Short Hot Summer 1981: Leicester

Another in the series of posts on the 1981 summer uprisings. 30 years ago today, on Saturday 11 July, riots raged in Leicester, both in the city centre and in Highfields (the latter with its large Asian community). The following report comes from Socialist Worker, 18 July 1981:

'Last Friday the solicitor's office of Tony Reed-Herbert, the nazi gun-runner, was picketed by anti-racists. Highfields district of Leicester boiled over in a riot against police. This time the retaliation against oppression and deprivation overflowed to the City Centre on Saturday night.

Police could do nothing to prevent angry youth from smashing the windows of banks, posh shops and and fashion shops. In Highfields cars were overturned and set alight. By midnight the shopping centre was a scene of desolation. The main streets were empty except for police.

In Highfields, strangers were embracing each other. Blacks and whites were united and conscious of a common enemy. The local fascists must feel like they've been slapped round the face with a wet flannel. Even Goodson, the Chief Constable, was forced to admit that there had been no racial tensions leading up to the disturbance.

On Sunday the police took revenge on Highfields. They invaded dressed ready for combat with riot shields, batons and crash helmets. The community retaliated by erecting blazing barricades and throwing bricks and petrol bombs. They were defending their neighbourhood- not looting. The local residents were united against the police invasion and front doors were left open to let people in to hide and take refuge. Women and men of all ages were involved, black and white'.

Image (click to enlarge) from Leicester local paper at the time. Note caption: 'A dummy lies half out of a smashed window, still fully clothed'!

Short Hot Summer 1981: Brixton

Another in the series of posts on the 1981 summer riots . 30 years ago today, on Friday 10 July, Brixton exploded for the second time in three months following the arrest of sound system operator Lloyd Coxsone.

'Violence returned to the streets of Brixton this weekend, a few hours after Lord Scarman finished part one of his enquiry into the April riots. Large crowds clashed with police, cars were overturned and set alight, shops were attacked and looted only a short distance from Lambeth Town Hall where GLC leader Ken Livingstone was addressing an Anti Nazi League meeting. His audience had a grandstand view as officers fought looters... 31 officers were hurt hurt and there were 157 arrests, mainly for looting and assaulting police.

Trouble started at about 4 pm when police arrested a Rastafarian called Maliki in Atlantic Road. A popular disc jockey and community leader Lloyd Coxsone (32) tried to intervene but was arrested for obstruction. Within minutes youths had set up barricades across Atlantic Road... Police reinforcements were quickly on the scene but at 4:30 a Panda care in Atlantic Road was overturned and set on fire. An unmarked car which came to its aid was also overturned and fired but officers escaped unhurt.

Outside the Atlantic pub [late renamed the Dogstar in the 1990s] black leaders used a loud hailer to appeal for calm. Mr Maliki told the crowd that Mr Coxsone had been released and urged them to disperse. But some youths had already taken advantage of the confrontation to start looting shops in Atlantic Road. Rattner's the jewellers were attacked at 4.30 and a mob then ran down Electric Lane to raid Curry's the electrical goods shop...

Police formed themselves up in squads of about a dozen men with a sergeant in command. They lined up along the main road, walking under cover of riot shields towards the crowds. They were apparently trying to disperse the mob along Effra Road and Brixton Hill... By 8.30 police had cleared the centre of Brixton'.

(Source: South London Press, 14 July 1981)

Interview with Lloyd Coxsone

'As Brixton licked its wounds this week, an influential black community leader appealed to local youths to leave the shops alone. Disc jockey Lloyd Coxsone, owner of an internationally-famous sound system, said: 'I condemn the looting and shop breaking of last weekend. I know that trust between the youths and the police in this area has broken down. Bu this is not the way to solve the problems. The fighting in April was for a cause and I do feel that a lot of young policemen overstep the mark and are morally wrong. But I would never support any youth who went shopbreaking. It destroys what we are aiming for - a peaceful solution'.

Mr Coxsone (32) of Goulden House, Bullen Street, Battersea, was remanded on unconditional bail until August 24 at Camberwell on Wednesday after pleading not guilty to obstructing PC Kenneth MacKenzie in Vining Street and Atlantic Road on July 10. He admitted that he felt bitter at the way he and a colleague were arrested in Vining Street, last Friday night. The arrests led to a major confrontation in Atlantic Road which was only defused when Mr Coxsone and other black leaders addressed the crowds...

Mr Coxsone, a devout Rastafarian and father of six children also owns a record shop in Coldharbour Lane which he opened last December [Lloyd Coxsone Outernational Record Store, 395 Coldharbour Lane SW9]. A personal friend of the late Bob Marley, he came to England in 1962 to help promote Jamaican music through his sound system. He taken his music and his faith to most cities in England and Wales, and last December was engaged to play in Holland. The sound system is run by a team of about 18 young men, who share in the decision-making, and has an enormous following.

Coxsone himself is famous for his 'toasting' - a form of spoken commentary which underlines the words and music of reggae. Tall and slim, with dreadlocks down to his shoulders and a penetrating gaze, he is an impressive figure by any standards. After the April riots, Mr Coxsone and other influential members of the black community formed themselves into a 'peace committee'. The idea was to act as a channel of communication between local youths and the police. But Mr Coxsone feels it has not achieved full recognition...'

