First pressing of flexi
Second pressing of flexi
Crass – ‘Tribal Rival Rebel Revel’ flexi disc
This particular issue of Toxic Grafity is probably the most well known of the handful that were produced. It was also one of the best selling (of all fanzines, not just Toxic Grafity!) due to the free flexi disc of a (then) unreleased track by Crass being included.
It should be noted that Throbbing Gristle are also featured in this issue which was always a bonus for fanzines in the late 1970’s.
I am indebted to Toxic Grafity’s writer and editor, Mike Diboll for supplying the following information below on how this particular issue of Toxic Grafity got produced. All artwork on this post is from this issue of Toxic Grafity.
This edition of Toxic Grafity was put together while I was squatting in New Cross, south London and originally printed during late 1979, but it didn’t really get into folks homes until early 1980, when a substantial reprint was done. Originally 2,000 came off the presses, quite how many were eventually printed, I am not sure.
Joly from Better Badges (who also printed the first three KYPP’s fanzines, the last three were printed by Little ‘A’ Printers) used to always swing things so it seemed that I owed him lots of money (quite large sums for those days); I’m sure he may well have been diddling me, but that was my fault, because I was very naive in those days and thought that anything do with business, copyright etc, was bourgeois and reactionary, so perhaps I deserved it. Also, it must also be added that I was off my head a fair bit in those days, but of course so was Joly! Judging by the number of flexi’s that were sent to Better Badges, I suspect the actual print run was over 10,000, perhaps well over.
A year before the release of this particular issue of Toxic Grafity, in 1978, and also during 1979, there had been some really nasty rucks at Crass gigs at the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square in west central London. These rucks had mainly been fought between boneheads and bikers brought in by the SWP.
I can’t remember what the gigs were in aid of, but it was something the SWP had a hand in. The boneheads were used to pushing punks around, but got far more than they bargained for when taking on the bikers, some of whom were grown men in their 30s and 40s armed with bike chains, knives etc. After those experiences at there concerts Crass seemed to get a lot more edgy than they had been previously about sharing any sort of platform with members of the ‘hard’ left wing.
The lyrics to the Crass 7″ single ‘Bloody Revolutions’ is based on that feeling from the band around this time.
Basically it was the left wing causes that Crass would sometimes support, that seemed to aggravate the boneheads, and of course the boneheads would generally mill around the halls looking dangerous, and on occasions causing some real trouble.
Toxic Grafity didn’t really have those left wing associations, and (luckily) I also knew a few of the bonehead contingent quite well. I had always despised their ideology, but on a human level I was quite friendly with some of them. This I think helped diffuse things when Crass performed at the Toxic Grafity event staged at the Conway Hall late on in 1979.
It was not a violent night at all, which was obviously good news at the time considering the previous gigs at the Conway Hall. There were of course some minor problems, but those situations were quickly nipped in the bud by some friends of my family that had come to witness the gig.
The flexi disc followed on from the Toxic Grafity benefit gig, it was Penny’s idea, he bought it up one evening at Dial House, the Crass commune, way out in North Weald, Essex.
The original Toxic Grafity benefit was staged because of an incident late on in 1978 when I was pulled by the police in Soho, the seedier area of the west end of London. The police stopped me on one of those charges they used to pick punks and other ne’r-do-wells up on, the infamous SUS law. I had stopped off in Soho on my way back from a visit to Dial House, and had the artwork of an earlier Toxic Grafity on me. The police found this highly amusing, as you might imagine, destroyed the artwork, treated me a bit roughly, threatened me, and said that they’d put me on some sort of Special Branch terrorist watch list. Looking back on this as a 50 year-old I can see that this was almost certainly bullshit, but I took it seriously enough at the time!
As a result, Crass decided to help Toxic Grafity out (a previous issue had carried one of the first in-depth interviews with them), and the gig at the Conway Hall and the flexi disc followed on from that.
The track on the flexi disc, was not one of Crass’ more in-depth or enigmatic tracks, rather it was what it says it is, a protest against violent political sectarianism screwing up the young. Of course I was extramely grateful never the less.
I’ve repudiated so much of what I used to believe in during those days in the late 1970’s, but the closing words for Crass’ ‘Bloody Revolutions’ track “but the truth of revolution, brother, is Year Zero” still appeals to the Burkeian in me!
