More bootlegged Punilux captured at the home of Pub rock, complete with those familiar 'small room' acoustic's.
Sounds like a loud high-octane performance that's too big for the room. They even do an encore before the tape runs out.....how non-punk is that?
Tracklisting:
1 - Puppet Life
2 - The Demon
3 - The Puff Song
4 - Lets get Married/You're So Beautiful
5 - Brainbomb
6 - Excess Bleeding Heart
7 - Babalon
8 - Funk Me (Lizard Love)
9 - Jellyfish
10- (Crowd) Speeding
DOWNLOAD punishment at the hope and anchor HERE!
The potential disaster of Actors forming bands and pop stars becoming actors,has thankfully met with only limited success.
Alas, one has to say, the actors in bands direction of this flowchart was far more satisfying than David Bowie in 'The Man Who Fell To Earth', Madonna in anything she's ever done (including all her godawful tunes), and even Phil Collins in 'Miami Vice'!
Most members of groups are actors anyhow, so it makes sense that if you're a better actor, with experience of stage and screen, you're gonna make a better 'Pop Star'; as referenced by David Essex (Actor) in his number one smash hit "Gonna Make You A Star".; wot I bought as my first single in 1975, weirdly a year or so after i had started buying albums.....ok, my first album was Slade's "Old,New Borrowed and Blue"....from humble begginings etc....!?
Slade's acting in "Slade in Flame" was quite bad in a good film, but the biscuit has to be taken by The Clash in the toe-curling docu-drama that is "Rude Boy". They were trying to act as their pop-star persona's,which was an act anyway!Always a challenging role to act as someone one who's acting.Even Sir Larry Olivier struggled with such a role as Archie Rice in "The Entertainer".But Larry Olivier wasn't in the Clash was he? They only had Mick 'Hardman' Jones and it was the kind of stuff you could only watch through your fingers as you try and hide from its unbridled horror; back of the sofa stuff!....ugh...shudder!(ok...yeah, the concert footage is good but so what?)
Whereas, Actors in Bands have ,narrowly,a better record (pun intended).
We got 'Alberto y Los Trios Paranoias',The Monkees,That Bloke from Bauhaus,....er....Phil Collins in Peter Gabriels' Genesis......struggling here......and Punishment Of Luxury of course. If left-wing fringe theatre counts as acting?
Naturally, there are reams of actors dabbling in music that should stick to acting.....in most cases they shouldn't do either, like Bruce Willis and Steven Segal.
What i'm trying to say is that Punilux are better as actors in a group than The Russel Crowe Band.
Here's the proof, in their second, and last, John Peel session from 1979.
Tracklisting:
1 - Radar Bug/Metropolis (5:35).
2 - British Baboon (3:37)
3 - Secrets (3:57)
DOWNLOAD within the luxury of your own home HERE!
I never started listening to the John Peel show until around the summer of '78 on our annual family 'holiday' in the bracing Skegness concentration camp(the same year that Skeg's famous pier and theatre was removed by a severe gale and storm surge;the place i saw my first pop group...Gerry and the Pacemakers....i jest not!?...and comedy legends like Norman Wisdom,Tommy Cooper, Ray Allen and Lord Charles).
The only record shop in 'Skeg' (not Skag) was a general electrical store called Herrick Watson. The summer before I had the pleasure of purchasing the first Clash Album which was displayed in the window; then the further pleasure of Uncle Ron returning from work and removing the Clash from his stereo and replacing it with some military Brass band playing the "Enigma Variations".An interesting and beautiful piece of music played on any other instrumentation than cornets, trumpets and tuba's by soldiers; driven along with military snare drums........even The Clash would have done a more sensitive interpretation.
That summer of '78 secured me a copy of "(Can't Stand) The Rezillo's", which got the same treatment. This time they did it to Holst's 'Planet Suite' !!!!!!
Uncle Ron was a miserable ex- air force ex-Navy arsehole who came from the same town as Punishment Of Luxury (Newcastle)......something dear to the clogged up arteries of Ronald's black heart, as he loved to punish anyone lower in rank to himself if they were caught enjoying any luxuries.
Television being banned, and having lost all my money in the amusement arcades, the only option was to disappear to bed to listen furtively to The John Peel Show, which, during that month of august featured the first session by Punilux. This sounded like outer-space to me, so used to the one chord shouty dirge's of '77 vintage punk. Were these mysterious musicians actually playing several chords in shifting time signatures with melodies, like the Progressive rock bands I grew up with.....but,without the messing about?....the answer was 'Yes', and opened my ears to the new intelligent bands that started to appear from that summer of 1978 onwards. There was at least four Geordies whom I liked that Geordie Nazi Uncle Ron couldn't censor.
