Description
The Lurkers - Past & Future Landslide
A boxed set of three CDs + booklet featuring two studio albums by The Lurkers along with a previously unreleased live recording from 1977!
CHEMICAL LANDSLIDE
With this album we wanted to keep part of that old school Lurkers feel – major chords, big choruses, shout along punk etc, but to make it that bit heavier. I think we succeeded. My guitar playing was by this point getting more metallic, and Esso and Nigel were both on top form for this album.
The record opens with ‘Every Night’s a Story’. I like the tune for this one a lot, it’s one of the catchiest on the album, I think. The album’s title track ‘Chemical Landslide’ has a Mick Jones-style one note riff which nicely compliments the lyric, a wistful reflection on times gone by. One of our later tracks, ‘The Boys In The Corner’ from the Sex Crazy album, touched upon a similar sentiment. I also get to do more of a wig-out solo later on!
‘Surviving’ has a cool military-beat dropout section which I’ve always liked. ‘Here Comes My Life’ is a good one. It opens with a quiet (for us) intro featuring a bit of Spanish guitar. Then comes the onslaught! ‘Crash Landing’ and ‘Bad Caroline’ are good tunes which I think fans who’d been with us from the early days would enjoy.
One thread that runs through the album the lyrical melancholy. Despite that the album was a lot of fun to make, hopefully that comes across too.
THE FUTURE’S CALLING
The Futures Calling seems like more of a "traditional" Lurkers album than Chemical Landslide on the whole. It is not so dark lyrically, and musically it doesn’t venture so far into metal territory. Production-wise we were a bit more confident with this one and we had a good workflow. Unusually for most bands we would bring each track to completion (ie. totally mixed and mastered) before moving onto the next. We were trying hard to keep the tempo and attack up for the bulk of the album, and with hindsight we may have overdone it a tad, a bit more variation might have been a good idea.
Some of my favourite tracks...
The opener ‘The Futures Calling’ - a return to ‘Jennyville’ and a nice slice of (very) powerpop. ‘Summer Nights are Never Like Movies’ - this is my personal favourite, and I would rank it highly amongst all the songs I’ve written. There is a lot of content and some nice rhythmic shifts, and I love the main chorus. ‘Make me Forget Where we Are’ - a raucous and catchy drinking type song. ‘Nearly Home’ - hopefully quite a meaningful song, a bit divisive, too slow for some but loved by others. We kept it empty as possible to boost the atmospherics. I really like the ‘Racing Through Time’ with the interesting lead guitar lines and the way the whole song builds up to a massive climax. ‘New Songs like the Old Songs’ - I later plundered this song for parts and it evolved into ‘Electrical Guitar’ which went on to become our first number one vinyl single. ‘It’s All Happening Today’ - I really like the choruses. I was going for a ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’ type feel but I don’t think anyone would notice, it didn’t really end up that way. And finally, ‘Not the Real Thing’ which ends proceedings in a suitably powered-up manner. T
LIVE IN MARGATE 1977
It was 1977 and things were progressing extremely well. We had signed to Beggars Banquet and our first single ‘Shadow’ b/w ‘Love Story’ had been released. John Peel had been playing both sides of the single most nights on his radio show, so we were getting heard by a lot of people. But we didn’t yet have a "proper" tour bus, so we all piled into a transit for the trip down to Margate with our tour manager Mike Stone in the driving seat.
The Queens Hotel turned out to be a pretty good venue. There was a nice high stage which we much preferred over the low-slung platforms of some of the places we played. It meant that the crowd wasn’t totally swamping us the whole time, although there would still be a constant stream of people jumping on and off stage, bumping us, knocking equipment over and so forth. We weren’t sure if many people would turn up on a cold and windy night so close to Christmas but it was a good turnout, and they were out for a good time too. There was none of the aggro stuff which would become a problem later on at our shows.
The actual gig was typical of a Lurkers show at that time, being fairly chaotic with a lot of crowd "interaction". There is a recklessly fast version of ‘Pills’ on the recording, and I think we were playing ‘It’s Quiet Here’ for the first time live. Howard was on good form too; it would be his birthday on Christmas Day. My favourite quip from him is towards the end of the show when he says "eat your heart out Hank Marvin" after one of my more eccentric Shadows guitar intros.
