Harlow is a new town situated 20 miles north of London, one of several built at the end of the Second World War as a result of the incoming Labour Government’s ‘Country Fit For Heroes’ determination to improve conditions for working class people returning from the war and made homeless by bombs or stuck in sub-standard housing. There’s no doubt that for those who moved there in the fifties and sixties this goal was achieved, but by the late seventies, although reasonably prosperous, Harlow had a reputation elsewhere as a pretty grey place to live, a mass of roundabouts set in the Essex green belt.
However, you can’t judge by appearances: musically, at least, there was loads going on, probably because - as everyone said - there was bugger all else to do. In the true spirit of punk, the Harlow scene was about to start its own record label, Stortbeat, run by members of local outfits The Gangsters and The Sods (just as the River Mersey runs through Liverpool, so the River Stort runs through Harlow). Given extra encouragement by the prospect of a record release, more bands were forming, and even though at that time there were few gig opportunities in Harlow itself, there were regular punk nights featuring Harlow bands at the aforementioned Triad club in Bishop’s Stortford, a few miles away.
My 21st birthday was due while I was working in Harlow, and as luck would have it, October 21st 1978 fell on a Saturday night, so I organised a party in a local venue, booked Pete the Meat & the Boys (who had asked me to be their manager) and the Newtown Neurotics to play and invited everyone I knew. I had a fair amount of experience of organizing events by now and was confident that everything would run smoothly. Loads of the ‘Harlow Front Line’ punks turned up, the Poulters turned up, the Newtown Neurotics turned up, Richard Holgarth turned up…but the rest of Pete the Meat & the Boys didn’t. They’d spent the afternoon in the pub and were all paralytic. And I was supposed to be their manager! But the Newtown Neurotics saved the day with a storming set, and afterwards Steve and I had a good chat. I told him I was going off to Brussels in a few weeks and if things worked out, I’d try and set up a gig for them over there. I’m sure he thought ‘yeah, right’ but we said we’d keep in touch.
It was getting near Christmas, more and more retailers wanted extra booze and my overtime became longer and longer – I didn’t get to many more gigs. Over the festive period I went back to my mum’s for a short visit and, as ever, to see the football. Through all my years away from Sussex – I finally returned in 1991 - I followed my beloved Brighton & Hove Albion home and away whenever possible, and the Seagulls were doing very well, challenging for a place in the old First Division for the first time in history. But it was time to leave England for a while. In early 1979 I phoned Eric in Brussels and told him I was on my way.
A few days later I was at Eric’s place, feeling rather let down. I’d never been to Brussels before, which was part of the appeal, as was the pleasure of speaking French on a day to day basis, and, of course, the prospect of large quantities of Belgian beer. Principally, though, I wanted to explore a different music scene and, at first, I trusted Eric to show it to me: sadly, he wasn’t any use at all. He didn’t have a proper drummer or singer for his ‘band’, and despite what he said, he didn’t seem to know anyone in the Brussels punk scene, or indeed anyone outside his own bedroom. Within a couple of days I realised I was going to have to sort things out for myself.
I’d got a contact number for the newly formed Brussels branch of Rock Against Racism, so I gave them a call, introduced myself as an activist from England, and immediately (literally an hour or two later) was in a bar in the pleasantly seedy area of the Rue de la Samaritaine, near Brussels’ famous Grande Place, having a beer or twenty with some of the local punk musicians and would-be RAR activists. It was there I met another Eric, but this one was the real McCoy – Eric Lemaitre.
When I told him I was a bass player, he smiled. ‘We’ve got a band, Contingent, and we need a bassist – come and rehearse with us.’
I couldn’t believe my luck.
A couple of days later I turned up at a Contingent (pronounced Con-Tan-Jhon) rehearsal and immediately knew this was the band for me. Powerful, melodic songs, interesting political lyrics, great musicians…and they liked my bass playing. I was in, and not just in the band – they had a punk commune in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels, and they invited me to come and live there with them. It was amazing that things had worked out so quickly: I needed no second invitation.
