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
Mike
May 12, 2008 at 1:05 pmFor all those bemoaning the gradual death of old London,check out this site:
http://www.london-rip.com
You can see which old pub/record shop/greasy spoon/club has been turned into ‘luxury flats’ this week.Pretty depressing.Another great link is
http://www.london-books.co.uk a new publisher set up by John King,author of Football Factory/Human Punk/Skinheads etc and a good Slough boy.He’s republishing some cult long-forgotten London novels of the past.
Sam:when did Brixton become black,Kilburn Irish etc…My mum came down here during WW2.In between the bombing she did the normal teen things of the time,going to dances at the Lyceum,Shepherds Bush Empire, Hammersmith Palais (which finally closed last last year to become an office block),Odeon et al,so I guess there was some kind of continuum there in that 30 years later I was going to the same places.Back then Southall was a village,the tram ran from Uxbridge to S.Bush (same route as the now 207 bus) and Peckham was “very posh” she says.When she talks about it it’s sobering to realise just how little they knew of what was happening in the world outside (compared to us in the 70’s & esp. compared to 2008) and how her girlfriends cared as much about make-up, boys etc as they did about the War.My Uncle Angus was sent down the mines,too young for call-up,he said ‘fuck that,it’ll ruin me suit/hair etc’ and bunked back to London.Police came and brought him back.In 1945 they put him guarding German POWs as they defused unexploded bombs in ctrl London,to teach him a lesson I guess.
I think Brick Lane is a good example,still Jewish in my time,now almost entirely Bengali.Globalisation,as the cliche goes,will quicken this continual flux. In the 80s London still had huge Irish population,now almost entirely gone I reckon.
Tony:re Thatcher et al.Someone younger asked me ‘was punk a reaction to Thatcher?’,but Labour were in power during 1977-79.But,as you say,it was largely irrelevant to us.Difference was that the Tories were pretty libertarian on matters personal,after all they possessed more than a fair share of perpetually-drunken lords and ladies.New Labour have this petit-bourgeois obsession with telling what to think/ingest that is becoming surreal.It brings to mind the Stasi,with the disturbing caveat they always use of it ‘being for your own good’
‘London RIP is nostalgia.It’s local history.It’s a protest against the lick spittle yellow running dogs of capitalism that are determined to turn the entire place into an enormous Starbucks’
Rich Kid
May 12, 2008 at 1:51 pm‘youre future dream is a shopping scheme.’
Hmm, clever lad, like the Jefferson Airpalne album cover ‘After bathing at Baxters.’
The nulifying quality of consumerism has been a constant theme of rocks rebels.
Who says it now?
Rappers?Goths?
Emos? Are Emos the noughties version of us?
Basically what Im getting from the last few posts is that we’re middleage fuckers bemoaning the loss of our youth.
True enough but..
So not only do we destroy what we love – & shit has that been proved by places in SE Asia for example in the ’80’s, when compared to how they are now – but, rather than being the people our parents warned us about, we have become as them when looking backwards in time.
Can you remember how dingy the ’50’s seemed to us?No TV, no dyed hair, no whatever we had.
Well thats how it looks to the young uns now I guess, what with the net & GM everthing and all
As for punk being part of the process of change .
Absolutely.But as with the riots its always lumped in as an ‘add on’ in retrospectives.
Even in sociological ‘rock’ retros. Its baffling
And this virtual ‘relating’ that the youth do?
Yeah Pork they do without doubt communicate more words.But because they relate through technology its like the derivatives.
One step further removed.
When we met in Rough Trade we had to deal with other.We learned from each other & had to be present.It was ‘real’.The world we created was real where as there’s is virtual.So virtual they dont even create it.They just modify templates.Bit like ‘Monsanto’.
Rah rah rah.
Rich Kid
May 12, 2008 at 1:57 pmIf our kids really do look back & get upset about shopping malls being replaced we’re doomed I tell you.Doomed.
Where the S F future we were promised.Living in Bubbles on other planets?Warp speed space travel?A world with no money & countries?Orgasmatrons?Jane Fonda?
