Band of Holy Joy/Test Department

We've enthused about The Band of Holy Joy here before, arguably the best band to come out of New Cross in the 1980s. Good to see they are busy again - in fact they are doing a cabaret/theatre piece, Troubled Sleep, at Chat's Palace in Hackney this week (5 December). Good too to see BoHJ singer Johny Brown getting a four page profile in The Wire magazine (December 2008), expounding on influences including Brecht, Behan and Burroughs.

Brown now lives in Stoke Newington, but in the interview he recalls that in the 1980s 'we were rooted in New Cross. Test Department and [UK comedian] Vic Reeves, they were our peers'. In the mid-1980s, he was sharing a house in Nettleton Road with another band, Test Department, who he compares with BoHJ; 'Test Department were incredibly masculine ... and we were extremely feminine. We were about romance, about a Britain that was fading away, contrasted with a reality that was quite dark. But there was definitely a spirit shared. Test Department were polemic where we were quite poetic, personal, romantic, the way we saw things. But then again, personal is political. They were out on tour with the miners during the strike, and you can't get more personal than people's lives being affected like that... It was totally opposite to Test Department, who were in training upstairs being militant. We were downstairs on drugs writing these really weird dirges. It was chalk and cheese'.

In terms of the local scene, Brown remembers 'there was lots of cheap housing in New Cross then, lots of squats and housing association houses, and there was Goldsmiths College too. [Test Department's] Angus was top boy at Goldsmiths, so it was mix of squatters, students, genius guys and general misfits. Vic Reeves was a very informed guy, with this art background and he was a really brilliant musician, very much an improvisor, working with people like Steve Beresford way before he made his hit record. The very first music I made when I came to London was with Brett [Turnbull film maker], Vic Reeves and his girlfriend Lucie Russell, and a guy called George on saxophone. We used to do this beautiful free rolling stuff with this cheap and nasty yellow and black plastic Wasp synthesizer. Of course everybody eventually moved away'.

(Thanks to John at Uncarved for letting me know about this article)

Music Monday: Test Dept and the Miners Strike

Continuing the series of posts on the 1984/85 miners strike and South London, we turn to Test Dept. As discussed several times here before, the influential industrial band started out in New Cross, specifically at 8 Nettleton Road where some of the band were living.

Many bands played benefit gigs for the miners, but Test Dept went further and put out a joint album with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir. The choir and the band played gigs together around the country, as well as putting out the album to raise funds for the strike. One of the gigs was at the Albany in Deptford on 18 September 1984, recalled by Neil Stoker: 'We did a huge benefit at the Albany Empire in London with a Welsh male-voice choir, and a band called Test Department. I can only describe Test Department as a band which filled plastic drums with water and sand and banged them in a rhythmic way. It was a bizarre night--these Welsh miners came down in a coach and were stuck in the middle of Deptford with these punks banging plastic drums--but there were a thousand people there!'

The album. Shoulder to Shoulder,  was recorded at various venues including Crynant Rugby Club (South Wales), Snowdon Colliery Welfare Club (in Kent coalfield), and Cold Storage studio in  Brixton. Some tracks featured the choir, and some Test Dept, but on what track - Comrades - they performed together.

From the back of album - note that at this time the contact address for Test Dept was 41 Billington Rd SE14

Last month Test Dept founders founders Graham Cunnington and Paul Jamrozy put on installation commemorating the strike at the AV Festival on Tyneside.  Paul told the Quietus: 'for the people who took part in it and lived through it, it's certainly not forgotten, and bringing up the 30 years of the strike brings it to the fore. People are still very bitter, there's a lot of anger. I think it's important to engage with that. Seumas Milne is bringing out the new Enemy Within book, and there's some stuff coming out with the Freedom Of Information Act, there are people still looking for some truth and justice to come out of it, with Orgreave and how the strike was policed... It was also the first signs of the militarisation of the police force in a way that is now just accepted: whether you're a pensioner or a student you're going to come across against people in full riot gear ready to attack you at the slightest excuse. That all became normalised during the Miners' Strike'.

