HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY TO KILL YOUR PET PUPPY FANZINE…AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL THE KYPP ONLINE BROWSERS FROM ALL THE KYPP SITE OPERATIVES!

Intro / Physical / Deutscher Girls / Cartrouble / Cartrouble2 / Cleopatra / The Idea / Whip In My Valise / Lady / PuertoRican / Press Darlings / Zerox / Tabletalk / Beat My Guest / Fall In / Red Scab / Fat Fun / A.N.T.S / Lady / Puerto Rican

This is the concert that the Kill Your Pet Puppy Collective went to en masse to celebrate and to see the first ever run of KYPP fanzine volume 1 sell out completely. New Years Day 1980. 

All the copies of the first KYPP taken to the gig were snatched up by eager punkers, a reprint was arranged later on that month with a slightly superior typeface courtesy of Joly down at Better Badges, and the rest of course is history.

WHEN A PUPPY IS BORN: Some notes on the beginning of creating Kill Your Pet Puppy, by Tony D.

As the late summer of 1979 eviction and disintegration of the fire station squat in Old Street splintered into petty squabbling, fear and cliques we went our separate ways.

* READ MORE ON OLD STREET FIRE STATION SQUAT BY BOB SHORT HERE

Bob Short and his crew had discovered a secret abandoned hospital and made their own plans to relocate there. I had enjoyed the glue fests at the fire station as much as anyone, but what was to become the genesis of the Kill Your Pet Puppy crew were being left behind as Bob and his gang hurtled off in their own druggy whirlwind.

We found our own ridiculous squat, a church near Liverpool Street. But we only lasted two weeks there. One day when all folks were out but Dave, he opened the door to the police and we were out. More bloody scenes. We had no choice to throw our selves on the mercy of St Monicas, Bob and gang’s secret hospital out on the Bakerloo line near Willesden.

Acknowledged but not welcomed, we were allowed to live in the garden. After reading Bob’s recent account of life inside the hospital, in his book ‘Filth’, I’m glad we weren’t allowed in!

We spent the days scouting around for suitable empty buildings to squat, and this led to a chance encounter with some punks in West Hampstead. The punks (one of whom was Adam’s ex-wife Eve, another was Kevin Mooney who later joined the Ants) let us in to their building so we could squat an empty studio flat languishing empty. So all of us living in the garden of St Monicas decamped to this studio flat that evening.

SHERIFF ROAD, PUPPY MANSIONS MK. 1

Val Puppy remembers it like this:

“Oh yes, Sheriff Rd – there were 8 of us in that one room, including Ross and Andi (singer of the Australian band The Urban Guerrillas and his girlfriend) who showed up at the door homeless and looking for Leigh and Andy (two members of The Last Words).

The lay out of the floor space went from the door, left to right – Ross and Andi, Leigh and Andy (two double mattresses) Tony D. (single mattress along the side wall) me and Brett (double mattress pointing out from back wall) Dave in the middle with whatever he could find I think.

Once we got the lec (electricity) on there was also a bar fire which I remember was also in the middle with Dave and his guitar.

Brett and I got through Lord of the Rings in that room, reading it out loud. I also read Salem’s Lot there (somehow on my own) and scared the bejaysus out of myself as I noticed the nailed shut windows and upside down crosses drawn above them! It backed onto the railway line and had weird lights and noises from out back all night as they shunted trains about doing maintenance and stuff.

The toilet was cemented up, so we were pissing in sauce pans. The way we found it – Tony, me and Brett were out from St Monicas looking for somewhere to squat and as we passed this house I saw a boy with tight red trousers on in the top window and suggested we go knock on the door.

We did and they invited us in – the red trousered kid was Kevin. Later to be in various bands (I have a mental image of him in frilly fronted pirate shirt on TV so one of the bands was the Ants mark III), and Adams ex wife Eve was also one of them.

They soon fled to Fulham and left the flat empty, so I used to climb out of our toilet window and up a drainpipe and into their bathroom to dye my hair, before we got the license for it”.

At last, a stable base. A new source of income was discovered, a leaflet-distributor company was just down the road and so a stable routine evolved as well. Some of us would head off in the morning to deliver leaflets, come back and all would sit in the Railway pub and talk into the night about great schemes and drink the daily £6 wages of the days appointed leafleters.

The Railway pub at the time had the Moonlight Club attached to it, which played a part in many Puppy adventures.

During this autumn of 1979 I was still making trips to Rough Trade to collect mail for Ripped & Torn fanzine. I was always being asked about when I was going to get Ripped & Torn going again. The people down Ladbroke Grove had no idea of my reduced circumstances, and I let them believe I was biding my time, irons in the fire etc but cash flow meant I couldn’t get going.

On one of my trips to Rough Trade Joly from Better Badges was in there and took me for a meal at the Mountain Grill cafe on Portobello Road. Good man, Joly, he could see I needed a hot meal. Whilst I stuffed my face Joly offered me a deal that he would pay for the print coasts of any magazine I wanted to put out, so long as he could distribute as many as he wanted through his mail-order business.

Any copies of the mag I wanted to sell myself I could buy off him at a trade price (I think it was 10p per copy). Basically this meant I could publish for free.

On the way home I bought a typewriter in a second hand shop for £6 (a days wages!) and back in the room I told the other people the news. “We’re going to write a new fanzine from this very room”, I declaimed, “and it’s going to be called ‘Fuck Your Mother’!” The people in that room would be the first FYM collective. So I guess they came first. Though some didn’t participate in the writing of the magazine. They were in bands called The Last Words and Urban Guerillas, and there was also Dave later to become a Sex Gang Child.

By the time I got back to Joly and agreed to his business proposal the title had changed to Kill Your Pet Puppy. I’ve always thought the title came from Val Puppy but she denies it.

KYPP1 was written very quickly. We were in the process of moving into another part of the building, and had some floor space to work on. Brett Puppy did the distinctive logo, girl with scissors and hair lettering, – he did that the same day we decided on the name.

After we saw Brett’s work we knew we had to go some to make something worthy of his effort. Jeremy Gluck of the Barracudas wrote his piece on glam and Abba after a Barracudas gig at the Moonlight club. He had no idea what the rest of the zine was going to be. He had of course written about the Vile Tones for Ripped & Torn.

(Still to be written up: The Crass gigs at the Moonlight club, their first since the Conway Hall, and skinhead violence that inspired the anti-Crass pacifism-stance KYPP piece “Pro-Crass-tination”. This entailed a trip by Leigh and myself to Dial House).

The zine was coming together, and then Joly suggested we get it done in time for the Ants’ New Years day gig at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, the most anticipated and hottest punk gig of the time. Adam was to supply a picture for the cover, DO IT Records were to supply exclusive photos for the inside and there was meant to be a pro-Ants piece prominent in the issue.

However whilst waiting for Adam to come up with his front cover photo – he’s promised something “special” – news was coming through about dissent in the Ant band ranks. The article that was written was from stories hot off the street (and inside the Screen on the Green).

Life being as it is, Adam was so late in getting his picture to us he had to take it direct to Joly’s printing presses on Portobello Road. Adam had to arrive just as the presses were churning out the Ant piece, slagging Adam off!

Joly remembers it was touch and go if Adam would or would not give up his picture. This is the picture on the cover of KYPP 1, the Polaroid. Luckily Brett had done the cover with that Black and Red anarchy flag style because we had no idea what Adam was bringing to the table. Lucky we did, eh?

