The Apostles / Faction / Blood And Roses – Scum Tapes – 1982

The Apostles – The Silent Truth / The Young Ones / Absolution Of Guilt / The Stoke Newington Eight / Hyde Park – Faction – Fuck Faction / Hello Mark / Tomorrow Belongs To Mark / Nazi Baby / Subversive Mark / Substandard / Realisation – The Apostles – Some Men Are Born / A Social Disease / Proletarian Autonomy / God Is Dead

Blood And Roses – Paradise / Roles / Sympathy / Tomorrow – The Apostles – Pete The Plectrum / January 27th I + II / New Crimes / Spitfire Parade / N.W.3 / Hello Mark / Empathy For Geoff Boycott

Another personal cassette from Andy Martin from The Apostles, who was the main contributor to Scum (the fanzine) and also head honcho of Scum cassettes.

This cassette would have been sent out around the middle of 1982. This specific copy was sent out to Jon (From Bromley).

Jon has kindly handed over several interesting cassettes (including this one) and some very clear photographs of folk at Wapping Autonomy Centre and the Centro Iberico which will be uploading onto this site very soon when I get some free time!

Thanks very much to JFB for that. 

Starting off with five slightly muddy recordings of some early Apostles tracks, the cassette gets a little clearer just in time for the seven Faction tracks which were recorded around January or Febuary 1982. Strangely enough a couple of months ago Andy Martin actually asked me if I could get hold of these Faction tracks, so here they are! Andy Martin at this time was helping out Faction on guitar along with Sue the vocalist, Rob Challice on bass and Martin on drums. Andy Martin was replaced by Paul (who wrote AZ fanzine) around March 1982, but during the couple of months Andy Martin was in the band this demo was recorded and much later on in the 1980’s some of these tracks turned up on various Apostles LPs.  Following Faction are some much clearer tracks, again by The Apostles with the vocals much higher than the other Apostles tracks on this cassette. The track ‘God Is Dead’ is the standout track in my opinion.

Side two kicks off with four Blood And Roses tracks, this band may well have been included on this ‘Scum Collective’ compilation due to Andy Martin helping members of this band and some friends of the band (Martin Cobb and Fod possibly?) get into the April Housing Co-Op and settle into Yoakley Road in Hackney around the time when these tracks would have been recorded. I think that may be the case anyway, feel free to correct me if I am wrong. The last seven tracks by The Apostles seem to be a mixture of live and bedroom demos. One track in particular  ‘January 27th 1982’ seems to be directed to the original members of the Apostles (Pete, Ju and Dan) who ‘sacked’ Andy Martin as the vocalist – The date is around the time when Andy was doing a short stint in Faction and just before joining various Innocent Bystanders and Libertarian Youth members for The Apostles mark II.

I hope my timeline is correct…! No doubt someone will correct me if any of the information above is incorrect.

Thanks to Andy Martin for the following essay on Blood And Roses:

That it has taken me 27 years to have in my collection any music by Blood & Roses is surely perverse. I knew both Bob Short and Lisa Kirby from my days as an unlikely secretary of April Housing Co-op and I met Richard Morgan, the first drummer (who tried – without success – to convince me that Magazine really were a group worthy of my attention). I think I met Jez James, too, but it was also so dark in that terraced house in Yoakley Road, Stoke Newington, that I could never tell who I was talking to. (“Do any of you have any rent for us? You do know you’re 2 months in arrears.” Brief shuffling of feet from Bob accompanied by slightly guilty grin. “Oh, er, sorry Andy, not this week.”) So why has it taken all this time for me to appreciate what they contributed to pop music, especially in a decade as starved of anything decent, interesting or relevant as the 1980s?

First: in the 1980s I was so completely submerged within my own private hell (still not recovered from nearly 2 years in a psychiatric hospital, realising I was queer and loathing it) that only truly psychotic music could break through the mental turmoil in which I suffered – i.e. The Pop Group, Throbbing Gristle, The Lemon Kittens and Five Or Six (to give 4 examples). Punk rock was always utterly irrelevant to me (middle class spoiled brats playing at being rebels only appeal to the homicidal side of my nature) and the few genuinely working class people involved in the scene never seemed to bother being in bands.

Second: the group appeared to be adopted by the Kill Your Pet Puppy collective (as I perceived it – probably erroneously) and at the time I had an extremely turbulent relationship with that crowd – you see, I possessed the social skills of a rhinoceros (and probably still do – that I have hardly any friends will attest to that) yet these colourful characters actually dared to have parties and enjoy themselves in spite of – or perhaps to spite – Britain under Thatcher. I was unable to forgive such blatant decadence! After all, it was our duty to fight the good fight, to engage in the struggle and be forever frothing at the mouth with much wailing and gnashing of teeth while we locked ourselves in darkened rooms to plot the revolution. What an utterly boring bastard I must have been back then, unlike the supremely cool, windswept and interesting chap I am now.

Third: I was in a two-bit little pop group that I think I suspected was always destined to go nowhere very fast indeed and when Blood & Roses came along and showed us how it should be done, well, maybe I was just a little bit jealous.

Fourth: through no fault of the group, the music press (very briefly) developed a fascination with the group and decided to market them as New Goth Thing (oh Jesus, give us a break) and exaggerate the Crowley Connection. In fact Bob Short did possess books by the miserable magi but, unlike so many other people during the previous 2 decades, he actually read and understood them (in so far as anyone can genuinely comprehend a book by Crowley). My heroes were people like Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Fred Hoyle, Carl Sagan and Patrick Moore so anything even remotely associated with magick, UFOs or the supernatural (I naively made no distinction) I simply dismissed as irrelevant to me.

I heard one cassette of five or six songs, recorded at Starforce Studio (where Twelve Cubic Feet also recorded their one album and where The Apostles recorded their 1st single) most of which I did enjoy – especially Tomorrow – but that was it. Important note for anyone new to this group: you will occasionally see their name linked with outfits such as Southern Death Cult, Sex Gang Children and Brigandage – ignore such associations immediately. There is absolutely no connection between Blood & Roses and all those other wallies. Also, there is nothing ‘Goth’ about Blood & Roses. How could anyone familiar with the group ever have concocted such an absurd relation?

The trouble is, whenever a pop group (or a writer, artist or film maker for that matter) cannot be easily labeled and categorised by those feeble minded miscreants who are employed to write about such people, the public have shoved in their faces so much ineffable twaddle that everyone (even the group) becomes perplexed and confused. I do remember the day Blood & Roses appeared on the front cover of the NME (and, I think, 1 or 2 other glossy magazines). In retrospect it was an excessively damaging development – the group was given an identity totally inappropriate to what it was actually about and the audience was thus completely misled. Had they been allowed to evolve at a more gradual pace, perhaps their ascent to the glory they deserved would have finally happened. That they were only able to release 2 singles and 1 album (whereas all that dismal and utterly irrelevant punk rubbish from Crass to The Exploited unleashed a torrent of vinyl, most of which was dire) is a damned shame, frankly – a case of quality rather than quantity.

Early incarnations of the group included No Allegiance (a good name for a group – one I nearly adopted except it sounded a little too close to punk) which changed into a symbol, a splendid hybrid of a swastika with a hammer and sickle. That was followed by “       “ which is my own favourite – that would have caused much consternation among music journalists and punters. Their next name was ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. After that rich heritage I found their ultimately adopted name Blood & Roses a complete disappointment. It refers to an old lesbian vampire film (I think). If there is any justice in the artistic world, the tracks from that Starforce Studio demo along with pieces from the cassette Life After Death (especially Scenario, Mummy, Product Of Love, Paradise and Curse On You) will also be remastered and issued on CD.

Dear Richard Morgan: it is time for me to repay a debt. On our own tracks Asian Invasion, Thalidomide and The Phoenix recorded by UNIT you will hear the drum pattern you used on Tomorrow recycled, revamped and reconstituted but always recognisable. Imitation is indeed a sincere form of flattery (but I still think Magazine are crap).

There is good news – Bob Short at least is still creatively active, in film as well as in music. A couple of years ago he sent me (as electronic files) some tracks his new group had recorded – unfortunately our computer refused to play them so his new music still remains a mysterious entity at present. What happened to Lisa then? A singer of her ability and calibre ought not to languish in the relative obscurity of a 1980s pop group, however fondly remembered. Anyway, along with Five Or Six, 23 Skidoo, Twelve Cubic Feet, Cold War and Part 1, we can add Blood & Roses to that hallowed elite company of groups who were simply too unusual or too inventive to be appreciated properly at the time they were active.

Andy Martin 2010