Tuesday 5 August 2014

Crisis - UK '79

Another classic from Crisis. 'UK '79' is their second single. The b-side 'White Youth' is most probably more well known as it was written as an anti fascist rally song, but some clever people from the press misunderstood, and labeled Crisis a fascist band (they couldn't have been further from the truth)

I can still remember when one of their protest songs nearly got their drummer Luke Rendall (also played with Theatre of Hate) into trouble. One of Crisis onstage favourites was a track called SPG, which for those of you who can remember was the abbreviated name for the Special Patrol Group (a controversial unit of the metropolitan police force of which in 1979 became notorious for the alleged murder of protester Blair Peach. In the inquiry the SPG officers were found to have weaponry such as Baseball bats, sledgehammers and crowbars - No SPG officer was convicted but an out of court payment was made to the Peach Family, the SPG were also cited as a major factor in the 1981 Brixton riots)

The SPG often hassled punks (and I guess anyone young), I can personally remember a number of occasions where they were over the top and over aggressive for no real reasons.So they had a reputation that you didn't muck around with.

Luke was wearing the Crisis SPG badge (see scan) when we were pulled up by the actual SPG. They looked at Luke's badge and said "Whats this then".

Luke replied "I'm in a band and it's a song about the SPG"

The SPG officer said "oh, what's it all about then"

Luke stood their silently thinking "Oh shit, the chorus is "smash, smash, smash the SPG (something like that I'm struggling to remember now)"

then replied "It's an instrumental"

Quick thinking and a lucky escape (for all of us).

Band: Crisis
Label: Ardkor
Year:
Tracks:
1.White Youth
2. UK 79

Ripped from glorious scratched vinyl:

8 comments:

45 Revolutions said...

"It's an instrumental"! Nice one!

Anonymous said...

This was the only song I could ever play on guitar! Good to hear this again after many moons. Cheers Gary.







Longy

Punkzer0 said...

Hi Steve, yep classic reply. I wish it had been me.

Punkzer0 said...

Hi Longy, do you have the tabs for this, its funny when i was playing it, I thought, thats sounds nice and simple I'll have a go at that.

Anonymous said...

Hi Gary. No tabs mate I'm afraid. I remember it being very easy though. I can't play the guitar at all!




Longy

Tony said...

Ha Ha!

A Taste of Hysteria said...

awesome blog, great story! i'd love to find one of those badges around..yeah right!

Punkzer0 said...

Thanks for the comment and compliment Hysteria, its very much appreciated, I guess those badges are quite hard to come by now, but you never know on ebay.