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| At the beginning... |
Who They’re For:
Depends on when you listen: punk (or thereabouts) from 1977 to 1979 (Rattus Norvegicus, No More Heroes, Black and White, maybe The Raven), art/proto-goth in 1981 (The Gospel According to the Meninblack), and what one Wiki-editor called “sophisti-pop” from 1981 to 1984 (La Folie, Feline, and Aural Sculpture). I struggled with their late-middle catalog - i.e., when they sought to establish “cult status” in the States (Dreamtime and 10). Stranglers in the Night aside, Spotify either lost track of or didn’t bother with the rest of their 1990s material - though I read good things about Norfolk Coast - but I well and truly rate their last studio work, 2012’s Giants, which is just straight, savvy rock.
A Little More
“Not anyone can be a Strangler. Paul Roberts and Jon Ellis could sing and play very well but they didn’t feel like Stranglers. Baz on the other hand does. He has the attitude and the music.”
The Stranglers were a rain-check from one of my earlier, dog-pile playlists - the one of two featuring pioneering punk bands - and it foundered on my need for variety. That’s never an issue with The Stranglers, a band with enough catalog for five. This feels like a good starting point:
“Burnel: There were some funny incidents in those early days. We were booked to play a Young Conservatives dance.
Black: At the start of the first song, there were 300 people in the hall. By the end, there were four left watching. But they started following us. It was a similar story all over the country.”
The “Burnel” in that quote is Jean-Jacques Burnel, the band’s original bassist and…arguably, The Stranglers’ standard-bearer as they enter their fifth decade; “Black” is Jet Black (aka, Brian Duffy), was the band’s drummer/founder, but he was always older than the rest of them. The rest of the key members were Dave Greenfield, their second keyboardist after Hans Warmling, and Hugh Cornwell…and, holy shit, there’s a story. The Stranglers came together piece-by-piece but several came in with hefty resumes - e.g., Cornwell had spent time with the well-respected Richard Thompson, Black spent some years as a jazz drummer, while Burnel had enough polish to play with symphony orchestras. When they became The Stranglers, they kept the smarts and quality, but embraced the liberty of playing under the “punk rock” banner.
Depends on when you listen: punk (or thereabouts) from 1977 to 1979 (Rattus Norvegicus, No More Heroes, Black and White, maybe The Raven), art/proto-goth in 1981 (The Gospel According to the Meninblack), and what one Wiki-editor called “sophisti-pop” from 1981 to 1984 (La Folie, Feline, and Aural Sculpture). I struggled with their late-middle catalog - i.e., when they sought to establish “cult status” in the States (Dreamtime and 10). Stranglers in the Night aside, Spotify either lost track of or didn’t bother with the rest of their 1990s material - though I read good things about Norfolk Coast - but I well and truly rate their last studio work, 2012’s Giants, which is just straight, savvy rock.
A Little More
“Not anyone can be a Strangler. Paul Roberts and Jon Ellis could sing and play very well but they didn’t feel like Stranglers. Baz on the other hand does. He has the attitude and the music.”
The Stranglers were a rain-check from one of my earlier, dog-pile playlists - the one of two featuring pioneering punk bands - and it foundered on my need for variety. That’s never an issue with The Stranglers, a band with enough catalog for five. This feels like a good starting point:
“Burnel: There were some funny incidents in those early days. We were booked to play a Young Conservatives dance.
Black: At the start of the first song, there were 300 people in the hall. By the end, there were four left watching. But they started following us. It was a similar story all over the country.”
The “Burnel” in that quote is Jean-Jacques Burnel, the band’s original bassist and…arguably, The Stranglers’ standard-bearer as they enter their fifth decade; “Black” is Jet Black (aka, Brian Duffy), was the band’s drummer/founder, but he was always older than the rest of them. The rest of the key members were Dave Greenfield, their second keyboardist after Hans Warmling, and Hugh Cornwell…and, holy shit, there’s a story. The Stranglers came together piece-by-piece but several came in with hefty resumes - e.g., Cornwell had spent time with the well-respected Richard Thompson, Black spent some years as a jazz drummer, while Burnel had enough polish to play with symphony orchestras. When they became The Stranglers, they kept the smarts and quality, but embraced the liberty of playing under the “punk rock” banner.
