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Introduction to Groove Grove Graphics is an exhibition about West London’s Groove Grove extraordinary music scene rom WWII to today. It explores the sounds Graphics that emerged rom successive generations o displaced soldiers, bohemians, economic migrants and political exiles who, living cheek by Jane Goodsir jowl, entertained themselves by borrowing, swapping and transorming John Phillips musical ideas.
Groove Grove Graphics ’ origins lay in Agitpop, an earlier exhibition at londonprintstudio, eaturing activist graphics rom May ’68 to today (2008). While planning that show we asked ourselves, what did West London contribute to ‘the Revolution’? We concluded that it excelled in designing the uniorms and creating the soundtrack. But this exhibition isn’t just a bout local Sex ‘n’ Docs ‘n’ Frock ‘n’ Role. It is also a response to other exhibitions, and to the questions: what is worthy o remembrance, and how are histories told?
Museum exhibitions are structured by classication systems that segregate and attribute signicance to the items on display. Their metaphorical ideal is the perect ossil, clinically extracted rom its precise location in petried time and revealed to the public in all its decontexturalised glory.The British Music Experience: Britain’s Interactive Museum o Popular Music (currently on show at the O2 Dome) guides the visitor through discreet time zones, presenting a high-tech spectacle o popular ‘icons.’ But it ails to reveal either the historical roots or the collective social experi ences rom which this vibrant culture grew.Island Lie (last year’s exhibition celebrating 50 years o Island Records) came closer to acknowledging the Caribbean, Black British and American contribution to UK popular music (hardly surprising, given Island’s origins as an importer o ska and reggae), but again, as visitors moved switly through the maze o digitally re-mastered records and larger-than-lie portraits o the ‘stars’, the exhibition - more corporate advertising than londonprintstudio, 2010 cultural product - seemed to emphasise the enormous gap between www.londonprintstudio.org.uk the music industry and its audience.
Groove Grove Graphics is ounded on the premise that common experiences run through the lives o successive generations o West Londoners. Disturbed boundaries arising rom overcrowding or inquisitiveness, coupled with a host o infuences that have poured into Titles you can't find anywhere else
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Introduction to the area, have led people to challenge established norms and create Groove Grove new or hybrid cultural orms. This exhibition employs themes (Absolute top 30 playlist Graphics Beginners, Do It Yoursel, War Ina Babylon, Sympathy or the Devil and so Jane Goodsir on) to explore those infuences that have shaped musical culture. MIA Galang John Phillips Tubeway Army Are Friends Electric? The exhibition has drawn on the generosity o many local people who The Pink Fairies Portobello Shufe have loaned record sleeves rom their personal collections. Inevitably The Ruts Babylon is Burning many o these items are scarred by time. Creating displays rom them is in keeping with our aim to present a living story, not a denitive history. David Bowie Ziggy Stardust It is a speculative collage o lived experience that aims, despite many Cat Stevens Portobello Road omissions, to celebrate creativity in the neighbourhood and to s timulate The Raincoats Adventures Close to Home urther discussion and debate. The Pink Fairies Portobello Shufe The Who My Generation Motorhead Motorhead Pulp I Spy Lord Kitchener London is the Place or Me The Clash White Man in Hammersmith Palais Junior Dan Mystic Grove Aswad Warrior Charge Estelle 1980 Vivien Goldman Launderette Sex Pistols Holidays in the Sun Lily Allen LDN Gorillaz Feel Good Inc. Hawkwind Silver Machine Nick Lowe Basing Street The Slits Typical Girls Quintessence Notting Hill Gate Delroy Washington The Streets o Ladbroke Grove Adamski feat. Seal Killer T. Rex 20th Century Boy Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK Blur Blue Jeans Image © Omtentacle (Design partnership o Mike Mcinnerney and Dudley Edwards),1967 2 www.mikemcinner ney.com, www.amazedltd.com Killing Joke Eighties Titles you can't find anywhere else
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The Originators: With their rash beginnings as a pig arm, then a racetrack, and Punk, Dub & with the commercial bustle o the market as a main artery, the the Female winding streets around Portobello Road have always been a ocus o community activity and revelry. Doubtless the late great mystic, Jean Principle Michel, bard o our parish, knew the status o ley lines around the Vivien Goldman groovy Grove, but there must be some sort o harmonic convergence going on in Notting Hill and Dale or so much music to dey gravity by spilling up and down the slope between two Tube stations: Ladbroke Grove in the valley and Notting Hill up top. Beore it became a strip o upscale boutiques, All Saint’s Road where the Carnival kicks o was known as The Front Line; mainly because o the role the old Mangrove Cae played as a centre or black activism. In the 1970s in particular the streets around the Front Line were truly a revolutionary vanguard charting the rise to some cultural dominance o black Brits and emales o all hues. The role o hippies in shaping the Grove ambiance is documented elsewhere, but though there was a much vaunted rivalry between hippies and the punks who ollowed, the anti-belie systems o the two successive youthquakes were quite similar; cut rom the same torn katan, you might say. ‘Never trust a hippy’ is the punk equivalent o the hippies’ ‘Don’t trust anyone over 30’ - both adages that lose their favour ater a decade or so. Those crazy Pink Fairies, Motorhead and Hawkwind certainly paved the way or the punky Grove denizens who ollowed. They may have been inspirational on the LSD-anarcho ront, but when it came to our old riends race and gender, the Hawkwind-Fairies axis wasn’t exactly progressive. Unreconstruct ed lads all, they did allow some space or the emale principle, as represented by naked, body-painted dancer Stacia’s ree expression. But the message to girls was as loud as Hawkwind’s ear-busting classic, Silver Machine - you weren’t invited to their party unless you were naked and covered in body paint. (O course, The Slits, one o the Grove’s most noted emme bands, sent shockwaves by portraying themselves naked and daubed in mud on their Cut album sleeve – but mud was just one o their Neneh Cherry, Vivian Golman and riends 4 outrageous outts.) Photograph © David Corio, www.davidcorio.com Titles you can't find anywhere else
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The Originators: Arguably the denitive tipping point rom one cycle into another The Originators: So the shebeens became extinct, to be re-born as warehouse parties, Punk, Dub & came when Clash co-ounder Joe Strummer saw the Sex Pistols Punk, Dub & then raves - and that thunderous reggae bass began to boom rom the Female perorm in 1976 and decided that his lively rockabilly combo, The 101- the Female synthesisers, not wood. White chicks with dreadlocks sprouted up Principle ers (regulars at the Elgin pub on the Grove) was passé. This epiphany Principle all over Europe and haute couture ashion designers in Italy started Vivien Goldman Vivien Goldman showed Strummer that the uncaged rage o punk was the best route saety-pinning satin gowns. to expressing the gritty but cheery realities o lie in the communal squats he requented around West London. The Clash were emale- Around the world, they were using such signiers to express a rebel riendly ; they even had a woman manager at one stage. So The sense, a quest to be or iginal. ‘True dem no know,’ as Jamaican patois Clash decided to take their sister band, The Slits (managed by puts it; the real origins, that originated a revolution, started right another Grove creative stalwart, lm-maker Don Letts) on the road here in West London. And like they say in reggae - the original is still with them or their era-dening bus tour o Britain. The Slits dressed in the greatest. subversive gear, their clothes combinations demolishing pre-existing ideas o ‘nice’, like pairing shnet tights with Doc Martens. They all do it now, natch. Today’s reigning West London musical princess, Lily Allen, pairs her ass-kickin’ boots with Chanel ballgowns. Knickers over tights? ‘Fess up, Madonna and Lady Gaga - who rocked the look rst? Yay, West London girls! But back then, everything was new and kinda underground, and what with (white) teenage singer Arri-Upp’s dreadlocks, The Slits’ own bus driver didn’t want to transport them.
