Ben Atar eviction: a cosmopolitan response

In November 2007, the Ben Atar squat in Tel Aviv was evicted by police. According to Indymedia Israel, the squat was located in Florentin, ‘a lower class neighborhood in south Tel Aviv that is going through a process of gentrification’. The building had been empty for many years when ‘Around 3 years ago, a group of young Anarchists and Punks, many of them homeless, decided to move into the building, live in it and start a social center for the activists scene and the neighborhood. During the three years of existence the squat hosted many events, film screening, shows, exhibitions, parties and many more. It also was a center for many political groups, artists and musicians, and a place for people who were looking for a warm place to stay in. It also became a home for the small but very active anarchist community in Israel, for the Anarchists Against the Wall group, for the animal rights activists, for ecological feminists and radical queers’.

In other words it was the kind of autonomous social space found all over the world, and as with many other such spaces it ended up facing eviction. As in most cases, news of this was posted at Indymedia UK, to be greeted in some cases by a very strange response. Prompted by a claim that this was Israel’s only squat, one person posted the following comment: “The whole ‘country’ is squatted. Only squat? NOT. Evict Israel. Evict the lot” (24.11.07).

Now amongst the self-defined radicals who post and comment at Indymedia we might expect to see a range of positions on Israel and Palestine: ‘Two State Solution, ‘One Secular Democratic (and/or Socialist) State for Jews and Palestinians’ or some kind of anarchist variant of a stateless society where Jews and Arabs live in harmony.

A statement like ‘Evict the Lot’ is saying something else again. It implies that the millions of Jewish people living in that part of the world should be somehow swept away. ‘Evict the Lot’ is as clear a racist statement as you could hope not to find, since by ‘the Lot’ can only be understood the people defined as being Jewish who are to be distinguished by cultural, religious or pseudo-racial characteristics from the people allowed to remain. Of course that is exactly the view of Bin Laden who states that ‘We will not recognize even one inch for Jews in the land of Palestine’ from the ‘river to the sea’.

It may be true that the state of Israel, like most states, was born in violence and dispossession, and that the state continues repressive measures is unarguable. Of course exactly the same could be said about the USA and Australia, where unlike in Israel whole populations were exterminated as their lands were seized. Whatever radical measures are proposed to ensure social justice for the remaining indigenous peoples in the US and Australia nobody would suggest that all the descendants of settlers could or should be expelled. It would be a human catastrophe to even attempt it, just as it would in Israel.

For some interesting reflections on this issue I would recommend a recent discussion paper by David Hirsh, Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism – Cosmopolitan Reflections. Aside from the specific points Hirsh makes about the use of antisemitic tropes by parts of the left, I was struck by his call for a cosmopolitan critique that ‘disrupts a methodological tendency to view the division of the world into nations as being more fixed than it is’ (e.g. the notion of Israel or Palestine as homogeneous entities) and focuses instead on the idea that, in the words of Robert Fine ‘human beings can belong anywhere, humanity has shared predicaments and… we find out community with others in exploring how these predicaments can be faced in common’.

Part of the interest at this site in music/dance scenes is precisely this cosmopolitan aspect – how common human experiences of rhythm, sound and movement can undermine fixed certainties of social categories and point towards alternative ways of being. We can see this in Israel not just in places like the Ben Atar squat and the small anarcho-punk scene, but in the popularity of dance cultures with an implicit critique of military values (and sometimes an explicit one – see the Rave Against the Occupation parties). We might also consider the way that in Israel, as in many other countries, dance scenes have been a means for the assertion of a confident queer culture in the face of intense conservative/religious fundamentalist opposition – no mean feat in a region of the world where gay men can still face execution in some countries.

It is in spaces like this, and their even more precarious counterparts in Arab countries, that the possibilities of breaking out of the cycle of nationalism and war can be posed in various ways. Limited as they may be, they deserve our solidarity, not only against the usual police and corporate interests that tend to squeeze them out but against those who want to bomb them out of existence and drive their denizens into the sea.

About Indymedia: the comment criticised above was the view of one person and all kinds of idiots leave random posts in reply to Indymedia articles. I am not therefore claiming, for instance, that Indymedia is antisemitic – only pointing out how racist comments can slip into some 'anti-Zionist' discourse in all kinds of places.

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.

Happy New Year

Tonight is a big party night in many parts of the world, we wish everybody a safe and happy new year and hope that anybody going out tonight can avoid being ripped off by outrageous ticket prices or having their unofficial alternatives closed down. Here's some global party policing news from December.

England: Rave returns to Slough area (Slough and Windsor observer, 31.12.07)

‘Patrols have been stepped up around an industrial estate after an illegal rave saw 500 revellers take over an empty warehouse.Police have been forced to beef up their prescience on the Poyle Industrial Estate after they were unable to break up a massive event. The rave in an empty warehouse saw an estimated 500 party goers descend on David Road, Colnbrook on Saturday, December 8. Officers were called to the event but decided it was too established to break it up prefering to monitor the situation safely and help disperse it the following day.

Slough East Neighbourhood Inspector, Andy Boomer, said: “This is the first rave that we have had in a number of years. Officers who were called to the scene estimated that there were some 500 people at the event. On s occasion it was decided to monitor the event rather than break it up. Since the rave we have increased patrols in the area to prevent a reoccurrence.”

India: police plan to stop New Year's Eve parties

'The Mumbai police's cyber crime cell is monitoring the Internet for information on rave parties being planned... The Mumbai Police is hoping that in the city, the Internet will yield information on not just venues but also who's been invited and the source of drugs. Rave parties are normally organized in places like Madh Island, Aksa beach, both in Mumbai, Yeoor Hills in Thane, Lonavala, Sinhagad and Mulshi in Pune are also hotspots. The Pune Police busted a rave party in March this year where 289 youngsters were picked up from a rave party in Sinhagad. The Mumbai police itself had raided a rave party in September 2006 at a Borivali farmhouse and arrested 80 people including 13 drug suppliers and prosecuted them under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. Now they are hoping to take that a step forward by prosecuting even those who advertise and publicise such events. The Mumbai Crime Cell says that once a rave party invite is found on the Internet on a cellphone, they use IP address and SIM card details to trace the identity of the sender and members of his group. With this pre-emptive measure they hope to bust the party even before it begins' (NDTV, 26 December 2007)

'After hundreds of youngsters were caught with drugs in a rave party, early this year, Pune registered 40 more cases of drug seizure. This is, however, an indicator of how susceptible the student city has become to drug peddlers. Keeping the city away from such unwanted elements, during the biggest party time of the year is a challenge, which the Pune Police is getting ready for... Pune crime branch will coordinate with excise and customs department for information on drug smugglers. Security forces will pair with home guard force to beef up security. City borders, too, will be covered with 13 check posts. Every entry lane to Pune will bear heavy security on the New Year eve. The police here is making sure that no matter how heavy the traffic be, no vehicle will enter the city without a security check.

Event managers are also hit by the tough stance taken by the city police. Last year Pune had twelve major events on the New Year eve, this year only six have managed to pass the necessary license tests. A club owner and event manager says, "After the trans party that really shook the city, this New Year eve is not going to be that big a celebration that it normally is for a lot of event managers."(IBN Live, 30 December 2007)

Australia: police criticised after overdoses (News.com, December 12, 2007)

'A police raid on a dance party at a medieval tourist attraction near Ballarat in central Victoria caused the overdose of 14 young people, a drug users association has claimed. Fourteen people were treated at Ballarat Health Services Base Hospital for drug overdoses at the Ultraworld rave event at Kryal Castle on Saturday, with three of them spending time in intensive care.

