The second single off Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ninth studio album Peepshow was “The Killing Jar.” The dark song centered around the process that entomologists use to kill hard shelled insects “quickly and with minimum damage” by gassing them in a glass container.  It brings to mind the warped entomologist in John Fowles’ twisted novel The Collector, in which one Ferdinand Clegg moves from bugs to humans when he kidnaps a young art student Miranda Grey, as a specimen to be kept and examined in his cellar. The song reiterates a theme apparent throughout most of the Banshees work that adults are not to be trusted as they can never behave responsibly.

This was a harsh fact Siouxsie Sioux learnt early. When she was nine years old, she and a friend were sexually assaulted by a man. When she told her parents, they did not believe her. It became an unspoken secret in the family, leaving Siouxsie (aka Susan Ballion) isolated as she told Word magazine in 2005:

I grew up having no faith in adults as responsible people. And being the youngest in the family I was isolated – I had no-one to confide in. So I invented my own world, my own reality. It was my own way of defending myself – protecting myself from the outside world. The only way I could deal with how to survive was to get some strong armour.

Siouxsie’s old man was a drunk who died when she was fourteen. This caused more trauma that led to her being hospitalized with ulcerative colitis. Against this, Siouxsie dreamt of a different life. There were hints of what this could be—like seeing Bowie perform on Top of the Pops, or listening to Roxy Music—but it all came together when she saw the Sex Pistols perform with her friend Steven Severin (aka Steven Bailey) in 1976. Not long after, the pair formed Siouxsie and the Banshees.
 

 
Released in September 1988, Siouxsie and the Banshees’ album Peepshow is one of the best in their catalog. Described at the time of release as the band’s “finest hour” which showcased “a brightly unexpected mixture of black steel and pop disturbance.” The single “The Killing Jar” was written by Severin, Siouxsie, and Budgie (aka Peter Edward Clarke) and featured Jon Klein on guitar and Martin McCarrick on keyboard and accordion. Released the same month as the album, “The Killing Jar” hit #2 in the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.

Much has been written about the vocal range of artists like Freddie Mercury but not so much on the equally brilliant Siouxsie Sioux, who developed from spiky, punky vocals to rich, powerful, and glorious textured tones in her later albums. She can hit the high notes and bring an unnerving warmth and menace to her lower range. Take a listen to this isolated track of Siouxsie singing “The Killing Jar” and you’ll hear just how good she is.

Hear Siouxsie’s isolated vocal for ‘The Killing Jar,’ after the jump….

 
Entrées de Secours (Google translation: “Emergency Inputs”) is the work of French filmmaker, Jérôme de Missolz. From the late ‘70s through the early ‘80s, he filmed a number of notable acts at Le Palace, a Paris theater and the epicenter of the city’s underground scene. Using a Super 8 camera—and without any sort of formal credentials—he shot the Clash, the Cramps, Public Image Ltd., Richard Hell, Iggy Pop, and many others.
 

Iggy Pop on stage (and wearing a shirt!) at the Paris Palace, 1979.

De Missolz eventually assembled what he had captured to make Entrées de Secours. During the editing process, he synched up unrelated audio—from the likes of Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, the Stooges, as well as ‘60s pop hits—with his Super 8 footage, and then manipulated the elements further. Finally, he blew it up to 16mm. The result was an 18-minute experimental work. In a 2010 interview, (roughly translated from French into English), de Missolz said his aim was “to transcribe the fury of the link between the electricity of music and the loss of identity in cities.”

Jérôme de Missolz died in March of 2016.
 

 
Entrées de Secours came out in 1982, and isn’t exactly easy to come by these days. As of this writing, the film doesn’t appear to be obtainable for sale in any format, nor is it streaming online. To further give you an idea of its rarity, its IMDb page doesn’t have a single rating or review. The short can be rented in its original 16mm form through a French distributor, Collectif Jeune Cinema (Young Cinema Collective), but that’s apparently the extent of its current availability.

