The Ruts - 50 Years of Ruts Music (1977-2027)

Ruts DC are playing The Sugarmill on Saturday 24 April 2027, as part of a run of shows marking 50 years of Ruts music. The night is billed as The Ruts - 50 Years of Ruts Music (1977-2027), and it's Ruts DC taking the stage.

To get where they are, it helps to know where they started. The Ruts came out of London in 1977 with a sound that didn't quite fit anywhere else: the raw urgency of punk colliding with reggae, dub and rock, driven by Malcolm Owen, Paul Fox, Dave Ruffy and Segs Jennings. Their album The Crack became one of the defining British punk records of its era. After losing Malcolm Owen in 1980, the remaining members reinvented themselves as Ruts DC. Later, in 2007, they lost Paul Fox, but the band has stayed a living, evolving entity, now with guitarist Leigh Heggarty on board.

The 2027 shows are framed by the musicians not as a reunion, recreation or tribute band, but as a celebration played in the present tense. The set draws on a discography that runs from the early records The Crack and Grin & Bear It through to the later ones: Animal Now, Rhythm Collision, Music Must Destroy and Counterculture?. It's a long stretch of music to pull from, and the night is built around that whole run rather than just the old stuff.

Doors open at 19:00 at The Sugarmill on Brunswick Street in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, and tickets are £31.94 including fees.