Between the 12 Bars: A Reflection on Music in London.

London’s music scene and her venues are in a state of flux. Seemingly powerless in the face of consolidated development and veracious capitalism, musical institutions are vanishing or at risk of doing so. One should not look on the past as perfect, halcyon days in which art and artists roamed and owned the streets, instead present lamenting must maintain a guise of objectivity and be a call to action rather than merely resignation in the face of the faceless forces of change.

Denmark Street is at a crossroads in its existence. Facing peril at the hands of developers and abandoned by local councils, a centuries old musical history is in the balance. It was with this contemporary issue in my head and in my heart that I endeavoured to walk ‘Between the 12 Bars’ – the 12 Bar being the streets venerable music venue and a place of deep personal attachment for myself as a musician having both seen gigs performed there and dreamed of taking part myself. The bar closed its doors at the beginning of 2015, moved to Holloway Road only for that to close. The tireless efforts of Henry Scott-Irvine and the Save Tin Pan Alley group have recently secured a music venue to operate once again on the original site, gutted by Crossrail development, on Denmark Street. Home again.

The walk was to function as an opportunity for reflection on music in London – perceived as ‘gone’, but perhaps ‘changing’ is more appropriate a term – at best optimistic, at worst naïve. My exact route is less relevant than my reflections – brought to mind as a direct result of the mentally stimulating act of perambulation.

Methodologically, my improvised route served sometimes as a distraction and weather at first propelled me to certain, sheltered routes. On the other hand this improvisation allowed me to get truly lost – something becoming a rarity in this city, my adopted home. Lost where amongst the first signs of familiarity are places of fond memory of time spent with my ex-partner. It seems even in walking, enacted as a mentally palliative exercise, one is not safe from the stop-in-your-tracks power of the memory of the head and of the heart. Included is a hand- and hastily- drawn map of my route, in the spirit of Guy Debord’s Discours sure les Passions de l’amour though I hope he will not take offence at the quality of its execution.

One, two, three, four.

Behold the 12 Bar brought low. Not wishing to dwell too long on a loss always in my heart I headed north on Tottenham Court Road, a station normally a popular busking spot but not today. Remembering conspicuously absent petrified Freddie Mercury. To Gower Street, passing RADA and a curiously named ‘Minerva House’. Goddess of wisdom and sponsor of the arts, trade and strategy – perhaps some perverse ancient divine determinism set the arts at the whim of the forces of trade millennia ago.

Through the bowels of the Ministry of Truth – a long and incorrect way (a detournement at least as far as being a detour) to Richer Sounds on Holborn’s ex-Electric Avenue, that name being an adolescent misnomer on my part. My father having described with fond memory the proliferation of shops selling and servicing record players around Tottenham Court Road. I, logically, conflated the name of Brixton’s famous street with the only area of London I associated with musical electrics. One could only find retailers of such things here and, in the same vein, London’s only guitar shops were on Denmark Street – except of course Macari’s which has presence not only on the street itself but also en route on Charing Cross Road, as if an amuse-bouche to the coming musical feast. Somehow my younger mind could absorb and retain this itinerant information but could not conceive of a place known as ‘Brixton’. This truly is time to reflect, and simply to be out walking.

Amidst rain and crowds, head-down to Euston via Gordon Square observing some obsolete borough street signs – an interest of mine. The first I ever noticed I used to pass every day, when I lived and loved in Peckham; St. Mary’s Road, once of the Borough of Camberwell, now Southwark. Mornington Crescent for Koko, heading, perhaps drawn, to Camden.  Arlington Road, Charlotte Street, being parallel to main thoroughfares – Camden High Street and Tottenham Court Road respectively – allow for but do not insist upon a quicker pace. Rather, the emptier pavements allow the freedom to dictate one’s own pace. Displaying an accidental loyalty to the A400 in its numerous guises as Tottenham Court Road, Hampstead Road and Camden High Street. Crossing Regent’s Canal via a beautiful Victorian lock, only to be confronted with a behemoth branch of Morrisons.

