Tales from a Disappearing City

Tales from a Disappearing City is a new youtube podcast from DJ Controlled Weirdness (Neil Keating) exploring untold subcultural stories from subterranean London. First few episodes have featured Ian/Blackmass Plastics and Howard Slater and centred around 1990s techno and free parties, with a common thread being the Dead by Dawn club in Brixton. But an emerging theme is that people are not confined to one scene and there are lots of connections linking apparently separate subcultures - each of our lives being a thread that join the dots across time and space.

So now it's my turn, in the first of two episodes me and Neil focus on the early/mid-1980s and my experience of growing up in Luton, in the orbit of London but with its own scenes. We covered a lot of ground including:

- being a 'paper boy punk' - slightly too young to take part in first wave punk and first encountering it in tabloid outrage;

- punk in Luton (including UK Decay, their Matrix record shop, and anarcho-punk band Karma Sutra);

- the open possibilities of post-punk, as exemplified on the Rough Trade/NME C81 compilation (which I misdescribe as C82 in the interview!)

- seeing Mark Stewart and The Pop Group at the Ally Pally and at CND demo

- GLC festivals and events including the one where fascists attacked the Redskins and the Test Dept extravanganza (which Neil went to but I didn't)

- Luton 33 Arts Centre -  a link connecting the later 1960s Artslab scene through to punk and beyond;

- racist skinheads in Luton area and the general climate of violence;

- the influence of 1950s style in the 80s, clothes shopping at Kensington Market and Flip;

-  Luton alternative club nights and warehouse parties; 

- seeing Brion Gysin speak in Bedford library;

- Compendium bookshop in Camden;

- Anarcho punk including Conflict at Thames Poly and my hobby horse about No Defences being the greatest band in that scene even if they never really put out a record;

- the limits of the Crass and Southern studios sonic/stylistic/political template and how the actual scene was more diverse;

- punk squat gigs at the Old Kent Road ambulance station and at Kings Cross.

In the second episode me and Neil move on to late 1980s and 90s and discuss things including:

- Pre-rave clubbing - rare groove, Jay Strongman's Dance Exchange at the Fridge, Brixton; Wendy May's Locomotion in Kentish Town; the PSV in Manchester;

- the early 90s 'crusty' squat scene - RDF, Back to the Planet, Ruff Ruff & Ready and related squat parties at Cool Tan (Brixton), behind Joiners Arms in Camberwell and school in Stockwell;

- the free party scene partly emerging from this, parties in Hackney Bus garage etc.;

- 'world music' clubs including the Mambo Inn (Loughborough Hotel, Brixton) and the Whirl-y-gig (which I went to at Shoreditch Town Hall and Neil in Leicester Square at Notre Dame Hall, also scene of famous Sex Pistols gig);

- Dead by Dawn at the 121 Centre, Brixton;

- Criminal Justice Act and getting into history of dance music scenes; 

- Megatripolis at Heaven and emergence of psychedelic trance;

-  1990s clubbing explosion - so called 'Handbag House' clubs - Club UK, Leisure Lounge, Turnmills, Aquarium etc.;

- 'clean living in difficult circumstances' - glam house clubbing wear as extension of mod sharp dressing continuum;

- superclubs and superstar DJs including Fatboy Slim vs Armand Van Helden at Brixton Academy (1999)

- Reclaim the Streets- Brixton party

- the Association of Autonomous Astronauts - Disconaut division.

Soviet Union Disco Style 1982

'the showy disco style caught on and is now seen in dance halls and at parties. The long dress, inconvenient for modern dances, has given way to narrow satin trousers and all sorts of tops'. This is clearly a fashion shoot, not sure how much this represents what people were actually wearing out in clubs.

From 'Sputnik - digest of the Soviet press', December 1982

The article was apparently originally published in Siluett, a long running fashion magazine produced in Tallinn (now capital of Estonia), a place 'sufficiently far enough away from the Soviet mainstream to allow relatively liberated experiments in popular culture to take place' according to an article about the magazine

 

Bedroll Bella: Geordie raver

Bedroll Bella by Sid Waddell (Sphere, 1973) is the story of a feisty, foul mouthed, hard drinking, 'right raver' and proud Geordie 'lass' who runs away from home in search of teenage kicks. She falls in with a bunch of 'bedrollers', itinerant hippies who drink, fight, screw and sleep rough in the ruins of Scarborough Castle by night and shoplift by day (carrying around their rolled up bedding - hence the name). Published in the youthsploitation publishing boom, it sits alongside the works of Richard Allen and Mick Norman in depicting a world of 'knockers', 'birds' and 'having it off' in alleyways and pub car parks; a world of casual violence, with scraps with Hells Angels and rugby club types. The book was apparently barred from the shelves of WH Smith when it came out. Bella is also a poet on the side, composing a sonnet in lipstick on a bathroom window. Like her the author also has higher literary ambitions. Naturally a visit to Whtiby entails a mention of Bram Stoker.

Other than the sexual politics, the thing that jars the early 21st century reader is its industrial background. The backdrop is the shipyards and mines of the north east, presented as being at the heart of local identity. The freaks are not middle class drop outs (as 'hippies' are usually portrayed) but have taken to the road as an alternative to dead end jobs, the dole and stifling conformity: 'She wanted faces and figures with style, animation, excitement.... anything different. There had to be a lifeline somewhere, a raft to sweep her out of boredom and the prospect of the dole'.

Class is at the heart of the novel. Bella, whose dad is a boilermaker, argues with a teacher's comments about greedy strikers: 'them and the miners only get a living wage by striking - and striking hard... So feeding me and my mother and seeing we've got shoes and coal is greed, eh, miss?' .

Spider, the main male character, is the son of a miner (like the author). When he reads in the paper about miners dying in a disaster in Poland, he is consumed with rage: 'The death of a miner is about as important as the death of a worm under a spade. Both are an occupational hazard. Self-pity welled in Spider's breast. How could society expect a pitman's son to be anything other than a dirty, sweaty, scruffy hippy? He had never known anything better. And if he followed his dad into the hole, who would have thanked him? Alf Robens? Ted Heath? Harold Wilson. No, not fucking likely. They were the coal-owners now. They didn't give a monkey's nut. Spider wanted to talk. To get some of the green bile of class hatred of his chest.' He manages this by having sex in a train toilet with the posh 'Weekend Madonna' character, a part time hippy who slums it at the weekend and then returns home in the week.

In a key section of the book Bella and co. head to the Yorkshire Folk, Blues & Jazz Festival, a real event held at Krumlin near Halifax in August 1970, reputed to have been hit by some of the worst weather even seen at a British festival. Before the rain comes down, Bella has that festival epiphany feeling:  'Bella was tripping out. She had never felt so entirely conjoined with society before. She was part of the primeval soup, and Spider was the umbilical cord stringing her to this wild, wondrous world. Being part of it was quintessence. It was not a case of wanting the kicks of drugs, music or men. It was deeper, more heady, wine, the scene was feeding her. This was the pure juice of the fruit. She was on her way to Heaven, and by Christ she was gonna be moved... Bella wanted to cry. For the first time in her life she knew why sparks like Wordsworth and Chaucer and even that maniac Swinburne, who she'd had to study for O levels, had written poetry. It was all here on the grass, naked and pulsating. The Daffodils, the Pardoners and Summoners and even the Hound of Heaven... The pale, streaked bleached look of the moorland sky and turf was enhanced by the gear the kids wore. Vests and stained blue jeans, Army surplus anoraks, nothing that quite fitted. Clothes had to hang, so that the loose slim bodies could flow along as freely as their hair swung... To be alive was very heaven'.

Bella eventually flees the freak lifestyle to return to the bosom of the close if restrictive working class community, symbolised by her first act on coming back to the city: putting on her black and white scarf and going to watch Newcastle United beat Leeds. 

I believe this was Waddell's only novel, though he went on to find fame as a TV sports commentator, his name being synonymous with coverage of darts in Britain up until his death in 2012. His politics remained intact until the end - asked in 2007 to imagine 'If you'd been present as a commentator when Maggie Thatcher left No 10 for the last time, what line of commentary would you have given?' he replied: "Sooo the poor little Iron Lady ends her years of vicious tyranny sobbing in a posh car. She took the kids' milk, made the rich richer and she smashed the coal miners... what a magnificent legacy!"

