1979 – Bob Short – extract from his book ‘Trash Can’

Was it the best of times or was it the worst of times? Maybe it was a bit of both. No. Surely, it was just the worst of times. It was 1979, a year that never could have imagined itself eulogised by the Smashing Pumpkins fifteen years on. Punk maybe wasn’t so much dead as […]

From the Fire Station to New Year’s Eve at the Electric Ballroom: the tale of Kill Your Pet Puppy

WHEN A PUPPY IS BORN: Some notes on the beginning of creating Kill Your Pet Puppy, by Tony D. 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 […]

1980 – Bob Short – extract from his book ‘Trash Can’

Doctor Death (not his real name) was about as bad an advertisement for five years worth of medical training as you could possibly imagine. It wasn’t so much the fact that he was a bad doctor . Whilst he was definitely crap in his chosen field, that was beside the point. It is just that […]

Moving from Covent Garden to the Old Street Fire Station, the summer of 1979: musings by Bob Short concerning glue, the occult, Crass and the terror of the skinhead threat.

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 […]