Atomic X / Who Cares / Fast Car / She Is The Boy / Pretty Nun
Confusion / Bored Housewifes / Lost In Space / Subtitles / Jeen Dreems
Before the Spice Girls, everybody’s favorite all girl band was The Androids Of Mu, which featured Suze Da Blooze from Here And Now on vocals.
From the hands of Grant Showbiz down in deepest Street Level Studios, and released ‘in house’ on Fuck Off Records, this non masterpiece still has a huge sackful of charm and if you try hard enough, you can jump around the room to it ‘but only when yer mum’s gone out!’ *
From the same Weird Tales tours as The Mob, The Astronauts and Zounds, Androids had tracks on the ‘Tribute to Bert Weedon’ cassette that I was going to upload until I realised it may scupper some Mob sales on the recently released CD on Overground Records as those tracks on the CD are in demand (ditto Ching demo) – so I didn’t bother, so you will have to have this LP instead!
* Television Personalities lyric in case you thought I had suddenly lost it big time…
Below is a snippet of an interview from the No Class fanzine.
As the people from No Class landed in Shepherds Bush, London W12, the keys to the flat were thrown out of the window to us, ready to let an interview with Bess and Corrina from the Androids of Mu take place, which went like this:
NC: Why was the LP called Blood Robots?
C: By calling it Blood Robots we threw more light on what our name is about. I don’t wanna be too precise about that, because I wanna leave a bit more to the imagination. A lot of our stuff at the same time was about everyday people and situations, but through our minds, from a completely different point of view.
NC: So are your songs protest songs?
B: Yes, most of them.
C: We would like to change things if we could. Generally we are supporting change, of attitudes and for the better. But on the other hand, sometimes what we do is just observation. It’s more like making people think, rather than opinionating and asking for people to accept our opinions.
NC: So you do benefit gigs?
C: Yeah, loads, cos we’re not playing for money. We aren’t making any money and even when we play ordinary commercial gigs we only get our expenses and when we play benefits we get our expenses, so from that point of view it’s not much different. It’s better that we’re actually supporting something that is worthwhile if we play a benefit, so we do.
NC: Did you lose money on the free tours?
C: Yes we did, because it cost us a lot to set it up in the first place, like posters and getting a vehicle in condition, so that we could do it. Our actual expenses on the road had been met but not the expenses that it cost us to prepare the whole thing. Everyone involved lost about £70. If you put all that together, there was three bands, it cost a lot of money.
B:Doing about two tours, free tours, made us realise that we didn’t wanna do it again cos…
C: We can’t do it, we can’t afford to.
B: As well as that, we realise that people want to pay. I really think so. They wanna pay to get in and enjoy themselves.
C: It was all part of an attempt to change existing attitudes, in the sense that if a person comes into a venue and they pay because they realise that by paying they support the whole idea, and at the same time they give opportunity to people who have got nothing to come in, That’s good but it just doesn’t work like that, because people’s attitudes were that if it’s free it’s not worth anything.
B: But another idea why we started doing free tours was because we thought music is something so nice there shouldn’t be a packaged price on it. You get gigs at Rainbow, £3 or whatever, depends on the seats if you’re at the front or the back, but we thought music should be left to people: what they think it’s worth. Some people at the time thought it was 10p, others 50p. I think that’s great because people paid money what they think; they don’t feel ripped off.
NC: I think it’s a good idea.
B: But it doesn’t work that way. There’s not many people thinking that. Maybe more down in London, they’re more open minded about things, but in North of England… It’s being conditioned, isn’t it? Most young people they work 9 till 5 and they go out on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. And if they pay money to get into a gig they enjoy themselves. It’s like a routine.
NC: Didn’t you get people going along to try it out, because it was free?
B: Yeah, half of it was like that, they were really supporting us, but not other half.
C: Another thing was that usually they spent all their money on drinks, so that even if they wanted to give, they didn’t have any money left.
B: No, but we sussed that out didn’t we? We were doing a gig with three bands. By the time the second band came on we would go round with the hat and collect money.
