The Gig Cartel - Gig guide: The Stranglers, Preston

The Stranglers, Preston

(featuring The Stranglers)

Venue: Preston 53 Degrees

BLACK AND BLUE TOUR – MARCH 2011

“Before a big night out, I get together with my friends. We put music on - something like The Stranglers or The Velvet Underground - and have a drink while trying on different outfits. It's sometimes the most fun part of the evening” - Kate Moss

Well Kate, due to the demand of their sell out tour last February and a busy major festival summer the band return to the UK with the Black and Blue Tour commencing 4th March 2011 and consisting of 17 dates up and down the country including a return to The Hammersmith Apollo in London on 17th March.
After a summer that has seen the band play the main stages of the UK top festivals T in The Park, Oxygen and Glastonbury the band are now busy working on a new album which they hope to road test a couple of the new tunes along with a combination of classics from their 36 year career which features 24 top 40 hits - including ‘Peaches’, ‘No More Heroes’, ‘5 Minutes’, ‘Duchess’, ‘Something Better Change’, ‘Always the Sun’, ‘Walk On By’ and culminating with their ultimate classic ‘Golden Brown’
As well as 24 top 40 singles the band have charted 18 top 40 albums with worldwide sales of over 16 million and  continue to  deliver a captivating live show, selling out across the UK.
Memorable classics delivered with that trade mark Stranglers sound that hits you hard time after time until you’re black and blue.

The Stranglers are an English rock music group, formed on 11 September 1974 in Guildford, Surrey.

Scoring a string of UK top ten hits, including "Golden Brown", "No More Heroes" and "Peaches" and UK top forty hits spanning four decades, the Stranglers originally built a following alongside the mid-\'70s pub rock scene. Their aggressive, no-compromise attitude made them one of the instigators of the developing UK punk rock scene, although their idiosyncratic approach rarely followed any single musical genre with the group going on to explore a variety of musical styles, including punk rock, gothic rock, and new wave through to the pop of some of their \'80s output.

With a sound driven by Jean-Jacques Burnel\'s bass, but also heavily reliant on Dave Greenfield\'s keyboards (reminiscent at times of Ray Manzarek), when the instrument was unfashionable. The Stranglers\' early music was also characterised by the growling vocals and sometimes misanthropic lyrics of both Jean-Jacques Burnel and Hugh Cornwell, but their output grew more refined and sophisticated, as critic Dave Thompson writes, "From bad-mannered yobs to purveyors of supreme pop delicacies, the group was responsible for music that may have been ugly and might have been crude – but it was never, ever boring"