The Apostles / Primal Chaos / Black Flag / The Heretics
Man about town, obscure punk enthusiast and general good guy, Chris Low late of Political Asylum, The Apostles, Oi Polloi, in the 1980’s and The Parkinsons in 1990’s, handed this tape to me on his birthday along with a load of others. I have uploaded this late because it is unfortunately been dubbed / copied onto tape by horrid mono means, i.e it only comes out of one speaker…bummer! Two other tapes Conflict at Brixton Ace 1982 supplied by Mark ‘Vegas’ Palmer starts off stereo then clicks into mono. Sadly to say Lugworm supplied a cassette tape recorded from Spaceward Studios of The Mobs LP recorded there. Not interested in The Mob LP as such but there is an alternative mix of ‘Stay’ which I was absolutely interested in. This track also plays on one speaker. Point of fact – nothing wrong with my cassette playback system!
Any how, I do not like putting up faulty or mono cassettes onto this site, but this has to be an exception because of the rarity value. The Apostles, Primal Chaos, Black Flag, and The Heretics all for the price of…well nothing. Not sure of the history of the tape, no doubt Chris will comment on it. Not sure of the line up, track listing or anything else. Again I hope Chris or his chum Nic will comment. On the B-Side of the tape is a Flux live gig and a Napalm Death practice. All I the info I got what was written on the tape itself, just band names basically. I actually have not heard this tape yet cos wifey needed me to do something so I just let it play…hope Bucks Fizz does not come on half way through the recordings!
Info from Nic:
The Apostles:
Pete The Plectrum (later formed part of ‘The Hunt’ on the first LP)
Some Men Are Born To Rule (the first song the group ever wrote)
Antichrist
? (This isn’t from this time period if I remember correctly – it features the drum machine: is it ‘The Island’, Chris?)
Solidaridad Proletaria (This is the original title at the time of recording: it was later changed to ‘A New World In Our Hearts’ and was re-recorded on both tape and vinyl)
Killing for Peace
Proletarian Autonomy (later re-recorded on tape and vinyl)
Time Bomb
Stoke Newington 8 (later re-recorded on tape and vinyl)
Primal Chaos – Rehearsal 1982:
Systems Slave (This isn’t part of their ‘Fighting for a Future’ rehearsal tape)
Black Flag – Rehearsal 1981:
The Master Race (Earliest version of this song that I heard)
Waiting for the All Clear (later recorded by The Apostles, but this version features Matt Mcleod on vocals
The Heretics – Rehearsal 1980:
No Character
Jake from Heretics on stage with Iggs of Crass 1979
The Heretics
jahpork
May 20, 2008 at 1:11 pm@Mike-> “the danger is of,coupled w/post-modernist fashionable disdain,you end up with the bland Blair-world the UK is increasingly becoming.It’s like crime,and the current “the kids are out of control” media-scare,the comment is less on working out why these kids are (allegedly) stabbing each other en masse and more of the “why can’t they just aspire to shopping,mortgages,Sky TV and a call-centre job like the rest of us?!” ”
I wouldn’t lump Blair and Brown in the same septic tank: they’re turds of quite different reek and consistency. Have you seen these stories…
“Stop and search powers increased
[14th May 2008]
Police will be using more stop and search powers in London in a bid to tackle knife crime, after the two fatal stabbings within 48 hours this week.
Officers will be operating under section 60 of the Public Order Act, which allows police to search people without reasonable suspicion. The first team of 15 officers are being deployed in an unnamed London borough.” [http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/media-centre/crime-in-the-news/may-2008–crime-in-the-news/stop-and-search-powers-increased]
and…
On raising the school-leaving age to 18…
“Brown, who has often spoken with pride about the fact that he is doing something equivalent to raising the school leaving age to 18, often attacks the Conservatives for not supporting the plan.
Under the bill, which is still going through parliament, young people aged 16 to 18 without the equivalent of two A-levels would have a duty to participate in education or training.
If they did not comply, local authorities would issue an “attendance notice” telling them that they had to. Refusing to obey an “attendance notice” would be a criminal offence.”
Porridge for not being in the sixth-form? Hardly postmodernist laissez-faire, is it? We’d all have been doing hard labour now, wouldn’t we?
