An Anarchy of Demons is a 400+ page hardback volume detailing the author’s (Charlie Harper) life and journey both before and with the UK Subs. The cover is beautifully finished, and the narrative is interspersed with photos and notes from Charlie’s personal archives. The book takes us from the year of his birth, 1944, in the final parts of World War II to the present day. To be honest, I had no idea Charlie Harper was in his 30s when the UK Subs first formed as a pub rock act, before becoming the punk band that we are familiar with. A good 160 pages are spent detailing his childhood, and adult life pre-Subs.
I went into this expecting an enthralling read from the nice guy of the early wave of UK punk. Unfortunately, I found it to be a real chore to read. I’ll explain as honestly as I can (it’s me, innit? I’m nowt but honest). For some reason, in my head, I found that I was reading this in the voice of Wurzle Gummidge…
The main source of frustration is that the chapters seem to be made up of loosely related paragraphs that I can only surmise have been written separately, perhaps in complete isolation from each other, and then thrown together in at best, a non-linear manner. Either that or it’s completely at random. The effect is the same, as they often contradict each other. This often makes any attempt at extracting any sense from the material a borderline impenetrable task. I can only speculate that this is bad editing, and these things (there’s so many inconsistencies and areas of confusion) could’ve been straightened out with the author and properly re-drafted several times before letting this work within a hundred miles of a printing press.
I can’t really offer much by way of a synopsis here beyond the book being a bit of a mess. A mess punctuated by: losing his virginity at 9 years old (seems far-fetched); several heart attacks (poor lifestyle choices); heavy drinking (poor lifestyle choices); how many “birds” he’s shagged (I’m caught somewhere between disgust, disbelief and being morbidly fascinated); and at every possible moment saying stuff like “they was luverly gals, they was” and “she were a proper beauty; an English rose, she were, oi oi!”. At best it’s pointless lechery, at worst, it’s how I’d imagine the conversation going at a brickie’s stag do in any Wetherspoon’s of your choice, where you’d probably get a good glassing for “not joining in with the banter, mate” or being a right puff for not boorishly objectifying women.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no prude by any stretch of the imagination, but a good chunk of this book feels a bit disrespectful toward (or at the least commodifying) women. Is this a generational thing? Maybe. The guy is over 80, afterall… Having grown up in Barnsley, I’m as working class as they come, but I wouldn’t want to read this type of stuff even if it was put together with any measure of coherency. This is pretty much Club 18 – 30 for people with no teeth that bang on about having been “there at the time” and state at every given opportunity that “punk’s not dead” whilst being unreceptive to any concept of punk rock being a constantly evolving beast (Charlie has even included grumbles about people wearing shorts and baseball caps, whilst thinking nothing of describing army surplus clobber as the UK Subs uniform of choice). Indeed the mind boggles.
I don’t want to piss on anyone’s chips, particularly as I have it on good authority that Charlie Harper is a nice guy, but this is something of a brimful clogged toilet of a book. Maybe one of the aforementioned stag do attendees if wazzing into it singing a rousing rendition of “we ‘ope it’s chips, it’s chips! We ‘ope it’s chips, it’s chips!”. It’s harmless enough in a global sense, but I don’t see that it has much cultural or subcultural value in my opinion. No doubt avid readers of The Sun and drinkers of white cider everywhere will find something of merit here. Otherwise it’s lacklustre, long-winded and pointless braying about the good old days.
Soz.
Tony of Nurgle rating: 2/10
An Anarchy of Demons is available for preorder from Earth Island Books, as both a hardcover and softcover, and doubtless the merch table at the annual UK Subs reunion.
