The Soft Boys

The Soft Boys: Red Cow, London

Live Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, 21 January 1978

AAAH, SOFT Boys. 'Soft Machine' and 'Wild Boys'? Maybe. Specialise in surreal shaggy dog stories/parodies laid over a solid rock base. Recently out from Cambridge, ...

Elvis Costello, Whirlwind, Soft Boys: Roundhouse, London

Live Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, 28 January 1978

The rise and rise of the perennial wimp ...

The Soft Boys, The Brakes: The Nashville, London

Live Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, 4 March 1978

NOT AN evening for those with sensitive eardrums, this. Even these days when volume for its own sake seems to be a pre-requisite of too ...

The Soft Boys/The Brakes: The Nashville, London

Live Review by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 18 March 1978

Why it's safer to lack discipline than imagination ...

The Soft Boys: A Can Of Bees (Two Crabs)

Review by Ian Penman, New Musical Express, 5 May 1979

TAKE THE "mystery" out of rock'n'roll and you're left with an evaluation of current rock'n'roll that relies upon the recognition of traditional principles or objects. ...

The Soft Boys: Underwater Moonlight (Armageddon ARM 1)

Review by Mark Ellen, New Music News, 12 July 1980

ANOTHER headlong plunge into the acid-rock grotesque. Another Creature Feature in wax. ...

Pylon, Soft Boys: Moonlight Club, London

Live Review by Betty Page, Sounds, 10 January 1981

THE SPORTING SBs stepped down for Pylon, Athenians from Georgia, after their Music Machine extravaganza was blown out by a freak fire. Best described by ...

Robyn Hitchcock Rocks Groovily On

Retrospective and Interview by Dave Thompson, B-Side, 1995

ROBYN HITCHCOCK is confused. At least, he's as confused as anyone who's been told they'll be called by a writer in America, with all the ...

The Soft Boys: Underwater Moonlight

Review by Bill Holdship, Rolling Stone, 13 March 2001

IN THIS ERA of nonstop rock lists, the term "classic" is almost as overused as "genius" and "influential."But 1980's Underwater Moonlight remains all three of ...

The Soft Boys: Let's hear it for the boys

Retrospective and Interview by Robert Webb, The Independent, 13 April 2001

Cambridge, 1977: the unlikely birthplace of one of the UK's most influential bands. But by 1981 they were gone. Whatever happened to the Soft Boys, ...

The Soft Boys: The Three Kings, London

Live Review by Nick Hasted, Uncut, May 2001

THE ONE-TIME freaks are out tonight, suited and booted for this biz-only reintroduction to Robyn Hitchcock's reconstituted Soft Boys, in the tucked-away, locked-up Clerkenwell pub ...

Just who the hell is Robyn Hitchcock, anyway?

Interview by Jim Yoakum, unpublished, 2004

FUNNYMAN? Serious Artist? Ironic? Fey? Wry? Ask the average punter "Who is Robyn Hitchcock?" and you'll get a variety of replies, from "neo-psychedelic warbler" and ...