John Peel, Can, This Heat, Captain Beefheart, Stockhausen, The Pop Group, Alternative TV, The Ramones, Howlin' Wolf, Glaxo Babies, Dif Juzz, Essential Logic, Miles Davis, Public Image Ltd, Scritti Pollitti, Richard Hell, Augustus Pablo, Ornette Coleman, Television, The Decorators, Linval Thompson, Soft Machine, Gavin Bryers 'Jesus Blood', The Rich Kids, The V.I.P.'s, The Art Objects, Johnny Clarke, Lemon Kittens, Gang of Four, Red Crayola, Rema Rema, 13th Floor Elevators, Kathy Berbarian, Lalo Schiffrin, XTC, Harry Partch, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Pere Ubu, The Clash, The Slits, Talking Heads, Chrome, Furniture, Weather Report, The Monochrome Set, Burning Spear, Cabaret Voltaire, Buzzcocks, The Residents, Eno, Mark Perry, Johnny Burnette, The Wire, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Ian Dury, King Crimson, The Art Objects, Alice Cooper, Dillinger, Talking Heads, Alice Coltrane, Pin Point, The Fall, Prag Vec, The Cure, The Damned, Robert Wyatt, Lol Coxhill, The Specials, Devo, 'We are not men', Throbbing Gristle, Sex Pistols, The Velvet Underground, The Mekons, U-Roy, Missing Presumed Dead, The Electric Prunes, 23 Skiddoo, Iggy Pop, Manicured Noise, Souixsie and The Banshees, The Flying Lizards, The Rezillos, The Good Missionaries, Howard Devoto, Big Youth, The Cure, The Mothers of Invention, Syd Barrett, The compilations No New York, Streets and Nuggets, Crossroads, Taxi Driver, The Rough Trade Shop!
Early Press shot 1977 - 78
Jill Furmanovsky photo's 1978
Here's the 'Nowhere Train Line-up
Here's some press shots from 1979
band meeting 1979 in the pit!!
Flyers etc!
We supported the Slits in Acton early 78
all the pistols were there + the Clash
Sid Viscious was carried in and laid down ceremoniously at the back
at the end of the gig he was dutifully carried out and thrown into the back of a black cab
So he WAS there - but he wasn't so to speak
The gig that never was! The vicar took one look, and cancelled!
Answers on a postcard!
Sounds Like
The Transmitters set was the most enervating they've played in eons, a crackling 40 minutes of disorganised brilliance where Chaos is a Craft: They veer between sub-Beefheart, the louder territories of free jazz merchants and something which is solidly and inescapably their own. Nouveau psychedelia?
Time and again The Transmitters prove themselves to be one of the funniest, but also one of the most ingenious additions to late 70's music: Rock and roll is a dirty phrase. CHRIS WESTWOOD. Record Mirror 1979. Nashville Rooms
Hope and Anchor 1979
TUNED IN to the Transmitters, a crowd of all sorts gathered for a National Abortion Campain benefit which ended the days impressive demonstration against the il-concieved Corrie Bill proposals.
The Transmitters were a useful choice for a movement (all about choice) fighting a pitiful and regresive male intrusion. They borrow from a wide source - early psychedelia, Beefheart Through to even Essential Logic - but furrow the influences into a style which demands to be taken on it's own merits. Comparisons are so limited that I find it hard to avoid the much mistaken and inflexible term 'progresive'
Further to this, their music, whether cautious or dissapated, is always underlined by a devilishly impulsive awareness and wicked streak of unpredictability. They plat a serious game of musical hide and seek.
Grinning and dribbling through a series of absurd lyrics is a singer (John Clegg) with a massive Trojan hair-do which all but dusts the collar with each turn of the head; guitarist and bassist jostle on the edge of the stage, urged on by the more necessary imobility of the drums and keyboard players.
In a set that switched with as much consistency as a knackered fluorescent light the Transmitters were always compelling and somehow evaded a possible self-destructive urge.
They have just released an EP called 'Still Hunting For The Ugly Man'. It is enticing to make another connection. NICK TESTER - SOUNDS
London Greenwich Theatre
The Transmitters were, as is their forte, unpredictable, uncalculatedly comic, inspirng and brilliant. A serious set? That may have been the intent, but one look at John, the vocalist, and a crowd can crack up. He stumbles around, fag in mitt, flanked by a drunken bass player, Simon Wells, a drunken guitarist, Sam Dodson, a workmanlike drummer Jim Chase, and the strangely sombre on-stage persona of keyboardist, Amanda De Grey.
The sound is open, free, off-the-cuff, bound together through all the stumbling, fumbling chaos that their approach entails. 'The One That Won The War', par example, a personal favourite, damn near falls apart at the seams, with clattering whining guitarthrashes mating with probably the most essential bass phrase this side of any other Transmitters number you care to name....
The fact that I believe in the Transmitters, their attitude, their music, their entire outlook, and - to some extents - their musical tastes, might just hinder my objectivity when writing about them. But see them. Don't let a good thing play itself out without deserving attention.
CHRIS WESTWOOD. Record Mirror Review
Here's a review by PAUL MORLEY - The Transmitters
Greenwich Theatre
Ealing's The Transmitters are the cheekiest group I've seen since the Mekons; the wackiest I've seen since Public Image (and almost as sinister). They were, of course, great. Naturally, their music is of Velvets' ancestry; deceptively nonchalant, barely controlled, repetitive, erratic and intoxicating, presented with an odd, wry condescension.
