Nothing Can Stop Us Now / A Pocketful Of Roses / The Great Unfolding / Captains Table

Just Can’t Tell Him / Backseat Driver / In The Mood? / 6+7=10

Uploaded tonight is the second Webcore cassette released on A Real Kavoom Cassettes from Cornwall. Personally I liked this band very much and saw them perform many times in and around the capital. Many squatted venues including the 121 Railton Road bookshop, the old Jungle Records building in Islington and the Mankind Club in Hackney Central. Plenty of great nights at the Club Dog venues in Wood Green and Finsbury Park must also be mentioned. Also saw them support Psychic TV on a couple of occasions…What I can not find is too much information on the band anywhere on the internet so you will have to make do with an interview with the Webcore keyboardist Paul Chousmer on the aural-innovations.com site.

Roughly four or five years ago I was in England for both a vacation and to start collecting stock for a psychedelic mail order that I ran for a while. Most of what I bought was directly from the bands themselves or band members. This was still when you could write to an address off of a tape case or a compact disc insert and some one would respond to you. I don’t really remember how I had got Paul Chousmer’s number and address. But I did contact him before my vacation and he agreed to meet with me. He was even kind enough to drive into London so that I could buy a few items from him. It didn’t really hit me that the person I was going to meet had been there for all of the eighties U.K. Psych/Free Fest scene or that he was moving quite gracefully into the electronic and dance clubs. Musically his style has always been similar to ENO. His ability to create mind bending soundscapes is uncanny. They lift you and take you to places you’ve only dreamed of.

One of the first groups he was with was as big of a major attraction as the Ozric Tentacles. More than often they could be found playing the same gigs. Forming in 1982, Webcore’s music was more progressive then their contemporaries. Though still heavily psychedelic their sound is often mechanical and much more structured.

It was during the Webcore years that Paul developed his soundscapes. He and fellow Webcore member Dan Carpenter formed the chillout group Another Green World. Their title describes their music to a tee. They originally formed to play the early morning chillouts at a regular Ozric/Webcore venue Alice in Wonderland. This led to the all-too-common draw at Club Dog, the Deptford Crypt, and later Whirly-Gig and Return to the Source shows, one of which I attended at the Brixton Academy in 1996.

Shorty after Webcore faded in 1988 Paul focused his attention on Another Green World only taking time out to work with The Thunderdogs (the trippy house band for a traveling circus) and Spannerman (a spin off of the Thunderdogs). Then in 1993 he joined up with Phil Pickering and Mick West of Webcore to form Zuvuya. Mixing tribal and dance rhythms with the textured sound washes of Another Green World they became one of the earlier bands signed to the Delerium label. For these releases they collaborated with the psychedelic guru Terrence McKenna.

Though Paul is no longer with Zuvuya he has continued with Another Green World. He has released various compilation tracks with the Return to the Source group, and on Club Crusty Vol 1, Shamanarchy in the U.K., and the Dubmission label. He also has a full compact disc release on the Magick Eye label. I was lucky enough this last April to be in England when Paul had a gig in Exeter. The show was held at the Phoenix. Once I made it past the metal bird above the entrance that came alive every so often to open its glowing red eyes and spread its wings I witnessed a show that blew me away. Pure electronic psych, dub, dance bliss. Joining him on stage playing guitar, another of my favourite performers, was Russ of the Oroonies (another great festy psych band which spawned Joie of the Ozrics and later Eat Static ).

Paul recently performed as Another Green World for the Return to the Sources New Years Eve celebration at the Rocket.

DS: Can you give me an idea of your history musically?

PC: Webcore has some complicated roots. I’ll try to draw a family tree.

Vane – formed in Chelmsford, Essex 1981-3. We released two singles on Island.

James Vain – Vox

Phil Pickering – Bass – Webcore/Zuvuya

Clive Roberts – Guitar – later owned Trace Elliot

Colin Woolway – Drums

Paul Chousmer – Keys

Ring of Roses – formed in 1984. Signed to RCA Records for 100,000 Pounds though never released anything.

James Vain – Vox

Richard Havis – Guitar

Chris ??? – drums – later went on to play with Zodiac Mindwarp

??? – Bass

Dan “Spannerman” Carpenter – Sax

Paul Chousmer – Keys – left after four months

Webcore – formed in Cornwall in 1984 and lasted until 1987. Released several self-released cassettes, 2 LP’s and 2 12″s through Jungle Records.

Mick West – Vox

Phil Pickering – Bass

Paul Chousmer – Keys

Clive Goodwin – Guitar – later Ozrics sound engineer

Colin Woolway – Drums

Nick Van Gelder – Drums – had played with the Ozrics earlier-went on to Jamiroquai

Dan Carpenter – Sax occasionally

Mike ??? – left to join a monastery

Jackie Hannah – backing vox

Karen Kay – backing vox

Another Green World also started in 1984 when Dan and I left Ring of Roses. And it just keeps going…

Did you know about the Thunderdogs? The band played with Circus Archaos all over Europe and Scandinavia from 1990 to 1992.

Thunderdogs

Tony “Dog” D’Amico – Vox

Gavin Griffiths – Guitar – previously with the Ozrics and Ullulators

Dan Spannerman – Sax

Jonny Ellwood – Drums

Seaweed – Keys – now with Ozrics

Gabrielli – bass

Sound engineer and occasional pianist was me. And Stuart Zehnder and Generator John were along for the ride, sometimes tecking. You can see that these bands were fairly incestuous. Dan and Jackie have a son together, Jackie’s brother is Stuart Zehnder who played bass for Spannerman and then Jamiroquai also.

DS: I’ve never heard either Vane or Ring of Roses before. What was their music like?

PC: Oh it was such a long time ago… Vane was primarily psychedelic, but remember this was the early eighties so we had just come out of the punk revolution here and were fishing about with Goth and New Romantic styles. We were very much into electric sounds and effects. So imagine if you can: we were fronted by James Vain, 6’4″ tall, skinny as a rake, loads of make-up, electric coloured hair (he was influenced a lot by Bowie’s transformations – but dissolute as Lou Reed!), low lights, big bass, electronic noises all over the place – can you picture this? Very much a precursor to what Webcore got up to. A little less danceable, but much better looking! The band got fairly well known around the seedier underground scene in London. Great fun and fond memories.

DS: What about Ring of Roses?

PC: Ring of Roses was James Vane’s attempt to ‘get commercial’ (He had already blown the deal with Island Records after releasing two dreadful singles), so the songs were still vaguely psychedelic/new romantic, but very polished with definite ‘understandable’ lyrics and structures. With the help of a typical low-life manager the band signed to RCA for 100,000 Pounds, then fell to pieces – really RCA were impressed by the band’s appearance more than anything. The A&R man who signed the band left the company shortly after the signing. Always a bad sign. So the money got frittered away and nothing was ever released! What a sad story.

DS: How would you describe Webcore?

PC: Webcore were often described as way ahead of their time (at the time, if you can see what I mean.) I sort of took the roll of manager as nobody else would and we played everywhere. I (and Ed ‘Ozric’ Wynne) took the same view that the best way to publicize ourselves was to play wherever we could. So we often found ourselves at the same dodgy benefit gigs. All sorts of squats, free festivals, you name it. So we got a reputation for playing together all of the time. I’ve always thought our music was completely different. I felt there was a common psychedelic thread and we were always up for a party. Then Club Dog started (by Mike Dog, who later had the Ultimate Record label with groups like Eat Static and Senser) Webcore, the Ozric Tentacles and Another Green World all became regulars. And we grew with it.

DS: I agree that Webcore’s music was ahead of its time at the time. What would you say were the musical influences of the group?

PC: Our influences at the time inevitably included ENO, but also Psychic TV, Siouxsie and the Banshees, it’s difficult to say now from this distance in time. I would say we brought lots of different things together. Mick was a poet not a singer, so that was his approach. Trying to make his words fit. My idea was to create atmospheres behind the songs. Setting the scene. We were all experimenting. Just trying out ideas and if they felt good. It’s funny now that I’m teaching I see loads of young bands coming together. They all seem to want to sound like somebody else. The A&R mentality of copying whatever the last big hit was! We didn’t think that way at all back then!

DS: Webcore’s music also seems quite different from much of the other free fest bands like the Ozrics and Psi. How do you feel that Webcore fit into this scene?

PC: You’d have to ask this one of the audience really. I find it very hard to be objective. I would say that I was always surprised that Webcore’s audience danced a lot. I didn’t think of our music as dance music. This was fairly unusual in the free fest scene. Our music was also quite structured. Not totally, there was some room for improvisation. But there were definite maps to follow. The other bands seemed to be more into long wibble solos etc…

DS: How did Spannerman fit into the fold?

PC: Spannerman came together while we were all in the circus. We were getting bored, so we became the party band. When the circus finished we carried on. We played for a summer in 1992 with an offshoot circus “Matarank” at the Avignon Theater Festival in France. Clive Goodwin came along with his PA and looked after the sound. I left the band shortly after this as I was starting a family. The band then changed with Jonny Ellwood taking over on drums etc… We used to describe Spannerman as “psychedelic-punk-jazz.”

DS: If I remember right you played with the Fields of the Nephilim for a short while.

PC: The Fields of the Nephilim link came through Jungle Records. They had put out a couple of singles through Jungle before signing to Beggars Banquet. And the Field’s manager, Steve Brown, was a partner of Jungle. I was working at London University in 1988 or ’89 when they were looking for a keyboard player. They remembered me from some gigs when Webcore supported the Fields in the early days and tracked me down. That was great fun. I played on six tours in the U.K., Germany and France and also on their live LP. I really enjoyed myself.

DS: What became of Zuvuya? PC: Dunno the answer to this. I broke off contact with these people for reasons I’d rather not discuss. I made some music with them and it was put out through Delerium.

DS: What are your feelings on the festival scene of the eighties?

PC: You have to remember there was a right wing government ruling here at the time, with that bitch Thatcher at the helm. Lots of unemployment, kids on the dole, etc… Punk had run its course. We were all getting politicized. Stonehenge free festival was banned and suppressed by the police with a heavy hand. So free festivals were often a way to protest. We were all squatting, traveling. I have fond memories of that time. People were thinking of the world around them. I look at the kids now. They have no idea about politics. Nothing to protest about I suppose. The legacy of the Thatcher years is that everyone is out for themselves. Make as much money for yourself as you can and screw everyone else. I think that Reagan and his cronies did the same sort of thing over there.

DS: Through your music as Another Green World, you as an individual have moved quite easily from the scene in the eighties right into the club scene of the nineties and on. How do you feel about the club sound and what are you writing these days?

PC: I really like the music I hear in clubs these days. But it only sounds good in the clubs! In that atmosphere and loud. Most of it doesn’t seem to work when I put it on at home. However loud! In that sense I don’t really understand how I fit in. I actively try to make music that transports you from your armchair at home to some other place, without necessarily being really loud. This is important to me. So I keep in contact with these clubs, send them what I am doing. I just do what I do and they book me if they like it. This is probably quite old-fashioned these days. Everything is high sell, throwaway.

DS: Would you mind naming a few of the bands that you have supported or that have supported you in the past?

PC: Webcore supported on occasion:

Psychic TV

Fields of the Nephilim

Doctor and the Medics

Zodiac Mindwarp

Daevid Allen

Ozric Tentacles

Another Green World has played with:

Eat Static

Astralasia

Banco de Gaia

Cheapsuit Oroonies

DS: What are your influences?

PC: I have all sorts of influences. Holger Czukay, Erik Satie, Lee Scratch Perry, Thelonious Sphere Monk. These days I listen to a lot of early Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Albinoni and Klezmer music. Dub seems to be another common thread. I’ve taken a long time finding the nerve to play dub live. It certainly takes me to some of the places I want to go. I hope it does the same for the audience. Who knows where it will take me next.

DS: What are you teaching at University?

PC: I teach a variety of things musical at the colleges. Music Technology, Keyboard Skills, Music Theory and Music Business. All very time consuming. But it earns a living and is rewarding in other ways. It can also be very frustrating. Under-resourced equipment, unmotivated students etc…

DS: What equipment do you use live as Another Green World?

PC:Roland Jupitar 6

Korg M1

Oberheim Matrix-1000

Roland s-550 sampler

Lexicon Vortex

Yamaha SPX90

Alesis Quadraverb

Soundcraft mixer

DS: What do you feel the future holds for you musically?

PC: I’ll just polish the crystal ball!… I don’t know. I just carry on putting together music that appeals to me. And if other people like it great. I’ve never been terribly ambitious. I’ve always felt Music to be my vocation. I need to do it. And it’s nice when some money comes back from it. I have some vague ideas about getting into producing for other people or making film music. But it is high pressure work. And I prefer to work at my own (snail-like) pace. I have to have time to polish my work. I have been playing real instruments recently in a Klezmer band, with Russ and Jane of the Oroonies, and this is excellent exercise for the brain. In the very long term I suppose I will probably find myself playing piano jazz in my eighties. Though it is bound to be weirder than that!!!

Discography:

Webcore

Cassettes: Cinematography (A Real Kavoom ARK 4) 1984

The Great Unfolding (A Real Kavoom ARK 16) 1986

Consider The River (M.E.L.T. Music) 1987

12″: The Captians Table (Jungle/A Real Kavoom JUNG 30T/ARK23)

Running for the Precident (JUNG 34T/ARK25) Both 1987

Albums: Webcore (FREUD16/ARK27) 1987

WebcoreWebcore (FREUD22/ARK32) 1988

Spannerman

Cassettes: Leave it Mandy! 1992

Zuvuya

12″: Grabbing Nandi by the Horns (Nation NR026T) 1993

Shaman I Am (Delerium DELEC EP 031) 1993

Albums: Dream Matrix Telemetry (DELEC CD 021) 1993

Shamania (DELEC CD 031) 1994

Another Green World

Cassettes: My Dreams in Your Hands (AGW 001) 1984

Boondocks (AGW 002) 1988

Adjusting the Mirror (AGW 003) 1993

Albums: Invisible Landscape (Magick Eye) 1997

Video: Ambiotic State 1994

The debut cassette by Webcore is on the site right HERE

Chumbawumba

KUKL

Many thanks to Martin Flux for the lend of this excellent cassette uploaded today. No doubt a Flux Of Pink Indians and D & V cassette from this gig will appear at some time from Martin as those bands also performed.