(Source: South London Press, 17 July 1981)

Poor Man Story by Levi Roots was produced by Coxsone and released on his label in 1981:

Short Hot Summer 1981: London

Number five in a series of posts on the 1981 summer riots - following on from Southall, Liverpool Manchester and Wood Green, on Thursday July 9th, crowds were on the streets in various parts of London with sporadic clashes with police:

'London police quickly quelled what threatned to be a riot early yesterday evening in Woolwich, south-east London. About 200 black and Asian youths ran through the town centre smashing 15 shop windows and overturning two cars. There was some looting. The youths were outnumbered by police who quickly dispersed them. 27 arrests were made… In Lewisham, eight youths were arrested after clashes in which goods were looted from Chiesman’s department store. About 100 black youths in Deptford threw bottles at a police car.

Twenty youths were arrested in Stoke Newington after bricks and bottles were thrown at the police… Several hundred youths were moved on by police from Dalston, east London. The youths, black and white in about equal numbers, gathered in Kingsland High Street and Dalston Lane. Several hundred police patrolled the streets. Street fighting broke out last night in Fulham with minor clashes between police and youths. Seven youths were arrested, six black and one white’ (Times, 10 July 1981)

In Balham High Road 'Around 35 shops were damaged in a wave of violence which started shortly after midnight when some 200 youths roamed the streets. Worst hit was the Argos Discount Store where hundreds of pounds worth of goods were stolen' (South London Press, 14 July 1981).

Swamp 81

All this talk of the short hot summer of 1981 has naturally got me thinking about continuities and discontinuities between then and now. One aspect is the way that images and tropes from that period get recycled, of which a positive example is Loefah's Swamp 81 record label. Over the last couple of years Swamp 81 has put out some great London bass tracks by, among others, The Bug, Pinch, Kryptic Minds, Addison Groove and Skream.

Calling the label Swamp81 is nice way of subtly situating this dubstep and after sound (don't make me use the term post-........) in a trajectory reaching back to reggae sound systems, and in a history of resistance sonic and otherwise. For as you probably already know, Operation Swamp 81 was the name of the notorious police operation in Brixton that sparked the uprising there in April 1981 - an operation in which 943 people were stopped by police in the streets of Brixton over a six day period.







(Drumz of the South reports on Swamp 81 in Paris)

Short Hot Summer 1981: Wood Green

The fourth in a series of posts on the summer riots of 1981.

On Tuesday 7th July 1981, on the same night as the first stirrings of the uprisings reached Manchester, there was also trouble in north London's Wood Green area. The local MP (Reg Race) reported to the House of Commons the next day:

'There were a large number of disturbances in my constituency last night, and 35 shops in Wood Green High Road were looted or had their windows broken. Reports in the press and by various individuals claim that 26 policemen were injured and 50 civilians arrested. Crowds of 400 to 500 youths — black, white and of Mediterranean origin—roamed around Wood Green High Road. A serious situation developed'.

(The reference to Mediterranean origin seemingly arose from the participation of Cypriot youth).

(photo from Wood Green © David Hoffman Photography, who has seemingly been photographing riots for 30 years)

The Times reported that in Wood Green 'the trouble began when a group of between 300 and 400 black youths began to gather near Turnpike Lane Underground station and marched along the High Road… The Special Patrol Group was called in. Police carrying riot shields attempted to drive the youths from the High Road. They had started fires in waste bins, and police cars were stoned…. In one men’s outfitters, a gang of black youths even took time to strip every window model of their trousers. Mr Mel Cooper, the owner commented: "They looted thousands of pounds worth of stuff, most of it trousers and shirts"' (Times, 8 July 1981).

Short Hot Summer 1981: Moss Side

The third in a series of posts on the summer riots of 1981.

The fighting in Toxteth died down on Monday, but the following day the torch (more or less literally) was passed from Liverpool to Manchester.

On that Tuesday night (7th July), or technically in the early hours of the next morning, 'after Moss Side's Nile Club closed a crowd of mainly black men spilled out on the street. A brick was thrown at a shop window and the trouble spread as other shops were attacked with petrol bombs'. Things calmed down after an hour or so, but just until the next day.

On the Wednesday, ‘Manchester and Salford were struck by severe and widespread riots... More than 1,000 youths stormed Moss Side police station, causing severe damage before being driven back… vehicles [were] overtuned, fires started and shops destroyed and looted…. Many petrol bombs were thrown… Three policemen, including an inspector injured by a bolt from a crossbow, were casualties’ (The Times, 9 July 1981).




The next night (Thursday), the police mounted a massive operation to clear the streets. That night, Manchester police were the first in Britain to deploy crash helmet-style riot headwear and to adapt the Northern Ireland tactic of using vehicles to break up crowds '54 vans swept through Moss Side charging at crowds with their back doors hanging open' (Uprising!: the police, the people and the riots in Britain's cities - Martin Kettle and Lucy Hodges, Pan Books, 1982)

The official Hytner report into the riot reported 'that many of the policeman in Moss Side in vehicles... were actively spoiling for trouble with young blacks. There was evidence of police vans toruing the area with officers leaning out of the back shouting racial insults at black youths and taunting them to come and fight'. Many people were beaten up by police, some of whom (according to the Guardian) were beating their truncheons on their vans and chanting 'Nigger, nigger, nigger - oi, oi, oi' (quoted in Kettle and Hodges).

Clashes continued for a couple more nights - after five days there had been 241 arrests (the majority white, unemployed and aged 17 to 24, though 48 were under 17). 22 police cars had been damaged.

Short Hot Summer 1981: Liverpool 8

The second in a series of posts on the 1981 summer uprisings in England:

Night number two was in Toxteth, Liverpool, 30 years ago on Saturday July 4 1981. In fact the trouble had started the night before, on the same Friday night that Southall had exploded. Police had tried to arrest a young black man on a motorbike, but a crowd rescued him. There was a couple hours of street fighting between police and young people.

