(click on image to enlarge)
This map is my attempt to chart the history of house clubs in London. It starts with the earliest house clubs like Delirium (after it moved to Heaven) where the Watson brothers plied their trade and the returning Amnesiacs haven, The Project which was born in a grubby little dive in Streatham called Ziggy’s, and follows the logical progression through to the acid house explosion of ‘88, the orbital scene of ‘89, onto the move back into West End clubs with the likes of Rampling’s Pure Sexy, through to the super club phenomenon and finally ending up at modern day East End clubs like Secret Sundaze and Buzzin’ Fly, taking in Balearic house, progressive house, techno, leather trousers, long hair, feather boas, handbags, metro sexual clubbing and acid teds along the way.
I'd like to say I knocked it together in a hour down the boozer one lunch time but it was actually given a little more consideration than that - and I am indebted to Alan Arscott and Grant Berry (who runs Enjoy) for their efforts in getting the map right, and Alan again for his superb design work making my rough drawing look so lovely. I also owe a pint or two to Dan Beaumont (who runs Disco Bloodbath) for helping get the gay clubs right, and Rick Hopkins (who runs Dream Machine) for his input on the techno side of things (love you all x).
A printed version of the map appeared in Faith Fanzine, which can still be picked up from cooler shops around London or by going on the forum >>here<<
5 comments:
Loved this when I saw it in Faith just before Xmas. Fantastically well researched and pretty much spot on.
Top effort sir...
Do you mind if I re-post the image on my blog:
http://leftside-wobble.blogspot.com/
I was resident at Kinky Disco and you managed to revive some fine memories while traversing the many wandering branches.
Cheers,
jm
Funnily enough someone on Faith was moaning about the link from Kinky Disco to Love Ranch, so I'm glad you liked it.
Nice blog you've got there too, so vey happy for you to repost the map on but grateful if you could credit Faith Fanzine and me(Milo), Alan and Grant form pulling it together.
And if you could tell me how you get that live audio player thing you've got in your blog, that would be ace!
Cheers fella. Absolutely on the credit front.
With ref to Kinky being a subset of Love Ranch while it's not strictly true, there was a huge cross over crowd-wise. The only real error is that Kinky was a direct decedent of Solaris (both promoted by Roscoe and Dave). But hey, that feels like nitpicking to me on such a gargantuan effort!
;-)
By the way mutual respect on the blog front. I'll be adding you to my recommended sites for sure.
The embedded mp3 player is provided by divshare.com
They provide both a limited free service and for roughly $150 a year you get 500 GB of downloads a month (lets me post the mixes at 320k without fear of running beyond my quota). Highly recommended.
I didn’t know Roscoe did Solaris too (wasn’t Nick Coleman involved in that?) but the lineage isn’t just about who ran the clubs. Sometimmes it is promoters but many other links are by style (one club influencing another or just of an similar style/musical movement), some are by DJ, some by the people who attended (two parties, same crowd, or people who went to one set up another), and are even by venue (the last resort). It isn't, meant to the from the view of people on the 'inside' but that of a 'fan'. At the time, I didn't promote clubs or DJ or work in a record shop or know loads of DJs/promoters. I just went to loads of clubs.
Obviously this is all subjective but every link was carefully considered and there being no arrows to indicate the direction travel was a deliberate decision, because it's not strictly chronological and I didn’t want to suggest one thing flowed from another - just they were linked.
For example, the Brain was around long before Love Ranch and Lazy Dog influenced Sunday Sonic, not the other way round.
Anyway, if I ever revise it, I’ll work the Solaris link in!
Oh and cheers for the divshare tip. I might well that when I've got a bit more muscial contnet ready to post.
Yep, Nick was involved in Solaris as well. It was one of the first (straight) clubs to start embracing a fashion aspect back to clubbing after the dress down aesthetic of the previous 18 months.
By the way I'm uploading a new mix to http://leftside-wobble.blogspot.com/ today and will be featuring the map as part of the post.
jm
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