I have a love/hate relationship with our capital city. It is a cultural hub and there are many places of interest and I do revel in sometimes playing the dumb northerner from north of Watford! The converse side is that the place can be overpoweringly busy and more than a tad mucky.
For a couple of years at the start of 80’s we used to undertake a house swap with a family in Upminster, which is the last Eastern stop on the District line (the green one) and this involved many trips into the metropolis and coincided with West Ham winning the cup in 1980. I recall one day going to the viewing platform in the Houses of Parliament for Question Time (allowed in those days), followed by a visit to one of the first McDonalds and then onto Wembley to watch England beat the reigning World Champions Argentina 3-1, twas an eventful day!
My first unaccompanied trip down was with my brother in April 1985 where at the age of 17 I attended the fifth and sixth gigs of my lifetime. We took advantage of the British Rail Apex tickets available at that point in time costing us a princely £25 each. As it was half-term we managed to purloin some digs in a halls of residence near Warren Street tube station, which were basic but cheap and centrally located.
On arrival, we scoured the NME and Time Out for available gigs and identified one at the Sir George Robey on Seven Sisters Road in Finsbury Park which was located opposite the Rainbow Theatre. Couple of useless facts I have since garnered is that the fictional pub The Harry Lauder in Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch is based on the Robey and it is also the pub visited towards the end of Trainspotting. The venue was renamed the Powerhaus and closed in 2004 and was subsequently demolished in 2015.
The band in question were called Bill Posters Will Be Banned who turned out be a comedic musical combo containing former members of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. I cannot recall a lot of detail though remember them being periodically amusing and have stronger memories of the drinking holes visited before.
The other gig the following night was at the Putney Half Moon where apparently the Rolling Stones, The Who and Kate Bush have graced the stage and the place remains a live venue to this day. The first band on was Surfing Dave. I was chatting to their bassist Les Atkins prior to the gig and extolling him for some inexplicable reason to reference when on stage that there were Preston lads in attendance and that the town contained the biggest bus station in Europe. To his eternal credit he affably did so. The lead singer was an absolute spit of Sergeant Bilko. Their best tracks were ‘I Got a Surfing T-Shirt’ and ‘Exchange and Mart’.
The headline act was The Hank Wangford Band which besides Hank also included Bobby Valentino and Cissy Footwear. They were a Country and Western group who we had picked up from airplay on the Andy Kershaw show. They were enjoyable and standout track was ‘Jogging with Jesus’. We had a chat with them afterwards and they remain on the live circuit to this day under the latest moniker Hank Wangford and the Lost Cowboys. The night took a turn for the worse however as we missed the last tube resulting in an exceptionally long trog back to the lodgings, finally arriving at 3.30am. We missed breakfast the following morning!