Next Weekend, Just Outside Chicago.

Is one amazing bike show and party. Everyone is welcome, doesn't matter what bike you ride. If you like music, beer, food and good times then come on! If you want to enter your bike in the show please email matt@dicemagazine.com.
Directions h E R E.

High Seas Open Roads.

September 6th. NJ. More details H E R E my lovelies.

New Picture Books Video

featuring our very own Imogen.

Get Ready To Party!

Some Old Fliers And Membership Cards.

As I was saying, I found a bunch of old crap in a box. Here is a selection of fliers and membership cards of clubs and gigs that I went to in London back in the day. The Mod stuff was from the late '70's and the club stuff from around the early to mid '80's. I was working in a builders merchants called Nu Lines in Notting Hill. All my wages went on rent and going out. London was the greatest city in the world in those days, oh how things have changed.

The Rock Garden was in Covent Garden, I think it's now an Apple store. I also think this menu was from when I saw the Trogs play there. Can't be 100% sure, I went there quite a few times and my memory is a little sketchy. However that was a great gig so it probably was from that particular night.

Ah yes, the Camden Palace, Mornington Crescent, loved this place. It used to be called the Music Machine where I once saw the Boomtown Rats (terrible band) and someone got up on stage and punched Bob Geldof right in the face. That was the best part of the evening. The bouncers there were the meanest nastiest of them all. Stabbing someone with a pool cue one night was part of their fame. When it became the Camden Palace they kept the same bouncers on. Hmmmm, not a good idea.

The Bat Cave, Leicester Square, the birth place of Goth. I wasn't a big fan of this club, I just wasn't into the music. However I remember going quite a lot because it was on a night of the week when there was nothing else happening.

Bat Cave again.

Lots of bands on this flier that you may well recognise.
The Electric Ballroom was in Camden Town, sort of a goth/Pcychobilly venue. I think it's still going too. 
The Hammersmith Palais was a great venue, lots of bands have played there in the past. I saw a very young U2 there when they were just starting out. Killing Joke were great (my sister was a backing singer for Youths next band called Brilliant. Buts that another story). The Palais is gone now but it lasted quite awhile changing hands regularly and reinventing itself. It closed down only a few years back.
Klub Foot was also in Hammersmith, right on the Broadway. A shit hole. A hardcore Pcychobilly club. Been a few times and always wished I had gone somewhere else. Long defunct now.
The Lyceum was in the Strand, A huge old building with Doric columns etc. Again lots of big bands played there. I didn't go to this particular gig because I thought SPK were rubbish and no one had ever heard of the Smiths.

Ah yes, La Beat Route on Greek Street. A great club. I remember it being pretty dark in there and for awhile we got away with buying drinks with photocopied 20 pound notes. Also I remember lots of people sleeping in the red vinyl booths. That seemed to be the thing to do at that club, go to sleep in a booth. I could never figure that one out.

La Beat Route Halloween party "where anything could happen, and probably will"

The Dirt Box was my favourite, it moved around to different venues quite a lot. Bring you're own six pack of beers and dance to the wee small hours. Jay Strongman on the decks, a good friend and a great DJ. For some reason Red Stripe was the hip beer to be drinking there, which was not a bad thing.

Ok I lied, the Mud Club, also on Leicester Square, was my favourite, or lets say joint favourite. I went to this club more times than all of the others. This is my membership card, I must of used it a lot because its held together with old Sellotape. Jay DJ'd here too and the club organiser, Philip Salon, became a good friend. Philip did more for the London club and music scene back then than just about anyone.

6T's mod club membership card.

Sometime in late '78/early '79 my friend Lloyd and a few of us started the Viceroys scooter club. This was my membership card. The first incantation of the Viceroys didn't last long mainly because Lloyd was living on the other side of London and he was the driving force behind it. My brother and my mates left and started the Shepherds Bush Mods. We remained good friends with Lloyd however and hung out with him every week at a pub called the Hercules Tavern in Lambeth.

Two Mub Club fliers. Big love. The Halloween party was held at Heaven nightclub. A far bigger venue than Leicester Square.

Funkapolitan was my friend, Sagat's band. I thought they were great. He is a brilliant guitar player. He suffered so badly from stage fright that he used to play the whole gig at the back of the stage facing the wall. The Venue was a large live music place in Victoria. It didn't last too long and was probably a little too large for most of the bands that played there.

I went to this weekly mod night at Alexandras only once because it was bloody miles away and the ride home of my Lambretta was freezing cold. I went to support my friend Tony Class who was a mod DJ. He organised a shit ton of great nights in and around London and was a huge part of the whole scene.

"Whats 'apnin fer mods" a hand written, photocopied flier of gigs that Tony had organised in 1981. By then the whole Mod thing had imploded, mostly thanks to Quadraphenia. Things fizzled out quite quickly and yet another youth movement, like UK punk, had been thoroughly used up and spat out by the fashion and music industry.
This is Matt BTW, Dean was still wearing nappies/diapers at around that time.

Kevlar Lined Flannels.

Our friends from Red Hot Chilli Customs in Poland have come up with this interesting item of road wear. This is what they say...

"We want to introduce a diaphanous Kevlar ultra light jacket, which on the first look, looks like an oldschool flannel shirt. Even if You touch it – it feels like a flannel, but in fact , it's an ultra high-tech product. And if You ride in it – You can feel like You'll be wearing a light summer jacket, but in case of accident all Your muscles and skin are protected by the one of the strongest kevlars on the market"

Get Up And Go issue #2

Back in London in '78, hot on the heals of punk came the second mod movement, we were mostly disillusioned ex punks in those early days. Really good times they were too. We had a couple of fanzines to keep us abreast of what was going on in London. Get Up And Go was one of them. I just found an old box of stuff that has been following me from place to place as I moved around. It's chock a block full of fliers from mod clubs in the '70's through to nightclubs in the early '80's. This first post of some of the contents of said box then is this fanzines 2nd issue in it's entirety. It does make good reading and some of the bands mentioned went on the following year to have hit singles.

Mallorca.

A little piece of Heaven.

Run For The Hills. Germany.

Hell yeah! its on again this year. Yowza!. Details H E R E.

Todd.

I just wanted to share with you these great outtakes from our last issue.

Get Monkey

So you have this beautiful island in the Mediterranean sea off the coast of Spain, Barcelona is a 7 hour ferry ride away, with amazing scenery and weather. Then a bunch of the nicest blokes on the planet who call Mallorca home get together once a year and throw what is basically a big party in the town of Alaro. Custom bikes, cars and scooters come from all parts of the island and the mainland to take part.Throw in the mix 13 bands, djs, tattoo artists, a swimming pool, photography exhibition, custom painted roller skate display and a skate park and you have the perfect event. Sometime around 2pm the pool is cleared of people and a ramp is set up on the coping. A motor pulled from a crashed modern Vespa is set up with a tow rope and for 2 hours a motely crew of skateboarders, roller skaters, inline people, bmx riders and kids on those push along scooter things get tugged airborne by an over reving 2 stroke engine. Some go way to high and only just manage to hit the water and were in danger of flying off into the adjacent field. The show itself ran from 12 midday to 12 midnight and was a very relaxed affair as only the Spanish can do. The icing on the cake was the fact that the town of Alaro was also having it's yearly fiesta the same weekend so everyone left the show when it finished and went drinking and dancing and letting off fireworks in the town square till the wee small hours. A bloody fantastic time it was. The Monkey Roll Fest is happening again next year too. Just saying.