Women in Revolt at Tate Britain

'Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990' at Tate Britain features a huge amount of archive material from different 1970s/80s feminist currents alongside the art works which taken together give a strong sense of the visual culture and politics of the period. 

Lots of South London content included, here's a few I spotted:

'Shrew - Women's Liberation Workshop' (1970)- I noticed on the cover that this copy was at one time held in 'The Fawcett Collection, temporarily at 67 Barry Road SE22'. The Fawcett Collection later became the Women's Library. Barry Road in East Dulwich just across the road from Peckham Rye, where as discussed here previously one of the first London Women's Liberation groups was formed, a group that was involved in the production of Shrew.

'In Print' - newsletter of Peckham Black Women's Group, at one point ran Peckham Black Women's Centre, 69 Bellenden Road SE15

Leaflet for a demonstration from Brockwell Park called by the Groce Family Support and Community Defence Campaign. Cherry Groce was shot and seriously injured by police during a raid on a house in Brixton in 1985, sparking off a riot.

'Defend the black community! fascists off the streets' - a leaflet mobilising for the anti-National Front demonstration in New Cross/Lewisham in August 1977, that became known as the Battle of Lewisham. Would like to see the back of this leaflet to see who produced it.

The exhibition includes issues of Rock Against Racism zine 'Temporary Hoarding', one of which features this picture of Adam and the Ants playing a RAR gig at Elephant and Castle'. This was at South Bank Poly (now Uni) on 17 June 1978.

Chain Reaction at the Market Tavern in Vauxhall, 1980s women only SM/fetish club 

 


Quite a few visitors delighted in spotting images of themselves or friends, or things they had been involved with and by the end I was doing the same with pictures from the Clause 28 demonstrations and copies of Shocking Pink zine which my friend Katy Watson was involved with and which was based for a while at the 121 Centre in Brixton.



The exhibition closes on 7 April 2024.

South London Gay Clubs 1984

Some South London gay clubs 1984: Dover Castle in Deptford Broadway; Market Tavern in Vauxhall, Union Tavern in Camberwell ) - from Capital Gay 24 August 1984

See previously:

Police raid Forest Hill Gay Club 1987

 

Vauxhall Horse Sculptures

'When suddenly Johnny gets the feeling he's being surrounded by

horses, horses, horses, horses

coming in in all directions

white shining silver studs with their nose in flames,

He saw horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses'

(Patti Smith)

I believe that Jason deCaires Taylor's horse sculptures on the Thames shore at Vauxhall (close to where what remains of the River Effra joins the Thames) have now gone after being displayed there throughout September. The sculptures were only fully visible at low tide, with the title 'Rising Tide' alluding to global warning.

Roger Moore: South London James Bond

Well a bit of excitement last week about Daniel Craig filming the new James Bond film in Deptford. But the real South London James Bond is undoubtedly Roger Moore.

As recalled in his autobiography My Word is My Bond, Moore was born in 1927 at the Maternity Hospital in Jeffreys Road, Clapham. He lived in Aldebert Terrace, then in Albert Square in Stockwell (number 4, then number 14). He went to Hackford Road Elementary (later Durand Primary) and then Vauxhall Central School.

As a teenager he hung out at the Astoria in Brixton and the Locarno ballroom in Streatham, snogging on Streatham Common afterwards. With his first wife Lucy Woodward (also known as Doorn Van Stein) , the daughter of a Streatham cab driver, Moore moved into a room in her family home at 16 Buckleigh Road, Streatham in 1946.

By 1952 Moore had started acting, and was invited to a party in St Mary's Mount, Bexley at the home of Dorothy Squires. At the time Squires was one of the biggest singing stars in the country, and 13 years years Moore's senior. Before long, Moore had divorced Doorn and moved in with Squires (Moore and Squires pictured below). Moore went on to star in the Saint as Simon Templar, then took on the role of James Bond in the 1970s - starting with Live and Let Die in 1973.

By this time Moore had long since moved on from South London. Squires - who he left in 1961 - stayed in Bexley until her mansion burned down in 1974.

