Saturday, 3 November, 1979 – JBs Club, Dudley, England 

Before the Moon Falls
Rowche Rumble
Flat of Angles
Rebellious Jukebox
2nd Dark Age
Stepping Out
Muzorewi’s Daughter
Fiery Jack
No Xmas for John Quays
In My Area
A Figure Walks

NOTES

45 minutes

An exceptional soundboard and an essential gig in the pantheon.

Breathtaking stuff as the band premieres a “new baby” in “Flat of Angles” and essentially works its way through the forthcoming Dragnet and Fiery Jack material with a slight nod back to Witch Trials.

Blistering performances throughout as the soloing of earlier in the year is inexorably worked out and the band moves into Beefheartian swamplands and oily garage rack territory. First Lieutenant Riley is a rock on backing vox and Leigh’s drumming builds on the Burns legacy providing a bubbling carpet of rhythm. The importance of Scanlon and Hanley in the history of the group is never more evident than here. This is the Dragnet band firing on all cylinders.

The first known recording of “2nd Dark Age” is a tumbling mess of sound of voices evoking the Magic Band at their most disparate.

The oldest tune “Stepping Out” is now a brash spiky garage thing. Marks obligatory slagging of extant bands finds realisation in the intro “Muzorewis” where the “Pop Group” are given short shrift – not altogether inaccurate in the great scheme of things – as Hanley’s bass monstrously carves a track across the veldt.

Far as I can tell the earliest recording, if not debut, of “Fiery Jack” a lumpen beast that drags itself spitting and blustering from some dark ooze in the West Midlands. The age of the UK Subs lead singer is remarked upon. “John Quays” is presaged by the riff from “In my Area” as Mark says “don’t make a career out of it”. When it eventually arrives “In my Area” is a brooding little monster with repressed venom held in by locked guitars. Simply sensational.

Unfortunately only a small snippet of the closing “Figure Walks” survives – a pity as it is a scrabbling violent confection with a tense and evocative feel to it.

Lots of excellent photos here