It was during the uncertain days of the first wave of the pandemic in 2020 that I began listening frequently to the song ‘Love and Death’ by the Ghanaian highlife musician and bandleader Ebo Taylor. I first heard it on Mary Anne Hobbs’ BBC 6 Music show and she explained that Taylor had written it as a reaction to the breakdown of his first marriage. In the lyrics to ‘Love and Death’, Taylor compares the kiss of his former wife during their wedding ceremony to the “kiss of death”.
Musically, it’s an upbeat, yet bittersweet afrobeat number, combining wistful major seventh and minor seventh chords and a barbed lyric that preaches wisdom when it comes to matters of the heart with a buoyant-sounding horn section. Taylor originally recorded the song in 1980 for his album ‘Conflict’ (you can hear the original here) and then reworked it after collaborating with musicians from Berlin’s Afrobeat Academy in 2010 for an album of the same name, released on Strut Records. As ‘Love and Death’ reaches its crescendo, Taylor begins to switch between singing in English and a native Ghanaian language.
It was around a similar period that I started taking notice of two particular (and related) traditions in Southern Italy when it came to recognising new life, as well as acknowledging the people who have recently departed from the world.
Firstly, when a new baby is born, friends and family of the newly-born child’s parents will place a large bow or ribbon on the front door of their home; blue if it’s a boy and pink for a girl (centuries-old Italian traditions are yet to become gender-fluid). Kids are widely-celebrated in Italy and unlike in Britain, it’s completely normal to still see young children out late at night and dining with their families in restaurants or bars. Therefore, the birth of a baby is seen as a moment of great joy and one that that should be celebrated publicly and amongst friends and family, alike. The tradition of placing the ribbon above the door is so that the rest of the community can join in with the well-wishing too.
Similarly, the Italians commemorate death in a very public way. When someone is unfortunate enough to pass away; a large white billboard-style poster announcing this news, along with the details of the funeral, will be put up somewhere prominent in their local community and sometimes even on the wall of their home, or place of work. Some of these posters feature an image of Jesus or the Madonna, or even the face of the deceased.
An example of these posters in the town of Turi in Puglia and a blue bow pinned to a door celebrating the arrival of a baby boy.
Although these death posters seem a little strange or even morbid to us English, the purpose of them is to show respect to the memory of the person who has passed away and to inform people of when and where they can pay their final respects. Sadly, during Spring 2020, new posters would pop up in my neighbourhood of Madonnella with an alarming regularity and locals would often pass by, pause for a moment and offer a solemn nod of acceptance, before then continuing with their day. It’s easy to see how the news would soon spread around the local area.
It’s safe to say that family is very important in Italy and many different generations will often live together under the one roof. In contrast to the UK and US where most teenagers can’t wait to fly the parental nest aged 18, It’s not unusual for young Italians to remain living in their familial home well into their late-20s or early-30s and I actually have heard of some Italians who stay at home or even move back home after having their children. If mamma and nonna are still around then perhaps it makes sense to make use of their renowned hospitality and even more famous culinary skills. In a country where families remain close, emotions tend to be worn on the sleeve and so much of everyday life plays out publicly or in the street, it’s not really surprising that birth and death are commemorated in such a typically extrovert way.
Ever since my elder sister made an eight-track mix tape for me aged 4 (the featured artists included Bon Jovi, Extreme and Inner Circle), I have collected records. As a kid, I religiously accumulated every Now That’s What I Call Music!compilation on cassette (Now 30 – Now 44 was the particular period in question) and then at age 12 I graduated to proper albums and received The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours by the Manic Street Preachers and um, Performance & Cocktails by Stereophonics (it was arguably the last decent album they made, in my defence) for my birthday.
As a teenager, I used the pocket money earned from my part-time job as an after-school cleaner (my school couldn’t find ready and willing adult cleaners so they employed us students instead) to bolster my collection of CDs (I had several hundred by the time I went off to university) and around 16, I began to take an interest in vinyl; initially collecting 7” singles and then graduating to full-length albums. I also took an interest in my Dad’s collection and would pilfer the occasional Beatles or Beach Boys album, not to mention a great blues and soul compilation featuring the likes of John Lee Hooker.
A snapshot of just some of my favourite albums throughout the years.
For years, I listened to music through an early 1990s hi-fi system that was very generously given to me by an uncle who worked for electronics company Phillips. He had upgraded his home system and with my interest in music had let me have his previous set-up (which would have been top of the range when it was manufactured). It was far too loud for my teenage bedroom and the volume annoyed my parents no end, but the fact it came with its own turntable, as well as graphic equaliser and CD and cassette decks was a major coup. It moved with me to London and took pride of place in the living room of my tiny flat on Stockwell Road and provided the soundtrack to many a late-night gathering.
After 17 years of continuous heavy use, the system finally stopped working in 2018 after my move to Brixton Hill and I decided it was time to treat myself to a new system. After nearly a year of reading audiophile magazines and gear reviews, I took the plunge early in 2019 and made a visit to Oranges & Lemons on Webbs Road in Clapham, South London, leaving with a Rega Elex-R amplifier and a Rega P3 turntable (Monitor 500 speakers, a Marantz CD deck and a vintage Nakamichi tape player were also added soon after, if you’re interested).
The new set-up taking pride of place in the living – either side of the fireplace.
The new set-up was the single most expensive outright purchase I have ever made (surpassing even guitars) and a present to myself to celebrate the first year of being successfully self-employed. However, it soon proved to be an excellent investment. Not only are the Rega units built like tanks, but I began to listen to records in an entirely new way, hearing details and nuances in the recordings that wouldn’t have been picked up before. On nights in, instead of turning the TV on after work, I would listen to albums instead.
As well as being so far away from family and friends, leaving my record collection behind in boxes was perhaps the second hardest thing about moving to Bari. I still buy the occasional vinyl in Italy and there are some excellent record shops in Bari, namely electronic specialist EXP, New Records for indie / new wave / alternative Italian, and the San Pasquale second-hand emporium Wanted Records. However, it’s frustrating not being able to listen to the new purchases (my current Bari set-up is a laptop or iPhone connected to a Bose Soundlink Bluetooth speaker – it’s not quite the same).
During the second wave of Italian Covid restrictions in late-2020 / early 2021, I did rediscover the joys of streaming though and began obsessively curating a series of Spotify playlists based on genre and overall vibe. What started off as a way to pass the time during lockdown soon became a labour of love and many of these have been painstakingly created (in particular, ‘Non-obvious soul’ and ‘Eyeliner and Spraypaint FM’); not just in terms of the chosen tracks but also the running order (don’t play these on shuffle mode).
With a 2,000-km drive ahead of me later this week, some of these playlists will be on heavy rotation, along with a number of podcasts. Here’s a summary of some of the most interesting compilations I’ve put together and what you can expect. I hope you find something to your taste; sit back and give your ears a treat…
I’ve been a great lover of soul music since I was a teenager and this playlist focuses on the less obvious cuts. Sure, there are some famous names in there but the song choices are a little more under-the-radar. Starting off with some instrumentals from Young-Holt Unlimited and the Menahan Street Band, this collection takes you on a journey through early Northern Soul footstompers, gospel, Motown, Stax, ‘60s girl groups, disco, slick 1980s pop and then the titans of ‘90s soul such as Jil Scott and Lauryn Hill. It ends with some more contemporary artists such as Children of Zeus, Lost Horizons and Solange.
Inspired by the Manic Street Preachers, Simon Price’s Stay Beautiful clubnight and a number of other provocative, sleazy, ‘eyeliner-friendly’ bands, this is the indie disco but with an edge. The New York Dolls, T-Rex, The Stooges and of course, the Manics all make an appearance but there are also nods to some often-forgotten noughties groups such as King Adora, Kinesis, Miss Black America and My Vitriol. Watch out for the disco and ‘80s pop interlude midway through.
I started compiling this playlist during what seemed like the endless Italian summer of 2020 – and the brief easing of the Covid restrictions. The soundtrack to many a summer’s evening, there’s a lot of disco, house and upbeat funk tracks, as well as some Italian oddities like ‘L’eroe di Plastica’ by Napolitano percussionist Tony Esposito. Put this one on as the soundtrack to a summer evening’s barbeque.
Hip-hop is not a genre I can claim to having an encyclopaedic knowledge of. I appreciate its artistry and the impact it’s had on modern culture but it’s probably the genre I have the least records of in my collection. However, reading XL Recordings founder Richard Russell’s book ‘Liberation Through Hearing’ and the BBC’s documentary series ‘Hip hop: The song’s that shook America’, opened a new world to me and I started to listen to a lot of hip hop from the 1980s and early ‘90s. This playlist attempts to provide a chronological musical history of the genre over five hours, starting with The Fatback Band’s ‘King Tim III’ (mooted by many as the first-ever hip hop track) and finishing with a crop of current artists including Berwyn, Madlib and Slum Village.
This playlist was created, mainly with the goal of helping to improve my Italian. It features a collection of classic Italian songs, alternative recommendations from Italian friends and some tracks I’ve found through my own research. Italian music icons such as Lucio Battisti, Fabrizo De Andre and Domenico Modugno are included but also young upstarts such as Venerus and Takagi & Ketra.
After nearly ten years of living in Brixton, it’s hard for reggae music not to rub off on you in some way. I’ve always had soft spot for the genre but exploring the area’s specialist record shops became a favourite weekend activity of mine – in particular Supertone Records on Acre Lane and Lion Vibes in Brixton Village. This playlist has developed and been added to over a couple of years and takes in classic reggae, earlier rocksteady, as well as some heavier dub moments. There’s an ace Discogs article on Brixton’s Supertone Records here.
A playlist of wistful alternative folk, alt-country, Americana and psychedelia. Expect Crosby, Stills & Nash, Fairport Convention, Love, The Flying Burrito Brothers and some more tender moments from Shirley Collins and Jackie Leven.
Partly inspired by my trips to Tennessee over the past few years, this playlist showcases a selection of the earliest rock & roll from the late mid-1950s until the early-60s. Bo Diddley, Billy Hawks, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent and Link Wray all feature, as well as some of the more raucous blues tracks of the era.
A collection of beautiful-sounding tracks that somehow make the listener feel happy and sad simultaneously. I spent a lot of last year’s road trip to Sicily listening to this playlist. Contains not one but two versions of ‘Strange Overtones’; David Byrne and Brian Eno’s original and an Americana-style cover by Chicago group Whitney.
Finally, this one is still a work-in-progress but focuses on music which is vaguely spiritual or uplifting; be it gospel or purely existential in its nature. Features the 1971 gospel-disco epic ‘Like A Ship’ and the Beach Boys’ hymn ‘Our Prayer’.
In my previous post, I talked about some of the very best and very worst gigging experiences we had as a band from the glamorous rock and roll hotspots of Chippenham and Romford to the slightly more hallowed boards of the Leicester Charlotte and Camden’s Dublin Castle. In this third and final post about The Screenbeats, I’ll draw a line under the group with a couple of stories from Occitanie in the South of France but first a leafy suburb of North London.
“But I love that dirty water…”
Supporting one half of the future Raconteurs in Tufnell Park
One of the early high points back when were still known as The Shake was when we got booked to play a show at the Dirty Water Club in Tufnell Park, North London in November 2005. Taking its name from The Standells’ cover of the Ed Cobb song, for a brief period, it was one of the hippest psychedelic and garage rock nights in London and its popularity had surged after a certain White Stripes had played a show there in August 2001 to an audience packed full of A&R people – as well as Kate Moss and pals (obviously). As well as stalwarts like Billy Childish, Holly Golightly and The Wilko Johnson Band, a lot of the most-hyped groups of the time played there including The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Datsuns, The Von Bondies and a few months after us, The Horrors. We were to support The Greenhornes, a well-known three-piece garage outfit from Cincinnati, Ohio.
The day of the gig came and on arrival at the venue, the club’s promoter PJ Crittenden explained to us that there was “a chance” that the enigmatic frontman of cult ‘60s psychedelic band The SeedsSky Saxon might be coming as he had been performing at the club recently and was staying nearby. Roger was a huge fan of The Seeds so suitably nervous and excited to hear this news. In fact, he might even have been wearing his black and pink Seeds t-shirt but unfortunately no photos exist from the night. We never did find out if Sky came to the show or not and it was too dark to see from the stage!
1.) A post-gig photo of us from 2005/6 with Roger wearing his Seeds t-shirt! (photo: Newbury Weekly News) 2.) The Seeds’ frontman Sky Saxon with Love’s Arthur Lee after their show together at the Kentish Town Forum in 2004. 3.) The White Stripes at The Dirty Water Club, August 2001 (photo: Dirty Water Club).
We played to a busy room and went down well – playing just before The Greenhornes took to the stage as their main support band. I remember that in the shared dressing room Patrick Keeler the band’s drummer commented on Joost’s snare drum (“nice snare man!”) and that they watched us from the side of the stage. Just a couple of months after the gig; The Greenhornes went on a hiatus and it was announced that Patrick and bassist Jack Lawrence were forming a new band, The Raconteurs with none other than Jack White from The White Stripes and singer-songwriter Brendan Benson. Their debut single ‘Steady As She Goes’ was a huge radio hit in the UK in 2006 and reached number 4 in the Top 40 singles chart, whilst the accompanying album Broken Toy Soldiers peaked at number 2 in the album chart.
