Outside of London, Bristol probably boasted the greatest number of signed punk bands in any one city – due no doubt in part to the presence of the prolific Riot City label as well as some particularly miserable areas of social squalor – and leading the charge was Vice Squad. A breakneck punk band who took the nail of disenfranchised West Country youth and hit it smack on its bored vacuous head, Vice Squad first appeared on the scene with a track, ‘Nothing’, for a regional compilation album, ‘Avon Calling’ (Heartbeat Records, 1979). They actually formed the year before, with Beki Bondage on vocals, Dave Bateman on guitar, Mark Hambly on bass, and Shane Baldwin drumming, and played their first gig at the Bristol University Anson Rooms on April 12th 1979, supporting The X-Certs and Crisis. Shane has fond memories of those bad old days.

“ The album got good reviews; a photo of us playing at the Summit Youth Club in Kingswood even appeared in Sounds (an influential music paper of the period), and John Peel played our track a lot on his show. So we were more than pleased! By this time, Dave and I had been trying for a couple of years, with no success at all, to get a band going (they were previously in the TV Brakes with Ian Minter and Tim Clench), so it was definitely a big thrill when we got our copies of ‘Avon Calling’. However, I couldn’t help noticing that as well as sounding quite puny compared to the other more accomplished bands on the record, it even looked puny if you held it up to the light… it took up far less grooves than the other tracks.

“ Sounds called our contribution ‘rabid minimalism’, which I had to look up in a dictionary, but that about sums it up. Actually, now it’s one of my favourite Vice Squad tracks…”

After that, things started to move pretty quickly for the band. John Peel picked up on them most enthusiastically, and was no doubt very instrumental in helping their growing profile.

“ I thought it was a bit strange that Peel was so keen on our track,” ponders a bemused Shane, “because there were much more established and capable bands on the record, like Glaxo Babies, Joe Public and The X-Certs. I spoke to John for the first time a few years ago, pointing out that we were much more ‘basic’ than the other bands, and he said, ‘Well, basic is what I like’. I chose to take that as a compliment!

“ And yes, he was always a staunch supporter; always played our records and we did two sessions for his show, which was a great honour. My dad was a big Peel fan and listened to the show every night, so that gave me a big kick.

“ Things started to move quickly after ‘Avon Calling’, that’s true, but they also ground to a halt pretty quickly as well. We supported The Damned and The Ruts at the Locarno, and picked up a bit of a following, but within months, after a lot of crowd trouble, we were banned from most local venues.”

That didn’t stop the band from helping launch Riot City Records with Heartbeat’s Simon Edwards at the helm and going on to create a veritable punk classic as their debut 7”. Even today, despite its thin production, ‘Last Rockers’ still sends a wicked thrill down the spine. The tantalising guitar intro that ushers in the ensuing chaos, Beki’s scathing vocal delivery, and those sombre backing vocals… possibly more luck than judgement, but the band had hit upon a winning formula.

Surprisingly though, that initial deal was some time coming, even after the critical praise heaped upon ‘Nothing’.

“ After ‘Avon Calling’ we thought that Simon would immediately give us a singles deal at the very least,” recalls Shane. “But for a long time he wasn’t that keen. After the early bright start things nose-dived quite dramatically, and we only played six gigs in the whole of 1980. After much nagging though, he came to see us at the last of those, a ‘Rock Against Thatcher’ benefit at Trinity Church, after which he cautiously offered to put out a single, where he would pay for the manufacturing and we had to cough up for the studio costs. It wasn’t exactly the record deal of our dreams, but totally understandable seeing as he’d recently lost his Heartbeat licensing deal with Cherry Red.

“ The only person we knew with money was our friend Bill White, who owned a cafe, and he loaned us the cash, interest-free, on the sole condition that he was given a credit on all future releases. It was a generous offer, and of course we stuck to it and paid him back as soon as we were able.”

It was a good call for Simon Edwards, because ‘Last Rockers’ sold well over twenty thousand copies and spent almost forty weeks in the then-important Independent charts, reaching the giddy heights of No. 7, almost unheard of for a debut punk single. The follow-up, four months later in May ’81, ‘Resurrection’, was equally successful, actually reaching No. 4, and the band did a tour with the UK Subs as well as their first session for John Peel. It was almost inevitable a major label would soon snap them up, and sure enough, before the year was out, the band’s debut album was in the racks, with the EMI logo adorning its back cover – much to the horror of some DIY punk purists.

