Here's a review of Ted
Curtis' book The Darkening Light from the latest Cubesville fanzine.
You wanna buy Cubesville #17? Get it through the Paypal buttons to the left... "
This is the best UK punk zine of nowadays." Active Distribution
It is
1986, two years after Crass have called it a day, and the anarchopunk
scene feels like it's falling apart. Heavy metal has ransacked punk
like a muscle-bound Viking invader and Crass Utopianism is as murky
as the homebrewed lager drunk by The Darkening Light's main
protagonist, Frank. In the transition between anarchopunk and UKHC,
Frank and his friends tumble into their huntsab group's Sherpa van to
journey between Wiltshire and Wood Green for an all-day squat gig
featuring Antisect, Atavistic and Heresy. Ted Curtis's writing
captures the mood of dislocation and isolation and the tuppence
ha'penny hedonism of homebrew and glue as Frank fumbles for answers
in a contradictory scene whose protagonists wrap its rules around
their own awkward personalities. The anarchopunk preoccupation with
veganism chokes in the blue haze of rollup smoke and is muted behind
the pandemonium and horror stories that fly around the gig.
As much
as The Darkening Light could be a story about DIY culture at its most
abrasive, it serves as a prelude to alcoholism and mental health
issues. Indeed, its frankness could provide answers to many an
Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, anger management workshop or cognitive
behavioural therapy session.
Ian
Glasper's account of the late 1980s UKHC movement, Trapped in a
Scene, was possibly the first book that attempted to catalogue this
subculture whose authenticity lay in its own obscurity. In an
otherwise comprehensive study, Mr Glasper's interviews, band profiles
and discographies catalogue the music scene of the time, but struggle
to capture the mood. Curtis's worm's eye view peers, totally sozzled,
between the fissures of fact and fiction to produce a piece of
subculture writing that ranks with the best.
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