Music Features

Billed as a celebration of UK Decay, Punk, Post Punk and alternative music from the Luton area in the years between 1979 and 1989, it will not only feature live punk music but also artists, DJs, films and poets in a massive punky party night.

And as well as this rare appearance from UK Decay, the seminal luminaries of the Post Punk and Goth movements, the night will also feature another pioneering Luton band from the 80s, Click Click. When they play a short warm up set it will be their first gig in ten years!

Katy Lewis has been talking to the organisers, Greg Dreg and Decay guitarist Steve Spon to find out more about the gig, the early Luton Punk scene and how it's all different today!

What is the UK Decay Communities 'Class of 1979 - 1989 Reunion III'?

Greg: It's a celebration really. We started it four years ago, we got some bands together at the Cork and Bull and we just got all the people together who used to follow UK Decay and it was like meeting people that we hadn't met for a long, long time. It was a fantastic night so we decided that we'd do that every year and it's just got bigger and bigger. Last year I met people who I hadn't seen for over 20 years who used to follow Decay and it was just fantastic.

Do you get just people from Luton or do they come from far and wide?

Steve: Well, we were based in Luton but in the first couple of years we gradually swept out of Luton into the rest of the UK, then Europe and then the US. I think that the legacy of the band is that although we've got a large Home Counties following, it now seems that we've got an international following. So we get an odd mix of these and local people that were there in the crowds in the old days, like when we played at the Carnival in 1982. Obviously a lot of those people have now moved on in life but the music brings them back together.

Obviously Decay are playing on the night but there will be many other bands too won't there?

Greg: Yes. We've got Rubella Ballet, Dun 2 Def, Los Cyclones and local bands Swank, The Adenoids, Rogue and Nick the Poet - again I haven't seen Nick for over 20 years!  Click Click are playing as well, a great Luton band, it's going to be a really good evening, I can't wait myself!

Steve: Yes, Click Click are another band that have come out of Luton and gone on to do bigger things throughout the world, particularly in Europe and Germany. This will be their first gig for ten years before going to a big festival in Germany in the summer, so it's a bit of a coup that we've got ourselves, UK Decay and Click Click to play!

And UK Decay are playing together for only the second time in 25 years?

Steve: Yes, at the last reunion tour event that we held at the Hat Factory at the beginning of 2007, the Tuesday before the Saturday of the event, Abbo the lead singer of UK Decay phoned me up out of the blue and suggested that we play a few songs and I nearly fell of the back of my chair! I said that I hadn't played guitar for over 20 years but I'd see what I could do. Over the next four days I thrashed my hands, got the guitar back up and running and we actually came back and did one song twice! It went down a storm basically! Abbo suggested we did more of a set the following year, so we're planning a 35/40 minute set which is about the length we used to play back in the day. We've been practising since January and can do 35/40 minutes of some of our classics.

What's it like playing the music now?

Steve: Strange! But actually, with a lot of the guitar based bands that are around these days, it feels surprisingly in date! I'm really enjoying it. When I put the guitar down all those years ago, I moved on to keyboards and used computers to make music and I thought I wouldn't go back to guitar again, but one thing in life you learn is never say never!

So this night is a celebration of punk and post punk and a mixture of older bands and up and coming bands. Do you think it's important to combine the two like that?

Greg: Oh definitely! It's good to have that combination of young bands and old bands, just like our audience. We're getting like the old crew, some of whom are in their 50s and we're also getting the younger generation coming to the gig and just seeing what it's all about. It's just a great celebration.

Steve: Yes. In some cases we're getting mothers and fathers and their daughters and sons and their daughters and sons are in bands as well!  

So can new, up and coming bands be inspired by this kind of gig?

Greg: Definitely, that's where it all started so that's where they've got to draw their influences from!

Steve: In some ways when I was starting off in a punk band, the attitude of my parent's generation was like get a real job, we were rebelling against our parents. But today it seems that with a lot of the youngsters, their parents are getting them to learn guitars and drums really early now, so that by the time they're 12-14 they're actually very good accomplished musicians, so they've had the support of their parents generation. There's a lot of energy in the scene and we think that mixing up our generation and the new generation of music is an interesting and viable thing to do  

You sound like you think that the scene is very different today?

Greg: Yes, I think it is very different. When I started playing in bands at about 15 or 16, we only knew three chords and that was it but that was all we needed and we were away, we were gigging. The up and coming bands now are so musically proficient and that is great! 

The Adenoids (artist Hugh Byrne)

But together at a night like this, you all come together?

Steve: Yes, we're going to show them how it's done! Seriously though, I feel quite daunted about playing against some of the younger musicians but we're going to do it the best way that we can do. Whatever music you create, and if you're in a band you're making a statement as to what you are and who you are, it's a big 'I am'. But musically speaking, it's just of interest to the audience to see how both scenes respond against each other and both sides can gain positively from playing up against each other.

What do you remember from those early punk days?

Greg: I first saw UK Decay when I was about 15 when I'd never really been to a gig, I used to listen to the Pistols, the Damned and the Clash, but I saw UK Decay at the Marsh Farm Festival. I had long hair then but I saw that show and all the Luton Punks there and I thought this is the way forward. A couple of days later I went and got my hair cropped, I then died it green. I got expelled from school and I thought this is definitely the way forward! 

Steve: Well, it has to be said that in Luton it was actually quite violent. It was quite a struggle. If you dressed up in punk clothes you were putting a label on yourself. Quite a lot of the red neck attitude of the town was 'let's got and beat up some punks' so we ended up actually having to fight our corner and unfortunately, at some of the gigs we did, there was quite a lot of violence. That seems to have thankfully mostly disappeared now in the modern day.

There was the legendary Luton Carnival performance wasn't there?

Steve: Oh yes - and we'll be showing that film at the party as there will be some screenings as well. The one of the Luton carnival is of interest to the town culturally and historically, but it was the last gig we did in Luton, after that we were banned by the authorities!

If you look at the film you see what actually happens. We had a large stage by Stuart Street and punks from surrounding areas including Leighton Buzzard, Bedford, Milton Keynes, Hitchin, Stevenage and St Albans came along. We were a big target for football supporters who thought that we'd be fair sport to attack basically and it all breaks out in the film.

So, you ended up defending yourself?

Steve: Well the band played on! We lost some of the sound and the police moved in but our attitude was let's get the music going and get people dancing and try and break up the trouble and in the end we played right through to the end. I feel that in a way we won the day.

Punk is a big cultural reference point but it feels weird talking about it as a historical thing. It's good to have evenings like this because it hasn't really changed, it's just with a different generation?

Steve: Yes, in this day and age it's quite cool to like punk, but you can also like heavy metal and classical music, rave and dance and club music at the same time, whereas back in the day, once you plunged into the world of punk you weren't allowed to like anything else - particularly heavy metal or any of the dinosaur rock as we called it, such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin any of that stuff! In this day and age you can like a wide variety of stuff and nobody will really put you down.   

Was the Luton punk scene quite big?

Steve: Yes, believe it or not there was actually a lot of punks around before us. They used to be called the Stopsley lot and they were going to some of the earlier gigs and they even had a band. The first punk band in Luton were called The Jets and they played at the Roxy in their very first year and had a track out and they really inspired us in Luton. They were the band that were before us in Luton and it turned out to be a race against time for us to get the first do-it-yourself single out in early 1979. It took about seven or eight weeks, we had to learn it all and made quite a few mistakes but we put out about 1000 copies of hand stamped vinyl records and we were proud! We put it in the local papers and we had a record company based in Wellington Street in Luton and we were getting letters asking if people could come and look round!   

It's amazing to think about how tracks go on the Internet so quickly now?

Steve: Yes, when we started off in 1979 we decided to go with the self-made single idea but at the same time we did a fanzine which was very popular in punk. We had the freedom to write about whatever we wanted to write about, print it, staple it together and sell it at gigs for 20p! So really - if we'd have had the Internet we'd have been using MySpace! And we do have a MySpace site now!

Finally then, what can people expect from the Reunion III gig this year?

Greg: It's just going to be a fantastic night, there's some great bands playing and there'll be good people there and it's just going to be a night of celebration and a night to unwind.  

Steve: Last year we put Reunion III on at the Hat Factory and we over ran the place with people. I didn't stop getting emails after it and messages saying what a wonderful party it was and that it was the best thing to have happened in Luton for years and years. So we're going to try and recreate that atmosphere in even bigger and better style this year. This is a mini-festival!