Sounds From The Junkshop #35 - Snuff

 "I'm an arsehole, I'm a fuckin' wanker 'cos I can't get to grips with what the fuck you're about..." - Snuff - Arsehole (1997)

I'm actually amazed it's taken me this long to get round to covering Snuff on Sounds From The Junkshop as they were a band I used to go and see a lot in my teenage years. Rising up during the pre-fraggle "grebo" period, they'd come up at the same time as Mega City Four and the Senseless Things but split in 1991 just as the two aforementioned were starting to bother the charts. Bassist Andy would go on to join Leatherface (of the classic I Want The Moon single and Mush album) while singing drummer Dunc would move to guitar and join up with the former Soho Roses/Wildhearts rhythm section of Jools Dean and Patrice Panache to form the excellently named Guns 'n' Wankers but the band would reunite in 1995 for a second bite of the cherry, signing to Steve Lamacq's Deceptive label (Lamacq had been a long time champion of the band when he wrote for the NME).

With groups like China Drum and Compulsion both now starting to make waves, it gave Snuff a whole new scene to latch on to and I first heard of them via their cover of the theme from Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? which was a Christmas single and got played on the Evening Session a lot. I'm actually struggling to remember when I first saw them live but I'm pretty sure it was at the Duchess some time around 1996-97.

If the majority of grebo/fraggle/indie-punk bands owed their sound in the main to the early pop-punk of the Buzzcocks and the Ramones then Snuff were more of a '90s Toy Dolls, injecting a bit of humour and enjoyable silliness into the mix with song titles like Look Mum, There's Vikings On The Tundra Again and the infamous Flibiddydibbidydob EP which featured the band turning their hand to covering the theme tunes from Kwik Fit and All Bran adverts.

I must've seen Snuff live loads of times from about 1997 to 2004, either out on their own or sharing bills with the likes of Compulsion, China Drum, the Dead Pets etc as well as at the Leeds Festival where they were usually a regular fixture on the Third Stage. Their gigs were nearly always brilliant - proper fun old-skool punk where people losing shoes while crowd-surfing was a common occurrence. The set would always end with their cover of the Likely Lads theme and their other signature tune Arsehole and there genuinely was something awesome to hear a full room bellowing "Weeeeee're all arseholes! We're a bunch of wankers!"

I bought pretty much all of Snuff's late '90s albums from 1996's Demamussabebonk through 1997's Potatoes And Melons Wholesale Prices Straight From The Lock-Up (you just know that there's probably also a Fall song called that somewhere or other), 1998's excellent Tweet Tweet My Lovely and 1999's Numb Nuts. The band were actually signed to NOFX's Fat Wreck records in the States at this point (taking over G'n'W's deal there - they remained on Deceptive in the UK) and you can kind of see a kinship between the two bands in terms of their sound in this era. Chart success would continue to elude them though - Pixies and Nick Motown both did well in the indie charts but failed to breach the Top 100. By 2003's Disposable Income, Deceptive had folded and the band had left Fat Wreck to self-release their own music. It was a strong effort though as was 2004's Greasy Hair Makes Money which saw them gleefully taking a sledgehammer to Girls Aloud's Sound Of The Underground.

Then...nothing. Snuff didn't even split up, they just went into an extended hibernation with Dunc joining the Toy Dolls for their most recent couple of albums, 2012's The Album After The Last One and 2019's Episode XIII as well as fronting his own band Billy No Mates. The group did put out a comeback album in 2012's 5..4...3...2..1...Perhaps? but seemed to disappear again shortly afterwards. However, this story does have a happy ending with the group getting back together a few years ago and producing some excellent new material in 2019's There's A Lot Of It About album and last year's Wrath Of Thoth EP. Both of which you can read this site's reviews of by clicking the above links.

I very nearly went to see Snuff a couple of years ago playing the Barfly for what I think might've been their 25th anniversary gig when I lived in London but predictably it sold out long before my pay cheque went in with the money I would've used for a ticket. However, hopefully with plenty of new material that the band haven't toured properly yet, hopefully some gigs will be forthcoming once the live circuit opens up properly again. We need to do this again lads, seriously, it's been way too long. In the meantime, all hail Snuff, the great grebo survivors.