History is made at night
The politics of dancing and musicking and other dark matters
Wednesday, October 09, 2024
Big Sexy Festy Finsbury Park (and Big Chill) 1996
Sunday, October 06, 2024
John Scarlett-Davis on Derek Jarman
A fascinating Derek Jarman talk and film at London's Farsight Gallery last month, featuring a 1984 LWT (London Weekend TV) documentary from the series 'South of Watford' about Jarman's life in London. It includes lots of great footage including Jarman on a boat going down the Thames pointing out the site of the warehouses he lived and worked in during the 1970s, including on the South Bank at Upper Ground, at13 Bankside (St Magnus warehouse and at Butlers Wharf by Tower Bridge where he moved in 1973. There is a scene too of him going through the gates of the latter on a building where there is now a plaque to remember him. As mentioned in the film, Ken Russell visited him on the South Bank and invited him to design sets for his film 'The Devils' - the start of Jarman's involvement in the film industry.
The film was directed by Jarman's assistant John Scarlett-Davis, who introduced it and told some very entertaining stories, including about filming a scene of Sebastiene at Andrew Logan's warehouse space with Lindsay Kemp also at Butlers Wharf. He recalled that at Jarman's Butlers Wharf studio the toilet was set up on a stage. Some people who were happy to take part in orgiastic parties apparently drew the line at going to the loo in front of everybody and a curtain was eventually put around it! Jarman and others had to move out of Butlers Wharf after a fire, one of a number in the area that some have observed were conveniently timed for property developers. Scarlett-Davis remembers being dressed up in the Blitz nightclub when news of the fire came through.
Scarlett-Davis helped Jarman with his film and pop video work, including Marianne Faithfull's Broken English, and made many videos in his own right including for some of my favourite songs from that period such as This Mortal Coil's Song to the Siren, Cocteau Twins 'Pearly dewdrops drops' and Scritti Politti's 'The Word Girl' and 'Wood Beez' (featuring dancer Michael Clark).
Scarlett-Davis talked a bit about the connection between Jarman, William Burroughs and Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV, with the latter's Genesis P. Orridge featuring briefly int he LWT film. I was interested to hear that Scarlett-Davis and others had lived in another warehouse in Clink Street that later became a famous early acid house venue and later still a prison museum. John remembers Peter Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle/Coil) attending parties in the warehouse there. Coil later (1998) recorded their album Astral Disaster at an underground studio in Clink Street.
Derek Jarman, William Burroughs, Marc Almond, Psychic TV and others took part in 'The Final Academy' event in Heaven, 1983. |
The event was linked to the exhibition 'Derek Jarman: from Soho to the Fifth Continent' by Jane Palm-Gold at the Farsight Gallery which is at 4 Flitcroft St next to St Giles Church. The exhibition featured photos of Derek at Dungeness by Derek Ridgers as well as Jane's paintings featuring episodes from his life, particularly in the St Giles/Soho area where Jarman lived in a flat in Phoenix House from 1979.
Jane did a great job not just in bringing together the exhibition but in bringing together some of the people who were part of Jarman's life and creative work in London. The audience at the film show including Simon Fisher Turner (who composed music for several Jarman films), Jenny Runacre (who played the Queen in Jubilee) and several people who like Scarlett-Davis himself were naked Roman extras in Sebastiene. The event was hosted by Sean McLusky from Farsight Gallery, once promoter of legendary London clubs like Club UK and the Leisure Lounge as well as sometime drummer with JoBoxers.
John Scarlett-Davis should definitely write a book. He also has some very funny stories about working in the film/TV industry including sitting in the canteen in Elstree between Jack Nicholson and Molly Sugden when he was working on both 'The Shining' and TV sitcom 'Are you being served?'.
Jane Palm-Gold's painting of the 1993 OutRage Queer Carnival in Soho 1993, which was opened by Jarman and also featured the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence |
Tuesday, October 01, 2024
London nightlife not dead shock
Dan Hancox has written a great piece on 'Debunking the weird myths about London's 24-hour party people' in which he rightly takes to task some dubious claims made in the Times and elsewhere that London nightlife is in terminal decline. He rightly critiques some very dubious data, such as relying on Google Maps to show venues with late night licenses.
