Some London free parties and clubs 1995

Came aross this fragment in a letter I wrote a the end of January 1995, seemingly I had  had a busy month:

'me and Toby went to Taco Joes's for a Shambhala sound system party which a friend of Toby's was involved in. It was OK, but there were some odd people there including some who had been mixing their drugs in a new and dangerous combination - steroids and ecstasy. There was one bloke in particular stripped to the waist and taking up lots of room on the dancefloor with his excessive muscles and Arnie-style chest. As well as looking like Brixton bodybuilder of the year he was going round shaking everybody's hand and introducing himself in happy E-head style. Still it's better that he was doing that than getting pissed and smashing people's faces in with his little finger.

For my birthday I went  to Final Frontier at Club UK in Wandsworth... The flyer said 'Rejoice as the old institutions and cornerstones crumble under the onslaught of pagan techno culture'...

The week after I went to the Far Side at the Robey with Kim and Vanida and then we went on to a free party in a huge squat in Brewery Road (off Caledonian Road, but not the same place as New Year's Eve). Downstairs was a big smoke filled warehouse type space. All you could see was a single beam of light and shadows dancing - the sound system and the DJs (Virus sound system who did that party we went to at London School of Printing) were invisible but you could feel a wall of earbleeding noise from their general direction. Upstairs was a bit more laid back with another dance floor and loads of rooms to chill out in.

I also went one week to 'Up to the Elbow', the queercore club where Katy (DJ KT) does her stuff. It had moved from the Bell (which has been bought by the Mean Fiddler for heterosexualisation) to the Freedom Cafe in Soho. There were a couple of good bands playing - 'Mouthfull' who were a bit Nirvana-like but did a great punkified version of 2 Unlimted's No Limtes and 'Flinch' who were more in the Pixes/Throwing Muses mould'.

Explanatory notes: Taco Joes's was a cafe/bar in Atlantic Road, Brixton (strangely I remember dancing to Perplexer's bagpipe-sampling Acid Folk at that party); the Brewery Road free party was in the next road to Market Road where I went to another free party on New Year's Eve 1995; the London School of Printing free party in 1994 was in a squatted building by Elephant and Castle; The Bell was a famous indie gay pub by Kings Cross, later became the Big Chill Bar.

Molly Macindoe - Free Party Photos

Photographier Molly Macindoe has a new book out 'Out of Order: A Photographic Celebration of the Free Party Scene'. I haven't got hold of a copy yet, but judging by the images reproduced in the Guardian last week, I have to get one soon. Lots of great images of parties in London from 1997 onwards then on to the Teknival circuit on the continent.



This photo was taken at a disused meat factory, Tottenham Hale on 31 December 1997. Joshua Surtees recalls this party at London Loves: 'The venue, we quickly realised, had once been an abattoir or meat factory. This was evidenced by large machinised meat hooks hanging from the ceiling, huge conveyor belts and various bits of slicing and dicing equipment. The size of the place was almost unimaginable. Each room was the size of a football pitch. Each contained a soundsystem playing either techno, jungle or gabber'.

This strange sense of space has always been one of the features of larger squatted buildings. In commercial clubs, every metre is planned for - the bar, the dancefloor, the cloakroom. Squatted buildings can be small and crowded but sometimes, like this one, huge and cavernous with a fantastically uneconomic use of space - whole areas where people can just drift. And yes, as Surtees point out: 'These were buildings lying empty in ruins. Filthy, devoid of electricity supplies or running water, windows broken, utterly neglected and destined to stay like that for years. Soundsystems such as Crossbones transformed these spaces into living, breathing, mind altering events full of colour, energy and sound. Very, very loud sound'.

On a similar tip check out 90's + Gigs Squats Parties, a newish site with flyers etc. from the free party scene. Lots of Brixton/South London stuff there, already including a few parties I was at.

Priory Grove School Squat in Stockwell 1991/92

In the early 1990s, when I was living in Brixton, I went to some parties at a squatted school in Stockwell. I couldn't remember too many more details, other than them being very messy and crowded - I recall climbing through a toilet window to get in to one because they'd stopped letting people in.

Thanks to Urban75 I now know that it was the former Priory Grove school, a site later developed as flats. It seems to have been occupied in 1991/92, with travellers living on site as well as puting on parties. Someone who lived there recalled that 'The redevelopment started shortly after the eviction, I used to live in the main building until shortly after the last party got busted and we lost electricity. Some great parties there, winter of 1991/2. Rave on the ground floor. Bands on the first floor. Fairshare reggae sound system on the top floor'.

