T / Belfast / A Dream Of Honey / Newz / Slant And Slide

Me / Krax Trax / Blues / Exit 

Ballet Dance / Something To Give

Unemployed / Krak Trak

The band was formed towards the end of 1979 by former Fatal Microbes members (without Honey Bane who by this time had a started concentrating on a solo career care of Jimmy Pursey). Pete Fender on guitar, Gem Stone and ‘It’ (Quentin North) both on bass. These ex Microbes were joined  by the drummer Sid Ation who would shortly also be drumming with Flux Of Pink Indians for a short while, and vocalists Annie Anxiety and Womble.

The bands first performance was when they took to the stage for a short set at a Crass and Poison Girls concert at The Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, London.  They had originally been called Rubella Babies for this event. Rubella Babies performed just a few times in and around London carrying on with chaotic stage shows, swapping instruments and even letting members of the crowd perform on stage with them.

Annie, Womble and ‘It’ were involved only initially, left and were replaced by vocalist Zillah Minx, who had at that time of the first Rubella Babies gigs recently started a relationship with Sid.

Pete Fender and Gem Stone are the son and daughter of Poison Girls singer Vi Subversa, so Rubella Ballet used Poison Girls equipment to jam and write songs and also had full use of the recording studio and practice area underneath the house the band and children shared in Leytonstone (along with Sid and Zillah). This is course was a major advantage in any young bands career, not having the need to save up for weeks to get a substandard guitar or  sessions in the studio.  

The band’s first ‘proper’ gig under the Rubella Ballet name was a fundraiser at the Theatre Royal in Stratford supporting the Poison Girls, which ended up in a riot, when West Ham affliated skinheads caused trouble fighting with the police.

Rubella Ballet performed frequently from this point on, many times supporting Poison Girls, Crass and Conflict. Many venues were visited including the Wapping Autonomy Centre and The Centro Iberico in Westbourne Park. The band were best known for wearing homemade brightly coloured dayglo clothes on stage at these gigs, to differentiate themselves from the other anarcho-punk bands who tended to wear black, ‘army-surplus’ clothing.  The colourful garb is a styling that has carried on throughout the whole of the band’s career.

The band released one album on cassette tape, entitled ‘Ballet Bag’ and a 4 track 7″ EP, ‘Ballet Dance’ in 1982, both for Poison Girls’ Xntrix Records, after the band had rejected the opportunity to put out a record on the Crass label a year or so before due to the packaging being genric Crass style black / grey / white which did not suit the band whatsoever.  Both sessions for the cassette and 7″ single were produced by Richard Famous of the Poison Girls and engineered by Pete Fender in the studio underneath the Poison Girls house in Leytonstone. Adrian Thrills, reviewing the single in the NME stated “the Ballet have an appealing sharp edge to their claustrophobic punk thrash, a poppy surge and even a discernable funk readjustment…of course, they could always just be taking the piss”. 

Both these Rubella Ballet releases were eagarly snatched up by a young Penguin in 1982 and I enjoyed the 7″ single so much at the time I went out and bought another one with a different coloured cover from Small Wonder Records in Walthamstow…Oh those crazy care free daze…!

Rubella Ballet recorded two well recieved John Peel sessions for the BBC, the only time they have been payed (correctly and with no drama involved) for a session supposedly. One of these sessions is uploaded onto this KYPP site if you care to search for it using the search function.

Pete Fender left at the end of 1982 and soon afterwards joined Omega Tribe as a full-time member, having been their early mentor and record producer.

Rubella Ballet went through many line up changes over the years and are still performing and releasing CDs to this day. Zillah and Sid are the only members of the band left from those days in 1981, although saying that last time I saw the band in Walthamstow with a reformed Lack Of Knowledge and a reformed Eratics (under the name Peckanpah) just a few years ago they had Pete Fender playing guitar so I dunno…

The three personal photos are from Sid and Zillah’s collection. Thanks to them in advance!

“Come round for dinner,” they said.

Gastronomically intrigued, my stomach rumbled in anticipation. An eating-packed, bloaterising evening was well on the cards, what with Rubella drummer Sid being a fully qualified five star chef and all.

I spent the appointed day with unfed mouth and rapidly rose to a feverish starvation buzzed, hunger high. Taste buds not so much salivating as positively dripping.

But the wicked ballerinas put a cruel twist on the night’s expected orgy of consumption. I arrive to find slack jawed lead stringsman Pete Fender on the cuisine-duty roster and presented before me is a pilchard, some potatoes and several dollops of green slime with lumps.

Fork stuck well in, I chew heartily actually finding the mess quite tasty. In fact there isn’t an unfinished plate in the house, all eight diners tucking in with equal vigour.

Eight? I should explain. Me, the four Rubella Balleters and Poison Girls, Vi, Lance and Richard. No, these last three didn’t gatecrash, they live here too.

Vi is the mother of one half of Rubella; namely bassist and voice, Gem Stone and the aforementioned galley serf Pete. Besides the resting cookery professor (once prepared nosh for fourteen hundred, y`know) Sid, there is chief singer Zillah.

By now you’ve probably already made the Bushellian mistake of herding Rubella Ballet in amongst the seemingly endless line of Crass/Poison Girls clones all of whom rampage furiously away with varying degrees of impact.

But while the Poison Girls spectre is unavoidably near, any direct and obvious influence is minimal. Just the briefest glimpse of Rubella playing live, or for that matter, lounging around on a sofa doing an interview, leaves a person in no doubt as to their variance from the dressed all in black, every word I say is important school of (more often than not) cliched music.

The quartet are attired in a colourful array of bright togs, not a leather jacket in sight. Bondage? Forget it, this is the glad rag liberation!

Sid: “Everyone is very dark these days. Black and dismal and singing about warfare. We don’t play songs about warfare, it’s time to think about living, not worry about dying.”

Pete: “If people aren’t dark and dismal they’re soppy and wet looking like that other group with Ballet in their name. The sort of songs that Crass bands do always end up sounding really depressing. I want to make good music and have people enjoy it. I don’t want them to go away thinking ‘oh, I really agree with that, I must get some information on it’.

“We play music with lyrics rather than slogans with a noise behind it. Not ramming our opinions down other people’s throats. That is an obvious way to build up a following or a movement which I consider to be quite false. If someone wants to be into your band they should be into it because of the music…”

Sid: “And not because of the politics. If we don’t put any politics over people will come to see us only because they like the music. Not because we’re going to brainwash them into being anarchists or pacifists or National Front or anything.”

Pete: “If Crass weren’t anarchists they wouldn’t have a following because, let’s face it, their music is pretty bad. Pursuing a certain way of playing or thinking always generates opposition. If you don’t try to convince people to think your way then you remove those barriers.”

Sid: “So you don’t get people coming who are just into anarchy or just into this or that. A lot of people object to playing to skinheads. We don’t object to playing to anybody. We’ve played to an eighty percent British Movement crowd.”

Zillah: “Although we didn’t know before hand it was going to be like that. Afterwards they were all cheering for more.”

The pink-haired chanteuse chooses to ignore the fact that the same gathering would probably respond just as wildly to a film of the Nuremburg rallies. I’m getting the distinct impression that this group are over reacting to the substantial and committed political involvement of Crass and Poison Girls.

Not that the Ballet ones are a political non thinkers but rather they are desperately keen to assert their own individual identity away from these parental (in one case literally!) figures.

Plus they now have an almost-paranoiac wariness of being associated in print with Crass. They feel a recent NME live review was an attempt to use them to devalue said band.

Pete: “A lot of people think Poison Girls started us off but that’s not true. I was playing in groups even before Poison Girls formed.”

Sid: “About three years ago I moved into the house that Poison Girls were living in. There was a room to play music in so we (him, Gem and Pete) went in there and jammed. We found we could all play together.

“We had two or three singers then we found Zillah and we’ve spent the last two and a half years teaching her to sing.”