When all’s said & done wheres Captain Kirk?
tonyb
May 12, 2008 at 2:11 pmAaah yes…Starbucks. A place mostly used in the beginning by empty headed ‘liberals’,who like to pick and choose what bits of London/UK/Society should be preserved!! Have a look where the starbucks are.Aint one in Edmonton.The scum cant afford it.Plus the scum dont have laptops.
These ‘Liberal'(TM) prats are the people who tell me how much broader the choice of food is now,for instance. These cunts live in places like ‘Stokey’,’Borough’,’Shoreditch’ with an organic butchers,a belgian-vietnamese fusion restaurant,a portugese deli etc.Where i live it just goes ‘Euro Cafe’-‘Dixie Chicken’-Millenium Kebab’-‘Lidl’-‘Chicken USA’ etc.
They are also partial to ‘Olde Worlde’ ‘Artisan’ etc Toys for the kids made of wood like 1920s style. Yet you are supposed to lap up a plastic mobile phone toy from Toys R Us for your kid! They want a ‘classic’ ‘greasy spoon’ serving veggie beans on artisan toast for 7.99 in thier fucking ‘village’. You are meant to be happy with Oven Chips.
I hate them and thier hypocrisy.They are the WORST little Englanders!
I DO NOT CARE whether Brick Lane was Bengali or Jewish really.I used to go to Petticoat Lane about twice a month on sundays,to buy bootlegs,secondhand records,clothes,army surplus,Last Resort shop etc.I LIKED it.(Probably at that time,was about half and half Bengal/Jewish i reckon.It was cool,it was safe.) I dont care about ‘Foreigners’ or any of that shit. I care about the quality of life. The fact is that since the early 90’s it has gotten worse in a very short space of time. I liked Petticoat Lane. I dont like Shopping Malls. The former is allowed to die. The latter is allowed to multiply. All in the name of progress,whatever they wanna call it to try to make me look like some old reactionary. Yet,at school in the late 60s early 70s,i was promised a fucking HoverScooter to ride around on in the future (about 1997 or something),yet everyones still in fucking shit cars.
Surely its about whats better.Not something based on some agenda that someone has from ‘Re-education’ ‘Liberal’ Gulag style.
Is Tesco better than the greengrocer that was on the corner of your street?
Is ‘Cash In The Attic’ ‘Britains Worst Celebrity Dogs’ ‘Car Boot Crazy’ ‘Location Location’ better than ‘Out Of Town’,’Panarama’ ‘Play For Today’ ‘World In Action’?
Is success measured by records sold better than success measured by intrinsic immeasurable greatness of the music better?
New Labour have done nothing to reverse any of the negative stuff. Obviously we are living the result of ‘liberalising’ economics post Thatch. Getting rid of ‘beaurocracy’ to ‘free up’ people to allow them to expand blah blah blah etc etc. Resulting in planning rushed through for big business etc. Labour did what?
More soulless glass and chrome ego towers for the grey bastards who have got their own way.
The weird thing is that recently ive started thinking exactly the same as one of the posts above:That punk rock was a ridiculous rallying cry for right wing libertarianism.Loads of songs about doing what you want etc..look where alot of the protagonists are now!!
‘Our’ punk rock. The punk rock of 79-82 so-called ‘Anarcho’,was. a reaction to that,rather than a continuation.So maybe it was more in line with hippys.Which means that the 76-78 punk was just ‘Pop Idol’ of its day.
Fucking jeesus,what am i saying!
Hahahahaha
I really did have nothing better to do for the last hour. Sorry.
jahpork
May 12, 2008 at 2:13 pmRichKid: Depends whereabout you place the datum line on “derivative” though, doesn’t it? Because when we listened to a new single that had just come out, it gave us a huge thrill. But it was a virtual representation of a band. It hadn’t even been recorded in one take, but had been overdubbed: it never really represented anything that had previously existed “together” in any form, it was a virtual thing of and in itself. And we did have telephones to communicate: just because they were crackly analogue telephones that were housed in piss-smelling phone boxes, they were still electronic devices.
