The Victims

About The Victims

The Victims were formed in March1977 and came from the Black Country in the West Midlands. Having worked in bands together previously they soon put together a new stage show.

Even though the average age of the band members was eighteen, with support from their manager Roy Massey they wrote and rehearsed their own original material in a comparatively short amount of time. Having been offered the use of the Club Lafayette in Wolverhampton during the day they were able to get in a weeks writing and rehearsal for their first gig at the Affair in Swindon on the 9th of March. The following week the band went into Nest Studio’s Bristol Street, Birmingham to record “Pogo”.

The impressive list of early gigs included “The Roxy Club, The Rock Garden (Covent Garden) and the Electric Circus in Manchester where they supported The Doctors of Madness (The in thing up the North of England at the time was to spit at a band if you liked them, it rained on The Victims that night). The band also put in an appearance at the Roxy Review on the 20th of August.

One of the gimmicks the band employed to get noticed was within the final number of the set “Fiver” and during Glyn’s long guitar solo at the end of the track, Chris used to take out both a five pound note and a box of matches, then continued to set the fiver on fire in front of the amazed faces of the front row of the audience. I must point out that a fiver in 1977 was worth a lot more than it is today, it was a week’s wage for each of us.

The next step for the band was to record more tracks so Roy booked a session for them in New Horizon Studios in Coventry (This studio later that year became the heart of the “Two Tone” scene). The lads recorded the majority of the tracks as live takes, featured on this compilation here.

On the 29th of August 1977 The Victims where invited to perform at Barbarellas nightclub as part of the Birmingham Punk festival. The line-up included 999 and many others. The gig could be described as a marathon for the audience, as it started at 2pm and finished at 2am the next morning. Every set was recorded using the Strawberry mobile recording studio, set up outside of the club and the plan was to take the best tracks to produce a follow up “Pose” album (there is no record of what became of the tracks?).

On the 1st of September the band began a joint tour with another well-known punk band on the Detour Records label - London, with a last minute change to the support band The Swords, the band The Verdict from Stoke Upon Trent completed the line up. The tour was for thirteen dates in total and it included the Sundown at Charring Cross, Rafters at Manchester, Top of the world Stafford and finally ending on the 29th of September at Mr Digbys in Birkenhead.

The Victims performed only two more gigs after this tour, the final being a revisit to the Rock Garden in Covent Garden on the 11th of October.

On the 18th of October 1977 the band split.

You may be interested to know that even today each member of the band works or produces for the music industry.

There are less than a handful of Victims images in existence and there is only one photograph of the four members together (which became the poster) and was taken on the roof of the then, newly built Alpha tower in Suffolk Street Queensway, Birmingham. The ones that have survived can be found on the bored teenagers website along with press cuttings:

(expired link)
We hope you enjoy the music