PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN ANNOUNCE SPECIAL ONE-OFF CONCERT AT LONDON’S 100 CLUB ON AUGUST 10, 2018
Human Punk in conjunction with Vive Le Rock Magazine have announced a special one-off concert by the recording lineup of Professor and the Madman. The group — which features Alfie Agnew (Adolescents, D.I.), Sean Elliott (D.I., Mind Over Four), Rat Scabies (The Damned, The Mutants) and Paul Gray (The Damned, Eddie & the Hot Rods, UFO) — will take the stage at the 100 Club in London on August 10, 2018. Tickets are on sale now.
Professor and the Madman released its third album, Disintegrate Me, to international acclaim on February 23. Choosing P&TM as one of its “Bands to Watch in 2018,” Classic Rock Magazine declared “Disintegrate Me is an infectious cocktail of power-pop/rock, ‘60s British Invasion and melodic psychedelia. It’s rich, quality stuff.” The album is available for download on iTunes and Amazon while the CD and clear vinyl LP can be ordered at http://professorandthemadman.com/patm_store/.
The 100 Club show will be a rare — if not only— chance to see the recording lineup of Professor and the Madman together on the same stage. Due to the distance between Agnew and Elliott in Southern California, and Scabies and Gray in the UK, logistics make it difficult for the quartet to convene for live performances. No additional performances by this lineup are being considered at this time.
“It’s a dream come true to be playing the 100 Club,” says Agnew. “Growing up in Southern California, my brothers and I would try to imagine having attended those ground zero punk gigs at the club in 1976. Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned, Buzzcocks, plus the infamous live debut of Siouxsie and the Banshees featuring Sid Vicious on drums.” The “brothers” Agnew references are Rikk and Frank, a pair of musicians who helped form the bedrock of the original Los Angeles punk scene as members of Social Distortion, Adolescents, Christian Death, 45 Grave, and others.
Elliott is excited about the 100 Club concert for another reason: “The Damned are, without a doubt, the #1 most influential band for Alfie and me. To actually share the stage with the rhythm section from The Black Album is going to be amazing.”
The origins of Professor and the Madman reach back to the early 1990s, when both Agnew and Elliott were guitarists in the Orange County punk band, D.I. Playing together, the pair hit if off immediately, both musically and personality-wise. However, Agnew left music for well over a decade to pursue an academic career (he is, actually, a professor) and didn’t reunite with Elliott again until 2014 when the pair formed Professor and the Madman. An unexpected third member arrived as a Christmas gift in 2015. Agnew and Elliott were playing a holiday-themed gig with a local Los Angeles punk covers band, introducing the Damned’s “Smash It Up” as an encore, when Scabies was coaxed on stage to join them. Scabies happened to be in town and some friends had brought him to the show. The trio were exhilarated by the performance and Scabies offered to drum on all the tracks for Professor and the Madman’s first pair of digitally-released indie albums, Elixir I: Good Evening, Sir! (July 2016) and Elixir II: Election (November 2016). In related news, Scabies is set to release his debut solo album, P.H.D. (Prison, Hospital, Debt), via Cleopatra Records on May 18.
Elliott reached out to Gray via Facebook in 2016, and he was soon on board to provide basslines for Disintegrate Me. Earlier this year, Gray (who recently reunited with the Damned after two decades) told KnowYourBassPlayer.com that “Alfie and Sean are continuing the legacy in a way that immediately spoke to me. It was absolutely honest music, the most exciting I’d heard in eons, and chock full of melodies. I knew what I could add straight away. They may or may not agree with me but my first thoughts were Damned meets vintage Cheap Trick via The Kinks — that’s a pretty heady mixture!”
Source: www.professorandthemadman.com
