Disrupters Interview in LSD Magazine
When I was a young kid I lived in Norwich and spent virtually all my pocket money in Backs Records, Norwich’s legendary independent record shop, in the City’s famous Swan Lane, now occupied by the Whiskey Shop.
There I was first thunderstruck by the stark graphic and image of anarcho punk and indie/protest.
The seven inch record covers were displayed behind the counter in an enormous and ever changing grid of the most potent, political, graphic and human distillation of anger, wry humour, irony and revolt I had ever witnessed.
On my Saturday visits I would stand gawping for ages in the middle of the shop, entranced at the artwork that completely covered the walls, lost in an alternative world of hope, humour, anguish and rebellion, a million miles from school, home and the doom laden news of riots and impending nuclear war.
After choosing one or two, often based on the artwork, I would rush home to play them. The first anarcho-record I bought was Bloody Revolution/Persons Unknown by Crass and the Poison Girls in 1980, then Reality Asylum by Crass and onto bands like Zounds, Conflict, Flux of Pink Indians, Dirt, the Dead Kennedys etc.
I had previously gone for the UK Subs, the Pistols and the Clash as well as more commercial stuff but when I started shopping in Backs it didn’t take long to work out that I could get more from my quid or two pocket money if I bought records on the Crass label.
They were 70p or even 45p when other singles were at least a quid, sometimes as much as £1.20,
With CRASS I could sometimes even afford two singles a week and would get a couple of amazing nihilistic monochrome posters by Gee Vaucher & co to stick on my wall, (which grew week by week to look more and more like the shop) plus the music was brilliant and educational and I could read the backs of the poster and read loads of amazing info exposing the bullshit of the system, which started me reading about politics, greed, history, genocide, state violence, control techniques, brainwashing, propaganda, direct action methods etc. and led to my humble but inspired origins as a graffiti writer.
Then one Saturday I went into Backs with my pocket money and saw a WHOLE ALBUM for £1.75!!!
They were normally at least three or four quid which meant saving up or birthdays. It was a compilation called Bullshit Detector, on CRASS of course and had an amazing 25 tracks on it, all by different artists when most albums had nine or ten. I bought it on the spot.
When I got it home and put it on the record player and started reading the massive fold out cover I was quite amazed by the variety of tracks screaming, poetry, the Jazz 78 gramophone manipulation and drunken ranting, and home taped weirdness and guttural snarling, there were some absolutely great tracks on it, some were pretty awful but one of my favourites was Napalm by the Disrupters from (incredibly, as I thought at the time) Norwich.
Me and my pals soon found out from their elder brothers who were ‘proper punks’ (unlike us snotty part-time herberts) that the Disrupters were releasing their first single ‘Young Offender’ which we all went and bought from Backs.
I carried on buying their vinyl through the eighties long after I moved near London; just in time to catch the birth of UK hip hop and London train graffiti.
Anyway……thirty one years after Bullshit Detector, I discovered they’ve reformed, still sound amazing, still writing great songs, sounding as tight as ever, have lost none of their morality or venom and are back out gigging and with a new album, so they were kind enough to do to an in depth interview for the current issue of LSD magazine, along with loads of artwork, and their in-house poet Prem Nick did an interview also and kindly contributed some poems and rantings for the piece!
It’s great, not only to read all about such a brilliant, honest and dedicated band, but to have a reminder of the grass-roots spirit ‘urban art’ actually came from, as narcissism, privilege, profits, con-tricks and posturing, festooned with false flags and propped up by censorship and control that would leave Stalin reeling, leave us with a corporate phenomenon which may well prove to be regarded as the single most outstanding example of hypocrisy and mass manipulation in human history.
Anyway…..
Never mind the Bollocks here’s the Disrupters…..
