The Gig Guide - 1995 South London music listings

I found this June 1995 issue of  The Gig Guide for London in Revolution Records in Penge. I don't remember it from the time and it certainly doesn't cover the breadth of music from that period. Its focus is very much on the pub music scene but it provides an interesting snapshot of South London venues, some no longer here. 

There are some recognisable names. Placebo are listed at playing at McMillans in Deptford which must have been an early gig for them. Brain of Morbius are at the Prince of Orange SE16, Pavement and Motorhead at Brixton Academy and Shane MacGowan and the Popes at the Clapham Grand - followed a week later by Whigfield.  

Most of the other artists aren't familiar - to me anyway - but The Station and The Roebuck in Lewisham, the Rutland in Catford, the White Swan SE10,  the Pie & Kilderkin in Forest Hill (now the Signal), the Paradise Bar in New Cross and the World Turned Upside Down on Old Kent Road are all busy with various rock, jazz and indie nights.  Clubbing was probably bigger than gigging in 1995, it certainly was for me, but that doesn't get too much of a look in here apart from The Fridge in Brixton with its gay nights Love Muscle and Gridlock. Drummonds in Beckenham High Street promises 'the best funk and soul bands' every Thursday.

 

Chumbawamba, Levellers and more: New Cross Venue 1991

I have posted previously about the Venue in New Cross Road, closed since Covid but in the early 1990s one of the top live music places in London, particularly for up and coming indie bands. This selection of references from Sounds music paper from January to March 1991 shows just how busy it was. There were gigs every Friday and Saturday and sometimes on other nights in the week. Bands finished by 11 pm but there was a club afterwards until 2 am (known on Saturday night as Awesome), with coaches back to Trafalgar Square afterwards, from where you could get a night bus to most parts of London. 

Sounds 5 January 1991:

The Levellers reviewed- 'It seems that the tribes of the rainbow have gathered here tonight. Every shape, style, colour and form of youthful life'. Just don't call them Crusty.

Chumbawamba, Thatcher on Acid

Subhumans, Long Tall Texans, The Hinnies, The Cropdusters, Chumba

Anarcho-punk band The Subhumans played two consecutive nights at the Venue - reunion gigs which Sounds in 1991 described as a 'nostalgia trip... might be your last chance to get down to timeless classics'. Not quite - I saw them twice at the New Cross Inn in 2024!

Sounds 19 January 1991:

Melvins, Steel Pole Bath Tub, Ocean Colour Scene, Fieldmice, Heavenly, The Orchids, Easy, Close Lobsters, Afgan Wigs.

Ocean Colour Scene

Sounds 26 January 1991:

Dr Phibes and the House of Wax Equations

The Fieldmice, Heavenly, The Orchids - I might have been at that one, definitely saw Heavenly there at least once

Sounds 2 February 1991

American bands The Melvins make their UK debut at the Venue in 1991, supported by Steel Pole Bath Tub

Chumba's gig on 12 Jan 1991  reviewed-  'The entire Venue is bathed in a sea of punks dancing'.  'Outside the roads are clogged with the prospective audience'. I think I went to this one, I remember the queue stretching down to New Cross station.

Easy, Close Lobsters

Sounds 9 February 1991:

Carter USM and Billy Bragg to play 'Stop the War in the Gulf' CND Benefit

Leatherface, Sleep, Working with Tomatoes

Sounds 16 February 1991:

Bleach, Basti, Suncarriage

Perfect Disaster, Bleach, The Darkside, Catherine Wheel, Chapter House

This issue Sounds featured a chart of the most requested records at the Venue - Carter USM, Nirvana, Cud, Throwing Muses, Orange Juice etc.

Sounds 23 March 1991:

Half Man Half Biscuit supported by 'Levellers 5' (not to be confused with The Levellers, a different band who had to change their name as the latter went massive)

East Village, Jesse Garron and the Desperados, Shack, Guana Batz, Long Tall Texans, Rattlers, Green on Red (great American 'paisley underground' band).

'Despite its out of the way location, the Venue in New Cross has proved itself a welcome addition to the London gig circuit and has become a comfortable, popular place to frequent - as proved by the full house for tonight's first birthday celebrations'. Headliners 'Lush are the brightest stars of the future'. Support bands  are Moose and another who tread 'their well worn 60s groove'. Whatever did become of Blur? The following year Lush were supported by Pulp at the Venue.

Sounds 30 March 1991

Front Line Assembly, Solar Enemy, Ganz Heit

See previous posts

New Cross Venue Flyers 1900-95

Spiritualized at the Venue 1991

More New Cross Venue Memories (including Lush)

Venue Flyers (including Sebadoh and Belly)

More Venue Flyers

Deptford Urban Free Festival 1995

 Deptford Urban Free Festival was a great event that took place in Fordham Park SE14 every summer from 1990 to 1996. It got bigger and bigger, squeezing bands, sound systems and tens of thousands of people into what is quite a small space. I have scanned and uploaded the July 1995 programme on to archive.org (see full thing here).

'you can't kill the spirit' - a reference to the Criminal Justice Act which had come into effect

Just part of the line up - headliners were Skunk Anansie and Asian Dub Foundation, others playing included Back to the Planet, Here and Now and Grateful Dub

Sound systems including RDK Hi-Fi (dub), Innervision (including Liberator and Institute of Goa DJs) and Avit Army ('from South London combine gabba/techno/acid/hard trance and industrial styles. Free parties are the order of the day'. I remember dancing a lot that day.

See also: Deptford Urban Free Festival 1992

Brixton Hill Clinic Defence Campaign - defeating anti-abortionists in 1990

The anti-abortion movement in the UK will no doubt be emboldened by recent events in the United States, and while the scope for them to challenge current laws seems to be limited there is a risk that they may step up direct action against health services. In recent years anti-abortionists have picketed St John's Medical Centre in Loampit Vale SE13 (including in 2015 and 2018) and sporadically protest in Brixton and Streatham.

These documents are from an earlier campaign that successfully stopped similar protests, at least for a while. Back in 1990, a Brixton Hill Clinic Defence Campaign was set up in response to anti-abortionists picketing the local clinic.  The Campaign was set up at a meeting at Lambeth Town Hall in July 1990. As the invite issued by the socialist group Workers Power explained:

'As you may know, anti-abortionists have been regularly picketing the Raleigh Clinic in Brixton Hill and the Leigham clinic in Leigham Court Road. Streatham. The pickets have included supporters of Operation Rescue, a US derived organisation noted for its militant and often violent tactics. The pickets take place every Saturday at Brixton Hill between 8am and 12 noon, and as far as is possible to tell, between 10am and 12 noon at Streatham on the last Saturday of the month only.

The anti-abortionists tactics have so far included leafletting and harrasing women going into the clinic.  It is vital that all those who support choice and the right of women to control their own bodies get organised against the anti- abortionists. While there are not very many of them at present, if they are left unchallenged, they will attract support and their tactics will become more and more militant. Informal counter-pickets have been happening every Saturday at Brixton Hill. Such counter-pickets need to be organised properly and built for in the Labour movement.

It has also been argued that there is a need them to be carried out with sensitivity - there is a danger that large unruly counter-picket outside a clinic would have the same deterrent effect on women seeking abortions as the anti-abortionists themselves. 

We have taken the initiative of booking a room in Lambeth Town Hall on Monday 9th July in room 121, in order to hold a meeting to discuss the way forward to defeating the anti-abortionists. We need to discuss what tactics to use and how to mobilise people against Operation Rescue. We would hope that some sort of organising committee could be constituted to organise the counter-pickets, and any other action deemed necessary. We hope everyone who is concerned about the threat that the anti-abortionists represent and wishes to organise against them will either attend or, if an organisation, send a representative'.

Invite to a meeting to 'Organise Against Operation Rescue' at Lambeth Town Hall, July 1990

In the early protests the police did not seem to have been interested and when an anti-abortionist had run towards the clinic and been stopped by a counter-demonstrator it was the latter who was arrested (though later released without charge).  

At the meeting at Lambeth Town Hall the main political difference was on how to respond - representatives attending from the alphabet soup of left/anarchist groups active in Brixton at the time. Broadly speaking the Socialist Workers Party wished to mobilise counter protestors at the clinic. Others present - the majority at the meeting - felt that having a crowd there, even a sympathetic one, would be very uncomfortable for women attending. It was agreed to have enough of a presence at the Clinic to challenge the anti-abortionists and if necessary escort women past them, but not to seek to mobilise large numbers directly outside it. Instead, efforts would be put into preventing Operation Rescue getting to the Clinic in the first place

A leaflet given out at the clinic declared 'A Woman's Right to Choose... Raleigh Nursing Home is one of the few places in Lambeth that performs abortions. We are here today outside it because we believe that every woman should have the right to control over her own body. That means she should have the right to an abortion if she wants one.

Unfortunately there are some people who seek to prevent women from exercising that right- by force, by threats and by terror. You may have seen them here too. As often as not they are the ones on their knees. You may have been given one of their glossy horror pamphlets full of photographs of "dead

babies". If we had the same vast wealth behind us as they do - and the same twisted logic - you could be reading an equally glossy pamphlet full of pictures of dead women; just some of the hundreds of thousands who die every year throughout the world whilst attempting backstreet abortion. Because that is the reality in countries without even Britain's limited legal abortion facilities.

[...] we aren't trying to frighten anybody away. We don't even want to be here ourselves. It can be traumatic enough for women to come for an abortion without a crowd of people on the gate as they go in. We are only here because if we weren't the militant anti-abortionists - who in the United States have resorted to fire bombing clinics - will count it as a victory'

Meanwhile a crew drawn from Workers Power, Red Action, South London Direct Action Movement and other local anarchists, all of whom had a presence in the area, put in place the plan to stop Operation Rescue in their tracks. These people were in effect the backbone of Anti Fascist Action in South London and weren't mucking around. As the anti-abortionists made their way up from Brixton station they were ambushed, and as they used to say 'acquainted with the pavement'. It was a long time before they returned to Brixton Hill.

A report on the campaign from Workers Power, July 1990

 

A letter from the campaign from City Limits magazine, 2 September 1990

The following account, 'Bouncing the Bigots',  comes from Direct Action, October 1990:

'[...] In Brixton a group was formed to oppose Rescue by mounting a counter picket. Over the weeks, our tactics evolved and developed. Members of a variety of groups and organisations  (DAM, Red Action and others) formed the Clinics Defence Campaign.

Our main concern is not to add to the intimidation of women going into the clinic. A vast crowd clustered round the entrance is inherently frightening. We use what we call "them plus two": if they have five people, then we have seven and we surround them with our banners supporting a woman's right to choose. We also have back up in case of any trouble and also relief pickets for when the constant singing and praying gets too much!

Week after the were they have appeared and been met with a hostile reception. Slowly their numbers decreased as weaker souls got too scared to face up to vigorous local opposition. On one appearance due to a certain incident they left en masse (well, there were only 3 of them) in an ambulance. For almost 2 months now, they've been happily absent from Brixton'

[The address given for the Clinic Defence Campaign in this article is 121 Railton Road - the squatted anarchist centre that was used by many local groups in this period]

(updated February 2024 with addition of Direct Action article)

New Cross Venue, Christmas 1990 (and other 90s flyers)

Some more flyers from the New Cross Venue in the 1990s, when the place was a key indie venue.

December 1990 - A Certain Ratio, Band of Holy Joy and Teenage Fanclub (with the Pastels and BMX Bandits) on consecutive nights. According to someone who was at the latter, Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream joined Teenage Fanclub on stage for an encore version of  'Get Back'.

Teengage Fanclub at the Venue Christmas Party, 21 December 1990 -
'bands finish 11 pm, club till 2 am, coach after club to Traflagar Square'

May 1990 with bands including Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry, Soho and The Oyster Band:

November 1991, including Therapy, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Pastels/Heavenly and Spiritualized (think I was those last two).

February 1992: Meteors, Godfathers, Planet Gong with Here & Now:

June 1992 - Pulp supporting Boo Radleys:

March 1993 - including Goats Don't Shave, Gang of Four and Dodgy:

May 1993 - Sheep on Drugs, The Lunachicks etc.:

October 1994 - Gary Clail, African Headcharge, Dreadzone, Ultramarine:

December 1994: Sleeper, Loop Guru, Shed Seven:

January 1995: Test Dept, King Kurt - also an early example of a tribute band 'English Rose' (Jam covers) which were to become the main acts at the Venue later in the 1990s.

May 1995 - Pale Saints, Cardiacs, Sidi Bou Said (a great South London band):

 See more Venue flyers and stories here

Je Suis Music at The Paradise Bar (1999)

News this week that The Royal Albert Pub (460 New Cross Road) has changed hands - it is one of a number of pubs previously run by Antic which have been taken over by Portobello Brewing. The start of another chapter in the history of this long established pub and sometime music venue (see previous posts for some of its history)

I found this flyer for a night out there in April 1999 when it was in its incarnation as the Paradise Bar. A note in my diary records that I went there with my late friend Katy Watson for 'Je Suis Music' a 'self-proclaimed pop-retro kitsch night' with DJs Joe Egg and the Futurist Girls playing 'a never-ending stream of 1980s pop', lots of Fun Boy Three, Smiths, Heaven 17, Soft Cell and Aha. All with the lit up multi coloured disco dancefloor. It was one of a range of campy nights put on by Joe and Nervous Stephen, including French Disko and Pretty in Pink themed nights (not to mention the Belle & Sebastian fanfest 2000 Troubled Teenagers which I've mentioned before)

There was a Pop Culture Quiz which me and Katy won, she took the Suede CD prize. I would still get the music questions right but not sure about the TV ones!

 

(It was a strange weekend, on the Saturday I had been on a demonstration about the war that was raging in Yugoslavia and a nail bomb had gone off in Brixton, planted by a far right activist as the first of a series that also targeted Brick Lane and the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho).