Enduring Spirit

On tour to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their eponymous debut LP, The Raincoats should be assured of its legacy if last night's gig at the Komedia in Brighton was anything to go by. Amongst the expected middle-aged audience was a healthy contingent of young people - and young women in particular - and they seemed to know the words to the songs as well as us oldies. Part of that may be down to the album's enthusiastic endorsement by the late Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's Hole covering one of their songs; but even that was 25 years ago so I like to think it's more an enduring spirit that has been handed down through punk and riot grrrl and still has currency today.

The Raincoats were born from the west London squatting scene of the late seventies: inspired by The Slits, Gina Birch (bass and vocals) and Ana da Silva (guitar and vocals) started the band having met at Hornsey Art College. After some initial line-up changes, they became an all-female group in 1978 when they were joined by Vicky Aspinall on violin and Palmolive from The Slits on drums. They started from a point of little musical ability but were undeterred: as Gina advised last night, "write some lyrics, put them to a couple of chords - but be inventive." And The Raincoats were: at a time when so many bands were opting for rama-lama punk as a template, they were different and surprising; it was no wonder that disillusioned Pistol John Lydon was an early fan.

Only Ana and Gina from the line-up that recorded The Raincoats were present last night - Anne Wood and Vice Cooler were on violin and drums, respectively - as they played the original LP in its entirety book-ended with outstanding debut single Fairytale in the Supermarket at the start and songs from the Extended Play EP at the end. Still sounding angular and lo-fi but with uplifting harmonies, they worked through the tracks chronologically and it was a joy to hear songs such as Off Duty Trip, The Void and, my particular favourite, the Velvety nag of the discomfiting In Love, with its lyrics of turmoil: "I can't do a thing today/I can't see anyway/I haven't eaten all day." I last saw the band in early 1980 at the Electric Ballroom in Camden and it was such a treat to hear them live again, not in a nostalgic way but as confirmation that in the era of my youth there were people producing such distinctive and life-affirming music.

Charming and disarming in their interactions with the audience, the band were candid about the demands of playing live: Ana revealed the difficulty of getting their cover of The Kinks' Lola right (they did) and Gina, switching to guitar for a couple of songs, confessed that it was hard to sing when playing the bass. It was just this sort of honesty that made The Raincoats so refreshing and opened up the way in music for countless others. The honesty continued to the end of the night when Ana said, "This is the last song, we're not pretending, we have no encore, we have no more songs." And as they took a bow to rapturous applause, they were joined onstage by 'fifth-Beatle' Shirley O'Loughlin, The Raincoats' manager since the start.

Trudge Life

At one point on stage at the Con Club in Lewes last night, bass behemoth Jah Wobble chuckled to himself that he loves “trudging through the Wobble back catalogue.” If this was trudging, I highly recommend it. Him and his fantastic Invaders of the Heart propelled us through two hours of sterling musicianship, wise-cracking philosophy and some stellar tunes – all underpinned by Wobble’s low-frequency basslines.

It is not all sternum-shredding sub-bass, though: I last saw Jah Wobble in the early 90s when I went to a couple of his gigs in London at the Jazz Café and the Astoria. This was at the time of his commercial apex with the Rising Above Bedlam album and I remember, at the Astoria gig in particular, being almost induced into a transcendent state by the higher power of the rising and spiralling bass on Visions of You. The same happened again on that song last night and on the final encore, a rendition of Public Image’s Poptones, which must be one of the most gloriously hypnotic basslines ever created.

There were other examples of his work with PiL in the seventies: a drum and bass version of Socialist from Metal Box; a skanking version of the debut single; an epic treatment of the sprawling closer from the debut album, Fodderstompf – still with falsetto chant of “we only wanted to be loved!” But Wobble had a life beyond Lydon and Levene and has an impressive range of collaborations to his name: he has worked with Paul Oakenfold, The Orb and Primal Scream from the dance end of the spectrum and, from the avant garde, Brian Eno and members of Can. How Much Are They?, from his eighties' work with the latter’s Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, gets an outing and Liebezeit, who passed away this week, is remembered fondly as “the best drummer I ever played with.”

These days, Wobble also strays beyond his own material: the Harry J. Allstars’ Liquidator gets the audience dancing – some of it interestingly interpretive – and features an interval with Wobble at a metaphorical mixing desk orchestrating an hilarious zoomorphic description of all the instruments in the band; and one of the encores is jazz musician Roy Budd’s theme from the 1971 film, Get Carter, with flashes of Jeff Clyne’s elastic bassline.

