Poison Girls: State Control and Rock’n’Roll

Marco Pandin introduces us to Poison Girls’ music and ideas

Starting in the late summer of 1979 I initiated, first driven by curiosity then by a strong sense of identification and belonging, a stable correspondence relationship with the British anarcho-pacifists Crass. At the time, travelling, faxes and phone calls cost a lot of money and the mail offered me the only affordable way to establish and maintain contact. In a letter from Dial House one day, I was told that there was Diavlery Productions, a collective from Bologna with whom they were collaborating: they were punks who distributed in Italy the records of Crass Records and other small labels of the English anarchic and independent scene, and surely getting the records from them would have cost me less than in a shop. In the letter there’s a phone number, I call and Giampi answers – he’s very kind, helpful and cheerful but it’s a bit hard to understand what he’s saying because he speaks in bursts. He seems to know a lot of interesting things, stuff that would normally become known to us in the provinces in the north-east much later, even too late perhaps, or never. So we made an agreement, and after a while, one day, with a friend of mine from Murano, we smashed the savings bank to stock up on records, took a train and a bus to Bologna, and arrived at the anarchists’ old headquarters, the Cassero of Porta Santo Stefano. Giampi, or rather Jumpy, is just as I imagined him: a little younger but smarter than me, smiling, skinny, he basically speaks without pausing for breath. Every now and then, he comes out with a few delirious phrases of his own, but as a whole he’s OK, he’s really nice and I like him. Tiziana and Walter, two dear comrades from the Berneri circle whom I would later meet for decades at the editorial meetings of A/Rivista Anarchica, look at us slyly. The corner occupied by the punks is practically a pile of boxes with records, cassettes and packages of paper inside: far from being a shop, it is rather an informal place where you have to make do to find what you want and some space for yourself in the midst of the mess. You can stay there indefinitely chatting, listening to music, leafing through fanzines, looking around and observing the multicoloured fauna that passes by, stays and then leaves. There we meet Carlo and Laura, so nice, kind and good too, both of them with Jumpy in Raf Punk – whom, at the time, we only knew in our Venice circle because of a few flyers and the protest at the Clash concert in Piazza Maggiore, and whom we considered a mythical band for this reason, even though they had not yet recorded a single song.

From our patrols in squadrons and solo tours in Milan, Turin, Rome and Bologna, we soon realised that things worked differently at home in the north-east for us marginalised and unfortunate provincials than in the big cities. First, we did not have some kind of herd identity to flaunt and defend, but rather a profound and very important individual need to be together, to huddle together, not to feel alone. This was to eliminate the friction between our different preferences in music, clothing, reading, style. Basically, everyone dressed and wore make-up and combed their hair as they wished, and this was not a problem for anyone. And when we got together for a group concert it happened that the stage was peacefully shared by groups playing punk, dark, electronic, research stuff and even rockblues, reggae and jazz without anyone having anything to say against it. Rockgarage, our Venetian fanzine, didn’t have a damn thing to do with the things punks did in Bologna, but to be honest it didn’t have a damn thing to do with the others that were printed by various groups, both punk and non-punk, in different Italian cities either. We were a completely informal and elastic collective: there were those who joined and stayed for a while and then disappeared and maybe came back to show up. We didn’t have to follow anyone or respect deadlines, obligations, commitments, let alone indulge the ass-pulling of someone hungry for the limelight. Young and wild beasts, we were spreading counterculture in a horizontal and unconsciously anarchic way: no corporals to follow, no organisational centre to report to, no shop to run. Taking advantage of the fine speeches on youth culture that then filled the mouths of the councillors at Ca’ Farsetti, one day we tried to raise our voices: we demanded and succeeded in using public spaces on the mainland to organise concerts, meetings, performances, exhibitions of comics and graphics, video festivals, all things that had never existed in the area and which we suddenly and urgently needed.

Every initiative we set up was a success and there was never a single incident. Clearly, they had mistaken us for nice guys. This lasted until someone at the town hall took the trouble to venture beyond the cover of the fanzine: since then, we have encountered only the silence of perpetually out-of-office contacts.

