Another Dark Age

Twilight Of The Idols / Culturecide

For this years KYPP’s zombie apocalypse Halloween post I thought I would upload the atmospheric 12″ single by SepPuKa from 1983.

Abbreviated to the more common S.P.K, SepPuKa was just one name for this industrial outfit used throughout the years. Other posts already on this KYPP site by S.P.K include the single by Surgical Penis Klinik on Industrial records as well as the debut LP by System Planning Korporation and the second LP by Sozialistiches Patienten Kollektiv both released on Side Effekts records. Search for these releases via the search function.

The tracks on this 12″ single are strong on chants and percussion. The earlier work by S.P.K tended to be power electronics industrial white noise and screaming, nothing wrong with that.

This 12″ single by S.P.K recorded with Sinan Leong on vocals who had recently joined the band, bridges the gap between the old industrial S.P.K and the newer kettle drum dance orientated outfit. Still a load of metallic percussion on this marvellous record to keep the grey and black clad industrial followers happy…

Photographs of S.P.K performing in Berlin 1984 courtesy of Thomas Meyer. The text on S.P.K ripped from the ghoulish wikkipeardear… The text on the Japanese ritual of seppuka (the name S.P.K used for this 12″ single release) courtesy of Wayne Muromoto.

SPK was formed in 1978 in Sydney when New Zealand-born Graeme Revell (aka “EMS AKS”, “Operator”, “Oblivion”) met Neil Hill (aka “Ne/H/il”). Revell was working as a nurse on a psychiatric ward at Callan Park Hospital where Hill was a schizophrenia out-patient. Hill and Revell shared a house and an interest in the manifesto of the German radical Marxist group known as the Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv (SPK). The duo were influenced by Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, Faust, and John Cage – they started playing their own variety of industrial music as SPK. According to rock music historian, Ian McFarlane the acronym SPK is variously given as “SoliPsiK, SepPuKu, Surgical Penis Klinik, System Planning Korporation and Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv”. The band recruited two teenagers, Danny Rumour on lead guitar and David Virgin on bass guitar (both ex-Ugly Mirrors, and went on to form Sekret Sekret), on early recordings by SPK in 1979. In that year they independently released three 7″ pressings:  “SoliPsiK” as a three-track extended play in April, “Factory” as a single in August and “Mekano” in November.

Dominik Guerin (aka “Tone Generator”) joined on synthesisers in 1980, and later concentrated on the band’s visual content. In May they issued an EP, Meat Processing Section, as Surgical Penis Klinik. Without Hill, SPK relocated to London where Guerin and Revell recorded their debut album, ‘Information Overload Unit’ in a Vauxhall squat with the help of Revell’s brother Ashley Revell (aka “Mr.Clean”) and Mike Wilkins (guitar, bass guitar, backing vocals). The album’s cover has System Planning Korporation with the initials SPK highlighted in red. In June 1980 they issued the single, “Slogun”, with lyrics inspired by the Marxist manifesto: “Kill, Kill, Kill for inner peace / Bomb, Bomb, Bomb for mental health / Therapy through violence!” McFarlane suggested “the album’s harsh, thumping sound appealed to fans of Throbbing Gristle and early Cabaret Voltaire”.  Allmusic’s John Bush felt it was “[a] noisy record basically comprised of guitar feedback, synthesizer distortion and rigid drum programming”. Other musicians working with SPK included James Pinker (drums, percussion) and Karel van Bergan (violin, vocals), who toured with them to the United States. In July 1981 in Australia, the M Squared label released another single “See Saw”. The cover depicts SoliPsiK with members given as Kitka (aka Kit Katalog), Sushi (aka Margaret Hill), Charlyiev (aka Paul Charlier) and Skorne (N Hill). Both tracks are co-written by Charlier and Hill.

In 1982 SPK’s Guerin and Revell were joined by Brian Williams (aka Lustmord), John Murphy of Forresta di Ferro (aka “Kraang”) and Derek Thompson (who later had a brief stint in The Cure and went on to record as Hoodlum Priest). SPK’s second album, Leichenschrei (English: The Scream of the Corpse) in 1982 shows Sozialistiches Patienten Kollektiv (English: Socialist Patients’ Collective).

After its recording they were joined by Sinan Leong on vocals who had initially auditioned for a planned SPK side-project Dance Macabre. Leong and Revell later married. In 1983 Thompson left SPK because Revell “wanted to make a very commercial sounding album which I did not”. McFarlane found that “SPK had softened the approach somewhat with discernible synth melodies and dance beats coming to the fore amongst the noise”.

In August 1983, the group issued a compilation album, Auto Da Fé, showing SepPuKu written with SPK in red capital letters. It included three studio tracks recorded in 1981. Bush suggested the album was the “beginning of a more organized approach for SPK material, Auto Da-Fé presents an intriguing industrial-disco fusion, reminiscent of prime contemporary material by Cabaret Voltaire and DAF … Although fans probably thought of it as an unconscionable crossover attempt, it’s still quite experimental in retrospect”. The three-track EP, Dekompositiones (also by SepPuKu) followed soon after. Its tracks were added to a later version of Auto Da Fé.

In early February 1984, just before his 28th birthday, Neil Hill committed suicide. Two days later his wife Margaret Nikitenko died as a result of complications from anorexia. In March SPK issued another single, “Metal Dance”, which was co-written by Revell, Leong and Thompson. SPK returned to Australia for a tour and recorded their third album ‘Machine Age Voodoo’ in Sydney which was issued in 1984 on WEA Records. For the album, SPK’s Revell and Leong were joined by Jeff Bartolomei on keyboards, Mary Bradfield-Taylor on vocals, Graham Jesse on saxophone, James Kelly on guitar, Sam McNally on keyboards and Phil Scorgie on bass guitar. McFarlane saw the album as “mixed mainstream disco-pop and sweet vocals with electronic experimentation (sort of like Blondie meets Kraftwerk)”. While Bush felt it was “another leap towards dance-rock and away from the group’s industrial past”. The album spawned a single, “Junk Funk” in 1985.

The Ritual of Seppuku

The ritual of seppuku varied from age to age in Japan. It was first recorded at the end of the Heian period, when a samurai from the Minamoto was in a losing battle and fell on his sword, killing himself while around him the yashiki burned to the ground. Later, it became codified as a dignified and less unsavoury way to die than to face capture and torture. We’re talking Dark Ages here, when all over Europe and Asia torture and mutilation was not at all an uncommon fate for the loser.

By the Sengoku period, seppuku had evolved into what has been codified as seen in rather well-known Iai Ryu like the Muso Jikiden Eishin-ryu and Muso Shinden-Ryu. I also studied Takeuchi-ryu batto-iai, and so the following comments are based on what my Sensei in Japan from the Eishin-ryu and Takeuchi-ryu said about the subject, besides some reading in the Japanese texts.

Seppuku on the battlefield was what you could make do with; i.e. if you didn’t have time to take off your armour, you’d just slit the veins in your neck or fall on your sword. If you had time and it was a formal affair, you dressed all in white to symbolize purity. You wrote a short poem that had to gently signify your state of mind and the season.

It is said that Lord Asano, the former lord of the 47 Ronin, wrote a junky death poem, which might indicate his immaturity and lack of self-discipline, which made him attack Lord Kira and start the whole blood vendetta.

You would be either in a Tatami room but more likely on a gravel clearing in a garden. There would be about three attendants from your lord and / or the shogun to observe the ritual and to file a report, and various sundry attendants as well as the kaishaku, or the one who in other posts was called the “second.”

You then had a raised tray of unlacquered wood presented to you as you sat in seiza, made only for that occasion and then thrown away. On the tray would be a sheaf of washi, white Japanese paper, and on top of that would be small trays of foodstuffs and a low, wide sake cup. You had a bite to eat to go with your sake alcohol, perhaps as you composed your poem.

So composed, you would then begin the ritual. A low wooden dais with a bare blade on a stack of folded washi paper is presented to you. The shoulders of the outer garment (kamishimo) would be slipped under the knees to keep yourself from falling backwards and ending in a rather undignified position. If possible, the low wooden dais would also be placed under your buttocks, so that you would be leaning slightly forward.

The bare blade is wound in the middle of the paper (it is not in a scabbard or handle because it will be discarded later for being so inauspicious) for gripping.

Cutting yourself took various forms. The most common was a straight horizontal cut across the belly, from left to right, with a sharp pull upwards at the end, thereby creating a flap so the guts could fall out, literally exposing your true intentions (belly and spirit in Japanese language are often synonymous, as it is in Hawaiian. And in English, having no guts is having no conviction). If you were strong enough to do that to the end, you would then lean forward at an exact degree, in proper spinal alignment, without jerking your head up from the pain. Why? Jerking up compresses the neck bones and makes it harder for the kaishaku to cut through the joints. That’s why proper posture is so important in Iai.

When you lean forward, off goes your head; if you were a samurai following proper ritual, your kaishaku would indeed cut only to within a thin span at the front. Blood will gush anyway, it in bad taste to have the head being lopped off. You lopped off heads indiscriminately only when beheading criminals.

Not all samurai were capable of such self-control and strength involved in this kind of Seppuku, and variations evolved. Women could stab themselves in the neck, severing veins and arteries and dying quickly, like samurai who were clad in armour. Women, children and even male samurai could just touch the blade and they could have their heads cut off, if they felt they couldn’t do the actual belly cut. Later, the inauspicious blade on the dais was often totally replaced by a fan or a sakaki branch.

The harder way to commit Seppuku was called jumonji giri. You cut across your belly as in the usual way, then withdraw your blade and then cut straight up the center, creating a cross, or the letter ten (juu) in Japanese.

Historically, the last person to do that was General Nogi, who committed Seppuku at the turn of this century after his beloved emperor died. Dying to follow one’s lord or partner in the afterlife was called jushin. Nogi cut himself in jumonji giri, then buttoned his navy white uniform up primly and died. His wife followed him by stabbing herself in the neck.

It must be noted that being kaishaku was also a very great responsibility. So in the Eishin-ryu, kaishaku is “easy to do in Kata, hard to do in real life.” You had to mix compassion (because you were chosen by the person dying as a close friend who knew you wouldn’t make him / her suffer too long) with strength and technique good enough to cut with one blow.

The sword was held out of the sight of the person dying, to keep the person from getting too nervous. So you raised it just out of the eyesight of the person, and you stood in Hanmi or crouched in chuu-goshi to the left of the person. In some schools, the sword is held at different heights according to the relative status of the person dying, either in a kind of gedan, behind the back, or in Jodan.

After the cut is complete, the sword is wiped with washi and the place is cleaned up. The sword is discarded for being tainted by death. How you cut, its particulars, etc. depends on your ryuha.

Yamada Asaemon was the “shogun’s executioner” and he often performed kaishaku for many samurai who had fallen from grace and had to commit Seppuku Yamada never took money for his service, as he felt taking money for killing someone in so solemn a rite was distasteful and vulgar. He made a living from testing swords. So if you had a sword to be used in a Seppuku, he would test it and certify it and get paid. Then he’d be asked to perform kaishaku. He kept things separate.

Finally, every school that had kaishaku also has a host of kuden, oral transmissions, passed on only directly from master to student. In the Takeuchi-ryu, there are five codified kuden, that deal with various aspects of Seppuku These have been handed down for centuries, even though the need for Seppuku has passed. It’s just part of history and tradition. The kuden deals with particular situations in Seppuku, including the possibility of ranshin, Katana no sabi, and so on.

Halloween history and traditions

Halloween, celebrated each year on October 31, is a mix of ancient Celtic practices, Catholic and Roman religious rituals and European folk traditions that blended together over time to create the holiday we know today. Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity and life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. Halloween has long been thought of as a day when the dead can return to the earth, and ancient Celts would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off these roaming ghosts. The Celtic holiday of Samhain, the Catholic Hallowmas period of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day and the Roman festival of Feralia all influenced the modern holiday of Halloween. In the 19th century, Halloween began to lose its religious connotation, becoming a more secular community-based children’s holiday. Although the superstitions and beliefs surrounding Halloween may have evolved over the years, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people can still look forward to parades, costumes and sweet treats to usher in the winter season.

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain.

The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.

During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of “bobbing” for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints’ Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints’, All Saints’, and All Souls’, were called Hallowmas.

Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.

Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into cats. We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred; it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today’s trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday, with luck, by next Halloween, be married.

In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it. In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl’s future husband. (In some versions of this legend, confusingly, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.) Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night, she would dream about her future husband. Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands’ initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water; and stood in front of mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their husbands’ faces.

Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry; at others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first down the aisle.

Another day with connections to Halloween is Guy Fawkes Day, celebrated on November 5. Guy Fawkes was a Roman Catholic who planned to blow up the Protestant House of Parliament on November 5, 1606; luckily for the House, he was apprehended and executed. Afterwards, the anniversary of the day was celebrated by building straw effigies, entreating passersby for “a penny for the Guy”, and finally burning “the Guys” in bonfires.

All the period photographs of Halloween children and adults that are displayed on this post are courtesy of the Ossian Brown book ‘Haunted Air’. Ossian has collated dozens of astonishing photographs for this charming and luxurious  felt covered hardback book. All the photographs were taken in the United States Of America between the late 19th and the mid 20th century.

I would like to thank Ossian for sending me two signed copies of this beautiful book, one which went straight up to Sheffield towards the eager hands of my younger brother who knew Ossian, as I did also, in the mid 1980s.

Ossian is a member of Cyclobe as well as working in collaboration with David Tibet’s Current 93.

Haunted Air is available now ISBN 9780224089708 published by Jonathan Cape with a forward passage by David Lynch and Geoff Cox.

It has now been exactly five years since I have been uploading rare vinyl and cassette tapes onto the KYPP blog.

The cassette tape by Touch Of Hysteria, originally released on 96 Tapes in 1983, was selected to start the ball rolling on the 23th of October 2007.

From the very beginning I have tried to place up rare, diverse but relevant vinyl and cassette tapes onto the KYPP blog and sincerely hope that browsers have enjoyed some of the selections.

Uploaded today for this special fifth year anniversary post are two very special début 7” singles.

