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.

And The Bands Played On

AND THE BANDS PLAYED ON

In a final farewell to 1982, for the paper's Christmas edition Penny Rimbaud was asked by the NME to write about Punk in a year of revived patriotic fervour and the Falklands war. Under the title 'Over A Thousand Dead And The Bands Played On', Penny went for it:

'The debate continues - is Punk dead? Was it ever alive? Who the fuck cares anyway?

Punk rejected media lifestyles, exposed lies, upset tables in the temple of youth market. Tired of exploitation by cynical elders, Punk discarded the Jagger/Bowie mafiosa and reclaimed rock'n'roll revolution for itself; the godfathers could sod off.

Punk was do it, make it, take it, yourself. It never was a style, three-chord thrash was a media misrepresentation, there was always more to it than that. Punk was an attitude, "this time round we're all Elvis and fuck the King".

Punk was about personal politics. The Right and the Left wings tried to exploit it and failed. The music business tried and succeeded. Cash speaks louder than conviction.

Punk made many promises, few were kept. Critics of stardom became stars, independent became another word for subsidiary, anti-fashion became radical-chic, mohicans bobbed with bouffants on Top Of The Pops. Those who only played at revolution were devoured by the sharks and excreted as commodity. Bought out, cleaned up and wrung dry, Pop Punk became a sideshow in the media pantomime, another social joke. They deserved everything they got... But did we?

1982 was 'Falklands Year', over one thousand dead, but Thatcher was "proud to be British", proud to be a part of that pointless slaughter, proud because pride's a glossy surface that hides the guilt, shame and lies. The media reinforced the lies. The dailies pumped out hysterical, heroical crap. TV toed the party sham. Business was as usual and the bands played on, superficial escapist drivel to cover the pain.

However, beneath the tinsel and stardust Punk lived on. Not Pop Punk - that remained at best silent, at worst supportive of Thatcher’s barbaric little war and was as dead as those who were sacrificed for her mean arrogance. No. Punk lived anywhere that people got together to demand peace and sanity, that's the real gig. Sometimes there was a band, sometimes nothing but people and that's the crux of the matter, people not musical fads or transitory fashion, just people, people who care - and that's something the music business could never buy.

Rather than ignoring the death and mutilation by turning up the stereo, the real Punks were out protesting against Her Majesty's government's murder machine. The music means no more than any other form of protest, it should offer information and inspiration, not escape. The charts are brainwash for the suckers. Punk's protest lives in the hearts and actions of ANYONE with the courage to stand against the authorities who oppress us ALL.

1983 is 'Cruise Missile Year'. Thatcher and Reagan, naively believing that "the threat of war is prevented by the threat of war", plan to make Britain into a giant launch-pad for their nuclear armoury.

The Task Force was Thatcher's international mask, Northern Ireland is the face beneath it. Her national hand-out is three million unemployed, recession and depression; the SPG and SAS are the fists she uses to deliver it. Do you really trust this megalomaniac with your future? Are you prepared to see life destroyed by the insanity of her and her government?

The world is a very precious place, FUCK THE MUZAK, let's get on with the REAL job, there may not be a second chance.

You've got the keys, find your own fucking door.'

The Zig Zag Squat Gig

THE ZIG ZAG SQUAT GIG

The following weekend - after the 'embrace the base' action at Greenham Common - another similarly remarkable event was unfolding but this time in London: Crass were throwing a Christmas party and everyone was invited.

Out of the blue, Crass along with a whole bunch of people experienced in squatting had entered and taken over the deserted and boarded-up Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park with the intention of staging a free concert there. Having locked themselves in, their plans were rudely interrupted by the arrival of security guards and police who promptly evicted them. Not to be thwarted, the equally deserted Zig Zag club in Westbourne Park was chosen instead to play host to the concert and via word of mouth and the use of a telephone hotline the news was spread.

On gaining access to the Zig Zag club, work began in earnest to transform it into a suitable venue for a Crass gig. The electricity was turned on and the building made safe and secure before being decorated with banners, flags and posters. Film projectors were set up along with information stalls and even a soup kitchen to serve vegetable soup and cups of tea to the guests. Down in the cellar, barrels of seemingly abandoned beer were discovered and requisitioned.

