GENERATION X and THE RUTS - Live

I’ve had these two live shows knocking about for a while now, so I thought, its about time I posted ‘em. Lets take a trip back to the late 70’s and early 80’s, Punk had grown into a whole new beast and the country was being run by a beast called Thatcher. Both the starz of today’s post GENERATION X and THE RUTS had been there in 77 and had developed into two great bands who were from opposite ends of the punk spectrum. Gen X with their poppy, glam, punk escapism and The Ruts with their gritty punky reggae style social realism. Gen X are captured here some time in 1980 at Hatfield Polytechnic, playing a great set of their classics, including a cover of The New York Dolls Jet Boy. The Ruts were recorded a year earlier in 1979 at Strathclyde University, playing a set of their classics, plus a cover of The Damned's Love Song. The Ruts set is slightly marred to my ears by a puerile sing along by Malcom Owen about wanting his mum to suck his dick?! Must have been the heroin talking. Sadly the drugs took their toll on Malcom who is no longer with us, a genuine wasted talent. Even sadder to my ears is the effects the drugs had on Billy Idol, who last year, or was it the year before? released an atrocious Christmas Album, where on the cover he looks like some punk Perry Como and sounded even worse. Anyway enough of that, cos this is what yer really after; some Ruts and some Generation X, so what yer waiting for all you KING ROCKERS AND RUDE BOYS!

999 and GENERATION X - Re-Upped and Re-Packaged.

Here ya go Usted, just for you and anyone else who hasn't been able to download these two cracking shows from the old skool; 999 @ The Nashville in 1979 and GENERATION X - Live in Sheffield 1978. I've done 'em as one download, but in two separate folders (hopefully) any problems with the opening of files/folders, leave a comment, also if there's any other dead links you may require let us know. Got a couple more 999 shows I may post sometime, also on the subject of thee old skool, in the comments under neath the Chron Gen post, Pip has kindly left the link to a couple of live CHELSEA shows that were released by Chaos Tapes. Well worth investigating. If the links to those are dead let us know and I'll make arrangements to re-up 'em. Ooops nearly forgot here's the link for 999 and Generation X.

GENERATION X - Live In Sheffield 1978

Yes here's some more 'old skool punk rock' this time it's Generation X. These guys were probably the most 'rockist' of the punks (this can be heard in the encore melody on this recording) their image seemed as important as their music, which was of a far more pop vein than their contemporaries, it wasn't a case of 'No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones' for these guys, in fact they sounded like all three of them. Billy Idol was the 'punk Elvis' with his pretty boy looks and curling lip; they were the perfect punks for Top Of The Pops and the poster mags that were popular at the time. Often called 'punk posers' they made no real political statements, but had some fine rockin' tunes. By 1981 the band had split up Billy Idol headed for L.A to live out his king rocker rock star dream and had a few massive world wide hits. Tony James has been working with Mick Jones(The Clash) for the last 3 years on their Carbon/Silicon project which is coming to fruition. As I type they are preparing to release their first commercially available product, prior to this all their other stuff has been only available to download through their web site. Anyway I appear to have gone off on a tangent, here's Generation X live in 1978. It's just a click away: http://www.sendspace.com/file/q8ic1m