First posted on MySpace Sep 7, 2008
Recently Edward Ball & Farfisa Dave have both posted some memories of Alan McGee’s Living Room club. Here are extracts from my rough notes for what might be a book one day called "From the Kings Road to the Room At The Top" or "How 3 schoolboys created Indie Music" or " Not another telling of the Ed Ball, Dan Treacy,Joe Foster Story" or...
Ah such sweet memories of youth. The way the early evening sun dappled the ground beneath the trees in the private gardens that made up the centre of the Georgian squares that filled the route between Goodge Street tube and Conway Street. Perfect for dreaming away an hour or two waiting for the doors of The Adams Arms to open at 6 of the clock.(For you youngsters out there, we haven't always had 24 hour drinking you know!).
An almost hidden London just yards from the stack-em high sell-em cheap electrical stores of the Tottenham Court Road-if you told me that David Hemmings had been filmed here for Blow Up I would've believed you. The setting made more perfect by the location just yards from the pub door of that faded picture postcard symbol of Swinging London-Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the Post Office Tower-a look to the future that was even then part of a receding past.
The Adams Arms itself-a back-street pub that always seemed slightly out of place with the squares nearby-what the neighbours thought of the sounds that flew from the upstairs windows God only knows. The Living Room might have only been there for 8 months before starting its journey around whatever pubs Alan could persuade to house it, but what a 8 months-from the opening night salvo of The Nightingales to the TV Personalities "Police Raid" (caught on Alive In The Living Room) via performances from The Times, Biff Bang Pow, Jasmine Minks,Nikki Sudden, The Pastels, Doctor & The Medics, The Loft, and more-and what about the support acts-usually some accapella combo fronted by The Legend, or 12 Cubic Feet, or the June Brides, or Revolving Paint Dream, or The Jowe Head Experience.
As the club took off there would be fanzine sellers with their carrier bags hoping to sell enough to buy a pint or two, new bands hoping to get a gig demo tape in hand, and journos from the weekly press all trying to squeeze into that tiny upstairs room that has since taken on a myth that seems to make it Indies answer to the Roxy Club.
+et+joe+foster.jpg)
When darkness had fallen and the bar was shut it would be time for all the hipsters to go -in my case either to a sofa at Joe Fosters place in Hendon,Alans in Tottenham ,whichever flat Nikki was staying at that week or if I had work the next day to a quiet corner of Waterloo Station to wait for the Paper Train to depart from Platform 7 at 2.45am.If I was lucky then it would go direct to Portsmouth, but a detour via Winchester and an hour or in sidings at Basingstoke wasn't uncommon-but very cold as the train wasn't heated! After the Creation Christmas Party, which was on a Thursday night, I spent 5 freezing hours walking around Waterloo and the South Bank waiting for the first train out of London (the paper train was running late) arriving back in Portsmouth at 7.00 am, just enough time to get home, washed and shaved ready to be at work for 8.30
