Telegraph Hill Festival 2018: The Lost Island of New Cross & other local history events.

The 2018 Telegraph Hill Festival kicks off today (Saturday 10th March) with the first of the sold out community performances of West Side Story. Between now and 25th March, there's lots of artistic, musical and other cultural events taking place in this corner of SE14 (well and a bit of SE4). You can check out the full programme here



On the local history front, John Price from Goldsmiths has already done a couple of walks today - one a New Cross radical history walk, and the other Deptford walk based around Charles Booth's description of the area in 1899. He will be repeating these two walks next Sunday 18th March - book your place at  www.gold.ac.uk/events

Tomorrow - Sunday 11th March - Malcom Bacchus will be leading a Telegraph Hill Walk from 11 am to 12:30 pm, meeting in St Catherine’s Churchyard for  'A stroll around the core of Telegraph Hill, looking at our architecture and galloping through some of the history' (free

Then at 2 pm Malcolm will be venturing further afield into New Cross with a walk exploring the history of its residents and buildings, meeting outside Haberdashers’ Aske’s at the bottom of Jerningham Road  (no need to book for either of these walks)l

On Tuesday 13th March at the Hill Station, Kitto Road SE14 (next to church), Neil Gordon-Orr will be talking on the 'Lost island of New Cross Road':


'The junction by the White Hart pub, London SE14 marks the divergence of two ancient trackways – now known as Queens Road and the New Cross/Old Kent Road. Major currents of London history, literature and mythology have swirled around it. It has been the location of a tollgate, and before it vanished beneath the waves of the A2 in 2010, of a traffic island whose toilets were both a grandiose example of Victorian public architecture and a place for illicit encounters. The lost island witnessed bombs, political protests and dreams of a New Cross pirate republic. All of this and more will be covered in Neil Gordon-Orr’s talk, illustrated with maps and photographs. Tickets (£2) need to be booked in advance here: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/event/FFMIDH

Strike at Goldsmiths

I've been down to the picket line at Goldsmiths in New Cross a couple of times in the last week to show support to the striking lecturers and other college staff. They have been taking part in a national strike which will continue next week unless there is some movement from employers in the next few days over their threats to reduce pensions.

As the union (UCU) explains:

'We are taking strike action to defend our right to a fair pension. University employers want to end guaranteed pensions and reduce retirement income for all. University staff have always accepted pay levels that are lower than comparably skilled professions, partly because we had a decent pension. Now our right to a well-earned retirement is under attack.

What employers' hardline proposals would mean:

Final pensions would depend on how the stock market performs not on contributions.

A reduction in retirement benefits by between 20% and 40% depending on grade and length of service. A typical lecturer stands to lose around £10,000 a year

The worst pensions in the education sector, far worse than those available to both school teachers and staff in 'new' universities

A recruitment and retention crisis as staff seek better financial security elsewhere'.

The strike at Goldsmiths have been well supported, with talks and appearances from Paul Mason, Dawn Foster, Gary Younge and others, performance art from students and lots more. Follow Goldsmiths UCU on twitter for details.

'Against the slow cancellation of our future'

Women's Suffrage Talk at Lewisham Library

Coming up this Saturday 10th March 2018 at Lewisham Library (199 Lewisham High Street
Se13 6lg), 'It’s not all about the suffragettes'.

The free event, which runs from 10 am to 12 noon, .will feature  Dr Claire Eustance  discussing some of the women – and men – with connections to Lewisham and the wider local area who challenged inequality in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Claire is a historian and lecturer at the University of Greenwich who has researched and published on the women's suffrage campaign

Previous women's suffrage posts at Transpontine:

'Letter Box Outrage' and Suffrage Pilgrimage in Bromley 1913

Fake Bombs in New Cross and Rotherhithe 1913

Emily Davison of Blackheath

Death of a (male) Brockley suffragist - or not?

