Luton New Year's Day 1944

A facebook found object for my digital collection of old flyers and tickets - this one is for a 1944 New Year's Day Saturday night dance at the George Hotel in Luton.  'Please note - This Pass is not transferable and must remain in your possession AT ALL TIMES. If you leave the Ball-Room you must obtain a Pass-Out and on re-entry present it with this Ticket'.

The George Hotel, Luton, pictured in around 1935

Jill Allott RIP

A  while back I posted about the death of Katy Watson, feminist, Brixtonite, and radical (among many other things). Sad news today from my friend Roseanne of the death of somebody else from that scene:

'With great sadness I’m writing to let people know about the death of Jill Allott, a former stalwart of Brixton squatting and a wonderful friend. Jill died last Friday on 6 January from a secondary brain tumour, though she had fought off two earlier bouts of cancer. She was surrounded by family and friends.

Some of you might know Jill from the 80s and the 90s in Brixton, where she lived on Brailsford and Arlingford Roads, Sandmere Road, Brixton Water Lane and Mervan Road. Like many women involved in squatting communities, Jill trained in a manual trade and became an electrician. She generously shared her skills and knowledge, whether in Brixton or further afield when she trained women electricians in Nicaragua. Later, she studied to become a Shiatsu practitioner. She was always helping people – opening squats, wiring up houses, giving Shiatsu treatments or simply being there as a friend.

Jill’s enthusiasm boosted many anarchist, feminist, lesbian/gay and community projects. She helped at 121 Bookshop in the early 80s, and played a major part in organising women’s café nights and gigs there. She galvanised resistance to evictions, helped produce the women’s zine Feminaxe, and took part in actions against Clause 28 and the Gulf War.

Jill was also a talented drummer who played in bands such as the Sluts from Outer Space and Los Lasses. She loved a good party, especially if it involved dancing to reggae. Her birthday parties were among the best in Brixton.



The Sluts from Outer Space (late 80s), with Jill on drums



In the late 1990s she moved to Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. She had two children – Corinne and Finley – and continued to play an active part in communities there. Always a fighter, Jill helped form a support and action network for women affected by cancer. She worked as a Shiatsu practitioner in projects offering treatment to drug users and women facing health and mental health problems.

Many people through the years have known Jill and loved her. Our lives and struggles have taken us many places and scatter us throughout the world; often we move on and lose touch. But hopefully everyone who was close to Jill will read this, share our sadness but also celebrate the life of a great friend, activist and mother'

Las Lassies - Jill bottom left

I didn't know Jill very well personally - she was more of a friend of a friend in my Brixton days - but like many people around at the time I can say 'Thanks for fixing my electricity Jill'.

[photos by Jill's friends from Roseanne's facebook wall - hope that's OK]

The Malatesta Club in Soho

1950s Soho clubs are one of the enduring obsessions of this site, but I didn't realise until recently that there was a specifically anarchist club there during that period - the Malatesta Club in Soho, named after the famous Italian revolutionary.

The club seems to have first opened on May Day 1954 and 'was run by the London Anarchist Group from 1954-8, seven nights a week. Habitues used to write songs and poetry and perform them at the club, which also had a resident jazz band' (Ian Walker, Anarchy in the UK, New Society, November 1979). Walker's article includes reminiscences of 'Justin', a veteran anarchist, who recalled  '"I used to make up songs - sort of sing and shout, to a drum. Couldn't play anything used to hammer away on the drum . . . it was really something, all run completely voluntarily". The anarchists' coffee house (it never had a licence) was called the Malatesta because he was the only anarchist writer the group could agree on. 'Some were Kropotkinists and some were Bakuninists, but we all agreed Malatesta was a good guy.'"

According to The University Libertarian (1955), 'Founded two years ago with much honest sweat, the Malatesta Club provides a meeting place and social centre' (University Libertarian 1955).

Among the founders was Philip Sansom (1916-1999), one of those put on trial in 1945 for their involvement in the anarchist paper War Commentary. and Donald Rouum, a prolific cartoonist for the journal Freedom for many years.

Philip Sansom in 1945

Donald Rouum in a 1952 portrait by Frank Lisle 
on display in Wakefield Art Gallery



Among those who went to the Malatesta Club at various times were the later socialist feminist writer Juliet Mitchell, author Colin McInnes; gay Labour MP and possible spy Tom Driberg  and libertarian architect and writer Colin Ward. The club was clearly a key portal into the anarchist movement for the curious and the committed. John Rety, who went on to edit Freedom in the 1960s, was a Hungarian Jewish refugee who started out on the Soho literary scene publishing magazines such as Fortnightly  and the Intimate Review. His collaborator John Pilgrim went to the Malatesta Club to do a report for the Review and both he and Rety were drawn into the movement.

In his book The Consul (2002), the sometime English situationist Ralph Rumney mentions that  ‘in Soho, I found the Malatesta Club, the final redoubt of old English anarchists’, and the writer Michael Moorcock has said that ‘Listening to old guys at the Malatesta Club talking about the Spanish Civil War’ was one of the influences on his anarchism ('Mythmakers and Lawbreakers – anarchist writers on fiction', AK Press 2009). It is mentioned in passing in his London novel King of the City  where a character says  'my grandad used to complain that the anarchists (he never missed a meeting at the Malatesta Club, Red Lion Square ) had been sold out to the communists who had lost the Spanish Civil War'. Moorcock and Rumney also both hung out at the Gyre and Gimble coffee house, though not sure if they knew each other.

I'm still a little unclear about where the club was. In some references, it appears it may have started out in Holborn before moving to Soho (maybe that's why Moorcock mentions Red Lion Square). In 'Inventing ourselves: lesbian life stories' by Hall Carpenter Archives (1991), Sharley MacLean recalls her first lesbian sexual experience was with someone she 'met through the Malatesta Club which was an anarchist cafe, a dingy cellar in Charlotte Street'. But Colin Ward  recalls that it was in Percy Street, which runs off Charlotte Street, so maybe it was near the corner.

As an interesting aside, the Club may have had a role in UFO history. As reported in Fortean Times (January 2011): 'In Flying Saucerers (Alternative Albion, 2007, p74), David Clarke and Andy Roberts relay a quaint eyewitness account from historian Laurens Otter. In early 1954, a drunken taxi driver entered a meeting at the anarchist Malatesta Club in Soho, and asked for Sam Cash, a fellow cabbie. Learning that Cash was expected later, “…the tired and emotional taxi driver lay down across some chairs and promptly fell asleep.” At the end of the guest speaker’s talk, the chairman asked if there were any questions. Whereupon "the taxi driver suddenly woke, asking, ‘How do I make a mill­ion pounds?’. Robinson [the chairman] took the question in good humour and speculated the best way to make a fortune was to found a fake religion. A discussion about how best to do this ensued with Otter opining that a much better idea would be to get in on the flying saucer craze. Robinson concurred, suggesting that the two ideas could be combined for best effect. […] A few years later, Cash told Otter that the drunken taxi driver, whose name was George King, had taken his advice about melding religion with flying saucers, and it had worked. The rest, as they say, is history".

