Adventures in London's musical underground ...

Having introduced Dingo Baby to Midnight Oil I felt compelled to accept his invitation to a night with Mac de Marco, if for no other reason than to experience the Coronet, a legendary sticky floor venue in Elephant and Castle, before it is inevitably knocked down to make way for more unaffordable apartments built for overseas investors to rent out to Londoners at exorbitant rates (read here the litany of injustice involved in this demolition of communities' and people's futures from Southwark Council and Australian developer Lendlease).

A quick tour through Youtube and I discovered that Mac de Marco's style could best be described as stoner or slacker rock so I was expecting mostly stoners and slackers to be in the audience. It's always disconcerting when expectation and reality don't meet so it took a few moments to adjust to being surrounded by a crowd of young, preppy, posh accents seemingly engaging in their own version of cos-play for a few hours, i.e., a mass sing-along of not particularly subversive lyrics wishing they too could be swigging beer and whisky from the bottles lined up on their speaker stacks.

Maybe after years of dance tents and stadium gigs, or the fact that I was just sipping on burdock and dandelion soda, I was also struggling with the repertoire of three minute pop songs ... just when you think the song is going somewhere, it stops. It was only in the second half that some of the music started to get more interesting but by then the state of mind of the band was starting to disintegrate along with the cheese sandwiches and other food stuffs being thrown at the stage (which was pretty funny). It was also funny to watch Mac de Marco (clearly a talented musician who will not age well) replace the drummer who then came to the front to sing; only he can't sing so it started to be largely unfunny after ten minutes. With long pauses and occasional guttural screaming, the jackass-ery finally came to an end with a five chorus version of 'I'm Henry the Eighth', lyrics substituted for something vaguely comical but I had given up caring. Apart from a freestyle long version of an instrumental somewhere at about the half way point (which was exceptional), my vegan souvlaki from the Greek cafe in the neighbouring BoxPark was the best thing from the evening (and the ride home on the night tube;  always guaranteed to be ethnographically fascinating).

I recognise that as the oldest woman at the gig, with a penchant these days for 'been there, done that' eye rolling,  my opinion on these things is doubtless considered worthless, but I would counter with the following vignette ...

This morning, on the way to a well earned recovery brunch in E20 (because dandelion and burdock soda can take it out of you), we crossed the no-person's land of Hackney Wick warehouses still to be demolished, to hear the ever louder pulse of a techno rave being illegally held in a squat. As the grinding bass lines reverberated off derelict walls and the houses of suffering neighbours, we started to see the late morning wreckage emerging, blinking, into winter sunlight, sitting in gutters with cans of beer, crashed out on nearby benches, digging holes in the ground for no particular reason, grinning maniacally in baggy cargos, hippy tie-dye and dreadlock splendour, make-up smeared down sweaty faces, in desperate need of a shower and sleep, weaving their way down the street beneath the ever encroaching cranes of gentrification to the overground station. And this was the vanguard of early leavers .... the hard core still had another eight hours of partying to go.

Now that, fans of Mac de Marco, is proper stoner/slacker behaviour, although debates on its authenticity are irrelevant if you have to live next door to it and I suspect neither the ravers nor their preppy brethren nor Mac de Marco were feeling particularly spritely today, and that, as I smugly sip my  dandelion and burdock soda, is a waste of a beautiful winter's day.

Seeing Red

It is confession time. Yesterday, I actually found myself uttering the words 'you posh hipsters', in public, directed at a resident from that part of the street that is all Victorian terrace on the outside and undergoing constant renovation within. 'Uttering' is perhaps too demure a verb to use in this instance. It was more yelling in a crazy woman kind of way at a man who, when I busted him using our bins for his overflow of waitrose leftovers, made the mistake of justifying his behaviour by saying 'I pay my taxes, I can put my garbage wherever I want'. No, sir, no you can't.

In the past when I have found people fly tipping on my doorstep I have employed all the non-violent communication and buddhistly skills I have been trained over the years to deploy. I've taken their hand, introduced myself, quietly and calmly explained the obvious situation - that if they keep putting their garbage in our bins then the bins overflow and we have rats and foxes spreading germs and half eaten babies' nappies all over our front yards - and then I have watched them smile and continue to put their garbage in our bins. Probably, I suspected, because they think it's a scummy estate and they pay their tax and can put their garbage wherever they like, or at least anywhere but in front of their own heavily mortgaged homes.

Enough is enough. It is time for outrage and justice. It is time for some name calling and yelling in the street, in front of everyone. It is time for Luther and Alice to kick some butt!

Now I know that I also shop at Waitress most of the time (actually I get it home delivered - an obvious sign of gentrification when delivery trucks with kale or blueberry paint jobs feel comfortable parking in your neighbourhood). I could possibly earn more than the man I called a posh hipster. I am petite bourgeoisie from my toe nails to my hair follicles. And I know that yelling at the man in the street will probably only increase his desire to place his garbage on our estate (and he did at least separate out his recycling and put it in the bin rather than leave it lying on top or on the ground as so many others do). But I have to also confess that for the few minutes it took to berate him for his selfishness, no matter how lacking in coherence and logical argument,  it did feel pretty good.

Ultimately though this madness is a symptom of the housing crisis that leads to middle class residents buying tiny two bedroom Victorian conversions for a sum, on average, 16 times their London salary according to the National Housing Federation; a space in which they find it impossible to store themselves, their kids, their flat screens and their garbage if they miss collection day, which perhaps leads them to say things like 'I pay my taxes and can do what I want'. It seems the only leverage they have is to piss on down the hierarchy. Private renter activists like DIGS highlight the growing resentment felt by this squeezed Middle that must spend too much on a basic necessity that has become part of an artificial market created by previous governments who now keep it propped up by transnational mobility and investment. Parts of this Middle, with few rights in the face of absent landlords and short term leases, look at the low rents and charges of social housing with an aggrieved eye and seemingly little comprehension that we're all of us, private tenants, leaseholders, freeholders and social housing, living with a precarity of ideological making. Where we put the garbage will be the least of our problems if the politics of London and nationally with regards to housing don't change.