Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Revolution Girl Style Now!
Riot Grrrl – revolution girl style now! (Black Dog Publishing, 2007) gives due weight to the zine and DIY dimensions of the movement, with a chapter by Red Chidgey on Riot Grrrrl Writing. She argues that the zine ‘manifestoes were a form of wish fulfilment, conjuring up in words whatever the authors wanted to see happen in real life… “Riot Grrrl was about inventing new titles”, says Jo Huggy, ”you think up some name for a fantasy revolutionary group of girls, spread the ideas of it about and hope, for someone, it’ll come true”'.
In England, key riot grrrl band Huggy Bear declared in their Her Jazz manifesto (printed in their Huggy Nation zine, 1992): ‘Soon truckloads of Girl Groups and Girl/Boy Groups will be arriving to storm onto our platforms to start the riot they’ve been dreaming and plotting in the many hours spent waiting, growing taller with anticipation’.
Thus the bedroom dreams of a post-punk feminist youth movement gave birth to just that, initially in early 1990s Olympia and Washington DC and then in the UK and elsewhere.
The scene struggled to cope with a media onslaught, and the record industry was soon repackaging a diluted form of girl power with The Spice Girls. Nevertheless, Riot Grrrl inspired girls (and boys) across the world to form bands and write, and there continue to be riot grrrl networks to this day.
Riot Grrrl was also one of the final pre-internet movements. As Beth Ditto notes in her foreword to the book, it was ‘Built on the floors of strangers’ living rooms, tops of xeorox machines, snail mail, word of mouth and mixtapes’. In the pre-internet world ‘the main means of communicating and networking… was through exchanging zines and writing letters’ (Julia Downes). Erin Smith, who published the early Teenage Gang Debs zine recalled, there ‘was something special about having this pen-pal and then kind of calling on the phone, and then hearing about this other person, and then reading their zine, and then mailing your zine out to people and just hoping somebody’s going to understand it’.
Internet communication is much quicker and broader – I know that within minutes of writing this somebody on the other side of the world will be reading it. But arguably communication is often shallower than the exchange of gifts implied by sending tapes, zines and letters to kindred spirits.
This book is a good start at documenting Riot Grrrl, though inevitably there are gaps. In the chapter Poems on the Underground, Cass Blaze covers the UK music influenced by riot grrrl in detail. She considers Huggy Bear, Mambo Taxi, Voodoo Queens and the crossover with the indie-pop scene. I would have liked the US Riot Grrrl music scene to be treated in similar depth. The link with the related queercore scene could also have been explored more, with bands like Sister George in the UK and Tribe8 in the US.
There's lots of good Riot Grrrl stuff out there online - you could start with The Riot Grrrl Manifesto, The Riot Project and Riot Grrrl Online Blog.
Monday, April 28, 2008
All you judges beware
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Clubbing in Luton 1983-87
Martin at Beyond the Implode has chronicled his memories of the downside of living there in the early 1990s – driving around all night listening to Joy Division on the run from ‘Clubs where you'd pay 10 quid to enter (5 if you were a girl) with the promise of a free bar all night. Pints of watered down Kilkenny Ajax, or single vodkas with a squirt of orange. Bobby Brown skipping on the club's CD-player. Bare knuckle boxing tournaments outside kebab shops’. Sarfraz Manzoor has also painted a less than flattering account of the town in his book Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion, Rock’n’Roll (later filmed as Blinded by the Light).
There’s nothing in these accounts I would really disagree with, though only people who have lived in Luton earn the right to criticise it. I would of course defend it against other detractors by pointing out to its interesting counter-cultural history!
I was born and grew up there, and actually chose to move back to be a full time anarcho-punk for a few years in the mid-1980s, having earlier left the town to go to college. I think the anarcho-punk stories can wait until another post, but for now lets look at the mid-1980s nightlife, such as it was.
