Flux Of Pink Indians: Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible by One Little Indian Records

COLLECTORS BOOKLET

STRIVE TO SURVIVE CAUSING LEAST SUFFERING POSSIBLE BY FLUX OF PINK INDIANS “This record changed my life” must be the biggest sleeve note cliche there is, but really ‘Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible’ really did change my life. It’s the reason I became a vegetarian, it’s the reason I spent most of my adult life squatting, it’s the reason I got arrested at 1983’s Stop The City (A Carnival Against War, Oppression and Destruction), it’s the reason I wore black (but for the last 20 years it’s because I’m fat) and it’s the reason at the ripe age of 46 my life is pretty much a big mess. Cheers Flux of Fucking Pink Indians. ‘Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible’ is in my top three albums of all time. Blondie ‘Parallel Lines’ is number one and after that it’s a dog fight between Meat 3

Loaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’ and Flux’s ‘Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible’. That’s two UK number one albums and one that amazingly got to number 79 on its release. It spent two weeks on the pop parade, not that I would have known or cared in February 1983 when it was released. What I did know was that, as one of the main players of the Cheddington Punx and a total Crasstafarian, I had to have the album on the day of release. So me and Tuck bunked off school and bunked the train and went to Hoe Street, Walthamstow to the much missed Small Wonder Record Shop to buy the album on the day. The album, released on the band’s own Spiderleg imprint, was everything you could want and more. 12 angry punk anthems driven by a tight rhythm section, squealing distorted guitars, Colin’s atonal vocals and masses and masses of feedback. It was a grainy yet beautifully put together sound. The lyrics were insightful and way beyond the standard “Fuck the Police and Maggie Thatcher” although ‘They Lie We die’ wasn’t far behind. The album warned of animal abuse, consumerism, nuclear waste and religion in all forms. Almost 30 years after the album was released, it still sounds like a masterpiece to me. And do you know?? It’s because it is a masterpiece!! Sean Forbes, Rough Trade Shops

CONTENTS COLIN & KEV OF FLUX MEET ROUGH TRADEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S SEAN FORBES - THE EPILEPTICS P.06

- 1970S EP (1979)

P.08

- FLUX OF PINK INDIANS

P.09

- NEU SMELL (1981) P.12

- STRIVE TO SURVIVE CAUSING LEAST SUFFERING POSSIBLE (1984)

P.20

- REFORMING P.33

Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible by Flux Of Pink Indians is part of One Little Indian Records Totem Series. Totem Series is all about uncovering great lost classics, rarities and oddities from the archives of One Little Indian Records and its associated labels. For more in the series visit totemseries.co.uk.

: Indian.co.uk

: Totemseries.co.uk

Published by One Little Indian Records

COLIN & KEV OF FLUX MEET ROUGH TRADE’S SEAN FORBES SEAN: So who was in The Epileptics at the beginning? COLIN: Me, Derek [Birkett], Richard [Coveney] and Clive [Griffiths]. Then Kevin took over from Clive. We used to rehearse in Clive’s bedroom. He was a hippy sort of longhaired guy. He played guitar. He was the only musician really because Derek had never played bass, Richard had only just bought a drum kit so he learned straight off and I’d never.. Well, say no more. So Clive was the only one who could play guitar so we used to use his bedroom until he went off to college. KEV: I joined completely by accident. I was down Triad which was a music venue [in 6

Bishops Stortford], and I mentioned to a mate of mine that I’d seen graffiti around town which said ‘The Epileptics’ and he said “that’s the singer and the drummer over there”. So I wandered over having had a couple of pints and just said “If you ever need a guitarist let me know,” ‘cos my band, The Darlex was splitting up. Colin and Richard looked at each other and said that their guitarist was leaving anyway so it was quite handy really. SEAN: Did The Darlex record anything? KEV: Not commercially no. We took a tape of a live gig to Lee Wood who ran Raw Records ‘cos apparently he’d said he was looking for bands. He put it in the cassette player, played about 5 seconds, turned it over played another 5 seconds and went “nah”. So that was as far as we got. Ha ha..! Nice to know it had a good hearing. SEAN: So had The Epileptics recorded before Kevin joined? COLIN: No. We’d done two gigs before Kevin joined. SEAN: Is it true you had to change The Epileptics name because of complaints from the British Epilepsy Association? [the band briefly changed their name to Epi-X, and later to The Licks] COLIN: Well we didn’t have to change it. We were playing a gig with Crass in Bradford, our name, The Epileptics, was on posters all around the city. It was after that the British Epilepsy Association got in touch with Crass to say “Look, this is disgusting. Epileptic people are just trying to lead a normal life. They don’t need your…” KEV: “Ill-conceited jocularity.” That was the actual quote. They said the only way that a name like that could be justified would be if the whole band were all actually epileptic. We changed the name in the end but it was because we’d been banned from Triad. We thought the only way to get around the ban was to be called something else. That’s why we did it. We got banned twice, thanks to Col’s antics… SEAN: Which were..? COLIN: Kicking a monitor off stage was the first one, and the second one was swinging off a light fitting. 7

1970S EP (1979) STORTBEAT RECORDS

SEAN: So you recorded your first single [‘1970s EP’] as The Epileptics? COLIN: Originally we were going to record a single for Crass which would have been ‘79 I suppose. SEAN: That would have been the first single on Crass Records outside of Crass? COLIN: Yeah. I can’t remember why it didn’t happen but for some reason it didn’t. But then Stortbeat Records enticed us into signing a contract and doing a record with them. But the very morning we’d signed it and were going to Cambridge to record, Andy [Palmer] from Crass called up and said “Do you want to do a record?” And I said we’d just signed this thing for two years. It took two years - even though Stortbeat had closed and wouldn’t do another record with us - two years until 1981 to do Neu Smell. So it could have been a bit different couldn’t it? KEV: Stortbeat was a couple of guys who’d been involved with a band called The Gangsters. Originally they didn’t want to know about us because we weren’t from Harlow. It was named after the river Stort so it was all a bit contrived. They weren’t interested in us at all. They thought we were shit. Then when we built up a bit of a local following they got interested and as we’d instigated this sort of anti-Stortbeat campaign amongst our local followers, when they asked us to do a single we thought “Yeah fuck it.” Ha ha ha..! Then our local followers thought we were sellouts. We just wanted to put a record out. We thought it was Pistolian at the time you know? To go back on what we’d said.

