The Vortex story starts as another club has its owners evicted by greedy landlords out to make fast cash out of what they saw as the punk goldmine.
One of those evicted is Andy Czezowski co owner of the infamous first Punk club, the Roxy in London WC2. He immediately starts looking for another club to run along the same lines as the Roxy.
Meanwhile, Andy hadn’t been idle. The mixing and release of the ‘Live At The Roxy WC2’ album had been completed and now he with Ray Rossi, manager of Slaughter & the Dogs, planned to take bands featured on the album round the country. First off would be Slaughter, Johnny Moped, Eater and X Ray Spex at Manchester Belle Vue on 9th July 1977, which would attract some 1500 to the show.
Around ten more shows were planned. He was also about to get back into running a club and had been offered a 50/50 deal on a new venture at Crackers discothèque, 203 Wardour Street by man called Terry Draper. Czezowski let the papers know he was launching the club, booked up some bands and got flyers ready.
BZZZZ,BZZZZ,BZZZZ: There is nothing like a rumour, nothing in the world. In this case, the rumour is a POSSIBLE new club, POSSIBLY run by Andy Czezowski of Roxy founder fame, POSSIBLY in Berwick Street, Soho, with a POSSIBLE opening night early next week…Remember where you read it first. Possibly… Sounds, 25.6.77
Andy had some ideas for the name of the new club.
Andy Czezowski (Roxy Club Partner) I had started looking for another place after the Roxy and had come up with a couple of names for clubs. One was the ‘Void’ and the other the ‘Vortex’ not realising it was the name of a group of artists in the twenties and thirties and that there was a play called the Vortex.
Right – unused flyer for Void nightclub
First though he had to open. Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice then, as within a week he was no longer a partner in the new club.
Andy Czezowski (Roxy Club Partner) I got it all going and it was looking good, and then I find out he [most likely Tony Draper] got rid of me.” Sounds 6.8.77
Andy Czezowski (Roxy Club Partner) I turned up one day and two thugs on the door asked ‘what did I want?’ I said ‘I’m putting the club on. Don’t you remember me? I set this all up. We got a deal to rent it off you.’ ‘No I’ve never seen you before’ they replied. That was the end of that and I was out before I was in! Punk77 Interview
Instead Draper had hooked up with John Miller (aka John McKillop), an ex Irish Guard, who had a different account of how the Vortex club and its name came about. In 1977 Miller was out of the army and attempting to start supplying security to nightclubs. By chance at a disco club called Crackers, in London’s Wardour Street, he gives a helping hand to the owner by diffusing a situation with some drunk Scottish football hooligans. According to Miller he then offers to take on the Monday night when the club is shut but the owner refuses to charge him rent. Instead the club agrees to take the bar takings from the night. Miller then decides to name his club the Vortex.
Miller on the right – on the left is Alex Harvey Photo Credit Denis O’Regan
John Miller is a colourful and charismatic character but like all chancers and opportunists where fact and fiction meet has become blurred over the years. How believable you think Millers’ version to be should be balanced by his other more ludicrous claim of letting the Sex Pistols play the Vortex to help them get headlines and sign record deals and to boost the clubs reputation!
Andy never made the same mistake again. He and Sue vowed never to run a club unless they owned the building, which is of course what they later did with the famous Fridge Club in Brixton, which ran for over twenty years.
Crackers opened up as the Vortex on the 4th July with the Buzzcocks, Fall and John Cooper Clarke and was gate crashed by the Heartbreakers putting in a final appearance before going back to the USA. Their work permits had been withdrawn and their tour called off. One of their roadies, Terry, was now employed as a bouncer at the Vortex and through him they approached Miller to play for free. Holding around 650 people it was significantly bigger than the Roxy and just right for those bands climbing the greasy rock pole and attracting a larger crowd.
In all appearances it was still Crackers the disco, but on Mondays (and within a couple of weeks it added Tuesdays) it became the Vortex and a Punk club. There’s an irony in the fact that both the Roxy Club and the Vortex both kicked off commercially with the Heartbreakers. In the 650 capacity club over a 1000 were packed in remembers John Miller though again caution is advised as he recalls the entry price being £2 and not the £1 as below.
It was no rip off. Initially, with Dave Woods of March Artists putting on the bookings there were some great nights. In August 1977 for £1 admission you could catch four bands like say, Generation X, the Lurkers, Steel Pulse and the Art Attacks (1st August 1977) or ironically Andy Czezowski’s package tour of X Ray Spex, Eater, Wire and the Unwanted (8th August 1977) and stay till 2 a.m.
Others thought differently about the Vortex.
