Better Badges & Dread Broadcasting Corporation North Kensington Library 108 Ladbroke Grove Saturday February 24 3-5 pm 2018

Colville Community History Project [issue 23] February 2018 It’s Your Colville www.colvillecom.com contact tomvague@gmail.com Getting it straight in Notting Hill Gate

Better Badges and the Dread Broadcasting Corporation: Image as Virus/Rebel Radio community media— mild apprehension at the control 1976-82 presented by Tom Vague with Michael Williams, Dave Hucker, the spirit of Lepke Rebel and Joly MacFie live and direct from New York City via Skype Saturday February 24 3-5.00pm North Kensington Library 108 Ladbroke Grove London W11 1PZ Colville Community History talk slideshow Tune in if you're ranking and book your free place for this event via Eventbrite or any of the K&C libraries

Colville Community History Project 2018 1918-58-68-78 local history talks slideshows etc City Living Local Life Ghosts of Ladbroke Grove Uptown Top Ranking by Althea and Donna number 1 40th anniversary commemorative issue It’s a London psychogeography thing Vague Anarcho Geography Unlimited Enterprises 90

In the late 70s and early 80s Joly MacFie above and Michael Williams ran Better Badges at 286 Portobello Road. As well as catering for the badge-wearing needs of the punk and reggae scene, they printed fanzines including the first issue of i-D and the Dread Broadcasting Corporation pirate radio station was established on the premises by Lepke Rebel.

Better Badges Adam and the Ants (pre-pop success) Antmania set 1979 advert in Vague 5

Michael Williams recalls his part in Better Badges, the badge and fanzine emporium at 286 Portobello Road and the Dread Broadcasting Corporation In the hot Summer of 1976 I was house-sitting Eric Idle’s house in St John's Wood, quite a place to laze in the summer. Up rocked Joly with his bicycle and hand badge press, having toured the free festivals making badges and hanging. Afternoons were spent with him cutting up comics to find images to press into badges. He’d cycle off and sell to head shops and stalls or anywhere, gener-ating funds for evening entertainment. So I headed off to work in Norway for a few months. Upon my return he called me and asked if I could fix a window, so I bodged glazed a window in a lock up garage in St Stephen’s Mews W2 that would become Better Badges GHQ. Following helping to shelve out the place I started to help out, first task was to work 5 nights at the Roundhouse where the Stranglers had a 5 night run. Joly had already done some punk gigs but this was the start of a regular pitch, the hippy incense and Rizla sales guy was booted out. The pitch was stage side between the ladies and the gents, so there was always someone waiting for their partner, ideal casual consumers. Sundays we’d go and sell, badges displayed on the wall, buckets on the floor for the 20p coins, etc. Many varied bands played the gigs, always a mix and the promoter Straight Music got a cut and used the badge stand for market research. Better Badges started a mail order service taking a regular NME ad with a chart of best sellers, which I think was dominated by the Clash’s ‘Police’ badge. Wholesale was available so the garage had a steady flow of shop/stall owners. Production jobs were undertaken too, so bands, record labels, protest groups or any group requir-ing badges also rocked up. Print was undertaken in the west end and Joly invested in a process camera so graphics could be produced in this garage space too. Come in Megan Green who as a freelancer laid out designs and also worked on her own design jobs (more about her later). The increasing indie music scene around Portobello knew of and used Better Badges and many out of town bands would visit at the same time as going to Faulty, Rough Trade, etc, badges were an im-portant part of releasing music, in many cases the badge was more interesting than the music IMHO. Soon space was acquired at 286 Portobello Road, the home of many underground enterprises previously and the mailing address for the mail order company too. So operations moved there with a basement wholesale area, camera room, office and living space for Joly. Printing equipment was purchased and installed in the basement allowing for in house printing. Now there was quite a firm, designers, stall vendors and soon the age of fanzines and collators. The fanzine creators spread the word and writers rocked up with their publications that