Shoulder to Shoulder - the label

Housmans benefit this week

As it happens, Paul Jamrozy and myself are both DJing this Thursday 10th April at a benefit for Housmans, the long established radical bookshop at Kings Cross. The event, at Surya on Pentonville Road, is themed around the Agit Disco project, with people playing tunes they define as political. I'm actually going to be playing a short set of tracks linked to the miners strike, and had already decided to include Test Dept when I heard that Paul is playing too. Others taking part include Stewart Home and John Eden - full details at Facebook

See previously:

Lewisham Miners Support Group/Women Against Pit Closures

Supporting the Miners at Goldsmiths

Test Dept

Next up in the roll call of great South East London bands is Test Dept. To quote from Deptford Fun City: 'Test Department were formed in 1981 from a group of people living at 8 Nettleton Road [New Cross]. They broke new ground with their ‘metal bashing’ industrial sound, using scrap metal for percussion. Their support for the Miners' Strike is documented in their 1984 LP, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’, recorded with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir'.

In his book 'Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth Century Music' (Cassell, 1995), John Gill describes the experience of an early Test Dept performance:

"One sunny Saturday afternoon early in the 1980s, a colleague and I found ourselves wandering the streets of south of Blackfriars Bridge, on a caper that was straight out of Thomas Pynchon. A band who had given us a tape of their music, crashing industrial gamelan music battered out of steel springs, oil drums, sheets of metal, vast tanks, drills and buzzsaws, had invited us to one of their performances. The precise address of the concert had to be kept secret. They hired industrial premises – railway arches, warehouses, industrial depots – under the guise of anonymous charities… We were told to keep an eye out for their initials – TD, for Test Dept, a collective from New Cross in South London…

It was probably the only concert I’ve attended where I wondered if I was going to die. Test Dept were (and remain) stunning, breathtakingly noisy and quite terrifying… As they drummed up metal thunder on an adventure playground’s worth of industrial detritus, violent electronic noise was bled into the mix and grainy Russian revolutionary films were projected on to band and stage… The smell of oil was everywhere, and when they began applying cutting machinery to their instruments, producing volcanic spurts of sparks 20 feet across, people stubbed out cigarettes and backed towards the door". At a similar event nearby some time later, Test Dept were arrested before starting.

I saw Test Dept much later, at the last big night at Brixton squat venue Cool Tan in 1995.

Watch Test Dept - Compulsion (1984) at YouTube

Lewisham Miners Support 1984/5

 During the miners strike of 1984/5, which started 30 years ago this month, there were support groups set up across the country. Previously here we have mentioned support at Goldsmiths in New Cross. Another local group was Lewisham Women Against Pit Closures. This flyer from January 1985 tells us that:

1. The group held planning meetings at Lewisham Labour Club, Limes Grove SE13.

2. They 'invited women from the mining community of Shirebrook to Lewisham to speak to local people about the dispute'.

3. One of the women from Shirebrook was due to speak to a Lewisham Miners Support Group meeting at the Albany in Deptford on 24 January 1985.

4. There was a 'Women's Party' planned to take place at Women's Employment Project, 28 Deptford High Street, to raise funds for Shirebrook Women's Action Group (Shirebrook Colliery was in Derbyshire)

Neil Stoker wrote a little about Lewisham Miners' Support Group on the 20th anniversary of the strike in 1984:

'My father is from the Caribbean and my mother's Irish. The black community in south east London at that time was under constant abuse from the whole structures of society--the police, the government, the executive. The 'sus' laws had gone, but in terms of police brutality, mental health issues, housing, no one really cared what was going on. What struck me was the huge collective nature of the struggle. We got a collective spirit from a part of society that I didn't know and that was completely alien to me. There was a great sense of these people getting to know and understand what we suffered in terms of oppression, and vice versa. In a sense, we were somewhat cocooned by Thatcherism: we'd not had the same levels of redundancies, etc, in London as they had in the north of England. I got an understanding of what was really happening north of the Watford Gap.

Small events had a big impact: a miner from Dennington colliery came to stay with me and my family while he was in London collecting money. He came down to breakfast one morning and said, 'I've got to apologise.' My parents looked at each other--we thought maybe he'd broken a vase or something--and said, 'What for?' He said, 'I worked in a mine in South Africa in the early 1970s, and I feel really guilty about it now.' Things like that politicised people. There's a culture that miners and miners' support groups and Women Against Pit Closures hadn't been aware of before, and there's a culture that we took on as well.

