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
Phil
May 28, 2008 at 5:51 pmDoes anyone know on this site that Sniper O.D.ed and died?
Must of been around 82.
Him and Andy Martin were good mates.
Phil
May 28, 2008 at 5:54 pmFuck.. That whole Crap Murder thing sent a shudder down my spine just then.
Phil
May 28, 2008 at 6:13 pmYeah, the flat sprayed with blood.. There was always creepy shit like that around campbell buildings. I remember Bob me and a few others doing Ouija Board in my sisters squat which had no gas or leccy and the next morning the flat burned down.
The fire brigade said it started in the cupboard where the glass was kept…Away from any flame or heat source!
baron von zubb
May 28, 2008 at 6:17 pmHey Phil ,which Phil is that?
Not fat Phil I guess. Hello mate .
Anyway Pork. U asked on the other thread about the free Tibet discussions I was in.
It was on http://www.skyscrapercity.com.
An urban enviroment based site, i’ve been posting there for years. Mostly in the Uk & Indian sub forums. Sometimes very interesting but less so as the mods take out more of the political & social based threads. Still worth a look if your interested in the built enviroment. The discussions I was in was on the Chinese sub forum & I ended up doing some research of my own about the whole Tibet issue.
Ok back to this here thread.
Yeah I remember getting gripped that day, prelude to a lot more.
Phil can u confirm that about Sniper. As as been said here its odd to hear that he O’d’d, as he was so anti gear.
Also Sam & Sii say they saw him in the late 80’s. Its all very curious.
But if Andy Martin is out there maybe he can confirm it?
Crap? He got HMP for his trouble.Heard that at the time, probably from one of the Brummies or Mitch. Got a vague memory of folk visiting him inside.
baron von zubb
May 28, 2008 at 6:21 pmYeah the flat sprayed with blood, nice.
Probably something rather more mundane that the Richardsons, like some poor women getting the shite beaten out of her by her mister.
baron von zubb
May 28, 2008 at 6:25 pmDid the sun ever come out there. As I said i was there the other day & it was scorchio & bright. And Lower Marsh St has like 7 thai / vietnamese snack bars…
All my memories of it are dark. Maybe cos it was the winter?
Phil
May 28, 2008 at 7:17 pmHey Baron, its Quick Phil / Queer Phil here.
Phil
May 28, 2008 at 7:19 pmFuck i didnt really stop squatting till about 1994.
Phil
May 28, 2008 at 7:31 pmYeah, sorry mate he is deff dead but I really cant remember the circumstances. I will ask a mate German Andrea maybe she can remember more.
I remember me and Sniper doing loads of DF118’s together and we were living in Batley or Basedon Rd a co-op in Stoke Newington.
He was really anti gear. Its quiet often those people become the biggest users.
Sorry to bring bad news.
Phil
May 28, 2008 at 7:43 pmShit! I am getting paranoid that I got Snipers death wrong
I’ve just took it as common knowledge that everyone knew, as I had heard years ago but can’t remember where from…
jahpork
May 28, 2008 at 8:40 pm@Phil-> “they would service her in return for tuinol.”
Yes, it really was a terrible drug 🙂
Seriously, though, I can’t figure out to this day why anyone was doing barbs: the punk scene was about getting out there and getting in the middle of it all, being seen and getting across whatever message you had. Speed was the perfect drug for it. And maybe a bit of a smoke for the comedown. Then Tuinal came along and all anyone did was stagger about like a zombie, then goof off with a slick of vomit running down the side of their mouth. No threat of impending social meltdown there really.
As for the fire I remember that one too. Bob always seemed to be around that weird shit going on. I remember being at Old Street one day when Bob inexplicably slept outside his bedroom door on the floor one night. We thought he was just off his tits as usual. In the morning, he opened the bedroom door up and there was a fucking great lump of ceiling and floor from above on his pillow where his head would have been. If not freaky, then certainly WELL lucky!
@BaronVonZubb-> Cheers for the Tibet site mate, I’ll pass it on when she wakes up! I’m very glad that this site is a beacon of free speech and isn’t “modded” (what a shite and euphemistic little term that is too, eh? Just perfect for the MySpace generation of sanitised internet commerce).
