Collaborators

THIRD WORLD
PUNK IN THE UK
Yeah you heard right kids...Britain or should I say British Punk Rock
was a genre of great, attacking formidable music! And was once a
pioneering threatening free spirit in the 70's and 80's music scene.
But today in the dawn of the 21st Century. The UK punk rock scene
is just a paltry insignificent and pathetic satellite state that foreign
bands won't visit (only if they really have to). And we are the
laughing stock amongst the world punk legions if the truth be
known! Our current batch of exports are mostly 3rd rate punk
outfits who churn out past glories that will only inspire the easily
pleased or blindly stupid amongst us! We no longer set the scene
alight...by producing the most unadventurous stale and jaded punk
bands in the world today. We constantly live on past dreams, old
anthems and 20-year old scenes! We've become a caracature of
our former selves! We're deflated, diluted and poor imitations of a
bygone age. Gone are the days when we set sail and took our snot driven icons to the Barbarians. Nowadays we pawn trinkets and fake parodies to the cloned natives. And now the tides have turned, THEY bring their often more exciting and potentially more inspiring punk creations over to us (when we're really lucky). While we just sit back in our squalor of depressing, homegrown but quaint (sic) punk ineptitude cursing the day we could be more!

"3rd rate!?...compared to our American cousins and European comrades!!!?" I hear you ask dismissively. You bet we are! The UK can no longer (nor deserves to) influence bands on a world-wide scale! Coz it's beyond our comprehension at this moment in time. We now look on others to inspire us but it still ain't working! We are viewed in most punk rock outposts with total disdain. We are classed as being a worthless, decidedly inferior dot on the punk rock landscape (and rightly so). We were twice worth checking out, but not now! So where the fuck did it all go wrong? The state of the nation and the state of the kids today calls for...in fact it screams for some feedback! They are just as angry, just as pissed off as their big brothers and sisters were...ain't they? Apparently not if the bands are a dipstick! They fucking should be though!!! We've still got the unemployed axe hanging over our heads, we've still got a government run by designer geared lying corporates and we've still got a fucking pantomine of fucking hideous music in the pop charts week in week out. So all the same gripes and stigmas are still intact, but where's the fucking backlash?, where's the rage?, where's the sulphur burning in our veins?...blown out on dope most probably! I'm still waiting, anticipating, in fact my bodys aching for another wave of angry yoof to spit out and kick in some trailblazing noises or kick in some fucking boy band by holding the current artificial pop world to ransom!

But hold on...I've got my ear to the ground and all I'm hearing is a faint murmur or a rumbling in the distance. I hear a handful of bands making a fresh heartfelt noise but they are surrounded, drowned out and firmly muffled by a big bunch of nothings! A growing mass of weak willed easily pleased no-entities who squat under the guise of punk! And no it ain't just spotty teenagers and gangly yoofs who are whining away to a thousand GM cloned afterbirths. These idiots ain't the entire cause of this apathetic bloody mess. It's also down to the 'Second time around' mob as well. These greatest hits packages and big butch beer monsters, with mortgages and kids! They should be in some fucking boozer telling their mates tales about the good old days when Gary Bushell bought em all the drinks down the Bridgehouse instead of hogging the stage playing at playing punk rock! These fuckers don't make groundbreaking records no more, and certainly do not represent a face of UK punk to boast about to strangers!! Maybe I do care too much? I dunno? You can put a record out today whether you've got talent or not. It's a sham, it's a con, it's a fucking joke, it's too fucking easy! Where's all that suss gone? Where's that great vision of doing something new, exciting and entertaining disappeared to? And where's all the fucking characters gone, that's what I wanna know?

They certainly can't be found on many stages the length and breath of those package US tours or in the UK gutters for that matter. And that is why we are now just now another 3rd rate Island on the punk rock map. And we will continue to be so as long as we let the tide of indifference flow across this very bland outcrop!
The US and more surprisingly Europe has robbed the punk rock crown from our receeding spikey heads, like taking candy from a baby. Where once the Europeean continent was seen as a punk rock backwater and unattractive tour schedule. It has now thrived and probably is the best place to play punk rock in the world today. They have enthusiastic audiences on tap (even for the most unadventurous DIY punk band). They actually feed you, free beer's on hand and in most cases a bed or a shag for the night. But the biggest shock is the promoters actually pay the bands 9 times out of 10!!! However the Euro honeymoon is short lived when the brave or foolhardy bands who do venture across the channel for a sniff of good old blighty, are bought back down to earth with a bang. When they do bother to check out our sceptred isle, they soon realise with depressing reality as they are confronted with playing empty backstreet pubs in the nations capitals for next to nothing, or a bit a petrol money. And warm loving arms of a cold frosty van to look forward to on some dark cold Winters night instead of some warm squat in the Dam to have a kip in....certainly loses it's charm fast! So can yer blame em for deafing out the place? I can't! It ain't much more fun for the local UK populous of punk bands who actually do a very rare UK tour these days. They'll no doubt play to a handful of punks coz the promotion is still back in the dark ages or everyones skint. And your lucky if you get a round of applause (snigger) never mind a round of drinks bought ya for your efforts. Especially if you travel half way to the other side of the country in a tranny and your gambling on getting a tenner for your troubles. But Hey! that's punk rock for ya, so the romantic punk novelists try and tell us in their on the road novels. But it ain't much fun if you've just been wined 'n' dined and played to a full house across the channel now is it?

So maybe I am a doom and gloom moaning old cunt, but this is reality in the UK at the moment. Now I fully understand why touring punk bands shun the UK for the more exotic locations of say Cottbus (guffaw!) in the German never regions. Britain is in the same climate as East Germany was before the wall came down, as far as punk tours are concerned. It desperately needs to get some fucking real pulling power back in the can. We've gone lazy and apathetic as we all book out B&B's in Morecambe for the tenth year running. We can no longer produce top rate punk acts with the flick of amp switch. The only way to do that is get some new, hungry blood in fast! There is however a dim and distant light at the end of the tunnel though, coz like most dorment bacterias punk has or had the ability to breed in certain hostile climates (late 70's UK). So lets hope the UK punk has a means to escape this controlled holiday campo enviroment and spread it's disease once more!!! I'll be waiting and watching coz we didn't create this thing for nothing y'know!!!
Peter Don't Care