Introduction To History And Where We Stand / Which Side Of The Fence *

Application To Everyday Life / Rock And Roll Factory Strike

Chumbawumba – Invasion / A.S.O.M. – Shits Pride

A.S.O.M. – A Bite Of The Apple Is Not Enough / Chumbawumba – Isolation

Meat Market / Grass So Green

Imagine / Take Action

The first 7″ single release carrying the Chumbawumba name very closely followed the same year by a split 7″ single with A State Of Mind plus the very first A State Of Mind 7″ single.

Closely aligned these two bands, one from Leeds, England one from San Francisco, U.S.A., shared common views and goals in the mid 1980′s. The booklets that come with these vinyl releases are full of information on what those views and goals would have been. Third world exploitation, multinational companies, vegetarianism, sexism and so forth.

After Crass had effectively folded in 1984 many 1000′s of people who wanted to avoid the well trodden path of what mainstream society expected of them, took Chumbawumba to thier hearts and travelled up and down the country to witness the wonderful theatrical gigs that the band performed. Many 1000′s of people also followed Conflict around of course after the demise of Crass. I prefered Chumbawumba as I felt that band had a better chance of getting alternative views over to a larger audience in the long run, which of course they did, and continue to do so today as far as I am aware. *Please note that the first side of the first Chumbawumba 7″ single “Introduction To History And Where We Stand / Which Side Of The Fence” is recorded from my turntable and transferred to mp3 correctly. The tracks suddenly go very quiet

The text below concerning A State Of Mind was specifically written for this site by Robbie A.S.O.M. Thank you very much Robbie for putting this history together and for sending the photos.

A State of Mind’s roots date back to the Philadelphia punk scene circa 1982. One of its founding members, Robbie (vocals), had left his previous band, the Sadistic Exploits, due to a disagreement on the band’s direction. Inspired by Crass, Poison Girls, and other anarchist bands, he teamed up with Allison Raine (vocalist, founder of Savage Pink fanzine) and well-known local punker Kevin (synthesizer/tape machine) to form A State of Mind (ASOM).

ASOM played their first gig three weeks after their first practice. They warmed up for Crucifix, an anarchist punk band from the San Francisco Bay Area, at the Philadelphia Better Youth Organization’s first (and only) gig which was promptly shut down by the police. Robbie joined Crucifix on the remaining portion of their east coast tour, and during long stretches of road between gigs, mapped out what they envisioned to be an anarchist revolution in the United States.

“She’s your personalized whore / this woman your wife / you fuck her and fuck her but still want more / you tell her you love her so you can achieve your dirty deal / not giving a fuck about the way she feels / forced actions of submission, bondage, rape / HELP! / with your macho fucking hard-on her feelings can not be felt / you talk about her as if she’s just a slab of meat / something you bought from the store/used up and forgotten next week”

ASOM moved to the Bay Area eight months later in 1983 and lived with Crucifix in an artist warehouse commonly referred as “New Method”. Within six months the band had grown to include Rip (guitar), Mark (bass), and Greg (drums). Later that year, after reading a Chumbawamba interview in Maximum Rock and Roll, ASOM contacted the band and initiated what was ultimately to be an international recording collaboration.

In 1984, the band broadened their efforts to work with others both locally and abroad. They collaborated with local musician/artist Carolyn aka Cyrnai (guitar) to produce the Liberte’ / ASOM Don’t Vote…Subvert! flexi-disc (Thought 1). The flexi was recorded on a small 4-track recording device by Rip at New Method, and with that, their label – Mind Matter Records – was born. Some ASOM members travelled to England to meet with Crass, Flux of Pink Indians, and Chumbawamba that year.

“Voting on any scale large or small / does it really mean freedom for us all / does it really make a difference / does it really mean your free /shouldn’t the decisions that the government makes be made by you and me / does it really mean you’ve had your say / it’s just another one of the games they play / it’s a mockery of what your life’s become / it’s just a masturbation of a presupposed freedom / the system has failed us so many times before /so what the fuck are you voting for?”

Vinyl production stepped up in 1985. Assorted members, working together again as Liberte’, collaborated with MKultra (working class writer; bass guitar) to produce a second flexi-disc entitled Racism in America (Thought 2). Cyrnai produced a solo-EP entitled Charred Blossoms (Thought 3), while ASOM released their What’s The Difference? Animal / Humyn Exploitation EP (Thought 4). Mind Matter Records produced a spin-off collaborative effort between ASOM’s Juliet (backing vocals) and her sister Kathryn that year – a cassette tape entitled Totem Falls (Thought 5).

“It ain’t just animals locked away in cages / And the profiteers don’t care for them or we / Yes we’re also bound if we don’t act now / It’s time we all fought to be set free / Animals exploited by murdering madmen / And it ain’t much different for you or me / Money’s to be made off the lives of the innocent / Despite who’s pain and agony / Monkeys and men are turned into machines / Vivisected loonies in a lobotomized life / Whether caged and bound or mind-fucked with lies / There is no difference this is all our strife.”

ASOM’s collaboration with Chumbawamba resulted in the We Are The World? EP (Agit-Thought 2) which was released in 1986. ASOM, with new member Verm (guitar), did an abbreviated West Coast tour with LA anarchist-punkers Iconoclast; and some members travelled to England to tour with Chumbawamba. Meanwhile, Mind Matter Records released vinyl for two Bay Area anarchist-punk bands: Christ On Parade’s Isn’t Life a Dream EP (Thought 6) and Think Tank’s What Now? EP (Thought 7).

“Burn the flags, tear them down / They’re part of the system which holds us bound / Break down the walls that separate us / Destroy the system which promotes distrust / Nation against nation, team against team / They divide up the people into those extremes / Commie or capitalist, which is your choice?/Either way you choose you haven’t got a fucking voice / So it’s time to fucking act /A united people in the attack / Working together freed from their grasp /Act now….act fast!”

The group played a few more gigs through the first half of 1987 with Greg S. (bass), Andrew (drums), and well-known Los Angles peace punk Lord Jim (acoustic guitar). Meanwhile, Mind Matter Records released Chumbawamba vocalist Danbert Nobacon’s 7” Bigger Than Jesus 45 (Thought 8 ) and Christ on Parade’s A Mind is a Terrible Thing LP (Thought 9). The band was evicted from New Method in the summer 1987 and band members decided to try new things.

The text below concerning Chumbawumba is courtesy of  kipuka.net/chumba/history/show.html and the photographs of Chumbawumba performing at Wood Green Arts Centre squat in 1985 courtesy of Graham Burnett.  

“Now if only pop (I mean POP) and politics DID mix…” – Robin Gibson reviewing Chumbawamba’s “Never Mind The Ballots” LP, Sounds July 1987.

“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 put 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 Travellers 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 cop shop. 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 rips 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 burn, 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 graying 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 armored 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.

1988 and trying to cross the border between Switzerland and France. Seven hours in the no-man’s-land between the two, the entire band strip-searched and questioned after being found to have some copies of “Class War”. Extra plain-clothes officers “looking for guns”, the band only managing to cross intro France when the Swiss refuse to have them back; and after signing papers agreeing to the destruction of the confiscated magazines.

BACK IN ENGLAND, and the Centre for Policy Studies has unveiled their brand new baby for the 1990′s – the Poll Tax. Contrary to previous form, this is an attack on the whole of the British working class in one fell swoop; having excelled at picking off sections of it, this time the state proposes to reinvent a sweeping poverty tax which last failed in 1381, the time of the infamous People’s Revolt. Chumbawamba reacts by releasing a collection of acapella songs dating from that revolt up to the present day: “English Rebel Songs” breaks the chain of guitar/drums pop and tells it’s history of trouble-makers, revolutionaries and rebels whilst around the land anti-Poll Tax groups begin to organise and educate.

“If I can’t dance to it… it’s not my revolution” – Emma Goldman

This post is dedicated with the greatest of respect to Iain Aitch who is enjoying his birthday today

The Sky Is Blue Again / Map / Outlook Army / Sucking Pig / A Sense Of Tumour

Meanwhile / Rules / Squat Song / Warning Shot / New Wars

The debut 12″ by The Ex, 45 rpm, 10 songs clocking in at 22 minutes. Indebted to Chris Low for the lend of this release. One I missed out on. I started collecting The Ex material after the ‘History Is What’s Happening’ LP was released in 1982. As a night out The Ex can barely be bettered. Since the first time I witnessed the band supporting The Poison Girls down The Hammersmith Clarendon in 1985, leading a year or two later onto a very special performance I witnessed in some squatted school in Amsterdam, in which the band were seriously energetic…Jumping over the potted plants and amplifiers set up in a class room whilst strumming guitars and barking into mics without even dropping a note. All great stuff.

Instead of writing (or ripping off text from another site) the history of this band onto this post, I would like to cut and paste my old friend and house mate, Iain Aitch’s Guardian newspaper article on The Ex that was published today.

Thanks to Iain in advance for letting me use his work.

Try to describe the Ex and you have a problem. The Dutch band may have celebrated their 30th birthday recently, but you would try to sum up their sound in two or three words at your peril. This is a ­quandary shared by the band members themselves. I meet them in Dublin, where they are playing a one-off date. The cab driver ­taking them to the venue asked them what they sound like. “We had real difficulty,” says Andy Moor, the band’s London-born guitarist, who boasts 15 years’ service. “It is really hard!” “We feel a bit stupid as it can sound very ­pretentious, ‘We are very unique, we are not like ­anyone else,” says Terrie Hessels, the only remaining member of the band’s original 1979 lineup.

Yet unique is what the Ex are. Take any major musical development of the last 50 years and you can almost guarantee that they have either incorporated it into their sound or played with it and discarded it. Their recent retrospective CD 30 contains a dazzling array of sounds that range from industrial to orchestral. Though the band’s real move forward, and one which brought them to the attention of the jazz world, was their 1991 collaboration with (now sadly deceased) US cellist Tom Cora. This lead to further unions, with the likes of zany Dutch jazz drummer Han Bennink as well as English saxophonist John Butcher.