Their inscrutable lead singer has the comedy timing of a Dave Allen, the detachment of a Devoto, the amused poise of a Mark Smith, the cool of a Sinatra. The music is feverish and jumpy. NME 1979.
Transmitters played many gigs in support of, amongst others, The Slits, Alternative TV, The Police, The Fall, Scritti Politti, Human League, The Birthday Party, Blurt and many more!
Recorded two sessions for the mighty John Peel. "Ah! transmit me baby!" to quote John Peel 1979.
Pre-release copies are available NOW for download, or from CD Baby
Released singles and an album for Ebony records, Step Foreward Records and Cherry Red.
Here's the first single, B side '0.5 Alave' on new compilation 'I Fear No-One..'
Here's the 24 Hours album sleeve.
The 24 HOURS TOUR 1978
12th July inside the Speakeasy
13th July outside...(on the back of a lorry) The Rainbow, The Roundhouse, Dingwalls, The Lyceum,The Nashville Rooms, Hammersmith Odeon, Albert Hall, The London Palladium, The Marquee (where it all stopped due to stupid policeman!- who was later arrested (citizens arrest!) for blocking the normal flow of traffic.)
sam drink beer!
Here's the 'Nowhere Train' Single.
Noel Edmunds from the TV Times with his copy!! Note the lyrics typed over the image!
Melody Maker September 30th, 1978, Space Oddities
THE TRANSMITTERS "Nowhere Train" (Ebony EYE 12)
And The Transmitters, in an eerie, dronal tune, call up the ghosts of serpent power, an neat bit of seance, just following tracks . . .LENNY KAYE
what a line-up!!
Gigging about town '79
fissionchips? Hastings, Cambridge.
John at the Ugly Man cut! + cutting man. The Fall at one end of the room Transmitters at the other - all scowling!! The Lemon Kittens looking rather afraid!
Still Hunting For the Ugly Man 12" 1979
THE TRANSMITTERS: Still Hunting For The Ugly Man, (Step Forward). Ealings Transmitters are an insular sort of a group. As is typical of those who for whatever reason, develop out of sight and mind of media scrutiny, they have developed a powerfully idiosyncratic sound. The group uses the same line-up as their labelmates The Fall, and it's not irrelevant to point out certain similarities.
Both groups are cynics and critics. Both groups are fronted by hurried, mocking inciters. Both groups deal with instabilities, abnormalities, ambitious truths....and make demented shell-shocked music.
This 12" four-track is an obsessive, frustrated record. Consistently effective and annoying, it rummages restlessly out on lunatic fringes. It's difficult, discomforting and oppressively manic, but worth exploring. PAUL MORLEY.
Then EXPLODED!! and did some explorative gigs as 'Tranmitters Presumed Dead'
they were very good and very drunk! reformed and.....( The beat goes on! )
Here's the 'And We Call That Leisure Time' Sleeve 1981.
"LIKE a dead Siamese sister I carry your weight around." Well it beats "I should be so lucky, lucky lucky lucky".The first is the opening line of the Transmitters' song "Dead Siamese Sister", one of their frenetic mutant paranoid stream-of-consciousness bohemian jazz-noise anthems which like very much to grab you by the retinae and throw you across the doghouse walls. It's a truly great globule of self-expression and nearly as bitterly poignant as "Ache", their finest murky mope, which sorely temp me to write out it's entire lyrics in full. However.
Tim Whelan is the most restless man alive and demonstrates this by dancing like a young Jackson. pacing like Mark E Smith, and huling himself at the floor like any-age Iggy. He spits forth his topical angst ("there's a hole in the world") while his lanky henchemen beat manifold drums, extract Haitian war chants from keyboard thingies, and scratch shrill guitars like jaguars assualting sandpaper. They tangle with the Velvets' "Ferryboat Bill" quite swimmingly and, all things assimilated, are a cathartic anglepoise on the heart of darkness. Highly wrecked and mended. CHRIS ROBERTS
Count Your Blessings, oil on canvas, Christopher Custons Cole 1989
12" single The Mechanic 1989
WELL IT was just the other day that someone called me up claiming to be a "Transmitter", and what do you know. that mid-Seventies combo have a new release. Yes the group that recorded and released an album within 24 hours, that were mercilessly avant garde on Step Foreward are back on 9CC (Craving Co Productions) with a 12- inch four track EP led off by The Mechanic, which is like Stump never happened, wanton artiness, expressing-yourself tendencies and other such angles are exposed. Oh yes you can get seriously avant Transmitter bits through Backs. DAVE HENDERSON. MUSIC WEEK.
THE TRANSMITTERS ARE GIVING AWAY 'COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS' on YOU ARE NOT STEALING RECORDS. This is from the 1986-89 line-up.
It's the remanants of this line-up that go on to form the so called 'global techno' or 'world fusion' bands Transglobal Undergroud and Loop Guru. And you could here this coming, a long way off!!
Hello. Hope you don’t mind us posting this on your page. We are starting a small tour of the UK next week. If you’re in the area, we hope to see you, and share a few drinks at one of our shows. Plus if you know any good nights out let us know!!
There are still a couple of dates to be confirmed, so check our myspace for updates!
Part of my 2008 project has been to re-produce some original 1977 songs from UK classic punk band "Why Control" . The guys at "Booty Tank" have been working with me to try and capture that original energy in the new recordings. They are a group of dedicated and talented lads. Try to get out and watch them soon... !
The Summer of 77 This discipline and obedience worked to mature the punk image of morality and freedom ....... Many released no records, and that is how it needed to be. They represent the legacy of many, the punks that served in the trenches. Bands that did not go vinyl but stayed true to their core.
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