CAROL CLERK enters the dungeon with progressive punksters
Article published in Melody Maker, 27th March, 1982
Charge | Charge Of The Macabre Brigade | DEEP down in the bowels of the London Dungeon, we lost him. He seemed to vanish into the dank, deathly air . . . somewhere between the moaning man on the rack and the figure on the gallows who was past caring that his own gouged-out intestines were sliding down his legs.
Charge’s lead guitarist, Stu P. Didiot (a name soon to be legalised by deed poll), had been showing enormous interest in the various scenarios of torture and pestilence, mutilation and mutation. It would be easy enough to find him; just ask an attendant.
“Excuse me mate,” said one of the band. “Have you seen a bloke going by with pink hair, a leather mini-skirt and fishnet stockings?” The face remained impassive: “No, I haven’t seen him, sir.”
Eventually Stu was discovered peering intently into a cage of live rats.
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“It would be really nice to live in here,” he enthused. “I’d like to live in the ‘Plague Room’. I once lived in a place that was incredibly similar . . . in the style of the architecture, the tables, the steps, the water dripping off the walls, the low ceiling. The corpses . . . well, there virtually were corpses lying around.”
The rest were equally impressed with the Dungeon and its gruesome exhibits. “I like the woman with the spear going through her neck,” said vocalist Moose. “And the bloke with the arrow in his mouth was great. The rats are a bit disappointing, though, lying around asleep. They couldn’t give anybody a bleedin’ disease.’”
“The bloody bits are the best,” decided Martyn (drummer). “And there are things in here that I can vaguely identify with.
People with no legs
“I went to India in 1977. And you get these really pathetic characters coming up to you in the last stages of VD and things . . . people with no legs using these slates to push themselves around. You end up just telling them to piss off.”
“I think it’s brilliant here,” interrupted bassist Dave, gazing round him at the headless bodies and sinister weapons. “And I love all the blood and guts. I like disgusting horror films as well; no plots or stories, just complete mindless violence.”
But while the fantasy of the macabre may intrigue the four members of Charge, the reality of violence takes no place in their lives.
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“I’ve got total revulsion towards it,” said Stu. “It’s one of the things that really scares me. Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. People tend to pick on me, but I ride around on my pushbike most of the time so they can’t catch me.”
“Stu and I shared the nightmare of always being picked on at school,” added Martyn. “I looked absolutely dead average and I was still picked on all the time.”
It’s no surprise that Stu in particular should find himself victim to persecution with his physical threat to the macho male stereotype that’s still held dear in intolerant hearts. Fluorescent hair, layers of make-up, that skirt unzipped up the side to the waistband to reveal the entire, fishnetted thigh . . . I’m surprised the pushbike saved him as often as it did!
Beki Bondage
I venture that he must feel strongly about his looks if he can adopt an appearance almost certain to antagonise the very people he fears; the men of violence. Not to mention the nudgers and winkers and the sneerers and sniggerers.
“I could give you different reasons for the way I dress,” he said. “One is to blow Beki Bondage off. One’s ‘cos I really like wearing a skirt. It’s something I wanted to do for ages and’ve just got around to doing. Or you could say I got some leather to make it from and having made it, I really like it.
“I look this way primarily because I want to; I feel comfortable. I might be challenging people’s preconceptions, but that’s such a small part of why I do it. It’s too complicated to go into.
“A bloke in a truck passed this morning. He stopped at the kerb, honked a few times, drove past, honked again and went off. After a bit it gets a real pain in the arse. But if anyone wolf whistles or shouts at me I just say ‘You can’t afford me’.
“I was pulled up at Kings Cross recently by the old bill. They reckoned I was soliciting but eventually they let me go. I was just on my way home from seeing King Trigger.”
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CHARGE, together in their present form since November 1980, have been attracting plenty of attention lately with a series of dynamic gigs and a new EP, “Destroy The Youth”, currently high in the indie charts.
This is punk music with a difference; punk with drama and melodrama, with light and shade, with muscle and mind. It’s music that the band attempt to describe as “progressive punk”.
“It’s not the straight three-chord thrash punk thing,” explained Dave. “We aim to get some kind of aggression into it, but try and make the whole thing interesting. There’s no point doing the same kind of stuff over and over again.
Kings Cross
“I suppose the thing that really gave us the start was the ‘Kings Cross’ single; things have been going quite nicely from there. Gigs aren’t a problem any more for us. We choose what ones we want to do, rather than just grovel for every poxy little gig we can.
“Punks still account for the biggest part of our audience, but we want to expand the crowd. We’ll have to see how the EP goes and maybe get a short tour together. We don’t plan too far into the future.”
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CHARGE have little time these days for other bands, viewing most as non-progressive — but their preoccupations outside of their own group are many and varied.
Stu, for instance, has taken such a passionate interest in coffee that he’s written a book about it: “Coffee Table Etiquette”.
“I spend a lot of time sitting round making coffee,” he said. “I make it in a relatively odd fashion. It involves lots of coffee and lots of sugar and hot water, occasionally with a dash of cold. The subject of milk doesn’t come into the book at all. Milk goes off, and it isn’t a very worthwhile thing to have around.
“There’s a bit about all the paraphernalia that’s needed. The cream jug isn’t cream at all. It’s a tester. You dip into the cup and have a little sip to make sure you’ve got the coffee right.
“Other paraphernalia . . . a can of petrol. It’s for when you take a swig of coffee with a fag in your mouth. I’ve done that before. The petrol’s for re-lighting the fag.
“Now it’s basically down to me finding someone to publish the book . . . for which I’ll need an enterprising lunatic.”
Moose also spends a lot of time sipping, although his taste is for something stronger. And it’s on frequent occasions of intoxication that he feels the stirrings of peculiar instincts.
Frustrate ballet dancer
“I guess I’m a frustrated ballet dancer,” he confided. “I started ballet dancing in the nude to Kate Bush tracks when I was drunk in this commune in Germany. Once Stu joined in and one of the commune people came in and saw us, gave a look of disgust through the door and walked off again.”
Martyn has his problems too . . . and don’t get me wrong. These guys are perfectly serious — well, serious with a sense of humour — about these things.
But back to Martyn and his night-time dilemma. Since he swopped the wobbly old camp bed for a comfortable double, he’s been dreaming regularly of Todd Rundgren — not, he hastens to add, in any improper situations!
“I have all kinds of dreams about him and I don’t even know why the have to be about Todd Rundgren,” he said. “I’ve never met him, but I think some of his music’s quite good I can’t put my finger on why, but I just started dreaming about him when I got the new bed.”
Relatively normal
I had the strangest feeling Martyn was withholding a small part of this story, but I never did find out what it was.
And so to Dave. “I’m relatively normal,” he said, before delivering the information that he collects fish “I keep them . . . until they die,” he grinned. “The fact that they don’t get any food probably doesn’t help. I did really like them, though. I’ve got one fish that’s absolutely mad, and it’s slowly eating the other fish fin by fin. They’re only doing what comes naturally, and I don’t believe you should stop them.”
Somehow that struck me as an appropriate parting shot as we stood up to leave the historic horrors of the London Dungeon.
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