UK Decay



UK Decay, Clarendon hotel

Im pretty proud of this photo, in the bad old days before digital you'd be lucky if you got one good shot from a roll of film , seems like that night I got two : One of Abbo and the Clarendon Chandelier and one of Blood and Roses. Keith reckons Sisters of Mercy played too but I didn't get a photo of them, too much dry Ice probly.

The image that stays with me is the UK Decay posse going mental under that chandelier, studded belts removed and swung arond their heads like football scarfs, there must be people who still have scars from those nights at the klub Foot.

Sexual - UK Decay

This is my copy of a recording of the last show released by the band as the  "night for celebration" cassette and its a bit weird to think that UK decay had called it a day when "Positive punk" was still fresh and the term "Goth" hadn't been coined.
Of course now they are recognised as the godfathers of the movement and their sound appropriated by the  black clad legion that followed them. But when you listen to these songs and put them in the context of what else was happening musically in 1981/82 you can appreciate what a special band they were.

Side A:
•Unwind
•Werewolf
•Dresden
•Barbarian
•Barbarians
•Sexual
•Stage Struck
•Rising From The Dead
•Twist In The Tale
Side B:
•Unexpected Guest
•Testament
•Black Cat

•UK Decay

•For My Country

•Unwind

   

Blood And Roses

 

Killdozer

'poor sods, first time in the UK and they get picked up in the Van by us. They look worried, they dont really want a red stripe at this time of the day , thanks. Chris lights one of his medicinal cigarettes:"could we open the window to let the smoke out?...."  Kernahan hits the M1 and puts the pedal to floor : "What speed is that guy doing? ya know the imit is 55 in wisconsin....." and then before we get 1/2 way to to the first venue: "can you pull over my brothers nose is bleeding...."

 

But strap em into their gear and they all grew 2 feet into babyeating southern redneck serial-killer worshiping rock monsters -and they went off - this was the first time Id seen anyone use a ceiling beam as a guitar slide. Like all US bands they only get to europe after spending years gigging and were as tight as the proverbial ducks, each night they seemed to work at getting a bit slower and a bit louder so by the time the tour ended they sounded like the swans playing lynrd skynrd.
And play lynrd Skynrd they did, Neil Diamond too......

Killdozer - I am I said

This was recorded at the Liverpool Bierkellar ,26th May 1988. The venue was a great big hall and was pretty empty all the key ingredients of a crap recording! There were some great nights and crowds though , northampton, bristol and the Greyhound rocked....bloody scousers dont know what they missed.

Babes in Toyland



Kat Bjelland

 This is another track from the mystery compilation video tape (shot by someone called Hunter apparently...dont know the guy..), filmed at the Mean Fiddler Harlesden which when it wasnt fulfilling its primary function as a Country and Western Club was a great place to see a band. It wasnt too easy to get to from Cricklewood but acts like Scratch Acid, Rapeman, Buttholes, Unsane, Head of David  etc etc  provided some top notch entertainment there. 

This song was the first thing Id ever heard by the band, I remember thinking it sounded like a really REALLY pissed off version of the Dog Faced Hermans and loved them immediately.
I always consider them honorary Camdenites too, Lori was a regular at the Falcon for a while and there was that scandal involving Kat and the guy from Gallon Drunk.....

Sea Scouts

Sea Scouts Patch

The other great Tassie band, you can imagine this demo was recorded on a well used 4track one stormy winters night in a drafty Hobart share house - it has the best/original Scouts line up of Monika Fickerle on drums , Zak Von Bumburger on bass and of course Tim Evans on guitar/vox.
Tims guitars were always very "distressed" ,held together with gaffa and looking like he had assembled them from bits he'd found on the street, the guitar cuts out during this tape a few times and even the tape recorder itself sounds like its going to die at one point.

Tim was a great frontman flailing away with his tangled haystack hair,  tall frame hunched over his mike stand , Monica stood up to pound her cymbal less kit and Zak was, frankly, a disturbing thing to watch , it was always anexciting chemistry to experience live. The songs were brutal and discordant symphonies of noise, with Tims voice riding above it all building from (still tuneful) shouts to strangled screams and beyond. And the thing that sets them apart is that you always felt there was actually bloody good pop-songs in there somewhere.


The Sea Scouts - Strange Loop
Unlike LUGS, their contempories ,  the Sea Scouts made a handful of records one of which has the dubious quality of being unplayable: The single came back from the pressing plant with the hole off centre...perhaps unsurprisingly the band didnt see a problem with that and happily distributed them.....

