I’ve been to several memorable gigs at the excellent dedicated live venue adjoining the Brunswick pub in Hove but until I turned up on Sunday afternoon I’d never even realised they also had a downstairs cellar bar venue. It was here in this small, sweaty cellar that the recently-formed X Generation X played their debut gig. As the tour’s official warm-up gig we were treated to a short but explosive set, followed by an equally lively band Q&A and some impassioned reflections from some of the old punks in the audience recalling those heady days of the birth of punk.
Read my interview with X Generation X’s Mark Laff here
A few hours later we’re back in that same tightly-packed, low-ceilinged venue for a full-length gig and an even more explosive performance. Assembled to mark the coming 50th anniversary of punk and to celebrate the music of Generation X, the band features Generation X’s own Mark Laff on drums, Spandau Ballet’s Steve Norman on guitar, Westworld’s Elizabeth Westwood on vocals, Vice Squad’s Michael Giaquinto on bass and, as a late addition, James Stevenson from the final Gen X line-up also on guitar.
Kicking off with punk anthem ‘Ready Steady Go’ and with Norman and Stevenson cranking out those fast and furious riffs, it’s the perfect opener and Westwood immediately proves herself to be an inspired choice to front this project. She’s not trying to be Billy Idol, of course, as Laff himself noted when I interviewed him ahead of the tour. But she truly inhabits the spirit of these songs with energy and verve.
The earlier part of the set is heavily dominated by songs from the first Generation X album and a thunderously tight Laff and his bandmates more than do justice to old favourites like ‘Promises Promises’, ‘One Hundred Punks’ and ‘Kiss Me Deadly’. There’s a couple of songs from the second album, Valley of the Dolls, thrown in as well though: the title track and ‘King Rocker’, introduced by Laff as his “biggest hit” – the only Generation X single to almost make the Top Ten. Throw in the essential early singles, ‘Wild Youth’ and ‘Your Generation’, a couple of deep cuts in the form of a cover of John Lennon’s ‘Gimme Some Truth’ (originally recorded as a B-side) and Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock On’ (originally recorded for a Peel session) and you’ve got the perfectly-curated Generation X set-list.
As things begin to draw to a close there’s one song left that we’re all expecting and we’re not disappointed. The band launch into a wonderfully raw and frenetic version of ‘Dancing With Myself’, from the third album and the album that Stevenson recorded with the band before the song went on to develop a more familiar life of its own outside of the confines of Gen X.
We’re then treated to an encore of Westood’s own “biggest hit”, Westworld’s ‘Sonic Boom Boy’, along with a cover of Norman’s debut hit with Spandau Ballet ‘To Cut a Long Story Short’ and a cover of the Skids ‘Into The Valley’. It’s an unforgettable gig and an energy-packed night to kick off the X Generation X tour in style.
Making light of the seeming incongruity of launching a UK tour on a Sunday, Westwood asked the happy but clearly refreshed crowd at one point if they all had to be up in the morning. “No!!” the crowd yelled back in unison. “They’re all retired!” quipped Steve Norman. That’s as maybe but for 75 glorious minutes it was 1976 all over again and here in this sweaty cellar bar the spirit of punk was recaptured in all of its incendiary glory.
Tickets and tour dates via: https://www.xgenerationx.com/
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