Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(P.B. Shelley, 1818)

The abandoned ruins of Mr Blobby theme park after ravers trash site (Daily Mail, 14 October 2009)

'He attracted nearly 17 million television viewers at the height of his fame, and even had a number one hit, but today Mr Blobby's empire is a mere shadow of what it once was. New images of what was the Mr Blobby theme park in Somerset show a depressing ruin covered in weeds and trashed after all-night raves. The park closed its doors in 1999, after the popular Saturday night television show Noel's House Party on which Mr Blobby featured was axed by the BBC. Now in a state of total disrepair, buildings are covered in moss, while windows and furniture lie broken after all-night raves that take place on the site. The entrance to Mr Blobby's home, named 'Dunblobbin', is surrounded by dead trees and a carpet of decaying leaves'

Same story in The Sun:

'The home of kids' telly favourite Mr Blobby lies in ruins - reduced to a waterlogged wasteland. Excited youngsters once flocked to the Blobbyland theme park to see the make-believe cottage of Noel Edmonds' famous character. Now it is more like Soggyland - overgrown and strewn with fallen leaves and mud. The house, named Dunblobbin, and its gardens opened in 1994 in Cricket St Thomas, near Chard, Somerset. But it closed after two years as fans lost interest. Since then, ravers have used it for all-night parties. Doors have been ripped off, windows and furniture smashed, mattresses burned and the interior wrecked (The Sun, 14 October 2009)

For readers lucky enough not to have been exposed to Mr Blobby, 'he' was an ubiquitous 1990s British TV phenomenon, a pink thing launched on an unsuspecting public by Radio DJ and TV presenter Noel Edmonds (the two of them standing with those poor kids in the top photo). The Daily Mail's attempt to put a 'broken Britain omg ravers are out of control' angle on this is absurd - the place has been abandoned for ten years so of course it's in decay - but I like the idea of people partying in the ruins of '90s TV culture. Both papers seemed to have sourced the story from a blog - a blogger called Captain Stealth is quoted - but I can't find any trace of the original blog post via Google. Anybody know where it is?


(Thanks to John Eden for spotting this)

Greek singer attacked by neo-nazis

A Greek singer is in hospital after being attacked by members of the Golden Dawn neo-nazi party in Athens last week. Sofia Papazoglou (pictured), a popular folk singer of the "entehno" genre known for her progressive politics, was attacked on Thursday 1st of October outside the metro station of Katehaki, in Athens, by ten members of the neo-nazi party Golden Dawn when she threw election leaflets handed to her in the garbage. The singer remains hospitalised with serious burns from use of unidentified acid spray and with impaired vision (more at libcom)

ASBO for pirate radio operator

'A man has been banned from every roof top in London after pleading guilty to installing illegal pirate radio equipment on a tower block in Camden. Working with Camden Council and the police, Ofcom successfully prosecuted Kieran O’Sullivan who received an antisocial behaviour order (ASBO). O’Sullivan also received a suspended 18 week custodial sentence, a three month curfew, a £1,200 fine and had his radio equipment seized. This followed complaints from residents about pirate radio equipment being fixed to roof tops on the Chalcots estate in Belsize' (24dash.com, 28 September 2009).

Shame - anyone know what station was involved?

Sonic Cannon in Pittsburgh

During this week's anti-capitalist protests against the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, police used a 'sonic cannon' as well as CS gas to disperse demonstrators. The Long Range Acoustic Device emits an ear-splitting siren which is extremely uncomfortable to be around. Used previously against pirates off Somalia, this is the first time it has been used against civilians in the US. It is also currently being used by the military in Honduras .

The LRAD is manufactured by American Technology Corporation (ATCO), a San Diego-based company, which has also supplied it to the Chinese police. The company calls itself "a leading innovator of commercial, government, and military directed acoustics product offers" that offers "sound solutions for the commercial, government, and military markets."

There's a CrimethInc report of the Pittsburgh protests at Infoshop news

Night of a Thousand Stars

As this post concerns both a South East London story and documents a club scene I wasn't sure whether to post it at my localist Transpontine blog or here. So in the end I decided to put it on both.


Going out this Saturday (September 26th) to the Grand Vintage Ball at the Rivoli Ballroom in Brockley (SE London). Should be a good night, but as always on the rare occasions when I go to the Rivoli nowadays I am hoping to recapture some of the magic of one of the best nights out there has ever been (for me at least) in Brockley or anywhere else - Club Montepulciano's Night of a Thousand Stars.