Specifically he skewers a map included in the Times article 'UK’s worst night out? Costly, crime-ridden London' (27 September 2024) which purports to show venues open after 2 am on Saturday nights. Using his local knowledge of Peckham’s Rye Lane he shows that in addition to three venues shown on map (Tola, the Prince of Peckham, and the Bussey Building) there are many other places: 'My raver alarm immediately went off. Just from going out dancing in Peckham, I know that this is rubbish. That list is missing the Carpet Shop (open till 4am), Peckham Audio (4am), Peckham Levels (4am, albeit occasionally) and Four Quarters (3am). There are also at least five pubs I can think of around Rye Lane which open until 1am on a Saturday night, new audiophile bar Jumbi is open until 2am' etc. etc.
As Dan points out this 'London Declinism mingles with the fog of racist myths' that London is a hotbed of random violence overseen by a muslim mayor implementing sharia law! Sometimes these kind of articles are really just snotty refusals to recognise that London actually exists beyond the centre of town - see for instance Bloomsbury resident Will Lloyd's 'Sadiq Khan’s silent city' (New Statesman, 24 March 2024) which begrudgingly admits that he 'could walk north to the Lexington (open until around 3am, but it smells), or south into London’s warm, unwashed armpit'.
There is also a well meaning but in my view wrong-headed left wing version of the argument highlighting that many venues are being squeezed out by property development and other pressures (true) and suggesting that there is no longer any grass roots/'underground' clubbing because its all been taken over by corporate giants (false).
Of course there are peaks and troughs, periods when everybody seems to be out clubbing and times when it is a bit more based around niche subcultures. But we also have to beware observer bias. We all have our peak periods for partying, the worse thing is to imagine that because you are personally not going out as much as you used to do that is not happening any more, or that its not as good or real or whatever as it used to be. People have been out dancing in London for hundreds, probably thousands of years and it is not stopping any time soon (see for instance this great account of London dancing from 1902).
Things do change but not necessarily for the worst. The demise of some of the old school high street nightclubs that hungover from the pre-rave period, some of them with long histories of racist and sexist door policies, is not necessarily a bad thing. Dance music no longer always requires specialist DJs or sound rigs, great as it is to have them. There is a more diffuse nightlife in which a pub can quickly become a dancefloor, or people can summon one up anywhere playing music from their phones through speakers. These nights might never show up on Resident Advisor or be documented anywhere but they are happening all around us in London and anywhere else with a pulse. My South London local for instance - a pub that used to be pretty much empty much of the week - is full most nights, sometimes people are watching sport, sometimes listening to a folk session, and sometimes it erupts into dancing. And of course as Dan points out there are countless actual club nights, gigs and other events of all sizes happening all the time.
Historically in London it is pub and restaurant backrooms, railway arches and other places off the mainstream nightlife map that have spawned new music scenes. Think about the emergence of the new jazz scene in the last ten years where places like Buster Mantis (a Jamaican bar/restaurant) and Matchstick Piehouse (a community arts/music space) hosted the Steam Down nights in Deptford, many of whose alumni are now internationally known. I suspect that such places are not even on the radar of many of those decrying the death of London nightlife.
Monday, September 23, 2024
'30 years of Grace' - photos of Jeff Buckley
Friday, September 13, 2024
Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent and youthful montage adventures
Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent at the Whitechapel Gallery is a retrospective of 50 years of radical image making.
'blast open the continuum of history] - illustration for Guardian article on Walter Benjamin, 1990 |
Radical Photomontage
I've no doubt that it was through discussion of Kennard's work in the left press at this period that I first came across John Heartfield who of course was a big influence on him.
The juxtaposition of images and newspaper clippings was also a feature of punk/post punk sleeve design, such as The Pop Group's 'How much longer do we tolerate mass murder?' (1980)
Possibly my first print political intervention at this time (1980) was sticking up crude photocopied montages around my school (Luton Sixth Form) - 'The Propaganda of Real Life' - with me and my friend Robert F. Not sure how many people read them, but it acted like putting a spell out in the world to find like minded people. Off the back of this somebody invited us to a meeting in Sundon Park where a group of us teenagers set up Luton Peace Campaign, soon to become the Luton branch of the reborn CND.
I am sure many other people were similarly inspired by Kennard, Heartfield and the DIY possibilities of photomontage at this time. Hopefully the Whitechapel exhibition will inspire some even now to pick up scissors and glue.
Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent at the Whitechapel Gallery, 23 July 2024- 19 January 2025 (admission free)
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Thank God for Immigrants - Wham
Wednesday, September 04, 2024
Martin Simpson - Palaces of Gold, an old song for Grenfell
posters in Shoreditch, 2024 |
Monday, August 26, 2024
Friday, August 23, 2024
Judy Chicago at Serpentine
Judy Chicago 'Revelations' is a retrospective of the artist's work at London's Serpentine gallery. Her feminist imagery is quite familiar to me, such as 'Rainbow Warrior (for Greenpeace)' which depicts a Goddess figure seemingly protecting the creatures of the sea. It was painted in 1980, five years before Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior ship was blown up by the French state while protesting against a nuclear test.
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Tower Hamlets - Cockney Rebels exhibition
African music in East London A Ghana Independence Day Celebration at the St Louis Club, 46 Commercial Road E1 in 1958 with 'African Cubano Band Leader Jimmy Scott'. Plus at the Cosmopolitan Club (1963?), 9 Artillery Passage, Bishopsgate E1, Deroy Taylor 'West Africa's Leading Guitarist' in a night 'featuring Ghana High Life, Jazz, Cha-Cha and Twist'. Ghanaian music legend Deroy Taylor aka Ebo Taylor had a an international hit in 2010 with 'Love and Death'. |
'The twilight jazz at Poplar. Open air dancing at the public recreation ground last night. It will be seen that male partners were shy' (The Star, 17 June 1919) |
Wobble, Singh and Smith |
Friday, August 02, 2024
Unite Against Racism demo in East End 1994 + a spycop report on David Bowie donating to Anti Nazi League
In 1993 the far right British National Party achieved a breakthrough in the East End of London when one of its members was elected as a councillor on the Isle of Dogs in Tower Hamlets. This was a period of racist murders, including the killing of Stephen Lawrence not far from the BNP HQ in Welling, SE London. The BNP still had a street presence in East London too, selling papers on Brick Lane.
It was also a period of mass opposition to the far right, one of the largest manifestations of this being the 'Unite Against Racism' demonstration called by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) on 19 March 1994. Around 50,000 people took part in the march through the East End, from Spitalfields to London Fields. This was part of a wider mobilisation that among other things led to the BNP losing their council seat in new elections in 1994.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Art Not Evidence: against the criminalisation of rap and drill
Art Not Evidence posters in Camberwell, South London, July 2024 |
'Art Not Evidence is a growing coalition of lawyers, journalists, artists, academics, youth workers, music industry professionals and human rights campaigners working together to fight the criminalisation of rap music in UK courts'. Here's their statement:
'In recent years, courtrooms across the country have gained an alarming new soundtrack. Prosecutors — with increasing frequency — put lyrics, music videos, and audio recordings in front of juries to help secure criminal convictions. In many cases, these creative expressions have no connection to the serious crimes alleged, and are used to paint a misleading and prejudicial picture, conflating art with evidence.
Specifically, police and prosecutors use the act of writing, performing, or even engaging with rap music to suggest motive, intention, or propensity for criminal behaviour. This is particularly prevalent in controversial "joint enterprise" and conspiracy cases, in which music, lyrics, and videos are used to drag multiple people into criminal charges, often under sweeping definitions of “gang” activity. This practice disproportionately affects young Black men and boys from under-resourced, marginalised communities. It is an agent of institutional racism.
Rap music, including the drill sub-genre, is one of the most popular forms of music across the country, and a significant cultural force, producing Glastonbury and Wireless headliners, multiple industry award winners, and enjoying an artistic influence that extends into film, literature, television, and the visual arts.
Yet, despite being known for its storytelling, symbolism, figurative language, and hyperbole, police and prosecutors invite judge and jury to take rap music literally, as direct evidence of criminal intent or behaviour.
Research produced by journalists and university academics have identified over 100 cases in the UK since 2005 in which rap music was used as evidence. The majority of these cases involved multiple defendants, making use of the doctrine of joint enterprise. In the last three years alone, at least 240 people have had their fate in court decided, at least in part, by their taste in music.
This is an urgent issue, and one which demands an urgent response.
The indiscriminate use of creative expression as evidence in court risks miscarriages of justice, perpetuates harmful racist stereotypes, and contributes to a racially discriminatory criminal justice system that stifles creativity and freedom of expression. We applaud law reform campaigns in the USA, including the enactment of legislation in California, and urge judges, lawyers and legislators in the UK to follow suit.
We call for police and prosecutors to stop relying on irrelevant, unreliable, and highly prejudicial evidence in pursuit of convictions; for defence lawyers to challenge prosecutors; and for judges to exclude such evidence.
We propose legal reform to limit the admissibility of creative expression as evidence in the criminal courts.
We seek justice, and your support, in our mission to achieve it'.
Saturday, July 20, 2024
Beat the Blues Festival 1980: 'Post punk Woodstock' at the Ally Pally
A ticket for the day signed by John Cooper Clarke (from ivaninblack) |
The Pop Group |
The Slits |