?. March 1982

UK SUBS
New York

WHAT HAS America done to the UK Subs?

The Subs seem to have taken up residence here in the States – this Peppermint Lounge show is no less than their seventh seperate appearance this past December, and their eleventh in a little over a year. Nothing wrong with that, of course; the Subs have established a small but steady and fiercely partisan audience here in America, fairly well in tune with their meaty punk.
But what has America done to the Subs? If this show at the Pep in front of a sparse but acrobatic crowd is any indication, the US has drained the Subs of their spark and life; the band on stage tonight is really just going through the motions.
Gibbs, Garratt and Harper do their jobs and do them well, but the gutsy whomp and reckless physical joy I’ve come to expect from the Subs just isn’t there, and any references to it seem to be just a fading memory. Only th Subs’ latest enlistment, drummer John Towe/Kim Wylie, seems to be throwing himself into the show with any of the old Subs spirit.
Early on in the set, those were my feelings about the Subs and this show, but I couldn’t let the story end there. And by about midway through the set, I reconsidered my expectations and just judged the band from what I was seeing and hearing: The plain and simple fact emerged that, even on an off –night, the Subs blew away most bands at their peak.

Tonight, the Subs were playing as well as ever; in fact they were playing as well as I had ever heard them play. It was just their lackadaisical stage and visual manner that was bothering me. Hearing such stellar, nearly perfect punk material as ’Countdown’, ’Crash Course’, ’I Couldn’t Be You’, ’Party In Paris’ and a great number ’The Enemy Awaits’ (a chunky slow burner in the ’Countdown’/’Warhead’ vein) made me realise that this band was just too damn good, too damn classic to put on a bad show.
Who cares if the frontline trio moved like they had weights on their ankles – the Subs were still more colourful and vibrant than nearly anything that I’d seen in ages.
Who cares that the last half of their set runs like a well-chosen K-tel collection, greatest hit running into greatest hit in a predictable and obligatory fashion? These tunes are so f***ing great, such well-formed, infectious, and purely wonderful examples of the punk genre that I wouldn’t mind sitting through the same unsurpising set over and over again.
I love this band, I love their act but they seemed trapped yet happy, and scared to move out of their comfortable little cartoon niche and grow. (And who can blame them – bands like the Rejects or Anti Pasti have committed commercial suicide by refusing to be satisfied with easy approval.)
These Subs may be dead – long live the new Subs!