Bristol’s Disorder release their second 7″ single, dripping with nihilism in every groove. The only real positive thought on this single is towards the end of ‘More Than Fights’ when the growler concerned tells us ‘This country is violent from bottom to top, everyone, they should know, we really should stop’ whether the audience members at Disorder gigs took this on board through their personal lives, and indeed inside the gig venue, is probably open to debate! Great single I love it, sorry Chris…will stick something you like on next!
Daily life, urrggghhh…
The first Disorder 7″ single is on this site somewhere, use the search function.
Chris Low
January 21, 2008 at 1:14 amActually, listening to this now – for the first time since it came out when – i rather like ‘more than fights’. Great cover too.
Funnily enough, THIS is the sort of music i always IMAGINED punk bands would play in the days before i ever heard a punk record and just based on seeing photos of kings road punks in the papers and hearing the shock horror stories of punks fighting & vomiting and sticking safety pins through their faces.
The reality was always bound to disappoint.
gerard
January 21, 2008 at 1:31 amif ‘punk’ had sounded like this it would have been heavy metal
Chris Low
January 21, 2008 at 1:58 amYea, but back then heavy metal was all Rainbow and Nazareth and stuff. I never liked any of that thrash punk type stuff that came after Discharge and was never a fan of Disorder; I was just meaning that after seeing how ‘alien’ punks looked when I first heard a ‘punk record’ (in fact, the first Clash LP – sorry pengy!) I was very disappointed as to me it just sounded like speeded up rock’n’roll. And it was only when I heard Crass’s ‘Feeding of the 5000’ that I though ‘now here’s something I thought punk SHOULD have sounded like all along’. Furious, relentless, discordant music. I’d say Disorder fall into that category as well.
Would still rather listen to Plastic Bertrand though 🙂
alistairliv
January 21, 2008 at 9:23 am“Speeded up rock’n’roll” – my first response to hearing ‘Anarchy in the UK’. I had expected punk to sound more like ‘Zyklon B Zombie’ by Throbbing Gristle (b side of their ‘United’ single) – but that didn’t come out until 1978.
But then if the first punk records – Sex Pistols, Clash etc- had sounded like a mix of Crass and Throbbing Gristle, would anybody have bought them?
carlbe
January 21, 2008 at 1:21 pmI just “never got” Disorder !!…Was I meant to ?
Chris Low
January 21, 2008 at 6:42 pmAlistair, funnily enough that is EXACTLY the same thing Andy Martin said to me once, about imagining punk would sound “as horrible as the image” and like TG rather than the “speeded up pub rock” of the first punk band he ever saw (a very early UK Subs gig apparently)
Nic
January 21, 2008 at 7:12 pmDisorder represent a manifestation of cathartic expression expressed through the kinetic – a rush towards (and embrace of) the maelstrom, and the uplifting effect of being enveloped in something that emanates waves of energy…
On a purely formal level, I think of their sound in correlative terms to the obsession with speed in art in the early C20: the stars our destination!
This music has more in common with the repetitive cyclical movements of Malian folk music, Delta Blues and primal R&B (1960’s style) than Heavy Metal…it seems to represent the first direct lineage with The Stooges (beyond the copyists of the mid-to-late 1970’s) in its embrace of noise, minimalism, repetition, overt confrontation, and the ugliest of chord patterns…
I was so excited when this kind of music came along and I didn’t have to listen to the fag end murmurings of Rock ‘n’ Roll that bands like 999 came out with (with all of their connotations of notions of ‘Music’ – of ‘melody’, ‘harmony’ and ‘structural progression’)…
The screaming on this EP certainly means more to me than 1000 Clash or Stiff Little Fingers songs – because (to em) those bands represent an expression of a musical culture I perceive as a control agent, whereas the inept amateur pure self-expression of Disorder speaks to me on a profound level as a human being…
(Mind you, Plastic Bertrand is always good for a ‘Pogo Pogo’…see what I did there? 😉 )
Penguin • Post Author •
January 21, 2008 at 8:05 pmChris, that picture that Nic took of you at Cent Ib, plus pic of you and Andy Martin now in the photo gallery under ‘Puppies and friends’. If you have a mugshot of Nic then perhaps you could lend it to me when I see you for your B-Day in a few days?
alistairliv
January 21, 2008 at 10:28 pmHang on Nic, what about ‘No pity’ by 999? (B side of Emergency). Also dug out D.O.A. e.p. from 1978 which has Disco Sucks on it. But not as fast n furious as Disorder – until I played it at 45 not 33 1/3 Almost the same, apart from squeaky vocals.
