Yes indeed this is Walter Lure's first London show for 25 years down at the now under threat 100 club. well if Walter can show up to help keep them in business then so can the rest of
us, or alternatively you can help save the 100 club here:
Save the 100 Club campaign online"
So I got in to the already filling club while Jeff 'Electrajet' Ward was onstage playing a set of semi acoustic blues numbers to promote his new novel. None of his songs has stuck in my mind at all and while he was OK in company like this he stood no chance at all.
Next on in the now pretty full club that was stuffed with Punk and music biz legends as well as normal folks were Johnny Throttle who are the current band fronted by Alphonse from the
Parkinsons. As their name suggests they play with their feet to the floor at about 200 mph urgent punk with great shout along chorus' in the style of Sham 69 meeting The Real Kids and
snorting a couple of kilos of Amphetamines!
Songs that stuck out included the one with the chorus "It must be fantastic to be so spastic", Job In The City - where they seem to be asking for a job (unlikely coming from Alphonse) - who is not quite as demented as he used to be in the Parkinsons. There again he dived in the audience a few times, so he's not lost his touch either.
Sick Of Myself would seem to be the bands creed if nothing else and they introduced Public Retard by dedicating it to everyone in the audience and themselves! They are great fun and very entertaining and older and snottier than the rest well worth catching live if they fly through a venue near you don't miss 'em!
Then it was time for the packed club to welcome one of the last men standing the miraculously still alive Walter Lure who looked incredibly healthy wearing a very cool jacket with a red
waistcoat and a tie on as well as a nice hat. He looked quite the dapper gentleman some 34 years on from his first appearence at the 100 club with The Heartbreakers.
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His band for this UK tour is from Birmingham which meant Walter had to Take A Chance on them sounding as good as they did bashing out all the classics for us with much commenting on how they were all written by people who are dead. Apart from Walter
that is!!
Countdown Love sounded great with the dreadlocked second guitarist taking some of the vocals. He dedicated London Boys to the London Boys in the audience, which - as there were Pistols and Spizzles and many other 70's punk faces in the house it was very appropriate.
There was a nice punked up version of I'm Busted. He still has a One Track Mind and well why wouldn't he? Walter reckoned that Get Off The Phone is even more appropriate now than when
they wrote it and I think he's about right!! By the time they played Pirate Love a bit of a mosh pit had got going and went a bit mad so much so that a woman who had been pushed once too often turned round and beat the crap out of one of the moshers!! To his credit he didn't hit her back and took his beating like a man until she was pulled off of him!!
Inevitably for the last song of the set Walter brought up on stage the man who threw a welcoming party for him on the night he first arrived in London. None other than Mr Glen Matlock who played guitar and sang on a great seemingly not too drugged up version of Chinese Rocks.
They encored with I Wanna Be Loved and Let Go and then they were gone at the end of a great set by a real living legend who had paid tribute to his dead friends Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan, Dee Dee Ramone, Killer Kane etc etc. I hope I get another chance to see Walter play live before he joins the Dead Boys!
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