Downwarde Spiral in association with Bedsit Press present the new tome by Joseph Porter ‘Genesis To Revolutions’ The Curse Of Zounds Demystified. A beautifully presented book and an excellent read. Book of the year thus far in my opinion. You can get the book physically by sending Joseph £10 (UK orders) via paypal to the following email address 56134@blythpower.co.uk. The cost of the book is a little more to send to places not in the UK. £13.62 (Europe orders) and £16.06 (other parts of the world). For the techheadz you can get a kindle version from Amazon for £5.13. BUY BUY BUY THE DAMNATION OF YOUR SOUL!
The book is Joseph’s version of growing up in Somerset, getting into punk rock, the Yeovil scene with The Mob and Stonehenge. Joining Zounds and stories of touring in the UK and in Europe. Recording sessions, Crass, the Mob, Brougham Road, Rough Trade, the Black Sheep housing co op – It’s all in the book. It is well written and also hilariously amusing.
dan i
June 20, 2012 at 11:46 pmi have read some of the online samples of this and i agree, it promises to be most entertaining. Josef’s dry style stops it getting sentimental, nice to see it published.
kperry
June 21, 2012 at 8:22 pmThanks for this I will now have to check out the Mega-book seller here ( sadly no real alternative bookshops left ) for a copy
Penguin • Post Author •
June 21, 2012 at 8:54 pmJoseph will ship the books world wide. Where ever anyone lives. The book is not available in any shops at this present time. Read above post for details of paypal email to send him the £££ from wherever you live. The prices are also there on the post.
Penguin • Post Author •
June 23, 2012 at 7:48 pmSome sample chapters here: https://killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/the-recollections-of-josef-porter/ to browse.
back2front
June 25, 2012 at 5:18 pmCheers for the link Penguin
Si
June 27, 2012 at 9:13 pmAce, can’t wait to get stuck into this.
Cheers
dan i
June 28, 2012 at 11:16 pmgot mine today, lovely!
Trunt
July 13, 2012 at 11:05 amRead the book in a day, what an addictive and brilliant wrote book. It’s one of those books you feel has been wrote about you. Maybe Joseph will do a follow on book about Blyth Power. Great to see Protag get a mention, one of the un-sung heroes of the day.
Tony Puppy
July 15, 2012 at 2:09 amI read my copy avidly, Porter/Hatcher has a great writing style. But the content jarred. What I mean is he is happy to relate how much he was drug addled and so was not responsible for anything that happened around his rise to glory. That reads well.
But he dismisses how much people cared and struggled to make a difference in the only way we knew how, and with the only means available to us at the time. That doesn’t read so well.
AL Puppy
July 17, 2012 at 12:31 amTony – it is going back 30 years, but my memory is that Joseph always had a skeptical attitude to the more idealistic aspects of anarcho-hippy-punk. I haven’t read the book yet, but I have just re-read the sample chapters (1 to 11) https://killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/the-recollections-of-josef-porter/
Even allowing for a fair bit of hindsight, what comes across is that Joseph was dubious at the time about the politics and values (e.g. vegetarianism) of Crass influenced anarcho-punk.
In the end it is just one person’s recollections of the time.
Sam
July 19, 2012 at 5:15 pmI thought his recollections on Anarcho matters were spot on:
“MANIFESTO OF THE ANARCHIST PARTY 1980
As adopted by comrade Porter on his Ascension to anarchist grace.
1. DOMESTIC POLICY
THE GOVERNMENT: Don’t vote, it only encourages them. All politicians are crap, and are oppressing the people. There is no difference between the political parties. They are all mad and want to drop the bomb. Only the police and the army are keeping them in power: e.g. why are their several regiments in central London, if not to keep the people down. All governments are fascists, which is why you shouldn’t vote, because whoever you vote for a government gets in. If we had Anarchy, then things would be much better, as no one would oppress anyone else. We are against the government.
