HOPING THAT ALL OF THE KYPP BROWSERS IN THE U.K AND WORLDWIDE WILL BE SAFE AND WELL IN 2017
012 was a band formed by Keith Dobson A.K.A Kif Kif Le Batter (one time drummer and vocalist with Here And Now) in the West London squats in 1980. The band took inspiration from Mutoid Wasters, Dread At The Control and Clash City Rocker types, as well as the free festival convoy scene.
The album was recorded at Street Level Studios in 1981.
“The 012 would like it to be generally known that they have now sold out completely, but will be doing all they can to maintain that urban guerilla pop star image in the future.”
012 went on to become World Domination Enterprises who were involved in a small way during the C86 indie scene, and re-recorded a storming version of ‘Asbestos Lead Asbestos’.
Note: The first time the Kill Your Pet Puppy Collective saw The Mob live, I am informed, was at the gig (the flyer in the video) with 012 also performing. Also interestingly, resident Mob artist Wilf supplied 012 the artwork for the sleeve.
The text below has been lifted from the excellent Quietus website and is a snippet of an interview with Keith Dobson.
In 1979 Dobson formed The 012, a World Domination Enterprises prototype who took the improvisational aesthetics of his former acts and merged them with the punk sensibilities that he admired. The leap was perhaps not so great as it seems.
“There is no real difference between hippy and punk,” he argues. “They were both essentially about youth wising up to the charade of society being played out around them and reacting to it. There is also a lot of the essence of improvisation in World Dom and The 012. That ‘immediacy of the moment’ was something I worked with very consciously, and in a way it was a continuation of what had started in Here & Now. I wanted to take this ‘moment’ thing up to another level. I read Stanislavsky.”
The 012 were never geared for commercial success: their shows were so chaotic that promoters literally pulled the plug on them if they hadn’t already been banned, so they instead rushed stages between acts if they wanted to play. But now firmly ensconced amidst the anti-establishment, Dobson simultaneously started a cassette label — the provocatively named Fuck Off Records — to release ‘albums’ by, among others, Danny And The Dressmakers (who featured one Graham Massey, later of 808 State). Ever restless, he then set up Street Level Studios in 1980, a home from home for many of the DIY bands extant in London at the time, with (former Hear & Now sound man and soon to be Fall associate) Grant Showbiz and 012 drummer Jose Gross. But after two cassette albums, one vinyl album and a line-up change — Steve Jameson now fulfilling the need for “gutter-funk bass”, as Dobson’s Melody Maker ad put it, and drummer Digger Metters not far behind — The 012 became World Domination Enterprises.
They set about recording what would become their finest moment, exploiting Thatcher’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme in order to pay for the six months and the weed required to put a reworked version of the old 012 track ‘Asbestos Lead Asbestos’ down on tape.
Dobson has no qualms about having used government money to fund the band’s beginnings.
“Let’s get something straight here,” he states passionately. “We are born into subjugation. Where is our land? Our birthright? It was taken from us before we even drew our first breath. What we have instead is forced enrollment into some intimidating scheme. And for some strange reason these somebodies who control it are stupidly rich, while us ordinary folk have to scratch and scrape just to get by. It is our right as ordinary humans, maybe even our duty, to get back as much as we can.”
Such arguments are indicative of the rhetoric that surrounded World Domination Enterprises at the time. Growing media interest focussed not only on the visceral, atonal racket that they created but also on their conscious rejection of contemporary Thatcherite values. They were pictured by photographer Tom Sheehan in front of their Chesterton Road short-life housing, reviewed by Simon Reynolds in conjunction with legendary party organisers and industrial waste sculptors Mutoid Waste Company, and much was made of their name. But Dobson denies that they were a political band.
“I’ve never been interested in capital P politics,” he clarifies. “What is true is that I’m a thinker. I spend hours a day just thinking. Anti-establishment? Hell, yes! That’s the natural result from time spent thinking. Our anti-establishment stance was . . . a huge part of what World Dom was about. If you’re gonna have words, why on earth should they not mean something important?
Read the whole article HERE
Each side of this rare debut 7″ single from Fuck Off Records gives a clue to the listener for the material stamped into the grooves of the vinyl.