Even now, the kind of phrases used on gig posters and in the music press range from “anarcho-punk” to “improvised jazz” to “afro-punk” and “folk”. The punk part may be fair – the band certainly formed with that ethos and a staccato approximation of the sound of the Fall or Gang of Four, but they have always been far more experimental than their three-chord forebears.

They chose their name for the ease with which it could be sprayed on walls, and drew straws to decide who would play what. There was always an exploratory and political edge to the band, as evidenced by the 1983 concept set of four 7″ singles about a closed factory in the Amsterdam suburb of Wormer where the band formed. Since then, the Ex have taken in folk influences from all over Europe. They have dabbled in jazz, improvisation, guitar ­destruction, drilling venue walls, dance music, ­military-band precision, ska, toy instruments, horns, African beats and sampling. I could go on. Yet, surprisingly, none of this comes across as radical departure in style. They still sound like the Ex on every recording and at every gig. The guitars retain a caustic, rhythmic precision and the drumming is tight and complex.

“One reason we are hard to describe is that we never had an education at music school, and in that sense we are not ­influenced by any traditional playing,” says Katherina Bornefeld, neatly sidestepping any attempt to form a soundbite encapsulating the Ex’s sound, despite her 25 years on the drum stool.

In order to understand the band you need to see them perform; they work in the opposite manner to most groups. The Ex write songs to perform live, tweaking them as tours progress and then recording the honed versions as documents of their time. Most Ex tours start with an entire batch of new material – there is no roster of crowd-pleasers to get the audience going. The dedicated fan is as challenged as someone hearing the band for the very first time.

This is a band very much about intuition. Moor plays intricate notes on a ­baritone guitar with his eyes closed before dashing at Hessels, both raising their ­guitars as the newest member of the band, Arnold de Boer (who last year replaced founder-member GW Sok), ducks beneath them. Meanwhile, Bornefeld seemingly hits every piece of her drumkit, before repeating the rhythm in a slightly different ­pattern. Moor aims kicks at the air – band members even try to put each other off at times. The band have a reputation for addressing serious politics, but they also have a great sense of humour. This is neatly evidenced by the 7in singles club they ran for a year, where the last single was a 12in and thus could not be squeezed into the box that came with the first record in the series.

As well as being a drumming original, Bornefeld also possesses a voice made for singing folk music in any language, which has come to the fore on the band’s tours of Ethiopia. Born out of sheer enthusiasm for the music and people of the country, the Ex’s Ethiopian tours ­took loud ­guitar music where it has never been before, as well as exchanging ideas and technical know-how with local musicians. They also played with Ethiopian saxophone legend Getatchew Mekurya, and collaborated with him on an album.

“There is no tour circuit,” says Hessels. “We even went to places that hardly any Ethiopian ­musicians had played.”

“One time we were playing in a barn on a farm and another time in the police community hall,” adds Moor. “We would just go to the chief of the town and they decided what we should pay, sometimes it was $20 and sometimes it was free.”

The band took generators and ­amplifiers with them, and left them behind for local musicians to use. They follow a ­similar DIY philosophy with all their work. The band has no manager, driver or roadies and they put out all their CDs themselves. Yet they also find time to have countless side projects, such as Bornefeld’s ­KatJonBand with the Mekons’ Jon Langford, Moor’s solo album and ­Hessels’s work with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.

Their free gigs in Ethiopia, which attracted crowds of 2,000 or more, have also left what could be a strange musical legacy. If ­Ethiopia starts throwing up scratchy, indefinable guitar bands, you’ll know who to blame. “Everyone still uses cassettes there,” says Moor. “We went back to pressing up cassettes, giving them out to taxi drivers all over the place. So at least they know what we sound like.”

An initial pressing of 10,000 cassettes, with more to follow and the inevitable home-taping, have made the Ex established favourites in parts of Ethiopia, but in the UK they remain something of a word-of-mouth aural delicacy. Their arrival on these shores for their first tour since 2003 should help to remedy that, especially as they have integrated yet more new sounds in the shape of Brass Unbound, a four-piece horn section of prodigious talents.

With this addition to their ranks, the Ex once again deter any attempts at description. But you get the feeling that as soon as anyone nailed their sound, the band would do their damnedest to defy it.

Iain Aitch / Guardian

Three tapes from two bands hailing from Southend On Sea. Both bands have two members in common, those members being Paul Brown and Graham Burnett, the later is a regular commentator on this very site.

Autumn Poison was the name given to the radiation sickness that followed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which Graham chose after recieving a letter from Toxic Grafity’s Mike Diboll who used to spray stencilled Japanese characters on the envelopes of the long letters he used to send Graham. Graham wrote back to ask Mike what the symbols meant and a band name was born.

The first Autumn Poison cassette has a lyric booklet accompaining it. The second Autumn Poison cassette has an inlay booklet held within the artwork with pages and pages of text (24 pages to be precise) that would even put The Apostles text sheets shoved into that band’s records and cassettes to shame. The Love Over Law release came originally with a 48 page booklet! The reams of information held within these printed masterpieces would have been just as (or perhaps more) important as the actual music being played on these cassettes.

I decided to place the Love Over Law tape onto this post (although the band and tape were both existing past 1986 so really should be in the post 86 section of this site) as I thought it would be better to keep all this work from these Southend On Sea bands on the single post.

The text below was liberated from the southendpunk.com site – Thanks in advance to them. Photographs are from Graham’s collection.

Autumn Poison – Songs of Anger, Songs of Hope – 1982

Hiroshima / War Crimes (Afganistan El Salvador) / Fox Hunting / Uranium / Worship The Bomb / The Power And The Glory / Smokescreen / Swords Into Plougshares

Animals Are Not Ours To Eat Wear Or Experiment On / Who Would Rape Mother Earth? / Contributory Negligence / Dirty Business / Porton Down / The Sun Says / Sense Your Own Strength

Autumn Poison – Kitchen Sink Politics – 1984

Conflict / Song Of The Experts / A Message To All Rulers / Mass Murderers / Stiffled Colours / Joke Army / Superiority Hypocrisy / A National Anthem

One Thousand Miles / Axania Song (Behead The Eagle) / Hospitals (Public Heath Or Private Wealth) / Liberation Dance / Half The Sky / Kitchen Sink Politics / Utopia (A New World In Our Hearts) 

Autumn Poison were an anarcho punk group from Southend, and were formed around the ‘core’ members of Graham Burnett, Sheena Fulton and Paul Brown. They existed between 1980 – 1985 and played many concerts in and around Southend, often with the like minded Kronstadt Uprising. When they first formed, they were originally called Enola Death, but soon changed their name to Autumn Poison. Graham had switched to Vocals after previously playing drums in Stripey Zebras, whom had played many great shows in 1980 around the area, especially at Focus and The Zero 6.

The band were an important part of the ‘cassette culture’ of the 1980′s (Graham ran his own label – New Crimes Tapes that was affiliated with his fanzine, New Crimes) and released two key cassettes on New Crimes Tapes – the first ‘Songs of Anger, Songs of Hope’, was originally issued with a free lyric booklet and badge and was a good document of the first phase of the bands career, featuring songs such as ‘Police Force’, ‘The Sun Says’ and ‘Fox Hunting’. With the key line up of Graham and Sheena on Vocals, Julian Ware-Lane on Guitar, Steve on Bass and Kevin Hickling on Drums, the band played a lot of concerts in the period, often in conjunction with the Kronstadt Uprising, many of which were benefits for the CND or local Animal Rights groups. Key shows of the time would have included The Thorpedene Community Centre gig with Kronstadt and Hagar The Womb on the 14.08.82, a local headliner at The Cliff Hotel with The Committee on the 06.08.83 and a gig at The Grand Hotel in Leigh with The Omega Tribe and Youth in Asia on the 25.09.83.

The band eventually disbanded around 1985, but fast forwarding to 1994, Graham and Paul reformed the band in order to record a track for Bullshit Detector Volume #4, a compilation put together by Resistance Productions, a Swiss-based Anarcho Punk record and cassette label, who wanted to continue the tradition of the earlier Crass compiled Bullshit Detector Volumes. (Autumn Poison’s track was notable too for including a sample of Crass Drummer Penny Rimbaud.)

After Autumn Poison disbanded, Graham and Paul would go on to occasionally collaborate under the title of ‘Love Over Law’, and release several cassette albums in the late 1980′s early 1990′s. Graham had also run the ‘Pritty Toons Press’ for several years, producing local fanzines such as his own, New Crimes, as well as Necrology and Confidential Waste, and nowadays runs permaculture workshops and various eco-friendly schemes. Paul Brown had a brief tenure in Kronstadt Uprising, and in 1984 played with Steve Pegrum in local band ‘The Children of the Revolution’. He continues to play and teach guitar. Kevin co-ran ‘SLAB’ in the mid ’80′s (Southend Libertarian Anarchist Broadsheet) and still drums occasionally.

Further updates on Autumn Poison band members:

Sheena left Southend to become a ‘New Age Traveller’ in 1990, she now lives with her family on the Isle of Lewis and has very recently become a grandmother!

Paul continues to earn a good living as professional guitar tutor and still plays locally in various bands ranging from folk to jazz to heavy rock.

Julian is now a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party and continues to campaign and comment on local and national issues.

Steve continues to live and work in Southend, and still plays in various local bands.

Graham has written books about and teaches Permaculture courses, including in the garden of former Crass HQ Dial House, and is now married to Sheena’s sister Debby, his website is http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/.

Love Over Law – This World We Must Leave – 1988

Oppression / Utopia (A New World In Our Hearts) / McDonalds / Dirty Business / Stifled Colours / The Song Of The Experts / The Vancouver Five / One Thousand Miles

Indebted to the most excellent Seema Kapoor for lending these tapes to me so I could upload them onto this KYPP site.

