Farewell Mark Astronaut

photo from Astronauts on facebook

Sad to hear of the death this week of Mark Astronaut (Mark Wilkins). I saw his band The Astronauts a number of times in the mid-1980s playing at anarcho-punk gigs, I believe for the first time at the Blockers Arms in Luton in February 1985 which I noted in my diary: 'really good, songs a bit like the early Bowie meets The Mob with a sense of humour, e.g. 'this one's about urban disintegration - it's also about darts'.  Also remember a gig in Mark's home town of Welwyn Garden City, again with Karma and Hertford indie-poppers The McTells and at various squat gigs in London. 

The Astronauts kept at it with various line ups from the later 1970s through to this year, to those in the know Mark was one of the great lost songwriters but they were perhaps too unique to fit in with any particular scene.  On the anarcho-punk scene for instance their folky melodies were a bit of an anomaly, though All the Madmen records did release their great 'It's All Done by Mirrors' album in 1983. 

image from discogs

Like many bands in that period they played various benefit gigs including one  with the Redskins for striking miners at  Welwyn's Woodhall Community Centre in 1984. Earlier in 1979, under the name Restricted Hours, they had contributed to a Stevenage Rock Against Racism EP

image from Discogs

Last year in November I went to one of my first post-Covid gigs at the New Cross Inn in SE London, to see another set of anarcho-punk survivors Zounds supported by Hagar the Womb. I saw a long haired figure with a covid mask on and immediately recognised Mark Astronaut who I hadn't seen for 30 years. He joined Zounds on stage for a guest vocal on You Can't Cheat Karma, and I chatted to him briefly afterwards before he headed off to get his train back to Welwyn. He told me that the Astronauts had some gigs coming up and that a book about him was coming out soon - I haven't got round to getting a copy yet of Survivors - 45 years of the Astronauts, but by all accounts its a great history not just of the band but of the punk/alternative scenes around his part of the world. 

Mark Astronaut with Zounds at New Cross Inn in November 2021

I went to see The Astronauts at Club 85 in Hitchin only a few weeks ago, playing with Blyth Power and Pog. They were great, nobody knew then that would be one of his last gigs. So long and thank you Peter Pan of the suburbs.

The Astronauts at Club 85 in Hitchin in May 2022

 

See also

https://thehippiesnowwearblack.org.uk/2022/07/11/mark-wilkins-founder-member-and-frontman-of-the-astronauts-dies/

War Inna Babylon at ICA

'War Inna Babylon: The Community’s Struggle for Truths and Rights'  at London's Institute for Contemporary Arts (7 July – 26 September 2021) is an exhibition curated by community organisation Tottenham Rights, together with independent curators Kamara Scott and Rianna Jade Parker. They say:

'Ten years on from the UK-wide riots sparked by the police killing of Mark Duggan, this exhibition shines a light on the vast range of collective actions, resistance and grassroots activism undertaken by Black communities across the U.K in response to over seven decades of societal and institutional racism. 

Using the ‘symbolic location’ of Tottenham, a neighbourhood that has received much attention in recent years due to its history of racial conflicts and heavy-handed policing; this exhibition combines archival material, documentary photography, film and state-of-the art 3D technology to ‘act as a window to the past and as a mirror for our present-day social climate’.  War Inna Babylon will chronicle the impact of various forms of state violence and institutional racism targeted at Britain’s Black communities since the mass arrival-upon-invitation of West Indian migrants in the late 1940'.

The exhibition is strikingly displayed in a way which does justice to its somber subject matter, including al list of deaths at the hands of the police and Forensic Architecture's detailed investigation of the police shooting of Mark Duggan in 2011 

"Frontlines, as they are affectionately known by locals, were the only tangible public spaces where Black people felt relatively safe enough to convene, especially as they were ostracised from mainstream venues. As so, the police would invade these locations... 'Symbolic locations' were determined by PC Kenneth Newman, Commissioner of Police for the London Metropolitan force from 1982 to 1987. In various speeches and articles he would offer: Broadwater Farm in Tottenham, Railton Road in Brixton and All Saints Road in Notting Hill as prime examples of 'no go' areas...

[In the aftermath of the 1980s riots] "...Oliver Letwin - then an adviser to Margaret Thatcher - advised her not to believe that the uprisings stemmed from systematic inequalities. Letwin blamed unrest on 'bad moral attitudes' and dismissed suggestions to fund communities, claiming that Black business owners would set up a 'disco and drug trade'. The police sought on occasions to restore  - 'take back' - these neighbourhoods. And so, community-led Frontlines where Black people were able to practice a level of autonomy were subjected to intense surveillance and military-style operations, quickly becoming sites of resistance"

Archive material in the exhibition: 1981 leaflets from the New Cross Massacre Action Committee and the Brixton Defence Campaign.