The head of drug users organisation VIVAIDS, Damon Brogan, blamed police for the mass overdose, saying rave-goers swallowed their drug stashes rather than risk arrest as police with sniffer dogs entered the party.He told the Herald Sun the arrival of more than 70 police at the rave party was “over-zealous”.

Nigeria: police raid Kuti family 'Shrine' club (AFP, December 16, 2007)

Nigerian police late Saturday raided the New Shrine nightclub in Lagos founded by two of the children of the late Fela Kuti, Nigeria's most reknowned musician, the Kuti family and police said Sunday. "They stole money, they stole drinks and they broke instruments," Fela's daughter, the dancer Yeni Kuti told AFP.

"I can confirm that a raid took place," Lagos state police spokesman Frank Mba told AFP. "It started at 2300 (2200 GMT) and ended at around 0500 and 331 persons were arrested," he said. Mba said the club was suspected of being a "safe haven for criminals" who met there to plan their "nefarious activities." He said he had also received complaints from residents of the area about "Indian hemp (marijuana) and other kinds of illicit drugs" being consumed on the premises. Mba said all of those arrested but found to have no link to any criminal activity were being released.

Yeni said the police broke down half of the door to the room where her musician brother Femi Kuti keeps his saxophones. "When you see what they did there, it's terrible," she said. Femi said he and his sister had been cleared of any involvement in robberies but were still at the police station trying to secure the release of more of the club's patrons.

"People are telling us we should be careful -- that they just want to victimize us," Yeni said. The New Shrine is a vast hangar decorated with fairy lights and Fela Kuti memorabilia. Most of the regular Shrine patrons are boys and young men. The atmosphere is friendly and electric with Femi Kuti often playing non-stop for several hours, and the club is something of a Lagos institution. The smell of marijuana there is so strong that visitors joke about it not being necessary to smoke oneself as "just breathing in is enough to get high". But the club has no reputation for hard drugs.

Fela Kuti himself, an outspoken critic of the then government, had several run-ins with the security forces. In the worst of several raids on his home, in 1977 his mother was thrown out of a window and died the following year from the injuries she sustained. His son Femi is also extremely critical but tends to attack Nigeria's political class as a whole rather than individuals'.

Radio anniversary

On this day just over 100 years ago - 24 December 1906 - the first audio radio broadcast of music took place in an experiment by Reginald Fessenden - the inventor of Amplitude Modulation (AM radio). Inevitably the first piece of music broadcast on AM was a Christmas song, with Fessenden playing O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage, Luke Chapter 2, from the Bible. The transmission from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, was mainly heard by shipboard radio operators along the Atlantic Coast.

Listening to the radio in London today Christmas songs are still going strong, I just wish they didn't just play the obvious ones when there's so much good midwinter music, old and new. For the latter check out the Asthmatic Kitty website where an incredible 600 songs were submitted for the Sufjan Stevens Xmas Song Swap. Or visit Belle and Sebastian's myspace where on Christmas Day only you can download their new song 'Are you coming over for Christmas?'. For older stuff, take a look at the huge amount of material at the Hype Machine or Sir Shambling's great collection of soulful Christmas songs.

Morris Dancers Against the Nazis

Bit of a kerfuffle amongst English folk dance enthusiasts about Observer columnist Jay Rayner's comment that "For some reason, whenever I see Morris dancers I assume a pogrom can't be far behind." Richard at Baggage Reclaim is amongst those rightly miffed by the suggestion that their dancing pleasure has fascist associations. Judging by Richard and others I have met, people in the Morris scene tend more to the left than to the stiff right arm tendency.

As shown by the row about Simone Clarke, 'the BNP Ballerina' at the English National Ballet, present day fascists are to be found in other forms of dancing - but nobody would say that whenever they see a tutu they assume a pogrom can't be far behind.

Incidentally, Surrealdocuments has a good quote from G.F. Foster querying the notion of pure folk culture existing in splendid isolation from other parts of the culture, stating the following in relation to folk dance: 'In the 17th and 18th centuries the Western European dance masters introduced folk dances to social dancing, adapting them to the needs of the courts. English country square dances played a role in the development of the French quadrille, which was then introduced back into London. These folk dances then became the forms around which composers, then and now, created important works. Folk dances, now become court dances, spread from Spain and France to Latin America, and the process began anew whereby little by little they became the property of the folk. The current American rage for square dancing also reflects this process: after a suitable time the folk entertainment of yesteryear becomes the pastime of the artistic avant-garde". The last point is surely relevant to morris dancing, many of whose practitioners are more likely to be slightly aging ex-punks and hippies than right wing rural traditionalists.

Back to the Classics (2): Beowulf

I went to see the new Beowulf movie recently. In 3D at London's Imax cinema it was quite impressive and I do think it captured the feel of an Anglo-Saxon warrior epic, even if it did depart somewhat from the storyline of the poem, composed sometime between the 8th and 11th century - sorry to say the sub-plot of heroes being seduced by an elf-shining Angela Jolie character doesn't feature in the original.

The poem and the film do though both emphasise the centrality of the mead hall, a combination of royal court with drinking, banqueting and music hall. A place of wine, women and song, or mead, maidens and minstrels. We are told that Hrothgar, the king, set his mind on 'a master mead-house, mightier far than ever was seen by the sons of earth'. The hall, 'high, gabled wide' was named Heorot - 'the Hart' or 'Stag', subsequently to be the name of many pubs down to the present day. The monster Grendel was prompted to attack out of jealousy for the pleasures to be had in the mead hall: 'with envy and anger an evil spirit endured the dole in his dark abode, that he heard each day the din of revel high in the hall: there harps rang out, clear song of the singer... So lived the clansmen in cheer and revel a winsome life'. Grendel launches a murderous assault when the Danes after a long night 'outreveled to rest had gone'.

It is probable that an epic like Beowulf was originally recited to music and for the warriors in the poem to pass into the lays of minstrels as heroes was a form of immortality - to be sung about and remembered, as the legendary Beowulf still is over a thousand year of later. But the musicality of Beowulf is not confined to the deeds of harpists and minstrels, but is embedded in its language, especially the kennings - poetic descriptions of the everyday by which, for instance, the sea becomes 'the whale road', 'the swan road' or 'the gannet's bath'. These are the kind of figures that recur in English folk song over the centuries.

Quotes from Francis B. Gummere's translation from the Old English.

Come forth o children

'Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love! I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy'

(Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law)

Photo by JaMmCat from an excellent collection documenting rave culture in Canada. This one taken at a Hullabaloo rave in Toronto in July 2007.

1996: chronology of parties and police

Following the recent 1997 chronology we go back another year to 1996, a time of Reclaim the Streets parties, police raids on gay clubs and, in Algeria, the killing of rai performers . All events below from UK unless otherwise stated. As always I'd be interested in any recollections or reflections on these events

January:

100 police raid Hollywoods club in Romford, Essex. As well as arresting some people for drugs, two women are arrested for assaulting a police officer.

Police bust a Vox Pop/Virus squat party in South London, and people move up to a Hackney venue. When they get there the police steam in making arrests and beating people up.

Police confiscate rig at Immersion Sound System party on the site of the Newbury road protest in Berkshire.

Gay rubber night GUMMI at Club 180 in London is stopped after a visit from the Met’s Vice Squad.