One or two days after that Joly had set up his stall at the back of the Electric Ballroom and amongst the badges and other fanzines was issue one of KYPP.

The cry was out, “Ants, Tunial, Crass, new issue”. That may as well have been the name! 500 copies were printed up in time for that gig and the lot were sold that night. Joly told me his stall had sold every copy as the Ants came back on stage for yet another encore, a parody of Y.M.C.A. called A.N.T.S. All I remember is dancing to this song with a great big grin on my face then waking up in a strange house in Islington with a bunch of new friends”.

Hopefully some of the other members of the old KYPP Collective will add further comments relevant to this night…

The gig is absolutely vital in the history of the fanzine…And to think it all happened exactly thirty years ago!

I got this copy of the New Years day Antz performance from Tony D. Unfortunately the original tape was transferred onto a CD, a format which I do not upload from, I upload normally from just rare vinyl and cassettes, so there are slight gaps between the songs due to the ‘donor’ CD being spaced. Sorry about that…Still a marvelous performance by this great band, a band that would soon change both its members and its image!

NOTE: This post has been brought forward from January 20th 2008, as this gig was, as stated above, an important date in the fanzines history which also coincides nicely with todays date. The post has been ‘beefed up’ quite considerably with extra information and photos on this very day though.

HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY TO KILL YOUR PET PUPPY FANZINE…AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL THE KYPP ONLINE BROWSERS FROM ALL THE KYPP SITE OPERATIVES!

***HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL THE KYPP ONLINE BROWSERS FROM ALL THE KYPP SITE OPERATIVES!

Culture Crossover

Asian Youth

It is that time of year again, presents being presented, families getting together, a chill in the air…It’s Christmas day!

Early on the day before, I stood alone before my front door picking up the last of the cards that would be delivered before Christmas day from various folk that would like to wish me and the family well and a I spied a single package seemingly already opened by the postie…

I was cheered to see the package was for me and not for the lady downstairs, I was further cheered to see that the product hidden within the opened packaging, was in fact still hidden within that same opened packaging. The cheery mood continued when I slipped out the 7″ record and found to my astonisement that it was none other than the Alien Kulture 7″ single.

Alien Kulture was a band that various KYPP browsers had commented about on a Six Minute War post on this very site. Later comments on that Six Minute War post came from Huw Jones, a member of Alien Kulture, and Zainne whose father also performed in the band (not sure which member though!). On one of the comments Zainne had mentioned that his dad still had some mint copies lying around, one of which is in my hands right now and is indeed still mint (mint even after blatently opened packages courtesy of Royal Mail).

Thank you to Zainne (and his father) for sending me this wonderful present during this time of present giving! I will cherish it, and you are both safe in the knowledge that it has gone to a good and safe home.

Check out the Alien Kulture website HERE or become a facebook fan HERE 

The text below courtesy of alienkulture.org.

“People rather fear being swamped by an alien culture” – Margaret Thatcher 1979

“There is an Asian band in South London called Alien Kulture who take gangs of Asian youth with them wherever they play. Mark had said he thought ‘niggers are okay, I like the music.’ But he just shakes his head about Alien Kulture: ‘I don’t think they’ll last. I don’t think they’ll last five minutes. A Paki band? I never heard of such a thing.” – Skinhead interviewed for an article in New Society – Skinheads – the cult of trouble by Ian Walker – June 1980

Alien Kulture was formed in South London in 1980 by Azhar (drums, from Morden), Jonesy (Huw) aka ‘the token white man’ (guitar, from Raynes Park). Pervez (vocals, from Balham) and Zaf (bass, from Wimbledon). Formed against the backdrop of a winter of discontent, riots in Southall and Asians being killed on the streets of England the group wanted to give the Great Britain of the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s a positive image of Asians – an image where Asians were not seen as submissive, Asians who were able to stand up speak for themselves and ultimately that Asians had arrived and needed to be recognised as something more than just people who ran corner shops. It was a time when the Far Right in the UK were dangerously close to becoming an accepted norm in British Society and the Conservatives, with Margaret Thatcher at the helm, were taking away liberties at every opportunity. Feeling was also widespread that there needed to be a stop to immigration. The message that Alien Kulture wanted to convey was very much a militant and in your face ‘here to stay, here to fight’.

There was no great ability musically in the group (except for Jonesy) but there was passion to drive a message home particularly to the Far Right of the National Front and the British Movement. There was also a wish to communicate to the young Asians in the U.K. that they were not alone and, at last, they had a voice. The band did not want the left (predominantly white at the time) to speak for them at every given opportunity and the band wanted to let it be known they had arrived and more importantly that they had a face and a message. If there had to be a voice it had to be a brown voice (shouting at the top of its voice) with a brown message. The only thing remotely resembling an Asian band was Monsoon – an Asian girl stuck in front of a bunch of white musicians. Where Monsoon sang about loneliness Alien Kulture would sing about the street in a radical way never seen before coming out of an Asian voice.

The band was born out of love for the British punk movement of the time and of a support for the political movements of the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism (the central committee of which two members of the group were voted onto eventually). They would forever be linked with these two organisations. It was not enough for the group merely to sing and talk about Asians fighting back; they actually lived it, going to demonstrations at every opportunity throughout the length and breadth of England. It was a time when there was a draconian Immigration Bill going through Parliament and, on a march to oppose the Bill, the group played on a truck at the head of the march (with 80,000 people following) to show their full support for the opposition. After one gig in Portsmouth they simply played their set, walked out of the door and straight onto a demo!

The songs broadly originated from their experiences and observations about being a second generation Asian in the UK. The songs had a political edge to them and themes ranged from cultural confusion to arranged marriages to colonialism to immigration. The songs were out rightly militant and were purposely intended to be so. No more mild and meek Asians for them, who would accept being spat on in the streets. For them the time had come to stand and then suffer the consequences. Some songs were outwardly political such as ‘Roots Rock Ratskank’ and some, such as ‘Siege And Turmoil’ had a more subtle message. The songs still have a resonance in today’s society and some lyrics would not seem out of place if written today. Musically the group wrote and played within their particular limitations. It is important to remember the songs were not simply a criticism of Asians but were written and sung so as to stimulate debate and discussion. After all if you want an arranged marriage then have one but think about it before you do it.

The first and only single released was a double A side (on their own label) ‘Asian Youth/Culture Crossover’. The record suffered from the group’s commitment to doing everything themselves and the record would probably have done better had it had a proper producer at the helm. The group went on to showcase these songs on television and radio but will always cite John Peel playing the record on his show as the major achievement. Known for saying very few words before and after playing records, John Peel actually introduced the record saying he could have played it because it was by Asians, which would have been ‘inherently racist in itself’ but was playing it because it was ultimately a good record. To the group this was the critical praise that they had craved. They accepted that the New Musical Express, Melody Maker and Sounds had all resolutely ignored them even though they knew of the existence of the band but John Peel playing them was enough. There were no more releases, simply a cassette of their songs recorded ‘live’ at an 8 track studio in a squat in Queensgate. Not perfect and full of mistakes (to those who are musically knowledgeable) but the cassette showed the group were not afraid to expose their shortfall in their musical abilities. The songs, however, speak for themselves and stand the test of time.

