Bureau of Lost Culture

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The Bureau of Lost Culture broadcast curious, rare, half-forgotten, half-remembered countercultural stories, oral histories and tales from the underground.

Join host Stephen Coates and a wide range of guests including musicians, writers and cultural commentators like Billy Bragg, Michael Moorcock, Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore in conversation.

Listen live on Sundays at 11.00am on London’s premier independent station Soho Radio or via catch-up on all major podcast providers: https://linktr.ee/BureauOfLostCulture

The Bureau is now also collected at The British Library Sound Archive

For more on the Bureau:
www.bureauoflostculture.com

The Bureau produce publications, films, events, broadcasts and installations that tell half-forgotten or lost narratives driving human endeavour. We create immersive experiences with unique perspectives that connect people to hidden stories. +

We celebrate the self-made, inventiveness and ingenuity driven by need. +

We resonate with those who have taken risks to go against the establishment, beyond censorship and outside the forbidden. +

The Roxy Club -100 Nights of Punk Madness

January 17, 2021

45 years ago, two working class South Londoners took over a decrepit seedy gay bar in Neal Street, then a rather desolate and deserted part of central London. At a time when the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK antics had resulted in a virtual blanket ban on venues hosting anything associated with the word ’Punk’, they provided a home for an astonishing array of bands including The Clash, The Police, The Jam, Wire, XTC, The Damned, Generation X, The Stranglers, Siouxie and the Banshees and many, many more. Their tenure lasted for just 100 intense, crazed nights before they were kicked out, but The Roxy became a punk legend.

Susan Carrington and Andrew Czezowski enter the Bureau to talk about their life in music, clubs and the counterculture - from meeting at a mod night at the Locarno Ballroom in Streatham in the 60s to opening The Fridge, one the of the longest running and most influential clubs of the 80s, 90s and 00s. We will return to the latter in a future episode, but today we hear their tales of The Roxy, of managing The Damned and Generation X and of the DIY can-do punk spirit that has infused all their adventures in the underground.

For more on Susan and Andrew and their book about The Roxy check out www.roxyclub.co.uk

For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture

www.bureauoflostculture.com

Days of the Underground: The Life and Times of Hawkwind

January 3, 2021

Hawkwind: Never in fashion but never out of it, piratical pagan proto-punks, avatars of the underground, figureheads of the free festival scene, innovative heralds of the rave generation, cosmic space rockers with street fighter spirit - there is no one like them.

We meet with Joe Banks author of “Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground – Radical Escapism In The Age Of Paranoia” (Strange Attractor Press) to explore the story of a much loved band that have gradually come to win the respect of many of the most cynical of critics - perhaps partly just by virtue of still being around, but mainly by sticking to their fiercely independent, idiosyncratc, anti-corporate, psychedelic ethos.

And we return to the West London musical, social melting pot we have previously explored with Nick Laird Clowes to uncover the fertile countercultural ground that gave birth to Hawkwind and in which they played such an important role.

For more on Joe Banks

https://www.daysoftheunderground.com

For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture

www.bureauoflostculture.com