Jamming at Jamboree

                              Photo by Pascale Yebgui

One of the things we are most blessed with, living in this fair old city, is the amazing amount of music from all corners of the world that resonate through the boroughs every day.

From huge and world-renowned venues to the dark and dingy nooks and crannies, aural delights seep out of every pore.

Down towards the nook and cranny end of the spectrum is a little-know bar tucked away in Cable Street Studios. Stepping through a giant, heavy curtain into Jamboree helps build the anticipation and one then steps into a beautifully atmospheric bar where all manner of performers come and display their talents throughout the week.

Regular nights here include 'Red Sky At Night' on Mondays, featuring a myriad of Bluegrass and Americana-inflected music hosted by the man known as Jim, and 'Magic Swirling Ships' on a Thursday with the finest selection of Garage Rock bands around.

In my humble opinion, the best venues are the ones that aren't on the tip of everyone's tongue. The kind of places that people who do know, often keep to themselves.

Well, today I'm breaking rank. Just for you guys...

Romper Causing a Rumpus

Now, being more of a culcha whore than a party whore these days, it is not often that I am moved to write on this page regarding another 'fundraiser'.

So I'm not going to start now. What I am going to write about though is an event that has been bubbling under the surface for a while now in the braincheese of some of our most respected compadres.

Brought to you by the estimable Mr Genochio, the irrepresible DJ Malaka and the irreplaceable Drusus Germanicus, Rumpus avoids the usual fuss and bluster and cuts straight to the chase.

Featuring a stream of performers from all parts of the artistic spectrum including the full-on swing powerhouse that is The Smoky Taps, the searing roundhouse kick of mayhem and mystery that is Reverend Zero's Medicine Show and those dashing gentlemen of action, Flay and DeVille.

This is without even mentioning the veritable ukulele hero Desmond O'Connor and chillout space designed by and featuring the kings (and queens) of Kitsch, The Immaculate Extremists.

If you're not bloated from indulging in all this then the gluttony will continue into the night with a range of DJs playing anything from Gypsy to Electroswing to Dubstep.

Taking place at Cable, near London Bridge, and for the unreasonably affordable price of £8, let the wild rumpus begin!

Celebrate the Tate

Believe it or not, the Tate Modern is 10 years old this year. Yes, it's 10 whole years since the former Bankside Power Station was reborn to great acclaim as one of the world's best homes of modern art.

I can't help but think back to what I was doing in 2000. And cringe a little. We're all a lot older and wiser now. Kind of. Right?

Anyway, as much as I am fond of riffing, scatting and circumnavigating the point, let's get back to the issue here.

In honour of this auspicious birthday, the Tate Modern are holding a free festival this weekend from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th May.

Working with the apparently 'visionary' curators Maurizio Cattelan, Cecilia Alemani and Massimiliano Gioni, there will be more than 70 international, independent art collectives creating projects in the famous Turbine Hall.

Some of these collectives include White Columns (New York), Cinemateque de Tanger (Tanger), Kling and Bang (Reykjavik) and no.w.here (London) and the opportunity to see them will be extended to midnight on Friday and Saturday.

From the information I've seen this looks as though it will be a veritable feast of contemporary art and performance and allied with the knowledge that most of you are in a permanent state of hunger for creative juices, this is surely a match made in heaven...

Megatropolis

Things just ain't what they used to be. In my day etc etc.

A familar rant and one I am not immune to. However, in some cases it is immutably true and the cinematic world throws up plenty of exceptional examples.

Probably the star witness in any such case would be the improbably epic Fritz Lang film, Metropolis. Made in 1927 and featuring more than 38000 extras, this is the most expensive silent film ever made costing more than 5 million Reichsmark (not far off 1 million pounds, which considering that my grandma said that everything then cost a penny, is, officially, a fuckload). The special effects still resonate on any viewing as much as the plot still feels relevant and sharp and the original soundtrack featured the likes of Richards Wagner and Strauss.

I am therefore extremely excited to reveal that Metropolis will be given a cinematic re-release in the UK on the 10th September and be featuring a full 25 minutes of lost footage thus making it the film in totality that Fritz Lang always intended!

If you haven't seen this film already then whet your appetite with the trailer that is available here and be prepared to have improved your life a notch. If you have, then you will all know what I am making such a fuss about.

If ever the word spectacular could be applied to a moviefilm, then Metropolis would be at the head of the rowdy queue.

The First Rule of Scrap Club is....SMASHITUP!

We live in an era and a city where the stresses and strains of modern life often weigh heavy on our shoulders and it is important to have an outlet to vent every so often.

Now Michael Douglas in Falling Down had one idea but that often leads to unnecessary killing of people and scaring of people in creepy burger joints. There is another way.

Scrap Club.

The premise is that if you are fortunate enough to get a ticket, you attend and are then shown into the arena. Each round a set of names are called and a load of hallowed scrap is brought into the room ranging from volvo cars to gas cookers, from grand pianos to exercise bikes.

When your name is uttered, you are then handed a sledgehammer and a pair of goggles and, well, you go to work on it. Smash it, kill it, break it, wreck it. It's frankly primeval.

Once you've walked the walk, you step away from the arena and, hey presto! The stress and anger has simply melted away...Ahhhh....now...