Part of the fun and folklore of punk were the rumours which spread around the community third, fourth and “N-th” hand… “Have you heard so-and-so band have split up?” “There’s a secret gig at Dingwall’s” (there never fucking was!) etc, etc. I remember starting one up the Bello when Joy Division bought out those badges with the “soundscape” equaliser logo on (looked a bit like a mountain range). I started going round telling everyone we didn’t know that they were for a new North London band called The Pinnacles. I heard it back the next week and it had morphed into “they were the best thing since sliced bread and their new album was gonna change everything”!
Ideas are virtual and abstract. However you represent them, the original idea is (literally) only conceptual: but that’s what separates us from Little Ken and his ilk!
And yes, I do feel a bit cheated about Jane Fonda. But at least Pauline Murray touched my hand for a second (felt like an hour!) at Penetration’s gig at the Rainbow so I had an extra excuse not to wash for a month 🙂
tonyb
May 12, 2008 at 2:13 pmHahaha the future stuff…we were both writing at the same time.
Bastards aint they .
haha
jahpork
May 12, 2008 at 2:15 pmNothing wrong with a bit of Dixie Chicken, Tone!
It’s all bleedin’ Ken’s Kebabs and Speedy Pizza down here in Pompey. What I’d do for a nice bit of Dixie Chicken……
Some people don’t know they’re born 🙂
tonyb
May 12, 2008 at 2:19 pmI dont mind the Dixie Chicks,but from the discarded boxes of the other stuff laying about all over the street it dont look great!
jahpork
May 12, 2008 at 2:22 pmSurely Anarchism is the ultimate conclusion of libertarianism? “I do what I want, when I want, without adversely affecting anyone else”.
But free-market liberal capitalism UK style is not of the same lineage at all. It’s the bastard son of Harold MacMillan and Del Boy, with a little Eastern-Bloc nannyism thrown into its gene puddle for good measure.
Libertarianism good, liberalism (in capitalist sense) bad.
Mike
May 12, 2008 at 2:24 pmRK:exactly,remember when they said computers would abolish
‘meaningless work’?! Last time I signed on it was still like a paper-mill in there and,because the UK doesn’t make much anymore,most people are engaged in ‘meaningless work’,ie at local govt offices,penning edicts on not smoking or tossing away applecores.That & call centres,surely the 21st Century version of the workhouse:speak to imbeciles all day AND wear a shit-eating grin whilst doing it.I’m amazed that no-one has not yet ‘gone Postal’ in a US call-centre,or don’t they have ’em
Moaning middle-aged old punks indeed,but good fun.Incidentally,there’s a fairly famous neuroscientist who has recently written book where she conjectures that modern technology will alter people’s brains over time and substanially change the way they interact/react to each other and life around them.I’m no scientist so can’t explain better,think her name is Greenefield..?
Tell me if I’m wrong,but wasn’t the whole infrastructure of clubs/pubs/ studios/record shops/rehearsal spaces we took advantage of in late 70’s actually run by older folk who’d started it all in the late 60’s? We gave ’em a new lease of life (i.e. they had new records to sell again).Perhaps we should then have taken on the mantle for the next gen?
Jake:my mum’s in her 80s,she told me the 50s were “boring as hell”,think she misses the old Spitfires and me109s overhead
tonyb
May 12, 2008 at 2:24 pmI love it when someone calls me an old fuddy duddy. I normally say “How many computers did you build so far this year?”. Its the assumption that if you somehow dont toe some robot party line of ‘anything that happens now is better than what it replaced’,then you must still have a’wireless’ or dont own a cellphone or summink.
I LOVE technology.
Food is not technology.
Landscape is not technology.
tonyb
May 12, 2008 at 2:29 pmLibertarianism good, liberalism (in capitalist sense) bad.
Liberalism in a nanny state boring cunt its for your own good sense?
Hahaha
And thats before you even get to Anarcho-Capitalism!!
tonyb
May 12, 2008 at 2:35 pmI loved small wonder shop. I loved buying X Ray Spex new 45.
But…
I have no desire to release round plastic anymore.
I have no desire to try to sell music in a shop anymore.
Because of progress.
Worthwhile ‘HoverScooter’ style progress.
The internet is the most punk thing to happen to people who make music.
Your own digital studio.
Make your own album.For Virtually Nil!
Your own website.
Your own Digital Web Radio Station.
Final Cut Pro..make your own video.For virtually Nil!
You give away what you want.You sell what you want.
No middleman. No Big-cigar Mr Ten Per Cent.
Not even a totally nice bunch of hippy middlemen ten percenters like Rough Trade.
Just You.
And the World.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Rich Kid
May 12, 2008 at 2:37 pmYeah Pork youre right, it was virtual.
But wrong there were secret gigs.
Can u not remember ‘the school bullies’?
Anyhow we can get upset about Osama bin Bush or poo poo the young.
But the rot realy set in when I arrived back in the UK once, went to an offie to get some smokes, asked for rizzla & swans & was given a box of Rizzla matches & some Swan papers.
Its SO SO wrong.
The kids have no chance when up against that.
Doomed I tell yer doomed…
Rich Kid
May 12, 2008 at 2:39 pmTB thats the arguement, but why does it feel so unpunk then. Is it just me?
Mike
May 12, 2008 at 2:48 pmTony:I wasn’t making a point on what ethnic group inhabited Brick Lane or not,just answering earlier thread of how quickly areas change.My favourite line from these Little Englanders when you visit the Canary Islands or somewhere similar is when you ask ‘Why did you leave the UK?’ and they grunt ‘Too many foreigners’ without a trace of irony,and then make no effort to learn a word of Spanish to boot.
Your “Anarcho was a reaction against the ’76-78 mob” has really got me thinking…but don’t apologise for it!
jahpork
May 12, 2008 at 3:20 pm“Liberalism in a nanny state boring cunt its for your own good sense?” <- Tony
Well, liberalism in the “liberal capitalist” sense. Moving assets from a low-value use to a high value use creates wealth, as the economists say. Get someone who is being literally whipped in a sweat shop in China to make a pair of pants and then sell them in The Gap for a tenner after you’ve orchestrated some million-dollar advertising campaign to promote your “brand” rather than the pants themselves. That I don’t like already!
The reason I make the differentiation about types of liberalism is this: I did a teaching course a few years back, and one of the essays we had to write was on “Liberalism v. Utilitarianism in Education”. Well, it was something I hadn’t thought about at all in that context. But when I did think about it, it’s a very good model of how we lived our lives as punks.
Liberalism in education is the idea that everyone has the free right to as much education as they want, for their personal development. It takes the view that education is a good thing in itself. Doesn’t matter if you want to do a course in 15th Century flower arranging in Matabeleland, or a doctorate in particle physics. Education has intangible benefits to people, and we shouldn’t deny them it. That way, you turn out a human race which is wise about what it wants to be wise about.
Utilitarianism is what New Labour would have us embrace. Education is only something which is tolerated when the outcome of that education is the ability of the person educated to participate in maoneymaking or other tangible benefit (and in our society, it’s only moneymaking). Any other education is to be discouraged (by huge tuition fees and student loans). Get ’em in the sausage machine young and they won’t notice they’ve missed out on anything in life.
You can extrapolate this well beyond education too:
If people want to live lives which don’t contribute to capitalism, but make them happy and increase the human race’s collective experience, then why shouldn’t they? Liberal.
Any way of life which does not make a buck at the end of the day is wasteful, does not benefit the majority and should be banned. Grey Brownian utilitarianism.
So in that limited sense, I’m for liberalism.
jahpork
May 12, 2008 at 3:26 pm“TB thats the argumnet , but why does it feel so unpunk then.Is it just me?” <- RichKid
Separate the message from the medium. They’re just two ways of tackling the same problem. The tribes are just much bigger and much more disparate these days, so we need quicker and more large-scale methods of keeping in touch with each other. The Heretics bedroom tape would have been just as cool if it had been made and distributed by electronic means in the first place.
Can you remind me about “The School Bullies?”
jahpork
May 12, 2008 at 3:28 pm“And thats before you even get to Anarcho-Capitalism!!”
That just sounds like the wet dream of every fat cat in a big office somewhere. They look down on the city below and say “That’s it. All the rules have gone. We can have every penny from them ALL now!”