Bard Buster

Chuggin In The Ruggin / Steppenwolf

Look Mummy Clowns emerged early on in 1982 from the members of  The Eratics. Stringy continued to play the bass and Snout continued to play the guitar. Roper, The Eratics drummer, moved over to vocal duties and the vacant drumming position was filled by ex-Apostle drummer Dan MacIntyre.

The band performed with the likes of Hagar The Womb, Blood And Roses and Flowers In The Dustbin in many of the usual pubs and squats that were available to punk bands in and around the London scene at that time.

A year on in 1983 the band recorded and released a demo which impressed ex-Eratics fan Jumpy who was based in Bolognia amongst the radical squats and book shops that existing in that Italian city. The band travelled over to Bolognia, performed in front of the radical audience and then sometime later in the week, the band rush recorded these tracks in a portacabin before having to travel to that nights gig in Milan. The travel arrangements to this gig in Milan ended in confusion as two members made it and two members ended up somewhere else near by!

The band performed for the last time at the New Merlins Cave pub near Kings Cross in June of 1985.

Dan MacIntyre had a thought about about this one and only Look Mummy Clown 7″ release;

“it actually came out alright considering it was recorded very quickly in a portacabin in Bologna using a small mobile studio. This was during a tour of Italy in 1983 organised by Jumpy from RAF punk record label Attack…”

Interesting article written by Tom Vague in August 1984 for Zig Zag magazine HERE and HERE

Many happy returns to Dan MacIntyre whose birthday it is today. Hoping you and yours are having a nice day down on the south coast.

Thanks to Jim Wafford for the lend of this release and to Dan for the flyers and for supplying the demo track  ‘White Horses’  a song that was mentioned in the comments after this post was completed.

A Black And White Statement / Progress / I Got No Time / Colour TV / Kontrast / System / Anarchy / Countdown Twist / Syphillips

B-52 Pilot / Soldiers / We Don’t Need No Speed / A Waltz / Vivisection / City Of Fear / I Don’t Like Rastaman / Peace Dilemma  

The debut and only LP by The Rondo’s from Rotterdam recorded in 1980 shortly before the band split up. A large Gang Of Four and Wire influence on the tracks contained on this excellent LP. A free flexi disc is also included in the package which I did not bother to upload as it is a very bad quality short wave recording of John Peel playing ‘The Russians Are Coming’ on his famous late night Radio One show.

The text and photographs below concern the infamous Crass / Poison Girls / Rondos September 1979 concert at the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square that was disrupted by a punch up between S.W.P. and B.M. hooligans. Crass never got to perform on this night due to the plod emptying the hall of all gig goers, peaceful or otherwise.

The text has been lifted from rondos.nl the Rondos official site, and the photographs are taken from the Rondos CD box set released on King Kong Records (KKR008/009). Indebted to Chris Low.

Conway Hall 9th September 1979 setting up

Crass soundcheck

Rondos perform

Rondos perform

Poison Girls perform

Conway Hall crowd during the break before Crass were going to perform and before the trouble erupted

The plod enter the scene, Steve Ignorant and Gee look on from the crowd and the venue is evacuated

Sometime early on in 1979, Peter from Backstreet showed us a bizarre LP from London ‘The Feeding Of The 5000’ by Crass. We were overwhelmed at the enormous noise, driven by the beat of a drum and accompanied by serious ranting and raving, lasting the entire two sides of the album. We’d never heard the word ‘fuck’ that often on one record before. In Huize Schoonderloo we held our breaths as we listened to Crass’ anti-musical music many times over. Something that resembled tracks started to take shape. We read the lyrics and looked closely at the sheet covered in fascist-like symbolism. They were great! Better than us!

We sent them an enthusiastic letter, some of our issues and a single. We immediately got a very nice letter in return, with Crass buttons we should by no means feel obliged to wear and a Crass lyrics book, handmade and stenciled. They wondered if we wanted to come to England to perform together. We sure did. We decided to take a trip to England. Dick and Mildred filmed our departure from Hook of Holland. We saw a Crass concert in London. What an experience. The whole thing soon degenerated into a fight, initiated by a gang of skinheads who were violently terrorizing the venue. To our utter amazement Crass initially played on as if nothing was happening.

The following day we visited Dial House in the countryside on the outskirts of London. Penny Rimbaud, Crass’ drummer and clearly its source of inspiration too, gave us a warm welcome. He’d been in the kitchen all day and had baked all kinds of vegan vegetable pies, especially for us. Were we hungry? We told him it was kind of him but we’d just scoffed some hamburgers in London somewhere. Vegetarianism was still one step beyond us. Crass were surprised we weren’t fifteen-year-olds. That is how our music had sounded on the single we sent them. What do you say to that? To make things better G. said it was meant as a compliment. Rather sweet.

We were invited to perform with Crass and Poison Girls in London in September. We were already looking forward to it. They asked if we could leave the hammer and sickle at home, because they were likely to have the wrong effect on the skinheads who faithfully frequented Crass’ gigs. We agreed to everything.

We returned to London in September. We were wearing nice black suits with red Politischer Schutzhaftling (‘political activists in protective custody’) triangles. Admittedly this was inspired by Crass’ militant uniforms. Up to then we’d usually worn cheerful, colourful football shirts bought on flea markets. But by then everybody was doing that, you see.

The Crass members lived and worked together for the good cause like we did. They were incredibly friendly, a little older and a little more intellectual. And the ladies were rather feminist. “We pay with our bodies.” We were still boyish and open-minded, but certainly not stupid. We got on straight away, especially with Penny who just seemed incredibly old to us. He had to be almost forty! He was very friendly, however, and had clearly been influenced by oriental philosophy. Zen, if you like. We spotted modest Buddha statuettes here and there in the beautifully decorated country home and in the middle of a conversation he suddenly pointed at the wooden coffee table and said: “This teapot is borrowed from the universe.” Everyone fell silent. You could have heard a pin drop and we all stared at the teapot on the table that looked very normal to us. We’d not seen that one coming.

We stayed the night. They willingly put their rooms and beds at our disposal. The day of the concert arrived, a benefit concert for the anarchist prisoners in England known as the ‘Persons Unknown’. Crass practised the transitions between the songs, which they played without pausing, like they did on their records. We hung around in their delightful garden. Steve Ignorant, Crass’ brilliant singer, polished everyone’s Dr. Martens boots. He asked how we could remain so calm just before a performance. We smiled, because we didn’t understand the question. He told us he kept running to the toilet with nerves all day. We raised our eyebrows. That afternoon we arrived at the Conway Hall in Crass’ van. The place was swarming with skinheads. The fascist National Front had just held a big meeting, in the Conway Hall of all places.

The atmosphere in the venue just before that night’s performance was vicious. Fights broke out near the toilets in the corridor between different groups of skinheads supporting different football clubs. They marched ostentatiously into the room, with bloody hands and faces. They raised their arms in the Nazi salute. The Rondos played. Apart from the odd broken string the gig went perfect. We got good reactions. Poison Girls played. There was a lot of Hex-like behavior from female fans. Their vocals were rather theatrical, but still it was a great show, supported noisily by a gang of West Ham skins thrashing the balcony.

Then all hell broke loose. It all happened very fast. People were getting punched and kicked. Panic broke out. The audience scattered. We lifted small skinheads on to the stage so they wouldn’t get trampled. They cried with shock and fear and were barely eleven or twelve years old. People were lying on the floor. The police arrived and cleared the room. The skins were told to hand in their shoelaces. Peace returned and staff scrubbed the floor and mopped up the blood. Apparently, members of the Anti Nazi League and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) had clashed with skinheads of the British Movement and the National Front, who had stayed behind in pubs around the Conway Hall after the NF meeting to come to Crass’ gig that evening. A Jewish activist from the SWP walked up to the stage and pointed his finger at Crass. Your fault!

We grabbed our things and got in the van. We were packed together and very quiet. We went by a Chinese take-away for some vegan spring rolls. At Crass’ place a discussion ensued. The tone was friendly, but still. Shouldn’t you protect yourself from this kind of violence? They frequently wrestled with these problems. Crass had become a target for skinheads who were attracted to their furious music, militant appearance and swastika-like symbols, but who rejected anarchist and pacifist ideas. Crass refused to employ bouncers or let the venue hire them, even though that was a common thing in London in those days. It was a question of principles but should the audience be put through all this? You do invite them to come to your gigs, after all. Is it fair to deliver them unprotected to hordes of skinheads, fascist or not, while you are safely on the stage? It was fair, said Crass, for that was simply the situation in London at that time and they didn’t want to be ‘anti’. Crass said we didn’t understand, coming from the peaceful Netherlands. Crass’ pacifist anarchism, although admirable, opposed The Rondos’ more militant attitude.

We said goodbye the next day. We agreed to do more concerts in England together, organize a common tour of the Netherlands and there were plans to record an LP with Crass’ help. We’d talk about it all later. In the meantime the newspapers in England were full of the Conway Hall battle. The only venue, by the way, that had offered the National Front a space to meet, from the fundamental conviction that everyone has the right of assembly.

When we got back home to peaceful Huize Schoonderloo Andy, Crass’ guitar player, telephoned us. They had decided not to collaborate with us after all. Yes, we did do the same thing and yes, personally they thought we were very nice and sympathetic, but still. Later we received a letter from Penny. They didn’t want to confuse the audience by playing with a band that had different views. Besides, we had some sympathy for the People’s Republic of China. This was also a difficulty.

We were rather baffled. Obviously we understood that they were under direct physical threat from National Front skinheads. If they’d taken that as an argument, we would’ve immediately endorsed and appreciated it. But they were turning it into an ideological issue. They just didn’t want to be seen with us. Letters were sent both ways. No results. Still we didn’t give in. Raket published vicious articles we wrote about the Crass vs. Rondos controversy. We thought it relevant because in the Netherlands too, the Crass ideology was spreading and racism, propagated by different neo-Nazi groups, was emerging and poisoning the punk scene. The issue simply had to be addressed.

