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?

Dancing Questionnaire 7: Jeff, California

Our latest questionnaire has been completed by Jeff, who works in the wine trade in California, something that sounds very enticing on a grey October morning in South London (although looking at the news about fires in California, they might be envious of a bit of rain).

Can you remember your first experience of dancing?

Don't remember this, exactly, but there's a picture of me dancing at a Grateful Dead show in 1973 or 1974, when I was 2 or 3. I do remember using a tennis racket as an air guitar and jumping off my toybox was I was 4 or 5. I think I had seen Elvis on television and was aping him, but now, for some reason, I always associate this memory with Ray Davies and Paul Weller.

What's the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?

Finding the ability to be absolutely at peace with myself, and losing all sense of self-consciousness, in a large crowd while dancing energetically, bizarrely, etc. And making a coupe of great friends.

What's the best place you've ever danced in?

There's a bunch... but went to a rave in La Paz Bolivia in 2000 where the dj was playing really good hard acid in an old colonial building at 3500m elevation. Great evening.

You. Dancing. The best of times….

Josh Wink dropping "Fool's Gold" just as the sun was rising over the Nevada desert at a big rave there in the mid-90s. Dancing with my dad at Burning Man in '98, when we were both off our heads on an assortment of things. A girl turning to me in the middle of Richie Hawtin's set at Glastonbury '95, and, smiling, asking "What have we done to deserve this?! " Wink, again, just after "Don't Laugh" came out, playing at a tiny club in LA. Dancing to James during their 2000 tour at MEN Arena. Weatherall at Heaven.

You. Dancing. The worst of times…

Taking something really, really weird at Glastonbury, and losing it a bit while Eat Static looped "Let them eat static" at volume ten. Tried to recover by focusing on a really kind - and gentle-looking girl to pull myself out, and telling her that she'd really helped me out. She looked at me, laughed me off, and walked away. Bad trip. Having parties shut down by the police. Having big parties canceled- the usual stuff...

Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places youve frequented?

My first party was a Doc Martin gig at a dis-used Vet's Hall in California in 1990. I became involved in the Southern California rave scene in the early-late 90s. Enjoyed several trips to check out the New York acid/hardcore scene during this time. Several trips to the UK for parties/dancing/records. Desert parties. Good raves in Peru and Bolivia...

When and where did you last dance?

Rather bizarrely, perhaps, to Morrissey, live, two weeks ago.

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

Very tough call. "Fool's Gold', probably... Or Vapourspace's "Gravitational Arch of 10".

All questionnaires welcome- just answer the same questions and send to transpontine@btinternet.com. Previous questionnaires here.

First Woman to Sing in Space

We have already discussed Yuri Gagarin's first song in space. A couple of years later, a woman's voice joined the ranks of space singers:

'On June 16th 1963, for the first time ever, a woman sang in space. The singer was Valentina Tereshkova, a 26-year-old Soviet cosmonaut and former textile worker, and the song was about her homeland, Mother Russia. Valentina had left the planet human beings inhabit, with all its diverse frontiers, to become the first woman and fifth cosmonaut after Yuri Gagarin to pioneer a new order of living in the unexpected dimensions of the universe... She remains to this day the only woman to accomplish a solo flight in space for three days'.

Tereshkova had been in a folk group, playing the domra (a Russian stringed instrument). In an interview she was asked 'During his flight Gagarin sang to Mission Control and he heard them play a popular song 'Moscow night'. You also sang during your flight, can you remember the words?'. She replied: 'They were something like this:

I see the black Heaven close to me

Beneath me the Earth is full of poppies

You are awaiting me Earth

I am flying, flying, flying.

My Earth until you call me back.'

This sounds like she may have made this up, in which case this would have the honour of being the first song written in space.

Source: Valentina: First Woman in Space, Conversations with A. Lothian (Durham: Pentland Press, 1993)

San Francisco Bus Stop Rave

From Golden Gate Xpress, 22 September 2007:

People overflowed into the street and crowded around the westbound bus stop at Haight St. and Fillmore St on Friday night. They whooped and threw glow sticks in the air, dancing freely to music pumping out of the rigged bus stop and a nearby car, and green lights flashed from the tiny shelter where people usually just wait for the 6, 7, and 71 bus lines.

This impromptu rave, like the pillow fights, zombie days, and big wheel races that came before it, is an example of people in San Francisco deciding to create their own fun for free. These peaceful free-for-alls help people forget about all the stresses and serious concerns of the day and just cut loose for an exciting good time.