THE POLICE: The police will beat you up and kill people, especially the SPG who are murderers, e.g. Blair Peach. The police are only there to keep the government in power. If we had Anarchy we wouldn’t need police, because crime is caused by the government and advertising, which makes people feel inadequate. We are against the police. They are big brother, and soon it will be 1984. You must always be careful when dealing with the police, as if you wind them up they will plant drugs on you. It’s a well known fact that weights of dope have been found with fingerprint dust on them, which proves that the police are selling on the drugs they confiscate.
THE ARMED FORCES: Like the police, the armed forces are only there to help the state keep control. We don’t really need an army as the Americans have enough for everyone. All soldiers are fascists and really stupid, if they get killed in Ireland it’s their own fault as they shouldn’t have joined the army in the first place. They are only there to keep the people down. We are against them.
THE CHURCH: The church is only there to keep the people in their place, by telling them what they should do. Religion is the opium of the people. If we had Anarchy we wouldn’t have churches, as the people wouldn’t need false hopes. The government and the church work together to keep the people down.. All servants of the church are fascists. We are against them.
THE ROYAL FAMILY: This is just another sop to keep the people down. Every time it looks like things are getting bad for the government, they have a royal wedding, or a baby, and it keeps the people happy. We are against royalty.
WORK: Work is just another way in which the government keeps the people down. Work is crap and wears people out so they don’t have any energy to fight the system. People who work are all blind sheep and wage slaves who are helping to keep the government in power. People shouldn’t do crap jobs for rich bosses. If we had Anarchy, people would only have to do the work for themselves, so they wouldn’t mind it. Not working is an act of revolution against the state. We are against work.
WAR: We are against it.
AGRICULTURE: Everyone should grow things, and you shouldn’t keep hens on battery farms as it is cruel. We are against it.
THE DOLE: “Do they owe us a living? Of course they fucking do!”
2.FOREIGN POLICY
IRELAND: We should get the troops out now, as they have no right to be there. It’s really good that the IRA blow things up as they are oppressed. Being English is really crap. We are against it. We recognise no nationality, which is just a way in which the governments keep control. Like national insurance numbers which are all linked to police computers. England is oppressing Ireland which is wrong. We support the Irish against the British, unmindful of the contradiction inherent in lending our support to nationalists.
THE MIDDLE EAST: It’s all the fault of religion and the CIA, who are probably in control of the American government, and hence the British government, which is just a puppet. We are against Israel, because it oppresses people, but guardedly as we don’t want anyone to suspect that we condone the holocaust. Anyhow, if we had Anarchy, then none of it would have happened in the first place, as there would be no religions and nationalism and stuff. NB. The CIA caused AIDS by having sex with pigs in Africa actually.
SOUTH AFRICA: This is really bad as the blacks are oppressed, and it’s their country. We (the British) invented concentration camps in South Africa in the Boer war, so we should be careful what we say about the Russian labour camps. We have them in Ireland too.
RUSSIA: Of course it’s really bad that there is oppression in the Eastern Bloc, but we’re just as bad (see above) as we oppress the Irish. The cold war isn’t as bad as the government makes out, but it’s a good way of keeping the people down by making them scared. Also, it enables the government to justify the presence on English soil of American troops, who are really here to keep the state in control. While not agreeing with governments and armies, and being against the soviet system, we have a secret fascination with their uniforms and tanks, which look really cool on the News at Ten – in fact we haven’t quite gotten over our childhood love of military hardware, but will endeavour to suppress it as it is not Anarchist: thus, when we see news reports on foreign wars, we resist the temptation to blow our cover by saying things like “Oh look, there’s a Phantom/Harrier/Mirage”, or whatever warplane it may happen to be. This is occasionally frustrating, as we are still very much children in some respects, but we are against war.
AMERICA: “I’m so bored with the USA,” but don’t quote The Clash if Crass are listening. America, of course, wants to rule the world, e.g. Vietnam etc. and we are against it.
IRAN: They have had a revolution and kicked out the Shah, which must be a good thing, also they are against America, which we are too. We don’t know whether to support them or not, as they cut off people’s hands, so we will wait until we hear someone else, maybe Crass, talking about it, and then decide what our policy will be.