In those days with no internet and no e-mail, in addition to Crass, I had frequent correspondence with a lot of other people and bands, fanzines, fans, musicians – even abroad. One of these was Daniel, who got in touch with me after picking up a couple of issues of Rockgarage at the London Rough Trade shop: it struck him that I had translated the lyrics of the Poison Girls, the anarcho-punk band where, he explained, his mother Vi and her partner Lance played. In the early days, still practically a kid, Daniel himself had played in the band, before changing his name to Pete Fender and forming Omega Tribe. This caught me off guard and was a lot of fun: I can’t see myself playing with my mum and dad in a punk band… At the time, there was a flexi with this Poison Girls song on it: it wasn’t danceable or consumable at all, in fact it was hard to listen to the end, it was so desperate and bleeding, but the lyrics made me unexpectedly see my parents in a whole new light. I am referring to ‘Statement‘, and There is a mother screaming at the sky. Here is a taste of it:

I denounce the system that murders my children
I denounce the system that denies my existence
I curse the system that makes machines of my children
I reject the system that makes men of machines
I reject the system that turns bodies of my own sweet flesh
Into monsters of iron and steel and war
And turns the hands of my children into robot claws

I reject the system that turns the hearts of my children
Against this earth
I curse the system that turns the genitals of my children
Into factories of fire and destruction
And rapes our flesh
And tears our womb
This earth our home.

There are no words
For us no words

Vi would be Vi Subversa – Daniel’s mother’s nickname, her real name was Frances Sokolov. A letter V turned upside down to make it look like the A for anarchy, a bit like Fabrizio de Andrè does with his hand on the cover photo of one of his last records. Vi’s feminist and pacifist and awful and transversal songs just sounded weird: they weren’t studded sugars or easy-to-digest punk anthems. They sounded more like a liberating coming-out of colourful, self-conscious rags to be worn casually on the street. The lyrics looked you straight in the face and pushed hard about happiness, about growing up and becoming aware, about contradictions, about breaking free from conditioning, about the relationship between girls and boys. I had stumbled upon the Poison Girls and their songs through the flyers Crass sent me. In their early years, in the mid-seventies, they were an experimental theatre collective based in Brighton, they had gradually moved from theatre to songwriting and decided to move to London. There they had befriended the Dial House people and played together with Crass in concerts in support of CND, and together they had made a split single to raise funds for the Autonomy Centre in Wapping, one of the first attempts to bring anarchists and punks together in the same cultural centre. Together they had also organised the occupation of the Rainbow Theatre in London, which lasted a few hours and ended under police batons, and – with a handful of other groups – the subsequent occupation of the Zig Zag Club for the first collective anarcho-punk concert after the Falklands war. With Crass, they ended up arguing one day, over a written contribution by Vi that was deemed unsuitable to appear on an animalist, pro-vegetarian compilation planned for release in 1983 – a project that was on hold for a while and eventually not even completed.

Daniel and I mail each other from time to time, and when one day I call him to tell him that I’m spending a few days in England and that it would be nice to see each other, his mother answers: oh yes, Marco the Venetian, Dan is not here right now, but you’re coming anyway, he’s playing with his band in those days, we’re playing in London too, come and see us, bye bye. I leave from Venice as part of a group of tourists, and in mid-June 1983 we meet: Omega Tribe have organised a music party in a small youth centre on Adelaide Street together with Lost Cherrees and Wet Paint Theatre – a concert that was certainly interesting, but the evening was marred by a despicable fascist attack that I will recount on Rockerilla, triggering a bit of agitation in my usual mail rounds, in the middle of which some dickheads also write anonymous threatening messages. Fuck it. The next day the Poison Girls are playing at the Ace in Brixton. At the venue’s ticket office, I get a nice surprise: I find out that they’ve put me at the top of the guest list. They give me a backstage pass and let me in. Vi welcomes me with open arms and introduces me to the others as a close friend of her son. In a matter of seconds, I have a beer in one hand, a sandwich in the other and half a dozen people around me asking for things. I point out to them that I had brought a tape recorder with me to interview them, and the opposite is happening instead. We all laugh.

– Lance, why did you start playing with the Poison Girls?

Lance – Because at the time I was the lover of the singer of the band, and I had nothing better to do than follow her in her craziness in and out of bed.

– Most of your fans are very young. How do you approach the relationship with those who, because of the age difference, could be your children?

Vi – In the beginning, kids would come to our concerts thinking they were dealing with teenagers, and they were surprised to see me and Lance on stage. They knew our songs but expected something quite different: the kids saw us as the eccentric parent or revolutionary schoolteacher. Then they had to change their minds.

