The Crabs
The Crabs were formed in Great Yarmouth East Anglia in 1974 and known as Cosmic Love and then Teezer. They supported the likes of X-Ray Spex, The Lurkers, Sham 69, The Jam & Siouxsie & The Banshees and many others and regularly played famous punk venues like The Roxy Club & Vortex. Also known as The Fulham Furies for a side project. After The Crabs members became the backing band for Gary Holton and played with Max Splodge. During the eighties, Ronnie Rocker played with The Angelic Upstarts and The Godfathers.
So what went wrong for The Crabs? Simply bad luck and the fact that they were a tuneful above ordinary punk band just as Punk started to harden into a more hardcore form. Record companies just weren’t interested anymore and The Crabs were at the fag end of the Roxy. How many of those bands were signed compared to the first Roxy live album?
Check out the music page – you won’t be disappointed!
Interview from June 2005 with Will Kimbling and Ricci Titcombe aka Ricci Ticci.
How did the band start, where and when and why? How did you come to choose the name – The Crabs
Will Kimbling We could and maybe should have been The Bloaters coming from Yarmouth but it was a seaside reflection and a bit offensive. The Sex Pistols had done their Bill Grundy thing and we were young and in a band and it seemed like a chance.
Were you involved with any bands previously…type of bands?
I joined Teezer [ Ricci Ronny and Tony ] on 19th Jan 1976, after the previous bassist left. We used to play the village halls all over E Angular doing our own promotions and getting ripped by our own personal Mr 10%. It was mainly covers of heavy songs Blak Sab, Deep Purp, but we also had to do Hi Ho Silver Lining for the Young Farmers, and Glad All Over for the RAF Nurses at the Ely RAF Hospital, Army Bases and even USAF Bases.
But then we got to play covers of the Heavy Metal Kids who we all loved. What a showman Gary woz. Oh and don’t forget the B sides by The Sweet which we all liked to do. Sort of Glam Heavy really but we always had the punky edge as well. Quirky humour was a thing wiv us as well which will become more important later in the story as you will see. Oh and when I while I remember I played Banjo in a school play which was translated from the original Greek!
The Crabs played the classic Punk venues at The Roxy Club & Vortex.
The Roxy Club?
Dirty old men trying to tap up innocent boys; not us. We weren’t so naive by then, having had a publishing deal, and it was just scummy dirty. The management must have changed from the original. If I went out to the pub for a drink I could never find my damn way back to the shithole.
Without being too over the top you had some cracking tunes like ‘Lullabies Lie’ and ‘Don’t Want Your Love’ and it’s a crying shame that none ever really got released. What were your favourites and why?
I liked Wilko Johnson a lot so…Don’t Want Your Love is my fave cos the words are clever and it’s got that r ‘n’ b drive [not the modern sort]. I did like Under Pressure ever so much for a 2 minit tune…it’s got everything by virtue of nothing in the words and is clever in its reference to the ‘plastic mac’ of Substitute fame. The tune is a little belter too.
What happened in the glass-throwing incident as I understand it the glass hit a friend of yours and the police pressed charges. Or was this a publicity gimmick?
Ricci. It did happen although the press exaggerated it. All it was we were playing this punk club in Nuneaton. In the crowd was a stag party, not at all into punk, giving us grief all night. We came on for an encore and a pint beer glass was thrown and hit me while I was playing in the side of the neck. I just lost it for a second & threw it back. It missed the guy who threw it & hit a girl I had been seeing earlier who happened to be standing near them. I’m not proud of this now or then. Hope this clears this up.
Worst Crabs moment?
You don’t wanna know, but singing backing vox at the Vortex one nite and receiving a huge greeny smack in the gob and I mean it went right nearly down my throat. I spat it straight out onto the stage and then saw how green it was!!!!! comes a close second
Anything to add?
Two and Two makes six of one and half a dozen of the other. I reckon the thing most people would remember The Crabs for was the bloody great three ton furniture van we travelled about the country in.
We lived in it for about 5 months on mattresses and used to wash in the motorway truckers toilets. We must have stunk like polecats. At one point we didn’t get home for 30 days consecutive!
Ah… Happy Days!
It’s a sad fact but like so many bands at the time The Crabs never got the breaks nor the recordings out they deserved. Quality songs like Lullabies Lie show a tuneful quality while Victim shows them as punk rock as the next. Their sole recording output is a solitary live track Lullabies Lie on the mixed bag that was the Farewell To The Roxy album – see below last track.
They signed to Lightning in February 1978, home of the flotsam & jetsam of punk like The Mirrors, Cane & Horrorcomic who were going nowhere. Allegedly a single exists – Victim /Blue Unction/ My Skin – but probably was never released as noone has ever seen a copy. The tracks were recorded and appeared on Dizzy Holme’s Bored Teenagers Volume 9 compilation which only confirms what a fantastic single it would have been
Tracks in their set at the time included Dull Kid, C.R.A.B.S, For Us & Wartime Memories. The below was recorded at The Vortex in 1978.
01. Hawai Five O Theme – Dull kids
02. C.R.A.B.S
03. All day and all of the night
04. Don’t want your love
05. For us
06. Under pressure
07. Save my skin
08. Victim
09. Wartime memories
10. Lullabies lie
11. You really got me
They also did a John Peel session on 3.5.1978. By then Will had left and was replaced by Ashley Morse on bass.
Ricci Tic Great session. Very privileged to be asked to do this at the time. Did’nt see or meet John at the session and remember listening to it in my car when it was played on air. I did meet Peely a couple of years later in1979 I was playing in a band called Zorro in Ipswich. Someone said John lived just up the road & we should go round his house which we did and knocked at the door. Peely answered the door. We said that we were a band playing up the road & if he would like to come to the gig. He invited us in and made us a cup of tea. We had disturbed his football on T.V. but he was great & he remembered The Crabs & our session. Punk77 Interview, June 2005
1) Victim
2) Under Pressure
3) Lullabies Lie
4) Don’t Want Your Love
Ironically their only real vinyl was when they recorded a football song dedicated to Fulham FC as The Fulham Furies (wrongly thought to be Cocksparrer or even The Lurkers!) These Boots Were Made For Walking / Under Pressure. Produced by Mike Berry of the Wombles fame!!
Ricci. Our manager & producer Mike Berry was an avid Fulham F.C fan & just got us to do Boots with the Fulham football team doing the vocals B. side was our song Under Pressure again with Fulham F.C. singing.
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