Press
Mayflower Club
1981

A press article sent to us by David Collier... Oi! at the Mayflower. Not sure what paper this is from though... (and '81 is a guess).

"Exploited, GBH, Discharge ... new names, perhaps, to those nof within spitting distance of the Mayflower.
But at this glass and vomit-strewn former cinema in Gorton, BOB DICKINSON discovers why the bands, and the songs remain the same.
THIS years musical bete noir has been labelled Oi! in the papers. The trashier the terminology, the prouder its adherents become.
And down the slope you go, to places like the Mayflower, a converted cinema in Gorton - a sort of architectural shell where groups (who can't play anywhere else as most promoters won't have them) exercise their loud, narrow capabilities most weekends.
This extension of early punk has been dismissed by bastions of respectability from New Musical Express to Nationwide. According to them, the so-called Oi! groups promote violence and, in some cases, racial conflict.
So this year, the fragmented nature of British pop has really come into its own. For the first time the knives were finally drawn. The Oi! groups were cut. Incoherence was uncool and Right-wing.
The fans were largely unsurprised when dumb skinhead band the Four Skins caused a race riot this summer. "They're stupid," said the fans. "They shouldn't have been there." Shrugging their shoulders, they continue to buy records by a growing number of groups with cheap, Godawful names like Blitz, Infa-Riot and Vice Squad.
The fans are aged from 12 to 20, with one or two exceptions like the Mayflower's bouncer who has been around, with or without his bike-chain, for a good number of years.
Going to the Mayflower is an exercise in sticking together. The unified image is the punch behind Oi!. But it is only an image. At the Mayflower, you are let into the debate behind this punk renaissance, inevitably split and sub-divided by unresolved contradictions.
Ironically, 1981's upper crust of fashion, style and music has celebrated its own factionalism as an indication of democracy. But the way the advocates of individual liberty (I-D Magazine and the New Romantics) have ostracised the rougher punk element has put paid to the lie of British pop being at all democratic.
Any style involves an element of coercion and group identity. More importantly, it illustrates how vital it is for the music business to achieve stability. Whereas the natural conditions that exist, and have done for some time, are precisely opposite.
"The Exploited" , Mayflower people say, "are gonna do an Adam Ant". Their fans aren't convinced that this Edinburgh band (currently top of the independent records charts) can retain their anti-star status much longer.
Wattie, the group's leader, is a bizarre, comic-book creation, resplendent in his giant mohican haircut. Revolting, otherwise.
"This one's called Punks Not Dead 'cause it ain't dead!" he yells. And he yells virtually every other phrase, no matter how unimportant.
Against a barrage of straight, heavy-metal drumming, the Exploited shoot through a set with titles which encapsulate the sentiments, in all their predictability and vitriol, of most people present.: Dead Cities, Sex and Violence, Class War.
The floor of the Mayflower is covered in smashed beer bottle fragments and the odd trickle of vomit. The place, everyone says, "has atmosphere". The only other venue anyone is prepared to visit is the Polytechnic and that, according to an apprentice plater from Droylsden called Paul, is "full of squares".
The bands tour round venues like this interminably. The audience has seen most of the bands before, more than once. So they're used to the songs and they either ignore the groups playing on stage or crowd tightly in front of the singer out of ritual rather than interest.
The audience is well-behaved.
Individually, they are good at mouthing off about their pet hates which usually include the police and the perries "who only like UB40 and the Human League". The punksaccording to 17 year old Spike, "get a lot of hassle like the Teds used to".
It's a familiar British youth obsession with the super real and the magnified industrial image. "1 don't mind heavy metal. I like Motorhead," says Spike. The antecedents are showing.
But better than the lonely sex-fantasies of heavy-metal albums, there's the short, sharp shock of the mass acceptable, football mentality punk 45.
"The bands," it is explained, "should have political views, because it's music for the working class kids. I'd rather hear political stuff than Baby I Love You by the Ramones."
Older bands who have hung on to the punk image of vintage anarchy, like the Subs and the Crass, are beginning to lose respect as the younger ones come up. "The Crass," Spike thinks, "don't believe in what they say. They've got their own record label. They should just play bigger places for the same amount of money."
Birmingham group GBH, whose recent 12-inch single Leather, Bristles, Studs and Acne has clocked up 12,000 sales, have been helped along by one example of a series of punk record labels becoming adept at getting their releases the independent charts.
The labels, like Rondolet (from Mansfield) and Secret (from London) are making the indies' charts more interesting to read than the
conventional ones. And now they're actually managing to penetrate the conventional charts.
"Our records make the top 50 but we never get on Top of the Pops", says GBH's guitarist. Their label, Clay, is based on Stoke-on-Trent and has made its reputation with a series of high-selling records by local group Discharge whose new single Never Again has sold around 20,000.
Discharge are prolific. Their songs are not long and you can't hear the words, their vocalist won't be interviewed. They will refuse to go on television if asked.
GBH, who have been going just under two years aren't so 'heavily political' as Discharge", as the guitarist says. "I don't mind getting exposure."
GBH use song titles which remind you more of early Black Sabbath than present day Discharge. Living My Life On The Edge Of A Knife, Necrophilia, Slate Executioner - they all sound similar.
The singer is blonde, tattooed, a bit of an older-brother figure for younger fans who hang about after the show to talk to him.
The smallest fans are pushed to the front of the scrum' by one skinhead who urges the singer top "talk to the little guys, not the big ones!"
They are talking about closing down the Mayflower, though the rumours are probably groundless. There have been a few thefts of equipment, though and at the moment there are no decks for playing records.
The place continues to function outside of the major promotion circuits in town.
But some of the bands will last longer than the decrepit old venues they are forced to play in. Derby group Anti-Pasti, hardly out of the independent charts this year, are currently on their first visit to America.
Barring the option of "going like Adam Ant", there's the difficult problem of sticking to the punk creed and bearing the demands of the audience.
The audience would have their groups continue in this way for good. But the only thing that remains constant in this country is the interminable shadow of social class over our chequered enter-tainment industry. "