A one-minute excerpt has been uploaded to Vimeo by the French collective, giving us a tantalizing glimpse of Entrées de Secours. DEVO are up first in the clip, then Siouxsie and the Banshees, plus some additional footage is incorporated. For the soundtrack, de Missolz used “Yummy Yummy Yummy” and “96 Tears,” as well as some sound effects. The Super 8 visuals, combined with the unexpected audio—all shaped further by de Missolz—creates a dizzying effect. It’s all very strange and unreal.
 
More after the jump…

 
New York Dance Stand was a music and dance public access show on New York cable in the early 1980s. While much of its history has been lost to the sands of time, a few video clips have resurfaced over the years. This one features an appearance by Siouxsie and the Banshees on November 25th, 1980. The group was in the city for their very first US tour, which was not well attended due to lack of US distribution by their label, Polydor. (During the interview Siouxsie mentions that just 60 people showed up for their show in Boston.) A performance at Club 57 at Irving Plaza occurred on the 21st, four days before this was shot. Kaleidoscope was released earlier that year and reached #5 on the UK charts.

Watch Siouxsie and the Banshees premiere their single “Israel” along with Kaleidoscope‘s “Christine” below. Despite the lip sync, the awkward interaction between goofball host Carl Bloat and Siouxsie Sioux makes it well worth it. The goth queen teases and backcombs her spiky black hair throughout the interview.
 

 
More ‘New York Dance Stand’ after the jump…

 
There had been a killing. But no one was quite certain where it had happened or where the body was hidden. Maybe it was in the library bludgeoned with a lead pipe? Or sprawled across the conservatory floor throttled by some rope? The press carried snippets. People were shocked by the news. How could this happen on our streets? How could this happen to our children when Abba was still number one? There was outrage. There was fear. There was a dread that this was only the beginning of far greater horrors to come.

They were right.

In some ways, it was a mercy killing. It had to happen. It was inevitable. It was putting the poor beast out of its misery. The old horse was now lame and blind and in constant pain and could barely perform its act. Yet still, they wheeled it out for one more turn for the rich people to ride and clap and cheer while the old nag bravely tried to canter around the ring.

But the children turned away. They wanted something different.

There had been noises of strange new things going on for months. Small signs in venues all across London. A growing sense that something had to change. The old horse was dead and the business was out of touch with its audience. The kids wanted something to happen.

A band called the Sex Pistols were playing gigs in and around London. Promoter Ron Watts saw them rip up the joint at a gig in High Wycombe in early 1976. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. This was the start of the future. This was what everyone was waiting for. He booked the band to appear at the legendary blues and jazz 100 Club in London. He organized a weekend festival called The 100 Club Punk Special for September 20th and 21st, 1976. The line-up was the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Damned, the Buzzcocks, Subway Sect, Stinky Toys and Chris Spedding & the Vibrators.
 

Sex Pistols poster for the 100 Club Punk Special, September 1976.
 
When the Sex Pistols hit the stage, everything changed. “In one night,” Watts later wrote in his autobiography Hundred Watts: A Life in Music, “punk went from an underground cult to a mass movement.”

The Sex Pistols had killed off one generation’s music and announced something new.

...[T]his was the big one, the first day of a new era. Nothing could compare with it either before or since.

Onstage, Johnny Rotten was “insulting, cajoling everyone in the room, his eyes bulging dementedly as he made the audience as much a part of the show as the band.” The group tore through their set to a thrilled and enthusiastic audience. The Clash played their set, while Siouxsie and the Banshees had improvised a set around “The Lord’s Prayer.” A week later, a crowd 600 deep formed a line at the door of the 100 Club.
 
Watch the Sex Pistols, Clash and Siouxsie in “Punk,” after the jump…

 
If you ever want to know practically everything there is to know about the first four years of Siouxsie and the Banshees, then you need to get your hands on a copy of the Siouxsie and the Banshees Scrapbook 1976-1980. I can’t tell you who compiled it because that information is lost in the rock ‘n’ roll black hole, but this fanzine/scrapbook released in 1984 includes early band history, discography, a list of all known bootlegs, photos and lots and lots of press clippings. It’s a truly work of DIY fanzine art. You would think if someone had taken an effort to compile this amount of information they would at least want to put their name or names on it. According to the back cover, “they” also compiled Volume 2 1981-1984 and similar scrapbooks on The Damned, The Cure and The Stranglers.
 