PETE STRIDE 2022
CHEMICAL LANDSLIDE
With this album we wanted to keep part of that old school Lurkers feel – major chords, big choruses, shout along punk etc, but to make it that bit heavier. I think we succeeded. My guitar playing was by this point getting more metallic, and Esso and Nigel were both on top form for this album.
The record opens with ‘Every Night’s a Story’. I like the tune for this one a lot, it’s one of the catchiest on the album, I think. The album’s title track ‘Chemical Landslide’ has a Mick Jones-style one note riff which nicely compliments the lyric, a wistful reflection on times gone by. One of our later tracks, ‘The Boys In The Corner’ from the Sex Crazy album, touched upon a similar sentiment. I also get to do more of a wig-out solo later on!
‘Surviving’ has a cool military-beat dropout section which I’ve always liked. ‘Here Comes My Life’ is a good one. It opens with a quiet (for us) intro featuring a bit of Spanish guitar. Then comes the onslaught! ‘Crash Landing’ and ‘Bad Caroline’ are good tunes which I think fans who’d been with us from the early days would enjoy.
One thread that runs through the album the lyrical melancholy. Despite that the album was a lot of fun to make, hopefully that comes across too.
THE FUTURE’S CALLING
The Futures Calling seems like more of a "traditional" Lurkers album than Chemical Landslide on the whole. It is not so dark lyrically, and musically it doesn’t venture so far into metal territory. Production-wise we were a bit more confident with this one and we had a good workflow. Unusually for most bands we would bring each track to completion (ie. totally mixed and mastered) before moving onto the next. We were trying hard to keep the tempo and attack up for the bulk of the album, and with hindsight we may have overdone it a tad, a bit more variation might have been a good idea.
Some of my favourite tracks...
The opener ‘The Futures Calling’ - a return to ‘Jennyville’ and a nice slice of (very) powerpop. ‘Summer Nights are Never Like Movies’ - this is my personal favourite, and I would rank it highly amongst all the songs I’ve written. There is a lot of content and some nice rhythmic shifts, and I love the main chorus. ‘Make me Forget Where we Are’ - a raucous and catchy drinking type song. ‘Nearly Home’ - hopefully quite a meaningful song, a bit divisive, too slow for some but loved by others. We kept it empty as possible to boost the atmospherics. I really like the ‘Racing Through Time’ with the interesting lead guitar lines and the way the whole song builds up to a massive climax. ‘New Songs like the Old Songs’ - I later plundered this song for parts and it evolved into ‘Electrical Guitar’ which went on to become our first number one vinyl single. ‘It’s All Happening Today’ - I really like the choruses. I was going for a ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’ type feel but I don’t think anyone would notice, it didn’t really end up that way. And finally, ‘Not the Real Thing’ which ends proceedings in a suitably powered-up manner. T
LIVE IN MARGATE 1977
It was 1977 and things were progressing extremely well. We had signed to Beggars Banquet and our first single ‘Shadow’ b/w ‘Love Story’ had been released. John Peel had been playing both sides of the single most nights on his radio show, so we were getting heard by a lot of people. But we didn’t yet have a "proper" tour bus, so we all piled into a transit for the trip down to Margate with our tour manager Mike Stone in the driving seat.
The Queens Hotel turned out to be a pretty good venue. There was a nice high stage which we much preferred over the low-slung platforms of some of the places we played. It meant that the crowd wasn’t totally swamping us the whole time, although there would still be a constant stream of people jumping on and off stage, bumping us, knocking equipment over and so forth. We weren’t sure if many people would turn up on a cold and windy night so close to Christmas but it was a good turnout, and they were out for a good time too. There was none of the aggro stuff which would become a problem later on at our shows.
The actual gig was typical of a Lurkers show at that time, being fairly chaotic with a lot of crowd "interaction". There is a recklessly fast version of ‘Pills’ on the recording, and I think we were playing ‘It’s Quiet Here’ for the first time live. Howard was on good form too; it would be his birthday on Christmas Day. My favourite quip from him is towards the end of the show when he says "eat your heart out Hank Marvin" after one of my more eccentric Shadows guitar intros.
PETE STRIDE 2022