The Blockers Arms
There were several pubs with an ‘alternative’ crowd in Luton around this time – The Black Horse, The Sugar Loaf, later the Bricklayers Arms. But in the mid-1980s the various sub-cultures of punks, psychobillies, skinheads and bikers tended to congregate at one pub more than any other, The Blockers Arms in High Town Road. A hostile local historian has written that ‘During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the pub became a Mecca for some of the undesirable elements of Luton society, it being reported that the pub was used by drug-peddlers, with the result that there was much trouble with fights and under-age drinking’ (Stuart Smith, Pubs and Pints: the story of Luton’s Public Houses and Breweries, Dunstable: Book Castle, 1995). Most of this is true, but of course we all thought we were very desirable!
The micro-tribes gathered in the pub were united in their alienation from mainstream Luton nightlife, whilst suspicious of each other, sometimes to the point of violence. The bikers dominated the pool table and the dealing. The traditional charity bottle on the bar read ‘support your local Hells Angels’, and you really didn’t want to argue with them. Skinheads would turn up looking for a fight, throwing around glasses. Even among the punks there were different factions, albeit overlapping and coexisting peacefully – some slightly older first generation punks, Crass-influenced anarcho-punks and goths. There were the early indie pop kids too, though I don't think anybody called them that at the time (The Razorcuts came from Luton as did Talulah Gosh's Elizabeth Price). The layout of the pub catered for the various cliques as there were different areas – the inside of the pub had little booths (the smallest for the DJ), and there was also an outside courtyard where bands sometimes played. I remember for instance seeing Welwyn's finest The Astronauts there.
I saw in 1984 in the Blockers. There was drinking, singing and dancing, with midnight marked with Auld Lang Syne and U2’s ‘New Year’s Day’. Inevitably Bowie’s 1984 also got an airing. Later in the year it closed down for refurbishment in the latest of a series of doomed attempts to lose its clientele. It reopened only to lose its license in 1986, closing soon after. The pub later reopened and eventually became The Well.
Sweatshop parties
After The Blockers on that New Year’s Eve nearly everybody went on to a warehouse party at 'the Sweatshop' (22a Guildford Street). Luton had once been famous for its hat industry – blockers were one of the groups of workers involved – and there were various former hat factory spaces in the old town centre. One of these was put into action on Christmas Eve 1983 and again on New Year’s Eve – the flyer for the former being recycled for the latter, inviting people to bring their own bottle and dance till dawn for £1. As well as Cramps, Siouxsie and the Banshees etc. there was lots of 1950s music, in addition to what I noted in my diary at the time as drinking, dancing, kissing and falling around. The flyer states 'Dirt Box Rip Off', a reference to the popular Dirt Box warehouse parties in London at that time.
The space was used a few times in the mid-80s for parties over Christmas and New Year. There was a small room downstairs and a big open space upstairs, I remember one time the banister on the staircase between the two collapsed, and somebody broke their arm. But most people there would surely rather have taken their chances with dodgy health and safety than risked going out in the main clubs and bars of Luton town centre.
The dominant nightclub culture in the town catered for pringle-clad ‘casuals’ as we derided the mainstream youth fashion of the time. The biggest club was the Tropicana Beach – once known as Sands, it still had plastic palm trees. I often wondered whether it might have been one of the inspirations for Wham’s Club Tropicana, given that George Michael grew up not too far away in Hertfordshire.
With a dress code of ‘casual or interesting but not scruffy’, punks were generally banned and indeed most other deviations from the norm. I remember seeing the organiser of a student disco there turned away from his own party on account of his vaguely hippyish appearance. Of course the people they did let in were often far more dangerous than those outside – once when I was refused entry there were knives outside presumably left behind when people realized they’d be searched on the way in.
I did occasionally go there on Tuesdays, when with punters in short supply free tickets were given out to more or less anybody able to buy a drink – seemingly regardless of age as well as clothes. The music was whatever was in the charts with a DJ who spoke over the records mixing sexist banter with comments designed to police the dancefloor – telling my friends to stop their raucous slam dancing with the warning ‘do you girls want to stay until one o’clock?’ (not sure they did actually).
For one night only in 1984, the Tropicana Beach fell into the hands of the freaks. The local TV station BBC East were filming a performance by Furyo, one of the splinters from the break up of Luton’s main punk band, UK Decay, and all the local punks, goths and weirdoes were rounded up to be the audience.
