Surplus Stock
“Surplus Stock was (for this album) Robert Giddens, Phil Renshaw, Robert
Clarke and Josef Schenk. Robert Giddens did not live in Düsseldorf, but
in a small town in Germany's north, Quakenbrück. But he is English, from
Rochdale. He had not been a musical producer to DAF, but had given them
his hard-earned money and managed them. DAF recorded their first single
in Rochdale. Before that, Giddens had written about German bands for
the English music mag Zig Zag. Surplus Stock's best track may be 'Let's
Kill Each Other' from the German compilation Fix Planet. Maybe they
are the inventors of the term 'Minimal' for this kind of music, as they
called it like that even in 1979, when their 7" Spiv came out.” Mutant Sounds
“Surplus Stock was my band. We were on the edge and went from Electronic
minimal music to a band that was playing 'Fake Jazz'. Signed with Rough
Trade made some records, made no money, broke up and moved on. I then
had the band Cliff Barnes and the Fear of Winning, The Illegal Artists
and I now make bicycles for a living.” Robert Giddens
VA Fix Planet! LP (Ata Tak, 1981)
Surplus Stock – Let's Kill Each Other
Get it here.
“Organized sport is the enemy. Skateboarding, yes. That is free, you can do it anywhere and there are no parents involved, or very few. But team sports? No, no, no. That's not to mention early indoctrination into the pernicious creed of competition. There is something horribly Victorian about team sports. Somehow you are supposed to give up your individuality to a wider cause. And good team players are often unpleasant people: 'Jock' is the expressive word for the type in the States.” Tom Hodgkinson
Dead Kennedys – Jock-O-Rama [starts at 51:00] (Live @ Wust Radio Music Hall, Washington DC, 1985)
“Sports reproduce the main features of modern industrial organization: regulation, specialization, competitiveness and maximizing performance. (…) What sport and physical education produce are fundamentally performances and records, that is, computable data, things, no relationships between people.” Federico Corriente & Jorge Montero
The Freeze Land Of The Lost LP (Modern Method Records, 1983)
“Organized competitive sports do not contribute to build character. They are so far from building character that, in my opinion, continuous and excessive participation in competitive sport tends to destroy it.” G. Okerlund
The Faith / Void The Faith / Void LP (Dischord Records, 1982)
“Team sports are all about beating the other team. They prepare young men for vicious competition in the workplace. But games don't have to be competitive, and any anthropologist will tell you that old-fashioned societies, which have more egalitarian systems of government, have their own games and sports but without the cut-throat Western competitive element.” Tom Hodgkinson
Three Sided Football (Nacer Merzoughi, 2009)
“Three Sided Football is a game invented by Asger Jorn, that he presents in the book The Application of the Triolectical Method in General Situology, edited in Århus in 1964 by the Scandinavian Institute for Comparative Vandalism.”
* * *
For further reading, please check out Federico Corriente & Jorge Montero's Citius, altius, fortius (only in Spanish), and do not hesitate to visit the International I Hate Sports Club.
Sleaford Mods
“Two skip rats with a laptop” from Nottingham, UK. Bestest of 2014.
Sleaford Mods Tiswas EP (Invada, 2014)
Sleaford Mods – 6 Horsemen (The Brixtons)
“Part fictional account of misguided drug use to fit a stereotyped image in order to sell records. Also a stab at delusional self-images which always end in tears. The people may tow the line but they will eventually tell you to fuck off if you keep telling them you are Elvis. Also a cheeky stab at the purists who inhabit the gig scene, so informed yet so uninformed.” Jason Williamson
Agonia
“Agonia were formed by Wretched's drummer Zambo – he was the only member. The sound of this album (incorrectly listed here as an EP) is pure catharsis, maybe Zambo decided whacking his drums and yelling like a loon would provide him with some emotional release. Or who knows, maybe he just wanted to have fun.” HorseMouth
Agonia Nessuna Agonia Ci Farà Morire LP (La Gabbiano Produzioni / Coll. Espansione Urbana Distribuzione, 1985)
Lois Maffeo (The Go-Team / Courtney Love / Lois)
“I actually bought a guitar because I thought it was pretty and then after I had it for a while, I figured, 'Oh, I guess I have this thing, I might as well learn how to play it.' A friend that knew how to play gave me chord diagrams. There was a really famous punk poster from England and it might have been for the Damned, I'm not really sure, but it shows three chords, G, A and D and says 'Here's three chords, now start a band.' I kind of used that as my inspiration.” Lois Maffeo
“Simplicity in my own music-making is kind of a demand in the sense that I'm not really a gifted guitar player. I'm also not that keen on becoming great, I just feel proficient for what I do. Maybe that sounds like a cop-out, but even if I tried to play covers of other people's songs, I couldn't. I just make up my own chords. So to me, simplicity is a necessity.” Lois Maffeo
The Go Team Archer Come Sparrow Cassette (K, 1989)
The Go-Team (featuring Lois Maffeo) – My Head Hurts
Get it here.