NC: Could you tell us how Girlfriend Records came about?
C: It just sprung out of the fact that I’m a sound engineer and I’ve been working at Street Level studios. All the time I’ve been working in there there’s been about one percent of the people that come to the studio were women. Because of that I knew a lot of female musicians. They used to say we really wanna come into record something but we can’t afford to or we don’t know where to start or …. things like that. I realised that there was a need to do something and I was just in the right place at the right time. It wasn’t that we decided it was gonna be Girlfriend Records, it just came out of the events leading up to it that I started recording all these women bands and it grew into an LP (Making Waves various artists compilation). Everyone thought it was a good idea that it came out on an independent label and we thought ‘Why not start a label?’
B: It involved all twelve bands, they all helped out in some way. It’s very difficult to be a record company by yourself.
.
NC: And what about Blood Robots?
C: Suzy who was with us at the time, she found this poster…
B: There was a big gallery, posters and poetry done by women. We saw this painting on a wall and she said that could be the cover, and we all went Wow! What a good idea. We did a coloured printing, but the colours didn’t come out right. It was too much contrast, black and brown.
NC: Is it the original that was used, the one in the gallery?
B: Yes, the woman who done that (Monica Sjoo), we wrote to her. We haven’t met her. She said of course you can use it.
NC: Can you tell us about your deal with Crass?
B: Two years ago, when they wanted to do a single with us, they didn’t want our drummer to play on it cos she was playing out of time. They wanted their own drummer, and we all thought it would sound like Crass again, so we refused it straight away.
Review with bigger text here
alistairliv
December 12, 2007 at 11:53 pmHey – I have this record! It is great. Sort of Here and Now/ Hawkwind meet the Slits/ Raincoats. Sort of.
I saw them play in free gig Hyde Park in 1979(?). The front cover is by Monica Sjoo – she was a pagan feminist artist. In April 1985 she walked from Silbury Hill to Stonehenge with a group of women out to ‘Reclaim Salisbury Plain’. They got to Stonehenge for Beltane/ May day – last free access to the Stones….
Pinki was on the walk and so was Starhawk who wrote Dreaming the Dark about being an eco-witch. Starhawk is still campaigning see her website
http://www.starhawk.org/
There is a whole archive of Monica Sjoo’s powerful paintings online at http://www.monicasjoo.org/
Nic
December 13, 2007 at 12:38 pmAh, I love this LP…
I wish I had seen them live – I tried to get into one of the gigs on the ‘Weird tales’ tour, but I was 11 at the time and they wouldn’t let me in!
I have one of their demos which has some nice different versions of LP tracks and tracks from the ‘Bert Weedon’ tape…
How about uploading the Zoundz tracks from ‘Bert Weedon’, penguin?
Get the full-on hippy vibe flowing: the versions on the tape are probably my favourite Zoundz recordings, laidback like the Larry W version of ‘Iron Horse’ on Motorhead’s ‘No Remorse’…
Penguin • Post Author •
December 15, 2007 at 1:28 pmNic, I only like uploading the whole product, cos I am an obsessive compulsive kind of bloke, so ‘Bertie’ will have to wait until the sales die down a bit, or I get permission off John at Overground. Plenty more bits and pieces to chuck on soon anyway!
mon50
April 11, 2008 at 7:12 amI’m trying to keep away from reading posts like this. It is totally meaningless. Ain’t it shame to post rubbish like this?
Nic
April 11, 2008 at 9:10 amMeaningless? In what sense, mon50?
Do you mean you find the music ‘rubbish’?
I presume Penguin posted it because the Androids of Mu’s activities overlapped with the activities of those related to KYPP – which is (after all) a focus of this site…
🙂
Burger
April 11, 2008 at 4:56 pm“Before the Spice Girls, everybody’s favorite all girl band was The Androids Of Mu, which featured Suze Da Blooze ”
Well that’s certainly putting a spin on them…in some circles the Androids were without a doubt very well liked but sales of the record did not propel these girls into the limelight and they got no mention in the press other than the underground magazines. I seem to recall them playing with a tape background at least once during one gig. The record is worth getting if you come across it and is likely to appreciate in value assuming civilisation lasts another 25 years. Suze would have been a little older than the other Girls and it seems the alliance lasted only for a while. This LP is the best place to appreciate her talents as in here and now she was firmly in the background.
