twenty odd years now

[This was a late one, as is fairly obvious.]

I suck. This month my critical faculties have entered meltdown phase due to that annoying bug of everything happening at once, which has resulted in this here thing, normally a refuge to write in a sea of more pesky tasks, being left way late, then I even sent last month’s one thinking it had yet to arrive (what a schmuck) as there are very few outlets for this blessed paper in London, its hard to get hold of so I go on my failing memory to remember the difference between drafted, sent and published. Any raging inaccuracies (with regards to arguments and their actually standing up) I can put down to the fact I didn’t proofread, and thus somehow remove all culpability for my foolishness? Somehow. Part of my absconding from ‘real life’ and chucking in a mistaken attempt at careerism, thus losing the ability to organise my brain, has including taking on various temporary shift jobs, and i’ve been lucky enough to get some at some kind of interesting places, the British Museum for one and the Southbank Centre secondarily…

Anyway, it’s currently 8am, I worked a 13 hour shift yesterday, today I am dogsitting a swiss hound called Biagio who’s actually Italian (don’t ask) and going for a ‘meeting’ at a very important gallery to fake acting very important about doing scarily important things, then somehow go to work for another night, to serve ice creams and overpriced programmes to the Orchestral cognoscenti, that is to say, the aged Generation who still recognise the strains of Dvorak over the din. I work increasing amounts of shifts in the Royal Festival Hall, which is the part of the Southbank centre on the river here that looks most like a relic from brighter post-War period – It was built for the Festival of Britain, where it was constructed as a ‘tonic for the nation’. It’s a huge 3000 seat auditorium, a palimpsest to changing ideas of ‘innovative’ architecture, so that Brutalist post-war British concrete angularity juts out into the Thames, buffered only by more 1990s style attempts at water features and glass frontage. Underneath it is probably London’s most well known area to skateboard, but its all location scouts and mall grabs. It’s one of the few ‘cultural complexes’ in London to operate an ‘open foyer’ policy, and I find this, and how people react to it, endlessly fascinating. Lots of the walls on the lower floors are mirrored, which means, despite the overwhelming bias towards classical performance, in the Royal Festival Hall part at least (there are lots of other smaller spaces within the building) it is not an uncommon sight to see an impromptu troupe of criminally determined dancers staring at their synchronicity, bodypopping to this week’s ringtones (did that make me sound about fifty? Shit i’m so not ‘urban’) out of tinny mobile phone speakers. Over and over again for sometimes far longer than my shift lasts. Patrons mostly just widen their eyes and step daintily over tracksuit bottoms to make it through to their £60 seats. That said, management recently rearranged a set of ‘lazy chairs’ to make it so that a certain area was less attractive to homeless people, which shows something of a less laissez-faire attitude, but it’s not uncommon to find a sleeping bag stuffed in a corner, jettisoned for more reliable heat. Still, it shuts at 11pm.

The staff at the Royal Festival Hall are an incredible testament to the over-qualification of service industry staff in this country, symptomatic of all that implies, but it produces this bizarre situation where the staff cloakroom becomes a contact zone for all kinds of amazing conversation about people’s ‘real work.’ Everyone is writing or doing or making between shifts. Mostly graduates or practitioners in their field trying to supplement meagre income, art theorists work next to choreographers, electronic musicians next to confused punks (hi.) United by precarity and smiling in the face of time-sheets and queue management duty, I snag my fingers on illustrious patrons arty coats, make small talk about a man unbeknownst to me before I began work there: Yevgeny Sudbin, a young Russian virtuoso pianist and favourite of the old ladies who have season tickets, including an amazing woman who was tiny and smelt of pine cones, who told me she ‘just wanted to touch him.’ Amazing. I don’t complain, because last week I got to watch John Cale perform the entirety of Paris 1919 for free (the programme’s not entirely classical) its actually really easy work and it dampens my wider guilt at being agency staff in a unionised environment to know that noone seems to resent it. Work is a strange beast, work on the front line of the UK’s much-vaunted (yet slowly subsiding into the economic mud) ‘cultural sector’ stranger still.

So the dog has just realised that his mirror image is not just another dog and is going mental. This is going to be fun. His ears are literally bigger than his head. Amongst the world of things I need to do is book flights to Austin Texas for a little festival I don’t think anyones going to, and then a connecting flight to SF for a month of honourary shitwork. I couldn’t be more excited! If you or anyone you know is subletting or has a spare room, attic, half a room or shed (!) anywhere in the general bay area I guess, for around a month and wouldn’t mind the company of a baffled Brit, I’d be really interested to hear from you. I decided I had to stay until at least that Eddy Current show or I’d never forgive myself, so I’ll be around til July, but I can always head back to my old haunt, the fuh-fuh reaky filmset gothic of permanently empty hostel El Capitan. Fear. I’m really quite nice most of the time, do a good mushroom and cashew strudel and put the seat down. Seriously, please get at me on bryonybeynon@gmail.com

A final note: When mysterious guy hardcore has a Facebook group and the Youth Attack store sells t-shirts made from bin liners (how-you-say.. trash bags?) it’s possibly time to admit the mystique you’re crying out for will not be found in manufactured rarity, codified hype, cassette tapes you’ll never play, or some digital cash flow for the gotta-catch-em-all pokemon punks. Please kill me.. as a wise man once said.

[This was heavily criticised by many people: just to clarify, I used examples, sometimes they're good, sometimes they're not so suitable, or pretty weak/out of context. I concede that arguing for new, aggressive self-representation is a bit flawed if  you're putting words in people's mouths they didn't ask for. Silly bryony. Still, for the last time, this wasn't written about any particular people or bands, but hey, Punk offends, world keeps turning.]

1. British winters are a peculiar breed. The problem is usually their interminable averageness. No deep freeze or breathtaking wind, just a slow procession of drizzle and grey-blue total cloud cover that today has the effect of making the high-rises across the road seem to blend into the sky. This year has been slightly more dramatic, yes we’ve had a few inches snow here and there, yes (of course) this was reported as a national ‘event’ which would make most more snow-acclimatised countries laugh the tennis raquets off their feet. This being Britain, the ‘freak’ weather came complete with, a few days into the ‘crisis’, much tabloid-newspaper consternation that the distribution of grit for the roads and pavements was an income dependent post-code lottery. Of course they weren’t inciting class war really, just having a futile moan, and as usual the sentiment melted faster than the icy stuff itself, leaving them to get back on with lambasting the usual cause of ‘Broken Britain’ – Polish lesbian Black immigrants (possibly Jewish) that are hellbent on establishing Sharia Law and anally penetrating your kids. Okay that may have been a bit of a skim read, and yes, while I’m more than lucky to not share a country with Limbaugh et al, here we are in the company of cancerous journo-turds like Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn, whose not-so-latent fascism still gets bought into way too much for my liking.

2. ‘So Tough! So Cute!’ Right on rampage, no apologies.

Why does a band described thus make me so angry? It’s not even for a gig, or a punk night, it’s another of these increasingly derivative and weird fetishisations of the symbolism and referents of riotgrrl for the purposes of a ‘themed’ night at some abberation ‘oh-but-everyone’s-going’ deadbeat bar in East London. Sooo when girl bands supposedly taking queues from messthetics and Delta 5 are sandwiched between DJs, and described happily as ‘So Tough! So Cute!’ I can’t help but make everything all awkward (damn me) and at least raise the question. Am I only heightening the awful otherness by wondering where the politics and self-criticism went? Doesn’t it matter anymore? There are more and more girls in bands in London and its more than exciting in a way, but seems everyones got peculiar ambitions and certainly noone appears to wanna challenge how they’re represented and mediated as women, or as a band, noone is being ballsy or worried about it. What does it means when, as I saw the other week, ten ‘helpful’ boys rush the stage at the sound of a coy ‘oh gosh, how do you work this amp!?’ tee hee!? Also, that familiar sort of ironic sing-song vocal delivery of that kind of bored-style talky disaffected stripped down lady punk was so powerful to me when I first heard it, presicely because of what they WERE saying, hidden in that seemingly dispassionate tone. The next step seems to have been to sing in a way that sure sounds like that, but make lyrics so happily content/context-void so as to neuter the whole shebang, Someone swapped a manifesto for guestlist spots, now the Minorest of all threats, made frilly enough to warrant a predatory ‘give us a twirl’ from the soundman. Fuck.

Back in the summer we played a few gigs with with Finally Punk, at one in particular I felt really weird and I couldn’t put my finger on it apart from one-way desire from audience to stage, as the band, who seemed at one with each other in a really awesome psychic way, stripped off to just t-shirts and knickers and frolicked about. They are all classically beautiful, toned and American, a deadly trio for English boys natch, and it was warm, and the band clearly didn’t give a fuck, of course, but the hope that they, well, that they might, if you catch my drift, well it felt palpable in that sweaty room, in a way that unnerved me, and I’m not a prude by any stretch. I read this quote ‘The idea of women empowering themselves by becoming sexual objects is backward. It seemed brilliant at one point, but it had really bad ramifications. Things lose their context so quickly.’ Okay it’s Kim Gordon and theres a whole other kettle of fish right there, but my worry is just that bar room sexism finds its comfiest home when everyone or even just a few people, think the job is somehow done because there’s girls on stage. Still, thank god, for every wah-wah-lalala-content-bankrupt band like Pens, there is a band like CHAPS from Bristol. (I wish the ratio was actually that way, but you get my meaning – http://www.myspace.com/chapsforever)

A few months ago, we went to a gig (it always starts the same way.) Some power pop bands played, some great ones, some not so great, some that made me question if this was really all that punk whilst having me tapping my toes so frenetically i forgot the question. After the set of one of the touring, female-fronted supports from the US, I found myself in conversation with some boy-friends, one ventured, still in a dreamlike state, and the other quickly backed up, that there is just something ‘so damn hot’ about a girl being in a band. After calling them creepy weirdos, I began to wonder about where this strange ‘hot’ came from, if it was something to do with the woman being so precisely in the proverbial spotlight that the usually kind of covert sexualised gaze is given automatic space for the duration of the set at least, and that’s maybe boner-enducing? At the same show, talking about this with a girl-friend of mine, she criticised the singer of said band for ‘playing right into their hands’ by being sugary and ‘too inoffensive’ – even just for being blonde! Now I peg that as kind of unhelpful. Personal politics shouldn’t have to come into every musical expression, girl or boy. But then that made me think maybe the weird ‘hot’ thing could be equally due to the fact that being in a band and making music is radical and super fun and that a person that does that and looks like she or he’s having fun is attractive – aka maybe I should chill the fuck out.

There’s surely no accounting for taste, but I’ve been trying to prove to some silly people that you can infact sing in octaves and notes-that-must-be-hit and still be really fucking angry and maybe a bit politically articulate. Like uh, haven’t they heard the Shangri Las? X? Pfft. Trouble is, composure’s one thing in theory, but the self-actualising agency of simply holding a microphone is all too often mitigated by the all-too-real fear that you can see my arse crack, or that i probably am too big for this tshirt and these lights aren’t flattering or that I look a stupid hiefer. (Sure, I talk of manifestos, yet this shit doesn’t stop mattering, somehow.) So recently when we played (with a one-off reunited Zounds, ferchrissakes) the other day, I was SO pumped for it, and then a legion of unbelievably moronic street punk types were being gropey bad bastards the whole way through our set, making shit comments, trying to grab my boobs, getting their dicks out even, I wanted to make a point, be ‘funny’ to diffuse how horrible I felt, some polemic, some kind of neat rebuttal to the butt display, because well, noone else was responding, but instead I just kept mumbling ‘fucking punks don’t get it’ and huffing. Eventually I did slap one of them who made more of move to my boobs than I was prepared to accept, which was weird because I’ve never done that before, and I don’t know if ineffectual violence towards a cider-faced teenage stage penis who was literally almost unconscious-wasted really did much to advance the cause, but needs must. Of course they goofed about during the other bands sets, but in very different ways. I kind of wish they’d gone for the singer of Violent Arrest because that dude would have definitely done better than my pissy slap.