(For those who are interested, Ron mellowed somewhat after his third heart attack, and even more after that as he died in about 2002-ish....not sure)
Tracklisting:
1 - Funk Me (6:20)
2 - Babalon (5:48)
3 - Let's Get Married/You're So Beautiful (6:54)
DOWNLOAD if you're a glutton for punishment HERE!
"Do you like cold Chips David?", and "I'll facking 'ave ya!", are just two of the tasty morsels of dialogue captured from the restless crowd on this recording of Punishment Of Luxury's career peak at the Reading Festival in 1979.
There were an inordinate number of Greebo's waiting for Motorhead ,ready for a fight. Punilux's appearance apparently caused a vicious can fight between their punky fans and a larger number of long haired headbangers.Although Punilux tried to calm the audience , their remarks did not help cool things down one bit . Sporadic fights broke out throughout the evening as bored ( or perhaps intoxicated ) audience members took their frustrations out on other fans .
Inexplicably they were below Doll By Doll on the bill!?....whom the Motorhead fans hated even more than Punishment Of Luxury......but they liked The Cure!??....obviously they were too hammered to care by then. More understandably they loved Wilko Johnson's Solid Senders, so these Greebo's couldn't have been that pissed, or that stupid.
The Police and The (fucking awful) Tourists,featuring the reprehensible Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox had to follow Motorhead!??.....who decided on this running order???
Festivals are fucking awful anyway, but at least some of the bands weren't, like Punishment Of Luxury.
Tracklisting:
1 Puppet Life
2 The demon
3 Funk Me
4 All White Jack
5 Obsession
6 Radar Bug/Metropolis
7 British Baboon
8 Babalon
9 Jellyfish
10 Brain Bomb.
DOWNLOAD a charming festival experience HERE!
'Post-punk' was in fact Prog's triumphant return after a forced tactical withdrawal during Punk Rock's 'Khmer Rouge' approach to anything slightly intellectual or musicianly.
Most of the intelligentsia of the punk movement were secret Prog fans, Like Devoto,Shelley, Lydon, Levine, and even the dumber end had its prog acolytes, like Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies.
As far as I was concerned, so-called 'Post-Punk' was Punk Rock, and never considered it all to be Post-anything; it was still happening wasn't it?
So suddenly in '78, filling the gaping hole left by Standard Punk's inability to move on from The Ramones template, we had This Heat, Magazine,Cardiacs and Punishment of Luxury. Alongside an increasingly active Fripp and Eno,a resurrected Van Der Graff Generator, and plenty of Peter Hamill albums. All suitably punkified of course.
Punishment Of Luxury (aka Punilux) were a bunch of actors from North East England, who made a type of funky performance rock, with shifting time signatures, fertile with ideas, and a spikey edge. All performed with a technical ability that was taboo in 1977/8.
Whereas Prog Rock before 1976 had largely turned into some kind of bad musical, the new revitalised Prog (aka Post-Punk) had learned the harsh lessons dealt out by the Punk's,stripped away the Lord of the rings and Mozart nonsense,and concentrated on actually being er...progressive. All packaged(with classic Prog art gatefold sleeve to boot!) in shorter song formats for those modern '78 kids with short attention spans;introducing heavier subject matter than chaos and boredom.
Punilux were outstandingly good, and it never fails to astound me that they virtually sank without trace. It wasn't until recently that i found out that they had a couple more albums released after this.....not on United Artists though, who dropped them like a hot potato as soon as they never went top ten with a bullet, and/or decided that they weren't 'New Wave enough.
Incredibly, as recently as 2012, they released a new album, and played gigs!?.... And why not?
Tracklist:
1 Puppet Life 3:03
2 Funk Me 4:00
3 The Message 3:55
4 All White Jack 3:57
5 Obsession 4:43
6 Radar Bug / Metropolis 5:43
7 British Baboon 4:03
8 Babalon 4:00
9 Excess Bleeding Heart 2:38
10 Laughing Academy 5:01
BONUS TRACKS:
11 Secrets (single 1979)
12 Brain Bomb (Secrets B-side)
13 Baby Don't Jump (Laughing Academy 7" B-side, 1980)
14 Engine Of Excess (Single 1979)
15 Jellyfish (Engine of Excess B-Side)
16 Puppet life (Small Wonder 7" Version 1978)
17 The Demon (Puppet life B-Side)