This rave was organized by Brent Lowteck, 25, a San Francisco native who has rigged bus stops at least five times before this. SF State alumni Leslie Carroll, 24, and Alex Oestreicher, 22, both heard about the rave on laughingsquid.com. “It shows the character of the city, that we don’t take ourselves too seriously, that we can get together and have fun at a bus stop in the Lower Haight on a Friday night,” said Oestreicher... Bus riders were also surprised at the crowd cheering for the bus as they pulled up to their stop, but none were annoyed by the ravers, one saying it’s a great thing to do on a Friday night.

The police came to the site three times before 11:00 p.m. The ravers would turn off the music, light up cigarettes, and stand around waiting for the authorities to leave. As soon as they did, the party was back on... By 11:00, the crowd was about half as large, but the remaining few kept the party going, having fun for free and clutching their brown-bagged beer bottles as they danced into the night.

There's a video of an earlier event here.

Indian dance

A couple of interesting posts focusing on different aspects of dancing in Indian cultures.

Richard at Rough in Here... has become an enthusiast for Mujras , and has posted some footage of the dancer Megha so you can see what all the fuss is about.

Meanwhile Blackdown has an interview with a participant in the recent Navrati celebrations in London, a Hindu festival featuring nine nights of dancing.

Derek Jarman and the colour of noise

I’ve been reading Chroma, by Derek Jarman (1994), I believe the last of his books published during his lifetime. It's a meditation on colour, all the more poignant as he was going blind at the time. At several points he talks about the colour of music:

- ‘the painter Kandinsky who heard music in colours said: "Absolute green is represented by the placid middle notes of a violin"’
- ‘It was on a tortoiseshell lyre that Apollo played the first note. A brown note. From the trees came the polished woods to make the violin and bass, which smuggled up to the golden brass. In the arms of yellow, brown is at home’
- ‘You set the colours against each other and they sing. Not as a choir but as soloists. What is the colour of the music of the spheres but the echo of the Big Bang on the spectrum, repeating itself like a round’.

This an ancient theme, going back at least as far as Pythagoras and various occult cosmologies linking musical notes, colours and heavenly bodies in a cosmic harmony. I particularly like the colour thought forms of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, where they attempted to show the colour forms they believed were left by different kinds of music, the music of Gounod hanging over a church for instance. More recently there have been attempts to scientifically ascribe colours to sound, based on analysis of the frequency spectrum to identify pink noise, blue noise and so on.

Has anyone tried applying some of these ideas to current music? What does a dubstep thought-form look like hanging above a club in South London? What colour is grime?

Eskimo Song Duel

Before the soundclash, before reggae, before hip hop, there was the song duel:

‘In Alaska and in Greenland all disputes except murder are settled by a song duel. In these areas an Eskimo male is often as acclaimed for his ability to sing insults as for his hunting prowess. The song duel consists of lampoons, insults, and obscenities that the disputants sing to each other and, of course, to their delighted audience… The verses are earthy and very much to the point: they are intended to humiliate, and no physical deformity, personal shame or family trouble is sacred. As verse after verse is sung in term by the opponents, the audience begins to take sides; it applauds one singer a bit longer and laughs a bit louder at his lampoons. Finally he is the only one to get applause, and he thereby becomes the winner of a bloodless contest’

Source: Man’s Rise to Civilisation – Peter Farb (London: Secker & Warburg, 1969)

Disco was the only time we were equal

“Disco was the only time we were equal. No one cared whether you were black or white – no one even knew. We were using the culture and the clubs to elevate our thinking. It was revolution in a primal way… If you think about it, the whole movement was run by women, gays and ethnics: Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Grace Jones… I mean the Village People were revolutionary! People who would never even stand in a room with a gay person were dancing to San Francisco, and that’s what was so subversive about disco. It rewrote the book”

Nile Rodgers, Chic, and ex-Black Panther - interviewed in The Guardian, 1999.

Blues Dance, West London, 1980s

'Blues dance is walking on the edge of Babylon and claiming cultural space. Black youth articulate their experiences and forge alternative aesthetics in opposition to dominant culture. On a winter's night when the moon is frozen and chill breeze take a walk, music drop from sound system like heavy lead. Dub voices chant all de while shaking the roof in full charge. The youth dance in combat formation, back to the wall and forward motion only. They've come from all over the Grove and beyond; for this is a vigil of testimony and incantation threaded through Reggae rhythms. The trumpets take a turn and they come with force. The sounds, dub wise, jus stretch big and broad…

Voices saturate the cramped basement and rise with the morning mist. The people here are below ground level and socially they occupy strategic locations for all of society is within scope. There are few real opportunities for the youth to fulfill their potential in Babylon so they walk the edge of downpression and focus their visions beyond the dreadlines of the night. Seeds of hope grow in their hearts and the Dee Jay chats with a fresh surge of melody…

