Monday, January 03, 2011
Haunted dancehall: the ruins of Detroit
Friday, December 31, 2010
Bobby Farrell takes the Night Flight
In 1978, Boney M released a bona fide Disconaut classic, Night Flight to Venus:
Geraldine Hoff Doyle: death of a Rosie the Riveter
The We Can Do It poster subsequently became associated with Rosie the Riveter, the fictional character representing WW2 women factory workers in the US. It has also become a feminist icon, widely recycled in popular culture (see some examples at Jezebel).
Interestingly, the history of the image isn't as straightforward as it seems. For a start, Doyle only worked in the factory for a couple of weeks. And the poster itself had a very limited local distribution during the war - seemingly hardly anyone saw it. It wasn't until the 1970s and 80s that the poster was rediscovered and became an icon of 'Rosie the Riveter'. Doyle herself was seemingly unaware of the poster's existence until then (see excellent post at Pop History Dig). But none of that detracts from its enduring power. In recent years for instance, Christina Aguilera (Candyman), Pink (Raise your glass) and Beyonce (Why don't you love me?)have all recycled versions of this image:
Monday, December 27, 2010
Happening 44: Groovy Food and Rave Groups 1967
From International Times no.14, 2 June 1967, an advert for Happening 44, a psychedelic club at 44 Gerrard Street in Soho, where basement clubs of one kind or another had been held since the 1930s.
An invitation to:
'Tune in, Drop in, Come to Life, Love, Be-in with The Colour of Sound, The Sounds of Colour, Rave Groups, Exotic Entertainment, Movies, Strobe, Discs, Groovy Food, Fantastic Decorations, The Astounding Slides of Ron Henderson and the Fiveacre Light Show'
All night on Thursdays and Saturdays from 10:30 pm.
Starchild RIP - Teena Marie
US R&B singer Teena Marie died yesterday at the age of 54. Lots of love to her on the internet already, such as this piece at Soulwalking, so I will confine myself to appreciating her fine slice of space funk from 1984:
'Starchild' is in the 'dream lover from outer space' sub-genre of space-themed dance music (see also I lost my heart to a starship trooper and Spacer) with a dash of Earth Wind & Fire-style Egpytology:
My telescope sent me to another planet
Since I was a child I yearned
To wear the rings around Saturn
My fingers burned
But when you hold me baby
That's the only time
I'm content, element, so sublime
Don't it make you wonder that your universal lover
Could be wearing the same smile
Ooo you are my Starchild...
Baby beam me, baby beam me up up
Drink the milky, from the Milky Way cup
Hold me tighter, touch me, then do
All of the sweet things
That star lovers do
Visions of another time
A strong pyramid, where secrets of life hid
Ancient Hieroglyphics told
of one man touching like Midas
He turned my love to gold
And when you hold me baby and I wear your magic ring
I feel you like no one in this world I've seen
Don't it make you wonder that your universal lover
Could be wearing the same smile
Oooo you are my Starchild...
Baby beam me, baby beam me up up
Drink the milky, from the Milky Way cup
Hold me tighter, touch me then do
All of the sweet things
That Star Lovers do
Take me to your heaven
I'll lay your odds to seven
And the Stars up in the sky
I can see them in your eyes
Oooo you are my Starchild...
Starchild...Starchild...
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Dancing is poetry with arms and legs
'The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs. It is matter, graceful and terrible, animated and embellished by movement'
(Charles Baudelaire, La Fanfarlo, 1847)
Photo of Mary Wigman, 1912, by Hugo Erfurth
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Black Album - Hanif Kureishi
There are some good descriptions of clubbing at the time with its mixture of love, ecstasy, crime, danger, joy and vacancy. Shahid's first E experience starts with a trip to a club in south London:
'The lip of the bridge was slipping them into the mouth of south London... They turned into a narrow cul-de-sac designed for murders, past workshops, lock-up garages and miserable-looking trees. They took a sharp corner into a lane. The building at the end, subtly vibrating, was the White Room. It was a silver warehouse.
In front of it was a forecourt along the centre of which had been laid a pathway of rolled barbed wire. The whole area was circled by a high fence and was washed in harsh yellow light, making it resemble a prison yard. Three pill-box entrances were manned by sentries mumbling into radios. Crowds surrounded them in the freezing night. Some kids, not admitted, clung shivering to the fence. Others attempted to climb it like refugees, yelling through at the building, before being yanked back to earth and pushed away.
