GIG REVIEW: The Professionals + Desperate Measures, The Cluny, Newcastle, Tuesday 19 October 2021
For a band who were formed in 1979, The Professionals have a relatively small body of work to show for it.
Formed from the ashes of the Sex Pistols by guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook, they only released one album and four singles during their original lifespan.
The band split in 1982, but reconvened in 2015 (without Jones) to celebrate the release of a 3CD set of their early work.
Tom Spencer (Big Boy Tomato/The Lurkers/The Yo-Yos/The Men They Couldn’t Hang) stepped in as frontman with Jones’s blessing, and the band decided they were on to something good.
Since then they’ve released the 2017 album What In The World, a series of 10in EPs and, last month, excellent new album S.N.A.F.U. (reviewed here).
Cook is the only original member, with the current line-up rounded out by the band’s ex-tech guy Toshi JC Ogawa on bass and Rich Jones (The Yo-Yos/Michael Monroe Band) as touring guitarist.
Although he’s now 65, Cook remains an outstanding drummer, full of power and precision, and the trio in front of him kick up a most enjoyable racket, with Spencer and Jones throwing down some huge chugging riffs.
They’re a few dates into the tour, and are cooking on gas from the off, opening with Payola, one of the best songs from their 1981 album I Didn’t See It Coming.
It’s followed by Going Going Gone, from What In The World (how many bands have had 36 years between their first and second records?).
As the impressive backdrop makes clear, they’re here to play the new album S.N.A.F.U., and its opening track Easily Lead is next up.
It’s one of four songs they play from the new record, the best of them being its excellent lead single Spike Me Baby.
We also get Rewind and Hats Off from WITW, but sadly there was no room for my favourite track from that record, Good Man Down.
That’s because they rolled back the years to wheel out some of their best songs from back in the day: Just Another Dream, One Two Three and Kick Down The Doors.
The band’s Pistols roots weren’t forgotten, with the Jones-Cook composition Silly Thing rapturously received mid-set, and Steppin’ Stone thundered out as an encore.
Whether it’s punk, power-pop or good old rock ‘n’ roll is open to debate, but it hits all the right spots, and the hour-long set is over far too quickly.
It’s perhaps appropriate that the opening band, Desperate Measures, were missing in action for about the same length of time as The Professionals.
Formed in New Zealand in the early 1980s, they issued just one 7in single, the 1984 EP, before going their separate ways.
Resurrected in London in recent years by frontman Eugene Butcher (the only original member), they’re another band making up for lost time as they thunder through a set of punk with a large helping of rock and a dash of glam.
He’s joined in the current line-up by James Sherry (Dealing With Damage) on drums, Ricky McGuire (UK Subs/The Men They Couldn’t Hang) on bass and Gaff (The Glitterati/Rich Ragany And The Digressions) on guitar.
They recently released a new record too, the 10in EP Rinsed, whose six tracks recall the proto-punk/garage rock of Iggy Pop and his band The Stooges.
The set revolves heavily around the EP, with Scars And Memories, Rich-Tual and Flowers At Your Door the highlights, with the gravel-voiced frontman showing he can walk the walk as well as writing about it as the main man of Vive le Rock magazine.
They end a hugely enjoyable 30-minute set with a cover of I Wanna Be Your Dog, which feels somehow fitting. They’re a band well worth seeing if you get the chance.
