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
Francesco
February 26, 2009 at 12:17 pmHi Ian S,
so if I need to ask information about some records, now I know who to ask for… 🙂
Jay Vee
February 26, 2009 at 2:55 pmAwesome!
alistairliv
February 26, 2009 at 5:39 pmAwesome indeed.
Graham Burnett
February 26, 2009 at 7:44 pmWho was the anarcho-punk who died?
james
February 26, 2009 at 8:18 pmHi Ian,
I vaguely remember a piece on the royal couple (Charles & Di) in that Chainsaw zine with a cartoon which amused at the time. “I kneed his meat, I meet her needs”, or something along those lines.
BTW we used to write back when you were living in Bexley and I was just down the road in Sidcup. Don’t think we ever met up though – at least not consciously.
Nice job BTW :o)
Cheers
Graham Burnett
February 26, 2009 at 10:06 pmRe British Library thing, I have my own Mike Diboll-style misguided ‘radical anti-establishment’ anecdote, when I used to do my fanzine New Crimes the British Library wrote to me requesting a copy for their archive, pointing out that it was a legal requirement that a copy of any publication be sent to them for ‘the records’. Being a ‘fuck you’ anarchist I thought, ‘bollocks to you, I don’t want to be a part of your sold out system’ or something and refused to send them a copy, anticipating a long drawn out legal battle wherin I would become a cause celebre as I asserted my right as an individual to decide who I sent copies to and they would be revealed as the oppressive heavy handed agents of state control and ownership by this unprecedented David vs Goliath courtroom conflict… What actually happened was that they sent me about 3 reminder letters then didn’t bother anymore. So that was a moral victory for me then, even though to this day a copy of New Crimes has never been archived for posterity. Jesus we could be prats in those days couldn’t we…
alistairliv
February 27, 2009 at 12:01 amPretty sure Kill Your Pet Puppy got a similar British Library letter which was also ignored.
chris
February 27, 2009 at 5:05 amhmmm…’Vaultkeeper’ sounds a bit like ‘Dungeon Master’ to me, Ian. 🙂
luggy
February 27, 2009 at 10:24 amThink Tony got requests from them for 2 copies of new issues of K.Y.P.P.
Thought he sent them off but may be wrong.
Ian S
February 27, 2009 at 12:10 pmIssues 2-5 are in the General Reference collection (it says here).
Nic
February 27, 2009 at 6:00 pmNice one, Ian: ‘Vaultkeeper’ – what a doss!
🙂
I’ve got copies of the Grinding Halt, In the City and Chainsaw flexi issues somewhere amongst all the detritus…where, is another question entirely…
Charlie (Chainsaw) went on to be a member of Rancid Hellspawn who did some nicely sludgey singles…
http://www.wrench.org/chainsaw.htm
Mike Diboll
February 27, 2009 at 6:41 pmI too fantasised about what a cause celebre I’d be if I didn’t send any copies of TG to the BL, same same David vs state Goliath bullshit. God, how self-important and egotistical we were! I think in the end I did send some copies, the vanity of posterity overcoming the vanity of my martyr to state opression complex. The scary thing is that although we grew out of it, I see the same sort of vainity in today’s schoolboy politicians. I’m thinkin of the likes of Milliband, et al. Hey up, I’m talking like an anarchist! Eh hem! Let’s set a minimum age of 60 for British PM or US President! And a proven track record outside of politics a condition of being an MP. And do away with parties, so we just vote for individuals on the basis of their moral probity, etc.
Mike Diboll
February 27, 2009 at 6:44 pmHey Ian, working at a major global archive is something really worthwhile. I’ve toyed with the idea of doing that sort of thing myself in the past.
Ian S
February 28, 2009 at 10:53 pmMike: I think Rough Trade may have passed on copies anyway heh heh, they seem to have done that for KYPP.
Graham: I will ask the guy on Monday who did all the negotiating to get the collection of zines and records. He should know the name.
Something some people here might know about. Was talking to the sound engineers on Friday, and they are preparing a talk on faked audio material.
One example they’re going to use is of a faked Aleister Crowley recording, supposedly of him speaking Enochian, but in fact it was a modern recording with cylinder scratchy sounds and other distortions mixed in to make it sound authentic.
First time I’d heard of this, does anyone here know any more about it?