-SEAN: So how did it switch over then from The Epileptics to Flux Of Pink Indians and the change of members as well? KEV: By the end of ‘79 we’d done a couple of abortive gigs. Usually there were two factions. There was Colin and Derek on the more political side if you like, then there was me and Rich. I just wanted to be in a band and so did Rich and we were both less into the ideological, political side. So Crass got us to play Stonehenge which I thought was an awful idea to be honest. In 1979 it was just a horrible hippy thing and I didn’t want anything to do with it. So Rich and I weren’t very happy about it but we went along with it. When we got there, we were meant to be playing at 5pm, and then it was going to be 7.30, then 9.30. The organisation was awful and at about half 9 me and Rich thought “Let’s just go home”. Derek and Colin were not happy about that because they wanted to play. That was the first seeds of there being two factions in the band. Oh - there was one before that in Deptford. Similar thing but with loads of skinhead bands. Derek and Colin wanted to play but me and Rich just thought it’d be a blood bath. SEAN: So it wasn’t Deptford Fun City then? Ha ha ha..! KEV: It was Deptford Unfun City. Loads of British Movement, skinheads and stuff like that. COLIN: Flux as a name came about a year later when we went back to play Stonehenge again. KEV: Yeah. Me and Rich left towards the end of 1979. Col had been playing as a third bass player in Rubella Ballet and me and Rich thought “Why’s he doing that? He should be with The Epileptics”, so that wasn’t good. Then you got Annie Anxiety to sing on a track without telling us and I thought: “I don’t like this”. SEAN: Have you read her book? COLIN: Did she say anything about me in it? I lost my virginity to her so you’d think she’d bloody mention me! 9

SEAN: Well I’ve only read a few pages but it’s really interesting. She’s got a really good style. You need to read it. COLIN: No, I don’t need to read it… KEV: It can’t have been that memorable. SEAN: Is that allowed to be in there? You lost your virginity to Annie Anxiety ha ha..! COLIN: It was at Dial house as well, of all places. KEV: The Crass connections never stop. SEAN: So you and Rich left and then what? KEV: Then you got Andy [Smith], Neil [Puncher] and Sid [Ation] from Rubella Ballet. COLIN: I think we had Neil on drums to begin with, again I’m not sure if he could play or not. We had to sort of send out a message “If anyone bumps into Sid, we’re looking for a drummer”. But in the meantime Neil came in as drummer although we didn’t play a gig with him. Then Sid got in touch and he became the drummer so we asked Neil to be second guitarist. SEAN: And where does the name come from? COLIN: Originally Steve Ignorant was probably the only person I knew who was into Native American stuff. It was pre-Adam Ant so it didn’t have anything to do with that. We were more influenced by Steve so I had this idea ‘Tribe Of Pink Indians’ - pink skinned rather than red. I mentioned it to Sid and he said he didn’t like the word tribe so I got a thesaurus out, looked up tribe and came out with ‘flux’ and that was it. SEAN: It is a bad name. COLIN: Do you think so? 10

SEAN: I do. I really do. KEV: Yeah I hate it. COLIN: Flux is good. SEAN: Yeah I like Flux by itself but Flux Of Pink Indians..? COLIN: It doesn’t sound punk does it..? KEV: It regularly used to make the silly names charts in the music press along with A Flock Of Seagulls. COLIN: I never thought about if it’d sell or not. KEV: See? No commercial sense. SEAN: So that was the line-up that recorded the Neu Smell single? COLIN: That was the line up.

NEU SMELL (1981) CRASS RECORDS

SEAN: You didn’t play on Neu Smell did you Kev? KEV: No I’m not on it. Funnily enough Tube Disaster was the first song me and Col both collaborated on in The Epileptics. So when I heard they were putting out a single on Crass with that song on it I was gutted. I didn’t mind that they’d done it, but I wanted to be on it. COLIN: What happened was the night before recording we went round to Dial House to rehearse and we’d originally picked 5 songs with Crass which included Tube Disaster. But before we went in we decided on some other newer songs. So we told Penny we didn’t want to do those 5 songs, we wanted to do these 5 new songs and I remember his response. He said “So basically you’re telling me to fuck off then?” Derek, being the diplomat, said “No no no - we’ll do the original 5”. He agreed with him ‘cos he thought otherwise it’d be over with. SEAN: So after you’d recorded it, what did you think? Did you think it was a good record? COLIN: Yeah I reckon so. The only strange thing was the artwork. Because Crass did all the artwork, I was expecting some punky thing but instead you’ve got the cigarette being stubbed out in sand thing which seemed miles away from the American Indian theme. SEAN: You didn’t see the artwork until it was finished? COLIN: No. We did the inside stuff but the outer sleeve we didn’t see until it was done. I’m not saying I didn’t like it; it just wasn’t what I expected at the time. The thing is, if 12

you’re going to release a record through Crass - they had their look and you have Penny as the producer - that’s the deal and that wasn’t a bad thing. SEAN: So many years down the line their brand is incredible. It’s horrible to say it like that, but it’s true. KEV: Yeah absolutely. COLIN: Yeah. You could walk into a shop and immediately know what was a Crass record and you’d buy it. I don’t think we thought anyone was going to buy our record. We went into Southern Studios with a suitcase and we took 200 records ‘cos we thought we’d have to sell it ourselves. It sold 35,000 just like that! SEAN: It went to number 2 didn’t it? KEV: Yeah, in the alternative charts as they were then. Neu Smell was only kept off number 1 by Depeche Mode’s New Life which made the top 20, maybe even top 10. That shows how many it was selling. -SEAN: So at the time of Neu Smell, how many of the band were vegetarians? KEV: Neil wasn’t. COLIN: I’ll be totally honest, when I wrote Sick Butchers I wasn’t a vegetarian. Derek was the vegetarian. I always knew him as a vegetarian. What happened was I was writing the songs for The Epileptics but Derek had the ideas. I would pick up on his ideas and that’s how we wrote Sick Butchers. I became vegetarian myself when the record was coming out. I was probably still wearing leather and that kind of stuff. I think. SEAN: At the time it was so brutal you know? “He’s wearing leather!” COLIN: Yeah. Well Penny said - years afterwards - that they didn’t want to do it. They could see that people were going latch onto the vegetarian side and ignore everything else. 13

SEAN: Well that record made me vegetarian and probably thousands and thousands of other people, so to have a record that has changed people’s lives is quite something. COLIN: Yeah. I’m not sure if all of Crass or all of Conflict were vegetarians were they? SEAN: When we were kids, the first guy in our village to become vegetarian became one because of your record. In fact I went to Small Wonder in London to buy your album on the day it came out. I bunked off school and went with Tuck - the vegetarian. COLIN: When you’d get invited round to someone’s house and there was food involved you’d have to start saying you’re vegetarian and you’d have to explain what it’s all about. In France in particular they do not get it. It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s almost like being rude. It’s easier here. My Mum was saying to me the other day “all I used to cook for you every night was omelette.” And TVP [textured vegetable protein, or soy meat]. -SEAN: After going to number 2 and selling so many records did you get offers from other labels? COLIN: Yeah. Crass were being courted by Polydor and as far as I know, Virgin offered us a hundred grand to sign with them for however many albums. The only person who actually spoke to them was Derek so I’m presuming that Derek was telling the truth. We didn’t actually go and speak to them. I think me and Kevin may have said “Don’t you think we should at least go and have a conversation with them”. I’m not saying we would have done it but we could have had a conversation about it. But Derek said, “If you want to do it, do it. But I’m not.” We wanted to keep the band together so we never spoke about it again. I can only presume that it happened. I never saw an offer at the time. KEV: No, I didn’t either. COLIN: Also I’ll say this - a hundred grand at the time would have bought… Well the house round the corner from here where we were living at the time, our landlord tried to sell it to us for 50 grand. A three bedroom house. Just to put it into context. So that’s two houses around here which are now worth £800,000 each. I know, fair enough, times have changed but I sometimes think “Hmmm..!” But I’m pleased we didn’t go with it, I’m 14

pleased with what we achieved as a band. KEV: At the time I think I was just a bit pissed off that what was essentially a democratic band was having one person be the spokesman for all of us when my idea would have been “Someone wants to offer us a deal, let them take us out to lunch and then we’ll tell them to fuck off ”. I know it’s very mercenary, but I thought they could entertain us and then we could say “no thanks”. Put us in a stronger position maybe, I don’t know. COLIN: I wasn’t too fussed by it at the time, but thinking about it now, can you imagine: Neu Smell comes out and Flux Of Pink Indians are now on Virgin. It’s a bit weird now to think about that, but it’s good that we did what we did. -SEAN: Kevin, you’d rejoined after the single? KEV: What happened was, Stortbeat were going to re-press The Licks [Epileptics] single off the back of Flux’s popularity. SEAN: Under the name ‘The Epileptics’, even though they didn’t like you? KEV: Yeah. So we had agreed to re-record the single to put it out to try and supersede Stortbeat’s reissue. Derek and Colin got in touch with me and asked if I wanted to record the single. I was up for it ‘cos I was playing in a couple of other bands but nothing serious. So the studio was booked… COLIN: The thing was our guitarist and drummer at the time didn’t turn up at the recording. They were from Wigan and they were in a band called The Insane. SEAN: Dave [‘Bambi’ Ellesmere, drums] and Simon [Middlehurst, guitar]? COLIN: Yeah. So they had left The Insane to join Flux Of Pink Indians. All the time we’re getting offers of gigs and we’d say “no, no, no”. So you’ve got me and Derek wanting to say ‘no’ – but the other two wanted to say ‘yes’. We were offered a gig as Flux on the day we were meant to re-record the single and they went and played it as The Insane and didn’t show up to record. So we rang Bambi’s mum up and she said “He’s gone down to London, 15

he’s definitely gone down...” But he’d gone down to play this gig at The Rainbow. KEV: We were just sitting in the studio thinking, “What a waste of money”. COLIN: I started to get the idea that they might be at that gig so me and Derek went down. We bumped into the guy who was doing the sound outside and he obviously knew. So Derek put on this leather jacket which was miles too short - and he never used to wear leather jackets. He goes in and I’m standing outside. After about 10 minutes the back door flies open, like in a Western, and Bambi and Simon come flying out. Derek had just grabbed them and thrown them out like a bouncer. Ha ha..! So we kicked them out of the band and that was the end of that. It was a funny thing ‘cos I thought that Flux would be a band that would play all over England and it wouldn’t matter where the members lived. When we ended up with two members in Wigan we didn’t think it would matter because half our gigs were in Sheffield or whatever but… It didn’t last long. KEV: So we didn’t get to record that single that day, we had to reschedule it and in fact we told Penny about it and he offered to drum on it. COLIN: He said he wanted to do his own version of the drumming. It was much faster because by then bands like GBH were happening and everything became twice the speed. SEAN: And through The Epileptics re-recording you rejoined Flux, Kevin, as they didn’t have a guitarist because Derek had battered him. Ha ha ha..! KEV: Yeah. Well I had enjoyed playing with them again. They’d been asked to record a track for the Wargasm compilation and originally it was gonna be Neil [Puncher] the first guitarist doing it but he couldn’t get the day off work or something trivial so they asked me if I wanted to play and I jumped at the chance. COLIN: The thing was, we’d started as The Epileptics as a local band who just played the Triad every Friday, which suited people like Neil. Suddenly we got involved with Crass and we were playing all over the place. They hadn’t joined to go all round the country. SEAN: Also I imagine that no one was getting paid? Everything was being covered but you didn’t even think about making money from gigs? 17