South Bank Subterranean Stories

This message popped up on the Folklore Society's Talking Folklore email list yesterday from Martin Goodson:

Just to report sitting on the number 36 bus yesterday from Peckham to Victoria in London. Three students got on outside the art college at Camberwell. We approached the big beige battleship known as the MI5 building at Vauxhall when one of the students piped up

"You know that in case of emergency I've heard that it (MI5 building) [actually MI6], can sink down and go under the river."

General hilarity broke out from the other students

"No, it's true, it can. I've also heard it can turn black so that it cannot be attacked at night."

Level of hilarity increases, but the student persevered in her conviction that this building is now equipped with quite SFX qualities to protect itself in case of attack.

Martin asked if anyone else has heard this rumour.

A response came from another list member who referred everyone to this video on the Daily Telegraph site which describes, firstly, the building as 'Legoland', fitting into an earlier Transpontine thread, and also mentions, 24 seconds in, of a secret tunnel that supposedly runs from MI6 to Vauxhall tube.

Has anyone heard more?

Resonance FM Free Concerts

A couple of free events brought to you by the folks at Resonance FM:

Friday 9 January at 8pm: What links the Indian Mutiny, Leon Theremin, Donna Summer and the alluring whiff of WD-40? Find out in a live concert of machine-music curated by Resonance FM's Ed Baxter. Featuring Sarah Angliss, Da nWilson, Ben Barwise, Xper.Xr and special guests.

Friday 16 January at 8pm: The Resonance Radio Orchestra live in concert; plus a live coding vs.live circuit building competition with Nick Collins (SussexUniversity) versus Nicolas Collins (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), vying for the annual award of the "Nic(k) Collins Cup," an exquisite ceramic vessel commissioned from Devon potter Nic Collins(no relation).

Both at: Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall Street, London SE11 5RH just by Oval cricket ground's West Gate (Oval tube, Vauxhall rail). Part of the exhibition Felix's Machines . Admission Free.

South London Film Locations

The London Film Location Guide by Simon R.H. James (London: Batsford, 2007) features hundreds of locations in exhaustive detail – he has obviously spent years tracking down not just particular streets but exact house numbers.

In terms of our core area of New Cross, Deptford and Brockley there’s not much to report, with the films included mostly mentioned on Transpontine before, including Shaun of the Dead, Spider, Once a Jolly Swagman and Intimacy. In relation to the latter though, James has identified no.2 Alpha Road as the house used for a great deal of sex. The only film he mentions that I wasn’t aware of is Five Seconds to Spare (1999), where Ray Winstone has a recording studio in APT arts on Deptford Creekside – and ends up dead in the Creek.

Unsurprizingly there are numerous film locations listed for Greenwich, the area around the South Bank, Bankside and Borough Market (including all those Bridget Jones scenes).

I watched Mona Lisa (1986) recently so knew some of it was filmed in East Dulwich , but the author has done the legwork and notes that Bob Hoskins buys flowers at 286 Crystal Palace Road (on the corner of Goodrich Road) and then tries to visit his daughter at 16 Darrell Road. I wasn’t aware that in Last Orders (2001), the exterior of the pub is The Wishing Well Inn in Bellenden Road (the interior is the Larkhall Tavern in Clapham – now converted to flats), while Michael Caine’s butcher shop is 194 Bellenden Road – now Lucius and Richards.

I must rewatch the Children of the Damned (1964) now that I know it features the Bermondsey Street tunnel. And I was delighted to discover that in the original Italian Job (1966), Michael Caine delivers the famous line 'You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off' in Crystal Palace park (you can see the TV transmitter behind him).



But things are never as they seem in the movies. A car chase in ‘Lewisham’ in I Believe in You (1952) was actually filmed in Latchmere Road in Battersea, while in Janice Beard 45 wpm (1998) a ‘Rotherhithe’ scene is actually Pensbury Place in Vauxhall.

Equally South London locations can double up for other places. The back streets of ‘Soho’ in an An American Werewolf in London (1981) are actually around Clink Street, SE1 (the scene where Jenny Agutter pushes through the police cordon is on the corner of Clink Street and Stoney Street). Passport to Pimlico was not filmed in Pimlico, but in a street built for the purpose on a bombsite in north Lambeth –where Copeland House and Ferrybridge House estates now stand. Most far fetched, at least in terms of geographical distance, Reese Witherspoon’s ‘Harvard’ speech in Legally Blonde was actually filmed in the Great Hall of Dulwich College! Oh and the door to The Leaky Cauldron in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is under the railway bridge at 7 Stoney Street, SE1.

