Wonk Unit in ‘The Scene That Would Not Die’

London’s Wonk Unit are not only one of the most successful and prolific UK punk bands of the last two decades, but also one of the most original and eclectic, their irreverent take on melodic punk knowing few boundaries and their self-effacing humour coupled with an often- fearless honesty.

“It was around 2005, and I hadn't made any of my own music for a few years previously,” explains vocalist Alex Johnson, who had enjoyed considerable success in the Nineties as part of The Flying Medallions. “Everything felt so stale to me, especially punk. I really didn't expect to ever get anything from punk again. However, since my recovery, I had been learning the art of song-writing and I had amassed a ton of crazy Bowie/Elton John-esque chord progression-style love songs. I somehow ended up in a rehearsal studio in Croydon with two incredibly talented musicians, who I considered superior to me in playing ability. We started jamming some of my songs, and as soon as drummer Mez - who now plays for Madness, Van Morrison, The Libertines and just about every other band in the world – started playing, it was just BAM! Bill Stevenson! I had previously asked the guys to listen to 'Everything Sux' by The Descendents, so Gavin walked into the room that day as Steven Egerton. It wasn't a choice to be punk; I had expected the songs to be more ‘Blue’ album Weezer-esque initially. But suddenly, there I was, unintentionally making punk rock again and it sounded on fucking fire. It was immediately obvious that the chemistry between the three of us was gonna work.

“The world was new and MySpace was happening. Coming from the pre-internet music days, where the only way to achieve success was through the NME, social media suddenly made touring and gigging very, very easy. To be honest, I had zero plans for the band. Having done the whole music industry thing with The Flying Medallions, for me the formation of Wonk Unit was just for fun. A very early ethos that stands true to this day is that I would never ask for a gig, or a review, or a record deal, or put my future in the hands of other people. The disappointments of the past - reading bad reviews in Melody Maker, not getting booked for Reading Festival etc. was not something I was ever going to repeat.

“As a fairly newly sober adult though, I vowed to never pass on any opportunities presented - which previous insecurities had prevented. So, we went where we were asked, and we ended up playing pretty much every single town and village in the UK. I don't think I ever actually turned down a gig in the early days.

“Regarding influences, apart from that initial MO of ‘Everything Sux’ to the other band members, there has never been ‘that one band’. I appreciate the art of song-writing and I couldn't exclude Carol King, Elton John, Bowie, The Beatles, Madness, and even Weezer. Lyrically, the songs were my sordid, emotionally immature diary. As an addict, I had the current emotional mental age of an eighteen-year-old.

“We were basically an Oi! band that somehow managed to get signed, lorded, applauded and vilified by the mainstream music industry and press,” he continues, of The Flying Medallions. “We were wild, and legitimately one of a kind at that time. We formed in 1992, signed to Big Life Records in 1994, where we released our album ‘We Love Everybody And Everything’s Great’. It all came to an end though in 1995, when we crashed on the motorway coming home from a festival in France. Dougie died and Stewie suffered severe head injuries.

“[Current guitarist] Kenny was formerly the bass player of Spoilers before joining Wonk, and [bassist] Pwosion [Mark] was in a band called Loophole, which I helped manage. That was in ’96, and their 7” single was the second ever release on Household Name Records; Household Name’s first release was a compilation album called ‘Last House On The Left’, which was originally put together to raise funds for Dougie’s family. Lil who started Household Name Records was driving our bus when the Medallions crashed.

“Wonk Unit has managed to retain a little bit of the chaotic, edgy nature of the Medallions, but apart from that, the parallels end. Wonk Unit is essentially my diary, and in the early days was pretty much my AA, my group therapy. Me sharing my woes and anxieties and triumphs with the world. It’s a very personal thing. We didn’t know what the fuck we were doing in the Flying Medallions; we didn’t really know what to sing about, we were just very naughty teenagers who loved chaos and parties. We couldn’t understand why people were getting offended by some of our songs, because truly they came from an innocent place. I guess we were just dumb and very naïve. The world has changed a lot since 1992, and we have grown up now... thankfully.”

The original three-piece line-up of Alex on bass and vocals, Mez on drums and Gavin on guitar played their first gig at the Brixton Windmill in 2005 supporting Billy No Mates, the side project of Snuff’s Duncan Redmonds.

“Mez still occasionally drums for Wonk ‘til this day, and has gone from playing a 100,000 capacity stadium on a Friday night to a 100 capacity pub the next day with Wonk. He assures me Wonk are his favourite band though, haha!

“The musical landscape in 2005 was incredible. Social media had just arrived and MySpace changed the world. Suddenly, the playing fields were levelled, and unknown bands had the same platform and potential exposure as the major label bands. It was almost like musical communism. MySpace was so new and fresh, and musicians were super keen to use it to their advantage. The punk scene exploded all over the UK. Wonk were very much Croydon-based back then, and it all seemed very healthy.

“I came up with the name Wonk Unit whilst on a building site. I was laying a crazy paving driveway in the middle of winter. My labourer at the time - Gavin, who became our first guitarist - was having a particularly miserable day in the cold. It then started to snow on our sorry arses. Turning around to see snow settling on Gavin’s shoulders, I exclaimed, ‘Look at us, we’re a fucking Wonk Unit!’ This was actually before the formation of the band... originally I wanted to use the name for a skateboard company.”

A lazy journo (and we all know one... ahem, moving swiftly on!) might pick up on the SoCal strains running through the band’s sound, mainly thanks to the tightly picked guitars and Alex’s laid-back drawl, but factor in the multitude of other influences, not least of all a healthy slug of assorted Brit rock and pop from down the ages, and it becomes difficult to pin Wonk Unit down as anything other than themselves. Their first album, ‘Flying The Japanese Flag’, captured this slippery musical charm to a tee, with Alex’s dry observational ditties both very relatable and endearing, its odd title apparently informed by the slightly unsavoury image that originally graced the front cover.

“That was recorded in monthly instalments,” he recalls. “We’d go into the studio and record three songs at a time. Those were uploaded to our MySpace page, which had a four-song music player which you were able to download from. The first six tracks were put out on CD as the ‘Punks Are Hard’ EP. When we reached about twelve songs, it was put out as ‘Wonk Unit vs. The Croydon Astronauts’, again on CD. It was done roughly over about a year. It only became ‘Flying The Japanese Flag’ in 2008 when a particularly graphic nude picture of me naked and covered in menstrual blood unfortunately ended up becoming the album cover. After I basically dared myself to... I felt particularly free-spirited at the time. ‘Flying the Japanese flag’, as you may or may not know, is an un-PC reference to a woman’s period... red dot, white background – well, work it out yourself.”

Since that first album, the band have had too many line-up changes to really document here without boring the piss out of you, and have been extremely prolific over the last ten years, quietly growing in stature, not just in the UK but around the world, their brand of catchy poetic pop punk having undeniably international appeal.

“Yeah, Wonk Unit had a really fluid line-up from 2010 until last year,” admits Alex, “But I’m stoked to report that we are a real band these days with a real London-based line-up, just like in the beginning. We rehearse once a week, we are best mates, and it’s been great to grow as a band this past year. Prior to this, it’s kind of just been ‘the Alex show’, but we now have some young blood in the band, who I live vicariously through. Vez singing and playing keys and Max on drums, both in their early twenties, they are my ‘kids’, and it’s been a real pleasure seeing them appreciating touring for the first time. No jaded musicians in this band, mate! Obviously, we’ve got Pwosion who is our band’s full-time bass player - and smoker - and then there’s Kenny on guitar, who is gentle like a frightened lamb and not meant for this jagged landscape. Luckily, we are all at hand to protect him from the hurricane of life. “Do I have a favourite Wonk record? They are all so different and personal that it’s kind of impossible for me to choose, they are my life; ‘Jap Flag’ was so punk rock and liberating, ‘Terror’ was quite a sad album... it really is hard to pick one. ‘Trolleys Thank You’ had my teenage musical hero Duncan Redmonds of Snuff on drums, so that is very special. With ‘Terror’, I was particularly hard on myself - I wanted an album without any skip tracks – and in that regards, it is probably my favourite record. But then I remember every fucking album, and they’re all as good.”

