The Gig Guide - 1995 South London music listings

I found this June 1995 issue of  The Gig Guide for London in Revolution Records in Penge. I don't remember it from the time and it certainly doesn't cover the breadth of music from that period. Its focus is very much on the pub music scene but it provides an interesting snapshot of South London venues, some no longer here. 

There are some recognisable names. Placebo are listed at playing at McMillans in Deptford which must have been an early gig for them. Brain of Morbius are at the Prince of Orange SE16, Pavement and Motorhead at Brixton Academy and Shane MacGowan and the Popes at the Clapham Grand - followed a week later by Whigfield.  

Most of the other artists aren't familiar - to me anyway - but The Station and The Roebuck in Lewisham, the Rutland in Catford, the White Swan SE10,  the Pie & Kilderkin in Forest Hill (now the Signal), the Paradise Bar in New Cross and the World Turned Upside Down on Old Kent Road are all busy with various rock, jazz and indie nights.  Clubbing was probably bigger than gigging in 1995, it certainly was for me, but that doesn't get too much of a look in here apart from The Fridge in Brixton with its gay nights Love Muscle and Gridlock. Drummonds in Beckenham High Street promises 'the best funk and soul bands' every Thursday.

 

Music Monday: Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and the Critics Group in Beckenham

In musical terms the folk singer Ewan MacColl (1915-1989) is associated in most people's minds with the Salford where he was raised (the subject of his song Dirty Old Town) and the Scotland of his parents with which he so strongly identified. But many of his most creative years were actually spent in the outer reaches of South London.

MacColl seems to have first lived in London for a short period in the mid-1930s shortly after marrying his  first wife, Joan Littlewood. They hoped to pursue their radical theatre ambitions in the capital. In 1936 they lived for a while in 'a borrowed flat on the north side of Wandsworth Common' then 'rented an enormous run-down house at 113 West Side, Clapham Common, paid a month's rent deposit and a month's down, furnished the place with hire-purchase goods and set about communal living' with a group of young drama hopefuls. The money soon ran out and later that year they moved back to Manchester, though Littlewood was to return in the 1950s and become a major figure in theatre, living on Blackheath (where she hosted Brendan Behan - see previous Transpontine post).

In the 1953 MacColl moved back to South London with his second wife Jean Newlove - a dancer and choreographer who he had met through their involvement with Theatre Workshop. They rented a flat at 109 Rodenhurst Road in Clapham Park then later that year rented a flat at 11 Park Hill Rise in East Croydon; 'Old Theatre Union friends Barbara Niven - now a full-time fundraiser for the Daily Worker - and her partner, the social realist painter Ern Brooks, took the flat upstairs'. MacColl and Newlove put up visiting musicians and friends there including the American singer Big Bill Broonzy, folk song collector Alan Lomax and Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid.

Ewan and Jean had two children together, but by the time the second was born - the singer Kirsty MacColl - Ewan had fallen in love with the American folk singer Peggy Seeger. Peggy first lived in London in 1956 and over a couple of years lived as a lodger in Greenwich (16 Crooms Hill) at the home of another influential figure in the folk revival, A. L. Lloyd - as discussed previously here.

In 1959 MacColl and Seeger rented a flat at 55 Godstone Road, Purley before in 1961 taking out a mortgage on the upstairs flat at 35 Stanley Avenue, Beckenham, Kent - where MacColl lived for the rest of his life. This was not just a family home but a productive centre of London folk music. From 1964 to 1972 a group of folk singers met there regularly to study and sing. The Critics Group recorded a number of albums including two collections of London songs in 1966 'Sweet Thames Flow Softly' and 'A Merry Progress to London'. The collective with its floating membership was active in left wing politics, particularly opposition to the Vietnam War.

As described by MacColl biographer Ben Harker: 'The stalwarts who congregated in the Beckenham workroom on one, two or three evenings a week in 1964 were mainly in their early twenties. They were typically from working-class backgrounds, had been caught up in the skiffle craze, and had subsequently renounced American-based music in favour of British or Irish traditions'. Early members included Sandra Kerr, John Faulkner, Frankie Armstrong and Gordon McCulloch, as well as for a short while Luke Kelly of The Dubliners. Children's author Michael Rosen was a later member.

Sweet Thames Flow Softly, written by MacColl, was sung on the Critics Group recording by John Faulkner. A song of a pleasure boat trip from Woolwich Pier to Hampton Court, it has become something of a folk standard, sung by many including Christy Moore/Planxty, Sinead O'Connor, The Dubliners, Maddy Prior and of course MacColl himself. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s MacColl and Seeger ran their own Blackthorne Records from their Beckenham home where today there is a plaque commemorating 'political songwriter and playwright' MacColl.

All quotes above from Ben Harker, Class Act: The Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl (2007)

Bethlem Museum of the Mind/Bethlem Gallery

The Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham (Monks Orchard Road) is one of the world's oldest mental health institutions. Starting out near Bishopsgate in the City of London in the 13th century,  it moved to Moorfields in 1676, and then to St George's Fields in Southwark in 1815, now site of the Imperial War Museum.  It moved again to the spacious grounds of Monks Orchard in 1930. The word 'bedlam' derives from its name.

It has in short been a place of much suffering and some healing over many years, a history that is covered in the Bethlem Museum of the Mind located in the hospital's former admin building.

The stairs to the museum are guarded by two statues which for centuries adorned the gates to Bethlam at its former locations.

'

The museum  aims to record 'the lives and experience and celebrates the achievements of people with mental health problems' as well as providing an overview of the history of their treatment, much of it cruel.

The well lit and contemporary designed museum also features original work by artists and former patients such as Richard Dadd and Louis Wain (famous for his cat pictures), while the Bethlem Gallery on the ground floor is an exhibition space for art by current service users.

On my recent visit I took part in a community Cyanotype Workshop Drop-in at Bethlem Gallery with Melanie King. The technique involves laying objects on solution treated paper and exposing in sunlight, leaving images behind. In my example below this included a fern, a feather, some Chinese coins and a small Kuan Yin figure.

Mad Pride sticker on Bethlem car park sign

The Museum/Gallery is free and is open Wednesday - Friday, as well as some Saturdays  (check website for details).

 

Life tips from Beckenham

 

'Folk Songs for Peace' at Lewisham Town Hall (1964) with Ewan McColl & Peggy Seeger

In February 1964, famous folk singers Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger performed at Lewisham Town Hall (Concert Hall) in Catford at a 'Folk Songs for Peace' benefit concert. I believe the couple were living in SE London at this time (and for many years later) at 35 Stanley Avenue, Beckenham BR3 2PU.

tickets from Janice Edmunds,  56 Vicars Hill, SE13 (Ladywell)

McColl and Seeger pictured at home in Beckenham, 1964 (source: Getty Images)

Proceeds from the event were for the London Committee of 100, the early 1960s non violent direct action body which organised sit down protests against nuclear weapons. It arguably peaked in December 1961 with simultaneous demonstrations at military bases including RAF Wethersfield in Essex where 850 of the 5000 demonstrators were arrested. Six organisers, the "Wethersfield Six", were charged with offences including conspiracy and incitement to breach the Official Secrets Act.  They were later jailed for 18 months. The same paper which reported the Folk Songs for Peace concert also reported on a Committee of 100 protest in January 1964 outside Wandsworth Prison, where one of the Wethersfield Six, Terry Chandler, was imprisoned.



Source (other than photo): Direct Action, paper of the International Working Men's Association/Syndicalist Workers Federation, February 1964, found while browsing around the fine Sparrow's Nest Digital Archive.

Peckham Soul brings Togetherness to Beckenham

I love Beckenham Place Park with its green spaces, woodland and grand old mansion house, so good to see that there are some interesting things going on there to encourage other people to come along and discover it. Personally I mainly go there to run (among other things there's a newish parkrun every Saturday morning) but I might be tempted to try out something even more athletic with some northern soul moves - which I always imagine I am capable of after a few drinks...