George King founded the Aetherius Society, claiming to have been contacted by the 'Space People' with the message 'Prepare Yourself! You are to become the Voice of Interplanetary Parliament'.

(well that's all I've been able to find out so far - would love to know more, including - what was the exact address? what kind of activities happened there? I've seen mention of chess, meetings and jazz- was there dancing? If you have any more information, or even personal recollections, please comment).

Some London free parties and clubs 1995

Came aross this fragment in a letter I wrote a the end of January 1995, seemingly I had  had a busy month:

'me and Toby went to Taco Joes's for a Shambhala sound system party which a friend of Toby's was involved in. It was OK, but there were some odd people there including some who had been mixing their drugs in a new and dangerous combination - steroids and ecstasy. There was one bloke in particular stripped to the waist and taking up lots of room on the dancefloor with his excessive muscles and Arnie-style chest. As well as looking like Brixton bodybuilder of the year he was going round shaking everybody's hand and introducing himself in happy E-head style. Still it's better that he was doing that than getting pissed and smashing people's faces in with his little finger.

For my birthday I went  to Final Frontier at Club UK in Wandsworth... The flyer said 'Rejoice as the old institutions and cornerstones crumble under the onslaught of pagan techno culture'...

The week after I went to the Far Side at the Robey with Kim and Vanida and then we went on to a free party in a huge squat in Brewery Road (off Caledonian Road, but not the same place as New Year's Eve). Downstairs was a big smoke filled warehouse type space. All you could see was a single beam of light and shadows dancing - the sound system and the DJs (Virus sound system who did that party we went to at London School of Printing) were invisible but you could feel a wall of earbleeding noise from their general direction. Upstairs was a bit more laid back with another dance floor and loads of rooms to chill out in.

I also went one week to 'Up to the Elbow', the queercore club where Katy (DJ KT) does her stuff. It had moved from the Bell (which has been bought by the Mean Fiddler for heterosexualisation) to the Freedom Cafe in Soho. There were a couple of good bands playing - 'Mouthfull' who were a bit Nirvana-like but did a great punkified version of 2 Unlimted's No Limtes and 'Flinch' who were more in the Pixes/Throwing Muses mould'.

Explanatory notes: Taco Joes's was a cafe/bar in Atlantic Road, Brixton (strangely I remember dancing to Perplexer's bagpipe-sampling Acid Folk at that party); the Brewery Road free party was in the next road to Market Road where I went to another free party on New Year's Eve 1995; the London School of Printing free party in 1994 was in a squatted building by Elephant and Castle; The Bell was a famous indie gay pub by Kings Cross, later became the Big Chill Bar.

Battleship Potemkin

Well you can now watch the whole of Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film Battleship Potemkin for free on youtube. If you don't know the story - the disgusting soup is the final straw prompting a mutiny by sailors on a battleship in the 1905 Russian revolution; the death of a sailor prompts an outpouring of support for the revolt in nearby Odessa; soldiers massacre demonstrators on the Odessa steps; rebellious sailors respond by shelling the opera house; the fleet is sent in to attack the Potemkin, but the sailors on the other ships join the revolt. THE END. All this plus the great scene where the man who shouts 'Kill the Jews' gets attacked by angry sailors and an early positive portrayal of disability as a man with no legs leaps down the stairs during the massacre.

Ko-Uta: Geisha Blues

Ko-uta is a genre of Japanese music which developed from the 19th century. It literally means 'little song' and indeed the songs tend to be short, accompanied by the shamisen (a three stringed, long necked instrument). It is most associated with the geisha, for whom learning to master the shamisen is one of the traditional arts.

There doesn't seem to be a lot about it in English, other than Liza Dalby's book 'Little songs of the Geisha: traditional Japanese Ko-Uta' (Tuttle publishing, 1979). The author trained as a geisha, and has translated some of the lyrics (she has also put out a DVD, Geisha Blues). Some of them remind me a little of the blues or Greek rembetika, songs of sensuality, longing and intoxication - albeit with more of the natural world imagery found in Japanese lyrics and poetry.

One of the songs, 'Sake to onna wa', Dalby translates as 'Wine and women'. A song associated with wandering minstrels during the late Edo period (first half of the 19th century), it could be out of the Mississipi delta:

Wine and women
Balm for the soul
This floating world is
Women and wine
Just a taste, and now
Karma leads me to this fate
Praise the lord, praise the lord!
To heaven or hell,
Women and wine,
You and me, babe
Till the end -
With a honey like you
With me in hell,
Emma and Jizo might forget
They ever renounced the world.
Oh, the demon drink

[Emma is king of the buddhist helll, Jizo is a patron deity of traveller. The last word 'onigoroshi, literally means "demon killer" and was the name of a cheap type of alcohol which was the drink of these peripatetic minstrels, not able to afford sake' (Dalby)]

I haven't found much of this music online so far - I suspect that I need to be able to search using Japanese characters which I can't read - but there are some examples at http://kouta-renmei.org/english.html.

Ichimaru (1906-1997) was a singer and geisha who developed her own style of Ko-uta singing:

Riot Shield Sonic Attack

There's nothing like a global wave of  popular insurgency to prompt weapons manufacturers to think of new ways to hurt and kill people. Latest in the sonic warfare department is the riot shield wall of sound:

'Riot shields that project a wall of sound to disperse crowds will reduce violent clashes with police, according to a patent filed by defence firm Raytheon of Waltham, Massachusetts. The device looks similar to existing riot shields, but it incorporates an acoustic horn that generates a pressure pulse. Police in the US already use acoustic devices for crowd control purposes that emit a loud, unpleasant noise.

The new shield described by Raytheon produces a low-frequency sound which resonates with the respiratory tract, making it hard to breathe. According to the patent, the intensity could be increased from causing discomfort to the point where targets become "temporarily incapacitated". Acoustic devices haven't seen wide adoption because their range is limited to a few tens of metres. The patent gets around this by introducing a "cohort mode" in which many shields are wirelessly networked so their output covers a wide area, like Roman legionaries locking their shields together. One shield acts as a master which controls the others, so that the acoustic beams combine effectively'.

