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SCREAMING TARTS PRESENTS... John McKay’s Reactor + Scant Regard.Saturday September 27th 2025. Wrecking Ball Arts Centre, Hull.
The Scream, the debut album from Siouxsie & the Banshees, was released late enough in the punk era to bear some claim as the first post-punk album, with only minor traces of 'punk' and enough hints of what had come even earlier to feel utterly new.
Siouxsie was clearly the focus of the band, but the sonic dynamo was John McKay, composer of most of the album's music and hit singles, such as Hong Kong Garden, while simultaneously creating a wholly new guitar sound that was harsh and brittle, yet melodically intoxicating, best articulated by a confounded Steve Albini many years later, ". . . only now people are trying to copy it, and even now nobody understands how that guitar player got all that pointless noise to stick together as songs".
Many of the most influential guitarists of the past four decades credited John as a major influence, including Geordie from Killing Joke, Jim Reid of The Jesus And Mary Chain, U2's The Edge, Thurston Moore, Johnny Marr,and even the two guitarists who followed him into The Banshees – The Cure's Robert Smith and Magazine's John McGeoch.
McKay's burgeoning status as the anti-guitar hero came to a sudden halt when he and Banshees drummer Kenny Morris – at artistic odds with Siouxsie, bassist Steve Severin and manager Nils Stevenson – fled the band just after the start of a tour in support of the group's second album, Join Hands.
It became a major music paper scandal and eventually the subject of a BBC documentary, with Siouxsie's vitriol at the situation working its way into the lyrics of a later Banshees b-side, 'Drop Dead / Celebration'.
Aside from a solitary single on Marc Riley's In Tape label some years later, McKay went silent.
So, it is a revelation for many to learn that numerous excellent recordings were made by McKay in the immediate years following his abrupt departure from The Banshees.
Unheard by all but a very few, featuring drummer Kenny Morris, Mick Allen from Rema Rema, Matthew Seligman of the Soft Boys, longer-term collaborator Graham Dowdall (Nico / Ludus) and John's wife, Linda… the latter three of whom are now all sadly deceased.
Sixes And Sevens is an historic lost album bearing fair claim as the lost treasure of the post-punk era, the album collects eleven compelling studio tracks.
A prelude to the great surprise of John's return to live performance, with a fresh new band and a number of live shows in the offing. John McKay’s Reactor will feature the lad ‘imself on guitar, Jen Brown (The Priscillas) on vocals, Jola (Adam & The Ants, The Priscillas) on drums, and Billy King on bass.
£22.50
https://www.seetickets.com/event/john-mckay-s-reactor/wrecking-ball-arts-centre/3458963
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Wrecking Ball Arts Centre, 15 Whitefriargate ,Kingston upon Hull, United Kingdom, Llandudno
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