Macc Lads: The most offensive punk band of all time?
You think of punk, and you think of the Sex Pistols, but it stretches back much further than that. For as long as a way of life exists, there will always be those who choose to defy it. From caves to council houses, farms to flats, the beginning of time to the end, rebellion will always find a way to manifest. In previous lives, this comes through war and revolution; in modern times, it exists in sound and art.
When punk came about in the 1970s, England was literally dreaming, dreaming of a better way of living and a society that stood up for everyone rather than a select few. The wealth gap continued to grow, strikes were happening around the country, and music became inaccessible; something had to change, which came in the form of the punk movement.
While Sex Pistols were one of the first punk bands to be commercially successful, they are by no means alone in the movement. People display anger and frustration in different ways. Some have healthy means of dealing with it, such as meditation and discussion; however, others find the rowdy nature of punk to be a much-needed release.
Music was no longer about the sweetness of sound or emotional connection; it acted as a sonic rage room. People took baseball bats to vases in the form of plectrums to strings, thrashed out their anger on instruments they hardly knew how to play, and put lyrics to the noise that came out, which tried to quantify the feeling of hopelessness and anger.
It wasn’t just the artists who found a release in the sound either; the public did, too. The gigs were used as places to dance, mosh and fight. And the fact that people higher up turned their noses up at the offensive nature of punk was an affirmation that the genre worked.
The issue with anger is the untameable nature of it. When many people open the lid on their rage and let it run free, it can be difficult to put that lid back on again. As such, there was a lot of punk music that got sucked into a black hole of aggression. One band that can attest to this was Macc Lads, who described themselves as the “Rudest, crudest, lewdest, drunkest band in Christendom.” This might actually be an understatement, as while it’s a difficult metric to measure, Macc Lads may well be the most offensive punk band on the planet.
Their music was noisy and politically incorrect as they spoke about drinking, sex and fighting; however, it wasn’t their music that got them banned from venues up and down the country; it was their gigs. The band unleashed their anger on stage, which was infectious, resulting in chaos for the band and the crowd. They destroyed venues in different cities and found themselves banned from a range of different places. They were also banned from ever entering the US as their music was deemed too violent.
One of their most notable gigs was in 1989, when they played the Hummingbird in Birmingham and caused thousands of pounds worth of damage. They pulled apart scaffolding, broke a toilet, and threw pots, pans, and ashtrays. They also played a gig in The Marquee Club on the same day as the Poll Tax Riots, and fans were caught in between the violence of the venue and the violence on the streets of London.
The release that punk provided for a lot of people was necessary; however, it also led to some horrendous moments during gigs. Macc Lads are an example of a band where the anger displayed in punk sometimes went too far.
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