Please note the items you are about to read consist largely of scurrilous gossip, vicious back-stabbing and idle speculation. As Jon Stewart might say, its stories are not fact checked. Its informants are not journalists. And its opinions are not fully thought through.
THE GONADS! CHARLTON! SOUTH LONDON! STREET ROCK N ROLL! COCKNEY CULTURE! COCKNEY ROCK! OI-TONE! SKA! BEER! CURRY! WORKERS’ RIGHTS! FLAG-GIRLS! ENGLAND! OI OI OI! THIS IS WHO WE ARE!
April 19. Gal Gonad’s new legal eagle Jessica Flockhart tells us he would have grounds to sue Lord Waistrel “and his subordinates” if his 69th birthday celebrations go off half-cocked. She tells us grimly, “A year ago Gal was promised funding to record a Big 69 triple album to be released separately over the year one trimester apart, with a box set to follow three months later; he wrote the songs but the funding never materialised. He was then promised a Bushell’s Birthday Bash, but whereas the three original bashes saw headline appearances by the Ruts, Cock Sparrer and Judge Dread, this year my client was offered the Rawhides UK (which he declined). Now it looks as if the event organisers can’t even rustle up a token age-appropriate celebration. He has every right to sue for professional negligence, bad faith and breach of trust.” Blimey.
Wattsie has swiftly squashed a malicious rumour, spread by Fat Col, that her nickname for him is ‘FILF’ (friend I’d like to…). “That’s wrong on every level,” she says wearily. “For starters, he’s no friend, and like most women given a choice between sleeping with Col and taking cyanide, I’d reach straight for the pill every time. My actual nickname for Col is unprintable but FWC gets close to it. My nickname for Gal is FFS because that’s my reaction every time I read this blog.” And we mean so well…
April 18. BOOK NEWS: Matt Worley’s Xerox Machine, a superbly researched and detailed book on punk and post-punk fanzines between 1976 and 1988, is out now. Sniffin’ Glue guru Mark Perry calls it “terrific” adding that it gets “the right balance between academic endeavour and the sheer excitement that the subject matter should induce”. And Lazza Ogden has written a follow-up to his spikey novel The Curse Of Dutch Courage. In The Resurrection Of Dutch Courage, the fictional band reform twenty years later and hit the big time (which sounds remarkably similar to the plot of Curry On Up The Gonads! – concerned Ed). We’re on to our lawyers now...
One blog reader asks if Gal’s next Harry Tyler book will be the last in the hard-hitting, pulp fiction crime thriller series. Fit Bird says no. Apparently, he has the plots for another three of Harry’s full-length adventures mapped out in his head. When he’ll have time to write them is another matter. Here are more of your blog-related questions answered:
Wattsie Watts asks Ellie Skeggs: “You say you saw Fat Col naked. Has he really got a half-inch fuse?” Ellie: “I don’t know in inches, but I’d say somewhere between 12 and 13mm. In fairness, the ‘dressing room’ was in the gents’ bog and it was cold. He did ask me if I knew about ‘shrinkage’.”
Bev Elliott asks her: “What on earth possessed you to attempt to pleasure the repulsive reactionary bastard manually after the show?” Ellie: “It’s hard to explain. Yes, he is revolting, but there was something carnal about his performance. He’s like a sex god on stage. Like Dionysus (Eh? – Ed). Col’s loud, beery music and ecstatic dancing liberates all of his fans and followers from the chains of self-conscious fears and inhibitions. When I saw him naked, there wasn’t a bit of him that wasn’t wobbling.”
And finally, one question we can’t answer. ‘Fair-minded’ of Locksbottom asks: “How can Fat Colin Gannon hope to surpass the glory of the Gonads when he and his band refuse to play outside of Plumstead?” A very good point. No idea.
BREAKING NEWS #1: Miss Management has worked miracles. She has renegotiated our first Soho guerrilla gig – it’s now due to take place in August – and she has persuaded Paul Mummery to agree to pay a simple Paulaner-based penance for swerving the June date, thus healing the latest ugly band rift. All Paul has to do is buy all of his brethren in the band beer and Rubies for a night. And maybe take out a bank loan. As part of the deal, Sir SkaNad will also be “ridden like a bucking bronco, while been lashed with a riding crop and jabbed repeatedly with highly-sharpened spurs,” Miss M’s assistant Effete El reveals. A shocking punishment, we say. “Punishment?” he replies. “No, that’s the sweetener, that’s his reward for cooperation. If she’d wanted to punish him, she would have broken out… the ironing board.” Strap up!
BREAKING NEWS #2: The Rawhides UK’s Khan’t Stand The Khan’t is released on Friday week (26th) but you can pre-order it here:
iTunes and Amazon.
April 17. Big 69 update: Nads HQ received an offer of “compassionate aid” on the big day from Charlton beauty Dawn ‘Birdie’ Brakes last night. Unfortunately, Fit Bird has declined it. She tells us, “I had to veto that Birdie cos though she’s a proper salt, she’s a spitter an’ for this occasion only swallowers will do.” Quite. She adds sharply, “He don’t want no garglers neither.” Nobody does.
Breaking news tomorrow. Watch this space.
April 16. Fat Col is stirring up shit again, using internal band anger over our cancelled Soho gig as a springboard to deliver his verdict on why the mighty Gonads are finished. “My song has made more impact than anything the fucking Gonads have done since 1982,” he sneers (referring to Khan’t Stand The Khan’t), before adding, “That’s because you’re yesterday and the Rawhides UK are the future; it’s the age of rage, baby, and we’re riding the wave that you’re drowning in. Nobody wants to hear silly ditties about round-dodgers and barmaids anymore. Grow the fuck up!” Pausing for breath, and to consume half a hot meat pie and a handful of chips, Col continues: “The so-called ‘Nads’ can’t go on anyway because Paul is in too many bands, JC won’t drop the Gillingham shit, Wattsie snubs curry nights, Phil is a shameless show-boater, and Gal is so curmudgeonly these days he makes Larry David look like Michael fucking McIntyre. I repeat, you lot are yesterday, the future belongs to the Rawhides”. Blimey.
Footnote: Fit Bird whispers, “The rest of the Gonads blame Paul SkaNad for the June cock-up, don’ they? Miss Management is fighting to heal the rift but she needs to do something drastic. She’ll have to proper fine him or, better still, tie him up and flog him with a variety of whips, ridin’ crops an’ stingin’ nettles, like she does on his birfday.”
April 15. With less than a month to go before Gal’s birthday, his PA Fit Bird has confided to a trustworthy and discreet source (Effete El) that she fears his Big 69 “could be a proper wash-out” on the grounds that so far Nads HQ has only received ten ‘age-appropriate offers’ from obliging female fans and nine of them were from the Nosher – “who is more known for her enthusiasm than her technique, in’t she?”. She dismissed El’s suggestion that a woman “close to the band” should “take one for the team”, branding the idea hard to swallow.
April 14. The Rawhides played an impromptu benefit gig in Plumstead last night to raise cash for “the new underground of anti-ULEZ campaigners and other freedom-loving fighters against state tyranny”. Our eye witness, Ellie Skeggs, says “They only done five songs, six if you count them playing Khan’t Stand The Khan’t twice, but they went down a storm. People seemed to love Col and would have carried him aloft from the stage if he wasn’t so hideously overweight. What a lardy arsed bastard. Talk about fat, when Col falls out of bed now, he falIs out on both sides.” Skeggsy, 32, adds that she went backstage afterwards to offer the great man a hand job “if I could find it”, and was surprised to see him “all shirtless, naked and sweaty – when he turned around, I got the shock of me life cos there it was, unmissable, hard, black and throbbing... ” What, we cry, what did you see? “He had a small black heart tattooed over where his actual heart would be, if he had one.” Strewth. Ellie goes quiet and tells us, “I’d seen one like that before when I was a lot younger and I know what it means. It means that your mate Gannon has sold his soul and secretly become a member of the ultra-violent Blackheath Foot & Death Morris Men.” (Stone me! – Ed). “If the Rawhides take off, so will those psychotic bastards.”
Songs in the Rawhides UK’s Plumstead set: Khan’t Stand The Khan’t, Alconaut (Gonads cover), Beer & Sex & Chips & Gravy (Macc Lads cover), B.F.D.M.M., 18 Stone Of Dynamite (Half Inch Fuse) and Khan’t Stand The Khan’t (encore). Plus Valley Floyd Road (post-gig acapella street performance).
In other news Miss M has been forced to strenuously deny rumours that Gal’s oppo, Deptford Kev (DIF), is lining up a “Gonads 2” combo for the soon-come south coast TV series. But our hard-pressed manager says she cannot confirm or deny claims that the LA Gonads have been contacted about our farewell Vegas show, much to the chagrin of the East Coast American Gonads – “the originals and the best”. In good news, we can confirm that the Dirty Metal Gonads II project is still due to happen... and that Lord Waistel has asked our support band the Clitoris All-Sorts to collaborate on the second Oral album under the stern but wise management of Si Spanner (IDF). Double blimey. All she has to do now is stop the blog from publishing the rumour that Waistrel has agreed to yet another overseas band spin-off by approving the Madrid-based Real Gondolas (Royal Gonads – Multilingual Ed) as his official representatives in Espania. Yeah. Good luck with that...
April 11. This blog is en route to Catalonia to celebrate the POUM, so we’re closed for at least a week. This is just as well as Paul SkaNad – furious at the odds on his marriage starting at 50/1 – has just sensationally pulled out of our Soho guerrilla show. “An’ this is why Gal is pulling the plugs on the band,” mutters a pissed-off Fit Bird. “Or at least this line-up...” Gertcha cow-son indeed. Someone please tell our all-female support act, Clitoris All-Sorts.
April 10. The news in headlines: Gonads set to play first ‘guerrilla gig’ in Soho this June; watch this space for details... fury mounts as Fat Col’s Rawhides UK get TV and radio play for their controversy-courting debut single, Khan’t Stand The Khan’t... and the new Members album to be released on 3rd May...
April 9. Cock Sparrer’s final album charted on its release last Friday following positive reviews in the Daily Mirror and Daily Express. Daryl Smith tells us that Hand On Heart entered the charts at number ten but dropped to 33 by midweek. Sparrer are now urging all fans to buy the record ASAP to give the band the Top 30 entry they so obviously deserve.
Newly elected Club 77 president Ed Butt is courting controversy by running a book on which two of the great Gonads family will be involved in a Vegas wedding ceremony next Easter. Band members were horrified to see that the early runners and riders include: Miss Management and Paul SkaNad 50/1, Fat Col & Wattsie 40/1, JC and Aitch 30/1, Fat Col & Fit Bird 20/1, Phil McDermott and “an airline hostess” 10/1, Wattsie and “some fallen rock star” 10/l, The PM & Wossname 8/1, Miss Management & Gal Gonad 5/1, Phil McDermott & the Yeti 5/1, Fat Col & Aileen Darling 3/1, Lord Waistrel & Sandie West 2/1, Fat Col & The Nosher 1/4. All other bets 100/1.
We hear disturbing reports that the Pranksters’ Eostre Festival included a tribute act to the ultra-violent Blackheath Foot & Death Morris Men. A shaken insider on a reverse-charges call told the blog: “A few axes were flying. Fat Col was involved. He and the dancers go back years. The lads were notorious at Summer Festivals in early 70s and were experts in civil insurrection. They were very much part of the ‘nasty band’ movement of the period and famously danced on stage with Skinner’s Rats at the Roundhouse.” We can also reveal that the aggro-loving hoofers narrowly escaped arrest after ejection from an Indian restaurant in Woolwich in 1971 “due to the role of a meat cleaver in the performance of their traditional English dance”, years before something similar happened to the Gonads in Lee High Road. The insider (Effete El) added, “A few of us feel that celebrating their thuggish heritage is a risky development for our fun-loving fraternal order.” Blimey.
This blog is shut temporarily. Back soon.
April 1st. Awesome exclusive news: There will be a wedding ceremony in Las Vegas next April (2025) involving two people strongly associated with the Gonads. And, even bigger and more exclusive news, Beyonce is seriously considering following her Cowboy Carter country-influenced album with a punk-powered one. A representative of Queen Bey’s management company phoned Gal’s PA Fit Bird directly about the project, due to be released in 2026. Off the record, and not to be leaked to the press, it seems Beyonce wants to record a Gonads cover but is torn between I Lost My Love To A UK Sub and South London Aggro Girl – “which she would relocate to South Central LA”. We are told she is also interested in adapting the Partisans’ I Never Needed You and The Specials’ Ghost Town. Miss Management told the blog: “She isn’t interested in the likes of the League or SLF but loves the down-to-earth warmth of the Gonads and Case. Remember today’s date because this band’s future has never looked brighter.” Blimey.
