Friday, February 16, 2024
Coventry Working Men's Club 'Colour Bar' (1971)
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Feminist discos/male violence (South London 1977)
Thursday, May 25, 2023
Bedroll Bella: Geordie raver
Bedroll Bella by Sid Waddell (Sphere, 1973) is the story of a feisty, foul mouthed, hard drinking, 'right raver' and proud Geordie 'lass' who runs away from home in search of teenage kicks. She falls in with a bunch of 'bedrollers', itinerant hippies who drink, fight, screw and sleep rough in the ruins of Scarborough Castle by night and shoplift by day (carrying around their rolled up bedding - hence the name). Published in the youthsploitation publishing boom, it sits alongside the works of Richard Allen and Mick Norman in depicting a world of 'knockers', 'birds' and 'having it off' in alleyways and pub car parks; a world of casual violence, with scraps with Hells Angels and rugby club types. The book was apparently barred from the shelves of WH Smith when it came out. Bella is also a poet on the side, composing a sonnet in lipstick on a bathroom window. Like her the author also has higher literary ambitions. Naturally a visit to Whtiby entails a mention of Bram Stoker.
Other than the sexual politics, the thing that jars the early 21st century reader is its industrial background. The backdrop is the shipyards and mines of the north east, presented as being at the heart of local identity. The freaks are not middle class drop outs (as 'hippies' are usually portrayed) but have taken to the road as an alternative to dead end jobs, the dole and stifling conformity: 'She wanted faces and figures with style, animation, excitement.... anything different. There had to be a lifeline somewhere, a raft to sweep her out of boredom and the prospect of the dole'.
Class is at the heart of the novel. Bella, whose dad is a boilermaker, argues with a teacher's comments about greedy strikers: 'them and the miners only get a living wage by striking - and striking hard... So feeding me and my mother and seeing we've got shoes and coal is greed, eh, miss?' .
Spider, the main male character, is the son of a miner (like the author). When he reads in the paper about miners dying in a disaster in Poland, he is consumed with rage: 'The death of a miner is about as important as the death of a worm under a spade. Both are an occupational hazard. Self-pity welled in Spider's breast. How could society expect a pitman's son to be anything other than a dirty, sweaty, scruffy hippy? He had never known anything better. And if he followed his dad into the hole, who would have thanked him? Alf Robens? Ted Heath? Harold Wilson. No, not fucking likely. They were the coal-owners now. They didn't give a monkey's nut. Spider wanted to talk. To get some of the green bile of class hatred of his chest.' He manages this by having sex in a train toilet with the posh 'Weekend Madonna' character, a part time hippy who slums it at the weekend and then returns home in the week.
In a key section of the book Bella and co. head to the Yorkshire Folk, Blues & Jazz Festival, a real event held at Krumlin near Halifax in August 1970, reputed to have been hit by some of the worst weather even seen at a British festival. Before the rain comes down, Bella has that festival epiphany feeling: 'Bella was tripping out. She had never felt so entirely conjoined with society before. She was part of the primeval soup, and Spider was the umbilical cord stringing her to this wild, wondrous world. Being part of it was quintessence. It was not a case of wanting the kicks of drugs, music or men. It was deeper, more heady, wine, the scene was feeding her. This was the pure juice of the fruit. She was on her way to Heaven, and by Christ she was gonna be moved... Bella wanted to cry. For the first time in her life she knew why sparks like Wordsworth and Chaucer and even that maniac Swinburne, who she'd had to study for O levels, had written poetry. It was all here on the grass, naked and pulsating. The Daffodils, the Pardoners and Summoners and even the Hound of Heaven... The pale, streaked bleached look of the moorland sky and turf was enhanced by the gear the kids wore. Vests and stained blue jeans, Army surplus anoraks, nothing that quite fitted. Clothes had to hang, so that the loose slim bodies could flow along as freely as their hair swung... To be alive was very heaven'.
I believe this was Waddell's only novel, though he went on to find fame as a TV sports commentator, his name being synonymous with coverage of darts in Britain up until his death in 2012. His politics remained intact until the end - asked in 2007 to imagine 'If you'd been present as a commentator when Maggie Thatcher left No 10 for the last time, what line of commentary would you have given?' he replied: "Sooo the poor little Iron Lady ends her years of vicious tyranny sobbing in a posh car. She took the kids' milk, made the rich richer and she smashed the coal miners... what a magnificent legacy!"
