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Not Just Bits of Paper
“We have our own words, scrawled on bits of paper smudged with some grimey hope. Angry chords waver out from the broken cassette-players – and every now and again a curious prisoner comes out for a look and never returns.” Tony Drayton
A series of recollections, memories, imagined dreams perhaps from the collective memories of those who lived through the punk and anarcho-punk years. Tales recalled of times past and a glorious tribute to the bands and the crowds who made the 1980’s so special for so many of us.
A series of recollections, memories, imagined dreams perhaps from the collective memories of those who lived through the punk and anarcho-punk years. Tales recalled of times past and a glorious tribute to the bands and the crowds who made the 1980’s so special for so many of us.
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 16, 2015
Great document and testament to those who realised back in the 80's, the need to make your own culture because the one you're being sold is shit.
May 25, 2017
VERY well done. Brilliant history of the UK peacepunk anarcho scene from first hand accounts and flyers and art from the time. Really indispensable if you are into this era of music at all. VERY good stuff.
neglected-unfinished
August 9, 2020I have a small piece in this book, here it is, as a little taster for the book. Though it was changed a little in the edit. I prefer it as I wrote it.
The original idea was to have brief pieces relating to flyers for gigs. So I edited this down from the original, though it was still twice as long as advised. I think it turns out to be one of the shortest things in the book in the end. People had too much to say, I guess.
My piece is related to a Crass gig, February 82, where, it turns out, the band and others left in the building had to barricade themselves in to save themselves from the skinheads, who then went back to the street and found me. To me it's a great little anecdote because of its contradictions, and also its context; time, culture, location even.
There is no flyer for this gig that we found, so what accompanies it is a newspaper ad for it, which is also apt because it also advertises the Wasted Youth gig a couple of weeks later, notorious in local music history for being a gig marred by violence from what appears to be the same gang of skinheads.
Also the location for me, and other locals, is kind of evocative, being right in the area destroyed by brutalist development in the 1970's. Right there, also, in the main location for Alan Moore's Jerusalem.
Seeing a woman discussing her childhood memories of going to church and Sunday school in the comments to a picture on FB of the same location as it looked before this development, I realised that right there in the 1980s, seen from her point of view in 1962 as a child, we were already living in some bizarre dystopian future. The place she went to Sunday school even, right next to where this happened, was the only building left standing in wasteland (now it's gone), squatted (very positively, by a local African-Carribean community organisation), and where I'd first seen Discharge live, now surrounded by a huge, brick, brutalist bus station and a concrete multi-storey car park, all the shops, hotel, houses, etc., of her time gone. A totally different scene to her childhood view of it, especially with Discharge playing, glue sniffing, etc.
Here's the location. Moving away from the photographer's viewpoint, that piece of road running downwards, after the red bus, towards Spring Boroughs, and the Express Lifts Tower in the far distance, is the stretch of road where this all happened. The bus station the huge brick building to the right of the photographer, the multi-storey further down to the right of that stretch of road.
So, these little anecdotes, and their context, the truth of them, the 'banality' of them set in a very far from meaningless bigger context, is basically the intent and accomplishment of this book and others in the series.
I haven't read it all yet, so no rating for now.
The original idea was to have brief pieces relating to flyers for gigs. So I edited this down from the original, though it was still twice as long as advised. I think it turns out to be one of the shortest things in the book in the end. People had too much to say, I guess.
My piece is related to a Crass gig, February 82, where, it turns out, the band and others left in the building had to barricade themselves in to save themselves from the skinheads, who then went back to the street and found me. To me it's a great little anecdote because of its contradictions, and also its context; time, culture, location even.
There is no flyer for this gig that we found, so what accompanies it is a newspaper ad for it, which is also apt because it also advertises the Wasted Youth gig a couple of weeks later, notorious in local music history for being a gig marred by violence from what appears to be the same gang of skinheads.
Also the location for me, and other locals, is kind of evocative, being right in the area destroyed by brutalist development in the 1970's. Right there, also, in the main location for Alan Moore's Jerusalem.
Seeing a woman discussing her childhood memories of going to church and Sunday school in the comments to a picture on FB of the same location as it looked before this development, I realised that right there in the 1980s, seen from her point of view in 1962 as a child, we were already living in some bizarre dystopian future. The place she went to Sunday school even, right next to where this happened, was the only building left standing in wasteland (now it's gone), squatted (very positively, by a local African-Carribean community organisation), and where I'd first seen Discharge live, now surrounded by a huge, brick, brutalist bus station and a concrete multi-storey car park, all the shops, hotel, houses, etc., of her time gone. A totally different scene to her childhood view of it, especially with Discharge playing, glue sniffing, etc.
Here's the location. Moving away from the photographer's viewpoint, that piece of road running downwards, after the red bus, towards Spring Boroughs, and the Express Lifts Tower in the far distance, is the stretch of road where this all happened. The bus station the huge brick building to the right of the photographer, the multi-storey further down to the right of that stretch of road.
So, these little anecdotes, and their context, the truth of them, the 'banality' of them set in a very far from meaningless bigger context, is basically the intent and accomplishment of this book and others in the series.
I haven't read it all yet, so no rating for now.
June 15, 2018
I'm slowly reading this and enjoying all the memories and anecdotes. It includes several people I had heard of but never knew back in the day. Ice to read about them and their experiences now that I know them better.
Great flyers of gigs I either went to or would have wanted to go to. I'm about halfway through.
Great flyers of gigs I either went to or would have wanted to go to. I'm about halfway through.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews