| EXPLOITED DISCHARGE ANTI-PASTI CHRON-GEN Manchester Poly, July 1st 1981 |
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| Apocalypse Now! Tour 1981 |
| NIGHT OF THE PUNK UNDEAD |
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| 'And lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood . . .' MANCHESTER POLY is as old and decrepit as the education system it's a part of. Right now it's also noisier than Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning and just a shade cooler than an active volcano. Heat and beat. My Fred Perry's stuck to me like a second skin, sweat-sodden and uncomfortable. 'Ultra-Ban Super-Dry' obviously ain't designed for these sort of supra-Sahara temperatures. Maybe I oughta sue. 'And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth . . .' In front of me God-knows-how-many-hundreds of spikey rodents detonate in a wild confusion of jabbing limbs and perspiration, running riot on the spot like a huge hyperactive multi-celled amoeba. 'And there arose a smoke out of the bottomless pit, as the smoke of a great furnace . . .' It's like Hades has split asunder, belching out the children of the damned in a blistering raucous gob-green bile to run amok in an orgy of satanic horror and breathe their foetid fire and brimstone breath over the living. I'd rather stand in the middle of the pitch during a Nazi Old Boys v. Stern Gang 15 rugby match than steam into that little lot. 'And in these days shall men seek death and shall find it not.' APOCALYPSE was the Biblical revelation of the end of the world made to Saint John. But this is APOCALYPSE NOW! (Step forward Sir James Goldsmith), the punky celebration of teenage terror-dance brought to tens of thousands of herberts over the last weeks. EXPLOITED! DISCHARGE! ANTI-PASTI! CHRON-GEN! Before your very eye-sah! The end of the pop world - or only rock 'n' roll? A primal scream of teenage defiance - or just another off-the-peg strait-jacket for bored teenagers? All that and more, much more. Five years on, that's what gets me. The Anarchy Tour is already ancient history. John Lydon - John Who? These bands reckon they're carrying on the Rotten flaming torch. Check the arguments - a diseased music industry OD'ing on the same old star system, recycled fashions and musical blandola; a social system sick with mass unemployment and ONE QUARTER of the population living on or under the poverty line (the NME's smug insistence on 'the satiated majority' is as out of date and strictly hippy sixties as they are). We NEED real rock energy. We NEED real protest. And yet there's something different about '81 punk and punks -- I hate the element of ritual about it, the uniforms, the restrictions of 'punk heritage' (yuck) that makes it all less threatening, more HM. The way it's now a 'punk market' where the record companies can shift X many units of this month's miracle b(r)and. But then you talk to the kids and they ain't fools. They know what's going on. They'll tell you there's no posers now, no plastics, no papers, no paper tigers . . . I dunno. I really don't. My mind's reeling. All I can see is this sea of bobbing noggins and the figure in the centre of the stage, the shouting lout who's holding all their attention. Wattle Buchan, a king in a jungle, a guttersnipe star, snarling and cavorting like his life depends on it and coaxing the exhausted pogo-packs into more and more rabble-revelry as his band the Exploited, hammer home their masterly unrelenting stream of supercharged roar. Now here's a band working in a tradition without getting hamstrung by it. They've got respect for no-one and nothing and that's maybe why they're the best band on tonight, why they make music with real fire in its belly, and why they make for a cranium-crunching climax to an evening of glorious confusion. But hold on, blue eyes, let's flip a tic-tac and take this from the top. |
| CHRON-GEN are up first, four-handed from Hitchin and managed by no lesser herbert than Gez Lowry, yep Sounds own part-time rockabilloi rabble sporting black-eye (the old co-manager's parting gift) and broad beam as his boys breeze through a short set of their own pop-punk pearlies. They certainly work much better in this rough-house than in the bow-tie and ball-room barreness of the Lyceum. Last week their debut EP came out on Gargoyle and not even the Larry Grayson production job could disguise the obvious flair there: the angst anthem 'Chronic Generation', the insistent protest of 'Mindless Few', the doomy addictiveness of 'Puppets of War', and best of all the stop-start contagiousness of 'Lies'. It reminds me a lot of 'Spiral Scratch' - the same nascent pop-sensibility and future promise. Live, the nagging vocals and speedy-pop tunes ram home the same comparison but the beefier sound makes me think of the Ruts at the same time - an earthier Buzzcocks perhaps, Shelley in steel-caps. Every one a Chron gem. 'Subway Sadist' is the best unrecorded number, that and the mutilation of the old and well suspect Smokey fave 'Living Next Door To Alice'. |
| Seems they could both be on the next EP whenever. Myself I reckon they oughta scrap the last one and re-record 'Lies' with a decent producer. Everytime I hear it I like it better: 'Tell me what it's all about/It's all about getting out/I'm in a cage inside my brain/Give me the key, I wanna speed again'. THE HALL clears after some small enthusiasm but I pass on the chance of scoring lemonade or orange juice at the no-alcohol bar - God knows what that'd do to me system - and lounge about by the mixing desk. Leather jackets stroll past, a time-warp back to the good old days at the Music Machine. Only the names have changed from the 'classic' punky images they've plagiarised: Crass, Dead Kennedys. Vice Squad, Blitz, the Upstarts, all tonight's heroes. I wonder where this lot were when they were ripping up the chairs in the Rainbow back when the two sevens Clashed. I wonder if it matters. |
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| Out in the bogs it stinks of glue and I get the hump. Mugs. If you're gonna keep punk alive why keep the shit side going too? Yer plastic soaraway Sun guide to posing? Be discerning - don't be a dummy! Anti-Pasti come on and I let the anger slip. Data: there are four Pasti's and they come from Mansfield. I dunno where that is so fact fans'lI have to dig their AA roadmaps out. The name sounds pretty radical, but it's really nicked from an Eyetie Restaurant menu and means 'starters'. If that whets the appetite move swiftly onto the main course - a meat and two veg recipe of prime populist punk that owes more than a little to the style of our old chums the UK Subs who the band once toured with. If you want it in a word Anti-Pasti are ACE. They claim to be "trying to recapture the sense of fun you got from 77 punk just by watching a band and feeling part of the evening." and on the happy occasions I've seen 'em that's been exactly what they've achieved. Details - the Pasti specialise in sang-froid shattering one hundred and eighty second bursts of manic pogo-power, franticly fast but latched onto songs with mighty Roberto Durand size hooks you can always singalong to. |
| Best of the lot I reckon is tonight's opener 'No Government', a clenched fist cruncher that finds singer Martin Pasti, a first-class rabble-rouser who never stops moving, calling out understandably though you might think somewhat idealistically for 'No Maggie Thatcher and No Government!' Guts protest y'see - it's the feeling that matters, it ain 't s'posed to be a blueprint. '1980' follows fast, a splendid slice of supercharged knees-up even if it is last year's thing already, and that's chased by 'Another Dead Soldier' a shameless steal of the 'Teenage Kicks' riff with a Buster Bloodvessel-big chantalong chorus that I have to admit I enjoyed immensely. The anti-military/anti-conscription themes are returned to later with the full-throttle bottle of 'Join the Army' by which time the band are getting unpleasantly showered in appreciative gob - trust the Damned to have invented punk's lowest tradition. Anyone with any class would've flushed it down the great bog of history along with glue and swaztikas yonks back. Maybe you just like being arseholes. Eighth song in, 'Freedom Road', slows down the pace and shows the band can handle the punchy and epical with the same breezy aplomb that marks their more traditional fare. Definitely the next big street-punk band, the Pasti crunch craniums and crack away with the kind of music I like best, and so the news of a debut album next month before a headline tour of their own is more than welcome. You're advised to see them yourself at the earliest opportunity. To me they're Oi thru and thru, though I don 't suppose they'd agree sharing the widespread but erroneous belief that Oi's 'just for skinheads'. But surely there's no denying their very essence plants it's Doc Martens fairly and squarely in the populist Rotten / Strummer / Harper / Pursey tradition as opposed to the Devoto / Verlaine / Lydon arty-farty school? To my mind it's a real shame Infa-Riot were pulled off this tour because they would've proved that Oi and street-punk stand for basically the same things (can you tell how long Lee Wilson's hair is by listening to 'Riot Riot'?) and maybe that would've heralded a speedier arrival of the newly mooted Skunk Rock movement. Punks and skins united against the common enemy - a society that chucks them all on the scrapheap. |
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| SUCH IDLE theorising is disrupted by the noisy arrival dance floorwise of my old mate Wattle, mohican plummage bristling to attention and accent as indecipherable as usual. Fer fook's seke, Jimmae. Seems the band have been plagued with management problems of late - ie management have been getting their dough from Secret and not passing it on - and a speedy divorce is on the cards afore the Edinburgh Avengers are back in the studio for a brand new single. No chance for any real rabbit here though cos he 's almost instantly accosted by legions of autograph hunters, amusing himself signing 'Crass are shit' on Crass t-sshirts and 'I'm a pest' on more persistent punkies' backs till the sound of taped sirens indicates it's Discharge time. I take up a position on a chair stage left to try and get a good view. I've seen this indie-chart topping Stoke combo twice before and hated every minute of 'em. It's not exactly that I've lost sleep about it but I have had this sneaky feeling that I might be missing out on something and tonight I'm determined to find out with mind and ears open. The air raid warning gives way to taped machine gun fire. Very HM I think, and then suppress the thought as unworthy. Open mind, remember? |
| Singer Calvin captivates the eyeballs from the off. He's young with a rabid animal quality. Very urgent. He moves great and looks mean, lean and hungry. His twin brother Rainy plays bass, craps in people's beds at parties (real Dumb), and has the look of a young Philthy Phil. Tezz drums like fury and sullen Bones handles gelignite guitar. The sounds they make is . . .uncompromising. God it's awful. The way they tell it "we make noise not music". The nicest thing I've ever thought to say about it is 'umpteen version of the same pneumatic drill solo' and that's being kind. It's pure chaos played ultra-fast. No tunes, no songs, no variation. And unlike populist punk the crowd can't even expropriate the chorus cos there ain 't none! What bothers me is not that I don't like it but the fact that I can't understand why anyone else should. All they've got is the speed but to me it sounds just like listening to a fast-action washing machine. Hardly big fun. Maybe this is the musical equivalent of glue sniffing. Unperturbed I asked a few punters why they liked the band - the gorgeous and discerning Beki Bondage likes 'em, so I must be missing the point, surely? "They're the fastest thing in the world." "You oughta like 'em - they're a punk Motorhead and you like Motorhead." Nah, Motorhead might profess to have no class but their organised chaos is like Division One to Discharge's Southern League. The Stokey pokeys have got no songs, no sparkle and no chemistry (not a drug joke). Nothing clicks. "I believe in what they say, that's what matters. It doesn't matter about the music, it's the words that are important." But you can't hear the words. Aw, never mind. We might have stumbled onto something here. It's what they say is it? Well what do they say? Calvin: "The message of peace. Our slogan says I want to grow up, not blow up'. Hence 'War's No Fairy Tale' and all that sort of thing. Fair enough, but if that's what you wanna get across why not write for Peace News? It'd make more sense than coupling it to dentist drill solos. Maybe you ought a give out lyric sheets. Calvin: "Anyone who doesn 't like it can fuck off, there's no need for us to change because of them cunts." That puts the likes of me in me place but I ain't being flippant now. A lot of you reading this are into Discharge so do us a favour and write in and tell me why. As far as I can see they're ghettoising punk completely making it dull, boring and monotonous and leaving it no room for growth. QUICK chat up the bar with Manchester's best punk band Blitz reveals the boys have got an EP out later this month so watch out for a feature on them very soon. And then a wild yell lets us know the Exploited have arrived - in more than one sense. |
