Haunted dancehall: the ruins of Detroit

The ballroom in the Lee Plaza Hotel, Detroit, from the excellent Ruins of Detroit by Yves Marchard and Romain Meffre.

Interesting article about this by Sean O'Hagan in The Observer yesterday.

Saving London Venues: the Half Moon and the Foundry

Campaigns are currently being waged to save two iconic London venues.

The Half Moon in Putney (South West London) has been hosting live music regularly since 1963. Since that time it has seen performances by, among others, The Rolling Stones, U2, The Small Faces, Ralph McTell, Badly Drawn Boy, Richard Thompson, Kate Bush, Kasabian, The Wombats, Newton Faulkner and Mr Hudson. The current tenant has been ordered by the brewery (Youngs) to quit the pub by the end of January 2010 and there are fears that the venue could be turned into a gastro pub. Following a public campaign, Youngs are now saying they are sympathetic to music remaining in the pub but it seems that the new tenant could decide otherwise. See Save the Half Moon on Facebook for latest news.

The Foundry in Shoreditch is a relative newcomer and a different kind of venue. Not so much a music pub like the Half Moon , more of a bar with art/performance/music and various other parties and happenings. It has a squat bar ambience of the kind found in places like Berlin or Rome but rarely in London, although it is not actually squatted. Anyway it is facing demolition and replacement by a hotel - almost a text book case in the urban regeneration cycle whereby hipsters take over run down properties for low or no rent, make an area trendy, and then are displaced by corporate operators cashing in on the value they have added. The Save the Foundry campaign is urging people to comment on the planning application for the hotel - the deadline is 4th January.

Clubbing in Kings Cross - end of the line

The beginning of this month saw the final closure of three clubs in the old Goods Yard by Kings Cross station in north London - The Cross, Canvas (formerly Bagleys) and The Key. For the past 15 years this zone of old warehouses and railway arches was one of the key areas for London clubbing, attracting up to 4,500 people between them in any one night, but in an area being massively redeveloped it was never going to last.

My first visit was there in March 1995 for Glitterati at The Cross, a glammed-up house night with Danny Rampling DJing (flyer pictured). The Cross had a small terrace with palm trees and seats from fairground rides. On that night it did indeed feel very glamorous, no mean feat for a couple of railway arches, but I guess that was down to the crowd.

The glamour had worn off by the time I went back the following year for a Renaissance night, perhaps because Renaissance had built up such a hype about the incredibly luxury of their events. My diary of Saturday 20th January 1996 records "First the highlights. The bloke passing round a bottle of champagne on the dancefloor at 2 am... the (German?) women who said to me'Luuuuvvly shirrrt oooh from Hyper Hyper!.. The people from Dublin who took our picture''. On the negative, there was the door policy: "two blokes in front were turned away because one had steel toe caps; so did one of our party but the bouncers didn’t even look at this boots. Was it because he had pink trousers on... perhaps, though my pink hair wasn't a problem. In fact I was only asked one question - how many of you are there, and how many are girls?". The night was billed “The Italian Renaissance” on account of Italy’s Alex Neri being on the promised DJ line up along with Boy George and Ian Ossia. It was £15 in and the famous Renaissance decor consisted of "a couple of polystyrene cherubs, a tatty cross and some red material".

Bagley's was much more messy, definitely more like a rave than a club. My main memory of it is going there for me and my partner's joint stag-hen do in June 1997. The night was Freedom (which ran from 1996 to 2001), based on the premise of having different kinds of music playing rather than a single style. I wrote at the time 'Bagley’s is a huge place with at least four big rooms playing a range of music from garage to techno. Unfortunately this meant that at any one time about half the people there were wandering from place to place looking for something better (with little joy in my case). Although the place was busy, there wasn’t much of an atmosphere, and it all felt a bit grim. The venue itself felt like a squat party without the imagination. There were no hangings or interesting decor, just a few sad trees in one room. One of the few things in its favour was that there was plenty of fresh air, with access to an open air terrace outside. I’m sure on a starry summer night it would be great, but it was too wet to appreciate'. Not one of my best nights then, but I know other people had some great times there.

