Steve Beresford /Tristan Honsinger/ Toshinori Kondo / David Toop – "Imitation Of Life" (Y Records – Y 13) 1982

Having been seen doing the donkey-work for the Slits it was inevitable that Steve Beresford would get some product on trendy Pop group connected label, 'Y Records' ,as owned by Pop Group/Slits manager Dick O'Dell. So, Steve and his weird London chums got to do a couple of Lp's of their spontaneous scraping toy instrument and Tuba madness to sit alongside the funky fayre of the Bristolian Illuminati. Unlike label mates Maximum Joy*,Poop Groop, and other suspected Trustfund surfers,there is not one ounce of 'Funk' on Steve's record ,which hardly even has a time signature.It does have however,four very unfashionable people living in four different but related worlds,playing different tunes at the same time.

NB...Maximum Joy threw a mardy*......

*Mardy Arse :(noun) INFORMAL•NORTHERN ENGLISH
a sulky, petulant, or grumpy person.

......about being featured on Die or DIY?,and demanded...yes...demanded(?)  that their work.....did they say 'Work'?,apparently ,yes?...be withdrawn.....so you can't find these suspected suburban  middle  class George Clintons haunting these pages no more.;...but you can,ironically, on YouTube,work that one out......or as Steve Beresford calls it, YouTuba! (ha ha ha)....i suspect it was Dick 0'Dell (who produced this funnily enuff!) wot done it,not the groop.Groops don't do shit like that,unless you're the remaining members of Throbbing Gristle,Cabaret Voltaire,Whitehouse,or Zoviet France?...There seems to be a theme there.....only Industrial Bands are wankers it seems.

Anyway fuck the fuckers and their honkyfied white mans funk, And how dare they share the same label as Sun Ra....yeah I'm a trendy too?Didn't you know?...how Dicky dingleberry O'Dell wangled that I dunno?

Well, at least Y Records have an ex-XTC member (barry) on their rostrum;...yeah,post-punk super group Shriekback's entire fun-filled oeuvre appears there.......not listened much to it however,,only that first single about a spine being a bassline or sum'ting equally cool,as in cool with a capital 'I'...don't care. Nah!

But, Beresford can't do anything wrong to this proudly closed mind,I just don't like Trendy's who'll reveal their under arm portable jazz collection before you can say Thelonius Monk;arranged in chronological order of course;the More Jazz than You Nerd off......yeah yeah I know.....I'm "Pure Scum" etc etc....! for stealing the royalties from these hard working bands blah blah......I wish I could get royalties from work I did 40 years ago, or sell copies of the same work again and again...and incredibly, no-one complains???

Tracklist:

A Whoosshh 21:16
B Please - Thanks That's Alright 17:34

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The Tesco Bombers ‎– "Hernando's Hideaway" (Y Records ‎– Y 14) 1982

Mmmmm, sounds like they're haaving fun doesn't it?.....another Homosexuals spin-off, including the irritating britpopart ratpack member of the nineties, Keith Allen, father of Lily allen. Better known as the yobbish drunk twat who hung around with fellow drunk twats Damien Hirst,and that bloke from Blur, doing cocaine and champagne......because they could......and we didn't want to.
This isn't too bad for a semi-trendy chart attempt......its got Sara, on vocals, and Amos (Jim Whelton) to add some class and moral fibre.

Tracklist:

A Hernando's Hideaway
B1 Break The Ice At Parties
B2 Girl From Ipanena (Instrumental)

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The Pop Group ‎– "For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?" (Rough Trade ‎– ROUGH 9, Y Records ‎– Y 2) 1980

The Pop Group's 'disappointing' second album,is in fact really good; despite some rather chaffing in-yer-face politics.
Snappy album title that, I wonder what these chaps' message to all us unenlightened worker ants is?
The Cover photo is a tactic used today by Charities,whose directors draw huge salaries, on those TV adverts voiced by millionaire actors who urge us to donate £3 a month with a background of sad piano music to manipulate our emotions.Except in this case the background music is designed to turn us into angry militants.......albeit dancing angry militants.
Its kind of patronising, and insulting.......but then again some of us need to be patronised and insulted, so fair enough.
Preaching self-righteousness aside, the music is ferocious punk-funk-dub, spat out with all the venom of a napalm attack on a village of vietnamese children.
The answer to the question?
We will continue to tolerate mass murder, because that's what the human race has always done.One day we will all realise,in all our arrogance, that we are not the chosen ones,but are merely on the top of a food chain and will do anything that maintains that position, including killing the opposition .If that means destroying ourselves then that is what we will do, clearing the way for a more successful species that can manage itself better than Homo-sapiens obviously are incapable of doing.

