Zounds - Dancing

ZOUNDS - DANCING

For some, Merry Crassmas may well have been a humorous note to end the year on but for far more people seeing Margaret Thatcher in tears was a much more amusing and fulfilling way to start the new year. So resolute was Thatcher in her coldness toward those feeling the brunt of her policies in the negative - from peace campaigners, to the unemployed, to families of H-Block prisoners - that she was fast becoming the most detested Prime Minister of all time.

When her son, Mark, went missing in the Sahara Desert for six days whilst taking part in the Paris-Dakar rally, Thatcher was shown visibly worried and upset but even this could draw no sympathy or compassion toward her from a great swathe of the public. Thatcher was viewed as being heartless and unforgiving, and as for her son: he was just an over-privileged, upper class twit who had somehow managed to get himself lost somewhere in the world.

1982 was to be a year of divisions, extremes and polar opposites where the gulf between mainstream conformity and alternatives to the mainstream would become ever wider. This gulf was illustrated immediately simply by the difference between the two records holding the Number One positions in the National Charts and the Independent Charts at the start of January.

On the one side, European Song Contest winners Bucks Fizz regaled the nation with Land Of Make Believe, an Abba-lite song of harmless pop fluff. On the other side, Punker/biker combo Anti-Nowhere League assaulted listeners with a psyched-up version of the Ralph Mctell classic, Streets Of London.

Years later, the composer of Land Of Make Believe would state that his was a virulent anti-Thatcher song, though no-one would ever have guessed. The Anti-Nowhere League would make no such claims but of the two, it was theirs that was seized by the Obscene Publications Squad due to the colourful language on the record's B-side, in the song So What?

The one thing in common between these songs and the groups behind them was that essentially everything was being done for entertainment purposes only and - it should be said - both succeeding very well in this. Those seeking a more thoughtful kind of entertainment would have to wait for the next 7" single release from Zounds, which hot on the heels of their début album would prove to be the year's first unquestionably classic record.

Built upon a simple organ riff and gliding guitar with dub bass and tambourine brought forward in the mix, Dancing was the sound of Zounds experimenting in the studio with wonderfully successful results. This was a song of deep foreboding, lyrically concerning itself with pre-World War 2 Germany but dealing with an anxiety easily transposed to 1980s Britain.

"It's 1933" and as war looms all that girls and boys are worried about is dancing and making a noise: "Munich, Berlin, Cologne, sweet mother Germany. Come to the cabaret, don't worry about history". Before too long "It's 1938" and "peace seems so far away" and those same boys and girls will never be dancing again.

The song ends with the refrain "Never, never, never again," sung with the dual meaning of never to be dancing again and never (in the same sense that Discharge had screamed it the year previously) for there to be war again.

Zounds would go on to record two more 7" single records before disbanding for reasons that for years would remain unclear but Dancing would forever be the pinnacle of their artistic endeavours and so-called musical career. Very few bands, in fact, ever reach the heights that Zounds did, particularly with the song Dancing and if only for this reason Zounds would pass into legend and be always held in high esteem.

Labelled as a Crass/Punk band by the mainstream music press, this was never really an apt description of Zounds although a large amount of Punk rockers were admittedly attracted to them. Evidence of them sitting uncomfortably with the Punk label was given when they played bottom-of-the-bill support to The Exploited, Anti-Pasti and Vice Squad at a major Punk gig held at the Lyceum, in London. To say that Zounds were the odd ones out at the gig is to put it mildly.

Serving much better the demands of this type of audience were a number of independent record labels such as Rondolet, Clay, and No Future that were dealing specifically in hardcore Punk bands. The leading label of this kind, however, was arguably Riot City, based in Bristol.

Founded initially to launch the Last Rockers EP by Vice Squad, the label had gone on to release a plethora of records upon an unsuspecting public by the like of Chaos UK, Court Martial, Abrasive Wheels, and The Insane. Though jumping ship to EMI after just two releases on Riot City, Vice Squad were the undisputed leading representatives of what a female-fronted street Punk band could be like. Until, that is, the arrival of Dirt...