Songull

Pokn

Fine and very rare debut 7″ single by Bjork’s early punk outfit KUKL released on the excellent Gramm record label based in Iceland.

KUKL went on to support Crass in 1983 at the ‘We Demand A Future’ festival held in Reykjavik which may be listened to HERE . Penny Rimbaud was absent for the drumming duties at this particular gig due to a perferated ear drum. The post was taken up for the night and the drumming successfully completed by Martin of Flux Of Pink Indians. KUKL also performed with Psychic TV in the same city in Iceland, a recording of Psychic TV’s performance was also released courtesy of Gramm Records in 1984.

Crass were important to KUKL during 1984, the band setting up at Southern Studios on two occasions and completing the recording sessions for the two LPs released on the Crass record label.

A cassette release recorded in Paris in 1984 is also available to listen to on this site HERE and just for fun there is also a UK performance with Chumbawumba HERE .

That’s all your KUKL needs sorted out for a little while then! If anyone has a decent recording of any of the KUKL gigs on the Flux Of Pink Indians / D&V tour in 1984 please contact me on this site. Specifically the Ambulance Station performance down the Old Kent Road.

Text below lifted lock, stock and barrel from the Southern Studios website. Thanks to them in advance…

ALL THE LOVELY PEOPLE: WHERE DO THEY ALL COME FROM?

Our story begins some years ago when we co-existed in different groups in the very same country.

PEYR was a band that gained a reputation in foreign countries, but when they had had their name spelled in Japanese they tactfully ceased to exist and left God Krist. and Tryggur floating in the Ether waiting to make themselves manifest.

PURRKUR PILLNIKK was another band, never too bothered but quite possibly too concerned. They played with FALL in England, then they too ceased to exist and Einar kept spinning around hoping to hit someone.

TAPPI TIKARRASS was still another band. When their charm became stagnant Bjork decided it was time for an evolutionary leap and sent us a bright smile that opened our hearts.

Birgir caressed his bass in a band called MED NOKTUM, but when the call came he knew he had to obey and left his fellow workers in the Vineyard for the Cosmic Unity of KUKL.

And there was one with the name of Melax who had spent his time within the framework of the surrealist group MEDUSA, alternatly making phallic Bird Cages and Music for Miro on the Moon. He too heard the call and obeyed.

KUKL thus became the logical conclusion of the Icelandic Musical Evolution. They depict the Marriage of Heaven and Hell: the Union of Opposites, Cold Claustrophobic Winters with the Agoric Midnight Sun of the Summer Months. Snow fused with Vulcanic Activity: A Cold and Calm Outside covering Catastrophic Aliveness that may tear the ground from under your feet.

KUKL will not prostitute itself, the group will play on special occasions only, so as to retain its inspirational quality.

KUKL played at “WE Demand a Future”, a concert that had over 2% of the Icelandic population present. And KUKL played with PSYCHIC TV at the legendary concert in Reykjavik.

As the time is ripe now, KUKL will expand into various parts of Europe and give the Europeans a taste of what KUKL sounds like and what the group stands for.

EXCERPTS FROM INTERVIEWS

Our aim is to work for the betterment of humanity through our music. We feel that music is one of the strongest mediums that you can have access to in the Western world as money is not our game we rely on the inherent power of our group.

Our power is what we are and what we do: through listening to us people will become part of the transmission of that particular power, even should they not realize what we are about. Whether we should be considered artists, does not really matter at all.

We leave that problem to those who want to define to understand. – We only want to wake up in people dormant powers which even they did not know existed. Sometimes we even don’t know ourselves what we are doing, as we are still learning. The “magic” has not been intellectualised or consciously assimilated to what we are doing.

Even the name of the group shows this: KUKL, meaning “Psychism” implies dabbling with some unknown forces and we don’t want to get stuck in any definitions as to contents or procedures as that would put an end to our learning process and our transmission. This “something” that we are dealing with is also a thing that we are against definging. We are not preaching convictions as they tend to produce convicts. The only clearly definable thing in our floating philosophy is that there is more to life than THIS. We want to be able to blow a few sparks into a consuming fire, burning away restrictions. A large portion of music in our times is serving us a tool with which people are lulled to sleep while those in charge are steering us towards our doom.

We want and we must catch the attention of those lunatics and show that we want to be reckoned with when it comes to defining the rules for our life and death. Our music is our strongest weapon in that battle, it is also nourishing for us and gives us strength to tackle this devilish problem. But as to the future we don’t have any five-year-plans – although in a sense we feel we have been booked for eternity…

PARANOIAC CRITICAL ACTIVITY IN MUSIC AND MASS-REVOLUTION

Paronoia (from the Greek “Para” (Demented) “Nous” (Mind), has become a universal state of being.

It is representative of the Schizophrenic Split in our society: a healthy reaction towards unhealthy surroundings. Burroughs has defined a paranoiac as “one who knows what is going on”, – we would see him as someone who fears the worst, knowing that habitual pessimism always yields the “best” results.

We know by now that our destiny is to a large extent governed by pestilent characters and emotional plague-bearers: people who have given up their humanity for the Secondary Gain of feeling in power, delighting in the fact that they can treat their fellow human-beings as pawns in their pathetic power-games. These people will direct your destinies according to their whims and fancy for the sheer enjoyment of being able to do so. The herd-morality inherent in the structure of our civilization makes it all too easy for those people to exercise their power over the individual as people are literally born into the power-structure and are not likely to move up towards the apex of the pyramid unless they make the right sacrifices at every step. Thus at the base we have people who still retain their individuality but are unaware of its use or power. As you move up you will be given more and more power over others, but your individuality will be stripped off accordingly: You will always be a slave of the system, the final step being that you have become the system incarnate. There is always an open invitation to become a cog in this mindless monstrosity, the dung-heap of diseased morals that ages of insane rulership have built up. But the apparent strength of the system is also it’s main weakness: its inflexibility will be its undoing in the end, but do not let yourself be lulled into passive observation or into participation in pseudo-revolutionary movements.

The strongest hope lies in the abberation of the individual, random-revolutions on the individual-basis which introduce a margin of error into governmental calculations. Through Cybernetics we learn that a system which has the greatest flexibility will eventually end up as the ruling system: this is a learning that can and should be employed on the individual level.

Do not conform, not in your life-style, your art or your attitudes. By using this law in our music we introduce a incongruence into the Psyche of our audience and as we do not attempt to utilize this to our own ends, this leaves space for the individuals to fill up for themselves. A single non-conforming attitude will breed a host of others. You have no right but to BE YOURSELF!

SOME PRESS OPINIONS:

We had expected some combination of PEYR and PURRKUR PILLNIKK, but we were served with suprise in evey respect. The music retains the manic quality of P.P. and the sophistication of PEYR, but it moves far beyond. At first I thought I could not stomach the rhythmic frenzy and the crazy tonal combination but then my stomach and eventually my whole body began to move along. And who am I to disagree?

S&T

April 84

For once I find myself at a loss for words. This concert can not be described. Those who lived it will have it with them for the rest of their life.

DV

Nov 83

SHOCK: An Icelandic band whose name nobody knows, except it has to be shouted, stormed into life and made perhaps the nicest noise of the whole evening. Apparently with two lead vocalists, (immpossible to see over the rhythmically swaying snoggers) this curious bunch generated an intensity born of a vaguely Fall-ish chaos everything getting wonderfully hysterical, but all the while, foundations remained under control, easily enjoyed.

SOUNDS

Jan 84

A new interpretation of Rock-Music, unlike anything I have ever heard before.

DV

Sept 83

Their musical creation literally explodes into the faces or masks of the audience, thrusts itself into its consciousness and even if you don’t happen to be interested, there is no way of avoiding it or refusing to take it into consideration…

DV

April 84

Ethics

Another Baby’s Face

Debut ‘pop’ single from 23 Skidoo, a band who would soon be working closely along side Cabaret Voltaire, and become friendly with Genesis P and Throbbing Gristle. From this debut 7″ single onwards and through the connections of the aformentioned, the band started to work on a more industrial sound, a percussion based freeform music complete with Tibetan thighbone horns and bells. Psychic TV, with the addition of Dave Tibet, had been looking into the same area of ‘field music’ around the same time for the ‘Themes’ series of records (‘Themes 1′ came free with PTV’s first LP in 1981, ‘Themes 2′ came out a little later on around 1984).

Eventually, much, much later, 23 Skidoo enlisted Sketch, the bassist of early eighties chart toppers Lynx, who added a much harder funk bass into the Skidoo sound. Tracks like ’Coup / Fuck You G.I.’ and the LP ‘Urban Gamelan’ featured Sketch, and believe me, this music was certainly not Lynx!

Last Words

The Gospel Comes To New Guinea

Two completly different sounding tracks from 23 Skidoo for the second single release, this time on 12″. Firstly the funkier ‘Last Words’ track, a track which is certainly a danceable affair bordering on the commercial. The second side was a much darker, brooding instrumental  which was a direction that would lead to the sound of the third single release below, and eventually to the Womad performance in the summer of 1982, captured by Protag via the mixing desk for the marvelous LP ‘The Culling Is Coming’ released on Operation Twilight Records.

Tearing Up The Plans

Just Like Everybody / Gregouka

The third single, again a 12″, this time a completely instrumental release from 23 Skidoo, concentrating on percussion and exotic horn sounds, the Tibetan thigh bone horn makes a welcome return. Very soothing in parts, twenty five minutes or so of interesting music.

I really must listen to 23 Skidoo far more often than I do…All the material that was released by 23 Skidoo in the band’s lifetime was excellent.

Text below ripped from ltmrecordings.com and the wonderful photographs of the band members courtesy of Jude Calvert Toulmin archive.

The origins of 23 Skidoo lie in a punk-inspired schoolboy trio formed in North London in 1979. Their chosen name, 23 Skidoo, was borrowed from the experimental Illuminati trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, although the American slang phrase is much older and also features in the work of William S. Burroughs and Aleister Crowley, translating loosely as move it, or get out while the going is good. This same philosophy – cut, run and confound – would become a guiding principle for this extraordinary and highly influential group.

By 1980, 23 Skidoo were a quartet, comprising Fritz Catlin on drums, Sam Mills on guitar, Johnny Turnbull on guitar and Patrick Griffiths on bass. After local gigs in North London, including several art colleges and the Scala Cinema, the group recorded their first single in October 1980, coupling Ethics with Another Baby’s Face. The session was financed and produced by Mark Bedford of Madness, who Skidoo had supported at the Dublin Castle in Camden, and released on 7″ by Pineapple Records, a small indie set up by Nigel Wilkinson and Dave Henderson. As well as being the band’s driver-cum-manager, Wilkinson was one of the owners of the Honky Tonk record shop in Kentish Town where Fritz worked, and Skidoo rehearsed.

Ethics was recorded as a four-piece by Sam, Fritz, Johnny and Patrick, although the group shortly afterwards expanded into a sextet, joined by Alex Turnbull (percussion, drums and bass) and Tom Heslop on vocals, electronics and saxophone. This meant that by the time the single appeared in February 1981, the scratchy punk-funk on offer was already unrepresentative, as Chris Bohn noted in the NME: ‘Does scant justice to the more confidently aggressive edgy funk that 23 Skidoo make now… But Another Baby’s Face is a better hint of what they’re doing today: an angry stomp/hot dance beat wittily curdled by a slyly cool voice.’

Indeed the expanded Skidoo were coming on in leaps and bounds, their influences ranging from The Pop Group, Parliament and Fela Kuti to Can, Eno and This Heat. Having impressed Colin Faver of London promoters Final Solution, the precocious sextet played several high-profile shows, including the University of London Union with The Associates, The Sound and Repetition on 30 January 1981, and North London Polytechnic with A Certain Ratio and Bush Tetras on 27 March. By now live performances were enhanced by visuals provided by Richard Heslop, a film student at St Martins. Reviewing the landmark North London Poly show for NME, Paul Tickell wrote: ‘Slideshows are usually more a distraction than a reinforcement of what a band is all about, This isn’t the case with 23 Skidoo, who have images projected behind them in choosy, clear series of three. The flow flickers in a primitivist direction, but it’s far from the dubious bleached ethnicity which the Pop Group or the Slits might inject into a slideshow if they had one… The ‘jungle’ roots to the music are similarly mediated rather than immediate. The wall of sound is delicate and calculated; the drama in Tom Heslop’s voice is kept low-key, just as drums, percussion, guitars, bass and tapes never let excitement become mere exoticism. Of course, there’s always the danger that this kind of balancing act might end up as the cerebral funkster’s version of psychedelia (“acid test” was a recurring phrase during one number!). Maybe the band even want to be a new, boho, self-congratulatory s(l)ideshow… And, bugger me, if this isn’t where A Certain Ratio already are.’

As well as enthusiastic reviews, the North London Poly show also earned them their first major feature, written by Paul Morley and published in NME in April. The developing buzz around the group saw their live shows constantly reviewed, although even at this early stage, Skidoo were wary of fleeting hip credibility. ‘We’ve been dumped in with the funk thing,’ Fritz told Pacemaker fanzine. ‘We really like funk music, but there’s a lot of other things there. We’ve radically changed since the old single, though I don’t think it’s bad for what it is. Maybe it will all fall through in three months. You know, we’ll have the 23 Skidoo backlash. I don’t think, with the music we’re playing, we’re ever going to get really big audiences anyway.’

At this stage Patrick Griffiths left to move to Paris, and increasingly the group abandoned fixed instrumental roles. Strangely, several early interviews seemed to overlook the Turnbull brothers. This was unusual, not least because Johnny and Alex were of Singapore-Chinese descent, and their ethnicity was one of several factors which underlined Skidoo’s essential otherness. Indeed the brothers came from a creative background (their father William Turnbull and mother Kim Lim were both highly regarded visual artists), and in the 1970s both were teenage skateboard stars, winning the UK championship competitions in 1976. However, none of these background details were aired in the press, or in Skidoo publicity.

The North London Poly gig in March impressed Rod Pearce of Fetish Records sufficiently to offer to record the group. By happy coincidence, Tom Heslop had also shared a squat with Fetish design director Neville Brody. Established in 1980 and run from Pearce’s flat at Denbigh Street, Fetish had commenced operations with a series of New York funk and no wave releases by Snatch, Bush Tetras, 8 Eyed Spy and The Bongos, before recording a raft of leading British ‘industrial’ experimentalists, including Clock DVA, Throbbing Gristle and Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire.

For their debut Fetish single, Skidoo recorded one of their most funky and commercial songs, Last Words, the lyric of which referenced Burroughs. Tom Heslop admitted: ‘Certainly I read a lot of William Burroughs, and we’ve played with the cut-up thing. Oh yeah, it works. It always comes out with some meaning, even if it’s a bit strange.’ No less impressive was the flipside, The Gospel Comes To New Guinea, the dark, brooding ten minute instrumental which opened live sets, with Fritz on bass, Alex on drums, Sam on guitar and Johnny on percussion. The track also featured a cassette loop of the band chanting a Chinese phrase and Johnny playing clarinet. Both tracks were recorded in July at Western Works, the Sheffield studio owned by Cabaret Voltaire, and produced by the band together with Stephen Mallinder and Ken Thomas, the latter a Fetish regular who would go on to produce the Sugarcubes and Sigur Ros.

Mallinder recalls: ‘Cabaret Voltaire played quite a few shows with Skidoo and I’d personally gotten to know them well through Neville Brody and the TG collective prior to my going into the studio with them and Ken Thomas. They were capturing that moment better than any other band, a real collision of modern and tribal that somehow worked more effectively in the pre-digital period, more organic, everything cutting and folding, made for the 12 inch format. Everyone was breaking the anchors of analogue, using instruments and studio equipment pretty loosely, but they were very focused on what elements worked and what they wanted. It was a full contingent with pretty fluid roles for everyone. Ken was perfect for getting that across with structure but without diluting that live dynamic. I just remember they were always long sessions over a few days, much fun with brief breaks for a bit of sleep and breakfasts back at my old gothic house that seemed as anarchically organised as the studio sessions.’

Fetish perhaps imagined they had signed a more edgy version of Funkapolitan, Stimulin or even Haircut 100, but in fact Skidoo shared more in common with the avant-garde wing of the Fetish roster. Throbbing Gristle provided rehearsal space at 10 Martello Street in Hackney, and Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson would replace Mallinder as co-producers. TG soundman Daniel Landin (aka Stan Bingo) was also involved with the live mix at shows and travelled with the band extensively. Live, the band avoided regular rock clubs such as the Rock Garden, Marquee, 101 and Moonlight Club, preferring alternative venues including the London Filmmakers’ Co-op, Cabaret Futura and the Action Space in Kentish Town. Johnny Turnbull: ‘We were careful to avoid the ‘white funk’ thing, but then we’d play a gig half funk and half completely unconventional. People would come and look at the person in front of them, because no-one was really sure why they were there.’

In September 1981 the fast-rising group appeared at the Futurama 3 festival in Stafford, supported Cabaret Voltaire at North London Poly on the 25th, and played two nights with Defunkt at The Venue the following month. The middle of the month saw Skidoo record an impressive session for John Peel, comprising Retain Control, Macaw Gungah, View From Here and Four Note Bass, with only the last subsequently appearing on record (as Porno Base). September also saw the release of Last Words, the extended 12″ also joined by a promotional 7″ edit, featuring a dub version on the flip. Most seized on the tight-but-loose funk of Last Words, although reviewing the single as a whole in the NME, Paul Morley wrote presciently: ‘17 minutes of dense rhythms and insolent effect – interested partners looking to fit 23 Skidoo in with the more theatrical images of funk will not have much of a poetically pleasant time.’

Johnny Turnbull told Blast magazine: ‘We tend now to think of The Gospel as our first single, because Alex and Tom weren’t even in the group before that. It was the first record that meant anything to us, and gave us the impetus to explore non-musical mediums, like using films. Everything was a process of experience, and although we didn’t know what we wanted to do, we did know what we didn’t want, which was to play conventional songs.’

At the end of November Skidoo entered Jacob’s Studio in Farnham to record a new EP. The result was the seminal Seven Songs, which expanded to become a mini album with the addition of several spontaneous, experimental tracks. The cryptic production credit for ‘Tony, Terry and David’ disguised the identities of Genesis P-Orridge, Peter Christopherson and Ken Thomas, the humorous pseudonym being adopted to play down associations with TG. The eight tracks were recorded over three days, and like Skidoo live shows were half funk (IY, Vegas El Bandito and Kundalini) and half experimental, featuring thumb piano and pygmy pipe on Martin Denny pastiche Quiet Pillage, a lock groove, and within Porno Base the refined voice of Diana Mitford, decrying the pernicious influence of pop music. Seven Songs still sounds contemporary today, combining grooves, industrial ambiance, metallic noise, fluid percussion, and anticipating world music and sample culture. Every bit as trailblazing as the scholarly My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, it was also a lot more fun.

Tom told Melody Maker: ‘We don’t listen to much music from this country apart from Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle. So far, most ethnic music in the Third World has been ignored because of Western tradition. We’ve immersed ourselves in a lot of black music, especially African, but you can only use tradition as a starting point to move on to something more adventurous.’

Johnny Turnbull later told Blast magazine: ‘At the time we were trying to get into Eastern and African rhythms and the album seemed a good blend of what was happening at that time. We tend to all work on things separately and then fuse them together. Our approach tends to change frequently, but we have a concrete agreement that we don’t want to be conventional musicians. To me, each time you make a record you make a statement, and it angers me that people can make that same statement over and over again. I think that’s why we try to make every record different.’

Alex added: ‘Actually it surprised us that it was taken up by so many people. When we recorded Last Words we thought that it might become popular, but with Seven Songs it was much more a case of us thinking, “Well, fuck everybody, we’ll do what we want to do”. It just so happened that there were two or three pieces on the album that were relatively catchy.’

Immediately after the recording, Alex and Johnny left to travel in the Far East for three months. Still as 23 Skidoo, the remaining three members performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) on 3 January 1982 along with Dislocation Dance and former Pop Group man Mark Springer, extracts from which were broadcast on Capital Radio. On 26 and 27 January the same ‘reduced personnel’ trio of Fritz, Sam and Tom also recorded an aleatory EP with P-Orridge, Christopherson and Thomas again producing. With guitar and bass entirely absent, it was even more experimental than Seven Songs, joujouka and Gregorian chant were combined on Gregouka, while Just Like Everybody, a collaboration with Tim Soar, featured a cut-up tape of CIA operative Frank Turpel. The 12″ was eventually released as Tearing Up The Plans in June.

