Andy Martin/The Apostles: What's That All About !

[Nigel]

During The 1980's used to listen to The Apostles all the time !
Punk Obituary, in many ways was life changing for me; used to play and jam to it more than other Anarcho Punk Album!
A friend of mine was a bit obsessive; pre-ordering and getting singles from South London, which we followed, almost like serial of magazines of their stories opinions and plights in coarse didatic rants and diatribes filled with anger and honesty !

Saw and briefly met Andy Martin a couple of times in 1980's; One time at CND demo when he started chanting 'F*ck Off Back To Hampstead' with Class War to wind up SWP and middle class left !
Had the impression that he had a few dodgy views and liked neo nazi oi, excusing doing so by claiming 'it's all punkrock'.
He was also as far as I remember into martial arts; mainly Shotokan and as some new age travellers that I met whilst working on building site once claimed, 'one of the most reluctant queers I've ever met. '
All in all good bloke, committed to punk with some fringe attachment to anarchist movement; rough diamond with maybe dodgy eccentricities !

However, although entertaining and creative on D.I.Y. level quite a bit of the stuff he has put on Youtube recently is a bit dodgy to say the least; songs wishing drug addicts a horrible death, attitudes towards ethnic minorities, anti left rhetoric and glorification of Neo Nazi bands doing many 'patriotic' anthems and songs as covers !

HAS ANDY MARTIN GONE COMPLETELY TO THIS DARK SIDE OR IS THIS JUST CONTROVERSY AND ARTISTIC EXPRESSION !
The Apostles - Punk Obituary

 

[Nigel]

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Short answer is he’s always been like that and is a wind up merchant / contrarian / mental.

Longer answer next time i’m on a computer but i’m sure others can contribute Angry Martin anecdotes too.

 

[Sir Belchalot]

Had some run-ins with him in the early 80s. Ain't seen him in years but it's good to know that he's still out there confusing people.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

As the text on Youtube says, "Rock Against Communism" originally appeared on The Apostles' "The Giving of Love Costs Nothing" EP in 1984 (and then again on their 1987 album "Equinox Screams").

A polite version of it all is that Andy was pissed off with the conformity in the anarchopunk / squat scene in London at the time and was dicking about with different personas to wind people up:

As usual we were quoted out of context and the artwork and literature that the records accompany was totally ignored. If you lift the line "Counted the nigger-notches on the handle of his gun." out of a W. S. Burroughs novel without saying which character said it or what the book was about you could say "Burroughs is a fascist". Of course no one would dare because he’s a famous and well respected writer. A whole chain of communication and creativity is broken down by such ignorance. If people think we’re nazis because of reviews in influential rags such as MRR then no one buys that particular project, which means us in great debt, which means inability to print more work, which means our inability to publish not only our own but lesser known artists, which means less communication with would-be collaborators. The sort of people who swallow every word of the music press are the sort of people who may need mind expanding ideas.

The context to this is maybe that The Apostles refused to be pacifists from the outset and were openly gay, neither of which was met with much enthusiasm at the time. Andy has also consistently hated middle class liberals which I have some sympathy with but not to the extent of all the shite in those lyrics obviously.

The messing about with personas also crosses into Andy's "autobiographical" writing.

For example I have a fanzine from him from the 1990s which is basically a long rant about being treated badly by people in the punk scene because he is disabled and gay. I also have a fanzine from him in from the noughties which is basically a long rant about being treated badly by people around a Vietnamese youth club in Hackney he was helping out at because he is disabled and gay. Basically it's the same text with the characters changed.

Also when I interviewed him in the early 90s he was largely ignorant of rave stuff but has since written essay about how he ignored punk at the time because he was off raving to the (noticeably middlebrow) Prodigy and Chemical Brothers at the time.

Apparently Andy was briefly in/around the NF in the late 70s or early 80s (hence the later lyric "I was such a stupid I cunt that I joined the National Front"). But possibly that is something he's made up too. If it wasn't then he's arguably done his penance with a bunch of brilliant songs about progressive issues (including anti-racism) since.

I have to say that when I knew him (90s and noughties) you could have a sensible conversation with him about this stuff and he would usually concede that he was being a dick. He was always cool with me and I know that he helped a lot of people out with squatting / community projects. When I split up with my long term partner in the mid 90s he immediately offered me a room in his flat (which was never going to happen but I was glad of the offer).

