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Loads of respect to Bristol IWW and Permanent Culture for these films and their ongoing solid organising and radical media work respectively. Check them out: We’re well proud and excited to play at the big benefit for Bristol Defendant Solidarity, in support of those arrested and charged as a result of the riots in Bristol this year. Loads of respect to Resistrance for coming out of retirement for one last job! Kebele Sound will be doing the business in the bands room and the line up is solid!!! This is gonna be uproarious and unmissable!!! For more info on the work of BDS see http://bristolabc.wordpress.com/defendant-solidarity/
Well that was good. What an understatement! We spent a long weekend in Brittany, leaving on 26th and arriving home on the 31st October and played 4 gigs in 3 days. It was the first tour with Nick and Em and they did us proud! Introducing…  Unstoppable Em  Quick Nick There were times when we thought we had Chris Evans stowed away in the back of the van (see photos), but Nick doesn’t need cocaine to hit the drums hard and fast! They call him Quick Nick, or sometimes Noisy Nick. He’s often both. Em was unstoppable, driving and partying her way round Brittany (not at the same time) and Fin was tireless on the infoshop and provided Ben with some sound dietary advice. He paid little to no attention and his chocolate frenzy continued throughout the tour and he is yet to come down from the sugar high. Pete and Richie showed no signs of old age and kept the party going the whole way round, always being the last ones standing. What a crew!
Everyone had a turn at being DJ in the front seat and the soundtrack to the tour was outstanding. Some of the favourites that kept us rocking along were France’s very own Skuds and Panic People, Ya Basta!, Brixton Cats (who we were lucky enough to play with), Tighten Up Ska Complilation, Primeval Soup, The Cabrians, The Offenders, The Freebooters, Drowning Dog and Malatesta to name a few. But as we cannot live on ska, punk and hip hop alone, we ate our way round Brittany in style, courtesy of our hosts and various supermarkets that were quite often just giving it away! Incredible! A big thank you to Vince and Mass Prod who organised the whole tour for us and made sure we were well looked after. These kids understand about DIY punk and know how to do it properly. The Mass Prod HQ was the first stop when we arrived in France and it was great to meet them. It’s an impressive organisation doing so much good work for DIY punk in Brittany and beyond. They’ll be seeing us again! The Gigs Ty Ana tavern, Rennes 27th October. with R’laaaa!!! The first gig was in the beautiful medieval town of Rennes. There is a good local scene here and we were made to feel very welcome, with the back room of the venue rammed full of sweaty dancing people all having a good time. A top local band called ‘R’laaaa!!!’ opened the night in style with some brilliant French Folk Punk. For a moment we were back in the Paris commune awaiting the onslaught of the enemies of freedom. This was barricades music indeed! We tried to kidnap them, but they weren’t having it, citing work as getting in the way of fun. We persuaded them that heading to the UK was a good idea so hopefully they’ll be travelling this way one day soon. There was plenty of interest in the infoshop and Rennes proved to be a cracking place to kick off the tour!
Now we have some youth in the band we stepped up to the challenge of two gigs in one night. Le Sterren, Tregunc 28th October with Heaven Sucks, Brixton Cats and Washington Dead Cats.
This gig was organised by Antifa and was very impressively done! Wierdly, it was in a town hall and the local council pays for loads of it. It was great to see such a wide range of ages involved in this gig, from cooking a full on dinner for all bands and crew, to running the bar and door. They were also selling pizza for youth projects so Ben thought it best to support that by buying multiple slices! Once again we were supplied with drinks all night; we were spoilt on this tour! There was a big and very mixed crowd and they were loving it. We sold loads from the infoshop and Spanner merch was flying out, testing Em’s minimal French language (and maths) skills. We met some ace people this night, from the local ASSO (community association), Antifa, Breton anarchists and General Strike records. We promised them we’d be back!
Much hilarity and nonsense occurred as we made friends through our mutual love of 80s cheesy pop! Em had everyone gobsmacked with her party piece of “In the Jungle” by Tight Fit, played through two, yes two, whistles… through her nose! We were very sad to say bye to the Brixton Cats and Heaven Sucks crew, but we’re sure we’ll see them again soon. Toujours bienvenus ici, camarades!
En route to the next gig we got in a bit of culture, with a visit to an ancient burial mound called Maison des Nains (House of the Dwarves). We got in the zone, took some proper rock n roll photos, had some wrestling and tribal war games and unwittingly, we should say, spoilt the peace and quiet for some other visitors to this sacred, tranquil place. (Desole!).