Deedee gave her name and they were admitted. Filmed by security cameras, they swung through the floodlit walkway while being watched enviously. It was like being pop stars at a première. They entered a dark bar area of tables and chairs, where people sat drinking water and juice beneath billowing parachutes. Alcohol was not for sale.
‘This way.’
He followed her through maze-like tunnels of undulating canvas. Eventually they were released into a cavernous room containing at least five hundred people, where shifting coloured slides were projected on to the walls. There was a relentless whirlwind of interplanetary noises. Jets of kaleidoscopic light sprayed the air. Many of the men were bare-chested and wore only thongs; some of the women were topless or in just shorts and net tops. One woman was naked except for high heels and a large plastic penis strapped to her thighs with which she duetted. Others were garbed in rubber, or masks, or were dressed as babies. The dancing was frenzied and individual. People blew whistles, others screamed with pleasure…
With his eyes half closed, he peered into the incandescent ultra-violet haze. He noticed, through the golden mist, that no one appeared to have any great interest in anyone else, though people would fall into staring at one another. Then he was doing it; everyone was looking so beautiful. But before he could think why this might be, or why he was enjoying himself so much, an undertow of satisfaction rippled through him, as if some creature were sighing in his body. He felt he was going to be lifted off his feet. The feeling left him and he felt deserted. He wanted it back. It came and came. In a pounding trance he started writhing joyously, feeling he was part of a waving sea. He could have danced for ever, but not long after she said, ‘We should go.’
Electric waves of light flickered in the air. Fronds of fingers with flames spurting from them waved at the DJs, flown in from New York, sitting in their glass booths.
Afterward they head further south to a party in a squatted mansion:
They arrived at the ominous iron fence of a white mansion, the sort of place an English Gatsby would have chosen, he imagined. Trucks were parked in the driveway. Big men stood in the gloom. They searched Shahid, putting their hands down his trousers; he had to remove his socks and shake them while standing on one foot in the mud.
They went into the marble hall and found themselves staring up at a grand staircase. Then they passed the efficient cloakroom, the bar and the stuffed polar bear on its hind legs with a light in its mouth, traversed the deep white carpet, through doors, wide passageways and a conservatory where trees touched the roof, until they came to a Jacuzzi in which everyone was naked. Beyond was an illuminated indoor swimming pool. On its shadowy surface floated dozens of lemon and lime-coloured balloons. Beyond that the garden stretched away into the distance, lit by gassy blue flames. It was the perfect venue for a house party…
The house had been squatted the previous evening after being claimed by the drummer of the Pennies from Hell, a window cleaner who’d spotted it on his rounds. Tonight it was overrun by hordes of boys and girls from south London. They had pageboy haircuts, skateboard tops, baseball caps, hoods, bright ponchos and twenty-inch denim flares. Deedee said that most had probably never been inside such a house before, unless they were delivering the groceries. Now they were having the time of their lives. By the end of the weekend the house would be ashes. ‘The kids too,’ she added.
Deedee and Shahid started up the stairs, but dozens of people were coming down. Others danced where they stood with their hands in the air, crying, ‘Everybody’s free to feel good, everybody’s freee . . . ‘ Some just sat nodding their heads with their eyes closed. Then Shahid lost Deedee. On the landing a runty little wiry kid had taken up a pitch and was jigging about and shouting, ‘Want anything, want anything . . . Eeeee . . . E for the people! Up the working class!’
…Upstairs in the chillin’ space no one was vertical; kids were lying on the floor not moving — except to kiss or stroke one another — as if they’d been massacred. Shahid needed to join them, and he lay down, slotting into a space between the bodies. The moment he shut his eyes his mind, which in the past he had visualized as ancient and layered like a section through the earth’s crust, became a blazing oblong of light in which coloured shapes were dancing… He was high and accelerating — liquid, as if the furnace in his stomach was simmering his bone and muscle into lava. But what the girl said grated. Somewhere in his mind there lurked desolation: the things he normally liked had been drained off and not only could he not locate them, he couldn’t remember what they were. He needed to find a pen and list the reasons for living. But what on the list could be comparable to the feeling of this drug? He had been let into a dangerous secret; once it had been revealed, much of life, regarded from this high vantage point, could seem quite small.
He and the girl next to him were kissing, drawing on one another’s tongues until they felt their heads would fuse. Someone was lying down beside him and tugging at his shoulder. Shahid ignored them. The room had become one nameless body, one mouth and kiss.