There were sporadic alternative nights in some of Luton's clubs which offered a bit of diversity. Sometimes they took place on the quieter mid-week nights - since so many of us were on the dole it didn’t particularly matter whether it was a Tuesday or a Saturday night.
Another occasional oasis was Luton’s only gay club, Shades in Bute Street (formerly the Pan Club). In 1983 it hosted Club for Heroes, an attempt at a new romanticish club night with lots of Bowie, Kraftwerk and Iggy Pop. I particularly remember Yello’s ‘I love you’ playing there. There were attempts at robotic dancing -whenever I hear the Arctic Monkeys sing of 'dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984' I am transported back to this place. All this for £1 and beer at 82p a pint!
There was also the 33 Arts Centre, a community arts space with print shop, video and music studios that sometimes put on gigs and events. These and other venues can be viewed in this fine gallery of notorious Luton punk venues.
The Switch
Most of these nights came and went, but there was one which defined Luton’s post-punk nightlife for quite a few years – The Switch.
In the early 1970s, Luton Council became one of the first to embrace the indoor shopping mall in a big way – by bulldozing much of the existing town centre. The Arndale Centre which replaced it opened in 1972 and was for a while the biggest indoor shopping centre in Europe. Needless to say it was, and is, a bland soulless affair but the planners did provide for it to include a pub, originally named The Student Prince and then the Baron of Beef. The name had changed again to the Elephant & Tassel by January 1985 when on a Thursday night – it happened to be my birthday – The Switch held its first night there.
The Switch was to remain at the Tassel for a couple of years, and continued at various other venues into the mid-1990s with the DJs/promoters Nick Zinonos and Bernie James spreading their empire to run nights in Northampton, Oxford and Cambridge.
My time there though was in 1985/6, when Thursday night at The Switch fitted nicely into the Giro Thursday routine of me and many of my friends. This involved picking up our cheques from the government (£39 a week), cashing them at the post office, getting in the vegan groceries and then going home to crimp our hair before heading to the pub and then The Switch. There to drink and dance to songs like Spear of Destiny’s Liberator, Baby Turns Blue by the Virgin Prunes, the Sisters of Mercy’s Alice, Dark Entries by Bauhaus and The Cult’s Spiritwalker. In a departure from the general gothdom the last record was usually 'Tequila' by The Champs.
Tracks like these were to become staples of goth clubs for years to come, but at least we were dancing to them when they were new and anyway Luton can claim to be the town that invented goth. So at least some say on the basis that UK Decay was one of the first punk bands to start referencing horror themes, plundering Edgar Allen Poe and Herman Hesse for inspiration (see 1981 article Punk Gothique). We might also add that Richard North (aka Cabut), sometime editor of Luton/Dunstable punk zine Kick played a significant role in the early goth/ ‘positive punk’ scene – he coined the latter phrase in NME in 1983 and played in one of the bands, Brigandage - you can read his account of being a Dunstable punk at 3am magazine (Dunstable is Luton's next door neighbour).
The UK Decay website has resurrected a whole virtual community of punks and goths from the Luton area, and includes some good memories of the Switch such as this one: ‘I started going late '84 when I was 16 and it was wild! The most amazing collage of weird and wonderful people…I drank LOTS of DRINKS, got into lots of bands, and dyed my hair various colours. It was where I learnt about wearing makeup as a boy, lots of new bands, subcultures, and of course...GIRLS! It was a life experience, that club, and we all came away changed’.
Another recalls: ‘Oh happy days. 1985 was the start of my new alternative social life and the blueprint to the soundtrack of my life. After leaving school and starting working in the alcohol aisle of Tesco's I was introduced to this cool goth called Karl. He informed me of this goth club under the Arndale called The Elephant And Tassel. After visiting for the first time in the summer of '85 and being lucky enough to obtain a membership straight away, I was born again’.
The same person also remembers the downside: 'I remember also, all too well, getting done over on the way home by an unpleasant man with a half-brick and three mates who objected to my fashion sensibilities…Dressing in black, crimping your hair and spraying it with the contents of one of those big fucking tins of Boots hairspray somehow always managed to cause offence to beer monsters’.