Ultimately, every stage is a fucking minefield and, apart from in cases like that, its not always anyone in this room’s fault. Still, while we continue to stand in in this proverbial room, its gotta be our responsiblity to at least recognise, if not engage with all this stuff in some way, no? Am I going mental? Wah. Clearly i’m working through these ideas as they slap me about the face, not with much in the way of any deeper tools than my own experiences, and maybe it shows, so, ugh, sorry.

3. Threeearworms.

My friend Lenny took me to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons today, which is a massive collection of so many different biological oddities – both human and animal. Pickled walrus tumour, distended sheep’s gut, gigantism sufferer’s skeletons, otter and lizard-face biopsies and more pickled foetuses than you could shake one of their massively brutal seventeenth century forceps at. There was almost definitely some kind of pickled ear-eating worm type monster, too. What i’m saying is I forgot to have lunch before hand and very nearly brought back my coffee on coming across a frog preserved at the moment of tadpole dispatch from weird little chambers in its stomach. RANK. I work as a visitor host at the British Museum, which is a more general (and deeply problematic in too many ways to go into here) ‘treasures of colonialism’ type affair, I just look at mummified stuff all day, and am now eternally glad that there’s little chance of me coming across anything quite as gruesome as the hairpin in the spleen I saw today. Ee gads. Anyway, Earworms, the other meaning. This month has been a more than usual repeated bashing of Securicor by Crass just for the best use of dog breed names in punk, and because it reminds me of Ralph Simmond’s two high-concept ‘name-only’ bands, a queercore darkwave two piece called Penetrating Gaze (ho ho) and primitive dbeat noise in the form of … Pissed Alsatian. If anyone can think of anymore dog songs beyond that Shellac record called ‘Excellent Italian Greyhound’ then email me – I’d like to make a tape. I’m also obsessed with Beer Can Beach by Surf Punks, completely ridiculous sparse bass-led like a jokier more-beach-based Devo dealing mostly with Californian beach turf wars it seems? I’m no expert but the area of South Wales I grew up in had a similar thing, except everyone just pretended to be a ‘Surfie’ and never went near the sea cos it’s fucking freezing. ‘My Beach’ is great as a novelty LP, but bro has definitely got sand in his bloody mouth organ, uncalled for. Either way, I cannot wait for summer to blast this on one side of a tape and Simpletones on the the other. Thirdly, Italian band Chain Reaction for the song ‘Bloody Ways.’ The vocals sound like he’s being flayed and kind of somehow liking it in a dirty way, its hyperspeed fast, easy on the production values and heavy on the accent, so great, tuneful and ballsy. Also Hi, totally not metal, unlike everyone else in 1985. The rest of the EP (Gabiie on Belfagor Records) has songs titled stuff like ‘Your Bloody War’ and ‘Personal Autodistruzione’ so make an informed choice there. I’m listening to this and reading Paulo Virno, and it WORKS, ho ho. If you can get me a copy of this, the email is there for a reason.

4. We finally, after what, six releases, started maintaining a proper internet presence so people can actually buy our records should they choose to, and whatever guff we’ve traded for. I nearly tore my own hands off trying to make it look not shit and then gave up but nevertheless, Dire Records has embraced the future. Where’s my jetpack? (if you want to look or maybe get a Sceptres record – fuck off I know – then god willing it should still be there – www.direrecords.com)

5. Garbled, but eh. So. Deleted from the internet…kind of.. something about planning actions not results and taking advice from semi-strangers. That email-only seems like puritanical cold turkey is weird but probably good. Regaining some semblance of inner life and trying to undo this constant partial attention we’ve had bred into us. I’ve swapped it for reading Walter Benjamin under the duvet (the night before the seminar of course) and that phrase ‘I contain multitudes’ loops on my frozen cycle ride as a hopeful kinda metronome. It’s only nine miles across the city but it feels like an adventure. I wait in library until its dark – four pm – mainly just for the way the high rises look across the river, impotent as every other financial capital now, but London still floors me when least expected. Home and wheezing. Dusty as hell and the glue has dried up to nothing, but I found the first LP ever bought. Played each side five times. Maybe back to the start or maybe reborn, today it’s impossible to tell, but for an accidental stuck groove mantra – You can’t be what you were, so you better start living the life that you’re talking about.

BB – bryonybeynon@gmail.com // http://www.direrecords.com

1. The beard in my life and I took a trip to berlin last week, we have never been so cold before or indeed since…the last time I was in berlin. Minus thirteen. That’s intense when you come from a country that empties its collective bowel (its up to you to pick a county to defile at this point by implying that THAT VERY ONE is the bowel in question) at the sign of some frost. Said Bearded boy’s eponymous facial accessory was all crunchy from icey spit. But hey, warm hearted folk more than made up for it, we shared a living room with sociopathic house rabbit named pok. carried on my irrational obsession with photographing every holiday meal I eat, and this time we ate a whole lot of them. The city is beyond good for vegan options – particular recommendations are Yoyo world in Friedrichshain (hawaiian pizza!) and Vux cafe in Neukolln, for all your Brazilian-inspired cake and bagel needs – with insane things like guava jam in them. No meat, no dairy, no fucking about. Too tasty. Seek them out, and go buy records from Bis Auf’s Messer, I got The Anals 7” and moreover, really like the sensation of browsing records in someones front room, complete with huge cellar door that nearly claimed my young life due to overzealous tape browsing. Thanks Emma and Joe!

