THE CLANG GROUP : EUGENE McGUINNESS, CLIVE LANGER & MAX RIPPLE (DEAF SCHOOL), JAMIE REYNOLDS (KLAXONS)

February 29, 2024

THE CLANG GROUP FEATURING : EUGENE McGUINNESS, CLIVE LANGER & MAX RIPPLE (DEAF SCHOOL), JAMIE REYNOLDS (KLAXONS) & GREGG BRADEN (DEAF SCHOOL)

It’s just a rumour that was spread around town. It said there was a star that few had ever heard of. But that few included David Bowie, Morrissey and Elvis Costello and he’d produced them all. Also, this man had a band called Deaf School and they’d inspired many other bands from Dexys Midnight Runners to Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

It’s time Clive “Clanger” Langer was known by more than a few. He is a quietly-spoken, bespectacled pop wizard from North London who (with his studio partner Alan Winstanley) made Come On Eileen and what seems like a hundred hits for Madness. He’s a songwriter, too. When Robert Wyatt broke our collective hearts with that great immortal sigh of a song called Shipbuilding, it was Langer’s music he was singing.

Langer grew up loving classic pop singles and he’s crafted plenty more himself. But there is a part of him that still thrills to a memory of Captain Beefheart’s band pulverising its bewildered hippy audience. These days he needs to blast away on that electric guitar: “It’s a bit RUDE, the sound I want to make, it’s not comfortable. I don’t want to fit in. I write pop songs, but I make a lot of noise. I need to be in overdrive.”

Clang! The rumour was true. Don’t let this year slip by without hearing The Clang Group. It’s getting dark, turn your bloody lights on.

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