Wednesday, October 05, 2022
East London Gay Centre attacked (1976)
Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Wildcat benefit at AMP, Covent Garden (1974) - with Charlie Gillett and members of Henry Cow
I am always interested in the social/cultural/musical life of radical scenes, here's a report of a London benefit night for the mid 1970s anarchist/libertarian left paper 'Wildcat' (no direct connection to 1980s ultra-left paper I believe). This report is from issue no.2 of the paper, October 1974. Sounds like an interesting line up including music from Lindsay Cooper and Fred Frith from Henry Cow with flautist Clive Bell, and DJing from Charlie Gillett and 'Pete's disco'. All this plus a performance from General Will, a radical theatre company that started out in Bradford and whose members included Brian Hibbard, later lead singer with the Flying Pickets.
The event took place at the Art Meeting Place, which I believe to have been at 48 Earlham Street, Covent Garden. It opened in 1974 and Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P. Orridge were involved with it - indeed they first used the name Throbbing Gristle there. Cosey describes it in her book 'Art Sex Music' (2017):
'The shift in direction to COUM being mainly me and Gen also coincided with my leaving full-time work and connecting with other artists at the Art Meeting Place... AMP, as it was known, was set up by John Sharkey (along with others) in one of the buildings left vacant from the relocation of the Covent Garden fruit, veg and flower market. Other buildings had also been opportunistically acquired by activists for use as community centres and alternative arts spaces. AMP was a kind of Arts Lab that provided free facilities for artists across the spectrum - musicians, poets, film-makers - and was run by the artists themselves, with open meetings every week, exhibitions and performances. Me and Gen became regulars there, using their resources and trying out ideas in the available spaces- as did Anish Kapoor, Carolee Schneemann, John Latham, David Medalla, David Toop and Susan Hiller among others.
Participating in the meetings was always interesting, watching people getting antsy with each other over art or politics, or art being a political act, feminism and Marxism. Some people had great ideas and ideals to uphold but there were time-wasters whose posturing made me angry and I got the sense that they didn't fully appreciate what an amazing thing AMP was'.
Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Police 'raid halts discos' - Wearside 1979
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Nine Funerals of the Citizen King - Henry Cow
Nine funerals of the Citizen King
Once upon a time my punky self would have dismissed this as 'prog'. But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.
Oh and they played a benefit for Brixton Socialist Club in 1978.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Punk and firefighters' strikes in 1977 and 2002
There's still a couple of days left on BBC IPlayer to watch 'Never Mind the Baubles: Xmas '77 with the Sex Pistols', Julien Temple's remarkable documentary about the Pistols last gigs in the UK. In 1977, firefighters were on all out strike over pay, walking out on 14 November for a 30% pay claim. The government mobilised the army to operate a strikebreaking fire service, and as Christmas approached firefighters and their families were facing great hardship. The Sex Pistols meanwhile were being banned from venues all over the country.
Huddersfield, December 25 1977 |
On Christmas Day 1977, the Pistols played two gigs in Ivanhoe's nightclub, Huddersfield. The first was a party for the striking firefighters' families, with the band handing out Xmas presents including t-shirts, albums and skateboards. The gig ended up with a cake fight and kids pogoing in their 'Never Mind the Bollocks' t-shirts. In the evening the band played a regular gig for adults. Temple was there on the day and filmed both sets, their last on British soil before heading off to the USA where they split up in January 1978.
The Pistols weren't the only band to play a benefit gig. The picture below is of popular pub rock band The Pirates at Hammersmith Fire Station in 1977, who also played for the strikers. Drummer Frank Farley's dad had been station officer at Hammersmith.
picture by 'Mick' at flickr |
Strange how these iconic moments in the history of punk and its aftermath coincided with these waves of firefighters' struggles.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Lou Reed Riots in Italy 1975
Instead of going any further down my own memory lane I'm going to write a bit about a lesser known episode in Lou Reed's career: the riots at his gigs in Italy in February 1975. In Milan, Reed fled the stage after just two songs (Sweet Jane and Coney Island Baby). In Rome, there were clashes between police and young people trying to get in to the concert for free. Tear gas was fired, bars were looted, and many people were injured and/or arrested.
Rome 1975 |
'Between 1975 and 1979 young people in several major Italian cities entered the political scene as the protagonists of new forms of urban conflict. In Rome, Bologna, Turin, Naples, Milan and other cities, they organized themselves into collectives and ‘proletarian youth groups’, squatted in buildings and carried out autoriduzione (that is, fixed their own prices) of transport fares and cinema tickets, set up free radio stations. At the height of the movement in 1977, tens of thousands of young people were involved in mass protest and street battles with the police'.
