It was this morning that we registered that our hotel was offering unlimited quantities of cava with breakfast (in particular we noticed the Swedish rockers at a nearby table who were consuming unlimited quantities of cava with or instead of breakfast). However we decided to set a good example to the world and chose for now to abstain. What we did do after our post breakfast nap was head back to the Centraal Museum to catch a screening of Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992. This is a documentary by artist Jeremy Deller, possibly best known for his re-enactment of the Battle of Orgreave from the 1984 Miners' Strike and We're Here Because We're Here, a commemoration of the 19,240 British soldiers killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Everybody in the Place is a film about acid house and early rave culture in Britain, situated in the context of the social changes taking place in the country at the time. It features plenty of archival footage but its real stroke of genius is its framing device, which sees Deller delivering a lecture about acid house to a bunch of students in a London secondary school. Now, I understood from the introduction to the film by the museum's artistic director Bart Rutten that the school scenes were a reconstruction of an actual lecture to school kids that Deller had previously delivered: i.e. that what we were watching was essentially scripted even if it was in some sense based on real events. However, no one else I talked to appears to have taken that inference from the director, so maybe we were watching footage of a live event and the unscripted response of bemused kids to a cultural phenomenon long predating their birth.
Some of the film follows the usual trajectory followed by discussions of house music's history, with the music's origins in Detroit and Chicago receiving some interesting attention. One insight I hadn't heard before was that in the 1980s the local radio stations in Detroit were used to test audience reaction to a wider range of material than was generally the case in the USA, with the result that the locals had been exposed to a lot more weirdo European music than was the case elsewhere; he felt this factored into the mindsets of the people there who went on to make hard electronic music. It's also good on the influence Kraftwerk had on black American musicians, on the face of it one of the more bizarre features of historical cross-pollination.
When the narrative moves to the UK Deller positions acid house as a reaction to the Thatcherite crushing of working class power, as epitomised by the defeat of the miners' strike. There is also some interesting footage relating to new age travellers, where he deliberately confounds expectations by playing news footage of pensioners, who instead of saying "lock up the crusties!" are complaining about how Britain is becoming too authoritarian. Deller sees it as significant that they are of the generation that went through the Second World War, which ties into something I remember reading about the 2019 Brexit referendum: although pensioners generally voted for Brexit, the oldest pensioners (i.e. the ones who would have actually remembered the horrors of the mid 20th century) voted strongly against it.
When it came to acid house and rave itself, I was struck by how Deller underplayed the London-centric narrative that normally dominates here. Shoom and Spectrum were only mentioned in passing and he talked a good bit about how warehouse parties in the north of England had paved the way for mass acceptance of a new mode of musical enjoyment. But it does hop back to the south east when he gets into talking about the orbital raves. He is generally not hostile to the entrepreneurial types who took acid house from tiny clubs to huge rave sites, though he does pretty much state that Paul Staines (later the founder of the Guido Fawkes website) is a cunt from central casting. Sadly there was no mention of my own favourite of the rave-entrepreneurs, Tony Colston-Hayter, who went from professional gambler to rave promoter, to more recently serving stints in jail for a electronic fraud offences.
What I was struck by was how coy the film was about drugs. I'm not sure Ecstasy was even mentioned by name, even when we were being shown footage of obviously mashed ravers gurning away. I can see why Deller might have wanted to focus on the community aspects of rave culture, but it did seem like an odd lacuna to ignore the role played by MDMA in binding that community. In fact I think he only really mentioned drugs late in the day as fundamentally a bad thing, on the basis that they brought the attention of criminals and the cops onto the rave scene.
Anyway, at time of writing the film is available in full on YouTube. I recommend checking it out. If you want to get a taste, here is a trailer:
After a return visit to Double Act (see previous post) I think we may have sourced sustenance of some kind (perhaps a pizza) and then it was time for more music, in particular Colombian electronic music sensation Lucrecia Dalt, who was playing in the Ronda as a surprise late addition to the bill. Last year her set had been relatively austere but this time round we were treated to something a bit more all-singing and dancing, probably based on her recent album, on which she draws from the Colombian song-based music of her youth. As well as treating us to her singing she also had a bemulleted live drummer who really gave it socks. All pretty enjoyable but perhaps foolishly I left early to head to the Grote Zaal for another act.
Who was I going to see? Why none other than Cate Le Bon. When it comes to the popular Welsh singer I feel like I am suffering badly from the sunk cost fallacy, gripped by the idea that because she did one great album years ago I should keep listening to her in the hope that she will return to that kind of music. I've largely given up on her on record as she has moved away from what I liked about her, but I keep being drawn to her concerts in the hope that the old magic will return (sometimes it does). Anyway, with this concert I was struck by how full the Grote Zaal was: it's a big venue and I thought maybe her appeal was a bit selective so there would be just me and some rolling tumble-weed there, but no, there were loads of people. Moving away from the key Ian demographic has obviously paid dividends.And the set started well, with "Miami", the opener from 2019's Reward. After that though it all got a bit ploddy, with the unimaginative and overly high in the mix drumming causing me particular annoyance. Cate Le Bon's big strength is her voice but since Me Oh My she has continued to not give it free rein.
Now, the big thing I wanted to see this evening was Goat, but there was a bit of time before they came on so to kill it we went up the mysterious Pandora venue to see Cheikha Rabia & Esraa Warda. These are two Algerian women, Rabia a veteran singer of the 200 cigarettes a day variety and Warda a younger dancer. Warda also was the one with enough English to talk to the crowd (no one ever addresses LGW audiences in Dutch), and they were joined by two musicians (an older guy on some kind of small drum and a young lad on keyboards). The show saw Rabia sing while Warda shook her stuff, all very impressive, but sadly we had to leave early for Goat.
Now you know the way at festivals when there is one act you really really want to see properly, you resolve to make sure to get in early enough to where they are playing so that you get a good spot? Well Goat were like this for me. They were basically the LGW act I most wanted to see over the weekend. And we did leave Cheikha Rabia & Esraa Warda in reasonably good time. But then we fell in with some of our buds, which necessitated some quick toilet breaks and then suddenly it seemed like a good idea to queue for drinks which then of course took ages to arrive, and with the hares and the hounds by the time we made our way into the Ronda it was only a few minutes before Goat were due to come on, plus the venue was completely rammed. A clever ruse saw us leap towards the front but way over on one side, and it was still unpleasantly crowded, but we had to make the best of our bad lot.
But who you may ask are Goat? Well, that is a good question. They appear to be from Sweden, though doubts have been raised on this front. What we can say for definite is that they play live wearing robes and masks. Their music is of a broadly psychedelic nature, with some suggesting that it incorporates "tribal" elements (with further people wondering if this makes them problematic). They have two singers, both of them apparently women, with these two also working as dancers and crowd molesters. As spectacle they are unbeatable. The music is pretty hot too.
I was struck by how the two singer-dancers were relatively uncoordinated with each other — while they were both wearing masks and crowns, they were not wearing matching masks and crowns, while the rest of their clothes shared an aesthetic without being in any way identical. They did not seem to have jointly coordinated dance moves either. Yet their dancing was not completely random. I noticed that a couple of times they exchanged places on the stage, swapping which microphone they were basing themselves at when resuming their vocals; and they managed to do this without bumping into each other or getting into scuffles over who was going to be using a mic. Fascinating.
So yeah, Goat deliver. They are GOAT.
And thence to the Grote Zaal, where África Negra were doing their thing. They are from Sao Tome and Príncipe, one of those countries Europeans dread coming up in Worldle. They played good time uptempo music drawing on various influences, and their frontman is known as The General and dresses accordingly (his precise military status has not been confirmed). I had originally planned to relax through their set, being a bit worn out by Goat, but even I ended up dancing away to them.
We then thought of sticking our heads into the Ronda then to see what Kokoko!, an electronic fellow from Kinshasa was up to, but everyone else had the same idea, so we decided that enough was enough. And so to bed.
The next post will conclude my account of the 2022 Le Guess Who festival.
images:
Typical ravers (Mixmag: "Jeremy Deller explores '80s UK rave culture in new documentary")
Jeremy Deller warns the kids to be wary of Paul Staines (Four Four: "Watch: Jeremy Deller's documentary on Acid House in 1980s Britain")
Kids making their own acid house music (Cast: "Jeremy Deller - Everybody in the Place")
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