| (THE FACE February 1983) DOCUMENTARY PUNK'S NEW CLOTHES text by Marek Kohn Photographs by Mike Laye PUNK'S NEW CLOTHES A little surprise for you: an acknowledgement in THE FACE that despite everything, people persist in re-creating rock. Here's an account of an Attitude and some groups to go with it... NO IT ISNT! If this is to be an examination of a kind of punk, then that snappish reflex should be its first axiom. That was it's attitude. You might think the style more important. Indeed, if this new phenomenon were just a fad and a prayer, I'd either have to chat about some nearby subject or dress this piece up in linguistic Doc Martens; make it look punk. But this kind of punk isn't about the number of syllables in a word, it is, as everyone concerned seems to affirm, about an attittude. This new feeling (this substitute for the controversial term 'movement') is "/ wish it was..." Punk was first of all a reaction which stoked the confrontation by refusing to explain itself. "No it isn't" would be a fair translation of each step in the dance punk led its host community. It depended on being probed and explained so it could keep saving "no, that isn't it". It had to wriggle out of being caught by definitions, and stay incomprehensibie to outsiders. It was triumphant until it lost its strangeness. And its brilliance was to know intuitively how to fight a battle of signs, to express the contempt of its participants for and their difference from the majority. Its worst conceit was to try to progress from this. Punk was in one sense a giant bluff which was never actually called. Other people just got used to it. Those on the inside did do too, pulling out strands from the tangle which, in its wilful disorder, defied explanation or an agreed meaning. They made it ordinary. |
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| Consigned to a foul demise by the forces of cash and chaos, punk broods alone in its dark tomb. Its evolution away from the light has been a cruel and twisted one, from guerilla assault on the media to ghost dancing on the bones of Red Indian mysticism, from glue to Gothick. Naturally, un�attended for so long, its hair has grown. So have its aspira�tions. It has risen to the call of groups like Southern Death Cult and Sex Gang Children and craves a positive com�munion through music. Come with us through the veil of gloom to meet the new romantics. |
| The Clash forged a misguided alliance between the sensationalism of a Daily Mirror Dead End Kids shock report and the romance of a Che Guevara bedsit poster. But the biggest musical disaster for punk wasn't so much them as Siouxsie, because she wasn't seen through. She was a trouper. She kept the faith and preserved the star-fan relationship which The Sex Pistols refused. Nobody ever came out and said that her songs were the sort of shallow pop pulp that had as much inspiration as anyone could get from a few hours with a random selection of secondhand paperbacks. If nothing else, she's a testimony to the power of make-up and a stony silence. ANARCHY IN THE UK The way our young people turn out tends to support Darwin's observations on the pecul�iar development of creatures cut off from their fellows by a stretch of sea. Even the disaffected are cast differently from their continental comrades. Over there, those allergic to mass culture seem to make more connections amongst themselves, in Ger�many, you have the Green ecological move�ment, in Italy, the desperately committed Autonomists; and more autonomes in Zurich in the Seventies, the French "marginals" had as dogmatic a uniform as British skinheads, with their check shirts, straight jeans and long hair. All these have a fairly firm ancestry (b. 1968. in effect) and often an unstoppable tendency to generate intricate political theory, appreciating as they do the value of tradition and thought. We of course have our Social Democrats and hand-wringers, and on the political side there is the disarmament movement, but our chief equivalent of a 24-hour social opposition is the Punk. Like all real Britons, punks distrust theory, politicians and intellectuals. They believe in the individual, and as true Britons one of their greatest concerns is for the welfare of animals. The really unapproachable anarchist punks, like tortoises in their crusty shells, are quite separate from the developments sketched in this article. They did help give it a definition by giving the new versions something from which to distance themselves. The word is accessibility, not purity. Brigandage, for instance, want to encourage punk fellow-travellers who might be scared off by the anarchist extremists. This is a shift of strategy rather than a change of heart. But there's still a sense of disaffection. Bob Short of Blood & Roses has a keen sense of anarchy but is against it on the unusual ground that if it were achieved, it would put an end to further progress. It's this kind of abstract argument that has difficulty getting out of the squat and down to practicalities. And no amount of imported earnest Italians could persuade these diffident dissidents to abandon idealism and individualism for the great leap forward of materialism. There's always that complacent British satisfaction with having good intentions. THE GREAT ROCK'N'ROLL MYSTERY Two things in rock are really easy to conjure up without trying very hard: a loud noise and an air of mystery. For the latter, you just drop a few hints and your audience fall over themselves to do the rest. A lack of irony, playfulness and humour; a handful of horror images (both the supernatural and the violent varieties), a need to conjure up an aura... You can see it in The Birthday Party, Bauhaus or Theatre Of Hate in their various way: Groups like those, especially the latter two are straws in the wind. Bauhaus would be the band in the scene (even if the fiercest demon they conjure up is Ziggy Stardust) but they're so acutely polished and commercial. Being "underground" is mysterious in itself. There's a constellation of images, mainly familiar ones from films or cartoons - who have also been taken up more rigidly and crassly by heavy metal - that fit the sensibility. Most of them are linked by the unseen Figure of Death, The silhouette of the Great Reaper himself turns up on the Sex Gang Children's single labels (By coincidence, he's also on the label of the current Rip Rig & Panic single, "Beat The Beast", which takes jazz to Blood & Roses' Crowley territory). Playing with the images of death is a running theme through youth culture, particularly those circles in which real chances are taken with an early grave, like Hell's Angels or drug-fixated groups. Such history builds up the resonances of the symbols There's a coherence here that is the opposite of the blind alleys, tricks and evasions of punk as she was first spoken. It's neater: the music is mostly competently played and by now traditional, a support for a cloud of images that you've run across before. You're halfway there before you start. It's no problem to fail in with much of the new punk if you want. |
