Independence Days

by Alex; Ogg

  “I still have the pile of books we speed-read to get ourselves acquainted with the Africa/charity situation,” he continues. “All we knew originally was that we didn’t trust Bob Geldof and Freddie Mercury to know what was happening, and to come up with the best solution. We wanted to be provocative but at the same time informed. The second thing about Pictures is that we wanted to make an ‘anarcho-punk’ record that didn’t sound like one. We wanted it to be clever and weird and up and down and not to everyone’s taste. We wanted it to embrace pop, alongside the distortion pedals. We talked to Red Rhino, the distributors, and made it clear that this was a strange record. We went into overdrive for the ten days recording and tried to piece together something strange and interesting. Then we concocted the sleeve, making all the song titles look like titles of chapters in a book. We spent ages with the sleeve, mimicking the then-current Habitat colours, making it all cool and fashionable, except that we had the tiny picture of the starving child obscured by the price tag.”

  It would be the first album released on Agit Prop. “We were careful about how much everything cost, etc. We did our own press releases and promo, cynical as possible, sent it to people we vaguely knew at radio stations and music press. And that was it. There was no big PR offensive or anything. We just sent about thirty or forty copies out to the press. And it picked up from there. At this point we were still in control of everything, but Red Rhino were paying for studio time and pressing costs. We had a relationship with Red Rhino, which was based partly on our vision of their set-up, as we saw it. The boss of this ‘independent’ company drove a BMW. The workers caught the bus. The company were indebted to the success of The Wedding Present’s George Best album (a lovely record) to keep them afloat. So really, we kept ourselves at a distance from their general day-to-day workings. Agit Prop started as a vehicle for us releasing our own stuff and branched out into helping other people put out records. It was so shoddily run! We weren’t very good at being a record label. We didn’t have definite roles within Agit Prop – other than some people being better at promo, others at artwork, others at finances etc. But we knew all that with the band, anyway. We’d always shared out the various tasks.”

  The parallel to Crass and ‘speed-reading’ subject matter (Crass; anarchism, Chumbawamba; a specific, and grotesque, incidence of record industry hypocrisy) is illuminating. Their inclination to disrupt expectations rather than riff on the accepted musical discourse also approximates Rimbaud’s instincts in the latter days of Crass. Chumbawamba’s second album, English Rebel Songs, was “a direct challenge to what we seemed to be steeped in at the time – the DIY punk movement,” Boff confirms. “We loved it, but knew we needed to somehow do it differently. Of course punk is about change, challenge, ideas, etc. But that could apply to a capella singing, if you so wish.

  We didn’t really have any intention of singing the a capella songs live; but it was important that we set up the idea that punk/anarcho-punk/DIY etc wasn’t just four blokes with loud guitars and fast drums. As it happens English Rebel Songs didn’t come out for ages after we’d recorded it, ‘cos Red Rhino went bust. We had two albums recorded and pressed when they went bust – English Rebel Songs and Sportchestra, a double album of songs about sport. We had to wrangle and wrangle and negotiate and discuss with receivers and lawyers etc to eventually get that stock from them. Because Red Rhino had gone bankrupt we were left with the studio costs for both albums, which we didn’t legally have to pay, but which we did anyway, cos we thought it unfair that the studio should get shafted cos Red Rhino messed up.”

  If Chumbawamba were in any doubt about the rigour with which ‘DIY punk’ branding was policed, and the stylistic limits set on it, they found out when Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll refused to review English Rebel Songs. MRR, for well over two decades, has become the pre-eminent arbiter of international punk, initially under the late Tim Yohannon’s stewardship. “We stayed at the MRR house in San Francisco for a couple of days, with Tim Yohannon etc,” Boff recalls. “They were lovely people, very friendly and helpful. But we couldn’t get over the barrier of them refusing to acknowledge English Rebel Songs. MRR was reviewing hardcore South American bands singing racist songs, (cos they were loud and guitar-based) but wouldn’t review ours ‘cos it was ‘folky’. It made us dig in our heels even more about music, politics, ideas, perceptions, etc. And of course the Americans really didn’t have any inkling of the political implications [as explored on their subsequent album Slap!] of ‘dance music’ – rave, warehouse parties, criminalisation, cops, etc.”

  Chumbawamba’s records would sell in the region of 10,000 copies each. “In the early days especially, we made bugger all from record sales,” admits Boff. “We were always happy to break even. Agit Prop’s releases by other bands all failed to break even, except for Credit to the Nation – and their best-selling single we just gave away to One Little Indian, because they could sell it properly. The pricing of every record we ever made has been discussed in meetings. Costs, recording, publishing, distribution, promo, equipment, studios, advertising, all that stuff. It always comes up. Long discussions between us all about whether or not to put an advert in the Guardian Guide, or whatever. We never have had anyone booking studios for us and that sort of thing.”

  Thereafter, Chumbawamba would famously join the despised EMI. It may not have been counter-revolutionary, but it was at least counter-intuitive. And having a number two hit on the back of that, ‘Tubthumper’, threw everyone a googly. The reaction from some in the ‘movement’ was as dismissive as might be imagined. As one anarcho distribution service noted recently while advertising “First and Second Demos and the Individual Possession LP – all studio tracks from a bunch of sell out cunts. £2.50.” It’s alarming that someone would be so hysterical about a band whose material they are continuing to sell (illegally). Of course, given Chumbawamba had previously taken to throwing red paint over Joe Strummer’s post-Mick Jones Clash when Bernie Rhodes sent them off on a busking tour, they now found themselves having to repeat some of that band’s mantras about access and the need to get the message out.

  The most successful label to emerge out of the anarcho punk movement was undoubtedly One Little Indian, formed by former Epileptics and Flux Of Pink Indians bass player Derek Birkett. It built on the lessons learned in an earlier venture, Spiderleg. Flux had released the ‘Neu Smell’ EP for Crass before Spiderleg was inaugurated with two EPs of archive Epileptics material. The first was a re-recording of the ‘1970s Have Been Made In Hong Kong’ EP, originally issued on local Hertfordshire label Stortbeat before disputes over alleged non-payment of royalties strained relations. The re-recording featured Rimbaud himself on percussion, stepping in at short notice when The Epileptics’ own drummer refused to record. The second, ‘Last Bus To Debden’, was a posthumous live recording from September 1979. It featured ‘Tube Disaster’, one of anarcho-punk’s most celebrated songs (probably because in the midst of so much austerity and seriousness, it betrayed a wonderfully macabre sense of humour), which the remoulded Flux had re-recorded for ‘Neu Smell’.

  But it was with the release of the Subhumans ‘Demolition Wars’ that the label really established itself as arguably a second-tier Crass. The latter band, though endorsing many of the anti-capitalist sentiments of the anarcho-punks, had both a superior musical foundation and an impish sense of humour. They quickly became the third-ranking anarcho band beneath Crass and Conflict via a series of EPs for Spiderleg and their 1983 LP The Day The Country Died. The latter reached number three in the independent charts (and would later provide the title to Ian Glasper’s encyclopaedic chronicle of the entire anarcho-punk movement).

  “We were more excited at the idea of being on Spiderleg than we would have been had Crass asked us to be on their label,” recalls singer Dick Lucas, “as we’d already met Flux. We thought the continuation of the cheap price tags on sleeves and black and white artwork, which both Crass and Flux [and Conflict etc] had done was a good idea for it
s visual statement of intent and where we were ‘coming from’. It also made economic sense – colour sleeves? Decorating the twisted truth with fairy lights to sell the product? And not cheap!”

  Asked if he saw the anarcho scene as belonging within the greater discourse of independent music, Lucas notes that “The Cravats were on Crass Records, as were Hit Parade, and neither were musically punk rock at all. So we are talking about attitudes, really, as to what makes a scene. If we go by the dress sense then all the black clothing was a visual disregard and disdain for what was laughingly called ‘independent’ music and all its bouffant trappings. If we go by the music, the boundaries are too blurred to instantly know an anarcho band by their notes alone: so it’s the message, in the lyrics and on the sleeves, that defines to the point of applying a label of ‘anarcho’ to a subset of punk rock. As for the contextual state of indie music at the time, well, anarcho-punk was happy to be left beyond the peripheries of fame, celebrity gloss and fancy dress, and wouldn’t play the game. The game was the spectacle and there’s the rub – the system functions on the back of our diversions.”

  There were other approaches to the band prior to the release of their second EP, ‘Reason For Existence’. One came from Small Wonder, the second from Sus Records, best known for the Case EP ‘Wheat From The Chaff’, and would-be entrants to the Oi! fold. “They were from South London and we turned them down after we’d met the chaps in charge, one of whom stood before a fireplace like someone else’s uncle on acid telling us all about the music industry for half an hour. In the same room stood an art table holding the preliminary layout for a porn magazine.”

  Thereafter The Subhumans, in keeping with the best traditions of anarcho baton-passing, established their own record label Bluurg (which in addition to vinyl released more than 100 cheap cassettes, and was actually extant during the Subhumans’ time at Spiderleg). “Before I was even in a band,” remembers Lucas, “I was swapping bootleg tapes of the Pistols, Banshees etc, and numerous Peel sessions, with similar ‘killing the music industry’ types advertising in the back of NME and Sounds. My tapes list was the first Bluurg list. After I recorded a Members gig in July 1979 I got into recording any gig I went to, or played [his first band, The Mental, were operational by then]. And as interest died in what were becoming increasingly shite quality bootlegs of now disbanded groups, I made the Bluurg list exclusive to local bands [from the Melksham-Trowbridge-Warminster punk rock triangle in Wiltshire]. After seeing the Instigators being awesome live, I decided to expand it to anyone I liked/who had something to say. From dodgy Pistols tapes for £2.50 to local/unheard music for a ‘blank tape and 20p’.”

  It was a huge undertaking, but one Lucas found immediately rewarding. “Excitement cancels out mental effort as a concept, and I generally get excited by making/creating things. Releasing tapes was easy, and it took the experience of recording a record or three and finding out the details of who does what like pressing and distribution to make the next step of doing it myself more realistic. Even with that, and the ‘Wessex ‘82’ EP [a vinyl compilation of the best local punk bands] all recorded, I didn’t have the money to make the records. Which is where I accepted John Loder’s offer of paying for it to get made and doing the distribution through Southern. It did make me think, ‘This is how DIY, exactly?’ But on the other hand this was the set-up that resulted in both Crass and Spiderleg Records coming into existence, so this was John being very DIY indeed and helping labels and bands out, because he could. When I was cycling 14 miles a day to a crap job and then coming home to 20-30 letters a day, the peak busy time just after The Day The Country Died came out, it wasn’t the letters I resented, it was the job! I quit soon after.”

  Flux’s own Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible topped the independent charts, featuring a gatefold sleeve recalling the police intimidation the band had been subjected to. They then did much to alienate their audience, and more particularly the authorities, with The Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks. A Dada-inspired exercise originally intended to be an EP, it had the rare distinction of being as musically abrasive as its title suggested; the wretched, agonised vocals recorded in the toilets of Southern Studios. Themed on the experiences of a band member who had been sexually assaulted, copies were seized from retailers, one of whom, Manchester’s Eastern Bloc store, was charged with displaying ‘Obscene Articles for Publication for Gain’.

  Spiderleg also housed the first recordings by Amebix – largely credited with being the inspiration behind ‘crust’ punk (an amalgam of anarcho and ‘black’ metal influences). Another band to emerge through the Bullshit Detector route, they were well versed with the Crass/anarcho dialectic. But as the band’s Baron Von Aphid would state, “The sound [on their Southern Studios’ recorded ‘No Sanctuary’ EP] was really dominated by the Crass/Spiderleg agenda, which was to thin the guitars out, so the mix was really not what we were looking for.” Again, the job lot package of Crass values – political, philosophical, aesthetic – that accompanied releases on the interwoven labels can be argued to have restricted the artistic liberty of some of its artists. Flux’s elaborately packaged ‘Taking A Liberty’ single proved to be the label’s last stand, as Birkett decided to move on to One Little Indian Records, founded with fellow travellers from the anarcho scene in South London in 1985.

  Despite being something of a holdover from Birkett’s anarcho roots – initially One Little Indian functioned on co-operative principles with assistance from Birkett’s wife Sue and ex-Flux guitarist Tom Kelly – the repertoire reflected diverse musical interests. “The intention was to make records for fun,” Birkett later conceded to Music Week. “I didn’t want a record company. [When Spiderleg finished] I decided to start another label and just make records for the love of music. The anarchic punk scene had got too violent.” One Little Indian was inaugurated with the October 1985 release of the abbreviated Flux’s Uncarved Block, a record, produced by dubmeister Adrian Sherwood, employing industrial and ambient textures. There was a clear break, sonically, with its anarcho-punk heritage, as AR Kane and They Might Be Giants joined the roster.

  However, their earliest breakthrough signing, Iceland’s Sugarcubes, came directly from that activist punk scene (members were formerly in K.U.K.L., including Einar Örn, who was studying at Central London Polytechnic and thus wired into the Crass/Flux circuit). If critics had pointed out that singer Björk Guðmundsdóttir, a former child recording artist self-tutored on Discharge and Ella Fitzgerald records, was a rare talent during her time with K.U.K.L., several more noticed now. Indeed, the media attention on her would somewhat overshadow and undermine the group’s success.

  Fellow travellers with Crass philosophically, the Sugarcubes grew out of Bad Taste Inc, an organisation formed in 1986 to establish a base for Reykjavik’s Bohemian arts community, with cafes, poetry bookshops and a record label. The Sugarcubes were, effectively, the ‘pop music arm’ of the operation. “We had all played before,” Örn would explain to Mat Snow, “but with the Sugarcubes we decided to play pop music and totally disgust ourselves. We looked at each other and said, can we play this – it’s such a cliche? And we said, fuck it, we can, because we’re the Sugarcubes. We’re a pop band, a living cliche.” Just as Rimbaud attests that the establishment and maintenance of the Dial House open house ethic was ultimately more important than anything he achieved with Crass, Bad Taste’s legacy, and continuing operations, have been responsible for Iceland punching several divisions above its weight in terms of contemporary music and art. And to suggest that they are in any way responsible for any minor international banking collapses might be gilding the Paris quadrifolia (member of the lily family found in lava crevasses, to save you a google).

  The Sugarcubes produced a run of exhilarating, Peel-adored singles and a terrific debut album, Life’s Too Good, in 1988. However, as Birkett would tell Phil Sutcliffe, the partnership nearly didn’t get that far. “We wouldn’t have existed but for Rough Trade. When we wanted to re
cord The Sugarcubes album in 1988 and we didn’t have any money, RTD (Rough Trade Distribution) fronted us £100,000. Then, when the record suddenly started selling, we had a cash flow crisis; we didn’t have enough to press up extra copies quick. It could have badly affected the band, their moment could have passed, but Rough Trade and Daniel Miller pulled me out of it with another loan. They did it to allow us to exist outside the major label system.” In fact, it was not the original intention that Life’s Too Good should come out on One Little Indian at all. Birkett had arranged for its release via a major, but the band resisted when the A&R contact tried to shape the way it was to be recorded and presented, Shortly after its release, Jay Barbour joined as One Little Indian’s business affairs manager. They are the only label discussed in this chapter, we can surely say, to have ever had one of those. One Little Indian was becoming a ‘grown-up’ label, with all that entailed.

  But it was those harbingers of rave culture The Shamen, previously purveyors of a psychedelic/political pop hybrid who had recorded for several labels before joining One Little Indian, that provided the next big push. They appealed to Birkett specifically because they reminded him of his political activism in the late 70s, though he was somewhat taken aback when they abandoned what he perceived to be their psychedelic leanings for a pure dance groove. In his Melody Maker essay on the band, Paul Lester noted that only Scritti Politti, Joy Division/New Order and Primal Scream had successfully undergone a similar journey – key contributors all to what we now understand as an independent ethic. The band themselves were initially frustrated when critical acclaim wasn’t consolidated, especially after ‘Pro-Gen’ proved a hit with DJs. It all fell into place when a remix of that same song, retitled ‘Move Any Mountain’, reached number four in the charts in July 1991. Unfortunately, its success was overshadowed by the death of Will Sin in a swimming accident in the Canaries while filming the accompanying video. The Shamen’s chart success, which peaked when ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ topped the UK charts in August 1992, proved fleeting, and was effectively over by the end of 1993.