The club started out at the Rivoli some time in 1997 I believe - anyway I know that I went to the 4th night there on Saturday 27th September 1997 (flyer below) and at that time it was running more or less monthly in Brockley. The club promised 'style, glamour, comedy, dancing, cocktails and kitsch' and it always delivered.

The host was Heilco van der Ploeg with the Montepulciano house band Numero Uno - among other things they did a cover version of the Cadbury's Flake advert song from the 1970s ('tastes like chocolate never tasted before'). The format was usually a floorshow featuring a mixture of cabaret and dancing turns. Among the former I recall seeing Jackie Clune doing her Karen Carpenter routine, Earl Okin and burlesque act Miss High Leg Kick; among the latter were Come Dancing finalists like The Kay and Frank Mercer Formation Dance Team.

Then the DJs took over - usually Nick Hollywood and the Fabulous Lombard Brothers - playing kind of loungecore kitsch, but always very danceable - Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Peggy Lee, Perry Como and Andy Williams. The latter's House of Bamboo was something of an anthem - anybody who ever went to that club must surely have a flashback if they hear the line 'Number 54, the house with the bamboo door...'. The dance floor was invariably packed with a mish mash of styles - mods going through their paces in one corner, couples doing ballroom and Latin moves, and disco bunny hands in the air action (that was me anyway).

Xmas 1997 flyer

There were themed nights too. Moon over Montecarlo was themed around Motor racing, complete with an 8 lane Scalextric track.

There was a 1998 Halloween Night of a Thousand Vampires featuring one Count Alessandro, who performed a punk-flamenco-operatic version of Psycho Killer before wandering through the crowd biting necks with his vampire teeth. Sometimes there was a casino - but not for real cash - or you could get even get your haircut.

If all of this sounds a bit too arch, I must emphasise that it wasn't full of people being cool or ironic in a detached sort of way. It was a full on 90s clubbing scene with drink, drugs, sex in the toilets and other madness. As usual in clubs when the queues for the women's toilets got too long, the women invaded the men's toilets and I remember seeing one woman peeing standing up at one of the urinals.

But above all else there was dressing up. I went to lots of clubs at that time with supposed glamorous dress codes - Renaissance, the Misery of Sound - but none came anywhere close to Night of a Thousand Stars. And while at these glam house nights, dress codes were arbitrarily enforced by bouncers to create some kind of dubious sense of style elitism, at the Rivoli nobody had to dress up to get in - but everybody wanted to. It was a mass of sequins, feather boas, suits and dresses in velvet and fake fur (zebra, patent snakeskin you name it), sombreros... There was a real sense of entering a fantasy world where every man and every woman was star.

Planning what to wear was all part of the fun, sometimes I would go up to Radio Days (retro shop in Lower Marsh, Waterloo) to buy a new shirt especially. Feeling like a million dollars, and thousands of pounds in debt - I'm still paying off my credit card bills from that extravagant time, but that's all part of the proletarian dandy experience.

The other star was the venue itself - the red velvet and chandelier splendour of the Rivoli Ballroom. I'm not sure exactly when the club finished in Brockley - I think it was some time in 2000 and the rumour was that in all the time it had been running the venue had never really had a license for late night drinking. It moved on to the Camden Centre and Blackheath Halls but I don't think it was ever the same. I went to the latter in 2003 and it just didn't have the stardust.

Xmas 1998 flyer

It was all very handy for me living within walking distance, but it wasn't 'a local club for local people'. People came from all over London - one flyer said 'Get out your A-Z'. When the club closed, the taxi rank up the road was transformed into a post-ballroom chill out as the best dressed queue in town hung around chatting and waiting for a lift home. Bliss was it in that Brockley dawn to be alive.

Heilco van der Ploeg went on to open the Kennington tiki bar, South London Pacific. I thought I saw him pushing a buggy round Brockley last year.

More details of the Grand Vintage Ball here.

Police Assault in Essex

Three Essex cops have been put on restricted duty while an internal inquiry is undertaken into a police assault in Brentwood, Essex last week. Video footage shows police spraying CS gas at close range in the face of a man who was already restrained and pushing women who complained on to the ground. The incident happened on Sunday September 13th near the Sugar Hut nightclub, where a big party featuring singer Pixie Lott had been cancelled due to a fire.

New Anti-Rave Ordinance in New Mexico

Officials in Valencia County (New Mexico) have agreed to develop 'an anti-rave ordinance' to give the sheriff more powers to stop parties. Comments at a recent meeting included 'After this last one happened, I learned that the behavior that goes on at these raves is more risque than I thought' (more at Valencia County News Bulletin, 12 Sept 09)

Sudan trousers trial

Lubna Hussein is one of 13 Sudanese women arrested while listening to music in a Khartoum cafe on July 3:

'Next week I will stand trial in a Sudanese court, charged along with 12 other women with committing an "indecent act" – wearing trousers in a public place. I will face up to 40 lashes and an unlimited fine if I am convicted of breaching Article 152 of Sudanese law, which prohibits dressing indecently in public. As an employee of the UN I was offered immunity, and the chance to escape trial, but I chose to resign from the UN so that I could face the Sudanese authorities and make them show to the world what they consider justice to be...

And my case is far from an isolated one. In fact the director of police has admitted that 43,000 women were arrested in Khartoum state in 2008 for clothing offences. When asked, he couldn't say how many of these women had been flogged. And it's not just about clothing. After my arrest, two girls were arrested in a public place and the police discovered that their mobile phones had video clips of scenes from the hugely popular Arab soap Noor and Mohannad in which the main characters kiss each other. The girls were charged with pornography and given 40 lashes...'

Read the full article in yesterday's Guardian

Thames Beach Party

Popped into briefly to this beach party on the South Bank of the Thames last Sunday. It was the latest in the ongoing series of 'Trance on Thames' free parties.

Homage (from a beach) in Catalonia

I'm not going to claim that I got any great insights into the local musical/political/social milieus whilst lazing round in the sun in Catalonia recently. The closest I got to radical politics - other than reading Planet of Slums by Mike Davis on the beach - was buying an Accio Antifeixista(anti-fascist action) t-shirt from Partisano, a militant ska punk emporium in Girona.


As for music, well let's just say that all I learned was that Swedish indie pop band I'm from Barcelona have reached the dizzy heights of having their epynomous theme song used in a TV advert for San Miguel lager.

Still I did come across some interesting stuff in Colm Toibin's book Homage to Barcelona (2002) about how the politics of war, revolution and dictatorship were played out musically in the 2Oth century.

The fascists in Spain sought not only to crush worker insurgency but to impose one unified Spanish state with one language (Castillian Spanish) and one Catholic culture. Under the 1920s military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, not only the anarchist CNT union was banned but also the Orfeo Catala, the main Catalan language choir (there was a strong choral tradition among factory workers with 85 workers choirs in Catalonia by 1861). For a while Barcelona FC matches were stopped after the crowd booed the Spanish national anthem.

CNT sticker in Catalonia last week

Under Franco the Catalan anthem Els Segadors was banned along with the public use of the language and Sardanes, a popular Catalan circle dance. During the dying days of the dictatorship these elements became expressions of resistance, including songs from La Nova Canca folk movement. Lluis Llach's 'song L'Estaca became the battle hymn of Catalonia in the last years of the old regime. It was about a stake in the ground, and how if youi beat at it for long enough it would fall. The chorus repeated the word fall, and everybody who sang the sing wanted it to fall, fall, fall. On Sunday nights in the mid-1970s the sardana would be danced in the Placa de Saint Jaume, and afterwards they would join hands in the square and sing "L'Estaca". Sometimes the police would come in jeeps and attack people, but most of the time it was quiet and orderly, there was just the fervour of the chorus "Segur que tomba, tomba, tomba"' (Toibin).

Image from the Franco period (I found this on a 1975 Calendar)

Toibin also notes how a new political elite was waiting in the wings to take over from Franco. Interestingly, in view of earlier discussions at this site about dancing and class formation, he identifies a Barcelona nightclub situated by Santa Maria del Mar as the key location for the emergence of this elite.

Zeleste was set up in a former clothes shop in 1973 by Victor Jou to offer 'a venue to more marginal and left wing groups, to jazz bands, and to people who wanted something new and different' in a city whose nightlife was dominated by flamenco bars; 'Twice during the early years of Zeleste the police came in vans and arrested the entire bar - all three hundred clients - and took them in for interrogation'.

Increasingly, the club became where 'the new ruling class, the men and women who later came to run the city, used to meet in the years before they took power. Zeleste was the place where the young designers and architects, painters and writers, politicians and journalists had discussed matters of mutual importance late at night in the last years of the dictatorship'.

In the 1980s it was replaced by Zeleste Nou, a 2500 capacity converted warehouse with a dancefloor downstairs and passageways along the roof for those needing some fresh air. By this time some of Zeleste's former denizens, the Socialist politicians who now ran Barcelona, were working hand in glove with ex-Francoists like Juan Antonio Samaranch to plan for the 1992 Olympics. The latter had gone from running Barcelona under Franco to becoming President of the International Olympic Committee.

Poster in Girona last week promoting musical and other events 'per la Independencia i el Socialisme'

Women Dancers killed in Pennsylvania

Earlier this month three women at a Latin Dance class were murdered at a Fitness club in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania. Their killer was a pissed off misogynist who then killed himself.