We did a huge benefit at the Albany Empire in London with a Welsh male-voice choir, and a band called Test Department. I can only describe Test Department as a band which filled plastic drums with water and sand and banged them in a rhythmic way. It was a bizarre night--these Welsh miners came down in a coach and were stuck in the middle of Deptford with these punks banging plastic drums--but there were a thousand people there!

The miners' strike created this level of cultural understanding in a way nothing else could have. I remember going to the Notting Hill Carnival the year of the strike, and one of the most popular badges was 'Black people support the miners--oppose police violence'. (Socialist Review, March 2004)

Band of Holy Joy

We have lots of writing about music here at Transpontine, but not enough actual music. To correct this we are now going to try and include links to MP3s, concentrating on South London obscurities and otherwise unavailable stuff.

First up, The Band of Holy Joy, decribed in The Rough Guide to Rock as follows: 'Amidst the glossy, superficial optimism of a lot of mid-80s chart music, Band Of Holy Joy were lauded by the music press for bringing the dirt and hurt back into pop. The ramshackle line-up – acoustic instruments ranging from accordion to toy trumpet, and not a guitar in sight – invited comparisons with The Pogues, but there was something very English about a group steeped in lowlife London and happy to make something of it. What they made of it fitted the band’s name. Singer/lyricist Johny Brown supplied the words for strangely uplifting songs of urban angst that brought comparisons with Brecht and Brel, but were firmly contemporary, with privatization, Prince and E-type hedonism all targets for the densely detailed lyrics. The band grew out of a group of friends living in the New Cross area of south London, although Brown was originally from the northeast of England. A south-London indie label, Flim Flam, released their first records, the mini-album THE BIG SHIP SAILS (1986) and the full-length MORE TALES FROM THE CITY (1987)'.

As Deptford Fun City notes, Band of Holy Joy emerged from a squatting (later housing co-op) scene centred around Nettleton Road in New Cross. Vocalist Johny Brown told Melody Maker in 1987: 'It was at a time when New Cross was really brilliant... Me and Max used to live in a big house with Test Department. That was how Holy Joy were formed... in Test Department's basement where they rehearse. We found an old organ there. It was this big house with no windows. They had a black door with a wreath on it and the house was haunted’ (Melody Maker, 1987).

BoHJ’s 1986 album ‘More Tales from the City’ was recorded at Chocolate City in New Cross, a now vanished recording studio on New Cross Road (think it was where that now equally defunct night club stands between the White Hart and Besson Street). The band split up in 1992, although they did reform a couple of years ago.

Mad Dot, from 'More Tales from the City' includes the immortal lines: ‘I get the madness in my head, when I lie for days in bed, or when I walk up the New Cross Road, When I’m starved and I haven’t been fed'

Band of Holy Joy - Mad Dot (MP3)

Some of their later stuff is available at ITunes but not 'More Tales...', which defintely deserves a re-release.

Convention of Hysteria (1985)

February 1985 and a pretty radical weekend of music at the Albany Empire in Deptford - The Convention of Hysteria with New Cross's own Band of Holy Joy and Test Department joined by Diamanda Galas, Evan Parker and others. Somewhere out there there's a bootleg of this gig, of which Galas has recalled:

'Well, the Convention of Hysteria was me solo one night. Me with Test Dept the next, Evan Parker -who I had played with once in San Diego - and ... I don't really know who else was on it. Probably one or two other Some Bizarre artists. The performance with Test Dept was alright. I can't criticize them if the electronics broke down.

FE: Was that a written piece?
Diamanda: No. I structured a piece for all of us. So we did something and in certain ways it was pretty interesting. It received a very horrified response because the vocal levels were already incinerating the place, then Test Dept came out with these gigantic, I mean GIGANTIC, steel things, with no shirts, sweating and playing these things that were put through processing by my engineer. So it was even more monstrous. Then I was on the top, so it was some sort of weird S&M ritual. It was fun. I liked it and they're good guys.

"Diamanda Galas: Tura Satana Without Cleavage", Interview in Forced Exposure #15 (Summer 1989)

Anyone out there remember this? Doesn't sound like you'd have forgotten it if you were there.

