History is Made at Night in The Wire

Back in December 2013, The Wire magazine featured this blog in its 'Unofficial Channels' column:

(from The Wire, December 2013 -
 nb John Eden is incorrectly described here as the publisher of Datacide, though he is a contributor to it)

The item was based on a short interview with me by Dan Barrow, which I've reproduced below as it sets out some of my thoughts on 'History is Made at Night' in a bit more detail:

How did you come to start the blog? What kind of interests fed into it?

I stated the blog in early 2007. The name came from a byline on a poster for ‘The Last Days of Disco’ - at the time I was unaware of the 1930s film, History is Made at Night.  The origins of it go back to the mid-1990s, when I first started writing about the history of dance music scenes – for a while I had a column in Mixmag on this called Back in the Day, and I also had stuff published in Eternity and Alien Underground zines. I guess every generation thinks they are the first to discover staying up all night dancing, but I was and am fascinated by how people have been doing this for centuries.

The blog also has its roots in the 1990s free party scene, in particular Dead By Dawn techno/speedcore night at the 121 Centre in Brixton. There was a scene of people around it who were thinking and writing about the political/social implications of electronic dance music, with zines like Technet and Alien Underground. So the blog is very much my expression of an ongoing collective project. I still write for Datacide, which also emerged from that same milieu.

The blog's described as being about "The Politics of Dancing and Musicking" - how do you feel dancing and (radical) politics intersect?

In a negative sense, dancing has always been subject to political regulation. As I said at the beginning of the blog there have been ‘rules about when, where and how they can move, rules about who is allowed to dance with who, rules about what dancers can wear and put inside their bodies…’.  Resistance to this regulation has been politically significant, from the 1969 Stonewall riots to the 1990s movement against the ‘anti-rave’ Criminal Justice Act and beyond.

In a positive/constitutive sense, dancing affirms community and can create new social relations between those involved. I took part in Reclaim the Streets, when the fusing of sound systems and protest was taken to a new level in the UK. In more recent movements, such as the student protests of 2010-11, we’ve also seen how sound systems can help fuse together isolated individuals into a social force.

What are your musical interests? I remember reading quite a lot of stuff on the blog about rave, jazz, UK reggae...

I suppose the focus of the blog is less on the music as such than on what happens when people come together around a music. So although I am not a massive jazz fan, I am very interested in the 1940s/50s London jazz scene as it prefigures later bohemian counter-cultures and indeed as far as I know gave birth to the word ‘ravers’! My personal musical involvements have ranged from anarcho-punk, to house and techno, to playing in pub folk sessions.

How do you keep blogging? I ask partly becuase a lot of the blogs from that era have more or less disappeared - Woebot, Beyond The Implode, Sit Down Man, The Impostume...

In starting HIMAN I was partly prompted by that wave of music blogs such as Blissblog and Uncarved (the latter’s John Eden is somebody else I first met through that Dead by Dawn scene). Obviously people’s focus shift sfor various reasons, some of that first generation of music bloggers used their profile to move on into publishing books and articles etc. It’s obviously true that the time I have spent blogging could have been put to use in writing several books, but maybe that desire to monumentalise your writing in an object that sits on your shelves is anachronistic – though I am not averse to it. Actually I have been talking to somebody about publishing a History is Made at Night book, but we shall see. What I still like about blogging is its immediacy - the ability to respond to things in real time. And the fact that unlike with Twitter, you have the space to do more than just express a quick opinion.

The blog goes up and down in terms of the time I can put into it, what keeps it going is that every so often something comes along that make its concerns seem particularly relevant – such as the Form 696 row about policing grime events. Also when people express an interest in it I feel guilty that I haven’t posted for a while and am stung into a burst of action!

I also wanted to ask about the Transpontine blog. What do you feel distinguishes South London as a place, especially musically?

If you start exploring the history of music scenes you can’t help but be struck how certain locations recur as important over the decades (e.g. Soho). As I live in South East London, I’ve tried to document this in relation to my own area at another blog, Transpontine. Deptford and New Cross for instance have been important at various times for reggae sound systems, punk and other scenes. I don’t think it’s necessary to fall back on a supernatural spirit of place to explain this, as Peter Ackroyd sometimes seems to – there are material processes at work. Partly it’s about the mix of people created by migration, location of colleges etc. Partly it’s about them having space to practice and perform – so you need a combination of plentiful/cheap rehearsal studios and pubs, clubs and other venues. As with art scenes, music is sometimes valorised for its contribution to creating a ‘buzz’ for regeneration, but the same process of rising property values threatens to undermine its infrastructure  as pubs and ex-industrial buildings get converted to flats.

Bad Attitude - music reviews from radical women's newspaper (1995)

Bad Attitude was a 'radical women's newspaper' published in the early 1990s from 121 Railton Road, Brixton (among other things, home to the famous Dead by Dawn speedcore nights). Some of the women involved it had previously been involved in the young women's zine Shocking Pink, including my late friend Katy Watson. Here from issue 7 (1995) is one of Katy's music columns.

Welcome to my second review column of punk/indie women's bands. I'm pleased to say that this time a much higher propor­tion of them are independent/DIY bands, rather than on major labels, which I think is something worth supporting. Once again, I've only mentioned things that I found reasonably enjoyable. Is this a good idea? I don't know. Maybe you'd like to tell me.

So first off it's time to get your leopard-print bikinis on and... Spend the Night with the Trashwomen! For this is the title of my most highly recommended LP of this issue. It's by the Trashwomen, as you might guess, and is entirely wonderful. The style is garage, as in Sixties-style surf songs, a little like the Cramps, only belting along at about twice the speed and very cheaply produced which makes it seem even more rough'n'ready'n'fab. There are quite a few instrumentals and their lyrics are mainly along the lines of love, sex and dates, except for the self-explanatory 'I'm Trash'. So not a night out with Sheila ]effreys (not that I've anything against her). Several songs are complete classics, to my ears. It came out last year and I don't even know what made me buy it. I can only think it was the hand of the Goddess. (On Estrus records) And now it seems they have a favourably­reviewed live LP out....