Zillah: “(incredulously) “You mean I can sing now?”

Pete: “I haven’t been turned on musically by anything that came after 1973. My favourite groups have always been the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. I like the seventies music but the stuff that was exciting not just pretend. I was more into punk for the spirit than the music.”

Zillah: “When I was a punk back in ‘76 we hadn’t even heard of the Sex Pistols. I used to go down to the Lacy Lady when Chris Hill was there and dress up. People called us punks. Suddenly there was the Today programme and everybody wanted to be a punk.

“The real punk scene was before that. Like the mod scene, we used to go to the mod nights at the Bridgehouse but after Secret Affair had been on Top Of The Pops it just wasn’t a scene anymore. I definitely preferred punk in the old days.”

Sid: “Punk now is so split. You’ve got Crass, UK Subs, Oi!, Skins, it’s all different sections.”

Zillah: “We’re still into the cheapness of punk, like making your own clothes.

Sid: We’re more into the spirit of punk than the politics.”

Pete: “And the spirit rather than the racket of punk.”

A racket is assuredly not what is revealed with their debut piece of hardware, namely the ‘Ballet Bag’. Available through Xntrix the package includes a badge, a poster, a lyric book and a cassette. All at is required from the consumer is the shelling out of modest two notes.

The tape dispenses a stern, jarring (in the good, stimulating, sense) medicine. In parts there is an a unmistakable taste of the early, unsettling Banshees, the drums roll and thunder over the beats as Zillah’s vocals veer from passionate to heartless.

The arrangements swing from urgent, speedy pounding to controlled, biting, almost funk rhythms. The tape format was opted for in preference to vinyl in order to showcase the compositional diversity.

One song is entitled ‘A Dream Of Honey’. Zillah and Gem grudgingly admit it was written about Honey Bane, an EMI recording star who once, of course, lined up alongside Gem and Pete in the Fatal Microbes.

Zillah: “The song’s not meant to slag her. Some of the things she set out to achieve she almost did. All her records on little labels were really good but the Top Of The Pops things were rubbish.

Gem: “She gave up her ideals for money. Last time I saw her she looked unhappy and depressed. Major labels dilute you. They water the music down and take away your beliefs.”

Pete hastens to disagree: “No they don’t, not always, not if you don’t let them.”

So what if a cigar-toting top record company executive parked the limo’outside the door and offered them a deal?

Sid: “I’d tell him I was busy and to come back tomorrow, when I’d made sure I was out.

Pete grimaces slightly.

In keeping with the described anti-propaganda stance, the lyrics never take a firm stand one way or the other. But sometimes they sit too firmly on the fence, often to the extent of becoming meaningless.

‘Exit’ is about the much-publicised aid a suicide brigade. Zillah penned the words but her intent is never clear.

“I question things, I don’t give answers in my songs because everyone has different answers but not always the full question. I mean everyone might have the right to commit suicide but should someone help them? It can escalate into euthanasia. There is no answer.”

What about ‘Belfast’ the title and the drawings in the lyric book reveal the subject matter but the actual verses are incomprehensible?

“That’s about someone who got his legs blown off and had to go home where they wouldn’t help him down the stairs.”

She giggles stupidly and hides her head under a coat.

Zillah: “It’s sort of written in bits. Abstract, is that the word? It’s difficult at first but if you read through it you’ll understand it. You have to think about our band, even we’ve all got different opinions.”

Which just about sums it up. Despite my doubts over the lyrics, it is the “four originalities pulling in different ways, as Sid said later, that gives Rubella Ballet’s music a fresh and dynamic sharpness.

Fingers crossed that this chemistry of variants doesn’t pull them apart too quickly.

Mick Sinclair – Sounds – March 1982

My Ladies Games / Chevy Chase

God Has Gone Wrong Again / Song Of  The Third Cause

Junction Signal

Bind Their Kings / A Tribute To Admiral Byng / Sordid Tales Of The Ffucke Masticke Room

The first two Blyth Power 12″ records that were released within a few months of each other on the All The Madmen record label, which at this time was still based at Brougham Road, Hackney. The second 12″ ‘Junction Signal’ was also available in a limited run of 1000 numbered 7″ vinyl of which I own number 0001. As I was the ’operative’ that stamped and folded all the sleeves for this release I made sure that I ended up with that number. I also did one for Sean ‘Gummidge’ though! Note, number 0001 on the ‘Junction Signal’ 7″ is not as rare as say number 0743!

Anyway record collecting aside, Blyth Power in 1985 were certainly a force to be reckoned with, the plentyful live performances all over the country were generally very well recieved and enjoyable nights out.

Josef Porta had started writing and singing his own compositions for The Mob toward the end of that bands lifespan in 1983. The track ‘Hurling Time’, a soon to be Blyth Power ‘dirge’ (as Josef  likes to call some of his own material) was performed at the very last gig that The Mob performed at in Doncaster with Passion Killers and Benjamin Zephaniah. That Mob performance can be listened to on this KYPP site if you care to search for it using the search function. 

When Mark Mob drove away in his converted truck from the stresses of urban squats, co-op housing  and performing in The Mob, to live a simpler existance at Pooh Corner, the two other remaining members of the band were slightly at odds at what to do… 

Josef and Curtis roped in Brougham Road resident and ex Faction member Neil Keenan and started practising a host of Josef original compositions and a few cover versions down in the basement of 96 Brougham Road, the home of J.C’s sound system and also base for All The Madmen Records, which in 1984 was run by Alistair from KYPP, but soon to be run by Rob Challice, ex Anthrax and Faction.

It was this line up that performed at the Bingo Hall squat (now mainstream music venue – The Garage) down the end of Holloway Road, Islington just a few weeks after The Mob had folded. Two gigs in the middle of Febuary 1984 and KYPP’s Val Drayton was invited to perform the backing vocals for these performances.

The band did not perform again until the middle of May. These performances were at the squatted pub ‘The Hemingford Arms’ in which Blyth Power performed with The Mayday Theatre group, incidental music to a play entitled ‘Mother’ by Berthol Brecht. These performance continued nightly until the end of May. A very strange residency for sure!

Other notible performances in 1984 were three shows at Meanwhile Gardens in the summer and also the first ‘out of town’ gigs at Nottingham and Sutton Cum Lound, both of these gigs and one of the early Meanwhile Gardens performances are available to listen to on this KYPP site if you search for them.

In December of 1984 the band decided to record a demo in the basement of 96 Brougham Road, with J.C’s equipment along with Meanwhile Gardens soundman and ex Instant Automation, Protag on the mixer. Sarah Lewington, a Mob supporter originally from Leeds who had been mixing it up in the squats of London for a couple of years was invited to perform backing vocals during these sessions. The finished product was released as ‘A Little Touch Of Harry’ on 96 Tapes run by soon to be All The Madmen manager, Rob Challice.

The tracks that appeared on the cassette are (in my opinion) absolutely wonderful, and brought a fuller sound with Sarah on the vocals, Curtis’s basslines still seemed reminiscient of The Mob, Josef’s lyrics seemed wacky at first but on further understanding dealt with contempery issues. Neils buzz saw guitar sounded early Buzzcocksy, which was not a bad thing, and all in all things were going well.  

At the beginning of 1985, Andy Morgan was invited by Josef to add further backing vocals, if memory serves me correctly Andy had a fair amount to do with the Street Level Studios organisation, and also performed in the Hamburger All Stars, a band afilliated with Street Level. This Street Level link is important as Grant Showbiz, the owner who had engineered work with The Fall, Here And Now, The Mob, The Astronauts, The Smiths and 100’s more would eventually engineer both these records uploaded tonight. Grant also organised the four times yearly Meanwhile Gardens free festivals along with Protag. Justin Adams from the Impossible Dreamers who performed at Meanwhile Gardens many times helped engineer the sessions that became the ‘Junction Signal’ release. Justin is now a massive name in world music.

