Doors yet to open, we engage in a lucid exchange of conversation with a number of punkily-regaled floor-sitters. The gist of this confabulation enlightened us to the fact that the night's attraction, Flux Of Pink lndians, have yet to arrive and furthermore had failed to show completely for two previous engagements in this fair town.

Any attempts to establish a telephone linkage with the Fluxed ones for the past week had proved futile. Now, in short, they weren't expecting us and we were expecting them not to show. Fearing the worst, we retired to the most modest of billets for a prolonged and painful session of lip biting.

A return to the hostelry was happily more fruitful. A doorman gleefully informs us of the artistes’ arrival. Minutes later my grubby palm is shaking the twanging hand of Flux bass Person Derek. I humbly beg for an interview. The man hesitates, then utters:

“We don't want an interview like the usual ones in Sounds. None of this 'Derek said', 'Colin said' stuff. We’d like to sit and chat and then you can go away and do what you want to do. By that time you should have an inkling of an idea of what we're about... or at least be fairly confused.”

Well, I'm easy and always open to confusion. What follows is a collection of unattributed quotes although Derek and Colin (the singer) did most of the talking, two inter-group arguments were candidly captured without guidance by my cunning cassette machine, plus some of my usual stunning insights into the chaotic minds of youthful popsters. Hold tight...

The Flux line-up are scattered nationwide. Mark their homes on a map and you'll get a chain of dots spreading from the London suburbs to far-flung Wigan. Only Derek and Colin remain from The Epileptics, an early Bishop Stortford punk outfit.

“The Epileptics were just four local people. When we started playing round London we met people from there and later got a London-based drummer and two London guitarists.

“Now we play all over, we meet people everywhere, there's no local people who could be in our group. We all live so far apart we don't often get a chance to rehearse, which is why we only have a half-hour set but we do have a band where everybody is into what everybody else is doing. We don't all have the same opinions but reach a compromise.”

Recently fallen in with the Pink tribe is Bambi, the drummer discharged from Discharge, who maintains a deceptively moronic and near-silent vigil by the table over which we are poised.

The Epileptics began sharing gigs with the then relatively unknown Crass in August 1978. This mutual assistance led to the release, earlier this year, of the Crass-labelled ep 'Neu Smell’, an immediate alternative chartbuster, having so far moved in the region of ten thousand copies.

“Crass asked us to do a single or an album when we were still the Epileptics, back in September 1979. The first Epileptics single came out on local Stortbeat label with whom we had a two year contract and a letter saying were free to do what we wanted to with Crass.

“The single went very well, the first local record to get anywhere and Stortbeat thought they were onto a good thing. It took two years to sort out the legal bits and in the end, Stortbeat went bankrupt and used us to pay off their debt to Spartan (a distribution company). We got our contract back then.”

The 'Pig' side of 'Neu Smell' begins and ends with an anti- war poem. In the middle comes 'Tube Disasters'. Exploding with a ferociously uncouth twin-pronged axe-attack and blessed with a chorus running:

‘I love tube disasters/I wanna marry a tube disaster/I wanna another one like the last one/cos I live for tube disasters/yeah!’

Aren't these couplings a trifle tasteless (to say the least) and offensive?

“It’s a provocative lyric. The meaning isn't conveyed simply by the song. If you buy the record and read the sleeve then you’ll understand what it's about. It's just a different way of getting a message across. I should think that anybody who’s got the single will know what we’re about’.

INTER-GROUP ARGUMENT ONE

Colin and a post-Epileptics member discuss an early Epileptics record. “That's a piss take of Nazism and Socialism.”

“But if I'd bought the record and not known anything about the group I would’ve been in two minds about what is was about and probably thought they're a Nazi band.”

"If you listen to the lyrics you can tell its not Nazi. It just mentions ‘wogs’.”

“But I can't hear all the lyrics.”

Which spotlights the dilemma of ambivalent content. While the liner notes do qualify the lyrics of 'Tube Disasters' with a discourse on the way the media behaves when covering events of the corpse-and-blood-aplenty ilk, it’s not difficult to imagine some bozos revelling in the ore-imagery of the song.

Turn the disc to reveal 'Sick Butchers’. The introductory' plod of the bass and drums not forewarning the listener of the most headache-inducing, guitar sound ever committed to vinyl.

The first verse proceeds:

‘I used to graze in a field/I could see and hear the world around me/See and fear man around me/Had a virgin skin/But now sold in supermarkets/Now studded blankets.'

The fold-out cover depicts several slaughterhouse scenes and the message is an admirable one but why wrap it up in such an irritating sound.

“Well, it's an irritating subject isn't it? You can't really do a lovely Abba-type song about three billion animals being slaughtered each year can you? It is a weird sound but we get about twenty letters a week and a lot of people say they’ve become vegetarians.”

Plans are afoot for the next outbreak of Flux wax. This will be a product of their own new, loosely Crass-styled label, Spider Leg:

“We're working on a twelve-inch ep with about eight songs to be put out for about £1.75. Our cash flow problem is so severe we really need to record a record and have it out the same afternoon to get the money back.

"We thought about calling the label after the group, as Crass do, but decided this wasn't really fair. It is run along the same lines as Crass though. We provide the facilities and are able to get the distribution.

“The first release is a six-track ep by the Subhumans in an excellent gate-fold sleeve. We can get advance orders of a thousand copies on the strength of the Flux name."

A rapid run down of project costs reveals a recording studio making the initial outlay with returns split three ways, between studio, Flux and Subhumans.

“It’s hoped that the Spider Leg venture will inject some money (to live on) into the poorly-filled Flux piggy bank. Despite the success of 'Neu Smell' the combo are loathe to charge the regular, what they consider excessive, gigging fee. Tonight's bash sees them performing after a trio of local bands for the well-affordable entry askance of one pound.

"We were going to tour but some of the group aren't very happy about doing gigs and charging three quid on the door. We tried to organise a Lyceum gig with another band for two quid but they weren't very pleased with the idea.

“A lot of groups go around singing about anarchy and peace and all that so it's a bit disillusioning when you offer to put on a cheap gig and they don't want to play it.”

INTER-GROUP ARGUMENT TWO

Colin (who has regular gainful employment) discusses finance with the dole-bound Bambi:

“It's alright for you because you're working. It doesn't matter if we make a loss you've got work... money to cover yourself.”

“But I don't want to play for two quid. Everyone always complains to me. Charge a quid, make a loss. Then it’s me that gets it.”

A nitty-gritty summary of the economic quandary faced when offering a non-profit alternative while attempting to maintain life support.

“People were taking the mickey out of Beki Bondage because she had to work. Most just don't realise you have to go to work to keep a group together. I'd like to know what all the writers of those letters would do in the same position.”

It transpires that Flux were approached to support Vice Squad, Anti-Pasti and The Exploited and the recent Lyceum gig. The offer was refused.

“We didn't play because we got an EP out about not hurting animals so how on earth could we support a group (the Exploited) who endorse violence against people.

''All those people in the audience had Crass written on their backs yet they started cheering when the Exploited started slagging them off. The singer said ‘this one’s for the Irish hunger strikers, I think they're a bunch of tossers and I hope the maggots get them’. I can't believe everyone at the Lyceum agreed with that view, be it right or wrong, but they were clapping and cheering.

“It was really sick. Those people must be into punk very shallowly. Sing 'Kill a Mod’ and get to the top...”