Why it's happening - a little bit of history...

www.punkbrighton.co.uk is a social history website that covers the punk years in Brighton between 1976 and 1981. Five years of upheaval and craziness, both in terms of the local music scene and the prevailing social climate. If you were in a band it was a time of feverish creative energy and it could also be mad, bad and dangerous. We rocked against racism and sexism, battled with the National Front, mass unemployment, football hooliganism and social disintegration.

Evidence of a whole new music scene emerged in August 1977 in a crypt which came to be known as The Vault, situated beneath a community building, the Resource Centre in North Road, Brighton, when a couple of local bands, the Piranhas and Wrist Action, hosted a gig, billed as 'Fuck The Jubilee'.

Fast forward to 1999; I had a session booked with a tutor who was going to teach me the basics of setting up and building a website. First I needed a project and he suggested I recall my days playing in Brighton punk bands Flesh and the Lillettes. So yes, I could do that.

Back in 1977, I'd thought that I was witnessing something really special and that somebody should be writing it all down. That someone turned out to be me. I had a lot of it in my head and I had some material to work with, old posters and photos and some press cuttings regarding my own bands, but needed more reference, so I went to see Rick Blair, a local musician, songwriter and something of an entrepreneur.

Rick Blair & Attrix Records
In 1977 Rick formed a band called Attrix and soon afterwards set up Attrix Records, Brighton's only independent record label. Later, he and his wife Julie opened the Attrix Records shop in Sidney Street. Rick believed in 'music for the people, by the people'.

Attrix provided an opportunity for many local bands to get their music onto vinyl at a time when the mainstream music industry was looking for the next big disco hit and punk music was largely still undeground, literally in Brighton's case, at the Vault.

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