This Saturday April 29th Peckham Soul will be putting on  the first of a series of Togetherness nights  there:

'With the best in Northern Soul, classic Motown, Stax, funk and disco, your host DJ Craig Jamieson (Peckham Soul / South London Soul Train), takes you on a dancefloor trip through the world’s most life affirming music. A season of Peckham Soul events taking place in in the summer  splendour of Beckenham Place Mansion... In this time of nastiness, we say - Brexit..no, Trump…No, Togetherness …Yes!'

This weekend will feature a DJ set from Ben Ayers from Cornershop, after that the monthly line up will include: 

May 27th Andy Lewis (Paul Weller Band & Acid Jazz) DJ Set

June 24th Special Guest T.B.A

July 29th Eddie Piller (6 Music & Acid Jazz)

Aug 26th Belle & Sebastian (Chris Geddes DJ Set)

Sep 30th Special Guest T.B.A

Tickets (£10) here

Althea Gyles (1868-1949), poet and artist: 'A Strange Red Haired Girl'

Althea Gyles (right) with Irish revolutionist Constance Markiewicz

The Irish poet and artist Althea Gyles (1868-1949) was born in County Waterford and moved to London in 1892. She knew Oscar Wilde, W B Yeats (who described her as "a strange red-haired girl, all whose thoughts were set upon painting and poetry"), Constance Markiewicz, Aleister Crowley (with whom she had an affair), Compton McKenzie and many other interesting people, and is best known for her book designs for Yeats, Ernest Dowson (now buried in Ladywell Cemetery), Wilde and others. For a period she was associated with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (famously connected to the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill), and was later interested in vegetarianism and Buddhism.

Gyles' cover design for Yeats' The Secret Rose (1897)

Sympathy - Althea Gyles (1898)

The colour gladdens all your heart;
You call it Heaven, dear, but I -
Now Hope and I are far apart -
Call it the sky.

I know that Nature's tears have wet
The world with sympathy; but you,
Who know not any sorrow yet,
Call it the dew.

She spent her later years in South London, including in Brixton, Sydenham (one of her last homes was at 19 Tredown Road SE26) and at a nursing home in Beckenham at 69 Crystal Palace Park Road where she died in 1949.

In Jad Adams' biography of Ernest Dowson (Madder Music, Stronger Wine, 2000) he writes: ‘Althea Gyles lived on... her flaming hair now grey.. She lived in bedsits in Tulse Hill and then Sydenham, casting horoscopes as the new century wore on, until she became a ghost from the 1890s in war-shattered London.’

"Lilith" by Althea Gyles, from 'The Dome' vol.I, Oct.-Dec. 1898

(The most detailed account of Gyles' life that I have found online is in 'Althea Gyles’ Symbolic (De)Codification ofWilliam Butler Yeats’ ‘Rose and Wind Poetry’' by Arianna Antonielli)

Related posts:

AE Waite and the Horniman

Beatrice Offor of Sydenham

WB Yeats, Mona Bergson and the Forest Hill Visions

Camberwell and Crowley

Springtime

After all the dreadful weather of last couple of weeks, today has been a perfect sunny spring day. I saw a kingfisher (my favourite bird) while running along the Pool River in lower Sydenham, and lots of spring flowers in bloom in the churchyard of St George's in Beckenham.

The blossom is also out on the Japanese cherry trees - this one in Gellatly Road SE14:

Firefighters strike in South London

There was solid support at South London fire stations for the national strike last night. Firefighters walked out between  6 pm and 10 pm over plans to raise their retirement age from 55 to 60 and increase their pension contributions. There will be another strike between the same times next Saturday night.

Here's a few pictures (sourced via twitter) from local picket lines:

Forest Hill Fire Station (from @MattWrack)

Beckenham (from @MattWrack)

Southwark Fire Station - facing closure by Boris Johnson
on 9 January 2014  (@savesouthwark)

See also report of last month's strike 

Music Monday: Richard Sanderson

Richard Sanderson is an important figure in the London improvisational music scene, not to mention a member of the fearsome Blackheath Morris Men. For the past couple of years he has been releasing some interesting sounds on his digital label, Linear Obsessional Recordings, and he has now put out a new album of his own, Air Buttons.