I'M GOING HOME!

21st May 19:30
Bocking Street Warehouse E8 3RL
Tickets are £10 (plus £1 bastard tax)

More Than A Home For Dogs

I'm coming back to a theme that is always close to my heart here. How frickin' awesome and talented the people I call my friends are.

They're also, mainly, massive show-offs...which is lucky for the rest of us who thus have the opportunity to see the manifestations of such efforts.

One such opportunity is on the horizon and drawing ever closer as part of the Scratch Festival at that veritable and giant mine of cultural performance and exhibition, the Battersea Arts Centre (BAC).

The Scratch festival as a whole will be displaying an array of different artists in every corner of the canyon of a space they have there. To narrow this premise down, a Scratch "is a new theatrical idea developed by artists and shaped by audience feedback".

Featuring in one of these Scratches is our resident cynical font of knowledge and creator of beautiful visuals, Justin Beardsall. In collaboration with composer Caroline Devine and Dancing Brick, "A L I C E" will be a piece lamenting the decline of analogue technology, harking back to a more innocent and clunky era and celebrating these icons of our childhood.

8-bit computer games, VHS, cassette tapes, that creepy girl with the doll and chalkboard. Ah, joy! Halcyon days indeed and, frankly, I couldn't think of a more capable pair of hands to bring this back to life than VJ Meno's.

Right, I'm off to spend 45 minutes listening to preternatural screeching and vibrating lines of colour just so I can play Arcadians on my Acorn again...

May 5th and May 6th
7:45pm
BAC

Tickets £5 (plus there is a 3for2 offer)

Fork Handles

If there are any regular readers of this out there on the interweb, then maybe at least one of you can recall my bigging up of the Sir John Soanes Museum a while back.

I had good reason then to give what little kudos I have to offer to this oft forgotten London treasure and I have even more reason now...

As if the Museum itself is not amazing and atmospheric enough, there will now be extra-super-special candlelit tours of the house.

A house that features collections ranging from Neo-Classical sculpture to Egyptian Antiquities to glorious timepieces. All this within the walls of a beautiful and historical building in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Taking place on the first Tuesday of every month from 6pm - 9pm and at the absolutely spiffingly good price of FREE.

Make sure to arrive in good time as this kind of thing tends to lend itself to the great British sport of queuing...

NomNomNomNomNom!

Food. God bless food. My top three things in life are often interchangeable and interwoven but a trip to flavour country is a regular chart-topper.

What's not to love? It comes in different shapes, sizes, flavours, textures, colours and even different parents.

If you're similarly driven by culinary desires or delicious mastication then I should inform you that we are, right now, in the midst of a celebration of food.

Hosted by UCL, Food Junctions has already been running this week and is set to climax this bank holiday weekend, in Camley Street Natural Park, with events covering workshops, lectures, food creativity and, of course, royally stuffing one's face.

Go on, get stuck in, Sausage Gut!

Je t'aime the Thames

There's been a noticable radio silence over the last week and I can only mitigate this by asking you to take a look out your window and remind yourself as to how fortunate our recent meteorological circumstances have been.

Daytime is the new nighttime and I, for one, have certainly been making hay.

With such conditions in mind, there is an exceptional opportunity to make the most of such clement weather this weekend. Not only is it, of course, a bank holiday, but one amongst our midst has squirreled out an opportunity to celebrate on the fair waters of our Thames river.

Launching this Sunday, Je Thames is going to be a new regular river boat party located on the Embankment. This weeks instalment, monikered "Our Frenz Electric", sees a stellar line-up from live bands such as Braindead Collective and Gobsausage to some deep and dirty DJ sets from Dan Donovan (Dreadzone) and Tom Parker (Deptford Noise Team).

Covering two decks, plus a barbeque to feed the masses on the (hopefully) sun-drenched open deck, there will also be a liberal sprinkling of performance art for you to enjoy in-between nourishing your electrosoul.

Located on the North side of the river, right near Temple station or a short walk from Embankment station, and at the absolute bargain price of £3 (before 6pm) and £5 after, it'd be an honour to sit out on the deck with you and relax while the waves and varying floating body parts wash gently up against the hull of this good ship Electric.

Electro Retro

So, there appears to be a new scent trail in the air, a smell, a sound that is attracting many of my peers and spreading like wildfire. Incorporating many things dear to mine own heart, including dapperness, swing music and modern electro.

Yes pop-pickers, it's electroswing. As far as I can tell, this all seems to have grown out of Mr Scruff's signature tune, Get A Move On and spawned a whole movement of such.

At the forefront of this, one of the spearheads if you like, are The Correspondents, spreading this vintage gospel to all four corners of London.

They will next be popping their heads above the pulpit at Jamm in Brixton as part of an evening being run by those old festival stagers, the Chai Wallahs and I am reliably informed by one of my most eminent and esteemed colleagues that "you'd be a fool to miss it, I is tellin' ya!".

Appearing alongside this formidable tour de force are South London's finest Rodney P and DJ Skitz. These veritable godfathers of British hiphop would be worth the admission fee on their own but added to the aforementioned and backed up by the likes of the explosive Molotov Jukebox and the slick and unstoppable King Porter Stomp this could be an evening to tempt even the most hardened Hackneyite out of the East and to head down South...