 
The pre-Internet care that they took compiling the “Bootleg Recordings Known to Exist” section alone is impressive: Three pages of carefully cataloged bootleg information.
 

 
My favorite tale from the Siouxsie and the Banshees Scrapbook comes from a press clipping of an article that was published in Sounds on September 15, 1979. The setting was Aberdeen. The story starts with this…. “The geezer standing next to me in the urinal said, ‘Hey, have you hear the rumour? Two of the Banshees have run off. They’re not going to play. The bouncers are expecting a riot.’”

On September 7, 1979, the very day their second album Join Hands was released Siouxsie and the Banshees were scheduled to play a show with the Cure opening for them. Before the show, at an in store record signing, the Banshees got into some sort of argument which caused guitarist John McKay and drummer Kenny Morris to storm off and quit. In typical punk form, when Siouxsie and Steve Severin went onstage that night to announce their bandmates disappearance—and therefore cancellation of their performance—Siouxsie encouraged the crowd to beat the shit out of the missing band members if found. The Cure came back on and played a few more songs before they invited some “special guests” to the stage. Siouxsie and Severin entered and together with the Cure, they played the Banshees’ rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Before the song started Siouxsie announced:

“I hope you realize these guys know nothing about the ‘Lord’s Prayer’…It’ll probably be all the better for that. John and Kenny were doing it for the money and you can’t do a good ‘Lord’s Prayer’ with that attitude.”

She’s probably right about that.

More after the jump…

 
Fans of Siouxsie and the Banshees had their minds melted when Universal released the three CD and one DVD box set At the BBC back in 2009. At the BBC collected 84 BBC radio sessions, live concert tracks and TV performances recorded between 1977 and 1991. (You can find it reasonably priced used on Amazon these days, for around $20.)

The DVD featured over two dozen live-in-concert sessions shot for The Old Grey Whistle Test, Rock Goes to College, The Oxford Road Show and of course some (barely) lip-synced Top of the Pops appearances. It’s a fantastic visual chronology of one of the greatest and most powerfully iconoclastic bands of the era. Truly this was a group who did things their way. The Cure’s Robert Smith is featured on guitar on several songs, including an early TV session from 1979. We also see the great John McGeoch and their early guitarist, the unsung and underrated John McKay, in action with the Banshees as well.

Most of this stuff has been on YouTube for years, but never before in this sort of quality.

More after the jump…

AC/DC jamming with Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielson during rehearsals for the German music TV show “‘Rockpop’ in 1979. You can see footage of Cheap Trick on ‘Rockpop,’here.
 
Today I have the perfect remedy for it sadly being Monday—again!—some incredible footage of bands such as Siouxsie & The Banshees, Kraftwerk, AC/DC, Suzi Quatro, and a number of other notable musical acts performing on German music television’s Rockpop in the late 70s.
 

Suzi Quatro performing on “Rockpop” in 1979
 
Rockpop was aired on German public-service television broadcaster, ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) starting in 1978 and running until 1982. The show would feature several performances from its diverse selection of musical guests on each episode. Some even performed live, not just miming along to their tunes, like AC/DC, Suzi Quatro, and Wayne County & the Electric Chairs did in 1979.

I’m especially fond of the clip of Siouxsie & The Banshees performing their 1978 single, “Hong Kong Garden” on Rockpop in 1979 (during which a 22-year-old Siouxsie Sioux does a sweet punk rock aerobic routine on stage) to a virtually motionless, rather serious-looking studio audience. In addition to the bands I’ve already mentioned in this post, I’ve also included clips from Rockpop featuring heavy metal heroes like the Scorpions and Judas Priest because the crystal clear footage (in most cases), is just too good not to share.
 

AC/DC performing “Highway to Hell” live on ‘Rockpop’ live in September of 1979.
 
More from ‘Rockpop’ after the jump…

Siouxsie & The Banshees, 1980

On September 13th and 14th, 1980, the second installment of “The Futurama Festival” was held in Leeds, a city in the English county of Yorkshire. This year the lineup included a cavalcade of incredible acts like Echo and the Bunnymen (fronted by a 21-year-old Ian McCulloch), The Psychedelic Furs, Athletico Spizz 80, U2, Wasted Youth and Siouxsie & The Banshees, headed up by a then 23-year-old Siouxsie Sioux. Apparently this was also one of the very earliest Soft Cell performances.
 