I went back to the other Eric’s place, picked up my stuff, thanked him, apologised for leaving (though he couldn’t have expected anything else) and moved in with Contingent. Looking back, they weren’t just the best band I ever played the bass in: they were – and now are again, as you’ll discover - one of the best ‘unknown’ (outside Belgium) punk bands I’ve ever heard, and I can say this without any self aggrandisement since I only co-wrote a few of their songs and had left before they recorded their one EP.
Everything about the band was striking. Bob Seytor, the singer, was a Black guy from Guadeloupe in the French–speaking West Indies, with an incredible accent, unmistakable vocal style and real stage presence. He wrote the lyrics, and they were apocalyptic: he was the only Black punk in Brussels, was constantly harassed by the police, and poured out his venom on stage. Eric, originally from Mons in southern Belgium, was one of those rare guitarists who manage to combine extreme power and real musicality. The drummer, Jo Fontainhas from Portugal, was equally technically proficient and explosive. And for the first time, the melodic bass runs, which had always been my stock in trade, actually suited the stuff we were playing. Four musicians, four nationalities: musically, think Magazine meets Motorhead in French. Well, sort of.
We soon did our first gig together, went down very well indeed, and I met loads more people from the Brussels scene: Spermicide, Phallus Band, the legendary Mad Virgins and many others. Quite a few people weren’t just punk musicians or fans, but activists as well, some involved in a radical group called ‘Pour le socialisme’ and its weekly newspaper POUR, others part of the anarchist movement ‘22 mars’ (March 22nd). Many were keen to get involved with the newly formed Rock Against Racism branch, and we started planning a major RAR punk festival.
Before that, however, we were involved with an event that was to provide the late, great John Peel with what he always claimed to be his favourite record of all time.
The Counter-Eurovision Festival was organised at the Cirque Royal in Brussels on 31st March and 1st April 1979 by the weekly newspaper POUR (see above) to coincide, obviously, with the annual Eurovision abomination itself, which that year was taking place in Israel. Headlining ‘Contre-Eurovision’ were Misty In Roots, whom I’d seen already at the big RAR carnivals in London and contacted with a view to them doing a show for RAR in Canterbury, although they never did in the end. Many local musicians and RAR activists were involved in the planning and stewarding: I helped with publicity and did a stint taking money on the door.
I can remember how good Misty were, and I remember the gig was being recorded: it later became the now legendary LP ‘Misty In Roots Live at the Counter-Eurovision’. A few years later, when I got to meet John Peel during my first session for his show, he was amused to hear that I’d witnessed and played a tiny part in the creation of his favourite record.
Belgium boring? No way! Brussels, then and now, is one of my favourite cities, ancient and atmospheric, and when you leave the administrative centre and the tourist traps around the Grande Place and head for areas like La Samaritaine and Schaerbeek you’re in a different world. We used to hang out in a punk bar called ‘La Limace Mystique’ (The Mystical Slug) in La Samaritaine, near the so-called ‘cafes tuberculoses’ which, as the name suggests, were full of people suffering from that awful disease, and in a really grotty café by Schaerbeek station in which, as far as I could work out, we were the only customers. We lived in the commune in a nearby street, Rue Anatole France, rehearsing in the cellar.
Agony and ecstacy in three days, both from afar. I
was very happy to be away from it all in Brussels on 3 May, 1979, when Thatcher was elected Prime Minister for the first time. ‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope’. I remember her picture on the front page of the paper I bought, and I felt sick. You brought discord, error, doubt and despair, Thatcher, and those were the good bits. Rot in hell.
But I was very sad that I simply couldn’t afford to travel across the Channel and all the way up to Newcastle on 5 May, when Brighton won their final game of the season to secure promotion to the old First Division for the first time. The rest of Contingent were rehearsing, I was glued to a radio with awful reception, and once we’d done it, I drank most of the Leffe in Brussels. None of the others could understand what the fuss was about. They weren’t interested in football.
