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!
Sept 28. Grim news chums. Gal’s specialist today ordered him to “stop drinking or die”. Pausing to dismiss the leading medical authority as “a two-bob, melodramatic quack”, caring Fat Col tells us this “unacceptable diagnosis will do unknown damage to the Gonads... As far as I know, Gal has never performed sober. How can you sing Pub Crawl without a pint or ten inside yer? It’s absurd.” Col pauses, ruminates and then continues: “Weighing things up, it might be better for the band if Gal carries on boozing, safe in the knowledge that his early death would do wonders for our sales.” All heart that man. Odds on if Gal does comply, Lee Wilson will be straight by his side to finally offer to buy him a pint... In the light of this shock news, the blog will now close as we enter a period of mourning. And drinking. (Well there’s nothing stopping us getting on it, is there?)
Sept 27. Gig update. Our November show at the New Cross Inn is still on track but the venue have asked us to make it socially distanced with a maximum audience of sixty. They tell us “With existing government restrictions, this is the only way the show will be able to take place.” Reluctantly we have agreed. This means the gig will be operated on a first come, first served basis, with no guest-list. Tickets are just £8 in advance. Get in quick here. Cheers!
Please note: as a consequence, we have sadly had to cancel the planned guest appearance of the Dagenham Girl Pipers.
Sept 26. Unexpected news: this week Gal and Clyde wrote two new songs, TDA and We Are The People, which are “red hot punk belters” according to Fat Col. Fit Bird isn’t that impressed though. “They’re a proper bleeding racket,” she tells us between drags on her roll-up. “I dunno why they bother. They’ve got about thirty songs they ain’t recorded yet, ain’t they? So why write more. It’s daft, innit?” We’d say so, especially as Mystic Meg, written in 1995, has still not seen the light of day except for one play of the demo on ITV in 96.
In other noos: The Slackers online festival Slacktoberfest will happen on October 3rd with a bill including our chums Buster Shuffle, Mexico’s Salon Victoria, Germany’s Dr Ring Ding and more. The Slackers new single Blue is out now on vinyl from Pirates Press, backed with a dub version of the same song.
Fat Col rings to claim that The Sopranos’ 2002 fourth season has “uncanny echoes” of Gal’s 2001 London-based pulp fiction novel The Face, including a certain unusual sexual deviancy and confrontation with political protestors. Gal, who is currently (slowly) writing the fourth book in the series dismisses the similarities as “a coincidence” adding that The Sopranos is “the greatest US TV series of all time”.
We ask what the best British series was and then regret it as he sets off on a half-hour diatribe about the enduring genius of Minder, The Sweeney and The Avengers, including a detailed appraisal of Emma Peel’s dress sense – specifically the basque, boots, spiked collar and whip look she sported in Queen Of Sin (serious students of television only can study it here, in trouser-straining slow motion). R.I.P. Diana.
A serious moment. The Church of Oi – the actual religious order – have taken great exception to the so-called “Church of Oi” page on Facebook. Their spokesman, Brother Mark tells us “The Church of Oi is not a club, it’s not a hobby. It is a genuine spiritual movement inspired by the real fraternal message of Oi. It’s about a set of values and a world view. Put simply Oi is for life, not just for music.” Speaking from his monkish cell, in HMP Belmarsh, Bro. Mark called on “the admins of the spurious and misleading page to do the decent thing and delete it – or fry in hell for eternity”. So mote it be.
A question for Gonads products coordinator FB, from Martin Sporrell (aggressive gooner): whatever happened to the Gonads Curry that you were developing for us in 2012? The super-strength Ruby, based on Gal’s own tongue-scorching recipe, was perfected by a team of punk rock chefs in Hazmat suits and FB was then tasked with the small business of finding a manufacturer and distributor... and generating a million quid by Christmas. The recipe for the toxic dish was even published in the sleeve notes of our Built For Destruction album. So what happened next? We have sent the great man a message. No answer yet but we have absolute faith in our former road manager and know that it will come soon.
Sept 25. Here’s the best of the fan art you sent in for Give Her A Dog. Thanks Bej!! We really appreciate your help.