But it was on the Saturday and Sunday nights that arguably the most intense rioting of 1981 took place:

'last night [Saturday] police officers investigating reports of a stolen car were attacked with bottles and stones. A crowd of 150 black and white men took control of Upper Parliament St, set up barricades using overturned parked cars. Police took cover behind riot shields but were overwhelmed by the bombardment of missiles. A BBC camera crew were chased by a masked gang brandishing pick-axe handles who took a £12,000 camera and destroyed it' (BBC News, 5 July 1981).



'The next evening [Saturday] rioting erupted on a huge scale. Barricades were built with overturned cars and a builders’ compressor; scores of petrol bombs were thrown at the police; rioters donned Ulster-style masks to avoid identification. The police could not cope. The press reported, ‘the police produced a show of force sufficient to enrage the black population, but not enough to quell the riots’.

The streets were barricaded again the next night [Sunday]. 'By then as many whites as blacks had joined the rioting' (Guardian). The rioters seized a fleet of milk floats and a concrete mixer to drive at the police lines, forcing the 800-strong force to retreat. Several buildings were burnt down, including the National Westminster Bank and the businessmen’s club, the Racquets. With the area clear of police, ‘there was an assumption that anyone who was not police would help themselves’ in the wholesale looting of shops. [Guardian] Reports told of middle aged women, white and black, queuing with shopping trolleys to loot supermarkets. Of the rioters, ‘fewer than 40% were black’. [Guardian] The deputy chief constable, Peter Wright, made it clear that ‘at the savage climax of the trouble, the rioters were mostly white.’ There were smaller, ‘imitation’ disturbances in white areas like Kirkby, Scotland Road, Walton, Woodchurch and Birkenhead.

The rioting began to die down the next night. By calling in the police from as far afield as Manchester, the authorities were able to regain control of the Toxteth area. That night the rioting tended to be in the white areas on the edge of Liverpool 8, away from the storm centre of the Saturday and Sunday night'(Chris Harman, The Summer of 1981: a Post-Riot Analysis, International Socialism, Autumn 1981)



'The real crescendo came on Sunday night when the 800 policemen were totally overwhelmed by hundreds of black and white youths and resorted to the use of CS gas, the first time it has been used against rioters on mainland Britain. The police admitted during the night that the rioting was out of control and called in reinforcements from Lancashire, Cheshire and Greater Manchester. Rioters commandeered milk floats, a stolen fire engine and a cement mixer and drove them straight into police lines. They were armed with every conceivable weapon, including lengths of scaffolding which they thrust at the riot shields like medieval knights... At one point they managed to seize a hire hose which the police had been using on them and turn it on the officers. Faced with this attack, the police had no alternative but to retreat, leaving behind them a no-go area open to a crowd of jubilant looters' (Uprising!: the police, the people and the riots in Britain's cities - Martin Kettle and Lucy Hodges, Pan Books, 1982)

According to the police, 781 policemen were injured during the rioting, and there were 1070 recorded crimes and 705 arrests. Civilian casualties included at least two seriously injured when they were hit by CS gas canisters - the projectiles fired were designed to pierce doors in siege conditions, rather than for crowd control.

See also Cook Da Books - Piggie in the Middle Eight, a song about the riots by 1980s Liverpool band.

Short Hot Summer 1981: Southall

The first of a series on the 1981 July uprisings/riots in Britain. Night number one was in Southall:

On Friday 3 July 1981, several 'Oi' punk bands were set to play a gig in Southall, an area of west London with a large South Asian population. The line up at the Hambrough Tavern included the 4-Skins, The Last Resort and The Business. Oi was not a fascist movement as such, and not all its bands and adherents were racist. It was quite distinct from the White Power music scene around bands like Skrewdriver (see: Misunderstood or hateful? Oi!'s rise and fall by Alexis Petridis, Guardian, March 18 2010). But it is true that gigs by such bands did attract skinheads with neo-nazi sympathies, and their presence in an area like Southall was asking for trouble. 

This was after all where Blair Peach had been killed by police in anti-National Front demonstration in 1979, and where in 1976 Gurdip Singh Chagger, a teenager, had been murdered by racists - prompting the formation of the Southall Youth Movement. In July '81, reports of racist incidents involving people heading to the gig in the Hambrough prompted Asian youth to take to the streets. Skinheads were said to have broken shop windows and abused an Asian shopkeeper, among other things. The police formed a cordon around the pub, and deployed riot shields. Clashes intensified as the police attempted to disperse the crowd. Petrol bombs were thrown and the pub was set on fire. Cars and police vehicles were overturned, and a police coach was burnt out. Walls were demolished to provide bricks for ammunition. 61 policemen were injured and at least as many civilians; there were 21 arrests.

Here's a contemporary report from Socialist Worker (11 July 1981), written by Balwinder Singh Rada - a long term Southall activist:

'The invaders of  Southall got more than they bargained for. They began the evening by terrorising some local Asians and ended by fleeing with their tails between their legs, protected by lines of police. The pub in which they had gathered was in flames.

Nazis started arriving in Southall at about 7 pm: 300 of them in four coaches and cars. Sine unfurled a banner in the Southall Broadway and started distributing leaflets advertising a “white nationalist crusade“ demonstration. Then they smashed the shop window and attacked Mr Nirmal Kalhan who was at the till. That led to a rampage through the Broadway smashing Asian shop windows and onto the Hambrough Tavern about 250 yards away.

