Dark Monarch

The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art is an excellent exhibition exploring the influence of folklore, mysticism, mythology and the occult on the development of art in Britain. It was first displayed at Tate St Ives last year and has now moved to the new Towner gallery in Eastbourne. There are no plans for it to come to London as far as I know, so if you want to see it you will have to take a trip to the south coast before 21 March, when it closes.

The reason I mention it here is because it includes works by a number of visionary artists associated with South London, including in no particular order:

Graham Sutherland, Cray Fields (1920)

(artist studied at Goldsmiths in New Cross)

Derek Jarman, Sulphur (1975)

(one of a series of super 8 films made when he was living on Bankside)

Austin Osman Spare, The Dawn (1920)
(artist lived in Walworth Road)

The Four Queens Find Launcelot Sleeping - David Jones (1941)

(artist grew up in Brockley)

The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke - Richard Dadd (1864)
(painted in Bedlam asylum, St George's Fields, Southwark)

Samuel Palmer, The Lonely Tower (1979)
(artist grew up in Walworth)

Damien Hirst - The Child's Dream (2008)

(artist studied at Goldsmiths in New Cross)

Well worth a trip to the seaside, these images don't really do justice to the works, for instance the drawing by David Jones includes an incredible amount of detail as does Gadd's painting.

From New Cross to 'Ampstead

The great London Nobody Sings has been featuring songs from north of the river this week, specifically songs about Hamptead. One of the numbers featured is All Aboard for 'Appy 'Ampstead, sung in 1932 by Gracie Fields:



A quick listen shows that this is really a South East London song, or at least a song about South Londoners going on a day trip to Hampstead. It starts off "can't you 'ear the charabanc coming down the Old Kent Road", then we hear that they're on a "New Cross Bus with the beer and lunch" with a cast of characters including "Blimey Bill from Denmark Hill". The song was written by Albert Chevalier, who also wrote 'Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road' - the tune quoted in the opening bars of this song.

In search of The Deptford Wives

The Deptford Wives is such an obvious pun on the Stepford Wives that it has been used a few times - there was an episode of Radio 4 Sci-Fi comedy Nebulous with this title in 2006, a local band of that name, and a song title by Hatcham Social.

But what I'd really like to find out more about is an 1984 film. The BFI database has some limited information about it, stating that it was made by Bethnal Green Women's Film Collective and sponsored by Tower Hamlets Arts Association. Those involved included Virginia Heath, Zuni Luni, Robyn Forbes, Angela Preece and Stef Heinrich.

It is described as 'Feminist science fiction. Women are forced back into the home under constant surveillance, and find ways and means to rebel'.

Intriguing - does anybody know more about it? Was it actually shot in Deptford? Does anyone even have a copy of it lying around that could be used for a showing?

Hole in New Cross

On 22 August 1991, Hole played at the Venue in New Cross, along with Mudhoney. As mentioned here before, Kurt Cobain and the rest of Nirvana were in the audience that night. Some great footage of Courtney Love & co. playing that night has surfaced on youtube, pretty awesome stuff it is too:



More from this gig here and here

Miles Franklin in Deptford

The Australian novelist and feminist Miles Franklin (1879 -1954) is best known for her 1901 autobiographical novel My Brilliant Career (filmed by Gillian Armstrong in 1979).

She lived for a while in Chicago, where she worked for the Women's Trade Union League, and then spent the First World War in England involved in various feminist projects including Charlotte Despard's Women's Freedom League, based in Nine Elms. She was also recruited to help with Margaret McMillan's Deptford nursery for the children of munition workers and described the nursery in an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 1916:

'Here in Deptford, under the shadow of St Nicholas's flanked by 'The Plume of Feateher' and 'The King's Head', like Scylla and Chaybdis, in the window of one of the humble houses of the locality, is a hand-printed advertisement of a day-nursery where working mothers are invited to leave their babies from 7 am till 7 pm and that there is a doctor in regular attendacne. The signature at the foot of the announcement is 'Margaret McMillan'...

Underneath it is tunnelled with great cellars leading down to the Thames, and legend has it that the smugglers once kept their goods in the stowage. At any rate, the creek where Drake kept his boats is at hand, and misty lore has it that Queen Elziabeth sat under the mulberry tree around which the toddlers sing 'Here we go round the mulberry tree'....

Inside the enclosure, safe from the brewery lorries and brawlers of the public-houses is a charmed land of infants and toddlers in a newly-planted rose gardem, ranging from six months up to four years of age, who practically spend the day in the open air'

The full article is included in A gregarious culture: topical writings of Miles Franklin.

See also The McMillan sisters and Rudolf Steiner in Deptford

King and the Olive Fields

Phil from New Cross-based King and the Olive Fields has been in touch to tell us that they will releasing their debut 10" EP, 'Fireworks', on Monday February 22nd 2010.

The official EP launch party will be on Friday February 12th at the Duke of Uke near Brick Lane, following that they are doing a number of dates including an instore at Puregroove in Farringdon.

As a preview you can listen to/download one of the tracks from the EP, Postcards, here. Lovely in a Magnetic Fields/indie pop kind of a way.

Linkage

The links on this site have been woefully out of date, so I have had a bit of an edit. So it's hello to:
A Room of One Zone, good stuff from Deptford Marmoset including joining the wonderful Caroline's Miscellany in the search for the great ghost signs of South London.

Greenwich Industrial History - not only does what it says on the tin, but can probably tell you that that tin was made at Tinmakers & Sons in Woolwich in 1923.

Sydenham & Forest Hill Society - quality rather than quantity at Steve Grindlay's blog.

Swimsuit Issue - New Cross-based feminist blogger, not too much local-specific content, but impeccable politics and music taste.

... and it's goodbye to:

- Someday I will treat you good - Andrew broke his blogging addiction and hasn't posted for over a year. Sure he's up to something, but not quite sure what - move over Miliband, next leader of the Labour Party?

Don't Ask Nothing/Deptford Arts Network - site has vanished, perhaps they have moved on and decided Peckham is the new Deptford? Or, hazard for people doing interesting things in SE London, headed off to Shoreditch thinking it's Hollywood/the Emerald City. It isn't and the wizard is a fake.

The Man from Catford - deleted his blog :-( Have said it before in my sometime historian guise, but hey people blogger is free, unless your blog was so personally embarrassing that it would compromise you for it to exist, please don't delete it. In ten years time (maybe sooner), your seemingly trivial observations about details of life in your ends will be gold dust to somebody.

Kate - another good blogger missing in action.

In the music links I have taken out Moonbow Jake's (closed) and updated Rocklands/Music Tourist Board plus added a few South London-based bloggers including Decks and the City, Rouge's Foam, Punch Brothers Punch and The London Nobody Sings . As for record labels I have left in Angular even though they have left the hood, their New Cross roots are still showing, and added No Pain in Pop.

David Hepher's beautiful tower blocks

Currently on display at Tate Britain gallery is this painting by David Hepher (born 1935). 'Albany Flats' (1977-79) depicts the Bradenham block on the Aylesbury Estate (not the Albany Estate as is erroneously stated in this otherwise informative description at the Tate Website, though they are off Albany Road).

The painting is one of a series depicting tower blocks in South London, with others including ‘Peckham Flats’ (1975–6), ‘Walworth Flats’ (1976–9), ‘Stockwell Flats I’ (1974–5) and 'Camberwell Nocturne' (1984)- below - featuring Habington House, a block on Camberwell's Elmington Estate.

He has said: ‘ I like best to work from council blocks, preferably stained and eroded by the dirt and the weather, where the facial appearance is continually changed by the people who live there, their comings and goings, and the changing decor. I would like to think that the pictures could make people look differently at the flats around them, to see beauty in objects that they normally dismiss as ugly.’

Naturally this put me in mind of South London militant modernist Owen Hatherley, generally appreciative of high rise beauty - though I notice that even he draws the line at admiring the tower blocks on the Aylesbury.

Hepher studied and taught at Camberwell College of Art. There's some pictures of his studio in Camberwell by Pete Marshall here.

Bold Vision benefit - with Mazaika

Bold Vision's plans for a new community cafe at the Telegraph Hill Centre in New Cross are pushing on, with a benefit night at St Catherine’s Church on Friday January 29th. They say:

'The evening will include a performance of Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals (‘The Swan’, ‘The Elephant’ etc.), and appearances by folk singer/songwriter Kat Drake, blues band Little Devils, readings and drama by actors who you will recognise (and not just from Sainsbury’s), accordion and violin duo Mazaika, comic interventions by Phil Nice, and much more (including a Bar). The first half will be child-friendly and last approximately 45 minutes, so bring all the family for this community event and an introduction to some great music.

Tickets available from the Telegraph Hill Centre from 18th Jan (when open) and on the door. The concert is free to under-18s, and to adults on a pay-what-you-can-for BOLD VISION basis! (Suggest £5 +)'.

Mazaika

I am particularly looking forward to seeing Mazaika, who are based locally and have played at Brockley Max etc. but who I keep missing. They are an accordion/violin duo who play Russian and Gypsy music. If you've seen Cronenberg's Eastern Promises - in the top 5 'set partly in Deptford' films ever - you'll be familiar with accordionist Igor Outkine, as he performs in the film. Violinist Sarah Harrison has also played with an outfit called the Hot Club of New Cross - not sure if they are still going, but they sound good. Marc Almond recently performed with Mazaika at Cecil Sharp House:

From Nunhead to the Titanic

When the Titanic sunk in 1912 one of the survivors was a young wireless operator, Harold Bride.
Bride first told his story to the New York Times immediately after the disaster. 'I was born at Nunhead, England 22 years ago, and joined the Marconi forces last July. I first worked on the Hoverford, and then on the Lusitania. I joined the Titanic at Belfast'.

Bride seems to have been one of the last off the ship and spent some time swimming in the sea before being picked up. He recalled listening to the band as the ship went down: 'The way the band kept playing was a noble thing. I heard it first while still we were working wireless, when there was a ragtime tune for us, and the last I saw of the band, when I was floating out in the sea with my life belt on, it was still on deck playing "Autumn"'.

On the rescue ship, Carpathia, he quickly went to work on the wireless, sending messages from survivors.

You can read his full story at the New York Times archive for 19 April 1912. See also the entry on him at the Encyclopedia titanica. Bride was born in 1890, in 1903 his family moved to 58 Ravensbourne Avenue, Shortlands, where there is now a London Borough of Bromley plaque.

Colin Wilson: an outsider in Brockley library

The always excellent Another Nickel in the Machine has an interesting piece on the the writer Colin Wilson. Wilson was feted as a genius after the publication of his book The Outsider in 1956, which popularised existentialism. Soon though the newspapers turned on him when it became known that - shock horror- he had left his wife and child and was living with his girlfriend Joy. Wilson may never have regained his reputation as the English Jean-Paul Sartre, but he has done OK as a writer, publishing continuously ever since, especially books on the paranormal.

As Another Nickel... documents part of the early myth was that he had written the book while sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath and studying in the British Library. This may have been partly true but, as Wilson has subsequently confirmed, the title was conceived in New Cross. In his book 'The angry years: the rise and fall of the angry young men' (2007) he writes: ''By September 1954, the autumn rains had driven me back indoors, and I took a room in the auspiciously named Endwell Road in New Cross, and found a job in the Lyons Corner House in Leicester Square. Joy had now become a librarian in Stanmore, and we were so far apart that I saw her only at weekends having convinced my landlady - a kindly soul named Mrs Harris - that we were married and obliged to live apart until Joy passed her librarianship exam'.

Wilson spent Christmas Day 1954 in his room 'dining on egg, bacon and tinned tomatoes... and that afternoon headed a page in my journal: "Notes for a book The Outsider in Literature", followed by the words: "To show that the outsider is evidence of a particular type of moral development that has its finest fruit in the Christian tradition"... In the local library I had discovered an excellent section on the mystics, and I had been reading Jacob Boehme and Saint John of the Cross. Within an hour I had sketched out the whole book'.

In his autobiography 'Dreaming to Some Purpose', Wilson states that the exact address was 31 Endwell Road and that 'Brockley Public Library had the best collection of the mystics in London - most of them in the reserve section in the basement'. Before the book was published he had moved back across the river, but evidently the local library had almost as much of a role as the British library in the conception of his best known work.

Brockley in the Telegraph

The Brockley Christmas fair and a certain local ukelele group get a mention in the Telegraph's gardening section this week (14 January), with Matthew Appleby writing:

'I ran a pop-up garden shop in up-and-coming London suburb Brockley recently. We sold the dream ticket of secondhand books, local photo cards of Brockley in the snow, cupcakes, and slug and weedkillers. Only the chemicals failed to shift. This retail offering may sound like a health and safety nightmare, and indeed one child complained about tinfoil in their fairy cake, but the event had a lovely community feel, with a ukulele band, Santa and mulled wine on offer. We used a cute baby as bait (my idea) and gave the proceeds to charity (not my idea).

However, no-one bought any garden products. Maybe it was the time of year. Maybe the trendy Brockley-ites want to do it for free. Maybe the seeds and grow-your-own thing is now so embedded that no-one thinks they need garden chemicals any more. Maybe they are all organic and self-sufficient. But I doubt it'.

Local allotment holders might also be interested in the item in this same column on a new company setting up private allotments to compete with the 'socialist system' of council-run allotments - apparently 'Allotments used to be for pensioners and the poor. Now they are for the middle classes'. Discuss.

Incidentally, has anyone else noticed the over-use of the term 'pop-up' everywhere for anything vaguely temporary? Someone sticks a few pictures on a cafe wall and now it's a pop-up gallery; or in the example above, a stall in a Christmas market is rebranded as a pop-up shop.

Chicken Run

That dreadful Tory poster is on the Old Kent Road among many other places - you know the one, 'we're going to cut everything, but may just stop at your throats'. There are many spoofs out there (see for instance Liberal Conspiracy), but I'm not sure if anybody else has remarked upon the remarkable resemblance between David Cameron and a chicken - more specifically Ginger from Chicken Run. Are they by any chance related?

South London French Exiles (2): Emile Zola

The great French novelist Emile Zola lived in the Queen's Hotel in Upper Norwood from October 1898 to June 1899 while in voluntary exile during the infamous Dreyfus affair. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army, had been falsely accused of spying, largely as a consequence of the widespread anti-semitism in ruling circles. Zola famously came to his defence by writing an open letter to the French President, "J'Accuse" and as a result was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for criminal libel. It was to avoid this that Zola fled to London, where he remained until the death of the President and the withdrawal of the threat of prison.

Zola led a lonely existence in Norwood, his whereabouts concealed from all but trusted friends. His visitors included the French socialist leader Jean Jaures, Yves Guyot (a prominent Dreyfusard), J H Levy of the Personal Rights Association, and the novelist Octave Mirbeau.

Zola spent his time working on his novel Fécondité, cycling and taking photographs of the local area, including the following one of the Crystal Palace.

Interestingly when Zola had visited London five years previously he was deemed sufficiently a literary celebrity to be honoured in one of the regular grand fireworks displays at the Crystal Palace. Along with the 'Ascent of two Large Balloons, bearing torches and Aerial fireworks' and and 'Aquatic Forest of Floating Trees of Fire' the 23 September 1893 display included a 'Fire Portrait of Emile Zola with motto "Welcome"' (Patrick Beaver, The Crystal Palace: a portrait of Victorian enterprise, 1986).

There is a blue plaque for Zola on the hotel in Church Road, Upper Norwood (close to Crystal Palace triangle). A collection of Zola's photographs of the area has been published by the Norwood Society.

Lewisham Communists, 1926

This photo of Lewisham Communist Party members was taken in 1926. It is featured on the cover of 'Communism in Britain, 1920-39: from the cradle to the grave' by Thomas P. Linehan (2007). I found another, smaller version of the same photo online in which you can see that as well as the main banner ('Communist Party Lewisham Group, 1905, 1917, Workers of the World Unite'), they are carrying red flags with hammer and sickles.

Alexander Wolfe - New Cross Rembrandt Dealer?

From The Sunday Times, 10 January:

'...Alexander Wolfe was a lead singer without a band after their keyboard player left to sign a multi-million-pound solo deal. What was to be spectacularly good news for Jamie Cullum left Wolfe wondering where next to turn. Then he remembered the artwork he had inherited from his French grandfather. The small lithograph of an elderly beggar seeking alms, produced in 1630, had been hanging on the wall in his bedsit in south London for more than a decade. It was a precious treasure: the only link to a family he never knew and, by his own admission, “the only thing of value that I owned”. However, it was also the passport to his dreams.

Wolfe took it down, wondering what it might be worth. “And on the back there was a letter to an ancestor of mine from the painter, who gave it to him as a gift. And it was signed ‘Rembrandt’.” At auction, the print fetched £9,000. Within days, Wolfe had gone out and bought everything he needed to bring his music dreams to life...

Says Wolfe: “It was hard to let the painting go, because it was my only connection with my French family, but there was no real point in hanging a Rembrandt in a bedsit in New Cross. I justified it as selling art to make art.” He adds: “I never knew my French grandfather. We only met once and he died when I was 14, but I owe my career to him.” With his new equipment, Wolfe set to work to make Morning Brings a Flood, a beautiful album with echoes of Nick Drake, inspired by an artistic vision. “The idea was to make a record about darkness and light,” he says. Recorded over the course of a year, much of it in his own home, Wolfe played almost all the instruments — guitar, bass, piano, drums, sitar, organ, harmonium and glockenspiel — and produced it himself'.

The album was recorded in New Cross - at his twitter feed, Alexander describes himself as 'the only French lord in New Cross'!. Here's his song Teabags in Ashtrays:

Cous Cous at Café Crema

Thursday night film screenings are back at Café Crema (306 New Cross Road) with the licenses all sorted once again…

This week on January 14th they are showing Abdel Kechiche’s ‘Couscous’, a portrait of the French-Tunisian community in the French port of Sète. 'Basically an ensemble piece, it pokes into the lives of the two extended families belonging to a separated, 60-year-old immigrant shipworker, Slimane (Habib Boufares). When unemployment hits, it is the grain and red mullet dish his estranged wife so lovingly prepares which he hopes may prove the central selling point of a new restaurant he plans to open on a reconditioned quayside barge'.

Film plus polenta, or sweet cakes and wine, all for £6. Doors 7.30pm; film starts at 8.oopm.

Chew Lips

London electro-popsters Chew Lips are launching their debut album, Unicorn, later this month. Clash reports that the trio 'formed almost exactly two years ago, playing their first show at a friend's party in the fashionable New Cross area of London'. In fact, singer Tigs and James Watkins were living in New Cross when they started out, with the remaining member Will Sanderson in Dulwich. Don't know if they're still in the 'hood, but that's enough of a SE London connection to get them on Transpontine.

Here's the video for their single Salt Air, released last summer:

Young London Artist Awards at Sydenham School 2010

There's an opportunity to see some exciting work by young South London artists later this month at Sydenham School.The Young London Artist exhibition and awards on Friday 29th January 2010 (6:00-7:30 pm) will feature work by 46 A-level students, including live cooking of Eritrean cuisine, large sand installations, live video feeds linked to CCTV, painting, sculpture, photography and much more.

The prize will be judged and awarded on the night by Grazyna Ciuksza, the schools learning officer at the Horniman Museum, and Tara Page, a lecturer in art and design education at Goldsmiths College. Some of the work being produced is of degree standard and will be worth checking out whether or not you have connections with the school - all visitors are welcome.

Sydenham School is located in Dartmouth Road, London SE26 4RD. It is a comprehensive secondary school for girls, with a mixed sixth form (Hillsyde) combined with Sedgehill and Forest Hill schools.

Murder in New Cross and Thornton Heath

A 19 year old who was attacked last April in Sandford Street, New Cross, has died after being in a coma for eight months. Johnson Ndjoli died on January 5th from the injuries he sustained when he was shot, stabbed and run over by van. In November 2009, two brothers were jailed for 35 years for his attempted murder. Dwight Callender, aged 23, of Mercator Road, Lewisham, and Derrell Callender, aged 20, of Leybridge Court, Eltham, were said to have been part of the 'Shower Gang' and to have carried out the attack following an argument with Ndjoli's friend Mohammed Turay, who was also injured.

The New Year started with a murder in Thornton Heath, where the family of the victim have criticised police handling and press coverage of the crime. The Deslandes family run the Newton Arms pub in Thornton Heath. Their account is that after an argument at a New Year's Eve party, a man was ejected from the pub and came back later with a gun. 34 year old Darren Deslandes was shot dead, and and his 25 year old brother, Wintworth [Junior] Deslandes, remains in the Critical Care Unit.

The Sun, however, reported that 'Two men shot after a New Year party are believed to have taken part in a Wild West-style shootout. One man in his 30s died from gunshot wounds and the other, in his 20s, is critical after the gun battle in Thornton Heath, south London'. In the press release (reproduced in full at Black Looks) 'The Deslandes family formally demand a full apology from the Sun and a full retraction of the cruel lies they have spread about the Murder of one innocent, law abiding young man and the attempted murder of another . Wintworth and Leline have a third son, James, age 13. He witnessed the Murder of his eldest brother. His other brother is fighting for his life and his parents are irreconcilably devastated'.

What this case shows is that the magic words 'Operation Trident, the force's black-on-black gun crime taskforce, are investigating', along with innaccurate press reporting, can create complacency and indifference amongst the wider community. There is an unspoken assumption that anybody who gets shot was probably involved in gangs, maybe even deserved it, and that nobody else should worry or even care. But people with no involvement in violent crime can get killed if they argue with the wrong person, try to break up a fight or go to the aid of a friend. And even when the victims are involved in gangs, it remains a tragedy for their families and for all of us that young lives are being wasted.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

This year's Telegraph Hill Community Production will be Stephen Sondheim' s 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'. Registration/rehearsals are taking place this weekend (9th and 10th of January) at St Catherine's Church at the top of Pepys Road.

In case you haven't been to one of these before, the Community Production usually features a cast of a couple of hundred children and adults, with two months of rehearsals miraculously resulting in a generally high quality weekend of performances during the Telegraph Hill Festival (13th and 14th March). So if you live in the New Cross/Brockley and fancy a sing song, check out the Festival website for details.

Did squatting save Victorian London?

In his book 'A Summer in the Park: a Journal of Speakers' Corner' (Freedom Press, 2004), Tony Allen puts forward the view that 'squatting saved Victorian London'. His argument is that 'Government Housing policy of the late 1960s was to knock down the crumbling grandeur of London's inner city Victorian terraces and replace them with tower blocks and housing estates. They placed CPOs - Compulsory Purchase Orders - on the old property and then spent years moving the tenants around and gradually trashing and tinning up the voids'. Many of the empty properties were squatted, and subsequently squatters and remaining residents joined forces and campaigned against Council demolition plans.

'By 1979 the policy was finally changed. "Renovate the Victorian terraces and divide and rule the squatters". The more articulate and organised of the squatters did a range of deals with the various councils and ended up living as co-ops or council tenants on controlled rents in the renovated Victorian terraces. It may not have been a deliberate anarchist policy, but nevertheless the squatters of the seventies saved Victorian London'.

The example he gives is North Paddington/North Kensington, but does the theory hold true for South East London? There are certainly housing co-ops in Victorian terraces to this day in New Cross with origins in the squatting movement (e.g. Nettleton Road), and indeed many houses in Telegraph Hill area were squatted in the 1970s and 1980s - when I stripped the wallpaper in my house I found some great old squat punk graffiti including a picture of a punk with a mohican and 'The Exploited' . This was a period when middle class taste was for new-built housing away from the inner city. I am one of many ex-squatters living inVictorian housing round here - some in co-ops and housing association properties, some who got cheap mortgages when not many people wanted to buy Victorian terraced houses, and/or when Housing Associations were buying people out of their tenancies by paying for them to put down deposits on houses.

So if Tony Allen is right there are a number of levels of irony here - the good burghers of the conservation areas partially owe the survival of the Victorian fabric of the city to a bunch of punks and anarchists. And conversely the latter inadvertently paved the way for the (re)gentrification of the inner city.

What do people think?

Deptford Urban Free Festival

I can't do justice to the Deptford Urban Free Festival in one post, so will return to it shortly, but suffice it to say that from 1990 to 1995 there was an annual full-0n festival in Fordham Park, New Cross that attracted tens of thousands of people from all over London. It wasn't some municipal music do, but a proper free festival bringing the spirit of Stonehenge and Castlemorton into town for the weekend complete with loads of bands and sound systems. It was too good to last, in the climate of the post-Criminal Justice Act crackdown on open air raves and festivals Lewisham Council refused permission for it to continue in 1996. I was lucky enough to be there for several of them.

To get things started here's some footage by Nigel Smith of the 1991 festival:



Then from 1993, here's New Cross-based (and internationally known) band Test Department playing:



From the same year, here's Brixton-based RDK Hifi sound system:



More to come. Bring on the memories...

New Cross Care Home Seeks Bagpipe Player

This is London reports that the Manley Court Nursing Centre, a care home in New Cross is looking for a bagpipe player for piping in the haggis on Burns Night (January 25). I do actually have a bagpipe chanter, but have never managed to get more than a few notes out of it. If you can do better, you could call the Centre on 0845 600 4622.

The Centre is in John Williams Close, off Cold Blow Lane.

New Year's Eve in Telegraph Hill Park

New Year's Eve was celebrated as usual in Telegraph Hill Park (top park), a couple of hundred people drinking and watching the fireworks exploding over London - the view of the main London display now newly obscured by the Strata building at Elephant and Castle. The other new development was the number of people launching Chinese lanterns in the park - no doubt prompting a rash of 'UFO sightings' across the capital. It was a full moon and a very clear night until just after midnight when there was a sudden snow shower sending everyone home with snow in their hair.

See also: New Year's Eve in Telegraph Hill Park, 31 December 2012

Twelfth Night on Bankside

The Lion's Part put on their annual Bankside Twelfth Night celebration today. There was the usual arrival of the Green Man by boat...

... followed by wassailing outside the Globe theatre, not forgetting my favourite polar bear costume.

All of this plus a St George Mummers Play, this year featuring lots of topical lines about banks and the recession ('the banks have taken the money, and now we're all toast").

Dead Santa fails to abolish Brockley poverty

Christmas photo special - Brockley graffiti artist bemoans Santa's failure to abolish world poverty ('Xmas has come - Why am I still poor?'). But maybe the answer is to be found in Deptford, where this shocking photo from the church of Santa Claus (or St Nicholas) suggests that Santa may actually be dead!

Santa photo from Laura W. on facebook; Brockley graffiti on Foxwell Road on site of demolished Maypole pub, Brockley's own Democracy Wall, previously graffiti'd here and here.

New Year's Eve in the Brockley Jack, 1869

The Penny Illustrated Paper, 1 January 1870 includes an article 'Village Ale-House on New Year's Eve' extolling the virtues of a walk in the countryside followed by a drink at the Brockley Jack.

It starts ''There are worse methods of inaugurating the New Year than that of starting out for a brisk walk into the country after a short railway journey which carries the pedestrian to a point beyond the last straggling houses of suburban streets'. The countryside recommended is in Kent around Knowle (assume he means Knole by Sevenoaks) and Chislehurst.

The author goes on: 'Should you wish to return to town by way of Lewisham you may as well take the short cut, and that will lead you through some country lanes stiff with clay; having recovered from which you will, unless you are an 'abstainer', which is scarcely probable, feel that a glass of good ale would not be the worst kind of refreshment. By this time you may have come upon the outskirts of a little village, where, if you are particularly fortunate you may see a labourer, or a tramp, or a wandering tinker; and if, with a laudable desire for information , you inquire of such a person where you can obtain the desired refreshment, he way say' "Why, it's mostly Jack's that people goes hereabout". Should you pursue the subject by any inquiry as to the identify of Jack's, you will learn that it is Brockley Jack's of course; and as "it's close by and precious sharp weather somehow makes yer feel thirsty like' the "price of a pint" cannot be reasonably expected "either to make you or break you; which here you are, with the name wrote on a bladebone" though whether a real bone or not your informant "ain't rightly certain; but it's a big 'un if it is real, that's all".

Now supposing it to be New Year's Eve - or, for the matter of that, almost any other eve in the year - you are not likely to learn much about either Brockley Jack or the great bladebone, because there are so many people in front of the bar that there is quite enough to do to draw beer for them, without answering questions'.

There's still a whalebone in the pub, not the original one as far as I know - or is it? Incidentally old maps show there was indeed a pathway across fields between Peckham and Lewisham and that it followed the course of the Brockley Footpath (still there by the Jack) and Sevenoaks/Ewhurst roads. Presumably this track went further into Kent , and Sevenoaks road is so called because it actually was on the old path to there. Presumably too, the author of this piece came across this track, as the Brockley Jack is directly on it.

It's hid in 'em - Pantomime in South London

Plenty of Pantomime still going on in South London, with Sleeping Beauty in Bromley, Cinderella in Catford and Mother Goose in Greenwich this year. Here's a couple of historical references:

At Christmas 1852 the Crystal Palace was still under construction at the top of Sydenham Hill (it opened there in June 1854). A preview of its attractitions was though included in the 1852 Christmas panto at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane which featured scenes set in 'The New Crystal Palace and Gardens at Sydenham'. There were fairies representing 'Art, Science, Concord, Progress, Peace, Invention, Wealth, Health, Success, Happiness, Industry and Plenty' and an Imp announced:

'Behold my treasures here, there's nought forbid in 'em,
And all will be revelaed though now it's hid in 'em' [Sydenham, gettit?]

In 1881 the pantomime at the Surrey Theatre, Blackfriars Road, featured music hall star the 'Great' G.H. Macdermott singing the lines: 'Whenever I sees a copper, I always tells a whopper'.

Source: 'Oh, yes it is - a history of pantomime' by Gerald Frow (BBC, 1985).

Turn of the Screw

Tomorrow night (Wednesday 30th December. 9 pm), BBC One is broadcasting a new production of The Turn of the Screw, the very spooky story by Henry James. The music has been composed by New Cross-based composer John Lunn, who was nominated for a BAFTA earlier this year for his music for Little Dorritt, also on BBC.

New Year's Eve Party at Lift'n'Hoist

Lift'n'Hoist is a newish social centre in a squatted factory in Walworth. They have a website with details of the various gigs, parties and meetings happening there.

On New Years Eve (Thursday 31st December 2009) they are hosting a benefit party for London No Borders, in conjunction with Siren Sound System, featuring live bands including:

- HEADJAM - dub/metal/punk [http://myspace.com/headjamuk]
- THE LEANO - hip-hop [http://myspace.com/leanoland]
- 52 COMMERCIAL ROAD - alternative/rock [http://myspace.com/52commercialroaduk]
- CAPTAIN OF THE RANT - acapella/lyrical/punk [http:///myspace.com/captainoftherantpoetry]
- NUKEONROUTE - punk [http://myspace.com/nukeonroute]
- LEWIS FLOYD HENRY - one-man blues band [http://myspace.com/lewisfloydhenry]
- JAKE LAWY - a'capella/hip-hop.

Plus DJs: XTRATS - drum'n'bass, LITTLE MINX - breaks, DJ ALFIE - deep tech house, REPEAT - breaks, DJ SERIFRAT - breaks/hip-hop/d'n'b.

