Anti-Social: “The world’s most dangerous rock group”
Among the select singles that filled the late BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel’s famed record box stood one of the rarest 7”s ever released amid the punk wilderness.
For years, the band behind 1977’s ‘Traffic Lights’ stood as little more than a Birmingham legend. Supposedly, a punk group dubbing themselves “The world’s most dangerous rock group,” Anti-Social, garnered an infamous reputation across the live music circuit for performing shows filled with blood, shit, and most notoriously, offering over £15,000 to anyone brave enough to partake in an on-stage execution by guillotine. Such transgressive theatre didn’t deter NME journalist Paul Morely from offering some positive words on their sole single, calling it an “archaic rock song sneered with incongruous, but violently necessary contempt.”
Any other details, however, were hard to come by until Detour Records honcho Dizzy Holmes stepped up to the task of rigorously piecing together the story after meticulous local paper archive research and untold levels of phone calls across the Shard End area of the band’s base of operations. Eventually, the Anti-Social story was uncovered for a 2007 Record Collector investigation.
In 1974, a young bass player named Matthew Smith jammed in some local bands before moving on to Maniac. The new group was comprised of much older characters than the 18-year-old Smith, including frontman and guitarist Bob Allcock. It turned out that Allocock was a bit of a local music veteran, being an old classmate of Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler and having opened for Iron Maiden in his former band Daisy Maisy more than once.
But punk was in the air. Soon enough, Maniac’s repertoire shifted from The Beatles and The Who covers to Sex Pistols and The Clash, prompting a name change to Anti-Social and an earnest deep dive into the more belligerent sounds of the UK underground rock scene.
It’s this point in late 1976 that Anti-Social began keenly whipping up their sordid legend. Donning a paper boiler suit during a show at Birmingham’s Barbarella’s venue, Allcock tore a hole through his backside, squatted on stage and theatrically pushed out a stool before smearing over his chest and running into the gagging audience. They got the reaction they wanted, deploying a half-eaten burger covered in brown sauce to imitate the bowel movement, but it didn’t stop one member of the audience from allegedly ripping all her clothes off, dancing on stage, and likewise rubbing the fake shit all over her breasts. Whether she was in on the act is unclear.
After such shenanigans in the West Midlands punk fringes, Anti-Social cut their debut single at Birmingham’s Zella Recording Studios in the Edgbaston area after Smith had left due to the controversy taking its toll, and with a rejigged lineup pulling in Lucy Nation on guitar, the ‘Traffic Lights’ debut was followed by their most ghastly stunt yet.
The suicide shtick had been performed previously, Allcock often feigning his own stabbing or, on occasion, disembowelment, Nation chucking animal guts onto the stage in the Grand Guignol spectacle. Eyeing up a chance at some marketing horror, manager Bob Green devised a “genuine offer – no hoax” advertisement of a hefty cash prize for whoever fancied sticking their neck in a guillotine and letting the heavy blade do its job. While distasteful, it was a sick joke that the Department of Public Prosecutions failed to see the funny side of, promptly arresting the entire band.
Nation scarpered, Allcock soldiered on despite equipment theft and the loss of their second single demo – a rendition of Rolf Harris’ ‘Sun Arise’, because of course – and one final gig triggered another arrest due to a drum solo on a gig goer’s head. Decamping to Wales, Allcock formed another band with his daughter called Pik-C, and mooted on a possible Mk II resurrection of his Anti-Social project over the years.
Allcock and Nation’s real names were Rob and Gabrielle Fern, a married couple living in a council flat in Shard End. Rob helped raise Gabrielle’s son as a stepfather, being the future Godflesh frontman and early Napalm Death member Justin Broadrick, who likewise found his way into Peel’s musical affections with the DJ’s routine Peel Sessions and championing of his records.
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