TERRORISTS: They are against state control, so we support them. We don’t condone violence, but sometimes it has to be done, and things blown up: e.g. Guy Fawkes who was the only person ever to enter parliament with honest intentions – even though he was a mad religious extremist, which we are against, blowing up the houses of parliament was a good thing.
3. SOCIAL POLICY
FOOD: Crass are vegetarians – so is Steve – we’ve never met one before, and it seems a bit extreme. Apparently there are people called ‘vegans’, who are even worse. We see no reason to stop eating meat, but we are united behind the idea that white bread is crap.
MUSIC: This is an important tool for social change, and our endeavours should reflect this. All songs should be against the state, and everything else is just rubbish used by the government to keep the people down.
CLOTHING: Crass dress only in black, and so shall we.
DRUGS: More people die from Aspirin actually. Besides, they are illegal, so taking them must be against the state.
RACISM: Although we don’t know any black people, and do not understand their culture, we feel guilty because they are oppressed by white people like us, so we will support them.
SEXISM: As above. We feel guilty because we are members of the oppressing gender, so we will support women and hope that this will make them want to sleep with us.
GAY RIGHTS: We support this – but not, you understand, because we are in any way gay ourselves (we are not doing this, we stress, because we want them to sleep with us, but because they are oppressed).
STRIKES: Even though we are against work, and write fanzines about what a bunch of hopeless blind sheep the people who do it are, we support strikes as they are against the government, even when people are on strike to save their jobs, which we can’t see why they would want. If we had Anarchy people wouldn’t want to strike as they would be working for themselves and have everything they want. When the dole office goes on strike it’s really good as they just send you cheques without having to sign on.
NEWSPAPERS: These are all crap as they are all run by the government and tell lies to keep the people in their place – or so we have heard: we’ve not read one for years, as they are boring.
TELEVISION: Telly is the opium of the masses! It keeps the people brainwashed and in their place. While they are watching rubbish on the telly, they are drugged into senselessness and present no threat to the system. Television is also the insidious means by which the state implants its propaganda into the people’s brains. We only watch telly to jeer at how crap it is. We will watch it until closedown, and then we will stay up and play backgammon until the dope runs out, because we don’t have to get up in the morning, unless it is giro day.
THE SYSTEM: We are against it. We will smash it.
That’s about it.
ANARCHY! PEACE! AND FREEDOM!”
Sean
August 3, 2012 at 5:52 pmTruly splendid book. Joseph is witty, pithy, honest and very funny. Great to see such self-depracating honesty too.
chas
August 10, 2012 at 7:39 pmI haven’t read the whole book, but I hope its not all as cynical as the anarchist manifesto bit. Most people have a pretty simplistic view of the world when they are very young; but as simplistic views of the world go, that one is better than most. My recollection is that it was always easy to mock those who appeared to be slavish followers of prepackaged ideologies, but that most people who seemed to be like that were not, once you got to know them. I know Joseph is just hamming it up for comic effect and I am not having a go, I just hope no-one gets the wrong idea. There’s a few inaccuracies here even allowing for what Ive just said – I don’t think anyone was really theorising about the cause of aids in 1980 and I certainly don’t remember anyone I knew fetishising the russian army or being in any way ‘into’ weapons. And the SPG did murder Blair Peach, which people were rightly shocked about, the SOME police officers did plant drugs on people and they did sell drugs – at least they did in Stoke Newington in the late 80s and early 90s. Some people, people who devoted years of their lives to fighting injustice and police corruption might be a bit miffed to see their history mocked just because some guy who played in a band and unthinkingly drew a circled A on his jacket now feels it was all a bit silly. If JP had devoted himself to political activism instead of drumming maybe he’d feel a little less jaded, but I dare say fewer people would be interested in his memoirs. I realise this may sound a bit po faced and self righteous and if it does I apologise because Joseph always seemed like a decent bloke and the excerpts i’ve read of his book suggest it is well worth a read. And also I apologise because I recognise 90 percent of this as a palpable hit. I just wanted to say there is another side to it which is in danger of being lost in the mists of time, especially if the jaded satire is all anyone under 30 who visits this site sees. So, no offence meant and none, I hope, taken. After years of lotus eating, I got involved in a couple of campaigns in a very small way, which, through the efforts of people far more dedicated to them than I ever was, made a tiny positive difference and I look back on my involvement in Stamford Hill anti-poll tax union and Hackney Community Defence Assn as a thoroughly positive thing both in terms of the outcomes and the feeling of purpose and comradeship it engendered, however laughable some of the grander ideological pretenses involved may seem now.