Seven Songs was released at the beginning of February 1982. Retailing at a buyer-friendly £2.99, it debuted at #20 on the NME independent charts at the end of the month, rising to #14 the following week, and #2 by mid-March. It was held off the top spot only by Pigbag’s Dr Heckle & Mr Jive, but peaked just above Sextet, the second album by A Certain Ratio. Reviews were ecstatic, Paul Morley describing it as ‘one of the most exciting records I’ve heard since Unknown Pleasures… A variably energetic and stimulating addition to that collection of perceptions, hallucinations and associations brought into play by Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and A Certain Ratio. It tears away deceptive dramatic or sentimental gloss and mixes a neutral type of documentary candour with thrilling regenerative abstraction. It’s candid, obstinate, intimate, incomplete, uncommon… rather solitary. Very appropriate. Intoxicating.’

This unexpected success meant that the Turnbull brothers were hurriedly recalled from Singapore, and dates by the full band hastily arranged. These included shows in Eindhoven (Holland) and Berlin early in March, where the group attracted unwanted police attention by applying graffiti to the Wall. Back in the UK, the group played dates in Scotland with the Virgin Prunes. Profiling the band for Melody Maker from Edinburgh, Adam Sweeting wrote that ‘Primed by a day of Fela Kuti and William Burroughs, Skidoo played a menacing set to an appreciative audience. Their slide show shoulders all the subversion, flicking super speed images of the band’s recent bombed-out arrest for graffiti-ing the Berlin wall. But beneath all this anti-theory, Skidoo thrive on making a great bloody row.’

By April a VHS video version of Seven Songs was available from Fetish, priced at £15 and packaged in a plastic bag which also included a boiled sweet, elastoplast and a coloured condom. The clips were shot and edited by Richard Heslop, who also provided Skidoo’s live visuals, generated by three slide projectors and one 8mm film. ‘The films are really important,’ Alex explained to NME. ‘For a start, there’s not very much light when we play, which we like ‘cos we’re not very extrovert performers, we don’t tend to bounce around onstage. At one point we were using four carousels and two 8mm, which was crazy. Sometimes we try to get the images projected round the back and sides, and sometimes we hang bits of material from the ceiling to catch part of the light. The relationship of the slides to the music is now evolving at the same pace as the music itself. Richard interprets what we’re playing, but we’re trying to make the two things even more closely related, because, unless it’s worked out beforehand, it’s not always possible to et the slides where you want them.’

‘It works in a couple of ways,’ revealed Richard Heslop. ‘One is the movement of the films in rhythm with the music, and the other is the specific content of each piece of film. Like Kundalini on the video is just about energy and sexual energy, to do with movement and colour. The films are basically composed of cut-ups of TV programmes and so on. I’m at St Martin’s film school anyway, so I can use their facilities. The 8mm films I’ve been shooting are just looking at rituals of society… There’s obviously a lot of chance involved, which is good, ‘cos one slide can give a song a totally different shade of meaning.’

Skidoo headlined at London University Union on 14 May, and at the newly-opened Hacienda club in Manchester on the 29th. In an NME interview with Barney Hoskyns, Alex confessed that the success of Seven Songs had taken the band by surprise. ‘Definitely. When Fetish wired Johnny and me to come back from Singapore ‘coz the album had gone in at number one, we thought Rod was winding us up. I think it’s because a lot of people thought we were like ABC or Stimulin, or a funky dance band like Pigbag, and then bought the record to find that wasn’t really so… From the reaction we had to The Gospel Comes To New Guinea, people tended to just review Last Words and not mention the rest of it. I think lots of people do come to our gigs who only want to hear the ‘funky’ ones… To be quite honest, I don’t think we’ve ever really been a dance band’

While dismissing New Pop as ‘just so much bullshit’, and spurning overtures from labels such as Island and EMI, the Turnbull brothers did not discount making a pop record. ‘It would have to be a one-off,’ explained Alex. ‘It would be hard to come up with something commercially feasible. And I think there’s a danger in making a real lot of money. There are so many bands who mind what people say about them because they’re so anxious to get famous and make money. So many bands find a formula and then don’t let go of it in case they lose their audience. We’re fortunate in that we don’t all have to live off the band, so we don’t have to think of it as a commercial proposition.’

Reviewing the show at Sheffield Victoria Hotel on 11 June for Melody Maker, Frank Worrell observed with complete accuracy: ‘23 Skidoo have come a remarkably long way in a remarkably short time. I’m not making a claim for them as potential messiahs (the mini album was too patchy for that), but clearly Skidoo are attempting and gradually working their way towards an alternative music… Skidoo provoke, invoke and soak their audiences with provocative ideas. Yes, Skidoo are worthy pioneers.’

Certainly the group brooked no compromise. On 16 June Skidoo headlined a prestige London show at The Venue, with support from Mark Springer and Palais Shaumberg. Shortly before going onstage, Sam Mills and Tom Heslop were dismissed from the band, though to their great credit both still performed that night, and again at a final booking in Leicester. For Fritz and the Turnbull brothers, it really was a case of Tearing up the Plans – ironically enough, the title of the new EP featuring the ‘reduced personnel’ of Fritz, Sam and Tom. Fetish, among others, were wholly perplexed. Challenging audiences and spurning major label deals was subversive enough, but sacking the guitarist and singer appeared perverse.

Sam Mills recalls: ‘Tensions had been building since at least the European dates. I didn’t take to the increasing rejection of structure so easily, and was becoming a bit of a Brian Jones figure. Being told that we were no longer required was a shock, but it was a relief too. I already had a place at LSE to read anthropology, so I went on to do that, and continued playing music with other people.’

Tom was less disconcerted: ‘Like Sam, I was having problems with the increasing free-industrial direction, and the rejection of the dance side. I kind of sleepwalked through the final live dates, and I wasn’t really shocked when I was dismissed – although I was surprised that Sam was too.’

The departure of Sam and Tom was not reported in the press, and shortly afterwards the group were announced as a late addition to the WOMAD festival, held at Shepton Mallet in Somerset in July, organized by Peter Gabriel and others as a celebration of world music, arts and dance. As well as orthodox rock acts such as Echo & the Bunnymen and Simple Minds, the polycultural festival also offered a wealth of world music, including the Drummers of Burundi and the Balinese Gamelan Ensemble. For their set on 17 July, Skidoo elected to perform a ritual to ‘banish’ their previous incarnation as hip press darlings, and were even joined by David Tibet of Psychic TV on thigh bone trumpet.

Alex Turnbull: ‘Skidoo elected not to use traditional instruments, but instead to improvise a performance with instruments made of scrap metal and tape loops – at this time, literally looped sections of tape. The ritual of banishing, invocation and healing mirrored the changes that had occurred within the group. Indeed this cycle of renewal is something very basic to the concept of 23 Skidoo. At 11 am on a sunny summer morning Skidoo – heads shaven, faces camouflaged – took to the stage. The bleary-eyed festival crowd, expecting a trendy funk band, were greeted by a wall of noise. Some fled, but those that remained witnessed Skidoo at their most confrontational.’

While expectations were shattered, Skidoo’s radical mid-morning gesture was missed by the music weeklies, and thus passed unreported at the time. Ironically, Sam Mills was in the audience, and judged the performance very good: ‘quite apocalyptic and visceral in a shamanic kind of way’. Just twelve months on from the recording of Last Words, 23 Skidoo had delivered their most unambiguous public rejection of mainstream commercial concerns. This irked Rod Pearce, and Fetish wound down soon after. In a sleevenote for farewell Fetish compilation The Last Testament, Jon Savage wrote: ‘Fetish’s greatest success was to occur at the point when mogul Rod Pearce was shutting up shop… Seven Songs became Number 1 in the indie charts. Phew! Luckily, insufficient interest combined with too much time spent promoting The Bongos meant that this incredible success was nipped in the bud.’ The same compilation signed off with a knockabout version of the Hawaii Five-O theme, recorded by Skidoo at the Seven Songs session to wind up Pearce, and seemingly released by way of revenge. Tragically, years later Rod Pearce later murdered in Mexico in appalling circumstances.

As the matt textures of post-punk gave way to the gloss finish of new pop, groups such as Cabaret Voltaire, the revamped Clock DVA and even Psychic TV began to step cautiously towards the mainstream, streamlining their music and membership, and signing deals with major labels. In stark contrast, 23 Skidoo abandoned the commercial zone entirely, the core trio of Alex, Johnny and Fritz now embracing tape effects, cut-ups, and a form of gamelan performed on conventional percussion and scrap metal. Gamelan is a ceremonial style in which light yet insistent percussion forms a rhythmic base, to which chiming melodies by gongs and bells are added. Adding their own slant, Skidoo came up with the concept of ‘urban’ gamelan. ‘Real Gamelan instruments are made from bronze and wood and elaborately carved,’ explained Johnny, ‘which makes them very expensive, so we’ve had to make our own. Hence the cylinders. It’s very attractive as an idea, simply because it’s an available source of music.’

The Fetish/Some Bizarre avant-garde allowed themselves a last hurrah at the Final Academy, a season of readings by William S. Burroughs in London and Manchester, organised by Genesis P-Orridge and others. These shows also featured performances by a variety of writers, artists and music groups, the latter including Cabaret Voltaire, Psychic TV, Z’ev, Last Few Days and 23 Skidoo. Skidoo performed as a trio at the Brixton Ritzy show on 29 September, describing themselves in the Final Academy catalogue as ‘cultural assassins’ who ‘embrace this ceremony of the constant random factor’.

The following month Skidoo took part in a short package tour in Belgium billed as Move Back-Bite Harder, arranged by Les Disques du Crepuscule, which also included Cabaret Voltaire, Antena, Tuxedomoon, Isolation Ward and The Pale Fountains. Several of the shows were professionally recorded, and Skidoo’s 27 minute loop-based performance at Tielt on 8 October was later issued as a bonus track on the CD version of  The Culling Is Coming released via  Boutique Records. The following night at Leuven Skidoo evidenced a more gamelan/Gregouka feel. Blaine L. Reininger of Tuxedomoon was among those fascinated: ‘I was envious and impressed by three things. Unlike us with our many heavy boxes full of electronic gear, they only had to acquire some empty gas cylinders used in any bar for beer. These they would percuss in interesting ways, while also availing themselves of field recordings and concrete acoustic tape assemblies, which they all carried on portable recorders. Also they were from Singapore. Add to that the name suggestive of Burroughs and the Illuminati, and I was intrigued.’

Having seen the Balinese Gamelan Ensemble perform at WOMAD in July, Skidoo arranged a recording session using authentic gamelan instruments at Dartington College on 22 and 23 October. Alex Turnbull recalls of the session: ‘It shows the other, meditative side of Skidoo… We travelled down to Devon for the weekend with a mobile eight-track studio, and spent the next three days and nights improvising and recording rhythms, which were later taken to Jacobs Studio to edit and mix with Ken Thomas.’ The featured instruments included gamelan and kendang drums, gongs and bamboo flutes. Paired with a recording of the WOMAD performance, the Dartington sessions then became side two of the second (and secondary) 23 Skidoo album, The Culling Is Coming.

Culling was released on 4 February 1983, initially on Operation Twilight, the label run Patrick Moore (aka writer Philip Hoare) and allied to Crepuscule in Belgium. Crepuscule also released the album in Europe, albeit in a less extravagant pantone sleeve. Both sides lasted 23 minutes, and side one included a stylus-hostile lock groove midway. Listeners tended to react in much the same way as the original audience at WOMAD. NME reviewer Richard Cook blasted an album that ‘traipses disconsolately across an arid terrain swept clear of form or relationship… They have missed the point of improvised music, of minds and instruments fusing and sparring to create a new world… Why bother with Skidoo?’

Writing in Sounds, Dave McCullough was scarcely more generous: ‘I must say that after hearing it, I still can’t dismiss the proposition that Skidoo are one of the few acts I would cross the road for. It’s just that The Culling Is Coming is an awfully long, some would say impossible, road to cross. There’s always been a thrill to Skidoo. They were like an elastic band you could stretch ridiculously far. With Culling, that elastic gets close to snapping.’

Steve Sutherland of Melody Maker was more positive, praising the ‘brave simplicity’ and calm of the Dartington material, but clearly less keen on the fearless WOMAD recording: ‘Like an orgy in an abattoir… Further listening should decide if the record cuts, or is simply a con.’ However, Sutherland at least understood where Skidoo were at creatively. ‘Sometime last year, more by misleading coincidence than deliberate design, popular music and 23 Skidoo crossed paths. The superlative Seven Songs was rhythmically direct enough to be loosely dubbed funk, and un-asked-for responsibilities were heaped on this flexible lot to prove they were worthy pioneers. Skidoo didn’t play the game, wouldn’t join the race, but instead shed two of the members once accepted as their public image and simply did something else. And whatever you think of The Culling Is Coming, is certainly is something else.’

Skidoo refused subsequently to view the album as a mistake. ‘Culling was very necessary at the time,’ Fritz told Sounds two years later. ‘Because it felt as if the music press was right behind us, ready to present the group as the new wonder boys. But we wanted to flush all that down the toilet, and make something very clear about our attitude.’

Public puzzlement aside, one unforeseen consequence was that The Culling Is Coming made it hard for Skidoo to find a new label, and difficult to persuade some shops to stock their next record. Alex later reflected: ‘We haven’t exactly been laying low, but due to the response to The Culling Is Coming people seem to have deemed us less worthy of notice. Culling was music as function. But when we really involved ourselves in the idea of music as function, for myself anyway, it got a bit obscured from the fact that one of music’s most basic messages is to actually dance.’

For the remainder of 1983, Skidoo activity was restricted to occasional gigs at home and abroad. During 1981 Catlin had begun performing with Last Few Days, a deliberately esoteric collective centred around Daniel Landin, Kier Fraser and Si Joyce. LFD avoided making records, and instead performed infrequent concerts featuring megaphones, tape loops and hard sonic barrages. Another early LFD contributor was none other than Sam Mills. In April 1983 LFD and 23 Skidoo were invited by Laibach to play at Zagreb’s prestigious new music Biennale. Skidoo also performed with at the Tone und Gegentone festival in Vienna in May. LFD returned to Europe for a lengthy tour with Laibach at the end of the year, recordings from which were later edited into the album Pure Spit & Saliva. On this tour Catlin also performed with Laibach, and played drums on the recordings that formed their first single. Catlin also collaborated on the first Current 93 release, and in 1986 performed again with Laibach behind choreographer Michael Clark for his show No Fire Escape in Hell, staged in London, Brighton and Los Angeles.

In mid 1983 Skidoo filmed an interview for BBC arts programme Riverside with Fetish cohort and i-D magazine publisher Perry Haines. The group insisted on recording and repeating the dialogue as it went along, with the result that the interview was not broadcast. However all was not lost, for at the studio the band met virtuoso bass player Peter ‘Sketch’ Martin, previously a member of Britfunk chart duo Linx. In Sounds Johnny explained: ‘Sketch told us he’d been involved in commercial music and wanted to move out of that area, and we told him we hadn’t been involved in commercial music but wanted to move towards it. Months later, we got him over for a rehearsal, and the first thing he did was ask if he could hire us as a rhythm section to record a single he had planned. So we went to work for him on his project and it ended up as Language.’

‘There is a dichotomy,’ confirmed Sketch, ‘but that’s what it’s all about. If 23 Skidoo were like Linx I wouldn’t be working with them. We’re working together, but we give each other infinite leeway to try things out. But if you ask me what 23 Skidoo are about, I wouldn’t have an answer.’

While Skidoo continued to explore a variety of musical and rhythmic forms, including hard reggae, funk and Burundi drumming, the concept of urban gamelan remained the backbone of (and title for) their album in progress. That said, the band were keen to distance themselves from metal-bashers such as Die Krupps, SPK and Test Department. Fritz explained: ‘We stayed with Remko Scha in Eindhoven once, who had a huge metal structure in his room. We spent hours hitting it, and after a while a whole range of tonal relationships became apparent between the different shapes and types of metal. It’s this we’ve been developing in our own music, using ideas borne of gamelan traditions.’

The move towards more commercial music outlined to Sketch bore fruit in February 1984 with the release of Coup, a tight dance version of a track that had been around for some time in various forms, including Coup In the Palace and GI Fuck You. This outstanding funk single featured a classic bassline from Sketch, and horns courtesy of Aswad. ‘It’s certainly more accessible,’ Johnny told Sean O’Hagan of NME, ‘but we’ve always allowed ourselves the space to do what we want, absorb what we need and move about in different directions. It was always part of the plan to confound the audience’s expectations, and part of that requires that you question your own popularity. That’s exactly what we did after Seven Songs… If we’d released Coup after Seven Songs then the story of 23 Skidoo would be very different. We have always put ourselves in a position where we don’t make a lot of money.’

‘Our application of our instruments has changed,’ Alex added in Sounds, ‘and that’s what Coup is all about. It’s quite funky – which I use in a very loose sense of the word, in terms of rhythm – but it hasn’t been made as our ‘commercial’ single.’

In fact Coup had undoubted commercial potential, although the absence of a 7″ version meant no radio airplay, and no chart hit. Despite this, O’Hagan voiced the concern that its wider appeal might raise precisely the same problems of expectation as had Last Words. ‘Then we were kind of lumbered with that new white funk scene,’ said Alex. ‘In many ways it’s a pity we don’t have that kind of audience now, because I’m sure we could take better advantage of it. You see, it gave us a lot of confidence. The fact that we could consciously reject that, and then come back, has meant that we no longer worry about appearing commercial. It’s all in the attitude, really. Coup may be commercial on one level, but it isn’t your average chart single.’

Fritz agreed. ‘We can use a kind of camouflage to superficially fit in with the music-biz game whilst actually using it for our own advantage. The commercial arena is so small, and outside it lies a vast area, still relatively unexplored, of other music, other sounds… We like to work on the periphery, sometimes jumping into the small commercial area, then dodging back out again and hopefully pulling a few people out with us.’

In July Skidoo followed Coup with Language, the track co-created with Sketch Martin, and featuring co-producer Simon Boswell on glass piano. The a-side version had been recorded the previous year, but never quite completed, and it’s the longer dub version on the flipside that works best. During this period 23 Skidoo did not play live, and instead the core trio practised chops of a different kind through extensive martial arts training. ‘We could do a whole new interview about Bruce Lee,’ revealed Johnny. ‘He was the greatest, the last of the warriors. You should mention the importance of Jeet Kune Do – that’s his fighting system and philosophy. It’s the idea that you just use what works for you at any given time, which is what we are doing.’

The album Urban Gamelan was finally released by Illuminated in August 1984. Perversely, the singles were omitted, with Coup appearing in radically different form as GI Fuck You, and Language in sparse percussive form. Although eagerly anticipated by many, the album was less accessible that either of the 45s. Reviewing it for NME, Mat Snow recalled: ‘Back in 1981 I walked out of the 23 Skidoo experience, I thought never to return. That is, until Coup thundered over the horizon earlier this year. A mighty 45, Coup is a vinyl TV cop show car chase driven by Sketch Martin’s bass, with Aswad’s horn section blazing away in hot pursuit… A pity there’s nothing half so much fun on Urban Gamelan… No single piece is allowed to unfold and grow, thus remaining little more than a series of tintinnabulating percussion workouts occasionally rounded out with other instrumentation, distant chants and Jah Wobble-ish humourous asides.’ Blast magazine also offered qualified praise, judging the album ‘a frightening journey of great endurance, a collection of sounds which is extremely difficult to translate’ while asserting that ‘criticism breaks down in the face of art like 23 Skidoo’s.’

With Skidoo still essentially a trio of Fritz, Alex and Johnny, live performance of their more commercial tracks remained problematic, and for a series of dates in Spain and London the group relied on tapes. ‘It’s funny,’ Alex told Sounds, ‘because we’re justifying the use of backing tapes, things we’ve tended to scoff at in the past. OK, so we’ve always used a lot of tapes, but in different ways, so this is just a different application that allows us to move on and not be restricted by playing bass, drums and guitar.’

Soon after the Spanish dates in Granada and Mercia, Fritz Catlin took a sabbatical from the group, and the Turnbulls devoted their energies to their chosen martial arts. The next Skidoo single would not emerge until 1986, when Illuminated released the hip-hop informed Assassin, backed with Ooze and neo-soul track T.O.Y. (Thoughts of You). A different version of Assassin also appeared as Shugyosha Step on several compilations, including Funky Alternatives (Vol 1). The single GI, released on Saderal in 1986 and credited to 400 Blows/23 Skidoo Assemblage, had no legitimate link to the group. The following year Catlin returned to the fold, and Illuminated (as Bleeding Chin) released Just Like Everybody, a compilation of Skidoo tracks recorded between 1981 and 1986, including a previously unreleased monitor mix of Coup. A new track, Magrehbi, was also released as a promo. Skidoo were then invited to record in New York by Rush Management, a subsidiary of Def Jam, and recorded three tracks with Sam Sever. However no deal materialised, and this episode proved instrumental in the band’s metamorphosis into a production entity, Ronin.