2. I was trying to think of musical commonalities shared by most people I know (I work a job that involves lots of staring at walls) and my main conclusion was that I seriously don’t feel like I know a lot of folk who aren’t dealing with a sliding scale of general obsession with Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Testament to this is my having to buy up all four copies of the Goner repress of the first LP when it showed up briefly in Rough Trade East, even at £16 each. Whether it’s a kind of long term slow burn every-evening-after-work record or sudden infatuation (see the song ‘Precious Rose’) for you, I heartily recommend you join us. I recently read that the singer is also a well-known graffiti writer and gallery-showing-type artist as well, and an animist, which I think is something weird about spirits, as if their whole mystique even needed any further propping up. They’ve got me wearing weird gloves at all the most inappropriate moments. At least I can now take comfort knowing I’m not the only one that finds myself howling in a frankly un-pc approximation of that nasal bogan-baiting drawl ‘I deserve, my dessert, uh uh ughhhh, cool ice cream!’ On a Melbourne-related note, can someone please make sure that MV and Steve, both sizeable chunks of my life-support system that have just upped and moved to your city (in a funny repeat of when my parents did the exact same thing five years ago, thanks life!) are both being looked after, oh and get them to buy me a Diamond Sea record? All I see are heavy skies. YES!

3. Bear with me here as I know this sounds like I need a slap and a quick listen to the Cro-Mags (this is normally true regardless), but Tunisian yé-yé music is actually incredible. Nothing moreso than the 1967 legit hit by a woman (although she was no doubt marketed as une petite fille) called Jacqueline Taieb, called ‘7 heures du matin’, that has a The Who-pastiche ‘g.g.g..eneration’ interlude that is probably the sexiest thing to be recorded in le langue d’amour since…oh no wait, Serge Gainsbourg was a total creep. I started researching yé-yé, apparently Gainsbourg was behind some of it but still, think of this as more like a Shangri-las for your younger sister, after she’s been necking cough syrup and fapping furiously. Apologies if you actually have a younger sister and feel a bit weird now.

4. Guinea Kid – demo (repressed recently on not normal tapes) I really, really like this even though it has that slightly confused out-of-place last song thing going on that you occasionally get on demo tapes where the songwriting cohesion has fallen down and there is, in the case of this tape, a cringey breakdown half-timey bit in the last tune, that jars rather sharply with the other songs – tastefully assembled skummy hardcore with the correct amounts of both squall and scree that requires. I have to say I kind of like that the icky tune is on there, though, because it lends an (I’mm cringing at myself here) authenticity that gets me thinking (probably totally inaccurate) they maybe have a longhaired drummer to appease, that is still way into sports metal or something. And that’s cool. Anyway, Guinea Kid may be way overhyped by now, but fucked if i knew that, I stumbled upon this and would recommend checking it out. In an age where so many clamor to be bored of even the most unavailable punk, it’s nice to hear a genuine rag bag of referents that actually rages, and is surely better than the thousands of message board derivatives with ‘i wanna do a band that sounds like blah blah blah-syndrome’ from the usual places exercising levels of stylistic fascism that only serve counter a lot of their own potential.

5. Cold Wave the genre and Cold Cave the apparent ‘band.’ I say stem the tide of mediocrity and resist this reprehensible guff.

6. Completed an almost-sentimental-if-I-wasn’t-so-happy-about-it bank transfer last month, in that I drip fed my last pound of the Queen’s money (well, mine…) into the nefarious and frankly parasitic legion of shit hawks that make up the buy-to-let property market in this country, and paid my last month’s rent to a private landlord. I’ve just moved into one of 8 houses that are part of a housing cooperative in North London, a fact that I still can’t quite believe as they are by no means common here, and this one has an incredible history which I’m going to detail hopefully in the next Modern Hate Vibe by interviewing my ‘housemate’, a 60 year old chain-smoking lefty archaeologist that is both bang on awesome and my buddy’s mum. She and her pals squatted the whole block in the late 70s and has been here ever since, in spite of the wider ravages of Thatcherite reality. Speaking to longer term residents it seems maybe they feel some of the realities of cooperative living can themselves be less than golden, but i’m really hoping i can bring some idealism-borne-of-ignorance to the equation and maybe help spark a little progress where it’s needed. Exciting times!

7. I’m off to cement my simultaneous statuses as world’s coolest auntie and most chastised sister (they asked for transfer tattoos after my last visit, UH OH) by giving my four year old niece ruby her christmas present, her first skateboard. I hope she’ll thank me in twenty years time.

8. I like all music with swagger and balls, send me some at my new house and I will send you some toenails or something, possibly taped to a cassette. Modern Hate Vibe, 12 Richmond Ave, London N1 0NF

Thanks! bryony.beynon@gmail.com // Bryony http://www.bigtakeover.co.uk

I CAN’T TAKE IT NO MORE, I’M BUGGIN’ OUT.

I’m marching out of revolving glass doors on the ground floor of the building I work in. Worked in. It’s the sixth of July 2009 and I have just quit my job to go on tour with the Shitty Limits. In this weirdly unBritish helter-swelter, London feels like holiday. Stepping out onto Leicester sq I seem to have entered some kind of parallel world. Hordes of determined looking youth are jostling for space, crowding around the steps of my work. Getting closer I can see they’re school kids. All from different schools, seemingly? They’re shouting. I am disorientated and a bit disturbed, until it becomes obvious what’s going on. Leicester square is London’s crap version of Sunset Blvd, a ‘cinema quarter’, much less cultural than that sounds, and these are harry potter fans, hundreds of them. Dogged with a look of steely defiance mixed with exhaustion, they’re all Hogwarts colours, handmade everything and underdeveloped ribs pressed against the barriers, preemptively rolled out, as they do for every Tom , Dick and Jonas brother. Lightning bolts gouged into tweenage foreheads. Radcliffe and related cartel aren’t due for a good six hours. It’s fucking tribal. Three girls I lock eyes with are crying. Already. This is fandom. I get on my bike. We could really learn something.

