One of the joys of living in Italy – even during the periods of lockdown – has been discovering local ingredients that are specific to particular regions. Edible weeds such as cicoria, cima di rapa and puntarelle in Puglia and the Salento; ‘nduja, soppressata and Tropea onions in Calabria and the crispy red peperoni cruschi of the Basilicata region, to name just a few.
A few weeks ago, I popped my head into my local casa vinicola,Vecchio Feudo on Corso Sidney Sonnino in Bari to pick up some essentials (well, olives, taralli and white wine), when a product I hadn’t seen before caught my eye as I was paying at the counter. A small glass jar in the chiller filled with a white paste was labelled ‘Ricotta forte’ (‘strong ricotta’). My interest was piqued and at €2.50 it was cheap enough to take a punt on.
A typical jar of Pugliese ricotta forte and Vecchio Feudo on Corso Sidney Sonnino in Madonnella, Bari.
I took the jar back to my flat, unscrewed the lid and a smell unlike anything else I can remember immediately hit me. It was pungent to say the least and made gorgonzola seem like Dairylea in comparison. I tentatively scraped a tiny amount onto a cracker and the sheer strength and bitterness of this spreadable cheese took the roof off my mouth. What on earth had I bought?
After some research, I found out that ricotta forte is a Pugliese speciality which is also popular in the neighbouring region of Basilicata. Its origins date back nearly one thousand years to when local shepherds would create their own unique version of the soft cheese ricotta (used in a variety of Italian sweet and savoury dishes) by placing it into wooden, glass or ceramic containers, adding salt and then storing in a dark, damp place to encourage the growth of mould. Traditionally covered with fig leaves, the cheese would be opened and stirred every week but overall, the fermentation process would take around three months. The fungus that grew gave the cheese its distinctive spicy flavour and one of the reasons the shepherds preferred this potent variety of ricotta was the fact it would keep for so long (it is said that ricotta forte never really ‘goes off’).
Ricotta forte being produced in the traditional way and served on crostini with anchovies.
The cheese soon became a local speciality and Pugliese families would often make it at home, placing the jars under the kitchen sink or in cool cantine (cellars) to ferment. It is often eaten served on crackers or crostini with anchovies or tomatoes or with sweeter ingredients such as grapes or drizzled honey. Even though I’m a big fan of strong blue cheeses, spreading ricotta forte on crostini is not for the faint-hearted. I actually found that stirring a teaspoon (yes, a teaspoon is all you need) into a pasta dish or a tomato sauce works better and adds a spiciness and piquant flavour. I also used a little in a mousse and served this with roasted fennel – the recipe courtesy of A Taste For Travel can be found here.
Ricotta forte has been recognised by the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies as a typical food of Puglia and Basilicata and has been awarded PAT (prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale) status. Incredibly, the Campania region alone has 515 of these. The Slow Food organisation has also sung the cheese’s praises and in particular its time-honoured production method and long shelf life. In line with the current craze for fermented food such as kimchi and sauerkraut, ricotta forte is also said to have numerous health properties including aiding digestion, boosting gut bacteria and even killing off worms. Good to know.
One jar of ricotta forte is likely to last you the best part of a year (you could even consider it an investment, of sorts) and it really does have a taste unlike any other cheese. You could do worse than picking up a jar of the stuff when you next visit Italy or a well-stocked Italian deli in the UK. You never know, it might even come in handy if you are planning on organising a stag do or a sports team initiation ritual in the near future too.
You can find a video showing the traditional production process of ricotta forte courtesy of Maria Rosa Pinto below:
There is also an English-speaking ricotta forte taste test here.
Seven days ago, I was back home in Bari feeling a little gutted that I had to teach a two-hour class at the same time as the England v Germany Euro 2020 match. 11 years earlier at Glastonbury 2010, I had even made the difficult decision to miss legendary Kinks frontman Ray Davies’ set on the Pyramid Stage in favour of watching the match on the big screens near the Dance Village instead. England got thumped 4-1, so in hindsight it was perhaps, the wrong call.
England v Germany is always a big deal. The match last Tuesday at Wembley was made even more significant by the fact it was a repeat of the semi-final at Euro ’96, where England were knocked out of the tournament with our then-central defender and now-manager Gareth Southgate having his decisive kick saved by Andreas Köpke in the penalty shoot-out.
Highlights of the famous England v Germany Euro 96 clash at Wembley. 26th June 1996.
The ’96 match was on the same day as my elder sister’s graduation from Durham University so she and my parents watched it there, whilst my half-Khasi grandmother travelled from Eastbourne to look after me in Market Bosworth, where we were living at the time. I actually missed the first half because I had to go to Scouts (there is a pattern emerging here), but was then glued to the TV for the second half, extra time (including the agonising near misses by Gazza and Darren Anderton) and then the ensuing dramatic penalty shootout. Despite being only nine years old, the game finishing at nearly 11pm and having school the next day, I vividly remember my grandma (a former nurse) encouraging me to “listen to some music” to calm me down so I would be able to go to sleep. I think I finally drifted off to sleep sometime after midnight.
Back to the 2021 rematch. I managed to watch the pre-match build-up on the BBC but then had to make the 15-minute journey into school, just as the game was kicking off. I switched my phone to airplane mode and didn’t look at any texts from friends and family for a few hours. On my walk home I actively avoided going past certain bars or pizzerias that might be showing the game and wore headphones to drown out any noise. At 9pm I was finally able to re-watch the match on my laptop but unfortunately, despite trying to avert my eyes, the 2-0 scoreline was revealed to me as the on-demand footage was buffering. It did perhaps make for a slightly less stressful England-watching experience though…
Never did I think for a moment that I’d be at the quarter final against Ukraine at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome a few days later as part of the travelling ‘Expat Army’. As soon as England had beaten Germany last Tuesday, I started getting WhatsApp messages from people asking if I was considering getting tickets for the game. With Covid restrictions still requiring Brits to quarantine for five days upon entry to Italy; the only people who could go were England fans living in mainland Europe (or even further afield than that).
A near-empty Stadio Olimpico upon our designated arrival time of 6.30pm. 3rd July 2021.
British media began (incorrectly) reporting on Tuesday night that the British Embassy in Rome would be issuing tickets to expats. However, after making a number of calls on Wednesday morning to the UK Consulate in Rome, it became clear that this was false and that UEFA would be selling the tickets after all – but only to people who could prove they were permanently living outside of Regno Unito. A British lady of Italian descent was selling a ticket through social media for €150 on behalf of her cousin who could no longer go; she seemed legitimate enough but was making a sizeable mark-up on the ticket and I took the risk and decided to wait until some became available on the official channels.
Finally, on Wednesday evening, UEFA made tickets available through its online portal. They weren’t cheap and initially my instinct was that I couldn’t afford it (in Puglia I earn significantly less than I did in London), however several friends in the UK urged me to reconsider. To quote my good mate from school Matt Turner; “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity!”. I snapped up the tickets, hastily began making travel plans to get to Rome the next morning and soon the Expats in Italy community was buzzing with people who would be making the very same pilgrimage.
I’d originally planned to take my time with Rome. I wanted to spend a full week (or even longer) in the city when the weather got a bit cooler in September or October. The idea was to get the tourist sights out of the way nice and early and then live like a local and really get to know some of the less obvious parts of the city. Instead; the weekend just gone has been a fun-yet-hectic, whistle-stop visit, dominated by the football on both Friday and Saturday nights. I arrived on Thursday evening and didn’t really stop until the high-speed train back to Bari Centrale left Roma Termini station early on Sunday evening.
The fact that the Pantheon – a Roman temple built by Hadrian circa AD 113 – has been in continual use ever since then particularly blew my mind. Let’s be honest though, even with the Covid restrictions in place, much of Rome’s Centro Storico is a honeypot for tourists. Food and drink there costs three times what it does in Bari and the crowded area around the Trevi Fountain, whilst beautiful, reminded me of a Baroque Leicester Square. I sought out some respite in the nearby Galleria d’Arte Moderna – a tranquil gallery that was hosting the ‘Ciao Maschio!’exhibition about toxic masculinity and political tyrants, as well as permanent works by Willem de Kooning (the Manics wrote the Everything Must Go track ‘Interiors’ about him), Carlo Levi and even London’s Gilbert & George. Entry was just €7 – highly recommended if you want a break from the crowds.
Some of the delights of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma.
It was the Italy v Belgium quarter final on Friday night and a small group of us watched it on a screen outside a restaurant just off Campo de’ Fiori, chowing down on cacio e pepe, cold cuts and burrata and knocking back a few Birra Messina. The final few minutes were tense but as the game finished 2-1 to Italy, the streets around the Centro Storico erupted and very soon they were teeming with local revellers celebrating the fact Italy had made it through to the semi-final. We stationed ourselves outside a small bar just off the Piazza Navona and there was a carnival-like atmosphere around the packed small lanes with plenty of chanting and the odd flare being let off. It was a lot of fun and the crowd continued to grow as the night went on. We called it a night around 3.30am and it was probably the right decision with the England game the next day – the locals continued festivities long after that though.
The scenes around Piazza Navona after Italy’s win against Belgium on Friday night.
Saturday was a slightly more chilled affair and after the typical Italian sweet breakfast of a pastry and coffee, I explored the Trastevere neighbourhood a little down the River Tiber. It’s an area famous for its rustic and bohemian vibe, although there are now a lot of upmarket boutiques and eateries. After an extremely rich polpettina di cicoriacon pecorino and carbonara lunch, I climbed Il Gianicolo – the second tallest of Rome’s seven hills, with a small terrace area at the top offering fine views of the city. I then made my way downhill to the Orto di Botanico di Roma – Rome’s botanical garden, opened in 1883 and operated by the Sapienza University of Rome. It featured over 3,000 different species of plants and a Japanese, Mediterranean and medicinal garden – not to mention two greenhouses full of giant cacti. It was a peaceful, almost otherworldly place to relax ahead of the excitement that was awaiting us at Stadio Olimpico just a few hours later.