Tracklist:

1.Forces Of Oppression
2.Feed The Hungry
3.One Out Of Many

4.We Are All Prostitutes
5.Blind Faith
6.How Much Longer
7.Justice
8.There Are No Spectators
9.Communicate
10.Rob A Bank

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Pigbag ‎– "Dr Heckle And Mr Jive" (Y Records ‎– Y 17) 1982

This blog of late has been getting into some pretty unhealthy, populist, 'Dance' orientated areas!.....I blame that bloody bunch of hippity-doodie commies 'The Pop Group'; especially as all their members seemed to crop up somewhere in all these groups.....Pigbag being no exception; as original bassist, Simon Underwood was to be seen doing that dancing with the bass thing, that all white boys felt obliged to indulge in from the Ska boom onwards.......YOU WILL ENJOY YORSELF!
One thing I can't stand is enforced jollity.
Mr Underwood also holds the undisputed honour of being the only member of The Pop Group to ever be on a Hit record..... "Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag", thanks to Mr Paul 'N-n-n-n-n-Nineteen' Hardcastle's punchy remix (included here); and they also got to do Top Of The Pops twice! 
Saving street cred stories were later heard about how naughty they were in the BBC studio's, making the director very very angry.......Oh those anti-capitalist Anarcho-socialists eh!?......just a pity that their need for success ran roughshod over their 'principles'.......but at least they could prance around on telly with their trumpets I suppose.
That said, they made a couple of well funky brass heavy tunes that can even get my Anti-Capitalist Anarcho-socialist toes-a-tapping.

Tracklist

Dr Heckle:

1- Getting Up
2- Big Bag
3- Dozo Don
4- Brian The Snail

Mr Jive:

5- Wiggling
6- Brazil Nuts
7- Orangutango
8- As It Will Be

Bonus Tracks:

9 - Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag (12" version)

10- Sunny Day (12" version)

11- Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag (Paul Hardcastle remix)

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The Pop Group ‎– "We Are Time" (Rough Trade ‎– ROUGH 12, Y Records ‎– Y 5) 1980

The Pop Groups 'Official' bootleg, compiling demos, live tracks,and radio sessions onto one handy black disc. Not a bad track on here (excepting 'springer',which is rather irritating).
The revived Poop Groop are currently destroying their legacy at a concert venue and record shop near you, but don't let that detract from the brilliance of their back catalogue,which you should already have in your collection and know intimately.Of which 'We are Time' is an essential part.

Tracklist:

1- Trap - demo 78
2- Thief of Fire - live Electric Ballroom 79
3- Genius or Lunatic - live Brussels 78
4- Color Blind - demo 78
5- Spanish Inquisition - live 79 (venue unknown)
6- Kiss the Book - John Peel Session 78
7- Amnesty Report - Foel Studios 79 

8- Springer
9- Sense of Purpose - demo 78
10-We Are Time - live Glastonbury 79

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The Slits - " Untitled Bootleg retrospective 1977-80 " (Y Records Y3LP) 1980

Like The Prats and Eater, The Slits had an underage member, one Ari Up, some posh German aristocrat who hung out at blues parties. They made a major label album, "Cut" for Island, with drafted in session men,and top reggae producers, which,although sounded good at the time, I now know to be a complete and utter 'SELL OUT'. That coupled with a German princess talking jamacian patois, and you have a truly sickening cocktail.
But, before selling out, they were a feral super nova of previously unseen proportions. Witnessing them live was like watching a pack of hyena's stripping bare a corpse; the corpse in this case being Rock'n'Roll, and there ain't nuffin' more Rock'n'Roll than that!
This was only captured on audio in their 1977 peel sessions,and this cassette recorded racket from squatland, London. (Is that anywhere near Squatney, where the young Spinal Tap came from? Ed.)
We have the non-selling out Pop Group to thank for this archive release, on their Y Records imprint; mirroring their own official bootleg release, "We Are Time", from the same year.
These primal paint-stripping rain dances are like having your brains scraped out with broken finger nail extensions, then shit on , grilled, and force fed back to you; and you WILL enjoy it.
I think the following quote from the uber-pretentious 'Lipstick Traces' by Greil Marcus, sums up the situation very nicely; couldn't have written better myself.........does that make me pretentious too?....Y' know I think it probably does!.....ok I admit it I am pretentious! Happy now?????

