Here and Now, live 7 June 1977, Bristol Gardens London W9
Available for £7 inc. post and packing from HERE
You can also can get a free download of one of the tracks. Features Twink (Pink Fairies) on synthesiser.
On 7 June 1977 the Sex Pistols took a trip down the Thames, manufacturing much outrage in their wake. .
The same day, Here and Now played a Jubilee Street Party at Bristol Gardens. Bristol Gardens was a squatted street, one of a network of similar squats which had grown up across London as part of the radical counter culture.
Squatting communities grew up all over London: at Bristol Gardens, Charrington Street, Tolmers Village, Finsbury Park, Longfellow Road and many other places. A few similar communities occurred outside the capital, too: Hebden Bridge, Bristol, Brighton etc. Each one was different depending on its size, the conditions of the property, the amount of security, and the people attracted to them. Some were made up of people from predominantly middle class backgrounds; others were almost exclusively working class. Some, like Prince of Wales Crescent, shared a hippy ideology which never truly “adapted to overcome social or political problems.”
And they all invariably changed rapidly, responding to external and internal pressures. But common to most was a sense of identity seldom found in towns. People had a sense of living somewhere special, symbolised by the street carnivals and parties which became a regular feature of squatting life. For some people, albeit only a small minority of squatters, squatting began to be more than simply finding a roof, it became fun, it offered new freedoms, a sense of community . . . almost a way of life in its own right.
From HERE
Listening to the relaxed atmosphere of Here and Now’s 30 minute long ‘Now’s The Time to Live’ in contrast to the frenetic sounds the Pistols were making that same day brings out the sheer surreal strangeness of it all.
Now we know that Here and Now would tour with ultra punk ATV the next year (1978), and later with our own Mob (and Zounds and Androids of Mu). But then? On 7 June 1977, how far apart were the worlds represented by the two simultaneous events?
Well one was a high profile media spectacle, which has been sampled and repeated to the point of recuperation – a set of sounds and images locked into all subsequent popular reproductions of the Jubilee and thus the Sex Pistols have become part of the mystique of monarchy. As if saying “Here are all these quaintly revolting punks being rude to the Queen but punk has come and gone and she still reigns over us”.
The other … was not. When Here and Now played at Bristol Gardens, the event was so far underground it has taken 31 years to surface. Does this mean Here and Now were (are) more subversive than the Sex Pistols?
If there is a cultural/ political unconscious – see Frederick Jameson: The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act : Methuen: 1981 – the answer is Yes. And although Kenneth Grant (Outer Head of the Typhonian OTO, retired) would substitute subconscious for unconscious; since Grant argues that nothing is truly unconscious, in the unlikely event that he would ever consider such a question, he would also agree.
It is the squatting that makes the difference. As readers of KYPP will no doubt be aware, in Capital Vol. I, Chapter 27 Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land, Marx advocates squatting as the most effective method whereby the urban industrial proletarian descendants of an agricultural workforce driven off the land and into cities by enforced enclosure can overcome the alienation of people from the land and the resulting fetishisation land ownership – still embodied in the figure of the monarch as feudal owner ( by divine right) of all land in the UK.
See HERE
Here and Now were “based in squats at nearby Latimer Road and Stoneleigh Street in the Ladbroke Grove/ Notting Hills area, and at Grosvenor Road in Twickenham”. Bristol Gardens was a squat. Thus on 7 June 1977 Here and Now and the Bristol Garden party were more actually subversive than the Sex Pistols and their boat trip.
You disagree? Then buy this CD, have a listen to it and post a suitably outraged comment here.
You agree? Than buy this CD and enjoy the music.
AL Puppy
baron von zubb
September 28, 2008 at 6:41 pmthe point was that the music was rubbish and they looked crap & were completely irrelevent to us. Important things to teenage punks. And thats why we all left the ATV gig in norwich when perrys van broke down/who wanted to hear the same tired apathetic old hippy nonsense even if it was dressed up in radicalism.
Witness the tony d pissing incident at the 1980 Anarcho piknik. I think u were there Al. Can u remember?
All they wanted to do was listen to gong, here & now or whatever rather than ‘stick the boot in’ when we had to.
Outraged enough ?
x x x
baron von zubb
September 29, 2008 at 12:11 pmTwink went on to form ‘the rings’ i think
alistairliv • Post Author •
September 29, 2008 at 4:45 pm1980 anarcho picnic? Was that the one in Regents Park?