“ We expected some flak when we chose to sign with EMI, but to be honest, we never expected it to be quite as bad as it was,” sighs Shane. “In some ways it still mystifies me. When we’re talked about now, it’s always one of the first things mentioned, whereas it never seems to crop up with anything written about The (Cockney) Rejects or The (Angelic) Upstarts, who were already on the label when we joined. I don’t regret it though; it was an opportunity to move into a completely different sphere, a whole new experience.

“ Even Simon Edwards, who was understandably hopping mad when we left Riot City, has since admitted that we just had to seize that chance while it was going. The simple fact is that, for most of the bands who were up in arms about us signing to a major label, the argument was purely academic – nobody ever offered them a similar deal.”

Although Shane is philosophical about the label the band chose for themselves, he remains less than flattering about that first album.

“ It’s just awful and I’m thoroughly ashamed of it! When Mark Brennan at Captain Oi! reissued the album recently he asked me what I thought we should do with it, meaning what bonus tracks to use etc. I suggested we take the fucking thing into the middle of a field and bury it, but he didn’t find that idea very helpful…”

Harsh words indeed, but enough fans of the band rushed out and bought ‘No Cause For Concern’ for it to narrowly miss entering the Top Thirty of the National album charts. The poorly recorded but best-selling ‘Out Of Reach’ EP followed, but it wasn’t until the summer of ’82 and the far more confident-sounding second album, ‘Stand Strong, Stand Proud’, that the band had a record they were truly proud of.

“ It’s a little known fact that EMI wanted us to do ‘Stand Strong…’ at Abbey Road Studios,” reveals Beki. “But the band – mainly Dave – talked me out of doing it! They said they’d use session musicians etc. I can’t believe how naïve I was in those days; they even showed us round the studio where The Beatles recorded and bought us lunch there… but I let myself believe it wouldn’t be a good idea!”

The preceding EP of the same name was even granted the accolade Single of the Week in Sounds, and the band celebrated with several dates in Holland and tours of the USA and Canada. A time fondly remembered by Shane Baldwin.

“ The tour of America and Canada in 1982 was definitely the highlight of what we sometimes refer to, laughingly, as our ‘career’. We started in California, and over six weeks drove from coast to coast, ending up, obviously, in New York. We got to play with the likes of Social Distortion, Youth Brigade, Battalion Of Saints, Black Flag and Bad Brains, and also linked up with fellow Brits, Chron Gen and Discharge, so it was quite an experience.

“ The best bit for me was when we played the 9.30 Club in Washington DC. One of my favourite bands, Lords Of The New Church, were playing down the road on the same night, and as we had to play two sets, we went to see them during our break. They returned the compliment and came over for our last show. I’m not ashamed to admit that I got a kick out of that.

“ Another thrill was when we arrived in New York. We stayed at the Iroquois Hotel, a famous rock‘n’roll dive, and as we drove up we joked that the first thing we would see there would be The Clash, who always mentioned the place in interviews. And sure enough, as we pulled over, there they were, stood outside waiting for a taxi. Chelsea, Lou Reed and Brian Brain from PiL were also staying there, so we thought it the coolest place in the world, if a little dingy.

“ At one point during that tour Mark said to me, ‘Well, whatever else happens from now on, the bastards can’t take this away from us.’ And he was right!”

But contrary to all external signs, things were afoot in the Vice Squad camp and soon after the ‘State of The Nation’ EP that the band released upon returning from the USA, Beki announced her decision to leave for pastures new. Her powerful voice had been a major factor in shaping the band’s distinct sound, and with her striking looks and dominatrix overtones, she had already become punk’s first real pin-up, adorning the bedroom walls of a thousand spotty adolescents the length and breadth of the nation. For many fans, she WAS Vice Squad, and her departure was greeted with incredulous outrage.

