Harnessing moments forever
What was all that noise about anyway.....???
P.U.N.K
It was 1976 and the music movement was kicked high and hard up the backside with a gaggle of young kids from the streets (well Kings Road...!!) and so it was 'labelled' PUNK.
It was just what the tabloids loved...the media were on a 'circus run' and lapped it up serving the same themed meal as often as it could to a baying public.
But what about the kids behind this 'movement' and what did they want, mean or sing about..?
Well as most young kids going through major hormonal inbalances...they seek rsistance to the norm.
They want to 'break out' and kick back at what (they feel) is holding them back and what (they feel) is 'wrong'.
You find your box to jump into and find like-minded people in that box (who, like you) jumped in there for the self-same reason.
Young, angry and energetic....the opposite of old people really.
There is nothing (to me) quite like the sound of a jagged loud distorted guitar...it is symbolic of confusion energy and power.
'Punk Rock' (as it was termed) encapsulates most of the above...alongside social comment and change too...I still see a lot wrong with society at the time of writing this..and I am drifting towards my fifties.
THE SYSTEM
Yet inside I feel much like I did then...only more clued-up about life and how to deal with the (ir) 'system'.
The system hasn't changed...I have had to....you cannot change the system....Punk failed because it couldn't deal with the sheer colossal scale of the things it wanted to destroy.
it had no chance....and still has no chance....it's just music.
You can change yourself.....but you can't change the world....only the (people on this planet ) world can change the world....and as you can see (if you haven't already noticed) it takes more than a few guitars to change things.
SOCIETY
Society makes people.
Society (wherever it is in the world) decides the 'majority' and how to mould them by what is shows offers or hides from them.
If they don't want you to riot for freedom...they will offer you 'peacemeal' consumer lifestyles...a decoy and mere distraction....around 90% of the populus (...hey thats 'Joe Public' to me and you) will lap it up and thus a 'system' is formed...it really is not much more complex than that.
PUNK WAS FUN
Punk was fun, it was relevent and well timed (for me at least). I got years of pleasure buying records (100's), travelling to gigs (500) and meeting people (1000s).
You like what you do until it is no longer good or the same feeling eminates from you for it...It's the same as anything in life (or should be!).
IMAGE
Punk was unique and very visual too aswell as the sound of the music. It was the right piece for me and fitted so perfectly into me it was untrue. I loved the sounds the bands the image with it...although being young meant you were always going to 'conform' to preset parameters of something that said it had no boundaries...quite contradictory...but hey you grow up...see the naivity in things you have done and accept it all as being young (er).
Now ?
I can still feel the same and not even look like I would think like that....people cannot pigeon-hole me just because I dress a certain way....they always get me wrong...It's unpredictable...and I like that....The studs, painted black leather jackets and spikey hair and obligatory Doctor Martens boots were all 'part and parcel' of looking 'the part'....and heaven forbid anyone who couldn't (afford to) subscribe to this.
PUNK BANDS
I always wanted to be in a Punk band...but bar a few practices in Hackney (east London) in 1983/4 that was it really...I left it to the bands themselves to give me that fix....Discharge filled that vacancy more than adequately for me.
A thousand other bands were out there doing 'their version' of Punk/Anarchy/Change/Resistance/Non-Conformity. It really didn't matter at the end of the day (as far as society went) but it did change attitudes to a few persons (I being one of them).
U.K. RIOTS OF 1981
The riots that erupted in the UK around 1981 were not by Punks or anarchists...sure they were there (or watching Discharge play live instead!) but the people/kids 'on the street' were just locals there for no other reason than it felt good to 'be in control of being outta control' for once and smash things up (usually local peoples cars, businesses and homes) ...how d.u.m.b was that?
The rioters had no aim....no motive....no direction
...it was just "yeah coppers? c'mon then...whose afraid now truncheon-boy...?".
Good for a while I would presume but 'nothing' will always come from 'nothing'.
As you may have gathered already...I was one Punk who thought things should come from it...the words...the action...a direct result of the music...which was a mere platform (but a bloody great one I might admit in hindsight of 30 years) for change.
SQUATTING
Squatting was 'freedom'.
It brought us all 'together' then showed us we couldn't even do that by living together..it became so problematic
..."let's call off the revolution till I get my dole giro then?"
Empty (mostly council) house and flats...a gang of punks with a lock and key, some car putty and a crowbar going 'equipped to be housed'.
It was such a great time indeed...but looking back...wern't we the 'neighbours from Hell/Hackney' that now you hope to god you never have bust in next door to your gaff...???
We, like most of society, didn't give two shits about anyone but ourselfishies.
We'd be noisy, and uncommunicative within the areas/streets/houses we hoped to be accepted into. Squatting when you are 40-something would be whole pogo-better...you know how to deal with people much better than when you are 19 or 20.
LIFE THROUGH A LENS
Punk and my camera brought me fun too. I loved being perched in a great vantage point and 'waiting' to click the shutter for 'that moment'...while I saw people snapping away 'willy-nilly' around me....seemingly embaressed for holding up a camera at a punk gig...I would see the place I would like to be positioned then make my way there if I could..even if it took half the set-list of the bands I went to see to get there. My camera's were just fairly basic...so I got the most out of them with position, lighting and composing the moment that I wanted to capture...forever.
I guess if I counted up my photos of bands it would come to about 2000...but I also include Metal (I liked that from 1984 onwards till 1988).
....Punk photos maybe about 700 or so???.
