Welcome to the latest Squire newsletter. This week we are again looking beyond the UK to explore Squire’s international fan base and are going in the very opposite direction of Los Angeles in California in every sense! We also take a peek at the post Get Smart era and reveal the demo version of ‘The Reasons Why’.
Firstly, there is still a week to go before we announce the winner of the ‘Every Trick (In The Book Of Love) white label test pressing competition, so if you want a chance to win this exclusive disc, please post your photos of your copy of the record on the Squire Facebook Group page! There is a link here and on the picture below.
Alternatively, if you don’t use Facebook then you are welcome to email your picture to our email address!
This months newsletters have found us revelling in Squire’s May concerts, from the first ever Mods Mayday and the subsequent annual events, to the important ten dates in 1979 that built the bands reputation. May has always been an eventful month for Squire music. It was May 3rd 1983 that Squire played their first concert in California, at the 3-2-1 Club in Santa Monica, followed on the 7th May at the Concert Factory in Costa Mesa.
The trip took us all the way to the edge of the Pacific Ocean, as far West as we could go!
A year later, almost to the day on 5th May 1984, found Squire playing at the Kulturzentrum in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany, a city five miles from what was once the East German border or ‘Iron Curtain’, about as far East as you could travel back then!
We were promoting the September Gurl album, a record that took the sound into a power pop direction with the inclusion of our interpretations of American power pop songs by Big Star and The Shoes, alongside our own tracks such as ‘Debbie Jones’ and ‘Can You Tell Me When’.
To do justice to the more guitar oriented sound of the album, we decided to expand the live sound, from the familiar three piece arrangement to a four piece ensemble by adding an extra guitarist. Ian Lucas, who fronted his own band Station 360 joined us for the 1984 live dates.
Here we are waiting outside the venue.
The concert was amazing, the City of Wolfsburg is also home of the VW Beetle and vast factory, and as it was situated a few miles from the location of the East / West divide, we were taken on a ‘guided tour’! The experience was profound, from staring across the Pacific Ocean into the sunset in 1983, in May 1984 we found ourselves in Germany staring across ‘no mans land’ that separated West Germany from East Germany! Indeed, our guide pointed out the nearby lookout towers, explained the empty space was a minefield, and that while we had been gazing into the void, an armed soldier had crept up, just hidden in the bushes within ten feet of where we were standing! We were advised not to take photos!
Instead we went back into the town and enjoyed a traditional Sunday morning Bratwurst breakfast from the takeaway truck parked in the town square, before driving back the six hundred miles home! Livin' the Rock 'n' Roll dream!
The September Gurls album was re-released in 2019 with the extra tracks that had been left off the original mini album.