Both bands that are featured on this post have a relevant place in the history of Tony D’s original fanzine ‘Ripped & Torn’ and / or ‘Kill Your Pet Puppy’ fanzine.

Both the début 7” singles by The Barracudas and Last Words were immense power pop punk classics. Both were released in the UK in 1979. Both could be among the best records of that era. That’s for you to decide.

Moreover all the tracks on either side of both the records last under two minutes thirty seconds of playing time, just how it should have been in 1979!

I love these records, I hope you enjoy them too.

Here’s to the next five years of KYPP downloads posts.

My immense gratitude goes out to Tony D, Bob Short and Jeremy Gluck from the Barracudas for the time they all took to write some memories down regarding the era when Ripped & Torn fanzine, The Barracudas, Last Words and Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine all overlapped.

Special thanks to Bobbly Jax Bird for being so patient with my KYPP ‘hobby’…

I Want My Woody Back

Subway Surfin

From Freestonia to James Street

Jeremy used to come by the old Rough Trade squat in Freestonia during 1977. The squatted Trafalger pub aside from housing several pivotal Rough Trade movers and shakers was also the Ripped & Torn fanzine base of sorts. The Rough Trade workers referred to the four of us who had arrived in west London as ‘the Scottish plague’!

Jeremy got caught in the eternal crossfire between writing and playing. Sandy Robertson and myself, being the pure typewriter-fiends on one side, whilst Alex Fergusson and Skid Kid were on the other, preferring to let their amps do the talking. Jeremy positioned himself on the side of the printed page but obviously his mind was turned by the sonic and visual power of the amps. If only a typewriter could be plugged into something so comparatively, compellingly inspiring it’d be a different story. And guess who’d be writing that story?

Jeremy was in London to surf the punk energy and began writing for weekly music mag Sounds via a friend of Vivian Goldman (well, weren’t we all?). Mr Gluck and myself also talked through the night many times about punk music, performances and contextual stuff too rich for the Sounds’ reader-base (more succinctly their sub-editors concept of a reader-base) and from these conversations his work first appeared in Ripped & Torn 11, a piece on the Vile Tones, which was published in April 1978.

This was written before Jeremy returned to Canada; when he came back a lot had changed.

Skid Kid and myself had moved the Ripped & Torn base to Covent Garden at the Long Acre and James Street squat (opposite the HQ of Sounds). By the time we were being evicted from this big squat Jeremy had become lead singer with a band he’d set up with Robin from a punk band The Unwanted. Ripped & Torn organised a protest / benefit concert within the squat (which hosted weekly gigs) and Jeremy’s new band, The Barracudas, offered to headline the event.

Having the Barracudas headline a protest / benefit event reveals many things: Jeremy’s band was now pretty much organised, Ripped &Torn were a galvanised bunch and the eviction was a newsworthy situation. And it also shows that Jeremy Gluck was linked to this Ripped & Torn / Kill Your Pet Puppy more than an accidental way.

On the afternoon of the concert police turned up and told us the eviction order was being moved forward to right now; and began some heavy-handed moves to prove their point.

Right about now the Barracudas showed up leaving me arm-wrestling with the police, saying the sound check is delayed and dealing with a Cudas member not happy with the posters that they say R&T stands for ‘Rock Against Thatcher’.

Jeremy does not take his musicians away, or their hired van, and we last minute make an agreement with a Covent Garden Youth Club event a few streets away to merge our two events. Their headliners, Ten Cubic Feet, can hardly believe it. Nor can the police, who’ve got themselves ready for a publicity stunt. Now all they can show on TV is punks directing people down the road and the police dare not smash up that event.

As an organiser I can report this sort of stuff – I’m sure others can relate the emotional and enjoyment side of seeing the Barracudas play. I remember the gig was fantastic. One of the other overwhelming memories I still recall was having to run up and down from both the tube station and to the youth club’s management office many more times than I expected to, damn that bondage strap in my trousers!

Tony D – October 2012

Subway surfin’

I met the Barracudas on the corner of Long Acre and James Street, London in 1979. Tony D and the hint of future Puppydom, squatted an old office block above.  Jeremy Gluck (Cudas’ singer) and I were both wearing Radio Birdman badges and that was as good as a Masonic handshake in those days. Come to think of it, it still is. A lot of people talked about some make believe notion of an “us” and a “them”. We’d been smart enough to work out where that line in the sand should be drawn.  You either had that badge or you didn’t and – if you have no idea what I am talking about – get yourself some education.

The Barracudas were playing a benefit for Ripped & Torn Fanzine. The fact that he was wearing that badge meant I was going to be pay them some attention. I thought they’d at least turn out to be a passable entertainment. I was wrong. They turned out to be seminal.

You don’t get to see a seminal band that often. In particular, you don’t often get to see a seminal band when they’re in the actual act of being seminal. Usually, you get to see once seminal bands go through the motions and embarrass themselves.  You see, seminal is hard. In these days of casual hyperbole, all you have to do is turn up and you’re awesome. If you manage to show up three weeks in a row then you’re a legend. So where is the line between the barely adequate and the wildly sublime? Are there any words left in the English language to express the truly exceptional?

The Barracudas’ début single was still three months in the future. They still had the Woody that they soon would want back. The only thing they had to prove they existed was a bag of “Surf and Destroy” badges. I’d never heard of them and I had had my ears glued to the ground for something cool.

Anything cool.

The grapevine had shrivelled and the cultural winter had rolled on in. To get some kicks in the big town, you needed a god damn Ouija board.

Let me tell it like it was. The London music scene (as deified by the New Musical Express) was turning out to be a wee bit of a clunker. You shook the box and the contents didn’t live up to the labelling. I’d seen a clearly hash stoned Clash limp through their back catalogue with all the enthusiasm of boiled cabbage. It would take me a further five years to listen to their first album again. They were that awful.

A second generation of bands stumbled to fill the hole in the club circuit left in the wake of various ascensions to stardom. With lyrics clearly written after partial lobotomy, they weren’t anything you’d want to write home about and especially nothing you’d want tattooed on your arm for life. The UK Subs and their ilk sounded like old Black Sabbath albums cranked up to 78 rpm. If you think that sounds like a good thing, you should dig up an old phonograph and try it on for size. That’s the difference between theory and practice. It was the sound of good ideas gone bad; a photocopy photocopied over and over again until the whole image went Rorschach – and I’m talking blot test and not Ivy.  If only the Cramps or the Ramones would have come back to town and played, then I’d have been singing a different tune.

The simple fact is that the really good stuff, both then and now, finds it difficult to grab a niche on the establishment circuit. You could trowel the listings of the Marquee, the 100 Club and the Hope and Anchor for weeks on end and still only come across the kind of drizzling shit that always finds a stage to stink up. We were heading to a youth club in a Covent Garden cellar. Urban regeneration had pushed the fruit market, the community and its attendant young people out of the neighbourhood. To justify their continued existence to Westminster Council, the social workers had gladly thrown their doors open for the gig. At least they could say there had been some young people on the premises that month.  Maybe they could hand out a few leaflets.

The night started drearily enough with some guy who called himself Larry the Lamb knocking out some sub Marc Bolan waffle on an acoustic guitar. Not T-Rex Marc Bolan either. I’m-a-prancing-fairy type late Sixties Marc Bolan. A couple of years later, Larry the Lamb changed his name to Andi Sex Gang and, with his Children, would create that thing called Goth. As I said, seminal is hard and there was nothing seminal about his performance that night. Any hint of future fame or greatness was entirely noticeable in its absence. Instead, it was like an animal with its foot caught in a trap being beaten to death with an acoustic guitar.

I knew just how that animal felt as Larry the Lamb left the stage only to be followed by a couple of truly forgettable punk bands. (The next time I would see Andi Sex Gang was in the role that would define him.  I looked up at the Gang and thought to myself “That band is not bad.  But, Jesus, that girl they have singing must be the ugliest woman in the world.” But that’s another story.)

To a hammered four on the floor beat, the bands that followed nailed the zeitgeist to the mast of mediocrity and vanished up their own arseholes. The hideous gravity of those black holes sucked light and hope from the room. By the time the Barracudas played I was ready to neck up.  Fortunately, my life was, indeed, saved by rock and roll.

Because that is what good rock and roll should do. This is the music we chose over the drab wilderness of what we were milk fed. This is the music that we dance to. We don’t expect much; just that it’s done half right. The Barracudas did more than do it right. They wrote the book, drew the pictures and underlined the important parts.

I’ll save us all a bit of lengthy descriptive passage and explanation here. The component parts do not give justice to the whole. Just listen to the sublime “I want my Woody Back” c/w “Subway Surfing” on Cell Records. This perfect slab of wobbly plastic delights with its wit, power and wall of harmonies.

If you have heard of the Barracudas then you don’t need me to tell you how good they were in 1979.  You can be jealous as all fuck that you weren’t there but you and me are at least on the same page in terms of how great they were and how quietly influential they have been. They successfully melded sixties and seventies punk through a pop sensibility and created something beautiful. They could be goofy and funny, melancholy, angry or angst ridden. Unlike their contemporaries, they didn’t just pull something off the Nuggets album and beat it to death with a bloody stump. Their “Drop out with the Barracudas” LP is one of those must-have cornerstones of any half way decent music collection.

Listen to that inspiring LP on this KYPP post HERE.

The Barracudas could have been huge and they should have been too. The trouble was that they were just outside of everything at a time when everything was supposed to have a nice neat box. Their record company could understand “Summer Fun” but not their cover of “Codeine”.

I still listen to the Barracudas. They still thrill me after all these years. I consider their song writing really influential. “Inside Mind”, a later single released on Flicknife, is so perfect that I still listen to it in stunned disbelief, amazed someone could compose something so extraordinary. I would also like to think they heard “Necromantra” before they wrote “On a Sunday” but that’s just how much I love the Barracudas.

Bob Short – October 2012

I want my puppy back: Ripped & Time

In the kingdom of the blind the mind’s eye is king and there’s a big room in a big squat in west London and sitting in it is Sandy Robertson  (I don’t know where he is now; I remember he went to the States ) Tony D and me. There’s (probably) somebody else there too, and it might be Alex Ferguson, who later played with Alternative TV and then some configuration of Genesis P. Orridge’s programme. I used to see Alex in the West End sometimes selling stuff on the street. A dream is like this, and so is the real. One thing bleeds into another; the blood is your life.

In those beautiful days when the blood was fresh and before transfusion seemed inevitable, my dream was real. About six months after my first trip to London and points east I arrived back on an Air Canada (or British Airways?) jet and was met off the flight by Robin Wills, who I’d gotten to know before and together with whom now planned to form a band. Punk was in flux, if not quite crisis, and our own still vague stylistic intentions might slip through the crap. Robin, who plays guitar, had a bassist and drummer in place and we rehearsed and shortly played a depleted Roxy to a few dozen bemused punters. I didn’t care; I was in my real dream: living in London, in a band playing the Roxy.

Now life can seem so rigid but in the dream of course events and people flowed one into another. How I was in a squat in west London with that phalanx of voluntarily exiled Scots I now have little idea. I believe Tony took a major shine to – as we became known – The Barracudas due to our punk aesthetic. Which is funny, because we were not punks and totally apolitical. The Barracudas were an aspirant power pop band if anything but at their inception lacking the music skills to do more than murder the genre. On the other hand, we did have an edge and chaotic quality and, best of all, a fantastic selection of covers in our repertoire, not least The Trashmen’s “King of the Surf”. My own stage presence, which I’ve described elsewhere as a hybrid of Woody Allen and The Seeds’ Sky Saxon, was in its infancy, fuelled by speed and an enthusiasm suitable for treatment. Whatever else was possible at the time, I was: in the dream anything is possible and I qualified.

In fact The Barracudas must have been playing in London a while before I met Tony (he can correct me but did Sandy introduce us?) because the pivotal outcome of our meeting was that Sandy, who worked for SOUNDS  (I sometimes wrote for that music weekly around that time too) was one week while subbing as features editor short a cover story and on very little notice asked The Barracudas to fill the gap. This was for the band coup and for Sandy a crazy initiative. After all, much as The Barracudas had a solid following in the city by that point, made up often of Mods and Skins (yes, you read that correctly), nobody cared about us much. Our stroke of genius, however had been deciding to hard sell our surf music fixation, a move that did attract the approval and affection of some eventual fans and endeared us to journalists fed up with paltry post-punk outpourings. Just when Joy Division loomed, and black was the new, uh, black, appeared for no reason whatsoever a band unwilling to bend to fashion or common sense.

The only surfer boys on town, just about able to master their own songs; The Barracudas, a bored reviewer’s dream.

To digress briefly.

The other piece of the puzzle, and the dream, is the writing component. Not satisfied merely to be the singer of a band few understood but a modest coterie already loved, I was also a keen scribbler from my pre-teens and, having written for fanzines for years and then freelanced for SOUNDS, was in short order writing for Ripped & Torn. My writing for the precursor to Kill Your Pet Puppy is amongst my proudest, and it doesn’t surprise me that its reputation has survived the fading of the dream and the onslaught of the real.

The look and feel of Ripped & Torn is pure punk; I never was much for the agitprop side of things, but just for its aesthetic and spirit Ripped & Torn is genuinely classic and I do recall a forever positive and motivated Tony D happily receiving outpourings on pop and glam to a fanzine whose baseline appeal and audience was quite frankly, not that oriented to surf punk adherence.

The advent of Kill Your Pet Puppy I remember only vaguely but I was more than happy to once again contribute. It’s corny to observe but that big flowering of punk hasn’t ever been reinvented. A lot has come and gone meantime but that time and place, and I know it’s plugged into the personal and for some kid now something else is as big a deal, was magical. Ripped & Torn and Kill Your Pet Puppy  crystallised some of the energy and it still sparkles and shines in the ethos and aesthetic equally invented and embraced by Tony D and his successive ragtag creative collectives.

Some years ago I played a modest solo show in London and who should turn up out of the (twenty or more years) blue than Tony!

I was astounded. It was a great thing to meet him again. I won’t say time is nothing, it can be a goddamned killer, but, yes, at the moment it meant little. The dream isn’t over, I guess, but the real is hungrier than ever. Nevertheless, the “dynamite days” (as Kevin Coyne called them in song) of the punk dream featured not just one love but one blood. Tony D and all of those who made it alive and real are owed a debt. I am very proud to be a part of the Kill Your Pet Puppy narrative.

The Barracudas persist, lately reformed a third time to play Spain, Italy and Japan and about to release a vinyl-only, analogue-crafted single, “God Bless the 45″ that is as big dummy as any of our pop outings of thirty plus years ago. In the immortal, sage words of those warrior kings of pop metal, the Blue Oyster Cult, “that’s the way it goes, that’s rock’n'roll…”

Jeremy Gluck – October 2012

Jeremy and Kill Your Pet Puppy

The story of how Kill Your Pet Puppy was born has been reported in this post HERE for our thirtieth anniversary.

However Jeremy Gluck contributed a piece on Abba for the first issue on Kill Your Pet Puppy. He wasn’t amongst the Fire-Station squat evictees so how did that happen?

There was a life-changing flyer for a gig at The Chippenham pub, The Raincoats being supported by The Barracudas, this was a venue in the wasteland between North Ladbroke Grove and South West Kilburn: accessible only by bus, our kind of place.

This flyer came our way via one of my trips to Rough Trade to collect mail. Crikey The Barracudas, I thought; so they’re still going?

Excitedly I took it back to our one room hovel where Val and Brett were also roused by the idea of seeing the Barracudas playing. Most of the inhabitants of our room took the bus to this event, looking forward to a gig almost as much as being able to use a flushing toilet again.

The gig was phenomenal and not just because of  being able to flush a toilet at the pub.

The Barracudas were now a tight band, the songs resembled songs and Jeremy was sensational on stage, even cutting his bared chest with glass at one point. There was a record company owner telling all and sundry he’s signed them and will be releasing a single. The manager was Geoff of Cells Records, the single was to be ‘I Want My Woody Back’ and amazingly it actually was released.

Also amazingly, I managed to get Jeremy to agree to write something for the first issue of our new fanzine concept, Kill Your Pet Puppy. He wrote the piece on Abba and pop music and it sits proudly amongst our ranting.

There are two more stories worthy of Mr Gluck:

One evening myself and some other Puppy collective members witnessed The Barracudas at the Moonlight Club. I told Jeremy about the Black Sheep co-op concept. The very next day he showed up at 103 Grosvenor Avenue in Islington and helped out with the renovations of the building!

Jeremy had stabilised himself and his life enough to have a nice place to live in. He invited me and other Puppy collective members to, as he put it, one of his ‘occasional gatherings of like minds’.  Unfortunately one of our people, the man later to be known as Dave Sex Gang managed to start a fistfight with someone and demanded all of us Puppies support him in his battle. The evening was disrupted wholesale. We were never invited again. God speed Mr Gluck.

Tony D – October 2012

Please check out the following links to find out what Jeremy Gluck is up to nowadays.

Jeremy Gluck @ Bandcamp Everything from chickens to cheese! http://jeremygluck.bandcamp.com

SoftWorld Electronica. It’s smart music. It’s music that isn’t music. How cool is that?
http://www.softworldmusic.com

The Barracudas new 45! http://godblessthe45.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/god-bless-45-coming-soon.html

Animal World

No Music In The World Today

Living in the animal world

“I coulda, shoulda, woulda been a contender.”  If a band gets an epitaph, you’ll find that one scratched deep in the Last Word’s granite. They could have been because they had the talent and, most importantly, the song writing muscle. They should have been because they had record companies falling all over them. They would have been except for a cursed, poisoned, condemned knack of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The first anyone heard of the Last Words was when a pile of the self produced “Animal World” single emerged on their own Remand Records. Hailing from the wildest of Western Sydney, Malcolm Baxter and Andy Groome apparently played everything on the disc. They then gathered a band around them to play some gigs. They played Blondies (a very short lived club on top of Bondi Junction’s McDonalds) and the Grand Hotel at Railway Square.  They picked up Leigh (aka Rique) Kendall on Bass, who despite being one of the nastiest men in show business, really invested them in a muscular bottom end they had sorely lacked up to that point. The brilliant Geoffrey Wegner (Young Charlatans and Laughing Clowns) and filled in on drums as did Ken Doyle (soon to be a Thought Criminal). Suddenly they were a live band to be reckoned with.

Not that anyone in Sydney seemed to notice. Sydney had Radio Birdman. Brisbane had the Saints.  Melbourne had the Boys Next Door. They were tough cliques manifesting their various destinies (and why not? They’d had had to bear the brunt of bans and resentment for years and figured the route to success was Darwinian).

Wizard was a kind of semi independent record label with major Australian distribution. They had specialised in glam acts like Hush and Supernaut. As glam faded they desperately looked around for their chunk of the next big thing.  If you were looking for an unsigned contender, the Last Words ticked off all their boxes.  Authentically working class punk with a firm grip on traditional pop sensibility, Wizard rushed them into the studio and did the business properly.  Hush’s Marshall amps replaced the wee tinny boxes of punk poverty. Produced with a firm ear to Chris Thomas’ panzer tank version of the Sex Pistols, the Wizard version of “Animal World” is the perfect punk single.

That’s right. Perfect.

Released to an underwhelmed Australian public, it sold nothing. Well it sold at least one copy because I bought one even though I already had the earlier Remand single release. It deeply impressed me. It taught me some really important lessons.  Firstly, the Last Words were playing the same circuit as a band I was in called The Urban Guerrillas (Don’t bother researching them. They didn’t record anything and a latter band took the name). When you’re playing in the same rooms and out of the same amps and making a comparable noise and you hear your “rivals” produce something of true genius, you figure you can do it too. More importantly, I learnt there and then that a great record is made by enhancing and not imitating your live sound. The Last Words were a really good live band but “Animal World” went so far beyond what they had done or would ever do on stage. Finally, I learnt that it doesn’t matter how good you are, you cannot expect anyone on this Earth to give a rat’s arse. Despite splashing out on glorious blue vinyl, the single that should have made the Last Words into stars completely and utterly failed. There was no airplay and no television. Despite the noise, no one was listening.

Or maybe there was.  Suddenly, Rough Trade was releasing the mighty Wizard single in the UK. The Last Words scooped up the Urban Guerrillas’ drummer and headed off to Mother England. Johnny Gunn (not a nom d’punk) is one of the best drummers you will ever hear. His addition to the band provides them with enough raw power to level mountains. All the cards are out on the table and there is no way this band can lose. Except that they did.  An intervening year had bought on the rise of Sham 69 and the Cockney Rejects and, whilst the Last Words had the sound, they didn’t share in that loathsome skinhead culture. The early Clash/Pistols sound had been co-opted by the enemy.  Rough Trade’s “Animal World” still did okay on the Indie Charts but didn’t rocket the band into the A league or even the B league. They remained perpetual outsiders and more power to them for that but you know what that means. It means the less talented walk off with the big prize.

The Last Words were a truly great band who never quite found a way in but they always should have. But the business kept trying to find them a way in. Out of nowhere, another record contract appeared, this time Armageddon records.  Adrian Sherwood produced a self titled album for them but things were getting weird.  Grinding poverty, a rhythm section increasingly infatuated with herb and dub and a ten minute version of “White Rabbit” quickly followed. The inevitable break up and straggling return to Australia was just around the corner.

But here’s the thing; the monument is there standing proud for all to see; a giant fuck you to all the pretenders.  “Animal World” (Wizard or Rough Trade) is a shimmering thing of beauty.  The Wizard b-side “Every School Boys’ Dream” is pretty damn fine as is the version of “No Music” on the Rough Trade single.  As far as contributions to the species go, these are pretty damn fine. Listen in awe.

Bob Short – October 2012

Last Words and Kill Your Pet Puppy

Brett Lees moved into the Long Acre and James Street squat in its last months of existence. Brett begat Bob Short via an Australian connection, who then moved in. I went to Europe after the eviction of the Long Acre and James Street squat and a brief stay at the Fire Station in Old Street, Islington (which at this point had opened and organised by the sensible members of the Long Acre and James Street squat weeks before the final eviction). Again I should point browsers to the thirtieth anniversary of the Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine KYPP post HERE for further information.

Upon my return from Europe, penniless and homeless I went back to the Fire Station in Old Street as there was nowhere else to go. I expected a frosty reception from the old school organised crowd so was surprised when the door was opened by a punk rocker who immediately placed me as Val’s brother.

Who are you, how do you know who I am and what has Val got to do with this? I didn’t say any of these things. Val, who it transpired, had moved in here, explained how Brett and Bob had been allowed to stay after I emigrated (gee thanks). As more of the organised crowd drifted off from the squat more punks moved in; Val for one and also an Australian musician friend of Bob and Brett’s, Leigh Kendall.

Leigh Kendall was in the band The Last Words, who had shared a drummer with one of Bob Short’s Australian bands. So naturally Leigh moved in with Bob when he arrived in London. This is how the Last Words became intertwined into the history of Kill Your Pet Puppy.

Amazingly Leigh could drive, something that had never occurred to any of us; and he even had a driving licence, which was unheard of in this milieu. This proved useful on our final night at the Fire Station when he drove a van through hordes of local Islington skinheads come to burn us out of the building. Unbelievable unless you lived through it, and thanks to Leigh we did live through it.

More of The Last Words band came to stay when we all moved into Sheriff Road west Hampstead, even when we were living eight to a room with no water. The Last Word’s singer Malcolm and his girlfriend and then guitarist Andy Groome; eventually when we moved into the larger flat upstairs there was a ‘Last Words room’ where they all lived.

As well as having the maturity to drive, Leigh also knew a lot more about Anarchy than the rest of us and used to educate us about the works of famous anarchists when we all lived in Sheriff Road. He looked askance at the Crass version of anarchy and wrote the famous piece in the first issue of the Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine attacking their pacifist stance. The piece was entitled ‘Peaceful Pro-Crass-tination’, written by Leigh calling himself  Buenaventura Makhno, a combination of two influential anarchists, to underline both his status as qualified anarchist and advocate of direct action.

The Kill Your Pet Puppy piece set the cat amongst the pigeons enough with Crass for myself and Leigh to go to Dial House in North Weald and discuss the situation with members of the band further. Penny Rimbaud then wrote a long response, which was printed in the second issue of the Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine. Some say Leigh’s article via Kill Your Pet Puppy caused Crass to change their stance somewhat.  I’ll leave others to judge that.

The Last Words single ‘Animal World’ was released on Rough Trade records, and they played a lot of gigs around this time and were actually a damn good band. They got a record deal and released an LP album which Brett from the Puppy collective designed the sleeve for (can be found on this KYPP post HERE).

Just another of the connections between the Puppies and the Words.

The last word is that Andy Groome taught me how to play Leonard Cohen songs on the acoustic guitar, for which I’ll be eternally grateful. My neighbours probably less so.

Tony D – October 2012

The Dream Machine / Lost Worlds / Mobius Loop / 1984

Tyranny Of Taste / Glimpses Of Reality / A Box Of Stolen Dreams / There’s No Place Like Home

A band that I know not too much about other than they seem to have been based in south London and that these recordings were completed on an eight track mixer based at the home of Rory Cargill’s Alma Road in Wandsworth. Rory Cargill remains the only constant member of The Invisible Band from the bands formation in 1981 until, well today.

The line up of The Invisible Band that recorded these tracks onto this tape, consisted of Julia on vocals and percussion, Rory on the guitar, bass and keyboards along with Jerry on the drums.

These tracks by The Invisible Band would appeal to anyone that likes Here And Now, Gong and Ozric Tentacles. The cassette tape is a grower and the listener ‘gets it’ after a couple of plays, or at least I did.

The band were regular performers at the Stonehenge festival in the early 1980′s and were known to the Tibetan Ukranian Mountain Troupe, a group of colourful entertaining travellers who between 1982 and 1983 were based, when not on the road, in the squatted bus station near to Brougham Road in Hackney.

The Tibetan Ukranian Mountain Troupe started in Kingston when it was called the Bombay Bus Trucking company and Mr Bombay was the boss, whoever he was the troupe never saw him, he did not exist. Perry Balfour, Perry Hazard was the young inspirational influence and Mike and KP got given the Blue and White marquee so they took it out on the road. Perry’s dad was Michael Balfour, a professional movie actor and the troupe’s show guru and link to the tradition of performance. He was also very impressed with the notion of love and peace as a youth movement.

At the end of 1979 at the festival of Fools in Penzance, wanting to take the mickey out of the so called alternative theatre scene, which they saw as an imitation of traditional stuff and nothing new, they came up with a sketch which was the sand dance, throw sand on the floor and do a silly dance to Egyptian music with a trio of idiot and dumb artists. As they were leaving Perry’s ‘Bella Vega’ bus, they needed a name so Perry dragged it off the ethers, and came up with the Tibetan Ukranian Mountain Troupe, a troupe from another planet or another place which would always be bizarre and so it was.

Or

The name Tibetan Ukranian Mountain Troupe was kind of a yin -yang thing. The Tibetan part represented the spiritual, metaphysical aspect of life whereas the Ukranian bit was the more physical, down to earth side of things. The deliberate miss spelling, although originally a sign writing error, was kept in for numerological balance. The Mountain bit because it was there, and the Troupe because they were!

Or

Some ancient clown thought of it off the top of his head!

Take your pick.

There is no doubt that the Tibetan Ukranian Mountain Troupe hold a unique place in the ranks of great British hippie eccentrics .Their activities were by no means confined to free festivals, as they appeared at almost all of the commercial East Anglian Fairs and Peace Fairs of the early 1980′s.

The Tibetan Ukranian Mountain Troupe stopped being called a Troupe by 1986. By this time it had become clear that they had evolved into something more and myriad diverse. Although the troupe had roots in the UK Free Festivals and Albionic fairs of the 1970′s and early 1980′s their travels and exploits in Europe in the early to mid 1980′s had brought them into contact with a whole and other world of colourful opportunities, excitement, challenge and medical conditions of great interest.

