Folk song as solidarity with the dead: Shovel Dance Collective, Broadside Hacks, Ewan MacColl and Walter Benjamin

Not sure how many folk music revivals we have had now, of course it's never really gone away but I am enjoying the latest queer friendly iteration with the likes of Shovel Dance Collective and Goblin Band. Have seen the former's Jacken Elswyth and Mataio Austin Dean performing solo at the Goose is Out folk night in Nunhead, likewise Sonny Brazil of the latter. And Broadside Hacks used to do a session at pub in my road in SE14.

The Broadside Hack (Live from Real World) 2022 is the soundtrack to a short film that includes some interesting reflections on the politics of folk song. In a 'collective authoring of history' interview, members of Shovel Dance describe how 'Folk music's kind of  like an act of solidarity across time I think… a real kind of genuine act of sharing across hundreds of years and millions of people...  A different kind of history than what you get from mainstream history, from capitalist history if you will, it's a kind of intergenerational, intertemporal collective authoring of history'. Simlarly Thryis discuss how 'We place ourselves within this greater chain of history by playing these songs, we're figuring ourselves within  this collective narrative...There's this sort of collaboration across space and time, you are engaging with other musicians from other times that you’ve never met and yet you feel like perhaps you have something of an intimate relationship with them, I like that sort of distanced intimacy'. Naima Bock says 'it’s a kind of history of people that have no voice so it’s a beautiful and poetic way of hearing people from the past who you wouldn’t otherwise have heard'.

Echoes here of Ewan MacColl who used to tell the Critics Group of folk singers meeting at he and Peggy Seeger's Beckenham home in the 1960s: 'I find it necessary to close my eyes and shut the audience out, and to identify, either with some character in the song, or with the kind of person I think may have originally sung the song, or even may have created the song. This means that you have to equip yourself with a fair amount of the data about the period in which the song was created ... say this song was perhaps written in 1736, written by a ploughman in Dorset. What was it like? I wonder what it felt for a bloke like that to create a song like this, and all the other people who contributed to the song later. All the other men and women who polished it over generations.. suddenly you find yourself filled with an extraordinary sense of compassion and respect for all those people who went before. And suddenly you find yourself in the tradition - you're with them. And at that moment you also disappear in a strange way, and the song really takes over ... the audience comes with you' (quoted in Ben Harker, Class Act: The Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl, 2007).

Folk singing here is a historical method, a form of 'history from below' of the kind pioneered by E.P. Thompson as famously stated in the preface to 'The Making of the English Working Class' (1963): 'I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.” Thompson's approach was characterised by his fellow radical historian Raphael Samuel as a form of 'resurrectionism', an attempt 'to give a voice to the voiceless and speak to the fallen dead' (Theatres of Memory, 1994).

For Walter Benjamin, remembrance was not an act of passive contemplation but a motor of radical change. For him the 'enslaved class' has to be 'the avenger that completes the task of liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden' (On the concept of history, 1940), giving a redemptive voice to those who came before. As Michael Löwy summarises it in his 'Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History' (2005), ' It is clear the remembrance of victims is not, for him, either a melancholic jeremiad or a mystical meditation. It has meaning only if it becomes a source of moral and spiritual energy for those in struggle today... During a conversation with Brecht on the crimes of the Nazis in 1938, Benjamin notes: ‘While he was speaking like this I felt a power being exercised over me which was equal in strength to the power of fascism, a power that sprang from depths of history no less deep than the power of the fascists.’ Or again from Löwy: 'the last enslaved class, the proletariat, should perceive itself as heir to several centuries or millennia of struggle, to the lost battles of the slaves, serfs, peasants and artisans. The accumulated force of these endeavours becomes the explosive material with which the present emancipatory class will be able to interrupt the continuity of oppression'.