Blair’s legacy in all its horror won’t be fully felt for another few years yet, I think, but Brown is setting out his Stalinist stall right now.
jahpork
May 20, 2008 at 1:54 pmIn my post above, the bit that read: “Although the postmodernist ideas of referencing the local environment and local history (here in Portsmouth we’ve got a lot of playful architecture referencing naval topics) and of the eclectic use of materials (steel, glass, wood etc), one still cannot polish a turd!”
… SHOULD have read “Although the postmodernist ideas of referencing the local environment and local history (here in Portsmouth we’ve got a lot of playful architecture referencing naval topics) and of the eclectic use of materials (steel, glass, wood etc), ARE A GOOD WAY OF TELLING STORIES AND OF PLACING BUILDINGS INTO SOME KIND OF LOCAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT, one still cannot polish a turd!”
jahpork
May 20, 2008 at 2:03 pm@Sam-> Loaded magazine once did a whole edition dedicated to arses.
I am a very proud owner of that edition, and furthermore I subscribe to the idea (as dear Keith had tattooed of Paul Weller) that “Martin Deeson is God” 😉
Sam
May 20, 2008 at 3:55 pm“That’s a bit ironic in itself though, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a perfect example of a paradigm shift, as in: “The idea was that once you’d realized the truth of the idea, there’d be no going back and you could throw your previous (sinful) ways of thinking away.” It’s PLANNERS themselves that are the problem. They’re the politicians of architecture, subjecting themselves to the electoral process of architecture critics.”
Not necessarily. You do need city planners and the guy I mentioned did seem to give a shit about the people he was designing for. I think whoever razed what was left of the East End, Birmingham, Coventry etc…in the early sixties were probably addressing their own egos and hoping to put their names in the history books. The theory of a Modernist avant garde is that appreciation for pure function will eventually trickle down to the average person. I think the twentieth century was marked aesthetically, politically and socially by misguided utopianism and an attempt at the reinvention of mankind.
But, to quote the ‘godlike’ P. Weller:
“The world’s insane
and we’re all to blame in a way”.
Penquin – Thanks for putting those colour pictures up. The only person I recognize is Wank Stain. He was a good looking boy! I can’t believe what babies we all were.
Rich Kid
May 20, 2008 at 4:38 pmYou lot is punktastic.
Sams coming down off the adrenalin after the gig Sam is dixieland, porks biploar kicking in nicely, mike well dunno you so i aint gonna comment. But its obvious you all no longer need any blues.
Sam; sullying St Petes name very very naughty him being the
s(c)acredc(r)ow. You are, for ever a heretic…
Yeah good that you lamped that copper, some fucking dickheads around.
All this punk history. I dunno, aint read the books or really thought about it in so much detail.
But we gotta remember that Mclaren, Jamie Reid, shit forgot the other 2 names, were all mates of king mob,(think Nick Brandt) pro -situ group in London in the 60’s based around the LSE.
All that Pistols stuff is sitiationissm for the the kids.
The end of rock n roll indeed.
But someone mentioned the footy riot the other day & is it any different to the poll tax version?
Well is putting Neson Mandela in prison the same as putting you or me in there? Course it is. Rioting is not just the action, its who’s doing it & how they got there (not on the bus..)
Poll tax was punk/crass/brixton/london autonomists(& obviously ME being the important part there)/classwar / poll tax. Im not talking about whether its good or even fruitful.
It is though, not the same as hoolies getting upset ‘cos the screens are broken.
Pork> Ian is still a looker…No hair, brown as a berrie. He found this thread highly entertaining & moving.He lived in Asia for 12/13 years completely fluent in manderin & cantonese, and thus puts me to shame. Said there was a pic of St Keith fully beareded up. I as usual, cant find it…
Erm I went to a burma support group meeting the other day, in an anarchist bookshop. Aint set foot in one for 20 years? Well wierd.
Found Ian Bones book. I aint mentioned, so a load of bollocks.
Nick Brandt & his mates gets a right slagging though. Seems all rather daft.
Still funny how it reminded me that Class war was based in some small way at least on the inputs that Wank & me had in Monday Group meetings, and around Rising Free generally.
Even one of the phrases that Mr Bone used to describe the group was Wanks I think.
Sure those who built class war deserve the credit (or not) but its odd to remember.
The Monday Groups publication was ‘authority’ written by Fabian (& Dave Couch.)We argued for something that would be more like CW. And basically got laughed out the room.
I think the time Monday Group got on to the front page of the nationals was when wank & me were with them on an intervention, pushing the rhetoric into action.
Green hair + political violence was then, front page news. And of course Ian Bone was still in Cardiff when we were all jigging about in the summer of ’81.
Also found some history of british anarchism, that mentions The Monday Group and Mr Wright alot.
But not, me so another load of bollocks.
All this talk about Crass. Well the music is completlely unlistenable.
And did Crass’ ideas have a big influence like Mclarens? No, though possibly indirectly in the free party scene. Though it took acid house to get it all on the road.
All respect to them but for most of us the fact that they lived in a pissin commune in the country made them almost irrelevent.
jahpork
May 20, 2008 at 4:52 pmI think that planners, by definition, are working in a utilitiarian way to deliver to us what THEY tell us is is good for us. They enforce planning rules according to political strategy handed down to them by politicians, local or national. The “planning consultation” process is an oxymoron. It’s simply there to add a false legitimacy to policy, and whether an individual planner gives a shit about the people he’s designing for or not, his hands are tied by accountants and politicians before he can begin to consider form-alongside-function, let alone form-over-function. “The public wants what the public gets” to continue in a fun Weller way!
In the cost-benefit analysis which elected officials go through for every penny to be spent, it comes down, once more, to tangible versus intangible benefits: high-density housing v. lebensraum (and I choose that word carefully); job lot savings on design and materials v. individuality, humour and a nod to history; municipal architects with municipal experience v. architects with vision and the lack of hubris to perform a meaningful consultation process and therefore discover the cultural references which the future residents find important.
However, I think that the post-WW2 environment in Britain was a special case: there had been so much bombing and neglect of housing stock (and the rest of the stock was so crumbling anyhow) that the small amount of money which was available had to be spent in a utilitarian and not-very-stimulating way. Norman Foster and Richard Rogers were not what was needed (and it WAS “needed”, rather than “wanted”, in a time of genuine national emergency rather than the manufactured sense of peril that the War On Terror has lavished on us). the first generation of people who lived in those estates DID appreciate them: my mum is one of them and has lived in her flat for 54 years. She doesn’t pine for outside toilets and tin baths, for sure.
You’re right about the 20th century: it was the logical conclusion of the process started by the Enlightenment. I do have a pet theory about social science which I was reminded of when the possibility of a Heretics Box Set was mentioned above…
In Physics (“proper” science!) the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that some things are so small that you can either know where they are OR where they’re going (and how fast) but NEVER both. My guess is that the same applies to small-scale social phenomena too: the guys that went out chasing the old Blues singers with their recording equipment (to find out where they were) actually changed the state of the social systems they investigated: the Blues singers became (albeit minor) celebrities and earned (albeit tiny) amounts of money from their work which changed their status in their communities. Observing them changed their course (where they were going and/or how fast).
Would that observation process have changed The Heretics at the time? And on the grander scale, did the media attention that Punk got change its velocity?
Rich Kid
May 20, 2008 at 4:53 pmThose colour pics are soopah.
We all look so young & harmless.
Modernism & brutalism (trellick) works very well in other locations. NY/HK etc
Here we see it as a destruction of a glorious history and thus tend to feel nostalgic towards that which was razed.
In Asia they see it as a destruction of being colonised. Thus they put more effort into getting it right & thus it works.
Hating the modernist aesthetic is a disctinctly European obsession.
Unfortuanatly although its hard to argue the point with an art teacher, taste & therfore art is almost always ‘political’.
Dont get me wrong, I agree that the fuckers who impossed their psudo socialist planning ideals on us all were egocentric arseholes.
But then I am also English, have a my own chunk of the collective unconcious’ zietgiest, and hark back to the empire, even if I dont, the days when we all lived in little houses with gardens, shopped at the local grocers & as a nation didnt really have to worry too much ‘cos we were at the top of the pile.
