Music Monday: Loose Talk TV (1983) – when Tom Waits, Grace Jones and Sade touched down in Deptford

Loose Talk was a short lived Channel 4 music/arts and chat show that ran for two series in 1983. It was recorded in front of a live audience at the Albany theatre in Deptford. Generally critically panned at the time it did bring a range of interesting people to touch down in SE8 with guests ...

Ruth Ellis drama at the Rivoli

New ITV drama 'A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story' is a fictionalisation of the life and death of the last woman to be executed in Britain. She was hanged for murder in 1955.Ellis lived for a while as a teenager at 7 Herne Hill Road, while working at the Locarno ballroom in Streatham.  In recreating ...

Ruth Ellis drama at the Rivoli

New ITV drama 'A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story' is a fictionalisation of the life and death of the last woman to be executed in Britain. She was hanged for murder in 1955.Ellis lived for a while as a teenager at 7 Herne Hill Road, while working at the Locarno ballroom in Streatham.  In recreating ...

Music Monday: Laura Misch – Alchemy on Hilly FIelds

Laura Misch might be touring internationally at the moment but but she continues to deepen her relationship with South London landscape and communities. Last month for instance she gave a listening workshop at Avalon Cafe in Surrey Canal Road SE14 while last summer she was down at the 56a Info Shop supporting a project from ...

Stealing Good Times from Bad – 80s casual fashions in Tower Bridge Road

In the Face magazine, July 1984, Robert Elms wrote an article 'Good Times'. A follow up to his 1982 article 'Hard Times', it highlighted a shift in street fashion away from dressing down to dressing up and focused  on shops in the Bermondsey/Tower Bridge Road in particular. Here's a few extracts:'Down the Old Kent Road ...

Music Monday: Peckham Blancmange

Synth duo Blancmange had a string of early 1980s hits, starting with Living on the Ceiling in 1982. Singer Neil Arthur hailed from Lancashire but at the peak of their success he was living in 'London SE15 in a huge Georgian house. It's not mine I share it with four other people'. (don't know where ...

Swedenborg Churches in Deptford and Camberwell

 The visionary Christianity of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) had a big impact on the more mystically inclined believers in the 18th and 19th centuries, famously including William Blake (though never somebody to bow to another's doctrine he had his criticisms of the Swedish thinker). To this day the Swedenborg Society still maintain a centre in Covent Garden ...

Valentines 2025 in Deptford and Lewisham, including ‘Horrible Music for Horrible People’

 

Chumbawamba, Levellers and more: New Cross Venue 1991

I have posted previously about the Venue in New Cross Road, closed since Covid but in the early 1990s one of the top live music places in London, particularly for up and coming indie bands. This selection of references from Sounds music paper from January to March 1991 shows just how busy it was. There ...

Goblin Band and some South London folk nights/open mics

Goblin Band were great at the Goose is Out last week (Friday 31st January 2025) at the Ivy House, bringing a new energy to traditional folk song including not one but two versions of Widecombe Fair, a song which as they note they have resurrected after it being out of fashion for years. Excellent support ...