Not yet witnessed much ‘music’, more homelessness than anything – at least, those people asking for money. What am I looking for, or expecting to see?  Something indicative of my second-hand experience of the halcyon days of the 1960s and 1970s? Perhaps something that made those days so open to rose-tinted reminiscences was the lengthy, peaceful cohabitation in the charts of both the titanic and timeless as well as truly drab and cliché pop acts. I refuse to make a comment on the condition of present chart music, but my reluctance to do so most likely reveals my feelings.

The loss of music possessing a power of cultural phenomenon – one likes to imagine young people as the ruling class and the easily characterisation of every youth as one of The Young Ones quartet – rather than simply being an audiophilic pastime is certainly, if partially, linked not only to the closure of pubs and bars, but also increasingly stringent licensing restrictions. Further, not only are long-standing venues at risk of losing their right to exhibit music – not least Kilburn’s venerable Good Ship – under the auspices of sound being classed as an anti-social act but large clubs, a real source of anti-social behaviour, are given free reign with all-night licenses. In Vauxhall for instance the recent by-law prohibiting the consumption of laughing-gas is a largely unenforced and irrelevant measure in the battle against anti-social behaviour in the area.

Fabric, ex of Farringdon, may not be a music venue by my personal experience – a place of live, band music – but it was a place of music for a great many people and to speak against its closure may at first seem a little counter to my preceding vitriol regarding large clubs, but the closure of Fabric was not about the consumption and potentially fatal consequences of drug-taking. Loss of young life is undoubtedly a tragedy but no lucid observer truly believes this was the reason for the popular and historic nightclub’s closure. It had to be made an example of. Indeed, “Fabric was always going to close, drug deaths notwithstanding”, and that closure could be celebrated as a tick-in-a-box in the war on drugs in the capital by both Mayor of London as well as the top echelons of the Metropolitan Police. Local councils lose more government funding year-on-year but, the Independent claims, revenue generated by institutions such as Fabric was simply too locally focussed. It did not serve to augment the coffers of the council in the more direct way that, say, a block of luxury flats would – which incidentally would create less income than night-time economy businesses. The fact that Dickens’ ‘Social Night’ is instead now referred to as the ‘night-time economy’ evidences the priorities of London administrators – not in a varied, safe and inclusive night-time culture, but instead the maximising of profit. Further, there is a clear congruence between the stories of the 12 Bar and Fabric in that they were both closed – the former moved north then closed again, the latter closed seemingly indefinitely – but both are set to reopen, highlighting the insecurity of London’s music venues.

Leafy north London, not so much a land of capitalism as is central London where I began – perhaps of the victors of capitalism – those financially comfortable in their existence. At least outwardly so – the financial affairs of my own family are by no means directly correlative with my father’s income. Sought a subversion of the present-day condition of my surroundings whilst lost in Hampstead and Gospel Oak by singing the Kinks to myself – those proud residents of Muswell Hill. ‘Sunny Afternoon’ seemed a fitting defiance to the autumnal reluctance of the sun to make his presence known.

Lost. An over-estimation of how north Holloway was led me to the south-eastern corner of Hampstead Heath and Gospel Oak. Refusing the aid of my phone – and the relief of public houses – I instead orientated myself by road signs and maps in bus shelters. At Tufnell Park, which I found myself at by accident, I got myself back on track, if nowhere near where I wanted to be considering the protestations of my stomach and the contents of my wallet – or lack thereof.

Finally, Holloway Road whose length presented itself with Roman straightness. Despite knowing that the 12 Bar was no longer in operation here – I never had a chance of visiting whilst it was, only during its Denmark Street residency – I was dismayed, due to a miscalculation, that it was now a Cashino (not a typo, a chain of slot-machine based casinos).