But not content with snapping away beaneath Cal or Colins feet I would also photograph my surroundings...the squats in Islington and Hackney with dwelled within. I captured 'us lot' - the squatting punks and moments that I look back upon now and think...well done for doing that...I think I have about 1000 shots of my Punk-spikey-haired years. From the 'early days' in 1980 there are only a few....but by 1981 I started to take people aswell as bands..then so on through, 1982 til I went squatting in London in March '83.
FREEDOM IS AN EMPTY HOUSE
I left Margate Kent and a nice council-paid flat with two friends and went up and slept in an old house in Stoke Newington, London on the top floor with little electric and/or water and laid asleep on a carpet with something from a skip for a 'pillow'.
It doesn't seem like a sensible move...but it was priceless with regards to 'feeling free'. Being around funny, crazy people into doing the same stuff as you...these people crop up in my photographs of punks time and time again...like I would do in their photos I guess...if they took photographs as much as I did then I would do.
THE PUNK UNIFORM
My 'Punk Uniform' didn't change that much really...when I was living in Southern Ireland and had no income...I was a bit too young to get 'dole money' in Ireland (you had to be 16 and I was 13-14 when we moved there in 1976!) so it was modifying what you had.
I'd buy some big 'dinner-plate' size badges of my favourite bands (Pistols, Damned, Clash etc) get a length of safety pins and put them together (about 21 if I remember correctly!) and wear a ripped 'trenchcoat' with a pair of corduroy black flared trousers with two zips in them and a pair of trainers (white).
Then when 'income support' supported me back in the U.K. in 1980...I could afford the (accepted) 'uniform' black this, black that...black everything.
Dm's, Leather Jacket ('Fight Back' 7 Inch cover and logo of Discharges on the back - almost compulsory)
PUNK SPIKEY HAIR
What about the hair I hear you 'brylcream' (scream) ???
Well early days (1978-1980) it was about 3-4 inches long and 'tufty' with nothing in it at all...erm...that'll be a mess then (nothing changes much...my hairs a mess everyday still...!).
After 1980 I experimented with back-combing (it is o.k. with some hairspray and a hairdrier but rubbish prior to discovering that all important piece of punk information...!).
Starch...that sounded great but wasn't any good really.
Then soap came in around 1981 for me (no, not under my armpits...on me 'ead!!!)....thick and lathery...you'd miss half the gig when it ran down into your eyes...but hey....you (thought you) looked great at the gig, right????
Then around 1982 came 'Punk Image Salvation'....they called it Hairspray...!
Back-comb into 'thick upward tufts' then spray it wet with hairspray...then pull and twist upwards till it stretched the skin on your head (or what was left of it by then) and blow dry...as hot and as fast as you could handle...within a minute each 'statue of liberty' spike would be rock hard.....awesome.
My hair then grew longer and longer as it could now stand upright...even at gigs...and I think mine ended up being longer than a 12" LP...!!
But when you are squatting you get lazy-er and do it less...so then an empending image change for your hair is almost progressively dictated for you....bring in the dreadlock look....for ex-punks who can't be bothered to spike their hair up anymore....just crimp (with a babyliss crimping tong set) and heat them....well you 'cook' them really....into crimped 'rats tails' all over...on a white dude like me...it'll 'sponge-out' a bit and fill them out to look thicker...and after a while they 'bite' and 'grow in' rather than them having to be 'done' every week or so.
I once went a year without a bath....god if I had kid like me eh???
(I now got it down to around 3 or 4 months in my forties!!!!)
If I had had more money I would have had a classy camera and about 15,000 photo's or more...and if digital stuff and computers were around then heaven forbid us....!
YOU DIFFERENT PEOPLE ARE ALL THE BLOODY SAME
I was always 'different' maybe we all were...but in the things you could see I would do (& not do) you could.
I never smoked (still never have)
I never drank (still never have)
I never took drugs (still never have apart from strange dessert in India once!)
I managed to 'hoard' anything I could like a Punk-Rock-Memorabilia-Robot and also wrote a daily (life) diary...in detail.
PUNK BOOK
Well if you put all that together then you have a classic (3 or 4) Monstrous Punkier Stockpiles for a
......book on U.K. Punk-Rock Photography - 1980-1985....!!
(click on the 'Punk Photography Book' link up the top to find out the status its at!)
Last Shot
So in short a long time ago I took a load of photographs of the U.K. Punk scene from 1980 through till around 1985-6.
One day they will all be high resolutionized and segregated, catergorized and available to you the (e) baying Punk public.
There will be a small outlay (for what you get in return from me for years and years of work) for I guess THEE BEST UK PUNK PHOTOGRAPH & MEMORABILIA COLLECTION ANYWHERE ON THE WEB for the years 1980-1986.
Fair is fair...in this world you get nothing for nothing...and if I only had a little to give...I would for free...I have not....it has taken and still will continue to take my time...like 10 hours plus on this website etc.
So as I have enough Punk Memorbilia to keep you busy until your grave...I kid you not....then even if I charged (GBH) £30 for a DVD/CD with everything on...that would be a giveaway...I know if I was searching and someone offered me this ( all what I have) for £100 or more I would buy it straight on the spot and no questions asked.
Will I enjoy it too...?
Oh yes...it will be my contributions to an earlier superb time of my life....I have surpassed that easily with the way I feel and things I do and places I go...but it will be forver unique to me.
I grew up through the U.K. 1980-1985/6 Punk scene and even though most of the memories have faded
.....this collection will not
...I will look forward to the day I can say to you
...."This Charged"....is finished
...let the ceremony begin
(.....form an order-bloody-ley queue will you lot..!!!!)
...Bloody Punks eh.....?!?!?!?!?!?