Flux Of Pink Indians - Hartham Common Peace Festival - Hertford - May 1983
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- Опубликовано: 28 авг 2024
- A NOTE: The first four minutes of this audio is taken up by National Front members having a 'debate' with members of Flux Of Pink Indians on the stage. Flux do start performing four minutes in, although it is worth listening to the 'debate'!
A great afternoon out in a Hertford park for a peace festival organised by Hertford and Ware C.N.D.
Plenty of bearded folk bands playing forever and ever, so long in fact that my younger brother’s band at the time, Necro, and another punk band, Strontium 90, were told that they could not be fitted onto the bill after all.
So a little disappointed and clutching unused guitars and drum sticks, we all settled down to witness D&V perform a short set in a truck being used as the 'stage'.
Then up stepped Flux Of Pink Indians to perform in the very same truck witnessed by about forty or fifty people.
Some were into the performance. Some wanted to cause trouble during the performance. Some were just half interested in the performance.
There were about fifteen school boy 'punks', friends of Necro and Strontium 90.
There were about fifteen National Front members from Harlow and Hertford.
There were about fifteen random members of the general public, who wandered to the 'stage', and then wandered away, due to Flux not being Wham, or whichever band was popular with some of the youth in those days.
A couple of the 'Fronters' were amazingly allowed (amazing due to supposed time limitations that was the excuse for my younger brothers band not performing!) to debate the pros and cons of nuclear weapons at the start of this set... All with the 'permission' of Colonel Blimp (Derek Birkett) who looked on bewildered, while adding some wiser words to the 'debate'!
The recording quality is not that great - a bit of chatter during some of the tracks - sorry, and sadly I seem to have recorded over the B-side of the cassette tape so a few tracks are missing from the recording of this performance.
My younger brothers band mate, drummer Tim Voss recorded the performance on the day. Hopefully he has the full recording.
Tim's memories:
"I organised the music for this festival.The 'stage' was a lorry blagged from the lorry park near the old Hertford cinema by an enterprising member of C.N.D (there was a crate of beer in it for the driver).
I believe the festival had been targeted by the National Front who had previously organised annual marches in nearby Harlow and had a scary presence at a number of local punk gigs. If you remember the boneheads dropped a chair onto Rob's (my younger brother) head at an Adicts gig in Stevenage Bowes Lyon House.
The National Front also stopped a Conflict gig in Hoddesdon, another gig that Necro should have performed at!
Quite a few of the local 'Fronters' did end up doing time at her Majesty’s pleasure, although not for Nazi related activity, usually just being bad thieves and moronically violent.
I also found out that a wedding in the church at the top of hill in Bengeo had to be stopped during the service due to the noise of this gig".
More on this day, and this gig, and the small local scene may be viewed on this KYPP post here along with downloads of the three local bands;
killyourpetpupp...
Well worth a read and a listen.
The images that accompany the audio are from my collection, and the local newspaper cutouts from (I think) Bill's collection.
Bill is the guy photographed at the front of the march in one of the newspaper photographs holding the 'HER' banner. HER-tford C.N.D. The other newspaper photograph is some bonehead on the 'stage'.
The last few seconds of the audio has an image of my younger brother and myself circa 1982. I have the black and white mohair jumper and white jeans on...
brilliant piece of history!
that was us back in the day!!
still have some of their viny somewhere?
on Crass label..
what a time to be alive!!
bless!!
Cool bit of punk history there.
One of my old faves and subhumans 55 and and still punkt up
Always liked Flux they where a very underated band.
Thanks for sharing
He sounds like Mickey Pierce 🙂. I had all their records when I was a teenager. Great band.
THis is really cool, I'd always been curious about this band and just started listening a few days ago. been a crass fan for a long time but never checked them out. the nazis at the beginning were actually rather tame compared to how they act today..
@7:00 my sister on the left
00. 00:00 Flux debate some boneheads
01. 04:18 Is There Anybody There?
02. 06:40 Sick Butchers
03. 08:47 Mind Fuckers Fucking Minds
04. 11:33 Tapioca Sunrise
05. 15:14 Blinded by Science
06. 17:30 Some of Us Scream, Some of Us Shout
07. 19:14 Background of Malfunction
08. 21:17 Take Heed
09. 23:24 Progress
10. 24:58 Charity Hilarity
11. 26:10 T.V. Dinners
12. 29:58 Hard Sell
13. 31:36 Myxomatosis
14. 33:12 They Lie, We Die
15. 36:00 The Fun Is Over
2:40 Flux is defending Nazism because Germany is the UK's closest ally? What the fuck?
That wasn't a member of Flux. Lots of skinheads had showed up at the park and were causing a little bit of a fuss, not to much thankfully. Anyway long story short. One of the skinheads offered to rant some shit over the mic and Flux used this few minutes for a 'debate' so the idiocy words were the skinheads and the sane words (in my opinion) belonged to Colin and Derek. It was a small CND run gig in a park and was maybe six o clock in the afternoon. There was only around fifty people there for Flux about fifteen or so were menacing skinheads from Harlow NF Other areas of the park had face painting, honey stands, kiddies activities etc. Basically a town summer fete but with a punk band playing going on last. My younger brothers punk band Necro was meant to play after Flux but the sound guy just turned off and packed up, as the skinheads were still mingling with the old grannies dog walkers and general public running around the fete excitedly!
In fact if you look at the images on this video, photographs taken by me aside, there are two local newspaper scans also on there. At 13 seconds you see the gobby skinhead nazi saluting from the stage (which was actually a back of the lorry).
@@mickeypenguin Thank you for the clarification and the quick reply, I was boggled up quite a bit and repeated it 3 or 4 times to make sure that's what I was hearing. Very insightful and terrifying stuff. Thank you as well for capturing this piece of history and the context and sharing it with us.