Sept 24. Random Noos: Our mates, the mighty Rose Tattoo, will be back in Blighty next July. Confirmed dates include Islington, Birmingham and Glasgow... the latest Slade compilation: Cum On Feel The Hitz is released by BMG tomorrow... Springsteen’s new single Ghosts was inspired by lost E Street Band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici...
As Madonna releases her Madame X perfume, we can reveal that our own boffins are working on a “game-changing” fragrance for men called Essence of Col. According to project co-ordinator FB, the pleasing aroma “smells of pubs and Wormwood scrubs with a lingering aftershock of curry, Paulaner and flatulence...it’s irresistible to females” (When we queried this claim, FB explained that to date it had only been tested on bloodhounds and sows).
In a related story you can now buy a scented candle that allegedly “smells like Lemmy”. Timed to coincide with the upcoming 40th anniversary of the immortal Motörhead album, Ace Of Spades, the official Lemmy candle comes from the Evoke Candle Co and has “fragrance notes of whiskey, oak and smoke, and will evoke the heady whiff of Motörhead at full-throttle in the comfort of your own home”.
RIP W.S. “Fluke” Holland, who played drums for Johnny Cash and for Carl Perkins on classics like Blue Suede Shoes. Fluke died yesterday at home in Tennessee. He was 85.
Sept 23. Here is the cover for our magnificent soon-come Christmas mini-album! Thanks DC! And thank you to the wonderful people who rushed to send us their own interpretations of the title, Give Her A Dog For Xmas. Only two were pornographic.
Here are the links for last night’s Rancid Sounds Of Glory mash-up. On Spreaker, on Google Podcasts, and on Spotify.
The headmaster of one of the teenage musicians who will be supporting us in November rang Nads HQ to say he was “seriously concerned” by reports that the Gonads “use a lot of obscenities on stage”. Luckily Fat Col answered the phone and reassured him immediately. “He was some proper posh geezer,” Col tells us. “But I put him straight. I told him that none of the band swears on stage or in real life. On my mother’s life! And I said we was gutted to hear this scandalous slander as we are respectable, clean-living people. Then I asked him to name his informers. Who are these grassing cunts?, I said. He must have been happy cos the phone went dead.
Sept 22. Gal’s latest radio show will go out live tonight at 11pm on 2nd City Radio from a “Covid-secure studio” in beautiful downtown Chelsfield and will be mash-up of two of his normal shows – Rancid Sounds and Sounds Of Glory, sort of Rancid Sounds of Glory, with tracks from everyone from the Welch Boys to The Clash. We’ll post the link tomorrow.
Sept 21. Our November gig at the New Cross Inn is still on with support slots from Monkish and teenage bands Three In A Bar & Plummet, but will Wattsie Watts’s security demands keep the masses away? The conspiracy-mad song-bird wants us to BAN “round-Earthers”, “fake-moon-landing deniers” and “anyone who doesn’t believe in aliens, pixies and fairy folk” (in other words rational souls who put their trust in science and reality) from the show. Our head of security Martin Sporrell (aggressive Gooner) hit back saying, “The Gonads believe absolutely in freedom of speech. I’m on the door and no-one will be banned for their opinions, not even Chelsea Dom.” So say we all, except Wattsie.
We’ve sent a replacement cover for our Christmas mini-album to Soitainly Records executives by racing pigeon this morning. But did it arrive in time? Gulp. News to follow, probably.
Sept 20. Oh calamity! The race to get our new mini-album out in time went tits up when Clyde’s mate Dave produced a cover that appeared to channel 1970s Penthouse. Half the band loved it! But fearing the wrath of Wattsie and Miss Management, it has been vetoed, meaning that we have less than a day (!) to knock up something slightly more tasteful... We’ll be back when we have any news. Fingers crossed kids. Cheerio!
Has anyone seen the DM? Terence Hayes is not answering his phone and The Bitch has taken over his FB page, stoking fears that El Tel has slipped into one of his periodic deep meditation states where, fortified by red wine, he wrestles with his inner demons. An ashen-faced Effete El tells us: “The deeper the meditation, the more chance there is of the DM entering a metamorphic stage and emerging in as a new and potentially much darker entity.” Blimey.
