Ruts DC - The Fleece, Bristol - 9th March 2013

Ruts DC: well, I've always had a minor issue with the DC moniker - the boys said they chose it because da capo in Latin/Italian means literally 'from the head' or, in common musical parlance, back to the beginning. However, in music, it actually signifies going back to the beginning and playing what one's already played all over again, exactly the same, and this couldn't be further from what Ruts DC actually did, and are doing! What they really did, in my humble opinion, was reference their eponymous first single 'In A Rut', and being close to being in one, boy did they get out of it, and in incomparable and uninimitable fashion.

Events conspired against me even to get to this gig, but I'm a rebel and I in turn conspired against events. My lift to the gig having fallen through, as had my accommodation options in Bristol, 3pm last Saturday found me in my trusty Saab leaving my geographical home for my spiritual one. What - bloody Bristol, I hear you ask? No, dear reader, a Ruts gig! (Though I did have the old Mike Absalom lyric going round in my loaf: If she was French she'd be from Brest / I always did like Bristols best...)

Anyway, arriving in time for the sound check, after a brief meet and greet, as the yanks say, I was taken down a road of olfactory reminiscence. I don't know why, but for me certain styles of music have particular nostalgic triggers; for example I first saw Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Jimmy Rogers et al at the 100 Club in the mid-70s, which in those days had a doubtful Chinese restaurant outlet at the opposite end of the club to the bar, meaning that the whiff of MSG-enriched sweet and sour sauce often engenders thoughts of Chicago blues in me. In the same way, the smell of stale lager and cider in a darkened, empty venue makes me think of punk gigs. Well, The Fleece, bless it, as I'd observed when seeing and supporting The Members there the other year, definitely lives up to expectations in that department.

To cut to the chase, the set! First, some wonderful deep reggae. How do you know - you know nothing about reggae, I hear you ask? Well, maybe not, but (a) I know great music when I hear it; (b) who better than The Ruts to educate one in this department? (c) I challenge anyone last week to have popped down the road to St Paul's and got the most devout Rastaman they could find, and brought him to the show, not to have had the feedback that the only thing that denoted he wasn't in the tightest soundclash he'd ever been to, was the fact that there was only a band at one end of the hall. Shall I have a little Pus-style rant here? Why not? Damn the expense! Well, people, then and now, talking about punk rock, often cite The Clash - admittedly a great band of creative musicians - as veering from the punk thrash norm because they had a strong reggae influence/content in their material...the old heckles always rise at this, and I think: have these 'people' never heard The Ruts? So...one step forward...and...two steps forward...and, in the case of Ruts DC, no steps backwards now or ever. As is commonly known and told, The Ruts and Misty in Roots have always been close chums and colleagues. The very name Misty In Roots has pantomime undertones, and WHY NOT? An old criticism of The Damned was that they were a 'vaudeville band.' Why a criticism, I always wondered, surely a compliment? I maintain that a small strand of slapstick marbleing the rock face of serious music validates, not undermines it - it helps connect the punter to the product, and should never be knocked, so very nice it was to hear Segs put his tongue in his cheek inbetween numbers.

I'd like to say, after the reggae, what we'd all come for, but I'd be speaking for myself - I'm sure lots of people came for the reggae too, I know I met at least four of them in the pub next door to the gig! Between ourselves - and I hope there's thousands of us - I came for The Crack, and I wanted to hear it. And, guess what? Fucking hear it I jolly well did! Maybe I should have been a music journo, but I'm not, so I made no notes, and enjoyed it so much I can't tell you what order they played the tunes in. My back - not my bum, as we used to joke in the old days - was duly bitten, I was got with SUS, etc., etc. I am unable to report any highlights, as every word, note and harmony was a highlight.

Every song had a special souvenir, in the French sense, for me. Staring At The Rude Boys puts me in mind of a gig on the Grin & Bare It tour at an old civic hall somewhere in the Midlands, possibly I think the Victoria Halls in Hanley. The soundcheck was over, and the doors had opened. Punters were filtering in, and the soundman or DJ had some records on. Now the first Human League album had just come out, and Malcolm loved it. We were sitting in the dressing room having a little libation when in bursts Malcolm, shouting: "Guess what? I've just put the Human League on, and all these fucking skinheads are dancing to it!"

Babylon's Burning hit the charts during a little three month holiday I had with Her Majesty in the summer of 1979, thoughtfully scheduled by the constabulary between my joining the lads as support slot on the earlier Damned tour, and doing so again on their victorious post-hit Grin & Bare It tour on my release, and hearing it still gives me the same joy and warmth that it did bursting out of the old tranny in the cell. Typing that last phrase alerts me to its possible ambiguity, and I can just hear Segs and Ruffy saying: "You had an old tranny in your cell, Aunt? Well you are a dark horse!" Ha, ha ha...

West One (Shine On Me) is a strange dichotomy: from the day of its release, through melting at watching a YouTube clip of Segs singing it at last year's Rebellion festival, right up until last Saturday radiates, pulsates and glories in Malcolm shining on. It never fails to move me, and I would quite possibly find it unbearably heart wrenching, were it not for the levity injected by the fact that I used to labour under the misapprehension that the lyric 'inside it's only me who's straight' was 'lost in a bar somewhere in sunny Spain.' Well, Malcolm's stunning model ex-missus Rocky had moved to Ibiza, things'd definitely gone downhill after she left, and I reckoned he missed her, quite probably correctly!

I find it very hard to say anything about the insuperable guitar, keyboards and harmony vocals. The best way I can find to express it is that they were so wonderful and so appropriate, that they managed to be simultaneously uplifting, driving and undetectable. It might seem a bit off the subject, but I love the Rolling Stones, and the best way Mick Taylor and Ronnie Wood could ever find to be Brian Jones was by being themselves. I had a lovely chat with Leigh Hegarty, Ruts DC's great new guitarist, after the show and he confided in me that he worried he "had some big shoes to fill." I could only respond, and I echo this here, that he has no shoes to fill whatsoever. Ruts DC are a renaissance not a re-creation, and he needs to be very proud of his contribution which underscores, fills, cuts and rocks! He exemplified how to acknowledge and reference a great influence whilst being simultaneously innovative, and without descending to the depths of tribute band territory. To quote Ruffy, in a recent Louder Than War interview: "He'€™s a monster player. We could never find anyone to do that job as well as that. He nails it. He knows exactly what it is."

To finish, as is traditional - one can't rail against every tradition, ha ha - the encore. (Another musical misnomer, as it's French for 'again', and not 'more.') The first single, released on People Unite records all those years ago. Vraiment, the people united last Saturday in Bristol! In A Rut: "You're in a rut, you gotta get out of it" - when I first heard and worked with The Ruts, how I liked to deceive myself into thinking this meant: you've got to get out of it. It took me nearly a quarter of a century, but finally the proverbial penny dropped, and it dawned on me that it meant I should get out of the rut, and not my head. Similarly, with H-Eyes, what harder way to rebel than by demonstrating that they weren't going to fuck my brain?

(Why is it that, when famous people have a tragic demise, they are remembered for this and not their creativity and humour? Take the great Tony Hancock, for example - sad that he died alone in an Australian hotel room, but he made and is still making a lot of people laugh, me included, and jolly loudly too. Now I never met or knew Jim Morrison, but I've read virtually all there is to read in the public arena about him, and as well as liking girls and getting off his head, he was clearly an extremely lively, and funny person. Well, let me tell you, so was Malcolm Owen, who also liked dangerous drugs, pretty girls, and left us at R 'n' R death age. I'd like to take this opportunity to tell the world, already I trust aware of his singing and songwriting genius, quite how amusing his husky idiosyncratic humour was. No, no quotes, I've told you and that'll do - but I like to recall Malcolm, a man who never possessed a driving licence, swinging the band Transit through the goalposts of a college gig football pitch in Hull with Segs and I beside him in the front seat, and a couple of terrified groupies screaming in the back, as the open doors swung to and fro, with a smile on my face, not a tear in my eye...)

To conclude, without wishing to over personalise, and thus render inaccessible, what started off as, and was supposed to be a gig review, I need to tell you that this band has been instrumental in precipitating most of my major life achievements e.g. the release of my first record, travelling the world, and showing hard drugs the door. I'm sure that the lads were as glad as I am that I didn't pitch up at their gig destitute, homeless and wanted by the forces of law and order, necessitating them taking me on tour with them for the combined reasons of subterfuge, compere duties and true love. However, the latter is ever present for me at the very mention of the word Ruts and, wishing to communicate the poignance this show resonated for me, rather than to be unnecessarily corny, I could still feel it in every note! Delighted as I was to be thankfully neither destitute nor homeless - though still penniless, the ongoing plight of most musicians - and having a lovely Georgian flat in Plymouth calling me back down the M5, I knew in my heart that there was a place in theirs for me. I can say no more than that this is forever reciprocated. As I write these words, the boys are about to take the stage at the Middlesborough Rock Garden revisited, where the promoter told me in one breath that I was a living legend since my performance there thirty-four years ago, and in the next breath that I wasn't welcome on the bill. Plus ca change! Well, give 'em hell lads, 'cause that's what they gave me thirty-four years ago!