Travis was unusually intellectual and politically conscious or the record business. He created a climate in which the regular social barriers dissolved: Rough Trade sold reggae records alongside punk 45s and anzines, responding to the proximity o so much British-Caribbean creativity. It was a time when a young dread would nd it hard to book a regular venue Up West, so abandoned buildings and dodgy basements near the store became the area’s playground: shebeens - all night dance sessions - dotted the area liberally. Our avoured joint was DJ Weasel’s: an end-o-terrace house right by the junction o Portobello and the Westway. Now it’s a normal home, fowers at the window, but back then, the basement was crammed with the creators o West London sounds that would rock the world: the Clash, Sex Pistols, Slits, Boy George, Generation X, Aswad and Amazulu with their dreadlocked lead singer, Anne-Marie Ruddock, who, along with the sassy Mo-Dettes represented West London girly ska in the 1980s.
But the party couldn’t last orever. One night the Dreads arrived to Boy George 6 open up and ound that the owners had selshly removed the foor. Photograph © Janette Beckman, www.janettebeckman.com Titles you can't find anywhere else
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Absolute Colin MacInnes was a major writer who took as his subject new and Beginners - unacknowledged voices who emerged in 1950s’ West London: ‘working class child mothers, ageing semi-proessional whores, the authentic A West London agonies o homosexual love, and the new race o English-born story by coloured boys.’ Colin McInnes Jane Goodsir Published in 1959,Absolute Beginners is set in an area bounded by West Kilburn, Kensal Green, Latimer Road, Notting Hill Gate and Bayswater. The reason why people migrate to the neighbourhood is that however horrible the area is, you’re ree there! ‘Give me our London Napoli I’ve been describing, with its railway scenery, and crescents that were meant to twist elegantly but now look as i they’re lurching high, and huge houses too tall or their width cut up into twenty fatlets, and ront acades it never pays anyone to paint.’
Following the tradition o other great London writers, he described the poorer areas o our city. Like Charles Dickens and George Orwell, Alexis Korner and Blues Incorporated with US GI’s at The Marquee,1964 MacInnes was both a novelist and a journalist preoccupied with the Photograph © John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins interplay o dierent cultures and social strata. MacInnes wrote in the ‘That brings me to today, and the third item in my education, my voices o the teenagers who lived in this area: the junkie ‘modernist’ university, you might say, and that’s the jazz clubs. Now, you can think Dean Swit; teenage pimp The Wizard, a hustler wise beyond his years; what you like about the art o jazz- quite rankly I don’t really care what shameless and sweet seventeen year old Crepe Suzette; jazz obsessed you think, because jazz is a thing so wonderul that i anybody doesn’t young Mr Cool, ‘born and bred on this island o both races’; Ed the Ted, rave about it, all you can eel or them is pity: not that I’m making out I and skife an the Misery Kid. really understand it at all- I mean, certain LPs leave me speechless. But MacInnes developed an experimental style, one which oreshadows the great thing about the jazz world, and all the kids that enter into it, the music and art that subsequently developed locally. Critic Nick is that no one, not a soul, cares what your class is, or what your race is, Bentley observes that MacInnes incorporates unocial and unlicensed or what your income, or i you’re a boy, or girl, or bent, or versatile, or language creating a disruption o standard English which ‘operates as a what you are - so long as you dig the scene and can behave yoursel, statement or proclamation o rejection and critique o dominant cultural and have let all that crap behind you, too, when you come in the jazz values. It is the mainstream reader who is the true absolute beginner in club door. The result o all this is that, in the jazz world, you meet all kinds this environment, whilst the narrative voice represents itsel as condent o cats, on absolutely equal terms, who can clue you up in all kinds o o its place within its own subcultural world, and projects directly to directions- in social directions, in culture directions, in sexual directions, perceived ‘members’ o that marginalized group.’ Central to the novel and in racial directions... in act almost anywhere, really, you want to go to learn. So that’s why, when the teenage thing began to seem to me to is the indierence demonstrated by the characters to the conventions all into the hands o exhibitionists and moneylenders, I cut out gradua lly o ‘the dullest society in Western Europe: a society blighted by blankets rom the kiddo watering holes, and made it or the bar s, and clubs, and o negative resp ectability, and o dogmatic do mesticity. The teenagers concerts where the older number s o the jazz world gathered.’ don’t seem to care or this, and have organized their underground o 8 joy.’ Joy was ound in music - and particularl y in jazz clubs: Quotes taken rom Absolute Beginners and England, hal English. Titles you can't find anywhere else
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Speed Pop For me the multi pop-cultural 60s began right here, on Southam History Mix Street (or what’s let o it, underneath Trellick Tower) in Kensal. A year Tom Vague ater the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, Colin MacInnes’ novel Absolute Beginners appeared in print with Roger Mayne’s portrait o a Southam Street mod on the cover. The term ‘mod’ (ironically) was an old one: once reerring to the 1950s modernist jazz movement, it now meant a musical subculture around blues, R’n’B, ska and soul.
