Starjets

I found this single floating around on the Internet. Mint copy for a tenner ... thought it was worth it. I was looking for the Starjets single "Ten Years (Lincoln Edition)" and in reality .. I still am, but couldn't turn down a MINT Copy.
I saw (The) Starjets live, just the once, back in 1979 they played the Drill Hall in Lincoln supporting Stiff Little Fingers on their "Gotta Getaway" tour. Stiff Little Fingers had played live in Lincoln a few months earlier promoting their 'Inflammable Material' album. It was one of those Rough Trade Package tours and alongside SLF were Essential Logic (when they still had William Bennett on guitar) and Robert Rental & The Normal. I am not a 'fan' of Stiff Little Fingers, a couple of good singles but the album was really terrible. The cover of "Johnny Was" is worse than The Clash's cover of "Police & Thieves" on their first album. But Lincoln being Lincoln and it being 1979 I went along ... and happy I did as I was entranced and blown away by Robert Rental & The Normal.
Lincoln Drill Hall hosted a couple of Rough Trade Package gigs back in 1979. The Raincoats, Kleenex and Spizz Energi was a good one but Cabaret Voltaire, Scritti Politti and Swell Maps got cancelled due to poor ticket sales.
The Drill Hall was a great venue for live bands back in the day. I saw my first ever live band there, (I am not counting the time that me and my big sister sneaked out of the Pontins Holiday Camp in Brean Sands whilst our parents were enjoying 'an evening with Ray Illingworth'* to go to the pub down the road to drink pints of cider and inadvertently see Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders in 1976.) Judas Priest & Magnum (1977). It was the 'bigger' bands that came to The Drill Hall, the likes of The Jam, The Psychedelic Furs, The Vibrators, The Damned, Magazine, Secret Affair, Adam & The Ants, The Stranglers to pluck just a few from my fading memory, with some bands bringing great supports like The Adverts, Prag VeC, Squire, The Depressions and The Jolt. I think the booking was done through the students union at the local Tech College ... but I could be wrong. At the same time Lincoln had its' own 'punk' club in AJ's as well as sporadic gigs at the Art College and Bishop Grossettes (the teacher training college in the North of the City .... Satans Rats played there in 1978!). 1979 and Lincoln was a hive for live bands.

It was only a couple of months after the SLF Rough Trade Package that they were on the road again, this time promoting the "Gotta Getaway" single ... and not a bad single either. It was their last for Rough Trade Records before signing up to Chrysalis Records. Admission would have probably been around 75 pence to maybe a pound. Support came from fellow Northern Irelanders Starjets.
Two memories from this gig ... one is getting beaten up, the shit was well and truly kicked out of me during the Starjets set and then getting a copy of the "Ten Years (Lincoln Edition)" 7" single after the gig. Starjets were promoting this track as a forthcoming single and had a hundred or so white label copies with 'Lincoln Edition' rubber stamped on the label. I remember the singer (Terry Sharpe) saying that 'they only cost the price of a packet of three and looking at the sight of you, you won't be needing one of them'. I had no idea what he was on about.

'Ten Years' is not a great stand out single from 1979. It is average New Wave Power Pop .. more Peter Powell than John Peel. File under Bram Tchaikovsky or Fabulous Poodles but I still want a copy of the Lincoln Edition. In the meantime the 'official' release will suffice.
Now we have the wonderful world of the Internet, research finds that Starjets went on to have a 'hit single' and appear on Top Of The Pops and that Terry Sharpe formed The Adventures after Starjets folded and the bass player Sean Martin later joined SLF frontman Jake Burns in Jake Burns & The Big Wheel. What comes around ... I suppose.
If anyone reading this has a spare copy of "Ten Years (Lincoln Edition)" or wants to sell their copy then please get in touch ...

God Bless The Starjets.

* An Evening with Ray Illingworth is not a euphemism. Ray Illingworth toured the holiday camps at the time and gave a talk reminiscing about his days as England and Leicestershire cricket captain. My parents were both keen cricket fans ... on the same holiday the Pontins camp was visited by such sporting greats as Ray Reardon, Chester Barnes and Kendo Nagasaki.