And Twink did form the Rings. Also released Do It ’77 (which I still have somewhere)
The thing to remember Baron is that I was a great fan of Gong, Pink Fairies and Hawkwind before I discovered punk… and if I had never met Tony, Val and Brett at a Persons Unknown Support Group meeting in late 79…would never have discovered that there was more to punk than a handful of short, sharp singles.
Graham Burnett
September 29, 2008 at 11:22 pmInteresting comment from Mr Von Zubb, as i think I may have posted elsewhere on this site I was lucky enough to have been just the right age to have gotten ‘into’ Gong, hawkwind, etc as well as some of the worst excesses of prog about a year or 2 before the advent of punk, so have always appreciated both sides of the fence as it were (2 of my all time favourite albums are still Close To The Edge by Yes and Feeding the 5000 by Crass). I really liked Here & Now, met them a couple of times, including once when they played at a local night club here in Southend on Sea, the bouncers wouldn’t let me and my mate in as we were too young, the geezers from Here & Now let us in round the back in return for helping to carry in their gear. Daevid Allen from Gong/Here & Now (Planet Gong) also once offered me and my mate (same one) a lift to one of his gigs from a poetry reading he’d been doing earlier in the evening. They seemed genuine people to me even though I was only 16 0r 17 at the time, and I really appreciated those human kindnesses that I still remember nearly 30 years later. I never really got why ‘punks’ had such a down on ‘hippies’, I always thought they were exactly the same thing but with different hair styles and less guitar solos…
baron von zubb
September 30, 2008 at 11:12 amAl , Regents Park indeed.
If i ever say i like gong sam wont talk to me for another 30 years . . .
No actually i was into the doors (even the airplane) & early floyd & velvets b4 the hair cut. Gong was just too wierd.
The jubilee boat trip was (more?) radical because it pointed out all the hypocracy in the full glare of the media. Like the palace signing
Imagine if the pistols had just been a squat band. We wouldnt be doing this now.
The Crass for example maybe have been big for us but they were irrelevent to the wider audience.
Nic
September 30, 2008 at 11:49 amThe Jubilee Boat Trip and the Palace signing were amusing and certainly appeal to a mood of inarticulate anger…but, in all honesty, neither event had anything to say about anything other than re-presenting (once again) the ‘early’ Punks dreams of becoming rockstars whilst simultaneously serving to uphold the social stereotypes which the protagonists had learned from their parents…
Sex Pistols were just another commodity to the wider audience – one that perhaps required a little head-scratching when first encountered, but a commodity nonetheless. ‘Pretty Vacant’ is Wedding Disco material: nothing wrong with that, but ‘Le Freak’ is much more fun to dance to…
By contrast, people like Here and Now were much more ‘radical’ because they suggested possibility as well as the expression of anger…
All that “I Hate Hippies” gumpf spouted by the ‘early’ Punks was a convenient way of sticking 2 fingers up at the preceding generation in order to create a space for themselves within the tight crush of Popular Culture (just as other youth cults had done before them)…It also conveniently provided a smokescreen to hide the fact that most of them had been Hippies themselves 2 weeks before…
I would contend that Punk was due to happen whether the Sex Pistols had existed or not: it was just fortuitous for them that they happened to be in the right place at exactly the right time…Youth cults appear (on average) every 5 years or so and the first wave become burned out after 2 or so years…
Outraged of Birmingham
😉
Graham Burnett
September 30, 2008 at 3:40 pmJust think, if punk hadn’t happened then The Racing Cars would have been the next big thing in 1976…
betab
September 30, 2008 at 4:20 pmTrying to filter through musical memories and try to get some things in the right sort of order. I guess hanging around with different people just brushed me into very different musics.
There was a definite Gong, Here and Now, Hawkwind axis alongside the all out thrash/stomp afficionados and yet another that was heavily into experimental electronica. I seem to remember it being acceptable to drift between them. Flux were great but not really the ideal thing for 2.30 in the morning when you just want to come down. Music was a much more scarce commodity out in the sticks, and if someone had access to something that fitted the occasion I suppose the tribal affiliation was not so important as it might be when looking back and trying to sort out ‘differences’.
