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.
Be good. Have fun.
Sid Vicious And The Idols Max’s Kansas City performance 30th September 1978
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
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
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
Before Marilyn Manson, before Alice Cooper, there was The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, an R&B act whose hit song ‘Fire’ set both the UK and US charts alight back in 1968. Considered one of the prime movers behind the British progressive underground, Brown’s flamboyant stage act – flaming helmet, outlandish costumes, bizarre facial make-up and crazy, incendiary vocals – appropriately suited the band’s manic, psychedelic sound. When that band broke up in early 1969, Brown slowly abandoned his R&B roots. He then resurfaced in 1971 and was back to his theatrical excesses (including his own on-stage crucifixion) with a new band called Arthur Brown Kingdom Come; this band was rockier, more adventurous and a decidedly more progressive outfit. Kingdom Come’s performance at the very first Glastonbury Fayre in 1971 was one of the undoubted highlights of that years festival, which also included performances by Pink Fairies, Family, Gong, Traffic, Fairport Convention, Terry Reid and David Bowie. See some wonderful photographs of the first Glastonbury Fayre event HERE .
Through the course of three LP’s, the band saw a string of musicians incessantly going through the revolving doors of Brown’s ministry. Not having much commercial success, however, Kingdom Come split up in 1973. Brown went on to cut three solo albums and then disappeared somewhere in Texas to become a carpenter.
All three Arthur Brown Kingdom Come LP’s are a kind of collision between psychedelia and new wave, bearing a space-rock and typical Zappa-esque tomfoolery. They feature Brown’s incredible vocals (that can range from Tom Jones’ croonery to sheer maniacal screams). Somewhat like a bridge between the psychedelic and early progressive eras, their first album ‘Galactic Zoo Dossier’ impresses with its aggressive guitar play and wild, killer organ. This is the set that the band performed at Glastonbury Fayre. Simply called ‘Kingdom Come’, the band’s second effort is a bit more disjointed, slightly lacking the punch and energy of the first. With ‘Journey’, we have the band’s most accomplished work, featuring new musicians, plenty of mellotron and synths – a highly entertaining space prog rock album altogether.
If you delight in both failed genius and early 70’s hippy zaniness, then do give this band a listen. You’ll probably find plenty of words to describe their music, but ‘boring’ isn’t be one of them…
Kind regards to Phil Ritchie who also likes a bit of Kingdom Come but does NOT have a birthday today…
Happy birthday to Chris Low…
Happy birthday to Lou…
Happy birthday to Sean…
Hoping you are all having a lovely day…
The Sky Is Blue Again / Map / Outlook Army / Sucking Pig / A Sense Of Tumour
Meanwhile / Rules / Squat Song / Warning Shot / New Wars
The debut 12″ by The Ex, 45 rpm, 10 songs clocking in at 22 minutes. Indebted to Chris Low for the lend of this release. One I missed out on. I started collecting The Ex material after the ‘History Is What’s Happening’ LP was released in 1982. As a night out The Ex can barely be bettered. Since the first time I witnessed the band supporting The Poison Girls down The Hammersmith Clarendon in 1985, leading a year or two later onto a very special performance I witnessed in some squatted school in Amsterdam, in which the band were seriously energetic…Jumping over the potted plants and amplifiers set up in a class room whilst strumming guitars and barking into mics without even dropping a note. All great stuff.
Instead of writing (or ripping off text from another site) the history of this band onto this post, I would like to cut and paste my old friend and house mate, Iain Aitch’s Guardian newspaper article on The Ex that was published today.
Thanks to Iain in advance for letting me use his work.
Try to describe the Ex and you have a problem. The Dutch band may have celebrated their 30th birthday recently, but you would try to sum up their sound in two or three words at your peril. This is a quandary shared by the band members themselves. I meet them in Dublin, where they are playing a one-off date. The cab driver taking them to the venue asked them what they sound like. “We had real difficulty,” says Andy Moor, the band’s London-born guitarist, who boasts 15 years’ service. “It is really hard!” “We feel a bit stupid as it can sound very pretentious, ‘We are very unique, we are not like anyone else,” says Terrie Hessels, the only remaining member of the band’s original 1979 lineup.