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| BLOOD & ROSES To his credit, Bob Short doesn't trade on his interest in Aleister Crowley's Art of Magick. True, he's fond of joss sticks, and the group does sometimes perform with black candles on stage ("The fans bring them!"). And it's fair to say he's some- thing of a paranormal, one of those people who interprets or invents coincidences as being arranged by some mysterious all-pervading force. He interprets the emergence of a loose social group around bands like Blood & Roses. Sex Gang Children and Southern Death Cult in this way, rather than ascribing it to smaller and more down-to-earth causes; the search for novelty, for instance. In a loopy Zig Zag piece on Blood & Roses last year, a very impressionable interviewer recounted all sorts of fringe stuff about astral projection and so on. It makes good sensational copy but Bob explains the Art in much more respectable and restrained terms: "There are three important factors in Magick. The first one is that any act of change made in accordance with your desires is an act of magick. |
| The second one is do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, love is the law, love under will. The third point is that magick's for all. That means it's not just if you want to be a guru, an ego trip like that. Making an effort to be the best is an act of magick." The rest of the group seem to be happy enough with it as far as that definition goes. They're an unassuming bunch who don't make any great claims for the music and don't even especially want to talk about it. Like Brigandage, they sometimes sound like The Sex Pistols and I like them, sometimes they sound like Siouxsie and I don't. Their single, "Love Under Will" is a due example of punk formality. The music is third-gear three chord punk, a traditional arrangement for a basic Crowley manifesto as above. One thing they manage (though perhaps only through shyness) is the lack of distinc�tion between themselves and their audience. They don't have the tiresome high stringing of Sex Gang Children and their need to make people concentrate on them. Bob: "We make music, yeah, but I think it's purely soundtrack. It's just the music that's going on when everyone's in the room together." And how would they express the new attitude-not-a-movement? The bands that are around now are making a genuine attempt to be different. That's the common denominator. That's the only justification ot the term 'movement'." BRIGANDAGE "We're a punk group." No ifs or buts. Michelle (the singer) is perfectly clear from the very first sentence past the introductions about what Brigandage are. Pronouced by her 'Brigandaahzh', as in Steve and Rusty's Visahzh, the name is a nod to McLaren' s notion of banditry. Like many of the people associated with this scene, Michelle is old enough (23) to have known what it was like first time round. Like Richard North, who pitched a banner for the movement ('Positive Punk') in the NME a few weeks ago, she believes in punk progress. (Six years to get to this? What patience!). Brigandage do present themselves in a positive fashion. They look at the same time like punks and like individuals with self-respect. And quite a lot of the time they sound bless 'em, not unlike The Sex Pistols. They are people who want to stay punks, but don't want to decline slowly and squalidly from year zero. As such, their look and their music is a viable formula. FEAR OF FUNK The Tribe is a one-nighter run by Cloudy and held at a once legendary gay club up West. Keep it dark and don't let them get comfortable is the guideline for the decor. Which is right for the two undergrounds using the place, although it wouldn't do for the mythical creatures with no visible means of support for whom the party never stops or gets any more diverting. The prices at the Tribe are more in their range; not astronomical, but liable to encourage observers rather than observees. Those Old records records they play sound suprisingly fresh if you haven't heard them for five years, but it's a nice club which would be a lot better if the music vvas more daring. At the moment, it's an odd place which, like the scene in general, is still working from an image to an identity. It's a bit gawky and really very punk especially compared to the largely vacuous, sporadically venomous and very faded London club circuit. SEX GANG CHILDREN It is snowing. Photographer Mike Laye and I have gone to Stevenage to see the live Sex act. The gig is in a little sports hall. The Comic Strip's Bad News Tour episode has just been shown - the one where a struggling band's progress up the M1 leads to pre-gig trauma and one member threatening to leave and take the PA with him. I amuse myself with the coincidence... When we contact the group, it turns out that the drummer had just left, taking the van with him, so the group had to dash for the train along with their fans. Nothing can stop me after this, and I have a perfectly entertaining evening doing desultory vox pops with drunks. The morning after, the Children and I do a faltering interview. They are very cross about the idea of THE FACE inventing a movement. "What I'd like to say to the London music press." complains bass player Dave Roberts, "is stop standing on your fucking pedestal and looking down on those kids across the country, as they do. Instead they should turn around and give them some confidence, like we're trying to!" Next they try and persuade me that they are not a rock