Cue Marcus:

"All the Slits really left behind is an object screaming with muteness: a nameless lp in a blank bootleg sleeve. I like to think the disc is called 'Once upon a time in a living room,' but there's no way to be sure; with phrases scrawled at random across the label in lieu of titles, you have to decide the names of the songs from the choices offered. 'A Boring Life,' then: once the music starts I've never tried to understand a word.

One Slit giggles; a second asks, 'You ready?,' another answers 'Ready?' as if she never could be, then the fourth returns the giggle like Alice diving down the rabbit hole: 'Ah, ah, OH NOOOOO -' It's the last sound you hear at the crest of a roller coaster, and in the dead pause that follows you have time to remember Elvis in Sam Phillip's Sun studios in 1955, setting up 'Milkcow Blue Boogie' with a little rehearsed dialogue ('Hold it, fellas! That don't move me! Let's get real, real gone for a change!'), except that the Slits' dialogue is too trivial to have been rehearsed, let alone lead anywhere, and then the silence is collapsed by an unyielding noise. This compressed drama - embarrassment to anticipation, hesitation to panic, silence to sound - is what punk was all about.

The Slits were Ari Up, lead singer; Palmolive, drums; Viv Albertine, guitar; Tessa, bass. The Rolling Stone Rock Almanac entry for 11 March 1977: 'The Slits make their stage debut, opening for the Clash at the Roxy in London... [They] will have to bear the double curse of their sex and their style, which takes the concept of enlightened amateurism to an extreme... The Slits will respond to charges of incompetence by inviting members of the audience on stage to play while the four women take to the floor to dance.' A line from an old Jamaican 45 comes to mind - from Prince Buster's 'Barrister Pardon,' the finale to his Judge Dread trilogy, the tale of an avenger come from Ethiopia to rid the Kingston slums of its rude-boy hooligans. Across three singles he sentences teenage murderers to hundreds of years in prison, jails their lawyers when they have the temerity to appeal, reduces everyone in the courtroom to tears, then sets everyone free and highsteps down from the bench to lead the crowd in a cakewalk: 'I am the judge, but I know how to dance.' With 'A Boring Life,' the Slits judged every other version of rock 'n' roll: 'Milkow Blues Boogie,' 'Barrister Pardon,' the crummy official records they themselves would make after their moment had passed.

Nothing could keep up with it. Shouting and shrieking, out of guitar flailings the group finds a beat, makes a rhythm, begins to shape it; the rhythm gets away and they chase it down, overtake it, and keep going. Squeaks, squeals, snarls, and whines - unmediated female noises never before heard as pop music - course through the air as the Slits march hand in hand through a storm they themselves have created. It's a performance of joy and revenge, an armed playground chant; every musical chance is taken, and for these women playing the simplest chord was taking a chance: their amateurism was not enlightened.

'No more rock 'n' roll for you / No more rock 'n' roll for me,' goes a drunken moan elsewhere on the record, echoing the Sex Pistols' chorus for no-future - some unidentified man was singing, maybe a guy running the tape recorder, but it was the Slits' affirmation that whatever they were doing, they wouldn't call it rock 'n' roll. This was music that refused its own name, which meant it also refused its history - from this moment, no one knew what rock 'n' roll was, and so almost anything became possible, or impossible, as rock 'n' roll: random noise was rock 'n' roll, and the Beatles were not. Save for the buried productions of a few cult prophets - such American avatars as Captain Beefheart, mid-1960s garage bands like Count Five or the Shadows of Knight, the Velvet Underground and the Stooges of the late 1960s, the New York Dolls and Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers of the early 1970s, and the reggae voice of gnostic exile - punk immediately discredited the music that preceded it; punk denied the legitimacy of anyone who'd ever had a hit, or played as if he knew how to play. Destroying one tradition, punk revealed a new one.

Looking back, it remains possible to take this version of the rock 'n' roll story for the truth, as the whole story - not because the music punk discredited was worthless, but because what little remains of the Slits' music allows you to imagine that the sound they made communicated more completely and more mysteriously than the most carefully crafted work of anyone who came before or after. 'A Boring Life,' heard as it was made in 1977 or heard a decade later, rewrites the history of rock 'n' roll."

(Greil Marcus - from his book "Lipstick Traces: a secret history of the twentieth century", publ. First Harvard University Press, 1990)

Track Listing:

Side A
- A Boring Life
- Slime
- Face Place
- No 1 Enemy
- Vaseline

Side B
- Or what is it?
- Bongos on the lawn
- Let's do the Split
- Mosquitoes
- No more Rock and Roll for you [Sister Ray] / Once upon a time in a living room

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