Loads more rare Chumbawumba and KUKL material uploaded on this site if you care to use the search function. Text below ripped from kipuka.net/chumba/history/show

“Suspended above the courtyard of the Pompidou Centre in Paris is the Genitron, an electric sign-clock flashing the number of seconds left in the twentieth century. Inaugurated in January 1987 by Francois Mitterand, the Genitron is a time machine that conducts its relentless countdown over the heads of the international fauna of Les Halles, the hustlers, punks, dealers, con men, mystics, musicians, strong-men, fire-eaters, rappers, breakers, addicts, sidewalk artists and sidewalk dwellers who seem already to represent the spectres of the apocalypse.” – Elaine Showalter, from “Sexual Anarchy – Gender and Culture At The Fin de Siecle” (1990)

FIVE OR SIX YEARS before the countdown began and Chumbawamba is being born out of that beautiful mess of street performers. Chumbawamba is the trio in the corner busking Clash and Gene Vincent songs on acoustic guitars – fired by punk logic, punk as change, hanging about in Paris during that knife-edge decision-time when rebellion turns into either part of your growing up or part of your life. Politics or “attitude” to come into it sooner or later.

Back a bit further. Legal Aid and Optical Illusion are the drummer and singer in a Barnsley punk band. Legal’s granddad is taking a Polaroid. They’re called `The Threat’ and their music starts and ends this record; the photograph becomes it’s cover. Later they’ll change their names to Harry & Mave and meet up with the others in Leeds, and end up living in a huge squatted Victorian house making pop (I mean POP) records.

Alice Nutter, art school drop-out, is playing drums badly in a group called `Ow My Hair’s On Fire’. Lou Watts operating computers for Burnley Building Society, Dunstan singing Velvet Underground cover versions in a Billingham group `Men In A Suitcase’. Teams that meet in cafes… and in the background, a woman Prime Minister running her own War in the South Atlantic, kills, maims, parades and gloats for half of 1982. England is dreaming alright: and somebody has to shout about the nightmare even if they are to be damned into obscurity for their pains. Usher in the Never-Has-Beens!

LONG BEFORE Chumbawamba release any records of their own, they pull off a successful guerilla attack which results in their first appearance on vinyl. In response to Garry Bushell’s inane patronage of Oi Punk (before Gary wrote for The Sun, he practiced his homophobic brand of tabloid sensationalism in music weekly `Sounds’), Chumbawamba fabricate a completely bogus Oi band called `Skin Disease’, complete with press pack and four-track demo cassette. Some few weeks later and Bushell lists Skin Disease as “Burnley’s premier Oi band”, and letters appear in Sounds lumping Skin Disease in with “other Northern Oi bands”, as proof of that “good Oi music is not exclusively a London phenomenon.” All this despite the fact that the “band” never actually exist. Eventually Bushell invites the band to appear on an Oi compilation single. Playing the role of Northern oiks, Skin Disease travel to London to record a special-written song called “I’m Think”, a bog-standard punky thrash with the words “I’m Thick” repeated sixty-four times. It appears on the single “Back On The Streets”.

Meanwhile, back to the twentieth century countdown. The first Chumbawamba demo tape is recorded in Hulme, Manchester, a few days after the band’s first gig in January 1982. A snippet of it ends up on a Crass compilation album “Bullshit Detector 2″, alongside a song about nuclear war by Barnsley band Passion Killers. Passion Killers are what became of The Threat. (As in, “1, 2, 3, 4, Let’s Go!”). The two bands meet. Small-town punks in Leeds, with a desire to rise above the mundane, to avoid a lifetime career at the Building Society or down the pit at Barnsley Main… sidestepping the alternative of college education. But instead of just escaping those roots, it becomes more and more important as the eighties progress to take them along, to re-write the endings of the Hollywood teenage rites-of-passage movies, to balance the fine line between everyday boredom and rock n roll’s petulant ignorance of real life; and to have fun doing it. Growing up to a soundtrack of punky, alienated noise – religiously watching The Fall, Wire, ATV, Clash – turns everything after it into a choice between safety – with all it’s inbuilt insecurities and emotional cancers – and challenge. Change or go under. The bad ship Chumbawamba sets sail.

“Chumbawamba: the message is more important than the music.” – Full extent of first ever live review, New Musical Express.

AT THIS POINT CHUMBAWAMBA are fast becoming unmovable flag-burning pacifists, a reaction against Thatcher’s election campaign involving nuclear stockpiling and stepping over dead bodies in the Falklands. This is the decadent 60′s and 70′s hangover, the Pistols’ “No Future” etched across a Boy George mirror. In the early eighties the choice seems straightforward – Brit-pop as complete escapism (Lady Margaret’s “Me, me, me” culture) or the sub-culture of resistance that is burrowing it’s way from underground. Chumbawamba play gigs at peace camps, turning up at demonstrations and rallies like they’re going out of fashion. (Which they are). The band’s home is raided twice in under a year by ten burly drugs squad officers who ask, “You lot them Socialist Worker types, right?”. No wonder the likes of the Guildford Four got banged up for fifteen years with authorities like this on the case.

The entries on the Special Branch files get longer. Raids, obstruction, breaches of the peace, even “theft by housebreaking” – twenty-six hours in the custody of the Strathclyde police in December 1983 charged with “removal of dogs, mice and files” from a research bucket load; for single parents, local hospital closure campaigns, hunt saboteurs, the ALF, anti-Sizewell campaign, nurseries. Nine people, three cats and a dog living under one roof, fledging anarchist politics mixed with too-hefty doses of idealism and organic vegetables. The dog, Derek, appears on a couple of the early records and includes in his CV the greatest accolade bestowed upon a canine: that of biting members of the police force (forcing one to have hospital treatment).

TWO EVENTS WHICH RE-ROUTE the agit-pop politics of Chumbawamba, both from 1984. Firstly, the Brighton Bomb. Half the Cabinet covered in rubble, and suddenly political violence – of the type which defeated Hitler, freed Mandela, ended slavery, and overthrew the state communist dictatorships – blows a hole in the pacifist edge to the band’s polemic. Secondly, and more importantly, the beginning of the great Miners’ Strike. From early on, the Armley (Leeds) Miners Support group is twinned with Frickley pit in South Elmsall – Armley Socialist Workers make the connections and Chumbawamba supply the van and the street collections on Saturday mornings. The band mix playing benefit gigs for the miners with traveling down to the picket lines at five and six o’clock in the morning. And during this bitter winter some of Chumbawamba join a theatre group who travel from village to village putting on a Christmas pantomime for miner’s kids, down to South Wales and around Yorkshire. Coming from places like Barnsley and Burnley in times when the coal mines were part of the very fabric of these towns, it doesn’t take much effort to know which side of the fence you ought to be standing on; the band makes and sells a fast-selling three-track cassette for the Miners’ Hardship Fund, and Sounds writes:

“The Chumbas, as they are affectionately known, are refreshing and genuine pop anarchists. And no, they won’t go away…” (December 1994)

“What we’re given is any old rubbish that won’t upset the apple cart. The only choice we seem to be left with it to play the part of the bad apple.” – from Chumbawamba’s first single sleeve notes

ON JUNE 1ST, 1985, Chumbawamba are recording their first single “Revolution”, whilst at the same time the Travelers’ Convoy is being attacked and wrecked in a beanfield adjacent to Stonehenge. Cracked heads, massive publicity, and the start of an era of political change: when the marginal’s begin to come out from the underground.

The Clash, hastily re-formed in new street-cred guide with Joe Strummer passing round the music business hat to pay for his cocaine habit, play rebel chic outside Leeds University. Danbert Nobacon arms himself with a hydraulic-action paint-gun and splatters band and audience before legging it. This is Chumbawamba discovering their real talent: refuting the idea that rock n roll is some huge back-slapping family business where everyone “pulls together”. Putting spanners in their own works, pigheadedly refusing to lie down and become another servile record business lap-dog.