(New Scientist, 14 December 2011)

All sounds a bit like Michael Moorcock's Sonic Attack, recorded by  Hawkwind on the 1973 Space Ritual album:

'These are the first signs of Sonic Attack:
You will notice small objects, such as ornaments, oscillating.
You will notice a vibration in your diaphragm.
You will hear a distant hissing in your ears.
You will feel dizzy.
You will feel the need to vomit.
There will be bleeding from orifices.
There will be an ache in the pelvic region.
You may be subject to fits of hysterical shouting, or even laughter'.

See also: Kathy Acker - Empire of the Senseless; Sonic Cannon in Pittsburgh.

Massacres 1981 and 2011

Thirty years ago last week, on December 16 1981, nine striking miners were killed by the state at the Wujek Coal Mine in Katowice. Three days previously martial law had been declared in Poland by General Wojciech Jaruzelski and the miners were on strike against military rule. Tanks, water cannon and then live ammunition was used in the clashes between police, troops and strikers.


The repression successfully pacified the movement in the short term, but the memory of the massacre fired up the next big wave of strikes in 1988, and within ten years of the killings most of those responsible were out of power. Some of those directly implicated in the massacre later went to prison.

Still the collapse of the Soviet Bloc precipiated by the Polish strikers and similar movements elsewhere did not unseat all the generals, secret policeman and bureaucrats in these countries. Some just changed their badges and got on with business as usual, nowhere more so than in Kazakhstan where the former head of the local 'Communist' Party Nursultan Nazarbayev became President of the newly independent country in 1991, holding on to power ever since.

Thirty years to the day since the Wujek massacre, on December 16 2011, tanks and military forces were used in battles in Kazakh city of Zhanaozen. More than 3,000 people assembled in the city in support of oil workers who have striking and protesting since May in support of better living conditions. Police and special forces attacked the meeting and opened fire on the strikers and their families. At least 10 people are reported to have been killed.

According to this report at libcom 'the Kazakh oil field workers established a “tent city”, in Zhanaozen’s main square, in June. When police tried to break it up in July, 60 of them covered themselves with petrol and threatened to set themselves on fire. Friday’s massacre took place in the same square'.

Say what you like about Sting, but to his credit he cancelled a performance at a government-sponsored festival earlier this year in solidarity with the strikers, saying 'The Kazakh gas and oil workers and their families need our support and the spotlight of the international media on their situation in the hope of bringing about positive change'.

Other UK interests have been less choosy:

' - The companies where most of the protesting oil workers work are partly owned by Kazmunaigaz Exploration and Production, which is listed on the London stock exchange and has often raised loans from London-based institutions;
- The UK is the third largest direct investor in Kazakhstan (after the USA and China);
- Tony Blair, the former prime minister, is being paid millions of pounds to lobby in the Kazakh government’s interests. Many other British businessmen and politicians help, too. Richard Evans, the former chairman of British Aerospace, is chairman of Samruk-Kazyna, a state-owned holding company that controls a big chunk of the Kazakh economy.
- The oil produced in Kazakhstan is traded in the offices of big oil trading companies and international oil companies in their London offices'.

Tomorrow - Wednesday 21st December 2011, 12 noon - there's a solidarity picket at the Kazakh-British Chamber of Commerce, 62 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London W1K 2QR.

'Re-education' and forced haircuts for Indonesian punks

Frightening tale from Indonesia of repression of young punks at hands of Islamists:

/Dozens of young men and women have been detained for being "punk" and disturbing the peace in Aceh, Indonesia's most devoutly Muslim province. They are being held in a remedial school, where they are undergoing "re-education". Rights groups have expressed concern after photographs emerged of the young men having their mohawks and funky hairstyles shaved off by Aceh's police.They look sullen and frightened as they are forced into a communal bath.

But Aceh's police say they are not trying to harm the youths, they are trying to protect them. The 64 punks, many of whom are from as far away as Bali or Jakarta, were picked up on Saturday night during a local concert...

Aceh police spokesman Gustav Leo says there have been complaints from residents nearby. The residents did not like the behaviour of the punks and alleged that some of them had approached locals for money. Mr Leo stressed that no-one had been charged with any crime, and there were no plans to do so. They have now been taken to a remedial school in the Seulawah Hills, about 60km (37 miles) away from the provincial capital Banda Aceh. "They will undergo a re-education so their morals will match those of other Acehnese people," says Mr Leo.

But activists say the manner in which the young people have been treated is humiliating and a violation of human rights.Aceh Human Rights Coalition chief Evi Narti Zain says the police should not have taken such harsh steps, accusing them of treating children like criminals. "They are just children, teenagers, expressing themselves," she says. "Of course there are Acehnese people who complained about them - but regardless of that, this case shouldn't have been handled like this. They were doused with cold water, and their heads were shaved - this is a human rights violation. Their dignity was abused."

...Aceh is one of the most devout Muslim provinces in Indonesia, and observers say it has becoming increasingly more conservative since Islamic law was implemented a few years ago' (BBC News, 14 December 2011).

The Art of Parties

This article 'Retort Goes to a Party' by Holley Cantine was originally published in the Autumn 1951 issue of Retort, a journal of anarchism, poetry, literature and essays edited by Cantine, with contributors including Paul Mattick, Kenneth Rexroth and Paul Goodman. It was reprinted in the Portland-based journal Communicating Vessels (Fall/Winter 2008-9). There are more Retort articles here - it was published in New York in the 1940s and 50s.

A 1950s report of a 1920s retro party might seem obscure even for this site, but there are some interesting reflections on the art of parties.

'On last March 24th, in Greenwich Village, a party, was thrown for the ostensible purpose of commemorating the 1920s. The editors of Retort, being at the time on one of their occasional visits to New York, attended. It was a fairly large party — upward of 100 people, most of them costumed in the styles of the period — either authentic or reasonably faithful representations. There was a competent Dixieland jazz band and an adequate amount of drink, the price of admission being a bottle. The party was held in a commodious sculptor's studio on the top floor of a loft building in a non-residential section of the Village, so there was both plenty of room and sufficient isolation to permit complete freedom from the usual urban inhibitions about noise.

Yet, in spite of all these manifest advantages, the party, as a party, and especially as an attempt to recapture the spirit of the '20s, didn't really come off. There was a good deal of boisterousness, some fairly wild dancing, and a determined effort on the part of the sponsors to keep things moving, but the atmosphere was not at all that of the period that was supposed to be commemorated, and the level of intensity that a really good party attains was never observable. The present writer, who has a very warm feeling for the '20s, perhaps because he was just a little too young to take part in the revels of that era, but old enough to have witnessed some of them, stayed on to the bitter end, hoping that  something might turn up, but unfortunately the evening just wilted away, and when at 3 or 4 in the morning the last remaining revelers began looking for their coats, it was as if nothing had happened.

