Death Magazine 52 - Mermaid 1983

 

I found this picture of the venue on Google, apparently taken the day after the gig. Whitehouse weren't fucking about that night, let me tell you. I'm presently sorting out all the digitised music files on my PC so as to free up space for more material which will eventually be shared here (in case anyone was wondering). In the meantime, I found this. It was originally part of a catch up blog post (scans of fanzines, FLAC files etc.) because it's only about five minutes long, which I'd reverted to draft for the sake of keeping everything tidy. Here's what I wrote back in 2017:

 

This left me with nothing much to post, so as it's been a Death Magazine 52 kind of month - what with the Family Patrol Group material I posted a few weeks ago, and Mike Grant of the same commenting, and my getting hold of a copy of their excellent retrospective double album released by Harbinger a couple of years ago - I figured I may as well digitise my tape of the Death Magazine 52 performance from when they appeared on the same bill as Whitehouse and Family Patrol Group at the Mermaid in Birmingham back in 1983. I don't recall D.Mag 52 / SHC being particularly amazing that night, certainly not compared to Family Patrol Group, but it seemed like the tape should be of interest to someone. So I digitised it and immediately realised why they had seemed so underwhelming: they played for about six minutes and knocked it on the head, so it's really just a track rather than a live gig. The evening is described in more detail in the Family Patrol Group post, and I therefore gather that whichever two - or maybe it was three - of the Death Magazine 52 collective had turned up to play that night must have felt as though it had been a mistake and pulled their own plug or something. It's a shame really. There's a tantalising burst of rhythm about half way through the track (which I don't remember at all from the event itself), hinting at the kind of material I've heard more recently on the Harbinger album, but I guess it just wasn't happening for them. Anyway, if you're interested, this was Death Magazine 52 briefly live at the Mermaid, Birmingham on the 27th of August, 1983.

 

While we're here, you might want to take a look at this.

That's all for the moment, I'm afraid. I'll be back when I've sorted more of my shit out.

Download D. Mag 52 at the Mermaid by clicking on this link.

   

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Another Lost Cause (1984) C90

Little bit of politics there. My name is Ben Elton. Goodnight!

No, I don't remember this one making much of a showing in that year's design awards either, but this might have been the first compilation tape to which a stranger had asked me to contribute (although it could have been Anal Probe's Political Piggies - it's all a bit of a muddle) so that makes it amazing in my book, even though, with hindsight, my tracks probably weren't. Another Lost Cause was the follow up to Refill Tapes' similarly wistfully named Reflections of a Past Age compilation. I suspect it was also their last offering as I don't recall hearing anything from them after this one. I think the tape-buying public's general lack of enthusiasm for Refill product was beginning to get them down; and before anyone says anything, yes I know their tapes looked a bit low budget, but fuck it - they made for some decent listening - apart from my tracks, I suppose.

 

If you've been following this blog, chance is you may already have some of this stuff. Mine appeared straight off the master copy here, for what little it may be worth; at least one of the Opera for Infantry tracks came from Hopsotch; I'm pretty sure all of the Family Patrol Group material is taken from Fear Death by Water; and the Bomb the Day Nursery stuff all comes from the album they released as Enhoenta Bödlar, although you might do best to get it from their Soundcloud page which additionally features a whole bunch of other stuff. I never quite worked out why this same material appeared credited to both Bomb the Day Nursery and Enhoenta Bödlar (and not just on this particular compilation) but assume it would be something to do with Roger Karmanik and Lennart Eilsersen eventually falling out with each other given that Roger went on to record under other names utilising the initials BDN, Brighter Death Now being the best known. The Yttersta Tagghudingen tracks eventually resurfaced on a 12" EP which I'll get around to buying one of these days, although I'm not sure if they're the exact same versions. Yttersta Tagghudingen were also something to do with Lennart Eilersen - or Uddah Buddah as he was also known, and possibly still is.

As for the rest, there are more details in the booklet, which I've scanned and which comes with the download, and which is as much as I know. This is a little annoying as I now realise I really should have sent for that tape by the Rattle when I had the chance. I've rooted around for any trace of it or them on the internet but can find nothing. I never really noticed them at the time, but I think the two tracks on this tape are fucking astonishingly good - My Bloody Valentine with a Casio VL Tone.