He says: 'These pieces were recorded at home in Hither Green, usually on Friday afternoons when the housework was done and before the kids came back from school. As with my previous album of melodeon improvisations the instrument was recorded in three different ways – using footpedals (wah, distortion and pitch change), pushing it through contraptions made with Audiomulch software on my laptop, or augmenting it with other sounds – in this case, field recordings and a wind-up gramophone. The gramophone was recorded with a contact microphone (made by Jez Riley French) attached to the needle, or to a toothbrush. “Above The Breakers” was played on pre-WW1 one-row melodeon, all the others were played on a D/G Hohner Pokerwork. The title of “Flim Flamingo” was suggested by Gary Widdowfield.. “Velux Doppler” was created from two field recordings- one of Beckenham Parish Church Bells, the other of the rain falling on the roof window of my bedroom. The field recordings on “Shade” were made in my garden...  For my Father'.

You can download it here, choosing your own price. Other South Londonist sounds on Linear Obsessional Recordings include Hannah Marshall's album of cello improvisations, Tulse Hill.

Music Monday: Life on Mars (Bowie on the Beckenham-Lewisham bus)

'David Bowie: Five Years' was an interesting documentary shown on BBC2 at the weekend. Bowie must have one of the most documented lives of any musician, so I did wonder if there could possibly be anything new. But there was some great footage I hadn't seen before and some interesting interviews.

His 1971 song 'Life on Mars' featured heavily, with Rick Wakeman being interviewed about his role in arranging the piano part. But what the programme didn't mention was that the song was written in Beckenham,  via a bus journey to Lewisham. In a 2008 article in the Daily Mail, Bowie recalled:

'This song was so easy. Being young was easy. A really beautiful day in the park, sitting on the steps of the bandstand. 'Sailors bap-bap-bap-bap-baaa-bap.' An anomic (not a 'gnomic') heroine. Middle-class ecstasy. I took a walk to Beckenham High Street to catch a bus to Lewisham to buy shoes and shirts but couldn't get the riff out of my head. Jumped off two stops into the ride and more or less loped back to the house up on Southend Road.

Workspace was a big empty room with a chaise longue; a bargain-price art nouveau screen ('William Morris,' so I told anyone who asked); a huge overflowing freestanding ashtray and a grand piano. Little else.  I started working it out on the piano and had the whole lyric and melody finished by late afternoon. Nice. Rick Wakeman came over a couple of weeks later and embellished the piano part and guitarist Mick Ronson created one of his first and best string parts for this song which now has become something of a fixture in my live shows'.

The park with bandstand he mentions is presumably the Croydon Road Recreation Ground in Beckenham where Bowie and friends once organised a festival (the subject of his 1969 song 'Mermory of a Free Festival'). The house in Beckenham was the  now demolished Haddon Hall at 42 Southend Road, where Bowie lived in the ground floor flat from 1969 to 1972 (working on the classic Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust albums).

David Bowie outside Haddon Hall in Beckenham
(he also lived for a while in 1969 in Flat 1, 24 Foxgrove Road, Beckenham)

More Transpontine Bowie posts

The Transmitter: Bowie in Beckenham

Another Nickel in the Machine: Bowie's early years in Brixton and Bromley

The Mistrale club in Beckenham

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Mistrale club in Beckenham was a top nightspot for South East London, hosting internationally known bands and introducing people to the sounds of young America and the Caribbean. It was located at 2-4 High Street at Beckenham Junction. Before it became the Mistrale it was the plain old Beckenham Ballroom. Peter Frampton, who grew up in the area, played early gigs there with his teenage band, and bands like The Yardbirds performed (May 1964). Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones later recalled: 'We would also go to dances at the Beckenham Ballroom, where drainpipe trousers were banned'. It seems to have become the Mistrale in 1968. I have come across two flyers online for the club in that year. The grand opening on 17th April featured Manfred Mann and was followed by others including The Alan Price Set (24 April), Ike & Tina Turner (1 May), Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (3 May) and Marmalade (8 May 1968).