Over the years, the band have played many memorable gigs and tours, but are probably best known for their annual Wonkfest, a fun summer gathering in London unlike any other punk all-dayer.

“There have been a few notable tours,” agrees Alex. “Both our US tours with the Raging Nathans, in 2016 and 2017, are up there; we’ve now played 30 US states, and both gigs at The Fest in Gainsville were particularly happy occasions. Who doesn’t love a gig in sunny Florida? Eating pizza slices and drinking root beer. Our two tours with Slaves were both outrageously amazing and different - the first one saw Slaves supporting Wonk, when we were touring ‘Muffy’ in 100 capacity venues in 2012, then for the second one, Wonk supported Slaves on their ‘Are You Satisfied?’ tour in 2015, in 2,000 capacity venues. A Euro tour in 2017 with Australian band Clowns was also amazing. Basically, I like playing with bands that challenge me to push my own performance. There genuinely aren’t many bands that I would feel uncomfortable playing after, and I like it when a band challenges my throne. No one is taking the undisputed heavyweight punk rock japester crown from me!

“But Wonkfest is an incredible experience every year, so as far as individual gigs go, Wonkfest will always get the gold medal. It actually began life as Medallionfest, a one-off reformation of The Flying Medallions for my 40th birthday, and that was at the famous South London punk boozer, the Grosvenor in Stockwell. The idea was actually heavily inspired by Hard Skin’s legendary Christmas gigs at said venue; I wanted to create a similarly legendary gig, but in the summer. I booked a second Medallionfest, but my fellow Medallions weren’t up for it, so the name changed to Wonkfest and the rest is history. It moved to the Dome in Tufnell Park in 2014. It’s a friends’ fest... the bands who play are the bands we’ve spent our year with. It’s an accurate representation of DIY punk rock in the year that’s passed.

“Wonkfest offers so much more than just your average gig. Our famous buffet and all day long free food is a star attraction. Every year we bring in more extras though: free merch, free candy- floss, free fucking balloon animals! Free make-your-own badges. We are like the ultimate village fete. This year we’ve even got free tattoos. You get a lot for your dollar, and we collect a shit ton for a local women’s refuge down in Croydon. At 2019’s Wonkfest we made over 1,000 burgers for our happy Wonkfesters... it’s as utopian as it gets. I never planned on growing Wonkfest into the behemoth it is today, but after the Grosvenor closed - another victim of London’s gentrification - I was stuck for a venue and was curious to see if I could go from 150 capacity to 700 capacity at the click of my fingers. It’s been a huge success. Wonkfest 2 was a highlight; it was Slaves’ first ever festival - those boys have always been very funny. And in 2019, Frankie Stubbs and Guns ‘n’ Wankers were special moments. At Wonkfest ’17, we had - for the first and only time - the complete Wonk Unit line-up, with my sister joining me on her cello.”

In the last few years, the band have started working with German label Kidnap Music with great success, and a new album was due by the end of 2020, although the COVID-19 epidemic and ensuing lockdown knocked that off schedule, making a spring 2021 release more likely. A great new song emerged in March 2020 though, the anti-fox hunting ‘Bloodlust’, 150 seconds of scintillating Wonk.