The radical theologian Jürgen Moltmann (1926-2024) was influenced by Benjamin and the Frankfurt School.  He wrote of 'The community with the dead... We suffer almost dumbly under the unreconciled hurts of the past. But we hardly perceive any more the sufferings of the dead which cannot be made good. A wall of silence, hard to break through, has been built up between us and the dead. Who feels the silent protest of the dead against the indifference of the living? Who is still conscious that the dead cannot rest as long as they have not received justice?... Are the murderers to triumph irrevocably over their victims?  Can their death be their end? 'Theology', said Max Horkheimer at  that time, 'is the hope ... that injustice will not be the last word. [It is] the expression of a longing, a longing that the murderer may not triumph over the innocent victim. ' It is profoundly inhumane to push away the question about the life of the dead. The person who forgets the rights of the dead will be  indifferent towards the life of his or her children too' (The Coming of God, 1996). 

It is not necessary to believe in a literal afterlife to recognise that the dead have a presence, not least in our language and our music (though of course in many spiritual traditions engagement with the ancestors is central). Isn't the singer of old songs of the downtrodden and apparently defeated resisting this indifference of the living to the dead and drawing on the power of the ancestors? I like to think so.

Dave Lawson's Indieprints

Dave Lawson (1972-2021) was a  London and North Wales based artist whose Indieprints series features numerous music themed designs, often inspired by 1980s indie bands and songs. I came across  a display of his works recently at Caffi Caban in Brynrefail,  lots of very striking vintage style images.

Pogues 'Fairytale of New York' as book jacket

'If I could settle down, then I would settle down'
(lyric from Pavement, 'Range Life')

'I will love you til I die, and I will love you all the time'
(lines from Spiritualized 'Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space' translated into Welsh in this version)

His prints are still available from Indieprints, which has been kept going by family members.

By the way if you find yourself in the Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon area) I strongly recommend checking out Caffi Caban, great coffee and food (including vegan options) and five minutes walk down the road you could be swimming in Llyn Padarn.

Caffi Caban

Llyn Padarn

Big Sexy Festy Finsbury Park (and Big Chill) 1996

A couple of free festivals I went to in north London's Finsbury Park back in 1996. Not sure of the date of the first one - 'Festival of Environmental and Global Rights'/Big Sexy Festy Party - but flyer says 'bank holiday weekend' so assume it was either in August or perhaps May. The party included Dub Tent, Free Party Stage, House Zone and Chill Out Zone. The map also shows Beer Tent and Shambala, the latter a party crew who used to put on nights I went to in Brixton at Taco Joe's in Atlantic Road railway arches. 'The Prisoner' magazine was running the acoustic stage - a free music listings zine which also covered anti-Criminal Justice Act and environmental protests. The same crew put on a similar event on Hackney Marshes in the following year.

Programme notes say: 'The first Free Festival for a long time.. Collective participation in an outdoor event of this nature can only strenghten community relations and fight the spread of racism and oppression of all minority groups. The inner city areas of London have been neglected over the past 17 years of Tory rule. We must stop the environmental degradation of our local areas for the generations to come... Everyone has the right to a life, everyone has the right to Party!'

In the same place in June 1996 a more traditional Finsbury Park Festival with a twist. Alongside various community dance and music acts there was the Big Chill electric picnic with Calcutta Cyber Cafe/Talvin Singh, Big Chill founder Pete Lawrence, Nelson Dilation (sometime Whirl-y-Gig DJ), and Global Communications (Tom Middleton & Mark Pritchard). All this and a string quartet playing 'Little Fluffy Clouds'.

John Scarlett-Davis on Derek Jarman

A fascinating Derek Jarman talk and film at London's Farsight Gallery last month, featuring a 1984 LWT (London Weekend TV) documentary from the series 'South of Watford' about Jarman's life in London. It includes lots of great footage including Jarman on a boat going down the Thames pointing out the site of the warehouses he lived and worked in during the 1970s, including on the South Bank at Upper Ground,  at13 Bankside (St Magnus warehouse and at Butlers Wharf by Tower Bridge where he moved in 1973. There is a scene too of him going through the gates of the latter on a building where there is now a plaque to remember him. As mentioned in the film, Ken Russell visited him on the South Bank and invited him to design sets for his film 'The Devils' - the start of Jarman's involvement in the film industry.

The film was directed by Jarman's assistant John Scarlett-Davis, who introduced it and told some very entertaining stories, including about filming a scene of Sebastiene at Andrew Logan's warehouse space with Lindsay Kemp also at Butlers Wharf.  He recalled that at Jarman's Butlers Wharf studio the toilet was set up on a stage. Some people who were happy to take part in orgiastic parties apparently drew the line at going to the loo in front of everybody and a curtain was eventually put around it! Jarman and others had to move out of Butlers Wharf after a fire, one of a number in the area that some have observed were conveniently timed for property developers.  Scarlett-Davis remembers being dressed up in the Blitz nightclub when news of the fire came through.

Scarlett-Davis helped Jarman with his film and pop video work, including Marianne Faithfull's Broken English, and made many videos in his own right including for some of my favourite songs from that period such as This Mortal Coil's Song to the Siren, Cocteau Twins 'Pearly dewdrops drops' and Scritti Politti's 'The Word Girl' and 'Wood Beez' (featuring dancer Michael Clark).

Scarlett-Davis talked a bit about the connection between Jarman, William Burroughs and Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV, with the latter's Genesis P. Orridge featuring briefly int he LWT film. I was interested to hear that Scarlett-Davis and others had lived in another warehouse in Clink Street that later became a famous early acid house venue and later still a prison museum. John remembers Peter Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle/Coil)  attending parties in the warehouse there. Coil later (1998) recorded their album Astral Disaster at an underground studio in Clink Street. 

Derek Jarman, William Burroughs, Marc Almond, Psychic TV and others took part in 'The Final Academy' event in Heaven, 1983.

The event was linked to the exhibition 'Derek Jarman: from Soho to the Fifth Continent' by Jane Palm-Gold at the Farsight Gallery which is at 4 Flitcroft St next to St Giles Church. The exhibition featured photos of Derek at Dungeness by Derek Ridgers as well as Jane's paintings featuring episodes from his life, particularly in the St Giles/Soho area where Jarman lived in a flat in Phoenix House from 1979.

Jane did a great job not just in bringing together the exhibition but in bringing together some of the people who were part of Jarman's life and creative work in London. The audience at the film show including Simon Fisher Turner (who composed music for several Jarman films), Jenny Runacre (who played the Queen in Jubilee) and several people who like Scarlett-Davis himself were naked Roman extras in Sebastiene. The event was hosted by Sean McLusky from Farsight Gallery, once promoter of legendary London clubs like Club UK and the Leisure Lounge as well as sometime drummer with JoBoxers.

John Scarlett-Davis should definitely write a book. He also has some very funny stories about working in the film/TV industry including sitting in the canteen in Elstree between Jack Nicholson and Molly Sugden when he was working on both 'The Shining' and TV sitcom 'Are you being served?'.

Jane Palm-Gold's painting of the 1993 OutRage Queer Carnival in Soho 1993, which was opened by Jarman and also featured the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

London nightlife not dead shock

Dan Hancox has written a great piece on 'Debunking the weird myths about London's 24-hour party people' in which he rightly takes to task some dubious claims made in the Times and elsewhere that London nightlife is in terminal decline.  He rightly critiques some very dubious data, such as relying on Google Maps to show venues with late night licenses. 

Specifically he skewers a map included in the Times article 'UK’s worst night out? Costly, crime-ridden London' (27 September 2024) which purports to show venues open after 2 am on Saturday nights. Using his local knowledge of Peckham’s Rye Lane he shows that in addition to three venues shown on map (Tola, the Prince of Peckham, and the Bussey Building) there are many other places: 'My raver alarm immediately went off. Just from going out dancing in Peckham, I know that this is rubbish. That list is missing the Carpet Shop (open till 4am), Peckham Audio (4am), Peckham Levels (4am, albeit occasionally) and Four Quarters (3am). There are also at least five pubs I can think of around Rye Lane which open until 1am on a Saturday night, new audiophile bar Jumbi is open until 2am' etc. etc.

