Rip It Up and Start Again by Simon Reynolds Page B
Authors: Simon Reynolds
Tags: Non-Fiction
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family. For others in the Slits/Pop Group milieu, getting into world music sufficed. Africa’s “rhythms of resistance” became the new roots reggae for a certain sort of postpunk.
The Pop Group splintered into multiple bands. Maximum Joy and Pigbag pursued slightly different versions of funk. Pigbag, helmed by Simon Underwood and still associated with Dick O’Dell’s Y label, became a real pop group, scoring a massive U.K. hit with “Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag.” Bruce Smith and Gareth Sager, the Pop Group’s most fervent free-jazzers, formed Rip Rig & Panic, named after an old Roland Kirk album. They peppered their interviews with beatnik patter like “cat,” “dig,” and “out there,” while the music capered and cavorted in antic whimsy. Rip Rig & Panic was basically the Pop Group minus the reggae input and the politics. “Yeah, it was only the music,” says Smith. “We didn’t even have a singer. Sager and our piano player Mark Springer would warble a bit into the mike now and then, but we didn’t really have vocals until Neneh joined later.” In one early interview, Sager obliquely dissed erstwhile comrade Stewart, arguing, “It’s definitely time to give the moaners the elbow. I like the cats who are complaining but they’re saying ‘yeah’ at the same time.”
Stewart, meanwhile, developed a relationship with Adrian Sherwood and the musicians surrounding the latter’s On-U label. He sang on the first New Age Steppers album, then made his solo debut in October 1982 with a fully realized version of the English hymn the Pop Group massacred at Trafalgar Square. Produced by Sherwood and marrying churchy organ swells to dub’s thunderquake bass, “Jerusalem” unites Blake’s vision of Albion as promised land with the Zion of Rasta’s dreaming. Its declaration, “I shall not cease from mental fight nor shall my sword sleep at my side/’Til we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land,” served as a mission statement for Stewart’s ongoing career as culture warrior. Amazingly, almost thirty years later he’s still shouting down Babylon.
CHAPTER 4
MILITANT ENTERTAINMENT:
GANG OF FOUR, THE MEKONS, AND THE LEEDS SCENE
IN BRITAIN, THE 1970S felt like one long crisis. There were endless strikes, power cuts, runs on the supermarkets by hoarding housewives, rising crime, student protests, and riots triggered by racist policing. Fascism resurged on the streets of major cities, while the IRA’s terror campaign extended beyond Ulster to the mainland with pub bombings and assassinations. The kingdom was disunited, simmering with resentments. Some mourned the nation’s lost imperial role and recoiled from the multicultural reality of modern Britain. Others pushed for revolution, seeing every successful industrial action as a worker’s victory bringing the Glorious Day a little closer.
In the midseventies, the trade unions were at their absolute peak of power. Their rank and file understandably demanded pay raises to keep pace with runaway inflation, but this only made prices rise faster and the country feel even more out of control. Using their full arsenal of weapons—sympathy strikes, secondary picketing—the unions effectively brought down the Conservative government in 1974. During the period of Labour rule that followed, many felt the Trades Union Congress was effectively coregent with Prime Minister Jim Callaghan. An inevitable right-wing backlash gathered momentum. People speculated about coups being plotted by the military and whispered of private armies, led by retired brigadiers, training in English meadows under cover of darkness. Legitimate pressure groups emerged like the Middle Class Association and the National Association for Freedom, dedicated to taming the unions, resisting “declining standards,” and restoring the word “Great” to its proper place in front of “Britain.”
In this polarized context, the decision by a bunch of students
The Pop Group splintered into multiple bands. Maximum Joy and Pigbag pursued slightly different versions of funk. Pigbag, helmed by Simon Underwood and still associated with Dick O’Dell’s Y label, became a real pop group, scoring a massive U.K. hit with “Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag.” Bruce Smith and Gareth Sager, the Pop Group’s most fervent free-jazzers, formed Rip Rig & Panic, named after an old Roland Kirk album. They peppered their interviews with beatnik patter like “cat,” “dig,” and “out there,” while the music capered and cavorted in antic whimsy. Rip Rig & Panic was basically the Pop Group minus the reggae input and the politics. “Yeah, it was only the music,” says Smith. “We didn’t even have a singer. Sager and our piano player Mark Springer would warble a bit into the mike now and then, but we didn’t really have vocals until Neneh joined later.” In one early interview, Sager obliquely dissed erstwhile comrade Stewart, arguing, “It’s definitely time to give the moaners the elbow. I like the cats who are complaining but they’re saying ‘yeah’ at the same time.”
Stewart, meanwhile, developed a relationship with Adrian Sherwood and the musicians surrounding the latter’s On-U label. He sang on the first New Age Steppers album, then made his solo debut in October 1982 with a fully realized version of the English hymn the Pop Group massacred at Trafalgar Square. Produced by Sherwood and marrying churchy organ swells to dub’s thunderquake bass, “Jerusalem” unites Blake’s vision of Albion as promised land with the Zion of Rasta’s dreaming. Its declaration, “I shall not cease from mental fight nor shall my sword sleep at my side/’Til we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land,” served as a mission statement for Stewart’s ongoing career as culture warrior. Amazingly, almost thirty years later he’s still shouting down Babylon.
CHAPTER 4
MILITANT ENTERTAINMENT:
GANG OF FOUR, THE MEKONS, AND THE LEEDS SCENE
IN BRITAIN, THE 1970S felt like one long crisis. There were endless strikes, power cuts, runs on the supermarkets by hoarding housewives, rising crime, student protests, and riots triggered by racist policing. Fascism resurged on the streets of major cities, while the IRA’s terror campaign extended beyond Ulster to the mainland with pub bombings and assassinations. The kingdom was disunited, simmering with resentments. Some mourned the nation’s lost imperial role and recoiled from the multicultural reality of modern Britain. Others pushed for revolution, seeing every successful industrial action as a worker’s victory bringing the Glorious Day a little closer.
In the midseventies, the trade unions were at their absolute peak of power. Their rank and file understandably demanded pay raises to keep pace with runaway inflation, but this only made prices rise faster and the country feel even more out of control. Using their full arsenal of weapons—sympathy strikes, secondary picketing—the unions effectively brought down the Conservative government in 1974. During the period of Labour rule that followed, many felt the Trades Union Congress was effectively coregent with Prime Minister Jim Callaghan. An inevitable right-wing backlash gathered momentum. People speculated about coups being plotted by the military and whispered of private armies, led by retired brigadiers, training in English meadows under cover of darkness. Legitimate pressure groups emerged like the Middle Class Association and the National Association for Freedom, dedicated to taming the unions, resisting “declining standards,” and restoring the word “Great” to its proper place in front of “Britain.”
In this polarized context, the decision by a bunch of students
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