Download the twenty-three tracks, cover and booklet by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Astral Joe & the Nighthawks - Our Friends in America
2 - Do Easy - Documentary
3 - Yttersta Tagghudingen - I Trek from Down Yondah
4 - Opera for Infantry - Playing with Fire
5 - Family Patrol Group - (live)
6 - The Rattle - The Party's Over
7 - Bomb the Day Nursery - That Blind Tormentor
8 - Opera for Infantry - Shoot to Kill
9 - Astral Joe & the Nighthawks - Theme
10 - White Elephants Over Jamaica - Pyromania
11 - Do Easy - Vicar Vicar Straight into the Public Lavatory
12 - The Rattle - She Loves You
13 - Family Patrol Group - Fear Death by Water I
14 - Astral Joe & the Nighthawks - The Dark
15 - Opera for Infantry - Hopscotch
16 - Bomb the Day Nursery - The Only Way to Survive is to Commit Suicide
17 - Yttersta Tagghudingen - I'm Nailed to the Barn Door
18 - Astral Joe & the Nighthawks - Where Do I Go?
19 - Do Easy - Nuove Tendenze
20 - Yttersta Tagghudingen - Golliwog
21 - Family Patrol Group - Fear Death by Water III
22 - Bomb the Day Nursery - Heathen Nordic Temple
23 - Astral Joe & the Nighthawks - Astronauts / Voice of a Psychic
 
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Opera for Infantry - Hopscotch (1984) C60

Opera for Industry were the first band to write to me and ask if I'd like to release their tape. I think they got my address from Colin of Family Patrol Group. The tape was called Hopscotch, and it was a bit rough, but nevertheless a fair bit more convincing than any of my own efforts in the same noisy direction, so naturally I said yes. Then they changed their name to Opera for Infantry as acknowledgement of their residence in Amesbury, Wiltshire, a town full of squaddies and camouflaged types; and then they started their own label and released a million tapes, including one of mine; and then they eventually became the Grey Wolves.

Just for the record, and seeing as this one has come up a few times, and I feel I'm in some sort of position to address it, having known these people on and off for the last three decades, albeit at a distance - I always understood the whole point of the Grey Wolves to be protest mounted by means of a sort of sensory overload, bombarding the audience with horror upon horror to the point at which there is no choice but to react - which is more or less directly stated in their Cultural Terrorist Manifesto; and this is why they've been accused of extremist right-wing sympathies from time to time, because they've made use of imagery suggesting the same but, I would argue, towards entirely different ends to those from which such imagery has been appropriated. In other words, the point is to inspire a positive reaction against the authoritarian status quo not by educating you, as Crass might do, but by scaring the living shit out of you. Whether or not such tactics work or are at best badly misjudged is another thing entirely, but that's how I've always seen it.

Anyway, Hopscotch was their first album, so far as I'm aware and is fairly revealing as to where the lads were coming from. Confrontational electronics was kind of a new thing at the time, and those dabbling were still very much experimenting rather than just forming Whitehouse tribute bands, which came a bit later. To me, Hopscotch always sounded like it owed at least as much to Reality Asylum and the other, noisier works of Crass as it did to Gristle and the like, particularly Winds of Mauthausen.

Hopscotch is a racket, and a primitive racket amounting to two blokes with a Jen SX1000 and a ghetto blaster making a noise in a scout hut, the hard electronics equivalent of Link Wray or something, I suppose; but I'm surprised at how powerful it still sounds, all things considered.

I've cleaned it up as best as I can, editing out all the clicks and pops of turning the tape on and off with what sounds like a cheap Woolworths cassette in the deck. Also, three different inlay cards are included, a homemade version forged from swinging mags in which the initial cassette was presented to me for my consideration, a photocopied one which came with the master tape they sent once I said I'd like to release it, and the overly fussy fold out Do Easy tape cover.