The band got stronger and tighter in 1985 with this ‘classic’ line up and the live performances were by this time becoming well known by ex Mob followers, general punky riff raff and the music press alike. Soon a small piece in Zig Zag magazine would increase the interest. The cassette on Rob Challice’s 96 Tapes sold well over 1000 copies in less than six months of release, not bad sales at all, booklets were reprinted, tapes were again professionally reproduced.  

Curtis and Josef had asked Rob Challice to become the manager of All The Madmen Records, a post that he accepted and he got to work on organising the recording sessions at Street Level that would be released as ‘Chevy Chase’. The finished product 12″ was released in August 1985 and became the first release on All The Madmen since the Zos Kia 7″ single released by Alistair in 1984.  

The tracks on the EP were at first hearing not as good as the numourous live performances witnessed or even as raw as the cassette tracks which I thought were under produced but superior. On replaying the 12″ though I soon decided that the tracks were indeed worthy of a second chance and it was not long before both sides of the 12″ were glued to my turntable! The record managed to get Single Of The Week in Sounds music paper courtesy of Mr Spencer and gained decent reviews in the other music weeklies.

The rest of 1985 after the EP was released seemed to be Blyth Power solidly gigging, up and down the country in Curtis’s old blue Commer van with the band, Sean ‘Gummidge’, unless he was ill or something, Alan the roadie, and all equipment cramped inside it. One of the last gigs performed in December 1985 was a benefit for the Blue House squat in Hommerton, Hackney. Blyth Power performing with The Astronauts, Zos Kia and Psychic TV at Stoke Newington Town Hall.

I wish I had recorded that gig!  A great way to end the year, although I still witnessed a couple more Blyth Power live performances before the new year came along…

During 1986 it was business as usual regarding Curtis’s Commer van and the people inside it. Miles were racked up, new places were seen. The ‘Chevy Chase’ EP had sold out only to be repressed and sell out again. Rob at All The Madmen had found that his time was taken up a fair bit by interested parties on the phone wanting to book Blyth Power for a nights performance.

Rob was at this time also actively interested in releasing other products on the All The Madmen record label. A new LP by The Astronauts, a 12″ EP by Thatcher On Acid and a repress of The Mob’s ‘Crying Again’ on 12″ were all released during this year. Blyth Power’s second release ‘Junction Signal’ was released on 12″ and 7″ formats and quickly sold out of the first pressing (and only pressing of the 7″). The A side was a proper sing a long track and a firm Blyth Power live favorite.

What on earth could go wrong?

During the later stages of 1986, after hundreds of gigs together as Blyth Power it seemed that there were cracks appearing in the band and more noticeably between Curtis and Josef. There was a lot of pressure and stress ‘in the van’ and sometimes on stage. It all came to a head when Josef sacked the band after a gig in November 1986. Josef had recently signed a publishing deal in which it was ’Josef’ the interested party wanted, not necessary ‘the band’. There were three more gigs to perform after the sacking, and also a paid up session at R.M.S. for the recording of the planned LP on All The Madmen records. To the bands credit, they played out the remaining gigs at Islington City University, Uxbridge Brunel University and Finsbury Parks Sir George Robey pub. The Robey gig was obviously a special occasion and the band roared through the whole roster of songs (some of them played twice) in front of a well over capacity Robey for two hours plus with huge amounts of gusto.

The LP was recorded by the ‘classic’ line up in early December 1986, but by the time of the release the members of Blyth Power performing live was Josef and Sarah, Steve Corr from Idiot Strength, Sian Jefferies from Lost Cherries and finally Protag who played bass and drove the band around just like Curtis did! The LP sold out of the original green sleeve version and also sold out the repressed blue sleeve version.

There was still much fun and enjoyment to be had Blyth Power gigs with the new line up throughout 1987 and into 1988. The new line up version of the band did not have a record released until 1988 as ‘Ixion’ was released first in the summer of 1987, a track recorded by the old line up and lifted off the LP. The material that Blyth Power recorded with the new line up was eventually released on the Midnight Music record label in 1988. The ’Ixion’ 12″ and 7″ were the last Blyth Power releases on the All The Madmen record label.

Another notible event that occured in 1987 was that Rob Challice, Sean ‘Gummidge’ and myself who were all working at All The Madmen records moved from Brougham Road, Hackney and relocated to Caledonian Road, Kings Cross in the same building as Better Badges and F.O. Tapes, nicely grafittied N.Y.C. style this corner building was called, by the grafitti dauped upon it ‘Crucial Corner’, and was just over the road to Rough Trade Distribution.

Blyth Power still continue today over 25 years later from the bands origins from the ashes of The Mob and the band are still worthy of some attention.

Many more Blyth Power downloads available if you use the search function.

Official ATM Site

Pete Nothing – Rape Ads / Null And Void – Only Seventeen / Can’t Hide / Sometimes I Get So Lonely / Still / Me And My Actor

Null And Void – Four Minute Warning / God’s Only Words / Still Lonely / Blank Pages / An Old Way / Pete Nothing – Fads

Still

Crap / Cold War

Null And Void were a band from around the Yeovil area formed in 1980. Closely alligned to Yeovil’s other band at the time, The Mob, the original members of Null And Void were Mark Hedge, Adie Tompkins and Andrew Barker. Barker had already previously released a record on the All The Madmen record label under the name Andy Stratton, along with The Mob’s then drummer Graham Fallows. Both The Mob and Null And Void members lived together in a shared commune in Sheend a village in Wiltshire. Adie Tompkins would eventually perform drumming duties for The Mob for a short time after Graham decided to leave that band. Eventually most of The Mob and Null And Void members decided to leave the sticks and chance squatting in London. Brougham Road in Hackney was the area where the bands shared bus ended up and parked up. Zounds, a close ally to both bands on the newly arrived bus had secured some property in that street a few months previously. 

Both of these releases uploaded today were recorded and engineered by Pete Fender at the Xntrix studio situated in the basement of the Poison Girls house in Leytonstone. The band by the time of recordings had a new drummer in Josef Porta who had been staying in Brougham Road with the other members of Zounds. Josef of course later joined The Mob, and continues to perform today with Blyth Power. Delia supplied some backing vocals and Pete Fender added a couple of poems under the guise of Pete Nothing on the sessions that would be released on the cassette.

After a couple of tours in Belgium with The Mob and Zounds, Null And Void were approached by Not So Brave Records who were based in Belgium. The band recorded the sessions, again with Pete Fender at Xntrix, that would end up as the only 7″ single that was released in the band’s lifetime. The sleeve artwork for the single was completed by Dave who was the brother of Steve Ignorant, vocalist for Crass (a fact that Dave did not like being made public to many folk in those days according to a member of Null And Void!)

By the time these recordings were released, the band were performing a fair few gigs in and around London including a set at the Zig Zag squat gig, Westbourne Park organised by Andy Palmer and Penny Rimbaud of Crass along with members of The  Kill Your Pet Puppy Collective and Andy Martin of The Apostles in December 1982.

These releases contain absolutely wonderful material by Null And Void, material which still sounds incredibly strong today.

Andy Stratton’s debut 7″ single released on All The Madmen Records in 1980 can be listened to on this site HERE

Confidence / P.A.s

Bibbly O Tek / Doubt Beat

Great third release by Scritti Politti on a Rough Trade and St Pancras Records split release, quickly following on from ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’ and the ‘Peel Session’ 7″singles from 1978.

The band at this time were submerged in the North London (Mornington Crescent / Camden area) squatting scene, were dabbling with Communist theories and were partial to a nice bit of grade A Dub and Reggae.  The band’s communal lifestyle, added to the mixture of influences, certainly gave them the edge when creating great slabs of music.

