Killing Hippies is Tight: The Electro Hippies / Generic split LP
The only good kind of hippies is the Electro Hippies!
The year is 1986. Hailing from Liverpool, England, Simon from the Electro Hippies had been in contact with Sned of Newcastle-bashers Generic through the usual means of the period; letter writing and tape trades. While Generic had already released a 7" in March of that year, both bands were still relatively new to the scene, and thus eager to get their material on a proper vinyl release. A split LP release was soon proposed as a joint DIY venture: self funded, self released and self distributed.
The record was tracked in 1986 but due to financial constraints was subsequently not released until February of the following year. Upon finally being released, the entire pressing of 986 copies sold out in less than a month. With such a response, it should have been quickly repressed however it was never to be. As a result, today it has become a sought after collector's item amidst the other limited pressing classics of the era.
Jeff Walker of the Hippies would later go on to form the seminal grind/death metal band Carcass, not to mention drawing some iconic artwork along the way such as Napalm Death's "Scum" and Axegrinder’s "Rise of the Serpent Men."
Sned from Generic would go on to play in a slew of DIY bands including One By One, Disaster, Health Hazard, Suffer, Doom, Oi Polloi, Boxed In and many more. In addition to his personal music output, he was also the main force behind the legendary punk label, Flat Earth Records.
Here Sned gives Negative Insight the full story on how the Electro Hippies/Generic split came together as well as many other interesting tidbits and anecdotes about the era.
NI: How did you first get in touch with the guys from Electro Hippies? Were they a band you played gigs with?
Sned: I knew Simon from before Electro Hippies began through letter writing, zines (he did a zine called Sparse) tape trading and gigs. He was in a band called Maybe Tomorrow down in Liverpool around 1984. I had met Jeff too, him and Griff (who did a zine called Happy Smiling Faces and later a doom metal zine, Under the Oak, and he was the original bass player in Cathedral). He had a band/thing called Bomb Culture way back then, very militant and anarcho as I recall from zines, don't think I saw or heard them though.
My main point of contact with the Liverpool was through our mutual friend Digger from Sunderland, who I'd known him since about 1982, through his zine IQ32 and gigs at the Bunker and the Station. He'd moved to Liverpool for university and I'd go visit him there. He was one of the first people around into international hardcore stuff along with Dig and a few other freaks I'd swap tapes with. The scene as such was fairly small and friendly around the country, letters, zines all that stuff.
Sned from Generic banging the kit while rocking a classy MDC tee in Liverpool 1986. Photo by Jenny Plaits.
Generic began early in 1985, and we'd been going a few months, playing locally when Digger asked us to play down in Liverpool (I think it was our fourth gig) at a hunt saboteurs benefit with the Instigators, Anarka and Poppy, Cyclic Amp and the debut gig of Electro Hippies! Digger and most of Generic/Electro Hippies were involved in hunt sabotage in those time and this was was the first we'd been out of our area to play a gig. Micky could drive and borrowed his mam's car and off we went... I recall being lost in Liverpool asking people for directions, pissing ourselves laughing at the strong scouse accents we were hearing!
The gig was at a community centre near Toxteth, renowned for the riots a few years before and still a bleak and burnt out area. I remember kids outside chucking concrete slabs off the roofs down below, tense atmosphere.
Electro Hippies were fuckin' killer, and this is when I first met Andy and Bruno—Andy's from Wigan, and I think Bruno too, Jeff from St. Helen's and Simon from Rainford. Electro Hippies called themselves 'Woolycore' which refers to Woolybacks, slang for people from towns outside of Liverpool. I think they liked us too and our friendships developed from there. We played Liverpool again a few months later with Electro Hippies, supporting Amebix—this time we brought a load of Geordies with us in a hire van, in the depths of winter.
Electro Hippies came up to play in Newcastle in April 1986 at the Anglo Asian club: "80p entrance - no assholes." Simon had borrowed his dad's car and to save on petrol he would switch the engine off and freewheel down any hills on the way, so it took them the whole day to get here!
NI: How did the idea for a split LP come about?
Sned: Generic had made a 7", the first release on Flat Earth, which came out in March '86. The label was still a collective at that point, me, Micky and Dave. Micky had the idea of a 4-way split LP as the next release, as well as Electro Hippies. The other two bands were new bands we'd met and became friends with: Post War, a band from Blyth, who you may not have heard of, and Oi Polloi from Edinburgh, who I'm sure you have! Anyway, this plan was ambitious beyond our means at the time and we favoured the notion of an Electro Hippies/Generic split LP. A genuine split release—ieach band put up half the money required to press the record, and we took half the copies each to sell. It took some time to raise the money, our money had gone into the 7" and we were all unemployed at this time. Money was tight and we were too proud and DIY to go looking to borrow off people. Electro Hippies side was recorded July '86 and absolutely blew me away. It's their finest moment for me, mates 8 track, no fucking about, raw and raging, proper.
Generic on the other hand... the first line up of the band was unravelling, and we were pulling in a number of directions, some adventurous and interesting ideas, but it didn't turn out great. (The studio guy being a dickhead didn't help things either). Two days after recording this we did a real bad gig in Newcastle. I guess it was me and Micky personality clash. I stormed off (as I was wont to do, I've been told!), and that was the end of Generic mk 1. September 1986.
It took six more months to raise the money and for the record to finally surface—in Febuary '87.
NI: How did it sell? Was it popular upon its release, and did it receive much distribution outside of the U.K.?
Sned: It sold out in 25 days! All 986 copies.
To save on delivery costs, Simon had driven his dad's car to London to pick up the records, then all the way to Newcastle to drop off our copies. And the next day we went to Nottingham to the BGK gig, where it was finally on sale. People had been waiting a long time for this and there was a bit of a buzz about it so, yes, it sold quickly.
Simon from Electro Hippies with and Pek Disattack (R.I.P.) selling copies of the Electro Hippies/Generic split on the day it was released in 1987. Photo by Jenny Plaits at a BGK gig in Nottingham.
There was very little distribution outside the UK. I'd got the Generic 7" distributed around the world in small packets, but this gigantic LP thing was a fucker to post out. It's such a different world to now—concealed cash, flakey distribution, based on trust, learning from (often costly) mistakes, etc. Konkurrel/ Konkurrent in Amsterdam ordered 25 copies and that was a big deal to sort out. I remember the packages—you had to tie packages with string back then—for customs! (It was a pain in the arse and this kind of shit will be returning post Brexit, stupid little England fucks).
A copy got to MRR, but I can't recall any other international action at that point. A friend of ours did some trades for us and maybe Simon got some of their copies around the world? John Peel got a copy, and he played the one second "Mega Armageddon Death Pt 3" on his show, and he kept playing it, to his amusement. And then he asked Electo Hippies to do a session—they were the first of the UK hardcore bands to do one. Then, as you know, loads of other bands did.
NI: With all the reissues that came out over the last ~15 or so years, did you ever consider repressing the split?
Sned: A repress soon after we sold out of it would have helped Flat Earth immensely. Yes, there was a demand, but Electro Hippies didn't want to. I remember being annoyed when the Electro hippies side got reissued by Jeff and Bill Steer on their Necrosis Records via Earache a couple of years later. It cost more to buy than the split with only half of its content. But in hindsight, fair enough, y'know, it wasn't my call, and I didnt really like our side. That line up had ceased and we had new line up, new songs and we were onto the next thing.
It became quite rare/collectable over the years and got bootlegged about 10 years ago. The bootleggers were kind enough to send me some copies, which I made a point of selling at the original price of 3 quid!
In more recent times, a friend of mine from Liverpool (hi Agz!) had put the album up on YouTube as people do with hard to find records, and it's a personal favourite of his. It got taken down by the 'owner,' I believe Earache may somehow or other own the Electro Hippies side, who knows? That's a world I don't understand, anathema to the intentions of the original release.
The Generic side is available for streaming/download at the Flat Earth Records Bandcamp. All proceeds from download donations go to the 1in12 club. Solidarity.
"Cut Grass, Not Throats:" Electro Hippies live in late 1985 in Liverpool. Photos feature the original lineup which included second guitarist Phil. Jeff Walker with the tambourine here. Photos by Digger.
NI: Electro Hippies is largely known as Jeff Walker's band prior to Carcass. Were you a fan of any of the early Carcass stuff?
Sned: Not really, no. Their first gig with Sanjiv on vocals (who was a maniac from the Liverpool scene) was at Planet X (correct me if I'm wrong). It was a poor sound, I recall. I quite liked that second album, or at least the intro to it, but that's about as far as I got with Carcass. I preferred Smeg and the Heads "Om Song." I got on well with Jeff, as I said, I knew him a while before Electro Hippies, a funny fucker—good sense of humour.
NI: What was your reaction when bands like Napalm Death, Carcass, Bolt Thrower and others, which were comprised of many people who'd come from the DIY punk scene, started appearing in heavy metal magazines, on TV, and crossed over to more commercialized underground music?
Sned: A load of bollocks, not interested. Never got into Bolt Thrower. Napalm Death were fucking amazing back at the Mermaid in 1986, was a big fan and travelled to see them quite a bit round then, side one line up with added Jimmy—mind blowing, glad i was around for that. Only saw them once with Lee, Shane, Bill—at Planet X in Liverpool, with second line up Generic. Micky Harris showed me the trick of taping a coin to the bass drum skin to make more of a click sound in conjunction with a wooden beater! Then shredded my bass drum skin, total maniac.
Couldn't be arsed when it went all death metal. Weren't Carcass sponsored by Wrangler jeans at some point or something? Haha.
On a personal level, I was friends and got on well with Dig and Hammy from way back when. But yeah, it all just changed into bollocks at some point, and I carried on in the DIY punk scene, different worlds.
NI: Any final thoughts on the period? And is "Britcore" a bullshit term or was NME alright in covering hardcore?
Sned: All that music press stuff I found to be bullshit, but y'know maybe that's me being precious about a small and personable scene and my transition from anarcho punk through to the early political hardcore, time and place, and me being a bit older. Dorks jumping on the bandwagon and missing the point, happens throughout history—nothing to see here. That gig on the TV with Napalm and ENT was likely the end of it for me, and the way it was treated as a novelty bit of fun. Again, it's age perspective. I was mid-20s then and had been around and done quite a lot, if I was a teenager that gig would have likely blown me away!
The NME, etc. soon fucked off looking for the next thing and there was a lot of godawful rubbish in the '90s for them to go after, while the DIY hardcore punk scene carried on.
To hear the Generic side of the Electro Hippies split, as well as many other raging releases from the Flat Earth Records catalog, please visit Flat Earth Records online:
Photos by Jenny Plaits from Nottingham and Digger from Sunderland. Used with permission.
Electro Hippies/Generic split LP record photos from the collection of Sned.
All other records from the collection of Negative Insight staff.