At this time few Asians were about. Some newspapers have claimed that the Asians “lay in weight“ for the skinheads. Harsev Singh Bains, secretary of the Indian Youth association, said “if we knew they were coming we would not have let them anywhere near Southall“.

But the word spread quickly and the youth started to gather near the pub. By this time the police had also arrived. For an hour and a half people argued with the police that they should arrest the fascists who attacked the people and smashed the shop windows and put the rest of them on coaches and send them away. But the police kept telling the Southall people to go away.

Mohan Singh who saw the shop being attacked said “I said to chief inspector that I can recognise the troublemakers, why don’t you go into the pub with me and arrest them? But he told me to “buy a beer, go home and watch it on the TV“.

When enough reinforcements plus the special patrol group arrived, the police decided to move the Southall people by attacking them with riot shields and truncheons. The fascists poured  out of the pub and from behind the police lines started throwing stones and petrol bombs at the Asians.

The people of Southall fought  back. They pushed the police and the fascists down the road. The whole community joined in the defence. Old men and women were coming out of their homes with stones and bottles in their hands and handing them over to the younger people. The youth, Asians, West Indians and some white, fought bravely against the police and the fascists and the pub was set on fire. Since then there has been a feeling of victory throughout the community.

On Saturday groups of people gathered in the Broadway chatting about how the fascists and the police have been taught a lesson. It was a lesson as well for the racist pubs in the area.

Many people believe that the police knew before about the fascists invasion. That they wanted a riot to help their case in the Scarman enquiry about the Brixton right. On Friday, as usual the police arrested about 25 Asians and only about five fascists. The Anti-Nazi League together with many other organisations are launching a defence campaign for  the arrested'

An item on the same page argues that not all skinheads are racists: ' Skinheads are rapidly becoming identified in the public eye as racist and Nazis. But this is not the case. Plenty of skinheads are not racists. Four weeks ago 500 black and white skinheads  marched together in Sheffield with the slogan ‘job not jails’ demanding an end to police harassment. And last Saturday there were hundreds of skinheads at the Leeds Anti-Nazi League carnival not only enjoying the music but also acting as stewards to protect the carnival from threatened  Nazi attacks'.

The report contrasted newspaper reports of the Southall events with the muted press response to the deaths of four members of the Khan family in a fire in Walthamstow in the same week, believed to have been caused by a racist arson attack.

There's some footage of the riot on youtube in the course of an old documentary about Oi

Some similarities between the Southall events and the riots in Luton a week later, also sparked off by the presence of racist skinheads - see The Luton Riots of 1981 - Brixton comes to Bedfordshire

[post updated July 2021]

The Politics of Hats

In the 17th century, the Quakers and other English religious radicals caused a scandal by refusing to take off their hats to their social 'betters', on the basis that all humans were equal before God:

'We should learn a great deal of the truth about class in this century... if we could grasp the whole etiquette of hats. The first principle was that the master of the house, and no one else, had the right to wear his hat in his own home. That is why members of Parliament sat ‘covered’, and are still supposed to do so. The second principle was that social inferiors ‘uncovered’ before their superiors — a practice still recalled by the elderly rural labourer’s habit of ‘touching his cap’.

Against this recognition of class distinctions the Quaker refusal to uncover to any man was a conscious protest. Liberal historians are apt to treat this habit of theirs as a meaningless breach of good manners, a tasteless eccentricity. On the contrary, it meant the boldest thing in social life. It was a revolutionary act. Taken over, like most of the Quaker beliefs and practices, from the Anabaptist tradition, it was an affirmation of human equality, a revolt against class…'

The Levellers and the English Revolution by H.N. Brailsford (Stanford University Press, 1961)

Camberwell Street Art

The pictures on the Camberwell Snooker Club in South London (junction of Camberwell New Rd and Camberwell Passage) are a bit past their best, peeling and graffiti'd over in turn. But something of their grandeur remains. Seemingly this is the work of the 'WCA Free University of Stencil Art'

Promised Land

Last week in Iowa, Michele Bachmann launched her bid to become the Republican candidate in the nex US presidential election. On the Tea Party far right of American politics, she has a long, lamentable history of anti-gay and anti-abortion activism not to mention whitewashing the history of slavery.

As she made her way to the podium in Waterloo at the weekend 'Elvis Presley's Promised Land belted out'. Well the notion of manifest destiny and Americans as the new chosen people is a hardy right wing trope, and at one level there is a connection between the idea of the Promised Land and the American frontier.

But we cannot leave the Promised Land in the hands of US Conservatives. The name itself derives of course from the Book of Genesis where God promises Moses the land of milk and honey, not a metaphysical utopia but the actual land of Israel. Over the millennia that tribal foundation myth of a people in the prehistoric Middle East has taken on a universal appeal, holding out the hope of a better world somewhere, some place, some time

It's hardly suprisizing that Bachmann chose Elvis Presley's version of the song, rather than the original by its black songwriter. When Chuck Berry sings it there is no doubt that the songs works on at least two levels. On the surface it is simply a description of a journey from Norfolk, Virginia to California, part of the 1950s/early 1960s mythologisation of travelling across the USA (Route 66, Highway 61, On the Road).



But at another level, the journey retraces a moment in the mass migration of black people from the segregated Southern states. Surely it can't be a coincidence that he 'bypassed Rock Hill' where in 1961 Freedom Riders had been beaten for fighting against racism on Greyhound buses. And at the time Berry was writing the song in prison in 1962/63 Birmingham, Alabama was the front line of the civil rights movement - no wonder the narrator can't get away quick enough once 'stranded in downtown Birmingham'.