Simon Reynolds piece on Scritti Politti first published in The Wire 2001

How do pop groups choose their fans? Like any romance, it’s a subtle, near-imperceptible process of sifting through the general population, a trail of lures and signals. I’m still not sure what it was that seduced me into a long infatuation with Scritti Politti: the sound or the idea of the band. Back in 1979, the two were inseparable, of course. The urgency’s of the post-punk era made the notion of music-for-music’s sake seem decadent, trivial, absurd. And some of the best groups were more influential as concepts than fully-realized propositions. What grabbed my ear first was the name, I think. Just the sound of it: Scritti Politti, brittle and chiming like the guitar-sound on “Bibbly O Tek” (first Scritti song I ever heard, John Peel, late 1979). That, and the sheer intrigue of what it might refer to. Eventually I discovered that it was a slight corruption of the title of a book by neo-Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci. Which only enhanced the image I’d already gleaned from the music press of this shadowy collective operating at some fabulously uncompromising and far-reaching outer-limit of politics-and-pop. If even Paul Morley, reviewing two of their singles together for NME, found them faintly forbidding… well, count me in! If I’m really honest, though, I think it was a photo that sealed the deal: Green, dragging on a cigarette, thin as a rail inside his baggy jumper. Clearly teetering on the edge of his nerves, with what looked like kohl darkly etched around his fragile, blazing eyes, he seemed the incarnation of intensity–all the glamour of a life harrowed by thought. There was another figure in the photograph (or was it another pic altogether?), a white guy with blonde dreadlocks: back then, this was quite a striking fashion statement (nowadays, it just signifies “nu metal, yuk!”).

1) Freddie McGregor Africa Here I Come 2) Rapper Robert Jim Brown Minister For Ganja 3) Sound Dimension Full Up 4) Stranger Cole Black Sun 5) Wailing Soul Back Out 6) Wailing Soul Back Out With Version 7) Burning Spear Rocking Time 8) Burning Spear Rocking Time 7 inch 9) Burning Spear Rocking Time extended 10) Silvertones Smile 11) Silvertones Smile dub 12) Willie Williams Jah Righteous Plan 13) Sugar Minott All Kinda People 14) Sugar Minott All Kinda Dub 15) J Osbourne Murderer 16) J Osbourne Murderer Version 17) D Drummonds Heavenless

1) Sugar Minott Vanity 2) Sound Dimension Vanity Version 3) Michigan & Smilie Rub A Dub Style LP version 4) Jah Jesco Warning 5) Lone Ranger Tribute To Bob Marley 6) Sound Dimension Version To Bob Marley 7) J Osbourne Water More Than Flour 12 inch 8/ Dennis Alcapone Riddle I This 9) Dillinger Kung Fu Fighting 10) Larry Marshall Throw Me Corn 11) Sound Dimension Throw Me Version 12) Charlie Ace & Scorcher Father and Dreadlocks 13) Rapper Robert Jim Brown Pirate 14) Cables What Kind Of World extended mix 15) Lone Ranger Badder Dan Dem 16) Wailing Soul Row Fisherman Row extended mix

I had just returned from Jamaica, and by a nice coincidence I had a very nice selection of Studio One 7″ and 12″ records selected and mixed up all ready on a link (ready to download) in my personal email inbox by a guy named Adam Morris.

Adam has been ‘namedropped’ on this very site several times by myself as he is not only a great bloke, but he was also the manager of Killing Joke way back during the early days of the band up until the bands heyday during 1982 / 83 or thereabouts. Adam was also one of the head honchos at the Wau / Mr Modo record label that released some proper nice stuff, either on the same  Wau / Mr Modo imprint, The Orb for example (Adam was also the manager of The Orb up to the time they signed to Virgin Records) or via Peppi’s Youth Sound label out of Stroud Green Road near Finsbury Park, Lidj Incorperated and Sound Iration etc (does anyone remember the Africa Centre Covent Garden Sound Systems this guy Peppi did?).

Adam has, along with a fellow Clash City Rocker, Pete Keeley (also a mate of Adam’s and myself incidently), a seriously large reggae vinyl record collection and I can guarantee that the tunes supplied on these mixes are proper Studio One 7″ and 12″ records bought or blagged at the time of release as opposed to a whole clutch of  relatively piss easy to get late 1980’s / early 90’s 7″or CD re-issues.

A message from Adam Morris:

“Here’s the first of the new mixes I’m doing of my reggae vinyl collection. Its been a long journey already and I feel I have just begun.

I have so far been through four recording phases since I hooked an old PC up to my mixer last Xmas.

Phase one was using Sound Forge, a programme I was familiar with, but I only had on demo version and when the crack codes stopped working I realised it was £150 + for the official thing. Not right now, thanks. I don’t mind spending money on this project, but right now I need equipment, Ableton and CD DJ decks in particular, so if it makes any money, it is going on that.

Off I went to the land of freeware and a programme called Audacity. Its good once you get used to it. But the default setting is for mono recording and I was well into mix two before I realised this fact.

End of Phase two, the mono hours.

I have issued the results of Phase three in these two mixes. The stereo hours part one.

In a previous time, I lived in the Harlesden area of London when London was the reggae capital of the world. As a result, I worked as Lee Perry’s tour manager for a short while, I shopped at Mr Pecking’s Studio One shop and got to know George Pecking well and I was neighbours and mates with Dr Alimantado, to name but a few. So I feel I had good educators. I also feel the history and culture that this wonderful music represents and the need to treat these tunes with respect.

I’ve abandoned the idea of recording one continuous live DJ mix like I used to do in previous eras. For one thing, recording a CD/MP3 and mixing live are totally different performances. One is there permanently for posterity and the other isn’t. And one requires interaction with a crowd and lights and volume and so on which do not exist in my backroom.

Add to that the restrictions of the sound card and the fact you cannot use the EQ’s on a recording as you would live without over recording, plus, ofcourse, if you make a mistake 50 minutes in, you end up re-recording the whole thing again not just the bit you messed up, which is not a good way to work.

Not when you mess up as often as I do!

Trouble with my echo box is the buttons are not very accurate. You get a delay between when you push the button and when the effect arrives. So its tough staying accurate. But, given this restriction, since the days when I heard a roland chorus echo in action (used by Killing Joke and Basement Five rather than a dub band), I’ve wondered what reggae and Coxsone in particular would sound like passed through one, given that Coxsone didn’t have one in Studio One when he made the tunes.

The versions on his singles are sparse and full of space, making them prime material for adding dub echoes to.

I’m glad to say that now I’ve heard them, the tunes sound pretty much like I suspected they would ie ACE !!!

I have evolved a methodology of recording and mixing each track separately, then I am hooking them up into a DJ mix at the end. Still learning how to label the final file so the tracks show up individually, rather than as one continuous track in the CD player. Once I’ve done that I am home free. Perhaps.

Phase 4 started ten days ago.

I’m working on a 3rd Studio One mix, then I’m going to change to another studio, I’ll go back to Coxsone further down the line.

I am now treating it more like a recording session with a band, so I am making multiple recordings. The first take is the track flat, not speeded up or EQ’d. Then I record several different remixes. That way I will eventually end up with all vinyl archived digitally, which will be a good thing to have. And then, when I get the CD DJ decks, I can use WAV’s of the original recordings and speed them up and dub them live if and / or when I start playing out live again. And I will only have to take CDR’s out, not my heavy, vintage, rare vinyl. That can stay safely in my backroom where it won’t get worn any more.

My flat is now a home recording studio for DJ’s. One morning I had an album recording in one room, a CD burning on the other PC and I was in the front playing back my mixes. It was infact the first time I’d heard them all the way through.

I’m satisfied. I want to remix the tracks again of course, infact I probably will when I’ve gone through everything else.

So that’s all my spare time for the rest of my life sorted then. I hope you like what i’ve done, there’s going to be a lot more if you do…”

Thanks to Adam for sharing these tunes with me and allowing me to upload them here on this site.

