Six Inch Killaz: Shoot to Kill #2

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• Apocrypha

Part 2: Destroy your way of life

Believe it or not, as I said before, drag and trannies had been modish, almost trendy in the few years previous to the Killaz formation in 1994. This was kinda worrying to us 'cos the last thing we wanted to be seen as was some sort of bandwagon jumping novelty freakshow. Luckily we avoided the heyday of the drag superclubs like Kinky Gerlinky in the Empire Leicester Square. By the time we hit the streets it was subsiding back into being a slightly seamy subculture again.

The other thing that was happening, of course, was the Internet. It was beginning to spread like a rash across the country by 1995. Almost impossible now to imagine a world without it isn't it? But in early 1995, hardly anyone in the UK had ever received an email, let alone launched a web browser. it's as mindboggling as the fact that few people had mobile phones back then. Remember having to look for a working payphone? Wow.

(And the other other thing that was happening was Britpop. More about that later.)

Anyway, I was one of the early adopters, a first jobber at one of London's first web and online agencies. It was a mad time, a bit like the wild west, with crazy schemes being launched left right and centre and disappearing as quickly.

One such crazy scheme we were working on was Planet Patrol, a very before-its-time online social networking system aimed at the Gay, Lesbian, Bi and Transgendered community. I was a junior designer on it, as well as having fun moderating its Transgender boards. With consumer brands chasing the incredibly affluent "pink pound" it seemed natural that this service was being funded by the booze giant Allied Domecq.

So late one night, I was talking to Dave Cook, Planet Patrol's lovely editor, while we were struggling to get the final version live, and he mentioned that he was looking for an act for the launch party. When I described the Killaz, his eyes lit up.

Now if I'd been him, knowing that the CEO of Allied Domecq plc and a lot of other grandees would be in attendance, I would probably have wanted to hear us rehearse or at the very least asked for a demo, but bless him, he clapped his hands together and immediately asked us to play. Think about it. Five volatile trannies (at least one of them probably completely insane), an enclosed space, rock and roll, and an almost endless supply of free booze courtesy of one of the world's largest drinks groups...

What could possibly go wrong?

What it does highlight is people's continuing willingness to book us unheard. It's because people were always mistakenly expecting something neutered, ironic, safe and glam. Not the horror, the horror. It's funny. They never fucking learned.

Kick it till it breaks

By this time, I'd written my first song for the Killaz. It wasn't one of my finer moments, a rather limp rip off of Here Comes The Summer by The Undertones called Go Go Go Go Girl. It really was as bad as it sounds and we dropped it pretty quickly. But it was good to have cracked one off and I later wrote several songs that I'm still proud of today.

Songwriting in the Killaz is the part I felt we were pretty good at right from the start. Back then of course, we all thought we were pretty good at everything; we also had a lot of (for us) energy at the beginning which made it all seem forward moving and exciting.

But looking back, like I say, it's the writing that remains particularly positive for me.

We broke into a few different writing groups. Mona would write a lot of songs by herself. They were pretty wonderful. Luis also pretty much exclusively wrote by himself.

Holly would contribute as well, adding verses and chopping things around, though she was the least active at writing among us. And of course there was the odd song that we'd thrash out as a band, but this tended to be rare.

I wrote whole songs by myself too, but to this day I generally prefer to work with a lyricist, and I found that Jasmine was pretty constantly turning out sheets and sheets of A4 with snippets of lyrics and poems and ramblings. It was all pretty raw, but she definitely had a great knack for a turn of phrase and some really good imagery.

Mona and I would divvy Jasmine's words up and go and hone them and fit them to music. I really enjoyed that process of taking her raw material and making it work, and then bringing it back to the next practice and trying it out. It's the opposite of how I wrote for subsequent band, Electric Shocks, where I'd work out the music for a song, including some idea of a melody, then singer Dan would go away and write lyrics to fit in. It works that way but it feels less involving for me.

Some of the songs I later wrote with Jasmine remain my favourite of all my compositions, including Superstar which the Shocks later covered and She Calls Angels, a late song from '98 which never made it past a rough demo with just me singing and playing guitar. I'll be presenting them both in a future part of this series.

In this early, creative phase, Mona was coming up with gem after gem. I think she wrote (in my and many others' opinion) the Killaz' best song (musically and lyrically) around this time. This was P.I.G.

P.I.G. was inspired by the Andy Warhol / Paul Morrissey film Women In Revolt, which features three disenchanted women (played by Factory drag queens Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis) who join a militant feminist organisation called PIGS (Politically Involved Girls).

It's the perfect Killaz song in a nutshell, short, noisy, witty, relentless and catchy, with a Warhol / Factory reference and an Angry Brigade, situationist attitude.

Mona's lyrics are fantastic, with a sloganeering call / response style which was ideal for Holly and Jasmine's delivery (Jasmine added the third verse because she thought it was too short):

We're the girls from P.I.G.
We're making our own history
P.I.G. is here for you
We're gonna show you what to do

Into the streets of London Town
Blow it up or burn it down
Kick it
Till it breaks

We're the girls from P.I.G.
Ending the century
(Burn baby burn baby burn YEAH!)
P.I.G. is here for you
We're gonna show you what to do
(Burn baby burn baby burn YEAH!)

Into the streets of London Town
Blow it up or burn it down
Kick it
Till it breaks

Politically Involved Girls
Politically Involved Girls

Baader-Meinhoff had their fun,
Patty Hearst load up your gun
(Gotta burn baby burn baby burn YEAH!)
Come and kill some time with me
In your town in your city
(Gotta burn baby burn baby burn YEAH!)

Into the streets of London Town
Blow it up or burn it down
Kick it
Till it breaks

Politically Involved Girls
Politically Involved Girls

Cock out

So, there we were rehearsed up with a short set of great songs for the evening of the Planet Patrol gig. It was to take place at Cyberia on Whitfield Street, which was Britain's first Internet Café.

I think, looking back, that it was a fairly momentous time for me. It had been years since I'd last played live, and never to such a big and guaranteed audience. Also it was the first time I'd performed dressed in public as well.

But funnily enough I wasn't nervous. I felt tingly and excited but not nervous. I guess I'm not the type to get nerves. Other band members I've played with did and do (and it can be horrible for them - it can result in anything from an attack of the ashen shakes, to needing repeatedly to have a shit), but I'm lucky that I haven't ever had the problem as I absolutely love performing live.

Ahh, nerves. I guess we all deal with it in different ways. Jasmine of course got absolutely slaughtered on the free booze. Holly's friend Dolly (aka Pearl who took most of these shots) almost got chucked out for trying to nick bottles of spirits from the free bars. Holly herself was pretty good natured throughout, as was Mona.

But Luis of course stole the show again. We'd successfully managed to talk him out of a repeat performance of the dogfood and ketchup throwing; I guess he compensated by getting coked off his head (his very sweet middle aged sugar daddy Manou always had a supply stashed on his person) and spending most of the evening stripped to the chest, showing off, Iggy-like, a brand new series of razor cuts all over his skinny torso. He also got his cock out during the show and was so impatient to play that he cut off host Dave Cook's launch speech half way through with a volley of swearing so we could get on.

Luis says:

At the Cyberia gig, I just settled for throwing some of the free doughnuts at the rotating ceiling fans. One tiny correction - my partner of the time's name was actually Pussy Minou, okay? Glad to have cleared that one up.

Luckily the PR shots with the Allied Domecq bigwig (where I'm almost sure Jasmine got on his lap) were done before we'd played or had too much to drink. And I think he'd been safely marshalled out of the building before we were allowed on.

After a certain point in the evening, I can't remember a thing. A good time was had by all, I'm sure.

was-Minou says:

Please keep it coming Miss K, it's wonderful, memories are oozing up, as I sit here in the rubber room at the Mrs Shufflewick Home for Elderly Drugettes. Thanks for the adjectival overkill but aren't all sugar-daddies sweet and middle-aged? And sulphate fuelled Luis's iggy moments, as it fuelled iggy's iggy moments; you seem not to remember, but Luis could metabolise it.

I am looking forward to your memory of the H2O gig; I remember 'the horror' having the form of Luis chasing the audience with a microphone stand, guitar and chair then hitting him over the head; I looked on in wonderment, dressed as a baby circus elephant.

& Luis, (hello dear Luis, if you are here checking, as I am, for the next instalment) please, now was-Minou, I was just-Minou. Pussy-Minou, like sweet sugar daddy, is solipsism. Manou, Miss K, though not as I spelt it, seems cruel but fair...

