Crass – Toxic Grafity Fanzine – 1979

First pressing of flexi

Second pressing of flexi

Crass – ‘Tribal Rival Rebel Revel’ flexi disc

This particular issue of Toxic Grafity is probably the most well known of the handful that were produced. It was also one of the best selling (of all fanzines, not just Toxic Grafity!) due to the free flexi disc of a (then) unreleased track by Crass being included.

It should be noted that Throbbing Gristle are also featured in this issue which was always a bonus for fanzines in the late 1970’s.

I am indebted to Toxic Grafity’s writer and editor, Mike Diboll for supplying the following information below on how this particular issue of Toxic Grafity got produced. All artwork on this post is from this issue of Toxic Grafity.

This edition of Toxic Grafity was put together while I was squatting in New Cross, south London and originally printed during late 1979, but it didn’t really get into folks homes until early 1980, when a substantial reprint was done. Originally 2,000 came off the presses, quite how many were eventually printed, I am not sure.

 

Joly from Better Badges (who also printed the first three KYPP’s fanzines, the last three were printed by Little ‘A’ Printers) used to always swing things so it seemed that I owed him lots of money (quite large sums for those days); I’m sure he may well have been diddling me, but that was my fault, because I was very naive in those days and thought that anything do with business, copyright etc, was bourgeois and reactionary, so perhaps I deserved it. Also, it must also be added that I was off my head a fair bit in those days, but of course so was Joly! Judging by the number of flexi’s that were sent to Better Badges, I suspect the actual print run was over 10,000, perhaps well over.

 

A year before the release of this particular issue of Toxic Grafity, in 1978, and also during 1979, there had been some really nasty rucks at Crass gigs at the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square in west central London. These rucks had mainly been fought between boneheads and bikers brought in by the SWP.

 

I can’t remember what the gigs were in aid of, but it was something the SWP had a hand in. The boneheads were used to pushing punks around, but got far more than they bargained for when taking on the bikers, some of whom were grown men in their 30s and 40s armed with bike chains, knives etc. After those experiences at there concerts Crass seemed to get a lot more edgy than they had been previously about sharing any sort of platform with members of the ‘hard’ left wing.

The lyrics to the Crass 7″ single ‘Bloody Revolutions’ is based on that feeling from the band around this time.

 

Basically it was the left wing causes that Crass would sometimes support, that seemed to aggravate the boneheads, and of course the boneheads would generally mill around the halls looking dangerous, and on occasions causing some real trouble.

Toxic Grafity didn’t really have those left wing associations, and (luckily) I also knew a few of the bonehead contingent quite well. I had always despised their ideology, but on a human level I was quite friendly with some of them. This I think helped diffuse things when Crass performed at the Toxic Grafity event staged at the Conway Hall late on in 1979.

 

 

It was not a violent night at all, which was obviously good news at the time considering the previous gigs at the Conway Hall. There were of course some minor problems, but those situations were quickly nipped in the bud by some friends of my family that had come to witness the gig.

 

The flexi disc followed on from the Toxic Grafity benefit gig, it was Penny’s idea, he bought it up one evening at Dial House, the Crass commune, way out in North Weald, Essex.

 

The original Toxic Grafity benefit was staged because of an incident late on in 1978 when I was pulled by the police in Soho, the seedier area of the west end of London. The police stopped me on one of those charges they used to pick punks and other ne’r-do-wells up on, the infamous SUS law. I had stopped off in Soho on my way back from a visit to Dial House, and had the artwork of an earlier Toxic Grafity on me. The police found this highly amusing, as you might imagine, destroyed the artwork, treated me a bit roughly, threatened me, and said that they’d put me on some sort of Special Branch terrorist watch list. Looking back on this as a 50 year-old I can see that this was almost certainly bullshit, but I took it seriously enough at the time!

As a result, Crass decided to help Toxic Grafity out (a previous issue had carried one of the first in-depth interviews with them), and the gig at the Conway Hall and the flexi disc followed on from that.  