Sam
August 14, 2012 at 6:46 amI dunno Chas, Mike Diboll’s on record elsewhere on this site stating (correctly I think) that most of us prescribing to Anarchist doctrines, largely had them passed on to us by fairly irresponsible older people. One can make the argument that we all had minds of our own, but I don’t think that’s really true with most 18 or 19 year olds – certainly not in my case looking back on it. I was certainly searching for something, angry and dissatisfied but I think the philosophy filled a big hole in much the same way as religion does to a different sort of person in a similar state. I feel like I had to deprogramme myself (not an easy thing to do) after I saw through the whole sham.
I laughed out loud when I read the manifesto thing Joseph wrote and recognized by naive younger self in it a lot. I’m happy to say I was and am fascinated by military hardware, although my better angels tell me it’s wrong and all the rest. The reason it’s funny is that I think myself and lots of other people beat themselves up for various uncool fascinations for years. All very Catholic. Several of my comrades admitted in later years to a fascination with military things. We were kids (as Mr Porter said) and boys. Ah well. I think there’s an interesting discussion on this on an entry dealing with Toxic Graffity if you want to read it. I don’t agree with Mike Diboll’s politics these days but his thoughts are interesting nonetheless.
Penguin • Post Author •
August 14, 2012 at 8:34 amMike Diboll Toxic Grafitty post here; https://killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/toxic-grafity-fanzine-1979/ For those that want to see it on Sam’s suggestion…
AL Puppy
August 14, 2012 at 3:13 pmBack in the day, KYPP the fanzine took the problem of how to counter the reduction of anarchism to a string of crass cliches (as illustrated by Joseph’s ‘Manifesto of the Anarchist Party 1980’ quoted by Sam above) very seriously. As Tony said [ July 15] we did care and we did struggle.
To illustrate I have transcribed an anarchist reading list (written by Genghis/ Brett Puppy) for KYPP 4 from September 1981.
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb227/killyourpetpuppy/KYPP%20issue%204/page02.jpg
Taken together with other books -e.g. Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time – recommended by KYPP the fanzine, the anarchism we advocated and practiced was and remains a source of strength and inspiration.
From Kill Your Pet Puppy 4 September 1981 page 2- Anarchist reading list for punks.
For those of you who got interested in anarchy (or what ever) thru Crass sleeves or journals like this and you’d like to find out more but don’t know where to look or what to look for, these are some of the books that influenced us to be the way we are. Most, if not all can be got from local libraries or ordered for you by them- if you don’t know, libraries are free to join.
The Dispossessed- Urusula le Guin. A science fiction story based around the anarchist ideas of free societies and the problems that can arise, and how they are solved. An entertaining read if nothing else.
Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell. A true account of Orwell’s days in the Spanish Revolution, when for a time, northern Spain turned totally anarchist and it worked. To find out why it failed, read the book and never trust a ‘communist helper’ again.
If you read these two and are still interested then try Floodgates of Anarchy by Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer which is harder to find and read but worth it. And there is News from Nowhere by William Morris. Play Power by Richard Neville [on the sixties counterculture], and a series of books on the sociology bookshelf by Ivan Illich which may open your eyes.
If you still believe after reading all these, that people are too greedy or too different from each other for it to work, read these here books as fast as you can get ‘em.
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, anyone who doesn’t even attempt to read this from start to finish is fooling themselves.
Function of the orgasm and The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich are very hard to read, but once you have ploughed through it all and grasped some of it you’ll be amazed how much more you understand people. Reich also has some easier to read booklets -Listen Little Man and The Irrational in Politics.
The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea is quite an [?] rampage thru everything and on the way thru it you learn a great deal about how and why things happen. One of my favourite readings.