The gigs ranged from playing ‘proper venues’ with a proper sound system to playing on beer crates with hardboard as a stage. Audiences ranged from just two people to crowds numbering into the hundreds. Each gig was prefaced with the fear of some sort of reprisal form the far right as they had now learned of the existence of a militant Asian rebuttal to their lies. That fear was at times realised as in the 101 Club in Battersea where the gig had to be abandoned. At that gig, the band was greeted, after coming off the stage, by one of their friends with ‘you were great but do you know the National Front are out there.’ Most gigs had a smattering of people from the fascists but the Group always had the support of a stalwart of supporters such as Harrow RAR, S.L.A.G. (South London Anarchists Group – a bunch of colourful kids from all aspects of the youth movements of the day)) and other brave individuals who would always keep a watch out. The group were of course asking for this unwanted attention, otherwise what would have been the point. Most gigs were started with a headline from The Bulldog (the National Front paper of the day) which was turned into a rallying cry – ‘When was the last time you saw a Punk Pakistani, a Mod Muslim or a Bopping Bengali, well HERE WE ARE!’

No history about Alien Kulture can be written without the missed opportunities. Invited by The Specials to play Coventry Stadium with them, the group refused because two of the members had exams. They broke up a day before they were due to record the Oxford Road Show (the premier youth show at the time) which would have been a primetime exposure for them.

At the time the group broke up they were rehearsing two new songs ‘When The Rains Came’ about the birth of Zimbabwe and ‘The Mask’ about the practice of women wearing the veil – it needs to be remembered this was a clear quarter of a century before the debate really started. There were two additional songs ‘Become Death’ (about the nuclear threat) and ‘Pakistani Girl’ (to the tune of Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl’), neither got as far as rehearsals. The music was also going into a different direction with the group planning to experiment with more Sub-continent musical themes such as Bhangra (yes Bhangra in 1980!).

It would be churlish to go into reason why the band broke up and the legacy of the group is for people to judge. The four individuals can not be faulted for trying to drag Asians from the dark days of the sixties and early-seventies into the light. Initially they were viewed with suspicion by the Asian community, after all the punk movement was a white movement. Towards the end, more and more Asians started turning up to gigs as the message started to filter through. The band looked up to the Clash and were seen very much as copying their heroes musically, little realising they had developed their own identity. By the end, when they performed ‘Garageland’ as an encore it was simply as a homage rather than wanting to be the Clash. They still have articles in books written about them, they are played on the internet when people can get hold of the songs. In the road map that is British Asian culture there should be a large sign on the day this band was formed and an even bigger sign when they disbanded; after all nothing like this would be seen until many years after with the breakthrough of the Asian Dub Foundation. They were the first of a kind and it took at least ten years to produce anything near to an Asian band that had this much energy, conviction and foresight.

***HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL THE KYPP ONLINE BROWSERS FROM ALL THE KYPP SITE OPERATIVES!

Bankrobber / Rockers Galore

Tribute to Joe Strummer who passed on way way too early, seven years ago on this day.

Presenting his finest moment (in my opinion) on record and the orbituary from The Times newspaper. 

Joe Strummer, rock singer and lyricist, was born in Ankara, Turkey, on August 21, 1952. He died of a suspected heart attack at his home in Somerset on December 22, 2002, aged 50.

His only rival as the main spokesman for the punk revolution which transformed British youth culture in the late 1970s was Johnny Rotten. Yet unlike the Sex Pistols’ singer, Strummer maintained his punk radicalism. When he was interviewed in this paper last year about his most recent album, Global A Go-Go, the writer observed that he was “the only rock star of his generation . . . who hasn’t mellowed with age”. Only last month, he was to be found playing a benefit gig for the striking Fire Brigades Union with his new band, the Mescaleros.

The son of a British diplomat, he spent his early years living variously in Turkey, Mexico, Germany and Egypt. Educated at a Surrey boarding school and art college, he had a spell busking on the London Underground, after which he formed his first band, the 101ers, playing amiable R&B on the mid-1970s London pub-rock circuit.

But he was frustrated by what he saw as the stagnation of the music scene of the time. In April 1976, the 101ers were supported at a London date by an emerging group called the Sex Pistols. Their volatile and nihilistic garage rock sounded crude and unrehearsed. Yet Strummer became convinced that the energy of the emerging punk movement could be harnessed to revolutionise British music. Within two months he had teamed up with the guitarist Mick Jones, the bass player Paul Simonon and the drummer Nicky “Topper” Headon to form the Clash.

Managed by Bernie Rhodes, an associate of the Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm MacLaren, they swiftly built a following at punk venues such as London’s 100 Club. Then, late in 1976, they joined the Sex Pistols on their “Anarchy in the UK” tour. With punk already making front-page headlines for its alleged violence and moral threat to the nation’s youth, all but three of the 19 planned dates were cancelled by anxious promoters.

Such notoriety only enhanced punk’s appeal. Major record labels were soon jumping on the bandwagon and after making some demos for Polydor, in January 1977 the Clash signed to CBS Records. Their first single was the provocatively titled White Riot, a raw, aggressive, streetwise song with Strummer’s angry lyrics snarled at breakneck speed.

It reached only number 38 but the band’s debut album, The Clash, made number 12 on its release in the spring of 1977. Taking unemployment, alienation and rebellion as its subject matter and recorded in a matter of days, it remains, along with the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, punk’s definitive statement.

In many ways, Strummer’s songs were responding to the same events and sense of political drift that led to Margaret Thatcher’s radical Conservatism. But Strummer moved in the opposite direction and was spotted at gigs wearing a T-shirt supporting Brigade Rosse, the Italian Red Brigades held responsible for the murder of the former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. He also expressed his support for Germany’s Red Army Faction, better known as the Baader-Meinhoff gang.

Given the group’s provocative attitude, trouble inevitably followed them. During their 1977 White Riot tour, Strummer and Headon were arrested and fined for spray-painting “Clash” on a wall. The same pair spent a night in jail in Newcastle, ludicrously charged with stealing a pillowcase from a local Holiday Inn. They responded by calling their next tour “Out on Parole”. The group even managed the not inconsiderable feat of inciting a riot when they performed in genteel Bournemouth.

They put their money behind their political convictions, and in April 1978 they headlined a free Anti-Nazi League festival in London, organised by the pressure group Rock Against Racism. But their politics and growing commercial success were always in potential conflict, as Strummer recognised in the single White Man in Hammersmith Palais in which he struggled with the dilemma of punk rockers “turning rebellion into money”.

The group’s second album, Give ’Em Enough Rope appeared in November 1978, and went straight into the charts at number two, kept from the top spot by the soundtrack to the film Grease. The recruitment of the top American rock producer Sandy Pearlman smoothed over some of the group’s rougher edges but did nothing to lessen their political anger in songs such as Guns on the Roof and Tommy Gun, which gave them their first British Top 20 single. “Protest songs, that’s what you’d call them. Folk-songs with an electric guitar,” Strummer said at the time.

A four-track EP which included a suitably venomous version of Bobby Fuller’s I Fought the Law was released in summer 1979 as a holding operation while they broke America and began planning their third album, London Calling. Produced by the veteran Guy Stevens, the double album is widely regarded as the group’s finest, as reggae and rockabilly tunes take their place alongside raw punk aggression on songs such as The Guns of Brixton and Revolution Rock.

