Zounds - The Curse of Zounds

ZOUNDS - THE CURSE OF ZOUNDS

It was obvious even by the cover of their Rough Trade label released début album, The Curse Of Zounds - the front depicting firemen aiming their hose at the Houses of Parliament as smoke engulfs Big Ben; to the back revealing their hose is not attached to a fire engine but to a petrol tanker - that there was much more to Zounds than at first met the eye.

Here was a band who were unique in a very subtle and very understated way, their apparent ordinariness masking a radicalism born of a very English imagination. With Crass, they shared a hope and a desire for a better world but whilst the forte of Crass was anger, the forte of Zounds was fear, as the first track on the album - with its cover designed by Clifford Harper (anarchist, illustrator, anarchist illustrator) - depicted perfectly:

"I'm frightened of the humans, I'm frightened of the stares, frightened of the poisons they pump into the air. Frightened of the chemicals they spray upon the land, frightened of the power they hold within their hands. I'm frightened of bureaucracy, I'm frightened of the law, frightened of the government and who it's working for. Frightened of the children who won't know how to cope with a world in rack and ruin from their technocratic dope."

Given the state of the nation and the political climate at the time, it was perfectly reasonable to be afraid. Very afraid. Who in their right mind wasn't frightened of nuclear war and scared of what politicians might be capable of? The Home Office on behalf of the government were, after all, responsible for the most bizarre public information pamphlets offering advice on how to survive a nuclear attack. Their instructions being to stockpile a bit of food, water and some warm clothing, then to build a makeshift shelter in the cupboard under the stairs. Just stay there for two weeks until the all-clear is given by the local council and then presumably emerge and be greeted with a cup of tea and a biscuit at the local community hall or other such building to be used as a gathering point. Services such as buses and trains may be disrupted.

Fright and anger were quite rational responses to this kind of delusory but very dangerous thinking. Anger, as demonstrated by Crass and later to be proclaimed by John Rotten/Lydon was an energy but fear as stated by Zounds was "a bum thing, a silly and a dumb thing. Fear can be the one thing that keeps us all apart."

What they were saying made sense. Fear was a form of social control. A tried and tested method of dividing and ruling a population. Fear of unemployment, of homelessness, hunger, crime, violence, damnation, nuclear Armageddon, etc, etc. Fear of 'the other'. Fear of one and other.

Fear was a weapon used to keep people in line and in place but to simply be aware of this was a step in the right direction toward further awareness and freedom. Highlighting this in a trilogy of songs linked together to form a mini opus, Zounds called out to the world: "The unfree child is full of woe, into the unfree adult he will grow. Have unfree children of his own, on and on and so it goes."

Caught in a perpetual cycle of repression, vocalist Steve Lake understood that his parents were actually his first oppressors but held no malice toward them as he also understood that they too were caught in the same cycle, as explained in the track My Mummy's Gone: "Now that I am older I know that you scarred me but I don't hold it against you though it damaged me sorely. I know that you're a victim just like me, you can feel the pressure just like me."

In the track Did He Jump Or Was He Pushed, a repressed upbringing be it socially or emotionally is taken to a possible logical conclusion where Steve sings: "Who was that on the window ledge? Did he jump or was he pushed? He left a note which no-one read, in desperate hand the note just said: Never turned my back on society, society turned its back on me. Never tried once to drop out, I just couldn't get in from the very start." Then in an echo of the Crass dictum that reality is an asylum, the track ends with the refrain: "All the world cannot be wrong, it must be me - I don't belong."

Could it be that there were more people feeling alienated than might actually care to admit it? Could it be that society was truly atomised, separated by degrees of fear?

According to Thatcher in her analysis of the summer's riots, all sense of community was lost - particularly within the inner cities - due to a culture of welfare arrangements which encouraged dependency and discouraged responsibility. Displaying her prejudices, Thatcher laid the blame firmly and unequivocally upon socialism for the demoralisation of communities by offering dependency instead of independence. The kind of independence promoted by Thatcher, however, simply meant a culture of selfishness and dog eat dog, pandering to some of the worst aspects of human nature.

Profit and profiteering was all. Anything without a monetary value was of no worth and merely surplus to requirement. To the conservative mind, wealth and ownership defined an individual and a society so deserved therefore to be protected by law, insurance, the gun, and ultimately The Bomb.

Those who could not achieve were simply 'the poor' and be they deserving or undeserving, they really had no-one to blame for their position but themselves. It was not the world that was wrong but the individual self.

The world as depicted by Zounds, however, was a world of ambiguity and dissatisfaction. A world where the "rain is flooding, the pavement cracks, headlines screaming 'Pay more tax'." A world where the news is "stranger than fiction," and where "the music is crap, that the radio plays." A world "choking with wires and plugs, strangled with fences and stuck with knives," where "everybody's looking for a little bit more."

This yearning for something other is explored to good effect in the track Dirty Squatters, where Steve Lake sings the song from the viewpoint of someone who has lived in the same street "for nearly fifteen years, lived here with my hopes, lived here with my fears. Paid my taxes, paid my bills, watched my money vanish in the council tills."

One day "some dirty squatters" move into his street "with their non-sexist haircuts, dirty feet. Their dogs, cats, political elite; they may have beds but they don't use sheets. Furnishing their houses from the contents of skips, things that decent people put on rubbish skips." He observes them as looking "quite harmless sitting out in the sun but I wouldn't let my daughter marry one. Oh my god, they're moving in next door! Is it for people like this that Winston won the war?"

Bemoaning his personal situation, he comes to see the squatters as being representative of some kind of an alternative: "Along come these scruffs with their education, their grand ideas and talk of corruption. My rent keeps rising, my job gets boring. If things get worse then I'm gonna have to join them."

The song ends with him doing just that: "Bought myself a lock and late tonight, under the cover of darkness if the moon's not bright. Getting out of here, moving next door, don't think I can take much more. Oh my god, I'm moving in next door!"

An alternative of any kind can very often and very easily be merely a different version of the same old thing with just a new set of different problems - as anyone who has had any experience of squatting, for example, would know. These contradictions are looked at in what is arguably the best song on the album - New Band - in which a yearning for something other is once again expressed:

"Been searching for something but I don't know what, been searching for a long, long time. Someone comes along and says 'this is it' but it will cost you, realise. Pay your money, try your luck, think you'll trust them one more time. But how long does it take to feel you're being ripped off? There's always something new to buy."

According to Zounds, alternatives of any kind within a capitalist system, particularly as promoted by the mainstream media are nothing more than new ways to make you spend. At the end of the day everything is a commodity to be either bought or sold. Be it good, bad, ethical or unethical, everything is a business and as Zounds point out in a more honest way than most, this even applies to music and bands:

"There's a new band every week, new ways to move your feet. New sounds to thrill your ears, same old chords dressed up weird. New attitudes, brand new stance, different steps but the same old dance. New ways but in the end it's just a new way to make you spend."

So did this mean that Zounds too were just another "new band" who in the end were "just a new way to make you spend"? By aligning themselves with Stonehenge and the free festival scene, along with supporting a variety of worthy causes through playing benefit gigs, it was apparent that Zounds weren't exactly going all out to court mainstream commercial success. Just like any other band, however, they were still releasing records that no matter how subversive they might be could still clearly be defined as 'product'.

Be it Abba or Crass, Boney M or Poison Girls, St Winifred Girls School Choir or Zounds, the exchange between producer and consumer remained the same no matter how expensive or how cheap the product might be. This was the bitter truth that Zounds were wrestling with and apart from not making records at all or making them and giving them away for free, there seemed to be no escape from it.

Caught in such a trap, the least any band could do in their songs was to impart something of worth or of value, or something they deemed to be of importance; which is exactly what Zounds do in the track Target: "The Americans are coming, they're bringing us their bombs to aim them at their enemies from our island home. Well, I don't want to die because of some mad President's whim. I don't want to be part of a war no-one can win."

The bombs being referred to, of course, were America's Cruise missiles, still bound for their bases in England and Europe despite an ever-growing opposition to which Zounds were adding their voice: "You're welcome here, Americans. We love you but not your bombs. And not your lies..."

The album ends with a track entitled Mr Disney, which itself ends with the words "radiation green!" being howled out, before the music morphs seamlessly into the guitar riff from the track War, the introductory song on Zounds' début EP Can't Cheat Karma, on Crass Records. The last words from Steve Lake on the album are indeed "War! War! War! War!", again taken directly from their début Can't Cheat Karma record.

The circle was complete.

From a hash-fuelled, post-hippy shambling band before being shaken down and fine-tuned by Crass, before setting off on their own trajectory; Zounds had ended up carving out an irrefutably, absolute classic album that would prove to be a milestone in the history of Anarcho Punk.

With Steve Lake's distinctive vocals backed by chorus-line-type chants, blown along by melodious, booming bass lines scribbled and skated over by electric guitar; all knitted together by the brilliant drumming of one Joseph Porter - The Curse Of Zounds would stand the test of time far, far better than most other albums of that same period.

The decision made by Crass to release on their label only one record by any given band and to then let them go their own way had proved to be a right one. If Zounds had stayed on Crass Records and not moved to Rough Trade then the resulting album would have been produced by Penny Rimbaud and come with a fold-out, black and white sleeve.

The result may well have been extremely interesting but it most certainly would not have been The Curse Of Zounds.