The Apostles – The First Demo – SCUM Tapes 1981

Erics Detachables / Some Men Are Born To Rule / Killing For Peace / Solidaridad Proletaria / New Crimes / Unknown / Proletarian Autonomy / The New Subhumans / Hyde Park / Time Bomb / Indian Thing / Drop The Bomb / No Clear Future

Absolution Of Guilt / Anti-Christ / Pete The Plectrum /Hyde Park / A Social Disease / The Stock Newington Eight / N.W.3 / Unknown / The Uniform / God Is Dead

The first line up of The Apostles, that actually got to record anything on tape, included Andy Martin, Pete Bynghall, Julian Portinari and Dan MacKintyre.

There was an earlier version of The Apostles with the members above, but they had a guy called Matt MacLeod instead of Andy Martin. This line up had been around for a little under a year or so.

Around the same point in time late 1980, the band Black Cross featured Andy Martin, The Innocent Bystander featured Dave Fanning, and Libertarian Youth featured both John Soares and Martin Smith. Eventually all these individuals from these bands would converge to make a most excellent version of The Apostles sometime in mid to late 1982. This line up recorded  the very good ‘Libertarian Propaganda’ cassette uploaded somewhere else on this site.

The first demo cassette was recorded by the band in a bedroom and released via the fanzine network and sold at the odd live performance by the band. It is not a studio release and should be treated as ‘historical’ interest only.

The sound is raw, sometimes muddy Punk Rock, recorded at different levels, sometimes through one speaker (at least on my cassette – maybe I have had a dud all these years?). There are some decent attempts of songs like ‘Drop The Bomb’ and ‘Stoke Newington Eight’ but most of the cassette is pretty rough stuff to listen to.

Would suggest this tape is for ‘experienced’ Apostles audiophiles only…If this is your first Apostles experience then turn it off and listen to ‘Libertarian Propaganda’ or ‘Punk Orbituary’ instead (somewhere else on this site) absorb these releases mentioned and play them over and over and then later, much later, return to this release!

Official Apostles Site

8 comments
  1. Nic
    Nic
    December 31, 2007 at 9:51 am

    For me, this is another classic because it was the first material I heard by the group in late 1981 when I started writing to them (because of – if I remember rightly – the small article on them in the fanzine Paroxysm Fear which was made by the drummer of the band Flack)…
    A lot of old favourites on here…

    One thing I noticed: the tracklist doesn’t seem to be correct…
    I make out the running order as:

    Eric’s Detachables (which was re-recorded under the name ‘Geoff Boycott’ on later demos, and also formed part of ‘The Hunt’ on the first LP)
    Some Men Are Born To Rule (the first song the group ever wrote)
    Killing For Peace
    Solidaridad Proletaria (This is the original title at the time of recording: it was later changed to ‘A New World In Our Hearts’ and was re-recorded on both tape and vinyl)
    New Crimes
    ? (I can’t remember the title of this instrumental)
    Proletarian Autonomy (later re-recorded on tape and vinyl)
    The New Subhumans
    Hyde Park
    Time Bomb
    Indian Thing (an instrumental)
    Drop the Bomb (This is the original title at the time of recording – it was later named ‘Where Will You Be?’)
    No Clear Future

    Absolution Of Guilt
    Anti-Christ
    Pete The Plectrum (later formed part of ‘The Hunt’ on the first LP)
    Hyde Park
    A Social Disease
    The Stoke Newington Eight (later re-recorded on vinyl)
    N.W.3 (This was later re-named ‘After the Fact’ and was re-recorded on both tape and vinyl)
    ? (I can’t remember the title of this instrumental)
    The Young Ones (later re-named ‘The Uniform’ and recorded on tape)
    God Is Dead

    I had a feeling that ‘Hello Mark’ was part of the first demo, but it’s not on here: I was probably mistaken…

  2. Penguin
    Penguin • Post Author •
    December 31, 2007 at 10:12 am

    Corrected now, must admit Nic, was not listening to the tracks when they were running – had to do some household stuff. Cheers for the extra info.

  3. Chris
    Chris
    January 2, 2008 at 1:21 am

    ‘Anti-Christ’ i still think is an absolutely stunning track and fascinating in the disparity between the structure and melodies incorporated into the tune and the musical abilities of the band at the time.

  4. Chris
    Chris
    January 2, 2008 at 1:26 am

    Original bassist, Julian added an interesting appendix to the biog on the Apostles myspace page:

    Hate to sound like Anal Mcloony but you’ve got your dates wrong methinks…yep the Apostles were started in 81 by the 4 bods you’ve named (better just add they were 14 years old at the time) but Bill Corbett never sang for the band as he had his own project Primal Chaos, (that’s one for the archive obsessive…dare you to find any of their cassette demos.), and Andy took up vocal duties after Pete/Jules/Dan went to his squat in Hackney and played some tunes to him. He deffo liked them as he put his foot through his living room door to show his appreciation! This was sometime in 81 and the band soon began to gig and write more tunes with Andy doing most of the lyrics, apart from the odd song such as God is Dead or Killing for Peace which appear on the first cassette album…then came the anarchy centre in Wapping and the gigs continued…infact there’s a cassette of the Apostles/the Synix and i think The Mob from the Brighton gig you’ve got a photo of on the page…another one for the anarcho obsessive! By mid 82 the three original members of the band found themselves increasingly marginalisd and often uncomfortable with some of Andy’s more extreme ideas and methods and left the Apostles (15 year old’s huh, what can you do?)…possibly one of the first times a band have left themselves!
    Andy continued with the project under the Apostles banner and the three original members formed The London Orchestra Of Simple Dischord (featuring Pete’s legendary Feedback guitar) who continued to gig the anarcho circuit and such luminous venues as The moonlight club.
    Andy remained friends and asked Pete/Dan to play on the first EP which they did, the bass talents of Jules not being needed as Dave had joined by this point…and the rest is, as they say is history.

  5. Nuzz
    Nuzz
    January 3, 2008 at 7:58 pm

    Just converted a right rough 16minute recording of primal scream it goes under the name of fighting for a future 3 unnamed songs, rougher than a badgers butt. I was gonna be posting that along with a compilation called shine on with The Apostles/Nightmare/the astronauts/chumbawumba amongst others on it, on my blog over the next couple of days

    http://nuzzprowlinwolf.blogspot.com/

  6. Penguin
    Penguin • Post Author •
    January 3, 2008 at 9:11 pm

    Primal Chaos Nuzz, yes ?

  7. jon.6
    jon.6
    January 17, 2008 at 6:21 pm

    this is totally different from my copy of the first demo. i haven’t played it for many years (no tape deck) but it has a photocopy sleeve (of course) with a drawing of someone shooting up, and only about 10 tracks… somewhere i also have the next few demos and a load of live tapes i recorded both at Wapping and Centro Iberico… not sure what state they will be in after many years in the loft tho!

  8. Chris Low
    Chris Low
    January 19, 2008 at 3:27 am

    jon, would love to hear what old apostles tapes you have. you can contact me through penguin or KYPP. cheers, chris

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