Nic
May 12, 2008 at 3:46 pmThe 1976 – 1978 period of ‘Punk’ made some great music, but I can’t bear the general feel of the political content: the demands of the early ‘Punks’ (as illformed and directionless as they were) are very much in keeping with the Rand-influenced strand of right-wing thought ushered in by Thatcher which is characterised by a Libertarian stance on personal life…
The ‘Hippies’ (in general) had much more beneficial, open and interesting ideas, perhaps because their culture was more of a ‘lifestyle’ than ‘Punk’ (which never really moved beyond the status of fashion)…
One of my own issues with the ‘present’ is the almost total de-politicisation of everything. I can see the positive benefits that the technology has brought, but I don’t see as much to be positive about in terms of the actual content of the transmissions. When you take a look at myspace (or any other internet medium utilised by large swathes of the teenage population), all you see is kids taking pictures of themselves or posting “This is fierce!”…While I appreciate that these things are very important for most teenagers, there doesn’t seem to be any exchange of information or debate around ideas (in contrast to my own youth)… Perhaps the period from the early 1960’s to the mid 1980’s was a blip and teenagers have gone back to the state they were in in the 1950’s?
jahpork
May 12, 2008 at 7:36 pm“TB thats the arguement, but why does it feel so unpunk then. Is it just me?”
RichKid: have you read The Crying Of Lot 49? I read it a few years back and found it very enlightening on all things cyberspace. One of the subplots in it is about an underground mail system operating in the US (the book was written in the early sixties) away from the prying eyes of “Big Brother”. You can quite easily substitute “The Internet” for the Lot 49 mail system, I think.
[from a review] “[C]ybernetics itself, or rather the signification The Crying of Lot 49 holds for readers of the cyber-generation[:] If looking for strict one to one correspondences, the underground mail service bears a strong resemblance to the early Usenet groups, bulletin boards and chat rooms, all those elements of cyberspace which encourage and foster communities to form and interact.”
It does go on to be a very cautionary tale about information overload and entropy, but it’s a bloody good read!
And, more generally, a brief plot summary I’ve found of the whole book interestingly mirrors a lot of the stuff that we’ve posted in this thread, too:
“The Crying of Lot 49 was written in the 1960s, one of the most politically and socially turbulent decades in U.S. history. The decade saw the rise of the drug culture, the Vietnam War, the rock revolution, as well as the birth of numerous social welfare programs after the Democrats swept Congress in the 1964 elections. This was also the decade of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Martin Luther King’s assassination, Civil Rights, and, to some extent, women’s rights. The novel taps into this explosion of cultural occurrences, depicting a dramatically fragmented society. The Crying of Lot 49 contains a pervasive sense of cultural chaos; indeed, the book draws on all areas of culture and society, including many of those mentioned above. In the end, the novel’s protagonist, Oedipa Maas, finds herself alone and alienated from that society, having lost touch with the life she used to lead before she began her attempt to uncover the mystery of the Tristero. The drug culture plays a big part in this sense of isolation. The world around Oedipa seems to be a world perpetually on drugs, manic and full of conspiracies and illusions. And though that world is exciting and new, it is also dangerous: drugs contribute to the destruction of Oedipa’s marriage, and drugs cause Hilarius to go insane. Oedipa hallucinates so often that she seems to be constantly high, and ultimately, this brings her nothing but a sense of chaotic alienation.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
jahpork
May 12, 2008 at 7:53 pm@Nic-> I don’t think the country is as depoliticised as it might first appear. There are huge anti-war and anti-poverty movements. There are pressure groups fighting against governmental excess of all kinds. Many of them represent a single issue and attract followers from across the political spectrum. One that typifies this is “the Countryside Alliance”. Now I don’t happen to agree with their politics, but they do represent a massive cross-party single-issue pressure group.
I saw JEREMY BLOODY CLARKSON on TV the other night speaking to the TV news people about a pressure group of which he is a member (looking after injured soldiers when they come back from war and leave the army). That’s a political issue.
Climate change is a (geo)political issue. The outcry against China in Tibet is a political issue.
Both sides of the argument on cars are indulging in political discourse.
