Death To Art Rock! Dave McCullough Gets Hip To The Nips Source: Sounds Date: May 19, 1979 Author: Dave McCullough Copywrite: © Sounds 1979 Photo: by Jane Harper. Caption: "THE NIPS: Paul Weller is their biggest fan" Way back in the dim dark distant days when you and I were just sixteen and when every record you heard sounded a certified classic and every gig you went to sent you home with a buzz in your heart that lasted for days after ... a scrawny, bug-eyed youth appeared on the front cover of Sounds, terminally Punk-looking, and mercilessly captioned: 'The Face of 76'. The mug in question belonged to one Shane MacGowan, then a well-known face in any punks around town imageof 'the London scene' and, now, some three years later, lead singer with The Nips, a London based foursome who've recently resurfaced with a brace of dates and good things to come. The band's recent gig at The Moonlight, for instance was an agreeable blend of ramshackle inspiration and hard-out r'n'b body punches, our four Nips working hand to mouth with a cranky old p.a. but giving enough muscle over the top of the aural chaos to suggest that they could continue mining their particular wholesome, fun-spinning rock and roll niche most successfully. The band's two singles on the mighty Soho label were certainly minor classics and the third 45, the seductive 'Gabrielle' set for June release, looks like being just the miracle tonic for a sagging summer chart. All very well, I hear you asking, but aren't The Nips just a bunch of ageing has-beens who've got no right to be tramping the same boards as yer present day bright sparks? Wrong first time. Sure the Nips are interesting in sheer terms of their history. Singer Shane and joint founding member bassist, the retiring Ms Shanne Bradley, were early faces on the 75, 76 punk scene, the duo associating themselves in particular with those Rickenbacker cowboys, The Jam. And with a simple but fascinating twist of fate in fact, nowadays Paul Weller is a prominent face at many Nips gigs, the besuited fiqure rating the band among his favourites. Dahn the pub we've agreed to use as our rendezvous, the unlikely couple of Shane and Shanne look back on those past-times with a mature affection. "Yeah, I was the bloke that got his ear-lobe bitten off," the wiry, crazy looking Shane reminisces, referring to a smut-press hype job of 76 vintage that depicted Shane rather romantically as the punk wot got his earlobe bitten off by a mystery girl at an early Clash gig. "It got in all the papers and 'earlobe' became sort of one of the punk words like 'safety pin' or 'bondage'..." Shane's memory is tinged with a nostalgia that is battle-torn rather than sweetly-sour. No dragging an antiquated punk scene into the eighties for this boy. No sirree, these old soldiers moved on to their own band with it's own identity, a band that incorporates some of the very best musical infections of the last four years. "Me and her," Shane goes on, raising his voice absurdly loud over the lunchtime pub din and swaying his Guinness in Shanne's direction, "we were part of a big crowd of people who knew all the bands and that... so we decided to get a band together ourselves." The beginnings continued in dourly predictable fashion for the then named Nipple Erectors, the band at that time consisting of our present duo plus assorted drummers and guitarists who seem to come and all too soon go in The Nips like so many managers of first Division football clubs, playing the odd gig down the Mecca-like Roxy and searching for a settled line-up. As we sat talking in fact the band rather enigmatically agreed that the guitarist they have been using recently, Larry Heinrichs, was to be removed in favour of the blond haired, carefully chiselled features of the youth who turned up for the interview by the name of Gavin Douglas. Douglas, formerly of the obscure Bitch, was/is/could be set to make his debut after the band's prestigious Rainbow gig supporting The Jam. Me? I think they just brought him along cos he'd look good in the pictures. Whatever the doubts looming over the future of Nip Heinrichs, the band's fourth member and drummer IS called Grinny, a grim-faced youth and an erstwhileSkrewdriver (his skinhead background gives him little pride). Shane talks of the future with optimism and a clear notion of what he wants for the refined and ultimate Nips sound; "The thing is, y'know, I've always been into the fifties and sixties music, you see, and that's why I was into punk, cos it was simple, loud, fast songs like they had in the fifties and sixties. I thought punk would develop into something a bit like that. Y'know, a nice pop scene with good songs. Instead it developed into all this 'newmusic' which Sounds seems quite fond of... all this avant-garde shit. I can't stand it?" Shane, much to the hilarity of myself and the rest of the group (we're SUCH philestines, us 'young' Sounds staffers!) at this juncture began a drawling, drunken, shockingly accurate haranguing of that vague brand of non-music that's self-righteously termed, ahem, 'experimental' and 'different', the fluff scene that is generally the antithesis of what The Nips have to offer. You know the mentality: The Nips did not go to Art School: so they are not valid. Shane puts it another way: "What I want is a healthy pop scene, y'know, with pop songs with a good beat... there's lots of bands doin' it, lotsa little bands, all the r'n'b bands... and there ARE good bands y'know..." A certain over-optimism I feel, but true in terms of The Nips where phrases like 'a good night out' and 'entertainment' (as opposed to the insipid, sugary, spineless, witless wooliness of yer supposed pop standard bearers, the guilty Buzzcocks, Rods etc.) ring magically true. With the (hoped for) advent of a settled band personnel, the live feel of The Nips should be made much more widely available than ever before, a fact created by the acquisition as band manager of Glitterbest girl Sophie, whose energetic attempts to get everything just right at the Moonlight left her by the end of the evening in a fit of near nervous exhaustion. Whatever the technical shortcomings however it was clear that the band's sound has moved away from its early rockapunky leanings to an altogether raunchier, wholly r'n'b based core. Hence the third single should strike a significant contrast to both the excellent 'King Of The Bop' and its less impressive successor 'All The Time Of The World'. As Grinny and Gavin muse over the merits of the likes of The Real Kids and Inmates (significant reference points for The Nips maybe), Shane reflects on the two singles. "'King Of The Bop' was meant to be a rock and roll number but we weren't that good at playing. Basically we hadn't got it together properly and we just did it in a couple of nights. It came out like a mixture of punk and rock and roll... I don't think it's that good now". Shanne, who has the uncertain distinction of being taught bass by the good Cptn. Sensible of The Damned before forming her own band The Launderettes puts it simply: "We just got sophisticated." I think back to the Moonlight gig and muse over the unconscious humour of the evening that extended beyond the band's anti-star, anti-image (I'm thinking of the continual banter between Shane and Sohoperson Stan at the back of the hall) How seriously then do a band that perform a song as funny as 'Maida Ada (She's Got Big Knockers)' take themselves? Shane: "We don't take ourselves seriously. We DO take the music seriously.. but really rock and roll is all a laugh..." As the afternoon wizzed past and the proprieter of the pub tried repeatedly to shift us out Shane indulged in more barbed analysis of 'new music' only to be halted half way through a thoughtful study of the Gang Of Four ("they are SHIT.") by the merry appearance of Daniel Millar, alias The Normal, darling of 'new music' fans who bode us all a red-faced 'good afternoon' and trudged-out, much wounded. You could have heard us larf in Rough Trade.