The Varukers – Inferno Records – 1981

Protest And Survive / No Scapegoat

Soldier Boy / Never Again

Debut release on Inferno Records run by Tempest record shop in Birmingham, next release was by Dead Wretched which is also a slab of tip top pogo punk.

This band I know hardly anything about except they reminded me of Discharge at the time of purchasing this 7″ single (except for Soldier Boy, that sounded like Dead Wretched), and the vocalist had a mohican when I caught them performing live.

All the rest of the memories are now faded into some kind of UK82 haze in my brain somewhere.

Lazy journalism at its most frustrating. Sorry about that…off to bed!

183 comments
  1. Andus
    Andus
    October 10, 2008 at 8:07 am

    Saw this band play dozens of times in Birmingham, They played last year in Birmingham at the Market Tavern and are better than ever, the singer still looks the same, we know him as Rat, Ace band. ‘This ones about dying for your goverment’ its called Die for your Goverment’

  2. Nic
    Nic
    October 10, 2008 at 8:44 am

    Varukers started (in 1979, iirc) in Warwick / Leamington Spa playing Sex Pistols influenced Punk (we interviewed them for our fanzine in late 1980)…

    They were then enamoured (as were many) of the Stoke-on-Trent “Crack Yer Brain Up” sound and promptly started playing in a very Discharge-influenced style…Funnily enough their drummer (Garry) left to join Discharge, playing on the ‘Hear Nothing…’ album, while one of their early bassists (Tom) went on to play in Antisect for a time…Rat (vocalist) is currently the vocalist in the reformed Discharge…

    I must have seen them play about 20 times over the years, including one in May 1982 (where Antisect supported, playing their 3rd ever gig), a nice bill or two featuring Dead Wretched (“Tell me about the aggro – ‘cos you don’t fuckin’ know! No Justice!”), and quite a few gigs where Napalm Death also shared the bill (in 1985 and 1986)…

    They always seemed to manage to ‘crossover’ between the ‘UK82’ faction and the ‘Anarcho’ faction, perhaps because they became quite heavily focused on Animal Liberation…

    Ironically, they went completely ‘Thrash Metal’ crazy in the late 80’s, starting a new Metal group (Arbitrator) and taking onboard the Metal fashion look…However, they were soon back to full Mohican status…

  3. Andus
    Andus
    October 10, 2008 at 9:27 am

    I have a copy of the Dead Wretched single, no hope for anyone, had a shock when I saw it on ebay going for £20, some members of The Varukers play in Sick On The Bus, another excellent thrash band, The Varukers/Sick On The Bus, was one of the best punk gigs I have been to in years and years last year. Punks not dead, least not until they bring in Martial law.

  4. Andus
    Andus
    October 10, 2008 at 9:45 am

    Ironically, they went completely ‘Thrash Metal’ crazy in the late 80’s, starting a new Metal group (Arbitrator) and taking onboard the Metal fashion look…However, they were soon back to full Mohican status…

    It was just a passing phase Nik, a fad, they soon came back to the family,
    At least they didn’t go over to rave music like so many of the other treasonous hordes.

  5. Chris
    Chris
    October 10, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    QUOTE: Ironically, they went completely ‘Thrash Metal’ crazy in the late 80’s, starting a new Metal group (Arbitrator) and taking onboard the Metal fashion look…However, they were soon back to full Mohican status…

    …to release a record called “NOTHING’S CHANGED”! Classic!! 🙂

  6. Alan Rider
    Alan Rider
    October 10, 2008 at 8:11 pm

    I only saw them once & thought they sounded like a totally pissed Motorhead. I must have been pissed too as I can’t remember where it was but it could have been Leamington Spa as I used to go there quite a bit around then. They were more in Nic & Miles camp than mine, but I must have had fun (I’d remember if I was bored).

    This isn’t really helping the blog along much is it?

  7. Jay Vee
    Jay Vee
    October 13, 2008 at 1:30 am

    I know Biff of Sick 0n The Bus / Varukers very well, but that’s not my point…my point is, why do so many contributors to this site find it so fuckin’ necessary to quote previous comments of others’… ain’t anyone got the abiliy to create a flow, ya know, like just carrying on your own opinion without kind of persecuting eachother…it’s so fuckin’ tedious! Punk is supposed to be about NOT being ‘Fascist’ yet time and again folk on here feel the need to go all elitist and try to intimidate the last comment by just criticising and not creating, or just simply adding on their own opinion…

  8. Nic
    Nic
    October 13, 2008 at 8:41 am

    I thought that people quoted other people’s posts in order to engage in a conversation, Jay Vee…I would have thought that the interaction between posters and the exchange of ideas creates a flow between people…

    Who is being persecuted? I haven’t seen anything like that here (apart from the occasional misunderstanding which stems from the nature of posting on the nookienet)…

  9. andus
    andus
    October 13, 2008 at 9:31 am

    There are two kinds of people in this world, those who leave posts and those who don’t.