Also in garage area though slightly more punky is a 4-track EP Punk or Die by Pink Kross, who are three girls from Glasgow. 'Doll core', apparently. The first track 'Drag Star Racing Queen' is a real cracker. I loved it. Catchy, thrashing, tuneful, fast, with lyrics either winning or daft, depending how you're prepared to take them. The other three tracks aren't as wondrous, but who cares when the first one's so brilliant? (Bouvier)

36C (LP) by Fifth Column, a Canadian dyke band. The first song, 'All Women are Bitches', is a classic, one of the best things I've heard this year - a powerful and catchy piece of pop-punk. But after that I found the others a let-down. The tunes are good, the singer has a fine voice and the lyrics are feminist, but it's all much slower. On the other hand if you appreciate melodic guitar songs this is good stuff. Personally I wish I'd just bought the 7" of 'All Women .. '/Donna'. (K records)

Alien's Mom (3-track 7") by Tribe 8. A San Francisco dyke band, much thrashier than the above. The title track is an OK thrash-punk tune with likeable lyrics about a woman leaving her husband for another woman. As for the drippy B-side - some things are best kept to ones therapist. I like Tribe 8 a lot, but this isn't the best I've heard from them. (Outpunk)

Out punk Dance Party (compilation LP). A variety of mainly north American dyke and queer bands from hardcore punk to one rap number. It gets off to a great start as a house beat familiar to any gay club-goer is wiped off the turntables with a satisfying needle­screech, but the tracks themselves are vari­able. Includes a good 'un (though not new) from London's own Sister George and I found the CWA rap story pleasantly amusing, plus a couple of the boys' bands a pretty good. However, though this could have been the definitive queercore comp, only half of it is up to scratch. (Outpunk)

You're Dead (4-track 7") by lovable young­sters the Frantic Spiders. I think this is their first record (?) and in their letter they say "this is very old and not indicative of the rousing live experience that Frantic Spiders are famed for". This may be, but all the same it's not bad. It's punky pop at a good pace, quite clear-sounding and there's a funny metaillic sound to the guitar, like slide guitar wthout the slide, which is also good. 'Retard' is the most memorable song, but don't they know it's not nice to call people that? (Weirdness).

American Thighs by Veruca Salt (LP) The most mainstream-indie of this issue's reviews. It sounds very much like The Breeders, ie US alternative pop-rock, tuneful, female vocals, expensive production, loud bits... quiet bits ... To be honest this is a bit too slow and mild to be my cup of tea, but I can see it's not bad, the guitars have a reasonable grind and if you like that sort of indie e stuff, you could well like this. The single, Seether, taken from the LP, is fairly lively and rockin'. (Both on Hi-Rise/Minty Fresh).

Suck (4-track 7") by Witchknot : I sup­pose this is roughly in the vein of hardcore but it has the unusual addition of a fiddle. They're six women from Bradford and I'd describe it as being something like a cross between the Dog Faced Hermans (one of their favourite bands, it seems) and the Au Pairs. Political lyrics, a strong vocalist and a fairly dissonant sound. And can you beat 'Pianist Envy' for a song title? (£2 (payable to D Taylor) from Witchknot, PO Box 169, Bradford, W Yorks BD7 1YS.)

I also got hold of records by a couple more all-women bands (both from the US) though I don't know how recent they are. 7 Year Bitch are feminist punksters whose EP Anti­disestablisbmentarianism (the longest word in the English language - don't say you don't learn anything here) is pretty good fast polit­ical hardcore, though the lyrics are stronger than the tunes. 'Dead Men Don't Rape' is an obvious crowd-pleaser. (Rugger Bugger) I also found a split single called Can We Laugh Now? with Thatcher On Acid on the other side. Musically this is good, though paradoxi­cally the lyrics are a bit irritating. (Clawfist)

Also worth checking out are US dyke band Team Dresch. Basically this is a little too gentle for my taste, but more mellow types might like it. I got a 3-track 7"; 'Hand Grenade' and 'Endtime Relay' are good, melodic guitar pop with a nice catch to them, a little dreamy­sounding. The other song 'Molasses in January' seemed painfully slow to me, but on the whole I'd recommend it. (Kill Rock Stars)

At the other end of the scale are Delicate Vomit, an all-women punk band from Newcastle. In case you hadn't guessed from their having 'vomit' in the name they are towards the hardcore end of punk. I haven't got a record to review, but the one song I heard sounded interesting.

121 Centre in Brixton: 1990s flyers

The 121 Centre in Brixton, variously known as an ‘anarchist centre’, ‘social centre’ and ‘squatted centre’, was a hub of international radical activity and much else throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The house at 121 Railton Road, SE24 was first squatted by a group of local anarchists in 1981 and was finally evicted in 1999 (it is now private flats). Its four storeys included a bookshop, office space, printing equipment, kitchen and meeting area, and a basement for gigs and parties.

Over 18+ years it was the launchpad for numerous radical initiatives, some short-lived, others having a more lasting impact. Many groups used 121 for meetings and events, including Brixton Squatters Aid, Brixton Hunt Saboteurs, Food not Bombs, Community Resistance Against the Poll Tax, Anarchist Black Cross, the Direct Action Movement, London Socialist Film Co-op and the Troops Out Movement. Publications associated with 121 included Shocking Pink, Bad Attitude, Crowbar, Contraflow, Black Flag and Underground.

There was a regular Friday night cafe and many gigs and club nights, including the legendary mid-1990s Dead by Dawn (which I've written about here before). 121 was a venue for major events including Queeruption, the Anarchy in the UK festival and an International Infoshop Conference. It was, in short, a space where hundreds of people met, argued, danced, found places to live, fell in and out of love, ate and drank..

This is the first in a series of posts featuring flyers from 121:



September 1995 - a film night with HHH Video Magazine featuring recent events including the Battle of Hyde Park
(anti-Criminal Justice Act demo), the McDonalds libel trial, the 1994 'levitation of parliament; and the Claremont Road/M11 road protest. In the pre-web 2.0/youtube era, videos like this were a key way in which visual information from different movements circulated.

Wonder what the 'Russian Techno Art Performance' was?



February 1995 - a benefit night for the 56a Info Shop in Elephant Castle, with Difficult  Daughters,
Steve Cope & the 1926 Committee, Mr Social Control and others.

Martin Dixon remembers playing the song  'Animals' at 121: 'Steve Cope and the 1926 Committee arose from the ashes of The Proles. I used to play trumpet with them on this one song. Invariably the last song of the set I remember getting on stage with them in the packed basement of the squatted 121 Centre in Railton Road, Brixton. Every time I lifted the trumpet a dog would leap up barking wildly. “Whenever they need to segregate, experiment or isolate, or simply to humiliate,
they’ll call you animals ”.

Mr Social Control was a performance poet, he used to sometimes have a synth player
 and rant to Pet Shop Boys style backing. 



August 1995: punk gig with Scottish band Oi Polloi and PMT, who came from Norwich.



August 1995 'Burn Hollywood Burn' video night. Riot Porn was always popular at 121,
in this case film of the Los Angeles uprising, as well as squatting in Brixton, Hackney and Holland.



