1BZOPNPSFUIBOb HITSVILLE UK: PUNK IN THE FARAWAY TOWNS Pg1 Roger Sabin During the punk years, I was lucky enough Catholic Girls. (In due course, the Small to live near one of the premier independent Wonder shop in London became a record label, Russell Bestley Pg2 Hitsville UK: Punk in faraway towns record shops, Small Wonder in Walthamstow, and signed up some of the top regional acts; London. Every time I visited, there would Bauhaus, from Northampton, the Cockney Pg4 From the First Wave to the New Wave be a new exhibition of art – by which, I Rejects from East London and The Cure, from mean the owner festooned the walls with the Crawley being the best-known. They declined, Pg5 Coloured Music latest seven-inch record sleeves. He’d also however, to sign my band – the rotters.) play the new sounds very loud, which meant Pg6 The Prole Art Threat his ‘gallery’ had a soundtrack. It was all There is a graphic design dimension to very mesmerising, and on a Saturday the shop the show (Bestley teaches the subject at Pg7 Key Categories in UK Punk would be packed with adolescents like me, university). But these sleeves were often not buying very much, but standing there not ‘designed’ in any conventional sense. Pg8 The Punk Community half-deaf and gawping like zombies. They were about mates deciding upon the most punkish/outrageous/amusing/dumb image, and Pg9 Proto Punk and Pub Rock Russ Bestley’s Hitsville UK: Punk in the then adding some typography – often filched Faraway Towns revives that sense of (small) from elsewhere or inexpertly lettrasetted Pg10 New Wave and Novelty Punk wonder, but isn’t just an exercise in on. The sleeves, and the records they nostalgia. It makes a case for seven inch housed, were not meant to last, and were Pg12 DIY, Post Punk and the Avant-Garde sleeves as a signifier of a point in history not intended to make their creators famous. when DIY took over a significant sector of The ethic seemed to be, in the words of one Pg14 Oi and Street Punk popular culture, and when art was up for fanzine from the time, ‘Ain’t Bin to No Art grabs. 1976-84 was a period when a School’ – though, as Bestley shows, some of Pg16 Real Punk, New Punk and Hardcore scissors-and-glue mentality empowered youths these lo-fi designers certainly had been to up and down the country to produce sleeves art school, and were more knowing than they Pg17 Anarcho Punk of often stunning originality. The mix of let on. bizarre colours, playful typography, and Pg19 Sound & Vision stitched-together images captured the spirit Does this amateur status make the sleeves of the equally DIY records perfectly. any less ‘valid’ than a product that might have come out of a major label and had There was also a political element. thousands of pounds spent on it? Does The phenomenon straddled the end of the their throwaway-ness make them not worth Callaghan Labour government and the remembering? Does the regional aspect beginnings of Thatcherism, and had varied detract from their appeal or authenticity? agit-prop manifestations (Bestley is not I’d argue the very opposite – but, please, afraid to highlight the far-right elements take a look and decide for yourself. of punk as well as the better-known left-wing and anarcho-punk scenes). Localised Roger Sabin production circumvented the corporations, and as each of the Faraway Towns gave rise Roger Sabin is the Editor of Punk Rock: to its own version of the Small Wonder shop, So What? (Routledge) so punk became as much about local issues, local politics, even the local pub, as about anything happening down the King’s Road (‘Sten Guns in Sunderland’ was one of the more amusing song titles). Hitsville UK is thus a riposte to the received wisdom of so many ‘top-down’ BBC documentaries about punk. It’s not about pogo-ing with Malcolm at some legendary Pistols concert in London. It’s about how the movement was lived by tens of thousands of teenagers all over the country, and about the bands they loved: the likes of Discharge from Stoke; the Cult Maniax from Exeter; the Prefects from Birmingham; Rudi from Belfast; Johnny and the Self-Abusers from Edinburgh, and the bands that never made it beyond their immediate surroundings such as the Small Mercies from Tunbridge Wells (with one R.Bestley on bass). Southampton itself could boast a clutch of such bands, including Strate Jacket, Catch 22, and the mighty www.company-london.com HITSVILLE UK: PUNK IN THE FARAWAY TOWNS Vinyl records seem to hold a deep-seated quickly, with subsequent stock often being