Richard Cabut - Kick presentation for the University of East London

 PRESENTATION 

 

 

Hi, my name is Richard Cabut. I’m a writer – I wrote for the BBC for ten years, and contributed to the national press, including Guardian and the Telegraph. Plays. Etc. But I started off, in the late 70s and 8os with a fanzine called Kick. 

 

 

Punk started in the UK in 1976. But As the 1970s turned into the 1980s, punk splintered into factions and entered a period of reinvention. Such a process was traced across numerous fanzines, but Kick  was among, it’s been said, the most astute. Configuring punk as a culture of individuality, creativity and rebellion, Kick helped lay the foundations for a ‘positive punk’, a proto-gothic scene that channelled punk’s spirit into more esoteric and expressive channels. This presentation contextualizes the need for a more positive reading of punk in the 1980s and explores the world, of squats, magick and make-up from which Kick and other such ‘zines emerged. 

 

Kick was a punk fanzine. I made four issues between 1979 and, 82.  

 

PICTURE 1 – Kick 2 

 

In the autumn of 1982, I was living in a punk squat in New North Road, London, N1, a walk from Old Street, unreconstructed and sort of scary/lairy at that time. Clouds of cig smoke and defeat in the unemployment office. There was often violence. On one occasion I was mugged for 26-and-a-half pence; all I had in my pocket and pretty much all I had in the world. I was on the dole and spent my time conducting a fruitful lifestyle based on what I described in my fanzine Kick as ‘creativity, individuality and rebellion’.  

 

The Dole financed Kick. Finance always came via this and that. The odd weird job here and there – the kind of job you could pick up anytime in those days, advertised in the back of Time Out, or those free commuter weeklies – delivering leaflets, or strange proto-market research. Just a day or two’s work now and then. If you’re squatting, and getting by on cheap speed and free vegetables thrown out by the market traders at Spitalfields Market, then it’s enough to get by, and to get a fanzine printed.  

 

Kick 4 had been published at the end of that summer and had attracted a fair amount of attention from other fanzines, the music press and even received mention on the John Peel Show – which meant a lot. The issue quickly sold out, people liked it – apart from a choice one or two.  

 

My favourite letter came from a chap in Penzance. ‘RE Kick,’ he wrote. ‘Its content filled me with such contempt and sorrow for the state of your mentality that I had to write… having myself witnessed the great heights of the Flower Power movement I speak from personal experience when I say your punk ideals are as far removed from reality as living on the moon…even your own definition of punk contradicts what you are aiming at, you preach punk and anarchy, yet in your own little way you define punk with three little words, individuality, creativity, rebellion, which is nice and safe. Little punks like you with your violent anarchistic ideals are harming our ideals for peace, love and spiritualism… false, cheap and above all harmful and distasteful twopenny thoughts… love and peace. PS You killed Lennon.’ He might have been right. Not the Lennon bit, obv. Although I get where he was coming from.  

 

Meanwhile, It was the interaction offered by selling the mag at gigs by bands like Southern Death Cult, UK Decay and Sex Gang Children that had led to an invite to live in the squat. Kick was part of, and described, a certain scene. As I wrote in the introduction to that issue:- 

 

‘Although we are pushing PUNK, I think it’s become necessary to define terms. For a start, we’re not talking about punk in terms of the oi oi, bootboy lot who have nothing to say & nothing to offer. It’s their brainless, class, macho mentality that  punk has been trying to get rid of from the start. It’s ‘easy way out’ punk that requires a leather jacket for the night and not much else. Then for the rest of the  week it’s work, pub, death. On the other hand and & at the opposite end of the scale are the ‘dead-head’ type punx who have who have seen a fragment of  freedom (thru squatting, no work etc.) but have chained themselves up again thru  drug dependence and other fixed dogmas & expectations. Self-destruction has  become some sort of punk common denominator in a lot of people’s minds. But not in ours. We’re still conveying it as a positive way of beating reality rather than escaping it (for a few hours down a pub or club). Punk still means the destruction of the conventions and expectations that society has thrown up. It means working on the preconceptions that surround things like work, parents, school, clothes etc. etc. This is why punk is still relevant and important and if you want it to happen, then make it happen for yourself, don’t wait for others to do it for you. ‘Do it now’. When you do, natural intelligence, instinct & energy will develop thru repeated indulgence. The rebellious surge will transform ‘WORK’, REST & PLAY into one single conscious and subconscious experiment in LIFE.’ 