“ I didn’t get on particularly well with the rest of the band as I was a teenage girl and they were teenage boys and at that age the sexes can be pretty unpleasant to each other,” explains Beki, of her decision to leave. “One of the managers we had at the time was particularly fond of winding me up, which included driving past an abattoir to wave at his friends ‘working’ inside, and I decided that he wasn’t going to make money out of me anymore and I left shortly after.

“ I read something Shane wrote that said I left because I already knew EMI would give me another deal if I left Vice Squad, but I’m sorry to admit that I wasn’t sussed enough to be that calculating. The irony of all this is that with CJD, foot and mouth disease, and mass starvation in the third world, not to mention all the other unpleasant by-products of the meat industry, I can see that I was right to believe in Animal Rights, and I still do.

“ Still, the split was years ago and it’s fair to say that people change and that ex-manager could well be a very nice person these days. To be honest, I hate being asked this question as the answer’s likely to cause bad feeling and it’s all water under the bridge and rather petty after all… but you did ask!”

Beki went on to front Ligotage and then Beki And The Bombshells, and her departure was to sound the death knell for the original incarnation of Vice Squad. Soon after, they were dropped by EMI, but undeterred recruited a young Clifton punkette by the name of Lia who was given the unenviable task of filling Beki’s rather large (speaking metaphorically, of course) shoes.

“ Actually, Lia was in her twenties when she joined the band and they were going to say she was sixteen,” adds Beki. “She only lasted about six months because you just don’t put up with being gobbed on and whatever when you’re in your twenties. When I said that I was leaving the band one of the managers even said that they were going to recruit another girl and say that she was my sister and call her ‘Belinda Bondage’!

“ I thought Lia had a really good voice, but I’m surprised that they took on a relatively mature woman as there was no way she would put up with the abuse I had, and let’s face it, the early incarnation of Vice Squad always attracted nutters! I’d like to meet her one day and talk about how she found life in the band; I bet we’d have quite a lot in common!”

Lia had formerly been known as Jools, singing for Affairs Of The Heart, the musical project of Steve Street and Martin ‘Merv’ Woolford, who between them ran Bristol’s SAM Studios. The band even released a single on Heartbeat during the summer of 1983, a cover of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by The Kinks.

The new Vice Squad, which now also comprised manager Mark ‘Sooty’ Byrne on second guitar, signed to Anagram, and did a David Jensen session for Radio One. There then followed three singles; late ’83’s ‘Black Sheep’, which spent two months in the Indies and achieved a respectable No. 13 position, ’84’s ‘You’ll Never Know’, and their early ’85 cover of The Sweet’s ‘Teenage Rampage’, which barely managed to trouble the Indie Top Fifty.

The rather splendid third album ‘Shot Away’, despite its overly electronic drum sound and some disturbing pseudo-hard rock tendencies, is arguably the most complete sounding release by the Eighties incarnation of the band, and the atmospheric ‘New Blood’ comes across particularly well as a potent reworking of that magical ‘Last Rockers’ vibe. But soon after its release, the band split up altogether, and the record failed miserably to chart.

“ That album died on its arse, to be honest,” admits Shane. “By then we’d already achieved everything we’d set out to with that line-up, and it had all begun to fall apart. In fact, we’d split up even before the reviews started appearing in the magazines. Mark left halfway through the recording of the album, and his replacement was Jon Chilcott, from The Crazy Trains, who played on the rest of the tracks and the final Vice Squad tour. I suppose it just died a natural death, and we all moved on. Dave, Jon and I even launched another band, Sweet Revenge, but that’s a whole other story.”

In 1997, Beki reformed Vice Squad, with members of The Bombshells - Paul Rooney on guitar, Stilton on bass, and Pumpy on drums. Since then they have released a further five accomplished albums, and toured both extensively and successfully. They were even part of the huge Social Chaos tour that criss-crossed the USA in 1999 and appeared on tribute albums to both Metallica and Nirvana.

“ I didn’t actually ‘reform’ the band as I didn’t get the original members back together,” corrects Beki. “I was being asked over and over again if I’d play the old songs. I couldn’t escape the past - mainly because record companies kept re-releasing the old material. In the end I was persuaded to do the Holidays In The Sun festival in 1997 as Vice Squad by a punk called Dougie who I met at The Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross. I told the promoter I’d only do it if I could use the band I already had. This band, The Bombshells, had played every dodgy pub and club with me for the last ten years, and it seemed only fair that they should play the bigger shows like H.I.T.S.