Joly at Better Badges did the litho printing for the fanzine and sorted out the badges. Southern Studios took care of the flexi disc by Crass, but I can’t remember where they had it pressed, or how many exactly were manufactured. The Crass flexi discs were written in red for the original publication of Toxic Grafity, others were written in silver for subsequent issues of the fanzine.
Eventually there were five Toxic Grafity fanzines that were produced and sold from 1978 – 1981.
Toxic Grafity issue 6 and 7 were planned and in large part nearly prepared, but I became a father in March 1982 (I’m now a grandfather, twice), and ‘reality’ stepped in quite soon after so all those projects were cancelled.
The later Toxic Grafity’s, including the issue above, had dropped the whole band interview thing and had became more like an anarcho-punk agit-art magazine, similar to what Kill Your Pet Puppy would evolve into.
By 1983 I was doing a lot of dispatching and also a lot of ‘white van man’ work until sometime in 1989. While doing these small jobs, a friend of mine, Wayne Minor (from Brixton’s 121 Railton Road bookshop) and myself brought out one issue of “The Commonweal” which was a more mainstream anarchist publication in 1985.
In 1989 I entered university as a mature student.
I now live and work in the middle east.
To advertise this issue of Toxic Grafity, Crass arranged to press up a few hundred vinyl copies of the same version of ‘Rival Tribal Rebel Revel’ to give to record stores that were ordering the fanzine in bulk. This was so the shop had a ‘hard’ vinyl copy that the shop could play rather than play the flexi disc from the fanzine if any potential buyers wanted a snippet pre buying the product.
With thanks to Chris Low for supplying the personal letter from Mike to Chris
Sir Head
February 20, 2009 at 11:37 pmBeen a fan of this website for ages. Saw this post and reminised big time. I got this fanzine at a gig on a council estate off a guy called Ian Bone (not that one) who always wore an Angelic Upstarts painting on his jacket. He suggested I might be interested in this and gave me a copy complete with stickers and flexi. It was a copy of this zine that made me aware that it wasn’t only people in my area that were being fucked over (I lived near Margate) but everyone in the country. Can’t remember the exact line in the zine but it was somethng like “10,000 houses in Islington left to rot, dont let em rot, squat the fucking lot” or something along those lines. Made me wake up to the fact it wasnt just us.
Thanks for the zine and this site.
Never met you but perhaps should have.
Rich
February 21, 2009 at 7:13 amYour posts never fail to amaze and astonish!
Thank you so much for this and the very informative write-up!
alistairliv
February 21, 2009 at 8:25 amThanks to Mike and Toxic G. I had a rather surreal experience. It involved a version of the old Quest for the Holy Grail routine – but happened in Hackney and we did get to glimpse the Grail on Beck Road…
The plan was to interview Throbbing Gristle for Toxic Grafity, but having found the supposed Martello Street TGHQ was just a forwarding address we then had to set of across the empty wastes of London Fields in search of the mythical ‘Beck Road’ which was near Mare Street and also (had we but known) the even more mysterious and portentious Brougham Road…
We got to Beck Road, but arrived just as the entire T. Gristle crew were leaving…
The Punk / Post Punk Tribe
February 21, 2009 at 10:04 amSweet post / info and zine!
baron von zubb
February 21, 2009 at 6:44 pmMore great nostalgia.
What will this generation look back on? Facebook? Uuhghghg…
shammy leather
February 21, 2009 at 10:03 pmFirst time I heard it was when Diabol was at a Poison Girls gig (I think ) in Manchester selling copies. I bought a copy off him and had a chat, when I heard it I thought Sham 69, I later met him again with his mate at a very early Conflict gig in Eltham where Steve Ignorant and Annie Anxiety were there too. I recall how Steve came over and said “I know you don’t I?” and he remembered all the visits and time I spent at Dial House hitching down from Newcastle.
chris
February 22, 2009 at 4:29 pmActually, I recently came across an old letter/interview from Mike D penned I think between the Crass flexi issue of Toxic Grafity and the A5 follow up benefit issue. I will try to scan it and send you a copy Penguin, on my return. One thing I do recall is it said was that the free flexi concept was intended to be an ongoing thing with the next proper issue of the zine having one by a new Eltham band called Conflict.
Actually, I think the Heretics issue (the one before the Crass flexi one) of Toxic Grafity was the first non-local zine I ever bought. Along with, if my sake-addled memory serves me right, another zine called Sunday The 7th which I think had a feature on the Bullshit Detector LP in it.
Anyway, Toxic Grafity – glorious stuff!
23star
February 22, 2009 at 10:19 pm…glorious indeed, remember buying this issue and being totally overwelmed artistically, philosophically and aurally…it left a deep impression to this day
John Serpico
February 22, 2009 at 11:18 pmJust as I think Mike D suggested that Baron Von Zubb’s book would be interesting by viewing those early eighties years from today’s viewpoint, I’d be interested in reading Mike D’s thoughts on those ideas he once espoused in Toxic Grafity from his position today. I know that on another thread on this site Mike began to discusss this kind of stuff but I felt it fizzled out quite suddenly and quickly diverted into other subjects.
“I’ve repudiated so much of what I used to believe in during those days”, Mike writes in the above piece. I remember at the time when I first read this issue of his zine there was stuff in it which was meaningless – the “Please, fuck the system now” stickers that I think came with it, as an example. There were though some actually very good ideas within it which were quite timeless. I suspect that the concept of anarchism is one of the major themes that Mike has now repudiated but what others? Would he still stand by the ‘Forming the stereotype’ idea, as shown above, for example? I’m curious to know what might appeal to Mike nowadays (apart from that Crass line from Bloody Revolutions) and what Mike might see as being hopeful and helpful in this day and age?
John No Last Name
February 22, 2009 at 11:55 pmIf you don’t look back on the person you were 20 or 30 years ago without a fairly large roll of the eyes, I think it would mean you haven’t grown at all as a person, which would be pretty sad. I look back at songs, I wrote then and things written down attributed to me and don’t even know who that person was. I’m okay with having moved on and grown out of that phase, though it was an important step along the way to becoming who I am now and hopefully who I’ll become in the future.
chris
February 23, 2009 at 5:35 amActually, I dont know how old Mike was when he did TG, but I would have been ten when I got hold of the Crass flexi issue. I think the reason it struck a chord is that at that age kids DO feel really nihilistic and TG sort of articulated this in the same way as Crass’ Feeding of the 5,000 which can only be likened to a bomb going off in my nine / ten year old head when I first heard it and read the lyrics. Not because I had any great understanding of the ideological content but simply because I understood that what was being espoused was ‘forbidden’.
listening to ‘So What?’ on Feeding or reading TG almost felt like the proxy equivalent of throwing the brick through the headmaster’s window you were always afraid to do.
Additionally, the Crass flexi issue was also, for me and im sure others, an introduction and gateway to Throbbing Gristle, who offered further vicarious, transgressive thrills for the precocious prepubescent.
Nice to see you’ve joined us Mr 23star 🙂
chris
February 23, 2009 at 5:46 amincidentally, does anyone have any isues of TG prior to the Heretics interview one? If so i’d love to see them so perhaps they could be scanned and posted up here?
alistairliv
February 23, 2009 at 8:44 amPolice are preparing for a “summer of rage” as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.
Britain’s most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming “footsoldiers” in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/23/police-civil-unrest-recession
chris
February 23, 2009 at 1:38 pmhmm, i’ll believe that when it happens.
star23
February 23, 2009 at 4:17 pm…’vicarious transgressive thrills’ make the world go round 😉
my comment earlier was purely from the perspective that reading, seeing and hearing it made me question and think about everything about life, that doesn’t mean i still take those philosophies and views of that time as gospel (though as a piece of design purely from an aesthetic artistic view its still powerful & inspiring)…the world’s changed and so have I…it was a catalyst as a 12 year old to see that I had the ability to think for myself 🙂
chris
February 24, 2009 at 5:37 amTotally agree. I think Crass’s primary strength was that they DID prompt people to ask questions. And digest and assess the veracity of the responses. Even at an early age I dismissed a fair amount of it as codswallop and find it depressing that there appears to be some who still unconditionally embrace Crass’ myopic political perspective and ascetic world-view in the same way old CPGB members still subscribe to Marxist Leninism like the remaining devotees of a cult. Only without the drugs and free love and the other fun stuff.
alistairliv
February 24, 2009 at 2:17 pmChris – CPGB style Marxist Leninism may be cultish, but old Karl’s critique of political economy is still useful. To put my work on the Galloway Levellers into a broader context, I have been working through the 2006 edition of “The Limits of Capital” by David Harvey which is an educated idiot’s guide to Marx. The original came out in 1982, so contemporary with anarcho-punk.
