venues:

 

SSA bar, Union St

Now a dance studio. The SSA Student bar on the top floor of the Mond buildings was where most of the local bands first got to play.. One of the first was the Skinny Bodies in May 78 and, once word started getting round. others followed. One Sunday in July 1978 featured a benefit gig for Rock Against Racism and featured Mannequin, The Trendies, and Johnny And The Nuforms. It soon became a regular sunday nighter with other bands, The End, Johnny and the Exits, The Noise and Next Step taking their first tentative steps here.

It closed abruptly and with no warning in early 1979

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Townhill Training College

Reggae band Misty In Roots played in the main hall in the summer of 1978, supporting were local punk band, Skinny Bodies, who's drummer, Steve Lovell was frequently seen hanging about in Virgin records and guitarist, Chris Leek could often be seen around the place, trying to sell an Alarm! . (The other members of the skinny Bodies, , namely twins, Michael and Jay Aston from a little village, near Porthcawl later went on to some considerable success in the 80's (and beyond) with goth rock band, Gene Loves Jezebel). After that, it slowly built a reputation as a good venue to play and nearly every local band had some sort of gig here, either in the bar (more so in the early days) or in the main hall, playing alongside bands including as The Lurkers, The Rezillo's, Here And Now and Splodgenessabounds (+Capt Sensible).Following trouble at a Venom/PayDay gig, including a plate glass window getting broken, the College banned all gigs -for ever!

 

 

 

Circles (AKA- 'Dirty 'Doras, "The Pit", Marina Nitespot)

Pandora's... Circles, "thats a fucking rough place mate, you dont wanna be going there", or so went the rumours. And it was a whole new experience when you first paid your money and went down those stairs into the club. A dingy black/red gloss painted room set off by mirror-panelled walls, perpetually sticky carpet and a bar running down the back, but set back into the room a bit so you could walk all the way around it, past bouncers who reminded you of the baddies in "For a Fews More" , the clientele of ex hippy bikers, valley boys, voyeurs, and dodgy looking women (who all seemed to consider this influx of grotty, skinny punks into their envioronment with mild contempt) where you could finally get yourself an expensive luke warm, watered -down beer in areused plastic glass, And it had a revolving stage,(although I only saw it revolve once- and even that time it fucked-up)

A couple of punk bands played there during 1976 and '77 (including the Sex PIstols and the Radiators From Space) but it wasn't until the beginning of 1978 that Circles nightclub in Adelaide street started doing regular punk nights on Mondays and Thursdays. The first few I remember were The Boys, on 6th March, the Slits supporting Buzzcocks a few days later and the Vibrators the following week. Other memorial names to play there included; 999, Johnny Moped (with Dave Berk perched atop the PA), Lurkers, Wayne County & The Electric Chairs (featuring authentic vomiting on stage), Ultravox!, Adam and the Ants (violent nights), Sham69 (non violent) and Crass/Poison Girls. X-Ray Spex were scheduled to appear there one time, but Poly discovered religion that same night - so couldnt make it

The club stopped putting on bands in the early eighties but continued as a flea-pit until it closed in the mid-90's. More recently the whole building of which Circles was part of (The Exchange Buildings) has been converted into a prestigious office development

 

 

Top Rank

In addition to the infamous Stranglers gig, Played host to many of the more commercial punk and new wave acts such as Ian Dury and the Blockheads +Squeeze, Eddie and the Hot Rods, , the Police and the Buzzcocks

 

Old Nicks Art Workshop

Tiny little venue in Gloucester place (now the Mission Gallery, directly oppose the Dylan Thomas Little Theatre) . Hosted local bands such as Dyfatty Flats, The Urge and Pseudo Sadists, plus, on occasion, one or two more widely-known bands. PinPoint is one such that has been pointed out to me

Media:

 

Virgin Records, Union Street

 

So punk was slow to kick off in Swansea. but, here, as in many other towns throughout the country, the local Virgin Records shop became a sort of refuge and the only place to hear punk rock and hang out. It started with a few boxes on the counter but soon there were rows and rows of picture sleeves, all screaming anarchy. The staff, Jerry, Jeff, Merrell, Nigel, Mitchell and the very sexy "trendy" Wendy ( who was also the sister of Arturo of the Lurkers) behind the counter,were always helpful and obliging and would always play a record before you bought it (if it wasn't too busy) Jerry was to put on the first punk "discos" -at swansea University and Townhill College in late '77, Mitchell Edmond joined the DC10's in 1980. He later went on to manage a prestigious Virgin Mega-Store, and Wendy May went on to sing for original cow-punk band, the Boothill Foot Tappers from 1982-1985 (click here for youtube video), as well as a presenter on Channel 4's music show "The Tube" with (Paula Yates and Jools Holland) and DJ on "Capital Radio".

Virgin closed quickly and quietly one wednesday afternoon in 1982 when the area manager, who was already concerned that the shop was not making any money came to check the books at the very same time that Ivor (of the Pseudo Sadists) chose to walk his goat through the shop, which promptly has a piss against the singles rack.