The echo chamber hits the words unto the concrete walls and the bounced sound, a receding thud races across the area. Blues dance transcends mere cultural opposition. It is particularly significant for the ways in which Black Youth explore and create musical forms and textures using available technologies. Many sound systems own equipment they have partly constructed or adopted to suit their own needs. Speakers are built with appropriate wood to achieve desired sound densities. The sound chamber is made tight to maximise the sound output. A good speaker should be able to accommodate the bass line and drum calls and give them appropriate tone and resonance…

The microphone is the symbol of dialogue. The Dee Jay engages the past and present simultaneously, livening up the session with varying delivery styles and subjects. The Blues dance is a school of social and political education and everyone comes with something to give and take away. They come for a communal affirmation of their own personal experience and they celebrate with spirited choruses when the Dee Jay calls.

The history of the sound system in Britain has produced many styles and forms popularised by two generations of Dee Jays and sounds. They include Coxsone Outernational, Unity, Sir Lloyd, Turbo Supreme, People's War, Channel One High Power, King Tubby's HiFi, Saxon, Sister Culcha, Lorna Gee, Smiley Culture, Ranking Ann, Pato Banton, Mad Professor, Asher Senator, Sister Audrey, Macka B, Martin Glynn and Tippa Irie. The Dee Jay tradition echoes that of the Calypsonian and hip hop rapper. Historically they are all rooted in the role and function of the African griot as the eyes and ears of the community’.

From: Behind the Masquerade: The Story of Notting Hill Carnival – Kwesi Owusu and Jacob Ross (London: Arts Media Group, 1988)

It ought to be a crime

Conversation in my house tonight:

"Did you hear that DJ Andy Kershaw got convicted yesterday"

Rose (my daughter), in all seriousness: "what did he do, DJ badly?"

Yes, it really ought to be a crime.

Japanese Silk Workers Songs

In late 19th century and early 20th century Japan, thousands of young women workers were recruited from villlages to work in the cotton and silk mills. The work was hard with long hours and dangerous conditions, and even outside of work the companies controlled their workers' lives, keeping them in dormitories and controlling their movements.

'Many did not get out of their dorms until the end of the year when they were allowed to visit their homes for New Year's. In order to keep the girls confined, factories built tall fences around the compounds - much like those of a prison camp. In fact, factory girls used to sing:

Working in a factory is like working in a prison
The only difference is the absence of iron chains'

In 1927, silk workers went on strike in Okaya. They 'marched through the town of Okaya singing labor songs, one of which went:

Harsher than prison life is life in the dormitory
The factory is like hell
The foreman is the devil,
and the spinning wheel is a wheel on fire

I wish I had wings to fly away to the other shore,
I want to go home, over the mountain pass,
to my sisters and parents.'

Source: Mikiso Hane, Peasant, Rebels and Outcastes: the Underside of Modern Japan (New York: Pantheon, 1982, p.185-196.

We would think her raving

There is a style of 1970s/80s US radical feminist writing that takes 'man-made language' to task, disavowing the patriarchal voice with its impassive claim to objective authority, and developing a discourse that foregrounds personal subjectivity and poetic language. It is a 'raving' discourse that reclaims elements of experience seen as being denied as 'hysterical'. This style is particularly associated with Mary Daly, but is also found in Susan Griffins's Woman and Nature - The Roaring Inside Her (1978). The following are some extracts from the latter on dancing and music. I am particularly struck by the immersive conception of music as a wave that sets us in motion.

Our dreams - what lies under our stillness

This above all, we have never denied our dreams. They would have had us perish. But we do not deny our voices. We are disorderly. We have often disturbed the peace. Indeed, we study chaos - it points to the future... Many of us who practiced these arts were put on trial. We stood at the gates of change, but those who judged us were afraid. They claimed the right to order the future. They would have had all of us perish, and most of us did. But some kept on. Because this is the power of such things as we know - we kept flying through the night, we kept up our deviling, our dancing, we were still familiar with animals though we were threatened with fire and though we were almost to a woman burned. And even if over our bodies they have transformed this earth, we say, the truth is, to this day, women still dream.