Danny Baker (Journalist) The Vortex, (aha!)…it’s just the Roxy crowd in a different hole in the ground but that ‘feel’ the Roxy has (had), is lost in the place the size of a medium length market, plus the fact it gets hotter than shagging in the back of a car during the summer of ’76…as far as the people who run the place go we could be a typists’ hen party so long as they get the pound note, which is a feeling the Roxy ain’t got. Zigzag #75, August 1977
John Miller (Vortex manager) Punk bands so disgusting that no other club in London would touch them, were queuing up to play at the Vortex. They were so desperate to get on stage, any stage, that they pleaded to be allowed to play the Vortex – for free. They’d turn up with their own sound equipment, their own lighting, they’d play for nothing and they’d spend all week sticking up fly posters all over town advertising their appearance at the club. Within weeks I was featuring five bands every Monday night at the Vortex from 8p.m. until three in the morning. John Miller, Former Soldier Seeks Employment, 1990
Jane Suck (Journalist) Crackers is designed like a sewer. One path leads to the toilets, one path leads to the bar, and if you’re lucky you’ll find the stage in half an hour. Oh, and when you get there you can SWEAT… Such whines are worth considering if Crackers is to take over from that corpse the Roxy as London’s premier gig for misfits. Record Mirror, 16.7.77
Gareth Holder (the Shapes) The Vortex was a dump. Mind you, so was the Roxy, but I never really liked the Vortex. It just didn’t have the atmosphere. I remember more aggro at the Vortex. The Roxy could get wild, but I don’t recall any of the huge bust ups like sometimes happened at the Vortex. Of course, thanks to the likes of Sham 69 and co not making a stand against violence and right wing involvement until it was way too late, there was a time when going to any gig could result in violence.
Ms Dayglo (Roxygoer) I saw many bands there including Siouxsie and the Banshees. It was never packed except for big names. I loved the Vortex – the Roxy was a pit with a sticky, dirty floor, the Vortex was much more glamorous by comparison (doesn’t say much). I came from that disco/glam tradition as much as rock. I remember lots of red, red walls, maybe plush curtains, and mirrors. An L-shaped bar and a dance floor. I can’t remember the bar staff except that they were kind of trendy.
Christian Paris (the Bears) I remember going to a Sham 69 gig at the Vortex and a big fight breaking out and I just thought what the hell has happened. Punk has gone downhill. I never saw any fights at any other Punk gig and definitely none at the Roxy.
Zecca Esquibel (Cherry Vanilla) There was no violence at the Roxy but there was at other places and that was mainly alcohol fuelled violence. Not from the original Punks but from the suburban kids who came later and who wanted to be Punkier than we were. Those suburban hooligans who came later were aggressive and I remember one night outside the Vortex I got myself in trouble as someone walked by with pair of Vivienne Westwood pants on, obviously some young kid from the suburbs who had never been to a Punk club before. I had the misfortune to open my mouth and say ‘Oh £75 to be a real Punk’. Well it was the stupidest thing I ever said and we got into a bit of a fight.
Other bands preferred the stage, sound and set up to the Roxy’s one.
Faebhean Kwest (Raped) Much more professional. It was a proper venue and much, much bigger with a beautiful stage to play on. The actual acoustics were so good as well. The whole thing was tighter and much better run. Different atmosphere, but just as good. I preferred it myself. There was more of a rock crowd as opposed to the Roxy and its Punk crowd.
Gene October (Chelsea) & Peter York (fashion writer – Harpers Bazzaar) Photo – Ray Stevenson
Alan Lee Shaw (the Maniacs) It was also downstairs but there was more room to hang out. The bar was bigger, there were more people and the sound was better. In fact everything was better. I just preferred it really. The Roxy was just like a little toilet.
Others more inexperienced just had a place to play and learn as it were…
Nina (Muvvers Pride) I remember a gig at the Vortex with Lyn standing there with her bass going to the sound man” its not working something is wrong?” Then someone, I am not sure who, said ‘plug the fukking thing in’. She had no lead going from the bass to the amp….she got away with it!
The Vortex had its share of unsavoury characters and mainly employed there as bouncers. Bouncers nowadays are virtually qualified professionals with health and safety certificates. Back then bouncers were often vicious, violent psychopaths who on one occasion threw a punter at a Sham 69 gig through a plate glass door and on many other occasions were responsible for unprovoked attacks on defenceless concert goers. Often they were ex-army.
John Miller (Vortex manager) There’s one casual job always available to prevent fit young ex-soldiers filling too many places on the dole queue. Pubs and clubs always need bouncers as the first line of defence on the door, and to mingle inside with the customers, with a quick eye to spot trouble developing, and enough muscle to put down an outbreak of fighting before it degenerates into general mayhem. John Miller, Former Soldier Seeks Employment, 1990
Ari Up of The Slits plus skinhead plus bouncers – Photo Credit?
