I found this ticket in a cache of similar billets in the Cultureberg Archive and felt it warranted writing about. The Gang of Four's gig-list doesn't mention it, and only one date is listed there as occurring prior to it, their first in May 1977. I can't imagine there were no concerts in the eight months in between. This appearance almost seems like equivalent to the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall of Post Punk, but in reverse. No-one claims to have been there or formed a band because of it, or even is aware of it happening, but it does, in my view, have significance.
In September 1976 Young Cultureberg had left the ancestral pile for the Glittering Spires of Sheffield Polytechnic (now rebranded as Hallam University). At my interview the preceding January I had waxed lyrical about the MC5 and The Stooges, whose import only albums I had sampled in lieu of lunch in the local Virgin Records. Such off-piste rambling was encouraged at the time, the same centrally funded free mindedness that had funded Meatwhistle, cradling many figures from the Sheffield music scene. In the eighties, homogeny drew everyone back to conformity, but the mid seventies now seem a wide-open era, contrary to how the era is cartooned these days. Such exotica as Iggy and the 5 elpees did not get down our way, but the signals of change had oozed up to the Black Country and I had sought these seminal texts out. Year Zero was approaching. Just before I got to Sheffield, in July of 1976 The Sex Pistols and The Clash had played The Black Swan on Snig Hill (since rebranded as The Compleat Angler). Something was in the air.
Now, if Culture is a system of feeling, then the air was pungent with politics and heady theories. Semiology, the Frankfurt School, Situationism, Marxist theory....all were circulating in the rarefied air over Pond Street Bus Station as well as in the Fine Art department of Leeds University, where the Gang of Four and The Mekons were studying. My fellow students were a dogs breakfast of Trots, no-direction-home bourgeois dilettantes and Comprehensive kids with an appetite for intellectualizing and proselytizing their Trash Aesthetic. I didn't know my Barthes from my Elbow (who would not form for nearly three decades) but Sheffield at that time was bursting with bands, both indigenous and visiting, and Young Cultureberg was Up For It.
By the time I go see The Mekons and Gang of Four, punk and the new wave were ousting many of the solipsistic favourites from select stereos. Elsewhere, proper music ruled. I'd taken a copy of Patti Smith's Gloria along to some college music club, and her live version of My Generation lasted less than a minute before the hairies snatched it off and put some Little River Band on. The night of the Penthouse gig Stuart and I had started at The Wapentake, where blue-denim-ed Grebo's drank Newky Brown from the bottle and egged each other on to put their hairy heads in the speaker bins. Heavy Metal, of course, continues oblivious to trends, like the Titanic. The Penthouse was also a heavy metal establishment, hence, I venture, the Headbangin' promise on the ticket. Although I'd been to see The Stranglers, The Damned and The Adverts, the cultural palate cleanser that was punk was a bolus of paradoxes; it remained both an embryonic movement and full of unachieved potential as well as an all-pervasive cultural presence.
If you stood on the front steps of The Black Swan and craned your neck a bit, you could see the concrete edifice of Sheaf Market and precinct, where the Penthouse was located, up an endless stairwell. Its name was not wholly fanciful, it was at the top of the block, but any connotations of modular bachelor flats is totally misleading. It was a pretty basic dive, which was how the rockers liked it, the better to headbang, booze and loon. Sheffield City Centre was full of what is now termed Brutalist architecture, such as the Park Hill Flats. The Penthouse was in an unwelcoming area where the bouncers were employed to throw reluctant punters in rather than to eject them.
I consulted my diary of the time, and though a bit perfunctory, it fills in the picture. It confirms that I was probably there following the recommendation of Steve, Jess and the Two Sarah's, who were on my course and were friends of the Mekons. All groups of young people have their cliques, and these were older, wore clothes that had holes in em out of choice not necessity, and if I recall, a couple of em had been at school with the artistes. Two other guys off the course were there stoned out of their minds (it says), and the contemporary record confirms my memory that the gig was pretty sparsely attended.
Memories change and decay over forty years and though Cultureberg would love to provide a crisp , rollicking account, the truthful recollection will be somewhat slimmer. For a long time I have believed there were three bands on, but that may have been confusion caused by The Mekons rotating members. I remember thinking the Mekons were great...the diary says they weren't very good really. It does, however, back up my memory that the Gang of Four were excellent, though I only found out who they were later...I'd gone to see the Mekons, whose Never Been In A Riot single had been out a few weeks. Looking at the set list from the preceding May songs like Armalite Rifle were there back then, so one must assume a lot of the classics from Entertainment! were played. I can remember no titles. The show was months before the Damaged Goods EP was recorded, and it would not be released until December.
What I'd extrapolate from all this is that although the Mekons were further along the path to public awareness they remained faithful to an anti-showbiz punk ideal , with members coming and going and their lesser known friends being the headliners, or last on at least. Maybe we can even surmise that at this early stage the Gang of Four were more willing to conform to a more established notion of a band who had a considered identity and wished to acquire an audience (for whatever purpose). The Mekons seemed more an art project.
Cultureberg is not, I beleive, being fanciful in imagining the concert as probably having brought together key figures related to Fast Records, Bob Last's iconic label, which had released The Mekon's debut in January. Fast 2 was All Time Low by Sheffield band 2.3, also released early 1978, (possibly before this show.) I had interviewed their lead singer Paul Bower twice for a Radio Sheffield piece which never appeared although I don't recall him being there. Paul passed the Human League's tape to Bob Last around this time, leading to the release of Being Boiled in June 1978; it's possible the League were there, so among the thin crowd of disparate punters who knows what was coalescing around the sticky dance-floor. It is hindsight that confers significance, which is as it should be. Sometimes to know that something will be regarded as important at the time only detracts. It is enough to be young and up for it.
I'd see the Gang of Four again, in 1981 with Pere Ubu and Delta 5 as support. I can recall Andy Gill darting about wrenching scree from his guitar and Jon King in his pomp on songs we knew by heart by then. But some combination of truthful memory, wishful thinking and being present at something you didn't fully understand at the time combine to make the Penthouse Club show more memorable.
