MONKEY'S SUNDAY SWING #2: WE ARE THE MODS, WE ARE THE MODS...

The M word has featured heavily during the last ten days or so, here's a look back.

I can’t recall the last time I saw a club advertised as a mod club and The Sidewinder in Islington doesn't, but that’s what it is.  Tucked away in a fabulous club room within the Wenlock and Essex, Essex Road, N1 on the first Thursday of each month it manages to be a relaxed affair yet still entice people on to the illuminated dancefloor with its soul, jazz and R&B soundtrack.  The highlight for me there this week was chatting to Martin Fuggles, who was the DJ at the Ricky Tick Club in Windsor during the mid-60s.  There were a number of Ricky Tick clubs but the Windsor one, in a mansion by the river, is regarded as the main one, and the one replicated in the film Blow Up when The Yardbirds tore it up.  Martin would DJ on two turntables built inside a gold painted piano, a playlist dominated by the Motown, Atlantic and Stax releases he’d purchase each week from a stall in Slough. Martin said he’d been reintroduced to the mod scene a couple of years ago and was now enjoying trying to catch up on what he’d missed and seeing how things had developed in his absence.  He still has all his old records but had lost interest in music once Pink Floyd had come along, saying if that was the future of music he wanted no part of it.  We chatted about what sounds were popular at the time and I asked him about The Impressions, to which he pulled a great OH MY GOD, THE IMPRESSIONS sex face.  This was exactly the reaction I’d hoped for.  He often began his sets with “It’s Alright” and would buy half a dozen extra copies of their records to sell down the Ricky Tick.  He also said that their gig at the Barbican last year was the second best gig he’d ever been to (one behind Buddy Holly and the Crickets).  The group are playing at the Jazz Café in London next month and if at all possible you must go.  To read me becoming all emotional about the Barbican night click here.  Naturally I tried digging for info about The Action but although he knew they’d played the club he couldn’t remember anything in particular about them.  Damn.  Martin certainly considered himself a mod back, complete with scooter, but soon learnt “you needed four wheels if you wanted to pull the better birds”, and carry your records of course.  It was fascinating chatting with him and hopefully he’ll be on at Sidewinder in the future.  His Ricky Tick site has more news and more posters like the one shown above.  The next Sidewinder is on Thursday 5th July.        

The launch party at the Fred Perry shop in Covent Garden for The A-Z of Mod book by Paolo Hewitt and Mark Baxter was a swinging affair with some well-known scene faces in attendance and even Phil Daniels popping by.  Luckily for him by the time I’d had enough to drink to recite chunks of Quadrophenia  – because he would have loved that – he’d disappeared.   It wouldn’t be right to review the book in detail as it was a birthday present for Mrs Monkey by Monkey Snr so try the one in The Guardian and work it out for yourself.  There’s a picture of Mrs Monkey and her sister in the book adopting their usual Kray twins stance - looking like they’d slash your throat with their haircuts if you stood too close. On the off-chance they read this I should add they aren't quite as menacing in real life. 

Also in Mrs M’s birthday haul was The Treasures of The Who by Chris Welch, a hardback, boxed book containing memorabilia inserted into the pages.  There are some great reproductions of Marquee contracts, posters, flyers (cool one from the Goldhawk “Beat” Club where The Who played Good Friday 1965 and The Boys played on Saturday), an early letter to fan from Roger Daltrey and a postcard from Keith Moon.  It sells for twenty five quid but was a lot cheaper in Fopp or a bit cheaper from that on-line retail place.  

On the subject of Keith Moon, keep your eyes open for a summer publication of Full Moon by Dougal Butler.  Original published in 1981 by Moonie’s personal assistant, with Chris Tengrove and Peter Lawrence, it's utterly hilarious in places and terribly sad in others.  I remember tears of laughter streaming down my face when I first read it when published as Moon The Loon.  Find out more at Full Moon The Book.

MONKEY'S SUNDAY SWING #1: MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE I'M A LONDONER

In an idea partly inspired by From Desk Til Dawn and Mod Male blogs, I might try using Sundays to round up a few bits and bobs that have caught my eyes and ears throughout the week which don’t make a post of their own but are worth sharing. 

We’ll start with the film The Small World of Sammy Lee.  No, it’s not about the ‘80s scouse footballer of the same name who was famously fat, round and bounced on the ground (and when signed by QPR was, according to the song, “worth a million pounds”), but about a strip club compere who owes a small fortune in gambling debts and has a day to raise the money or he gets done over by the heavies (including one very mod mobster).  Any British film from 1963 that features lots of location footage is of interest purely for that and the opening sequence which sweeps through Soho filled with clip joints, restaurants and coffee bars doesn’t disappoint.  Even better than recognising West End and East End locations, is that it’s a good film in its own right.  Newley is convincing as he tries to keep a clear head as the pressure mounts, and a Who’s Who of mid 60s British film and television: Warren Mitchell, Wilfred Brambell, Roy Kinnear, Julia Foster, Derek Nimmo and others back him superbly.  A new favourite.  

By strange coincidence, on the day I watched that I bought The Lowlife by Alexander Baron, a novel first published in 1963, and, as well as the year, shares many similarities with The Small World of Sammy Lee.  Harryboy Boas is another Jewish East London gambler who is more than content to live his life on his own terms: gambling, dressing up, visiting prostitutes, spending money when he has it, and reading books in his small bedsit.  His sister and her husband try to coax him into settling down with a proper income, suggesting buying property in the slums to “stuff full of niggers”.  It does provide a vivid picture of how Hackney was at the time (Harryboy’s view of immigrants and the local community is far more positive than that previous description) and Soho is identical to the one in Sammy Lee.  I’m only a third of the way through the book and Harryboy is being drawn into the secret lives of his new neighbours in his lodging house and he will soon be dragged into “an underworld where violence and revenge stalk those who can’t come up with the money”.  Excellent stuff so far. 

I’ve been meaning to write about Jeremy Deller’s Joy In People exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London for a while but it ends on 11^th May, so gets your skates on if you’re local (or have a nose through the accompanying book).  Deller’s latest creation, Sacrilege, was in the press the other week: a gigantic inflatable Stonehenge plonked overnight in Glasgow Green much to the surprise and delight of locals who started bouncing all over it.  Joy In People contains many other delights and if you like some pop in your art then you’ll appreciate work inspired by and featuring Keith Moon, Manic Street Preachers, Happy Mondays, Neil Young, World of Twist and acid house.  Deller isn’t an “artist” in the sense of here’s a painting, here’s a sculpture kind of way (although there are those), he’s more a curator or instigator of events so they don’t always work, nor were intended, as gallery artefacts, but his more serious studies such as a full scale acted reconstruction of The Battle of Orgreave from the miners’ strike of 1984, or taking the wreckage from a Baghdad car bomb on a tour through America with former American servicemen and Iraqi citizens invite further thought and discussion.