Chapter forty-one - State Of Independence Police was a small player of a label that was one of the first to announce the coming of a big movement. Pint-sized labels would soon be here, there and everywhere on the late seventies music scene taking rock back off The Man. Leading the way was Rough Trade, a London set-up that later made a name for itself and no money at all by releasing a string of classics by family band The Smiths (Patti, Hurricane and Fred Sonic). Another capital label was Stiff whose name meant they could never release a flexidisc. The Damned, Devo, Ian Drury and loads of other acts beginning with D, like maybe the Dooleys, got their first merciful release thanks to Stiff. If you wanted to be a clever-clever rock hack you could call this battle for the bands between the major label goliaths and the indie slingshots, the War of Independents. One guy earning his stripes up on the little guys barricades was a dude who got his kicks out of giving the majors lots of minor headaches. His name was Barry Perry, his label was Police Records and his philosophy on life was to try anything once unless it kills you. If that happens, dont touch the stuff again. “Barry Perry was a risk taker,” Wadcock tells me, “and The Decompressed were his kind of risk. In the early days when the big boys hadnt started clamouring for every new punk on the block, I think he saw the band as a kick in the teeth for the music establishment. To be honest, Ive got a sneaking suspicion that our music was less important to him than our ability to shock. And, without beating about the proverbial, we were absolutely shocking.” Perry warmed to the picture Colin Wadcock painted of the band over the phone and asked them to come into his offices for an audition. Less than half a minute into “Monotony Lobotomy” the label owner leapt out from behind his desk, gave the whole group lovebites and slit open his thumb with a letter knife insisting that such a rock n roll deal had to be signed in blood. Dave Dark fainted, but the others made their marks and The Decompressed were ready to take their bow on wax. Anna Key may have changed name and lifestyle, but the impressively chested bassist still remembers those first kosher recording sessions as if they were not so long ago. Now known as Anna Sunflower, she still has a sort of musical career of sorts. When I caught up with her at a select rock festival held in one of the Midlands nicer lay-bys she was a member of a macrobiotic, moon-worshipping cosmic dance trance commune. Inside the converted coal-fire ambulance she shares with five mongrels and three dudes with plaited beards, she recalls Mick Frenchs record production baptism of fire. “Mick might have been a virgin at the control desk, but he just had fantastic natural vibes for the thing. I was freaked out when he said my T-shirt and skirt were picking up static. No-one else could hear it except Mick. So he told me to strip down to bra and pants for the bass parts. For me the human body is a thing of beauty so I had no problem with it. In fact, I felt more at one, closer to my inner self and played some blinding bass. Whats bizarre is that Mick was never totally satisfied which meant spending hours together doing take after take, me in the studio in my undies and Mick behind the screen mixing with one hand. After a while Id see him sort of groan and hed go off to the toilets to freshen up. Then wed be off again. I lost count of the number of takes we did like that. It may have been his first production job, but the guy was a real perfectionist.” Compared to some of the other members of the Decompressed, Anna Tibbs/Key/Sunflower got off pretty damn lightly. Free of any real idea of how a record should be produced, French went right off-the-wall to get what he thought were the right results. Dave Dark was told to play his drums underwater in a special tank wired for sound. Rusting cymbals were a big problem. To keep Johnny Toxic from veering into a guitar solo that might echo the dinosaur bands punk was gunning for, French made him play in oven gloves. The only ones the producer could find were two gloves joined together by a length of material to give double-handed, super-efficient hot-pot and casserole leverage. Using them to play his burning riffs gave Toxic some nasty strains. Despite the whacky whims of their producer plus the time lost for medical reasons and drum kit corrosion, the band managed to get their two tracks in the can as 1976s leaves were brown and the sky was grey. For his part, Barry Perry was so excited by the single his label was about to unleash that he didnt even listen to the results before sending the master tapes off to the pressing plant. A first run of 3000 were produced, each in a photocopied fold-around sleeve with a black and white pic of the band standing in a graffiti-covered stair. They were rubber stamped with the legend Police Records – Confidential. The live-wire record boss was banking on re-pressing the single within the week. The Decompresseds vinyl debut missed being the UKs first punk 45 by a matter of weeks. As soon as the platter arrived at Police HQ Perry had copies sent out to everyone who was anyone and quite a few people who werent really anybody at all. The cats whod already trodden the more obscure highways and byways of the business recognised straight off the photo of the be-whiskered Wadcock among the punk personnel on the sleeve. Getting curious, some would have put the record on their posh silver-coloured music centre with smoked plastic top and double Dolby tape deck, only to be super-surprised by what came out via their woofers and tweeters. Even Colin Wadcock has to admit that both “Monotony Lobotomy” and “Spit And Span” were dead different from his back catalogue. “This direction might have disappointed some of my fans, if Id had any to disappoint that is. But, for me, punk wasnt a million miles away from what The Bandits had been up to twenty years earlier. Take away the spiked hair, tear up the ripped T-shirts, change the music then replace all that with what we were wearing and playing back then and it would have been hard to tell the two apart. Even close up. “Aside from the threads and the sounds, the most important thing was the attitude. When we started out way back with Jimmy Swillard, we had just the same attitude. We were anti everything, except anti those people who were anti everything like we were. We were pro those people. If youre anti almost everything youre on the way to anarchy. Not that we ever smashed anything up. It was anarchy, but within the law.” The Decompressed single was a trailblazer that either met with complete disgruntlement from the music press or else with just a little bit of gruntlement from the fanzines that were punks voice. Record Industry Weekly (Incorporating Gramophone Needle Times) “Monotony Lobotomy” – The Decompressed (Police) Sometimes two minutes and seventeen seconds can seem like an eternity. This puerile nonsense from Dunwich no-hopers The Decompressed, is musically challenged, lacks any lyrical invention and is sung in an out-of-tune half-shout. All but the masochistic should give it a wide berth. Scrawl Fanzine “Monotony Lobotomy” – The Decompressed Frikin hell, anyone in a group these days sez there Supa Punk. Take the Decompressed (in fact youd be better off leaving them). The cover of this single shows three poseurs and an ancient muso (hes even gotta moustache!). The musics OK, but wot about the kids? The hole things a sham. If we all laze about letting them rip us off like this well wind up with a state controlled music biz. Get reel. God shave us all.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 15:51:16 +0000
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