To the connoisseur of parties — and in the '20s, the party was an art form with many zealous devotees, not a few of whom gave their lives as a result of their single-minded dedication to art — a party is not really successful unless something happens other than the usual banalities of passings out, corner seductions, et al. Exactly what is supposed to happen is impossible to foresee (this is the chief charm of the party as an art form). At some point in the evening, usually well after midnight, when the more inhibited guests have gone home and the rest are sufficiently liquored up to be ready for anything, a sort of spirit of the party begins to take over, fusing the participants into a spontaneous organic whole which is capable of very curious and memorable acts.

At the party in question, the focal point of the evening was the so-called Charleston Contest, and had the party been sufficiently alive, this could have been the spark that started things moving. As it turned out it was merely an exhibition of rather extreme dancing (none of it the Charleston) with most of the people reduced to spectators while a dwindling number of couples competed. I can recall parties in the '20s when an event of this nature suddenly evolved into a mock revival meeting or voodoo ceremony, with everyone taking part, or at least experiencing the excitement — a sort of pseudo-religious ecstasy that could be quite breathtaking.

Of course, such a performance is only possible in an entirely spontaneous andabandoned atmosphere, and the heavy aura of self-consciousness that hung over this party was a serious detriment to even bogus spirituality. Perhaps we who have endured the terrible '40s are unable to recapture the fine, free and essentially naive gusto for wickedness that characterized the lighter side of the '20s. The '20s, despite the fond belief of its Flaming Youth, was — at least in perspective — a very innocent period. There was something ingenuous and good-natured about its revolt against Victorianism. The bottomless pit that the First World War had opened up before the Lost Generation was a shallow ditch compared to that which our generation has witnessed, and the consequent cynicism was childlike and lighthearted, in comparison to the numb apathy that is characteristic of the more advanced youth of today.

The "wild" party was the perfect vehicle for expressing this spirit, especially since, as the result of Prohibition — that last desperate stand of the forces of Puritanism — the simple act of taking a drink was transformed into a wicked and excitingly illegal event. (Today, the youth must resort to the more deadening narcotics to achieve a similar thrill). A party in the '20s that commemorated the '90s was a lively, good-natured spoofing of the previous generation's foibles; we of the '50s, with our prevailing atmosphere of doom and disintegration, are hardly in the proper mood to give the same sort of treatment to the youthful follies of our parental generation'.

Police and Parties in England: November 2011

Dorset: 'Illegal Rave blocked by Police' (Bridport News, 1 December 2011)

'Lyme Regis police blocked an illegal rave that was set to attract hundreds of revellers after it was advertised on the internet. The party was publicised on social networking site Facebook as a public event with camping, fireworks and live music. Police in Lyme Regis received a tip-off about the event and discovered that various DJs were lined up to perform in a field from 8pm to 6am.

Community beat manager PC Richard Winward said: “We had no idea where it was so we made some inquiries and discovered who the organisers were. We discovered that it was going to happen on Saturday, November 19 in a field off the A35 at Wootton Fitzpaine. We realised of course that it must not go ahead because it was illegal and would have caused huge disruption to people living in the area.” The organisers were three 19-year-old men from Lyme Regis, Umborne in Devon, and Exeter.

"We told the organisers that they did not have permission and the rave would not take place, and if it did go ahead or if they made any more preparations they would be arrested We also told them that unless they removed the pallets and breeze blocks, which legally counts as preparing for a rave and if they didn’t put a notification on Facebook that it had been cancelled, they would also be arrested.”

PC Winward said the organisers agreed to postpone the rave until they obtained the correct licences and permissions. But some determined revellers still threatened to turn up at the field, so police were forced to blockade the area'.

Hampshire: 'Illegal rave in Andover stopped by police' (BBC, 21 November 2011)

'An illegal rave in a disused industrial unit in Hampshire has been shut down. Police officers followed social media websites to locate the site of the rave which was being set up at the Walworth Industrial Estate in Andover. About 70 officers broke up the gathering by dispersing people travelling to the music event on Saturday night. Three men, from Wales, Gloucester and Hampshire, were arrested and sound equipment was seized by police. A 36-year-old from Llanishen, Wales, and a 19-year-old from Alton, Hampshire, were both arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and using electricity without authority. A 37-year-old from Gloucester was arrested on suspicion of using electricity without authority'.

Norfolk (Lynn News, 28 November 2011)

'Police seized sound equipment and a vehicle used to transport it from those believed to be the organisers of an illegal rave shut down on Sunday in Feltwell. The unlicensed music event was held at a Fire Ride, between 4am and 1pm, where it is thought that around 200 people attended. Superintendent Dave Marshall said: “The Constabulary takes such incidents very seriously. “We will take action to deal with anyone intent on causing disruption and nuisance within our local communities. Such events are unsafe and we will continue to prosecute, seize and destroy the equipment of anyone found to be involved.”'

Buckinghamshire (Leighton Buzzard, 2 December 2011)

'Thames Valley Police has charged a 20-year-old man with public nuisance following a rave at Ivinghoe Beacon in October. [RB] of Haverhill, Sussex, was charged with the offence yesterday and is due to appear at Aylesbury Magistrates’ Court on December 19. The offence relates to an illegal rave attended by more than 600 people which took place in the early hours of October 2'.

Somerset: 'Seven arrested for illegal rave' (Somerset County Gazette, 18 November 2011)

'Police arrested seven people and seized sound equipment after breaking up an illegal rave at Nuctombe Bottom near Timberscombe recently. More than 600 people descended on the site without permission, prompting police to move in and break up the rave following complaints from angry residents. Police said the noise was so intense that it could be heard up to four miles away in Minehead'.

Lancashire: Police Scupper New Year's Eve Party (Burnley Citizen, 2 December 2011)

'Plans for a New Year’s Eve rave in Colne have been refused after strong objections by Lancashire Police. Promoters Small Trees wanted to stage the event at an industrial unit off Burnley Road, Primet Bridge but PC Mark Driver, Pennine policing division licensing officer, raised concerns on how an expected crowd of up to 500 could be managed. Further worries centred on internet promotional promises of £2 drinks for everything except spirits. The borough’s licensing committee issued a counter-notice against the event'.

The strike in London

I went on strike on Wednesday November 30th against changes to pensions for public sector workers - against in short having to work for longer and pay more to receive less. The goverment initially tried to play down the numbers on strike - but even by their own figures around a million were on strike, the largest number for at least  30 years. The unions suggested the number was more like 2 million. 