Sometimes it seems that the post modernist concept is just another way to say that we’ve run out of new ideas.
jahpork
May 20, 2008 at 4:56 pm@RichKid-> “porks biploar kicking in nicely”
Yep, and the beauty of this kinda high is that it doesn’t fuck my lovely teeth up like those blues used to 😉
Rich Kid
May 20, 2008 at 4:58 pmThat Heisenberg relates to the heretics is a wonderful thing…..
If the media had observed us we would have been famous .
Wicked!!
Sam
May 20, 2008 at 4:58 pmYeah it’s interesting about McLaren and Reid and Granny Vivenne. If you haven’t read ‘England’s Dreaming’ Jake I think you’d like it. They were so old (in our terms) and were really very much from the hippy generation. I think the Pistols camp did design ‘situationism for the kids’ but they weren’t the whole story. It’s interesting that McLaren was in Paris in ’68. But maybe it’s bullshit. I think McLaren likes to put it across that he masterminded everything but I get the feeling it was mostly very instinctive. Lydon says they all designed the Bollocks album cover and just came up with the most disgusting design they could think of. I remember the impact of it – that sickly yellow and pink but it’s no big deal these days.
The Ramones doc I mentioned also showed how old these people were. Apparently Johnny Ramone and his mates went to see The Beatles at Shea Stadium (1965-6?). His mates asked why he was carrying a big rucksack but he didn’t explain. They got there, The Beatles came on and he opened the rucksack which was filled with stones and he proceeded to throw them at the band for the next hour. Fucking great.
jahpork
May 20, 2008 at 5:02 pm@RichKid-> “Sometimes it seems that the post modernist concept is just another way to say that we’ve run out of new ideas.”
Not to me. It just means that I’ve run out of trust for the kind of fuckers who claim to have something new and better for me. Whether it’s a new toothpaste, a new way of earning money or a new political system. If it was that fucking good they’d keep it for themselves!
Sam
May 20, 2008 at 5:30 pm“My guess is that the same applies to small-scale social phenomena too: the guys that went out chasing the old Blues singers with their recording equipment (to find out where they were) actually changed the state of the social systems they investigated: the Blues singers became (albeit minor) celebrities and earned (albeit tiny) amounts of money from their work which changed their status in their communities. Observing them changed their course (where they were going and/or how fast). ”
Very true. Is this the same principle as ‘you can’t seperate the observer from the observed’?
In musical/social terms the same process is true of Appalachian folk music and Bluegrass. It had a fairly short life of its own, was replaced by other styles and revived when New Yorkers started coming down this way with tape recorders to document authentic people on their front porch. Doc Watson was ‘discovered’ at this time and convinced that he should give up playing rockabilly electric guitar in favour of the acoustic folk he became famous for. They persuaded him by bringing him to New York where he catered for the coffee house scene that was going on and made a good living from it.
I’m no more qualified Jake to have an opinion on Modernist housing etc…than anyone else. I agree that Manhattan is a wonder, though it is a one off. Americans are blessed (or cursed) by not growing up being surrounded by ghosts. Contemporary American architecture is marked by this sense of nowhere-ness. Strip malls, breeze block Wal Marts. It is completely disposable and IS pure function. Tony Wilson (as played by Steve Coogan) in 24 Hour Party People says of The Hacienda that ‘great architecture outlives its original purpose’. I think that’s absolutely right. The Roundhouse in Camden was always this fantastic playground despite being something utilitarian originally. I see franchises going bust over here and they just raze them to the ground and put up another block house. I’m not being nostalgic regarding old architecture but designers did used to think in terms of the future. I think that the 20s/30s tube stations are beautiful, especially after living away for so long. The Broadwater Farm Estate is, and always will look like a prison though. Another misguided thing in Britain was that concrete minimalism may look great in the South of France, Manhattan or Italy but combine it with a climate where it fucking rains all the time and it’s depressing as hell.
Sam
May 20, 2008 at 5:44 pmAnother thought is that the Manhattan everyone loves is the rich people’s bit lower Manhattan-mid town. If you go to the projects in the Bronx or Brooklyn or Queens they have have the same eastern block mood as similar places in Britain with all the same alienating qualities.