Seeing the ‘Undercurrents’ cover makes more sense – there was alternative technology alongside Greenham Common next to communes network stuff and things to get angry about – and of course sold at the same places that would hold copies Peace News, Gay News and the details of gigs and of local political meetings of all sorts of Black, red and green hues.
Not just squatting but the whole creative alternatives undertow, whether in housing or income generation or cultural alternatives.
Pistols punk was largely irrelevant except for the liberation of DIY possibilities that the Clash/Buzzcocks/Siouxsie revealed to a wider audience.
Graham Burnett
October 1, 2008 at 2:06 amLe Freak isn’t just more fun to dance to, the Nard and Nile sound is utterly blinding (and check out the B side of the original 7″, ‘savoir faire’), even cheesy sub-euro disco pap like Sheila B Devotion was transformed by the Chic team production of ‘Spacer’ (so much so that it was an influence on our old pals Amebix even before Black Sabbath and the like…). Coming Out by Diana Ross was also probably one of her finest moments thanks to Nard and Nile, and ‘My Old Piano’, given to me by Paul Brown of Train Fares/Stripey Zebras/Autumn Poison. I’m sure I used to confuse my fellow bedsitlanders playing this very loud back to back with Christ The Album…
I once swapped a ropey old rucksack for a copy of Chic’s Greatest Hits with the lead singer of Stripey Zebras, one of the best deals I ever did…
Graham Burnett
October 1, 2008 at 2:21 amAnd what about the production on ‘He’s the Greatest Dancer’ by Sister Sledge?? Hey lets get a ‘how fabulous were Chic actually?’ thread going, how punk would that be???
Sam
October 1, 2008 at 5:06 pmI’d still talk to you if you liked Gong Jake. I think one of the reasons punk had to die (’78 anyone?) was it created a VERY narrow field of expression. A Band like The Jam really moved forward and came into their own during this period through having the bravery to sing political songs and soppy love songs. Keith Levine said somewhere “Punk was just a vehicle that took everyone somewhere else”, which I agree with. The Pistols did this magnificently. Crass founded a religion. I think Lydon treating PIL like a business venture was a lot more alternative (and prophetic) at the time than the romantic pseudo-agrarianism of Crass, which felt very tired and reactionary. So what if The Pistols were a form of commodity? They were a very witty and useful one and I think NMTB truly stands the test of time. We all grew up with consumerism and The Pistols presented dissent in a language we could all understand. Not all of us wanted to live in a fucking commune. I think there’s too many people around here who still think squatting, shop lifting and leaving a big pile of plates in the sink is/was some kind of revolutionary act.
John No Last Name
October 1, 2008 at 6:25 pmGreat post Sam, well put.
johng
October 1, 2008 at 8:20 pmwonder if here and now will go into advertising some product like this old geezer………. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/01/advertising.television
Nic
October 2, 2008 at 4:58 am“I think one of the reasons punk had to die (’78 anyone?) was it created a VERY narrow field of expression.”
Very true, Sam…
“Crass founded a religion.”
Totally disagree: some people treated them in that manner, many others didn’t…and the content of their material never indicates that this was the intention…
“I think Lydon treating PIL like a business venture was a lot more alternative (and prophetic) at the time”
Please elaborate…
Larry Parnes was doing this in the 50’s (following the Colonel and many before him) – nothing new (or ‘alternative’) there…
The ‘business venture’ marketing tool they bandied about in early interviews gave way very quickly to the ‘we want to be a multi media art show with films and stuff’ marketing tool, so it didn’t really carry much weight anyway…PiL became more interesting (sonically, at least) when they revealed themselves as the dope smoking hippies they were before Punk on the ‘Metal Box / 2nd Edition’ LP…
“So what if The Pistols were a form of commodity?”
If it doesn’t matter to you, that’s fine…
If they were a commodity, they were probably ‘Deely Boppers’ (or perhaps ‘Swingball’)….
“Not all of us wanted to live in a fucking commune.”
Very true (although it would seem that those who didn’t ‘want to live in a commune’ were ALWAYS a majority rather than the minority which the comment implies)…
Then again – not all of us wanted the same old rock ‘n’ roll either, particularly when it pretended to be something more…When you have the Small Faces and the Stooges, why bother with the Sex Pistols sluggish sub-Heavy Metal and half-baked tantrum lyrics?
“I think there’s too many people around here who still think squatting, shop lifting and leaving a big pile of plates in the sink is/was some kind of revolutionary act.”
