BRISTOL: The Thunderbolt

Friday 9th February, 2024

7:30pm

Event information

Join PC Press and Bizarro Promo for a fascinating evening of talk and music. The discussion will be led by Dave Massey -former music journalist, manager, music publishing executive now writer and curator and include, Pete Webb (PC Press), Tom Vague (Vague Fanzine/Journalist) and Richard Cabut (Journalist/Author) . Music will be from the latest incarnation of the legendary GLAXO BABIES, playing music old and new.----------------------------------------------------------------
Glaxo Babies are the greatest UK post-punk band you've never heard. Formed in Bristol in late 1977 and named after the British pharmaceutical giant who allegedly inoculated thousands with a toxic vaccine, the band's pioneering mix of metallic guitar, dubbed-out rhythms and shamanistic chants found its way into the bloodlines of generations on both sides of the pond. Naturally, Glaxo members later joined The Pop Group and Maximum Joy.

Vague was the Post Punk Fanzine that tuned so many people into the joy of punk and the futuristic and hybrid styled music that followed it, that became known as ‘Post-Punk’ or for a period of time ‘Positive Punk’. Vague promoted the notion that a band meant something more than the music and that meaning could be shared amongst like-minded folk, the ‘lovable spikey tops’ or the like-minded ‘tribe’ that people were looking for. Vague though was critical enough to see through the growing number of punk bands who were seduced by the world of pop stardom and teen adulation. That disillusion often turned into a searching for the counter culture, or philosophy and radical politics, to find something that could inspire us to be different and to change the world around us. Vague became the go to critical counter cultural fanzine that still found music irresistible but wasn’t just a fawning FAN zine. Vague also importantly had a sense of humour, it could laugh at itself as well as brag about how good it was and slag off those it found wanting!

Vague the 20th centuries most fashionable and counter cultural fanzine featuring: Adam and the Ants, Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Public Image Ltd, Southern Death Cult, Bow Wow Wow, Sex Gang Children, Crass, The Pop Group, The Clash, Talisman, Bauhaus, Theatre Of Hate, Killing Joke, The Cure, Iggy Pop, Getting The Fear, AND Situationism, CND, Anti-vivisection, Stop The City, Greenham Common, Charles Manson.

Richard Cabut’s,”Looking for a Kiss” is an 80s post-punk,
twisted tale of drug-fuelled beat, punk, love and hate, set in
Camden, Camberwell and New York.
The book is a fabulous chronicle of our protagonists Robert
and Marlene struggle to find themselves and their lives whilst
immersing themselves in drugs, sex, magic, chaos and post-
punk music. Incorporating the themes of the time, acid, pop
art, teenage perversity, the nature of melancholy as they head
into breakdown, breakup, and then breakout. Expect to find
amusement in, bathroom functions, clairvoyance, personality
crises, primal scenes, screams and schemes. Finally,
following their eternal quest for cool and the endless search
for redemption

Tickets for this gig will be £6.00, in advance, which will give you a £4.00 discount of the purchase of either book on the night.