In hindsight we may have been too bitter and disappointed, and thus let things get too tense. We did, however, get votes of sympathy from London punks who were tired of the skinhead terror and wanted to strike back, but felt hindered by Crass. The discussion spread across the Dutch punk scene. You can look it all up in the fanzine Raket.

Levellers piece on the Crass / Poison Girls / Rondos Conway Hall troubles – published date: Oct 1979 (Chris Low Collection)

Bigger text HERE

Another perspective of this concert is written in the book ANTI FASCIST by Martin Lux who was there that night fighting the fascists.

An excerpt of that chapter is on a seperate post which may be accessed HERE

Richard Kick has just put up some new clips on his youtube channel, rcabutx.

This is the first of the six parts of Brigandage live at the Bull And Gate, 1986. Enjoy.

Warning – there’s a lot of smoking going on in this clip.

Run Come Rally / Jah Vengeance / Conquering Lion / Covetious Men / Anti Christ

Carnel Mind / Jah Love / Love Thy Neighbour / Love Of Jah / The Man Who Does The Work

This debut collection of recordings, recorded by Vivian Jackson and The Prophets, included various 7″ single tracks dating from 1972 until 1974, JA singles that were released in amazingly small quantities of 100-200 copies originally.

The LP I have in my collection got distributed all over Europe, amongst the wave of militant roots reggae music that had became popular in the large cities on that continent. Artists like Culture, Burning Spear and The Congos and many more helped pave the way for this music in the UK, with a large amount of help from late night radio DJ’s David Rodigen and John Peel.

Vivian Jackson was born in extreme poverty in Kingston and got seriously ill in his teens while working at a furnace facility. Thrown out of his employment, he had no choice but to became a beggar and hustler around the markets, in the tough ghetto’s of Kingston. Vivian being disabled and in such a ragged state, no one would employ him, added to this situation, he also had his share of knocks living on the street.

He eventually started to compose songs and, as normal with Jamaican artists, visited many recording studios and sung acapella style to the studio owners. Osbourne Ruddock AKA King Tubby told the artist to come back to the studio with the (ever so) important JA dollars, and they would cut a vocal and a dub.

Vivian had no money and had to wait quite some time to go back to the studio, this time with The Prophets (actually originally credited as Ralph Brothers on the final release in 1972) to get ‘Conquering Lion’ down on dub-plate with a King Tubby’s dub on the reverse side.

This dub-plate, as usual in Jamaica, was played on the sound system that was affiliated with the studio the tracks were recorded in; in this case King Tubby’s sound system, and from the reaction from the crowd at the dances, a few hundred copies were pressed up on the NOW label. These copies sold out and gave Vivian his first steps in the industry, to build up a working relationship with Tubby that would last several years.

This album of early material by Yabby You was released in the UK, in a slightly different form and was entitled ‘Ramadam’.

This album is filled with tracks (nowadays quite well known, with some of the excellent reissue labels like Blood And Fire and Pressure Sounds Records pushing this era of reggae music) that are sublimely beautiful, and without doubt some of the best roots music ever produced by any artist.

In the words of John Lydon “words can not express”…

From the original post upload date of June 2008, re-published on this site today due to Vivian’s death yesterday…

The reggae community has been hit with another tragedy as Vivian Jackson, better known as Yabby You, passed away Tuesday 12/01/10 at the age of 63. Throughout his illustrious roots career, Jackson defined himself by his iconoclastic behavior, and iconic music. While his peers were all of devout Rastafarian faith, Yabby accepted the lifestyle, but rejected the creed, opting instead for a strong Christian faith that eventually earned him the nickname “Jesus Dread.”

After struggling with health problems exacerbated by the dire poverty he mired in throughout his youth, Yabby eventually came to Kingston where he found reggae. His first album, ‘Conquering Lion,’ is widely regarded as nothing short of a masterpiece, a dark work that somehow strikes a precarious balance between traditional reggae tropes and the artist’s own religiosity. And his ‘Jesus Dread (1972-1977)’ compendium CD released on the Blood And Fire imprint is now a must have for any reggae fan’s shelf. Yabby You was, if nothing else, unique. Unquestionably, he will be missed.

Picture Gallery / Biff! Bang! Pow! / Its Time / If Now Is The Answer / Looking At The World Through Dark Shadows / I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape

Pop Goes Art / Miss London / The Sun Never Sets / Easy As Pie / This Is Tomorrow

The fine debut LP release on the Whaam! Record label. The Times being the chosen artists for this particular accolade! Ed Ball and Dan Treacy from Television Personalities swapping vocal duties and coming up trumps…Really good material on this record and a beautiful hand painted sleeve to boot.

An interesting interview conducted with Ed Ball in 2005 below courtesy of the creation-records.com site. 

As he prepares to release the ArTpOp! compilation featuring some of his best work, we caught up with the living legend that is Ed Ball

In the interview he tells us about meeting Dan Treacy and Joe Foster at school right up to his future plans as a solo artist and the new Television Personalities album.

YOU STARTED THE TELEVISION PERSONALITIES WAY BACK IN AUGUST 1977 (THE SAME MONTH ELVIS DIED).

We started the Television Personalities because WE’D KILLED Elvis . . . He’d become fat, redundant and useless. We were young, spunky, good-looking and very, very talented and launched a musical revolution from the common room of the ultra-strict London Oratory school.

We’d had enough of fat rock’n'roll and decided young skinny punks – like ourselves – was the future of music. Here’s to old England!’ An ArTpOp! Compilation, is an humble sampling of the ensuing twenty two years, the first in a re-issues programme featuring The Times and Teenage Filmstars.

HOW WERE THEM DAYS, DO YOU HAVE MANY FOND MEMORIES?

Well ten years before, I’d lived with my family at 20 Wetherby Gardens, off Gloucester Road – 100 yards from Anita Pallenberg, Brian Jones and Keith Richards, 200 yards from Syd Barrett and the infamous 101 Cromwell Road and 50 yards from Mervyn Peake (Auntie Veronica was friends with his daughter Claire). A bohemian atmosphere, you get me? I have fond memories of those times.

Beyond that . . . just of being in the trenches fighting the Great War – winning – going our separate ways at certain points in our lives, only to come back and fight another war . . . like foreign legionnaires or mercenaries . . . perhaps I was the most mercenary of all.

AT WHAT AGE DID YOU FIRST START LISTENING TO MUSIC? WHAT ARTIST/BANDS FIRST GRABBED YOUR ATTENTION?

Apart from the obvious hand-me-downs, the highlights of my album collection were pretty lean – David Bowie ‘Images 66-67′, Kraftwerk ‘Autobahn’, Wizzard ‘Wizzards Brew’, Mothers of Invention ‘We’re only in it for the money’, Pink Floyd ‘Piper at the gates of Dawn’, Alan Price ‘Lucky man’ and Bob Dylan ‘Blood on the tracks’. That pretty much defined me for the next twenty-odd years. But I didn’t just want to listen to this stuff, I wanted to play it.

I don’t know how to explain this, but broadly speaking, I see music in my head and can automatically play back vast compositions after one hearing, despite not being able to read or write music. But even with this affliction, I was treated as rather an idiot in music lessons at junior school, given a stick to bang on the floor while other supposedly more talented children were given the keys to the music cupboard. Later on at the Oratory, I would sneak into the assembly hall during breaktime to furtively pick out tunes from memory on Mr Ferguson’s upright.

“Ball! Stop with that hooliganism!”.

John and Gerard Bennett would’ve been a party to all this, we’d shared the same celebrity neighbours and education since we were five years old. Revenge at sweet seventeen would be our first record as O Level, containing the names of our most hated teachers, played most nights on John Peels radio show. But we’re getting ahead of our story somewhat . . .

I UNDERSTAND YOU WENT TO SCHOOL WITH JOE AND DAN. YOU MUST HAVE PRETTY CLOSE FRIENDSHIPS WITH THEM…?

Unbelievably close. To say that we drew alarmingly similar parallels to the three boys in Lindsay Anderson’s 1968 film ‘If’… would be an understatement; corporal punishment was an everyday occurrence and public floggings by the Head, in mortar board-and-gown drag were not unheard of. Art Life Imitation Whatever.

Apart from my referred-to affliction and this horrific ability to play virtually anything on guitar or piano, I was pretty good at rugby and football, quite apart from being able to sprint like the devil himself. So although at heart I was a Rimbaud amongst Rambos, to use an American college expression, I was probably a reluctant jock (perhaps with bagpipes, if you will).

Joe on the other hand was a brain in denial. Highly intelligent but always in confrontation with teachers; his tirades often had an undeniable logic and were always very entertaining. Essentially, his rants always articulated our defiance against the bullying education system we were in.

As for Dan, that American expression is redundant, so i’ll invent one. He was a ghost; that is, he was never there! He had the school’s second worse attendance of all time. I can still recall in our third year when Mrs Couch ushered Dan into Divinity, announcing him as a new boy. But Miss, I exclaimed, he’s not, he’s been on the books for the last two years, only he’s never bothered to come in.

“Ball! You’re bad, mad and awfully trad. Go and get the cane this instant!!”

I knew Dan by sight anyway because during those two years truancy, We’d moved flat from Gloucester Road to Beaufort Street, around the corner from Dan’s on the Kings Road. Even though he was shy, and that no one seemed to notice him, I knew he was special. He would’ve been a brain in denial too, because there’s an extraordinary part of Dan’s mind that could, and still can, work out complicated multiplications mentally. This is particularly interesting because around this time, we were streamed into roughly the same sets for each subject, all of us dumped in the bottom class for Maths. Me, and John Bennett, who couldn’t add 5 apples between us, even if you numbered them – sitting next to this mathematical phenomenon waiting to happen. His short stories were fantastical works of invention too.

It wouldn’t be much of a conceit to say that I brought us – Dan, Joe, John, Gerard and me – together. Getting us to sit together in classes and at lunchtime. Working at the group’s weaker aspects and relationships. Talking us up individually and as a band to anyone who’d listen.