It was my brother-in-law Stuart who first mentioned to me that he could hear a similarity between ‘Steady As She Goes’ and one of our songs ‘All The Rage’. Now, to my ears the songs are very different but there are certainly some things they have in common. Both tracks use a lot of the same chords and the introductions to both each of them feature a descending bass line, staccato guitar stabs and a prominent snare drum (“man”). Little did we realise when we shared a stage with The Greenhornes what a huge band their future group would go on to become. ‘Steady As She Goes’ was named “the second-best song of 2006” by Rolling Stone magazine, nominated for a Grammy and later covered by Adele. To this day, The Raconteurs play main stages at festivals all over the world from Glastonbury to Coachella – the last time I saw them live was at All Points East 2019 in Victoria Park, East London.
We recorded ‘All The Rage’ on at least two different occasions and below is a version that we captured with Ed Deegan directly onto his 1970s Studer tape machine at Gizzard Studios in Hackney Wick. Below is also a clip of The Raconteurs playing ‘Steady As She Goes’ live on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury 2008.
Decide for yourselves if there’s any resemblance below…
I have also dug out this video of us playing ‘All The Rage’ live at The Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon, London in July 2007. We’re playing it a lot quicker than on the record but it’s got a raw energy to it and features an impressive vocal performance from Faye. It was also the gig where I was struck down with food poisoning – possibly the reason why I’m pouring with sweat in the video.
Ça va Montpellier!
Perhaps the pinnacle of The Screenbeats’ ‘career’ was playing the 1,000-capacity Rockstore venue in Montpellier in December 2010. We were booked to play through a mutual contact of our later era-drummer Praag and were headlining a line-up, consisting of six other Anglo-French bands with all of the ticket proceeds going to a humanitarian aid charity.
We spent two fun nights in Montpellier and were looked after brilliantly by the co-organisers Savaha and Hanna, staying in Savaha’s apartment both nights. I think they were a little surprised by how many bottles of beer we got through in two days though… The show itself was brilliant; the venue was busy and the other bands not only decent but good people too. The venue, formerly an automobile garage was a mid-sized old theatre and bands to recently play there included Beach House, The Kills, Phoenix and The Stranglers. We were in our element, flattered to be in such illustrious company and felt great to play a large venue with top-drawer facilities.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) Arrived in Montpellier! Place de la Comédie in the city centre. 2.) Faye, Roger and I outside Le Rockstore venue (Praag was taking the photo). 3.) Faye and I side of stage. 4.) Post-gig elation at Le Rockstore. Maxime on the far right of this shot was the frontman of The Wishy Washy, a local Montpellier band who opened for us. 5.) The Screenbeats do Montpellier! (l-r: Praag; Faye, yours truly, Roger).
The show was filmed but unfortunately only one video existed on YouTube of us playing a version of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers’ tune ‘Hospital’. It’s a great song but quite downbeat and not exactly a showstopper. I’ve recently found the first half of the show and below for the first time are some of the tracks. A member of the audience filmed this and the camera angles and sound quality are a little erratic in places but it serves as a good record of the concert. If anyone has access to the second half of the show – please let me know (it contained our best songs!).
‘Why Can’t We Let Go?’ (live at Montpellier Rockstore, 16th December 2010)
‘Pound Signs & Foreign Villains‘ (live at Montpellier Rockstore, 16th December 2010)
‘For The Faint-hearted‘ (live at Montpellier Rockstore, 16th December 2010)
‘For The Faint-hearted’ was a new song that we had only written a couple of months prior to Montpellier and this was one of its first live outings. It was a punchy song but sadly never recorded so this is the only version that exists (the sound quality is not ideal but it gives you some idea).
‘Hospital‘ (live at Montpellier Rockstore, 16th December 2010)
As luck would have it, our return flights to the UK were severely delayed due to heavy snow storms and we had an eight-hour wait at Montpellier Airport with all of our equipment. We passed the time by playing cards and sinking a few beers and I remember that Praag, a vegetarian was forced to have some pastries and a couple of doughnuts for his main meal (the airport’s cafes were not veggie-friendly to say the least). At one stage, it was touch-and-go if we would be able to fly but we eventually made it home in the early hours, only to return to find Roger’s van covered in snow at Gatwick Airport carpark (see below).
1.) Praag tucking into his nutritious evening meal of pastries, Montpellier Airport. 2.) Finally in transit back to London after the eight-hour delay. 3.) Roger’s snow-covered van, Gatwick Airport.
The later years
Praag joined us in 2008 (he was interviewed in the very same Newbury pub that I was five years earlier) and after a spell of flux with various talented, but ultimately temporary drummers, we enjoyed another period of stability within the band. We were all older, a little more worldly-wise and we began writing some of our best songs to-date. Having been around the block a few times; the types of venues we were playing got better too and we stopped playing, well, the really shit gigs. We also by now had a small number of go-to trusted contacts who helped us out; namely Adam Cooper who released some of our music through Rowed Out Records based in Lincolnshire, Woodie Taylor (a member of The Cribs’ favourite band Comet Gain and also the drummer on Morrissey’s Vauxhall and I album) who would mix our tracks and act as an honest sounding board and we also found a new regular rehearsal and recording space; Studio 91 on the former Greenham Common airbase on the outskirts of Newbury with Jordan Fish (now a member of the huge Bring Me The Horizon) at the helm.
The new line-up of The Screenbeats with the addition of drummer Praag. August 2009, Newbury and the surrounding Berkshire / Hampshire countryside (all photos: James Thorogood).
I had by now entered the world of work and also remember spending a memorable afternoon at Studio 91 around a similar time, recording a radio advert for one of my clients, Guide Dogs For The Blind. They were a great charity to have as one of my first clients but they insisted that only real people and real guide dogs were used in the recordings. As a result, Jordan, myself and the dog’s owner spent the best part of an hour trying to persuade a docile black Labrador to bark into a microphone for the ad – we eventually succeeded though.
The Screenbeats went into the studio with Jordan at Studio 91 in summer 2009, laid-down what we felt were four very strong tracks and then sent them over to Woodie who was based in Windsor to perform his magic on them. The result was the ‘Super 8’ EP-of-sorts, containing four tracks; a reworked and more abrasive version of the song ‘Super 8’, ‘Hanging On’, ‘Under Neon’ and ‘Why Can’t We Let Go?’. ‘Hanging On’ and ‘Under Neon’ were perhaps the most notable; the former being the heaviest and fastest track we’d ever recorded, with a blistering tremolo-picked guitar solo (if I can say so myself) and the latter transforming into a disco track midway through and pre-empting the Nile Rodgers and Chic revival craze by at least three years (we were all already big fans of the Rodgers / Edwards songwriting duo). These songs also sounded distinctly contemporary and were very different to some of the more retrofied recordings we made in the early days.
‘Under Neon’ (video filmed by James Thorogood at the Lock, Stock & Barrel, Newbury, September 2009)
At least 300 copies of the ‘Super 8 EP‘ were issued on CD in 2009/10 but the tracks are also all available digitally on Soundcloud – see the links below:
The Screenbeats called it a day in 2011 and looking back, I personally have nothing but fond memories. Being in a regular gigging band from the age of 16 onwards certainly taught me some life skills (as well as probably exacerbating my email addiction as I booked most of our gigs!), exposed us to all sorts of people and we perhaps learned not to be so green and always eager to please as time went on.
Without sounding too mawkish though, the most important thing to come out of the band was friendship. I was Best Man at Roger’s wedding in 2014 and he remains a great mate to this day. Faye and I both lived in South London for a few years and it was always good to catch up with her and put the world to rights over a beer or three – most frequently at Brixton’s Effra Hall Tavern or Trinity Arms. Joost is someone I don’t see regularly enough but we usually pick up where we left off, whether it’s in London or in Newbury (“Well, I’m up for staying out!” was his response when I tentatively checked if he wanted to call it a night at 11pm when we last caught up at The Heavenly Social on Little Portland Street towards the end of 2019). Praag again, is someone who I mainly keep in touch with on social media these days but the drives to places like Cardiff or Southampton were always a good laugh and one particularly messy night springs to mind after Roger’s 30th birthday party – festivities may have continued long into that night / the following morning…
Roger and I performing a short acoustic set at his wedding reception, April 2014. (we covered Daft Punk, The Cure, The Kinks and The Velvet Underground!)
Music in London
Glastonbury 2010 was one of the hottest festivals on record (the only other year I can recall to rival it was the almost unbearable heatwave in 2019). Whilst a sunny and warm Glasto is always a blessing, the downside is that it’s very difficult to stay asleep inside a tent as soon as the sun comes up. However, this did mean that at that particular festival, my friends Joe, Mark and I got to chat to our neighbours every morning; Vicki and her friend Kate who were camping next to us with a group of friends.
Fun and games at Glasto’ 2010 and with Vicki and Kate packing up to leave on the Monday morning (photos: Joe Miller).
One of the positives of social media is that we all stayed in touch and after moving to London in January 2011, I began playing in an acoustic duo with Vicki on vocals and myself on guitar. In a strange twist of fate, we also ended up living a two-minute walk away from each other in Brixton, making rehearsals (and trips to the pub) very convenient.
After The Screenbeats, I was keen to find another group to join in London as quickly as possible. I briefly joined forces with a hip hop MC from Camden and we used to rehearse in the community studios at The Roundhouse – we were trying to emulate the guitar sounds in Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Money Trees’ and ‘Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe’ but ultimately, the project was short-lived. I collaborated with a fellow Manic Street Preachers fan from Limehouse but despite him being a powerful vocalist it didn’t quite gel. Then there was also the promising teenage soul singer from Neasden who had allegedly been spotted by Dave Stewart from Eurythmics; she had a lot of promise but her backing band consisted of a bizarre motley crew of characters from across London (a French Metallica fan on drums, a Danish barmaid backing singer and a mysterious bassist who never arrived). Her mother was also the ‘manager’, sat in on the entire rehearsal and chipped in with nuggets of advice at various opportune moments. We could barely get through a cover of ‘Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay’ without an interruption of some form or another.
Vicki and I worked well musically and we soon established a regular routine of a weekly Tuesday evening practice. Whilst joining The Immediate as a teenager led to me discovering a lot of great soul and Motown music, as well as the more underground movements of the 1960s and 1970s, playing as a mainly acoustic duo with Vicki introduced me to some more introspective folky influences; Elliott Smith, Martha Wainwright and Neil Young to name just three.
The Queen’s Head, Stockwell Road (and the ‘gig’ at Julia Bradbury’s house)
We were lucky that around the corner from us was The Queen’s Head on Stockwell Road. At the time, it was one of London’s most anarchic, free-spirited boozers and the burgeoning Fat White Family had made it their adopted HQ and lived upstairs (they were pictured draping a ‘The Witch Is Dead’ banner out of the top floor window on the day Thatcher died and made the pages of most of the national newspapers as a result). The pub was a pretty unique place, had a certain gothic air and it soon became a hotspot for other South London bands and musicians with the likes of Childhood, King Krule and Shame all hanging out and playing tiny gigs there. We would play Carl Chamberlain’s weekly open mic night ‘Sing For Your Supper’ (the performers were ‘paid’ with free pizza) and on one hand, would often share the stage with a wonderful Dolly Parton-esque Brixton singer, well into her autumn years known as Patti Paige, but also with an angry political poet who would rant to the crowd from The Queen’s Head’s tiny stage. I also strangely met King Prawn’s (a band I had a fondness for as a teenager) former bassist Babar Luck at the pub before playing one of the open mic nights; he was handing out flyers for a political night he was hosting there. Brixton Buzzdid a great piece on Carl’s open mic night back in 2014 with lots of photos; check it out here.
The Fat White Family performing during the anarchic ‘glory days’ of The Queen’s Head, Stockwell Road (circa 2013-15).
You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone though and The Queen’s Head changed hands in 2015 and is now a very pleasant, yet slightly bland ‘vegan pub’. The pub was only 16 doors down from my old flat and had I known that the live music and bohemian antics would be coming to an end, I would have gone there a lot more in hindsight. The Queen’s Head wasn’t our strangest gig though. That honour was reserved for the day when we played a humanist baby blessing ceremony in the home of BBC and ITV presenter Julia Bradbury in Notting Hill. The gig was secured through one of Vicki’s contacts from work who explained to her that “it would be at one of her friend’s, who has a bigger house”. Vicki recognised Julia immediately after she opened the door to us (“she’s famous!”, she whispered to me as we were tuning up in an upstairs room) but I didn’t really fully know who she was until afterwards.
Now that I’ve been in Bari 18 months and with the pandemic severely restricting any musical opportunities, this is the first time since the age of 13 that I haven’t been in a band or played music with other people. It’s a time for self-reflection and practising those difficult chords or scales though and I remain convinced that there’ll be a global Belle Époque-style creative resurgence and renewed interest in the arts once this pandemic is finally over. I didn’t write these pieces about being in a band for self-promotional reasons but rather that I wanted to put down the memories onto paper for the first time and for posterity’s sake. Radiohead famously once said; “anyone can play guitar” and my advice to a 16-year-old who’s thinking about picking up a six-string, a bass, a turntable or even exploring GarageBand is to justgo for it. Start making music. You’ll meet some interesting characters, make some great friends and you’ll learn just as much as at school.
Clive & Vicki became ‘OCDC’, adding bassist Rich and drummer Pete in 2018 for a gig at The Heavenly Social on Little Portland Street (first photo). Also, two shots of us rehearsing at Antenna Studios, Crystal Palace, South London. Early 2018.
APPENDIX; THE SCREENBEATS’ ARCHIVE
We recorded a reasonable amount of material and gigged a lot between 2004 and 2011. Recordings and videos have existed in various places online for a number of years now but below is an overview of where you can find the best of the band’s output. It’s the first time that everything has been indexed in one place and in roughly chronological order (by the date of release – starting with the oldest). I have embedded the ‘lead’ track for each of the main recordings below but then hyperlinked to the rest of the material (where possible).
Also recorded; ‘They Say’ and ‘You Are The Ones’ (at that point, the most futuristic-sounding track we’d ever recorded, complete with a ‘Superman’-style guitar line in the chorus, to quote Rog).
‘Super 8’EP (recorded by Jordan Fish at Studio 91 and mixed by Woodie Taylor at Milou Studios, 2009)
‘The Immediate’ (recorded in 2004 with Ali Moore at his home studio in Hermitage)
Recorded; ‘Blown Away’, ‘All The Rage’, ‘Loyal Union’ – tracks not currently available online. Cover photography below (photos: James ‘Winnie’ Winter).
‘Home demos’ (recorded by Roger Green 2005-2008)
Roger has always been something of a home recording buff too and below are two interesting sketches of what would go onto become ‘Pound Sounds & Foreign Villains’ and ‘You Are The Ones’. In the first, Rog is playing all of the instruments himself and it sets the tone for what would later become ‘Pound Signs…’. The latter features a weird keyboard intro from Rog and is much more soulful than the version we recorded and in retrospect, I think I prefer it!
‘Pounds Signs & Foreign Villains‘ (the building blocks)
‘You Are The Ones’ (home demo)
LIVE VIDEOS
Below are links to various pieces of live footage on YouTube. You will find links to other songs from the same gig on the YouTube sidebar.
There are too many photos below to label but they include shows at The Lexington on Pentonville Road, The Monarch in Camden, The Dublin Castle, Bloomsbury Lanes, Cardiff University, Cardiff Barfly, Southampton The Rhino, Southampton Central Hall, Reading Oakford Social and The Lock, Stock & Barrel, Tap & Spile and Northcroft (all Newbury).
In my last post, I reminisced about The Artist Formerly Known As The Screenbeats / The Shake / The Immediate and shared a link to the newly-re-uploaded video for ‘Super 8’ which was shot in South Wales back in 2008. In part II below, I’ll expand a little bit more on some of the most memorable tales from life in the band…
Unsurprisingly, it’s either the very good or the very bad stories that stand out in the memory.
The ‘not ideal’
Who could forget the time that we played Brixton Jamm in summer 2006 to a crowd comprising of only the sound man? That’s right; no paying customers – even the bar staff had called it a night and gone home. The promoter had booked a line-up consisting purely of bands from out of town (a band even travelled down from Northumberland for the gig) and we were due to play last at 10pm, by which point all of the other groups (who also had also brought no fans) had left. We played Jamm twice and luckily the second time was a lot busier. There was also the heavy snow blizzard we had to endure on the way back from a gig in Kingston in 2009. Roger’s steady driving prowess (and perhaps the Saint Christopher necklace that he decided to wear for luck) got us home in one piece though – even though the journey took several hours longer than usual.
At Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff in 2009, my cherished Gibson ES-335 guitar fell over whilst in its case during soundcheck and I was distraught to open it to find the neck had snapped clean off. I was a bit subdued during the gig but the guitar was able to eventually be repaired so all ended well (it was actually my second guitar to have been badly damaged after one of Newbury Corn Exchange’s technicians knocked my white Les Paul off its stand before a gig in 2004). The less said about another show at Cardiff University in 2007 where our sticksman at the time got “lost” on his way to the venue and never arrived, the better. We soldiered on drummer-less as a three-piece – with the occasional member of the audience coming up to try and improvise along to our songs. Not our finest moment.
The red Gibson 335 that got badly damaged repaired and in action at a gig in Newbury in 2009 (photo: James Thorogood) and the “one where the drummer didn’t show up” – Cardiff University CF10 venue, 23rd November 2007(photo: Emily Trahair).
Bizarrely, we agreed to play a gig in Chippenham, of all places in August 2006. We were playing for a local ‘face’ around town known as ‘DJ Delboy’ (no, I’m not making this up) who had put on a night of bands loosely inspired by the 1960s and mod culture at a venue called Fizz Bar. At the time, I was slightly prone to anxiety and over-thinking things – possibly as a result of my high caffeine intake (until the age of 21 I would drink a bottle of Coca Cola a day until I went cold turkey in 2008 – I rarely touch the stuff these days). Onstage I became convinced that I was desperate for the loo and about to wet myself in front of the assembled audience. Midway through our final song ‘Loyal Union’, I flung off my guitar, rested it against my floor monitor and sprinted to the bathroom upstairs (where it turned out that I didn’t even need to go after all), before returning to finish the song the guys had continued playing in my absence. Afterwards, the rest of the band weren’t best pleased with my decision to bolt upstairs mid-song and things were a little tense as we loaded our equipment into Rog’s car. However, the mood was soon lifted and we started laughing about it after an incident involving an underwhelming post-gig chow mein takeaway, an open car window and Chippenham High Street.
The notorious Chippenham Fizz Bar gig (the Union Jack flag on the guitar amp was NOT ours), August 2005 (photo: DJ Delboy). Onstage at Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff with Haydn drumming. May 2007 (photo: Ed Salter)
It wasn’t our only incident involving an open car window…
Our hometown Newbury had been a Liberal Democrat stronghold for 12 years since 1993; and the incumbent local MP was the late David Rendel. However, in 2005 he lost his seat in parliament to Richard Benyon, the Conservative candidate. On our way to a London gig sometime in 2005/6, we spotted Benyon being interviewed by a camera crew as we drove past Newbury Market Square in Roger’s Rover 400. It only felt right that we should of course, wind down our windows and shout some words of disapproval at him as we drove past. We didn’t hang around to see what the reaction would be. I actually met Benyon years later whilst I working for the Newbury Spring Festival in 2009. He had hosted a classical recital at his stately home and country estate Englefield House and even though I don’t agree with his views, he was pleasant enough.
Another unfortunate car window-related incident but this time involving a bout of food poisoning, vomit and the famous Harrods department store was en route to a gig in Clerkenwell in July 2007. We had optimistically booked ourselves to play two gigs in one day. The first was at the TNT Festival in Victoria Park in Newbury; an all-day event headlined by Columbia Records signing GoodBooks and compered by the irrepressibly upbeat ‘Smiley’ Dave Browne. After our early afternoon slot at the festival we then drove to London for our second show of the day at The Betsey Trotwood; a grand Victorian pub on the Farringdon Road that had a great little cellar venue (both The Magic Numbers and Keane had been spotted after playing shows there). We also liked it because it feltpacked, even if only 20 people were there.
Our first gig of the day on 28th July 2007 – at TNT Festival, Newbury (pre-vomit).
It was as we made our way through West London and the upmarket areas of South Kensington and Knightsbridge that I began to feel unwell and very nauseous. I asked Rog to stop the car in South Ken, lay down on the pavement briefly and then began to feel momentarily better and we continued with our journey. However, it was as we were driving past Harrods, London’s premiere luxury goods emporium that I couldn’t stop it; I hastily wound down the right-side rear passenger window and was violently sick onto the busy A4 with the oncoming traffic behind us. This continued to happen every 10 minutes or so until we finally reached the venue. I spent all of the evening lying in one of the venue’s darkened alcoves (apart from the occasional visit to the bathroom to heave up whatever was left in my stomach), unable to keep any liquid down whatsoever. However, I somehow managed to find the energy from somewhere to do the gig and we actually played pretty well. As luck would have it, the entire gig was filmed too (why was it never the best gigs?).
The Screenbeats – ‘Before Before’ – live at The Betsey Trotwood, Clerkenwell. 28th July 2007
We wrote ‘Before Before’ in 2004 and changed the chorus at some stage in 2005/6. We would later drop it from our live set in 2008/9 but it contained a nice vocal melody and some soulful chord changes.
We will never know exactly what strain of food poisoning I had that day and admittedly I had been out the night before to the closing party of Southampton’s alternative nightclub Nexus (towards the end of the night bar staff had stopped charging for drinks and everything had to go), but I had felt fine at the TNT Festival gig during the day so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a hangover. Also, on the Betsey Trotwood line-up with us that day were The Lucky Strikes, a band from Southend. They were good lads, helped us with our equipment with me incapacitated and we ended up playing a few gigs with them over the next couple of years. They’re still together today although have taken a more rootsy / Americana direction in recent years. They’re decent – check them out here.
Then there was Romford, Essex in April 2005. We had been contacted through MySpace (the way most bands booked their shows at the time) by a promoter who had heard our music, claimed to be a “big fan” and wanted us to headline a show at a venue called Pacific Edge. We had reservations about the merit of playing a gig in Romford and the venue’s name did it no favours but he assured us that it would be busy, we’d be paid £300, would have a rider of complimentary food and drink and our own dressing room.
When we arrived, it was nothing of the sort and we found out we would be playing the small upstairs room of a town centre nightclub that had no stage other than a DJ booth (we had to set up our amps on the floor). To add insult to injury, soundcheck was at 3pm and our stage time was 10.30pm. The crowd was sparse, the PA system not loud enough for Faye’s vocals to be heard and the promoter paid us a paltry £20 towards petrol costs. Our night in Romford finished with all four of us shouting at the promoter (we were all generally pretty mild-mannered, most of the time) as he tried to justify his decision to reduce our fee by more than 90 percent. I ended up leaving one of my overdrive effects pedals at the venue too but to give the promoter his dues, he did eventually post it back to me – but only after my Dad had phoned him pretending to be our ‘manager’ (I was only 17 at the time so it’s perhaps less pathetic than it sounds).
Our eventful evening in Romford. 10th April 2005.
It wasn’t all bad at Romford though. Earlier that day some genuine local ‘fans’ had contacted us by email saying they were coming to the gig and asked if we could put them on the guestlist. The promoter was having none of it so drummer Joost and I met them outside the venue instead and helped the two lads to climb over the wall in the garden at the rear of the building so they got in for free after all. It was the closest we ever got to The Clash letting their fans in through an open dressing room window before their gig at the Edinburgh Odeon!
The Clash’s Joe Strummer helps fans get backstage through an open dressing room window. Edinburgh Odeon Theatre. January 1980.
Joost and I crashed on his sister’s floor in Leytonstone the night of the Romford show and after initially being too wound up to sleep after the heated altercation with the promoter, we got up bright and early the next day and headed to Soho with the aim of dropping off our demo CD and press pack to as many music companies in the area as possible. We found Heavenly Recordings’ then-HQ on above Ronnie Scott’s and opposite Bar Italia on Frith Street, dropped off our demo but sadly there was no response on the buzzer from Jeff Barrett, Robin Turner and co – at least we tried.
NB: Looking back, it’s quite amazing the chutzpah we had in our late-teens and early-20s – perhaps lacking the self-awareness and social etiquette you pick up as you get older. Edith Bowman, Steve Lamacq, Zane Lowe, Huw Stephens and various members of The Cooper Temple Clause, Ocean Colour Scene and Super Furry Animals; these were all people that we would bound up to at gigs and festivals, thrust a demo CD into their hand, ask if they would mind giving it a listen and urge them to get in contact if they liked what they heard.
The Pleasure Unit; Bethnal Green’s finest
We then headed East to Bethnal Green where we were playing a show later that evening at The Pleasure Unit at 359 Bethnal Green Road. Apart from some certain venues in our hometown of Newbury, The Pleasure Unit became a second home for us over the years and musically and aesthetically it felt like a venue very much in-keeping with our identity as a band. Stepping into the venue for the first time was like going back to the ‘60s; kitsch aged wallpaper, projected light shows and some walls painted cream whilst the others were a lurid purple. Despite its retro stylings, the venue was a favoured haunt of Pete Doherty, Art Brut, The Paddingtons, Special Needs and a lot of the other current crop of post-Strokes-era bands coming out of London at the time. Although the venue was downstairs, there was a dressing room-of-sorts up a rickety staircase on the next floor, where we would keep our equipment when we weren’t playing. Before a gig in 2005, we were surprised to bump into Libertines bassist John Hassall and his band Yeti who were also rehearsing in the building. More about Yeti and their marvellous and underrated single ‘Never Lose Your Sense of Wonder’ in a future post.
The heyday of The Pleasure Unit, Bethnal Green Road. Pure Reason Revolution, Thee Unstrung (joined by Dominic Masters from The Others) and Pete Doherty with Dot Allison (photos: Andrew Kendall) – all in 2004. Also, The Actionettes dance troupe and some shots of the venue’s distinctive interior.
The quality of the acts at The Pleasure Unit was usually pretty high (from memory, two of the best bands we played with were the brilliant Young Soul Rebels from Brighton who toured with The Ordinary Boys and The Lost Revue who had a minor indie hit with ‘The Devil Hit A Hi-Hat Riding’) and we got to know the two main promoters ‘Nigerian Nick’ and ‘Smart Phil’ and even earned a slot supporting the then-buzz band Thee Unstrung who were briefly signed to former Creation Records boss Alan McGee’s Poptones label and fresh from supporting The Libertines on tour. I would bump into Phil (whose feather cut made him a dead ringer for Roger actually) years later during my leaving do for the London PR agency Mischief that I was working for at the time – by chance he was DJing at the underground dive club The Bar on Hanway Street (now sadly gone and replaced by a karaoke bar) He’s a nice bloke and a complete music aficionado. The Pleasure Unit closed a long time ago now and 359 Bethnal Green is now the trendy Star of Bethnal Green pub.
Happy days
A short interview with us and a clip of ‘Hanging On’ filmed at the 229 Club, Great Portland Street by Caffy St Luce. 4th March 2010.
For every Romford or Leicester Square though there were 10 shows that went well and where we actually received a decent reaction from the audience. It was always a pleasure playing for Caffy St Luce and Jean ‘Genie’ Graham, whether it was down in New Cross at Goldsmiths University, The Walpole, New Cross Inn or the unique Montague Arms, or in later years at 229 Club on Great Portland Street. Simon Owens always made sure we were well-looked after and fairly-paid at our busy hometown gigs at the Newbury Tap & Spile – the audience sometimes even bizarrely included our former teachers. Neil Jones got us some great gigs in Cardiff, including a rather surreal night playing a Primal Scream aftershow party at Chris Sullivan’s (of WAG Club fame) newly-opened venue Tabu on Westgate Street – we went onstage at 1am just as the ‘Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, Martin Duffy et al were arriving. The Hope & Anchor in Islington and Camden Dublin Castle were both well-run, small grassroots venues where you also felt a sense of history; the former being the location of not only Joy Division’s but also U2’s first London shows and the latter venue will be forever closely associated with local heroes Madness, Blur and Amy Winehouse. There is a great 10 minute documentary about it here.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) Onstage at The Dublin Castle, August 2007. 2.) The flyer for one of Caffy St Luce’s Art Beat shows, 2010. 3-4.) Live at The Hope & Anchor, Islington 2008 (photo: Hersh Tegala). 5.) One of the many shows we played at the Tap & Spile, Newbury. September 2007 (photo: Scott Burgess).
It was sat on the floor of the tiny ‘dressing room’ / equipment cupboard at the Dublin Castle in 2007 that by complete chance I became reacquainted with Dan Fatel (or perhaps ‘Fate-l’ is more apt). Dan was the frontman of Renton, a North London post-punk band that I booked to headline a charity fundraiser concert at my school St. Bart’s in Newbury on 2nd July 2004. Significantly, it was Joost and I’s first-ever show as members of the revamped The Immediate. I had also booked The Junglists who would go onto become a big name on the Newbury scene and would even support The Mystery Jets. A review of the show that appeared in the Newbury Weekly News still exists on the R*E*P*E*A*T Fanzine website – it makes for nostalgic reading. After the show, my pals Jason, Mike and I went to a party and would then spend the night trying to sleep in a pup-tent that we had cheaply bought from Argos and then stashed for safe-keeping in a bush on our school’s athletics field, Brown’s Meadow. Despite it being July, it was still rather cold at 4am so we returned to the school as soon as it opened on Saturday morning and actually slept for a couple of hours on the Luker Hall stage, with the fire curtain closed, obscuring us from view.
Dan and his band Renton taken just before their charity show at St. Bart’s Newbury, 2nd July 2004 (photo: Newbury Weekly News). Two of our first promo shots from around a similar time.
Dan and I would keep in touch after our Dublin Castle encounter and he was in a number of bands after Renton split up including Fatels, No Picasso and then CuT. CuT were managed by former Food Records boss and Blur impresario Andy Ross and after seeing them live a couple of times I chose them to feature in the new point-of-sale advertising campaign for Jack Rocks for 2014/15 – the music initiative from Jack Daniel’s, who was I was working for at the time. It was great to get reacquainted with Dan some 11 years after that first gig in Newbury and CuT went onto to play raucous Jack Rocks shows for us at both The Macbeth in Hoxton and The Isle of Wight Festival 2015. Dan’s a top bloke and is now making music as REALS.
Some 11 years later and CuT play the Jack Rocks Stage for us at The Isle of Wight Festival 2015 (photo: Will Ireland).
Supporting The Arctic Monkeys’ best mates at The Charlotte, Leicester
Leicester was another city where we strangely played a number of shows; at The Charlotte (R.I.P.), The Attik (R.I.P.) and the ace Firebug venue (still open – hurrah!) where we supported twee-pop starlets Pocketbooks in 2010. The Charlotte was one of the oldest, well-trodden and most famous independent ‘toilet circuit’ venues in the country when we played there in July 2005 supporting Milburn from Sheffield.
Milburn were good friends (and two of the members actually cousins of bassist Nick O’Malley) with the Arctic Monkeys and had apparently “taught them how to play their instruments”. Both bands were on the ascendancy at the time (Milburn had been signed to Universal Music Group imprint Mercury Records), yet it was the Arctic Monkeys who went stratospheric one year later, although it quite easily could have been Milburn instead. They had some great tunes like ‘Send In The Boys’ and ‘Cheshire Cat Smile’ – both of which dented the UK Top 40, charting at numbers 22 and 32 respectively and their Dave Eringa-produced debut album Well Well Well went in at number 32 and featured an appearance from none other than Billy Bragg.
Onstage at the Leicester Charlotte, July 2005. Milburn took to the stage just after us.
That gig was notable for a number of reasons; The Charlotte was the first ever venue we played where they had an actual full-size bath in the upstairs dressing room. Neal, an old primary school friend still living in Leicester came to the gig with some friends – the first time I had seen him in over 10 years. An emerging music photographer called Ollie Millington came to the gig and took some shots of us; Ollie is today a well-established snapper and we still keep in touch. We also encountered the venue’s notorious soundman Feedback Phil. Phil was in his 60s, had a ponytail, arrived at the venue by bicycle and curtly barked orders at us from behind his sound desk; a tactic I think was designed to crush any oversized egos that visiting bands might have brought along with them. Milburn were a nice bunch of lads too. They let us share their backline equipment and midway through their set frontman Joe Carnall even paused between songs to hand an errant earring back to Faye after it must have been fallen out during our performance.
Milburn disbanded in 2008 but reunited in 2016 to a rapturous reaction from fans including several arena shows and four sold out nights at the O2 Academy Sheffield. Here’s footage of them playing to the sort of crowd they deserved back in the day; to 7,500 fans at the Don Valley Bowl, Sheffield in 2017 (I think their influence on the ‘Monkeys has finally been recognised). The full concert is available here.
In the third and final post about The Screenbeats I’ll look back at what happened when we played the legendary garage-rock club Dirty Water in 2005 – with a band that would go on to form a supergroup with Jack White just a few months later. There’ll also be some never-seen-before videos from one of our final shows at the Montpellier Rockstore, December 2010.
This is the first in a series of three posts looking back at my former band The Screenbeats / The Shake / The Immediate which was active from circa 2003 until 2011. There’ll be some never-seen-before photos and video footage, amusing anecdotes and hopefully these articles will provide some sort of glimpse into what life was like for a group navigating the choppy waters of the DIY music scene in the mid-noughties.
15 years ago this summer…
My old band The Screenbeats (also previously known as The Immediate and The Shake) recorded what would become our first proper release on Rowed Out Records, ‘Troubled Scene’ at Gizzard Studios, Hackney Wick with the ace analogue engineer Ed Deegan who had previously worked with our favourites The Cribs, Holly Golightly, The Fall and later, Michael Kiwanuka. We recorded the EP whilst the 2006 World Cup was taking place and made ourselves comfortable in a nearby East London industrial estate pub on the Saturday afternoon to watch England play Portugal, strongly encouraging Ed to come and join us. England only went and got knocked out on penalties and we then had to return to the studio to finish the day’s session at 7.30pm with us all of us feeling somewhat deflated…
Halcyon days at Gizzard Studios, Hackney Wick. 2005-6.
14 years ago…
We launched the more adventurous and soulful follow-up EP ‘Pounds Signs & Foreign Villains’(also recorded at Gizzard Studios with Ed), with an actually-quite-busy show at the famous Dublin Castle in Camden Town. I started the morning in Southampton where I was working for the summer at a language school, took the train up to Cardiff to sit an exam during the day and then made my way to North London for the gig that evening, before taking the night train back to Southampton afterwards. One of the more restful days…
Onstage at The Dublin Castle, Camden Town. August 2007.
13 years ago…
We decamped to South Wales for an eventful weekend (we stayed at my flat in Cardiff) over the Easter period and recorded a set of songs with Gethin Pearson (Kele Okereke, Charlie XCX, Crystal Fighters, Badly Drawn Boy) in Pontypool, including an early version of ‘Hanging On’ and what we felt was our strongest song yet, ‘Super 8’. Gethin now has his own residential studio and you can find out more about his work on Big Life Management’s site here.
Also, 13 years ago…
We filmed a video for ‘Super 8’ in Dinas Powys in the Vale of Glamorgan with Cardiff-based film-makers Skin and Sledge. The video sadly disappeared from YouTube a few years ago but happily, and with Skin’s help posting the master copy to me, it’s now back online in all its glory once again. Hopefully in perpetuity this time.
The Screenbeats – ‘Super 8’
I had met Skin and Sledge in The Mackintosh pub in Cathays, Cardiff (and later Clwb Ifor Bach) – as is often the case with the most productive of meetings. They were a good laugh and kindly offered to storyboard and shoot a video for us free of charge – they enjoyed the creative process and it was something for their portfolio too.
Stills from the ‘Super 8’ video shoot. June 14th 2008.
We shot the video on 14th June 2008, the day after my final university summer ball so I was suitably rough around the edges that morning. However, we were blessed with a warm, sunny day (not always the case in Wales) and Skin and Sledge’s concept of a ‘Mexican vampire party’ turned out to be something of a masterstroke. It was a long day of filming and our drummer at the time couldn’t make it but we still were happy with the end results. We filmed the closing scenes of the video in my shared flat in Cardiff and when a group friends turned up ahead of a night out later that evening, they were suitably bemused by the black plastic sheets taped to the walls and the people walking around in supposed traditional ‘Mexican’ dress.
The Screenbeats; a potted history
I was in this band from the age of 16 until I was nearly 24. The first time I met singer Faye and bassist Roger we had to sit outside the Newbury pub we were in and they smuggled pints of beer out to me on the sly (the legal drinking age in the UK is 18). We had three names; starting life as The Immediate, then becoming The Shake and finally settling on The Screenbeatsafter being threatened with legal action on not one, but two separate occasions. An Irish band called The Immediate had been picked up by Fierce Panda Records in 2005 and we received a letter from their lawyer ordering us to change our name as both bands had started to get some radio airplay and it was making things confusing for journalists and DJs alike. We had been using the name for over two years but we didn’t have the funds or legal expertise to challenge them so acquiesced. The same thing then happened two years later when an American band called Shakes got signed to a major label and their legal team got in touch. We chose to change our name to The Screenbeats as we were pretty sure it was unique and there wouldn’t be another band with the same name.
Two of the earliest photos of The Immediate / The Shake. Waterside Centre and Northcroft, both Newbury. October 2004 and July 2005 (photo: Newbury Weekly News).
The band’s core nucleus was distinctive, soulful vocalist Faye, ever-reliable bassist Roger whose melodic playing became a key part of our sound and myself on guitar (excitable, something of a liability at times but I think I also brought a certain energy). We had as many permanent drummers as we did names; my schoolmate and supremely-talented jazz percussionist Joost (2004 – 2007), the self-confessed vegan ‘posi-punk’ Alex (2007-8) and our final drummer Praag (2008 – 2011) who brought a degree of calmness and sophistication to proceedings. We also had two notable temporary drummers – the inimitable Newbury character Nick and South East Londoner Haydn, my pal from university.
In the beginning; Row 1; various promo shoots – all taken in Newbury, 2004. Row 2; the cover art to our first demo CD as The Immediate (2004) featuring an early version of ‘All The Rage’. Our first ever London gig at Southern K, Kilburn in July 2004. Row 3; live at Newbury Corn Exchange, November 2004. Our new ‘The Shake’ branding and logo following our enforced 2005 name change.
We played over 300 gigs with our various line-ups from every corner of London to Southampton to Cardiff to Leicester to Birmingham to Bristol (and everywhere in-between). There are too many stories and capers to recall them all but being in the band was very much an education for all of us. We learned how to occupy ourselves for hours in between our soundcheck and stage time, not to mention the long journeys – either by train or in Rog’s trusty van. “What would you do for a five-album record deal?” and “speak in pirate language for an hour” were just two of our favourite ways of passing the time. There was also great excitement when we once spotted the late magician Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee at a motorway petrol station on our way home from a gig at The Sunflower Lounge in Birmingham too. From memory, I think Joost snuck a photo through the passenger window as we drove away…
We also met all manner of people vaguely connected to the music business; from the absolute diamonds (you hold onto these people), to the well-intentioned but hapless, to the absolute scumbags. The second-ever London show we played in 2004 at Sound, Leicester Square springs to mind as an example for the latter; we had sold 50 tickets at £10 each and the promoter still kept all of the proceeds. We even had to use the venue’s guitar amp (we weren’t allowed to bring our own due to space constraints on the stage) and this stopped working halfway through our set meaning we had an impromptu midway interlude. You live and you learn from these experiences though and it’s amazing how many of these people – the good and bad – I would meet again during my career in my 20s.
More in my next follow-up post about the very best and very worst gigging experiences we had and some other tales about life on the road.
A selection of photos from the early days of the band including a raucous party at The Colony Club, Greenham (complete with stage invasion), The Halfmoon in Putney, the Farringdon Betsey Trotwood, Newbury Northcroft and Joost’s farewell gig with us at The Late Lounge in Newbury. All December 2004 – January 2007.
In my recent post, ’20 years ago today life changed forever’, I talked about 30th March marking 20 years since my first ever live show – Manic Street Preachers at Brixton Academy, South London. In this next article, I’ll pick up the story, as well as expanding a little on the impact the Manics have had on my life since then – a band I have gone on to see live some 22 times.
In the weeks leading up to the Manics’ Brixton Academy gig on 30th March 2001, my mate Mike and I spoke about little else. Were we going to get crushed in the crowd? Yes. Was there going to be drugs? Yes. Would we be refused entry to the venue on account of our tender age (most shows were 14+). Remarkably no.
Mike’s older sister had been to a see System of a Down in concert a year prior and she had warned him that before the band appeared onstage, the venue had gone “completely pitch black” and then once Serj Tankian and co. emerged, “the lights went on and everyone went mental and started moshing”. Such reports only added to our sense of anticipation and our apprehension increased when it was announced that My Vitriol were to be added to the bill as the support band.
They were a great group and had recently released the brilliant, futuristic-sounding debut album Fine Lines. However, they were on the heavier side of things and had one song ‘C.O.R (Critic Orientated Rock)’ where frontman Som Wardner pretty much screamed non-stop for 40 seconds. We began to imagine what injuries might be inflicted upon us in the ensuing circle pit that we would of course, be forced by audience members to take part in. In our heads, the other participants would naturally be a mixture of six foot four rugby players and chain-wielding metalheads.
30th March eventually came around and Mike’s dad, affectionately known as ‘Big Mike’ (he was actually quite slight in frame) had agreed to escort us to Brixton. After driving to Didcot, we took the train to Paddington and then the Bakerloo and Victoria lines to Brixton. We had worked out that arriving at the venue at 4pm, three hours before the doors opened should give us enough time to ‘get down the front’. On arrival at Brixton Academy on Stockwell Road, there were already several hundred fans queuing up down the alley to the right of the venue We unzipped our Nirvana hoodies (much to the visible chagrin of the somewhat aloof leopard skin and feather boa brigade who looked like they had been queuing all day) to reveal our homemade Manics-inspired shirts; mine emblazoned with ‘Culture of Destruction’ and Mike’s with ‘Useless Generation’ and began the long wait for the doors to open. Big Mike, meanwhile was left to fend for himself in Brixton for seven hours until the gig finished.
My much-cherished, homemade ‘Culture of Destruction’ shirt.
‘New Art Riot’ on the front.
Whilst Big Mike very kindly gave up his day to take us to London, my parents also did more than their fair share of ferrying my friends and I to gigs during our teenage years and played a big role in my musical education. They had some memorable encounters too; whilst waiting for us to leave The Cooper Temple Clause’s gig at the Portsmouth Pyramids (a review I wrote is still online here from 2003), they witnessed a group of girls literally falling out of a taxi onto the ground, mimicking the famous Ab Fab scene.
On another occasion, whilst waiting for us to leave the Southampton Guildhall after a Supergrass show in 2002, my Dad spotted a worse-for-wear-looking girl in a leather jacket and short denim skirt walking past his car eating a bag of chips. On closer inspection, he realised that it was a man and it was only after talking to us after the gig did he realise that it was in fact Pete Doherty, co-frontman of The Libertines. The band were in that ascendancy at that time and had been supporting Supergrass – Pete had taken to the stage in that very attire. The less said about Ash’s gig at the Swindon Oasis Centre, the forgotten tickets and the additional 80-mile round trip they had to make on our behalf, the better. We had arrived at the gig so early though that we did get to briefly meet Tim Wheeler and Charlotte Hatherley from the band as they arrived by taxi from Swindon train station.
Pete Doherty with The Libertines in that very same denim skirt and brown brogues combo. October 2002 (photos: Getty Images).
Back to Brixton and the queue was an education in itself. In front of us was a serious-looking, heavily-eye shadowed couple who whiled away their time in the queue debating whether or not tonight could actually be Richey Edwards’ long-awaited comeback gig. She was in full Generation Terrorists-era regalia; a pink feather boa, leopard print dress and tiara, whilst he wore a green army surplus store shirt with ‘Linguistics Die Easily’ stencilled on the back of it in red (a lyric from the song ‘Intravenous Agonistic’ that was on the new album Know Your Enemy). We were also offered drugs for the first time in that queue; a cheeky-looking bloke popped up from around the corner asked us if we “wanted some skunk?”. We were familiar with weed but the term skunk was new to us. The girl behind us explained to him that “she really wanted some but didn’t have any money” – unsurprisingly the pusher was unsympathetic to her plight and continued along the queue.
Photos 1.) and 4.) Dressed to see the Manics wearing my ‘Culture of Destruction shirt’. Cardiff, May 2007 (photos and eyeliner courtesy of my long-suffering old housemate Emily). 2.) The ticket stub for the Brixton Academy gig on 30th March 2001. 3.) Nicky Wire signing autographs outside Brixton Academy’s stage door after the gig (photo: Crucifix Kiss).
Finally, just after 7pm, security opened the doors to the venue and after a quick search by security staff on the door we were in. Built in 1929, originally as the Astoria Variety Cinema, the 5,000-capacity Brixton Academy is one of London’s finest music venues. Boasting an Art Deco exterior and marble-floored entrance lobby, its main auditorium was modelled in Italian Renaissance-style to resemble a Mediterranean garden and its ceiling, the night sky (there are some fantastic old photos on Albert Lloyd’s encyclopaedic theatre website here).
Brixton Academy in years gone by when it was the Astoria Variety Cinema.
At capacity for The Decemberists in February 2015 (photo: Alison Clarke).
Simon Parkes famously bought the venue for £1 in 1983 (it was in a poor state and needed substantial repairs) and transformed it into the Brixton Academy we know today. Parkes’ book ‘Live at Brixton Academy’ tells his story of the venue’s resurgence and is a great read for anyone with even the slightest interest in the venue. Brixton Academy has been voted the UK’s Best Venue 12 times by the NME, was the location of The Smiths’ final ever gig in 1986 and in June 1996, Leftfield broke the world decibel record for a live concert when they reached levels of 137db. The venue’s ceiling apparently started to disintegrate as a result and showered audience members with particles of plaster and dust.
As part of the theatre’s rebirth as a music venue, the seats were removed but the gently sloping floor retained. The result is one of the best views anywhere in London, with crash barriers strategically placed along the slope to prevent crowd surges. It was the second barrier back from the stage (and still one of my favourite spots in the venue) where we positioned ourselves and waited for My Vitriol, and then the Manics.
Brixton Academy’s interior and the barrier where we positioned ourselves that night in March 2001.
My Vitriol mooched onto the Brixton stage shrouded in smoke and obscured partly by low lighting and partly by their fringes. They kicked off with the slow-building instrumental ‘Alpha Waves’ which then morphed into the recent single (and underrated classic) ‘Always: Your Way’ and as expected, a dedicated throng of fans directly in front of us started hurling themselves into each other in a frenzied circle pit for the duration of their performance (we were luckily protected by the barrier). Their impressive set finished with frontman Som screaming into the microphone whilst sprawling around on the floor. My Vitriol are still together today and I saw them again some 18 years later in 2019 with my friend Virginia at the Scala in King’s Cross. They were still pretty good although strangely they now perform as a three-piece and the bassist seemed to have been curiously replaced with a backing track…
My Vitriol performing ‘Always: Your Way’ on Top Of The Pops – three weeks before we saw them at Brixton. February 23rd 2001
As we then waited for the Manics, we got chatting to the guy stood next to us in the crowd – a third year politics student called Andy. A hardcore Manics fan, Andy was also equally as passionate about New York hip hop outfit the Beastie Boys and was writing his thesis about the feminist politics of the riot grrrl movement. He was affable and incredibly polite – his profanity of choice was ‘sod’ – so we were suitably surprised when he removed his leather jacket to reveal a deeply offensive and blasphemous slogan on the back of his t-shirt.
The wait was over; the venue’s lights went down and the Manics stepped onto the stage to a rapturous reception; James and Sean in khaki shirts and Wire in heavy make-up and trademark white tennis skirt. James’ guitar roared into the urgent power chord intro of ‘Found That Soul’ and from the moment Sean’s drums kicked in, the crowd surged forward and we were firmly pinned against the barrier for the duration of the gig. It was actually quite fun though and added to the adrenaline even more. A glorious-sounding ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ followed and the band ploughed through a two-hour set of hits, material from Know Your Enemy and some fan favourites such as the brutal ‘Yes’ from The Holy Bible.
The Manics onstage at Brixton Academy. March 2001 (photos: Getty Images).
The whole experience was euphoric and rushed by – the adrenaline almost taking us to an altered state of being. The band were so much louder than My Vitriol had been and the swaying and surging movement of the crowd meant that Mike and I ended up quite a few metres away from each other by the end of the show. We were ‘treated’ to Nicky Wire’s Mark E. Smith-esque singing on ‘Wattsville Blues’ and ‘Miss Europa Disco Dancer’ (James took over bass duties on a double-necked guitar for both songs whilst Wire strummed a Fender Strat), an acoustic rendition of ‘Baby Elian’ and ‘This Is Yesterday’ and then a triumphant closing trio of ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’, ‘You Love Us’ and ‘A Design For Life’.
The Manics never play encores and with that they were gone; the venue’s lights went up as we slowly filed out of the venue to the strains of the psychedelic interlude of ‘Let Robeson Sing’ B-side ‘Masking Tape’ being played over the PA. We met Big Mike outside the front of Brixton Academy and it turned out that one of the security staff had taken pity on him waiting for us holding two teenagers’ hoodies and let him sneak into the back of the venue to watch the end of the band’s set. “They were really good” he beamed afterwards; “although they swear a lot, don’t they?”.
I had been very conscious of not eating or drinking anything all afternoon in case a call of nature meant losing my spot in the crowd. I remember downing an extra-large coke immediately after the gig in one of the fast food joints on Brixton Road but had zero appetite after hours of being crushed and not drinking any water. Ironically, as a 20-something I would move into a small flat on the very road that Brixton Academy is situated on and would often stop off at these fried chicken shops on the way home after a boozy night out. It’s funny how life works out and Stockwell Road and its Little Portugal neighbourhood (it’s home to London’s biggest Portuguese community) is somewhere I always feel very much at home.
“We’re a mess of eyeliner and spraypaint” – an evening at Newbridge Memo, Gwent
To-date I’ve seen the Manics some 22 times and being a fan of the band is a big part of my identity. Whenever you meet someone new and they say that they’re a Manics fan, you tend to have an idea about their politics, outlook on life and the books, music and art they’re likely to be into. I’ve had too many memorable experiences as a result of seeing the band live to really do justice here but one that immediately springs to mind was after seeing James Dean Bradfield play a fundraiser at the Newbridge Memo in South Wales in 2006 – a venue whose bar he used to work at as an 18-year-old.
Newbridge Memorial Hall (known locally as ‘The Memo’) and the room that James Dean Bradfield played in (the rest of the venue was undergoing refurbishment at the time).
I was at university in Cardiff and writing music reviews at the time and the Manics’ PR agency Hall or Nothing had arranged a pair of free tickets to the show. I commandeered my good mate Chris to come along with me and after a bus to Blackwood and then a walk into nearby Newbridge, we arrived the venue. The place was originally built in 1898 as a miner’s institute and working men’s club and they were trying to raise funds for the refurbishment of their art deco cinema auditorium on the upper floor (this has happily now been restored to its former glory). The gig was great – one of the highlights being a cover of ‘Clampdown’ by The Clash. We even met James after the gig and had a quick chat with him about the music venues he used to play in Cardiff when the band was just starting out – see the photo below. Yes; I am wearing a crucifix.
Chris and I with James Dean Bradfield. Newbridge Memo, 14th October 2006.
We had made friends that night with two other Manics fans that we recognised from uni, Owen and Rhys. It was only after the gig had finished that we realised that the buses back to Cardiff had stopped and that we were stranded in Newbridge – 20 miles away. Our first port of call was the local pub to see if they had a spare room we could bed down in for the night. They didn’t but the locals at the bar were very welcoming, despite their intimidating appearance, asking us how the gig was and giving us a local taxi number.
No taxis were in the area so eventually we went back to the venue and explained the situation. One of the barmaids was closing for the night and to our amazement she said that she would drive us back to Cardiff once her shift finished. After stopping off at her house to explain where she was going to her husband, it took a good 30 minutes for us to reach Cardiff and when we got there she wouldn’t accept any money from us for petrol – “we just like to see everyone getting home safely”, she explained. She even dropped Chris and I off at the Barfly nightclub so we could meet some of our mates. That unique evening in Newbridge taught me a lot about the kindness and community spirit of the rural South Wales communities. What an absolute legend that lady was.
There were other stories too; Owen, Rhys and I bumped into Welsh rugby prop Adam Jones munching on a kebab on Caroline Street, Cardiff’s famous ‘Chippy Lane’, after the Manics’ show at the university’s Great Hall. He took one look at our get-up and stencilled shirts and asked; “Been to see the Manics have you lads?’’
“Love your masks and adore your failure” – being banned from the school music block
Then there was the incident of my first ever ‘gig’ as a musician in 2001. Inspired by what we had seen at Brixton Academy in March, Mike and I had formed a rudimentary band with a drummer called Kevin and we had been allowed to stage a short three-song performance to our class in our Music lesson on Friday afternoon. We spent as much time decorating the ‘stage’ as we did rehearsing our songs and we decided to play three Manics tracks; ‘Found That Soul’, ‘You Love Us’ and ‘Stay Beautiful’. Not only did ‘Stay Beautiful’contain swearing in the chorus (it was replaced by a guitar lick on the single recording) but we actively encouraged our fellow classmates to shout this back to us, call and response-style.