Absolute Beginners was a landmark both in late 50s & 60s mod culture and in the late 70s revival. Julien Temple’s 1985 musical lm version opened (like the book) with a series o Roger Mayne’s Southam Street photos. David Bowie provided the theme song and the soundtrack also eatured London-born reggae artist David Emmanuel (Smiley Culture) and his electro-version o Miles Davis’ 1958 hit So What .
Local mod Tony Sparsis remembers going to the Cavern Club, Holland Park to see the High Numbers (an early incarnation o The Who), ‘then up to the Goldhawk Club in Shepherd’s Bush or the same,’ but the bands too were paying tributes o their own. In 1977, The Jam posed or This is the Modern World under the Westway roundabout where the ‘58 riots started in mod homage to MacInnes’ novel, and the 1979 lm o The Who’s Quadrophenia eatured scenes shot on Freston Road and Phil Daniels visiting a West Indian street in Notting Dales to score blues (amphetamines). West London was already littered with the relics o rst wave mod-culture when the second arrived.
The Clash also saw themselves as emerging rom an iconic moment o violence in West London’s history. Having played with the Sex Pistols at the Screen on the Green, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon were on Ladbroke Grove or the start o the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival riot. Following the attempted arrest o a pickpocket, smouldering tensions erupted into the inevitable clash o police and youths. Junior Murvin’s reggae hit Police and Thieves became the soundtrack o the ‘76 Carnival, and was later covered or The Clash’s rst album, and Rocco Macaulay’s iconic photo o the ‘Clash’ moment when policemen charged at youths under the Westway duly adorned the Joe Strummer, 1975 10 back cover. Photograph © Julian Yewdall Titles you can't find anywhere else
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Speed Pop ‘When I think o the punk years, I always think o one particular spot, Speed Pop The Beatles made Portobello amous in the 1964 lm A Hard Day’s History Mix just at the point where the Westway diverges rom Harrow Road History Mix Night , and in ‘66, Cat Stevens was ‘getting hung up all day on smiles Tom Vague and pursues the line o the Hammersmith and City tube tracks to Tom Vague walking down Portobello Road or miles.’ But the most important rock Westbourne Park Station. Ater 1976, one o the stanchions holding and pop route isn’t Portobello, Ladbroke Grove, the Westway or All up the Westway was emblazoned with grati which said simply, ‘The Saints Road - it’s Basing Street: home o Island recording studios. As Clash’. When rst sprayed the grati laid a psychic boundary marker well as ska, rocksteady and reggae, Chris Blackwell’s roster went or the group – this was their manor, this was how they saw London.’ through olk, progressive and glam rock. As Island became the rst big independent rock label, Basing Street was requented by Nick Drake, Jon Savage, ‘Punk London’, Evening Standard 1991 Fairport Convention, John Martyn, Roxy Music, Cat Stevens and Jethro The area’s history o unrest wasn’t the only infuence on its music. In Tull. Ater starring in the classic ’72 reggae lm The Harder They Come , 1957 the legendary maverick producer Joe Meek was living at 20 Jamaican artist Jimmy Cli let Island or a better deal elsewhere, but Arundel Gardens. A key gure in