When Penetration played Edinburgh’s Citrus Club a couple of weeks before Christmas 2009 as part of a mini season of old time ‘punk’ bands, the County Durham based combo sounded a whole lot different from The Lurkers, 999 and co. It wasn’t the audience of somewhat grizzled looking middle-aged men sporting squeezed-on black t-shirts that gave Penetration their edge. Nor was it the music, which, while possessed with an ear for infectious power pop melodies infinitely more sophisticated than their spiky-topped peers, was hardly breaking musical boundaries.
The real attraction was the dynamic figure centre stage dressed in black, leaning provocatively out past the monitors or else down on her knees. With a microphone clutched in both hands and the swoopingly melodramatic voice of a coarsened choir-girl, the band’s kohl-eyed front-woman could have passed for someone in their mid-twenties rocking a Joan Jett look.
As it is, Pauline Murray first sang with Penetration in 1977. Over three decades on, she is an unexpectedly credible survivor of a time when the musical rule-book was ripped up, only to be reassembled by a far more cut-throat industry than the one punk was supposed to have consigned to history. Onstage, Murray is a mix of ferocity and vulnerability, as if she still has something to prove. She may have sang the same cover of Buzzcocks mid-period chainsaw romance, Nostalgia, that Penetration used to do all those years ago, but far from going through the motions, Murray was clearly in the moment.
“We’re doing it because we want to do it,’ says Murray, who finishes Penetration’s latest tour with dates in Perth and Glasgow this week. “It’s good fun, even though we’re doing everything on our own. We have no record company or management behind us, which means we’re totally in control of everything we do. But we might be taking a bit of time out soon. We’re all doing other things beside Penetration, and we don’t want to be available all the time.”
These are typically feisty words from someone whose debut single was titled Don’t Dictate, and whose formative musical experiences came as a teenage music nut watching bands at Newcastle City Hall. A visit to London to catch the buzz of the nascent punk seen found Murray and her then boyfriend Peter Lloyd stalking Sex Pistols front-man Johnny Rotten down the King’s Road. The seeds of Penetration were sown after Murray met guitarist Gary Chaplin on a bus en route to a Roxy Music gig. With bassist Robert Blamire and drummer Gary Smallman in tow, Penetration made their debut at London punk mecca The Roxy, supporting Generation X and The Adverts.
“Initially we were just having a laugh,” Murray remembers. “We all had jobs, and were doing Jonathan Richman and New York Dolls songs, getting support slots with The Stranglers, not taking things too seriously.”
Following Chaplin’s departure, however, Murray, Blamire and co fell in with Status Quo’s very un-punk management company, who guided them towards signing with Virgin Records. Debut album Moving Targets promised much, but Penetration found themselves caught up on the rock n’ roll conveyor belt.
“We took things as far as we could in this country,” Murray admits, “then went to America for what became this five week slog playing thirty-four dates. When you’re doing gigs every night for three years you eventually get tired and start wondering what the point of things are.”
On the band’s return they were hustled into the studio to record second album, Coming Up For Air. Despite the urgency of potential crossover single Come Into The Open, exhaustion and internal strife marked the end of the road. Unlike their peers Siouxsie and the Banshees, whose own internal collapse fired them on to both commercial and cult success, Penetration’s burn-out was final.
“It’s quite funny after the last gig you do,” Murray opines, “and you drop everyone off from the van, then you don’t see them for the next ten years.”
What is arguably Murray’s finest musical moment came less than a year later, however, when, having begun writing with Blamire, the pair was put into the studio with producer Martin Hannett. At the time, Hannett was Factory Records in-house boffin whose cache was high following his mould-breaking work with Joy Division. The result of the collaboration with Murray and Blamire was the eponymous Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls album, which featured an array of Manchester’s musical set who lent Murray a voguish sophistication that was a considerable leap forward from Penetration.
