My London musical/radical soundscape 2023

Reading other people's end of year lists is like listening to people talking about their dreams - occasionally interesting but mostly very much not. So this round up of musicking and political activity from (mostly) London 2023 is really for my own benefit and to document a few things which might otherwise vanish from the historical record or at least my memory.

Best gig of the year for me was Kneecap at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, a giant mosh pit in a sold out gig for Belfast Irish language rappers. Just up the road at the Roundhouse in December, Lankum were also excellent. Irish hegemony in my music tastes for the first time since the 1990s. Love the Roundhouse (also saw Big Moon there in May  and a couple of years ago Laura Marling), not so keen on the cavernous Ally Pally where I saw Sleaford Mods with John Grant, but a good gig.

On a jazzier tip, loved Ezra Collective at Hammersmith Apollo in February, and Laura Misch's mellow cloud bath performance at the Peckham Old Waiting Room. Nearby at the Ivy House pub SE15, The Goose is Out continued to curate some excellent folk nights including Martin Carthy and Stick in the Wheel. They also put on a monthly singaround session where people take it in turns to stand and sing one song at a time; I sang there earlier in the year and also at Archie Shuttler's Open Mic at the Old Nun's Head. Strummed the banjo and mandolin a bit.

In terms of my own music making the highlight was taking part in the Wavelength Orchestra event on the beach in Gravesend in June, an improvisational performance where assorted musicians sustained notes based on the duration of waves (although it was low tide and they were more like ripples). I took along my old Wasp synth, my dad's bagpipe chanter and my grandad's harmonica to add to the mix.

 

Went out for my birthday to a Mungo's Hi Fi night at the Fox & Firkin in Lewisham, checked out my local Planet Wax record shop and bar in New Cross. Enjoyed giving a Peckham anti fascist history walk for around 30 people in October, and chatting about my own history on Controlled Weirdness' 'Tales from a disappearing city' podcast.

I always appreciate the unexpected random encounters with music in the city, like coming across an Italian hip hop collective (Hip Hopera Foundation) performing in Beckenham Place Park or bumping into morris dancers by my local pub. Loved dodging the rising tide on the Thames shore for a dark 'Noise TAZ' in the summer.

Politically I am not a super activist at the moment but do try and get myself out there in times of emergency - and with climate change, war, anti-migrant racism and transphobic 'culture wars' it feels like that is most of the time at present. Or as Benjamin put it, 'The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule'.

The year started with ongoing strikes from NHS, rail workers and teachers, I popped down to various picket lines and protests. It has been hard to keep track of the endless state onslaught against refugees, including the 'Illegal Migration Act' which criminalised seeking asylum. Protest too becoming increasingly criminalised with climate emergency activists being locked up for months or even years just for walking in the road or doing a banner drop.  My most sustained activity was turning up regularly to defend a drag event at the Honor Oak pub in South London from far right opposition (which I wrote about at Datacide). I got increasingly fed up with anti-trans nonsense from fellow old lefties  and said so. The end of the year dominated by the massacre of October 7th and the seemingly never ending massacre in Gaza ever since - highlighted by both Kneecap and Lankum at their gigs.

Perhaps it remains true, as Frederic Jameson said, that 'it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism', but the neo-liberal capitalist utopia of a world united and pacified by globalised markets has vanished too. It is not hard to imagine a kind of end of capitalism as we know it, at least as a global system, replaced by endless ethno-nationalist violence and conflict for shrinking resources like water and arable land. Harder sometimes to hold onto a politics of hope for a better world, but what is the alternative?

'South London Loves Trans People' - at the Honor Oak pub in May

Stop the Migration Bill protest at Westminster with speakers on Fire Brigades Union fire engine (13 March 2023)

Refugee solidarity on London anti-racist demo, 18 March 2023

Gaza ceasefire demo blockades Carnaby Street, 23 December 2023

Anyway here's a slice of London's musical/radical soundscape as experienced by me in 2023:

Seen and heard in film above:

1. Striking Lewisham teachers, January 2023.

2. Ezra Collective perform Space is the Place, Hammersmith Apollo, February 2023.

3./4./5. Extinction Rebellion demo in London, April 22 2023.