 

The track on the flexi disc, was not one of Crass’ more in-depth or enigmatic tracks, rather it was what it says it is, a protest against violent political sectarianism screwing up the young. Of course I was extramely grateful never the less.

I’ve repudiated so much of what I used to believe in during those days in the late 1970’s, but the closing words for Crass’ ‘Bloody Revolutions’ track “but the truth of revolution, brother, is Year Zero” still appeals to the Burkeian in me!

 

Joly at Better Badges did the litho printing for the fanzine and sorted out the badges. Southern Studios took care of the flexi disc by Crass, but I can’t remember where they had it pressed, or how many exactly were manufactured. The Crass flexi discs were written in red for the original publication of Toxic Grafity, others were written in silver for subsequent issues of the fanzine.

 

Eventually there were five Toxic Grafity fanzines that were produced and sold from 1978 – 1981.

 

Toxic Grafity issue 6 and 7 were planned and in large part nearly prepared, but I became a father in March 1982 (I’m now a grandfather, twice), and ‘reality’ stepped in quite soon after so all those projects were cancelled.

 

The later Toxic Grafity’s, including the issue above, had dropped the whole band interview thing and had became more like an anarcho-punk agit-art magazine, similar to what Kill Your Pet Puppy would evolve into.

 

By 1983 I was doing a lot of dispatching and also a lot of ‘white van man’ work until sometime in 1989. While doing these small jobs, a friend of mine, Wayne Minor (from Brixton’s 121 Railton Road bookshop) and myself brought out one issue of “The Commonweal” which was a more mainstream anarchist publication in 1985.

 

In 1989 I entered university as a mature student.

 

I now live and work in the middle east.

To advertise this issue of Toxic Grafity, Crass arranged to press up a few hundred vinyl copies of the same version of ‘Rival Tribal Rebel Revel’ to give to record stores that were ordering the fanzine in bulk. This was so the shop had a ‘hard’ vinyl copy that the shop could play rather than play the flexi disc from the fanzine if any potential buyers wanted a snippet pre buying the product.

With thanks to Chris Low for supplying the personal letter from Mike to Chris

310 comments
  1. Sam
    Sam
    April 14, 2009 at 10:31 pm

    Thanks Ian!

    Tinkle of glasses, hubbub in the background and a geriatric, closeted nancy boy at the piano. That’s the one!

    Sam

  2. Ian S
    Ian S
    April 14, 2009 at 11:12 pm

    ‘geriatric, closeted nancy boy at the piano’

    His name is Tony Pearson and he makes people happy.

  3. Sam
    Sam
    April 15, 2009 at 1:26 am

    Sorry Ian, I meant it fondly. No offense meant.

    Sam

  4. Ian S
    Ian S
    April 15, 2009 at 9:14 am

    None taken Sam. Tony is indeed quite a shy man, he comes out of his shell when he gets at the keyboard.

    There’s also round-the-piano singing at the Duke of Kendal off Edgware Road, not that far from the Golden Eagle, where June does the honours.

    If you’re missing hearing some London sounds over in the States, there are some recordings here:

    http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk/index.php/survey/categories/

    Market traders, piano singing, football chants, dog racing, street preachers and lots more.

  5. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 16, 2009 at 9:19 pm

    What’s the name of the pub under the railway bridge near Brighton station, the one with the Bankski John Peel and kissing coppers? I ought to remember its name; I know it well for its “last chance saloon” provision of real ales when leaving Brighton. Anyway, that pub does good pub-rock, although a bit tribute-ish and not quite pub rock as I remember it.

    A couple of stops up on the London-Brighton railway there’s the Kings Head in Burgess Hill, which is a lot more spit ‘n’ sawdust & on the surface nothing at all to write home about, but have some excellent local bands at the weekend, who reprise the old punk classics with gusto, with genuine late 40s, early 50s ex-punks.

    Re Sam’s point about “teenagers” being a 1950s invention, that’s interesting. I see what he means, but that would make us all (in our old days) part of some sort of consumerist social engineering. Not that I’m denying it at all, it makes sense. But would 1950s US ad men ever have anticipated Crass?