The lineup for The Futurama Festival, September 13th and 14th, 1980

Despite the handwritten fliers claims that the festival was being “immortalized on film,” footage of any quality from early Futurama gigs is almost non-existent on YouTube, but I did find this clip that someone recorded on VHS from a television broadcast of the festival.

While the video isn’t up to today’s high definition standards, it is still quite good. The seven-minute clip captures the band on top of their game performing two songs, “Paradise Place” from the 1980 album Kaleidoscope and “Eve White/Eve Black” which was released in 1980 as the B-side to the band’s “Christine” single.
 

Siouxsie & The Banshees performing at the Futurama Festival, Saturday, September 13th, 1980
 
Bonus clip of high energy punks Athletico Spizz 80 at the 1980 Futurama Festival, after the jump…

 
Last week, when DM HMFIC Richard Metzger posted about Robert Smith and Steve Severin’s Siouxsie and the Banshees spin-off the Glove, it set me off on a kick. I’ve waxed rhapsodic on DM, probably more than once, but definitely once that I can specifically remember, about the surpassing excellence of the Banshees lineup with guitarist John McGeoch, also a vet of Magazine, The Armoury Show, and P.I.L. before his untimely alcohol-related death in 2004. When I listen to Siouxsie, it’s almost invariably one of the three albums McGeoch played on—Kaleidoscope, Juju, and A Kiss In The Dreamhouse.

But that’s kind of stupid, given that McGeoch’s tenure in the band was bookended by the two stints enjoyed by the Cure’s moonlighting poo-bah Robert Smith. Weirdly, as influential as both the Cure and the Banshees are/were, Smith doesn’t get a whole lot of accolades as a guitarist. Even Cure devotees know him more for his melancholic singing and his trademark hairsplosion. But the guitar stylings associated with that saturnine strain of UK post-punk that would become known as Goth owed as much to Smith’s deliberate and doleful playing as to the aggressive slashing of Bauhaus’ Daniel Ash, the disquieting Morricone-isms of the Birthday Party’s Rowland S. Howard, or McGeoch’s heavily chorused, layered picking. Check out early Cure songs like “Three Imaginary Boys” or “The Figurehead,” and it’s plain that Smith can wring a lot of emotive impact out of comparatively few notes.
 

 
And so, after that post last week about Smith’s excursion in the Glove, I started giving more attention to his time in the Banshees, and in the process I found this fantastic TV footage of Smith during his first Banshees go-round, from the BBC2 show Something Else (I love the “Watch Something Else” banners decorating the set!) in 1979. They perform “Love in a Void” and “Regal Zone” from Join Hands, an album on which neither Smith nor the drummer appearing here, Budgie, actually performed. The prior guitarist and drummer left very shortly after Join Hands’ completion, so Smith and Budgie, a refugee from Big In Japan and the Slits, were recruited to fulfill tour obligations. Budgie went on to stay with the band forever, and even wed Siouxsie, but Smith only stayed in for the duration of the tour (the Cure were the opening act anyway), so his first shift with the band was as an interpretive player. Smith wouldn’t write music with the band or perform on a Banshees album until 1984’s Hyaena, but as this was the transitional phase of the Banshees’ career wherein the band straddled punk and goth, Smith makes an apt fit even though the compositions being played aren’t his.

Also, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the reading of a pretty damn funny letter from an unhappy London viewer who wanted his vigorous opposition to all this “punk” nonsense noted for the record.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
During Robert Smith’s tenure as the guitarist in Siouxsie and the Banshees (1982-84), a period that yielded the “Dear Prudence” hit single, as well as Hyena and the live Nocturne album, while Siouxsie and Budgie were off doing The Creatures, Smith and Banshees’ bassist Steven Severin formed The Glove, a one-off side-project with vocalist/dancer Jeanette Landray (Smith’s Cure contract forbade him from singing with another group).

