clair056

'Because all these serious faces’ll drive you mad, the only meaning is without meaning– Music blends with the heartbeat universe and we forget the brain beat' (Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels, 1965)   Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) - photo from when he joined the Naval Reserve in 1943

Playwright and actor Steven Berkoff (b.1937) wrote an autobiography 'Free Association' in 1997. Born in a Jewish family in Stepney (his father was a tailor), he spent his teengage years on the Woodberry Down Estate and hanging out around Stamford Hill (he went to Hackney Downs School, as did Harold Pinter). The book includes some great descriptions of going out dancing in London in the early 1950s, in particular at the Tottenham Royal, the 51 Club in Soho and the Lyceum Ballroom. Tottenham Royal: The Mecca 'I recall in my youth the extreme beauty of some of the men and women, the sharply fierce eyes and beautiful peach-like skins and the men with their handsome Celtic faces. They would gather together like warring clans at the weekly stomp at the Tottenham Royal,which was run by Mecca. I was to write a short story about that  dance hall called Mecca - it was published in my collection Gross Intrusion. What an ironic title, Mecca Dance Halls, for it was indeed our Mecca and...

Struggling to remember the names of Cold War US presidents? Here's a handy South London mnemonic taught to my daughter by her history teacher! 'Ryan takes ecstasy. Kenny just nicks Ford cars really badly' = Roosevelt/Truman/Eisenhower/Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon/Ford/Carter/Reagan/Bush How about Russian leaders in the same period: 'Silly Kids Buy Guns. Yes' = Stalin/Khrushchev/Brezhnev/Gorbachev/Yeltsin

Protests are spreading across Turkey following the violent police assault on the Gezi park occupation on Taksim Square in Istanbul city centre. At least 100 people have been injured as gas and water cannon have been deployed against people protesting against the demolition of the park to build a shopping centre. Pictures from: http://occupygezipics.tumblr.com/ Earlier, occupiers had put up tents and had the usual occupy mix of meetings, discussions, music and hanging out. This video shows people singing Çav Bella - the Turkish translation of the Italian partisan song, Bella Ciao.

Santa Maria, Brazil, 2013 'Sixteen people will face criminal charges in connection with a deadly fire at a Brazil nightclub in January. More than 240 people were killed when insulation foam caught fire and spread toxic fumes through the packed venue in the southern town of Santa Maria. Police said the blaze started when the singer of a band held a firework close to the ceiling, which then caught fire. The singer, the band's producer, the club's owners, and fire officials will be charged with negligent homicide. A police report published on Friday said dozens of eyewitnesses reported seeing the singer on stage holding the firework which triggered the blaze. Attempts by the singer and a security guard to extinguish the fire failed when the extinguisher they used did not work, the witnesses described. Many said that the security guards at the Kiss nightclub at first tried to stop people from leaving the club. The fact that the club only had one door was described by the invest...

A new low in corporate clubbing at the Shimmy club in Glasgow, where women have complained about a two way mirror looking in to the women's toilets which groups of men can pay to view from an adjoining function room: 'Allegations that a nightclub in Glasgow has secretly fitted a two-way mirror to allow male guests to spy on the women's toilets "as a bit of fun" are being investigated by police and council licensing officers.Glasgow city council said it had received complaints that the Shimmy nightclub had installed a spy mirror – without warning female guests – between the toilets and a function room that was allegedly rented to private parties for £800. A customer at the club called Amy told the Guardian she was warned about the two-way mirror by another customer when she visited Shimmy's recently to celebrate her birthday. Distressed, she left the toilet, and noticed that people in the club's main room could glimpse inside the toilets. The main view int...

'Once upon a time New York nightclubs catered to the aristocracy of the fabulous, to those with the looks, the style, or the connections to gain admittance to the world of the night. That all changed with the invention of bottle service. Buy a table for some astronomical sum, and mere money will admit you to this world which once excluded the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, with their real jobs and neat suits. Sucking the credit cards out of their wallets became the main game, and the nightclubs became big business. Nightclubs ceased producing their own kind of celebrity, and became dependent on attracting the sports and entertainment stars of their day. The nightclub became, in other words, just an enterprise dependent upon the spectacular, rather than one of its prime engines of efflorescence. The game became one of attracting celebrities, who might in turn attract the bankers and hedge fund men for the VIP rooms. The general admission crowd down on the dance floor would be largely for ...