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| FREEZE FRAME: Eight months ago, they were next to unheard of. They'd had one ep out, the seminal 'Army Life''/'Fuck A Mod' jaunt, and just one pop paper feature - in Sounds natch. 'Army Life' was followed by the two tracks on 'Oi - The Album' and then the bellicose drum-heavy defiance of 'Exploited Barmy Army'. Like the debut it became a permanent fixture at the apex of the Indie chart, selling close on 20,000 copies. By the time of the third release, 'Dogs Of War', they'd been snapped by Secret Records for a seven grand advance of which they've hardly seen a penny. The outcome of the resulting row will be known shortly. The album/rallying cry 'Punk's Not Dead' followed hot on its heels, smashing into yer bona fide Top Thirty and topping sales of everyone from the Rejects to the Damned's last offerings. A timely reminder of how the hardcore punks are open to new life. Right now the Exploited are THE hot street-punk band, and with good reason. Live they piss all over even the album recordings, those top-notch pogo-protest-singalongs given extra bulk and impact by a tight hard delivery making them almost as awesomely meaty as guitarist Big John himself - a man who makes Dougy Trendle look like Richard Strange and who inspired Wattle to write such informative snippets as 'Big John has never seen his willie' all over our office wall. |
| Yeah, Wattle, the wild Mohican boy, arguably more rivetting live than a row of topless Can-Can dancers. There he stands stage centre, his bare muscley torso covered in a layer of sweat and gob as he moves fit to put even Cal to shame. He's one of the finest punk frontsmen to date. "I hate fuckin'students," the Dickensian urchin swears down the mike. "Are you gonna smash this place up tonight?" And 'Punks Not Dead' thunders thru the cheers. Wattie: "Punk is working class people on the dole, a chance to vote against the government." Wattie immerses himself in the song totally, limbs and body becoming part of it. The shout/scream vocals are almost secondary. To his left Big John looms like a grounded whale, his guitar looking almost like a baby's toy in his flabby hands. Dru Stix is out of sight but hardly out of mind unleashing blitz after blitz of ferocious drum attack. And then there's permanently pissed bassist Gary, modelling red hair and small shades, pumping his weapon with a small grin on his boat like he's in a world of his own. Wattie acknowledges the applause and launches into 'I Hate Cop Cars' with true Mensforth passion. A wild thing, he'll make your head sting, he'll make your ears ring. Then 'EXPLOITED BARMY ARMY', pounding and smashing, the punks and skins singing along with belligerent gusto - the new Sham Army? The dawn of Skunk Rock. Wattie: "We want to bring punks and skinheads together" Punks and skinheads: "MANCHESTER LA LA LA, Man-Chess-TA LA LA LA" 'Life On The Dole' comes next, much harder than the album version. 'IT'S NO FUN AT ALL' Wattie screams. 'SPG' next, loaded with brutality and vitality. Real gut feeling, real anger. Then 'Dogs Of War' followed by a-new number 'Dead Citys' faster than you've ever known 'em. But it's 'Fuck The Mods' really gets the whole place shaking - bad news if you get more worked up about a decayed rival youth cult than about Snatcher Thatcher. Listen to the Last Resort, kids, let's go and smash WESTMINSTER up tonight! The stompin' 'Sex And Violence' punches out on the same theme, holding the crowd, their mouths open, chanting madly. 'Blown To Bits', has to be, Discharge-fast and chased hard by the glorious 'Army Life'. 'Crashed Out - OUT OF MY HEAD' next, then finally 'I Believe In Anarchy' a hundred times harder than the 'Oi-The Album' version. Wattie: "We're into Anarchy as Chaos. We don't want a government or a police force to tell us what to do." Big John: "It's just self-anarchy - doing what you want." GET PISSED - DESTRO YH! The healthiest thing about punk is there's no more heroes any more. If you're no good you're junked, no resting on the laurels, and there's a whole army of new talent bursting to break through. You want names? Check out Blitz, Conflict, the Partisans, The Strike, The Ejected, the Bomb, Skin Disease, Attak. And don't forget the 4 Skins, Last Resort or Infa-Riot who are making some of the hardest punk on offer - don't let your prejudices cut you off from the real thing. Punk now really could mean the street revenge the hippy punk pretenders. For the bands the problems are obvious, the solutions harder to come by. Self-activity's an important key, forming your own labels if necessary cos the majors really are out to lunch. Don't rely on 'punk tradition' be adventurous, don't make a cult of yourselves, stand up and think for yourselves, tear down the walls, aim for the mainstream without compromising your principles, aim for the jugular. I'll repeat - It really is up to you to keep the music fresh, adventurous and exciting, and not to let it stagnate and become cardboard cliches. Punk can mean and will mean more than people dressing up like Sid Vicious five years too late - if YOU want it to. Report by GARRY BUSHELL Pix By Martin Dean (Reprinted from Sounds July 11th 1981) |
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