I think there’s too many people who want music to be a soft cashmere blanket of entertainment in inertia replete with notions of ‘musicianship’ and ‘talent’…They probably think art should consist of photo-realistic paintings of horses and the countryside as well…
It’s utterly butterly…
🙂
Carl
October 2, 2008 at 2:33 pmUtterly Butterly Indeed !!..Some good points being made here and my own view is that “age ” has to be taken into consideration when discussing Here and Now/Sex Pistols. To anyone who was a young teenager during the late 70’s ( Moi !) then the first musical experience of my own and people around me would be The Undertones, Skids, SLF, The Clash and The Pistols…and the media/punk line at the time was that “hippy” was old guard and to be dismissed. Its a question of “starting points” for some people. At the end of the day and with the benefit of hindsight then neither band were/ are a threat to the establishment…saying that I love the Pistols even now !!. There can be no doubt that the Pistols reached and effected more people than Here and Now. Does that make them more important ?? …In my eyes…Yes.
Crass as a religion…of course it was seen as thus, the thousands of followers blindly taking the line , hook line and sinker…This site and the people on it now better than most that the better “anarcho” bands of the time were the ones that did something different , more colourful.
As for communes and leaving piles of plates in the sink…never did that, and tbh I never wanted to. Never saw it as a threat to the system but maybe something that was done out of neccesity.
Sam
October 2, 2008 at 5:33 pm“I think there’s too many people who want music to be a soft cashmere blanket of entertainment in inertia replete with notions of ‘musicianship’ and ‘talent’…They probably think art should consist of photo-realistic paintings of horses and the countryside as well…
It’s utterly butterly.”
Quite funny that you’re implying The Pistols as an example of musical virtuosity. It was generally seen as musical barbarism at the time.
Nothing wrong with photorealism or landscapes. Take a look at Gerhardt Richter sometime who uses ‘the lowest common denominator of artistic experience’ to question our relationship to reality, the media image and the German romantic landscape tradition. They’re not easy paintings. Similarly Steve Jones is still one of the dirtiest guitarists of the last 50 years. Who knew Chuck Berry could be reinvented and used in that context? If you think Crass were doing something (non) musically ‘new’ then you’re more concerned with progressive ideas of form. Tired old Modernism if you ask me.
In retrospect The Pistols were a commodity but at the time they were like this killer shark that had slipped through the net. The Bill Grundy show was like a dangerous slice of reality that exposed the media’s hypocrisy completely. Love The Stooges but Iggy never wrote anything as concise as Holidays in the Sun. Rotten’s lyrics (and interviews at the time) were genius for a late seventies teenager.
andus
October 2, 2008 at 8:17 pmI thought the Sex Pistols were actually a musical re-invention of Dada, only in the live form, if the dadists had written lyrics they would have been similiar to theirs. rock’n’roll with a touch of avant-garde, nihilistic purpose that could only go so far, I do believe Lydon mean’t it, this comes out more in PIL than the Pistols, they did become a commodity, whether that was intentional or not is up for debate, The reason I think they were more genuine than commodity is because, they nearly blew it with their activities which led to gig bans and getting thrown off labels, this could have easily collapsed them.
Here And Now were a superb band a sort of everything hippy becomes one in this outfit, they were the definative hippy band in my opinion.
Nic
October 3, 2008 at 9:17 amThe comment about musicianship was intended to be more general, Sam, rather than referring specifically to the Sex Pistols…
I can fully appreciate what a powerful tool their ‘lack of talent’ must have been in the mid-1970s in the heart of the Prog Rock dinosaur…
I agree with you completely that there is nothing ‘wrong’ with photorealism or landscapes (or Richter for that matter): I was thinking again in a more general manner about a certain approach to defining art that seeks to blot out the developments of the late 19th and 20th centuries…
I am concerned with ideas of form, partly because I believe that form and content are inextricably intertwined and inform each other…which could indeed be construed as a Modernist position. I don’t necessarily believe that the Modernist approach was as redundant as it has been perceived to be: flawed, without a doubt, but not necessarily redundant: the re-appraisal of Post Modernism which has been occurring over the last decade or so would seem to indicate I’m not alone in that viewpoint…However, there are elements in both Modernism and Post Modernism which seem to point in a positive direction (for me, at least)…
I agree with your comment about Iggy – his gnomic approach is specific and fairly narrow, and – whilst being evocative of obsession – doesn’t traverse the range of concerns which are evidenced in Lydon’s lyrics…I find Lydon’s lyrics on ‘2nd Edition’ to be pretty unstoppable, particularly ‘Poptones’…
(In terms of the post itself, I was thinking more of the music of the Stooges rather than the lyric)
Andus: I can see the Dada analogy, but I believe that Lydon’s lyrics are actually far less nihilistic than they seem on the surface…and they certainly don’t display the raw black hole nihilism of Vache and Cravan (although it has to be said that other Dada-ists like Janco were much more positive in their outlook)…
baron von zubb
October 3, 2008 at 3:53 pmPeople forget when slagging the pistols off in rhetrospect, that they were both banned and no.1 at the same time.