The updated lyrics and the retro NF graphics with that first video are pretty distasteful.

I don't think it's worth reading too much into any of this. He'll be back to rehashing the better Apostles songs about workers' autonomy, gay pride and class war next week (with the same terrible keyboards all his new stuff has) and then release a two hour avant garde prog rock symphony about UFOs and physics equations the week after. Hardly anyone will hear them, bar ageing former squatters.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Top 5:

 

[Lurdan]

In the early 80s Andy and Dave Fanning both worked at anarchist printers Little@ in Wapping Wall. One product of this was some of those self-printed single covers and accompanying texts. I remember we came into work one day and found that Andy had been there the night before printing something. Parts of it were still lying around. As we read it our brows furrowed...

Happily Andy turned up and explained that he had had the idea of engaging in some kind of entrism into right wing oi/skin circles and that the stuff he'd printed was part of this project not an indication that he was adopting such views himself. You could have fucking told us we pointed out.

I liked Andy enormously.

Dodgy views ? Hmmm - there was his attempt to go vegan which as I recall consisted of giving up a lot of foodstuffs with little regard for any notion of balanced diet and drinking a lot of soya milk. Only when he developed an impressive crop of boils did he rethink things.

But politically dodgy ? Well I haven't spoken him for many years and thus I had no real idea what he thinks today. So I interrupted my current listening schedule of K-pop and turned to his YouTube channel where he has been posting new stuff on a frighteningly regular basis, each item accompanied by a written commentary. (I have to say I like a lot of his recent music). I don't myself see any sign that his views have gone in what I would call a 'dodgy' direction. When he posted up the original Apostles version of ‘Rock Against Communism’ in December 2016 he referred those interested to the piece he wrote about the lyrics on the killyourpetpuppy website. I see no reason to assume that the new version (posted I see on April 1st) has any different motivation.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I knocked around with Andy for quite a few years. Did a few magazines with him. I did accept an offer to stay in his flat when I had nowhere else to go - he was very generous in that respect.

I'm still in touch with a couple of ex-band members - Apostles/Unit. But not with Andy. He did have an ability to alienate people. You just had to accept a level of bullshit with him. He was 29 for many years, which became increasingly untenable as people overtook him. He was Scottish for a while. He would no doubt have claimed to be Chinese if he could have got away with it. Did he have dodgy views? Yes. He'd have said stuff that would get him banned from here. But he was massively variable and a bit of a chameleon depending on who he was with. He craved intellectual stimulation but also sought out company that wouldn't provide it. He was massively encouraging towards others in what they were doing. He worked for many years for MIND as an advocate and he was genuine about both his deep anger at what had been done to him and his desire to help others in similar situations. He was a mass of contradictions.

He really, really needed an editor. His best stuff, like Fucking Queer, was really fucking good. His worst stuff was awful. And he couldn't tell the difference. So he'd pack the full 70-odd minutes into each CD. He'd write in impenetrable 8-point type in all that he wrote, some of it good fiction, other bits cut and paste jobs of maths he didn't fully understand. And if you couldn't be bothered to listen/read, that was your problem. Good to hear that he's still knocking stuff out. He'll be 60 this year - before he denies it, I've seen his birth certificate.

I was very glad to have known him and it makes me smile to think of him now. I haven't thought of him for quite a while.

 

[hitmouse]

Anyone got any updated views on this? Looking at the UNIT/Andy Martin youtube, it does look like he might well have gone a bit dodgy of late. Or he might just be playing around with personas and that, I can't really be arsed listening to all his new stuff to try and make my mind up. Mob Violence was good though, innit.
And looking around related stuff a bit, I've just been reminded of Twelve Cubic Feet, they were really good.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I struggle with the idea that anyone would be looking to Andy Martin for incisive analysis in 2022.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

A fine legacy from the 1980s though:

Anti- Apartheid and porn “redecorations” in 1980s Hackney

“Daughters of Amazon” attack Hackney porn shop (1983): From the anarchist newspaper Black Flag 17th June 1983 Anti-Apartheid activists attack Barclays Bank on Green Lanes (1986). From B…

hackneyhistory.wordpress.com

 

[Fozzie Bear]

This was published since the last time this thread was active. Andy’s insights into the original problematic single. Or at least his insights for the duration of one conversation.