THE HOUSE IS RAIDED AGAIN, this time with sledgehammers. They’re looking for “explosives and bomb-making equipment”. Everyone is hauled down to the station, questioned relentlessly, kept separately, diaries and books confiscated – huge plastic bagfuls of pamphlets, posters, even song lyrics… twenty-three hours in a Leeds copshop. Meanwhile, the first single sells out.

“We haven’t got a master plan – we react to things as they come along. As Anarchists we live with the contradictions that socialism doesn’t allow.” – From an interview with Melody Maker, Dec 1986

Chumbawamba mocks up as an April Fool’s SDP/Liberal Alliance pop group, calls itself The Middle, and records three tracks for a spoof demo. The Libs love it. Mike Harskin at the Liberal Whips Office in the House of Commons writes to invite the band to play at MP David Owen’s birthday party at Stringfellow’s in London; Chumbawamba are busy playing their own gigs. The single “Smash Clause 28″ attacks the government homophobia pushing through a law which, amongst other things, demands the teaching of hetro-only family values in schools. This single is received as “unwashed ghetto grumbling… rock n roll won’t even notice” by Sounds magazine. (Shortly after, few people notice the demise of Sounds.) “Smash Clause 28″ is the first of several recorded attacks on homophobia by the band, and significantly it isn’t until 1994′s “Homophobia” that the issue becomes “acceptable” enough to make it into the pop industry’s frame of vision, along with active anti-fascism (as opposed to a general nod in the direction of anti-racism) and anti-sexism. This year’s thing, last year’s thing, next year’s thing.

IN THE SUMMER OF 1985 Live Aid gives Sir Bob Geldof an excuse to get pissed and shout “fucking give, you bastards!” on live TV. Everyone waits to see if they’ll exhume John Lennon’s body and sit it in front of a white piano. Showbiz razzamatazz and displays of public generosity before McCartney sings “Let It Be”. Let what be? Have a party, celebrate decadence, and send a few bob to Africa? The £80 million raised amounts to a little more than half Michael Jackson’s personal fortune, or about what the world spends on arms every two hours forty minutes. And not one of those has-beens up there on the global pulpit ever mentions why there’s a famine in the first place – no-one asks who rubs off the African crops and gives only MacCoke culture in return. Band Aid: a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. Revive those flagging careers! And U2 get their first taste of stadium rock…

Chumbawamba’s response is an LP catchily titled “Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records; Starvation, Charity and Rock n Roll – Lies and Traditions”. Which says it all, really. On the home front, Chumbawamba get involved in mass pickets both locally, at the Silentnight factory in Barnoldswick, and nationally, outside Fortress Wapping in London, where Rupert Murdoch mixes upgrading production of The Sun and The Times with all-out attacks on unions. Bundles of newspapers sitting outside newspaper shops across Britain are repeatedly stolen and burnt, and several nights in Wapping end in a celebratory and almost ritual battle between cops protecting newspaper lorries and thousands of pickets and supporters. The band plays benefits for both sets of strikers in addition to gigs for Gay Switchboard, Prisoner’s Support group, Leeds Bust Fund and even an Anti-Freemasons concert in Keswick which has to switch venues twice due to local Masonic council threats. Chumbawamba are described in the Keswick press as “the worst of the American satanic backwards message bands”. And a gig with arch-punks Conflict at Leeds University ends in a mini-riot, missiles and riot cops and running battles… and Chumbawamba earn a lifetime ban from the University.

Late 1986 and Chumbawamba link up with Dutch band The Ex for a gig-to-gig relationship which is to last several years. Anarchists, squatters, and die-hard musical experimentalists, The Ex introduce Chumbawamba to demonstrations, Amsterdam-style; in a protest against NATO warships being stationed in the harbour, thousand of people create a huge party on the shores with bands playing on warehouse roof-tops and people already in crash helmets and with scarves across their faces. The Dutch riot police repeatedly charge the crowd, there’s a scream, and it’s an English accent. Alice Nutter is caught in the panic and has a broken leg. She completes the tour sitting on stage on a stool with her leg in plaster.

“All good clean fun, and ultimately harmless” – Chumbawamba live review, Birmingham Mermaid 1987

THE “SCAB AID” SINGLE, released under the name “The Scum” in 1987, attacks The Sun newspaper’s hypocrisy and jingoism by parodying that paper’s charity single “Let It Be” – where a host of pop’s grieying publicity-fetishists (McCartney, Boy George, etc) sing to raise money for people involved in a ferry disaster. The single, a spoken-word n’ piano piece narrated by long-standing Chumbawamba sidekick Simon Lanzon (later of Credit To The Nation) makes NME’s single of the week and sells out before anyone realizes it’s Chumbawamba. The Sun describes the record as “sick!”. And what more accolades could it get from a paper which described the drowning of hundreds of Argentine soldiers aboard ship in 1982 with the headline “Gotcha!”?

“NEVER MIND THE BALLOTS… Here’s The Rest of Your Life”. Another Thatcher election victory and another round of red-faced Labour politicians shifting further to the right. The Labour Party, sitting on the fence so long it can’t work out which side it’s supposed to be on. Scared to challenge the status quo, wooing big business, turning a blind eye to sexual politicsm to the dismantling of the Unions, to Ireland. For some of Chumbawamba, a few days in Belfast to see a little of what’s going on there. Saturday night chucking-out time, blacked-up squaddies creeping through peoples’ front gardens, in armoured cars in daylight asking questions, taking detail at sub-machine gunpoint. And the British media’s propaganda warfare, relentless in it’s blanket-censoring thoroughness… you can sing “Free Nelson Mandela” until the cows come home, but sing a song about Bobby Sands and see what reaction you get.

Screaming Babies

Kill Your Pet Puppy’s Mick Lugworm with Fred Previous of Screaming Babies

Jon From Bromley, Rob and Fred before Screaming Babies gig at Centro Iberico

Rob and Jon From Bromley before Screaming Babies gig at Centro Iberico

Screaming Babies PRACTICE

Screaming Babies DEMO

Paralysis

Side One

Side Two

From Houston in Texas, U.S, Culturcide decided to do without the rock and roll traditions of actually having a band to perform tracks for voicing over. Culturcide thought that with such great material out there in the M.O.R. FM world they might as well just hi-jack these tracks and get there point of view over without the hassle of too much practising in garages and studio time…Al Puppy will probably have long words for this kind of thing finishing with ism’s and involving Societies Spectacles…I would describe is as ‘ripping the piss’.

Lots of tracks I recognise but can not put a title to, but Bowie, Michael Jackson, Beach Boys, McCartney and the Boss Springsteen all get the treatment, with lyrics involving vegetarianism, corporate America, and even industrial bands!

Of course Culturcide got into deep water for there antics but hey, any record that finishes with the lyric ‘colour my world with PIGS…fucking me’ has got to be onto a winner..! 

On the lyric sheet it has the following advice: Home taping is killing the record industry…so keep doing it. Let this record be the master for your cassette edition

Exactly what Robin and Lee from Acid Rain productions took on board when they released this LP as a cassette on their label in 1988 or there abouts.

THIS POST HAS BEEN BROUGHT FORWARD FROM FEBUARY 2008 IN REMEMBERANCE OF MICHAEL JACKSON WHO DIED EARLIER TODAY FROM A HEART ATTACK AGED 50.

