Conflict - The Serenade Is Dead

CONFLICT - THE SERENADE IS DEAD

Having already released the Icons Of Filth demo tape on their Mortarhate label, Conflict's first venture into releasing vinyl was a 7” record from themselves entitled The Serenade Is Dead. Conflict had always been viewed as a good band and were always a ferocious proposition when playing live but nobody could have foreseen the sheer power of their début record on their own label.

Combining the best of The Clash, Stiff Little Fingers, Crass and themselves, The Serenade Is Dead was like a flower in full bloom. Underpinned by a rumbling bass line, its level of production gave it a thickness and weight that had often been missing from other Anarcho Punk releases, raising what was already a fully realised combination of the personal and the political into a freeform Punk ballad of epic proportions.

To the pounding of drums and a storm of guitars, Colin Jerwood went from describing love forlorn to contemplating god, the system, the threat of war, regret, and the need for unity; arriving at a summary of the state of the Anarcho Punk movement: “The system still stands strong as our movement starts to crumble, the pressure we once held has just turned to a rumble. They've got us where they want us and we all accept that, well don't you think it's time we started to HIT BACK? They ARE the enemy, they want a rope around your neck and if they will go that far then what the fuck is next?”

There are occasions in time when it is the perfectly right conditions and the perfectly right moment to take an action, ask a question or to make a statement; occasions when any of these things will have the most impact. For Conflict, such an occasion was at the start of 1984 when George Orwell's prophetic new year lay ahead and all the very real political problems and objectives of the day were clearly in view.

The forces of the conservative Right were on the march and it was they who were calling the shots. It was they who were on the attack and it was they who were out to quash all their ideological enemies. Something needed to be done to halt the drift towards their world view being fully realised and it was plain to see at that point that peaceful protest was insufficient.

For Conflict – one of the most prominent of Anarcho Punk bands – to ask whether it was “time we started to hit back” was exactly the right thing to do and the fact that their question was being delivered over one of the most powerful and accessible Anarcho Punk Rock compositions to date made it all the more effective and all the more potent.

The Serenade Is Dead was the signal that Anarcho Punk was about to turn more militant. Pacifism had been tried and tested but was now no longer going to be used as a convenient excuse for not moving things forward. From peaceful protest there would now be a lot more active resistance and Conflict would be the prime cheerleaders for it.

'Together we can turn the impossible dream into reality' they declared, and like Crass they sounded mightily convincing. Conflict were proletarian exponents of that impossible dream. Proletarian exponents of an alternative culture that up against the cruel hardness of Thatcherism and the predicted gloom of 1984 were offering much needed energy, enthusiasm, positivity – and hope.

1984

Welcome to 1984

George Orwell was 46 years old when he wrote 1984 and passed away six months after its publication so never witnessed the cultural impact the book would have. His vision of the future as depicted in his novel was both logical and plausible, and if nothing else served as a warning of what could so easily be in regard to the dangers of totalitarianism, surveillance and the distortion of language.

'If you want a vision of the future,' Orwell wrote 'then imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.'

But oh, to be content with that vision! Particularly if the boot was a soft, velvety one rather than steel toe-capped. If only everyone could be content in being ruled by an iron fist, watched over by CCTV and fed a constant diet of bullshit? To be content with eating at McDonalds, watching mindless television game shows and reading The Sun? What a wonderful world it might be?

Gladly, however, there were still some people who wanted more than “the shit they get, the shit they get, the shit they get.” Gladly, there were still some people who wanted something other that they could call their own which wasn't “a Ford Cortina or a mortgage on a home.”

In California Uber Alles, Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra had welcomed his listeners to 1984 by asking them if they were ready for the Third World War? In 1977 on the B-side of White Riot by The Clash, Joe Strummer had counted down the years and on reaching 1984 had let out a loud gasp. Crass, on the other hand, had counted down to it by cataloguing each release on their label with numbers indicating how many years it was before 1984.