 

In the second part of the introduction, I imagined punks as barbarians at the gates of ‘Rome’ – their appearance signalling a crisis in civilisation. Punks, I fancied, were part of one of W.B. Yeats’ cyclic turns: they were the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. I was sure of this. After all, ‘mere anarchy’ had been loosed. Although there was nothing ‘mere’ about it as far as I was concerned. I suggested that the current punk sphere had evolved from the ‘caper of the Seventies’ on to a ‘total rejection of the whole of society’.   

 

PICTURE 2 – Kick 4.  

 

VO ?? - No 4, was printed by Colin Bennett (CB Press) in W11, Colville Terrace – near Powis Square. Colin, I seem to remember, was a mate of Keith Allen, father of Lily Allen and a successful actor now, and an actor in his own right, perhaps. His heart certainly wasn’t in printing – he fucked up the order of the pages a little. It was that ex-hippy, out-of-it, joints-on-the-go-all-day, Portobello Rd scene – his place was a shitty ramshackle room – though the printer was in an adjacent tumble down shack-like construction – with tons of old crap in it.  I liked it!  

 

In Kick 4, I wrote about how I and some friends in my suburban hometown had always been barbarians, or at least since being first inspired by punk, and had remained so, waiting for the world to catch up with us, to reach a crisis: ‘What that crisis is and why the present generation is reacting to it the way it does is the theme of this fanzine and of the issues following it,’ I wrote. 

 

My own crisis had culminated in the flight from suburbia. Mostly I dreamt of escape. I lived in a, working/lower-middle class smalltown. Dunstable, Bedfordshire. Thirty miles from the capital. There, kids left school and went on the track, the production line, at the big local factory, Vauxhall Motors (now closed). If you got some qualifications you could join the civil service. Meanwhile, the archetypal Trevor and Nancy had been going out with each other since 3rd Form and watched telly round each other’s house every night, not saying a word – parody of and practice for the marriage to come. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew I didn’t want any of that shit ever. Instead, I was in love with punk rock. I was in love with the idea of picking up momentum and hurling myself forward somewhere. Anywhere. Rip up the pieces and see where they land. I was suburban punk Everykid in pins and zips, with a splattering of Jackson Pollock and a little Seditionaries.  

 

PICTURE 3 – me in 77 seds t shirt 

 

VO?? – When I went to Seditionaries for the first time, it was scary. It caused you to momentarily take a look at your inner self. Before you went in you thought: Do I come from a place where I have the moral quality to go into this shop? Do I have the revolutionary spirit? I think I do. So I went in, and it wasn’t very welcoming. Jordan, the shop girl, kind of ignored me completely. I met her in 2006, at the British Library Punk exhibition and told her about my fears, expecting her to say, ‘Oh you shouldn’t have worried’. But she said: ‘ You were right to worry – we only wanted people in there with that attitude.’  

 

In my bedroom there were some Aleister Crowley books, a bit of Sartre, 48 Thrills (bought off Adrian – writes for the Mirror now – at a Clash gig), Sandy Roberton’s White Stuff (named after the lyrics in Patti Smith song)  

 

PICTURE 4 - Patti 

 

and Sniffin’ Glue and Other Self Defence Habits (July ’77),  

 

PICTURE 5 - SG.  

 

If, as the cliché had it, escape from the ghetto could at one time only be achieved by means of sport or showbiz, then either learning three chords or scrawling a fanzine was the easiest way out of the suburbs for a bored punk rocker. 