Dancing

Yes, we are
dancing, oh yes, we are
dancing, oh yes, we
dance, whenever we
can. Now we
move together.
Tambourine. The joy.
Tambourine and pipe.
The joy in me. Tambourine,
pipe and violin.
The joy in me that
I see in you. Tambourine,
tambourine. tambourine
and pipe. And if we should
falter, tambourine,
violin, tambourine,
violin, if danger over
takes us, tambourine
and pipe, we must
stay together, violin
and harp, we must
not forget. Violin, pipe,
tambourine and harp.
Now we move together.
Feeling dances through us.
We move our feet together.
We do this dance.
Tambourine, tambourine,
harp and violin.
We dance
to be free. harp,
harp and pipe,
free to live our lives,
tambourine and harp,
the way we dream.
Tambourine and
harp. If
one of us falters,
violin, violin, violin,
if
danger over takes
her, violin, violin,
we must not forget,
tambourine, tambourine,
what happens to one, pipe
and harp, happens
to us all. Now
we move together, this
music rushes through
us, we dance with
the wind, to the
singing of the trees…


Her vision

She sees lives half lived becoming whole. She reads stories that have never been written. Sees whole cities grow up, and the new growth of forests that were razed long ago. She sees all kinds of marvels far beyond what we ask her to see, things, she says, we could not even dream. We would think her raving, but she speaks to us so sweetly of what she says can be, that we too begin to see these things.


Acoustics

The string vibrates. The steel string vibrates. The skin. The calfskin. The steel drum. The tongue. The reed. The glottis. The vibrating ventricle. Heartbeat. Wood. The wood resonates. The curtain flaps in the wind. Water washes against sand. Leaves scrape the ground. We stand in the way of the wave. The wave surrounds us. Presses at our arms,, our breasts. Enters our mouths, our ears. The eardrum vibrates. Malleus, incus, stapes vibrate. The wave catches us. We are part of the wave. The membrane of the oval window vibrates. The spiral membrane in the cochlea vibrates. We are set in motion by what moves outside our bodies. Each wave of a different speed causes a different place in the cochlea to play. We have become instruments. The hairs lining the cochlea move. We hear. To the speed of each wave the ear adds its own frequency. What is outside us becomes us. Each cell under each hair sends its own impulse. What we hear we call music.

All Night Rave, London 1966

We’ve previously noted how the word ‘rave’ was used in the late 40s and 50s for late night jazz parties in London and elsewhere. Moving into the 1960s, ‘rave’ continued to be used for parties on the emerging psychedelic scene

In October 1966 there was an ‘All-Night Rave’ at the Roundhouse in Camden (North London), a disused railway engine shed. The event was held to mark the launch of the underground newspaper International Times . On the bill were Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, both playing one of their first London gigs. In his ‘Watch Out Kids’ (1972), Mick Farren recalled the night:

‘It was a new kind of celebration. The Roundhouse, then, was a vast, filthy circular building. Loose bricks, lumps of masonry and old wooden cable drums littered the floor. Slide and movie projectors threw images on a screen of polythene sheeting that had been hung at the back of a rickety, makeshift stage. The only way into the building was up a single flight of shaky wooden stairs. At the top Miles and Hoppy passed our sugar cubes. According to legend one in twenty was dosed with acid. Mine wasn’t.

A Jamaican steel band played on the stage… Paul McCartney came by in an Arab suit. For the first time in my life I saw joints being passed around openly in a public place… A band called Soft Machine played from the floor as a weird biker rode round and round them… Across the room an Italian film crew filmed a couple of nubile starlets stomping in a mess of pink emulsion paint. As we lurched into shot we were told by the producer ‘Fuck off, you’re spoiling the spontaneity’. We stumbled off to watch a bunch of freaks dragging an old horse-drawn cart around the building’.

More Dead by Dawn

Some more on Brixton mid-90s speedcore night, Dead by Dawn, following my previous post.

John Eden has pointed me in the direction of Controlled Weirdness's Unearthly Records site, where there are some more Dead by Dawn flyers - from where I sourced the following:

A short history of Dead by Dawn (Praxis Newsletter, August 1994)

'We would like to set the facts straight for those Cultural Studies students who intend to write their dissertations about us. This is our story so far.

A chance meeting on Blackfriars Bridge between a member of the Praxis DJ team and a senior executive of the 121 Centre Management Committee, revealed a shared interest in the dark secrets of Freemasonry (top Vatican banker Roberto Calvi was found hanged beneath Blackfriars Bridge in 1984, £23 grand in various currencies stuffed in his pockets, believed to have been a victim of the forces of Masonic mind control).

Well anyway, a subsequent chat over chips and beans revealed that these rogues had far more in common than just an unhealthy obsession with conspiracy theory. They both felt a desparate need to wreak havoc on the jaded and boring London club scene. Soon plans were afoot to do a once-a-month techno all-nighter at the 121 Centre in Brixton, to create an experience that would reflect the energy and experimentation of the music they both so dearly loved.

The idea is so simple, but very effective. An evening of noises that assault the mind and body, kicking off with a talk/discussion for the party-goers to digest and then the hardest, fastest, weirdest techno available on vinyl, mixed together, at no expense spared, by the wickedest DJs in London.

