ICON A.D. "Don't feed us shit" Ep, 1982

This immodest writeup should be my last leisurely stroll in the flowery gardens of 80's anarchopunk for a while, not that I am growing bored with it but I intend to tackle some faster shit when it's time to go back to school next month, something urgent that makes you want to twat your boss. Icon A.D. therefore feels like the ideal band to momentarily part ways with that specific wave as it is an act that is bound to leave a sweet taste on your all delicate palate.

2006 was a great year as far as I am concerned. As I mentioned in a previous review, it was the year when The Day the Country Died was published and the Overground compilation Anti-Society was released, both of which, although they were, strictly speaking, unrelated, worked together to open up further musical and subcultural perspectives and gave momentum to the nerd machine I was steadily becoming by exposing anarchopunk greats to avid me. Moreover, with Zidane headbutting Materazzi in the World Cup final because of what was basically a "your mum is so fat that" joke, probably costing France the game (or so goes the national tragedy anyway and the official narrative), 2006 was very close to being the perfect year indeed. The stenchcore revival was at its peak and I still had a perfect hairline. What could go wrong?

Just like for many other bands, I first heard of the Leeds-based Icon A.D. through the aforementioned cd compilation and the song "Seeing is believing" which was actually an unreleased number from the band that was supposed to appear on a third Ep that never saw the light of day. Luckily enough, miraculously even, Overground Record released the same year the band's discography, Lest we Forget, shortly after Anti-Society. Truth be told the label focused meaningfully on anarchopunk in the mid-00's with retrospective records of The Mob, Rubella Ballet Naked or The Disrupters, all of which swiftly landed in my collection. Cd's were probably not as uncool then as they are now and must have still sold, but interestingly Overground reissued both Icon A.D. and The System's discography on vinyl just a couple of years ago, a sensible move considering most of the record-buying public no longer buy cd's. 

To get back to Icon A.D. I was obviously as proud as a peacock parading on an Aldi carpark to know a band people from my generation were manifestly so uninterested in. And still are for the most part. Just like The Sears, Icon A.D. never seemed to garner much interest outside of some old-timers' who were really into them and almost always quite dithyrambic. Punk works in mysterious ways I guess especially since, like The Sears again, Icon A.D. had a great-looking Flux-like logo that would just look amazing on the jacket of any Insta-obsessed comrade. The London bias that prevailed in the 80's certainly made it more difficult for bands from the North to get noticed, although their Ep's did do well in the indie charts, but these days the equalizing factor and the decontextualization of music through streaming as dominant cultural practice significantly undermines this aspect as most people cannot even be bothered to check where bands are actually from. At the end of the day, I suppose only the real ones know, or care to.

Don't Feed us Shit is close to being a perfect record. It has everything, from the fantastic memorable tunes you can instantly hum to, the upbeat spontaneous, almost naive, energy, the poppy dual female vocals, it is an Ep that has stood the test of time better than a lot of 80's UK bands can claim. The record opens with a riff reminiscent of the Cockney Rejects but the song quickly goes in a more melodic, positive way as if the Londoners had been fed exclusively on Lost Cherrees or A-Heads. Icon A.D. were primarily an old-school punk-rock band (not to mention a family affair with husband, wife and some siblings) and sounded closer to the original '77 wave of punk than the Crass tribes but with an anthemic quality that unmistakably tied them to the subsequent 80's wave, like a Demob or No Choice for instance. As a result Icon A.D. is a band that can appeal to many people and they often get some airplay whenever my mum comes for tea (oddly enough she was never that much into Chaos UK or Disorder). A genuine classic that never disappoints from.

Don't feed us shit!

  

THE SEARS "If Only..." MLP, 1984

Twenty years ago, Ian Glasper - UK punk's official archaeologist - wrote about The Sears as "one of anarcho-punk's best-kept secrets" and, rather extraordinarily, it still stands true today even though we have access to even the most obscure bands, some that released the one demo in 1983, did just 3 gigs, one of which took place in a shed with bins for drums, and played for about 6 months in total. Alright, The Sears did use bins as a drum kit at some point but they were around for four years and did release a wonderful album on Bluurg Records, a well-respected label run by Dick Lucas from Subhumans, so not exactly your local garage band. And yet, The Sears remain vastly overlooked as the absence of bootleg shirts on Etsy tends to indicate (it's pretty much the unit of measurement to gauge a band's popularity these days), this is all the more incomprehensible that they have a brilliant recognizable logo depicting a bat (or is it a ghost?) that would fit on the fanciest jackets of any postpunk revivalist. Indifference to The Sears is one of history's mysteries, like UFOs or my dad firmly thinking he would have made a decent addition to the French Résistance in 1940 even though he is afraid of spiders, heights and gluten. I can picture the Nazis shitting themselves.