For much of the next decade, 23 Skidoo activity was displaced by remix and production work under various guises, including Assassins With Soul and 23 Skidoo. Having built their own studio in Highbury, clients included Ice T, Seal, Sade, Stevie Wonder, Bomb The Bass and Public Enemy. However, sessions with Mark Morrison didn’t pan out. ‘That’s a funny story,’ Alex later told Mojo magazine. ‘Just when he was about to get big, we got hooked up to do some production for him. We played him some tracks and we were all set to do it. Then for some reason we started talking about 23 Skidoo and played him the live side of The Culling Is Coming. Never heard from him again!’

We’re So Cool / Love Song / Set Up / Repetition / Headache

Come Again / Armagh / Unfinished Business / Dear John / It’s Obvious

Dunno why I fancied giving this vinyl a spin tonight, just did, so uploaded for your pleasure is the excellent debut LP by Birmingham’s Au Pairs. The text below is a July 1981 interview with members of the band written out for Newcastle based Eccentric Sleevenotes fanzine just after the LP was originally released. The interview was robbed from the eccentricsleevenotes.com website.

The Au Pairs have been claiming a lot of critical praise recently due to the release of their brilliant LP ‘Playing with a Different Sex’.  We interviewed the group the day after its release.

ESN: How did the group form?

PAUL: I knew Lesley and I went to school with Pete.  We were mucking around and decided to form a band.  We needed a bass player, Martin – the bloke who manages us, knew Jane had just got a bass and was learning to play.  We took it from there… There were interesting points like Jane was in the bath when Lesley phoned.

JANE: I conducted the conversation with Lesley in the nude!

The band decided to release their first single themselves.  ‘You’ was released on 021 Records with a little help from Rough Trade.  021 Records has since branched out and discovered other excellent new bands.

PAUL: At the moment, Iganda, Musical Youth and Tarzan 5 have released singles.  When the money is available, The Pinkies and Fast Relief will be releasing singles.  It’s just something Martin puts together occasionally.

ESN: How did you get the contract with Human Records?

JANE: A friend of the group had some connections with them.

PAUL: It’s run by two guys.  One knows the recording side as he’s had a lot of experience with RSO.  The other bloke works on the business side – distribution, advertising etc.  We’re quite pleased with them.  It all came about from this friend who saw us.  The deal was just what we were looking for.

ESN: What’s the next single called?

JANE: What’s it called? (The question is directed at Lesley.)

LESLEY: It hasn’t got a title yet.

ESN: Do you have difficulty finding live work?

PAUL: We’re quite fortunate working with a big agency, TBA.  We can always find gigs.  We played a lot of Rock Against Sexism and Rock Against Racism gigs and made a few contacts there.

ESN: Does ‘Playing With A Different Sex’ have a definition?

LESLEY: Yeah, three really.  There’s playing, as in playing like in sport that sort of thing; there’s playing sexually with different sex being the opposite sex or ‘different sex’ being the opposite sex or ‘different sex’; not the sex you’re expected to play with – in terms of homosexuality.

ESN: What does the cover of the LP represent?

LESLEY: The Chinese woman on the cover isn’t wearing a uniform but this searing dress.  It’s not like when people say women can fight as well as men because they usually dress up in a uniform this woman is going into battle as a woman, running into battle carrying her gun…

ESN: You’ve used the term ‘Flexi Sex’ recently.  What is that?

LESLEY: Flexi sex, like in terms of sexuality and homosexuality.  (Lesley says no more about that as she heads off in search of the sandwiches.)

ESN: Previous interviews have said you want commercial success.  Do you think that’s possible when you have such strong lyrical content (a recent example of the effect of this was BBC Television censoring ‘Come Again’)?

LESLEY: We’re not saying that is our one aim and without it we won’t be happy.  We think our songs are commercially viable.  The music itself is also commercially viable.  Our lyrics are based on the same subject as a lot of other people’s songs only we present ours in a different way.  This means we can’t be put in a bag.  Because the music press can’t decide whether we are commercial or political, which to me is a ridiculous distinction: the Beat are very commercial but their songs are also very political.  A lot of music journalists want to be able to reinforce these distinctions.

ESN: What are some of the unrecorded songs about?

LESLEY: Pretty Boys will be on the B aide of the next single.  It’s a weird new version of it.  It’s a send up of an Iggy Pop song, ‘Pretty Girls’, which has the line “I like pretty girls, some have beautiful shapes”.  Our version changes the sexes to show how a girl can appreciate boys’ bodies as well.

‘What Kind of Girl’ is a song we don’t do anymore.   It’s about images girls that choose to adopt.  Like a Tom Girl image or Olivia Newton John, “Oh, when I’m home I like to casual jeans and t-shirts” (Lesley puts on an excellent send up voice).

ESN: Do you think stereotyping will ever end?

LESLEY: It probably will but will be replaced by something else, maybe worse.

ESN: When the Au Pairs played the Marquee last February, thereabouts, there was an incident when a group of girls complained to the DJ because he was playing sexist music. The DJ ended up punching one of them. I mention this to Lesley.

LESLEY: Yeah, that got some publicity in Sounds.  When we play three nights at the Marquee on this tour, we’ve made sure that DJ won’t be there as it’s written into the contract.

ESN: What next?

LESLEY: Who knows?

SIMON McKAY

The debut 7″ single by Au Pairs is uploaded on this site if you care to look for it via the search function.

1976 : year zero

In year zero I left school in Scotland and went to work on a small-holding in Gloucestershire. I helped look after the goats and geese, ducks and chickens while rebuilding a derelict cottage. Only one room was habitable so I stayed in caravan. The summer of 1976 was ferociously hot. The cottage was built up against a hill. My main job was to dig out a six foot wide by 15 foot deep cutting between the cottage wall and the hillside. The hot weather meant the red clay soil was dry, which made the digging easier, but it was full of large lumps of sandstone rock. These were used to build a retaining wall against the hill. The spoil was tipped at the front of the cottage. Even for a physically fit teenager it was hard work, but I enjoyed it. I imagined I was a Victorian navvy, making a railway cutting. There wasn’t a flushing toilet and there was no bath. I could get a bath nearby, but due to the drought had to syphon the bath water, red with clay dust, out of the window onto a vegetable patch. Cooking was done on a coal fired stove. The cottage was in the Forest of Dean. Under laws dating back to the middle ages, people born in the forest had the right to dig for coal. So when coal was needed, it came from one of these ‘free’ mines. The mine was tiny, just a long sloping tunnel (a drift mine) into the ground with an ancient electric motor to pull tiny trucks of coal up a narrow gauge railway up from the coal face. The coal was tipped into a heap and every so often a lorry would take it to a power station in Wales. I was given a pile of sacks and told to fill them up from the heap. Each sack held about a hundredweight (50.8 kilos) so twenty sacks made a ton of coal. So the next time I had a bath the water was black, not red.

In the middle of the summer of year zero I went to London for a few days. I went via Stonehenge, I had heard about a free festival there. It was advertised on Radio Caroline, a surviving offshore pirate station. The festival was long gone though . He heat at midday was intense, the stones shimmering and dancing I the hot air. The land was parched and dust dry, more like Egypt than Wiltshire. There were dead elm trees everywhere (Dutch elm disease) which made the countryside look like winter. In London I wandered around Notting Hill and Portobello Road. I ‘d been sending Hawkwind science fiction stories and had a reply from Nik Turner. I was hoping to find Hawkwind’s office but didn’t. I did find some old copies of Oz and Frendz and Forbidden Planet where I bought an International Times, which was still going. If there were punks about, I didn’t notice them.

Then one night I I saw flashes of light and thought it was a nuclear war. Then it rained, only a violent thunder storm. Went back to Scotland to Stirling to university and joined an anarchist group. Most of the group were older, post-grads. We sold Black Flag on the anarchist stall, but they were more green, selling a magazine of ‘radical technology’ called Undercurrents. There was a book as well, called Radical Technology which came out in in 1976. In these days of peak oil and climate change it seems very sensible stuff -

Industry can expect to be taxed according to energy units used. Since goods imported from far afield will bear the tax incurred through energy used in transporting them, local materials will be more attractive. Similarly, since finished products sent to distant markets will bear the tax incurred by transport , manufacturers will cater chiefly for local markets. [Rad Tech p.227]

1977: year one
But I didn’t carry on, instead, by late 1977 I was back in Gloucestershire and working in factory. It was down by Lydney docks on the Severn. I worked in the engineering department , in the drawing office between the machine shop and the assembly shop. My job was to keep huge lists of all the parts, right down to each nut and bolt, for a rubber glove making machine which we were building. It was huge great thing. As each section was erected it was checked and the parts numbered then put into containers and sent off to Malaysia. It took a year to construct then deconstruct. The photo below was taken in late 1978 as the last load was shipped.

You can see the engineering shop on the right. I am in the front row, kneeling down, third from the right. As you can see it was an all male crew, although most of the 1000 workers on the site were women who worked packing the rubber gloves we made. It was a family affair, with wives and daughters/ husbands and sons all employed by the J.Allen Rubber Company – which was part of the London Rubber Company group. It is a sad photo really. The whole factory site was shut in 1981/2 and a thousand people lost their jobs. But more about that later.

1979: year three.
After the rubber glove machine had been shipped, my job was over. Luckily I was offered a job in the engineering department at the main site/ headquarters in London. So on 2 Jan 1979 started work there. It was a huge sprawling place on the North Circular Road near the river Lee near Walthamstow/ Chingford. There were four rubber glove machines, two household ( Marigold), two surgeons gloves plus two Durex condom making machines and the condom testing and packing lines. On top were a set of offices where all the managers worked. I worked down in the bowels in the engineering foremen’s office. Unfortunately, almost as soon as I got there, the Conservatives got elected. By 1980 their monetarist economic policies were devastating manufacturing industry. The claim was they had to attack inflation but Alan Budd (who was an advisor to the Thatcher government) said in a 1992 tv documentary [Pandora's Box by Adam Curtis] -

The nightmare I sometimes have, about this whole experience, runs as follows. I was involved in making a number of proposals which were partly at least adopted by the government and put in play by the government. Now, my worry is . . . that there may have been people making the actual policy decisions . . . who never believed for a moment that this was the correct way to bring down inflation. They did, however, see that it would be a very, very good way to raise unemployment, and raising unemployment was an extremely desirable way of reducing the strength of the working classes — if you like, that what was engineered there in Marxist terms was a crisis of capitalism which re-created a reserve army of labour and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since. Now again, I would not say I believe that story, but when I really worry about all this I worry whether that indeed was really what was going on.

Quoted in New Statesman March 2010
The full episode of the documentary plus comment by Adam Curtis can be watched here
[Thanks to Nick Hydra. Documentary also in ten minutes sections on youtube.]

In 1979, this was still in the future. In the even more distant future there was global warming/ climate change. With the benefit of hindsight, I now regret not going along to the editorial meetings of Undercurrents magazine which were held in London and open to readers. I might have become greener sooner, joined the Ecology Party as it then was (now Green Party) and … done something useful? Instead I went to a Ceinfuegus Press readers meeting which was also a Persons Unknown support group meeting … which led to the Crass/ Poison Girls Bloody Revolutions / Persons Unknown single and the Wapping A Centre and – at another meeting towards the end of 1979- meeting up with the Kill Your Pet Puppy collective.

To be continued.

Crass performing at Colombo Street Community Centre Waterloo July 1979 – Terry Smith archive.

It’s official!

News of the release of the re-mastered Crass material is now available on the Southern website HERE.

The Feeding Of The Five Thousand tracks plus a heap of bonus material on CD yours for £12…

AL Puppy

Southern Studio notes below:

The Crassical Collection is finally here, and the first release is the newly remastered “The Feeding Of The Five Thousand”. After many years of being out of print, this legendary album has been been restored from the original analogue studio tapes, repackaged and bolstered by rare and unreleased tracks, and stunning new artwork from Gee Vaucher, who has lovingly created what could only be considered a real artefact. Included in this package is a 64-page booklet featuring all lyrics along with extensive liner notes from band members Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant, which shed light on the making of the record. Also included is CD-sized recreation of the iconic original fold-out poster sleeve.

‘Five thousand’s a crowd (four thousand nine hundred and ninety nine more than I imagined were going to buy the record), but two’s company (I knew for certain that my Mum would want one), so it was on the plate, ready to serve, The Feeding of the Five Thousand’.
‘We were setting out as purists: hard, uncompromising and utterly bemused’

‘On one thing we were very clear, in bringing a prosecution of Criminal Blasphemy against us the authorities would have been giving us the kind of publicity which overnight would have made us a household name. They were aware of this, and so were we. It was a situation that allowed us carte blanche to say pretty much whatever we wanted without any real fear of incrimination, a situation which over the next seven years we exploited to the hilt’.

‘Easy listening? You ain’t heard nothing yet’.

First released in 1978 on Small Wonder Records, and later rereleased on the band’s own Crass Records, “The Feeding Of The Five Thousand” showed Crass as an anti-establishment and highly uncompromising act, and one that would influence countless other bands to follow. This signals the first in a series of remastered versions of each of Crass’ now legendary albums, each one including bonus tracks and brand new artwork.

Crass flyer Colombo Street Community Centre Waterloo July 1979 – Terry Smith archive.

Rat Skank / Heavy Manners / The Burden / Airport Arrest / Arranged Marriage / Siege And Turmoil / Culture Crossover / Asian Youth

Much indebted to Luc Tran from UNIT for remastering all the above tracks by Alien Kulture and also for writing the text below.

Thank you very much for your time and effort that you have put into this post.

There are two other Alien Kulture posts on KYPP HERE and HERE if you wish to have a peek. If you like band’s that are similar to Stiff Little Fingers then you will love the material by this band.

ALIEN KULTURE – SWAMPED!

In 1980, in an address on immigration, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher warned the nation of the dangers of being swamped by alien cultures. By 1981 Britain rejoiced in having the first and so far only Pakistani punk group in the world. They recorded just eight tracks in their brief career, all of which are included here. All the fuss made over us in our band UNIT is no doubt entirely justified but don’t forget – Alien Kulture did it first – twenty years earlier. Respect!

01   Rat Skank   Unreleased cassette   1981

02   Heavy Manners   Unreleased cassette   1981

03   The Burden   Unreleased cassette   1981

04   Airport Arrest   Unreleased cassette   1981

05   Arranged Marriage   Unreleased cassette   1981

06   Siege & Turmoil   Unreleased cassette   1981

07   Culture Crossover   Single ‘b’ side   1980

08   Asian Youth   Single ‘a’ side   1980

PERVEZ BILGRAMI: Vocals.  HUW JONES: Guitar.  AUSAF ABBAS: Bass Guitar.  AZHAR RANA: Drums.

Recorded at Foel Studio 1980 – 1981. Engineered by Dave Andrews.

Remastered from the original analogue sources by Luc Tran.

COME AND GET SWAMPED – AN INTRODUCTION

To people new to the band UNIT, I’m their keyboard player and I was born in 1989. This means these tracks were recorded nearly eight years before I made my entrance into the world. I discovered the anarcho-punk scene and what it meant to be opposed to the establishment in Britain under Margaret Thatcher as a result of a book by Ian Glasper called The Day The Country Died. Through it I discovered Anthrax, Hagar The Womb and The Living Legends. We recorded four covers of Anthrax pieces (despite objections and complaints from the other two group members of UNIT at the time) on our 9th album and invited Ian Bone of The Living Legends and anarchist newspaper Class War to appear on our next album (called Class War). So why did we decide to record our own versions of four tracks by Alien Kulture?

Mick Penguin is the moderator of the Kill Your Pet Puppy blog, who also works at Southern Record Distribution which was until quite recently linked with Southern Studios. He sent UNIT’s singer, ex Apostles member, Andy Martin, a CD onto which he’d burned six tracks by Alien Kulture. The cassette originally belonged to Chris Low (the drummer with The Apostles in the early 1980s and The Parkinsons in the 1990s) who had kept it in almost pristine condition since 1983. These tracks were recorded in 1981 and apparently never officially released. Andy gave them to me to remaster (remove tape hiss, restore bass and treble frequencies etc) and as I listened to them I realised that here was something special, something unusual and something highly individual.

When Andy told me they were a band comprised of three Pakistanis (Pervez Bilgrami, Ausaf Abbas, Azhar Rana) and one white English fella (Huw Jones), I was astonished because I thought UNIT were the first group to contain that kind of set up (i.e. three British born Chinese lads and a white fella). He told me the group also released a single but that it was so obscure, I’d never be able to find a copy. Well, he under-estimated my perseverance on e-bay. I found a shop in Portobello Road that had a copy – the only one for sale anywhere in the world – for a mere £35. Sod it, I gave Andy the notes and told him to go and buy it. That’s how impressed I was already with the six tracks I’d heard on that cassette. (I work full time during the day for a publisher and work part time for my parents take-away three nights a week so I’m allowed to waste my hard earned cash on such luxuries. Then Andy, with a malicious grin on his face, showed me the Alien Kulture feature on the KYPP site which included the information that Penguin was sent a free copy because the son of one of the original members of the band was commenting on the site – bah humbug!)

I was relieved to discover the record I had purchased was a near mint copy that looked unplayed so when I transferred it into digital format, very little work was required to bring it up to the contemporary standard modern listeners expect and deserve. Obviously the original master tapes to all these eight tracks have long since vanished so that was never an option. The single was the only record released by Rock Against Racism, a dubious but initially well intentioned group of middle class socialists who were popular for a brief period during the late 1970’s and early 1980s to combat the two fascist political groups in Britain, the National Front and the British Movement (both of which later transformed themselves into what is now the British National Party). Political groups that both either organised or at least encouraged racial assaults against West Indian and Asian people in Britain.

My only regret is that Alien Kulture weren’t able to consolidate this early success and record an entire album of works. However, even the eight tracks which comprise their complete recorded repertoire have remained virtually unknown or forgotten since the 1980s. So thank you Mick Penguin for inadvertently introducing me to Alien Kulture, thank you Chris Low for keeping an excellant condition copy of that cassette tape since 1983 and thank you Andy Martin for additional information on the group and for legging it all the way to west London to buy that single.

ONE LAW FOR THEM AND ANOTHER LAW FOR US

In the 1980s it became a popular trend for records by independent groups to have messages etched into the run-off grooves. This refers to a narrow area after the main playing section and before the label itself. On the ‘b’ side is written ‘Alien Kulture Love Asian Youth’ while the ‘a’ side warns ‘Remember Southall And Newham’. This last statement refers to two major incidents in south and east London, each of which motivated Alien Kulture to take themselves seriously once their embarked on their brief career.

The Southall event centres around a concert in the Hamborough Tavern at which The 4 Skins, a skinhead band with strong fascist sympathies, were due to play. While the band hardly constituted a threat themselves, their legion of cromagnon followers took pride in the number of racial assaults they committed on a regular basis. These assaults were generally against very small numbers of Asians who were unable to defend themselves. On this occasion, the Asian community in Southall decided to wreck the concert, set fire to the pub and hospitalise as many skinheads as possible.

Unfortunately, no skinheads actually died that night but the frequency with which these cowardly thugs attacked ethnic minorities decreased rapidly as more and more skinheads began to purchase brown trousers and stay indoors at night. After all these years surely I should express some sympathy for the skinheads who attended the concert with no intention to cause trouble? Not in the least – I loathe them all. Bullies, national socialists and racists deserve to die and that’s all there is to it.

In fact, should fascist groups like The 4 Skins and Skrewdriver have been allowed to release records and play concerts? Yes – beyond any doubt. They have as much right to be seen and heard as anyone else. However, there is a large Asian community in Southall. Throughout the 1970s they had been attacked and assaulted by skinheads and other local racists. To organise a concert for fascist bands in the centre of a multicultural area is not only insensitive (stupid would be a better word) but also provocative.

Here’s what Andy Martin wrote to me in an e-mail after I’d asked him what it was like for immigrants in Britian during the 1980s: “Readers born after 1980 will be unable to appreciate the climate of fear and fury generated by the police and by these neo-nazi gangs, each of which committed vicious racial assaults in this decade while Thatcher and her government either ignored or even tacticly supported such behaviour, especially when perpetrated by the police.”