Seething Wells- Godzilla Vs The Tetley Bittermen / Police Dog / Cadillacs In Bradford / Agro-Britain! / Ha Ha Ha

Attila The Stockbroker- A Bang And A Wimpy / Pap Music For Wreck People / Andy Is A Corportist / I Don’t Talk To Popstars / Foyer Bar / They Must Be Russians / Russians In The D.H.S.S

Never forget this genre is ‘Ranting Verse’ not poetry, a side each of snippets from a Wandsworth gig with these two ‘Punk Poets’, uggghh! Horrid term but there you go…Everyone needs to be pigeon holed in the mainstream music media.

Quite amusing some of the poems, oppps, sorry, ‘rants’ on this EP, the last couple recited by Seething Wells are great. I am pretty sure that I never had the pleasure of seeing Seething Wells perform live, but I witnessed Atilla loads of times in Harlow and around that area, normally with The Newtown Neurotics. The Atilla side is OK, but I know he is much better performer and poet than this EP reveals.

Not a classic record, though a decent effort for the material offered I suppose, the Swells side wins hands down!

Seething Wells (Steven Wells) died yesterday after several years of coping with cancer. 

The text below is James Browns piece on Steven published in The Guardian newspaper:

It is, perhaps, fitting that in the week that the NME editor joined the BBC to develop the multi-platform brand of Top Gear magazine, the most political and confrontational NME writer of the late 1980s and early 1990s should die from cancer. Steven Wells, or Swells as we knew him, was the most impossible person to work with because he knew no form of compromise, had little true interest in music, was narrow-minded and his personal hygiene and dress sense left so much to be desired that the company nurse once appeared and ordered him to remove and burn his stain-covered tracksuit bottoms. Naturally all of this made him a provocative and popular NME writer.

Swells worked at the NME because it gave him a voice — he had joined at a time when it featured articles about Right To Work Marches and CND and he expected it to stay like that forever. If he had any connection with music, it was as a medium to express political comment and also occasionally to give him an adrenalin rush. If he ever did discover a new band he felt passionate about, it was usually after they’d already had a hit album.

He smuggled himself into the Live Reviews pages in the mid-80s posing as a woman, Susan Williams, covering the anarchist bands and punk poets of his hometown, Bradford. These were the same acts he was appearing with night by night as ranting poet Seething Wells. His poems were vitriolic rants against Tetley Bittermen, police dogs and leftwing new men. Pretty much anyone who had irritated him appeared in his poems, which appeared alongside others by Joolz Denby and Little Brother in his fanzine Molotov Comics, which was handwritten and illustrated by Jon Langford and Kevin Lycett of the Mekons.

It is to their credit that the NME didn’t fire him when they discovered they’d been duped and the ranting firebrand championing bands like the Sid Presley Experience and Chumbawamba was, in fact, a man.

Swells had helped me start my fanzine and given me my first NME review to do. He also helped open the door for my staff job there as a 21-year-old. I repaid him by bringing in a generation of fanatical music obsessives and great writers like Steve Lamacq, Bob Stanley, Stuart Maconie and Barbara Ellen and giving them all the work. He welcomed the revolution but not the smaller pay cheques. As an NME writer, he was obsessed with class war, masturbation, dogs, cancer, Jello Biafra and the multiple use of the exclamation mark. His work was littered with it. Almost creating his own language. ‘(SUBS LEAVE THESE LAST THREE SENTENCES IN)’ was a regular sentence in his copy.

Aside from the surreal comedy column he co-wrote with David Quantick, Swells was increasingly marginalised in a more-music, less–politics NME until he took up the offer of interviewing Phil Collins. Asking questions no one else would dare to, the end result was brilliantly funny and he realised that if he delivered a great interview it would piss the rest of the staff off, which seemed to be his main purpose in life.

There followed a series of superb interviews with mainstream rock acts, the terminally unhip, the forgotten and the ignored. Anything loud or unhip became his domain, writing cover stories on Def Leppard and T’Pau. He discussed dwarves with Ozzy Osbourne, played tennis with Mike Oldfield and went flying with Gary Numan. They were fantastic articles that kept his NME stock high and helped drive the sales over the 120,000 mark. The irony for this card-carrying SWP member was, the better the paper was, the more money the capitalist bosses made. But his political timing wasn’t the greatest. On the day of the poll tax riots in Trafalgar Square he was boating in the Serpentine wondering what the smoke in the distance was.

You always knew when Swells was in the office, he was like a mad old man in the pub. I never heard him mention ‘multi-platform brand development’. But mention Chumbawamba and he could go on for hours.

Truth / Polluted Ideals / Today’s Miss World / Dressed To Kill / Routine / Rabies / Silent Minority / Cardboard Theatre / Remalada / For The Ferryman / Armchair Observer / ?

Rehearsal 1 inc ‘Dressed To Kill’ and ‘Rock And Roll’

Rehearsal 2 mainly JFB playing guitar

Indebted to Jon From Bromley for the lend of these cassettes from his private vault! Also thanks to Jon for the photographs of Ruth and Karen wailing away at the Centro Iberico which head this post. Thanks also to Steph Hagar for the photographs below. The photograph of Steph just above this text is from Ruth’s personal collection…Confused? You will be… Many thanks also must go out to Jon From Bromley for the third time for the text he composed specifically for this post which is written out below.

These recordings were made in the summer of 1982, about a year or so before ‘The Word Of The Womb’ 12” was released.  The tracks were recorded at Xntrix studios which was based in the basement of the Poison Girls’ Leyton house. The tracks were engineered by Pete Fender.

The Hagar The Womb line up at the time was Ruth & Karen on vocals, Janet on guitar, Steph on bass, Chris from Cold War on drums, and myself, Jon From Bromley, on lead guitar. 

We recorded all the songs using two 4-track machines in tandem and the idea was to release a cassette album on Mortarhate Records.  In the end, the band were not totally happy with the recordings and they were all shelved with re-recording sessions planned for September 1983 at Heart And Soul Studios to be engineered again by Pete Fender.

One track from the Xntrix Studio sessions did get an official release – ‘For The Ferryman’ turned up on the ‘Who? What? Why? When? Where?’ compilation LP released on Mortarhate Records in the mid 1980′s.

Also recorded during these sessions was a cover version of Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ which the band used to play live. This track featured everyone who happened to be in Xntrix Studios at the time on vocals – Colin Conflict, various members of Rubella Ballet, Poison Girls and all of Hagar The Womb. The musical backing on this track was Jon From Bromley on guitar and bass with Chris performing the drumming and percussion parts.

During the time between the two recording sessions at Xntix and Heart And Soul Steph left the band and was replaced by Mitch from Flack. I was also just about to leave and I was eventually replaced by Paul from Cold War.

The ‘Word Of The Womb’ 12″ that was recorded at the Heart And Soul Studio sessions was released late on in 1983 on Mortarhate Records.

JFB

G’s Song / Yes Sir I Will / Nineteen Eighty Bore / Don’t Get Caught / Mother Earth / Mother Love / Yes Sir I Will / Smash The Mac / Bata Motel / Darling / Poison In A Pretty Pill / Sentiment / Gotcha / Big A Little A (twice) 

Yes Sir I Will / Major General Despair / You’re Already Dead / Banned From The Roxy / So What / Shaved Woman / Securicor

Indebted to Martin Flux for the lend of this crisp mixing desk quality tape of one of Crass’s very last gigs on the band’s last tour during May 1984.