band, which strikes me as precious coming from a guitar/bass/drums vocals outfit who, it can safely be said, do not play bossa novas. Much of their spiel is special pleading: they're desperate to be different, and they push their songs well beyond the safe work�ing limits of what talent they have. The effect is like a race between the instruments and the voice to lose each other and get to the end of the song on their own. The group are so tense and twisted that I can't help but guess that they like it that way. So there I was with a useless tape, less than pleased. Then I ran into Andi, the singer, who wasn't happy about it either. Off the spot and without recording, we got on okay - as long as we weren't actually talking about the group. Terry, the guitarist, gave me a copy of the LP, which has a very good sleeve that avoids doing the obvious and trading on the gothic. The lyrics are printed on the inside. They're hopelessly convoluted and belong to the rock school of apocalyptic masochism, but do show that they are thinking, and, from what I can make out, that they have some sense of right, wrong and politics. One thing they are is sincere - to the point of sounding self-righteous - complete�ly committed to what they are doing. If they would only display the sense of parody they say they have...Unless it's all parody? Anyway, I've come to terms with them,and I'm cheerily writing this piece when Mike phones me to say that the Children aren't coming out to play. So you'll have to buy another magazine to find out .what they look like. |
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| THE WHIP The Whip was good during the first few years of its life, when it lived happily. Then I noticed that it had been born evil. An extraordinary fatality. Whenever he kissed a little pink-faced child, he felt like tearing open its cheeks with a razor. And he would have done so very often had not Justice, with its long train of punishments prevented him. He was no liar, admitted the truth and said that he was cruel. The Whip, drenched with unrestrained savagery and menace unveils a strange world. One of angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and lunatics. Delirious, erotic, blasphemous and grandiose by turns. See before you a monster. The Whip's face I am glad you cannot perceive, though it is far less horrible than its soul. Beware the painful impression he will not fail to leave upon your imagination. Become fierce and find your way across his desolate and poisonous swamps. |
| THOSE NEW CLOTHES The main title of this piece isn't simply sceptical. The actual clothes are fine. Indi�vidualism as a political position is a liberal dead end, but in dress and lifestyle it's a joy to behold. No single basic uniform emerges but you can tell it when you see it. There's an open approach to dressing, a desire to look good and a slight punky edge of toughness (not machismo). It's a look to live with rather than a moment's rebellious gesture. Not that it's particularly new. For what it's worth, the studs, leather and jeans worked their way (via the gay clubs?) back into the |
| West End wardrobe, oh, ages ago. The music came later and it still doesn't seem crucial. Easy as it would be to make some sort of equation like 'tough music for tough times', the return of rock in all its hard banality is more likely a result of boredom with funk and bright new pop. There's a group squeezed between the complicity of the ex-punks (and their elders) and the pop kids. Both of these avoid rock for different reasons. In between, there are lots of people who will want a rock experience. They want to be in that crowd in front of that stage. They want to be all facing that same way, not |ust dancing around to records. At the least, they need the semblance of pas�sion, even if it's only sweat and noise. The aura of mystery helps because it never delivers, only entices. On another level, music doesn't matter. Heaven was pack�ed for Southern Death Cult (This group looms small in this piece because one of its members vetoed any cooperation with THE FACE. One looks forward to such firm princi�ples being applied to appearances on Top Of The Pops). I doubt very much that many of the customers had seen them before, and I should imagine many would go along with the person overheard the next night, "Y'know. I woke up this morning and I still didn't feel any better about Southern Death Cult". The group fills a theatrical need. It doesn't really matter what the bulk of the audience thought of them, they'll do for now. To paraphrase Bob Short, it's the right back�ground noise for a social event. Further ahead, as the charts indicate the growth of a new market with no shame about wanting rock, it's a correct background noise for the time. But it's okay, this new scene. It's indi�vidualistic and positive - though it defines that positiveness negatively against other kinds of punk; pack punk, overcommitted purist punk, drug and glue swamped punk, punk that cuts its nose off to spite society's face. No doubt some will disclaim the punk label before you can say bandwagon, but they can't escape their roots! The doom 'n' gothic theme is another way of expressing gloom - which doesn't square with the Positive Principle - another version of long raincoat music, but more kitsch. It also allows a dose of very silly mysticism (which is hardly progressive, except in the old sense of Progressive Rock) an airing it doesn't merit. There's a quiet but significant leaning towards political idealism, as expressed by small labels and opposition to commercial pop. It's liberal, not radical, and it tends to end up having faith in faith itself. As style it's fine, as a faith it's insipid. What can be said for it is that it gives people hope, and that is not a quality to sneer at nowadays. The new clothes are very nice, but they shouldn't be blown up into the New Clothes of the folk tale. It's only a new combination of themes we've seen before and it wouldn't be anything without that familiarity. There's a ghost hanging around whose words seem to have persisted like the Cheshire Cat's grin . "The Sex Pistols are an attitude, not a band " Ever have the feeling that you're hearing an echo that just won't go away? THE END |
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