The 2006 update has a whole chunk on ‘fictitious capital’ – the imaginary £/$ trillions created by bankers and financiers which have now vanished into thin air, leading to the current ‘crisis of devaluation’. Such crises ” which strike at capital and labour alike, necessarily send reverberations through work place and community which may rock civil society to its very foundations.”.
If things really are as bad and getting worse as otherwise sober financial commentators are suggesting, civil society is going to be rocked to its very foundations.
Francesco
February 25, 2009 at 2:07 amI’ve got the italian book “Anok4u” (1984) with enclosed “Rival Tribal Rebel Revel” flexi disc printed with silver ink.
Inside Crass website, I see only the first press with red ink.
Someone could explain this to me?
Nic
February 25, 2009 at 2:32 amIf the Police predictions are to be considered (of course, the “paranoid” perspective would be to view these pronouncements as a smokescreen), then it may well be that there truly IS a deeper sense of unrest..after all, what is more affecting to the populace of Britain that issues around MONEY – particularly when it affects you and your family’s whole daily structure?
I did a verbal (and admittedly brief) ‘Straw Poll’ around friends who don’t have any particularly ‘extremist’ leanings, and they ALL said “If they nick my Pension – or my savings – I WILL RIOT…particularly after the way they bailed out the banks”
(I’m paraphrasing here)…
It imagine it would all depend on how quickly an equilibrium is reached within the social sphere…
chris
February 25, 2009 at 5:55 ambut nic, the british populus are surely the most supine and apathetic on the planet. that’s why so much shit is put up with without the outrage and protest it would attract pretty much anywhere else in the western world. i have no confidence that relatively secure people will take to the streets as the infrastructure has enough sugar coated pills to dish out to quell any possible dissent, let alone riots.
francesco, as i understand it, the red ink flexis were the ones given out with the original print runs of toxic grafity (2000 copies), and the silver ones effectively pressings produced for the enormous second run of the zine as alluded to in the text above (10,000 extra copies?). though im sure MD or Penguin can confirm.
andus
February 25, 2009 at 12:57 pmThe thing is Chris, if people loose their savings, pensions and jobs they won’t be secure people anymore, people rioted in the 80s recession, this one could be a lot worse, some pundits are saying it will make the 30s look like a cake walk, the other fact is there is clearly someone to blame for it, ie the banksters, and by implication the goverment, when you have millions of people going without and the goverment / banksters are clearly to blame, you are gonna get riots. period.
Ian S
February 25, 2009 at 2:16 pm“the british populus are surely the most supine and apathetic on the planet.”
Among the most in Europe, for sure.
Full-scale nationalisation of the banking system on both sides of the Atlantic is considered by many to be a serious possibility. A big realignment is now under way, locally and globally.
It’s hard to take in and there seems to be a widespread air of unreality at the moment. Many people would like to carry on as if nothing had happened. None of the main political parties know what to do. It’s like the ‘phoney war’ period of 1939.
But that came to an end, and there will be expressions of popular anger, not necessarily leading to riot porn though. They could go in reactionary directions too – more class hatred towards ‘undeserving chavs’, more xenophobic hatred towards those seen as unwelcome aliens.
We’ll see.
alistairliv
February 25, 2009 at 4:19 pmStop the City …26 years later….
City of London 1 April Climate Change Camp
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20
Join our camp in the Square Mile! Gather at noon, April 1st, at the European Climate Exchange, Hasilwood House, 62 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AW. Bring a pop-up tent if you’ve got one, sleeping bag, wind turbine, mobile cinema, action plans and ideas…let’s imagine another world.
Mike Diboll
February 25, 2009 at 7:12 pmThanks for the interesting posts, guys. Yes, Anarchism’s very much part of what I’ve repudiated. If the blood-soaked C20th has told us anything, it’s that the Enlightenment-derived ideas about the perfectability of mankind are wrongheaded.
As for revolution, probably the only major one that didn’t result in mass murder and kind of worked in its own terms was the American one, but still I have reservations about “the right to happiness”, and even in America there were 700,000 deaths to end slavery, etc.