“Just in purely historical terms, Zen was originally a reform movement created by Buddhists who thought that Buddhism had deviated too far from its roots as a form of meditative practice. But that doesn’t really tell you what Zen is. To me, Zen is a search for truth through action. It’s less a religion or even a philosophy than it is an attitude.” Brad Warner
“Before you can live the life you truly want to live, you need to find out what you truly want. That takes patience. You need to look straight into your own mind and weed out your real desires from the false ones you’ve created out of thought. I only know of one way to do that, and you should have figured out by now what that is. Yep. You got it. Lots of zazen.” Brad Warner
“Meditation is a totally nonviolent, nonaggressive occupation. Not filling the space, allowing for the possibility of connecting with unconditional opennes — this provides the basis for real change. The more we sit with this impossibility, the more we find it’s always possible after all.” Pema Chödrön
“The joyous and voluntary poverty of Buddhism becomes a positive force. The traditional harmlessness and refusal to take life in any form has nation-shaking implications. The practice of meditation, for which one needs only 'the ground beneath one’s feet,' wipes out mountains of junk being pumped into the mind by the mass media and supermarket universities. The belief in a serene and generous fulfillment of natural loving desires destroys ideologies which blind, maim and repress — and points the way to a kind of community which would amaze 'moralists' and transform armies of men who are fighters because they cannot be lovers.” Gary Snyder
“Question authority. Question society. Question reality. But you’ve got to take it all the way: Question punk authority. Question punk society. Question your own rules and question your own values. Question Zen society. Question Zen authority. Question other people’s views on reality and question your own.” Brad Warner
“Do not be a prisoner of any doctrine or ideology, even Buddhist ones.” Thích Nhất Hạnh
“The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.” Gary Snyder
Ruin He-Ho LP (Red Music, 1984)
Ruin – Freedom Has No Bounds
More info here and here.
Sleeping Dogs
“Sleeping Dogs came out of the New York Punk trio [Amerikan] Arsenal, that moved to SF in 1981. Drummer Dirty Dog (Dave King) designed the iconic Crass logo and that band's noted fold-out graphics. Sleeping Dogs' proto-Industrial opus, 1982's Beware 7" EP, came out on the Crass label (with musical contributions by Penny Rimbaud and Phil Free)." Steven Blush
“The practice of violence changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world." Hannah Arendt
The Fugs – Kill For Peace (W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, 1971)
“Violence is not only undesirable in itself, it generates panic (and thus manipulability) and promotes militaristic (and thus hierarchical) organization. Nonviolence entails more open and democratic organization; it tends to foster composure and compassion and to break the miserable cycle of hatred and revenge." Ken Knabb
“It [nonviolence] has been marginalized because it is one of the rare truly revolutionary ideas, an idea that seeks to completely change the nature of society, a threat to the established order. And it has always been treated as something profoundly dangerous." Mark Kurlansky
Neos Hassibah Gets The Martian Brain Squeeze EP (Alandhiscar Records, 1982)
Neos – Opposition To All Violence, Even If Commited In Self Defense Get it here.