I’m flummoxed, really. Everyone else may have Better records, bigger cities wilder times. I wish I could write like Brace but frankly I don’t have the liver for it. I tried to think about what I know about. After some serious brain defrag, it’s been decided: other than heavy interest in (not always backed up by knowledge of) my two specialist subjects: New York hardcore and Thomas Pynchon, all I’ve really learnt in the last two years is related to the job I have just quit. There’s a peculiar terror in that, but hey, a little background: Aged fifteen, yes I had a skateboard, but it was cheap, I was/am clumsy, the boys just thought I was stupid, so instead as a bored teenagers do these days, I got good at using the computer. somewhere between graduating a degree in English and Cultural Studies (the study of whatever you bloody well please) and the dole queue (they don’t even really make you queue) I got told there might be money in all that screen time. I sunk my freakishly small, blunt teeth into that, and to cut to the chase, spent eighteen months of my young adult life working in a public relations firm. This became reading and writing about ‘digital and social media engagement’ (amongst many other marginally less vacuous, more intensely technological things) for one of London’s top firms. I went to events, stood on the sidelines of this whole new weird subculture of blogger meetups (subcultural only in as much as ‘the wider populace would think you’re a fucking moron’) and smiled at the men and women there: mostly jolly, but deeply desperate, weirdly promiscuous functioning alcoholics comparing smartphones and revelling in a who’s who of status-update status-anxiety. There were moments when I started to believe it, present it, the bosses liked it. They viewed me as putting an amiable face to the blind panicked fear that these ‘new channels’ and represented to thousand greasy execs – turning bilious and pale as they realised this might be one hurdle too far. One week I trained fifty people how to use fucking fucking fucking twitter, saddened as they gripped hard at their employability in the face of not-so-empty threats from management about new requirements to be a ‘digital native’.

I started to reach capacity. resentment bubbled over as I heard my own mouth spout more and more convincingly about ‘viralising’ and ’seeding.’ It’s no accident that these terms bring to mind some kind of dribbling heinous future semen; dried up, impotent and full of dead ideas. Smeared it all over everything that is ostensibly useful about the internet, giving it that predictable echo chamber glisten. Everytime some ‘blogger’ typed, it was fodder for a brand awareness graph, algorithms to measure sentiment. Me. My mother, the woman who, some seven years ago, executed a military level u-turn on discovering pink hair dye in amongst her 16 year olds daughters purchases on the way home from the shops, now responds to my plaintive moans at being effectively trapped in a world of vacuous pricks, with her honeyed intones of ‘but Bryony, you’re a punk, you’re meant for better than all this.’ Head hits palm. did I hate every second? no, but I’m tormented by how lucky I am every day anyway (so should you be), so I’ll tick off the ability to piss bile about choices I made for myself as another middle class privilege. I guess. Time off to play shows and do other real things felt like lovely, monochrome relief from the 56 million colours bombarding information super duper next level two-dot-oh-god-please-no world of my work. I’d always tutted inwardly at the ‘9 to 5 admin hate my job’ overtones of the messageboard addicted mid 30s punks, I thought it was a clever ruse, that having a ‘real’ career to go with the label and the band and the shows would be a lucrative accoutrement, the punkest jugglers act, but only dropped balls ensued, and there are some things not up for sacrifice. I can still make things with codes but all that shit loses its lustre when you have to deliver fifty deck power point slides on what some dipshit blogger who can’t fucking spell said about adidas. or hamleys. or business process management software. I’m not kidding. I’m on the run. digitally. and I hate how that sounds too. knowing how SEO works (aka the ability to terminally scupper myself by having an unusual real life name) only makes me more determined. still, even under duress, you try saying the anonymous onandonandonanist. Viralise that, fuckheads.
Despite my nose-as-viewfinder talk here, to my employers, it seems I dipped out graciously with the promise of an MA (I got an unconditional offer but its still five thousand pounds I don’t have) and by the time this is published, I guess will be penniless and shaped like a human burrito after three weeks with Logic Problem and the Shitty Limits. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same. While the clear desk policy puts paid to grandiose ’shit on it and run’ notions, I’m working out my notice with clenched fists and resolutely leaving this particular breed of suckers in their rancid gold dust. Wilfully, then, this is the new poor. This is the new poor. And without a proper job I guess I’ll be sticking to tar babies mp3s, and patch up my self-worth, whichever way.

Last night (fresh wounds fyi) I put a hardcore punk gig on in an arch under London Bridge station. I called it Big Takeover. It was a mixed bill (Logic Problem, Shitty limits, Mob Rules, Black Time, Ironclad and Nowhere Fast ) I made it all ages, bring your own booze, and 200 people showed up. There are reasons why all of this is unusual, much of which I think I covered in that scene report, but that’s all by the by. What was, to attendees, by all accounts, a night to rejuvenate something that’s been lacking here for a long time, was, for me, the promoter, irrevocably marred by constant harrasement from the venue owner, who seemed like a ‘regular’ guy (who responded to london’s version of craigslist with news of an empty space that may be ’suitable for my event’) but revealed himself that night to be nothing short of an absolute wanker. I’ve dipped toes into the stagnant water that is putting on gigs over the last five years, but nothing to compare to this in terms of scale. I was excited, energised. I put up a 500 pound (what, like 850 dollars?) damage deposit. I was an idiot.

