Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts

Friday, March 08, 2024

Institute of Goa 1995 (plus Trends/Trenz in Stoke Newington)

A couple of flyers for London parties I believe I went to in 1995 (sometimes it's a bit hazy) . The first one I think a free party somewhere on 8 April 1995,  'The Cave Club' summer party featuring Institute of Goa and Chiba sound system. Not sure where  in 'central London' this was.


The second one is an Institute of Goa Halloween Party, I think in October 1995, at 240 Amhurst Road.  I can make out some DJ/performer names there - Liberator DJs, Aztek (ex-Spiral Tribe), Brides Make Acid...



Although the name might suggest a pyschedelic/goa trance vibe, something that was emerging as a distinct sub genre at this time with clubs like Return to the Source, I think that 'Institute of Goa' was more on the harder edged London free party techno/hard trance tip. I beleive it was run by a guy called Chico who also DJ'd as Whirling Dervish. I'm pretty sure I also went to a night they put at Labyrinth (ex Four Aces) in Dalston Lane, or maybe that was something else. They also seemed to have taken part in the Deptford Urban Free Festival which I went to in 1995, on the Innervisions sound system. 

Deptford Urban Free Festival 1995, held in Fordham Park SE14
('Anti CJA=Freedom')
 
Amhurst  Road: Trends/Trenz nightclub [post update 10/3/2024]

Thanks to Blackmass Plastics for recalling that the venue at 240 Amhurst Road was a club called Trends at this time. Events there included in October 1994 an 'All Hail Discordia' all-nighter put on by Sublminal Revolutions (which I believe was run by Lisa Lovebucket and Lovely Jon), during the Anarchy in the UK Festival in London


Later the spelling changed to Trenz, as mentioned for instance in this listing for Undergrowth there from Muzik magazine, April 1999:



Must admit I've got a bit confused about identifying this location. 240 Amhurst Road E8 was the address of the longstanding pub The Amhurst Arms. It has had various incarnations this century including De Bysto, Oro and most recently The Hand of Glory.

But down the road in a separate building 240a Amhurst Road N16 was a hall that was the headquarters of the Hackney Spiritualist Church in the 1900s and then the Hackney Jewish Lads Brigade. In the 1960s it became the Regency Club, notoriously associated with the Kray Twins, then later became Willows, an African Caribbean Club. So I assume it was this building, rather than the Amhurst Arms, that became Trends/Trenz. Apparently it's now been converted to flats. This was presumably also the location in 1970s of Phebes 'Reggae, soul and funky club' famous for its Jah Shaka sessions as well as its own Phebes Hi-Fi (thanks to John Eden for info about this) - but again there's some confusion as address is given as 240 not 240a, though elsewhere I have seen Phebes address given as 240a! 


Flyer archive Phat Media has one for a 1993 event there which names the venue as The Jungle Club, so maybe it was know as that for a while too.


The club was the scene of a fatal shooting in 1997, as reported in Birmingham Mail:




See also:





Some Brixton Nights 1994/95 (Club 414, Fridge etc)

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

My London musical/radical soundscape 2023

Reading other people's end of year lists is like listening to people talking about their dreams - occasionally interesting but mostly very much not. So this round up of musicking and political activity from (mostly) London 2023 is really for my own benefit and to document a few things which might otherwise vanish from the historical record or at least my memory.

Best gig of the year for me was Kneecap at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, a giant mosh pit in a sold out gig for Belfast Irish language rappers. Just up the road at the Roundhouse in December, Lankum were also excellent. Irish hegemony in my music tastes for the first time since the 1990s. Love the Roundhouse (also saw Big Moon there in May  and a couple of years ago Laura Marling), not so keen on the cavernous Ally Pally where I saw Sleaford Mods with John Grant, but a good gig.

On a jazzier tip, loved Ezra Collective at Hammersmith Apollo in February, and Laura Misch's mellow cloud bath performance at the Peckham Old Waiting Room. Nearby at the Ivy House pub SE15, The Goose is Out continued to curate some excellent folk nights including Martin Carthy and Stick in the Wheel. They also put on a monthly singaround session where people take it in turns to stand and sing one song at a time; I sang there earlier in the year and also at Archie Shuttler's Open Mic at the Old Nun's Head. Strummed the banjo and mandolin a bit.

