Alternative - In Nomine Patri

ALTERNATIVE - IN NOMINE PATRI

In Scotland, there was another band who were showing they had mighty good taste by dressing all in black, sporting Kamikazi bandannas, and playing live beneath huge stage backdrops and banners depicting anarchist slogans. Consisting of six members including dual vocalists, they were espousing ideas of autonomy and peace through the mediums of fanzines, leaflets, and a sublime form of Punk Rock. The band was called Alternative, their main influence, of course, being Crass.

Brought to the attention of a national audience by the inclusion of a song by them on the first Bullshit Detector LP, Alternative had grown to be a force to be reckoned with and an important Scottish connection for like-minded bands wishing to play gigs in Scotland. It wasn't too long before Alternative were sharing stages with all the leading Anarcho Punk lights, leading to a record by them being released on the Crass label.

In Nomine Patri was the title of the 4-track EP and was nothing short of a high-octane blend of UK Subs and early live Clash rinsed thoroughly through with a healthy dose of Crass. The centre-piece song on the EP was a track called Anti-Christ, being essentially a dramatic and powerful venture into Crass's Reality Asylum territory. With a near-epic, fanfare introduction featuring church organ, the Lord's Prayer, pounding drums, and crashing guitars, it effectively and immediately established Alternative as being just as able if not not even better than any English band at denouncing religion: "I will not cry or reach out for Christ's hand. He carries my guilt and my sin which was never there. I reject this Christ, I reject the myth that holds us. Where is this Heaven You speak of? Where is this love You offer? Have I no self-control over my thoughts? Whether I like it or not? Is my fate sealed to an endless existence binded in guilt and sin? Your cross has been worn as a symbol of guilt for too long."

Was it Patti Smith who first unwittingly gave the green light for blasphemy in Punk when she declared on her Horses début album "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine"? Or was it Johnny Rotten when proclaiming himself an 'Anti-Christ'? Or was it Crass who well and truly flung open the door with Feeding Of The 5,000? Whoever it was, it was clear that a rich seam had been opened up within the Punk realm that was being mined for all it's worth: "I seek no Christ as my saviour, I must find control myself. I seek no god, no painted idol. I'm the only one who answers for me. I ask for nothing. I owe Him nothing."

In a secular age, religion and in particular Christianity had become a sitting duck for criticism if not outright abuse, particularly over the way those with their finger on the nuclear button would use it as the backbone of their morality. At the same time, however, there were also a number of quite radical free-thinkers within the Peace Movement who would cite Christianity as the backbone of their own morality as well. So it went both ways.

Increasingly, then, being blasphemous for blasphemy's sake was becoming a rather pointless exercise unless good reason for it was given. To their credit, this is what Alternative were doing: "His conditions, His ten commandments, slip the noose around our necks... What right has He to share His pain? What right has He to crucify us?... Religious rantings support this system, we're caught like flies in a spider's web."

Like all good anarchists, Alternative saw religion as just another tenet of the system, another pillar of the State, and another form of repression. Their advice being that as well as rejecting organised religion, that people also: "Reject this system. Sow the seeds of peace. Don't recognise the rules of the power-monger, for his hand shall not touch upon our peace. Let no politician make your decisions, for the only government is your self. Reject and pacify."

Anti-Christ was a magnificent achievement both sonically and polemically. The problem Alternative were now going to face, however, was that by setting such a high standard with this particular song, they were going to be hard-pressed to follow it. Not that they weren't going to give it a good try if the other three tracks on the EP were anything to by, all being super-charged Anarcho Punk work-outs operating on a scorched earth policy. 

Or even going by the self-belief as conveyed on the record's inner sleeve: 'We are not alone. Our voices will not fade. We will confront and question. Our vision is absolute.'

Amebix - Winter

AMEBIX - WINTER

What constitutes a classic band is far easier to define than what actually constitutes a classic record. A band either have 'it' or they don't. 'It' having little to do with the music being played but more to do with possessing an edge and a relevancy if only for a brief moment in time, no matter if that moment comes and goes in a blink of an eye to be followed by a subsequent career of mediocrity. Having touched greatness a band can always hold on to that accolade forever more - or the memory of it, at least. From being 'classic' it is then but a short step to becoming 'legendary'.

Dirt had initially proven themselves to be a classic act when first playing live and had then gone on to produce a classic début single in the form of Object, Refuse, Reject, Abuse. Although their début LP had failed to impress and in the interim they had split up, it was of no real matter because they had by then already attained legendary status.

Another contender for that same title was Amebix whose second single, entitled Winter, was released the following month, again on the Spiderleg label. This time round the Killing Joke influence was even more pronounced than on their début single; with tribal drums, rumbling bass and jagged razor-blade guitar creating a backdrop for the hoarse vocals. Once again, however, it seemed that this latest single was another stab at trying to create something unique of their own but not quite getting there.

Winter was a good mood piece to blast over the heads of the huddled Punk masses but there was no denying that Killing Joke had done it so much better and with so much more power. Not that there was anything wrong in wearing your influences on your sleeve, particularly if they were worn with pride and if they were of such high calibre as Killing Joke. And if nothing else, it also showed what good (or bad) taste you had...

Dirt - Never Mind Dirt Here's The Bollocks

DIRT -

NEVER MIND DIRT -

HERE'S THE BOLLOCKS

January 1983 saw also the release of the début album from Dirt, entitled Never Mind Dirt - Here's The Bollocks. With its nod to the Sex Pistols in the title, Dirt were reaffirming their allegiance to the tattered and torn flag of Punk. Not for them any denial of history or any musical/cultural progress for the sake of it. Punk was a state of mind rather than a form of music, for sure, but that wasn't to deny how utterly brilliant three-chord Punk Rock rammalama could be. Dirt being fine exponents of the art.

After numerous interviews with various fanzines a bit more was now known about Dirt as in who they were and where they were from. Not surprisingly they were London-based but interestingly two of the members - Fox on drums, Vomit on bass - were brothers and the older, tattooed guy who was always helping with the lighting at their gigs was their father, Leo.

Although Crass fans from days of old, unlike so many other bands who had been sending demo tapes to Crass (for later inclusion on the Bullshit Detector LPs) it was actually Crass who had approached Dirt rather than the other way round, offering them a support slot on an upcoming tour in place of Poison Girls.

Why Crass had chosen Dirt over so many others seemed to be down entirely to just liking them as people, so much so that they were one of the very few bands that Crass broke their label policy of only releasing one record by any one band. Thus, Dirt's début album appeared on Crass Records.

Their début single, the Object, Refuse, Reject, Abuse EP would forever be a superb slab of Anarcho Punk beauty but it was playing live where they had first impacted and it was live where they would always be at their strongest. It made sense then that Dirt might release a live album but to do so as their début just smacked of compromise. Recorded at The New Half Moon in Stepney, London, almost a year earlier, Never Mind Dirt disappointed because it wasn't what it could and should have been.

Dirt excelled at playing basic, tuneful Punk Rock shot through with a shivering, self-possessed fervour. In the studio with Penny Rimbaud their songs had been turned into finely-chisled Punk jewels; suggesting that a whole album crafted in a similar fashion would be sublime. What was actually delivered - though a bargain at 'Pay no more than' £2.00 - was instead a curiously flat affair that failed to do justice to what Dirt were capable of.

With uninteresting samples of inter-group dialogue replacing any audience applause or any acknowledgement of an audience at all, along with studio-recorded overdubs it wasn't really a 'live' recording of a gig at all. At the same time, it wasn't a full studio recording either. It was neither one or the other. It was a compromise.

Even the cover seemed to convey a mixed message with wording around the outside edge stating 'Anarchy as enacted and as demonstrated by Dirt' but the main picture design being of The New Half Moon venue beneath a looming depiction of the Grim Reaper wielding a scythe. On the back of the cover additional wording around the outside edge simply said 'The end. Or is it the beginning?'

So what did it all mean? And why were the titles of the tracks not listed anywhere on the record? And why even the extreme change of name of their drummer from 'Fox' to 'Shit'? It all made a lot more sense when it became known that just prior to the release of the album, Dirt had actually split up, instigated by the departure of drummer Fox under less than happy circumstances at the Zig Zag squat gig. This would also explain the finality of such statements on the cover as 'Thanks to all who shared the experience', implying not just the experience of the gig at The New Half Moon but the experience of the entire 'career' of Dirt.

Apart from this, the maddening thing about Never Mind Dirt was the fact that all the songs on it were really very good. Hi-jacking the John Lennon line "All we're saying is 'Give peace a chance'" and shouting it out Dirt style shouldn't have worked - but it did. So too playing The Animals' House Of The Rising Sun in their own specific manner and changing the words so that it became an anti-war song. It should have been rubbish - but it wasn't. Instead, it was a sing-along though not quite a family one: "Corpses lay scattered like flowers in a field, in the town of Nagasaki. Animals and land destroyed beyond belief, in the town of Nagasaki..."

Dirt were brilliant but it was just a shame the same couldn't be said of their début album...

Subhumans - The Day The Country Died

SUBHUMANS -

THE DAY THE COUNTRY DIED

For the Subhumans, an important signifier as to where England was at was the inner city riots of 1981, the subject of which they chose to name their début LP after. Released on the Spiderleg Records label, The Day The Country Died was a welcome return to former glory, picking up from the point at which they had first exploded into existence with their Demolition War EP.

Delivering sixteen songs of churning, spinning, speeding Punk urgency, from beginning to end the album simply bounced with excitement. The album's title came from the song Black And White and though not explicitly mentioning the riots of '81 by name, it was clear what it was that was being referred to: "Enquiries - but no solutions, faceless - empty illusions. Reasons - are always pushed aside, remember - the day the country died."

On the album's cover, a cartoon image of a spiky-haired Punk Rocker being shot through the head - molotov cocktail in hand - is superimposed over images of police, war, mobs, missiles and newspaper front pages boasting riot news headlines. Without overstating it, the summer of '81 was obviously of meaning to the Subhumans.

When listened to over the length of a whole album it was apparent that the Subhumans were continuing to perform the neat trick of avoiding being pinned down and categorised, and it seemed to be all down to Dick Lucas's lyrics. Whilst the music was a turbo-charged flurry of rushing, thrashing guitar, bouncing bass and snapping drums; in amongst the words were politics, wry observation, social comment, humour, and even poetry: "There's a hole in the bottom of the world where the blood pours out at the end of the day. When the usual amount of people have died, sit back and watch the death and decay - it's a dying world."

Whilst being fully immersed in the by now recognisable mores, activities and practises of the Anarcho Punk scene and whilst being quite capable of seriousness when it came to serious subjects, what differentiated the Subhumans from the rest of the Anarcho Punk pack was Dick Lucas's almost cartoon-like sense of humour. Liberally lacing his songs with comic asides and noises, he could also pen whole songs that read like madcap comedies: "Oh what a great experience my house is full of deviants, my Dad is going mad downstairs, my brother has just dyed his hair. We got Punks and drunks and thrills and pills and lots of things to make your head go round. It's fun fun fun fun fun til the pigs come round."

In one of the longest songs on the album, entitled Mickey Mouse Is Dead, the irreverence in his lyrics is highlighted when he turns the Crass peace chant of '1, 2, 3, 4 - we don't want your fucking war' into a more comically stupid chant of "1, 2, 3, 4 - look what you done to Mickey Mouse."

Though the subject matter of many of the songs was quite morose, the saving grace was in the way that Dick sounded as if he was thoroughly enjoying himself. In the face of doom and gloom the Subhumans were having fun, no better conveyed than in the track No More Gigs, in which Dick depicts a depressing scenario for his band: "In a smoke-filled room, 'How's it going then?'. 'It's not going at all, we got no more gigs'." But even here Dick turns depression on its head and makes a celebration of it: "A bottle of gin, a packet of cigs. Sing, brother, sing - we got no more gigs."

Despite being undeniably supportive of Anarcho Punk ideas, right down to having the 'pay no more' demand on their record sleeves, the Subhumans were far less intense about it than most of their Punk peer group. And unlike most of the other bands of the Anarcho persuasion, they only had one real message to impart and a very simple one at that. A single word message as written all over the inner sleeve of their album: 'Think.'

Steven Waldorf

STEVEN WALDORF

As unacceptable as it was to be stopped and questioned by the police for simply attempting to take some photographs, it could be argued that Flux Of Pink Indians actually got off lightly, particularly when compared to the experience that befell film editor Steven Waldorf after being spotted by the police in January 1983.

When a car that Waldorf was travelling in as a passenger stopped at some traffic lights, from out of nowhere a police officer suddenly appeared alongside the passenger window and started firing a gun into the car at point blank range. Waldorf was shot five times before the police officer pulled open the car door and pointed the gun between Waldorf's eyes, introducing himself in a Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry-like manner with the words: "Okay, cocksucker." The officer then punched and pistol-whipped Waldorf before dragging him out of the car and onto the pavement.

Bleeding profusely from his wounds but miraculously still alive, Waldorf was arrested then taken to hospital where he was immediately put into intensive care. Days later, the police issued an apology, saying it had all been a case of mistaken identity and having established that Waldorf was an entirely innocent man he was now free to go.

Waldorf understandably sued the police and was awarded £150,000 in compensation, whilst two of the arresting officers were charged with attempted murder. Months later, the officers were found not guilty but by way of some kind of punishment (and for the greater safety of the general public?) were barred from ever using firearms again. The whole event was not only utterly outrageous but also completely disturbing, underlined by the fact that not only were the officers found not guilty but that they also kept their jobs.

Like the murder of David Moore by the police during the Toxteth riots, this was a watershed moment in the relationship between the police and the wider community. An indication of a rising social tension and of barely suppressed State violence lurking beneath the veneer of law and order.

Something about England died that day. Another Rubicon had been crossed. It was barely believable that something like this could happen to an entirely innocent man in the centre of London although it was yet another signifier of the way the country was going under the Thatcher government.

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.

Greenham Common

GREENHAM COMMON

As the sun rose over the Berkshire countryside on New Years Day 1983, the women peace protesters at Greenham Common were busying themselves opening a door that Her Majesty's government thought had slammed shut on its citizens. A door that the government would have preferred to have remained closed so that the business going on behind it could continue unabated. The protesters, however, had well and truly found a key to unlock it and there was simply no way now of holding them back.

Under cover of darkness and armed with just a ladder and a piece of carpet, 44 women scaled the outer perimeter barbed-wire-topped fence of the missile base and made their way to the partially built missile silos. After clambering up to the top of the 50-feet high silos the women joined hands with each other and in a large circle commenced to sing, skip and dance around. Nothing more, nothing less.

Although the action had been planned and conducted in secrecy so as not to forewarn the base’s security forces, the women were savvy enough to have the whole escapade filmed. The subsequent footage of them happily dancing in a revolving circle on the top of the silo was curiously, beautifully and incredibly powerful. Shrouded in the half-light of dawn and viewed from a distance, the women looked like wood nymphs, prompting vague memories of childhood fairy tales where in dark forests far from the gaze of man, elves and pixies would always celebrate in a similar fashion.

For the women it was indeed a celebration - of themselves, of womankind dancing over what was in effect the stupidity of mankind wrapped up and packaged into the idea of a Cruise missile. As a peaceful protest it once again highlighted what was going on at Greenham and without doubt caused questions to be asked by the government regarding the impact of such actions upon public opinion.

As the police dragged the women one-by-one down from the silo, even though they could be facing jail sentences they could take comfort in the fact that the film footage would soon be beamed across the world and that one photograph in particular of them all dancing on the silo would soon become an iconic image.

Greenham Common was going global.