Then Naive by the Killjoys… which is played fast n furious, but with distinguishable vocals.
Isn’t the trajectory towards noise- to Metal Machine Music?Brief pause, shuffles through record collection, digs out Metal Machine Music to play along side Disorder. Ah- the feedback sections on the first track – they meld indistinguishably into MMM.
Also , if it is 1980/1981 -its a soundtrack to the end of industry, the collapse of heavy engineering/ manufacturing industry brought about by Thatcher’s obsession with ‘monetarism’. No more metal bashing in the UK, no more noisy factories – the music speeding up in synch with a frenzy of economic destruction. Following quote picked at random from texts on ‘Monetarism’
Despite much strenuous opposition, “Monetarist experiments” were conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s in several Western countries – notoriously, the US and the UK. In 1979, soon after the ascendancy of Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States and Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in Great Britain, interest rate targets were dropped in favor of money supply targets and “disinflation” was begun. The critics of Friedman’s policy turned out to be correct: there was a long, painful recession with double-digit unemployment – by far the worse recession since the 1930s – and inflation seemed to survive.
In Britain, the cost of the disinflation was even greater: output had shrunk in two years by 7.5 % and a fifth of manufacturing output disappeared; unemployment soared to 10% while, surprisingly, inflation actually climbed from 10% to 22%. Faced with this result, Margaret Thatcher abandoned the disinflation attempt and, eventually, monetary targets, and laid the blame for the disasters of 1980-1 on what she publicly denounced as a misguided economic doctrine.
Nic
January 22, 2008 at 10:12 amYes, Al – I was just a little ‘over eager’ with the hyperbole, perhaps…
🙂
I do agree that there are certainly precedents to the sound of Disorder (and Discharge and Chaos UK), but my position on those songs would be that they represent an inevitable result of the combination of regular rehearsal, competitive behaviour and chemical stimulants…
I would suggest that songs like ‘Naive’ are rooted much more in the traditional flow of Rock ‘n’ Roll – and posssibly don’t reach the fervent heights of the more hopped-up sides by Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, et al…
I would perceive the music of Disorder as having more in common with your reference to ‘Metal Machine Music’ (which I have always found wonderrful), and other antecedents in ‘popular music’ such as the ‘whorls of noise’ from T.G., the more brutalist end of the Good Missionaries / F.O. Reckords axis, and those extended passages in live improvs by the V.U….
I’m certainly not trying to suggest that those groups were listening to ‘MMM’ and so on, but sometimes we find ourselves in strange places by accident…
Indeed, the development of what became ‘hardcore thrash’ has its roots in the first EP by the Middle Class (from L.A.) which was co-opted by Bob Last for his Fast Records ‘Earcom’ series…
I am being slightly disingenuous though as I have the Killjoys singles, and enjoy them a great deal (although I do prefer the Users and Some Chicken singles on Raw)…I just think they’re a different kind of pleasure, one that is (on a subjective level) less appealing…
And, I totally agree that the music is born out of the economic effects of Thatcherism…A sense of frustration, of a blank and unforgiving future, of anger – and the expression of that anger through sound rather than overt politics…a rage which boiled over into outright rejection (“Working class? Fuck them / Working class? Fucking let them!”)…
They say my own area (the Midlands) was characterised by the dull thump of the foundries in the Black Country and that this influenced the development of Black Sabbath (Bill Ward in his bedroom drumming along on his bedframe at night to the rhythmic pulses)…Interesting that the decline of this soundfiled initiated a period where Duran Duran were the most recognisable faces of Midlands music…
The singer of Disorder left after the first 2 singles to become a toilet cleaner…
Thinking of your thought on playing records at different speeds:
When I was 10/11/12, the only record player in the house was a Marconiphone mono portable record player…what it lacked in fidelity, it made up for by the fact that it had the option to play at the 4 speeds (16, 33, 45, 78): every record I bought at that time (which weren’t too many as my pocket money didn’t stretch very far!) was tested on every speed – ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ sounded amazing at 16 rpm…
Nothing could make the Vice Creems sound good though!
😉
It was great for making tape collages too: snippets of the atomic explosion from ‘World War’ by UK Subs, T.V.21 ‘Thunderbirds’ singles from charity shops (great rushes of rockets), the ominous opening to ‘Mars’ and the sombre opening mood of ‘Jupiter’ from Holst’s ‘The Planets’ suite, and birdsong from RSPB flexidiscs…well, everyone has to have a hobby!