Penguin • Post Author •
April 11, 2008 at 5:36 pmJust for the record Burger and mon50, the spice girls comparison was a joke, OK. It sounded good at the time in a D.L.T. kind of way, but is indeed complete ‘rubbish’…
I have two copies of this LP though, will have to Ebay one in 25 years time. Thanks for the ‘heads up’ Burger.
Nic
April 14, 2008 at 1:59 pmThe LP is already fetching good sums (on ebay and beyond) thanks to the increase in interest in the ‘UK D.I.Y.’ music scene of the late 70’s / early 80’s…
I think I’m going to press up a couple of their demos on vinyl LP: 500 copies, red vinyl, nice little holiday for me…
😉
alistairliv
April 14, 2008 at 6:05 pmNic said – “An increase in interest in the UK DIY music scene of the late 70’s/ early 80’s..” – that is interesting, any idea where the interest is coming from?
Is it just from old folks like me, or are young people involved?
Nic
April 14, 2008 at 8:15 pmWell, Al, it’s a bit of both: it initially started as a re-visitation from the old folks, and has since been embraced by the youth-man-dem…
In the 1990’s, a series of (bootleg) LP’s called ‘Killed by Death’ came out which compiled tracks from very rare Punk singles from around the globe…They were a bit of a smash hit as they allowed people to hear old rare records that were far too expensive to buy (whenever copies actually showed up for sale), and – as you can imagine – the scarcity of the records had exponentially increased the expectations of what their grooves contained…
🙂
Following on from this idea, a man in the USA started a series of CDr’s called ‘Messthetics’ which compiled tracks from obscure (and rare) UK D.I.Y. singles with each CDr cataloguing a different letter of the alphabet…
The buzz about these CDrs dovetailed with the releases of the Rough Trade ‘Post Punk’ double CD and a general resurgence in interest in the Post Punk period (spurred on by the rash of bands informed by Gang of Four / Delta 5 etc which popped up about 7 or so years ago)…
This has been consolidated over the last few years by the Soul Jazz records compilations of Post Punk, and also by a few more bootleg compilations…
The ‘Messthetics’ CDrs have now started to be released as ‘official’ CDs, beginning with 2 volumes of London-based singles, a volume of Midlands singles (one of which – from 1981 – features my good self as part of the cover picture – aged 12!), and a volume each for South Wales and Scotland…
As the net widens, people have got wind of the Fuck Off Records / Street Level Studios recordings (which all go for quite silly money in the world of Record Collectors), and this has led them to the Androids of Mu…
🙂
Here’s a link to the ‘Messthetics’ CDs:
http://www.hyped2death.com/frameset1.html
alistairliv
April 14, 2008 at 9:49 pmClunk – sound of jaw hitting floor as AL skims through Nic’s Messthetics link…
for example – He’s Dead Jim – Colour Climax/ Monochrome World: Aberdeen D.I.Y.-punk 1981-83 (Messthetics #215 CD-R)
There was an Aberdeen DIY punk scene?
Struggling for a reference point, I guess this may link to the ‘long tail’ theory
http://www.longtail.com/about.html which goes like this…
The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.
Can we claim this ‘long tail’ as part of our DIY -fanzines, tapes, records- counter culture? As an alternative to mainstream ‘brand name’ consumerism? The internet as a huge photcopier/ double tape recorder… C40 C60 C90 go… Bow Wow WOW….
alistairliv
April 14, 2008 at 10:03 pmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U291AOW2-Ms
Every day I get a brand new show
off TV record and radio
I breeze with the sleaze on my cassette
’cause I got the affirmative
C30 C60 C90 Go
A bit bam-boogie and a booga-rooga
my cassette’s just like a bazooka
a bligger a blagger a blippity-blop
well I’m going down to the record shop
Yeah!
