The Stranglers - '74-'75-'76 Rare Live & Unreleased {Out of Print}

The Stranglers - '74-'75-'76 Rare Live & Unreleased

Studio Session Demos & Live @320

{Out Of Print}

Track List:

(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)- demo

Bitching- demo

Go Buddy Go- demo

(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)- live

Sometimes- live

Bitching- live

Peasant In The Big Shitty- live

Hanging Around- live

Peaches- live

Ugly- live

Down In The Sewer- live

Go Buddy Go- live

Wasted- demo

Strange Little Girl- demo

My Young Dreams- demo

Princess Of The Streets- live

Recorded At:
Tracks 1-3 Pebble Beach Studio, Worthing, 11+12/7/76 (Demo tape for Bell Records)
Tracks 4-12 live in London, Hammersmith Odeon, 23/10/76 (supporting Patti Smith)
Tracks 13-15 TW Studios, Fulham, 1974
Track 16 live in Redhill, Surrey, Railway Tavern, 15/11/75
 

I was rather interested to discover that vintage video footage of the Stranglers' infamous 1978 open-air gig in London's Battersea Park, complete with male and female strippers onstage during Nice 'n' Sleazy, has been posted on YouTube (in the restricted section which requires users to log in).  It's been there for almost nine months now, so evidently YouTube are perfectly cool with it, which is reassuringly non-uptight.

What strikes me most about the video is how preposterously tame it now looks  -  almost like a scene out of the once-outrageous but now rather embarrassing Hair.  In fact, it's not just tame, it's positively cheesy.  And yet there's a sort of innocent charm to it, almost of the girl next door variety, which on the one hand is faintly endearing but which on the other hand makes it even harder to get one's head around the fact that way back in '78 this was considered a "sexy" occurrence.

Personally I've never quite understood how anyone except a twelve-year-old boy could possibly get turned on by anything as naff and laboured as striptease.  But this particular bit of videotape certainly stands up as a quaint social document of what used to be considered outrageous  -  and as one of the (female) viewers has commented underneath the video, it's also good to see a bunch of young ladies whose wazongas haven't been 'enhanced' to bursting point by having unnatural substances shoehorned into them.

~Mr Hodges

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