The trouble is the use of undue force. This was a club not a battlefield. Miller recounts the time Ari Up of The Slits peed on the Vortex stage and a bouncer grabbed her and pulled her off.
John Miller (Vortex manager) Before they reached me, the girl jerked her head round to one side and sank her teeth into Freddie’s hand, drawing blood. It was gut reaction. Freddie lifted his free hand and whacked her across the face. And she went unconscious… we were both worried that Freddie had broken her jaw or maybe even broken her neck. But after a minute or two she came round. She got unsteadily to her feet and spat straight into Freddie’s face. John Miller, Former Soldier Seeks Employment
The other occupation open to ex-squaddies was to become mercenaries and the current conflict at the time was Angola. In that conflict, the most infamous mercenary of all was Colonel Callan who executed twelve of his own men and murdered and tortured civilians. Interestingly, he had worked as a bouncer in a top London nightclub at the time before going out there.
George Webley (Blitz) Sometimes you would turn up in the Vortex and there would be a whole army of bouncers, real hard nut guys but they were on their way out to Angola. It was a place to meet up. In three or four days time you would never see these people again. Or maybe you would do in six months time. They were all military people and they were all right, though occasionally they would give someone a slap and when they did that person didn’t come back for a few weeks.
Blitz at The Vortex 28.11.77
Occasionally though, the boot was on the other foot as the bouncers were on the end of a right good pasting from the audience.
Kevin McKay (Skrewdriver) We had just put together a twenty six date tour and the first headline gig was the Vortex. Suggsie (later singer with Madness), our roadie, was there at the side of the stage. All the skinheads were there from Arsenal, West Ham and Chelsea and as soon as we started the first song they just kicked off. They weren’t fighting each other but against all the bouncers and bar staff. We kept playing and they were hitting them with chairs and everything. It ended up with a fleet of ambulances outside at 10.30 p.m at night with all the staff in them so they had to shut the club. Punk77 Interview
Violence certainly did seem to feature at the Vortex. The Jam’s flipside to their single David Watts was A Bomb In Wardour Street describing a night at the Vortex with the narrator being beaten up and ‘stranded on the Vortex floor’ with ‘the blood starting to pour’ while ‘3 geezers’ have his girlfriend pinned to a wall.
The Vortex on a Monday now became part of the circuit for Punks as the Roxy now closed that night. For some it was reluctantly.
Dave Patten (Roxygoer) I was a regular gig goer in 1977 and remember seeing loads of bands. Friday & Saturday nights at the Roxy were the thing for me. Then the Roundhouse on a Sunday night and the Vortex on a Monday. It was less about the bands and more about being a place to meet like minded people.
Zecca Esquibel (Cherry Vanilla) We didn’t go back to the Roxy after Andy left. We all went to the Vortex which we didn’t like very much.
Meanwhile The Vortex grew from just being a nightclub to a brand. On the 23rd of September it opened up (under the Vortex name) London’s first twenty four hour Punk venue in Hanway Street complete with coffee bar and record shop. This came about after Vortex managers Terry Draper and John Miller had found 150 kids wandering the streets after a Vortex gig. Their press release claimed that ‘what Carnaby Street was to the Mods so Hanway Street would become to the Punks!’
In addition to opening two nights a week and taking on average £1,000 while paying bands virtually nothing, the coffee/record shop, together with a proposed in house ‘Vortex’ fanzine selling advertising space, was a further attempt to milk the punk cash cow by Miller and Draper.
To mark the event Sham 69 played on the roof performing George Davis, I Don’t Wanna and Ulster before the police arrived, cut off the power and manhandled Pursey off into custody. Coincidentally Sham’s EP of I Don’t Wanna, Red London and Ulster was out on that day on the Step Forward label. However it wasn’t a PR set up but a genuine mistake!
Dave Parsons (Sham 69) We were asked to play a gig on the roof at the opening by Brian Adams, the guy who was going to run the place. We of course said ‘yes’. It was along way up to the roof and by the time we had got there it wasn’t clear which part of the roof was the right part. Anyway we ended up playing on the wrong roof, hence the owner called the police and all hell broke lose – it certainly wasn’t set up, we had a gig in Bristol that night, and after being arrested Jimmy only just made it to the gig with ten minutes to spare. Punk77 Interview
Island Records also got a toe in the Punk door when the Vortex secured both a small financial commitment and a distribution deal through them on all upcoming releases on the Vortex label.