These selections esp the second one is dedicated to my little man Aaron who has had his first (out of England) holiday very recently where he enjoyed meeting some of his cousins, aunties and uncles in Kingston, Gordon Town (Blue Mountains above Kingston), Black River (St Elizabeth) and Georges Plain (Westmoreland) immensely.

The weather in Jamaica suited him a fair bit also, 25c in that country’s winter time, suited me as well to tell the truth!

Enough Is Never Enough / Some Like It Hot / Your Sin Is Your Salvaton / Whirr / Roles / Breakdown

Assault On Precinct 13 / The Tower Falls / Possession / Living For Tomorrow / Spit Upon Your Grave

The one and only album by Kill Your Pet Puppy favorites and ex Campbell Buildings, Old Street Fire station, St Monicas Hospital, Bayston Road squatters Blood And Roses.

This release was recorded well after Kill Your Pet Puppy had ceased to exist in fanzine form as the band had originally faded away with the departure of Richard Morgan the drummer of the band towards the end of  1983, sadly Jez the bassist got run over and died in a traffic accident involving a bus in Islington shortly after.

The studio engineer (for the debut Blood And Roses 12″) Ralph Jezzard stepped in on bass, a guy named Parrot joined the band on drumming duties sometime in 1984 and the band begun performing live again in 1985 with the new members. The first gig with this line up was a decent performance down the Ambulance Station down the Old Kent Road, a gig which Blyth Power also performed. This concert as well as various other Blood And Roses material (including the debut 12″ record) is available on this site if you care to use the search function and enter Blood And Roses.

Although in my opinion, the material on this LP is not quite as vital as a live performance by the band (or indeed the debut 12″) when first listening to it, the tracks do sound better after repeated plays. I thought the LP on first listening was slightly overproduced and with the addition of synth drums on some tracks it was less like the garage band riffs we were used to and it seemed to edge towards a more pop oriented 1980’s product. There are many moments of greatness on this LP though. ‘Some Like It Hot’, ‘Your Sin Is Your Salvation’, ‘Roles’, ‘Possession’, ‘Tomorrow’ and of course ‘Spit Upon Your Grave’ are all decent fare.

Blood And Roses worked on sessions for a never released second LP but alas I do not have those  tracks on tape. The band finally gave way around the time of these sessions when Lisa became pregnant and (I assume) she decided to take a break from all the recording and touring with the band, and of course take a break from all the baggage that came with the bands day to day existence (baggage which is well known to fans and friends of the band).  

Many Happy Returns to Lisa, the singer and record sleeve artist for Blood And Roses (left in picture with Cory) whose birthday it is today. Hope you have a nice relaxing day. Thanks to Phil Ritchie for the photo.

After purchasing this LP from Ugly Child Records in Walthamstow (in the same building of the much loved and much missed Small Wonder Records) I bumped into Kirk Brandon who I promptly got to sign the inner sleeve of  my copy of this Blood And Roses LP. I can not recall why he was in that area of London now as my memory has slightly faded somewhat. It certainly would not have been for a Spear Of Destiny concert as I am sure I would have attended one in that area if indeed they were performing.

Uploaded to youtube a couple of weeks ago by a fan. From the VA-Break The Silence Tape, no visuals just the tape cover but a great song.

The first person to post a credible history of the Hagars will be my valentine.

Until then believe me when I say the Hagars were the glue that held the nascent London Anarcho scene together – apart from glue of course!

XXX

Fifth time over there for me, first time over there for the infant Penguin.

No new posts (with music downloads attached) for two weeks. Sorry about that.

Tony Puppy adds: but the the site is still open for your continuing pleasure. Keep on reading, listening and commenting as usual.

Sid Vicious And The Idols Max’s Kansas City performance 30th September 1978

Search And Destroy / Chatterbox / Something Else / I Wanna Be Your Dog / Belsen Was A Gas / Stepping Stone / Take A Chance With Me / No Lip / Chinese Rocks / My Way (part of)

A particularly extreme example of the self-immolating celebrity — and one of the first high-profile casualties of the punk era — John Simon Ritchie A.K.A Sid Vicious was given his education in unhealthy lifestyles early in his existence, his mother Anne using (and sometimes selling) heroin throughout his childhood. His father, a Grenadier Guard in the British Army named John Ritchie, left the family shortly after his son’s birth, and his stepfather Christopher Beverly died after only six months, leaving Anne to raise young John Simon primarily on her own. Shortly after the dissolution of her first marriage, Anne relocated herself and her son to the Spanish island of Ibiza, returning to England in 1965 just prior to her second marriage and living in Kent for several years before moving to Hackney in 1971. It was here that John made the acquaintance of John Lydon while both were attending Hackney Technical College in 1974; it was also during this period that he initiated his own hard drug use and began to cultivate the destructive behavior that would earn him such notoriety in later years.

Ultimately, John Ritchie dropped out of school and spent his time hanging around with the so-called Bromley Contingent, a gang of disaffected youths that adopted the music and fashions of the emerging UK punk rock scene and maintained an orbit around the John Lydon (now Johnny Rotten) – fronted band The Sex Pistols. In the summer of 1976 Ritchie became a member of The Flowers of Romance alongside future Public Image Limited guitarist Keith Levene, but the group never actually did anything in public; before the end of the year he had joined Siouxsie and the Banshees as a drummer, although this situation did not endure far beyond the group’s debut performance in September of 1976. Afterwards, while living in a squat with both Lydon and John Wardle (later Jah Wobble), Ritchie chose to call himself Sid Vicious in order to distinguish himself from the overabundance of Johns, and subsequently did his best to live up to the anti-social implications of his new name. By early 1977 he had been drafted into the Pistols to replace departing bass player Glen Matlock, despite the marked limitations of his playing ability (supposedly, Vicious’s bass was turned down during many Pistols shows, and his recorded parts were actually performed by either Matlock or guitarist Steve Jones).

Prior to Vicious’s membership, the Sex Pistols had already earned themselves widespread notoriety for their combative attitudes and use of profanity (a couple of fucks and a shit) during an interview on national television with Bill Grundy; their debut single Anarchy in the U.K., released by EMI in November of 1976, also created a considerable stir around the band despite EMI’s decision to cease manufacturing it after less than two months. Vicious helped to maintain this anarchic reputation by vandalizing the office of A&M’s Managing Director (an act he consummated by puking on the director’s desk) during the party celebrating their signing to the label. The band was forced to find a new home a week later, and thus it was that their next single God Save the Queen was instead released by Virgin in May of 1977. The song instigated an even stronger negative response than Anarchy in the U.K., but the resulting hype also successfully pushed it up to the #2 position in the British charts — although there is some evidence to suggest that it might have actually reached #1.

Issued in October, the Pistols’ debut full-length Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols lived up to the controversy created by the two preceding singles, the album’s title resulting in an obscenity trial that was ultimately dismissed. A month after Bollocks’s release, the fate of the band’s already rapidly-deteriorating bass player was sealed through his meeting with ex-prostitute / heroin addict Nancy Spungen. 

Nancy was born in Philadelphia on 27 February 1958, and was a difficult child almost from birth. She threw ferocious tantrums that scared her parents and cried so much that she was given her first sedative at the age of three months. By the age of 4, she had seen a psychiatrist. When Nancy was 11, she attacked her mother with a hammer and smashed her bedroom to pieces. She first tried heroin at the age of 13 and two years later was an addict. Her behaviour was so out of control that doctors refused to treat her until she was diagnosed as schizophrenic. By the time she was 17, her parents asked her to leave home. The unbalanced groupie from New York who had come to London with the intention of latching onto a punk celebrity, Spungen found the equally unbalanced Vicious an easy target, and soon had him sharing her heroin habit as well as her bodily fluids. This tumultuous relationship created significant problems between Sid and his band mates. Lydon in particular repeatedly pressed his friend to sever his ties with Spungen, but the unhealthy co-dependence that had formed between the two was something that Vicious was unwilling to leave behind.