Milan 1992: Parco Lambro and Prisoners demo

 

In Summer 1992 I went to Milan with Italian friends who I knew from Brixton to go to a radical gathering/festival in Parco Lambro. The city's largest park has an interesting counter-cultural history, including being the site of Festival del Proletariato Giovanile from 1974-76, a kind of Italian equivalent  of the Isle of Wight festival in that what started off as a planned free festival ended up in clashes and arguments about rip off prices and poor facilities.

Anyway as the poster and programme show, the 1992 event called by 'Coordimento regional antagonista della lombardi' included plans for discussions on prisons, HIV, migration, video, theatre and evening concerts. It was themed 'Percorsi de Liberazione- contro la destra sociale' (Routes of Liberation - against the social Right).  I'm not sure though which of the scheduled events went ahead though as it poured with rain- not great for camping! - and I know some of the music was cancelled.

The main thing I remember is taking part in a demonstration at Milan's San Vittore prison in support of a prisoners' protest that was going on there. A few hundred people went from the park in the rain, charging on to the metro train en masse without paying. We marched around the prison, making lots of noise and on the way back we were charged by the Carabinieri (armed paramilitary riot cops). A few people got battered and a few arrested. There was a lot of a chanting of 'servi, dei servi, dei servi, dei servi' (mocking the police as 'servants of servants of servants of servants') and 'per tutti i comunisti - liberta' (freedom for all the communists) - there were still many people in prison as a result of repression of the movement of the 1970s and early 1980s.

'Per una societa senza galere - i compagni del movimento antagonista' (for a society without prisons - comrades of the antagonist movement) - banner in Parco Lambro, July 1992.  The self designation of the post-autonomia scene as the antagonist movement was a feature of the time.

Above: A report of the demonstration from ECN Milano (European Counter Network), found at the excellent archive grafton9. 'The procession, made up of about 300 comrades, moved from the prison towards the Porta Ticinese district, to end up at the Colonne di S.Lonrenzo, a well-known meeting place for Nazi-skins. The demonstration took place in the pouring rain, but with the determination of the comrades to complete the procession. At the end of the demonstration, while the comrades were preparing to descend into the subway, yet another provocation by the Digos unleashed a violent charge by the carabinieri'. ECN was an international radical information exchange, at this time I was involved in the London ECN group.

I found these photos of the circus tent/marquee at Parco Lambro 1992 online at https://fantasyclod.blogspot.com/2011/01/raduni-parco-lambro-1989-1990-1992.html

Earlier on the year, on 2 May 1992, there had been a concert outside the San Vittore prison with the slogan 'Liberta per tutti is proletari e i comunisti incarcerati' (freedom for all the proletarian and communist prisoners), with bands including AK47, Tequila Bum Bum, Politico's Posse and 99 Posse. Poster from Liberia Anomolia).

HIV Prisoners' Struggles

 The situation in Italian prisons in this period was particularly grim. The so called Jervolino-Vassalli law passed in 1990 criminalised possession of drugs with heavy penalties, in a country where it had previously been legal to have a small amount of any drug if it was for your own use.  The jails were filled with drug users,  many of them HIV positive and receiving totally inadequate health care. Just to make matters worse some emergency 'antimafia' laws had just been passed which made it harder for all the prisoners to get parole , have visitors etc.   Prisoners were staging hunger strikes and other protests. 

In Padova people around the radical radio station Radio Sherwood launched a project in support of prisoners, Radio Evasione, included a regular show focused on prisoners in the Due Palazzi prison. I was working in HIV in London at the time and wrote about it in Mainliners |(HIV/drugs magazine). I also visited Radio Sherwood and took them some info about HIV treatments  (basically copied a loads of stuff from the UK National AIDS Manual).

Letter from a HIV+ prisoner:

From 'Mainliners', January 1922 - full issue here

Radio Evasione zine, Padova, June 1992
(I have uploaded full issue to internet archive here)

Also from 1992 - an intifada mural at a social centre in San Dona di Piave, Veneto

 99 Posse 'Rigurgito antifascista' features the 'servi dei servi' line

Some Brixton Nights - 1994/95

A few flyers and memories from my many nights out in Brixton, 1994/95:

The Duke of Edinbugh on Ferndale Road SW9, with its large garden, was often the starting point for a Saturday night as it was here that we would gather to find out where parties were happening and then head off afterwards to some bus garage in Hackney or wherever. In the age before mobile phones this involved people running down to the phone box and calling a free party phone line where they would leave a message saying where to go.  Sometimes there was dancing in the pub itself too - this flyer for a 'Warmin' Up Mix' with 'deep underground house and garage' from DJs Zeki Lin, Igor and Brian.

 

There were loads of club nights at the Fridge on Brixton Hill at this time - gay club Love Muscle and various trance nights (Return to Source etc.) as that emerged as a separate sub genre. X-ClaimNation Co-op was I believe a split away from Megatripolis, the Thursday night psychedelic/techno/trance club held at Heaven. Not sure they lasted too long in that form but I went to the opening night at the Fridge at the end of May 1995. Like Megatripolis the music was supplemented with stalls offering massage, face painting, smart drinks etc. Bit too much flute playing for my taste at the time, but hey.

Club 414 at Coldharbour Lane was a longstanding Brixton nightspot, run I think by Louise Barron and Tony Pommell from the 1980s through to 2019. Nuclear Free Zone was associated with the Liberator DJs so very London acid techno sound, that club night itself was still going  15 years later (2009).   This flyer is from November 1994, 'future-techno-trance' from Liberators, Cloggi, Phidget etc.

Chris Liberator and Cloggi again at this Rub Harder night along with Chiba City Sound System, a December 1994 benefit for Crisis at Christmas. Venue was Taco Joe's, a two-roomed railway arch (no.15) on Atlantic Road. This was a great little venue, basically a Mexican restaurant that turned into a club until it lost its licence. Basement Jaxx started out there, with their first night in October 1994.

Shambhala Sound System also put on nights at Taco Joe's, this one in January 1995

The former dole office on Coldharbour Lane closed in 1992 and was soon squatted for parties. The original crew who occupied it were evicted but then it was resquatted by the Cooltan collective. Think this party was in August 1995: 'rave in your face and all over the place with Offshore, Megabitch (all 3 of them), Erase, Medeema, Apple B, Foetal, Ian (disorganisation). Cold taps turned on. Rave on. Hardhouse, techno, jungle'. Unusual for people in this scene to still be using the word 'rave' by this time. 'Cold taps turned on' is a reference to the dubious practice in some commercial clubs of turning off cold water taps in bathrooms so that people had to buy overpriced water from the bar. Bar proceeds were often down as people on other 'refreshments' weren't that interested in drinking alcohol.

See also:

1987: Dancing in Brixton and Beyond

Dead by Dawn, Brixton 1994-6

Summer Rites 1997: Lesbian and Gay free festival in Brockwell Park

Reclaim the Streets Party, Brixton 1998

 

'It's Ravers' top town': Brighton 1959

'40 coffee bar night spots- some of them dimly lit cellars were teenagers go on unlimited necking parties - have earned for the seaside town of Brighton this new title… It's ravers' top town.

The "ravers" are gangs of young people who travel from London on early morning milk trains to have a rave day and night whooping it up in the coffee bars.

Why ravers? Because they move around in a crowd not caring where, not caring why...

The dingy ill-ventilated coffee bars have one piece of equipment common to all. The juke box. To the canned music the teenage ravers jive themselves into a frenzy. As they jive they kiss. When they tire they lounge around often on the floor because there aren't enough seats.

And the necking goes on continuously. In London coffee bars necking is strictly forbidden. But no such prudery in Brighton. There the ravers can neck from 11:30 am to 11:30 pm and no one will tell them to calm it down.

When they have enough of one bar the rave starts up again and they move to the next spot. Often the ravers carry their own musical instruments and jive in the streets.

They are not popular with the Brighton police who will be keeping a special watch for them on bank holiday trains this weekend. Not long ago a trainload of ravers paraded hrough Brighton streets at dawn, singing, jiving and waking sleeping people [...] Mr Hugh Sanders, Brighton's senior probation officer says 'Some of the coffee bars are unhealthy dungeons where the immature attempt to pass off infantile behaviour as virile. They are dark unhealthy dens that are breeding grounds for juvenile crime'

(Sunday Pictorial, 29 March 1959)

 

'Time for Peace, Time to Go': demonstrations in London, Belfast and Dublin - August 1994

1994 marked the 25th anniversary of British troops being sent on to the streets of the north of Ireland, and there were demonstrations in London, Belfast, and Dublin on the theme of '25 years - time to go, time for peace'.

London, 13 August 1994

In London the Troops Out Movement and other groups including the Irish in Britain Representation Group held a march from the park by the Imperial War Museum. Black balloons were released to mark the dead of the conflict and a coffin taken to Downing Street labelled 'Britain's War: 25 years - 3400 dead'. Around 3,000 people took part.

A sticker for the demo

Black balloons released over Westminster

'Troops Out' magazine, August/September 1994

Belfast, 14 August 1994

In Belfast the next day there was another demonstration, with thousands of people converging on City Hall in parades from all parts of the city. The largest contingent came from West Belfast, where 'The march proceeded to the Whiterock Road where the Ballymurphy section of the march joined them. Several of the visiting delegations were with this section of the march. There were contingents from Noraid, from the Basque country, from Italy as well from the Troops Out Movement and many other solidarity groups' (An Phoblact, 18 August 1994). Speakers at the end of the march included Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.

'Falls/Clonard: 25 years of resistance' - mural in Dunville Street off the Falls Road in Belfast

'Free the Ballymurphy Seven' - the campaign in support of seven young men who were arrested following a bomb attack on an army patrol in 1991. They were charged on the basis of 'confessions' obtained under duress in Castlereagh interrogation centre. Eventually all were acquitted but not after spending several years in prison.

'Cheering marchers say Britain Must Go', An Phoblact, 18 August 1994

Dublin, 20 August 1994

The march in Dublin on the following Saturday 20th August was one of the largest pro-republican rallies there since the 1981 hunger strikes.  Over 10,000 people took part in what was billed as a parade and pageant rather than just a traditional demo. There was street theatre and more than 54 floats highlighting current and historic issues.  The Wolfe Tones played to the crowd gathered by the GPO, and of course there were various republican flute bands including the Spirit of Freedom,  Sliabh Dubh, Gleann an Lagain and Tom Smith.

 

The Angel of Death leads the march

'Get out of my sight!'

A float highlighting Fermanagh/Monaghan border posts

'Guth na mBan' singing 'Something inside so strong'

The Dublin and Monaghan bombs in 1974 killed 33 people and were planted by the Ulster Volunteer Force with the knowledge of British intelligence

At the GPO

'Slán abhaile' (Safe Home)

An Phoblact, 25 August 1994

A summary of other Time to Go events including in Derry, Crossmaglen, Newry and around the world
(An Phoblact, 18 August 1994)

1994 was a key turning point in the conflict. The year before Gerry Adams and John Hume had launched the Irish Peace Initiative, and then on 31 August 1994 the Irish Republican Army announced a ceasefire.  After several years of a stop and start process the Good Friday Agreement was signed in Easter 1998, paving the way for demilitarisation and prisoner release.

Anyway that was a busy week for me, rushing from London to Belfast then travelling around Ireland towards Dublin. Stopping off in Sligo for a banging house club night in a hotel back room full of people celebrating on the day of their Higher exam results. Where was that I wonder? 

[I recently donated some photos and papers to the MayDay Rooms in London for their archive of Troops Out Movement and related materials. If you have anything you can share with them get in touch with them. This post is one in a series where I contextualise this material with my recollections]

See also:

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town: Luton 1980-81

Remembering Bloody Sunday 

May Days in Dublin 1994

'Time for Peace, Time to Go'
(I did think this photo might have been from Dublin, but seems it's actually Albert Square in Manchester, so this must have been on the Bloody Sunday demo there in January 1995)