Download the seven tracks and variant covers by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Hopscotch
2 - Winds of Mauthausen
3 - Repetition
4 - Hopscotch Revisited
5 - Playing with Fire
6 - Propaganda
7 - Black Christmas


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v/a - Political Piggies (1984) C60

This was the first compilation put out by Trev Ward and Dave Padbury, then collectively known as Opera for Infantry. Opera for Infantry eventually morphed into the Grey Wolves and had a string of hits, as you'll probably remember, whilst simultaneously stirring up controversy of a general thrust implying they might actually subscribe to some of the extreme Fascist beliefs blasted forth in their music. Having met them a couple of times and spent at least a few years writing to Trev, I'm confident of this being complete bollocks, and clues as to why I might hold with such a conviction can be found here, a tape firmly rooted in the short-lived but fertile period of cross fertilisation occurring between weirdy electronics and the anarchopunk scene; and yes, I'm well aware of all that post-left green anarchist shite having been plopped out of the same arse, but that's something else entirely...

I think this was also the first compilation to which I was asked to contribute, so apologies for my tracks. Marginally less crackly versions can be found elsewhere on this blog if you're stupid enough to look for them. Anyway, it was massively exciting finding myself sharing ferric oxide with Nocturnal Emissions, Nurse With Wound and the Apostles, and I still say this was a fantastic genre-busting tape. You'll probably recognise a few of the names here, and I'm pretty sure the Nocturnal Emissions and Nurse With Wound tracks resurfaced elsewhere, although The Strange Life of August Strindberg was almost certainly an exclusive at the time. Steve Stapleton was known for his generosity when it came to tape labels no-one had heard of asking him for tracks. There's more by Anarchist Angels and Family Patrol Group elsewhere on this blog, if you want to check the index. There's more about Epidemic on the excellent Punky Gibbon site, and Alternative and the Destructors were pretty big names at one point so you should be able to find something about them if you look. Alternative released stuff on Crass, for example.

I suspect they may have been experiencing some technical difficulties at Anal Probe Tapes world headquarters when they were running off my copy of this tape, unless the fuck ups were on the master copy. The tracks varied in recording volume quite a bit so I've tried to bring the quieter ones up to the same level. Also there were a couple of instances of what sounds like a lead cutting out - first during Living a Lie, after which the track comes back much louder. I did some fucking about, raised the volume of the first verse, and copied the missing riff from later in the track so as to effect a repair, which is hopefully better than listening to the track with a few seconds silence just as the chorus kicks off. There was also a gap in the middle of Seen through Tear Stained Eyes, occurring during a sung passage ruling out the possibility of making a repair by copying anything from elsewhere in the song, so I've er... just copied and reversed a bit to at least make the screw up sound deliberate, which will probably make more sense if you listen to the thing.

Download the sixteen tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Nocturnal Emissions - Rabbits Don't Cry
2 - Anarchist Angels - I Cry with Despair
3 - Destructors V - Urban Terrorist
4 - Do Easy - Waterside at 12
5 - Epidemic - Living a Lie
6 - White Elephants Over Jamaica - Adverts
7 - Alternative - Seen through Tear Stained Eyes
8 - Do Easy - Kick the Dwarf
9 - Epidemic - No Identity
10 - Family Patrol Group - Cronus
11 - Opera for Infantry - Resettlement
12 - Destructors V - Khmer Rouge Boogie
13 - The Cause for Concern - The Occasional Me and You
14 - Alternative - Caroline's Carnival
15 - Nurse With Wound - The Strange Life of August Strindberg
16 - The Apostles - The Phoenix

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Family Patrol Group - Fear Death by Water (1983) C60

Back when I was just a schoolboy in short trousers, I went to see Whitehouse play live at a pub in Birmingham. I'm not sure if it was the first gig I ever attended, and I can't be bothered to check, but it was probably one of them. I went with my friend Grez, and possibly also Jez, although I have a feeling he may not have been able to make it - it was a long time ago. Anyway, despite being a youthful bag of nerves I made a new friend just by standing outside the venue with a Come Org badge proudly sported upon the lapel of my school blazer. His name was Colin Fisher and I think he'd helped organise the event. He was a member of Family Patrol Group, one of the two support bands, the other lot being D.Mag 52 / SHC standing for Death Magazine 52 and Spontaneous Human Combustion because they had two names, not yet having decided which they preferred. We went in and my eyes boggled at what the inside of a pub looked like. I noticed a bloke resembling the Shend from the Cravats stood on the other side of the room fighting off a massive crowd of fans, and David Tibet was perched at the next table reading out the lyrics to Whitehouse's Rock and Roll to his pals and making them laugh. It was exciting, and also kind of scary.