Yet unique is what the Ex are. Take any major musical development of the last 50 years and you can almost guarantee that they have either incorporated it into their sound or played with it and discarded it. Their recent retrospective CD 30 contains a dazzling array of sounds that range from industrial to orchestral. Though the band’s real move forward, and one which brought them to the attention of the jazz world, was their 1991 collaboration with (now sadly deceased) US cellist Tom Cora. This lead to further unions, with the likes of zany Dutch jazz drummer Han Bennink as well as English saxophonist John Butcher.
Even now, the kind of phrases used on gig posters and in the music press range from “anarcho-punk” to “improvised jazz” to “afro-punk” and “folk”. The punk part may be fair – the band certainly formed with that ethos and a staccato approximation of the sound of the Fall or Gang of Four, but they have always been far more experimental than their three-chord forebears.
They chose their name for the ease with which it could be sprayed on walls, and drew straws to decide who would play what. There was always an exploratory and political edge to the band, as evidenced by the 1983 concept set of four 7″ singles about a closed factory in the Amsterdam suburb of Wormer where the band formed. Since then, the Ex have taken in folk influences from all over Europe. They have dabbled in jazz, improvisation, guitar destruction, drilling venue walls, dance music, military-band precision, ska, toy instruments, horns, African beats and sampling. I could go on. Yet, surprisingly, none of this comes across as radical departure in style. They still sound like the Ex on every recording and at every gig. The guitars retain a caustic, rhythmic precision and the drumming is tight and complex.
“One reason we are hard to describe is that we never had an education at music school, and in that sense we are not influenced by any traditional playing,” says Katherina Bornefeld, neatly sidestepping any attempt to form a soundbite encapsulating the Ex’s sound, despite her 25 years on the drum stool.
In order to understand the band you need to see them perform; they work in the opposite manner to most groups. The Ex write songs to perform live, tweaking them as tours progress and then recording the honed versions as documents of their time. Most Ex tours start with an entire batch of new material – there is no roster of crowd-pleasers to get the audience going. The dedicated fan is as challenged as someone hearing the band for the very first time.
This is a band very much about intuition. Moor plays intricate notes on a baritone guitar with his eyes closed before dashing at Hessels, both raising their guitars as the newest member of the band, Arnold de Boer (who last year replaced founder-member GW Sok), ducks beneath them. Meanwhile, Bornefeld seemingly hits every piece of her drumkit, before repeating the rhythm in a slightly different pattern. Moor aims kicks at the air – band members even try to put each other off at times. The band have a reputation for addressing serious politics, but they also have a great sense of humour. This is neatly evidenced by the 7in singles club they ran for a year, where the last single was a 12in and thus could not be squeezed into the box that came with the first record in the series.
As well as being a drumming original, Bornefeld also possesses a voice made for singing folk music in any language, which has come to the fore on the band’s tours of Ethiopia. Born out of sheer enthusiasm for the music and people of the country, the Ex’s Ethiopian tours took loud guitar music where it has never been before, as well as exchanging ideas and technical know-how with local musicians. They also played with Ethiopian saxophone legend Getatchew Mekurya, and collaborated with him on an album.
“There is no tour circuit,” says Hessels. “We even went to places that hardly any Ethiopian musicians had played.”
“One time we were playing in a barn on a farm and another time in the police community hall,” adds Moor. “We would just go to the chief of the town and they decided what we should pay, sometimes it was $20 and sometimes it was free.”
The band took generators and amplifiers with them, and left them behind for local musicians to use. They follow a similar DIY philosophy with all their work. The band has no manager, driver or roadies and they put out all their CDs themselves. Yet they also find time to have countless side projects, such as Bornefeld’s KatJonBand with the Mekons’ Jon Langford, Moor’s solo album and Hessels’s work with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.