People spend a lot of time analyzing the reasons why acts like this take place, the obvious point often being overlooked that most murdered women are killed my men, for such crimes as not sleeping with them, and indeed most murdered men are killed by men too, for such crimes as offending their masculinity by looking at them in a funny way.


I remember many years ago, when I was at college, going to a debate on the Yorkshire Ripper murders entitiled 'The Ripper: mad or male?'. Radical feminist analyses might have fallen from fashion, but I must admit I am increasingly being drawn back to the notion of 'male violence' if only because it describes an empirically observable reality. That doesn't mean that there are simple solutions, or that other socio-economic/psychological factors aren't important - after all most men don't go around killing people - but to pretend it's not an important factor is to ignore what is staring everybody in the face.

5 words: Funky, Surrealism, Pirates, Exodus, 121

The '5 word meme' is just that - somebody gives you 5 words to say something about. Bob from Brockley gave me my five (as well as prompting Shalom Libertad and Waterloo Sunset to respond among others). If you want to join in, say so in a comment and I will give you five words to ponder.

Funky

A while ago, Cornershop declared that Funky Days are Here Again. What they didn't predict was that Funky would return as a noun rather than a verb, the name for the latest blending of bass and beats on UK dancefloors. It's always been hard to define funk, but there are certainly plenty who would argue that UK Funky doesn't have it (including Paul Gilroy). It's true that the rhythm owes more to house and soca than to James Brown, but who cares. I've always liked up on the floor female vocal anthems, so can only rejoice that a whole new seam of them has been uncovered in the disco goldmine. Check out Grievous Angel's Crazy Legs mix, which has the temerity to mix Brian Eno & David Byrne's Jezebel Spirit into Hard House Banton's Sirens.

Surrealism

When I first got interested in politics I was greatly attracted to Dada, Surrealism and the Situationists, initially through second hand accounts in books like Richard Neville's Play Power, Jeff Nuttal's Bomb Culture and indeed Gordon Carr's The Angry Brigade. The emphasis on play, festival and the imagination still resonates with me, but I would question the notion of desire as an unproblematic engine of radical change. Desire is surely formed amidst the psychic swamp of present social conditions and I would no longer advise everybody to take their desires for reality - sadly I have seen far too much of the impoverished desires of men in particular. Just look through your spam emails.

Pirates

The untimely death of 'pirate' Paul Hendrich scuppered our scheme to raise the jolly roger and declare a pirate republic on a traffic island on the New Cross Road. Still the appeal of some kind of autonomous sovereignty beyond the reach of states lingers on- even if its contemporary reality of sailors held hostage in Somalia doesn't sound quite so romantic. I was also once in a short-lived Pirate Band, our one gig playing the yiddish potato song Bulbes in the Pullens community centre at the Elephant and Castle, supporting the fine indie pop duo Pipas.

Exodus

I grew up in Luton but had moved away by the time of its greatest counter-cultural contribution, the Exodus Collective. I made it to a few of their events though, and their massive free parties were as legendary as their tenacity in defending themselves in the courts. If Rastafarians transposed the Exodus myth to Africa, the Exodus Collective were more modest - an actual practice of leaving the Town (and in particular the Marsh Farm council estate where some of the them lived) for parties in the Bedforshire countryside combined with plans to create some kind of alternative society of community housing and support. Some of the people involved are still keeping the faith, but Exodus itself seems to have imploded at the end of the 1990s. Not sure exactly why, but I guess it was the usual story of conflict involving drugs, money and personalities. Still the land of milk and honey did materialise briefly next to the M1 motorway.




121

121 Railton Road was a squat in a Brixton terrace that ran from 1981 to 1999. During that time it served as an anarchist centre, radical bookshop, meeting place, print shop, office for feminist and anarcho magazines and venue for countless gigs and parties, including the far famed Dead by Dawn events. As I lived in Brixton from 1987 to 1995 I spent a lot of time there, the best of times (dancing and chatting all night) and the worst of times (seeing somebody die in the street outside after a party I was helping with). And also the plain dullest of times, with seemingly endless meetings of bickering and intra-anarchist faction fighting.

Police Assault at Liverpool Street

Last year's tube party in protest against the drinking ban on the London Underground resulted in a court case last week in which a man was acquitted of assault after being beaten up by police at Liverpool Street Station. The following story comes from The Sunday Mirror (9 August 2009):

These shocking pictures show a man cowering in fear after being punched by a police officer.
A PC lunges at Chris Leonard and grabs him by the neck as police try to clear a train station packed with party-goers. A PC lunges at Chris Leonard and grabs him by the neck as police try to clear a train station packed with party-goers.