Steve Ignorant collapses with exhaustion during the end of this performance showing the moment when the strain of consistent gigging with the band for over six years finally took it’s toll. B.A. Nana had long left Dial House and was living with the KYPP collective in the Black Sheep housing co-op housing in Islington.

Within a few days Crass would be touring no more and eventually disbanded for good. Penny Rimbaud and Eve Libertine went on to concentrate on the more avant garde side of Crass; continuing to release excellent work under the Crass name up until 1986.

Thanks to Martin also for the photographs that he supplied, one of which is actually St Georges Hall in Exeter being set up during the afternoon of the gig, and two from Cleator Moor Cumbria.

Text below from a Crass interview that first appeared in the St Albans fanzine ‘Mucilage’ from 1984. I think a guy called Aiden run the fanzine, but Allan Clifford interviewed the band and wrote the piece. Ripped off of John Edens uncarved.org site.

Love them or hate them, not many people can deny the enormous influence of CRASS over the last 7-8 years. The leading exponents of the ‘Anarcho-Punk’ genre, the band that launched a thousand clones and lit a candle of hope in thousands of hearts.

An interview of some sort was definitely in order, as much as to satisfy my own curiosity as to inform you the eager reader. The Crass-persons live in a small farmhouse somewhere in the North Weald, and very nice it is too. It was in this picturesque setting that we chatted with Peter Wright, Joy de Verve, Penny Rimbaud and G over a cup of funny tasting tea.

MUCILAGE: You’ve all been very quiet recently, what’s happening? A re-evaluation of aims, and methods?

Pete Wright: Yes, I think its two things, one side allowed ourselves space to try and discover and develop certain areas, we are still in the process of doing so, like launching ourselves into the dark with this new LP. On the other hand we do tend to withdraw occasionally from the arena to allow other people to get on with things. We don’t want to end up monopolising everything by continuously instituting moves, you have to stand back and clear the floor for people.

Some people in the band have done an album set of fifty poems; it’s sort of classical and hasn’t gone out as Crass. We felt we’d been jumping and shouting about things for quite a few years, we tried to see what positive contributions had been… a demonstration of our own positive side… we wanted to produce something of beauty, quality and vision. Although all that has been underneath Crass from the start it hasn’t always been clear that Crass itself is trying to push things onto a different stage.

Penny Rimbaud: The new LP that we’ve done, I imagine most grannies would prefer it to most so called punks. I should think a lot of punks will be thoroughly pissed off, ’cause it doesn’t say fuck in every song. It will be interesting to see what happens, to see how many people reject it in the same way their parents reject punk.

Do you think that it’s bad that you became so popular just as a musical group?

P.W: No, because any situation we’re faced with in life is an opportunity for us to use. So we don’t assume popularity. If we are faced with a possibility we’ll use it to the best of our abilities. So our ability to be a popular punk band has introduced people to a whole series of things that they might not have found. The bands we’ve played with people might not have gone to see, or a film or other performance. So we’ve capitalised on our ability and to some extent it’s the very need for us to drive as a punk band that has slowed us down.

So are you moving away from the more aggressive (angry) music you’ve produced in the past?

P.R: I think that our anger is our passion and on a superficial level people may not be able to recognise the anger, a lot of people who have parodied us have effectively come across with an aggressive stance and have really, in my view, been exposing their emptiness. I don’t think we’ve ever been aggressive, we have been extremely angry and extremely passionate and we still are. The reason we’re spending a long time over what we do next, it’s sufficiently important to us, because we are sufficiently passionate and angry about what we feel to spend a lot of time studying and not become a parody of ourselves. It’s really important not to be drawn into a situation of doing something simply because that’s what people expect you to be doing.

Wouldn’t you agree that a lot of people see this parody of what you are more than you yourselves do? Like Crass T-shirts and badges, it’s bad that people are ripping you off making them, but they wouldn’t make them unless there was people willing to buy them?

P.R: Well it’s a start isn’t it? When you’re young all you’ve ever had is what your mum and dad have told you you’ve got to look like, or how you’ve got to behave, and the first, easiest and most obvious way of revolting against that is to get a different haircut, wear different clothes and wear a badge.

That’s the first stage in telling your parents and those people immediately around you to, basically, piss off – you want a bit of your own space and that is really the start of free thought. Up until that age people are never given the chance to think for themselves, and I think if they pick up one of our records and think “Oh I want to identify with this!” and buy a T-shirt or a badge then I don’t think that’s bad. If they went out and bought an ABBA record then all that would happen is that the values that are generally offered to them at school and by most parents would be reinforced.

It’s not a criticism, but most people grow out of the obvious elements and the more important things then take over. It ceases to matter what your hair is like, it’s more what’s beneath your hair.

But it cannot be denied that a lot of people never get beyond the first stage of t-shirts and badges.

P.R: They don’t, but then again, so what! It is better that at least they are put into a position where maybe they will go beyond that first stage. And equally well, you can say that a lot of people do go beyond. The commercial market is fully aware of the fact that people between the ages of 14 and 23 are the most easily exploited group. They come under more attack than any other age bracket, because they have got the cash and the vulnerability. Beyond 23 a person is beginning to stabilise. Generally speaking if a person is on the outside at 23 then they will remain on the outside. If they are on the outside at 14 then chances are that given the amount of pressure that is put on them they will have a hard time of it.

So if people have fun in between well… so what! If people enjoy just jumping up and down and pogoing and getting pissed to our music then that’s great… we’ve never ripped anyone off at the door and we’ve never ripped anyone off with our records. So they’ve gone out and ripped up a T-shirt and put chains on – well that’s a cheap way of having fun. If you go for the casual market you’ll be broke within a week. The fun we promote is cheap fun, and all fun should be. And if people only have fun, well so fucking what! It’s better than not having fun.

Do you think that you have succeeded in changing people?

P.R: Yeah, I think that we’ve succeeded… l think that we’ve been largely responsible for re-promoting (it would be ridiculous to pretend we created anything!) a set of ideas which have roots way back through history… these are quite simply ‘sod all authority, I as an individual have something worthwhile about me.’ That sort of thinking seems to go in cycles – there are people all over the world that have been liberated because of the sort of things that we have been saying for the last 7 years, but if we hadn’t existed then someone else would have done it. What we’ve done isn’t so important, what is important is that across the world there are people that are closer to some sense of their own lives.

G: It’s not even a qualitative thing. It can be a sense of one’s own life in a totally different direction to which you would live your own life, in the end that doesn’t really matter – it’s the quality of person, and the quality of life that comes from that. It doesn’t have to follow the same route.

P. R: Yeah, we’ve never promoted our own lifestyle, which happens to be very quiet. This house is very restful – we work very hard but very quietly, be it gardening, writing or rehearsing. We don’t say “This is the way people ought to live” – it’s the way we as individuals enjoy living.

G: And we function like that.

P.W: I think we appeal to people who are misfits and who are prepared to open up to certain ideas. We also appeal to people who are young enough, or smart enough, not to have a huge investment in the ways things are going in the rest of society. I think young people are flexible in that they haven’t got the investment that others have… They aren’t threatened by ideas so they can think more creatively.

Wouldn’t it be better to aim to get through to ‘middle-aged’ people?

P.R: Yes, well that comes in time. I mean we’ve done what we were able to do, we’ve never been lazy, and we’ve always worked very hard at doing what we were able to do. In 10 years time maybe because of the experiences and realisations that we have had we’ll think of putting £4,000 into a centre for psycho-geriatrics rather than into an Anarchy centre. I think what we did 7 years ago was very important to us, it manifested and we became popular hand in hand with a huge number of important social developments. It is not impossible that in our future projects we will find some way of being active in other areas.