Thanks to Chris Low for the lend of this cassette tape uploaded today. The artwork that heads up this post is by the late Wilf, known mostly on this site at least for the artwork that adorns the records by The Mob. Credit to the etherealmusic.co.uk site for some snippets of information on The Invisible Band and the photographs and to ukrockfestivals.com site for some snippets of information on the Tibetan Ukranian Mountain Troupe and the photographs.

Too Long In Slavery / Two Sevens Clash

Lion Rock / Armageddon

This session by Joseph Hill’s Culture was recorded in December 1982 at the BBC Maida Vale studios for the John Peel radio programme and is one of the all time great Peel sessions in my opinion. Furthermore it is one of the all time great Peel sessions in John Peels opinion! I was once told that John Peel wept when he first heard the results on the tapes that Dale Griffin had handed to him a few days before the session was meant to be aired in January 1983.

For clarity John Peels opinion is written in burgundy red bold towards the bottom of this post.

The versions of the two newer tracks ‘Lion Rock’ and ‘Armageddon’ that Culture recorded for the BBC actually eclipse in quality the versions that had previously been recorded at Aquarius studios in Kingston and released on the Sonic Sounds record label. This is no mean feat as the ‘Lion Rock’ album from 1982 is an immense work in itself!

As a much younger Penguin I remember listening to the John Peel radio show on a more or less nightly basis from 1979 right up to the mid 1980′s. I met him a couple of times, and he was a very pleasant man.

Text for this post stolen from allmusic.com and two BBC websites.

CULTURE

Vocal trio Culture helped define the sound and style of Rastafarian roots reggae, thanks largely to charismatic singer, songwriter, and leader Joseph Hill. True to their name, Culture’s material was devoted almost exclusively to spiritual, social, and political messages, and Hill delivered them with a fervent intensity that grouped him with Rastafarian militants like Burning Spear and Black Uhuru. Their classic debut ‘Two Sevens Clash’, is still considered a roots reggae landmark, and most of their other late ’70s output maintains a similarly high standard. After a hiatus, Culture returned in the mid-’80s with a lighter, more polished sound that drew from more eclectic musical sources. Yet the force of their message never softened, and they soldiered on into the new millennium.

Joseph Hill had been trying his hand at a solo career for some time before forming Culture. He first started out as a disc selector for various sound systems in his hometown of Linstead, in St. Catherine Parish. From there he joined a group called the Soul Defenders as a percussionist and part-time vocalist. The Soul Defenders worked at Clement “Coxsone” Dodd’s legendary Studio One in 1971, cutting backing tracks for a variety of vocalists. Hill himself recorded several solo numbers during that time, including “Behold the Land” and “Take Me Girl,” but nothing came of them. The Soul Defenders returned to St. Catherine to work the hotel lounge circuit in northern Jamaica, and Hill floated through several bands prior to forming Culture in 1976. His cousin Albert Walker came to him with the idea of forming a vocal group, and the two quickly recruited another cousin, Roy “Kenneth” Dayes, to sing harmony vocals along with Walker.

Initially calling themselves the African Disciples, the trio hooked up with producer Joe Gibbs in Kingston, and soon changed their name to Culture. Overseen by Gibbs and engineer Errol Thompson, aka the Mighty Two, they debuted with the single “This Time” on Gibbs’ Belmont label. Not long after, they broke through with several hit singles, including “See Them a Come” and “Two Sevens Clash.” The latter was a Rastafarian vision of the rapidly approaching apocalypse, which fuelled public paranoia in an already violent election year; it also provided the title track of the group’s debut album, which was released in 1977 to tremendous acclaim. Featuring other crucial tracks like “Get Ready to Ride the Lion to Zion” and “Natty Dread Take Over,” “Two Sevens Clash” was a spiritual manifesto against racial injustice and poverty. It won a huge following not only in Jamaica, but also the U.K., where the growing punk rock movement was discovering a kinship with protest reggae, and connected immediately with the album’s powerful disaffection.

Unhappy with their financial dealings with Gibbs, Culture soon split for a brief and contentious stay at Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle label, where they started (and never quite finished) a new album titled Africa Stand Alone; the results were eventually released as they were, without authorization. Meanwhile, Gibbs released leftovers from the Two Sevens Clash sessions on two more LPs, Baldhead Bridge (whose title song was a hit) and More Culture. By the end of 1977, Culture had already moved to Sonia Pottinger’s High Note label, and recorded three excellent albums in quick succession: 1978′s ‘Harder Than The Rest’ and 1979′s  ‘Cumbolo’ and ‘International Herb’. Additional material from the era was later compiled on Trod On and Production Something. Culture performed at the legendary One Love Peace Concert in 1978, and later toured heavily in the U.K. with backing band the Revolutionaries (which included the young Sly & Robbie).

However, there would not be much more material forthcoming, at least for the time being. Culture split up in 1982, and Hill recorded which was essentially a solo album ‘Lion Rock’, under the Culture name; Walker and Dayes meanwhile made a few recordings with producer Henry “Junjo” Lawes. The trio reunited in 1986, and quickly recorded two well-received comeback albums, ‘Culture at Work’ and ‘Culture in Culture’ that year. They resumed touring as well, and kicked off another prolific and productive period with albums like 1988′s ‘Nuff Crisis’ (which featured the powerful protest “Crack in New York”), 1989′s ‘Good Things’ 1991′s dancehall-flavoured ‘Three Sides to My Story’, and 1992′s ‘Wings of a Dove’.

In 1993, Kenneth Dayes left the group to pursue a solo career, wanting to continue their earlier experimentation with dancehall. Culture was then touring with an independent backing band called Dub Mystic, and that group’s lead singer, Ire’Lano Malomo, was pressed into service as the third vocalist in the trio. Malomo appeared on two studio albums, 1996′s ‘One Stone’ and 1997′s ‘Trust Me’. He was replaced in 1999 by veteran singer Telford Nelson, who made his debut on 2000′s ‘Payday’. Hill released another effective solo album, ‘Humble African’, in 2001, and Culture returned in 2003 with the acclaimed World Peace. On August 19, 2006, during a show in Berlin, Germany, Hill collapsed on-stage and passed away.

MAIDA VALE STUDIOS

Maida Vale Studios is a complex of seven BBC studios (of which five in regular use) on Delaware Road, Maida Vale, London.

It has been used to record thousands of classical music, popular music and drama sessions for BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4 from 1946 to the present. On October 30, 2009, BBC Radio 1 celebrated 75 Years of Maida Vale by exclusively playing 75 tracks recorded at the studios over the years. Snow Patrol played a live set from the studio with Fearne Cotton to celebrate 75 years of live music.

The site was built in 1909 as the “Maida Vale Roller Skating Palace and Club”. Over a period of fifteen months in 1933/1934, one hundred men reduced the skating rink to a shell, then rebuilt it. The arches at the doorway were preserved. It was one of the BBC’s earliest premises, pre-dating Broadcasting House, and was the centre of the BBC News operation during World War II.

It has been the home of the BBC Symphony Orchestra since 1934. For over fifty years the BBC Symphony Orchestra has given invitation concerts, usually free. As a schoolboy, Vernon Handley learned some of his conducting technique by watching Sir Adrian Boult conduct the BBC symphony orchestra here. Studio 1 has room for an orchestra of over 150 musicians and an audience of over 200. An unusual feature of these concerts is that they were often recorded, which means that in later years the orchestra sometimes were able to do re-takes. It is the largest classical music studio in London.

The “Third Programme” was created in September 1946. By the 1950s, the Third Programme was frequently broadcasting concerts from this venue. Some premieres of British classical music were recorded here (in studio 1), including works by Robert Simpson, Arnold Bax, Nicholas Maw, Alan Rawsthorne and Sir Arthur Bliss. Many of them later became available on vinyl or CD. Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalila was rehearsed here, before its UK premiere at the Royal Festival Hall.

In 1958 the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was created and based here until its demise in 1998, and the pioneering “Delaware” synthesiser made by EMS takes its name from the Studios’ address. The Workshop’s rooms are now used as a small TV studio for The Film programme, audio archiving facilities, engineering workshops and office space.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s the radio programme Movie-Go-Round was broadcast from here. Peter Haigh played sound clips from major films. The Beatles used studio 5 several times in 1963 to record sessions for BBC radio.

From 1967 to 2004, “John Peel Sessions” were recorded in studio 4. At first a number of other venues around London were also used, such as the Playhouse Theatre in Charing Cross, but as these were let go by the BBC the sessions increasingly centred on Maida Vale 4. Music sessions were once a mainstay of BBC Radio programming as there were strict limits on the amount of commercially recorded music that could be aired (known as needle-time restrictions), so the BBC regularly booked musicians to record music exclusively for broadcast. In the early 60s when the BBC began to give some limited coverage of pop groups such as The Beatles, it was found that the sessions allowed up-and-coming bands to gain exposure, and for musicians and groups to try out new material, play covers they would not include on their albums, and experiment with different sounds and guest musicians. With the birth of Radio 1 in 1967, programmes such as Top Gear embraced this concept, with sessions from such stars-in-waiting as David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. And when one of Top Gear’s presenters, John Peel, got his own programme, he again continued to commission these specially recorded sessions. Most of the artists were relatively unknown even to Peel’s listeners: he and his producer would often invite bands on the strength of a rough demo tape or gig to hear what they could do, and for many of the bands it was their first experience of a professional recording studio, not to mention a much-needed boost to their finances. The format became standardised as a single session in the studio with a staff producer and engineer (or more latterly a producer-engineer and assistant), during which the artists would record four songs, but there were also some sessions which were either live to air, or pre-recorded as live with an audience

John Peel said “The Clash did half one, then amazingly said that the equipment in the studio wasn’t up to the standards they’d expected so they couldn’t complete the session. Which seemed to me to be unbearably pretentious of them”.

Some albums by The Fall were entirely recorded there. The last band to record a Peel session was Skimmer, at Maida Vale Studios on October 21, 2004.

Other BBC disc jockeys invited artists to perform at Maida Vale. Led Zeppelin recorded for Alexis Korner’s “Rhythm and Blues” program in 1969. Walter Trout recorded for Paul Jones’s R & B show. Marillion recorded for Radio 2 DJ Bob Harris. Jo Whiley invited Hard Fi to play here. The venue is also the home of the BBC Elstree concert Band. The Radio 3 “Jazz Line Up” sessions were recorded here.

JOHN PEEL SESSIONS

The Peel Sessions are the stuff of legend. They broke all the rules and engaged the listener with rough and ready mixes of some of the world’s most weird, wonderful and wired bands. There was a mythology to Peel Sessions: musicians went into the studio to record their three or four track session, only to emerge a few hours later blinking and dazed, having made a hell of a racket that would go down in history as the making of the band

The Peel Sessions began when John realised he had to play by more rules than he was used to at pirate radio when he joined the BBC in 1967. John’s show had to air a large amount of non-recorded music. This meant that he was only allowed a certain amount of ‘needle time’ (referring to ‘stylus-on-vinyl’ time – the time allotted to playing records on air) due to Musicians’ Union rules.

The choice was either to have idle banter or to get bands to play a live session… Guess what he chose to do?

Deciding which artist to book for The Peel Sessions was an organic process. Peel would have a brief chat with his producer, John Walters, usually about artists that took their fancy that week. A phone call was made and the band would turn up to the recording studio to lay down the session, usually at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios.

Peel said: “There are those who believe that there is in place some system, that meetings are held, that charts are pored over… John and I would list those bands who had not recorded a session for a spell, eliminating those whose work no longer pleased us or, more rarely, whose new-found celebrity status would mean that their agents, management and record companies would come together in holy union to frustrate our attempts at rebooking. We’d also add to the list the names of artists we had heard and liked on demo tape or record or seen and liked in performance.”

John was repeatedly asked what his favourite session was. He could never choose because there were so many Peel Sessions recorded.

John told Interzone magazine: “It’s really impossible to say which is my favourite… Perhaps Culture, I wish they’d done more. The Slits was something of a classic, and I liked several by The Wedding Present. There’s been a few American bands that it would have been nice to have – The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead – for a while it was difficult to get American bands into the country in the Sixties and Seventies.”

But artists who did get invited back lots of times included: The Fall (32 sessions), Ivor Cutler (20 sessions), The Wedding Present (16 sessions) and The Delgado’s (16 sessions). And, of course, there are also the famous sessions, from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, The Smiths, Nirvana, Pulp and The White Stripes.

The Peel Sessions are now a worldwide phenomenon, recognised for quality and diversity.

Crass – The Final Performance – Track Listing Above

A very special post is uploaded on Kill Your Pet Puppy tonight for many differing reasons.

Firstly the audio download is the very last performance of Crass at the Aberdare Coliseum in Wales. This is obviously an important event to archive for this site. The Kill Your Pet Puppy collective were always generally supportive to Crass whether during their numerous visits to Dial House or at the numerous Crass gigs they attended. The Kill Your Pet Puppy collective along with the Black Sheep and April Housing co op’s also helped with the autonomy social centres being set up, as well as helping to organise the Zig Zag christmas squat gig and the very first Stop the City demonstration.

The quality of the audio is poor in parts but at least it is something to place up on the site. If I get a better version of this performance lent to me I will replace this version. Do not hold your breath though!

Many thanks to Graham Burnett for sending me this audio in any case.

Crass had performed a short tour in May 1984 and most people thought that was the end of the band’s live excursions. Crass decided to show solidarity to the striking miners after being asked to come to Wales and performed one last time a couple of months later in July.

Secondly Kill Your Pet Puppy’s aforementioned friend, Graham Burnett (editor of the Southend based New Crimes fanzine which had a lifespan from 1980 until 1983) was originally given permission to ‘release’ the tape by Penny Rimbaud of Crass. Graham then had the tape placed onto the CD format and designed the sleeve artwork that heads this post in order to raise funds for the Dial House appeal which was active over a decade ago.

Penny and Gee were trying to ensure Dial House one of the more important landmarks for the alternative community for over forty years at that time was saved so it could continue to function as an art space and open house. They were both actively involved in the fund raising.

Around this time I saved up for the fund from my wages from Southern and eventually placed £200 into the appreciative hands of Gee Vaucher whilst enjoying the North Weald summer fete that Gee and Penny had helped organise with the local community. Steve Ignorant of Crass was also in attendance at this fete.