I talk extensively about the concert and publish the interview in the November 1983 issue of Rockerilla. What wonderful memories, and I’m not just talking about the performance. When Vi and Lance hug me it’s just like breathing the air of home: I feel that they love me, that they care, that they’re glad I’m there, that they think they’re doing the right thing and that I’m doing it too. Dan’s mum had him and his sister a short distance apart, she was still quite young and had to raise them on her own. My family story is different, and I tell it. Lance of the band is the drummer, but he is above all the creative soul. With his sly manner he somewhat resembles my father: he looks at me sideways and smiles, he is so thoughtful and kind to me, curious and attentive in listening to my questions and incredibly off-the-wall in his answers, which he fills with jokes and laughter. A biting humour that left its mark on me: it was his way of teaching me to keep my head up, not to give up, not to be afraid – just like my father used to do. This is ‘Don’t go home tonight‘, a song that fascinated me every time, gave a nice radical shuffle to my doubts and indecisions, and that still makes me feel a certain unease for all those dreams that ended up in crumbs. Back then, you really thought that songs, certain songs, could change the world.

Are you a child of a friend of the state?
Are you a little chicky of a friend of the state?
Do you go to work for a friend of the state?
Are you making time with a friend of the state?

Don’t go home tonight

Do you go to bed with a friend of the state?
Do you suck the dicky of a friend of the state?
Are you wined are you dined by a friend of the state?
Do you suck the titty of a friend of the state?

Don’t go home tonight

So do you sell your body to a friend of the state?
And don’t you see the money is too little and too late?
And do you sell your sister like a chicken on a plate?
And would you kill your brother to satisfy the state?

Don’t go home tonight

Who offered you security and freedom if you wait?
Who tricked you with a uniform, and filled you up with lies?
When you try to find your own way, using your own eyes?

Don’t go home tonight

Vi, Lance and the Poison Girls’ weren’t just sad, problematic, and devastating songs. Every now and then a corrosive chart-topping piece would come out of their hands and heads – indie, mind you. I used to put this one on the radio a lot, because it’s an all too clever lyric, tacked on top of a simple rock’n’roll that immediately catches on and over which, as an alternative to pogoing, you can even dance the twist. It’s called ‘State control‘:

State control and rock and roll are run by clever men
What they sell is selling very well and the price is up again
State control and rock and roll are run by clever men
What you know is what they show so it all goes round again

State control and rock and roll are run by clever men
Politics are ultra chic and wars are in again
State control and rock and roll are run by clever men
Revolution’s this year’s thing, we’re on the streets again – and again

State control and rock and roll are run by clever men
It’s all good for business, they’re in the charts again – and again
State control and rock and roll are run by clever men
They build you up and they break you down, then you’re on the dole again

You know it’s true – but what can you do
Look for a gap – to get out of the trap
It’s a vicious circle – try and break loose
Break out of the trap – get out of the noose
You know it’s true – but what can you do
Cos what you’re feeling -is a human being
Not this year’s thing
Or last year’s thing
This year’s thing
Or next year’s thing…

State control and rock and roll
Are run by clever men
It’s all good for business!
And it all geos round again

State control and rock and roll
Are run by clever men
And anarchy
Is this year’s thing…

In 1984 they self-produced the double album “7 year scratch” to celebrate seven years of singing on the road: they threw in a handful of tracks from their various records, a couple of old demos and a whole disc of live recordings. I know that in recent years their albums and singles have been collected in anthology CDs and reissued several times, but I like to pick up the old vinyl copies from back then every now and then, the ones I almost wore out but kept fondly. How strange, listening to Poison Girls songs makes me nostalgic for my parents, who have been gone for over thirty years.

The thing I did least willingly in the long time I collaborated with A/Rivista Anarchica was writing two lines to report that Vi and Lance were gone, losses that occurred about a year apart in 2016 and 2017. Those two were happy, among us young anarchists: they were of the kind that somewhere inside in their heads had kept going on in their twenties. The kind you learn a lot of things from, without them standing there to teach or explain anything to you on purpose. If you get a chance, go and listen to some of their old songs again: Vi’s voice will certainly surprise you, voice of a fox and a crow, but pay attention to Lance with his stainless strokes on the drums – each one a hammering vibrated with joy at the foundations of the system, always a laugh on, always a sneer to spit in your face. Anarchists, rebels, and dreamers – they all enriched the world with their wonderful poetry, their love and their boundless sense of peace.

Article by Marco Pandin, stella_nera@tin.it
Translated by Deesastrous

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