Between 1980 and 1982, as Vic Godard and The Subway Sect, Rob Marche, Sean McLusky, Dave Collard and Chris Bostock hosted a club in Soho every Thursday night at the Whisky-a-Go-Go (later abbreviated to the WAGG) in Wardour Street where the band played under the banner ‘Cool Bop & Swing’. Our manager Bernard Rhodes had had his eye on this long-forgotten venue for some time, and with Sean, transformed it into Club Left; it had a panoramic view overlooking Soho’s Chinatown and was last used as a regular music venue in the 60’s for groups such as Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames. Johnny Britton was the regular DJ and their refined set became the “Songs for Sale” album on Phonogram.

In addition to Vic, each week Subway Sect performed regular sets for different guest singers; Lady Blue, Bananarama, Tom Cat, Johnny Britton and the great Dig Wayne. Dig’s previous group were Buzz And The Flyers, the influential New York rockabilly band of the late ‘70’s. The club quickly became a magnet for the musical luminaries of the time who were attracted by its laid back and intimate feel.

Georgie Fame himself returned to perform as well as the legendary Slim Gaillard, (who featured in Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel “On the Road”) who became something of a fixture. Subway Sect took the whole club on a UK tour and also toured with Bauhuas, Altered Images, John Cale and The Birthday Party before moving the club along the road to Ronnie Scott’s. At Ronnie’s, the JoBoxers quickly evolved with Dig as the front man and they used the opportunity to develop with many more influences, both past and contemporary, before signing to RCA records.

Club Left in the Guardian 2014

More on Vic Godard and Subway Sect here

More on Buzz And The Flyers here

They Opposed All Rock & Roll by Mark Jay

On the rare occasions Subway Sect Mk1 ventured above ground  - starting with the 100 club punk festival Sept '76 (a messy rehearsal), Harlesden Coliseum March '77 (Vic topples face first into the wings like a felled sapling as the Buzzcocks step onstage over him) and the subsequent Clash tour – they were a jarring, shambolic event which even a decidedly punk-friendly journalist responded to thus:   " I'm told it's music that grows on you - if it grew on me I'd cut it off...". They stood blinking in grey pullovers, dazed and uncomfortable on vast, brightly lit Civic hall stages before velvet curtains as swaying herds of impatient Mohawk and leathered Clash fanatics hurled beer glasses (they withheld the spit – that was an honour solely reserved for the beloved headliners).
It was art rock, but without much art... or rock.  But we looked forward to their performances and obtusely defended their static, droning atmosphere. And - because of Vic's stoic refusal to toe the identikit-punk line, plus the vague whiff of intrigue and espionage that always seemed to surround them (we'd also seen those French New Wave films at the Scala)  - they remained a group we always kept within spitting distance of our hearts.

So why, in 1980, is everyone now dressed in dickie bows, quiffs and cocktail dresses, lindy-hopping like Pearl Harbour never happened, in a dingy Soho 'beat' club on a wet Thursday night, watching a band with the same name as those 100 club punk fest debutantes, playing joyous, tightly wrought, 'cool bop and swing’ with a professionalism and energy so at odds with that dissonant anti-rock - it might just as well be another band.

Well  - it is another band, bar of course Vic, who seems to have been reborn as Tony Bennett's shyer, less suntanned, less vocally blessed younger brother. But - he can sure carry off a mean DJ and pop his fingers like a pro, and this time - no falling over.

I'm not sure that Club Left delivered all it promised, but what it did provide was some thrilling pre-rock and roll sounds and attitude - and gave us, not only that lost masterpiece, ‘Songs For Sale’, but at least one great enduring legacy in a band that would become the only chart-storming, table dancing, half-mast-trouser-wearing Northern Soul groovesters that made the ‘80’s swing - JoBoxers.

It also spawned a fanzine, aptly named ‘One Flight Up’ put together by myself and a few Club Lefties in DIY punk fashion, offering space and voice to anyone who could be bothered to put pen to paper, printed on an old litho machine culled from some Portobello Road hippies which we housed in the Clash’s rehearsal space. It had an edgy, unpredictable energy, looked like a punked-up ‘50’s fashion mag and lasted for just one issue.
And that – might just be a fitting epitaph for the Club itself.
But I doubt if London – or anywhere else for that matter has ever seen a night quite like those irreverent, eclectic, swinging Thursdays in Soho.
While it lasted, Club Left was a brief sanctuary from the conspicuous loadsa-money high-Tory consumerism that was fast overtaking our era - shoulder-pads, filofaxes and power-lunches in Soho as unemployment, right wing hooliganism and a totally pointless war ravaged the land.

Of course punk rock never really changed anything. A few teenagers left home, made bands, got politicized, wrote fanzines, lived fast, died young. But that’s teen spirit – it would have happened anyway. More disturbingly, my recollection as a wide-eyed fourteen year old at punk gigs was that there always seemed to be a sinister backline of old men (and by that I mean over 30) lurking in the shadows, watching, making notes, muttering to one another. And these men  (and we all know who they are) forged entire careers - some huge, some tiny, based on the premise that they created this revolution. Not so. It was created by us - the teenagers - the 'kids' who got regularly stopped and searched by bored coppers, beaten up by ‘straights’, turned away from jobs and thrown out of school because of our allegiance to the cause. From us came the bedroom bands, the homemade fashion, the DIY fanzines, the artists, the DJ's, the mad, possessed anarchic faces that would have done it themselves regardless. And some of these faces were the boys who became Subway Sect Mk 2.