UK DECAY - Live @ Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage 4/1/81

This is the first in a series of live shows recorded by the legend that is Simon Herd. UK Decay were a favourite of mine in the early 80’s saw them on several occasions, as they were regular visitors to my local venue Bowes Lyon House when I was younger, always a good night out, even if at times the atmosphere was a bit tense. Listening to these tapes and thinking back, the early 80’s were pretty messy times and UK Decay seemed to capture those feelings into sounds. They were dark, intense and errr…. atmospheric, almost claustrophobic and as uplifting as they were gloomy. Swirling guitars pounding bass lines and heavy tribal drums, with vocals more akin to chanting and shouting than singing. Described by in an early review by NME as; the worst punk band ever, and then later as gothic. (possibly the first time the term goth was used in the music press to describe a band.) With song titles like The Black Cat, Necromancer and Rising From The Dead its easy to see why, not that all their politics were of death. For My Country along with The Mob’s No Doves Fly Here remains one of the best ever anti-war songs, another; Dresden was a slab of social commentary about the allied bombings of Dresden during WWII. Wait up, perhaps their songs were all about death . As for Punk, well UK Decay weren’t yer average 3 chord punk trash, I mean their Guitarist only had 5 strings on his guitar. They were beyond punk , I cant recall any other band that appears in both Gothic Rock, Mick Mercer’s account of Goth and Ian Glasper’s book Burning Britain about 80’s Punk. UK Decay were that kind of band, distinctive and different for the times but a product of the times and at times listening to them again now, ahead of the times. See what yer think with this here recording. The first of a few, which will follow over the passing weeks. Enjoy!

WANKWANK!

Tax payers funding Duck houses for MP’s ponds and Government research into whether it really is the weather for ducks!!!! For Fox sake, you couldn’t make this chicken shit up. I was rather hoping that the ‘expenses scandal’ story would start to dry up now they’ve been exposed for the con artists they really are, but no, there’s more. We’ve been paying for their accountants to cook their books. You’ve just got to look at their mileage expenses to see the extent of their thievery from us. The longer the media coverage continues, the more I’m starting to think that it’s all either a) a major distraction from things e.g. the real state of Britain’s economy, or b) that somewhere, someone or some people are trying to bring Britain’s present Liberal Democratic system to its knees and replace it with something less Liberal and Democratic, then again it could be both, or perhaps I'm just quackers!

WASTED YOUTH - Live in 1980 and 1981

Anyone who’s arrived hear looking for some punk rawk from L.A’s Wasted Youth are gonna be disappointed, cos this aint no punk riot. This is more of a psychedelic, post punk, pronto goth, new romantic rock’n’roll trip from London’s East End, courtesy of 5 pale skinned sexy skinny lads called Wasted Youth. A band who’s star shone bright for a few brief years in the early 1980’s; supporting Psychedelic Furs on tour, Peter Perrett from The Only Ones producing their second single and releasing one classic album Wild And Wandering. These original Wasted Youths took their cue from the Adam and The Ants and, Siouxsie and The Banshees school of punk and came on like a cross between The Velvet Underground and The Doors, all dark and brooding. Sadly their original guitarist Mick Atkins died recently (a solo track of his can be heard on the What A Nice Way To Turn Seventeen compilation I posted a while back, and the demos his band The Famous Monsters recorded can be found here) after the band split his replacement Rocco went on to find slightly more fame with Flesh For Lulu and more recently on a Channel 4 series about doing up a property in Spain, as for the rest of the band, who knows? The first of these two recordings comes from The Marquee, London on 22nd Sept 1980, the second is when they rolled down to my local venue Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage in Jan 1981. Of the two The Marquee has the slightly better sound, and a more comprehensive set list, but they’re both worthy of yer attention, as are the Memorialize Singles collection 79-82 and the re-release of Wild and Wandering, with bonus tracks. Both available from Bridge House Records.

Give the dog a bone,

or let him chew the election propaganda that’s dropping through the letter box. Stan's saved me the job of ripping up their bullshit! So anyone gonna vote? Me, I’m gonna deface the ballot paper with a short slogan of some sorts, that’s my protest vote, shame it wont get counted; which is pretty undemocratic if you ask me. Spoilt papers should be counted, just to see how many people are disillusioned by the whole political process, that'd give them something to chew over.

FUCK THE(IR) SYSTEM!

Their economic system is fucked! Their political system is fucked! and they fucked it with their greed and power. We’ve been paying for their shit for far to long , now it’s time they paid; sack ‘em all, remove the greed and power from their system and start again with a new one of our own!

1st RULE OF FIGHT CLUB IS.........

MC5 - Black To Comm

The MC5 gig at The Sturgis Armoury in June 1968 has been released in parts on various bootlegs and anthologies but this 14 track CD is I believe the only one that captures the whole show, which was recorded on a reel to reel tape player through the P.A. The sound quality is rough to say the least, but the passion and power are pure. When it was released by Receiver Records in 1994 it was the first time that the track Black To Comm had been heard on disc. In the words of John Sinclair it was the bands “ultimate expression which combinined the roughest of riffs, the loudest of power chords with the most spontaneous of improvised lyrics and a plethora of barely controlled feedback, an expression of the bands deepest feelings of rage and rebellion and love and regeneration.” Kick Out The Jams Mutha Fuckers (NEW LINK) If you fancy some future/past reading why not take a trip to Dennis'Machine Gun'Thompson's rather excellent blog.