    I’ll put the time machine in fast forward, some idiot has put me in charge (if only they knew!), as Head of Professional Development charged with reforming secondary school education and the retraining of existing secondary school teachers in the “Kingdom” (it’s about the size of Corfu) of Bahrain. Maybe they’ve got the right guy after all!

    The idea is that the existing education system has not delivered the goods in terms of enabling learners to achieve their best, has disaffected Bahraini youth from education, and pushed many towards extremism. I failed my 11 plus, went to a real shit secondary modern school, but eventaully ended up, via TG, Crass, anarch-punk &ct with a PhD. So perhaps I am a suitable guy for the job!

    Anyway, a big part of teacher (re-) education here is the psychology of adolescence, as it is that this age that the young Arab guys get dragged into extremism, &ct (the young women are much more mature). It may well be that traditional societies managed this crucial change more quickly and more effectively that the protracted adolescence of modernity and consumerism.

    The idea of the “teenager” might well be a marketing concept. But the stuff to do with the interaction between psychological and physiological development (negotiated through hormones) certainly isn’t.

    So perhaps the “teen” phenomenon is objectively real after all. I suspect that it is, but that however difficult it is “naturally”, it doesn’t last that long. I think the big sin of the 1950s marketing men (I’m sure they were all men then) was in projecting the “difficult” years of 11-13 into early adulthood.

    This in turn is part of a wider infanticisation of society that accompanies consumer capitalism. The teen “revolution” of the 1950s, therefore, involved the projection of the anxieties of a 12 year old onto 18 year-olds, 19 year-olds, and even into the early 20s. Come the ’60s and 70s d-rugs are thrown into an already very volatile concotion.

    The process doesn’t end there. As we get into the ’80s, the ’90s and the Noughties infantilism is projected into people’s entire adult lives, and no one ever grows up, but endlessly attempts to relive and revive the anxieties and cheap thrills “teenage kicks” of their early teens, as if this were some sort of holy grail. Why else would we be reading and writing stuff like this. Even the real wrinx retired pople in the 60s, 70s and even 80s seem to be deterimined to revert to their teens. How embarrassing!

    Jake, you’ve travelled to and lived in the non-Western world. You must have seen how the cult of youth and teen-ism is far less prevelent there? There grey hairs are respected, perhaps too much.

    That said, I’m sure that as the really big developing world countries, India, China, Brazil &ct “develop” into mass consumer capitalism, mall culture &ct infantilism will rule the roost there too, just as it took root in the US and UK 50 years ago.

    Come the coming catastrophy, all this will seem so decadant and nieve. God, I’ve got boozer’s gloom! Next w/e my wife and kids return from the UK, and I’ll be happier!

  6. andus
    andus
    April 16, 2009 at 11:55 pm

    When I was a kid, if a fight started on the school playground the so called adults would escalate it, First we would be taken to the Headmasters office (note how he was called the ‘Headmaster’ as in nurgh nurgh nurgh nurgh I’m better than you) to be caned, this usually caused a third fight where one pupil would seek revenge on the other for being caned or more usually for ‘grassing’ instead of keeping mum. The so called teachers would then have turned one fight into three fights, with weaponry being introduced for the second one and the rule that the pupil must not defend himself.
    On a Saturday afternoon when there were no teachers present, just one fight would take place and that would be the end of the matter.
    The teachers were obsessed with control, believing that if they did not take firm control over the pupils and exact a stiff deterrent all manner of chaos and evil would ensue, they believed a pandora’s box would be opened, so in order to keep that box closed they put a big and heavy stone slab over the door, the stone slab crushed pandora’s box splitting the sides and all manner of chaos and evil came flooding out.

    We also used to form gangs and fight each other over trivial differences. in much the same way the adult world would fight over the petty differences of religion,ideology and culture, the only difference being that they took it far more seriously. Death was introduced.

  7. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 17, 2009 at 9:16 am

    Hi Andus,

    Re:

    “. . .the adult world would fight over the petty differences of religion,ideology and culture, the only difference being that they took it far more seriously. Death was introduced.”

