0. HO3 was recorded on reel-to-reel tape at the mutual aid centre on newfoundland road, bristol. Where they said: 'People come from all over the world, man. They just come off the motorway and they come right in.' Could the hippie dream adjust to a world where political solutions to inequality and poverty were being dismantled? . . . . . another road, not a motorway, wound under a railway bridge, past a Sikh grocery store - there lived a Jamaican British community discriminated against by unemployment, racism and police harassment. On the sleeve of the record Dole Age/Free Speech by Talisman, a Rastaman walks past a police dog handler; in this xerox silhouette artist - and dreaming record company magnate - lloyd harris imag[in]es the first English innercity uprising of the Thatcher era: St Pauls first, then came Handsworth, Brixton, Moss Side and Liverpool 8.
1. it ended at the command STOP! & after that it changed.
2. one of the foam armchairs being used for a game of catch by The Mohican Punks in the darkened room, hit the electric mains and the building was plunged into darkness, the amps into silence.
For a moment, as if time had been erased, still-dancing silhouhettes were picked up by the light from the street, which had entered through holes in the roof, dancing the low budget dance, as the bulky silhouette of another armchair sailed over them.
a hippy jumped onto the stage.
'Why have you stopped playing, you b******s! I paid 75 pence to get in here!'
1. Mutually assured destruction was the insane theory that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is in itself a deterrent to their use. It had nothing whatsoever to do with goats. Into this experimentally conflicted society, or non-society - monetarism demanding unheard-of levels of planned unemployment, anti-union legislation, a politicised police force equipped to deal with the inevitable civil unrest - was dropped the perfect palliative. A Royal Wedding!
3. While new romantics went weirdswimming through dry ice-clouds of wild cocaine, past St Pauls pubs playing Jamaican imports on turntables at the end of bars, basses booming, and post-punk funk zooming from the stage in the magnificent gloom of Trinity Hall - Pigbag, The Pop Group, 23 Skidoo, ACR - the baleeshas played at the Stonehouse, then the Mutual Aid Centre,
4. first left on the line drawing by eugenia ledesma, anita sawyer was in both the baleeshas and vile bodies. when vile bodies heard her version of her song 'its so mystical' with the baleeshas which she was due to sing with vile bodies in the next set one of them said: you might have told us. but vile bodies played completely different chords under anita's tune, because in reality it's so mystical was a screamed poem.
6. a musician who had made an album called Abstracts and Extracts, a work inspired by EWM (early white minimalist) pulse music and the Who, nick carter invited me to a workshop at the Arnolfini - there was a quadrophonic concert of avant-garde music in the evening. The workshop leader showed participants how to prepare a piano like John Cage. It may have been Max Eastley. nick had seen him talk before and on that previous occasion he had been a firebrand, a revolutionary. This time however, as he stuffed corks and forks between the piano strings, he seemed less than enthusiastic about the whole process, pointing out the potentially lethal danger of a prepared piano, and admitting that these days he preferred Bach.
5. nick came to a gig when we had grown to a quintet. I asked him what he thought; his early enthusiasm had waned (he had admired us as a duo because he said we were 'not stylised'), he said we were 'OK'. His friend, however, liked us: said we had a Dadaist quality. and finally we got the chance to play Trinity Hall, on 20 april 1981.
There was a rumour circulating that the extreme right wing National Front Party were going to smash up the benefit. but nothing happened. As I write these words in 2019 the far right has grown a new head.