This is artwerk is rubbish....

....it seriously is! Three pages torn from a book and a piece of A4 paper, which I found individualy discarded in the space of a few feet on the path while walking to work this morning. Thrown away by a student perhaps? Who knows. The lessons of history are always ignored!

ALTERNATIVE TV and VICTIMS OF THE PESTILENCE - Live @ Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage 14/6/1981

Mark Perry’s got to be one of my favourite figures from the punk era. From ATV to The Door and Window via The Good Missionaries, you were always guaranteed no guarantees as to what his musical output would be, which to me is the true spirit of punk; pushing the boundaries and breaking down the barriers of convention. Mark reformed ATV in 1981 with original members Alex Fergusson and Dennis Burns and released the album Strange Kicks on IRS records, one of my favourite ATV albums, a dubby, punky, poppy delight. It was this album they were promoting when they visited Stevenage in the summer of 1981. My most vivid memory of the gig was the sight of ATV in bright Hawaiian shirts, possibly a reaction to the black leather and army clobber that seemed to be the choice of fashion for the punks at the time, or just because the weather was nice. The bands set was a colourful one, mainly drawing from the Strange Kicks album, with Love Lies Limp and Action Time and Vision thrown in for good measure. First band on the bill were local heroes Victims of The Pestilence with their pronto lo-fi punk racket. They had some great little tunes that had impressed Gene October from Chelsea so much he personally invited them to play at the gig this recording is from. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get hold of the Chelsea set, so it’s just Alternative TV and Victims of The Pestilence. For best results turn the bass down a tad. I had it a bit too high when converting to digital. Apart from that these are two great recordings. (You even get Alternative TV’S sound check) Enjoy! and thanx to Simon.H for the tape. The Victims of The Pestilence recording goes out to Brutha Bloggers, H and Longy with their Cactus Mouth Informer and Punk Friction, cos they enjoyed the singles.

OINK, FUCKING OINK!

In the midst of swine flu we discover the real disease and who the pigs really are. (Well not all of us, because some of us have known what a load of shit it all is for sometime) In a move that has shown just how undemocratic our democracy is, and which will destabilise the whole system; because it’s not just the Labour ones that have had their heads in the trough, (£93m last year.) MP’s expenses have been made public, and boy have they been taking the piss with our money big fucking time. For example; Barbara Follett my local MP, who’s husband’s a well known author and millionaire has claimed £25,000 in expense for her security! Greedy fucking bitch!! but that’s just one example of many!!! The thing that pisses me off the most about these self-serving politicians, especially the fucking champagne socialists is that they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong by cheating and fiddling their expenses, so why keep them secret? Then they have the audacity to ask the Police to investigate how the list of expenses was leaked to the media, just who are the biggest wrong doers in all this? Is it any coincidence that the country is skint after 10 years of New Labour, and we now find out the sort of shit that they have been spending our money on during that time? No! Their spending is as much to blame as peoples spending over the last decade. Uncontrolled and out of control, now Britain has no money these politicians are preaching austerity to us. Well lets hope they lead by example, because we are morally bankrupt as a nation and the disease needs to be cured. Don’t suppose they will though, cos the only thing they’re gonna want to do is save their own bacon.

EU, GB, BNP

The BNP have been campaigning in the South East over the last few months, they’ve held 20 fund raising events which has netted them £100,000 for their coffers. Praying on the government weakness in handling the present economic crisis and ’immigration issues’ and peoples fears created by the media. It’s the European elections in June and the BNP could gain several seats and therefore funding from the EU, this despite the fact that they don’t Britain to be a part of Europe. Far Right parties in countries like Italy and Austria hold more power than the BNP in the European parliament and As a lot of directives come from Brussels it stands to follow that the more power the Far Right have in Brussels, the more influence they will have in future EU policies, that will effect us all in Britain. In countries such as Poland, East Germany and Russia the far right think nothing of murder as a means to their end / Hostels full of asylum seekers burned to the ground. Violence and Raciscim is the part of their ideology that the BNP don’t like to make public in their glossy leaflets that appeal to the populist opinions and views on Immigration, Crime etc, but it’s there and always will be.
The immigration issue would never have been the political hot potato it is now, if the New Labour government like other EU countries had signed up to a deal that controlled the number of immigrants. That’s why people end up in Britain, they have no other choice, because other countries have controls; it is not our brilliant benefit system that attracts migrants from across the globe, it’s that nowhere else will have them. Why didn’t the British government sign up to the quota? Colonial/empire guilt? No! cheap labour that’s what! All the time migrant workers were being allowed in wages were kept low and the money rolled in. Now the moneys gone and unemployment is rising, migrant workers are either leaving (media doesn’t report much on this) or staying and competing for available work. Resentment is rising, and people are too quick to blame ‘the foreigners’ rather than the government and it’s policies that have allowed the situation to develop and reach a point were racism and prejudice starts to rear it’s ugly head from out of the sewer. Crime wouldn’t be as much of an issue if the government did something about it, but it wont, because despite their ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ mantra, they aint done anything tough about anything. Why not? Because if they did they’d be accused of being too right wing. If you can’t walk the talk, keep yer mouth shut. Saying that though, they have made a whole lot of new laws for any future governments to use as they see fit, just because New Labour have used them to their full capacity, it doesn’t mean any future government wont, and that’s the thing I for sure don’t want any party with Racist beliefs getting anywhere near to the state power that New Labour have amassed since 9/11; anti-terror laws etc that can have people arrested if their views are against the states way of thinking. It’s bad enough that they’re at the disposal of any party, but the BNP, it doesn’t bare thinking about. To those that say it can’t happen here, well it could if we don’t remain vigilant.