    I reckon that real wars are seldom fought over these things, although they can be used in an ideology-as-false-consciousness way to get populations “on side” for war.

    After nearly 200 years Von Clausewitz’s observation runs true, that “War is not an independent phenomena, but is the continuation of politics by other means. . .politics is the womb in which war develops”.

    Thus, if you look beyond the rhetoric and ideology for most wars (including recent ones), you find at least one of the following: attampts to open up, control, or monopolise markets; attempts to secure or control vital resources; bids to achieve global or regional hegemony, or to checkmate the hegemonic ambitions of others; attempts to extend territory under control, or defend against other’s attempts to do so, &ct, &ct, &ct. Things like religion and culture have far less to do with it than people think.

  8. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 17, 2009 at 9:34 am

    Re school, when I was at primary school in the 1960s (I was born in 1959), corporal punishment was very widespread, including nasty things like a casual rap across the knuckles with the sharp edge of a ruler (Imperil meansurements, of course!) You’d be lucky to get through a week at school without being hit in one way or another.

    That said, in their own way the teachers were considerate and professional, and had good insights into how children learn — violence that would be seriously illegal today aside.

    My primary school teachers were an aging lot even then, so you have to remember that a senior teacher at that time would have first trained in the late 1920s or early ’30s, and that her mentors (or his, men could work as primary school teachers in those days without being thought nonces) might well have trained at the turn of the C19th/C20th.

    Despite the beatings then, my memories of primary school are almost entirely positive, and the odd thwack aside I recall is as a tender, nuturing place.

    My memories of secondary school are far darker. Unlike my primary school teachers my secondary school ones were incompetent idiots who it was impossible to respect.

    There was still some corporal punishment, but nowhere near as much as primary school. In its place was cod-military discipline, “dark sarcasm in the classroom”, regimentation, bullying from Lord of the Flies prefects, and lots and lots of really nasty humiliation.

    That really, really hurt, and I remember secondary school as a dark, fearful place in hich teachers attempted to crush my spirit and at which I learned practically nothing.

    The rise of educational psychiatry didn’t help, and when I started to get really out of hand and the incompetent teachers didn’t know what to do with me they called the country head. Shrink in.

    Luckily she was of a somewhat better calibre and sad more or less that I was a fairly normal, intelligent lad and the teachers needed to adjust to my learning style. This really pissed them off as they had been hoping that she’d move to get me sectioned (or what ever it was called in those days) so as to take the problem out of their hands.

    A bookish sort I gave 6th Form & A Levels a shot, but dropped out early in my first year of 6th form, in 1976, as out in the wider society more interesting things were going on at that time!

  9. andus
    andus
    April 17, 2009 at 11:27 am

    Mike. Yes war is mainly about the gaining territory and wealth, however that is usually the motivation of Goverments and leaders, not of the ordinary people who fought, for instance the puritans who fought Charles 1st really did hate catholics. and muslim extremists really do hate western christians and vice versa.

    Your experience at secondary school sounds identical to my experience, even up to the point of being sent to see a psychiatrist. who turned round and said virtually exactly the same thing as your one did. This psychiatrist chap read the letter the teacher had given me to hand him, and lost his temper, he threw it in the bin, explaining. ‘ Bloody cretin’, he was talking about my headmaster. Of course at the age of 13, this delighted me no end, I was over the moon.

  10. baron von zubb
    baron von zubb
    April 17, 2009 at 2:52 pm

    More interesting stuff on the diabolical thread.