Blyth Power performed on the small makeshift stage so it was nice to see Josef and the band in the middle of this field in Essex! Some other bands performed as well but I can not remember who they would have been. Maybe just a trad jazz quartet or something similar.

Graham did not manage to properly release this CD with any effectiveness to raise money from it for Dial House although he did help out in many other ways.

Thirdly, back to Graham again.

Graham runs regular permaculture courses at Dial House advising students on the course on how to live out ethically enriched lives causing the least harm possible to living things.

Anything from reclaiming building materials to building compost toilets, vegan-ism and cultivation of plants.

He also writes books on the subject, my copy of one of his books is pictured above. This book is well worth getting hold off if it is still available on his website.

Dial House is of course the near perfect setting for Graham’s talks as the house and the gardens surrounding it have always been maintained in an ethical manner.

Graham’s website Spiralseed which has much more information on what can be done and ways to get involved is HERE.

Fourthly Graham has been suffering with an illness and has been continuously and bravely fighting throughout these last eighteen months to keep the illness in check.

This post is dedicated with love to you from all the Kill Your Pet Puppy on-line crew.

Thanks again to Graham for the sending me the audio, for writing his piece for the post below. Thank you to Penny Rimbaud who wrote such lovely words about Graham and his mum back in 2006!

Thanks also Sara who does not yet know that I have snatched her photographs of this last performance by Crass off the Southern Studios forum! Thanks also in advance to Anthony Brockway from the Babylon Wales blog for the review of the performance on the night. This text was also snatched under the cover of darkness, without the authors knowledge, and dragged here to Penguin Towers kicking and screaming. Tristian Carter supplied the Crass ticket stub, thanks for that.

The photographs of Dial House are from my collection, so at least I added something to this post!

This recording is the last Crass gig performed at Aberdare, Wales in July 1984. This recording and the artwork I designed was put together for a benefit CD that I was going to release to raise a bit of cash for Dial House a decade ago now. Penny gave me permission but I never got around to releasing it properly!

I first heard Crass in 1978. It was in Projection Records – Southend’s ‘alternative’ vinyl outlet, and I was perusing the avant-garde jazz section at the time. A bunch of local punks with whom I was on nodding terms were harassing Barry Martin, the shop’s long suffering blues enthusiast owner (now better known as guitar legend Automatic Slim and still plying his passion with live stalwarts The Hamsters incidentally) into playing a just arrived 12 inch single. It had a black and white cover featuring somebody walking about with a huge but rather dodgy looking banner in a muddy field, and looked intriguing. Eventually Barry put it on, and our ears were assaulted by a searing barrage of noise.

The energy and excitement of the ‘first wave’ of punk was declining fast – The Pistols had been reduced to artistic carry on flogging dead horses like cutting novelty records with Ronnie Biggs, The Clash were no longer bored with the USA but were now being over-produced with an eye to cracking that very market, and the DIY ethos of The Desperate Bicycles had been overtaken by the corporate ‘new wave’ of The Cars and The Jags. Beyond the shock of the new and the short-lived arse kicking of the complacent rock dinosaurs like Genesis and The Rolling Stones, it was once again the same old music in the same old kitchen.

But this was somehow different, a raw and disturbing discord ¨C what I’d imagined punk should really be all about, yet so far had never quite delivered. I bought a copy, and at home played it with the accompanying lyric sheet. The words to the 17 Crass songs contained on ‘Feeding Of The 5000′ weren’t exactly sophisticated, but they articulated an uncompromising rage at the order of things. Current Prime Minister Jim Callaghan and his soon-to-be successor Margaret Thatcher, Christ, Buddha, The Clash, The State, The System, nuclear weapons, patriarchy, Securicor guards and complacent hippies – the usual suspects and sacred cows alike were all up for slaughter amongst the buzzsaw guitars and militaristic drumming, and I was revelling in the bloodbath (strictly metaphorically you understand- I was already a vegetarian by this stage…). But there was one lyric that I found particularly challenging – never mind not giving a toss about that fucker Jesus, the assertion that ‘MARX FUCKS!’ was one invective too far… I was as righteously outraged as only a 17 year old Socialist Worker paper seller can be. I’d been drawn into Rock Against Racism by the big Carnivals, and the pidgin Trotskyism of the SWP offered all the answers to a youth aware enough to realise that whilst Labour wasn’t working, the Tories would only ever work for their own class and that the National Front were a Nazi front. I can still remember penning an earnest letter to these upstart naive anarchists pointing out the error of their ways. Where was their political analysis? Their grasp of theory? How could they dismiss such an important economic and social philosopher with just two ill thought out words of abuse? I never posted it. Instead I played the record again. And again. “MARX FUCKS”. How dare they? That great man. Those important ideas. Those big thick books that I borrowed from the library and pretended to understand. Those pub and classroom arguments I couldn’t afford to lose. That cool little red enamel clenched fist badge Full Party Members were allowed to wear and that I coveted so… So what was their alternative anyway? Anarchy?? Do it yourself???? Take responsibility for your own actions?????? ‘Sucks’ was the Zen-style whack on the side of the head that knocked me into new ways of seeing politics just as the white noise of detuned guitars and off station radios opened my eyes to the musical possibilities of punk beyond cranked up 12 bar rock n roll riffing…

I actually met Crass for the first time about 18 months later when Chris, Steve and I interviewed them for our fanzine, New Crimes. Amongst all the earnest questions we asked them about CND, war, squatting, Northern Ireland, religion and all the rest, I remember that Penny Rimbaud seemed particularly enthused when I asked about Crass’ musical influences, and his references to John Cage and Stockhausen didn’t surprise me one bit. The mainstream music press of the day always dismissed Crass as mindless three-chord thrash, but they actually had far more musical intelligence and imagination, with antecedents including modern classical, European atonality and free-form jazz.

More importantly, this trip to Dial House marked the beginning of a long and close friendship with the band, and I have to say that it didn’t come as a shock to me when they decided to call it a day in 1984. Personal tensions between band members that had been long suppressed were beginning to surface, and I’d seen at first hand the toll that maintaining the public front of ‘Crass’ had begun to take on these individuals. The exhaustion and stress caused by constant surveillance and harassment by The State was only compounded by the role of ‘leadership’ placed upon them by an anarcho-punk following who clearly hadn’t paid attention to the lyrics of ‘Where Next Columbus?’…

Penny, Gee and Steve continued to live at Dial House, although during the late 80s and 90s their priorities focussed on more personal struggles, particularly against land owners and property developers seemingly intent on encroaching into the last remaining green belt areas surrounding London. Over a decade later, this culminated in buying the previously rented house at auction, a decision which left them £100,000 in debt, but at last securing a stable future for what they describe as a ‘centre for dynamic cultural change’.

Since 2002 I’ve been running regular permaculture workshops at Dial House that have been attended by possibly hundreds of participants. Many have never heard of Crass (but we also attract a very high proportion of those who have…), but nearly all comment on the positive energy of the place.

Once past it’s rickety little wooden gate it’s easy to get lost for a while wandering amongst the vegetable plots, native tree plantings, fruit bushes and flower beds teeming with humming bees and birdsong, and the multitude of hidden shelters and sitting places adorned with sculptures and carvings. Turning each corner is a surprise – you never quite know what you will find.

Then there’s the 17th century building itself, a crooked house maze of artist’s studios, rehearsal rooms, libraries and social spaces. Some even describe it as ‘Paradise’. Certainly it can be an asylum from the madness that is early 21st century fossil fuel and war driven ‘civilisation’.

Much of what Crass dealt with as a band was dark and frightening, particularly towards the end, in the period that followed the Falklands War, when it became clear just how far The State would go in order to protect its power. But despite this their message was always essentially positive; that behind the ugliness, brutality and violence that we are expected to accept as normality there lies the rarely glimpsed beauty, creativity and barely fathomed potential of the human spirit. Crass never used the word permaculture, but their vision of an alternative to a society which is anything but earthright and sustainable, and where we can all live fulfilled lives in harmony with nature’s patterns, struck a chord with many people that I’ve since met within world-change movements. Diggers, dreamers, ‘New Age’ travellers, road protesters, animal rights campaigners, self-builders, anti-globalisation activists and permaculture designers – there is a generation out there who one way or another drew inspiration from their central message that ‘There Is No Authority But Yourself’.

Graham Burnett 2012

In 1986, Sounds wrote: ‘two years ago Crass couldn’t decide whether to blow up the country or grow cabbages – fortunately for the Tory tyrants, they chose the latter’. The choice wasn’t always that easy. Generally I was happy enough stringing up runner beans, but every so often I’d find my mind drifting towards lurid thoughts of stringing up Margaret Thatcher and her cronies from the lampposts on Westminster Bridge, and what a pretty sight that would have made.

From its inception in 1977, Crass have been at the forefront of what has now become popularly known as the anarcho-punk movement. Johnny Rotten had sung about anarchy in the UK, but hadn’t meant it: Crass did. We were loud, fast and angry. I was the drummer. Thirty years later, I’m still at it, but now I’m into performance poetry, and yes, I’m still loud, fast and angry.

Since the mid-sixties I have lived at the edge of Epping Forest on an acre of land in a rambling old cottage called Dial House. I had moved there to find peace and solitude, to paint and write, and to grow my own food. From the start it seemed obvious to me that organic was the right way to go: why pay for expensive fertilisers when farmyard manure or leaf mould were never much more than ten minutes walk away? Why fork-out for weed-killers when one stroke of a hoe did a better job? Forty years later, the flourishing garden stands as proof of the wisdom of the organic way. Equally, everything that was done within the cottage made use of the excesses of consumer society; why buy expensive furniture when package cases were freely available and could be made just as comfortable, and why pay for food extras when the surplus could be so readily bagged up from supermarket waste bins? There may not be big money in other people’s muck, but sure as hell there’s an awful lot of loose change to be found.

From the beginning, Dial House attracted interest from people seeking alternatives to the nine-to-five rat race they’d been told was the only future they could look forward to. Artists, gardeners, drop-outs, bums and beats somehow found their way to the doorstep. Some moved on after a cup of tea and a chat, while others moved in to stay permanently. Very quickly my initial dream of peace and solitude became a memory. Since then the house has thrived as a creative rural community: over forty years of glorious madness.

Of all the many projects growing out of Dial House, Crass is probably the most renowned. The Sex Pistols had chanted their mantra of ‘no future’, while we set out to prove as conclusively as possible that there was one if we were prepared to work for it. Employing an unusual mix of rural nous and street-wise savvy, our songs advocated direct action: be it super-gluing the local Army Recruitment Offices or planting your own spuds, our prime message was ‘there is no authority but yourself.

It was into this heady atmosphere of anarchist subterfuge that a bright-eyed young lad stepped accompanied by his mother. As mum’s didn’t usually tag along with their sons on visits to Dial House, I was concerned that we might be in for a bollocking, the kind of ‘how dare you corrupt my little boy like this’ reaction which by then we had learnt to expect. As it turned out, rather than berating us, Mrs Burnett praised us for the positive influence we’d had on her son Graham. I was shocked. Until that time I’d rather glibly assumed that parents were there to be upset by our activities. Where had we gone wrong? As it was, both Graham and his mum became close friends.

Graham shared an interest with us in much of what in those days was considered by the average punk to be somewhat unacceptable: modern jazz, folk and avant-garde music, and, more importantly, self-sufficiency and all that that implies. While Johnny Rotten had rather pathetically declared war against hippy culture, we were looking to its positive aspects to assist us in the way forward. Crass were undeniably at the vanguard of what later became the DIY movement, but it was people like Graham whose wit, work and wisdom gave us the confidence to drive on. While our front was by necessity broad, ‘fight war not wars’, his was much more specific ‘make compost not wars’. He’d turn up at our gigs with beautifully illustrated booklets on how to construct a marrow bed or how best to recycle domestic junk, cheerily handing them out to bemused skinheads whose only thoughts on the subject might hitherto have been how best to trash a park bench. While Crass more often than not appeared tired, angry and dark, Graham would always have a smile on his face (and a pint in his hand). His was a happy revolution which I sometimes envied. To paraphrase Che Guevara, a revolution without love is no revolution at all.

Since those days, Graham has remained a part of my life, popping in for tea with a dozen or so residents from the Special Care Unit for which he worked, or maybe just calling by to scrounge a roll up and check out how the rhubarb was doing (and heading home with a rucksack full of the stuff). More recently, since becoming involved in the Permaculture Movement, he has been running popular workshops at Dial House, teaching the arts of self-sufficiency which in the punk era were frequently dismissed by cynics as mere dreams, but which have now become a reality.

In the quarter of a century since Rotten’s chant of ‘no future’, people like Graham have categorically proved that there is one; in short, if you’re not looking for the solution, you’re part of the problem. For example, a few years back, in response to Dial House’s ancient and somewhat frail sewage system, Graham suggested that we build a compost loo (basically a plastic bucket in a wooden shed; all the rest comes all too naturally). Since then, the fabulously fertile results have been regularly spread around our fruit trees and flowerbeds, giving categorical proof that if only we are prepared to make the effort, good can come of any old shite.

As is so often the case, it’s not a matter of buying ourselves out as much as digging ourselves in. To many it may seem like too much graft, but to those of us who see today’s supermarket commodity culture as anti-creative and anti-life, there’s no alternative. In its bold optimism, this book is designed to inspire action: read on, and then get out there and ‘do it’. The shovel will forever be mightier than the sword.

Penny Rimbaud 2006

Crass in Aberdare

In the summer of 1984 anarcho-punk band Crass played their last ever gig at – of all places – the Coliseum in Aberdare. It was a benefit concert for striking miners. Local paper the Aberdare Leader carried the story on their front page. The following week they did a double-page, picture special, on the event (see pic). Clearly, Crass were big news in Aberdare. I wonder if the band had ever before had such extensive and positive coverage from the regular press. Here’s the newspaper’s review of the concert:

Backstage, our photographer John Wright was given some sound advice: “Don’t get too close or they’ll gob all over you”. Point taken.

Aberdare Coliseum had never seen anything like it.

