Far Out 40: The best of the Leeds art punk movement of the 1980s
“Being in Leeds in 1979, every single person I knew was in a band,” Sally Timms once recalled to the Chicago Tribune.
Timms, who remains a member of the Leeds-born but now Chicago-based band the Mekons, was part of a unique period in the north of England—not just one in which punk had changed the rules, but where a working class kid could still get an art school education fully funded by the state.
As a result, the late ‘70s and early ‘80s—just before those sorts of opportunities started drying up—have taken on a sort of halcyon quality in retrospect, as Professor Gavin Butt observed in his excellent 2022 book on this subject, No Machos or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk.
Butt had originally planned his book to be a tale of how the art schools at the University of Leeds and Leeds Polytechnic (now known as Leeds Beckett) had helped influence hundreds of artists and the creation of dozens of bands, including some very successful ones: Gang of Four, Soft Cell, Scritti Politti, Delta 5, and the Mekons among them. Instead, many of those surviving artists talked less about being inspired by their formal educations and more about being driven to push beyond the frustrations and limitations of the institutions around them. State support had created the opportunity, but the punks—some of whom were part of the faculty—built the narrative.
“Students turned to one another,” Butt writes, “And to others beyond the institution to fashion alternatives to the moribund condition of the avant-garde and to pull themselves out of the collective torpor of a stagnating post-1960s late capitalist culture.”
While “punk” is sort of the catch-all genre for a lot of this rebellious DIY music coming out of Leeds in the early Thatcher years, many of the bands that emerged from the scene broke off in their own very distinct directions, from the electro synth-pop of Soft Cell to the New Wave soul sound of Scritti Politti and alt-country adventures of the Mekons. The main thing they all had in common was flying by the seats of their pants in those formative years.
“It didn’t matter if you could play or not,” Sally Timms said. “You joined a band. When I did a record [1980’s Hangahar] with Pete Shelley [of the Buzzcocks]—40 minutes of people banging pots and pans and warbling—it seemed so easy to make a record. Just go in and do it, and a few months later you get the pressing from the plant.”
Far Out’s 40-song dive into the 1980s Leeds art punk movement includes various selections from the key bands featured in No Machos or Pop Stars, as well as some of the groups either on the fringes of that punk scene—like the Leeds goth pioneers Sisters of Mercy—or part of its second wave in the mid to late 1980s, including acts such as The Wedding Present, The Mission, Pale Saints, and yes, even Chumbawamba.
A 1980s Leeds art punk playlist:
Part I: The First Wave
- ‘Mind Your Own Business’ – Delta 5
- ‘English White Boy Engineer’ – The Three Johns
- ‘Never Been in a Riot’ – Mekons
- ‘Damaged Goods’ – Gang of Four
- ‘What?’ – Soft Cell
- ‘State of the Nation’ – Fad Gadget
- ‘Getting Nowhere Fast’ – Girls At Our Best!
- ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’ – Scritti Politti
- ‘Try’ – Delta 5
- ‘Teenage Nightingales to Wax’ – The Three Johns
- ‘Where Were You?’ – Mekons
- ‘Outside the Trains Don’t Run on Time’ – Gang of Four
- ‘A Man Could Get Lost’ – Soft Cell
- ‘Ricky’s Hand’ – Fad Gadget
- ‘Politics!’ – Girls At Our Best!
- ‘Asylums in Jerusalem’ – Scritti Politti
- ‘Oblivion’ – Mekons
- ‘I Love a Man in Uniform’ – Gang of Four
- ‘Tainted Love’ – Soft Cell
- ‘Perfect Way’ – Scritti Politti
Part II. The Wider 1980s Leeds Family
- ‘Walk Away’ – Sisters of Mercy
- ‘Talk About the Weather’ – Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
- ‘Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft’ – The Wedding Present
- ‘Only (A Prawn in Whitby)’ – Cud
- ‘Government Policy’ – The Expelled
- ‘Kiss’ – Age of Chance
- ‘Dutiful Servants & Political Masters’ – Chumbawamba
- ‘She Rides the Waves’ – Pale Saints
- ‘Past Not Forgotten’ – The Parachute Men
- ‘Snake Dance’ – The March Violets
- ‘Severina’ – The Mission
- ‘Lies’ – Bridewell Taxis
- ‘American Boys’ – The Rhythm Sisters
- ‘November Comes’ – The Hollow Men
- ‘Always There’ – Rose of Avalanche
- ‘Heaven’ – Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
- ‘British Colonialism & The BBC’ – Chumbawamba
- ‘Kennedy’ – The Wedding Present
- ‘Sight of You’ – Pale Saints
- ‘Ghosts of American Astronauts’ – Mekons
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