Their free gigs in Ethiopia, which attracted crowds of 2,000 or more, have also left what could be a strange musical legacy. If Ethiopia starts throwing up scratchy, indefinable guitar bands, you’ll know who to blame. “Everyone still uses cassettes there,” says Moor. “We went back to pressing up cassettes, giving them out to taxi drivers all over the place. So at least they know what we sound like.”
An initial pressing of 10,000 cassettes, with more to follow and the inevitable home-taping, have made the Ex established favourites in parts of Ethiopia, but in the UK they remain something of a word-of-mouth aural delicacy. Their arrival on these shores for their first tour since 2003 should help to remedy that, especially as they have integrated yet more new sounds in the shape of Brass Unbound, a four-piece horn section of prodigious talents.
With this addition to their ranks, the Ex once again deter any attempts at description. But you get the feeling that as soon as anyone nailed their sound, the band would do their damnedest to defy it.
Iain Aitch / Guardian
Three tapes from two bands hailing from Southend On Sea. Both bands have two members in common, those members being Paul Brown and Graham Burnett, the later is a regular commentator on this very site.
Autumn Poison was the name given to the radiation sickness that followed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which Graham chose after recieving a letter from Toxic Grafity’s Mike Diboll who used to spray stencilled Japanese characters on the envelopes of the long letters he used to send Graham. Graham wrote back to ask Mike what the symbols meant and a band name was born.
The first Autumn Poison cassette has a lyric booklet accompaining it. The second Autumn Poison cassette has an inlay booklet held within the artwork with pages and pages of text (24 pages to be precise) that would even put The Apostles text sheets shoved into that band’s records and cassettes to shame. The Love Over Law release came originally with a 48 page booklet! The reams of information held within these printed masterpieces would have been just as (or perhaps more) important as the actual music being played on these cassettes.
I decided to place the Love Over Law tape onto this post (although the band and tape were both existing past 1986 so really should be in the post 86 section of this site) as I thought it would be better to keep all this work from these Southend On Sea bands on the single post.
The text below was liberated from the southendpunk.com site – Thanks in advance to them. Photographs are from Graham’s collection.
Autumn Poison – Songs of Anger, Songs of Hope – 1982
Autumn Poison – Kitchen Sink Politics – 1984
Autumn Poison were an anarcho punk group from Southend, and were formed around the ‘core’ members of Graham Burnett, Sheena Fulton and Paul Brown. They existed between 1980 – 1985 and played many concerts in and around Southend, often with the like minded Kronstadt Uprising. When they first formed, they were originally called Enola Death, but soon changed their name to Autumn Poison. Graham had switched to Vocals after previously playing drums in Stripey Zebras, whom had played many great shows in 1980 around the area, especially at Focus and The Zero 6.
The band were an important part of the ‘cassette culture’ of the 1980’s (Graham ran his own label – New Crimes Tapes that was affiliated with his fanzine, New Crimes) and released two key cassettes on New Crimes Tapes – the first ‘Songs of Anger, Songs of Hope’, was originally issued with a free lyric booklet and badge and was a good document of the first phase of the bands career, featuring songs such as ‘Police Force’, ‘The Sun Says’ and ‘Fox Hunting’. With the key line up of Graham and Sheena on Vocals, Julian Ware-Lane on Guitar, Steve on Bass and Kevin Hickling on Drums, the band played a lot of concerts in the period, often in conjunction with the Kronstadt Uprising, many of which were benefits for the CND or local Animal Rights groups. Key shows of the time would have included The Thorpedene Community Centre gig with Kronstadt and Hagar The Womb on the 14.08.82, a local headliner at The Cliff Hotel with The Committee on the 06.08.83 and a gig at The Grand Hotel in Leigh with The Omega Tribe and Youth in Asia on the 25.09.83.