Astonishingly it was Chris – who claims he was punched in the face up to four times and got two suspected cracked ribs when the officer threw him to the floor and knelt on him – who was charged with assault. This week the case was thrown out of court after prosecutors reviewed a police video and Press pictures of the incident. Chris, 26, is now preparing to sue the police over the assault and for malicious prosecution and false imprisonment.

And he is planning to go to the Independent Police Complaints Commission about PC James Hendrick – the officer he claims assaulted him at Liverpool Street station in May last year.
PC Hendrick is in the Met’s Territorial Support Group. Other members of the same squad were linked to the death of bystander Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in London this April.
Chris, a land surveyor with no criminal record, was one of around 1,500 revellers packing the station. The Last Orders On The Tube events were held the night before a ban on drinking on public transport came into force.

Chris says: “It was a really good atmosphere. There were loads of people drinking and dancing. I maybe had about four or five beers, but I wasn’t drunk.” At around 11pm, senior officers decided to clear the station and around 50 PCs formed a line across the concourse. Police digital camera footage shows them coming forward in an effort to move the crowd towards the exit. In the footage, Chris can be seen smiling and talking to some of the officers.

He says: “I did join in with some of the others giving the police some banter but - we were asking why they were pushing us back.” He adds: “At first, it was all good-natured. But as we got closer to the escalators near the exit there was less room to move and people were starting to get a bit crushed and panicked. The police shouted at us to get back and people shouted that we couldn’t move any more. I thought they were being heavy-handed. I was getting quite scared because I realised I was trapped and I felt like there was no way out. I also realised people behind me in the crowd were throwing things at the police – I saw beer cans flying over my head.”

Moments before he confronted Chris, the police film shows PC Hendrick being hit in the face by what appears to be a can of beer. He turns and briefly puts his hand to his face and seem agitated before he rejoins his colleagues in the advancing police line – some of whom have their batons drawn.

Chris says: “I only noticed him seconds before he hit me. I just had time to realise, ‘Oh god, he’s coming for me.’ I backed away as far as I could, but I couldn’t get away from him. I remember saying, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ as I saw him draw his fist back. He hit me three or four times in the mouth and nose in quick succession. I was left disorientated but could hear people around me shouting and screaming at him.”

Pictures taken by Press photographers appear to show PC Hendrick lunge at Chris’s nose and grab his neck as blood drips from his mouth

Folk Against Fascism

The majority of folk musicians I have met have tended to be some kind of lefty/liberal/anarcho/counter-cultural type, and indeed the same goes for many of the people involved in Morris dancing and other folklore-related events. But the British National Party is trying to shift this, advising its activists to get involved in these kind of scenes to stoke up some spurious nationalist culture. Lancaster Unity quotes from the BNP's Activists and Organisers' Handbook which states:

"Ideally our units will lead their communities in organising, or at least supporting, cultural events such as St George's Day celebrations (April 23rd). Most regions of the country have cultural events which are unique to that area, or county. For example, Padstow Hobby Horse (sic) in Cornwall, Arbor Tree Day in Shropshire, Garland King Day and the Well Dressing in Derbyshire, the Marshfield Mummers in Wiltshire, the Haxey Hood in Humberside, and countless others.Some such celebrations, now very popular, have only been revived in recent years - the Hastings Jack in the Green and Whittlesea Straw Bear festivals show just how big such things can get. Why not do some research to see if there's a lost local tradition you can inspire a team of enthusiasts to revive?"

Meanwhile, folk musicians are getting increasingly pissed off about the BNP playing their music and selling their CDs to raise fund- both of which are pretty much out of their control. At the recent Sidmouth Folk Festival, Folk Against Fascism was launched to counter this. They say:

'The UK folk scene is a welcoming and inclusive one; folk music and dance have always been about collaboration, participation, communication and respect. Folk Against Fascism has been created to take a stand against the BNP’s targeting of folk music, a stand against the appropriation of our culture. Folk Against Fascism isn’t a political party or a bureaucratic, top-heavy organisation. It is any and all of us who want to make ourselves aware of the BNP’s bigoted view of our history and culture, and who want to do something about it. The BNP want to take our music, want to twist it into something it isn’t; something exclusive, not inclusive. We must not let them. Folk Against Fascism is a way to demonstrate our anger at the way the BNP wants to remodel folk music in its own narrow-minded image'.

There's a Facebook group and much more to come.