A few years later, Martin Luther King brought the Promised Land into the heart of the struggles of the period. In his final speech in 1968 during the Memphis sanitation workers strike, King famously declared: 'I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop... And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land'. The next day he was murdered.



It is this semi-utopian Promised Land that Joe Smooth (and Anthony Thomas) sings of in the early Chicago house classic: 'Brothers, Sisters, One Day we will be free. From Fighting, Violence, People Crying in the Streets... as we walk, hand and hand, sisters, brothers, we'll make it to the promised land'



In Bruce Springsteen's take on this, from the 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town, the Promised Land features only as a hazy image of a better life. The singer professes 'I believe in the Promised Land' but he is unclear about what or where this is. It is simply the negation of a life spent 'Working all day in my daddy's garage', a place that can seemingly only be reached on the other side of the destruction of all that stands:

'I've done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this whole town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart...
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down'.



(see also Springsteen's Thunder Road with its line 'Oh-oh come take my hand, Riding out tonight to case the promised land').

In its Rastafarian and Garveyite inflection, the Promised Land is firmly located in Africa. Dennis Brown's 1979 song, produced by Aswad, pictures Africa as a land of abundance and freedom: 'There's plenty of land for you and I, By and By, Lots of food to share for everyone, no time for segregation in the Promised Land'.



Dennis Brown's song is the starting point for last year's 'Land of Promise' by Nas and Damian Marley. This is a track that bring the Promised Land song cycle full circle, dropping the names of American states just like Chuck Berry but comparing them to African places: 'imagine Ghana like California... Lagos like Las Vegas'.



Speaking from Africa, Nigerian reggae singer Majek Fashek wonders whether the Promised Land is to be found anywhere in the world as it stands: 'Promised Land is not America, is not Asia, Promised Land is a state of mind, Promised Land is a state of mind, Promised Land is not Europia, is not Africa, Promised Land is a state of mind, Promised Land is a state of mind':



So Michele, leave the Promised Land well alone. You wouldn't recognise it if you found it.

(OK just one more... I love Johnny Allan's 1971 cajun verson of Berry's song, which I always associate with the late great Charlie Gillet thanks to whom I first heard it)

Darker Electricity - Spiral Tribe blog

Mark Angelo Harrison, aka Stray Wayward, was involved with early free party sound system Spiral Tribe. So good to hear that he is working on a book about those times called A Darker Electricity. You can check out some extracts at his blog like this one:

'The arrival of the Acid House scene in the late 80s had transformed audiences into participants. At The Hacienda in Manchester and at underground parties in London, I’d experienced a real sense of involvement and social equality. Once that equality had been glimpsed there was no going back to the old rock n roll relationship between performers and audiences. A relationship that – whether intentional or not – reinforced the old power structures of us and them. At the underground parties, the dance floor was no longer the pit for the worshipping minions. No longer a place to gaze up adoringly at some contrived act strutting about on a pedestal. The dance floor had been reclaimed by the people as a free social space – a place where people felt centred, balanced – together. Not a new idea, but one that successive overlords have relentlessly outlawed – and attempted to write out of history'.

The worst disco sleeve of all time?

Wandering the streets of Peckham this evening I came across a box of records outside a house, mostly 1970s and 1980s and mostly not very good. I did pick up a 12" Scritti Politti single though (The Word Girl) and Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Welcome to the Pleasure Drome. Oh and 'The Hit Squad - Nightclubbing - over 60 minutes non-stop disco'...

This is a 1983 compilation from the last days of disco, with some decent tracks on it such as Freez's Arthur Baker-produced Brit-funk classic IOU. But that cover, designed so it says by Shoot that Tiger! with an illustration by Paul Cemmick... It's not that it's a bad picture - motorcycle emptiness chic would have been quite acceptable in the period in, say, 2000AD magazine or on a heavy metal sleeve. It's just so not disco. OK obviously there was a whole leather queen gay iconography at the time, but this is more Mad Max than Kenneth Anger. What were they thinking of?

It was released on Ronco records, which I believe focused on TV advertised compilations.

The Darryl Pandy Moment

Darryl Pandy died yesterday (10 June 2011). Here's why he was important: 

Before the internet and satellite/cable channels the musical moving image was as severely rationed as food in the second world war. Today we can happily waste hours browsing our way through endless music videos; in those days we were limited to an hour or so a week, chiefly in the UK the half hour 'Top of the Pops'. Of course that gave that half hour an enormous cultural power, with millions of people avidly watching. And amidst all the dross there were moments when whole generations recognised that something had changed, when adolescent outsiders saw a new world of possibilities open up, when tiny subcultures exploded into the nation's living rooms. When the faces barely featured on TV during the rest of the week - black, gay, 'freaks' - seemed to have momentarily seized control of the transmitter. So, people of a certain age will spontaneously recall the impact of seeing David Bowie performing Starman on Top of the Pops in 1972 (still looks magnificently queer nearly 40 years later). For punk, the Sex Pistols 'Pretty Vacant' had a similar impact in 1977. For house music, that moment came in 1986. In August, the single Love Can't Turn Around entered the UK singles chart, climbing to a number ten position by 27 September. The record was credited to its producers - Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk and Jessie Saunders - but it was the vocalist who stole the show when the song made it on to Top of the Pops. Darryl Pandy had been a singer in the choir of the Church of Universal Awareness in Chicago, and he brought all of his gospel experience to an incredible live vocal performance on Top of the Pops, though not sure he learned to dance around in a sparkly top, kick off his shoes and lie on the floor in church.

