Monocled Alchemist

Infa-Riot reckon real punk is the only good thing to come out of the recession

Article published in NME, 1st May 1982

Infa-Riot | Still Out Of Order | HOLD STILL. The old punks are still perfecting their chord and all the new ones play curled lip-service to the First Rule (“The punk audience of today is the support band for next Monday”) but tho’ urchins everywhere are scraping yet more acrid names for themselves out of ’76’s rejection bin before lining up the band’s first single (and half-inching a CND a slow purge is pamphlet from the library approaching. You can smell so’s they can write the it in the air. bleedin’ thing). The time for a slow purge is approaching. You can smell it in the air.

It’s time the neat was separated from the naff. And look, here’s Infa-Riot, a band who represent everything you despise about punk, a band who are brash, crude and extreme —a band who have all the ingredients.

I first caught Infa-Riot on vinyl, seven inches of sweet anger (hey, like whatever happened to hate and war?) devoted to the kids of the ’80s, stars of many a concerned documentary on the migrant punks who flood the capital and rent their bodies not a bedsit before snuffing from glue-sniffing.

Barry Damery, nonplussed of North London, Lee Wilson and brother Floyd, bored of Wood Green, and Mark Reynolds, disgusted of Tunbridge Wells or somewhere (not N. London), are but four of the ’60s baby boom who have opted for drums and wires in favour of petrol bombs.

Barry plays guitar, started the band and keeps his mouth shut. Floyd plays the bass, sits close to the mike and winds his brother up. Lee’s been bellowing all evening but after the gig he’s still doing the yapping. Mark, the drummer, doesn’t seem so keen on doing interviews and does a bunk instead.

“Our drummers are always disappearing,” says Floyd. “We had the Exploited tour coming up and a week before it started our drummer — this was the last one — said his granddad was ill and so he wouldn’t play. He left the band because of his grandad.”

What’s been tonight’s ‘drummer problem’?

“Nothing really cos Mark’s really good, he’ll stick, but the support band have smashed a cymbal stand, bent a cymbal or something, probably tried to eat it . . .”

The gig itself wasn’t so impressive. The Infas started the set with Girlschool‘s ‘Emergency’, played so-so and finished with ‘Still Out Of Order’. Nothing special?

“Nothing special,” agrees Floyd. “It’s what you’d expect for London. If we’d done a gig tonight same size as this up North it’d be packed out solid, it’d be miles better. Or if it’d been Scotland . . . Scotland’s brill!”

Infa-Riot | Still Out Of Order

“London’s no good at all’, says Barry. “There’s so many places bands can play, compared to up north, that people in London are spoilt.”

Lee and Floyd don’t come from spoilt London but from Plymouth and so, like most of us, were kicking and posing in the wrong high streets come ’76. While the West Country’s brashest daughter was speedwriting in London, Plymouth and Yeovil and the rest of the steel toe-cap of England were dozing. The punks out West only woke up later. As Lee points out, punk has gone from capital fashion to provincial obsession.

“A lot of the people punk was supposed to be for are only now getting into it. The difference is that punk is now a genuine street movement and a genuine youth movement; the bands are getting younger and younger.

“There’s not a lot of difference musically. With a four-piece punk band you’ve got guitar, bass, drums, vocals and you’re pretty limited really so you’re working on the same basic sound. But then a lot of the kids were too young to see the Upstarts or whoever anyway.”

The Infas are almost unique in Oi’s first division in taking their cue not from Sham but from Mensi’s crew, and the first single was, accordingly, a racket in true ‘I’m An Upstart’ style. Luckily it had enough edge to be more than just a re-run, and ‘Kids Of The ’80s’ was a winner. God knows why but, like ‘Complete Control’, ‘Let’s Groove’, ‘This Sporting Life’ . . . it’s just one of those records.

Given that the single is, however, derivative and the four-piece punk-scope is limited, then why the hell Infa-Riot?

Lee explains: “When I go and watch bands I’ll watch bands like Killing Joke with maybe a touch of originality but I wouldn’t play like that because I wouldn’t get a kick out of it. If I played that I’d get bored to tears.

“I know how intelligent our music is — it’s not exactly A1 intelligence” (“Isn’t it?” asks Floyd worriedly) “but there’s no way I’m gonna change our music cos I like doing it and so do the rest of the band.”

Infa-Riot exist because they like playing — not because they like the idea of being a pop group (which they are as well).

“If we wanted to cash in,” says Lee patiently, West Country vowels creeping in, “we wouldn’t be playing this music, we wouldn’t be Infa-Riot, would we? ‘Course we wouldn’t — we’d all be playing with synths and haircuts over one eye.”

As it is, Lee has chosen a crop and the Infas have gone for a following, not a fringe. Punk, like Presley, Lennon and The Rolling Stones, may be dead but it still sells records. Lee points the finger:

“Blame punk on the recession. Three million unemployed is the reason punk’s had an after-life — it’s the only good thing to come out of it all.”

The theory goes like this: ’76 was a summer holiday compared to ’82. Now with real chronic unemployment comes real punk . . . What is certainly true is that everywhere in the little box called ‘Music’ the new slogan is ‘Revive To Survive’ —and forget all this ‘challenge’ lark and wallow in ’72, ’74 or Chic Tip pop.

Infa-Riot | Still Out Of Order

The ’76 revival doesn’t shock so much now that the Mohicans have been seen on TOTP and Woy Jenkins has been seen wearing tartan strides in Hillhead, but the ’76 revivalists are still getting slammed, banned and arrested.

Someone comes in and interrupts Lee to tell us there’s cops outside. “Watch yerselves as you go, lads.” Peroxide may be passe but spiky tops are still easy targets for the boys in blue and the truth is skins and punks get nicked for their clothes —Haircut fans have to break the law first. Both pop factions can argue their importance, it’s just that the suburban wazzocks haven’t the Infas’ sense of style . . .

. . . Or politics. Infa-Riot will survive the punk purge because they’re harder than the rest. Whereas the ’76 summer holidaymakers were quick to line up on the right side, too many of the latest punk batch have pussyfooted around. Infa-Riot wanted to do anti-racist gigs from the start, did them and got predictably slagged for it.

“We got a lot of shit from people. Like on the street people would come up to me and hassle and someone came round to Barry’s house and said: ‘What’s all this shit about you doing anti-racist gigs?’ like we’d betrayed them. It’s stupid — they’re kidding themselves.”

There was the usual moron brigade in the crowd tonight, sieg heiling in between numbers. Lee pinpoints the absurdity:

“When they sieg heil they haven’t got a clue what it means. If the Nazis were in power d’you think they’d be allowed punk rock bands? ‘Course not. People have got a bit more suss up North but in London, ‘sieg heil’, ‘sieg heil’—it’s right fuckin’ hassle.”

So how to knack the Nazis, Lee?

“Our tactics is doing anti-racist gigs and we’ll keep doing them. That’s pretty strong stuff for us to say cos those kids there tonight are our bread ‘n butter and now I’ve spoken against them but I feel that strongly about it.

“Listen, they can shout about immigrants for the next hundred years but they’re here to stay, y’know. They’re all British really, it’s just the colour of their skin. I’m not into one side or the other — really I’m the observer commenting on it — like, I don’t get into politics really deep, but that’s the truth.”

Infa-Riot | Still Out Of Order

This crew picked on ‘Infa-Riot’ because they want to stay part of the non-music real world. Lee’s not surprised by others who flirted with punk and now play not for themselves but for the leisure process — the sprayed-leather slogans of the cult become the acceptable pop-slogans of the chart.

“I mean, a name like Adam & The Ants you can get away with but not Infa-Riot.”

No twee connotations here; a name that spells “In For A Riot” roots them outside of the biz. Mind, Infa-Riot aren’t self-righteous martyrs. Their new single ‘The Winner’ will crack the top of the indie charts and their album probably will as well — while the purge claims other punk bands, Infa-Riot will find success and stick.