the Notting Hill bedsit recording luckily or Island, Bob Marley arrived in Basing Street soon ater, and tradition, his makeshit studio eatured an old honky-tonk piano rom Blackwell perected rock-reggae usion to create the phenomenally Portobello Market. Meek’s tenancy came to an end when the studio successul Wailers’ album Catch a Fire . / fat hosted the launch party or the skife single Sizzling Hot by Jimmy In 1976 the birth o Rough Trade at 202 Kensington Park Road Miller and the Barbecues. Meek then moved across Ladbroke Grove crystallised the punk rock and reggae scene in West London. Indieness to set up Denis Preston’s recording studios on Lansdowne Road. in its original post-punk, rad-em, DIY orm was dened by the all-girl Improvised recording studios might have begun as a necessity, but Raincoats, who ormed in the rst Rough Trade shop. Most o Geo later experiments with recording in bedrooms and bathrooms were Travis’ rst customers were either starting a punk band, a anzine or part o the production values even or the most successul, money- a reggae sound-system (a group o DJs, MCs & sound engineers), making musicians. It could be one orm o recognising the musical and the shop acted as the oce o Mark Perry’s Snifn’ Glue anzine, heritage o West London and its poor immigrant communities living the rst o many Xeroxed eorts by punk ans which were distributed under the likes o notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman. Derek by Rough Trade and Better Badges at 286 Portobello Road – Jones remembers skife and jazz holding sway over rock’n’roll down including Vague . the pub: ‘in Latimer they couldn’t aord drums, so they had Danny McDermott playing on a hard-seated chair with a couple o beer bottles, and that would be the rhythm section.’
Despite his unscrupulous dealings, Rachman had his supporters, and only gained widespread notoriety ater the 1963 Proumo Aair, when it emerged that both Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davis had been his mistresses. The Conservative Secretary o State or War John Proumo’s own aair with Keeler had come to public attention ater a ght at the All Nighters’ Club between Keeler’s other lovers - the jazz pianist ‘Lucky’ Aloysius Gordon and Johnny Edgecombe - which Tom Vague edited the punk anzine Vague distributed by Rough Trade and wrote or Zigzag magazine on Talbot Road. His London psychogeography reports can be ound ended with Johnny ring shots at her door and being arrested or in the Clash London Calling CD set, the pop history guidebook Getting It Straight In 12 attempted murder. Notting Hill Gate and at www.vaguerants.org Titles you can't find anywhere else
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How Reggae Sunday morning, past three, in a school hall near Ladbroke Grove. Won the West Tonight it’s been transormed into a Kingston-style ‘bashment dance’ Lloyd Bradley - strictly ragga reggae, with a tempo and delivery best described as hardcore. This patch o West London, and its particular attachment to reggae, has been a crucial actor in shaping music in the UK.
London’s original sound systems, Duke Vin the Tickler and Count Suckle, played in the basements o Notting Hill as ar back as 1955. Bob Marley and the other Wailers set up home in Neasden and, beore their advance rom Island paid their ares back to Jamaica, immersed themselves in the area’s black lie.