Border Controls

The new restrictions on musicians and artists entering the UK (discussed in an earlier post) are having a predictably lamentable effect. Henry Porter has publicised a couple of recent examples - the banning of Moroccan poets Hassan Najmi and Ouidad (Widad) Benmoussa and Indonesian poet Dorothea Rosa Herliany from a poetry festival; and the treatment of Canadian singer Allison Crowe who was detained at Gatwick for 11 hours, questioned, fingerprinted and then deported because she did not have a Certificate of Sponsorship when she arrived with her band in May.

There are lots more examples in the Manifesto Club report UK Arts and Culture: Cancelled, by Order of the Home Office.

Black Rock Free Party

A big free party took place last weekend in Brighton in the aftermath of Brighton LGBT Pride:

The Black Rock Rave, which many see as the unofficial Pride after party, took place at Black Rock on Saturday and carried on into the early hours of Sunday. Thousands of people descended on the site after the event was publicised on Facebook as being a 'night of mayhem' and a 'massive mash up'. One reveller needed medical attention as the party wound down at 3am.

Sussex Police said there were no serious incidents and no arrests were made. Party-goer George Hall said: “It was one of the best nights of my life, there must have been about 4,000 people there throughout the night and the next morning.”

A police spokesman said: “The last sound system was dismantled at 3am. We had minimal complaints about the noise although our environmental health officers did attend. It is illegal because you do need a license to hold an event like this but we patrolled from outside. There were no arrests, there was a minor scuffle but that sorted itself out. People see it as an extension of the Pride party.”

The Black Rock Rave has become a traditional part of the Pride celebrations for many people.
Last month The Argus revealed that all-night raves have returned to Sussex.
Hundreds of people have begun descending on Brighton and Hove at weekends for the outdoor parties.

Source: Argus, 2 August 2009.

Nice piece here on Positive Sound System and the history of free parties in the Brighton area.

London Funky MC murdered

Terrible news about the murder at the weekend of 19-year-old London MC Charmz (Carl Beatson Asiedu), apparently stabbed outside Club Life, Goding Street in Vauxhall. He had just performing at the Summer Vybz night at the South London club as part of the duo Kid n Play. Carl grew up in Norbury (South London) and was a student at De Montford University in Leicester.

His friend Shadestar says: 'It sickens me and upsets me to say that this most probably UNFORTUNATELY wouldn't be the last time an event like this takes place in the streets of London. It's SAD and PATHETIC! If YOU think carrying a knife around for WHATEVER reason is OK, then YOU are part of the knife culture in London and it NEEDS to come to an END!' Sadly he's right, only last week there were stabbings in Peckham outside the R'n'B Nitespot which left two people critically injured.

Here's Charmz performing his UK Funky track 'Buy Out da Bar':

Big Green Gathering Cancelled

The following article from Schnews (27 July 2009) describes the cancelation of this week's Big Green Gathering festival. I am reproducing it here because it describes in detail the extent of police powers under the Licencing Act 2005 to dictate how festivals are run - and the barriers to getting permission for anything vaguely alternative:

The Big Green Gathering, a fixture in the alternative calendar, was due to return after two years this week. 15–20,000 people were expected to turn up on Wednesday (29th) to the site near Cheddar, Somerset, for Europe’s largest green event - a five-day festival promoting sustainability and renewable energy, with everything from allotments to alternative media. Hundreds of staff and volunteers are already on site, and its cancellation comes just days before gates were due to open. Organisers, most of whom work for nothing, are gutted. One told SchNEWS “We are so disappointed not to be having this year’s gathering – it means so much to so many people”.

A last-minute injunction by Mendip District Council, supported by Avon and Somerset Police, put the ki-bosh on the entire event - citing the potential for ‘crime and disorder’ and safety concerns. This was despite the fact that the festival had actually been granted a licence on the 30th of June. According to Avon and Somerset police’s website “[We] went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure this event took place.” This is of course utter bollocks. The injunction was due to be heard in the High Court in London on Monday (27th). However, before that could happen the BGG organisers surrendered the festival licence on Sunday morning. As soon as this was done a police commander at the meeting was overheard saying into his radio “Operation Fortress is go”. Police have already set up roadblocks and promised to turn festival-goers back.

Chief Inspector Paul Richards, festival liaison, later confirmed to one of the festival organisers that “This is political”, adding that the decision had been made over his head at county level. One of SchNEWS’ sources on site said that the police were frank about the fact that the closure had been planned for two weeks. “This was a blatant act of political sabotage – the Big Green Gathering is now completely bankrupt, they knew that we were going to be closed down and yet they carried on allowing us to spend money hand over fist on infrastructure”.

The BGG collapsed financially in 2007 under the weight of increased security costs. The new licensing act added an extra £120k to their costs, leaving them with a loss of £80k. Security accounted for a third of their overall overheads and the road marshalling bill rose from £5k to over £23k. In spite of these setbacks, they managed to scrape themselves back off the floor with shareholder cash and some potentially dubious corporate involvement. Every effort had been made by the gathering’s organisers to accommodate the increasingly niggling demands of police and licensing authorities. The procedure lasted over six months – just check out www.mendip.gov.uk/CommitteeMeeting.asp?id=SX9452-A782D404 for the minutes of meetings held between organisers and the authorities. Demands included a steel fence, watchtowers and perimeter patrols, having the horsedrawn field inside a ‘secure compound’ and wristbands for twelve undercover police.

At a multi-agency meeting on Thursday, police took those wristbands in order to maintain the pretence that the festival stood a chance of going ahead. A catalogue of other obstacles were also continually placed in the organiser’s path. All of the businesses associated with the BGG came under scrutiny, licensing authorities contacted South West ambulances, the Fire Brigade and the fencing contractors and asked them to get payment up front from the BGG. Needless to say this caused huge problems. Under the terms of the Licensing Act 2005, police can insist on certain security firms being used by organisers. This of course leads to a totally unhealthy hand-in-glove relationship, open to abuse. Stuart Security were forced on the BGG by police, and on Wednesday last week, they suddenly announced that they wanted 60% of their fee up front. Even though the BGG scraped the cash together, the company still wanted out. So the BGG hired another firm – against police wishes. The fact that Stuart Security rely on police approval for lucrative contracts at Glastonbury Festival, the Royal Bath & West Show, WOMAD, Reading Festival, and Glade Festival has, of course, no bearing on the matter.

The last issue at stake was road closures. Mendip District Council had insisted on road closures as part of the licensing requirements. A festival organiser contacted the highways agency to process this fairly routine request. The decision was passed to junior management who reportedly came under intense pressure not to grant the closure. As the road closures were not secured, the council were able to claim that the BGG was in breach of licence. A nice little legal stitch-up that according to one QC meant the BGG stood fuck-all chance of fighting the injunction. Of course, now that “Operation Fortress” is in full swing, there are road-blocks throughout the area. The BGG is itself a limited company and could have fought the injunction - risking no more than bankruptcy - but in a nasty twist two individuals were also named, meaning that should proceedings have gone ahead against the festival then Mendip Council would have had a claim on their assets to settle court costs. Police also threatened to place the farmer on the injunction, risking his entire livelihood.

Anyone who has ever been to the Big Green will know that the atmosphere is more like a village fete than any of the mainstream events. There is virtually no aggro. It’s more about chai and gong-massages than Stella and fisticuffs. All power is 12V solar and the amplification is correspondingly quiet. Music stops at midnight. Compare that to the 24 hr Technomuntfucks that go on with state blessing across the country. Of course it would be cynical to suggest that the BGG represents an alternative that the authorities fear. It’s a gathering place for eco-activists, where the likes of Plane Stupid and No-Borders hang out and exchange ideas while trying to avoid being button-holed by 9-11 truthers.

It’s clear now that the state views events like the Big Green in the same light as Climate Camp and the anti-G20 protests. The BGG saga is showing that there may no longer be any ‘safe’ legal spaces for us to gather. The third way of quasi-legal free-ish festivals is looking like a dead-end.

It’s clear that the Big Green has been singled out – and any gathering promoting those values or trying to organise in a grass-roots way will probably suffer the same fate once they get to a certain size. As corporate-branded Glasto has become a fixture on the mainstream calendar, like Ascot or Wimbledon, many have turned towards smaller more ‘grass-roots’ festivals. Niche festivals have bloomed across the British landscape. No matter what your bent, be it faerie wings or S&M, there’s probably a muddy weekend in a field for you. Of course this isn’t the first time that Britain’s had a thriving festival scene. See previous SchNEWS’ for how the free festival scene came under ruthless attack from the forces of Babylon (or just skin up for an old hippy and listen to them bang on about the glories of the White Goddess Fayre or Torpedo Town). Some have tried to go down the quasi-legal route, such as Strawberry Fair and even Glastonbury, until the aptly named Mean Fiddler intervened in 2002.

Unfortunately the corporate dollar is never far behind. Witness how Glastonbury went from a fence-jumping free-for-all where the festival organisers built the infrastructure, but the fly-pitchers, buskers and random naked lunatics made it a real festie rather than a fenced in, heavily policed corporate theme park. The Big Green was an exceptional festival, which managed to leap through the legal process while being crew-heavy and retaining a lot of the free-festival atmosphere (Not all of course - we still had to put up with plod wandering around site). It was a unique gathering place for fringe movements, from eco-activists to crop-circle nutters.