Family Patrol Group were first on with a fifteen minute wall of noise, followed by D.Mag 52 / SHC, who were good, but not as good, finishing with Whitehouse, who were terrifying. A glass casually lobbed into the audience by one of the Whitehousers hit Grez squarely on the top of the head. I turned to him so as to opine something along the lines of fuck this - let's go home and found my question answered in dramatic fashion by blood gushing down his face from where the glass had hit. This incident has somewhat coloured my view of Whitehouse since, but to get to the point, Family Patrol Group really stole the evening for me. There was something about the pure force of their noise, like standing before the business end of a jet engine, and a jet engine which caught our attention without turning the event into the pre-title sequence of an episode of Casualty.

I kept in touch with Colin and bought a few tapes off him, then saw Family Patrol Group again later that same year supporting a couple of bands I don't even remember - Seduction and Baptism with Fire. One of them was a Bauhaus tribute act or something along those lines. This second gig is captured on Fear Death by Water, or at least on my copy. I've a feeling the original tape may have been just the four studio tracks, and I added the recording of the gig in support of Whitehouse myself seeing as there was plenty of room on the tape. I had the impression that Fear Death by Water wasn't so much an official thing as just a tape they might slip you if they could be arsed. The cover doesn't give much away, certainly no titles, and some of this stuff turned up on compilation tapes with titles which may have come from the group, or may have come from whoever was putting out the compilation. I get the impression they were more interested in the live setting, and to be fair, they were fucking amazing live on the two occasions I saw them.

I still don't know much about Family Patrol Group, although their internet presence seems to have increased since the last time I looked, and there's even a website with a list of gigs performed. Their commitment to power electronics conventions of the time seemed tongue-in-cheek bordering on sarcastic, at least going by what Colin said about their Beyond Nilsen stickers. They clearly figured somewhere in that whole Birmingham noise thing which also bequeathed us Final, Smear Campaign, Con-Dom, Godflesh and so on, and the two who weren't Colin Fisher had also been involved with D. Mag 52 / SHC, concerning which, please feel free to interpret whatever else you may feel you need to know from this excerpt from one of Colin's letters:

I'm not in D. Mag 52 / SHC, but the other two are. I'll give you the D. Mag 52 / SHC potted history if you like. Originally a large band of around nine members, fluctuating line up depending on who could attend, no rehearsals, just found instruments before gigs usually. Mainly metal bashing, drums, and other percussion, like Test Dept at times. Slimmed to five, four, or six piece - then mainly metal, tapes and vocals. Then down to two hardcore members - others thrown out or dissuaded. No gigs, but still fluctuating as people replace one another. At the Mermaid, Simon was helped out by a friend. The other hardcore member - Paul - was on 'holiday'. Truth is he was a bit embarrassed at supporting Whitehouse. I think he felt it was pointless trying to compete with them, as we all did, but nevertheless we didn't bottle out. After Family Patrol Group degenerated to nothing, mainly because of my absence at Sunday afternoon jamming sessions, Mike Grant, Family Patrol Group vocalist, was looking for gigs to play as D. Mag 52 / SHC, playing alongside Simon and Paul with Greg, our tape person. They got two, one at a pub which has a regular free spot on Monday evenings, and the second was at an all day festival where Nick Lowe was the main artist. They got ₤100 to play this, but I was told they used ₤80 in preparation by going into the recording studio to record backing tapes. I think it may have been Mike Grant's idea as he had not been into a studio before and was quite keen to do so. Anyhow, I didn't go to either of the above two, mainly due to Mike Grant falling out with me. Nothing serious, just once when we were in a pub he ignored me and he's never spoken since.

I'm therefore assuming that Family Patrol Group were Colin Fisher, Mike Grant, and some dude called Greg, but I'd be very happy to be corrected on any of this - always happy to revisit this little corner of noise history, given that you probably won't get to read about it in books written by tossers for whom it all started with comedy acts such as Ministry.

