Cock Sparrer

[martin]

has anyone yet mentioned discharge? sitting on this side of the atlantic, i recall their sound really blowing a lot of similar bands away. also remember sort of liking offshoot band broken bones.

BLOODY RAGS IN THE STREET
A HOMELESS MAN HOLDS HIS DEAD CHILD
NUCLEAR FLASH BLINDS HIS EYES

VICTIMS OF THE FUCKING SYSTEM'S ATOMIC TOYS

RADIATION IN ANIMAL LABS
DONKEYS SCREAM OUT, NEVER HEARD
WILL THEY TEST THE DOLE QUEUE NEXT

Yeah, they were OK.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

totally awesome....

to me, it's a tossup between Blitz and Cock Sparrer as the two best Oi bands ever... both totally different styles...

as much as I like Cock Sparrer it's BLITZ by a thousand miles (or kilometers, sorry). tho surely different styles & such. really Blitz's cover of "Vicious" is what seals the deal for me - such a great ruffing up of that bitchy Lou Reed feyness - really I can't see any other Oi band attempting such a cover let alone pulling it off. I also love that part in Warriors that STN mentioned - the singer from Blitz had such a great gruff Oi voice.

oh & on the flip side there's no doubt at all that Blitz's New Pop stuff is much, much worse than Cock Sparrer at their most generic pub rock...

the real question is...which one is worse...Blitz's New Pop or latter Discharge's hair metal...actually hair metal Discharge is kind of awesome ("this is the price, the price of SIIILENCE")...

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Never really got into Blitz, cos one of them had a moustache...

you're nuts, that only adds to the appeal. Nigel whatshisname (RIP, I think?) was the Freddie Mercury of Oi...

 

[STN]

I struggle to find a more wretched example of punks overreaching themselves than the Vibrator's jocular rap on 'We Name the Guilty'. Amazingly terrible. Late Blitz stuff just washes over me as unsurprisingly crap.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

has anyone yet mentioned discharge?

yes but they need to be mentioned again & with as much frequency as possible, the original dons of D-Beat haiku, the original lords of the studded leather jacket & spiky hair...there are legions of guys still doing that....

the D-Beat is one of the all time great beats, right up there with the One Drop & the Neu! Motorik & James Brown's On the 1 & the Moroder 4-to-the-floor-pulse...

not just Broken Bones man, thousands of great bands they inspired; Anti-Cimex, Mob 47, all the Finns (Kaaos, Riisteyt, Rattus, etc.), the Brazilians (Olho Seco, Lobotomia, Colera, etc.), all those crazy Japanese disnoise bands (Confuse, Gai, Kuro plus also Gauze, Lip Cream, Death Side, etc. - insanely great Japanese hardcore deserves its own thread...), the hundreds of Dis bands - Disorder, Discard, DISCLOSE, Distraught...

*EDIT* christ & how could I forget the legions of scruffy Englishmen - the children of Discharge/Crass/Amebix - who had amazing 80s thrash/crust bands; ANTI-SECT (the original dons of D-Beat/crust darkness), Doom, ENT, Sacrilege, Legion of Parasites, Electro Hippies, early Napalm Death, the first Bolt Thrower LP which is crust as f**k, the English Dogs before they went full-on metal, Hellbastard (& Hellkrusher), A.O.A, AXEGRINDER (Rise of the Serpent Men)...if you can't tell this was almost literally all I listened to from about 15-17...

 

[Leo]

not sure if this fits here, but i remembered a friend and i went to see uk subs at cbgb about 20 years past their prime. kind of a laugh, charlie harper was fat. they must have flipped out when guns'n roses recorded a cover of "down on the farm," wonder how they did with royalities from that one. they're still touring, i think.

also just chuckled to myself remembering that, sad to say, i also had an anti-nowhere league record or two.

 

[STN]

For You by the Anti-Nowhere League is such a tune. I would poison the food of anyone who disputes this.

I saw Charlie Harper on a train recently. I'd just been thinking about him. Spoooooooooooooooooooky!

