ONCE UPON A TIME VOL 86 - U.K. '82 # 3

Le dernier volume pour l'année 82 consacré au punk britannique. Six ans après "Anarchy in The UK" ou "New Rose", si certains lancent le slogan "Punk's not Dead", un article de Bushell dans Sounds intitulé "Punk is Dead" jette un froid. C'est en décembre 82 que se réunit un "aréopage" pour un colloque sur la question.
Les participants: Hoxton Tom (4 Skins), Steve Drewett (Newtown Neurotics), Beki Bondage (Vice Squad), Mensi (Angelic Upstarts), Vi Subversa (Poison Girls), Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Colin Jerwood (Conflict), Del (videur du Vortex), Attila (Poet), Gal (Coming Blood), Garry Bushell (Gonads, journaliste), Johnny Waller & Winston Smith (journalistes). Un extrait assez intéressant ci-dessous...

Vi: "I think we've got to stop talking about punk as being just about music and about bands,it's an expression right? We're expressing something, and we're using music as a medium. But if it stays within there, then we're going to become either ignored or just so much fodder and so much product. Unless punk is started to become defined outside the definition of music, then we're wasting our time."
Steve: '. . . What you said earlier was right. I'd like to hear punk records on the radio, and talking about taking a view from old age pensioners, a section of society which has now become discarded by society because they're past the age of working, therefore they're no longer ploughing money into the system. I mean the only old age pensioner view you get is on something like the Tweets, or around Christmas time, 'Grandad'."Isn't punk the music of the underdog though? I mean that's basically what it should be, and why cut off some parts of the underdog? "They should have a channel to express their views as well, and it should be on the radio, but the radio's not giving it, and even though it's never been as good as it should be, there was more exposure of those ideas before than there is now."
Waller: "Is it because the late 76 early '77, punk was more concentrated, and now, as you say, it's gone out and split up, and also it was new; and because it's split up there's less of a movement, and that's maybe why you (Bushell) think it's dead, because it is far less concentrated."
Beki: "It wasn't perfect in '77 though was it? It was far from perfect, there's loads of glaring contradictions in it. It was basically people walking on thin ice, trying to find their feet, deciding what they wanted to sing about."
Tom: "Steve, you're talking about records, the establishment and all that, but we know what it's like, right? It's right hard to change it. We're all moaning about not getting on the radio and all this, so can anybody think of a positive way we can change things?"
Waller: "Is everyone here agreed that punk should be trying to change things, or does anyone think it's just a different form of entertainment?"
Tom: "Can it change things, or will it though?"
Steve: "If only it changes people's minds; If someone had a view of something that was die-hard, that was set and would not shift, and punk jogged that viewpoint in that person's mind . . ."I don't think you should align yourself with something completely and say 'this is all I believe in,' you should have doubts, doubts should be in your mind all the time so you question everything . . .
Attila: "We're talking about ideas and the way punk gets across these ideas. The way we get them across is obviously through the music, and what I think is really terrible and awful about punk at the moment is that it has become so bloody narrow. I mean there's a whole axis in punk which thinks that punk is shouted tuneless thrash . . ."
Mensi: "Steve, you were saying earlier about gigs, how the kids hang around the walls and how it's all depressing; Well, they've got nothing to be happy about man have they?"
Steve: "Oh I know, but the music should lift them for a while, and make them think at the same time."
Mensi: "How can the music lift them when we've been saying the same things for four years and they've seen no breakthrough whatsoever? They only get more and more depressed."

(Vi Sub versa picks up a copy of the notorious 'Punk Is Dead' article and turns to Garry Bushell . . .)

"From here it seems you've thrown out nearly everybody. I mean I love Conflict, I love Colin, but down here he's the only one left; and I mean where does that leave the rest of us? Why are we all sitting round here talking about punk?"
Bushell: "I'm talking about the audience more than anything, and I'm also talking about bands. I mean lots of people moan about everything and never do anything about it, that's what really annoys me."
Mensi: "But see it's not as simple as that. You were saying about us not doing benefits and that, but to do a benefit right, you've got to have a PA, you've got to have equipment and you've got to be able to rehearse. Everything costs money, d'you know what I mean?"
Tom: "That's just an excuse, everyone's saying they can't afford it. I mean to set up a few prisoners' rights gigs, and PROP made £500 to print up a book, but that's not hip any more. Nobody gives a toss.
"It's like you're all saying why ain't our music on the radio: It's because we're not hip no more? We're gone, we're the fuckin' same as Elvis . . ."
Mensi: "No, but we haven't gone, we're still here!"
Steve: "You don't have to be hip, bollocks to being hip."
Tom: "But Steve, I know that and you know that, but how do the radio people know that?"
Mensi: "But Tom, we never had vast amounts of radio play anyway."
Tom: "I know, that's what I'm saying. Everybody's moaning about a campaign for punk radio now, but was there one in '77/'78 or what?"
Winston: "Do you think there's enough good punk to go on the radio though?"
Steve: "Yeah there is."
Beki: "You could play all the old stuff couldn't you . . ."
Attila: "Well look, the latest Upstarts single is a classic right? If that got airplay it would have been top ten, no sweat. I've heard it once on the radio.'
Tom: "Why worry about the charts though?"
Waller: "Listen, there are tons of records that different sorts of people think about; I mean heavy metal records, new romantic records or whatever. I mean it's not exclusively punk."
Mensi: "Johnny, that's shit!"
Waller: "I mean no-one at Radio One will have heard of the Newtown Neurotics, and that's why you don't get played; It's not just because you're punk as such. If you'd had a hit already . . ."
Mensi: "We had a hit with Teenage Warning' right? We were on Top Of The Pops with it. The next single, 'Never Had Nothing', I could count it's radio plays on one hand . . . With four fingers chopped off!"
Steve: "You're all talking about national radio; now the local radio scene is terrible. They don't even cater for the bands in their area."
Waller: "But are you genuinely bothered about that? Do you want to be on local radio?"
Attila: "Yeah, why not? Why the sodding hell not?"
Steve: "I do. I'd have thought you'd get on local radio easier than national radio, and I don't want to hear country and western . . ."
Tom: "So we can all sell more records, is that what it is? Why are we all so fuckin' worried about it?"
Attila: "Well if you're doing something . . ."
Tom: "Doing what? Becoming the new establishment and getting more records out on Radio One? So we become the new housewives' choice, the oldies of the future? Bollocks!"
Attila: "No, if you're doing something you want it to get across to most people right?"
Tom: "We're on Radio One then, so the housewives sit and say 'what a nice record that is ..." Why are we all so fuckin' worried?" 
Attila: "They won't say that, they'll say it's out of order . . ."


Vol 86 - U.K. '82 # 3

01_Destructors - Agent Orange (Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, '82)
02_External Menace - Don't Conform (Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, '82)
03_Dead Katts - Fun Wars (Bristol, City of Bristol, '82)
04_Disorder - Remembranse Day (Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, '82)
05_Threats - Politicians & Ministers (Dalkeith, Midlothian, '82)
06_Vice Squad - Tomorrow's Soldier (Bristol, City of Bristol, '82)
07_Criminal Class - Fighting The System (Coventry, West Midlands, '82)
08_4 Skins - Low Life (London, Greater London, '82)
09_No Cover - 200 Voices (Peterlee, County Durham, '82)
10_TDA - TDA (Rainham, Kent, '82)
11_Expelled - Make It Alone (Leeds, West Yorkshire, '82)
12_Last Resort - King Of The Jungle (Herne Bay, Kent, '82)
13_Newtown Neurotics - No Sanctuary (Harlow, Essex, '82)
14_Crux - Keep On Running (Nuneaton, Warwickshire, '82)
15_Lunatic Fringe - British Man (Bristol, City of Bristol, '82)
16_Outcasts - Mania (Belfast, Ireland, '82)
17_Electro-Motive Force - Wanted (Northern Ireland, '82)
18_Rabid - Jubille (Leicester, East Midlands, '82)
19_Uproar - Rebel Youth (Peterlee, County Durham, '82)
20_Special Duties - Violent Youth (Colchester, Essex, '82)
21_Splodge - Crabs (London, Greater London, '82)
22_Wall - When I'm Dancing (Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, '82)
23_Stench - Raspberry Cripple (Wolverhampton, West Midlands, '82)
24_Riot Squad - Lost Cause (Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, '82)
25_Xpozez - Nightclub Strategy (Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, '82)
26_Amebix - Beginning Of The End (Tavistock, Devon, '82)
27_Icon AD - You Fight To Kill (Leeds, West Yorkshire, '82)
28_Public Disgrace - Toxteth (Liverpool, Merseyside, '82)
29_Total Chaos - Revolution 10 (Gateshead, Tyne & Wear, '82)

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