   

In the conventional history of house music in the UK the impression is sometimes given that it all started when the South London clubbing crew (Rampling, Oakenfold etc.) returned from their 1987 Ibiza holiday and started putting on club nights. But a full year before that Darryl Pandy had helped detonate the house explosion in the UK, followed shortly after by Jack Your Body - a number one record in January 1987 for Steve 'Silk' Hurley. Incidentally Hurley had shared a flat with Farley Keith in Chicago, and had himself produced an earlier house version of Isaac Hayes' I Can't Turn Around. It is true that in these early days there wasn't a distinct UK house scene as such, but on dancefloors in London, Manchester and elsewhere early house tracks like Love Can't Turn Around took their place alongside other great electronic dance and funk tracks - 1986 was also a good year for Mantronix, Cameo, Prince, Janet Jackson and Joyce Simms, not to mention Madonna, New Order and early Pet Shop Boys. 

So thank you Darryl Pandy for kicking off house music for me and many others. In an early article on house music in Spin magazine, Barry Walters recognised that Pandy's vocal performance embodied part of what was essential about house music: 'Darryl Pandy is an enormous man, a Refrigerator Perry gone disco diva. He comes from a Broadway and opera background and has a six and a half octave range. Ask him to prove it and he’ll gladly sing selections from Porgy and Bess, taking on both Porgy and Bess. On record, notably ‘Love Can’t Turn Around’, Pandy resembles a possessed cross between his idols Yma Sumac and Minnie Ripperton, with a dark trace of Loleatta Holloway. Like Doctor’s Cat, Pandy sings with emotions endearingly inappropriate to the material. He begins ‘Love Can’t Turn Around’ with all the hypermasculinity of an ill-fated Wagnerian baritone, to come back in the third verse as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. His dynamics are so ridiculously wrong by contemporary R&B standards that they become absolutely right for house. Pandy’s histrionics are emblematic of the house scene in general. House is about the loss of decorum and control. From sexual extravagance to dance-floor excess, everything about house is geared towards losing it’ (Burning Down the House, Spin, November 1986)

Twisted - sweet pretty country acid house music in Brixton

Twisted (or Twisted a.m.) was a late 1990s/early 00s club night in Brixton playing a unique mixture of what the Alabama 3 once called 'Sweet pretty country acid house music'. It took place originally in legendary late night drinking den Brady's (formerly known as the Railway Hotel) on Atlantic Road, and was described in a 1998 article in the Independent by Oliver Bennett:

'Over the past few years, club life has become a bit corporate, with VIP rooms, sponsors and in-it-for-the-dough promoters and DJs. Where is the enthusiasm, the chaos, in this brave new world of blinking technology and oiled abdominals? The answer is that you have to dig a little. For instance, at a back bar in Brixton, Twisted club heralds a return to the spilt beer and out- by-midnight approach to nightlife that ruled in the Seventies and early Eighties. But it adds its own unique contemporary hybrid in the music it favours: country and western, mixed with dance tracks. "I've always loved country and I want to show that it isn't a dead music form," says Tim Perry, co-founder of Twisted with Piers Hawkins. "Jazz blues and world music have all crept into dance music, so why not a few country chords?"... Perry and Hawkins have had great fun thinking up names for their genre, among them Pharma Country, Honky Skunk, Trailer Trash, Swamp Hop, Fucked-Up Country and Bubba Beats. "I'm reminded of the Blues Brothers joke, where they say they play both kinds of music - country and western," says Perry, "except that we play country and techno." Patsy Cline, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton spin alongside dance sounds like Fatboy Slim and Orbital, interspersed with live acts like the local acid-country supremos Alabama 3 and guest appearances from the likes of Chip "Wild Thing" Taylor' (Independent, 15 March 1998)'.
Alabama 3 set the chemical country template with their debut Exile on Coldharbour Lane album in 1997 (Brixton's Coldharbour Lane is just round the corner from Brady's), and indeed their song Peace in the Valley gave the club it's name: 'she feels so twisted, she ain't never gonna fix it, she's just waiting for the light to shine on a brand new day'. Their genius was (and still is) to recognise that country's melancholic tales of addiction and redemption could speak to a generation coming down from ecstatic peaks.

The band were strongly associated with the club, and truth to be told were arguably the only outfit who successfully integrated electronic sounds with proper Hank Williams-style heartache. Just bringing in a few country elements to clod-hopping 4:4 beats was a recipe for Cotton Eye Joe-style cheese in less skilled hands.

So the music policy at Twisted was more a case of playing country alongside techno and hip hop, rather than lots of attempted country/dance music hybrids. For instance at the night featured on this flyer (which I was at with my late friend Katy Watson), Hank Wangford played a straight country set.

Twisted 1998 - 'This ain't no disco, this ain't no line dance, this ain't no foolin' around'

This review comes from On magazine, 1997:

‘Genre-bending reaches its illogical conclusion in the deep south (of London) with a new club for techno honkies. Expect chemical country, trailer trash, two step and honkyskunk. At their last hoedown they had the Million Gram Session from the Larry Love Showband fronted by the Alabama 3 singer himself with the Reverend D Wayne Love at his side. Jesus, there must have been a dozen people on the stage at one time, with others from from Alabama 3, BJ Cole on pedal steel, Fliss (from Joli Blon) on fiddle, Hacker on harmonica and guitar and loads others. Slim happened to look in on the club and when they realised he had an accordion in his car, the big man from the Cyder Co was co-opted into the band. Top night –a world-class group of musicans in Brady’s Saloon. Was it a dream? When you hear that they managed to play stuff from Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb and Lefty Frizzell next to Spiritualized, Underworld and Deep Dish, you’ll get an idea of how open things are at this particular ranch’.

