#THE VARUKERS UK

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

MAJOR RESPECT TO A UK SKINHEAD MAKING IT OUT TO A NUKE WAVE/APOCALYPSE PUNK GIG.

PIC(S) INFO: Mega spotlight on rare live shots of English hardcore punk/street punk/UK82 band THE VARUKERS, performing live in Manchester, UK, c. May 1982. 📸: Kiwi Kim Mullan.

Source: www.picuki.com/media/1746617758974773026.

[randomvarious]

1980s Oi! Punk Playlist

And 1980s Punk Rock Playlist December is going out with a bang, with this small batch of kick-ass oi! tunes from the early part of the decade. In a broad sense, oi! is to punk what punk is to rock. Punk arose out of a desire and necessity for rock to have raw, energetic simplicity again, like it had at its founding, and when oi! came around in the UK in the late 70s, it was for much the same reasons: punk rock was losing its meaning and its edge as it was being practiced by artsy intellectual types and it was in need of a reduction back to its roots.

Oi! was working class music that dealt with working class concerns, like labor exploitation, lack of employment, run-ins with police, Thatcherism, the constant specter of nuclear annihilation, brawling, etc., and another thing that all the songs had in common was their use of anthemically chanted gang vocals, in which every member of the band would yell along to the chorus of a song in unison, which would also involve crowd participation in a live setting too. That aspect of it helped carry on long-held traditions of drinking songs and football chants in a new and different way; solidarism and empowerment achieved through unified rebelliousness 🤘.

So what we've got here are 13 classic oi! songs to get rough, rambunctious, rowdy, and raucous to—stuff that I don't think will ever end up going out of style because of how pure and true-to-form its brand of punk rock is. There's been a lot of oi! that's come out since—even some really gross white nationalist and Nazi shit that ignorant folks think is more or less representative of oi! as a whole—and a lot of it feels like it's going through the motions, because at the end of the day, there's really only so much that one can do with oi! in the first place. But this early generation of the stuff will feel forever fresh, and as long as working class issues remain issues, which seems very likely to be the case, the topics will continue to remain broadly relevant too.

One of the great leaders of this scene was a band called Blitz, and here I've included their blistering "Never Surrender," a perfect 90-second soundtrack to an enormous hypothetical street fight between rival gangs that's outfitted with brass knuckles, trashcan fires, broken glass bottles, knives, and spiked bats. As one of Blitz's most popular songs, which is currently sitting at 758K+ plays on Spotify, "Never Surrender" is one of those primal pieces of pure jump-around-and-break-every-single-thing-in-your-immediate-vicinity fury 😤.

And then for another leading light in this scene, we've also got The Exploited, who supply "Dead Cities," which has over 1.2 million plays, but also the much less popular "Rival Leaders" too, which only has 41.6K plays. "Rival Leaders" is one of those songs that invokes that aforementioned threat of nuclear Armageddon, but does it in a way that makes it feel exhilarating, sort of like how Detroit techno can also make the vision of a futuristic urban dystopic wasteland feel somehow inviting too. There's just a certain sense of, 'well, we're all stuck in this muck together, so we may as well just fuckin' party, right?' to it all. "Rival Leaders" is an explosion of pent-up speed and has one of the best gang choruses on this playlist, which is a simple rapid countdown from ten-to-one, before a final shout of "HERE WE GO!" which first signifies the launching of the nuke and then its detonation. Cathartic and invigorating.

This playlist is ordered as chronologically as possible:

Abrasive Wheels - "The Army Song" The Partisans - "No U Turns" The Exploited - "Dead Cities" Blitz - "Never Surrender" Abrasive Wheels - "Shout It Out" Resistance 77 - "Nuclear Attack" The Fits - "Too Many Rules" One Way System - "Give Us a Future" Special Duties - "Violent Youth" Threats - "Politicians & Ministers" Uproar - "Rebel Youth" The Varukers - "Die for Your Government" The Exploited - "Rival Leaders"

Now, normally this is the part of the post where I say, 'but wait, there's more, over on YouTube!' but I'm not doing that this week. Every song that's on this Spotify playlist is on the YouTube and YouTube Music versions of it too. 13 songs that run at just under half-an-hour, which is pretty close to the perfect length for a punk rock album anyway 😁.

And that's it for this five-Sunday 80s punk rock December! This month we got into punk rock in general, and then dove further into the oft-overlapping scenes of hardcore punk, street punk, UK82, and oi! punk, where we sussed out a bunch of the similarities and differences between them all.