Over the years the building has played host to all manner of musical and theatrical productions – but never a punk concert featuring one of Britain’s best-known anti-system bands. Billing the event as a ‘rock and pop concert’ was an understandable mistake made by the organisers, who had little or no knowledge of the reputations and anarchist ideals of Crass and their support band, Flux of Pink Indians, when the bands offered their services to help swell the miners’ strike fund.

Local police turned up in force when youths clad in studded leather and bondage gear, topped with colourful and elaborate punk hairdos, began to congregate in the town. The police, too, had been expecting a small scale ‘pop’ concert. It certainly wasn’t that.

Crass – one of the major bands to spring out of the mid-seventies revolt against ‘glam rock’ along with the likes of the Sex Pistols – have managed to maintain a healthy following and every live appearance attracts new recruits. Their songs attacking the system and those in power have become the anthems of the unemployed and of would-be anarchists.

Relying more on sheer volume and energy than anything else to convey their message, the band have, like so many others, come in for a great deal of criticism from those who refuse to listen and instantly condemn them as riot makers. Onstage they stare blankly into space as if unaware of members of their audience scrambling on to the stage to join them. Offstage they are a bunch of the most engaging conversationalists you could ever wish to meet, bursting with ideas and plans to put the world to rights.

Whether their largely teenage audience at the Coliseum fully understood why the band wanted so much to do something positive for the miners was hard to tell. The sight of miners’ agent Emlyn Jenkins onstage presenting a brass miner’s lamp to Crass guitarist N. A. Palmer must have seemed a little odd to those who had turned up mainly to bash their heads against the amps. The meaningful words of encouragement to the miners to continue their strike were soon lost amid the sea of catcalls and abuse.

The presentation over, ‘normality’ resumed. A barrier set up to separate the crowd from the stage was quickly rendered useless as the first band, Flux of Pink Indians, took to the stage. They whipped up the frustrated concert-goers almost to their limit then left them ready and waiting for the headliners.

Two intervening punk poets did act as a sedative, however, calming the crowd temporarily with their weird and puzzling ranting, so much so that when Crass emerged the floodgates opened.

Accompanied for every number by almost a dozen intrepid members of the audience who forced themselves aloft to join the ‘messiahs’, the band blasted out their anti-establishment slogans with constant vocal support. The lyrics of such numbers as Do They Owe Us A Living? rang out with conviction and gave many food for thought.

But the burly miners-cum-bouncers who had been on standby around the hall in case of trouble left with just a few battered eardrums. The police, too, had a quiet night as the punks filed away peacefully at about 9pm. More than a few heads had been turned by the unexpected mass pilgrimage made by punks of all shapes and sizes, but the general consensus of opinion was that it had all been worthwhile.

Anthony Brockway 2008

Graham Burnett was involved in several bands in the Southend area in the early 1980′s; two of the bands may be listened to HERE

Please support Graham Burnett with his Spiralseed website by reading the articles and perhaps purchasing a book or two HERE

There is also a Facebook page for Spiralseed HERE

Nice To Be Back

Dirty Harry On The Falls Road

This record uploaded tonight clocking in at ten minutes over the two sides is one of only 500 in existence. The band originally from Hackney were active from 1978 until 1983 although by the end the only constant member was the guitarist Simon.

Oxy And The Morons were sometimes mentioned in Northern Ireland circles, as according to the very small snippets of information available on the band, they performed in Belfast several times.

‘Dirty Harry On The Falls Road’ is obviously a nod to the catholic front-line so prominently surrounded by the British Army in the decades that the troubles existed in Belfast with Shankhill Road being the protestant equivalent. The song deals with the mentality of some British soldiers stationed in that area.

The band performed their last gig in 1983 at the Brixton White Horse and morphed into the band ‘See You In Vegas’.

The record itself aside from having a lovely (or in the case of my copy uploaded tonight, used to be lovely) screen-printed paper bag showing some scenes typical from Belfast back in the early 1980′s is a mixture of D.I.Y funk and reggae with punky overtones and attitude. An almighty mix up of styles but generally this works for this particular band and is reasonably presented on both sides of this record. The vocals on ‘Nice To Be Back’ reminds me a little of the late Billy McKenzie from The Associates!

I could imagine Oxy And The Morons recording for Grant Showbiz at the Street Level studio, or performing at the Idiot Ballroom or Meanwhile Gardens quite easily.

If anyone has any further information on Oxy And The Morons I would be happy to add any text to this post with a credit to the writer.

REPOSTED FROM NOVEMBER 2007 DUE TO SOME RARE CASSETTE TAPES BEING LENT TO ME RECENTLY BY LOUISE AS WELL AS AN INFORMAL ‘INTERVIEW’ UNDERTAKEN.

Brett, Lou and Tony D Puppy Mansions 1981 – photo – Tony D collection

Louise Harris once of the Kill Your Pet Puppy collective, veteran of Campbell Buildings, St Monicas and other slum squats alongside Bob Short and Lisa of Blood And Roses, Quick Phil, Cory, Tony D, The Heretics and Dave Sex Gang amongst many others. A Wapping autonomy centre and Centro Iberico regular.

One of the most pleasant women around and a massive help to a much younger Penguin when I first started helping out at All The Madmen records in Brougham Road Hackney.

The Hysteria Ward cassette is a rare All The Madmen release indeed. Not many cassettes around any more I would think. I have added some rough mixes of some of the tracks that featured on the original cassette. These rough mixes are very good indeed. The rough mixes were recently lent to me by Lou herself and simply must be heard… I have been also been reminded by Dan I that All The Madmen records also released a flexi disc by Hysteria Ward. I forgot all about that release; but of course I own it. I have added it to this post now!

SOME HISTORY

Lou was living with the Puppy Collective at Puppy Mansions in Westbere Road Hampstead during 1981. Lou along with other house mates went to witness a gig in the squatted ‘Grimaldi’ church in Pentonville Road, Kings Cross.  The Grimaldi church was so called as that is the resting place for a famous clown Joseph Grimaldi who died in 1837. The proper name for the church to any other congregation, other than punk squatters, was St James.

Amongst the bands performing that night was The Mob. This was the first time Lou had witnessed the band and she was shortly in a relationship with Mark from the band. Through Mark who was living at 74 Brougham Road at the time, Lou met Josef Porta and Tim Hutton amongst other notable Brougham Road co – op members. Tim at the time was drumming for The Mob. Josef was drumming for Zounds.

When Lou was commuting from Puppy Mansions into Hackney to see Mark Mob in Brougham Road it was decided one night to record a low key jam in Josef’s bedroom at 64 Brougham Road.  One of the tracks on this personal tape is entitled ‘Shalom’ which means peace in Hebrew. This is a track that was written by Lou after she was badly attacked by two skinhead girls in Kilburn. Brett and Mick Lugworm from Puppy Mansions managed to get Lou to the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead to get cleaned up and mended.

Josef drums, Tim guitar and Lou on second guitar and vocals.

Lou with Tim Hutton and Josef Porta 1981 <<< Tape to download>>>

This line up ventured out of Josef’s bedroom only twice Lou remembers. Once at a pub now forgotten when an amp blew up so no performance was completed, and once on the Fuck Off stage set up at Stonehenge. The Stonehenge performance went ahead but as Lou and Tim had dropped acid a little while before, it was not that memorable at least to Lou who was tripping heavily. She remembers the reception to the performance was pretty good but that could be just the drugs! The band retreated back to the KYPP tent after the performance to enjoy the rest of the evening at the stones on Salisbury plain.

Lou (with the blue denim jacket on) at a Mob gig in Belgium - photo – Onno Hesselink collection

Tim Hutton who drummed briefly for The Mob before Josef Porta’s stint on the drum stool at a gig in Belgium. Tim a Brougham Road resident also performed bass duties for Zounds in a short lived four piece band – photo – Onno Hesselink collection

Lou was at Brougham Road waiting to travel with The Mob on one of the Belgium and Holland tours. At the same time that the police were raiding 64 Brougham Road to hassle the assorted Zounds personnel that were barricaded within, Lou and The Mob were loading the truck to drive to Harwich to get the ferry. Last man in shuts the door. The door shuts and then falls off into the street. Trying not to be so obvious whilst a police presence is within pissing distance, the members of The Mob hastily attach the door back on and make a quick getaway with whatever stash they were going to Europe with. Mark who was driving to Harwich was not in the best of spirits. Not because his near neighbours were getting busted, or because of the state of the truck. The problem was that all the other passengers in the vehicle were swallowing magic mushrooms while Mark was the designated driver…

Peat Protest, Mitch Flack, Martin Flack and Andy Martin of The Apostles at the Wapping Autonomy Centre - photo – Martin Flack collection

Andy Martin from The Apostles was also a huge motivator for Lou. Lou ended up at the top room of the squat that Andy had in Foulden Road, Stoke Newington, and between them composed and performed several tracks that appear on the tape that you may download below. Lou got on with Andy Martin very well and even got a cake given to her, made from Andy for her to share with Mark from The Mob. Commuting to Stoke Newington was also pivotal to Lou’s future as it was there that she was first introduced to Rob Challice then of Faction. Lou had seen Rob at the Wapping autonomy centre but had not up to this point ever spoken to him. Lou sold Rob her heavy black bass guitar in fact in Andy’s Foulden Road squat!

Lou with mostly Andy Martin 1981 <<< Tape to download>>>

In 1981 Lou had also been a member of The Witches who infamously performed with The Apostles, Blood And Roses and Part 1 at the Wapping autonomy centre in January 1982. This event was the first time Part 1 had successfully performed in the capital. The Witches also had in the band’s ranks Ann Gee Zoff who at this time was Bob Short’s partner in Hackney squatdom.

Lou was still living at Puppy Mansions in Westbere Road Hampstead. Through the house she met up with Paul AKA Jah Pork Pie again. Paul was another survivor of Campbell Buildings alongside Tony D.

Spasm Ensemble was a band that included Lou on vocals, Mick Lugworm on guitar and Jah Pork Pie on bass. This band performed in the North Cheam and Esher areas of south west London but according to Lou, was just a band that would get together if another band advertised on any flyers did not turn up!

Mental Disorder was another band that Lou was involved in with Mick Lugworm around this time. The band used to rehearse in a pub in Esher (Surrey). This was useful as the band were offered free refreshments throughout the practice sessions.  There was another band that used to be involved with this pub that was run by the parents of two brothers who were in a band called Wargasm (before the compilation of the same name was released). Neither were in Mental Disorder but at least one of them did play with Spasm Ensemble. Part Time Pousurz was another Lou and Mick Lugworm band that did have Fred Previous within the bands ranks.

Jah Pork Pie was involved in another band with Lou, Dream. Also featured in the band was Lou’s brother Max Harris on keyboards. The band was influenced by Patti Smith (Lou’s greatest influence then and now) and Pink Military.

Lou at Centro Iberico 1982 – photo – Mick Lugworm collection

Dream performed at the Harrow Road autonomy centre, the Centro Iberico on a couple of occasions in the summer of 1982.

Dream – Centro Iberico June 1982 <<< Tape to download>>>

Dream – Private Recordings 1982 <<< Tape to download>>>

Both sides of this cassette are recorded in mono and the cassette ‘sleeve’ is an old page of KYPP fanzine issue five; cassette info hand written by Mick Lugworm!

But around the middle of 1982 Lou had a life changing moment and the darkness started to cast around her already fragile psyche.

Lou’s parents decided to organise their daughter to be sectioned under the mental health act in the autumn of 1982. Lou was self-harming at an alarmingly consistent rate at this stage. Lou’s father unbeknown to Lou at the time picked her up in his car and drove her to Tooting Springfield hospital and dropped her off there to be ‘examined’.

The area in the hospital that Lou was taken to was the Wisteria Ward.

She spent around eight weeks on the ward. During this time she was being forced fed antipsychotic drugs which were not working, just gave her several episodes of jerking fits. Procyclidine, an anticholinergic drug was added to the daily menu.

She had friends visiting during this time one of which Mark Edmonson the guitarist of Youth In Asia.

Mark made a deal with the hospital and with Lou’s parents to look after Lou and that he would ensure she took her drugs. Mark allowed Lou to stay at Lithos Road in Finchley. Soon enough the two were in a relationship. Mark got Lou into Youth In Asia as a second guitarist. They played several gigs toward the end of 1982 the pinnacle of which was performing at the Black Sheep housing co – op organised Zig Zag squat all day gig in Westbourne Park late on in December. Crass also helped to advertise and clean this venue for the day’s events. The first choice of squatted venue, the Rainbow in Finsbury Park, was found to be too risky the night before. Youth In Asia performed amongst the cream of 1982 anarcho punk bands including Flux Of Pink Indians, Poison Girls, The Mob, Faction, The Apostles, Amebix, Omega Tribe, Null And Void and Crass.

Lou left Youth In Asia early on in 1983 as Mike Clarke from the band Windsor’s Disease took over guitar duties. Mike was a far more accomplished guitarist than Lou at that time. Probably still is. Kay from the band continued to inspire Lou to get back to being a vocalist in a band.

Lou was still living with Mark in Lithos Road and as Mark was very close to Crass, the couple would spend many days away from London and in the beautiful confines of Dial House in North Weald Essex. Lou wrote in a long distressed letter about her feelings about the street violence she saw around her and the experiences that she had with being assulted. Penny wrote a very long and kindly reply to Lou which she states helped her immensely. It was around this time that Lou and Penny Rimbaud from Crass discussed a possible single release on the Crass record label. Lou went into a studio to record some demos for Penny. Involved in the session was Simon who was the partner of Lou’s sister. Two tracks recorded were ‘Grey man’ a track written about her experiences in Wisteria Ward at the Totting Springfield hospital and ‘The Field’ about the Stonehenge trips that Lou had embarked on with the Puppy Collective and the Brougham Road crew. After these tracks were complete the cassette tape was given to Penny who unfortunately but politely rejected the material.

Youth In Asia were also offered a release on Crass but alas split up shortly before it was organised. Members of Youth In Asia turned up shortly afterwards as Decadent Few.

Lithos Road in Finchley was suddenly becoming populated with punks and squatters due to a new Autonomy Centre starting off opposite Mark’s co-op squat. This autonomy centre was named the Burn It Down Ballroom. This venue / workspace was where the bands on the scene would turn up to to perform; hand in hand with the Rosebery Avenue autonomy centre in Islington which was up and running around the same time.