It didn’t last, however, as Murray and Blamire’s record label RSO went bankrupt. A period of personal turmoil followed, with Murray leaving Lloyd to hook up romantically as well as creatively with Blamire. Musically, however, things were changing, and without Hannett on board, the new generation of major label bosses wasn’t quite so keen on what was now regarded as an act from a different era.
“By this time I’d had enough,” remembers Murray. “We still put out good records, but still had no money. That was very depressing, but we still wrote. We did an album ourselves, put another band together did gigs, but in the end I just turned my back on it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with music.”
As it turned out, Murray moved behind the scenes, opening her own rehearsal studio, Polestar, in 1990.
“After everything we’d been through I felt I knew what bands wanted and needed,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of young bands pass through the place who are very good, but who can’t get out of the city and split up. That’s such a shame, but if they’ve got decent facilities to work in, maybe that won’t happen quite so often.”
Murray never wanted to reform Penetration. By the time it happened eight years ago, long before the current wave of punk era second comings, she thought she’d put her performing years behind her.
“It’s a funny thing, music,” Murray deadpans. “Everything we did with Penetration the first time round is in the past, but that’s part of you, and it’s never going to go away.”
Despite Penetration’s current high profile, which has seen them support Stiff Little Fingers on tour as well as releasing brand new material on a limited edition single, Murray remains ambivalent about the band’s future. The fact that Uncut magazine recently named the Pauline Murray and The Invisible Girls album in their top fifty lost albums that were currently unavailable may also have something to do with it. A CD reissue, the first since a limited 1993 release, is already on the cards.
“I want to do some more of my own stuff,” Murray says, recognising the limitations of an old-time punk guitar band. “I’d like to do more material where you can do anything rather than just be limited by having to write a certain type of song for Penetration. I’m also busy relocating my business, and am buying a building off the council, which is taking up a lot of time. We may go back to Penetration again eventually, but right now I think I need a bit of me time.”
Penetration, Corrina, Perth, April 23; Sounds In The Suburbs@Stereo, Glasgow, April 24. Penetration’s limited edition 7” single, The Feeling/Guilty, is available now.
www.myspace.com/penetrationreanimated
www.loversofoutrage.com
www.loversofoutrage.co.uk
The Herald, April 22nd 2010
ends
The real attraction was the dynamic figure centre stage dressed in black, leaning provocatively out past the monitors or else down on her knees. With a microphone clutched in both hands and the swoopingly melodramatic voice of a coarsened choir-girl, the band’s kohl-eyed front-woman could have passed for someone in their mid-twenties rocking a Joan Jett look.
As it is, Pauline Murray first sang with Penetration in 1977. Over three decades on, she is an unexpectedly credible survivor of a time when the musical rule-book was ripped up, only to be reassembled by a far more cut-throat industry than the one punk was supposed to have consigned to history. Onstage, Murray is a mix of ferocity and vulnerability, as if she still has something to prove. She may have sang the same cover of Buzzcocks mid-period chainsaw romance, Nostalgia, that Penetration used to do all those years ago, but far from going through the motions, Murray was clearly in the moment.
“We’re doing it because we want to do it,’ says Murray, who finishes Penetration’s latest tour with dates in Perth and Glasgow this week. “It’s good fun, even though we’re doing everything on our own. We have no record company or management behind us, which means we’re totally in control of everything we do. But we might be taking a bit of time out soon. We’re all doing other things beside Penetration, and we don’t want to be available all the time.”
These are typically feisty words from someone whose debut single was titled Don’t Dictate, and whose formative musical experiences came as a teenage music nut watching bands at Newcastle City Hall. A visit to London to catch the buzz of the nascent punk seen found Murray and her then boyfriend Peter Lloyd stalking Sex Pistols front-man Johnny Rotten down the King’s Road. The seeds of Penetration were sown after Murray met guitarist Gary Chaplin on a bus en route to a Roxy Music gig. With bassist Robert Blamire and drummer Gary Smallman in tow, Penetration made their debut at London punk mecca The Roxy, supporting Generation X and The Adverts.
