Pauline Murray kept a diary when she and Penetration were on the punk rock frontline and her vivid and emotional memories appear in a new memoir, Life’s A Gamble, beautifully illustrated with personal photos, press cuttings, late ‘70s gig listings and other lovingly archived memorabilia. It teleports you back to a time when pop music made daily headlines and battles were lost and won in fragrant dancehalls and knackered vans on motorways. As does this podcast, recorded with an audience at London’s 21Soho club in late November. Aged 14 she was travelling to London from County Durham and sleeping in railway stations to see the Pistols and the Clash. She formed Penetration in ‘76 and for two hectic years they were caught up in the whirlwind. This account of it all includes Alan Freeman, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Jonathan Richman, Tim Curry (as Dr Frank-N-Furter), why the deaths of Sid and Nancy has such symbolic significance, the female punk ‘sisterhood’ giving her the cold shoulder, her unwise marriage, and the profit and loss statement of the debt she still owes Virgin (the annual reminders have never stopped). And she talks movingly about the experience every group endures when their first flush of mutual love and enthusiasm turns to bitter inter-personal fall-out. One of her kids was in the audience. As was Gaye Advert!

Order ‘Life’s A Gamble’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lifes-Gamble-Penetration-Invisible-Stories/dp/1913172708

21Soho: https://www.21-soho.com/

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