 

I was rubbish on guitar at the time, and so I started planning my first fanzine, Corrugated Boredom. For the ‘zine, which was never actually printed, I wrote a review of a local Clash gig:  ‘On the way to a Clash gig, on January 25, 1978 Steve and I join a big group of new punks, maybe 30 or 40 strong, walking along the main road. A police car stops us, and everyone waits his or her turn to be searched. The kid in front of me surreptitiously pulls out a gun, a real revolver that he’s nicked from a party, apparently, and passes it back through the group to a girl who sticks it in her handbag, crosses the road and walks away. I should have done the same. The gig itself is a bloodbath. Different estates slug it out with each other – Lewsey Farm v Stopsley – people stagger around with axe wounds, blood everywhere, the Wild West. A support band called The Lous get killed, the Sex Pistols’ minder English wanders around with a knife. I’m backstage and The Clash are worried: they’re popping Mogadons’. I’m worried, too – that I’ll get stuck forever in all this bollocks.’  

 

PICTURE 6 – clash poster – teen delinquent. Idea. Different gig. 

 

I knew it’s time to move. Which, I did – to London. The bright lights. ‘Don’t dream it, be it’ (The Rocky Horror Show). Yeah.  

 

London was, of course, the traditional refuge for suburban refugees – people who felt disaffected by life in the sticks: the treadmill, the mores, the conservatism, the repressive nature of family life. We wanted to tip all of this upside down, assert ourselves and fathom the world. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, there existed a diaspora centred in London, where punks sought fresh forms of community. Consequently, social spaces sprang up where punk culture could really develop. The Anarchy Centre, first in Wapping, and then on the Harrow Road, provided a place for happenings. And, Ollie Wisdom’s Batcave – before the hoo-ha: a multi-media hang out mixing DJs with cinema and a range of live acts in a fantastically expressive atmosphere where reality could be confronted and perhaps subverted a little. Interaction in Kentish Town, where posters handouts could be printed cheaply – though I didn’t use it for zines. There was a big fanzine scene – why? Well, creativity is everything, if you’re that way inclined, and so is imagination – it’s contagious, and takes courage. Kids just did it, not really worried about where it would lead to, nowhere was as good as somewhere or anywhere, and vice versa. In that sense, it was magical i.e. with no lust of result – reference Crowley’s Book of the Law. “For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of results, is every way perfect.” Magic works like that. If you work it. And I did. Most of the fanzines were not so good. When I moved house in the 90s, I took the opportunity of dumping many many hundreds of fanzines I’d accumulated – they became landfill, which was always their essence and destiny. But, you know, sometimes it’s OK to be ephemeral and throw away. A purpose is served at the time. 

 

I lived and gallivanted first at the aforementioned squat in New North Rd, and then in Westbere Road, West Hampstead. The New North Road squat broke up thanks to petty animosities and personality clashes – often happened.  

 

The place I moved to in West Hampstead was something of hub. All kinds of cool and crazy people would pitch up. Bands, writers, vagrants, and a TV crew on occasion. It was a punk rock melting pot of striking creativity and cross-pollination. The interaction fuelled creativity and vice versa. Westbere Road was a sanctuary from the changes sweeping punk at the time. It was also a catalyst. 

 

In Westbere Road, and other punk squats, a young, rebellious, open culture began to create (mostly mayhem!). An honourable, self-sufficing and self-sufficient economy – low-level capitalism – began, based on the production of music, fanzines, fashion and art. Squats became hives of activity for a diverse range of people. It was a world away from both suburban restraint and urban bedsit boredom, or from the lifestyle of the aforementioned ‘dead-head type punx’ in their seedy, down ‘n’ out squats – in extreme conditions of debauch and poverty underpinned by a sense of overwhelming stare-at-the-wall-drooling boredom, punctuated only by outbursts of violence and furore, usually fuelled by whatever substances came to hand. An underworld of alienation, loneliness, hopelessness and anger. Well, it was either that or get a job …  

 

One of the worst punk squats was Campbell Buildings in Waterloo, a kind of punk annex to Dante’s inferno, a nether place peopled in the main by dolemongers, charlatans, delinquents, drug addicts, petty thieves and musicians. The worst, of course, were the musicians, and therein lies the link between squalor and glamour, I suppose.  

 

A similar hellhole was to be found at Coronation Buildings in Vauxhall, home for a while of Kick writer Lill. She became in involved with Kick after just knocked on the door one day and introducing herself – she’d read a copy of Kick and was enthused. People did that kind of thing back in the 70s and 80s. Wonderful. It was all a part of the adventure – and the point of punk in those years was that it was nothing if not an adventure. Listening to records or going to gigs was the least of it – at least as far as I and the people I largely associated with were concerned. The idea was to live a creative, adventurous lifestyle.  

