Please note the items you are about to read consist largely of scurrilous gossip, vicious back-stabbing and idle speculation. As Jon Stewart might say, its stories are not fact checked. Its informants are not journalists. And its opinions are not fully thought through.
THE GONADS! CHARLTON! SOUTH LONDON! STREET ROCK N ROLL! COCKNEY CULTURE! COCKNEY ROCK! OI-TONE! SKA! BEER! CURRY! WORKERS’ RIGHTS! FLAG-GIRLS! ENGLAND! OI OI OI! THIS IS WHO WE ARE!
May 9. Noo music update… the Raging Nathans have banged out a video for new song Waste My Heart… the Riverboat Gamblers have released new 7-inch single called Ramotorhead, featuring covers of the Ramones’ Bonzo Goes To Bitburg and Motorhead’s No Voices In The Sky… and Suck, from Germany, release new single Copkiller b/w with Hell and Heaven next month
May 8. Today Miss Management took the unprecedented step of issuing an official denial that we had played a secret gig at Arkwright’s last night, adding, “and the band certainly did not play a set including Badly Done, What’s Happening Now?, Shona & The Alien and Reinfected”. Suspicious Rainham Recorder reporter Suzie Tacini tells us: “Reports that something hasn’t happened always interest us. We know there are known knowns and known unknowns, but there are also unknown unknowns – things we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of punk and Oi, and of the Gonads in particular, it is the unknown unknowns that tend to be the most significant.” Hmm. The DM agrees saying “Why deny something that no one thought had happened? There is a bigger picture here that we cannot yet wossname.” What can it mean?
May 7. Although Rebellion has blamed the festival’s cancellation on Covid uncertainty and insurance difficulties, we can’t help wondering if Fat Col is to blame. On Friday, acting in an unauthorised capacity, Gannon submitted a series of outrageous rider demands including roast oxen, a landing pad for Wattsie’s alien(s) and extra security to keep members of the UK Subs away from our wives, mistresses and girlfriends. Festival insiders believe this pushed the organisers over the edge. Our absence from Blackpool this year means the fortune tellers on the piers will take a major hit, however. Col is addicted to them ever since Gypsy Rose Lee informed him that “the tealeaves revealed” his unrequited love for Wattsie, his counterfeiting activities and his time in Belmarsh. With voice trembling, Ms Lee told him “The one you love despises you, her heart is lost to another… from far far away… you are destined for great sadness…” Col left her booth in tears after handing over a wad of twenties. When we asked all-seeing Rose how she knew all this, she replied: “I read it on the blog, didn’t I? But don’t tell Fatty.”
May 6. STOP PRESS. This year’s Rebellion Festival has been cancelled. Their email reads: We are absolutely gutted to have to announce that it’s not possible for this year’s Rebellion to go ahead. We genuinely thought that a year on, with the vaccine programme and all the promises of a normal summer we’d be in a position to return. But as of today, we still have no confirmation on what needs to be put in place regarding entry to a large event. The government have been trialling events with Covid Testing but that won’t work for an event that runs for 4 days with re-entry. But crucially we can’t get insurance for this year and we’re not prepared to gamble the future of the festival if there’s no guarantee we can stage it safely. We have released a statement explaining our position and you can read it in full on our website or our Facebook page. We thank you for being part of our plans for this year and regret that we were not able to pull it off. Cancelling 2 years in a row is hard but we will overcome. However, we are going to have to approach 2022 as a new festival rather than carry over all bookings so unfortunately no slots are guaranteed. We will do our best to re-book as many bands as we can subject to availability, budget and our plans for 2022. Please don’t be offended if your band isn’t re-booked immediately. This is a long process. No decisions have been made yet on the line up and you could get that call / message at any time in the next year. For now, we’re having to deal with the very messy fall-out of cancelling a festival, so please bear with us. Your support is going to be really important in helping us get through this, so we thank you in advance. More importantly, we hope you and your loved ones are all safe and well and we all look forward to seeing you when things can finally return to normal. Best wishes, TEAM REBELLION
May 6. Suzi Moon’s new single, I’m Not A Man, is released tomorrow, ahead of her debut ep Call The Shots (released Friday week). Her first single Special Place In Hell can be seen here.
Please snap up her records, the poor woman clearly can’t afford to buy many clothes.
May 5. The backlash against the May 3rd backlash has begun! First Skippy, ship’s captain at Pirates Press, has praised our new protest song Promised Land dubbing it his second favourite of our four new numbers behind Federales. “I really like the message and the fact that the lyrics are pretty discernible throughout the song,” he says. Second, the first review of Shona & The Alien on Amazon awards the GBX single five stars describing the ditty as a “surprisingly tuneful outing from the guys behind the Gonads” and adding “which of us hasn't fallen for a passing alien?” (Quite true. Even Fat Col admits to spending hours standing around on Plumstead Common late at night just hoping to be sucked off by something alluring and other-worldly…). Effete El tells us: “This reaction really puts Col back in his box. He doesn’t speak for Club 77. Our loyal members generally prefer your punkier songs but we like the way Gonadary flourishes in other forms too.”
May 4.The Dropkick Murphys’ UK & Ireland tour dates have just dropped. They are, Feb 2022: 15 Manchester O2 Victoria Warehouse, 16 Newcastle O2 City Hall 18, Dublin 3Arena 19, Belfast Telegraph Building 22, Glasgow The Hydro 23, Cardiff Motorpoint Arena 24, Brighton Centre 25, Birmingham O2 Academy, 26 London Wembley Arena. Support band are the mighty Interrupters. Disappointingly there’s no sign of Awkright’s Bar in Rainham. Fat Col sniffs: “They’re big, but they ain’t Arkwright’s big yet”. Nuff said.
May 3. The backlash against Shona & The Alien has begun. First a furious Wattsie Watts condemned the single’s cover design saying: “The alien is completely wrong. My spaceman looked like David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth! He didn’t have fingers like bananas neither! And why has Shona got brown hair? She’s a woman in her twenties – she doesn’t look like a teenager at all!” Backing Wattsie all the way is Fat Col who lambasts the song “as lightweight pop”. We tell him that GBX are a separate band from the Gonads and aren’t supposed to sound punky. But Col insists the spin-off band “must be disbanded”, adding “this is the Gonads’ ‘Dylan at Newport’ moment and you need to stop it and do what you do best – that is, record 18 Stone Of Dynamite in all its mewling and puking punk rock glory”. Our alien expert, Professor Eric T. Mork dismisses Wattsie’s complaints however saying “Ze creature on ze cover is quite clearly a Changeling from ze Gamma Quadrant of the Milky Way who could morph into whatever physical shape Shona desires, be it David Bowie, Fat Col or a man-sized gluten-free bagel”. He adds that the Changeling’s natural state is “a viscous liquid” that “she could swallow whole without feeling ze need to spit it out”. He goes on, “Changelings have been secretly breeding with earth women for decades – which explains ze existence of Boris Johnson.”
May 1. Happy Mayday. We can confirm that good sense has triumphed over controversy and, as Miss Management decreed, we will release our new split single THREE CHORDS & THE TRUTH by The Gonads b/w SO GLAD TO BE ALIVE by The SkaNads in about five weeks’ time. Promised Land is being “held back until the time is right”, Dave Long style-ee. Fat Col, one of the hardcore who objected to the song, tells us, “This is the right decision. We have to make the Gonads punk again. Anyone who liked Federales will fuckin’ LOVE Three Chords.”