The Hackney Hell Crew and "The Giving Of Love Costs Nothing" EP — Negative Insight

This isn't about the dedicated followers of fashion in the Carnabetian Army or those hangers on of the Bromley Contingent. This is about London's feared and revered Hackney Hell Crew. Their legend continues to tantalize. Yet for all the wild tales, physical documents are sparse and only a single vin

www.negativeinsight.com

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Didn't know Andy had a youtube channel. Makes sense. 50 subscribers.

Listening to bits of his latest output. Ronnie's Poem is rather good. Some of it though? Oh dear.

 

[hitmouse]

I struggle with the idea that anyone would be looking to Andy Martin for incisive analysis in 2022.

I'm not sure that anyone is, it's just that the OP of this thread had posted that video as one of his baffling interventions on another thread, which sort of left me scratching my head and going "what's that all about then?"

This was published since the last time this thread was active. Andy’s insights into the original problematic single. Or at least his insights for the duration of one conversation.

The Hackney Hell Crew and "The Giving Of Love Costs Nothing" EP — Negative Insight

This isn't about the dedicated followers of fashion in the Carnabetian Army or those hangers on of the Bromley Contingent. This is about London's feared and revered Hackney Hell Crew. Their legend continues to tantalize. Yet for all the wild tales, physical documents are sparse and only a single vin

www.negativeinsight.com

Blimey, I had never realised before that the original single was recorded and released without any input from half the band. As inconsiderate ways to behave towards your bandmates go, that is at least quite an original one.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I'm not sure that anyone is, it's just that the OP of this thread had posted that video as one of his baffling interventions on another thread, which sort of left me scratching my head and going "what's that all about then?"

Well Andy has been provocative/irritating/mental/dodgy since the mid 1980s. Take your pick, but it's certainly not a recent conversion or anything.

You're not the first to wonder "what's that all about then?" and there are some good attempts to answer that on this thread from people who knew him better than I did

 

[Nigel]

Well Andy has been provocative/irritating/mental/dodgy since the mid 1980s. Take your pick, but it's certainly not a recent conversion or anything.

You're not the first to wonder "what's that all about then?" and there are some good attempts to answer that on this thread from people who knew him better than I did

Thanks for the links Fozzie!
Really interesting stuff!

 

[Griff]

Had a band briefly when we were 15 back in '82 and Andy Martin and other members of The Apostles, Assassins of Hope and A Flux of Pink Indians turned up to our one and only playing day at the Alan Gordon rehearsal rooms in Leyton.

We were shit and couldn't play a chord between us, but were still better than some of the Crass bands on the Bullshit Detector EP. My then girlfriend was on 'vocals'.

Used to see him round the Wapping venue and the Centro Iberico.

Sorry, this thread just brought back some amusing memories of a lifetime ago.

 

[Sir Belchalot]

Well Andy has been provocative/irritating/mental/dodgy since the mid 1980s.

Before then too!

 

[redbrigades]

He must be having a laugh surely!!! I’m sure when I bought his academy 23 records the umpteen pages he’d type for me described how the whole point of the band was to spread the word of communism and sex magick!!!’ (Maybe not at the same time!?)

 

[Nigel]

He must be having a laugh surely!!! I’m sure when I bought his academy 23 records the umpteen pages he’d type for me described how the whole point of the band was to spread the word of communism and sex magick!!!’ (Maybe not at the same time!?)

th

Had the impression Crowley was pretty hostile towards Anarchism (Communist or otherwise); Magick Theory & Practice, The Slave Shall Serve etc.
Although T.O.P.Y./Genesis P. Orridge did have their 'Shamanarchy' around the time of 'Free Stonehenge'/Free Festival days!

 

[nogojones]

I'm guessing these have nothing to do with the jazz-funk Apostles?

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Some people around TOPY London (who put on the one of the first Academy 23 gigs at the Robey) managed to combine situationist stuff with the sex magick. There were a lot of alternative ideas circulating through the London squat scene and counter culture in the 1980s.

Crowley's acolyte Victor Neuberg was knocking about with Freedom Press too.

There is obviously an overlap with "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and Stirnerite anarchism. Generally occult types tend to gravitate towards awful individualist and anti-class struggle politics in my experience.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Some nice people have released the early demos and practice tapes on vinyl and digital: