Frenzied Friday In Leytonstone ๐คช
Hey, so not a million miles away from me lies Leytonstone in East London, many of my family come from around this area of the East End of London which used to be part of Essex back in the day. My tribe originally came from a neighbouring area a mere Leyton 'stones throw away'.
Although I have been to both areas many times over the years to visit relatives and also just for jollies with Mrs Akin to see what we can find to nose around at I decided to take a solo trip back recently (on Good Friday to be precise), rather than just take the bus from where we are I thought I'd make life a little harder and jumped the District Line to Barking and then catch the Overground train to Leytonstone High Road and walk into the high street.
Murdery About Murals
To be fair, it's not that far for me and I fancied a different route than the usual, so I encountered some wonderful artwork along the way and visited a lovely pub called 'The Birds' a real neighbourhood type pub which as well as serving nice beer also hosts comedy nights, wedding venue hire, art clubs and yoga! it is named after the Alfred Hitchcock film as he was born and lived for a time in Leytonstone. Whilst I was knocking around I also hit upon another pub which is still a bit of a music venue called 'The Red Lion', it is the place where the band Iron Maiden met up with the 'then' lead singer for the band Paul DiAnno (all to be mentioned in an up coming post soon!).
Psycho For Leytonstone
One of my favourite films directed by him (other than things like The Birds or Pyscho) is the film 'Frenzy'ย from 1972 which is a dazzlingly brilliant piece of suspense with a hint of dark humour. The short synopsis of the plot is that an ex-R.A.F. officer is wrongly accused for a series of murders and tries to defend his innocence, the real murderer turns out to be his 'friend' a fruit and veg market trader who works in the Market at Covent Garden (it used to be based there before it moved to a new location in 1974), who tries to cover his tracks along the way, but is eventually caught, the scene where he is trying to dispose of one of his victims in a potato sack as part of the cargo of a lorry and then realises that his victim still has his neck tie pin in her hand, he tries to rectify his mistake and retrieve it but not before the lorry sets off, cue the sort of suspense Hitchcock is famed for. The lead roles are played by Jon Finch (the innocent ex-R.A.F. Officer) and the murderer played wonderfully by Barry Foster, evidently Hitchcock instructed Foster to read some books on serial killers before he embarked upon the role...he clearly read well! For the dark humour side is the Chief Inspector investigating the case whilst also trying to avoid his wife's experiments with 'exotic cooking'.ย ย
The film was based on a book called 'Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square' originally written by Arthur La Bern in 1966.
Mad For The Music
Leytonstone has a fair share of famous people who were either born or lived there, some of the famous names include David Beckham (footballer), Damon Albarn (musician), Steve Harris(musician), Graham Gooch (Cricketer), Don Henderson (actor), Derek Jacobi (actor) and Fanny Craddock (Cook), Johnathon Ross (television presenter)ย to name but a few, so to celebrate Leytonstone's rich pool of talent especially musically here is a band from the area called Boy Kill Boy with their first release 'Suzie' from 2005 on the Independent 'Fierce Panda' record label.
Fierce About Pandas?
The label Fierce Panda was set up in 1994 and evidently the founders just wanted to release one 6 track E.P. called 'Shagging In The Streets' and retire from the music business, however they paved the way for bands such as Supergrass, Placebo, The Bluetones, Ash and of course the band featured in this post.
Anyway the track 'Suzie' on initial release didn't seem to fare too well, but after playing a bunch of festivals including Leeds and Reading the band re-released the single again in 2006, this time it was better received reaching #17 in the UK mainstream charts. The band called it quits in 2008 but re-formed briefly again in 2016.
They were:
- Chris Peck - Lead Vocals/Guitar
- Kevin Chase - Bass Guitar/Vocals
- Peter Carr - Keyboards
- Shaz Mahmood - Drums
It was a nice way to spend a Friday just discovering things 'locally' and leaving you with the words of Mr Damon Albarn (from Leytonstone) and Blur with their track 'There's No Other Way' at the link, until next time...
Video Thanks
Picture Sources
Photo by Maxime Roedel on Unsplash
Photos by ๐ ๐โ ฐ๐ฌ๐ รีผแซโ ฐ๐ฎ ๐๐๊โฑฟ
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