When I recall my time in Luton, violence is always mixed up with my memories- skinheads threatening blokes for wearing make up, bikers beating people up for talking to their girlfriends, drunken arguments with bouncers. In the Switch one night, the DJ got a bloody nose from a guy called Maz - who really put the psycho in psychobilly – just because he hadn’t played his band’s demo tape enough. Then there was gang warfare – Luton Town Football Club’s hooligan firms the MIGs (Men in Gear) and the BOLTs (Boys of Luton Town). At least unlike some of the London firms they weren’t linked to the far right, but the fact that they were racially mixed (white british and african-caribbean) didn’t stop some of them from engaging in a long and violent conflict with the asian Bury Park Youth Posse.
Post-post punk
As the 80s wore on, the punk uniform began to feel restrictive and more to the point anybody with an appreciation for music had to acknowledge that some of the most innovative and exciting sounds were coming out of black music, such as early hip hop and electro. For some reason it was Prince more than any other artist who seemed to provide the bridge which a lot of Luton punky types crossed into an appreciation of this music.
I did use to come back sometimes over the next couple of years and go to The Mad Hatter (which later became Club M), where the Switch had moved to. They played indie stuff upstairs while downstairs there was 80s soul and funk. By this time I was spending more time downstairs than up, down among the casuals who I was now indistinguishable from with my flat top and bomber jacket. Maybe they weren’t so bad after all -well my sister was one – and to be fair as well as intolerant unmusical thugs there was always a hardcore of dedicated soul boys and girls in Luton who took their music very seriously, heading off to Caister for soul weekenders etc. Mind you some of them were still thugs!
That was more or less it for me and dancing in Luton (so far!), although I did make it back to Bedfordshire for a festival put on by the Exodus Collective, Luton’s free party warriors and I also went to a 2011 night put on my their successor Leviticus. And of course I had to go when Exodus put on a party at the Cool Tan squat in Brixton when I was living there in 1995. Some of the old Luton ex-punks were there too, still going strong in an electronic outfit called Big Eye. Having put down roots elsewhere I can’t imagine living back in Luton, but respect to those still trying to make interesting things happen there, some of whom have now been at it for 30+ years.
Vandalism begins at home is a current Luton music site. UK Decay Communities is the best source of Luton punk history, with a gallery of photos that future social historians will pore over as a record of subcultural style in an English town in the 1970s and 1980s.
See also clubbing in 1984 in London, Sheffield and Manchester.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Dancing Questionnaire 8: Beyond the Implode
1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?
The earliest was probably throwing myself around to the theme tunes of TV shows like "The Professionals"and "Weekend World". You need a good, driving, dynamic theme tune to injure yourself to, and "Weekend World" ticked all the boxes with its crashing guitar blitz, tense drumming and moody organ. I was quite disappointed, years later, when I found out that particular piece was actually recorded by a '70s prog rock band called Mountain - I preferred imagining that it was knocked up by some eccentric 'TV jingle expert', frantically chain-smoking and directing a school-aged rock group in the London Weekend Television studios.
This primitive slam dancing would go on for weeks until I had permanent carpet burns and severe bruising, or til my dad kicked me out of the living room. After that, it was probably doing the Adam & The Ants "Prince Charming" dance at my (much) older sister's wedding reception in 1981 - well, until I realised that a bunch of pissed-up, middle aged Irish relatives were staring at me, causing me to bottle out and hide under a table.
But my first real communal dancing memory was a girl's birthday party. We were all about 7, I was wearing my MY SISTER WENT TO MALTA AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT t-shirt and me and some snot-nosed girl called Sheilagh were grooving to rubbish like "Young Guns", "D.I.S.C.O" and the one that went "Hands up, baby hands up, gimme your heart gimme gimme..." etc.
2. What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?
I can't identify one most interesting / significant thing - for me what was significant was the fact that, when I was younger, I considered myself a right ming-mong who'd never be able to cut it on any dancefloor. So just dancing at all without incurring any fatal consequences or humiliation was quite nice.
I don't really take dancing that seriously, I tend to arse around doing 'rave spaz' hand movements. I picked up a few tips on the dancefloor over the years, though. Some woman told me that men should dance with their knees rather than their hips, as it reduces jerky shoulder movements. I don't know if she was having me on, but as a result I've danced like M.I.A ever since. Also, if you do that '70s disco thing where you form 'V'-signs with your fingers, and then drag them across your eyes, it's a good way of reassuring people that you don't spend all your time practising in front of a mirror and that you're not going to start pelvic thrusting all over their legs.To be honest, as long as it's the right vibe with the right people, I could dance at a Norwegian country and western night and have a good time.
3. You. Dancing. The best of times…
A fair few. There was the time I went to see The Damned and the Anti-Nowhere League at the Astoria in1994. I'm not really a big fan of either band, but that was such a laugh, like splashing through a lake of spilt beer at a medieval public execution. Spoddy kids across the globe owe a debt of gratitude to Sid Vicious for inventing pogo dancing, anyone can do it and all it takes is a bit of basic stamina. I liked the unspoken code of honour at punk gigs, like if someone slipped over and hit the deck, everyone would clear a space around them and help them back up to their feet. There was a fat psychobilly bloke down the front of the gig, whose 'dancing' solely consisted of violently lashing his fists out in front of him, sending the occasional skinny punk reeling. At some point I just thought, "Sod it, it can't hurt THAT much", and gleefully flung myself into his path. He whacked me in the chest and I went flying, but I was too busy laughing to feel any pain. I used to love going to Slimelight too, I think I had some sort of affinity for dancing to EBM (which I hardly ever listened to at home) because I ended up getting snogged by random strangers on a regular basis.
I did my first vial of poppers there. I've never been a heavy drugs user, but I liked amyl nitrate because it gets straight to the point and makes you feel like your heart's about to come drilling out of your chest 'Manic Miner' style - you also avoid hours of talking shit about the hidden meanings of Smiley Culture lyrics. My favourite night at Slimelight was when I 'pulled' (or 'was pulled' more accurately) by some punk girl who later vomited all over herself at Angel tube station. She was barking mad but very sweet. Bizarrely, I still wonder how she's doing these days.
Megatripolis at Heaven was good fun, like running around inside a techno LSD carny. But one of my favourite nights out was New Year's Eve '98, me and my flatmate Kev had ended up in a pub in Edgware called The Railway. We were doing the standard, skint "This is such a rip-off, what a crap night" moaning when some incompetent DJ came on and started (very poorly) mixing "Renegade Master", a pile of big beat records, Run DMC etc. The whole pub suddenly transformed into the best nightclub in the world, we were rolling around the sticky carpet, trying to 'breakdance' with local bikers, people grabbing the DJ's microphone and giving surreal shout-outs to their bedridden grandmas...just good, dirty chaos all round! The whole thing fizzled out around 4am when the police turned up, the last thing I remember was a skeletal guy in nerdy glasses, a Santa hat and his boxer shorts, dancing with one of the barmaids to "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" on the pool table and waving a poolcue around like a sword, while a couple of incredulous cops tried to get the DJ to sober up enough to unplug his decks.
I haven't linked dancing to sex yet - in 2002, I was down the Stockwell Swan with my then girlfriend. I've never been bewitched by someone dancing before but she completely blew me away, she seemed to transform herself into a snake goddess and did this odd dance in the middle of the floor. There were blokes craning their necks to get a look, it was something else, Ididn't dare go near her in case I broke the spell. I'm not making this up, and I wasn't on drugs. I just stood by the side of the dancefloor with my jaw scraping the floor. I remember telling myself, "Lap this up and enjoy every minute of it, because special moments like this don't last forever, and one day it'll all be gone" - and sure enough, me and the cowsplit up in 2003.
