Aural Aggravation

Christopher Nosnibor

Forty-five years on from the release of their debut album, The Crack, The Ruts – or Ruts DC as they subsequently became – as still going, and perhaps unexpectedly, they’ve been more prolific in the second half of their career than the first.

Having released two Electracoustic albums – stripped back versions of material from their back catalogue, they’re back on the road with this format, too. The trio seated in a line on the stage befits a band whose members are in their late sixties / early seventies. They’re done being ‘cool’ or staying ‘punk’: “punk’s dead”, Segs shrugs at one point during tonight’s set. It’s striking just how honest and open they are during the lengthy intros and meandering anecdotes which seem to spring spontaneously, often without punchlines or clear endings. These are off-the-cuff, unrehearsed, down the pub type chats, which provide some real insight into the workings of the band and its members. Unpretentious, grounded, it’s a joy to feel this kind of intimacy with a band of such longstanding who truly qualify – and it’s not a word I use often – as legends.

They’re a band at ease with one another and the audience, Ruffy particularly happy to be back in his home town and regaling us with a lengthy tale about his early life, his father, and shoplifting out of necessity.

Not being able to get out so much lately, I have to pick my nights out carefully and strategically, and I had been in two minds about this one, for a number of reasons. But within minutes, it became apparent that coming down had been the right decision. Y’see, music can reach parts that practically nothing else can. Once comes to associate songs, bands, albums, with people, places, life experiences. They become indelibly connected, for better or worse. And The Ruts are a band who carry substantial emotional, reflective weight for me on a personal level. Of course, this is about me rather than the band, but this is a contemplation on how we engage with music and how songs and bands, become the soundtrack to our lives, and it’s something we only really realise in hindsight. And I feel that sharing the details of this complex and intimate relationship with a band is part of a dialogue we need to open up.

I was around thirteen or fourteen when I began hanging round the second-hand record shop where I would subsequently become the Saturday / holiday staff. The owner was – to me, being fifteen years my senior – an old punk, and he introduced me to a shedload of bands, and would air-bass around the shop to ‘In a Rut’, a song he would also cover with his band. This song – indubitably one of THE definitive punk singles – would become an anthem to me in my life, a song I always play to remind myself to get my shit together when times are tough. If punk has a solid link with nihilism, ‘In a Rut’ provides a counterpoint, as a rare positive kick up the arse. It’s a song I play when I need to remind myself that I need to get my shit together. It must surely be one of the greatest songs of all time. And what a debut! And that was even before ‘Babylon’s Burning’…

The first time I met my (late) wife’s dad – who died in 2003 at the age of 50 – he was blasting The Ruts and Rage Against the Machine on his car stereo, and I knew immediately we’d get on well. And we did. He was a grumpy fucker who hated anything establishment, and had great taste in music.

And so The Ruts and Ruts DC are a band who run a thread through my life. I find it hard to hear them without a pang of sadness, but ultimately, they’re an uplifting experience, and this is so, so true of tonight’s show.

‘Music Must Destroy’ makes for a strong opener and provides an opening for a not-quite anecdote about number-one fan Henry Rollins (another hero of mine and my wife’s, we got to see The Rollins and numerous spoken word performances, including one which included an expansive tale of his obsession with The Ruts and how he came to front the band at their reunion fundraiser for guitarist Paul Fox in 2007), who provided additional vocals to this, the title track of their 2016 album. It provides an early reminder of the fact that they’re more than merely a heritage band, and that they’ve always been, and continue to be, political.

‘West One’ and ‘Love in Vain’ land early, and the range and quality of the material stands out a mile. The set spans punk, reggae, rockabilly, anthems… and they have songs that mean something, too.

One thing that sets Ruts DC’s acoustic(ish) sets apart isn’t that the lead guitar has some pedals and tweaks and that it’s not a straightforward acoustic strum, but the fact the arrangements rightly bring the details to the fore. Listen to The Crack and it’s apparent that the basslines are special. And paired down, you can really hear everything that’s going on. Their material is so much more than the lumpen three-chord thud of regular pub-rock derivative punk. They switch slickly into dub mode, with echoed rimshots and booming heavy bass, and the sound – and musicianship – is outstanding.

‘Something That I Said’ arrives as the penultimate song of set one, before closing with a new song, ‘Bound in Blood’ that’s a strong new wave cut. And suddenly, with the introduction of an electric guitar, it’s louder, too.

The second set is more electric, but still minimal in terms of arrangement, and stripped back: ‘Dope for Guns’ shows the song’s solid structure. It’s a rapturous experience to hear them powering through ‘Staring at the Rude Boys’ and ‘Babylon’s Burning’ towards the end of the set, and then to hear them segue ‘In a Rut’ with a full-lunged rampant chorus of Neil Young’s ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ was truly rapturous. Again, there’s a personal element here: a song I associate with my wife, and a song she in turn inherited from her dad, I found myself shedding a tear at hearing a great song well-played. It wasn’t just a token gesture to enhance and pad the set: they meant it and felt the power of the sentiment. And right now, we need to cling to that. These are dark and fucked-up times.

They ramped things up to slam in a fully electric, fully punk rendition of ‘Criminal Mind’ to draw the curtain on the night. And what a night. And what a band.

While they do still thrive on their early material, and do it justice, they have so much more to offer, too, and significantly, they’re not attempting to recreate the experience of the late 1970s with some sad old punk nostalgia trip. They’re clearly happy onstage – that is to say, loving the fact they’re up there, still going, and playing these songs. They’ve every reason to be: tonight, they deliver solid gold.