COLIN: Well, you remember inter-band argument number 1 and inter-band argument number 2 from that article in the Melody Maker or NME or whichever it was? That’s because we had Dave and Simon who were unemployed living up in Wigan and then me and Derek living down in the south both working. They couldn’t afford to go all over the place. So we were being asked all these questions and of course disagreeing with each other. That was the last time we ever spoke to a newspaper. -KEV: So I played on the re-recording but they were still trying to find a permanent guitarist and drummer and they found Martin [Wilson]. SEAN: How did you find Martin? COLIN: Oh, I tell you, that was just one of those amazing coincidences. He wrote to us saying he loved Neu Smell, he was a dedicated vegetarian, this and that, animal rights, blah blah blah. “If you ever need a drummer just let me know.” So I wrote back that we did need a drummer, he came for an audition and that was it. KEV: I rejoined after that. I was just talking to Colin about it and we came to the conclusion that maybe I should rejoin because I already knew a lot of the songs. SEAN: ‘Cos a lot of the Flux set at that time still had Epileptics bits in didn’t it? KEV: Yeah that’s right. SEAN: When you rejoined, you recorded a track for the Wargasm compilation. What happened to make you record an album and do it on your own label? COLIN: Crass had a policy of ‘one single - out on your own’. But they had all the facilities set up at Southern Studios, they had the recording studio and distribution, so really it was using the mechanics of Crass but doing it through our own Spiderleg label. The funny thing is after two singles on Spiderleg with Subhumans, we went and did the same with them. Derek turns around to Dick [Lucas] and says “why don’t you do your own label?” He didn’t want to do it but now look at Bluurg Records. I just think it’s fantastic! And they used the exact same infrastructure as well. 18

STRIVE TO SURVIVE CAUSING LEAST SUFFERING POSSIBLE (1982) SPIDERLEG RECORDS

SEAN: So when did you start writing the songs for Strive? You recorded a 6-song demo in 1980? KEV: Yeah that was the early one with Sid and Andy at Elephant Studios but a couple of those didn’t get recorded. But when I rejoined we looked on it as starting again really, because Colin and I then collaborated on new songs just like we had done in The Epileptics. You see us all fall back into it again. COLIN: With those first demos, the words are different on some of the songs. KEV: Yeah - and some of the riffs are different. COLIN: I’d written a lot of the songs, but Derek at that point had started writing songs too, so he had kind of gone over the songs I’d written. Whereas I would pretty much write with pen and paper and it would just come out without me thinking about it too much, Derek was a bit more like “You haven’t mentioned X, Y, Z and this is the subject”. So some of the songs were rewritten to cover more points than I had originally done. If you listen to the demos and the actual album you can hear the difference. SEAN: So it was you and Derek writing the lyrics on Strive. And who was writing the music? KEV: I thought at the time a lot of the anarcho bands were a bit tuneless but I always liked a good hook. I was really influenced by bands like The Clash and I didn’t like that 19

sort of one chord thrash. So when Col and I started writing for Strive I tried to bring in more verse and chorus based stuff. COLIN: I used to write by memorizing phone numbers. I remember I’d look up a number and play each digit as a fret on a bass. 0, 7, 1, 6 etc and it’d be a tune for gods sake! It kind of worked. SEAN: There are 3 extra tracks on the Strive album to the demos. Were these written after the demos? KEV: It would seem unlikely that they were but I think we had a bit of extra time at Southern Studios. Originally it wasn’t going to be an album it was going to be a 12” EP. SEAN: Have you heard the Crass demos for Feeding the 5000? They are amazing! They’re better than the actual album. The bass is incredible isn’t it? COLIN: Did they do it all live? Didn’t they have to squeeze it onto a 30 minute tape or something so they had to do it in one take? SEAN: It could have been because tape was so expensive at the time wasn’t it? KEV: It was, yeah. I think that’s why there was a disparity because we were only booked in for a day to do the demos so it was surprising we did as many tracks as we did. We had one day and as usual the drums take half a day to set up which cuts your time down. Basically we just played what we’d been playing in the rehearsal studio because we thought we might only use 5 or 6 tracks. It was only meant to be a 12” EP. -SEAN: So you went in to record the album. Where did you record it? Who produced it? How many days did it take? And how much did it cost? COLIN: No idea how much it cost but it was Southern Studios, booked for 5 days and Penny was in charge. KEV: It felt like we were a proper band at that point. We all had day jobs at the time and 20

we’d do the band in our spare time. But we lived at Southern while we were recording it and we were nothing but band which was great! I think that’s why we put so much effort into it. It certainly felt like we were making a really good album. COLIN: Actually I remember how much Penny got paid and Derek will remember because of his sore arse. KEV: Ha ha ha..! COLIN: Penny wanted a bike made from 100% plastic for recording it. SEAN: That is amazing! COLIN: Yeah. For 5 days in the studio, Penny wanted as payment - in 1982 I might add a bike made of plastic. Ha ha ha..! For some reason Derek could only find one in Brixton and he had to cycle it all the way up from Brixton to Ally Pally. I don’t think he walked right for days. That is how we paid Penny. Other than that I don’t know how much anything cost. Maybe the bike was recycled or something, ha ha..! KEV: Ha ha..! Recycled, I love it! COLIN: Crass had different bins for cans and vegetable cuttings and stuff. Bearing in mind this was the early 80s - they were way ahead of their time. SEAN: So Southern were paying for the studio costs? COLIN: Well, I don’t know if Southern ever had it on their accounts ‘cos I never saw them. Even though me and Derek were basically running Spiderleg, I’m not sure either one of us ever saw a balance sheet. Neither of us ever got a penny from it. So did it make a profit or a loss? I have no idea. I can’t remember doing a tax return at the end of the year. No one ever got paid anything from it. To me it’s just an imaginary label. You would just turn up at Southern Studios, for instance with Antisect. You’d go up to John Loder and say “I want to do an album” and he’d say “3 days to do an album” and I’d say “no, it’s got to be 5 days” he’d go “3 days” I’d go “Right I’ll pay for the other 2 days myself ” and he’d say “Sod it, have it for 5 days” - and that’s how it would work. It never really got paid for, so I’ve got no idea. 22

SEAN: The thing with John Loder, god rest his soul, he was an honest man. All the dealings I ever had with him. But sometimes things are really chaotic in the early stages before you know what you’re doing. COLIN: It’s strange how it happened because John knew Crass for years and he had the studio. I think it just kind of happened by accident didn’t it? So who knows? He never had a plan like “let’s sit down and let’s do it.” And as far as I remember people like Pip worked there for nothing, one day a week. Actually, how Spiderleg became One Little Indian was a very strange thing. My girlfriend Judy was working as a cleaner at Southern Studios and Derek’s girlfriend Sue was working one day a week doing accounts in the office. I split up with Judy and she went into Southern Studios one day and spurted out a load of stuff. She said that it was alright for Crass because they had a ‘slush fund’ - it was just an invented word she used, but apparently there was such a word used at Southern Studios and John accused Sue of going through the accounts or whatever and knowing something she shouldn’t have known. It’s not true, it was just a coincidence that Judy used a word that Crass also used and made it look like she knew something she shouldn’t have known - which she didn’t. So Derek went up there and said “That’s it. I’m not dealing with you anymore,” and that’s how One Little Indian had to start. We had to start again. SEAN: Wow… COLIN: The funny thing is, we ended up starting off with a distribution deal with Nine Mile. Derek at the time was working at Berry Street Studios so he had a studio we could use and we started recording there. The distribution was done through Nine Mile and I guess that’s how One Little Indian started. That’s how the two changed. We didn’t really fall out with Crass; I went back many years later and did my own little label with John, so no problem - just a big misunderstanding. SEAN: That is odd… But, like you said at the time, everybody was dealing with so many records, ‘cos records were selling really well. Your Strive to Survive was £3 minus the distributor costs etc. Even though it sold 35,000, or however many copies, you’re talking peanuts. COLIN: Well you know about Crass’ Shaved Women single don’t you? They had worked 23

out that to break even the price was 45p. They only found out years later it was actually 50p and they’d been making a loss every time they’d pressed. And the other thing with Strive, if you remember the original copy; it was a double album sleeve with a booklet inside, 12-pages all black and white. That’s fine when you’re doing a print run of 5,000, but when it comes down to 1,000, you just can’t do it. It was naïve really but these things happen. If we made money or not, who would know? But that wasn’t the point though really was it? SEAN: So it was released on Spiderleg which was the band’s label. Was that the whole of the band or...? KEV: I had nothing to do with it. COLIN: It was me and Derek. It was quite 50 / 50 but Derek ended up getting a bit more involved. When it came to Spiderleg becoming One Little Indian that was Derek completely. I guess I could have got more involved because when The Sugarcubes took off, Derek would have needed help at that point but at that time I think we were beginning to get a bit distant. Derek had moved to South London and I was still North London, I moved to a squat in Hampstead and really never properly spoke to Derek again. I bumped into him once at a gig and that’s been it. I almost went to visit him once and it felt like a bad idea. You know when you try and go back somewhere? It just felt like we’d all gone our separate ways. -SEAN: Where does the title ‘Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible’ come from? COLIN: Definitely Derek. I think the reason was, if you could sum up everything in one line, that would be it. SEAN: The artwork for Strive and the booklet was a massive part of the album. Who took all the photos and decided that was going to be the look? KEV: It was a joint decision, we all contributed bits of artwork and stuff. 24

COLIN: I reckon my idea was the banners in the wood. I had a thing about woods. You know the idea that you could live in a wood, and all that kind of stuff. And I think that’s why we went to Epping Forest, did all the banners, almost like setting up a camp you know? For the rest of the inside where there’s a square for each track, we all took 3 to 4 each, to come up with different styles. Then Bernard, the bass player from Poison Girls did the layout for £100. -SEAN: A lot of the writing on the album is kind of ‘paranoid’ isn’t it? For me when I listen to the record, I think the sound of the music goes with the paranoia of the time. KEV: Some of the experiences we had fed that paranoia. When we did that photo shoot it was on Good Friday in 1982, we went on this piece of land and we were done for trespassing. COLIN: The guy turned up immediately. KEV: Yeah, he just turned up out of nowhere while we were posing like dickheads in the middle of this forest or field with banners and he kicked us off. So we thought “oh that’s alright we’ll go, you know, we don’t want to make a fuss”. Before we actually got off his land, there was a police car on our tail escorting us off, then they pulled us over. They went through all our banners, went through the photographers roll of film. I mean it was just that sort of stuff that made you paranoid, cause you’d just think “what are they scared of?” you know? COLIN: At the time, Derek’s dad worked for BT - Derek noticed they weren’t getting any mail and so he started looking into it. There was definitely something going on. KEV: I remember I sent you stuff when you were living at Bishops Stortford. I sent a birthday card and the stamp I bought had some kind of military design on it, I can’t remember what, so just for a laugh, I stuck it on upside down and wrote underneath it ‘Hitler Youth’. I don’t know why, I just did. But that had got opened before it got to Colin’s place. It was only 6 miles down the road. We were just thinking “What the hell’s going on?” 25

COLIN: You wouldn’t get any mail and then all of a sudden it’d all turn up opened. Derek’s Dad had tried to complain about it. Some time after that I remember I picked up the phone in our house, made a phone call and put the phone down. Then I went to make another phone call and heard a recording of me speaking coming out of the phone. KEV: It wasn’t just paranoia, this shit was happening. But then when you think about it, we did draw attention to ourselves by going on land that you know that we shouldn’t have been on. We went to Beechams [now Glaxo Smith-Kline] or one of those places and took loads of photos and stuff. I mean, the booklet inside Strive detailed where the regional seats of government were and this was the time of the Falklands war! I can’t imagine what it’d be like now. We’d probably get slung inside! COLIN: How about the photographs of that place near Epping that we thought was a nuclear bunker but turned out to be Thames Water? We had no idea at the time! There was this big mound there so it really did look like one. We cut through the fence, and took these photos ha ha ha..! The spookiest thing was that later, we did a gig somewhere and a guy came up to us and showed us this massive big plan for a Thorn EMI 8-floor military bunker, which was being built out in West London somewhere - might still exist, I don’t know - and he said “I managed to get all the way in and saw signs saying ‘Trespassers will get shot’”. He got all the way down and found this plan. He couldn’t do anything with it so he gave it to us. So we were thinking what to do with it. We were making Fucking Cunts at the time so we decided to make out that we were going to put it in every record by sending it out with the promo copies to see if we could get into some trouble. I remember dressing as smartly as I could, going down to West London to a copying place that could print that big. I walked in and said “Can you do me a couple of copies of this please?” and they said “On account?” Ha ha ha..! I went “Oh no I’ll pay for it thanks.” I sat there for 15 minutes waiting and thinking “Any minute now the cops are just going to turn up and I’m absolutely dead.” But they didn’t and I walked off with the copies. I think we sent it to EMI (records) and said we were putting it out with the album but I don’t really know what happened after that. -SEAN: You should have put it on account! Ha ha ha..! On the Strive album there was masses of feedback, all over it from the start to finish. 26

