Cheap ‘n’ Nasty, other Dutch, Swiss bands on US radio

Cheap ‘n’ Nasty Covergirl EP lyric

Commie Francis has played Cheap ‘n’ Nasty and other bands on her Uneasy Listening show at WFMU radio in the USA.

You can hear that show here.

At 10:47 in the show, Commie Francis plays the title track of the Cheap ‘n’ Nasty Covergirl EP and tells how that song was played for the first time in the Melkweg in Amsterdam.

The theme of the show is 1981 songs by early punk bands including women from European continent countries.

Other Dutch bands in it: Bizon Kidz from Utrecht, Götterflies from Amsterdam.

Also bands from other countries, like Östro 430 from Germany. And Unit 4 from Belgium, with whom Cheap ‘n’ Nasty played in Antwerp in November 1981.

I know all 3 Swiss bands in the show. I interviewed Kleenex, by then called LiLiPUT. I photographed Mother’s Ruin at a concert in Winterthur. TNT played with Cheap ‘n’ Nasty and other bands in November 1980 in Berlin.

Sara of TNT and Klaudia of Kleenex/LiLiPUT have a new band now, called OneTwoThree.

UK Sub Alvin Gibbs, Rebellion 2022

In this 26 March 2022 video, Mikayla Beyer from the USA interviews Alvin Gibbs, best known as bass player in the UK Subs; since 1980, with some interruptions, like playing with Iggy Pop.

At the 2022 Rebellion festival in Blackpool, England, on 7 August, Alvin Gibbs was interviewed again with UK Subs singer Charlie Harper on the front row of the audience. This blog post is about that interview. It is my seventh post about Rebellion 2022, the sequel to my earlier, sixth, post about 7 August at Rebellion.

I first met Alvin in 1980 in Venlo in the Netherlands. There, we opened for the UK Subs. Promoters Bureau Pinkpop did not want to pay our travel costs. So, Charlie Harper paid the petrol for the small car of our bassist/female vocalist Terry so we could travel to Venlo. Only one Venlo person knew that we would play, but we had to play an encore. Charlie said afterwards: ‘Come back to play with us any time’!

The next time we played with the UK Subs was in 1981 in Eindhoven.

UK Subs and Cheap ‘n’ Nasty in Eindhoven, poster

Alvin asked for the first copy of the Cheap ‘n’ Nasty Covergirl EP. When it came out, Terry sent it to Alvin in England.

Cheap ‘n’ Nasty Covergirl EP cover

Our Cheap ‘n’ Nasty should not be confused with a band of almost the same name, Cheap And Nasty, founded nine years later. Including, then, Alvin Gibbs.

Alvin said Cheap And Nasty were commercially not really successful. ‘As we were not like Guns ‘N Roses, or like grunge, which both were on the rise then’.

Their singer, Jan-Markus Stenfors, had the stage name Nasty Suicide, hence the name of the band. Alvin had been briefly in Nasty Suicide’s earlier band, Hanoi Rocks. They had opened for the UK Subs in Scandinavia. Alvin had then liked Hanoi Rocks more than Subs audiences did.

When Nasty Suicide left the band, Alvin said at Rebellion, it became useless to continue Cheap And Nasty, as Nasty had left.

Alvin talked about his autobiography, the third volume would be published soon.

After the interview, Alvin told me: ‘See you at the UK Subs show tonight in the Empress Ballroom!’ Then, however, there was a queue from the overcrowded Empress Ballroom entrance to Tokyo. So, I missed that Subs concert.

Stay tuned for my eighth, last post about Rebellion: about the Drowns, Ruts DC, Maid of Ace, and Stiff Little Fingers!