Gig 041/042 Tom Robinson Band / The Stranglers/The Dictators

Tom Robinson Band
29 October 1977
Oxford Polytechnic

The Stranglers/The Dictators
30 October
Reading Top Rank

Probably the only thing that my family had in common with the politburo of the Soviet Union was its attitude to homosexuality, a phenomenon which didn’t exist at home and only occurred in other, more decadent societies. Homophobia wasn’t a thing, you can’t be phobic about something which doesn’t exist. On primetime TV gay men, and just occasionally women, were caricatural objects of mirth and pity, though they were often granted the juiciest innuendo – nothing to worry about, this is what ‘other’ people do. Ironic then that since early adolescence the music and culture which had come to shape the lives of myself and a number my friends was suffused with gay iconography – most obviously David Bowie, but an intrinsic element of the whole glam scene was gender fluidity; Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side had been a massive favourite, as had All The Young Dudes. Notwithstanding the New York Dolls’ influence, punk had thus far tended to present, both musically and lyrically, a stern and shouty macho front which was already becoming a bit tiresome. Around this time the most overt reference to gay culture had improbably been provided by uber-lad Rod Stewart with his tune The Killing of Georgie, which must have confused some of his fans.

Yet despite a long history of allusion and nudge-nudge, going back way beyond Little Richard, through Music Hall and Chaucer, probably Gregorian chant and plainsong as far as I know, no-one had got it out in the open – I cede to no-one in my relish of innuendo – until Tom Robinson, whose most famous song was and remains Sing if You’re Glad to be Gay. At the time of the gig the TRB had a chart hit with 2-4-6-8 Motorway, a cheery if rather plodding singalong, and musically they weren’t too adventurous, largely 4-to-the-floor rock with big choruses, plus a side order of vaudeville-via-the-Kinks. Tom was a bit older than the punks and Free were more an influence than the Ramones. So on the face of it nothing to get too excited about, yet Tom somehow held the audience in the palm of his hand and in 1977 the sight of hundreds, most of them straight white blokes, singing along with Glad to be Gay was quite something. The song was at this time a hugely courageous gesture, and my sense of it on the night was that this crowd were appreciative of Tom’s balls, so to speak. He wasn’t the greatest singer but he did the righteous anger thing with more conviction and justification than most, without feeling the need to antagonise. A pretty great gig, and Are You Being Served would henceforth seem even less funny.

Tom Robinson was and is one of the good guys – not something anyone ever said about The Stranglers, whom I saw the following night at Reading. First up were The Dictators, a New York act fronted by ex-wrestler Handsome Dick Manitoba, who might well have been Ronnie Barker in a wig. I found the New York punk scene enormously appealing, being for the most part some distance musically and sartorially from the cliché’d media vision of punk, and smart and cool in a way the Brit acts couldn’t quite manage. However you couldn’t really say this about The Dictators, who had songs called Master Race Rock and Teengenerate, plus a rather pointless cover of Iggy Pop’s Search and Destroy. They were probably being ironic, but y’know, whatever, there was much more interesting stuff than this going on. Still they were quite entertaining, and Handsome Dick went authentically berserk when someone chucked a glass at him, reasonably enough.

The Stranglers were by now quite familiar, very popular, and got a proper moshpit going. Their unsavoury character was a large part of the appeal so there wasn’t much point in complaining about their openly misogynistic songs, nor the stories of them beating up journalists. More problematic for me was the fact that several of their songs were just garbage. They were clearly intelligent and capable of much better, when they chose: tunes such as Down in the Sewer, Grip and Hanging Around (with its reference to Earls Court gay pub The Coleherne) projected an irresistible sinister allure which most of their contemporaries couldn’t get near. Their set at this point was a mixture of these and lesser songs which sounded like they had been thrown together to capitalise on their successful association with punk, plus one new tune barked out by Jean-Jacque Burnel, which we decided was called Five Minutes in a Rubber Skirt. Later they would reveal a sensitive side, but this was 1977 and they weren’t as brave as Tom Robinson, so they kept it in their closet, the big bunch of jessies that they were.