market, its origins, and its references: emotional value for many of us – we can housed in a plain sleeve or of the (boring!) where The Clash had defined the sound of remember where we were, who we were with, black vinyl variety (I had my suspicions the Westway and had sung about sten guns and that gut feeling dragging us back in that the trendy bloke behind the counter in Knightsbridge, now groups were rallying time whenever we hear a particular record, in Boots was grabbing all the best stuff against their local council, or the village or come across a certain record sleeve. for himself anyway). However, if you were pub landlord who banned punk drinkers, or I can remember hearing snippets of the prepared to put in the effort, you could the lack of prospects or excitement in their new, outrageous phenomenon of ‘punk rock’ be rewarded with the ‘first edition’ record own home town. through items on the television news, and that showed how dedicated you really were seeing the shocked reports in the newspapers to the new movement. I can remember walking This exhibition is both a celebration of the (all that spitting, vomiting, swearing and miles to out-of-town newsagents on hearing wide range of graphic approaches adopted by rebellion certainly sounded appealing to a reports that they had singles by the likes punk sleeve designers, and an attempt fourteen year old potential punk rocker), of X Ray Spex, The Lurkers, UK Subs or to redress the balance of recent punk though it wasn’t until the beginning of Generation X on pink, red, blue, orange or ‘histories’ which focus purely on a 1977 that I really heard anything of the green vinyl. For that extra special rarity short-lived series of events based around actual music. I was skateboarding with my well outside of the charts even more effort the Kings Road and Oxford Street. It is brother and some friends, and I remember was required – such as bunking the train to based on the mapping and grouping of a wide overhearing the radio in my mate’s back London to seek out the Dangerous Girls or range of punk-related seven inch single garden – the song was Grip, the debut single Mekons single that John Peel had been raving sleeves across the period 1976 to 1984, and by The Stranglers, and I could genuinely about the week before. It got easier once seeks to tell a wider, more inclusive story describe it as a life-changing moment. I punk became a national ‘movement’ and record of the punk years. was so impressed, I began to seek out other shops began to advertise in the back of the examples of this ‘new wave’ of music. I music press – you could buy obscure singles ordered the debut album by The Stranglers by the likes of Crass, The Tights, Spizzoil, from my mum’s Freemans catalogue (those Menace or the Television Personalities by were the days…), and I started listening to mail order from Rough Trade or Small Wonder. John Peel on Radio One and Stuart Henry at Of course, everyone has their own particular Radio Luxembourg, discovering new groups tale to tell of the punk years. Mine include and trying to find out more in the music my mum destroying my ticket for a Siouxsie press. Punk grew exponentially during 1977 & The Banshees gig at Lewisham Odeon (she’d – in some ways, unknown to me at the time, read reports of race riots and punk Nazis in because so many groups and labels saw the the News Of The World), burning my bondage golden opportunity of a bandwagon to jump trousers in the dustbin (luckily, I managed on – and I began to seek out the music in to rescue the singed garments in order to earnest. wear them again – result! Even more punk!), and destroying my copy of the Cult Maniax “If you’re going to Black Horse e.p. – which would now, rather reminisce,then you amusingly, be worth a large amount of money. need to do it properly” Punk hit the regions in a different way to The Mekons, 1st Guitarist (CNT Records)1982 its impact in the cities. It’s interesting to see how the ‘waves’ of punk activity shifted The first port of call for a budding punk their geographical centres over time, moving rocker, beyond some very limited radio gradually away from London, Manchester or play and the music press, was the records Liverpool and out into the smaller towns themselves. Gigs were often centred around and cities of the UK. This includes the London and the major metropolitan centres locations of bands themselves, as well as – early punk tours seldom rolled into town their fan-bases: local groups could play to if you lived out in the sticks.