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.
South East London blogzine - things that are happening, things that happened, things that should never have happened. New Cross, Brockley, Deptford and other beauty spots. EMAIL US: transpontineblog at gmail.com Transpontine: 'on the other (i.e. the south) side of the bridges over the Thames; pertaining to or like the lurid melodrama played in theatres there in the 19th century'.
Shirley Temple (1939) – Old Kent Road – US child star goes cockney in the film Little Princess
ReplyDeleteNice selection, cheers.
ReplyDeleteYou could probably add a few more: Back To The Planet, P.A.I.N., Skunk Anasie, Billy Idol...
Thanks Dansk, I am going to do another selection soon. I know Back to the Planet played a lot around South London, but not sure exactly where they were based. Likewise P.A.I.N. who I associate with the old Goldsmiths Tavern. Billy Idol was from Bromley but what of Skunk Anansie? Wasn't Skin from Brixton?
ReplyDeleteFantastic to see 'What the Moon Saw', I remember seeing it on Snub TV back in the day. What a tearjerker! The Test Dept is great too. Cheers for the mention and big thanks for the original Holy Joy post which bought them back into my life! As for other SE London acts, how about This Heat, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Homosexuals, Comus, Japan and er Haircut 100? Wasn't there a band in the 80s called the Forest Hillbillies?
ReplyDeleteNo RDF?
ReplyDeleteI remember that some Back to the Planet used to live on Trisillian Road and around about there. Missed there reunion recently which I heard rocked.
ReplyDeleteBilly Idol went to school in New Cross - my old man taught him art!* (maybe not such a good job tho). Not sure about Skunk but i remember them playing Fordham park.
Senser are pretty local too, more Greennwich way.
There used to be loads of posters for the Forest Hillbillies but don;t think i ever heard them (probably too young!). Worth looking into...
*he also taught Bones from Brain of Moebius (thanks for finding the video!), I worked with the guy years later and when I mentioned his name to him (not knowing he was my dad) he replyed Mr R*******? What that w*****r?!
What school did you dad teach at then? I read somewhere that Billy Idol went to Ravensbourne school in Bromley but left and went somewhere else.
ReplyDeletePossibly he went there too.
ReplyDeleteIt was West Greenwich School (not quite New x but deptford - at the bottom of Blackheath hill) and he was apparently a quiet lad, sat at the back a lot and may have been in the same year as Danny "Daz" Baker...