The Sods

The Sods were a superb band from Harlow Essex who deserved more than history has currently accorded them. Like many bands at least one member had an epiphany after seeing the Sex Pistols. The Sods never managed to make it out of Harlow and onto tours or secure a major recording contract. Instead the band like hundreds of others got involved with starting a record label  – Stortbeat (the Stort is a tiny river that flows through Harlow) to release their own records. And in the end, like with so many other bands, slowing momentum and arguments just caused the band to fizzle out.

Here’s an Interview with The Sods vocalist Kevin Jones from January 2005.

1. How did The Sods start; where, when and why?
Started at the end of 76, start of 77. Both Chris Wood and I were totally taken away with the Sex Pistols/ anarchy thing. At the time there was a feeling anybody could start a group and you could change the world (or at least the town you were living in!). We all lived in Harlow New Town, which was really dull in those days, so making your own entertainment came easily to us.

2. Members of the band and instruments played?
Mickey Howard – Drums – Also known as Little Mickey
Steve Horton – Keyboards – Also known as Bobby Crush!
Shane Roe – Guitar
Chris Wood – Bass (Dec Baron from The Rabbits on the No Pictures single as Chris had left) Replaced by Scott Barker from The Fatal Microbes in 1979 who played on Mopey Grope and wrote the B-side
Me – Vocals and generally insulting the audience and starting punch-ups with fascists!

3. Were you involved with any bands previously…type of bands?
Chris and I had never been in a band before, though we had always wanted to. The fact neither of us could play a musical instrument used to be a bit of a barrier pre 76. Mickey was a hippy (refused to cut his hair) and had played (mostly guitar) in a load of local prog rock outfits. But we felt he was a much better drummer than guitarist and in those days drummers were rarer than rocking horse shit (in fact I think Mickey played drums for another two or three punk outfits at the time). Shane was also a hippy back then, into Frank Zappa and things. He could play a bit and taught Chris where to put his fingers on a Bass guitar.Steve’s dad was a church organ player, and I think Steve played piano at home and may well have helped his dad out in church. He’d never been in a band before though

4. Influences?
Many and varied as you can tell. The Pistols kick started us, but we listened to tons of different stuff. Chris and I were big Blues lovers. We had also been into early David Bowie. He’d played Harlow in the early 70’s just before the release of the Ziggy Stardust album. It was on a Wednesday night and our local 550-seat theatre was only half full. It cost Chris and I 30p to get in cos we has forged student union cards. We were expecting some sad old git with an acoustic guitar to come on and do Space Oddity (his only hit record to date back than). Suddenly, the lights went down, fireworks went off and these geezers all dressed up like nancy boys came on to dry ice and very loud rock music. I tried to get my mum to make me a gold lame cat suit, but she wouldn’t! I also liked The Sensational Alex Harvey Band back then as well. From the punk era I liked a lot of things, Sex Pistols and The Clash (though you only supposed to like one or the other, not both!) I was also into American bands from that era, The Ramones, Patti Smith, Devo and Richard Hell and The Voidoids. Shane was into Iggy Pop, but he was a bit too Heroin Chic for my liking.

5. How did you get into punk rock? I understand that members of the band were at the 100 club festival and Jubilee boat ride. Memories of these events and how they affected you?
I don’t think any of us were on HMS Talcy Malcy when it sailed the Thames so Brown, but my mate Bill Meadows (he was a co- conspirator in Stortbeat Records and founder of another Stortbeat combo, The Gangsters) went to see the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club in 1976. This was about a month or so before the notorious Bill Grundy incident on the TV.

6. What bands did you support, places played. Reaction to you. Spitting, Violence wild adulation?
We tended to do local gigs, where as the first and proper Harlow punk band, we headlined. Our first gig was at the LSE bar in central London. Our mate Div was a student there. We only knew 3 songs and one of those was the Velvet Underground’s “Waiting for the man”. I think we did each song four or five times. We did a couple of support acts, The Lurkers at Chelmsford, Eddie and The Hot Rods in Harlow.

The best one though was when we supported Siouxsie and the Banshees. We went on and did a cracking set, the stage got covered in beer. Her majesty, who I must say had been a bit toffee nosed back stage, then struts on to the stage wearing these boots with towering six inch high spiked stiletto heels. The stage was still covered in beer and she went arse-over-tit and landed with a thump on her coxic! Serves her right for not heeding the warnings I gave her backstage. I think The Poison Girls may have played that gig as well, but I’m not sure.

My band mates tell me we also supported Wire and Steel Pulse, but I have to say that I don’t remember, but there’s a lot I don’t! I was never too bothered about gobbing and stuff, though I thought it did play into the media stereotype of punks, which we tried to avoid like the plague (listen to the lyrics of No Pictures, our first single and now available on CD on The Stortbeat Collective Album!!)

Most of the violence we encountered was with The National Front and I think they deserved it! Mind you there was always more of us than them. Would have been very scary the other way round. We did a gig in Cambridgeshire in this pub way out in the sticks in a place called The Welcome Inn, at Horseheath. Welcoming it was not. It was a biker’s pub and they made it very clear they did not like punk music. One hell of a fight broke out and it was just like those bar room brawls you see in old westerns. Got no idea how it ended, but we were not asked back for a return gig

7. The Sods supported a lot of major bands – what was their attitude towards you. Superstars or we’re all in it together attitude?
See above, though we went to see the Pistols play at Middlesex University once. Although we couldn’t get in, we met Joe Strummer in a pub over the road. Turned out both he and Chris had mouth ulcers at the time so we spent the whole evening talking about them and the best cures. I wish we had recorded it. I would have titled it “The Bonjella Tapes” and released it after his untimely death a couple of years ago

8. What bands did you rate and conversely what bands did you think pants?
Like I’ve already said, The Pistols and The Clash here and a few Yankee bands. I hated The Police, The Lurkers, Adam and The Ants and all of those once hippy, now punk outfits like The Skids. I also liked a couple of the northern bands like The Buzzcocks when Howard Devoto was in them, Joy Division and The Ruts. Shane was into The Talking Heads and The Tubes. I never was but did like the “We’re white punks on dope “ single. These days as an old git, I listen to a lot of Jazz, early Miles Davis in particular.

9. You supported quite a few name bands. How come The Sods didn’t make it to the London circuit of the Roxy, Vortex etc and get more coverage?
Beserkley records had a slogan that read “Support your local bands, wherever they come from” We were lazy and it was easier playing locally. Cynics might say it was easier being a big fish in a small pond rather than being a small fish in a large one. It was tough getting gigs in London and it was very cliquey. We just couldn’t be bothered and we were enjoying ourselves locally

10. There was obviously a large scene around Harlow? How did the general public take to punk rock and punk rockers around Harlow?
Same as in the rest of the country I guess, with a mixture of horror and contempt fuelled in the main part by those misleading and ill informed media stereotypes. Mind you, I always found everyone’s mums very nice and understanding!

11. Local places played and bands?
The Square, which is still just about going was the main place. We played community halls and church halls a lot cos you had to put the gigs on yourself. For other bands you should really check out the new Stortbeat Collective CD. We were the first, but following us were The Newtown Neurotics, The Gangsters, Pete the Meat and The Boys, Easy Action, The Pressure Stops, The Rabbits, The Epileptics (later to become The Flux of Pink Indians) and many more I can’t remember

12. Without being too over the top I think No Pictures is one of the finest records ever made. It’s a kind of mixture of punk velocity and garage psychedelia with a cracking hooky chorus. How would you describe the Sods sound and how did you arrive at it?
By pure chance! We decided to have Steve in the band on keyboards before we had actually written any songs. Having an organ in the band, the style came a bit from The Doors, who Shane really liked. The rest is history. I have to say that I don’t really like my own stuff and hate listening to my own recordings

13. There really were no pictures of you on the single or the next one? What’s the story behind the singles covers?
It was cheaper to do them that way and we were skint is the honest truth. It’s also true to say that none of us were prima donnas so the idea of having pictures of the band on the covers never came up. There were never any pictures of The Sex Pistols on their record covers were there?

14. Why were the Sods not signed to a bigger label? Did you try? Were you ever approached? How did you get on the bigger bands tours?
Dunno really, As I said, we were really very lazy sods and I think time limited in what we could do. No we never tried, though we did have a couple of dodgy managers once that would have made Malcolm Maclaren look tame. I blame them for the lack of success, not the fact that we were a bunch of talentless wasters!

How wierd hearing this again….. We managed this band in the late 1970’s (the band called us ‘Jaws’ and ‘Shylock’). Harlow new town angst inflamed by seeing a Sex Pistols gig…. The bands members were the perfect mix of new town low life meets art school pretension …. They had loads of great songs but we were crap managers and they never achieved their potential…… Sorry guys….

Henry Longstop, YouTube

15. What did the Sods want to achieve? Fame, success, just a laugh?
People who climb mountains say thy only do it because they are there. We only did the things we did, because we could and the time was right

16. How did you get involved with Stortbeat?
I was one of the founder members along with Billy Meadows and Shane Roe. To be honest it was the only way of getting the stuff we were doing released to a wider audience, and at the time there were hundreds, if not thousands of bands doing it up and down the country. I thought up the name, for those who don’t know, the Stort is a tiny river that flows through Harlow.

The label also was an attempt to harness all of that local talent in the area under one roof, a bit like Stiff records but with less talent! Billy and I also run an alternative club at the start of the 80’s. We had alternative comedy, dance and videos (played on gear rented from the local Granada shop!) as well as music. We were ahead of the time! The name of the club was the Apocalypso, A name I notice has recently been nicked by a TV production company. Maybe we should have registered it

17. Best moments in the Sods?
Just managing to get it together in the first place! Mind you, chinning our then manager Henry in a pub and him getting thrown out because the guv’nor thought he’d started it came a close second

18. Worst Sods moment?
Chris leaving and a huge fight occurring with bikers at a pub called the Welcome Inn at wide spot in the road in Cambridgeshire called Horseheath

19. How did it all end?
In the documentary of The Ramones called “End of the Century” one interviewee (I think it’s Chris Stein from Blondie) says that being in a band is like being married, except you have three or four spouses all at the same time! This is true and after Chris left the momentum slipped away and we just argued a lot. No I go back to my original thought it was all the fault of our managers Sean and Henry!

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