The Railway/Brady's closed down in 1999 and remained empty for many years later before briefly becoming a branch of Wahaca (full story at Urban 75 - from where the photo below was sourced)*. Along with the George Canning (now Hootananny), it was a place where drinking went on late into the Brixton night. The front bar in its Railway days was mostly frequented by older African Caribbean men, playing pool in front of murals of island scenes. The back bar was more Irish/squatters/SW9 itinerants - I remember being in there one night at a London Celtic Supporters Club social with a band called Athenrye banging our republican songs. There was also a band called the Dead B Specials who used to hang out there.

Its relaunch as Bradys music bar later in the 1990s didn't signify much change apart from a few candles in bottles - it was still messy and drunken with the occasional punch up and the less occasional table being knocked over.

Twisted meanwhile relocated to the Windmill in Blenheim Gardens a sthe Twisted A.M. Lounger. I remember seeing American singer Chris Mills there in 2000 (flyer below), and Kelly Hogan and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts around the same time. Twisted co-founder Tim Perry has been running the music at the Windmill ever since, providing a platform for so many up and coming bands.

[updated July 2022]

Dancing arrests at the Jefferson Memorial

Some heavy-handed arrests at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC on Saturday.

It was the latest in a saga that started in 2008 when Mary Oberwetter and a group of friends celebrated President Jefferson's 265th birthday by dancing silently at the memorial while listening to music through headphones. Police ordered them to stop and arrested them when they didn't. Oberwetter sued on free speech grounds, but last week the appeals court ruled that her conduct was prohibited "because it stands out as a type of performance, creating its own center of attention and distracting from the atmosphere of solemn commemoration".

So some others called a silent dancing flashmob last weekend at the same location. By the looks of it it was a low key event with just a few people dancing, but the Parks police response was vicious with 5 arrests including one guy slammed down on the floor seconds after singing a version of Men Without Hats' 'Safety Dance':

We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
Cause the cops won't dance [it's 'friends' not 'cops' in the original]
And if they don't dance
Well they're no friends of mine



(OK it seems that the guy getting thrown to the floor is Adam Kokesh, self-publicist with a decidely odd cocktail of political beliefs. Just to be clear, arrests like these are not evidence of 'Obama's communist police state' as right wing 'libertarians' suggest, but they do raise some fundamental questions about the boundaries of freedom - as the original court case highlighted, what is the distinction between 'freedom of speech' and freedom of movement of the body in a public place?).

Molly Macindoe - Free Party Photos

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



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

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

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

Peace dreams shot down by war schemes - RIP Gil Scott-Heron

Sad to hear of the death yesterday of Gil Scott-Heron. Among many other things, he was a consistent critic of the Space-Military-Industrial Complex, something dear to my heart as a former Autonomous Astronaut. His best known poem on the subject was Whitey on the Moon, written in the aftermath of the 1969 moon landing:

A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey's on the moon)
I can't pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still.
(while Whitey's on the moon)
The man just upped my rent last night.
('cause Whitey's on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
I wonder why he's upping me?
('cause Whitey's on the moon?)
I was already paying him fifty a week.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes taking my whole damn check,
Junkies making me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is going up,
And as if all that shit wasn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arm began to swell.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Was all that money I made last year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain't no money here?
(Hmm! Whitey's on the moon)
Y'know I just 'bout had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I'll send these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon)



Less known is his track Space Shuttle, released in 1990.

Space Shuttle – raising hell down on the ground
Space Shuttle - they're turning seasons upside down.
Space Shuttle - and all the hungry people know
all change sho' 'nuff ain't progress when you're poor.

Space was the place
Where at least we thought our dreams were safe
Ideas of innocence and grace
Floating above the planet’s face
Ah, but the distance has been erased
'cause Uncle Sam is on the case
ET has joined the Arms Race!
Helping with a military base.

Rocketing through the atmosphere
Slding into second gear
While miles below the people cheer
The New Invaders on the New Frontier
But there are also those who do not cheer
The gravity of their lives appears
And in their eyes flash frozen fears
rocket sounds are what they hear

Practice looks of great surprize
You’re the Captain Kirk, this is Free Enterprise
Wall Street says ‘Let’s play Defense!’
And ‘Dollar Bills make damn good sense!
Hail to the Protectionism!
Let us bring on the new age of Humanism.
We can put the cap on Capitalism!
What have we got here – Ray-gunism!

No matter what man goes looking for
He always seems to find a war
As soon as dreams of peace are felt
The war is raging somewhere else

…we’ve got peace dreams
shot down by war schemes
a hole shot through the ozone layer
put the fear back in the atmosphere

Rockingham Estate Street Art

These murals are on the Rockingham Estate, near the Elephant and Castle in South London. They were done in 2009 by Morganico with local youth (click on images to enlarge).

Dancing Questionnaire 22: Jamie Potter

Jamie Potter (http://twitter.com/jamiepotter) gives us the low down on 21st century nights out in Hull, Leicester and Leeds.

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?

I have a strange relationship with dancing. I bought my first decks when I was 15 but I was about the only person in my school/town who had any interest in dance music so parties and club visits were non-existent. When I first started going out drinking there were small dancefloors in some of the bars with cheesy DJs playing horrible cheesy music. I was generally reluctant to dance as I was scared of looking like an idiot, though if I saw an attractive girl on the dancefloor I was occasionally tempted into some awkward shuffling that barely registered as 'dancing'.