Bermondsey and Deptford Suffragettes

Fire at St Catherine's Church, Hatcham 1913

More on the St Catherine's Fire

Isa Craig - a Victorian feminist in Brockley

Suffragette attacks in Deptford (Tanners Hill) and Blackheath

Beckenham Suffragists

Lewisham Suffragette Banner


See also some great related posts at Running Past

Lewisham Swift Talk

Tomorrow night (Thursday 22 February) at Lewisham Town Hall there's a free talk by swift expert Edward Mayer about swifts and enhancing urban biodiversity, including what can be done locally to create swift-friendly environments.  The event is courtesy of Forest Hill & Lewisham Borough Swift Group in partnership with Swift Conservation and Lewisham  Council (free tickets here)

Personally the very fact that there is such a thing as group of people locally focused on this fine bird gives me a good feeling.  Swifts make a mockery of our human borders, migrating freely between Africa and Europe. Watching them in the west country TIm Dee observed: 'To watch their combing of the matted air is soothing. They don’t seem to be feeding, they don’t seem to be on their way anywhere; they are at rest in motion. They have flown from Bristol to Southern Africa and back to Bristol without touching anything, carrying nothing, never perching, never landing, never tired' (The Running Sky).

They also fly at incredible speed: 'The highest migration speed recorded for swifts over a long distance is (a plainly wind assisted) 650 km (404 miles) per day… Measured by tracking radar, the flight speed of swifts on spring migration was 10.6 m (35 feet) per second, which, if maintained over 24 hours, would be 916 km (569 miles) per day. The fastest human runner, Usain Bolt, clocked 12.4 m (41 feet) per second' - but of course he only kept this up over 100m! (Charles A Foster, Being a Beast).

Funeral Farewell to New Cross Post Office

Protestors gathered in the rain on Saturday 10th February for a funereal farewell to the New Cross Post Office, due to close this week and be replaced by a counter within a local convenience store.

From the Press Release:


'From 15 February, New Cross Gate post office services will be run as part of a One Stop shop nearby. New Cross Gate Crown post office is the third London Crown post office to be axed under plans unveiled last year to sell off a total of twelve Crown post offices. Earlier this week campaigners and councillors went to Downing Street to hand in a petition against the closure signed by 3,000 people.




Kirsten Downer, local campaigner said: “We’re concerned about this downgrading of services. There will be fewer counters in the new shop, and vulnerable people will have to queue past lottery tickets and alcohol. There are no guarantees of a long term service under a private provider – up the road in Deptford post office services are in the back of a shop which has since closed, and it looks like a junk shop. How can it be right that the Post Office, a government company with a duty to act in the public interest, can pay its CEO £600,000 while lecturing local communities about the need to cut costs?”'


Among other things, there will be a loss of the free cashpoint at the post office, compounding the previous loss of cashpoint at the adjacent ex-Barclays Bank.

Elvis Costello at Deptford Albany with Squeeze

In August 1980, Jools Holland played his last gig as keyboardist with Squeeze at The Albany in Deptford. In fact they played three nights at the venue (12,13,14 August), a deliberate return to their roots at a time when they were riding high commercially and selling out much bigger venues than this one, which Danny Baker characterised in his NME review of the gig (reproduced at Elvis Costello Wiki) as follows:

'For those — and there are some — who've never been to the Albany Empire and are ignorant to the venue's overwhelming size, maybe the following local joke will illuminate: a fella goes to the Albany and opens the door. "Can I come in?" he asks, and the bloke behind the desk says, "Only if I come out." (NME, 23 August 1980). This was in the Albany's original location on Creek Road - badly damaged by fire in a suspected right wing petrol bomb attack  in 1978, it was in limited use until new building was built in Douglas Way in 1981 (see here for picture of new building under construction).

The gigs featured support acts including Alexi Sayle, John Cooper Clarke and 'mystery' act  'Otis Westinghouse And The Lifts' who were in fact Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Elvis Costello also joined Squeeze for their encores (pictured below):

Review from Smash Hits, 4 September 1980

Aladdin's Cave demolition threat

From the Murky Depths reports that a planning application has been submitted to build flats on the site of the Aladdin's Cave' second hand shop.  (72 Loampit Hill SE13).


The streetscape would never be the same without its assortment of statues and furniture, but the locally-listed building is a rare slice of vanishing  railway history. It was once a railway station on the lost Greenwich Park line (1871-1917) which ran between Nunhead and Greenwich Park, via Lewisham Road and Blackheath Hill.

View from the railway line, from Abandoned Stations (2003)

Image of proposed flats

You can read the planning application here. The Heritage statement has lots of information about the history of the site, even if this developer funded document unsurprizingly concludes that there's nothing worth saving...


