How minimal can you get? #92

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

“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)

The Freeze – Go Team Go
Get it here.

“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)

Void – Organized Sports
Get it here.

“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.”

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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.
 

How minimal can you get? #91

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

Order the fuckin' record here.