Transpontine TV

I’ve put together a Transpontine playlist of videos on YouTube of music and songs linked to South East London. Take a look at:

Band of Holy Joy - What the Moon Saw (1985) – gorgeous song, the band recently reformed and when I saw them at the Windmill in Brixton last year they were fantastic. Cherry Red recently released a retrospective compilation, Leaves that fall in Spring (see review at Swedish Nurse).

Test Department – Total State Machine (1984) - awesome industrial assault from their Beating the Retreat album in solidarity with striking miners.

Conflict – The Serenade is Dead – live anarcho-punk action from 1985.

(the previous three bands all had connections with Nettleton Road in New Cross)

The Violets - Mirror Mirror (2006) – current Angular favourites.

Linton Kwesi Johnson – It Dread Inna Inglan (1979) - unaccompanied reading from dub poet, ex-Goldsmiths student and long time Brixton resident – ‘no matter what they say, come what may, we are here to stay inna Inglan’.

Squeeze - Up the Junction (1979) – from Top of the Pops, ‘I never thought it would happen with me and the girl from Clapham’. The SE London band played early gigs at The Oxford Arms in Deptford (now the Birds Nest).

Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine (1992) – The Only Living Boy in New Cross.

Shirley Temple (1936) – Old Kent Road – US child start goes cockney in the film Little Princess.

Brain of Morbius (2003) – I'm a Busy Bee and I'm loaded – big in New Cross and apparently massive in Hungary

June Brides (1986?) Every Conversation – live version of one of the greatest 1980s indie-pop songs. The band were based in Lewisham (lived in Courthill Road) and used to rehearse at studios off Creek Road in Deptford.

Lewisham Hospital Protest at Department of Health

In the build up to this Saturday's big Save Lewisham Hospital demonstration, supporters mounted a 'mums and buggies' protest outside the Department of Health headquarters in Whitehall today, with around 60 parents with their children blockading the entrance. Currently 4,000 babies are born every year at the hospital, but maternity services will be radically reduced under the cuts proposals.

Consultant obstetrician Ruth Cochrane said: "Lewisham currently has full maternity services and it is wonderful to see that so many local mothers have come out to support the trust. Proposals to downgrade these services and to have a midwife-led birth centre – without the back-up provided by full obstetric services - are just not safe. If women experience a complication during childbirth they would have to be transferred from Lewisham to King's Hospital or to Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich, both of which are simply too far." (see report at Newsshopper).

Support for the campaign was also shown at Millwall's home match against Burnley last weekend, with players warming up in 'Save Lewisham A&E' t-shirts. The club's FA Cup match against Aston Villa has been moved from Saturday to Friday 25th to avoid a clash with the demonstration - apparently the police can't cope with both on the same day. The club is fully behind the campaign saying:  'Whilst changing the date of our Cup tie is an inconvenience to us, we believe there is a bigger picture here. Millwall Football Club, our players, staff and many thousands of fans have, over the years, had reason to be grateful for the resources, facilities and care we have received from our local hospital. We are not persuaded by the arguments put forward in favour of closing the A&E department, childrens ward, intensive care and maternity services at Lewisham...  we would also encourage supporters who feel strongly about this issue to attend the demonstration next Saturday'.

The demonstration on Saturday will start at Lewisham Roundabout (by the station) at 12 noon on Saturday 26th January. It will march past the hospital to Mountsfield Park for rally, music and giant petition.

If you can give out any leaflets at work, school or in your street, there are details of how to help at the Save Lewisham Hospital site.

As discussed here previously, the threat to Lewisham Hospital services has now become a national issue as a test case for the Coalition Government's claims that the NHS is safe in its hands. Two weeks ago the subject dominated BBC's Question Time, filmed in New Cross. In last Saturday's Guardian magazine, columnist Lucy Mangan wrote: 'we march again, next Saturday. Please come. You don't have to live in Lewisham. Because if there's one thing the dragooning of Lewisham into the service of a neighbouring trust's debt shows, it's that where you live doesn't matter. Your beloved, priceless, well-sited hospital – be it ever so efficient, admired or attuned to local needs – could at any point be next in the stealthy process of breaking up the NHS and selling it, privately, for parts'. Writing in New Statesman, Lewisham Hospital-born Rowenna Davis remarked: 'For many, this is a political decision. Lewisham is a poor area and as one doctor put it, “There is very little to lose when everyone votes Labour here anyway”. The alternative is to close hospitals in Conservative-held areas like Kent, and MPs like Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling and Julian Lewis have already proven that even Tories can’t justify closures in their own backyard. Some call it “fiscal nimbyism”. Patients and doctors call it understanding the consequences when you’re close to them'.

The campaign has also gained international support in the shape of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu who has reportedly described the plans as 'scandalous'. And if you're wondering what it's got to do with him, it was his local hospital when he lived in Brownhill Road, Catford in the 1970s, and he opened the Riverside building at Lewisham Hospital in 2007.

Today's protest was the main story in ITV London News and also featured on BBC London.

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...

Urban Free Festival 1992

'The Dewdrop Inn. Deptford. For all the old punks n freaks' is a great facebook groups with loads of photos of that pub from the 1980s and 1990s. The Dew Drop Inn was on the corner of Clifton Rise and Angus Street SE14 - sadly now converted to flats (I will do a post about it another time). As the pub faced on to Fordham Park it was the main drinking hole during the legendary Urban Free Festivals held in the park from 1990 to 1995, which attracted tens of thousands of people from all over London and beyond. I have taken some of the photos of the festival from the facebook group to give a flavour of it - hope nobody minds, this is priceless cultural history.

1992 programme - Uban Free Festival III
Conscious Collective - 'You can't kill the spirt').

The line up in 1992 included Back to the Planet, Brain of Morbius, The Seas, Sensor, Fat Dinosaur, Sidi Bou Said, Attila the Stockbroker, Moral Panic, The Rythmites, Levitation, Dr Phibes and the House of Wax Equations, RDF, Test Department, Co-Creators, Community Charge  and many more. All this and the 'Free the Spirt Rave Big Top'.

Groups involved in organising the festival that year included South East Musicians Collective, SYLVIA (Support Your Local Venues and Independent Artsits), Conscious Collective, Dole House Crew (who squatted the Peckham dole office) and Sonic Relief with sponsors including The Dew Drop Inn, Music City,  Catford TUC Centre for the Unemployed and Lewisham Council.

I believe these photos were taken by Seran Tahsin, who was not sure whether they are from 1991 to 1992. I think probably 1992, because there is a great bit of film footage from 1991 and the structures look a bit different.

Dancing in Fordham Park in 1993

I had some great times at those festivals will write some more about the later ones at some point. Any good memories or stories, leave a comment as always (and why was it the Deptford Urban Free Festival when it was plainly in New Cross?!)

Update: here's a couple of interviews with people remembering the festival (film was made by people from Deptford.TV Collective in 2007)

South East London Synagogue

This must be one of the great lost buildings of New Cross - the South East London Synagogue in New Cross Road, where the Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall now stands.

According to Jewish Communities & Records, this building was consecrated in March 1905 and was destroyed by a German air raid on 27 December 1940. After this the congregation moved temporarily to 117 Lewisham Way (recently known as the Elephant house and demolished just last month). It 'returned to its original site in 1946, first to a temporary hut and then to new purpose-built synagogue in 1956'. However the congregation went into decline and it closed in 1985, by which time it only had 56 male members compared with 294 in 1939.

Afterwards the old synagogue was squatted for a while and used as a rehearsal space for Test Department, among others. I assume the 1950s building must have then been demolished, because the Jehovahs Witnesses hall looks more recent (correct me if I am wrong).

The synagogue seems have been started by Ashkenazi jews from eastern Europe living locally. Services started in a house in 452 New Cross Road in 1888, and then moved to two rooms in Nettleton Road, followed by a hut in in 1889 Lausanne Road until the building above was opened.

Credits - picture comes from South London Liberal Synagogue - I believe this is the earlier building rather than the 1950s one.