Better Badges: Image as Virus

publications that were duly litho printed. They could have them printed, collect them and truck down to Rough Trade, who had a distribution service. Badges were still the core business but this diversifica-tion made the whole operation more interesting. Better Badges was close to a company of T-shirt printers, 5th Column. We were invariably working on the same project separately but in unison, most notably for the Clash and the Jam. So artwork would be given to 5th Column with instructions for it to be forwarded on and the merchan-dise produced. This was before many bands had large merchandising operations. Protest groups too utilised Better Badges, most notably the Animal Liberation Front who produced ongoing sets of well designed badges for this campaign or that, eg Save the Whale. Another place was opened in Notting Hill Gate above the Ryman’s store called Hard Lines, Geoff Pitt's mail ordered T-shirts (5th Column) and also the Rocking Russian designs. I ran a tape duplicating service there too, we had cassette decks set up to edit and equalise. Trying to avoid boot-legging, we duplicated tapes for bands who would come with a tape from a rehearsal or demos to present to labels, as was the way in those days. Fanzines footnote: The Portobello Road underground press tradition continued from the 60s into the 80s at number 286, across the road from the Frendz/Friends paper office at 305, where Better Badges printed and distributed punk fanzines. The premises had been the Bell Press, who printed posters in the 60s for Count Suckle’s Cue Club in Paddington and hosted the office of Van Der Graf Generator. 286 also acted as the mailing address of the Dread Broadcasting Corporation, JB (of the Portobello Film Festival)’s Fuck Off Records, etc. Today 286 continues in a similar vein as the Portobello Artshop stationers/photocopiers and maintains its link with the reggae scene. Joly MacFie was an International Times connected Pink Fairies roadie, also associated with Syd Barrett, Hawkwind, the Pretty Things and Suzi Quatro, who reputedly hadn’t had a haircut since 1968. As a sideline Better Badges printed fanzines, which were distributed via the Rough Trade Fanzine Co-op network; thus encouraging and orchestrating the late 70s post-punk fanzine boom inspired by Sniffin’ Glue and Ripped & Torn. Simon Dwyer, the editor of Rapid Eye Movement fanzine, wrote in Sounds of how ‘dozens of Rough Trade’s mail-order generation dumped passive consum-erism and rattled off reams of rubbish in a search for identity, purpose and fun. Every day another young editor staggers proudly under the Westway with a new bag of radical reading matter, making the 3 minute walk from one bright spark of the current explosion, Better Badges, to the other, Rough Trade.’ Like everything else on the market, some fanzines, like Ripped & Torn/Kill Your Pet Puppy, Panache, Poser, Tales of Dayglo and Toxic Graffity, had their 15 minutes then disappeared, while others, like Jamming, In The City, i-D and Viz, became proper magazines/comics and, in the case of the last two, survived the old mainstream music press.

In 1980 I was out of work, having left Better Badges, and for the previous two years I had lodged in Latimer Road with Nightdoctor Charles Wood. DJ Lepke who we hung with was also out of work having been let go by Honest Jon's. Joly at Better Badges had got hold of an AM transmitter from Luke (Luke the Duke), who would later join DBC as an R'n'B DJ, and gave it to Lepke. Being one for tinkering with electronics, Lepke took the transmitter and set it up in his garden in Neasden. An AM transmitter requires a long ariel and he set one up in his garden. Two friends, DJ Chuckie and Dr Watt were drafted in, all making radio shows on tape that along with Lepke's would be transmitted on a Sunday afternoon after the BBC Radio London Rice and Peas reggae show. Down in Latimer Road, I’d get a call asking if it was tuned in, sadly not was the usual reply. But word got out about these transmissions and people wanted to hear them, so we had a bright Idea—I got the open reel tapes and went to a place in King's Cross where they duplicated, getting 20 or so tapes at a time; started to sell these off on a regular basis then the DTI struck, raiding Lepke one Sunday and charging him and Dr Watt over the affair. By this time I was rolling on a daily basis with Dr Watt and Lepke and my lodgings at Latimer Road became the DBC headquarters.