Started to write an in-depth post about capitalism, crisis, the weakness of both the state and its oppenents etc. But that will have to wait for another day, probably another year! Instead, here's some pictures and short commentary from the strike in London - all taken on the demonstration in central London (attended by up to 50,000 people) unless otherwise stated.

'Debt enchains us, work exhausts us, you disgust us'

'Revolution is the ecstasy of history'  - banner on picket line at Goldsmiths College in South London.
Nice slogan, even if begs the riposte 'what you mean you love everybody on Saturday night, but can't face gettting
out of bed by Wednesday'

The Occupy London banners were impressive : 'All power to the 99%'

The sound system behind the Occupy banners kept people dancing, righteous reggae and dancehall
among other sounds, but the track that led to a frenzed explosion of energy from hundreds of people was
'One Step Beyond' by Madness!

Nostalgia Steel Band on the march. Clare is angry - and she's not alone!

New architecture of control - police temporary metal barriers in Trafalgar Square

After the main demonstration, 21 people were arrested during an occupation of Panton House near Leicester Square, headquarters of  mining company Xstratahe whose CEO Mick Davies was said to be the highest compensated CEO of all the FTSE 100 companies in the last year, receiving pay and shares ot a value of £18,426,105. 37 people were also arrested in Dalston, ironically outside the CLR James Library. Seemingly they had been part of a mobile group with sound system moving between picket lines in Hackney.

 See also: The Big Strike in South London for more photos and reports.

Police use UV ink at Occupy Montreal

Bouncers tricks and bass lines at the eviction of Occupy Montreal:

'Occupy protesters “branded” with UV ink: Montreal police borrow tactic from club bouncers to stop protesters from returning to public square


Occupy protesters in Montreal were dismayed to find they had been marked by police with a special ink that is only visible in UV light after being arrested during a raid of Victoria Square Friday. Police told CTV Montreal they borrowed the technique from bouncers at clubs and bars and it is meant to mark protesters who might return to the square.

But they apparently weren’t so forthcoming with at least one protester. “They wrote on my hand with a permanent marker and then after I felt something pointy and metallic scraping across my skin,” wrote protester Nina Haigh on Facebook, continuing: 'I immediately asked “What are you doing” and they simply said we wrote on you with a pen and showed me a bunch of various pens in her hand. I didn’t argue about it and I was unable to look at my hands as they were tied behind my back with zipties. As soon as I was released I looked at my hands and there was no ink on them from a pen. …

This morning we tested my hands under a black light and sure enough there was a number 2! The freaky thing is this is IN my skin, washing my hands and scrubbing with abrasives will not get this off…. perhaps in several months of my skin cells renewing themselves if will eventually fade.What ever ink that is in there is irritating my skin slightly and its a very terrible feeling that they put a substance in my body with out my consent and then later lied about it' (Salon, 30 November 2011).

This took place during the eviction of the Occupy Montreal camp on 25 November, as reported in The Link, 29 November 2011:

'In the end, Occupy Montreal didn’t go out with a flash bang, but with a bass line. Exactly six weeks after the global Occupy phenomenon came to the city, Victoria Square was a place transformed, then transformed again.  Gone was the intricate maze of shelters and structures. Gone were the kitchen and library areas. And gone were many of the inhabitants of the tent city, kicked out by members of the Service policière de la Ville de Montréal on Nov. 25.

Still, despite the naked landscape of the square compared to the bustle and crowds that had been a mainstay for the past month and a half, on Saturday afternoon, a few hundred people came back to the site to discuss what they had been a part of, and where the movement will go now.  Unlike the violent end to the Occupy camps in New York, Oakland, and UC Davis, Montreal’s version didn’t end in clashes with the cops—instead, it ended with a concert. Local legends Bran Van 3000 performed a stripped-down set marked with the refrain, “Love is in the air.” [Bram Van 3000 are best known in the UK for their track Drinkng in LA]...

Today, the tents have been torn down, and the inhabitants have all gone back to wherever they came from. All that’s left is the question that’s been levied at the movement since the beginning: what’s next? What do you do when a protest predicated on the physical occupation of a location no longer physically occupies that space?

“That’s a good question,” said di Salvio. “Even in the middle of summer we were wondering what was going to happen in the winter. We’re human, and it gets very cold". Rather than look at the winter as a time for bonds to weaken, di Salvio, who had also paid a visit to New York City to check out Occupy Wall Street, thinks that breaking up the camp will result in different kinds of organization—digital and physical—that will lead to bigger things when the temperatures rise again in the spring...It’s almost like a tour: you go and reinforce and recharge to meet up again next summer.”

Spannered

'Spannered' is a new novel by Bert Random, published by Spannered Books, a new small press based in Bristol.

Described on the cover as 'a book about free parties, friendship and dancing', it is essentially an account of one weekend in Bristol in 1995 centred around a warehouse party, but its evocative descriptions will echo with anybody who has been to free parties anywhere or anytime then or since. It's all there - the highs, the lows, the intense friendships, the casualties, the transformation of some derelict zone into a temporary playground... And of course the music.

The chapter headings are tracks from that period (e.g. The Pump Panel's Ego Acid, Starpower's Renegade 303 from the Chris Liberator/Dave the Drummer 'Stay up Forever' stable). Writing about music without lyrics is notoriously difficult, but the author has a real sense of the physical impact of a snare, a kick drum or a blast of 303 on the bodies of dancers. Especially the latter - it's all about the acid, 'Bristol-style techno - the hard, dense kick drums are circled by fine-tuned cymbals and snares, dirty, squelchy, sub-bass notes rumble under our feet, while sweeping strings and swirling acidlines collide up above. The duelling 303s churn away...'

As a historical document capturing the mood of a specific time and place this book is bang-on, but it also has some broader reflections on dancing. At one point on the dancefloor, the narrator feels 'a link with something primeval, not just with my immediate environment, not just with the shit-hot party going on around me. A link with something deeper than that. I feel a connection to my own history of dancing... I'm possessed by everyone who has ever been moved by music. I feel a link to distant drums of warning and celebration, to the force of rhythm on our cerebral patterns and genetic muscle memories. I remember all this in a split second'.

If the author has felt compelled to write a novel 15 years after the events described, it is presumably because like many of us he recognises that one night can last a lifetime: 'Those moments, those movements, those sounds, those feelngs - they all really happened. The afterglow from sharing those experiences with thousands of people - with hundreds of thousands of people over the years - can keep you warm for a long time, if you let it'.

Detail from illustration by Silent Hobo in Spannered

The book also features some great illustrations by artists including Silent Hobo, Boswell, Nik III, Natalie Sandells and Rose Sanderson.