KEV: That was all done afterwards; we recorded it on separate tracks. At the end Penny said he had got this idea that it might be nice to link the whole album with feedback. So he got me to go into the studio once we had all done our stuff and I just had to stand in front of my amp with a guitar getting feedback for 20 minutes. COLIN: I love the feedback! I have it all still in my head now because of tinnitus. For me it sounds like a cross between bagpipes and feedback which are both my favorite noises. Ha ha..! For some people it drives them mad, but I’m fine with it. KEV: So I had to do that for like, 20 minutes and he cut it up and put it between tracks and it sounded like it was recorded live. It absolutely killed me doing that! And then when I’d done it, he said through the talkback “That was great! Can you do it again?” I told him to fuck off. But he said “No seriously, do it again.” So that’s how we did it. We played a gig 2 days later and I still couldn’t hear anything. -SEAN: So when Strive finally came out it sold ridiculously well. KEV: Less than Neu Smell, but I guess for an album, yeah - it did quite well. SEAN: It went into the national charts in 1983, which is unbelievable for a record at that time. The first ever independent record that went into the charts? COLIN: I think Crass were first. SEAN: Yeah, you’re right but even then, yours can’t have been far behind. ‘Pay no more than £3’ was really important at the time. The 80s were so political from Stop The City to everyone squatting and people doing benefit gigs. I mean it was mad wasn’t it? Strive for me is like a timepiece. Politically, the sound… COLIN: It is yeah. Before the Shepherds Bush Empire gig I listened to Strive over and over again and it is still great to hear. SEAN: You were heavily involved in playing benefit gigs… 27

KEV: Yeah most of them were benefits. I don’t remember getting paid for a single gig. COLIN: Well squat venues hadn’t happened yet had they? The Zig Zag wasn’t the first surely? SEAN: No there was stuff before. The Zig Zag was ‘81 wasn’t it? COLIN: The problem was that we were living in Bishops Stortford. Whenever a squat gig happened we felt like we had to be in London so that we could go straight there and do it. So that was why we moved to London. SEAN: There was so many benefit gigs at the time, there were benefit gigs for benefit gigs ha ha..! It was like “Oh my dog’s poorly, can you come and play?” COLIN: We played in Camden. A pound to get in, 500 people, all done for free and we just handed it all over to CND. I remember thinking “Wow…that was a lot of money”. We didn’t get a penny. We just gave it all away. But who would want to take money then? Hence, £3 a record. The idea of making money from doing it just seemed to be contradiction. SEAN: The idea of making money was a bit alien if you wanted to be a musician. There was definitely a stigma of that in the anarcho-political scene. In hindsight though, making money isn’t a problem but I still feel that there’s a right and a wrong way. COLIN: It’s the same as my business now. People ask me if it makes any profit. Well if you take my wages out then no, it doesn’t make any profit. What is profit? Money that is left over after all the wages are paid? Maybe you need extra money as collateral to back the business up if you’re trying to expand but in my business really, if I have any money over at the end of year I’m like “what am I gonna do with that?” The silly thing is, I’ve been doing what I’m doing now for 20 years and it’s taken me a long time to get out of the habit of not charging people enough money for what I do. Because the whole Crass / Flux thing left a massive impression that you don’t charge anything for what you do. It took me a long time to realise that I should charge a good amount for doing something and not be embarrassed or shy to charge a proper price for something. SEAN: For me growing up with Crass and Flux in that sort of era…I think it’s put good 29

values in a lot of people and that’s something to be really proud of. When people say “punk didn’t change anything” it’s not true. People still have those ideals in their minds; you just have to adapt to deal with life’s realities. COLIN: There’s loads of contradictions because when we were recording Strive living up here as a household I was working as a telex operator as a temp. So I might be working in a bank in the city one day but it was almost at the same time as Stop The City was beginning to happen. When I was involved in Stop The City and I was getting arrested by the police, I thought that someone might look out of the window and see the guy they were working with a couple of weeks ago. “What the hell are you doing out there!?” I remember I was at Southern Studios one day doing some photocopying and Andy from Crass walked in and asked what I was doing that afternoon. I said “Oh I’m working” and he said “where do you work then?” and I said at Hill Samuel [Bank Limited] in the city. He said, “You shouldn’t be doing that” and I went away thinking that he was right and I shouldn’t. What I gave up was an excellent hourly rate, a mortgage which at the time was 4% which was unheard of… So Andy of Crass owes me big time! Ha ha..! After that I went to work in a health food shop for a tenth of the amount thinking “this is so right on!” I’m glad I did it because I met nice people, it was a better atmosphere and I could talk about being a vegetarian without someone asking “Why?” every lunchtime. -KEV: A couple of months after we’d finished recording Strive, they were talking about getting a house together, like Crass had done and that’s when I decided “I can’t do this, it’s just not my sort of thing”. I had been feeling a lot of dissent about certain decisions that were being made and I just thought “I’m on my own here”. So I honoured the gigs that we had booked up until the end of November and the day after the last gig we did, I rang up Colin and said “I can’t do it anymore mate, I just gotta go” and that was it really. COLIN: I didn’t help because I thought it would be a good idea to have another guitarist, not asking Kevin. So I asked Lou [Bell] to come in on guitar. She was quite political with what she was saying. So I really didn’t help matters. KEV: There had been talk that Lou might be coming in as the second guitarist. I didn’t 30

want to be like “I’m the only guitarist”; it wasn’t that, but I couldn’t think of any bands that had two guitarists that really sounded good apart from Thin Lizzy. Flux wasn’t a band like that and I just felt that unless you get two guitars that are really spot on, I don’t think it works. COLIN: I can’t remember you ever talking to us about it. KEV: Yeah I didn’t get on with Lou, you know I used to wind her up. I just found her too straight. So I left before the album came out. But I had a test pressing and I thought “this sounds great, but hang on, I’m not gonna be around to gig this”. But I just considered that was the trade off. COLIN: It was a real shame as well because with Lou joining Tim [Kelly, guitar] also joined, and two of them playing guitar were never as good as Kevin on his own. But at that point it didn’t matter to me or Derek. I think we were more interested in the message. Now I can look back and see what an excellent guitarist Kevin was but we wanted to really have a band of five people all political and all the rest of it. Hence that’s why Fucking Cunts sounded like a complete noise because we couldn’t write an album like Strive with those musicians. SEAN: Fucking Cunts was rubbish, unbearable. I tried to listen to it the other day. COLIN: Really? There were a couple of good bits weren’t there? SEAN: A couple of bits but I got halfway through side 1 and I was like “Oh no no…” COLIN: What the hell was going on there? SEAN: ‘Cos I went back and listened to everything in order, you know, when I was doing this - it was quite interesting. COLIN: I’m pretty sure we had only started making Fucking Cunts as a 4-track EP but it came out as a double album. That’s never a good thing! SEAN: That is never a good thing. There actually aren’t many good double albums anyway let alone ones of improv anarcho noise. 31