[insert your own rant about blandification of London and the squeezing out of quirky,  'marginal' spaces by identikit developments]

Save New Cross Gate Post Office picket on Saturday

The Post Office's Valentine's gift to New Cross is its plan to close the Post Office at 199 New Cross Road on 14 February 2018. Some Post Office services will be available instead as franchise at the back of local convenience store One Stop, but the loss of a busy dedicated Post Office has been widely criticised locally and there must be fears that the adjacent sorting office is also under threat. There are no plans for a free cashpoint/ATM at One Stop, unlike at the current Post Office, and with the Barclays Bank next door with its cashpoint also closed down,  this is another loss of a local amenity.


The  Defend New Cross Gate Crown Post Office campaign has called for a last ditch picket of the Post Office this Saturday 20 January from  9:30 AM - 11:30 AM .

Mark Fisher remembered at Goldsmiths

It is a year now since the sad death of  Mark Fisher, writer, critical thoughtist and lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths in New Cross. I remenber seeing him talk there around the time his best known work, Capitalist Realism, was published. Personally I was most fond of his work on K-punk blog (and then Dissensus forum) in the early/mid noughties when Fisher was at the forefront of a wave of thinking and talking about music and politics in the post-rave/early dubstep era.

On Friday 19th January the always interesting Kodwo Eshun will be giving the first annual Mark Fisher Memorial Lecture from 6:00pm - 8:00pm in the Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Whitehead Building at Goldsmiths. No need to book, just turn up - full details here.

                                

Quote from Mark Fisher on wall of  Margaret MacMillan building at Goldsmiths on Dixon Road SE14: “Emancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency, just as it must make what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable”

Music Monday: A View from a Hill - sounds from Telegraph Hill, Point Hill, Catford, Dulwich and beyond

Hither Green-based experimental/improvisational label Linear Obsessional Recordings has released its annual compilation album. 'A View from a Hill', released on Christmas Eve 2017, includes more than 100 artists from across the world each contributing two minute tracks. It was compiled by David Little, who records as smallhaus. Several of the tracks feature field recordings at South London locations, including the following:


Catford Gyrations - Bandstand
'The track was based around a recording I made while stood under the bandstand in Mountsfield Park, London SE6 – this also happens situated directly under a flight path, but despite the roaring jet planes, I still managed to capture some birdsong and barking dogs.I've also added some guitar, a Farfisa organ and a little bit of brass and Woodwind'

Alison Henning - A View from Point Hill
'Beautiful morning, rise and fall of piccolo sounds inspired by the A2, flight paths, Greenwich below and the early birds'.

Neil Gordon-Orr - Boney on the Hill
'Sound recording December 2017: Telegraph Hill Park, formerly Plow'd Garlick Hill, site of Telegraph during Napoleonic Wars; list of stations on the Admiralty shutter telegraph line (1795–1816), used to send messages between the Channel (Deal) and London; treated mandolin, 'Boney was a Warrior'

Z.AvTes – Le Scelte
'Written by Zuleika AvTes in London, December 2017. Original field recordings: Recorded at West Norwood Cemetery and Dulwich Park. Z.AvTes plays in Glass Isle and lives in South East London'.

Dennis Bovell - Lovers Rock as 1970s X-Factor

Earlier this month, Dennis Bovell was made an Honorary Fellow at Goldsmiths, a recognition of his contribution to music and his links to the South East London area. Bovell is probably best known for his many reggae/dub productions, including producing Linton Kwesi Johnson, helping to establish the Lovers Rock genre (including writing Silly Games for Janet Kay)  and being a member of Matumbi.  But he also had a key role in the punk/post-punk period, producing The Slits and The Pop Group among others.

Bovell wrote the film score for the film Babylon (1980), which as discussed here before was filmed in SE London. Earlier this year he devoted his Soho Radio show to music from the film in dicussion with Les Back from Goldsmiths, prompted by the death of the film's director Franco Rosso.



Much of Bovell's work in the late 1970s was recorded at Dennis Harris's Eve Records studio at 13 Upper Brockley Road, SE4, the base too for Harris's Lovers Rock label. In the Soho Radio show, Bovell recalls 1970s auditions here:

'we used to have an audition every Sunday afternoon after 3 pm. There was a programme on BBC London called Reggae Time and that was presented by a man called Steve Barnard, it was the only chance of listening to reggae for two hours on  the BBC, and so directly after that we'd hold our auditions. We'd get him to say if you want to audition get down to Eve Studios in Brockley and
one day came three girls that became Brown Sugar and Caron Wheeler was one of them, and so was Kofi and of course Pauline Catlin who now goes under the name of Shezekiel (and her son Aaron Soul, big talent). This is where the youngsters of South East London came to audition- this was the X Factor!'

