The Stranglers arrested for inciting a riot in Nice, France, 1980
One of my favorite Stranglers tracks belongs to the spoken word genre. The B-side “An Evening with Hugh Cornwell” is just 20 minutes of Hugh talking to audiences on the Aural Sculpture tour, c. ‘84/‘85. It’s a bit like Lee Ving from FEAR winding up the crowd in The Decline of Western Civilization, but slower to build and, for me, even more hilarious. It made me sob uncontrollably with laughter the first three or four times I listened to it.
The other two tracks on the Stranglers’ Official Bootleg twelve-inch, “Hitman” and a live version of “Shakin’ Like A Leaf,” surfaced on the recent B-sides compilation Here & There, but “An Evening with Hugh Cornwell” has never been released in digital format.
A sampling of Hugh’s wit and wisdom that doesn’t spoil the best laughs:
What’s wrong? What’s happened? Has it been a depressing day in Sheffield… again?
If you paid ten pounds, you’re a mug! You’re an absolute mug. I wouldn’t pay ten pounds to see us. I wouldn’t! I’d go out and buy two LPs.
Most—all musicians would come up here and say what a great place Newcastle is and you’re all such wonderful people, but I’m not going to say that, ‘cause I think that Newcastle’s awful. Oh, it’s an awful place.
Someone up here is really thick ‘cause he’s thrown his identity card here. He’s gonna forget who he is. Oh no, it’s a lady.
Cornwell’s new collaboration with John Cooper Clarke, This Time It’s Personal, will be released on October 21.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Punk poet John Cooper Clarke sings ‘MacArthur Park’ with the Stranglers’ Hugh Cornwell
The Stranglers’ 1979 cricket match against the UK music press, featuring Lemmy and a bag of drugs
The Stranglers appear in a BBC documentary about surrealism, 1978
The Stranglers’ live performance of ‘Nice ‘n’ Sleazy’ with a bunch of strippers from 1978