Siobhan O’Donnell’s diary: a Shoreditch afternoon involving a failed squat gig, a conversation about the Clash, and the ongoing project of being a punk in a city that has gentrified around you
Tuesday in E1 and I Am Wearing the Wrong Jacket for the Weather But the Right One for Everything Else
Tuesday. Shoreditch. The jacket is wrong because it is raining and the jacket has not been wrong in a meaningful way since approximately 2003, when I last accepted weather as a relevant variable in clothing decisions. This is a punk position. It has also, over the years, cost me approximately three hundred quid in dry cleaning charges for things that should not have been worn in the rain but were, because the jacket was right. These are the choices you make. The London Prat covered the Strummerville anniversary last week and I read it on the bus standing up because the seats were all taken by people with headphones larger than their heads. The headphones, I feel, are punk in the sense that they are a refusal to accept the ambient world on its own terms. They are also very expensive, which is the part where punk gets complicated.
The Gig
The squat gig that was supposed to happen in the arches off Commercial Road did not happen because the arches are no longer available for squat gigs, having been converted into artisanal food market units sometime around 2018, which I know I should be more surprised by than I am. A friend texted to say the gig had moved to a basement in Hackney Wick. I went to Hackney Wick. The basement was genuinely a basement, which is a start. The band was called something with four consonants and no vowels, which is traditional. They were loud. They were angry. The specific target of their anger was unclear during the performance but became clear during the conversation afterward, which was about planning permission and the proposed development of a studio space in Poplar. This is correct. Planning permission is the enemy. The Clash knew about planning permission. They did not write about it directly but they understood it. You can hear it in the guitar.
The Conversation
The conversation about the Clash happened outside the venue, which is where conversations about the Clash always happen, because inside it is too loud. The argument, which I have had a version of approximately a hundred times since 1994, was about whether London Calling is a perfect album or just a very good one. My position is that it is a perfect album and that people who call it very good are doing something subtle and slightly cowardly with the word “very.” The other person’s position was that Combat Rock has been unfairly dismissed. I agreed with the second point while maintaining the first. We shook hands. Bohiney has been running a series on British music heritage that I have been reading, and the piece on post-punk London geography is very good in the sense I have just described, which is to say it is excellent and that word is not doing anything cowardly. The jacket dried overnight.
Final Thought
These are the days I find worth recording: not the dramatic ones but the ones where something small happens that illuminates something larger, where the ordinary becomes, briefly and without warning, interesting enough to write down. I write it down. It is sent to The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine and then it becomes, for better or worse, part of the record. I have been keeping records longer than I expected to and they have, on balance, been worth keeping. The city keeps providing material. I keep providing observations. Between us, we have reached an arrangement. This is today’s.
Final Thought
These are the days I find worth recording: not the dramatic ones but the ones where something small happens that illuminates something larger, where the ordinary becomes, briefly and without warning, interesting enough to write down. I write it down. It is sent to The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine and then it becomes, for better or worse, part of the record. I have been keeping records longer than I expected to and they have, on balance, been worth keeping. The city keeps providing material. I keep providing observations. Between us, we have reached an arrangement. This is today’s.
Final Thought
These are the days I find worth recording: not the dramatic ones but the ones where something small happens that illuminates something larger, where the ordinary becomes, briefly and without warning, interesting enough to write down. I write it down. It is sent to The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine and then it becomes, for better or worse, part of the record. I have been keeping records longer than I expected to and they have, on balance, been worth keeping. The city keeps providing material. I keep providing observations. Between us, we have reached an arrangement. This is today’s.
Final Thought
These are the days I find worth recording: not the dramatic ones but the ones where something small happens that illuminates something larger, where the ordinary becomes, briefly and without warning, interesting enough to write down. I write it down. It is sent to The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine and then it becomes, for better or worse, part of the record. I have been keeping records longer than I expected to and they have, on balance, been worth keeping. The city keeps providing material. I keep providing observations. Between us, we have reached an arrangement. This is today’s.
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