The Toads Gig List
The Toads played the following (few) gigs in 1977:
| 22 April | Downstairs at the Kingsway Pub, King Street, Norwich - often referred to as the Kingsway Caves. This was a private birthday party. We managed to perform a few songs and then the whole thing was stopped by the pub landlady who hadn't realised it was going to be a punk party and didn't exactly like us a lot! The pub was demolished in 2005. |
| 5 June | Wymondham College with another local group, the Victims, who we had met at a concert at West Runton Pavilion (once one of the main gig locations in Norfolk and now almost forgotten about - in 1977 it hosted, amongst others, the Jam, the Damned, T.Rex and, oh yes... the Slits). |
| 12 June | Cambridge Street Queen's Jubilee Street Party, Norwich. Also playing were the Stain. |
| 30 July | 3Cs (Charing Cross Centre), St John Maddermarket. Also playing were the Victims plus the Bondage Boys (see the Turkey Molesters page). |
| 10 September | Premises Arts Centre, St Benedicts Street (which became an indoor market later on). Support group were the Turkey Molesters. |
| 24 September | Premises Street Roots Party, Premises Arts Centre. Also playing were Thandoy and Here and Now. |
| 8 November | Peoples Nightclub (now 'lost' somewhere behind Westlegate). We were the support band to Rumblestrips whose lead singer, Philip Bird, now acts and writes. |
| 15 November | Peoples (with Rumblestrips again). |
| 22 November | Peoples (with Rumblestrips) |
| 1 December | Premises supporting Radio Stars (whose lead singer, Andy Ellison, was in Marc Bolan's pre-fame group, John's Children) who charged us half our paltry payment to use their PA system! |
| 4 December | Wymondham College. Also playing were the Victims plus Rasputin and His Mad Monks (see the Turkey Molesters page). |
| 6 December | The final gig at Peoples. Paul Cheetham also joined us for one song. Also playing were Rasputin and His Mad Monks and the Right Hand Lovers (the latter sported members called Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse). |
The early gigs were interesting as we had very little equipment and sometimes two guitars had to share the same amp. The first (awful) gig also had the vocals going through a guitar amp as well. All members except Polo wrote songs and the composer of each song always sung lead on it. This caused problems as both Dave and Paul preferred to play rhythm guitar while singing lead vocals and therefore swapped over guitars if the lead changed. I didn't play bass and so stuck to rhythm.
Some time ago I was contacted by the brother of one of the Victims with a little bit more info on them. They were Clive (lead vocals), Pip (rhythm guitar), Tabby (lead guitar), Alan (bass) and Will (drums). They tended to play covers of songs by the Clash, the Damned and the Velvet Underground. I can vaguely remember that the final song at the 3Cs gig was a jam between the Toads, Victims and possibly even the Bondage Boys where we played either White Light/White Heat or Waiting For The Man (or possibly both).
An expanded version of the details here can be found on the Toads web site.