When we were punks, and indulging in our policital discourses and actions, there were far more teenagers who were more interested in Cortinas with go-faster stripes, corduroy trousers and wing-tip shoes, twenty-quid haircuts, burberry raincoats (no, it ain’t a chav invention), Top Of The Pops and Smash Hits, A-line skirts, discos, nail varnish and Max Factor makeup, and having a fight/getting laid on a Friday night. We just didn’t tend to bother with them. But they outnumbered us by the millions. Now their chavvish descendants have got Facebook and MySpace as well as ours. That’s equality for ya. but the politics is there if you look for it.
Sam
May 12, 2008 at 8:37 pmRe read The Heretics interview. Were we any better?
Rich Kid
May 12, 2008 at 9:32 pmThe interview was not our high point.Was it?
‘The school bullies’;
The Damned olde fruit.Incognito
Interesting about education .
I realised how idealistic we all had been on my first trip to the 3rd world where most folk were/are illiterate.Blew me away how arrogant we’d been.World revolution?A very British solution.
We can ‘choose’ to read tabloids & on a planetary scale thats a huge privilege
Rich Kid
May 12, 2008 at 9:42 pmIts true there were always more straights than not but there was a tangible cultural underground.
Now although we do have ‘team america’ ,michael moore & ‘tony & me’ and even the theories of direct US involvenment in Mr Bin Ladens plot, I just dont see alternative culture & lifestyles.
At Glasto festi one is actually more controlled on site than off.And there lapping it up
Is it because society is generally more open & diverse?
Or its peoples merely more apathetic?
Or just ‘cos I listen to too much Radio 4??
Sam
May 13, 2008 at 5:15 pmI noticed the change in ‘de-politicised’ people in the late eighties when I was at art school. Most of my friends there were five or six years younger than myself and they didn’t have political opinions at all. Maybe these were ‘Thatcher’s children’ or perhaps they were less naively utopian. Looking back on it we grew up in a very socialist world. Small things like sharing sweets after school (which was a social law) was a reflection of this. But maybe kids in Britain still do this. Americans don’t share cigarettes automatically for example. I miss it.
I think the idea of a ‘counter-culture’ relies on the notion of outsider-hood, which is a romantic way to think about yourself but we’re all part of the society we grow up in whether we like it or not. My dad annoyed me by telling me ‘no man is an island…’ in about 1979…and here I am.
Nic – ” The 1976 – 1978 period of ‘Punk’ made some great music, but I can’t bear the general feel of the political content: the demands of the early ‘Punks’ (as illformed and directionless as they were) are very much in keeping with the Rand-influenced strand of right-wing thought ushered in by Thatcher which is characterised by a Libertarian stance on personal life…
The ‘Hippies’ (in general) had much more beneficial, open and interesting ideas, perhaps because their culture was more of a ‘lifestyle’ than ‘Punk’ (which never really moved beyond the status of fashion)…”
I think both movements produced consumer revolutions and highlighted gaps in the market. TV shows in the eighties such as The Tube were a breath of fresh air at the time. I remember obsessive hunts for ‘granny glasses’. Si found a pair of little, round shades in Oxfam which I borrowed for a while which were made for a blind person and you couldn’t see through them. We wore them anyway. Personally, I never wanted to live in a farming commune in Epping or wear a black, Maoist uniform. When ‘the shopkeeper appeared’ for me in 1983 I found my re-entry into the ‘straight’ world as interesting as my entry into the ‘counter-culture’ a few years before. It does wonders for your self-respect to wear clean clothes for example. Likewise going to work every day and supporting yourself. I consciously didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of social political ideas, but feminism, racism etc…were mainstream left-wing concerns at that time too.
I think that punk’s great strength early on was its naivity to left/right wing ideas. The punk girls around at that time didn’t take any shit from anyone but didn’t drone on about feminism or call themselves feminists. And they changed the way I thought about women. Early punk fashion was more of an invitation to get your head kicked in than any kind of fashion statement. Despite punk being in Smash Hits in ’78, I remember every trip out of the house being marked by encounters with smoothies, lads, blokes outside of pubs, people shouting at you from cars. It pissed people off.
Sam
May 13, 2008 at 5:19 pmMost of the cars were Cortinas I might add.
