Review: Jon Robb of The Membranes, with guest Jonn Penney of Ned’s Atomic Dustbin
Bewdley Arts Festival. Wednesday 14th October
Nostalgia: past its prime?
Thanks to Jake Burns and Stiff Little Fingers for that opening lyric.
History’s a thing of the past. Too.
Stiff Little Fingers? One of the 70s/80s/90s popular beat combos that are out there today, still doing it, keeping it real.
Likewise, The Membranes. Blackpool, Lancs. Since 1977.
Frontman, Jon Robb. Various re-inventions. Ever living, breathing, promoting the punk ethic across 49 years and counting …
Like a similarly-sartorially-styled but substantially-sub-snarky John Lydon, Jon Robb connects with his audience, this audience, in a way that ensures no great outrage, but nonetheless carries a direct sense of his latest book, the very positively reviewed Punk Rock Ruined My Life.
Yes, a book.
And not Jon Robb’s first book.
Previously, Live Forever: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Oasis. Likely covers what it says on the cover.
Preceded in 2023 by The Art Of Darkness, an exhaustive, almost scholarly work on goth subculture. It’s a book that would surely be well-received, but … well, never ask a goth for a review.
And these are not by any means his first ventures into writing.
Journalism having been a very early and constant travelling companion to his musical pursuits, with Jon journeying from Xerox-generated fanzines through to founding in 2010 the Louder Than War website, providing in its first iteration independent reviews of new releases and gigs, along with interviews of the sort barely seen since the best days of Sounds and The NME.
But Jon Robb’s iron lung by the Severn tonight is the relatable nostalgia trip; the ‘who remembers …?’ common life experience meanderings to which the bell-curve standard deviation of any audience unfailingly warms; the schtick that, if deployed to excess, risks being parodied – no: mercilessly and deservedly ripped apart – by Stewart Lee or his (too few) like; the sort of safe, unthreatening, banal routine from which Michael McIntyre has probably earned most of his gazillion pounds.
Jon, thankfully, understands this audience, chooses not to compromise, doesn’t overplay the reminiscence hand. Retains edge.
He also knows – or would know from monitoring ticket sales patterns – that this audience is waiting to hear from tonight’s other frontman, another near-namesake, Jonn Penney of Ned’s Atomic Dustbin.
And, although nominally headlining, Jon Robb’s cynical punk is generous-enough to happily cede the stage tonight to his support act, for whom this is almost a homecoming gig.
So, ‘Who remembers the Stourbridge independent music scene …?’
‘What? You mean the Black Country triumvirate of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, who all emerged from Stourbridge (then population barely 50 thousand souls) at much the same time and gained global recognition?’
‘Yes.’
‘Saw their massive gigs in Aston Villa Leisure Centre … Yow gooin’ to menshin’ The Mighty Lemondrops too, bab?’
Oops. There we go. Nostalgia.
But, again, definitely not overplayed.
Considering that Jon Robb as raconteur has so much detail, memoir and pent-up energy that, even were twice the time available, he would still be need to be racing through, even skipping over, projected passage-of-life pictures.
Jon Robb as interviewer however proves a knowledgeable and active listener, giving space, pertinently questioning, nudging the conversation along when need be.
And Jonn Penney takes that space, that nudge.
And so he channels a seemingly genuine disbelief that almost 40 years later he’s still here, on stage – albeit incongruously seated in a wing-backed full-hide Chesterfield armchair – and that people are laughing along with his self-effacing humility as, free-of-ego, Jonn describes the early DIY incompetence and rank amateurism that ultimately didn’t stand in the way of achieving musical appeal to the masses.
Or is that just the way of the Black Country?
That you’re in a band but you’re never going to risk bigging yourself up to be anything other than ‘crap’.
That you may have just sell-out toured the States, but you’re never going to be that knob who bores on about it incessantly.
That when you go from your bedsit in Lye to headlining the NME Stage at Glastonbury in front of 20,000 in 1992, when you come home you’re still never going to behave like a wanker down the pub.
Two more considered thoughts from Jonn Penney stand out.
One is the importance in the 80s and 90s of having in small-town Stourbridge a prestigious and thriving art college; this, and its orbiting pub-enabled music scene, this being key to bands forming, taking risks, seeking creativity, supporting each other, growing their confidence, and eventually, some of them, breaking through.
The other is that in describing The Neds’ songwriting process, Jonn admits as lyricist and singer to having had little understanding of any meaning in his own songs, the words being almost a chance by-product of the musical composition.
But, as he’s matured, Jonn pays much greater thought to the meaning of what he’s singing.
This change has led to him writing a book.
Yes, a book.
A really well-received book: SELF-ish – biographical, yes, but much more an exploration of his lyrics than a standard workaday music memoir.
And there is some nostalgia in it as well, just in case …
Jon Robb’s latest book is Punk Rock Ruined My Life.
Jonn Penney’s only book (so far) is SELF-ish.
Both can be bought through your local, independent bookstore. They are also available through Jon Robb’s website, Louder Than War.
Words by Dai Morris
Photography by Colin Hill