Author’s history:
Baron Von Zubb A.K.A Rich Kid A.K.A Jake Heretic’s parents hailed from Stepney but by the time he was born they’d left that all behind and joined the ranks of northwest London’s middle classes. Nice, this rather bored our Baron so after being expelled from school, squatting, punk rock anarchism, heroin and general delinquency as chronicled in the book, Baron went to Asia for several years. There he worked as a small time smuggler, a tailors tout, a film extra and drug dealer.
He has traveled overland to Asia 3 times, smoking opium and drinking alcohol in the Ayatollahs Iran, visited the closed area in Pakistan that is now home to enemy number one Mr. Bin Laden and spent 3 months at The King of Thailand’s pleasure in Klong Prem jail.
He’s lived for months under trees on beaches and swam in the planets cleanest jungle streams in India and Malaysia
His long suffering partner Kay and him organized and actualized a small relief project in the immediate aftermath of Sri Lankas tsunami.
They now live in Brighton, have two nieces and a nephew to keep them sane, are trying to be middle aged and eat masalla dosa weekly.
They visit Asia every winter.
Synopsis:
Here’s some extracts from the unpublished novel ‘The Joys of Work’, by Baron Von Zubb; the story of one kids journey from a nullifying suburban background to the revolutionary barricades of post Thatcherite Britain.
Via getting expelled from school, punk rock, squatting drugs, crime, autonomist politics, and the 1981 summer uprisings in Britain’s inner cities, the book chronicles an alternate history of the times.
Written as I travelled in Asia in the mid 1980’s, it was intended to be the first in a trilogy of books, the following two postulating alternate futures, ironically thanks to global warming, based on environmental and societal collapse.
My nomadic lifestyle meant that too many copies just got lost on the way so along with the rejections of ‘The Joys of Work’.
I called it a day.
Thanks to Mickey Penguin and all The K.Y.P.P. crew for putting this up.
The following books are published, recommended and available:
A.K.A. Martin Wright: Anti Fascist Action street fights in London and elsewhere during the 1970’s > ISBN 094898435X
A.K.A Daniel Wright: Thieving, drug taking, homelessness in London, true account of Martin Wrights (above) deceased brother > ISBN 1871593212
A.K.A. Bob from Blood And Roses: Early punk days in Australia, thieving, drug taking, homelessness in London, true account by Bob Short (not deceased, surprising if you read it!) > ISBN 9780975825846
A.K.A. Nick from Rudimentary Peni: Semi autobiography, shyness and fragile ego, punk, depression > ISBN 0952574403
A.K.A. Sian from The Lost Cherries / Blyth Power: Squatting in Brixton, gigs, crusties, lost loves, Tinsel and even ‘Mickey Penguin’ is mentioned a couple of times in this book > ISBN 1412026814
A genuine KYPP success story. Exactly six months after uploading this KYPP post. Jake finally gets these writings into print form. Go get it from lulu.com or alternative bookshops > ISBN 9781409245964
baron von zubb
December 9, 2008 at 8:54 pmNow ive argued the point someone may well say, what about sept 11 or july 7 or Mumbai the other day?
They are merely ‘trying’. Do you not condem them?
Yes. Why?
1) civilian targets.
2) they are reactionary (islamo) fascists who seek to impose barbaric theocracies on the people
3) In the UK at least; if they really hate living here so much then they should do as we did and ‘have a walk around’ the planet, rather than bombing the tube.
But…And there always is one; Militant Islam feels that the west has an anti muslim agenda.
And its a good question. What exactly has been the neo con agenda?
Also al quieda know they can’t win. By force. We also know that neither can we.
So at what point do the two sides sit down and talk about the main damands of militant Islam?
Palestinian statehood, US out of the middle east and regime change in Aaudi(Islams holy lands)
Abu Dhabi Mike?
tally ho!
Penguin • Post Author •
December 9, 2008 at 11:42 pmbaron von zubb Says: Peng is that a no no to links then?
