The Vibrators – The Singles 1976-2017: Album Review

By Seuras Og on 4th June 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

Punk’s never dead with a Cherry Red!

Release Date: 24th May 2024

Label: Captain Oi (Cherry Red)

Format: CD boxset

Canny band, even if they never quite broke into the premier league of punk, they were shrewd enough and sufficiently seasoned operators to know a bandwagon when they saw one. For they were never, really, punk, having been on the block for a bit before, and could play a good deal better than many of the other year zero operatives. Not that they’d want you to know that, mind, or ever much let on, the clue being their non-allegiance to the core template, not unafraid to drop the tempo, or throw in an extra chord or two. Even guitar solos weren’t off their limits, unsurprisingly, as the band members were earlier steeped in the pub rock movement, and, at a decade senior to most of their subsequent peers, they had a more formal grounding in the music styles of the 50s and 60s. (This made for similar ground to the Stranglers, the paths of the two bands eventually combining, as will be shown.)

Cherry Red are good at this sort of thing, and have done a few related projects, with a similar collection for the not markedly dissimilar trajectory of Eddie and the Hotrods, which we addressed here. Like that, this brings together all their singles, both sides, at least up until 2017, even if, nominally, the band still may even exist. Members have come and gone, with the only (nearly) constant presence being that of Knox, aka Ian Carnochan, and (always) drummer, John “Eddie” Edwards. That may even come as a surprise to those who expect the better known figures of Pat Collier and John Ellis to feature more prominently. Or even Gary Tibbs, whose brief spell in the band was followed by time with the varied palates of Roxy Music and Adam and the Ants. Anyhoo, no more ballyhoo, let’s get digging!

Following a gig at the 100 Club, supporting the Sex Pistols, the band: Knox, vocals and guitar, John Ellis, guitar, Pat Collier, bass and Eddie, drums, played a John Peel session and got signed to Mickie Most’s RAK label. With Most producing, We Vibrate was the A and, in a different version from the later album, Whips And Furs the flip. Chuck Berry more the influence than much else, We Vibrate occupies a not unpleasant Dr Feelgood-y vibe. If the lyric suggests there was an accompanying set of dance moves, and illustrated, in easy steps, on the label, sadly this was a trick they missed. Whips And Furs carries, and carried then a greater heft, and still offers a surge or excitement, largely courtesy Eddie’s of the moment drumming, the traditional punk falling downstairs in a wooden overcoat.

Chris Spedding was a champion of the band from the start, seeming to forget he was a seminal jazz-rock guitar maestro and prestigious session man. Indeed, it is the Vibrators that provided the backing for Motorbikin’, his “hit”. He more formally teamed up with the band for Pogo Dancin’ and The Pose, as the Vibrators with Chris Spedding. Released on the same day as the single nominally before, in November 1976, it is fairly turgid drivel, that smacks of a little desperation to repeat Motorbikin’. The Pose is much the same song, if slower, with more prominent bass, put through a Monster Mash filter.

Bad Time b/w No Heart never managed a release, care of changing labels immediately after completion. Both standard fodder, well played formulaicism, characterised by Ellis’s fluid soloing, which demonstrates his direction being possibly different to his cohorts, as they took to deconstructing much their own instrumental chops, in favour of root notes and ever more snarled vocals. Decent tracks, actually, but you may well have to have been there. But, now safely ensconced with Epic Records, the next release was the real couda and shoulda, upon which any success, or lack of, would surely hine. I still don’t get why Baby Baby wasn’t huge. Was it too rockist and retro? Certainly slower than the current mood of the moment, with brilliantly dumb yet literate lyrics, it featured the best guitar break of the late ’70s. And they looked the part, too. But it wasn’t, despite the rather more frantic Into The Future backing it up.

Live recordings as singles were quite the thing back then, so London Girls and Stiff Little Fingers, each on the recently released Pure Mania album, get a Marquee club taping. With Collier having jumped ship, after the album, the ploy was maybe more around introducing Gary Tibbs to the band in his place. A hollering Knox makes an introduction hoarser even than his singing voice, London Girls is very redolent of the early Clash. Stiff Little Fingers rattles along on a pure manic energy, which explains why Jake Burns was to lift the title as a name for his won band. (Yup, it was that way around.) A beautifully bonkers guitar solo.

There is a dip in quality control for a while thereafter, with the generic Automatic Lover/Destroy nonetheless, via Top of the Pops, getting them into the lower reaches of the top 40. (Destroy has the dubious dictinction of being possibly the song that begat Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias’ Kill, which, if you don’t know it, remedy now and often.) Come June 78, and Ellis to had left the band, initially becoming a sidesman with Peters Gabriel and Hammill, and later a Strangler, post Hugh Cornwell’s exit, 1990, lasting for a decade. He was replaced by Dave Birch on guitar and, briefly, by later Squeeze keyboards man, Don Snow, who could also wield a sax. The admirably titled Judy Says (Knock You In The Head ) had some minor chart action after a slot on TV show (who remembers) Revolver. It has a blast of saxophone which, as always in this sort of style, seems intrusive, if effective. For side B, the title track of the album gets what you might assume a early revival, but given it actually contains no such song, this is a punk by numbers tumble, with some unexpected Hawkwind bleep and booster noises, that add some unexpected grift.