We know ‘the chart’ werent 100% accurate but as far as i know its the only time in the history of rock n roll that its occured
(Sheep farming in the falklands just didnt have the same impact) They used the situationist theory of detournement (i think) the idea of using the form of the spectacle against itself .
Very much like the Dadaist toilet with hammer.A commodoty they were, as everything is an a world of commodities but thier massage came through at a million miles an hour.Whether you wanted to hear it or not.
I liked Crass at the time unlike Mr Sam. Mainly because they wouldnt ‘sell out’ But i knew even then, they were 2 dimensional & thus ultimately irrelevent. The Pistols grabbed you from wherever you were and offered you the freedom to choose.
Crass only did that if you’d already bought your crazy colour & Docs. And then gave you an clearly framed idealogical framework to stay within. And as radical as they were, they started from a secure base of property ownership.
And Here n Now/Gong? You had to already be ‘alternative’ , If you liked The Floyd, to access them.
And we always washed our plates, eh
Its like the differnace between drum n bass & Psi trance. . .
Sam
October 4, 2008 at 6:28 amThanks for the posts Nic and Jake.
I think the problem with Crass as a band, is that they offered solutions. I’ve never liked didactic art or philosophies. The Pistols still do it for me because it still (remarkably) sounds like a howl of pain. It’s honest music. ‘No Fun’ just shits on The Stooges version in my opinion. If Mr Lydon’s making a bit of cash by doing butter commercials at 53, it doesn’t bother me that much. I can still watch an interview with him at 19, speeding, pissed off, eloquently bored and remember how he seemed to have come from another planet. It wasn’t put on and they weren’t a prefabricated boy band. His autobiography’s still a great read. It never fails to impress me that they’d pile into a van and drive up to Huddersfield in the winter to play some working mens’s club. Rotten’d crouch there at the front of the stage and insult the lads in the audience. The balls it took to do that is incredible. They were less rock and roll, than completely suicidal. But, they were the last word in rock and roll. Nothing of their significance has happened since.
Regarding their musicianship, I had no idea that Steve Jones was chanelling Chuck Berry/Keith Richards/Richard Hell. I’m not sure if he did either. It just sounded like the rawest, nastiest thing you could imagine. It interested me to read in Lydon’s book that ploddy Paul Cook had such a big part in formulating their sound. They’d all want to play the songs at a million miles an hour and he’d tell them to slow the fuck down. It’s a much harder thing to do sucessfully and it made them unique. Funny how none of us second generation bands tried to emulate them. We took the Mark P ‘here’s 2 chords now form a band’ thing seriously which is why we all sounded alike.
Sam
October 4, 2008 at 6:26 pmAnd……
“When Here and Now played at Bristol Gardens, the event was so far underground it has taken 31 years to surface. Does this mean Here and Now were (are) more subversive than the Sex Pistols? ”
The Heretics’ gig at Unit 1 in Uxbridge still hasn’t surfaced which is why we’re still under investigation by MI5.
baron von zubb
October 5, 2008 at 10:39 amHeres a funny subversive story for all us old anarchist types
Dunno if you knew Sam, but at one point, ’84 ish, a few of us got married to Ghananian ladies & gents, for love obviously.
As is the procedure one has to go to the home office for an interview to ascertain that it is for love.
At my interview B4 the questions, I was left in the room with my file.
I didnt even imagine they had a file on li’lle ole me.
Too scared to get caught opening it, I did never the less suss out it was 4 A4 pages thick. Plus it contained photos of Mr Tina Statist that were never knowingly taken.
They could only have been taken on one occasion, dress/hair combination revealed. That was on a journey from me old dears on the North London line, to Rising Free. Summer 1980
It spooked me for years after.
The Heretics. They were onto us!
baron von zubb
October 5, 2008 at 11:28 amI fear senility prevents me from remembering that I may have already posted the above tome on the big thread .
Oh well.
I love the way we all still seem to take the old debates seriously.
Its fab.
Anyone ever liked Public Enemy? They were pretty punkque.
Sam
October 6, 2008 at 1:11 amThat’s very disturbing Jake, that our paranoid urban guerilla delusions were in part founded. Wonder how they took the photo? Some clumsy device concealed in a briefcase I should think. When I went for my greencard interview over here I wondered what’d come up. Nothing apparently.
Graham Burnett
October 6, 2008 at 10:19 am> “Crass only did that if you’d already bought your crazy colour & Docs. And then gave you an clearly framed idealogical framework to stay within. And as radical as they were, they started from a secure base of property ownership.”
Hi BVZ – i don’t think that is true, Crass never offered a ‘clearly framed idealogical framework’, I think that was created later by the anarcho-punk movement that followed on afterwards that never quite got the line “Be exactly who you want to be, do what you want to do”. Crass as far as I was concerned were all about asking questions rather than providing answers, and a read of George Berger’s ‘Story of Crass’ will reveal that they were actually pretty clueless as far as politics went at least in the beginning. when it came to ‘anarchist theory’, Penny apparently thought Bakunin was a brand of Russian vodka…
Also Crass never ‘started from a secure base of property ownership’, thats actually an amazingly ironic statement considering what happened to Dial House later. Dial House was rented from the Post Office (later British Telecom) during the Crass years for an incredibly low 15 quid (i think) a month, basically because when Penny started living there in 1967 it was a broken down rat infested hovel that nobody else had the slightest interest in. During (I think) the late 80s BT sold Dial House to a property holding company who for 10 -15 years were trying to get Penny and Gee evicted as they wanted to sell the house and the land around it to turn into a golf course. Penny and Gee fought long and hard against a background of personal difficulties (both had elederly parents who required care on top of everything else that was going on) to save the building and the land around it. During the 1990s the landlords even imposed tenency conditions that prevented them carrying out any maintenance or repairs on the house, despite massive subsidence and great big holes in the roof that were letting in water. Dial House was a pretty miserable place to live during those years, but the residents stood their ground and fought long hard legal battles in the courts in order to stay there.
It wasn’t until 2002 that Penny and Gee finally bought Dial House at auction, for which they had to bid anonymously through a proxy as the holding company had clearly stated that there was no way they were going to let them buy it. Unlike many from the old anarcho-punk scene who maybe squatted for a few years back in the day then later ‘settled down’ and got a mortgage (myself included, although I never actually squatted), Penny and Gee never owned property or wanted to, in fact Penny now regrets buying Dial House in some ways (although obviously its got positives as well) as he feels that actually ‘owning’ it feels like a ‘millstone’ and compromises its long standing ethic of being an ‘open house’
alistairliv • Post Author •
October 6, 2008 at 10:28 amThanks Graham. I wasn’t very aware of all the ramifications of the Dial House saga. Now I am.
Graham Burnett
October 6, 2008 at 12:49 pmNo problem Alistair. The main thing that actually saved Dial House from demolition was that in the courses of her researches Gee discovered that a chap called Primrose McConnell once lived there during the 19th century who wrote a book called ‘The Agricultural Notebook’ which apparently is still to this day a standard reference work in the farming community. That meant Dial House had ‘historical significance’ and now has some sort of listed status (can’t recall the full details). Apparently Penny Rimbaud also set some sort of legal precedent in the courts by being able to somehow demonstrate that as a writer he needed to be in a quiet and tranquil space which is what Dial House provided – again can’t remember the full details but personally I found the idea of an anarchist setting a legal precedent rather ironic!
A couple of years ago my wife gave me Oliver Rackham’s classic book ‘The making of The Countryside’ for Xmas – there on page 127 (for the many KYPP readers who I’m sure also own a copy…) is a map of Ongar Great Park, which includes Dial House, not named but anyone who knows the place can make it out. I asked Gee if she knew about this, she replied, “What old Olly? He’s an old friend of ours, he was an expert witness for us when we were fighting to save the place”.