 

PICTURE 7 - LILL 

 

Her place was in a dank Victorian block full of the desperate and the damned, not the Damned tho’. You didn’t know what or who you’d find when knocking at the door – more than once, I turned up to find that the place had been raided and ransacked by a roving gang of skinheads, who’d beaten up the guys and abused the girls. This sort of skinhead terror was a horrible hazard in certain parts of London punk squatland in the late 70s and early 80s.  

 

Lill lived by begging every day – and I hated being dragged off across Vauxhall Bridge to ponce loose change from commuters. It was embarrassing, frankly. And I certainly didn’t think the point of punk was to engender a look of pity in the eyes of the passer-by.  

  

In Kick, though, I very much accentuated the positive. I liked the punk scene in the early ‘80s. I liked it in the mid-1970s too. The late-70s, though, were like the third Monday in January, officially recognized by the medical profession as the day on which more UK citizens wake up depressed than any other. The reality of another grinding year kicks in, the horror of the Christmas credit card bill bites, and the misery of another rain dashed day dawns. It was like that. But the early ‘80s were another punk spring.  

 

PICTURE 8–Kick No 3 

 

VO - No 3 was printed by Joly at Better Badges. He had his production line of fanzines and badges going full pelt at that time with a bunch of punks, Sarah from Clapham, et al, manning the machines in his dark satanic pit – but if you were a young punk there were worse places to work I suppose. Everyone seemed to be having fun, every time I went up there at least. But maybe Joly was having too much fun, or/and had taken on too much by then, and it all seemed to be extra chaotic. The standard deal was: he printed a 1000 copies, you took 500 and he kept 500 for himself to sell . 

 

As described, punk at that time became a way of life for an increasingly large and motivated group of people. Moreover, folk were, to paraphrase Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, creating an environment in which they could truthfully run wild. Instead of just listening to records in isolation and going to the odd gig, people were having life adventures – documented largely by fanzines like KYPP, Panache, Vague and Kick. 

 

We wrote about bands like Southern Death Cult, Sex Gang Children, Bauhaus, their predecessors Adam and the Ants and the Banshees, and later Brigandage and Blood and Roses: bands that promulgated the overriding ethic and aesthetic of rebellion, individuality and creativity, with a touch of esoterica, some flash and plenty of glam dash to boot. Having said that, the music was the least important part of the equation – the bands simply provided the soundtrack to a lifestyle.  

 

We strutted our Billy-the-Kid sense of cool – bombsite kids clambering from the ruins – posing our way out of the surrounding dreariness. We were living in our own colourful movie (an early-ish Warhol flick some of us liked to think), which we were sure was incomparably richer, more spontaneous and far more magical than the depressing, collective black-and-white motionless picture that the conformists had to settle for.  

 

PICTURE 9 – PIC  4 – Richard 80s 

 

VO – soap backcombing hairspray – caused the hole in the ozone layer – so soz about that. 

 

We were living in our Warhol movie - but we had a clear understanding of the here and now, and a desire to get out of it – rather than just get out of it. We cared with unflinching sincerity, although not many were intellectuals or activists in the traditional political sense. Of more interest were, perhaps, the fantastic slogans. ‘They said that oblivion was their ruling passion. They wanted to reinvent everything each day; to become the masters of their own lives.’ That kind of thing. And I don’t recall many people attending marches or ‘political’ meetings on a regular basis. 

 

I once wrote a sort a piece, which talked about the ‘Romance of Anarchy’ becoming ‘Reality’. I believed that the romance is grounded in a reality that makes clear that, on all levels, the process of daily life is based on a trade of humiliations and aggro, as the Situationists (a big influence, of course) said. I thought that, as they said, ‘alienated work is a scandal’, that so-called ‘leisure’ is an affront, and that ‘real life is elsewhere.’ Where? Well, the pertinent questions, I thought, are not about restructuring economic systems, although I admit on a day-to-day level that helps, but about how quickly the underpinnings of society – all the givens, great unmentionables, so-called axioms, the fact that it is a closed-loop feedback system which easily sops up and throws back challenges and critiques – could be dissolved. I demanded that this happens. And I felt, to paraphrase the Situ slogan and Malcolm McLaren’s shirt, I was entirely reasonable to demand the impossible. 

 

When I joined the band Brigandage, I detourned a Situationist poster for promotional purposes. 

 

PICTURE 10  – Brigandage are coming 

 

Be reasonable, demand the impossible. This, I feel, was the overriding, if sometimes coded, message given in the best fanzines of those years. Including Kick, I hope. My fanzine, and the scene itself, to an extent, was probably more influenced by someone like Richard Neville and his ‘Politics of Play.’ In his 1970 book, Playpower, Neville stands aside from the straight Left.  

 

PICTURE 11 – book 

 

We got the memo. The straights were about working hard and supportively, while for us there was no wish to work at all. The straights wanted work for everyone (and this was a time of mass unemployment) whereas we shrugged off the very thought of routine to focus on the exciting stuff, and somehow managed to get by. 

 

We were like kids (hence Playpower). I was positive that self-empowered, autodidactic, spiky guttersnipes were an upsurge of the future, certain to overcome the old political order – the RCP, the SWP, the stolid Left, the more traditional anarchists even. I remember, later, sneering at the people who supported the miners’ strike. Many in our circle did. I remember talking to Fred Vermorel, author of Sex Pistols: The Inside Story  

 

PICTURE 12 – book 

 

amongst other books, who moaned about the Pistols’ art director Jamie Reid because he spoke out in support of the strike. We wondered why anyone would want to work underground. Maybe we should all have stood firm. This is clearly the downside of the so-called ‘cult of individuality’ – politically, a liberal dead end, to paraphrase writer Marek Kohn. 

 

Instead, Kick and the other fanzines described the punk scene in the same way as, in one episode of the TV show Bewitched, the character Endora describes the difference between witches and humans, ‘They all look the same to me, noses to the grindstone shoulders to the wheel, feet planted firmly on the ground, no wonder they can’t fly!’ She adds: ‘It’s fine for them but not for us. We are quicksilver, a fleeting shadow, a distant sound that has no boundaries through which we can’t pass. We are found in music, in a flash of colour, we live in the wind and in a sparkle of star…’ 

 

It was a magical time, in more ways than one. Serious, sometimes seemingly endless conversations were held about occultists like Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, Kenneth Grant and the possibilities of magic. Use of the tarot and I Ching were a daily occurrence. The inside back cover of Kick 4 was a hastily drawn Tree of Life – from Kether to Malkuth.  

 

PICTURE 13– System – kabbalah – popularised by Madonna. Bowie – lyrics – from kether to Malkuth. form of ten interconnected nodes, as the central symbol of the Kabbalah. other religious traditions, esoteric theologies, and magical practices. The tree of knowledge, connecting to heaven and the underworld, and the tree of life, connecting all forms of creation, are both forms of the world tree or cosmic tree, and are portrayed in various religions and philosophies as the same tree 

 

Few, though, ploughed through the theory. Most were more interested in the mystery rather than the history, I suppose.  But there was a little more to the association between magic and our punk scene than that, as I myself wrote in the NME in 1983: ‘Nor is it a silly hippy Tolkien fantasy joyride, or even a Killing Joke stench-of-death gloomier-than-thou slice of fanaticism. These groups are aware: UK Decay (positive punk forefathers), using the dark to contrast and finally emphasise the light; Sex Gang Children taking us into the sub-world of the Crowleyan abyss; while Blood And Roses are pushing the symbols a whole lot further, their guitarist Bob being a serious student of the Art. The mystical tide we are talking about here refers, if nothing else, to the inner warmth and vital energy that human beings regard as the most favourable state to live in. The new positive punk has tapped into this current.’ 

 

I had started writing for the NME towards the end of 1982. This was probably one of the reasons why Kick 5 was never printed, although I had already put together much of that issue. Echoing the 1960s/70s exodus of writers from the underground press to the mainstream, I jumped on the music press bandwagon, as did many of the main punk fanzine writers: Tom Vague (Vague–ZigZag),  

 

PICTURE 14– ZIG ZAG 

 

 

Mick Mercer (Panache–Melody Maker), Alistair Livingston (The Encyclopaedia of Ecstasy–Punk Lives), Tony D (Kill Your Pet Puppy–NME), Robin Gibson (It Ticked and Exploded–Sounds). Why? The consensus amongst ourselves was that we had ‘sold out’ in order to further push ‘our’ bands and ‘the revolution’. We felt that we were, with our undying passion for punk, attacking orthodoxy and challenging those in power, sometimes in volatile ways. We thought we were encouraging the overground music press to tackle concerns that they would otherwise have ignored – for instance, I wrote about the Black Sheep Housing Co-op, which grew out of the squatting movement in Islington (I was a member). Others wrote about international anarchist organisations for the NME and about the Anarchy Centre for Punk Lives – a mainstream mag. 

 

I wrote the positive punk article for the NME in January–February 1983. Made the front page. 

 

PICTURE  15 POSTIVE PUNK 

VO - ANYTHING 

Anton Corbyn 

 

Really, the piece reiterated much of what I had previously written in Kick, and what other fanzines had reported, too, about the state of the punk scene in the early 80s. Describing the three distinct groupings. The Oi-sters and ‘herberts’, who were basic and gumby-ish in their music, fashion and behaviour; the anarchos, who were a mass of black, in terms of clothes and demeanour; and our loose, nameless collection of punks and former punks who were colourful and full, it seemed, of vim and go-ahead spirit. We tended to go to see roughly the same bands and attended the same sort of clubs. I wrote about many of the bands and places, ranging from the Batcave and Specimen to The Mob (who were sort of anarcho-plus). I liked the make-up-break-down, safe-when-dangerous, follow-the-heart-and-unconscious-mind, heaven-and-hell-and-kiss-and-tell bands like Bauhaus, Wasted Youth, Flesh for Lulu and Psychedelic Furs. Groups that promoted sensual style and re-action: ‘With wild-coloured spiked hair freezing the eye, and even more vivid clothes to spice the imagination – faces, thoughts and actions – the atmosphere’s infused with a charge of excitement, an air of abandon underlined with a sense of purpose. Something stirs again in this land of fetid, directionless sludgery, this land of pretend optimism and grim reality. Theory and practice are being synthesised under the golden umbrella of a 24-hour long ideal. Welcome to the new positive punk […] a re-evaluation and rejuvenation of the ideals that made the original outburst so great, an intensification of and expansion of that ethos of individuality, creativity and rebellion.’ 

 

The positive punk article garnered a reaction. Melody Maker wrote an amusing pastiche; The Face replied with its own piece complete with photos of all the key participants, including myself 

 

PICTURE 16- face 

 

; there were myriad mentions in the fanzines; LWT’s Friday night arts and leisure series, South of Watford, devoted an episode to the ‘movement’. Host Michael Moorcock came to Westbere Road one morning to conduct interviews and, seeing that we were all worse for wear after a late night at the Tribe Club, gave us some (extremely potent) speed to encourage the chat. It worked … perhaps all too well – Private Eye contacted me afterwards to ask whether it was true that the presenter had given drugs to his obviously over-refreshed interviewees. I denied everything. 

 

But Positive Punk was ahead of its time. My Wiki says: ‘With the watershed NME article ‘Punk Warriors’ 19 February 1983, Cabut first used the term ‘positive punk’, to describe a cultish following that was soon to influence goth. As described by Mathew Worley, No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976–1984. ‘Richard Cabut (Richard North) was the first to outline the basis of what eventually became codified as “goth”.’  

 

In hindsight, the music wasn’t great but, as aforesaid, that wasn’t really the point. And then, yes, it turned into goth, with even worse music. 

 

The Westbere Road finished soon after – many of the inhabitants went off to become New Age Travellers. I, meanwhile, joined Brigandage.   

 

PICTURE 17 – ME IN BRIGANDAGE 

 

We released an LP and tape, which included a fanzine – continuing the good work of Kick.  

 

I also continued to write for the music press and, later, various national media organisations. Nevertheless, I maintain that Kick and the other fanzines of that time and space, revealed our particular genre of ‘80s punk to be remarkable in its essence – creative, spirited and progressive. Full of, yes, individuality, creativity and rebellion.