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"All the power in the hands of
the people rich enough to buy it"
(Clash - White
Riot)
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Its hard to believe in this cradle of
democracy that people in authority and power could try so hard to
repress punk music. As we have seen record labels wanted nothing
to do with it believing it a fad and at first music writers
dismissed it as well still stuck in mid seventies time warp.
Unfortunately 2 incidents made it public increasing its notoriety
and thus helping disseminate what they wanted to repress. The
first was a glass thrown at the 100 Club punk festival which
injured a girl and was reported by the tabloid media who then
became fascinated by the violence, anger and one suspects the
clothes of punkettes in a frenzy of moral outrage. The second was
the Bill Grundy swearing on live national tv which doubled the
interest and outrage. As a result of these incidents many local
councils and venues banned punk groups from playing ( Menace - GLC)
Repression always spawns a subculture which
in turn is accepted back into the mainstream. We had clubs that
played specifically punk music, fanzines that promoted local
bands etc and record labels sprang up to release the songs of
punk bands.
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And places to play. At this time there
was a well established rock circuit where you were expected to
learn your trade and pay your dues. If there's one thing that punk
did it was to smash this. Armed with three chords bands multiplied
like cockroaches and they needed places to play. I'm sorry if I
concentrate on London. The Roxy Club and Vortex were the main
clubs where nearly all the punk bands first cut their teeth. The Roxy
was open only 100 nights and set up by Andy Czezowski. Both have
live albums. The Roxy is particularly interesting with its little
snippets of conversation and photos. Other places such as the Hope and
Anchor and Nashville also put on punk
bands. It helped that they were owned by the management Albion,
who had The Stranglers and 999 under their wing. |
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Fanzines such as
Ripped and Torn and
Sniffin' Glue were formed. The
latter by Mark Perry and featuring the writing of Danny Baker featured bands and the legendary
"Here's a
picture of a chord and another one and another one - now go form
a band." . Shoddily
zeroxed or photocopied these fanzines
kept the fans in touch with what was going on. This was
especially essential in local areas - I well remember my copy of
Teeside Smells !!! |
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| At the same time
record
labels sprang up,
the most famous being
Stiff
(Damned, Adverts),
Step
Forward ( Chelsea, Sham 69),
Illegal ( Menace),
The Label
(Eater),
Raw (Users, Killjoys etc),
Small Wonder (Menace
& Angelic
Upstarts) and loads more like Bonaparte,
Chiswick, Rough
Trade and Deptford Fun City. Inevitably these labels didn't sell many
records as the major record companies cherry picked the best
artists or deliberately ruined others (Cortinas). |
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| Soon every major label had its quota of punk
bands and punk bands/fans would regularly be in the press more as
creatures in a zoo. As the shock wore off that the barbarians weren't at the gate, punk died off to come back in an ever more
tribal form that backed itself in a corner with the oi/ hardcore
movement. The graffiti and song " No Fun" had come to
pass and we all moved on. |
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