Negatives – Stakeout / Love Is Not Real (Look Records) 1979. Here’s another British obscurity that’s worth a listen. These are The Negatives from Bradford England. Not to be confused with The Negatives from Sheffield who released the somewhat inferior Electric Waltz 7inch from 1980. No these guys were as they put it, “part of the Bradford Crowd” and yes they were Bradford’s first punk rock band. This was a single pressing of 500 and they sold out the first day they released it. There was no cover but they hand wrote a limited edition of them. You can see them here. As far as the tunes go, the B-Side seems to be the most well-known and it’s a melodic little number but it’s Stakeout that really gets the blood going. By 1979, this kind of energy was gone from the big city scenes but out in the provinces this kind of thing was still running its course. It may have seemed hopelessly out of touch to be recording songs like this in 1979 but viewed now in retrospect a song like Stakeout represents a great example of first generation UK punk. Ahhh the great blur of history.
Hardcore Podcasts
September of 2010 I put together eight Hardcore Podcasts. You can check them out here if you are interested. For more insight into how I came up with the years 78-90 for the First Wave you can read about The Hardcore Superiorty Myth.
hi there i have a cassette of the negatives from bradford live at the queens hall on the 21 2 1981 supportings the thomson twins the tracks are as follows the black panther,strangeways,loveis not real,blue light,my england,i saw her standing there,world war three ,brain damage,why am i no good with girls,also there are studio tracks love is not real,and stake out i was wondering if you knew anybody who would be interested in this cassette cheers andy
FANTASTIC remember buying this single…still have it in mint condition
To Andy Cross: I’m interested. Could You upload it somewhere?
@Andy – I must have missed this or something. My apologies. I would love to post it!
hey andy, the tape would have been mysterious footsteps then. pete and bob carried on after i left, we were called that after dave wilcox left the negatives. the tracks are a mix of stuff we did as the negatives, then newer tracks as footsteps. a lot have been released by detour records on their ‘bored teenagers’ series, along with some very early tunes that were never released, because the original tape had got lost. a copy turned up in sweden of all places in 2009 – i’d sent it over in response to an ad in the NME asking for bands to go and play in sweden. would have been fun, cos at that point, we hadn’t played outside of bradford.
we’ve played a couple of gigs in the last year or two, and are hoping to get some more done in 2011, i’ll post info on my myspace and facebook page when we get round to it.
tino palmer, drums, the negatives 1978-1980, mysterious footsteps 1980-81.
I would love to post some of this Negatives / Mysterious Footsteps stuff as a sampler…
Hi Andy
Only just read your post, just been flicking round the internet remenicing about the old band days , I would be very very interested in a copy of the mysterious footsteps queens hall gig as I was the drummer at that time , I left New Model Army to join the footsteps way back then , maybe not my best move !!! but i did enjoy the too few gigs I did with Bob & Pete.
I’m absolutely gutted I didn’t get to see Tino & the boys do the 2009 & 201o gigs ….. Maybe next time ???
Cheers
Phil