South London Collective Sounds
Well, back to some more 'independent' sounds for this post, featuring another area in London and weaving it in with a recent trip 'up smoke', to be honest it has been nice to have a 'divergence' away from the usual style of music for a change and I am sure I will go a bit AWOL again in some future posts, so please 'bear with' and enjoy.
So for this post I am hitting South East London and some sounds from that area from back in the day, the place is Greenwich, which is a pretty cool place to hang out with trendy bars and restaurants a plenty, it also has a cool indoor market selling all sorts of stuff from antiques, food, arts & crafts, books and music and is absolutely heaving at the weekend. Check out the Greenwich Market Website at the link.
It also has a rich maritime past represented by The Cutty Sark and Maritime Museum as well as a beautiful park and for those music lovers the O2 arena isn't far away. It is a place that is wonderful to visit in the warm Summer days in the U.K. my Missus and I seem to end up 'gravitating' towards it when the weather warms, it is right on the Thames, with perfect places to soak up the vibe and weather.
Just Chewin' The Fat
This time, however myself and a couple of work friends decided to 'hook up' and have a 'jolly boys outing' on a Saturday afternoon after several other aborted attempts to get together during the working week (it's only taken us about 6 months to sort this gig out, meticulous and detailed military planning has been required!)
I headed towards Stratford, hopped the Jubilee Line to North Greenwich and then the short bus ride on the 188 to Russell Square down to Cutty Sark to meet up, guess I could have just jumped the Docklands Light Railway to Canary Wharf and changed, but you know me, I just love a bus ride! I managed to get there with some time to spare to have a wander round and then go 'early doors' to the meeting point at the pub called The Gipsy Moth, finding out one of our 'shipmates' was on the way and the other just around the corner frightening the locals in the park with his huge sandwich!๐ฅช
Avast, Ye Landlubbers!๐ดโโ ๏ธ
I bagged us a table outside under a sun umbrella overlooking The Cutty Sark (just as well as it was another screamingly hot day๐ฅต in London with temperatures hitting 32 degrees, I grabbed a beer and more importantly water (which we carried on doing for each alcoholic drink we had throughout time there...soooo sensible!๐). We all hooked up and 'chewed the fat', it was lovely to catch up again, have a moan about work, talk music, ULEZ and other hot topics in the news. We never made it to some of the other wonderful pubs Greenwich has to offer, it was just too hot to move, but it didn't matter, it's all about being in 'the moment', engaging and just talking and laughing so that it kind of doesn't matter where you are.
Anyway this post 'kills a couple of birds with one stone' in that September 19th is 'International Talk Like A Pirate Day' โ so we were in the right kind of nautical environment and also Greenwich is featured musically in the post below...
Creeping Bathroom Records๐
A various artists L.P. called Pulsebeat by the madly named Independent Label 'Creeping Bathroom Records' released in 1984
- Noize Wot Noize - Dennis The Menace
- Noize Wot Noize - (I'm In Love With) My 26" Colour T.V.
- Jive Syndicate - Out of The Blue
- Dance On Water - Horror Stories
- The Pressure - In The Boat
- Dark Asylum - Possession
- The Papers - Living In The Land of The Living
- Please Return My Dog - Tell God I've Had Enough
- Please Return My Dog - Underdogs
- Street Secrets - It's All Over
- The Unknown Colours - No Reason
- The Pearl Divers - The Glory of Love
- Bzu-zu - The Game
The track below by Bzu-zu:
A nice bass start off and ripping into that wonderful so very 1980's synth sound, really good track to be honest. The other youtube link to the band Dance On Water on the track list kind of highlights the mix of different sounds the compilation offered, in this case a slightly more minimalist synth sound.
Blood Fetish & The Greenwich Performance Collective
Evidently the band Bzu-zu were also known as Blood Fetish. You can check out some of their other material and become a fan at reverbnation.com/bzuzu.
It appears that they had some involvement with The Greenwich Performance Collective as they appear on another compilation album called 'Here's The Shit' released in 1984, they appear on that compilation with their track 'Curse'. The 'Collective' appear to have been as described on the tin, a group of interested and like-minded individuals doing that whole record thing d.i.y. style, by the sounds of it they had no particular leader just a consensus of opinions and a vote (at least that's how I think it sounds upon reading what little I can find) as well as gathering together different musical sounds and putting on gigs locally.
More Info On 'The Collective'
Check out the wonderful dieordiy2 blogspot for the album listings for both cassette albums mentioned plus information and some input from people who remember gigs set up by the Collective. You can also check out another release by them called 'Dennis' in the same year featuring another clutch of unknown punk, post-punk, new wave style bands. Looking like a serious bit of d.i.y. not on a label material in cassette format only.
Also well worth a look is xamountofxamount blogspot which has begun a digital archive of the Greenwich Collective's two cassette compilations. It also has a link to the Collective's Facebook Page.
Back to some of the other tracks on the album with this one byย Noize Wot Noize with their track called 'I'm in love with my 26" colour T.V.'๐บ
A slightly more 'punked up' sound than the previous track, but equally as good. Mind you a t.v. would be a bit bigger than 26" today, but size isn't everything when it comes to the love of a television (at least that's what mine tells me!)
And finally rocking that whole Goth Sound with Dark Asylum and their track 'Possession'.
Mix Of Sounds๐
A real mix of good sounds on a clearly overlooked album, from Rock, Punk, Post Punk, Power Pop to Minimalist Electronic. Kind of something to appease all tastes, it's a shame that it appears to have been a bit of a 'one off' and it is hard trying to find out more about the record label and individual bands on the album. There are two bands which appeared to release several other tracks i.e. The Pressure who were a Medway based Power Pop/Mod/Garage band who were to release the L.P. 'Through The Looking Glass' in 1984 on Ace Records which was a local based Independent label.
The other band of some note were The Papers an Australian synth based band who seemed to get lucky in providing some music for the 1983 film BMX Bandits starring a very young Nicole Kidman (never heard of it! ๐).
Video Thanks To
Picture Thanks To
Photo by Phil Lev on Unsplashย
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