And the boss said
“LP, single, picture cover or plain
I’ve got all the hits and all the big names
I’ve got biggest discounts in my store
if you buy three records, I’ll give you four”
C30 C60 C90 Go
off the radio I get a constant flow
hit it, pause it, record it and play
turn it, rewind, and rub it away
C30 C60 C90 Go
It used to break my heart when I went in your shop
and you said my records were out of stock
so I don’t buy records in your shop
now I tape them all, ’cause I’m Top of the Pops!
Yeah!
Now I got a new way to move
it’s shiny and black and don’t need a groove
now I don’t need no album rack
I carry my collection over my back
C30 C60 C90 Go
off the radio I get a constant flow
hit it, pause it, record it and play
turn it, rewind, and rub it away
Policeman stopped me in my tracks
said “Hey you, you can’t tape that
you’re under arrest ’cause it’s illegal”
So I shoved him off and blew his whistle
I’m a pirate and I keep my loot
So I blew him out with my bazooka
C30 C60 C90 Go
off the radio I get a constant flow
hit it, pause it, record it and play
turn it, rewind, and rub it away
You’re rich enough to have a record collection
I’ll bring my bazooka round for inspection
Sometimes it better get hit twice as fast
so I press my playback to make it last
I breeze with the sleaze on my cassette
I’ve got the affirmative
C30 C60 C90 Go
off the radio I get a constant flow
hit it, pause it, record it and play
turn it, rewind, and rub it away
lee23
April 14, 2008 at 10:11 pmGood link to the punk/d.i.y scene in late 70s early 80s brighton :
http://www.punkbrighton.co.uk/index.html
Penguin • Post Author •
April 14, 2008 at 10:26 pmYou know I gave away my cassette pet by Bow Wow Wow many many years ago, gutted I did cos I wanted to upload it on this site, cos it would have fit KYPP perfectly. Hindsight is such a dog, y’know.
Nic
April 15, 2008 at 9:49 amFor those in need of a cassette to pet:
http://lost-intyme.blogspot.com/2007/08/bow-wow-wow-1980-your-cassette-pet-ep.html
Ants nerds (that means you lot! 😉 ) might like to check out this Ants-related:
http://musicforafutureage.blogspot.com/
I’ll do my best to respond to the interesting ideas in Al’s other thread when I have a moment…
Mr.mick
April 15, 2008 at 7:05 pmTa for Androids of Mu info.I found my copy in a suitcase a number of years ago and no one i asked knew who they were ,or where they came from,so thanks for clearing that up.Oh,yeah it’s a great chunk of vinyl too.
Tony Puppy
April 15, 2008 at 11:02 pmThanks Nic, getting petting by the cassette as we speak.
This really reminds me of round the kitchen table at Westbere Rd.
MURPHY
May 31, 2008 at 5:08 pmHi there just found the demo tape you sent me all them years ago, for a gig, or to the record company, titles – housewifes.pretty nun.atomic exploision.
Hope you are all well. I Have given you a brief mention in a book I have written BRIDGE HOUSE CANNING TOWN…Keep well,
Dave
January 18, 2009 at 2:56 pmI put on a gig by the Androids of Mu and The 012 in 1980, in Leicester, and they were great. I gave Kif Kif some cassettes and he agreed to tape the whole gig (including supports) via the mixing desk. Unfortunately I left at the end forgetting to ask for the tapes back-when I got round to writing to KK a few weeks later to ask for them he said he didn’t know what happened to them! So somewhere there’s an Androids of Mu live in Leicester tape floating about, if it’s survived.
Deborah
June 30, 2009 at 8:02 pmI was in the 2nd incarnation of the Androids around 1981. I played lead guitar.
Anyone know of any photos of that era ? I would love to see them.
bobby wotnot
August 1, 2009 at 6:41 pmGosh, I haven’t thought about the Androids for a long time. I will have to dig out my copy of ‘Blood Robots’ and give it another listen. I remember seeing the a few times maybe it was at the Idiot Ballroom at the Clarendon Hotel or Westborne Park.