Today is the 44th anniversary of the Sex Pistols playing the infamous two-day Punk Festival at London’s 100 Club. But don’t get too swept up with the golden glow of nostalgia. On the fest’s second night, a Tuesday, Sid Vicious – then “drummer” with the Banshees – blinded a teenage girl in one eye after attacking The Damned on stage with a glass. Sid was nicked the next day. Sadly they let him out again.
Sept 19. Lord Waistrel loves Pub Crawl so much that he has ordered the rush-release of a Christmas mini-album! Give Her A Dog For Christmas by The Gonads vs GBX will be released in “about six weeks” IF we can get the artwork done in time. (Miss Management is cracking the whip... but we enjoy that too much to get any work finished.) Waistrel has also “opened a bally channel” to a leading streetpunk record label with a view to releasing brand new Gonads vinyl next Spring.
Record Noos: Veteran Boston punks, The Welch Boys, recently released a split 10incher with California’s Bonecrusher. You can hear a track on Gal’s next radio show, which might be live as early as Tuesday night. The lads, who have opened for everyone from the Murphys to The Dead Kennedys via The Business and the Buzzcocks, will release a full album later this year... Chrysalis will release a half-speed version of the Specials’ second album, More Specials on November 20; it comes with rare single Braggin and Tryin’ Not To Lie b/w Rude Boys Outa Jail... The latest Wailers single Philosophy Of Life is now on YouTube.
And don’t forget Leah McCaffrey’s debut ep is on Spotify, including her blinding version of Cock Sparrer’s East End Girl
Sept 18. How on earth could a Gonads pub crawl possibly involve Amanda Holden, Fox Mulder and William Hague? Our latest true story is now playing on YouTube in all its glory.
Oh happy day!! Today is the day the new Gonads single – Too Old To Riot/The Full English – and the new GBX single Pub Crawl/Beer Can Boogie are available to download across the board. Get buying kids, this blog don’t pay the rent.
Sept 17. Just 24 hours to go until the biggest punk rock event of the year – the release of our two new singles! And to make life even sweeter, tomorrow at midday UK time, our brand new Pub Crawl video will be up-loaded to YouTube! Stand by your beds!
Sept 16. We will celebrate the launch of our new singles with a VIRTUAL LAUNCH PARTY on Friday evening. Wherever you are in the country, you can participate fully, simply by imagining that we’re playing in your local! Says Miss Management: “An imaginary Gonads gig is in many ways better than the real thing because you get to choose the set, you can pause the action to nip to the khazi, and – if your imagination is strong enough – picture a scene where Lee Wilson actually buys you a drink. It’s the future!” Friday’s virtual launch party will be compered by the ghost of Max Miller, with guest appearances from Jimi Hendrix and Howlin’ Wolf. Flag girls to include Pamela Anderson, Haley Berry and, for one night only, Kara Clark from the Co-Op.
BOOK NOOS: John Cooper Clarke’s long-awaited autobiography I Wanna Be Yours is published on 1st October. The rib-tickling memoir spans five decades and as many continents, and features an incredible cast of characters along the way from Nico to Plan B via the great Chuck Berry... Judas Priest’s Rob Halford reveals that he tried and failed to seduce Paul Di’Anno in his soon-come memoir Confess: The Autobiography. The leather-lovin’ Priest singer invited Di’Anno back to his hotel room when Maiden supported them on 1980’s British Steel tour. Halford writes: “Maybe I took Di’Anno’s comment that he would blow Priest off stage too literally… because the one night we got drunk together, I tried to seduce him! We went to my room to carry on drinking, but I was too pissed to try anything, and he was too pissed to even know what I wanted to try. I think that was definitely for the best.” Yep. Too risky.
NOOS: Captain Oi are to release a 5-CD clamshell box set The Boys On Safari covering the Boys’ 1979-81 period. The 75-track covering their time on Safari Records is released on Friday week and costs £21.99... and don’t forget that the six-album Oi box set is released this Friday for £23.99 although it’s slightly over-shadowed by the release that same day of The Gonads’ Too Old To Riot/The Full English and GBX’s incredible Pub Crawl/Beer Can Boogie. Bad timing, Cap’n!
Sept 15. The countdown to our two new singles has begun! Pub Crawl by GBX and Too Old To Riot by the Gonads are both released electronically on Friday. So there’s just three days to wait for two absolute belters! And wait till you hear The Full English!