Then there are the continuity distortions, where areas several miles apart are made to look adjacent. The book gives many examples, including The Sandwich Man (1966) with Michael Bentine, where Dulwich Park SE21 is apparently sandwiched between SW1 and Green Park, W1.

No book of this kind can ever be really comprehensive. In terms of New Cross and Deptford for instance, he hasn’t picked up on some locations featured previously at Transpontine, such as Interview with a Vampire and the Quatermass Xperiment. He documents the Thamesmead locations for A Clockwork Orange and the concrete subway at Wandsworth gyratory, SW18, where a tramp gets beaten up in the same film. But he doesn’t include Nettlefold Hall in West Norwood, also used in the film.

Still there’s more than enough here to fuel a thousand conversations in the pub or round the water cooler.

Another Nickel in the Machine

Another Nickel in the Machine is a great London blog, focusing on the musical history of various parts of the city, mixed up as it is with sex, scandal and politics. All the posts are well researched and lusciously illustrated with photographs.

On a South London tip, he has a great post about the Elephant and Castle, including the history of Teddy boys and girls and the link to early British rock'n'roll through Tommy Steele. He mentions that 'Just ten minutes walk away from 'The Elephant' on the Waterloo Road was a cafe called The Cave (so-called because it was under some railway arches). Three young musicians played there in a skiffle group called The Cavemen and named after the cafe. They were Lionel Bart, local boy Tommy Hicks and Mike Pratt. They'd all met at a party at a sort of pre-hippie Beatnik commune called The Yellow Door next to The Cave'. Hicks was soon to be renamed Tommy Steele and Lionel Bart went on the write Oliver. I would like to know more about the Cave and the Yellow Door.

There is also a post on Vauxhall and the Albert Embankment - into which he manages to weave the Angry Brigade, Jeffrey Archer and a remarkable Julie Driscoll song called Vauxhall to Lambeth Bridge.

The latter is another one for the South London Songs collection with lyrics including: 'I walked down by the Thames, Vauxhall to Lambeth Bridge... I look down into the lapping water that’s dark and black, When I look up I see a man standing all alone and he too is looking into the water that’s dark and black, What are you thinking of man, what are you searching for? I hope you find you answer, but I don’t think you'll find it there'.

Seven Songs

I have been tagged twice to take part in this (by Andrew and Richard):

'List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to'. A bit slow off the mark, but here we go:

1. M.I.A. – Paper Planes – ‘If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name’ – Clash sampling (Straight to Hell) classic from Kala album. There’s a remix featuring Woolwich’s Afrikan Boy on his myspace.

2. Jonathan Richman – Buzz Buzz Buzz (go the honey bees) – this is an old song that I’d forgotten about until I heard it earlier in the year at the memorial for Paul Hendrich. Despite this sad association this is a spring/summer twee classic.

3. Shortwave Set –No Social – from their new Replica Sun Machine album, they’ve upped the ante since the first album with strings on some tracks arranged by Van Dyke Parks and production by Dangermouse (of Gnarls Barkeley fame) – perhaps they reminisced about South East London with the latter, as they hail from Deptford and he used to live in New Cross. John Cale’s on some tracks too and he also went to Goldsmiths in New Cross. They are playing at Massive Attack’s Meltdown on the South Bank next month.

4. Kode9 and Spaceape– Konfusion – caught some of Kode9’s set at The Amersham Arms in New Cross last Friday. What I like about the stuff he does with Spaceape is the languid MCing, it puts me in mind of the first Massive Attack album, particularly the tracks with Tricky on. Of course both the early 1990s ‘Bristol sound’ and dubstep have in common that sonic collision between reggae sound system culture and other dance musics.

5. Portishead – The Rip – no longer sounding like early 1990s Bristol, this track of the new Portishead album starts off as folky but dark-sounding ditty about horses before driving minimalist synth riff kicks in.

6. Laura Gibson – All the Pretty Horses – more gee gee action, not nearly as creepy as Current93’s version of the same song – well she was growing up in a logging town in Oregon when the latter’s David Tibet was squatting in Vauxhall. Laura’s playing in London next month.

7. Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan – Seafarin’ Song – from their new Sunday at Devil Dirt album. I still miss Isobel from Belle and Sebastian, but her two albums with Mark Lanegan more than make up for her absence from Glasgow’s finest.

See also Baggage Reclaim and Bob's selections. Most people I know seem to already have been tagged for this one, but I will throw it open to the following in case they want to play (no obligation of course): Uncarved, Ruinist, Last Bus Home, Pecknam, Grievous Angel, Dub and Sonic Truth.

Heathrow Expansion

It might seem a long way from New Cross to Heathrow airport but of course it's not by plane. The projected expansion of Heathrow will have a big impact on South East London with even more air traffic overhead. In fact, as Sue notes at Green Ladywell, it is planned that flights coming into Heathrow will join their final landing path as far east as Woolwich and Bexley and then fly in two parallel paths to Heathrow: the 'northern' flight path going Greenwich – Peckham – Camberwell – Vauxhall and the southern flight path Blackheath – Deptford – Dulwich – Stockwell/Brixton.


There is a public meeting happening happening in Blackheath about this, with speaker John Stewart from aircraft noise campaigners HACAN. It takes places on Wednesday 23rd April, 7.30 pm, Recital Room, Blackheath Halls, 23 Lee Rd, SE3 9RQ. In the meantime as my contribution to the campaign to Stop Heathrow Expansion I would like to put forward an alternative vision for Heathrow - the picture below is from London Marches On (1947):

Self-Cancellation

Coming up at the Beaconsfield Gallery in Vauxhall from 2 to 9 February, 'Ten experimental sound artists are invited to explore in public the principles of self-cancellation in sound through conferencing, workshops and performance', featuring Mark & John Bain, John Butcher, Michael Colligan, Rhodri Davies, Benedict Drew, Robin Hayward, Gustav Metzger, Lee Patterson, Sarah Washington. Commissioned by Arika & the London Musicians’ Collective and developed with Beaconsfield. Events include:

- 2 Feb – 11am-4pm: SpeedDataRadio 2 – multiple round-table live-to-air mixdown on Resonance FM for artists, musicians, academics & enthusiasts (free but booking essential)
- 6 February – 2pm: Gustav Metzger – Art & Compromise lecture series (free but booking essential)
- 9 February – 8pm: Performances – oscillators, seismographs, harmonics, acid-action etc. (tickets £10/£8 concessions – limited availability)

Book for free events by contacting Beaconsfield on 020 7582 6465/ info@beaconsfield.ltd.uk Buy tickets for 9 February via the Beaconsfield website, or by sending a cheque to Beaconsfield at this address: Beaconsfield, 22 Newport Street, Vauxhall, London, SE11 6AY.

South London Drag

The recent post about Boy George, South East London’s best-known cross dressing icon, has got me thinking about drag. Whether Boy George was ever strictly a drag queen, as opposed to a man in a frock, is as open to question as the meaning of drag itself. As one its historians points out: 'Drag is about many things. It is about clothes and sex. It subverts the dress codes that tell us what men and women should look like in our organised society. It creates tension and releases tension, confronts and appeases. It is about role playing and questions the meaning of both gender and sexual identity. It is about anarchy and defiance. It is about men's fear of women as much as men's love of women and it is about gay identity' (Baker).

Until the 17th century, almost all actors were men so the stages of London’s South Bank were full of female impersonators like Edward Kynaston, of whom Samuel Pepys said he "made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life, only her voice not very good" (18 August 1660).

Later there was cross dressing in music hall and pantomime, particularly the role of the Pantomime dame. Dan Leno (1860-1904) was one of the most famous dames as well as the sometime Champion Clog-dancer of the world. Towards the end of his life he lived in Brixton (56 Akerman Road, SW9) and was part of the company that built the Oriental Palace of Varieties in 1896, a Camberwell music hall.

Post-Second World War drag acts 'in the noisy, smoky, crowded pubs of South London and docklands’ drag acts ‘'were joining the singers and local comics in the line-up of entertainers for a Saturday night’ (Baker). Who were these South London drag acts? Boy George mentions from his childhood (late 60s/early 70s) 'Bubbles the drag queen who ran a caff in Dulwich... Used to perform at the Valley Club in Dulwich and spent all his days dishing up sausage, egg and chips to navvies'. There was also George Pinaud, some-time Greenwich market stallholder and drag artist, who set himself up as the Pearly King of Greenwich and Deptford in 1958 (Binder).