Writing songs for us to practise, writing plays, giving everyone notes, telling everyone what to do . . . fuck, how much did they hate me!! Still, everyone played their part too. John and Gerard, drums and bass, providing a massive basement to practise in; Joe’s obvious love and attention to how Byrds, Velvet Underground and early Floyd records were made and a thought process that could ‘manifesto’ itself at will – Dan’s Wilko Johnson guitar style/demeanour, always looking like he wished he was somewhere else. I knew Dan and Joe were geniuses . . . I suppose at that age it takes one to know one.

Up in Glasgow, Alan McGee was doing much the same with Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes. The “No Turning Back” teams of ’77. We really believed we could change the world.

DID YOU EVER CONSIDER YOU’D STILL BE MAKING MUSIC NEARLY 30 YEARS LATER?

I don’t think any of us seriously thought more than 30 packets of ‘Space Dust’ let alone 30 years ahead! But you’re right. It’s 30 years since we started our very own brand of anti-music in that subterranean haunt down Earls Court way, and it’s basically the same shower making the same old racket on this new record . . . once again, we’re ahead of the story.

YOU LEFT THE TELEVISION PERSONALITIES ORIGINALLY IN 1982. WHAT WERE YOUR REASONS FOR LEAVING FIRST TIME ROUND?

Like many important decisions in life it was a compound reason. for one thing, Dan and I had been making records fairly intensely for five years (twelve singles and five albums between us as the TVPs, O Level, Teenage Filmstars, Gifted!” Children and the Times), and we’d reached a point where everything that Dan seemed to do and everybody’s appreciation of Dan seemed to eclipse alot of the things I felt were important. But that’s not even near the mark . . .

YOU RAN THE WHAAM! LABEL WITH DAN TREACY IN THE 80′S. CAN YOU TELL US MUCH ABOUT THAT?

It was our vision of Track records, a label that didn’t appear to have any shit artists on it. And back in 1981, no one was even contemplating the sort of visions we were having on daily basis, Whaam! being the sort of dream that only Dan and I could’ve conceived at that time. We spent time perfecting it too, releasing two splendid singles that Shel Talmy would’ve been proud to have produced – ‘Red with purple flashes’ The Times and ‘Painting by numbers’ The Gifted Children, complete with pop art sleeves and labels bearing the beautiful full colour Whaam! logo. We then proceeded to instil some life into an ailing mod/psychedelic scene by DJing and action painting at all the trendy clubs.

Soon after, we launched a triple broadside of albums ‘Pop goes Art!’ The Times, ‘Mummy you’re not watching me” TV Personalities and ‘Beach Party’ The Marine Girls. What a start! But certain machiavellian/svengali/smakywallyponces saw Whaam! as a convenient vehicle for their own uses. And wouldn’t it be easier, they schemed, to convince Dan, and not Dan AND his obstinate buddy, that it would be a good idea that some shit-awful bands from fuck-knows-where should make records on our beautiful label. Rather than have an undignified row with a dear friend I moved on, and eventually, er . . .

SO WHEN DID YOU FIRST MEET ALAN?

. . . Yes, I met Alan! Now, that would’ve been around 1983. just as he’d started Creation, with singles by Biff Bang Pow and Revolving Paint Dream, Alan and Andrew Innes respectively. In the interim, I’d released ‘I helped Patrick McGoohan escape’ and ‘This is London’ LP as The Times on my own ArTpOp! label and was enjoying some status on this largely untapped area of independent sixties idealism.

I recall meeting Alan at the Living Room and his enthusiasm was so similar to my own I was quite stunned. It was usually I, the charm master, who administered the flattery and complimented artists on their work, what was going on here?!? He made reference largely to ‘This is London’ and even suggested re-recording and releasing a track off it called ‘If Only’ on Creation, with Bobby Gillespie on drums, (only I didn’t know who Bobby Gillespie was), and strings, possibly in the style of “Sunday morning” Velvet Underground. I liked him right away and although he made me feel special as a writer, my natural instinct at this point was to kindly decline. A big mistake, but it wouldn’t happen again . . .

AT WHAT STAGE DID YOU GET INVOLVED WITH CREATION?

Specifically working at the label, probably early 1988. No question, Alan McGee saved my life. This would have been precipitated by some key events in both our fortunes. Working with good musicians but missing the creative competitiveness of another writer, I made a string of records that were so pop art and underground, I was virtually off the map. I had to flog off my Jam albums just to keep me and the Times in outfits – those poplin tabcollar jobs could cost the earth! In Toytown, I was the Ball who’d lost his Bounce.

By contrast, Alan had perfected the art of maintaining a medium-sized independent label in the mid-80s with his own contemporary vision. I looked on in awe as the Jesus and Mary Chain rioted on record and in concert. Even better, I recognised some of the other players; isn’t that Joseph Foster up there on the barricades with Alan, Jim and William? And there, isn’t that Joe’s name on the label, doing what I always told him he was best at?! And even as the JAMC moved on, Alan always seemed to gauge the ensuing moods of those times.

So when I bumped into him at a TV Personalities show at the 100 club sometime late ’87 I was pleasantly surprised. And when he offered me the opportunity to make an album on his label I was dropdead surprised. Me, with my tattered reputation? Surely not.

But he felt certain there was an audience out there for The Times, of anything from five to ten thousand, mainly in Europe. But I haven’t got a band, I said. The Times had split up eight months before on the very stage Dan was singing from as we had this conversation. Simple, Alan replied, His own band Biff Bang Pow! would make the record with me. And so it came to pass. “Beat Torture” 1988, sort of picked up where “The girl who runs the Beat Hotel” left off. Conversely I joined them on “Love is Forever”, the Pow’s fourth album, the making of which was massively instructive for me – particularly Alan’s acoustic writing style.

From here, it was just a short magic bus ride to ‘E for Edward’ 1989 Times album, by which time I’d been working at Creation for about a year and was in the froth and thrall of it’s Ecstasy culture. This last record reads like the drug-fuelled confessions and revelations of a James Fox ‘Performance’ stylee gangster confronting his own sleaze and guilt. But with Charlie Hawtrey and Babs Windsor as Mick and Anita.

CREATION HAD QUITE A FEW DIFFERENT PHASES WITH C86 AND THE SHOEGAZING SCENES BEING THE MOST FONDLY REMEMBERED JUDGING BY THE PEOPLE I SPEAK TO, IS THERE AN ERA OF THE LABEL YOU REGULARLY FEEL NOSTALGIA FOR?

If I’m entirely honest, (and believe me I am) I will tell you I didn’t understand any of it. I CAN tell you that in the ‘C86 phase’ I recognised the sound that Dan and I had made almost 8 years before. Only most of these bands had forgotten to record the song. Or even write one in the first place. Shoegazing was much the same for me. Only prettier. I’m not nostalgic about any phase or era. Thinking back to those times doesn’t make me feel warm and runny. You see, it was what we wanted to do, but it was really tough mentally and we weren’t fucking about.

That tag Label of Love was a complete misnomer too, the touchy-feely notion that all these bands loved each and really got on being a joke. They were mostly indifferent to each other , maybe verging on hatred in certain instances. It’s the basis of pop narcissism. it’s what a label pays the advance for. I’m sure deep down I was hated in some quarters too, being a close friend of Alan’s. But I wasn’t there because I could warm the toilet seat. A decade of running labels through Rough Trade doesn’t come as a diploma at Polytechnic. You can’t buy that experience in Oxbridge, either. You gotta live it. The Charm School of Hard Knocks. I wasn’t a natural, but I knew the drill, helping to play some small part in smoothing out an edgy relationship with distributors Rough Trade.

If there’s any period that has a particular resonance with me, then its ’90 to ’93. There was an unspoken “licence” that existed at Creation by Alan’s decree. Any artist could make as many records as they liked, the prerequisites being you recorded inexpensively, quickly and could guarantee 5000+ sales. It benefited the label by filling the release schedules resulting in turnover. This privilege had briefly been in the hands of two or three other notable writers. I applied for the “licence” and had it for a year on probation. It prompted one weekly music paper to describe me as “the only artist in music today who uses and abuses his label” – for the next forty-odd months I made 12 albums, variously as The Times, Teenage Filmstars and . . .

YOU MADE A FEW ALBUMS UNDER THE LOVE CORPORATION BANNER IN THE EARLY 90′s. I REALLY LOVED THE ‘TONES’ ALBUM WHICH I STILL REGULARLY LISTEN TO. WHEN DID YOU FIRST GET INTO DANCE MUSIC? DO YOU THINK YOU’LL EVER RELEASE ANYTHING ELSE BY THE LOVE CORPORATION?

Thank you for saying that about ‘Tones’. Listening to it now, it sounds like a Quentin Tarantino film soundtrack – ’60s inspired themes interpreted by Kraftwerk on a ’70s porn film set, the whole sweetmeat produced by Giorgio Moroder. Not bad for 1989. The first of its kind on Creation. even though I’d dabbled with pop electronics on “Hello Europe” 1984, I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and say I was into dance music, more the pirate concept of sampling, half melodies, noise, the deconstruction and the excuse for another disguise.

Having to programme drum machines, grab the latest loops, blah de blah, was a bore and mostly got in the way of the really exciting stuff; stealing dialogue from films, lifting ‘grabbable’ voices and riffs from records . . . rather like bringing a graveyard back to life! Me and Dan could probably make a brilliant dance record. Maybe we will!!

YOU TOURED WITH THE BOO RADLEYS AFTER THEY RELEASED GIANT STEPS. WAS THAT A GOOD EXPERIENCE?

Touring with those Northern souls was a beautiful experience. I owe Martin no small debt for inviting me to join his concert party, as I probably wouldn’t have made it through the next three or four years. When they first visited the offices in ’93 I liked them straight away, enjoying Martin’s humour and the dynamic within the group. These were difficult days for me, having come out of an extremely intense relationship, being three stone overweight and fighting an escalating obsession with acid and amphetamine.

