Squad

Punk77 says… Squad were a Coventry band who released the classic single Red Alert / £8-A-Week (Squad 1978) . Sing along a punk with great riff and tune and a touch of ‘The Kids In America’ style crooning ! The b-side was covered by the Last Resort and is set to a sort of Johnny B Goode style toon. Second single Millionaire / BrockHill Boys (1979 Squad) continued this rock’n’roll style punkiness unfortunately. One other excellent track , ‘The Flasher’, exists by the band on the ‘Sent To Coventry’ compilation.

Pete Chambers – Coventry Telegraph

“Just over six years ago Coventry and the world of music lost one of its most colourful and charismatic figures, Mr Gus ‘Gary’ Chambers. He will always be remembered for his days in Squad. So we take a look back at this top Coventry punk band. If you’re talking Cov and punk then you’re talking Squad. Without doubt they were the finest punk band that ever came from this beloved City of ours.

They were lunatic, loud and loveable. Nothing malicious though, just out for a good time as their audiences inevitably were. They began their life in the posturing safety-pin clad mid 70s. With a certain Terry Hall on vocals, Danny Cunningham guitar, Billy Little drums and Sam McNulty on bass. Hall, who was never really cut out for a life of punk, left to join a band called The Specials (whatever became of them?). He was replaced by the great Gus Chambers. Now Gus was cut out to be a punk, after seeing Roddy Radiation and the Wild Boys he was hooked.

Squad’s rock ‘n’ roll punk style was the kind of dish most punters in the late 70s were looking for. If you didn’t move at least a little at a Squad gig then you must have reached your sell-by date some years previous. It was always sweaty, loud and enthusiastic with some great laughs thrown in.

The line-up changed constantly, with the band effectively becoming a training ground for Cov musicians. Danny Cunningham would leave and form The Ramrods/ Major 5/Gdansk. Their drummers would include Mark Hatwood, Rob Hill and Steve Young. Guitarists included Jim Scully (from local band 1984) and Johnny Adams (from the bands The Blue Jays, RU21, Fission, and Don’t Talk Wet). With Nigel Mulvey then Nick Edwards replacing Sam McNulty on bass, Sam eventually ended up with The Giraffes.

Vocalist Gus looked at all the line-up changes like this, “Coventry was a hotbed of talent in the late 70s, early 80s, some cutting-edge bands were formed, so it was hard to keep good musicians in your own band”.

Squad released two singles in their illustrious career, ‘Millionaire’ (where they were hanging out with The Radford Boys) and ‘Red Alert’ with the rather wonderful ‘£8 a Week’ on the other side. They also got onto ‘The Sent From Coventry’ compilation with the song ‘Flasher’. The singles also appear on The Anagram album Punk Rock Rarities Vol 2. Songs you were likely to hear at their gigs included Brockhill Boys (Millionaire’s other side), ‘Son Of Sam’, ‘We Understand’ and ‘Bag On Your Head’.

They knew how to play the crowd. I will always remember them singing ‘The Bells are Ringing For Me and My Girl’ at The Market Tavern. Whatever the song though, whatever the venue, be it The Heath Hotel, The Hand and Heart, The Domino or Mr George’s, you knew they would always come up with the goods, great times.

Of course it wasn’t all fun in those days, punk rockers despite the fact that most of them were decent friendly people, were stigmatised because of how they looked. One incident Gus recalled happened in Birmingham after a Boomtown Rats gig. “We were sitting in this club with a couple of band members, when in burst a guy with a huge kitchen knife screaming all punks must die because they had killed Elvis Presley. “No one was hurt but it shows what a negative role the media played in it’s portrayal of punks. “There were however some positives in that time” Gus says. “The race barriers was smashed down during this period and there was nothing stronger than a united front”.

As the last pangs of punk rebellion began to die in the city, Squad members moved on, as for Gus well he joined 21 Guns, who released the single ‘Ambition Rock’ on Neville Staples Shack Records. They’re line-up-included Stuart Maclean, Kev Tanner and former Specials roadies Johnny Rex and Barb’d wires own Trevor Evans, the record failed to sell and the band soon split.

Way back in 2002 (18/5/02) Gus Chambers emailed Punk77 with a little history of Coventry punk – the bands, places and the experience.

It’s been a long time since my first days of punk so some of the names of places and people might be spelt wrong so bear with me. Punk for me started in Coventry in late 76, a mate of mine, Jinks had a cousin who had a local  band called Roddy Radiation and the Wild Boys (Roddy later went on to join The Specials) and he suggested we go check out his band and see what this new thing called Punk Rock was all about, and that was it I was hooked.

In the beginning punk in Coventry started out very small and not many places to go, there was about 15 to 20 Punks all coming from different walks of life but getting together to be a part of the scene. The only pub that allowed punks in at the time was a gay pub and the student union bar at the Lanch Poly sometimes let us in, non-students would get hassle etc.

The main Pub we used was a gay pub called the Rose and Crown; gay people were very tolerant to punks but it did have its draw backs. Because we hung around the gay pubs punks were often labeled as queers and perverts and where often targeted for violence and abuse (catching the last bus home or going to the chippy late at night was a no no) and things got even more heavy when the media started running negative stories about punk rock, then the Teds got involved etc. etc. I don’t want to go on and on about the violence that was associated with punk but it did play a role and to be a punk was not all rosy.

My trips to the emergency dept. to get stitched up became quite frequent but one instance of madness sticks in my mind. A couple of us had traveled over to Birmingham to see the Boomtown Rats at Barberellas, we  were sitting in a pub across the road from the club with a couple of the band members (Bob Geldof was trying to sort out a squat for the night ) when in come this maniac with a huge kitchen knife yelling all punks must die because they had killed Elvis Presley (and he wasn’t even a Ted ) no one was seriously hurt but it shows what a negative role the media did play in portraying punk rockers. 

Back in Cov. the punk scene started to grow very quickly and was being accepted which led to more pubs in Cov becoming punk friendly, some pubs let us put our own records on their jukeboxes, a punk disco started at the weekend at the Rose and Crown, the Bear Inn become a big punk hang out, a mainly metal disco upstairs in The Golden Cross started to play punk rock and a couple of night clubs started to have punk rock nights. The first one was The Cottage, Wednesday was punk night sometimes letting local bands play. Monday nights at Mr Georges became a great venue for live bands, a lot of national acts played there plus many local bands had the chance to play, this helped play a big part in building the local scene. Local bands started to hire out back rooms in pubs, places like The Heath, The Hand and Heart, and upstairs in the Domino played a big role in keeping music live also musicians who didn’t have a record out, had no management and all that other record biz bull had the chance to book a gig and play (after all that’s what punk rock was all about).

Early punk and new wave bands that contributed to the local scene in Coventry were The Flys, Roddy Radiation and the Wild Boys, The Squad, The Urge, The Automatics (later to become ska band The Specials ) The Vietnamese Babys, Gods Toys, The Pink Umbrellas (fronted by Eighties pop Icon Paul King ) and a couple of years later came Riot Act, Oi band Criminal Class and various ska bands, The Selector. Swinging Cats.

The punk scene in Coventry had really grown from a handful of punks wearing converted Oxfam and second hand store clothes (not having the money to buy punk fashion items from the Kings Road or over priced punky stuff from Khan and Bell or the Oasis in Birmingham) to a genuine supportive group of punks, we would try to attend every local gig, anything from seeing The Stranglers in front of 3000 people at The Locarno Ballroom to attending Anti Nazi League demos in London or Birmingham, we supported the punk movement, but a few years later I personally started to get really tired of the politics of punk and the way a punk should be or not be, to me punk opened my eyes to a way of life and gave me values which I still have today. So before I start rattling on about being born into a class system and having no future and all that fucking crap I’ll end by saying Thanks for letting me contribute and I hope you enjoy this small part of punk history.

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