Fat is a Feminist Issue is about how we are conditioned to think the way we do, how our lives are run conforming to other people’s values of good and bad.
There’s lots more and we haven’t even started to mention ‘real’ anarchist writers like Bakunin, Kropotkin and Proudhon, or the Cienfeugos Press lists of books. If you can get hold of The Christie File by Stuart Christie (the autobiography of an enemy of the state) it’s a good read but I doubt it’s ever going to appear on a library shelf. The address of the Cienfuegos Press is on the Introduction page along with the addresses of anarchist book shops in London if you want to buy any of the real stuff. And of course Spectacular Times comes into this as well as [in] the magazine round-up [section].
And in case you still doubt whether we need a new society, read Beneath the City Streets by Peter Laurie and see how much regard ‘they’ have for ‘s’ when it comes down to it.
These books are just waiting to be read, it just takes that bit extra to find them. Genghis [Brett Puppy]
Sam
August 14, 2012 at 3:56 pmGood post from Chris on the TG thread:
“MIKE D: “as a corporate entity Crass especially was humourless, and encouraged an earnest humourlessness that is the mark of the fanatic.”
just want to say I totally agree with that and your above post related to that position.
the unfortunate fact being that extremity and fanaticism will always attract young impressionable minds.
I actually wrote about this when I was interviewed for that ian Glasper book but none of my answer was printed:
“being from a comfortable and loving family I didn’t exactly have anything to be AGAINST but a major part of it’s [Crass’ “Feeding of the 5,000″] appeal was that it seemed to articulate and somehow validate all these ill-formed feelings of pubertal resentment and negativity you felt. School was shit, the lessons were boring, and having to say prayers was for kids, no different to santa-clause but for some unintelligible reason treated otherwise… all your mates who were into football or wanted to join the army were stupid, coronation street and everything on tv seemed brain-dead, and with your hormones raging all your mates Jackanory stories of getting off girls after school discos made you think you were the only person on the planet not getting any. But suddenly, ‘feeding’ was there , providing, by proxy, an alternative reality and comfort-zone, that in essence made you think that as the things it was ‘against’ were things that you couldn’t relate to, it was a whole all-encompassing ethos and ideology of alienation and disassociation that you could derive an identity and sovereignty from”
An “identity and sovereignty” that for many I believe simply created another highly confusing ‘guilt system’ to an extent just as oppressive as organised religion in that it critiqued everything that basically was fun, and kind of vilified much that is a fairly integral part of growing up. One instance in particular I recall being upon going to stay with a fellow fanzine-writer of similar age (13 or 14) the palable ‘fear and guilt’ he displayed when, going through his box of fanzines we came across a couple of porn mags. Whereas with any of my (non punk/crass fan) friends from school i’d gone to stay with probably the fist thing they’d have done was get the scud mags out.
Not that I think many kids genuinely subscribed to this hair-shirted asceticism for long but several I met at the time did, and it was much to their detriment as developing children. For some, I perceived a feeling that there was a real feeling that somethings would be ‘bad’ and verboten in the eyes of Crass, just as Crass themselves wrote about their reasons for articulating the sentiments on ‘Reality Asylum’.”
AL Puppy
August 14, 2012 at 11:25 pmFollowing up a point made by Chas above – according to wickedpedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS , AIDS was not identified until 1981 and was not named until 1982. It only took off as a ‘moral panic’ after the death of Rock Hudson in 1985 – so AIDS could not have been blamed on the CIA in 1980 as Joseph says it was.
The ‘Manifesto of the Anarchist Party 1980’ is more about the late 80s fossilisation of anarcho-punk and the fetishisation of Crass after they ceased trading in 1984.
Thinking about what Sam says above – about 13/14 year old fanzine writers and Crass, we (KYPP) were in our early twenties and so had a different, more critical, perspective on the Crass version of anarchism and punk. So, as well as interviewing Bauhaus for KYPP 3 (1980), we gave Cory’s ‘Make up for urban guerillas’ feature a centre page spread in KYPP 5 (1982) as a counter-blast to Crass’ moral puritanism. See
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb227/killyourpetpuppy/KYPP%20issue%205/page12.jpg
The complete run of KYPP’s 1-6 is available on Photo-bucket http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb227/killyourpetpuppy/ along with a huge archive of photos and flyers and other wild stuff. Even the briefest of skims through these documented, contemporary sources reveals a dynamic, diverse, colourful and creative scene.
