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!
July 25. News in brief: A live recording of Pegging Sue will be a bonus track on the planned 2025 Gonads album… Gal finds four more “bangers” he’d forgotten he’d written… half the band are pushing for us to record Loonstompers 2 next year as well… and Captain Oi re-release the first two Cockney Rejects album as a CD boxset with bonus tracks…
The details: Our Buddy Holly spoof Pegging Sue was recorded live at Arkwrights last year but will not be in this year’s live show sets… Gal discovered the chords and lyrics to four new Gonads songs, including Wat Tyler’s Back and Forward To Death, in a shoe box at Nads HQ yesterday. Miss Management tells us, “He writes stuff in the middle of the night and forgets about it. The songs are all high quality which probably means next year’s album will have 16 tracks plus bonus numbers rather than 12. Our guiding principle is that the record must be better than Revolution Now, which is difficult to pull off but not impossible. We have had interest from two labels but have not yet reached any agreements. More bids are welcome.” On the question of the follow-up to All The Loonstompers, she explained, “Again the new Ska songs are top quality but my feeling is we will save that for 2026. It would be bonkers to release both projects next year. We have to pace ourselves.”
The Top 5 Gonads albums as voted for by Club 77: Revolution Now! Back & Backing. Glorious Bastards. Live Free Die Free. New Boots, No Panties.
In a more serious development, our anonymous mole inside the illustrious and mysterious Jolly Pranksters fraternity tells us that senior Pranksters, worried by mounting rumours about a female infiltrator – allegedly Wattsie, disguised with a prominent dildo, with her bosoms taped down – have ordered that all members of their so-called 69th degree (aka the ‘club within a club’) must be “searched intimately for concealed weapons”. The top-secret mole (Effete El) tells us: “They asked for volunteers to do the searching. Fat Col immediately stepped forward, but they turned him down for having ‘an obvious ulterior motive’; such a job should fall to someone whose morality and principles are beyond question, like the PM himself and his grand rank associate Wilf Smith aka Ol’ Wandering Hands”. So mote it be. We think…
July 24. Conspiracy theories about the two Gonads who are allegedly members of the Jolly Pranksters’ 69th degree (aka the ‘club within a club’) continue to mount (unlike Fat Col). A school of thought persists maintaining that Wattsie Watts is one of the pair, despite the Pranksters being a male-only fraternity. They argue that “she has form for impersonating men” and prove it with this historic photo of Wattsie using a dildo to impersonate a drag queen in order to obtain free entry to Madame JoJo’s. She could, they say, be using similar subterfuge to infiltrate the brotherhood. Gonads loyalists Sid & Doris Puke dismiss the “crank theory” asking “how would she conceal her magnificent assets?” But a grim-faced Pranksters spokesman (Effete El) tells us that senior brethren will be made aware of the disturbing claim.
July 20. The cult 2021 punk book, Grammar Free In The U.K., is now finally available as an audiobook with extra content. For the book, Derek and Dave Philpott sent bizarre letters to leading British punks and got hilarious replies from the likes of Cock Sparrer, Splodge, the Rejects, the Upstarts, us, Steve Ig, the Ruts DC and more – and all have taken part in the audiobook. Del tells us, “We have 70 contributions voiced by the actual artists; it’s quite magnificent... and utterly unique. It’s been remixed and remastered, which has taken 100s of hours (no, really). As with the previous editions, we’re supporting CRISIS UK/Musicians Against Homelessness, with £2,440 already donated.” It’s available from Amazon Worldwide and Amazon UK.
Ain’t it fair? Bruce Springsteen is now officially a dollar billionaire and we can’t even get lowlife tightwads and hangers-on to stand their rounds…
In other news Fat Col has announced he has (once again) ceased his persistent trolling of Wattsie. “I’m a new man, I ain’t never gonna pester Wattsie Watts again,” he tells us, adding dismissively, “She’s too aloof for me anyway; there’s no magic there.” So are you going to behave like a proper human being from now on, we ask? “I’m a reformed man,” he says solemnly. “And I’m in love with someone new.” Who? Do tell. “Daphne Guinness,” he sighs. “Now that’s one quality bird. Beautiful, talented, classy – know what I mean? We’re a perfect match.” How does she feel about that? “She don’t know it yet, but she will when she wakes up and finds a thousand roses on her lawn tomorrow, along with two turtle doves up a pole and a Renee and Renato tribute act belting out Save Your Love…” The poor woman.
July 19. Our new DMG ep, Dirty Metal Gonads 2, is out on 2nd August. Here are a couple of pre-order links: iTunes and
The DMG project has its roots in our TNT track from 1982’s Total Noise ep, which was one of the earliest punk/metal crossovers. These songs are Indus Road – about growing up in Charlton, London SE7, the band’s spiritual home where Gal says his maternal great aunts (from south Wales via Poplar) used to fight men topless in Charlton Village. Urban Guerrilla – a heavyweight cover of a controversial Hawkwind single that was banned by the BBC. 18 Stone of Dynamite (Half Inch Fuse) – rock’n’roll in its hardest, rawest and dirtiest form. Says Gal: “I wanted it to sound extreme and deranged, and to push the boundaries. I think we managed that.” Tough ’n’ tasty indeed.
In other news, the whispered Paris event will take place on Friday November 15, 2024, and include the first-ever performance by the French Gonads. Seriously. Pour commander, mes frères. Passports ready.
Internet speculation about which Gonads are secretly fully-signed-up “practitioners in the dark arts of the Jolly Pranksters” and active participants in the brethren’s so-called club within a club range from the absurd (JC and Major Tom) to the impossible (Gal and Wattsie). A laughing Miss M tells the blog “We normally ignore these rabbit-hole theories but how could Wattsie be involved in the Pranksters’ 69th degree? It’s an all-male fraternity.” Quite so. Let’s draw a line under this trivial nonsense.
July 16. Watch out for book-and-authors fanzine Spinners. The brainchild of early 80s punk fanziner, Raoul Galloway, it’s in the vein of John King’s lit-zine Verbal but is likely to prove more prolific. Raoul has also published Joe England’s latest book, Lone Moor Road, about an innocent boy visiting Northern Ireland in 1973 and returning fifty years later. At a recent book reading in London, Joe was supported by performances from Tim ‘Teething’ Wells, Chip Hamer, Calum O'Keefe, Steve Potts (of Criminal Damage) and Garrie ‘Guitar’ Lammin who contributed a handful of songs including the original version of Sparrer’s Running Riot. John King described the night as “Proper people who believe in what they're doing, the power of the small-press underground.” Check out Raoul’s website.
July 13. News in brief: we have added a Norfolk gig, B2 Brickmakers, Norwich, on 2nd November... Gal’s new books have all been postponed until 2025... hints about the next Gonads album emerge... fresh Prankster scandal excites gutter press.
Those stories in full: we will join a packed bill at the Norwich Brickmakers gig with Hung Like Hanratty, Scandal, Jack The Lad, Tear Up and Violent Solution. Our farewell mini-tour of north London begins at the 229 in October (Cream Of The Crop), followed by the Spice Of Life, Soho, 11th November, and a final show, with special guests, at the Dublin Castle on 6th December. No further full gigs are likely this year, but Miss Management was yesterday overheard speaking cryptically about “a Paris event” possibly in November. Exciting!
Gal’s PA Fit Bird has announced that his latest, long-awaited Harry Tyler novel, plus Sounds Of Glory volumes 3 and 4, and the rumoured Gonads annual have “bin pushed back like the Ottoman hordes at the gates of Vienna”. No reasons were given. But she did reveal that the next Gonads release will be a split album “half-Nads, half GBX”, released ideally a year from now. Although playing down the project, Miss M told the blog: “Revolution Now! is the benchmark to beat, so we won’t be heading back until we know the songs are better than those ones. Everything has to be inch perfect and spot on.” Quite so.
Meanwhile sensational allegations have emerged suggesting that two members of The Gonads are secretly fully-signed-up “practitioners in the dark arts of the Jolly Pranksters” – and worse, that they are also active participants in the 69th degree, the brethren’s so-called ‘club within a club’, a level of membership and enlightenment that the only the most devoted and influential brother can obtain. Newspaper enquiries have been batted away with stony “no-comments” but top investigators from the US National Enquirer are said to be “on it like a car bonnet”. A tight-lipped Martin Sporrell (aggressive Gooner) dismissed the claims as “gutter-press smears” adding “There ain’t no Pranksters here” before telling his security detail to “step off with the left foot”. Blimey. So mote it be.
July 12. We are devastated to learn that our former drummer Paul Haslin has died. Scottish-born Paul – widely known as RD (Robber’s Dog) and MacGonad – played for us in the first Nacho Jase/Mick Maverick line-up and appears on our Live Free, Die Free double album. Paul also played in Pete Way’s Waysted and was a session musician for the Orgasm Guerrillas. No cause of death has been confirmed, but a close friend tells us that RD had “started feeling very ill a week ago; he took himself to hospital here in Milton Keynes and was a bit better the next day, and said he wanted to sleep.” If we hear more, we’ll pass it on, along with more MacGonad memories. Rest In Power, mate.
