Monocled Alchemist

Gary Bushell reviews the shots fired in New Punk’s battle for mass acceptance

Article published in Sounds 7th August, 1982

War Of Independence | The UK Punk Scene | IF YOU needed any proof of the grass roots strength, and, paradoxically, the overall weakness of ’82 punk, a swift perusal of our indies charts should do the business.

This week and every week over half the best selling indie singles are heavy duty punk in one form or another. The indie charts have been the incubator for the New Punk baby, and most of the reason is that most of the majors decided way back that guts punk had run out of chart potential.

So when better than now, as the time comes for junior to either make it in the big wide world or forever hold its cult status, to put punk’s progress in perspective?

After the initial would-be world-conquering punk tidal wave, the industry decided the only way a punk band could make it was to pretend to be something else. In A&R offices, gormless berks who’d hated punk and then championed it, Nicky Horne style, pleaded the ‘common-sense’ line that if their pet punks wanted to play in the big boys’ charts they’d have to water down their music, play down any message, and come up with bastardised daytime airplay singles to sooth the tranquilised brows of bored housewives everywhere.

‘Happy Talk’ is obviously the cherry on the top of this success-before-integrity soft-brained hard sell. With the halcyon Top Ten days of Les Pistols, Sham, the Ruts and the Skids, and the heroic Top Thirty/ TOTPs skirmishes of the Subs, Rejects, Upstarts et al long behind us, verily did this new line make corporate sense at the time.

War Of Independence | The UK Punk Scene

The results were inevitable. Watered down punk failed miserably; ‘New Wave’ lined up with the rest of The Problem; and real punk coiled away, turned in on itself and refused to die.

The backdrop to it all was that for the myopic mess we call the record biz punk was never more than this-year’s-trend, soon to be relegated to Southern League status and replaced by the next trend and the next, and progressively less threatening and more financially rewarding.

But as punk was really a raw energy enema needed to flush out a sick system, and as six years on the sickness of the system has grown rather than diminished while the cleansing power of raw energy rock has yet to be superceeded, the need for undiluted uncompromising punk is logically more pressingly urgent than ever.

Hence the punk upsurge/regroupment we’ve seen over the last 16 months, a development largely outside the experience and world view of the majors. For them new punk was/is just a throwback hiccup, nothing serious enough to upset the new waves of industry manufactured trends.

The standard industry argument remains that the maximum punk market is 30,000 and declining. And that to them is chickenfeed. And that to me is a particularly static and typically short sighted viewpoint.

Punk’s original chart blockbusters came when bands reached beyond immediate fashion/cult barriers to win over a mass audience. And only three factors are mitigating against that happening again.

Firstly the contemporary defensive ‘hardcore’ backlash against melody, secondly the absence of any way a mass audience can get to hear punk records (and we’ll get back to that later) and finally Indie Chart survival has fostered a ghetto mentality reinforced by the reactionary inwards-looking mentality which cult status (especially off stage centre) seems to entail.

War Of Independence | The UK Punk Scene

DESPITE these phenomenal setbacks the power and appeal of the biggest new punk acts has seen them penetrating the real charts while keeping their indie roots (the ideal recipe). ‘Nagasaki Nightmare’ sold over 8,000 (including a generous portion of exports; ‘Dead Cities’ sold 67,000 in this country alone and that wasn’t even one of the Exploited‘s best songs. It was more a relentless bellow — but it proved the audience for raw raucous punk was still there.

Over the last nine months there’s been a plethora of strong punk songs that would indubitably have charted with airplay — ‘Harry May’, ‘Viva La Revolution’, ’17 Years Of Hell’, both Toy Dolls singles, ‘Banned From The Pubs’ (though thankfully ‘Run Like Hell’ looks like reaping its just desserts).

While the Exploited and the League nudge back into the Naughty Forty, the Beeb blacklist puts the mockers on superb should-have-been smashes. My contention is if just one single of this calibre got the airplay/distribution breaks, punk would be back on the national offensive, and then we might see more positivism and less defeatism in the punk ranks.

Men of the match in restoking punk fires over the last year outside the Crass camp have got to be No Future.

War Of Independence | The UK Punk Scene

They formed in June 1981, place a small ad in Sounds for punk and skin bands looking for a deal and the quality of the response demonstrated the lack of marbles among the major labels’ talent scouts. Then there were Blitz, the Partisans, Charged GBH (who eventually signed to Clay), and the Test Tube Babies, all outrageously floundering around without a label. No Future’s founders, former office clerk Chris Berry and former indie AIIR man Richard Jones, couldn’t have asked for a riper roster.

The banks blanked the new oi-some enterprise, but undeterred the dynamic duo piled up the necessary cash by borrowing from relatives and friends, debuting to the world with the masterly Blitz ‘All Out Attack’ ep last August. It cost £80 to record and sold over 20,000 copies. For want of a better cliché they haven’t looked back since.

Fourteen further releases have all made the Indie Top Twenty, all sold over 10,000, most made the Indie Top Ten, two made the Top 75, and all have ranged from great to okay. They haven’t put out a bad record yet — which is no mean track record.

And better yet most of the bands they’ve signed have got massive potential — that’s the Violators, Attak and Red Alert as well as the more obvious rising stars.

My only moan is the occasional poor production job — due to lack of cash. But indications are that this is changing soon which’ll make a great label even greater — and needless to say they’ve got no problems with the bank manager any more.

War Of Independence | The UK Punk Scene

Blitz and Partisans albums are the next big thing in the No Future pipeline, along with a series of low-priced live albums. Young bands are still encouraged to send demos in, and Berry says the average new signing gets offered a contract for two or three singles/EPs and an album.

“As Vice Squad pointed out on their last album no record company is a charity,” says Berry, “and obviously we want success for our bands and our label. Despite the NME trotting out the old ‘punk died in ’77’ line, I can’t remember a time when there where so many good punk bands around. Our message to them is never surrender, never give in . . . “

The only label with a comparative track record is Secret, the biggest indie in Wandsworth, run by Martin Hooker, dubbed ‘Prince Of Punk’ by one over-extravagant fanzine. Hooker formed the label in early 1980 after leaving EMI “due to an acute case of boredom”. The early days were self-financed and difficult mostly because the nearest they got to signing a hot act was that renowned loser Brian Brain.

Two factors changed things: a partnership with publishing company Panache Music, and signing the Exploited. Their debut album ‘Punk’s Not Dead’ was the biggest selling indie album of last year. And although the company continued to sign up acts like Lovely Previn and Keith Chegwin, it was obvious that street punk was where the real market was.

Secret became the shelter from the storm for Oi at the end of last year. There was ‘One Law For Them’ from the 4-Skins on the one-off spin-off Clockwork Fun, ‘Carry On Oi’, and of course more Exploited and more hot street-punk from Infa-Riot, the Business, Chron-Gen and the Gonods.

Unlike No Future who flung their net wide, Secret have kept to a small select rosta and seen the results in a plethora of Indie Top Ten singles and Top Five albums. And they have also until recently been responsible for some of the best designed punk sleeves ever, thanks mostly to the artistic genius of Dave Dragon (though the appallingly drawn Infa-Riot album cover rather blotted their copy book).

War Of Independence | The UK Punk Scene

Secret’s latest release, the Exploited‘s ‘Troops Of Tomorrow’, smashed straight into the real Top Fifteen album chart — and disappeared from the Indie Charts in the meantime, mostly because although they’re still an indie company they’d signed a distribution deal with Virgin, and that excludes them from the RB chart.

Hooker is unperturbed. ‘The real battle is for the major charts,” he says. “I want Secret to become the biggest selling indie in the UK and to have international success.”

Real ambition, Nathen Chasen style. Having now moved into the HM field with soon-to-be mega-starts Twisted Sister it seems like the Secret story is only just starting.

Clay Records are perhaps the next most successful indie. Launched by former Beggars Banquet employee Mike Stone back in ’79, this Stoke-based label was financed by a local businessman and got it right early on by signing Discharge back in January ’80.

Like Secret, Clay have tried to duplicate their punk success in other fields (Zanti Misfits, White Door, Plastic Idols etc) but have found nothing else sells like ramalamadole queue.

The latest Discharge and GBH singles made it into the national charts as well as the indies, with similar elpee successes to follow.

Somewhat unfairly perhaps I’d always thought of Riot City as the dustbin of the punk indies. Formed in December 1980 and funded by Bristollian Simon Edwards, the label rose from the ashes of Heartbeat Records and centred round bright young hopefuls Vice Squad who came up with the moniker (and incidently EMI have got nothing to do with the label, they use just the name on Vice Squad releases for that extra pinch of street cred).

The label’s first release, Vice Squad‘s ‘Last Rockers’ clocked up 20,000 sales. But after this impressive beginning Riot City went through a less successful period of signing boring sub-Discharge bands.

War Of Independence | The UK Punk Scene

Recently things have changed, with the ever-improving Abrasive Wheels, the promising Expelled and new hopefuls the Ejected. Edwards incidently also funds Disorder’s Disorder label, and the fledgling Riot State label, a UK home for US punk.

Unlike Secret, Riot City has no ambitions to become the next Virgin. Simon says he’s happy “giving bands a chance who wouldn’t normally make it past the receptionist’s desk.”

Honourable mentions must also go to Rondolet (home of Pasti, the Fits, and Special Duties), Jello’s Alternative Tentacles, Curd’s WXYZ (home of the AN League, the Defects) and his distributors the longest standing punk indie, Faulty (home of Chelsea).

There’s also some promising newcomers in the shape of Anagram and Company Records. Of course there are hosts of other labels. It’s estimated that over half the records produced in the UK are released by indie companies of whom over 4,000 are registered. Usually they’re there to meet a demand the majors don’t/won’t/can’t cater for.

There’s no inherent virtue about indies. Altruism doesn’t make it as business principle, and Step Forward are as concerned about profit margins as CBS. Often indie labels can’t afford to spend enough on decent promotion, and their releases are hidebound by lousy distribution deals.

In theory big means more muscle and more money. But in practise big too often means bureaucracy, lethargy and the forward looking qualities of an ostrich in fright. Indies are coming through because they’re closer to the ground.

War Of Independence | The UK Punk Scene

Often their existence depends on the viability of the next act they sign. It makes them hungrier, sharper. And the best ones are at last coming to terms with the need to smash out of the indie charts and into the real world. If this punk wave breaks, and it ought to, let’s hope it breaks on the indies who’ve kept the fire alive.

It’d be disgusting if the majors now moved in to reap the rewards of the months of hard work and little reward the indies have carried, just as upsetting as when indie labels and their bands fall into the trap of being satisfied with indie chart success. In the words of an occasionally wise woman, think big but keep your eyes on the pavement (not the gutter).

Post script: It’s no use everyone sitting round moaning about lack of airplay and doing nothing about it. If you feel strongly about the lack of punk on the radio and telly get together with your mates and get a petition together. Something along the lines of ‘We the undersigned demand adequate coverage of punk music on Radio One’. Then send it all to me and Christine Cousins at Sounds. The Campaign For Punk Radio starts here.