It is the nature of club spaces that they come and go, but there are broader questions about what happens in a city when the marginal, semi-derelict zones where nightlife flourishes are replaced by the bright shining surfaces of redevelopment. There are apparently plans for new clubs in the area, but another chapter in the history of dancing in London has definitely come to an end.

Do you have any good Kings Cross stories? Post in comments.

The Roxy, New York

As previously mentioned the Roxy club in New York closed this month. It opened in 1979 as a popular roller disco and, since 1991, had hosted a gay club on Saturday nights. Now it has been sold to developers - as the New York Press notes: 'sprawling redevelopment has engulfed much of the neighboring land on West 18th Street in recent years, and Roxy’s prime location directly below the soon-to-be renovated High Line made the former truck warehouse an irresistible target'. As it came to an end, the DJ played as the final record 'This used to be my playground' by Madonna.

In the early 1980s, the club was a critical stepping stone for hip-hop from Bronx scene to global phenomenon. As Jeff Chang describes it in his essential 'Can't stop ,won't stop: a history of the hip-hop generation':

"When Kool Lady Blue finally found a new home for her "Wheels of Steel" night, her club became the steamy embodiment of the Planet Rock ethos… To its ecstatic followers, the Roxy would become "a club that changed the world." In June [1982], Blue hung out a sign at the rink: COME IN PEACE THROUGH MUSIC. Her gamble was immaculately timed. She opened the club with all of the scene's leading lights at the beginning of a hot summer when graffiti and b-boying and hip-hop music was on everyone's minds.

"The regulars were Bam [Africa Bambaataa ]and Afrika Islam, and then Grandmixer DST, Jazzy jay, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash, and I'd rotate them," she says. "We had no booth. The DJ would be in the center of the floor on a podi­um. Everyone could see what he was doing, and he was kind of elevated to rock star status." On both sides of the DJ, large projection screens displayed Charlie Ahearn's slides of Bronx b-boys, rappers, and scenemakers. Nearby, the Rock Steady Crew convened all-night ciphers on the beautiful blonde wood floors.'"

Although it was "billed as the anti-Studio 54", the club attracted David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Talking Heads et al, facilitating the cross over of the music to a wider audience. One regular recalled "The crowds were very diverse. That was why I was so excited to be there. Suddenly this racially mixed group was having a good time partying in a room, which was a very rare thing. On the level of music and art, people were able to bridge all these boundaries."

The club was used as a setting for the 1984 film 'Beat Street', including the classic break dance battle between the Rock Steady Crew and the New York City Breakers (see next post for clip).

From Hangars to Warehouses

When was the warehouse party born, that is a party in an industrial space rather than a specially designed dancehall or ballroom? One candidate must be aircraft hangars and similar spaces in World War Two, as swing grew in popularity. US servicemen paid a prominent role in spreading the popularity of this music and related dance styles.

Margaret Townsend has recalled her time in World War Two: 'When I was 16 living in Cheltenham working as a trainee tracer in Gloucester Aircraft Company Brockworth. We used to go to the Queens Hotel in Cheltenham to be bussed to the hangars at Tewkesbury where we used to go dancing with the American G I's on a Sunday night. Very often we went home minus a few girls, soon they stopped that and a head count was taken before we left for home partly'.

An RAF serviceman remembers: 'A smoke-hazed aeroplane hangar somewhere in England, the floor crowded to capacity with uniformed boys and girls swaying gently or jiving wildly according to the dictates of that essential commodity, the dance band... The dance was on and all we were conscious of was the music (and what music it was) the exhilarating rhythm and of course, the girl in our arms' (quoted in John Costello, Love, sex and war - changing values, 1939-45, London: Collins, 1985, p.110).