Penetration

Penetration formed in Ferryhill, County Durham, in 1976, initially performing as The Points before taking their name from a 1973 Iggy and the Stooges song. Their first show was at the Rock Garden in Middlesbrough that October, their second supporting the Stranglers at Newcastle City Hall. Pauline Murray sang, with Robert Blamire on bass, Gary Smallman on drums and Gary Chaplin on guitar.

They played the Roxy club during its first hundred days, shared a bill with Generation X, and were supported by Warsaw, the group that became Joy Division, at that band's first ever gig. They also toured with Buzzcocks and supported the Vibrators, part of the wider first wave of British punk.

'Don't Dictate' remains the song they are best known for. Chaplin left in 1978, replaced by Neale Floyd, with Fred Purser, later of Tygers of Pan Tang, joining as second guitarist. The band recorded a John Peel session that July. Their material carried more melodic and harmonic detail than much first-wave punk, edging towards new wave, with Murray's voice giving the songs an unusual clarity.

Their debut album, Moving Targets, came out in 1978 and placed highly in both Sounds' and NME's critics' polls that year. After touring Europe, the US and Britain in 1979, a second album, Coming Up for Air, was less well received, and the band split that October, followed by the release of a bootleg collection, Race Against Time.

Pauline Murray went on to record with Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls, an album produced by Martin Hannett that yielded the singles 'Dream Sequence' and 'Mr. X', plus the non-album 'Searching for Heaven'. Penetration reformed in 2001 with Murray, Blamire and Smallman alongside new guitarists Steve Wallace and Paul Harvey, and have recorded and performed together since.