My unintended north London jaunt meant my end-point had been reached, without all of my points of interest visited. Completing the length of Holloway Road I headed towards Highbury and Islington to visit upon the Union Chapel – a space shared in the Durkheimian sense between the sacred and the profane, being a Congregational Church as well as part-time music venue (and a charity base). The Union Chapel is partially representative of the growing sharing economy in London – itself a necessity as much an anti-capitalist belief system – as well as the multiplicity of roles that a single place can perform. One wonders how the nearby disused but fine Highbury station building could function if reopened. Unlikely to be musical with The Garage next-door-but-one, but music is not the only activity that requires public spaces for its exhibition and is not the only branch of the arts with a falling number of opportunities for that exhibition. Sat in its residents’ gardens with a free coffee from a certain supermarket, before rushing to Lewisham, home again, in the Carol King sense, to develop my film.

Here is the street as it was, is and – Muses willing – will always be.

 

(the) Strand: interesting: yay or nay?

Who amongst us would choose to visit the Strand? Assaulted by tourists at most hours and commuters and office workers at certain hours it is fairly sought after on the Monopoly board but seems to have little to offer anyone who has been there at least once, apart from its use as a thoroughfare. There are many places in London that share this characteristic – Oxford and Regent Street, Camden High Street and Trafalgar Square for instance – where one must adopt a different somewhat less relaxed attitude to walking London. Head down, one foot in front of the other, take a parallel side street if all becomes too much. Camden-ites must forgive my lumping of their NW1 home into this grouping – I am too much of an adopted south Londoner. With tourism such a defining characteristic of London it would be wrong to ignore the history, or indeed the present worth and interest that these oft-avoided parts of the city can offer. In this vein I sought to reclaim the Strand: to find interest in it and interesting features of and on it; without much more methodology in mind than looking above shopfronts and no more prior knowledge than that there were several embassies located there.

I deliberately alight my bus at the Southbank in order to cross the Thames, on foot, across Waterloo Bridge. Giving the skyline panorama information panel on the bridge more than a glancing look for the first time I notice St. Martin-in-the-Fields church spire is just visible in the far distance past the Embankment and Cleopatra’s Needle; this church overlooking Trafalgar Square being my pre-ordained end-point.

I could have wrapped-up warmer. I was soon trusting warmth to come from walking. My on-ear headphones were positioned around my neck but, I hasten to add, out of operation – their use would severely restrict one of a walkers most essential senses. In this case they served, in lieu of a scarf, to keep the collar of my jacket up against the cold.

Passing Somerset House, I head east to where Fleet Street, Chancery Lane and Strand meet, to be sure that I walk the street’s entire length. With some of King’s College buildings on my right I notice the entrance to the disused Strand Station (then of the Piccadilly Railway). I intended to look down as well as up during this exercise and could picture viscerally what was below my feet. If not sous les paves, la plage, then sous les paves, le métro désaffectée – the finest Google Translate.

Further, I smile to myself as I pass a walking tour, but I slow my pace too much and earn a disapproving look from the guide. People have clearly paid for this walk – but I haven’t. When I later pass this group again, I get a more approving look as the guide notices a camera and notebook and seems to assume I am not simply trying to mooch clearly lucrative information regarding the Anglican church of St-Dunstan-in-the-West that has over a thousand-year history – I got that much for free anyway.

St Clement Danes, church of the RAF, fronted by a grand statue of Gladstone, flanked by statues to Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding and the infamous Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris. I am ashamed to admit I once spat on his statue. A veritably rough-and-ready statue of Samuel Johnson, from 1910, is tucked away at the back of the church.

The Royal Courts of Justice, avoiding chuggers, encounters with which leave me frustrated at the state of government funding to the charity sector, frustrated at this coercive method of gaining secure donations and, at once guilty at the lengths I can go to in order to avoid these people whilst smugly proud at the occasional inventiveness of my solutions. Finally, where Strand becomes Fleet Street I rather inefficiently execute an about face and head west, ultimately, to Trafalgar Square. This spot turn is not wasteful however at is only leads to new and different perspective – and it is when I have my second encounter with that walking group.

