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...

Zounds - The Curse of Zounds

ZOUNDS - THE CURSE OF ZOUNDS

It was obvious even by the cover of their Rough Trade label released début album, The Curse Of Zounds - the front depicting firemen aiming their hose at the Houses of Parliament as smoke engulfs Big Ben; to the back revealing their hose is not attached to a fire engine but to a petrol tanker - that there was much more to Zounds than at first met the eye.

Here was a band who were unique in a very subtle and very understated way, their apparent ordinariness masking a radicalism born of a very English imagination. With Crass, they shared a hope and a desire for a better world but whilst the forte of Crass was anger, the forte of Zounds was fear, as the first track on the album - with its cover designed by Clifford Harper (anarchist, illustrator, anarchist illustrator) - depicted perfectly:

"I'm frightened of the humans, I'm frightened of the stares, frightened of the poisons they pump into the air. Frightened of the chemicals they spray upon the land, frightened of the power they hold within their hands. I'm frightened of bureaucracy, I'm frightened of the law, frightened of the government and who it's working for. Frightened of the children who won't know how to cope with a world in rack and ruin from their technocratic dope."

Given the state of the nation and the political climate at the time, it was perfectly reasonable to be afraid. Very afraid. Who in their right mind wasn't frightened of nuclear war and scared of what politicians might be capable of? The Home Office on behalf of the government were, after all, responsible for the most bizarre public information pamphlets offering advice on how to survive a nuclear attack. Their instructions being to stockpile a bit of food, water and some warm clothing, then to build a makeshift shelter in the cupboard under the stairs. Just stay there for two weeks until the all-clear is given by the local council and then presumably emerge and be greeted with a cup of tea and a biscuit at the local community hall or other such building to be used as a gathering point. Services such as buses and trains may be disrupted.

Fright and anger were quite rational responses to this kind of delusory but very dangerous thinking. Anger, as demonstrated by Crass and later to be proclaimed by John Rotten/Lydon was an energy but fear as stated by Zounds was "a bum thing, a silly and a dumb thing. Fear can be the one thing that keeps us all apart."

What they were saying made sense. Fear was a form of social control. A tried and tested method of dividing and ruling a population. Fear of unemployment, of homelessness, hunger, crime, violence, damnation, nuclear Armageddon, etc, etc. Fear of 'the other'. Fear of one and other.

Fear was a weapon used to keep people in line and in place but to simply be aware of this was a step in the right direction toward further awareness and freedom. Highlighting this in a trilogy of songs linked together to form a mini opus, Zounds called out to the world: "The unfree child is full of woe, into the unfree adult he will grow. Have unfree children of his own, on and on and so it goes."

Caught in a perpetual cycle of repression, vocalist Steve Lake understood that his parents were actually his first oppressors but held no malice toward them as he also understood that they too were caught in the same cycle, as explained in the track My Mummy's Gone: "Now that I am older I know that you scarred me but I don't hold it against you though it damaged me sorely. I know that you're a victim just like me, you can feel the pressure just like me."

In the track Did He Jump Or Was He Pushed, a repressed upbringing be it socially or emotionally is taken to a possible logical conclusion where Steve sings: "Who was that on the window ledge? Did he jump or was he pushed? He left a note which no-one read, in desperate hand the note just said: Never turned my back on society, society turned its back on me. Never tried once to drop out, I just couldn't get in from the very start." Then in an echo of the Crass dictum that reality is an asylum, the track ends with the refrain: "All the world cannot be wrong, it must be me - I don't belong."

Could it be that there were more people feeling alienated than might actually care to admit it? Could it be that society was truly atomised, separated by degrees of fear?

According to Thatcher in her analysis of the summer's riots, all sense of community was lost - particularly within the inner cities - due to a culture of welfare arrangements which encouraged dependency and discouraged responsibility. Displaying her prejudices, Thatcher laid the blame firmly and unequivocally upon socialism for the demoralisation of communities by offering dependency instead of independence. The kind of independence promoted by Thatcher, however, simply meant a culture of selfishness and dog eat dog, pandering to some of the worst aspects of human nature.