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

oh & just in general once one gets into this territory it's incumbent to mention Motörhead, massively influential on Discharge & Amebix (check out latter Amebix's straight up biker songs)...as Lemmy said once the punks learned to play their instruments they would play metal...thus crust was anarchopunk + metal - people say Crass meets Slayer which works for say, Nausea, but for all the English stuff I think Crass meets Motörhead is more accurate...quite English all of it I reckon...

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

not sure if this fits here, but i remembered a friend and i went to see uk subs at cbgb about 20 years past their prime. kind of a laugh, charlie harper was fat.

when I was about 15 I saw the Angelic Upstarts at CBGBs in similar circumstances - the singer, that massively muscular dude, had gone well to fat...but they still rocked it pretty goddam hard I tell ya...they did a scorching cover of "A.C.A.B." by the 4-Skins & dedicated it to the NYPD, this being shortly after Amadou Diallo...

 

[martin]

they're still touring, i think.

As long as there's 14-year old girls in kohl eyeliner going to gigs, the UK Subs will always be touring. I think it's obvious that the only reason they've released anything since "Party in Paris" is so Harper can get his filthy kicks. He even had to start up a second band, Urban Dogs, to plug the gap when the rest of the Subs were too knackered and needed a break from the road.

 

[martin]

Loved the first Amebix 7", "Who's the Enemy", but maybe just cos it's so heavily influenced by Killing Joke. "Carnage" sounds like a jet taking off if you play it loud enough. Never really checked their later stuff, but most metal leaves me cold anyway...

I hate the Anti Nowhere League with a passion, I used to know some kid who would repeatedly play "So What" and giggle to the lyrics. Maybe I'm being prejudiced but the memory's put me off ever listening to them. Mind you, I saw them live supporting the Damned in '94, and they were enjoyable, even if most of the audience was aged 30 (ancient when I was 18).

And sorry, apart from the first 7" and "Upstart", I thought the Upstarts were terrible - just depressing, plodding rock-pop with no energy. And even the first 7" was pushing it in that respect....

Does anyone here like the '75p' EP by Six Minute War? That's one of my faves.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Loved the first Amebix 7", "Who's the Enemy", but maybe just cos it's so heavily influenced by Killing Joke. "Carnage" sounds like a jet taking off if you play it loud enough. Never really checked their later stuff, but most metal leaves me cold anyway...

I love the early Killing Joke-influenced (& PIL, tho perhaps this is just from Killing Joke being PIL-influenced) stuff as well, "Winter" & all that...

Arise! is a great record tho...& Monolith is one of my favorite records ever...also it's not really "metal" that's the whole point...crust was punks playing metal...this chugging mid-tempo (well on the Motorhead tip as mentioned) quite atmospheric doomy stuff (the other end of crust being the dis/thrashier stuff a la Doom/ENT)...quite a bit of low-end in the mix which you wouldn't expect...plus Amebix's lyrics were always considerably smarter/more ambiguous than most anarcho-by-the-numbers stuff...the main guy Rob aka the Baron comes pretty intelligent in old interviews...actually they've reformed but I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole don't want to tarnish my idealistic view of them...

also interesting random Amebix point - an older friend of mine actually went to the Isle of Skye to apprentice in sword-making with Rob from Amebix at some point in the mid-90s...

And sorry, apart from the first 7" and "Upstart", I thought the Upstarts were terrible - just depressing, plodding rock-pop with no energy. And even the first 7" was pushing it in that respect....

oh no I completely agree...generic Oi bollocks...I'm just saying they put on a cracking live show...at least that one time...

 

[Tentative Andy]

ANL version of Streets Of London has to be one of the all-time punk covers.
Angelic Upstarts had some good songs, obvious ones like Teenage Warning, but yeah, they could get a little tiring.
Never quite saw the appeal of UK Subs: every song seems to leave you thinking 'yeah... that's alright', nothing more.