Also supplied for spiritual refreshment during the evening is an electronic disturbance zone and anti-ambient space. Records, zines, free information and other weapons are available and a cheap bar for people to blow their giros on.

So what have the talks been about? Well, so far we've had - Advance Party and Squash giving detailed information about the Government's plans for universal conformity with their Criminal Justice Bill and its attacks on ravers and squatters; the London Psychogeographical Association explaining how chaos theory is a ruling class conspiracy; the Lesbian and Gay Freedom Movement discussing what sex would be like in an anarchist society; the editors of Underground, the London-based filthy free newspaper for the demolition of serious culture, demonstrating the possibilities of electronic art, encouraging us to make love to computers and conceive an army of bastard cyborgs, as well as revealing plans for the transmission of strange signals on the Fast Breeder computer bulletin board; and an evening with Stewart Home, chatting about his life, work, techniques for psychological warfare on the ruling class and why he wants to smash the literary establishment.

So this project continues: Dead by Dawn on the first Saturday of the month, operating beneath the underground, inciting the invisible insurrection of a million minds.

John has also gone to the trouble of digitalising some sections from the Dead by Dawn album, released on vinyl at the 23rd and final party in 1996. As well as tracks by various people who played at DbD, the album includes short recordings of people chatting at the parties and other background noise (as well as someone talking about DbD on a London pirate station). This makes it quite a unique audio document - it's rare for there to be any record of the conversations people have in clubs, in all their stoned/intense glory. Check it out: Download Dead by Dawn samples (MP3)

Do they owe us a living?

Occasionally I pick up my mandolin (yes really) and sing. Earlier this year at the (now evicted) Camberwell Squat Centre, I played a few songs at a gig with PJ and Gaby and I Made This Mistake. I performed a version of Crass's Do they owe us a living , and even though I'd added a melody that isn't on the original song everyone was singing along by the time I'd got to the second chorus.

I thought I was being quite innovative, but not long after at the same venue I went to see Kleber Klaux, an Australian synth duo who did a version of the same song (pictured at this gig). Talking to them afterwards they mentioned that they'd played another gig where some people did an electro version of it. Then I came across another electronic version from San Franciso by The Soft Pink Truth. Finally, for now, I hear that Jeff Lewis, from New York, has recorded a whole album of Crass covers including Do they owe us a living?

I think we can say that this song is not only an anarcho-punk standard, but is on the way to becoming probably the only true anarcho-punk folk song, that is a song that is now known by many people who have never heard the original (recorded on 1978's Feeding of the 5000).

What I like about it is simply the sentiment of the title 'Do they owe us a living? Of course they do'. Some of the other lyrics I have always felt more ambivalent about. When I sang it, I must admit I changed 'Don't take any notice of what the public think,They're so hyped up with T.V., they just don't want to think' to 'we're so hyped up...', trying to defuse the holier than thou tone that was one of the weaknesses of anarcho-punk moralism.

Interesting interview at 3 am magazine with George Berger, author of book about Crass;

Expletive Undeleted also has a couple of good Crass posts; Green Galloway has loads.

Dead by Dawn, Brixton, 1994-96

Dead by Dawn was a techno and speedcore club in Brixton, South London that ran from 26 February 1994 until 6 April 1996. In itself this was nothing particularly unusual – at the time it felt that every available social space was being taken over by record decks, speaker stacks and dancers, and in Brixton there was plenty of techno to be heard of various varieties. But Dead by Dawn was unique, and not just because its music was the hardest and fastest to be heard in London.

Dead by Dawn was only discovered by the mainstream dance music press after it had ceased. A Mixmag article by Tony Marcus on 'Hooligan Hardcore: the story of Gabber' (July 1997) stated that 'In London, the music is supported by the crustie scene or parties like last year's Dead by Dawn events, hosted by the Praxis label, conceptual events that were preceded by Mexican Revolutionary films or talks on topics like Lesbians in Modern Warfare'. Likewise it wasn't until September 1997 that The Face published an article by Jacques Peretti, 'Is this the most diabolical club in Britain', documenting the speedcore/noise scene: 'Like any embryonic scene, no one quite knows what to call it yet. But at the clubs where it's being played (Rampant, Sick and Twisted, Dead by Dawn, Acid Munchies) they're also calling it Black Noise, Titanic Noise, Hooligan Hardcore, Gabber Metal, Hellcore, Fuck-You-Hardcore or, my favourite, my a severed arm's length, Third World War' (the 'diabolical' club written about was incidentally Rampant at Club 414, also in Brixton).

Dead by Dawn is also (mis)name-checked in Simon Reynolds' book Energy Flash (1998): 'The anarcho-crusties belong to an underground London scene in which gabba serves as the militant sound of post-Criminal Justice Act anger. A key player in this London scene is an organisation called Praxis, who put out records, throw monthly Death by Dawn and publish the magazine Alien Underground'. All of these references contain some truth, but don't really convey the real flavour of the night. This is my attempt to do so.

121 Centre

Dead by Dawn took place on the first Saturday of the month at the 121 Centre, an anarchist squat centre at 121 Railton Road first occupied in 1981 (and finally evicted in 1999).

The Centre was essentially a three storey (plus cellar) Victorian end of terrace house. At the top was a print room and an office used by radical publications including Bad Attitude (a feminist paper) and Contraflow. Below that was a cafe space, decorated with graffiti art murals, and on the groundfloor there was a bookshop. Down a wooden staircase was a small damp basement used for gigs and parties.

The basement was where the decks and dancefloor were set up for Dead by Dawn, but the rest of the building was used too: 'Dead by Dawn has never been conceived as a normal club or party series: the combination of talks, discussions, videos, internet access, movies, an exhibition, stalls etc. with an electronic disturbance zone upstairs and the best underground DJs in the basement has made DbD totally unique and given it a special intensity and atmosphere' (Praxis Newsletter 7, October 1995).

Praxis

The musical driving force behind DbD was Chrisoph Fringeli of Praxis records. The notion of praxis, of a critical practice informed by reflection and thought informed by action, was concretely expressed at Dead by Dawn with a programme of speakers and films before the party started. A key theme played with around Dead by Dawn was that of the Invisible College, a sense of kindred spirits operating in different spheres connecting with each other. Those invited to give talks were seen as operating on similar lines to Dead by Dawn. I particularly remember a talk by Sadie Plant, author of 'The Most Radical Gesture: the Situationist International in the Post-Modern Age'.

Of course, only a minority of those who came to party came to the earlier events, but I recall intense discussions going on throughout the night on staircases and in corners. The discussions continued in print (this was one of the last scenes before the internet really took off). Dead by Dawn was one of those places where a very high proportion of people present were also making music, writing about it or otherwise involved in some DIY publishing or activism. There was a whole scene of zines put out by people around it, including Praxis newsletter, Alien Underground, Fatuous Times, Technet and Turbulent Times. My modest contribution to this DIY publishing boom, other than a couple of short articles for Alien Underground, was The Battle for Hyde Park: Ruffians, Radicals and Ravers 1855 -1955, an attempt to put the movement against the anti-rave Criminal Justice Act in some kind of historical context . People who occasionally came to DbD from outside of London also put out zines, including the Cardiff-based Panacea and Sheffield's Autotoxicity.

The writing about music was in some ways an attempt to make sense of the intensities of places like DbD. If there was one source quoted more than any other if was Jacques Attali's 'Noise: the Political Economy of Music', in particular the statement that 'nothing essential happens in the absence of noise'. Other ideas in the mix included Deleuze & Guattari, the Situationists, ultra-leftism and William Burroughs (particularly ideas of control and de-conditioning partially filtered through Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth). As well as music there were various other projects brewing, such as the Association of Autonomous Astronauts.

The mob

All of the above might make it sound as if DbD was some kind of abstract, beard stroking affair. I'm pretty sure though that there was no facial hair on display, and I can certainly vouch for the fact that DbD was a real club, complete with smoke, sweat, drugs (definitely more of a speed than an ecstasy vibe), people copping off with each other and general messiness.

There were people who came from round London and beyond especially for the night, Brixton Euro-anarcho-squatters for whom 121 was their local (at the time there was a particular concentration of Italians in the area) and the usual random collection of passers-by looking for something to do with the pubs shut, including the odd dodgy geezer: UTR (Underground Techno Resistance) zine warned in August 1995: 'if you go to the Dead by Dawn parties watch out for the bastard hanging around passing off licorice as block on unsuspecting out of their heads party goers. We suggest if he tries it on you that you give him a good kicking. You don't need shit like that at a party'.

Some of the crowd might have fitted Simon Reynolds' description of 'Anarcho-Crusties' but the full-on brew crew tended to be less represented than at some of the larger squat parties in London at the time. Of course we were more civilised in Brixton than in Hackney, and anyway the music policy tended to scare away those looking for the comfort of the squat party staple of hard/acid techno (not that I was averse to some of that).

DbD was one point in a network of sound systems and squat parties stretching across Europe and beyond, through Teknivals, Reclaim the Streets parties and clubs. I remember talking to somebody one night who had just got back from Croatia and Bosnia with Desert Storm Sound System. They'd put on a New Year’s party (January '95) where British UN soldiers brought a load of beer from their base before being chased back to base by their head officer.