After a search through websites that reproduce various punk fanzines of the era, I was not able to find a single mention of Alien Kulture in any of them – maybe I looked in the wrong places or simply didn’t spend enough time on the net? Whenever The Apostles were mentioned (and that wasn’t often), it usually seemed to be in as insulting a manner as possible. I found out from Dave Fanning (who was our bass guitarist until 2005 and was also a main stay in The Apostles) one of the major bands on the Crass label, DIRT, included two members who sported neo-nazi tattoos. I was finally able to comprehend just why Andy was so relentlessly hostile toward punk rock and the anarcho punk scene in particular.

From 2000 to 2002, UNIT had three other British born Chinese members (Lang Kin Tung, Gieng San Man and Ngo Achoi). I read the reviews of their concerts and later spoke to Achoi about certain gigs too. Various audience members shouted out racial abuse at some of these live events (“**** off back to your take-away you ****ing Chinks” was the most infamous example) but this only occurred when UNIT played in front of punks. When we play in universities before students, we receive a different kind of heckling: “prog rock died thirty years ago – get with the century” being my own favourite!

Since Zhang Yao Min, Wong Yit Sinh and I joined the group, nobody has given us any racial abuse – they wouldn’t dare, because they know what would happen if they tried it. Look, it’s the 21st century – surely this kind of ridiculous behaviour is obsolete by now? Anyway, I really hope Alien Kulture never had to endure that kind of bigotry but, knowing the British punk scene, I suspect they probably did.

OUR COLOURFUL CULTURE

In 2001 when UNIT released their 2nd album Sons Of The Dragon: almost all the works that included traditional Chinese themes or Chinese lyrical subjects were written by Andy Martin. The Chinese lads virtually ignored their ethnicity since not only did they take it for granted but also they wanted to be respected for their work regardless of their racial origin. Ngo Achoi once told me he was a musician who happened to be Chinese rather than a Chinese musician. The distinction is subtle but important.

One other similarity between Alien Kulture and UNIT exists: the total absence of role models. There had never been a Pakistani pop group of any kind before Alien Kulture were formed. That created its own problem, particularly from people who expected some form of Asian exoticism and were disappointed when the band played their own brand of tuneful, melodic pop music in a strictly western style. Prior to the formation of UNIT, there had never been any Chinese pop groups in any genre in Europe or America although there was one brave, bold individual who sought to give us a voice in a different genre.

The Chinese American rapper Jin Au Yeung was faced with this problem as audiences expressed a desire to hear about what they perceived to be Chinese issues. Jin was born in America and could hardly speak Cantonese properly himself; he faced a major problem: how to be a role model for other Chinese rappers while he remained true to his own artistic integrity. This was also our own problem – more so, actually, because the vast majority of rock musicians in our specific genre have all been white. Demands met with expectations from audiences, most of which were inevitably destined not to be fulfilled because it was never our intention to play the ‘oriental local colour’ card for the entertainment of middle class white audiences.

There were two other racially mixed punk bands during the 1980s that I know about (if there were / are more then please add to this blog and let us know): an obscure outfit from Manchester called Death Sentence (two black African brothers on guitar and drums, a white punk on bass guitar and a white skinhead on vocals) and (of course) the superb Hagar The Womb with their Asian guitarist and black bass guitarist. I don’t think many people bothered to inflict racial abuse upon them because they were too busy being condescending and patronising toward the four women in the sextet that comprised that band!

I grew up in a house where Cantopop and Chinese music was virtually all I heard so is it any wonder I want our group to play other kinds of music? There really is something incredibly offensive about white middle class people who seek to relieve the boredom of their facile lives by calling for ethnic exoticism from groups, writers and artists of non-white origin. We are not in business merely to titillate their desires for an example of our ‘colourful culture’. If they cared that much about it then they’d all fly to India, wreck every Coca-Cola factory and burn down every McDonalds in the land. Do that and then we’ll certainly play them some traditional Chinese tunes. So now you can appreciate why we were inspired to cover no less than four Alian Kulture tracks and I to remaster the eight that they actually recorded themselves.

Rat Skank

There’s a Grantham grocers’ daughter – she is a national joke but the joke’s gone sour – it’s not funny anymore. She’s doing things that are frightening, frightening and the pressure is tightening, tightening. Dangerous times for our people – they’re trying to put us under, saying it’s all in the national interest, things should be the way they are. We’re going to rock – roots rock ratskank! Take a listen to what we say before she tries to take away any more of our rights because we’re not going under without a fight. We’re going to rock it to the ratskank now! Talking about an alien culture, tighten up the immigration laws. Make it hard to get an abortion, the only ones who want them are the ‘dirty whores’. A womans’ leader who doesn’t care about a womans’ right to choose, because she and her henchmen are making damned sure that a woman knows her place. Hitting at our everyday lives, trying to hit our people with their show trials, mucking things up for the future, they’re trying to kick us out of town. Make her listen to what we say before she tries to take away any more of our rights as we’re not going under without a fight. We’re going to rock it to the ratskank now! Well she’d better know we’ve had enough and we’d better show her that we mean business. Fight back at her repression, fight her plans for our regression. Fight for the rights that cost so much. Fight for the right to run our lives. Fight for the people who are being put under as we’re not going under without a fight – we’re going to swamp her! Better call the rat catcher. Swamp her with our alien culture. Swamp her! Better rock against Thatcher!

Heavy Manners

Your looks are so staggering and I’ll remember them. We’ll probably never meet again but I know I’ll remember you not only out for romance but also to build your ego. You want them all to run after you so you can tell everyone. Everyone is out to deceive – faith has no future, for we’re all under heavy manners able not even to be sincere with the important things in life. You’ll grow old one day with no-one by your side. You’ll be on your death bed with no-one to hold your hand. Try to change if you can – I know it’s hard. It’ll make you all the more attractive, so much better. We all are under heavy manners.

The Burden

The white mans’ burden is a heavy weight, borne on the shoulders of the Western States. The have helped to nurture mankind. They have cleansed and soothed the savage mind. They have engaged in mineral extortion. They have undermined a nations’ life. They have instilled the old school values. They have enforced with the guns the fuse. They have redefined the moral structure and killed a nations’ dream. We were only trying to help. Okay, so we made a few mistakes. We’ll keep the Koh I Noor – you can have a British passport.

Airport Arrest

We came full of hopes and ambitions; we didn’t dream it would be a nightmare. Immigration laws are just your customs for making strangers feel unwelcome. Families that only want to be together, there’s always a barrier to happiness. Together in the old world, divided in the new, stopped by paper discrimination. A British passport is only a document, it was a passport to prosperity. Step up here for your virginity test – there’s a first time for everything. Airport arrest – welcome to Harmondsworth. Welcome to your new council home. No rent, no bills, the only price we charge is the degredation of your soul: locks to keep you in, barbed wire to keep you from getting out.

Arranged Marriage

He’s the product of another marriage, thoughts and character moulded by his parents. He did well at school and behaved himself; studied hard, now he doesn’t know the difference between his and his parents’ wants. He doesn’t realise what’s going on, too busy enjoying his short lived freedom. Mother searches for the perfect girl, perfect boy for the perfect girl. Perfect boy – perfect girl. Another aspect of the human meat market, branded for life for the sake of a wife. He didn’t want the marriage transaction, but no-one wants to hurt their parents, do they? She was brought up very strictly, taught the virtues of an eastern woman. Truth, innocence, beauty and goodness was what she typified to nearly everyone, so her parents thought anyway. She realises what’s going on, hears her mothers’ whispers, her friends’ cries: what is she to tell her boyfriend? What is she to tell her parents? She can’t marry him – he’s not a doctor, nor a lawyer nor even an accountant! Pressurised, she gives up her happiness – doesn’t even know what the boy looks like – what does he look like? Childhood arranged, marriage arranged, now their whole life is arranged. Who’s going to arrange their death? Everything is planned out now. She can stay at home, take care of the family, walk five paces behind him. He can go to work, bring back the daily wage, treat her like a piece of the furniture. It’s only a matter of time before they arrange another. It only has to stop – it’s up to you!

Siege & Turmoil

The blood is on the marble floor; the crescent’s on the rise. Gather behind the religion, find sanctuary within the robes. Brainwash time for the masses, messages from the mountains. Your leaders sleep on rugs while Persian carpets lie idle. Siege and turmoil – we’re living in a world of siege and turmoil. Long time between crusades – looks like time for another. New order beside the old – old order beside the new. Torture, blood and flogging – looks like it’s here to spread. A religious state is something to die for – it’s not worth living in. Siege and turmoil – we’re living in a world of siege and turmoil. The fires of hell are burning and the flame has been lit again. Commit crime in the name of religion and bless it in the name of God. Brainwash time for the masses, messages from the mountains. The blood is still on the marble floor; the crescent is still on the rise.

Culture Crossover

First generation illegal immigrants, 2nd generation juvenile delinquents, torn between two cultures – caught in a culture crossover. We’re taught how to pray five times a day but that’s not what we’re about. We just want to live out our lives, run and dance and sing and shout. Trapped in a void and we don’t know just which way to turn, this way and that way but we’re still stopped from having fun. We start off with clear minds which always end up cluttered. Parents say what we do and all our dreams end up being shattered. There’s pressure all around us without having to fight our elders. All we need is understanding, to be happy and content. I don’t want to go to Pakistan. I want to live my life here. I don’t want to read the Koran – I want to read my NME! Caught in a culture crossover – I don’t want a culture crossover.

Asian Youth

You want something to belong to. You want something to hold on to. You go to college. You read your books, you buy your white pegs and structureless jackets. At weekends you’re on maximum pose down at the disco. Your elders want to control you. Your elders want to protect you. They’re using their ancient values while living in the modern world. You kids end up wondering just who the hell you are. You come from different countries. You belong to different religions. You hate each other. You swear and fight but you don’t realise that you’re the same. Nothing’s achieved by being divided. Why can’t we be united? Asian youth, where have you been? Asian youth, you want to be seen. Asian youth, you don’t know who to turn to – oh Asian youth.

UNIT PLAY ALIEN KULTURE

It had to happen – I couldn’t resist it. I insisted we record our own versions some of these pieces so UJ (Cheung Yiu Munn or, in Mandarin, Zhang Yao Min), Richard (Wong Yit Sinh) and I picked one song each (fortunately the ones we liked best were all different) and the three of us each made our own arrangements of them. I then decided to adopt Rat Skank into an instrumental called Rat Skunk because while I like the music, I had to omit the out-dated lyric. Obviously we removed all traces of any punk influences from the pieces (it is 2010 after all). The four tracks are to be issued on our album Bread & Circuses which at the time of writing (July 2010) is about two thirds complete – we intend it to be available before Christmas.

Since I started these notes I learned that in 1983 Andy was also in correspondence with both Pervez and with Rob Beasley, a college friend who was the manager of Alien Kulture. This was useful since it enabled me to find their colourful website HERE . This contains videos of the group playing live and also interviews for the BBC and an Asian programme in Urdu although the group give the interview in English.

So what are the ex-members of the group doing now?

Huw Jones works for a local government department in Leeds that advises the council on housing – well, that’s not too extreme, is it?

Pervez Bilgrami runs his own recruitment agency with his wife in Baker Street – that sounds rather more up market but then one of his neighbours is Noel Gallagher.

Now we enter the big league: Azhar Rana is a partner in a firm of chartered accounts.

However, I save the best until last: Ausaf Abbas is the managing director of an American investment bank and he is based on the 14th floor of an office tower block in Canary Wharf.

Finally, the children of all three Asian members all attend private schools. By the way, only one of the members still votes Labour – the managing director of that American investment bank, Ausaf Abbas. That may not tell us much about Mr Abbas but it tells us a lot about New Labour. To be fair, apart from those impolite references to Margaret Thatcher in Rat Skank, not one of their tracks actually attacks capitalism so they can’t really be accused of hypocrisy or even ‘selling out’ (whatever that actually means). In any case, would you prefer it if they were all poor, starving and homeless? Punk rock – Better rock against Thatcher – yeah!

Luc Tran 2010

http://www.unit-united.co.uk/

PO Box 45885, London E11 1UW

unitunited@yahoo.com

Anyone interested in getting a taste of what UNIT sound like may like to go to the post 86 section of  the KYPP blog or for a short cut press right HERE

Fade Away / Radial Drill / State Assembly / Crazy Dreams And High Ideals

Abderhamanes Demise / Animal Space / Love Forever / Private Armies

My Whole World / Observe Life / Got To Get Away / My Love

Problems / Nuclear Zulu / Guiding Star

Uploaded today are the first two LPs by the ON U Sound supergroup New Age Steppers. These LP’s were released jointly on Statik and ON U Sound records just over a year apart in the very early eighties. Joining in the punky reggae party across these two slaps of experimental dub include members of The Slits, Aswad, Flying Lizards, Roots Radics, The Pop Group, Creation Rebel and Rip Rig And Panic.

Plenty more ON U Sound related posts are on this site if you care to search for them by entering ONU Sound (note spelling) into the search function.

The texts below were plundered from www.skysaw.org for the Steve Barker piece on New Age Steppers and from John Eden’s www.uncarved.org for the interesting interview with knobs man Adrian Sherwood. Thanks to those blogs for such great articles.

The Gee Vaucher limited print of one of her artworks below (artwork that was later modified and used for the debut Tackhead LP released on World Records, an ON U Sound sister label in 1989)  belongs to me, so thanks to myself for that.

The eponymous album debut of the New Age Steppers (ON-U LP 1) also provided On-U Sounds first long player release in January of 1981. In the January of the previous year the band had versioned the Junior Byles classic “Fade Away” for the labels first 7″ single (ON-U S 1). Featured on the flip were London Underground with “Learn a Language”. As a result New Age Steppers have always played a special part in the history of On-U Sound, not only for contributing its debuts in single and album formats, but also for the bringing together of a disparate collection of individuals for the sole purpose of making music – a rationale that On-U was to follow for the following two decades.

Reputedly, the driving force behind the formation of New Age Steppers was Arianna Foster A.K.A. Ari Up – the vocalist from the Slits, one of the original “girls with attitude” bands. The Slits, along with other UK outfits like the Clash and the Ruts, felt a close association with the rebel axis of reggae music. For the Slits this link was most creatively manifested in their work with Dennis “Blackbeard” Bovell, a largely unrecognised genius in the area of UK reggae production. Along with Ari came Neneh Cherry, a few years short of her international stardom, step-daughter of jazz legend Don, and mashing up the leftfield indie-funk scene with Rip Rig and Panic. Also from that band were Bruce Smith and Sean “Hogg” Oliver, although drummer Bruce had earlier been a founder member of the controversial Pop Group, as had guitarist John Waddington and vocalist Mark Stewart who was later to produce some of the most radical and brutal music ever to be committed to vinyl in his first two solo albums for On-U.

Keith Levene from Public Image Limited was in the area – but not on the first album. Style Scott from Jamaica’s reigning rhythm machine the Roots Radics and George Oban from the UK’s top roots outfit Aswad supplied the drum and bass foundation and credibility for the enterprise. Whereas from the UK, Creation Rebels Charlie “Eskimo Fox” and “Crucial” Tony Phillips provided the link with Adrian Sherwood’s previous studio work. Viv Goldman and Vikki Aspinall were both recruited in from the collective that constituted the all-female Rough Trade band, The Raincoats and Steve Beresford was, well Steve Beresford, but perhaps best known for his Flying Lizards association. Technically able to play, inspire, provoke and create – here he was making one of his many appearances on early On-U Sound recordings.

Although I cannot personally testify to this, it is rumoured that in 1980 / 1981 New Age Steppers, together with producer Adrian Sherwood, took seventeen musicians to the BBC Studios in Maida Vale to record a session for the John Peel radio show. Given the penury in which most musicians lived at the time, seventeen lots of Musician’s Union fees would no doubt come in handy! [***It has recently been suggested by a well informed source that the "session" may, in fact, have been a pre-recorded "private tape" that was supplied by AMS to the show, featuring just 15 unnamed musicians and recorded in 1983...***]

The set of that first album opens with Ari Up’s off-centre vocals on the New Age Steppers version of Junior Byles’ “Fade Away”, a tune which the singer had cut for Channel One’s JoJo Hookim some five years earlier but which had already achieved the status of a reggae standard. “Crazy Dreams and High Ideals” is one of those songs, which counted as favourite down at On-U and was versioned over time numerous times by others and its author Mark Stewart.

A version of “Animal Space” was originally released as a UK 7″ single by the Slits on the Human label and can also be found on their album “Return Of The Giant Slits” on CBS. Bim Sherman’s “Love Forever” is next for the Ari Up treatment with some great spooky on-key screams in the dub towards the tracks close. The set is rounded off by a dub version of Viv Goldmans overtly political “Private Armies”. Viv was better known as a music journalist, mainly for the New Musical Express music paper rather than a musician. Her only single was “Laundrette” on a Rough Trade 7″, which had the vocal version of “Private Armies” as the flip.

The New Age Steppers’ and On-Us debut was also remarkable for another reason, entirely separate from musical context – it boasts art work, by the never-to-be-forgotten Bill Bell (?), which is clearly the daftest in the whole catalogue of the label. The album cover depicts a mock gyrating Elvis hula-hooping a car tyre round his knees and a jeep in his face, aside a giant footballing baby accomplishing a neat “dribble”, all this is set in the context of an ever so tasteful red, white and black minimal Soviet neo-constructivist design!

Released in the summer of 1982 “Action Battlefield” was the second New Age Steppers album for On-U Sound. They were to go on to produce one further set for On-U, 1983’s swansong “Foundation Steppers”, by which time Bim Sherman had more fully entered the scene and was taking the lions share of the albums vocal credits. In reggae terms it could have been presented as a showcase album in the sense that most of the tracks are vocals extended into a dub version – in Jamaica this would have been a thirteen or fourteen track album rather than seven, albeit lengthy, cuts – all a matter of value for money of course!

Ari Up takes the majority of the vocal duties and proceeds to warble and scream in her inimitable fashion through the sets opener with a version of a tune that is now recognised as a classic – Bim Sherman’s “My Whole World” originally cut by the singer in the seventies and re-versioned in the nineties for his wonderful “Miracle” album. “Observe Life” is a cover of a song penned by ex-Black Uhuru member Michael Rose whereas “Got to Get Away” returns to the rock steady pen of Sherman.

The strangest track on the album is undoubtedly the bizarrely constructed “My Love” a take on a track written by one time Gaylad B.B. Seaton. The production may very well have been crafted for the young vocalist who takes the lead – Neneh Cherry, but what can only be described as a jolly, off-key doo wop is gratefully relieved by the gentle entry of the dub! “Problems” is a Horace Andy oldie, first recorded for Leonard Chin and re-cut massive style later in his career and probably best known as a version from his legendary “In The Light” dub set. Here, a chugging, insistent treatment allows Sherwood (still with hair on the album cover!) some freedom on the desk as does the following track, the set’s only instrumental (except for an unidentified ethnic chant – North London?), “Nuclear Zulu”, which provides a template for some of the future experimentation that was to take place under the banner of African Head Charge.

A reggae classic “Guiding Star” closes affairs, originally penned by Heptone Leroy Sibbles. This standard provides one of the most enduring rhythm beds of the genre and is perhaps now best remembered via the late Augustus Pablo’s wonderful melodica version. Dub versions to “My Whole World”, “Got To Get Away” and “Guiding Star” can all be found on the New Age Steppers / Creation Rebel album “Threat To Creation as “Painstaker”, “Final Frontier” and “Eugenic Device” respectively.

Steve Barker

Going into the legendary On-U studios is like a lesson in musical history for those that love UK and Jamaican roots reggae. I was welcomed at the door by Adrian, and ushered into a completely chaotic, yet calm and friendly atmosphere, with a lot of people getting on with their work in the studio. A large portrait of King Tubby in crisp white shirt, perfectly pressed suit trousers with a typically serious, dignified expression takes pride of place on the wall as an obvious sign of respect. Shrine like, it is placed high up on the studio wall and dominates the vibe of the room. Inspiration from the source. Dub science.

I notice more casual, smiling pictures of Bim Sherman and other On-U luminaries on the walls. The next thing I noticed were the piles of boxed master tapes everywhere. Little Roy, Junior Delgado, Dub Syndicate, Ghetto Priest. (I was sorely tempted to make a closer inspection!) The vibe was good, and I was looking forward to a good interview with this man whose work I had admired for many years, (since those early UK roots classics, the early Creation Rebel albums) and who had worked with so many of the JA and UK roots legends.