The band eventually disbanded around 1985, but fast forwarding to 1994, Graham and Paul reformed the band in order to record a track for Bullshit Detector Volume #4, a compilation put together by Resistance Productions, a Swiss-based Anarcho Punk record and cassette label, who wanted to continue the tradition of the earlier Crass compiled Bullshit Detector Volumes. (Autumn Poison’s track was notable too for including a sample of Crass Drummer Penny Rimbaud.)
After Autumn Poison disbanded, Graham and Paul would go on to occasionally collaborate under the title of ‘Love Over Law’, and release several cassette albums in the late 1980’s early 1990’s. Graham had also run the ‘Pritty Toons Press’ for several years, producing local fanzines such as his own, New Crimes, as well as Necrology and Confidential Waste, and nowadays runs permaculture workshops and various eco-friendly schemes. Paul Brown had a brief tenure in Kronstadt Uprising, and in 1984 played with Steve Pegrum in local band ‘The Children of the Revolution’. He continues to play and teach guitar. Kevin co-ran ‘SLAB’ in the mid ’80’s (Southend Libertarian Anarchist Broadsheet) and still drums occasionally.
Further updates on Autumn Poison band members:
Sheena left Southend to become a ‘New Age Traveller’ in 1990, she now lives with her family on the Isle of Lewis and has very recently become a grandmother!
Paul continues to earn a good living as professional guitar tutor and still plays locally in various bands ranging from folk to jazz to heavy rock.
Julian is now a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party and continues to campaign and comment on local and national issues.
Steve continues to live and work in Southend, and still plays in various local bands.
Graham has written books about and teaches Permaculture courses, including in the garden of former Crass HQ Dial House, and is now married to Sheena’s sister Debby, his website is http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/.
Love Over Law – This World We Must Leave – 1988
Indebted to the most excellent Seema Kapoor for lending these tapes to me so I could upload them onto this KYPP site.
Chuggin In The Ruggin / Steppenwolf
Look Mummy Clowns emerged early on in 1982 from the members of The Eratics. Stringy continued to play the bass and Snout continued to play the guitar. Roper, The Eratics drummer, moved over to vocal duties and the vacant drumming position was filled by ex-Apostle drummer Dan MacIntyre.
The band performed with the likes of Hagar The Womb, Blood And Roses and Flowers In The Dustbin in many of the usual pubs and squats that were available to punk bands in and around the London scene at that time.
A year on in 1983 the band recorded and released a demo which impressed ex-Eratics fan Jumpy who was based in Bolognia amongst the radical squats and book shops that existing in that Italian city. The band travelled over to Bolognia, performed in front of the radical audience and then sometime later in the week, the band rush recorded these tracks in a portacabin before having to travel to that nights gig in Milan. The travel arrangements to this gig in Milan ended in confusion as two members made it and two members ended up somewhere else near by!
The band performed for the last time at the New Merlins Cave pub near Kings Cross in June of 1985.
Dan MacIntyre had a thought about about this one and only Look Mummy Clown 7″ release;
“it actually came out alright considering it was recorded very quickly in a portacabin in Bologna using a small mobile studio. This was during a tour of Italy in 1983 organised by Jumpy from RAF punk record label Attack…”
Interesting article written by Tom Vague in August 1984 for Zig Zag magazine HERE and HERE
Many happy returns to Dan MacIntyre whose birthday it is today. Hoping you and yours are having a nice day down on the south coast.
Thanks to Jim Wafford for the lend of this release and to Dan for the flyers and for supplying the demo track ‘White Horses’ a song that was mentioned in the comments after this post was completed.
The debut and only LP by The Rondo’s from Rotterdam recorded in 1980 shortly before the band split up. A large Gang Of Four and Wire influence on the tracks contained on this excellent LP. A free flexi disc is also included in the package which I did not bother to upload as it is a very bad quality short wave recording of John Peel playing ‘The Russians Are Coming’ on his famous late night Radio One show.