  In October 1968, artists perfroming included PP Arnold (11th October), and T.Rex with The Pretty Things (18th October). Ska was obviously popular with The Skatelites playing on 20 October 1968 and The Pyramids (who wrote Skinhead Moonstomp) in April, May and October. There was also a twice weekly Rock Steady Disco - according to George Austen this was put on by Little Lee and The Savoy Sound who also played at the Penthouse Club in Bromley and the Amersham Arms in New Cross ( a flyer for the latter in 1968 promises 'Ska, Soul and Tamla Motown' from Lee).

  Other gigs included: - Black Sabbath, 25 September 1968. - Kaleidoscope, 29 Novemeber 1968 (advert below). - Isley Brothers, 20 December 1968. - King Crimson on 11 July 1969; guitarist Robert Fripp recorded in his diary: 'Mistrale, Beckenham. Bad, but they know how to clap: faster, baby, you’re slowing me down. £50'. - Genesis, 2 March 1970. - Mungo Jerry, 31 Decemeber 1970. - Mott the Hoople, 9 April 1971. - Fleetwood Mac, 23 July 1971.

 

There's some good discussion about the place at Beckhenham History Forum. Seemingly there was a Rolls Royce on the way in where people paid their entrance money. Mike Loveday was the owner. One regular recalled: ''In the days of the Mistral the club was on 2 floors. The resident DJ used to play downstairs and guests – e.g. DJs like Emperor Rosko & Johnnie Walker and acts like Jimmy Helms - used to play upstairs. After you paid your entrance fee to the lady in the Rolls Royce you walked past a games room that had a pinball machine and table football before turning right to go past the bar and into the main (downstairs) dance area. In 1973/1974 the biggest night of the week was Friday night, with lots of good Soul music played. Saturday was not as busy and was a bit more “commercial”... the upstairs part of the club always used to close before the downstairs - which meant that the final few dances were always downstairs. Closing time was 2am, and the last record played at 1:55 am every night by the resident DJ (whose name I think may have been Lee) was "Goodnight My Love" by Jesse Belvin - a classic!'

Some of the DJs who played out at the Mistrale were national big names. Don Moss is named as 'popular DJ' for the 'opening of our Discotheque' in April 1968, presumably the same Don Moss who was a BBC radio DJ and one of the presenters of 60s TV pop show Thank your lucky stars. Emperor Rosko and Johnnie Walker were both DJs in the early days of Radio One. In around 1974 it became Tites Disco - Lee was still a resident DJ along with Rocking Richard and Dave Mitchell. The central ceiling between the ground and first floors had been removed to create a single floor warehouse-like club. Later still - in the 80s - it became Langtrys and then its latest incarnation, The Bridge Bar. 

  If you liked this you might also be interested in: 

 - Mods in South London. 

- 1960s ska and soul clubs in South London. 

- 1960s jazz and r'n'b in Blackheath (Green Man). 

Ticket Offices face Closure

Ticket offices at rail stations across South London face closure if the Government implements the recommendations of the McNulty Report which it commissioned. The report, "Realising the Potential of GB Rail: Report on the Rail Value for Money Study" proposes that all Category 'E' Stations should have their staffing removed. These are stations which typically only have one member of staff present - in future they would have no staff on the premises.

Together for Transport have the full list of 675 stations at risk nationally, including the following from South London:

Anerley
Beckenham Hill
Bellingham
Brixton
Carshalton Beeches
Crofton Park
Deptford
Elephant & Castle
Gipsy Hill
Ladywell
Loughborough Junction
Lower Sydenham
Mitcham Eastfields
Mitcham Junction
North Dulwich
Nunhead
Queens Road, Peckham
Ravensbourne
St Johns
Sydenham Hill
Tooting
West Dulwich
Woolwich Dockyard

As Together for Transport argue:

'This will cause a great deal of inconvenience to passengers who will then:

•lose the opportunity to seek advice about planning rail travel

•lose the ability to get advice about a range of ticket products including cheaper options

•lose the option to pay by cash if ticket machines - like those proposed to be installed by London Midland - only accept debit or credit cards

•lose the assurance of assistance in the event of an accident or assault'.

I have benefited from the help and advice from staff at many of the stations on that list, and have also felt reassured at their presence in some threatening situations. Some of these stations are already scary enough - they need the staffing hours increased, not decreased.