My political position today is close to Burkeian, or perhaps Eliotic; after several “experiments” with religion I have been for some time a Christian in the Anglo-Catholic tradition.
Yes, “Forming a stereotype” makes me cringe more than a little. I have a 12 year-old son; he plays both chess and rugby, “ancient wargames” both!
What else is PC but an early anticipation of what is now called “political correctness”, which itself is part of the humourless authoritarianism of the left.
Yet these is still, underneath it all, something I retain from those years. Certainly not any of the ideologies. Perhaps a humane vision for a world based on something more than greed, selfishness and consumerism.
I’m an expat, and have been for some time. I love visiting Britain, but am very concerned about the way it seems to be going. I agree that the current global crisis will affect the UK very badly indeed, and this in turn will have very nasty knock-on effects on civil society.
But it won’t be revolution, or even anything like Brixton etc in the early 1980s. I can see there being more gun crime, knife crime, gang crime, more and more abuse of cheap nasty booze and cheap, nasty smack by younger and younger people, more abuse, more exploitation, more suicide and self-harming, more of the same, really, but with the volume turned up.
So I really cringe when I recall how I and others used to espouse something “nihilism”, because the reality of nihilism, the hopelessness, the aimlessness, the despair, the casual violence is what we have now. Once the comfort blanket of cheap credit is taken away from the UK and even those who’d done well out of the ’80s and ’90s seriously feel the pinch, God only knows what will happen. No more living beyond their means, no more “be a millionaire in 5 house sales”, no more third cars, no more cheap sex holidays in Thailand, no more 24/7 drunkeness. And as for the underclasses. . . .
Maybe things will eventually get better, but I fear they’d have to get a lot worse first!
That leads me back to what I think really did motivate us back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, beneath the ideology, beneath the posing: Hope. It’s the hopelessness of the world today, or at least Britain today, that really worries me. But hope that there is somewhere something a lot better than what’s in our face is, I am sure, an essential part of our human make-up.
alistairliv
February 25, 2009 at 10:03 pmMike – “Enlightenment derived ideas about the perfectibility of mankind are wrong headed…” … That sounds close to Eric Voegelin, but he argued that the notion of the perfectibility of mankind came from the Gnostic heretics of early Christianity who wanted to immanentize the eschaton… which he then equated with 20th century totalitarianism. [Left and Right].
But if anarchism is an anti-totalitarian position, then anarchists must necessarily reject the Gnostic/ Enlightenment belief in the perfectibility of mankind.
The Anglo-Catholic position claims* to be the direct/ legitimate successor to the orthodox interpretation of Christianity which rejected Gnosticism. *I say ‘claims’ since the Protestant Reformers argued that they had restored the original catholic church.
So perhaps what you repudiated was gnostic perfectionism rather than imperfect anarchism…
Francesco
February 26, 2009 at 12:30 amhi Chris,
thanks a lot for your information!
I knew that the red ink was the first pressing, but I was not sure that the silver version was official: no-one talks about this pressing.
I’ve to ask you another thing: in the early 90’s I’ve seen a Schwartzeneggar gig. Can you tell me please if they’re still in activity? I remember that it was a Steve Ignorant project.
Penguin • Post Author •
February 26, 2009 at 12:37 amFirst recording by Steve Ignorant and Schwartzenegger is here
https://www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/?p=675
After this they did nothing, but in the early 90’s Iggs re-launced the band name with Andi and Ben from Thatcher on Acid and Yeovil dude Bob Butler and released records on Gummidge’s Rugger Bugger label. The band does not exist no more and the members except Iggs morphed into The Tone, who were decent enough.
You might as well listen to this if you are a Igg supporter.
https://www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/?p=674
Knock yourself out…
Mike, great comment you wrote there fella.
Francesco
February 26, 2009 at 12:43 amThanks a lot Penguin!
I didn’t find news about them…
Mike Diboll
February 26, 2009 at 8:41 amPart of the “Enlightenment” of course was the rediscovery of ancient learning, particularly that of the Greeks. Gnosticism (in its myriad varieties) assimilated Greek Platonic thought into a syncretic system that also incorporated elements of the Hebrew prophetic tradition and Egyptian hermeticism. From this Greek (Aristotelian) position come the Enlightenmnt ideas about perfectability (although the neo-Platonists rejected this idea). Hence I suppose you could say I was rejecting both. This is an imperfect world and cannot be perfected.
