M.D. Theme \/ Norsburg Affair<\/a><\/p>\nThe Managing Directors epitomise the essence of the punk era: the energy, spirit, anger, DIY ethos, politics and – yes – FUN of the band are a testament to the shared values of that time. What’s more, they can actually play – this is a storming single!<\/p>\n
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Formed in 1978, the Hackney-based band shared many gigs with the likes of The Poison Girls, Charge, Crisis, Blood and Roses and loads of others, and were well-known for their support of local causes; they often played benefit gigs for everyone from Rock Against Racism to the ‘alternative’ bookshop\/community space Centerprise, and were regulars at Chats Palace and Victoria Park festivals.<\/p>\n
Starting out doing covers of everything from the Kinks to Gary Glitter, they just got better and better as their own material began to dominate. Drummer John Griffiths and bassist Kevs Ford grew up together in the tiny Welsh slate town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, sharing a mutual love of Jamaican reggae – listen to the drum and bass lines on this record and tell me they aren’t the Sly and Robbie of the punk generation…<\/p>\n
It all came together when they met guitarist\/vocalist\/lyricist Chris Sparks in a squat on the Balls Pond Road. All three knew and were friends with many of the punks, rastas and squatters who lived\u00a0in Hackney\u00a0and his lyrics are based, as the title of the song suggests, on the ‘Life and Times’ of people like us: they\u00a0include the line, “In the back streets is a foul and rotting rat-land, many people here have learned to call it home”, and touch on the shattered dreams and hopes of us all, name-checking Jez and Andy in the line, “Jez has spent his life dreaming he’s a soldier, Andrew needs a fix to get him through the day”. Ultimately, though, this is an uplifting\u00a0song about redemption and positivity, summed up thus: “We’re just trying to bring some heat to the heart of London – that’s why we stay here, that’s why we play here, we’re just trying to play a song to make you happy…”. Anyone who’s squatted in a freezing, broken-down hovel through a British winter with no heating or hot water will sympathize with THAT sentiment!<\/p>\n
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In later years, Pip (well-known to KYPP) joined as keyboard player and for some songs Lee, a rasta, joined them on stage to toast.<\/p>\n
The band paid for this record themselves during a tour of Sweden (they were big in Nordic music circles one Sunday morning between 2-3am), and broke up in 1984.<\/p>\n
John and Kevs\u00a0then returned to Wales, where they have had a lot of success with their new band Llwybr Llaethog (Milky Way in English) – they brought out the country’s first Welsh-language hip-hop\/dub\/reggae record, and are still going strong!<\/p>\n
Thanks to Stewart for sending this in and doing the write up.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Life And Times M.D. Theme \/ Norsburg Affair The Managing Directors epitomise the essence of the punk era: the energy, spirit, anger, DIY ethos, politics and – yes – FUN of the band are a testament to the shared values of that time. What’s more, they can actually play – this is a storming single! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-downloads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2020,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835\/revisions\/2020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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