We decided to go FM and a new rig was ordered. Sadly the guy doing it ripped us off but as luck had it we met the person who built our transmitter. Prior to that we used a community rig. The deal being you picked it up in Kilburn, set it up wherever and returned it. So this we did and we were rolling again, only finding sites to transmit was a job. Now a myth that needs to be corrected—it was this rig that Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon used to transmit their Radio Clash show. People think they played on DBC, they supported us but this is what they did. Joe and Paul got their hands dirty, the show they produced was superb and even had a DBC advert done by Mikey Dread. So, now up and running, we established a weekly programme of 6 hours plus. Lepke’s vision was for a radio station aimed to the black community but all inclusive. Unlike many pirates of the day, it was not to be a vehicle for self promotion by the DJs. Lepke, Dr Watt and I toured the city throughout the week letting people know about the station, soliciting advertising and gather-ing community information. The DJs would produce their shows but if relevant items were needed within them then they’d be advised. The shows were pre-recorded and standards set high. Dr Watt had his studio, Lepke

Acklam before the flyover

In Shepherd’s Bush. What was good about Edward Woods was that there were 3 blocks to choose from, so if one roof was locked we could go to the next. Lepke’s aunt also lived in one block and she would allow us to hang with her, eat and drink too. We then found another place to hang and the person there became a DJ too. Dr Watt had a DJ pal Papa C, he lived in the estate in a low-rise so we could set up and go up on the hour to change the tape. Papa C’s wife was a diamond too, she fried fish for us. We took beers and drinks for her or she would have a girl friend round babysitting and go out and rave, win, win. The T-shirt printers left their rented place in Kilburn and gave us the keys as they left, so we moved in. The landlord never made contact so we had the space for a couple of years rent free. In one room we built a studio, now DJs had a place to go and record, those with home studios still used theirs. It was noticed that some stations were on 24/7 and we heard rumours of a legal loophole. It transpired that if a transmitter was set up with docu-mentation of ownership the DTI couldn’t remove it and had to go through the courts to seize it. We experi-mented with using a microwave link to link to our site in Shepherd's Bush; it worked but we felt insecure, then a rooftop in Notting Hill Gate was found and that was where we placed the rig. The link was set up and we were on until one fateful night. On June 2 1984 the South African leader Botha met Thatcher in the UK. DBC was apolitical but this was something that couldn’t be let go by unnoticed. Ms P read the leader from the Guardian of that day and a few minutes later the signal died. The police ran across the roofs and seized the transmitter causing a lot of damage. The irony was the roof was of a house owned by a lead-ing Tory MP’s cousin. That for me was the end of the DBC station. Lepke carried on selling tapes from stalls and doing radio with other operations. But my analogy is that of the Beatles, McCartney carried on as Wings, still a Beatle but not The Beatles.

too and Ms P had hers, those without recording facilities could use these. The link with Better Badges was not only the transmitter Joly donated and myself but designer Megan Green. The iconic T-shirt/station design was her creation. I had collected some graphic items, most notably the dread head. The original was a French record label design (Jah Live). She turned it around, changed the locks and stuck the spliff in. I had named the station Dread Broad-casting Corp as a parody of the BBC so it became Rebel Radio—Dread Broadcasting Corp. We marketed these shirts and other items, also using 286 Portobello Road as the mailing address, note too the shirt was printed by 5th Column, this was the age of cooperation between people with similar interests. So a transmitting site was found that was perfect —The Edward Woods Estate

DBC aerial being erected by Lepke Rebel and Michael Williams, Edward Woods estate, Latimer Road/Shepherd’s Bush photo by Leon Morris

Acklam Hall—Subterania

Better Badges fanzine supplement featuring Vague 5, 7 and 8 Adam and the Ants issues 1980

Colville Community History Project 2018 1918-58-68-78 Vague Anarcho Geography Unlimited Enterprises 90 Better Badges and the Dread Broadcasting Corporation history talk slideshow newsletter # 23 February 24 2018 Uptown Top Ranking by Althea and Donna number 1 40th anniversary commemorative issue. Mild apprehension at the control 1976-82 with Michael Williams, Dave Hucker, the spirit of Lepke Rebel, Joly MacFie live and direct from NYC and Tom Vague at North Kensington Library 108 Ladbroke Grove London W11 1PZ 3-5pm + Elgin after party