Flux Of Pink Indians - Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible

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.