4. You. Dancing. The worst of times…
I remember an extremely unpleasant night in Ritzy's nightclub in Dunstable, which was situated in a shopping precinct - it was just a commercial club, playing chart music and a bit of house. I can't even remember why we'd bothered going there, but it was a complete nightmare. Groups of blokes who hadn't managed to pull were just roaming around beating the shit out of anyone they took a disliking to. Somebody got glassed in the toilet and then it all erupted, with two sets of blokes clashing, I can still remember seeing puddles of blood all over the floor and smeared up one of the cubicle doors. Outside, some bloke had collapsed in a heap on a metal bench and a group of lads were surrounding his comatose body, gobbing all over him and shouting stuff like "piss on the fat cunt".
There was a similar night in Mirage in Luton. The upstairs used to be for 'alternatives', whereas the downstairs area was a dance area. It operated on a kind of segregation basis, as if you had this 'peaceline' running across the back stairwell, so the punks/ goths / indie kids and 'straights' didn't come into contact with each other. It's funny to think these(mostly) gentle, polite kids were upstairs listening to grunge and Rage Against the Machine wailing about fucking up the system, while, downstairs (where we ended up one night) some squaddie would be kicking bejayzus out of another bloke and girls would be decking each other to "Saturday Night" by Whigfield.
Worst was last year when I went to Russia with some girl and it transpired she was actually on the rebound. I decided to get as drunk as possible, hoofed back a bottle of Russki Standart Platinum, and set out to dance myself into oblivion in some seedy Euro-techno club. Instead I ended up falling over, landing on my thumb and leg and having to be carried outside by her and her friends. The next day I had a nearly flight back to London, but when I got to Heathrow my hand had swollen up and I couldn't actually stand, so I had to be helped to arrivals by the cabin crew, which was highly embarrassing. I ended up in Whittington Hospital being X-rayed, patched up and prescribed a course of anti-flams and hobbling back home (it took me half an hour to walk a normal 10 minute distance). It was kind of full circle back to where I started, crashing into things and getting injured.
5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented?
Not really, it's kind of scrambled, but as a rough sketch: 1992-1994, London punk / riot grrrl bands; 1994-1996 - Megatripolis for techno, Lazerdrome in Peckham for jungle, Venue, New Cross, for indie / punk bands, Goldsmiths Tavern, New Cross, for the odd anarcho band, and Slimelight for goth / industrial.Ever since then, various clubs, ranging from outright commercial cattle markets to excellent dancehall nights like Kevin Martin's and Loefah's BASH in OldStreet.
6. When and where did you last dance?
That tendon-ripping night in St Petersburg, unless you count coolly nodding and shuffling (A BIT) at a grime night in East London a while back.
7. You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?
It'd have to be "Body of an American" by the Pogues, a real mosh out way to go, preferably accompanied by streams of Talisker and (despite having quit earlier this year) a last Marlboro Light. Oh, and a couple of ex-girlfriends dabbing their eyes with a hankie as I drop to the ground and convulse around a bit at the end.
All questionnaires welcome- just answer the same questions and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires)
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Do they owe us a living?
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Club Louise and Sombrero's - London 1976/77
Monday, July 16, 2007
Born in the UK
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Sheep Farming in the Falklands
The occasion was apparently an event to remember the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War. The crowd in Whitehall and around Buckingham Palace was the opposite of the diverse crowd of New Londoners gathered on the other side of the river - mainly white and looking back nostalgically to past imperial adventures. A crowd that cheered Margaret Thatcher in a ceremony that 'concluded with the massed ranks singing Rod Stewart's contemporary hit I am Sailing, with rear admirals, former squaddies, Prince Charles and the prime minister's wife seen joining in'.
The Falklands/Malvinas conflict was a squalid affair. On the one side was the fading Argentinian military dictatorship facing growing unrest, on the other a Conservative government in its first term of office keen to blood its armed forces and rally patriotic support after a year of mass unemployment and urban riots. Over 900 people died in an argument about which flag would fly over a sparsely populated group of islands in the South Atlantic.
The short but bloody war inspired a number of songs, the best of which is undoubtedly Shipbuilding, written by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer for Robert Wyatt, and later recorded by Costello himself on his Punch the Clock album. This lament links the war, unemployment and industrial decline, featuring the lump-in-the-throat lyrical gem 'diving for dear life, when we could be diving for pearls'.
The Argentinian Junta had been sold British arms prior to the conflict, a point highlighted by Billy Bragg in his Island of No Return: 'I never thought that I would be, Fighting fascists in the Southern Sea, I saw one today and in his hand, Was a weapon that was made in Birmingham'. Bragg had only bought himself out of the army in 1981, so had had a lucky escape from being dispatched 'to a party way down South'.
The most sustained assault on the war and its instant mythology came from Crass. When How Does It Feel To Be The Mother of 1000 Dead? was released in 1982 there were calls in Parliament for it be banned. It is a fairly straightforward anarcho-punk anti-war rant with lyrics like 'Throughout our history you and your kind have stolen the young bodies of the living to be twisted and torn in filthy war'. The following year's Sheep Farming in the Falklands is more specific, sticking the boot into 'Winston Thatcher', The Sun newspaper and the monarchy: 'The Royals donated Prince Andrew as a show of their support, was it just luck the only ship that wasn't struck was the one on which he 'fought'?" Their most audacious act was to feature a picture of Falklands 'hero' Simon Weston on their album Yes Sir I Will. The title came from the badly-burned Weston's reply to Prince Charles wishing him to 'get well soon'. For Crass such apparent servility to crown and country simply meant obedience to the war machine.
There were other punk efforts. The Exploited released Let's Start a War (said Maggie one day), while New Model Army's Spirit of the Falklands saw the war as a cynical diversion from the home front: 'The natives are restless tonight sir, Cooped up on estates with no hope in sight, They need some kind of distraction, We can give them that'.
Rod Stewart's Sailing wasn't written for the Falklands (it actually came out in 1977), but this dreadful dirge has twice been pushed into the patriotic service. As well as being adopted as an unofficial anthem for the Navy in the Falklands War, it was also the record that was officially declared as the Number One Single in the Queen's Jubilee Week 1977, widely believed to have been a ploy to disguise the fact that the best selling record was actually The Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Repeat after me: F*ck Queen and Country
Friday, March 09, 2007
Dancing questionnaire 2 - Scott Wood
The earliest one I can remember (so it may be my first) was dancing with my Auntie Jean in Wellington College Social Club to Apache by The Shadows and my insisting I slide under her skirts as often as possible. It wasn't any weird Auntie-love this either, I was way too young for that; I just liked sliding along the floor.
I didn't notice; I was dancing.
Stonehenge, though it was a bit edgy. See also question next question.
The Treworgey Tree Fayre, 1988, to Culture Shock and, also, the Poison Girls, a Turku club in Fethiye to a bloke with a lute in 2005, on a sofa in a nightclub in Camberley many years ago to I-don't-know-what-indie-tune, out of my skull and dressed like a pirate in Brighton last year to some mash-ups, bare-foot to Papa Brittle at Royal Berks Hospital Social Club. Around the Jack-in-the-Green while dressed as a bear outside the Market Porter (Greenwich) on May Day 2005. That sort of thing.
Getting the fear from the massive wreaking-crew at a Meteors gig / Giving the mother of the bride a black toe-nail at a friends wedding / Having a Faith-No-More fan thrown at me and spraining my wrist at the Agincourt in Camberley/ Going arse-over-tit at an anonymous nightclub in Reading many, many years ago while trying to impress a girl / Realising, suddenly, in the middle of dancing, that Born Slippy by Underworld is really, really boring to dance to / Orbital at Somerset House: I'm not a huge fan and dancing on cobblestones doesn't half fuck your knees up.
Gigging and clubbing history could go, though: anarcho-punk and crustie punk, greebo, goth, noise-nic, erm. Hang, on, sorry, slotting music I've danced to and moments of my life into specific categories is quite a spirit-crushing exercise. I'm a music lover and am not, or ever have been, part of any 'scene'.
The kitchen, last week. I think it was to a track by Loney, Dear. Last public dancing was to various eighties indie and indie-pop tracks at a mates house in Birmingham on New Years Eve.
She-La-Na-Gig by PJ Harvey (left)