(Brown Sugar's debut single 'I'm in Love with a Dreadlocks' was released on the Lovers Rock label in 1977).

Les Back abd Dennis Bovell at recent Goldsmiths Graduation Ceremony

Check out Dennis Bovell's recent A to Z compilation at his bandcamp site

Snow on Nunhead Scouts Memorial

Snow in Nunhead Cemetery today, here on the scouts memorial. This is the burial place of eight boy scouts aged 11 to 14 from the 2nd Walworth troop who were drowned on 3 August 1912 when their boat capsized at Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey. Among those who survived was Edward Beckham, great grandfather of footballer David Beckham. His brother William, aged 12, was amongst the dead.

Rick Gibson - a police spy in 1970s South East London Troops Out Movement

The latest undercover police spy in radical movements to be profiled by Undercover Research is 'Rick Gibson' (not his real name), who infiltrated Irish solidarity and other groups in South East London in the 1970s.

'Gibson' was actually unmasked at the time after activists discovered that he was using the identity of a dead child (a common tactic), and seems to have been pulled out by his superiors after being confronted with evidence. The case is now being looked at again in the context of the official Undercover Policing Enquiry.

A genuine activist from this time,  Richard Chessum (who lived in Burrage Road SE18 in this period), had helped set up a South East  London branch of the Troops Out Movement  in 1974, a campaign which called for British withdrawal from the north of Ireland. Chessum recalls:

'At the time I was a student politically active in Goldsmiths. I had in fact been a candidate for President of the Students Union. I had also been involved in a previous organisation campaigning on Northern Ireland, the Anti Internment League. In this latter capacity I had been one of the main organisers of a march to Woolwich Barracks protesting against internment without trial and had been the person negotiating the route with the police. I therefore had a high profile, which I think may have made me of interest'.

He was joined in the SE London branch of TOM, which held most of its meetings at Charlton House, by someone who called himself 'Rick Gibson'. By making himself useful and avoiding some of the sectarian infighting from rival left wing groups, Gibson became secretary of SE London TOM in 1975, going on to become London organiser then one of two national secretaries in 1976 - a position that would have given him  possession of the names and addresses of all members across the country. He also triend to join the revolutionary group Big Flame, but they were suspicious and it was their checks that led to him being exposed. 

1975 Troops Out poster

Like several other exposed spycops, 'Rick Gibson' was in relationships with women while undercover who would surely not have consented to them if they had known the position. According to Undercover Research, he was 'in four relationships that we know of. The first longer-term relationships were with two women Richard knew, and active in the Troops Out Movement South East London Branch. The women were friends sharing a flat, and active as students at Goldsmiths College. After Chessum found out that Gibson had disappeared, he visited them. Without having heard of the investigation, they told him they had figured out between them that Gibson had to be a policeman. They had no evidence, but had decided this was the only explanation for his behaviour - always leaving before the morning, never visiting at weekends - which suggested he was going home to a wife and family'.

Incidentally part of Gibson's cover story was that  he  said he had signed on as an evening student at Goldsmiths to learn Portuguese - at that time Goldsmiths had an extensive adult education programme.


Reflections of a later Troops Out Movement member:

We asked a former South London TOM activist for some thoughts about this:



'Hearing about this episode has made me reflect on my own time in the South London branch of the Troops Out Movement in the early 1990s, which met at a community centre by the Elephant and Castle (in Rodney Place if I recall correctly). Arguably it was a less dangerous time to be involved in Irish politics than in the 1970s, with the peace process unfolding towards the first IRA ceasefire in 1994. But there were still some terrible events occurring, like the murder of 6 people watching the World Cup in a pub in Loughinisland in June '94, carried out by the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force. The Troops Out Movement argued at the time that members of the police and secret services were colluding with loyalists in such attacks, something that has since been confirmed by official inquiries.


We had no doubt therefore that anything to do with Irish politics in London, as elsewhere, would be the focus of state surveillance. We simply assumed that there would be infiltrators in our midst, that went with the territory. I remember there was at least one guy who completely fitted what we now know to be the spycop profile - drove a van, very cagey about their address, no obvious previous political involvement  - who we used to joke about being a cop even then (but of course maybe he wasn't). We didn't spend too much time worrying about it, partly because organisations that obsessed about uncovering spies usually descended into recriminations and sometimes misplaced allegations, and partly because there wasn't actually anything much to hide - just a lot of usually quite dull meetings and the hard slog of leafleting and lobbying. Troops Out was close to Sinn Fein, and through our annual delegation to Belfast many of us had friends in the Irish republican community (one member of South London TOM, who I remember used to live on Kinglake Estate, is now a Sinn Fein councillor in Dublin). No doubt these connections were of interest, though knowing what we now know about the extent of infiltration of the republican movment too I am sure they didn't find much of interest from infiltrating TOM. I think there was just a massive security services industry that was all over anything that moved to do with the north of Ireland whether or not it was involved in anything illegal, which TOM definitely wasn't.  


I guess police spies exploit the positive human tendency to want to think the best of people and include people who seem a bit out of their depth. People need to be wary, but not to create a  cold, calculating, hostile political culture where everyone is constantly suspecting everyone else. When people are exposed, you can't help but get caught up in the human drama of these situations and wonder whether, amidst all the subterfuge, loyalties and sympathies were ever blurred; whether there were ever any moments that could pass for genuine friendship. I have friends who went to gigs and festivals away from pollitics with people now known to be undercover cops. Maybe the shared musical taste was real, maybe it was all a cover story - this kind of thing messes with your sense of memory and self. But we shouldn't lose sight of the real damage done by mixing up policing, politics and personal relationships - particularly where sexual relationships and even children are involved. The damage was mainly inflicted on the activists who were deliberately deceived, but it's clear that many of the police involved have also been left pretty screwed up in the long term. No doubt much more of this will be heard as the Undercover Policing unfolds, even if the early signs are that much will be still be swept under the carpet'.


Update, February 2018: 'Mary', one of the women Gibson was involved with metioned above, has given a statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry:

'From September 1972 to July 1975 I was enrolled on a teacher training course in the Education Department at Goldsmith College. I was politically active in the student movement and a member of the Socialist Society. After I finished my course, I remained in my flat and active around student politics for another year.

The first time I met Rick Gibson was at Goldsmith College when he approached me while I was distributing political literature. He came up to me and showed an interest in our political campaign.

I rented a flat that I shared with another Goldsmith student who was also politically active. I was involved in various campaigns and student solidarity work. My flatmate was active in the Troops Out Movement. Rick Gibson befriended her as well, socialising and talking politics. Due to the fact that the flat had a landline, lots of organising was happening from our flat. I often hosted meetings of the International Marxist Group (IMG) branch in my flat. Various people with leading positions in the organisation would visit. Rick Gibson very quickly became a frequent visitor to the flat to see me and my  flatmate to coordinate TOM publicity and planning - as well as for socialising and conversation... 

At one point while he was still a regular visitor, Rick Gibson and I became sexually intimate for a short period of time...  I feel very used by him, and by the state, invading my privacy and my body. I do onder how many other people he has deceived and hurt over time... In  the public interest, I think we are entitled to know who he was and to what extend he was operating on instruction from senior figures in the police of the government of the time. Was he acting on his own initiative? If so, what steps will be taken to hold his senior police officers who sanctioned this activity? If senior civil servants of previous government ministers sanctioned this, or knew about these activities they also need to be held accountable'.

Full statement here: https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/20180125-statement-from-Mary.pdf

see previously:

Jim Sutton - undercover in East Dulwich

May Day 2001 - a police spy at the Elephant and Castle

Undercover - police spies in South London (including their sometime Camberwell HQ)

Undercover with the Millwall Bushwackers

A police informer in Lewisham during the 1926 General Strike

Music Monday: Down on Deptford Creek by The Alan Tyler Show

Alan Tyler was the lead singer of The Rockingbirds, who in their early 1990s indie/country rock hey day put out a couple of albumns and a series of singles and EPs on Heavenly then Cooking Vinyl records.

A couple of years ago the Alan Tyler Show recorded their song 'Down on Deptford Creek':

The water’s rising with the tide
That comes in twice a day
The city streets are always near
But now we drift away

From muddy beds we’re lifted up
In boats that crack and creak
It’s time to strain the ropes again
Down on Deptford Creek

And though the wind is blowing low
And though my light is weak
I’ll see a moving picture show
Down on Deptford Creek

And when the tide begins to turn
And go back to the sea
A mossy wall shows velvet green
That used to be the quay

Where bigger boats had once come to
When Ha’penny Bridge was raised
Unloading cargo from afar
Back in the older days

Below the rumbling dockland train
Down in the waters bleak
I see the ages ebb and flow
Down on Deptford Creek

And when the sea has left the scene
It leaves a shallow flow
Where duck and wader, gull and grebe
And heron come and go

To pick among the rank remains
For filthy foraged fare
In tangled twine a Christmas tree
A broken office chair

Up on a rung my fisher-king
Above the sea-birds’ shriek
Surveys the silver in the stream
That swims in Deptford Creek

A flash of blue, a dip, a dive
A tiddler’s in its beak
I hope that I’ll see you again
Down on Deptford Creek
I hope that I’ll see you again
Down on Deptford Creek

from The Alan Tyler Show, released March 17, 2015
Words and music by Alan Tyler (published by Bucks Music

Definitely one more for the South London aongbook

The Walworth Beauty

The Walworth Beauty (2017) by Michele Roberts is a novel featuring two entwined stories set in the same area of south London over a 160 year period. One thread concerns a man working for Henry Mayhew carrying out research into the lives of prostitutes in the early 1850s. Unknowingly retracing some of his steps in 2011 is a recently redundant lecturer who has moved to Walworth.

The novel is partly a reflection on what has changed and what has not changed over this period of time and also on how the ghosts of the past haunt the present both figuratively and perhaps sometimes literally.



The precise setting is a fictional Apricot Place (described as being near to John Ruskin Street) where the Lecturer now lives and where in the 1850s another key character, Mrs Dulcimer, runs a home for young women with secrets: a black woman who when questioned about where she is from replies 'from Deptford, Mr Benson. My family roots in London go back generations. Further than yours perhaps'.



Walking into town, Madelyn in the 21st-century is aware of her predecessors:



'Walworth Road felt sleepy, some shops still shuttered, a few people about. The scent of warm spice, yeast and sugar drifted out of the Caribbean bakery. The newsagent’s door swung open and shut. She plunged westwards, through cramped backstreets of 19th century artisans dwellings each with its little bootscraper on the pavement just outside the front door. She headed towards the Imperial War Museum rearing in the distance. The tap of a boot on paving stones; the flying ribbons on a bonnet. Women walked out of the pages of books and accompanied her. Mary Wollstonecraft, briefly domiciled, as a young woman, in Walworth, fretting about what to do with her life’. The Elephant and Castle roundabout and East Street market (or East Lane as commonly known and referred to in the book) are among the other locations that figure.



With concerns like these it is perhaps no wonder that the novel features a description of a Halloween Crossbones gathering which presumably the author must have witnessed, as it is very accurate (and I am sure Crossbones MC John Crow/Constable didn't mind the description of him!):


'A small crowd, 40 or so strong, has gathered, spread along the strip of pavement in front of the fence sealing off the ancient burial ground. The wind rustles the ribbons and strings of beads laced to the wire barrier, the bunches of dried flowers, the gilt streamers. People cup lit candles in their gloved hands. A few children jig from foot to foot. A musician in a striped woollen cap strums a guitar...

The fence separating off the burial ground in Redcross Way purports to divide the living and the dead. Does it? Perhaps the dark air on either side teems and flickers with spirits… A man in a brown tweed coat steps forward from the group of women bunched near the stone Madonna. Clear eyed; open face; his attention focused like a beam of light on his listeners… A shaman with golden wings he seems, beating through smoky air, wielding the sword of dissent; slashing through hypocrisy, praising prostitutes, his beautiful, misunderstood sisters.…The poet–priest drops his arms, turns back into an ordinary man, merry and sexy, full of jokes and cheek'.


Michele Roberts moved to South London in the 1970s, living in a semi-commune in Talfourd Road SE15, something she has written about previously and which I might get round to posting about another time.

Music Monday: A-ha in Sydenham

There are lots of  80s pop hits which all the cool indie kids mocked at the time but which with hindsight sound pretty good, and which today's cool nobody-worries-about-being-indie-kids-anymore just get on and dance to. But there are other pop tracks which surely even the coolest shoegazers had to recognise at the time were destined to be classic songs, including at least a couple by some Norwegian likely lads: A-ha's 'The Sun always shines on TV' and their debut 'Take on Me'.

So what's the South East London connection? Well back in 1983, A-ha were living in London as poverty-stricken artists with dreams of pop glory, hanging out at the Camden Palace. With funds running low, they booked themselves in April 1983 into a small Sydenham studio, Rendezvous (107b Kirkdale, SE26), run by a man called John Ratcliff - an interesting character with experience of playing in bands himself, not to mention once having been a successful international athlete - the world double decathlon champion, no less.

107b Kirkdale - John Ratcliff confirms on twitter that the whole building was Rendezvous

According to the Quietus: 'Rendezvous was chosen simply because it offered equipment when they had little of their own. But, setting out to lay down three or four songs per day, they in fact only needed one before Ratcliff’s ears pricked up.  “He said, ‘That sounds really interesting. Do you have more?’ And we said, ‘Yeah, but we can’t afford to pay.’ ‘Well, why don’t you come in on off time?’ He started talking about, ‘I know people in the music industry. I can get you a singles deal’ (Talking Away: A-Ha On The Making Of Take On Me by Wyndham Wallace, 2015)

John O'Connell notes that Ratcliff's contribution went further than just offering studio time:

'A-ha had ended up at Rendezvous almost by accident, allegedly booking it because it had a Space Invaders machine. But Ratcliff proved a generous patron when the band were at a low ebb, paying for them to make additional demos of the songs he thought were strongest and renting them a flat at 221 Dartmouth Road, about 200 metres from the studio. Furuholmen and his bandmates Pal Waaktaar and Morten Harket would make the daily journey from flat to ‘work’ by jumping across the roofs of the neighbouring houses and entering Rendezvous through a rear window'.



221 Dartmouth Road, next to Mr Pizza by Sydenham School - where A-ha once stayed

Thanks to John's music industry connections, the band were soon signed to Warner Brothers with global success to follow.

One of the demo tracks recorded at Rendezvouz was called Lesson One. Before long it had been reworked into their breakthrough hit 'Take on Me' - a great song helped by a groundbreaking 1985 video combining animation and live action filmed in Battersea at Kim's Cafe (later the Savoy Cafe) at 390 Wandsworth Road, SW8 (corner of Pensbury Place). The song reached number one in the USA and number 2 in the UK.

inside the cafe in 'Take on Me' video - Bunty Bailey, the young woman in the video,
became the girlfriend of a-ha singer Morten Harkets

Bunty Bailey flees the cafe in the video and, below, the cafe today

 

Thanks to Adrian Lobb on twitter for posting a photo that set me off on this. Thanks too to Laugh Clown Laugh, who also recorded there, for confirming location of Rendezvous.

Some more Forest Hill/Sydenham music connections:

Don Letts

Peter Perrett/The Only Ones

Split Enz

Flux of Pink Indians/Crass/Bjork

Music Monday: Oh Wonder, made in Brockley

Electro/alt pop duo Oh Wonder played a sold out gig at Brixton Academy this month, part of a massive international tour to mark the launch of their second album Ultralife.  Their track Without You has had 44 million views on YouTube. Not bad at all for an outfit who started out putting songs up on soundcloud in 2014 and have recorded both their albums in their flat in Brockley.

Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West recently explained to the BBC:


'Our studio is on a busy main road, on the corner of two bus routes. henever we’d start recording, another bus would go by. We couldn’t do vocals before 10pm... But some buses do sneak in. The album opens with a bus, an ode to the fact that the entire album was compromised by London transport. There’s also a police siren from New York, where we had the same problem with traffic. We could have made our lives easier by going to a studio with soundproofing, but that isn’t us. Our lives are in these songs and it didn’t feel fair to leave the night buses out'


Josephine has also discussed how the song High on Humans on Ultralife was written on the way back home from Brockley Station after an encounter on the tube home from Heathrow with a guy :'covered in blood [with] no teeth, looking sorry for himself.  I tentatively went up to him and his girlfriend and said, 'I just wanted to let you know you'll be fine', Go to the dentist tomorrow, don't panic, you'll be great'. And he was like, 'Oh, thank you so much!'.


'And then this guy opposite us piped up, 'I broke my nose, too!'. And suddenly this whole little carriage was talking about their injuries, which was remarkable.  When I got off the Tube, I was so excited. Chatting to strangers gives you such a buzz because there's that element of fear before you talk to someone. So I walked from Brockley station back to my house, singing into my phone. And I've got this really funny voice note, which is like, 'I'm getting high on humans!' (Josepine had herself smashed teeth and broken her nose in an accident a couple of years ago).

High on Humans joins that select list of songs written on South London public transport - including Bowie's Life on Mars (written on the bus to Lewisham) and The Red Flag (written on the train to New Cross)

Little Richard at Lewisham Odeon (1963 and 1975)

American rock'n'roll legend Little Richard played in Lewisham on at least two occasions.

The first time was on 31 October 1963 as part of an amazing line up that also included the Rolling Stones, the Everly Brothers, and Bo Diddley. But on that Halloween night there were some famous or soon to be famous names in the audience too.  According to 'History with the Beatles' by Bradford E Loker (2009), George Harrison attended this concert  having earlier that day arrived from back with The Beatles from a trip to Sweden and been greeted by thousands of fans. This was to prove to be a fateful day in pop culture history - American TV presenter Ed Sullivan was passing through the airport and on the strength of witnessing this outbreak of Beatle-mania booked them to appear on his TV show, the legendary appearance on 9 February1964 kicking off the 'British invasion' of the US pop charts.

Also in the audience in Lewisham was a 17 year old David Jones, later Bowie: 'After seeing the Rolling Stones perform on the same bill as Bo Diddley and Little Richard at the Lewisham Odeon in October 1963, he was desperate to perform R&B rather than teen pop' (The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And The 1970s by Peter Doggett, 2011). As was common in those days, the acts performed short sets twice over the course of the evening - according to this advert there was a 6.30 and a 6.45 show.

The advert for the tour mentions Little Richard, The Everly Brothers and Bo Diddley and 'special guest star' to be announced. As the Bowie story above illustrates, also on the bill was The Rolling Stones on their first tour.

Little Richard's return to Lewisham Odeon in July 1975 seemed to have been memorable though for all the wrong reasons. Mick Farren's review in the New Musical Express described 'The debut date of Little Richard's UK tour at the half empty Lewisham Odeon' as 'little short of a disaster. Possibly the person least to blame was Little Richard himself'.

Support band The Wild Angels were said to 'not score too highly on either originality or technique, but they play with such energetic determination that they more than keep the customers satisfied. They don't leave space for even the most aggro prone ted to start yelling for the star of the show'.

Booing there soon was though as after lengthy delays the back up band took to the stage and played for too long without sight of the singer:  'Before the riot could start the warm up man announced Little Richard. With one bound he was on top of the piano, accepting the adulation of his loyal fans in a nifty one piece, red, spangled creation that showed everyone that after 26 years on the road, his figure was still built to please. It looked as though everything was going to be alright. The band kicked off into a tight, functional 'Good Golly Miss Molly' that was traditional enough to mollify the grease. Then Little Richard sat down at the piano and started to sing. The awful truth became apparent that both his voice and piano were totally inaudible... After a few more tries he finally had to instruct the band to turn down. At least, after that he could be heard, although his voice still sounded as though it was coming from deep under water. From then on, all thoughts of music went straight out the window... At the end, nobody asked for an encore'

Farren concluded: 'Nobody likes to schlep all the way to Lewisham to be let down. For me, it was the second time. The first was the Chuck Berry debacle. That was mainly due to Berry's towering meanness. In the case of Little Richard, the majority of the blame must rest with the people who brought in a potentially top line act like Little Richard and his Band, then saddled them with a Mickey Mouse P.A., joke continuity and a terminally ham-fisted stage operation'.

(I believe the Chuck Berry gig at Lewisham referred to was also in 1975 - when Berry died earlier this year, Boy George tweeted that he 'met him outside Lewisham Odeon in the 70s').

See previously on Lewisham Odeon:

Lewisham Teddy Boy Trouble 1956

The Beatles and Ray Charles at Lewisham Odeon, 1963

David Bowie at Lewisham Odeon, 1973

Rod Stewart with Paul & Linda McCartney, Lewisham Odeon 1974

Siouxsie and the Banshees & The Cure, 1979

The Specials at Lewisham Odeon 1979

Adam and the Ants at Lewisham Odeon 1980

Desmond Dekker, Madness and The Go Gos at Lewisham Odeon 1980

The anarchist festival that never was - Lewisham Odeon 1986

Halloween: the pumpkins after the night before

Maybe not quite so spooky in daylight, but the surviving pumpkins on the  morning after Halloween have their own horrors...

Malpas Rd SE4

Drakefell Rd SE4

Drakefell Road SE4

Asylum Road SE15