Some photos and a flyer have surfaced recently on facebook, the latter from 'The Dynamic Pig Posse of Priory Grove' advertising an event in January 1992 with bands including festival/squat circuit favourites RDF and Co-creators as well as 'hardcore acid'. I know one of the parties I went to there was in December 1991, because I found a copy of a letter I wrote at that time (to a Brixton guy who was in prison for the poll tax riot) in which I said 'I went to a rave at a squatted school in Stockwell last week, which was good. Downstairs they had a serious rave, upstairs there were bands playing. There was also a massage room, although I didn't use it myself'.

Lot of intense parties in that period in some amazing places, many of them completely undocumented online or anywhere else. So if you were there, let us know what you remember...

(Images from Chris the Poet)

Update, July 2023

Found a couple more flyers. This one with PSI Company, Poison Electric Head and Tribal Energy plus rave, vegan cafe, brain machines, circus acts, massage [found at 56a Info Shop]

This one from February 1992, apparently the last party and it didn't really happen as it got busted by police early on. So not sure how much maximum hardcore and weird shit garage got played.  This seemingly dormant blog has the full story. Flyer says 'it's not a gig it's a rave', interesting because I think there was a transition in the early 90s from squat parties with bands, through parties with both bands and sound systems, through to free parties with just the later. So this was on that cusp. 

[some great comments below including from some of those involved, have included a couple of extracts from Stuart and Nina's 2015 comments here:

'we lived in stockwell park cres and opened priory grove and brixton dole office with other squatters we didnt care about money and normally opened places put on seminal parties/gigs then let the breadheads take over' (Stuart)

'Remember the gym at Priory grove, you could swing on the ropes and bars. I did the fluo skeleton paintings along the wall in there., watch them dance... and the gyroscope, that used to be everywhere, in fact I think Stuart spent a lost weekend trapped in that thing.  Re - the money bit, we always tried to make a profit as the gigs were benefits and what may have looked like chaos did take a lot of work to get together. The general rule was no one got paid to play or to help run the bar, cafe, door, security on the night or for skipping for veg - all free from New Covent Garden skips, - stage building, decorating etc.etc. Any one was welcome to muck in and help run stuff. Everyone was expected to pay in for a benefit, at least a donation, including us I seem to remember.

The idea was to make back all the beer money & costs for the next gig and to have made money on top for the benefit. The choice of benefit was usually chosen by whoever was in charge of the particular event. The Hunt Sabs ran a regular cafe. Gigs were often for squatters advice groups, prisoner benefits (Poll Tax, Strangeways & political) and groups might come along and run an event.

Everybody wanted a chance to run a cafe or gig and some were a lot more successful at it than others! My thought was that if you didn't let people have a go then how would they learn that they could do it. We would have a lot of lively meetings, there were always hierarchies and cliques rising and falling, there were big talkers and quiet do-ers, fights and arguing was a staple of every meeting, it was a crazy experiment really, probably a miracle we ever managed to put an event together at all! But hey, we tried, and we had some great nights but the no leaders approach surely took a mental toll and an awful lot of thrashing out to get a result!' (Nina)

Long hot summer starts early in Berkshire and Bristol

An early start for the long hot summer of 2011, with the warm weather prompting people to head out on to the streets and thegreat outdoors.

Two weeks ago, police broke up a party at Devil's Highway on land between Bracknell and Crowthorne in Berkshire, but not until about 1 pm on the Sunday after around 1,000 people had partied all night (see report at Get Bracknell, 10 April 2011). The party was seemingly put on by Koalition sound system (looks mighty crowded on the dancefloor!):



Last weekend there was a party in the woods near Catmore in West Berkshire. The police arrived at 4 am to close it down, but were prevented from doing so and the party continued until 11 am on Sunday. According to the BBC (18 April 2011), six people were arrested and sound equipment was seized. Thames Valley police claimed: 'This was an illegal rave which at times descended into violent disorder. When our officers tried to stop the event at around 4am, lots of missiles were thrown, which included burning wood. Thirteen officers and a police dog were injured in total. Fortunately, the rave happened in a very isolated location so there was minimal impact on the neighbouring community'. In that case it would probably would have been better for all concerned if the party had been left to get on with it.