Actually, teaching the Enlightenment out here in the Middle East is interesting. Partly because of all that smart-arse post 9/11 comment along the lines of “What the Arab world needs is a Renaissance/Reformation/Enlightenment” (delete as applicable). Arguably, the Arab world had two Englightenments, a derivative one in the late C19th and early C20th which really was a local derivative of the Western Enlightenment, and an earlier one in the C9th and C10th when the Arabs who had conquered the Hellenistic lands started to seriously get to grips with Greek rationalism.
Islamist trends re the Enlightenment take one of two broad positions: a fundamentalist position which is a wholesale rejection of the Englightenment as unislamic and therefore superfluous, or; an attempt to prove that Enlightenment rationality is perfectly in line with Islamic principles.
Anyhow, all this makes teaching the Enlightenment in classes out here really interesting.
Of course the real enemy of thoughtfulness out here as most other places in the world in mall culture, global brands, dumbing down, etc.
Mike Diboll
February 26, 2009 at 8:43 amRe Chris’s comment: yes, I fully intended to do the Conflict flexi. What happened to that and to future TGs was that real life intevened, having a child, the need to earn a wage, etc.
Ian S
February 26, 2009 at 10:29 amOn the subject of flexi discs, have just received a few old zines here at work containing flexis. See if these jog any memories:
10 Commandments zine from Glasgow, early 1980s, has flexi of Orange Juice ‘I wish I was a Postcard’.
Grinding Halt anarcho-punk zine from Reading, 1981, has flexi with two tracks from Sub-Active, ‘Live in a dream’ and ‘Chaos in the USSR’.
Chainsaw zine from West London, 1981, has a three-track flexi with the Tronics, Dancing Did and Instant Automatons.
In the City, 1980, London, everyone here will know this one: Poison Girls flexi with ‘Bully boys’ and ‘Pretty polly’.
Communication Blur from 1983, Glasgow, flexi with TV Personalities ‘Biff bang pow!’ and ‘A Picture of Dorian Gray’.
Zines + flexis, what a great combination that was!
Penguin • Post Author •
February 26, 2009 at 10:43 amHey Ian, recognise a load of those. Hows about letting the folk know where you work to put your post into context. I know I was very impressed when you told me what you did from 9 – 5. Reckon Nic will be jealous as well, being surrounded by all that history inc pre 1920’s cylinders!
Ian S
February 26, 2009 at 11:21 amOK Penguin, time to fess up. I’m the Vaultkeeper of the British Library Sound Archive, formerly the National Sound Archive.
‘Vaultkeeper’ is what it says on the pay slip, and the job description involves keeping everything under lock and key and organising stuff, sort of a glorified warehouseman. Sometimes I get to do other things, like sound recording.
The Archive currently has around: 230,000 LPs, 100,000 7-inch singles, similar number of 12-inch singles, 6,000 ‘special shapes’ (odd-shaped box sets and novelties), tens of thousands of pre-LP coarsegroove records, ranging from 4-inch discs used for children’s record players from the 1930s to whopping great 17-inch discs made by the BBC, 32,000 cassette tapes, tens of thousands of reel-to-reel tapes, and yes, very old wax cylinders, maybe around 1,000+.
Some of the wax cylinder date from the last decade of the 19th century. Florence Nightingale’s voice is on one of them. Those aren’t the earliest recording medium though (if you discount ‘sooty cylinder’ sonograms). Edison first invented cylinders made from thin aluminium sheeting, and they were initially used in talking toy dolls. They weren’t at all robust, and were torn up quickly by the needle. Most of the dolls were returned to the shops within a few weeks. They’re one of the things I regret we don’t have.
Unlike with books, record companies aren’t obliged by law to lodge copies of their releases with us, so the collection is not comprehensive. Instead, we rely on them donating stuff to us, and on bequests.
Last year, we received a big collection of zines and records from the estate of a former anarcho-punk in East Anglia who sadly died in a road accident. There was a real sense of time dislocation on seeing all the items boxed up in record cases with the band names and logos he’d marker-penned on the outside as a teenager: The Sinyx, The Epileptics, Hagar the Womb and so on. He’d kept his interests in punk music going for at least a decade, shifting from being into British-based bands to collecting American zines and records from about the mid-1980s.