Hardcore is not a style

It is true that gabber was played at DbD, as were more black metal-tinged sounds - the black-hooded speedcore satanists Disciples of Belial played at the closing party (though it is not true as suggested here that Jason Mendonca of the Disciples was responsible for DbD - I believe he was more involved in another London club, VFM). But DbD was not defined by either of these genres - indeed what separated DbD from many of the other 'noise' clubs was an ongoing critique of all genre limitations: 'Hardcore is not a style... Hardcore is such a sonic weapon, but only as long as it doesn't play by the rules, not even its own rules (this is where Jungle, Gabber etc. fail). It could be anything that's not laid back, mind-numbing or otherwise reflecting, celebrating or complementing the status quo' (Praxis Newsletter 7, 1995).

This meant that DbD DJs played dark jungle for instance, as well as techno, gabber and speedcore, occasionally winding up purists in the process. Sometimes there were live PAs, for example by Digital Hardcore Recording's Berlin breakbeat merchants, Sonic Subjunkies.

Even with gabber it was possible to get into a kind of automatic trance setting - after all it was still essentially a 4:4 beat, albeit very fast. The experience of dancing at DbD was more like being on one of those fairground rides which fling you in one direction, then turn you upside down, and shoot off at a tangent with no predicable pattern.

A quick roll-call of some of the DJs - Christoph, Scud, Deviant, Jason (vfm), Controlled Weirdness, DJ Jackal, Torah, Stacey, DJ Meinhoff, Terroreyes, Deadly Buda, not forgetting VJ Nomex, responsible for much of the video action.

The last days

DbD quit while it was ahead. Praxis newsletter announced in October 1995: 'In order for this never to become a routine we have decided to limit the number of events to take place as DbD with this concept before we move on to new adventures - to another 5 parties after the re-launch of this newsletter on October 7th'. So it was that the last party took place in April 1996. There was some frustration that the baton was not taken up by others: 'What a relief to be rid of the stress - but six weeks later we start feeling bored already and start looking for new concepts. Why did no one take up the challenge to make this sort of underground party spread? Why was the last discussion avoided by those people who tried to give us shit about stopping the parties?' (Praxis newsletter 8, 1996). The latter article was accompanied by a 1938 quote from Roger Caillois: 'the festival is apt to end frenetically in an orgy, a nocturnal debauch of sound and movement, transformed in to rhythm and dance by the crudest instruments beating in time'.

There was no going back, but many of those who were there have continued to be involved in making music, DJing, writing and other interventions, including Christoph (still doing Praxis and sporadically publishing Datacide), Howard Slater, Jason Aphasic, John Eden and Matthew Fuller.

The final document was a Dead by Dawn double compilation album (Praxis 23, vinyl only) with tracks from Richie Anderson & Brandon Spivey, Sonic Subjunkies, Deadly Buda, Somatic Responses, DJ Delta 9, Controlled Weirdness, Torah, Aphasic, Shitness and The Jackal, plus recordings made at Dead by Dawn parties.

Some Dead by Dawn texts:

Dead by Dawn on 3rd December 1994 - Club Review by the Institute of Fatuous Research (published in Alien Underground 0.1, Spring 1995)

Dead by Dawn is a baptism of fire happening on the first Saturday of every month, organised in conjunction with elaborate astrological cycles. It is an open secret, an anonymous pool of power accessible to guileless travellers of multitudinous potentiality. A new rougher and tender realm and yet another sucker on the beautiful arms of that octopus of desire called the INVISIBLE COLLEGE.

Dead by Dawn is an all-night feast of fire consumption; a self-sustaining palace of pleasure. Aliens advance their individual investigations into involvement with MOB RULE, test-driving hectic notions against believing everything... but minds do burn out (perhaps the effect of swallowing too much dogma and listening to techno played in other clubs that has been made with tired and fatigued formulas) and on this occasion we were sorely disappointed to have to watch the spectacle of certain elements getting angry because some Dark Jungle was playing out. Did this so offend their techno tastebuds that they had to spout their pathetic invective against breakbeats?

Dead by Dawn fires up binary dilemmas, resulting in aphasic implosions of belief structures. All the declared origins for things, all the various shades of after-life theory, are majestically destroyed. The fragile skin between inner and outer space has been punctured; a celebration begins, of incompleteness, the dissolving of categories and the accumulation of ideas. This is a launch pad for a thousand missions into electronic disturbance zones. Nothing is sacred. Dead by Dawn is the realisation and suppression of popular music and attendant social conditions; techno reveals how we find our own uses for magical systems, alchemically transforming machines into play-things, and constantly re-mixing, re-connecting, and re-inventing ourselves. All of this was confirmed by the live PA that night from Berlin technodadaists Sonic Subjunkies.

Dead by Dawn fans its own flames; the key to its success is 'Mind Our Business', cultivating the MOB mentality. By outflanking the administrators of fear, Dead by Dawn gleefully contributes to the breakdown of society, as our contradictions disrupt the whole millennial regeneration of the Renaissance world-view, and the manipulation of reality for the purpose of reality. The whirligig of time speeds up and has its revenges. These digital hardnoises accelerate the displacement of hierarchy, they provide space/time travel to a classless society where there will be no plagues of crap music and stupid club-promoters, no ego-tripping pests and self-promoting bores, no extortionate prices and rip-offs, and where there will be unlimited free drugs, records, dancing and sex. WE ARE INVINCIBLE.

Dead by Dawn - a game of Noise and Politics (from Fatuous Times, issue 4)

"Well done, now you have captured the Seven Angels of Noise you may begin organising your Parties. Parties provide space for you to assemble Noises and begin Composing. But remember, with every Party you organise you take a risk, gambling on slavery or freedom - always avoid the Caricatures, such as Business Head, Drug Casualty and Career Opportunist; they will try to use you.

You must try to create Paradise City. You will need to invent the rules and codes for doing this as you go along. Your Compositions will provide you with new Relations and Meanings, use these as your guides.

The Forces of Restraint will try to stop your Parties. They will use the Four Hands of Power, Eavesdropping, Censorship, Recording and Surveillance, as weapons against you. The Four Hands can be used in various ways - strategies may include Law and Order Campaigns, Soft-Cop/Hard-Cop Routines, and Austerity Measures.


It is advisable to seek help and assistance at all times, to form alliances and collaborate with others.

Composing will allow you to learn the pleasures of doing something for the sake of doing it, without a need for financial reward.

Pleasure in being instead of having - this will make you stronger. Paradise City is made from Noise. Only you know this.

Good luck. Please press return button to continue this game.



Dead by Dawn: the 24th Party, flyer by John Eden at Turbulence, published in Praxis newsletter 8, 1996)

Down with intelligence!

Dance music is primarily functional in a way that no other music is. It should interact with the listener as directly as a fire alarm. Eliciting a response so immediate that it bypasses the conscious mind. If the rhythm isn’t replicated by nervous and muscular responses then it's time to change the record. If it doesn’t make your feet and legs move then you can fucking forget It. Heads down, smiles on. Go.

Bodies jammed together have no space for pretension. Technology is utilised to elicit a peculiarly 'primitive' response. No time to think, only time to keep up. The third mind of the dancefloor is fully occupied. No need for packaging. Our bodies don't care about record labels, music labels. Every man and every woman is a star here. The dancefloor is in another dimension to the coffee table. All of the body begs for a frequency to vibrate to, not just the ears.

The oxymoron of making "listening" techno is an insult. Music for consumers so passive that they don't even leave the sofa and move about. Voyeurs of a subculture that demands physical activity and secretions. The spectre of "Intelligent" jungle or techno. The removal from the party with all its smells, interactions, exhaustions and into a tidy category for the post-modern tourist.

"Don't go in there! There's people flailing their arms around and sweating!" Save us from a dance music that distances itself from the mob of whirling people we have come to love. There are no footnotes when the bass drum kicks in. No time for roles. Intelligence implies a certain sophistication, a superiority to the plebs that are prepared to make fools out of themselves in the name of Hedonism. We reject it.

Well that's my version - more contributions and comments welcome. Also I can't find copy I thought I had of the DbD album - anybody care to record a copy? See also More Dead by Dawn

Classic party scenes (1): Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) is a kind of even-more druggy The Monkees with breasts, in which a young female band (The Kelly Affair, later renamed The Carrie Nations) taste the decadent delights of Los Angeles only to be caught up in Manson-murder style slaughter.

It features a couple of classic party scenes, set at the mansion of Ronnie Barzall, a Phil Spector-like music manager. People dance energetically to a show by psychedelic band the Strawberry Alarm Clock . It's all gyrating hips, hands in the air, a smattering of semi-naked dancers amongst the swingers and groovy people, sex and drugs in beds and swimming pools in adjoining rooms. It's not a hippy crowd as such, more a mixture of freaks and suit-clad jet set. Best of all is the dialogue: "This is my happening and it freaks me out!", "In a scene like this you get a contact-high!" and the ultimate chat up line "you're a groovy boy, I'd like to strap you on some time".

There's also a bit where a woman on a chain says "What I see is beyond your dreaming", a line I immediately recognised as a sample and thanks to Dissensus now know to have been used on Roni Size's Mad Cat from the New Forms album (1997). Lots of trailers and clips from the film here.