-SEAN: The last Flux gig was at ULU in 1986 wasn’t it? COLIN: What a great gig to finish on. I think we did Belgium and Holland after but ULU was the last UK gig, yeah. It was fantastic. Really something else. We only did Uncarved Block. SEAN: Didn’t you play one or two from Taking A Liberty? COLIN: Maybe… And then we just came back on and played the same songs again. Can you remember that nobody shouted for Tube Disaster? The world had changed. Can you remember if there were any punks there? That was ‘86 I think? SEAN: You’re right; it was the punks who’d got into new dancier stuff. So the band reformed and played Shepherds Bush in 2007? COLIN: I didn’t expect to see so many punks there. Do you remember what a wild day it was, the rain and everything? SEAN: I didn’t go. COLIN: It was absolutely pissing it down. My wife had never been to punk gig before, she called and said “I’m outside, it’s wild out here!” I said, “I know, I can see the weather from here”, and she said “No, the people!” She was in the queue for the guest list and got to the front and said “I’m with Flux Of Pink Indians”. There was a big tattooed, punky guy with the list and when she said I was her husband he got down on one knee! Ha ha..! So for her it was totally weird. SEAN: So you’d been asked to reform a few times? COLIN: I reckon from the early ‘90s to whenever that gig was, 2007, I don’t think the word Flux was really mentioned was it? Don’t you think it had all kind of gone? SEAN: I think for you probably, because you weren’t in those sorts of circles. 32

COLIN: Well I thought, “How are people gonna know about the gig?” They said it was going to be advertised in Mojo or something so I thought it would be a Mojo crew turning up but of course there were people from France and from all over the place that went. SEAN: You were reluctant to do it weren’t you? Who instigated it? KEV: It was this promoter who had managed to get The Specials back together. COLIN: He said Subhumans are doing it, Steve from Crass, and it just felt like if they thought it was ok to do it, then maybe it was ok for us to do it. In the end Subhumans didn’t play and it was just one member of Crass but we ended up saying yes. There might have been a time in the past when I thought “What’s the point of doing a gig now if the songs aren’t relevant”. Then funnily enough after we agreed to do the gig I read through the lyrics and there’s nothing that doesn’t still sound right. There’s nothing that specifically references Thatcher or anything that doesn’t really exist anymore. There’s nothing that dates it. KEV: In the meantime I’d got to know Colin again and we’d been working together for 3 years so when this came around it wasn’t like I had to make another connection again. I thought it would be a good idea because I’d left in a bit of a weird way. When we were playing the last gigs after recording Strive and we didn’t have any more gigs organized, I’d told people around me that I’d probably leave. But when we were gigging with bands like The System they’d say “We’ll see you in January” and I knew I wouldn’t but I couldn’t tell them because I hadn’t told the band at that point. So for me it felt a little bit like laying a few ghosts to rest. I could go and do it again, say goodbye to it. Because at the time, it was only supposed to be that one gig at Shepherds Bush Empire. COLIN: It was a lot of work wasn’t it? A lot of rehearsals. The gig was in November and we started rehearsals in August. The first rehearsal we did we was shit. You know in your mind your memory makes everything fantastic? Ok Derek wasn’t there, we had this other bass player who we’d never worked with, but the first rehearsal was dreadful. I remember thinking we were going to be crap. But it was a bit of a wake up call. SEAN: Who played drums? KEV: Martin. So it was three-quarters of the original band. 33

COLIN: For the months leading up to the show I was shitting it. 2000 people! We’d never played a gig that big. But it’s amazing how the moment you open your mouth onstage, all that fear disappears. It’s really weird. And once you start it just flies by. I mean we only played for half an hour but it went by in a second and suddenly we were walking off stage. SEAN: Did Derek not want to do it? COLIN: We presumed not so we just didn’t ask him. Did Derek go to the show? KEV: I don’t know. (Editor’s note: He did but he went on the wrong night so missed Flux!) SEAN: For me personally I didn’t go because I hold that time in a certain way. I didn’t complain about it like loads of people, I just didn’t go. I heard you broke a string in the first song? KEV: Nah, I didn’t. Martin dropped a stick straight away though. We hadn’t played together since the ‘80s other than these 6 or so rehearsals so it was all a bit weird and surreal. COLIN: I remember about a minute into the first song, I was giving it a bit of the Hotalacio [Colin’s later band], moving around - rather than the Steve Igs stand and shout into the microphone thing, so a bit active. After about a minute I thought “Fucking hell, I can’t keep this up! You just can’t take air and my lungs aren’t the best as it is. So I thought “I’m just going to have to slow it down gradually and no ones going to notice that I was very energetic earlier on”. Ha ha..! KEV: Putting the live recording of the show out was my idea in a funny sort of way. When we were asked if we wanted to do the gig we were also asked if we wanted it professionally filmed and recorded and at first we thought “No, why would we?” but a lot of the other bands were going to and it worked out cheaper if everyone did it, so we agreed. Then someone approached us and asked if they could put it out. We agreed and sent them the files but for 3 years they didn’t do anything with it. I kept mailing asking them what was happening with it and they kept saying they were working on it. I thought “Working on what? A claymation reproduction of the gig?” Nothing takes that long. But 34

then I realized that the 30th anniversary of Strive being released was coming up. I’d had a little bit of email contact with Derek so I asked him if he was thinking about doing anything for the 30th anniversary and told him that we had the show as extra material we could use and he said “Sounds good. I’ll get someone on it”. SEAN: And so after the Shepherds Bush gig you played one in Bradford, another in London and the legendary Espace Autogéré Tanneries in Dijon [a self-managed social and cultural centre] COLIN: Shepherds Bush was one thing but I liked the idea of doing the 1 in 12 in Bradford because I remember them giving Hotalacio a couple of breaks. I wanted to play in a place that big and see what it was like. That was an interesting one. Then the one in Dijon, well, I’ve got a thing about France. But I really had to force these guys to drive all the way there in one day! KEV: I didn’t even have a passport so I had to get one especially to play it! But it was great. COLIN: That place is excellent. SEAN: You must have felt proud to see a place like that. Because you were part of generating it. I mean there are places like that all over Europe and I just think that without the political, anarcho scene, would they be there? So why after those few gigs was that it? COLIN: Because otherwise, where does it stop? It just carries on forever doesn’t it? But the thing is, we got a lot of push from Ian because he wasn’t an original member. KEV: Yeah, he was a fan of the band so he sees it from the outside. COLIN: He’ll say “Why wouldn’t you want to play where American and Japanese people and all these people who have never seen you can all see you in one place? Why wouldn’t you want to do that?” KEV: After Shepherds Bush we were offered a huge gig in America and then we were offered Rebellion Festival this year with prestigious billing on the last night and a bigger fee than we could have expected. But I don’t know…it just didn’t seem right. Plus Colin 35

and I fell out because we had different ideas about what to do and that has only happened once in the 30 odd years we’ve been friends - when we’ve been in Flux. I hated that. COLIN: The thing is there must be loads of bands who would give anything to do stuff like that. You know? Going to America to play a gig and getting paid to do it. So to turn that down feels…I don’t know… You get the opportunity to do it and you don’t want to do it. It feels a bit funny. I don’t like that in a way but the problem is it gets out of hand. After Shepherds Bush we had so many good offers. It’s hard to know what to do so it’s better to just say no. SEAN: If you look at gigs now, there’s no one you can’t see. And that’s a bit depressing to me. There’s certain people I will always respect like Ian McKaye. He could make a lot of money by doing Minor Threat or Fugazi but he still moves on doing his own thing. I mean that’s why The Clash still have a reputation and The Sex Pistols don’t. KEV: Perhaps we did more harm than good by doing Shepherds Bush but I’m glad we pulled it off. After not playing for so many years, we could have completely fucked it up and trashed our name. SEAN: I think for a lot of the more political people you repaired the slight damage of the Shepherds Bush gig by playing the 1 in 12 Club. COLIN: That’s what I hoped would happen. SEAN: It’s still there, it’s still doing it, and it’s great people. Same with Dijon. It was like putting a little bit back. COLIN: The only one I regret is the one in Islington [Academy]. KEV: Yeah. COLIN: Playing with Subhumans again seemed like a reason to do it but in hindsight I don’t think that was a good idea. I liked the Dijon one though, that was really good. To see how things are done abroad. We sat down and they made a massive meal for us and it was just fantastic. 36

-SEAN: So before we finish up, is there anything else you want to say about Flux? COLIN: My step daughters’ got a sort of rockabilly hair salon in Hoxton and she’s got this guy working there who’s 22 and he’s only got 2 things on his iPod, The Beatles and Flux Of Pink Indians. Apparently his dad was a hardcore punk and told him god knows how long ago “don’t listen to that shit, listen to Flux Of Pink Indians and Crass”. She told him her step dad was in Flux and he just can’t believe it. So I realize now that there are 22 year olds out there who are listening to it. SEAN: Kids today though, because of the internet their knowledge is extraordinary. I’m thinking “I took a lifetime learning all that and you just picked it up in 10 minutes! Now you’re talking to me about obscure Norwegian records from 1979?!” COLIN: The thing is though, with us, we started in 1978 and as far as we were concerned, punk was finished and over. But I don’t think whether it was ’76, ’77 or ‘78, it doesn’t make any difference to them does it? It’s just punk and that’s it. It makes no difference if it was ’81 or whatever. At the time though, last year was like a million years ago. KEV: It works the other way with knowledge on the internet though. Some mistakes get repeated and repeated and repeated until they become gospel. COLIN: Yeah, I’m Derek’s brother Colin Birkett aren’t I!? KEV: Exactly. Somebody once wrote a piece about Flux and they had already mentioned Colin’s name but not Derek’s. So the line was something like “Colin and Derek Birkett…” People started assuming they were brothers and now it gets repeated on websites all the time. It just shows how information can be picked up without being verified and given credence. SEAN: My band doesn’t have a Facebook or a website or whatever. You can’t find us online and it drives people mental! But it also means that people buy your records because they can’t think “what does this band sound like? Oh right, they’re shit!” People’s attention spans are so short now. When I first bought Strive I didn’t really like it. It’s grown to be up there with Meatloaf and Parallel Lines. But that’s because you bought the record 37

and you paid money. KEV: You invested in it, yeah. SEAN: Yeah you’d think “I’m gonna like this because I bought it and I can’t afford to buy another record for 2 weeks”. Whereas now, people have views on things in 10 seconds you know? “I don’t like that.” So, I’ve got one last question. Do you still strive to survive causing the least suffering possible? KEV: Yeah, I think so. COLIN: I reckon so. I reckon so. Yeah. SEAN: Well that album’s really important to me. It stands up as a classic record even above the Crass ones for me. Maybe not for other people but it’s a great record. COLIN: I think it’s the feedback. It ties the whole thing together. SEAN: It does. Have you got a mix of it without the feedback? COLIN: No. I’ve got the complete opposite. I’ve got the ¼ inch of just the feedback. I mentioned it before and no one seemed interested but I think it’s a song in itself. SEAN: It should be a bonus track. KEV: Yeah that’s a good idea! COLIN: Is it too late? I’ll dig it out!

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TOTEM SERIES

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

DISCO INFERNO THE 5 EPS CD / 2 X VINYL

A.R.KANE COMPLETE SINGLES COLLECTION 2 X CD

THE WOODENTOPS BEFORE DURING AFTER 3 X CD

AC ACOUSTICS VICTORY PARTS 2 X CD

TOTEMSERIES.CO.UK