Bristol

Then there was Bristol on Thursday night this week, with a full scale riot in the Stokes Croft area after police raided the Telepathic Heights squat. Barricades were set up, a police car destroyed, and a Tesco store attacked. This film shows something of a carnival atmosphere with crowds of people milling around the street - note the bit where some people get hold of police riot shields and run up the road with them.



There was some heavy police violence, with even the local Labour MP complaining that she was shoved by a cop. As Oli Conner reports, people were injured in by police batons and dogs, with people taking photos being targeted by police (see also report at The Commune).

Apparently there were also saxophone players on a bus stop outside the squat during the riot, and the strains of Summertime could be heard...

See also: St Pauls Uprising 1980; Bristol parties 1611 and 2006.

Gaddafi Occupations 1986 and 2011

Great to hear tonight of the occupation of the mansion in Hampstead, north London, belonging to Saif Gaddafi - son of the hopefully soon to be late Colonel. 'Topple the Tyrants' have squatted the place and put up banners including one with a picture of Gaddafi saying 'Out of London, Out of Libya'.

Put me in mind of an earlier occupation, the squatting of the abandoned Libyan People's Bureau(an Embassy building), initiated by people around anarcho-punk prankster band God Told Me To Do It in 1986. There's a nice account of the squatting of the place - and expropriation of its contents - by Anna Marrian at Animal Farm:

'We secure the door and explore the building, staying away from the windows. It’s four floors of 30-foot ceilings, ballroom sized rooms with plush carpeting and heavy velvet curtains, mahogany desks, button-backed leather sofas and office equipment stacked up in the end of each room. A shroud of dust everywhere... I get everyone from the St. John’s Street squat and drive back to the Libyan People’s Bureau intact. It’s dark and the side street is deserted. Andy and the others disappear inside and reappear thirty minutes later carrying one of the green leather sofas out the back door. This is followed by several photocopiers, curtains, fax machines, telex machines, leather executive office chairs, handfuls of books written in Arabic. The van is stuffed to the ceiling'.

Also came across this account: 'It had been vacant after someone inside the embassy fired on a group of demonstrators and killed a policewoman. After that, the whole staff refused to cooperate in any investigation and returned to Libya, leaving the building vacant. Enter squatters. I went to one of their parties. I remember one skinhead girl trying to balance as many copies as possible of Quadaffi's Little Green Book on her head'.

Of course in those days, Libya was a pariah state following the shooting dead of PC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984, as Embassy staff opened fire on anti-Gaddafi demonstrators in London. Since then, without any change in regime, Gaddafi has acquired quite a fan club - shaking hands with Tony Blair and his son Saif feted at the London School of Economics and by the British Royal Family. Everybody from Anthony Giddens (social democratic theorist of the Third Way), the National Front (current BNP leader Nick Griffin travelled to Tripoli in 1986), the Workers Revolutionary Party and the Nation of Islam have sung his praises. Was there ever a dictator with such a disparate group of supporters from far right to far left via every shade of mainstream governmental opinion?

No part of the political spectrum seems to have been immune from this nonsense. In the early 1990s I took part in the International Infoshop gathering in London, bringing together people involved in radical social centres and book shops from across Europe. The event was hosted by two London infoshops, the 56a Infoshop at Elephant and Castle (which still exists) and the 121 Centre in Brixton's Railton Road (which was evicited in 1999).

Those of us at the London end were mostly from a broadly anarchist background of hostility to all states. We seemed to have plenty in common with the comrades from Germany and Scandinavia with their focus on housing struggles (squatting), militant anti-fascism and autonomous movements. However when it came to talking about stuff outside of Europe it was a different story. We were horrified when the proposal was put forward that we should take part in an 'anti-imperialist solidarity camp' in Libya to show our support for the Gadaffi regime's stand against the US and Europe!

Amongst parts of the 'anti-impi' autonomist left this kind of support for all kinds of dubious regimes and stalinist 'liberation movement' rackets was commonplace - seemingly in Europe, autonomy and new forms of emancipatory politics was on the agenda, the rest of the world could make do with personality cults and militarist dictatorships.

Datacide #11 Launch in Berlin

I went to Berlin recently for the launch of the new issue (number 11) of Datacide - 'the magazine for noise and politics'.


There were a couple of events. First up was a series of talks at Cagliostro, a bar in Friedrichshain which also houses the Praxis record shop (plenty of breakcore, noise and hard drum and bass vinyl with some radical literature too - funny seeing Aufheben, the German-titled English communist magazine on sale in Germany). Praxis is the label started by Christoph Fringeli who also initiated Datacide. Note the extremely rare Association of Autonomous Astronauts slipmat in the shop:

I gave a talk based on my article in the magazine, Dance Before the Police Come, looking at the different ways the state tries to regulate clubs, raves and parties. I also reflected on the role of sound systems in the recent student demonstrations in the UK.