Tony Puppy
February 28, 2009 at 11:02 pmHi Ian, can you tell more about this talk on faked audio material? Is it a public event? Could be an interesting event.
Ian S
February 28, 2009 at 11:57 pmTony, think it might be related to a short series of talks, some of which fall under the general title of ‘forensic audio’, so you can see how faked audio would relate to that. iirc it’s within the next few weeks sometime.
I’ll ask more on Monday about this and will post here what’s going on.
luggy
March 1, 2009 at 2:31 amIan, one of my mates, Nick was out celebrating his birthday tonight. First time I’ve seen him for a while, he’s working as a lackey at the British Library now as well (on level 3 IIRC). Was sporting a nice home-made anarchist librarian shirt that someone made him as a birthday gift. Didn’t know who you were but say hello if you venture down there!
chris
March 1, 2009 at 1:10 pmIan, that ‘forensic audio’ talk sounds fascinating. regarding the Crowley recording, it’s been released in various forms by a number of sources. IIRC, it may have been featured on one of the Come Org or associated comp LPs and I think on some Current 93 release (“Crowley Mass” perhaps?), amongst others. I expect someone here may have a recording of that fabricated Crass Thatcher/Reagan tape that is perhaps one of the best known examples of a ‘faked recording’.
Penguin • Post Author •
March 1, 2009 at 2:43 pmThat Crass Reagan / Thatcher tape is included on the David Tibet (Current 93) music collage (towards the end of the ‘piece’) uploaded by me here:
https://www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/?p=608
luggy
March 1, 2009 at 7:12 pmMy daughter’s Uni Design class is heading to the British Library tomorrow to look at punk fanzines!
joly
March 1, 2009 at 7:59 pmI’m a little stung by the ‘diddling’ accusation! This one was well subsidized by Better Badges, and the rate charged to Mike was below actual cost, and even then we gave him a hundred yard start. Apart from the cost of printing there was a lot of painstaking camerawork to make the plates due to dodgy typewriter ribbon and various textures in the collages. Every PMT cost 50p before one even got to plates. The number printed was indeed locked to the number of flexis made – I don’t remember if it was 5,000 or 10,000 – unfortunately John Loder is no longer with us to verify. You guys will well remember the economics of KYPP – look at the number of pages/halftones/plates in TG and do the math!
That said I’m proud of it as a product and kudos to Mike for the work.
Ian S
March 2, 2009 at 2:20 pmluggy: The BL has a collection of zines ready to hand for schooltrips, people on courses and so on. Here’s a page from the BL site, with a couple of Sniffin Glue pages which can be enlarged:
http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/counterculture/doityourself/punkfanzines/punkfanzines.html
Tony: I know that the talk will be open to the public, but not sure yet when it is. No sign of it in the March calendar of events. Will ask around some more.
Graham: The guy who died and bequeathed us loads of zines and records was Jas Toomer. He lived in Lincolnshire.
Graham Burnett
March 2, 2009 at 10:05 pmNo I didn’t know him. Just thought as it was East Anglia it might have been an old aquaintance of yore.
Mike Diboll
March 3, 2009 at 7:30 amLuggy, re your daughter’s trip to the BL to look at punk ‘zines Design course, who’d have thought it, eh? Kind of makes it all worthwhile!
Joly, what can I say? Would that we could see ourselves as others see us. Or probably more to the point, would that I COULD SEE MYSELF AS OTHERS SEE ME!
So perhaps I ought to apologise. I thought I’d laid so many of my old punk demons (I use the term both literally and metphorically) to rest, come to terms with all the things “Angry Mike” used to be angry with, realised where it was all coming from , dealt with it, moved on, &ct, &ct. But maybe not.
One of the things that impresses me so much about the messages posted on the KYPP website is the clarity of recall that you guys have for the late ’70s and early ’80s. My memories of that time are very vague, almost like one’s memories of one’s early childhood, although oddly my recall of the years before and after that period are quite clear.
It’s almost as if instead of growing up I’d actually been regressing during that time. Instead of becoming aware and responsible for my own actions as a young adult should I had drifted back into the solipsistic, self-referential world of childhood. Very odd.
Anyway, when Penguin asked me to write something about TG I initially found this hard. Hard to think back to those days, hard to recall exactly what went on.