In October, bands had been recorded at the Vortex Club for a proposed live album along the lines of the first ‘Live At the Roxy WC2’ record. The record featured the Maniacs, Suspects, Wasps, Neo, Art Attacks, Bernie Torme and Mean Street who were all regular players at the Vortex and Roxy. Masterswitch were due to be recorded but pulled out when they saw the contract. Paying the bands virtually nothing and holding them to ludicrously disadvantaged contracts, Miller and Draper raked in even more from Punk and its naïve bands. The album is estimated to have sold over 50,000 copies but unlike the ‘Live At The Roxy WC2’ failed to dent the charts.
In late November 1977, a press release from PR agency Shaboodle Promotions Limited for the Vortex album (released 5th December) offered the following obituary to the Roxy Club.
Chagaramas and then Punk club) Kevin St John, a man with a criminal record, connections to the London underworld and involved in a number of shady deals but there was undoubtedly one. In Miller’s autobiography he has in the dedications the following cryptic comment.
The gay club in Soho, it still hurts;
Around January 1978 John Miller decided to bail out of Punk Rock and management. The coffee/record shop died without fanfare soon after opening and issue two of the Vortex fanzine never appeared. Its first run of 15,000, on which figures advertisers had stumped up money, was mysteriously reduced to 3,000 with Island also pulling out distributing it. Its editor, Mathew Nugent, was also reported in the Vortex Fanzine fanzine Trick #1 as being ‘beaten up in mysterious circumstances’ but didn’t elaborate.
John Miller (Vortex Manager) The Vortex grew too fast for its own good. I began to tire of the raucous Punk bands and their sleazy hangers-on. I had the money to be able to afford to pay for real rock ‘n ‘rollers, talented, respected musicians to appear on stage, and I began to get the urge to move up-market. John Miller, Former Soldier Seeks Employment
Miller’s next move was to form Executive Security, which offered to organise revolutions and uprisings, orchestrate armed struggles and ruthlessly suppress terrorism. Learning from his flirtation with the music business he also added a bit of showbiz in his daring plan to kidnap Ronnie Biggs, the escaped Great Train Robber in Brazil, as a publicity stunt in 1979.
John Miller (Vortex Manager) …I’ll snatch someone as a feasibility exercise. We’ll be internationally famous or notorious, overnight…in a private army of go-anywhere do-anything mercenary Supermen. John Miller, Former Soldier Seeks Employment
For the record the plan failed. In 1981 John Miller would hit the news again when he and Patrick King, along with other ex-military personnel in ‘Operation Anaconda’, attempted to kidnap Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs again. Allegedly hired by Sir Hugh Fraser to do the job, the plan was he would be handed over to the British there. A loophole in the law however meant that he was returned to Brazil before returning to England and turning himself in in 2001.The whole kidnap affair is a book in itself and was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary ‘Kidnap Ronnie Biggs’ in 2005.
Miller would also pull off a a Lord Lucan scam, hang out with Billy Idol and the Cult’s Ian Astbury and be involved in various political hi jinks in Jamaica to name a few incidents in his interesting life. What’s blatantly obvious from Miller’s book is how much he disliked, misunderstood and got wrong Punk.
Steve Strange (Moors Murderers) at The Vortex – Photo Ray Stevenson
John Miller (Vortex Manager) “It’s a scientific fact that most punks have an attention span of ten seconds
The sights onstage were equally astonishing. Groups like the Moors Murderers strutted about in Gestapo uniforms. (Steve Strange left – out of uniform!)
I found myself being consulted as an agony uncle to some of the fastest rising punk stars on the scene.
They’d ask me in all seriousness, if I thought they should wear stockings and suspenders instead of tights, or if their lipstick clashed with their eyeliner and mascara. And these were the guys for Crissake!
Punk music wasn’t really music at all and any attempt to exploit it widely on a commercial basis was going to show it up for the fleeting fraud it had been all along.” John Miller, Former Soldier Seeks Employment
That said he was a chancer who struck lucky and who had a flair for self promotion.
John Miller (Vortex Manager) I began to tire of the raucous punk bands and their sleazy hangers on. I had the money to be able to afford to pay for real rock’n’rollers, talented, respected musicians to appear on stage and I began to get the urge to move up-market…I liked the money, the affluence, the new cars I could buy…the posh flat I had rented for myself in Fulham. John Miller, Former Soldier Seeks Employment
On the 25th February it was announced in the music papers that the Vortex was under new management. It had now been taken over by promoters Dick Tee and Hazel Northcott who hoped to build numbers up again and attract bigger name bands. They kicked off with The Depressions on the 27th February.
Less than two months later and their plans failed to take off. Fortune hadn’t smiled on them. They failed (and there’s no satisfactory answer as to why) to match their promise of attracting the bigger bands and bigger audiences. The Depressions, Eater, Menace and Radio Birdman had played there throughout March. Finally, on Monday 3rd April, Tubeway Army was the last listed gig in the music papers and London’s second major Punk club limped out unmourned and unnoticed. The Roxy would limp on another month.
