The Adicts

Originally formed as The Afterbirths in 1977 before changing to the name Pinz. However a band with the same name meant they had to change to the Addicts. Bad luck again as this was taken so to avoid confusion they dropped 1 ‘d’ to become the Adicts! For two years they played mainly local gigs building up a following and their break came when they played the Breakneck in Camden London in August 79 when they were signed to the Norwich label Dining Out who were at the gig.

For the time frame of this site, a one record deal brought a 4 track EP – Lunch With The Adicts in September 1979 featuring This Week / Straight Jacket / Organised Confusion & Easy Way Out. Selling a respectable 10,000 copies (and earning them £23 in royalties!) and at no 2 in the independent charts things looked up even more with a John Peel Session in December 1979 with Get Addicted, Distortion, Sensitive and Numbers being the tracks.

The band at this time was Pete Davison on Guitar, Mel ‘Spider’ Ellis on Guitar, Kid Davison on Drums, Tim Hocking on Bass and K ‘Monkey’ Warren on Vocals (on account of his big ears!)

Obviously the Adicts went on to record more stuff and are in fact still playing today. They adopted a Clockwork Orange image to distance themselves from the regulation punk image that was now commonplace, changed their name a few more times i.e. Fun Adicts and ADX before coming back to The Adicts. “Musically, they pretty much run the gamut from chant-a-long, scarf-wavin’ oi to somethin’ akin to a punked-out Dexy’s Midnight Runners, to new-wave-punk fusion and back again without soundin’ any the worse for it.” From some site another that I’ve forgot!

Jan Knightley Punk77 email from 15.1.2005
“We did a gig supporting a band called “The Adicts”. I think they were from Ipswich. The lead singer dressed like Alex out of “A Clockwork Orange”. I think his name was Monkey. They were on T.V. (I think it was “Cheggers Plays Pop”), and they used the name “The Fun Adicts” – I think because it was a show aimed at little kids. They did spell the name with only one ‘D’ (it is more punk that way). Do they fit your criteria? Maybe they were a bit later than 77 – maybe 78 or 79…They seemed pretty ambitious. I was in a band called “The Push”, and supporting The Adicts was a big deal for us. They had a manager and everything. They let us use their P.A. and mikes. Then when they came on, after we had played, the manager brought out these high quality, very posh mikes for them – so they sounded way better than we did. I thought they were pretty crap. They seemed to be selling out before they had even got anywhere – and at the time, as you know, that was not a punk thing to do.”

The Adicts are still going today in 2024.