Miss K's sleb factoid:

At the time of the Planet Patrol gig, I'd been in email conversation with none other than the wonderful actor and writer Stephen Fry the week before - we'd started corresponding as I had, like some huge busybody, emailed him to point out a broken link on his website! - and he had promised to come down and support the evening, but mailed me earlier in the day to apologise for missing it due to a 'double booking'. Pah! I'd really been looking forward to meeting him.

Mona says:

Wow - remember the Planet Patrol theme song? It seems like we worked hard for that gig. My best memory of it was that Holly & Jasmine couldn't believe the drinks were really all free all night, so they collected a secret stash in the corner that were never touched. I think I stayed sober, worried about my guitar. Luis had good hair.

Miss K says:

My friend Clint was filming the event, Andy Warhol-style, on my beloved Canon 815E Super-8 film camera. He got burgled a couple of days later and the camera was nicked. I was furious about the camera at the time, but now I'm more curious as to what the film would have been like. The exposed cartridges were nicked with the camera so were never developed.

We want to shag Oasis, then we want to kill Oasis

Things started to happen quite quick after that.

We'd been practicing and writing a lot more and we even managed to record a few tracks (Teenage Whores, P.I.G., Shoot To Kill, Wonderful, Peppermint Cat, Trashola, Too Bad) in Camberwell that summer on a 4-track cassette portastudio owned by our friend Chrissie from the band Valentine Jeep.

I still remember going to a party at Mona and Charlotte's in Stratford the day after we'd done the recording. We were feeling pretty good about it, and we put it on the stereo. I recall being puzzled by the rather embarrassed reaction of most of the listeners. We didn't play all the tracks on the tape...

Around that time, we also made the first of our television appearances. One of the people who'd been doing a summer job at my work was now a director for a late night local "subculture" programme on ITV called Shift and he wanted to do a segment about us.

Almost simultaneously, we were offered our first mainstream gig, in a pub venue called The Swan, in Fulham. We agreed that that night would be the best time for them to film the piece. There would be an interview and some clips from the show.

Mona says:

I enjoyed doing the flyers. I kept big scrapbooks at the time so was never short of images.

Miss K says:

I was in awe of your amazing flyers. I'll probably do a post in this serial that focuses on just them - they were so good. With the greatest of respect to Luis, whose initial vision the band was, I think your flyers far outstripped his in terms of summing up the ethos of the band. I remember being intensely jealous of your wonderful scrapbooks as well. You bitch.

In the event, as would often happen, I arrived very late due to work and missed the soundcheck and the interview. The four of them did the interview though and it was great, with Luis a twitchy mess on one side and Mona, Holly and Jasmine exuding a sexy and dangerous charm. Holly fixing the camera with an evil stare and declaring "We want to shag Oasis. Then we want to kill Oasis." when asked about the top band of the day was a great moment.

I did shoot a short interview myself while getting dressed in the cellar, but it was so embarrassing and mannered that I'm glad none of it survives.

When we got onstage, we could see that there was a scattering of friends in the audience, but mainly, it was locals, who were staring up at us with a mixture of fear, horror and disbelief.

As if on cue, Luis, whose puffy little boobs were now definitely showing on his scarred, naked chest leapt forward, seized a microphone and sneered:

"Good evening! We are Six Inch Killaz. And we've come to DESTROY your way of life!"

And, d'you know, that's exactly what we did to them that night. It was January 1996, the beginning of the KIllaz' best year.

Mona says:

"We want to FUCK Oasis, and then we want to KILL Oasis" - Holly was the funny one. When she swore at the audience she never sounded really mean like Jasmine did. At this time Holly and Jasmine were like one person most of the time. They had names for each other that nobody else used. They would never venture out without a big plastic bottle of vodka and coke. I started drinking vodka and coke because of them.

Miss K says:

Yes, me too. I still default to V&C when I need a pick me up on tour or am otherwise some way into a long night. I remember that they had special names for each other. Jasmine was "Jean" wasn't she? What was Holly's? A shame how that closeness evaporated towards the end.

NEXT TIME: More songs from the vaults, lots of gigs, PRIDE in the Park, and Dr Rhythm has a showdown with a drumming rival...

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Six Inch Killaz: Shoot to Kill #1

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• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• Apocrypha

Prologue: Smashing times

Miss K says:

Some of you will have read this before. Never mind. The story will run to its thrilling conclusion this time, hopefully without interruption. I'm also particularly pleased to be able to include comments and corrections from bandmembers Mona and Luis, as well as other interested parties, this time round. I hope you find the story of five tranny punks on the verge of chaos as interesting as it I found it to live through. Now, (*swirly timey wimey effect*) join me as we travel back to 1994 and begin again the Six Inch Killaz story...

I arrived late as usual. Before I joined, Six Inch Killaz had been around a few months and even had their Stu Sutcliffe in the shape of Medway legend, writer, artist, musician and tranny, Sexton Ming, who was pencilled in as the Killaz' second guitarist and third vocalist drummer.

Already in the band were unstable young man, Luis Hatred on bass (whose idea the band's name was, based on a line from a track by Ice Cube) and my good friend Mona Compleine, guitarist and witty lyricist who was the musical heartbeat of the band. They were joined one drunken night by Holly and Jasmine, two beautiful girls about town who frequented London's Way Out Club and who couldn't, well, sing, but when you look that good, who cares?

The mission? To make glorious, trashy, drink-n-drug-fuelled punk rock. Who could resist it?

Well, Sexton, for a start. I'm not sure whether he ever turned up for a practise or not. But Sexton Ming was an ex-Killa almost before the thing started.

Mona says:

If anyone's interested in the Sexton Ming connection, that was just something (Minty and Smashing's) Matthew Glamorre suggested. I think I'd met Sexton before or at least we had mutual friends. He came along to York Way and we talked to him, but we wanted him to play drums, and he wasn't interested.

Now, the simplicity of the Killaz' musical format meant that two guitarists weren't strictly necessary, but I think Mona had in mind a big, double-barrelled fuzzed up guitar sound to go with the shouty twin vocal attack.

So this is where I come in. At that time, I was beginning my first proper job as a design junior at one of London's first Internet companies and just starting to come out as a tranny. This would be back in 1995. Mona and I had known each other from the world of small press comics and zines and we'd occasionally meet up for a drink or two and it was on one of these occasions, over a game of pool at the Tufnell Park Tavern, that she mentioned the band to me.

I'm not sure if before that afternoon, Mona knew I was a guitarist. The details are fuzzy, but by the end, we'd agreed that I'd come along to their next gig to see if I wanted to join up.

This was to be at Smashing! at Eve's Club on Regent Street. London was awash with decadent mixed nights back then. Trannies were everywhere and I think the tranny superclub Kinky Gerlinky at the Empire, Leicester Square was still around at that time. The point is trannies and drag were extremely out (as in in) at the time in London. It was actually trendy.

(This was something Six Inch Killaz were concerned about, but more on that later.)

But anyway Smashing! was one of those places from around that time which got a genuinely mixed crowd: gay-straight-boy-girl-trannie-fetish-indie-dance, it all came down. It was put together by Matthew Glamorre, Leigh Bowery associate, ex Blitz-kid and founder of the bizarre theatrical art rock band Minty who featured Bowery on lead vocals.

The Killaz had played at Smashing! once before (the band's second time out, I think, after a "dry" run at the Way Out Club talent night) and had caused outrage and hilarity, Luis hurling dog food into the audience and spraying people at the front with blood er.. ketchup, which Jasmine promptly drunkenly slipped over on. Still they were asked back by Glamorre, who understood the power of controversy well enough.

So forewarned, I stood near the back and witnessed the most crappy, shambolic, irritating and yet exhilarating ten minutes of noise I'd ever heard. Mona's guitar was so loud that it annihilated the bass, drum machine, Holly and Jasmine's atonal shouting and the eardrums of those unfortunate to be standing within her amp's sonic cone. Luis gave up half way through, sat down on stage, opened a couple of tins of tomatoes and proceeded to spray the audience with the contents. I think a couple of people attacked him (this would become a familiar, almost reassuring sight at Killaz gigs).

Luis says:

Yes I did squirt ketchup at the audience at the first two Smashing gigs (mixed with a bit of water in plastic squeezy bottles that worked as good as a water pistol), but I squirted some mayo at 'em as well. At the Cyberia gig (see next intalment - Miss K), I just settled for throwing some of the free doughnuts at the rotating ceiling fans.

Yet you could still just make out the songs, some of which seemed to be punky stuff reminiscent (in intent) of the Ramones, Voidoids, early punk rock and very New York. Holly and Jasmine looked fantastic, Luis was an eye-drawingly seething ball of anger and Mona propped up the backline with studious concentration, trying bravely (as the only real musician there) to hold it all together.

You heard about the Sex Pistols' early, legendary gigs in '76, or The Jesus and Mary Chain smashing things up again in '85. Call me deluded but I felt that another ten years on there was the hint of that kind of buzz about Six Inch Killaz. If we'd had any kind of luck, or been a fraction less crap, lazy and fucked up, I really think something might have happened.

But that's all to come. And by the end of that warm May evening, I was the fifth member of the Killaz.

Mona says:

Wow - I have no memory of the 2nd Smashing gig other than it was a disaster and I was amazed that you were still interested in joining, after seeing us! I sort of remember trying to hide behind something to avoid getting splattered with tomatoes. The bass was quiet because Luis didn't have an amp and was playing through the PA.

Miss K says:

The head said "this is awful", the heart said "this is the most exciting thing imaginable". The heart won, and I hope the heart continues to win as long as I breathe.

Michael Smashing:

I was the DJ and founder promoter of Smashing and remember the six inch killaz gig with glee and more than a little thrill. It was FANTASTIC, one of my all time favourite nights. I always felt you were set for world domination...there's still time !!!!

Part 1: Meet the band

Bus number 10 used to be one of the longest routes you could take - it started up at Archway in North London, went down through Kings Cross, Bloomsbury and up Oxford Street, past Hyde Park and Kensington and eventually all the way to Hammersmith, way out West. Long route, though they've kinda spoilt my story by splitting it into two now - it only goes to Kings Cross. The 390 goes the rest of the way up to Archway.

So, get the number 10 (or rather the 390, now) north from Kings Cross, and the very first stop on York Way will deposit you on the corner of Copenhagen Street. Cross the road and you'll see a little parade of shops - a worker's cafe, a launderette, an off license and general store. Behind it is a block of flats, that looks pretty new and nice. This is York Way Court and this is sort of where we used to practise.

I say sort of because when we practised there and Holly and Jasmine, our two singers, lived there, there was nothing pretty, new or nice about it. To get into their flat, you had to scurry through the scabby, rubbish strewed car park with scary shadows on every corner, towards the huddle of big steel bins by a stairwell smelling of piss. Into the stairwell and up two flights and you'd be at the flat. Jasmine would be on the phone, Holly would greet you with a cheery "'ello, lady!", Luis would be spouting off at length about something and Mona would be sitting reading or fiddling with equipment, maybe smoking the odd fag.

(This grubby York Way Court was knocked down and replaced by the nice version in 2000, a year or so after Six Inch Killax finished.)

Holly and Jasmine's flat was pretty amazing. Just about every single patch of wall, from bog to living room was covered in torn out pictures from magazines. Pictures of beautiful boys and girls looking down from every surface. The place just dripped with fading gorgeousness. Apart from the fashion shots, punk rock pix (especially Deborah Harry) featured prominently. Holly, Six Inch Killaz' wonderful, friendly, mumsy blonde singer, was kind of obsessed with Debbie Harry and she was, I guess one of our icons, so it made sense that she'd look down on us as we practised.

It's always a little strange finding your way into a band which has been together a while. This was the second time for me. You feel you have to do enough to earn the others' trust while not doing too much to stick out and break the equilibrium. Also, while I knew Mona pretty well, and Holly and Jasmine were friendly enough, Luis was pretty terrifying.

Luis Hatred was a fair bit younger than us all, in his teens still, and he was definitely a little unstable. He came from a weird background - his parents had him when they were already pretty old, and his dad, I seem to recall, was some kind of big British fascist figure and Luis done growed up a little bit "touched".

Luis was pretty much rock 'n' roll personified. In a way he was like a distilled version of the band. To start with, you kind of imagine that he's like some sort of amusing, harmless caricature of a rock and roll kid, self harming, smack smoking, Electric Eels obsessed and almost completely out of control. Like a caricature until you suddenly realise it's all completely real for him. Not ironic in any way. Whoa. To a nice, well-brought up middle class tranny like me, that was kind of scary to start with.

But once you realise he's for real, then you either run away screaming or step up and get on. That's what I mean when I say he was like the band. People expected us to be funny and ironic rather than awful and terrifying. See? You had to take us the way we were. We weren't some sort of happy, ironic drag version of The Spice Girls.

So there was Luis, who'd just started taking Premarin to make his boobs grow, and Jasmine, who was frequently interrupted by phone calls from gentleman clients, and Holly, sitting good naturedly on the sofa, and Mona with the musical ideas. And Dr Rhythm.