“War is no more adapted to preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace than midnight darkness is to produce noonday light." David Low Dodge
“To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt ten-fold, to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundred-fold. This the rulers of the earth all recognize and yet when it comes to the greatest crime — waging war on another state — they praise it!"Mozi
Suicide in the Trenches (Siegfried Sassoon, 1918)
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
UK Decay For My Country / Unwind 7" (Fresh Records, 1980)
UK Decay – For My Country
“Every ‘blood and iron’ type of governor fears nonviolent resistance so much that he secretly hires so-called ‘agents provocateurs’ who go among the nonviolent resisters pretending to be of them, and invite them to deeds of violence…" Richard Gregg
“The kind of pacifism that does not actively combat the war preparations of the governments is powerless and will always stay powerless. Would that the conscience and common sese of the people awaken!" Albert Einstein
Ill Repute What Happens Next 12" (Mystic Records, 1984)
Ill Repute – Turn The Guns Around
“I think war, and the fact we kill each other over border disputes and who's got the best god, is an absolute abomination. It's not civilised behaviour at all. It's an outgrowth of the old 'big fish eat the little fish' primitive existence, and we humans have to grow past that." Edgar Mitchell
“Civilization is peace, barbarism is war." Frédéric Passy
Minutemen – King Of The Hill
* * *
For further reading, please check out Bertha von Suttner's Lay Down Your Arms; Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front; and Jacques Tardi's Goddamn This War! and It Was the War of the Trenches.
Die Tödliche Doris
“The fantastic and twisted first vinyl outing from these legendary 'Geniale Dilettanten' [Ingenious Dilettantes] and stalwarts of the most radical wing of the Neue Deutsche Welle." CollectorsFrenzy
“Rather than constructing a consistent identity, typically essential for pop music groups, Die Tödliche Doris challenged the notion of 'convention' or 'stereotype'. Instead, they tried with each music piece and production not to follow a 'style' or 'image'.” Wikipedia
Die Tödliche Doris Ohne Titel EP (Zickzack, 1981)
Die Tödliche Doris – Avon-Gard
Get it here and here.
Die Tödliche Doris – Über-Mutti [Super-Mom] (Live concert Paris 1983, lip-synched in Berlin 1984)
“The acoustic distortion and actionistic
interventions in the sound recording are mediatized once again in the
performance 'Super-Mom': the Paris concert is lip-synched in Berlin, and
performers as well as audience simulate their parts. This is the first
live lip-synch show with a wig-wearing audience, which must also
simulate the applause (by holding up and moving its hands). Die Tödlich
Doris thus initiates a spiral of self-reference corresponding to that in
video feedback. The serial concept, which increasingly approaches pure
white noise with each new 'generation' of performance, is realized in
its most extreme form in 'Cavaliers live in Villingen-Schwenningen, live
lip-synched in Bonn, live lip-synched in Berlin, live lip-synched in
Bruxelles, live lip-synched in S'Hertogenbosch'.” Rudolf Frieling
Twee special
“Simplicity can indicate a lot of things in music. It can signal a lack of chops, inattention to detail, a minimalist approach, or disinterest in more complicated forms. But in a timeless fashion — like the eternal little black dress — Tracey Thorn's A Distant Shore proves that sometimes simple is the most direct route to stunning.” Lois Maffeo
Tracey Thorn A Distant Shore LP (Cherry Red, 1982)
Tracey Thorn – Too Happy
“If punk’s utilitarian manifesto was summed up by 'this is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band' and its DIY ethos by the Desperate Bicycles’ declaration 'it was easy, it was cheap — go and do it!' then by the time those calls to action had hit the Isle of Wight in the early 80s, they’d been taken on board by brother and sister Mark and Mel Litten as ‘we have a schoolgirl’s recorder, a beaten up cheap guitar and we can hit things for percussion’.” Did Not Chart
Trixie's Big Red Motorbike – That's The End Of That [Second John Peel Seession] Get it here.
“Twa Toots was the second group featuring songwriter Sarah Brown. The first being Sarah Goes Shopping who released a clutch of essential 45s. The band hailed from the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, UK and performed only a handful of concerts.” Discogs
“The group — Sarah Brown (vocals, guitar, bass, piano), Phillipa Richmond (guitar, vocals) — recorded their debut (and only) Peel session in 1983, augmented by Will Cassell (drums) and Sarah's dad Frank on trombone. But it wasn't until the latter part of 1986 that this seven track mini LP quietly slipped out on the Crystal Clear label (Cat. No. CC103) in a pressing of just 250 copies.” Maggot Caviar
Twa Toots Please Don't Play A Rainy Night In Georgia 12" (Crystal Clear Records, 1986)
ISSUE #3: SEPTEMBER 2014 | buy | download |
A5 / 92 pages / English Cover:Anna (Leeds, UK) Contributors:Camille (Rennes, FR), Constance (Rennes, FR), Darryl (San Francisco, US), Edu (Vancouver, CA), Jeremy (Paris, FR), Maïssa (Lyon, FR), Patty (San Jose, US), Pierre (Rennes, FR)
MAKING WAVES ZINE TAPE #3 | download |
01. The Chefs - 24 Hours
02. SST - Empty
03. Algebra Suicide - No War Bride
04. Brabrabra - Tropical Sensation
05. Pervers - Freude am Tanz
06. Rebby Sharp - I’m So Hot
07. Generation Loss - Turnaround
08. Fifth column - The Fairview Mall Story
09. Sex Crime - Too Many
10. The Courtneys - Kc Reeves
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Mahatma Gandhi
Meet Your Meat
“The cruelties of modern factory farming are so severe that you don't have to be a vegetarian or animal rights activist to find the conditions intolerable and a violation of the human-animal bond.” John Robbins
“Factory farming wasn't born or advanced out of a need to produce more food — to 'feed the hungry' — but to produce it in a way that is profitable for agribusiness companies. Factory farming is all about money. That is the reason the factory farm system is failing and won't work over the long term: it's created a food industry whose primary concern isn't feeding people. Does anyone really doubt that the corporations that control the vast majority of animal agriculture in America are in it for the profit? In most industries, that's a perfectly good driving force. But when the commodities are animals, the factories are the earth itself, and the products are physically consumed, the stakes are not the same, and the thinking can't be the same.” Jonathan Safran Foer
“Even if you don't work in the meatpacking industry or eat meat, you are not immune to the consequences of the practices of the animal agribusinesses with which you share the planet. Meat production is a leading cause of every significant form of enviromental damage: air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, erosion, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and depletion of fresh water.” Melanie Joy
“The vast majority of the animals we eat are not, as those in the animal agribusiness industry would have us believe, 'contented cows' and 'happy hens' lazing amid grassy fields and open barnyards. They are not sleeping in spacious stalls with fresh hay. From the moment they are born, these animals are kept in intensive confinement where they may suffer from disease, exposure to extreme temperatures, severe overcrowding, violent handling, and even psychosis. Despite what the prevailing imagery of farm animals suggests, small, family-run farms are largely a thing of the past; today the animals are in massive 'confined animal feeding operations,' or CAFOs (sometimes called 'factory farms'), where they reside until they are shipped to the slaughterhouse.” Melanie Joy
Le Sang des bêtes (Georges Franju, 1949)
“The meat industry understands that the more people know about what happens on the kill floor, the less meat they're likely to eat.” Michael Pollan
“Human beings cannot be human (much less humane) under the conditions of a factory farm or slaughterhouse. It's the most perfect workplace alienation in the world right now. Unless you consider what the animals experience.” Jonathan Safran Foer
VA Sub Pop 5 Tape (Sub Pop, 1980)
All Night Movies – Slaughterhouse
“A diet based on industrial fast food is contributing mightily to escalating rates of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. And factory farms are contributing massively to global warming, deforestation, and species extinction.” John Robbins
“It might sound naive to suggest that whether you order a chicken patty or a veggie burger is a profoundly important decision. Then again, it certainly would have sounded fantastic if in the 1950s you were told that where you sat in a restaurant or on a bus could begin to uproot racism. (…) Deciding what to eat (and what to toss overboard) is the founding act of production and consumption that shapes all others. Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can. One of the greatest opportunities to live our values — or betray them — lies in the food we put on our plates.” Jonathan Safran Foer
God Is My Co-Pilot I Am Not This Body CD (Les Disques Du Soleil Et De L'Acier, 1992)
God Is My Co-Pilot – Animal Rights
“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?” Jonathan Safran Foer
Ja Ja Ja – I Am An Animal
* * *
For further reading, please check out Eric Schlosser'sFast Food Nation and Gail Eisnitz's Slaughterhouse.
The Sterilles
“The Sterilles (Aan Leadingham, Dina Press-Price and Ashley Stewart) started out as an all-girl punk band and had a radio hit early on in their career with 'I'm on the Rag'. Poor management and bad business practices took away any profit from that experience.” Official site
The Sterilles On The Rag LP (Screaming Skull, 1987)
The Sterilles – Shopping
Endless thanks to Nathan for uploading the whole record back in the day.
Originally posted Sep 5, 2010
“Reno's all girl band were born to a family of ceramic lizards and have been around since about October 1980. These girls range in age from 16 to 18. Hell-n-52, Jone-9, Bess-147, and Lynn-2 months. They play Ozark music on a variety of instruments: Lynn-spoons and mandolin, Bess-fiddle and kazoo, Jone-washboard and harmonica, and Hell-n-banjo and jug. MUSICAL INFLUENCES: Molly Hatchett, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Lynard Skybard and Aretha Franklin. Just jivin'. SOME OF THEIR PASTIMES INCLUDE going on dates with people who eat glass, collecting empty deodorant containers, and lighting people's underwear on fire.” Not So Quiet On The Western Front
Not So Quiet On The Western Front zine, 1982 [CD inlay, 1999]
“This band hails from Reno, Nevada and is composed of four teenage girls that do mostly all hardcore material. The nine songs on this tape are definitely not of the slam'n'thrash variety but are more akin to art damage, sorta like Flipper. Anyway everything here is original and well, kinda weird. Broken-up rhythms and strange singing abound but this stuff really does grab ya after repeated listenings. Also the lyrics are top notch and these girls definitely have something to say! They deal with subjects such as high school, Cuban refugees, and the all important question about drug use. What ya got here is a fairly rewarding tape from a rebellious crew of teenage girls ready to shake up the system.” Frankie DeAngelis (Ripper #7, May 1982)
Lynn of Reno's The Wrecks. Touch & Go #19
“The Wrecks were one of the first all-female hardcore punk bands. They rocked Reno from 1980 to 1982. Two of the members went on to form the still-active Imperial Teen: Lynn Truell and Jone Stebbins. Lynn was just named one of the 100 best alternative-rock drummers by Spin magazine, which neglected her time in The Wrecks but included her drumming in The Dicks and Sister Double Happiness.” Mark Robison
“She [Bessie Oakley] also happens to be the very definition of a maverick pioneer, if not in terms of settling the land and breaking ponies, then at least culturally speaking. She and her all-girl Hardcore band The Wrecks were matter-of-fact Riot Grrrl before the first people to call themselves 'Riot Grrrls' were out of grade school! I might be forgetting one but I can’t think of another all-girl, or even girl-centric band, in that early American Hardcore era.” Jason Traeger
Jone Stebbins of The Wrecks. Cari L. Marvelli
“Bessie and Jone [Stebbins] weren’t only known for being Wrecks either. They were equally well regarded and probably just as well known for their work as the co-editors of one of the most engaging and well loved fanzines of the time, a brilliant, funny, and charming off-the-cuff serial work of art known as Paranoia 'the magazine for blind and illiterate punks'.” Jason Traeger
Paranoia #1, 1980
“Tesco Vee: How's been the response to your tape? Bessie: Good enough for a homo-zine-new wave chronicle like Touch & Go to interview us I guess. Actually pretty good – I think it's cuz we put alot into it. Lynn: So far pretty good. We get a couple of letters a week for tapes. Jone: Pretty good, I'm surprised. We've been getting good reviews except those that say we're an art damage band. Fuck yeah we sound like a combination of Rik L Rik and the Slits and David Bowie… I'm sure! Hell-n: Great – I even saw one in Recycled Records.” Touch & Go #19
“You probably won't be able to get this garage-punk gem anymore, but suffice to say this nine song cassette is both funny and wise — with lots of hardcore thrills mixed in. Even though the WRECKS are no longer with us (sigh), songs like 'Couldn't Believe It' will live on in the annals of punk history. Mark my words.” Steve Spinali (MRR #2)
Punk's An Attitude (Jone "Jetson" Stebbins, 1981)
Swear to God I get sick of people's attitudes
And trying to figure them out
They talk about shit they don't understand
And dress to fit the trend
You can be accepted or rejected
in punk or society
You can play the role, I'll just be myself
Fuck people who think I'm a hippy
or a weekend punk
If they stopped to think they'd see
Punk is an attitude
Punk is an attitude, individuality is the key
Do what you want, don't care what they think
I guess some people just can't see…
Trendies suck!!!
