Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Alarm - now there was a band!
Posted by Uncle Wheaty on 16 October 2009 - 11:24pm.
If ever a band divided opinion in their time few come close to The Alarm. Slagged off at the time as second rate U2 copyists and stadium rock bandwagon jumpers they also seemed to attract really passionate "believers".
I loved them.
They made four fantastic albums between 1983-87 and I still listen to them on a regular basis
Here is evidence of their greatness
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The Hair
That's what put me off and weren't they mates with that Gaz Top bloke ?
I think Gaz Top
played bass with The Alarm didn't he?
No
He was their roadie. He looked very similar to the equally daftly coiffured bassist, Eddie McDonald.
Damn - I've just outted myself as a fan.
Uncle W
I'm with you on The Alarm (we agree on Del Amitri too I believe) but I fear we are lone voices on Mike Peters and co. I suggested "Where Were You Hiding" as my favourite live sing-a-long anthem http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/whats-your-favourite-live-sing-a-l... and the silence was deafening. They really were a top band and I think if the cards had fallen in their favour they could have been huge. The fickle finger of pop decided it would point towards Ireland and the rest was history.
Clash by numbers
see above
they're no Chameleons, face it guys
God, they were rubbish
68 Guns may well never die, but I always hoped the Alarm would.
Thank you, pocket.
My thoughts exactly.
68 guns was, to my mind, one of the most awful, cynical, cliche-ridden anthem-by-numbers bits of tripe ever to sully the charts. I hated it then, I hate it now.
But there's a problem. That's the only Alarm song I know. All the rest of their stuff might be wonderful but it'll take a huge leap of faith for me to spend some of my precious spare time listening to it.
Has anyone with a mullet ever made good music?
Lenny, listen to this one
It might reinforce your views but then again...
...when you are 18 and have never heard The Clash this could be seen as good?
Interesting..
Listen to the intro again, forget that you've ever heard The River and imagine Bruce singing it.
It'd work perfectly.
68 Guns
is not so different from "Sunday Bloody Sunday" if you're talking awful, cynical etc. etc.
My love of The Alarm was sealed by one live performance and I accept you probably had to be there.
On the mullet front, how soon you forget Lenny, how soon you forget.
Dave.. how could my memory have failed me so?
Truly a gem.. sort of.. if you support Spurs..
I'd disagree as regards Sunday Bloody Sunday. I'm not a fan of U2 in any way whatsoever but SBS is, to my mind, their finest moment and a bit of proper quality. This song is not a rebel song, etc.
In the new Word
disagreement is fine. However "how long, how long must we sing this song? How lo o o o ong?" not a rebel song?
Now, Waddles miss at Italia 90 was unforgiveable, far worse that Pearce's but it's like it never happened. Came down in Sicily apparently.
Not for me
The records were tinny, and having been lucky enough to see The Clash at the height of their powers I thought the Alarm's live show was a pale shadow of it when I saw them in 83.
(In case this is too grumpy, I'm only expressing my view, and I'm not saying anyone else shouldn't like them, OK?)
Friends of mine supported them on tour and said they were lovely blokes.
Were your friends The Faith Brothers?
Now there was an even better band!
Not them
It was The Kissing Bandits
Faith Brothers
Blimey the Faith Brothers have had a few mentions lately. Both their albums, singles (plus b-sides and extended versions) and the videos are now available on iTunes. In case you didn't know. Time for an article.
Faith Brothers
Everything is also now available on Spotify - marvellous!
Damned by faint praise
I must say that if I had ever had a band and the highest praise was "Better than The Alarm" I would know I had failed.
One of the great jokes in Viz...
... was a letter from a man complaining that his wife rang to say that 'The Alarm's gone off', he rushed home only for his wife to say 'They've not made a decent record since 68 Guns'.
It was funnier the way they did it...
In the mid 80's
Simple Minds were known as U3. If that is the case this lot must be U4.
U2... U3... U4...
A Prisoner-esque question for you lot...
If Simple Minds are U3 and The Alarm U4, who are U1?
U1
I presume U1 were Echo and The Bunnymen. They did that big Cello sound first and Anton tried out his photographic ideas out on them first also.
In the mid 80's
U2 were sometimes known as Very Simple Minds.
Simple
Bonio and chums all along.
Dear Uncle
I never dismissed The Alarm as a second rate U2. I did however, as others above also allude, dismiss them as a second rate Clash.
I'm afraid the YouTube link has done nothing to move from this standpoint.
Was it the late, lamented Swells
who described The Alarm as 'Revolution seen down the barrel of a hairbrush?'
I like 'em
1983 - First Hearing of 68 Guns. That was superb.
Finding the longer version on the soon purchased album - even better.
Like youself Uncle, still listen to the LPs fairly regularly.
Not seen them live, but I have seen Dave Sharp playing guitar with Stiff Little Fingers if that counts
I probably saw them before you
May 17th 1982 at The Half Moon, Herne Hill. My girlfriend of the time was sharing a house with the girlfriend of their manager and she was called up at short notice to play keyboards on one of their early singles Marching On. She dumped me that night after the gig. It was the worst night of my life.
Old Goths still
traipse along to see Dead Men Walking they have various Alarmists, Spears of Broccoli and a former Sister/Mission bass player as roadie.
Summat's no right there.
BTW, I'm not one of the traipsers, and chaps, I gave everyone of your YT links a chance - I couldn't complete one of them. The Alarm - alarmingly awful Clash vs hit anthems by numbers sporting dreadful mullets, and ever shall they be :(
And their best track was...
Strength...enjoy
They were great live
First time I saw them was Aylesbury Friars. They stumbled back on for the umpteenth encore, had an on-stage discussion about what else they could do and settled on "A legal matter" with Dave Sharp singing. IMHO the second album (Strength) was a big improvement on the first, a bit less bombastic.