6. Martin Carthy singing High Germany at Goose is Out folk club at the Ivy House SE15, April 2023

7. Wavelength Orchestra in Gravesend (OK not actually London) on beach next to St Andrews Art Centre, June 2023

8./9. Dancing in the streets in Honor Oak, defending drag event from far right opposition, 24 June 2023

10. Stick in the Wheel at at Goose is Out folk club at the Ivy House SE15, June 2023

11. Torquon on Thames Beach, Noise TAZ, 19 August 2023 

12. Khabat Abas, Thames Beach Noise TAZ, 19 August 2023 (Kurdish experimental cellist)

13 Leslie, Hilly fields, September 2023 (pop up electronic performance in the park)

14. Blanc Sceol,  Deptford Creekside Discovery Centre, September 2023 (acid sounds on self made acoustic instruments as part of 'Thorness and Green Man' autumn equinox performance with artist Victoria Rance)

15 Cyka Psyko - Sardinian rapper with Hip Hopera Foundation, Beckenham Place Park, 24 September 2023

16. Laura Misch in Peckham 21 October 2023

17. Palestine demo, Battersea, 11 November 2023

18. Kneecap, Electric Ballroom, 29 November 2023

19. Sleaford Mods cover West End Girls at Ally Pally 2 December 3034

20. Lankum singing The Pogues' Old Main Drag to remember Shane MacGowan at the Roundhouse, 13 December 2023.

21. Palestine demo, Carnaby Street, 23 December 2023

In defence of Billy Bragg and Trans Rights

Billy Bragg has fluctuated in my estimation over the years. When he first appeared on the scene, singing solo on electric guitar was more or less unknown and he had some great songs. I mean a double A side single of New England and St Swithins Day in 1984... few can top that.  Levi Stubbs Tears can still make me cry.

And yes he was on the right (left) side of the all the big battles like the miners strike. My main criticism of him in those days from my anarcho/ultraleft stance was that he was so close to the Labour Party. Must confess I may even have heckled him from this perspective when he played on a National Union of Students demo though he was great live (sorry Billy)! I've never been entirely convinced by his 'progressive patriotism' line of reclaiming icons of English identity from the far right, though I can see that it can sometimes be effective. 

That time I heckled Billy Bragg - the 'Stand up for a New Deal Now' demo and rally in Battersea Park in March 1984 where he performed with Benjamin Zephaniah and Dancing with the Dog (who were they?). That was the first time me and my friends met Ian Bone and Class War who were quite an influence

Still he has stuck to his guns politically when others have gone quiet, not to mention later nameless indie folk singers influenced by him who must be suspected of being shy Tories given their absence of anything to say. He has played countless benefit gigs for various worthy causes.

Musically he has steered an interesting path for someone from a punk background -  I actually have a copy of his 1978 punk single with his band Riff Raff, 'I wanna be a cosmonaut', which I sometimes played as part of my Disconaut Autonomous Astronauts set. He has explored Americana through his interpretations of Woody Guthrie lyrics with Wilco, and English folk music with Imagined Village. 

I might add that my partner is from Dagenham and no word can be spoken against him in our house.

Billy Bragg singing outside the Festival Hall, June 2007

But recently my social media timelines have been flooded with accusations about Bragg accusing him of misogyny and being anti-women. The reason for this attention is that he has been an outspoken supporter of trans rights, including changing the words of songs to be trans-inclusive. He now sings his old song 'Sexuality' with the lyrics “And just because you're they,  I won't turn you away' instead of  'just because you're gay', explaining 'Times changed. Anyone born since the song was released would wonder why it’s a big deal to find common ground with a gay man. The front line now is trans rights'. Bragg has also been critical of those feminists who oppose trans rights along with their far right allies. But if Bragg is a misogynist then so presumably are the Feminist Library, Sisters Uncut, Gal-Dem etc. and many other feminist projects - not to mention most left wing/anarcho/radical folks under the age of 35.

I think Bragg is braver than most because he actually stands to lose some of his livelihood for speaking out. I hate the lazy political stereotyping of generations, but I do feel there is a generational aspect at play here. The trans exclusionary position does seem to be particularly concentrated among British lefties of a certain age.  I would estimate that the majority of people I know who were involved in radical politics in the 1980s have this as a default setting. This is precisely the constituency who are Bragg's natural fan base and it would be very easy for him to just serve them up 'what did you do in the strike?' platitudes rather than challenge their current day prejudices.

And I don't feel that prejudice is too strong a word. For me the issue does come down to the simple one of  'Some people are trans, get over it'. We can debate biology, gender and ideology until the cows come home, but it is a fact that some people really do experience gender dysphoria and that their lives can be made better by having their gender identity recognised. It seems needlessly cruel to deny this, or to portray those in this position as some terrible threat.  Of course that's a simple version of the argument and there's much more that I could say, but that has to be the starting point.

The vigil in Soho Square on 18 February 2023 for the murdered Brianna Ghey Vigil. A very moving event and I couldn't believe some of the hateful stuff some people were posting about it. You know 'how do they know it was a hate crime' like every racist says about every racist murder ever. Well it sure wasn't a love crime. 