The text and photographs below concern the infamous Crass / Poison Girls / Rondos September 1979 concert at the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square that was disrupted by a punch up between S.W.P. and B.M. hooligans. Crass never got to perform on this night due to the plod emptying the hall of all gig goers, peaceful or otherwise.
The text has been lifted from rondos.nl the Rondos official site, and the photographs are taken from the Rondos CD box set released on King Kong Records (KKR008/009). Indebted to Chris Low.
Conway Hall 9th September 1979 setting up
Crass soundcheck
Rondos perform
Rondos perform
Poison Girls perform
Conway Hall crowd during the break before Crass were going to perform and before the trouble erupted
The plod enter the scene, Steve Ignorant and Gee look on from the crowd and the venue is evacuated
Sometime early on in 1979, Peter from Backstreet showed us a bizarre LP from London ‘The Feeding Of The 5000’ by Crass. We were overwhelmed at the enormous noise, driven by the beat of a drum and accompanied by serious ranting and raving, lasting the entire two sides of the album. We’d never heard the word ‘fuck’ that often on one record before. In Huize Schoonderloo we held our breaths as we listened to Crass’ anti-musical music many times over. Something that resembled tracks started to take shape. We read the lyrics and looked closely at the sheet covered in fascist-like symbolism. They were great! Better than us!
We sent them an enthusiastic letter, some of our issues and a single. We immediately got a very nice letter in return, with Crass buttons we should by no means feel obliged to wear and a Crass lyrics book, handmade and stenciled. They wondered if we wanted to come to England to perform together. We sure did. We decided to take a trip to England. Dick and Mildred filmed our departure from Hook of Holland. We saw a Crass concert in London. What an experience. The whole thing soon degenerated into a fight, initiated by a gang of skinheads who were violently terrorizing the venue. To our utter amazement Crass initially played on as if nothing was happening.
The following day we visited Dial House in the countryside on the outskirts of London. Penny Rimbaud, Crass’ drummer and clearly its source of inspiration too, gave us a warm welcome. He’d been in the kitchen all day and had baked all kinds of vegan vegetable pies, especially for us. Were we hungry? We told him it was kind of him but we’d just scoffed some hamburgers in London somewhere. Vegetarianism was still one step beyond us. Crass were surprised we weren’t fifteen-year-olds. That is how our music had sounded on the single we sent them. What do you say to that? To make things better G. said it was meant as a compliment. Rather sweet.
We were invited to perform with Crass and Poison Girls in London in September. We were already looking forward to it. They asked if we could leave the hammer and sickle at home, because they were likely to have the wrong effect on the skinheads who faithfully frequented Crass’ gigs. We agreed to everything.
We returned to London in September. We were wearing nice black suits with red Politischer Schutzhaftling (‘political activists in protective custody’) triangles. Admittedly this was inspired by Crass’ militant uniforms. Up to then we’d usually worn cheerful, colourful football shirts bought on flea markets. But by then everybody was doing that, you see.
The Crass members lived and worked together for the good cause like we did. They were incredibly friendly, a little older and a little more intellectual. And the ladies were rather feminist. “We pay with our bodies.” We were still boyish and open-minded, but certainly not stupid. We got on straight away, especially with Penny who just seemed incredibly old to us. He had to be almost forty! He was very friendly, however, and had clearly been influenced by oriental philosophy. Zen, if you like. We spotted modest Buddha statuettes here and there in the beautifully decorated country home and in the middle of a conversation he suddenly pointed at the wooden coffee table and said: “This teapot is borrowed from the universe.” Everyone fell silent. You could have heard a pin drop and we all stared at the teapot on the table that looked very normal to us. We’d not seen that one coming.
We stayed the night. They willingly put their rooms and beds at our disposal. The day of the concert arrived, a benefit concert for the anarchist prisoners in England known as the ‘Persons Unknown’. Crass practised the transitions between the songs, which they played without pausing, like they did on their records. We hung around in their delightful garden. Steve Ignorant, Crass’ brilliant singer, polished everyone’s Dr. Martens boots. He asked how we could remain so calm just before a performance. We smiled, because we didn’t understand the question. He told us he kept running to the toilet with nerves all day. We raised our eyebrows. That afternoon we arrived at the Conway Hall in Crass’ van. The place was swarming with skinheads. The fascist National Front had just held a big meeting, in the Conway Hall of all places.