My first 'proper' dancing experience will have been at either Spiders or Welly in Hull, I can't remember which. Both are rock/indie clubs catering to very young crowds. As I said, I was mainly into dance music but I also liked a lot of rock music and most of my friends were into it, so it was a scene I felt comfortable in. Some and friends and I, while in sixth form, got a train over one night and I remember actually dancing to the likes of Rage Against the Machine and At The Drive In.

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

At Gatecrasher Summer Soundsystem in 2008 somebody died after taking drugs in one of the tents we'd been dancing in at the time. I think they had a heart attack. We weren't aware of it until a few hours later when word got around the campsite, at which point we were all chilling out by our tents. I wasn't taking drugs that weekend, I don't really like or need them, but everybody I was there with was on something or other, so the news hit home a bit and led to some glum faces. Though, of course, a few hours later normal service had been resumed.

3. You. Dancing. The best of times…

Getting lost in the music, there's only the here and now, the world doesn't exist beyond the four walls (or railway tunnel...) and the range of the speakers. Tapping into the groove of the music that transcends individual tracks, like a pulse, with this record pulling you to this side and the next record tugging you in the opposite direction. Warmth, sweat, skin on skin, jostling and bumping. Timeless.

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times…

Listening to the DJ play the same record he did last week and the week before that and the crowd responding like it's the first time they've ever heard Living On A Prayer and you neck bottles of artificially flavoured alcohol packed with sugar because the other option is being alone in your room mixing together some minimal techno and you hope for a beautiful girl to come and rescue you, but it doesn't happen. In the morning you vow to give up on these crap nights but the other option is being alone in your room mixing together some minimal techno...

5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented?

As previously mentioned my first dancing experiences were among the rock and indie clubs in Hull when I was 17 or 18. The party scene in my home town was pretty non-existent with house parties an excuse to drink rather than dance. I remember DJing at a friend's house party, my only house 'gig' back then, and I was essentially playing background music.

Things changed when I started university and I began going to my first 'proper' nightclubs. These were often to see drum and bass/hip hop/breakbeat nights, usually in small, sweaty venues like the old Po Na Na or Charlotte in Leicester. Such gigs were nearly always dominated by white males, despite the cultural mix of Leicester. The large number of music technology students also contributed to the crowds at these gigs.

At the same time, I was also going to the cheesy student nights with my wider circle of friends, who tended to be fairly disinterested in dance music, especially the house and techno I love. These nights were always bigger, drink fuelled and soundtracked by chart hits and classic cheese like the Baywatch theme. There would be an even mix of girls and guys in what I could only really term a cattle market - people on the prowl for members of the opposite sex. I couldn't stand these nights out and only went along because my social life would be non-existent otherwise and I tended to depend on copious amounts of drink to get me through them.

Further in to my uni life I started working at some cool bars in Leicester, often finishing in the early hours of the morning and hitting one of a couple of late night bars until 7 or 8 in the morning. Both were fairly small places, frequented by bar staff with a nice community feel. One, the Basement, played funk, ska and soul and was a refreshing change to all the crap elsewhere. The other, Esko, started as a members only space and soon grew into a hot, underground club pulling in some of the finest drum and bass and dubstep DJs.

Working a bar every weekend often meant I missed a lot of the big gigs elsewhere. In my final year at university I started DJing out a bit more getting a set at a tiny bar in Leicester called The Hub which had a great DIY feel and regular bunch of customers. House parties, again, were danceless affairs despite asking for my services as a DJ. Around this time I started falling out with the scene. Drugs were integral and it was very cliquey. If you weren't quaffing MDMA it was hard to integrate and I found most of the people boring. I'm personally very political and found the lack of politics, the rape jokes, materialism, sexism and so on really uncomfortable. Similarly, the clubs and gigs seemed to be dominated by faddish music (tropical etc.) and were all about getting off your tits, dropping tune after tune, which I like in moderation, but I was yearning for more nuanced music and sets from techno DJs and the like.

Since then and finishing university I've been floating around following jobs or postgrad degrees and haven't really settled down yet. Subsequently the dancing has had a hit too, being few and far between.

6. When and where did you last dance?

Aside from a shuffling my hips while mixing in my bedroom, it was unfortunately a while ago now, at the Brudenell in Leeds for Jeremiah Jae, Tokimonsta, Teebs and Daedelus.




I went along with a friend who usually listens to folk, indie and punk/riot grrl so it was an eye opening experience for her and it was nice to be the one who drew her out of her comfort zone, to share some new music and experiences with her. I distinctly remember she asked during the warm-up set, while we were sat drinking, how on earth you dance to such music. But as soon as Jeremiah Jae took to the decks and the crowd swelled she just started dancing without any kind of prompt or 'education', it just came naturally. Great night!

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

That's a tricky one to answer. I have many favourite pieces of music for dancing to, but with something like techno, which is some of the music I listen to and mix the most, they're not records that I'd immediately jump up and dance to. Rather, I find with a lot of techno and other electronic music that the urge to dance follows on from all the music that has come previously in the set. There has to be a groove, so to speak. So I may hear a track that I absolutely love, but if I haven't been 'warmed up', if I'm not in that dancing trance, then I might not feel that immediate urge. Saying that, I remember walking past a tent at a festival and hearing Vitalic's performing Pony live and I just left my friends and ran into the tent.

To get back to the question though, there is music that does make me jump right up and that's usually hip-hop/funk kind of stuff. So, death bed track? That would probably have to be Hip Hop by Dead Prez. Soon as I hear that bassline, my mood perks up.



All questionnaires welcome, just answer the same questions - or even make up a few of your own - and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires).