Social Security

Social Security was 77 Punk band from Bristol, United Kingdom. Simon and myself had met when we were both around 12 years old. We’d both been expelled from local public boy’s schools unable to adhere to the regimes and doctrines of a private education. A career in banking, the military or the city didn’t suit our recalcitrant ways so we were sent to the local comprehensive where we were taught how to be thick. We loved everything sixties, the clothes, the look, the songs, the bands, the T.V. the films and anything to do with Ealing Cinema. We loved Mod, The Kinks, The Small Faces, the Who, the rebellion of it all and of course ,we loved the scooters. We were more Pop than Punk and more Monk than Mod. All our gear was sixties, AC30 and Selmer amplification, Hofner and Vox guitars, but most importantly Si had managed to get hold of a 12 string Vox pear/tear drop that he'd wanted for years. It made a dreadful noise, but our timing was impeccable. Yeah we made a record, climbed high in some indie charts and got played by John Peel, but so did every small band in 77 and 78; That wasn’t the point of our journey. We were a tight unit that wanted a laugh and Punk was our vehicle, we arrived laughing and we left laughing and we laughed all the way through. We'd always envied the movements of the sixties, the musical genres, the musicians and the memories those pop tunes must have evoked. Little did we realise that the Punk movement was going to be our time and that like the kids in the 50's when they first heard Elvis and the kids in the 60's when they first heard The Stones and The Beatles, our memories would have equal importance. …So there we were in the summer of 76, Peter Powell kites, skateboards, stand pipes and drought, the sky was blue and the grass was brown and the winter of discontent was just around the corner. We were kids who’d just left school. These really were the last days of our youth; our salad days. Cider, hash and sunshine, the CSE’s at the local comprehensive had promised us dead end jobs for no money and fuck were they right? We drifted around getting up to odd bits of mischief, hanging out with other mates who had also failed miserably. Tom was another mate, he played bass and would soon go on to form The Glaxo's. We spent our time sitting in the sun, smoking hash, drinking cider, drinking tea, swapping riffs off Revolver and waiting for Dan (the Cortinas' drummer) to get home from school. We waited for life to become interesting in that hideous purgatory that seemed to exist between the ages of 16 and 18. We seemed to be living in this hideous monochromed, Manichean, world of political and musical stagnation. Boredom pervaded most aspects of our lives. The ennui and the apathy of the everyday seemed to loiter around us like a bad smell. We didn't want careers and nor did any of our mates. We were desperate for an escape. Ironically, we'd snuck into Be Bop Deluxe one night, not a great band, way to muso-ish for us, but it was either that or The Good Life on telly. We loved live music and had seen nearly every live band that had come to The Colston Hall since 73. The Small Faces one of the highlights, but that's another story. The fire exit doors were the weakest in town and we knew the back stage area like the backs of our hands. Tonight though was different. This particular Be Bop tour was projecting Fritz Lang’s Metropolis as a back drop while the band performed their latest album. The music became secondary to the visuals as this intertextual link towards a Marxist representation that highlighted the drudge of the everyday filled us with terror. It became, for us, a huge pre-cursor towards our later introduction to Reid’s agit-prop, God Save the Queen, situationism that apparently existed within early Punk. The music was infinitely forgetful, but those dystopic nightmarish images of the underground work force shuffling to work en-masse horrified us. And then very slowly it started to happen, rumours started coming down the M4 about some weird leather clad nutters into some strange musical genre, not violent, not too musical, just a bit odd. We didn't really get it at first, it was all hear say based around someone who knew someone else, who had heard or seen something, who had been to a gig somewhere. And then we heard mention of the words Punk Rock... Meanwhile Si had started working in a small independent record shop owned by Bristol's infamous Tony Dodd. I was sat at home one day minding my own business when Si turned up at my house after work with two singles under his arm; Anarchy in the U.K. and New Rose. He put them on the record player with an evil glint in his eye and a smirk that looked horribly dangerous, he placed the arm of the player on the rotating vinyl and we waited. Is she really going out with him?

And that was it really, from that point on we were fucked.

I Don't Want My Heart To Rule My Head 7'' (1978)

01 - I Don't Want My Heart To Rule My Head
02 - Stella's Gotta Fella
03 - Cider
04 - Choc Ice

Arley Hill (2009)

01 - Problems
02 - User
03 - Psychotic Reaction / Lets Stomp
04 - Cider
05 - Choc Ice
06 - Students
07 - Students (Live At The Dug Out 1977)
08 - Sweet Little Rock 'N' Roller
09 - Stella
10 - Responsibilities
11 - Self Confession
12 - She Won't Take No
13 - Snakes And Ladders

pass: freepunk77