Today, British author, journalist, playwright, and musician Richard Cabut joins us to share some his favorite post-punk records of all time. His novel Looking For a Kiss drops June 15th. He penned this 80s post-punk, twisted tale of love and hate, set in Camden, Camberwell and New York during lockdown a period which reminded him of the time following punk in the late 70s/early 80s with the same sense of isolation.
The book is a fabulous chronicle of our protagonists Robert and Marlene struggle to find themselves and their lives whilst immersing themselves in sex, magic, chaos and post-punk music.
Top post-punk records
Blood and Roses – Spit Upon Your Grave
I wrote an article titled Positive Punk for the NME in January/February 1983 and according to academic Matt Worley, in his book No Future (Cambridge Press, 2017), had a hand in the invention of goth: ‘Exploring the edges of light and dark and some of the areas in between – fetishism, sex, magic abjection, death, Richard Cabut – writing as Richard North, in 1983 – was the first to outline the basis of what eventually became codified as goth.’ Well, in any event, as fun as the scene was at that time, Positive Punk was a bit of a disaster, mainly because the music was, in the main, fairly poor. But one of the bands to stand the test of time are Bob Short’s Blood and Roses. Spit Upon Your Grave is one of their best. The Positive Punk article is reprinted in all its glory in the new edition of my latest book Looking for a Kiss (PC-Press, June 2023)
Brigandage – Pretty Funny Thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0_P9OQZpJw (first track)
Brigandage, the other main band I wrote about in the Positive Punk article, were also very good. So, good, in fact, that I went on to join them. In 1984, we released FYM, a cassette-only live/demo compilation, which sold well. In 1986, we released a mini-LP called Pretty Funny Thing. One track, Angel of Vengeance, featured on Cherry Red’s 2017 Goth compilation Silhouettes and Statues. I wrote our sleeve notes, describing the LP as a facet of ‘the Velvet Underground archetype that spoke of viciousness, lust ‘n’ hate and leather (a fantasy of style); life as film noir, existential, nihilistic and a little apocalyptic, I guess; silver art – white heat, pale, glamour frail with the sheen of squalor that spangles; downtown slow dive low life, and other throwaway thrills. You get the idea. It was bound to end in tears.’ And it did! Ha.
Rema Rema – Rema Rema
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjgquvlF2NE
In 2017, my book Punk is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night was published. I edited and co-wrote the anthology which takes in sex, style, politics and philosophy, filtered through punk experience, while believing in the ruins (of memory), to explore in depth a past whose essence is always elusive. Significant contributors include Jon Savage (England’s Dreaming) and Jonh Ingham (the journalist who wrote the very first interview with the Sex Pistols, for Sounds). One of my favourite pieces is by Dorothy Max Prior, who was also in Psychic TV and Rema Rema. The latter were ‘the psychopath’s Velvet Underground’. Their Wheel in the Roses EP, released on the 4AD label in 1980, remains a dazzling and essential art-gone-afraid howl. The track Rema-Rema has been aptly described as ‘the post-punk Louie Louie.’
Brian Eno and Snatch - RAF
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1hhD_oxgM4
Judy Nylon wrote the foreword to Punk is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night. She was part of the pre-punk London demi-monde – Derek Jarman, Andrew Logan, et al – belles of the epoch – so many amazing people concentrated into such a small space. In her foreword, Judy wrote about how that divine creativity fed into punk. She was also in the band Snatch, who collaborated with Brian Eno on the brilliant 1978 release, RAF.
Max – Little Ghost
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkssFXD2hxs
Leslie Winer - Skin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB8Ao9xvD8g
Ten years after the events described by Judy Nylon, a different glittering London crowd gathered at places like London's infamous Taboo Club. Life at this time was being lived at high speed, with peddle to the metal. Kevin Mooney (ex-Adam and the Ants) and his then partner, Viv Westwood model Leslie Winer were at the centre of this avant-garde arts'n'drugs scene. Situated in Leicester Square and run by the late Leigh Bowery, Taboo was home to a bunch of provocative eccentrics following their own mad logic. Mooney and Winer were mates with doomed artist Trojan, a leading Taboo figure, who half-sliced his ear off as an artistic act and later died of a drugs overdose. In 1987, Mooney’s band Max released Little Ghost, about Trojan – ‘One for the blue boy, and two for the dead kings’. Leslie went on to ‘invent trip-hop’ with her LP C, featuring the track Skin.
The Fall – Repetition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTKCKBu8CLI
Before I took the IPC shilling at the NME, I wrote and published a fanzine called Kick. I liked the punk scene in the early 80s –another punk Spring. Punk at that time became a way of life for an increasingly large and motivated group of people. Moreover, folk were, to paraphrase Malcolm McLaren, creating an environment in which they could truthfully run wild. We were making scenes that took people away from the confines of school and work. Instead of just listening to records in isolation and going to the odd gig, people were having life adventures – documented by fanzines like my own. One of my favourite articles in Kick was an interview with the Fall’s Mark E Smith. Repetition is one of their finest. Listen on repeat.
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Richard Cabut is author of the novels Looking for a Kiss (PC-Press, 2023) and the modern/beat poetry book Disorderly Magic and Other Disturbances (Far West Press, 2023). He co-edited/-contributed to the anthology Punk is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night (Zer0 Books, October 2017), and was also a contributor to Ripped, Torn and Cut – Pop, Politics and Punks Fanzines From 1976 (Manchester University Press, 2018) and Growing Up With Punk (Nice Time, 2018).
Richard’s journalism has featured in the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, NME (pen name Richard North), ZigZag, The Big Issue, Time Out, Offbeat magazine, the Independent, Artists & Illustrators magazine, thefirstpost, London Arts Board/Arts Council England, Siren magazine, etc. His fiction has appeared in the books The Edgier Waters (Snowbooks, 2006) and Affinity (67 Press, 2015). As well as on various sites on the internet. He was a Pushcart Prize nominee 2016. Richard’s plays have been performed at various theatres in London and nationwide, including the Arts Theatre, Covent Garden, London. His poetry has appeared in An Anthology of Punk Ass Poetry (Orchid Eater Press, 2022), and magazines such as Cold Lips, Foggy Plasma, 3ammagazine, etc. He published the fanzine Kick, and played bass for the punk band Brigandage (LP Pretty Funny Thing – Gung Ho Records, 1986).
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