The atmosphere in the venue just before that night’s performance was vicious. Fights broke out near the toilets in the corridor between different groups of skinheads supporting different football clubs. They marched ostentatiously into the room, with bloody hands and faces. They raised their arms in the Nazi salute. The Rondos played. Apart from the odd broken string the gig went perfect. We got good reactions. Poison Girls played. There was a lot of Hex-like behavior from female fans. Their vocals were rather theatrical, but still it was a great show, supported noisily by a gang of West Ham skins thrashing the balcony.
Then all hell broke loose. It all happened very fast. People were getting punched and kicked. Panic broke out. The audience scattered. We lifted small skinheads on to the stage so they wouldn’t get trampled. They cried with shock and fear and were barely eleven or twelve years old. People were lying on the floor. The police arrived and cleared the room. The skins were told to hand in their shoelaces. Peace returned and staff scrubbed the floor and mopped up the blood. Apparently, members of the Anti Nazi League and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) had clashed with skinheads of the British Movement and the National Front, who had stayed behind in pubs around the Conway Hall after the NF meeting to come to Crass’ gig that evening. A Jewish activist from the SWP walked up to the stage and pointed his finger at Crass. Your fault!
We grabbed our things and got in the van. We were packed together and very quiet. We went by a Chinese take-away for some vegan spring rolls. At Crass’ place a discussion ensued. The tone was friendly, but still. Shouldn’t you protect yourself from this kind of violence? They frequently wrestled with these problems. Crass had become a target for skinheads who were attracted to their furious music, militant appearance and swastika-like symbols, but who rejected anarchist and pacifist ideas. Crass refused to employ bouncers or let the venue hire them, even though that was a common thing in London in those days. It was a question of principles but should the audience be put through all this? You do invite them to come to your gigs, after all. Is it fair to deliver them unprotected to hordes of skinheads, fascist or not, while you are safely on the stage? It was fair, said Crass, for that was simply the situation in London at that time and they didn’t want to be ‘anti’. Crass said we didn’t understand, coming from the peaceful Netherlands. Crass’ pacifist anarchism, although admirable, opposed The Rondos’ more militant attitude.
We said goodbye the next day. We agreed to do more concerts in England together, organize a common tour of the Netherlands and there were plans to record an LP with Crass’ help. We’d talk about it all later. In the meantime the newspapers in England were full of the Conway Hall battle. The only venue, by the way, that had offered the National Front a space to meet, from the fundamental conviction that everyone has the right of assembly.
When we got back home to peaceful Huize Schoonderloo Andy, Crass’ guitar player, telephoned us. They had decided not to collaborate with us after all. Yes, we did do the same thing and yes, personally they thought we were very nice and sympathetic, but still. Later we received a letter from Penny. They didn’t want to confuse the audience by playing with a band that had different views. Besides, we had some sympathy for the People’s Republic of China. This was also a difficulty.
We were rather baffled. Obviously we understood that they were under direct physical threat from National Front skinheads. If they’d taken that as an argument, we would’ve immediately endorsed and appreciated it. But they were turning it into an ideological issue. They just didn’t want to be seen with us. Letters were sent both ways. No results. Still we didn’t give in. Raket published vicious articles we wrote about the Crass vs. Rondos controversy. We thought it relevant because in the Netherlands too, the Crass ideology was spreading and racism, propagated by different neo-Nazi groups, was emerging and poisoning the punk scene. The issue simply had to be addressed.
In hindsight we may have been too bitter and disappointed, and thus let things get too tense. We did, however, get votes of sympathy from London punks who were tired of the skinhead terror and wanted to strike back, but felt hindered by Crass. The discussion spread across the Dutch punk scene. You can look it all up in the fanzine Raket.