In terms of my own music making the highlight was taking part in the Wavelength Orchestra event on the beach in Gravesend in June, an improvisational performance where assorted musicians sustained notes based on the duration of waves (although it was low tide and they were more like ripples). I took along my old Wasp synth, my dad's bagpipe chanter and my grandad's harmonica to add to the mix.

 

Went out for my birthday to a Mungo's Hi Fi night at the Fox & Firkin in Lewisham, checked out my local Planet Wax record shop and bar in New Cross. Enjoyed giving a Peckham anti fascist history walk for around 30 people in October, and chatting about my own history on Controlled Weirdness' 'Tales from a disappearing city' podcast.

I always appreciate the unexpected random encounters with music in the city, like coming across an Italian hip hop collective (Hip Hopera Foundation) performing in Beckenham Place Park or bumping into morris dancers by my local pub. Loved dodging the rising tide on the Thames shore for a dark 'Noise TAZ' in the summer.


Politically I am not a super activist at the moment but do try and get myself out there in times of emergency - and with climate change, war, anti-migrant racism and transphobic 'culture wars' it feels like that is most of the time at present. Or as Benjamin put it, 'The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule'.

The year started with ongoing strikes from NHS, rail workers and teachers, I popped down to various picket lines and protests. It has been hard to keep track of the endless state onslaught against refugees, including the 'Illegal Migration Act' which criminalised seeking asylum. Protest too becoming increasingly criminalised with climate emergency activists being locked up for months or even years just for walking in the road or doing a banner drop.  My most sustained activity was turning up regularly to defend a drag event at the Honor Oak pub in South London from far right opposition (which I wrote about at Datacide). I got increasingly fed up with anti-trans nonsense from fellow old lefties  and said so. The end of the year dominated by the massacre of October 7th and the seemingly never ending massacre in Gaza ever since - highlighted by both Kneecap and Lankum at their gigs.

Perhaps it remains true, as Frederic Jameson said, that 'it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism', but the neo-liberal capitalist utopia of a world united and pacified by globalised markets has vanished too. It is not hard to imagine a kind of end of capitalism as we know it, at least as a global system, replaced by endless ethno-nationalist violence and conflict for shrinking resources like water and arable land. Harder sometimes to hold onto a politics of hope for a better world, but what is the alternative?

'South London Loves Trans People' - at the Honor Oak pub in May

Stop the Migration Bill protest at Westminster with speakers on Fire Brigades Union fire engine (13 March 2023)

Refugee solidarity on London anti-racist demo, 18 March 2023

Gaza ceasefire demo blockades Carnaby Street, 23 December 2023

Anyway here's a slice of London's musical/radical soundscape as experienced by me in 2023:


Seen and heard in film above:

1. Striking Lewisham teachers, January 2023.

2. Ezra Collective perform Space is the Place, Hammersmith Apollo, February 2023.

3./4./5. Extinction Rebellion demo in London, April 22 2023.

6. Martin Carthy singing High Germany at Goose is Out folk club at the Ivy House SE15, April 2023

7. Wavelength Orchestra in Gravesend (OK not actually London) on beach next to St Andrews Art Centre, June 2023

8./9. Dancing in the streets in Honor Oak, defending drag event from far right opposition, 24 June 2023

10. Stick in the Wheel at at Goose is Out folk club at the Ivy House SE15, June 2023

11. Torquon on Thames Beach, Noise TAZ, 19 August 2023 

12. Khabat Abas, Thames Beach Noise TAZ, 19 August 2023 (Kurdish experimental cellist)

13 Leslie, Hilly fields, September 2023 (pop up electronic performance in the park)

14. Blanc Sceol,  Deptford Creekside Discovery Centre, September 2023 (acid sounds on self made acoustic instruments as part of 'Thorness and Green Man' autumn equinox performance with artist Victoria Rance)