London Calling reached only number nine in the British charts, but it remains one of the most influential rock albums. Among those to fall under its influence was Bob Dylan’s son Jacob, who now leads his own band, the Wallflowers, and recently cited London Calling above his father’s work as the record that “changed his life”.

The group’s politically charged fourth album, Sandinista!, appeared in 1980. The first to be produced by the group themselves, this sprawling, 36-song triple- album was released at a special budget price, after the group agreed to forgo royalties on the first 200,000 copies in return for CBS’s co-operation.

In 1982 Strummer mysteriously disappeared for three months, later claiming that he was in Paris where his girlfriend’s mother had been in jail. The mystery helped the next album, Combat Rock, to number two in the British charts and gave the group there first American Top Ten entry.

Strummer still sounded confrontational and the album produced hit singles in Rock the Casbah and Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Yet paradoxically, it was the beginning of the end for the group. Headon left, and when the Clash joined The Who on their farewell tour of America in late 1982, many felt that the latterday punk heroes sounded tame in comparison to the 1960s veterans.

The following year Jones was evicted from the group. Strummer and Simonon soldiered on with two new recruits, Vince White and Nick Sheppard, and played benefit shows for the striking miners. But after the group’s final album Cut the Crap was savaged by critics, they called it a day at the end of 1985.

As a rock icon who had achieved everything before he was 30, Strummer appeared unsure what to do next. He played on Bob Dylan’s album Down in the Groove, organised a “Rock Against the Rich” tour, played with Latino Rockabilly War and released the 1989 solo album Earthquake Wonder. But that was to be his last album for a decade as he turned to cinema and deployed his chiselled good looks to effect in such films as Straight to Hell, Sid and Nancy, Mystery Train and Lost in Space. He also worked on several film soundtracks including John Cusack’s Grosse Point Blank.

After a brief spell deputising for Shane MacGowan as lead vocalist with the Pogues, he spent much of the 1990s resisting invitations to re-form the Clash as various compilations kept them in the charts and a reissue of Should I Stay or Should I Go? became the Clash’s first number one single, following its use in a Levi’s jeans commercial. Strummer reportedly refused an offer of more than £3 million for the group to tour America. “That was never the Clash way of doing things,” he later told The Times. “We all agreed it would have been sickening to have been playing that music with the pound signs hanging over us.”

It was not until 1999 that he returned fully to the fray with a new band, the Mescaleros, and the album Rock, Art and the X-ray Style. A second Mescaleros album, Global A Go-Go, followed within 18 months. “It took ten years to recharge my batteries. I felt isolated and wanted to wait until I’d stopped being the singer from a once-famous group and was this guy who needed help,” he said.

Although he moved to Somerset to bring up his family, his political fire remained undimmed. “The spirit of rock’n’roll helped to stop the Vietnam War,” he told The Times last year. “Perhaps it’s a bit crazy for me still to feel like that. But I can’t help it. Someone’s got to keep the faith.”

In March he was due to have been inducted with the Clash into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, when it was expected that the group’s original line-up would perform for the first time since 1983. Fate has decreed that the Clash will now never reunite. He was also working on a track written with Bono and Dave Stewart for Aids Awareness in Africa.

He is survived by his wife, two daughters and a stepdaughter.

Baby Aaron celebrating The Clash.

This post has been fowarded from 2008…so Baby Aaron is now Toddler Aaron.

At the Winter Solstice, we celebrate Children’s Day to honour our children and to bring warmth, light and cheerfulness into the dark time of the year. Holidays such as this have their origin as “holy days”. They are the way human beings mark the sacred times in the yearly cycle of life.

In the northern latitudes, midwinter’s day has been an important time for celebration throughout the ages. On this shortest day of the year, the sun is at its lowest and weakest, a pivot point from which the light will grow stronger and brighter. This is the turning point of the year. The romans called it Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.

The Roman midwinter holiday, Saturnalia, was both a gigantic fair and a festival of the home. Riotous merry-making took place, and the halls of houses were decked with boughs of laurel and evergreen trees. Lamps were kept burning to ward off the spirits of darkness. Schools were closed, the army rested, and no criminals were executed. Friends visited one another, bringing good-luck gifts of fruit, cakes, candles, dolls, jewellery, and incense. Temples were decorated with evergreens symbolizing life’s continuity, and processions of people with masked or blackened faces and fantastic hats danced through the streets.

The custom of mummers visiting their neighbours in costume, which is still alive in Newfoundland in U.S.A, is descended from these masked processions.

Roman masters feasted with slaves, who were given the freedom to do and say what they liked (the medieval custom of all the inhabitants of the manor, including servants and lords alike, sitting down together for a great Christmas feast, came from this tradition). A Mock King was appointed to take charge of the revels (the Lord of Misrule of medieval Christmas festivities had his origin here).

In pagan Scandinavia the winter festival was the yule (or juul). Great yule logs were burned, and people drank mead around the bonfires listening to minstrel-poets singing ancient legends. It was believed that the yule log had the magical effect of helping the sun to shine more brightly.

Mistletoe, which was sacred because it mysteriously grew on the most sacred tree, the oak, was ceremoniously cut and a spray given to each family, to be hung in the doorways as good luck. The celtic Druids also regarded mistletoe as sacred. Druid priests cut it from the tree on which it grew with a golden sickle and handed it to the people, calling it All-Heal. To hang it over a doorway or in a room was to offer goodwill to visitors. Kissing under the mistletoe was a pledge of friendship. Mistletoe is still forbidden in most Christian churches because of its Pagan associations, but it has continued to have a special place in home celebrations.

In the third century various dates, from December to April, were celebrated by Christians as Christmas. January 6 was the most favoured day because it was thought to be Jesus’ baptismal day (in the Greek Orthodox Church this continues to be the day to celebrate Christmas). Around 350, December 25 was adopted in Rome and gradually almost the entire Christian Church agreed to that date, which coincided with Winter Solstice, the Yule and the Saturnalia. The merry side of Saturnalia was adopted to the observance of Christmas. By 1100 Christmas was the peak celebration of the year for all of Europe. During the 16th century, under the influence of the Reformation, many of the old customs were suppressed and the Church forbade processions, colourful ceremonies, and plays.

In 1647 in England, Parliament passed a law abolishing Christmas altogether. When Charles II came to the throne, many of the customs were revived, but the feasting and merrymaking were now more worldly than religious.

I Am A Fool / Back To The Womb / Mother / Shakti Yoni / Keep The Children Free / Prosititute Poem Street Version / OK Man  This Is Your World

Next Time Ragtime / Time Of The Goddess / Taliesin

For this years winter solstice I have the pleasure to upload the debut LP by Gilli Smyth (A.K.A. Mother Gong) released on Charly Records over three decades back in 1978.   

These recording sessions were the last to involve Gilli Smyth and Daevid Allen both collaborating together…

…that is until 2009 when they both got together for the sessions that culmulated in the release of Gong’s ‘2032′  double LP  released on Steve Hillage’s G-Wave Record Imprint. 

Two further original Gong members, Steve Hillage and Didier Malherbe, were also part of the project to release this wonderful new work by Gong. I could have blagged a free jolly at the London Kentish Town Forum gig a few weeks ago but alas could not get to that performance on that night. Anyone go at all?

Text below courtesy of planetgong.co.uk.

