From: fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Brixton: I'm Raving Mad Pal!
Date: 18 Aug 92 17:46:39 GMT
Distribution: alt
Organization: Edinburgh University

Setting the scene: Last weekend I was off to London for a "psychedelic
all-nighter" at Brixton Academy. Brixton Academy is not in fact any kind
of educational institution, but simply a London nightclub. Very much
like Hammersmith Odeon, but without any seats downstairs.

Now the tickets cost 12 Pounds, and there wa of course a further 57
Pounds return train fair from Edinburgh. Those of you who pay any
attention to my posts at all will have by now guessed that the reason
I'd spend this much money is that Hawkwind were the main band at the
gig. In fact they were due to be playing twice.

The main peeve on the train down was a Kid From Hell. This was a little
bespectacled apprentice dweeb who upon fdiscovering something that
assualted the very foundations of logic itself spent some considerable
time screaming "WHY ARE THERE TWO TOILETS??". He proceeded to beat the
head of a nearby adult with a plastic sword while screaming out his
angst and anger at such a baffling cosmos.

!peeve: the adult in question was apparently a parent.

Anyway, on to the gig after several pints of beer and some pool playing
which wasn't half bad considering the quantities of alcohol ingested. 

At first everything seemed normal. Hordes of denim clad Hawkwind and
Gong fans were walking around with either beer or joints. Almost all of
the diehard Hawkwind fans I know were there and various promises of live
tapes were offered and accepted. Much chitchat, and more beer.

Then I noticed that there were several well dressed young ladies milling
around amongst the crowd. Naturally I considered this a Good Thing,
hormones temporarily shutting down my natural paranoia.

In the foyer upstairs however, there was a disco playing Rave music.
This should have alerted me to something, but I just regarded it as
curious and continued about the business of getting more drunk at a
ridiculously expensive price per pint.

The noise of the rave prevented me from becoming alert to the fact that
the first Hawkwind set had in fact begun though I managed to get in just
after the start of "Right To Decide".

Hawkwind put on a good gig with a very warped lightshow and the addition
of two synth players to the band. 

Planet Gong with Daevid Allen did a good following set and then it was
off back to the bar. 

The first real warning came when someone came up to us and said that the
roadies had started to dismantle the cabling to Hawkwind's equipment.
This was certainly worrying. Confirmation came when Richard Chadwick,
the drummer, walked through the crowd and confirmed that there'd been
some sort of problem and Hawkwind wouldn't be going back on. It was
fairly obvious taht he wasn't best pleased about it.

We tried to go back to the seating upstairs to see what was happening.
We were prevented by a bouncer who said that "upstairs was being
closed". The place was already mobbed and seriously over capacity. There
were also no seats downstairs.

So entering the downstairs hall, which was very packed, we discovered
that the Rave had apparently moved down to just in front of the stage.
Very strange. We sat down to wait for the next band. 

It was only when the next band started up and played rave music that the
full horror of the situation dawned upon me: The gig had now been turned
into a rave. We were in Brixton. All the tube trains had gone. It was
raining. The railway station didn't open until morning. The only
possible conclusion was: *we were stuck in a rave for six hours*.

One of our number concluded that this had been the plan all along. The
place hadn't been given permission for a rave so they'd advertised
something else with the plan to convert things later on. Presumably the
rave grapevine alerted the "E" crowd to be there.

So we'd been ripped off, herded around and now had little choice but to
lie down amongst the trash and debris on a beer-soaked carpet and try to
sleep while people brain-damaged by Ecstasy danced to brain-numbingly
dull music with the mandatory rib-shaking subsonic rhythm.

I remember that my mother used to say of my teenage musical tastes "it's
all the same though". Little did either of us know that twenty years
later people would dance all night to the same 5 seconds of music
repeated ad nauseum and insist that "it's the consistency of the beat
that's important". I need no further confirmation that "E" does in fact
damage the brain, assuming that any of them actually had one to start
with.

With ravers passing over my supine body on their way to the bar or
toilets, I found myself unable to do more than doze and count minutes.
I'd already concluded that I was much too angry to spend any more in the
place thus ruling out beer-induced unconciousness. Things looked like
they were taking a slight turn for the better when the speakers began to
emit Klaus Schulze's "Stardancer" theme from the "Body Love" album.
I was sadly disabused of this notion when the rave-rhythm backing track
started up. 

It was a long haul to 6am and then out into the rain. The first Tube
train was at 7am but fortunately we found a cafe open. We went in and
ordered beefburger rolls and tea. There was no hot water apparently, and
tea was being made by putting styrofoam cups of water into the
microwave. Which is to say, V-E-R-Y S--L--O--W--L--Y. Still, it was
faster than the rolls. I concluded that they'd sent someone out to
Brazil to fetch a cow.

Finally off to the tube station. There are two lines north from Brixton.
At one of them the first train would appear. Both platforms were
crowded. The first train arrived. At the other platform, while the
speakers near us announced "the train is at the other platform." I
should have guessed.

In to Kings Cross and more breakfast, though I was too tired and
dispirited to eat by now. The train to Edinburgh was at 9am.

It being the Edinburgh International Festival for the next three weeks,
the train was packed. I finally did get a seat though. The major peeves
here were:

a) The seats on the new trains are damn well impossible to sleep in.

b) BR keep advertising that they can get from London to Edinburgh in
less than 4 hours. Why then was this bloody train scheduled to take 6??

c) The train kept stopping In The Middle Of Nowhere. Finally the tannoy
announced that the train was in fact delayed by signalling failure and
would be approximately 66 minutes late.

Someone came round and informed us that under the Citizens Charter, if
the train was more than an hour late, we could claim our ticket money
back.

BR then of course completed the peeve by catching up time and getting
into Edinburgh just under one hour late.

...which got me there about the time that the Festival Procession
finished.

...which meant lost of people going out from the centre of town.

....which meant no bloody taxis to get me home.


I was so tired by this point that the intellectual energy required to
locate a bus stop was way beyond me. I shouldered my pack and began the
two mile walk home.

I was spotted by a fellow netter looking tired, dejected, and sadly in
need of refreshment and was dragged into a pub and sat down in front of
a pint of Greenmantle.

The nightmare was over.
Newsgroups: alt.peeves