🙂
alistairliv
January 22, 2008 at 11:13 am16 rpm I had forgotten that. And 78 rpm.Yeah, I had similar ancient record players and likewise played around with the speeds. I think I wrote parts of my mag ‘Encylopaedia of Ecstasy’ whilst listening to Metal Machine Music at 16 rpm down in the basement of 103 Grosvenor Avenue whilst the rest of the household were at Stonehenge 1983.
On Disorder, Discharge etc… was there a competition between bands to play faster, harder, louder? The aural image I have is of the punk sound speeding up and up until it explodes…
Also slightly shoogly (Scotch for shaky) memories of Wapping A Centre – sitting in a side room at the Pet Puppy table – fanzines, Situationist Times, anarchist literature and cheap lager for sale – whilst next door all hell was breaking loose as the bands played faster, harder, louder, punker – to a solid heaving sweaty mass crammed into a tiny room.
The sound of the underground – but the musical part of the memory is a blur, individual groups indistinguishable, become a solid wall of sound. Try as I might, I cannot pick out a memory of hearing/ seeing any separate group at Wapping. It was a totality and, in the memories, it all sounds like Disorder.
Centro Iberico memories are different. Distinct. The memories are more broken up into separate chunks – so i can recall Brigandage playing… or the time Daevid Allen played (but that was a non punk ).
Space and temperature come in to it as well. Wapping was the freezing cold (even snow) winter of 81/82, and the space was confined – Centro Iberico was spring/ summer 82 and the space was huge. East London and West London… English (Irish, Scots) anarchists and Spanish anarchists…
Lots more, but later…
gerard
January 22, 2008 at 11:35 amRecords at the ‘wrong’ speed – I read a review of Metal Box by Public Image Ltd that said it was pretty radical and out there, then bought the record.
Being three 12 inch discs, I thought it natural to play them at 33rpm and the music was indeed, pretty out there. Took 3 plays to realise…
Nic
January 22, 2008 at 5:46 pmhehehe, nice one Gerard! 🙂
Ma femme informed me that a copy of the 12″ bootleg of those ‘Metal Box’ outtakes (from Lydon’s DVD) arrived at home this morning: 10 minutes of ‘Swan lake’ – nice…
Actually, Gerard, it is very fortuitous (for me) that you’re here: I wanted to ask you about the Skunx venue which operated at the Blue Coat Boy pub in the early 1980’s (I believe you played there with the Anabolic Steroids as did a number of other ‘anarcho’ affiliated bands such as Assassins of Hope)…
It’s a place which isn’t really documented, yet it seems interesting because of the way it allowed for a convergence of extremes of politics in one place. ..
I’ve read – for example – that Attila the Stockbroker was attacked onstage there by fascists, and used to have a cassette of the Assassins of Hope doing a song with the lyric “The boy on the corner in the Blue Coat was a fascist with many friends”…
So I wanted to ask: how was it when you went there? Was there tension between the ‘anarcho’ and ‘right wing’ punks and skinheads? Or did everyone generally co-exist because they were there for nights of celebration?
A few thoughts:
Skunx was opened in February 1982 by Dave Long (who went on to start Syndicate Records) at the Blue Coat Boy pub in Islington…
It immediately developed a catholic booking policy, promoting concerts by the more ‘Riot City’/’No Future’ styled Punk bands (studded leathers, spikes, possibly the odd ‘tache and football scarf), skinhead bands like The Crux and Angela Rippon’s Bum (houseband of the notorious Tilbury Skins), fascist-affiliated bands like Peter and the Wolf, Brutal Attack, Vicious Rumours (whose singer was in the BM) and the Ovalteenies, and ‘anarcho’ affiliated bands like Assassins of Hope and the Subhumans…
Members of Menace had promoted gigs at the pub in the late 1970’s (‘Hoxton’ Tom of the 4-Skins was a roadie for Menace and later dj-ed at the Blue Coat)…
The history of Acklam Hall would also be an interesting topic, because of the convergence of widely disparate elements…
Chris
January 22, 2008 at 7:41 pmMartin ‘Lux’, author of the book ‘Anti-facsist’ used to live just round the corner from The Blue Coat Boy/Skunx which is now the basement bar/pizzeria just round from Angel and opposite the Slimelight.