At the start of 1978 the Sex Pistols embarked on their first American tour, organized by their manipulative manager Malcolm McLaren. The tour fell apart after only two weeks, however, and a few days after a performance at Winterland in San Francisco Rotten announced the dissolution of the band — apparently as a bluff, but no one called him on it and McLaren and half of the band promptly buggered off to Brazil. Vicious had not fared very well in his forced separation with Spungen during the tour, and he immediately flew to New York to reunite with her. A short period was spent back in England before traveling to Paris to contribute to McLaren’s Julien Temple-directed film The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle (1978) (a largely fictional account of the Sex Pistol’s history); Vicious’ first solo tracks would be recorded for the film’s soundtrack, which included a piss-take on the Frank Sinatra standard My Way and covers of Eddie Cochran’s Something Else and C’mon Everybody.

After raising some money through a final UK performance with the help of a backing band named The Vicious White Kids, Sid and Nancy relocated to New York City on a permanent basis, taking up residence at the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street. With $10,000 to spend, the couple went on a drug holiday, scoring heroin on the streets while developing a taste for the barbiturates Tuinal and Dilaudid, a synthetic morphine. They made an effort to kick their habit by signing on at the Spring Street Methadone Clinic, but it was a sour experience for Sid, who suffered frequent beatings from other addicts. He and Nancy then started taking methadone in an attempt to wean them off heroin.

Vicious then attempted to launch a solo career, with Spungen assuming the role of manager and various British and American punk musicians acting as his new band The Idols. A poor-quality collection culled from some of his live performances during this period was eventually released as Sid Sings in 1979. These solo ambitions were abruptly brought to an end in October, when he was arrested for killing Spungen, found dead in their apartment from a single stab wound on the morning of the 12th.

At 2.30am on 12 October, their personal drug dealer with the fantastic name of Rockets Redglare received a frantic call from Nancy to get some ‘D-4s’ (the street name for Dilaudid) and hypodermic needles. Rockets arrived at 3.15am with only some methadone – he had been unable to get any D-4s. Nancy was wearing a shirt over black panties. Sid was sacked out on the bed and the couple was already high on Tuinal, which had slowed them down physically, but did not satisfy their craving for Dilaudid, which they intended to take intravenously. Nancy showed the dealer her open handbag, which was stuffed with 50 and 100 dollar notes. She told him that she would pay double if he could get forty D-4s. He left just after 5am to try his contacts.

Just after this, the guest in room 228 called the front desk to complain about all the noise coming from room 100 below him. The desk clerk sent a bellhop named Kenny to check it out, and he found Sid Vicious wandering the corridors, singing loudly. When Kenny asked Sid to be quiet, Vicious taunted him with abuse, and a fight ensued. Kenny swiftly beat Vicious into submission, bloodying Sid’s face as he fell. The bellhop then returned to the lobby.

At about 7.30am, a woman’s loud moaning awoke Vera Mendelssohn, a 48-year-old sculptor in room 102. It came from next door – room 100, and was a lonely, frightening sound. Nothing more was heard from there until Sid himself telephoned after someone had already called the front desk just after 11.00am. 

11.00am on 12 October 1978 the desk clerk at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City received a telephone call. A man told him, “There’s trouble in Room one hundred.” The clerk sent a bellboy to check it out, but before he returned, the front desk had another call, this time from room 100. “Someone is sick here”, a different male voice said. “Need help.”

The platinum blonde lay face-up on the floor of the toilet, her head under the sink. She wore only a black bra and panties, both items soaked with blood from a one-inch knife wound in her lower abdomen. The hotel bed was also extensively stained with blood. The desk clerk called for an ambulance, which arrived with a police escort. After the paramedics confirmed that the woman was dead, police checked the room and found drugs and drug paraphernalia as well as a bloodstained Jaguar K-11 folding knife with a five-inch blade and a black jaguar carved into the handle. The victim had been resident in Room 100 with her drug-addicted boyfriend.

The drug-addled musician could not remember the incident, but the knife responsible for the wound was still in the room when Spungen’s body was discovered. Police found Vicious wandering the hotel hallways, crying; he was immediately taken into custody and charged with second-degree homicide.  By the time Sid Vicious was arrested, he had taken enough Tuinal to kill a horse.

Virgin Records on instruction from Malcolm McClaren put up the money required for bail shortly after his arrest.

Vicious’ mental state became even more erratic following his arrest. His mother Anne Beverley flew out to New York City on 16 October, the day of his release on bail. Within a week, he tried to commit suicide by overdosing on methadone and slashing his right arm. His mother discovered him and rushed him to Bellevue hospital, saving his life.

Another arrest followed in December due to an assault on Patti Smith’s brother Todd at Max’s Kansas City; after serving two months in jail, Virgin supplied his bail for a second time, and he was released once again pending his trial for Spungen’s murder. That trial would never take place: Vicious was found dead of what is speculated to be a deliberate heroin overdose on February 2nd at the home of his new girlfriend Michelle Robinson. Supposedly his ashes were scattered on Nancy Spungen’s grave by his mother Anne Beverly as per his request, but whether this actually was accomplished remains in dispute as this act was against the express wishes of the Spungen family…

Photographs of the Sid Vicious Memorial March below taken by Janette Beckman in 1980.

Kill Your Pet Puppy Collective memories of the Sid Vicious Memorial March

HERE 

HERE 

HERE 

and  HERE

Nancy Spungen was not murdered by Sex Pistols member Sid Vicious, Malcolm McLaren says.

McLaren said he can’t believe it.

The former Sex Pistols manager said Vicious, the band’s bassist, was incapable of murdering her.

Spungen was found dead on 12 October 1978 in the couple’s New York hotel room having suffered a single stab wound to her abdomen from which she apparently bled to death.

Vicious was arrested and charged with her murder but claimed to have no memory of the event. He died of of a heroin overdose on February 2 1979.

Writing in a blog for The Daily Beast, McLaren said: “I was stunned when I first heard this and I still can’t believe it. Sid was capable of a wide range of self-destructive acts, but I didn’t think that he could kill someone, especially his girlfriend, unless it was a botched double suicide.”

He added that he believed Spungen was killed after getting in a fight with someone who had stolen money from the couple’s room.

He wrote: “He passed out on the bed, having taken fistfuls of the barbiturate Tuinal. All around him, drug dealers, and friends of Nancy came and went from Room 100.

“Money was stolen and Sid’s knife was taken from the wall where it was hung and seemingly used by someone defending themselves in a struggle with Nancy.

“Nancy was no pushover. Probably, she caught this person stealing money from the bedroom drawer.”

He also revealed that Vicious’ mother Anne Beverley smuggled him heroin hidden in her vagina.

McLaren wrote: “Sid’s mother, Anne, was kind enough and helped him wherever she could. A small-time drug dealer, she smuggled heroin in her vagina to Sid at Riker’s Island, a detention center in New York where he was awaiting trial for the murder of Nancy.”

Introduction To History And Where We Stand / Which Side Of The Fence *

Application To Everyday Life / Rock And Roll Factory Strike

Chumbawumba – Invasion / A.S.O.M. – Shits Pride

A.S.O.M. – A Bite Of The Apple Is Not Enough / Chumbawumba – Isolation

Meat Market / Grass So Green

Imagine / Take Action

The first 7″ single release carrying the Chumbawumba name very closely followed the same year by a split 7″ single with A State Of Mind plus the very first A State Of Mind 7″ single.

Closely aligned these two bands, one from Leeds, England one from San Francisco, U.S.A., shared common views and goals in the mid 1980’s. The booklets that come with these vinyl releases are full of information on what those views and goals would have been. Third world exploitation, multinational companies, vegetarianism, sexism and so forth.

