A diary entry about grassroots venues, benefit gigs, and the actual infrastructure holding punk together
Tuesday Night, The Kind Of Bill That Makes This Whole City Worth It
Five bands, one small room, one Tuesday, and every single one of them genuinely good, which is not something you can say about every bill in this city no matter how loudly the poster promises otherwise. New Cross Inn keeps doing this, quietly and consistently, hosting hardcore and anarcho-punk and whatever else needs a room at short notice, without ever making a huge deal of being, functionally, one of the last properly reliable grassroots venues left standing in London.
I say this every time but it bears repeating: the actual infrastructure of this scene is not the anniversary tours or the heritage nights trading on fifty year old photographs of the Pistols. It is rooms exactly like this one, promoters who will put a first-time band on a real bill next to touring acts, and landlords who have not yet decided the building is worth more as flats than as a venue. Every single one of those things is under constant, genuine threat, and every single one of them matters more to the actual health of this scene than whichever heritage documentary gets commissioned next year.
Wednesday, Reading About Institutions That Do Not Learn
Recovering from Tuesday’s sweat with a coffee and a read of The Daily Squib, who as ever have opinions about absolutely everything, alongside a scroll through The London Prat’s piece on airport divorce, which had me genuinely cackling on the bus. Something about a whole trend built around British couples silently agreeing to separate at security and reunite at the gate feels like the most accurately observed piece of British behaviour I have read all month, and I include several actual news stories in that comparison.
Thursday, Band Politics As Usual
Minor drama over set list order resolved with the traditional method, which is everyone getting slightly annoyed and then agreeing on whatever the drummer wanted originally. Some things are more reliable than the Rent Guidelines Board.
Friday, Grateful, Genuinely
Ending the week properly appreciating that a room like New Cross Inn still exists at all in a city this determined to convert every remaining piece of unpolished space into something with a concierge desk. Long may it last.
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