Sam
August 15, 2012 at 2:52 amJust to put the record straight Al, I was quoting Chris in the above post.
AL Puppy
August 15, 2012 at 1:04 pmWhat date was the Chris post you quoted Sam? Scrolling down through all the Toxic Grafity posts but haven’t spotted it. Although towards the beginning did see that Chris says he was 10 when he first read Toxic Grafity in 1979.
I was 10 in 1968. For an exercise at school we had to write a newspaper. One of my headlines was ‘America defeated in Vietnam’ Another was ‘Russians land on the moon’. I had read a book about the Russian Revolution and decided to become a Communist..
Also looking through the posts on the TG thread, the numerous participants did argue their/our points of view very thoroughly/ in depth. A KYPP classic thread.
Sam
August 15, 2012 at 7:33 pmDate was June 27th 2009 Al. Close to the end of the thread.
AL Puppy
August 16, 2012 at 8:23 amAh- the whole quote was from Chris’ comment. I thought it was a mix of quote and comment. Makes more sense now. Possibly Chris never saw a copy of KYPP so was not exposed to our non-Crass alternative to hair-shirted asceticism. Sorry for the confusion Sam.
Sam
August 16, 2012 at 11:59 amWith respect, I don’t think it was just Crass that came across as puritanical, but the whole Anarchist movement. I think that Joseph’s manifesto is applicable to the Anarcho scene in general at that time.
AL Puppy
August 16, 2012 at 7:36 pmOK Sam – where was the puritanism in Kill Your Pet Puppy?
chas
August 16, 2012 at 8:12 pmSam I wouldn’t particularly disagree with what you wrote and as I said I think joseph’s satire was 90 per cent accurate. At the time flowers in the dustbin’s bible seller was about exactly that – people putting crass covers on their wall like the 10 commandments. I simply wanted to make the point that – well two things really – as naive delusions go I think a 19 year old crass fan in 1981 had a better set of delusions that a 19 year old squaddie off to the falklands; and that while i have never had a great interest in ideology i think a lot of good things were achieved at that time by people who were ostensibly in thrawl to both anarchist and trotskyite illusions. Now we have just lived through an unsustainable property bubble in which the propertied class – and i dont mean people with a big house in hampstead I mean the real masssively rich tiny minority – have quadrupled their wealth at the expense of everyone else and are now determined to ensure everyone else pays for the crash this bubble caused. Im no anarchist or trot these days but i dont see any of the mainstream politicians suggesting a 20 per cent tax on the wealth of the richest 2 per cent of the population which would probably pay off enough of the national debt to sort out a lot of peoples problems, so while i accept entirely that crass could act as a surrogate religion, i think (a) there will always be people who want to blindly follow, but its better if they blindly follow people who are telling them to open their eyes and go their own way; (b) for a lot of people, including me, crass was the first step on a road that led to something worthwhile and positive. If it wan’t for Crass I might never have been on ian hisops telly train show 😉 – actually, what i meant to say was, if you want to know where it took me, theres a good interview with someone else from HCDA here: http://www.uncarved.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/colin-roach-a-crime-is-a-crime-is-a-crime.pdf
Sam
August 17, 2012 at 10:58 pmAl – None probably. What I remember of KYPP was the first few issues which I remember being about attacks by skinheads and The Antz etc…
Good post Chas and nicely put. You’re right that as delusions go, it was a lot more on the money than many of the alternatives. But Mike expressed it well on the TG thread when he said (to sum up in a nutshell) his beliefs eventually became so rigid and his denial so powerful that he ended up on his own in a locked room listening to The Pistols on headphones so no one would know he was listening to something deemed unworthy.