You sound very optimistic, but don’t you think that after an upsurge in radical activity everything has fallen off rather dramatically?

P.R: No, I don’t actually, because what’s far more important is what’s going on in people’s minds. If you look at the last 7 years there has been a fast and dramatic rebirth of awareness. That awareness had been around in a different form on a very strong front for about 10 years previously, and 7 years ago it suddenly blossomed again.

A lot of people like ourselves walked up a lot of dark alleys and came walking back again, looking for other bits of light. When it’s quiet you can be pretty certain that are having a good think about what’s going on. I mean, yes, my first feeling was ‘shit, it’s all over, after all that effort nothing’s been achieved.’

Joy: I think you’re just talking about ideas.

P.R: Yes, there’s superficial manifestations of things like Stop The City. People say that the last S.T.C. was the worst, but for me it was the best. I turned up, wandered around and realised that the police had got it completely sussed. So then I just wandered around talking to people, and I had some great conversations and I got to know one or two people, and I didn’t know who they were and they didn’t know who I was. I saw and felt a lot of things.

The S.T.C. before that I’d spent the entire time shoving the police around, and apparently this is a far out active thing to do. I’m not putting down the shoving, if that is what we have to do, if we have to lob bricks then fair enough. I’m not making any qualitative judgment, but it’s pretty bloody stupid when we start thinking that shoving and being shoved by the police is better in some way than creatively sharing an experience with people.

P.W: There are a lot of people who are prepared to do things now. It’s not actually doing them, the most important contribution that we can make as a group of people is to expand the vocabulary of people who want to do things. There has always been people chucking bricks at the police, and there has always been people going on strike and all sorts of actions.

The most important thing is the understanding that develops. Like the miners, there were people learning what life is about, that there is more to life than they thought before; they’ve got to know the people they live with, seeing their workmates in different situations. They found the power of communal action and communal co-operation; those sorts of things are what we get out of it. That’s the positive side whether we win or lose a particular battle doesn’t matter that much because it’s just a battle.

P.R: I think it’s really important to know when to back off. That needn’t be a defeat; it can be a very positive thing which allows the opponent to move into some of the space you’ve created. But if we’re trying to create change then we’ve got to sometimes (although our pride might suffer) back off and say “Okay look this is what I think; this is the view that I have created; now you see if you can move in that space.”

Now the chances are that you will be shat upon, but unless we’re prepared to back off then you’re in a state permanent argument and there is no point in that, it’s bad tactics. Then the whole situation is maintained, it is to the government’s advantage to promote a situation of animosity.

Joy: We are constantly spending energy on argument rather than something more subtle.

P.R: It’s rather like that situation at S.T.C. where the police had sort of got everyone enclosed. Well, it was to everyone’s advantage ’cause what the hell would everyone have done? They’d probably have got fucking bored and gone off home!

I can see what you are saying, but, putting it simply, are you really so optimistic about the future? You say it’s good that we’re not in a state of argument, but is everybody sitting back and thinking or are they saying “Oh hell, the whole thing is falling apart”?

P.W: It’s all according to what your objective is. If you want Cruise missiles out of this country, then forget it -you’re not going to do it. But if your objective is to enlighten people and to grow, then there is every possibility because you must see that the pillar of all that is yourself. I think that the lull at the moment is incredibly strong, I sense that there is a lot going on in peoples’ heads.

I mean that sense of morality, of humanity, is in all people albeit carved up half dozen kids, a mortgage and the rest of it. It is still in there, it’s innate, it is there, and it’s coming alive in the most unlikely people. That is very important.

P.R: We have fluidity which is one thing they don’t have, as the state becomes more and more rigid in its attitude and the manner by which that attitude is enforced, parallel to that our intelligence grows, our fluidity grows, and our compassion and love for each other grows. The right wing state throughout history has made that mistake.

Surely all of this is very long term? What about immediate problems like people that are starving… now?

G: Yes they are immediate, yes there are millions of people starving every day, but I cannot do anything about that, I can only hope to build for the future… a society that would never put up with that sort of shit… the individual cannot stop it.

P.R: One also has to understand that the very fact that we are aware of starvation is a piece of political propaganda. There are people starving in the world in just the same situation as the people of Ethiopia. It’s interesting that because Ethiopia is backed by Russia as opposed to the West there is this hysterical outcry. The way we hear about things is carefully engineered.

What’s happening in Ethiopia is not unusual in the Third World. Ethiopia is a useful propaganda stunt; America wants to get its hands on Ethiopia… blah blah blah! The reason starvation exists is political. Food is not shared for political reasons.

You have to look at it in the long term, if you look at the short term you will soon be burnt out. Driven to the frustration and anger that so many radicals have. One has to have the strength to stand back and say ‘look, I know I’m right, I know what I feel is good, I know I act out of the purest reason.’ And then spend the rest of the day knitting.

Yes, I have thought all of that before, that faced with the ‘politics of depression’ you must see it as their weapon and stand off. But ultimately you cannot live outside the system – everything you do is connected with the system.

G: But you try and live with it and not at the cost of it. Of course no-one can live outside the system, everything in this room is in some way a product of it. You cannot totally detach. But you must look at the properties that are of use to you, like this light bulb, but see that there is little it can offer your soul.

P.W: The big illusion is that you change systems by opposition, and they don’t, they might be destroyed by opposition but the power you would need would probably make you a similar system.

Systems change by facing in the same direction as other people who YOU change. So the theatre of opposition like, S.T.C. or Greenham is one of apparent opposition. People see us as being up against the system, but we’re not – we are trying to affect the people that we stand beside – the people who come to gigs and buy records, people who are facing in the same direction. And whether the person who buys the record is a 12 year old punk or a middle-aged civil servant (it does happen!) the change occurs by being beside and facing in the same direction.

But in saying these things you are very lucky people, you are in a relatively comfortable position where you can look to the future without the loneliness, hardship or depression that faces many others.

P.R: I think that we are lucky in that we don’t need some of the things that create bondage and hunger, in the sense that we don’t have a standard of life to maintain. Where we live is where we work, we’ve put years of work into maintaining it as such. But if we were told to leave tomorrow, then we would do so actively and creatively as individuals.

Not so much luck – it’s down to hard work. Ultimately I would be happy in a shed in a field or in one room of a squat. It doesn’t really matter, it’s what I carry in my head that’s important to me – the actual physical furniture I can find later.

Invariably one does have to go out and do some shitty job. If one sees it as a shitty job then one does it resentfully and badly, but if you can see it as a method towards something then it becomes an exciting and creative thing to do. If in three months’ work you can get a printing press, then that’s a fucking bargain.

It’s an awful thing to think that whatever you doing is the fate for the rest of your life – I only ever thought this once. When I first left school I worked for a year and a half in a fucking awful job. I got into a real screwball ’cause I thought I’d be doing it forever… THAT is the big trap and in a lot of cases it is what people do for the rest of their lives.

G: There is no reason why anyone can’t turn their hand or their whole living situation.

P.R: That’s the whole bullshit of people like the Band Aid record. There are all these fucking near millionaires taking peanuts of their pockets. I mean if they actually meant it and really did mean to help the situation, it wouldn’t happen. If it wasn’t for people like Boy George and all the rest of the hip capitalists in the world it would not exist. Boy George is just a drag stockbroker, that’s what it boils down to. Yet apparently these people care….

The big social pantomime is that these people really mime ‘care’. Boy George cares about Ethiopians, he cares about war ’cause it’s ‘stupid’!! That’s what we are working against, well… it’s not competition, and it’s what you’ve got floating about all the time.

G: No, it’s not competition. It is like another knock in the teeth, like a coconut shy. Every time you put something up for discussion it gets knocked down by some co-opting idiot who makes it into a facile statement. ‘War is stupid’… I couldn’t believe it!

You know that you have to make another greater effort to get war out of being co-opted by some stupid arsehole in the pop world. Get it back up for discussion again.

So how have you managed to keep at it, it must take a great deal of determination and all that?

P.R: Just graft really, being prepared to graft, that’s all, nothing else.

You can only do so much by graft, surely you have to turn to someone to say… distribute your records?

P.R: We do all our own distribution and everything we possibly can ourselves. If we do it we know it will get done properly.

G: I think the advantage we have is that all the people concerned with the band, or helping with the paperwork etc. have known each other a long long time; we have been through a lot and have an understanding and a respect for each other. I think one of the downfalls of a lot of other bands is that they don’t really know each other; you can’t just start with a guitarist and hope that somebody like-minded is going to come along. It takes years – it’s never ending trying to get to know people……….

Well it is here that the written interview ends, though we chatted and argued long after the tape had run its course. So how do you sum up a group of people like CRASS? Perhaps a look at their influence from the ultimate symbol of materialistic exploitation of the young – the music charts:

“It’s sinister that we can sell 20,000 records and not appear in the charts, a very effective way of shutting you up. We would expect if we put out an LP for it to sell 20,000 in the first few weeks…”

“…Stations has now sold over 90,000, and when it goes to 100,000 we’ll press one in chocolate and present it to each other and then take some photos and send them to the press, because the music press tries to pretend that we don’t sell thousands of records. If the charts had been honest then we’d have been in the actual top ten on a number of occasions i.e.; Nagasaki Nightmare, Penis Envy, and Christ The Album…”

In the Pagan Celtic year, there are four major Sabbats or harvest festivals and four lesser Sabbats, also known as solar festivals. Litha is one of the lesser Sabbats and is also known as Summer Solstice, Midsummer, Gathering Day and Vestalia.

Typically celebrated on June 21st, Litha is the longest day of the year and a time when the sun reaches its apex in the sky. It is considered the mid-point of summer, which begins with Beltane on May 1st and ends with Lughnasadh on August 1st. In many Pagan traditions Litha is seen as the time when the Oak King, who represents the waxing year, is triumphed over by the Holly King who represents the waning year. The two are actually one God, the Horned God, but the Holly King is seen as the growing youth while the Oak King is seen as the wise and mature man.

The Goddess is also celebrated at Litha by many Pagan traditions. She is seen as the woman heavy with child, who will give birth to the God at Yule. She is also seen as the bounty of coming harvests, of protection and sustenance. The ancient Romans saw this time as sacred to the goddess Juno who was the wife of Jupiter, the goddess of women and children and also the patroness of marriage. Seeing that the month of June is named after her it’s no wonder that marriages are so popular during this month.

For contemporary Pagans, Litha is a time of brightness, purification and healing. It is a time to meditate on the aspects of light and dark both within us and in the world around us. Litha is also a time of celebrating outdoors and enjoying the warmth of the sun and the beauty of nature. Rituals and celebrations that involve bonfires, music and handfasting are common during this time.

Litha is considered a time to harvest your medicinal and spiritual herbs and is also considered to be one of the best times to perform spells and magickal work that foster love, prosperity and healing. It can also be a time for meditating on the balance between light and darkness both within yourself and in the world around you.

War / Dirty Squatters / New Band / Not Me / Can’t Cheat Karma / Demystification / Dancing / Fear

Great White Hunter / Target / Mr Disney / Subvert / This Land / Not Me / Biafra / Subvert / My Mummy’s Gone

It’s that time of the year again, so I decided to upload Zounds, not sure why, just fancied it for some reason. 

Thanks to Jon From Bromley for the lend of this tape of a Zounds gig recorded on a small tour that the band performed on with support from Cheap And Nasty. Supposedly a whole heap of Brougham Road residents turned up for this gig which must have been nice for the band!

Thanks also to Jen Wilson for the photographs of Zounds, Null And Void and The Mob performing in Belgium (at different times – but in the same venue by the look of the hall decor).

It is not Holland but it is near enough.

It is worth noting in the photographs from Jen’s collection, that Tim, the drummer pictured with The Mob also played bass guitar for Zounds at the performance uploaded on this site today. Josef Porter is pictured drumming for Null And Void  and of course he would have performed drumming duties with Zounds and later on The Mob.

Steve and Lawrence of Zounds just performed for Zounds!

Alistair Livingstone, the great man, one time ex Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine scribe, All The Madmen Records head honcho (apres The Mob and pre Rob Challice) sometime writer and commentator on this site succesfully passed his degree on July 15th for the work he submitted on the Galloway Levellers.

You can view Al’s work HERE

Well done to him, two years to complete 50,000 words. Pretty sure I did not reach that target in all my years of schooling from five to sixteen years old!

21/01/83

Amebix

Flux Of Pink Indians

22/01/83

The System

Flux Of Pink Indians

I still have a handful of cassettes belonging to Jon From Bromley for uploading onto this site, but for now I am just slipping a couple of cassettes lent to me by Martin (ex Flux Of Pink Indians drummer and fellow THFC supporter – photo below).

The first batch of cassettes on loan here at Penguin Towers are rather Flux / Crass / Antisect / Amebix orientated. The recordings on these cassettes by these bands are all crisp mixing desk quality or studio outtakes which is just a complete doss, hope you will enjoy listening to them when I start to upload then over the next few weeks.

These first two cassettes recorded at The Greyhound pub in Fulham Palace Road over two nights, both nights with Flux Of Pink Indians headlining, are all absolute audio stunners (apart from 10 minutes towards the end of The System’s performance when the cassette seems to evolve into mono – naughty soundman being half asleep no doubt!). All the bands perform great sets at these gigs and it is well worth giving the uploads a listen to hear (at this time the more Killing Joke inspired) Amebix, The System and Flux Of Pink Indians on top of their game at this point in 1983.

There will also be some photographs from Martins collection to upload into the Photo Gallery. Some of these photographs (I am lead to believe) were taken at this very gig uploaded onto this post tonight. When I get to see Martin again in a day or so, and he is clutching a whole heap of photographs to lend me, I will ask him which are the ones taken at the Greyhound gig (I should really know as I went to this venue countless times!) and when I get confirmation I will add those specific photographs to this post - I am hoping on seeing some nice photographs of Wigan’s excellent System as photographs for this band seem to be quite scarce.

And as if by magick, some photos appear!

A big thank you then to Martin W for the lend of these cassette gems and photographs, and a huge slap on the back to Martin’s older brother Paul W who was the drummer in the original line up of Psychedelic Furs from late 1976 – 1979, supposedly being given the elbow for some no shows at gigs at the Zig Zag magazine office party and one at the Moonlight Club in Hampstead. A few weeks later the Psychedelic Furs signed to C.B.S. DOH!

Some more live System on this site HERE for anyone interested. Loads more Flux material on this site if you care to use the search function.

The first batch of photographs from Martin’s collection uploaded HERE