Homework by candlelight (AKA the 3 day week - Up the Miners!)

1973

Spangles

The taste of summer holidays 1976-1979

Burnt Toast

The smell of Breakfast & Tea (1967-1992)

Bands I wish I'd been in #6 - The Pop Group

Born out of the debris of The Avon Soul Army and the catalytic impact of seeing The Clash and Sex Pistols early on in the nascent punk scene. The Pop Group swiftly took the punk rule book and ripped it up. Incorporating funk, free jazz, dub and punk soundscapes. The original band featured Mark Stewart, John Waddington, Simon Underwood, Gareth Sager and Bruce Smith. Their heady combination of James Brown, Albert Ayler, Funkadelic and King Tubby mixed with radical lyrics was a complete headfunk for a teenage suburban punk like myself. 

Their debut single 'She is Beyond Good and Evil' was the most searing combination of potent punk/funk and poetic imagery I'd ever heard. These boys were different to anybody else on the scene. This was followed by their debut album 'Y', which covered all the bases (and basses). The relentlessly funky chaos of 'We are time' & 'Thief of Fire' interspersed with dub piano melancholy of 'Savage Sea' - the album beautifully underpinned by Dennis Bovell's production work.


Then came 'We are all Prostitutes' the song that sold thousands and the (bootlegged) t-shirt that sold millions....

They then followed up with a second album 'For show much longer do we tolerate mass murder', an album that was even more political and featured The Last Poets and Mark Springer. An album that was pilloried by the likes of the IPC owned NME but still stands up as a fine piece of work - albeit not quite as remarkable as 'Y'. In amongst all this activity was a formal bootleg LP 'We are Time'... And then came the most joyous slab of Funk to come out of the UK in the 1980's - 'Where there's a will' b/w 'In the beginning there was rhythm' but the equally unconventional and fabulous The Slits.

The first incarnation of The Pop Group played their last gig at the CND march in Trafalgar Square in 1980 in front of half a million people. The gig featured old and new versions of the band and they finished with a version of 'Jerusalem', which to those of us present took on almost magical properties (We having sprinted through traffic whilst 'We are Time' ricocheted around the heart of London). It was a remarkable/shambolic day...

So, why do I wish I'd been in The Pop Group? Well apart from the songs, the free form mindset, the lyrics, the amazing iconography, the willingness to challenge the musical 4/4 status quo of punk (which very quickly simply reverted to rebel posturing, boring guitar solos and appropriating the language of tired old cock rockers), the courage to wear their politics on their (LP) sleeve and the desire to SEEK - they were the most dynamic live act I'd ever seen! 

Postscript.
I was initially concerned that their return in 2011 would tarnish their name. I had no need to fear - live they are still an astonishing proposition and I did finally get to fulfil my ambition at Komedia in Brighton a couple of years ago. Mark Stewart thrust the mic forward for me to sing... 

"Where there's a will, there has got to be a way..."

Excelsior!

Paraffin 2

The smell of winter 1973-1977

Paraffin 1

The smell of winter 1973-1977

Hiding in plain sight (or ‘You always used to be able to spot a Nazi ‘cos he wore a badge’)

When I was 14 (back in 1976) one of the boys in our year suddenly started bringing in copies of ‘Bulldog’ the National Front’s newspaper. Bulldog, for the uninitiated was a combination of jaundiced articles, vile rants, badly drawn cartoons, recruitment advertising and requests for money to fight the scourge of Bolshevism and anybody else the latest group of British Fascists hated. The National Front, a fundamentally racist entity, had been recruiting at English football grounds from the early 70’s, with quite alarming success. 

The disaffected young white male population gravitated towards the Front with undue haste. Barely a decade after the summer of love/height of the swinging 60’s, the UK had crumbled into a bitterly divided nation. A class war had erupted in the shape of the struggle between the miners and the government. The 3-day week and recession helped incubate resentment. And whilst the wealthy remained untouched, the white unemployed populace looked for someone to blame and the National Front found plenty of scapegoats for their rage… West Indian, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, African and Jewish communities were targeted and violence was never far away. 

Eastbourne, sleepy old Eastbourne, the sun trap of the south and home to the largest collection of white over 65’s in Europe at that time hardly seemed a relevant recruiting ground for the NF. There were less than 20 BAME families in the town at the time and there was hardly anything to suggest that the situation would change. But the NF continued to peddle their ‘truths’and they went on a recruitment drive to turn the rather weedy youth of the town into some kind of elite Freikorps. A rather simple strategy of identifying the intellectually immature but physically intimidating was the way forward. And so, it came to pass that our school got its very own playground brownshirt – NaziBoy!

It began with a badge. Badges being quite high on the teen boys currency list. A little NF badge, if you were none the wiser, might seem like just another band badge – white red & black. The badge provoked interest and provoked a conversation or two. The recruitment process had begun. After the badge, some stickers. They’d start appearing on bus shelters, in the school toilets, on desks and noticeboards. The message was simple “PAKIS GO HOME”. The message was repetitive. The message was of course, repulsive!

The follow up was then the newspaper. ‘Bulldog’ full to the brim with odious, ill-concealed racist rhetoric left the reader in no doubt who was to blame and what should be done. Terrace humour mixed with a mangled manifesto hewn from off cuts of Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech. Battle-lines had been drawn.

Fortunately, to the eternal credit of all but two of my classmates, the message was received, understood and swiftly rejected. Membership of the Anti-Nazi League/Rock against Racism skyrocketed and robust debates were had on every bus home, the untruths were confronted at each and every turn. Admittedly the significant shoeing that was meted out to NaziBoy helped to sway any of the undecided. 

The point of sharing this little snapshot of a political awakening on the South Coast of England is twofold:

1)   Recognition of my schoolmates who swiftly and rigorously rejected the doctrine that NaziBoy had been championed with spreading.

2)   To also recognise that it was easy to confront such an obvious affront to common decency because the tactic of playground recruiting was so route one.

The problem of course now is that, the same enemy has become far more sophisticated in their branding, message and approach. Route one is no longer viable, these tricky fuckers are far more subtle. The use of well-worn tropes is still happening, not least because the rebuttal portals are no longer geared up to respond. The significant leap to the right by media houses has left rigour and context trailing behind all those chasing clicks. The various techniques and approaches to get people on their own (the digital equivalent of getting somebody round the back of the back sheds and threatening them with a right kicking) are so marvellously subtle thanks to targeted EDM’s, FB Posts etc.

What I’m trying to say is that the bastards aren’t wearing badges anymore and it makes it easy for the weak and embittered to join the slipstream of hate… 

It is our duty to call them all out. Every single one of them, every single time. If we don’t before you know it, NaziBoy and his chums will not only run the playground, they’ll own the whole damned country!