clair056

What were the UK pop kids, dancers and punks listening to 30 years ago? Here's some clues in the charts  from the New Musical Express 24 December 1983. The Dance Floor charts weren't really a reflection of record sales or even necessarily of what people were dancing to in many UK high street clubs. This one was compiled by the DJ at Birmingham club 'The Garage' so it's probably more a snapshot of what people were listening to there and in similar places where the DJs played an eclectic mix of of  funk, soul and more post-punk funk from the likes of A Certain Ratio and Jah Wobble. Certainly I remember going to lots of student parties in this period where James Brown was obligatory - he was still releasing great records in this period, with 'Bring it On' coming out in 1983 and his last hit 'Living in America' in 1985. The term 'World Music' hadn't yet caught on, the category 'Third World' was used in the NME charts to cover music fr...

The sounds Of the Harlem night Drop one by one into stillness. The last player-piano is closed. The last victrola ceases with the “Jazz Boy Blues.” The last crying baby sleeps And the night becomes Still as a whispering heartbeat. I toss Without rest in the darkness, Weary as the tired night, My soul Empty as the silence, Empty with a vague, Aching emptiness, Desiring, Needing someone, Something. I toss without rest In the darkness Until the new dawn, Wan and pale, Descends like a white mist Into the court-yard. First published 1925. See also: Dream Variations

My favourite Arthur Machen story is the The White People , published in 1899, featuring the diary of a young woman who has stumbled into the world of faery or something similar... 'she told me one very strange story about the hill, and I trembled when I remembered it. She said that people always went there in summer, when it was very hot, and they had to dance a good deal. It would be all dark at first, and there were trees there, which made it much darker, and people would come, one by one, from all directions, by a secret path which nobody else knew, and two persons would keep the gate, and every one as they came up had to give a very curious sign, which nurse showed me as well as she could, but she said she couldn't show me properly. And all kinds of people would come; there would be gentle folks and village folks, and some old people and boys and girls, and quite small children, who sat and watched. And it would all be dark as they came in, except in one corner where some o...

Effigy of Thatcher at the party in Trafalgar Square last night - the hair made out of Sainsbury's carrier bags (insert joke about grocers' daughter here) When Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister in November 1990, me and my workmates at a north London hospital invited some like minded people over to our HIV unit to share a bottle of champagne. Later some of us went down to a party in Trafalgar Square to continue the celebrations. Although Thatcher was forced out of power by a Conservative Party leadership challenge, there was no doubt even then that the poll tax movement, including the riots in central London on March 31 1990, was a major factor in her fall from grace. After ten years or more of defeats at the hands of Thatcher and her cronies it felt great to have been part of something that had shown that they were not invincible, even if it didn't turn out to be quite the political turning point we'd expected - within a few months we were engulfed in the horr...

Up until 1983, the authorities generally left Irish republican funerals alone. An abrupt change of policy by Margaret Thatcher's government resulted in police and soldiers violently intervening in numerous funerals for the remainder of the decade. It was not simply a matter of preventing shots being fired over coffins - the RUC would provocatively try and seize flags, gloves or berets off coffins. There were baton charges and plastic bullets in clashes with mourners. A coffin falls to the ground as Royal Ulster Constabulary officers fire plastic bullets at funerals of IRA Volunteers Paddy Deery and Eddie McSheffrey, Derry City, 2 November 1987 Police try and push through mourners at same funeral: Mourner injured in police baton charge in Derry '87. Police try to seize flag from coffin at 1983 funeral of Joe Cravan of the Irish National Liberation Army Police at the Belfast funderal of Larry Marley in 1987, delayed for three days as a result of police intimidation. And they wo...