I remember in the 00's seeing quite a few cd's (homemade-looking cdr's sometimes) from Bluurg Records and stupidly sleeping on them but I don't think The Sears ever got that treatment although there is a trace of a cdr on Discogs (I have no idea when it was done and by whom) but thankfully not atrocious vinyl bootleg. Will If Only... enjoy a proper official reissue one day? Pretty likely I reckon what with Mad Butcher Records releasing old materials from the likes of A-Heads or Potential Threat (and any old UK bands really, it's like the label has gone into a frenzy) and with Sealed Records' recent work on Karma Sutra or Alternative there is ground for hope because in terms of quality, The Sears' album was certainly up there. I have no idea why the record is classified as a mini-album as it is 26 minutes in length, a perfectly acceptable format for the genre (I wouldn't have been against a couple of extra songs though if I'm honest) especially by today's rather ungenerous standards - to give you an example modern classics like Vampire's What Seems Forever Can Be Broken or Subdued's Abattoir are shorter than this.

I would have first heard The Sears, who were from the Midlands, thanks to the inclusion of the grandiose track "Not prepared" - that opens If Only... - on Overground Record's wonderful cd compilation Anti-Society from 2006, the third volume ouf of four released between 2005 and 2007 that introduced so many of us to brilliant obscure anarchopunk bands. "Not prepared" was one of the highlights of the cd and illustrated the band's undeniable energy, tunes and intensity, a balance not many bands managed to pull as well as they did. 2006 was also the year The Day the Country Died was published so that it can be said to be a pivotal year for me because, as much of an already massive fan of British anarchopunk as I was (notably through the Mortarhate and Rugger Bugger cd reissues), these Overground cd's and this book further opened my eyes to a world that was much wider than I thought. It was not just The Mob, Omega Tribe, Icons of Filth or DIRT, it was The Sears, it was Anarka & Poppy, it was Famous Imposters, Reality Control and Anathema and it was incredible and it cemented my love for the peculiar and unique scene. Besides the booklets included biographical notices about the bands and therefore provided me with precious intel for the punk trivia nights I quickly started to rule over, ruthless like a vegan at a free tofu festival.

Strangely the members of The Sears are very negative about the album, basically claiming it sounds like shit, that it should have been much better and they cannot bear to listen to it. I understand being a little exigent with what you do but such comments are insulting to those of us who play in genuinely shit bands and can only dream of producing something half as good as If Only.... Apart from the short and sweet UK82 number "System psycho" the songs all demonstrate the writing flair of the band and how they could tell great punk-rock stories in 3 or 4 minutes. The songs have plots with often softer, darker melodic intros, bursts of punk energy in the middle, sometimes epic direct conclusions too and overall, this moodiness and versatility that always sound tuneful, catchy and powerful, and just punk as fuck really, make the work stand out. At times the music reminds me of Lost Cherrees on the eerier poppier softer moments, of A-Heads when the bouncing punk flow kicks in, of The System when there is a need for a catchy chorus, of Conflict when it gets proper angry and confrontational and in your face. The powerful, emotional, haunting female vocals are certainly the band's main assets (some of the best in the genre arguably) but one should not disregard the care put into the songwriting and, as mentioned, "Not prepared" epitomizes how a grand old-school punk hit should sound like. Lyrically the band was on point too with "Body hold" about imperialism or "Statistical rape" being well ahead of its time (it was written by a third person) with its critique of rape culture and how the pigs dismiss claims when it suits them. Apparently the whole packaging wasn't meant to look like this and the band had prepared a different artwork and lots of visuals that ended up not being used at all so one can only imagine if The Sears had gone for a proper booklet and different aesthetics.

Nevertheless If Only... exemplifies the concept of "obscure classic". It has all the elements that make a record great and worthy of adoption into the canon and yet it remains vastly unknown. But if you ask me, it only requires a well-produced reissue for the punters to rediscover this anarchopunk jewel. I bet the prats are not prepared.

Prepared?