Contingent gigs were very well received but sporadic, and though we pooled every centime we got, there was no way the band was going to provide any of us with anything approaching a living. So every day I got out my violin, made my way to the tourist crammed streets around the Grande Place and started busking, playing cod-Irish jigs and all the well-known tunes I could think of. At first my efforts just about provided me with enough money to eat, then a young Arab punk I knew suggested he held my violin case and we went round the restaurants and bars and tried to put on a bit of a show.
I painted my violin gold (don’t worry, it was a mass produced Chinese job) and got hold of a top hat and tailcoat from somewhere. Mounir, who looked young and baby-faced enough to begin with, stuck a dummy in his mouth and assumed a plaintive ‘please help us’ expression, and we were an instant hit, wandering round the open air restaurants in the ancient, narrow streets of the city centre, serenading the diners, gone before the proprietors could throw us out. The violin case always ended up full. Ok, I had to play snatches of light opera over and over again for hours and I looked a complete idiot, but no matter - that was my first experience of earning reasonable money playing music, and I was very pleased indeed.
Contingent started to get more gigs outside Brussels, occasionally even venturing into the Flemish parts of Belgium (perpetual petty linguistic bickering and mutual incomprehension between the Dutch-speaking Flemish and French-speaking Walloons is, then as now, part and parcel of Belgian life). We got Brussels Rock Against Racism well and truly organised and put on a very successful two-day festival with twelve of the new Belgian bands. Encouraged by this, we booked a central Brussels music venue for another gig and, true to my word, I phoned Steve Drewett of the Newtown Neurotics and invited them and fellow Harlowites Urban Decay to come and play a RAR alldayer alongside Contingent, Spermicide and Phallus Band.
Then an unlikely and incredible turn of events took place which would propel the Brussels punk scene onto the news pages of daily papers right across Europe and even merit a half page story in the New Musical Express, hardly noted for its coverage of all things Belgian. We, of course, were right in the middle of it. That August, Belgium wasn’t boring - I can promise you!
In 1979, the city of Brussels was officially a thousand years old, and, of course, many events were held in celebration, including a series of open-air summer concerts. One of these, in July, featured the great reggae singer Peter ‘Legalise It’ Tosh, and, needless to say, many people in the huge crowd took the opportunity to openly enjoy large quantities of the substance in question. But dope had certainly NOT been legalised in Belgium, and in those days the police took a very hard line: given their attitude, it’s obviously incredible that the authorities didn’t realise that an open air Peter Tosh gig was a confrontation waiting to happen, but they didn’t.
When the ganja clouds started to form, the police waded in and started arresting people (who were doing nothing more than getting peacefully stoned and enjoying the music) in an arbitrary and brutal fashion, which of course provoked the crowd, and there was a fair bit of trouble. Afterwards, the concert area looked like a battlefield, albeit one strewn with the remains of a thousand spliffs. And if the police action was stupid, unprovoked and heavy-handed, what happened next defied belief.
Following the predictable headlines in the respectable Belgian press, the mayor, van Haelteren, immediately cancelled all the remaining summer rock events planned by the city council in a fit of rage - and, incredibly, announced that ALL rock music events everywhere were banned and that henceforth the live performance of rock music was illegal in Brussels. He was plainly a senile old git off his rocker, and such a measure was obviously unworkable, but to the massed ranks of punks, reds and anarchists of the city, especially those still nursing bruises inflicted by the police at the Peter Tosh gig, it was a declaration of war. And the gauntlet was picked up with gusto.
There was no way we were going to cancel the Rock Against Racism gig we were planning with the Newtown Neurotics, for starters: we went to the venue and they assured us that they thought the mayor was an idiot and were 100% behind us. Then it was decided that on August 3rd, the day before our gig, there would be a free ‘anti mayor’ punk festival on the official summer stage that had been erected right in the middle of the Place de la Monnaie in the city centre…
It couldn’t have been more provocative: the mayor declares rock music illegal, so a bunch of punks declare their intention to gate-crash the official municipal stage in one of the most famous squares in Brussels at 6pm in the middle of the tourist season! To put the icing on the cake, large posters appeared everywhere. ‘Millenaire Bruxelles, tous les mille ans la fete’, ‘La violence des flics est gratuite, ce concert l’est aussi’, ‘Bruxelles, ville de merde’ (‘Brussels’ millennium, every thousand years there’s a party’, ‘The violence of the pigs is gratuitous, this concert’s free too’, ‘Brussels, shit town!’)
Everyone knew there wouldn’t actually be a proper gig, because the main stage P.A. equipment would most certainly not be made available by the city council. But, given the track record of the Brussels police and the fact that their main headquarters was very close, everyone was pretty sure that there WOULD be a riot.
Into this maelstrom walked a Transit van load of punk rockers from Harlow.
‘Hi, you lot! Good to see you! Had a good trip? The gig starts at 3pm tomorrow: sound check’s about one. And tonight we’ve a special treat planned for you. A riot.’
‘A what?’
‘A riot.’
‘A RIOT?’
Yes, that’s right, a riot. The riot starts at six o’clock. We’ve got time for a beer first…’
Everyone in Brussels with the slightest rebel streak made their way to the Place de la Monnaie that evening: it’s a big square, but it was completely packed. And, sure enough, many of the side streets were also packed – with riot police.
At precisely six o’clock, a few punks climbed up on the big stage with acoustic guitars, to huge cheers, and started to strum and shout. Not exactly a terminal menace to society as we know it, to be honest.
At precisely one minute past six, the riot police charged.
All hell broke loose. If the police had just stayed where they were, I don’t think very much would have happened: certainly, there was nothing going on to merit such a response. But ‘softly, softly’ just wasn’t in the vocabulary of the Belgian police in 1979: heads were cracked and batons flew. Some of the assembled throng fought back, others fled in anger and panic through the shopping areas nearby, smashing windows as they went. Battles raged all around, the city centre was trashed, and the riot made the news all over Western Europe. But, for us, even that paled in comparison with what was to follow.
The next day, as planned, we went to the venue of our planned RAR gig, La Vieille Halle aux Bles (The Old Wheat Hall) and started setting up. Given the events of the previous evening we had half expected the owner to meet us and tell us it was off, or for there to be a load of police outside, but no. All the bands soundchecked, some people went off to get something to e
at, the doors opened to the public and soon the place was pretty full, some people nursing bruises, everyone talking about what had happened the night before. Contingent was due to go on shortly, and someone opened the door to see where the rest of the band was. They – we all – got a nasty shock. The entire venue was surrounded by riot police with dogs and water cannons!
No-one was allowed in and anybody trying to leave was immediately arrested and taken off to the cells. Many people were trapped on the other side of the cordon, and none of the bands had a full complement of members. So, while some of the other organisers tried to work out what the hell we were going to do, I got up on stage and did a few songs on my own, accompanying myself on the electric mandolin. In some ways, you could call this the first Attila the Stockbroker gig, although I hadn’t come up with the name yet and most of the songs were covers or still in the try-out stage. But adrenalin and anger meant that at the very least I put on a show, and I went down pretty well.
By this time, we’d worked things out and come up with a plan. The police were self-evidently there because of what had happened the day before. Who was behind it? The mayor, van Haeleteren, obviously. We knew a good, sympathetic journalist called Daniel de Bruycker at the Brussels evening paper, Le Soir: Daniel didn’t like van Haelteren one bit, and he had lots of contacts. Fortunately, there was a telephone in the venue: we rang the paper and told him what was happening. He was beside himself with fury. ‘Leave this to me…’
The Neurotics’ drummer Tiggy Barber was on the other side of the police cordon, so Spermicide’s drummer Daniel Wang stood in and they made a brave attempt at playing a set. Bits of Urban Decay had a go as well. And then, suddenly, to massive cheers, the police packed up and disappeared, as quickly as they’d come. Everyone who had been trapped outside charged into the venue, the people in the cells were released, the bands all did proper sets and the evening turned into a massive victory celebration. And in the middle of it all, Daniel from Le Soir turned up.
ARGUMENTS YARD Page 4
