Punilux are a hard band to categorize, they came to the fore with the emergence of punk in the late 70s and early 80s, not really either punk or new wave, I would probably label them as alternate or post-punk nowadays. They produced an amazing concept album called ‘Laughing Academy’ which is still one of my favourite albums to this day, and most of the tracks off it found their way into the set tonight.
They hit the stage at about 10:30 to a full house, indeed the gig was sold out several months in advance so the band still has a lot of die hard fans out there. Brian came onto the stage wearing white trousers and a black tunic over which he wore a white lab coat to the intro of ‘The Message’. There were a few sound gremlins during this song with a loose connection to Brian’s mic and later in the set to the keyboard both of which required attention from the sound tech. The Message ran straight into ‘All White Jack’ just as it does on the album and Brian donned a pair of sunglasses as he sang the lyric I’m in the dark room keep out the light, developing an image of you tonight… The band appeared to be a bit uptight from the start but were starting to loosen up nicely with ‘Radar Bug’ and then ‘Metropolis’. Brian spent a couple of minutes looking for ‘Yvonne’ before the band stormed into the track then it was back to ‘Laughing Academy’ and a quick crowd rehearsal of Ooh Aah, Ooh Aah for ‘Funk Me’ followed by ‘British Baboon’. An ‘old’ new song next in the form of ‘Fracture’, I wasn’t too impressed with this the first time I heard it back in 2010 but it’s definitely growing on me. Another new one called ‘Cry’ was next. The crowd were getting a bit restless with the new songs now and started shouting for ‘Babylon’ but they got ‘Secrets’ instead. Back to ‘Laughing Academy’ again and a rabid version of ‘Excess Bleeding Heart’ followed by the title track of the first LP ‘Laughing Academy’. Brian introduced everyone in the band halfway through ‘Laughing Academy’, there can’t be many bands that still have the same lineup after 35 years! Brian had the crowd rehearsing ‘BBBBBBBBBBBBBrainbomb’ before doing a storming version of the track, the band tried to leave the stage after this but the crowd called them back for the rather silly ‘Jellyfish’. There were a few more shouts for ‘Babylon’ but instead we got Brian: Here they come, they’ll never take me away, I won’t go to room 16, Neville: You will, Jimi: you’re already there, and the band finished on ‘Puppet Life’ which was their very first single on Small Wonder records way back in 1978. ‘Babylon’ never did get played but it was still an ace set, a long one too at just over an hour and 5 minutes.
An excellent gig from yet another seriously under-rated band from the North East, it’s great to see them still playing live although I wish they’d play a bit more often.
The full set of this gig was video taped by someone in the audience and uploaded to YouTube, It’s pretty good quality too and it’s at this link:
nxb003 