{"id":10124,"date":"2019-03-31T19:52:42","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T18:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/?p=10124"},"modified":"2019-04-03T23:04:31","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T22:04:31","slug":"%ef%bb%bfthe-mob-let-the-tribe-increase-by-al-puppy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/%ef%bb%bfthe-mob-let-the-tribe-increase-by-al-puppy\/","title":{"rendered":"\ufeffThe Mob – Let the Tribe Increase: An essay by Al Puppy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The text below was written in 2010 for the sleeve notes for the re-release of ‘Let The Tribe Increase’ album that was released on Overground Records. Catalogue number – OVER122LP \/ CD
TIDIED UP AND IMAGES ADDED BY MICKEY ‘PENGUIN’ IN 2019<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Original pressing of ‘Let The Tribe Increase’ with poster and flyer c\/o Mickey ‘Penguin’ collection<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cWe are not afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There\nis not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie may blast and burn its\nown world before it finally leaves the stage of history.  We who ploughed the fields and built the\ncities can build again, only better next time. We carry a new world, here in\nour hearts. That world is growing this minute.” [Buenaventura Durruti – Spanish\nanarchist 1896 \u2013 1936]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brougham Road – photograph by Mickey ‘Penguin’<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I first met the Mob in 1982, when they were living at\nBrougham Road in Hackney, East London. Brougham Road had been built 100 years\nearlier, as one of an endless succession of cheap, brick-built streets of\nterraced houses. In the 1970\u2019s huge swathes of Victorian Hackney were\ndemolished to be replaced with tower blocks. Brougham Road (complete with its\noutside toilets) had been due for demolition, but the money ran out about the\nsame time as punk emerged. So, Brougham Road survived to become home to a\nvibrant and diverse community of squatters. On one side lay a newly built\nhousing estate, on the other a derelict wasteland. Brougham Road was still\nsquatted when the Mob arrived in 1981. Before the move to London, the Mob had\nbeen living in the depths of rural England – Seend and Stoke Sub Hamdon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Mob were living in a rented house in Seend in Wiltshire and we bought a bus to tour on. When we got it ready, we took it for a test drive to visit Josef who was living in Brougham Road.  The next morning a guy walked out of number 74 and asked us if we wanted to buy the house for \u00a340. This was the amount he had spent on getting water on and changing the Yale lock. We only lived in Seend for a few months. Our real roots are in Stoke Sub Hamdon in Somerset. The Seend place was our first attempt at communal living. We knew an old gay gangster from Yeovil and he set it all up. The real shining light of living in Yeovil for me was the closeness of Stonehenge. We would go on school trips to London and would pass the festival which at the time was only 200 or 300 people there. I remember vividly thinking “That\u2019s for me”. From about 1977 or 1978 the whole Yeovil scene would decamp to Stonehenge for weeks on end.  Most of the songs were written hitch- hiking up and down the A303 to London\u201d. [Mark Wilson of the Mob]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seend is village near Melksham in Wiltshire in the west of England. In 1801 it had a population of 1000. About the time Brougham Road was being built it experienced a brief industrial revolution when three blast furnaces smelting local iron ore employed 300 people, but by 1981 the furnaces were long since gone and it had become a rural hamlet of 1000 once more. Stoke Sub Hamdon is an even smaller hamlet in Somerset. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How could a punk group like the Mob emerge from such   places?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer lies in the way that punk radiated out from its\nground zero in London. Punk did not just explode in cities like Manchester.\nInspired by the Sex Pistols \u2018anti-Jubilee \u2018of 1977, punk also exploded in the\nmost remote and obscure towns and villages inspiring hundreds, even thousands,\nof punk groups across the UK. Most of these flowers in the dustbin of history\nfaded as swiftly as they had flourished, but a few, like the Mob, survived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Mob were able to survive through their connections with\nan older counterculture. Whilst punk in London began to decay, the Mob were\nplaying gigs with archetypal hippies Here and Now, along with Zounds and the\nAndroids of Mu. This hippy \/ punk crossover had its punk roots in the 1978 Alternative\nTV \/ Here and Now tour which took in Stonehenge Free Festival – and where the\nMob also played.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Original Wapping Autonomy Centre poster c\/o Tony Barber collection<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Mob\u2019s relocation to Brougham Road was fortuitous. Thanks to a Crass \/ Poison Girls benefit single \u2013 \u2018Bloody Revolutions \/ Persons Unknown\u2019, in late 1981 an anarchist centre was set up in a warehouse in Wapping in East London. This became the launch pad for dozens of anarchist punk groups. It also became the focus for an anarchist punk community which survived the collapse of the Wapping centre to create a new anarchy centre in West London – the Centro Iberico. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Centro Iberico photograph by Tony D<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Centro Iberico flyer c\/o Tony D collection<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\nThe Centro Iberico was an abandoned school which had been squatted by Spanish anarchists, including veterans of the Spanish Civil War. The Mob were actively involved in both these ventures, as well as the string of squatted anarchy \/ peace centres which followed on.