Trackers and Breakbeats: Brain Records exhibition

'Trackers and Breakbeats: Celebrating Brain Records’ Underground Revolution' was an exhibition  at The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich (October/November 2024) exploring 'the groundbreaking influence of Brain Records and its pioneering use of 8-bit technology in the 1990s', highlighting 'the often overlooked yet pivotal role of Brain Records and its founder Bizzy B in shaping the UK hardcore and jungle scenes'. The exhibition featured original studio equipment, flyers, zines, interviews and film.

The scene was centred around Leytonstone in East London where Bizzy B and Dlux ran 2Getherness record shop in the 1990s (238 Leytonstone High Road)

They put on parties at The Dungeons, 'a maze of tunnels' off Lea Bridge Road.

'Bizzy B - creator of the dark style' (article by Adrian H from Ravescene zine)

A letter to the record shop from Peckham junglist venue The Lazerdrome

 

Joe Strummer, Rock Against the Rich and Spycops

In 1988 Joe Strummer embarked on a 'Rock Against the Rich' tour organised by anarchist group Class War. The tour had its origins in the Warwick Castle pub in Notting Hill where Class War's Ian Bone and the ex-Clash lead singer came up with the idea over a few pints.

 

As part of the ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry, thousands of  reports filed by police infiltrators have been published. Among them are many reports from 'HN10' Bob Robinson (real name Bob Lambert) who infiltrated animal rights groups in north London in the 1980s but also kept an eye on anarchists and others he came across in London Greenpeace and similar groups.

Lambert, who was married with children in his 'real' life, notoriously had a number of  intimate relationships while undercover (none with informed consent) including fathering a child before vanishing. Part of his schtick was  to use music to develop connections with activists, travelling to the Glastonbury and Cambridge Folk Festivals and peppering his letters with references to Steely Dan and Van Morrison and, seemingly, his police reports with references to The Clash.

In his reports to his Special Branch and security service bosses he notified them of the emerging plans for the Strummer gigs. The first report in March 1988 includes the claim that Strummer was 'contacting Mick Jones and other former members and associates of The Clash with a view to reforming the notorious punk band especially for the gig'

A second report on the 10th May from this 'secret and reliable source' noted that 'Ian Bone and. Darren Ryan, leading Class War activists continue to have regular discussions with veteran punk music star Joe Strummer in connection with a series of planned Rock Against the Rich concerts... certain to attract a high level of interest amongst London's resilient punk community'. The report also mentions a forthcoming Rock Against the Rich launch party at the Golden Lady pub in Albion Road with disco provided by an Animal Liberation Front activist'.

There's a couple of pages about the tour in Class War newspaper, no. 28 (1988), some extracts follow:

'Welsh band Anhren are bringing out a Rock Against the Rich benefit single'

Round up of Rock Against the Rich gigs, including Strummer playing in Brixton (at the Fridge) and Camden. The latter was at the Electric Ballroom on July 7th 1988, supported by Chelsea and World Domination Enterprises. Found an account on facebook from somebody who was there: 'Set included his single Trash City , covers of Big Audio dynamite songs V13 & Sightsee mc, Keys to your heart from his pre Clash 101ers days & the stuff most of us were there for White man in Hammersmith Palais,Police & Thieves, Police on my back ,This is England, Somebody got murdered, he also chucked in a lively Pogues cover If i should fall from grace with God'. 

'At a time when rock music and its surrounding cults and causes are about as threatening as a bowl of marshmallows, Class War has initiated Rock Against the Rich to put class politics back onto the agenda, using music as a weapon'

Class War's Darren Ryan has written an account of the tour, conlcuding: 'It may not have been how we originally intended it, but it was moderately successful in some ways. And it was a lot of fun. But I look back in anger at it, as we had such great ideas for it, and it still gets my blood boiling the way it was turned from potentially dangerous to pleasantly adventurous by people who used it as their ticket into the music industry. And such are the best of working class ideas, watered down for safe consumption for the middle classes. However, the original idea and plan of Rock Against the Rich remains as relevant and as dangerous as it was then'. Not all planned gigs happened, in particular events on the Isle of Dogs and at Hackney Empire were blocked.

Probably shouldn't romanticise all this too much. I think some of these gigs at the time were seen as being quite shambolic, Strummer backed by an unprepared band. In a way it was a bit out of time in emphasising rock when other musics were becoming more important. Other things were stirring in 1988...

From NME, 30 July 1988 - a Rock Against the Rich gig at the Tunnel Club in Greenwich with Anhrefen, Sign on Valley Rangers and the Mega City 4. Another South London gig mentioned in the Class War article was apparently scheduled for July 2 1988 in Lewisham, with The Dispossessed and Beethoven.