Perhaps what I trawled up re Joly and BB wasn’t a memory of what really happened, but I memory of how I felt at the time. Me against the world, solipsistic, self-important me, my shot at fame, infamy, or what ever it was I craved at the time stymied by some hip capitalist who had the temerity to want paying for his services.
The truth is that I simply can’t recall in accurate detail what transpired betwen me and BB. But what disturbs me somewhat is that only a few days ago 50 year-old me, who ought to have known better, put finger to keyboard and gave vent to a 30 year-old bit of 20 year-old me’s angst. Where was my filter? Where was my discernment?
So sorry Joly, sorry for my past and present injustices to you.
Mike Diboll
March 3, 2009 at 7:51 amRe Crowley, &ct., an earlier phase of my juvenile (in every sense) rebellion involved me sitting feet up on the table in the 6th form common room reading Crowley, Waite, et al. Of couse, it was all a pose, and the works of such “kabblists” utter bollocks. The other students blackballed me from the common room, which I suppose is what I wanted, so thus oppressed I dropped out of school, got into punk, &ct.
Years later I got to read Gershom Scholem’s superb book “Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism”, not the snappiest title, I know, but the book was a real eye-opener. Likewise his “On Kabbalah and Its Symbolism”.
I especially recommend his writings on the Kabbalah of Isaac bin Lauria, which presents perhaps the most enlightening and mind-expanding mystical system I’ve ever read. Bin Lauria’s system transcends the context of any one faith, synthesises the theistic and pantheistic trends of the Kabbalah into a coherent whole, and answers many of the positivistic objections to theism.
In short it’s a work of inspired genius, the parallels between the Lauranic system and certain aspects of contemporary physicas and cosmology are especailly interesting. And it’s a good antidote to the showmanship of the likes of Crowley, ditto the sort of nonsense that Maddona et al are into these days.
alistairliv
March 3, 2009 at 8:42 amGershom Scholem? Yes! Mike – your post on the 9th/10th century Arab enlightenment brought the names Avicenna, Averroes and Maimonides [and Thomas Aquinas ] up from the depths. Now I remember where from – a course on early medieval Judaism… which also covered the origin of the kaballah and being really really impressed by reading Gershom Scholem.
Damn. Very tempted to get some Scholem in, but still not done with the Galloway Levellers.
baron von zubb
March 3, 2009 at 11:09 amWe couldn’t be who we are now if we hadn’t been who we were then.
It’s not like we can erase our past personalities and they disappear from history. Or from our personal history.
Being an anarchist / autonomist was part of the progression that led to this place, and for my part I repudiate nothing. I may not agree with it all ‘idealogically’ but thats progress.
The search for a better way to live was important, possibly misguided because we were young, badly informed and idealistic.
But the pattern from anti authoritarion politics to spiritual awakening, whether its catholic or shivite or crowleyist is a well trodden path.
And a much more interesting one than the hordes of people who have never bothered to ask the questions.
OK brothers?
Lets meditate.
x x BVZ
Graham Burnett
March 3, 2009 at 12:24 pmHi Mike, you are very hard on your past self, like BVZ says we wouldn’t be who we are now if we hadn’t been who we were then…
Sure when I think back to my fanzine New Crimes or some of the other things I said/thought/did then I cringe, but on the whole I’m proud of what I did and see it as a direct path to where I am now, ie, working in social care as well as self-publishing permaculture books and websites, having an allotment, running permaculture workshops and training, trying to live sustainably/ethically along with my wife and 4 children in our Victorian terraced house, involved in local community projects, etc, etc, and like it or not you were part of that process Mike, I used to really enjoy our correspondences and reading TG (even though there was loads of it I didn’t really understand – what was that bit about stealing the queens turds and drying them out all about for example???), and TG was one of the main zines that inspired me to start my own fanzine, it made me realise that it was possible. The fact that I am a creative person and confident enough to express that creativity on my own terms is probably the most important legacy for me of that whole punk/DIY/anarcho era. And it would have been a poorer time without your contributions to the pot.
Sam
March 3, 2009 at 9:21 pm@ Mike: “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.”
Actually the constitution reads “The right to the pursuit of happiness” which is very different, even if it is misinterpreted in the way you put it by many people and, through personal experience seems to come down to consumerist bliss these days. Living in the States, I have to confess I miss the natural jaded humour of our island but Americans do seem to be less burdoned by historical class divisions than we are/were.