The man hardly needs an introduction here: To anyone who has followed roots and culture music closely, it is generally acknowledged that he has produced truly innovative, ground breaking UK roots music of the highest order since the late 70’s. He had uncompromisingly worked on with roots and dub, even when roots music was at its lowest ebb in the early 80’s and many people had moved on to early digital dancehall and slackness. A lot of people considered roots music a spent force, but Adrian had persevered with the form, working with artists he respected, and artists who still had a lot of originality to offer the reggae world, even though they were no longer considered “fashionable”.

Albums like War of Words, Revenge of the Underdog and Pounding System showcased UK roots and Jamaican roots artists still at the peak of their creativity. Fit To Survive and Devious Woman are considered by many to match the best of Bim’s JA output, and are unquestionably deep and atmospheric pieces of music.

I was invited into the kitchen, and was met by the sight of guitarist Skip McDonald, sitting quietly at the table, wearing a West African style hat, cup of tea in hand, looking particularly calm and thoughtful amongst the activity. An artist comfortable with himself. A man with a gentle and peaceable presence, he greeted me and we started talking, mostly about his recent album, a dub deconstruction of blues music: Eerie Robert Johnson blues style echoey cut ups, with one drop drum rhythms and backward tape loops. Some tracks also feature beautiful vocals from Bim Sherman and Ghetto Priest, an atmospheric new vocalist I was to meet later.

Seek The Truth is the aptly named track which features Bim’s haunting vocals, backed by eerie slide guitar, unpredictably soaring around in the mix, the righteous vibes urged forward by a Bunny Lee “flying cymbals” style. Bim chants, stating his creed with righteous emotion, a relentless, simple and direct message: “Oh friend of mine, a lie is a whisper, the truth is a shout… seek the truth…” The message is replete with a shuddering echo, and what sounds like African chants, cut up and spliced into a weird refrain in the background, swooping in and out of the mix. The brittle percussion is so strangely engineered as to be at times, of unidentifiable origin. Harsh, moody, aggressive and melancholy by turns, it’s a fine, original piece of music.

The album Hard Grind is obviously a work of love and dedication, a tribute to Skip’s respect for, and love of the blues. It has an overwhelming sense of the genuine, a work of integrity. Hard Grind is an unusual record, a distinctly weird listening experience, and one I’d strongly recommend. A cut up dub funk blues experience, and definitely one for those of you that loved ground breaking records like Eno’s My Life in a Bush of Ghosts.

For someone that had worked with so many musical legends in the roots and culture and funk worlds, I was impressed that he was so modest and unassuming a character.

Excusing himself, Skip returned to the studio to work on some new rhythms with one of Adrian’s engineers, Nick Coplowe. (Later I had a chance to speak with Nick, currently working on his own project, Mutant Hi-Fi. Clearly, there is a strong working relationship and understanding between him and Adrian. I asked how he met Adrian and what clinched it for him in getting the job. He looked at me directly, and put it very simply and succinctly: “Me and Adrian work well together and get on well, because we both have a common interest in noise.” He didn’t need to say any more…)

It wasn’t easy getting Adrian to focus on the interview process, because he was doing so many things at once. Periodically, Skip would rush back in to the kitchen enthusiastically to ask what Adrian thought of some new sound he was working on, and Adrian would juggle ideas back and forth, striving to flesh out new ideas, adapting and innovating together.

At the same time, the phone was ringing constantly, people organising sound system sessions (sound system session with Adrian, Junior Delgado and Iration Steppers in Leeds was being put together, and Style Scott was in town, to play with Luciano) enquiring about record release and tour dates and so on. Crucial Tony and Eskimo Fox were due to lay down some tracks for Adrian, and Junglist Rasta Congo Natty had a meeting with Adrian a few days later. I kept on switching on my tape, only to be apologetically interrupted by Adrian, “I’m sorry, bear with me one minute…”

As if this wasn’t a busy enough scenario, Adrian was constantly trying to parry the mischievous playfulness of his daughters. They hurtled around the studio as Adrian prepared snacks for them and good naturedly did his best to organise some kind of afternoon schedule for them. It was a lovely summer’s day, and the garden, as I looked out of the window, looked peaceful and quiet compared with the mayhem in the studio.

Adrian comes across as someone who is completely down to earth: direct, sharp, smart, and it is clear that this is a man who is very determined and resolute. He has earned respect from his many years in the reggae world, and his work as an innovator. Ghetto Priest arrives and joins the work in the studio.

I take advantage of an ensuing period of relative calm to begin the interview, and I ask, what led Adrian to reggae in the first place. What started his journey that led to the On-U Sound experience?

When I was pretty young, I was heavily into soul music. I loved that, but I was really carried away by early reggae music and ska tunes. Those were pretty eccentric, freaky tunes, stuff like U Roy’s Wear You To The Ball… I was soaking up all that energy, even when I was at school, and when I heard reggae music at the local black clubs I went to, that was when I got really into it.

What was your next stage after your initial fascination with reggae I asked?

Well, I was still in my late teens when I started working for the Carib Gems label people… I was a junior director… I loved roots music, and the tunes we were putting out on that label, tracks like Observe Life by Michael Rose, and Babylon Won’t Sleep Tonight / Sleepers by Wayne Jarrett and the Righteous Flames were strong, strong tracks, they really were. Especially I loved the Sleepers track. The Tubby’s version is a heavy dub. It’s sad, I don’t even have copies of those 45’s myself anymore. I wish I’d held on to my copies! You know of course we cut our own On-U version of Observe Life with Creation Rebel on the rhythm, and Ari on the vocal, then there was a dub too.

Since you’d released so many good tunes on that label I asked, why don’t you collect them to release on a compilation? I think a lot of people would be really glad to hear them on one compilation.

I’d love to. I was so into those Carib Gems releases, but like a lot of those Hitrun label tunes, it’s a matter of ownership and copyright that prevents me. It’s a shame because there are a whole lot of unreleased tunes which just haven’t seen reissue because of ownership debates. A whole lot of those Creation Rebel Hit Run 12’s were very good, such as Beware. They deserve good reissue. I did collect a few of the best tracks from that time on an early On-U compilation with tracks like Carol Kalphat’s African Land and some other Far I and Creation Rebel stuff. I don’t know how available that release is now, but it’s a solid collection. Another person from that time I’d like to work with again is Deadley Headley, who is another Jamaican artist who just hasn’t received the attention he truly deserves. It’s possible that I’d consider putting together a compilation of my tunes I did with him if there’s enough unreleased stuff in the On-U vaults: I’m not sure that I have enough unheard stuff though, but that would be nice, and it’d be good to get some more exposure for such a good artist.

When I had linked up with Don Letts, I’d asked  about his experiences with Adrian and the early days of the On-U family. He remembered it this way: “Sure, we hung out with Adrian in those times. I still do see Adrian! I’ve known him for about twenty five years. The thing about Adrian was, you knew that the man always ran with a posse in them days! So if you met up with Adrian, they’d all be there too. Yes, man like Jah Whoosh, Prince Hammer would be there, Crucial Tony, Bonjo I, and Don Campbell too. And of course Prince Far I and Bim Sherman if they were in London at the time”.

I’d asked Don which records he’d liked from the early On-U stuff: “Of course the early African Head Charge music, which is pretty far out stuff. Extreme music. Of the later stuff, I think Skip McDonald’s dub blues fusion stuff is pretty interesting.”

Since Don Letts had around that time cut a tune with a vicious, threatening subsonic dub (with Jah Wobble and Keith Levene at the production desk) as the Electric Dread, I’d asked if he’d ever liked to have worked with Adrian in those days: “Yeah sure, of course I would, but I’m more a vibes man, a sound man. I’ve always DJ’ed and made films, that has always been my thing you know, I’m not really a musician.”

So in the light of my discussions with Don Letts on this subject, I was keen to know about Adrian’s experiences with John Lydon, as well as his very early days with Jah Wobble, Keith Levene, Ari Upp, and of course most importantly, Creation Rebel who were the backbone of all those early On-U tracks, and in my opinion haven’t really been given full credit for the outstanding original and innovative UK roots outfit they were at that time.

OK, on the subject of Creation Rebel, who made a great body of roots music, then later let’s talk about those early days when I hung out with John Lydon, Jah Wobble, Ari and Keith Levene. We had an authentic, hard rhythm section in Creation Rebel, with good musicians, such as Crucial Tony, Lizard and Eskimo Fox, with Pablo on the melodica. I still work with Crucial Tony and Eskimo Fox now. They will be here in a few days to lay down some stuff for the new Little Roy music I’m working on, and Crucial did some stuff on the Little Roy Long Time album. Yeah, so in those days, we were always competing with the Jamaican bands of the time, always looking for a way to get the edge on them, it was a challenge for us, a hype thing too, to be different from the JA bands when they came over on tour to the U.K. and the way for us was with the drums… we really worked on getting a heavy, heavy rockers drumming style, but it had our own thing in there, our own distinctive contribution, our own hard edge to it. It wasn’t just a copy of the Jamaican drum sound, and I think in its own way, it was as good as what was happening in Jamaica at that time. Of course when we got Style enlisted that was it, a great step forward for us, because it united what was going on in the roots scene in UK with what was happening in Jamaica. And of course, linking up with Prince Far I was a great thing for me at that time because it opened up access and pathways to a whole pool of great Jamaican talent too.

Speaking of the whole early period of experimentation with Creation Rebel, Dub Syndicate and African Head Charge, including the contributions of Public Image members Jah Wobble and Keith Levene, Adrian remembers it this way:

Going back to the influence of punk days now, yeah, I knew John Lydon well, and it was through John that I got to know Keith Levene and Jah Wobble. I got to know John better after Sid had died. Ari Upp, Neneh Cherry, Junior and I, we all lived in a squat down Battersea way, and John Lydon was living with Nora [his future wife and Ari Upp's mum] round the corner. John Lydon used to visit us, and we all hung out together. John was just so hip you know, a lot of people really looked up to him at that time. John really knew his reggae, he loved his reggae. I can tell you that John Lydon really helped the progress of roots and culture in Britain at that time. It was around that time, not long after he’d been beaten up here in London that he went on to radio and played Dr Alimantado’s Born for A Purpose. Alimantado was immediately shot to cult status as a result! The lyric of that tune was relevant you know? “If you feel like you have no reason for living, don’t determine my life!” That was John’s reply to the idiots that had beaten him up. You should realise that it was John Lydon who suggested that I work with Keith Levene who I was really impressed by, and then through him I linked up with Jah Wobble, which was great for me at the time. I was so happy to work with Keith, because Keith just had such an original sound, and I knew I could translate that originality he had into a dub context, and it worked totally if you listen to those Creation Rebel and Singers and Players records. He also played guitar on some of those New Age Steppers sessions, and laid down bass as well on some tracks, which I don’t think he was ever credited for… So it was John Lydon who had the idea for me to work with his band, and I loved their sound and what they were doing.

Levene’s sparse guitar sound on Creation Rebel’s Threat To Creation and the War of Words albums, jagged and lonely, punctuated the melancholy and ethereal purity of Bim’s angelic voice… Without a Love like Yours/Devious Woman and its dubwise excursion is a work as powerful and compelling as Bim Sherman’s earlier Kingston releases.

On his tracks cut for Adrian and Creation Rebel, Keith Levene’s style is eerily reminiscent of Earl Chinna’s style on the East of The River Nile album… (Check out the emptiness of the East of the River Nile album, and specifically Chinna’s spiraling chord structures on Pablo’s Nature’s Dub, loosely held together by almost bleak echoing piano notes, falling like rain in a deserted space).

Then there is Bim’s meditative version of Satta, here going under the title of Ethos Design, and it is a design, the instruments acting as sculptural forms, existing in structures in which the silences are as vital as the drum-bass movements. It is an extraordinary work of linear sound deconstruction, the rhythm section building up, only to literally fall away, as the engineer gets deeper and deeper into separate drum tones, reducing the vibe to a heartbeat pulse… snares fall away, cymbals and high hat oscillate in bright spirals, only to be further reduced to a skeletal form, with Bim’s voice effortlessly present, floating over the surface as the song fades in to reflective silence…

Deadley Headley, (who contributed to Augustus Pablo’s Rockers label, notably the Rockers meets King Tubby inna Firehouse album) cut  his own melancholy horns version on the same Creation Rebel version of this rhythm, and the drum track was used to fine effect on a version of Bim Sherman’s Revolution/ Resolution: In the latter case, the drum track received brutal disassembly at the hands of Adrian, spinning the snare sounds backwards, then forwards in a spiral of noise, only to drop into the familiar Revolution bass vibration… uncompromising and aggressive. Also featured on Threat To Creation are the severely underrated drum skills of Eskimo “Mus’come” Fox, and Bruce Smith, who went on to work as Lydon’s PIL drummer for four years: Listen to the version of Horace Andy’s Problems on the Playgroup album, (titled Deep and Mintyful) for some militant drum and percussion interplay, and you’ll see how underrated these drummers truly are.

What about working with Jah Wobble, I asked Adrian? Jah Wobble had in his early days, had a serious reputation as a hard man: an instinctive, natural bass player, but cantankerous into the bargain. In Jon Savage’s book England’s Dreaming, journalist Nick Kent describes the by now notorious time he was attacked with a bike chain by Sid Vicious at an early Pistols gig : “Sid immediately pulled this chain out. He made some remark he thought was insulting like: ‘I don’t like your trousers.’ The guy next to me immediately makes a motion towards Vicious and then pulls his knife out and he really wants to cut my face. Years later I find out his name is Wobble. This was a real speed freak, and this is when it got very unhealthy. I remember putting my hands up and not moving a muscle, and then Vicious tapped him on the shoulder and he disappeared immediately. It was all a set up: Vicious then had a clear aim, and got me with the bike chain.”

Wobble saw it somewhat differently though, as he told Jon Savage: “I used to get violent on a few occasions… The one with Nick Kent was not one of those. Kent was with some geezer who demanded that we step aside, they couldn’t see the band. I said ‘fuck off’ which was pretty standard. Sid wasn’t a rucker but he lashed him with a chain and then I had a go, but we were just mucking about. What I didn’t know then was if you set yourself up as a hardman, someone will come looking for you who’s harder than you are…” Again  to Jon Savage, Wobble spoke of his friendship with John Lydon and Sid Vicious: “John and Sid were exactly what I was looking for when I was sixteen… all I knew then was that I desperately didn’t want to work. I was already an angry young man. I had images of being enclosed by council flats, feeling very claustrophobic.” Jon Savage comments on Wobble: “Only [Jah Wobble's] icy blue stare now betrays his past. During Punk, Wobble, Like Sid, resembled a random destruction machine, wound up and placed in the middle of an event to see what would occur. Today he speaks of his past as if of another life.”

I recounted these stories to Adrian, and I perceived  a certain mischievous, conspiratorial expression cross his face, (memories perhaps?) but when he speaks, his love and respect for Wobble are only too obvious. He speaks of Wobble’s achievements with pride:

Me and Wobble go back a long way, and I love him. We’ve always been very close. It’s true, Wobble did have a problem with alcohol, but that’s all in the past now, and he’s long left that behind. I respect what he has become as a person and a musician, because he is an example of someone who has really achieved and built everything from his own efforts. You always hear people say, “Oh Wobble couldn’t play bass when Public Image started, and he just had a good, instinctive way with playing a heavy dub bass-line” well, that may have been true back then, but let me tell you, Wobble really can play now! He really understands his instrument; he is the original MR FAT BASS SOUND. That is Wobble for you. The last time I saw Wobble was at his wedding and he looked so happy. I’m proud of the stuff Wobble has done with me on those African Head Charge and Dub Syndicate records, and I love a lot of his solo stuff too. Some of his early tunes on the Betrayal album are really good.

I was very keen to know more about the African Head Charge albums as well. They were so prolific, eccentric and uncategorisable, yet no one had really spoken about them at any great length, so I was very eager to get Adrian’s insight in to these strange records. He spoke about them with obvious a sense of sincerity, but with a definite high spiritedness, representative of the obviously bizarre and downright eccentric sounds that Bonjo I et al had created all those years ago.

I’ll be straight with you, a lot of those sounds we created on those records came out the consumption in large amounts of two very different drugs, speed and marijuana! You know, those African Head Charge records were a labour of love to me, and we didn’t really expect too many financial rewards. When you listen to a record like Environmental Studies, it’s clear that a sound like that might be intimidating to some people. Woven into the mix, you can hear car crashes, water flowing, bottles breaking. We used a lot of “found sounds” and many “environment sounds” from the studio down at Berry Street where it was recorded. It’s a long time since I’ve listened to that record, but who knows what sounds we put into that record, I think we even might have used water sounds from the toilets and humming vibrations from the boiler room! I haven’t listened to that record in a long time, for the simple reason that when I was working on the record, I listened to it repeatedly, day in, day out, so in my mind, its very much a part of that time… I’ll have to go back to it and listen to it again some time…

I mentioned that the Deadley Headley contributions are especially good on that album, to which Adrian wholeheartedly agreed. I also asked him about my favourite track from the My Life In A Hole In The Ground album, the eerie and haunting Far Away Chant. It is such a strange piece of music, and I was inquisitive to know, where it had come from, deep in the On-U Sound psyche!

Yes, that’s a heavy track. If I remember rightly, it came out of the same sessions we had been working on with Prince Far I and the Dub Syndicate for the Cry Tuff album. There was a slow and hard track, Plant Up, with a classic, growling Far I chant about the herb… anyway, I wanted something even slower, more threatening, heavier, so I took similar sounding rhythm track, and slowed it right down, right down, making it ridiculously slow and heavy, and laid Far I’s anti nuclear chant over the top. You know, the film director David Lynch took that track, and slowed it down even further, which made it even more threatening, and used it in Wild at Heart as part of his soundtrack which really pleased me. The mood of the scene he chose it for was pretty dark… I believe it was a ritual ceremony or sacrifice with Harry Dean Stanton.

I asked him specifically about a point in the middle of the aforementioned song, when it just simply stops, cuts off randomly for a few seconds, halfway through a vocal line, midway into a word, seemingly for no reason… before crashing back mid way through the tune… It creates a pretty surreal effect! Adrian laughs at the memory…

As I said, they were pretty strange times when we recorded those albums, and random too sometimes! I can’t tell you about that part of the track! Who knows? Maybe I accidentally hit the pause button halfway through the track and we left it in the mix?

He isn’t joking either…

I went on to ask him if a he had received criticism from the reggae cognoscenti mafia in London at that time for his bizarre experimentation with roots music, and unconventional attitude to an often over orthodox form. (I remembered back in the late 70’s and early 80’s some roots purists turning their noses up and not buying certain tunes if they knew they had been recorded in Wood Green or Peckham, even if the dubs were as heavy and creative as what was coming out of Jamaica).

Yes, I did experience some of that, but I didn’t care. We always believed in those early On-U releases, and I felt some of them would have sounded incredible as futuristic film soundtracks. It’s true that some purists on the London scene dissed me for those records I was producing at the time. Perhaps it was the sheer unconventionality of the sound, the inability to be able to categorise such a threatening sound. I didn’t give a fuck about the luddite purists with their little reserves. Really, they didn’t matter to me. I just went on to expand my experiments, putting out hard dub records by Creation Rebel, featuring entire tracks made up of backward tape loops, industrial drills roaring, that kind of style. Anyway, what did the elitists matter to me? I remember going round to people’s houses to listen to tunes, and these guys would be covering up the label with their hands so you couldn’t see who it was by, or blanking out the title. What is that behaviour, you know? I was always very open about this music ‘cos I love it. I used to give away good rare tunes, help people get into the music and hear good tunes. I enjoyed promoting good roots artists, artists who deserved the exposure. I even knew some people who would be too intimidated to visit roots stores because they worried the vibe might be intimidating, but of course it isn’t like that at all.

Finally on the subject of African Head Charge: what about Drastic Season, I asked?

That was extreme. The stand out track for me is Depth Charge, with that slow, driving syndrum intro.

Seen. 20,000 leagues under the sea style! I always thought that was such a harsh record, and I loved that aspect of it, its uncompromising sound, its complete lack of concession to anything even remotely commercial. When listened to repeatedly there were some extraordinary rhythms at play here. A look at the track titles gives some indication of the bizarre listening experience lying in wait for the (believe me here) unprepared listener: African Hedgehog, Snake in the Hole, I want Water…

On some tracks, it sounded as if an array of animals had somehow been sucked into the wildness and primal coldness of the mix… croaking frogs, shrieking birds, massively distorted so as to be rendered unrecognisable, snakes hiss, and an assortment of other bizarre creatures make their presence felt… The over all result is disorienting, disturbing, but as a sonic assault, deeply pleasurable… It is the strangest collection of rhythms I’ve ever encountered, yet one of the most rewarding…

When discussing these African Head Charge works, Adrian’s expression is bright, concentrated, inspired. It is clear he loves talking about these old releases, taking pleasure in how disorienting and ground-breaking they were and still undoubtedly are, the mixture of menace and sheer euphoric spirit present in the records. Apparently not many press releases ever came out of the On-U Studios, but in the case of Drastic Season one did emerge, and reading it back now is as extraordinary and baffling as the sounds on the disc proved to be:

“A mix of human, animal and machine sounds… check it if you are a dancer, a listener, a film maker, a computer programmer, a human or an animal. Special treats in store for steam locomotive enthusiasts and biologists. You’ve never heard such sounds in your life.”