The Glove, named after a character in Yellow Submarine produced just one album, the experimental, druggy, yet still quite poppy-sounding goth psychedelia of Blue Sunshine (yes, they copped the title from the cult film about the bad LSD) and two singles, “Like an Animal” and “Punish Me with Kisses.”
 

 
The 2006 reissue of Blue Sunshine as a 2 CD set that features a second disc of Glove demos with Smith singing instead of Landray. (Many fans were annoyed to find that his vocals were only recently recorded.) Both Severin and Smith have indicated that they would like to record together again.

Below, “A Blues in Drag”:

 
Hear “Punish Me with Kisses” after the jump…

 
In June of 1983, in her first bid for reelection, Margaret Thatcher won “the most decisive election victory since that of Labour in 1945,” according to Wikipedia. For the unionists, punkers, anti-nuke activists, and enemies of the National Front, it was a depressing outcome, parallel to Reagan’s easy reelection in the U.S. a year later. Labour’s platform was stridently left-wing, seeking unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the European Economic Community, abolition of the House of Lords, and the re-nationalization of the major industries Thatcher had privatized.

Labour Party MP Gerald Kaufman later referred to his own party’s platform as “the longest suicide note in history.” Labour was in the same predicament the Democrats in the U.S. found themselves in, led by standard-bearers like Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.
 

 
As with any major election, the subject was on everyone’s lips for a time. Smash Hits, the U.K. magazine, printed a two-page spread in its June 9, 1983, issue—the issue that would be on the newsstands when voters cast their ballots—in which they asked various prominent musicians “What Would You Do If You Were Prime Minister?” Included in the spread were Elvis Costello, Mark E. Smith of the Fall, Boy George, Gary Numan, and Malcolm McLaren.

The answers given by Costello and Smith are terse, and, each in its own way, perfectly representative. Boy George and Numan actually appear to have given the question some thought and give detailed answers. In general the answers are thoughtful but overall, especially with McLaren’s answer, tend to give credence to George Orwell‘s 1946 reference to “the irresponsible violence of the powerless.”

Probably the most attention-getting item on the page is Numan’s avowal of admiration for Margaret Thatcher, whose perceived image among left-leaning musicians was roughly that of the Wicked Witch of the West, as it remains today. Numan’s received plenty of flak for his early views—in 2006 he expressed regret that he had ever supported Thatcher, telling DJ Jonty Skrufff that “I voted for Margaret Thatcher once and it’s lived with me ever since. ... Like a noose around my neck.”

Support for Thatcher (or Reagan) wouldn’t be high on my list of attributes I’d seek in a friend, but the way I see it, Numan’s original answer was thoughtful and heartfelt and, most important, it took true guts to counter the orthodoxy of the artsy crowd he was running with at the time. 

Here are quotes from some of the participants:
 

Steve Severin, Siouxsie and the Banshees:

I’d stop the Cruise missiles, ban fox-hunting and animal experiments, change the licensing laws to open all the time—well, possibly—and I’d ban censorship, if such a thing were possible. I’d probably abolish the BBC or get it burnt down. One of the two. I’d also make Glenn Hoddle stay at Tottenham.

Gary Numan:

Personally, I’d like to see all the closed-down factories being incorporated into the school system so they can train school-leavers. I really like Maggie Thatcher—she’s everything that we needed and made me proud to feel British. The way the country’s going I really think that we’re on the way to recovery. Business is picking up and I liked the way she handled the Falklands’ crisis. But it’s hard for me to talk about British politics being rather outside it all.

Elvis Costello:

If Maggie wins again, I think I’d just take all the programmes off the air and just play Stevie Wonder’s “Heaven Help Us All” for the next 24 hours.

Boy George:

I don’t think any politician is in touch with the realities and pressures that normal working class people have to live with. I realised that after seeing Margaret Thatcher on Jim’ll Fix It. There’s so much money and glamour involved in politics today that I can see why it’s hard for politicians to stay in touch. If I was in power I’d lean more towards ecology—improving the environment people live in. You have to understand why Coronation Street is so popular. It’s because people like the kind of environment where they can communicate with each other. The worst thing that ever happened to this country was council-built, high-rise blocks. I would spend more money on renovating old buildings in an attempt to preserve Britain’s character. I’d make a lousy politician, though, because I’m too soft.