KRS-Dan on Flickr has been uploading some yellowing newspaper clippings from the acid house era. This one from the Sun, 2 November 1988, sums up the late Thatcher period. A ludicrous acid house 'trip to hell' cartoon next to an image of Margaret Thatcher as Superman! Well with Duke Dumont's slice of retro-house Need U topping the UK charts in the week of Thatcher's death, we can safely say that house music has outlasted her. Even if bizarrely Need U has been knocked off the top slot by people buying Judy Garland's Ding Dong The Witch is Dead to mark the demise of the one-time Iron Lady. From Music Week, 10 April 2013 - Thatcher should never have messed with the Friends of Dorothy Related: Thatcher's War on Acid House by Michael Holden (vice.com, April 2013): 'First she came for the milk. Then she came for the mines. Then she ran out of things to come for, so she went after the soccer fans and acid house. It might sound unlikely in an age where there are ...

In 1944 the Nazi occupation of Paris was in its last deadly phase. The RAF was bombing the city's railway stations and the Resistance was stepping up its activities - to be met with fierce repression and mass executions. Following a show trial, 23 members of a Jewish and other migrant workers' resistance group led by Armenian communist Missak Manouchian were executed, most of them in Paris in February 1944. A group of artists and writers linked with various degrees of commitment with the Resistance met and socialised in these conditions, holding parties in each others houses with quite a guest list. Pablo Picasso was living in Paris at the time and wrote a play, Desire Caught by the Tail, which was performed in the home of surrealist writer Michel Leiris , with Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beavoir and  Albert Camus taking part, and the audience including Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan and Picasso himself. The party continued after the play: 'Those who stayed after midnight...

Excellent Dublin newspaper/blog Rabble has an interesting piece on the Public Dance Halls Act 1935 in Ireland, which remains in force to this day. The Act requires a licence from the state for any dancing 'which is open to the public and in which persons present are entitled to participate actively' and applies broadly not just to pubs and clubs but to any 'place' defined as 'a building (including part of a building), yard, garden, or other enclosed place, whether roofed or not roofed and whether the enclosure and the roofing (if any) are permanent or temporary'. In practice, the police have historically used this even to apply to private houses in some cases. As Rabble points out, the Act was originally passed on the back of a moral panic about jazz undermining traditional Irish culture - but ironically its implementation undermined that very culture as it was used to stop country dances too. The future regulation of drinking and dancing in Ireland is a live...

The working class style tribes of  the 1980s have been nicely recreated in Shane Meadows'  This is England films/TV series. But some of the best contemporary images of that world that I have come across are by Chris Porsz, many of them collected in his excellent book 'New England: the culture and people of an English New Town during the 1970s and 80s' Many of the more cliched images of 80s sub-cultures are based on a tiny minority of people in bands or scene setters in big city clubs - a long way from how people on the dole or with low pay tried to make a mark with their hair, clothes and music in towns where sometimes the few exisiting clubs wouldn't even let them in. Portz's pictures were taken in Peterborough, but they could have been taken almost anywhere in England in the early '80s, with punks, pychobillies, rockabillies and skinheads hanging out in town centres with bottles of cider for refreshment. Certainly they remind me of Luton at that time .  ...

Girl Germs   is a 'feminist not-for-profit club night that showcases women-fronted bands' with their next night coming up on April 27 2013   (8 pm - 2 am) at  Power Lunches.    'The line-up includes  The Wharves ,  Shopping , and   Skinny Girl Diet . There will also be zines for sale, courtesy of  Vampire Sushi distro , and DJs playing everything from Beyonce to Bratmobile, until the early hours. We're super excited about the lineup this time.  The Wharves  blend taut rhythms and guitars with gorgeous, reverb-heavy harmonies to create instant ear-worms.  Shopping  are made up of members of some of our favourite bands: Trash Kit, Wetdog and Cover Girl. The result is as urgent and melodic as you'd expect from these DIY veterans.  Skinny Girl Diet  describe themselves as a 'fierce girl gang from London'.  Everett True  describes them as ' Gothic, grunge AND teen female.' A goth/grunge, fierce teen gir...