Deptford Fun City Revisited

A very good turn out (50+) at my 'Sounds of SE14' New Cross and Deptford musical history talk last night at St.Catherines, thanks for everyone for coming. For me it was great to have a mixture of some of the people who make the area interesting in one place, and in some cases ‘networking’ in the pub afterwards – those present included Caffy from Music Tourist Board, Mark Sampson (whose ‘New Cross Sympony’ was played), Ceri James (whose 'Deptford Broadway' was also played), Catherine from Cartridge, our very own Scott from South East London Folklore Society, Andrew from Ragged School Blog, Paul from Deptford Free Radio (who recorded the talk for a future podcast) and Paul Hendrich from Goldsmiths' Town Hall Pirate, the latter a new initiative looking to contest Deptford's colonial legacy as seen on the old Town Hall (now a Goldsmiths building) with its statue of the slaver Francis Drake. If you want to find out more sign up here and select 'Town Hall Pirate'.

Here's the music I played last night. If you want to know more about the connections between them and SE London, you'll just have to come along to my next event, likely to be in May during the Made in Deptford festival.


Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine – The Only Living Boy in New Cross
Roy Harris – Ratcliffe Highway
Robert Wyatt – The Red Flag
Marie Lloyd – A Little of what you fancy does you good
Fats Waller – The joint is jumpin’
Spike Milligan – The Q5 Piano Tune
Bonzo Dog Band – Monster Mash
Velvet Underground – Black Angel’s Death Song
Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel – Come up and see me make me smile
Dire Straits –Sultans of Swing
Squeeze - Cool for Cats
Alternative TV - Action Time and Vision
This Heat – SPQR
Kate Bush - Cloudbusting
The Flying Pickets – Only You
The Fabulous Poodles – Mirror Star
… and the Native Hispters – There goes Concorde again
The Chords – Maybe Tomorrow
The Only Ones – Another Girl, Another Planet
Japan – The Art of Parties
Homosexuals – My night out
Johnny Osbourne – 13 Dead
Linton Kwesi Johnson – New Craas Massahkah
Test Department – New World Order
Band of Holy Joy – Mad Dot
Ozric Tentacles – Sploosh!
The June Brides – Every Conversation
Blur – Girls and Boys
Placebo – Nancy Boy
Blak Twang – Trixsta
The Violets – Laxteen
The Swear – Ch ch eh!
Shortwave Set – Is it any wonder?
Mark Sampson – New Cross Symphony
Zen – Deptford Broadway.

Towards a South East London Top 20

Thanks to everyone who came to my Sounds of SE14 talk at the Telegraph Hill Centre last night - it was a surprize to have a full house on a Saturday night. For the uninitiated it was a mixture of me playing and talking about music linked to New Cross (with a bit of Deptford and Brockley thrown in). Here's twenty tracks I played - not necessarily the all time South East London top twenty but a sample of different times and scenes.

- Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine – The Only living boy in new cross (1992)
- Robert Wyatt – Red Flag (song written in New Cross, 1889)
- Marie Lloyd – Coster's wedding (1904) - 'Queen of the Music Hall' lived in Lewisham Way.
- Fats Waller – The Joint is Jumpin (played at New Cross Empire, 1938)
- Goons – You gotta go owww (Spike Milligan lived in Lewisham and performed in Deptford)
- Bonzo Dog Band – Canyons of your mind (met at Goldsmiths, New Cross)
- Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs (John Cale went to Goldsmiths)
- Squeeze - Up the Junction (Greenwich band, early gigs in Deptford)
- Kate Bush – Hounds of Love (lived in Brockley, played at Royal Albert before it was the Paradise Bar)
- Chords – Maybe Tomorrow (Deptford/SE London mod revivalists)
- Alternative TV – Action Time Vision (Mark Perry from Deptford)
- Dire Straits – Sultans of Swing (lived on Crossfields Estate, song about a Deptford pub)
- This Heat – SPQR (late 70s, lived in Speedwell House squat in Deptford)
- Homosexuals – My Night Out (as above)
- Johnny Osbourne – 13 Dead and Nothing Said
- Linton Kwesi Johnson- New Crass Massacre (previous two both about New Cross fire)
- Test Department – Roman war song
- Band of Holy Joy – Mad Dot (previous two both started out in Nettledon Road, New Cross).
- June Brides – Every Conversation (Lewisham band, played a lot in New X)
- Blur – Song 2 (met at Goldsmiths)
- Placebo – Nancy Boy (met in Deptford, Brian Molko lived in Drakefell Road)
- Steve Harley- Judy Teen (lived in New X, went to Edmund Waller school)
- Violets – Laxteen (current Angular favourites).

All other suggestions welcome!