h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi,

Spotted you in the MR&R forum, just thought i'd pop over and say hi. I'm just putting together some ideas for a Punk thingy too. For me there was very little spiky hair and studded leather jackets, more v neck school sweaters and parkers, less Exploited and Chelsea, more Raincoats and Fall. But i was up in The North, and not down in the hub, so the scene was very different. But the perception of punk (young white males shouting fighting and listening to agresive music) is completely at odds with what i found punk to be (not just in the early days either (indeed i missed the early days - didn't pick up on punk until 1977/8 & going to middle school), metal seemed to become punk in the 80's and punk seemed to become indie. Then again the Pistols always said they were New Wave, not punk, so i guess that makes some sence. Sorry i'm blethering...

Do you know much about fanzines? There used to be one here in GY, i remember it, Destroy or Damage or something like that it was called. I was wondering if there's a website that collects these things, or even a punk memoribilia store anywhere that sells stuff like that - i'd love to get them. Any ideas.

So you like MC5 - i bumped into Fred Smith here the other day - he'd never heard of them! Wow.

Hi Flinch... Well next time you see Fred Smith tell him I've got 7 MC 5 albums with him playing on them. Did'nt he die 2-3 years ago?

Thanks for getting in touch, can't reply now, do it early morning.

Looking back, the north/south divide was a factor in shaping the music. Down here, the aggressive, speed driven music would of never produced Joy Division, Fall, Magazine, Buzzcocks etc. The northern bands seemed to deliberatly steer clear of 3 chord/destroy type music which gave rise to more controlled stuff.

the fights I actually saw, rather then read in the press, were from a couple of bands with skinhead followings: Penetration, The damned and of course Sham 69. I did get chased by soul boys a couple of times - luckily fear made me a very fast runner!!

As for the clothes, I started going to gigs in Jan '77 and everyone was dressed like me - long hair, flares and t-shirts. At first you hardly saw anyone dressed like the Pistols or Clash. Just the fact that you were at a punk gig seemed to make you one! Of course, come May and the Clash played the Rainbow and I had my hair cut short, ripped jeans and biker jacket. Only a handful of people dressed like you saw in the Sun. Everyone seemed to use the Ramones as fashion gods! oooh sir, suits me. OK, thats a bit of a generalisation but we felt good because we knew for a fact , you northern lot wore anoracks, raincoats, had pudding bowl haircuts and were the only ones who could listen to the Fall

'77 to '79 I had some of the most fantastic times of my life - due to living 7 miles from the centre of London, I saw most of the punk bands before they got to big. I was seeing 3-5 gigs a week. about the only band I didn't see were Joy Division

I havn't seen any fanzines for a couple of years now, due to not going to gigs at the moment but I have seen various adverts for old ones as I was looking through sites trying to shift a couple of un-used Nirvana tickets!!

Yeah, the dress code up here was very much one of dressing up by dressing down - lots of army surplus and your old school uniform, cardigans with badges rather than leather jackets. The main identifier was having shortish scruffy hair (but not particularly spiky, and maybe taking your trousers in a bit if you were fashion conscious.

There was lots of violence up here, but it was mainly getting jumped when you we own by Teds, Police, Dockers, metalers, mods, dressers and casuals later on, anyone who fancied a go basically. There was very much a gang system up here amongst all those groups, wheras we had a very strong sence of community and solidarity, but not a gang mentality at all.

Yeah, the dress code up here was very much one of dressing up by dressing down - lots of army surplus and your old school uniform, cardigans with badges rather than leather jackets. The main identifier was having shortish scruffy hair (but not particularly spiky, and maybe taking your trousers in a bit if you were fashion conscious.

There was lots of violence up here, but it was mainly getting jumped when you we own by Teds, Police, Dockers, metalers, mods, dressers and casuals later on, anyone who fancied a go basically. There was very much a gang system up here amongst all those groups, wheras we had a very strong sence of community and solidarity, but not a gang mentality at all.

Spot on! As a community, we were against the world but come out of a gig to find 5 skins waiting, even though there was a crowd of 100 punks (gen x?) it was every man/woman for himself. Why didn't we gang up and kick s**t out of them. Could it of been because we were all quite young, spotty and shy?

young, spotty and shy - they were in fact the requirements from being a punk, the Pulp song 'Misfits' almost perfectly recreates the period 1977-1986 for me.

Have you heard the dance remix of " God Save the Queen"?

I remember the KLF / JAMMS version - i'm assuming thats not the one you're refering to...

I wish it were. This is by Leftfield - a group I like (and they did a great job with Lydon on Open Up) but it's really wishy washy. It could of been the most banging remix ever, but turned out very poor!

Perhaps a fitting reflection of attitudes towards the jubilee in '77 and 2002

Perhaps...... still I would prefer to hear the original version.

er... I think I may have jumped the gun a bit. On XFm - a London alternative station - I heard the tail end of an Lydon interview. He was talking about re-mixing "God Save". Turns out they are just re-mastering to give a stronger sound..... and the dance version played was their p**s take of what it might sound like. I don't know if they are going to remaster the whole album. Does it need it? Mind you, Iggy remastered "Raw Power" and the results were fantastic!

Dee Dee Ramone died on Wednesday

A sad day - a great obit in the Guardian. A fine fine man.

I bought God Save the Queen on the jubilee, and the b-side was a bit weak, needed to be much bigger in the bass dept. Have you invested in the box set of out-takes?

I've got most of the out-takes thanks to 2 bootlegs I got in 78/79.
The first is called No Future and is the demos and out-takes from the B******s album produced by (I'm doing this from work and can't remember the names!) Chris Thomas(?)
The other is Spunk and this appears to be Bill Price(?) recordings done after Anarchy. A lot of the "b" sides come from these sessions - No Fun, Stepping stone, Gimme no lip etc.

Has the box set got any radical new stuff? I've seen small clips of them doing a song thats about being in the army but never heard it on any of the live stuff I've got.

I got Kiss This purely because it's easier than pissing around with the singles to hear them all at once!

Ah! I too have Spunk and No Future. Both of which have been releaced (semi)officially since i think. If it's just the same matirial i won't bother buying it. Glancing at the packaging it seemed to claim that a lot of the matirial was previously unreleased (one of the discs is live at Screen on the Green 76) so i assumed that included the semi offical releases.

Old joke - what's the biggest venue in the world?
Screen on the Green.
It must be huge to hold the 15,000 people who saw the Pistols play there!

This ties in with the Watchman thread but seems more suitable here..... a couple of weeks after Sept. 11th, a plane crashed in the Rockaway Beach area. People were killed and what's the first thing that came into my head? Yep ..... the Ramones!

oooh I'm a bad monkey!

Do you know the work of lisping Welsh Ramones devotee Helen Love at all?