Oh yeah, Dr Rhythm, the beating heart of Six Inch Killaz.

It was a tiny little drum machine that produced a big, monotonous, relentless, machine-gun drum sound when amplified. I think it was popular with early hip hop and electro artists. We kind of only used it as we couldn't find a drummer (or rather we couldn't be bothered to find a drummer) but it really contributed something to our sound. A relentlessness, like I mentioned earlier.

Particularly because I don't think Mona had a manual, so she never really worked out how to program patterns, or to start and stop it onstage without running over to it and frantically mashing the stop button at the end of a song. So four bars of drum machine at the beginning and end of songs became kind of a trademark sound, for a start.

Mona says:

I never tried to programme the drum machine because it was easier that way, we could never lose our place if it was just the same beat over n over.

Miss K says:

Haha, that's funny cos I remember we still managed to lose our way on songs like Schizoid (a song from '98).

Anyway the musical shortcomings of our drum machine were pretty much academic when you consider that neither of our beautiful vocalists could sing. If I had to put money on it, I'd say that Jasmine, rest her soul, was the worse of the two. They were an interesting combination.

Jasmine was a really nice person. I got on with her from the beginning and we wrote a fair few songs together later on. But her whole world was fucked up.

She was basically a whore, and as Mona points out, "she used to say the band was her only option for a way out". She definitely had a hustler's attitude (I remember her always running around after gigs, vodka in hand, shouting "where's me fuckin' money" - for drugs, I guess) and her fabulous looks were I suppose her only real asset. She definitely had more presence on stage and was more upfront than Holly, who could hold a tune better but wasn't the frontman in the same way that Jasmine was. Jasmine had more... sass. Holly was big and blonde and beautiful. They were a great duo. But, singing? Not their strength.

Plus, Luis could only play in a very rudimentary fashion due to his massively long nails, and my technique and equipment were so basic that any noise I made was utterly disgusting and unnecessary.

I used this crappy old Korean guitar called a Vulcan, which had been smashed up so many times that the electrics were always breaking and had to be soldered back in place (often just before stage time, which was... fun), and my amp was a Laney Mighty Fifty, which was not at all mighty and was so broken that you could only play it with the gain turned all the way up. Revolting mess of noise, but it suited the early sonics of the Killaz. Also, it was very light, which was handy when you had to lug it up some slippery club steps wearing stilettoes.

So, the first few times we practised I quickly became aware of the musical quallities of our band. I think at that stage they had a four or five songs and two covers. As I recall, Luis hadn't started writing yet, so the music would mostly have been written by Mona Compleine.

Mona's a great musician and writer. There was a fantastic throwaway punk ethos about her tunes. Not just basic three chord stompers either, but more complex stuff, with stop starts, and choppy bits and surf intros. I was actually really pleased with the songs when Mona played them through and I could actually hear them. Also, easy to learn.

Songs in the set early on included the bonkers Wonderful, which featured one of Luis' stream of consciousness raps, Shoot to Kill, Teenage Whores (inspired by real life, of course), Too Bad, and a great combined cover version of Blondie's Rip Her To Shreds and the Velvets' Sister Ray. We all liked the CBGBs and Max's scene and loved The Velvet Underground, so it was a natural mix.

One that really stood out (and which became one of the standards of our set) was Trashola, which anyone who saw us live would probably remember if they heard it again, it was so catchy. It was pretty much a template for one type of Six Inch Killaz song, list poems chock full of pop culture and trash references matched with a fast three chord structure, with a stop in the middle and a madly catchy tune.

I think it's one of the best songs we did. We all had a turn writing lyrics but I think Mona easily wrote the best ones, including this one. Judge for yourself:

So to summarise, we couldn't play, we couldn't sing, and we were too lazy to practice and get any better. Things were looking up...

Now to find some gigs!

Mona says:

Wow - I admire your objectivity here! It's a miracle how we ever learned any songs with all that going on. It was v slow progress, but we kept it going somehow. The funny thing is that at this point I was thinking "hey, yeah - this is starting to sound pretty good!" Luis was very enthusiastic, he was really the driving force.

Miss K says:

I'm always surprised how good the early stuff sounds. My current favourite is the recording of Too Bad I posted above. It's absolutely fucking brutal isn't it?

I just remember feeling frustrated by my lack of ability at the time, and I was always like: "if only Jasmine could sing a *little* more in tune"... Maybe unfair.

Yeah, Luis definitely kept it going. Like you said in that Flipside interview we did in 1999 (something like) "Luis brought the band into being by sheer force of will alone". He was frighteningly driven.

OK, next time, the Killaz go cyberpunk, try being pub rockers and we make our first television appearance. If anyone has comments, corrections, photos, videos, and other mementoes or additions, please mail them to me for inclusion!

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Deathline: Merry Fucking XXXmas

More gigs, more tours, more merch and new songs. And the release of our first album, SixtyNine. All in 2009. Sleep tight, for now...

http://deathline.co.uk

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My bands #2: Six Inch Killaz (1994-9)

• #1: Deathline
• #2: Six Inch Killaz
• #3: Electric Shocks

I've just been posting a few pictures of my old band, Six Inch Killaz on my flickr photostream. I'm going to be finishing writing the whole story of the Killaz here over the next couple of months. I know some readers have been looking forward to that.

I'll also be revising the first few parts as I republish them to include corrections and comments from former members and friends of the band, where my facts have been (frequently) missing or inaccurate.

Update

The Six Inch Killaz story is now complete. You can start reading it at part 1. Glance over to the right sidebar for chapter by chapter links and various links to Killaz related stuff scattered round the web.

In the meantime, here's a brief potted history:

From Six Inch Kiilaz' last.fm wiki page:

Six Inch Killaz were a notorious London, UK based punk rock group in the 1990s. All the members were transgendered and the group described itself as "tranny punks on the verge of chaos". Their live shows were characterised by their uncompromising attitude and by drink and drug fuelled excess, frequent attacks by and on the audience, and instruments played so loud that the music itself was often on the verge of feedback shrouded unlistenability.

Six Inch Killaz formed when guitarist and songwriter Mona Compleine and bass player Luis Hatred met at famous London transvestite nightclub The Way Out. They quickly recruited two renowned beauties from the London drag scene, Jasmine Salome and Holly Cock, as singers. Their first performance was in 1994 at The Way Out Club's talent night. Soon afterward they recruited Medway scene musician and artist Sexton Ming as drummer. This relationship only lasted for one rehearsal.

In summer 1995, they were joined by Mona's friend, Miss K, on second guitar and the permanent line up of the band was established. Their primitive sound was established early on by the duelling overdriven amps of Mona and Miss K, underpinned by a monotonous and brutally deprogrammed drum machine (a BOSS Dr Rhythm, beloved of early rap artists) and Luis' Sid Vicious-esque bass and performance style. Above this backing, Holly and Jasmine would duel in an atonal call-response shouted style.

The group's reputation as an unpredictable and dangerous live act was probably well founded and they gigged regularly around London in a mixture of indie venues such as The Garage, The Hope and Anchor (where they memorably played for 20 feedback-mired seconds before leaving the stage), in the eclectic 90s London club scene, playing nights like Smashing, Alcohol, Nux Vomica, Kitsch Bitch, Vaseline, Cinergy and Jackie, and in the genderqueer subculture including two GLBT Pride festivals in 1996.

Six Inch Killaz recorded irregularly and never encountered success in their quest for a recording contract, despite gaining some exposure in mainstream television media. Their surviving recorded work is available on the collected CD-R, "Wonderful" released in 2000 by Mona Compleine. Most of the material was mastered from cassette tape 4-track recordings and is of extremely lo-fi quality. Also present on the CD is material from their few studio recording sessions, notably at Toe Rag Recordings, and Big Fucking Digital Studio (Britannia Row). The band are on record as saying that the 4-track demo material is more faithful to their sound than the professionally recorded material.

(20 of the 31 tracks on Wonderful are available to hear on last.fm)

In early 1999, Jasmine was sacked for personal reasons. The remaining four members continued for a few months but the group dissolved for good later that year.

Mona continues to write and record original experimental compositions as well as designing and manufacturing musical instruments and effects pedals. Luis is now a visual artist while Holly has withdrawn from public view. Miss K (as Kaoru) is now half of the electronic rock duo Deathline. Jasmine's whereabouts are unknown.

Official site: www.phreak.co.uk/killaz

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Memory, loss, friendship, record

I've been going through a bunch of old videotapes recently. There's a pile by my back wall which is growing smaller as I chuck them out. Occasionally I'll find a programme I want to keep, which I transfer onto the Hard Drive of my PVR, then burn onto DVD at a later date.