You can get the paperback for a mere £8.99 from the Spannered Shop, and there is also an e-book version. Ideal Christmas present for anybody who was there, wishes they were, or wonders what it was like (and indeed still is like in free parties today, although obviously some things have changed in the past decade and a half).

Swing as Surrealist Music

Cultural Correspondence (1975-83) was a remarkable US-based radical journal with a particular focus on popular culture. Its entire archive is now available online and is a real treasure trove. I've been browsing through a 1979 special on surrealism, which has lots of music and dance related content. The following text is by the American philosopher Horace Meyer Kellen (1882-1974), an extract from his 1942 book Art and Freedom. I would certainly take issue with its association of jazz and swing (and by implication black people) with the 'primitive' - these developed as modern urban musics created by sophisticated virtuoso musicians. But the text does express very well the enthusiasm of its followers in that period for a music that seemed to embody liberation:

SWING AS SURREALIST MUSIC

'The musical equivalent of surrealism in painting and literature is not obviously connected with either its theory or practice. It develops as a practice entirely innocent of theory, as an unwilled expression of alogical spontaneity, of irresponsible, personal invention unenchanneled by form, unchecked by musical knowledge or learned tradition; develops thus with all the differentiae which the connoisseurs ascribe to surrealist creations. The name for it is Swing. Its native habitat is the United States of America, and it is indigenous to the southern portion, especially to the Mississippi riverfront at New Orleans. Unlike its literary and pictorial parallels, which sustain a local life already below the level of subsistence among selected groups of intelligentsia, Swing has attained a world-wide diffusion among all classes and occupations. The event is natural enough. Verbiform and graphic symbols require interpretation; sheer sonorous rhythm does not. Swing is caused in a medium which issues from and speaks to Dr. Freud's Unconscious direct, without disguise, without distortion...

...Swing arrived as the latest phase of a progression from Ragtime through Jazz. The trick of heightening emotional tension by opposing one rhythm to another became conspicuous as a practice about the same time that post-impressionism made its start. The matrix of Swing is said to have been opposed and mixed body-rhythms of the pasmala as danced in New Orleans bawdy-houses and honky tonks. The manner of mixing and opposition was carried over from dancing bodies to  sounding musical instruments. Popular songs so treated were said to be "ragged," and the treatment came to be called Rag-time. The singers and dancers and players who devised Ragtime were American Negroes with remnants of an eroding African culture in their body-rhythms, in their social habits and in their personal outlook. They were primitives indigenous to industrial civilization, with its timeclocks, its rigid divisions of the hours of the working day, its patterns of machine-logic and rationality. Negro Ragtime was the beginning of a break from that. In less than a generation the Negro's social heartbreak was absorbed into Ragtime's terpsichorean breakdown and Ragtime transmuted to Jazz. The vehicles of the American Negro's heartbreak is the Spiritual and Jazz, which is said to derive from jaser, an Acadian word meaning to gabble, to chatter, is the compenetration of the rag and the spiritual. Body, voice, wind and percussion instruments are its vehicles.

Jazz began to spread through the great industrial cities of the North American continent about the same year that the First International Exhibi-ion of Modem Art began its epoch-making trek across the States. This exhibition, which for the first time brought before the unaccustomed eyes of Americans the works of all the schools and cults that Europe had bred in two generations, had been arranged under the auspices of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. Ragtime, which might be said to correspond to the cubist phase of the pictorial and verbiforrn arts, spread to Europe while modernist painting and poetry were acquiring a vogue in America. The four years o' the First World War were a plowing of a cultural soil wherein Jazz could take deep roots, and when the War ended it flowered indeed. . . .

The metronomic noises of the railroads and factories, the monotonous roar of the cities de-manded their rhythmic compensation. Even  formal music brought them forth. Percussion and wind instruments — brasses, saxophones, trombones, xylophones, bells — became more noticeable in orchestras. To atonality or to polytonality, which dropped modulation, which set key against key and scale against scale, was joined a continuous shift of rhythm or a contrapuntal opposition of many rhythms. In 1893, Dahomey Negroes, beating tom-torns for the entertainment of gaping Americans at Chicago's World Fair, had, by using feet and heads as well as hands, produced a triple cross rhythm which constituted an unconscious counter-point of rhythms. . .

Formal professional music, however modem, somehow failed to release the emotions which the industrial workday blockaded and starved. Night, that so long had been the time, not for living, but for sleeping away the fatigues of the living day, became conspicuously the time for living. The existence of the folk of the industrial cities is now a cultural schizophrenia of day-life and night-life. Day is the time when they earn their livings, night is the time when they live their lives. During the day most people are producers, disciplined to the machine, their bodies held to its rhythm, their minds constrained to its motions. By night, they are consumers; their body-rhythm seeks to recover its native physiological patterns, their movements search to resume the human form appropriate to autonomous human function. The extraordinary spread and influence of Swing testifies that in it the seeking and searching come to a haven; that it owns the power of gratifying the needs which launch them. Also its well-spring is the Negro of the urban jungle in New Orleans; also its centers of power are the great industrial areas — Chicago, New York, London, Berlin, Moscow, Shanghai, Tokyo.

Atonal, polyrhythmic, Swing cuts itself loose from every rule and canon that tradition has brought down or craftsmanship confirmed. It asks of the performer two things, a maximum of virtuosity on his instrument, a maximum of spontaneity in his performance. That must needs be sheer, unrestricted improvisation, the free, the anarchic expression of his Unconscious, undisguised and unashamed. Nor is the expression sonoriform only. His whole body collaborates: as he plays, he dances, he acts, he sings, he leaps and twists and weaves like an acrobat, and the different behaviors pass seamlessly into and out of one another. He becomes the leader, not only of his band, but of his audiences: they step from their seats into the aisles and dance with him in an ecstasy — orgiastic or mystical or both according to the observer's lights — of release and self-recovery. It is the liberation of Dionysos from Apollo, of the living organism from the automatic machine, an insurgence of the depths into a conscious experience without connection and without analogue, though perhaps revivalist religious gatherings do enfold likenesses wherein convert and jitterbug are one under the skin. Swing might with good reason be called surrealism in excelsis'.

(full text below- click to enlarge)

Agit Disco Book Launch

Agit Disco has just been published by Mute Books, compiled by Stefan Szczelkun, edited by Anthony Iles  The launch takes place on 8th December 2011, 6.30pm – 9.00pm at The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, London, NW8 8PQ.

I have a chapter in the book so will be going along, maybe see some of you there  (details here, including how to order a copy).

'Agit Disco collects the playlists of its 23 writers to tell the story of how music has politically influenced and inspired them. The book provides a multi-genre survey of political musics, from a wide range of viewpoints, that goes beyond protest songs into the darker hinterlands of musical meaning. Each playlist is annotated and illustrated.

The collection grew organically with an exchange of homemade CDs and images. These images, with their DIY graphics, are used to give the playlists a visual materiality. Almost everyone makes selections of music to play to themselves and friends. Agit Disco intends to show the importance of this creative activity and its place in our formation as political beings. This activity is at odds with to the usual process of selection by the mainstream media - in which the most potent musical agents of change are, whenever possible, erased from the public airwaves. Agit Disco Selectors: Sian Addicott, Louise Carolin, Peter Conlin, Mel Croucher, Martin Dixon, John Eden, Sarah Falloon, Simon Ford, Peter Haining, Stewart Home, Tom Jennings, DJ Krautpleaser, Roger McKinley, Micheline Mason, Tracey Moberly, Luca Paci, Room 13 – Lochyside Scotland, Howard Slater, Johnny Spencer, Stefan Szczelkun, Andy T, Neil Transpontine, Tom Vague'.

Shelagh Delaney RIP

Shelagh Delaney (1939-2011) died this weekend. She achieved many things, but will always be primarily remembered for A Taste of Honey, the play she wrote when she was just 18 years old in 1958. As her Guardian obituary mentions 'A Taste of Honey showed working-class women from a working-class woman's point of view, had a gay man as a central and sympathetic figure, and a black character who was neither idealised nor a racial stereotype'. This was recognised from the start, with Colin MacInnes stating in a 1959 review in Encounter that it was ‘… the first English play I’ve seen in which a coloured man, and a queer boy, are presented as natural characters, factually without a nudge or shudder. It is also the first play I can remember about working-class people that entirely escapes being a “working class play”: no patronage, no dogma, just the thing as it is, taken straight’.

Of course both Taste of Honey and Delaney's subsequent The Lion in Love had a huge influence on Morrissey and The Smiths, as summarised  by Passions Just Like Mine:

'Delaney's "A Taste Of Honey" features the following lines which were adapted by Morrissey mainly for the Smiths' "Reel Around The Fountain" and "This Night Has Opened My Eyes", but also other songs: "I dreamt about you last night, and I fell out of bed twice"; "You told me not to trust men calling themselves Smith."; "That river, it's the color of lead."; "I'm not sorry and I'm not glad"; "Oh well, the dream's gone, but the baby's real enough"; "It's a long time, six months"; "You can't just wrap it up in a bundle of newspaper. And dump it on a doorstep."; "I'll probably never see you again"; "I don't owe you a thing"; "As merry as the day is long"; "Sing me to sleep"; "You want taking in hand"; "It's your life, ruin it your own way.".

Delaney's "The Lion In Love" features the lines "I think we've courted long enough, it's time our tale was told"; "I'll probably never see you again"; "Cash on the nail"; "Anything's hard to find if you go around looking for it with your eyes shut"; "I'd sooner spit in everybody's eye"; "I'll go out and get a job tomorrow / you needn't bother" ; "Nell: And getting nowhere fast. Andy: These things take time."; "Pagliacci - that's me"; "Shall I tell you something? I don't like your face"; "ten-ton truck"; "Do I owe you anything"; "Tied to his mother's apron strings" which also appear in similar form in various songs penned by Morrissey. The line "So rattle her bones all over the stones, she's only a beggar-man whom nobody owns" also appears almost word for word in Morrissey's "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle" although it must be said that this line had previously appeared in James Joyce's "Ulysses" and even earlier in English poet Thomas Noel's "The Pauper's Funeral". Still, Morrissey's most direct inspiration is very likely the Delaney source'.

And Delaney's image graced two Smiths covers.

 

Delaney on the cover of Girlfriend in a Coma

Delaney on the cover of Louder than Bombs

Interesting to reflect on the similarities between Delaney and Morrissey, both from working class Manchester/Salford families of Irish origin. In fact that Manchester Irish proletarian perspective is a major influence on 'English' popular culture, isn't it? Shaun Ryder/Happy Mondays would be another example.

(The Beatles also recorded A Taste of Honey, a song originally written for the Broadway version of the play; their song Your Mother Should Know lifted its title from the play)

Riots 'like a rave'

The August riots in England: Understanding the involvement of young people, published by the National Centre for Social Research (Novemeber 2011) is a report commissioned by the Government's Cabinet Office, with all that implies. But it does at least have the strength of actually being partly based on interviews with people involved, and gives the lie to the notion that the riots were simply a gang-organised mindless explosion. Here's a few extracts:

'Why did young people get involved (or not)?
...
• Something exciting to do: the riots were seen as an exciting event – a day like no other – described in terms of a wild party or “like a rave”. The party atmosphere, adrenaline and hype were seen as encouraging and explaining young people’s involvement by young people themselves and community stakeholders.
• The opportunity to get free stuff: the excitement of the events was also tied up with the thrill of getting “free stuff” – things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to have.
• A chance to get back at police: in Tottenham, the rioting was described as a direct response to the police handling of the shooting of Mark Duggan. Here and elsewhere in London, the Mark Duggan case was also described as the origin of the riots and the way it was handled was seen as an example of a lack of respect by the police that was common in  the experience of young black people in some parts of London. Outside London, the rioting was not generally attributed to the Mark Duggan case. However, the attitude and behaviour of the police locally was consistently cited as a trigger outside as well as within London.

“People doing it because they’re angry at police. Police and people don’t have a good relationship and feel mad when get pulled by the police. Government were going to close [swimming] baths and people were angry about this ‘cos the only thing for young people to do.” (Young person, in custody)

“I think some of them just wanted the free stuff and some of them wanted to get back at the police. … Some of them might have been there because of the cuts, because of the EMA. … There were different reasons why people went there. Some it was for the enjoyment, to be with friends, some because they were angry with the government, the police.” (Young person, Peckham)

“We was just bored really and obviously nothing like this has ever happened for however long we have been alive. It was a first really, and we decided just to go up there just so we can say we had been there, not to act cool or anything, just to say, it is so big, it will probably be put in history, so we decided to go up there. We were that bored.” (Young person, Birmingham)

'However, the excitement was an attraction not just for the bored and underoccupied but also for young people who were otherwise engaged in work or education. In some instances, the events were described in terms of a wild party or, as one young person put it, “like a rave”. A sense of glee pervaded these accounts – people were often grinning while describing their experience – a delight that the normal order of things was briefly turned upside down. There was satisfaction in having “put two fingers up” to the “authorities” and pleasure in the memory of a day of disorder and misrule'.

“[I felt] excited, adrenaline, scared, but a good scared, like: ‘Wow, wow, wow, is this happening?’ And the bin on fire was wow. It was a new experience. [I] think it was for everyone. People were excited, especially getting PS3 boxes.” (Young person, Peckham)

Communities, commodities and class in the August 2011 riots

Also good is an article from Aufheben, Communities, commodities and class in the August 2011 riots.