The Boos had had a fairly rotten time of it too, nailed in a shoegazing coffin. But Martin had come up with ‘Lazarus’ and the boys made ‘Giant Steps’ which set them up for a spot of real contender stuff and a See the World touring-type scenario. Only they needed a keyboard player. Dick Green, suggested me. Martin called, but I initially turned him down due to a lack of live practise, a massive lack of confidence and good old fashioned drug paranoia. We compromised, agreeing that I would go up to Liverpool to make up the numbers for an audition.

I remember that day well. Arriving at the rehearsal studios, I sauntered in, expecting to see all sorts of geezers and hairys with black and white notes on their lapels like Morgan Fisher. But there’s only the Boo Boys, two against two on a bar football game. I ask Martin have I got the day wrong. Through a cloud of cigarette smoke he informs me to stop arsing about cos he’s busy right now, that the keyboard’s in the other room and would I be a good chap and learn the songs in time for tomorrow night’s show in Glasgow. But not quite as nice as that. And that was the nice bit.

Later that night, after beers at the Crack, they jump me armed with garden shears and a blunt pair of crocodile scissors, surgically removing my leather cap and hair, such as it was. One moment I was Joe Orton, the next, Colonel Kurtz! The horrors!!

It was around this time also that Oasis signed to Creation (I’d still been an office wallah when they’d first visited Hackney) and they supported us on a few shows, the first of which was the Tramshed, Glasgow. Still bearing the scars from the previous night’s scalping, I reacquainted myself with the chaps. Noel, once he realised who I was, as before and ever since, was friendly and polite. But Liam! He was something else!! It felt like an automatic bond. As if we’d been friends since knee high. And he’s never changed.

Things took on an extra-surreal quality when the Boo’s next single went Top Ten and the album “Wake Up!” went number one nationally. Particularly surreal as I started trading in false particulars, pulling chicks as the “lead singer”, despite being a foot taller and a decade older than the lovely and ever-faithful Sice (as indeed all the band were). Feeling on the verge of another metamorphosis, I started writing with a degree of reality that I hadn’t achieved for more than a decade. And with just these new songs, I requested – and was granted a 20 minute solo spot before the Boos every night.

I remember soundchecking ‘The Mill Hill Self Hate Club’ on a stage somewhere on the planet for the first time, Martin striding out of the dressing room arriving nose-to-nose, engulfing me in the obligatory plume of smoke, asking, nay demanding “Where the fuck did you get that? That’s brilliant!!” Aah, music to my ears . . .

AT THE HEIGHT OF BRIT POP YOU WERE FLIRTING WITH CHART SUCCESS AS A SOLO ARTIST. I STILL REMEMBER BEING PLEASANTLY SURPRISED SEEING YOUR VIDEO FOR “THE MILL HILL SELF HATE CLUB” APPEARING ON NATIONAL TV WITH THAT STAR STUDDED VIDEO. DID IT FEEL STRANGE FINALLY BEING ACCEPTED ALMOST AS PART OF THE MAIN STREAM AFTER ALL THOSE YEARS?

Well, you see, not really. As a writer I was only doing what almost everybody else was trying to do at the time, what The Times and TVPs had been doing since the beginning -write seriously good songs and make popular records that would sneak past the system. Only now the high-tier media and the public in particular had become attuned to us.

Our scene from 1983 had permeated the mass culture and I was certainly glad of the company. But I wasn’t cheating anyone. Those solo albums ‘If a man ever loved a woman’ 1995 and ‘Catholic guilt’ 1997 with the invaluable music support of Alan McGee, Andy Bell (some of his most beautiful guitar work ever) Idha, Nick Heyward and the Boos, have an unswerving conviction about them – it’s the whole break up/healing process, right there in the songs.

Anyway, I was back on daytime radio again. My usual slot. I always made records that got played on the radio. Even when they cost sixpence to record, just knew how to. Only this time prime-time telly beckoned too. You can only guess how much fun it was making ‘The Mill Hill . . .’ video. Almost entirely scripted by Alan , it’s an absolute dramatic masterpiece featuring Doctor Heyward and Mister Bell, Monsieur Le Saux and Ms. Friel. The best film she ever made! And ‘Trailblaze’ too, even though they both went to video!! Only kidding!!

WHAT’S YOUR OPINION OF THE HUGELY SUCCESSFUL YEARS THE LABEL HAD WITH OASIS. DID YOU ENJOY THAT TIME?

I was glad I’d opted out of the office when I had the chance. Making solo records gave me something to do for the rest of the century. As a close friend of Alan’s, and coming close to understanding the psyche of the man, it was inevitable that he’d eventually find the band who matched his ambitions. Most groups on the label pre-Oasis had a problem with any kind of success, which had alot to do with some old indie ethic or other. Too many cosmic socialists, really. It was the most honest success that any independent label ever had, because most other large profile indies traded on an English middle-class currency that would chastise itself feeling dirty for its success, the same old intellectual bullshit.

WERE YOU DISAPPOINTED WHEN CREATION CAME TO AN END?

Not for Alan I wasn’t. He’d definitely had enough and wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I knew long before anybody else he was going to chuck it. We’ve remained the best of friends to this day. I knew it couldn’t last forever, and was fascinated to know what the after-life was like. And it wasn’t so bad really, the after-life, apart from the odd medium and board tapping merchant trying to make contact. But I’m happy to be amongst the living again.

GIVEN THAT THE DUST HAS TRULY SETTLED ON CREATION NOW, WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE RELEASES ON THE LABEL?

Of my own? Probably ‘Pure’ The Times 1991 for being so anarchic and disrespectful. Recorded on a £600 budget, it sounds like a mental breakdown waiting to happen. Not surprising given the amounts of LSD I was ingesting . . . far beyond ReCreational doses. (Alan maintains that in hindsight, I’d suffered a minor breakdown around this time). Also ‘Star’ Teenage Filmstars 1992 which appeared only months after “Loveless” for achieving that intangible vagueness. As for everybody else who made records on the label, I’ve adopted Joe’s view that they were all brilliant.

I’m not sure that’s true though, about the dust settling. Creation was the brainchild of a man who had 20 ideas a day, some of which changed thousands upon thousands of people’s lives. Some are timebombs still waiting to go off. The mid-period of the label is currently in vogue and there’s alot of fascinating music and madness to discover therein. The last quarter of Creations music history is largely overshadowed by Oasis’s staggering success and the change in the company’s working mechanism, but it was still mostly Alan’s idiosyncratic vision. That period wasn’t always about trying to occupy all 40 positions in the charts every week . . .

YOU’VE RECENTLY REFORMED THE TELEVISION PERSONALITIES. IS IT STRANGE BEING REUNITED WITH DAN TREACY AFTER HIS TIME AWAY?

No, not at all. It’s the same old musical (or anti-musical) shorthand between us, composing beautiful songs only to subject them to the tyranny of structurelessness. If you really need a contemporary simile for the dynamic between us, then I’ll be Barat to Dans Docherty, Innes to his Gillespie. George to his Gilbert. Or Hardy to his Laurel. Right now we’ve got that ‘artist, audience, zeitgeist’ thing going. Invaluable stuff, really.

I’ve done everything thing from playing a bit of drums to slide guitar on this set, but the real show stoppers have been Dan’s piano songs, perhaps the most touching he’s ever written. And as if sensing there was another war to be fought, John and Gerard have been there too, reinforcing our old Physics teacher Mr Shaida’s theory that all TVPs really do gravitate towards each other. check out www.reacta.net for their fascinating adventures post TVPs and O Level.

JOE’S NOT IN THE BAND THIS TIME? WAS THERE ANY PARTICULAR REASON FOR THAT?

Yes, It’s a bit difficult to arrange something like that. we’re all such large presences. But it isn’t so surprising when you consider that the only time Dan, Joe and I performed together was the glorious “Cloud over Liverpool” Teenage Filmstars recording sessions in ’79, and the infamous Victoria Venue ‘soft drugs trolley’ event of ’81. Like all the very greatest bands its never easy to balance 3 planet-sized egos.

WHEN CAN WE EXPECT THE TVP ALBUM TO BE RELEASED? IS THERE ANY PROGRESS IN GETTING A SUITABLE DEAL?

There is a suitable deal in place with Domino Records right now – signed, sealed, done, dusted and both parties driving each other nuts. I’ve been present at all the meetings and it’s going to be one helluva campaign, with a Jan ’06 album release date, preceded by a single or two.

Don’t get me wrong, we’ve not changed all our evil, perverted ways, but with our case histories, you’ll more likely catch us propping up the snug bar drinking like tin legs than looking through Yellow Pages for the local dealers – you can’t have us wild and domesticated at the same time, chief!

YOU’VE RECENTLY DONE SOME GIGS AS A SOLO ARTIST AGAIN. CAN WE EXPECT A NEW SOLO ALBUM IN THE FUTURE?

I’m on fire, man. A bush fire at that. Expect a solo album and the rest. It’s a good scene at the moment.

WHAT MUSIC ARE YOU LISTENING TO THESE DAYS?

Well, today I’m mostly rotating between Neutral Milk Hotel ‘In the aeroplane over the sea’ on Domino, London Oratory new boys Dustins Bar Mitzvah ‘Dial M for Mitzvah’ private recordings, and best of all, the Projects, a listening copy of their upcoming ep ‘Voice is glue’ on Track and Field.

FINALLY, HAVE YOU GOT A MESSAGE FOR THE KIDS TODAY?

Edward Ball and Daniel Treacy say: Remember kids – DON’T DRINK AND WRITE! Last judgements please, lazan-gelman!

There! And I didn’t mention the Beatles once!

HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY TO KILL YOUR PET PUPPY FANZINE…AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL THE KYPP ONLINE BROWSERS FROM ALL THE KYPP SITE OPERATIVES!

