The Coils

Morpeth

Formed at King Edward VI school in the summer of 1976 the band played mainly low key gigs.

In 1977 the band ventured into their local studio and recorded the following tracks:

SuperMouse

(About a boy whose mum don't give him SuperMouse coz she has gone and left him)

Fascist

(A nice little ditty about being a right wing scum bag in the 70's) 

Land of the Dead

(Another ditty about the middle class housing estates in Morpeth in particular Kirkhill) 

Upper Class Cretin

(About a certain individual who came to our school in the 6th form, he was adopted by his uncle and was a real wanker) 

Smash The Front

(Another little ditty about how rock against racism had to voice their anger at the national front and the racism it promoted in the 70's)  

The final gig was at Morpeth Rugby Club in 1978

Our influences were 'Iggy Pop', 'Penetration', 'Sex Pistols', 'Velvet Underground', 'Lou Reed'.

The above snippet appeared in the North East Punk fanzine "Gabba Gabba Hey" #4 from 1977

The Coils were once described as the band that left a nasty taste in your mouth, to which it was replied by one band member wearing a ripped Johnny Condom t-shirt and cheap dirty jeans, “ a nasty taste?. ..I'll piss in it”.

There were no punk bands in the North East in 1977...at least not that we were aware of...at least not that we could get to see, living in sleepy Morpeth- written about in Gary's song“ Land Of The Dead”.  The punk scene in Newcastle between 1976 and 1978 was almost non-existent.  You were always up against a north eastern mono-culture of heavy rock and hard drinking, with a student sideline in intellectual hippy-dom.

Gary and Gavin had been mixed up in bands and music from the age of 13, always hanging around like a bad smell  with the older boys who had guitars and amplifiers to borrow; Gary always fixing stuff and messing with radios etc. Dave, on the other hand, sang in the school choir and was suspected of being a closet soul boy; often caught at the disco, wearing flares at weekends.

Formed in the summer of 1977,  at the same time as the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, The Coils (IUD) started out by playing  Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Sex Pistols covers. They had Gary on bass , Gavin providing a solid back beat on borrowed drums, and Hoddy thrashing about with power chords and randomly sequenced solos with a “ just better than Woolworths” electric guitar. David Dwek, or Maurice D Vine as he was known, was the front man; to call him a “singer” might be stretching it a bit but he had the necessary swagger and style. 

One of the few pieces of equipment the band had (owned by Gary) was a tape recorder so all of the very short rehearsals and some gigs were recorded on tape and the band started to write their own material with several songs being written for specific gigs. “Fascist” and “ Smash the Front” were written and performed at a benefit gig for the Anti Nazi League. The band developed an ethos towards song writing, with a minimal approach to rehearsal, which was “play it once then sod off.”

 ‘Upper Class Cretin’ was written about a school mate, he was a nice enough guy who came from a private school and was driven to school in a Rolls Royce.  He used to fancy himself as a ladies man, so we wrote a song about him. He was trying to be chummy but just didn’t get it. He was the only person we knew who could afford to buy Levi's. There’s a line about ‘the bulge in your Levis’ is a fake as your smile”. I mean he was a lovely guy really, don't get us wrong, but David wrote the lyrics about him, I don’t think he has ever realised it was about him, it was just we were writing songs about the environment that we were in for fun!

“Supermousse”: David wrote that one and it’s a fantastic lyric. It tended to be that Gary and Dave wrote most of the songs. It’s opening lyric is: ‘Got no shit, got no reality, just got plastic comes in a pack of three , seducing taste buds with MSG, I fell in love with a lady on the TV’.  It was an advert at the time, once again its like, you know, ‘I got no real mum, she’s gone and left me, but I got this other one, she won't give me no Supermousse’.   It was an advert with a mother giving her kid this pink frozen mousse ice cream called Supermousse that was also, in fact, quite a good hair gel.

 The Coils ended in 1978 when all band members at the age of 18 headed off in different directions but also keeping with the punk spirit of short term fun and just one set of decent recordings released for the first time here done on borrowed school gear at the rehearsal for their final gig.

 It is now 2016, 38 years later and the band have recently reunited to record some new songs (“Bam Bam”, “Do You Remember”, and a new version of "Supermousse”) still with the same spirit of 1977, and the same, instant, Coils principal of “play it once then sod off”.

Thanks to Gary Nattrass

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