So where does the Vortex sit in Punk History? Arguably the Roxy Club was THE definitive Punk club and it was that 24/7. Small compact, in at the start, seedy and a real club goers clientele. A place where audience and bands were literally on the same level and equal to each other.
Andy’s leaving the Roxy marked not just a watershed for the club, but also Punk as it began to burst out and go mainstream and the Vortex filled a void (sic). Being a larger venue, it enabled the bands who had matured to play to more people. In a way it reaffirmed all the standard tenets of rock’n’ roll with a proper stage and sound and the more formal band audience contact on a raised stage. It was now part of the circuit, A stopping point for bands on their way up. Next stop the Marquee, Roundhouse and Hammersmith Odeon.
It hosted great nights and it produced an above average live album. The Vortex’ status as a legendary punk venue is assured.
In October, bands had been recorded at the Vortex Club for a proposed live album along the lines of the first ‘Live At the Roxy WC2’ record. The record featured the Maniacs, Suspects, Wasps, Neo, Art Attacks, Bernie Torme and Mean Street who were all regular players at the Vortex and Roxy. Paying the bands virtually nothing and holding them to ludicrously disadvantaged contracts, Miller and Draper raked in even more from Punk and its naive bands.
John Miller (Vortex Manager) I even made more money out of a privately produced album ‘Live At The Vortex’, featuring the most tuneless bands of our time. It must have been one of the worst records ever made, but it was hailed as a breakthrough in ‘New Wave Punk’. It was all getting extremely silly. John Miller, Former Soldier Seeks Employment
The record was universally panned by the music weeklies smelling a cheap cash in. Comparisons with the Roxy album did it no favours either. Where one was a vibrant affair featuring crowd noise and conversation, heaps of photos of bands and clubgoers alike and a fairly detailed rundown of the bands the Vortex album had nothing.
There was also the curiously sterile atmosphere of the recording and some controversy over whether the ‘Live’ tag was actually justified. Following a review by Jon Savage an irate Jesse Lynn Dean from The Wasps replied to Sounds on the Letters page.
…that these live recordings were made with plastic glasses and other objects being thrown through the air while some of the audience were trying to take a singer’s microphone from him.
This letter prompted another letter from an attendee at the gigs Sounds 14.1.78.
REVIEW OF The Review Of The Review Of Live At The Vortex’ (A Serial in 96 weekly episodes)… Having just phoned the editorial office of your illustrious paper (and convincing the rather forbidding lady who answer me that I was a complete nutter) I am making one last attempt to gossip about the Live At the Vortex album. Jesse Lynn-Dean of The Wasps – who is probably a very nice non-entity (but then aren’t we all – PHILOSOPHICAL POINT OF LETTER) is not telling the absolute truth. The Live At the Vortex’ album was not recorded in the midst of flying glasses, flob and dismembered limbs but in stereophonic old wave studio conditions. True they did use the Vortex for their recording but only during the daylight hours when most good punks were asleep in their Kensington and Chelsea flats.
The audience (if that’s what we must call it) was no more than a few hand picked guests (yours truly included) who watched in hushed silence as the musicians’ attempted to play their instruments in a pretty awful approximation of the banal songs that hid beneath all the bum notes and feed back Basically Live At the Vortex’ is only live in the same sense that all studio albums are live (ie at the time of the recording all the members of the band have not yet departed into the afterlife).
Would dear Jesse please stop whining – the album is crap because most of the bands are crap and the songs are even worse. Q.E.D. – A. Bitch from a band even less famous than the Wasps.
PS I am not a manager with a grudge
PPS I am not a bitch with a grudge
So what was the real story. The answer like always is a combination of the above. Neo and Bernie Torme were asked to be on the album.
Ian North (Neo) We were doubled booked the night of the recording – we tried to back out but they wouldn’t let us. So we played at the Vortex early before the club opened and the record company dubbed in crowd noises later. It was recorded live but I do remember going into the studio and re-recording a vocal track. Don’t kid yourself – everyone does it.
Bernie Torme: Because we played lots of times at the Vortex they asked us to be on the album. They were under the misapprehension that we were going to be successful I suppose. Really I guess they were trying to jump on the Roxy album bandwagon.