Mark moved out of Lithos Road in 1984 and the space was taken up by a good friend of the Puppy Collective; Julian AKA Joe Pop.

Rob Challice was still a Brougham Road resident living at number 96 where he was in charge of Wot Distribution and All The Madmen records. Andy Morgan soon to join Blyth Power was Rob’s co worker at this time. The office was at the front of the building on the second floor overlooking the many trucks and converted buses that would be parked up along the road with many people and dogs and cats residing on them.  JC and New Zealand Darren were also residing at 96 Brougham Road at this stage.

Joe Pop moved out of Lithos Road towards the end of 1985 and Rob who was now in a relationship with Lou spent the day time hours in Brougham Road and night time hours in Lithos Road with Lou.

Around this time after a gap of around a year Lou felt confident enough to start singing again on stage with a band. She placed an advert in Melody Maker stating Magazine, Bowie and Patti Smith as influences which gained interest from a band (with no vocalist) called Umbrellas Of Cherbourg.

The musicians Boggie, Squid and Mick who eventually formed the backbone of Hysteria Ward were (happily enough) friends of Mark Edmonson from Youth In Asia who had got Lou out of the Wisteria Ward and into his care some years previously.

Lou – photo – Lou’s collection

Rob Challice guided Lou and her band Hysteria Ward into the pubs and clubs of the time towards the end of 1985; one special occasion was when the band performed at a street party in Lithos Road along with Lou’s old band mates Decadent Few. Hysteria Ward were a much more professional and long-standing band than Lou’s previous band incarnations, with the immense help of Rob Challice the band performed many times in London. Lou or myself whilst we were talking trying to remember the ‘history’ could not remember Hysteria Ward performing outside London except for a performance in Brighton in April 1986.

Blyth Power, Hysteria Ward and Wat Tyler all jumped into JC’s bus parked outside 96 Brougham Road along with myself, I had started working for ‘free’ at All The Madmen records from the last months of 1985, Sean Gummidge the Wat Tyler vocalist was within the All The Madmen ranks around six months previous to myself. JC drove us to the seaside together and we all did normal seaside type things throughout the day finishing off with a blistering gig in the evening. Hysteria Ward played well that night probably because Brighton crowds were not quite as cynical as London crowds who tended to resort to heckling quite easily. Robin and Lee from Acid Rain tapes organised this classic gig with all the bands caught on the top of their game at the Art College Basement.

Hysteria Ward – photo – Darren Clements collection

Hysteria Ward seemed to go through several drummers in quite a quick time. Squid also left the band after little after a year. New Zealand Darren who was still living at 96 Brougham Road along with JC joined as the band’s drummer. Rob Challice had left Brougham  Road and was living full time with Lou at Lithos Road.

Rob Challice and Lou during a break in recording at R.M.S. studio – photo – Lou’s collection

Rob Challice had been getting Hysteria Ward some studio time throughout the differing line ups and some of the results ended up on the All The Madmen released cassette tape and flexi disc released at the beginning of 1987.

All The Madmen had left Brougham Road early in 1987 to engage in the hustle and bustle of Caledonian Road in Kings Cross. Above Better Badges, below Fuck Off Tapes (several months later to be replaced by Cooking Vinyl). Over the road to Rough Trade Distribution. A much different experience than the relative laid back vibe of the hidden away from the main drag, Brougham Road in Hackney.

Vendetta / As Was / Free Spirits / Breakfast To Madness / 1000 Years Ago / The Saint <<< Tape to download>>>

Vietnam / Ribbons And Roses / Jungle / Rep-Hes-Dev / The Lodge / Peace Song <<< Tape to download>>>

Rough Mixes 1 <<< Tape to download>>>

Rough Mixes 2 <<< Tape to download>>>

Vendetta/ The Saint  <<< Flexi to download>>>

John Peel played the flexi disc on several occasions. Hysteria Ward continued to perform gigs but things started to sour a little with the slog and the low audience appreciation. Times had changed on the gig circuit. Bands like Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror were getting the excitement of the crowd by 1987, not bands like Hysteria Ward.

Timebox night at the Bull And Gate Kentish Town 1986 – photo – Lou’s collection

The last gig Hysteria Ward performed was at the Bull And Gate in Kentish Town in 1987. The band told Lou that they were fed up and wanted to move on to other things. Boggie and Lou, the two original members of the band left after that night’s gig, remained friends and still see each other to this day. As does Squid another original member of Hysteria Ward who left a year before.

Rob and Lou moved out of Lithos Road and into a house in Willesden sometime in 1988.

Rob stopped the All The Madmen record label and started off Firefly records (Vision Of Change) and started to work closely with Michelle Shocked. Rob also started to put on US/ UK hardcore shows at the Sir George Robey in Finsbury Park alongside Rob Tennant of the Vinyl Solution record shop. Sean went on to continue his 69 tapes empire and eventually got his ‘dream’ job at Rough Trade Ladbroke Grove. I went onto begin King Penguin Distribution and eventually got my ‘dream’ job at Southern Studios / Southern Record Distribution early in 1989.

Lou who had already performed several ‘acoustic’ solo gigs, memorably one at Meanwhile Gardens in 1987 continued to perform solo. Rob Challice organised an Italian tour for her in the 1990′s. With the rise of the Mad Pride culture celebrating individuals that society feels are ‘unwell’. Hysteria Ward reformed for the odd gig or two. Old Wapping autonomy Centre regular, Apostles and Rudimentary Peni supporter Robert Dellar, who used to produce the ‘Straight Up’ fanzine from Watford and then Brighton, was heavily involved in getting his old friend Lou back on the stage during this time in the 1990′s. Robert Dellar was also the chap who was involved in Spare Change book publishing, Nick Blinko’s ‘The Primal Screamer’ is on Spare Change books as is ‘Mad Pride’ – the book an essay in ‘Mad Pride’ is written by Louise herself.

Artwork by Lou – Lou’s collection

These days Lou lives quietly with her grown up daughter Rebecca in Barnet. Rob Challice, Rebecca’s father also lives locally to Louise in Barnet.

Thanks to Lou for lending me these personal cassettes and photographs to accompany this post and also for discussing all the memories one Saturday afternoon.

Please forgive Lou if some dates or some facts are blurred. It all happened a long time ago and Lou still has to take similar drugs to the ones given out to her when she was a patient at the Wisperia ward in 1982. Thirty years ago. So some of her memories are blurred and collide somewhat.

A new post and a KYPP exclusive. Blood And Roses, personally one of my favourite bands from the early 1980′s.

Bob Short is currently working on a new Blood And Roses album with Lisa. Hopefully it’ll come together but it involves passing recordings from Bob to Lisa across continents. Part of the process has been for Bob to remaster the tracks off of the ‘Love After Death’ cassette to work out what was being played and what the lyrics are. Fifty minutes of the original ninety minute cassette has been completed so far. That equates to eighteen tracks out of twenty eight from the original 96 Tapes release. Bob thought he would offer the results to KYPP in case anyone was interested as he has just spent a week or two trying to improve the quality! A kind thought indeed. There might be more tracks to come.

Thanks to Bob Short for sending me the remastered tracks all the way from New South Wales and also for the text written out below. Many thanks also to Andy Martin for the text he wrote on Blood And Roses and sent to me a couple of years ago. I have attached Andy Martin’s text below Bob Short’s.

BLOOD AND ROSES ‘LIFE AFTER DEATH’ REMASTERED (Tracklisting below)

01/ Scenario (Rehearsal  1981)

02/ Louie Louie (Rehearsal  1981)

03/ Paradise (Rehearsal  1981)

04/ I’m Waiting For My Man (Rehearsal  1981)

05/ Jesus (Clarendon Hotel 1981)

06/ Roles (Rehearsal  1981)

07/ Product Of Love (Clarendon Hotel 1981)

08/ Sympathy (Rehearsal  1981)

09/ Mummy (Clarendon Hotel  1981)

10/ Strychnine (Rehearsal  1981)

11/ Your Sin Is Your Salvation (8 Track Demo)

12/ Curse On You (8 Track Demo)

13/ Necromantra (8 Track Demo)

14/ Spit upon Your Grave (16 Track Demo)

15/ Possession (16 Track Demo)

16/ Tomorrow (8 Track Demo)

17/ Your Sin Is Your Salvation (Dub) (Casenove Road Demo)

18/ Love Under Will (8 Track Demo)

Looking back over thirty years, I am confronted by a world that even I find difficult to recognise; a world of cassette tape recorders with condenser microphones and telephone boxes on the corner, listening to John Peel on a battery powered transistor by candlelight. Sure kid, we had electricity in those days – unless you hadn’t quite managed to get it together to steal an old meter and jerry rig it into the squat wall. Or the police had torn it off said wall for kicks. Or the Council had dug up the lines in front of the house in an attempt to save on eviction costs. Or one of your friends had decided the meter was a Dalek during some kind of drug fuelled psychotic episode. Could have been some kind of power cut. They seemed to always be happening because of strikes or cut backs or something. Maybe God just decided to take a dump on. It’s been known to happen. Ask Job.

Was it surprising that there was always some kind of shit happening? There was always some sort of bomb going off here and a riot or two there. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and, like some kind of hell spawned Midas, everything she touched turned to shit. There was still good old British know how and crap made out of Bakelite barely holding the circuits of London together. When the fuse blew up in your plug, you wrapped foil from your cigarette packet around it. Every appliance in the capital seemed to be attached to a frayed cloth lead with odd patches of exposed metal shining through from where one of the local sewer rat went and fried itself. Why there wasn’t some all consuming second great fire is one of life’s great mysteries. Possibly, it was always raining.

Fortunately, if the power was off and the cold wind blew, you could always shuffle your way down to some club in search of light and heat. Of course you had to avoid a long list of youth sub cultures in your travels. Every night in London town was a reinvention of The Odyssey as told by some third rate Cockney Walter Hill. Can you dig it? Why did you go to gigs when skinheads were always turning up to beat you up? Well. If you stayed home they’d come around and beat you up anyway. You might as well go out, hang out with the herd and better your chances. And there was music (or at least some rhythmic pulsing noise pretending it was music.)

There’s the nostalgic cut and thrust part of proceeding dealt with. War Stories for the barely impressionable. Funny to think now that those second World War fogeys we mocked were closer to 1945 than we are to 1977. I just needed to get the idea of time and place settled before I talk about “Life and Death”, a cassette only release by Blood and Roses that was released by 96 Tapes in 1983/4. The reason it came out in the first place was every morning I woke up to a pile of blank cassettes and self addressed stamped envelopes courtesy of the mail man. Various darkly covered envelopes with felt pen decoration would make their introductions. Do you have any demo recordings? Live recordings? And dutifully I’d sit there pressing play and pause and waste precious time I could be indulging in debauchery. In hindsight, I know I was participating in a huge underground network communicating ideas and culture. If you think about it, it is a rather amazing phenomenon that probably deserves a University thesis. The trouble was, I was never a great revolutionary. I may well have had my revolutionary ideas and ideals but I essentially wanted to consume copious amounts of substances both illicit and otherwise whilst having sex with women. There were certain people who considered this to be reprehensible but they generally were not having sex with anyone so I envied them nothing.

“Rob,” I said to the Lord High God of 96 Tapes.  “Just let me shove everything on a cassette and they can buy it off of your fledgling musical empire. Then I can get on with my pitiful attempts at wenching and less than successful attempts at filling the gutters of Hackney with my vomit.”

“Sure,” says the Bossman. “How much do you want to charge?”

“Just costs. I don’t want to make any money off this shit”

“What do you want to put on the cover? We could put bats and spiders’ webs and shit on it. We could do a real Banshee’s thing on it”

“Fuck that. Put something repulsively cute on the cover. A baby seal. Some pretty flowers.”

“I got this picture of the kitten”

“Perfect.” says I. And that was the extent of our business and marketing dealings.

And perhaps that sounds dumb and cynical and somehow lacking in cultural, revolutionary or artistic zeal or merit. But if you want the truth about how this project got off of the ground, there you have it. But before you get too disappointed, just remember art has a funny way of shining through. These were a collection of recordings made in complete seriousness under absolutely absurd constraints. And when I actually went to put the master tape together, I began to realise I was actually creating a very weird piece of work. Instead of looking for the perfect takes – or even the acceptable takes – I was collecting a series of snap shots about how a band essentially comes in to being. And it is strangely compelling in a way that more commercially acceptable anthologies are not. That still didn’t prepare me for the fact that Robin Gibson gave it a five star album review in Sounds. What was he thinking?

Then I’d start reading someone say that this was ”the real Blood and Roses album” and… in many ways they were right.

Blood and Roses played most of their gigs in squats and squatted venues through PA’s that were far from effective. Okay; occasionally they were guitar amps or record player amplifiers and not PA’s at all and that may have explained their abject failures. In an attempt to hear herself, Lisa plugged her microphone into a guitar pedal. Any improvement in levels was at best a placebo.

I had a semi acoustic guitar I had bought for ten pounds (I got to knock the price down from fifteen because it didn’t have any pick-ups). I taped some pick-ups from a smashed guitar into it and then stuffed it full of toilet paper to stop it feeding back. We owned no amps. Whatever we could beg to play through we played too loud because it seemed like that was how you were supposed to do it.

It wasn’t like we were playing venues with sound guys. We just did our best to tack all this crappy equipment together and then put a cassette player somewhere. Then we’d get on the train or the bus home and listen to the cassette happily as our fellow public transport users recoiled in horror. Any venues that heard these tapes would black list us, nail their doors shut and call the police. So, yes. I guess this really is the authentic Blood and Roses album; not born of dreams but nightmares.

But it is not as if I am claiming some unique way of working. This determined seizure and misuse of any or all available tools of production was rampant. This was, however, a separation of working method from the first wave of punk bands who talked the talk about doing it yourself but pretty much recorded the same way all those rock and roll vampires had recorded; talked their way into record company demo’s. By the early Eighties, the major record companies had enough punk bands to keep them going. Gary Bushell’s myopic lenses kept the various sonic experiments committed in the nation’s squats in a state of premeditated commercial suicide. Even Crass seemed to have access to some sort of legitimate form of production. Given how far outside of society we had all tumbled, we clung to the lyrics of those we thought had blazed our trail. Someone locked the door? I’ll kick my way back in. Or that was the plan.

