When feeling blue, a lot of people indulge in what they call "comfort food" in order to feel better. Something familiar, predictable that brings back - if temporarily - that feeling of safety and warmth. Granted, some of that "comfort food" must be called "comfort booze," and "comfort hangover," afterwards but I suppose it fulfills the same purpose: getting over shit through what you intimately like, through familiarity, for instance through greasy crisps, a can of cider and the blasting of Why - not that I would ever need to be comforted, I just bought my second yacht thanks to Terminal Sound Nuisance and the fourth attempt at hair transplants seems to have finally worked as my scalp is not as purulent as last time (that one Turkish barber advertised on Youtube was dodgy indeed in the end, I should have been more cautious). I am a spoilt man.
From my tiny spot in this big bad world, a good way to feel better, if only briefly, is, of course, to play a vintage UK anarchopunk records that I have listened to death for the past 25 years and whose corners, circumvolutions, flaws and every single tiny details I have learnt to love. Just as important to this comfort-seeking enterprise is the exact memory of where and when I first bumped into the band, in this case Dirt. It's funny how you can remember - usually fondly, even though it might have been a crap show - gigs that took place so long ago but are barely able to name the opening bands of last Tuesday's concert. I bought my first Dirt record on October, 4th, 2002, at an Inner Terrestrials gig in a venue called Fahrenheit near Paris. Unless you were there at the time, there is little chance that you have ever heard of this venue but it used to play an important role in the alternative punk scene between 1984 and 2008. For the record Nirvana played there in December, 1989 in front of a manifestly rather scarce audience although listening to some old-timers who suddenly pretend to have been there indeed you would think they played to a full house.
But back to my petty story. At this Inner Terrestrial gig, a band I really enjoyed then and still do, Active Distribution had come along and they had set a little distro table with political fanzines I would mostly pretend to be interested in in order to look cool and sophisticated and a couple of cd's the label had put out among which was Dirt's double cd discography Black and White, referenced as Active 1 for you nerds and originally released in 1997 so I suppose I was lucky to find it at all for cheap then (it now goes for more than 40 euros on Discogs). I am aware everybody hates cd's these days because they have no cachet - and because Stranger Things is set at a time when they did not exist yet they will therefore forever be deemed unworthy of coolness and of viral Tik Tok videos - but the cd version included two amazing unreleased songs that were not on the vinyl version. Who's the fool now, huh?
I would be lying if I said it was love at first sight between Dirt and I and it did take me some time to get used to Deno's unhinged shrieks, especially on the band's early years. When I did totally get it, I couldn't help but think how disturbing and challenging the vocals would have been 20 years before, back when it originally came out. By then female vocals in punk were still tacitly expected to have some melody, some tunefulness to them. Of course, punk-rock questioned gender norms and expectations and bands like X-Ray Spex, Crass of course or Vice Squad did challenge the conventional image of female rock singers and while there were evidently angry and passionate political female rock singers before punk, they did not really sound angry and did not shout in the microphone like demented howls if you know what I mean. Dirt took things one step further in 1981 with Deno sounding deliciously tuneless on this first Ep and showing no pretense of any intellectualism (unlike Crass I guess) or of any London art schools bollocks or of poster punk stardom. The legendary repetition of "Object refuse! Reject Abuse!" concluding "Democracy" remains an iconic (as Gen Z's would say) bit of anarchopunk history and the best way to deter burglars.
It is easy but nevertheless true to claim that a Dirtless world would have been more boring and many a young punk - female or male actually - might have been influenced by the strident vocal style and by the efficient simplicity of these four songs and thusly galvanised into action. On this level, I would personally argue that Dirt's snotty punky discordance was as important as Chaos UK or Disorder's, although their influence may have been more circumscribed to the anarcho realms (this is very difficult to assess from our perspective as many local scenes then were not as split and tribalism not as prevalent as we can imagine and people freely listened to all sorts of punk and besides, let's keep in mind that no less than 13000 copies of Dirt's Ep were sold at the time).
In any case, and if the amount of patches and shirts still worn today is any indication (which it probably isn't, the band may just prove to be more Insta-compatible), Dirt remain one of the most loved anarchopunk bands of the era. As mentioned the crazy, defiant shrieky vocals of Deno are still what they are primarily known for - for good reasons as they still sound so mental and spontaneous almost 50 years later as I got to experience by playing the band to my "I listen to a bit of everything" work colleagues - but I would venture that the three-chords simplicity, the raw sound, the energy, the distortion, the primitive tribal beats, the frontal punk vibe and the dual vocals (let's not discard Gary's ace vocals as well) all make this Ep an absolute 80's punk classic. Of course, a less thoughtful, more direct version of Crass is an obvious point of comparison as they definitely borrowed their mentors' love for noise and distortion - and let's not forget to mention that the Ep was obviously produced by Penny Rimbaud whose very precise, strict, inimitable ideas of what bands were meant to sound like went on to define what we know call "the classic anarcho sound". Rereading Glasper's The Day the Country Died I noticed Gary mentioned that they would listen to 6 Minute War a lot in the band's very early days and that Dirt was at first basically a faster, noisier version of their songwriting, which makes a lot of sense sense; and I personally would throw The Epileptics/The Licks in the mix as well - albeit in a much spikier mood. Finally, one might contend that Dirt's long-standing popularity also has to do with their image that, along with their music, was significantly more punk than a lot of their anarcho comrades like Flux, The Mob or Omega Tribe who were often discarded as "bourgeois" or "hippie shit" by the spikes'n'studs crews, especially in the pre social media days. But Dirt never were, perhaps because of the punk-as-fuck spontaneity of their sound, they were paradoxically easier to listen to alongside Chaos UK, The Exploited or The Business, and because later on they reformed before it was fashionable to do so and toured with DIY crusty hardcore bands like Hellkrusher or Final Warning and played many DIY festivals and squat gigs in the 90's, they definitely maintained that anarchopunk street cred, all of these elements making them such a respected and beloved band.
So yeah, there's nothing like Deno's vocals when you are looking for comfort and now that I think of it the band foes very well with a cold can of cider and some crisps. 6 minutes and 30 seconds of delight.
Object Refuse Reject Abuuuuuuse