 

[petergunn]

oh & just in general once one gets into this territory it's incumbent to mention Motörhead, massively influential on Discharge & Amebix (check out latter Amebix's straight up biker songs)...as Lemmy said once the punks learned to play their instruments they would play metal...thus crust was anarchopunk + metal - people say Crass meets Slayer which works for say, Nausea, but for all the English stuff I think Crass meets Motörhead is more accurate...quite English all of it I reckon...

the Cro-Mags are at least 50% Motorhead as well...

listening to early 80's metal bands like Saxon, Exciter, Diamondhead, Merciful Fate (i don't have alot of this stuff, like 10-15 records), i don't hear much Motorhead in their music at all... seems like Motorhead were way more influencial on bands you mentioned like Discharge...

and yes, i would put the D-beat up there as one of the all time great drum beats...

 

[Tentative Andy]

also interesting random Amebix point - an older friend of mine actually went to the Isle of Skye to apprentice in sword-making with Rob from Amebix at some point in the mid-90s...

Whoa whoa whoa, just spotted this. That guy was in a band? I knew him when I was growing up, my parents used to part-time work for his dad who also lived on the island. Really nice guy actually, pretty posh but a solid bloke. It's a small world, etc.

 

[STN]

Never quite saw the appeal of UK Subs: every song seems to leave you thinking 'yeah... that's alright', nothing more.

Don't try to call me up on the telePHONE cos I won't be OME!

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

listening to early 80's metal bands like Saxon, Exciter, Diamondhead, Merciful Fate (i don't have alot of this stuff, like 10-15 records), i don't hear much Motorhead in their music at all... seems like Motorhead were way more influencial on bands you mentioned like Discharge...

I reckon this to be true with the caveat that I am not the biggest expert on NWOBHM a la Saxon or earlier Judas Priest. on the other hand I think Discharge, via Motorhead, was a big influence on a lot of the harder thrash metal bands - Metallica, Slayer, the German trio (Kreator, Sodom, Destruction), early Sepultura & Sarcofago - like a lot that stuff is sped up D-beats with double bass & more complex fills...a lot of the riffs have that classic Discharge "ba-na-na ba-na-na" cadence to them...

on the other hand a lot of those crust punk bands I mentioned gradually went metal - Sacrilege is a prime example, Axegrinder (who billed themselves rather hilariously as "anarcho-metal"), Nausea...you also have the birth of grindcore via Napalm Death (Scum is a great, great record, downhill after that) paralleling death metal with Possessed, Repulsion, all the Swedes & Floridians...actually punk & metal have for a long, long time had quite a symbiotic relationship...

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Whoa whoa whoa, just spotted this. That guy was in a band? I knew him when I was growing up, my parents used to part-time work for his dad who also lived on the island. Really nice guy actually, pretty posh but a solid bloke. It's a small world, etc.

I find this to be quite amusing - actually a big part of the Amebix mythos is them living hard with in squats with another band, Disorder (with whom they shared members), in squats in Bristol during the 80s...early on even before the Killing Joke-influenced stuff Amebix was peacepunk inna Crass stylee, they have a song on one of the Bullshit Detector comps...later on tho all the photos of them they look like scruffy ne'er-do-well hessian bikers - reedy mustaches & mullets & leather jackets...

here is a great video of a very youthful Rob/Baron back in the punk as f**k squatting days giving advice on hairstyling...

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=""></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

oh & I feel compelled to proselytize for Antisect here...the originators of crust (& linked into the Crass generation via the dude from Flux who I believe produced them) & my favorite by far of all these bands, even over Amebix...

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=""></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=""></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

used to cover this one in an old band...
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=""></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

 

[Tentative Andy]

I find this to be quite amusing - actually a big part of the Amebix mythos is them living hard with in squats with another band, Disorder (with whom they shared members), in squats in Bristol during the 80s...early on even before the Killing Joke-influenced stuff Amebix was peacepunk inna Crass stylee, they have a song on one of the Bullshit Detector comps...later on tho all the photos of them they look like scruffy ne'er-do-well hessian bikers - reedy mustaches & mullets & leather jackets...

here is a great video of a very youthful Rob/Baron back in the punk as f**k squatting days giving advice on hairstyling...

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=""></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Hahaha, that's the guy alright.

"Is there a dandruff problem?"
*scratches thoughtfully for a bit*
".... Yes"