  10. andus
    andus
    October 13, 2008 at 10:02 am

    Time for a poem anyway, I think people need cheering up a bit.

    SECOND DESERT.
    The unknown is a noise that obliterates every sound,Sparing no one in a density of self;
    Fear breeds out of fear,Choking all emotions,
    Violating the deepest of thoughts with infallible possession.Head to stone;
    Cold clinical spirit;Wafer blade;
    Sliced up mind.This is the fear that sweeps like a mantis,Preying on our perception,
    Senses that would stop turned hollow;
    All is occupied by this dense hurricane,
    As the dark unnamed,unravels its abominations.
    This is fear,In the twinkling of its eye,
    Worlds collide.This is the far-away place,
    A land of snarling dogs,Lips drawn back,
    Foaming at the mouth.This is the dead moment
    that stretches out of all proportion;
    The time-plundering block,The hideous mist,
    Where we rampage through our heads
    like demented tyrants.This is the fear
    that shakes the beauty,Which turns like a snake in the grass,Scared of its own tail
    This is shear drop,After shear drop,
    After shear drop,There are no roads out of here;This is the day the sky fell in;
    This is where fear begins,In silence,
    Among the ruins,Watching like a hawk.
    This is where fear begins,Sand upon Sand,
    Stone within Stone,Eclipse over Eclipse.

  11. Nic
    Nic
    October 13, 2008 at 11:01 am

    Well, Andus, all I can say is: Thanks…
    That poem left me about as far from ‘cheered up’ as it is possible to get…
    😉

  12. Nic
    Nic
    October 13, 2008 at 11:13 am

    A few more happy moments…

    A Study of Reading Habits by Philip Larkin

    When getting my nose in a book
    cured most things short of school,
    It was worth ruining my eyes
    to know I could still keep cool,
    and deal out the old right hook
    To dirty dogs twice my size.

    Later, with inch-thick specs,
    Evil was just my lark:
    Me and my coat and fangs
    had ripping times in the dark.
    The women I clubbed with sex!
    I broke them up like meringues.

    Don’t read much now: the dude
    Who lets the girl down before
    The hero arrives, the chap
    Who’s yellow and keeps the store
    seem far too familiar.
    Get stewed:
    Books are a load of crap.

    Since The Majority Of Me by Philip Larkin

    Since the majority of me
    rejects the majority of you,
    debating ends forwith, and we
    divide.

    And sure of what to do
    we disinfect new blocks of days
    for our majorities to rent
    with unshared friends and unwalked ways.
    But silence too is eloquent:

    A silence of minorities
    that, unopposed at last, return
    each night with cancelled promises
    they want renewed. They never learn.

  13. andus
    andus
    October 13, 2008 at 11:42 am

    I was being sarcastic Nik, Talking the piss out of my own poem. Just read that other post/book. The obscure Chris Low tape. Jesus, glad I wasn’t there.
    In fact that poem would have fitted nicely into that post, perhaps I should move it. Cheers for the Philip Larkin poems, never read him, didn’t know he was so good, I can feel a trip to the library coming on.

  14. Nic
    Nic
    October 13, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    I had guessed you were being sarcastic, Andus…so I thought another sarcastic comment might be in keeping…
    🙂

    I didn’t realise you hadn’t read Larkin…
    Try ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ and move on to ‘High Windows’…
    A completely curmudgeonly and miserable old codger (no wonder I like him)…but a wonderful poet: a perfectly measured approach to the use of language, and the ability to open out a particular situation so that it speaks to the universal…

  15. andus
    andus
    October 13, 2008 at 12:50 pm

    As idiotic as it sounds when I used to read my poets, I’d pick up a Philip Larkin book and think nah won’t bother with him don’t like his name. T S Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Tony Harrison, Hugh Mcdiamid, have been my favourities, along with some of the war poets, Byron, Keats I thought were awfull,
    You should read T S Eliots The waste land for shear disconsolation. I read that poem ( second desert ) out at a gig at the Wagon and horses ( ex cannon ball heath mill lane ) a few weeks ago, Tommy Drongo described it as ‘ very dark’ I was overjoyed at that comment.

