Boff: No, there was also a bloke called Mitch.

MRR: Wasn't that 10 years ago?

B: We were in a sort of band before called Chimp Eats Banana which was basically a comedy band because we listened to early Frank Zappa, when he was humerous. He said a lot of good things. There was me, Dan and Mitch and about 5 other people. That didn't last long. Then The Fall came along and we really got into The Fall, and started slagging everyone off and got really cynical. It was a mixture of comedy and satire and not being able to play our instruments and being really into punk. When there was 3 of us left we decided we'd start a band. We got into Crass. So it's all those things mixed in.

MRR: You were on 1 of the 'Bullshit Detector' LPs?

B: Yeah, the 2nd one. It was the 3 of us.

MRR: What was your first live show like?

B: We all lived in Leeds but come originally from a small town called Burnley in Lancashire. We went back there and did our first gig. Just before that we did a fanzine. All the fanzines back then had Crass interviews in them. So we wanted to do a fanzine that was called 'The Obligatory Crass Interview'. We didn't know what was going to be in it, but we thought we'd write to Crass and get an interview off them. So we wrote to them and got a letter back saying, it's petty and small-minded of you to call your fanzine 'The Obligatory Crass Interview'. He just slagged it, which was really good, so we just printed his letter. We were really into slagging things; we were really cynical about everything even though we were really into some things. We had this fanzine that had all of these references to what happened to the so-called punk scene in Burnley. We were so totally involved in this whole punk thing. There was loads of energy, lots of shows. People were really involved. Bands came and played there despite the fact that it was a really small town. But then everyone got into work. That was one thing, people just got really boring jobs, so they'd go to the pub at night and get drunk. They lost interest that way. And everyone got into drugs as well. So the whole thing collapsed in the space of 6 months. We had a real gripe about that. Nowadays you read a lot about "scenes" collapsing but then we had no concept of that . So the fanzine was based on the idea that the whole thing had collapsed.

MRR: How old were you at that time?

B: About 18.

MRR: How old are you now?

B: 29. So it was a long time ago, around 1978. Actually, that's not true. we didn't get together and start playing until 1980 or '81 because Chimp Eats Banana was in the punk bit. that first gig was really funny because a lot of people hated me after that.

MRR: Why?

B: Because we slagged everyone off. We slagged off that mentality that had stopped everyone doing anything. We had really close ties to a band who were from Burnley. In fact, Mitch (who was in Chumbawamba)'s brother was in them. We had seen them live 50 or 60 times and seen then deteriorate from being this really fresh exciting thing when punk really happened in Burnley, to just a rock band who were desperate to actually get on a big label and actually become boring people. They started throwing tantrums on stage and things like that. We were totally disgusted by it. They got picked up by Garry Bushell from the music press. We retaliated against that.

MRR: Were you out to offend people?

B: Yeah, to offend people.

MRR: Did you have a good time when you were doing it or were you really angry?

B: We had a good time.

MRR: How did people react?

B: Some people were really mad which was what we wanted really. We weren't like Mykel Board or something, because we knew everyone and it was a personal thing. It wasn't like throwing big issues and hoping that everyone disagreed.

MRR: When did you become active with more stark political issues?

B: I don't know. It's weird because for me, bands like The Fall and ATV, which were the bands we thought were really good, were doing things in a really different way. The bands that were punk and political, like the Clash, who we sort of like earlier on, we thought were sort of a joke. People like Sham 69 singing "If the kids are united", which is great , but we thought it was a joke. We thought that what people like Marc Riley and Mark E Smith (from The Fall) were doing was good because it was challenging things. They had a big gig in London with 5 or 6 punk bands like Stiff Little Fingers, and The Fall were on the bill. They came on and slagged Jake Burns from SLF for his attitude toward dressing rooms, which we loved! They used to wear these rag bag clothes and didn't have the punk uniform. So they played halfway into their first song and someone from the audience came up and smacked Mark Smith in the face because he wasn't punk. When you hear live tapes of it, you can actually hear when he gets hit in the face. We thought that whole thing was great because they weren't just challenging the music business, they were actually challenging punk as well.

MRR: That's really necessary. Your lyrics are more starkly political than The Fall's as far as your writing style You might have been discussing the same issues but yours were more direct and in your face. Were they ever any funny times when maybe the band was taking itself too seriously, like ranting and raving, and the audience just wanted to have a good time?

B: Sure, a couple of times we've played at parties. The theater things we were doing then didn't have much humor in them. They were really stark. Like during the time of the Falklands issue in 1982, we were using red paint for blood and things like that. It's a really powerful thing to do because it looks amazing. You can't laugh about it, you can giggle nervously. All of our stuff was about soldiers being blown up.