An ‘awkward’ and ‘difficult’ child, Gilli learned to live in her imagination in reaction to being punished for her acting abilities. She was subsequently expelled from her Catholic convent school at the age of 12 for writing ‘heretical’ and erotic poetry. Inspired by Simone de Beauvoir she edited her university magazine writing such radical anti-sexist and anti-racist articles that it prompted the Daily Mirror and Daily Express to a vitriolic attack upon ‘girls like this, who should not be funded by the government to go to university’. Nevertheless she achieved an M.A.

She had a daughter Tasmin out of a brief marriage. Decamped to Paris with her child where she slept under bridges until rescued by an old ‘clochard’ who sold her an old boat for twenty quid. Six months later she was teaching NATO generals English whilst working as a professor at La Sorbonne. Eventually she sold the boat to one Daevid Allen. A year later they began living together in a small apartment in Rue Beauborg and subsequently moved to Deya in Majorca.

In 1966 Gilli published ‘Nitrogen Dreams of a Wide Girl’ and travelled with Soft Machine in the spring, creating Pop Poets with Daevid which incorporated the band, notably at Deptford Boxing Ring and as a duo at Paris Bienniale in 1967.

Gilli started doing performance poetry with Soft Machine on their occasional poetry / music gigs, and then more intensively with Daevid Allen and the first Gong band after it was founded in Paris in 1968. This ran for a colourful season in an old Theatre Restaurant in the Latin Quarter, with many visiting poets and musicians passing through including American beat poets Laurence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso, and jazz musician Don Cherry, who sat in with this Gong band at the concert at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm. The Stockholm concert, attained after days of travelling through silent frozen forests, was held in conjunction with an Andy Warhol exhibition of enormous cornflake packets, and widely publicised as contemporary music.

Gilli developed the concept of Space Whisper as her own, unique singing style, rather than be coerced into singing ‘girlie’ backing vocals. It wanders across modes, keys and pitches to find the resonances that touch our deep instincts. It is the sound of emotions, a sound that moves us to cry, laugh, dance, and also a search to sing the music of grass-growing, spheres moving, and the deep humming of outer space. Despite a classical music training, Gilli’s sound has moved into unchartered areas which seem to some impossibly anarchistic and to others instinctively harmonious. Even though it may break established rules, it does have very strict rules of its own in the resonances it chooses. It is a constant experimentation to find the sound of the event and cannot be written down. This became part of the unique sound of Gong as part of the concept of Total Space Music that they had heard in their mind’s ears. Gilli played a central role in the creation of the Gong mythology, being responsible for much of the radical political integrity of the band and was often credited as being the ‘invisible’ leader.

However, the balmy days at the Theatre Restaurant were abruptly shattered by the 1968 Revolution. Gilli had to flee Paris, considered a dangerous revolutionary by the right wing authorities, as did many other musicians, television crews, writers, etc.

She returned to France in 1969, a return politically expedited by a film maker, Jerome La Perrousaz, who wanted music for films, and made available his haunted Normandy Chateau, where the group of musicians who were to form the second Gong band under the musical leadership of Daevid Allen gathered together. This time, however, the dreamy contemporary music was augmented by sizzling jazz rock, which combined with absurdist stories and lyrics and lifestyle extremism. This was to catch the imagination of the alternative culture and shoot the band up to being, as Actual magazine put it, “the leading underground band in France”.

Gilli was the only female voice in the line-up of brilliant musicians, including Steve Hillage, Pierre Moerlen and Didier Malherbe. She portrayed the prostitute, the witch, the old woman, the many voices of women, and this became part of the cult. Mythology was written in the sixteen albums that were produced, and mythology was abroad in the air, and it was as if “we were all sailing off in a huge white boat that accommodated thousands of people”. The band were not the captains, they simply got on the boat first, and the people who joined became part of a world wide network that exists today

Gilli struggled with the age-old question of how to continue working while having two babies (born in 1972 and 1974). As the success of the band in worldly terms grew and grew, so did her agony at being parted from the babies, so she ran away to Spain with them in 1974 to try and forget the band which had meant so much. In 1978 four years of thinking and writing about this emerged as a solo album ‘Mother’ (Charly CRL5007) produced and recorded by Daevid Allen. Following this the stresses and strains became too great and their relationship broke up in 1979, whereupon to her great surprise and despite the extraordinary depth of her attachment to Daevid, Gilli fell immediately into a deep relationship with Harry Williamson. Together they have made several albums, ‘Fairy Tales’ 1979, ‘Robot Woman’ 1981, ‘Robot Woman 2′ 1982, and ‘Robot Woman 3’ and ‘The Owl and the Tree’ 1990, ‘Wildchild’ 1992, as well as numerous cassettes. They ran a poetry and music program on 3CR community radio for five years, called People in Performance. During this time they met Tom the Poet, an extraordinary improviser who for years has breathed fire into the renowned Street Poetry of Melbourne. Tom toured with Gongmaison in 1990 and Mother Gong in 1991.

Race Against Time / Knife Edge / Lycanthropy / Necrophilia

State Executioner / Dead On Arrival / Generals / Freaks / Alcohol (?)

Charged G.B.H, a band significantly more  inspired by Motorhead than by The Clash, came out of Birmingham, kicking and screaming in 1979. Uploaded today is the debut 12″ EP released on Clay Records in 1981 and apart from the last track ‘Alcohol’, all the tracks strangely enough still sound great! That last track ‘Alcohol’ never sounded great even in those soon to be UK82 days…

The photo is a still from the video ‘Give Me Fire’ featured on the Tube music programme in 1982, the text below is a section from a letter written a few days ago from H.M. Prision Gartree by Gary Critchley.

This post is dedicated to Gary Critchley A.K.A Crap, a man who knew Charged G.B.H. in the very early days of the band’s formation and who ventured to Campbell Buildings near Waterloo in the summer of 1980. The events that followed a matter of weeks after his arrival were rather tragic for all concerned.

More information on Gary Critchley is available on the post below.

Qual / Geheimnis / Young Man / Indernacht / Orient

Hand In Hand / Kaempfen / Danthem / Boomerang / Stummes Kind

One of the musical highlights of 1983 for me personally was the release of the debut LP by Xmal Deutschland and also the gigs that the band performed in London around that time to promote the LP and the follow up 12″ single entitled ‘Qual’.

The two previous singles, a 7″ and a 12″ released on ZickZack Records breathed potential but this LP uploaded today, totally exploded in it! The standout tracks from this LP, I feel, being ‘Boomerang’, ‘Orient’ and ‘Stummes Kind’.

A load of other Xmal Deutschland material is sitting on this site somewhere if you care to use the search function.

Text below ripped from wikkie.

Xmal Deutschland were formed in 1980 by Anja Huwe (vocals), Manuela Rickers (guitar), Fiona Sangster (keyboards), Rita Simon (bass guitar) and Caro May (drums) in Hamburg, Germany.

Their first single, Großstadtindianer was released a year later on Alfred Hilsberg’s ZickZack label. The band also contributed to the ZickZack label compilation LP Lieber Zuviel Als Zuwenig. Around this time Rita Simon was replaced by Wolfgang Ellerbrock.

In 1982 the band released the goth classic Incubus Succubus. Drummer Caro May left the band and formed a new band, and the vacant drummer position was filled by Manuela Zwingmann the same year. While German audiences were less than receptive at first, a United Kingdom tour opening for the Cocteau Twins resulted in a label deal with independent label 4AD Records. Their debut album, Fetisch and the singles Qual and Incubus Succubus II were released in 1983, all three making the UK Independent charts, even though the band wrote and performed in German.

Fetisch was met with unanimous critical acclaim from journalists and fans alike it impressed with its freshness and exhilarated with its power. There was no confusion over the German delivery – Anja Huwe epitomized the voice as instrument. The album reached no.3 in the independent charts behind the pulp pop of New Order and Aztec Camera. It stayed there. ‘The seductive foreplay had begun’.

Manuela Zwingmann left the band after one year, being replaced by Peter Bellendir. This lineup, Huwe / Rickers / Sangster / Ellerbrock / Bellendir proved to be the longest running. 1984 saw the release of the single Reigen and the album Tocsin, followed by a world tour through 1985.

The Sequenz EP was essentially a remake of a John Peel session, which had been originally recorded April 1985 and was broadcast in May 1985. The EP contained the tracks Jahr Um Jahr II, Autumn (the band’s first English lyrics, apart from brief snatches of English that appeared in Qual, Young Man and Tag für Tag) and Polarlicht but omitted Der Wind, which was played at the Peel sessions.

Ohh and happy birthday to me as it is that special day again…!

All together now “Happy Birthday Dear Penguin Happy Birthday To You…”

Sucked Out Chucked Out 1

Sucked Out Chucked Out 2

Sucked Out Chucked Out 3

Sucked Out Chucked Out 4

Sucked Out Chucked Out 5

Sucked Out Chucked Out 6

Sucked Out Chucked Out 7

Sucked Out Chucked Out 8

A conceptual project by The Ex concerning the shutting down of the Van Gelder paper and asbestos felt factory in Wormer in 1981 with the loss of 550 jobs. A bullet point dated history for this factory is written out below for anyone that cares to shift through any of the facts.

The Ex’s sound is much more industrial on this release, hardly surprising given the subject matter. I also believe that some members were squatting in the ruins of this old factory. The band recorded some of the tracks within this old industrial site so it is not too unlikely that some of the band may have lived there for a while.  

The recorded tracks for this project form eight sides of 7″ vinyl. All four 7″ records are nicely housed in a thin cardboard box with a large poster / lyric sheet, and a booklet explaining the closure and the illnesses which occured in some of the workforce from the mishandling of asbestos felt.

It Has Not Taken Long / Secret Side / You Forgot To Answer / Innocent And Vain / Valley Of The Kings

We’ve Got The Gold / The End / Das Lied Der Deutschen

Nico’s uncompromising and absolutely vital fourth solo LP is uploaded today rather than the usual crash, bang, wallop…

This LP was recorded in 1973 at Sound Techniques in London, and was produced by John Cale who also performed most of the instruments alongside Brian Eno in the studio sessions. A couple of years later Brian Eno would produce and perform in the studio for the sessions that gave birth to the Thin White Duke’s best work, ‘Low’ and ‘Heroes’. Eno’s solo LP from 1975, ‘Another Green World’ is also a class vinyl outing. Seemingly this period in Eno’s life was most productive indeed. Another ex-Roxy Music member was also involved in the sessions that produced these tracks. Phil Manzanera performed all the guitar parts. Nico performs vocal parts on all the compositions with grace and maturity. She also performs all the harmonium parts.

Listening to this work is an unforgetable experience.

Text below ripped from allmusic.com.

It is one of the most entrenched visions in the rock critic’s vocabulary; Nico as doomed valkyrie, droning death-like through a harsh gothic monotone, a drained beauty pumping dirges from her harmonium while a voice as old as dirt hangs cobwebs round the chords. In fact she only made one album which remotely fits that bill, this one, and it’s a symbol of its significance that even the cliché emerges as a thing of stunning beauty.

Her first album following three years of rumor and speculation, “The End” was consciously designed to highlight the Nico of already pertinent myth. Stark, dark, bare, and frightening, the harmonium dominant even amid the splendor of Eno’s synthesized menace, John Cale’s childlike piano, and Phil Manzanera’s scratchy, effects-whipped guitar, it is the howling wind upon wuthering heights, deathless secrets in airless dungeons, ancient mysteries in the guise of modern icons. Live, Nico took to dedicating the final cut, a sparse but heartstoppingly beautiful interpretation of the former German national anthem, to terrorist Andreas Baader, even as the song itself conjured demons of its own from an impressionable Anglo-American audience. Nico later admitted she intended the performance in the same spirit as Jimi Hendrix rendered “Star Spangled Banner.” But “Das Lied Der Deutschen”. “Deutschland Uber Alles” has connotations which neither tribute nor parody could ever undermine. It is only in the ’90s that even Germany has reclaimed the anthem for its own. In 1974, it was positively leperous. Listen without prejudice, though, and you catch Nico’s meaning regardless, even as her voice tiptoes on the edge of childlike, all but duetting with the little girl she once was, on a song which she’d been singing since the cradle.

The ghosts pack in. Former lover Jim Morrison haunts the stately “You Forgot To Answer,” a song written about the last time Nico saw him, in a hired limousine on the day of his death; of course he reappears in the title track, an epic recounting of the Doors’ own “The End,” but blacker than even they envisioned it, an echoing maze of torchlit corridors and spectral children, and so intense that, by the time Nico reaches the “mother…father” passage, she is too weary even to scream. The cracked groan which emerges instead is all the more chilling for its understatement, and the musicians were as affected as the listener. The mutant funk coda with which the performance concludes is more than an incongruous bridge. It is the sound of the universe cracking under the pressure.

But to dwell on the fear is to overlook the beauty, “The End”, first and foremost, is an album of intimate simplicity and deceptive depths. Nico’s voice stuns, soaring and swooping into unimagined corners. No less than “Das Lied Der Deutschen,” both “Valley Of The Kings” and “It Has Not Taken Long” make a mockery of the lazy critical complaints that she simply grumbled along in a one-note wail, while the arrangements (most of which were Nico’s own; producer Cale admits he spent most of his time in the studio simply marveling) utterly rerout even the most generous interpretation of what rock music should sound like. “The End” doesn’t simply subvert categorization. It defies time itself.

This post is dedicated with respect to Sam, ex of The Heretics and Campbell Buildings squalor, whose birthday it is tomorrow. Many happy returns to you. I do not know if Nico is your bag, but give it a listen. It will, I promise, be worth it!

Three Wishes / David Hockneys Garden / In A Perfumed Garden / Flowers For Abigail / King And Country / Boy In The Paisley Shirt / Games For Boys

Painter Man / Psychedelic Holiday / 14th Floor / Sooty’s Disco Party / Makin Time / When Emily Cries / Glittering Prize / Anxiety Block / Mysterious Ways

This post is dedicated to Aaron Williamson who helped organise the TVP’s and Viv Albertine performance last night at the Stags Head in Hoxton, a gig which saw half a dozen Pet Puppies brave the cold winds and attend. A nice touch during the night was Dan Treacy having  a recollection of being interviewed by Tony D in 1977 for Ripped And Torn fanzine, an interview that took place right up on the 14th Floor of Dan Treacy’s council block.

A busy night indeed, as this small traditional pub was packed with an apprieciative audience for the whole night witnessing not only the two headliners, but also Typical Girls, Hari Kari and the Feral Four. 

The stage lighting and twirly props were powered by various crowd members riding a bike fixed on the covered pool table!