A collective sigh of relief was heard all over south east London today as it emerged that Fat Col has NOT been cloned. Or rather he has and he hasn’t. It turns out that the “Colin Gannon” who was successfully duplicated on Sunday was not our Col but an 85-stone Gloucester Old Spot pig of the same name. We asked Mardy Marjorie, who runs the farm at That Sussex Place with her husband Mick, how the mix-up came about. “Well,” she said. “When our porker was growing up he was rude, greedy, selfish, stupid, and particularly smelly... a proper boar in fact, so it seemed only natural to change his name to Colin Gannon. I mean, we read the blog like every decent person does and our Col and your Col are like two peas in a pod. The only difference being one has a small corkscrew penis...and the other one is a pig.” Ouch.
Sept 14. We’re hearing reports of a major incident at the Pranksters’ packed Rage Against Tyranny festival in East Sussex yesterday. Our sources tell us that there was a “terrible accident” at the experimental cloning event and as a consequence there are now TWO Colin Gannons. Questions arising: can this possibly be true? Is it Wattsie’s worst nightmare? And if their no-strings honeymoon goes ahead will she now be the meat in a Gannon sandwich? We’ll be back with the answers ASAP.
Sept 12. R.I.P. Frederick ‘Toots’ Hibbert, of Toots & the Maytals glory, who has passed away aged 77. The reggae legend died peacefully yesterday surrounded by his family at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. R.I.P. also Sid McCray, the original Bad Brains singer, who died three days ago. Sid introduced the Brains to punk back when they were a jazz group called Mind Power.
One of the few surviving original members of the League of Labour Skins has contacted us appealing for “young blood” to take over the reins of the forty year old League and build it afresh. LOLS was formed by Chelsea skin Joe McAvoy, R.I.P, in 1980 and was originally based in Battersea. Interested parties can contact the lads via their Facebook page.
Sep 11. The apolitical Jolly Pranksters are “spitting feathers” over what they call “the latest Nanny State clampdown”. So livid are senior brethren at the government’s “draconian intrusions on English liberty” that they are staging an impromptu Rage Against Tyranny event this Sunday, stating that “groups of seven and over are especially welcome”. The mini-festival will be held at That Sussex Place and, in a calculated snub to “the alien concepts of Political Correctness”, event organiser Effete El has arranged a series of frowned-upon activities including: unlicenced dwarf-throwing, topless darts, bull-fighting (in the Bull Inn car park...winner to take on Mandy the landlord’s mum) and “experimental cloning”. Five Mary Millington films, including Eskimo Nell and I’m Not Feeling Myself Tonight, will be shown nonstop in the Great Barn. To see off charges of dumbing down, El is also attempting to book Chelsea Dom to give a talk on “Cock Sparrer shows I have seen” and/or the art of hydro-electrical engineering – “whichever is more of an endurance test”. Side stalls will include the legendary drunk tattooists of Kings Cross (spelling mistakes guaranteed) and the evening’s headliner will be veteran variety turn Albert Gruntfuttock, 93, the celebrated Rita Ora impersonator. The festive board will consist of a John King unfriendly multi-meat banquet prepared by the militant Carnivore League. “The vegan option is to starve,” laughs spokesman Del the Butcher, whose splendid spatchcock has converted many a drooling veggie. “Inside skirt is his speciality,” whispers Mrs Del, who adds “it’s a thing of great joy... his short loin and ball tip ain’t to be sniffed at ever”. We’ll try to avoid them. Proceeds from the all-dayer will go to “poor and distressed” retired members of the League Of Herbert Gentlefolk. Co-organiser Old Eric tells us: “Unlike many of our countrymen, the Pranksters have not yet been forced to our knees by the so-called Tories, their ‘health’ Gestapo and the Marxist Civil Service. I say to all brother patriots: be here on Sunday or be a slave.” So mote it be. And so say we all. See your Tyler for details.
Work has begun on a second Gonads lyric book, which will contain the words to at least forty songs. We ask: “Will it be out by Christmas?” Fit Bird: “The publisher says yes, dunn’e?” Us: “Who’s the publisher?” Fit Bird: “Stalin.” Us: “Did he say what year?” The phone goes dead.
Nads Fest organiser Colin Gannon has rejected calls for the American Gonads to appear on the 2021 bill. “What we want is a proper pathetique carnival,” he sniffs. “That means we need comics, clowns, fire-eaters, poets, French flatulists, surrealists, punk rock, Trojan reggae, hard rock, head-bangers, fire jugglers, karate displays and pole-dancers” (Are you sure? – Ed). “What we don’t need are two versions of the same bleeding band. No matter how alluring Jay the Tripod may be.”
Sep 10. Great news for glum times! Our two blinding new singles are released one week from tomorrow! Here are the links to PUB CRAWL by GBX:
iTunes -
Spotify -
Amazon -
Deezer -
7digital
And here are the links to The Gonads’ single TOO OLD TO RIOT:
iTunes -
Deezer - Google Play -
The b-sides are FULL ENGLISH (THE GONADS) and GBX’s glorious Status Quo tribute BEER CAN BOOGIE
STOP PRESS: Due to the government’s latest Covid somersault, we kindly request that you read this blog in groups of six or fewer.
Sept 9. The Cockney Rejects will live stream their first two albums, Greatest Hits Volume One and Two, on Oct 5th. See the Rejects’ website and FB pages for details... the ultra-special 40th anniversary Oi compilation, Oi – 40 Years Untamed, will be released in late November, featuring brand new songs from Cock Sparrer, The Last Resort, the Gonads, Stomper 98, The Business, Doug & The Slugz and many more... the new NOi!se digital ep, Welcome To Tacoma, featuring acoustic versions of four fan-picked NOi!se ditties is out now.
New government requirements for social gatherings of just six people have sent Fat Col into a blind panic. “How is that going to work?” he asks, aghast, adding “Five friends? I’ve only got the one.”
Sept 8. In a shock move, Fat Col has backed Wattsie agreeing that the pair should IGNORE Club 77’s democratic vote and REFUSE to be bullied into a wedding. “It’s an unacceptable intrusion into individual liberty,” he tells us from his perch at the Blackheath & Newbridge Working Man’s Club. “You can’t be forced into marriage by strangers. It’d make more sense for us to have a three week trial honeymoon to see if we are compatible where it matters.” In bed, we ask? “Well yeah,” he replies. “But no more than three times a night nowadays because of me back. Actually though, I was thinking more about compatibility when it comes to buying rounds.”
Sept 7. The American Gonads have thrown a mighty great spanner in the works for next year’s Nads Fest by insisting that they must be on the bill too. “Gal has to have all his Nads at Nads Fest!” insists Rodger ‘Trotsky’ Shosa. “That is non-negotiable.” But a furious Wattsie Watts has dismissed the idea out of hand, stating “There’s only one Gonads” – a sentence that is “as flawed logically as it is grammatically,” according to The Bitch. Unaware of the controversy, Trotsky adds that the US Gonads could all afford to pay for their own flights over “except for Tripod, but that’s okay, we can stick him in a carry on”. In another unforeseen twist, all of the Yanks are expecting to sleep at Wattsie’s bijou “south Shooters Hill” apartment, after whip-cracking songbird Dori Cameron turned down Fat Col’s generous offer to share his sleeping bag on Plumstead Common.
Metal Noos: Judas Priest will celebrate their 50th anniversary with a heavyweight official photo book compiled by the legendary oaf Gross Halfwit in collaboration with David Silver and the band‘s manager Jayne Andrews. Judas Priest – 50 Heavy Metal Years will be a 648 page coffee table volume. It’ll be published in December and include many previously unseen shots plus an “extended essay from rock writer Mark Blake”. Priest had their share of notoriety back in the day, not least in 1985 when American teenager Raymond Belknap tragically killed himself with a shotgun after an afternoon spent drinking, smoking dope and listening to Priest. His drinking buddy blamed himself and died himself three years later. Their parents sued the band claiming that Belknap had shot himself because of a subliminal message command “Do it!” that was hidden on their 1978 song Better By You, Better Than Me. The case was dismissed when it came to court in Reno, Nevada in 1990. Rob Halford later stated that recording subliminal messages urging fans to commit suicide wasn’t a sensible way to build a following. Better, he reckoned, to insert the command: “Buy more of our records”.
Here’s Black Lung by the Drowns.
