Monday, October 22, 2012

Music for the Middle of the Night

From Haruki Murakami's 'After Dark', 2004:


'The record ends. the automatic turntable lifts the needle, and the tone arm drops on to its rest. The bartender approaches the player to change records. He carefully lifts the platter and slips it into its jacket.  Then he takes out the next record, examines its surface under a light, and sets it on the turntable. He presses a button and the needle descends to the record. Faint scratching. The Duke Ellington's 'Sophisticated Lady' begins to play. Harry Carney's languorous bass clarinet performs solo. The bartender's unhurried movements give the place its own special time flow.

Maria asks the bartender, 'Don't you ever play anything but LPs?'

'I don't like CDs', he replies.

'Why not?'

'They're too shiny'....

'But look at all the time it takes to change LPs', Mari says.

The bartender laughs. 'Look, it's the middle of the night. There won't be any trains running till morning. What's the hurry?'

Karou cautions Mari, 'Remember this fella's a little on the weird side'.

'It's true, though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night,' the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette, 'You can't fight it'.

... The sound of the needle tracing the record groove. The languorous, sensual music of Duke Ellington. Music for the middle of the night.'

Friday, October 19, 2012

Datacide Twelve is Out!

The twelfth issue of Datacide, 'the magazine for noise and politics',  is out today, with 68 pages of stuff you won't find in any other journal. I have a couple of pieces in it, and the full contents are as follows:

- Datacide: Introduction
- Darkam: The Art of Visual Noise
- Nemeton: Political News
- Christoph Fringeli: Neo-Nazi Terror and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Germany
- Cherry Angioma: Communisation Theory and the Question of Fascism
- Christoph Fringeli: From Adorno to Mao – The Decomposition of the ’68 Protest Movement into Maoism (extended book review)
- Split Horizon: Control and Freedom in Geographic Information Systems
- Riccardo Balli: “Bolognoise ain’t a Sauce for Spaghetti but Bologna’s Soundscape”
- Polaris International: Documents and Interventions
- TechNET insert:
   - Noise and Politics – Technet Mix
   - No More WordS
   - Listener as Operator
   - The Intensifier
   - No Stars Here
   - Techno: Psycho-Social Tumult
   - Dead By Dawn – Explorations inside the Night
   - Psycho-Social Tumult (Remix)
- Dan Hekate: Kiss me, cut me, hurt me, love me
- Howard Slater: Useless Ease
- John Eden: The Dog’s Bollocks – Vagina Dentata Organ and the Valls Brothers (interview)
- Neil Transpontine: Spannered – Bert Random Interview
- LFO Demon: When Hell is full the Dead will Dance on your iPhone (Review of Simon Reynolds' “Retromania”)
- Christoph Fringeli: “Fight for Freedom” – The Legend of the “other” Germany (extended book review)
- Nemeton: “West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California” (book review)
- Datacide: Press reviews
- terra audio: 2023: A Spor remembers ‘Reclaim the Streets’
- John Eden: Christopher Partridge: Dub in Babylon (book review)
- terra audio: Jeff Mills: Violet Extremist
- terra audio: Keeping the Door of the Cosmos open – on Sun Ra’s Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen
- Record Reviews
- The Lives and Times of Bloor Schleppy (12)
- Comic by Sansculotte

You can buy a copy from the Datacide website here.


There's a launch conference and party in Berlin tomorrow night October 20th at Subversiv - more details here.



If you're in London you will be able to pick up a copy next weekend (27th October) from the Datacide stall at the London Anarchist Bookfair. There is also a plan for some Datacide talks and a party in London on November 2nd - watch this space for more details.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Wild Nights


Rita Tushingham and Michael York in Smashing Time (1967)

'Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!'

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)


Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Hobsbawm on Jazz, Dance and Class

The historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) died yesterday at the age of 95.  There's plenty to criticise in his political judgement  as he aligned himself with  the various phases of the Communist Party of Great Britain from its outright Stalinism to its proto-New Labour 'Marxism Today' period - even if it's not hard to understand why somebody who spent some of his teenage years in Berlin during the rise of Hitler joined the KPD. But his history writing on class and culture was often very nuanced and non-dogmatic. He also wrote extensively on jazz.

One of my favourite short essays of his looks at the early days of jazz in Europe, reflecting on how its popularity related to changing class cultural practices. 'On the Reception of Jazz in Europe'  was originally published in 1994 and then republished as 'Jazz Comes to Europe' in the excellent collection 'Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz' (1998). Here's a few extracts:

'The speed of transatlantic transport was such that ideas, notes and people could already cross the ocean very rapidly indeed. Will Marion Cook's Clorindy: The Origin of the Cakewalk - Cook was later to bring Sidney Bechet to Britain - was performed in 1898 in both New York and London. The foxtrot, the basic dance routine associated with jazz, first appeared in Britain in the summer of 1914. a few months after its first appearance in the USA , and in Belgium in 1915. Jazz had hardly been baptized in the USA when groups under that name already toured Europe. They were there from the middle of 1917.

  ...the interesting thing about this diffusion is what was being diffused. It was one of several kinds of novel cultural and artistic creation that emerged, in the late nineteenth century, from the plebeian, mainly urban, milieu of Western industrial society, most probably in the specialized lumpenproletarian environments of the entertainment quarter in the big cities, with their specific subcultures, male and female stereotypes, costumes - and music. The Buenos Aires tango which secured for Latin American music a permanent but minor place on the international dance floor at the same time as jazz did, is one example. Cuban music is another...jazz was both novel and, in origin, an art belonging to an autonomous subculture...

  ...Jazz made its way and triumphed , not as a music for intellectuals but as a music for dancing, and specifically for a transformed, revolutionized social dance of the British middle and upper classes, but also. and almost Simultaneously, the British working-class dance. During the 1900s the upper-crust dance was transformed in two ways. (An expert contemporary witness dates the major change precisely to the season 1910-11.) First urban dancing had already ceased t be a seasonal occupation linked to special occasions. and was being practised all the year round as a regular social and leisure activity. To some extent it was practised privately, but special dancing clubs developed - there were three in Edwardian Hampstead alone - and it occurred in hotels and what were not yet called 'nightclubs' . The tea-dance and the restaurant-dance appeared on a modest scale. Second, the dance lost its formality and ordered succession. At the same time it became simpler, more easily learned and less demanding and exhausting. The crucial change here was that from the turning dance (for example. the waltz) to the walking dance, such as the Boston. a sort of rectilinear waltz, in the early 1900s. It seems clear that these developments reflected a substantial loosening of aristocratic and middle-class conventions, and they are a striking and neglected symptom of the notable emancipation of women in these classes before 1914. The link between the dance revolution, even specifically between the new primacy of rhythm in social dancing, and the emancipation of women, did not pass unperceived. It is noted in the most intelligent or the early jazz books, Paul Bernhard's Jazz: Eine musikalische Zeitfrage (1927)...  

...British jazz had a broad popular base, because its uniquely large working class had developed a, for Europe, uniquely recognizable, urbanized, non-traditional lifestyle. Even before 1914 huge popular dance halls had already been built for the holiday demand of specifically proletarian seaside resorts like Blackpool, Morecambe, Margate and Douglas on the Isle of Man. The post-war mania for dancing was immediately met by the new institution of the so-called Palais de Danse, of which the Hammersmith Palais. the first . immediately became a jazz venue by booking the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919. No doubt the music to which the plebs danced would not always be considered jazz today. Indeed, the central tradition of British mass dancing moved away from jazz towards a curious phenomenon called 'strict tempo' dancing, which was to become a competitive sport on British television. Nevertheless, jazz made its mark as a name, an idea, a novel and demotic sound.

The massive dance mania produced an unusually large body of dance-band musicians, mainly of proletarian origin, or at least raised in the environment of the brass-band movement, much appreciated in the industrial areas. These formed the original core of the jazz public... Socially speaking. dance-band musicians, who did  rather better in the 1920s than in the depressed 1930s, were on the borders between the skilled workers and the lower-middle classes. It was in the higherparts of this zone that the bulk of British jazz evangelists were to be found before 1945. They were typically self-made intellectuals. In London we find 'Rhythm Clubs' (ninety-eight of which sprang up in Britain between 1933 and 1935) not in middle-class quarters like
Chelsea, Kensington or even Hampstead, but in the outlying districts like Croydon, Forest Gate, Barking or Edmonton...

We can leave aside the reaction of high society and its associated intellectuals. In Britain this was of no great importance though doubtless it pleased Duke Ellington to have the future King Edward VII sit in on drums at a party for his band in London. Much more important, as has been suggested, was the democratic and populist character of the music, which made the Melody Maker state approvingly: [It appeals not only to the fauteuils but to the gallery also. It considers no class distinction.'

...[what Britain] did develop, however, probably in close association with American New Deal radicalism ,was a powerful bonding of jazz, blues, folk and the extreme left, mainly communist but also, marginally, anarchist. For such people jazz and blues were essentially 'people's music' in three senses: a music with folk roots and capable of appealing to the masses, a do-it-yourself music which could be practised by ordinary people, as distinct from those with technical training, and lastly a music for protest, demonstration and collective celebration. Revivalist or Dixieland jazz lent itself unusually well to all these purposes. So much so that at its peak in the 1950s it came closer to turning jazz from the art of a coterie into a mass music than has been achieved anywhere else, except perhaps, for a moment, during the swing boom of the later 1930s in the USA. It is no accident that a typical anthem of the 'trad' jazz fans also became the typical song of the football fans on the terraces : 'When the Saints Go Marching In'. However, it should be noticed that, while revivalist jazz became de facto the music of an age-group in which students, and particularly art students, became prominent for the first time. it was neither consciously nor militantly a youth music... The 'trad' boom prepared the triumph of rock, but only rock turned itself into a conscious manifesto of immaturity'.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Someday all the Adults will Die!: Punk Graphics 1971-84

'Some day all the adults will die!: punk graphics 1971-1984' is a free exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, on until 4th November 2012.

