^{Text and Photos by Onnik James Krikorian}

A lively crowd of passionate fans eagerly gathered outside Elektrowerk, a repurposed Soviet-era factory in Tbilisi's Isani district, last weekend. They were here to see[ME1]  punk legends, The Exploited who had come from delivering electrifying shows in Yerevan and Istanbul just days earlier. Now they were bringing raw energy, rebellious spirit, and a dose of punk-infused chaos, to the Georgian capital.

Their arrival was only fitting. Georgia pioneered the regional emergence of punk in the early 1990s and even though recent fashion has seen the electronic music scene dominate the contemporary cultural space, there are signs that punk might be attempting a comeback. 

Though the country is often host to a number of big name musical acts, this concert was the biggest in its genre since The Prodigy played Batumi in 2016. Bringing The Exploited to Tbilisi was down to Igor Tonkikh, a music promoter since 1986 and the former managing director and founder of Moscow’s ГлавClub. A week after Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine last year, Tonkikh moved to Yerevan and stayed there six months before again relocating to Tbilisi. 
Why was Azerbaijan was omitted from The Exploited regional tour? Simply because Tonkikh lacked the necessary local contacts there, he says, and is more familiar with those locations where he has lived. Tonkikh had previously organized 1997 shows for  The Exploited in Russia where a bomb-hoax caused a temporary audience evacuation. 

Formed in 1979 in Edinburgh, Scotland, The Exploited are synonymous with the second wave of British punk and part of the street punk movement, a working class sub-culture. Their first album, the 1981 Punks Not Dead, was a response to critics claiming the opposite, labeling the genre a faded fad. Their music was political and socially-conscious too. But it was the band’s ferocity on stage that attracted fans.

The Exploited influenced Metallica while Slayer and ICE-T have performed covers of their songs. Long gone, however, are the days when an Exploited gig did literally erupt into anarchy and chaos. In 2003, for example, some Exploited fans, nicknamed The Barmy Army, rioted in Montreal, Canada, after a gig was canceled when the band was denied entry to the country. Eight Police cars were set on fire, over five times as many other cars were damaged, and shop windows smashed. 

Just in case, one young Georgian anti-fascist was tasked with standing outside Elektrowerk to identify any neo-Nazi teen gang members who might try to infiltrate the audience to pick a fight with the Exploited fans who are politically poles apart. The emergence of such movements has been on the rise in recent years but there are few if any attempts to counter the problem of radicalisation among disaffected youth by the government and local civil society alike. 

It’s a problem that Wattie Buchan, The Exploited’s frontman, knows only too well with the band sometimes incorrectly linked to the Oi! punk subculture in the late 1970s and early 1980s. White supremacist bands such as Skrewdriver, formed in the Oi! Scene in 1976 but disbanded in 1993 after its vocalist died in a car crash, are still radicalising youth the world over today, including in countries such as Georgia where neo-Nazis still listened to the band.

Buchan says The Exploited were never Oi!. Instead, he says, one of their tracks was included in a compilation album but they stayed away from the movement itself because of its perceived links with the National Front, a far-right fascist political party in the United Kingdom. “I didn’t want to be associated with any of that,” says Buchan and nor do most Georgian teenage punk fans more concerned with socially aware lyrics and their own future amidst increasing economic and political uncertainty. 

“Perfect,” says Buchan in a thick Scottish accent when asked how the shows in Istanbul and Yerevan went. He can’t remember when The Exploited first performed in Turkey, but thinks it was about 18 years ago. Armenia and Georgia were a first for the band, however, and a day before Tbilisi band members shared photographs visiting the pagan temple of Garni in Armenia before their Yerevan show. 

“This time was fantastic,” he says. “Armenia – I’ve never been there before or here [in Georgia] but I knew it would be good because we’ve been to Russia and Ukraine and they’ve always been great gigs. Coming here – the people here are crazy up for it. Tonight there’s so many young kids here all screaming. I could be their grandad so it’s absolutely fantastic. Really good.”

Buchan turns 65 years old in July and is very much a survivor. 

When asked if he has any plans to retire, he jokes that his body is, though at first brushes aside health concerns following his collapse on stage in Columbia in December last year from a suspected heart attack. “I think it was exhaustion,” he says, “but I have had five heart attacks, a quad heart bypass, and a burst ulcer that was like a bloodbath. I really thought I was going to die.

“Every day for me is a good day ‘cause I’m on borrowed time. I take every day as it comes. That’s how I look at life. Enjoy every day.”

“I was brought up in poverty,” he says, “and a broken family. People said punk was dead but the original music might have died but what came from that gave the working class a voice. When I first heard punk I was in the army in Germany and I had to leave the army. It’s hard to explain but it gave me a purpose in life. So I came back and got a Mohican. I was the first [in the punk scene] to have one.”

“This year we’ve done 44 gigs and I’ve never seen so many young people at our concerts,” he says. “Normally it’s older guys from the punk scene of the 80s so it’s unbelievable – all these young kids. Tonight it seemed like a lot of 14-16 year olds and they were having a great time so I find it mind-blowing especially as we haven’t recorded an album for 20 years. Exploited have always been a great live band.”

“In years to come when I’m dead, they’ll still be saying that they remember going to an Exploited gig and went up on stage,” Buchan says about one track where security is told to let the audience join the band on stage to sing the lyrics to one of their tracks. It happens everywhere in the world and at every gig. Istanbul, Yerevan, and Tbilisi were no exception. 

“For them it’s really something and for me it’s something that I’ll take to my grave. That’s something that makes me happy.” he says about the punk karaoke. “That’s better than money. It makes me feel that I’ve actually done something with my life and not just wasted it.”