Time Let's Go / Is This A Man?

Catalogue Number - SP522

Label - Rubber Connection Records

Year Of Release - 1979

In 1977 when the Vultures formed, we were just 15-year-olds and like a lot of youth had an outsider mentality. Punk fitted the time and circumstances and with the backdrop of the Queen’s Jubilee offered a much-needed irreverent stance to what authority was selling.
 

Punk simply continued that pattern from Rock n Roll greats onwards of artists throwing up new standards of creativity and tapping into youth rebellion. But it’s generally the case that artists who were once ground-breaking become flabby and the music steps back to being a commodity.

At that time the bands and music getting dished out didn’t inspire or reflect our circumstances so with the meaty opening of ‘God Save the Queen’ with big ball lyrics to match, it created a new musical burst which we were happy to be part of. After all Stockton wasn’t exactly an art house full of drag queens, hustlers and party people so for anyone on the edge the only thing to do was drink and be in a band playing music you liked.
 

We managed to get some gear together (some homemade) and a place to practice and put together some stuff. We played a few gigs (The Wellington, Dovecot Arts Centre, The Teessider, Harewood Arms, St Mary’s College etc).  A lad named Donkin who was a few years older than us and working, scraped together enough cash for a back street recording studio and released a 7” single ‘Time Let’s Go’. John Peel played it a couple of times with the line ‘so that’s the sort of thing they get up to in Stockton-on-Tees these days’.

The single was well received but we never played the Rock Garden which was the main Teesside venue to be exposed and in any event the band was like the Punk explosion a short-lived firework blast which quickly fades as the bandwagon arrives and the flabby musical cycle continues. All good things end and you move on.
 

Some other recordings survived alongside plenty of memories watching the other local bands perform; Shoot the Lights Out; Bombay Drug Squad; Blitzkrieg Bop, Savage Passion, Johnny 7, Barbarians et al. Those people at that time had a spirit in that they didn’t just blindly take what was being dished out but created a culture for themselves. They picked up a guitar, played it badly but it was our sound for a short while and not created by a music executive.
 

I’d sum it up as Sterling Morrison from the Velvet Underground said, ‘People who were kind of screwing around, who knew they couldn’t possibly achieve mass appeal, and didn’t care…all you needed, really, was people who didn’t care about the ordinary concerns’.

Greg Archer

Deja Vu & The Vultures together, outside The Rock Garden 1979

The Vultures outside The Rock Garden 1979

The Vultures outside The Rock Garden 1979

The Vultures outside The Rock Garden 1979

The above snippet appeared in the fanzine 'Teeside Smells" #1 from 1979.

The above snippet appeared in the fanzine 'Teeside Smells" #2 from 1979.

Thanks to 'Blank Frank' and Greg Archer for the above photographs.

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