Profit and profiteering was all. Anything without a monetary value was of no worth and merely surplus to requirement. To the conservative mind, wealth and ownership defined an individual and a society so deserved therefore to be protected by law, insurance, the gun, and ultimately The Bomb.

Those who could not achieve were simply 'the poor' and be they deserving or undeserving, they really had no-one to blame for their position but themselves. It was not the world that was wrong but the individual self.

The world as depicted by Zounds, however, was a world of ambiguity and dissatisfaction. A world where the "rain is flooding, the pavement cracks, headlines screaming 'Pay more tax'." A world where the news is "stranger than fiction," and where "the music is crap, that the radio plays." A world "choking with wires and plugs, strangled with fences and stuck with knives," where "everybody's looking for a little bit more."

This yearning for something other is explored to good effect in the track Dirty Squatters, where Steve Lake sings the song from the viewpoint of someone who has lived in the same street "for nearly fifteen years, lived here with my hopes, lived here with my fears. Paid my taxes, paid my bills, watched my money vanish in the council tills."

One day "some dirty squatters" move into his street "with their non-sexist haircuts, dirty feet. Their dogs, cats, political elite; they may have beds but they don't use sheets. Furnishing their houses from the contents of skips, things that decent people put on rubbish skips." He observes them as looking "quite harmless sitting out in the sun but I wouldn't let my daughter marry one. Oh my god, they're moving in next door! Is it for people like this that Winston won the war?"

Bemoaning his personal situation, he comes to see the squatters as being representative of some kind of an alternative: "Along come these scruffs with their education, their grand ideas and talk of corruption. My rent keeps rising, my job gets boring. If things get worse then I'm gonna have to join them."

The song ends with him doing just that: "Bought myself a lock and late tonight, under the cover of darkness if the moon's not bright. Getting out of here, moving next door, don't think I can take much more. Oh my god, I'm moving in next door!"

An alternative of any kind can very often and very easily be merely a different version of the same old thing with just a new set of different problems - as anyone who has had any experience of squatting, for example, would know. These contradictions are looked at in what is arguably the best song on the album - New Band - in which a yearning for something other is once again expressed:

"Been searching for something but I don't know what, been searching for a long, long time. Someone comes along and says 'this is it' but it will cost you, realise. Pay your money, try your luck, think you'll trust them one more time. But how long does it take to feel you're being ripped off? There's always something new to buy."

According to Zounds, alternatives of any kind within a capitalist system, particularly as promoted by the mainstream media are nothing more than new ways to make you spend. At the end of the day everything is a commodity to be either bought or sold. Be it good, bad, ethical or unethical, everything is a business and as Zounds point out in a more honest way than most, this even applies to music and bands:

"There's a new band every week, new ways to move your feet. New sounds to thrill your ears, same old chords dressed up weird. New attitudes, brand new stance, different steps but the same old dance. New ways but in the end it's just a new way to make you spend."

So did this mean that Zounds too were just another "new band" who in the end were "just a new way to make you spend"? By aligning themselves with Stonehenge and the free festival scene, along with supporting a variety of worthy causes through playing benefit gigs, it was apparent that Zounds weren't exactly going all out to court mainstream commercial success. Just like any other band, however, they were still releasing records that no matter how subversive they might be could still clearly be defined as 'product'.

Be it Abba or Crass, Boney M or Poison Girls, St Winifred Girls School Choir or Zounds, the exchange between producer and consumer remained the same no matter how expensive or how cheap the product might be. This was the bitter truth that Zounds were wrestling with and apart from not making records at all or making them and giving them away for free, there seemed to be no escape from it.

Caught in such a trap, the least any band could do in their songs was to impart something of worth or of value, or something they deemed to be of importance; which is exactly what Zounds do in the track Target: "The Americans are coming, they're bringing us their bombs to aim them at their enemies from our island home. Well, I don't want to die because of some mad President's whim. I don't want to be part of a war no-one can win."

The bombs being referred to, of course, were America's Cruise missiles, still bound for their bases in England and Europe despite an ever-growing opposition to which Zounds were adding their voice: "You're welcome here, Americans. We love you but not your bombs. And not your lies..."