    The thing with UK pubs is there both better when you live abroad and if you drink alcohol.
    Good things as a part of the cultural landscape
    Old beams are nice, but bejesus, as boring to look at as others drunk drivel is to listen too.
    Maybe I should start bevying?
    Parents. Hmmm.
    How did we manage to equate our beatings at school, the pathetic celebrations of the jubilee and prog rock as being their fault.
    Is it because in our ignorance and lack of imagination we just couldnt concieve (…sorry) that the pill didnt exist then, and that they could BOTH have no choice as to have -us- kids but still WANT to as well.
    For my part and for those I know about, what we put them through was far in excess of what they put us through.
    A bit more than thinking they were old cunts.
    I aint pleeding guilty and seeking absolvetion.
    Shit happens.
    But why did we feel legitimised or entightled?
    As I said we chose not to like Joan Armatrading.
    Or were they all so boring? Those nice tunes.
    If so then we were all merely products of the times, media and urban enviroment and the whole punk thing as dull as Oasis.
    BTW, I had all that shrink stuff, from the 5th year on, too.
    I reckon they had a point….
    xxx J

  11. andus
    andus
    April 17, 2009 at 4:46 pm

    Of course they fucking did.

  12. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 17, 2009 at 4:52 pm

    “For my part and for those I know about, what we put them through was far in excess of what they put us through.”

    Tell me about it! I think I’d crack after a year or so if my son put me through half of what I put my lot through. They must have had constitutions of iron, but then if you’ve lived through the Blitz, &ct. . . .

    Actually, no, I don’t think I would crack, although I wouldn’t be over the moon about it. Come to think of it, there was never a dull moment when my grown up daughter was in her teens, and some of it was pretty nasty stuff. . .

    Another one who was under the school shrink. There we have it: we were all nuts! It does seem to carry some explanatory force!

    But then think back to a couple of postings, about how shit the school system was in the ’70s. Maybe it wasn’t us who were nuts, but the majority who put up with this shit and thought it was normal; shades of R.D. Laing?

    My school called in the shrink toward the end of my 5th year, in June 1976. One teacher who prided himself on his “liberal” views (he was a Baha’ who I was also into) went into some schpiel about how there was another side to the uprisings in Soweto that month, how his brother in SA had to treat the “Bantus” who worked in his hotel as if they were children, because they kept on breaking plates, &ct. I stood up in class and told him “fuck off”, so obviously I was nuts!

    In my very brief career as a 6th Former he was 6th Form Tutor, and held a “democratic” vote among the other 6th formers to get me blackballed from the 6th Form Common Room. Only one (I suspect I know who) voted in favour of his motion. My first brush with democracy. A few months later I was out of there. I eventually got to university via an Access Course for “mature students”, in 1989.

    Certainly what with “school” our first direct experience of “the state” it was hardly surprising that we checked Punk, and for political stuff Anarchism, &ct., even before we really knew what it was.

    In fact, it amazes me now that (apart from Punk’s brief phase as a “fashion”), it was relatively few of us who were like that and there were so many straights.

  13. baron von zubb
    baron von zubb
    April 17, 2009 at 7:29 pm

    Thanks for youre support Angus.
    This K Y P P stuff has led to a kind of decade or two overdue spring clean.
    Last night I found, and I kid you not – my jaw dropped too, detailed diagrams & insructions on how to make homemade ‘devices’.
    Ingrediants.
    Measurments.
    Composition.
    The lot.
    Blimey.
    Where I got them from I remember not.
    Though the Anarchist Cook Book had all that didnt it? I remember having a discussion about it with ‘pigmee’ -Joe- in Kennington ‘the pit’ long before I got hold of a copy.
    I remember me and ‘Robbo’ swore an oath that if there had been no revolution by the time we were 40 and we were still alive, which seemed unlikely at the time, we would buy some AK 47’s and fill a van with explosives and drive it into Parliament.
    Am I glad I didnt find them instructions before!
    Think I could sell ’em to some jihadis?
    Or maybee I should put ’em in a new edition of me book?
    (Mr Officer Plod Sir i’m only joking.
    they are shredded and in the re cycle bin).
    Phew.
    J

  14. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 17, 2009 at 8:43 pm

    The ATC (Air Training Core) based at RAF Biggin Hill was a big thing when I was a kid. For some reason, I didn’t get into it, probably because of all the military stuff.

    But lots of BH kids did, and got to learn to fly planes and cool stuff. A mate of mine did, a very intense, bulging eyes guy, intelligent, but borderline bipolar.

