Bombsite Fanzine 1977 ; The Prefects Live at Eric's

Saturday August 20th 1977 ; The Slits, The Prefects and the Spitfire Boys

Above; Viv Albertine of The Slits, Paul and Alan Apperley The Prefect's - Reading Bombsite Fanzine issue #1 at Eric's club in Liverpool.

After receiving a copy of this photo Paul Apperley notes, "the other Prefect is my brother Alan [right], who is still playing guitar with the reformed Nightingales, although he was never a Nightingale originally. In my not very extensive diary notes, it says that we did an encore with Ari from the Slits playing drums on "Freedom Fighters" whilst I sat it out and watched".
Paul also recalls "at the end of the gig after we had played , me and Viv were sitting on an amp on the stage talking , and someone threw a bottle at us! ( fortunately they missed) I've always wanted a photo of me & Viv , we got on well, so cheers for that".
"The night before Eric's we had gone to the Pistols first secret gig , at Wolverhampton, we were supposed to support them but for some reason did not, Ari`s mother was there, I told Ari at Eric's that we had bumped into her, obviously without realizing her connection with John Lydon at the time". A few years later John married Ari's mother Nora Forster.

The Prefects were invited to open the London show of The Clash's 'White Riot Tour'. It was the group's fifth ever gig and the first 'big' punk concert, at the Rainbow Theatre in May '77 alongside The Jam, Buzzcocks, Subway Sect and, of course, The Clash. This was the night that DJ John Peel and his producer John Walters saw the group and it was this pair who responsible, later on, for the band's only visits to a recording studio.

The Prefect's were particularly 'popular' in Manchester and were the one non Manc act at the last night of the legendary Electric Circus in that city. Playing on a bill with Warsaw (later Joy Division), The Negatives, The Worst, The Fall, Magazine, John Cooper Clarke, Buzzcocks and, of course, John The Postman, this show was recorded by Virgin Records but The Prefects refused to be on the record.

However, in 2001 a line up did reform for a couple of low key reunion gigs and, in 2004 Acute Records in NYC released a CD of all the group's studio recordings, plus a song from the Electric Circus tapes and a ten second blast the never-officially recorded track 'VD'.