![]() ![]() Pursey’s Sham deliberately and professionally gives their punters what they want when they want it, and there’s f*ck all wrong with that. ![]() Sham 69 will always be the name badly spray-painted on a suburban train station wall, and their timeless tunes reflect this moth-eaten underdog with sharp teeth spirit. At under sixty minutes, it’s a short sharp shock of a gig, but in fairness to the band, they wasted no stage time and used no (show) filler. Top ten smash ‘Hersham Boys’ punches the TOTP nostalgic sweet spot, whereas ‘Hurry Up Harry’ could raise the dead with its futile tea-time chorus and Punk ‘N’ Roll riff. A cover of ‘White Riot’ garners a raucous audience reaction before the double trouble anthem encore. The hits now flow as ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’ see a few a pints get launched while ‘Questions And Answers’ remains a poetic clip round the ear of classic Sham. ‘George Davis Is Innocent’ is followed by a rollicking ‘Borstal Breakout’ and the perfect aural pocket-sized snapshot of Seventies teenage exasperation on ‘That’s Life’. The engaging frontman with a piercing stare holds court as ‘Ulster Boy’, ‘Rip Off’ and a speedy ‘Bastille Cake’ fly past. Sham 69 takes to the stage with little or no fanfare and launches into ‘What Have We Got’ with Jimmy Pursey leading the enthusiastic Friday night crowd through the chorus chant of “f*ck all”. The bar is jammed with mainly middle-aged men quaffing pints in tight Fred Perry’s and casual football clobber, plus the usual Fingers, Sparrer and Pistols T-shirts. Tonight it’s punk ‘n Oi! Heroes Sham 69 taking over the bustling Sub 89. The Sub 89, Readipop, South Streets Arts Centre, The Hexagon, The Purple Turtle and The Face Bar venues are all pushing a town made famous by biscuits back into the custard cream musical limelight. That was not the end of the Sham 69 story, however, as Pursey and Parsons put a new lineup together in 1987.Reading is swiftly becoming a must-do stopover point for touring bands of a particular vintage, style and popularity. But his exasperated group eventually, understandably, ceased British live appearances.įinally, after a fraught fourth LP sarcastically titled “The Game” (by then the band had issues with its major label, Polydor), the fed-up group quit in 1980 despite scoring two more Top 50 U.K. Pursey was publicly aghast - the group’s 1977 B-side “Ulster” had decried sectarian bloodshed, he sang with the Clash at London’s 1978 Rock Against Racism festival and he worked with the Anti-Nazi League. Soon, white power National Front members began using Sham 69 shows to solicit converts. The band had a large skinhead and hooligan following, which helped set the tone for the Oi movement. (At the time, punks were already under violent attack from other youth gangs for example, in June 1977, nine Teddy Boys ambushed Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten outside a pub and slashed his face with razors.) Sham 69 lacked the art school background of many rock bands of the time, and brought in football chants, drinking songs and a sort of inarticulate political populism. To the group’s revulsion, its concerts drew copious violent neo-Nazi skinheads. His shouting everyman style, sometimes following pitch and sometimes making it cry uncle, and penchant for sloganeering football (soccer)-chant choruses led to a large, loyal fanbase dubbed the “Sham Army.” That army, however, proved a mixed bag. hit “Hurry up Harry,” he appropriated Ramone’s up-down-up-down sequence from “Beat on the Brat.”) The bellowing, charismatic, lanky, wide-eyed (and caterpillar eyebrowed) Pursey sounded more like Keith Moon singing The Who’s “Bellboy.” Parsons’ riffing had a load of Johnny Ramone’s no-frills, buzzsaw, down-stroking density. ![]() Think of a mouthier, more working-class Ramones with a heavy Cockney accent. Yet the band rode guitarist Dave Parsons’ powerful attack and singer Jimmy Pursey’s garrulous “man of the people” persona to Britain’s Top 10 singles chart three times and the Top 20 twice more, while also scoring a Top 10 album and two Top 30s. Its music was a coarser, rougher, more stripped-down cousin, initially discounted by London’s music press (albeit championed by fanzines such as Sniffin’ Glue). Surfacing in London from Surrey’s bucolic Hersham, its songs lacked the withering disgust of Sex Pistols, the cutting cultural barbs of the Adverts, the wild abandon of the Damned and the art-attack smarts of Wire, X-Ray Spex and Manchester’s Buzzcocks. punk seemed barebones to mainstream rock fans, Sham 69 seemed simpler yet. ![]()
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