Le Havana Café, Lannion 29th October. We had time for a bit of a walkabout in Lannion, which was another nice medieval town. Le Havana Cafe was definitely a bit more like it. A small room in the back of a pub – a lot more cosy! We were the only band playing this night and they asked us to play a longer set. Step up Nick, the wizard, with a calm and confident suggestion of playing 3 songs we’d never practiced! After a couple of listens to the CD in the van and drumming on the steering wheel, he was ready. He only went and played them better than the rest of us! It’s nice to have a bit of talent in the band! This was the night of the street punks, with new friends from the night before up the front again! Salut les gars! By this time we were pretty fucked but Pete, the old boy of the band, made the call to do the set in one hit, instead of the two shorter sets requested by the venue. Anarchy! Or maybe just getting it out the way… Anyway, we had a great gig, passing over an hour in a very sweaty and uproarious fashion, doing our sore, ragged throats the world of good! After the gig our hosts invited us out to another bar, but what they neglected to mention was that it was on Brittany’s most violent street. Sure enough, after a while a fight kicked off with macho twats knocking shit out of each other, shortly followed by macho twats in uniforms coming with big sticks and CS spray to “keep the peace” and make it all alright again (?!). French police clearly could give the Met a run for their money in their delicate handling of people who speak out against them or get in the way of their “justice”. We saw a woman protesting the arrest of her boyfriend, who had been largely on the receiving end of the violence, put in a headlock and manhandled into a cop car by one of the thugs in uniform. As they say in France, “Police partout, justice nulle part!” – Police everywhere, justice nowhere. Same scum, different uniform. Other than that, a top night out. The journey home was epic and this is when we really saw just what an addition to the band we have with Em. Ah, to have youth (and strong French coffee) on your side! Absolutely solid and tireless, laughing all the way! Especially when Pete had a go at some impromptu, cidered up free running at Mont St. Michel and fell flat on his arse much to the amusement of the assembled, howling mob! The euphoria tinged with hysteria kicked in as hard as Pete’s landing towards the end. Richie’s solid reggae and ska tunes selection kept us bouncing all the way home. As is traditional for us, we nearly missed the ferry after some confusion about clocks changing. We got there just in time, with 20 minutes to spare (well it keeps it exciting, innit?!) and settled in for the ferry ride home. We got back to Bristol in the early hours of Monday morning, tired but elated, unloaded all the kit back into the studio and then posed for one last photo before normal life resumed. The tour had been amazing.
We were all buzzing and wanting to do it all again as soon as possible. We met so many good people and all had some wicked times together, spending four days sharing everything and doing everything collectively, where everyone is involved, putting in whatever they can to make it all work… in a spanner in the works kind of way of course! Plenty more where that came from!…  "Hey Dad, can you tell Mum I might be home late tonight?" Punk art in Brittany.
Thanks to Theo Koppen for b/w band photos at Ty Ana and Jacques Le Baill for band photos at Tregunc. Well, this is it! We made it onto a sampler CD of the mighty Riot Ska records!!! Autonomous spaces has squatted the playlist! For immediate free download of 24-track album in your choice of MP3 320, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire go to: http://riotskarecords.bandcamp.com/album/global-unity-musik-ii-v-a Nice one kidz! See you for a bop soon!
As well as the black vinyl version available from us, Maloka Records, Mass Prod Records and Rebel Time Records, there is also a limited edition colour pressing of 100 available only from Iron Column Records. You can buy the record at our gigs for £8 or by post for £10 (more outside the UK), just contact us at thespannercrew@hotmail.com. Just in time for filling stockings! Don’t forget that the CD version is still available from plenty of places too.
Huw Norfolk, aka Badger, our bass player, comrade, friend and one of the best, most dedicated revolutionaries we know is being sought by police after a window smashing action against offices of the Evening Post newspaper in Bristol. Police raided a local squat on the basis of reported DNA evidence. The cops didn’t find the man they were looking for, but made a political investigation, and seized computers, phones, papers. The newspaper, which naturally had their journalists present at the raid, tried to play a key part in the local repressive operations of the police, exactly like every other newspaper in the country. They all justified the police murder of Mark Duggan and excused the daily brutality and disgusting behaviour of the police, printing suspects photographs and spreading hatred and vengeance etc. The Evening Post is a very typical daily newspaper owned by Northcliffe Media, a large regional newspaper publisher in the UK and Central and Eastern Europe, owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. The Spannercrew say “Rock on! Stay free and keep fighting mate.” Or as they would say in another rebellion “Move quickly, comrade. The old world is right behind you!” Love and respect always. 1st communication, An open letter to whoever wants to be concerned, My decision is not to comply with my judicial persecution, and I greet D.C.I Will I am one of those who simply cannot and will not stomach the social, economic, We are the “lost kids” angry and disappointed by false promises, the “uncontrollable Today we are here. Today we throw our rage and anarchy against the station that this Each day, be sure that we are faced with constant battle as each individual must So, in the midst of this incessant war underlying all in this world – I acknowledge And of course as the clash continues and escalates with increasing recognition that Enough silence. just another fugitive.
Wahey!!! It’s Geoff’s burfday!!! Now there’s a good lad who knows about good ska punk. Don’t let him grow old alone. Join him for a bop n skank innit! |
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The stage we played on was massive, which meant plenty of room for breakdancing during the sound check but it was a bit lonely at each side. Give us the back of a pub and a sweaty mob up close and personal any day!
We got to play with the Brixton Cats – what a band and such lovely people! Ben found his guitar hero in Mathieu and pestered him for guitar wisdom at the house we stayed at that night.
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