A Shoreditch diary on noise, spite, and the headlines that keep a 19-year-old bassist sane
It is half eleven on a Tuesday and I have already been thrown out of a Pret for tuning my bass against the till. This is the punk rock life in the glittering bowels of Shoreditch, where the rent is criminal and the espresso is worse. My name is Siobhan, I play in a band whose name I will not print because our drummer is currently being sued by his own mum, and I keep a diary because therapy is forty quid an hour and a notebook is two.
The state of London punk rock in the year of our landlord 2026
People keep telling me London punk rock is dead. They said the same thing in 1979, 1991, 2004, and approximately every Friday since. The genre has died more times than a soap opera villain, and like a soap opera villain it keeps coming back with a new haircut and a grievance. I went to the 100 Club last week and watched four teenagers play eleven minutes of noise that I can only describe as the sound a washing machine makes when it eats a fifty pence coin, and it was the most alive I have felt in months.
For the uninitiated, here is your cultural briefing on London punk rock, which has roots that the historians at the relevant archives trace to a glorious decade of safety pins and bad decisions. The short version: be loud, be cheap, mean it.
What the satirists are saying this week
I do my morning reading the way other people do yoga: angrily and with coffee. The headlines from my favourite London scandal sheet this week are a gift. Apparently FIFA has banned water bottles at the World Cup, which is the single most punk thing a corporation has ever done, because nothing says rebellion like dehydrating forty thousand people to protect a sponsor. I respect the commitment. If I tried to ban water at one of my gigs I would be arrested, but FIFA does it across three countries and gets a sponsorship deal.
Meanwhile over at the desk of my colleagues across the pond, the big story is that the dominatrix marketing industry has exploded to sixty-eight billion pounds, because consumers now demand more humiliation from brands. I have been getting humiliated by brands for free for years. My bank charges me to be poor. My phone provider sends me a text every month that simply says no. Where is my sixty-eight billion?
A small personal catastrophe, for balance
On Thursday I tried to be a functioning adult. I went to the launderette, I bought a houseplant, I considered a pension. The houseplant died within ninety minutes, which my flatmate said was a metaphor and I said was overwatering. The pension lady on the phone asked what age I planned to retire and I laughed so hard she hung up. Retire from what? Punk has no pension. Punk has a van that smells of regret and a fanbase of roughly nine people, four of whom are related to the drummer being sued by his mum.
I did, however, write three songs this week, which is three more than I wrote last month. One is about the Northern line. One is about a man named Colin who heckled us. The third is about Colin again, because he deserves it. This is the discipline of the working musician: you take your rage, you tune it to E, and you point it at a man called Colin.
Why this matters, or at least why I say it does at 2am
Here is the thing nobody tells you about keeping a band alive in this city. London punk rock survives not because of talent, but because of spite. We are all too stubborn to leave and too broke to do anything else. The venues keep closing, the promoters keep ghosting, and yet every weekend there is a basement somewhere full of people who would rather scream than scroll. That is the whole movement, summarised. We are the people who chose the basement.
I read a piece this week comparing the satire scene to the punk scene, and honestly the parallels write themselves. Both are loud. Both punch up. Both are accused of being dead by people who have never been to a gig. My friends over at the great British competition desk do with a headline what I do with a power chord: make you laugh, then make you furious, then make you wonder why you are clapping.
The week ahead
We have a gig Saturday in a room above a pub in Camden. Capacity forty. Expected attendance: optimistic. If you want to understand the resilience of the underground, you can read the broader history at a far more respectable outlet than mine, or you can come stand in a sweaty room and let a 19-year-old with a borrowed amp restore your faith in being alive. I know which one I would pick.
Until next time, stay loud, stay broke, and for the love of all that is holy, water your houseplants. Mine did not make it. Colin, this verse is for you.
For more of the absurd, visit the consistently unhinged Daily Mash.