Local council take out injunction against four members of the Exodus Collective in Luton, forbidding them to hold free parties

February:

200 police in riot gear raid the Coliseum nightclub near Stockton-on-Tees, arresting 35 people

On Valentine’s Day hundreds of people dance, drum and bounce on Brighton’s North Street. Police pile in at end of the Reclaim the Streets party and arrest 43 people.

Three people from Black Moon Sound System arrested in Corby at the prevous July’s attempted Mother festival found guilty under Section 63 of the Criminal Justice Act and their £6000 rig confiscated.

March:

Police raid a party at the A.R.T.L.A.B. in Preston with an Environmental Health Officer who removes equipment under noise pollution regulations [Dream Creation, 1996]

Police set up road blocks to search people going to Lost in Paradise at Fantasy Island, Skegness. 11 arrests.

Jury throw out disorderly house charges against Club Whiplash in London, raided by sixty police with dogs in 1994.

Sex Maniacs Ball at the Fridge in Brixton cancelled at the last minute after police pressure. The tenth annual Ball, a charity event, was to be held at Brixton Academy, but they cancelled the booking after the police threatened a raid. Bagley’s at Kings Cross did the same. [Pink Paper 29/3/86] In response the Sexual Freedom Coalition was set up to “combat police inteference in clubs and with publications”, and on April 20th 200 people danced through Soho to Downing Street in protest at police action.

“Four people were arrested on drug possession and sale charges after police crashed a ‘rave’' party at a local nightclub in Danbury [USA]. More than 600 people ranging in age from about 14 to 21 attended the party, staged by an out-of-state production company at the Subzero nightclub on Elm Street”. [News Times, Danbury, March 25, 1996]

April:

Police in Essex board a privately-hired coach taking people clubbing in London and search everybody on board. Several arrests for drugs offences.

May:

Sussex police seize a sound system at a warehouse party in Bevendean.

Mounted police move in at the end of a Leeds Reclaim the Streets party; 12 people arrested

Tribal Gathering festival, Britain’s largest dance event, cancelled after authorities in Oxfordshire refuse it a licence following police objections - despite a successful event last year, months of preparation, and advance ticket sales of 25,000.

50 people arrested in dawn raids on two gay clubs in Santiago, Chile [Pink Paper, 24 May 1996]

June

100 riot police raid the Zoom Bar in Halle, Germany on the day before the city’s first ever gay pride event. 70 people inside the gay bar are handcuffed and made to lie on the floor during searches for drugs. Some are clubbed to the floor, others strip searched [Pink Paper, 4 July 1996].

On June 9th, several hundred people block the main A6 road into Leicester city centre for a Reclaim the Streets party, with sound system, comfy chairs, children’s paddling pool and fire jugglers. After three hours the police force people off the road, making six arrests.

A woman in Melbourne, Australia, wins compensation from the police after being stripsearched in a raid on the city’s Tasty nightclub in 1994. During the drugs raid, 465 were stripsearched, many of whom now claim compensation [Pink Paper14 June 1996]

The Tunnel and Limelight clubs in New York are raided and closed down, and the owners charged with conspiracy to sell ecstasy.

July:

On the biggest Reclaim the Streets action so far, 8000 people party on the M41 motorway in West London. There are no arrests on the day, although in the aftermath police raid the RTS office and an activist’s home and charge one person with conspiracy to cause criminal damage to the M41, parts of which were dug up during the party.

Royal Ulster Constabulary and British Army crack down on Irish nationalists in Derry (N.Ireland), blocking off the streets in the city centre as people leave pubs and clubs. 900 plastic bullets are fired. 41 people suffer injuries including a fractured skull, broken jaw, and a broken leg. 18-year-old Michael McEleny, on the way home from Henry J’s disco with his sister, is hit in the face with a plastic bullet which tears away his cheek leaving him with a broken palate and cheekbone. According to his sister “Bullets just flew everywhere. Every two seconds there was another one. You couldn’t stand up. Every time I tired to get up and run, another bullet was fired. Anyone who stood up was hit”. 16 year-old Kevin McCafferty is left unconscious and critically injured after being shot in the chest and head with plastic bullets on the way home from Squires disco. Rioting spreads throughout Derry in the following days, and Dermot McShane iss killed after being run over by a British army vehicle. [An Phoblact/Republican News, 18 July 1996].

350 CRS police close down the Bordeaux Arts Festival in France, searching 600 people and making 23 arrests. Although the dance music festival had the permission of the landowner, the French Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre declared it an illegal event. [Wax, August 1996, Muzik September 1996]

August:

Big police operation against Smokey Bears legalise cannabis picnic in Portsmouth - sound systems stopped from entering the area

Riot police baton charge revellers at Maidstone River Festival in Kent.

10 people arrested at Reclaim the Streets party in Birmingham on.17 August. On the same day there is a five hour RTS party in Bath. The following week, 80 people are arrested as police mobilise to stop a Brighton Reclaim the Streets party.

Sussex police use a helicopter to break up a party near Brighton.

September:

95 police raid the Living Room club, the Marlowes, Hemel Hempstead. 250 clubbers are evacuated, and 18 arrested, mostly on drugs charges.

100 police stage a drugs raid on I Spy, a gay night at Leeds club Nato. 19 people arrested. Police clear the club with people being met on the streets by at least 25 vans of police [Mixmag, Nov 1996]

Reclaim the Streets activists take part in the Reclaim the Future events in Liverpool in support of striking dockers. A march of 10,000 people is livened up with sound system, and a docks building squatted for a free party. On the Monday 600 people picket the docks and there are 44 arrests.

In Barnsley a planned gay night at the local Hedon Rock bar is blocked after a local hompohopic campiagn by the so-called Campaign Against Homosexual Equality [Pink Paper27/9/96]

The popular Rai singer Boudjema Bechiri, 28 (known as Cheb Aziz) is killed by Islamic militants. He is the fourth Rai star to be killed, since Rai songs which are often about sex and drink have been declared blashpemous and banned in areas dominated by Islamic fundamentalists [Observer, 22 Sept 1996]

October:

Police raid on Love Muscle gay club at the Fridge, Brixton, London.

Reclaim the Streets Halloween Party in Oxford- over a thousand people dance on the road and on bus shelters with music from Virus Sound System, Desert Storm, Rinky Dink and some bagpipers. Police escort sound systems out of Oxford as they attempt to set up an after party-party. There is also an RTS party in Cambridge.

Reclaim the Streets party in Manchester with free music and free food. No arrests, but one van is impounded

Taliban seize power in Afghanistan: “Women are barred from work, men ordered to grow beards... They snatch music cassettes from cars and smash them with rocks by the roadside” [Guardian 9.10.96]

Riot cops evict squatted social centres in Madrid and Barcelona. Armed riot cops storm a squatted cinema firing hundreds of rubber bullets. Riots follow as people marched on the police station to demand the freeing of the 48 people nicked. The centre has been used for films, gigs, exhibitions and debates as well as huge parties to raise money for the Zapatistas and other causes.

November:

100 police raid Jubilee pub in Camden, north London and arrest 23 people

Riot police with dogs bust a party in a tunnel in Beddgelert, North Wales

December:

Adrenalin Village, London fined for opening beyond their 2 am limit [South London Press, 13.12.96]

London gay sex pub/club the Anvil loses its licence; police had raided the pub (also known as the Shipwright’s Arms) in Tooley Street following reports of sex in the upstairs bar [Pink Paper, 29.11.96]

Heaven events in Motherwell cancelled after police pressure

The Dance of Albion

Albion rose from where he labourd at the Mill with Slaves

Giving himself for the Nations he danc'd the dance of Eternal Death

(William Blake, The Dance of Albion, 1794)

Tomorrow is the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake. To mark Blake Day let's have a think about Blake and dancing. Blake uses dance in a conventional way as an image of joyful pleasure, as in this song:

I love the jocund dance,
The softly-breathing song,
Where innocent eyes do glance,
And where lisps the maiden's tongue.