15 Cyka Psyko - Sardinian rapper with Hip Hopera Foundation, Beckenham Place Park, 24 September 2023

16. Laura Misch in Peckham 21 October 2023

17. Palestine demo, Battersea, 11 November 2023

18. Kneecap, Electric Ballroom, 29 November 2023

19. Sleaford Mods cover West End Girls at Ally Pally 2 December 3034

20. Lankum singing The Pogues' Old Main Drag to remember Shane MacGowan at the Roundhouse, 13 December 2023.

21. Palestine demo, Carnaby Street, 23 December 2023

Sunday, December 24, 2023

'Do not play acid' - London club listings October 1988

London Club Listings from a local paper in October 1988 (Westminster and Pimlico News) in the midst of the acid house upheaval. KISS FM crew 'know how to make a rave swing' at Second Base at Dingwalls 'but steer well away from acid'. Meanwhile at Memphis/Legends DJs Rajan and Tim Archer 'do not play acid' but do mix in some Chicago House with their P-funk and r'n'b. Cafe de Paris offers 'salsa, soul and Balearic beats for a packed dancefloor of sloanes, trendies and those who know the doormen'. ACID! very definitely promised though at Asylum at the Harp Club (later the Venue) in New Cross with 'total mayhem, surprises and visuals'. Not sure of the exact music policy  at The Rok at Brixton's Fridge but there's 'delecatable deejays' and 'dishy dancers'.

('Top Twenty' chart here is just a pop listing from HMV, not representative of club sounds from the time).



 

Thursday, September 07, 2023

Stop the City, London, September 1984



1983/84 saw a series of anti-capitalist 'Stop the City' actions focused on the financial centre of London and other cities too, including Leeds and Birmingham. In London, momentum built with large protests in September 1983 and March 1984 (I've written about the March one here). A fairly half hearted one in May 1984 didn't amount to much, but a more serious attempt to organise and mobilise led up to the action on September 27 1984. By this point though the police had got used to this mode of protest and had developed their own tactics for dealing with it - largely mass preventative arrest. 470 people were arrested, most of them later released without charge. A high proportion of people came from the anarcho-punk scene, but there was advice to dress in more casual clothes to avoid being singled out by the police. I did so, not sure I would have passed for a city gent but I didn't get nicked!

There were occasional short lived breakaways from police lines, as reported below: 'There was a small rampage not far from the Stock Exchange where windows were smashed and cars jumped on and later Barclays Bank off Cheapside had windows broken'. I recall somebody stepping up on the window sill of a bank and kicking the window in. Other than these brief moments there was a lot of wandering around aimlessly.

Dave M, who helped organise the London events as part of London Greenpeace, summarised the day as follows:

'On Sept 27th, maybe 2000 came - mostly anarchists and unemployed, as well as some peace and animal rights campaigners. Police repression was well organised and strong. It was impossible to gather at the City centre (St Paul's and the Bank of England, used previously, were cordoned off). Individuals and isolated small groups who were 'looking for the demo' were threatened with arrest, and soon left, disillusioned. Anyone looking like a punk was particularly harassed. 470 were arrested and held hostage (only 35 were charged) to break up the collective strength.

However, many people who'd organised into independent groups were able to do quick actions all over the place (graffiti, smashing bank windows, a quick occupation etc). 2 or 3 times 3-400 people came together for a march into the centre… Hundreds who were dressed up smart continued to float about (giving out leaflets, passing messages, doing actions...). But generally the City became a no-go area almost for us. Many demonstrators therefore decided to go to Oxford Street, and Soho in central London and were able to make quite a few effective protests at various banks, offices and stores etc.' (A Brief Account of the Stop the City Protests)


Report from Green Anarchist, November 1984


There was quite a lot of soul searching afterwards. The following chronology from anarcho zine Socialist Opportunist (October 1994) ends up asking 'People put months of planning into all this. Was it worth it?'


The general consensus was that it was 'time for us to move on, having learnt from Stop the City' as expressed in this response written on the day:

 
(there a couple of other responses in the same issue, full copy of which can be read at the excellent Sparrows Nest Archive).