As well organising their own counter-cultural music festivals, the movement contested the cost of commercial cultural events: 'Autoriduzione of tickets at pop concerts had already been carried out ‘spontaneously’ in Milan in the early seventies. In September 1977, at a Santana concert in Milan, the practice became formalized; youth groups assured the organizers that the event would not be disrupted in exchange for a fixed price reduction. Earlier, in October 1976, youth groups launched a campaign to force cinemas to reduce ticket prices. A leaflet of the youth groups of zona Venezia declared: "The defence of the living standards of the masses also means establishing the right to a life consisting not just of work and the home, but of culture, amusement and recreation"'.
The 'autoriduttori' movement was promoted by the Milan-based Stampa Alternativa (Alternative Press), who set up stalls outside concerts organised by promoter David Zard - including Lou Reed's 1975 gigs. There's some misleading information about these events online - one source claims that 50 people died in Rome, but in fact there were no fatalities. You may also find mention of 'fascists' being involved - again, this does not seem to be true. It was common practice at the time for the Communist Party in Italy to denounce militants of autonomia and the extra-parliamentary left as 'fascists', even as these same militants were fighting in the streets with the actual fascists.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Nightclub Fires: 2013 and 1970 (with reflections by Guy Debord)
'Sixteen people will face criminal charges in connection with a deadly fire at a Brazil nightclub in January. More than 240 people were killed when insulation foam caught fire and spread toxic fumes through the packed venue in the southern town of Santa Maria. Police said the blaze started when the singer of a band held a firework close to the ceiling, which then caught fire. The singer, the band's producer, the club's owners, and fire officials will be charged with negligent homicide. A police report published on Friday said dozens of eyewitnesses reported seeing the singer on stage holding the firework which triggered the blaze. Attempts by the singer and a security guard to extinguish the fire failed when the extinguisher they used did not work, the witnesses described.
Many said that the security guards at the Kiss nightclub at first tried to stop people from leaving the club. The fact that the club only had one door was described by the investigators compiling the report as a "grotesque safety failure". Escape routes and lighting in the club were also found to be inadequate. The club was found to be overcrowded. Eyewitnesses reporting more than 1,000 revellers packed into the venue, which had a licence for fewer than 800. All of the 241 victims were found to have died of asphyxiation as toxic fumes from the insulation foam quickly spread through the club. Police believe that five of those killed were people who had gone into the club to try to rescue others. More than 600 people were injured' (BBC News, 22 March 2013).
Thousands pause outside the Kiss nightlub in Santa Maria on a march after the fire |
St Laurent du Pont, France, 1970
'A fire at a nightclub in France has killed 142 people, most of them teenagers. The club, a mile from the town of St Laurent du Pont, near Grenoble, was packed with revellers when the fire started at around 0145 local time (0045 GMT). A fire department spokesman said the partly-wooden building "went up like a box of matches" and the victims perished within 10 minutes. Many of the interior fittings, including the ceiling, were flammable, the spokesman said, but many people might have escaped from the Club Cinq-Sept had emergency exits not been blocked. Firefighters found bodies piled five deep around the exits which had been padlocked and barred with planks to keep out gatecrashers.
It is believed some dancers were trampled to death in a stampede as people rushed to get out of the dance hall through the main entrance. Only 60 of the 180 people in the building are believed to have escaped - many of them are in hospital with up to 90% burns. Herve Bozonnet, who got out virtually unscathed, said: "It was ghastly. People on the dance floor were engulfed by burning plastic from the ceiling." Another survivor, 17-year-old Dominique Guette, said: "We tried to break down emergency exits but it was impossible." (BBC News, 1 November 1970)
Guy Debord on the Saint Saint-Laurent-du-Pont Fire
'The instantaneous incineration of the dance club in Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, in which 146 people were burned alive on 1 November 1970, certainly aroused strong emotions in France, but the very nature of these emotions has been poorly analyzed, then and now, by many commentators. Of course, the incompetence of the authorities concerning security instruction has been revealed: these instructions are well conceived and minutely spelled out, but making them respected is quite another matter because, effectively applied, they more or less seriously interfere with the realization of profits, that is to say, the exclusive goal of capitalist enterprises in both their places of production and the diverse factories in which diversions are distributed or consumed. The dangerous character of modern [building] materials and the propensity for horrible decor to become the decor of horror have already been noted: "One knows that the polyester ceilings, the use of plastic covering on the walls and the inflatable seats burned like straw and cut off the retreat of the dancers, who were surprised in their race against death" (Le Figaro, 2 November 1970).