The gig went down well and there were lots of cheers but the teachers were less impressed (“if you think you can get away with performing a song like that you are sadly mistaken!”). We were placed in detention and banned from the music block for the rest of the year (it wasn’t the end of the world, we just started practising in the sports hall instead). However, there was some retribution in the form of our free-thinking drama teacher Class Tutor Mr Hudson (once a technician for folk musician John Martyn) who said he thought the lyrics were “rather good” after we showed him a printed copy.
An early line-up of my Manics-inspired group Felix Mandelson, summer 2001. Left-to-right; new bassist Charlie, Kevin, Mike and myself.
Manic Street Preachers are set to release album number 14(“like The Clash playing ABBA”) in September this year and Nicky Wire has been quoted as saying that the album is “bathed in comforting melancholia” and that the lyrics explore “the tension between online connectivity and healthy solitude”, with Bradfield adding that the pandemic has made him realise he’d “undervalued absolutely everything in my life.” It will certainly make for an intriguing listen. Long live the Manics.
The Manics’ very own rendition of ‘Stay Beautiful’, live at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. New Year’s Eve 1999.
Note: I began writing this piece earlier in the week and planned to publish it sooner but was unfortunately sidelined for a few days with some Covid vaccine side effects. Whilst I’m eternally grateful for receiving the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab, it was best to rest up for a couple of days until the aches and fever subsided. For those who are yet to be vaccinated; the side effects are nothing to worry about – they just made me more inclined to pop paracetamol, binge Rick Stein’s BBC series on India and watch England unconvincingly beat Poland in the World Cup qualifiers than turn my attentions to creative writing.
30th March 2021, Bari
20 years ago today my life changed and it would never be the same again. After several months of anticipation and numerous phone conversations between anxious parents, my old pal Mike and I saw the Manic Street Preachers live at Brixton Academy, South London – my first ‘proper’ gig (I’m not counting Slade’s performance at a guitar show at the Birmingham NEC the year before). Live music has been a huge part of me ever since – I’ve played over 350 gigs in various groups myself and whilst I cannot put an exact figure on it, I estimate that I’ve seen well over 1,000 artists perform in the subsequent two decades.
I had been heavily into the Manics from the age of 11 onwards after being given 1998’s huge number one album This Is My Truth Tell Me Yoursfor my birthday on cassette. The album contained a string of massive singles but I was more intrigued by the R.S. Thomas quote in the liner notes and the complex nature of some of the lyrics. I found out that the hit single ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’had been written about the Spanish Civil War, ‘S.Y.M.M.’ a reaction to the Hillsborough Disaster and that ‘Tsunami’ concerned the troubled ‘Silent Twins’, Jennifer and June Gibbons, who only communicated with each other using a language unique to them and shunned the outside world. I discovered the band had a chequered and much more radical history, prior to their recent mainstream success and I was captivated.
The Manics onstage at Wembley Arena with The Anchoress. May 2018.
My school friend (and early bandmate) Mike ‘got’ the band’s appeal too and soon the Manics had usurped Nirvana as our favourite band and were a major influence on an early line-up of our teenage band Felix Mandelson. We bought all of the band’s older albums and it’s safe to say that the band soon held deity-like status for us. When we spotted a red full-page ad written in block capitals in a copy of NME in early 2001 announcing a UK tour for their latest album Know Your Enemy, we knew we had to get tickets to one of the London shows – two consecutive nights at Brixton Academy.
The back of a bootleg tour t-shirt I bought on the pavement outside Brixton Academy and the Spanish Civil War that inspired the number one hit single ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’.
Our parents were initially wary as we were only 13. Whilst I had an older sister living in Bermondsey in South London, Brixton rightly or wrongly, had a reputation as a dangerous and lawless place and to my emerging musical knowledge, Brixton Academy was a venue more favoured by the dance music fraternity – The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim had both recently played huge shows there. However; eventually it was decided that we could go and after phoning the venue to ask for more information about the show, a very helpful member of staff at the Academy told my parents that it “was an ideal place for a first gig” and even explained in detail about the “sloping floor that means you get a good view wherever you stand”. Thank you to whoever was manning the venue’s phone lines that day.
“We live in urban hell, we destroy rock and roll’
For the unfamiliar; I will try to sum up the Manics’ story. Summarising 30 years of history in a few paragraphs is no easy task. Formed in the mid-1980s in the South Wales mining town of Blackwood in Gwent, two cousins James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore (they were actually more like brothers after Sean moved in with the Bradfields following his parents’ acrimonious divorce) formed a band with school friend and aspiring footballer Nick Jones (known as Nicky Wire due to his gangly frame) and later the slightly older and fiercely intellectual Richey Edwards. Spending much of their formative years ensconced in James and Sean’s bedroom, the friends devoured Situationist literature, leftfield films and a whole host of musical influences ranging from Guns N’ Roses and Rush to Magazine and Wire to Public Enemy and James’ love of the melodies of Motown Records to C86-era obscurities like The June Brides and Tallulah Gosh.
The Manics (left-to-right); James Dean Bradfield, Richey Edwards, Nicky Wire, Sean Moore) outside the gates to Buckingham Palace. January 1991.
Their nihilistic early singles ‘Suicide Alley’ (1988, self-financed) and ‘New Art Riot’ (1990, Damaged Goods) were massively out of place against the cultural backdrop of the ecstasy-fuelled acid house scene and the so-called Second Summer of Love of ’89 but got the band noticed. A press release written by Edwards from this time claims “We are as far away from anything in the ’80s as possible” and on stage the band would wear white shirts that they stencilled with slogans such as ‘Culture of Destruction’, ‘Useless Generation’, ‘Lonesome Aesthetic’ and ‘Kill Yourself’. The Manics signed initially to Heavenly Recordings where they released the two classic singles ‘Motown Junk’ and ‘You Love Us’ before moving to Sony imprint Columbia Records on a long-term album deal. The Manics were one of the first bands signed by a certain Rob Stringer who has since gone onto become Chairman of Sony Music Group and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment. They remain close friends to this day and this relationship may well be central to the band’s longevity on the label.
‘Motown Junk’ live at the Marquee Club, Soho in 1991. This video is notable for the dozens of stage divers who invade the band’s performance!
The Manics released their debut album Generation Terrorists in 1992, an 18-track opus of incendiary lyrics and political polemic set against squealing guitars and a very American-sounding stadium rawk production. It did have some brilliant moments though namely, the precociously ambitious ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’, ‘Little Baby Nothing’ and ‘Stay Beautiful’. The band’s public persona became more set in stone during this era too; singer / guitarist Bradfield and drummer Moore were the musical masterminds who wrote the songs and rhythm guitarist Edwards and bassist Wire the outspoken ‘Glamour Twins’ who drafted the lyrics, gave interviews and dictated the band’s aesthetic. The band claimed they had “made the greatest rock album ever” and that they would split up after selling 16 million copies. 29 years and 12 albums later, the band are still together.
The official video to ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’, filmed in Tokyo in 1992 and an unofficial influence on the future Sofia Coppola film ‘Lost in Translation’.
1993’s follow-up Gold Against The Soul, recorded at the sumptuous residential studio Hook End Manor was a fairly forgettable, more radio-friendly affair but the Manics hit their creative peak with 1994’s The Holy Bible. Recorded cheaply in an industrial estate behind Cardiff Central train station and containing a set of dark existential lyrics from Richey Edwards (themes included suicide, anorexia, prostitution and the holocaust), the album is a difficult album to listen to but is pretty much flawless from start to finish and remains the group’s creative benchmark. However, Edwards’ mental health had begun to unravel as early as 1991 when he carved the words ‘4 Real’ into his arm with a razor blade in front of the then-NME journalist Steve Lamacq who had been questioning the group’s integrity and he went onto be hospitalised on more than one occasion for depression, anorexia and alcoholism.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) and 2.) The band’s regulation military uniforms of The Holy Bible-era. 3.) Jenny Saville’s artwork for The Holy Bible album 4.) Richey Edwards following the notorious ‘4 Real’ incident. 5.) James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore onstage at the London Astoria in December 1994 – Richey’s last ever show with the band.
On 1st February 1995, Edwards vanished from his hotel room in Bayswater, West London on the eve of the band’s US tour to promote The Holy Bible. He left behind a book of lyrics (these would finally be used on the band’s 2009 Journal for Plague Lovers album) and some mysterious photos of foreign-looking buildings. His Vauxhall Cavalier was found abandoned near the old Severn Bridge at Aust Services but he had also regularly been withdrawing £200 every day from his bank account in the weeks leading up to the disappearance. Richey Edwards has never been found and sadly both of his parents have since passed away without knowing what happened to their son.
In the 2019 book ‘Withdrawn Traces’, Sara Hawys Roberts and Leon Noakes (with the full cooperation of Edwards’ sister Rachel) made a convincing argument that Richey had staged his disappearance; he had long been fascinated by recluses and self-imposed exile and had talked about wanting to spend time in Israel, living on a kibbutz. Whatever happened to Richey Edwards; one thing is clear; he did not want to be found.
After consulting Richey’s parents, the band made the difficult decision to continue as a three-piece (Edwards’ main artistic contribution was his lyrics and image – he didn’t usually contribute musically to albums and his guitar was turned down low in the mix at live shows). The sloganeering shirts of yesteryear and military uniforms of The Holy Bible-era were gone and they returned with a more palatable image and the Phil Spector-inspired Everything Must Go album in 1996. The lead single ‘A Design for Life’ became one of the decade’s most famous and recognisable songs although it’s chorus lyric of “We only want to get drunk” was frequently wrongly interpreted by lager lads as a drinking anthem, when it fact it was a critical comment on how the powers that be often looked down sneeringly at the working class. The song opened with the line “Libraries gave us power” which was inspired by an inscription above the former library in Pillgwenlly, Newport and fittingly the Manics opened Cardiff’s new library in 2009.
The release of Everything Must Go finally resulted in mainstream success for the new three-piece Manics and both the album and its ’98 follow-up This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours were certified multi-platinum, spawned numerous Top 10 singles and saw the band pick up BRIT Awards on two separate occasions for Best British Group and Best British Album. The band saw in the year 2000 with a huge show at Cardiff’s newly-built Millennium Stadium in front of 60,000 fans and bizarrely, they also knocked Westlife off the top spot to claim the first UK number one single of the new millennium with the abrasive standalone track ‘The Masses Against The Classes’.
However, mainstream success and being the new darlings of the music industry sat uncomfortably with the Manics and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’ successor Know Your Enemy, released on 19th March 2001 was a challenging, sprawling, 16-track album taking in a myriad of genres and influences. There was primal rock reminiscent of The Stooges (‘Found That Soul’), sunshine ‘60s pop (‘So Why So Sad’), lo-fi (‘Wattsville Blues’), a futuristic take on punk (‘Intravenous Agnostic’ and ‘Dead Martyrs’) and even disco (‘Miss Europa Disco Dancer’) – Diana Ross’ ‘My Old Piano’ was the first single James ever bought, after all.
Jeremy Deller’s video for ‘Found That Soul’.
The artwork, created by Welsh painter Neale Howells featured a blood-stained, lyric-covered wall and throughout the album were lyrical references to leftist politics and in particular, the United States’ relationship with the outside world. The album contained a paean to Elián González (‘Baby Elian’), the Cuban child who had been the subject of an intense custody battle involving the US and Cuban governments, a tribute to the singer and Civil Rights activist Paul Robeson, who also spent time in Cuba (‘Let Robeson Sing’), a track featuring My Bloody Valentine guitarist Kevin Shields called ‘Freedom of Speech Won’t Feed My Children’ and even a curious cover of ‘We Are all Bourgeois’ by ‘80s far-left indie group McCarthy.
Neale Howells’ artwork for Know Your Enemy and the cover to ‘The Masses Against The Classes’ – the first UK number one single of the new millennium.
This album felt like it was the Manics flexing their creative muscle again, reconnecting with their more radical roots and perhaps alienating some of their newer, more casual fans in the process. This sentiment was reinforced when it was announced that the group would be launching the album with a show at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana, Cuba becoming the first Western group to play in the country since Billy Joel 20 years earlier. The Brixton Academy show on 30th March was only their fourth show since the monumental Havana gig and it’s against this backdrop that we’ll return to that evening in 2001 in the next instalment…
Why The Pipettes were marvellously out of place in 2004
15 years ago this month, The Pipettes released their first single to dent the UK Top 40 (reaching number 35 in March 2006), ‘Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me’. Whilst it’s a jaunty-sounding two-minute pop song with a catchy refrain, it contains a wistful pre-chorus and a barbed lyric where the singer pleads with a needy ex-boyfriend to finally leave her alone. “And you might cry for some time” and then later in the track; “I want you out of here, don’t send me wild / you’re just a child.”
On a trip to Nashville, Tennessee some years later whilst working for the Jack Daniel’s music team, I found out that a colleague actually met her future husband at the video shoot for ‘Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me’. The band invited fans to be in the audience and it was shot at the much-missed Kilburn Luminaire – both Music Week and Time Out London’s ‘Venue of the Year’, before closing its doors and being turned into student accommodation in 2011.
The official video to ‘Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me’.
The Pipettes formed in Brighton in 2003 and the group originally started life as the vision of local musician, actor and writer Robert “Monster Bobby” Barry. Bobby was already a luminary of the city’s alternative music scene and friends with established Brighton bands such as British Sea Power, The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, The Electric Soft Parade and Brakes. Inspired by the heartbreak pop of the girl groups of the early 1960s, yet determined to give it a modern slant, Bobby recruited various faces from across the Brighton music world and brought them together for an initial get-together at The Basketmaker’s Arms on Gloucester Road in the North Laine area. The first line-up of The Pipettes was born.
The Pipettes. Left-to-right; RiotBecki, Gwenno, Rosay.
Consisting of three singers and their respective adopted alter egos; poet and photographer Julia Clark-Lowes (“The Duchess”), Rebecca Stephens (more commonly referred to as “RiotBecki”) and multi-instrumentalist Rose Elinor Dougall (“Rosay”), it was agreed that The Pipettes would be backed by an all-male band known as The Cassettes. This would feature Monster Bobby himself on guitar, drummer Joe Van Moyland and brothers Jon and Seb Falcone. Only the three female Pipettes would take part in any interviews and the individual personalities of The Cassettes were deliberately largely anonymous; in live shows, members could only be identified by the initials embroidered on the musicians’ matching knitted beige cardigans. Julia would leave The Pipettes in 2005 and be replaced by the Cardiff-born singer Gwenno Saunders who had left Wales aged 16 and moved to Las Vegas to star in Michael Flatley’s ‘Lord of the Dance’.
In contrast to the drab outfits The Cassettes wore onstage, The Pipettes’ uniform were kitsch blue and white polka dot dresses, heavily leaning on late-1950s fashion. Their sound wore its influences on its sleeve too; Phil Spector-produced girl groups like The Ronettes and The Crystals, the harder-edged Shangri-Las and Motown’s more soulful Supremes, yet also British Invasion-era solo artists such as Cilla Black, Helen Shapiro, Sandie Shaw and Dusty Springfield. However, songs such as ‘Pull Shapes’ also showed a more modern side, incorporating electronic and disco elements, as well as the songwriting and production prowess of the ‘80s powerhouse Eurobeat trio Stock Aitken Waterman.
‘Because It’s Not Love (But It’s Still A Feeling)’
Despite being heavily influenced musically by the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, The Pipettes’ attitude and lyrical content was thoroughly modern and the group avoided falling into the revivalism trap. Whilst Dusty sang “I only want to be with you”, The Pipettes fiercely warned off potential suitors; “leave me alone, you’re just a one night stand.” The Crystals sang the praises of a male protagonist in their most famous song ‘He’s A Rebel’, but The Pipettes reminisced about ‘Judy’, the intimidating bad girl at school; “she used to do things I thought were rude / but I never said anything to her face / ‘cuz my friends, I thought she’d kick my arse all over the place.” Then there was the small matter of grievous bodily harm on the indie disco dancefloor in ‘It Hurts To See You Dance So Well’:
“Half past one on the dance-floor, And my thoughts have turned to murder, Can’t these strangers feel my eyes, burning into them, They know that I want to kill them.”
‘It Hurts To See You Dance So Well’
‘It Hurts To See You Dance So Well’ live at the Brighton Freebutt. 30th September 2007.
The group also spoke in interviews about how their formation was very much a reaction to becoming tired of the post-Strokes and pre-Arcade Fire musical landscape of the early to mid-noughties. Whilst not dissing their music specifically, they were also antipathetic towards The Beatles and the consequent legacy they inspired; in particular, “all of the really boring all-male guitar bands”. When asked to name her favourite artists of the 1960s in an interview with the Spanish fanzine Yellow Melodies, Rose named girl groups “The Shirelles, The Chantelles and The Revlons” and tellingly, “Pulp and Sleater-Kinney” for the ‘90s. The Pipettes definitely had a riot grrrl side to them too and even though their melodies were impeccable and unmistakably poppy, their songs were permeated with shrieks, yells and chants that wouldn’t be out of place on a Bikini Kill, Huggy Bear or Shrag record.
Various live shots of The Pipettes between 2005 and 2007.
I first saw The Pipettes live in late 2005 at the tiny Cardiff Barfly. It was a matinee show on a Sunday afternoon and my English Literature coursemate Matt (later the frontman of the band Drowners) and I arrived early (and hungover) to gingerly nurse a lunchtime pint, unsure of exactly what to expect. The crowd was relatively sparse but the show was great, with the band working their way through many of the tracks that would later appear on their debut album ‘We Are The Pipettes’ (released in July 2006 and produced by Gaz Parton of The Go! Team fame), complete with their trademark synchronised hand jives and choreography. I also recall it being one of Gwenno’s first performances (if not the first) with the band and several friends and family were there with it being a hometown show for her.
The next time I saw them live would be 18 months later and in slightly different surroundings; The Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury 2007. It was my first Glasto’, I had just turned 20, was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and on Saturday had been up watching bands from 10am whilst my friends still dozed at our Kidney Mead campsite HQ. Even though they went onstage in the lunchtime slot The Pipettes were my fourth act of the day; “you don’t seriously like these do you mate?”, was one of my more sceptical mate’s reactions to the gig.
The Pipettes performing their signature tune ‘We Are The Pipettes’. The Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury. 23rd June 2007.
In many ways, that Pyramid Stage appearance represented the pinnacle of the first incarnation of The Pipettes’ career. Their debut album was released to generally positive acclaim and their chart positions gradually increased with each single, peaking with ‘Pull Shapes’ (No. 26 in the UK, also in July 2006). However, Rose Elinor Dougall and RiotBecki both left the band in early 2008 and the consequent revolving door policy of Pipette members never saw the band reach the same heights again. 2010’s album ‘Earth vs The Pipettes’ only featuring Gwenno and her sister Ani, bombed both critically and commercially.
The cover to the group’s debut album ‘We Are The Pipettes’.
The Pipettes story has a happy ending though and the group proved to be quite the launchpad for future endeavours. Since leaving, Rose Elinor Dougall has had a well-respected solo career, releasing three albums and collaborating and touring with Mark Ronson. Her brother Tom played guitar with the brief indie starlets Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong and is now in psychedelic band and former Heavenly Recordings signing Toy. RiotBecki / Rebecca Stephens has collaborated with Californian singer Jesca Hoop and appears regularly with her live. Former drummer Joe Van Moyland (real name; Joseph Bernays) was the frontman of the short-lived but massively-hyped aforementioned Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong and will be familiar to many readers as Sophie’s brother Jamie in the British comedy Peep Show.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) Rose Elinor Dougall performing live. 2.) Gwenno live at Islington Assembly Hall, 2018. 3.) The short-lived Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong. 4.) The Cassettes’ former drummer Joe playing Sophie’s brother Jamie in ‘Peep Show’.
It’s Gwenno though who has perhaps, experienced the most success since leaving the band in 2010. She initially toured as synth player with both Elton John and Pnau and then signed to Jeff Barrett’s eclectic Heavenly Recordings in 2015 as a solo artist in her own right. She has since released several EPs and two widely-acclaimed minority language albums (she was raised by Welsh and Cornish language activist parents) including ‘Y Dydd Olaf’(‘The Last Day’) which won The Welsh Music Prize in 2015 and 2018’s Cornish language album ‘Le Kov’. The Cornish Language Board claimed that the latter directly resulted in a 15 percent increase in people taking Cornish language exams in 2018 and Gwenno was made a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh at a ceremony in Saint Just, Penwith in 2019. Gwenno also collaborated with the Manic Street Preachers in December 2020 to re-record English and Welsh versions of their track ‘Spectators of Suicide’, with the download proceeds going to food bank charity The Trussell Trust and Missing People UK.
Gwenno at The Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh ceremony, 2019. Photo: Greg Martin.
The Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh ceremony. Gwenno is third from left. Photo: Greg Martin.
The Pipettes (and The Cassettes) were proudly independent and fiercely claimed that “we manufactured ourselves” and that every member was as involved in the creative process as the other. That said, Rose and Gwenno have both since talked about how they eventually found being in the group “restrictive” as they began to develop musical ideas that were outside of the tried-and-tested formula and given the free-spirited nature of all of its members, The Pipettes would always have a limited shelf life. They were fantastically out of place set against the musical backdrop of the time though (Jet, Razorlight and Kaiser Chiefs anyone?) and although they paid their dues to the girl groups of yesteryear musically, they put to right the subservience and patriarchal nature of their lyrics. Outspoken, risqué and most importantly fun, The Pipettes were ahead of their time. Give their debut album ‘We Are The Pipettes’a spin and re-immerse yourself in their world for 33 minutes.
A 2006 mini-documentary about The Pipettes
The full set from The Pipettes’ show at the Camden Barfly. 25th February 2005
In my last post, I waxed lyrical about Jamboree; a unique venue that started life in the Cable Street Studios complex in Limehouse and has recently announced its return to the Kings Cross area of London.
“Every now and then, you find a music venue that has a certain special aura and is simply unlike any other you’ve been to before. Sometimes it’s unique in its interior or location, sometimes it’s the warmth and generosity of the people running the place and other times it’s the programming of the events and the venue’s cultural or historical significance.Jamboree in Limehouse was one of those.”
‘The return of Jamboree’ (Set Your Own Scene, 22nd February 2021)
I want to now shine a spotlight on some of the other special venues that have particularly stood out to me over the years, either from playing gigs at them myself or watching as a punter. Here is a snapshot of ten that immediately spring to mind from Bari to Bedford, via LA and Pune, Maharashtra.
I’ve included links wherever possible to the venues in question – please do take a look and find out more about them! They need all the support they can get after this pandemic year.
On stage at Clwb Ifor Bach with The Screenbeats. May 2007 (photo: Ed Salter).
I had been reading about Cardiff’s legendary ‘Clwb’ (also affectionately known locally as ‘The Welsh Club’) for years prior to going to university in the city and it lived up to expectations as the beating heart of the city’s alternative music scene. For at least the first year of university, the highlight of my week was going to The Dudes Abide night on Fridays where the DJ was usually Gary Anderson who also ran the hallowed Cardiff indie-pop night Twisted by Design at the nearby Dempsey’s (now bizarrely Gareth Bale’s sports bar Elevens) on Saturdays and Cardiff’s famous rugby pub the City Armson Thursdays. Through regularly going to these nights as an 18-year-old I discovered Belle & Sebastian’s back catalogue, became obsessed with The Supremes and tracks like ‘The Rat’ by The Walkmen, ‘Happy Together’ by The Turtles and ‘The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth’ by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah became as ubiquitous to my ears as commercial radio’s airplay of Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Since U Been Gone’ around that same time.
The Welsh Club spanned three floors catering to pretty much every genre possible on various nights of the week. I spent on average six hours a week here between 2005 and 2008 and even met Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr there in 2008 after one of his first gigs as a new member of The Cribs at the nearby Student’s Union. I was a little tongue-tied to really say much to him other than ask for a photo but I had a better chat with Ryan Jarman from The Cribs a year earlier when we were both watching Everett True (the journalist who introduced Kurt Cobain to Courtney Love) and Manics biographer Simon Price DJ in the downstairs room. Ryan remembered an early regional newspaper interview I did with them at the Reading Fez Club back in 2004 and the main topic of conversation was how passé and justplainwrong the current Sex Pistols reunion was (The Cribs had recently supported them at Brixton Academy).
Now Clwb is the subject of some exciting new expansion plans involving the venue taking over the derelict building next door. Hopefully these plans will cement Womanby Street’s position as Cardiff’s cultural quarter (as well as the longstanding hub of the annual Sŵn Festival) for many decades to come.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) Clwb Ifor Bach, Womanby Street, Cardiff. 2) The downstairs floor during Swn Festival 2012. 3.) Telegram getting ready to play a Jack Rocks show at Clwb for Swn Festival 2015.
I stumbled upon the Shisha Jazz Café whilst staying in Pune, Maharashtra for a few days in November 2019. Part of the ABC Farms complex in the hip Koregaon Park district of the city that actually contains a couple of live music venues, the café was one of my favourite hangouts from my trip to India and provided some much-needed calm after a week of rushing around hectic Mumbai. Part-jazz café, part-jungle treehouse; there were several huge trees growing through its floor, rustic tapestries and kitsch lanterns hanging from the rafters and its wooden walls were adorned with pictures of the likes of Chick Corea, Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Evans and Sun Ra. It is also home to the Pune International Jazz Festival. It’ll be one of the first places I head to when I visit Pune again.
A national institution as far as independent music venues go, Band On The Wall on Swan Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter has been hosting live music since at least the 1930s. The venue got its name from the fact that the musicians originally played on a raised stage halfway up the pub’s wall! The venue has had a long association with jazz, blues, folk and punk and today prides itself on hosting an eclectic array of artists from a wide range of genres. I saw tabla player Saleel Tembe perform there in 2018 and before the concert he hosted an interactive workshop with the audience – that’s just the kind of place Band On The Wall is. Now a registered charity, the venue was awarded £3.2 million in 2007 by Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund to transform into a music venue for the 21st century.
Saleel Tembe at Band on The Wall, August 2018 and a band quite literally playing on the wall at the venue circa 1946 (photo: The Band On The Wall archive).
Forever immortalised on screen as the location for the filming of Super Hans’ notorious “juice cleanse stag do” scene in the cult British comedy series Peep Show,Passing Clouds was a community-run arts venue off the Kingsland Road in Dalston, East London.
Opened in 2006; the venue hosted musical nights, as well as community-led initiatives including the ‘Permaculture Picturehouse’, healing and self-development workshops and swing dancing and instrument lessons. Housed in the former printworks of the Hackney Gazette, two notable gigs at Passing Clouds for me were Sun Ra’s Arkestra led by the then 91-year-old saxophonist Marshall Allen and the Brixton-based Effra Hall Jazz Band. There was a blizzard during the latter gig and a subsequent snow fight ensued afterwards, culminating with my friends and I being branded “bumbaclarts” by an angry Rastafarian gentleman who was accidentally hit by a stray snowball whilst enjoying a smoke outside.
