Brian signs up for Pointy drumstool

Pointy Boss are officially a four-piece once again — with Brian signing on as permanent resident of the Pointy drumstool.

After a couple of months of feverish rehearsal in the dark winter months, Pointy Boss are now ready to begin gigging again — just in time to celebrate the band's first commercial musical release: two tracks on the UK Subs tribute CD Brand New Rage. Pointy Boss might be Brian's first ever band, but he has learnt the core of the band's live set incredibly quickly, and helped to arrange the new songs now coming off the Pointy production line.

"Brian joining the band has given Pointy Boss a new lease of life and an injection of infectious enthusiasm" said a spokesman for the group. "The band's triumphant return to the live circuit can only be a few weeks away now."

Pointy Boss in rehearsal with new drummer

Pointy Boss are in rehearsal with a new drummer — Brian. Enthusiastic and a powerful skin-pounder, Brian has never played in a band before, and the Pointies are locked in intensive rehearsals to bring Brian up-to-speed on the Pointy back catalogue, and to indoctrinate him in the Pointy Way.

Nik quits sticks — Pointy Boss in fix

After much agonized reflection, Nik "The Sticks" Smith has announced that he has given up his drum stool, and is quitting Pointy Boss. Nik, drummer with the band since its formation in 1999, has concluded that he can no longer invest the necessary time, and has therefore — reluctantly — decided to call it a day.

Prefering not to play a 'final, farewell' gig with the band, Nik was still happy to lend his stick-skills to the then-imminent July 2003 recording session, and to lay down the necessary drum tracks.

This will ensure, when the recording is completed later this year, that a CD of more than a dozen songs from the band's set 'performed by the original line-up' will be readily available.

Nik's drum talents will also be on show on the forthcoming Brand New Rage UK Subs cover CD, to which Pointy Boss have contributed two tracks.

With no hint of ill-feeling from anyone involved, the three remaining members of Pointy Boss have agreed to look for a replacement for Nik, and will continue to write and rehearse as a three-piece in the meantime — with Pete filling-in on drums, and Rich taking over lead vocal duties.

The band had already performed live with such a line-up back in December 2000, when Nik was unavailable for the night.

Any aspiring punk drummers, hunkered down behind their kit within spitting distance of Nottingham, should contact Pointy Boss pronto.

Pointy Boss share Brand New Rage

Pointy Boss have recorded tracks for the first official UK Subs tribute CD — set to be released across Europe in August 2003.

The long-awaited Brand New Rage features tracks by a host of punk bands from around the globe, and includes songs from right across the Subs' musical career to date. The CD is being compiled by the official 'unofficial' UK Subs website, and with the full approval of the band. Long time Subs guitarist Nicky Garratt has helped to track down bands known to have recorded, and even released, Subs covers.

In May 2003, Pointy Boss recorded two tracks for the CD — 'Killer' and 'Motivator'. It now seems likely that both tracks will be included on the release.

More details will be published here as soon as they are made available. The provisional track listing for the CD is available here.

In a six-page interview published in the January 2002 edition of US punk mag MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL, Pointy Boss bassist Rich recalls the life of work of his earlier punk bands Metro Youth (1979-1981) and Sanction (1982-1984).

The interview, conducted and edited by longtime MRR contributor and J Church frontman Lance Hahn, is the latest in an ongoing series of features on bands involved, in one way or another, with the 1978-1984 wave of British anarcho-punk. Previous pieces in the series have included features on The Cravats, Flowers in the Dustbin and The Mob.

Metro Youth were a far less established group of performers and activists than many of the other bands in Lance's list, but offer a good example of the nationwide underground culture of anarcho- and alternative- punk — which a vast network of bands, organisers, publishers and militants were involved with at the time.

In the interview, Rich describes the first rehearsals and early Metro Youth gigs, the initial recording sessions and discusses the early Exeter punk scene. He goes on to talk about the band's involvement with Crass and the Bullshit Detector release, and the musical, publishing and political work of Sanction — the band formed by the four surviving Metro Youth members after the original group's demise in 1981.

Lance intends to publish the collected interviews in book form in due course — more details on the excellent punk oral history project will appear here as soon as we have them.

Confusion has arisen amongst Pointy Boss fans following the publication of a web review of the band's latest CD release which describes the group as 'like a faster version of The Buzzcocks'.

The review, published on the www.punkoiuk.co.uk website and authored by "Kev", describes the Pointy Boss sound as 'punky / new wave.' Regular visitors to BiG THiNG POiNT will remember that the first ever review of Pointy Boss, published on The Evening Post website, defined the band as a derivative Oi band working from — wholly ficticious — Oi blueprints.

"The band and their many fans are somewhat confused by this latest independent assessment of their work", explained a Pointy Boss spokesman. "It's a little odd to have one reviewer dismiss you as a by-the-numbers gumby Oi band, only to then find another depict you as souped-up and much softer new wave / pop-punk outfit."

"Ultimately Pointy Boss and their many fans are content in the knowledge that the group sounds like Pointy Boss. The fact that reviewers have such difficulty characterising the band's sound is, for Pointy Boss, confirmation of the group's distinctive and original approach to the artistry of punk rock music making", the spokesman insisted.

"Mind you, that's only because they're all completely delusional — but for god's sake don't quote me on that", he added.

The second CD demo release by Pointy Boss — ‘No Frills, No Glitz’ — has now been released.

All tracks on the CD can be heard in RealAudio format here, and downloaded in MP3 format here. All the tracks are now available in both formats from peoplesound.com.

Reviews of the new CD will be posted here as soon as we here about them (see above)!

Studio work is continuing on the new Pointy Boss CD demo, with a expected release date early in the Spring. The core recording was completed in December, with additional sessions now scheduled for January and February. Raw and unmixed run-offs of the December 16 session show great promise and the band expect the recording to be a significant advance on the quality of We Are Demo. The new CD remains untitled at present.

On Saturday 16 December Pointy Boss return to the studio to begin work on a new — and as yet untitled — CD demo. The core recording will be completed the same day and the demo should be completed early in the new year. As with We Are Demo, all tracks from the recording will be available on this website in RealAudio format.

Alongside new songs such as This Ends Today and Nothing Here's For Sale, the demo will include a new version of the now classic Little White Lie — a track not done proper justice in the mad scramble to put down workable versions of songs during the manic three hour We Are Demo session back in March of this year.

"Great named band delivering great stuff." So begins the first in print review of Pointy Boss's premier CD We Are Demo, in the July 2000 issue of the East Midlands' listings magazine City Lights. 

The review, alongside demo reports on local bands Roosevelt and Skinny Sumo, continues:

“A demo recorded in three hectic hours, thus, presumably, recreating their live sound. Take this demo 'round to anyone who works for a major record company, wears a suit or thinks Sting isn't a pretentious wanker. Or, perhaps, your old maths teacher. Music as it should be played - no frills, no glitz, just fast, furious and great fun to mosh to (at, say, the Victoria in Derby). Fast, furious — why use three chords when two will do. We're All Pointy Boss Fans Now, discuss.”

A demo track by the 1980s punk group Metro Youth, one of Pointy Boss bassist Rich's earliest bands, has been re-released on a compilation CD celebrating twenty-three years of Exeter punk.

The Metro Youth track Brutalised was first released in 1982 on the Crass records compilation double-LP Bullshit Detector Two. Brutalised has now been included as one of twenty tracks on Year Zero: The Exeter Punk Scene 1977-2000 put out by Hometown Atrocities and Boss Tuneage.

The CD features Exeter bands active at the same time as Metro Youth, such as Rat Patrol and The Gift; alongside seminal local bands The Fans and The Scabs; and tracks by recent and current Exeter bands including Pop Vandals and Annalise.

The CD comes with a fairly exhaustive A-Z "who's who" booklet documenting the work of local punk activists over more than two decades. Hometown Atrocities are keen to build up a larger web based guide to the history of punk rock activity in the Devon town. A Metro Youth page was added to the database in December 2000 - sadly, in spring 2005, the site was off-line.

Year Zero is being distributed by Cargo in the UK and Europe. Mail order copies are £10.00 [pounds sterling]  in the UK and Europe, and $19.00 [US dollars] elsewhere, post paid. For more on the release and to order copies contact Hometown Atrocities - as was the label's website.