From the Fire Station to New Year’s Eve at the Electric Ballroom: the tale of Kill Your Pet Puppy

WHEN A PUPPY IS BORN: Some notes on the beginning of creating Kill Your Pet Puppy, by Tony D.

As the late summer of 1979 eviction and disintegration of the fire station squat in Old Street splintered into petty squabbling, fear and cliques we went our separate ways.

Bob Short and his crew had discovered a secret abandoned hospital and made their own plans to relocate there. I had enjoyed the glue fests at the fire station as much as anyone, but what was to become the genesis of the Kill Your Pet Puppy crew were being left behind as Bob and his gang hurtled off in their own druggy whirlwind.

We found our own ridiculous squat, a church near Liverpool Street. But we only lasted two weeks there. One day when all folks were out but Dave, he opened the door to the police and we were out. More bloody scenes. We had no choice to throw our selves on the mercy of St Monicas, Bob and gang’s secret hospital out on the Bakerloo line near Willesden.

Acknowledged but not welcomed, we were allowed to live in the garden. After reading Bob’s recent account of life inside the hospital, on literary website 3am and in his book ‘Filth’, I’m glad we weren’t allowed in.

We spent the days scouting around for suitable empty buildings to squat, and this led to a chance encounter with some punks in West Hampstead. The punks (one of whom was Adam’s ex-wife Eve, another Kevin Mooney who later joined the Ants) let us in to their building so we could squat an empty studio flat languishing empty. So all of us living in the garden of St Monicas decamped to this studio flat that evening.

SHERIFF ROAD, PUPPY MANSIONS MK. 1

Val Puppy remembers it like this:

“Oh yes, Sheriff Rd – there were 8 of us in that one room, including Ross and Andi (singer of the Australian band The Urban Guerrillas and his girlfriend) who showed up at the door homeless and looking for Leigh and Andy (two members of The Last Words).

The lay out of the floor space went from the door, left to right – Ross and Andi, Leigh and Andy (two double mattresses) Tony D. (single mattress along the side wall) me and Brett (double mattress pointing out from back wall) Dave in the middle with whatever he could find I think.

Once we got the lec (electricity) on there was also a bar fire which I remember was also in the middle with Dave and his guitar.

Brett and I got through Lord of the Rings in that room, reading it out loud. I also read Salem’s Lot there (somehow on my own) and scared the bejaysus out of myself as I noticed the nailed shut windows and upside down crosses drawn above them! It backed onto the railway line and had weird lights and noises from out back all night as they shunted trains about doing maintenance and stuff.

The toilet was cemented up, so we were pissing in sauce pans. The way we found it – Tony, me and Brett were out from St Monicas looking for somewhere to squat and as we passed this house I saw a boy with tight red trousers on in the top window and suggested we go knock on the door.

We did and they invited us in – the red trousered kid was Kevin. Later to be in various bands (I have a mental image of him in frilly fronted pirate shirt on TV so one of the bands was the Ants mark II), and Adams ex wife Eve was also one of them.

They soon fled to Fulham and left the flat empty, so I used to climb out of our toilet window and up a drainpipe and into their bathroom to dye my hair, before we got the license for it”.

At last, a stable base. A new source of income was discovered, a leaflet-distributor company was just down the road and so a stable routine evolved as well. Some of us would head off in the morning to deliver leaflets, come back and all would sit in the Railway pub and talk into the night about great schemes and drink the daily £6 wages of the days appointed leafleters.

The Railway pub at the time had the Moonlight Club attached to it, which played a part in many Puppy adventures.

During this autumn of 1979 I was still making trips to Rough Trade to collect mail for Ripped & Torn fanzine. I was always being asked about when I was going to get Ripped & Torn going again. The people down Ladbroke Grove had no idea of my reduced circumstances, and I let them believe I was biding my time, irons in the fire etc but cash flow meant I couldn’t get going.

On one of my trips to Rough Trade Joly from Better Badges was in there and took me for a meal at the Mountain Grill cafe on Portobello Road. Good man, Joly, he could see I needed a hot meal. Whilst I stuffed my face Joly offered me a deal that he would pay for the print coasts of any magazine I wanted to put out, so long as he could distribute as many as he wanted through his mail-order business.

Any copies of the mag I wanted to sell myself I could buy off him at a trade price (I think it was 10p per copy). Basically this meant I could publish for free.

On the way home I bought a typewriter in a second hand shop for £6 (a days wages!) and back in the room I told the other people the news. “We’re going to write a new fanzine from this very room”, I declaimed, “and it’s going to be called ‘Fuck Your Mother’!” The people in that room would be the first FYM collective. So I guess they came first. Though some didn’t participate in the writing of the magazine. They were in bands called The Last Words and Urban Guerillas, and there was also Dave later to become a Sex Gang Child.

By the time I got back to Joly and agreed to his business proposal the title had changed to Kill Your Pet Puppy. I’ve always thought the title came from Val Puppy but she denies it.

KYPP1 was written very quickly. We were in the process of moving into another part of the building, and had some floor space to work on. Brett Puppy did the distinctive logo, girl with scissors and hair lettering, – he did that the same day we decided on the name.

After we saw Brett’s work we knew we had to go some to make something worthy of his effort. Jeremy Gluck of the Barracudas wrote his piece on glam and Abba after a Barracudas gig at the Moonlight club. He had no idea what the rest of the zine was going to be. He had of course written about the Vile Tones for Ripped & Torn.

(Still to be written up: The Crass gigs at the Moonlight club, their first since the Conway Hall, and skinhead violence that inspired the anti-Crass pacifism-stance KYPP piece “Pro-Crass-tination”. This entailed a trip by Leigh and myself to Dial House).

The zine was coming together, and then Joly suggested we get it done in time for the Ants’ New Years day gig at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, the most anticipated and hottest punk gig of the time. Adam was to supply a picture for the cover, DO IT Records were to supply exclusive photos for the inside and there was meant to be a pro-Ants piece prominent in the issue.

However whilst waiting for Adam to come up with his front cover photo – he’s promised something “special” – news was coming through about dissent in the Ant band ranks. The article that was written was from stories hot off the street (and inside the Screen on the Green).

Life being as it is, Adam was so late in getting his picture to us he had to take it direct to Joly’s printing presses on Portobello Road. Adam had to arrive just as the presses were churning out the Ant piece, slagging Adam off!

Joly remembers it was touch and go if Adam would or would not give up his picture. This is the picture on the cover of KYPP 1, the Polaroid. Luckily Brett had done the cover with that Black and Red anarchy flag style because we had no idea what Adam was bringing to the table. Lucky we did, eh?

One or two days after that Joly had set up his stall at the back of the Electric Ballroom and amongst the badges and other fanzines was issue one of KYPP.

The cry was out, “Ants, Tunial, Crass, new issue”. That may as well have been the name! 500 copies were printed up in time for that gig and the lot were sold that night. Joly told me his stall had sold every copy as the Ants came back on stage for yet another encore, a parody of Y.M.C.A. called A.N.T.S. All I remember is dancing to this song with a great big grin on my face then waking up in a strange house in Islington with a bunch of new friends”.

See front cover picture and all the issue in the ‘content’ part of this site. Hear the Ants at the Electric Ballroom 01/01/80 gig on the download section.