Millie Week 57; Mon October 7 - Sat Oct 12, 1991

Introducing GBH (an English legal term standing for Greivous Bodily Harm), the most notorious band in South London, who of course turn out to be a bunch of rather camp public school boys play acting at being vicious thugs.

There's form for this, of course. The town I grew up in was Tunbridge Wells, and its leafy groves and primly tidy streets have spawned a few rock acts that the Daily Mail have declared to be the end of civilisation as we know it. Shane McGowan of the Pogues spent a lot of the 70s in the town, Sid Vicious grew up there. And the ultimate punk rock band of all time, the Anti-Nowhere League, originated from the town - they were so beyond the pale that their first single was seized from its distributor by the Metropolitan Police's Obscene Publication Squad because of its expletive laden B-Side 'So What'. (The same song later got covered by Metallica.) Rather wonderfully, I've just read their Wikipedia entry, and found that they played their first gig at the same church hall that, one year later, Gnomefumbler were to play their one and only live show. And thus the circle is complete.

'Outing' was one of the big new phenomena of the time. And the Poll Tax was still a big bone of contention, at the time many people were either refusing to pay their poll tax outright, or protesting by paying their tax with bin liners full of unsorted 1p and 2p coins.