As Dan points out this 'London Declinism mingles with the fog of racist myths' that London is a hotbed of random violence overseen by a muslim mayor implementing sharia law!  Sometimes these kind of articles are really just snotty refusals to recognise that London actually exists beyond the centre of town - see for instance Bloomsbury resident Will Lloyd's 'Sadiq Khan’s silent city' (New Statesman, 24 March 2024) which begrudgingly admits that he 'could walk north to the Lexington (open until around 3am, but it smells), or south into London’s warm, unwashed armpit'.

There is also a well meaning but in my view wrong-headed left wing version of the argument highlighting that many venues are being squeezed out by property development and other pressures (true) and suggesting that there is no longer any grass roots/'underground' clubbing because its all been taken over by corporate giants (false).

Of course there are peaks and troughs, periods when everybody seems to be out clubbing and times when it is a bit more based around niche subcultures. But we also have to beware observer bias. We all have our peak periods for partying, the worse thing is to imagine that because you are personally not going out as much as you used to do that is not happening any more, or that its not as good or real or whatever as it used to be. People have been out dancing in London for hundreds, probably thousands of years and it is not stopping any time soon (see for instance this great account of London dancing from 1902).

Things do change but not necessarily for the worst. The demise of some of the old school high street nightclubs that hungover from the pre-rave period, some of them with long histories of racist and sexist door policies, is not necessarily a bad thing.  Dance music no longer always requires specialist DJs or sound rigs, great as it is to have them.  There is a more diffuse nightlife in which a pub can quickly become a dancefloor, or people can summon one up anywhere playing music from their phones through speakers. These nights might never show up on Resident Advisor or be documented anywhere but they are happening all around us in London and anywhere else with a pulse.  My South London local for instance - a pub that used to be pretty much empty much of the week - is full most nights, sometimes people are watching sport, sometimes listening to a folk session, and sometimes it erupts into dancing.  And of course as Dan points out there are countless actual club nights, gigs and other events of all sizes happening all the time.

Historically in London it is pub and restaurant backrooms, railway arches and other places off the mainstream nightlife map that have spawned new music scenes. Think about the emergence of the new jazz scene in the last ten years where places like Buster Mantis (a Jamaican bar/restaurant) and Matchstick Piehouse (a community arts/music space) hosted the Steam Down nights in Deptford, many of whose alumni are now internationally known.  I suspect that such places are not even on the radar of many of those decrying the death of London nightlife.

'30 years of Grace' - photos of Jeff Buckley

Last week I stumbled across an exhibition of photos of Jeff Buckley by Merri Cyr, including the shots she took for the cover of Grace, his only studio album released 30 years ago in 1994. A beautiful man with a beautiful voice, difficult though to approach his music with a clear perspective through the fog of the misplaced romanticism surrounding a tragic early death - in his case of course a doubling of the early death of his father. 

'30 years of Grace' is at Proud Galleries, 32 John Adam Street, just around the corner from London's Charing Cross Station. On until 24 September 2024, admission free.

 

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent and youthful montage adventures

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent at the Whitechapel Gallery is a retrospective of 50 years of radical image making. 

'attempt to express that outrage by ripping through the mask, by cutting, tearing, montaging and juxtaposing imagery we are bombarded with daily. It shows what lies behind the mask' the victims, the resistance, the human communality saying no to corporate and state power'

His work was very much the most striking visual imagery of the radical left in Britain when I was first getting involved in politics as a teenager in the 1980s, including designing posters for some of the first big demonstrations I went on for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (such as the 1980 protest and survive demo)

If much of the exhibition content was familiar to me, seeing it in a new context made me look at it afresh. For instance some works were projected onto pages of the Financial Times.

'blast open the continuum of history] - illustration for Guardian article on Walter Benjamin, 1990

Radical Photomontage

I've no doubt that it was through discussion of Kennard's work in the left press at this period that I first came across John Heartfield who of course was a big influence on him.

