Monocled Alchemist

CHRON GEN spew it out to STEVE KEATON

Article published in Sounds, 10th April, 1982

Chron Gen | Gen-Ocide | LIKE A SACRIFICIAL pig Chron-Gen’s debut album lies butchered and twitching in an arena of crimson sawdust. Lurking nearby in deep shadows are four youths, stained cudgels dripping darkly from their hands. They’re a cold unflustered landscape of juvenile disregard.

“Well, it looks a bloody mess to me, lads.” I mutter, as pools of gore dry elegantly on the floor.

“No it ain’t!” says a voice.

“What if it is?” snaps another.

“Who cares?” declares a third.

I feel strangely let down. Glynn Barber, Gen’s amiable frontman arches up a dark and slightly bushy eyebrow as if to say, ‘So there!’ and then begins to pick dutifully at his exposed knees. Pause to reflect . . .

Chron Gen | Gen-Ocide

‘Chronic Generation’ is a brief, dramatic, wildly erratic and utterly disappointing LP. It laughs at the unquestionable promise of their leather clad EPs and has your ears whirling crazily in disbelief.

The record lifts you up with a momentary explosion of unfettered punk power and then unceremoniously spits you into a mucky marsh of awful cliche that’s both cloying and embarrassing.

One minute you’re accelerating out of the gloom like a lunatic rider on a Katana mega-bike, face distorting under more Gs than a CBS advance, and then the next you’re sprawled amongst garbage. The jolt is spectacular.

Chronic Generation‘ is an album that splutters like a batch of medieval fireworks and has more dips per square inch than a packet of digestives. Some of the material on it (all the better tracks have been previously available, albeit in a cruder form) I found quite astonishing.

‘You Make Me Spew’ is so awful it could almost be a perfect splatter rock parody. ‘Rocka’ Bill’ and ‘Friends Tell Me Lies’ are equally bad.

The only bright spot on the entire thing is ‘Hounds Of The Night’ which towers above its trackmates like a giant above trolls. In fact it’s hard to believe that it’s produced by the same band that’ve sired such a prime turkey as ‘You Make Me Spew‘, I mean it’s absolute magic.

So what’s gone wrong? Chron-Gen’s debut is a horribly complacent howler of Himalayan magnitude, when it should have been the bees knees.

Chron Gen | Gen-Ocide

SITTING IN a dead dodgy, high-tat public bar where darts fly like bottles through the air I make tenuous noises to this effect. Chron-Gen however casually swat my criticisms away like flies.

“Yeah, it is uneven, yeah,” concedes Barber. “But I don’t really see that there’s anything wrong with that . . . being uneven. It’s just being different and that can’t be all bad can it?

There’s material on that record that’s about five or six years old! They’re what I wrote when I was about 14 or 15, ‘LSD’, ‘You Make Me Spew’, songs like that. I made those up when I was walking the dog or sitting on the bog. Because I never knew how to play guitar then. I mean (cough) they’re all right, but it’s just not the sort of material we like to play anymore.”

All the more reason for giving such old duffers the boot I’d have thought! The band don’t agree. Natch.

“We didn’t really have a record contract when we recorded it,” declares Jon Thurlow. We just did it and gave Step Forward and Secret a copy each to listen to. Secret liked it and offered us a good deal.”

Thurlow is the band’s short but chatty rhythm guitarist. I decide to bluster on. But ‘You Make Me Spew’ and ‘LSD’ are so shallow, the good stuff like ‘Hounds Of The Night’ sounds as if it were recorded by a different band!

Chron Gen | Gen-Ocide

Glynn: (Laughing) “Yeah it does, doesn’t it. I can’t explain it really . . . ”

Jon: “The thing is Chron-Gen have been going since late ’77 so this is a catalogue of us from then up until about a year ago, innit? So you’re bound to get a change. Every band changes . . . “

Glynn: “Really it just proves how bloody long we’ve been going. The stuff just goes from being really basic to getting a, um . . . bit more involved.”

It’s no use, I muse cramming my head into a convenient beer mug. I’m simply amazed at how sluggishly the band defend their work.

“If you think ‘Spew’ is bad,” says the singer, “you should’ve heard ‘Disco’!” He laughs before being caught in a violent coughing bout.

“Cough, Cough, Cough!”

“The first time we met I thought him the victim of some particularly virulent flu bug. Coughing and wheezing he sounded more like some geriatric Volkswagon than a vocalist. Months later the guy is still croaking like a pool of frogs. I ask him if his voice gives him a lot of problems.

“Yeah, I’m trying to give up smoking now” rasps the singer. “I stopped last night at seven o’clock and I’ve only had two since. I normally smoke 30 a day.”

Chron Gen | Gen-Ocide

John Johnson, their blond drummer nods encouragingly. “He’s doing a good job,” he confirms. “Y’know when he coughs he goes like a beetroot and falls on the floor. It’s really funny to watch — but he don’t half look in agony!”

Glynn Barber is not amused, “I don’t think it’s funny, I want to get rid of it, it hurts.” His chums look unsympathetic.

SO WOULD I be right in citing ‘Hounds’ as a new (I’d say much needed) direction for the band then?

Not really, according to Barber. “There’s no direction in particular,” he says. “It’s just what we come up with at the time, what we like. If people don’t like what we’re doing, then we flop.”

John: “It’s not contrived or anything. I suppose we could put out something really fast and sell loads of copies, but we don’t want to do that. We’re getting more technical.”

Well that’s reassuring to say the least.

Glynn: “I really like ‘You’ll Never Change Me’, even if it is old. I know the words are ridiculous . . . but if you look at about half the lyrics on the album, they’re all dead funny. (Well Glynn should know, he writes them). But I don’t get embarrassed singing them or anything like that. I’ve sung them so often I don’t even know I’m singing them anymore. It’s automatic. I get embarrassed listening to them though!”

Chron Gen | Gen-Ocide

Is there anything on the record that doesn’t embarrass you, then?

“Yeah, ‘Hounds’ I like, ‘Mindless Few’, ‘Jet Boy Jet Girl’ is better on the album than on the single, but then that single is the biggest heap of shit. We only recorded it to fill up the album because we didn’t have enough material. (cough).” (This strikes me as odd as they’ve been together 4 years).

Jon: “We recorded it in 7 days, we finished the vocals in a day.”

So it was completed quickly because you were using your own money and could only afford limited studio time then?

Glynn: (laughing) “Yeah, that’s right . . . “

John: (Looking a touch indignant) “No it’s not. It took that long because we just didn’t need, any longer.”

Glynn: “Nah! Look, we only took seven days because we only had that much money and we had to go on the Pasti tour, so we didn’t have much choice.”

John: (Taking a defiant stand) “We had the choice of leaving it!”

Glynn: “Nah. Rubbish,” He tugs a grimy headband down over his ears.

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‘Hounds Of The Night’ is a drastic change in style though, don’t you think you might lose some of your audience? Perhaps alienate them. Am I insulting your audience?

Glynn: “I dunno . . . ”

“I think we will,” says Pete Dimmock the bassist.

His announcement solicits gasps of astonishment from the rest of the band. Peter, I’m told, never says anything at interviews. In fact he hasn’t spoken at all since he was three and a half.

“I think we’re gonna lose a lot of our audience,” he declares.

Jon: (Frowning wisely) “We could lose a lot, but then again we might gain a whole lot more.”

Glynn: “I don’t know how people’ll react to our newer songs. We’ve got a lot of stuff waiting in the wings, ready for our second album, which’II probably be out next September — we’re going in the studio in May to begin work on it. We don’t want to restrict the music, keep it basic, just for the kids. We’d just be fooling them as well as ourselves.”

YOU SEEM to be a band with a drug fixation, don’t you? The album has more than it’s fair share of ‘Drug’ songs . . .

“Yeah, that’s right,” says Glynn. “There’s ‘Hounds’, ‘LSD’, ‘Reality’, ‘Lies’ —they’re all drug songs . . . ‘Hounds’ is about LSD. Someone I know had a really bad trip on it, really gruesome (cough) and he thought that I was a devil and a werewolf chasing him about the room. It was pretty good because it gave me the idea for a song. Anyway, if you really want to talk about drugs talk to Pete, he’ll be able to answer you—”

Chron Gen | Gen-Ocide

John: “Yeah, he’s the perfect example of the effects of drugs on the human body.”

“Perhaps you’re right about us” adds Barber slowly, “but we’re still working out what we’re about. It’s all part of the process, innit. We haven’t got any one direction that we’re going in, one particular thing that we’re singing about.

“I mean, I wrote a song about fashion the other day, because it really annoys me that who you go and see and what types of music you should listen to is dictated by the way you happen to dress. You should be able to go and see what you like.

“I went to see Iron Maiden and shit a brick, you should’ve seen the dirty looks these heavy metallers were giving me.” The wheezing singer pulls a face that I presume is meant to resemble a miffed HM fan. “Uurrgh!” he goes.

John: “Personally I’d love to go and see Meatloaf (Pete Dimmock falls off his chair) because I think he’s brilliant, but it wouldn’t be worthwhile. It’d be sold out and even if you did get in you wouldn’t get a good seat.”

Jon: “That’s right, I’d like to see Infa-Riot, really good band, but I’d be a bit worried because when I’d get outside I know there might be a few pissed up . . . um, people wanting to start a bit of trouble.

“‘Ere are you a punk? Gissus ten pee!, y’know? I think it’s a pity when people have got that, ‘If it’s not punk rock, it’s shit’ attitude. I don’t not talk to John Johnson because he likes Meatloaf! Personally I can’t stand the bloke.” A barney about overweight singers swiftly ensues.

Despite the oceanic wetness of their first LP Chron-Gen remain a vibrant force. Brash, strong and most importantly young. The warriors ride on, hopefully leaving ‘Chronic Generation’ behind to fertilise the rhubarb.