As for the sunshine, I always remember it being a really nice Spring that year, before Crow died – in fact it had been really beautiful in the early mornings for a coupla days before he went up there. A bit ironic (given your time at HMP in the Far East) that there are those Thai and Vietnamese places in Lower Marsh now, doncha think? And with Kevin Spacey taking over the Old Vic the whole place is a bit up and coming. Mind you, a bit of Hamlet and Macbeth might be quite appropriate for the old place really 🙂
@Everyone: Has anyone tracked Ruthless down at all? Although she had the Aussie accent, I think that was just from hanging around with Bob and Jess too long. She was from Sidcup, I think. I really would like to know WHICH member of The Clash it was that she was paid to whip every week in her incarnation as Dominatrix Ruthless. Her professional ethics prevented her from disclosing the name at the time, but I’m sure the National Union of Whippers and Humiliators won’t mind after 30 years!
I remember the first time I encountered her was at St Monica’s: they had a “graffiti door” (very civilised considering the rest of the downstairs room was a shithole with an open fire on the carpet in the middle of the floor). She’d written “Ignorance is Bliss. RUTHLESS” on there, so I wrote underneath “But Bliss Is Ignorance: JAH PORK PIE”. Next time I went up there, neatly written underneath my entry was “Jah Pork Pie Is A Wanker! RUTHLESS.” Well, I just had to love her after that!
jahpork
May 28, 2008 at 8:48 pm@BaronVonZubb-> about global warming…
If you discount the dissenting scientific opinions involved, it’s really only down to “Who has the most to gain out of you believing their version of the story?”.
And that ain’t the crusty tree hugging types, it’s George Bush and his fellow oily-garchs and Middle-East adventurists.
So instinctively my money is on the hemp-wearing, human-waste-recycling, badger-bothering lot being right on this one, on the simple basis that they’re not trying to sell me anything. Plus the fact that I spent 6 months working near Manchester a couple years ago and actually managed to get a suntan rather than hypothermia!
Phil
May 28, 2008 at 9:20 pmYeah, Ive got it confirmed by German Andrea that Sniper is dead but she thinks it was around 1984.
He was going out with a girl called Bernie at the time who I never knew.
Phil
May 28, 2008 at 9:28 pmRuth less used to love intimidating heards of commuters down lambath north with that whip. Such fun to watch!
Phil
May 28, 2008 at 9:40 pmYeah, all the blues seemed to dry up and the market got flooded with tuinol.
What a shit drug.
After campbell buildings lots of us started munching lots of acid and quality drugs. But then by the mid 80’s lots of smack started to seep in.
I think thats one reason I became a traveller cos smack was really frowned upon on site
johng
May 28, 2008 at 10:17 pm“I spent 6 months working near Manchester a couple years ago and actually managed to get a suntan rather than hypothermia!”
It was sunny here for 3 days last week jpp i’ll have you know.
I never experienced tuinol, it sounds slightly like ketamine (for todays yoof) ? i.e. it doesnt contribute in a creative way and make people get up and get involved in a positive way…..from what I have seen and experienced up here, its messy stuff.
Jah Pork Pie
May 28, 2008 at 10:32 pmRuth and her cat o’ nine tails! I can almost hear Venus In Furs playing now as she practised on us all the day she bought it!
Jah Pork Pie
May 29, 2008 at 12:51 am@johng-> Found a site that has a couple of good descriptions of the relative effects of Ketamine and Tuinal:
“KETAMINE
Drug Class: General Anesthetic, Hallucinogen
Description: Ketamine is a general anesthetic that has been approved for both human and animal use in medical settings since 1970. Approximately 90% of the ketamine legally sold is intended for veterinary use, which is liquid in form. The street form is typically a white powder that is sniffed. Certain doses of ketamine can cause dream-like states and hallucinations. At high doses, ketamine can cause delirium, amnesia, impaired motor function, high blood pressure, depression, and potentially fatal respiratory problems.
TUINAL
Drug Class: Anticonvulsant, CNS Depressant
Description: The barbiturates are central nervous system (CNS) depressants derived from barbituric acid. They were once commonly prescribed for the treatment of anxiety and insomnia and are often referred to as “sleeping pills”. Barbiturates are commonly divided into groups based on the onset and duration of their action. The intermediate and short-acting barbiturates are the categories most commonly abused, most notably Seconal (secobarbital) and Tuinal (secobarbital with amobarbital). Long-acting barbiturates have an onset of action of 30 to 60 minutes and a duration of action of 6 to 8 hours. Examples of long-acting barbiturates are phenobarbital and barbital. Their slow onset of action discourages their abuse. The intermediate-acting barbiturates have an onset of action of 15 to 30 minutes and a duration of action of 4 to 6 hours. Examples of intermediate-acting barbiturates are amobarbital, butabarbital, and Tuinal. The short-acting barbiturates have an onset of action of 10 to 15 minutes and have a duration of action of 2 to 4 hours.”