After Crass had effectively folded in 1984 many 1000’s of people who wanted to avoid the well trodden path of what mainstream society expected of them, took Chumbawumba to thier hearts and travelled up and down the country to witness the wonderful theatrical gigs that the band performed. Many 1000’s of people also followed Conflict around of course after the demise of Crass. I prefered Chumbawumba as I felt that band had a better chance of getting alternative views over to a larger audience in the long run, which of course they did, and continue to do so today as far as I am aware.

The text below is courtesy of  kipuka.net/chumba/history/show.html and the photographs of Chumbawumba performing at Wood Green Arts Centre squat in 1985 courtesy of Graham Burnett.   

I have not found any information on the internet on A State Of Mind. Apart from the sleeve texts that I have in front of me there seems to be very little information out there. None of the texts on the two 7″ singles gives a ‘biography’ of this San Francisco band, just the above mentioned political thoughts which I am not going to write out on here as it would take weeks to complete!

*Please note that the first side of the first Chumbawumba 7″ single “Introduction To History And Where We Stand / Which Side Of The Fence” is recorded from my turntable and transferred to mp3 correctly. The tracks suddenly go very quiet

“Now if only pop (I mean POP) and politics DID mix…” – Robin Gibson reviewing Chumbawamba’s “Never Mind The Ballots” LP, Sounds July 1987.

“Suspended above the courtyard of the Pompidou Centre in Paris is the Genitron, an electric sign-clock flashing the number of seconds left in the twentieth century. Inaugurated in January 1987 by Francois Mitterand, the Genitron is a time machine that conducts its relentless countdown over the heads of the international fauna of Les Halles, the hustlers, punks, dealers, con men, mystics, musicians, strong-men, fire-eaters, rappers, breakers, addicts, sidewalk artists and sidewalk dwellers who seem already to represent the spectres of the apocalypse.” – Elaine Showalter, from “Sexual Anarchy – Gender and Culture At The Fin de Siecle” (1990)

FIVE OR SIX YEARS before the countdown began and Chumbawamba is being born out of that beautiful mess of street performers. Chumbawamba is the trio in the corner busking Clash and Gene Vincent songs on acoustic guitars – fired by punk logic, punk as change, hanging about in Paris during that knife-edge decision-time when rebellion turns into either part of your growing up or part of your life. Politics or “attitude” to come into it sooner or later.

Back a bit further. Legal Aid and Optical Illusion are the drummer and singer in a Barnsley punk band. Legal’s granddad is taking a Polaroid. They’re called `The Threat’ and their music starts and ends this record; the photograph becomes it’s cover. Later they’ll change their names to Harry & Mave and meet up with the others in Leeds, and end up living in a huge squatted Victorian house making pop (I mean POP) records.

Alice Nutter, art school drop-out, is playing drums badly in a group called `Ow My Hair’s On Fire’. Lou Watts operating computers for Burnley Building Society, Dunstan singing Velvet Underground cover versions in a Billingham group `Men In A Suitcase’. Teams that meet in cafes… and in the background, a woman Prime Minister running her own War in the South Atlantic, kills, maims, parades and gloats for half of 1982. England is dreaming alright: and somebody has to shout about the nightmare even if they are to be damned into obscurity for their pains. Usher in the Never-Has-Beens!

LONG BEFORE Chumbawamba release any records of their own, they pull off a successful guerilla attack which results in their first appearance on vinyl. In response to Garry Bushell’s inane patronage of Oi Punk (before Gary wrote for The Sun, he practiced his homophobic brand of tabloid sensationalism in music weekly `Sounds’), Chumbawamba fabricate a completely bogus Oi band called `Skin Disease’, complete with press pack and four-track demo cassette. Some few weeks later and Bushell lists Skin Disease as “Burnley’s premier Oi band”, and letters appear in Sounds lumping Skin Disease in with “other Northern Oi bands”, as proof of that “good Oi music is not exclusively a London phenomenon.” All this despite the fact that the “band” never actually exist. Eventually Bushell invites the band to appear on an Oi compilation single. Playing the role of Northern oiks, Skin Disease travel to London to record a special-written song called “I’m Think”, a bog-standard punky thrash with the words “I’m Thick” repeated sixty-four times. It appears on the single “Back On The Streets”.

Meanwhile, back to the twentieth century countdown. The first Chumbawamba demo tape is recorded in Hulme, Manchester, a few days after the band’s first gig in January 1982. A snippet of it ends up on a Crass compilation album “Bullshit Detector 2″, alongside a song about nuclear war by Barnsley band Passion Killers. Passion Killers are what became of The Threat. (As in, “1, 2, 3, 4, Let’s Go!”). The two bands meet. Small-town punks in Leeds, with a desire to rise above the mundane, to avoid a lifetime career at the Building Society or down the pit at Barnsley Main, sidestepping the alternative of college education. But instead of just escaping those roots, it becomes more and more important as the eighties progress to take them along, to re-write the endings of the Hollywood teenage rites-of-passage movies, to balance the fine line between everyday boredom and rock n roll’s petulant ignorance of real life; and to have fun doing it. Growing up to a soundtrack of punky, alienated noise – religiously watching The Fall, Wire, ATV, Clash – turns everything after it into a choice between safety – with all it’s inbuilt insecurities and emotional cancers – and challenge. Change or go under. The bad ship Chumbawamba sets sail.

“Chumbawamba: the message is more important than the music.” – Full extent of first ever live review, New Musical Express.

AT THIS POINT CHUMBAWAMBA are fast becoming unmovable flag-burning pacifists, a reaction against Thatcher’s election campaign involving nuclear stockpiling and stepping over dead bodies in the Falklands. This is the decadent 60’s and 70’s hangover, the Pistols’ “No Future” etched across a Boy George mirror. In the early eighties the choice seems straightforward – Brit-pop as complete escapism (Lady Margaret’s “Me, me, me” culture) or the sub-culture of resistance that is burrowing it’s way from underground. Chumbawamba play gigs at peace camps, turning up at demonstrations and rallies like they’re going out of fashion. (Which they are). The band’s home is raided twice in under a year by ten burly drugs squad officers who ask, “You lot them Socialist Worker types, right?”. No wonder the likes of the Guildford Four got banged up for fifteen years with authorities like this on the case.

The entries on the Special Branch files get longer. Raids, obstruction, breaches of the peace, even “theft by housebreaking” – twenty-six hours in the custody of the Strathclyde police in December 1983 charged with “removal of dogs, mice and files” from a research bucket load; for single parents, local hospital closure campaigns, hunt saboteurs, the ALF, anti-Sizewell campaign, nurseries. Nine people, three cats and a dog living under one roof, fledging anarchist politics mixed with too-hefty doses of idealism and organic vegetables. The dog, Derek, appears on a couple of the early records and includes in his CV the greatest accolade bestowed upon a canine: that of biting members of the police force (forcing one to have hospital treatment).

TWO EVENTS WHICH RE-ROUTE the agit-pop politics of Chumbawamba, both from 1984. Firstly, the Brighton Bomb. Half the Cabinet covered in rubble, and suddenly political violence – of the type which defeated Hitler, freed Mandela, ended slavery, and overthrew the state communist dictatorships – blows a hole in the pacifist edge to the band’s polemic. Secondly, and more importantly, the beginning of the great Miners’ Strike. From early on, the Armley (Leeds) Miners Support group is twinned with Frickley put in South Elmsall – Armley Socialist Workers make the connections and Chumbawamba supply the van and the street collections on Saturday mornings. The band mix playing benefit gigs for the miners with traveling down to the picket lines at five and six o’clock in the morning. And during this bitter winter some of Chumbawamba join a theatre group who travel from village to village putting on a Christmas pantomime for miner’s kids, down to South Wales and around Yorkshire. Coming from places like Barnsley and Burnley in times when the coal mines were part of the very fabric of these towns, it doesn’t take much effort to know which side of the fence you ought to be standing on; the band makes and sells a fast-selling three-track cassette for the Miners’ Hardship Fund, and Sounds writes:

“The Chumbas, as they are affectionately known, are refreshing and genuine pop anarchists. And no, they won’t go away…” (December 1994)

“What we’re given is any old rubbish that won’t upset the apple cart. The only choice we seem to be left with it to play the part of the bad apple.” – from Chumbawamba’s first single sleeve notes

ON JUNE 1ST, 1985, Chumbawamba are recording their first single “Revolution”, whilst at the same time the Travellers Convoy is being attacked and wrecked in a beanfield adjacent to Stonehenge. Cracked heads, massive publicity, and the start of an era of political change: when the marginal’s begin to come out from the underground.

