Rock Shrine No. 27 – The Vortex

Posted over 2 years ago

Artist:
- PLAY
Generation X
Track:

All The Young Punks

The summer of ’77 – hot and heaving. The Summer of Punk. The year of The Vortex. Every Tuesday night 1500 punks would cram themselves into the basement of this club to see a double bill of the best new bands. You knew when a fresh shipment of Punk’s drug of choice was in town because if you entered straight the atmosphere was unpleasantly electric. Amphetamine sulphate was a 1234! drug for 1234! music. It cost a measly £15 a gram and one nostril stripping snort would keep you alert and charging for ten or twelve hours. The unholy trinity of 1977 was punk, powder and price.The punk-reggae interface started here, when Generation X played with a band from Birmingham called Steel Pulse. On stage it was all Rasta patois but in the dressing room they sounded as Brummie as Ozzy Osbourne. Ex-Pistol Glen Matlock started The Rich Kids here; Mick Jones was getting tired of no drummer in his band and injected a big dose of is-he-quitting paranoia into Camp Clash by guesting with Glen. Malcolm McLaren was putting his Sex Pistols movie together and had hired titilation director Russ Meyer. As wonderfully strange as Meyer’s movies were, in punk he was a tourist in a very strange land. My favourite image of The Vortex was watching Meyer – slacks, jacket and very big cigar – wandering disturbed and confused through the sea of punkettes in dog collars, torn fishnets and bad makeup.Thirty years later it’s a disco.The Vortex, 201 Wardour Street, London W1F 8ZH"Map Location":http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&q=201+Wardour+Street,+London+W1F+8ZH&ll=51.517609,-0.136085&spn=0.01183,0.030513&t=h&z=15&iwloc=addr&om=1Put this post code into Google Earth and go for a ride: W1F 8ZH"Rock Shrines 1 – 12":http://jonh-ingham.blogspot.com/2007/02/rock-shrines.html"Rock Shrines 13 - 20":http://jonh-ingham.blogspot.com/2007/04/rock-shrines-13-20.html

Comments (7)

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RobinH says I remember Don Letts making a comment about the whole 'punk/reggae interface' in his punk documentary. His observation was that, in the early days of UK punk there was so little vinyl output to play at 'punk gatherings' that reggae was played a lot.

Permalink posted 05/31/2007
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Jonh Ingham says When he was DJ at the Roxy there were only about 5 punk singles and a bunch of Iggy, etc., so he started playing dub and Max Romeo. Partly out of necessity and partly because people like Lydon, Simenon, myself, Caroline Coon and a few others loved reggae. There was a booker called Dave Woods who was booking The Clash, Gen X and a bunch of other bands and he called one day (I was managing Gen X) and said words to the effect that everyone goes on about this punk-reggae thing, well I've had a call from a band in Birmingham called Steel Pulse. Do you want to put them on the bill with you? From that grew other punk-reggae bills and the whole RAR movement.

Permalink posted 05/31/2007
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RobinH says Thanks for putting that into context for me Jonh, I've often wondered about the 'bigger picture' of the whole punk-reggae interface. This is such a great musical education. You mentioning RAR, inspired me to do a little digging and found stuff I never knew over at wikipedia. "Rock Against Racism (RAR) was a campaign set up by Red Saunders, Roger Huddle and others in winter 1976. It was founded in response to allegedly racist comments and gestures made by David Bowie and Eric Clapton. RAR was first conceived as an idea for a one-off concert against the rise of racism in the early 1970s. According to Huddle, "it remained just an idea until August 1976," when Clapton made a drunken declaration of support for former Conservative minister Enoch Powell (famous for his anti-immigration Rivers of Blood speech) at a concert in Birmingham. Clapton had said that England had "become overcrowded," and implored the crowd to vote for Powell to stop Britain from becoming "a black colony." Huddle, Saunders and two members of Kartoon Klowns responded by writing a letter to NME expressing their opposition to Clapton's comments, which they claimed were "... all the more disgusting because he had his first hit with a cover of reggae star Bob Marley's 'I Shot the Sheriff'". At the end of the letter, they called for people to help form a movement called Rock against racism, and they report that they received hundreds of replies. Further support for RAR came after David Bowie stated in a Playboy interview that "Britain is ready for a fascist leader", and by allegedly making a Nazi salute while riding in a convertible. Bowie later retracted the fascist comment, claiming that the statement was a result of substance abuse. He denied making a Hitler salute, arguing that a photographer caught him in the middle of waving. RAR's first activity was a concert featuring Carol Grimes as lead artist, and the group also launched the fanzine Temporary Hoarding. In spring and autumn 1978, RAR organised two major music festivals with the Anti-Nazi League, to counteract the growing wave of racist attacks in the United Kingdom. It has been reported that 80,000 people marched six miles from Trafalgar Square to east London (a National Front hotspot) for an open-air concert. The concert featured The Clash (as seen in the film Rude Boy), The Buzzcocks, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, The Ruts, Sham 69, Generation X and the Tom Robinson Band. An audience of 25,000 came to the Northern Carnival in Manchester, for a concert featuring The Buzzcocks, Graham Parker and the Rumour, and Misty in Roots. In 1979, a concert was held at Acklam Hall in London featuring Crisis, The Vapors, and Beggar. The anarcho-punk band Crass stated that they performed at one RAR concert, and the money that was raised was given to the acts instead of the anti-racist cause or a charity: We even played a Rock Against Racism gig, the only gig that we'd ever been paid for. When we told the man to keep the money for the cause, he informed us that 'this was the cause'. We never played for RAR again." "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Against_Racism":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Against_Racism Ahh music, the great educator. (while doing this found an interesting vid of Members - Offshore Banking Business from Urgh! a music war, but I think I will save that for another post)

Permalink posted 05/31/2007
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soulrocket says what a cool post. I remember listening to dr. alimantado & u-roy along with brittish punk-rock bands back in the day. somehow usa bands were not a good choice to make except for NY bands. a few years later i started to appreciate the cali sound but we were very narrow-minded abt only brittish bands then.

Permalink posted 05/31/2007
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Jonh Ingham says Know what yr saying. I moved to LA in '78 and saw some great bands - Weirdos, Plugz and Screamers for sure. Then all the Brit bands started coming thru the Whiskey and everyone was going 'meh' (as chucky would say). Guess punk was always a "local" thing!

Permalink posted 05/31/2007
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Mike the Knife says Sucked into the Vortex - not a bad way to go.

Permalink posted 06/02/2007
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tigand says Great post. Glad to see this topic come up because punk got me into reggae in the first place. As a youngster I was so into the early UK punk bands and that way was introduced to Steel Pulse. The song Steppin' Out was just too good, I was hooked and fell deep into the world of reggae. I always noticed the punk/reggae connection but never thought about it. I mean, there's the whole ska/2 tone thing, which seems like a political statement that just had to be made at the time. I also thought it was because of the trade relationship between Jamaica and England that reggae was naturally there in abundance and then being somewhat anti-system anyway it made for a nice pairing with punk.

Permalink posted 06/12/2007