Some great photos of women in early 1980s style sub-cultures by Anita Corbin here, including this one captioned 'Laura and Janet, South London Rosettes, April 1981'. Anyone know more about these mod revival scooterists?
Showing posts with label mods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mods. Show all posts
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Monday, April 23, 2012
Music Monday: The Who in South London
The Who were really a West London band, but one of the most influential English bands of the 1960s and 1970s established themselves on the South London gig circuit and at their 70s peak played two iconic gigs at Charlton football ground.
Early Who
The band started out as The Detours, and one of their first regular gigs was at the Paradise Club in Peckham (3 Consort Road). They played at least five gigs on Friday nights there in the summer of 1962, with bassist John Entwistle recalling 'The first time we turned up to play, there was hardly anybody there, just some girls. Around 10 o'clock, their boyfriends all turned up with bloody noses and black eyes. It turns out they'd been at another club and started a brawl. What we didn't know is that the other club would come by the following week and it would be our turn to get our gear trashed'
On Friday 13 September 1963 they played for the first time at the Glenlyn Ballrom in Forest Hill (15 Perry Vale). On 3 January 1964, the Detours supported the Rolling Stones at the Glenlyn, and a few weeks later (24th January) they supported The Hollies at the same venue. Then on 14 February they supported Carter Lewis and the Southerners there.
At this point they changed their name to The Who, and on Monday 16 March they started playing a regular Monday night residency at the Glenlyn. Over the next few months they played at least 15 more gigs at the Glenyln, including most Monday nights and some Fridays too. As they became more famous they returned to the Glenlyn - playing there for instance in January 1966. So they must have played in Forest Hill at least twenty times.
(source for most of the above: 'Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere: The Complete Chronicle of the Who 1958-1978' by Andrew Neill and Matthew Kent).
1970s
By the early 1970s, The Who were one of the biggest bands in the world. In 1972, drummer Keith Moon compered a gig at Crystal Palace Bowl featuring The Beach Boys among others.
Then the band headlined two huge gigs at The Valley, home of course of Charlton Athletic FC. The first took place on 18 May 1974, with The Who headlining an event that also featured Lou Reed, Humble Pie, Bad Company, Lindisfarne, Maggie Bell and Montrose. Around 50,000 people attended.
Early Who
The band started out as The Detours, and one of their first regular gigs was at the Paradise Club in Peckham (3 Consort Road). They played at least five gigs on Friday nights there in the summer of 1962, with bassist John Entwistle recalling 'The first time we turned up to play, there was hardly anybody there, just some girls. Around 10 o'clock, their boyfriends all turned up with bloody noses and black eyes. It turns out they'd been at another club and started a brawl. What we didn't know is that the other club would come by the following week and it would be our turn to get our gear trashed'
On Friday 13 September 1963 they played for the first time at the Glenlyn Ballrom in Forest Hill (15 Perry Vale). On 3 January 1964, the Detours supported the Rolling Stones at the Glenlyn, and a few weeks later (24th January) they supported The Hollies at the same venue. Then on 14 February they supported Carter Lewis and the Southerners there.
At this point they changed their name to The Who, and on Monday 16 March they started playing a regular Monday night residency at the Glenlyn. Over the next few months they played at least 15 more gigs at the Glenyln, including most Monday nights and some Fridays too. As they became more famous they returned to the Glenlyn - playing there for instance in January 1966. So they must have played in Forest Hill at least twenty times.
(source for most of the above: 'Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere: The Complete Chronicle of the Who 1958-1978' by Andrew Neill and Matthew Kent).
1970s
By the early 1970s, The Who were one of the biggest bands in the world. In 1972, drummer Keith Moon compered a gig at Crystal Palace Bowl featuring The Beach Boys among others.
 |
| Keith Moon at Crystal Palace 1972 |
Then the band headlined two huge gigs at The Valley, home of course of Charlton Athletic FC. The first took place on 18 May 1974, with The Who headlining an event that also featured Lou Reed, Humble Pie, Bad Company, Lindisfarne, Maggie Bell and Montrose. Around 50,000 people attended.
 |
| The crowd at the Valley in 1974 - photo by Chris Keegan from UK Rock Festivals |
Two years later, on 31 May 1976, they returned - this time with support acts including the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Little Feat, Streetwalkers and The Outlaws. This was part of their Who Put the Boot In tour, which also featured gigs at Celtic and Swansea football grounds.
There's loads more about the Charlton gigs at the excellent UK Rock Festivals site, including photos, set lists and memories - see here for 1974 and here for 1976.