The juxtaposition of images and newspaper clippings was also a feature of punk/post punk sleeve design, such as The Pop Group's 'How much longer do we tolerate mass murder?' (1980)

Possibly my first print political intervention at this time (1980) was sticking up crude photocopied montages around my school (Luton Sixth Form) - 'The Propaganda of Real Life' - with me and my friend Robert F. Not sure how many people read them, but it acted like putting a spell out in the world to find like minded people. Off the back of this somebody invited us to a meeting in Sundon Park where a group of us teenagers set up Luton Peace Campaign, soon to become the Luton branch of the reborn CND. 

I am sure many other people were similarly inspired by Kennard, Heartfield and the DIY possibilities of photomontage at this time. Hopefully the Whitechapel exhibition will inspire some even now to pick up scissors and glue.

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent at the Whitechapel Gallery, 23 July 2024- 19 January 2025 (admission free)

Thank God for Immigrants - Wham

Charity fundraising t-shirt from Jeremy Deller, featuring Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, of Greek Cypriot descent and Andrew Ridgeley,  son of Alberto Mario Zacharia (1933–2015), 'of Jewish, Italian, Yemeni and Egyptian descent... expelled from Egypt as a result of the Suez Crisis'. T-shirt available from  Jeremy Deller — fire-sale.store

 

Martin Simpson - Palaces of Gold, an old song for Grenfell

posters in Shoreditch, 2024

When I saw the great folk singer/guitarist Martin Simpson playing earlier in the summer (at the Goose is Out folk club, the Ivy House by Peckham Rye) he played a song which he said he had pledged to sing at every gig until there was justice for the Grenfell fire dead and their families. The song was  'Palaces of Gold', written by Leon Rosselson and which Simpson has been singing for many years. Rosselson originally wrote it in response to the Aberfan disaster of 1966 when a coal tip slid down to bury a school in Wales, killing 116 children and 28 adults. Although about a specific tragedy there is, as Simpson recognised, a universal aspect to the song. Namely that some lives are deemed to matter more than others, and that disasters like Aberfan and Grenfell wouldn't be allowed to happen to the families of the rich:

'If the sons of company directors,

And judges’ private daughters,

Had to got to school in a slum school,

Dumped by some joker in a damp back alley,

Had to herd into classrooms cramped with worry,

With a view onto slagheaps and stagnant pools,

Had to file through corridors grey with age,

And play in a crackpot concrete cage.

Buttons would be pressed,

Rules would be broken.

Strings would be pulled

And magic words spoken.

Invisible fingers would mould

Palaces of gold'.

 

Monday Blues

Spotted  by Dollis Brook while walking part of the Capital Ring this weekend

 

Judy Chicago at Serpentine

 Judy Chicago 'Revelations' is a retrospective of the artist's work at London's Serpentine gallery. Her feminist imagery is quite familiar to me, such as 'Rainbow Warrior (for Greenpeace)' which depicts a Goddess figure seemingly protecting the creatures of the sea. It was painted in 1980, five years before Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior ship was blown up by the French state while protesting against a nuclear test.

I hadn't though seen any of  film work before, specifically her documentation of a series of  performances she staged with others in the landscape in the early 1970s including Northwest Coast Atmospheres (1970-75) and Women and Smoke (1971-72):  'Staged across the Californian desert, the performers, whose naked bodies are painted in vibrant pigments, carry out a series of ritualistic gestures connected to early women-centered activities, such as the kindling of fire and the worship of goddess figures' (exhibition guide). There are some very powerful images of women moving around amidst flares and smoke. . 

Exhibition closes 1 September 2024, admission free.

Tower Hamlets - Cockney Rebels exhibition

'Cockney Rebels: Popular Music in Tower Hamlets, 1624-2003' is a free exhibition at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (20 June 2024 - 21 February 2025).

African music in East London A Ghana Independence Day Celebration at the St Louis Club, 46 Commercial Road E1 in 1958 with 'African Cubano Band Leader  Jimmy Scott'. Plus at the Cosmopolitan Club (1963?), 9 Artillery Passage, Bishopsgate E1, Deroy Taylor 'West Africa's Leading Guitarist' in a night 'featuring Ghana High Life, Jazz, Cha-Cha and Twist'. Ghanaian music legend Deroy Taylor aka Ebo Taylor had a an international hit in 2010 with 'Love and Death'.

'The twilight jazz at Poplar. Open air dancing at the public recreation ground last night. It will be seen that male partners were shy' (The Star, 17 June 1919)

As one of a series of events linked to the exhibition, the archive hosted 'Anarchy in the East End' featuring Jah Wobble and Suresh Singh (Spizz drummer) , both of whom grew up locally. They were in conversation with Debbie Smith (Curve, Echobelly etc). Interesting talks, with quite a spiritual vibe (Wobble is a longstanding Buddhist, Singh talked of the influence of his parents' Sikh heritage). As a bonus Talvin Singh was in the audience and commented that seeing Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart playing at the Wag Club was a big musical turning point for him.

Wobble, Singh and Smith

 

Unite Against Racism demo in East End 1994 + a spycop report on David Bowie donating to Anti Nazi League

In 1993 the far right British National Party achieved a breakthrough in the East End of London when one of its members was elected as a councillor on the Isle of Dogs in Tower Hamlets. This was a period of racist murders, including the killing of Stephen Lawrence not far from the BNP HQ in Welling, SE London. The BNP still had a street presence in East London too, selling papers on Brick Lane.

It was also a period of mass opposition to the far right, one of the largest manifestations of this being the 'Unite Against Racism' demonstration called by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) on 19 March 1994. Around 50,000 people took part in the march through the East End, from Spitalfields to London Fields. This was part of a wider mobilisation that among other things led to the BNP losing their council seat in new elections in 1994.

Photos from an amazing set from the day taken by Pete Marshall, very evocative of the whole period

As has been confirmed in the Undercover Policing Inquiry, anti-racist groups were infiltrated by undercover 'spycops' who dutifully reported on everything that moved.  In July 2024, the Inquiry published a series of reports seemingly written by Trevor Morris who had infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and Anti-Nazi League using the name Bobby Lewis (HN78). This includes an assessment of the SWP/ANL's planning for the TUC march, in the context of which it is mentioned that David Bowie had recently made a donation of $1000 to the ANL. Thus we have the unusual billing at the end of the report where the list of  'Special Branch References' - usually referring to people/organisations of interest to Special Branch - is headed by David Bowie and followed by Anti Fascist Action, the Anti Nazi League, Newham Monitoring Project and several Turkish revolutionary organisations reported to be joining the TUC march.

During the 1970s of course Bowie's brief apparent flirtation with fascist imagery had been  one of the instances that prompted the formation of Rock Against Racism, but his subsequent actions show that he decisively moved on from that time. Doubt if he had a Special Branch file (I believe that the letters n/t next to his name stand for 'no trace' in their records), but who knows?

Source

Art Not Evidence: against the criminalisation of rap and drill

Art Not Evidence posters in Camberwell, South London, July 2024

'Art Not Evidence is a growing coalition of lawyers, journalists, artists, academics, youth workers, music industry professionals and human rights campaigners working together to fight the criminalisation of rap music in UK courts'. Here's their statement:

'In recent years, courtrooms across the country have gained an alarming new soundtrack. Prosecutors — with increasing frequency — put lyrics, music videos, and audio recordings in front of juries to help secure criminal convictions. In many cases, these creative expressions have no connection to the serious crimes alleged, and are used to paint a misleading and prejudicial picture, conflating art with evidence.

Specifically, police and prosecutors use the act of writing, performing, or even engaging with rap music to suggest motive, intention, or propensity for criminal behaviour. This is particularly prevalent in controversial "joint enterprise" and conspiracy cases, in which music, lyrics, and videos are used to drag multiple people into criminal charges, often under sweeping definitions of “gang” activity. This practice disproportionately affects young Black men and boys from under-resourced, marginalised communities. It is an agent of institutional racism.

