search the friars website
   
 

Saturday April 19th 1980

friars aylesbury phase three - maxwell hall, civic centre, market square, aylesbury

exclusive friars aylesbury interview with viv albertine

 
The Slits
the nightingales  creation rebel
 
related friars history (click on date)
The Slits Friday December 22nd 1978
 
setlist
 
 
band line up
The Slits
 Ari Up (vocs) Palmolive (drums) Viv Albertine (guitar)  teresa Pollitt (bass)
`
gig poster and flyer (click to enlarge flyer)

 
 
ticket

  

memories
 Rick Pearce, writing the for New Roxette and the Friars Aylesbury website in 2009:

A special evening.  Arrived late but still in time to catch the end of the Nightingales set. They were playing difficult music with their backs to the audience. There was some heckling going on and the big question was what did the complainers expect? Surely not more punk clichés?

Creation Rebel unleashed huge dub sounds and rhythms on us with some occasional, barely audible percussion from Ari Up. Downstairs grooving to the music I looked round and saw a smiling David Stopps doing the same. They were colossal, magnificent and personally only exceeded by a Tackhead show years later at the Town & Country, featuring Adrian Sherwood’s looped chanting monks and guest contributions by Wobble and Keith Levene.

To continue on the theme of magnificence, The Slits had all bases covered. The vertiginous roar of their early days was long gone, as were Palmolive and Budgie. Their replacement was Bruce Smith from The Pop Group who was superb and could play melody lines on his drumkit. Tessa was rock solid on bass and between them they created a massive foundation allowing everything else to flow freely. Viv Albertine pushed things forward with her insistent, sharp, scratchy guitar rhythms which had proved so effective on Cut the previous year while Ari’s whoops and warbles completed the huge primitive/sophisticated other worldly sound, redolent of some tropical jungle paradise. Could this be how pop music sounds in the Garden of Eden? For an encore the rest of The Pop Group trooped on stage and the whole ensemble crashed through a gloriously shambolic In The Beginning There Was Rhythm.

This really was an amazing night, a personal musical highlight and an object lesson in the vital importance of the rhythm section. There were probably people there who will disagree, but who said music had to be an objective thing? Coincidentally there are features on both The Slits and The Nightingales in the current Mojo. They are both recording again…

 
press cuttings

thanks to graham britten for the nme cuttings

what happened next
The Slits made no more records after 1981 until recently.  Ari Up died in 2010.

The Nightingales are now back together too.

 
odds and trivia
 
official web presence
The Slits official website  The Nightingales official site
 
sound and vision
 

The Slits - Man Next Door

 
 
The Nightingales - The Crunch
 
 
  Creation Rebel - Rebel Vibration
 
 

privacy policy  legal and t&c  contact 

© copyright 2007-2021 david stopps/friars aylesbury ltd

All rights reserved and no part of this website may be reproduced without written permission - please see terms and conditions for details. All photos copyright mike o'connor except where specifically stated and used with permission.