With a two-hour set and three encores, it was a great gig; band and audience seemed to really enjoy themselves and Wobble cut a dash in his trademark pork pie hat as he prowled the stage. At one point he even choreographed some moves with the guitarist and trumpeter - but they were swaying not trudging.

Kicking Out at the World

It seems to be the current and popular view that John Lydon, the one-time anti-Christ and Sex Pistol, has undergone a rehabilitation, that he is now a reformed and respectable character. His recent interview with Piers Morgan on primetime, mainstream television saw a cuddly, joking John willing to play the game: he was happy to field the obligatory sentimental questions and be led to the brink of tears over the loss of his mum and his friend, Sid Vicious. It ended with Morgan playfully accusing Lydon of being a nice bloke, these days.

The probable truth is that he was always an affable character - his abrasiveness simply a defence mechanism. He was a teenager when he joined the Sex Pistols in 1975 and, within a couple of years, he found himself to be a public enemy, an immoral influence on the nation’s young. The words of a Libertines' song - “the boy kicked out at the world/the world kicked back a lot fucking harder” - come to mind. It is little wonder that he quickly developed a hard, spiky shell and a reluctance to engage with the media or any authority.

The irony of being condemned by those moral guardians of the 1970s, Parliament and the BBC, is surely not lost on Lydon. Recent revelations about the sexual practices of senior politicians and television personalities tell us that it was the likes of Johnny Rotten who were the ones with a strong moral compass. His railing against power and institutions, informed by his working-class Catholic upbringing, and his oft-expressed distaste for hypocrites and liars, make a lot more sense now.

Lydon is, of course, a survivor and his second band, the sublime Public Image Limited, arguably invented post-punk: the first three LPs the band made are still quite extraordinary to listen to for their experimentation and originality. With different line-ups into the 1980s and 90s, they settled for a more accomplished rock sound that brought success but less musical plaudits. The band then underwent a twenty-year hiatus – which Lydon filled with an autobiography, Sex Pistols’ reunions, reality television and butter advertisements - before re-emerging in 2012 with earlier members Bruce Smith and Lu Edmonds and new addition, jazz bassist, Scott Firth. Their LP, This Is PiL, was enthusiastically received for its post-punk, prog and reggae leanings.

Since then, the band have been gigging regularly and Lydon has written a second autobiography, Anger Is An Energy. Last year, I saw him promoting that book at the De La Warr Pavilion and, much as I enjoyed the evening, it seemed wrong to be in such a great venue listening to his life story rather than his music. Last night, he returned to Bexhill with PiL to put that right and commented that the book we purchased a year ago has probably make a good doorstop in the interim. I am sure it was a joke, like his comment that he had lived down the road in “far-superior” Pevensey Bay for a while as a kid.

Where Lydon seems happiest is on stage making music. It is easy to forget how remarkable his voice is, ranging from his familiar North London nasal whine to the deep bellow of a demented preacher and often both within one line of a song. The first two tracks on new album What The World Needs Now, Double Trouble and Know Now, were the set openers last night and they perfectly displayed his peculiar talent for hysterical, accusatory ranting. If the opening was frantic, it soon settled to a more thoughtful pace with a terrific version of one of their best songs, Poptones –“I can’t forget the impression you made/you left a hole in the back of my head” - from the ground-breaking Metal Box album, underpinned brilliantly by Scott Firth’s looping and spiralling bass. Lu Edmonds guitar work was inspired throughout and its piercing discordance illuminated the centrepiece of the set, an epic version of 1979’s Death Disco. There were also mid-period PiL treats with versions of Disappointed, The Body and This Is Not A Love Song.

A friend who had seen PiL a couple of years ago said that it was one of the loudest gigs he had been to and, as the evening wore on last night, the volume seemed to be increasing. By the time the set concluded with Religion, a savage attack on the world's faiths, I could feel Firth’s electric stand-up bass in my sternum and, as the song climaxed with Lydon chanting “turn up the bass!”, I could sense my scalp starting to tingle. The band’s two most iconic songs were saved for the encore: they returned to the stage with the rumble of first single, Public Image, and finished with the closest they get to a terrace anthem – “anger is an energy!” – the 1986 hit, Rise. The band seemed to have genuinely enjoyed the evening and lingered on stage as Lydon introduced them – pushing drummer Bruce Smith upstage - to the crowd’s appreciation.

October Spawned a Monster

There is so much good music being put on at the De La Warr Pavilion at the moment, I feel as though I spend more time in Bexhill’s Modernist temple of culture than I do in my own home. There is nothing wrong in that only, having been there three times in twelve days already this month, my state of genteel poverty presents me with a dilemma over the forthcoming Belle and Sebastian gig.

Not actually a gig, my sojourn at the De La Warr started a fortnight ago at an interview and book event with Public Image Limited’s John Lydon, formerly Johnny Rotten of this Sex Pistols parish. Lydon was interviewed onstage by The Guardian’s Alex Petridis to promote his new ghosted autobiography, Anger is an Energy. When I say interviewed, Petridis only had to ask a few questions; getting John Lydon to talk has never been difficult. And he seems to know better these days that, when he is amongst friends, he doesn’t have to shock; having said that, he still gives good copy. He tells us that he believes in a society that looks after its weakest members; that Russell Brand is misguided and you must vote “for the least bad option”; that the best thing about Britain is its embracing of immigrants, like his Irish parents; and that punk had true gender equality. It would have been good to hear him play some music, but then I remembered that it was another interview with him, a long time ago, that caught my attention just as much as the Sex Pistols’ music. In a filmed piece with Janet Street-Porter for The London Weekend Show in November 1976, his expression of anger about the drudgery and low expectations society bestowed upon the young working class, resonated with my teenage self so much that – and I am not being hyperbolic here - it completely changed my outlook on life.

Three days later, and the De La Warr was hosting another Johnny. A few years after Lydon’s poetry had declared that there was “no future in England’s dreaming”, The Smiths gave us “the songs that saved your life” and, for many, their articulation of gauche awkwardness and personal desperation, was just as important and life-affirming as the Pistols. For all the pathos and bathos of Morrissey’s lyrics, what made The Smiths a great band was their cracking tunes. The architect of those, Johnny Marr, has spent most of the intervening years collaborating with others and being a general guitar for hire, but in the past 18 months he has released two solo albums. The title track from the most recent, Playland, is the impressive set-opener and then he does something unexpected: Panic is the second song in and, although I knew he would play Smiths songs, letting the audience know this early on settles things down – everybody goes on to enjoy themselves, most of all Marr, who is a virtuoso guitarist. When he takes off his jacket, very carefully folds it and places it on the drum riser, a friend remarks that it is a sure sign of a mature man. Upstarts from last year’s The Messenger album follows and then the set is made up mostly of songs from the new album, with a regular sprinkling of Smiths’ songs – Stop Me, Bigmouth Strikes Again (with lyrics archly changed from “Joan of Arc” to “Johnny Marr), There Is A Light That Never Goes Out – that are, inevitably, rapturously received. A version of Electronic’s Getting Away With It reminds me what an elegant song he penned with Barney Sumner and Neil Tennant, and the final encore, How Soon Is Now?, lets Marr show off that extraordinary guitar sound that used to frighten the life out of my oldest son when he was a baby.

If you can be fairly certain what you will get from Lydon and Marr, British Sea Power are a constant surprise. A long history of gigs in unlikely places, (only recently they played on a ferryboat to Brownsea Isand in Dorset), onstage bears and robots and diversions into instrumental film soundtracks all mark them out as one of the most innovative and idiosyncratic bands around. And last Friday night in Bexhill they presented Sea of Brass, a set of songs from their extensive 10-year repertoire rearranged for performance in collaboration with a full brass band. Touring the country with a variety of regional ensembles, London’s Redbridge Brass Band were present at the De La Warr. With the traditional BSP dressing of foliage, all 6 members of the band and the 28 members of the brass band, the stage was looking crammed; and if the visual senses had a lot to take in, the aural layers presented by the fullness of the sound were incredible. It was not unexpected to hear tender songs such as The Land Beyond, The Great Skua and Machineries of Joy working so well in this context but when the punk pounding of Atom features, and then a full ten-minute version of Lately, it is an absolute delight. I always enjoy British Sea Power when Phil Sumner’s trumpet and Abi Fry’s violin are high up in the mix and, with the guitars tempered for the occasion, they shine through and are beautifully complemented by the plaintive full brass. The whole thing is so bloody marvellous that it is hard to contain yourself: my brother-in-law, sitting next to me (the seats were in for this one), keeps throwing his arms up in the air in an almost involuntary spasm. They encore with Waving Flags, which is as amazing with brass as the version I saw them perform with the full London Bulgarian Choir at the Roundhouse in 2008.

At my age, it was a monster of a gig-going month and I was almost relieved my residency at the De La Warr had ended. But then talk of the Belle and Sebastian gig this Wednesday started, prompting me to ask myself the question: should I go and hear The Boy With The Arab Strap played live, or be a responsible parent and spend the money entertaining the kids during half-term?