Rap music, including the drill sub-genre, is one of the most popular forms of music across the country, and a significant cultural force, producing Glastonbury and Wireless headliners, multiple industry award winners, and enjoying an artistic influence that extends into film, literature, television, and the visual arts.

Yet, despite being known for its storytelling, symbolism, figurative language, and hyperbole, police and prosecutors invite judge and jury to take rap music literally, as direct evidence of criminal intent or behaviour.

Research produced by journalists and university academics have identified over 100 cases in the UK since 2005 in which rap music was used as evidence. The majority of these cases involved multiple defendants, making use of the doctrine of joint enterprise. In the last three years alone, at least 240 people have had their fate in court decided, at least in part, by their taste in music.

This is an urgent issue, and one which demands an urgent response.

The indiscriminate use of creative expression as evidence in court risks miscarriages of justice, perpetuates harmful racist stereotypes, and contributes to a racially discriminatory criminal justice system that stifles creativity and freedom of expression. We applaud law reform campaigns in the USA, including the enactment of legislation in California, and urge judges, lawyers and legislators in the UK to follow suit.

We call for police and prosecutors to stop relying on irrelevant, unreliable, and highly prejudicial evidence in pursuit of convictions; for defence lawyers to challenge prosecutors; and for judges to exclude such evidence.

We propose legal reform to limit the admissibility of creative expression as evidence in the criminal courts.

We seek justice, and your support, in our mission to achieve it'.

Beat the Blues Festival 1980: 'Post punk Woodstock' at the Ally Pally

The Beat the Blues Festival was a one day event at the Alexandra Palace in north London on 15 June 1980, held to mark the 50th birthday of the Morning Star - the daily paper associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain (technically the Morning Star had only been so named since 1966 but its predecessor, The Daily Worker, was founded in 1930).

I was still at school at Luton Sixth Form and went down to London on a coach which I presume was put on by the local branch of the Young Communist League. I had been to a couple of their meetings and done some fly posting against cruise missiles with them in the underpass near their Crawley Green Road HQ in Luton though I never joined up. They only had a handful of active members in the town but they pulled more of a crowd down to the Ally Pally on account of the fantastic line up. 

Looking now I can see that I could have checked out folk acts including Dick Gaughan and Leon Rosselson not to mention jazz from Humphrey Littleton and others, and even 'fire defying motorcycle stuntmen'. But for me at the time it was all about the great post punk line up featuring some of the best acts of that time - The Au Pairs, Raincoats, The Slits, The Pop Group, Essential Logic and John Cooper Clarke. It blew me away,  The Slits and The Pop Group in particular had an amazing funky energy- drummer Bruce Smith played with both bands that day, while The Pop Group played with two bassists! I was lucky enough to see the Raincoats, the Au Pairs and The Pop Group again in that period, as well as other great post punk heavyweights including The Gang of Four and Delta 5 but for me this day will always stand out as the pinnacle of that scene and one of the musical highlights of my life. Somebody else who was there recallled:  'I'd just turned 15, Metal Box had just come out and was playing over the PA between bands at this outdoor festival- I guess this was the post-punk Woodstock for me!'. All of this for £2.50. The only thing that could have improved it for me would have been if Scritti Politti had played too, sadly not though I remember standing behind their drummer Tom Morley in the crowd.

A ticket for the day signed by John Cooper Clarke (from ivaninblack)

The politics of it were a little contradictory, the CPGB was generally quite staid and sympathetic to the regimes of Eastern Europe where  autonomous music scenes were often the target of state repression. In his NME review of the gig, Graham Lock mentions Czechoslovakia 'where musicians from the bands DG307 and The Plastic People of the Universe have been jailed for playing rock'n'roll without a state licence'. While the cream of innovative English bands played on the stage elsewhere there was an 'International City' - 'about ten tents filled with travel brochures for Eastern Europe'. I think there were also brass bands from that part of the world, and lots of stalls indoors from various left groups.

The Pop Group, with their more independent radical left perspective called these contradictions out on the day, 'dedicating 'Forces of Oppression' to "all the Stalinists in the audience" and "For How Much Longer do we Tolerate Mass Murder' to Leonid Brezhnev' (Lock). In fact I recall a thrilling moment when Mark Stewart smashed up a portrait of then Soviet leader Brezhnev on the stage. 