Side BAD:
012 – Fish From Tahiti
Danny And The Dressmakers – Cathy And Claire
The Sell Outs – Ballad Of Fuck Off Records
Danny And The Dressmakers – The Truth About Unemployment
Side AWFUL:
Door And The Window – Number One Entertainer
Danny And The Dressmakers – Legalise Vimto
Danny And The Dressmakers – Hey Ho My Cholestarol Level Is Low
Instant Automations – Electronic Music
Danny And The Dressmakers – Dont Make Another Bass Guitar Mr Rickenbacker
This is a record so D.I.Y it came with its own Allen key and a badly illustrated sheet of fitting instructions!
All the tracks need to be listened to with an equal amount of irony and awe. Joy and misery.
The tracks are not that bad, but they are hard work!
“The Sell-Outs, The 012, The Door And The Window, and The Instant Automatons recorded at home on 4 track and 2 track tape machines. Danny And the Dressmakers get that unique “Dressmakers white noise” effect with 3rd generation cassette recordings. Gut level rock and roll from 1979. The whole thing got together by Kif Kif, Nag, Bendle and Protag and dedicated to the Steet Level organisation. The Sell-Outs were a band led by Fuck Off Records supremo Jonathan Barnett. The line up on the record is J.B on vocals, Steve Lake of Zounds on detuned bass, Mark Mob of The Mob on detuned guitar and Kif-Kif from the 012 on drums. J.B and Kif-Kif detuned the instruments and asked us to make a random unholy row while Jonathan screamed his lyrics about running a budget record label whilst signing on the dole and trying to exploit (in a very small time way) the resources of larger record companies. The aim, as with most of these things, seemed to be to help bring about the demise of the record industry and there after the whole global capitalist, military industrial complex; to tap into some creative, life/art/spirit force through spontaneity and improvisation; and in the process try to make J.B the star he really should have been. The whole enterprise was doomed sadly. The track was truly awful, though the E.P. it comes from did have some amusing tracks by Danny And The Dressmakers and a good track by the 012. It also contained a track each by the Door & the Window and the Instant Automatons”
Steve Lake – Zounds
Sleeve screen printing courtesy of Joly from Better Badges who printed the original Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzines and thousands of others in that era.
Written memories below, courtesy of Kev Hunter from The Epileptics, ripped off for all the right reasons from punk77.co.uk site.
The Triad Centre was a great place to see bands and just hang around with other punks from Harlow, including members of the Sods and Newtown Neurotics, and surrounding areas. I asked around and was pointed in Col and Rich’s direction; I went over and said “If you ever need a guitarist, let me know.”
Coincidentally, Clive was about to leave and go to college, so they told me to come along the following Saturday to one of their rehearsals. I did, and I was in!
They had already played two gigs – one at Triad in August, and one at London’s Covent Garden with Crass – but needed new material. Col and I reworked some of the older songs and changed the lyrics and titles, and collaborated on some new material too, such as “Tube Disaster”, and our first gig together was at the beginning of November 1978.
In January 1979 we got the chance to support Crass and the Poison Girls in Bradford, but the van we’d hired broke down on the way, and we reached the gig just as Crass were finishing their set.
In March we recorded our first demo tape and started to attract a small following; thereafter we regularly played at Triad, as well as doing gigs in London’s Conway Hall with Crass.
For a while we changed our name to Epi-X, but then reverted to the Epileptics; our line-up also changed briefly in summer, when Stan Stammers replaced Derek on bass. (Stan would later go on to Theatre of Hate and Spear of Destiny.)
After playing one gig under the pseudonym Acid Experience, with Derek back in, the Epileptics decided to take a break as personality clashes had been surfacing.
In August, we were approached by Stortbeat Records to record a single, and – with a dubious change of name to The Licks – did just that in September.
Having played just one gig as The Licks, the name reverted to the Epileptics again, but by November differences in how we thought the band should go led to Richard deciding to leave; Col and Derek decided to get Sid (from Rubella Ballet) to replace him, and within a week of their decision, I made up my mind to leave too.
Two guitarists were brought in, Andy Smith and Neil Puncher (previously of the U. Samples), and the band continued to play local, London and other gigs – including Stonehenge Festival where they were bottled offstage.
During the middle of 1980 the band changed their name to Flux Of Pink Indians.