.... many people have been sensitive to the particular horror of exit denied to all those who flee, already on fire or close to it, by a barrier specially created to only open towards the interior and to close again after the passage of each individual: it is a question of avoiding the situation in which someone might enter without paying. The slogan on the signs carried by the parents of the victims a month later - "They paid to enter, they should have been able to leave" - seems to be obvious in human terms, but it is fitting to not forget that this is not obvious from the point of view of political economy, and the difference between these two projects is only and simply knowing which one will be the strongest. Indeed, to enter and to paid is the absolute necessity of the market system; this is the only necessity that it wants and the only one that preoccupies it. To enter without paying is to put the market system to death. To enjoy oneself (or not) on the inside of the air-conditioned trap, to possibly leave it - all this has no importance for it, nor even any reality. At Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, the insecurity of the people was only the slightly undesirable by-product - the nearly negligible cost - of the security of the commodity...'
Originally written in 1971, for publication in the 13th (never published) issue of Internationale Situationniste. Translated by NOT BORED!
See also: 2009 fire in Perm, Russia; 2008 Shenzhen fire, China/2004 Buenos Aires fire
Monday, February 04, 2013
Bowie in Dunstable 1972
The Civic Centre/Queensway Hall, Dunstable |
Bowie in Dunstable |
Monday, December 03, 2012
Turner Prize 2012: Sub-Cultural Traces
Leaving aside my bias, I do think her film 'Woolworths Choir of 1979' is the most powerful work in this year's Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain in London. It cuts together three sets of images, drawn from Church architecture, 1960s/1970s female music performance and most poignantly a fire at Manchester Woolworths in 1979 in which ten people died. The film both utilises a didactic public information style of address, and critiques it by refusing to tell people what to make of the connection between these three themes. The threads include the notion of the 'choir', the name for part of a church as well as a group of singers/dancers or chorus; and the common hand gestures of humans in disparate situations, the 'conspicuous twist of the wrist' shared by dancers and a desperate wave from a burning building.
The use of a real tragedy in this way is controversial, but the film's rescue from the archives of a chorus of voices from the time restores this tragedy to the public memory from which it has largely faded. It also calls into question how our familiar visual shorthand for historical periods (the kind of 1960s and 70s fashion, haircuts, and music used elsewhere in the film) excludes these kinds of less cosy and familiar events.
Liz was a founder member of 1980s band Talulah Gosh (as well as later performing as one half of The Carousel), and with that knowledge in mind you can't help but noticing some of the continuities - in particular the appreciation for girl groups. The Shangri-Las 'Out on the Streets' features prominently in the (pleasingly loud for a gallery) soundtrack to the film.
One of the interesting things about all four of this year's finalists is their links to sub-cultures/counter-cultures beyond the art world, either in their personal biographies or as reference points in their work. Well to start with there's Liz Price's indie-pop thing (and as mentioned here, even before she went to art school she was hand printing tickets for a 1985 Luton punk gig benefit for the local Unemployed Workers Centre with bands including Karma Sutra, Party Girls and Click Click - I helped out with that gig too, wish I'd kept the ticket!).
Paul Noble was involved in the 1990s Claremont Road/Leytonstone road protest against the M11. According to Josephine Berry Slater & Anthony Iles, 'Paul Noble who had been involved early on in the campaign began to fix home-made blue plaques onto derelict houses in the path of the road (a trick later copied by Gavin Turk to egotistical ends). The inscription on the plaques read: Our Heritage: This House was Once a Home'. Is it too fanciful to see in Noble's drawings of a fantasy city-scape some echo of the alternative urbanism of Claremont Road?
(photo from Little Tramp's excellent Claremont Road set at Flickr) |
Luke Fowler's film about radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing (pictured below), All Divided Selves, can't help but feature lots of interesting archive footage from key 1960s/1970s counter-culture moments linked to Laing such as The Dialectics of Liberation 1967 conference at the Roundhouse, the London Street Commune and The Anti-University of London.
The Turner Prize exhibition continues until 6 January 2013.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Someday all the Adults will Die!: Punk Graphics 1971-84
Manchester 1977: 'Punk rock rules!' at The Squat with The Drones, Warsaw (later Joy Division) and others - interesting discussion about this poster here |
Los Angeles 1979: The Last and The Go-Go at Gazzarri's on Sunset Strip |
Crass at Acklam Hall, Portobello Road, September 1979 |