Heading downstream to Trastevere and the Orto di Botanico.
Due to Covid-restrictions, everyone attending the England v Ukraine match was given a designated entry time with their ticket and mine happened to be 6.30pm – very early considering the kick-off wasn’t until 9pm. We were treated to an awkward set by the tournament DJ (Euro-trance was his speciality) and some football jugglers but at least they showed the highlights of the Czech Republic v Denmark game on the big screens. I’m not sure the stadium was quite prepared for how thirsty the England fans would be and very soon the bars had huge queues by them and the poor guys whose job it is to wander around the stadium selling drinks and snacks would be accosted as soon as they came back to the stand and would sell out again and have to refill pretty much instantly. Soon the choruses of ‘Three Lions’ began to ring out across the England section of the stadium, whilst the opposite end gradually filled up with the yellow shirts of the Ukrainian fans.
There was a great atmosphere in the stadium as it got busier and we met people who had travelled to Rome from across mainland Europe, and even one lad originally from near Middlesbrough who’d made it over from Dubai in time. There was a group of Anglo-German healthcare workers who had decided to fly over from Frankfurt that day and were returning the same night and my English mate Jamie was also flying back to Vienna at 4am, straight after the match. Whilst the newspapers made much of the “ragtag band of teachers, lawyers and waiters” (to quote a headline in The Sunday Times) who would be cheering England on in Rome, the mood became increasingly raucous and noisy, particularly after the three goals in the second half went in.
Inside Rome’s Stadio Olimpico on Saturday night, including shots of the players celebrating Harry Maguire’s headed goal and Harry Kane leading the applause to the England fans.
Enough has already been written about the finer details of the England v Ukraine game itself, the team’s slow-build performance in the tournament so far and the possibility of the team reaching their first major final in 55 years. However, in summary, the first half performance was efficient but not thrilling – Harry Kane’s early goal after four minutes settling some initial nerves. Ukraine had a few half-chances towards the end of the half but we were never really in danger of conceding.
The team turned up the heat in the second half though and Harry Maguire’s header was a real thunderbolt; we had a great view of it as we were sat right above where Luke Shaw’s assisting free-kick was taken from. It was great to see Jadon Sancho getting his first start of the Euros on the right and Jordan Henderson’s first-ever England goal for number four too. Kane led the players on a lap of honour at the end of the game and even the unused substitutes like the plucky Phil Foden and Jack Grealish joined him in their tracksuits too. Foden’s newly-bleached peroxide barnet making him unmistakeable – even from the stadium’s furthest seats. Ukraine didn’t provide the most challenging of opposition so perhaps it makes sense to keep the flair players in peak condition for the next match against Denmark.
Another rendition of ‘Three Lions’ at Stadio Olimpico on Saturday night.
Stadio Olimpico is a quite long way from the centre of Rome and post-match the 2,500 travelling England fans dispersed in several different directions very quickly. However, we still had a few beers after the game but it was nothing compared to the celebrations after the Italy win the night before and the scenes in the alleys around Piazza Navona and Campo de’ Fiori.
Sunday was spent exploring the Villa Borghese park just above the Piazza del Popolo, a quick walk around the Pantheon area again and then lunch at a great restaurant I had found on Thursday evening in the Prati district called 3 Quarti. Reasonably-priced, off the tourist trail and busy with mainly locals, I would highly recommend it to anyone who is visiting Rome (they also have another restaurant in Roma Nord). Thursday’s dish of choice was the classic Roman dish Maccheronici alla gricia and spicy sautéed cicoriaas a side and lunch on Sunday was courgette flower stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies and cacio e tre pepe (three peppers – black, white and pink).
The boating lake at Villa Borghese and the delicious fare at 3 Quarti on Via Attilio Regolo in the Prati district of Rome.
So, my first trip to Rome didn’t turn out exactly how I imagined it would be. I walked on average 11 miles per day, drank quite a lot of beer and tried to cram as much into a three-night stay as physically possible – and that’s without starting on the football. It was great fun though, a real adrenaline rush getting the tickets so close to the match and good to also catch-up with some familiar faces.
I’ll be back in Rome before not too long but next time, will look forward to spending some time in the more under-the-radar neighbourhoods of Ostiense (a formerly industrial district now full of bars, galleries, museums and street art), Parioli (a leafy, well-heeled suburb of Northern Rome) and San Lorenzo (the buzzy student area where bottles of Peroni apparently still cost €1). Another image of Rome that is embedded in my mind as much as the ancient architecture and numerous Baroque church spires is that of the distinctive stone pines (also, known as the Parasol or Umbrella pine). They are everywhere – even in the city centre and are very much an iconic emblem of the city. Until next time. A dopo Roma.
Rome’s distinctive stone pines.
The sunset over the River Tiber near Prati on Thursday evening.
Southbank Centre and the Festival of Britain’s legacy
Unlike the nationalistic overtones of the impending Festival of Brexit, the 1951 Festival of Britain championed creativity, design, innovation and science and gave a young generation of architects, planners and creatives a huge platform. It was incredibly ahead of its time.
By all accounts, post-World War II Britain in the 1940s and early 1950s was a grim, grey and colourless place. Six years of bombing, air raids and then subsequent debt and austerity left much of the country feeling depressed and disillusioned and rationing remained in place long after the end of war including the much-dreaded state-produced ‘National Loaf’ of bread which was fortified with vitamins and calcium in an attempt to make up for other nutritional deficiencies in the typical daily diet (rationing finally came to an end in 1954 and the loaf was abolished two years later).
Whilst unthinkable today, London was rundown, dirty and scarred with bombsites and many of its buildings were blackened as a result of air pollution. The now-upmarket North London suburb of Hampstead was at the time, an affordable enclave for artists, writers and creative types and the areas just south of the River Thames around Waterloo and London Bridge were industrial wastelands.
The initial idea for the Festival of Britain was thought up by The Royal Society of Arts in 1943 who were keen to hold an event to commemorate the centenary of The Great Exhibition of 1851 (held at The Crystal Palace – then situated in Hyde Park) and to raise national morale after the trauma of the war. The Labour government’s Herbert Morrison soon took charge of the idea and decided that the core focus of the festival should the arts, architecture, science, technology and industrial design. It was also agreed that there should be no politics at the festival – either explicit or implied. As a result, Labour-led initiatives such as universal health care and housing for the working class were excluded. Morrison would go onto serve in Clement Atlee’s government as Foreign Secretary and later become the Leader of the Opposition. He was raised in South London and was an alumnus of Stockwell Primary School; he was in good cultural company as some 50 years later a certain David Jones (or in future, ‘Bowie’) would also attend the same alma mater.
There was significant opposition to the idea from the political right and Winston Churchill, in particular hated the idea, labelling it “a state-sponsored jamboree” and “three-dimensional socialist propaganda”. However, Morrison and his team eventually got the project over the line and the experienced and dynamic left-leaning newspaper editor Gerald Barry was appointed as Festival Director. He described the Festival of Britain as “a tonic for the nation” and the festival billed itself (albeit, more long-windedly) as “one united act of national reassessment, and one corporate reaffirmation of faith in the nation’s future”.
Postcards of the South Bank festival site showing the Dome of Discovery, Skylon and Royal Festival Hall.
The Festival of Britain involved events and displays taking place all over the country during 1951 and it is thought that over half of Britain’s then-population of 49 million took part in some way. The centrepiece of the festival was the regeneration of the South Bank site near Waterloo in Central London. The area was run-down and predominantly industrial and the festival would see the creation of a brand new public space and a walkway along the River Thames, showcasing the principles of international modernist design – a rarity in London at the time. South Bank was to stage three large, multi-facetted ‘core’ exhibitions, ‘The Land’, ‘The People’ and ‘The Dome of Discovery’. The latter was a huge aluminium dome with a diameter of 111 metres designed by the architect Ralph Tubbs and designed to house an exhibition championing British exploration and innovation. It soon became an iconic London structure and a nationwide symbol of the festival. The Dome of Discovery was almost certainly a significant influence on the Millennium Dome, now The O2 Arena.
Another radical new landmark created especially for the festival was Skylon; a futuristic-looking steel tensegrity tower over 90 metres tall that appeared to ‘float’ above the ground. Situated next to the Dome of Discovery on the stretch of the Thames between Hungerford Bridge and Westminster Bridge, it also quickly became synonymous with the festival and was extremely popular with the public, given the interest in space exploration in the early 1950s. Having said that, a common jibe at the time was that “(Skylon) had no visible means of support – just like the British economy”.
Clockwise (from left): 1.) An aerial view of the main South Bank festival site, 1951. 2-3.) Skylon and a view of the site from across the River Thames. 4.) Festival signposts. 5.) A close-up of the Skylon structure. 6-7.) Inside the Dome of Discovery and the dome at night.
Atlee’s Labour party would unexpectedly lose the autumn 1951 snap general election and Winston Churchill’s new Conservative government begin immediately tearing down the majority of the Festival of Britain’s structures, which they saw as symbols of socialism (Churchill’s first official act as Prime Minister was to clear the South Bank site). These included the iconic Dome of Discovery and Skylon both of which were sold as scrap to a metal dealer in Canning Town.
However, perhaps the two most successful ventures of the Festival of Britain remain to this day; the Lansbury Estate in Poplar, East London and Royal Festival Hall on South Bank. The ‘Architecture’ element championed what became known as ‘Festival Style’, incorporating international modernism with traditional English quaintness and the Lansbury Estate in East London which had been badly damaged by bombing was identified as a site for regeneration. The philosophy behind the design of the new estate was that it should be low-density and consist of several ‘neighbourhoods’ – with each one including the various amenities that an area needs to thrive, such as pedestrianised shopping areas, covered markets, churches, old people’s homes and pubs and restaurants, linked by walkways. The Lansbury Estate today, now stands in the shadow of Canary Wharf but it remains very popular with residents.
Royal Festival Hall was the first in a new generation of post-war public concert halls in London and was one of the first venues to be acoustically designed using scientific principles. The project was led by London County Council’s chief architect (and leading proponent of modernism) Robert Matthew who assembled a team of talented young specialists including architects Leslie Martin, Edwin Williams and Peter Moro, as well as furniture designer Robin Day, his wife textile expert Lucienne Day and acoustic consultant Hope Bagenal. The vision of the hall and its numerous wide, open foyers was for it to “become a space for all” and not to include segregated bars and lobbies for different ticket holders, as was the case with most of the concert halls of the previous century. The auditorium itself was radical too; designed democratically so that it had “no bad seats”, cantilevered boxes resembling “open drawers” and unusually, it was located on the building’s upper floors – an early 1948 sketch described it as “the egg in a box”.
Royal Festival Hall in the 1950s and the iconic publicity poster for the festival.
Built predominantly from reinforced concrete (particularly in vogue with modernist architects at the time), this was combined with more luxurious materials such as polished wood and metal, white limestone and glass. The generous use of glass was intended to connect the building to the communal terrace spaces outside and its white limestone exterior was chosen to deliberately contrast with the then-blackened city surrounding it. There were some radical touches with the interior furnishing too; the now-famous ‘net and ball carpet’ that runs through the foyers and floating staircase was created by Peter Moro and Leslie Martin – partly inspired by oscilloscope sound waves (and also an apple that was on Martin’s desk). The hall’s foyers’ numerous plywood chairs have also achieved cult-like status and most of the ones used today are Arne Jacobsen Series 7 Chairs, designed in 1955.
1.) Inside Royal Festival Hall and its famous armchairs and ‘net and ball’ carpet. 2.) The festival’s core design team; Robert Matthew, Leslie Martin, Peter Moro and Edwin Williams.
The designers’ dream for Royal Festival Hall was for it to become ‘The People’s Palace’. A place where everyone could go to socialise, have meetings or just relax and enjoy the views across the Thames that it offers – regardless of whether they were going to a concert there or not. I first encountered Royal Festival Hall in 2001. I was doing the first of two work placements at NME (New Musical Express) – then based at IPC Media’s King’s Reach Tower, nearby on Stamford Street, Waterloo. My Dad and I had wandered there whilst exploring the area along South Bank the weekend before and stumbled upon a free piano recital taking place in its light and airy downstairs lobby. During the week, it seemed like the ideal place to go and grab a quick sandwich during my lunch break at NME. At first it felt almost as if I had snuck into the sumptuous, open-plan foyer by mistake – I was shocked that anyone could just walk in off the street and enjoy the space.
During my London years, the RFH foyers and terraces played host to countless meetings with friends, work contacts, visiting Americans and I remember one particularly lively evening early in my PR career entertaining a group of thirsty technology journalists there. I have seen the likes of Annie Nightingale DJ and Tuto Puone perform in the open-plan Clore Ballroom on the lower level and John Cooper Clarke, Johnny Marr & Nile Rodgers, Stewart Lee, the Manics, Mogwai and The Motown Orchestra all play in the 2,700-capacity ‘egg box’ auditorium upstairs. The auditorium also hosts the annual Meltdown Festival (past curators have included David Bowie, Lee Scratch Perry, Patti Smith and Scott Walker), as well as being the location of Love and Arthur Lee’s celebratory comeback gigs in 2003 after his release from prison in California. This show would later be officially released as the Forever Changes Concert.
Royal Festival Hall’s airy foyers and terraces and inside its auditorium.
Things weren’t always so culturally lofty at the hall though. A group of us, including my mate Scott, went to see a line-up of alternative comedians from the 1980s (curated by Stewart Lee) there in May 2011 and during the interval a play fight broke out that may have culminated in a “bundle” (or “pile-on” if you happen to be American). As we all returned to our feet, the first person we saw was an unimpressed Frank Skinner looking towards us disdainfully. On another occasion five years ago, my Welsh pal Mark and I had been on the anti-Brexit protest march around Westminster. Post-march we decided to go and have a couple of pints at the Duke of Sussex, just off Lower Marsh. After the pub, we popped into Royal Festival Hall and saw that that it was staging some sort of meditation-inspired exhibition and that the floor of the lobby had been completely covered in fake grass and bean bags. A little sleepy from the march and the American Pale Ale, we temporarily lay down on the fake grass and were both fast asleep in minutes. We woke up a little disorientated half an hour later. Probably not the sort of response the exhibition was looking for, but then again RFH is “a space for all”…
Royal Festival Hall is the one surviving structure of the original 1951 Festival of Britain site. In the decades following the festival, more cultural and artistic venues were built in the area including the BFI Southbank, Hayward Gallery, The National Theatre, Purcell Room and Queen Elizabeth Hall. The area became renowned for the arts and creativity and the complex is now known as the Southbank Centre. Whilst, it was an arguable travesty that the pioneering Dome of Discovery and Skylon were demolished so quickly after the original festival, the site the dome occupied is now home to Jubilee Gardens and the London Eye and this stretch of the river is now one of the most-visited by tourists in the whole of London. In 2007, Royal Festival Hall paid tribute to the original Skylon by naming its new restaurant in its honour. Since 1981 it has also been given Grade I-protected status – the first post-war building to be recognised in this way.
Royal Festival Hall today.
Perhaps the most important legacy of the festival though, is that it acted as a springboard in the careers of so many young architects, curators, designers, producers and writers who were involved in the creation of its numerous areas and exhibitions. The start-up incubator of its day, perhaps. The key architects involved in the launch of the festival all went onto have long and successful careers, designers such as Lucienne and Robin Day, Abram Games and Ernest Race became synonymous with mid-century Festival Style and a young Patience Gray got her first ‘break’ contributing to the displays inside ‘The Country Pavilion’ with the designer FHK Henrion. The Baku-born designer Sir Misha Black worked alongside Gray and Henrion, masterminded the ‘Upstream’ area and co-designed the Dome of Discovery. His daughter Julia said after Black’s death in 1977; “as for Henrion and my father, the Festival of Britain really made their careers”.
In many ways, the festival was a signpost for the 1960s – a decade of radical change in Britain, and the rest of the world. During the warmer evenings, outdoor dancing under moonlight was encouraged in the open space behind Royal Festival Hall (in Julian Hendy’s 2011 BBC documentary an elderly lady called Jean recalls how she met her future husband there) and there was even a dedicated ‘Dance Pavilion’ downstream at the Battersea Pleasure Gardens (maybe the Silver Hayes area at Glastonbury could consider rebranding for 2022?). The dancing was accompanied by live music and saw some of the first-ever performances by Trinidadian steel pan groups in the UK. The Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO) was invited to perform at the festival in summer 1951 and this would have been the first time the British public would have been exposed to this kind of music. It proved to be extremely popular and many of the musicians in the orchestra would stay in Britain long after the festival to pursue their love of music and to help increase knowledge about steel pans. TASPO member and calypso pioneer Sterling Betancourt MBE settled in London and would co-found the Notting Hill Children Street Festival in 1964. This would later evolve into the Notting Hill Carnival – Europe’s largest street event with an average annual attendance of two million.
The proposed £120 million Festival of Brexit planned for 2022 would do well to learn from the pioneering and futuristic festival that took place on South Bank some 71 years earlier.
Julien Hendy’s 2011 documentary ‘Festival of Britain: A Brave New World’, featuring contributions from Roger Allam and Dominic Sandbrook is available to watch on YouTube below.
Calabria is the rugged, sparsely-populated and partly mountainous region that begins south of Naples and extends down into the “toe” of Italy’s “boot”, towards Sicily. As well, as the notorious ‘Ndrangheta criminal syndicate, Calabria is famous for the spicy spreadable salami ‘Nduja, the Calabrese soppressata dry sausage, peperoncino (red chilli peppers – Calabrian cuisine is notably hotter than in the rest of Italy) and the distinctive Tropea red onions. They grow between April and October and the most famous and revered variety cipolla da serbo are in season in May and June.
They resemble giant spring onions but with a bright red bulb and they are renowned for their sweet and more delicate taste. In fact, Calabrians claim that when a Tropea onion is ripe, it should be able to be “eaten just like an apple”. Having bought some of these prized onions for the first time earlier this week, I can concur that they certainly are sweeter than their brown and white cousins and were equally at home being finely chopped raw into a salad and also, cooked and softened over a heat to form the base of a casserole. This versatility means that Tropea onions are frequently served in Italy as part of antipasti cold cut spreads, as a panini filling, as pizza toppings, in pasta dishes and even grilled or barbequed whole (in Catania in Sicily I saw a variation of this where the whole onions had bacon or in some cases, intestines wrapped around them and they were then cooked outside over charcoal).
Red Tropea onions hanging alongside peperoncino di Calabria (photo: Caterina Policaro).
Tropea onions have been awarded PGI status (Protected Geographical Indication) and are known locally as the “red gold”. That said, I’ve noticed that Italians do seem to have a particular penchant for referring to edible items as “gold” – peperoni crusci (dried sweet peppers) is known as “the red gold of Basilicata” and the residents of Bronte in Sicily, a town renowned all over Italy for its high-quality pistachios talk about the humble nut as its “green gold”.
The origins of these Tropea onions have been disputed but it’s now widely agreed that they were most likely introduced to Calabria by the Greeks and Phoenicians from present-day Lebanon around 3,000 years ago. Tropea’s sandy soil, proximity to the coast and more moderate climate meant that the conditions were ideal for these unusual onions to flourish and eventually become one of the region’s best-known culinary exports. The reason for their sweetness is due to a lower level of pyruvic acid than normal brown onions and this makes them less pungent and harsh – also less likely to induce tears as you slice them.
Red Onions “Cipolle di Tropea” (photo: Martin Mboesch), my own purchases and a wholewheat lampascioni and wholewheat pasta I made with them.
The cipolla da serbo also reputedly has numerous health benefits and the Roman author, naturalist and philosopher Pliny the Elder (his first solo album went massively under-the-radar) detailed the 30 ailments which can be treated by these particular onions in his then-groundbreaking encyclopaedia “Naturalis Historia”. Pliny also pointed out that any dishes containing onions are curative as well as more nourishing. Good to know…
Just a few examples of the different landscapes Calabria has to offer; Tropea, Belvedere Marittimo, Condofuri and Scalea.
I have been to Calabria twice; a week before the first Covid lockdown when I stayed in the coastal villages of Belvedere Marittimo, Diamante and Scalea and then last September, when I spent several hours winding my way through its mountainous landscapes on my way to Villa San Giovanni, to then take the short ferry hop over to Messina, Sicily (and then all the way back again). The ‘vibe’ is noticeably different to that in Puglia; the scenery is more varied (craggy mountains, hilltops towns, scenic coasts and then fertile plains), the people slightly less open and welcoming and overall, it seems more wild and remote. Puglia is by no means a developed region – apart from the bigger towns and cities, a lot of its rural areas appear to be just row upon row of olive trees and vines. However, parts of Calabria feel a long way from civilisation. Having said that; I was still pleasantly surprised by the fare available in the various Calabrian service stations I stopped at; ‘Ndjuja and mozzarella panini were the order of the day (historically, the region’s hot and humid climate led to food preservation techniques being key and cured meat and salsiccia are popular staples here).
To find out more about Tropea’s unique red onions, you can watch the video below (it’s in Italian but English subtitles are provided):
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.
I first met Allan B. Hill just over 10 years ago through a mutual friend of ours – my old classmate from school Chris. My band The Screenbeats were playing the 93 Feet East venue in the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, East London, supporting the-then buzz band Man Like Me and Chris and Allan came along to watch. In fact, we went for a slap-up curry a few hours before the show; perhaps not the ideal pre-gig preparation on my part. From memory, a group of us then had a boozy night out afterwards and a couple of hazy photos still exist from that night.
A snap from the gig in question; 4th December 2010. The Screenbeats at 93 Feet East, Brick Lane (photo: Emily Trahair (née Joel).
Anyway, 10 years on and Allan and I reconnected for an episode of his The Nostalgic Vagabond podcast where we talk about swapping hectic London life for the South of Italy and the effect the pandemic has had on us all. It was great to catch up after all this time and I really enjoyed our chat.
You can check out the new episode which went live today – it’s available on all good streaming services and you can find out more below.
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.
We are all going to die. Unfortunately, this is an inconvenient, unavoidable fact of life. However, once you have passed onto the next world, how would you like to be remembered? A quaint wooden bench in a public park dedicated to your memory? Your ashes placed in an attractive urn overlooking the family dining table so that you can watch over them as they eat? Or perhaps you would like a distinctive tree planted in your honour? Or you could have an item of food or even better, a panino named after you so that your essence can live on every time someone takes a bite of an unusual, yet delicious sandwich? Well, that is exactly what happened with Pasquale Dell’Erba from Alberobello and ‘Il Pasqualino’.
Pasquale’s views on life after death are not well-documented but one thing is clear; he made a bloody good sandwich (or panino in Italian). He owned and ran a delicatessen on the corner of Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Via Cesare Battisti in the Pugliese town of Alberobello – famous internationally for its white, conically-shaped dwellings known as trulli. His trademark sandwich started to attract attention in the town during the mid-1960s after he began rustling it up for a small group of three or four of his close friends who would meet regularly in front of his shop.
La Pagnottella’s version of ‘Il Pasqualino’
The ingredients varied a little from time to time and depending what was available in his deli, but usually the panino consisted of tuna, capers, salami and provolone cheese. Always in that order and served in either turtle bread (pane tartaruga) or rosetta bread (rosette di pane). It may not initially sound that appetising but the combination worked very well and soon its popularity caught on. The sandwich became a hit with students from several local schools in the area who loved the fact that it was not only good value but also substantial and made using an unusual mix of hearty ingredients.
Soon, Pasquale’s deli couldn’t keep up with the demand and they began pre-making a batch of panini first thing in the morning and then refrigerating them so that they would be instantly ready as customers arrived throughout the course of the day. The term Il Pasqualino (‘The Pasqualino’) was born. Over the next coming decades other bakeries in Alberobello started to serve their own version of the Pasqualino too, sometimes adding ingredients such as marinated mushrooms, pickles or other cold cuts of meat. However, by the 1990s, these bakeries’ tradition of keeping a chest of readymade Pasqualinos in their shops began to fade and it became something of a well-kept local secret. Pasquale’s memory lived on but only amongst those in the know in Alberobello.
Today, you can go into any deli, bakery or café in Alberobello, ask for “un Pasqualino, per favore” and they will know exactly what to make, even though very often it will not be listed anywhere on the menu, or on the board outside. When I visited Alberobello last summer, I avoided the overpriced cafes on the main tourist drag near the ‘trulli zone’ and instead popped into La Pagnottella (Piazza Plebiscito, 10B) around the corner from Chiesa di San Lucia and the popular viewing platform next to it. It is actually quite an upmarket deli that also serves an array of pastries and cakes (sadly I don’t have much of a sweet tooth so give me a sandwich laden with capers and cured meat and fish any day), as well as cheese and fresh pasta.