Press coverage



Evening Standard calls for police to move in on the organisers

Guardian: 'Police swamp  City's 2,000 anarchists'

Benefit Gig

The night before there was a benefit gig for the Stop the City Bust Fund in Camberwell at Dickie Dirts, featuring among others Conflict, Subhumans and Stalag17. The venue was an old Odeon cinema that for a while had been a Dickie Dirts jeans warehouse before being squatted.   I think there may have been some Stop the City planning meetings in the same venue.

There's a little confusion about the Conflict/Subhumans gig, the flyer is clear that it was the night before Stop the City though some people (mis?)remember it as being on the night of the protest. 



Earlier that Summer Subhumans had recorded a song Rats about Stop the City, having taken part in the previous London actions. As lead singer Dick recalls:

"We're talking about thousands of people — a lot of them punk rockers, hippies, alternative types — all turning up, dressed up, making a lot of noise... bells, whistles and drums, that sort of thing. It was an angry party atmosphere, and it was just really refreshing. It was one of the first protests I'd been to that wasn't a CND march, and it felt slightly more relevant, more 'everyday' than a protest for nuclear disarmament. That was a one-subject protest, but this was against the exploitation of people across the world by the people who press all the buttons and control all the money — it was about the very  hold that money and profit and greed have got on society in general. It felt more urgent to be there. I went up there on my own, and met up with lots of people. I remember the band Karma Sutra from Luton were there.  At one point, people were being violently thrust around by the cops, and I overheard one of them say, 'If you act like rats, you'll get treated like this... ', which became a line in the song and is the reason the song's called 'Rats' , which may not be an obvious name for a song about protesting against capitalism" (quoted in 'Silence Is No Reaction: Forty Years of Subhumans' by Ian Glasper).

The lyrics of the song do capture the feeling of those days (maybe especially the line  'Co-ordination was not so good, But everyone did just what they could'!):

A sense of enterprise is here, The attitudes that conquer fear
Stability, togetherness, The feeling cannot be suppressed
Hand in hand we had our say,  United we stand but so did they
Hands in handcuffs dragged away, To cheers of hate and victory!

We fought the city but no-one cared, They passed it off as just a game
The city won't stop til attitudes change, Rats in the cellars of the stock exchange

Co-ordination was not so good, But everyone did just what they could
Unarmed with inexperience, We had to use our common sense
If you act like rats you get treated like this,  Said a policeman like we didn't exist
When the force of law has lost it's head, The law of force is what you get

We fought their calculations, Money gained from third world nations
All that money spent on war, Could be used to feed their poor
The papers played the whole thing down, Said there was nothing to worry about
The rats have all gone underground, But we'll be back again next time round


See also:



Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Prolekult - Marx, Debord, Crass and more...


London based 1990s label Prolekult was influential in popularising the hard/acid trance sound, but its visual imagery really stood out with record labels each featuring radical left icons. Their first release in 1993, Sourmash's Passport to Paradise, set the tone with Karl Marx.




From there it was an eclectic mix of the good, the not so good and the ugly of radical politics depending on your particular perspective... Let's just say I don't think all of this lot would have got along!


Bertolt Brecht

Che Guevera

Lenin

Andreas Baader of the Red Army Fraction

Wasn't sure of who this was - but reliably informed on twitter that its Russian revolutionary artists Mayakovsky, Malyutin and Cheremnykh in 1919



'No Justice, No Peace, Resist the CJB' (Criminal Justice Bill) - image from 1990 Poll Tax Riot



Rosa Luxemburg

Leon Trotksy



Helen Steele and Dave Morris - the much spied upon McLibel Two


Huey P. Newton of the Black Panther Party


'Welcome to the future: let me breathe'

Malcolm X
Mexico Olympics 1968

Stephen Lawrence

Zapatistas

Harvey Milk



Aung San Suu Kyi

The Clash

Crass


'Chairman Gonzalo' of the Shining Path in prison in Peru


Guy Debord - Down with the Society of the Spectacle

Tony Blair and John Major - Zero Difference

Paris 1968



Anarchist clash with police in Barcelona, before or during the Spanish Revolution (thanks to @semicoda for spotting)


Situationist Rene Riesel - confirmed by @andrew_wilson_a on twitter


Keith Narey, Bradford Socialist - featured on 1997 release Vuture  Shoque by Logique (Kult 23). I had some difficulty identifying him, but @casperpottle on twitter recognised the photo from his local pub, The Brewery Tap in Bradford. He seems to have been a larger than life figure well known in the Campaign for Real Ale as well as Militant who sadly died celebrating Labour's victory in the 1997 general election.