And to start next year we'll be zagging into a couple weeks of soul music!

Enjoy!

More to come, eventually. Stay tuned!

Like what you hear? Follow me on Spotify and YouTube for more cool playlists and uploads!

[coweatman]

War Wound.

Canon 60D.

[felopunk]

Ruin - Ghost Of The Past (Full Album)

[bestfuckinmusic]

Varukers - How Do You Sleep

Classic UK crusty punk, find a dog-on-a-rope and enjoy!

[criminalbehaviorfanzine]

The Varukers at Small’s in Hamtramck, 11/15/17.

[xsheeraddictionx-blog]

UK 82

When you listen to it, you should feel what UK 82 was about. !Check the '77 early demos of Discharge in my previous UK 77 playlist! Discharge-Exploited-GBH are like the Father-the Son-and the Holy Ghost. The rest of the bands are even more aggressive. "Chaos UK - No Security" ! God YES! Updating it

https://open.spotify.com/user/sheer-addiction/playlist/2nw6vCcbOj23kkztrRCQf5

[douguru]

UK/DK Soundtrack 1983

A1 The Exploited–U.S.A.

A2 The Adicts–Joker In The Pack

A3 Chaos U.K.*–No Security

A4 Disorder (3)–Life

A5 The Business–Blind Justice

A6 Action Pact–Things That Need

A7 The Vibrators–Fighter Pilot

B1 The Damned–Ignite

B2 Pressure (6)–You Talk, We Walk

B3 The Adicts–Viva La Revolution

B4 One Way System–Jerusalem

B5 The Varukers–Soldier Boy

B6 Angelic Upstarts–42nd Street

B7 Vice Squad–Stand Strong, Stand Proud

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

THE TRANSITION FROM UK82 INTO UKHC BEGINS NOW -- WELCOME TO 1984.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on live shots of UK82/UKHC band THE VARUKERS, during the band's "Another Religion, Another War" line-up, performing live at the 100 Club, London, UK, c. 1984.

"Rat" Martin -- voice

Damien Thompson -- guitar

Mark "Brick" Briscoe -- bass guitar

Andy Baker -- drums

Source: www.artofthestate.co.uk/punk-2/punk-photos/the-varukers.

[randomvarious]

1980s Street Punk Playlist

Alright, so, a couple weeks ago I posted an update to my general 1980s Punk playlist, then last week I posted an update to my 1980s Hardcore Punk playlist, and now, for this week, we're distilling things further down another level with a brand new 1980s Street Punk playlist. Think of all this as, like, that classification system that you once learned about in one of your biology or life sciences classes...

Street punk is a specific style of hardcore punk that sprung up in the UK in the late 1970s among the urban working-class male youth in direct response to the artistic pretensions that some punks had thought that their favorite genre itself had been developing at the time. The street punk ethos is, essentially, that punk rock is for the common people, and anyone should be able to make it; it has a near-strict level of equality between performer and fan (everyone at a punk rock show is a punk, be they creator or consumer), and therefore, the idea of needing to have 'musicianship' in order to play music is pure, exclusionary bollocks. Just make some radical fuckin' noise with some chords, a drumbeat, and a bassline, and yell your angst-ridden diatribe with the same intensity of one of those lunatic blokes down at a public town hall meeting or something, and you might have a real rockin' tune on your hands 🤘.

And so, what some of this rawest-of-raw and back-to-basics type of punk rock ended up giving us in the early 80s turned out to be some of the most timeless and catchy shit that the genre itself had ever managed to produce. By stripping the music of any perceived overgrowth of fuss, we got some sweet and hooky anthems out of it, with simple, but infectiously energetic riffs too.

Case in point, the song that's currently rolling around in my head right now as I type this, the militant "Never Surrender" by New Mills-based oi! band Blitz, which they released in 1982. As one of their most popular songs—758K+ Spotify plays—this tune is just 90+ seconds of pure and primal jump-around-and-break-every-single-thing-in-your-immediate-vicinity fury; the soundtrack to an enormous and chaotic, no-holds-barred street brawl that's outfitted with rusty chains, brass knuckles, broken glass bottles, trashcan fires, knives, and spiked bats 😤.

Never surrender, never give in Never let the enemy win Never say why, never say die It's always worth another try

This playlist is ordered as chronologically as possible:

Abrasive Wheels - "The Army Song" The Partisans - "No U Turns" The Exploited - "Dead Cities" The Partisans - "Police Story" Chaos UK - "Four Minute Warning" Blitz - "Never Surrender" GBH - "Sick Boy" Mayhem - "Psycho" Abrasive Wheels - "Shout It Out" Resistance 77 - "Nuclear Attack" Chaos UK - "No Security" The Fits - "Too Many Rules" One Way System - "Give Us a Future" Special Duties - "Violent Youth" Threats - "Politicians and Ministers" Uproar - "Rebel Youth" One Way System - "No Return" Riot Squad - "Lost Cause" The Varukers - "Die for Your Government" The Exploited - "Rival Leaders" Broken Bones - "Decapitated" Riot Squad - "Society's Fodder" Ultra Violent - "Crime for Revenge" The Varukers - "Led to the Slaughter"

And then the YouTube version of this playlist has all of these tracks, plus a few more that can't be found on Spotify too, like the great, horror-thrashing "Psycho Killer" by The English Dogs, a tune from 1983 that *is not* a Talking Heads cover and has over 350K+ plays on YouTube right now, which makes it more popular than any song of this band's that is currently on Spotify. And its bouncy main riff sounds like something that a band like Rancid could've successfully replicated a decade or so later too.

English Dogs - “Psycho Killer” Mau Maus - “Just Another Day” Oi Polloi - “Thugs in Uniform”

And this playlist is also on YouTube Music.

So with the introduction of this playlist, we start with 24 songs that clock in at 55 minutes, but over on YouTube, we've got 27 songs that clock in at 63 minutes. So if you want a few extra goodies, including what appears to be the English Dogs' most popular song, give that YouTube one a listen.

And if you want something shorter, here's another street punk playlist that consists of tunes that are exclusively from 1982 too:

1982 Street Punk: Spotify / YouTube / YouTube Music

1980s punk rock playlist December will continue next week when we get even deeper into all of this stuff with a playlist of UK82 songs, which, no, is not just UK punk rock from the year of 1982 😅.

Enjoy!

More to come, eventually. Stay tuned!

Like what you hear? Follow me on Spotify and YouTube for more cool playlists and uploads!

[angryyoungandpoordotcom]

AYP NEW #Vinyl of the Day - #Varukers Bloodsuckers 40th Anniversary LP imported from the UK on green colored vinyl. Available in store & online now. Click on the pic for a direct link to purchase you dirty punks! #punk #punkvinyl #streetpunk #angyyoungandpoor #instavinyl (at Angry Young & Poor) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz8wo1bn4Vh/?igshid=khofvdl689ta

[sirenrecords]

NEW RELEASES & REISSUES OUT TOMORROW (FRI 7/1) : FLEET FOXES, SHINEDOWN, ROXY MUSIC, FERRY DJIMMY, KLAUS SCHULZE, Ferkat Al Ard, Bad Brains, Nick Cave (2), Kit Downes, Earth, Robert Fripp (2), Nico Gomez, Grey Daze, Guru Guru, Imagine Dragons, Jethro Tull, Mankunku Quartet, Midland, Municipal Waste, Ozric Tentacles, Pere Ubu, Shadow Project, Super Djata Band, Tedeschi Trucks Band, TV Priest, Oded Tzur, UK Subs, Varukers, Volta Jazz, Wild Style, Yaeji, XTC (at Siren Records) https://www.instagram.com/p/CfcswghJqoS/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[don-lichterman]

CBGB: Punk from the Bowery

CBGB: Punk from the Bowery

Price: (as of – Details) Featuring Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Madball, H2O, Poison Idea, Harley’s War, UK Subs, The Varukers, Chaos UK, The Vibrators, Molotov Cocktail, Kraut, Adrenaline OD, Even Worse, and Furious George. Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 1.33:1 Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated) Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 3.57 Ounces Media Format ‏…

[criminalbehaviorfanzine]

The Varukers at Small’s in Hamtramck, 11/15/17.

[occultdominion]

New York City 1994 - L-R: Victor Dominicis (Chaos UK, Nausea...), Christine Boarts Larson (Slug & Lettuce), Rat (Varukers), some twat photobombing, Kev Frost (Varukers), Pat Devilman (Chaos UK), background my brother Steve Borkowski (Distraught). Photo from the Kev Frost Collection