Changing subject now, I asked Adrian what he felt had changed in people’s attitudes to buying reggae, or indeed any good music, since the late 70’s. He reflected a while then answered:

Is music too corporate and controlled now? … Well, in the past it was a whole ritual… the vinyl, the sleeve, the record label… you know, down the record shop on a Friday night, it was pure ritual… black guys, young white guys, sound men… all enjoying the thrill and pleasure of the ritual, buying the hardest 12″ disco, or spiritual 7″ with a heavy dub on the version… Now, it’s largely a different matter, more of a commodity, a lot of people with a disposable income, and besides, music isn’t viewed in the same precious kind of way, because so much is available now. This just wasn’t the case before. You really had to hunt around to find the kind of tunes you wanted, it was a whole different process. The mystique is taken out of record buying now in a way. Besides the commercial side, there is a whole cross pollination and interchange of ideas and influences going on, which just wasn’t in existence in the late 70’s or eighties, and that in a sense demystifies the uniqueness of what was once a specific “reggae sound” too. Many noises, vibrations, frequencies that were exclusive to reggae are now being used in Hip Hop and other styles too, so that has to be taken into account. Plus the influence isn’t only one-way: reggae too, is soaking up sounds and influences from other forms as well.

I went on to ask Adrian his view of the UK roots scene past and present, and UK so called “Nu Roots”:

UK has always had good roots music. I love what Neil Fraser has done over the years. I especially liked the tunes he put out by Aisha, Macka B and the good stuff he does these days with Mafia and Fluxy. Those are really good tunes. As for the UK Nu roots? Yeah, I like it too, it’s all good works, but I would say this, I feel they need to get away from concentrating exclusively on steppers rhythms, perhaps use vocalists more. They need to get out of limiting themselves to steppers. Having said that, it isn’t a criticism. I like what they do. So England has always had a good roots tradition, and besides that, it’s always had openness to a kind of avant garde thread in the dub world. I had a taste of that myself when I worked with Suns Of Arqa back in the late 70’s and early eighties with their weird cut ups and Islamic, Celtic and Persian influences which were way ahead of their time. They came to me and said “give us some rhythms!” I duly did so, and was impressed with what they did with them. So this openness has always been there in UK, love of hard music and willingness to experiment.

In a discussion of UK roots artists, it was inevitable that I ask him about Shaka. He answered with a sense of awe, respect and reverence.

Shaka? I’ve known Shaka for over 25 years. We are close. I’ve got his number, he’s got mine you know? I have ultimate respect for the man Jah Shaka. Shaka just loves his music! He’s a soul head and he knows his jazz too, deeply. Did you know that? Shaka just has his own thing altogether. Playing music for ten, twelve hours without a break, until he enters a trance like state, then he’s on God’s plane, following God’s plan.

What was his opinion about the current roots music coming out of Jamaica?

There is a lot of hard, tough music coming out of Jamaica right now. Astounding tunes. I especially like the Xterminator studio works, and the album MLK in Dub was a real groundbreaker. Then of course there’s people like Daweh Congo. Good music. There is a lot of good music out there to check out and follow. I think they are increasingly aware of an interest in dubwise styles over here in Europe, as well as an awareness of Europe’s interest in the noise factor.

(This interest in keeping up with the cutting edge of Jamaican innovation  was certainly in evidence from the (literally) piles and piles of modern Jamaican roots and dancehall 45’s, neatly stacked in the studio, cupboards and corridors: Productions by new and hungry contenders, innovators out of Kingston such as Steven Stanley, Soljie, Bulby, Penthouse label, African Star and Xterminator music… Bass Research and development…)

Where did Adrian think was the main market in Europe right now for roots music?

France, without a doubt. People like Burning Spear and Israel Vibration are stars there in their own right, and why on earth shouldn’t they be? They do consistently good work and France rewards them accordingly, they get appreciated. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen in UK for roots artists.

What is Adrian’s opinion of the Junglist and drum and bass vibes, I wondered, especially since some of the drum ‘n’ bass artists I had recently interviewed had name checked On-U Sound as an influence?

When I hear Jungle and drum ‘n’ bass artists saying that On-U Sound influenced them, well I feel that’s very kind, because as Rasta philosophy tells it, “each one teach one”, and I was influenced by so many people too, so I’m glad this vibe is continuing.

Finally, I felt I had to ask him about the death of Bim Sherman. We had listened to his music for 25 years or so, but not many of us had any insight into the man himself. All we knew of him was his voice, with that uplifting, lonely and angelic character. Adrian looked somewhat dark and serious at the mention of Bim and it is obviously still a delicate point, since they had worked together for a long time.

Did you hear Miracle? That says a lot about Bim. What can I say? Bim was a darling. I’m sorry for using that term, but I’m not sure which other word to use. He was a lovely human being, just a pleasure to work with, and I had been a huge fan of his, right from the early records. He was such a gentle person. Don’t get me wrong though, he could look after himself, and cuss with the best of them. Bim is not someone you would fuck around with. He could speak up for himself, stand up for himself.

Much later, I was to see Adrian’s diary entry for the period covering Bim’s illness and eventual death…

“It was to be my first proper tour as a live DJ… A few days prior to departure, Bim had fallen ill and was in hospital. I visited him at 11.30 the night before I left. It was to be the last time I’d see him alive. We got the news that he passed on the 17th while we were in Dijon. I returned home the next day. Skip McDonald and Bim had a very close friendship. Skip… was devastated… I was sad for Bim’s family, angry with people and everyone around felt empty…”

Gregory Mario Whitfield

What Gives / Non Stop Girls / Do The Pop / Man With The Golden Helmet / Descent Into The Maelstrom / New Race

Aloha Steve And Danno / Anglo Girl Desire / Murder City Nights / You’re Gonna Miss Me / Hand Of Law / Hit Them Again

This post is respectably dedicated to Bob Short, late of Blood And Roses, pictured here on the fence in 1978 outside a shared house in Darlinghurst, a suburb of Sydney and the area where the Oxford Funhouse venue would have been. Filth the band Bob was in at the time may well have performed at that venue on occasions, The Saints and Radio Birdland certainly did…

Bob who is celebrating his 50th birthday today, would probably have grown up in his formative years with The Saints and Radio Birdman and would no doubt know this record uploaded tonight, backwards, sideways and any other ways, but I uploaded it anyway in celebration of Bob actually reaching 50 and for the benefit of any browsers who may not have heard too much of this great band.  

Happy Birthday Bob from all here at KYPP online.

A wonderful (and very long) interview below courtesy of  nkvdrecords.com.

New Race a Radio Birdman / MC5 / Stooges spin off band can be heard on this site HERE

With the benefit of almost a quarter century of perspective, it’s apparent that, with the possible exception of the Easybeats, Radio Birdman are the most important band in the history of Australian rock and roll. Even die hard Saints fans can’t argue this – as great as the Saints were, they split for the UK almost before anyone in Australia noticed them, and they didn’t come back for many years afterwards. And when they did, it wasn’t the same band.

While Radio Birdman eventually also took their chances in the UK and also foundered on those shores, they waited until they’d caused a lasting impact in their own country – an impact that remains to this day. The Saints and Radio Birdman each released their debut singles within weeks of each other in 1976 – the first independently released singles in Australia and the start of the independent record industry there. But Radio Birdman did more – they created a scene where there none had existed, taking responsibility for booking the Oxford Funhouse in Sydney and ensuring both a place to play and a place to hang out for musical misfits who shared their opinion that music should be a wild, emotional and primal experience. Though the names of the bands that played the Funhouse may be unknown today, a lot of the players are not…turning up in later bands that achieved international status like the Hoodoo Gurus or Died Pretty.

There can be no doubt that it was Radio Birdman who infected the entire country with a love of Detroit-styled rock’n’roll owing a debt to the Stooges and MC5, a passion that exists to this day. For most of the 80s inner city Sydney almost nightly boasted gigs featuring bands that were directly influenced by Radio Birdman, and Radio Birdman shirts were probably more prevalent than those of any other band. Even now, bands like Brother Brick, Asteroid B-612 or Challenger 7 owe a strong and acknowledged debt to Radio Birdman.

Although they are consistently lumped in with the MC5 and Stooges, there was much more to Radio Birdman than that. Deniz Tek’s guitar licks often sound more like something from Blue Oyster Cult than the Stooges, with an almost jazz-influenced feel to them. There’s more than a little surf element to songs like “Descent Into The Maelstrom”, “Aloha Steve and Danno” or “Cryin’ Sun”. Rob Younger’s vocals recall Jim Morrison of the Doors more than Iggy Pop, and Pip Hoyle’s keyboards reinforce that feeling. And the songs show a strong sense of pop hooks, as on “More Fun”, “Non Stop Girls” or “Do The Pop”. It’s the fact that so many different influences are combined that made their sound so enduring…it doesn’t feel locked to any one era or style.

The story of Radio Birdman has to be one of the most fascinating in rock and roll. A full treatment of the band’s history requires an entire book, and fortunately, there is an excellent volume available in Vivien Johnson’s Radio Birdman (Sheldon Booth Publishing, 1990). The interview here provides only a glimpse of some key episodes, but suffice to say, the band was led by Tek and Younger, the former an American guitar ace from Michigan, who was in Australia studying medicine, and the latter their passionate Australian vocalist. Radio Birdman included 3 more Australians in bassist and graphic design wizard Warwick Gilbert, drummer Ron Keely, and another med student in Pip Hoyle on keyboards. Rounding out the lineup was Canadian Chris Masuak, who joined on guitar when Hoyle left the band for a brief period and stayed when Hoyle subsequently returned.

In the interview below, Tek and Younger talk in detail about their earlier bands and the formation of Radio Birdman. Like most bands, Radio Birdman was not immediately appreciated and spent plenty of nights playing to nobody. It was only in their last few months in Australia that they began to achieve wider recognition and play to large crowds. Like the Sex Pistols in the UK, or the Velvet Underground ten years earlier, their real impact was in the number of bands they inspired. The people who heard Radio Birdman seemed to undergo a conversion and develop the conviction that they, too, could and should start a band and play with fire and passion.

Signed to Sire Records in 1978, Radio Birdman released their first LP Radios Appear in the US and UK (with substantial modifications in content and packaging from the original Australian release) and left Australia for a UK tour. They returned in the fragments of wreckage. The tour was an artistic success but a logistical disaster, with their tour sponsor Polygram breaking from Sire before they started, a negative and ideologically straitjacketed UK rock press hounding them, the headlining Flamin’ Groovies dropping out of the tour due to Cyril Jordan slicing his hand open, and finally Sire dropping their contract while they were in the middle of recording their second album at Rockfield Studios. With internal pressures building, the band exploded. That second LP, Living Eyes, finally saw Australian release two years later. It has never been released anywhere else.

Steve: The Ramones and the Sex Pistols…those bands were definitely more basic than Radio Birdman.

Rob: Well, yeah, we had one more guitar!

Steve: And keyboards…

Rob: Ah, yeah! Shit!

Steve: And I think your songs were a lot more sophisticated, too. Songs like “Descent Into The Maelstrom” – I can’t imagine the Pistols or Ramones doing a song anywhere near like that.

Deniz: Yeah, I dunno. Maybe they had a different style, but there’s something outstanding about the songs on that first Ramones album, too. What they achieved to me was really revolutionary. We were sort of in between periods with our band because we pre-dated that stuff by a little bit. We didn’t see ourselves as part of the punk genre, because when we started up, the word punk was used to refer to bands that were mid-60s garage bands mostly. It was a different sound.

Steve: I wasn’t trying to imply that the Ramones weren’t good. I love the Ramones, and most of those late 70s punk bands, too. It’s just that it was kind of a straitjacket in terms of what people would accept if they were into those kinds of punk bands, and I think that hurt Radio Birdman.

Deniz: Well, yeah, because once people lock into a genre or recognize a genre as being what they are into, they can put the blinders on a bit, and we didn’t really fit into a genre. We took elements from all over the place. We had a pretty heavy Blue Oyster Cult influence as well as a British Invasion band influence. I even copped riffs from James Brown’s Live At The Apollo for one of our songs…

Rob: Did you?

Deniz: Well, yeah. That riff in “The Hand Of Law”.

Rob: Oh, right!

Deniz: If you think of the intro kind of fanfare thing on Live At The Apollo ’63.

Rob: That’s great, I’d never connected that.

Deniz: I’m not sure I was aware of that at the time, but I can hear it now.

Rob: I’ll have to pull that out and have a listen!

Deniz: Yeah, so there’s a lot of mixes of stuff in there. We had a pretty broad base of influences. We liked a lot of different kinds of music.

Steve: It seems like in Australia you could do that sort of thing more easily than you might elsewhere.

Deniz: I wouldn’t say easily…

Rob: No, I don’t think so at all.

It’s only that we came on fairly strongly with it and maybe turned people’s heads around with it. Not that we were universally liked from the outset or anything. It gathered a bit of momentum, but not really!  Our stuff was pretty left of field at the start and I think people around Sydney just wanted to hear Free and Deep Purple covers and shit like that.

Deniz: Yeah, that’s right. When we started off it was mostly laid back boogie bands and bands that would do sort of electric blues like Company Kane and the La Dee Das, and things like that. Then there were bands that would cover whatever song was popular from the band that had most recently toured in Australia, because in those days not that many bands would come out. When I first got there, everybody was doing Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin songs because those two bands had come out in the early part of that year, and that’s what people wanted to hear. So when we started to do what we did, it took years for us to get more than one or two people to come along and see us.

Steve: As long as we are going back to the beginning, I thought I’d try my trick question, which is to get Rob to describe TV Jones for me and then get Deniz to talk about the Rats a little. So maybe Rob I can put you on the spot and ask you to go first.

Rob: Oh, dear! OK, well, basically TV Jones (pauses as Deniz laughs in the background) – TV Jones were a great band, because they were different. They were just as different as anything that Deniz was a part of later on. Deniz used to be the front man in that band – he didn’t always have a guitar in his hand. From that I actually probably learned a bit myself. But the style of music that they were playing – the covers were anything from J. Geils to Alice Cooper, the Stooges, the Stones, and that type of thing. The originals they were writing were complimentary to that. They had a sort of a glam aspect about them, too, which in a way my own band the Rats did at the time. So there was a fair bit of common ground. I never saw their earliest gigs, which were mostly at this place called the Charles, wasn’t it Deniz, down my way where I live now?

Deniz: Yeah, the Charles Hotel.

Rob: Yeah, and they apparently had developed a pretty large following down there. So they actually had a great base of appeal. They weren’t unattractive to look at either. Apparently they’d cut quite a dash down there. I dunno, I think you had a couple of name changes before you arrived at TV Jones. But I was impressed.

Steve: So how about the Rats, Deniz?

Deniz: The Rats was the first really hardcore rock band I saw in Australia. I heard about them because my roommate, the guy who had the lease at the student house I was living in was Ron Keely – that house actually was the site of the formation of a lot of personal relationships that are still going on today. John Needham (Citadel Records founder and a key figure in Australian indie rock for the last 20 years – Steve) was one of the other students who lived in that house. We just sort of met there because we picked up an ad for a room in a student house, and Ron was the guy who was running the household. I rented a room in that house, if you can believe this, for six dollars and fifty cents a week. (laughs)

Rob: Now it would be six hundred and fifty dollars!

Deniz: Yeah, exactly. But Ron was a drummer, and he knew some other musicians in Sydney, and it was through him that I’d met Rob and got in touch with the Rats. I think Ron actually played me a tape of the Rats before I saw them, and the tape sounded great. I guess it reminded me a lot of the New York Dolls at the time. It had a lot of similar elements to the Dolls, and they actually covered a few New York Dolls songs.

Rob: Yeah, we played about six off the first album alone! (laughs) The first song I ever did was “Bad Girl”, actually.

Deniz: Yeah, and you used to do “Jet Boy” and “Personality Crisis” and things like that. But then I got to see them. It was a two guitar lineup. Warwick was the lead player, Warwick Gilbert. I think he played through a Fender amp, but he had the treble and volume on ten and the bass on zero – just this incredible slicing treble sound, and the only thing I’d heard that came close to that before was Williamson on Raw Power. Just this incredibly biting treble. So they had that going, and the rhythm guitar player was named Mick Lyon, and he just had this style where he played like every down stroke that the Ramones played, plus every backstroke, too. It was just this wall of noise coming out of his amp.

Rob: Yeah, he played a Telecaster thinline.

Deniz: You couldn’t even see his hand going up and down, he was playing that fast. And since it was a thinline Tele, again it was extreme treble. It was this incredibly abrasive yet somehow compelling wall of noise coming out of this band, and then Rob singing. I think in the early days they were doing makeup and stuff and had a great look, and it was the only thing out there that was different. So we immediately became pals and started going to each other’s gigs, and I think we had at least one gig together. Down in Wollongong, didn’t we?

Rob: Yeah, I think we did one or two.

Deniz: I think about five people showed up.

Rob: Yeah, we often outnumbered the audiences, I think. But I remember Ron Keely saying he knew a guy who played the same sort of stuff that the Rats were playing, and I just said, “Oh, bullshit. There’s no chance!” And he said “I can introduce you”. And I said there’s no way that any bands out here know anything about the Dolls and the Stooges and all that. But we got together eventually.

Deniz: In fact I remember the night very well when he brought you over to the house. I was trying to have a quiet evening at home listening to my records and all these people started turning up.

Rob: Shit, I’m sorry!

Deniz: So I look up from headphones and there’s all these people in the room, and they look like a band!

Steve: So then the origin of Radio Birdman was when Deniz you got kicked out of TV Jones…

Deniz: Yeah, I was sacked from the band. As Rob said, we had a little popularity in Wollongong, which was a town – I guess it was a coal mining or steel mining place about 100 kilometers south of Sydney. It’s a blue collar town, and that’s where we had gigs. We had a residency at this hotel there, the Charles Hotel. You know, in Australia, hotels are pubs. That’s their word for a pub – “hotel”. It’s not like you’re going to the Hilton. It was just this corner pub. They had bands, and we would get to play every Friday and Saturday night and get a free meal and a few bucks and free beer. At the time I was student in Sydney and I had to hitch-hike down there every Friday or Saturday afternoon and hitch-hike back on Sunday afternoon.

So we decided to make the move up to Sydney, because we saw that as going to the big time. We thought we were doing so great in Wollongong and we had no problems in generating this vibe down there that we just assumed that when we went to Sydney we’d be popular there, too. And that was quite a wrong assumption, because the minute we got to Sydney problems started.

We got a one week residency in Checkers, and the other band that we were opening for was Sherbet. We would do four sets, Sherbet would do one set, and then we would do a last quick set. After the first night we got fired from that gig. We showed up on day two to play and all our stuff was thrown off the stage – equipment was on the dance floor and these heavy grade bouncers were telling us “Get all your shit out of here now, or we’ll confiscate it and you won’t see it again.” Try to argue with these guys and cop an attitude and they offer to break both of your hands and put you in the garbage bin out back.

We didn’t have a van organized or anything but we had to get our stuff out of there. We played at the Whisky and it was the same thing again, and we couldn’t get a gig after that. So to make a long story short, the other guys in the band said it must be Deniz. There’s this vibe of negativity – that was the word they used – he’s too negative on stage…

Rob: (laughs) You were!

Deniz: (ignores Rob and continues) …and we’re not doing the covers people want to hear and it’s unpopular. So we’ve gotta get rid of Deniz and get somebody that we’re more likely to be successful with. So they came around the house and said I was going to be out of the band.

Rob: Yeah, I was there. That was hilarious!

Deniz: Yeah, Rob was actually there when it happened.

Steve: So what happened Rob?

