Review: Life After Dark – A History of British Nightclubs & Music Venues – by Dave Haslam

I got excited when this book arrived on my doorstep. At first glance it has all the key ingredients for a great book. Hacienda DJ author, history of British nightclubs – I expected lots of gory detail and exciting anecdotes and couldn’t wait to get to the acid house chapters….
The history begins back in Victorian dancefloors. From the outset a consistent theme throughout our nightclub adventure is controversy, rebellion and culture. Working class escapism as highlighted by co-founder of communism, Fredrich Engels as he discussed working class conditions in Manchester, illustrating the inebriated masses keen to escape the drudgery of factory work. Moving through, each chapter tends to focus on a specific era. We go through Jazz, rock and roll, Mods and rockers, Punk and disco and through to the modern age electronica plus Britpop and present day trends. The book often focuses on particular niche venues across various cities in the UK, both small and large, venues which influenced the whole culture. It’s so surprising considering the incredible popularity of such bands as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Animals, to discover how they really became grounded and formed the elements of their success in small club residencies: The Cavern in Liverpool for the Beatles, The Crawdaddy in London for the Rolling Stones and the Club a Go Go in Newcastle for The Animals. Later so many dance DJs carved their names in residencies such as at the Hacienda in Manchester and also self-promoted London nights such as Spectrum, Shoom and Trip at the Astoria. As a DJ I found it particularly interesting seeing the evolution of my art. How early than I had imagined venues were turning away from live acts and creating spaces for vinyl spinners or jukeboxes where the latest music from all over the world could entertain the crowd in its original studio glory rather than lame band covers playing the same old stuff. Often the first and most successful DJs to contribute to dancefloor culture were the ones with the most eclectic well-resourced vinyl collections. The resistance from formal old school music industry to record-spinners was there from the outset. On a local tip for me, John Sicolo, famed owner of TJS in Newport, one of John Peel’s most favourite live venues, gets a mention in the introduction and although Miss Moneypennys @ Bonds and elsewhere and Chuff Chuff in Birmingham escapes much attention, I did, in particular love the focus on Bristol with detailed analysis of the formation of Wild Bunch, leading to the musical movement that is Massive Attack. I think the Korean restaurant whose basement was the spiritual home of Daddy G’s crew was once a Thai restaurant on Park Row where I’d treat all my Shuffle resident DJs to meals before our weekend gigs. Throughout the book special attention is paid to the gay scene and how it has influenced UK culture. From clandestine beginnings we see a more accepted mainstream less-discriminatory inclusion in the modern day entertainment environment. There are some darker tales and the history of Gary Glitter at the Cavern and Jimmy Saville’s live DJing are historic details I’d rather not know tbh but truth is out there…. The whole acid house coverage is where DJ author, Dave Haslam comes into his own. The whole book is written with intellectual flair and creative passion but from the evolution of Hacienda to coverage of Sasha at Shelleys and rise of Ministry of Sound Garage, Summer of Love Ibiza London acid house founders, the story bubbles and Haslam lets loose with a soul of a professional dance music aficionado. As someone who grew up in nightclubs and has spent a lifetime dodging around venues in the UK as a DJ, promoter etc it was great reading about many people who influenced my life so much and also people I’ver been privileged enough to work alongside. Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, Nicky Holloway, Norman Jay, Judge Jules to name a few. Most of the London and Birmingham clubs that I did play in have since closed their doors and one consistent fact I notice in the book is that venues often have a short shelf life. Often many are a lot smaller and these are the most influential in the various eras. There are a few survivors but so many are now tescos or blocks of flats or shopping centres. It’s noticeable how marginal the lines are when it comes to finance and how fashion dictates and authorities discord with entertainment sector has harsh political consequences. The book is quite substantial and detailed with so many new facts for me and amazing anecdotes I shall be relaying to all who might listen to me. However, I need more. at 400 pages it’s not enough. There’s too many characters left in silence too many more venues I need the facts on. I want to keep Mister Haslam’s pen busy and will be applying to Routledge for him to be approached to compile a definitive Encyclopedia of British nightlife and I’m sure Haslam could maybe expand his horizons beyond the confines of this tiny island and deliver a history of global nightlife. I want to know how many guitars Jimi Hendrix has put through the ceiling in Antarctica and for every nook and cranny from darkest Africa, Chinese villages, Amazonian jungle hideouts, Saharan oases to Detroit back alleys, New York boutiques and Chicago storage facilities I need to know what bands are on, what the DJs are spinning, dress code, bouncer quality and profit and loss situation. Plenty more to crack on with, Dave. Get busy. Like any vinyl collection there’s always room for more… Anyone from the humblest cloak room assistant to the most pretentious superstar DJ should get onto this book and analyse and enjoy the great achievement of its original creation.