What’s that then Baron???
baronvonzubb
December 10, 2008 at 11:11 pmOh I just noticed me books up there in the original post. Cheers for that. Very muchly indeed. Looks all proper and real and all that. Very odd, this whole process…
Erm links, ah its nothing I put a couple of links in a post and there not there. Not important.
Sam if your out there I emailed yer about lambeth skyline.
Ian S
December 11, 2008 at 4:07 pm“I knew the persons unknown lot, not well but Vince was in the Monday Group, and the truth about it all is not able to be commented on an open forum.”
To be able to control what people say about you 30 years on is certainly a form of power.
Sam
December 11, 2008 at 4:22 pmSpill the beans, people.
baronvonzubb
December 11, 2008 at 8:30 pmIts a case of criminal culpablity.
Not my place to comment.
I was merely trying to point out that as with many things that go on in ‘revolutionary movements’ that are on the fringes of legality, its often hard to get to the bottom of any cause or issue.
Anyone see ‘my brother is an only child’? about the Brigade Rosse. Great movie. Lots of emotional truth there Sam.
Sam
December 11, 2008 at 9:08 pmDish the dirt…come on, you know you want to.
Mike…I remember you at 66a lying in bed pretending to be dead whilst listening to Hamburger Lady by Throbbing Gristle. Ah…we made our own entertainment in those days, eh?
Ian S
December 11, 2008 at 9:12 pmNot that much dirt as I recall.
More that they got themselves a kind of halo as a result of the trial. This put them above criticism. But it did strike some of us that despite happily using the money-raising and publicity-raising powers of Crass and Poison Girls, they were distinctly sniffy about those bands and those that were into them.
But at the time that has hard to articulate – they’d been in front of the beak, martyrs to the cause etc.
Sam
December 11, 2008 at 9:15 pm“but in private they tended to be scathing about those bands and the punks that were into them.”
So they weren’t all bad then?
chris
December 11, 2008 at 9:22 pm“Spill the beans, people.”
errr…it doesn’t exactly call for dusting off the Enigma Machine, surely?
—————-
but talking of ‘Hamburger Lady’; Ian S. I think the first time I met you was in that squat you shared with Andy Martin down Packington St after i’d puked up in the sink following a humungous whitey provoked by by Larry Peterson playing ‘Hamburger Lady’ with the lights out and doing this daft ‘Egyptian Dance’ round the room wrapped in a bedsheet and holding a bicycle torch on his head. Entertainment indeed 🙂
Ian S
December 11, 2008 at 9:33 pmYou had ate a tin of Target brand diced mixed vegetables iirc.
Mike Diboll
December 11, 2008 at 10:04 pmOuch! I’d forgotten (conveniently) about my belated adolescent TG & JD morbidity chic, thanks for the memory!
Some of my best memories of 66a are acidic: the 4 a.m. “cosmic walks”; the “milk round” following the milky at dawn and snatching his pints (repropriation, eh?), then startling commuters at West Hampstead station; ranting like madmen at the rush hour traffic, beckoning it on like Moses calling Bani Yisrael across the Red Sea.
One incident is “inscribed on my body”, as the po-mo types like to say: we were doing a Pollock on one of my bedroom walls (40 years after doing so was original), chucking paint all over it and smearing it into patterns with our hands. In a fit of inspiration I forgot about a nail that had held up a picture, and slashed open my right hand so that I could see the tendons of my little finger. In my tripped-up state I made a mental note “must remember my finger’s hanging off”, bound said member in toilet paper, and carried on.
A few years later I was picked up and charged with Possession, and the desk sergeant recorded the scar as a “distinguishing feature”, I think it’s still on the police computer, the scar’s certainly still on my hand.
I suppose it would be petty to parry your TG recollection with something to do with endless replays of “Transformer”, lying strung out on old mattresses?
T’wen’t no satellite TV an’ shopping malls in our young days!
Jake, I’m in Bahrain now, not Abu Dhabi, although I did live for five years in the oasis town of Al Ain, which is on the border with Oman, on the edge of the Empty Quarter; although it’s in the Eastern Province of Abu Dhabi Emirate, it’s over 100 miles from AD city.