We’re not just banging on about festivals being free because we miss the good ‘ol days – there’s a huge difference between being a punter who has a whole experience laid on for them (e.g. Glasto’s themed areas with helpful stewards pointing you in the direction of the consumer delights), and being part of a festival/free party where everyone’s responsible for the entertainment, and even infrastructure like welfare. A crowd that feels it owns an event behaves differently to one that feels it has paid to have an experience. The fact that undercover police now feel free to operate and arrest people, without any back-up, for cannabis use or nudity (See SchNEWS 684 and 603) at festivals has a lot do with the sheep-like behaviour of punters - a mentality that our masters are keen to see enforced. In the SchNEWS office we’re hearing rumours that people aren’t going to be put off – alternative sites are being looked at and people are heading to the West Country anyway. In the words of one participant “Things are just getting interesting”. Time for the Big Black Barney?

Ibiza on the roof: sex, naked dancing and squatting

Ludicrous/hilarious anti-squatter story in today's Sun - it's got the lot 'scroungers', 'crusties' and 'drug-fuelled orgies':

A GROUP of squatters have sparked fury by taking over an empty tower block and staging SEX SESSIONS on its roof. Crusty couples have been seen performing sex acts in broad daylight after carrying a sofa to the top of the five-storey building. Others were seen having full sex and dancing naked on the flat roof. Wild parties have kept neighbours up at night and there are claims of widespread drug-taking. Residents at a posh high-rise next door say they can no longer use their balconies in case kids see the sordid scenes...

The Sun also published a slightly different version of the same story yesterday with some more choice quotes:

SEX mad squatters have outraged residents at block of flats by having wild romps — on the ROOF. More than 250 horny crusties have enjoyed months of drug-fuelled orgies in full view of shocked residents. Fed-up homeowners claim the scroungers have caused havoc since occupying the building after the G20 summit in April. They have now begun a campaign to get the saucy tenants evicted from Poplar, East London — even calling for the building to be demolished.

Neighbour Jo Graham, 27, said: "When they go up on the roof they are there for everyone to see. "You normally hear them first, shouting and playing loud music and then when you look some of them are totally naked and dancing around and others are obviously having sex on the roof. Sometimes there are as many as 50 or 60 people on the roof and of course it's dangerous, especially if they are on drugs. Hopefully this eyesore will be demolished as soon as possible."

Local MP Jim Fitzpatrick added: "There's no proper solution apart from demolition." However the kinky squatters claim they want to stay — likening the flats to famed party island Ibiza. One jobless crusty, who only wanted to be known as Jon, said: "More and more people are coming because they hear about how much fun we have here. The more the merrier. The parties will continue until we are left with no choice but to go. It's like Ibiza up there on the roof. It's just party, party, party".

Crisis Music?

Well yes, I'm a bit slow off the mark in posting up these pictures from the demonstrations around the G20 summit of world leaders in London at the beginning of April. Not having much original to say about it all my intention was just to document some of the diverse musical forms on the protests, a project that seemed a bit facile after Ian Tomlinson was killed by the police on 1st April.

Still here they are. Most of the photos are from Put People First March for Jobs, Justice and Climate, a diverse demonstration of at least 35,000 people in central London on Saturday 28th March:

A mobile sound system with pretty impressive mixing desk, the guy on the left was rapping through a headset microphone

Jambalaya, New Orleans style marching band

Belgian workers on the London demo

More marching brass

Old school brass band with the RMT (railworkers union)

Then on April 1st I headed into the City for the G20 Meltdown protest at the Bank of England, where my main concern was avoiding being surrounded by police and prevented from coming or going for several hours (ye olde 'Kettling' technique). Apparently Billy Bragg, Kate Nash and Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly did a few acoustic numbers for the crowed, but I didn't see them or Enter Shikari's Roughton 'Rou' Reynolds who was apparently there.

This mobile sound system was stopped by the police from joining the crowd outside the Bank of England - until it started playing gabba and suddetly the police line parted! (probably only to widen the cordon mind).

Didn't find either of the actions particularly inspiring, but for all their limitations I guess I feel that some kind of movement is better than none. The long history of deep capitalist crises demonstrates that without a strong counter-movement the cost of recovery will be paid by those of us enduring pay cuts, job losses and reductions in public services - if not worse.

For some really deep history of the current crisis, take a look at David Graeber's 'Debt: the first five thousand years' in the new issue of Mute magazine (also available online at their site)