I think the difference between them is (as you mention above) that K can bring on hallucinations and out-of-body experiences, aiding creativity. Tuinal just knocks you for six like being very very pissed-up without the nice experience of how you feel on the first 12 pints! The one thing they don’t mention above is that whether you’re using slow-acting or medium-acting barbs, if you fix them up you’re gonna get a hit in about 5 seconds!
I just always thought it was a really stupid drug though: I can see the attraction in opiates: dream-like state and feeling no pain, disconnected from the world outside while still being part of it (though I don’t advocate them in any way). And there’s the ‘romance’ of being a junkie, as I think some of the guys have said above. But Tuinal just stops you being able to participate in anything: you can’t talk straight or walk straight. And you can’t think at all. A lot of good art has been produced (sadly) on opiates. But I can’t think of anything at all of any value that has been produced on barbs.
@BaronVonZubb-> I think you said earlier that “Simon” the rent boy brought Tuinal to Campbell Buildings. I’m sure that it was working its magic up the Bello in the summer of ’79 well before Campbell Buildings (when Bob and the gang were up at Old St, before St Monica’s). Wank and Dino/Lisa were often out of it on a Saturday afternoon, as was Little Ken. I first saw it at Notting Hill tube station in ’79 when Wank showed me a capsule. I don’t think he’d seen much of it before then because he described it as a “Chewball”!
Jah Pork Pie
May 29, 2008 at 12:57 amBTW, everyone: just copied and pasted this thread into Word just to see how much there is of our recollections and thoughts.
The answer? Over 72,000 words. There’s gotta be a novel in that somewhere for someone. Mind you, thinking about it, I’m sure we all felt very novel at the time!
Stewart (jellyfishinthebath)
May 29, 2008 at 2:38 amNo doubt about it in my opinion – smack killed punk stone dead. It was the day the music – and a lot of my and your friends – died. I only ended my habit about five years ago… what a waste! (to coin a phrase. Ian Dury RIP!). And I bet, like me, a lot of you have got Hep C from jacking up in the ’80s
On the other hand, it was rather addictive… lol
Stewart (jellyfishinthebath)
May 29, 2008 at 2:38 amPS I’m writing that novel!
Stewart (jellyfishinthebath)
May 29, 2008 at 2:59 amPPS And can I just say the first time I jacked up we didn’t have nice clean disposable syringes and capsules of distilled water and little swabs in packets to clean our bloody arms with, oh no. I remember Pip brought back some Victorian glass and metal monster which he nicked from the cancer lab where he used to inject rats and which looked more like a medieval torture weapon-cum-bicycle-pump (ok, I know they didn’t have bicycles in medieval times, bear with me on this one…). The needle was about three inches long and two inches thick, and I’m not kidding either. Honestly, when he stuck it in my arm I thought I was going to die on the spot (I didn’t have a LOT of blood in my skinny frame as it was, and what was in there was spouting out of an oil-well of a hole in a vein – fuck, it was probably an artery – at an extremely alarming rate).
I remember you had to travel for miles to find a chemist that would sell you syringes. Was it Bees at the start of Hackney Road that was one of them (might have been Bethnal Green Road)? And it was all really seedy and under-the-counter and ‘Be with you in a minute after all the normal, decent customers have left, you dirty little junkie’ sort of thing. I was well relieved to find some sort of medical card in a skip in someone else’s name that said this person had diabetes and needed syringes of a certain sort – the fucking chemists I went to after that always asked what sort of insulin I was on, as apparently it made a difference to the size of the needle or something! I just sort of muttered back to them…. seemed to work (*shrugs*).
I used to be taken down the ‘dilly to score Tuinol by a very young girl called Kristine (before Huntingdon Street, sort of Balls Pond Road time) – I know none of you will know her, but she died from a Tuinol OD and she was only 16 and she meant a lot to me so I just wanted to mention her. Still think of you, Kristine! I came a lot closer to dying on Tuinol/Nembutol/Seconal than I ever did on smack – evil drugs. I turned up at the BPR squat out of my head on them, and German Shanti – bless her – stayed up all night by my side as I was crashed out unconscious on the floor to make sure I didn’t die. She used to be a nurse or something apparently. No idea what happened to her, but thank you for that, too, Shanti – I don’t know if I said that at the time. xxx
Stewart (jellyfishinthebath)
May 29, 2008 at 3:10 amAnd I knew I was in trouble when Ken was taking VERY used and VERY blunt needles out of the wall where we’d stuck them months before (at 57 Cazenove Road) (as a sort of arty tribute to our elegant addictions) and I was sharpening them on a matchbox before we used them…
He still managed to once dissolve a cocaine/speedball in vodka instead of water by mistake before jacking me up though…
Fuck, that was good 😉
Phil
May 29, 2008 at 8:23 amI always thought that ketamine was partly responsable for the collapse
of the free party rave scene (along with the CJB)
I always called it “ravers smack”
You would go to a party and there would be bodys laying all over the floor!