  16. Nic
    Nic
    October 13, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    Yes, ‘The Wasteland’ is a journey directly into the heart of darkness…

    I can still appreciate Byron, Keats, Donne, Marvell, Shelley, Coleridge, Rossetti, Wordsworth et al for their use of language and their themes…

    However, I do have more of an inclination towards the work of C20 poets such as Eliot and Plath, and other poets such as Matthew Arnold, Larkin, George Macbeth, Cummings, Dylan Thomas, Stevie Smith, David Gascoyne, Ezra Pound, Butler yeats, and so on…

    However, my favourite poetry is probably that written by various French poets (such as Rimbaud, Laforgue, Mallarme, Verlaine, etc) during the period mid-1850’s to the 1920’s…

    I’ve also got a soft spot for Harry Crosby, d’Annunzio and Mayakovsky…

  17. alistairliv
    alistairliv
    October 13, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    Let us not forget Scotland’s national bard… Rab C Nesbitt. I mean Rabbie Burns. Tam o Shanter is too long, but here are some bits.

    When chapman billies leave the street,
    And drouthy neibors, neibors, meet;
    As market days are wearing late,
    And folk begin to tak the gate,
    While we sit bousing at the nappy,
    An’ getting fou and unco happy,
    We think na on the lang Scots miles,
    The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
    That lie between us and our hame,
    Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
    Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
    Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

    This truth fand honest Tam o’ Shanter,
    As he frae Ayr ae night did canter:
    (Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses,
    For honest men and bonie lasses).

    O Tam! had’st thou but been sae wise,
    As taen thy ain wife Kate’s advice!
    She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,
    A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum;

    She prophesied that late or soon,
    Thou wad be found, deep drown’d in Doon,
    Or catch’d wi’ warlocks in the mirk,
    By Alloway’s auld, haunted kirk.

    But pleasures are like poppies spread,
    You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
    Or like the snow falls in the river,
    A moment white-then melts for ever;

    Nae man can tether Time nor Tide,
    The hour approaches Tam maun ride;
    That hour, o’ night’s black arch the key-stane,
    That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;
    And sic a night he taks the road in,
    As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in.

    The wind blew as ‘twad blawn its last;
    The rattling showers rose on the blast;
    The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d;
    Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow’d:
    That night, a child might understand,
    The deil had business on his hand.

  18. andus
    andus
    October 13, 2008 at 11:23 pm

    I forgot to mention W H Auden, William Blake. A E Houseman and of course Robert Burns, any offers for the worst ever poet, I would like to nominate Ted Hughes. Cummings and Dylan Thomas and Rimbaud, Hey Nik what do you reckon to the conspiracy theory that The Wasteland was written by Ezra Pound and not Eliot, personally I think its bullshit cause it showed a continuityof style, but I reckon she may have helped him a bit especially with the mythological referances, The Final verse is from Hindu Mythology. Datta Dayadhvam Damyata, give,sympathise,control, is based on the hindu story of prapatti. well the three solutions are anyway.

    O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag –
    it’s so elegant
    so intelligent
    ‘What shall I do now? What shall I do
    I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
    with my hair down, so, What shall we do tomorrow ?
    What shall we ever do?

  19. Nic
    Nic
    October 14, 2008 at 9:01 am

    ‘Worst ever’ is somewhat hard to judge, particularly as it is so subjective…for example, I quite like the visceral and organic quality of Hughes’ poetry (although I rarely read his work)…How about Andrew Motion?
    🙂

    I think I agree with you, Andus: scholarship seems to prove without a doubt that Pound had a major role in an ‘editorial’ capacity in relation to ‘The Wasteland’ (assisting largely with structure), but the language, imagery and themes of the poem are Eliot’s alone (including the anti-Semitism, although that could have been Pound too!)…
    http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/composition.htm

  20. John No Last Name
    John No Last Name
    October 14, 2008 at 9:03 am

    Am I the only one amused by all of the poetry posting on a varukers thread?

  21. baron von zubb
    baron von zubb
    October 14, 2008 at 9:04 am

    Andus i luv u bruv, but i suppose i was glad u wasnt there either.
    No doubt u was doing something better?
    Post your experiences on the big thread it needs more inputs.

  22. andus
    andus
    October 14, 2008 at 9:38 am

    I think anything is better than jacking up all the time, and sort of encouring 12 of your mates to commit slow suicide. The point is I’m still here, most of the friends of this Sam geezer are dead. I rest my case.

  23. andus
    andus
    October 14, 2008 at 10:01 am

    In 1978 I was at school, largely being bullied by the so called punk kids, would you believe it. I was 13, That was the year I met a 21 year old lass and slept with her for about 2 months until the police arrested her. She ended up on the front page of The Sun as the girl who couldn’t say no to sex. circa Aug 1978. So thats what I was doing while Sam and his mates were trying to destroy themselves.

  24. baron von zubb
    baron von zubb
    October 14, 2008 at 10:24 am

    Mr Peng, its not fair, these posts should surely come under the ‘big thread’, no?.
    Andus .
    Mate. Well if you’d come down to one of our luverly squats you could have slept with lots of lovely punk girls too. And we wouldnt have force fed you smack.
    Maybe.
    Your’e still here. Sams still here. I’m still here.
    That Sam geezer would agree with you that doing gear is a very stoopid thing. I doubt very much if he was encouraging his mates as he wasnt using by then.

    I is the only one who’d advocate it as a therapy.x x
    Well me n Mr Burroughs.

    Drugs are part of youth culture.
    So is (self) destruction
    Some people die along the way.
    Its a personal choice to take them.
    For us it was part of the adventure.
    If you’d been there you would have also been part of that adventure.
    You had some of your own, no doubt.
    BTW, nice poem.
    Njoy BVZ

  25. Nic
    Nic
    October 14, 2008 at 10:33 am

    hehe – we DID have a few adventures, didn’t we Andus?
    🙂

  26. andus
    andus
    October 14, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    I did used to come down to London mate, about 6 times a year, usually to visit Andy and Dave at Brougham Road. and occassionally to places like the George Robey for gigs, I remember the squats down Camden or was it Camberwell, not much sign of smack when I was there, 87 onwards. That was obvious from the fact that most of those squats were immaculate, there was a bit of a smack culture around Hackney, but Andy used to diligently keep away from those people, telling me tales of the awfull Hackney hell crew and how he was forced to evict them, everywhere I went in London people used to say ‘Are you from Brum’ Yeah ‘ Do you know Mad graham’
    I was introduced to The Apostles by Nic and his mate Rat ( ex Napalm drummer ) so I decided to interview them for my fanzine, after writing to them I went down to visit, The interview ended up being 8 pages long.

    Yeah that was some adventure for a 13 year old Nik, Raquel Welsh lookalike as well, I was the star of the school afterwoods, everyone though I was a hard man. ( pun intended )

  27. andus
    andus
    October 14, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    Smack as therapy. I can see that yeah, after you’ve been in camp x ray being tortured for a few hours.

  28. andus
    andus
    October 14, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    Its quite sad that Elliot was anti-semitc, Nic, I could never understand why that accusation came about, until you posted that link above, but could he have been talking about anti-semitics in ‘Death by water’. I would like to think so, Its more depressing than finding out the 4 skins were a tad racist a few months after I had discovered them in 1981.

  29. andus
    andus
    October 14, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    A Varukers thread and we are talking about poetry, don’t think the Varukers would be impressed, ‘this ones about the wasteland its called, the wasteland’.

  30. Nic
    Nic
    October 14, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    What? The 4 Skins are racists? You’re joking? When did you find this out?
    I can’t believe it…

  31. Nic
    Nic
    October 14, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    I always interpreted ‘Death by Water’ as a meditation on Death as the Great Leveller (rather than a comment on Anti-Semites)…

    The references (to ‘death by water’ and the Phoenician) create a link back to Madame Sosostris, giving the poem a (roughly) cyclical quality…

  32. andus
    andus
    October 14, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    I always interpreted that way as well Nic, but apparently those are the reputed anti-semitic lines, all jews become equal with us through death, which implies that jewish people think they are above everyone else, A common accusation during the early 20c,and beyond.
    The poem had a sort of feminist angle to it as well, largely about sexuality, which I think is more than just a passing theme. Tiresias is supposedly the embodiment of both sexes. The latin at the beginning of the poem, you probably already know translates thus.
    ‘nam sibyllam quidem cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: respondebat illa’
    For once I saw with my very own eyes the sibyl at cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her, ‘Sibyl what do you want ? she answered ‘ I want to die’.

    HURRY PLEASE ITS TIME quite literally represents the grim reaper.

    My favourite part of the poem is the verse that starts. Here in no water but only rock, etc etc.

    I have a copy of The wasteland on tape read by Alec guiness along with The four quartets, brilliantly read as well, I will have to do you a copy if you want.

  33. andus
    andus
    October 14, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    What? The 4 Skins are racists? You’re joking? When did you find this out?
    I can’t believe it…

    LOL, This was in 1981 Nic, when not alll skins were NF, I think it was in the early 80s perhaps late 70s when they started becoming NF. the original skins were not NF racist skins, I have a NF march on Vhs through digbeth in 1976, and there are no NF skinheads on the march, they came a little later i think.

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