One of the Finchley Boys rode my Triumph over to Amsterdam and I went with the band. NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY Sleazy was written about our experiences with the Amsterdam Hells Angels in the autumn of ’77. Everyone else went away for Christmas but I didn’t cos I had nowhere to go. It’s a hard one for Dave to play live, depending on where he is through his bottle of Cognac at the gig! The whole of the album was written (at Bear Shank Lodge) at Oundle and it was a very snowy winter. TANK Hugh’s lyrics with my music I think. To mark the forthcoming tour showcasing the band’s third album Black and White, bassist JJ Burnel revisits the album’s tracks and associated b-sides: The special guests for the complete tour will be Welsh rockers The Alarm featuring Mike Peters. Shifting from their recent home at the Academy, the band return to the legendary Manchester Apollo where they played regularly between 19, with its 3500 capacity, it will be a fitting finale to the tour. After a hometown date in Guildford, the tour takes in some less visited places including Reading, Salisbury and Folkestone before the final gig in Manchester on the Saturday 26th. The itinerary then heads south, via Nottingham, Liverpool and Newcastle before the London date on Friday 11th at the 5000 capacity Brixton Academy- a venue which the band last played 25 years ago back in 1991. The 18 date tour kicks off with a trio of gigs north of the border, visiting Perth on the 3rd, Inverness on the 4th and Glasgow on the 5th. To underline the stark & polarised content of the album, a press junket to Iceland was organised which ended up with a variety of accidents affecting various journalists… ![]() ![]() Musically, taking inspiration from influences as diverse as Devo and Captain Beefheart, the album pushed the boundaries of the band’s established sound and they experimented with quirky time signatures and synthesisers-one track even includes a morse code message! The album was split into two distinct ‘sides’-the ‘white side’ proving closer to the band’s first two albums while the ‘black side’ was a darker and more challenging listen. Lyrically, subject matter had been broadened by the band’s recent travels around the world and included the Cold War, Yukio Mishima, Sweden and Hell’s Angels. Described recently by journalist John Robb as ‘the first post punk album’, its release was acclaimed by fans and critics alike at the time and it reached number 2 in the UK charts. The band’s third studio album Black & White was unleashed in May 1978 and showed them to be the first of their peers to break away from the ‘punk’ formula of the previous year. ![]() In March 2016, The Stranglers will head out on a full UK tour which will see them showcase their legendary Black & White album both chronologically and in its entirety plus additional material new and old.
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