The album ends with a track entitled Mr Disney, which itself ends with the words "radiation green!" being howled out, before the music morphs seamlessly into the guitar riff from the track War, the introductory song on Zounds' début EP Can't Cheat Karma, on Crass Records. The last words from Steve Lake on the album are indeed "War! War! War! War!", again taken directly from their début Can't Cheat Karma record.

The circle was complete.

From a hash-fuelled, post-hippy shambling band before being shaken down and fine-tuned by Crass, before setting off on their own trajectory; Zounds had ended up carving out an irrefutably, absolute classic album that would prove to be a milestone in the history of Anarcho Punk.

With Steve Lake's distinctive vocals backed by chorus-line-type chants, blown along by melodious, booming bass lines scribbled and skated over by electric guitar; all knitted together by the brilliant drumming of one Joseph Porter - The Curse Of Zounds would stand the test of time far, far better than most other albums of that same period.

The decision made by Crass to release on their label only one record by any given band and to then let them go their own way had proved to be a right one. If Zounds had stayed on Crass Records and not moved to Rough Trade then the resulting album would have been produced by Penny Rimbaud and come with a fold-out, black and white sleeve.

The result may well have been extremely interesting but it most certainly would not have been The Curse Of Zounds.

Zounds - Demystification

ZOUNDS - DEMYSTIFICATION

A more conventional yet none the less powerful form of song writing was to be found in the next 7" single release by Zounds, entitled Demystification.

Following the huge success of their Can't Cheat Karma EP on the Crass label, Zounds had moved over to the Rough Trade record label for their second single and with that move came a slight change in the way they were perceived. If Zounds had their way they would probably have happily stayed on Crass Records but by this time Crass had decided on a policy of only releasing one record by any one band before letting them go on their own merry way.

Whether they were aware of it or not, Zounds were a very enigmatic band and in being lumped in with Rough Trade's roster of post-Punk groups such as The Fall, Cabaret Voltaire, the Monochrome Set and Swell Maps simply served to make them even more difficult to pigeon-hole. There was a mystique about Zounds that was actually only added to by them calling for "a demystification about what's going on".

Demystification was like a breath of agitated Pop Punk - drugged to the gills, abandoned in a bus station and told to make its own way home. Sounding as though fueled by equal measures of paranoia and chemically-induced awareness, vocalist Steve Lake sang of dark thoughts: "Now I hear they're counting numbers to store down in Whitehall. So much information what can they do with it all?"

In signing to Rough Trade, Zounds were provided with the medium of the glossy record cover as opposed to the Crass, black and white, fold-out affair; and it's the cover of Demystification that captured the essence of Zounds better than anything else.

Depicting a crowd of commuters emerging from a London underground tube station, all the commuters in the picture are shown to be blind-folded apart from one who is shown lifting the blind-fold he has on from his eyes. The subsequent look in his eyes is a mixture of terror, amazement, determination, paranoia and awe.

This look in his eyes was a near perfect depiction of Zounds.

Zounds - Can't Cheat Karma

ZOUNDS - CAN'T CHEAT KARMA

In as much as the early Punk bands openly derided hippies and all they stood for, an underground subculture of British hippydom had managed to weather the Punk storm and if not exactly flourished had certainly survived, consolidating around such concepts as peace, freedom and independence - and a certain penchant for drugs.

Entertained and at the same time represented by bands such as Inner City Unit, Pink Faries, Here And Now, Planet Gong and the mighty Hawkwind, it was a scene that sat happily outside of the music business and of the realms of fashion. It turned out years later that Johnny Rotten himself was a big Hawkwind fan and had even at one point (according to Nik Turner) roadied for them. Of all the Punk class of '77, however, it was only Mark Perry of Sniffin' Glue fanzine who braved potential mockery by attempting to build a genuine bridge between the Punk and hippy scenes.

Disillusioned by how his Punk peer group were all flocking to be signed to major record labels, Perry set out in the summer of 1978 with his own band Alternative TV to play a free tour of the UK with Here And Now, taking in along the way the Stonehenge Free Festival of that year. This was Perry's way of demonstrating how he thought the spirit of Punk should be: free, experimental, and wild. A spirit perfectly captured by Crass, who Perry would later become a huge admirer of.

The Here And Now/Alternative TV live experience was captured for prosperity on the split album What You See Is What You Are, a shambolic but vital record of what really was a pivotal moment in Punk.

Zounds were a relatively unknown hippy/Punk band who had only ever played at various squat gigs and free festivals alongside the likes of Here And Now, so were very much a part of that same scene. Through their association with Crass, however, and the release of their Can't Cheat Karma EP on the Crass label they were catapulted to the attention of a far bigger audience. By the time of the release of the EP in July of 1980, the Crass label had gained a reputation of importance and integrity, ensuring thousands of copies of any new release would immediately be sold; Can't Cheat Karma being no exception, going straight to the top of the Independent Chart.

Whilst the record's lead track - Can't Cheat Karma, with its opening line of "I've got an ego it won't let me go what am I gonna do?" - was incredibly catchy and the song War name-checked the "violence in Bristol", it's the song Subvert that was the most compelling.

To an engaging, choppy, Pop Punk sound, vocalist Steve Lake advised how "If you got a job, you can be an agent. You can work for revolution in your place of employment. If you work in a factory, throw a spanner in the works. Internal sabotage - hit them where it hurts. Subvert!"

There would never be any way of telling how many people on hearing this song would actually act on the given advice though the potential was enormous.

"If you got a job, you can be an agent. If you work in a kitchen, you can redistribute food. If you are a policeman ordered to arrest me, you don't have to do it - you can refuse. Subvert!"

Subvert was a brilliant piece of polemic matched only - if not surpassed - by the sleeve notes on the cover: 'Anarchy is a state of mind, not a form of government. It seeks, through the liberation of the individual to free society from the restrictive rules and regulations that have been created in a world dominated by fear and controlled by the manipulators of that fear. Fear is one of the first 'facts of life' that we are taught. The smack for the naughty child, the first agent of normality...'

This was an essay that at the time was invaluable, putting into words much of the thought, sentiment and anger behind what was soon to be labelled as 'Anarcho Punk'. Any young person of school-leaving age facing a future of either unemployment or dead end work could not help but to be inspired by the prose, nor as could any person stuck in a rut of any description.

'At work we are treated as idiots incapable of making our own decisions. We work for our mere survival, while the bosses grow richer and richer. When they fuck it up, it is us that have to do without. They dare ask us to make do, but do you think they give up anything? And when the bosses and the politicians find that their world is collapsing around them they create phony campaigns like 'I'm backing Britain', or phony wars like Northern Ireland and expect us to support them. Back Britain? Fuck Britain! Do you really think that they care one bollock about you? As long as you tow their line they'll feed you your monkey nuts, but try and do it your way and see whose life you're living. They don't care a fuck if you can't afford to eat, they don't care a fuck if you're cold and homeless. As long as you clock in on time you're a convenient number in their little book. Do it your way and you'll be a name again, out on the streets.'

Zounds were putting forward anarchism for consideration as a serious, cohesive idea. Festooning the record sleeve with circled 'A' symbols and even quoting seminal French anarchist philosopher Pierre Joseph Proudon: "Whoever puts his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant. I declare him my enemy."

Anarchist ideas that had previously been the domain of students or earnest men in sandals were being given a make-over and presented in a fresh, relevant and exciting way. Revolutionary action suddenly seemed to be reasonable, feasible and under the circumstances of the day, perfectly sensible.

'Don't be fooled by their reasonable smiles. They don't want you, they want a neat number, with no voice, with no mind so that their greed can be fed. Don't be fooled by their polite manner, they'd suck you dry to line their pockets and wouldn't put their hand in it if you were starving. From the very start we are conditioned (conned) to be a part of their machinery. We are conned by our families, schools and places of work into being passive tools. Is that really how you want to live your life? Reject their system of oppression, reject their 'facts of life'. Kick back, question, disobey, make your own rules, live your own life, be responsible. Subvert.'

As a band, Zounds will probably never know or understand just how important their début record actually was. Being one of the first of many releases to come on the Crass label, it not only confirmed the commitment of Crass to their ideas but firmly established the label as being an arbiter of good taste. In addition to this the record also served as a solid foundation stone for a huge number of people to build their personal politics upon, thus helping to pull into shape the budding Anarcho Punk scene.