Gods of London: Alan Moore, Bauhaus and occult poetry gigs
Real magic…
London
Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers bring junkie chaos to the London Lyceum, 1984
Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers live.
They Were There: Composite photos of Queen, Jagger, Beatles and Floyd on London streets then and now
I’m reliably told that photographs are polysemous–that is they have multiple meanings which can change depending on mood or understanding of what the image represents.…
Inside the Batcave: A 1983 news report on the legendary London goth club
Liori Patterson at the Batcave, photo by Pierre Terrasson (via Pinterest) In 1983, the London Weekend Television series Reporting London paid a visit to the…
A young Primal Scream before ‘Screamadelica’: Live in London 1987
One small but hugely significant turning point in the long career of Primal Scream came when Alan McGee gave Bobby Gillespie an ecstasy tablet at…
Police break up full-on rave on a random London Underground train car
Last night police were summoned in order to break up a “fully-fledged rave” that started on a subway car on the Bakerloo line of London’s…
Infamous London punks Cockney Rejects get banned by the BBC, 1980
The 1970s were a hugely contentious time for the UK. In 1973 the country was reeling from a massive outbreak of worker strikes that were…
Picking a lock to the divine: Earliest known recordings of The Doors surface in ‘London Fog 1966’
When UCLA film student student Nettie Peña borrowed a reel-to-reel recorder from the high school where her father worked to record her friends’ new group,…
Murderers and Meths Drinkers: A strange, grim tour of ‘The London Nobody Knows’
The great actor James Mason stands in a Victorian urinal in London talking about goldfish. Here, Mason says referring to this Holborn convenience, is true…
The ‘Cutting Monster’: Bizarre 18th century illustrations of London’s stab-happy lady stalker
A bizarre illustration/caricature by James Gillray of the ‘Monster’ (aka the ‘Cutting Monster’) assaulting one of his female victims, 1790. Nearly a century before Jack…