Martin & The Brownshirts

Norman Graveney – Vocals, Paul Urmston – Guitar,
Addy Adams – Bass & Willie Williams – Drums.

Martin & The Brownshirts were formed in Chester in March of ’77. This band of teenagers went for a more Tubes/Zappa style of punk irony and parody and featured songs such as Taxi Driver, Klans’ Man, Picadilly School Days and Boring. From the onset they attracted violence which their choice of name didn’t help, bringing right wing lunatics to their gigs from Chester to London. Read Willie Williams excellent account from the link above.

The band played punk bastions the Roxy Club, Erics and The Vortex. They also managed one single – Taxi Driver / Boring (Lightning 1978) and like every other Lightning release it sank without trace despite being also released in Belgium! 

Willie Williams Once upon a time which now seems so long long ago I played in a spunky little outfit called Martin & the Brownshirts; and now in the twilight of my years, with my own PC (plastic computer) I find myself cyber surfing in a very modern world where a trend for low slung cut trousers makes everybody look like they have shit their pants, and being in the twilight of my years I know how that feels, but I’m wondering here; I feel its time to put the record straight about Martin and the Brownshirts, well our one and only record anyway.

We formed in the Boat House pub car park in Chester in March of 1977. Almost at once the local skinhead gang were wanting our scalps, just because we had sprayed the name of our band on a wall; their wall and they were peeved;  that night in March we spoke of our plans. We knew deep deep down in our hearts that we were already getting on an over crowded band wagon called Punk Rock. It was near to peaking and we needed a new angle.

Having a love for bands like The Tubes and Frank Zappa, we decided to rip them off instead,  and  go for irony and parody. We had elaborate ideas of having German sentry positions on stage with barbed wire  encircling us and phoney stolen works of art, but of course this was soon dropped as being far to elaborate. We did have songs though; Piccadilly School Days, about London rent boys, Pointless, about being pointless, Klan’s Man, which went something like, (well they don’t like Russian’s and they don’t like Jews and they hate them people that sing the blues they got the whole county upon their side and the people they hate they crucify) and so on and so forth, and by the end of that week we had what we thought to be a hit record, Taxi Driver.

Of course the local scene, although small was connecting “man” and Eric’s in Liverpool was a fanny fantastic place for inspiration so there wasn’t much left to do other than make ya own clothes care of Oxfam and start doing some gigs and of course signing that dodgy record deal which we did in the back of a van, now that was a cliché.

So then we went a giging which in our case became an occupational hazard being chased out of motorway service stations by gangs of marauding kitchen staff too scared to serve us and being spat at. No wonder I suffered from TB a few years ago, playing clubs where stages collapsed. The Roxy Club was great but nobody came, and the Vortex Club, well it was so quaint after the gig, to have all those nice London National Front skinheads helping us up the stairs with our equipment. Then of course there was the infamous Swinging Apple Club we had invited everyone we knew because after all coming from Chester and playing a Liverpool club was hip, there was even a black Punk girl we knew called Ermer looking back now that girl went through hell.

We were on at midnight and all ready it was getting tense with loads of nasty looking folk goose stepping around the club in full Nazi regalia, so Eva Brawn “darlink”. I was in the toilets getting changed, when in step’s this tanked up speed head who had just come from Wigan Casino, the North West’s premier Soul Club, He precedes to get out of his soul clothes and into a very eye-catching Third Reich number.

So we get on stage and all hell breaks loose; bottle’s are flying and they are shouting and there is more goose stepping. At one point I thought I was in a surreal version of Spring Time for Hitler by Mel Brooks, but I wasn’t and it was nasty; the kind of nasty where you wanna leave. We were so pissed off we stopped halfway through a song, and I stood up on my drumming stool and shouted at the top of my lungs and said, why don’t you lot suck the shit out of my bowels? This was greeted by an awfully nice man who came to the side of the stage, I do think it was Hitler himself, who then went on to say, you lot have got ten minutes to get out of this club or you will die.

A selection of Martin & The Brownshirts hand made posters supplied by Willie Williams

We have never packed our gear away so fast as we left down the back stairs of a three level building. We were surprised to see, underneath the The Swinging Apple, a soul Club, and under that a Reggie Club, or were we surprised!! You could say we picked a very bad  band name  for a band with a self fulfilling prophecy, and over the years, trawling through the tinternet; I am not shocked to see Neo Nazi lovers hijacking our single for there own CD’s and tawdry cause, or using oure bands name for a vestige that is not what we were about. If only they knew!  Willy Williams, Drummer – March 2004


“Concerning Martin & the Brownshirts – yes they were for real from Chester, later changed name to Angry Young Men??-if my memory serves me. The band I was in Psycho Mafia (Ellesmere Port) played support to ’em once (one of our 10 or so gigs-no recordings).

Remember one of their gigs at a small club in Liverpool-The Swinging Apple (Eric’s was my haunt and Chester Smartyz with occasional visits to Manchester) their name brought out the local NF in force The Apple being a fave with nazis anyway-much fighting in the bogs and a heavy night all round NF=NO FUN. I think this gig may at least have been part of the reason for the name change.’

Paul Hambleton  22.7.01 Email


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