And then from miles they came, from all corners of London and other parts of the country. From homes in the outlying suburbs, from bedsits, flats, hostels and squats. Hundreds upon hundreds of Punks, hippies, layabouts, undesirables, outcasts, and ne'er-do-wells. Dropouts, Anarcho rockers, riot rockers and rebels with a cause. Like moths to a flame, drawn to the beacon of Crass. Dressed and stalking elegantly in Doc Martens or baseball boots, black army fatigues, black Punk bondage, black Oxfam chic and black rags. Peroxide Punks, Punks with rainbow hair, spikes and dreadlocks. Street Punks, shabby Punks, hippy Punks, Punk troopers, Punkniks, Punkettes and Punkerellas. Unruly, ungovernable, free, smiling, happy hardcore Crasstafarians and Crassites.

Having extended invitations to come join and perform with Crass at the club, the cream of the Anarcho Punk crop responded and for the first time ever almost all the bands affiliated or supportive of Crass met up under the one same roof and suddenly it was no longer a gig but a festival. A free festival. Suddenly, Crass were re-creating the perfect Stonehenge festival right in the heart of London. The dream and vision of Phil Russell/Wally Hope was being resurrected.

Ever since they had attempted to play at Stonehenge in 1980 and encountered violence from the bikers there, Crass had always shied away from any kind of festival but now, two years later, they and others who had fallen victim to that violence were creating what they had initially hoped to find at Stonehenge: Freedom, autonomy, anarchy and peace.

As explained in a leaflet handed out on the day at the Zig Zag: 'We have to learn to say 'No'. We hope that today we will be able to demonstrate that together we can begin to reclaim that which is ours... Freedom. Free food, free shelter, free information, free music, free ideas. Freedom to do whatever doesn't infringe on the freedom of others'.

The impossible dream was being made real. The last bastion of Punkdom, gathered beneath the flag of the circled 'A'. The Crass empire. The Crass kingdom. A different approach to living, a shared air of understanding. Warm and brilliant. Very drunk but very conscious. Aware.

'Today is a chance to drop old constricting roles and values. A chance to get a taste of music, dancing, love and real anarchy (not the text book type). A chance to tap the reservoir of energy and inspiration that we don't often bother to break through to. A chance to take control of our own lives from the ticket touting music biz; from the money grabbing capitalists, from the multi-national corporations, from the power mad politicians, the democrats, Eurocrats, bureaucrats, from all that crap and prove that we can do it and live it better ourselves'.

Given just 30 minutes each to ply their wares and to say and do what they needed to, the bands and solo performers lined up to take their turn on the stage. Each and every one of them just as good, important and as valid as the next: Faction, D&V, Omega Tribe, Lack Of Knowledge, Sleeping Dogs, T42, Apostles, Amebix, Null And Void, Soldiers Of Fortune, Annie Anxiety, The Mob, Polemic Attack, Poison Girls (re-uniting for the last time with Crass), Youth In Asia, Conflict, Flux Of Pink Indians, Dirt and, of course, Crass.

Enhanced by the celebratory atmosphere and the drunken revelry, outstanding performances were delivered throughout the day, culminating with the entrance of Crass at the end of the night and never before had they looked so mighty and omnipotent yet so as one with the audience. Never before had they looked so fierce, so noble and so proud. The whole event from beginning to end had turned into a complete success, standing as a shining example of what could be achieved through a little bit of trust, a bit of solidarity, and a lot of determination.

'It's only through trying, only by seeing the greyness for the greyness that it is that we can add some colour. We are not advocating instant or violent revolution but neither will we turn the other cheek. We are not game for intimidation, nor will we intimidate. We are not prepared to sit back and watch what is rightfully ours being taken from us. We will defend what we believe is ours, defend what we believe to be our rights. We will try to understand those who seek other visions but we will not let them impose those visions on us.

If you're not looking for the answer you're part of the problem (if you've got the answer please contact Crass as soon as possible...). See you next time... Somewhere over the Rainbow.'

The Zig Zag squat gig as it would forever be known, would pass on into legend and in hindsight be looked upon as one of the best things that Crass were ever involved in. Even the music press came not to bury but to praise it. Not least, it would serve as an example of what was possible and act as a catalyst and an inspiration for other similar events to take place for years to come.

More immediately, it was an absolutely positive way to end a year that had been at times frightening, dangerous and intense though never to be forgotten not only for the historic events but for the historic, classic and utterly brilliant music.

Poison Girls - Where's The Pleasure

POISON GIRLS - WHERE'S THE PLEASURE

It's fair to say that a good number of the women at Greenham Common, if not quite outright fans of Poison Girls would have been aware of them and knew they were on their side. It's fair to say, even, that were it not for Poison Girls some of those women would possibly have never become involved in protesting against Cruise missiles in the first place.