“ But I have to say that it didn’t really work out in the end, so Michael (Giaquinto – bass) and Tony (Piper – drums) joined in late ’99/early 2000 and this is by far the best band that I’ve ever worked with. We played H.I.T.S. in ’97,’98 and ’99 and gradually turned things round for Vice Squad, but since I got this line-up we’ve gone from strength to strength. Last year at H.I.T.S. 2003, we spent hours and hours signing autographs and having photos taken after the show. I am constantly told how much people love the new band which is gratifying after years of hard work. We’ve finally been accepted as the definitive version of Vice Squad; I should also point out that the current line-up has far outstripped the first incarnation in terms of touring and recorded output! Five studio albums, one EP, numerous compilation tracks in Europe and USA… and we’ve headlined several European festivals, three European tours and three coast to coast American tours too!

“ The old VS members hadn’t played for years, had got married, had kids or got other jobs. In other words, they would not have been able to dedicate themselves to a band the way that you have to, to stand a chance of succeeding. Also, the knackered Transit van, ‘Bertha’, that we were using to take us, the PA and backline to gigs was in serious need of repairs, and the fee for doing H.I.T.S. meant that I could afford to get it fixed. Without the van the band and I couldn’t work.

“ I didn’t have any qualms about using the Vice Squad name as I thought of it in the first place and people associated me with it so much that it actually stopped me getting another record deal for years! And I always made it very clear that it was a new band with no original members except for myself.”

Almost bringing everything full circle then, there was a new Vice Squad ‘Best Of’ CD – the appallingly named ‘Bang To Rights’ – released two years ago, once again on EMI, which compiles old and new songs from both eras of the band’s existence. It tied up a lot of loose ends rather nicely, and even paved the way for future Vice Squad releases on the label.

“ EMI own the recordings of the old songs so they could release them whenever and however they wanted,” explains Beki when asked whether she insisted upon the inclusion of some of her newer songs. “There are far smaller companies than EMI releasing stuff of ours which they don’t own, so I couldn’t have insisted on EMI doing anything. They included the new tracks because they thought they were better than the old ones and as we have three albums on release from 1998, 1999 and 2000 it made sense to include tracks from these albums on any new ‘Best Of’ collection. In actual fact, there are ten new tracks and nine old tracks.

“ We mastered the new tracks and cleaned up and re-mastered the old ones at Abbey Road. Ron Hill, the engineer, told us that the old master tapes had to be ‘baked’ in order for us to play and re-master them. This is done at a low temperature over several days, but I couldn’t get past the image of these tapes cooking away on Regulo 8 in a gas oven and being burned to a crisp, so we were quite relieved when they arrived in one piece! I brought the new songs to Abbey Road on a tiny DAT whereas the old tapes turned up in big metal canisters looking like nuclear waste or something! Anyway, needless to say, the old stuff sounds better than it has before due to the wonders of modern technology.

“ There are so many shoddy releases out at the moment claiming to be the ‘best of’ Vice Squad that we were worried that people wouldn’t be interested in ‘Bang To Rights’ but thankfully they were and we had very positive feedback from it.”

So positive in fact, Vice Squad have recently headlined another full, sell-out US tour, and their brand new studio album, ‘Rich And Famous’, appeared through EMI in September 2003. A convincing collection of great songs, drawing influence from power pop, hard rock, thrash metal and even some uptempo ska, ‘Rich And Famous’ ably demonstrates that Vice Squad aren’t content to let the grass grow under them stylistically. And Beki’s voice, not to mention her lyrical prowess, seems to grow in range and power with every new release, cementing her reputation as a genuine punk rock icon.

And rightfully so; Vice Squad were there from the very inception of that second wave of UK punk rock. They’ve provided us with some wonderful music over the years, and the fact that Beki is still out there working the clubs and keeping the name alive is testament to both her gritty determination and the timeless power of the band’s songs.