Download the tape, cover and flyer by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Fighting Cocks, Moseley 17/12/83
2 - Fear Death by Water I
3 - Fear Death by Water II
4 - Fear Death by Water III
5 - Fear Death by Water IV
6 - The Mermaid, Sparkbrook 27/8/83


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v/a - From Down Yondah (1984) C120

Here's another relatively obscure compilation, another one on which I had a track, and rooting around on the internet I realise there were some genuine unsung weirdy music pioneers here, quite aside from those we all already know about; so my ego is a little larger than it was just before I digitised this tape.

From Down Yondah came as a C120 selotaped to a knackered charity shop record with a vague stack of associated A4 photocopies - vague, because it was sort of difficult to tell where the compilation artwork ended and Lennart Eilersen's manic accompanying letter began. Lennart Eilersen, also known as Uddah Buddah, was the man behind Selbstmord Organisation - one of my favourite things to emerge from the whole noisy tape scene of the early 1980s; and From Down Yondah was the label's international assemblage of friends and sympathetic parties. Cloister Crime, We Be Echo, Asepisis, and Do Easy are already fairly well represented on this blog, so please refer to the index and make sure you download the Cloister Crime tape if you haven't already done so because it's a fucking cracker. Opera for Infantry turned into the Grey Wolves, Unkommuniti turned into Stereolab, and Swedish Nature eventually became Brighter Death Now. Club Moral, FâLX çèrêbRi and Die Form surely require no introduction. The Cause for Concern was Larry Peterson who used to run the tape label of that name and who is now some sort of Thunderbirds puppet mogul or summink. Yttersta Tagghudingen was something to do with Lennart Eilersen, as referred to above, some kind of outgrowth of his magnificent Enhoenta Bödlar - which also featured Roger from Brighter Death Now and whose Ogreish Guttural Wounds is probably the greatest album ever recorded. The rest can be looked up on Discogs, probably.

While we're here, here's another masterpiece from the same label just in case you missed it. Someone really needs to write a book about the Swedish weirdy music scene. Those guys really had their shit together. Maybe it was something in the water.

I've always been a bit wary of C120s so have probably only played this thing a couple of times at most. Unfortunately for the sake of enduring quality this probably hasn't made a lot of difference as the tape appears to have been copied at an unusually low sound level. I've done what I can to restore the thing. Also, my own track was split between the end of side one and the beginning of side two for some stupid reason, so I've replaced it with the original uninterrupted version from The Fourteenth Metal Tape.

Also, I've scanned the Selbstmord catalogue, so that's included in the download for the sake of curiosity. I'd love to know how much of that stuff actually saw the light of day. I still have the first issue of Pok-a-Tok (which is, by the way, possibly the greatest fanzine I've ever read) but I have no idea if the promised From Down Yondah issue ever came out.

Finally, is it my imagination or does this version of The Witches Burn sound different to those posted previously on this blog? 

Download the twenty-five tracks and artwork by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - (introduction)
2 - Club Moral - Tegen Het Ik   
3 - IMCP - Day of Stunts   
4 - Asod Dvi - Det Synkende Synkende Skip   
5 - Live Loop - Breathings   
6 - Caspar Hausers - Slow Albanian Stucco   
7 - Cloister Crime - Sacrum Sacrifice   
8 - The Audience - We Need Fast Paint   
9 - We Be Echo - The Witches Burn   
10 - Asepisis - Genetik Product Control   
11 - Family Patrol Group - Bottle Fuck   
12 - Autentisk Film - Svarte Fugler   
13 - Opera for Infantry - Black Christmas   
14 - Do Easy - United States of America   
15 - The Cause for Concern - To Life + Death   
16 - Laxative Souls - Bryseri Half Anticipation
17 - Unkommuniti - Fry Day 2   
18 - The Rimbaud Brothers - Bite the Bullet   
19 - FâLX çèrêbRi - Olympic Games   
20 - Comando Bruno - Racaille   
21 - Interaccion - X y E   
22 - Die Form - Il Coltello nell Acqua   
23 - Swedish Nature - Suck It   
24 - Diseño Corbusier - Escuadra Popular   
25 - Yttersta Tagghudingen - Amschaspand Abrasax   

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