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!
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Oct 11. Thank you all! We’ve been overwhelmed with your kind messages about Gal’s throbbing pain. Some were almost sympathetic. You’ve also sent us sage advice about how the great Gonad should reach the 229 stage tomorrow night. Your tips include, but are not limited to: via a large circus canon, or a giant catapult; on a camel on loan from Regents Park Zoo; by trapeze with the help of the Flying Wallendas; on a Roman-style lectica; on stilts (how would that work? – Ed); as the back-end of a pantomime horse; or carried on a stretcher by a suicide squad of skin-birds dressed as Carry On Nurse extras. For his part, Gal is stoically riding the pain and ignoring the fuss. He is believed to have met secretly with our former Assistant Comrade Manager FB at Office #1 earlier this week to make plans for the tour-free year ahead. Their immediate aims are 1) to secure a new record label, and 2) produce a killer Gonads 2025 album. New tracks are being worked on even as we speak.
Oct 10. Don’t panic, but Gal needs urgent surgery on his left foot. His PA, Fit-Bird tells us: “E’s in agony, ain’t ’e, and ’e can’t walk easily or stand for long for that matter.’ However, she assures us he will go ahead with Saturday’s gig. “E never pulls out, does ’e?” she said, with no hint of unpleasant ambiguity. His glamorous Spanish GP, Dolorez Perez – aka the hotter doctor from the Costa – tells us: “I examined Mr Gonad’s problem last month, it was engorged, purple, and throbbed painfully throughout. And then he showed me his foot.” Saturday’s promoters Human Punk have been most helpful, suggesting that Gal should be carried on stage by a platoon of Bushell Babes. Sadly, Wattsie has over-ruled this sensible suggestion. Instead, Gal will throw away his crutches backstage, swallow a handful of codeine washed down with best brandy and get stuck in. Says Wattsie: “He’ll be miserable and moany afterwards, necking huge quantities of alcohol, but hey, that’s condition normal.”
Oct 9. Our Dublin Castle farewell show, The Gonads Flop Out, on 6th December is nearly sold out, so if you fancy coming grab a ticket quick. It genuinely will be our last London show and spell the end of the Magnificent Gonads as a touring band. Special guests are being lined up. It’s going to be a great night! Before that we headline the Spice Of Life in Soho on 9th November. You can get tickets here. And don’t forget we’re playing Cream Of The Crop at the 229 this Saturday, a jam-packed all dayer featuring punk, Ska, Oi, cockney rock and book signings, but as far as we can tell no ventriloquist act. What’s wrong with you people?
In other news, Amyl & The Sniffers are Vive Le Rock’s latest cover stars ahead of their new album… The Cure release their first new studio album for 16 years next month… and Less Than Jake’s new EP called Uncharted is out next month, featuring seven tracks, three of them brand new.
Oct 8. Out now! The second issue of The Spotty Herbert, a superior street-culture fanzine from San Francisco. Issue #2 features such lesser-spotted herbert luminaries as Bones from the Lower Class Brats, The Oppressed, Symond Lawes, the Hub City Stompers, our own Gal Gonad and many more.
Oct 7. Quotes from recent interviews with Gal Gonad.
Q. When’s the next Gonads gig? A. Cream of the Crop at the 229 on 12th October. Then there are two in November and the big farewell show on 6th December.
Q. Is that really the end for the Gonads? A. It will be our very last show in London and also the end of us touring.
Q. Will you continue to record, and if so, what? A. Yeah, I want to carry on recording. We’ve always been a very productive band and I feel that some of our earlier recordings have been over-looked. Eat The Rich was never on a Gonads album, just a couple of compilations, and Antigallican Last Bell, one of our oldest songs, has never been recorded. Also Chaos (Herbert Version), that’s only ever been available as a track on the live bootleg, and Ripper’s Delight. I’d like to record them all properly, if I can remember the chords to Antigallican… Clouds has never been recorded either but that’s more suited to the Orgasm Guerrillas. Plus there are songs like Say What You Like which would almost certainly get us cancelled.
Q. Punk and politics, where do you stand? A. Nicky Thomas singing Love Of The Common People – that was politics. Sam Cooke singing A Change Is Gonna Come, The Temptations singing Ball Of Confusion… those songs meant more than hanging around posing for pictures in Belfast. I loved the Clash but politics for Bernie Rhodes was a marketing ploy. When we covered Joe Hill, it was an acknowledgement of my own very leftwing political past, but I’m very cynical about the virtue-signalling side of ‘punk’ today.
Q. The Gonads band has always been a bit schizophrenic, would you agree. A. Well we’ve always been known primarily as a punk rock band, but we’ve never been confined to one genre. Even on the first live double, there’s blues-rock, Cockney piano sing-a-longs, metal and a bit of reggae. I’m glad we do songs like Oi Mate and John King Is A Veggie as well as Gob and Federales. It may be that we’ll make the next Gonads album high-energy and do the ska stuff and the comedy songs on a GBX album. I’ve just written one song that is so serene, it could never be on a Gonads album. But any new Gonads release would have to be at least as good as Revolution Now!
Q. When will you release them? A. That will depend on finances.
Q. What’s your favourite Gonads song? A. Karl Marx Supported Millwall! Other than that, Hey You, Federales, Oi Mate and Gob.
Q. I feel you don’t make enough video footage. You never get the true joy of the Gonads on records, I mean the live sparkle you have. A. Well. I’m looking into making more videos. Again, we’re pricing it up.
Q. The Gonads have an assured and unshakeable place in punk and Oi history. What’s missing for you? A. Apart from hit singles, groupies, cocaine and huge royalty cheques, absolutely nothing. Nobody in a punk band today is doing it to make money. The only people playing stadiums are Green Day and the Murphys. The only thing missing in my life is the time I need to do all the things I still want to do.
Q. Will punk ever make a come-back? A. It’s never been away.
Q. Who are the best new bands around? A. Newer, rather than new, I would say Clobber, The Meffs, The Molotovs and The Chisel.
Q. Don’t you ever yearn to lead a sleepy life in a bungalow in Whitstable rather than punk rock gigs?
A. What’s the famous quote – I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
October 1st. The Punk Rock Curry Club assemble! The rowdy but friendly throng witnessed the triumphant return of Terence Hayes, PM, plus a turbo-charged JJ Kaos, a tardy John King, Lee ‘Fridge Freezer’ Wilson, Steven Whale, Timothy Wells, a hobbling and demented Galahad ‘Gal’ Gonad, Liberty Hayes, Barnet Mark, Mandy Crow, a portly man known only as ‘The Grumbler’, Max Spartan, the disappearing Steve Kent, and too many more for us to detail with a hangover the size of Tower Bridge. All good people. Apologies for absence were received from Cass Pennant, Olga Toydoll, Paul SkaNad, Miss Management, the Beast, Ginger Bob and Carrie Griffiths. Pictures, largely courtesy Jim Jimmy James, are from the Brown Bear and the Halal Restaurant in London E1. Oi Oi!
An invitation for the Gonads to play an acoustic Xmas set on the 7th December – less than 15hours after our last-ever London show – has been rejected. A band insider (Effete El) tells us: “They were tempted because it would have beaten even Sinatra’s come-back record, but in the end, Gal nixed it saying simply, ‘When it’s gone, it’s gone’.” So mote it be, we suppose.