So now, this venue guy is sending threatening emails, wanting to withhold my damage deposit plus bill me thousands. We stayed ’til three am cleaning and that place was spotless. There’s no more than 100 worth of ‘damage’ – including labour. I hate him, I hate him. I hate that he treated me so differently to my taller, maler friends who reasoned with him so easily. I hate that I let myself feel threatened. That I started to feel like this was too much for one person. I hate that I couldn’t see any of the bands because he was shouting in my ear the whole night, that I couldn’t catch up with the people who’d travelled. That people got turned away. That I was still trying to be pleasant to him as he snakes an arm around my waist and thanks me for doing his washing up with a weird snarl. I made one thousand two hundred pounds and gave every penny to the bands because that’s the way I wanted to do things, only to be told that I should have kept it, to deal with this eventuality. That a man who runs a space banging on about health and safety, shouting in my face, should think that a rusty screw for the main door handle is acceptable. One of my sillier friends, wasted and backed up with the ultimate ‘its a punk rock show’ illegitimate defense, threw a cymbal stand at head height into the crowd. I was distraught as we bundled the guy (he was from France and it was his first show in London, great time) into a cubicle. Venue guy barged in, threw a first aid kit (complete with scissors) at my face and stormed out. so he’s screaming in my face as the injured party pisses blood up the toilet wall, staring me down and blocking my path and I am a five foot five twenty three year old woman that has given him half her monthly salary, and he is a sociopathic, dishonest, powertripping, cringy, fucking, bastard. Oh and a secret christian, I found a ringbound notebook on a desk in his office, with a crucifix daubed on the front in tippex (maybe you call it whiteout) the book was full of prayers scrawled in a disjointed cursive he’s all ‘dear god, i won’t enjoy tonight, but don’t let me fuck it up’ – I clench weaker fists at 2am whilst my best friends clean his floor and he shouts at them about the best way to wield a mop, then thinks he’s being funny asking my friend Keg if he’s ‘the token asian?’ He’s claiming I’m in breach of a contract I never signed, that too many people were there, that I’m responsible for the guys that pissed in the street. For the ‘nuisance’ caused to neighbours who were hanging out with my friends outside. My friend Jen is a doctor, and even he knew better than her, because calling the ambulance when the French guy started to pass out was ‘putting his business in jeopardy’. GAH. Still, I went to a show the next night and there were kids there who’d never been before, who’d picked up flyers at Big Takeover, who were kinda wide eyed and wanted to say hi. Maybe it’s trite to say so, and I’m no martyr, but if it made anyone at all feel like there’s something left of punk in this city more than brand-backed indie, free-association fuzz hipsters and the odd irono-DJ, it might all end up being worth it. For now i’ll stay incandescent and penniless.

A word in your shell-like (some UK-OK recommendations): Read Futility Exercise #1 and crank proudly, listen to Black Mamba Beat and burn your boat shoes, get the Kingdom of fear 7” compilation and basically just slamdance, watch Phoenix Nights with some garlic bread, listen to Sex Dungeon and do the Fritzl stomp. I’m going to America tomorrow, when this is in print (scary) I’ll be back, so I hope you said hello. http://onandonandonanist.blogspot.com/ bryony.beynon@gmail.com

[DIY in LONDON UK - This is the unedited verison not as short as the one in the mag]

This is less of a scene report, more of a snapshot of lots of disparate stuff that’s happening across the city and just outside, brought together, temporarily I fear, under my contradictory and happily subjective umbrella of personal taste. Come on, humour me, at least it’s dry under here. The cohesion and dare I say it unity required for all these bands to exist in one single scene isn’t present in London, UK, and there are many and varied reasons for that. The principle one is that sky-high expectations about any kind of subversive cultural production in this nation’s capital persist over thirty years after Johnny ‘Countrylife*’ Rotten did a rude word on telly.

This means that a merciless spotlight is angled constantly and full beam on the youth, and I can let you imagine what the kinds of bands that run towards that spotlight sound like. Invariably, they end up singed (if not signed) wilted and smelling like plastic. It can be hard to pick the wheat from the chaff, the amps are on but there’s nobody home, you see, there is no shortage of ‘bands’ in London just like there is no shortage of ‘actors’ in LA. If you catch my drift. So watch out for that nasty smell, its the primary editing mechanism I used for the list. Some nights it might seem like this complacence has filtered its way down to the punks, the hardcore kids, and the artists. But there’s always something happening in someone’s flat that’s a little less overlooked, a little more potent.

I present to you what I believe to be the full gamut of exciting DIY things happening in and around (I’ve limited the definition of ‘around’ strictly to a twenty minute train ride beyond the major stations!) London as far as I am concerned, and all strictly without the aid of an ad campaign. We’re running rings around those journo chumps and they don’t even know it.

(*Countrylife is the brand of butter than the mole-faced public image is currently promoting in full page ads in all the National newspapers in the UK. Don’t turn over too quickly in disgust, Iggy pop’s mangled caramel torso has found a new trade in car insurance on the next page. No really. Media Blitz.)

I’m going to start with Paco, whose opinions have featured in this here zine and who is one of the city’s most prolific punk ‘doers’. He has run LA VIDA ES UN MUS from his Hackney, East London homestead or wherever he happens to be, helping out friends and his label’s bands when they pass through Europe with shows under the name XEROX MUSIK (this is also a Mus sub-label that puts out weirdo noise like BILLY BAO 7”.) The shows usually happen at The Grosvenor, a pub in Stockwell that would be a lot closer to legendary with a calmer landlord. Most recently those have been: CRIMINAL DAMAGE, LIMP WRIST and GOVERNMENT WARNING. He is also booking the SEX/VID tour here in the Autumn and helping out SURRENDER with shows. So basically much of the good punk rock that is available in London is thanks to this man. The Label is probably one of the more high profile beyond our borders, cuz of its international scope. Most recent releases are:
MUS28 LIMP WRIST – Incluye Want Us Dead LP
MUS30 SURRENDER – There Is No War” EP 7”
MUS32 DESTINO FINAL – Atrapados 12”
MUS33 GOVERNMENT WARNING – Paranoid mess LP
MUS31 THE SHITTY LIMITS – Beware the Limits LP

Paco works at Rough Trade records with Sean from HARD SKIN, whose London centric comedy Oi should surely be in your collection. These two brilliants run another label called DEMO TAPES RECORDS along with Clint, but he’s gone away. Next releases:

TAPE005 BLYTH POWER – A little touch of Harry in the night Demo LP
TAPE006 PASSION KILLERS – Lion Studios 20/9/83 Demo LP