 

Herald of Wales - Graham Larkbey

Mentioned in the Zigzag small labels catalogue of 1978, Graham Larkbey had been the first person in Swansea to release a DIY single, the thrash/folk nonsense of Aunt Fortesques BluesRockers was released in in 1975. John Peel wrote back to Graham saying he'd see if he could play it but wasn't sure if the Beeb would allow him as it wasn't on a proper label...

Sleever was his next band, playing anything they fancied from Dylan to their own stuff also including some Hot Rods and Ramones numbers

"I suppose we were to Swansea punk what pub rock was to the London end of things, ie a bit before it and a bit older than everyone else. We played all sorts of stuff, and we were the first band in town to put a few vaguely punkish numbers into our set (everyone one else was still doing Man & Wishbone Ash covers), so the few pioneering Swansea punks used to come along to our regular hot and sweaty Saturday night gigs at the White Swan in High Street, sit politely through the Dylan stuff & the bluesy stuff, and go mental at the end. When we split up (gradually, painfully and acrimoniously) I decided I'd had enough of the hassle of being in a band and decided to do a spell promoting gigs and backroom stuff instead, I couldn't get a slot in the Evening Post as they didn't take freelance work so I wrote to the then editor of the Herald Of Wales, Con Atkin, saying I really thought they needed a rock column, and to my surprise he gave me one."

His weekly Rock 'N' All Column frequently promoted the newer bands (as well as hosting the all important weekly gig guide) I remember being dead chuffed when he wrote a headline about my band entitled, "Things Come Back To Life Again" after he's attended a boisterous evening of ours at the Hafod Inn. There was another time, shortly after we'd recorded our second demo,when four of us called at his house early one Saturday morning (much to his disconcertion) to drop off the tape and get his (hopefully) written approval  (which in this case however, come the following Thursday, was far too critical for our liking and talk was of going to see him again on the following Saturday to put him right !!).

With much work behind the scenes, he later helped set up Sonic International records (with Steve Mitchell) including co- financing the labels first release, Plastic Dreams by the Tunnelrunners. Left Swansea in early 80's but still makes the occasional appearance at Pontadawe folk festival Top bloke!

 

Alarm! - iAN Bone

Bearing more than a passing resemblance to the drummer from Deep Purple, Ian Bone could be found outside Barons in College Street every Saturday flogging his scandal sheet, Alarm! .... The grassroots column, "Sounds Profound" written by Jan Green kept us abreast of the local gigs n things

more soon

 

 

Swansea Sound - Steve Mitchell

Department Of Youth radio programme, originally two hours on a Saturday evening but later moved to the less prestigious Wednesday nights between 9 and 10 and which ran for a few years in the early eighties. Steve was given almost carte blanche to play whatever he wanted after he'd won some Young Persons Inovation Award (or so I'm led to understand) and would frequently mix up such diverse sounds as The Stupid Babies, red krayola, Kaptain Kremmin, TG and the Monkees into something special to look forward to each week - our very own John Peel almost

Steve Mitchell went on to considerable success under his new moniker Steve Gregory when he formed and mentored the Pooh Sticks with Hue Williams, Haggis, Mike Gant et al., becoming John Peel faves for a brief instant, including doing a couple of sessions for his show, including the excellent "On Tape"

Their entry on Answers.com states: "The Pooh Sticks were rock's most inside joke, a monumental yet affectionate prank on the very mythology of pop music itself. Cloaked behind ridculously-overblown marketing schemes, made-up histories and cartoon-character images, the Welsh group punctured the industry's myriad excesses, freely pilfering from the entirety of pop's past by shoplifting titles, lyrics and melodies at will; wrapping their barbs in cotton-candy sing-a-longs, their subversions worked on many levels -- postmodern cultural criticism, retro-irony, slavish imitation, and power-pop manna among them -- to forge an identity as high-concept as it was low-brow." Quite.

They released half a dozen or so albums, including "Great White Wonder", which gave them considerable success in the States. "Young People", the opening track (and subsequently used in TV commercials stateside) was originally written by Andrew Griffiths and Hywel James of Swansea band, the Love Nazis before being covered by the Pooh Sticks -who, according to the sleevenotes then cheerfully took the credit for it.

"H" recalls," I remember that song being written, me plunking away idiotically on my bass, playing the (nearly always the) same bass riff, trying to teach the playing of it to my fingers, and impress the memory of it into my head, as I had been trying to do all afternoon since I had tripped over it, a sort of time-bandit mind-trap, and Griff was standing on a box telling me about this "brilliant song he wrote the night before, well more sort of thought about writing actually, but the solo will be brilliant", stand next to box with one foot on it, in what he called the 'Clash; foot on the monitor stance'.
We played it at the University, Steve Mitchell videoed it, Pooh Sticks covered it, NME made it single of the week, maybe they sold a couple of dozen copies, maybe they got paid, we didn't."

Steve Mitchell reply in 2009 was, "I told Griff it would need to be credited to 'The Pooh Sticks' on the label, but that official documentation would show that he and Hywel were the actual writers. "I loved the song, and I even offered to give Griff a thousand pounds to buy into the publishing rights, but he declined" Unsurprising perhaps!

Still, too late to do anything about it now though eh lads!.

 

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