1992: Burn Hollywood Burn again! LA riots plus video of Mainzer Straße evictions in Berlin (1989).
The benefit was to raise funds for an early computer link up with the Italian-based
European Counter Network (ECN) amd the Amsterdam-based Activist Press Service (APS),
via which radical news and information was circulated.




Poll Tax Archive (3): Community Resistance Against the Poll Tax

'Pay no poll tax' posters like this one graced many a window during the anti-poll tax movement.  This particular one was produced in March 1990 by Community Resistance Against the Poll Tax,  a group based in the South London borough of Lambeth. The address given on the poster is 121 Railton Road SE24 - home of the 121 anarchist centre and, as discussed here previously, the Dead by Dawn parties. 

There were many political tendencies within the movement, with debates and disagreements about the way forward. In Lambeth there were actually three borough wide groups - Lambeth Against the Poll Tax (Labour left and Socialist Workers Party); Lambeth Anti Poll Tax Union (dominated by 'Militant', now the Socialist Party) and Community Resistance Against the Poll Tax (which included  anarchists and assorted non-party activists).  The key political difference was the first two (LAPT and LAPTU) placed a great emphasis on lobbying the local Labour council not to implement the poll tax, which Community Resistance dismissed as naive. At the time this leaflet came out the Council had in fact just agreed to set the poll tax amount for Lambeth despite a riotous demonstration outside the Town Hall. 

Here's the text from back of the leaflet:

Fight the poll tax

The demonstrations at town halls in March have shown just how much anger there is against the poll tax. It’s obvious that, no matter what anyone says, mass non-payment is becoming a reality. The reason is simple – millions simply can’t afford to pay, millions more don’t want to.

But we can’t defeat this horrible new tax without organisation. All over the place you meet people who are saying “I’m not paying, I don’t care what they threaten me with“. This is great, but in a few months time any of these people could have been worn down by the massive campaign of lies that there will be in the media about how many people are paying, by well-publicised threats of court action by councils, by council snoopers hunting for those who haven’t registered, by the feeling that perhaps they will be among the unlucky few that the council has got the resources to chase up. No doubt there will be no shortage of ‘advice’ available from central and local government about how to tighten our belts to pay our poll tax and how to claim the pathetic rebates that are on offer. Any of us could become “waiverers” if we remain isolated.

We can’t expect “friends in high places” such as councillors or MPs to fight the tax for us. It’s up to us. Labour Party leaders call it “Maggie‘s tax“ but the real position on it was recently summed up by the shadow environment secretary, Bryan Gould, who said “we say pay the bill. However difficult and unpleasant and objectionable it may be..". The experience of Scotland, where the tax has been introduced a year earlier, has shown that Labour councils are just as enthusiastic about sending in the bailiffs against non-payers as their Tory friends are. But in Scotland people have resisted, there has still not been a single successful “warrant sale“ of  non-payers possessions. This is because the bailiffs have been physically resisted by large crowds.

Community Resistance against the Poll Tax is a group of people who live in the Brixton/Clapham/Stockwell/Vauxhall area. We are trying to break down isolation and support anybody who refuses to pay. We intend to resist the councils, the bailiffs and the media liars. We don’t want people to be martyrs who suffer for their principles. If we are organised it will be the implementers of the tax who will be sick with worry, not us. Lots of things could happen in the next year or so. They could get rid of Thatcher , they could call a general election… anything to make people think “we don’t have to fight now, things will be OK“. But we can’t feel safe until this evil tax has been made completely unworkable and the government and councils give up trying to implement it. 

We want to:

1. encourage as many people as possible not to pay. We will do this by means of public meetings, street stalls and the distribution of leaflets and newsletters to keep everyone informed. We have already been doing this kind of thing for well over a year. We need as much information as possible about what the councils are up to. If you know anything interesting… Get in touch!

2. encourage the formation of other local anti-poll tax groups. If you know someone who is thinking of setting up a group in another area put them in touch with us. We can help with organising public meetings, getting stuff printed etc

3. organise well-publicised acts of mass defiance against the tax, such as burning payment books

4. Exercise disruptive pressure against offices involved in implementation of the tax by means of demonstrations, pickets and occupations. We would also like to put similar pressure on employers who deduct payments from the wages of employees refusing to pay the tax, as the courts can require them to do.

5. Make links with workers who are in a position to directly disrupt implementation, either through open strike action or just through being “difficult". If you work locally in the workplacess involved in poll-tax implementation (e.g. DSS, council, company supplying services to the council…) and you think there is some potential for resistance or you think you can feed us useful information, come along to one of our meetings. You will be very welcome.

6. Do anything else we can think off to frustrate the tax.

We hold meetings on alternate Wednesdays at Clapham Baths, Clapham Manor Street at 7:30 pm. The next few meetings are on the following dates: 4th April, 18th April, 2nd May, 16 May. We also sometimes have a public meetings at other venues in the area – look out for flyposting.

We are not paying

[as stated here, Community Resistance held meetings in Clapham; they also held regular cafe nights at the community cafe in Bonnington Square, Vauxhall. Original leaflet A4 printed on white paper]

More on the poll tax:

Poll Tax Archive (1): Hospital workers say: 'we're not paying': North Middlesex Hospital anti-poll tax leaflet, 1990

Poll Tax Archive (2): St Valentines Day 1991 - Massacre the poll tax (in Lambeth)

Trafalgar Square Poll Tax Riot Memories

'Mobs riot in the West End': Poll Tax Riot press coverage

I am going to be giving a talk on the 'Poll Tax Rebellion - 30 years on' as part of the Datacide #18 magazine launch event on Friday 21 February 2020 at Ridley Road Social Club, 89 Ridley Road. London E8 2NH (with followed by music courtesy of  Praxis and Hekate - details here)

Dancing questionnaire 1 - Neil Transpontine

I want this site to reflect people's personal experiences of dancing and musicking, so I've designed a short questionnaire which I've sent out to various people and which I will post as replies come back in. If you're really keen you can fill one in yourself and send it to me at transpontine@btinternet.com. You can also add another question of your own devising if there's something else you really want to say but can't squeeze into one of these questions! To pilot this I have filled it in for myself, Neil Transpontine.

Can you remember your first experience of dancing?

I remember primary school discos in Luton. It was the 1970s and I won the best dressed boy competition (aged 11) – purple shirt with a big round collar, checked flared trousers, stack heels and a two tone suede bomber jacket (Robert Elms describes these ‘Budgie’ jackets in his book 'The Way we Wore'; Felt wrote a song about them). I remember trying to follow the girls' dancing moves, attempts at ‘The Hustle’ and kind of disco line dances. A few of us decided it was time extend our social lives beyond the confines of our own school, so we went to check out a disco at another local school. Dressed up and looking forward to a dance we were surprized to be set upon almost immediately and chased through the nearby Runfold Estate. Clothes, clubbing and running in the streets at the age of 11 - the pattern was set for the next 30 years.