Mark E. Smith, The Fall:

I’d halve the price of cigarettes, double the tax on health food, then I’d declare war on France and introduce conscription for all members of CND [Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament].

Malcolm McLaren:

The Union Jack to be pulled down and a new flag with a big banana to be hoisted in its place. Free transport for everyone. An instant law that would shut out all TV, radio and press, encouraging everyone to invent their own truth. All public clocks to be put out of order.

The requisition of British Airways in order to transport all people under 16 to some more exotic part of the world. Parents must go to school and children to their Mum or Dad’s place of work. Everyone to write their own personal cheer, for example (sings): MY NAME’S MALCOLM—I COMMUNICATE/IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, YOU DON’T RATE/UPSIDE, DOWNSIDE/TURN THE TIDES MY SIDE/YOU—SHUT UP!

Everyone’s cheer shall thereafter be yelled by themselves throughout my term of office.

I found this issue of Smash Hits at the Rock Hall’s Library and Archives, which is located at the Tommy LiPuma Center for Creative Arts on Cuyahoga Community College’s Metropolitan Campus in Cleveland, Ohio. It is free and open to the public. Visit their website for more information.

Here’s the full spread—click for a much larger view:
 

 

 
Okay it’s been nearly 40 years since I heard The Ramones debut album for the first time and that means I’m fucking old. But I ain’t dead. In fact, I’m feeling pretty damned good. And part of the reason I feel so damned good is I’ve been on a steady diet of rock and roll since I was a itty bitty boy. Rock and roll has been the one constant in my life that has given me something that others might call a religion. From the moment I first heard “Alley Oop” by The Hollywood Argyles when I was nine years old (sitting in a tree with a radio in my lap), I was hooked.

I’ve always been a seeker, looking for meaning in life, searching for answers to the essential questions of what are we doing here and where are we going? I’ve read everything from Jung to Chogyam Trungpa to Kerouac and Crowley in my yearning for clarity and spiritual fulfillment. Aside from a few reveries and insights fueled by psychotropics or the momentary flash of cosmic consciousness you get in those special moments when something suddenly opens up your brain - maybe it’s the way a shard of prismatic light bounces off your rear view mirror or a fleet of perfectly white clouds rolling above New Mexico - my “religious” experiences have been seldom and unpredictable. But one thing, other than fucking, that consistently pulls me into the moment where bliss and contentment co-mingle is listening to rock and roll music. It’s the closest thing I have to an artistic calling or spiritual practice and when the music hits me in the right place at the right time it can be divine. And it seems that loud, fast, and hook-filled works best. The music doesn’t need to be about anything spiritual, lofty or significant. It just needs to grab me by the balls and heart, rattle my cage, and move me.
 

 
There was a barren period in my rock and roll life in the early ‘70s. Not much I wanted to listen to. I mostly bought blues and jazz albums and later reggae. Then in 1976 I heard The Damned’s “New Rose” and shortly after that I got my hands on The Ramones’ self-titled first album. These were momentous events in my life that drove me back into arms of rock and roll. Talking Heads, Blondie, Mink DeVille, Pere Ubu, Patti Smith, The Clash and Television were the second wave of musical salvation to land on my turntable that changed my life.  Punk, or whatever you want to call it, defibrillated my rock and roll heart and inspired me to start my own band. And I wasn’t alone.

In this fine documentary directed by Don Letts (who knows a thing or two about punk rock) a bunch of aging punkers talk about the roots of the punk scene and their love of the music they make. There’s not much new here but it’s good to see Steve Jones, Pete Shelley, Howard Devoto, Siouxsie Sioux, Captain Sensible, Mick Jones Jones,David Johansen, Jello Biafra, Wayne Kramer, Thurston Moore, Legs McNeil and Tommy Ramone, among many others, wax poetic about the music explosion that was detonated in the mid-70s. It’s amazing how many survived. And deeply saddening that since this film was made in 2005 we’re down to zero original Ramones.

“Punk is not mohawks and safety pins. It’s an attitude and a spirit, with a lineage and tradition.” Don Letts.
 

 
For sale one amp, slightly used. Previous owner Steven Severin.

