Sometimes I get lost in the area, aided by the fact that Apple Maps gets lost too. The two of us usually manage to find our ways there, though. Lots of shops and cafés were closed; the bagel shops still had their queues, and the charity shops and vintage shops were still doing brisk trades. It's funny how parts of town have totally different identities in the daytime and at night.
About ten years ago (possibly more) Guy Harries, a colleague at UEL, and me used to run the Songlab at the venue 93 Feet East in Brick Lane. It was monthly on a Monday night, a 'dead' night for pubs and clubs. Mostly we had students and staff from the University playing there; one time, our illustration lecturer Mikey Georgeson (AKA David Devant) did a brilliant set as Mr Fox with Mr Solo (the latter played French Horn). People used to drop in off the street and perform sometimes, often young rappers with a CD with their backing track on it.
Guy organised the illustration students to come along and draw the musicians playing their songs. It had a gentle buzz about it ,and was always full of people who had come to watch or come to play. I would drive down from Barnet to Tufnell Park to pick Guy up with his PA and take it to Brick Lane, then do the reverse at the end of the evening, and stage manage it while Guy did the sound; we organised regular song writing sessions to help people to write material. The University put us on their website, and a student came all the way from Romania to enrol on the course specifically because of that. But the University wouldn't contribute anything to it, nothing at all. In the end we stopped, which was very sad. We'd made a little mark in the nightlife of the area, a tiny droplet of water under the bridge!
Years before that, I went to see Cleveland Watkiss perform across the road at the Truman Brewery. My friend and colleague at the University of Westminster, Mykaell Riley, had been a producer on a TV show in the very early 1990s. One of Cleveland's first TV appearances was on that show, which was presented by Smiley Culture. I'd been working at The Peckham Settlement with a reggae band, and I took them all along to the show to be in the audience. Cleveland had a wonderful singing voice, and when eventually both me and Mykaell started working at Westminster, I invited Cleveland to come along to do a lecture. We were all fish out of water as lecturers back in the day- musicians who had paid their dues on the road entering an institution that was more used to highly academic people but needed the injection of reality once the government of the day finally recognised the sheer amount of money that British musicians were bringing into the UK. We were simultaneously resented and respected, which is a weird combo.
I don't think that feeling ever left me even after 24 years of lecturing; it was partly my own impostor syndrome, but was also fed into by the behaviour of some of my colleagues. How dare a person who couldn't read music and with only Grade 3 piano (I consistently failed sight-reading), have made records, signed to labels and toured and (rise to full affronted height and shriek) ARRANGE HORNS! I actually used to feel apologetic, but the truth was that I worked very, very hard at learning all the things you need to know to survive. I was never late, always said yes to projects that I was offered and made sure that I was well-prepared, learned anything I didn't know (apart from reading music, possibly because of dyslexia), adapted quickly, and had a trusted network of musicians who knew how to do all the things that I didn't know, and who I respected for their knowledge.
Also, when you start from zero you are unafraid of anything. I didn't have a reputation to protect, a map showing the direction of travel, or indeed a goal. The number of times that I've been humiliated by offensive comments, had ideas ripped off and generally undermined is astonishing. However, this is the lot of many creative people. It's not that you become immune to it all or even develop a thick hide; what happens is that while people are throwing critical spears at the last thing you did, you have already moved on to the next thing.
You also really, really appreciate people who support what you're doing, even the little things that they say and do. It's almost as though the sun comes out and picks out refuges for you: an energetic press person, a supportive record label, promoters who care and people who are interested in what you do. These things make the whole process a complete joy.
What a ramble... maybe wandering around the streets has inspired a mind-wander now I'm back home. I'm still half asleep after nodding off after what turned out to be a very long walk, six and a half miles. I didn't know there were so many miles in East London, but there you go.
What's next? More learning of songs for Friday's Crisis gig, then lots of rehearsals next week for the Waiting Room gig in Stoke Newington. A big thank you to everyone who has helped me, both back and the day and more recently. Musicians too- how wonderful to play with such inspiring people.
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