I wonder sometimes whether anything else useful can be said about punk, feels like we have been reliving that moment endlessly for the last 30 years. Ageing collapses time in unexpected ways. At school in the late 1970s and reading about May 1968 it felt as remote to me as the First World War. Now the late 1970s feel not so far away, even if the equivalent of this exhibition in 1977 would have been a show about early 1940s style. So an exhibition like this is essentially a kind of nostalgia for some ('ooh I've got that original 7 inch of Scritti Politti's Hegemony') and ancient history for others.  

The exihibition, curated by Jon Savage and Johan Kugelberg, is less a coherent take on graphics and more a very good collection of memoribilia - zines, flyers and record sleeves. But in subtle ways it does undermine some simplistic versions of the punk story.


After Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces, everyone knows about the parallels between Situationist attitude/style (if not always politics) and some strands of punk, but the exhibition shows this directly with some material from that milieu such as a King Mob poster from the late 1960s:


Likewise, and contrary to the notion of punk as a straightforward negation of the preceding period, the influence of the pre-punk UK counter culture (Oz magazine etc.) is acknowledged: 'design forerunners included the proto-pop mail art movement, counter-culture protest graphics and the underground press of the 1960s'.

The exhibition gives space to the American punk scene, with its parallel but distinct aesthetic. Who knew that Wayne County's backing band in 1976 was the Back Street Boys? Surely more interesting than the later outfit with the same name.


It recognises that punk in the UK was about much more than The Clash and The Sex Pistols, and gives due recognition to anarcho-punk - including Crass's graffiti stencils:


There are some interesting radical perspectives on music, including a remarkable flyer given out when The Rolling Stones played at the Hollywood Bowl in 1966 that hallucinates the band's music as some kind of radical rallying cry: 'Greetings and welcome Rolling Stones, our comrades in the desperate battle against the maniacs who hold power. The revolutionary youth of the world hears your music and is inspired to ever more deadly acts... We will play your music in rock'n'roll marching bands as we tear down the jails and free the prisoners'.


Less optimistic/tongue in cheek is an earnest critique of The Clash, put out by Art in Revolution in Holland in  the late 1970s: ''London's buying your crap... this is what is left of the '77 punx, a bunch of junkies and a bunch of drunks'


The zines on display are frustrating as they are behind plastic so you can only look at the covers when really you want to flick through them. The record sleeves are evocative, but you really want to listen to the music (though some of this is being played in the exhibition). The flyers and posters though don't hold anything back, or nothing that can be accessed now. They simply record a series of singular moments in history:. 

Manchester 1977: 'Punk rock rules!' at The Squat with The Drones, Warsaw (later Joy Division) and others - interesting discussion about this poster here

Los Angeles 1979: The Last and The Go-Go at Gazzarri's on Sunset Strip

Crass at Acklam Hall, Portobello Road, September 1979

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Party Riots in Holland and Spain

34 people were arrested in Haren, Netherlands, on Friday night (21 September 2012), after thousands of people turned up for a young woman's 16th birthday party inadvertently publicised on Facebook. The party was cancelled after media publicity and 'going viral', and hundreds of riot police were deployed in the small Dutch town. Youths clashed with police, who fired tear gas to disperse the crowds. A supermarket was looted. In the lead up to the weekend, people had begun making 'Project X - Haren' t-shirts, a reference to the American film about a teengage party that ends in chaos.




On the same night in Madrid, around 1,000 people who could not get into the MTV Beach festival rioted, clashing with police and setting up burning barricades in the streets. Plastic bullets were fired by police.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Expect Anything, Fear Nothing

Coming up on Saturday 22 September,  8:00pm - 10:00pm,  at the Mayday Rooms, St Brides Yard, outside 88 Fleet Street, London:

'An evening including interventions from Stewart Home, Peter Laugesen, Fabian Tompsett, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen and Jakob Jakobsen to mark the UK launch of the anthology Expect Anything Fear Nothing: The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere edited by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen and Jakob Jakobsen.

This volume is the first comprehensive English-language presentation of the Scandinavian Situationists and their role in the Situationist movement. The Situationist movement was an international movement of artists, writers and thinkers that in the 1950s and 1960s that strived to revolutionize the world through rejecting bourgeois art and the post-World War Two capitalist consumer society.

The book contains articles, conversations and statements by former members of the Situationists’ organisations as well as contemporary artists, activists, scholars and writers. While previous publications about the Situationist movement almost exclusively have focused on the contribution of the French section and in particular on the role of the Guy Debord this book aims to shed light on the activities of the Situationists active in places like Denmark, Sweden and Holland. The themes and stories chronicled include: The anarchist undertakings of the Drakabygget movement led by the rebel artists Jørgen Nash, Hardy Strid and Jens Jørgen Thorsen, the exhibition by the Situationist International “Destruction of RSG-6” in 1963 in Odense organised by the painter J.V. Martin in collaboration with Guy Debord, the journal The Situationist Times edited by Jacqueline de Jong, Asger Jorn's political critique of natural science and the films of the Drakabygget movement.

Contributors: Peter Laugesen, Carl Nørrested, Fabian Tompsett, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Jacqueline de Jong, Gordon Fazakerley, Hardy Strid, Karen Kurczynski, Stewart Home, Jakob Jakobsen'

.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Revolution as resonance



Following on from Negri and Hardt's recent reference to 'low frequency' communication between struggles, here's another example of bass as radical metaphor:

'Revolutionary movements do not spread by contamination but by resonance. Something that is constituted here resonates with the shock wave emitted by something constituted over there. A body that resonates does so according to its own mode. A insurrection is not like a plague or a forest fire – a linear process which spreads from place to place after an initial spark. It rather takes the shape of a music, whose focal points, though dispersed in time and space, succeed in imposing the rhythm of their ownvibrations, always taking on more density' (The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection, 2007)

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Low Frequency Struggles

'Early in 2011, in the depths of social and economic crises characterized by radical inequality, common sense seemed to dictate that we trust the decisions and guidance of the ruling powers, lest even greater disasters befall us. The financial and governmental rulers may be tyrants, and they may have been primarily responsible for creating the crises, but we had no choice. During the course of 2011, however, a series of social struggles shattered that common sense and began to construct a new one. Occupy Wall Street was the most visible but was only one moment in a cycle of struggles that shifted the terrain of political debate and opened new possibilities for political action over the course of the year...

Each of these struggles is singular and oriented toward specific local conditions. The first thing to notice, though, is that they did, in fact, speak to one another. The Egyptians, of course, clearly moved down paths traveled by the Tunisians and adopted their slogans, but the occupiers of Puerta del Sol also thought of their struggle as carrying on the experiences of those at Tahrir. In turn, the eyes of those in Athens and Tel Aviv were focused on the experiences of Madrid and Cairo. The Wall Street occupiers had them all in view, translating, for instance, the struggle against the tyrant into a struggle against the tyranny of finance. You may think that they were just deluded and forgot or ignored the differences in their situations and demands. We believe, however, that they have a clearer vision than those outside the struggle, and they can hold together without contradiction their singular conditions and local battles with the common global struggle.

Ralph Ellison’s invisible man, after an arduous journey through a racist society,developed the ability to communicate with others in struggle. “Who knows,” Ellison’s narrator concludes, “but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” Today, too, those in struggle communicate on the lower frequencies, but, unlike in Ellison’s time, no one speaks for them. The lower frequencies are open airwaves for all. And some messages can be heard only by those in struggle'.


Saturday, September 08, 2012

London Drum Riot for Pussy Riot


Global Day of Action in support of Pussy Riot next Saturday September 15 - London action is 11 am - 2 pm opposite Russian Consulate, Bayswater Road. Facebook details here.

There's also a Free Pussy Riot benefit gig tomorrow night (Sunday 9 September) at the Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen with PEGGY SUE, GAGGLE, NEUROTIC MASS MOVEMENT and SKINNY GIRL DIET.

Translations of Pussy Riot letters and documents at this site. Here's a letter from Maria Alyokhina (20 Aug. 2012), one of three members of the collective jailed in Russia last month for two years for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after an anti-Government punk performance in a Moscow cathedral:

'Right after the reading of the verdict, we were taken to the cells, accompanied by guards with dogs. After a few minutes my guard asked for an excerpt from the verdict. A few minutes after that, a special forces cop burst into my cell and started swearing at me, telling me to get my things together. Evidently I wasn't fast enough, and he started twisting my arms. This was very strange, because in the past we were generally treated less roughly. So there must have been special instructions. The rest of the procedure went like this: we were loaded onboard a bus full of these special forces types and then, accompanied by numerous police vehicles, including two other buses full of armed police, were driven halfway across Moscow in a "corridor" specially cleared through the dense traffic. What is the meaning of all this? Even terrorists and heavy criminals aren't given this kind of special convoy treatment. Doing so for three girls is a clear sign of FEAR. The depth of this fear came as a surprise. It would be nice to think that it will all end happily, but these events would seem to indicate otherwise'.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Sicilian Dance Trophies


The centrepiece of 'Pursuit of Perfection: The Politics of Sport' at the South London Gallery is Aleksandra Mir's Triumph. a collection of  2,529 trophies gathered by the artist in Sicily. Here's some of the dance competition  trophies.





Friday, August 10, 2012

Party in the Essex Woods

From Southend Standard (10 August 2012):

'Footage of revellers at an illegal rave in Rochford woodland has been posted on YouTube.More than 200 people attended the event, advertised on Facebook, in Gusted Hall Woods, Rochford.Dozens of residents near to Gusted Hall Lane called police to complain about the loud music in the early hours.

Police say when officers first arrived at 1am they were pelted with bottles. After speaking with the organiser, they agreed to stop the music and clear the site. One man, who attended the rave, said it had been organised properly.

He said: "I am a qualified first aider. There were wristbands given out as proof of entry and they were checked regularly so there wasn't anyone who hadn't paid. There was no alcohol sold at the rave. The police turned up en masse, four riot vans, three cars and about 10 at the bottom of the lane. They were completely over the top in my opinion'.

Girl with Cassette Recorder (1975)


This great photograph of a young woman with her cassette recorder was taken in London in 1975 by US photographer Al Vandenberg. It features in the exhibition Another London: International Photographers Capture City Life 1930-1980 , currently on at Tate Britain in London.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

An Underground Dance, Greenwich 1846

Blackheath Cavern, also known as Jack Cade's Cavern, was a  series of caves under Blackheath Hill in Greenwich South East London (presumably still there but no longer accessible). In the mid-19th century it was used for social events, including 'For one night only' on 'Monday November 16th 1846' a 'Grand Bal Masque' -  'The effect of Music in the Cavern is truly wonderful'. The advert promised that the cavern was to be turned into 'A capacious ball room, capable of holding 1500 persons', with a  'powerful quadrille band' providing the music at this 'Carnival in the Bowels of the Earth' (West Kent Guardian, 7 November 1846).


The following month the same promoter, Mr Richard Fyffe, put on another Masquerade at the St Helena Tavern, a pleasure gardens in Lower Road, Rotherhithe. Seemingly the Blackheath event had not gone well due to 'bad ventilation and excessive crowed. At St Helena Tavern, a 'Fashionable Place of Amusement' there was to be 'a complete wardrobe, containing every requisite for those Ladies and Gentlemen who may wish to appear in Costume' (West Kent Guardian, 5 December 1846).



(Subterranean Greenwich blog originally posted these cuttings. Unfortunately that blog is currently down, as discussed here).

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Summer rave madness


It's getting hot - time to take the fields and beaches people.

Wicklow (Ireland) - Herald.Ie 18 July 2012

Raves are regularly taking place on the outskirts of the capital, it has emerged.The illegal parties in remote rural and wooded areas in Wicklow have become commonplace despite efforts by gardai to stop them.The raves have been held in areas such as Devil's Glen and Mahermore Beach since 2001 and there have been several already this summer according to one organiser, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Gardai are working with locals to prevent these raves but are "playing catch-up" according to Rathnew councillor John Snell. "What you're trying to deal with now is social media. Word spreads so quickly that in more cases than not the event is over before the gardai get a handle on them."

He described the nature of the parties as "cloak and dagger kind of stuff...There aren't any posters for these events. Unless you're mixing in these circles, the normal public are not aware until some rural cottages hear the music and alert gardai."

One of Cllr Snell's key concerns was the danger of drug-taking in such remote areas. "There's no medical expertise at these raves. It's a recipe for disaster. It's only a matter of time before life is lost."

Rathdrum Councillor O'Shaughnessy wants tougher action against ravers."The Government needs to bring in stricter sanctions, maybe zero tolerance measures like high fines or custodial sentences," he said.

A rave organiser from the Roundhill area defended the events saying that licensing laws "are prehistoric..They go back to the ballroom days. Clubs here have to close at 2.30 or 3am whereas in Europe they are open until 6am. We are forced to take it into our own hands." He says ravers resent the bad name the Phoenix Park debacle has given them. "There has never been any trouble at these parties. The record speaks for itself, there have never been any assaults"


Dartmoor (England) - BBC 3 June 2012



A suspected illegal rave involving hundreds of people has been stopped on Dartmoor, police have said.
Police said more than 1,200 people and up to 500 cars gathered at Bellever Woods, near Postbridge.

Devon and Cornwall Police said they were called to the site, owned by the Forestry Commission, at about 00:30 BST.Police stopped the gathering and set up road bocks to prevent more people from attending.

A Devon and Cornwall Police spokesman said: "The land is owned by the Forestry Commission and no permission has been sought or granted by them to hold this rave."He added: "We're encouraging those there to leave, and we're certainly preventing any other people from attending."



Norfolk (England) - EDP 17 July 2012

Two vans containing audio equipment and mixing decks were also seized after officers were called to farmland off Yarmouth Road at about 12.35am.More than 200 people were found at the rave with about 60 vehicles, as officers worked to disrupt the event which was safely concluded by midday.

Seven men aged between 20 and 24 were arrested at the scene on suspicion of organising an unlicensed music event and were taken to Wymondham police investigation centre for questioning. One of the suspects was also arrested for taking a motor vehicle without the owners’ consent.

Three more people were arrested for offences relating to the incident. A 25-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of being unfit to drive through drugs while officers arrested a 22-year-old man on suspicion of criminal damage after a fence was damaged by a vehicle.

A 20-year-old woman was arrested in connection with assault after a man suffered minor injuries after being involved in a collision with a car.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

1980s Glasgow Haircuts

Somebody else can write the cultural history of how the punk look was gradually domesticated in mainstream hairdressing during the 1980s - for now I will just say 'great hair'! These examples all from Alan and Linda Stewart's Rainbow Room (and Rainbow Room Education) in Glasgow.

From Hairdressers Journal: '1986 Blonde Cropped

'Its Band Aid for your Easter Bonnet', Anne Simpson, Glasgow Herald, 23 April 1984)

From Hairdressers Journal: '1984 Punk Quiff'

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Music for Pleasure

Last week I had the opportunity to visit a rarely opened archive in South London. The basement of New Cross Learning (the volunteer-run library/community space in New Cross Road) holds the collection of the Lewisham Local History Society, an eclectic assortment of specifically local artifacts and general 'old things' assembled over the years with an aim of one day forming the basis of a museum collection. 

Naturally I was intrigued by some of the musical items, including this metal sign for the old 'Music for Pleasure' label. I spent some of my teenage wages from working in the library and Debenhams (like someone in a Belle & Sebastian song) on these budget LPs, often consisting of early material or live recordings from well known bands.  My favourite was 'Relics', a fantastic compilation of Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd.



The archive also include various bits of semi-obsolete technology stacked up on the shelves. Here's an Alba gramophone:


Most evocative for me was this Regentone valve radio, made in Romford at some point in the early 1950s. I remember as a child going to visit an elderly relative in the Forest of Dean and they had something similar.



I recall that I was fascinated by the dial with its list of exotic sounding places and stations. Looking at it now as an adult it still seems to embody a kind of utopian internationalist dream of the radio, the possibility of sitting in a room somewhere in post-war England and listening in to Marseilles, Bologna, Berlin or the USSR.


Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Soul and Hip-Hop Pirates 1984

Interesting short article on mid-1980s London pirate radio and hip-hop:

Soul pirate on the air waves

By Jaswinder Bancil (South London Press, 13 July 1984)

"Steve Devonne is, by his own admission, one of the major figures in London's hip-hop scene. As a regualr broadcaster on the soul pirate station Invicta, Steve was among the first to introduce scratch and mix sounds over the air waves in the capital.Most of the exposure given to this type of record has largely been confimed to clubs.

But hip-hop is not the only sound the 26-year-old DJ plays. His slot at the Maze club in Soho every Friday night is strictly soul. He explained, 'I'm still a soul and funk man, but I also believe I have a wide enough perspective to cover hip-hop. Already established soul artists like Herbie Hancock and Shannon are showing obvious hip-hop influences on their records. It's going to continue to have an effect on mainstream music'.

Born in Lambeth, but raised in Wandsworth, Steve has been a DJ for nearly ten years. He became involved in pirate radio because 'I was interested in broadcasting black music to London without having having to go through official channels'.

While Invicta is temporarily off the air, Steve will be broadcasting for rival station JFM (102.8 metres FM).

To date pirate stations have been the most abundant source of black music in the city. Having cottoned on to the popularity of these illegal stations among young people, the BBC have recently begun to feature more soul and reggae. But hip-hop remains largely ignored, despite its massive appeal.

Steve admitted, 'I'm one of the few people who have picked up on hip-hop. It is something that goes beyond the music - style, dress, language all count. Hip-hop goes back as far as James Brown in my opinion. It's attitude, a way of life'.

Steve Devonne will be at the Albany Empire on July 28 for our breakdown spectacular".

Radio Invicta was a pirate radio station that broadcast in London from 1970 to 1984, usually on VHF on 92.4 MHz. It slogan was "Soul over London" and it featured soul and disco. It started broadcasting from a bedroom in Mithcam, but is credited with being one of the first pirate stations to use the tops of  tower blocks (more here, including some recordings of old shows)


Here's some clops of Steve Devonne and others on Invicta from 1980:



And here's some J.F.M. from 1984:

Sunday, July 08, 2012

Free Pussy Riot

It's now been four months since Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Santsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were arrested and detained in Russia. Their alleged  'crime' was to perform an anti-Putin song with their punk band Pussy Riot in an unauthorised pop-up performance at a Moscow cathedral.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
Last week they started a hunger strike in protest at the authorities threatening to put them on trial at short notice without them having time to view the 'evidence' against them. Back in the Cold War, people locked up for expressing their political views in the USSR were hailed as heroic dissidents by Western leaders.  Now David Cameron sucks up to Putin while the latter locks up his opponents.

Putin is likely to come to London on a 'private visit' during the Olympics. I imagine that anybody trying to demonstrate against him will also find themselves behind bars.




Sunday, July 01, 2012

Punk's Dead

'Punk's Dead' is a book of photographs by Simon Barker (Six), with an exhibition of some of the photos at Divus Temporary, 4 Wilkes Street, London E1 until July 7th.

Jordan

'In 1976, when I moved into the St. James Hotel in London, I bought myself one of the cheapest pocket cameras available. Fully automatic, with no controls or settings, it just required a simple slot-in film cartridge. An idiot could use it - and I did. | I knew I did'nt want to be like other photographers, so I chose never to take a black and white photograph or focus the camera. Subconsciously I concentrated on the women and artists at the heart of what would later be known as 'punk' in London. 

Women such as JORDAN, SIOUXSIE, DEBBIE JUVENILE, TRACIE O'KEEFE, ARI UP, POLY STYRENE and NICO . Artists and writers such as MALCOLM MCLAREN, HELEN WELLINGTON-LLOYD aka HELEN OF TROY, BERTIE MARSHALL aka BERLIN and DEREK JARMAN. The book PUNK'S DEAD is a product of that camera and those times - my family album covering the years 1976 to 78. The photos you see in it were all unplanned, spur of the moment shots taken by myself for myself and, up until now, with never a thought given to publication. In over thirty years, they have only been seen by a handful of close friends. I used to think they weren't good enough to show people. Now I think they are almost too good'

Adam Ant


Derek Jarman with Derek Dunbar

Some great pictures, and also due recognition of some of the queer/arty underground links of that early London punk scene (e.g. Derek Jarman's Butlers Wharf parties), something largely passed over in the recent BBC punk nostalgiafest.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

The Face Club Listings, March 1989


From The Face, March 1989, an overview of (mainly) London clubland - 'Clubland is coming to life again after the traditional Jan/Feb slump, with over 20 new one-nighters opening in the capital alone'.  Nights featured include: - 

- 'Beautiful Contradictions' - 'a collaboration between dancer Michael Clark, comedian Keith Allen and long-standing club-runner Phil Dirtbox' taking place at Wall St, 14 Bruton Place, W1.

- 'High on Hope' and 'Talking Loud, Saying Something' at Dingwalls, Camden Lock. 

- 'MFI' - garage night at Legends in New Burlington Street, W1. 

- 'Confusion' at Bill Stickers, Greek Street, W1 - 'Sunday night rave for hardcore clubbers'. 

- 'Bangs' at Busbys, 157 Charing Cross Road, WC1 'gay mixed (but mainly male) crowd dancing to an almost Taboo-like mix of pop trash, new imports and disco classics' 

Places outside of London include:  

- 'Abraham Moss All-Nighter' at Abraham Moss Community Centre, Cheatham Hill, Manchester ('bi-monthly rare soul rave'). 

- 'Club Voodoo' at McGonagles, South Anne Street, Dublin. 

- Laurent Garnier's 'Locomotion' in Rue Pigalle, Paris.

 At this point, house music hadn't become the dominant sound in London clubs that it was shortly to become - it was still just one of the flavours. The Dancefloor tracklist from Daddy Gee (Massive Attack) includes Soul II Soul and the Jungle Brothers, among others.


Saturday, June 16, 2012

Bracknell Squat Party 1985

Red Rag was a radical newsletter published in Reading from around 1979 to the mid-1980s.  Somebody is currently doing a great service by gradually scanning in back issues, with a wealth of information not only about the Thames Valley area but also wider radical movements in that period.

Here, from May 26th 1985, is a report of a mainly anarcho-punk squat gig at Bracknell cinema which featured bands including No Defences, Slave Dance, Pro Patria Mori, Barcelona Bus Company and the Magic Mushroom Band.


From the same scene and the same year (I think), a report of a 'free festival benefit gig' at the Paradise Club in Reading, featuring Karma Sutra, Barcelona Bus Company and Cosmetic Plague. Not sure of the source of this report but it is reproduced in the booklet for Karma Sutra's retrospective album 'Be Cruel With Your Past And All Who Seek To Keep You There' 





Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Stewart Home, Tim Cockburn & a Norfolk Rave Poem

Enjoyed the spoken word event at the Hannah Barry Gallery in Peckham last night (actually a warehouse on the Copeland Industrial Estate). Of course Stewart Home stole the show - not many other writers can recite their work without the book in front of them while standing on their head.



Good stuff too from Katrina Palmer and Iphgenia Baal, among others. But on a dancing tip I enjoyed some of Tim Cockburn's poetry from his collection Appearances in the Bentinck Hotel, especially this one:

A Rave in North Norfolk

For Laura

After the rave the steamed-up Peugeots
that, nightlong, blunted the field’s edge
slunk off one by one like a flagging picket,
leaving a stillness of litter-strewn hedges
the waterfowl dared enter back into.
On the lawn tall shadows tucked stickered decks
into retracted back seats, whilst the few
who remained in the lamp-lit mill slept,
not noticing how like kicked up sediment
settling the displaced calm restored
itself around them, or how, beyond the lane,
the shallow-pooled stretches sharpened:
the coloured smudge of ballast and gorse
beside a decelerating train.

Saturday, June 09, 2012

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Gay Clubs

From the NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (early 1978), a guide to the Gay Scene starts with a warning: 'a note to all you guys 'n' gals, cuties 'n' chickens, rent boys 'n' muscle men, leather lovers 'n' sock eaters: REMEMBER British Law permits homosexual activity in PRIVATE between two consenting adults of 21 and over. Any sexual contact in public is forbidden'. Places mentioned include:

- Bang Disco, The Sundown, 157 Charing Cross Road 'a good mixture of gays and punks';
- Gateways, 239 Kings Road, SW3  'Women only'
- Louise, 61 Poland Street, W1
- El Sombrero, 142-144 Kensington High Street, W8
- A & B Club, 27 Wardour Street, W1
-  Escort, 89a Pimilico Road, SW1.
- Maunkberry's, 57 Jermyn Street,W1
- Mandy's, 30 Henrietta Atreet, W1
- Napoleon's, 2 Lancashire Court, New Bond Street, W1
- Oscars, 4 Greek Street, W1
- Festival Club, 2 Brydges Place (off St Martin's Lane), WC2



See also:

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London 1978: Disco
NME Guide to Rock & Roll London: Reggae

Sunday, June 03, 2012

This Feast of Flunkeyism - Agitate, Educate & Organise

On the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, I am reminded of James Connolly's denunciation of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897:

'“The great appear great to us, only because we are on our knees:  LET US RISE.”

Fellow Workers, The loyal subjects of Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, etc., celebrate this year the longest reign on record. Already the air is laden with rumours of preparations for a wholesale manufacture of sham ‘popular rejoicings’ at this glorious (?) commemoration. Home Rule orators and Nationalist Lord Mayors, Whig politicians and Parnellite pressmen, have ere now lent their prestige and influence to the attempt to arouse public interest in the sickening details of this Feast of Flunkeyism...

During this glorious reign Ireland has seen 1,225,000 of her children die of famine, starved to death whilst the produce of her soil and their labour was eaten up by a vulture aristocracy, enforcing their rents by the bayonets of a hired assassin army in the pay of the –best of the English Queens’; the eviction of 3,668,000, a multitude greater than the entire population of Switzerland; and the reluctant emigration of 4,186,000 of our kindred, a greater host than the entire people of Greece. At the present moment 78 percent of our wage-earners receive less than £1 per week, our streets are thronged by starving crowds of the unemployed, cattle graze on our tenantless farms and around the ruins of our battered homesteads, our ports are crowded with departing emigrants, and our poorhouses are full of paupers. Such are the constituent elements out of which we are bade to construct a National Festival of rejoicing!'.

Connolly goes on: 'To you, workers of Ireland, we address ourselves. AGITATE in the workshop, in the field, in the factory, until you arouse your brothers to hatred of the slavery of which we are all the victims. EDUCATE, that the people may no longer be deluded by illusory hopes of prosperity under any system of society of which monarchs or noblemen, capitalists or landlords form an integral part. ORGANISE, that a solid, compact and intelligent force, conscious of your historic mission as a class, you may seize the reins of political power whenever possible and, by intelligent application of the working-class ballot, clear the field of action for the revolutionary forces of the future. Let the ‘canting, fed classes’ bow the knee as they may, be you true to your own manhood, and to the cause of freedom, whose hope is in you, and, pressing unweariedly onward in pursuit of the high destiny to which the Socialist Republic invites you' (full text here).

Agitate, Educate and Organise

I am intrigued by Connolly's use of the Agitate, Educate, Organise meme, a phrase that became common in 20th century radicalism. I wonder about its origins - the earliest reference I have found is from 1882, when the Knights of Labor (a trade union) held what was in effect the first Labor Day parade in New York: 'on Sep 15, 1882, a handful of laborers, organized by Peter McGuire,  began a march uptown through lower Manhattan, carrying signs that read Agitate, Educate, Organize  and  Less Work, More Pay.   Mocked by fashionable New Yorkers they continued their trek as more and more laboring men, women, and children joined them.  By the time they reached what is now called Union Square, there were over 10,000 strong and cheered by thousands more in the Square.  It was the first real Labor Day' (article here).  Irish emigrants played a key role in the formation of the Knights of Labor, and later Connolly himself became involved in US radical politics in the 1900s.

Of course the phrase made its way on to 1980s dancefloors via 'How we gonna make the black nation rise' ('we're gonna agitate, educate and organize') by Brother D with The Collective Effort (1980) - one of the earliest explicitly political rap tracks.



In 1987, Irish band (with American singer) That Petrol Emotion used the phrase in their track 'Big Decision' with its rap section 'What you`ve gotta do In this day and age. You gotta agitate, educate, organize'. The track was no doubt influenced more by Brother D than Connolly, but its references to the use of plastic bullets in Ireland put the band in Connolly's republican tradition.



Saturday, June 02, 2012

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Disco

From the 1978 NME Guide to Rock & Roll London, the section on Disco compiled by LeRoy Z. Jefferson, with listings and reflections on the music in London clubs:

'The thing to remember is that Southern Soul is a whole different ball game from the much- publicised Northern brand. In the North, the more obscure '60s foot stompin' scene still dominates, around London it's mainly imported flash funk and deep soul from the likes of Earth, Wind & Fire, The Commodores, Slave, Cameo, Parliament and Pockets, plus a side order of reggae and thankfully just a smattering of android Euro-Disco (Baccara and Amanda Lear) and New York aural soft-porn (Andrea True Commection)'.

The legendary Crackers (201-203 Wardour Street W1) gets a mention. I had no idea that it was the place that hosted the Vortex punk club on Mondays and Tuesdays. Bar prices are given: 50p for lager, 40p for whisky, 27p for coke.

Also mentioned is a forthcoming All Day National Soul Festival on Easter Monday (March 27 1978) at Tiffany's, Brighton Road, Purley (near Croydon), with DJs Chris Hill, Greg Edwards, Robbie Vincent and Chris Brown.


Other places listed include:

- Chelsea Drug Store, 49 Kings Road SW3
- Columbo's, 50 Carnaby Street W1
- Fangs, Praed Street W2
- Fouberts, Fouberts Place W1
- Global Village, Villiers Street WC1 (replaced by gay club Heaven later in 1979)
- Hatchetts, 67a Piccadilly W1
- Hombre, 78 Wells Street W1
- Kareba, 63 Conduit Street W1
- Le Kilt, 60 Greek Street W1
- Saddle Room, Park Lane W!
- Samantha's, 3 New Burlington Street W1
- Speakeasy & Speakearly, Oxford Circus
- Sundown, Charing Cross Road W2
- Thursdays, 36 Kensington High Street W8
- Tiffanys, Shaftesbury Avenue W1
- Upstairs at Ronnie's, Frith Street W1
- La Valbonne, 62 Kingly Street W1

See also:

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London 1978: Gay Clubs
NME Guide to Rock & Roll London: Reggae