(thanks to Deptford Dame for alerting me to this on twitter)

South London Smash Hits

I found some old music mags on a market stall on holiday in Dorset, and spotted these early 1980s transpontine beauties.

Kate Bush of Brockley (from Smash Hits, May 15 1980)



David Sylvian of Japan, and of Beckenham/Catford/Sydenham (from Smash Hits, February 4 1982).

Mick Karn from Catford to Japan and beyond

Sad to hear of the death from cancer today of musician Mick Karn, aged 52. Born Andonis Michaelides in Cyprus, he grew up in South East London and attended Catford Boys School where he and a group of friends started the band that became Japan. Karn initially learnt bassoon at the school, but switched to bass after his instrument was stolen when he was attacked by skinheads on his way back to Catford from his first concert with the London School Symphony Orchestra.

Japan were the missing link between 1970s glam rock and the 1980s new romantics. While lead singer David Sylvian (born David Batt in Beckenham) was the best known face of the group, once labelled 'the most beautiful man in pop', Karn was central to their sound, particularly his fretless bass, but also a range of other instruments.

Here's Japan's Art of Parties from 1982:



... and Quiet Life (1979):



After Japan, Karn made solo records and played with Pete Murphy, Gary Numan, Kate Bush, Midge Ure, Bill Nelson and many others. Here's a really nice piece from 1983, with Mick reviewing a sculpture exhibition on the South Bank with his music playing in the background:



In an interview a few years ago, Sylvian spoke of his musical efforts as 'a conscious drive away from everything that childhood represented' including the Lewisham suburbs: 'the landscape becomes a reference point for emotion. So, sure, to ride a train through the London suburbs would be a profound journey to take. It would cause enormous discomfort in me, but at the same time at this point in my life, enormous fascination - because I'm more fascinated in what discomforts me than comforts me' (Sylvian grew up in Venner Road, Sydenham).

I wonder if something similar motivated Karn, as like Sylvian he didn't just belong to a band called Japan but immersed himself in Japanese music and culture. Mid-1970s Lewisham probably wasn't a great place for pretty boys in make up - Richard Barbieri (the band's keyboardist, who went to the same school) later recalled that 'Catford Boys was dead rough and David and Mick always used to get beaten up for wearing earrings and dyeing their hair'. You can only be amazed at the achievement of a group of largely self-taught working class school leavers in seeking out new horizons musically, culturally and geographically.

Mick Karn 1958-2011, RIP

(source of quotes unless otherwise stated, David Sylvian: the last romantic By Martin Power, London: Omnibus Press, 2004. Catford Boys in Brownhill Road was closed in 1991 and demolished in 1993)

Memory of a Free Festival

Memory of a Free Festival by David Bowie is a song I've known for years - it's on his 1969 Space Oddity album - but I've only recently discovered it is a true South London song.

Bowie's Beckenham connections have been documented here before, but I didn't realize that this song was apparently inspired by the Free Festival held in Beckenham Recreation Ground, Croydon Road on August 16 1969. The festival was put on by Bowie and others involved in the Beckenham Arts Lab held on Sundays at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street. As David Bebbington recalls at Beckenham History, 'Bowie played solo, and the bill also included singer-songwriters Bridget St John, Keith Christmas and Toni Visconti'. Comus and The Strawbs also played.



Here's the lyrics:

"Memory Of A Free Festival"

The Children of the summer's end
Gathered in the dampened grass
We played Our songs and felt the London sky
Resting on our hands
It was God's land
It was ragged and naive
It was Heaven

Touch, We touched the very soul
Of holding each and every life
We claimed the very source of joy ran through
It didn't, but it seemed that way
I kissed a lot of people that day

Oh, to capture just one drop of all the ecstasy that swept that afternoon
To paint that love
upon a white balloon
And fly it from
the toppest top of all the tops
That man has pushed beyond his brain
Satori must be something
just the same

We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes and saw machines of every shape and size
We talked with tall Venusians passing through
And Peter tried to climb aboard but the Captain shook his head
And away they soared
Climbing through
the ivory vibrant cloud
Someone passed some bliss among the crowd
And We walked back to the road, unchained

The Sun Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party
The Sun Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party
The Sun Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party
The Sun Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party
The Sun Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party."