Passing Clouds was sadly closed down and boarded up in 2016 and is now The Jago.
In a way, Bari’s equivalent of London’s former Passing Clouds venue, Ex Caserma Liberata is a squatted space located in the city’s former Rossani Barracks. Whatever your political persuasion is regarding people squatting in derelict buildings, it’s difficult to argue that Ex Caserma Liberata isn’t a hive of creativity and home to a friendly and welcoming community. In non-Covid times; the space consists of a music venue that hosts both bands and DJs, a permaculture garden, impressive sculptures and street art, workshop spaces and even an indoor skate ramp. It hosts everything from punk festivals to dub nights to poetry readings and political meetings. The site is set to be transformed by the authorities into an urban park and public library in the not-too-distant future at a reputed cost of €450 million so the Barese need to make the most of this unique space whilst they still can.
Ex Caserma Liberata and one of Bari’s most interesting emerging bands Strebla performing there in 2019.
In 2007, a huge Victorian pub on the corner of Effra Road and Brixton Water Lane which had previously been known as The George Canning and then The Hobgoblin became Hootananny. Now run by a Scottish family, ‘Hoots’ dedicated itself to live music, particularly (but definitely not limited to) the world music side of things. You never know quite what you’ll see when you go to Hootannany but on a Friday or Saturday night it’s guaranteed to be lively. Boasting a large hostel on the upper floors (what a great idea if you were a music-loving traveller) and a huge garden out the front, you can choose between whether you soak up the music indoors or sit and enjoy a cold beer and some excellent Caribbean food on the benches outside. I’ve had some of my best nights out in London here and it was also a packed place to watch the England football team’s unexpected run to the semi-finals World Cup 2018.
I’ve written about seeing Berlin’s Ellen Allien at the Sound Department Club just outside Taranto before, but this is a truly unique place. Located about five miles outside of the city near to the Italian naval docks and hidden out-of-sight amongst olive groves and Mediterranean scrubland, the venue appears to be entirely made from shipping containers. There were two separate live rooms; one that was low-lit and a distinctly industrial affair and the other which was brighter and more house-flavoured. At about 3am, the club’s security staff winched up the metal sides of the venue to transform it into an open-air space and an hour later, the roof slid back to let in the early morning Pugliese sunlight.
Tbilisi DJ Newa’s Boiler Room set live from Sound Department, Taranto. December 2019.
Located in LA’s at-times, self-consciously hip Silver Lake neighbourhood, The Satellite made its name in the 1990s as the famed Spaceland venue. Its first ever gig in 1995 featured The Foo Fighters and Beck, it hosted early shows by The White Stripes and The Silversun Pickups and it was the venue choice for Arthur Lee & Love’s comeback show after Lee’s release from prison in 2001. It also starred in the Jim Carey film ‘Yes Man’ as the venue where Zooey Deschanel’s character’s band played their live shows. We saw The Bulls there who played a bemusing shoegaze cover of ‘Alright’ by Supergrass – I think we were in the minority in the audience by actually being familiar with the original version.
The Satellite was quite similar to many British venues of a similar size but everything was just nicer, albeit in a slightly sanitised, yet typically Los Angelan way. The toilets were clean and didn’t smell, the floor wasn’t sticky and awash with stale beer and there was even a pool table at the back of the room for in-between bands. Instead of a greasy burger van being stationed outside, there was of course, a converted silver Airstream caravan serving up delicious tacos. Once the epicentre of Silver Lake’s alternative music scene, there are now plans afoot to transform The Satellite into a restaurant.
From sunny LA to Bedford. My old band The Shake was offered a show at The Angel back in summer 2006. The venue on Bedford Broadway had hosted Oasis back in 1994 (it was still extremely proud of this) and was enjoying a new lease of life after a refurbishment and recently hosting Razorlight whilst they were still on their ascendency (and still credible). We had been due to support The Heights, a former Guardian New Band of the Week and Best Before Records signing. However, they had pulled out a couple of weeks before and we were moved up the bill to become the impromptu headliner.
Despite most of the audience originally buying their tickets to see The Heights, it was one of the best shows we ever did and we played to a packed and receptive room. Despite Bedford not exactly being a hotbed for rock and roll, the venue was clearly a labour of love and had a great soundsystem. We got paid, given free beer and even got a cheery hug from the promoter after the show! Sadly, The Angel shut down a few years later (it had stiff competition from the long-established Esquires venue around the corner in the town) and is now Doorstep Dolci, a café specialising in “American-Belgian Waffles, oven-baked cookie dough, artisan gelato and milkshakes.”
The former location of The Angel music venue, Bedford.
The Troubadour on Old Brompton Road, West London is best-known in music circles as being the venue for Bob Dylan’s first ever UK gig in 1962. Opened in 1954 as a coffee house, it was one of the city’s prominent folk venues of the time hosting performances from Joni Mitchell, Bert Jansch, Davey Graham and Sandy Denny, as well as the more raucous Jimi Hendrix, Charlie Watts, Sammy Davis Jr (slightly more raucous) and Led Zeppelin – the latter would jam at the club after shows at the nearby Earls Court Arena. Today, it retains many of its original features and décor but has been expanded to include a restaurant / café, outdoor dining space, small art gallery as well as the 135-capacity downstairs venue. I played here in 2010 and contemporary artists to come through its doors in recent years include Florence Welch, Ellie Goulding, Adele, Jamie T and Ed Sheeran, with its small size making it ideal for showcases. The Troubadour was also the inspiration for the Los Angeles venue of the same name, with it even copying the distinctive typeface above the door. Time to put its London counterpart on the musical map again.
The Trobadour’s interior, virtually untouched since 1954 and Ronnie Wood and Mick Taylor playing the club in 2013.
Every now and then, you find a music venue that has a certain special aura and is simply unlike any other you’ve been to before. Sometimes it’s unique in its interior or location, sometimes it’s the warmth and generosity of the people running the place and other times it’s the programming of the events and the venue’s cultural or historical significance.
Jamboree in Limehouse was one of those. It was the live music venue for the Cable Street Studios complex; an 88,000-square foot former sweet factory that was built by Batgers Confectionery in the 1860s. Despite the site being worth a small fortune to potential developers, its owner was a keen believer in the power of the arts and culture and by 2011 it had become a thriving artistic community consisting of over 200 individual artists’ studios, a mosque and a transgender nightclub, happily co-existing side-by-side and the Jamboree venue.
The old Jamboree venue, Limehouse, London.
Many of the artist studios also doubled up as residential dwellings; the workspace and the kitchenette area on the ground level and then a wooden mezzanine above housing the sleeping quarters. My old school friend Charlie spent a couple of years there and it was always fascinating to go and see him and meet the various characters who also called the studios home.
On one occasion Charlie organised for the Imam of Cable Street’s mosque to give a talk to the other residents about the customs of Islam and there would also be frequent ‘Open Studio’ days where the complex would open its doors to the public. The artists would welcome you into their studios to view their latest work and there were also many performance art spectacles. One performance that stands out in my mind was an artist dropping pieces of broken glass down a stone staircase on piece at a time. Remarkably, he had worked out that each piece had a different pitch and the result was surprisingly musical.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) Cable Street Studios, Limehouse (photo: Ewan Munro). 2.) The old entrance to Jamboree (photo: Ewan Munro). 3.) My friends Roger and Hanna outside Jamboree, December 2013. 4.) Another view of the live room at Jamboree.
Charlie and I had become good mates around the age of 14 when we formed a four-piece guitar band called Felix Mandelson. We covered The Vines and Red Hot Chili Peppers and our own songs were a perfect blend of naivety and well-meaning pretention. “New Era” (written by moi and our rhythm guitarist Mike) paid homage to Che Guevara and contained the chorus line; “It’s the beginning of a new era for us // We’ve got to stop the pigs from exploiting what we’ve got”. On the other hand, one of Charlie’s songs “Enemies to the Peace” quoted verse from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. Charlie has since gone on to be a successful actor on both stage and screen and the last time I caught up with him, he had been touring Europe in Dracula playing Jonathan Harker.
Anyway, the evening I discovered Jamboree, I had taken the DLR over to Limehouse after work (I was living and working in Islington at the time) to catch up with Charlie over a couple of beers and we had decided to check out what was going on across the courtyard. We lucked out that night as it turned out that Simo Lagnawi was performing – one of the main proponents of traditional Gnawa music in London. Simo, originally of Amazigh (Berber) origin had spent several years travelling around Morocco studying Gnawa music, as well as Ahwash chanting before relocating to London. He has since set up the London School of Gnawa in the city’s East End.
Simo Lagnawi performing at Jamboree.
It was a captivating concert with Lagnawi being joined onstage by two other Moroccan musicians whilst accompanying himself on the guimbri, a three-stringed instrument made from stretched camel skin and goat gut. The music was strangely hypnotic with complex polyrhythms and syncopated, repeating riffs and chants. Everything was kept in time by one of the musicians frantically playing the qraqeb – iron castanet-like finger cymbals. There were only around 50 people present in Jamboree that evening but everyone was silent whilst the band was playing; fully absorbed in their music.
Simo Lagnawi performing at the V&A Museum, London in 2013 – around the time we also saw him play at Jamboree.
Jamboree was a unique venue too; a cross between a bohemian café and Tony Hornecker’s pop-up restaurant-cum-art installation The Pale Blue Door. The stage and the venue’s windows were surrounded by velvet drapes, comfortable sofas and arm chairs were dotted around the room and there was art from some of Cable Street’s artists adorning every wall. The venue took a chance on booking artists not usually looked at by more mainstream music venues too – Eastern European folk, calypso and zouk performances, Celtic roots music and gypsy jazz. Charlie mentioned that Jonathan Richman of The Modern Lovers fame had even performed a secret acoustic gig there too.
Unfortunately, in 2018 just shy of its tenth anniversary Jamboree was forced to close its doors after being served notice by Cable Street Studios’ new landlord Sudbury Properties. After a temporary stay on Three Colt Street, also in Limehouse, it shut its doors at the beginning of 2020, potentially for good.
I was overjoyed, however, to receive an email last week announcing that Jamboree would be returning in 2021 with a new home in Kings Cross, North London. Kings Cross – as recently as a decade ago, one of the last undeveloped parts of Central London and a quasi-red light district – is fast becoming the destination of choice for the creative industries. As well as behemoth companies such as Google, Facebook, communications group Havas, PRS for Music and Universal Music now calling the area home, there are some much more interesting developments happening just beneath the surface.
For example, the music start-up incubator community Tileyard is home to several emerging challengers in the music and tech space and the likes of Mark Ronson and Sir Antony Gormley even have studios there. The Spiritland audiophile bar opened a few years ago on Stable Street and boasts that its huge, bespoke soundsystem is “the best in London” (I’ve been there a few times and it is pretty special – as are the huge speakers inside each individual bathroom cubicle). The team behind Omeara in Flat Iron Square (led by Mumford & Sons musician Ben Lovett) opened the 600-capacity Lafayette venue in February 2020 and although its launch has been disrupted by the pandemic, it’s set to reopen later this year. Although one night there will set you back around £200, the newly-opened Standard Hotel just off Euston Road and owned by the same group behind LA’s notorious den of iniquity the Chateau Marmont, contains its very own venue and has promised regular music events and “cultural happenings”.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) Tileyard, Kings Cross. 2.) Inside the newly-opened Lafayette. 3.) Inside The Standard hotel. 4.) The prized sound system at Spiritland, Stable Street.
These new venues join the already well-established bastions of live music in Kings Cross such as The Scala (where the iconic cover to Iggy & The Stooges’ Raw Power album was shot), the famous grassroots venue Water Rats, arts café Drink Shop Do and electronic music club The Egg. The Guardian and The Observer newspapers have, of course also been based on York Way, Kings Cross since 2008 too.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) The Egg, York Way. 2.) The Water Rats, Grays Inn Road (photo: Adam Bruderer). 3.) The iconic sign outside The Scala (photo: Ian Muttoo). 4.) The front cover of Iggy & The Stooges’ ‘Raw Power’ (taken at The Scala) 5.) Drink Shop Do, Caledonian Road.
Whilst there’s no denying that 2020 has been the toughest year on record for the performing arts, there are also some encouraging signs outside of the Kings Cross bubble. The Music Venue Trust confirmed at the beginning of February that 13 venues on its ‘danger list’ had already been saved from imminent closure. Only last week, the creation of the first-ever trade body for the live music industry LIVEwas announced to widespread support. Many venues such as Band on The Wall in Manchester and The Wedgewood Rooms in Portsmouth have used this time to carry out essential repairs to their venues with The Wedge relaying the wooden floor in its main room.
Repairs taking place at The Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth. October 2020.
Even closer to (my adopted) home in Bari in Puglia, there are some green shoots of recovery appearing too. The 1920s Art Deco venue Kursaal Santa Lucia on the city’s Lungomare (‘seafront’ to you and I) is set to reopen in spring this year after a lengthy refurbishment and shows are already starting to be tentatively booked again in venues such as Teatro Petruzzelli and Teatro Kismet.
The soon-to-be-reopened Kursaal Santa Lucia, Bari.
Hopefully the post-Covid age will see a Belle Époque-style resurgence for the live music sector and a surge in creative pursuits in general. Watch this space.
