VICE SQUAD

Becki Bondage Dave Bateman Mark Hambly Shane Baldwin Later Lia Dave Bateman Jon Chilcott Shane Baldwin Sooty

Any keen peruser of the many punk reference tomes lining the shelves of discerning bookshops will, if they care to look at a Vice Squad entry, see something along the lines of "Vice Squad emerged from the ashes of local garage bands TV Brakes and The Contingent". To be fair, this statement isn't entirely untrue, but it is a little misleading. Our singer Beki certainly did form a band called The Contingent long before Vice Squad, but it never got past the rehearsal stage, while the TV Brakes, the first band formed by myself (on drums) and guitarist Dave Bateman, played a lot of local gigs and wrote many of the songs that were later used by Vice Squad.

Just to be contrary, the first Vice Squad recording (with the erstwhile Mark Hambly on bass) is the last track on this CD, "Nothing", which appeared on the Heartbeat Records "Avon Calling" compilation (Heartbeat HB 1) in 1979.

After the success of the Brighton compilation "Vaultage '78", regional collections were in vogue, and "Avon Calling" sold well, but the best part was that John Peel took a shine to our track and played it to death on his Radio 1 show. We had two other strokes of luck in 1979, playing our debut gig as last minute additions to a Rock Against Racism bill at the Bristol University Anson Rooms on 12 April (where Heartbeat boss Simon Edwards spotted us), then supporting The Damned and The Ruts at the Bristol Locarno. These events were a staggering contrast to the TV Brakes days, when we considered ourselves lucky to secure gigs at the local Railway Preservation Society, and even the local Borstal, and meant that we soon picked up a sizeable local following. The problem, though, was that most of our new friends verged on the psychopathic, and we were quickly banned from playing most venues in the South West of England. In 1980 we managed just 6 gigs, but at the last of these, another Socialist Workers Party benefit (this time "Rock Against Thatcher") Simon Edwards suggested that we join forces and form a new label for our debut single. Dave came up with the name Riot City (after the violent scenes occurring in the St Pauls area of our city, and others around the country), and early 1981 saw the release of "Last Rockers" (Riot 1). I tracked down Sounds journalist Garry Bushell, in a pub near the paper's offices, and he championed the record in its pages, while John Peel again gave us his support, opening his show with it several nights in a row, though he always moaned about Dave's "irritating" guitar bit at the end. To our amazement, the initial pressing of 1,500 (which we had thought foolhardy on Simon's part, reckoning 1,000 would have been pushing it) sold out straight away, and "Last Rockers" went on to sell over 22,000 copies, reaching No. 7 on the Indie Chart. I don't suppose Rod Stewart was quaking in his snakeskin boots, but that's a lot of records, however you look at it. Emboldened, we went back to Cave Studios (where "Last Rockers" was also recorded) with a new song, "Resurrection", which became our second single (Riot 2). This sold roughly the same number of copies as its predecessor, and bettered it on the Indie Chart, reaching the No. 4 spot after entering the chart on 30 May. The success of the two singles upped our profile considerably (as today's marketing people would no doubt put it), and resulted in some choice live shows, like a support slot with The Damned at The Lyceum and a short tour with the UK Subs. Somewhat reluctantly, the other music papers began to take notice of us, and though their coverage was often disparaging, we quickly realised that it didn't really matter what they said, as long as they let people know we were out there. Add to all this a John Peel session, which he repeated several times on his show, and it's not surprising that other record labels were soon sniffing around. In the Punk Credibility Stakes, choosing to sign to EMI was a bit of a risk, and we certainly came in for a bit of flak from the Punk purists, but as the Angelic Upstarts and Cockney Rejects were already signed to the label (like us, on the Regal Zonophone imprint), we felt in good company. Our first recording for EMI was the debut Vice Squad album "No Cause For Concern", and it was an unmitigated disaster. Foolishly, under the guidance of our then manager, Ian, we went into a studio whose only merit was that it was cheaper than Cave. The album (ZEM 103) was actually quite successful, reaching No. 32 on the national album chart in October, but the fact that I can't bring myself to include one track from it in this collection should give some indication as to how woeful the finished result actually was. More than a little ashamed of ourselves, when EMI suggested that we try their Manchester Square studio for our next recording, the single "Out Of Reach", we felt in no position to argue, but if anything, the results of that session were even worse.

For that reason, the version of "Out Of Reach" included here is the one that was recorded for our second album "Stand Strong Stand Proud", rather the single version (Z 26) which, ironically, was our only national single chart "hit" reaching No. 68 in February 1982.

The b-side tracks were "(So) What For The Eighties?", which is represented here by a far superior four-track demo version recorded just before the Manchester Square session, and "Sterile", which is taken from the single as the peculiar mix, which was very heavy on vocals and drums but light on guitar and bass, by a happy accident seemed to suit that song rather well. Tracks 9 - 13 are my favourites from the aforementioned "Stand Strong Stand Proud" album (ZEM 104), produced by our new co-manager Sooty, which was slightly preceded by the "Stand Strong Stand Proud EP". The EP (Z 30) failed to chart, despite a gushing Single Of The Week review by Steve Keaton in Sounds (the fact that we included four tracks, reducing the volume level to such an extent that it couldn't be played on the radio probably didn't help), but the album entered the national chart on 22 May and rose to No. 47. We spent the summer touring Europe, the USA and Canada, before returning to the UK for a month-long tour to promote the "State Of The Nation EP" (Z 34) in October. I've included the a-side track "Citizen" here, plus one of the b-sides, "Scarred For Life". "State Of The Nation" turned out to be our last release with Beki on vocals. She announced her intention to leave the band early in 1983, when preparations for our third album were already well underway, and we were immediately dropped by EMI. They kept Beki on their books for a short while, releasing the first single by her new band Ligotage, then she too was shown the door. As you can imagine, these were difficult times for Vice Squad, but we recruited a new vocalist, Lia, Sooty joined the band as second guitarist, and we signed a one-off single deal with Anagram. "Black Sheep" (ANA 16) was only really intended to announce the fact that we were still among those present, but to our surprise it sold very well, (helped in no small part by heavy airplay on Radio 1 by DJ David Jensen, and a session on his show) entering the Indie Chart in December and climbing to No. 13.

This success led to a more long-term deal with Anagram, who released the follow-up single "You'll Never Know" (ANA 22) in 1984, not to mention heavy touring around the UK and a memorable trip to Lisbon, Portugal, for a brace of gigs at the newly opened Rock Rendezvous club. However, most of that year was spent recording, at last, our third album, "Shot Away" (GRAM 14).

Working with a small budget, using "down-time" at SAM Studios, the album was a long time in the making, but the finished result was everything we had hoped for: a Punk album with a Rock feel that showed we had progressed musically but not lost track of our roots. Well, I think so anyway. Mark left the band roughly halfway through the recording of "Shot Away", and was replaced by our friend Jon Chilcott, formerly bassist with The Crazy Trains, who played on the remaining tracks. This led to a little confusion as a track from the album, a cover of The Sweet's "Teenage Rampage", was issued as a single (ANA 26) shortly before the album appeared, and Jon's photo was on the cover, though Mark actually played on the song. The single entered the Indie chart in January 1985, and reached the No. 44 slot. To our chagrin, "Shot Away" failed to chart, though Spike Sommer awarded it five stars in the 2 February issue of Sounds, concluding his review with the pleasing, if ungrammatical words, "Five stars is not enough". It made little difference, though, as by then Vice Squad were no more, and Dave, Jon & I had already launched a new band, Sweet Revenge. But that's another story. Tracks 16-24 on this CD include all the Vice Squad #2 singles, plus the best b-sides and my (admittedly biased) favourites from "Shot Away". To conclude: It was hardly a bed of roses, being in Vice Squad, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world, and I think we knocked out some pretty good stuff along the way. (Shane Baldwin April 2000) Next Page