The only one of these bands who could at a push fit into London scene reportage is THE SHITTY LIMITS. They’re actually based in Reading, High-Wycombe and the leafier surrounds a little west and north west of the capital, but with a frenzied motown punk style that is kinda ANGRY SAMOANS fronted by Johnathan Richman, they’ve got that hipshaking garage thing with hardcore fury that stops it being in any way trite. Probably the most prolific punk band du jour in the UK. Contact Paco for that record won’t you – www.lavidaesunmus.com. Next up, and I stuff my hands into my own mouth with this guilty segue, but mentioning THE SCEPTRES in the same breath because that’s two limits plus Ralph and me and I do at least actually live in London. I have a shrill voice and Ralph has very well-strung guitar, people say TYRADES meets WIPERS. Out of that comes DIRE RECORDS is our small 7” label venture – with a focus on the mono (chrome and phonic) we just put out a split 7” THE SCEPTRES/FACEL VEGA (from Wales, not even I can pretend that’s London) and repressed the first 7” of the now-quasi legendary HYGIENE.

With a deeply “English”-oriented proposition, despite their singer being a nasal Canadian by the name of Mr. Weiner, HYGIENE play a stripped down, cool and evocative post-punk-with-big-choruses that crosses the naivety of TELEVISION PERSONALITIES with something altogether darker, CRISIS meets CRIME. The best description I’ve read of them is ‘Bingo Master’s Breakout”-era FALL, and COCKNEY REJECTS. Music for when you’re fighting in the streets of Southwark with the psycho mafia outside the town hall you never wanted anyway.” (http://www.myspace.com/hygieneldn) That prosaic summation came from Luke Younger, a noise dude with lovely hair and a love of punk that means he gets in the door without anyone spitting on his snakeskin noise-dude brogues, plus we all wanna see his band SPIN SPIN THE DOGS. Stringing post-punk guitars with melodic fuzz and a wild-eyed unpredictability that is genuinely unsettling, they’re honestly a thing all of their own – LP out on Gringo Records from Nottingham.

Gig-wise, Hygiene have thus far sat on the boundary between the straight-up punk and the merky but sometimes very rewarding territory wherein you’ll find the more garagey/psych/breakout/fuzz pop feedback set of bands. These bands are breeding rapidly, but awesome projects like SHABEEN SCENE TAPES help to sort the shit from the ‘holy shit!’ as does Eric who does funtime dancing opportunity CORN ROCKET CLUB. The most recent output of SHABEEN SCENE TAPES is a split between BLACK MAMBA BEAT! and WORK THAT SKIRT. This is the ribald, meat and potatoes garage section by the way. I’ll mention BLACK TIME here, on IN THE RED RECORDS in the US and overlooked by London comparatively. I’ll also mention KING SALAMI AND THE CUMBERLAND 3, THE CHINESE LUNGS and THEE VICARS (DIRE RECORDS alumni.)

Bands like COREY ORBISON, ROSEANNE BARR (drum/bass thrashy punk) and HUSBANDS (keyboardy queercore) fit here too, kinda covering the whole gambit of a more frenetic messtheticsesque sound, these bands are outsider punx to the nth degree. HUSBANDS have a split 7″ with DRUNK GRANNY on local kid, a forthcoming split with HUMOUSEXUAL on IRRK and full length LP on LOCAL KID and self released cd-r’s and tapes on homo-tones.co.uk. I’m going to mention METHODIST CENTRE here even though thus far I’ve not seen them live, jangly and highly Oinergy camp power queer vibes from East London on Invisible Spies records.

Many of these bands are put on by DIY tour-booking artist/music behemoth UPSET THE RHYTHM. A loosely formed collective with Chris and Claire at the helm, they are incredibly prolific with fingers in more pies than even I would care to eat. UTR began with booking THE EX and a then little known band called DEERHOOF to play in the UK in 2003, and has since then expanded into a wonderful carousel of shows and records that keep strictly DIY principles whilst having the bandwidth to actually be able to afford stuff, allowing all kinds of wild an crazy freakout genre-benders to play in places and with people they wouldn’t otherwise, both through consistently dreamy ambitious two day fests in abandoned car showrooms (this kind of thing NEVER happens in the UK – It was called YES WAY and it ruled) and through things like co-promotions with Frieze (a big UK Arts organisation) and David Shrigley (doodle-monger) always self-funded and refreshingly egoless. It’s become a kind of scene it itself, innovative, open, with a refreshingly high ratio of lady musicians too. They’ve put on quite literally hundreds of great bands, I want to mention PLUG (two piece lady delta 5ness) TRASH KIT (London raucous girlpunk) Next releases are GENTLE FRIENDLY, TRASH KIT (London lady rabble punk) and FOOT VILLAGE from LA. Http://www.upsettherhythm.co.uk

Continuing with the theme of people who’ve taken DIY principles learnt in hardcore and put them to use in other contexts, REAL GOLD is the umbrella name for an initiative by Deano Jo to produce “things with a bit of permanence and weight to them – whether its records, books, magazines, putting extra thought and effort in to make that object special.” REAL GOLD is synonymous for many with ridiculous warehouse parties that attract off-duty hipperati, but we still go when they happen because people like to fraternise, plus nights like that which aren’t sponsored by corporate youth marketing schemes are few and far between. As well as the continued success of a (colour!) zine called FUN, REAL GOLD has put out records by THE TRAIN CHRONICLES (Boozy Banjo-driven hyperspeed Blues.) http://www.wearerealgold.com

RICOCHET! RICOCHET! Is Patrick from HUSBANDS and Colette’s awesome zine distro, stocking a plethora of xerox propaganda from these very fringes, and showing up everywhere. (http://www.myspace.com/ricochetricochet) They’re also involved in the zine archive at 56a Infoshop (56a.org.uk) which is a diy social centre with zine archive, bike workshop and food collective. Zinewise, London is comparatively rich in self-publishing, and those guys have their own channels, including several symposiums and socials and what nots, so as far as straight up music zines go I just want to mention NICHE HOMO (two isssues out) which is poisonously sardonic and has a nice clarity in its tone of voice that is sort of like being sat on someones knee and read to, such is the level of muso knowledge mixed with lighthearted shitter chatter (the zine’s tagline is ‘Superior Toilet Literature’- http://nichehomo.blogspot.com) Then there’s QUALITY CONTROL is a straight-edge fanzine out of West London with interesting theorising on hardcore. MODERN HATE VIBE three zlso is out now with interviews from the Stupids, Brian Walsby (Double Negative) and Chris Bickel (in/Humanity.) Next Issue has interviews with Gang of Four and Citizen’s Arrest, and will include the source material I got sent for this report, so if you want to know more about all this stuff you could pick that up! (bryony.beynon@gmail.com)

To throw a curveball in right here and shimmy over to stylistically to about as far away from queer power pop as I could possibly go right now…here’s the bit where I talk about RUCKTION RECORDS! The kickboxing elephant in the room has been unleashed. Seriously though, this longtime label has been self-sufficient for ten years, the age of their longest standing (and now on hiatus as I understand it) group – KNUCKLEDUST. With a core of almost disconcertingly dedicated show-goers, RUCKTION singlehandedly kept London Hardcore alive when it was deeply unfashionable. Over the years that has meant some deeply questionable output, from my corner, but now that every bar hopping socialite has an integrity tshirt, these bands and this label are more important than ever. I’d check out NINEBAR, a very weighty proposition blending SHEER TERROR with later era NYHC like RAW DEAL or BREAKDOWN, pulling this off with a cheeky London-centric aplomb that is loveable and moshy as all hell. (http://www.rucktion.com)

The pretty awfully named HELLBENT DIEHARD are actually super and a bit mind expanding – technical hardcore played with gusto. RUCKTION recently released the CD version of Leeds, Yorkshire’s DEAL WITH IT’s full length ‘End Time Prophecies’ – a fully realised paean to LEEWAY and the guitar solo as a higher plain of consciousness. They’re not from London, emphatically, but are worth catching for the punkest delivery of what comes very close to a full on metal band. Another band in this whole subsection, although they’ve kind of taken it next level and play what seems like weekly sold out shows in Europe (recently toured the US with TRAPPED UNDER ICE) is the inimitable DIRTY MONEY. Not much of a progression musically from NO WARNING but with a Liverpudlian accent, and good lyrics about real dare-I-say-it ‘issues’ which are directly engaged with on stage, which in what’s generally a politically sendentary scene is a real standout. They put out records with DEAD AND GONE RECORDS from Sheffield, an institution in itself.

The guitarist from NINEBAR also puts on London’s only regular fixed date hardcore show, a first Saturday of the month type deal at the 12Bar in Soho, with increasingly mixed bills and always something interesting to see. On that note, the demise of her (and others) annual London hardcore fest known as NinjaFest and latterly RunningRiot has not stopped May from steadfastly putting on shows. Check www.londoncalling.cjb.net if you’re in town.

Straight edge as any kind of governing force has long been dead in London, a city with over 7000 pubs, and I mourn this as it makes hardcore just that little bit more ‘normal.’ So I was surprised but invigorated to see a small group of kids flying that flag and what ho, doing it really very tastefully. ABOLITION are a politically charged 90s style metallic hardcore group that sounds and kind of feels like STRUGGLE and CHOKEHOLD’s Instilled 7”. CANT RELATE share members and say they’re influenced byYD-I and NA and formed out of boredom and a desire to rage against all rubbish things like racism and working in your local chain cinema (“Stale popcorn and skin on the cheese – Your life is boring, like these movies”) It is genuine hardcore punk played by angry boys and girls and thus is really fucking exciting. http://www.myspace.com/xcantrelatex

All on NEVER HEALED RECORDS are HANG THE BASTARD who do sludgy INTEGRITY style moshism, and share a label with some more bastards – HELLO BASTARDS, South American, Polish, German and Israel ex-pat punx crusting up London, and DEATHSKULLS who sound like an extremely English “Slow-Mags” if you will. One of their members now plays in SPECTRAHAWK with Bloody Kev from such UK greats as HARD TO SWALLOW and DEAD INSIDE on vocal duty. A bit like EHG, all reverby and chaotic and not averse to a breakdown. Its all the above bands you might be the most likely to witness at any number of squat-based shows, but they are few and far between as due to draconian squatting laws here are not exactly wise from an inhabitants position, oh and houses here categorically do not have basements so that’s out too.

Perfectly segueing into husband and wife winning team Sam and Derek, who run a label, promote shows and do a and distro called PARADE OF SPECTRES (http://www.myspace.com/paradeofspectres) that puts out international heavy screamo and punk product, including BURNING TIMES, KADDISH and FURNACE. They also play in BATTLE OF WOLF 359 who have made it over to European punk fest Cry Me a River a couple of times and are great in a Sci-Fi loving UNION OF URANUSy way. On the same label are ME AND GOLIATH for more crushing emo business.

And there we have it, for now. Focussing on our city (the vast majority of DIY doers here are passing through, so ‘ours’ is as loose as it should be) was difficult because lots of the gigs I’ve enjoyed the most in the last few months has been bands from out of town, only a few hours to the north or east. I’m sad to have to exclude those bands for geographical reasons, so check out IRONCLAD and MOB RULES, and go to THE COWLEY CLUB in Brighton and THE 1 IN 12 in Bradford. Do venue names even get MRRSHOUTINGCAPStreatment? Who knows, but those two definitely deserve it and a space like that is one thing London really needs.

Ya may have thought of something I totally should have covered/boycotted, but hey, opinions are like arseholes, if you don’t have one, chances are you’re full of shit.

For more info on any of this stuff please get in touch, I didn’t want to flood it with URLS so you can use a search engine or email – bryony.beynon@gmail.com