Mike
December 11, 2008 at 10:07 pm“Target Brand”, eh? What powers of recall. I remember us all once staring at a tub of white pepper, waiting for it to reveal some inner truth. Someone put on a Dr. Alimantado track that began “Good evening”, which then for us was the voice of the pepper. Can’t remember what brand of pepper though, it was probably from the 24 hour shop we used to nick from, down by Finchley Road underground. Can’t remember what chain the shop was though. Must be going senile, “if you can remember those days you weren’t there”, or something like that!
Sam
December 11, 2008 at 10:35 pmVG Stores aka ‘The Brothers’ (run by several Asian siblings). No problem with your riposte. You’ll have to dig deeper than that my friend.
Sam
December 11, 2008 at 10:53 pmNot that I meant any offense mind.
alistairliv
December 12, 2008 at 12:07 amI moved to London in Jan 1979 and started going to Ceinfeugos Press readers meetings and met Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer – which was a bit strange, I had read their Floodgates of Anarchy in 1976ish and suddenly there I was having a pint with proper anarchists… the meetings then turned into Persons Unknown support group meetings so I met Ronan Bennett and Iris Mills.
Ronan had met the brother of one of UB40 in prison and so the original idea was that UB40 would do a benefit single for an anarchist centre (this was after they were found not guilty). It was going to be affiliated to the Working Mens Clubs Association so there could be bar and show films, have a library and political discussion groups.
The Crass/ Poison Girls stuff came later, after the UB40 idea didn’t work out. I don’t remember there being any punks at the earlier meetings, but after the Crass/ Poison Girls connection was made a whole bunch of punks turned up and after the meeting I went to the pub (the one next to the Conway Hall) … it turned out they were the Kill Your Pet Puppy Collective. — Tony, Val and Brett. Somehow I got talking to Tony about magic, Aleister Crowley and Kenneth Grant… which is how I became a Pet Puppy.
I found the KYPP version of punk a bit more interesting than the anarchists -who were all older folk and I was only 21. I did become a card carrying member of the Wapping Autonomy Centre but never went to any of the anarchist events there, just the Sunday afternoon punk ones.
As far as Albert Meltzer and the proper anarchists were concerned, the punks destroyed the place… here is a quote from Albert’s autobiography about it from
http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/meltzer/sp001591/angels21.html
Ronan decided to appeal for support from the punk anarchists, then a new phenomenon, saying the punks would pass anyway and would be useful for the time it was around. The punk support, especially from followers of Crass and Poison Girls, was substantial. Punk has lasted a couple of decades, long outlasting the proposed club. With the punks’ money came the punks, and in the first week they had ripped up every single piece of furniture carefully bought, planned and fitted, down to the lavatory fittings that had been installed by Ronan from scratch, and defaced our own and everyone else’s wall for blocks around. In the excitement of the first gigs where they could do as they liked, they did as they liked and wrecked the place. Loss of club, loss of money, loss of effort. End of story. Ronan was not unnaturally disheartened and returned to even more chaotic Northern Irish politics.
Mike Diboll
December 12, 2008 at 10:47 am“With the punks’ money came the punks. . .”
Anyone would think we were oil shiekhs, just goes to show how skint the anarchists were.
Couldn’t they have gotten money from Gaddafi, like the IRA? After all, the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Great Jamahiriya, (SPLAGJ, like a James Bond Baddie) is supposed to be a “republic ruled by the masses, without political parties, governed by its populace through local popular councils and communes.”
Gaddafi doesn’t style himself “leader” or “president” but “Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.”
I’m sure one or other of the old anarchos that we knew (or an opportunist outsider a good deal more ruthless) would have adopted some similar title When the Great Day Came. Of course, it should have been obvious to a fool with half an eye — even a 20 year-old drugged-up fool — that The Great Day would never come, and that this was as good thing.
Mike Diboll
December 12, 2008 at 11:27 amThanks Sam; VG Stores, how could I have forgotten? You guys’ powers of recall amaze me, and I’m not being sarcy or ironic at all.