Rob: (laughs again) They were all sitting around telling him he was Mister Bad Vibes on stage and they wanted to be a bit more, you know, um, welcoming to the people. Bands like Hush and so forth that played things that were more commercial. It wasn’t exactly like their music was all so left of field anyway. It was quite accessible stuff – it was rocking! But nevertheless, they couldn’t tolerate it…Deniz probably gave the audience a few vacant stares and a few glares and was doing a lot of various moves and stuff like that, the sort of thing that people around Sydney had never seen before, really. And I dunno, maybe that non-plussed an audience, but to me it was just the icing on the cake. They could play!

In fact, the Rats were dead primitive and I could understand if people hated us, but with TV Jones, they had more musicality about them. They had a level of confrontation to them to, but I couldn’t figure out what the other guys were on about. It was ridiculous. They got this sort of milquetoast character to sing sort of more in the British vein, I suppose, more of the upper range shrieking a la … that type of thing, you know?

Deniz: The guy’s name was Paul Greene, and he came on the stage with TV Jones as the new singer wearing jump suits, a big moustache and kind of a poofy feathered haircut. And he had a snake, too, so they could cover the Alice Cooper aspect. And of course, we all know where that all ended up!

Rob: Exactly. So I’m sitting here listening to all this shit and I’m thinking, well, this is just great, because now we can get a band together. So I was lapping it up. I thought it was quite amusing.

Steve: So were the Rats coming apart at that time?

Rob: I think we had just broken up ourselves. This happened almost concurrently (or is it simultaneously). I think Warwick just rang me up one day and said he couldn’t carry on with it, so that pretty much broke the band up. So that was that. And Deniz and I had struck up a bit of a friendship. One of the bases of our conversations in his living room was “Who’s better, James Williamson or Keith Richards?” and stuff like that. And that was it, a friendship was forged and we got something together after that.

Steve: When you first started as Radio Birdman, were you doing a lot of Rats and TV Jones tunes along with some covers, or did you start writing new material right away?

Deniz: Well, it’s obvious that we want to use the best of the two previous bands, so we did some of the same covers – we were doing “Personality Crisis” that the Rats were doing, and I think we did some Velvet Underground stuff…

Rob: Yeah, we did “Waiting For The Man” and “Rock and Roll” – stuff like that.

Deniz: Probably about half the stuff was from the previous two bands and the other half of the set was stuff that we got together for Radio Birdman.  The first couple of original songs I wrote, we had been doing those in TV Jones as well and we transmitted those onto Radio Birdman. Things like “Man With Golden Helmet”, “Monday Morning Gunk” and “I-94″, which originally was called “Eskimo Pies”. TV Jones had actually done a recording session and we got a couple of those songs on tape.

Steve: That was that single that just came out in Europe a little while ago, right?

Deniz: Well, sort of. That single, half of that single was TV Jones and the other half was a Radio Birdman out take. The guy made an error that put it out. He had a tape and he figured it was all TV Jones, but there was a mix of stuff on it. We had the better part of an album done, but the tape got erased or recorded over and used again for something else, and all we had was cassette dubs of the stuff.

Steve: At the start, Deniz, you and Pip were both in med school, which seems like a pretty serious case of burning the candle at both ends.

Deniz: I dunno. You’ve gotta do something else. You can’t just sit around and study all the time. Pip had been in a later version of TV Jones, so we’d been playing together for probably about a year before Radio Birdman started up. Pip was an interesting character because he’d never played rock music before and didn’t know anything about it. The closest he’d gotten to rock music was something like John Mayall. He’d been playing jazz and classical music. So especially with his classical music background, his tempo was whatever he wanted it to be at that moment. Which made his playing really, really interesting as far as fitting in with the rigid 4/4 format of a rock band. There was a lot of give and take there, and I think the results were that he sounded different from everyone else.

But the other guys in TV Jones didn’t particularly like Pip. First of all, they’d never met anyone else who was intelligent like Pip was, so he was kind of intimidating to them for that reason. But also, they didn’t understand his time and pitch freedom as being freedom. They understood it as he couldn’t play 4/4. So I think Pip had been tossed out of the band just before I was.

But as far as having time to play in a band…I suppose I could have done better in medical school if I’d studied harder. But I did OK. I got a credit and distinction and got through OK. Most of the stuff you learn in medical school you never use again anyway in the real world. So I think it’s actually more important in life to have other experiences. Look at most doctors and they have zero understanding of most normal people because they’ve never been around them – they’ve just had their head in the books their whole life.

Steve: Well, you gotta admit it’s an unusual thing. There haven’t been many bands with even one doctor in them, let alone two.

Deniz: But if you have one it attracts more.

Steve: Probably true! Changing gears, Rob, can you tell me some of the details about recording the Burn My Eye EP and how you came to the idea of releasing it on your own?

Rob: Oh, dear, I’m fairly hazy on the details of all of that. I remember we became acquainted with this journalist who was the editor of this magazine called RAM – Rock Australia Magazine is what it stood for – and this guy Anthony O’Grady took us around to various studios introducing us to producers and engineers and getting us to try to put down a couple tracks here and there. Mostly it didn’t work out terribly well, but eventually he took us to meet the people at Trafalgar, which was Charles Fisher and an engineer that he worked with called John Sayers. And we hung around that studio and I suppose we must have talked about what we wanted to do, the direction of the band, how we saw ourselves – I can’t really recall. I can only recall that we kind of reached a point where we couldn’t agree, and it looked like the discussion was breaking down, and someone suggested, why don’t you just go in there and set up and play something anyway. And so we knocked out a couple of songs and they seemed really interested after that.

Deniz: Yeah, we were ready to walk out because there was such a divergence in attitude between us and those guys. This was about the third or fourth studio that we had tried to work with and each one had failed as far as we were concerned. They didn’t like us and we didn’t like them. And the same thing was happening here with the discussion. We thought, this is hopeless, we’re going to leave. We’re out of here. But then Charles said, well, you know, you’re here, you’ve got your equipment here, and you might as well just play a couple of songs. And we said OK.

And you know what, they started to like us!

Rob: Yeah, which was to their credit, I suppose, from our point of view. Because hardly anyone ever did. So that was a surprise in itself. But I suppose we have to give credit to Anthony O’Grady for being so persistent as well.

Deniz: Yeah, he was willing to continue to take us around to other studios after the first couple of mishaps.

Rob: I think we went to one studio, it was something like 2SER radio station and I think we smoked out the console didn’t we?

Steve: Did Trafalgar actually pay for recording the EP and pressing it up, or how did you finance that?

Deniz: Yeah, Trafalgar paid.

Steve: Because it would have seemed like a pretty gutsy move if you had paid for it all yourself. But even so, the way you sold it was pretty unusual for the time.

Deniz: Well, Trafalgar wasn’t a label then, it was just a studio, and they’d never put a record out before under their own name. It was just a studio for hire. So this was a pretty bold move for them to go out on the limb and do an independent record. I don’t know if that had ever been done before in Sydney.

Rob: We weren’t aware that it had. I thought it was the first independent release. I’d never seen a record come out with no logo or anything on the label.

Steve: I’m not sure if it came first, but the one other that springs to mind is the first Saints single.

Rob: Yeah, but this was before that.  (Note – Ian MacFarlane’s Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop pegs the release date of Burn My Eye as October 1976 and

The Saints debut on their own Fatal Records of “(I’m) Stranded” as September 1976 – almost like Bell and Marconi practically simultaneously inventing the telephone!)

Steve: Were you surprised at how fast they sold out? Or were you expecting that it would sell pretty well?

Rob: I don’t remember. I just remember stamping the things. They were all white label records and we had a Radio Birdman symbol on a stamp and I was just sitting in the Trafalgar office stamping them. Then they’d get parceled up and sent out mail order. I think there were only about 1800 or so ever pressed up.

Deniz: Didn’t they go for about a dollar or two dollars?

Rob: Yeah, something like that. A dollar seventy five, maybe. Probably that was fairly reasonable in those days.

Steve: Yeah, but still selling 1800 of anything that’s relatively unknown is really hard. Even with the internet, I can tell you that with my label I do a thousand copies of something and it takes me years to make a dent in it.

Deniz: Yeah, that’s right, Steve, but look how many records are being put out now that you’re competing with. Whereas in those days there just wasn’t that much.

Steve: I suppose that’s fair enough. Well, another story I was hoping you’d re-tell is the story of how you met Lou Reed at the Sydney Airport and how that led to the Oxford Funhouse.

Deniz: Yeah, you know, I’ve told this story so many times that sometimes it’s hard to remember what’s really true about it and what I read in Vivien’s book. But to the best that I can recall, we knew that Lou Reed was going to be at the airport, and I wanted to go and see the press conference and I wanted to give him a Radio Birdman T-shirt. I had this idea to give him a T-shirt, but we didn’t have any T-shirts, so I went over to Dare’s house – Dare Jennings. He had just started silk screening. That’s even a much more incredible story, because this guy essentially owns Mambo (a clothing line similar to Quicksilver or Billabong that’s made Jennings one of the richest men in Australia according to Tek – Steve) and is a world clothing magnate now. But the first thing he did was a Radio Birdman T-shirt.

So I got him to make one, and Lou Reed answered these questions, and he was pretty tired after a long flight and was really kind of rude to these journalists. And I’m just listening at the back, and at the end of this press conference I walked up to him and handed him the T-shirt and said, this T-shirt is a present for you. And he said, oh, is this a local band? And I said yeah. And he said, local band, great! Are you playing? And I said yeah. But we didn’t really have a gig, and when he took off his secretary came up and said Lou wants to see your band. Where are you playing? And we didn’t have a gig, so I said, I don’t know, I don’t have my calendar with me right now, can I call you back? So I got her phone number and then we went and scrambled for a gig.

At this point, this was like mid 1975, this was the low point in terms of success for us. We’d been banned from all the major pubs on the circuit in Sydney. No place would have us. So we got the idea of going back to the Oxford, which is where the Rats used to play. Rob and Ron knew the guy that ran the thing, and they asked the guy – his name was Bill – if we could play there. They said, you don’t have to pay us, we just want to play, and our friends will come. Oh, and Lou Reed will come. And Bill said, well, if Lou Reed’s gonna come, you can play, but you’re not getting any money.

And we said, OK that’s fine, we’ll play. So we set up and our friends came, and it was actually a pretty good night. But of course Lou Reed never came. By then he’d forgotten about it or he blew it off. But it was a good night, and Bill actually came up to us after and gave us a ten dollar bill. I remember that really clearly. We’re sitting there, sweat-soaked, the place is full of beer cans and equipment, and we’re completely exhausted, and Bill goes, just to show you guys I appreciate how good you played, here’s ten bucks and be sure to pick up all these beer cans on your way out.

But then Bill wanted us to come back and play again, because a lot of people came and they drank a lot of beer. So that started off the residency for us at the Oxford. That’s how I remember it. Is that how you remember it, Rob?

Rob: Yeah, pretty much. I remember you also telling me at the time that Lou said something to the affect of see those people over there – he’s pointing at the journalists – he said “Fucking animals!” I remember you telling me that. I was impressed!

Steve: So after that you had a lot of pretty interesting bands play there with you that aren’t very well known outside of Australia, and probably aren’t even that well known inside Australia today, like Johnny Dole, or the Psychosurgeons, or the Hellcats, or the Mangrove Boogie Kings or those kinds of bands. Can you describe some of those?

Rob: Well, the Mangrove Boogie Kings were basically a rockabilly band. They were nice guys, and they played pretty well and had a huge repertoire. They were deeply rooted in the 50s. And Johnny Dole and the Scabs were playing 60s sort of songs, like Easybeats gear and so forth, maybe a few of their own, but in a more amped up way, more in the line of what became the punky sort of feel I guess. And who were the others we’re talking about?

Steve: The Hellcats?

Rob: Hellcats, yeah, well I think by the time the Hellcats were playing I seem to recall they had Damned songs and things like that in their set, didn’t they Deniz? They were doing “Born To Kill” and shit like that?

Deniz: Yeah, that was ’77. They were doing some of those early punk songs from England, and they were also doing some odd sort of gear like Beach Boys songs, but in an amped up way. They were doing “Fun Fun Fun” and things like that.

Rob: Yeah, I remember you being really taken by Mark Kingsmill’s drumming.

Deniz: I thought his drumming was really great and I loved Charlie Georges guitar playing.

Rob: Yeah, he had a tough style. It was mostly me and the Radio Birdman manager George Kringas who were booking that place, and I think we even either printed up leaflets or published some sort of little manifesto – it’s a bit embarrassing to think of it now – but it was basically like a set of rules about what you could wear in the place. But we were just trying to sort of give the place a kind of exclusive feel and create a sort of insular atmosphere and alienate the people that we thought were into all the weak stuff that we perceived as wimpy (laughs). So there were all these rules and edicts and shit, you know? We were trying to book bands in there that we thought were really like minded. But it wasn’t easy to do that, because there weren’t too many around there like that. So often that idea got compromised. And when we couldn’t play there ourselves, we had to get someone else in and now and then we’d have an expedient sort of band and we’d hear later on “fuck, don’t ever get them again”, you know. It was the sort of stuff that we loathed in the first place.

Deniz: But for the most part the idea was to try to get bands in there to play that had a hard time finding any where else to play because they were rejects like us. That was the idea, for rebellious people that would be rejected by the music establishment, they could play there. And the other idea was to turn all the money over to the bands. We kept nothing…we paid the girl at the door twenty bucks to take dollars at the door, and the guys who owned the bar got whatever the bar tab was, but all the door money, the band owned it.

Steve: Do you feel like having that place had a lot to do with developing bands in Sydney?

Deniz: I think some bands started just to play there. The Psychosurgeons probably started up just to play there.

Rob: Now, they were a pretty wild outfit.

Deniz: They later transformed into the Lipstick Killers, but originally they had a different singer and a different drummer. That was Mark Taylor’s band. They were pretty far out, those guys.

The band recorded their first classic LP, Radios Appear, for Australian release and then were signed by Sire for the international market. The Sire version of Radios Appear featured several different songs and new packaging. A fiery cover of the Stooges “TV Eye” and the old TV Jones tune “Monday Morning Gunk” were dropped off and their anthem “New Race” was shortened by nearly two minutes, but a brilliant cover of Roky Erickson’s “You’re Gonna Miss Me” and four new originals more than made up for the shortfall. The best of the new tracks was perhaps “Aloha Steve And Danno”, which copped the theme from “Hawaii 5-0″ for its bridge and even today is without question one of the toughest surf songs of all time.

I can still remember picking up my used promo copy of Radios Appear for $1.99 in a bin at Al Bums Records in Tucson in the summer of 1978. I’d never heard of the band, but they were on Sire, and almost everything else on Sire was great, so I figured it was worth a go. It seemed an odd record for the times…the cover showed six band members (everyone else had either 3, 4 or 5) on the front looking like for all the world like some kind of special forces group with guitars – the Dirty Half Dozen.

Inside, the music was something different, too. It was ferociously hard driving rock and roll, but it sure wasn’t anything like the 1-2-3-4 three chord rock coming out of the UK. There were murderous guitar solos, keyboard flourishes, and textures lifted from jazz, soul, surf, garage rock, 60s pop and hard rock all mixed together in a bewildering montage. Although scarcely a word was written about the band in any of the music magazines I read, it was pretty clear to me that this record was a keeper.

Unfortunately, by the day I got that record, the band was already nearing the end of its lifetime. Sire sent them to the UK for a tour that ended in disaster. Vivien Johnson’s book on Radio Birdman does a terrific job of describing the tensions leading to the band’s break-up – there’s only room to hint at the issues in this interview. From that UK tour period a second album ultimately surfaced in Living Eyes, a slightly more subtle record than the debut, but still a powerful piece of work.

Steve: Can you talk a little about how you recorded the original Radios Appear album?

Deniz: It was a lengthy process. You made the comment earlier that Trafalgar funded the EP and the sessions and stuff, well what really was happening was that we got to use the studio when nobody else was booked in and when they didn’t have any paying customers. So we were using an infrastructure that was already there and pretty much already paid for, they just had to have the engineer and turn the lights on. But we only could get in there when nobody else was using the studio. So it took like a year to get all the stuff together. If we had a free weekend and the studio had a free weekend we could go in.

But that didn’t happen very often, and it was tedious, because we had to haul everything in and set it up, set the drums up and get a drum sound. Sometimes we’d record a little bit in the afternoon and then we’d have to tear everything down and go to a gig, and then come back the next day, Sunday.

Rob: I don’t remember it being so spread out – I have no recollection of that at all! But I remember all those sheets of corrugated iron that we used to liven the room up a bit.  It always seemed a somehow little bit muffled or subdued. It was one of those LA or west coast designed studios for Eagles sort of music or something, wasn’t it?

Deniz: Yeah, and it was heavily carpeted. Everything on it was carpeted – the walls, the ceilings. The only thing that wasn’t carpeted was the window on the control room. And even that was some kind of special glass that muffled sound.

Rob: (laughs) Bullshit! (all laugh)

Deniz: So we would bring in sheets of corrugated iron roofing material from the streets, bring it in our van into the studio. The engineer thought we were being deliberately contrary, but we weren’t – we were just trying to make it sound a little harder. And if you listen to the sound of the record now, it sounds pretty good. One of the things I’ve been asked a lot in interviews lately since this thing came out is: how come it endures? How come it still sounds OK when everything else recorded around those days sounds dated?

And I think one of the things that makes it endure is that the production was pretty straight forward. They didn’t use a lot of gimmicks. We got a good guitar sound, and we played really loud in there, and we had the corrugated iron to help it sound harder.

Steve: Can you tell the story about how you got signed by Sire? I heard that Seymour Stein came to Sydney to sign you, is that right?

Rob: He came to sign the Saints, I think.

Deniz: He was there to sign the Saints, but somebody dragged him along to one of our shows at the Oxford Funhouse. At least that’s what I remember hearing.

Rob: He was dancing on a table, apparently!

Deniz: I never see things like that because I always have my head down.

Rob: Yes, I know. You are quite diligent, but I have the luxury of perusing the room and, yeah, he was over there doing all this. And he came to another gig, that one we did at the ABC TV studio. And subsequently he had a meeting with us out in Trafalgar in the control room there, and he was deep into it by then. He was talking about us going to the UK and supporting the Ramones as it was going to be at the time, and tour around there. But as we know, it turned out to be the Groovies.

Steve: Why was the overseas version of Radios Appear different from the original Australian one? It seems like it’s half a second album and half a first album – it always struck me as strange that you didn’t just release the Australian version outside of Australia or else do an entirely new LP.

Rob: What happened there? Did we get cold feet or something? Maybe we just thought we could make a stronger album. I know we had some more new songs.

Deniz: I think when Sire signed us up for the world wide release of Radios Appear that was one of our conditions. We said, we’ve been living with this album for about nine months now and there’s a lot of things about it we’d like to change. If it’s going to go out to the whole world, we’d like to make it better. We’d been in the studio recording some new songs. Not nearly enough to make a whole second album, but enough to change it. And we figured, who’s ever going to hear the Australian version of the album anyway? We weren’t really thinking globally.

Steve: Can you talk about some of the tours you did to other parts of Australia and how you influenced the music scene there? Just as an example, I’m working on another feature for my website with Rob Griffiths of the Little Murders, and he was telling me how impressed he was when he saw Radio Birdman on the first tour to Melbourne.

Rob: We hear that quite often from people, about how some of these gigs really were like seminal moments in their lives. They say that’s case and it’s really quite flattering when you hear it. I think people like Nick Cave used to come to some of those Melbourne shows, I believe, and that entire crowd.

Deniz: There was a big difference between the first time we saw them and the second.  They were quite friendly the first time around and invited us to a party or something.

But the second time we came back they copped a pretty hostile attitude. So I suppose that’s an influence of sorts.

Steve: Was it sort of a competitive thing?

Deniz: I don’t know if it was competitive or whether it was genuine hate.  I don’t know.

Steve: It doesn’t seem like they’d have much reason to dislike you…

Deniz: What I picked up at the time was that they’d found out that a couple of us went to medical school and they thought that that signified a lack of commitment – as compared to being a junkie or something like that, which implied more commitment. (much laughter from all)

Rob: I wouldn’t argue with that!

Deniz: Yeah, that’s what I picked up.

Steve: One of those Adelaide shows got shown on TV, didn’t it?

Rob: Yeah, the Marriatville show, they filmed about seven or eight songs, I think. Sort of washed the whole room out with these really bright lights and I had two microphones to sing through, one for the PA and one for the recording. It was actually a bit inhibiting in a way. But that footage is really well regarded, and they keep recycling it on the ABC late at night to this day. We broke the attendance record of that place. It wasn’t doing so well in those days, but we got over 900 people that night and the place was jammed. It was quite exciting going to Adelaide the first time. That’s the city that gave the Beatles the biggest reception they’d ever gotten anywhere in the world too. There was like 400,000 people out to see the Beatles, and there’s barely that many in the whole frigging city!