Men like these have had a significant impact on South London in some unexpected ways. In the 1950s 'drag acts were a popular attraction in some working-class straight pubs. Some of these such as… (the) Vauxhall Tavern and Camden's Black Cap began attracting gay men in growing numbers to their shows, and by the late 1960s had slowly metamorphosed into gay pubs' (Baker). So perhaps Vauxhall’s current key position in London gay nightlife owes something to these men who weren’t afraid to put on a dress.

Sources: Drag: a history of female impersonation in the performing arts - Roger Baker (London, Cassell, 1994); Take it Like a Man: the autobiography of Boy George; Binder, Pearl, The Pearlies: a Social Record – Pearl Binder (London: Jupiter Books, 1975)

Ernest Dowson: Lewisham Decadent

Ernest Dowson (1867-1900), in the words of his biographer, was a ‘poet and decadent’ who lived and died in the Lewisham area.

Dowson was born in his parent’s home, Gothic House, The Grove, Lee on 2 August 1867. After his father's suicide in 1894, his mother moved to 97 Quentin Rd, Lee where she killed herself the following year.

As a poet Dowson became involved with The Rhymers Club, whose poets included WB Yeats and John Barlas, an anarchist arrested in 1891 for shooting a pistol near the speaker of the House of Commons residence (Oscar Wilde stood bail). Wilde sometimes attended Club as did Edgar Jepson, whose lodgings in Harleyford Road, Vauxhall were sometimes used as a crashpad by Dowson after a night's drinking.

Dowson lived a short life of poetry, drink and poverty – he was turned down when he applied for a job at Newington Library in 1892, still open today on Walworth Road.

He died in February 1900 while staying at the home of Robert Sherard, a writer and former friend of Verlaine, who lived at 26 Sandhurst Gardens (now 159 Langley Road), Catford. He was visited there by the novelist Conal O'Riordan (living in Bromley) and the artists Charles Conder and Augustus John. His grave is in Ladywell cemetery.

Dowson is best known for the lines:

"They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream”.

Other famous phrases include 'gone with the wind', 'stranger in a strange land' and 'I've been faithful to thee in my fashion'.

A favourite quote of mine is the following: 'Give me the streets and the yellow gas, the roar of the City, smoke, haggard faces, flaming omnibuses, parched London, and the river rolling oilily by the embankment like the Styx at night when the lamps shine" (Dowson and Arthur Moore, A Comedy of Masks, 1893). There is a selection of his poems here.

Source: Madder Music, Stronger Wine: the life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent - Jad Adams (London: Tauris, 1990)

South London Spooks

No, not MI6 at Vauxhall. We're talking the supernatural/imaginary/anomalous phenomena for which there is a perfectly rational explanation - take your choice, or in true Fortean style keep open the option that all or none of the above may be true.

Any way, on 11th October South East London Folklore Society presents Patsy Langley talking on Ghosts of South London, with a particular focus on Borough and surrounds. 8 pm at the Old King's Head, Kings Head Yard, 45-49, Borough High St, London, SE1 1NA, £2.50 / £1.50 concessions.

Not sure if I can make it due to being treble booked, so I will throw in my own tale now. One of my neighbours in New Cross thinks they've got a haunted piano, or a house haunted by a ghost that is partial to tinkling the ivories. There was the time she thought her daughter practicing the piano, but she was actually in another room; the time she heard the piano being played in the night; the time everybody in the house was sitting down to dinner and they all heard some strange piano music (described as like fairy music). They live in a Victorian terrace on a busy road, so you could explain it as neighbours' noise, passing car stereos, or a hallucination. If you want to explain it by something else, why pick on ghosts (spirits of the dead), rather than say aliens or fairies? I guess that's folklore, the stories we tell to make sense of the things that don't appear to fit in with our habitual way of seeing the world.

Greenwich Solstice

I went along to a Winter Solstice celebration in Greenwich Park last week (22nd) arranged by the Tribe of Avalon. They very kindly asked me along to sing a song I have written, 'On Snow Hill', which refers to that hill in the Park. In his book, 'Goddesses, Guardians and Groves: the Awakening Spirit of the Land' (Capall Bann, 1996), Jack Gale associates Snow Hill with a Winter Goddess, a Snow Queen linked to the Saxon deity Holda. What is undeniable is that there are Saxon burial mounds on the hill, and nearby a filled in, but still noticeable well. It felt special singing the song at the well (the well gets mentioned in the song too), one of a number of site-specific singing sessions I've done this year. These have included singing 'Georgie' (a poachers ballad set in Shooters Hill) in Oxleas Wood at the top of Shooters Hill at the start of the South East London Folklore Society walk there in the summer, and singing with Juleigh 'The Only Living Boy in New Cross' as part of the Telegraph Hill Festival at Page Two in Nunhead. Next year I am planning to get the music project off the ground on a more regular basis with 'Winterland' (watch here for details).

Greenwich Park felt like a fitting place for the turning of the year, as this year a lot of threads of my life seem to have run through it. Back in April, there was Tom McCarthy and Rob Dickinson's excellent Greenwich Degree Zero exhibition at the Beaconsfield gallery in Vauxhall, based around an alternative history perspective on Martial Bourdin's death in Greenwich Park in an 1894 bomb explosion. I gave a talk at the exibition, 'Stargate SE8: time, space and parklife' which combined my local history and Association of Autonomous Astronauts interests. Jem Finer, Pogue and sound artist, was also on the bill and through meeting him we both ended up taking part in Brendan Walker's wonderful Fairground Thrill Laboratory at the Science Museum in the Autumn, an event that combined space-themed talks and music with a go on the Booster fairground ride.

Then of course there was the unforgettable wedding of fellow Transpontinians Scott and Clare in Greenwich Park, an event which showed that it was possible to have a ceremony in keeping with your beliefs without frightening the horses or the relatives. Jacqui from Tribe of Avalon conducted the wedding, Jack Gale talked briefly about the history and spirits of the Park, Scott & Clare led the leaping over the broomstick.

Red Thread

Here's an interesting thing that came my way via the SELFS chat list and Rocklands. Bonnington Square is nice, it feels like how the sixties must have been.

"""""" let's get straight to the point... i'm putting a kinda 'secret' red thread festival on on the 9th july in bonnington square, vauxhall,and i'm gonna need some help!! it's got a good chance of being fairlychaotic but it should be a riot if everyone get's on board.. the square itself is a really quaint slice of urban bohemia, just south of theriver and well out of the public eye. everyone's invited and it's allfree so START TELLING EVERYONE!!!

we ain't gonna do much traditionaladvertising so it's up us lot to get a crowd down.. doing it this meanswe should only attract cool heads!! the line up so far reads.. LIAMFROST, THE MONKS KITCHEN, THE BRIAN JACKET LET DOWN, JOHN STAMMERS and PETE GREENWOOD. plus a load of eccentric locals who wanna do their ownthing! IT'S GONNA BE A GREAT AND UNIQUE DAY OUT! things kick off with apaganesque animal procession round the square at 2 o'clock [damn work means I'll miss that, I love a procession, I do], then music all day. there's beautiful community gardens to lay about in and loads of random entertainment planned, feel free to get involved, if you wanna dress up, do magic or be a human fruit machine?!? your welcome to!! spread the word and enjoy!!! x x x """""""""

Solstice Party

There's a party tomorrow night at the Beaconsfield gallery in Vauxhall- no less than the Mother of all Parties for the summer solstice. Details are Saturday 24 June 2006, 8pm - 3am, with live music, experimental electronica, performance, film, eclectic DJ¹s including Spring Heel Jack, Daniel Figgis, Fallen Leaves, Susannah Hewlett, Fairlights, DJ Tendraw & The Gypsies Dog, Dr Valentine & Suzywan, Sanda
Kolar, Howard Jacques, Northern Roses, Annie Davey. Admission: £6 (£4 concessions).

I can't make it personally, but I can vouch for it being a cool place with nice people. You can hear it live on Resonance 104.4 fm, though I suspect that may be a poor substitute. Beaconsfield is at 22 Newport Street, Vauxhall, London, SE11 6AY (020 7582 6465).