There are some comparisons here with what happened when the Gay Liberation Front and similar groups erupted in the 1970s. Then too there were plenty of older (and some younger) leftists who found this threatening and denounced them, didn't they know that homosexuality would disappear under socialism and anyway wasn't all this a diversion from the class struggle? (see for instance this Gay Left article on the experience in the International Socialists). Let's just say that history has not been kind...

I know change and challenges to accepted ideas are uncomfortable. I would just urge people to pause and sit with this discomfort for a while rather than make knee jerk responses to something they mostly don't know much about. Read some books, listen to some trans people.  People also need to look around at the company they are keeping. Globally the anti-trans movement is being driven by the far right who are also coming for abortion rights and LGBTQ+ people generally. As someone once said 'If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction' (attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer). Wouldn't you rather be heading along the A13 with Billy Bragg?

Part of the big crowd that turned out at the Honor Oak Pub in South London on 25 February 2023 to oppose a far right threat to a drag storytelling event. I know it's not exactly the same issue but quite an overlap and  the anti-drag mob were a motley crew of ex-Combat 18 thugs and assorted Tommy Robinson wannabes. As somebody once sang 'which side are you on?' 

[sometimes it's a lonely and painful path when you feel so many of your friends have taken a wrong turn. Anyone for a support group for 'Boomers and Gen Xers for trans rights'?]

by Neil Transpontine, written on transgender day of visibility 2023

(had some positive responses to this post including one friend saying 'I think us boomers / gen x for trans rights ARE the majority - it’s just the usual crap about those shouting loudest')

Update 31 March 2024

Nothing much has changed, though I've noticed a few left anti-trans people nervously trying to distance themselves from the openly far right associations of some of the people they previously defended (but see Bonhoeffer quote above). A 'wait, are we the baddies?' moment can't come too soon, but I don't think it's good enough. The most sustained anti-fascist movement in London in the past 12 months was at the Honor Oak pub in South London from February to August 2023 where for six months people turned up to oppose openly far right protestors targeting a drag storytelling event. The anti-fascist effort was led by trans/queer activists - see 'South London Loves Trans People' banner below. Being an anti-fascist today means standing alongside and in solidarity with trans people.

For more on the Honor Oak movement, see my article in Datacide magazine: Defending Drag - South London is Still Anti-Fascist

'They call themselves the Gender Benders' (1984)

I saw an online discussion recently about the origins of the term 'gender bender'. Seemingly Jon Savage used it in a 1980 article about David Bowie in The Face, and it seems to have been in use in UK/US in the 1970s if not earlier. But it was with the advent of Boy George and Culture Club that the term became applied in the popular press to a whole fashion scene/subculture. The first example I could find at British Newspaper Archive was from the Sunday Mirror, 22 January 1984, 'Gender Benders' by Linda McKay.

'They are shocking. They are outrageous. They call themselves the Gender Benders, the latest youth cult to follow in the high-heeled footsteps of bizarre pop idols Boy George and Marilyn. These days, far from simply dressing up in the privacy of their own homes, the Gender Benders are coming out of the  wardrobe. They wear their camp clothes in the streets, to the local pub and even shopping in the supermarket… The Sunday Mirror has made an in-depth investigation of the crazy new cult, which will become part of the fashion history of the 80s,

Gender Benders are are easy to spot. These days you can see them on suburban streets from Penzance to Penrith, More and more parents are discovering their children turning to astonishing new fashions that make even Boy George look butch. And It can be a terrible shock to suspect that your son is bisexual or gay. But our research shows that most Gender Benders are anything but gay. In fact, most of their blood is as red as their lipstick. They make-up and dress up entirely out of a sense of fashion. And the girls find it a turn-on and sexually attractive'

Update (27/9/2022):

For a 1970s example of the term see a letter entitled 'gender benders' in Texas Monthly (August 1978), describing a sex reassignment clinic in Houston.  Simon Reynolds (see comment below) has spotted a 1981 book by David Egnar, 'The Gender Benders: a look at the trends distorting the roles of men and women' published by Radio Bible Class, a US Christian publisher - a book bemoaning the undermining of biblical gender norms by feminism and the sexual revolution .

Gender Autonomy Now

Lots of interesting material at the South London Gallery (fire station site) in the School SOS display of work from a recent critical design programme, SOS-21.

As I'm posting this in Transgender awareness week (November 2021)  I'll highlight a couple of relevant works from this exhibition.

O.S. Warren risograph print 'Gender Autonomy Now' and pamphlet 'Transgender health in the UK: a primer':

'Gender, and identity more broadly, is work: an alienated labour of enacting or failing to enact an amorphous set of supposed norms, the value of which is handed over for judgement by supposed experts'

Jackson Deans' video piece 'Malicious gay faggotry 'interrogates historical trans exclusion from LGBTQ+ activism and the current climate of corporate late-stage Pride':