If you fancy owning a piece equipment once used by Siouxsie and the Banshees, then you may be interested in bidding for Steven Severin’s Fender Super Six Reverb Amplifier, which is currently up for grabs on eBay.

This is a vintage amplifier from 1974. It has a small tear on the upper left grill and a bigger one at the base. It has been repaired and buyers can be “assured that it works and sounds great, having been recently tested and repaired.”

The repairs carried out include:

Replace 13A plug
Replace speaker leads
Replace 5x resistors in output stage
Repair reverb tray lead connector
Test and bias output valves
Replace 3 speakers
Clean inside amp and all controls
Test amp
Labour: 3 hours
Parts: 5 x resistors, 1 x RA jack for reverb tray. 3 x eminence 10” speakers
Test Amp

This amp is loud and has 6 x 10” speakers, sounding like the fender twin silver face but with and additional 4 speakers.

It has the serial number: A77617, which dates it to 1974

 

 
Mr. Severin adds:

Hi,

I’m finally parting ways with my trusty guitar amp. She’s been in my possession since late 1979 and made her first appearance on the track TENANT from 1980’s KALEIDOSCOPE album. She has spent most of her life in my home studio but on the odd occasion when I’ve felt the desire to thrash 6 strings as opposed to four - she’s been my weapon of choice. She got an outing on THROW THEM TO THE LIONS & I PROMISE, for example. I’m now in Edinburgh surrounded by banks of computers so it’s time to relieve the caretaker, my friend Demian of a few items that have outgrown my use and give him back some valuable space. It’s a real beauty. Happy bidding!

p.s. It’s a bit of a beast so collection only I’m afraid.

S.Severin

Asking price is £1,000 (around $1500) and you have a week in which to make your bid.
 

 
See photos of Severin’s amp, after the jump…
 

 
The Thorn is one of Siouxsie and the Banshees more obscure releases. A four song EP that was recorded after Hyæna—the 1984 Banshees album featuring The Cure’s Robert Smith moonlighting from his own group on guitar—and before Tinderbox, The Thorn took a handful of previously recorded Banshees numbers—two album tracks and two B-sides—and gave them orchestral makeovers with stunning results. Always a “deep cut” fan favorite, today the EP is only available as part of 2004’s Downside Up rarities box set which is itself difficult to find and usually pretty pricey when you do find it.

The Wikipedia page for Tinderbox indicates that it was the group’s first outing with new guitarist John Carruthers, but that’s not true, that would be The Thorn. Apparently the impetus behind the EP was to initiate Carruthers into working with the group in the studio, as well as getting a chance to revisit some older songs that had taken on new life on tour and experiment with working with a string section.

You can listen to the entirety of The Thorn EP (“Overground,” “Voices (On the Air),” “Placebo Effect,” “Red Over White”), below:
 

 
An intense live version of “Overground” with string section and Robert Smith on guitar, after the jump…

 
The trouble with getting famous when you’re young and cherubic is that you’re forced to grow up in public—a public that still wants you to be the nerd from The Breakfast Club, no less, when you’re Brat packer Anthony Michael Hall. Hall attempted to buck typecasting with his role in the 1986 stinker, Out of Bounds, a “gritty” film directed by no other than Richard Tuggle—who wrote the actually gritty Clint Eastwood film Escape from Alcatraz. Trouble is, Anthony Michael Hall isn’t Clint Eastwood or even in the remote vicinity, and his role as an Iowa farm boy searching for the LA drug kingpin that murdered his brother is not his finest moment.

It is so bad. Between stilted dialogue and Anthony Michael Hall’s attempt to pull off a tough-guy act, we’re talking hilarious 80’s cable TV B-movie fare here. The soundtrack however, is from Stewart Copeland of The Police, and it is surprisingly good, if a little schizophrenic! With music from Copeland and Adam Ant, Night Ranger, Belinda Carlisle, The Smiths, The Cult, The Lords of the New Church(!), Sammy Hagar, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, who actually had a cameo in the film—you can see the performance below. Don’t get me wrong—the hamfisted inclusion of some good music for cool cred does not save this bomb, but maybe they’re enough to make it a cult classic?

Probably not, but here’s the good part:
 

 
Via Post-Punk