“People tend to forget that it (punk) wasn't all about postcard punks on the King’s Road - the heart of it all was scruffy little shits in small towns getting beaten up by bikers and skinheads all the time”
(Kenny Brooks, The Brakes, pictured, quoted in ‘No More Heroes’ by Alex Ogg.)
As a belated footnote (after thought?!) to the recent Scabs post, a couple of books that I helped out on with some Exeter punk related info have recently been published by Cherry Red Books.
Firstly ’No More Heroes’ by Alex Ogg covers some of the many obscure KBD/DIY bands from the seventies UK punk scene and features interviews/articles on The Scabs, The Brakes and the Dangerous Girls. The second book which features Exeter bands Metro Youth and The Waste, is 'The Day The Country Died', Ian Glasper’s follow up to his acclaimed look at the UK82 punk scene 'Burning Britain', which concentrates on the anarcho bands that followed in the wake of Crass during the late seventies and eighties. The third and final volume in Ian’s look at the eighties UK punk scene, focussing on early UK hardcore, will feature a band from my own punk rock past, Mad At The Sun.
Here’s some related music featuring a track each by The Fans (‘Looking Glass World’, an unreleased studio track from 1978 featuring one of the prime movers on the early Exeter punk scene, Len Gammon, who is interviewed in ‘No More Heroes’), Dangerous Girls (‘I Don’t Want To Eat With The Family’, a track from the bands first 7’’ from 1979), Metro Youth (‘Brutalised’, taken from the ‘Year Zero-Exeter Punk 1977-2000’ compilation album) and Mad At The Sun (‘When Vision Becomes Blurred’, recorded in 1989 and currently available on Boss Tuneage Records Mad At The Sun anthology CD ‘Hot Snow Falling’)
Exeter Punk In Print-The Soundtrack!
3 comments:
If you'd be so kind... Info required for dodgy novel about dodgy punk band in 1981. Can anyone remember or point me at lists of pub venues which were booking punks and the like during that year. Just looking to insert my fictitious band into likely environments.
Well, there was the Merry Monk [later Barts] on Batholomew Street, the Printers Pie [which I think was then called The Greyhound], a really crappy nightclub by Exe Bridges that had some great bands on at the time[The Psychedelic Furs, for example, before they gothed out], and the even crappier Caprice Club beneath a posh hotel where I remember seeing bands like The Waste, Jon Beast and DV8
Finally, there was the amazing UB40 centre occupation in 1985, when the main meeting room became a gid space and all sorts played - including Garage Grinders, TAXI and Field of Crosses - that was known as the Pig and baliff, for obvious reasons, and was a quite extraodinary burst of anarchic life in the city. Ah! happy days!
I WENT TO A FEW GIGS IN EXETER IN THE LATE 80S TO SEE BANDS SUCH AS SNUFF,MC4,PERFECT DAZE,SENSELESS THINGS I TAPED ALL THE BANDS I SAW INC MAD AT THE SUN,ANAL VOYAGE,REALLY GREAT NIGHTS OUT AWAY FROM PLYMOUTH WERE I LIVED THE DRUMMER OF MAD AT THE SUN PUT ME UP ONCE WHICH WAS CWELL COOL GREAT BLOG AND AN INTERSTING READ...COME OVER AND TAKE A LOOK AT MY BLOG AT http://mrmagoomc4.blogspot.com/ AND GRABYOUR SELF SOME DOWNLOADS CHEERS KEITH
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