Kev Hunter
Verbal memories below, courtesy of Sean ex Eat Shit and God Told Me To Do It.
Ahhhhh, my youth revisited…..
No one except Stortbeat ever called them The Licks.
Derek used to sit on my mate at school to steal his fruit pastilles.
The story of Derek’s bass playing (as related by Colins little brother) was that when the lads decided to form a punk band, big Derek said “I’m not playing bass, bass is a morons instrument” picked up the waiting to be assigned guitar and promptly broke several strings, so bass it was to be. Funnily enough when a bass was acquired for him he immediately broke a string on that too.
Sid of Rubella Ballet passed through the drum slot, as did Discharge skin thumper, Bambi Ellesmere. Stan Stammers was friendly to the young punkers hanging out in Saffron Walden (all three of us, I had school mates there) but Kirk Brandon was above being seen with us kids.
I first saw Crass with The Epileptics at Triad on a Sunday night, it seemed strange to me then that no one made a fuss about bands of local notoriety playing on Sundays. Stortford was quite lively punk-wise, but there was a lot of mod violence early on, mainly by kids who had been punks the year before, the skinheads came later, mostly from Harlow.
That town was a hotbed of NF/BM recruitment (the lyric “I’ve got a target on my back but I’m not a fucking mod” was poignant). On one notable occasion, when Conflict came to the Triad, some skinhead violence was nipped in the bud by Colin Jerwood who promptly smashed his mug of tea over the miscreants head. There was even a short-lived squat in Stortford in a condemned house at Hockerill but the coppers gave short shrift.
So many memories…One of my first girlfriends was from Debden, so “Last bus…” struck a chord. Harlow was punky town, but lots of aforementioned skinhead violence. After a gig at the Square, three of us were chased until lost (easy in Harlow, it all looks the same) and had to take cover in an elderly couples house who offered us refuge and a phone to call mum.
People will tell you these days that they were into the Neurotics, but most in Harlow considered them a bit naff. Steve Drewitt will tell you that I was the only person to sport a big Newtown Neurotics logo on my leather.
Sean Ridgewell
In 1980, Leonard Dillon from arguably one of rocksteady’s finest vocal harmony duos in the sixties, The Ethiopians, returned from a start / stop career in music (from the middle of the seventies after the accidental death of his long time vocal partner, Stephen Taylor) to voice over some of the finest vintage Studio One rhythms.
This is one of my favourite Studio One albums although when released to the public it did not sell in large quantities.
Towards the very end of the seventies, roots reggae music started to lose popularity amongst the youth of Jamaica and in fact the world.
The new sound preferred by the youth being a harsher stripped down, no thrills, no horns, no organ sound pioneered by Roots Radics, Sly and Robbie and others, recording for young producers like Junjo Lawes and Linval Thompson and mixed by the up and coming Scientist, all working with countless young singers and DJ’s.
Studio One Records could not keep up with the times as well as the recording studios like Channel One, who owned the in-house record labels like Hit Bound and Well Charge releasing records by the likes of Barrington Levy, Frankie Paul and Ranking Trevor.
Studio One tried hard to keep up with a couple of Sugar Minott albums as well as albums by Brigadier Jerry and Lone Ranger, but the old time rhythms just sounded too familiar and stale to the youth at the end of the seventies and the dawn of the eighties. .
Despite all that, this Leonard Dillon solo session (under his long standing and well deserved moniker, The Ethiopian) recording new versions of some of his best songs from the late sixties and early seventies at Coxsone Dodds’ Studio One, to my ears at least, is a marriage made in Heaven, if such a place exists.
Below text a snippet of an interview with Leonard Dillon from the reggae-vibes website.
Q: But what about this ‘Everything Crash’ album, this is a very consistent album and one that is highly regarded by Ethiopians fans all over. If the Ethiopians name is dropped somewhere, you often hear talk of that record.
A: Yeah. You see, that album now, I just did that song over for Coxsone and he called the album ‘Everything Crash’.
Q: Most of those tracks were voiced in the same session, or this was compiled stretching over a long period of recordings from the seventies up to the early eighties or something like that?
A: Yes, some of them.
Q: So how come you went back to Downbeat again?
A: Well, because I left the music scene for a while and the easiest way to be heard right now is the Studio One label, so I just went back and did that before I did my album ’cause whenever time you want to be known, yunno, the Studio One label is a label that really expose you. Everyone love Studio One and are familiar with Studio One, everyone rates Studio One. So you don’t really – Coxsone is a man that don’t really pay money, yunno. You don’t do music for Coxsone for money, you do music just for the label’s sake, to really expose you. Because Studio One label go wide, y’know.
Anthrax were formed when they were all school children in Kent. Anthrax would practise in the church hall near to the school. The bassist of Anthrax (Rob Challice) father was the vicar. Rob, Fod and Oskar were also allowed to print their fanzine ‘Enigma’ on the church printer. After several line up changes Sue joined on vocals. Anthrax did thier first gig in Gravesend and after that gig, Rob and Sue left Kent and went on to form Faction.
Around January or Febuary 1982 Ann-Dee Martin from The Apostles, was helping out Faction on guitar along with Sue, Rob and Martin (who wrote Sunday the 7th fanzine) on drums. Ann-Dee Martin was replaced by Paul (who wrote the AZ fanzine) around March 1982, but during the couple of months that Ann-Dee Martin was in the band, Factions first demo was recorded in Ann-Dee’s attic at Foulden Road, Stoke Newington.
That demo tape is great and might be up on this Youtube channel at some point, although tonight I have placed up both the Faction demos that Rob Challice released on his own 96 Tapes imprint (so called as Rob was living at 96 Brougham Road in Hackney at that time).
The first Faction cassette that 96 Tapes released features Sue on vocals, who left shortly after, to be eventually replaced by Mel from the West Country band, The A-Heads.
Mel is the vocalist on the second Faction cassette that 96 Tapes released.
Both of those cassettes are featured on this YouTube post.
I lifted a bullet point history on the band below (and edited a little bit) from the anarchoscene.blogspot.co.uk
Rob and the singer Sue (a fourteen year old girl with spiky hair) left Anthrax and relocated to Hackney to form Faction with Sue on vocals, Rob on bass, Martin on drums and Ann-Dee on guitar.
Rob and Martin then moved into a squatted street street in Hackney, Brougham Road, number 96, and used the basement for rehearsals.
Rob had this to say about choosing the name Faction: “I think it was by democratic vote. The name scored quite highly because you could circle the A and N, and convert the O in the CND sign. Essential stuff”.
In the Spring of 1982, their guitarist Ann-Dee Martin, was replaced by Paul Van-Transit (formerly from ‘The Snails’ and ‘This Bitter Lesson’) who would become their permanent guitarist. Rob found inspiration in the Hackney squat scene as it had introduced him to The Mob, Zounds and Blood and Roses, which in turn were bands that were also followed by the Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine / collective whom also inspired him.
Rob continued by starting his own cassette tape label called 96 Tapes, which helped several bands get their music and message out.
In November 1982, Faction released their ‘Through The WIndow’ cassette tape along with a booklet containing the lyrics and their ideas and philosophies. Shortly after the release of that tape, the band played at the infamous Zig Zag Squat gig in December of that same year.
Unfortunately, Sue left in February 1983, and the band struggled with several new singers until they found Pip.
Faction managed to eventually release a 7″ single with the Bluurg record label run by Dick Lucas of The Subhumans. The record was titled ‘You’ve Got The Fire’.
Before the studio work on the record started, Pip had already left and had been replaced on vocals by Mel from The A-Heads. Neil from Brougham Road was added as a keyboardist.
Two more cassette tapes featuring Faction were released on 96 Tapes, the first was a live split with D & V called ‘No No No Don’t Drop Yer Bombs On Us They Hurt’ and another was a full length tape called ‘If They Give You Ruled Paper…. Write The Other Way’.
By the time the 7″ single was released, Faction had split up. Rob wanted to focus on his cassette tape label, Neil went on to play guitar for Blyth Power alongside Josef Porta and Curtis from The Mob, and Mel was still performing with the A-Heads. Martin and Paul left the scene.
In 1984 the All the Madmen record label was passed down to Rob Challice, 96 Tapes was still operational for a while after, and Wot? Distribution was also created. Wot? shipped hard to get vinyl, cassette tapes and fanzines via mail order to customers over the U.K and other parts of the world. Wot? was eventually re-named All The Madmen Distribution, sitting alongside the record label of the same name.
Fine and very rare debut 7″ single by Bjork’s early punk outfit KUKL released on the excellent Gramm record label based in Iceland.
Recently I checked this 7″ single on Discogs.
This small bit of vinyl with a groove running time of less than seven minutes has been selling for absolutely insane amounts of money.
Between £250 to £500.
I very carefully unwrapped the foldout cover and scanned each panel and then dumped the vinyl onto the scanner and scanned both sides of the label. There was also a handwritten poem that I scanned. I am not sure, but the poem might be the words translated from Icelandic to English for the A-Side, ‘Songull’.
I hope you understand the sacrifices and risks I am prepared to take to get interesting YouTube posts to you. I might have knocked £10 off of the selling price in the few minutes of preparation for the visuals!
Text below lifted lock, stock and barrel from the Southern Studios website. Thanks to them in advance…
Our story begins some years ago when we co-existed in different groups in the very same country.
PEYR was a band that gained a reputation in foreign countries, but when they had had their name spelled in Japanese they tactfully ceased to exist and left God Krist. and Tryggur floating in the Ether waiting to make themselves manifest.
PURRKUR PILLNIKK was another band, never too bothered but quite possibly too concerned. They played with THE FALL in England, then they too ceased to exist and Einar kept spinning around hoping to hit someone.
TAPPI TIKARRASS was still another band. When their charm became stagnant Bjork decided it was time for an evolutionary leap and sent us a bright smile that opened our hearts.
Birgir caressed his bass in a band called MED NOKTUM, but when the call came he knew he had to obey and left his fellow workers in the Vineyard for the Cosmic Unity of KUKL.
And there was one with the name of Melax who had spent his time within the framework of the surrealist group MEDUSA, alternately making phallic Bird Cages and Music for Miro on the Moon. He too heard the call and obeyed.
KUKL thus became the logical conclusion of the Icelandic Musical Evolution. They depict the Marriage of Heaven and Hell: the Union of Opposites, Cold Claustrophobic Winters with the Agoric Midnight Sun of the Summer Months. Snow fused with Vulcanic Activity: A Cold and Calm Outside covering Catastrophic Aliveness that may tear the ground from under your feet.
KUKL will not prostitute itself, the group will play on special occasions only, so as to retain its inspirational quality.
KUKL played at “WE Demand a Future”, a concert with CRASS that had over 2% of the Icelandic population present. And KUKL played with PSYCHIC TV at the legendary concert in Reykjavik. In 1984 KUKL supported FLUX OF PINK INDIANS around England.
As the time is ripe now, KUKL will expand into various parts of Europe and give the Europeans a taste of what KUKL sounds like and what the group stands for.
Our aim is to work for the betterment of humanity through our music. We feel that music is one of the strongest mediums that you can have access to in the Western world as money is not our game we rely on the inherent power of our group.
Our power is what we are and what we do: through listening to us people will become part of the transmission of that particular power, even should they not realize what we are about. Whether we should be considered artists, does not really matter at all.
We leave that problem to those who want to define to understand. – We only want to wake up in people dormant powers which even they did not know existed. Sometimes we even don’t know ourselves what we are doing, as we are still learning. The “magic” has not been intellectualised or consciously assimilated to what we are doing.
Even the name of the group shows this: KUKL, meaning “Psychism” implies dabbling with some unknown forces and we don’t want to get stuck in any definitions as to contents or procedures as that would put an end to our learning process and our transmission. This “something” that we are dealing with is also a thing that we are against defining. We are not preaching convictions as they tend to produce convicts. The only clearly definable thing in our floating philosophy is that there is more to life than THIS. We want to be able to blow a few sparks into a consuming fire, burning away restrictions. A large portion of music in our times is serving us a tool with which people are lulled to sleep while those in charge are steering us towards our doom.
We want and we must catch the attention of those lunatics and show that we want to be reckoned with when it comes to defining the rules for our life and death. Our music is our strongest weapon in that battle, it is also nourishing for us and gives us strength to tackle this devilish problem. But as to the future we don’t have any five-year-plans – although in a sense we feel we have been booked for eternity…
