The Mob (British band)

The Mob, featuring singer Marc Mob and - in the beginning - Josef Porta (of British Anarcho-Punk-Band Zounds, now singer/drummer with Blyth Power), hailed from a squat in Grosvenor Avenue, Islington, North London.

They were quite popular with the English and especially London Peace Punks, some of their audience running the Community-Squats "Peace Centre" (Rosebery Avenue 99-110, Islington, today the residence of Amnesty International GB, where The Mob once played a benefit-show in the basement) and the "Ambulance Station" (Old Kent Road) in South London.

The Mob put out their first single "No Doves Fly Here" on the Crass Records label. They later recorded an LP (Let The Tribe Increase) with an indie label, One Little Indian, followed by another single ("Mirror Breaks"/"Stay").

Marc Mob was the bands centre of attention with colourful (red) dreadlocks and an angelic face. On the contrary his voice sounded doomed, his lyrics featuring topics such as nuclear bombs, war, wastelands, death and doom in general.

Josef Porta famously quit the band by saying, that he was sick of singing about children being slaughtered.

Lyric sample from "No Doves Fly here":

"The sky is empty and is turning different shades of colour
it never did before
and we never asked for war"

The band broke up around 1984. Marc Mob, who once had a tipi built on his van, is now probably living with his many children somewhere in the english countryside.