MRR: What did you feel about that? Did you take it out on the audience and get mad that no one was taking it seriously? Did you feel uncomfortable when you were doing it?

B: No, I felt really comfortable.

MRR: Were you mad at the audience because they weren't reacting the way you wanted them to?

B: Yeah, yeah. It's true to a certain extent. You have this idea that you can't sing about any sort of depressing things. We're getting over it now because the things we're singing about - I mean the whole idea of singing a song about somenone who was in a concentration camp - if you were singing about concentration camps, you can't laugh about it, but if you're singing about how somebody dealt with that siruation then you can laugh about it because it's totally different. We never did songs like that: all the songs we did were always: "This is bad, this is bad and this is bad". It's rare that we thought that we should be positive in the songs. We'd just sort of tack something onto the end of a song that said "peace and love" or something.

MRR: That's sort of in the Crass vein.

B: Oh yeah. There was actually a time when we had been into The Fall and that sort of thing and it crossed over with getting into Crass. The first time I went to see Crass I went purely out of cursiousity. I really liked this band they were palying with. I was living in this little village down south, in Kent, totally back in nowhere. It was just the image of them, it wasn't what they were saying, that was totally amazing. I'd never seen anything like it. I thought, "great, brilliant". The whole attitude of being totally cynical about punk and on the other hand Crass who were the epitome of punk - they had taken it further than anybody else had done - really sort of clashed. And Crass won, They totally did. In a way, after a few years of that I looked back and resented it.

MRR: Why is that?

B: Because my big thing with Crass was that I found it too easy to take what they said and believe it, and say"Yeah, I believe it" and just do it. It was really easy. Especially since a lot of people were doing it. There was a uniform with it and the gigs were really good. It all seemed so sensible, especially with all the things that were happening, the fracturing and everything. When the Falklands War happened, everyone dropped it. no one mentioned it except for Crass. There was nowhere to turn musically. Musically, it just became redundant during the Falklands War, which was something we felt really strong about. Obvoiusly, being really into music, you're looking around and there's loads of really nice music that we were into but it wasn't saying anything at all, apart form the Black cloud scruffy punk Crass stuff. That's just looking back on it. It was almost like a religion - I had started reading anarchism and stuff, and gradually sort of forgot what i had read becuase of what Crass was saying. It was really neatly tied up, all too easy, a neat package. Whereas, if you look at what anarchism is and read about who is into it or where it came from or where it's going, it's incredibly diverse. For everything that Crass inspired me, when I look back I resent it because they weren't diverse, they were strict in everything they did.

MRR: Did you realise this at the time or only after a while?

B: After a while

MRR: How did you go about i t, as far as your expression whithin the band? Did you say that you had to try to do something different because you realised that you were the same way?

B: For one thing, we all lived together. A couple of things happened around 1983-84 with the people who were all living in the house - not the ones living in it now. There were conflicts politically with what we actually thought about things outside the house, and there were conlficts in the house as well. People just weren't getting on with each other. At the same time people were trying desperately to get on with each other because that's what you do when yo live in a commune: you live together and share everything, and everything's great. You don't have luxuries and you don't watch television, or do this or that.

MRR: You deny everything.

B: Yes, but it was really great, really positive for a while. When it started breaking up there was a lot going on emotonally, personally and also politically with people. With the miners' strike it finally hit everyone that we were into working with the SWP and we were into throwing bricks and we were into not having to look scruffy. Suddently you were working with people that were in communities like where the miners all lived and it had a real effect on us becuase it was just a bloke and woman sittng in the living room watching TV. We had always thought that that was Mr & Mrs Normal, which I think is a bad thing and I don't like that sort of thing, I've never liked it. The next minute they were out on the streets rioting and telling stories how they had been defending themselves against the police. I think that was all a big mess for a couple of years when everybody sorted things out, sorted their lives out and relaxed a bit.

MRR: Did you still have your sense of humour?

B: Yeah. Personally, we all did. We had a reputation for being serious on stage. Anyone who knew us thought it was really weird because we were practical jokers.

MRR: How come it never came out onstage?

B: Becuase we thought we had to be serious. We thougt: "Well, we're singing about nuclear war". The set that we played live even when were into playing fast music has always been constructed so that it drops every 3 or 4 minutes. We did this for two reasons. First, we thought it was less boring, and second people who want to be aggressive don't know how to react when all of a sudden the music slows down. You can say whatever aggressive things you want in a million different ways but if you use agressive music to do it you're turning your aggression against all of the things you support. Some people will take that agression and use it the wrong way and have no interest in what message you have as long as the music is loud and fast. I think that this a real disturbing thing but it can be dangerous as well. I think that this is one reason why we don't have that many problems at our shows.

MRR: I like how the band support more radical politics than most punk bands but still makes music that people can dance to.