The story of UK DIY: 131 experimental underground classics 1977-1985

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31. FAMILY FODDER
‘Playing Golf (With My Flesh Crawling)’
(Parole, 1979)

Okay, this one might be pushing the boat out a bit, in terms of its industrial/structural provenance – Parole was connected with Fresh Records – but it’s such a righteous blast that fits right in with the ‘go anywhere, do anything’ openness of DIY that it has to be here. For this song only, Family Fodder were basically England’s answer to The Residents – and how. Alig from Family Fodder would later go on to write some of post-punk’s most giddily hyperactive pop songs – check out ‘Savoir Faire’ and ‘Debbie Harry’, in particular – but ‘Playing Golf (With My Flesh Crawling)’ is genuinely sinister, the flick-knife behind the forced grimace. “I’m so happy with my life, there’s times I feel fungus growing on me”. Who hasn’t felt that way? Uhh…


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32. ‘FATAL’ MICROBES
‘Violence Grows’
(Small Wonder, 1979)

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Unsubtle yet bang-on socio-cultural commentary from Honey Bane’s first group: “While you’re getting kicked to death in a London pedestrian subway, don’t think passers-by will help, they just look the other way”. The ‘Fatal’ Microbes’ story is a weird one – two of the group’s members were the children of Vi Subversa, whose own group Poison Girls shared a 12” EP with the Microbes; one of those kids, Pete Fender, would end up in anarcho-punkers Flux Of Pink Indians., whose Derek Birkett runs One Little Indian, the label that gave the world Björk. It’d be nice to think there’s a through-line from ‘Fatal’ Microbes’ spacy, dub-inflected, slow-crawl pop threat to Björk’s wired experimentation, but I might be pushing it.


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33. THE FEAR MERCHANTS
‘U-Boat Captain’
(It’s War Boys!, 1983)

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Ah yes, The Fear Merchants, yet another limb from the hydra that is the Homosexuals/It’s War Boys! scene. Some day, Emanuele at Alga Marghen will reissue Mental, The Fear Merchants’ 1983 cassette, on his War Extension sub-label, and more people will understand just why The Fear Merchants sit close to the apex of wonky, wild DIY. Another project from the minds of Amos and Sara – who is credited here as Sara Hop-Hop, with no real explanation, natch – Mental feels like one of the more naked, unreconstructed of the It’s War Boys projects, though from the way the legendary Die Or DIY? blog describes it, perhaps there’s a reason for that: “Amos plays the role of a, probably, ex-Nazi extermination camp doctor, come psychiatrist; hamming it up, like Larry Olivier in the Marathon Man on nitrous-oxide, between tracks on various themes of mental illness… Hence the title of the album”. Right, indeed. While I’m here, let’s toast the brilliant souls at Die Or DIY?, the blog that has done more than anyone to get so much of this brilliant music circulating in zeroes and ones.


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34. THE FEGS
‘Mill Street Law & Order’
(Groucho Marxist Record Co:Operative, 1981)

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Another kicker from the Ha! Ha! Funny Polis Paisley punk compilation. Not much information out there on The Fegs, but they’re clearly of a piece, aesthetically, with stablemates Defiant Pose, who shared at least one member. ‘Mill Street Law & Order’ hits with the kind of vibrancy you’d expect from a ‘60s garage gang – kids hepped up on pills and ready to take on the world. All the groups were from Paisley, but Sirocco Studios was in Kilmarnock – maybe being out of their environs pushed the Paisley punk team to really go for it, as the entire compilation feels like it’s running high octane. A great story from Joe Feg about distributing the record, from the Vicious Riff web site: “’I went down to London with Tommy and Wully in a car with box loads of the Ha! Ha! Funny Polis EP to Rough Trade. We got stopped and searched by the Special Branch in an underground car park, I think the IRA were busy at the time. They opened up all the boxes and I thought our tea was out, but then they let us go.”


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35. PATRIK FITZGERALD
‘Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart’
(Small Wonder, 1977)

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Patrik Fitzgerald, the true punk poet. I’d rate this up there with the Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch as far as formative DIY moments go, simply for its disarming honesty and power – Fitzgerald chipping away at three chords on an acoustic guitar while bleeding his heart out over six strings, it’s easily as brutally potent as ‘Boredom’, though it trades the Buzzcocks’ oblique dryness for direct expression. There was little more punk than getting up in front of identikit crowds and pulling out the acoustic six-string. Fitzgerald is still out there doing his thing, a lifer on the fringes, in the midst of the music industry’s eternal comings and goings.


36. THE FLOWERS
‘Confessions’
(Pop:Aural, 1979)

Pop:Aural was the label started by Bob Last after he closed the legendary Fast Product imprint. Previously appearing on one of Fast’s Earcom collections, ‘Confessions’ was the first 7” on the new label, and was a great opening shot, a dissolute female vocalist drawling through a thicket of guitars, each chord shattering against vaguely tribal tom-toms, sometimes playing out spindly and variegated against an insistent bass pulse. Based in Edinburgh, they shared connections with The Fire Engines and another Pop:Aural group, Boots For Dancing, who really should be in this list too. (Ditto the incredible but barely known Frank Hannaway & Michael Barclay 12” EP, At Home, which seems to have disappeared from the world almost entirely. But You Ishihara of White Heaven is a fan…)


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37. FLYING BRIX
‘Black Colours’
(Modello, 1980)

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What an unexpected find. This first line-up of The Flying Brix only released this 7” single, a nine-track EP, each song a short shot – structurally, it feels like the Northern Hemisphere equivalent of the Seems Twice 7” from Australia (12 songs in under six minutes). But Flying Brix surprise with their mournfulness – “Black Colours” is a frail acoustic number, the vocalist singing out true and gentle with a slightly flat, nasal tone. In a weird way it sounds like Patrik Fitzgerald on a total downer, something that probably happened in real life quite a few times…Other songs on the EP have a more typical, skiffle-ish, primitive guitar/drums/vox feel, but the song writing of Joe Beagle – also known as Joey Parratt – shines through even at this early stage.


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38. THE FOUR PLUGS
‘Wrong Treatment’
(Disposable, 1979)

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As with many of the records on this list, I first heard of The Four Plugs thanks to Johan Kugelberg’s Top 100 DIY singles. It placed pretty highly, at number 12, and when you listen to it you can see why: sat out on the margins, The Four Plugs have a weird, wired, wild edge, the two guitars – if they are guitars, everything’s so freakishly recorded it’s hard to tell what’s going on – parsed off into separate channels and playing the most rudimentary of riffs, while a simplified Moe Tucker thud ticks away in the background, the vocalist untying everything with a strangely declamatory vocal. There are connections between The Four Plugs and Idol Death, it seems, whose “New Lesson” ups the ante even further. Amazing.


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39. FRANK SUMATRA & THE MOB
‘Tedium’
(Small Wonder, 1979)

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Good old Frank Sumatra. The Sinatra piss-taker and his mob were, in fact, Alig from Family Fodder with friends, and this 12” EP proves what we’d all suspected, that the music of this particular subset of the UK underground was rather more grounded in Rock In Opposition than we thought. Because ‘Tedium’ is post-Eisler/Weill madness par excellence, as though it somehow slipped through the cracks when Slapp Happy & Henry Cow were assembling their Desperate Straights collaborative record. This EP also features a mindboggling cover of ‘Telstar’, which is just as bonkers as you’d expect. (Hunt it down on YouTube.)


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40. THE FUN 4
‘Singing In The Showers’
(NMC, 1979)

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They’re here just as much for their historical significance as anything, though ‘Singing In The Showers’ is a great punk non-anthem. For The Fun 4 were an early group for Orange Juice’s Steven Daly, and guitarist James King and bass player Colin McNeil would go on to form James King & The Lone Wolves, who were involved with Alan Horne’s Swamplands record-label-cum-industry-conspiracy. So, a single you’ll want to own for its provenance, but don’t forget to blast it loud: what a great Glasgow thrill.