Select discography:

7”s:
‘ Last Rockers’ (Riot City, 1981)
‘ Resurrection’ (Riot City, 1981)
‘ Out Of Reach’ (EMI/Zonophone, 1982)
‘ Stand Strong Stand Proud’ EP (EMI/Zonophone, 1982)
‘ State Of The Nation’ EP (EMI/Zonophone, 1982)
‘ Black Sheep’ (Anagram, 1983)
‘ You’ll Never Know’ (Anagram, 1984)
‘ Teenage Rampage’ (Anagram, 1985)

12”s:
‘ Tour Issue’ (Riot City, 1982)
‘ Black Sheep’ (Anagram, 1983)
‘ You’ll Never Know’ (Anagram, 1984)

LPs:
‘ No Cause For Concern’ (EMI/Zonophone, 1981)
‘ Stand Strong Stand Proud’ (EMI/Zonophone, 1982)
‘ Shot Away’ (Anagram, 1985)
‘ Get A Life’ (Rhythm Vicar, 1998)
‘ Resurrection’ (Rhythm Vicar, 1999)
‘ Lo Fi Life’ (Sudden Death, 2000)
‘ Rich And Famous’ (EMI, 2003)

At A Glance:

No such thing for Vice Squad, I’m afraid. ‘Bang To Rights’, the aforementioned latest collection for EMI nicely compiles the highlights of ‘Beki’s Vice Squad’, both past and present, but barely even acknowledges the Lia era, which did actually produce some fine moments as well. ‘The Very Best Of’, in Anagram’s Punk Collectors Series, covers the whole of the Eighties Vice Squad period, but opts to ignore Beki’s current line-up. For the best representation of that, you would be advised to pick up ‘Rich And Famous’, the new album and the one that Beki maintains she is most proud of.

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haotic Dischord were actually the ugly offspring of Vice Squad. Members of the Beki-fronted Squad by day turned into a sneering, spitting Mr. Hyde at night. Formed with the help of some roadies, more as a joke than anything else, and perpetrated originally to expose the pointlessness of the generic noise that many of the second wave punk bands were gravitating towards, it was to be especially ironic when the band became one of Riot City’s best-selling acts. In fact, their signing to the label in the first place was all part of an elaborate hoax…

“ Chaotic Dischord were myself (‘Evo Stix’) on drums, Dave Bateman (‘Pox’) on guitar, and Vice Squad roadies Igor (‘Ampex’) on bass and Bambi (‘Ransid’) on vocals,” reveals Vice Squad’s Shane. “We weren’t impressed with some of the more ‘crusty’ bands that Simon Edwards was signing to Riot City, and an argument ensued, during which we claimed that we could knock out something along the same lines ‘in ten minutes’.

“ He laughed that off, but when we had some spare time at the end of a Vice Squad recording session, we had a go, strictly within that time limit, and ended up with ‘Glue Accident’. Surprisingly, it sounded quite authentic, so we sent it, via a girlfriend of Dave’s in Swindon (for that all-important non-Bristol post mark), to Simon, who was advertising for bands to be included on his ‘Riotous Assembly’ compilation.

“ To cut a long story short, he fell for it, and we told him that, despite musical differences, Vice Squad were friends of ours, and we would only deal with them. We managed to keep up the subterfuge for quite a while, and by the time he found out, though he wasn’t best pleased, we were selling serious numbers of records, so we carried on. We ended up releasing two EPs, a proper album, a mini album, and a live album for Riot City, plus later releases for Not Very Nice. Our first album, ‘Fuck Religion, Fuck Politics, Fuck The Lot of You!’, was actually one of the best selling UK punk albums of 1983!”

The band were a total hoot, rehashing half-baked cliché punk riffs, with Ransid spewing out a diatribe of juvenile obscenities over all the feedback. They were unashamedly awful, yet somehow strangely relevant as a brutal parody of the intensely noisy thrash that was so popular at the time. Even if the unruly time signatures and the band’s blatant disregard for writing decent tunes assaulted your sensibilities, the self-effacing humour displayed by some of their song titles and the sheer energy captured during their impromptu recording sessions helped them worm their way into the minds and hearts of many more people than just the local glue crew.

“ We had a lot of fun with the press, they really didn’t know what to make of it,” laughs Shane. “It was especially delicious when (respected US hardcore fanzine) Maximum Rock‘n’Roll gave us great reviews, ’cos they really hated Vice Squad. There were a few red faces there when the truth came out, but Tim (Yohannon, the editor) got his own back by saying that we were better as our joke band than the real one. God rest his soul!

“ The only journalist that actually saw through it all was Attila The Stockbroker, who was working for Sounds as John Opposition, but he gave ‘Fuck Religion…’ five stars anyway. What a nice chap!”

The band’s best moment remains to this day their Riot City debut, the ‘Fuck The World’ EP, three bursts of irreverent noise, all ushered in by an hilarious sample that could have been lifted straight from (popular youth comedy programme) ‘The Young Ones’. Subsequent releases saw the joke starting to wear dangerously thin, although the band did do exceptionally well to release a ‘Live In New York’ album despite never doing a single show in their whole career. In fact, the closest they came to a stage was when Ransid kept ringing venues and booking shows “Just to piss people off.”

As if one Chaotic Dischord wasn’t enough, there were actually two in existence for a short period. An almost totally different band released an album charmingly entitled ‘Fuck Off You Cunt, What A Load of Bollocks’, which came packaged in sexual artwork so gross, it ended up being released in a white gatefold sleeve, with the intended cover inside, so as to avoid offending Joe Public. Of course, this was a clever marketing ploy to ensure a few extra sales, and rumours about the inclusion of a free glue bag helped fuel the controversy, but Shane is adamant that this was never a real Chaotic Dischord release.

“ When Beki left Vice Squad, Igor chose to go with her. He then asked if he could still be in Dischord, and being mature, reasonable, sensible adults, we said, ‘Nah, fuck off!’ So, more or less as a spoiler, he and Beki put out what I regard as a bogus Dischord album. It didn’t hurt us any, and I don’t really know what it was like because I’ve never heard it, but people tell me that it’s rude but just not funny. And if that’s true then they missed the point somewhat.”

The natural end of Chaotic Dischord should surely have been when Riot City closed its doors, but their respectable sales helped ensure that there were still some poor, deluded fools out there more than willing to finance more releases, and never ones to turn down some easy money the band obliged by bashing out three more albums for Not Very Nice. However nothing they recorded could recapture their early bluster, and instead of being funny, these later releases were just painful and dull. It was the end – thankfully – of something that should have remained as a one-off joke.

“ I wouldn’t dispute that allegation at all,” admits Shane. “Of course it was a joke, and we were actually quite disturbed when so many people took it seriously!

“ But there was no real ‘demise of the band’… because there was never really a band in the first place. After the first album Dischord was just me, Dave and Bambi, plus whoever happened to be in the studio at the time. When Riot City folded there was still demand for another album, so we put out the ‘Now That’s What I Call A Fuckin’ Racket!’ on Not Very Nice Records. It was a compilation of old tracks, plus a few unreleased Sex Aids songs, released purely to squeeze out the last few drops of cash, and we assumed that that was the end. But someone at our distributors, Revolver, offered to stump up the cash for more Not Very Nice releases, and we put out ‘Goat Fuckin’ Virgin Killerz From Hell’ and ‘Very Fuckin’ Bad’ for them in the late Eighties.

“ By then we were all quite bored with it all, though we kept threatening to record more anyway… until Bambi’s tool hire firm took off,” recalls Shane, before adding in true Dischord fashion, “He became a successful businessman and I haven’t heard from the cunt since!”

Select discography:

7”s:
‘ Fuck The World’ (Riot City, 1982)
‘ Never Trust A Friend’ (Riot City, 1983)

12”s:
‘ Don’t Throw It All Away’ (Riot City, 1983)

LPs:
‘ Fuck Religion, Fuck Politics, Fuck The Lot of You’ (Riot City, 1983)
‘ Live In New York’ (Riot City, 1984)
‘ Fuck Off You Cunt, What A Load of Bollocks’ (Syndicate, 1984)
‘ Now That’s What I Call A Fuckin’ Racket, Volume One’ (Not Very Nice, 1985)
‘ Goat Fuckin’ Virgin Killerz From Hell’ (Not Very Nice, 1986)
‘ Very Fuckin’ Bad’ (Not Very Nice, 1988)

At A Glance:
‘ Their Greatest Fuckin’ Hits’ (Anagram, 1994) is as good a place to start as any for anyone foolhardy enough to want to find out more, although the US CD reissue of ‘Now…’ (Punkcore, 2001) also contains the ‘Live In New York’ album for good measure, thirty-three tracks in total. Whether that makes it a more desirable collection is open to debate!

The aforementioned Sex Aids were another side project of the seemingly tireless male contingent of Vice Squad. They released just the one single for Riot City in 1983, ‘Back On The Piss Again’, and although it was light-hearted and mildly enjoyable, the band was never pursued beyond that initial drunken get-together. They did record the song ‘Cliff’ for the ‘Riotous Assembly’ compilation, but it was left off the final cut of the record due to its libellous nature, and eventually turned up in the Chaotic Dischord set.

“ Well, The Sex Aids were essentially the same band as Chaotic Dischord anyway,” explains Shane. “Dave and I used to drink in two pubs in Hanham called The Swan and The Maypole, and joined an informal drinking club that we dubbed ‘The No Hopers’. Originally, the idea was that we would release a single under that name, but none of our worthy comrades could actually play an instrument, so the four of us took care of that and the rest of the rabble joined in on backing vocals. The only real difference was that Igor did the lead vocal. Come to think of it, I can’t remember what Bambi actually did!

“ I think we used the Sex Aids name because in yet another conglomerate (with, if I remember correctly, yet another girlfriend of Dave’s, Jane, on guitar), we had submitted a song called ‘Lady Diana, Married To A Spanner’ for possible inclusion on one of the Oi! albums. It was so bad it was turned down, but at least it got mentioned in Sounds, which made the name marginally more marketable for Riot City.”

One other ‘Vice Squad roadies spin-off’ band who appeared on ‘Riotous Assembly’ (with ‘Fun Wars’) was the Dead Katts. Shane produced the song for the band, and seems to think he may have even played at least one show with them.

“ Loads of people came and went in that band,” he says, hinting yet again at the bewilderingly incestuous music scene of the time. “But it was basically Igor, Bambi, Mitch and Flea. I can’t even remember who did what, other than Mitch played guitar and Flea played drums… although at one point, Bambi actually played drums. It was nearly as bad as his singing!”

By ruthlessly sending up their noisy neighbours, Chaotic Dischord were unwittingly mirroring the changing tastes in punk rock. With the scene veering ever nearer to extremities, there was no room for subtlety; only the most gratuitous uproar could satisfy those thrill-seeking punkers looking desperately for the ultimate expression of their own suppressed slow-burning aggression.

Disorder epitomised this violent disregard for musical tradition, and pushed the proverbial envelope right off the edge of the table plummeting towards oblivion. The band formed in Bristol in 1980, its initial incarnation comprising Steve Allen on guitar, Steve Curtis on vocals, Nick Peters on bass, and Virus on drums, but by 1981, Steve Robertson had replaced Nick, and this was the line-up that recorded the first two Disorder EPs, ‘Complete Disorder’ and ‘Distortion To Deafness’.

After approaching Riot City Records with their demo, label boss Simon Edwards decided to set up Disorder Records with them, and unfettered by any sort of external label interference they were able to release some of the most uncompromising music ever committed to vinyl.

“ When Disorder came to me with their demo, we decided that Riot City wasn’t the right label for their music,” explains Simon. “So we thought, ‘Fuck it’ and started another label just for them! I loved the band and thought they were really good... they were out there, wild, just didn’t give a damn… they were exciting, loud, extreme and above all humorous!”

Astonishingly chaotic, those early EPs were rabid tirades against the establishment, drenched in howling feedback and propelled by runaway tin-pot drums, setting new standards – or lack thereof, some might argue – in belligerent punk music. This unique Disorder sound was to terrorise music lovers for the next twenty years… and then some.

Their third bassist Taf, who joined the band in 1982, in time to record the ‘Mental Disorder’ single and the eight-track ‘Perdition’ 12”, was to be the sole constant member in a bewildering string of line-up changes over the next two decades. He still remembers vividly how he became fascinated with punk rock in the first place:

“ I used to deliver newspapers when I was fifteen. I saw a lot of articles about punk rock, and I liked the style, thought it was very exciting. I went to see bands like The Clash and a lot of those other punk bands and thought I could do better."

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