Shortly after it all went tits up, with now Knox jumping ship, with Eddie, last man standing, picking up the gauntlet, as, too, even the new recruits were gone before their seats were even warm. An otherwise totally new line-up, a five piece with two guitars, lasted long enough for two singles. These, despite a brave stab at Spencer Davis Group’s Gimme Some Lovin’, were of little lasting consequence, so maybe no bad thing that, then, the original line-up reformed, and were a relatively early sign for Cherry Red’s punk imprint, Anagram. So what better to announce the fact than to reprise Baby, Baby (as BB 1982)? Any different from six years earlier? A bit more reverb in the slightly fuzzed guitar and more echo in the now choral vocals for the refrain. The flip, Dragnet suggested that the spirit was still willing. Follow-up Guilty, written and sung by Collier, was a step in a different direction, a rap with an Aerosmith/Run DMC vibe. With an instrumental, Hang Ten, on the other side, this was better than it ought.

Success, or lack of, was having a bearing on things, as indie chart placings didn’t placate the accountants, with a further 1983 shift to Ram Ram records. MX America, the first track released from the Alaska 127 album, a Clashy assault, showed further progression. Shadow Love was a completely novel construction, with the hint of acoustic guitar and a psychedelic flamenco flavour. It’s one of their best, if a tad quirky. Flying Home, up next, continued with the sense of retro-experimentation, whereas Flash Flash Flash smacked of filler, however well played. More songs from Alaska 127 continued to appear, revealing it to have more lasting appeal than the punk by numbers they felt duty bound to still issue; 4875 a good example the former. With the same original line-up still hanging on in, Baby Blue Eyes being another real coulda shoulda, now offering a power pop direction that warranted pursuing. Somnabulist, a commercial ditty that wouldn’t be unwelcome on a Siouxsie and the Banshees album, made for a better flip than Amphetamine Blues, the choice dependent on where the record was issued. The last gasp of this quartet was Blown Away By Love, another distinctly new wave morsel. In fact, this era smacked of promise, with Still Not Over You and Demolishers both worthy b sides.

By 1988 Collier and Ellis had again peeled off, and a run of other players took turns to fill the bass and guitar slots. Knox could still write a song, and, from the next spell, Every Day I Die A Little, a starting off acoustic lament on, possibly, the struggle of keeping the b(r)and alive, was certainly one. Live singles smack always of a little desperation, a Germany only release patching together a quartet of songs from different line-ups. A Billy Fury cover (of Goffin-King’s Halfway To Paradise) might seem now an odd choice for the band’s first CD single, and it is. Personally, I love it, but it bombed, even with the three additional tracks. Worth a mention is the subsequent release, Troops Of Tomorrow, an old song that punk oi mavericks, The Exploited, had given a strident bang through to, sufficient to warrant a “new” version, in 1992. All sturm and drang, it is was it was, getting another bite, that same 1992 version coming out again, six years later, with a pot-pourri of further recycled tracks.

Without a Christmas record yet to their name, the millenium saw this remedied, with I Hate Christmas, b/w I Miss You Most At Christmas, and a couple of old tracks. Their last release for six years, it was entirely agreeable nonsense and, compared to the usual dross on all the usual festive compilations, o that the lead track could have got a foothold on one of them. And when they did return, in 2007, it was with new versions of Automatic Lover and, yet again, Baby, Baby. The repetitions, if nothing else, confirmed the superiority first time around. These had formed part of an ill-conceived covers album, Punk; The Early Years, that as well as their own songs, included the two songs on the next single. Whether we needed karaoke facsimiles of New Rose and Sheena Is A Punk Rocker was and remains moot…… Let’s just say they were competently executed.

Fast forward to 2013 for Slow Death, a jangly version of the Flamin’ Groovies song. A very rare disc to find, it passes muster, if the songs on the “other side” don’t really. Then, against all the odds, 2016 saw the return, once more for Ellis, if briefly, of he and Tibbs. Rock’n’Rescue didn’t, unfortunately, provide that solace, with further rejigs of Public Enemy and Stiff Little Fingers. Finally, in 2017, nigh on forty years after the blue touch paper lit, Restless was a lively roustabout, up with their best and showing few signs of it being the end, if released only in an extremely short run of two hundred pressings. It also includes an unexpected version of Presley’s Hound Dog. (But the end is never the end, is it, with, outside the remit of this release, I note Knox, Eddie, Ellis and Collier reunited yet again for an album in 2020, and, two years later still, Knox and Eddie hooked up with latterday stalwarts, on many the here featured releases, Pete Honkamaki, guitar, and Mark Duncan, bass. He’s A Psycho remains, at the time of writing, their curtain call.)

This being Cherry Red, and with some space to spare on the third CD, Knox spins things out with four solo tracks, including Syd Barrett’s Gigolo Aunt. Better than dead air, I guess, but, snark aside, all in all this boxset exemplifies all that is good about Cherry Red. The Vibrators had their ups and their downs, more the former, if unrealised at the time, and this makes for a tremendous wallow down memory lane.

I Hate Christmas!