Aaron was also hawking his fanzine on the night, which flicking through looks a very interesting read. Still a little hung over today so I have not read any of it properly! 

The details for his website at the foot of this post if anyone would like to browse that. If anyone is interested in seeing if any copies of this A5 sized fanzine are still available then contact eelzine@yahoo.co.uk . The fanzines are limited to 500 numbered copies, so will run out fairly soon I guess.

Please note: My copy of this LP  ’They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles’ is the reissue released on Dreamworld Records  in 1986, not the original 1982 release on Whaam Records which has different sleeve artwork. There are several other Television Personalities downloads available on this site if you care to find them using the Search function. Ensure you enter the band name in full though!

Below text and Melody Maker review of this record when it was originally released courtesy of  the absolutely wonderful televisonpersonalities.co.uk site.

Chelsea, London, in the mid-70s. Schoolmates Dan Treacy, Ed Ball, Joe Foster, John Bennett and his brother Gerrard rehearsed together in their spare time, playing covers by the likes of The Who and Pink Floyd.

Inspired by the punk movement, Dan, Ed and the Bennetts went into a recording studio in August 1977 and emerged with ‘14th Floor’ and ‘Oxford Street’. Lack of money meant that only a handful of white label singles were initially pressed. Dan originally thought of calling the band Teen 78; whilst writing out a label to send a copy to the DJ John Peel, for a joke he listed the members of the band as famous television stars of the day, and the name TV Personalities was born. Peel played the single a number of times, and eventually Dan scraped together enough money to press 867 copies.

Dan returned to the studio with Ed Ball in the Summer of 1978 to record a follow-up single, the ‘Where’s Bill Grundy Now?’ EP. This was an instant hit with John Peel, who played the track ‘Part Time Punks’ many times. The success of the EP led to a deal with Rough Trade, who reissued the single and a follow-up, ‘Smashing Time’ (recorded again by Dan and Ed). Throughout these early years, Ed Ball had his own projects, O Level and then the Teenage Filmstars. Although Dan and Ed helped out with each other’s groups, they were always separate bands.

In the middle of 1980, the TVPs made their live debut following the recruitment of Joe Foster on bass and Mark Sheppard (known as Empire) on drums. This line-up was short-lived, reportedly due to differences in opinion between Foster and Sheppard, resulting in Joe’s departure. Prior to this, Dan and Mark helped out with Joe’s solo project, the Missing Scientists, which also included Mute Records boss Daniel Miller. The group’s ‘Big City Bright Lights’ 7″ was released by Rough Trade in September 1980.

In October 1980, Dan and Ed Ball returned to the recording studio with Empire to create the TVP’s debut album. Issued in January 1981 by Rough Trade, ‘And Don’t The Kids Just Love It’ was a considerable improvement over the early ramshackle recordings. The influence of Sixties pop culture was apparent from the LP’s sleeve, which featured supermodel Twiggy and Patrick McNee from the Avengers. The songs included Kinks-like social commentary (‘Geoffrey Ingram’), domestic drama (‘This Angry Silence’, ‘A Family Affair’) and one of their most famous (but not typical) songs, the rather whimsical ‘I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives’. Simultaneously, Rough Trade issued the latter as a single, albeit a different version.

In early 1981, Dan and Ed launched their own record label, Whaam! (named after the Roy Litchenstein painting). The first release was the debut single by Ed Ball’s new outfit The Times, followed by the Gifted Children’s ‘Painting By Numbers’. This was recorded during winter sessions by Dan and Empire, with Bernie Cooper on bass. It seems as if Dan toyed with the idea of breaking up the TVPs (not for the first, or last time) and continuing under this name. However, this single, and a track on the Whaam! compilation LP ‘All For Art’ were the only Gifted Children releases. Bernie Cooper apparently then disappeared, leaving Ed Ball to fill in on bass, notably during a joint Times / TVP UK tour in the Spring of 1981. The TVPs second LP was released in January 1982. ‘Mummy Your Not Watching Me’ combined tracks recorded during the ‘Gifted Children’ sessions with later material recorded with Ed Ball. Both Dan and Ed were leading figures in the contemporary psychedelia revival, and the influence is evident, particularly on the lo-fi pop psyche of ‘A Day in Heaven’ and ‘David Hockney’s Diaries’. Elsewhere, songs with Pop Art references, such as ‘Painting By Numbers’ and ‘Litchenstein Painting’ sat alongside the enduringly popular ‘If I Could Write Poetry’ and ‘Magnificent Dreams’.

A third album followed shortly afterwards; ‘They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles’ compiled unreleased tracks, material recorded during the ‘Gifted Children’ sessions, alternate takes and another airing of ‘14th Floor’. Despite this, the album was a surprisingly cohesive and entertaining collection of songs.

In early 1982, Ed Ball left the ranks to concentrate on his own band The Times. Mark Flunder was recruited to play bass and the trio of Treacy, Flunder and Sheppard gigged until the Spring of 1983, when Mark Sheppard departed. The TVPs expanded with the return of Joe Foster and the addition of Dave Musker (keyboards). This drummerless line-up recorded the TVPs next LP, ‘The Painted Word’, a dark masterpiece considered by many to be their best. The overall tone of the album was heavy, with some angry political songs such as ‘A Sense of Belonging’, ‘You’ll Have to Scream Louder’ and ‘Back to Vietnam’. In contrast to these were the melancholic beauty of ‘Stop and Smell the Roses’, which invited comparison with the Velvet Underground, and the touching ‘Someone to Share my Life With’.

With the album recorded, the band reunited with Rough Trade in 1983 for the acerbic protest single ‘A Sense of Belonging’. Controversy over the sleeve, which depicted a battered child, probably influenced the label’s decision not to release ‘The Painted Word’. A legal dispute with a pressing plant prohibited Dan from putting out the record on his own Whaam! label. Delayed by 18 months, the album was finally granted a limited release on Illuminated in mid-1984, a label that promptly folded. Further line-up changes occurred. Drummer Jeff Bloom joined the band and Mark Flunder was replaced by ex-Swell Maps bassist Jowe Head. After a tour of Europe in early 1984, the five-man TVP line-up came to an end with the departure of Joe Foster and Dave Musker.

Television Personalities then enjoyed their longest period with a settled line-up, comprising Dan Treacy, Jowe Head and Jeff Bloom. Although short of money and lacking a recording contract, the band concentrated on live work, especially in Europe where they enjoyed greater popularity than in the UK. Dan set up the Dreamworld label as the successor to Whaam!, initially to reissue the early TVP albums. He soon began releasing recordings by other bands, including the Mighty Lemon Drops and Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. This label also issued a new TVP single, the psychedelic protest song ‘How I Learned To Love The Bomb’ in 1986. Aside from that, TVP output was limited to occasional tracks on compilation albums. During this period, Dan also promoted gigs at the Room at the Top club.

THEY COULD HAVE BEEN BIGGER THAN THE BEATLES

On his first LP, “. . . And Don’t The Kids Just Love It”, Dan Treacy sang one of the most moving songs I’ve ever heard. But the media and public alike chose to overlook the sweet, almost suicidal sadness of “Diary Of A Young Man” for the obvious and attractively twee “I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives” and the kitsch John Steed, Emma Peel cover.

On his second LP, tentatively titled “Mummy, You’re Not Watching Me”, Dan Tracey went mad in a way that I find as harrowing and exhilarating as any pop music I’ve ever experienced.