The lady behind the counter was very friendly and humoured my basic cod-Italian and quickly made me a Pasqualino from scratch – from what I could see, sticking to the traditional ingredients but with the addition of some pickles and a drizzle of olive oil. It was delicious and actually went down very well with an iced coffee on a sweltering summer’s day; the acidity of the capers and pickles cutting through the meat and cheese. The only word of warning is that there was a lot of olive oil – it’s definitely worth picking up an extra napkin or two before you leave the shop.
Signor Pasquale Dell’Erba, the creator of ‘The Pasqualino’ (photo: Alberobello.com).
Signor Pasquale Dell’Erba, the creator of ‘The Pasqualino’ (photo: Alberobello.com).
A word about Alberobello
Alberobello is a UNESCO World Heritage site, having been recognised in 1996 and is one of the most famous tourist destinations in Puglia. The town is renowned for having the largest concentration of trulli (the plural form of ‘trullo’) anywhere in the world. These conical, low-level, whitewashed buildings are particular to Puglia and they actually can’t be found anywhere else outside of Southern Italy. There is also some debate about whether the author J.R.R. Tolkien ever visited Puglia and if the trulli served as the real-life inspiration for his novel The Hobbit and the fictional world of Middle-earth and the region where the hobbits lived called The Shire.
One of the main concentrations of trulli in Alberobello.
Trullis can be found dotted all over Puglia. Whilst many of them are still private residential dwellings, a lot of them have now been converted into holiday homes, agriturismos, shops and restaurants. The story of the trulli begins in the 14th century. The ruling Aquaviva family was keen to avoid paying high property taxes to the Kingdom of Naples, so ordered local peasants to build homes that could be easily taken down, in the event on an inspection. Using the ancient drywall (mortarless) building technique and locally-sourced limestone boulders, the trullis started to appear all over Puglia and became a symbol of the region. Centuries later, many new homes were built in this style, partly as an act of defiance to the ruling family.
Whilst I was keen to visit Alberobello at some stage whilst living in Bari, it wasn’t at the top of my list. I prioritised the baroque and culinary delights of Lecce and the coastal towns Santa Maria di Leuca and Gallipoli first. I actually only stopped off Alberobello for a couple of nights as I was going to the pared-down Locus Festival in nearby Locorotondo and accommodation there was completely fully-booked.
The Comet is Coming at Locus Festival. 14th August 2020.
Locus Festival happens every summer in Puglia and in previous years has attracted the likes of David Byrne, Esperanza Spalding, Four Tet, Floating Points, Lauryn Hill, Theo Parrish, Sly & Robbie and Kamasi Washington to the picturesque town of Locorotondo. Pre-Covid, Locus 2020 had announced a stellar line-up featuring The Pixies, Little Simz, Paul Weller and Kokoroko but sadly the event had to be completely scaled back and most of the acts were unable to play. However, miraculously, some (socially-distanced) gigs were still able to go ahead in the grounds of the Masseria Ferragnano and I saw saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings’ experimental jazz outfit The Comet Is Coming play there. I had seen Shabaka and the band several times in London and at Green Man Festival, so it was a strange experience seeing them playing a gig in the south of Italy during a pandemic year, but a great show all the same.
The following morning, I woke up at 6am and found myself unable to go back to sleep; partly due to the sunlight pouring into my room through a broken blind. It was actually a blessing in disguise as after a typically unsatisfying Italian breakfast of biscuits, pastries and coffee, I was able to explore the trullis of Alberobello without the hordes of tourists and with the August temperatures yet to reach their peak.
The streets and trullis of Alberobello at 7am on a Saturday morning.
There really is no other place in the world like it and the town took on an otherworldly feel at 7am when the streets were quiet apart from a few local businesses opening up for the day. This would be my tip for anyone visiting Alberobello; get up very early and explore the streets without the crowds. Find somewhere for a lunchtime Pasqualino and then have an afternoon pisolino afterwards, if you need it. By 11am, the place was already swarming with selfie-stick wielding tourists and later that evening a bar tried to charge me €9 for a 330cl beer. Needless to say, after speaking to the waiter, I did not pay this.
Salvation was found in the excellent Ristorante La Nicchia though. Now, it did involve a slightly hazardous 15-minute walk (or five minutes if you are driving) along a busy (and dark) main road to get there but it was absolutely worth it. Housed in a complex of trulli 1.5km outside of Alberobello, you immediately got the impression that this was where the locals ate. Great Pugliese fare, a huge wine selection and wallet-friendly prices.
The food at La Nicchia; Ravioli with almonds, lampascioni and burrata.
Braciole in tomato sauce.
For more background reading on Alberobello’s famous Pasqualino panino, head to the Il Panino Italiano Magazine website (yes, there really is a magazine dedicated to the art of the Italian sandwich).
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.