Sam
May 13, 2008 at 7:35 pmI heard a good show on Radio 2 (quite upsetting that we’re now their target audience!) recently with Malcolm McLaren talking about the legendary (1976?) Sex Pistols trip to Paris. He described Siouxie, bare breasted as ‘Liberty leading the people’. Interesting analogy I think. I was never a big Siouxie fan but particularly with hindsight I think she’s an extraordinary person. She grew up in Pett’s Wood near Orpington which is where my grandmother lived. A more picture perfect example of straight-laced surburbia you couldn’t hope to find. Privet hedges, semis, the gentle purr of lawnmowers on sundays. Dressing as she did in 75 or 76 was more than just ‘fashion’.
Sam
May 13, 2008 at 8:02 pmAlistair – “Beneath the streets the fields. I lived for ten years on Brooke Road in Hackney. I found a book ‘London’s Lost Rivers’ and discovered that there had once been a Hackney brooke which flowed from Highbury down through Clissold Park, across Stoke Newington Common, along part of Brooke Road then around the edge of Hackney Downs, along Amersham (?) Road, crossed Mare Street near Hackney Central Station and wound its way down to the river Lea.
A bit more digging and I found histories of Hackney, Shoreditch and Stoke Newington – going back to the days when Hackney was an Anglo-Saxon village on the edge of Epping Forest. ”
Interesting stuff. The only thing I remember from Geography class at school was a photo of a tube train going through fields somewhere, which is now West London – probably Hounslow or somewhere like that. You realize that every generation has this sense of loss. But change is the only constant and all that.
I’m seeing it where we live. It’s incredibly rural, blue collar country. The most beautiful place I’ve ever been but housing developments and sub-divisions are cropping up all over the place. I bemoan the inauthenticity of it all but having lived here for 10 years, as an outsider, I’m probably the spearhead of the problem. It is the same disease as someone mentioned – British ex pats complaining of ‘all the foreigners’ at home. I knew this girl in the early nineties – trendy, well-spoken, vegetarian Camden girl who had been living in Hackney for a couple of years and complaining of all the yuppies moving in. Life/culture is/was much more complicated than we ever imagined.
johng
May 13, 2008 at 8:53 pmenjoyed this site showing parts of old london now mostly derelict
http://www.derelictlondon.com/derelict_london_com.htm
John stop calling me ...well you know
May 14, 2008 at 12:10 amNice post Sam, Punk to me was a growing and learning experience, I took the bits that made sense and they stuck with me. The impractical or naive parts I left by the wayside along with my Sham 69 records. I find it funny reading the posts here with people complaining about the youth of today not rebelling enough. Just like the way that when we were kids old people used to say ‘what has happened to our nations youth?’ etc it’s kind of funny that us older rebels are now saying ‘what has happened to our nations young rebels?’. I’m just making an observation as I’ve done it myself too. The thing is we didn’t invent rebellion, and nor did we perfect it. The right to bear arms and the right to be able to form a militia in America came directly from the idea that if your government was corrupt or was taking too many liberties with your rights you could join together and go kill them. This was one of the tenets the US was formed on. Which kind of makes our generation hurling stones and insults at cops look rather tame by comparison. Of course it is a little less passive that shooting them with a pixelated machine gun on Grand Theft Auto 3 which seems to be today’s nearest equivalent.
I remember reading a quote in ‘Vague’ that may have been from ‘the boy looked at Johnny’ where someone said to a young punk rocker “What are you rebelling against?” and the answer was ” well what have you got?” Maybe the youth of today are rebelling against what they grew up looking at…us.
Penguin • Post Author •
May 14, 2008 at 12:17 amAhhh that quote was stolen from Brando in ‘The Wild One’. Also lampooned brilliantly in a ‘Simpsons’ episode when Lisa wants to be more Bart-like and starts to fail at school, hanging out in the toilets with the smokers etc.
Sam
May 14, 2008 at 5:26 amI just watched ‘End of the Century’ – Ramones documentary again. What a great band. As funny as their image. Big Heretics influence by the way.
[Interviewer] Why do you play so loud?
[Dee Dee] We used to play loud and our amps were crap and they’d break on us. Now we’ve got amps that…..[long pause, searches for correct word] ………………….work.
I find it genuinely moving that the three main players all died within a year of each other. Quite amazing what they did.