While I can remember other periods of my life, before and after, in pretty good detail, my memories of 66a and associated scenes are scrappy and impressionistic. The obvious answer is that its the d-rugs, but I don’t think I was any worse than anyone else in that regard. I suspect that it’s something to do with denial, even now, nearly 30 years on.
I recall the smell of 66a very well, a mixture of fresh paint and the seldom-washed bodies of male youth, like a Young Offender’s Institution that’s just got a lick of paint for a royal visit. I remember how each room had a very different feel, and that at the beginning we’d put a lot of work into decorating them and making them right.
I remember the nights as being intensely colourful, but I also remember weeks of days that were entirely monochrome. I don’t mean that as a metaphor, but literally monochrome, like the shades of grey on an old black ‘n’ white telly.
But dullness and ennui (affected or deliberately brought on by drug psychosis) was also part of what we were about. Odd, considering other aspects of our aesthetic (in so far as we had one) were almost psychedelic. I suppose our recipe was that for every part of jollity there had to be at least five parts of affected dullness, otherwise we weren’t in earnest.
Thus, my desert squat discs of the day would have included plenty of Throbbing Gristle and Joy Division and the output of lesser wannabes, earnest stuff like Crass and, in secret, like masturbation, commercial Crass-a-likes like Killing Joke. The nearest thing I liked to a jolly ditty was “Holiday in Cambodia”. Even today I find it hard to suppress a “You tosser!” when I walk past Gothy or E-mo types. But really I’m swearing at myself.
Again, this is odd given the liveliness of so much of the music that was about then. Sam mentioned X-Ray Specs, nowadays I find the Buzzcocks and the Undertones very listenable; even “Hurry Up Harry” gets my foot tapping.
Perhaps part of this is that the energetic-earnest middle-ground was occupied by such a bunch of tossers, the UK Subs (punk’s Status Quo) and such like, then later The Exploited and similar mimetic anarchoes. But then there were always lively bands that were energetic, reasonably musical, and had Something to Say without letting politics become an obsession, The Ruts, for example.
My memory of the time cuts off quite sharply circa 1983, when my life began to take a quite different turn.
baronvonzubb
December 12, 2008 at 1:30 pmAl, if you were that involved in the campaign then I imagine that you know what i’m alluding to. Last saw those chaps when we helped ’em move house, must ave been ’81 – pre summer – so still relevent. x x x x
Funny that , I think the emos & goths are great. A bit of va va voom in an otherwise boring teenage landscape.
But then I live in Brighton so probably a bit of a fashion tosser meself..
VG stores is still there , another name and no pictures of sai baba.
Dr Mick; the question begging is how did you get to be so into our Islamic brothers culture?
Dike Miboll
December 12, 2008 at 2:17 pmRe the Goths and emos, nothing personal against them at all; like I said “really I’m swearing at myself”. I take your point about “a bit of va-va-voom in an otherwise boring teenage landscape.” My son’s coming up to his teenage years, probably I’m being overly protective (fat lot of good that will do).
Re the other stuff, first-off I should stress that I’m NOT AT ALL into any of that today. My residency in the Gulf just being that having learned Arabic “in those days”, and then having reformed myself largely through education to PhD level (and through the love of a good woman), I was well placed to do academic Comparative Literature and comparative Middle -Eastern Cultural Studies.
I’d dearly like to talk about my experiences in that scene, but for all manner of reasons I really can’t in an open forum like the Internet under my own name. A lot of what’s in my book is to do with that time. At sometime I’d like to do something more autobiographical, since personal connections between the worlds of 1970s extremism and the extremisms of the turn of the C20th/21st is highly relevant.
Suffice to say that I could only enter into something like emotional and intellectual maturity once I’d killed of the extremist within me, and he took some killing of. Where did he come from? That’s one for the shrinks, do doubt.
The intellectual history (to dignify it somewhat) of the journey from the Anarcho stuff to the other stuff is also interesting. I’ll sketch it out here one day.
Tony Puppy
December 12, 2008 at 2:24 pmMike, how many goths and emos do you see in Bahrain?
Sam
December 12, 2008 at 3:06 pmHow I suffered for my obsession with The Jam at 66a. Bastards.
Mike Diboll
December 12, 2008 at 3:15 pmMore than you might think, it’s not the stone age here! Haven’t you ever heard of Straight Edge Muslims?
BTW, I also summer for three months in London and near Brighton, and visit in the winter. So I’ve not “gone native!”
Don’t forget that in all GCC states except Saudi and Oman the nationals are a minority in their own countries. Only about 5% of the population of Dubai are Emirati Arabs, in the UAE as a whole its only 19%; in Bahrain it’s about 50-50% locals and outsiders. The entire working class is bought in from India and the sub-continent, and almost the entire professional class are expatriate Westerners of one sort or another, Dubai alone is home to 70,000 Brits.
Thus, the angst-ridden teen sons and daughters of Western expats hang out in the shopping malls, bars and nightclubs here, and most contemporary trends in youth culture are present here, in one form or another. Often it’s a bit naff and “not quite there”.
There are Arab emos &ct too, especially here in Bahrain, the most “liberal” of the GCC states (alcohol is readily available here and the university I work at is completely co-ed, the uni shop even sells contraceptives).
Gloomy existential angst is a favourite theme among the Creative Writing students I work with here, almost to the point of tedium: “lighten up guys you could be in Saudi”, indeed, a fair few travel over the King Fahd Causeway to do “haram” subjects like Literature, unavailable in any meaningful sense in SA.
The Muslim Straight Edge thing is quite interesting (although not quite my cup of tea), and just one of the many ways in which all manner of cultures and sub-cultures interact in a kind of po-mo, globalised way. Maybe the people of C20th “cosmopolitan” cities like London and NYC (both of which I love) are becoming the new provincials?
Mike Diboll
December 12, 2008 at 3:17 pmExactly! Good on you, Sam.
John No Last Name
December 12, 2008 at 5:34 pmwoah 1980 flashback, I’m sitting here getting educated by Toxic Graffiti Mike. Reading about the middle east from someone who lives there is way more interesting than reading about a bunch of bands from 27 years ago (no offence BVZ)
Oh and Sam, for what it’s worth I never was a big Jam fan back then, but every now and then Steve Jones plays their stuff on his radio show, and when you listen to those records now they are pretty damn great, great songs, great lyrics, way ahead of most ‘punk’ bands. Even now on his solo stuff, Paul Weller is still writing great songs and is far more relevant than almost all of his contemporaries.
baronvonzubb
December 12, 2008 at 7:36 pmHow very dare you…
Bruv I will quite gladly bollock on about Asia if you like, it IS much more interesting.
So background to the mumbai attacks; oh no, dont get me started now will ya.
Sam you wondered why were all so ‘uncomfortable in our skins’?
I think the answer may lie, rather than being a class thing which is pretty irrelevent I reckon, in the sort of characters we were/are.
Oh The Saints have just come on. Synchronicity or what.?
Erm, oh yeah.
Of all the folk who were at 66A for example,
3 of them now live abroad -Sam, Dr Mick & Mark-
And the rest of us -Ian P, Tony R,(Tony B also) Jake S have spent big chunks of our lives – between 5 & 10 years -living abroad. And still have big connections there.
(Lee and Volga were foreigners already. Ian A is now Jim Morrison. Gretch lives ruraly in wales. Leaves Mitch & Pork based in UK the whole time-i’m presuming )
See what I mean?
Graham Burnett
December 12, 2008 at 11:55 pmMike Diboll said; “The scene around Crass certainly was, and required a bit of self-deprogramming to get out of. Although most of them were alright as individuals, the older ones should have been more aware that there were some very vulnerable and confused young people in their entourage.”
Presume you mean Penny and Gee, who I think were well aware that there were very confused and vulnerable young people in their ‘entourage’ and took their responsibilities here very seriously, ie very careful about not being seen as ‘leaders’ or putting folks into potentialy vulnerable positions, unlike some others I could mention who seemed quite happy to put kids into ‘cannon fodder’ situations, eg provoking riots after gigs, urging unprepared and ill-equiped kids to ‘fight back’, etc, etc.