On the subject of Crass vs The Pistols and who still has relevance, I know that Penny’s current forays into poetry and free jazz arn’t everybodies cup of tea, but can’t help feeling that he’s showing a bit more integrity in his old age than flogging butter to the masses…
alistairliv • Post Author •
October 6, 2008 at 1:37 pmSynchronisity Graham. I have a copy of Oliver Rackham’s book – it is enthralling and inspired me to spend hours looking at old hedges and ditches and woodland etc – and get into arguments with the Scottish Commission of Ancient Monuments about a bank and ditch around a woodland I say is medieval and they say is 19th century.
I thought I had found a Galloway connection to Primrose McConnell, but it turns out he was born over the border in Ayrshire :
Primrose McConnell (from recent edition of The Agricultural Notebook)
Born Lesnessock Fm, Ochiltree, Ayrshire, 11th April, 1856. Son & Grandson of tenant farmers. 1870s, studied at Uni. of Edinburgh.Passed diploma in 1878, BSc (Ag)in 1886 Rented 600 acres at Ongar Park Hall Fm near Epping, Essex.
The arable depression (cheap grain from America as per Stan’s article) forced him to grass a big area down for livestock, including 60 dairy cattle. He had to move in 1905 “For the very good reason that I was losing more money than I could afford!”He also had a dispute with the landlords over the improvements he had made.
Next he farmed 500 acres at North Wycke, Southminster, Essex with 80 cows, 9 work horses, a pony three dogs and 2 tomcats as well as some chickens. He lectured on farming, travelled widely and wrote textbooks before his death in 1931. Of his sons Archibald and Primrose, the latter was killed in the final days of the Great War.
From
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=326014.msg2080346;topicseen
baron von zubb
October 6, 2008 at 3:35 pmInteresting info. Dunno why I thought they owned their commune. That was just the impression I had. I blame Dibble. Im sure he told me. Or maybe I asked them ? Or maybe I was speeding at the time. Who the fuck knows? . .
Clearly defined idealogy?
Green Anarcho Pacifism & Vegetarianism..
Love free jazz n poetry. Like all worshipers of morpheus I still believe i’m inside Kerouacs head. . .
And I dont eat better.
Sam how d’you know about the ad over there in the land of dixie?
Sam
October 6, 2008 at 4:53 pmIf you mean JR in the butter ad, there’s a link posted on this page.
Actually, all this selling out stuff has been going around my head a lot in regard to my band. We just got back from Nashville where we spent a week schmoozing at a large annual industry event. I’m the odd one out in the band in thinking you shouldn’t pander to other people’s opinions when it comes to music and presentation, but I’m an old fart and probably very old fashioned (the average age in the band is about 30). We’re getting a lot of attention but any mention of ‘target demographics’ sets my teeth on edge. Unfortunately though, I think this has always been an issue, though I expect it was kept well away from the bands themselves back in the day. But I’m sure we all fell into certain pigeon holes and bit hook line and sinker for certain marketing strategies. Crass had it sussed. I’m not suggesting they sat around discussing how best to attract the downwardly mobile, disposessed middle class but they certainly did a wonderful job of packaging the product complete with brand recognition and brand loyalty. In an age of decentralised marketing and CD production, bands do have to think about how best to market themselves. As far as I’m concerned, I try my best to just get up on stage and play my heart out but there’s a whole world of bullshit that bands have (and have always had) to deal with.
Graham Burnett
October 6, 2008 at 5:21 pmOn the subject of brand marketing and all that, I’m a member of the Council of management (fancy term for ‘trustee’) of the Permaculture Association of Britain, at a recent meeting our development co-ordinator was talking about how we might get better at ‘marketing’ permaculture in the UK, and mentioned some bunch of consultants we might consider talking to, “they’re very good”, he said, “They masterminded the whole marketing strategy for the Arctic Monkeys”, i was genuinly shocked, I really was naive enough to believe that at last here was one modern band who’d genuinely made it on the back of solid gigging, loyal fanbase, good honest songwriting and all that stuff… Even after all these years the cynisism of the modern world never fails to spring another surprise on me…
Graham Burnett
October 6, 2008 at 5:31 pmPrimrose McConnell, Penny Rimbaud… there does seem to be a slightly ‘The shining’ like theme of a repeating historical pattern emerging of male writers with women’s names living at Dial House doesn’t there…
alistairliv • Post Author •
October 6, 2008 at 5:33 pmLike a man named Sue?