“Okay, my take on the UK DIY punk scene,” concludes Alex. “When Wonk Unit were heavily championing the DIY scene a few years ago, it was a place of unity. Yes, it was heavily political, but it was balanced with a healthy dose of positivity and friendship, unity and love. I felt like it changed from this place of unity to a lot of finger-pointing and scene police, at a time when there was no real need. Ironically, as the right-wing stomp through every fucking town in the country, and as nationalism is normalized, we are actually seeing the resurgence of right-wing punks and strangely a diminished number of people calling them out. Scene police finger-pointing caused a lot of division. “But UK punk is vaguely spilling into the mainstream via grime. Grime is really the new punk, it’s punk rock for this generation. That’s where it really is at politically, and making the biggest impact.”

“The wider politics of the UK and the world have become a lot more intense since 2015,” adds Vez. “This has shown a lot in the punk scene, and - as someone coming into it pretty fresh - there definitely seems to be a slight tension between the ‘original punks’ (i.e. those who lived it in the Seventies and Eighties) and the kids getting into it now, with slightly differing stances on what punk is and what it should represent. Bands like Slaves and Idles have packaged a more consumable brand of punk for the masses, so we’re seeing a wider interest in punk peak again, which is interesting. The magic of Wonk is that a Wonk gig feels like a ‘safe space’, a unifying force where everyone is welcome, and I feel like that is where punk is at its most authentic and genuine.”

“I would like myself to be remembered as the greatest songwriter of the 21st century,” laughs Alex, “To go down in history with the likes of Bowie and Elton John, Lennon and McCartney - and then me, Daddy Wonk. I want Wonk Unit to be remembered as great innovators and performers, who did our own thing and never followed the crowd. It would also be nice to be remembered as the bunch of silly chaps that we are, and as a friendly, welcoming family.”

Vez: “We would also like a marble statue of us to be erected in Trafalgar Square.”

SELECT DISCOGRAPHY:

EPs:

‘Punks Are Hard’ (SELF-RELEASED, 2007)‘Pwoision & His Aquatic Knowledge’ (EX GRATIA, 2013)‘Split’ (RAD GIRLFRIEND/DRUNKEN SAILOR, 2016) – split w/ Raging Nathans ‘We Are The England’ (VIRGIN EMI, 2016) – split w/ Slaves‘Christmas In A Crackhouse’ (PLASTERER/CADIZ, 2018)‘Cyclists’ (SAFETY PIN MAGAZINE, 2020) – split w/ Menstrual Cramps

FULL LENGTHS:

‘Wonk Unit Vs. The Croydon Astronauts’ CD (SELF-RELEASED, 2007)‘Flying The Japanese Flag’ CD (SELF-RELEASED, 2008) – vinyl version released on TNS in 2015 ‘Trolleys Thank You/Wonk Unit Saved My Life’ (SELF-RELEASED, 2011) – vinyl on TNS, 2015 ‘Muffy’ CD (SELF-RELEASED, 2013) – vinyl TNS/PLASTERER/CADIZ, 2017‘Nervous Racehorse’ CD (TNS, 2014) - vinyl TNS/PLASTERER/CADIZ, 2017‘Mr Slashy’ LP & CD (TNS/PLASTERER/CADIZ, 2016)‘Terror’ LP & CD (PLASTERER/CADIZ, 2018)‘Love In Chapan’ LP & CD (PLASTERER/CADIZ, 2019) – with live DVD

AT A GLANCE:

The ‘Pwosion Idea, Feel The Wonkness’ LP and CD was released by Drunken Sailor, Johanns Face, Round Dog, Boss Tuneage, TNS and Cement You Cunt Records in 2015, whilst ‘The Fall And Rise Of Wonk Unit & The Pwosion From Croydon’ LP and CD was released by the aforemen- tioned German label Kidnap Music in 2019. Failing that just go to their Bandcamp page.

The Scene That Would Not Die by Ian Glasper rounds up the last two decades of the ever-evolving UK punk scene, interviewing 111 essential bands from the last twenty years, discussing the challenges they’ve faced, the obstacles they’ve had to overcome, and how they think they still need to evolve to stay relevant in these troubled times.

The book comes with a double CD with tracks by the bands included.