…They clambered into the silence of the taxi and discovered their ears were yearning for music much as one’s stomach complains for food, but there was none available.
The song mentioned is Everybody's Free by Rozalla. I remember dancing to this at a party in Newcastle in 1991 to celebrate the release of a prisoner who had been jailed for refusing to pay the poll tax. On the chorus, everybody sang her name, 'Beccy Palmer's Free'.
Shahid's experiences open up a vision of the city as a giant desiring machine:
'This journey, as he headed home, involved a different disturbance. It had been the best night. Now he wanted to dream it again, luxuriating in what he remembered… he could see that today, although the secrets of desire were veiled, sexual tension was everywhere. He couldn’t doubt its circulating tangibility. Beneath the banality and repetition of this ordinary day there ran, like the warm inhabited tube tunnels under the city, flirtation, passion and the deepest curiosities. People dressed, gestured, moved, to display themselves and attract. They were sizing each other up, fantasizing, wanting to desire and be adored.
Skirts, shoes, haircuts, looks, gestures: enticement and fascination were everywhere, while the world went to work. And such allure wasn’t a preliminary to real sex, it was sex itself. Out there it was not innocent. People yearned for romance, desire, feeling. They wanted to be kissed, stroked, sucked, held and penetrated more than they could say. The platform of Baker Street Station was Arcadia itself. He had had no idea that the extraordinary would be alive and well on the Jubilee Line. Today he could see and feel the lure'.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
January 1980 in the UK: chronology
Friday, December 17, 2010
Captain Beefheart RIP - Hard Workin' Fucked Over Man
He features on the soundtrack of one of my favourite films, Blue Collar (1978), in which a group of Michigan car factory workers (played by Harvey Keitel, Richard Pryor and Yaphet Kotto) revolt against the company and the union which is in cahoots with it by staging a robbery. I love the way in the title sequence that the sounds of the factory are built into the music, with Ry Cooder on guitar and Beefheart on vocals.
St Pauls Uprising, Bristol 1980
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Eadweard Muybridge
The Edweard Muybridge is on at Tate Britain in London until January 11 2011.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Night is not an object
"When [...] the world of clear and articulate objects is abolished, our perceptual being, cut off from its world, evolves a spatiality without things. This is what happens in the night. Night is not an object before me; it enwraps me and infiltrates through all my senses, stifling my recollections and almost destroying my personal identity. I am no longer withdrawn into my perceptual look-out from which I watch the outlines of objects moving by at a distance. Night has no outlines; it is itself in contact with me and its unity is the mystical union of the mana. Even shouts or a distant light people it only vaguely, and then it comes to life in its entirety; it is pure depth without foreground or background, without surface and without any distance separating it from me." (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945)
Isn't this quality of night part of what makes people interact differently after dark? The light reinforces our sense of separate identity, watching the world from our personal lighthouse, the dark begins to dissolve it.
Photo by Anthony Rahayel at Picable, taken at BO18 club in Beirut. Quote sourced from Documents.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Some more DayX3 Music Notes
So having already written on some of the sounds on the December 9th demonstration and the Battle of Millbank, here's some more notes on the subject.
- Dan Hancox has put together a 2010 Riot Playlist of tracks he heard being played in and around Parliament Square on December 9th. Tinie Tempah, Rihanna, Princess Nyah and Sean Paul all feature, while in the comments others add Rage Against the Machine (Killing in the Name of) and Polynomial-C by Aphex Twin. Dummy mag has turned this into a Spotify playlist.
- I've noted previously that the Star Wars 'Imperial March' theme, also known as the Darth Vader tune has cropped up several times in the current movement. I've been down to the Goldsmiths occupation a couple of times in New Cross and couldn't help but notice that some of the people involved had put together a short film using guess which tune?
- Another track I heard being played at the demo on Thursday was Liar Liar by Captain Ska. It was being played from the fairly dismal National Union of Students bus on the embankment (footage here). It is an explicitly anti-cuts anthem, is this what Dan Hancox had in mind in his recent call to arms for musicians to make some noise about the cuts?:
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Strictly Scum Dancing Stopped by Police
But other accounts suggest it was more chaotic than this implies. According to the Enfield Independent:
Riot police clash with Enfield warehouse ravers (Monday 6th December 2010)
'Police officers were pelted by fired-up ravers furious their illegal warehouse rave was shut down prematurely. Officers visited the abandoned warehouse on an Enfield industrial site, in Lincoln Road, at 11.30pm on Saturday night after a tip off that hundreds of young people were gearing up to party.
It is believed the rave was put together by a rave group called Scumtek which organises guerilla dance events dubbed Strictly Scum Dancing, spread by word of mouth and on the internet. One reveller broadcasted the event on the web, stating: "London ravers! Strictly Scum Dancing from Scumtek is happening now in Lincoln Road, Enfield...if the Old Bill says it's off, it's not".
Up to 300 turned up and more than 800 people were said to have been turned away before even getting to their destination. As officers tried to move the party-goers along, a small group started throwing bottles and rocks at the police near Great Cambridge Road. Enfield police were inundated with calls from frightened residents from Percival Road as small groups of the ravers sat on cars, setting off alarms and drinking alcohol, leaving behind their cans and beer bottles.
Neighbours who live near the scene said it all started to "turn nasty" around 2am when police arrived in riot gear. They claimed 100 young people were penned in by officers, in Main Avenue, and were charged by officers in a bid to force them along. Many of them fled into a nearby housing estate and down side roads with small groups lingering in the area until 4am. A total of 12 people were arrested for public disorder, three people were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and a sound system was seized'.
Was the police operation pay back for the recent high profile Holborn Halloween party, which the police were criticised for failing to stop? Both were organised by SkumTek, and in the days leading up to the Enfield party, police raided the homes of people they believed to be involved, seizing computers, phones and other equipment. On this occasion, the police seemed to have got the upper hand, although many people made it on to another squat party that night in Hackney Wick (Smeed Road) afterwards.
Lots of discussion about all this at Party Vibe and Facebook. Much of it the usual armchair moaning - 'they shouldn't have organised a party in Central London last time'/'they shouldn't have organised a party so far out of Central London'; 'They shouldn't have put it on Facebook'/'Why can't I find out what's going on?'; 'You kids should have been there when the parties were much better in 2000/1995/1988/1066' etc. etc. Putting on parties like this is a risky business, nobody can guarantee that it will always work out and maybe some of the moaners should try putting one on themselves.
On the other hand it is important to acknowledge that there are some real problems that the scene has to deal with - mostly not the fault of party organisers - such as people being mugged at parties and other stupid behaviour. Somebody reported that on the bus back from the Enfield party they narrowly missed being injured by a brick coming through the window thrown by another disgruntled would be party goer. Still if the Enfield party had been allowed to go ahead, maybe there wouldn't have been any trouble.
Here's some footage of last Saturday night, with the crowd beginning to face off to police behind makeshift barricades. Funny how the Holborn events were front page news but something like this happening just a few miles north is more or less ignored by the media:
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Panic on the Streets of London
For now just going to post a few photos and report what I saw. At lunchtime crowds came down the Strand and into Trafalgar Square then on to Parliament Square.
As this sound system came into Trafalgar Square it was playing Damian Marley's Welcome to Jamrock and Tribe called Quest 's 'Can I kick it?'. People were bouncing up and down. Then I heard it playing Benga and Coki's Night.
Interestingly the BBC's Paul Mason has written today of the 'Dubstep rebellion':
'The man in charge of the sound system was from an eco-farm, he told me, and had been trying to play "politically right on reggae"; however a crowd in which the oldest person was maybe seventeen took over the crucial jack plug, inserted it into aBlackberry, (iPhones are out for this demographic) and pumped out the dubstep.
Young men, mainly black, grabbed each other around the head and formed a surging dance to the digital beat lit, as the light failed, by the distinctly analog light of a bench they had set on fire. Any idea that you are dealing with Lacan-reading hipsters from Spitalfields on this demo is mistaken.
While a good half of the march was undergraduates from the most militant college occupations - UCL, SOAS, Leeds, Sussex - the really stunning phenomenon, politically, was the presence of youth: bainlieue-style youth from Croydon, Peckham, the council estates of Islington' .
(though while there was certainly dubstep being played, as Dan Hancox notes on Twitter, the sounds of grime, rap and bashment were also prominent: 'they banned grime from the clubs, now THERE ARE 300 KIDS RAVING TO POW IN PARLIAMENT SQUARE' (Lethal Bizzle's Pow).
I also heard another sound system entering Trafalgar Square playing John Lennon's Working Class Hero!
There was the usual percussion...
... and the not so usual bagpipes:Later in the evening on the Victoria Embankment there was what seemed to me to be an attempt to use music to pacify the crowd with a National Union of Students bus playing music and then telling people to disperse. Bizarrely they had hired private stewards (SFM) who were blocking the road to stop demonstrators heading down to the House of Commons where a line of riot police were guarding the entrance to Parliament Square near to Westminster Bridge. People pushed past the stewards who got very aggressive - two of them shoved me as I walked through afterwards.
I went round to Trafalgar Square having heard that there was an occupation going on at the National Gallery. Then around half past seven a crowd surged across Trafalgar Square and there was an attempt to set alight to the big Christmas Tree - no doubt inspired by the burning of the tree in Athens during the December 2008 riots.
Although by now police had formed across the road, they didn't seem to know what to do. Oxford Street on a Thursday night before Christmas is full of shoppers and tourists and it wasn't easy to tell who was standing around excitedly watching and taking photos and who was a protester. Every so often the police would surge forward and shoppers, tourists and protesters would scatter, then another stand off started.
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
More on Occupations and Dance Offs
What has been impressive is the innovation and the rapid circulation of struggles. A group of school students from Camden School for Girls visited the occupation at University College London - today 100 young women have occupied Camden School for Girls. As far as I know this is the first occupation of a school in London for more than 30 years! (anyone know differently let me know).
A 1977 Occupation
The most recent school occupation I have come across was from 1977: ''Sixth formers at Wanstead High School, east London, occupied their common room and front hall yesterday in protest against education cuts. 'We have a lot of support in other schools and our teachers are sympathetic' Richard Boyes, aged 17, a reprsentative at the school of the National Union of School Students, said". The occupation followed a 12 day occupation at the University of Essex "against Government increases in tuition fees" (Times, March 19 1977).
Sheffield Occupation dance off
Reported previously on the occupation dance offs in Oxford and UCL. Here's another one from the occupation at Sheffield University:
Next chapter tomorrow, with the call to Shut Down London on the day Parliament votes on student fees.
Monday, December 06, 2010
Classic Party Scenes (6): Warriors, 1979
Musically my favourite scenes are those featuring the radio DJ who broadcasts a coded commentary on the gang battles with lines like 'All right now for all you boppers out there in the big city, all you street people with an ear for the action' before playing Nowhere to Run as a threat to the Warriors.
Then there's the scene where the Warriors are enticed into the club house of The Lizzies, an all-women gang who promise 'Let's party a little, get something going'. You don't need a PhD in queer studies to work out that Lizzies suggests 'Lezzies', with women dancing together to "Love Is A Fire" by Genya Ravan. Of course the welcome is a trap and as the women pull out their weapons a hapless warrior shouts 'The chicks are packed'. The film is loosely based on an ancient Greek story, so The Lizzies also stand for the Sirens.
Update: As mentioned in the comments, a sample from the film features in the mid-1990s house track Can You Dig It by Mark the 909 King (sample kicks in at about four minutes):
The Can You Dig It sample comes from a speech by gangleader Cyrus early in the film, where he calls for the gangs of New York to unite and take over the city:
This speech is also sampled in Can U Dig It? by Pop Will Eat Itself
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Fight the Imperial Forces
On Tuesday things were moving so fast that when I turned up at London's Trafalgar Square the whole demonstration had moved on unexpectedly through the snowy streets of the West End. On the previous Wednesday in Trafalgar Square there was an amazingly lively crowd, with lots of school students and others climbing all over Nelson's Column. We headed off down Whitehall and within half an hour most of the crowd were surrounded by police where many remained 'kettled' until late in the evening. But not deterred, less than a week later a few thousand were braving the freezing cold to demonstrate again. Interesting times.
Plenty of time to ponder this significance of this later on, for now just a few more notes on the musical aspects. There were a couple of small 12v sound systems on the 24th November London demo including this one, which was playing hip hop when I saw it - to be precise Modern Day Slavery by Joell Ortiz/Immortal Technique.
Lots of other music and dancing going on. Here's students dancing during the occupation of University College London (UCL):
And here's students dancing in the occupied Radcliffe Camera Library at Oxford University:
The ultimately successful fight of the Jedi against the Empire is now an established myth for rebels everywhere. The Fight the Imperial Forces image below comes from Alec Empire's 1994 album Generation Star Wars.