That which changes our way of seeing the streets is more important than what changes our way of seeing painting.

Guy Debord 1957.

Debord was a leading light in the Situationist International who lasted from 1957 to 1972. They were a much misunderstood movement. They had a great thing that used to appear on their publications. It Read...

No Copyright. Any of these texts may be freely reproduced, translated or adapted, even without mentioning the source.

Here's another nice photo taken by that nice Mr. Rudeforth.

I found some notes that I made in 1993 about the history of WKDN and with their help I will elaborate further.

1981/82

Played as a duo. Mark Fell and Paul Moller.

Mid 1982 we did a gig at the New York hotel in Hull. We played two sets of 30 mins each with The Luddites doing the same. For the first set I was on guitar and vocals with Mark playing violin, we had two friends with us - Yana and Tanya who played a radio each. For 10 mins of the second set I played Sax and Clarinet while Mark played the Drums then we swapped and Mark played the Trumpet while I played the Drums for the next 20 mins. We had a strobe light going continually for 30 mins. Yana and Tanya fought, whipped each other, pulled and cut hair, bit and wrestled each other very convincingly for the duration. Afterwards one of them (can't remember which) was upset because it had moved from being a 'pretend' fight into something that looked very real to me.

1982/83

Our friend Chris Hunter joined us playing bass. Chris had been in a band called Aphasia with John/Willy on guitar, I only saw them once, they did a great version of the Stones' Jumping Jack Flash. He's out there somewhere I hope, probably drunk, I don't have a clue how to find him. My notes say that we sat freezing in overcoats and occasionally gloves playing in a small room above my Dads' shop where we did a lot of our playing. We did one gig on 14.3.83 at a deserted Bridlington Spa, a massive place and I couldn't see a single member of the audience as we played. The best jazz thing we ever did was performed at this concert. We were allowed 17 minutes having an alarm clock onstage so we finished perfectly on time. Our friend Cheryl walked up towards the end and put her young daughter Gemma on the stage, she wandered about for a few minutes. Mark wore a gold lame tutu. I threw a chair offstage (we played sat down) at the end in disgust, I was like that in those days.

Johnny Tasker joined in about April playing percussion mainly on gas canisters, we also had a sheet of hardboard used as a wobble board just like Rolf. We also had a thing which was a length of tube on a trumpet mouthpiece that you blew into and twirled around your head. We recorded a video in late '83 and I had been up getting twatted beforehand, I demonstrated the twirly-thing to Grant Ardis before we started filming and promptly passed out! Everything we did was totally improvised so we used to tape as much as possible.

I was really surprised to find this tape, I thought all the early ones were gone. This is the earliest recording of WKDN (mid-1982) and the only one that exists of the original duo. I had an old f-hole guitar that was my Dads and Mark gets some almost double-bass-like sounds out of it as well as playing it with the violin bow. I am playing everything else on this including doing percussion on the table and gas fire. We were heavily into jazz and the more extreme varieties of it used to give us great delight. This is a good example of us playing at my flat. We never did any gigs as a duo. I can't remember the name of the stringed instrument that I am playing in the latter part, I can't even remember what it looked like. The "red thing" was a plastic wind instrument called a clarina. I split the tape into three tracks, the names of which are...

1. Where's The Red Thing?

2. You've Sat Comfy, We've Begun.

3. The Big Perhaps.

The line-up is...

Mark Fell - Guitar, Guitar with violin bow, Voice.

Paul Moller - Violin, Clarina, Clarinet, Saxophone, Stringed-Thing, Table Percussion, Vocals.

You can find it here...

http://www.archive.org/details/TheBigPerhaps

I went shopping when I was asleep.

The photographs of Hull are taken by Mr. Rudeforth.

Down With Imperialism are just about the only words of Mr. Rudeforths' that are audible on this live recording. It was recorded from behind the PA system and unfortunately the quality is not great. Later when I joined in on vocals I can just about be heard saying "My uncle Frederick was a good man with an axe". Of course I never had an uncle Frederick, I did have an uncle Frank though, he was my Grandads' brother and they lived next door to each other. Bob (my Grandad) was a cantankerous old git and would sometimes not speak to Frank for months on end even though they would be in their respective gardens a few feet away from each other for hours.
So, Down With Imperialism it is then.
This is the oldest surviving live tape from WKDN, it was our first gig as a five piece. Terry and I had flats very close by so we could get out of our trees in the comfort of our own home and go round the corner to play, it was a community benefit type thing and we played in the afternoon just after the children's entertainer who is heard right at the beginning.
Mark and I had been jamming with Terry for a few weeks and this concert marks his first live appearance with us. The tapes of the three of us were stolen many years ago, a very sad loss as they were very special. The improvisations were of a flowing structure that knocked us out at the time. A little of that is discernable through the murk of this tape.
This is also Mr. Rudeforths' first appearance with the group. I asked him to come along and recite some stuff, the only proviso being that he said What Katy Did Next at the beginning, which he duly did although I don't think it's audible. He moved on to radio, tapes and sound effects for the rest of his considerable stint with us.
Johnny Tasker was the first singer with the Luddites, I got to know him and invited him to join, he didn't want to sing and we didn't have any songs so since he was a non-musician he played the short-wave radio. He first started jamming with us playing a gas cannister from a portable gas heater but the novelty very soon wore off. Unfortunately Johnny died a few years ago.
We often used to chuck in a bit of Interstellar Overdrive by Pink Floyd just for jolly but on this occasion it was excruciating as my guitar was out of tune cos I'd been messing with it and detuning the E string so I abandoned it to shout shortly afterwards. We went over our allotted time limit and the tape ends as they turned the power off. That's me at the end saying - "The trouble with these sort of people nowadays is they never know when to stop, they never know...".

What Katy Did Next - Live at The Wellington Lane Community Centre in Hull - 3.9.83.

The line-up is...

Mr. Rudeforth - Voice.
Paul Moller - Guitar, voice.
Johnny Tasker - Short-Wave Radio.
Mark Fell - Bass.
Terry Parkinson - Drums.

You can find it here...

http://www.archive.org/details/WhatKatyDidNext-downWithImperialism

Enjoy!