Lock describes the festival, or at least the main stage music as 'the result of a tentative alliance between Rough Trade - freewheeling, anti-biz collectivists [...] and the Morning Star'. Elsewhere Dick O'Dell - who I think managed The Slits and The Pop Group at the time, as well as founding Y records which released their stuff - has said that he organised it with Shirley O’Loughlin, manager of The Raincoats and who worked at Rough Trade setting up their booking agency.

There were many iconic photos taken that day, perhaps most famously David Corio's picture of The Slits' Viv Albertine;

 I really like these colour ones snapped by Bruce Crawford which he shared on twitter a while back.

The Pop Group

The Slits 

The gig was reviewed in issue number 6 of Vague  zine:

'June 15 Morning Star 50th anniversary festival at Alexandra Palace, featuring the Slits, the Pop Group, the Raincoats, Essential Logic, the Au-Pairs and John Cooper-Clarke: Alexandra Palace is full of communist propaganda. The punters are a mixture of Rastas, biker types, punks and old age pensioners. I spent 4 hours walking round the stalls, which was fairly interesting because there were stalls selling souvenirs from Russia, Greece, etc. I won’t go into details though because even the Pop Group aren’t into politics like this. Whether left or right it amounts to the same thing, an authoritarian state that subjugates the weak, poor and minorities...

Anyway most people came to hear the music and this particular music says a lot more than we ever could. The gig was behind the palace and started at 3pm. The Au-pairs came on first and did a very exciting set which got some of the crowd going. The Raincoats came on next and all the crowd were dancing and being friendly with each other. Half way through their set an announcement was made: “Somebody got bottled. So if you want this gig to go on, report anyone who looks as if they might get violent.” Big Brother is watching you. Where have you heard remarks like that before? Even this didn’t do it, after that announcement 2 more people got bottled. John Cooper-Clarke was on next, minus musicians, which I think is much better, because that guy has so much stage presence…

The Pop Group were on next and Mark came on stage with a picture of Brezhnev, shouted “We don’t want communism!” and stamped on the picture. They did all the stuff off the second album which got the crowd shouting and Gareth was doing some brilliant disco-dancing… Apparently the Pop Group stole the show and Iggy didn’t have much (anything?) to say about the Slits, which is a shame, but this is the Pop Group’s piece, feeble as it is. The Pop Group have a highly original style of their own, if you didn’t like them at Ally Pally give them a second chance, they deserve it. They also deserve a better article than this. Their lyrics make Crass seem like failed Cockney Rejects (they are aren’t they?) and their funky dance beat is better than the Crusaders. Sorry we couldn’t do them more justice'.

It was also reviewed in the NME (21 June 1980) by Gavin Lock:

There is some good footage of The Pop Group on the day shot by Don Letts on the stage. If you look carefully you can see a cricket match going on in the background elsewhere in the park.

He also captured The Slits, great clip here of them doing 'Man Next Door' on the day with the young Nenah Cherry on the stage with them (in red beret). I think you can see members of other bands standing around on the edge of stage watching them, including Gina from The Raincoats and maybe Jeannette Lee of Public Image Ltd and later Rough Trade.

 

The Ally Pally itself was seriously damaged by fire just a month later which broke out during a Capital Radio Jazz Festival there, resulting in it being closed for a number of years.

See also:

Au Pairs interview 1981

The Pop Group at CND Protest and Survive rally 1980

(I used to have a poster for this event on my teenage bedroom wall, can't find that particular image online, anybody have a copy?)

An advert for Beat the Blues festival from The Leveller magazine, May 1980. At that point looks like only John Cooper Clarke was confirmed of the post-punk acts, the advert highlighting jazz and folk artists as well as mentioning Kent miners brass band and Bulgarian puppet theatre. On the same page of magazine an ad for Gang of Four single and for the great Compendium Bookshop in Camden.