If folk situated in Mid Sussex believe that they are going to participate in Sunday cream teas with cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and Earl Grey in china tea cups, then they’ve got another thing coming!
On Sunday 8th September the building, known as Mid Sussex Music Hall, which is physically (and ideally) located in the car park of Hassocks Railway Station, will be hosting a trio punk, psychobilly and ska stalwarts. Doors will swing open at 5pm and the first band will hit the stage at 6pm where they will be performing all the Flanagan and Allen music hall hits from days gone by! Oh alright then, that last bit was a porkie!
What actually is going down is that bestie chums Peter Bywaters and Del Strangefish will be riding once more with their pals as Peter And The Test Tube Babies and they will be rockin’ the building to its foundations before scarpering off up the car park and on to the Brighton bound train! We are assured that ‘Strangefish’ (who played Rebellion Festival) will be in the lineup for this gig!
In the year of our lord 1978 the 17 year old punks Peter Bywaters and Del Strangefish founded Peter And The Test Tube Babies in Peacehaven. After a couple of rehearsals they made their first recording, ‘Elvis Is Dead’, which appeared on the ‘Vaultage ‘78’ compilation of Brighton new wave bands. Radio 1’s iconic and sadly missed DJ John Peel loved the song instantly, a John Peel session with the Test Tube Babies swiftly followed. The success was breathtaking and Peter And The Test Tube Babies became one of the hottest unsigned bands in the UK overnight.
The first single ‘Banned From The Pubs’ which was met with great enthusiasm followed and fans and press freaked out in equal measure. From that moment everything went crazy, sold out concert halls in the UK and Europe and their big success in the media pushed their debut album ‘Pissed And Proud’ to No.1 in the UK independent charts. Directly after that ‘The Mating Sounds Of South American Frogs’ was released – a must have for every record collection – and sold more than 100,000 copies, resulting in invitations from far and wide. The Test Tube Babies played shows all over the world and cemented their status as one of the most brilliant and funniest live bands in punk rock culture. They also had the honour to represent the United Kingdom at the historical MTV East/West party to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall.
The band line-up may have changed over the intervening 46 years…. Yes I know right, forty-six years!!! … but the manic smile from Peter, the driving bass and drums, and power based guitar is still all there!
Support for this forthcoming Hassocks concert will come from Too Many Crooks who are a tuneful 7-piece ska outfit who as legend has it were formed following a Bad Manners gig in Brighton around 40 years ago. The group of friends felt that Ska music needed to be dragged kicking and screaming into the next millennium if it was ever going to haul itself out of the underground, where it had been left to fester since the end of the Two-Tone Era. Mission accomplished I would suggest!
Not only that but attendees will also get to lap up the psychobilly tunes of local legends Long Tall Texans. Back in Brighton 1982 it wasn’t that easy to get your hands on a double bass. And even if you did, you’d be lucky to get more than a free grope in a music shop because those things were bloody expensive. Well out of the range of 16-year-old Mark Carew. This story would have ended there, with our hero standing hands in empty pockets gazing longingly at a lovely curvy double bass in front of a shop window before mooching sadly off into obscurity. But it certainly didn’t and decades later he’s still on the case with rockin’ bandmates!
Tickets for this forthcoming bash are on sale now and can be purchased HERE.
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www.facebook.com/TooManyCrooks
