Chip On My Shoulder<\/a><\/p>\nMassively fine second release by those crafty cockney\u2019s Cock Sparrer on Decca Records from 1977. Play bastard loud! Text below ripped from punkmodpop.free.fr<\/p>\n
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It started off like any other show (\u201cArgy Bargy\u201d)\u2026you see, the thing about Sparrer is that they\u2019re not just a band. The four original members (Steve Bruce \u2013 drums, Mick Beaufoy \u2013 guitar, Steve Burgess \u2013 bass and Colin Mcfaull \u2013 vocals) together with their tour manager, Will Murray, have known each other since the age of eleven. They were born and raised in London\u2019s East End, growing up in an atmosphere of football and rock music. For most of their lives, they\u2019ve been mates.<\/p>\n
They all attended the same school and, in 1972, swapped homework for rehearsals in order to form a group, playing Small Faces songs and not much else. They were later joined by Garrie Lammin, the first of several rhythm guitarists. Garrie had a lot going for him: he owned a Marshall stack, had a spikey haircut and was Burge\u2019s cousin. Thanks to Terry Murphy, who ran the Bridgehouse pub in Canning Town (East London\u2019s coolest rock venue), the boys were never short of somewhere to play, even if it was only a wet Monday night with an audience of just Terry and his bar staff.<\/p>\n
Sparrer began to write their own songs. They were based on the life they led and the characters they met while supporting West Ham Football Club every Saturday afternoon. The sound that evolved was more raw than the prevailing heavy rock favoured by their contemporaries and soon attracted a regular following. The gigs at the Bridgehouse were now being supplemented by support slots at The Marquee in London\u2019s West End (thanks to Archie, The Marquee\u2019s dodgy jock doorman).<\/p>\n
Malcolm McLaren came to see the band rehearse in a room over The Roding pub in East Ham with a view to taking them under his wing and turning them into the \u2018next big thing\u2019 (sound familiar ?). Bondage trousers and safety pins met Doctor Martins and jungle greens. It was not to be. Malcolm invited the boys to play with the newly formed Sex Pistols at a strip club in Soho but his inability to buy them a beer did not go down well and the association ended there (if only\u2026Oh well, who gives a shit ?)<\/p>\n
Shortly afterwards the music scene was changed forever with the release of \u2018Anarchy In The UK\u2019. Suddenly record companies were rushing to find anyone who didn\u2019t sound like the \u2018dinosaur\u2019 rockers that had now become so \u2018un-trendy\u2019 and Cock Sparrer signed their lives away to Decca Records (along with \u2018Slaughter And The Dogs\u2019 from Manchester). Fame and fortune were just around the corner.<\/p>\n
Decca sent the boys to their West Hampstead studio to record a single (the same studio once used by the Stones). They were assigned the company\u2019s best producer, Nick Tauber (whose other clients included Thin Lizzy) and, while everybody from the head of A&R to the studio engineer were trying to work out what to do with a \u2018punk\u2019 group who refused to dye their hair green or stick safety pins through their ears, Sparrer kept themselves busy trying to work out how many microphones they could nick and sell without them being missed.<\/p>\n
A support slot on the Small Faces UK tour was negotiated and the first single, \u2018Runnin\u2019 Riot\u2019, was released in July 1977. It reached the lower end of the British chart but did nothing to dampen the band\u2019s growing mistrust of record companies, managers and P.R. companies (\u2018Take \u2019em All\u2019). By the time the second single was released (\u2018We Love You\u2019\/\u2019Chip On My Shoulder\u2019 \u2013 12 inch and 7 inch \u2013 November 1977), the boys were rejecting every promotional idea they were asked to consider (which was why the \u2018We Love You\u2019 picture sleeve was blank) and were booking their own tour from Decca\u2019s offices.<\/p>\n
They all lived in a house in Dagenham, Essex. When not gigging, they spent the time in the kitchen playing football, drinking in the local pub or praying for Will to win enough money on the horses to pay the rent. They had \u2018acquired\u2019 boxes and boxes of both their singles which they used for rifle practice in the back garden (they\u2019re sick when they now see them being offered for huge amounts of money in record collector magazines).<\/p>\n
This period was the inspiration for many songs (\u2018Working\u2019, \u2018Last Train To Dagenham\u2019) often written as they travelled to gigs in the back of a red ex-Post Office van driven by their trusty roadie, \u2018The Head\u2019 (another old school friend). The band\u2019s most loyal supporters were a bunch of East End lads known as \u2018The Poplar Boys\u2019, who turned up at every gig.<\/p>\n
With the emergence of punk, Sparrer naively believed their music had found a natural home. Not so. Their aggressive anthems born out of a dangerous mixture of East End life and football matches were not welcomed by the West London art school dropouts who dominated the British music press. These critics were desperately trying to turn punk into \u2018new wave\u2019 in order to give it a respectability that would justify their interest. \u2018Serious\u2019 punk musicians quickly emerged. The Pistols disintegrated and so, with somewhat less fuss, did Sparrer. Garrie left to become an actor and the others booked themselves on a Freddie Laker flight to America, paid for by selling off their P.A. (which wasn\u2019t actually theirs to sell).<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t split up. They just didn\u2019t play for a while.<\/p>\n
The next couple of years saw the boys with no great desire to get back on the road. The only real highlight was Trevor Brooking\u2019s magnificent diving header which secured West Ham\u2019s defeat of Arsenal in the 1980 F.A. Cup Final.<\/p>\n
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HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY TO MIKE DIBOLL OF TOXIC GRAFITY FANZINE FAME. HOPE YOU HAVE A NICE DAY OVER IN THE MIDDLE EAST. DON\u2019T HAVE A CLUE IF YOU LIKE EARLY COCK SPARRER BUT THIS POST IS DEDICATED TO YOU ANYWAY!<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i192.photobucket.com\/albums\/z149\/pengy1966\/pengy1966%20stuff\/KYPP745.jpg\")
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We Love You Chip On My Shoulder Massively fine second release by those crafty cockney\u2019s Cock Sparrer on Decca Records from 1977. Play bastard loud! Text below ripped from punkmodpop.free.fr It started off like any other show (\u201cArgy Bargy\u201d)\u2026you see, the thing about Sparrer is that they\u2019re not just a band. The four original members […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-downloads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2639"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2649,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions\/2649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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