No Dice Redcar Coatham Bowl 20th May 1979
After a brief excursion to review some punk gigs, I am now moving back to my alphabetical list, to cover bands I have seen starting with the letter “N”. The band that I am covering first are all but forgotten, including by me 🙂 ! No Dice appeared during the emergence of punk, coming from North London and playing bluesy rock in the style of the Stones and the Faces, primarily at The Marquee and other assorted London venues. They released two albums ‘No Dice’ and ‘2 Faced’, and toured extensively, supporting UFO and Eddie and the Hot Rods (I may have seen them as support, but don’t recall). They also played the Reading Festival in 1977. By 1979 they was a lot of promotion behind them and they were out on their own headline tour, which I caught at Redcar Coatham Bowl. No Dice were Roger “Peaches” Ferris on vocals, Dave Martin on guitars, Chris or “Kit” Wyles on drums and main songwriter Gary Strange on bass. At the time of this concert they were promoting their second album “2 Faced”. 
I remember No Dice as a straight ahead blues/rock band with a singer in the mould of Rod Steward and Frankie Miller, and music that would stand up well alongside the Faces and Free. If they had been around in the early 70s, instead of in the midst of the UK punk scene, they may well have done a lot better. I remember thinking that No Dice looked and sounded like a major rock band (they had the music, the image and all the gear and stage setting) but without having a really strong following to match. The gig was not that well attended. Bad timing I guess. No Dice gave up to the inevitable and split in the early 80s, although they have reformed recently and played a gig at Dingwalls London last year. The gig got a good review on Uber Rock : “No Dice came, No Dice played, No Dice rocked. Shut your eyes and you were back in the Marquee.” http://www.uberrock.co.uk/gig-reviews/9-may-gigs/5072-no-dice-london-camden-dingwalls-16th-may-2012.html
You can find the No Dice website here: http://www.nodiceband.com/
22 Dec
Vintagerock's Weblog. 
Posted by Mark on May 16, 2022 at 4:26 pm
Here’s an interesting No Dice snippet from a
Mixcloud upload that led me to your blog.
It’s an offair recording of the Mike Read
Saturday Show from 19 May 1979, the day
before you saw No Dice at the bowl.
“Tomorrow, Redcar, next week, the World”,
announces a somewhat optimistic ‘Ready
after playing “Come Dancing” (starts at
7:10).
Great blog, by the way; you’ve got a new subscriber.
Posted by vintagerock on May 16, 2022 at 4:39 pm
Welcome to my concert memories world Mark. I am always pleased to welcome new subscribers. I hope you enjoy reading my concert memories. I certainly enjoyed writing them and it took me a long time! No Dice. Now there is a name from the past. As I recall they were tipped to make it big, and were a pretty fine band, but never quite made it. Happy days Peter