Intro / Physical / Deutscher Girls / Cartrouble / Cartrouble2 / Cleopatra / The Idea / Whip In My Valise / Lady / PuertoRican / Press Darlings / Zerox / Tabletalk / Beat My Guest / Fall In / Red Scab / Fat Fun / A.N.T.S / Lady / Puerto Rican

This is the concert that the Kill Your Pet Puppy Collective went to en masse to celebrate and to see the first ever run of KYPP fanzine volume 1 sell out completely. New Years Day 1980. 

All the copies of the first KYPP taken to the gig were snatched up by eager punkers, a reprint was arranged later on that month with a slightly superior typeface courtesy of Joly down at Better Badges, and the rest of course is history.

WHEN A PUPPY IS BORN:

Some notes on the beginning of creating Kill Your Pet Puppy, by Tony D, Bob Short and Val Drayton.

Bob Short remembers thus;

Out near (what seemed like) the wilds of Old Street, we moved into a new squat. The Fire Station on Tabernacle Street was a five story building enclosing a central courtyard. Most of the upper levels were coated in a snowy white covering of petrified pigeon droppings.

Downstairs was a very large basement where some amps were set up at one stage. This basement may have descended a further two or three floors but I can’t remember if I dreamt that labyrinth up or not. Life can get a little weird when you mix chemistry, trauma and rumour. I certainly remember a stairwell descending into the kind of darkness you’d do your level best to avoid in a horror movie. If it was real or not, who can say?

It wasn’t a completely punk squat; there were a variety of other miscreants to hang around with. The media may have told you that punks hated hippies but punks had a lot more in common with hippies than we did with the media.

On one of the first days I was there, a mad artist came running out into the courtyard; naked and with penis half erect. He threw his canvases into a massive pile and proceeded to set them alight. I believe his girlfriend had just told him his work was shit or something. He departed that evening and one can only imagine which bank he is working for now. There but for the grace of God go we all.

There was Steve on the ground floor running some kind of illegal car repair shop and Ray who took photos. There were a couple of would be metal monsters planning the return of the fifteen minute drum solo and there was Guy who seemed to planning on becoming Buddha at some point.

On the punk side, Tony D, Brett, Dave and I were joined by Val and Mitch, Jessica, Lee, Lou and Ruthless. There was also this mad little Scottish kid whose entire raison d’etre seemed to be taking whisky bottles he had emptied, refilling them with his own urine and leaving them on the step in the vague hope that somebody might be stupid enough to drink it. Time has robbed history of his name but his deeds remain in our memories.

One dreary Saturday afternoon, we all decided to sniff glue which – in retrospect – seems an absurdly stupid thing to do. We had already dropped a television set off of the roof and watch it implode on the courtyard below. This had made a fairly impressive noise so we decided to dump a cooker from the fifth floor balcony. Its impact had made the entire building shudder. Even at the top of the building, I had felt the shock wave in my legs. Such excitement had demanded escalation and the freshly discovered pot of Evo-stick seemed to demand our attention.

The perceived experience of sniffing glue is rather different to the image the glue sniffer projects to the outside world. Walking past the drooling, collapsed form of the sniffer at play, one can only speculate on how a human could fall so low. A sniffer could never picture him or herself as that gurgling floor bound wreck. To sniff glue is to enter into the most vivid of dreams whilst maintaining a self delusion of consciousness.

One of the most interesting hallucinations glue can cause is a delusion of shared experience. As eyes remain open, the hallucinations tend to include physical surroundings including the people around you. You therefore become convinced they see what you see because, in the dream, they converse and interact with you.

I’ll be straight with you. There are a whole lot of ways to open the doors of perception. Solvent abuse is not an advisable course to take. There is too much medical evidence of brain damage, not to mention unpleasant fatalities and the fact it makes you smell really bad. I am lucky enough to be able to share my stupidity with you but, having been somewhere dangerous, it is necessary for me to report on what I have found there.

Drugs certainly did begin to blur the edges of reality. Even when sober, concepts drawn from this derangement of the senses found application in the straight world. For example, a vividly imagined telepathy made the concept of telepathy that tiny bit more plausible than it otherwise may have been.

Adding to this derangement of senses, I was hitting the occult text books pretty hard as well. I’d been brushing up on meditation techniques, astral projection and starting up a dream diary. One of the major effects this had was making my dream life incredibly vivid. With dreams becoming more real and reality becoming more dream like, the entire nature of reality was falling into question.

I woke up in the middle of the night imagining calamity in the floors below. Having heard what sounded like a German tank division coming through the front door, I got out of bed to see what was happening. There was a large crash behind me as part of the roof collapsed and fell on my bed. I doubt this would have killed me but it would have hurt like a bastard. This was a real event that appeared to go far beyond simple luck. The world was turning weird in ways no chemicals or their abuse could explain.

What was real was the violence of the Summer of 1979. Skinhead violence had moved on from being a mere extension of terrace violence and racist bashings into what amounted to a criminal lifestyle. Punks were pretty much considered fair game for street robbery because the police were never called in. As I had discovered two months earlier, even if you were hospitalised, the interviewing officers they were obliged to send out merely spent twenty minutes taking the piss out of you. Cash was skinhead’s immediate objective but unpainted or uncustomised leather jackets were easily resold. I even heard of boots being taken.

Was it a coincidence that punk fashion went totally post apocalyptic at this time until pants became little more than layers of shredded rags from a variety of tattered garments worn one atop another until skin was (mostly) covered? Whilst no High Street fashion chain leaped upon this latest street fashion, at least no-one would try to steal them from you in the street.

Skinheads would “storm” small grocery stores; entering a premises and taking what they wanted from shelves through speed and numbers. Asian shop keepers were especially targeted for the obvious political motives.

Graffiti was, by accident or design, a potent terror weapon in their hands. The more skinhead graffiti you saw, the more likely it was that you would run into a group of these bald headed freaks. Were the COD (Cash on Delivery) Skins an unstoppable army or two guys with a lot of spray cans? As the paranoia grew, who could really say?

British Movement Skinheads began specifically targeting Crass gigs at around this time. The audience, as opposed to the band, seemed to be the target of choice. At the Waterloo Community Centre, a group of around twenty to thirty skinheads entered the hall and drove a wedge through the crowd until they reached the point where the crowd became to thick to push forward. At this point, they turned and started throwing punches, quickly clearing the back of the venue. There had been a fairly large crowd in the Community Centre: probably around four of five hundred people. In the space of under a minute, the skinheads had bought the number down to about a hundred.

Once again, the skinheads turned towards the stage and laying into the audience at the front of the stage. If the objective had been to take the stage, destroy equipment and bend the band over the busted speaker cabinets, they could have easily achieved their goal and had their way with them. It wasn’t as if the audience were fighting back. There was too much shock and panic to organise any kind of legitimate resistance.

Meanwhile, the band were threatening to go of stage if we didn’t stop fighting. There was the usual tired rhetoric about “us all being on the same side.” This was no doubt true in text book terms and Ghandi should have been proud. However, non violent resistance is ultimately only effective against an enemy with a conscience albeit a deeply concealed one. Passive resistance on the part of the Jews would only have strengthened Hitler’s resolve.

Why would the skinheads target the audience instead of the band? In the eighties, right wing skinheads certainly physically targeted left wing skinhead bands like the Redskins. Perhaps one reason they were singled out was that the Redskins, in the eyes of the Nazis, represented an abhorrent mutation of their “culture” that required immediate termination.

“The Eagle Club”, a bare room in a Soho basement that tried to pass itself off as a night club. Later on, many of the same characters from both skinhead and punk camps who had been at Waterloo were in attendance. There was no trouble at all. One did, however, get the distinct feeling that the skinheads were in recruitment mode.

It worked as well. Up until this point, there had been very few punks who had seriously believed in a system of social organisation based on equality and the removal of all power structures. Anarchy had merely meant getting pissed and destroying what ever shit wasn’t nailed down.

Even the Clash’s left wing agenda was more of a marketing illusion than a serious exercise in insurrection. The polemics of Messrs Jones and Strummer are a Boys Own version of Red Army Faction propaganda. Besides, there are far more references to drugs in their lyrics than there are to revolution.

The Clash defended “White Riot” and said it wasn’t a racist song. It wasn’t racist in the overt sense of the charges levelled against it. However, when they sang “Black People got a lot of problems but they’re not afraid to throw a brick” they just continued to propagate the myths of the noble, virile savage so beloved by the sexually repressed.

The influence of politics on a lot of the early punks was largely overstated. Obviously, there were many exceptions who proved this rule but punk had exploded with little more than a dress code. It had scooped up many people who had merely signed up because they had just bought a copy of the Strangler’s great revolutionary opus: “Peaches”. By mid Seventy Seven, it almost seemed like everybody and their pet dog had become punks (at least on the odd weekend).

This had not led to any real rise in political consciousness (at least not in a radical left wing sense). The Jam’s Paul Weller had told us he would vote Tory. He and many like him did. Chelsea (the band, not the team and not the Borough) had at least gone so far as to suggest we had “The Right to Work.” What some of us wanted was, however, a little more radical. We would have preferred the right not to work but none of the major political parties would frame that into policy. They wouldn’t even make it a non-core promise.

Whilst I am obviously trying to be humorous, my humour hides a seriousness. The State would like you to believe that Welfare Benefits are gift from on high that you should, in some way, be indebted for. Whilst there is a kind of mutual obligation involved it is not the kind of contract they would have you sign.. The laws of the State protect property and, if you have no property, you are fundamentally left on the outside looking in.

Both Western Capitalist governments and the former Communists can exist only by limiting lifestyle choices. The flexibility of Capitalism has ensured its longevity. Piercings, tattoos and alternate lifestyles might shock parents (who should know better) but it is all good for the country if the cash keeps turning over.

Welfare Benefits are the price of doing business. They are there to stop the great unwashed from rising up and tearing the whole playhouse down. You don’t believe me? Why did the so-called race riots that hit Britain in the early eighties follow staff lock outs at Social Security offices so synchronously?