Demo Tape Cover

Sea Scouts Demo (199?)
1. Strange Loop
2. Dark Green
3. Macarbre Maybe
4. Destroy your local Macdonalds


And unlike LUGS there is little chance of a reunion show Tim is New york based working as Degreaser and other projects but is also known for his lack of interest and respect for what has gone before - if you missed Mouth, Sea Scouts or the Bird Blobs first time round then thats tough.

Virgin Prunes

Guggi @ Ace Brixton

Im pretty sure this is Chris' tape and I have no idea how it came into my posession, its a live set from Brighton in 1981, and I can easily picture  him clutching that old school cassette recording brick to his chest as the chaos unfolded around him.
Theres a couple of tracks from the headline band (the Fall) and that places it as 21st October at the Regency.
I didnt go to this show, only time I saw them was at the Ace when they supported the Birthday Party and were filmed for the TV(thats where the photo is from). That performance was fairly staid so I never saw the confrontational and charged theatrics that made their name and maybe because of that didnt really accord them the same reverence as my peers at the time.


Virgin Prunes

Set from the Virgin Prunes, Brighton 21/10/81 (24mb mp3)

Rachels Pilchards



Rachels Pilchards Live outside theTiptree Co-Op.



"Their Songs go on for hours,

Their Musics' worse than ours

What Is Oil are shit (crap) shit (crap)

What Is Oil are shit (crap) shit (crap)

What Is Oil are shit."

Okay so Rachels Pilchards were a Kazoo band from Maldon Essex, who in the '80's would play any and every where normally to an unreceptive if not downright hostile audience.

Steve Fish and Rolf Pilchard (Chris McKenna) were the ringleaders and other members came and went , often with a song added to the set in "tribute":  "we're a whole lot better since we kicked keith out", "Neils got a big nose" and "Lord dikky is Missing".

There were a raft of Cassette releases recorded live, in a transit van, around a campfire and even a studio demo which was a real disappointment - the end result sounding just as you'd expect an all night night session by a bunch of arhythmic-drunken-atonal-drug-dealers-with toy instruments to sound like: "oooh look theres a button with echo written on it - press it AGAIN!!!"

Little Ugly Girls




LUGS @ The Arthouse

LUGS @ The Arthouse

Little Ugly Girls Photos courtesy of the Tom Lyncoln Archive.

 And sometimes the tape is all there is, no seminal single, no genre defining first album (no tricky 2nd) - in this case not even a rough-hewn potential laden studio demo . With the LUGS I always blamed this lack of progeny on Hobarts industrial strength bucket bongs, but thinking about it now, it was probably that other bane of the creative soul: the desire for perfection.

   

The band are playing a one-off (we hope NOT) show this month, Im guessing a lot of the people there will only know Linda and Beans' current projects (Bulls,Diacos) and Im hoping the band will still have it in them to deliver exactly the same awesome, primal, visceral punk, noise that cemented their reputation.

The first time I remember seeing them was at the Evelyn: Bean, Sloth and Cameron all eyes down and simmering, intent on their precise , clever, intricate and deafening riffage while the little Angry Girl up front tried to get something far bigger and badder than we could ever imagine out of her system.
Linda on stage was a constantly morphing onslaught of full-on claws-out feminine savagery, her huge voice filling the room, a taswegian compound of  Kat Bjelland, Leslie Rankine and the Avengers Penelope Houston turned up to 10.




 

This track is completely un-representative musically but is just as troubling as the noisier stuff, its Linda , on her own reciting a poem /spoken word/stream of conciousness/therapy session that conjures up images of family holiday nostalgia,  child abuse and a painful coming of age in a few sour verses.

Boxenhoodahayda - LUGS














The artwork is all by Linda too, I remember when we (s:bahn) stayed at LUGS central I was blown away by her huge photos around the place: lurid bodies at sex-crime scenes, a nightmare of Cindy Sherman meets "Rivers Edge" . The band are as creative now as then, Bean and Linda owning the Melbourne live-scene with the Diacos, Cameron going strong with the Legends of Motorsport and Sloth enjoying great success with his "Head Gap" recording studio.

The Litle Ugly Girls Demo , 1996 (29mb mp3)

slip,
tractor,
the dead sea,
bunny-hole luck,
the pit,
boxenhoodahayda.