Rich Kid
May 20, 2008 at 6:42 pmYep all good points
Just lost a post. Still on old machine. Computer man didnt show.
This really is quite hard.
Pork is not the gerkin phallic mockery post modernist? And Zahida was her names mentel 3d topography?
Sam
May 20, 2008 at 6:44 pmThe Heretics
Popularity: 100%
Sam
May 20, 2008 at 6:51 pm345 Responses to: The Heretics – Yiddisher Kings of North London
jahpork
May 20, 2008 at 7:56 pmJust looking at the photo of you guys on the other thread and I thought that although you said you’d look better in Black and White, I’d go one further and pop the old Circle-H on there too.
Also photoshopped the photo of Sam scoring at Allan’s place so the colours are a bit brighter (though I’m not sure that really fitted the mood of the old place 🙂 )
http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm312/JahPork/
jahpork
May 20, 2008 at 8:04 pm@Sam-> I like your thought on Manhattan. Maybe that’s the point with Trellick Towers now too. Concrete minimalism is all very well if you can afford to use it as a little pied-a-terre, furnish it with some nice modern art and treat the whole thing ironically, but if you’ve got 3 kids, big bills and no money there really isn’t much of a joke or much of a future to be seen. They’re the people who wouldn’t say no to a Barratt Home, I guess.
Sam
May 20, 2008 at 8:31 pmNice one Pork.
Here’s another classic Heretics shot:
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/8580/keef7nu9.jpg
jahpork
May 21, 2008 at 12:48 am@Sam-> Dunno, I think the separating the observer from the observed bit is more about there being no way of differentiating subject and object, the observer and observed being related by context and also related by the process of observation or something like that.
I’m gonna have to admit defeat on this one… even manics get knackered sometimes.
The classic Heretics shot is a blinder, btw!
@RichKid-> I may be a fan of the Gherkin but I can honestly say I’ve never mocked a phallus in me life 🙂
Sam
May 21, 2008 at 4:02 amSomething to do with the way atoms behave depending on your method of recording them. Thus, lady with camera in Archway produces primal scream response in Heretics bass player.
Rich Kid
May 21, 2008 at 6:12 pmCos we cant edit these after posting this is taster to see if i can post at all.
Rich Kid
May 21, 2008 at 6:27 pmOk sort of can via some weired blah blah.
Broadwater Farm,and all those wrecks of communities: It seems to me the main missing ingrediant after having seen how they do it in Asia is shops
There, they’d have built 2 floors of shops, and maybe a food court, all acting as a central location where the communities connect with each other.
The reason they didnt do it in the UK was because
1) culture
2) planning laws disallowed mixed use development
Of course its easy to argue that if they did that here all the shops would get robbed or vandalised & the food court would become a centre of drug dealing & other anti social stuff.
Possibly true. But if so that would not be the fault of the planners.
Also an obvious comment given my line of work; Greenary.
Singapore is a modernist city.
Its tall, wide car infested streets & all that.
But it’s a garden city. In 1967 they embarked on an ambitious plan to green the town. And they did. Its dripping with greenery & flowers from every wall & overhead walkway. Its very pleasent in that respect.
Theres a park however small in every locality. Most residential developments are built around a ‘wet market’ (fresh food) and a school, that acts as a youth centre at night.
Now Singapore aint a paradise and it has its own racial tensions. But it works.
From an urban planning point of view its brilliant.
Now it could be argued that it only works because its been a (soft) dictatorship for most of its life.
Well now its opening up so we’ll see.
Rich Kid
May 21, 2008 at 6:43 pmThe Heretics;underground yiddish legend.
Its great. Was at a festi the other day .
Young punky type girl was buying some stuff off me mates stall.
So I got talking, Stiff Little Fingers? Yeah saw them blah.
And Boom.
Mention K Y P P & your in.Then say you knew T D and quickly add that the band you were in has the most popular thread on his site .
Boomtastic.
Another pink haired convert to the cause of heresy.
Middle age git version is that she was so impressed that she swooned off to check her mates lap top.
Her version may be a little different..
She looked so young. But now i’ve seen those colour pics, no different to that.