“Initially we were just having a laugh,” Murray remembers. “We all had jobs, and were doing Jonathan Richman and New York Dolls songs, getting support slots with The Stranglers, not taking things too seriously.”
Following Chaplin’s departure, however, Murray, Blamire and co fell in with Status Quo’s very un-punk management company, who guided them towards signing with Virgin Records. Debut album Moving Targets promised much, but Penetration found themselves caught up on the rock n’ roll conveyor belt.
“We took things as far as we could in this country,” Murray admits, “then went to America for what became this five week slog playing thirty-four dates. When you’re doing gigs every night for three years you eventually get tired and start wondering what the point of things are.”
On the band’s return they were hustled into the studio to record second album, Coming Up For Air. Despite the urgency of potential crossover single Come Into The Open, exhaustion and internal strife marked the end of the road. Unlike their peers Siouxsie and the Banshees, whose own internal collapse fired them on to both commercial and cult success, Penetration’s burn-out was final.
“It’s quite funny after the last gig you do,” Murray opines, “and you drop everyone off from the van, then you don’t see them for the next ten years.”
What is arguably Murray’s finest musical moment came less than a year later, however, when, having begun writing with Blamire, the pair was put into the studio with producer Martin Hannett. At the time, Hannett was Factory Records in-house boffin whose cache was high following his mould-breaking work with Joy Division. The result of the collaboration with Murray and Blamire was the eponymous Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls album, which featured an array of Manchester’s musical set who lent Murray a voguish sophistication that was a considerable leap forward from Penetration.
It didn’t last, however, as Murray and Blamire’s record label RSO went bankrupt. A period of personal turmoil followed, with Murray leaving Lloyd to hook up romantically as well as creatively with Blamire. Musically, however, things were changing, and without Hannett on board, the new generation of major label bosses wasn’t quite so keen on what was now regarded as an act from a different era.
“By this time I’d had enough,” remembers Murray. “We still put out good records, but still had no money. That was very depressing, but we still wrote. We did an album ourselves, put another band together did gigs, but in the end I just turned my back on it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with music.”
As it turned out, Murray moved behind the scenes, opening her own rehearsal studio, Polestar, in 1990.
“After everything we’d been through I felt I knew what bands wanted and needed,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of young bands pass through the place who are very good, but who can’t get out of the city and split up. That’s such a shame, but if they’ve got decent facilities to work in, maybe that won’t happen quite so often.”
Murray never wanted to reform Penetration. By the time it happened eight years ago, long before the current wave of punk era second comings, she thought she’d put her performing years behind her.
“It’s a funny thing, music,” Murray deadpans. “Everything we did with Penetration the first time round is in the past, but that’s part of you, and it’s never going to go away.”
Despite Penetration’s current high profile, which has seen them support Stiff Little Fingers on tour as well as releasing brand new material on a limited edition single, Murray remains ambivalent about the band’s future. The fact that Uncut magazine recently named the Pauline Murray and The Invisible Girls album in their top fifty lost albums that were currently unavailable may also have something to do with it. A CD reissue, the first since a limited 1993 release, is already on the cards.
“I want to do some more of my own stuff,” Murray says, recognising the limitations of an old-time punk guitar band. “I’d like to do more material where you can do anything rather than just be limited by having to write a certain type of song for Penetration. I’m also busy relocating my business, and am buying a building off the council, which is taking up a lot of time. We may go back to Penetration again eventually, but right now I think I need a bit of me time.”
Penetration, Corrina, Perth, April 23; Sounds In The Suburbs@Stereo, Glasgow, April 24. Penetration’s limited edition 7” single, The Feeling/Guilty, is available now.
www.myspace.com/penetrationreanimated
www.loversofoutrage.com
www.loversofoutrage.co.uk
The Herald, April 22nd 2010
ends
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