DJing at the Foundry in Old Street several years back, which finally closed today. I’ll miss it!

I also hear Fabric as of today is in receivership, Astoria, The End, Turnmills, Ghetto and Scala are also gone for various reasons over the last year or two.

It seems a lot of the small bars and mid-sized clubs are going to make way for the Olympics to be developed as overpriced hotels and CrossRail, and a few like Fabric to the current economic woes. I hope it’s worth the death of a lot of smaller venues that were the lifeblood of London’s musical scenes – because ironically all those visitors will arrive in 2012 looking for ‘cool London’ will otherwise find a nightlife that consists of depressing chain pubs and mega-O2 venues only – the very life they came to look for will have been cleared out to make way for Olympics PLC.

But of course that sort of local character is never preserved; with the stupid laws on small venues that came in a few years back they’ve succeeded to help the megapub chains and kill the smaller places which struggle against the Wembley and O2 arenas, rather than foster a local creative culture.

Still not all bad – I see the free raves are back. Will this be the summer of free rave parties again? Ones out of the range of sponsors and brewery control? I hope so.

EDIT: Fabric is still open, despite being sold. It’s sister club Matter though has closed…

As you might have read here my letters and campaign (in a small way) against the Digital Economy Act talking to my local MP, Glenda Jackson (Lab). She sadly went ahead and voted for the Digital Economy aAct and is in a marginal of Hampstead & Kilburn (474 votes people – head and head with Lib Dems due to boundary changes in the seat).

Researching the parties who are standing I found via the wonderful Open Rights Group that my local Lib Dem candidate Ed Fordham is against the DEAct. I now know where my vote is going…although I’m not really a LD supporter I hasten to add – for various reasons that seem rather churlish to mention now (and relate to another part of the country entirely). If you want to know if your MP voted for the Digital Economy Bill, you can still go to VoteThemOut and find out (and indeed should vote them out!). And in fact Open Rights Group has quite a few MPs and candidates stating their opposition on their YouTube channel – is yours there?

For those who are undecided still, there is a great tool called Vote Match which tries through questions to match you up to your local candidate that’s closest to your views. I was Green at 65% but Lib Dem at 60% so I think that’s close enough (and yes that wasn’t a total surprise for me, I vote Green at the last mayoral/London Assembly elections)

Also funny: The implosion of the BNP’s webmaster 2 days before the election (Marmitegate). LOL. The interesting facts is not only letting their webmaster take the rap for infringing Unilever’s brand, is how they’ve been ripping off their own members contributions and overclaiming for equipment expenses…and violently threatening people (surprise surprise). I’d not waste your vote (but then again you shouldn’t been even reading this blog if it even crossed your mind…)

London. It’s 1984, and a band called The Art of Noise make their first video, and a previously unknown dutch director and music photographer creates his second ever video for them.

The photographer/directors name? Anton Corbijn.

Great video including shots of London in the mid 80′s…makes me feel all nostalgic. Where’s Night Network to play this?

Warning: contains Paul Morley.

Had a great time at Bootie London – as you can get a taste of what it was like by ThriftshopXL’s video above…not only can you see Kleptones rocking the VideoTones video for ‘Welcome Back’ at 4:09 (ButchAuntie aka Pete mixed in 4 of the Videotones videos, not shown is me pogoing up and down at the front saying ‘that’s my video’ like a 3 year old child – it was a trip to see them up there – thanks Eric Kleptone & Pete! BorisB’s excellent video for This Songs Smells was used for the mash/moshtastic encore, and Mad Groove & Brad’s video for MKY da HVN were shown) you can also see me dancing like a spaz at 2:31…sigh. I hoped all evidence of that had been destroyed…;-)

The event was packed – people queuing for 90 minutes outside…and was a big success!

Thankfully no-one has video of me dashing behind the decks for Mad Groove and dancing next to Eric Kleptone like a loon and re-enacting the words from Network…;-)

Eric Kleptone, Payroll, Berlin DJs, DJ Morgoth and A&D rocked the place, as did ButchAuntie and ThiftshopXL on the visuals…was a mad night. Great to see A&D, Eric Kleptone PomDeter who came from Aberdeen, Lee Spoons, Robb, Jez CMP, MattCatt, Ian Fondue, and to finally meet Pete ButchAuntie, more of the Bootie Berlin gang and Sugamotor from France.

Only downside was a rather over-zealous security staff at Cargo, nearly getting dragged off the stage by my neck even after Mr Kleptone vouching for me repeatedly – and I wasn’t the only one to have problems. But glad to hear via @BootieMashup future Bootie London events won’t be at Cargo so that’s been sorted

Going to upload my rather shaky iPod footage sometime soon which I’ll post here…mostly of the stage as it was rather dark!

Haven’t got round to doing a full Bootie London debrief – namely it was a great night and went really well, very mad…A&D, Payroll, Kleptones all rocked the house and it was packed – and even the Videotones vids made an appearance during The Kleptones set!

Talking of Mr Kleptone, he tipped me this dubstep simian mashup/remix/remake of TC’s Where’s My Money by Parker and said ‘you’ll post that on Radio Clash in about 5 minutes after seeing it’. He was correct ;-D