Prolekult was a sub label of Hooj Choons founded by Alex Simons and Red Jerry (Jeremy Dickens) in 1990. They put out a lot of big house tunes, notably Felix's "Don't You Want Me" (1992) co-produced by Red Jerry and Rollo. The thinking behind the Prolekult label, and the labels, is set out in the booklet accompanying the 1997 Prolekulture compilation:
 
"We started Prolekult up in the spring of '93 as a harder alternative to the more commercial-oriented house we'd been involved with up until then. There was never much of a gameplan involved, just a bunch of preferences and prejudices: a liking for hard, having-it, often Euro-flavoured trance and total indifference to the up-its-own-arse electronic doodling that characterised the UK techno scene at the time.

Sourmash's Pilgrimage To Paradise was a good tune to kick it all off with, emanating as it did from the UK, but packing the punch of a Beltram / F. De Wulf / Orlando Voorn record. Getting off to a start like that, we'd hoped to overcome our sense of musical Europhilia and carry on signing banging home-grown material, but it wasn't to be. Of the twelve tracks included here [on the CD], three quarters were licensed from European labels, reflecting the failure on our part to consistently find the kind of material we were after here in the UK. We're not sure what that says about us, or the UK, or both ...or neither, but we like the vibe surrounding the very up-for-it free party scene that's developed over the past few years and the producers that are now emerging from this sector of the underground are kicking arse. Proper UK acid business.

When it came to adopting a name, logo, etc, for the label, as unreconstructed lefties, we turned to socialist political history for inspiration. "Prolekult" is an adaptation of the Russian word "Proletkult" which was a workers cultural organisation set up in 1907 by the socialist exiles Alexander Bogdanov and Maxim Gorky. The theory went, in simple terms, that at a time when Russia's Tsarist dynasty was at the weakest and most vicious stage in its squalid history, the Bolshevik party was to lead the political opposition, the unions to lead the economic opposition and the Proletkult the cultural opposition. Perhaps the best known work to come out of the Proletkult was the post-revolutionary films of Eisenstein (Strike, Battleship Potemkin), but within a year of his rise to power in 1921 Stalin had effectively stripped the Proletkult of any autonomy, vibrancy or relevance, turning it, as he did all other genuine bases of working class expression, into just another instrument of state power.

Obviously, none of this has much direct relevance to the records we put out as the lack of vocals involved makes overt political statement difficult ("you gotta have house" repeated a few times on Neurodancers' Wippenburg [sic] - the only vocal on the twelve tracks - isn't exactly "Blowing in the Wind" is it?) but it made a change from the cod-futurism to be found on the sleeves and logos of so many techno/trance labels and, in terms of lefty icons over the last two hundred years, we knew we had an extensive reserve of imagery to draw upon. There was also the quiet hope on our part that by using pictures of long-forgotten working class heroes we'd be making our own tiny contribution to the rehabilitation of these political giants who have effectively been written out of our history. We thought that even if the odd person here and there asked "who's that?" then the labels and imagery would have transcended their original role as mere packaging and taken on a higher role as potential consciousness-raisers (man). Unfortunately it soon became apparent that no one gave a toss about which old trot we wheeled out next and after three years and seventeen releases I can safely say that we could put Donald Duck on our next release and no one would bat an eyelid...

...When we first decided to use socialists/revolutionaries etc we had assumed it would all pan out in neat chronological order, beginning with Marx and ending wherever, of course within three or four releases it had all gone. Last minute desperate scrabble to find someone reasonably relevant the night before label copy and image due at the printers etc. and to be frank the odd dubious character go used for expediencies sake". Nevertheless they meant it and included potted biographies in the compilation,,




(if you search prolekult you can listen to all this on soundcloud, spotify and all the usual places)