Decadent Few

I THOUGHT I was quite enlightened in 1984 but apparently not. This ‘vintage’ postal interview is from the pages of Fun & Games, which was very much a one-off zine I did when I moved to Darlington for a year.

Anyone for a leading question? Can I interest you in a chauvinist worldview then? And the less said about Gary the bassist, the better. To their credit, the band gave him the boot when he went off the deep end.

Not my best work – some of Mick’s answers demand follow-up questions, to say the least – but it’s an interesting take on the mid 80s UK anarcho scene, if nothing else. Don’t judge me.

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Chumbawamba

“WE WALKED around for a while before we could find someone to tell us where the gig was. We went up these endless dark steps up to a massive hall with lots of people with funny hairstyles, selling ace fanzines called Kill Your Pet Puppy, while other people with green and red dreadlocks smoked sweet-smelling ciggies. We sat in front of the stage and read some fanzines.

The Passion Killers came on and did a lot of songs and I liked them all. There were three of them and the drummer was very good. They went off and I went to the toilet.

When I came back, D&V were on and by now the hall was filling up with girls with fluffy pink hair and studded leather jackets with ‘The Destructors’ painted on the back. There were lots of other people as well but I didn’t really notice them. Anyway, D&V were ace. They did the stuff off their Crass record and most people seemed to like them.

Zillions of people came onstage and started to put a washing line up on stage. A bloke started sweeping up in the middle of the audience. Chumbawamba’s set was very theatrical, with people swapping instruments, chalking stuff on the floor, and splashing red paint over Action Men and themselves. Some of the songs were slow, gentle ballads, I suppose, and others were like wall of noise aaaaargh-type things. I liked it…”