[This review was first published in Badaboom Gramophone #3 and appears here with permission.]
Few punk bands could court fights like the Epileptics. In just a couple of years, this feisty English lot from Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire managed to collect complaints from the British Epilepsy Association (which eventually led the band to briefly rename itself Epi-X and later the Licks before reverting to the original name after all), battle with bikers at an anarcho-punk festival at Stonehenge (the Epileptics’ banner was burned up in the process), fight with Anti-Pasti over a stolen song (Anti-Pasti received the song as demo and upon learning the Epileptics broke up, helped themselves to it). An imbroglio with their first label (Stortbeat) is documented on the Nineteen Seventies E.P., a re-recording of the Licks’ untitled 7-inch.
The Epileptics’ stripped-down sound and highly political songs made them a natural for Crass fans. After changing their name to Flux of Pink Indians, they signed to the label in 1981, finally achieving more success than notoriety. “Last Bus to Debden” is a raw posthumous live single, but it does contain an early version of Flux’s biggest hit, “Tube Disasters.”