It's peculiar sifting through your memories like this. Especially memories mediated through other people's media. Piles of media, some of which spark memories, almost eidetic in nature, based on experiences I was having when I first ingested the images contained on this old analogue magnetic tape. It's quite therapeutic, soothing. Sometimes a few inches short of obsessive and wallowing. But hey, no one is as obsessive and wallowy as an old tranny.

I found a real treasure the other day. A BBC documentary from the mid nineties about the American photographer Nan Goldin, amongst the old comedy, episodes of the X-Files, all that kinda crud that builds up pointlessly and yet informs us in some way.

To be glib for a second, you could say that Nan Goldin invented photo blogging. No, not like that. I mean in the way that she obsessively photographs the world and people around herself, she is like the prototype of a flickr user, way before digital photography, the Internet, became everyday realities for the likes of us.

Goldin has been photographing her circle of friends, a constantly shifting group of social and sexual outsiders, gay and bisexual men and women, drag queens and transsexuals, centred around Rhode Island and New York, since the late 1960s. She says in the documentary, I'll Be Your Mirror, which she co-directed, that she did so initially because her life was so exciting and beautiful that she couldn't bear to forget every moment, every face, each fleeting butterfly moment.

But as her life went on and hardship built on hardship, and AIDS hit the community with its heavy, cold hand in the late 70s, the timbre of her work changed. The subjects were the same, but the work became about memorial, more than memory.

In one devastating sequence in the film, we're presented with a slideshow of all the friends she photographed who were taken by AIDS and other HIV related disease. The photographs are unflinching and unsentimental, showing equal moments of joy and despair. The quantity of loss her circle of friends endured is unimaginable.

This was followed by a montage of Goldin's self portraits, showing the hits she's taken in life as she grows older, from a sassy, knowing-eyed young woman, to the experienced middle-aged artist narrating the piece. By the end I was in tears.

Traces of life found...

Nan Goldin's photography is moving because it is unbeautiful and honest. Her book of photos of transsexuals, drag queens and transvestites, The Other Side, drew huge acclaim a few years ago; it's a far cry from the airbrushed world we feel we'd like to live in, rarely presenting more than a grimily direct view of their lives. This photo of two New York queens in the back of a cab is justifiably famous. It feels unbelievably true to me. I've been those girls, in that cab, so many times in my life.

The moment of reflection before performing, showing out...

But perhaps her greatest work is a book and slide piece called The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, which I was obsessed with in the 90s, when I was at my most extreme as an individual, socially and sexually. It shows her circle of friends, documents the ever shifting trading of sexual needs between them, even shows in horrific detail the growth and breakup of one of her own relationships, which ended with a savage beating which resulted in Goldin in intensive care, having almost lost her sight.

The book felt resonant to me at the time I was in the Six Inch Killaz, but is resonant still now. I read through it last night and was still moved by the legacy of loss that it expresses. Losses we've all gone through in our time.

But which leave the traces of life which we crave so much when we post our pictures to our streams, and pore obsessively into the streams of life's others.

Thanks Nan. Nanks...

Thanks Nan. I enjoyed your film ten years on, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to wallow in the old media pile with you.

Wallowing is good of course, but not half as good as the lightness that comes from taking a box of shitty old videotapes to the dump on Caledonian Road.

Forward!

Notes:

Originally written 1 May 2006 on draGnet 4.0.

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Burning Chrome: Kei Mars

Her eyes were inhumanly perfect optical instruments, grown in vats in Japan. She was both actress and camera, her eyes worth several million New Yen...

Pineapple Brandenburg

In Heathrow a vast chunk of memory detached itself from a blank bowl of airport sky and fell on him...

Bosozoku

I didn't imagine that art girls in the Midwest would be flashing their tits in cyberspace...but I'm glad that they're doing it...

Neo Tokyo, Sick Project

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead station...

Notes:

All images shot at the Sick Project, Second Life. Quotations by William Gibson, without whom, etc...

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I'm a Musician, writer, photographer, designer, transgendered z-list celebrity. Insomniac's boyfriend. Tragic glamour and sleepless nights are my fellow travellers. Skinny jeans and pointy shoes are my mode-us operandi. I like cats. Especially the ones who talk. Oh, and David Lynch.

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