Bernie Torme – Photo Mick Mercer
Well yes, it was all recorded live on some mobile, then they had us go to Morgan Studios in Wimbledon to clean it all up. i think we repaired everything but the drums on what must have been a copy master, because they still had the original. We thought it was wonderful, it was the best studio with the most time we’d ever been in,
Then a few days later the Robin chappie who was organising it phoned up and said our tracks sounded too good and not live enough, and would we come back and mix the original live recorded take. So we did, which mainly consisted in standing there and saying yes Robin, and that’s what they used. I can’t speak for any of the other bands, but ours came out as it was, live. Some other tracks sound better than ours, maybe that’s why. i still have a copy of the studio one someplace. But I didn’t really know that, I always thought that since they used our live originals, they would have used everybody’s. maybe not. Punk77 Interview
Others resisted the fixes like Jesse but based on the above he didn’t get the story quite right
Jesse Lynn-Dean (Wasps) The bands on this album all resisted any temptation to go into a studio and overdub any part of the album; they had the courage to say ‘no’. If someone pays for `Live at the Vortex’ that’s what they should get. Sounds
Steve Wollaston (Wasps) I didn’t hear the story about the album being a fake. It’s ridiculous, as there are plenty of people out there who witnessed the event. We were particularly good that day. I only wish I had a copy of the complete set. I remember hearing the Vortex version of ‘He’s Back’ which was brilliant, and Robin Turner (the producer) wanted permission to release ‘Something To Tell You’ from the set, as he thought it was outstanding that night. Punk77 Interview
Alan Lee Shaw (Maniacs) We had a manager at the time who was a guy called Ian Dickson. He got us on the Vortex. They then said do you want to appear on the album as they were doing a live at the Vortex album like the a live at the Roxy which happened previously. It was recorded on the RAK mobile over 2 nights. It was all live. On one of the songs my guitar goes all over the top and that was because there was a stage invasion and I was being knocked all over the place. We went to RAK studios to hear a playback from the guys producing the album, nothing was added. I don’t know about the other bands. Punk77 Interview
So there you have it. As a ‘Live’ document it’s clearly not all it purported to be. As Neo said this kind of thing isn’t uncommon on Live albums BUT and it’s a big but … on a low key punk album like this? The single released from the album didn’t help matters either. A straight Mean Street? Wasps cull of tracks and picture cover replicating the album cover.
Can’t wait (yawn) til ’78 (zzzz) over and over again. Cashing in on a live Vortex album is one thing, but to release a single from it has the same effect as an out of context quote. It reeks of capitalism, and the cover is just an advertisement for the L.P. ‘B’ side is even worse, bland, atonal mockery of the dead. Is nothing sacred? Donna McAllister Sounds 17.12.77
That said it’s not a bad album, the Wasps, Maniacs, Art Attacks, Mean Street, Neo, Bernie Torme and the Suspects all acquit themselves fine. But there were no great success stories like the Roxy album. No one, with the exception of Neo, would produce an album… at best a couple of singles and in the case of the Wasps and Maniacs one offs with major labels. If you’re looking for commercial success then out of all those bands it would be Bernie Torme who would later go on to have a solo career, play with Gilland and Ozzy Ozbourne.
In fact both Neo and Bernie Torme were signed following the recording night and both to Jet records who had no punk bands at all on their roster.
Bernie Torme: Jet Records were there that night and signed us shortly afterwards, and paid us 40 quid a week each for the next 18 months, I thought i had it made, put us on lots of support tours, The Boys, Bethnal, Generation X, so it was a great learning experience for yer live chops, and life in general. Punk77 Interview
Ian North (Neo) … it got Charisma records and Jet Records into a bidding war to get us. Punk77 Interview
The record supposedly sold quite well
Bernie Torme: I don’t know if it did. I suppose it must have. It was great to be on a record. Of course we never got any royalties. Punk77 Interview
Ian North (Neo) The record sold 50,000 copies and we never saw a single penny. Punk77 Interview
Reviews for the album were not good to say the least.
`Live At The Vortex’ (NEMS)** Sounds 10.12.77
HA. ANOTHER sledge-hammer blow pulping revolt into style …
At least might someone have the good grace and honesty to stick `Punk (a/k/a ‘New/Wave’) Sampler’ on the sleeve and sling it out in a cheesy cover at £1.99 so we’d know that we’re getting mutton? Please. Lamb this is the price of – for so little return.
Immediately: 12 tracks, recorded live (at little cost – compared with studio time), performed by up-and-coming/little known bands. Fair enough, there might be some aces in the hole, but none appear . . . As for identification with the venue – rationale being that the `Roxy Club WC2′ album went Top 20 – I mean c’mon! The Vortex! Hey daddio, don’t want to go down to debasement …
The intro to side one and The Wasps’ `Can’t Wait Until ’78’ is worth quoting. Attitude indication, see. “OK. This ain’t a bad little bunch of people for the Vortex (scattered moans) . . . don’t get excited, carried away – I’m just saying it isn’t bad … It’s still 1977! Remember what happened at the beginning? Let’s have some more of that, eh?” etc . You get the drift. It’s unfair, perhaps, to berate a band for their spontaneous intros – but it was chosen to remain on, and start the album. Prominence thrust …
The Wasps themselves mix some enviable freshness and youthful energy – and cliche-free playing with some awful lyrics and misplaced cockiness. Wasn’t worth being alive in 75/Didn’t get too many kicks in ’76’ – so now safety-pin satori, hey? Clocked also was a Do what you wanna do’.