    When he split from his girlfriend of the day, he was beside himself. One summer’s day in the mid ’70s he nicked a light aircraft from the civil airport equipped with a bottle of whisky.

    Then he started to buzz his girfriends house, saying over the radio he was doing a Kamikazi. Kent police cars went back and forth impotently as he buzzed the house, said girlfriend and family left the house PDQ, the air-raid siren at the RAF airbase went off (RAF Biggin Hill was a Cold War target at that time).

    My mate was eventually talked down, and there were consequences for him, not criminal justice, but mental healthcare ones.

    Six years later, in my anarcho days, there was the Charlie and Die Royal Wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral. I fantasised that someone would nick a plane filled with petrol, stacked with “cookbook” explosives, and crash it into St. Paul’s when the Royal Family and half the world’s dignitaries were there assembled.

    Of course, I wouldn’t do it. Apart from the fact that I’d never learned to fly, really, despite all the cod-existentiual stuff, really and truly I wanted to live, not die. I shared the idea with my anarcho mates of the time. Same problem: nobody knew how to fly, nobody wanted to die.

    I believe there is a God up there, and that he wanted something better for me than this nonsense, and that He preserved me from the potential consequences of my twisted will and egotistic phantasies.

    But is was only a matter of time before an ideology came around that gave desperate, confused, mixed up young men that here was a cause to die for, that that kept them sober so they could learn to fly or whatever, in an age when five minutes research on the Internet could find you stuff that makes the “Cookbook” look like Blue Peter.

    I’m thinking of course of Al Qaeeda. Not a non-existent conspiracy based in Pakistan or somewhere, the endlesly repeatable, copybale idea, the brand, infinitely recyclable, mimicable, that no amount of bombing in Pashtunistan will ever stop.

    There’s quite a bit of autobiography in my unpublishable novel, and I’m thinking seriously about putting it on the web.

  15. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 17, 2009 at 8:55 pm

    “. . .this K Y P P stuff has led to a kind of decade or two overdue spring clean”

    Definately, it’s up there with Augustine’s “Confessions”

  16. Sam
    Sam
    April 17, 2009 at 9:31 pm

    “Re Sam’s point about “teenagers” being a 1950s invention, that’s interesting. I see what he means, but that would make us all (in our old days) part of some sort of consumerist social engineering. Not that I’m denying it at all, it makes sense. But would 1950s US ad men ever have anticipated Crass?”

    In my more cynical moments I think punk was at the forefront of a consumer revolution. The ‘boredom’ that we all complained about was largely a lack of youth-based entertainment. TOTP and The Whistle Test was pretty much it for music on the tele. Of course this all changed in the eighties but, ironically I now decry the easy availability of all this stuff – you can download almost any obscure track you can think of from itunes. This has lead to a kind of cultural entropy I think.

  17. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 17, 2009 at 9:59 pm

    “I now decry the easy availability of all this stuff – you can download almost any obscure track you can think of from itunes.”

    Not quite everything. I’ve long admired the Jones & Cook “light metal” sound. J&C got dismissed as a couple of blokey tossers compared to Johhny and Sid, but I have very fond memories of their sound, seeing the connection between their sound and the pub-rock-ish stuff we was on about earlier.

    I used to have a post-Pistols blood red 45 by “Dave Goodman and Friends” doing “Who Killed Liddle Towers” (answers on a postcard), featuring J&C on drums and guitar (nearly all my old rare vinyl went the way of all things — the Record and Tape Exchange — to pay for this and that back in the old days).

    I’ve tried for ages to access it on the net but to no avail whatsoever. I’d very much like to hear it again just to see whether or not it was a good as I remember (probably not). If anyone has a link, please send it to me!

    Punk as the “forefront of a consumer revolution”, you’re right, Sam. But there was another side to it too, perhaps the dialectical method can help us arrive at a real understanding of what it was all about. But I can’t be arsed!