Ian S
December 13, 2008 at 3:39 pm“eg provoking riots after gigs”
I don’t recall anyone ever succeeding in doing so 😉
Mike Diboll
December 13, 2008 at 6:41 pmIf I’d have meant Penny and Gee I would have said so. No, what I’m concerned with is not the individual members of Crass, but Crass as a corporate entity, with a corporate aesthetic, a corporate ideology, and a corporate modus operandi.
If a group has these things, it needs corporate responsibility too, otherwise it becomes cult-like. This is the issue I have with Crass which, for better or worse, was far more than a band. I also chose the word “entourage” carefully to mean those who (with Crass’ encouragement) became close to the group, rather than those who simply turned up at Crass gigs.
Corporate responsibility is abrogated the moment people who are leaders (de facto or otherwise) claim to be no such thing. Looking back I find it hard to understand the anarcho aversion to leaders and leadership; an aversion to rulers in consistent with the creed, by why the aversion to leaders if their leadership is earned and recognized, the sort of leadership implied in words like “guru” or “sensei”.
By refusing to acknowledge that they were, like it or not, leaders of a sort, Crass shied away from their corporate responsibility, and the consequences of their aesthetic, ideology, and MO had on a large number of impressionable, and in some cases vulnerable young people (I don’t think I was vulnerable here, just stupid).
The only reason I mentioned the older ones is that if you are twice the age of your acolytes, have a level of education that most of them will never attain, and come from a relatively privileged social background, your level of responsibility vis-a-vis those young people is that much higher. But really I’m talking about Crass as a corporate body.
The kind of responsibility I’m talking about isn’t really to do with the things Graham mentioned, “riots”, “fighting back”, &ct. Rather I’m thinking about the groups role in forming and shaping young minds, mental attitudes, and beliefs about a wide range of complex subjects, politics, religion, ethics &ct. And I maintain this was cult-like.
John No Last Name
December 14, 2008 at 3:33 amIt’s an interesting thought that other youth movements have come and gone over the years and I can’t think of one except maybe PTV that had the cult like grip on their fans that Crass did. Even when the Beatles were practically in a cult very few of their fans tried to follow them there.
The Sex Pistols certainly opened up a lot of peoples eyes and I count myself as one person they woke up and enlightened, but nobody was ever concerned with what John Lydon ate and felt the need to emulate it. Maybe this was in part because John changed direction deliberately many times to keep any followers on their toes. From going out in 1977 dressed up as a teddy boy to forming Public Image and turning his back completely on the sound he was part of creating, all the way to getting Ginger Baker and Steve Vai to play on ‘Rise’.
Crass could easily have broke at least part of the mold by ditching the all black uniforms at just one show, of course they chose not to. I’m not here to crucify them, as quite honestly I hadn’t even thought about that band in over 20 years until I came on this site, but it is interesting that they made no effort that I can think of to not appear cult-like.
andus
December 14, 2008 at 11:02 amQuote.
“eg provoking riots after gigs”
I don’t recall anyone ever succeeding in doing so.
I remember a gig in Leeds were a band did provoke a riot, then they watched the riot from the window. afterwards they dished out handouts slagging off the people who just stood and spectated.
Incidentally. A good way to suss people out is to image what they would be like if they were the Goverment. Having observed these anarchist type people over the years I think I will stick with Labour and Tory.
Ian S
December 14, 2008 at 1:14 pmYes, if you want pointless violence done properly, you’ve got to leave it to the professionals. A load of little punks aren’t really up to bringing added chaos I mean peace and stability to Iraq and Afghanistan.
andus
December 14, 2008 at 8:12 pmI didn’t say I voted for them, I just reckon most of those so called Anarchists would be worser, but would they wage war against those countries they saw as being fascist?? But its a contradiction to speculate on anarchists goverments, but, say an anarchist revolution did happen, how long would it be before someone else started setting themselves up as the goverment. people like the hells angels, the outlaws, skinheads, and gangster groups would for a start, not to mention x police, christians, etc and a variety of other groups. Or would we all be anarchists in the new multi cultural Britain!!