Review: Poverty Safari – Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass – by Darren McGarvey

Poverty Safari is a winner of the Orwell Prize in 2018. The author, Darren McGarvey offers us a biographical account of his life in working class Glasgow suburb Pollok. Darren is a rapper who does extensive community work and is also a socially conscious intelligent man with his finger on the pulse of the problems poverty creates for working class people across the UK. This book explores personal examples of his life on the periphery and transcends into a political journey where he encourages disillusioned working class people to seize the initiative and follow his model of self improvement in order to escape the constraints of our country’s enduring classist system. He writes very fluently and considering he claims he has hardly read any books at all, his writing style is erudite , flowing and engaging to the reader. His safari takes us on a journey through community centres and jails, to his own personal battles against alcoholism and drug addiction. He intimately describes his own struggle in growing up in a working class family. The tragic loss of his estranged alcoholic mother during her mid thirties who hailed from the Gorbals estate in Glasgow was a sad anecdote but his relationship with his father in later years suggested a maturing of his attitudes and forgiveness towards his parents. I think the best thing about the book is that to any politician or community leader who doesn’t directly face immediate poverty, there is a steady flow of real life examples of the actual daily war that disaffected poor people face in our poverty stricken working class communities across the country. From the Pollok free state to annoyance at media bourgeois values and its general ignorance of the poorest in society, there is anger in this book but that is equalled with passion and an irresistible desire for social justice. Politically McGarvey is generally in support of leftist values yet he doesn’t wholly agree that politicians on the left truly are unique in offering a solution to the poor. Racism and the uncontrolled immigration where many migrants end up the brunt of political violence on rundown estates like Pollok lends him some sympathetic views towards the far right. He discusses the reality of life and genuine values and has a tendency to criticise the nanny state that overlooks and peers down at his contemporaries as though they lack the ability to understand or absolve themselves of their issues and the silencing of the political voice in rundown estates that are overlooked are symptomatic especially of the wider societal issues at play in the modern day, especially under a Britain where Tories have run government continuously for well over a decade. I’m a house music DJ myself and live on a poor council estate in South Wales. Like Darren I have used my music skills to engage with the community by running DJ workshops which have opened my eyes to a wider aspect of society and I feel that he touches base very well with the most marginalised people’s struggles in today’s world. It’s quite a dark scary tale yet the conclusion is quite spiriting and enlightening as the key he identifies as being self-motivated and using self improvement it is possibly the only real way out of this safari park and I think that the book could inspire many as well as encouraging politicians to amend their views on poverty in the U.K.

Review: Memoirs of a Revolutionary – by Victor Serge

This is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read, a first witness account of some of the most important world events of the first half of the twentieth century, a rich period for revolutionary events and the author, Victor Serge, a Belgian born Russian, is perfectly poised to give detailed personal encounters with many of the key protagonists. Serge is a revolutionary, who participates in the Russian Revolution from 1919 as a core Bolshevik. He meets and works with Lenin and Trotsky and his European roots make him critical to the emerging infrastructure of Soviet Russia. Serge writes often with a critical frankness of the core movements of which he is part, a fact that later endangers him as (correctly identified by the author) the Revolution seeps into Totalitarianism, culminating in the great Stalinist Purges of the 1930s. Initially the book flirts with the rising tide of working class socialism in Western Europe. Paris is a hotbed for leading international figures of the Left. Later, in Barcelona, Serge makes key contacts that will come into fruition for his analyses of the Spanish Civil War. From there he embarks for his never seen before motherland (his family were anti-Tsarist exiles). The post 1917 revolution is enduring its honeymoon, yet the whole survival of the Bolsheviks comes within a blink of an eye as the Civil War almost leads to their destruction in Petrograd as the Whites make gains. Serge, as he moves up the ranks, rapidly becomes disillusioned with the turn that the Revolution is taking. He warns against the Cheka and GPU. He is a peaceful man and holds onto the non-violent tenets of socialism. Later, when the party splits – Serge is a key figure in the alliance against the Party Centre and Politburo, which culminates in his expulsion from the Party and exile in Orenburg. His suffering in prison shows how lucky he was to retain his life, in a period where the executioner’s bullet was only ever a step away and was freely used. Serge’s fame as an author, especially in France, managed, through international outcry, to keep him and his young family away from the true harshness of life as an exile and ultimately secured his freedom back to Western Europe. The outbreak of world war was predicted by this great political visionary. His tracts against Stalinism often made him an enemy of his comrades and left him few publishing opportunities during his lifetime. As Nazi Germany ultimately rose up and invaded France, Serge fled Paris for one final time and luckily managed to secure a final exit from the continent as he became a war refugee in Mexico where he ultimately died peacefully a couple of years after the cessation of hostilities. I love this book for its detailed insight. The frankness of the author is inviting and his ideology and awareness are truly inspiring on both a political and personal level. For any student of world history in the twentieth century this book is a must read and for any aspiring revolutionaries I cannot think of a better book to read (with the possible exception of the Guevarist diaries) in order to quench your revolutionary zeal.

Review: A Social History of France in the 19th Century – by Christophe Charle

This is a translation from the original French and as such I feel that sometimes reads a little strangely as an academic study in that it sometimes has an unusual technique for presenting ideas. It is quite rich in statistics and sometimes the data can be overwhelming. The book is neatly broken down into chapters which focus on the different effects during multiple time periods on the individual classes which compromised 19th century French society. It is clear that each of the revolutions that occurred during this period, even though often initially driven by the lower classes, all had a tendency to ultimately favour the bourgeois status quo among society’s political elite. Even though peasants and working class often bore the brunt of society’s effects, it is also apparent from the study that by the end of the century, in particular during the Belle Epoque, living conditions and standards had actually risen. France caught up with the rest of the Western world in terms of its industrialisation and a more cohesive labour movement gradually improved the lot of wage earners. France moved during three major periods during the nineteenth century. We have the July Monarchy, the Second Empire and the Third Republic. There are good regional examples of the different events that form the country’s social history. I particularly enjoyed the details about various industrial regions such as the mining districts and also the variations across the land from North and South. It is a worthy read, even if sometimes this book does get bogged down in detail.

Review: France 1815-1914 The Bourgeois Century – by Roger Magraw

This book focuses on post-revolutionary France, during a period where the bourgeois consolidated their gains from 1789. Three further revolutionary changes of power occurred in France during the studied century and again it was the bourgeois who gained the most from these changes. We see a period of a modernising country, catching up with other industrialised nations. Capitalism endures a fight with the emerging political left which campaigns on behalf of a peasantry and working class whose standards of living are in general on the rise due to new technologies and modernisations. The study goes into each of the classes in depth, during varying periods. Political focuses on anticlericalism, workers’ rights, education and preparing the country for impending military dangers from abroad are varied. Often Magraw will introduce a fairly difficult concept as a topic and through the subtle use of repetition he will develop each of these ideas until by the end of the book the text is fast-flowing and comprehensively understood. I particularly enjoyed the focus on the lower strata of society and the impact of the varied political changes. The book definitely compliments other study I have made on the France of this period.

Review: Marxism and the French Left – by Tony Judt

This is an in depth study of socialism in France. The book is broken up into a series of long chapters, each covering a critical period of the political left in France. The emergence of working class political culture in the nineteenth century is explored and we see the development of trade unionism and the creation of socialist parties. The development of the social party, the SFIO is looked at in detail, prior to its rise to power under Blum. We then see the decline in the power of the socialists as they concede proletariat votes to the PCF, communists. The chapter on the French communists looks at the theorists who were so successful at internationalising the ideas and images of French Marxism. Sartre among the most famous, also there is a detailed study of Althusser, who unlike many of the French Marxist writers – was also an actual member of the PCF. The tailing off off Communist popularity as it clung hopelessly to the vestiges of Stalinism, leads to the book’s final chapter, where the rise of the socialists yet again, culminates in the ascendancy of Mitterand at the 1981 French general elections where the socialists swept surprisingly into power. this victory is compared with the Revolution of 1791 and the Paris Commune of 1871 in terms of its relevance to leftist politics in France. I found this book to be very detailed and some chapters were a bit tricky in terms of ideas and specialist vocabulary – but the book, read for a History of French Labour course at Cardiff University – has certainly enlightened me on certain aspects of French working class politics and I feel that the knowledge imparted has been vital.