And then their intro to their version’ of Waiting For The Man’, where breakneck assurance is never any replacement for the world-weary disgust/repetition of the original: “This is a classic illustration of how English bands can still do it better than American bands: this is a number we wrote for Lou Reed . . .” – at least someone has the manners to scream obscenities in response.
As we start, so we (mostly) continue: competent/fine playing ruined by inept lyrics and acute lack of tunes. The lumpen: Bernie Torme run through two routine numbers unmemorabably – no spark no life. Living For Kicks’/Streetfighter’. The Suspects confuse speed for talent in `Nothing To Declare’ – sound and fury signifying … nothing.
The Maniacs come clean over a massive bass riff in You Don’t Break My Heart’:Gimme a shot of novocain/And watch my feelings go . . .’ So now it’s out in the open … Finally Meanstreets (recurring motifs … ) offer Bunch Of Stiffs’ (!) with the immortal line:What am I doing here wasting time?’ neatly begging the question at the very moment they shouldn’t along with the Maniacs’ `I Ain’t Gonna Be History’.
Best moment of the set occurs when Art Attax’ Edwin lets fly with a tart “Fuck off Jack – who needs ya?”. Intro to Animal Bondage’, which although a neat idea well served with apoplectic vocals and witty lyrics suffers from a muddy production/sound and no tune. Ratio is similar forFrankenstein’s Heartbeat’ – balance tipped slightly by some wheezy backing vocals. They seem different, and raise a grin – some positive reaction. Neo come off best – might be my ears but the production sounds superior (shades of the Wire’ tracks on the Roxy album): the sound is inventive and tricksy, vocals strongly Sparks, content ambitious. Some thought, some originality. The following lyrics burn out ofSmall Lives’: `Do what you will/The only solution is kill kill kill’. Thank you. Sure it’s a parody/statement, the music doesn’t make it clear … Belsen wasn’t a gas and Aleister Crowley wasn’t exactly a barrelful of monkeys,
Look: it’s easy but hard to be hard. Often bands are never captured best on live recordings (esp. at the Vortex), so no accurate forecast to the several band’s futures possibly – although suspicions, nothing hard and fast. Hey. But you have to buy this. Don’t you waste your money so – as plastic gap-fill this is profoundly depressing as the consistent lack of originality/distinguishing features turns your brain to novocaine …
Petulant protestations about our music’ and exploitation unfortunately redundant. Such quickies as these inevitable (human nature’ being understood to be what it is’), best recognised for what they are, and avoided. Now if you want something to get worked up about, you could begin by inspecting the contracts allegedly offered’ to each band before the recording of this album …
Suggest this album comes too early to be rightful spearhead of inevitable `Punk Revival’ . JON SAVAGE.
This review caused Jesse Lyn-Dean of the Wasps to reply in the Sounds letter page.
REVIEW OF THE REVIEW OF LIVE AT THE VORTEX (WHO INVITED YOU TO DEBASEMENT ANYWAY) 17.12.77
CONGRATULATIONS, Mr Savage, you have just struck another superfluous blow against the enthusiasm, hope and possible emergence of some great new British bands. You infer that the album is overpriced and-talk of how little it cost to make and that studio time is more expensive than the methods of live recording at the Vortex. In your wisdom you chose to ignore the cost of a band borrowing thousands of pounds from parents, friends or just anyone to buy ordinary equipment, to ignore the cost of months of rehearsals in filthy overpriced rehearsal rooms, the cost of advertising to find members for their respective bands.
it is your job to review an album – OK. It is not your job to take into account the fact that the bands on this album (most of them) are working all day as well at their jobs, and that some of them are 16 and are in a very early and delicate stage of their careers, and that these live recordings were made with plastic glasses and other objects being thrown through the air while some of the audience were trying to take a singer’s microphone from him. No, you can just do your review at face value so who can expect you to have the sensitivity to take the initiative of mentioning some of these things; not by way of excuse but plain fact?