  18. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 17, 2009 at 10:44 pm

    I stand corrected:

    http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/davegoodman.htm

    The title was “Justifiable Homicide”; “Who Killed Liddle Towers?” was the chorus.

    Still can’t find the tune, though. Liddle would be 72 years old now: “non vacant tempora”, “time never takes a break”!

  19. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 18, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    Ah ha! I think the problem was I didn’t remember the proper title “Justifiable Homicide”, just the chorus “Who killed Liddle Towers?”

    Anyway, thanks a lot for the links, John and Luggy, that’s amazing guys, it must be getting on 30 years since I last heard this! Unlike a lot of stuff I hear after all those years, this one stands the test of time. He’s why:

    * It starts off right, with Lydon-esque snarly, sneery Cockney voices introducing the question “Who Killed Liddle Towers” in a style that’s very much of the period

    * But then juxtaposing this, we hear those slightly effete do-woppy chorus voice seemingly introducing a trite Rock ‘n’ Roll cliche

    * While all this is going on, Cook and Jones power the whole thing along, punk pub rock style (who was on bass?)

    * Said sneery Cockneys begin to relate the story of Liddle’s demise, while hitherto effete chorus voices comment adding fundamantal questions “Whose law?”, like the chorus in a Greek tragedy

    * The phrasing of the voices narrating the story is classic punk pub rock, and really drives the track along, yet the story they relate is hardcore, a vicious beating to death

    * In between verses Steve Jones really pub rocks it, simple riffs but classic and rocking

    * The story continues “Taken to the station for his crimes. . .” (“What crimes?” comments a startled sounding Sopheclesian chorus in alarm); this is Liddle’s Calvary, his Via Dolorossa

    * A third of the way through we reach a turning point “They put him in cell. . .in HELL!” Do-woppers continue unphased, Jones lets rip with some pub solo riffs, as Liddle slips into a coma and begins his descent in to Hades

    * Guitar maintains the tensions with angstish, uprising riffs; Liddle continues to suffer, but this is suggested by the tension in the music, not by lyrical overstatement

    * The lead voices pause in their narration of Liddle’s death to make comment making a serious point: “There is no law they make their own, what am I to do? With no official [inaudible] they can do the same to you!”

    This rocks all the better for the absence of all the usual punk cliches: no four letter words, left-wing ideology, smut, blood-curdling blasphemies, incitement to killing the pigs, just genuine moral outrage and a perfectly reasonable demand that if the police are allowed to get away with this we will all suffer; this bit could have been written by a broadsheet leader-writer circa 1978!

    * The story of Liddle’s sufferings continue, with just enough graphic detail of his injuries to maintain interest and a sense of outrage

    * The suffering of the family is introduced, all to often forgotten about in today’s compensation culture in which nobody’s ever fully guilty of anything; we move to the frustrations of the eyewitnesses, again, just enough detail to maintain interest, Cook’s drumming driving it along nicely

    * The lead voices use the verdict of “Justifiable Homicide” ironically, mockingly, but without laying it on too thick

    * Jones’ intros the finale with snatchy little chords as the main voices restate the question “So who killed Liddle Towers?”

    * The instruments are allowed one last blast of energy before the track winds down, a Lydon-esque voice not letting us forget, “He died, inside!”, while the chorus resumes its do-wopping, Jones goes back to pub rock, and other voices finish off with a football terrace style chant.

    Excellent stuff, on a par in my book with the very best punk rock of the period, NMTB, the first Jam, Buzzcocks and Clash albums, “Teenage Kicks”, “Holiday in Cambodia”, &ct.

  20. andus
    andus
    April 18, 2009 at 6:24 pm

    I preferred the Angelic Upstarts, ‘Liddle towers’ one of the best punk tracks of all time, they suffered no end of harrassment from the police because of that song.

  21. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 18, 2009 at 6:49 pm

    Andus, perhaps you’re right, I should check that one out on the ‘net too: either way those songs are a million times better than generalised “Fuck the System” rants, the sticker I put in TG notwithstanding. Then there were The Ruts, “I’m in a rut, I’ve gotta get out of it, out of it, out of it”, simple stuff, but what better heroin lyric was there this side of the Velvets?