So there must be something about that place. But it was quite satisfying to feel that momentum building up. But there were still strange things going on. There were people from TV stations – like we did an interview after that particular gig that was filmed, and I believe that the person who conducted that interview subsequently had a nervous breakdown and said that “if Radio Birdman come back to Adelaide it’s going to bring down the government” and all this shit. I think the guy went right around the bloody bend 

But we seem to have evoked pretty strange reactions from people where ever we went. We were still getting banned at different times, weren’t we, even at that point? Yet popularity was building and we were getting radio airplay, too.

Deniz: Some of us, I don’t know if you were with us that night Rob or not, but that first time we went to Adelaide, some us went to see Fleetwood Mac play at an outdoor concert.

Rob: Yeah, I went to that.

Deniz: We wanted George to get Stevie Nicks to come back to the Grange with us. We actually thought he might be able to do it. Talk about hubris! (laughs)

Rob: I didn’t know that went on, but I went to the show.

Deniz: Yeah, George went off somewhere after we really goaded him and pestered him, and he came back fifteen minutes later and said “sorry, I can’t get you backstage”. And that was when we ran into Blondie, wasn’t it?

Rob: Oh, yeah, one of the trips down there. I suppose it was that first one. The place we were staying was called the Grange, right on the beach there. The beach with no surf. And the guy who was putting us up there, our friend Patrick Miles who had the rock column in the Adelaide Advertiser and he’s the one who championed us and was the catalyst in getting us over there – Blondie were touring so he invited us over there. So we got to meet the band and so forth. She seemed really sweet. Yeah, I’d forgotten about that.

Steve: Can you talk about the final tour that you did to England and how that got arranged and all the problems between Phonogram and Sire and all that?

Rob: Deniz is probably more expert on this because there were a lot of things I didn’t even know went on until about ten years after the fact. It’s quite strange – I keep learning things about what went on before I arrived in England, because Deniz and our manager went over before the band did. I’m still learning, so I’d be happy to hear anything.

Deniz: Well, I don’t really know what’s true and what’s not true at this point. But what I learned from George – he was sort of keeping me informed as we went along up to a point – the tour was organized by a promoter over there named Ed Bicknell who was Dire Straits’ manager. That was before they really got big – a couple years before. Ed was recommended by Philips, which was the Polygram subsidiary that we were on over there. They were the distributor for Sire. So Sire said go tour, and they arranged through the distributor to finance the tour, and Ed Bicknell put the tour together.

We get over there and rehearse and we’re just starting the tour, and the records are in the warehouse, and the next thing we know Sire has split from Polygram. There’s some rift between those two companies and the relationship is gone between those two. We were only signed to Sire and we only had a relationship with Polygram by proxy. So there’s no reason for Polygram to continue to do tour support other than that they’ve got warehouses full of these albums, which in the end weren’t even shipped anywhere and weren’t getting to stores.

Because the relationship was dead between them and our label, they just sort of let the record die.

But somehow, George Kringas our manager managed to talk them into letting us finish the tour. So we went on the tour anyway, while knowing that things were bad relationship-wise, and where ever we went the record wouldn’t be in the stores or available to people. So it was kind of demoralizing.

It’s amazing that George was able to get them to continue to fund the tour and not just cancel it, but he did that, and we even went into the studio as previously scheduled and recorded the next album, again, just sort of running on fumes because there was no real backing.

About half through this or three quarters of the way through that we found out that we also were dropped from Sire. So Polygram dropped Sire, and Sire dropped us. My understanding was that Sire dropped a whole bunch of other bands at the same time, like the Dead Boys. They only kept a few bands…they kept the Ramones, they kept the Talking Heads, and they kept the two bands that were paying for all the other bands at that stage, which were Renaissance and Focus. They were the acts on Sire that were actually earning money. Nothing else was earning money at that point – the other bands were just an expense.

So Sire had to retrench, I guess because of cash flow problems or whatever was happening with this distribution deal going bad. So we got dropped. That’s my understanding of it pretty much in a nutshell.

Steve: Can you talk about some of the gigs you played on that tour? There were gigs both in England and in Europe as well, right?

Deniz: We only played a couple shows in Europe that I can recall. Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. Everything else was in the UK.

Steve: These were all with the Flamin’ Groovies, right?

Rob: Well, the Groovies had to pull out of it because Cyril Jordan fell over on this walkway down to a gig at this place in Brussels and he severed a tendon, I think, in his right hand, so they couldn’t play in that gig. So we filled in for both the nights, I think. And I think we did OK, actually.

I think one night they hauled us off the stage, which apparently is a customary thing in that area, for rival promoters to ring up and say “there’s a bomb in the place” and stuff like that, so we had to clear off on one night.

Deniz: Yeah, and the next night after that one, we went to Amsterdam and opened for Van Halen.

Rob: We didn’t play with them I don’t think, we went and saw them. I remember going to see them. We didn’t actually play with them, did we?

Deniz: No, they played after us at the Paradiso.

Rob: No, shit! Christ, I remember seeing them, I remember their singer David Lee Roth standing over at the side of the stage beseeching the balcony, because it had this balcony running high around the side of it, and he was shrieking “I’m on fire, I’m on fire!”. And this guy’s up on the top there and right through the center of the spotlight that’s beaming down on Roth he pours this beer, and you could just see the stream going right into his head. And he was shaking his fist and cursing this bastard up on top there. That was the highlight of that show for me! And their insane bass player strutting around there…

Deniz: I really didn’t know who they were then. They might have been famous and I didn’t know about it, or they weren’t famous yet, but I didn’t know who Van Halen was. They were just another band on the top of the bill. But I’ve got a great photo of us playing at that gig, there with that big circular balcony.

Rob: I just remember George struggling and cursing getting the banner put up behind the stage there, and none of us would help him. It was a huge banner and he was really perched on the top of this ladder trying to pin this damned thing up. I think he was pretty sour about that.

Deniz: We didn’t really know what to do, because we didn’t know if the Flamin’ Groovies cancellation of the rest of the tour was going to affect us, or if we were going to keep going, or what was going to happen. There was just one thing after another going wrong.

Rob: We went off and did a lot of gigs on our own after that.

Steve: You had a pretty rough time with the press, didn’t you?

Rob: Well, we got a few unkind reviews, but we got a lot of great receptions at the gigs. It’s not accurate to say…a lot of people have perceived us as having gone down badly in the UK, but it’s not really true. We really killed at lots and lots of places where we played, and there actually were some occasions where there was some real yellow journalism going on. There was gig we did at the Hope and Anchor where, I think it was the third one we played there, and the previous two had been all right, too…I guess that’s why they had us back…and we killed it. The place was stacked. And this bastard from the NME, I think…could’ve been Sounds, but I think it was the NME…he reviewed the gig as being a real pile of shit and saying how people were walking out and criticized us for having six members, for Christ sakes, shit like this. But he was referring in his review to our songs by the names that only we would know, sort of abbreviated versions of the names.

And what turned out was that Patrick Miles, our publicist that I mentioned before from Adelaide, he saw this guy grab a set list and piss off after about three songs. So he didn’t stick around. So he reviewed the whole gig, shit canned us completely in a magazine that had a vast influence both in the UK and across Europe…

Deniz: And in Australia, too…

Rob: Yeah, and all this sort of shit was getting back, and the perception was that we were doing really badly. Now that was one gig where we really killed it.

Deniz: We killed it. We actually did three encores that gig, and it was a riot. People were throwing chairs, and it was unbelievable. And we’d NEVER get three encores – that was the only time in our life where we ever did it.

Rob: Yeah, that’s absolutely true, and even if there were a few isolated gigs where we didn’t play so well, the majority of times we really put in and we got a great response. Like that first gig at the Marquee was fucking great! So I think we were pretty harshly treated at times.

Deniz: It was pretty inspiring to play at a place like the Marquee, when you’ve seen pictures of the Who playing there and the Stones.

Rob: The dressing room was covered with graffiti with the names of all these different groups, and I was just hoping that it was all genuine stuff and hadn’t just been scrawled up there in the last couple of weeks. Because it had all these famous band names written everywhere. It’s really marvelous to play there. It’s a good stage – a great sounding stage.

Steve: Looking back now, even the Hope and Anchor is a hell of a place to have played. A lot of great bands played there – a lot of the pub rock bands and stuff like that.

Rob: Yeah, well I saw the Police there for 60p and there were only about 8 people in the crowd. They had no profile whatsoever. I actually didn’t like them much at all, though I thought the drummer was pretty shit hot.

Steve: But guys like Dr. Feelgood and Eddie and the Hotrods played there.

Rob: Yeah, but I never caught those.

Steve: On the second album, Living Eyes, you were in the middle of doing it when Sire dumped you and that led to the studio holding the tapes…can you talk about that?

Rob: Well, Deniz is the expert on this episode, because things went on in relation to this that I had no idea of at the time.

Deniz: All I know about that is that we recorded it at or around the time we were being dropped from Sire, so there was no release outlet for it at that moment. As far as payment of the studio I have no idea, but the studio did keep the tapes, so the tapes were available when it came time to do the remix in 1995. We were able to remix from the 24 track masters. The studio had maintained the tapes all that time.

Steve: How did you manage to pull out the tape that was used for the original release of Living Eyes?

Deniz: That was burned off a safety copy of the quarter inch tape.

Steve: So they knew you were taking it and they didn’t have any problem with that?

Deniz: No, they didn’t have any problem with that. But it was just a safety copy and was never meant to be used as a master. But we retained the rights to our stuff in Australia and New Zealand and Sire only had the copyright for the rest of the world for that record.

Steve: When did that first get released in Australia?

Deniz: 1981.

Steve: Was it on Traflagar?

Deniz: Yeah, Trafalgar. Or was it Warners?

Rob: Shit, I don’t remember. It might have been Warners.

Deniz: Trafalgar might have… no, I think it was Trafalgar, wasn’t it?

Rob: I’m sitting not too far from a copy of it, so maybe I can haul it out. I just remember the times when we were recording that, the morale of the band was pretty low. Deniz was producing the record, and he was down in the studio a lot of the time, but we were in the process of a lot of infighting back up the hill at the manor house. Socially we were disintegrating at the same time as we were putting this album together, so it was a pretty fraught time. I don’t have very pleasant memories of that particular recording.

Steve: Bands are pretty fragile things in general, so I think all the stresses you’d been through sound pretty tough.

Rob: Yeah, it was pretty hard at the time.

Steve: In hindsight, are there things you can see that might have been better, like if you had just bailed out on the tour altogether and not gone when things started to go bad, do you think that would have made a difference?

Rob: It’s kind of hard to say, isn’t it?

Deniz: I never thought of it. I think everything that happened was pretty inevitable. We were just on that path.

Steve: Can you talk about the sequence of events that led to the remixing of Living Eyes in the mid 90s.

Rob: I think it was the guy from Red Eye Records who went to some great lengths, but I wasn’t terribly involved in all that. But I know the tapes were in bad shape and they had to be baked and all that sort of thing that they do to tapes that have been sitting in one spot for 20 years or whatever it was. I don’t know what to think about whether it was a good idea to remix some of that stuff or not, but when you have the opportunity to do those things, it’s hard to resist, I suppose.

Steve: My own view is that it’s one of the rare cases where the remastering and remixing really made a noticeable difference. There are so many things that come out remixed or remastered where my reaction is: I don’t see any difference that would matter to anybody.

Rob: Sometimes it can affect the atmosphere and does it in a very complementary way. Sometimes people think you can make a record a lot better just by tweaking the treble…all the tops and this sort of shit. I notice this from old records that are remastered into CDs, suddenly you can hear all this stuff around the cymbals and so forth and people for some reason equate that with being an improvement. But I think we’ve actually improved the atmosphere of the original stuff, so the remixes probably toughened up the songs, anyway.

We left a few little things out here and there. It might be interesting for people who were acquainted with the first releases to compare them. I know when I got a copy of that Raw Power remix, the relatively recent one, and saw what was left in as opposed to what was on the original release of that. It’s kind of fascinating to hear what a band will do when they’ve gained a measure of control over their stuff, and how they must feel in retrospect and decide “oh, I’m going to sling that out because I’d never liked that anyway”, whatever it is.

Steve: The one I really notice the difference on is “Crying Sun”. It seems like the balance between the keyboard and guitars has changed substantially from the original to the remix.

Rob: Yeah, well, with “Crying Sun”, the original mixing of that was a very contentious episode, so we were probably pretty conscious in the remixing of that one and we made a distinct improvement.

Steve: How did the reissues lead into the reunion tours? Was the sequence of events that you did the two reissues and then the tours happened after that?

Deniz: Yeah, I think the reunion tour was about nine months later.

Steve: My understanding is that those tours were pretty fantastically successful, is that right?

Rob: We had a good time, particularly the first one. We played to huge crowds, because a lot of them were big festival gigs around the country. That was pretty good. I think the band represented itself pretty well. We played a lot of big shows and were able to hold a really big room, really get their attention, and deliver a great show. I had a great time, particularly on that first tour.

Steve: Were those the biggest shows you ever played?

Rob: Oh, yeah, by far.

Steve: Were you surprised that there was that much of demand to see you?

Deniz: Yeah, I was. I had no idea how it was going to go over. But there was a lot of interest. I guess that’s one of the advantages of obscurity, that it generates interest. I suppose that people are attracted to things that are generally unavailable and obscure.

Steve: It seems like since you’ve split up, the importance of the band continues to grow steadily throughout the years. There’s more and more bands that are influenced by Radio Birdman, and people just don’t stop talking about Radio Birdman, and so the interest seems to just constantly build.

Rob: It’s bound to die out one day!

Deniz: Splitting up was probably our best move ever.

Rob: You can’t be too obscure, or no one will ever want you to come back in the first place.

Steve: Well, what is there about Radio Birdman that gives you the most satisfaction when you look back…particular songs where you feel like you really nailed it, or shows that stand out…what is there that really makes you feel proud about having been in that band?

Rob: Well, for me, I’m gratified that people really regard the band as making a difference in their lives. That’s a good thing, and I feel good about…there was a certain feeling in about the first year or so of the band, I thought that we were doing something that carried a lot of meaning for me. It’s rather hard to describe. I think it comes from just being…well Deniz and I were very close, and we were pariahs. We went out and wherever we turned up with that band we caused some shit. To me it seemed like that had meaning in itself. I found it really gratifying. Acceptance is one thing, but somehow the feeling that you’re breaking some kind of new ground is a special feeling. I can still get in touch with that, and I rather cherish that.

Deniz: I’d echo what Rob just said. To me the early days of never knowing if you were going to get beaten up or have equipment busted or get banned from the place or chased by the police, and persevering and still doing the music that we wanted to do on our own terms, regardless. Even if it’s two songs and they pull the plug, we still never compromised in the early days. We never did anything that we didn’t want to do. And as far as I’m concerned, we really stuck it to the established order of the day as far as the music scene goes. And that’s what I find gratifying, much more so than any sales of reissues now or general acceptance.

I mean, I’m glad also that people get enjoyment out of it. Obviously that’s great, but I think that for me, what I look back on most fondly are those early days of hardship, really. We had something going that was worth fighting for.

Steve: What was different seems to have been the intensity of commitment that you had; when you compare that to other bands who were trying to find a way to get popular without having something they were sticking to that was what they wanted to do. That whole idea of commitment to your music was not there for most bands.

Deniz: I think Rob and I, and also the other guys in the band really share a deep love of great rock and roll music. Ever since we were kids we have. And that runs really deep. And to be able to be part of a tradition of that…it’s like getting that from when you’re a kid, and hearing this great stuff, and finding out cool things about bands that you like, and then being able to do some of that yourself in a way that hadn’t been done and then pass it on to whoever is coming along next, that’s a great thing to have participated in.

In The Lab / The News At Ten / Automatic Image / Fascist In The High Street / The Fearful Darkness  (original tape)

In The Lab / The News At Ten / Automatic Image / Fascist In The High Street / The Fearful Darkness  (digitally remastered version)

A great quality tape lent to me by Chris Low  from the seemingly bottomless pit that is his tape archive, the photographs are from the personal collection of Chris Low and Mikey P.

Recorded after the departure of Chantelle, Jozie and Peat Protest, this session recorded at Recession Studios featured Andy Martin of The Apostles on vocals and lead guitar. Ivan strummed along, Leon plucked the bass and Mike thrashed the skins.

After this recording The Assassins Of Hope shortened the band name to simply The Assassins.

Text below supplied by Andy Martin, the original tape recording was kindly digitally remastered by Luc Tran of UNIT. Thanks to both of them.  

The Assassins Of Hope? The simple fact is that  I have absolutely no memory of ever recording anything with that group, my presence on this recording is stranger still as Ivan was the only member of the band who didn’t utterly detest me!

Quite how I was enlisted to help the band record these five tracks is a profound mystery to me. There was no love lost between us; Leon in particular made his opinion of me public in various fanzines – I suspect his socialist political beliefs were offended since I never disguised my own fascist sympathies at the time, despite being stridently opposed to racism; this was probably the only common factor in our political ideals. Stating all that, Leon was first person I ever met who was totally into The Jam, it was he who introduced me to the works of that band.

This tape sounds like it was recorded on a decent quality portastudio yet I have no recollection of the actual session. I can’t tell you exactly where it was recorded although it would most likely have been at Recessions Studios, Ponsford Road in Hackney, on one of those better quality cassette portastudio devices.

“Come back Chantelle, all is forgiven” is a reference to one of the original singers in the group – she absolutely loathed and despised me while I held her in nothing but complete contempt. I have never been able to tolerate communists and I found the company of wealthy, spoiled teenagers profoundly irritating. Since these people were both communists and from wealthy privileged families then contretemps were inevitable. Why are so few working class people drawn to maxism? Perhaps because communism has little of real substance to offer us, whereas the sons and daughters of the rich can afford to indulge their political fantasies.

To be fair, they must have found my own working class consciousness little more than prejudice (or even jealously) and after all, we cannot be held responsible for the social circumstances into which we are born. I never had any problems with Ivan, however, so I assume I wasn’t a complete bigot.

My guitar playing on this session isn’t quite so abysmal although I still sing like a strangled parakeet. 

The final two tracks will be oddly familiar to anyone who has heard the sixth Apostles album ‘The Other Operation’. I used the bass guitar lines, guitar chords and melodies for the track ‘A World We Never Made’.

Thanks Penguin for getting these recordings to me, apologies that my memory on the studio session is somewhat hazy.

The debut cassette release ‘Slowmotion Suicide’ is available to listen to on the site HERE

A live performance recorded at Centro Iberico is available to listen to on this site HERE

Our Life Our World / Another Day Another Death / Stay / Dance On / Prison / Gates Of Hell / Witch Hunt / Slayed / What’s Going On? / No Doves / I Hear You Laughing / Youth

Never Understood / Shuffling Souls / Witch Hunt

Thirty four years ago, as crumbling canal side terraces were being cleared in Westbourne Park, a local sculptor named Jamie McCullough wondered if some of the derelict wasteland that was left after the demolition could become a community garden. He asked the local authority (Westminster at the time) for permission to turn the rubble into a park. Westminster gave temporary permission – hence the name, Meanwhile. The name stuck and the Gardens prospered. Meanwhile Gardens is still there today and is still a nice day out.

The ‘idiot picnics’ which were held four times a year at Meanwhile Gardens from the summer of 1977 to the last events in 1988 were organised by the Lancaster Music Co Op and the Street Level studios folk (notibly Kif Kif and Grant Showbiz) with the additonal help of Protag. The Meanwhile Gardens events which I attended and jumped around in the sand pit with a bottle of Merrydown cider in hand, were enjoyable affairs with a real mix up bands and performers turning up to play, or to perform for free in the summer sun.

Enjoy the set, it’s an absolute blinder,  a nice bit of Grant Showbiz at the end and of course plenty of Raymond!

The other Meanwhile Gardens performance by The Mob recorded earlier on in that summer of 1983 is posted on this site right HERE.

Thanks to Mark Vegas Palmer for the photographs of  The Mob in action at Meanwhile Gardens.

View some other random photographs of Meanwhile Gardens HERE if you so wish.

Tom Vague’s apology to The Mob in Vague vol 15 above may be read HERE. Tom Vague had coated the band off pretty bad (along with most of the other ‘Crass’ type bands) in Vague vol 14.

Tom going to one of  The Mob’s Meanwhile Gardens gigs in the summer of 1983 turned his view of the band around, which was great to read!

Official Mob Site