1960s Ska & Soul Clubs

Further to my post last week on South London mod clubs, John Eden pointed me in the direction of the flyers section of George Austen's great Ska2Soul site. George has reproduced a collection of 1960s flyers from South London clubs playing soul/ska/rocksteady, including: - a 1967 flyer from the Ramjam Club in Brixton, with artists including The Skatalites and Geno Washington. - a flyer for a Duke Reid sound system 'Night of Happiness' at 42 Carmenia Road, Balham, SW17 in 1966. - A 1968 flyer for the Mistrale club at Beckenham Junction, where PP Arnold played in October. - a July 1966 flyer from El Partido, 8 -12 Lee High Road, with one night featuring Duke Reid plus The Groove and the other an All-Nighter with The Partisans, The Tea Set and 'London's Top Sound' Soul Sound. All for 50p (1o shillings). The example I've reproduced here is for a 1968 night at the Amersham Arms in New Cross, with Little Lee and the Savoy Sound offering 'ska, soul and Tamla Motown'. Little Lee apparently also ran the Rock Steady Discotheque at Mistrale in Beckenham. As always memories of these places and people actively welcomed. See also: Mods in South London; Deptford Soul City.

Kirsty MacColl

It's that time of year when Kirsty MacColl's voice seems to be coming out of every radio and pub jukebox, singing along with Shane MacGowan on The Pogues' Fairytale of New York. It's also a time to remember her tragic death, killed by a speedboat while swimming with her kids in Mexico on 18 December 2000.

A compilation released after her death is entitled 'From Croydon to Cuba', and she did indeed grow up in South London in Beech Way, Selsdon, going to Monks Hill Comprehensive School (later re-named Selsdon High School). She started out in a pub rock band, the Tooting Frootis, later re-named The Drug Addix. The latter put out a 1978 EP on Chiswick Records which includes the South-London suburb referencing Addington Shuffle. It was recorded at RMS Studios in Clifton Road, Thornton Heath, which Kirsty later used for some solo material (incidentally The Monochrome Set and St Etienne also recorded there).

Her final album, the Latin-infused Tropical Brainstorm (2000) was also partially recorded in South London, at her long-time collaborator Pete Glenister's studio in Bermondsey.

Kirsty had an ambivalent relationship with her father, the folk singer Ewan MacColl, as he split up with her mother shortly after her birth. But it is clear that the adult influences on her childhood included some interesting people who lived in South East London at the time. Most important was her mother Jean Newlove (married name Jean MacColl), a dance teacher who had been assistant to Rudolph Laban (later the inspiration for the Laban Centre in Deptford). Ewan MacColl and his new partner Peggy Seeger lived in Cromwell Road, Beckenham. Also signficant was Kirsty's godmother, Joan Littlewood, who had founded the Theatre Workshop with Ewan. She lived in Blackheath and used to take Kirsty for walks in Greenwich Park.

An MA scholarship in Kirsty's name was established at Goldsmiths College in 2001.

Anyway here's Kirsty with the Pogues on St Patrick's Day 1988 (at the Town & Country Club in Camden):



Source for most of the above: Kirsty MacColl: the one and only by Karen O'Brien (2004). Incidentally this book includes a photo entitled 'Kirsty... with the Drug Addix at the Venue, New Cross, south London, 1978'. I'm pretty sure the Venue wasn't called by this name until the end of the 80s - previously it was the Harp Club. So presumably this is a mistake - there was also a place called The Venue in Victoria around that time, maybe the photo was taken there.

See also: Suburban relapse; Shiraz Socialist on Kirsty.

South London Gypsy History

June 2008 is apparently the first Gypsy, Traveller and Roma History Month. As part of it in Lewisham, the London Gypsy Orchestra are playing at Blackheath Halls on June 13th. So here's a bit of South London Gypsy History.

The Gypsy presence in South London is marked in some of the place names, most obviously Gipsy Hill. On a more derogatory note, South Norwood Hill was once known as Beggars Hill. From at least the 17th century to the mid-19th century, gypsies camped in in Norwood, Penge and and Croydon Common, paticularly in the summer months. A 1777 pantomime in Covent Garden was called 'The Norwood Gypsies'.