I am glad they are remembered.
No Class
August 14, 2009 at 9:24 amDeborah,
Can you contact me about the Androids via http://www.myspace.com/noclassfanzine?
edson
August 17, 2010 at 11:44 amDoes anyone remember Androids playing at Trinity in Bristol? Let us know. I’m doing a history of the bands and events held there since the 70s. Cheers.
vinylbypost
August 26, 2010 at 4:32 pmI have this LP and to be honest was not all that impressed with the music when i listened to it recently. i had no idea it was such a cult classic and have unwisely listed it on eBay (5 hours left its on £15). i think i’ll now record it to mp3 before it disappears into a post office sack and see if i can find any hint of the raw talent spoken of above
great name for a record label!
AL Puppy
August 26, 2010 at 9:15 pmIt is all about context, vinylbypost. I am just listening to the recently remastered version of Close to the Edge by Yes. I have just been reading a history of prog rock and it rated Close to the Edge as the very acme of perfection of the genre, that you just can’t get a piece of rock music which is better played, better composed etc. …although I’d rate And You and I (on the B side of the original album) one notch higher, right up there at 11. I bought the album (for its Roger Dean cover art) in 1972 and have loved it ever since.
But I did not see Yes play at a Smoky Bears picnic in Hyde Park in the summer of 1980, acting out ‘Bored Housewife’ on stage using vacuum cleaners, standard lamps and a giant spliff (or did I hallucinate that?) – which is where I saw the Androids and why I bought their album when I saw it in Small Wonder. And snipped the album review from Sounds. The cover illustration by Monica Sjoo is as evocative as the music – Monica and her paintings were part of an eco-feminist scene which mixed Greenham Common in with Silbury Hill, anti-nuclear protests and Stonehenge Free Festival…and which then (along a gendered spectrum) moved seamlessly into the Mob playing in an empty (adventure) playground the next summer…and Meanwhile Gardens a couple years on. Of photo of the first of which I have just seen posted up on Facebook.
Was it ever about ‘being impressed by the music’? I remember someone pointing out at the time that Mark Wilson was not a very good singer (he sounds flat was the phrase)… but technical proficiency was never the point was it? The music was an expression of the ‘tribe’ -not strictly punk any more, but not exactly hippy either. What ever it was, participation was the key principle. With Yes, you could only ever be a spectator, the sheer brilliance of the music set it apart from the grubby ears of Yes’s audience.
But with the music of the Androids, of Zounds, the Mob, Hagar the Womb, and a list which I had better not start since I will forget too many of the groups…. the boundaries and distinctions between performers and audience, between creators and consumers, spectacle and spectators were blurred and diffused if not actually erased. It was quite revolutionary.
But when isolated and abstracted, listened to cold thirty years later – yeah, maybe the Androids’ music don’t seem so impressive . But it never was. The music was just the soundtrack, the movie we made was what mattered.
pinkpressthreat
December 14, 2010 at 4:26 pmAl Puppy – perfectly put mate..not just the music but the movie as a whole. I have this album up in my girlfriend’s attic..I’ll have my hands on it tonight but in the meantime thanks for the upload!
I was looking at some Here & Now posts earlier and they led me here. This blog is simply peerless, with great posts, really good journalism and the feedback I find from various replies/contributers is fascinating..and sometimes really amusing too. Don’t ever go away will ya?
davefromchadwellheath
July 7, 2011 at 10:57 pmsadly Sooz died in August 2007
click the link below
http://www.herenow.be/suze.htm
Penguin • Post Author •
July 8, 2011 at 12:11 amYeah thanks Dave, KYPP are aware and there is mention of this sad issue on various Here And Now posts on this site.
AL Puppy
August 3, 2013 at 10:43 amBlood Robots has now been re-released on vinyl by Water Wing Records/ Free Love Records. Available in the UK from Piccadilly Records for £14-99.
http://www.piccadillyrecords.com/products/AndroidsOfMu-BloodRobots-WaterWingMississippi-88947.html