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CyberPunk
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INSIDE THE WELSH PUNK SCENE OF THE 1980S
‘Wastelands of my Fathers’ is a new exhibition taking a vivid look into an under-reported chapter in punk’s story.
“You wanna go out today but the lifts are all still broken,” vocalist Andy James sneers to kick-start Victimize’s 1979 cult-hit Hi Rising Failure. “You wanna go out and play and the council says, ‘You better jump, son.’” Almost 50 years later, its clattering bass and shredded power chords tamped down into a YouTube vinyl rip, the song’s stifling, going-nowhere rage remains inescapable.
Victimize formed on a council estate in Barry, then an ailing port town in south Wales, in the late 1970s. Their take on punk, confined to a few singles and compilation appearances, replaced the cartoonish nihilism of the Sex Pistols with a sense of hard-nosed, grounded inertia that makes you want to climb out of your own skin. A photo of the young band — their leather jackets set against the rubble of a demolition site — leads off Wasteland of My Fathers, a new exhibition that assembles a vivid look into under-reported chapter in punk’s story.
Designed by Cardiff Music History’s David Taylor, the retrospective will form part of the Llais festival at the Wales Millennium Centre in the capital between September 25th and November 5th. It delves into a Welsh scene that existed in the fading light of heavy industry, percolating throughout the 1980s in dockers’ cottages and mining villages, from the southern coast to Blaina in the heart of the valleys and on to Bangor in the north.
“If you think about punk, you probably think about London or New York,” Taylor says. “It was very different in Wales. It was Thatcher’s Britain. They were playing benefit gigs for the miners in London. In Wales, the bands’ families were down the mines. It was closer to home.”
Wasteland of My Fathers pulls together photographs and oral history from 13 leading bands including the Partisans, the Oppressed, Icons of Filth, Yr Anhrefn, Rectify and Shrapnel, alongside excerpts from the influential zines Artcore and Oh Cardiff...Up Yours!. There is also a look at Is the War Over?, a 1979 compilation drawn from goings on at the Cardiff cultural hub Grassroots, which sustained the minimalist post-punk pioneers Young Marble Giants. ...
Wasteland of My Fathers will run between September 25 and November 5 at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.
https://www.huckmag.com/article/inside-the-80s-welsh-punk-scene
‘Wastelands of my Fathers’ is a new exhibition taking a vivid look into an under-reported chapter in punk’s story.
“You wanna go out today but the lifts are all still broken,” vocalist Andy James sneers to kick-start Victimize’s 1979 cult-hit Hi Rising Failure. “You wanna go out and play and the council says, ‘You better jump, son.’” Almost 50 years later, its clattering bass and shredded power chords tamped down into a YouTube vinyl rip, the song’s stifling, going-nowhere rage remains inescapable.
Victimize formed on a council estate in Barry, then an ailing port town in south Wales, in the late 1970s. Their take on punk, confined to a few singles and compilation appearances, replaced the cartoonish nihilism of the Sex Pistols with a sense of hard-nosed, grounded inertia that makes you want to climb out of your own skin. A photo of the young band — their leather jackets set against the rubble of a demolition site — leads off Wasteland of My Fathers, a new exhibition that assembles a vivid look into under-reported chapter in punk’s story.
Designed by Cardiff Music History’s David Taylor, the retrospective will form part of the Llais festival at the Wales Millennium Centre in the capital between September 25th and November 5th. It delves into a Welsh scene that existed in the fading light of heavy industry, percolating throughout the 1980s in dockers’ cottages and mining villages, from the southern coast to Blaina in the heart of the valleys and on to Bangor in the north.
“If you think about punk, you probably think about London or New York,” Taylor says. “It was very different in Wales. It was Thatcher’s Britain. They were playing benefit gigs for the miners in London. In Wales, the bands’ families were down the mines. It was closer to home.”
Wasteland of My Fathers pulls together photographs and oral history from 13 leading bands including the Partisans, the Oppressed, Icons of Filth, Yr Anhrefn, Rectify and Shrapnel, alongside excerpts from the influential zines Artcore and Oh Cardiff...Up Yours!. There is also a look at Is the War Over?, a 1979 compilation drawn from goings on at the Cardiff cultural hub Grassroots, which sustained the minimalist post-punk pioneers Young Marble Giants. ...
Wasteland of My Fathers will run between September 25 and November 5 at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.
https://www.huckmag.com/article/inside-the-80s-welsh-punk-scene
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