You all may mock the box set concept but you wait.
Soon there’s gonna be demand from all those little punkies out there who want the authenticity & rarity of our underground cult tape. And no drummer left, its sooo culty
I vote Pork to be Mclaren.Can you morph our images to music & call it an newly discovered tape of our one & only gig.Yes I say yes.
Sam you may be qualified or not to comment about whatever it was.I didnt really mean that.
I just meant that to try to convince an art teacher that taste & art were political was going to be a tall order.
Hard to argue anyway as we all know that art is beyond that.
Hava, Hava na gilla, Havanagilla hava hava oi oi oi.
oi
oi
oi oi oi
Rich Kid
May 21, 2008 at 6:55 pmThe other 2 were Tony Wilson & Julian Temple. With Mc & Reid they were the 4 pro-situs who presented us all with the Pistols.
All the content was as said J R.
Witness what happened after he left. Public Image were exciting. Ronnie Biggs wasnt. Funny yes. But very daft.
Mclaren, he loves to be the man but he knows without little John it was merely spectacle. And thats what he misunderstood at the time.
BTW rains a fucking lot in Singapore. But I know what you mean. Somehow the UK is grim.
So Mr P, whats you’re take on Spiniker then? And how does that relate to Heisenberg ?!!
What d’you reckon about the ‘connected electron’ theory. I mean how do they know that the two electrons light years apart are infact spinning at the same time & will for time immamorial?
Beats me..
Rich Kid
May 21, 2008 at 6:59 pmI know we is popular but i cant help noticing that its only 4 different posters in the last 20 million posts .
Just a thought ..
Sam
May 21, 2008 at 7:01 pmInteresting about Singapore.
I’m interested in what you mean by taste being political. Please explain!
I’m all for a boxed set. Funnily enough me and Si did come up with an idea to write us into the history books by photoshopping our heads into famous punk rock moments. For example, me doing a Les Dawson ‘Pwoooaaar!’ face behind Siouxie ‘tits oot’ at Screen on the Green.
The trouble with a boxed set is they generally have lots of songs in there and we’ve got 2 and a bit ropey tapes, one of which features Sniper’s drumming. I wonder if Scarecrow’s mum still has……………….no we couldn’t.
I don’t remember doing ‘Victim’ in rehearsal. Was it that good?
I remember one Plague Dogs song and that had something to do with ‘Going down to subway number 9’. Was it called ‘3 for a quid?’. Did you see your legs drawing Jake and the other Heretics photo?
Sam
May 21, 2008 at 7:10 pmThat’s true…no one here but us chickens but we have gone from Thixofix to connected electrons. Better watch it….we have a cretinous image to uphold here. I get the feeling Situationism was what was happening in the art schools in the late sixties. I was taught by similar people. It’s kind of hard Pop Art really. A few of the participants have said that Malcolm was shitting himself during the Bill Grundy thing. The Pistols were a lucky accident I think.
Rich Kid
May 21, 2008 at 7:16 pmOh lordy..
I hate to admit it. But I did phone her up & ask. Talk about myopic. I never told anyone, as I was too shamed up. It wasnt the best move. It still ranks as one of the worst things I’ve done. The logic was that all parents were cunts.
But boy do I feel lighter now!
We CAN make ‘new’ songs. Yeah that plague dogs song is great
It can be in the set called Streets ’79 or whatever.
I really gotta go and do stuff.
Sam
May 21, 2008 at 7:17 pm359 Responses to: The Heretics. Boyz in the Grubby Schmutta.
Rich Kid
May 21, 2008 at 7:18 pmRe: other thread. which two books? thats mad.
Sam
May 21, 2008 at 7:21 pmWe’ve all done wicked things Jake. What was her response? (I’m asking this to give you some chance of catharsis).
Rich Kid
May 21, 2008 at 7:22 pmShit you’re there live. Maaan I really gotta goooo.
But I AM an addict. I admit it .
Help this is internet future imperfect. Its all gone terribly wrong. My thoughts at the speed of light.
Ok got it. We’ll call the song ‘Battery Humans’ about people thinking there alive but all they do is this.
You & Pork work out the chords.I’ll do the grubby lineage .
Here come my chinese rug.