Old parish boundaries of St. Margarets – now with public notices subtlety informing of imminent and lengthy road closures – I pass Aldwych, Kingsway and more King’s College and LSE buildings. I believed India House to be the first embassy I had come across but in truth I had missed the Australian High Commission back towards St. Clement Danes.

Onto Strand proper I realise that the scale of the buildings dictates they are best viewed from their opposite side of the road; thus, I head towards Trafalgar, whilst observing the river-side of the Strand – the etymology of Strand being from Middle English for shore. The Strand’s architecture is grand in scale, design and longevity. That is, some buildings are large, others ornate, some both, others old, more old and ornate etc.

Royal society of arts; sandwiched between and behind branches of Topshop and Bella Italia. I honestly had never considered where this Society would call its home but I realised at the time of writing that I had walked past the building countless times – only from the back. The offices my father works in being nearby, and the Royal Society of Arts being on my way from his offices, along Embankment and across Waterloo Bridge to a single bus home – tube be damned.

On the corner of Bedford Street is the clock of the Civil Service Supply Association Ltd., once the Army and Navy Supply Store. Destroyed in 1982 by fire, the clock is halted at 6.55 – the time that the fire started, perhaps. One of many innumerable myths of London. It is one of those seemingly personal links to the past that are the reward when one keeps oneself aware of the surroundings and their history. Why does the entrance road to the Savoy Hotel have cars drive on the right rather than the left? For the archaic benefit of ladies in carriages. When you feel among a minority that is aware of these objects or bygone times but persistent traditions, that alienation from the masses is dwarfed by the sense of historical privilege. Further, the useless clock stands above a watch specialists.

The main use of the Strand in history and presently is as a thoroughfare and once-upon as the resident to wealthy families. Buses may crawl painfully along, but they are there nonetheless, utilising the A4 – the far less romantic name for this stretch of road, certainly not rooted in Middle English. The Strand is not an anomaly against London’s arguable status as the most interconnected city.

At the Holborn end one can see the flashing lights of the Southbank, only a bridge crossing away – even if that crossing is less than inviting at this time of year. At Charing Cross is the cut down to Embankment station, the tube journey to which from Charing Cross is as foolish a journey as Leicester Square to Covent Garden. A cut up Southampton Street leads you to Covent Garden piazza.

This accessibility is testament to London’s interconnectedness – enumerated by Simon Pope – this place where one can walk from anywhere to almost anywhere. Be it for the simple pleasure, whether one is lost, or whether finances dictate it must be so. Whilst the journey from embankment to Charing Cross is foolish in its brevity and cost, the tube network and underground passage in general can serve to reduce that feeling of connection that one can most easily maintain with walking. Passing under urban topography is no substitute for being amongst it.

Conclusions?

Perhaps my study proved too focussed on buildings and static, impersonal features of the Strand. One must never reduce a city only to its physical attributes at the expense of that place’s heterogenous population. Mark Twain fell into this trap when he compared Berlin with Chicago – both rather new cities in the 1890s – writing at length on the remarkably straight avenues and orderly nature of Berlin whilst leaving Berliners themselves conspicuously absent and without any individuality. i hope to have brought focus on the ‘feel’ of the city not just the city itself.

I would have rewarded the end of my walk – as well as fuelled the beginning – with a brief stopover in a pub (as much as public houses in that part of town can be called ‘pubs’ proper) but I have self-prohibited myself for the foreseeable, near, future.

What is interesting about the Strand is not what it offers in itself but what it opens up to you – theatres, centres of culture, transport, restaurants, embassies should one need them (Zimbabwe and South Africa in addition to the aforementioned). Or, less tangibly, a sense of history. One might have to seek it out and look beyond Pret, McDonald’s and Boots [above, not unlike Chinese nail houses?], but one is more often than not rewarded for the effort. Tourism might lead us to avoid certain places but it should not have us neglect them. If their history is not discovered and preserved, it will be lost. Imagine what damage developers would do to this city if left totally unregulated by the preservation of the past.

It takes Christmas Day to empty the Strand.