Margaret Finch, who died on 24 October 1740 at the age of 108 years, was known as the 'Queen of the Gypsies' and lived near the lower end of Gypsy Hill. Her fortune telling was a local attraction. She was buried in Beckenham Parish Church.


According to James Caulfield: 'The most remarkable was Margaret Finch, born at Sutton, in Kent; who, after travelling the whole of England in the double capacity of gipsy and thief, finally fixed her place of residence at Norwood. [She] adopted a habit, and afterwards a constant custom, of sitting on the ground with her chin resting on her knees, which caused her sinews to become so contracted, that she could not extend herself of change her position. [..] The singularity of her figure, and the fame of her fortune-telling, drew a vast concourse of persons from the highest rank and quality to that of the lowest class in life. Norwood, and the roads leading to it; on a fine sunday, resembled the scene of a fair; and, with the greatest difficulty only, could a seat or a mug of beer be obtained, at the place called the Gipsy-house." (Remarkable Persons, 1819)


Margaret was succeeded by her niece, 'Old Bridget, the Queen of the Gypsies' who died 6 August 1768 and was buried in Dulwich college burial ground. She was succeeded in turn by her niece Margaret. Another of her descendents, a Mrs Cooper, was one of the principal fortune tellers at Beulah Spa in the 19th century.

In the nineteenth century, 'the heights of Norwood were the holiday playground of the cockney tripper... Fortune telling by the gypsies was still one of the attractions" (1). Other attractions included the tea gardens at the Jolly Sailor (at the foot of South Norwood Hill), the White Swan, the White Hart (at the corner of Westow Street and Church Road) and the Windmill in Westow Hill. There were strawbery gardens in Beulah Hill and the famous Beulah Spa.

Elsewhere in South London, Samuel Pepys records in his diary for the 11 August 1688 that his wife went 'to see the Gypsies at Lambeth and had their fortunes told'. The church register for St Giles in Camberwell records that on June 2 1687, 'King and Queen of the Jepsies [gypsies], Robt. Hern and Elizabeth Bozwell' were married there (2)

The authorities cracked down on the Gypsy fortune tellers of South London in the late 18th century. In August 1797, police arrested thirty men, women and children in Norwood under the Vagrancy Act. In 1802, the Society for the Suppression of Vice brought charges against the Norwood fortune-tellers. 'Faced with police repression and subsequent enclosure of the Common, the fortune-tellers finally deserted Norwood' (3). Despite this there has been a traveller presence in South London down to the present.

Sources:
(1) Alan R. Warwick, The Phoenix Suburb: A South London Social History (London: Blue Boar Press 1972).
(2) William Harnett Blanch, The Parish of Camberwell (1875).
(3) Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Cultures, 1736-1951 (Manchester University Press, 1999)

Beckenham Suffragists

This advert from the Beckenham Journal, 1 May 1882, testifies to an early meeting in support of the campaign for women's suffrage, held at Christ Church Lecture Hall, Beckenham. The advert mentions the existence of a 'Local Executive Women's Suffrage Committee', with supporters evidently including Miss Eliza Orme, Mrs. C. McLaren, Mrs Harvey (address given as 8 Bromley Grove, Shortlands) and Mrs Isabel Willis. Rev. Charles Green, Vicar of New Beckenham chaired the meeting.

A report of the meeting in the following edition of the Journal (1 June 1882) records that it passed a resolution asking that 'Parliamentary suffrage be extended to women on the same conditions as it is, or may be, granted to men'.

According to The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866-1928 by Elizabeth Crawford (2001): ‘Bromley, Beckenham and Shortlands Suffrage Society’ was ‘formed in 1882, as a branch committee of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage. Mrs Daniel Harrison, who was a sister of Mary Howitt, had been a member of the London National Society in 1867, and was a founding member of the Bromley Society.. The society was still active in 1907 (when Miss Heppel, headmistreess of Bromley High School was present at a meeting) but appears to have disappeared before 1913’.