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Baldy's Sweetness: August 2012

Don't Go Backwards
Early DIY Post-Punk
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"Something truly important and vital really DID happen after the punters took up the cry of "punk is dead" (And no, we don't mean Joy Division.) In its way, DIY was just as revolutionary as punk. Punk --however proletarian it was at the musician level (say, 80% in the U.K., 2% in the U.S.)"became business-as-usual almost instantly in terms of manufacturing and marketing. Sure, Stiff and Radar stayed independent for a couple of years, but before the Sex Pistols even got to EMI or A&M, they were cutting their early acetates at Abbey Road. D.I.Y. brought music back to the bedsits for the first time since the 1950s skiffle fad that hatched the Merseyside Beat scene.
The Desperate Bicycles (who reportedly do NOT want their material reissued) set the initial standard, starting in mid '77. They pressed the same two songs on either side of their first two singles to cut mastering costs in half, and they recorded as cheaply and as quickly as possible. Younger fans may be surprised at the printed sleeves and labels [one side only, natch], but in 1978, both letter-press and offset printing were cheaper than photocopying, even in quantities of a couple hundred (most UK DIY 45s came in editions of 1000 or more). But the true rallying cry of DIY came from the 'Bicycles' "The Medium Was Tedium:" "It was easy. It was cheap. Go and do it!"

While punk fizzled in 78 in a wave of tuneless posing and gobbing, more timid bands either plugged over-hyped (and again, tuneless) skinny-tie pop [Pleasers, Boyfriends] or smothered whatever other fresh ideas they might have had under ever-more expensive gear and slicker production. So John Peel and others were only too happy to play and promote DIY's rising tide of self-produced, homemade vinyl. (The U.K. listings for Volume were chiefly assembled from Mr. Peel's archives: if a DIY record is not listed, chances are the band never sent him one.) But back to budgetary matters... DIY groups were more likely to list their production costs on the record sleeve than the names of the band-members. They were highly competitive about the former... and quite egalitarian about the latter, which were often given as little more than indeterminate three-letter grunts: Gez, Baz, Kaz, Daz, Loz, Tag, Jaf, Nik, Nag, etc. (The Oi movement raised this habit to a high art form.)

Much of DIY is recognizable by wheezy unreliable keyboards. Since they'd gone utterly out of fashion and/or they'd been superceded by newer electronics, Rolands and Farfisas and Fender-Rhodeses and even a few Hammonds had become as cheap or cheaper than guitars in 1978. And every crappy studio still had a rattly old piano in the corner. Other common non-punk elements are hippie-psychedelic guitar chops and bass-lines that seemed lifted rather directly from JJ Burnel of the Stranglers (an underappreciated genius of some magnitude). Oh yeah, and no-one ever worried all that much about their tunings or musicianship...
--Hyped to Death


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