Mike Diboll
March 4, 2009 at 9:32 amHi Sam, yes, I stand corrected on the exact quote from the Constitution. I ought to know it as I teach it on my Enlightenment course. In the first lesson I juxtapose Milton putting rationalist arguments into Satan’s mouth (1670s, in Paradise Lost, Book 11) with the Constitution (1770s) which in many was is the classic and definitive statement of the political agenda of the Enlightenment. Then I ask my students “What changed in that 100 years?” It sparks interesting debates in an Arab class, where so many students are torn between on the one hand a love of American mass culture and freedom of expression, and on the other the knee-jerk anti-Americanism that exists in much of the Arab media, resentment of Iraq, &ct., &ct.
Still, I’m not sure that the difference between the right to happiness and “the right to the pusuit of happiness” is as radical as you suggest. My view of human nature and our place in the world is (on a superficial level) a bit more pessimistic than the “enlightened self-interest” position expressed by many Englightenment figures, and today’s economic libertarians. So far as Englightenment figures go, I’m probebly closer to Burke or Johnson than the Fathers.
That said, I’m not at all an ameri-phobe, oh no, no, no! All that went out the window the first time I visited the US (Chicago), back in the mid 1990s. All what I had taken to be Yank boasting about this, that and the other all turned out to be true! It was we Brits who were full of shit! Now I love the USA and look forward very much to each trip I make. I take your point about “consumerist bliss” (although the Gulf is very much like that too, but I do really appreciate the energy and optimism I find in the States, and the relative classlessness too. In fact, when (if) I make it to full professorhood, it will be to the US that I look to finish my career.
You’re in Virginia, if I remember correctly. I once spent quite a bit of time in Kentucky doing archival research, and I particularly like the Upper South, both from a natural and a human point-of-view.
Mike Diboll
March 4, 2009 at 9:58 amHi Graham: perhaps I am hard on my old self, but I don’t think I’m TOO hard.
As I’ve said before posting on BVZ’s page, I think that a lot of what we did still has value and importance. In a funny kind of way it seems so have a greater importance now than it did at the time. Maybe that’s because at the time our grandiose ideas about revolution &ct were purile in the literal sense (boyish), and all-in-all an “infantile disorder” (although at least our infantile revolution wasn’t built on piles corpses like Lenin’s grown-up one).
But I think it’s valuable now partly for historical and cultural reasons, and also as an antidote to the mind-numbing, dumbed-down conformity that so many young people live today: “Come on guys and and girls, if Dad (or Grandad) could do this, why don’t you log off Facebook and bin the I-Pod and do better yourselves!”
That said, we did, some of us more than others, make serious mistakes. We all of us probebly know people who didn’t survive that period, or emergeed from it as dossers or mental recks. I’d hate my son to take some of the risks that I took over this and that.
Many of us under achieved, failing to live up to our full potential because we adhered to unworkable ideologies or had got into dead-end or anti-social habits.
Yes, today there are millionaire sell-out ex-punks a plenty, working in the media, but I think we all knew they were tossers at the time. But I’m not thinking of them, I thinking of myself and probably most others who contribute to this site and others like it. Our committment to the unworkable let our generation (born say, 1955 to 1965) down by handing the field over to the Thatcherites and later the Blairites, et al. Certainly my career as an academic and writer started a lot later than it should have done (but then would I have had so much to write about?).
So although I think there is value in what we did, I think we have a duty not to over romanticise it, or to dwell in the “I did it so it must be right” comfort zone (Burchill et al). Hence I try to be tough on myself, if our bullshit detectors (the punks Mojos) remain switched off, then what was the point?
Then there are the more serious things than mere careers. For reasons of confidentiality I can’t go into details here, but once something very terrible happened to someone very dear to me for whom I was responsible. Almost as bad a thing as it is posible to happen. It happened on my watch, not in my punk days, but in the early 1990s, but if I hadn’t retained that solipsistic, anarchistic “fuck the system” mentality I probably wouldn’t have happened. It almost certainly wouldn’t have happened if I had been the person I am today. Enough said, but I believe in sin and these are sins for which somehow I must atone, even if they be sins of omission rather than commission.
Mike Diboll
March 4, 2009 at 9:59 amAlistair, log on to Amozon, order Scholem, read, enjoy!
chris
March 5, 2009 at 12:04 amMike, have emailed you re: a possible publisher for your book.