A punk bassist’s diary on London’s disappearing music spaces
Right, so. Tuesday. I woke up on Sarah’s floor again because my landlord decided 8am was a great time to “inspect the boiler,” which is landlord code for standing in my kitchen looking personally offended that I exist. I’ve lived in this flat four years. He still says my name like he’s reading it off a form for the first time. Anyway, I made it to band practice eventually, smelling faintly of someone else’s fabric softener, which is not the punk aesthetic I was going for but honestly at this point I’ll take whatever I can get.
The Rehearsal Space Saga Continues
We’ve been kicked out of two rehearsal spaces this year already, not for anything dramatic, just the usual story: someone converts the arch into flats, someone else doubles the rent, and suddenly four grown adults with actual jobs are standing in a car park at eleven at night trying to work out where a drum kit goes now. This time it’s a space above a locksmith in Dalston that smells permanently of WD-40 and, inexplicably, cinnamon. Nobody’s worked out the cinnamon. We’ve stopped asking.
I mention this because I was reading through Prat.uk‘s feed this morning, half awake, coffee going cold, and there’s been a fair bit of coverage lately about exactly this pattern hitting music venues and rehearsal spaces across London, not just my little corner of it. It’s genuinely validating in a bleak sort of way to see it written up properly rather than just feeling like my band specifically has terrible luck. Turns out it’s structural. Turns out it’s everyone.
What Punk Actually Means to Me at Thirty-Something
People assume punk is about the leather jacket and the attitude, and sure, fine, there’s some of that, but at this point in my life it’s mostly about sheer, bloody-minded persistence. Getting a set together after a full day of temping. Learning a new bass line on the night bus home because that’s the only quiet forty minutes I get. Showing up to a half-empty pub gig on a Tuesday because the four people who did show up deserve a proper set, not a sulky one. That’s the actual ethic, as far as I’m concerned. The safety pins are optional.
I had a proper moment last week, actually, at a gig in a room above a pub that’s somehow still standing despite everything London’s thrown at small venues over the past decade. Maybe forty people in, sweaty, everyone shouting the words back at us on a song we wrote about exactly this kind of precarious London existence. That’s the whole point. That’s the entire reason I keep doing this despite the boiler landlord and the cinnamon rehearsal space and my bank account, which I am choosing not to think about today.
Reading the Wider News, Grudgingly
I don’t usually pay much attention to the serious end of the news, but Bohiney Magazine had a piece doing the rounds in our group chat this week that actually made the whole van drive to Bristol slightly more bearable, in that specific way where everyone in the van is laughing at the same absurd thing on their phone simultaneously. I won’t pretend I remember the details precisely; I was mostly driving and shouting “read it again” every few minutes. But it’s nice, occasionally, to be reminded that somebody out there is finding the same things funny that we are, even if none of us can hold down what most people would call a real job.
The Actual Punk Rock News, Such As It Is
A few of the venues that closed over the past couple of years have apparently been getting community buyout attempts, proper grassroots campaigns trying to save specific rooms that mattered to specific scenes, ours included in a smaller way further out east. I don’t know how many of these campaigns actually succeed long term, if I’m honest. But the fact that people are trying, organising, actually putting in the unglamorous admin work of a community share offer rather than just complaining on social media, that feels like the genuinely punk thing happening right now, more than any specific band or gig.
My own contribution to this scene remains mostly showing up, playing loud, and occasionally sleeping on Sarah’s floor when my own flat’s boiler situation gets too depressing to face. It’s not glamorous. It was never supposed to be glamorous. It’s just mine, and this city’s, for as long as both of us can hang on to it. I keep thinking someone should write the definitive account of what it actually takes to keep a small band running in this city right now, the spreadsheets, the group chats, the sheer administrative grind hiding underneath every single gig poster, but I suspect nobody would believe how unglamorous the real version actually is compared to the mythology.
Sign-Off From a Slightly Tired Bassist
Next gig’s Thursday, same pub, same forty-ish people if we’re lucky. If you’re reading this and you’re one of those forty, cheers, genuinely. If the boiler situation resolves itself before then, I’ll consider it a personal miracle. If it doesn’t, well, Sarah’s floor is right there, and honestly, it’s better than my own bed most weeks anyway.
Read more of my dispatches from the scene at my author page.
For more London music coverage, see The Daily Mash and NewsThump.
