The Panic Brothers

At university I never missed a chance to see the V.I.P.s, the home-grown punk pop band managed by fellow Warwick student Clive Solomon. Their future seemed bright. Eventually their single The Quarter Moon reached 55 in 1980 – the only dent they made on the charts.

I went to see them playing the prestigious 100 Club in London, supporting a swingin’ soul band called Q-Tips. I concluded that Q-Tips were a great band, but that their singer was the weak link. Yes, the singer who went on to fame and fortune as Paul Young.

A few years on, I was absolutely certain that the wonderful Mint Juleps would be huge, but they never came closer to world domination than records which peaked at 62 and 58 in the British charts.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Maybe my musical tastes were a little bit too niche. It’s just as well I didn’t work in the business, because my track record at picking winners was hopeless. But perhaps that was about to change.

Early in 1986 my go-to live music was the many retro bands who played fifties and sixties R&B, country music, rock’n’roll and soul in pub venues around Camden like the Dublin Castle – where Madness (previously) and Amy Winehouse (later) made their names. One night I was there breathing the cigarette smoke and enjoying the Cajun R&B of the Balham Alligators, when during their break a couple of young guys came on stage, introduced as the Panic Brothers.

They were a revelation. Their musical influences were pretty obvious – two guys playing acoustic guitars and singing close harmonies inevitably recalled the Everly Brothers – but also taking inspiration from Hank Williams and the roots of contemporary country music. They performed entertaining original songs with a large helping of shrewd observation, humour and sharp social comment – with an edge of left-wing protest, which informed rather than overwhelmed the music – at a time when most country music came from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

I was so impressed that I typed out a review and sent it in to London fanzine Capital M – and they printed it:

Reading this now, I wouldn’t change much, although I’m not sure why I suggested they should do covers when their original songs were so good.

I banged the drum for them one more time. After attending a gig on 21 September 1986 I sent the fanzine a second review. I justified my enthusiasm in the covering letter:

I’m sorry to bang on about the Panic Brothers again, but if you were at the Dublin Castle last night you would have known it was a very important gig. After all, it’s not so often that a pub-rock act breaks through nationally and I think it can’t be far away for these guys.

If the enclosed review looks like hype – I can only say it’s sincere, and that it takes a lot to impress this cynical old pub-rock veteran.

Panic on Parkway

City Limits be blowed, it was in Capital M back in April that you first read that the Panic Brothers would take the world by storm. To judge from their tumultuous reception at their return gig at the Dublin Castle, they’re over halfway there already.

A large and lively crowd was captivated by the Panic recipe of excellent singing and playing, witty original songs and waggish introductions. There were signs of an act about to break big; a fiercely partisan audience, calling for their favourites, and knowing the words by heart.

The essence of Panic appeal remains their songwriting ability. Like truly great pop, their songs combine economical lyrics with simple, memorable tunes. Some are already Panic classics – “Sober”, “Payoff” and “Bivouac”. “No News” is an indictment of the yellow press on a par with “Pills and Soap”. Best of all though, the new songs – they go on getting better. What a privilege, to attend the birth of these future classics: “Almost as Blue as Hank Williams”, “I Made a Mess of a Dirty Weekend” and the exquisite, wistful “My Friends Don’t Come Drinking Any More.” These won friends immediately, and all three were demanded as encores.

To judge from the rate of increase in Panic popularity, Reg and Richie will not be around the pub circuit for very long. Treat yourself now.

Waggish? Really young Rik? This piece was never published, but for a while they were on a promising trajectory. In 1987 they released In The Red, a “mini album” – a 12-inch vinyl disc containing ten songs which played at 45 rpm. To underline the joke, the first track, Bivouac starts with a glissando to mimic the sound of the record adjusting after mistakenly being started at 33 rpm – as it no doubt often was. They also had a video made for In Debt, but the single was never released.

My favourites were, and remain, the poignant My Friends Don’t Come Drinking Any More, the brilliantly funny I Made a Mess of a Dirty Weekend, (“With my British Rail Red Rover I’m a real Casanova”) another drinking song, I’ve Forgotten What it Was That I Was Drinking To Forget, a not-drinking song, I Feel So Sober I Could Cry, (“But I gave it up! I wonder why? Tonight I feel so sober I could cry”). And there’s Almost as Blue as Hank Williams (“On the bicycle of life I’ve got a spanner in my spokes” – surely up there with Hank’s own “I’m going down in it three times, but Lord I’m only coming up twice”) and No News (“Lying in the gutter press, watching the stars undress”). Their songs are funny or beautiful, or both, and unlike many comedy songs, the quality of the music repays repeated listening.

Over the next five years they were frequently on TV: among other appearances they sang Bivouac and My Sony Walkman Just Walked Out On Me on Channel 4’s Friday Night Live in 1988, and a snippet of them singing Almost as Blue as Hank Williams and commenting on the appeal of Country music in Britain was shown on NBC News. Three of their songs were used for a 1989 BBC Scotland Play On 1. They performed at the Edinburgh Festival, and at Glastonbury.

As you might have guessed, they never made it big. But they both launched successful solo careers. The stage banter was always a big part of their appeal, and for Richard the comedy outgrew the music, and he became a popular stand-up comic – once described as “Newcastle’s answer to Billy Connolly”, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Jack Dee and Jo Brand, and has often featured on the radio.

Meanwhile Reg has become an established act in the folk world. He specialises in telling local stories, sometimes commemorating tragedies. But my personal favourites are the more pop styled songs which could have been drawn from personal experience: Your Face Again, the achingly sad Good with his Hands, and the superb The Goodbye Hat. The last of these shows that Reg took all of his lyrical bite into his solo career:

Now it doesn’t necessarily follow 
That she’s been going out with somebody else 
But it’s starting to look 
Like she’s found a new book
While this one gathers dust on the shelf

Best of all is the marvellous Good Morning Mr. Colston which Reg recorded in 2022 marking the toppling of the slave trader’s statue in 2020: a song which pulls off the rare feat of combining a hard-hitting political and human message with a beautiful and memorable melody.

In the Red was at last released in CD format in 2015. Richard and Reg have got together for the occasional Panic Brothers reunion in recent years, and when they scheduled a gig at the Dublin Castle in 2017 I was there. I wasn’t disappointed: it was well attended, and the playing, singing and banter were as sharp as ever. They even gave me a shout-out and played my request. I thought I was a superfan, but I saw a fellow there of about my age singing the words to every number, who had brought along his young adult son and daughter. A true apostle. If the Spotify stats are any guide, Panic Brothers fans are now few in number. But we remember, and we are strong in faith.

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You’ll be wondering, given my record of picking winners in the pop music world, who I’m tipping for stardom now. Well, this time, it’s a little closer to home: my daughter’s band, The People Versus. As I always loved music but had zero talent for it, Alice is livin’ the dream for me. I’m bound to get it right eventually, no?