Monday, December 05, 2011
The Fellowship Inn
In comments to an earlier post on 1960s mod venues in South London, a few people mentioned the Fellowship Inn in Bellingham (Randlesdown Road, SE6). The pub, which is still open today, has an interesting history.
A pub for the future
The pub was built to serve the London County Council's Bellingham Estate, which was developed in the 1920s. Both the estate and the pub were seen as examples of a new kind of modern urban living, as this report of the pub's official opening in makes clear: ‘In an effort to evolve an ideal public house, a big brewery firm has opened a “fellowship inn” at Bellingham, which is the first of a group of inns intended to serve alcoholic beverages and to cater to the social wants of all classes and particularly of families. The inn’s sign was painted by Sir Arthur Cohe, member of the Royal Academy. Inside the inn there is a large hall where music, dances, concerts and lawful games may be enjoyed. The inn has its own band and its own entertainmennts and the customers sit at small tables in the continental cafĂ© style, consuming tea, coffee or ale as they prefer. The opening ceremony of the inn was attended by several society people as well as by county council officials who are watching the experiment of those new inns with interest. The cooks and waitresses of the new public house have been instructed at a school instituted by the brewery company whose chair claims that the liquor problem cannot be solved by prohibition, government control or local option, and suggests his way – fellowship – is the right one’ (Spartanburg Herald, 6 July 1924 - how this came to be reported in a US local paper I don't know)
In 1930 the council of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (including German, Dutch and Austrian delegates) visited Bellingham Estate and heard tell of its ‘two churches, two schools, and a licensed refreshment house, Fellowship Inn’ (Times 29 September 1930). Still business couldn’t have been that great because in 1933 the pub’s landlord, Mr T. Croker, was declared bankrupt at Greenwich court (Times, 16 September 1933).
During the 1940s and 50s, jazz bands played there including the River City Jazzmen. The South London Jazz Club put on events at the Inn.
Henry Cooper
Boxer Henry Cooper, who died last year, grew up on the Bellingham Estate. In 1963, he lived and trained at the Fellowship Inn in preparation for his famous fight with Cassius Clay (later Muhammed Ali), as reported in the American magazine Sports Illustrated (July 1 1963):
'at the Fellowship Inn in Bellingham, in southeast London, the menfolk munched pork pies and lifted their nightly pints of lukewarm bitter in salute to the doggerel posted over the bar by one of the regulars. It made the point that Humble Henry would soundly thrash Gaseous Cassius "and once again prove that very old adage:/Action speaks louder than strong verbal cabbage!"
At the end of the week Macmillan and Clay were still in command of things and the "Ode to our 'Enery" had been quietly unpinned at the pub. It was about all the men of Bellingham could do for their friend after his brave and ghastly fight. Just as Clay had promised, Cooper went in five. For weeks he had lived at the Fellowship, taking his meals there, training in the back room when a wedding reception or tea party did not interfere. He was among friends and did not seem to mind that Clay was all over London calling him a cripple and a bum ("He's building up the gate, and I'm on a percentage just like he is")'.
The hall at the pub seems to have been hired out for churches as well as dances. Mary Bastable has recalled a childhood in the Jehovah’s Witnesses in her story Sister Jessie: ‘On Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons we met at the Kingdom Hall. We rented the dance hall behind the Fellowshop Inn pub at Bellingham. It was Henry Cooper’s pub; boxer, mate of the Krays. He lived there, and would lean out of the upstairs window and wave to us after the meeting on Sunday… The Fellowship Inn’s piano wasn’t up to much’ (published in Second Degree Tampering: writing by women, 1992).
Music and Mayhem
The large hall at Fellowship Inn was used for gigs. Fleetwood Mac played there on 25 September and 23 October 1968, part of a mammoth tour that also took in the Zodiac Club in Beckenham, The Star Hotel in Croydon, The Shakespeare Hotel in Woolwich and the legendary Fillmore West in San Francisco!
Bob Farrow, who used to work there in the 1960s, has been in touch with some great memories of the place: 'I used to work there helping out the guy who ran the Disco there. He was John Hoppy.- he also ran the Surrey Rooms by the Oval, The Falcon in Falconwood too. This was an evening job for me as I was at school still. This job (for me) was the bees knees. Good money (30 bob a night), free beer, tons of girls and great music - primarily Motown. I had to open up in the evening and my first job was to get the UV Flourescent lights working. When they were first turned on they would just flicker. The trick was to wipe them with a wet mop whilst turned on - life on the edge eh?'.
Bob also used to give out tickets outside local train stations. Here's one from August 1968. 'Non stop dancing in the intimate Night Club atmosphere. Every Wednesday. Disc Show with 2 DJs'
Bob recalls 'Wenesday was gig night. Fleetwood Mac (Pete Green era - the best) were there a couple of times. The Blues Breakers, Yardbirds and many other great bands. After '68 Wednesday became disco night along with Friday and Saturday. This was Motown, Ska and Reggae - the typical kind of mix those days.
For a short time the club opened on Sundays for a non-disco disco. The regular DJ whose name I have forgotten had a night off and a progressive DJ came along but it flopped and was stopped after about four Sundays. Shame for although I love all music in particular Motown etc I had long hair (what I thought was) whilst the club was 90% skin heads and as I recall suedeheads'.
Another commenter at the earlier post recalled that they 'Used to play Ska music and we wore tonic suits. Lights were ultra violet so any white clothing would glow in the dark'.
This was a time when the mod look was developing into a distincut skinhead style with very short hair (but not to be confused with the 1980s post-punk bonehead revival look). Bob remembers the clothes, and the fights they sometimes caused in the cloakroom:
'The period I worked there was what I think of as the skinhead era. Most guys would be in tonic suits, Ben Sherman shirts, slipovers, def no flares!!!! Crombies for the poor and expensive sheepskins for the well to do skinhead. Though to be honest we had the odd donkey jacket in the cloakrooms on a cold night. Girls all in tight short skirts, Ben Shermans too!!!!! Horrible denim jackets plus the occasional sheepskin (often matching their boyfriends)'.
These were times of much 'aggro' as it was referred to and trouble was rife every night pretty much. There were a minimum of five bouncers every night. The boss John, despite being a small guy, was not the kind of guy you argued with. Though he was great to me I must say - others who upset him lived to regret it. I heard a story from my previous incumbent that some chap had been seriously injured on his involuntary way down the extremely long flight of stairs leading up to the club. The bouncers were a lovely bunch of ex-boxers who I spent many an hour chatting to. One exception was little (he wasn't) George who was a county Karate something or another and drove a mint American Hotrod. Another George was was indeed a regular sparring partner of Henry Cooper.
There were always lots and lots of fights. Particularly at closing time when everybody was trying to get their coats from the cloakrooms. This is when, without fail every night, somebody would lose their ticket and point to a nice sheepskin hanging up. 'That's mine mate'....... 'Sorry no ticket no coat - see George the bouncer'. Who settled disputes.
"give me my f****g coat c**t ' I actually had a mega memory in those days and made a point of remembering sheepskin owners - in particular the regulars who I got to know and would hand over their sheepskins to me like they were the crown jewels. There were more fights in the cloakrooms than at any other time and summers were a blessing. Many a time well before closing somebody would come in and ask me to throw their coat out of the window to them - we were on the first floor. He could then leave discretely without some 'bas***d' seeing him who had promised to sort him after! This was a regular happening.
Also, after somebody had been ejected by one of the bouncers they would manfully shout out 'I'm coming back with a mob!!!!' All regular everyday utterings. Though one night it happened - it had to eventually. Shortly after closing as I was helping clear up there was a noise downstairs of the doors being forced open and what sounded like a herd of angry Gorillas shouting and rushing up the stairs. Fortunately there were a lot of stairs and (as a civilian and coward) I dived through the nearest door - the Ladies - and locked myself manfully in a ladies cubicle. I emerged some time later and holding my head high emerged to a scene of carnage. Bodies and broken furniture everywhere, John the boss had a bloodied face but was clutching his briefcase to his chest and smiling 'great fun, great fun he was saying'. Yea rather you than me.
I think the disco was shut down in '72 - drugs being the main reason. The Landlady of the Pub itself apparently had some role to play in closing the disco and one of my lasting memories is of John the boss pouring a pint of beer over her head. Not easy - he was 5ft nothing and she was about six feet tall'.
A pub for the future
The pub was built to serve the London County Council's Bellingham Estate, which was developed in the 1920s. Both the estate and the pub were seen as examples of a new kind of modern urban living, as this report of the pub's official opening in makes clear: ‘In an effort to evolve an ideal public house, a big brewery firm has opened a “fellowship inn” at Bellingham, which is the first of a group of inns intended to serve alcoholic beverages and to cater to the social wants of all classes and particularly of families. The inn’s sign was painted by Sir Arthur Cohe, member of the Royal Academy. Inside the inn there is a large hall where music, dances, concerts and lawful games may be enjoyed. The inn has its own band and its own entertainmennts and the customers sit at small tables in the continental cafĂ© style, consuming tea, coffee or ale as they prefer. The opening ceremony of the inn was attended by several society people as well as by county council officials who are watching the experiment of those new inns with interest. The cooks and waitresses of the new public house have been instructed at a school instituted by the brewery company whose chair claims that the liquor problem cannot be solved by prohibition, government control or local option, and suggests his way – fellowship – is the right one’ (Spartanburg Herald, 6 July 1924 - how this came to be reported in a US local paper I don't know)
In 1930 the council of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (including German, Dutch and Austrian delegates) visited Bellingham Estate and heard tell of its ‘two churches, two schools, and a licensed refreshment house, Fellowship Inn’ (Times 29 September 1930). Still business couldn’t have been that great because in 1933 the pub’s landlord, Mr T. Croker, was declared bankrupt at Greenwich court (Times, 16 September 1933).
During the 1940s and 50s, jazz bands played there including the River City Jazzmen. The South London Jazz Club put on events at the Inn.
Henry Cooper
Boxer Henry Cooper, who died last year, grew up on the Bellingham Estate. In 1963, he lived and trained at the Fellowship Inn in preparation for his famous fight with Cassius Clay (later Muhammed Ali), as reported in the American magazine Sports Illustrated (July 1 1963):
'at the Fellowship Inn in Bellingham, in southeast London, the menfolk munched pork pies and lifted their nightly pints of lukewarm bitter in salute to the doggerel posted over the bar by one of the regulars. It made the point that Humble Henry would soundly thrash Gaseous Cassius "and once again prove that very old adage:/Action speaks louder than strong verbal cabbage!"
At the end of the week Macmillan and Clay were still in command of things and the "Ode to our 'Enery" had been quietly unpinned at the pub. It was about all the men of Bellingham could do for their friend after his brave and ghastly fight. Just as Clay had promised, Cooper went in five. For weeks he had lived at the Fellowship, taking his meals there, training in the back room when a wedding reception or tea party did not interfere. He was among friends and did not seem to mind that Clay was all over London calling him a cripple and a bum ("He's building up the gate, and I'm on a percentage just like he is")'.
 |
| Henry Cooper training in Bellingham in 1963 from Daily Mirror - pretty sure this was taken in the pub |
The hall at the pub seems to have been hired out for churches as well as dances. Mary Bastable has recalled a childhood in the Jehovah’s Witnesses in her story Sister Jessie: ‘On Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons we met at the Kingdom Hall. We rented the dance hall behind the Fellowshop Inn pub at Bellingham. It was Henry Cooper’s pub; boxer, mate of the Krays. He lived there, and would lean out of the upstairs window and wave to us after the meeting on Sunday… The Fellowship Inn’s piano wasn’t up to much’ (published in Second Degree Tampering: writing by women, 1992).
Music and Mayhem
The large hall at Fellowship Inn was used for gigs. Fleetwood Mac played there on 25 September and 23 October 1968, part of a mammoth tour that also took in the Zodiac Club in Beckenham, The Star Hotel in Croydon, The Shakespeare Hotel in Woolwich and the legendary Fillmore West in San Francisco!
Bob Farrow, who used to work there in the 1960s, has been in touch with some great memories of the place: 'I used to work there helping out the guy who ran the Disco there. He was John Hoppy.- he also ran the Surrey Rooms by the Oval, The Falcon in Falconwood too. This was an evening job for me as I was at school still. This job (for me) was the bees knees. Good money (30 bob a night), free beer, tons of girls and great music - primarily Motown. I had to open up in the evening and my first job was to get the UV Flourescent lights working. When they were first turned on they would just flicker. The trick was to wipe them with a wet mop whilst turned on - life on the edge eh?'.
Bob also used to give out tickets outside local train stations. Here's one from August 1968. 'Non stop dancing in the intimate Night Club atmosphere. Every Wednesday. Disc Show with 2 DJs'
For a short time the club opened on Sundays for a non-disco disco. The regular DJ whose name I have forgotten had a night off and a progressive DJ came along but it flopped and was stopped after about four Sundays. Shame for although I love all music in particular Motown etc I had long hair (what I thought was) whilst the club was 90% skin heads and as I recall suedeheads'.
Another commenter at the earlier post recalled that they 'Used to play Ska music and we wore tonic suits. Lights were ultra violet so any white clothing would glow in the dark'.
This was a time when the mod look was developing into a distincut skinhead style with very short hair (but not to be confused with the 1980s post-punk bonehead revival look). Bob remembers the clothes, and the fights they sometimes caused in the cloakroom:
'The period I worked there was what I think of as the skinhead era. Most guys would be in tonic suits, Ben Sherman shirts, slipovers, def no flares!!!! Crombies for the poor and expensive sheepskins for the well to do skinhead. Though to be honest we had the odd donkey jacket in the cloakrooms on a cold night. Girls all in tight short skirts, Ben Shermans too!!!!! Horrible denim jackets plus the occasional sheepskin (often matching their boyfriends)'.
These were times of much 'aggro' as it was referred to and trouble was rife every night pretty much. There were a minimum of five bouncers every night. The boss John, despite being a small guy, was not the kind of guy you argued with. Though he was great to me I must say - others who upset him lived to regret it. I heard a story from my previous incumbent that some chap had been seriously injured on his involuntary way down the extremely long flight of stairs leading up to the club. The bouncers were a lovely bunch of ex-boxers who I spent many an hour chatting to. One exception was little (he wasn't) George who was a county Karate something or another and drove a mint American Hotrod. Another George was was indeed a regular sparring partner of Henry Cooper.
There were always lots and lots of fights. Particularly at closing time when everybody was trying to get their coats from the cloakrooms. This is when, without fail every night, somebody would lose their ticket and point to a nice sheepskin hanging up. 'That's mine mate'....... 'Sorry no ticket no coat - see George the bouncer'. Who settled disputes.
"give me my f****g coat c**t ' I actually had a mega memory in those days and made a point of remembering sheepskin owners - in particular the regulars who I got to know and would hand over their sheepskins to me like they were the crown jewels. There were more fights in the cloakrooms than at any other time and summers were a blessing. Many a time well before closing somebody would come in and ask me to throw their coat out of the window to them - we were on the first floor. He could then leave discretely without some 'bas***d' seeing him who had promised to sort him after! This was a regular happening.
Also, after somebody had been ejected by one of the bouncers they would manfully shout out 'I'm coming back with a mob!!!!' All regular everyday utterings. Though one night it happened - it had to eventually. Shortly after closing as I was helping clear up there was a noise downstairs of the doors being forced open and what sounded like a herd of angry Gorillas shouting and rushing up the stairs. Fortunately there were a lot of stairs and (as a civilian and coward) I dived through the nearest door - the Ladies - and locked myself manfully in a ladies cubicle. I emerged some time later and holding my head high emerged to a scene of carnage. Bodies and broken furniture everywhere, John the boss had a bloodied face but was clutching his briefcase to his chest and smiling 'great fun, great fun he was saying'. Yea rather you than me.
I think the disco was shut down in '72 - drugs being the main reason. The Landlady of the Pub itself apparently had some role to play in closing the disco and one of my lasting memories is of John the boss pouring a pint of beer over her head. Not easy - he was 5ft nothing and she was about six feet tall'.
 |
| 1974 photo of the Fellowship Inn (from Ideal Homes |
Thanks for the memories Bob. Always interested in any memories people want to share, especially about South London nights out, clubs, discos, music etc. Email transpontine@btinternet.com
If you liked this you might also be interested in:
- Mods in South London.
- 1960s ska and soul clubs in South London.
- 1960s jazz and r'n'b in Blackheath (Green Man).
- The Mistrale club in Beckenham (1960s and early 70s)
If you liked this you might also be interested in:
- Mods in South London.
- 1960s ska and soul clubs in South London.
- 1960s jazz and r'n'b in Blackheath (Green Man).
- The Mistrale club in Beckenham (1960s and early 70s)
Monday, October 31, 2011
The Mistrale club in Beckenham
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Mistrale club in Beckenham was a top nightspot for South East London, hosting internationally known bands and introducing people to the sounds of young America and the Caribbean. It was located at 2-4 High Street at Beckenham Junction.
Before it became the Mistrale it was the plain old Beckenham Ballroom. Peter Frampton, who grew up in the area, played early gigs there with his teenage band, and bands like The Yardbirds performed (May 1964). Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones later recalled: 'We would also go to dances at the Beckenham Ballroom, where drainpipe trousers were banned'.
It seems to have become the Mistrale in 1968. I have come across two flyers online for the club in that year. The grand opening on 17th April featured Manfred Mann and was followed by others including The Alan Price Set (24 April), Ike & Tina Turner (1 May), Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (3 May) and Marmalade (8 May 1968).
In October 1968, artists perfroming included PP Arnold (11th October), and T.Rex with The Pretty Things (18th October). Ska was obviously popular with The Skatelites playing on 20 October 1968 and The Pyramids (who wrote Skinhead Moonstomp) in April, May and October. There was also a twice weekly Rock Steady Disco - according to George Austen this was put on by Little Lee and The Savoy Sound who also played at the Penthouse Club in Bromley and the Amersham Arms in New Cross ( a flyer for the latter in 1968 promises 'Ska, Soul and Tamla Motown' from Lee).
Other gigs included:
- Black Sabbath, 25 September 1968.
- Kaleidoscope, 29 Novemeber 1968 (advert below).
- Isley Brothers, 20 December 1968.
- King Crimson on 11 July 1969; guitarist Robert Fripp recorded in his diary: 'Mistrale, Beckenham. Bad, but they know how to clap: faster, baby, you’re slowing me down. £50'.
- Genesis, 2 March 1970.
- Mungo Jerry, 31 Decemeber 1970.
- Mott the Hoople, 9 April 1971.
- Fleetwood Mac, 23 July 1971.
There's some good discussion about the place at Beckhenham History Forum. Seemingly there was a Rolls Royce on the way in where people paid their entrance money. Mike Loveday was the owner. One regular recalled: ''In the days of the Mistral the club was on 2 floors. The resident DJ used to play downstairs and guests – e.g. DJs like Emperor Rosko & Johnnie Walker and acts like Jimmy Helms - used to play upstairs. After you paid your entrance fee to the lady in the Rolls Royce you walked past a games room that had a pinball machine and table football before turning right to go past the bar and into the main (downstairs) dance area. In 1973/1974 the biggest night of the week was Friday night, with lots of good Soul music played. Saturday was not as busy and was a bit more “commercial”... the upstairs part of the club always used to close before the downstairs - which meant that the final few dances were always downstairs. Closing time was 2am, and the last record played at 1:55 am every night by the resident DJ (whose name I think may have been Lee) was "Goodnight My Love" by Jesse Belvin - a classic!'
Some of the DJs who played out at the Mistrale were national big names. Don Moss is named as 'popular DJ' for the 'opening of our Discotheque' in April 1968, presumably the same Don Moss who was a BBC radio DJ and one of the presenters of 60s TV pop show Thank your lucky stars. Emperor Rosko and Johnnie Walker were both DJs in the early days of Radio One.
In around 1974 it became Tites Disco - Lee was still a resident DJ along with Rocking Richard and Dave Mitchell. The central ceiling between the ground and first floors had been removed to create a single floor warehouse-like club.
Later still - in the 80s - it became Langtrys and then its latest incarnation, The Bridge Bar.
If you liked this you might also be interested in:
- 1960s jazz and r'n'b in Blackheath (Green Man).
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Bermondsey Mods
This fine picture popped up on Urban75 recently, where it was identified as being taken in the 1960s on Tower Bridge Road, SE1. Rossi's cafe at no. 73 is now a Steak and Kebab House. Anyone remember Rossi's or these SE1 scooterists?Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Night of a Thousand Stars
Going out this Saturday (September 26th) to the Grand Vintage Ball at the Rivoli Ballroom in Brockley Road. Should be a good night, but as always on the rare occasions when I go to the Rivoli nowadays I am hoping to recapture some of the magic of one of the best nights out there has ever been (for me at least) in Brockley or anywhere else - Club Montepulciano's Night of a Thousand Stars.
The club started out at the Rivoli some time in 1997 I believe - anyway I know that I went to the 4th night there on Saturday 27th September 1997 (flyer below) and at that time it was running more or less monthly in Brockley. The club promised 'style, glamour, comedy, dancing, cocktails and kitsch' and it always delivered.
The host was Heilco van der Ploeg with the Montepulciano house band Numero Uno - among other things they did a cover version of the Cadbury's Flake advert song from the 1970s ('tastes like chocolate never tasted before'). The format was usually a floorshow featuring a mixture of cabaret and dancing turns. Among the former I recall seeing Jackie Clune doing her Karen Carpenter routine, Earl Okin and burlesque act Miss High Leg Kick; among the latter were Come Dancing finalists like The Kay and Frank Mercer Formation Dance Team.
Then the DJs took over - usually Nick Hollywood and the Fabulous Lombard Brothers - playing kind of loungecore kitsch, but always very danceable - Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Peggy Lee, Perry Como and Andy Williams. The latter's House of Bamboo was something of an anthem - anybody who ever went to that club must surely have a flashback if they hear the line 'Number 54, the house with the bamboo door...'. The dance floor was invariably packed with a mish mash of styles - mods going through their paces in one corner, couples doing ballroom and Latin moves, and disco bunny hands in the air action (that was me anyway).
Xmas 1997 flyerThere were themed nights too. Moon over Montecarlo was themed around Motor racing, complete with an 8 lane Scalextric track.
There was a 1998 Halloween Night of a Thousand Vampires featuring one Count Alessandro, who performed a punk-flamenco-operatic version of Psycho Killer before wandering through the crowd biting necks with his vampire teeth. Sometimes there was a casino - but not for real cash - or you could get even get your haircut.
If all of this sounds a bit too arch, I must emphasise that it wasn't full of people being cool or ironic in a detached sort of way. It was a full on 90s clubbing scene with drink, drugs, sex in the toilets and other madness (well I can only speak for my friends). As usual in clubs when the queues for the women's toilets got too long, the women invaded the men's toilets and I remember seeing one woman peeing standing up at one of the urinals.
But above all else there was dressing up. I went to lots of clubs at that time with supposed glamorous dress codes - Renaissance, the Misery of Sound - but none came anywhere close to Night of a Thousand Stars. And while at these glam house nights, dress codes were arbitrarily enforced by bouncers to create some kind of dubious sense of style elitism, at the Rivoli nobody had to dress up to get in - but everybody wanted to. It was a mass of sequins, feather boas, suits and dresses in velvet and fake fur (zebra, patent snakeskin you name it), sombreros... There was a real sense of entering a fantasy world where every man and every woman was a star.
Planning what to wear was all part of the fun, sometimes I would go up to Radio Days (retro shop in Lower Marsh, Waterloo) to buy a new shirt especially. Feeling like a million dollars, and thousands of pounds in debt - I'm still paying off my credit card bills from that extravagant time, but that's all part of the proletarian dandy experience.
The other star was the venue itself - the red velvet and chandelier splendour of the Rivoli Ballroom. I'm not sure exactly when the club finished in Brockley - I think it was some time in 2000 and the rumour was that in all the time it had been running the venue had never really had a license for late night drinking. It moved on to the Camden Centre and Blackheath Halls but I don't think it was ever the same. I went to the latter in 2003 and it just didn't have the stardust.
Xmas 1998 flyerIt was all very handy for me living within walking distance, but it wasn't 'a local club for local people'. People came from all over London - one flyer said 'Get out your A-Z'. When the club closed, the taxi rank up the road was transformed into a post-ballroom chill out as the best dressed queue in town hung around chatting and waiting for a lift home. Bliss was it in that Brockley dawn to be alive.
Heilco van der Ploeg went on to open the Kennington tiki bar, South London Pacific. I thought I saw him pushing a buggy round Brockley last year.
More details of the Grand Vintage Ball here.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
1960s Ska & Soul Clubs
Further to my post last week on South London mod clubs, John Eden pointed me in the direction of the flyers section of George Austen's great Ska2Soul site.
George has reproduced a collection of 1960s flyers from South London clubs playing soul/ska/rocksteady, including:
- a 1967 flyer from the Ramjam Club in Brixton, with artists including The Skatalites and Geno Washington.
- a flyer for a Duke Reid sound system 'Night of Happiness' at 42 Carmenia Road, Balham, SW17 in 1966.
- A 1968 flyer for the Mistrale club at Beckenham Junction, where PP Arnold played in October.
- a July 1966 flyer from El Partido, 8 -12 Lee High Road, with one night featuring Duke Reid plus The Groove and the other an All-Nighter with The Partisans, The Tea Set and 'London's Top Sound' Soul Sound. All for 50p (1o shillings).
The example I've reproduced here is for a 1968 night at the Amersham Arms in New Cross, with Little Lee and the Savoy Sound offering 'ska, soul and Tamla Motown'. Little Lee apparently also ran the Rock Steady Discotheque at Mistrale in Beckenham.
As always memories of these places and people actively welcomed.
See also: Mods in South London; Deptford Soul City.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Mods in South London
Where were the South East London mod clubs?
A friend (Mick H.) has told me that he used to go El Partido club in Lewisham (8-10 Lee High Road) in the 1960s, a place he remembers being frequented mainly by young Jamaicans as well as some local white mods. King Ossie Sound played out there regularly. Other guests included Jimmy Cliff and the Duke Reid Sound System from Jamaica (both in 1966) and Bo Diddley in 1965.
George Austin recalls at Ska2Soul: 'music was a mix of Ska, Blue Beat and American Soul/Motown. The Club was on two floors, it had a small stage and very low ceilings just the place for live acts. Usually with two sound systems, one on each floor. Upstairs Duke Reid played with his home made sound system tucked away in a small corner, it was a large box, stood about chest height, which housed the amp with a single record deck on top. It had a selection of small lights on the front. The sound was turned down at the end of each record as it was removed and replaced with another disc, a large record box stocked with the latest sounds stood by the side, it's lid open displaying the contents. Speakers stacked up to the ceiling in each open room, pumping out the sound, using about 200 watts. The smell of hash in the air people dancing everywhere'.
There was also the Savoy Rooms in Catford (75 Rushey Green), originally a 1950s ballroom and known in the 1960s as the Witchdoctor. At some point the downstairs was named Mr Smiths, and I've also seen it referred to as the Black Cat - a later incarnation? The Rolling Stones, The Who (April 1966) and Desmond Dekker (1969) all played there. There is a delightful poem called The Savoy Rooms by Marie Marshall, in which she recalls being 'thirteen trying for sixteen in the court of the mohair miniskirt'. In March 1966, a man was shot dead in the club in a gangland battle involving members of the Richardson gang (including Frankie Fraser)
I've also seen mention of the Glenlyn ballroom in Forest Hill (15 Perry Vale - later Crystals Snooker Club) - the Kinks, Stones, Byrds and The Who all played there too.
Interested if anyone's got any memories of these or other places - happy to host any scanned photos, flyers or newspaper clippings people may have lying around too.
See related posts:
The Who in South London
The Mistrale Club in Beckenham - 1960s/1970s
The Green Man in Blackheath - 1960s jazz, r'n'b and Manfred Mann
The Fellowship Inn in Bellingham
Soul City record shop in Deptford
A friend (Mick H.) has told me that he used to go El Partido club in Lewisham (8-10 Lee High Road) in the 1960s, a place he remembers being frequented mainly by young Jamaicans as well as some local white mods. King Ossie Sound played out there regularly. Other guests included Jimmy Cliff and the Duke Reid Sound System from Jamaica (both in 1966) and Bo Diddley in 1965.
George Austin recalls at Ska2Soul: 'music was a mix of Ska, Blue Beat and American Soul/Motown. The Club was on two floors, it had a small stage and very low ceilings just the place for live acts. Usually with two sound systems, one on each floor. Upstairs Duke Reid played with his home made sound system tucked away in a small corner, it was a large box, stood about chest height, which housed the amp with a single record deck on top. It had a selection of small lights on the front. The sound was turned down at the end of each record as it was removed and replaced with another disc, a large record box stocked with the latest sounds stood by the side, it's lid open displaying the contents. Speakers stacked up to the ceiling in each open room, pumping out the sound, using about 200 watts. The smell of hash in the air people dancing everywhere'.
There was also the Savoy Rooms in Catford (75 Rushey Green), originally a 1950s ballroom and known in the 1960s as the Witchdoctor. At some point the downstairs was named Mr Smiths, and I've also seen it referred to as the Black Cat - a later incarnation? The Rolling Stones, The Who (April 1966) and Desmond Dekker (1969) all played there. There is a delightful poem called The Savoy Rooms by Marie Marshall, in which she recalls being 'thirteen trying for sixteen in the court of the mohair miniskirt'. In March 1966, a man was shot dead in the club in a gangland battle involving members of the Richardson gang (including Frankie Fraser)
I've also seen mention of the Glenlyn ballroom in Forest Hill (15 Perry Vale - later Crystals Snooker Club) - the Kinks, Stones, Byrds and The Who all played there too.
Interested if anyone's got any memories of these or other places - happy to host any scanned photos, flyers or newspaper clippings people may have lying around too.
See related posts:
The Who in South London
The Mistrale Club in Beckenham - 1960s/1970s
The Green Man in Blackheath - 1960s jazz, r'n'b and Manfred Mann
The Fellowship Inn in Bellingham
Soul City record shop in Deptford
Thursday, May 15, 2008
The Chords - Maybe Tomorrow
Following yesterday's Woolwich mods photo, I was thinking about the late 70s/early 80s mod revival. One of the key bands was Deptford's The Chords. Their first gig, in 1979, was at The King's Head in Deptford (they rehearsed at Silver Sound Studios in Sydenham). This is them on Top of the Pops in 1980 with their big hit Maybe Tomorrow:
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