Nemeton spoke about the Tea Party movement and the radical right in the US, also based around her article in Datacide#11 . She dismissed claims that it simply represents a grass roots popular movement, highlighting the role of Fox media and established right wing politicians in launching and promoting it.

Riccardo Balli missed his flight from Italy but gave a reading of his short fiction piece ' 333 bpm' the next day.

Then on the Friday night there was a launch party at Subversiv, a housing project with a bar and brick basement. Berlin nightlife gets going late, the music started about one and the dancefloor peaked around four. Hard breaks and beats were supplied by DJs from Berlin, Bologna, Los Angeles and Essex including Christoph Fringeli, Balli (Sonic Belligeranza), Kovert, Baseck (Dark Matter), Nemeton (Dark Matter), LT, Cannibal Brother. I missed the last couple as I had to leave to get to the airport. But it was a good party and the notion of praxis as the unity of theory and action was certainly embedded in the event with at least four of the DJs also writing articles for the new Datacide.

[In the basemenet of Subversiv - the red poster sets out the venue's rules: 'Diese Party ist ein Freiraum in dem Sexismus, Transphobe, Homophobe, Mackertum, Antisemitismus and Rassismus KEINEN PLATZ haben' ( approximately 'this party is a free space in which sexism, transphobia, homophobia, macho behaviour, anti-semitism and racism have no place')]

Subversiv is one of the few squatted projects left in Berlin from the period after the fall of the wall when vacant properties were occupied en masse. Many of these were subsequently licensed in deals with the local government, but as the buildings have been sold off to developers and private landlords most have been evicted.

The day before I arrived another high profile squat was evicted in Friedrichshain, with 25 residents cleared from the Liebig 14 tenement block. The eviction was a big deal, the day was announced in advance and thousands of cops swamped the streets to make sure it went ahead.

On Wednesday night (2nd February) a march of a couple of thousand people in the area was stopped by the police short of its destination, and there were clashes followed by cat and mouse chasing through the streets with groups heading off causing mischief. I saw smashed bank windows and lots of graffiti, and apparently windows were broken at the O2 centre (big corporate entertainment centre similar to its London counterpart).

The full contents of Datacide #11 are as follows:

Datacide events - page 3
Political news compiled by Nemeton - page 4-5

Features:

“Hedonism and Revolution: The Barricade and the Dancefloor” by Christoph Fringeli, page 6
“Dope smuggling, LSD manufacture, organized crime & the law in 1960s London”
by Stewart Home, page 8
“Shaking the Foundations: Reggae soundsystem meets ‘Big Ben British values’ downtown” by John Eden, page 12
“Tortugan tower blocks? Pirate signals from the margins” by Alexis Wolton, page 16
“Dancing before the police come” by Neil Transpontine, page 21
“From Subculture to Hegemony: Transversal Strategies of the New Right in Neofolk and Industrial” by Christoph Fringeli, page 24
“From Conspiracy Theories to Attempted Assassinations: The American Radical Right and the Rise of the Tea Party Movement” by Nemeton, page 28
“How to start with the subject. Notes on Burroughs and the ‘combination of all forms of struggle’” by R. C., page 37

Fiction
“Sonic Fictions” by Riccardo Balli, page 40
“Digital Disease” by Dan Hekate, page 45
“Infra-Noir. 23 Untitled Poems” by Howard Slater, page 46
“Office Work” by Matthew Fuller, page 48

Record Reviews, page 52

“Beat Blasted Planet. An interview with Steve Goodman on ‘Sonic Warfare’” by Matthew Fuller and Steve Goodman, page 58
“Free Parties” by Terra Audio, page 60
“This is the end… the official ending” by Gorki Plubakter, page 61

The Lives and Times of Bloor Schleppy (11), page 62
Charts, page 63

Available now for EUR 4.00 incl. postage – order now by sending this amount via paypal to praxis(at)c8.com, or send EUR 10 for 3 issues (note that currently only issues 5, 7 and 10 are still available, but you can also pre-order future issues.) Also from the Praxis Webshop.

The zine is now available in London, currently exclusively at the 56a Info Shop, 56 Crampton Street, SE17.

See also Datacide in Rome 2009, Datacide in Berlin 2008.