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

My mum and dad met dancing at the California Ballroom in Dunstable – I guess that was pretty significant for me even if didn’t happen to me. I met my partner at the other great meeting place – work – but it was defininitely dancing and clubbing that brought us together from a drunken snog dancing to Chic in Upper Street after a Christmas party to several years clubbing all over London in the 1990s.

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

Aesthetically, my favourite venue would be the Rivoli Ballroom in Brockley (South London - pictured left), a wonderful old dance hall with velvet walls, chandeliers etc. In terms of the thrill of being there, I would say the M41 during the Reclaim the Streets party which closed down the motorway for a day in July 1996 - London Acid City – Our Time was Then.

You. Dancing. The best of times….

Hard to pin down one, but I suppose going to Club UK (in Wandsworth) with my new girlfriend (now wife) for the first time in 1994 would be up there. I can remember lots of details of the night – listening to a pirate station on the way out, J’s clothes, talking in the queue to some kids who’d done a bunk from the local children’s home to come out. Most of all I remember walking in and they were playing that Pigbag remix (Perfecto Allstarz – Reach Up), the whole place seemed to be exploding, everyone was dancing including the bar staff. Chemicals were obviously adding to the effect for me and most of them, but I also felt this sense both of instant community and continuity, as I’d seen Pigbag play this track live years before and had also seen and loved The Pop Group (Bristol post-punk agit-funkers) from whom Pigbag emerged.

You. Dancing. The worst of times…

Nothing terrible has happened to me personally, but in the early 1990s I helped put on a party at the 121 Centre in Brixton. There was a basement with a wooden staircase down to it. A guy fell straight from the top to the bottom, people carried him up (probably not the best thing to do in terms of first aid) but he died on the pavement outside – whether from the fall or that combined with drugs and alcohol I’m not sure.

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

After school and youth club discos I started out with post-punk gigs, getting my glasses smashed in the mosh pit at The Undertones (Aylesbury Friars), leaping over the barriers at the Albert Hall to get to the front when Echo & The Bunnymen played there (1983). Then on to anarcho-punk squat gigs, mid-1980s (Old Kent Road Ambulance Station, Kings Cross Bus Garage), rare groove/funk nights 1987/88 (Jay Strongman’s Dance Exchange at The Fridge in Brixton, PSV in Manchester), ‘world music’ clubs (Mambo Inn in Brixton, Whirl-Y-Gig in Shoreditch Town Hall), indie pop nights in the late 80/early 90s (Camden Falcon, New Cross Venue), clubs in West Belfast (Felons). Everywhere possible with increasing frequency in the 1990s from house music clubs (Club UK, Ministry of Sound, Leisure Lounge, The Gallery at Turnmills, The Cross, The Aquarium), trance and techno nights (Megatripolis at Heaven, Eurobeat 2000), drum and bass (Speed at the Mars Bar) to free parties/squats (Cool Tan and Dead by Dawn in Brixton, bus garage in Hackney, United Systems parties in Market Road, north London). The photo right is in Ibiza (where else?), 1995. Finally stopped for a breather due to children later in the 1990s, sporadic and eclectic dancing, DJing and musicking ever since, highlights in the last year including Norman Jay at Notting Hill Carnival and rediscovering dancing to indie pop at How Does It Feel to be Loved? in Brixton.

When and where did you last dance?

Sean Rowley's Guilty Pleasures at Everything Must Go in Soho, just before Christmas 2006. It was most people’s last day at work for a week or two, so it was like the Saturday night release feeling magnified in intensity, hundreds of people singing along to Carly Simon (‘I had some dreams there were clouds in my coffee…’) dancing on tables and in every available space. I started having this utopian fantasy about everyone deciding that they wanted to carry on like this all the time and refusing to go back to work after the break - a kind of disco general strike spreading across the planet.

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

Probably some epic house anthem, Scarlet Beautiful by The Beloved would certainly be up there as the song we played at our wedding. Your Loving Arms by Billy Ray Martin. Something like Joe Smooth ‘Promised Land’ or Bedrock’s 'For what you dream of' would also work. Or maybe ‘Walk away Renee’ (Four Tops). Or Belle and Sebastian’s ‘Boy with the Arab Strap’. Or…. Or….

Praxis Records 20th Anniversary Party

Looking forward to next Friday's Praxis records party in London, all aboard the MS Stubnitz boat (facebook events details here) .

Praxis released its first records in November 1992, and twenty years later is still going strong. Started by Christoph Fringeli in South London, and associated in the mid-1990s with the famous Brixton Dead by Dawn parties, it is now based in Berlin. It has stayed true to its mission of putting out sounds from the noisier, faster, more experimental, but still very much partyable end of electronic music. There's a great line up next week, with various people associated with Praxis and related projects at various times:

- Bambule - http://soundcloud.com/touchedraw
- Base Force One - http://soundcloud.com/praxisrecords/
- Controlled Weirdness - http://soundcloud.com/dj-controlled-weirdness
- Dan Hekate - http://hekate.co.uk/
- DJ Stacey - http://soundcloud.com/noyeahno
- DJ Scud (Ambush/Sub/Version)
- Eiterherd - http://widerstand.org/
- FZV - http://soundcloud.com/fzv
- Kovert - http://soundcloud.com/kovert
- Somatic Responses - http://soundcloud.com/somatics
- Warlock - http://soundcloud.com/warlock

VJ: Sansculotte

The boat is located at King George V Dock, Gallions Reach (DLR-Station), Royal Docks, London - it is a stationary boat, so you can get on and off when you like!


Doors open 11pm on Friday 2nd November, music starts midnight and goes until 6.

Tickets on the night: GBP 10.00.  Guest list: GBP 5.00 (email to praxis(at)c8.com for guest list with subject header “stubnitz guest list”)

The venue itself will be worth the effort. The MS Stubnitz is a former East German deep-sea fishing vessel, converted in 1992 to a floating cultural space. It came over to London earlier this year for the ill-fated Bloc festival. In fact, as chaos and overcrowding ensued on shore, leading to the cancellation of the festival, the party on the Stubnitz went fine by all accounts, with DJ Controlled Weirdness and others holding it together.

Dancing Questionnaire 21: John Eden

Happy summer solstice, June 21st and here's the 21st completed Dancing Questionnaire from John Eden of Uncarved, Woofah and many other adventures.

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?

I can't really, unless you count doing the hokey cokey at parties or 'music and movement' at school as a child. I have rubbish co-ordination, so never had much confidence for physical things like football or dancing.

We did have some school discos when I was about 10, but I seem to remember running about with mates rather than dancing. It was a nerd's life from then until my mid teens.

I found it a lot easier to hang out at parties talking bollocks in the kitchen or arguing over whose tape got played on the stereo (which I think is how many people ended up being DJs 'in the olden days' - a love of music and a fear of making an arse of yourself dancing).

I eventually overcame most of my reservations about getting on down with a combination of teenage drinking and going to places where nobody seemed to mind if you were gyrating like a short-circuiting C3PO. I'm never going to win any medals for my dance skills, but it's been an incredibly important part of my life.

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

Er, I dunno. None of the significant things in my life have happened whilst I've been dancing. This is probably because I try to get completely lost in it all and remove myself from the outside world.

I guess I'm often 'working through' stuff in the back of my head without realising it, and then having a chuckle at myself for being so serious and then realising that whatever it was just didn't matter all that much anyway. I'm also a fan of those little conspiratorial smiles with complete strangers.

More concretely, the plan to do the fanzine which became WOOFAH hatched out of several nights on the Plastic People dancefloor at the sadly missed BASH - an incredible reggae/grime/dubstep night run by Kevin Martin (The Bug) and Loefah (DMZ).

On a less positive note, someone was once sick into the hood of my hooded top whilst I was dancing, which seemed quite significant at the time.

Oh and the first Gulf War broke out while I was dancing to Psychic TV at the Zap Club in Brighton, which killed the mood somewhat.

3. You. Dancing. The best of times

Reclaiming the Streets on the Westway [film below from 1996 - one of my favourite days too, Neil]. Fatboy Slim playing all night in the small room at The End. Watching the sun come out from behind the clouds at the Big Chill. Any of The Bug's sets at BASH.

There's a lot I can't remember, the hundreds of amazing nights out with friends that are little chapters in the larger story of a social relationship... it's never just about the dancing, it's the mad conversations, getting ready, random things happening on the way home, the whole night.

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times...

I got really drunk at drum 'n' bass night PM Scientists (Farringdon, circa 1997) and fell over the MC whilst he was in full flow. That didn't go down very well.

Seeing bouncers pound some poor guy's head against a wall in Cyprus. Moody junglists telling people off for dancing 'in my space'. Euro-crusties killing the vibe with a two hour acid techno set in someone's kitchen.

Homophobic MCs on my favourite soundsystem (which to be fair to them they sorted out sharpish),

Casualties. Realising that, tonight John, YOU are the casualty.

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to every single person whose feet I have trodden on, or whose drink I have spilled in the course of my adventures over the years.

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

Mid 80s - Flailing around ripped to the gills on cider at various punky gigs.

1988 - first acid house moment, first time in a nightclub.

Late 80s/early 90s - lots of gigs/clubs by aciiiieeeed converts like Psychic TV, the Shamen, Megadog, the odd squat party here and there. Oh and The Torture Garden fetish nights, which were a bit of an eye-opener. Also some goth/indie nights (I blame my housemates). This covers the first few years of me moving to London so I was going out a lot.

Mid 90s - the Tribal Gathering festivals. A brief flirtation with the early stages of Goa trance with Return to the Source at the Brixton Fridge. Then drum 'n' bass, plus things like Dead by Dawn at the 121 Centre.

Late 90s: falling headlong into Big Beat and an increasingly all-consuming obsession with all things dub, culminating in some truly inspirational moments under the influence of soundsystems like Jah Shaka, Iration Steppas, Abashanti and Jah Tubbys.

Early to mid 2000s: I went to a few nights organised by folk on the UK-Dance.org discussion list. Since then the only game in town has been BASH, really. I've occasionally enjoyed grime/dubstep nights like Dirty Canvas, FWD and the squatted 'House Party' events. For a while my main source of dancing was at kids' discos... cha cha slide..
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Late 2000s: A few years ago I got tired of regularly being the oldest bloke in the room at dubstep/grime nights. Since then I've gravitated more towards smaller reggae/rocksteady/ska clubs like Tighten Up and Musical Fever . These attract an impressively diverse age range and are always great - everyone is serious about the music, but generally not at the expense of having a good time.

6. When and where did you last dance?

I had a drunken stagger recently at a mate's birthday party in Camden (this mate, in fact). Jah Shaka at the Dome in Tufnell Park was the last time I had a proper session. That was back in May and did me a power of good.

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

I would probably attempt to nod my head to Hopeton Lewis' 'Take It Easy', but throwing off the respirator and waving my zimmer frame in the air like I just don't care is probably reserved for 'Drop Top Caddy' by Aphrodite and Mickey Finn.

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).

5 words: Funky, Surrealism, Pirates, Exodus, 121

The '5 word meme' is just that - somebody gives you 5 words to say something about. Bob from Brockley gave me my five (as well as prompting Shalom Libertad and Waterloo Sunset to respond among others). If you want to join in, say so in a comment and I will give you five words to ponder.

Funky

A while ago, Cornershop declared that Funky Days are Here Again. What they didn't predict was that Funky would return as a noun rather than a verb, the name for the latest blending of bass and beats on UK dancefloors. It's always been hard to define funk, but there are certainly plenty who would argue that UK Funky doesn't have it (including Paul Gilroy). It's true that the rhythm owes more to house and soca than to James Brown, but who cares. I've always liked up on the floor female vocal anthems, so can only rejoice that a whole new seam of them has been uncovered in the disco goldmine. Check out Grievous Angel's Crazy Legs mix, which has the temerity to mix Brian Eno & David Byrne's Jezebel Spirit into Hard House Banton's Sirens.

Surrealism

When I first got interested in politics I was greatly attracted to Dada, Surrealism and the Situationists, initially through second hand accounts in books like Richard Neville's Play Power, Jeff Nuttal's Bomb Culture and indeed Gordon Carr's The Angry Brigade. The emphasis on play, festival and the imagination still resonates with me, but I would question the notion of desire as an unproblematic engine of radical change. Desire is surely formed amidst the psychic swamp of present social conditions and I would no longer advise everybody to take their desires for reality - sadly I have seen far too much of the impoverished desires of men in particular. Just look through your spam emails.

Pirates

The untimely death of 'pirate' Paul Hendrich scuppered our scheme to raise the jolly roger and declare a pirate republic on a traffic island on the New Cross Road. Still the appeal of some kind of autonomous sovereignty beyond the reach of states lingers on- even if its contemporary reality of sailors held hostage in Somalia doesn't sound quite so romantic. I was also once in a short-lived Pirate Band, our one gig playing the yiddish potato song Bulbes in the Pullens community centre at the Elephant and Castle, supporting the fine indie pop duo Pipas.

