Saturday, 3 November 2012

Dry Rot #1, 1979

"AT LAST" indeed! This Dry Rot is a firm favourite of mine - just one of a handful of exceptional items I've been holding back. Produced by Rob Callous from the fabulously low-fi D.I.Y. stalwarts, Six Minute War. As far as I know 3 issues of Dry Rot saw the light. There's no flashy front cover for this fanzine, it just gets right on down to brass tacks from the get go with news on Proles, The Unknown, Riot/Scrambled Acne, Benny Normal, Doggy Ryan, Belgrade, The VDUs, Dyno Rod, The Red Plague, Crass. Great interviews with The Epileptics, Crisis and Crass. Live reviews of AD 1984, The Administrators/The Leopards, Brockwell Park including Stiff Little Fingers/The Verdict/The Spoilsports, Spizz Energi/The Last Words, Splodgenessabounds, Graf X/The Mass/The Licks/Klingons. Featuring Dummy, starring Captain Armpit, Shag Nasty, Mekons (selling out to Virgin), and Manicured Noise + Rob's charts (top and bottom 20 of 1979). Excellent stuff!
 
A4 single sided scanned at 600 dpi
Dry Rot #1     

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

All I can say is "Thanks once again", Si: great post! I never had a copy of Dry Rot so it's great to see it...

I presume the band The Red Plague (who have the song 'Marker Pens' in the chart) are an early version of Six Minute War...
(I'd like to hear 'Television Sabotage' by Poison Girls too!)

The Epi-X interview mentions that The Satellites are "nazis": would they be the band who released the 'Urban Gorilla' single?

I noticed that the singer of the local band The Proles was Dave Ferguson (aka "Terry Fied" - classic!) who seemed to be something of a 'Rent-a-Punk' in photos of Punks on the Kings Road in the early 1980's...

The 'Bottom 20 1979' is hilarious: "Adam and the Ants - so what's so brilliant about them?", "Good Missionaries - Pink Floyd 1979", and "Merton Parkas - sound like Racey" are particularly amusing!

Great stuff, mate: thanks again!

Nic

Anonymous said...

your blog is a real treasure. you have done a great work here, thank you for sharing

Si said...

Hi Nic, thanks for the thought provoking comments - very sorry for the dead slack reply. Things have been a bit hectic lately and I've just about been able to keep ee afloat.

As usual you make excellent points that add context and provide/suggest interesting connections - it great to get some stimulation in return - do keep it coming.

Btw, I can't find any recording of Television Sabotage - was it renamed at a later date? PGs did that with a few of their early songs. Ditto Red Plague - I'd lie to hear them.

All the best

Si said...

Thank You Anonymous, pleased to hear that you like it.

All the best

 Allied Propaganda Issue 2, July/August 1979 Any fanzine is worth checking out if you can spare the time or money, if only for the principle...