Levellers piece on the Crass / Poison Girls / Rondos Conway Hall troubles – published date: Oct 1979 (Chris Low Collection)
Bigger text HERE
Another perspective of this concert is written in the book ANTI FASCIST by Martin Lux who was there that night fighting the fascists.
An excerpt of that chapter is on a seperate post which may be accessed HERE
Richard Kick has just put up some new clips on his youtube channel, rcabutx.
This is the first of the six parts of Brigandage live at the Bull And Gate, 1986. Enjoy.
Warning – there’s a lot of smoking going on in this clip.
Run Come Rally / Jah Vengeance / Conquering Lion / Covetious Men / Anti Christ
Carnel Mind / Jah Love / Love Thy Neighbour / Love Of Jah / The Man Who Does The Work
This debut collection of recordings, recorded by Vivian Jackson and The Prophets, included various 7″ single tracks dating from 1972 until 1974, JA singles that were released in amazingly small quantities of 100-200 copies originally.
The LP I have in my collection got distributed all over Europe, amongst the wave of militant roots reggae music that had became popular in the large cities on that continent. Artists like Culture, Burning Spear and The Congos and many more helped pave the way for this music in the UK, with a large amount of help from late night radio DJ’s David Rodigen and John Peel.
Vivian Jackson was born in extreme poverty in Kingston and got seriously ill in his teens while working at a furnace facility. Thrown out of his employment, he had no choice but to became a beggar and hustler around the markets, in the tough ghetto’s of Kingston. Vivian being disabled and in such a ragged state, no one would employ him, added to this situation, he also had his share of knocks living on the street.
He eventually started to compose songs and, as normal with Jamaican artists, visited many recording studios and sung acapella style to the studio owners. Osbourne Ruddock AKA King Tubby told the artist to come back to the studio with the (ever so) important JA dollars, and they would cut a vocal and a dub.
Vivian had no money and had to wait quite some time to go back to the studio, this time with The Prophets (actually originally credited as Ralph Brothers on the final release in 1972) to get ‘Conquering Lion’ down on dub-plate with a King Tubby’s dub on the reverse side.
This dub-plate, as usual in Jamaica, was played on the sound system that was affiliated with the studio the tracks were recorded in; in this case King Tubby’s sound system, and from the reaction from the crowd at the dances, a few hundred copies were pressed up on the NOW label. These copies sold out and gave Vivian his first steps in the industry, to build up a working relationship with Tubby that would last several years.
This album of early material by Yabby You was released in the UK, in a slightly different form and was entitled ‘Ramadam’.
This album is filled with tracks (nowadays quite well known, with some of the excellent reissue labels like Blood And Fire and Pressure Sounds Records pushing this era of reggae music) that are sublimely beautiful, and without doubt some of the best roots music ever produced by any artist.
In the words of John Lydon “words can not express”…
From the original post upload date of June 2008, re-published on this site today due to Vivian’s death yesterday…
The reggae community has been hit with another tragedy as Vivian Jackson, better known as Yabby You, passed away Tuesday 12/01/10 at the age of 63. Throughout his illustrious roots career, Jackson defined himself by his iconoclastic behavior, and iconic music. While his peers were all of devout Rastafarian faith, Yabby accepted the lifestyle, but rejected the creed, opting instead for a strong Christian faith that eventually earned him the nickname “Jesus Dread.”
After struggling with health problems exacerbated by the dire poverty he mired in throughout his youth, Yabby eventually came to Kingston where he found reggae. His first album, ‘Conquering Lion,’ is widely regarded as nothing short of a masterpiece, a dark work that somehow strikes a precarious balance between traditional reggae tropes and the artist’s own religiosity. And his ‘Jesus Dread (1972-1977)’ compendium CD released on the Blood And Fire imprint is now a must have for any reggae fan’s shelf. Yabby You was, if nothing else, unique. Unquestionably, he will be missed.