Phil
May 29, 2008 at 8:30 amTheres a bit of a pattern here init? Hippys, punk, ravers, all hitting the mind shrinking drugs.
Well, what goes up…
johng
May 29, 2008 at 9:12 am“I always thought that ketamine was partly responsable for the collapse
of the free party rave scene (along with the CJB)
I always called it “ravers smack”
You would go to a party and there would be bodys laying all over the floor!”
there still is everyweekend bodies lying around at free parties k’d out….or in the k-hole as we like to say………..ravers smack or ‘disco glue’…….dunno who brought that onto the party scene,dancing is the last thing that stuff makes me wanna do…or should read ‘wanted’ to do ,i’ll stick to me puff and stella artwats these days
baron von zubb
May 29, 2008 at 10:26 amPhil.
G’day mate.
Long time…
So the rumour about snipers true.cest la vie.
Missed Castle Morten as i was away but heared you all had a great party.
Pork, there was a bit of tiunol about but I know it was ‘simon’ who brought it to C Bdgs.He turned up with about 500 of the beasts.He took a load crashed out & we all raided his stash. Me & wank debated the morals of nickin of a bruvaman.
We decided to only take ‘a few’. But someone nicked his £££ too.Silly boy.
That was the first influx.
baron von zubb
May 29, 2008 at 10:42 amHmm, bangin up vodka, whisky etc. What sweet memories.
Alcohol rush was a bit odd though..
Pork, dunno if there is still a debate on that site but it was in the ‘olympic torch’ thread of the chinese mainland sub forum.
Also a big debate about boycotting the olympics on the UK section, in ‘skybar’section.
Did smack kill punk?
I dunno depends when one decides that it died.The 76/77 crew will say it was dead & gone before i/we arrived anyway.
Or those into it later will say that it was still strong but different in their times. Riot Girl stuff was in the 90’s for example.
But yeah as soon as i discovered opiates ‘punk’ seemed irrelevent.
But one could say that being a drummer in the heretics was a dangerous route to take.
Any offers for the re-formation tour? Free tuinol for the lucky stixman.
Phil
May 29, 2008 at 10:58 amCastlemorton was prob one of the highlights of the 90’s for me. Some great pics of those traveller times if if you log on to my face book profile (Philip Ritchie)
and click onto new age traveller group.
Yeah I remember that simon bringing all that tunol to Campbell as well.
Yeah and it is a deffo about Sniper, sadly
baron von zubb
May 29, 2008 at 10:59 amBTW one reason , & i aint joking about this, why our posse of users stayed in west london was because of bliss chemests in willesden lane.Sold works till midnight over the counter.
And it had the right name.
And Airies night shop was up the road. So 24hr supplies. I think at that time their was only 4 all night shops in the whole city so it was well usefull.
This reinforces the basics of thatcherisms obsession with goods and services i suppose.
Of course as the SPG, who were brought in in ’84 to clean us all up informed us later, kilburn / west hampstead happened to have, as described by them, ‘the biggest smack problem in london’ too.
So that may have encouraged us to stay local.
Although we lived in the grove, kilburn was still our main source..
Why am i bothering to say this ? I dunno it just all come out, all the last unimportant details.
Something to do with Mr Stewarts post just flicks all those switches.
So blah blah to you all.and have a good day.
Phil
May 29, 2008 at 11:05 am> Stu i remember that Shanti. cos i used to live with her and other Stu.
She was like this no nonsense german matron type that was anti all drugs.
Im sure she even grabbed spliffs out of my hand!
baron von zubb
May 29, 2008 at 11:06 amyep phil i’ll check it out.
Great.
My nieces also need to see the pics of things they cant really imagine.
Phil
May 29, 2008 at 11:17 amI was traveling with the old Anti-Sect punk lot, and hanging out with Nottinghams D.i.Y Soundsystem.
Hippy Dave’s site is quite fun http://www.travellerhomes.co.uk