The music industry did not care if Andy Martin lurked in his attic with a couple of tape recorders and a five watt amp churning out  Apostle album after Apostle album having nothing but time on his hands. Out on the edge of the smoke, Faction pressed play and record, thrashed for a minute and a half and then pressed stop. Repeat until you have a dozen songs. Fill in the name of two hundred offenders I fail to mention. A house could fill up with band tapes if you didn’t watch out and remember to tape over them with your own band. Nothing like a roll of sticky tape to foil those copy protect tabs.

That is the world “Life After Death” begins in. The Clapham demo was created via a revolutionary idea. On a less than bright Sunday afternoon, we jumped the tube across the river and set up all of what little gear we could scrounge into the basement of a squat. I had got hold of this 35 watt amp that, if you pushed every dial up to full you could almost hear over the drums. When we played back the half dozen songs we recorded, we couldn’t hear the vocals at all. No problem. We put the cassette into another machine and then had Lisa sing it again with her right next to the recorder. The instrumental “Scenario” got added words because I picked up the first available book and read where I opened it at. Typically the library book in question must have fallen open at the… ahem… most read section. Professional microphone? Nah. The crappy built in thing records sound doesn’t it? High quality cassettes? I picked up these from that stall outside Boots for fifty pence. Each? Nah, all three.

If you somehow think I am mocking this process, you are wrong. Necessity is the mother of invention. The day you wait for someone to give you permission is the day you should give up. The day criticism is enough to slow you down means you are pushing a losing hand. Throughout my life, I have seen thousands of people waiting for their break, holding back for the perfect opportunity to strut their stuff. Waiting for that one perfect thing that is going to vindicate them. Guess what? I’ve haven’t seen it happen once.  The only way you can prove yourself artistically is to actually stand up and try to do something with whatever tools are at your disposal. If no one likes what you do, FUCK ‘EM. If all you care about is people liking what you do, FUCK YOU.

The Live at the Clarendon gig was recorded by Andy Martin for SCUM tapes. It was our first gig with Jez on bass and he’d been on bass for all of two minutes. The recording was made on a portable cassette player. It sounds like a toilet being flushed. It sounds just like every small punk gig you ever went to. It sounds totally and utterly real and wonderful but you’ll never need to listen to it twice.

From there on, the recordings get better. Unfortunately, the tapes are copies of copies of copies with each new generation layering its own peculiar rumble or EQ spike. I’ve put them though some software to try and improve some of the quality and trim off jagged tape recorder clicks. Sony has just invented some software that claims you can separate individual instruments so you can fix virtually anything up. Well. I thought that might defeat the purpose somehow. If these recordings were to suddenly morph into something listen-able, where would this leave the feeling of adventure and authenticity? Why isn’t your favourite track here you might ask. Well, “Life after Death” was a ninety minute tape and CDs to burn aren’t that big.  For this re-issue, I’ve decided to make two separate discs. Look out for “More Life After Death” coming soon.

And finally. Why now? Why bother?  Who cares? Well, I have been recording some backing tracks of some of the unreleased Blood and Roses songs and I needed to try to work out some of the lyrics. That’s why you have the misfortune to be able to download this. But why are you recording backing tapes?  Hmmmm. We’ll see.

BOB SHORT 2012

INDEBTED TO ANDY MARTIN FOR THE FOLLOWING TEXT THAT HE WROTE SPECIFICALLY FOR KYPP TWO YEARS AGO

That it has taken me near twenty seven years to have in my collection any music by Blood & Roses is surely perverse. I knew both Bob Short and Lisa Kirby from my days as an unlikely secretary of April Housing Co-op and I met Richard Morgan, the first drummer (who tried – without success – to convince me that Magazine really were a group worthy of my attention). I think I met Jez James, too, but it was also so dark in that terraced house in Yoakley Road, Stoke Newington, that I could never tell who I was talking to. (“Do any of you have any rent for us? You do know you’re two months in arrears.” Brief shuffling of feet from Bob accompanied by slightly guilty grin. “Oh, er, sorry Andy, not this week.”) So why has it taken all this time for me to appreciate what they contributed to pop music, especially in a decade as starved of anything decent, interesting or relevant as the 1980s?

First: in the 1980s I was so completely submerged within my own private hell (still not recovered from nearly two years in a psychiatric hospital, realising I was queer and loathing it) that only truly psychotic music could break through the mental turmoil in which I suffered – i.e. The Pop Group, Throbbing Gristle, The Lemon Kittens and Five Or Six (to give four examples). Punk rock was always utterly irrelevant to me (middle class spoiled brats playing at being rebels only appeal to the homicidal side of my nature) and the few genuinely working class people involved in the scene never seemed to bother being in bands.

Second: the group appeared to be adopted by the Kill Your Pet Puppy collective (as I perceived it – probably erroneously) and at the time I had an extremely turbulent relationship with that crowd – you see, I possessed the social skills of a rhinoceros (and probably still do – that I have hardly any friends will attest to that) yet these colourful characters actually dared to have parties and enjoy themselves in spite of – or perhaps to spite – Britain under Thatcher. I was unable to forgive such blatant decadence! After all, it was our duty to fight the good fight, to engage in the struggle and be forever frothing at the mouth with much wailing and gnashing of teeth while we locked ourselves in darkened rooms to plot the revolution. What an utterly boring bastard I must have been back then, unlike the supremely cool, windswept and interesting chap I am now.

Third: I was in a two-bit little pop group that I think I suspected was always destined to go nowhere very fast indeed and when Blood & Roses came along and showed us how it should be done, well, maybe I was just a little bit jealous.

Fourth: through no fault of the group, the music press (very briefly) developed a fascination with the group and decided to market them as New Goth thing (oh Jesus, give us a break) and exaggerate the Crowley Connection. In fact Bob Short did possess books by the miserable magi but, unlike so many other people during the previous two decades, he actually read and understood them (in so far as anyone can genuinely comprehend a book by Crowley). My heroes were people like Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Fred Hoyle, Carl Sagan and Patrick Moore so anything even remotely associated with magick, UFOs or the supernatural (I naively made no distinction) I simply dismissed as irrelevant to me.

I heard one cassette of five or six songs, recorded at Starforce Studio (where Twelve Cubic Feet also recorded their one album and where The Apostles recorded their first single) most of which I did enjoy – especially Tomorrow – but that was it. Important note for anyone new to this group: you will occasionally see their name linked with outfits such as Southern Death Cult, Sex Gang Children and Brigandage – ignore such associations immediately. There is absolutely no connection between Blood & Roses and all those other wallies. Also, there is nothing ‘Goth’ about Blood & Roses. How could anyone familiar with the group ever have concocted such an absurd relation?

The trouble is, whenever a pop group (or a writer, artist or film maker for that matter) cannot be easily labelled and categorised by those feeble minded miscreants who are employed to write about such people, the public have shoved in their faces so much ineffable twaddle that everyone (even the group) becomes perplexed and confused. I do remember the day Blood & Roses appeared on the front cover of the NME (and, I think, one or two other glossy magazines). In retrospect it was an excessively damaging development – the group was given an identity totally inappropriate to what it was actually about and the audience was thus completely misled. Had they been allowed to evolve at a more gradual pace, perhaps their ascent to the glory they deserved would have finally happened. That they were only able to release two singles and one album (whereas all that dismal and utterly irrelevant punk rubbish from Crass to The Exploited unleashed a torrent of vinyl, most of which was dire) is a damned shame, frankly – a case of quality rather than quantity.

Early incarnations of the group included No Allegiance (a good name for a group – one I nearly adopted except it sounded a little too close to punk) which changed into a symbol, a splendid hybrid of a swastika with a hammer and sickle. That was followed by “       “ which is my own favourite – that would have caused much consternation among music journalists and punters. Their next name was ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. After that rich heritage I found their ultimately adopted name Blood & Roses a complete disappointment. It refers to an old lesbian vampire film (I think). If there is any justice in the artistic world, the tracks from that Starforce Studio demo along with pieces from the cassette Life After Death (especially Scenario, Mummy, Product Of Love, Paradise and Curse On You) will also be remastered and issued on CD.

Dear Richard Morgan: it is time for me to repay a debt. On our new tracks, Asian Invasion, Thalidomide and The Phoenix recorded by UNIT you will hear the drum pattern you used on Tomorrow recycled, revamped and reconstituted but always recognisable. Imitation is indeed a sincere form of flattery (but I still think Magazine are crap).

There is good news – Bob Short at least is still creatively active, in film as well as in music. A couple of years ago he sent me (as electronic files) some tracks his new group had recorded – unfortunately our computer refused to play them so his new music still remains a mysterious entity at present. What happened to Lisa then? A singer of her ability and calibre ought not to languish in the relative obscurity of a 1980s pop group, however fondly remembered. Anyway, along with Five Or Six, 23 Skidoo, Twelve Cubic Feet, Cold War and Part 1, we can add Blood & Roses to that hallowed elite company of groups who were simply too unusual or too inventive to be appreciated properly at the time they were active.

ANDY MARTIN 2010

LISTEN TO THE WHOLE ‘LIFE AFTER DEATH’ CASSETTE RAW UNREMASTERED AND UNEDITED:  HERE

A rare post from a Lugworm to plug a recent release from an old face on the anarcho-punk scene. Chris Elephant Face/Cold War/Hagar The Womb/We Are Going To Eat You/Liberator Sound System. Despite his band claiming that “the internet is a load of shit, you can waste your life living in it”.  It’s nice to see someone still creating new music & not wallowing in nostalgia.
I’ve just returned from seeing them playing off a narrow boat on the River Lea (before they headed off to play a squat party in Camberwell) in one of the rare nice little spots in Hackney (no, that’s not an oxymoron). Think Meanwhile Gardens without the permission, you old scrotes!
Anyway, Chris is one of the few people from back in the day still regularly supporting the D.I.Y. culture either as a D.J. or with his band Dogshite, give them a listen here & check them out if they’re playing near you:

Spite Your Face

O.K.F.M.

Those KYPP browsers old enough and living in or around the London area in the early 1980′s may remember spending the odd Saturday afternoon in the Virgin record store in Oxford Walk underneath Oxford Street in the west end. This shop was much smaller than the Virgin megastore down the other end of Oxford Street next to Tottenham Court Road. The Virgin record shop in Oxford Walk specialised in punk and alternative records and tapes.

One of the long term workers in that store was Jim Foetus who one day happily sold me the very last copy of the leather look enveloped covered ‘Heyday’ cassette credited to the Sex Pistols released on Factory records (I did not know it was Jim Foetus at that time). Basically the cassette was just a load of interviews by Fred Vermorel slapped onto an admittedly nice looking package. I sold it on shortly afterwards to my regret years later after finding out it was a rare piece in its original form. It got sold with several other bits and bobs to help me fund £25 to buy an electric guitar from a junk shop a few days after a Clash gig! I wanted to form a band. Never happened!

Walking underneath Oxford Street towards the Virgin store you would notice that one part of the window display was seemingly always dedicated to this strange band with Foetus in the band title. Foetus Under Glass, Foetus On Your Breath, Foetus Vibrations. Seemingly Jim Foetus was promoting his own product through the Virgin retail outlet and good on him!

This debut 7″ single on the Self Immolation record label was similar in style to the extreme electronic sonics he was involved with previously in Come (see post below) in the late 1970′s. Although this debut 7″ single release does not exactly tear up trees, Jim Foetus by 1984 had morphed into Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel and had released the ‘Hole’ and ‘Nail’ LP’s via Some Bizarre records. Both of these LP’s are classics and extremely strong in content.

Text below courtesy of the official foetus.org website. Thanks to them / him in advance…

A MESSAGE FROM OUR FOUNDER

SELF IMMOLATION RECORDS WAS CONCEIVED IN 1980 AS AN OUTLET FOR RECORDED WORKS OF AGGRESSION, INSIGHT AND INSPIRATION, AND IN REACTION TO THE GENERAL MALAISE, MEDIOCRITY AND POISON RIFE IN THE MUSIC SCENE.  A DRIVING FORCE IS THE SHEER LACK OF ANYTHING WORTHWHILE; SELF IMMOLATION CAN BE SEEN ON ONE LEVEL AS A CRY OF DISGUST.  THE FOETUS FAMILY PREFERS THE OBSERVER TO NOT HAVE PRECONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE MUSIC, ESPECIALLY VIA THE APPEARANCE OF THE PERPETRATORS(S); THE ARTEFACT MUST BE JUDGED ON ITS MERITS ALONE.  THE FOETUS NEITHER WEARS ITS HAIRCUT ON ITS SLEEVE, NOR BLURTS SIMPLISTIC INTERPRETATIONS.  IN FACT, WE WELCOME MISINTERPRETATIONS: THEY CAN BE STIMULATING.

In the past, however, this has arguably scared off many as they have no yardstick(s) by which to judge our releases.  Well ain’t that just too bad.

Self Immolation basically provides an open avenue for the Foetus family to exercise their inalienable right to point at, poke or kick the shit out of what they deem worthy of degradation, glorification, insult or injury.

Self Immolation are not interested in commercial considerations.  We do not hold board meetings in recording studios; financial decisions are always secondary to artistic and aesthetic decisions.  The Foetus family has more soul and sincerity in its collective little finger than a mega unit of top 30′s has in its Swiss bank account.

However, Self Immolation is not elitist or willfully obscurantist.  Ours are commodities one cannot afford to be without…..the greater part of the world merely doesn’t know it yet.  Fling filth at pop kids!  Someone has to redress the balance!

In 1983, Self Immolation formed a close mutual working relationship with Some Bizzare, who now promote and release S.I. product to an increasingly rabid horde of Foetus followers.  This fruitful marriage has put S.I. in its strongest position yet, both artistically and in terms of public consciousness.

We are the good guys.  Viva mobility!  No fear…..No compromise.

Sincerely,

J.G.THIRLWELL

MANAGING DIRECTOR, SELF IMMOLATION