Back when I was a lad this was all fields. A pint of beer was just three bob, and you could leave your back door open all day. Those were the days I can tell you.

Actually none of the above is true. When I was a lad this wasn’t all fields, it was all houses like it is now, although there may well have been a bit more grass here and there, Furthermore I’ve no idea how much a pint of beer was but I bet it was more than three bob. And we certainly didn’t leave our back door open all day - in fact I don’t remember it being open that often at all, except when we wanted to go out into the back garden, and then we always closed it after us. It’s interesting how what you remember happening and what actually happened are often two different things - the truth is funny stuff sometimes isn’t it?

But one thing that I know definitely happened was punk rock. I remember reading about bands with slightly scary names emerging in London sometime in 1976 - I was too young to go to see any of them, and since none of them had any records out there was no way of hearing them yet, but they intrigued me immediately. By the time 1977 dawned things were hotting up, with ‘The Filth And the Fury’ seemingly sweeping the country and destroying everything with long hair and flared trousers that was unfortunate enough to stray into it’s path. Exciting stuff indeed. By the summer of said year I was bravely making journeys into London to buy records as well as ordering them from small ads in the music press. Was I a ‘punk rocker’? Well, in my head I was, although I didn’t really look like one - I still had fairly long hair (most people did in those days, and I was still a victim of peer pressure - well, most of us are at some point aren’t we?) and I couldn’t have afforded to wear the King’s Road clothes even if I’d wanted to, I also liked many other styles of music, from the rhythm and blues of Dr. Feelgood to sixties pop and seventies heavy rock. To me it was all music - if I liked it then I liked it, if I didn’t then I didn’t, regardless of what the musicians looked like.

Around this time like a lot of people my age I’d started to listen to John Peel’s show on BBC Radio One, which had begun feature many of the new bands that I’d read about, rubbing shoulders somewhat uneasily with the boring old farts that they were by now tearing to pieces in the afore-mentioned music press. One of the most interesting things about his programme were the sessions recorded especially for the show as they would often be by bands that had yet to release a record, although one would often emerge on a small label shortly after a broadcast such was the speed at which things moved in those days. I remember hearing a fair few punk bands on there before I’d heard their released material, and for a lot of people these are among some of the most exciting recordings by bands such as these. One such as-yet-unreleased act were The Adverts. Now these seemed to be an old bunch, very quirky with stop-start songs and tongue-twisting lyrics on some very odd subjects indeed. They caught my interest enough for me to allocate an amount of my meagre financial resources to their name, and I was not disappointed when their first single ‘One Chord Wonders’ came my way. It’s still one of my favourite records from that time. They went on to have chart success then burn out after a couple of years (as so many punk bands did!) but they remain a well-remembered band from that time - and rightly so in my not-so humble opinion. Their singer and songwriter T.V. Smith continued writing and recording amazing songs over the next few years (there’s a link to his website on the ‘Friends And Families’ page of this website if you’d like to catch up with his story) and these days can regularly be seen as an acoustic guitar-wielding solo act as well as occasionally appearing with a variety of bands or in a duo format.

So - why am I telling you this? Well, strange as it may seem the T.V. Smith ‘duo format’ features your humble narrator next to him on acoustic guitar. We first met back in the 1980s when he was in Cheap and I was in The Price - we played together several times (always a poster worth seeing if you think about it!) and then stayed in touch over the years. By a twist of fate I played a couple of songs with him at a Price reunion show that he also appeared at, and it all grew from there. These days I join him for occasional shows that are always highlights of my year and that generally have me thinking things like ‘wow, that looks like ‘’One Chord Wonders’’ on the setlist’. Great stuff.

Meanwhile back in 1979 John Peel played a new band called The Ruts. I’d first seen their name sprayed on walls in our area, and my blindingly analytical brain had deduced that they were therefore a local act. It turned out that two of their members were indeed from the West London area (virtually everyone I spoke to about them locally claimed to have some sort of connection with them) and together with their bandmates they made an absolutely fearsome noise, extraordinarily well-played and with a power that I’ve rarely heard elsewhere. I bought all their records and they immediately became big favourites of mine, and I continued to follow them as they morphed into Ruts D.C. following the sad death of their lead singer Malcolm Owen. Talking to band members at gigs I had somehow befriended their guitarist Paul Fox, and early Price gigs were often at the bottom of the bill of shows by his mid-80’s band Choir Militia. I went on to watch him in bands like The Dirty Strangers and The Fluffy Kittens, and he even produced The Price’s double A-sided single ‘So What About Love?’ / Between The Lies’. Following his diagnosis with lung cancer I found myself in the ‘teenage-fantasy-gone-mad’ situation of being the rehearsal guitarist for the Ruts reunion show in July 2007. As I stood in a rehearsal room kitchen with Henry Rollins - yes, THE Henry Rollins - discussing the fact that as diehard Ruts fans we were somehow in a room playing their songs with Ruffy and Segs, I reminded myself that life, like the truth, is funny stuff sometimes....

Fast forward a few years and the ‘teenage-fantasy-gone-mad’ has achieved meltdown as I’m now the guitarist in Ruts D.C. and playing songs that I sat on the edge of my bed attempting to learn 30-odd years ago. I used to watch Paul’s hands at gigs and then try to put my fingers in the same places on the fretboard - I still think that they’re amazing pieces of music, and judging by the audience reactions at the gigs we’ve done so far I’m not the only person with that opinion. We’ve also been featuring material from the upcoming ‘Rhythm Collision Volume 2’ album, and there’s talk of putting together more new material in the future.

Both acts played at The Rebellion Festival in Blackpool earlier this month (you can find reviews of the shows here and here) and are both playing at The London Punk Weekender at The 229 Club at the end on September, an event also notable for a rare appearance from The Price. I’m really looking forward to this as you might well imagine, as I would never have been able to form The Price without having heard bands like The Adverts and The Ruts. I often remind myself how lucky I am to play the guitar, and events such as this seem to prove it - who’d have thought something like this would ever happen? Maybe luck is funny stuff too?

PS 7th September - it seems that luck certainly is funny stuff as the 229 Club show has been cancelled! Bugger!