waterintobeer 10th birthday/Acoustic Anarchy 100+

The great Brockley beer shop/bar waterintobeer celebrated its tenth birthday last month with a series of events and some cans especially for the occasion. Earlier this year too Acoustic Anarchy celebrated its 100th event at waterintobeer, marking the event with a one off zine listing everyone who has played there (including me). As promoter  Martin Howard set out in the zine, the monthly night is a great example of 'DIY Culture' with people turning up and singing unplugged (mostly).

The beer and homebrew shop also has origins in this DIY culture. As beer shop owner Tim Livesey has explained, waterintobeer was originally the name of a punk zine he was involved with in Leeds in the noughties, that later gave its name to a local football team before becoming a popular drinking spot at 209 Mantle Road SE4.  

Last Saturday's headliner at Acoustic Anarchy was Joe Solo from Scarborough. Edwyn Collins may have once bemoaned 'too many protest singers, not enough protest songs' but nobody could accuse Joe of lacking in the bolshy ballad department. I liked his explanation of ensuring 'cognitive ease' in protest songs so that people aren't distracted from the message by too many complex chord changes. To be honest I needed some singalong anti-fascism on the day would-be far right paramilitaries had converged on Dover.

Joe Solo at Acoustic Anarchy, 5 September 2026