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tod \/ Val \/ Mark Mob \/ Lugworm at one of the Black Sheep Co-op houses in Islington Photograph by Tony D<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The Mob & Blood And Roses – Black Sheep co-op gig flyer c\/o Tony D collection<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Mob were also actively involved in a spin-off venture –\nthe Black Sheep Housing Co-op. The Mob did not just play benefits for this punk\nco-operative – they helped rebuild the derelict houses the co-op were given.\nThe Black Sheep Co-op survived until 2002, and some of its houses remain in\nco-operative \u2018multiple -occupancy\u2019 to this day. The survival, against the odds,\nof the Black Sheep Co-op and its houses has its echoes in the survival, against\nthe odds, of the collective – the tribe – which the Mob were part of and which\nthey helped create. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Mob at Parliament Hill Fields flyer c\/o Tony D collection<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Kill Your Pet Puppy was a punk fanzine created by the Puppy Collective as successor to Tony D\u2019s \u2018Ripped and Torn\u2019 fanzine in 1979. After an encounter with the Mob in the summer of 1981, involvement with the various anarchy centres and participation in the Black Sheep Housing Co-op, the Puppy Collective became part of the tribe as it increased. Indeed, \u2018Let the Tribe Increase\u2019 came out of a \u201cwhat if…\u201d conversation between Mark Wilson of the Mob and members of the Puppy Collective. Mark then approached Rough Trade (at that time also a co-operative) who said if the Mob could find the recording costs, they would pay the record pressing costs. One of those who helped finance \u2018Let The Tribe Increase\u2019 was Mick Lugworm. As well as forming his own group, The Lugworms, The Turdburglars, Mick also sold more copies of the zine than the rest of the Puppies put together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mick Lugworm [Top] and The Mob [Bottom] at Jubilee Gardens photographs by Mick Lugworm<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

“The anarcho-punk\nscene was great but mainly for the people involved and not the music. There\nwere a few notable exceptions like Rudimentary Peni but most of the bands\nsounded very similar.  The Mob were like\na breath of fresh air amongst the black-clad hordes. I know some people think\ntheir music sounds a bit grim at times with songs like \u2018I Wish\u2019 (I remember\nJohn Peel taking the piss after playing a song from the album) but as people\nand as a live band the opposite is true. Mob gigs were always joyous affairs\nfull of people grinning and dancing. I\u2019d never really liked Penny Rimbaud\u2019s bombastic\nproduction of \u2018No Doves Fly Here\u2019 and knew that they had the option of making\nan album with Crass.  When I heard the\nband would rather put out an album on their own, I was only too happy to lend\nthe money to record it. The album was recorded and mixed over 3 days at\nSpaceward Studios in Cambridgeshire. \nOnce the sound levels had been set up, most of the songs were recorded\nquickly as the songs had been well-honed at gigs.  I remember a bit of time was spent on Josef\u2019s\ntom-tom intro to \u2018Never Understood\u2019, talking crap on \u2018Roger\u2019 and Curtis loving\nwatching the film Barbarella on video in the evening but not much else.  I\u2019m glad to have had a part to play in a\nrecord that has stood the test of time.” [Mick Lugworm]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so \u2018Let the Tribe Increase\u2019 was made. The costs of the\nalbum were based on the assumption that it would sell only 10,000 copies. But\nthe tribe was bigger than imagined – 20 000 of the first pressing were sold.\nThe profits from this unexpected outcome were then recycled back into the Mob\u2019s\nAll the Madmen record label which, with pleasing symmetry, eventually found a\nhome back on Brougham Road. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Blyth Power photograph by Gail Dunlop c\/o Mickey ‘Penguins’ collection<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Mark Mob on the road photograph by Jen Wilson<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By then the Mob had moved on, having split up in late 1983.\nJosef began Blyth Power, initially with help from Curtis. Curtis later became a\nchef, but Blyth Power are still making music. Mark spent the winter of 1983\nsewing himself a tipi, bought a fluorescent orange fire truck and became a\ntraveller for the next few years before settling down back in Wiltshire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, there is an ambiguity to the Mob. Heard in isolation, \u2018Let The Tribe Increase\u2019 can sound doom-laden and apocalyptic.  The lyrical nihilism of punk was often hard to hear, so short, sharp and fast were the songs. The Mob slowed the music down making inescapable the bleakness of their vision. And yet in the flesh, in the moments of excess of their live performances, the Mob were uplifting and inspiring. Somehow, amidst the ruins, the Mob made real the possibility of the new world we carried in our hearts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The text below was written in 2010 for the sleeve notes for the re-release of ‘Let The Tribe Increase’ album that was released on Overground Records. Catalogue number – OVER122LP \/ CD TIDIED UP AND IMAGES ADDED BY MICKEY ‘PENGUIN’ IN 2019  \u201cWe are not afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-al"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10124"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10154,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10124\/revisions\/10154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}