'Detailed examination of the August unrest allows a tentative designation of three forms of disturbance. These categorisations are fairly loose, as repertoires of activity such as collective violence directed against the police and organised looting were features of most of the disorders to greater or lesser degree. However, there were clearly some differences in the primacy of activity in the August unrest that were related to the motivations and temporal positioning of the events.

The first disturbance form, designated the 'community riot', is characterised by locale rather than purely by its activity. These incidents in August 2011 were typically located in largely proletarian inner-city areas of mixed ethnicity (e.g. Tottenham, Hackney, Brixton, Toxteth, Handsworth). Typically they were triggered by police actions (e.g. the shooting of Mark Duggan and the police reaction to the subsequent demonstration in Tottenham, the 'stop and search' operations in Hackney) in areas, which had a significant pre-history of both contested policing and 'riotous' responses.37 These incidents were characterised by a large amount of violence directed against the police, static defence of 'territory' by the 'rioters' (such as Tottenham High Rd. and the Pembury estate in Hackney), attacks on important 'symbolic' targets (such as police stations, courts, public buildings) and the active and passive support of different sections of the local population (e.g. Tottenham and Hackney). Looting was clearly a subsidiary activity in these events.

The second category of disturbance can be labelled as 'commodity riot', as the primary aim of the participants was to appropriate goods. In August these events were the most common, were precipitated by the participants rather than the police and characterised by some level of pre-meditated target selection and organisation (using BB messaging, e.g. Enfield, Oxford Circus, Bristol and many other areas). They were usually aimed at large concentrations of commercial outlets (such as shopping centres, malls and retail parks), involved significant crowd mobility (including the use of bikes and vehicles to transport 'booty') and avoided contact with opposing superior forces (of police). The 'cat and mouse' manoeuvring between the police and 'looters' that occurred in many incidents - the latter aided by mobile phones and instant messaging - was a by-product of the primary aim to acquire useful (and valuable) commodities for the protagonists. Looters operated in numerous but smaller groups than in 'community riots', often travelled significant distances to 'hit' selected targets and were not spatially tied to their home locales.

The final (and fairly unusual) type of disturbance, which occurred in August in a few locations in London (Ealing, Pimlico, Sloane Square, Notting Hill), was the 'anti-rich riot'. These were characterised by pre-planning, movements by participants out of home locales to attack areas that were perceived to be dominated by the wealthy and were marked by widespread destruction of cars, cafeacute;s, restaurants, boutiques and commercial properties that were not necessarily high value 'looting' targets. Face to face robbing, terrorising and violence, directed at rich residents of these areas were a significant feature of these events'.

Looting, violins and ballet

I remember people looting a music shop on Charing Cross Road during the 1990 London poll tax riot, a young Chinese guy sprinting down the road carrying an electric guitar, somebody else grabbing a saxophone. People have been jailed in Manchester after similar scenes at a music shop in the city:

'[S.H.] was clutching a looted violin when he was arrested in the aftermath of riots in Manchester. Smelling strongly of drink, the aspiring musician quipped: ‘I’ve always wanted to learn to play the violin.’ His parents wept in the dock as district judge Alan Berg told the 19-year-old it was an ‘absolute tragedy’ that he had thrown away his prospects in this way.Hoyle, of Manchester, was arrested at 3am on Wednesday when police encircled a group of youths and saw him clutching the violin, thought to be from a music shop which had earlier been looted. He tried to run away as police arrested a girl, but the court heard he was chased and caught, telling officers: ‘I can understand why people riot, you really are fascist ********.’ Hoyle had never been in trouble before and is on Jobseekers’ Allowance, the court heard.
Sentencing him to four months in a young offenders’ institution for theft, Judge Berg told Hoyle he had brought ‘shame and disgrace’ on his family. But he told the shamefaced teenager: ‘Nobody forced you to get drunk and pick up the violin.’

An aspiring ballerina was arrested after police published images of her looting two boxed flat screen TVs from a hi-fi store where £190,000 of damage was caused. The 17-year-old, who has been studying ballet since she was seven and wants to be a dance teacher, gave herself up after seeing a CCTV image of herself in a newspaper.  The dancer was among a group of masked women caught on camera looting Richer Sounds, in Croydon. She was remanded in custody' (Daily Mail, 2 September 2011)

'Just two days after gangs of youths rampaged through Manchester smashing windows and looting shops, the city's retailers were in defiant mood. "We are Manchester, we don't give in that easy," said Trina Rance, operations manager at Dawson's, one of Manchester's largest music stores. Standing by a wrecked £14,000 grand piano, she described how she learned on Tuesday night that looters had broken into the shop.What followed was anarchy, with looters helping themselves to musical instruments and smashing equipment. One hooded youth was filmed walking casually down Portland Street carrying an expensive electric guitar he had stolen, the price tag still fluttering' (BBC, 11 August 2011).


'A soldier from Greater Manchester has been jailed for eight months after trying to sell a guitar that had been stolen during August's riots. [LB] 20, bought the guitar for £20 from an unknown man in Manchester city centre, during the height of the disorder on 9 August.He was arrested two days later as he tried to sell the instrument at a music shop in his home town of Leigh.He was sentenced to eight months in jail at Manchester Crown Court.Bretherton bought the Gibson Les Paul guitar, which had an estimated value of £2,000, from a looter in the street. It had been taken from Dawson's music store on Portland Street shortly before. The soldier, a member of the 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, took the guitar into a music shop in Leigh two days later.As he attempted to sell the instrument, the shop owner became suspicious, locked him in and called the police' (BBC, 21 October 2011)

Halloween in London

London Halloween
Costume 2011

Halloween weekend in London, and the streets were full of zombies, witches and men wrapped in bandages. White make up and fake blood. The fancy dress theme seems to have spilled beyond horror into generic carnivalesque costume. On the way to a house party in Brixton on the Saturday night a pantomime horse crossed the road in front of us, and a man ran down the road dressed up as a flying squirrel.

At the party a DJ dressed up as a penguin span the obligatory Michael Jackson's Thriller to a party including a crocodile, a parrot, the snow queen from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (handing out Turkish delight), a bat, two suicide bombers, Amy Winehouse and somebody dressed up in a take on one of Louise Bourgeois' costumes from her performance piece Banquet/A Fashion Show of Body Parts (seemingly somebody had a similar idea at a feminist art themed Halloween ball in New York in 2010).



Louise Bourgeois in 1978

 

Erica Magrey, New York Halloween Costume 2010