Anti-Cimex Archive

Old news to some, perhaps: on the awesome Swedish Punk Fanzines blog, there is a post of the "Fanx—Live 83" cassette, released by Really Fast. (The site has done an excellent interview with Patrik from Really Fast as well; he was a source of info for some of my earliest writing about Swedish hardcore).

Over at the Victims of a Bombraid blog, our main man Masken has posted a review of a Skitslickers gig that originally appeared in the Swedish fanzine Blaskan. The gig was on January 30, 1982, at a place called Rockers. 

Tony Gunnarsson translated it for me, in his words a "rough and ready translation":

Rawpunk at Rockers

A few years ago, when I posted about the pre–Anti-Cimex bands Kloak, Bombhot, Avfall, and Bohman Brinner, one of the things I said was that no Bohman Brinner recordings or photos seemed to be extant. Yet Bohmann Brinner was the band that was closest to Anti-Cimex in the genealogy. Now, thanks to Nillen, the original singer of Anti-Cimex, who later went on to sing in DNA, we finally have recordings of Bohman Brinner available. They are remarkable, particularly because we can hear embryonic Anti-Cimex tuneage in them. Nillen posted three songs on Soundcloud: "Heroindöd," which became a Cimex song on the first EP, "Fattiga och Rika," and "Kyrkan Är en Bluff." There is also an attached photo of a flyer, which appears to date to the days of Bohman Brinner. It's got classic adolescent punky artwork. By the way, Gösta Bohman was a Swedish politician who came to prominence in the 1970s. "Brinner" means "burns."

Well, this is hilarious.

Tom of General Speech wrote with some fascinating findings, thanks to, uh, nutso googling skills.

In a 1997 alt.punk usenet posting (if you don't know what that means, congratulations), someone reported having met a member (Jimmy) of The Shitlickers at a Johnny Cash concert. Jimmy offered proverbial words—"we're getting the band back together"—and discussed a planned tour, as well as new recordings.

Needless to say, neither actually happened. But we can all imagine what it would've been like. Oh wait, most of you probably weren't born yet and/or were listening to Green Day, not Shitlickers, in 1997. But now you have Shitlickers tattoos. The rest of us know what usenet means. 

A previously unknown (to me, at least) video of Anti-Cimex has surfaced on YouTube. Check it out here. As videos have a tendency to disappear, get your views in now. Otherwise, we may end up with dead links, as in this earlier post.

The three songs on the video are "Game of the Arseholes"; "I Skuggan Av Ett Krig", originally on the "Really Fast" LP, the first in that compilation series; and "When the Innocent Die."

Here is the greatest flyer of all time, for what was the greatest gig of all time. Thanks to Tony, who reports: "This photo was taken by my friend Masken at Jonsson's house yesterday. This was Jonsson's first time seeing Skitslickers and of course he was asked to join the band shortly after." See also this post, which is by Masken.

One of the most memorable aspects of Anti-Cimex's oeuvre is the artwork for the 2nd and 3rd EPs. They are iconic. As a teenage punker in the 90s, long before I had heard the music, I knew the sleeves. I believe the first time I saw the artwork was in the old Havoc Records printed catalog of shirts and backpatches. It wasn't too long after that I discovered that R. Cobb, who made the artwork for the "Raped Ass" sleeve, was a well-known radical antiwar artist (and the artwork was not made for the sleeve--they reappropriated it!).

A buddy of mine just acquired a copy of "Raped Ass" pressed on clear vinyl, with the two-piece R. Cobb sleeve (see here). It includes an advert flyer I've never before seen. The flyer is for a recording called "Bootleg Live!" released on Hardcore Horror Rec. And the flyer actually looks a bit like a j-card. But I've never seen such a release.

Maximum Rocknroll has been posting some awesome stuff on their website lately to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the magazine. For example, you can download pdfs of some early issues, and there are reminiscences with people involved at very early stages of the magazine's history.

And then there's this.

Here's a great photo of three punks hanging out in the Haga neighborhood in Göteborg, circa 1983. Notice the poster hanging in the window.