But for Blake, carefree joys of innocence are always overshadowed by experience. The simple pleasures of life can be equally simply brushed away, like a fly:

Am not I A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink & sing:
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

Dancing for Blake is sometimes something terrible; in 'Milton', people seem to be dancing in a kind of hell:

Thousands & thousands labour, thousands play on instruments
Stringed or fluted to ameliorate the sorrows of slavery
Loud sport the dancers in the dance of death, rejoicing in carnage
The hard dentant Hammers are lull’d by the flutes lula lula
The bellowing Furnaces blare by the long sounding clarion
The double drum drowns howls & groans, the shrill fife shrieks & cries:
The crooked horn mellows the hoarse raving serpent

We need to bear in mind that Blake bore witness to the birth of the modern factory system and that the ‘Mills of Satan’ he describes were partly a visionary take on the realities of the giant mills of early industrialism. There is a sense in which music and dance are a relief for the labouring slaves of Albion but that even their pleasures are mis-shapen: ‘Los beheld The servants of the Mills drunken with wine and dancing wild With shouts and Palamabrons songs, rending the forests green With echoing confusion, tho' the Sun was risen on high’ .

Certainly, Blake warns, nobody should mistake the pleasures of the poor for consent for the status quo. As the Chimney Sweep says in his famous poem of the same name:

They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy, & dance & sing,
They think they have done me no injury:
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King
Who make up a heaven of our misery

Thanks to Bob and V for reminding me of Blake's birthday. See also Blake in South London

The White Rose

The White Rose (die Weiße Rose) was an anti-fascist resistance group in Germany 1942-3, initiated by students in Munich. A number of its members were beheaded in February 1943 for distributing leaflets calling for the overthrow of Hitler, including Sophie Scholl (pictured), her brother Hans Scholl, Alex Schmorell, Willi Graf, Kurt Huber and Christoph Probst.

The film Sophie Scholl - The Last Days starts with Sophie listening to swing on the radio, and music was an important part of the lives of those involved.

Hans Scholl had joined an underground anti-nazi youth group in 1937 called d.j.1.11 (the German Youth of November 1 1929): ‘The group’s members developed attitudes and styles that would set them clearly apart. They were not nationalistic; and unlike the earlier Wandervogel, they preferred hitchhiking to tramping. For their group's name and in their writings they used lowercase letters, a modernist style reminiscent of the Bauhaus movement in art and architecture, and one that was reviled by the Nazi establishment. They sang Balkan folk songs, even American cowboy laments, played the Russian balalaika, and devoured banned literature’.

Conscripted to the Russian front as medics in 1942, Hans Scholl, Schmorell and Graf sneaked away to fraternise with the locals in farmhouses where they ‘sang folk songs, joined in the dancing, and provided the local people with schnapps and medicine’. Graf wrote: ‘In the evening we listen to Russian songs at a woman’s house. She works in the camp. We sit in the open air, behind the trees, the moon comes up, its rays falling in the spaces between the rows of trees, it’s cool, the girls sing to the guitar, we try to hum the bass part, it’s so beautiful, you feel Russia’s heart, we love it’.

In Hamburg jazz and swing had the biggest impact. A friend of the Munich group, ‘Traufe Lafrenz went home to Hamburg, bringing with her a batch of White Rose leaflets to show her old friends Heinz Kucharski and Greta Rohe. Like the Munich group these young people and their friends met regularly to discuss the arts and the dismal state of affairs. Unlike the White Rose, however, they were aficionados of American swing and jazz. This kind of American music had a secret, cultlike life of its own in Nazi Germany among certain groups of youths. Because it was officially frowned on and prohibited as a “racially inferior product” of the Afro-American blacks it exerted a magnetic allure. Its free rhythms, its wild expression of feeling in sound, and its erratic and improvised beat charged up young people and drove them to find records, listen to them together, and become almost embryonic cells of conspiracy’. 

It was from this milieu that the Hamburg branch of the White Rose emerged. Seven members of this group were executed, although Kucharski managed to escape from a train on the way to the execution site in the last days of the war.

Source: Sophie Scholl & The White Rose - Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn (Oxford: One World, 2006). See also dancing under the Nazis in France.

Burial vs. Bauhaus

Popped into People’s Republic of Disco in Brixton for a little while last night, couldn’t stay for the messy mash up that was just getting going when we had to leave but spent some time listening to the music leaping across genres with, for instance, Burial’s South London Boroughs being followed shortly afterwards by Surfin’ Bird and I was made for lovin' you baby by Kiss. Thing is that’s exactly how my brain works, which is how the following occurred to me...

Has anybody else noticed that the bassline on Burial’s glorious dubstep anthem Archangel sounds remarkably like that on Bauhaus’s 1979 proto-goth classic Bela Lugosi’s Dead? The similarity doesn’t stop with the bassline either, the Bauhaus track has a very dubby feel, lots of space and reverb.

Lets’s take this flight of fancy a step further. Was the real origin of dubstep not South London in the last few years, but Northampton (home of Bauhaus) in the late 1970s? And what of Burial’s famed anonymity – could this be a ruse to disguise the fact that he is none other than Bauhaus’s Pete Murphy or maybe Daniel Ash?

Anyway I have spliced together a couple of samples from Archangel/Bela Lugosi so you can decide for yourself:

Bauhaus and Burial: samples from Bela Lugosi/Archangel (MP3)

Another point, if Burial’s Untrue is to dubstep what Goldie’s Timeless was to drum’n’bass in 1995, the crossover album that gets reviewed in the broadsheets etc., isn’t it interesting that both feature a key track referencing celestial beings – Archangel in the first case, Angel in the latter? Is there something about this ethereal aesthetic that smooths the way for acceptance more readily than say urban Londonism? A question rather than a criticism, I love both these tracks. Mind you I also love Bela Lugosi's Dead.

Human Hyperorganism on the Beach

'Thousands of bodies everywhere. In fact, just one body, a single immense ramified mass of flesh, all sexes merged. A single, shameless, expanded human polyp, a single organism, in which all collude like the sperm in seminal fluid.... [a] human hyperorganism... A kind of single being, living the same life, with the same fluids coursing through them, aquiver with the same passions' (Baudrillard, Fragments: Cool Memories III).

Photo of Reclaim the Beach party, London, 2006, by Georgina at Flicker. Baudrillard's comment was actually about Copacabana beach in Brazil.

Ten Years On: 1997, a year of dancing dangerously

This chronology of raves, clubs and policing was compiled from the dance music press at the time (Mixmag, Muzik, Eternity, DJ etc.). Much of it is the familiar story of cat and mouse chases between police and sound systems in East Anglia, Wales etc. - just as happened in 2007. But some things have changed - no more Reclaim the Streets parties in England, and more positively people being able to go out dancing in the north of Ireland without having to worry so much shootings and plastic bullets.

January 1997, Scotland: Fusion close down operations in Grampian after police threaten the licence of any venues allowing them to put on events

January 1997, London: Club UK in south London loses its licence. The club had appealed against the council withdrawing its licence, but this was upheld by a magistrates court.

February 1997, Holland: Police confiscate vans containing tripods, sound systems and banners to prevent a Reclaim the Streets party outside the Amsterdam motor show. After police baton charge the crowd, there is free food, music and dancing with a huge bonfire in a market square [Earth First Action Update, March 1997]

February 1997, USA: A nail bomb explodes at the Otherside Lounge, a lesbian club in Atlanta, Georgia, injuring five people. The attack is claimed by the far right Army of God saying it is aimed at “sodomites, their organisations and all who push their agenda”.

February 1997, London: Battersea police licencing section announce they are to oppose the renewal of the public entertainments licence for the club Adrenalin Village, up for renewal by Wandsworth Council.

February 1997, Leicester: Hardcore club Die Hard raided by 50 police - everyone searched.

February 1997, London The Cool Tan the building in Brixton, previously evicted, is resquatted for two parties and then evicted after a fortnight.

April 1997, London: A man dies from a heart attack and 8 people are arrested when riot police raid a squat party in Putney.

April 1997, Luton: The Exodus collective win the right to appeal against eviction from their site by the Department of Transport

April 1997, London: Linford Film Studios in Battersea, south London loses its licence

April 1997, N.Ireland: Robert Hamill a 25 year old Catholic father of two, is kicked to death by Loyalists while on his way home from a dance at St Patrick’s Hall in Portadown. The attack happens in full view of police who refuse pleas to intervene. In March 1999 his family’s solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, is killed by a car bomb. She has been preparing to bring private prosecutions against those involved and the Royal Ulster Constabulary

April 1997, London: 5000 party in Trafalgar Square at the end of march for social justice in support of Liverpool dockers, organised by Reclaim the Streets. Police seize sound system at the end and arrest four people in the van, charging them with conspiracy to murder for allegedly driving through police lines (charges later dropped). 1000 riot police clear people out of the square

May 1997, London: Southwark Council refuse licence to Urban Free Festival (formerly held in Fordham Park, New Cross), after earlier given permission for it to take place in Peckham in July
May 1997, Wales: Police use helicopters and road blocks to stop free party at a disused quarry in North Wales, seizing the T.W.A.T. sound system and dispersing a 4 mile convoy of party cars to the English border (despite this two parties go ahead later)

May 1997, Manchester: Police and bailiffs evict treetop and tunnel protesters, including the Zero Tolerance sound system tied into the trees, at the site of the proposed Manchester Airport Terminal 2

May 1997, Brighton: Police action prevents parties at three venues in Brighton, but one goes ahead on a travellers site at Braepool on the outskirts of town. A Noise Abatement notice is served, and the Council begins legal action to evict the site [Big Issue, 4.8.97]

May 1997, Hull: 300 party at Hull Reclaim the Streets, with sand pits and dancing for three hours (no arrests)

June 1997, Bristol: Police make 22 arrests at Bristol Reclaim the Streets and confiscate the Desert Storm sound system

July 1997, N.Ireland: Police open fire with plastic bullets on young people returning from a teenage disco on the Falls Road, Belfast. A 14-year-old boy is left in a coma.

July 1997, USA: The Stonewall Inn in New York is once again under threat, scrutinised by the city’s Social Club Task Force because of concerns about noise levels and ‘illegal dancing” [Pink Paper, 8/8/97]

August 1997, Wales: Two people on their way to set up an open air party in Deiniolen, North Wales are stopped and strip searched by police, who set up road blocks to prevent the party going ahead.

August 1997, London: Local councillor calls for the Dog Star pub/club in Brixton to be closed, claiming it is a magnet for drug dealers.

August 1997, Surrey: Hundreds of people turn up at a free party in old chalk pits in the Mole Valley in Surrey by the time police turned up the next morning to serve a notice under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act most people had gone home [Guilfin, September 1997]

August 1997, Portsmouth: Police with dogs and video surveillance teams ring a common in Portsmouth and search people trying to attend the Smokey Bears Picnic; council byelaws banning music on the common are enforced and 10 people are arrested [Guilfin, September 1997]

Summer 1997, Surrey: Police close down a free party in a forest near Guildford put on by Timber sound system.

September 1997, France: Police in Paris close down five mainly gay clubs supposedly because of ecstasy dealing (Le Queen, Le Cox, L’Enfer, Le Scorp and Les Follies Pigalle). 2000 people march in protest with one banner declaring “Paris, capitale de l’ennui” (Paris, capital of boredom).

October 1997, Russia: Moscow gay club Chance is raided by “a team of men wearing special troops uniform, black masks and carrying automatic guns”. The special police claim to be searching for drugs; dancers are beaten up and abused a 90 people are arrested [Pink Paper, 17.10.97]
.
October 1997, Wales: 24 police raid a party in a private house in North Wales and impound the sound system. The Country Landowners Association have set up a Rave Watch scheme in the local area encouraging local farmers to tip off the police about possible parties

November 1997, Greece: police violently raid the ACID trance club in Thessaloniki.

November 1997, Norfolk: Police bust squat party at Thelveton Hall, an unoccupied country house in Norfolk, seizing the Brighton-based Innerfield Sound System and carry out intimate body searches. The house belongs to Sir Rupert Mann, but had been empty for seven years.

November 1997, Oxford: Police use a helicopter and horses in an effort to stop Oxford Reclaim the Streets party. Despite the seizure of the solar powered sound system, and the Rinky Dinky Sound System being escorted out of the city, 400 people party in the road [Peace News, December 1997]

December 1997, N.Ireland: Loyalist Volunteer Force open fire on a disco in Dungannon, County Tyrone, killing a doorman. Another man is killed in an attack on a bar in Belfast.

December 1997, Scotland: Street party halts traffic for 1.5 hours outside the Faslane nuclear submarine base . Several people injured by Ministry of Defence police.

December 1997, Wales: 22 arrests in police drug raid on Hippo Club, Cardiff.

December 1997, Israel: Trance outfit Juno Reactor are deported from the country, where they were due to be playing at a 5000 capacity rave, prompting the launch of a Freedom to Party organisation. “Indoor parties are usually legal, as opposed to outdoor parties which are usually not. But even so, many of the indoor parties are constantly being raided by the police” (Dream Creation July 1997)

December 1997, N.Ireland: Edmund Treanor killed and five injured in a Loyalist Volunteer Force attack on New Year celebrations at the Clifton Tavern, Belfast.

December 1997, Brighton: 27 people arrested as police try and close down New Year’s Eve squat party in Brighton; people throw bottles at police.

Kill the Spirit of Gravity: Nietzsche on Dance

The 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche clearly appreciated dance, and in his imagining of the “the glowing life of the Dionysian revellers” he seems to be not only looking back to Ancient Greece but anticipating future raves. I would be interested in finding out more about his own experiences of dancing, as opposed to writing about it, so if anybody has any knowledge of this, let me know.

“Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but Nature which has become estranged, hostile, or subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigal son, man.... Now the slave is free; now all the stubborn, hostile barriers, which necessity, caprice or ‘shameless fashion’ have erected between man and man, are broken down... Each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, blended with his neighbour, but all as one with him... In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak; he is about to take a dancing flight into the air... He feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy... He is no loner an artist, he has become a work of art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature reveals itself to the highest gratification of the Primordial Unity” (The Birth of Tragedy, 1872)

"I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance. And when I beheld my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: it was the Spirit of Gravity - through him all things are ruined. One does not kill by anger but by laughter. Come let us kill the Spirit of Gravity!" (Of reading and writing, Thus spake Zarathustra, 1883)

"Do not cease your dance, sweet girls! No spoil sport has come to you with an evil eye, no enemy of girls... How could I be enemy of divine dancing, you nimble creatures... A dance-song and a mocking-song on the Spirit of Gravity, my supreme, most powerful devil" (The Dance Song, Thus spake Zarathustra, 1883)

"And once I wanted to dance as I had never yet danced: I wanted to dance beyond all heavens. Then you lured away my favourite singer. And then he struck up a gruesome, gloomy melody: alas, he trumpeted into my ears like a mournful horn! Murderous singer, instrument of malice, most innocent man! I stood prepared for the finest dance: then you murdered by ecstasy with your tones! I know how to speak the parable of the highest things in the dance - and now my greatest parable has remained in my limbs unspoken!" (The Funeral Song, Thus spake Zarathustra, 1883).

Photos via Flickr from Tel Aviv, Israel - top by Orenziv of a rave, October 2007; bottom from Love Parade 2004 by Ehud

Everything is Now - Toni Morrison

We've discussed house rent parties in pre-WW2 Harlem here before. Toni Morrison's novel 'Jazz' is set in Harlem in the 1920s. First published in 1992 it is an imaginative reconstruction of Harlem life rather than a contemporary decsription. Nevertheless her depictions of parties ring true, not just for Harlem but for many other times and places:

Before the lights are turned out, and before the sandwiches and the spiked soda water disappear, the one managing the record player chooses fast music suitable for the brightly lit room, where obstructing furniture has been shoved against walls, pushed into the hallway, and bedrooms piled high with coats. Under the ceiling light pairs move like twins born with, if not for, the other, sharing a partner's pulse like a second jugular. They believe they know before the music does what their hands, their feet are to do, but that illusion is the music's secret drive: the control it tricks them into believing is theirs; the anticipation it anticipates. In between record changes, while the girls fan blouse necks to air damp collarbones or pat with anxious hands the damage moisture has done to their hair, the boys press folded handkerchiefs to their foreheads. Laugh­ter covers indiscreet glances of welcome and promise, and takes the edge off gestures of betrayal and abandon...

Two arms clasp her and she is able to rest her cheek on her own shoulder while her wrists cross behind his neck. It's good they don't need much space to dance in because there isn't any. The room is packed. Men groan their satisfaction; women hum anticipation. The music bends, falls to its knees to embrace them all, encourage them all to live a little, why don't you? since this is the it you've been looking for.

Her partner does not whisper in Dorcas' ear. His promises are already clear in the chin he presses into her hair, the fingertips that stay. She stretches up to encircle his neck. He bends to help her do it. They agree on everything above the waist and below: muscle, tendon, bone joint and marrow coop­erate. And if the dancers hesitate, have a moment of doubt, the music will solve and dissolve any question...

Anything that happens after this party breaks up is nothing. Everything is now. It's like war. Everyone is handsome, shining just thinking about other people's blood. As though the red wash Hying from veins not theirs is facial makeup patented for its glow. Inspiriting. Glamorous. Afterward there will be some chatter and recapitulation of what went on; nothing though like the action itself and the beat that pumps the heart. In war or at a party everyone is wily, intriguing; goals are set and altered; alliances rearranged. Partners and rivals devastated; new pairings triumphant. The knockout possibilities knock Dorcas out because here- with grown-ups and as in war­ - people play for keeps.

Also of interest: A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem

Dancing Questionnaire 8: Beyond the Implode

Martin from Beyond the Implode with tales of drunken dancing and snogging from Dunstable to St. Petersburg. Don't think we've met yet, despite both having spent time in dodgy Luton clubs, New Cross Venue, the Swan in Stockwell, Megatripolis and doubtless other places.

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?
The earliest was probably throwing myself around to the theme tunes of TV shows like "The Professionals"and "Weekend World". You need a good, driving, dynamic theme tune to injure yourself to, and "Weekend World" ticked all the boxes with its crashing guitar blitz, tense drumming and moody organ. I was quite disappointed, years later, when I found out that particular piece was actually recorded by a '70s prog rock band called Mountain - I preferred imagining that it was knocked up by some eccentric 'TV jingle expert', frantically chain-smoking and directing a school-aged rock group in the London Weekend Television studios.

This primitive slam dancing would go on for weeks until I had permanent carpet burns and severe bruising, or til my dad kicked me out of the living room. After that, it was probably doing the Adam & The Ants "Prince Charming" dance at my (much) older sister's wedding reception in 1981 - well, until I realised that a bunch of pissed-up, middle aged Irish relatives were staring at me, causing me to bottle out and hide under a table.

But my first real communal dancing memory was a girl's birthday party. We were all about 7, I was wearing my MY SISTER WENT TO MALTA AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT t-shirt and me and some snot-nosed girl called Sheilagh were grooving to rubbish like "Young Guns", "D.I.S.C.O" and the one that went "Hands up, baby hands up, gimme your heart gimme gimme..." etc.

2. What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?
I can't identify one most interesting / significant thing - for me what was significant was the fact that, when I was younger, I considered myself a right ming-mong who'd never be able to cut it on any dancefloor. So just dancing at all without incurring any fatal consequences or humiliation was quite nice.

I don't really take dancing that seriously, I tend to arse around doing 'rave spaz' hand movements. I picked up a few tips on the dancefloor over the years, though. Some woman told me that men should dance with their knees rather than their hips, as it reduces jerky shoulder movements. I don't know if she was having me on, but as a result I've danced like M.I.A ever since. Also, if you do that '70s disco thing where you form 'V'-signs with your fingers, and then drag them across your eyes, it's a good way of reassuring people that you don't spend all your time practising in front of a mirror and that you're not going to start pelvic thrusting all over their legs.To be honest, as long as it's the right vibe with the right people, I could dance at a Norwegian country and western night and have a good time.

3. You. Dancing. The best of times…
A fair few. There was the time I went to see The Damned and the Anti-Nowhere League at the Astoria in1994. I'm not really a big fan of either band, but that was such a laugh, like splashing through a lake of spilt beer at a medieval public execution. Spoddy kids across the globe owe a debt of gratitude to Sid Vicious for inventing pogo dancing, anyone can do it and all it takes is a bit of basic stamina. I liked the unspoken code of honour at punk gigs, like if someone slipped over and hit the deck, everyone would clear a space around them and help them back up to their feet. There was a fat psychobilly bloke down the front of the gig, whose 'dancing' solely consisted of violently lashing his fists out in front of him, sending the occasional skinny punk reeling. At some point I just thought, "Sod it, it can't hurt THAT much", and gleefully flung myself into his path. He whacked me in the chest and I went flying, but I was too busy laughing to feel any pain. I used to love going to Slimelight too, I think I had some sort of affinity for dancing to EBM (which I hardly ever listened to at home) because I ended up getting snogged by random strangers on a regular basis.

I did my first vial of poppers there. I've never been a heavy drugs user, but I liked amyl nitrate because it gets straight to the point and makes you feel like your heart's about to come drilling out of your chest 'Manic Miner' style - you also avoid hours of talking shit about the hidden meanings of Smiley Culture lyrics. My favourite night at Slimelight was when I 'pulled' (or 'was pulled' more accurately) by some punk girl who later vomited all over herself at Angel tube station. She was barking mad but very sweet. Bizarrely, I still wonder how she's doing these days.

Megatripolis at Heaven was good fun, like running around inside a techno LSD carny. But one of my favourite nights out was New Year's Eve '98, me and my flatmate Kev had ended up in a pub in Edgware called The Railway. We were doing the standard, skint "This is such a rip-off, what a crap night" moaning when some incompetent DJ came on and started (very poorly) mixing "Renegade Master", a pile of big beat records, Run DMC etc. The whole pub suddenly transformed into the best nightclub in the world, we were rolling around the sticky carpet, trying to 'breakdance' with local bikers, people grabbing the DJ's microphone and giving surreal shout-outs to their bedridden grandmas...just good, dirty chaos all round! The whole thing fizzled out around 4am when the police turned up, the last thing I remember was a skeletal guy in nerdy glasses, a Santa hat and his boxer shorts, dancing with one of the barmaids to "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" on the pool table and waving a poolcue around like a sword, while a couple of incredulous cops tried to get the DJ to sober up enough to unplug his decks.

I haven't linked dancing to sex yet - in 2002, I was down the Stockwell Swan with my then girlfriend. I've never been bewitched by someone dancing before but she completely blew me away, she seemed to transform herself into a snake goddess and did this odd dance in the middle of the floor. There were blokes craning their necks to get a look, it was something else, Ididn't dare go near her in case I broke the spell. I'm not making this up, and I wasn't on drugs. I just stood by the side of the dancefloor with my jaw scraping the floor. I remember telling myself, "Lap this up and enjoy every minute of it, because special moments like this don't last forever, and one day it'll all be gone" - and sure enough, me and the cowsplit up in 2003.

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times…
I remember an extremely unpleasant night in Ritzy's nightclub in Dunstable, which was situated in a shopping precinct - it was just a commercial club, playing chart music and a bit of house. I can't even remember why we'd bothered going there, but it was a complete nightmare. Groups of blokes who hadn't managed to pull were just roaming around beating the shit out of anyone they took a disliking to. Somebody got glassed in the toilet and then it all erupted, with two sets of blokes clashing, I can still remember seeing puddles of blood all over the floor and smeared up one of the cubicle doors. Outside, some bloke had collapsed in a heap on a metal bench and a group of lads were surrounding his comatose body, gobbing all over him and shouting stuff like "piss on the fat cunt".

There was a similar night in Mirage in Luton. The upstairs used to be for 'alternatives', whereas the downstairs area was a dance area. It operated on a kind of segregation basis, as if you had this 'peaceline' running across the back stairwell, so the punks/ goths / indie kids and 'straights' didn't come into contact with each other. It's funny to think these(mostly) gentle, polite kids were upstairs listening to grunge and Rage Against the Machine wailing about fucking up the system, while, downstairs (where we ended up one night) some squaddie would be kicking bejayzus out of another bloke and girls would be decking each other to "Saturday Night" by Whigfield.

Worst was last year when I went to Russia with some girl and it transpired she was actually on the rebound. I decided to get as drunk as possible, hoofed back a bottle of Russki Standart Platinum, and set out to dance myself into oblivion in some seedy Euro-techno club. Instead I ended up falling over, landing on my thumb and leg and having to be carried outside by her and her friends. The next day I had a nearly flight back to London, but when I got to Heathrow my hand had swollen up and I couldn't actually stand, so I had to be helped to arrivals by the cabin crew, which was highly embarrassing. I ended up in Whittington Hospital being X-rayed, patched up and prescribed a course of anti-flams and hobbling back home (it took me half an hour to walk a normal 10 minute distance). It was kind of full circle back to where I started, crashing into things and getting injured.

5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented?
Not really, it's kind of scrambled, but as a rough sketch: 1992-1994, London punk / riot grrrl bands; 1994-1996 - Megatripolis for techno, Lazerdrome in Peckham for jungle, Venue, New Cross, for indie / punk bands, Goldsmiths Tavern, New Cross, for the odd anarcho band, and Slimelight for goth / industrial.Ever since then, various clubs, ranging from outright commercial cattle markets to excellent dancehall nights like Kevin Martin's and Loefah's BASH in OldStreet.

6. When and where did you last dance?
That tendon-ripping night in St Petersburg, unless you count coolly nodding and shuffling (A BIT) at a grime night in East London a while back.

7. You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?

It'd have to be "Body of an American" by the Pogues, a real mosh out way to go, preferably accompanied by streams of Talisker and (despite having quit earlier this year) a last Marlboro Light. Oh, and a couple of ex-girlfriends dabbing their eyes with a hankie as I drop to the ground and convulse around a bit at the end.

All questionnaires welcome- just answer the same questions and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires)

Autonomous Spaces

Extracts from a call for transnational days of action for squats and autonomous spaces:

'On Friday the 4th and Saturday the 5th of April 2008, we call for two days of demonstration, direct action, public information, street-party, squatting... in defence of free spaces and for an anti-capitalist popular culture.

Through these two days, we want to help create more visibility of autonomous spaces and squats as a european/global political movement. We want to develop interconnections and solidarity between squats and autonomous spaces. We want to keep linking our spaces with new people and new struggles, and support the creation of autonomous spaces in places where there has not been a history of this kind of action. We want to build, step by step, our ability to overcome the wave of repression falling on us....

For centuries, people have used squats and autonomous spaces, either urban or rural, to take control of their own lives. They are a tool, a tactic, a practice, and a way for people to live out their struggles. For decades, squat movements across Europe and beyond have fought capitalist development, contributing to local struggles against destruction; providing alternatives to profit-making and consumer culture; running social centres and participatory activities outside of the mainstream economy. Demonstrating the possibilities for self-organising without hierarchy; creating international networks of exchange and solidarity. These networks have changed many lives, breaking out of social control and providing free spaces where people can live outside the norm...

All over Europe, repressive agendas are being pushed by governments. They are attacking long-standing autonomous spaces such as the Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen, Koepi and Rigaer Straße in Berlin, EKH in Vienna and Les Tanneries in Dijon, squatted social centres in London and Amsterdam, Ifanet in Thessaloniki, etc. In France, squats have become a priority target for the police after the anti-CPE movement and the wave of actions and riots that happened during the presidential elections period. In Germany, many autonomous spaces have been searched and attacked before the G8 summit. In Geneva and Barcelona, two old and big squatting "fortresses", the authorities have decided to try to put an end to the movement. Whereas it is still possible to occupy empty buildings in some countries, it has already become a crime in some others. In the countryside, access to land is becoming harder and communes face increasing problems from legislation on hygiene, security and gentrification by the bourgeoisie and tourists. All over Europe, independent cultures are being threatened.

Several months ago we saw running battles in the streets of Copenhagen and actions everywhere in Europe in an explosion of anger at the eviction of the Ungdomshuset social centre. Since then, and with a few other big resistance stories that happened over the last months, we've managed to renew the meaning of international solidarity...

We're calling for an international preparation & coordination meeting on November 24th & 25th 2007, in the autonomous space "Les Tanneries", located in Dijon, France. It is a squatted social centre in a post-industrial environment, occupied since 1998. Thanks to years of struggle against the city council owning the buildings, the project has reached a certain degree of stability. It hosts a collective house, a gig room, a hacklab, a free shop, an infoshop, a collective garden, a library... We hope that many of you will be able to join.

Full call here, contact april2008 at squat dot net for further information.

Kent police take to the woods

Following a summer of police harrassment of parties in East Anglia, their colleagues in Kent seem to be getting in on the action:

Endings Wood (BBC, 4 November 2007, 7 November 2007)

'Four men have been arrested after hundreds of people joined in an illegal rave in Kent.
Kent Police said about 300 revellers were at the party near Sittingbourne, on Saturday night.
Sixty officers were called to the scene at Endings Wood, which police said was privately-owned land. A spokesman said the alarm was raised around midnight. Officers were still moving people from the scene in the early hours of Sunday. Police said the four men were being held on suspicion of public order and drugs offences'.

'Ravers at the party near Sittingbourne on Saturday night said officers were kicking and punching girls in the head and "indiscriminately beating people". Assistant Chief Constable Dave Ainsworth refuted the claims, saying 55 officers were there, but out of the 300 revellers just three were arrested. "That doesn't sound like an excessive use of force in my view," he said.
"Most of the people, and the organisers themselves, complied with the requirement of the law to actually shut the event down."

One of the revellers at the event at Endings Wood told the BBC that he was now using crutches after he was allegedly hit with a police baton. Daniel, from Canterbury, said: "I saw one of my friends pushed onto the floor and literally being stamped on by the police. I dived down to try and help him up and... I was hit across my right knee with a metal baton." He claimed a friend was also knocked unconscious with a baton and then kicked while she was on the ground.'

Lynsted (Kent Police, 4 October 2007)

'Police are asking landowners in mid Kent to remain vigilant, particularly in rural areas, to the possibility of illegal raves taking place. It follows a team of officers intercepting a rave in private woodland in Lynsted on Sunday morning (30 September). Police were called at around 7am to a suspected rave where they discovered around 150 people along with a stage and sound equipment. After liaising with the landowner, police began to seize equipment and check all the vehicles at the site. Subsequently two people were arrested on suspicion of theft of a motor vehicle and possession of a class A drug'.

The great disco debate

Richard from Commie Curmudgeon and Rough in Here... has taken issue with some of my earlier pro-disco posts, suggesting that I have exaggerated its utopian dimensions. He says:

'I was just a young teenager when disco had its heyday in NYC with Studio 54, not even of drinking age during most of that time, but I have a pretty clear memory of some things as an outside observer, such as the overblown elitism involved in that venture and much of the disco scene. Studio 54 was famous for having a door policy, something that didn't really exist in the punk scene until the Mudd Club and Danceteria (which policy I always disliked), and Studio 54 widely advertised the idea that you could get on their long line to participate in this big competition to prove you were glamorous or chic enough to get in. It was probably their biggest selling point.

Disco may have promoted a sort of liberation for oppressed identity groups, and it may have inverted the usual standing of some of these groups in society, but the disco scene, especially as manifested at '54, enforced a class elitism and system of hierarchical selection all its own. The argument that this movement was so utopian because it was run by women and gays could be countered with the argument that a woman also got elected to run the British government in the late '70s, and look how egalitarian she turned out to be.

If disco had these great liberating qualities for identity groups, it featured and promoted some pretty regressive attitudes as well. One might add that disco was characterized by a complete retreat from the overtly radical or even liberal politics of so much popular music (especially black dance music, if I recall correctly) in the '60s and early '70s. Disco had good qualities too, which were carried over into techno and a lot of related dance music in later years (which would take another, very long comment to spell out), but if my memory serves me correctly, calling it an egalitarian utopia is a bit of a stretch'.

Today I went to an exhibition in London of photographs of 'New York's Nightlife in the 1970s' by Allan Tannenbaum (example left). The exhibition at The Draywalk Gallery, off Brick Lane, was promoted by Deep Disco Culture and if indeed it was truly a representation of 70s disco culture I would have to agree that Richard was right. Many of the photos were of Studio 54, and while some of the scenes looked liked fun, there was clearly an emphasis on wealth and celebrity and more than a whiff of 'fuck the proles' upper class decadence.

But from all I have read and heard, I do not believe that disco can be reduced to Studio 54 and similar scenes. Tim Lawrence is one of many who have persuasively argued that the origins of disco were quite distinct from its later manifestation. In an article entitled In Defence of Disco (again) (New Formations, Summer 2006) he puts forward the following account:

'The disco that riled the gathering forces of the New Right was born in cauldron conditions. Lacking alternative social outlets, gay men and women of colour, along with new social movement sympathisers, gathered in abandoned loft spaces (the Loft, the Tenth Floor, Gallery) and off-the-beaten-track discotheques (the Sanctuary, the Continental Baths, Limelight) in zones such as NoHo and Hell's Kitchen, New York, to develop a uniquely affective community that combined sensation and sociality. Developing a model of diversity and inclusivity, participants established the practice of dancing throughout the night to the disorienting strains of heavily percussive music in the amorphous spaces of the darkened dance floor'.

The subsequent opening of Studio 54 in April 1977 as 'the glitziest and most exclusionary venue of the disco era.... steamrollered the ethical model of the downtown party network into smithereens... Whereas the dance floor was previously experienced as a space of sonic dominance, in which the sound system underpinned a dynamic of integration, experimentation and release, at Studio this became secondary to the theatre of a hierarchical door policy that was organised around exclusion and humiliation, as well as a brightly-lit dance floor that prioritised looking above listening, and separation above submersion... Whereas the dance floor had previously functioned as an aural space of communal participation and abandon, it was now reconceived as a visually-driven space of straight seduction and couples dancing, in which participants were focused on the their own space and , potentially, the celebrity who might be dancing within their vicinity'.

In disco the lyrical content was rarely political in the way some rock and soul was, as Richard identifies, but this can only be seen as a retreat if we judge music solely by what it says. A negative critique that explicitly refuses to affirm the way things are is one part of any radical social movement, and this is something that we find for instance, in some punk - essentially the sound of saying NO. But movements also need to be constitutive, that is to develop new more liberatory relationships between people involved. The latter was the contribution of the best disco dance floors, 'generating and spawning a model of potentially radical sociality' (Lawrence) quite different from the audience at traditional gigs, a contribution that has been played out in different dance music scenes ever since.

Dead can Dance

Today and tomorrow the Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico: 'The country vigorously embraces its dead during these days. It drinks, sings and dances with them. This is the most ostentatious festivity of the year—more exuberant than either Easter or Christmas. It illustrates the special relationship that Mexico seems to have with death—a laughing, mocking familiarity that is embodied in the portrayal of grinning paper mache skeletons performing life’s everyday tasks. Dancing on someone’s grave, an action that carries such negative connotations in the rest of the Christian world, here represents a reaching out of the living to the dead, a reunion in the most festive spirit' (Oaxaca Times).

While on the subject of Oaxaca and remembering the dead, it is the first anniversary this week of the killing there of indymedia journalist Brad Will and three protestors during an uprising.

Electric Ballroom to be Demolished?

Camden Council in north London seem to have agreed last week to the demolition of The Electric Ballroom. I must admit I haven't been there since some acid jazz club in the 1990s, but it is a music venue with a long history. It apparently opened up as the Buffalo, an Irish dance hall in the 1930s, became The Carousel in the 1960s, and then The Electric Ballroom in 1978. Famous gigs there included 2 Tone nights in 1979 (with Madness, The Specials, Dexys Midnight Runners), followed by Joy Division, The Clash, Talking Heads, The Pogues, The Smiths in 1983, Public Enemy and loads of others. Clubwise, it hosted Jay Strongman's Warehouse funk sessions from 1983 then in the early 1990s the gothy Full Tilt and the housey Crush.

Its apparently impending demise follows the closure earlier this year of another famous London venue, the Hammersmith Palais.

Any good Electric Ballroom stories/memories?