See previously:

Unite Against Racism demo in East End 1994 + a spycops report on David Bowie donating to Anti Nazi League

This is the Beatnik Horror (1960)

From 'The People' July 24 1960 a report on Beatniks in Liverpool, London and elsewhere, with some choice quotes and turns of phrase:

This is Beatnik Hell

Every week more and more young people joint the ghastly Beatnik army

this bizarre new cult imported from American is a dangerous menace to our young people

This is the Beatnik Horror

though they don't know it they are on the road to hell

They revel in filth

their unwashed horror

Most beatniks like dirt. They dress in filthy clothes

They don't care a damn for anyone or anything

They like to frolic in the gutter

Most are dope addicts

This is 18 year old Pat Davenport. Her "rave" is to hitch-hike round the country in search of "kicks". She goes about barefoot and takes snuff to shock

She is a part-time typist but a full time beat girl

In the middle of all the chaos was a magnificent home-built hi-fi record player, blaring the "cool" jazz without which no beatnik "pad" - their slang for home - is complete

"We don't believe in work - it's just for mugs - My only interests are girls and poetry"

Interesting that article defines rave as 'a sudden enthusiasm' rather than a party. 

Partisan Books: a 1970s radical community bookshop in Luton

Continuing the series on the radical history of Luton, here's a bit about a 1970s radical bookshop, Partisan Books which was based at 34 Dallow Road from 1974-76.

The bookshop announced its presence in socialist and anarchist publications in June 1974,  with notices in Freedom and Socialist Worker:

Freedom 26 June 1974

Socialist Worker 8 June 1974

Key figures in the bookshop included radical social workers Brian Douieb and Liz Curtis (aka Liz Durkin) who had previously been involved in setting up the Mental Patients Union.  The bookshop was linked to a wider 1970s radical culture of 'community activism including creches, squatting, community wholefoods, vegetarianism, legal and welfare rights and community newspapers':

Source: Nora Duckett and Helen Spandel,  Radically seeking social justice for children and survivors of abuse, Critical and Radical Social Work, 2018

One of the groups that operated from the bookshop was Luton Women's Action Group. Some of their material has been deposited in Bedfordshire Archives who have written this summary of the group:

'The Luton Women's Action Group held their first meeting in June 1974. At that time the partner of Liz Durkin (now Dr Liz Davies), one of the group's founder members, ran a non-profit political bookshop, Partisan Books, in Dallow Road. This book shop became the centre for lots of groups, including the Women's Action Group and the Luton Street Press.

The Women's Action Group had about 8 women at the core and others that came and went over time. The group was very inclusive and as well as women they had male supporters, including Andrew Tyndall of the Luton News who wrote a number of pieces relating to their campaigns.

The group campaigned for various women's rights and also for nurseries and an adventure playground for children. They believed in direct action and took action, for example, against advertisements that they found offensive. Other activities included writing anti-sexist stories for children and running a women's study course at Luton College. Members of the group attended national conferences and meetings.

In 1976 Liz and her husband moved back to London and the shop in Dallow Road closed. Some of the group's activities carried on for a little while after this and some of the members continued to be active in campaigning for women's rights but the group had ceased to be active by about 1977. The two former members who were responsible for depositing material with Bedfordshire Archives remember being part of the organisation as very exciting and energising. Although the group was only active for a relatively short period it was an important period for the women's liberation movement'.

Partisan Books published a series of non-sexist children's stories including 'Project Baby', 'Doughnuts' and 'Linda and the Food Co-op'

Source: Libertarian Struggle, July/August 1975

A 1975 jumble sale for Partisan Community Bookshop

I was intrigued to see mention of a 'Luton Street Press', so assume there was actually a Luton radical news sheet similar to Bristol Free Press, Hackney Gutter Press and others of the era, for a while at least. Please get in touch if you have any copies. There's a listing for it in the 'International directory of little magazines and small presses' (1976)  

Also around this scene was Ronnie Lee, founder of  the Animal Liberation Front and its predecessor the Band of Mercy.  Lee was living in Luton's Ashburnham Road at the time and active in Luton Hunt Saboteurs  as well other radical movements - he was one of 14 peace activists arrested in 1975 for distributing leaflets produced by the British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign (BWNIC)  encouraging soldiers not to serve in Northern Ireland.

When Lee was jailed in 1975 for a raid on a vivisection laboratory, the bookshop hosted campaign meetings in his support. Released from prison the following year, Lea moved into a squat in north London with Liz Davies and Brian Douieb and helped open a new bookshop in Archway:

Source: Jon Hochschartner (2017), The Animals' Freedom Fighter: a biography of Ronnie Lee .

This new Partisan Books was on Archway Road, and I assume that the Luton one closed around the same time.

Undercurrents, June/July 1976

Both Davies and Douieb went on to careers in critical social work, the former a leading writer and campaigner against child abuse including whistleblowing on abuse in Islington children's homes. 

This 1987 Luton News report of Ronnie Lee being jailed for ten years in relation to ALF activities mentions the earlier Luton campaign in his support in 1975 with meetings 'at a bookshop in Dallow Road and at the Recreation Centre in Old Bedford Road' as well as 'youngsters in the Dallow Road area' planning a sponsored swim to raise funds.

(as an aside there's an interesting 2023 interview with Lee at DIY conspiracy where he talks about being in an animal liberation punk band Total Assault and about the influence of the Situationists and the Angry Brigade on him. He also recalls being in an ALF group who would play The Flamin Groovies 'Shake Some Action' before going on a raid)

[I had never heard of the bookshop until recently despite growing up in Luton and getting involved in politics only 5 years later. Would love to know more, please comment/get in touch if you have any memories or documents]

Other Luton writings:

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

Luton Nuclear Disarmament Campaign go to Greenham Common 1980

Blinded by the Light - memories of racism and job cuts in 1980s Luton (including the Luton Youth Movement)

The Luton Riots of 1981 - 'Brixton comes to Bedfordshire'

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town

Karma Sutra, Luton anarcho-punk and hunt sabbing

Clubbing in Luton 1984

Dole Days in Luton: unemployed protests, 1985

Luton Punk Squat Party 1985 - with Karma Sutra

We are Luton - opposing the English Defence League in 2012

'Angry White People' book review (in Datacide magazine)

Folk song as solidarity with the dead: Shovel Dance Collective, Broadside Hacks, Ewan MacColl and Walter Benjamin

Not sure how many folk music revivals we have had now, of course it's never really gone away but I am enjoying the latest queer friendly iteration with the likes of Shovel Dance Collective and Goblin Band. Have seen the former's Jacken Elswyth and Mataio Austin Dean performing solo at the Goose is Out folk night in Nunhead, likewise Sonny Brazil of the latter. And Broadside Hacks used to do a session at pub in my road in SE14.

The Broadside Hack (Live from Real World) 2022 is the soundtrack to a short film that includes some interesting reflections on the politics of folk song. In a 'collective authoring of history' interview, members of Shovel Dance describe how 'Folk music's kind of  like an act of solidarity across time I think… a real kind of genuine act of sharing across hundreds of years and millions of people...  A different kind of history than what you get from mainstream history, from capitalist history if you will, it's a kind of intergenerational, intertemporal collective authoring of history'. Simlarly Thryis discuss how 'We place ourselves within this greater chain of history by playing these songs, we're figuring ourselves within  this collective narrative...There's this sort of collaboration across space and time, you are engaging with other musicians from other times that you’ve never met and yet you feel like perhaps you have something of an intimate relationship with them, I like that sort of distanced intimacy'. Naima Bock says 'it’s a kind of history of people that have no voice so it’s a beautiful and poetic way of hearing people from the past who you wouldn’t otherwise have heard'.

Echoes here of Ewan MacColl who used to tell the Critics Group of folk singers meeting at he and Peggy Seeger's Beckenham home in the 1960s: 'I find it necessary to close my eyes and shut the audience out, and to identify, either with some character in the song, or with the kind of person I think may have originally sung the song, or even may have created the song. This means that you have to equip yourself with a fair amount of the data about the period in which the song was created ... say this song was perhaps written in 1736, written by a ploughman in Dorset. What was it like? I wonder what it felt for a bloke like that to create a song like this, and all the other people who contributed to the song later. All the other men and women who polished it over generations.. suddenly you find yourself filled with an extraordinary sense of compassion and respect for all those people who went before. And suddenly you find yourself in the tradition - you're with them. And at that moment you also disappear in a strange way, and the song really takes over ... the audience comes with you' (quoted in Ben Harker, Class Act: The Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl, 2007).

Folk singing here is a historical method, a form of 'history from below' of the kind pioneered by E.P. Thompson as famously stated in the preface to 'The Making of the English Working Class' (1963): 'I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.” Thompson's approach was characterised by his fellow radical historian Raphael Samuel as a form of 'resurrectionism', an attempt 'to give a voice to the voiceless and speak to the fallen dead' (Theatres of Memory, 1994).