By ‘Anarchism’ I guess I’m referring more to the general scene, which included a lot of feminism, animal rights, vegetarians etc. Again, nothing wrong with any of this but looking back on it, my early youth was such a minefield. I find it interesting that these were general left wing concerns at the time, though we tended to place ourselves in an ever shrinking cultural ghetto. When I started art school in ’84 for example, most of the women there were very clued in about feminism without having to label themselves or carry a huge chip on their shoulders. And most were school leavers.
I always felt the anarchist strand of the punk movement was very conservative in that it dragged things back to older hippy ideas of ‘alternative’ culture. I always found the anarchist movement boring and depressing for this reason, though I bought into it for a while despite my instincts. I think I liked the revolution part of it more than the tedious utopian society bit.
Having said all of this I find myself seeing more and more relevance in situationism and much of the paranoia of our younger days has come to pass. Young people seem to have largely bought into (ha ha) consumer culture in ways I couldn’t have believed in back then.
But I do love to shop.
Chris L
September 13, 2012 at 3:20 pmAl: Just for the record I did come across a copy of KYPP – when I would have been around ten or eleven. It was definately amongst the small number of ‘zines I sent off for from either Better Badges or Rough Trade. Perhaps following one of the irregular ‘zine features in Sounds or perhaps if you were listed on the cover of Bloody Revolutions + it was via that source (got a feeling that’s how I first came across Pigs For Slaughter anyway)?
There was definately a more ‘celebratory’ theme running through KYPP (think the Antz + the Sid Vicious memorial march were featured in the issue I got so must have been around 1980) but what I would suggest is that back then *NO* FANZINES per se really projected any particular ideology and attempted to proselytize, as later ones did. That’s why, for me, that 1980-82 era of (better badges printed) zines are the most vibrant and *revolutionary*. It was only after that the real ‘Crass dogma’ emerged (the anarcho-punk genre term appearing later) which did usher in a very distinct hair-shirted asceticism which many ‘younger followers’ struggled to adhere to.
Obviously, being considerably older, experienced & worldly-wise, this is something that would probably have bypassed the KYPP psyche but, believe me, it DID exist and, on reflection, was very ‘cultish’ in a way which to an extent alienated one from a number of peers which I don’t think was healthy (tho many aspects i’d contend were). I can’t remember if it was in the same thread but even at the time I distinctly remember living what was almost a pubescent ‘double life’ where I had to devote loads of time to doing fanzine interviews, duplicating tapes and writing articles & letters when I ws actually a lot more into just getting pissed & stoned with my (non-punk) school mates and getting off with girls at the local disco. Which was probably why I pretty much turned my back on punk at the age of 14/15 and got into more hedonistic musical and leisure persuits. Tho, strangely, remained a staunch anarchist for years after….
I find it all absolutely fascinating to look back on and analyse, but a lot of it WAS pretty fucking weird!!
Sam
September 13, 2012 at 7:25 pmI noticed the hair shirts first appearing in 1980 Chris.
AL Puppy
September 14, 2012 at 11:38 pmThanks Chris- the Sid Vicious memorial march piece was in KYPP 2 (December 1979/ January 1980) which also had my first contribution to KYPP in it.
By then Tony had already been editing/writing/ producing a fanzine (Ripped and Torn) for 3 years and 17 issues and his idea for KYPP was to push the boundaries of punk/ zines as far as he/we could shove them. So – for example – his intro to KYPP 4 (1981) recycled a text by surrealist Louis Aragon from 1924 “Buy, buy the damnation of your soul …welcome frenzy and darkness with out stretched hands’ (etc)
The idea of the Puppy Collective also made a difference – most fanzines were produced by one or two people and so were personal/ individual takes on punk. But with KYPP there were up to a dozen of us involved in the production and the Puppy Collective in turn were cross-connected with the punk squatting scene- including the anarchy centres- and with groups like Charge, the Mob, Blood and Roses and with other fanzine writers – Mick Mercer, Richard Kick, Tom Vague.
The end result being that KYPP reflected a punk as a more diverse and chaotic experience than it would have if only one or two of us had produced the zine. At the same time, it was also a ‘double life’ for me – since I was working at London Rubber throughout the KYPP years.