You infer your surprise that the dialogue spoken by Jesse Lynn-Dean of the Wasps was left on’ the record. I remind you this is a live recording and people from ail parts of’ the country want to, know what happened, what was said, not an edited version which would reduce the album to a studio job. The bands on this album all resisted any temptation to go into a studio and overdub any part of the album; they had the courage to say ‘no’. If someone pays forLive at the Vortex’ that’s what they should get. In your review it is startlingly obvious to me that a lot of the music, lyrics and happenings on the album you find a bit passe. But this is because you are too close to the business in London to be able to remain in touch with what is still only just becoming popular in other parts of the country.
You have a distinct style of writing which may well be a source of entertainment for other journalists but is certainly irrelevant for a people’s paper’ which for me SOUNDS has always been. Berate/Petulant Protestations! Apoplectic, these are a few words taken from your review, words you found it necessary to use in your description of a record. I myself am accused ofmisplaced cockiness’, this in a paragraph in which you fail to realise that the lyrics in Can’t Wait Till78′ are deliberately written as a parody of 1977 and not with any serious intent, lyrics with serious intent can be found in other songs/lyric< written by myself and the Wasps.
This is not a case, of sour grapes’. TheLive at the Vortex’ album is honest, courageous, unselfconscious and in retrospect will stand up as a classic illustration of the refusal of young British musicians to lay down and die in spite of the exploitation and abominable conditions (a cause which you have yet to champion) that have to be suffered in order to entertain the public (and show a loss doing it) in London today. -Jesse Lynn-Dean, The Wasps.
‘Live At The Vortex’. Record Mirror – 10.12.77
THE TAIL end of any musical trend is depressing . . . endless strings of no talent, no – future bands mechanically recycling the sounds of 12 months ago. While truly original, talented bands have gone on to pastures new, this lot can still be seen down the Vortex, last in their own time-warp, churning out last year’s thing. And while it’s probably still quite valid live entertainment (it’s all right to dance to, innit?) there really is no justification for putting it down on record.
It might seem a bit hard writing off all these newish bands on the evidence of just a couple of tracks, and of course it is possible that this caught them on an off night, or that they’ve improved since then, or…But to be perfectly honest, I can’t really see any of them advancing very far until they can shake off their outdated formula and find their own direction, instead of just retreading someone else’s. + + SHEILA PROPHET
With only a maximum of two gig nights a week and most of them in the first seven months, the Vortex managed a very healthy and consistent line up of quality billings thanks to the Dave Woods agency.
While the Roxy descended into gay nights and bands of the ilk of Handbag, the Vortex was still knocking out Eater, Radio Birdman and The Depressions to the end. The obvious drop off point is in February when Miller bails out and Dick Tee and Hazel Northcott take over.
October 3rd The Only Ones/The Depressions/The Speedometers/The Skunks 4th Sham 69/Wire/Solid Waste/Bazooka Joe 10th Wasps/BernieTorme/Mean Street/Raped 11th Johnny Curious/Art Attacks/The Suspects 24th The Killjoys/Model Mania/Spizz 77/Spitfire Boys/The Rivvets 25th Jah Woosh/Terminal/The Crabs/The Primates 31st Siouxsie & The Banshees/Ants/Auntie Pus/The Void
November 1st Models/Headache/The Tones/Peroxode Romance 7th The Maniacs/Bazooka Joe/Jetz/Monotones 8th The Rezillos/Menace/Bazoomies/Tanya Hyde & The Tormentors 14th Slaughter & The Dogs/Spizz 77/Raped/Metal Urbain 15th The Lurkers/Art Attacks/The Doll/Bizarros 21st The Heartbreakers/The Depressions/Mean Street/Spizz 77 28th The Unwanted/The Tickets/Blitz/The Mistakes 29th The Killjoys/The Mirrors/Patrick Fitzgerald/The Cane
December 5th Wasps/Maniacs/Neo/Mean Street/Art Attacks 6th Merger/Rage/Bazoomies/Tubeway Army 12th Wayne County/The Skunks/Backlash/Teenage Jesus & The Jerks 13th Eater/Raped/The Members/Dick Envy 19th The Drones/The Reaction/The Me members/Cane 20th Merger
January 2nd Gloria Mundi/The Rage/The Jerks/Martin & The Brownshirts 3rd Sham 69/The Crabs/Mirrors/The Jerks 10th The Monotones 16th Art Attacks/Mean Street/Accelerators/Perverse Velvet 17th The Depressions/Suburban Studs/Muvvers Pride 23rd The Cortinas/Automatics/The Cheap Stars 24th The Cortinas/Automatics/Cheap Stars/Mean Street 30th The Police/Menace/Muvvers Pride
February 27th The Depressions/The Speedometers 28th The Mirrors/Patrick Fitzgerald/Menace
March 6th Suburban Studs/UK Subs/French Lesson 13th New Hearts/Speedometers 14th Eater/Menace/Blitzkrieg Bop 20th Radio Birdman/Alligator
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