Crass certainly had a political stance and an ability to express these ideas through lyrics and artwork. Strangely, Margaret Thatcher could have also held them up as an example of her brand of Capitalism in action. I would like to think that they were in some way aware of this irony.

But Crass were not alone in developing a new ideology through their art. Killing Joke’s “War Dance” shared both the rage and a visual sense of design. Discharge were also beginning to replicate the sound of an industrial drilling tool being gang raped by Motorhead. Love them or loathe them (I’m a long term loather), they were clearly doing something.

Then there was UK Decay who must have been doing something because I’ve read about how much influence they had on me. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually get to hear them until we did a couple of supports years later. I’m not saying they weren’t great because they were. It’s just I didn’t get the chance to hear them. It was wonderful being around in a time when you couldn’t keep up with everything.

A movement creates a band wagon and, after a while, the wagon is abandoned. The people who stick around are generally those who have found something in that form that they can build on. When a scene comes to an end, it is generally painted as a time when there is nothing left but the dregs. Alternately, you can look at it as a levelled field and see the opportunity to plant seeds.

For those without an ideological connection to a notion of what punk could be, a quick change of clothing ultimately meant very little. If the price of not getting the crap beaten out of you was a shaved head and a Fred Perry shirt, there were a couple of barbers and merchants near Petticoat Lane who had finally come out of economic recession.

By creating a campaign of terror more easily joined than avoided, the political right was, consciously or unconsciously, recruiting in the same way it did on football terraces. I obviously suspect the former because, even though I believe Fascist ideology to be morally bankrupt, I do not believe that necessarily means its practitioners are congenital idiots. The assault on the Waterloo Community Centre gig had been too well orchestrated to suggest any notion of random attack. Besides, as Sigmund Freud would have told you, if there is one thing an anally obsessed Nazi loves, it is organisation.

This violence escalated over the summer. The first rumours began to filter through of attacks on a punk squat in Camden. The story that was going around was that they had busted through the door and beaten everyone up. Then they had individually dragged each occupant into a room and sodomised them with a broom stick..

Now, I don’t actually know anyone who was there and I don’t know the address where this allegedly happened but, given the climate of fear, fact and rumour became indistinguishable. However, I have no reason to doubt the truth of this story because of what happened at Derby Lodge in Kings’ Cross.

Tony D remembers thus;

As the late summer of 1979 eviction and disintegration of the fire station squat in Old Street splintered into petty squabbling, fear and cliques we went our separate ways.

Bob Short and his crew had discovered a secret abandoned hospital and made their own plans to relocate there. I had enjoyed the glue fests at the fire station as much as anyone, but what was to become the genesis of the Kill Your Pet Puppy crew were being left behind as Bob and his gang hurtled off in their own druggy whirlwind.

We found our own ridiculous squat, a church near Liverpool Street. But we only lasted two weeks there. One day when all folks were out but Dave, he opened the door to the police and we were out. More bloody scenes. We had no choice to throw our selves on the mercy of St Monicas, Bob and gang’s secret hospital out on the Bakerloo line near Willesden.

Acknowledged but not welcomed, we were allowed to live in the garden. After reading Bob’s recent account of life inside the hospital, in his book ‘Filth’, I’m glad we weren’t allowed in!

We spent the days scouting around for suitable empty buildings to squat, and this led to a chance encounter with some punks in West Hampstead. The punks (one of whom was Adam’s ex-wife Eve, another was Kevin Mooney who later joined the Ants) let us in to their building so we could squat an empty studio flat languishing empty. So all of us living in the garden of St Monicas decamped to this studio flat that evening.

SHERIFF ROAD, PUPPY MANSIONS MK. 1

Val Puppy remembers it like this:

“Oh yes, Sheriff Rd – there were 8 of us in that one room, including Ross and Andi (singer of the Australian band The Urban Guerrillas and his girlfriend) who showed up at the door homeless and looking for Leigh and Andy (two members of The Last Words).

The lay out of the floor space went from the door, left to right – Ross and Andi, Leigh and Andy (two double mattresses) Tony D. (single mattress along the side wall) me and Brett (double mattress pointing out from back wall) Dave in the middle with whatever he could find I think.

Once we got the lec (electricity) on there was also a bar fire which I remember was also in the middle with Dave and his guitar.

Brett and I got through Lord of the Rings in that room, reading it out loud. I also read Salem’s Lot there (somehow on my own) and scared the bejaysus out of myself as I noticed the nailed shut windows and upside down crosses drawn above them! It backed onto the railway line and had weird lights and noises from out back all night as they shunted trains about doing maintenance and stuff.

The toilet was cemented up, so we were pissing in sauce pans. The way we found it – Tony, me and Brett were out from St Monicas looking for somewhere to squat and as we passed this house I saw a boy with tight red trousers on in the top window and suggested we go knock on the door.

We did and they invited us in – the red trousered kid was Kevin. Later to be in various bands (I have a mental image of him in frilly fronted pirate shirt on TV so one of the bands was the Ants mark III), and Adams ex wife Eve was also one of them.

They soon fled to Fulham and left the flat empty, so I used to climb out of our toilet window and up a drainpipe and into their bathroom to dye my hair, before we got the license for it”.

Tony D remembers thus;

At last, a stable base. A new source of income was discovered, a leaflet-distributor company was just down the road and so a stable routine evolved as well. Some of us would head off in the morning to deliver leaflets, come back and all would sit in the Railway pub and talk into the night about great schemes and drink the daily £6 wages of the days appointed leafleters.

The Railway pub at the time had the Moonlight Club attached to it, which played a part in many Puppy adventures.

During this autumn of 1979 I was still making trips to Rough Trade to collect mail for Ripped & Torn fanzine. I was always being asked about when I was going to get Ripped & Torn going again. The people down Ladbroke Grove had no idea of my reduced circumstances, and I let them believe I was biding my time, irons in the fire etc but cash flow meant I couldn’t get going.

On one of my trips to Rough Trade Joly from Better Badges was in there and took me for a meal at the Mountain Grill cafe on Portobello Road. Good man, Joly, he could see I needed a hot meal. Whilst I stuffed my face Joly offered me a deal that he would pay for the print coasts of any magazine I wanted to put out, so long as he could distribute as many as he wanted through his mail-order business.

Any copies of the mag I wanted to sell myself I could buy off him at a trade price (I think it was 10p per copy). Basically this meant I could publish for free.

On the way home I bought a typewriter in a second hand shop for £6 (a days wages!) and back in the room I told the other people the news. “We’re going to write a new fanzine from this very room”, I declaimed, “and it’s going to be called ‘Fuck Your Mother’!” The people in that room would be the first FYM collective. So I guess they came first. Though some didn’t participate in the writing of the magazine. They were in bands called The Last Words and Urban Guerillas, and there was also Dave later to become a Sex Gang Child.

By the time I got back to Joly and agreed to his business proposal the title had changed to Kill Your Pet Puppy. I’ve always thought the title came from Val Puppy but she denies it.

KYPP1 was written very quickly. We were in the process of moving into another part of the building, and had some floor space to work on. Brett Puppy did the distinctive logo, girl with scissors and hair lettering, – he did that the same day we decided on the name.

After we saw Brett’s work we knew we had to go some to make something worthy of his effort. Jeremy Gluck of the Barracudas wrote his piece on glam and Abba after a Barracudas gig at the Moonlight club. He had no idea what the rest of the zine was going to be. He had of course written about the Vile Tones for Ripped & Torn.

(Still to be written up: The Crass gigs at the Moonlight club, their first since the Conway Hall, and skinhead violence that inspired the anti-Crass pacifism-stance KYPP piece “Pro-Crass-tination”. This entailed a trip by Leigh and myself to Dial House).

The zine was coming together, and then Joly suggested we get it done in time for the Ants’ New Years day gig at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, the most anticipated and hottest punk gig of the time. Adam was to supply a picture for the cover, DO IT Records were to supply exclusive photos for the inside and there was meant to be a pro-Ants piece prominent in the issue.

However whilst waiting for Adam to come up with his front cover photo – he’s promised something “special” – news was coming through about dissent in the Ant band ranks. The article that was written was from stories hot off the street (and inside the Screen on the Green).

Life being as it is, Adam was so late in getting his picture to us he had to take it direct to Joly’s printing presses on Portobello Road. Adam had to arrive just as the presses were churning out the Ant piece, slagging Adam off!

Joly remembers it was touch and go if Adam would or would not give up his picture. This is the picture on the cover of KYPP 1, the Polaroid. Luckily Brett had done the cover with that Black and Red anarchy flag style because we had no idea what Adam was bringing to the table. Lucky we did, eh?

One or two days after that Joly had set up his stall at the back of the Electric Ballroom and amongst the badges and other fanzines was issue one of KYPP.

The cry was out, “Ants, Tunial, Crass, new issue”. That may as well have been the name! 500 copies were printed up in time for that gig and the lot were sold that night. Joly told me his stall had sold every copy as the Ants came back on stage for yet another encore, a parody of Y.M.C.A. called A.N.T.S. All I remember is dancing to this song with a great big grin on my face then waking up in a strange house in Islington with a bunch of new friends”.

Hopefully some of the other members of the old KYPP Collective will add further comments relevant to this night…

The gig is absolutely vital in the history of the fanzine…And to think it all happened exactly thirty years ago!

I got this copy of the New Years day Antz performance from Tony D. Unfortunately the original tape was transferred onto a CD, a format which I do not upload from, I upload normally from just rare vinyl and cassettes, so there are slight gaps between the songs due to the ‘donor’ CD being spaced. Sorry about that…Still a marvelous performance by this great band, a band that would soon change both its members and its image!

NOTE: This post has been brought forward from January 20th 2008, as this gig was, as stated above, an important date in the fanzines history which also coincides nicely with todays date. The post has been ‘beefed up’ quite considerably with extra information and photos on this very day though.

HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY TO KILL YOUR PET PUPPY FANZINE…AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL THE KYPP ONLINE BROWSERS FROM ALL THE KYPP SITE OPERATIVES!