It was known as an NF pub and there were regular battles between nazis and early Red Action types outside it. I remember one saturday afternoon walking up to Chapel market and mart pointing out the pools of blood where he said some nazi had got a doing earlier that day. On the corner of Chapel market was another well-known nazi pub, The Agricultural (or ‘Aggro-cultural’ as it was known!) which again had numerous pools of blood outside it, plus all the windows smashed in.
Suffice it to say, Islington has changed quite a bit since then…
gerard
January 22, 2008 at 10:28 pmHi Nic
The Steroids played twice at Skunx, both on ‘punk’ nights line up wise – once with the Drones and once with The Straps IIRC.
My memories are very hazy and possibly therefore wrong, but I seem to remember punks being searched on the door but not skinheads – sounds too bizarre to be true as I write it down but there you go. Pissing in the toilets as skinheads hung around took a lot of getting over stagefright.
Personally I didn’t differentiate much between macho skinheads and macho punks – had nothing in common with either and thought they were closely related – big boots, denim jeans, swaggering round, mostly listening to crap music whilst they were on crap drugs (glue etc).
A Steroids anthem was ‘Burn The Flag’ (“…Britain is a slag / Burn the flag / The laws a drag”) – can’t remember any of the crowd giving us any lip about it but we always had quite a big following at these gigs which acted as a safety blanket to some extent.
Skunx was a shithole essentially, but then so was Wapping…
Not sure what you mean by ‘*catholic* booking policy’??
Chris
January 23, 2008 at 1:19 ampengy, I do remember more photos being taken by us at that centro gig (remember Nic taking some of the Apostles playing and me taking one of Nic and Miles strutting their funky stuff to ‘Burn The Witch’) but think they were taken on either Nic or Miles’ camera so alas I dont have any.
Nic
January 23, 2008 at 10:13 amThanks Gerard – it doesn’t sound like my kind of place at all! I couldn’t get into the ‘studded leather + spiked hair + football scarf + moustache’ scene at all – as you say, far too macho…Punk really had a large hooligan element in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s…
I was thinking ‘catholic’ in the sense that they booked the range of Punk bands, some of whom would seem to be in direct conflict with others in terms of views…
I remember ‘Burn the Flag’ from the back page of one of the Ability Stinks fanzines and from the demo (where it was probably my favourite song, along with ‘Funerals’ and ‘2.2 and a Mortgage’)…
I haven’t got any pictures from that time I’m afraid, as much as I wish I had some from that concert at the Centro! I took pics at The Mob/Sinyx gig at the Centro in August as well, but they have vanished. I have a grand total of about 12 pictures of me covering 0 to 30! I do have some nice pictures of Antisect from 1982 though (when they were still good 😉 )…
I’ll ask friends to see if they have any of me, Pengy (the earliest I have is from 1985 when I was 17)…
Tony Puppy
January 23, 2008 at 11:23 pmAntisect! Did you like ’em Nic?
Not many people did but their first release, which was an album, In Darkness There Is No Choice, for me caught the mood and the mix of sound, adding a gothic feel to the TC/MMM ‘noise’ being debated by AL Puppy and others in this message thread.
found the ‘official Antisect site’ : http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/ANTISECT/page1.html
but there’s no music on it.
Go on you buggers, get a myspace and put some of those wonderful anarcho-goth noisescapes up.
Talking of chat and thread, all this answering each other in these message boxes is great fun but…but could this be easier and more accessible to others if done in a forum?
What I mean is shall the forum button be brought to life?
Tony Puppy
January 23, 2008 at 11:36 pmJust noticed the ‘forum’ button has gone. : P
tim
January 24, 2008 at 1:56 amNic. Concerning Skunx. I remember going there to see Chron Gen circa early ’83. There were some scruffy skinheads poncing the money to get in outside and I remember one of the people we were with, giving them something (more out of being intimidated than charity i suspect), we were seriously pissed off with the guy for this, and told him so.
Later the two skinheads were in the venue (the only skins in there as I remember) and were generally pretty pissed and being idiots. While Chron gen were on one of them through a pint glass at the band, hit one of them who had to do the rest of the gig with blood on his face. The guy who’d given them money got some serious grief from us as a result.
I’m certain I went to other gigs there but can’t remember specifics, they had seperate Oi nights too I believe.
The venue was a bit of a dump from what I remember, the entire building is gone now, demolished when Angel station was redeveloped years ago.
Nic
January 24, 2008 at 11:30 amI did like Antisect, Tony…I’d go as far as to say I loved them!
They combined the brutal attack of Discharge’s music with an ‘anarcho’-informed political position, plus their image represented a meeting of Discharge (black clothes + big spiked hair) and Crass (black clothes + stage banners)…
😉
Not many people liked them? Crumbs! It must be a ‘capital city’ thing because everyone I knew up here in the Midlands absolutely loved them!
🙂
I saw the groups 3rd ever gig (in Coventry in early 1982 – with the Varukers and Bible of Sins), and then saw them twice again that year including the concert in Nottingham in late 1982 that was turned into a live album…
(Actually that concert was quite funny a live album made of it, but there were only about 15 people there…and half of them were Hagar the Womb! I was 14 years old then…hehehe)
I also saw them a few times in 1983 (mainly with Flux), but – to be honest – I preferred the set that they had in 1982 as it was a bit harder and more unrelenting…I still have the album, along with their demos and a bunch of live tapes…
In later years (1985 and 1986) I played on the same bill with them quite a few times…although I think they were floundering then, trying to present a ‘Metal’-inspired sound that rapidly went out of style as Grindcore and Death metal developed…
The chapter on them in Ian Glasper’s book ‘The Day the Country Died’ has some useful information…
I was thinking the same thing about a Forum the other day: it would really help to spur on the sharing of ideas…
Thanks for the memories, Tim – even if they are bad ones! 😉
carlbe
January 24, 2008 at 1:52 pmI just love stuff like this, where even Disorder are analysed to death. I still dont get them tho’ and they just seemed embarrisingly bad to me…But everyone to there own.
A forum would be a good idea.
Chris
January 24, 2008 at 6:40 pm“Disorder represent a manifestation of cathartic expression expressed through the kinetic – a rush towards (and embrace of) the maelstrom, and the uplifting effect of being enveloped in something that emanates waves of energy…
On a purely formal level, I think of their sound in correlative terms to the obsession with speed in art in the early C20: the stars our destination!
This music has more in common with the repetitive cyclical movements of Malian folk music, Delta Blues and primal R&B (1960’s style) than Heavy Metal…it seems to represent the first direct lineage with The Stooges (beyond the copyists of the mid-to-late 1970’s) in its embrace of noise, minimalism, repetition, overt confrontation, and the ugliest of chord patterns…”
On the other hand you could just say it was a bloody racket by a load of smelly punks 😉
regarding Anti-Sect, ‘Tortured & Abused’ must have one of thee best riffs in the history of civilisation but always thought the rest of the LP was crap.
The cod-metaphysical pretensions of the ‘statement’ on the cover gave me a good laugh though. Always liked it when bands got some mate studying A-level social sciences to write an essay for their sleeve. Another great piece of codswallop on the cover of that Life Cycle LP (stunning first single -woeful sub Anti-Sect tribute band album)
carlbe
January 25, 2008 at 1:50 pmChris…”a bloody racket by a load of smelly punks” does hit the nail on the head for me. Thanks !!
Penguin • Post Author •
January 26, 2008 at 2:34 amAntisect anyone? Go to post 86 section to see and hear the rarest Antisect release in all its glory…!
alistairliv
July 14, 2008 at 9:42 amNic – that was spam, not a person…now deleted.
Nic
July 14, 2008 at 2:24 pmSorry Al – I haven’t been to bed much before 4.30 am for the last 3 nights (as I’ve been at a music festival), so I’m not quite with it…
Nic
July 14, 2008 at 2:25 pmIgnore this post: I spammed myself…
Ad Skin
September 11, 2011 at 10:46 pmI was a skin back in the day and must have gone to Skunx about 4 or 5 times in 82. Should still have the tickets somewhere. I remember Peter and the Test Tube Babies and one time we went to see Blitz but their van broke down, so they said, and Skrewdriver played in their place unexpectedly. The singer gave an unintelligible nazi speech before they played. They were shit. We didn’t like them and felt ripped off. Never saw any punks there. Must have been just oi nights I went to. Used to go to Bridge house too.
What was the tune that always got played on the juke box? Lyrics went something like; “Come on to you”
del
September 20, 2011 at 2:30 pmDisorder “lived the life” so to speak, a life that you can’t really keep up for years at a time. I’m really surprised that one member actually lasted the entire time and is still going strong.
I saw Disorder live in 1984, i had a chat with them backstage and was offered the pre gig glue bag, but i wasn’t that far gone at that time.
I admire Disorder for just going out there and doing something, i think they emigrated to Norway for a long time, while the rest of us roughed it out under thatcher, i think Norway would have suited me better.