FORTY-THREE YEARS LATER...

the bands first and only EP finally gets a release!

After witnessing the Sex Pistols during the summer of 1976, Andrew ‘Crush’ Blunt and Paul Mex, set about the demise of their school band Siren, in favour of forming the Crowbars. With the new ideology presented, they were energised by the notion that concepts and attitude were now more important than musical virtuosity, whereby a complete fresh start was the key for teenagers coming of age.

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Although the Crowbars had several lineup changes during their short time, the two original founding members remained throughout, until forming the Passion Killers in 1978.

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The Crowbars wrote and performed songs that directly related to them, joining in on the uprising of an exciting new youth culture. Within this scene, they quickly forged an alliance with local bands the Bears and Cane, often opening up shows as the support for these more established acts of the time.

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Much of the setting for the band was centred around Watford Art College, where legendary cult artists such as Wire and Prag Vec, also evolved from. It was an incredibly exciting time to be young, with no restrictions bound anymore by the elite when it came to creativity.

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1977 was a busy year for the Crowbars, playing live at many venues, including a slot at the mythological Watford Punk Festival of that summer. It was during this bustling year that they recorded an intended EP release at the Sex Palace, which also staged regular punk gigs.
Only days after the recording was made, the tapes mysteriously disappeared, with the presumption that they had been stolen by their road manager ‘Sodhi the Roadie’, who intended to bootleg them in the far east, before he disappeared in Thailand under suspicious circumstances. However, it turned out that this was not the case and the tapes had simply accidentally been left in a Watford pub called the Wellington Arms, with the landlord putting them under the counter for safekeeping, but forgetting they were there until late 2018!

So, with some modern digital restoration to revitalise the dusty tapes, the Crowbars lost EP finally hits the streets forty-three years later, capturing the band sounding as energetic and vibrant as the day they recorded it.

As the saying goes, ‘Punk’s not Dead!’