The Clash, hastily re-formed in new street-cred guide with Joe Strummer passing round the music business hat to pay for his cocaine habit, play rebel chic outside Leeds University. Danbert Nobacon arms himself with a hydraulic-action paint-gun and splatters band and audience before legging it. This is Chumbawamba discovering their real talent: refuting the idea that rock n roll is some huge back-slapping family business where everyone “pulls together”. Putting spanners in their own works, pigheadedly refusing to lie down and become another servile record business lap-dog.

THE HOUSE IS RAIDED AGAIN, this time with sledgehammers. They’re looking for “explosives and bomb-making equipment”. Everyone is hauled down to the station, questioned relentlessly, kept separately, diaries and books confiscated – huge plastic bagfuls of pamphlets, posters, even song lyrics… twenty-three hours in a Leeds cop shop. Meanwhile, the first single sells out.

“We haven’t got a master plan – we react to things as they come along. As Anarchists we live with the contradictions that socialism doesn’t allow.” – From an interview with Melody Maker, Dec 1986

Chumbawamba mocks up as an April Fool’s SDP/Liberal Alliance pop group, calls itself The Middle, and records three tracks for a spoof demo. The Libs love it. Mike Harskin at the Liberal Whips Office in the House of Commons writes to invite the band to play at MP David Owen’s birthday party at Stringfellow’s in London; Chumbawamba are busy playing their own gigs. The single “Smash Clause 28″ attacks the government homophobia pushing through a law which, amongst other things, demands the teaching of hetro-only family values in schools. This single is received as “unwashed ghetto grumbling… rock n roll won’t even notice” by Sounds magazine. (Shortly after, few people notice the demise of Sounds.) “Smash Clause 28″ is the first of several recorded attacks on homophobia by the band, and significantly it isn’t until 1994’s “Homophobia” that the issue becomes “acceptable” enough to make it into the pop industry’s frame of vision, along with active anti-fascism (as opposed to a general nod in the direction of anti-racism) and anti-sexism. This year’s thing, last year’s thing, next year’s thing.

IN THE SUMMER OF 1985 Live Aid gives Sir Bob Geldof an excuse to get pissed and shout “fucking give, you bastards!” on live TV. Everyone waits to see if they’ll exhume John Lennon’s body and sit it in front of a white piano. Showbiz razzamatazz and displays of public generosity before McCartney sings “Let It Be”. Let what be? Have a party, celebrate decadence, and send a few bob to Africa? The £80 million raised amounts to a little more than half Michael Jackson’s personal fortune, or about what the world spends on arms every two hours forty minutes. And not one of those has-beens up there on the global pulpit ever mentions why there’s a famine in the first place – no-one asks who rips off the African crops and gives only MacCoke culture in return. Band Aid: a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. Revive those flagging careers! And U2 get their first taste of stadium rock…

Chumbawamba’s response is an LP catchily titled “Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records; Starvation, Charity and Rock n Roll – Lies and Traditions”. Which says it all, really. On the home front, Chumbawamba get involved in mass pickets both locally, at the Silentnight factory in Barnoldswick, and nationally, outside Fortress Wapping in London, where Rupert Murdoch mixes upgrading production of The Sun and The Times with all-out attacks on unions. Bundles of newspapers sitting outside newspaper shops across Britain are repeatedly stolen and burn, and several nights in Wapping end in a celebratory and almost ritual battle between cops protecting newspaper lorries and thousands of pickets and supporters. The band plays benefits for both sets of strikers in addition to gigs for Gay Switchboard, Prisoner’s Support group, Leeds Bust Fund and even an Anti-Freemasons concert in Keswick which has to switch venues twice due to local Masonic council threats. Chumbawamba are described in the Keswick press as “the worst of the american satanic backwards message bands”. And a gig with arch-punks Conflict at Leeds University ends in a mini-riot, missiles and riot cops and running battles… and Chumbawamba earn a lifetime ban from the University.

Late 1986 and Chumbawamba link up with Dutch band The Ex for a gig-to-gig relationship which is to last several years. Anarchists, squatters, and die-hard musical experimentalists, The Ex introduce Chumbawamba to demonstrations, Amsterdam-style; in a protest against NATO warships being stationed in the harbour, thousand of people create a huge party on the shores with bands playing on warehouse roof-tops and people already in crash helmets and with scarves across their faces. The Dutch riot police repeatedly charge the crowd, there’s a scream, and it’s an English accent. Alice Nutter is caught in the panic and has a broken leg. She completes the tour sitting on stage on a stool with her leg in plaster.

“All good clean fun, and ultimately harmless” – Chumbawamba live review, Birmingham Mermaid 1987

THE “SCAB AID” SINGLE, released under the name “The Scum” in 1987, attacks The Sun newspaper’s hypocrisy and jingoism by parodying that paper’s charity single “Let It Be” – where a host of pop’s graying publicity-fetishists (McCartney, Boy George, etc) sing to raise money for people involved in a ferry disaster. The single, a spoken-word n’ piano piece narrated by long-standing Chumbawamba sidekick Simon Lanzon (later of Credit To The Nation) makes NME’s single of the week and sells out before anyone realizes it’s Chumbawamba. The Sun describes the record as “sick!”. And what more accolades could it get from a paper which described the drowning of hundreds of Argentine soldiers aboard ship in 1982 with the headline “Gotcha!”?

“NEVER MIND THE BALLOTS… Here’s The Rest of Your Life”. Another Thatcher election victory and another round of red-faced Labour politicians shifting further to the right. The Labour Party, sitting on the fence so long it can’t work out which side it’s supposed to be on. Scared to challenge the status quo, wooing big business, turning a blind eye to sexual politicsm to the dismantling of the Unions, to Ireland. For some of Chumbawamba, a few days in Belfast to see a little of what’s going on there. Saturday night chucking-out time, blacked-up squaddies creeping through peoples’ front gardens, in armored cars in daylight asking questions, taking detail at sub-machine gunpoint. And the British media’s propaganda warfare, relentless in it’s blanket-censoring thoroughness… you can sing “Free Nelson Mandela” until the cows come home, but sing a song about Bobby Sands and see what reaction you get.

1988 and trying to cross the border between Switzerland and France. Seven hours in the no-man’s-land between the two, the entire band strip-searched and questioned after being found to have some copies of “Class War”. Extra plain-clothes officers “looking for guns”, the band only managing to cross intro France when the Swiss refuse to have them back; and after signing papers agreeing to the destruction of the confiscated magazines.

BACK IN ENGLAND, and the Centre for Policy Studies has unveiled their brand new baby for the 1990’s – the Poll Tax. Contrary to previous form, this is an attack on the whole of the British working class in one fell swoop; having excelled at picking off sections of it, this time the state proposes to reinvent a sweeping poverty tax which last failed in 1381, the time of the infamous People’s Revolt. Chumbawamba reacts by releasing a collection of acapella songs dating from that revolt up to the present day: “English Rebel Songs” breaks the chain of guitar/drums pop and tells it’s history of trouble-makers, revolutionaries and rebels whilst around the land anti-Poll Tax groups begin to organise and educate.

“If I can’t dance to it… it’s not my revolution” – Emma Goldman

This post is dedicated with the greatest of respect to Iain Aitch who is enjoying his birthday today