Orwell had created a sense of foreboding around his chosen year that had entered all aspects of culture, Punk being no exception. Many of his terms and slogans from the book had also entered into common language whilst his principle predictions remained standing as warning signs of unparalleled bleakness, forever struggling with the power of Newspeak whereby coercion into that bleakness was presented as free choice and that bleakness even presented as sunshine.

'If there is hope, it lies in the proles,' Orwell had wrote and indeed this had always been the case and would forever remain so but might hope also lay somewhere else too? In the creation of alternative cultures, perhaps? Freethinking, anarchist-based cultures where the participation and input of proletariats was a prerequisite?

Punk had offered hope but its initial vanguard had quickly been bought out and the creativity and destruction it had engendered had been recuperated. From out of the wreckage Crass had emerged, offering fresh hope to a jilted generation and spawning additional hope in the form of Anarcho Punk but now it was 1984 was this still the case? Did Anarcho Punk still have anything to offer apart from Punk Rock? If Stop The City was anything to go by then the answer was a most definite 'Yes' but was Anarcho Punk enough? Could the momentum of the Anarcho Punk movement be maintained? Could it be advanced?

Crass may have started to have their doubts but if Conflict had anything to do with it then the answer again was a most definite 'Yes'...

MDC - Multi-Death Corporations

MDC – MULTI-DEATH CORPORATIONS

Just in time to finish off 1983 with a glimmer of light at the end of an ever-darkening tunnel, one last great record was released on the Crass label. Multi-Death Corporations by MDC was a 4-track EP that had originally been released in America on the band's own R Radical label.

Based in San Francisco, MDC were leading members of the burgeoning American Hardcore Punk scene who had already produced a classic 7” single (under their original name of the Stains) called John Wayne Was A Nazi, released a seminal début album entitled Millions Of Dead Cops, toured the length and breadth of America, and played support to the Dead Kennedys on their first tour of Europe.

Taking it easy they were not.

The Multi-Death Corporations EP came wrapped in a typical Crass-style, black and white, fold out sleeve; the difference between this one and all the others, however, being in how graphic the writing was, particularly in the descriptions of the torture and atrocities committed in El Salvador by US-sponsored and trained government troops. And rather than any Gee Vaucher-style photomontage art on the poster side of the sleeve there was instead a large, graphic and repulsive photograph of two dead victims of those same troops, their faces hideously burnt away by acid.

Ronald Reagan had a lot to answer for.

Musically, MDC were an uncompromising aural assault upon the listener, sounding like a large box of metal objects and broken glass being shaken furiously by an angry person that even to ears accustomed to Disorder took some getting used to.

Lyrically, vocalist Dave Dictor shouted out words at a relentless pace, raining criticism down on multinational corporations, selfish shits, the profit motive, and the rich. In amongst his torrent of words one particular line stood out: “Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of you”.

This particular phrase had originally been used by Martin Luther King Jr in the late Sixties to describe how the rich were being protected by government policies and economic subsidies whilst the poor were basically being left to fend for themselves in an increasingly dog-eat-dog world.

By raising this same idea, Dave Dictor was hitting the nail on the head in regards to Reagonomics in America and Thatcherism in the UK. It was there for all to see, not even bothering to hide in plain sight. Tax cuts for the rich and for big business, for example, were immediately and so blatantly for their benefit alone though presented as if they would also be of benefit to the poor. Anti-union legislation as another example was clearly for the benefit of the bosses with nothing to be gained from it by the actual workers, though again it was presented as if it was for the benefit of the country.

On both sides of the Atlantic, governments were telling their respective populations that black is white and white is black. That censorship is national security, armies are peace-keeping forces, and civilian deaths are collateral damage. That war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. Examples, of course, of Newspeak, the language used in George Orwell's novel 1984 by a future totalitarian State to limit free thought.

The future, however, had arrived.

The future was now.

The year 1984 was here...