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.