HOW TO GET BULLSHIT FROM PIGS (A few thoughts)

I’m sick with all this swine flu. The adverts have started up on the TV. “Swine Flu..Catch it, Kill it and bin it” No doubt the leaflets will be dropping through our letter boxes , with more useful information, like not putting a strain on the NHS with every cough and sniff, and to staying at home. Sick days are already on the increase battered economies are set to lose even more money, but every cloud has a silver lining and the drug companies will be set to make even more profits through vacinees and immunisations.
Kill The Poor It’s about the survival of the fittest. On a micro and macro scale. Look at all the issues surrounding immigration and links between crime with poverty. Then there’s the support given to cut down the gap between rich and poor countries of the world, who are only poor because they’re what made the rich countries rich in the first place. It’s about these rich cuntries making cutbacks on public spending, at a national level, eg less poor people=less crime=less police., and on an international level Less poor nations=less development aid. Chink, chink, chink
Is this just a mass panic, Bird Flu came to nothing, and it looks like it could be the same with the Swine Flu. It’s like the boy who cried wolf, because when it happens again people will take no notice or will have been brainwashed about what to do. I have no fear that at sometime in the future there will be a pandemic of some sorts, but then it will be the real thing What we are seeing now is them preparing us for this eventual outcome. Why? Let look at the fact that The world is over populated the countries and people who would be most hit by a pandemic would be the poorest one, i.e.those without the means to prepare and protect their people. It will probably be in one of these developing countries where the outbreak will occur, or we’ll be told that’s were it came from because of poor animal livestock conditions, this could be fact or fiction to cover up the developed worlds complicity in creating and spreading the virus, or maybe that’s just total conspiracy, or is it? Think about it! Because thousands of people die each year as a result of ‘normal flu’ so why is this swine flu such a big deal ? Who knows? All I know is that something stinks!

"MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE!"

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Evil Mothers

This bootleg was originally released on vinyl by French label Skydog. It includes a couple of tracks I’m Set Free and New Age which were released on the legitimate 1972 album Live at Max’s Kansas City, the rest of the tracks were also recorded at Max’s but at a different show on 26/7/1970. Also included on it are The Ostrich and Sneaky Pete by the early incarnation of the Velvets; The Primitives. A slightly crackly recording again, but still listenable to. If you fancy a blast you know what to do. Enjoy!

MUGS FOR THE MUGS!

The Daily Mail’s telling us all to KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON, by trying to evoke the war time spirit of the Blitz. Well excuse me but the country maybe in the shit and sinking deeper into it, but I don’t see or hear any Nazi Doodlebugs falling from the sky and blowing houses and people to bits. Money might be tight, but the only people I see walking the street in tatty clothes paid £75 for a pair of designer ripped jeans. The only mass evacuations to the country I’ve heard of are people holidaying in Britain because they can’t afford their usual luxury holiday abroad. The token that The Mail are printing for people to collect for their keep calm propaganda pack says it all.

REVOLUTION - Better late than never!

WHAT A LOAD OF HOG WASH!

Some little piggies went to market, some little piggies stayed at home, some little piggies went to Mexico and came back with swine flu. The piggy politicians with their heads in the trough said trust us, it’ll be OK, but of course no-one did, and who can blame them. Instead they believed the mass media hysteria of don’t panic………….panic! and the suckers bought it at £34.99 for a pack of 3 face masks from www. letsprayontheirfears.com Now after the initial reaction/response to it all some experts believe that swine flu, or whatever they re-branded it as maybe no worse than a common cold, talk about the boy who cried wolf!

SPEAR OF DESTINY - Religion

Went to the local newsagents the other day for a packet of fags and came back with this as well; Spear of Destiny’s 1997 album Religion. I found it nestling next to compilations of Irish Folk Songs, The Best Of Tammy Wynette and Aled Jones Christmas Songs. You know the score, those sort of things shops have near the till, so when yer queuing up, they hope you’ll buy something else as well as what you originally went in the shop for…. SUCKERED! I fell for it, never mind cos it was well worth the £2.99 I paid for it. The fags I bought were more expensive and have long been smoked, but I’ve listened to this quite a few times since I purchased it. It finds the band in a stripped down and anthemic rock mode, good stuff and far better for you than smoking.