For Walter Benjamin, remembrance was not an act of passive contemplation but a motor of radical change. For him the 'enslaved class' has to be 'the avenger that completes the task of liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden' (On the concept of history, 1940), giving a redemptive voice to those who came before. As Michael Löwy summarises it in his 'Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History' (2005), ' It is clear the remembrance of victims is not, for him, either a melancholic jeremiad or a mystical meditation. It has meaning only if it becomes a source of moral and spiritual energy for those in struggle today... During a conversation with Brecht on the crimes of the Nazis in 1938, Benjamin notes: ‘While he was speaking like this I felt a power being exercised over me which was equal in strength to the power of fascism, a power that sprang from depths of history no less deep than the power of the fascists.’ Or again from Löwy: 'the last enslaved class, the proletariat, should perceive itself as heir to several centuries or millennia of struggle, to the lost battles of the slaves, serfs, peasants and artisans. The accumulated force of these endeavours becomes the explosive material with which the present emancipatory class will be able to interrupt the continuity of oppression'.

The radical theologian Jürgen Moltmann (1926-2024) was influenced by Benjamin and the Frankfurt School.  He wrote of 'The community with the dead... We suffer almost dumbly under the unreconciled hurts of the past. But we hardly perceive any more the sufferings of the dead which cannot be made good. A wall of silence, hard to break through, has been built up between us and the dead. Who feels the silent protest of the dead against the indifference of the living? Who is still conscious that the dead cannot rest as long as they have not received justice?... Are the murderers to triumph irrevocably over their victims?  Can their death be their end? 'Theology', said Max Horkheimer at  that time, 'is the hope ... that injustice will not be the last word. [It is] the expression of a longing, a longing that the murderer may not triumph over the innocent victim. ' It is profoundly inhumane to push away the question about the life of the dead. The person who forgets the rights of the dead will be  indifferent towards the life of his or her children too' (The Coming of God, 1996). 

It is not necessary to believe in a literal afterlife to recognise that the dead have a presence, not least in our language and our music (though of course in many spiritual traditions engagement with the ancestors is central). Isn't the singer of old songs of the downtrodden and apparently defeated resisting this indifference of the living to the dead and drawing on the power of the ancestors? I like to think so.

Dave Lawson's Indieprints

Dave Lawson (1972-2021) was a  London and North Wales based artist whose Indieprints series features numerous music themed designs, often inspired by 1980s indie bands and songs. I came across  a display of his works recently at Caffi Caban in Brynrefail,  lots of very striking vintage style images.

Pogues 'Fairytale of New York' as book jacket

'If I could settle down, then I would settle down'
(lyric from Pavement, 'Range Life')

'I will love you til I die, and I will love you all the time'
(lines from Spiritualized 'Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space' translated into Welsh in this version)

His prints are still available from Indieprints, which has been kept going by family members.

By the way if you find yourself in the Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon area) I strongly recommend checking out Caffi Caban, great coffee and food (including vegan options) and five minutes walk down the road you could be swimming in Llyn Padarn.

Caffi Caban

Llyn Padarn

Big Sexy Festy Finsbury Park (and Big Chill) 1996

A couple of free festivals I went to in north London's Finsbury Park back in 1996. Not sure of the date of the first one - 'Festival of Environmental and Global Rights'/Big Sexy Festy Party - but flyer says 'bank holiday weekend' so assume it was either in August or perhaps May. The party included Dub Tent, Free Party Stage, House Zone and Chill Out Zone. The map also shows Beer Tent and Shambala, the latter a party crew who used to put on nights I went to in Brixton at Taco Joe's in Atlantic Road railway arches. 'The Prisoner' magazine was running the acoustic stage - a free music listings zine which also covered anti-Criminal Justice Act and environmental protests. The same crew put on a similar event on Hackney Marshes in the following year.

Programme notes say: 'The first Free Festival for a long time.. Collective participation in an outdoor event of this nature can only strenghten community relations and fight the spread of racism and oppression of all minority groups. The inner city areas of London have been neglected over the past 17 years of Tory rule. We must stop the environmental degradation of our local areas for the generations to come... Everyone has the right to a life, everyone has the right to Party!'

In the same place in June 1996 a more traditional Finsbury Park Festival with a twist. Alongside various community dance and music acts there was the Big Chill electric picnic with Calcutta Cyber Cafe/Talvin Singh, Big Chill founder Pete Lawrence, Nelson Dilation (sometime Whirl-y-Gig DJ), and Global Communications (Tom Middleton & Mark Pritchard). All this and a string quartet playing 'Little Fluffy Clouds'.

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