The Mob - No Doves Fly Here

THE MOB - NO DOVES FLY HERE

Hailing originally from Yeovil, in Somerset, at a tender age The Mob had run away from home to join not the circus but the hippies, touring the length and breadth of the land with Here And Now in a series of free gigs and festivals. This formative experience led them to up-sticks permanently and move to London whereupon they had become firmly ensconced in the sprawling squatting community of Hackney.

Prior to their Crass label release, The Mob had already put out two singles on their own All The Madmen Records. The first, Crying Again, served as a neat vinyl introduction to the band but the second, entitled Witch Hunt, was something altogether very different.

Presented to a much wider audience via airplay on the John Peel show, Witch Hunt was an extremely curious and breathtakingly powerful composition evoking images and feelings long buried in the depths of the English psyche. To a bass-driven groove awash with rudimentary, chopping electric guitar and whispering voices, vocalist Mark Mob was touching upon an unstated awareness of purity and freedom that through a very real perception of surrounding and encroaching fear and danger was lent a value and fragility beyond words.

"Stubbing out progress where seeds are sown, killing off anything that's not quite known, sitting around in a nice safe home - Waiting for the witch hunt. Idle plans for the idle rich, knitting the economy not dropping a stitch, destroying anything that doesn't quite fit - Waiting for the witch hunt. Changing your course for another way, you better stop that or be willing to pay, never mind son you'll come around some day - Under pressure from the witch hunt. Still living with the English fear - Waiting for the witch hunt. Always living with the English fear - Waiting for the witch hunt..."

The Mob were a very special band and Witch Hunt was a very, very special record indeed that called out to like-minded souls in a way that few records do. The Mob were possessed of a strange spirit - the holders of a flame - and them forging a link with Crass could almost have been preordained; the resulting record - No Doves Fly Here - being for many people (Penny Rimbaud included) one of the best things to ever be released on the Crass label.

Essentially, No Doves Fly Here was a description of a war-ravaged world with Mark Mob gazing upon the destruction and horror in sadness, anger and disbelief:

"The sky is empty and it's turning different shades of colour, it never did before and we never asked for war. My mind is empty and my body different shapes of torture, it never was before and we never asked for war. The buildings are empty and the countryside is wasteland, it never was before and we never asked for war. The playgrounds are empty and the children limbless corpses, they never were before and they never asked for war. No-one is moving and no doves fly here. No-one is thinking and no doves fly here. No-one remembers beyond all this fear - and no doves fly here."

What elevates the rather simple anti-war lyrics to a superior level is the tone and the tremble in the vocal delivery but what elevates the whole song to an utterly superior level is the production work of Penny Rimbaud.

Mixing in synthesiser noises, crashing cymbals, apocalyptic trumpets, echoes of children playing and heavenly choirs, the song is given an epic, cinematic feel that coming from the unlikely source of a group of Anarcho Punk squatters is really very impressive. From sheer despair at the horror of war, The Mob (along with Penny Rimbaud) had crafted a thing of beauty and grace that would forever stand as one of the greatest though widely unacknowledged anti-war anthems ever.

Though very much a timeless record, No Doves Fly Here could only have been composed during that specific early 1980s period when the fear of nuclear war was widespread, deeply held and very real. This genuine anxiety regarding the threat of nuclear war was so embedded, it would seem, that any lesser war was almost palatable.

Which might go some little way in explaining the Falklands war, if not the support for it then the relative lack of protest against it...