The address is LIFT'N'HOIST, 1 Queens Row, Walworth, SE17 2PX. Suggested donation: £5.

I ate the London Eye for Christmas

The tower bridge biscuit was nice too.

Happy Christmas War is Over

...or at least it was peaceful enough on Blackheath last weekend, by the frozen pond.

Hoodoo business in Lewisham

As a birthday present to Transpontine contributor Skister, here's a link to a spooky story partially set in Lewisham. Rooum by Oliver Onions (1873-1961) tells of a man pursued by an invisible runner that can pass through his body. It includes an encounter in the local area: 'we were somewhere out south-east London way, just beyond what they are pleased to call the building-line - you know these districts of wretched trees and grimy fields and market gardens that are about the same to real country that a slum is to a town. It rained that night; rain was the most appropriate weather for the brickfields and sewage-farms and yards of old carts and railway-sleepers we were passing... We were walking in the direction of Lewisham (I think it would be), and were still a little way from that eruption of red-brick houses'.

Health warning - the story starts with some HP Lovecraft-style racism hinting at the exotic secrets of black people: 'something about him, name or both, always put me in mind, I can't tell you how, of negroes. As regards the name, I dare say it was something huggermugger in the mere sound - something that I classed, for no particular reason, with the dark and ignorant sort of words such as "obi" and "Hoo-doo"'. Probably not untypical sentiments for a white writer in 1910 (when the story was first published), but certainly jarring to the modern reader.

Anyway you can read the full story here.

Rape in New Cross

Terrible news from New Cross, a young woman was raped in the early hours of this morning near to Hong Kong City (which is near the junction of New X Road and Pomeroy Street). For now I will just repeat the story from today News Shopper:

'Police are appealing for witnesses following a rape in Lewisham this morning. A 19-year-old woman called officers after being raped some time between 4.15am and 4.30am close to the Hong Kong City restaurant in New Cross Road. The woman was on her way home and was walking towards the bus stop opposite the Toys R' Us store in the Old Kent Road.

Having noticed two men at the bus stop, she chose to walk to another stop but was followed by one of the men. He dragged her to a wall about 10 feet away from the main pavement where she was raped. The suspect also stole her Nokia N97 mini mobile telephone.

The suspect is described as having tanned skin, with light coloured eyes and possibly a moustache. He was around 5ft 8ins tall, of skinny build, and was wearing a black woolly hat with Crystal Palace and the number 88 written on it. He was also wearing a black leather jacket, dark trousers - possibly jeans - with a belt, black trainers and black leather gloves. Officers from the Sapphire Unit at Lewisham are investigating. Anyone with information should call 020 8284 8380 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111' .

South London French Exiles (1): Martin Nadaud

In the 19th century many French people lived in voluntary or enforced exile in London, including in various parts of South London. So I thought I'd run a short series of posts on some of them, starting with Martin Nadaud:

Martin Nadaud (1815-1898) grew up in the Creuse region of central France, before moving to Paris as a stonemason. He was on the secret strike committee during the first ever French national building workers strike in 1840. In a period of recession, thousands marched behind a banner declaring 'Let us live working or die fighting'.

Nadaud participated in the 1848 revolution, and became the first working class Member of Parliament in the National Assembly. In December 1851 the Republican government was overthrown in a coup. Nadaud was jailed for a month and then ordered into exile, making his way to London early in 1852 where he worked on building sites and lived in lodgings in various places including Soho, Islington, Greenwich, Blackheath and Lambeth. He visited the Crystal Palace in Sydenham.

His periods living in South London seem to have been his most desperate. Recalling the winter of 1855, Nadaud wrote: 'At one point I fell into despair - really a terrible despair. I went and hid myself away in Greenwich, reduced to eating dry bread'. He described the accommodation where lived in a period of unemployment as 'a narrow, dilapidated and often fireless attic room in the little town of Greenwich'. In June 1856 he was living at a temporary address on the Old Dover Road in Blackheath, and in early 1858 in 'an obscure street in Lambeth, sandwiched between a railway viaduct, the archbishop's garden and the slum of Lower Marsh' (Tindall).

However his fortunes were to change in 1858 when he obtained a job teaching French at Wimbledon School under the assumed name of Henri Martin, and moved to live in Wimbledon village. He remained there until 1870, when he returned to France and resumed a political career, being elected as a republican and moderate socialist MP from 1876 to 1889. A station on the Paris Metro was named after him. His experiences in England, including long studies in the British Museum, informed his writing - in 1872 he published in French his 'History of the working classes in England'.

Wimbledon School still stands incidentally, though today it is known as Wimbledon College. Nadaud, who campaigned for secular education as a French MP, is no doubt spinning in his grave as the College is a Roman Catholic secondary school run by the Jesuits!

Source: Gillian Tindall, The journey of Martin Nadaud: a life in turbulent times (London: Chatto & Windus, 1999).

Winter Solstice - On Snow Hill

Today is the Winter Solstice in case you didn't know, and here's a seasonal song to go with it.

Snow Hill is in Greenwich Park. This song was inspired by a talk on Greenwich Park given by Jack Gale for South East London Folklore Society. It was first sung at a SELFS Yule event at the Royal George in Tanners Hill in 2006, and in a few other places since including the Old Kings Head in Borough High Street and most memorably at a Winter Solstice event in Greenwich Park itself.

I have performed the song in various musical incarnations, including my most recent project Half a Person, but originally did so as Neil Transpontine. You can download a demo version of the song here if you wonder how the tune goes.

On Snow Hill

The moon is full, lets bathe in its milky light
Lets make like foxes in the night
I know the ground is hard and its cold outside
But you’re hot enough for both of us, on this winters night

Beneath our feet, long gone lovers lie
The London clay has long since filled their eyes
They long to look up on that patch of sky
That looks down from high, on you and I

Stars are shining above Snow Hill
Reflected like diamonds in the frozen well
Some say the Snow Queen, she waits here still
Waiting until, lovers slide in the snow on Snow Hill

The wind cuts through you like an icy blade
Slicing the last leaves from the trees in the old oak glade
Making a carpet where we can lay till the break of day
It would be rude not to use what the seasons made

Stars are shining above Snow Hill
Reflected like diamonds in the frozen well
Some say the Snow Queen, she waits here still
Waiting until, lovers slide in the snow on Snow Hill

Is anyone interested in getting together in the New Year to sing and play folk/acoustic music with a particular focus on songs linked to South London (covers and new material)? Whether it leads to an ongoing band or not would be open ended, but the aim would be to get at least a few songs together to perform by the time of Brockley Max festival in June 2010. Email if interested, I will post more details shortly.

Spiral Tribe parties in SE London

Spiral Tribe were the best known of the many techno sound systems putting on parties in (mostly) squatted venues and free festivals in the early 1990s. They became media folk devils as a result of their role in putting on the famous Castlemorton festival in May 1992, following which people associated with Spiral Tribe were prosecuted for public order offences, only to be acquitted after a four month trial (the government got its revenge by passing the anti-rave Criminal Justice Act).

The year before, Spiral Tribe put on several parties in South London. According to this list included in a Spiral Tribe zine at the time (reproduced below), these included:

- July 27-28 1991, a benefit party in Deptford
- September 21-22 1991, Peckham party
- October 12 -14, Volume 2 Lewisham

I went to lots of free/squat parties a little later in the 1990s, but didn't go to any of these ones. Does anyone remember where they were or anything about them or other similar events?

Here's a few clues. DJ BPM says on her myspace that 'walking into a Spiral Tribe squat party in Carnegie Library in Deptford changed my life, it was a divine experience to me (neither joking nor blaspheming)'. The Carnegie library referred to is the old Lewisham Central Library (now Lewisham Arthouse) at the New Cross end of Lewisham Way, which was built in 1913/14 with funding from the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. It closed in June 1991, and was sporadically used as a venue for squat parties until Lewisham Arthouse moved in three years later. I think this party actually took place after the above list was compiled in November 1991, as Steve Spiral recalls:

'Lewisham Library, the venue walls were painted by Mark and Debbie for a week before the party, and the 2 terror strobes and smoke machine were intense and ran all night long. Darren crashed his camper with the rest of the light show in the back the day before the party. Easy to remember this was my 21st birthday party…Saturday 17th November 91'.

There's some great footage of this party, featuring some classic '91 raver moves. The film was apparently shot in the afternoon when not many people were around, as it was too dark to film at night:
He also mentions a separate party at 'The arches Deptford, the venue was arranged by big Alex (dancer for Back to the Planet and co-organizer of the Urban Free Festival in Fordham park, New Cross). This part took place directly after Camelford so must have been mid Sept 91'. This does slightly contradict the list, so wonder if there's some confusion with the 'Peckham party'?

The exact dates aren't really important, but I'm guessing that the Deptford arches party actually took place in July 1991, as I believe that this was the time of the Deptford Urban Free Festival which he mentions, and I have seen somewhere else a reference to Spiral Tribe organising an 'after party' for the festival. No idea where the Peckham party was or 'Volume 2' in Lewisham.

Hither Green Spiritualist and Bin Laden

Why is Gordon Brown sending all those troops into danger when the 'war on terror' could have been ended years ago thanks to a Hither Green spiritualist? According to a story in this week's News Shopper (15 December 2009), Angela Bayley's prediction of where 'Bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan was not taken seriously when she made it eight years ago. But now Angela Bayley says her prediction, exclusively reported in News Shopper in 2001, has been proved true in a US Senate report'. Back then she 'dangled an Islamic charm over a map of Afghanistan to find bin Laden and felt a strong pull to Waza Khwa, in the south-east of the country'.

Bayley has her own theory about what's really going on : 'I don’t believe they want to find him because the longer it is they can’t find him, the more they can blame on him. They have wasted billions of pounds and dollars on a war no-one wants. They are never going to find him and they know it.'

AE Waite at the Horniman

We have discussed before at Transpontine the interesting connection between the Horniman Museum and Victorian occultism, specficially the fact that Annie Horniman was a member and patron of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and that through her Order founder MacGregor Mathers and his wife Moina Bergson (sister of the philosopher -pictured) came to live on the site. WB Yeats was among those who visited and took part in magical experiments.

Another visitor was the occultist/mystic Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1942) and his wife Ada Lakeman, known as 'Lucasta'. In fact they were both initiated into the Golden Dawn in a January 1891 ceremony at the Mathers' house, Stent Lodge, in the grounds of what is now the Horniman Museum (source).

Waite (pictured)doesn't seem to have been entirely happy with the ceremonial magic of the Golden Dawn, preferring his own mystical take on esoteric Christianity. When the Golden Dawn broke up into acrimonious factions, Waite started the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross which declared that it "has no concern whatsoever in occult or psychical research, it is a Quest of Grace and not a Quest of Power”.

Waite wrote over seventy books on subjects incuding Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, the Holy Grail and the Kabbalah, but is probably best known today for his part in the creation of the Rider Waite Tarot Deck, with the cards illustrated by the artist Pamela Colman Smith under his direction.

SE London Green Fair 1986

SE London Green Fair took place over two days in 1986 (21-22 June), starting off with a day of stalls, workshops and music at the Albany, followed the next day by a community festival in Fordham Park, New Cross.

'Greenwich 264' has recently posted a video on Youtube shot at the time by Tim Spencer and it really is a priceless social historical document, opening a window not only on to 1980s Deptford but to the green/peace/left movements of that time.

As described by Graham Bell (complete with some classic 1980s glasses!) the themes of the event were International Year of Peace and green campaigns around Transport. He mentions the launch of a campaign called Commuters against Polluters and the proposed East London River Crossing (a threat to Oxleas Wood, it was finally cancelled in 1993).

Across the event we see stalls and local activists of the time - Jeanette Prior of Deptford CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) with a 'One Missile is too Many' banner; the Anti Apartheid movement, Dorothy Shipp of Lewisham United Nations Association; Ron Wye, London Cycle Campaign ; Kevin D'Cruze, Lewisham Peace Council; Micheael Prime, Lewisham Greenpeace Supporters Group; Tim Wright, Lambeth Friends of the Earth; and a short interview with Peter Tatchell ('I'm here because I'm a socialist and i think green politics is really important'). There's also a Brockley Bean stall - a vegetarian shop/cafe in Coulgate Street at the time.

Musically there's Irish folk from Goats Brigade, Grange Lunchtime Band, Barflies, Childeric School Steel Band, Lewisham Lizards (doing 'Cajun Two Step') and a reggae sound system from Catford Link. The famous Dewdrop Inn can be seen in the background in the park scenes. All this plus a beer tent, face painters, clowns, jugglers, inflatables and animals from Stepping Stones Farm in East London.

Apparently there was a similar event the year before, at Goldsmiths and in Fordham Park. Does anyone know if it happened again?

There's a bit in the first part of the film where Catherine Maguire leads a workshop in the Albany on 'Creating Your Own Future', asking people to envisage the world they would like to live in in the year 2000. Did your dreams come true?

Urban Screen at the Albany

Urban Screen is a monthly film night at the Albany (Douglas Way, SE8), with a format of an indie feature along with shorts by emerging talent (mostly local). All followed by Q&A, a drink and some film biz networking.

This week - tomorrow in fact - they will be showing Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS plus Brazilian short TARANTINO’S MIND. As it's a festive gathering there will also be wine and mince pies (Wednesday 16 December, 7:30 pm, £5 entrance)

Last month Deptford-based film maker Destiny Ekaragha was featured. Her film TIGHT JEANS was included in the London Film Festival, and was inspired by a man in very tight jeans in Deptford High Street!

Brockley Mess

Some kind of aliens/snow people/monsters have taken over the garden at Brockley Mess for the festive period. Well, whatever they are it's the cutest Christmas installation spotted so far this year.

Inside there's an exhibition of paintings by Brixton-based artist Martin Grover. There's a picture of Brockwell Park ponds, but I was particularly taken by the large scale paintings of 7" singles.

What lifts them above straightforward reproductions of record sleeves off the production line is that they are actually paintings of specific individual objects with their own histories. So one record has the handwritten name of the girl it used to belong to on the label, while this copy of Thin Lizzy's Whisky in the Jar has a stamp from the record shop on the sleeve: 'Whymants Records, 1050 London Road, Thornton Heath'.

Oh and the coffee and cake was very nice too!

Brockley's most famous fascist

Brockley Central this week features a plaque on a local house. It reads simply 'Henry Williamson, writer, 1895-1977, lived here, 1902-1920. Presented by the Henry Williamson Society'. The writer is best known for his novel Tarka the Otter, which for many of those familiar with the film version must make him seem just a cuddly nature writer.

In fact, he was pretty much a life-long fascist who was denying the Holocaust up to his dying day. A quick google trawl using the terms "Henry Williamson" and "Hitler" will tell you all you need to know, if you can bear to look at the loony neo-nazi sites across the world that continue to sing Williamson's praises.

A member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, he visited Germany in 1935 to attend the National Socialist Congress at Nuremberg. He wrote of Hitler as 'the great man across the Rhine whose life symbol is the happy child'. A regular contributor to the BUF paper, Action, he was briefly interned as a nazi sympathiser on the outbreak of war. While some British nazis hid their pro-Hitler position behind calls for peace with Germany, Williamson was unapologetic. On September 24, 1939, he wrote that Hitler was 'determined to do and create what is right. He is fighting evil. He is fighting for the future'.

Many pre-war fascists kept their heads down after the war, but not Williamson. When Oswald Mosley launched his Union Movement after the war, Williamson wrote for the first issue of its journal. In The Gale of the World, one of his final works published in 1969, Williamson puts forward the view that the Holocaust never happened, specifically that deaths in concentration camps were caused by diseases brought about by the destruction of all public utility systems by Allied bombing.

Williamson was born born in 1895 at 66 Braxfield Road in Brockley. In 1900 the family moved to 11 (now 21) Eastern Road, Brockley, where the plaque stands. He went to Colfe's school. But he moved to Devon in the 1920s and never returned to live in South East London, so I would be quite happy for other parts of the country to take credit for him - or rather the blame.

SE London music blogs

As you will have gathered if you've ever checked out my music blog, I'm interested in thinking, talking and arguing about music as well as listening to it. Some of the more interesting dance music thoughtists are also in the SE London zone, so though I'd mention a few here.

Peckham's Rouge's Foam is an ambitious exercise in 'excessive aesthetics', check out the brilliant and exhaustive overview of Burial's music which has got everybody talking in the past week (well everybody who likes that sort of thing, and I do).

Meanwhile Decks and the City is the place to go if you wonder what a theory of Peckham Soca Aerobics would be like.

No Pain in Pop is the blog of the New Cross-based label/promoters, featuring lots of interesting new music.

Deptford Albany Posters Exhibition

There's a nice exhibition in the cafe at Deptford Albany (Douglas Way, SE8) of posters advertising gigs there in the early 1980s, designed by Colin Bodiam ('Bo'). Posters featured include The Flying Pickets...

The Raincoats (legendary post-punk band), who played at the Albany in December 1981. The poster says 'first week of music', presumably this was just after the new building opened in Douglas Way. The old Albany Empire in Creek Road was demolished to make way for a road widening (as well as being damaged in a suspected fascist arson attack).

Dr John, with local support The Electric Bluebirds:

Mary Wells (the poster says 'Detroit to Deptford'):

Jazz musician Abdullah Ibrahim:

'World Music Hits Deptford' with gigs by dub poet Michael Smith, Rico (ska trombonist who teamed up for a while with The Specials. I saw him a couple of times in the early 1990s playing in Mingles, a pub in Brixton's Railton Road) and Bobby McFerrin (best known for 'Don't Worry, Be Happy')...

Other posters on display advertise gigs by Squeeze, Richard Thompson, Martha Reeves and Defunkt. No sign of the Lee 'Scratch' Perry & The Upsetters poster shown in the latest New Cross Gate Post. The exhibition runs until Christmas Eve.

Colin Bodiam was born in 1945 and grew up in Blackheath. At one time he was the music critic for IT (International Times). His biog, displayed at the exhibition, also mentions 'other activities in the early seventies including supplying rock stars at Underhill Rehearsal Studios in Blackheath Hill (A Ziggyfied David Bowie: 'it's not for me, it's for the band")'. The posters were mostly printed by silkscreen in a room at the Pink Palace on Crossfields Estate. Mark Knopfler helped print an early poster for a gig by Dire Straits, using 'feminist enclave See Red Women's Workshop'.

Colin also has an amazing collection of local music photos at his Myspace site, including a 1970s Dire Straits photo shoot in Greenwich and more recent, this photo of the Dire Straits plaque unveiling on Crossfields Estate last week. Bo is pictured, I believe, holding an early Dire Straits poster in between Mark Knopfler (left) and John Illsley (right) from the band.