Plastix
Plastix one vinyl contribution to the world of punk rock comes on the ‘Farewell To The Roxy’ album with their song ‘Tough On You’. Their story is typical of the many hundreds of bands that formed in the wake of punk and while success may have eluded them at the time, every member later tasted it to varying degrees.
Plastix formed in early 1977 and were allegedly named after someone’s dad who ran a plastics factory in Hastings! Mark Wilmshurst their bassist/guitarist takes up the story..
“We were all from round the same area which was Bexhill/Hastings and I originally came from Brighton. We were in various bands at school but we got to know each other after we left school at 16. Musically we all had different tastes. Mine was Bowie and Bolan; Nick’s was Lou Reed. Musically it was a mix of heroin music and rock and we thought we were a rock band rather a punk rock band. It was only as the punk thing began to happen that it dawned on us that actually we were a punk band.
It kinda all started in Nick’s garage. We were genuinely a garage band. His mum was pretty cool. He was on the dole and we used to practise there. Nick Sayer was on guitar and he was the shining light of the band who wrote songs and was the band leader. I also played guitar. I played bass on the guitar because we didn’t have a bass guitar!
When we first formed Mick was our original singer but couldn’t sing. Our drummer Mark Hoggins couldn’t play drums either but he learnt very quickly!
Then we met Huggy at a Jam gig at Eastbourne Winter Gardens. He was kind of a roadie or hanger on of the Jam. Afterwards Nick knew Huggy and we met him and he joined the band after we kicked our old singer out. There was also a guy called Simon Watson who was almost in the band for a while. Newspaper articles allude to him being in the band but he was our notional manger. Simon was the ‘get things done’ manager and had a transit van. He came from quite a wealthy family but was living in his transit van on his parents drive with a mattress in it!
Songs in the Plastix set… Nothing 2 Do, Fleet Street, Terminal TV, Cheap Copy, Politics and 9 Till 5. “9-5 for the rest of my life.” were the only words in that song mand it was only one chord and we would do that for 3-4 minutes. If you were lucky there was a lead guitar break. It was pretty aggressive. We were filmed with the UK Subs in the Buccaneer for a television feature on punk rock and the song ‘9 Till 5’ was used as the intro for this. It was the only one we made any money from. It was advertised as being on telly so you got every wannabee turning up and it was packed. We got paid twice! Once for the gig and once for royalties.
In Hastings we kind of befriended the local Hells Angels and they would get us out of scraps. At the time there was still the hangover between mods and rockers and punk rock was adopted by the Hells Angels there because it had a rock influence on it and we both had a kind of odd look.
You’d get people coming down from up north for a weekend away and wanting to beat the punk rockers up. We’d be talking to girls in Brighton and the next thing we knew we were being attacked by 15 people from Manchester for dressing like we did.
The Hells Angels were running all the club doors and acting as bouncers and we got to know them all. Because of this we got on the support list for Hastings Pier, an old rock’n’roll 50’s hall. Plastix supported just about every single band that came to Hastings Pier for the whole summer – The Damned, Adverts and Lurkers. We were always there as the warm up act. As we had quite a big local following and all the punks in the area knew us. When we played they’d come up to the front and get them warmed up. They’d just chuck us on to get the crowd going or not as the case might be. Sometimes when we played there would be 5 people in front and everybody else would be at the bar and jeering but then slowly move to the front. Bigger bands would get worse. They would get bottles thrown at them and I saw quite a few injuries.
Most of our other gigs were in Brighton at place like the Buccaneer and the art college and one at Sussex University with Rich Kids, Johnny Thunders and The Vibrators. Just being in the backstage area was huge. Because everyone put their gear in front of everybody else and we were on really we had about 2 inches of stage!
We got the Roxy gig through Simon or Huggy who had a lot of connections in London. The biggest place we played in London was the Marquee supporting The Crabs. We were doing ok but musically we were terrible!
Plastix almost became like the darlings of the Roxy in a way. I think it was because it was in its deathroes probably and they had pissed off everybody to the point where they couldn’t get anyone else to play there anymore. We were always getting phone calls on a Friday asking can you come and play tomorrow and we’d go alright then.
Plastix fell to bits. I’d given up my job and we hadn’t had any money out of the band. I’d become semi pro but there was no money. The whole thing got taken down by drugs and debauchery. For me it was money. We were begging, stealing and borrowing money to get up to London, to play gigs and get bottles thrown at you for no money!
So what happened to the band? Simon Watson, the non member manager, later managed The Alarm. Nick Sayer became guitarist in Transvision Vamp. Mark Hoggins was drummer in Peter & The Test Tube Babies. Mark Humphries had a top 20 dance track/acid house under the name Federation and joined the interesting band on the left Pa Chica-Wow! Huggy Leaver has featured in several films notably ‘Judge Dredd’ and ‘Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels’ and is now a regular on Eastenders.
TalkPunk
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