Britain’s most consistently successul reggae act, Aswad, were known as the Lions o Ladbroke Grove, while mainstream hitmakers Black Slate, Misty In Roots and Janet Kay all came rom the West. In the mid seventies, the Metro Youth Club in St Luke’s Road, Westbourne Park, was where Suerer HiFi, London’s premier sound system, deended itsel and was rarely beaten in sound clas hes. Aklam Hall, o Portobello Road, was another prime reggae venue, and Shepherd’s Bush Market, Harlesden High Street and All Saints Road were ‘Frontlines’ - more West Kingston than West London. And even though All Saints Road has long been gentried, there’s the People’s Sound Record Shop, run by Jah Vigo, a selector on Duke Vin’s original sound system. He recalls, ‘there weren’t no big clubs, even though the need or them was big. Which is why the sound-system business take o here like it did. I think people that had come to England was more receptive to a Jamaican-style dance than even they had been in Jamaica.’ London’s reggae recording industry really began when Sonny Roberts, a music-obsessed Jamaican carpenter, established Planetone Records in two rooms o his house. It was Roberts who struck a deal with Chris Blackwell when the fedgling Island Records (another West London operation) needed premises bigger than Blackwell’s spare bedroom and Planetone needed a wholesaler. In the early sixties, Island Records was the leading importer and distributor o Jamaican music, and its ‘feet’ was another West London eature: Blackwell would race around town delivering records in his Mini Cooper. Chris Aswad 14 Blackwell hooked up with Lee Gopthal, a Jamaican accountant, Photograph © David Corio, www.davidcorio.com Titles you can't find anywhere else
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How Reggae Won and Trojan Records was born: a label that would enjoy nearly 30 UK How Reggae Won scene any more - thanks largely to pirate radio deejays. And it’s these the West chart hits. Gopthal also built up Musik City, London’s best ever chain the West deejays who are the local stars, because a vast proportion o the Lloyd Bradley o specialist reggae shops, by expanding his original retail outlet - a Lloyd Bradley music is coming in rom Jamaica rather than being made here, as stall in Portobello Road market. has been the case in previous decades. One thing hasn’t changed though - London still leads t he way in UK reggae. I anything, according Later in the seventies, that unholy alliance o punk ’n’ reggae was to promoter/manager Deborah Ballard, it has grown stronger over initially a West London phenomenon and would soon be taken the past ew years. ‘London is like the apex o a triangle with its to its limits by Westway rockers The Clash. Then in 1977, ater Johnny base points at Kingston and New York, the centres or contemporary Rotten announced on Capital Radio that Dr Alimantado’s Born or reggae music - artists and people in the business go up and down A Purpose was one o his avourite singles, the Jamaican deejay’s between London and Kingston. That means there’s always such name became the most commonly sighted grati in the Westbourne a creative presence here - especially in areas like Ladbroke Grove Park area. Seventies’ artists like The Heptones and Perry would or Brixton.’ visit regularly. © Evening Standard The punk ’n’ reggae combination shouldn’t have come as too much Lloyd Bradley’s Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King is out now o a surprise, according to Dennis Bovell, leader o reggae band (Viking, £12.99) Matumbi and owner o Suerer HiFi. ‘They weren’t King ’s Road designer punk - that came later. These were white kids rom the council fats and tower blocks around the Harrow Road and Ladbroke Grove who had grown up around black kids and elt they were being dumped on in just the same way. How they dressed was anti-ashion - their dad’s trousers, donkey jackets, Dr Martens, old shirts ... anything that rejected the glam rock that was going on around them. And because they hung around with black kids, naturally they listened to reggae.’
Don Letts, a successul reggae eature lm director (Dancehall Queen) and video maker, was also there. ‘The Roxy was the rst proper punk venue anywhere, and my riends and I played the sounds. I had to play the records in between the bands and, although there were always plenty o bands, there were only about ten punk records and they were all so short. So to ll in the time, w e started playing our own reggae records and the kids loved it.’
Franco Rosso’s 1980 lm Babylon , set among the area’s sound-system culture, was a sharply scripted slice-o-lie lm that managed to get across the area’s racial and social politics, as well as the internal conficts o growing up in London as a second generation Caribbean Ranking Dread in Dub, 1981 16 immigrant. These days, there’s little parochialism in the sound system Image © Rod Vass, www.rodvass.com Titles you can't find anywhere else
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Before and What happened beore and ater the celebrated golden years o After the Punky the 60s, 70s and early 80s? Reggae party Under the infuence o Hollywood movies and US troops stationed in Jane Goodsir the UK, most London teenagers were, until the 1950s, buying American records. American bebop was admired in the ate 40s, and a London- based jazz scene was developing. Musicians played club nights at the Mapleton Hotel in the West End, and at the short-lived but historic Club 11 in Soho. The nest ree-orm jazz was played by Joe Harriott and Harold MacNair - who went on to develop jazz usion in the 60s. American Harry Belaonte was the only black musician to have hits in the 1950s’ UK charts with calypso; but many calypsonians made a living in local clubs. Lord Kitchener arrived rom the Caribbean in 1948 - one o the original Windrush emigrants - and became an important gure on the London scene.
By the mid 50s the jazz scene had polarised - ‘modernists’ and ‘trad’ enthusiasts wore dierent styles, and avoided one another. In 1954, Lonnie Donegan emerged rom the trad jazz scene with skife. Originally American olk music (mainly ballads) perormed on home-made instruments, the skife craze swept London and beyond. Donegan was the rst UK male to have chart success in the US, exporting American songs back to the US. D onegan was an inspiration, maintaining that the English had been ‘imbued with the idea that music was or the upper classes. You had to be very clever to play music. When I came along with the old three chords, people began to think that i I could do it, so could they. The reintroduction o the olk music did that.’
Gradually, UK artists populated UK charts, with local musicians in the 60s taking their inspiration rom American blues, soul and olk. Local soul singer Dusty Springeld introduced Tamla Motown music to UK television, and live soul, jazz, and blues music were played at the Flamingo Club all nighters in Wardour Street, where the sound systems also eatured ska and bluebeat. The mix attracted a multiracial crowd, including the emerging ‘mods’. In the mid 60s the scene moved on Dusty Springeld, 1965 - Pink Floyd playing at the short-lived UFO (then at Middle Earth) was Photograph © John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, www.hoppy.be/principal.htm inspired by drugs and psychedelia. London’s underground culture Titles you can't find anywhere else
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Before and centred round Ladbroke Grove with Mick Farren, the Deviants, the after the punky Pink Fairies, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Sot Machine and many others living reggae party locally or dropping in. Jane Goodsir After punky reggae
Post-punk thrived in West London, with infuential acts such as Killing Joke making their presence elt in the 1980s. Mute Records in Harrow Road signed ‘industrial’ bands, and ound success with Erasure, Depeche Mode and later Goldrapp. Mute also established oshoot labels in experimental electronic and dance. As rave culture went mainstream in the late 80s, Rhythm King had success with S’Xpress, Beatmasters and Leteld; Guerilla Records had progressive house with William Orbit and Nation Records had UK alternative Asian. This Harrow Road scene saw small labels and studios working in the same building as london printstudio.
Mainstream music fourished locally with Seal, All Saints (initially on ZTT), Estelle on Richard Branson’s V2 and Omar on Harlesden’s Kongo records. Elastica were locals, MIA started her career as a West London rebel girl and Rough Trade continued to manage young artists. Lily Allen has emerged as a chronicler o West London’s scene and the worlds o music and animation merge in the studio where Gorrillaz images are created nearby.
The spirit o usion - a musical genre emerging here in the 60s - endures in this neighbourhood. John Martyn blurred the boundaries Titles you can't find anywhere else
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Interviews With Joe Boyd, Dudley Edwards, John Hopkins, International Times Mike Mcinnerney and Delroy Washington. John Hopkins: ‘The rst issue o International Times was in October 1966 - the rst underground press in this country. Started on a shoestring, it got popular because it was useul - it talked about crash pads, art, Revolt into Style culture, theatre, drugs, police, gigs. It lled a gap where there was Joe Boyd: ‘The thing I noticed in Britain was clothing. The US wasn’t quite as no communication in the media. It served a whole disparate lot o tribal; nobody put a lot o eort into dressing up. In ‘64 in a London people and we got to nd out about one another. In ‘67 we were olk club I saw this guy - I was completely dumbounded because busted or obscenity. The police used somebody’s complaint as an he had these white boots on, this white trenchcoat tied tightly at the excuse to close the paper down.’ waist with a belt, his hair all bouant - he just looked extraordinary. I’d Mike Mcinnerney: ‘Hoppy asked me to become Art Director o International Times , and never seen anybody look like that so I thought, obviously homosexual. I worked on it until Issue 13 or 14 - just ater the police raid. We were It was still a shock to see somebody be famboyantly eminine. I said, working with linotype machines - very hard to design with and be who’s that guy? It was Rod Stewart.’ psychedelic with. The chance to do more interesting stu with layout came when we changed to oset litho so we were able to cut and Street art paste. Much more fexible.’ Dudley Edwards: ‘We painted everything we had the opportunity to paint. We were The mid 60s scene orerunners o grati artists in that sense - the swinging sixties thing was already happening, but we were the rst to take it out as street MM: ‘At Hoppy’s fat and other gatherings it was denitely a salon culture, art. We did the acade o Wol Olins, urnitu re, painted cars. We’d have with the apartments close together. Designers and artists and painted the pavements and streets i we could. We discovered that musicians at the time were trying to articulate and make sense o a guy called Etchie Powell was responsible or 90% o the airground what this drug experience was; to bring this into their work. There art in this country, so we went to meet the master. An unassuming guy was denitely an interest in the drug culture - about states o working in a backstreet in Battersea - he showed us all the techniques consciousness - which later moved on into mysticism.’ he used.’ DE: ‘There was a lot o cross-pollenisation. It was a tighter scene then. I Titles you can't find anywhere else
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DE: ‘Beore fower power had reached these shores, there was news Credits Groove Grove Graphics was curated by We would like to thank about all the acid that was going on - about light shows at the Jane Goodsir, John Phillips and members Faisal AbduAllah o the Bring into Being Team Phoenix Bay Fillmore and Avalon in San Francisco. There were some beginning to Research: Janette Beckman happen in London - Mark Boyle had been doing lightshows at UFO Ismaa Ari, Kerry Riordan, Daniel Scown Joe Boyd with Pink Floyd. The guy rom Avalon came over and helped us put Web design, blog design, design: Lloyd Bradley Matt Scoins Francoise Brough on a lightshow at the Roundhouse which we booked or 2 nights. At Collection, acquisitions and George Butler the rst Paul McCartney did an electronic music track. For the second loans management: David Corio show we got Jimi Hendrix to play or £50. He brought an audience - Kerry Riordan, Ismaa Ari Ian Clarke Commissioning: Dudley Edwards maybe 2000, 3000 people. I was watching Hendrix and thinking ‘Is he Cat Millar, Kerry Riordan The Evening Standard as good as I think he is?’’ PR: Larry Ford and Cat Millar, Tamzin Simpson Gloria Cummings, Flamboyan Black Music Interviews: Bill Godber Ismaa Ari, Kerry Riordan, Simon MacAndrew, Vivien Goldman Delroy Washington: ‘It’s kind o strange. I would nd out that the Rolling Stones were Matt Scoins, Daniel Scown Sue Hall Exhibition copy: Dave Hendley infuenced by black people, so I got introduced to black American Kerry Riordan, Daniel Scown, John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins blues music through the Rolling Stones. A lot o people don’t talk Ismaa Ari, Matt Scoins Peter Jenner about that kind o stu. It’s unny, black youth in this country. Well or Photowall: Steve Jameson me I got introduced to blues and deep black music through white Ismaa Ari, Kerry Riordan, David Kerekes Matt Scoins, Karen Skeats John Marchant, Isis gallery people. The more commercial jazz stu was in our house, but this was Gallery and photography: Gaz Mayall deeper stu ... deep jazz and blues.’ Karen Skeats Jean McConachie Digital production: Tony McDermott JB: ‘In the late sixties I was working with a band called the Blue Notes Vinesh Shah Mike McInnerney Additional research: Herbie and Sarah at Mensah - the rst multiracial band in South Arica. They were going to have Simon MacAndrew Elliott at Merc a hard time coming back to South Arica and everyone thought Mark Minton they were great so they settled in London - and immediately the John Purcell, John Purcell Paper Enid Price atmosphere changes. As long as they were exotic visitors passing Jamie Reid Titles you can't find anywhere else
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