  22. Sam
    Sam
    April 18, 2009 at 7:08 pm

    “but what better heroin lyric was there this side of the Velvets?”

    ‘H eyes H eyes it’s gonna fuck your brain’

  23. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 18, 2009 at 7:10 pm

    It’s pretty darn good: the intro is deceptive, those interesting juxtapositions again, almost a pastiche of metal or mid-seventies “dinosaurs of rock”: then the music changes suddenly to snare drum driven 3 piece punk.

    There’s Mensi’s rasping skin voice and that classic line “The police have the power, the police have the right / to kill a man, and take away his life” this restatement of the same idea in two lines is called “paralellism” in the Hebrew poetry of the Bible (Isaiah, &ct). Here it rocks. I think the Lydon-esque snarls are a bit over done at the end though.

    So here we have it, two bloody excellent songs that more than stand the test of time. More than that, they don’t deal with generalised “revolutionary” bullshit, but the real killing of a real man. OK, the Upstarts were supposed to be a “socialist” band, but the ideology wasn’t rammed down anyone’s throat. LKJ’s early stuff was like that too from a Black perspective. Were there any Blair Peach songs? Must have been.

    The big question I have is that with all this superb stuff, why did I, and TG, and so many of us, go so far down the Crass route, which as I’ve said elsewhere, stikes me now as “cult-like”? I suspect that Mensi, Malcolm Rut, even Cook and Jones had a maturity that we simply didn’t have.

  24. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 18, 2009 at 7:32 pm

    “Don’t feel straight, can’t love or hate / can’t feel nuffink, can’t feel no thing, just gotta get out of it. . .out of it. . .out of it”

    Enough of this real-time, I have a curry to cook!

  25. andus
    andus
    April 18, 2009 at 7:32 pm

    The Tom Robinson band wrote a song about Liddle Towers as well, called Blue Murder, from their 1979 alum TRB 2, some of the lyrics,’Well they kicked him far and they kicked him wide,He was kicked outdoors, he was kicked inside, Kicked in the front and the back and the side,It really was a hell of a fight, He screamed blue murder in the cell that night, But he must have been wrong cos they all deny it, Gateshead station, police and quiet, Liddley die Lie lie lie diddley lie,Die die die Liddley die’.

    Linton Kwesi Johnson wrote a song about Blair Peach called ‘Reggae fi Peach’ which was on the album Bass Culture.
    Mike Carver also wrote a song about Peach ‘The murder of Blair Peach’,
    The Pop Group did a song about him as well I think.

  26. andus
    andus
    April 18, 2009 at 7:43 pm

    Oh yes and how could I forget. ‘The Ruts’ Jah War’ again about ‘Peach’, or at least relating to him,

  27. Mike Diboll
    Mike Diboll
    April 18, 2009 at 8:16 pm

    Jah Wars, and LKJ’s Reggae fi Peach, how could I have forgot?

    Pardon me, I’m a bit out of touch with the UK these days, but has anyone done a song about the G20 killing of Ian Tomlinson, or Charles Menendez?

    I’m more conservative than I used to be, and believe that the police do have the power and ought to have the right to “kill a man and take away his life” if said man is some motherfucker who’s about to let off a dirty bomb on the Underground, or blow up the ‘plane I’m about to get on with my family.

    But said right is abrogated if it’s all about crushing dissent, braining NZ teachers, beating drunken boxers to death, or if Brazillian tourists and Somali bomb-backpackers “all look the same to me, guv.”

    So does anyone write songs about these things, or is it just all pap these days?

  28. andus
    andus
    April 18, 2009 at 8:25 pm

    There are a few bands that still write lyrics, Unit. Headjam. Dubtheworld, Inner terrestrials. Lyrics went out of fashion followed the advent of the ‘Napalm Death’ type bands. Sorry Nic.

  29. andus
    andus
    April 18, 2009 at 8:27 pm

    The Cracked Actors write lyrics as well.

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