On his third LP, “They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles”, Dan Treacy’s finally thrown in the towel . . . or, to be absolutely precise, he’s packed the paisley back in mothballs. Confused, frustrated, maybe even defeated by the inability of the press to resist a snide broadside at anything remotely psychedelic, Dan has folded his TV Personalities and so “Beatles” is his final farewell to the genre he chose as his medium of communication.

And let’s get (this) straight: Dan Treacy’s psychedelics have always served as a canvas on which he splattered his neuroses and not as any naively idealistic attempt at revival.

Let’s get (this) straight too: “Beatles” is over 50 minutes of outtakes which span his whole career, straddling both previous albums and staggering wide-eyed, witty and weighed down with worry, towards some indefinite future. It’s nowhere near perfect – it doesn’t purport to be – but its scope is incredible, its ambition outstanding and its heart damn near broken.

“Boy In The Paisley Shirt” is a Jilted John wink at the Groovy Cellarites – satire born of sympathy – “Three Wishes” (“If I had three wishes I’d wish for three more”) is characteristic of Dan’s ability to expose nerves while tickling your fancy, “King And Country” takes on McGuinn’s solo from “Eight Miles High” and presents a strong case for the reinstatement of electric guitar as the expressive instrument and “Anxiety Block” sounds like Abba ill-coping with “Mother’s Little Helper”.

I should go on, but I can’t so I’d better just tell you that on his last album, “They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles”, Dan Treacy sings a naked song called “Mysterious Ways” which floods me with adrenalin. Don’t allow any preconceived bias to prevent you from listening. In other words: stop being stupid and get tuned in.

Steve Sutherland August 1982

Possibly still available from the publishers contactable at eelzine@yahoo.co.uk

Aaron’s personal website HERE but do not contact him for getting the fanzine. Use the email address above.

There Is No Shame In Death

Dolphins / These Frayed Edges

Excellent debut 12″ record by Danse Society, recorded in 1980 and released on Pax Records in 1981.

Nice and gloomy, the A side clocks in at over 12 minutes playing time. A seriously epic dark dirge. The B side, also recorded during the same sessions in Manchester are slightly more upbeat, but not much!

Text below from personal1.iddeo.es/blancinegre

The forerunners of The Danse Society can be found in 1979 when Steve Rawlings (voice), Paul Gilmartin (drums), Paul Hampshire (known as Bee) (keyboards), Dave Patrick (lead guitar) and Bubble (bass) formed a band simply called Y? which had the track ‘End Of Act One’ included in the compilation LP ‘Bouquet Of Steel’ released in early 1980. By 1979 Lyndon Scarfe and Paul Nash had a band called Lips-X, the mutual ideas with the people of Y? lead to the joining of both bands by June 1979 to form the real forerunner of The Danse Society, a band called Danse Crazy. This band played at the Futurama Two Festival (popular name for “The World’s Second Science Fiction Music Festival”) held at Queen’s Hall, Leeds in September 1979. Other groups playing at that festival were: Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, A Certain Ratio, OMD, Public Image Limited, Soft Cell among others. The complete festival was filmed by the BBC and in November 1981 was aired. Danse Crazy were shown playing ‘Sink’, although they were listed as The Danse Society.

A few days before they played at Futurama, the band was in studio and recorded two tracks ‘There Is No Shame In Death’ and ‘Dolphins’, shelving them for a future release.

The nucleus of Danse Society was formed in January 1981 when Bee left Danse Crazy. Bee was later involved in other bands such as Panache, Getting The Fear and Into A Circle. Patrick also left. The four remaining members went on with the band but by March 1981 they changed the name to The Danse Society. The first line-up were Steve Rawlings (voice), Paul Nash (guitar), Lyndon Scarfe (keyboards), Tim Wright (bass) and Paul Gilmartin (drums).

In September 1980 they recorded their first 12″; it was called ‘There Is No Shame In Death’ although it was shelved, releasing ‘Clock’ instead, on their new own label SOCIETY RECORDS.

You can read on Paul Nash´s own words how the first record was released:

“Clock / Continent was originally released as a one off 7″ single with a pressing of just 1000 financed by the band. We each of us put in about £200 to paid for the recording, pressing etc. and I designed the sleeve which was a wrap around white card with lyrics printed by my girlfriend liz at the local college ( she later became my wife! ).This was then inserted into specially made plastic bags and had an interesting clock logo for the label of the 7″. The single was subsequently re-released, with a different sleeve and label and I believe the original is still hard to come by. It was never released as a 12″, although we did used to play longer versions of it live”.

With a contract with PAX RECORDS ‘There is No Shame In Death’ finally saw the light and the first 7″ record (‘Clock’) was re-released in March 1981. Soon after, and prior to breaking the contract with PAX RECORDS later on in 1981, the band released a 12″ ‘Womans Own’ , which contains four songs recorded originally as John Peel sessions, and a 7″ ‘We’re So Happy / Woman’s Own’ , edited both by PAX and SOCIETY RECORDS.

By that time they were respected by public and musical press mainly due to their great live shows. Their tunes, with Steve’s typical distance voice and painful atmospheres, excited a public who found them far more accessible than other gothic bands. Their popularity quickly grew up as their shows improved. One of the reasons of their quick success was the opening of several shows for major goth bands of the day, like UK Decay, Killing Joke or Theatre of Hate.

Their musical career reached mature in 1982, when a six-track album ‘Seduction’ was released by SOCIETY RECORDS. This record contained only six songs but with the initial copies it was given a free bonus 12″ with two remixes of a popular songs by the band: ‘Danse / Move’.

A rare tape of that musical moment was edited semi-officially by the fan club. You can read Paul Nash´s comment on that:

“As far as live stuff goes there was only one official / unofficial live tape – released entirely through the fan club, of a gig at The Hague in Holland containing mainly the seduction album stuff. Again not many copies were done so it’s pretty rare”

The success of this work was big enough to make the band a point of interest for some major labels. Soon after releasing their last independent single, the glorious ‘Somewhere / Hide’ (December 1982), the band signed to ARISTA in January 1983.

A compilation of all their first singles was also released with the homonymous title ‘The Danse Society’. It was edited in two different versions during 1983, one in Canada with a free bonus 12″ and a simple edition in France.

The first singles with the new major label didn’t deceive, they were even better than the past material. ‘Wake Up’ released in June 1983, and mainly the great ‘Heaven Is Waiting’ brought them to the top of their popularity.

Their new major album appeared in December 1983. The record was called ‘Heaven Is Waiting’. A different edition of this record by Great Expectations Records can be found. This edition and adds four songs to the common edition by ARISTA, although it seems to be from the early 1990’s. The album contained great tunes like ‘Red Light’, ‘Where Are You Now’, ‘Come Inside’, and the two previous singles ‘Heaven Is Waiting’ and ‘Wake Up’. It also contained a song which, according to musical press opinion, didn’t fit with their style: the epic version of the Rolling Stones ‘2000 Light Years From Home’, also edited in 1984 as 12″ and as a limited edition double single.

During 1984 they toured extensively to promote their record, even playing in Madrid and Barcelona. A highlight performance during this tour took place on April 7th 1984 at the Hammersmith Palais, London, sharing the night with the German band from the stable of artists on 4AD records, X-Mal Deutschland.