Exodus

I grew up in Luton but had moved away by the time of its greatest counter-cultural contribution, the Exodus Collective. I made it to a few of their events though, and their massive free parties were as legendary as their tenacity in defending themselves in the courts. If Rastafarians transposed the Exodus myth to Africa, the Exodus Collective were more modest - an actual practice of leaving the Town (and in particular the Marsh Farm council estate where some of the them lived) for parties in the Bedforshire countryside combined with plans to create some kind of alternative society of community housing and support. Some of the people involved are still keeping the faith, but Exodus itself seems to have imploded at the end of the 1990s. Not sure exactly why, but I guess it was the usual story of conflict involving drugs, money and personalities. Still the land of milk and honey did materialise briefly next to the M1 motorway.




121

121 Railton Road was a squat in a Brixton terrace that ran from 1981 to 1999. During that time it served as an anarchist centre, radical bookshop, meeting place, print shop, office for feminist and anarcho magazines and venue for countless gigs and parties, including the far famed Dead by Dawn events. As I lived in Brixton from 1987 to 1995 I spent a lot of time there, the best of times (dancing and chatting all night) and the worst of times (seeing somebody die in the street outside after a party I was helping with). And also the plain dullest of times, with seemingly endless meetings of bickering and intra-anarchist faction fighting.

Alien Underground

Over at Datacide, Christoph has been publishing texts from Alien Underground, a great zine published in South London in 1994/95 offerin 'techno theory for juvenile delinquents'. Two issues were published before the project morphed into Datacide, still going strong albeit with a somewhat irregular publishing schedule.

Highlights include interviews with Digital Hardcore Recordings, Mille Plateaux and Sadie Plant (by Matt Fuller), Flint Michigan on the Critical Arts Ensemble, and an article on the anti-rave Criminal Justice Bill.

Reading these made me nostalgic for that scene, encompassing Dead by Dawn in Brixton, squat parties, the Association of Autonomous Astronauts, anti-CJB demonstrations and all round techno-optimism - with a combination of Deleuze & Guattari and very fast and loud beats seeming to offer a new radical line of flight from capitalism. In those days I seriously thought I would never listen to a guitar again! Well maybe it wasn't sufficient basis on its own for a 21st century radical movement, but it certainly created some interesting situations and opened up new possibilities, some of which are still being played out (in all senses of the phrase).

There's a couple of old pieces from me: a report of a London History Workshop meeting on jazz culture: 'The powers restricting “raves” in the Criminal Justice Act are not the first authoritarian response to a dance-based culture. The association of popular dancing with sex, intoxication, and black people has made it an object of moralist suspicion at various times in history. It was the jazz dance craze which swept across much of the west that was the source of both pleasure and panic in the 1920s'; and a review of the book Microphone Fiends: '"Underground” nights in expensive clubs and “underground” compilations on major record labels might be bullshit, but loads of people taking over empty buildings and creating free or very cheap space for parties on their own terms is a real alternative to the commodity culture industry. And when sound systems become the focus for a serious showdown with the cops in central London, as happened on October 9th [anti-CJB demonstration], it is clear we are no longer just talking about empty gestures of fake rebellion'.

Yup, I've been repeating myself for at least 15 years, but hey, once you've got your schtick why change it?

Clubbing in Luton 1983-87

In the mid-1980s the centre of the musical universe, or at least my universe at that time was Luton in Bedfordshire. For any non-UK readers, this is an industrial town 30 miles north of London – or at least it was at this point, before General Motors closed down the Vauxhall car factory.

Martin at Beyond the Implode has chronicled his memories of the downside of living there in the early 1990s – driving around all night listening to Joy Division on the run from ‘Clubs where you'd pay 10 quid to enter (5 if you were a girl) with the promise of a free bar all night. Pints of watered down Kilkenny Ajax, or single vodkas with a squirt of orange. Bobby Brown skipping on the club's CD-player. Bare knuckle boxing tournaments outside kebab shops’. Sarfraz Manzoor has also painted a less than flattering account of the town in his book Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion, Rock’n’Roll (later filmed as Blinded by the Light).

There’s nothing in these accounts I would really disagree with, though only people who have lived in Luton earn the right to criticise it. I would of course defend it against other detractors by pointing out to its interesting counter-cultural history!

I was born and grew up there, and actually chose to move back to be a full time anarcho-punk for a few years in the mid-1980s, having earlier left the town to go to college. I think the anarcho-punk stories can wait until another post, but for now lets look at the mid-1980s nightlife, such as it was.

The Blockers Arms

There were several pubs with an ‘alternative’ crowd in Luton around this time – The Black Horse, The Sugar Loaf, later the Bricklayers Arms. But in the mid-1980s the various sub-cultures of punks, psychobillies, skinheads and bikers tended to congregate at one pub more than any other, The Blockers Arms in High Town Road. A hostile local historian has written that ‘During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the pub became a Mecca for some of the undesirable elements of Luton society, it being reported that the pub was used by drug-peddlers, with the result that there was much trouble with fights and under-age drinking’ (Stuart Smith, Pubs and Pints: the story of Luton’s Public Houses and Breweries, Dunstable: Book Castle, 1995). Most of this is true, but of course we all thought we were very desirable!

The micro-tribes gathered in the pub were united in their alienation from mainstream Luton nightlife, whilst suspicious of each other, sometimes to the point of violence. The bikers dominated the pool table and the dealing. The traditional charity bottle on the bar read ‘support your local Hells Angels’, and you really didn’t want to argue with them. Skinheads would turn up looking for a fight, throwing around glasses. Even among the punks there were different factions, albeit overlapping and coexisting peacefully – some slightly older first generation punks, Crass-influenced anarcho-punks and goths. There were the early indie pop kids too, though I don't think anybody called them that at the time (The Razorcuts came from Luton as did Talulah Gosh's Elizabeth Price). The layout of the pub catered for the various cliques as there were different areas – the inside of the pub had little booths (the smallest for the DJ), and there was also an outside courtyard where bands sometimes played. I remember for instance seeing Welwyn's finest The Astronauts there.

I saw in 1984 in the Blockers. There was drinking, singing and dancing, with midnight marked with Auld Lang Syne and U2’s ‘New Year’s Day’. Inevitably Bowie’s 1984 also got an airing. Later in the year it closed down for refurbishment in the latest of a series of doomed attempts to lose its clientele. It reopened only to lose its license in 1986, closing soon after. The pub later reopened and eventually became The Well.

Sweatshop parties

After The Blockers on that New Year’s Eve nearly everybody went on to a warehouse party at 'the Sweatshop' (22a Guildford Street). Luton had once been famous for its hat industry – blockers were one of the groups of workers involved – and there were various former hat factory spaces in the old town centre. One of these was put into action on Christmas Eve 1983 and again on New Year’s Eve – the flyer for the former being recycled for the latter, inviting people to bring their own bottle and dance till dawn for £1. As well as Cramps, Siouxsie and the Banshees etc. there was lots of 1950s music, in addition to what I noted in my diary at the time as drinking, dancing, kissing and falling around. The flyer states 'Dirt Box Rip Off',  a reference to the popular Dirt Box warehouse parties in London at that time.

The space was used a few times in the mid-80s for parties over Christmas and New Year. There was a small room downstairs and a big open space upstairs, I remember one time the banister on the staircase between the two collapsed, and somebody broke their arm. But most people there would surely rather have taken their chances with dodgy health and safety than risked going out in the main clubs and bars of Luton town centre.

I believe Ric Ramswell was one of the people involved in putting on some of these parties. For a while he ran 'Identity',  an alternative clothes shop in Luton. In the 1990s he and his partner Debbie ran London club nights Pushca.

On Facebook, Luton legend Steve Spon (UK Decay guitarist among many other things) has recalled of the final (?) nights 'Think that was run by Crazy Fish and the Lovelite crew [local soul/reggae sound system], I was placed on the door to take the ad fee along on behalf of Crazy Fish with a chap from Lovelite. We were literally glued together all night, not allowing each other out of sight. The party became roadblocked as scores of cars arrived from London after word got out. It became so packed , the stairway collapsed, luckily I don't think anyone was hurt too badly. I think that was the last time at that venue as the venue was getting way to popular for it's size. Crazy Fish, got himself another Technics SL1200 with the help of the proceeds if I remember correctly. This was a portent in Luton of things to come, with underground parties taking a foothold, after the the infamous Milton Keynes parties in Woburn woods gathered large crowds from Luton on warm summer evenings. One such involved the Mutoid Waste Company who drove us around the MK fields in large Dinosaur sculpted Trucks. Then a year or two later Exodus hit the town with thousands hitting the big empty warehouses in town and the empty quarries out of town in the nearby area'.

Tuesday Night Beneath the Plastic Palm Trees

The dominant nightclub culture in the town catered for pringle-clad ‘casuals’ as we derided the mainstream youth fashion of the time. The biggest club was the Tropicana Beach – once known as Sands, it still had plastic palm trees. I often wondered whether it might have been one of the inspirations for Wham’s Club Tropicana, given that George Michael grew up not too far away in Hertfordshire.

With a dress code of ‘casual or interesting but not scruffy’, punks were generally banned and indeed most other deviations from the norm. I remember seeing the organiser of a student disco there turned away from his own party on account of his vaguely hippyish appearance. Of course the people they did let in were often far more dangerous than those outside – once when I was refused entry there were knives outside presumably left behind when people realized they’d be searched on the way in.

I did occasionally go there on Tuesdays, when with punters in short supply free tickets were given out to more or less anybody able to buy a drink – seemingly regardless of age as well as clothes. The music was whatever was in the charts with a DJ who spoke over the records mixing sexist banter with comments designed to police the dancefloor – telling my friends to stop their raucous slam dancing with the warning ‘do you girls want to stay until one o’clock?’ (not sure they did actually).

For one night only in 1984, the Tropicana Beach fell into the hands of the freaks. The local TV station BBC East were filming a performance by Furyo, one of the splinters from the break up of Luton’s main punk band, UK Decay, and all the local punks, goths and weirdoes were rounded up to be the audience.

Strokes and Shades

There were sporadic alternative nights in some of Luton's clubs which offered a bit of diversity. Sometimes they took place on the quieter mid-week nights  - since so many of us were on the dole it didn’t particularly matter whether it was a Tuesday or a Saturday night.

The Stingray Club was one such night which sprung up in various places including Cheers, The Mad Hatter and Doublets. I believe it opened at the latter in May 1983, I noted at that time that  'it has lots of mirrors, a bar, a steel dance floor and opens until 2 am' with music including 'New Order, Bauhaus, Sex Gang etc'. £1.50 in and a 'mostly Blockers set' crowd. Think Derek Smith from pioneering electronic duo Click Click helped set up Stingray, and that Rick Ramswell was also involved. The latter ran a clothes shop called Identity in the town that later moved to Kensington Market; he later ran Pushca club nights in London.

I think the Stingray Club also used Strokes nightclub, where another occasional ‘alternative’ night called The Gathering was held in 1984,  I also went to a reggae sound system night at Strokes.

Another occasional oasis was Luton’s only gay club, Shades in Bute Street (formerly the Pan Club). In 1983 it hosted Club for Heroes, an attempt at a new romanticish club night with lots of Bowie, Kraftwerk and Iggy Pop. I particularly remember Yello’s ‘I love you’ playing there. There were attempts at robotic dancing -whenever I hear the Arctic Monkeys sing of 'dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984' I am transported back to this place. All this for £1 and beer at 82p a pint!

There was also the 33 Arts Centre, a community arts space with print shop, video and music studios that sometimes put on gigs and events. These and other venues can be viewed in this fine gallery of notorious Luton punk venues.

The Switch

Most of these nights came and went, but there was one which defined Luton’s post-punk nightlife for quite a few years – The Switch.

In the early 1970s, Luton Council became one of the first to embrace the indoor shopping mall in a big way – by bulldozing much of the existing town centre. The Arndale Centre which replaced it opened in 1972 and was for a while the biggest indoor shopping centre in Europe. Needless to say it was, and is, a bland soulless affair but the planners did provide for it to include a pub, originally named The Student Prince and then the Baron of Beef. The name had changed again to the Elephant & Tassel by January 1985 when on a Thursday night – it happened to be my birthday – The Switch held its first night there.

The Switch was to remain at the Tassel for a couple of years, and continued at various other venues into the mid-1990s with the DJs/promoters Nick Zinonos and Bernie James spreading their empire to run nights in Northampton, Oxford and Cambridge.

My time there though was in 1985/6, when Thursday night at The Switch fitted nicely into the Giro Thursday routine of me and many of my friends. This involved picking up our cheques from the government (£39 a week), cashing them at the post office, getting in the vegan groceries and then going home to crimp our hair before heading to the pub and then The Switch. There to drink and dance to songs like Spear of Destiny’s Liberator, Baby Turns Blue by the Virgin Prunes, the Sisters of Mercy’s Alice, Dark Entries by Bauhaus and The Cult’s Spiritwalker. In a departure from the general gothdom the last record was usually 'Tequila' by The Champs.

Tracks like these were to become staples of goth clubs for years to come, but at least we were dancing to them when they were new and anyway Luton can claim to be the town that invented goth. So at least some say on the basis that UK Decay was one of the first punk bands to start referencing horror themes, plundering Edgar Allen Poe and Herman Hesse for inspiration (see 1981 article Punk Gothique). We might also add that Richard North (aka Cabut), sometime editor of Luton/Dunstable punk zine Kick played a significant role in the early goth/ ‘positive punk’ scene – he coined the latter phrase in NME in 1983 and played in one of the bands, Brigandage - you can read his account of being a Dunstable punk at 3am magazine (Dunstable is Luton's next door neighbour).

The Switch sometimes had live music. I recall seeing a band called The Veil there in 1986, strangely enough including some Americans who had been in a band with Bryan Gregory from the Cramps and had ended up living in Luton and working in the local cinema.

The UK Decay website has resurrected a whole virtual community of punks and goths from the Luton area, and includes some good memories of the Switch such as this one: ‘I started going late '84 when I was 16 and it was wild! The most amazing collage of weird and wonderful people…I drank LOTS of DRINKS, got into lots of bands, and dyed my hair various colours. It was where I learnt about wearing makeup as a boy, lots of new bands, subcultures, and of course...GIRLS! It was a life experience, that club, and we all came away changed’.

Another recalls: ‘Oh happy days. 1985 was the start of my new alternative social life and the blueprint to the soundtrack of my life. After leaving school and starting working in the alcohol aisle of Tesco's I was introduced to this cool goth called Karl. He informed me of this goth club under the Arndale called The Elephant And Tassel. After visiting for the first time in the summer of '85 and being lucky enough to obtain a membership straight away, I was born again’.

The same person also remembers the downside: 'I remember also, all too well, getting done over on the way home by an unpleasant man with a half-brick and three mates who objected to my fashion sensibilities…Dressing in black, crimping your hair and spraying it with the contents of one of those big fucking tins of Boots hairspray somehow always managed to cause offence to beer monsters’.

When I recall my time in Luton, violence is always mixed up with my memories- skinheads threatening blokes for wearing make up, bikers beating people up for talking to their girlfriends, drunken arguments with bouncers. In the Switch one night, the DJ got a bloody nose from a guy called Maz - who really put the psycho in psychobilly – just because he hadn’t played his band’s demo tape enough. Then there was gang warfare – Luton Town Football Club’s hooligan firms the MIGs (Men in Gear) and the BOLTs (Boys of Luton Town). At least unlike some of the London firms they weren’t linked to the far right, but the fact that they were racially mixed (white british and african-caribbean) didn’t stop some of them from engaging in a long and violent conflict with the asian Bury Park Youth Posse.

Post-post punk

As the 80s wore on, the punk uniform began to feel restrictive and more to the point anybody with an appreciation for music had to acknowledge that some of the most innovative and exciting sounds were coming out of black music, such as early hip hop and electro. For some reason it was Prince more than any other artist who seemed to provide the bridge which a lot of Luton punky types crossed into an appreciation of this music.

In search of something different we sometimes went to a gay club at the Elephant and Tassel on Saturday night, where there was a diet of hi-nrg pop like Bronski Beat, Divine and Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round. In January 1987, I went to another night at the Tassel, Rubber Box, where DJ Crazy Fish (John Harper) played versions of Kiss by both Prince and the Age of Chance. The next week I moved down to London and my days clubbing in Luton were more or less over.

I did use to come back sometimes over the next couple of years and go to The Mad Hatter (which later became Club M), where the Switch had moved to. They played indie stuff upstairs while downstairs there was 80s soul and funk. By this time I was spending more time downstairs than up, down among the casuals who I was now indistinguishable from with my flat top and bomber jacket. Maybe they weren’t so bad after all -well my sister was one – and to be fair as well as intolerant unmusical thugs there was always a hardcore of dedicated soul boys and girls in Luton who took their music very seriously, heading off to Caister for soul weekenders etc. Mind you some of them were still thugs!

That was more or less it for me and dancing in Luton (so far!), although I did make it back to Bedfordshire for a festival put on by the Exodus Collective, Luton’s free party warriors and I also went to a 2011 night put on my their successor Leviticus. And of course I had to go when Exodus put on a party at the Cool Tan squat in Brixton when I was living there in 1995. Some of the old Luton ex-punks were there too, still going strong in an electronic outfit called Big Eye. Having put down roots elsewhere I can’t imagine living back in Luton, but respect to those still trying to make interesting things happen there, some of whom have now been at it for 30+ years.

Vandalism begins at home is a current Luton music site. UK Decay Communities is the best source of Luton punk history, with a gallery of photos that future social historians will pore over as a record of subcultural style in an English town in the 1970s and 1980s.

See also clubbing in 1984 in London, Sheffield and Manchester.

Updated August 2022 with additional Switch and Rubber Box flyers found at Friends of the Switch Club facebook group.

Note: a lot of people seem to end up at this post looking for information about Luton Town FC 1980s football firms, as I mention MIGs and BOLTs. So do quite a few people in comments - yes it's true that Luton hooligan face 'Badger' -Daniele Luciano Moskal - became a born again Christian and evangelical writer. Not quite my scene but I am a lifelong Hatter and I think quite a few of the old Luton punks can say likewise. Indeed it was because UK Decay/Furyo singer Abbo (Steve Abbott) became manager of US indie band Pavement that members of that band were sometimes seen in Luton shirts in the early 1990s.

Pavement singer Stephen Malkmus in (I think) 1992/3 Luton Town away kit

Neil Transpontine (2022),  Clubbing in Luton 1983-87  <https://history-is-made-at-night.blogspot.com/2008/02/clubbing-in-luton-1984.html>. Published under Creative Commons License BY-NC 4.0. You may share and adapt for non-commercial use provided that you credit the author and source, and notify the author. First version published 2008.

Other Luton writings:

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

Blinded by the Light - memories of racism and job cuts in 1980s Luton (including the Luton Youth Movement)

The Luton Riots of 1981 - 'Brixton comes to Bedfordshire'

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town

Karma Sutra, Luton anarcho-punk and hunt sabbing

Luton anarcho punk squat party 1985 at the unemployed centre

Dole Days in Luton: unemployed protests, 1985

We are Luton - opposing the English Defence League in 2012

'Angry White People' book review (in Datacide magazine)