Poison Girls encouraged people - and women in particular - to stand up for what they believed to be right and to voice their objection to what they perceived as being wrong. And if this was in regard to the imposition of nuclear madness then to Greenham Common they could go. They gave courage to both men and women to act on their love, their fears, their feelings, and their compassion. Poison Girls emboldened.

Having announced earlier that year that they would no longer be touring with Crass, Poison Girls were now striking out on their own, free from the shadow of being so closely associated with - for some, at least - such a revered band.

Where's The Pleasure was Poison Girls' first studio album since the 'divorce'. Released on their own XNTrix label and produced by Simean Skolfield and Stuart James (as opposed to Penny Rimbaud), like all their previous releases it found them once again in a strange and unique place. Musically they were being more diverse and adventurous than ever whilst lyrically concentrating more on the personal, though in Poison Girls' world the personal was always going to be political and vice versa.

"Where's the pleasure, where's the fun?" asks Vi Subversa in the title track "It don't take much to work it out. Love is what it's all about." And once again there she was getting to the point immediately. The whole reason for her writing and singing her songs was not for fame or fortune or other such trifling things - but for love. The whole message being imparted was not of anarchy or rebellion or whatever - but love. That wasn't to say, however, that in real life love can't be battered and bruised and be painful; and if anyone sounded as though they'd experienced real life to the max, then it was Vi: "I've done it all before," as she tells us in the song of the same name "Losing my head, sharing my bed. Love in the bath, love on the floor. Done it all before. But this is now love, it's me and you love. Take it easy, let's take it slow. Make it last, don't want to lose it. Love will die, love will go, I know. I've done it all before - but not with you."

If there was no love in a relationship or in what you were doing then should that relationship be brought to a close or the course of your direction changed? This is what Vi (and subsequently Poison Girls as a whole band) was expressing as in the title track again: "The feeling's gone, the story's told. The pleasure's over, now it's cold... People alter, people change. I hardly know you, what's your name?"

And then in the track Lovers Are They Worth It, Vi sings: "Some say I'm silly not to realise how good it was, but things are better now that you don't come around no more... Days, when I knew I had to throw you out. And I'm not sorry, even though I'm all alone."

A personal act leading to personal change could also be a revolutionary act leading to revolutionary change. The personal was political and vice versa. As Vi had sang in Don't Go Home Tonight on the Total Exposure album: "Big changes can come from just little actions. You take a little risk, just a small chance. Take a little risk, like don't go home tonight."

No better is the personal/political relationship exemplified than in the track Soft Touch where Vi tells the story of a boy and a girl going to bed together for the first time: "They were tired, they were drunk and both of them were full of dread. He hoped she would be cute enough to detonate his armaments, but he felt like the government that couldn't get its rockets up."

Rather than going at it like a battle, however, they discover that softness can be ecstasy: "So they realised that sex didn't have to be a fight, time and time again they made energetic peace that night. Both ways up and both ways round, with no attack and no defence, they beat the government with sexual disarmament."

Was there anyone else but Vi Subversa who could connect oral sex with the British government's national defence policy?

And talking of 'defence', how and from who knows where that very issue is addressed in the track Take The Toys in which Poison Girls go acappella, delivering not so much a song but an incantation: "Take the toys from the boys, made a bullet out of rubber. Take their hands off the dials, made a cannon out of water. Get their minds off the money, gotta make a killing. Made a bomb."

At later gigs, rather than singing it live, a recording of this particular track would be played over the p.a. before the band stepped out onto the stage; causing the audience to stop their chattering and creating a sudden change of atmosphere. The effect was spine-tingling.

In an additional track entitled Take The Toys (Reprise), they again go acappella but this time with just two lines being repeated over and over, but those two lines speaking volumes: "Oh no, another bloody bomb song, bomb song. Oh no, another bloody peace march, peace march."

For all this, the most overtly political track on the album is Rio Disco Stink, in which Vi introduces to the agenda the subject of Rio Tinto Zinc, the multi-national mining company responsible for importing uranium to the UK from its mines in South Africa. This being at a time of Apartheid and in contravention of UN resolutions stating that South Africa's natural resources should only be sold with the consent of the UN Council for Namibia - which hadn't been given.

"Do you know what it means when you hear the pain in an ugly woman's song?" asks Vi "I know the truth, I won't hold my tongue about what's going on. I know what it means when you look away when I sing my song. I've got nothing to gain and nothing to lose, and what you do is wrong."

The uranium was being imported under contracts signed in the Sixties by the UK Atomic Energy Authority and RTZ. It just so happened that the British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington (before moving on to become the Secretary General of NATO after resigning from the government over the Falklands crisis) was a director of RTZ (who were investors in British Petroleum, who were interested in the oil around the Falklands) but also that Queen Elizabeth was a major investor in them.

"It's not enough to cry when the miners die at Rio Tinto Zinc, uranium will kill your son whatever you want to think... I know what it means to want to blow up the Queen and Rio Tinto Zinc... The company banks fill up their tanks but you can't lock up the stink.. Are you feeling proud of that hole in the ground at Rio Tinto Zinc?"

The most powerful track on the album, however, is Cry No More which comes across as a genuinely heartfelt confession as Vi confides that she's simply tired of crying: "..For the underprivileged, for the blacks, the women, for even black women. I'm tired of crying for the starving children, for the Irish, for the unemployed, refugees, amputees, for the pain of the Third World, the poor unfortunates of Hiroshima, Bikini, America... I'm tired of crying for America."

The list continues and never was Vi's voice more fitting for a song: "I'm tired of crying for collection boxes, for noble causes, for victims, more victims. Victims of violence and protection, victims of privilege, more violence, more victims. For teachers lies, for poisoned milk, I'm tired of crying - it changes nothing. For the abuse of sex, the endless rape, the decay, the decaying. I'm tired of crying. For the broken hopes, broken hearts and promises, for the broken backs and the broken dreams. I'm tired of crying."

Years later, Mark of The Mob would say that Cry No More was probably the best Anarcho Punk record ever and his claim would be a valid one.

"It's a savage world, a savage world and I'm tired. And I just want to cry - for me."

The album ends with the track Fear Of Freedom, leaving the listener standing on the spot having been accused of something applicable to all: "Why do you think that they are laughing?" Asks Vi before telling us "Because they've got you where they want you. They taught you fear of falling. They taught you fear of feeling. They taught you fear of freedom. Fear of freedom."

Which meant, of course, that only we held the key and that nobody else could provide it for us. Not Crass, not Poison Girls, nor anyone. Only ourselves.

According to music critic Johnny Waller when reviewing the album in Sounds newspaper, Where's The Pleasure was 'the last great Punk record', which was a nice thing to say and a huge compliment to make though not true by a long chalk. In fact, it would actually be the album that would lose Poison Girls a large chunk of their hardcore Punk audience due to the softening and diversifying of their sound. For the Punk hardcore there were other, more harsher sounding bands to attract and hold their attention than Poison Girls with their new, melodious, post-Punk agit folk rhythms. But that was fair enough and no bad reflection on the hardcore Punks at all.

Poison Girls were moving into the future.

Everyone was happy.

Embrace The Base

EMBRACE THE BASE

Born from despair at the descent into nuclear madness were the women of Greenham Common who by example were continuing to inspire both men and women around the world to stand up and let their feelings regarding nuclear weapons be known.

From the germ of an idea for a protest, an amazing illustration of what was possible came to fruition when 30,000 women descended upon the base to take part in an action. Just two months earlier, copies of a handwritten leaflet had been circulated calling upon women everywhere to come to Greenham Common and 'embrace the base'. The plan being for thousands of women to link arms and form a living, human chain around all nine miles of the perimeter fence. At the same time, everyone wishing to attend was urged to bring with them something that symbolised what they loved most so that the whole of the fence could be decorated with these items. The distributed leaflet took the form of a chain letter that asked the reciprocant to make further copies and to send them on to ten friends.

The response was staggering; as on a dreary, wet Sunday in December 30,000 women of all ages and backgrounds joined together in an emotional show of strength and completely surrounded Greenham Common. By the end of the day, the fence was covered in ribbons, photographs of children, baby clothes, bay nappies, and even a wedding dress. As a protest it was a massively symbolic one, succeeding in showing the stark contrast between life and love as represented by the women and death and hate as represented by the military base.

The following day, the Daily Mirror newspaper put the protest onto its front page with the simple headline: 'Peace!'. Greenham Common and the subject of Cruise missiles were now big media issues.

Whether or not any of the women thought their protest would actually close down the base was beside the point. For the women of Greenham it was a major propaganda coup, causing the government and other supporters and advocates of the Cruise missile plan to launch a counter attack in a bid to regain the higher ground. Women Conservative MPs such as Lady Olga Maitland and Anne Widecombe were wheeled out in a bid to show that the peace protesters weren't representative of all womankind, whilst newspaper editors adopted overnight an almost blanket policy of depicting the Greenham women as unwashed, militant lesbians.

The war to end all wars was heating up.