FLUX
OF PINK INDIANS -
STRIVE TO SURVIVE CAUSING LEAST SUFFERING POSSIBLE
The
start of 1983 saw a flurry of album releases from some of the most
relevant bands in the UK at that time, one of the most eagerly
awaited being the début album from Flux Of Pink Indians. Though
having gigged extensively and having set up their own record label,
nothing new had been released by Flux (as they would often be called)
themselves since their Neu Smell EP in 1981. Between then and now,
however, they had taken up the mantle of being 'second in command'
within the Anarcho Punk ranks; the lieutenant to Crass' general.
Strive
To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible, the rather
well-named title of Flux's début album looked, felt and sounded as
though a lot of time and thought had been put into its making. From
the gate-fold sleeve featuring a black-and-white photo of their
banners seen usually adorning the stage when playing live but now
strung up in a wood against a background of fallen winter leaves, to
the enclosed map of Great Britain showing the many government
bolt-holes and nuclear fallout shelters dotted around the country. To
the production of the songs themselves (by Penny Rimbaud, of course)
that like Neu Smell before, could only be described as 'masterly'.
The
record begins with a poem concerning the subject of starvation in the
modern world, the words spoken softly over the sound of an argument
that could well have been between a Crass fan and a Special Duties
fan. This is but the very short calm before the storm, however, as
the first real track entitled Charity Hilarity bounds jauntily up,
smacking the listener in the face before grabbing and pinning them
against a wall. Held fast and unable to move, the listener is
confronted by lead vocalist Colin Latter (or Hugh Man Bean, as he's
taken to calling himself on the record's sleeve) shouting squarely
into their face: "The Oxfam ad makes you feel bad, you push a
few coppers into the slot, pretending that it's all you've got. The
money we donate to charity is too small to be of real consequence but
large enough to ease our conscience. Disease, poverty and famine need
not exist but because we let them they continue to persist. There's
enough for all of our need - but not for all of our greed!"
From
the shambling, jumble-sale Punk of their first incarnation as The
Epileptics, Flux Of Pink Indians had now grown into a tight,
well-oiled Punk machine with a totally individual sound. Along the
way, not only had they learnt to play their instruments but they had
learnt also to harness and focus power and passion to create great
streamlined juggernauts of pounding belligerence.
Flux
Of Pink Indians had come of age.
One
poem and one song in and suddenly the most unexpected thing occurs:
Two of the greatest songs of that whole Punk era appear one after the
other, introduced, sewn together by and departing on ear-piercing
howls of screeching feedback. Containing the greatest bass lines, the
greatest drumming and the greatest guitar playing; the two songs
propel the whole album to a previously untouched level of brilliance
from where it then refuses to budge.
The
first song, entitled Some Of Us Scream Some Of Us Shout, posits a
very simple but irrefutable notion: "Feed starving people -
fuck your bombs." Rather than going for easy sloganeering,
Flux contemplate why "We're all conditioned to think ten
tellies are better than one and to blow this world up ten times is
better than to blow it up once," and why there are "Billions
spent on destroying the world while millions starve in the Third
World," raising as many questions as they do possible
explanations.
"Where
did we go wrong?" they ask before conceding "Maybe
you don't think this is wrong?" In the end, however, they
make it clear exactly where they themselves stand and that's nowhere
on the right side of supposed 'normality': "They make out
that it's normal for people to fight and hate. They shove toy guns on
impressionable children, their future soldiers of war. Is it too late
for us all to change? Have we gone too far? ...We don't want their
life no more. Fuck off."
The
second song, entitled Take Heed, is essentially a commentary on the
Punk movement at that time, a subject that in one way or another Flux
and their audience were all engaged with. Driven by a hard, fast and
quite sublime bass riff, it takes to task all the so-called "puppet
Punks" who by allowing themselves to be influenced by the
mores of the music business were denigrating the whole Punk movement:
"Promoters wanted to put a stop to the cheap gigs bands
arranged on their own, so they introduced more lies and once the
seeds were sown the puppet Punks began to smash up halls, believing
they were having a real ball. But the destruction meant nothing at
all, they were just dancing to the tune the big businessmen called.
Very soon bands couldn't afford to do their own gigs and the
promoters had won, they got their own way. Protecting their halls
with bouncers, they decided which bands could play. And best of all,
they controlled the price that we all have to pay."
In
response, Flux shout out one of their most memorable lines: "Punk
belongs to the Punks not the businessmen. They need us, we don't need
them. Punk will never be dead - as long as some of us refuse to be
led."
The
song ends with a single word chorus of "Trash!",
referring to the rubbish sold by businesses in the guise of
'essential' Punk ephemera, though serving also as a nod to the
classic song of the same name by grandfathers of Punk, the New York
Dolls.
Just
over a year earlier in a review of a Flux Of Pink Indians gig as
published in the NME, journalist Barney Hoskyns had written that in
Colin Latter 'Punk had found its true son and heir - he that shall
pull the sword from the stone'. In just two songs alone - Some Of
Us Scream and Take Heed - these words were being validated and
Hoskyns' prophecy vindicated.
For
the rest of the album, the songs veer between fully-realised rushes
of raucous energy to slower caustic soundscapes, lyrically focussing
primarily on the subjects of violence, war, peace and animal abuse.
Linked together by howling, ringing feedback, each song flowing into
the next, creating a cacophonous whole. At its heart: a profound
anxiety.
"Is
there anybody there?" cries Colin in the song of the same
name but rather than being all-seeing, all-hearing and all-knowing,
the God he calls out to is deaf and dumb and blind. And probably even
dead. "Jesus Christ / God - if You really exist why do You
let the suffering persist?" he continues to cry.
Deserving
an answer but receiving none it makes perfect sense to presume that
religion might well be "just another tool used to control and
manipulate the things we do." Though this does nothing to
allay the existential uncertainty that permeates everything. So
powerful are the forces of social control - religion being just one
of them - that to even question anything raises all kinds of
self-doubt. As though to question was the cause of problems and
simple acceptance and acquiescence were the keys to a peaceful life.
"Tell
me, tell me!" Colin rages "Christ, what's wrong with
me?" But again there is only deafening silence whilst the
music crashes down around him like waves of smashing glass and
cascading debris.
In
Flux Of Pink Indians' world, the only absolute truths were being
derived from understanding that authoritarian power is totalitarian
by nature, the differences being measured in shades and degrees only.
Starting from the premise that "They lie - we die,"
other certainties duly unfold: "Atomic electricity is
just a filthy mess and waste, it makes you wonder why they bother
with such risks involved. Is it just a coincidence this atomic power
makes an only source of uranium from which atom bombs are being
made?"
According to Flux, like
the concept of God, nuclear weapons are "more tools for
further oppression," whilst war is "government's
arguments they have failed to control." The main challenge
being put forward throughout the whole album, however, is against
political and cultural hegemony, particularly regarding the question
of violence.
As embodied in the
acceptance of the possibility of nuclear war, violence - be it actual
or the threat of - is promoted by government and media as a
'necessary evil' before transmuting into a 'common sense' belief held
by all. Consequently, the world teetering on the edge of nuclear
destruction is seen as 'the norm', as is Third World hunger.
Experiments upon animals are seen as 'acceptable', as is the mass
murder of Argentinian conscripted soldiers.
The task that Flux were
setting themselves was commendable but not a particularly easy one:
"The time has come to stop sitting back, to say 'No, we've
taken enough of this crap'. Violence isn't acceptable in any form, so
let's work together to make peace the norm."
In a similar fashion to
how the individual songs on the album were being welded together by
feedback to form a whole, Flux were also trying to weld together the
individual issues they were dealing with into a tangible crisis:
"Myxomatosis / vivisection / experimentation / starvation /
torture / war / all mindless slaughter - are all basically the same.
Man-made oppression / man-made pain." At the same time, they
were also attempting to form an equally cohesive solution to the
problems of the world: "To live in peace we must reject all
oppression on all levels. There can be no compromise. One man's
justice is another man's crime - who has the right to decide where to
draw the line?"
For all this, even though
Flux Of Pink Indians were one of the most prominent of Anarcho Punk
bands and had produced a fully realised, near perfect album, it was
apparent they were still on a learning curve. The kind of questions
they were asking and the ideas they were raising were leading to a
philosophy of sorts not yet fully developed. Combining this with the
imperative to act politically against war and oppression, they were
on a road to somewhere quite special.
The influence of Crass
upon them was obvious though a significant difference between the two
bands was not in where they were both at but in where they were both
from. Due to their age, experience and espousal of ideas associated
with the Sixties, the accusation of being 'hippies' was always being
levelled at Crass. No such accusation would ever be put to Flux (or
at least, not that often) due in no small part to being fully
grounded in the frontline of 1980s environmental and ideological
struggles but also because of their more younger age compared to some
of the Crass members.
Though both bands were
singing from the same prayer book albeit from different pages, the
more worldly experience of Crass lent them 'elder statesmen' status
whilst Flux's relative inexperience could sometimes lend them an
innocence that was easily shocked. In the production notes on the
inner sleeve of their album, for example, Flux write of how on two
separate occasions whilst attempting to take photos of a sub-regional
nuclear fallout shelter and an animal experimentation laboratory they
were chased away by security guards before being stopped and
questioned by police.
'We couldn't believe
it - we are living in a police state. Step out of line and they'll
get you!' they declared. As if it was the first time they had
ever come face-to-face with something they had before only ever read
about? 'Our mail is now being opened,' they continued 'With
no attempt to conceal the fact.'
Flux Of Pink Indians were
waking up to Thatcher's Britain. As was everyone.
