to get away from the pits and the factories, all that cloth-capped bullshit

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When the scene was at its most vigorous there was this tremendous search for obscurities, and a lot of great records surfaced as a result. But after a while, the chances of discovering some old masterpiece diminish. I started Northern Soul but I actually found the music very limiting because in the early days I’d play a Charles Mingus record, then I’d play a bluebeat disc followed by a Booker T. tune, then a Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley record. Gradually there was this blanding out to one sort of sound. When I started DJing, I could play what I wanted. But after three years I had to keep to the same tempo.

Fortified by an adequate dose of pep pills, I faced the presiding judge

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England is, after all, the land where children are beaten, wives and babies bashed, football hooligans crunch, and Miss Whip and Miss Lash ply their trade as nowhere else in the western world. Despite our belief that we are a 'gentle' people we have, in reality, a cruel and callous streak in our sweet natures, reinforced by a decadent puritan strain which makes some of us believe that suffering, whether useful or not, is a fit scourge to the wanton soul … England's essential nature, throughout its history, is to be constantly invaded by new races which the older settlers first resisted, and then accepted. Kipling, prophet of Empire, dreamed of a federation of the 'white' dominions giving the world a moral lead. MacInnes wishes to 'steal Puck from his inventor' and subvert his message. By looking forward rather than backwards (Kipling 'was a backward-looking prophet, as most prophets are'), he offers the English a vision of a new 'mongrel glory' undreamed of by Puck's creator, with his cast of Romans, Danes and Normans safely mellowed in the mists of time. The key word is 'mongrel'. A mongrel dog may not look as pretty as the pure breed, but is often more vigorous and intelligent.

Psychedelic Shack by the Temptations was blasting out on a hi-fi

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MR SELF-LOVE AND DRUNKENNESS
'Patience!' Macinnes spat. 'Patience! Don't berate me with the values of the adult world. I'm not some ageing stockbroker and I don't like being told to wait for my kicks. Deferred gratification is the credo of the suburban middle classes, not of the juvenile delinquent seeking thrills. Because I am cool my acts and attitudes do not require any form of justification or explanation. I purely and simply embody rebellion against authority without the necessity of recourse to verbal articulations. If you want to join the new world of teenage rebellion then you need to follow my example and like me learn to embody its truths.'
'You're not a teenager, you're a middle-aged drunk,' Norma observed.
'Drunk, yes!' Macinnes roared. 'I'm drunk on life drunk on kicks, drunk on this new teenage world of action and ultra-violence. I'm drunk on cool. I'm the Jesus of cool. I gave teenagers life and speech in my novels so that they could forever bask in the icy silence of cool ...' 
Macinnes would carry on in this way for hours, blissfully unaware that he came across as a refugee from the 50s who was utterly clueless about the new hippie fashions that were emerging from the womb of swinging London.

'God, this is so boring!' Rose announced. 'This guy is useless. His technique is completely lacking, he's just a clumsy oaf. He couldn't satisfy a nymphomaniac who'd been stranded on a desert island and hadn't encountered another human being for the best part of a decade. This slob doesn't know how to eat out a woman. He'd have difficulties licking up the remains of a plate of custard.'

royal pimps and headless men and naked Ministers in masks

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It was appropriate that the most blatant rebellion against law and order in 1964 should be merely the day-long unauthorised broadcasting of pop records from a rusty hulk moored ten miles off the coast. Throughout the month of April, the country waited in mounting suspense to see what the Government would do to terminate such unauthorised invasion of the airwaves. The Post Office cut off Caroline's ship-to-shore telephone. The Customs Officials did as much as possible to hinder intercourse with the ship. The Foreign Office lodged a protest with the Government of Panama, where the Caroline was registered. Four days later, when Radio Atlanta also began transmission, the prospect of a whole armada of pirates massed round Britain's shores elevated the problem briefly into major political importance. As May drew to a close, 'Screaming Lord Sutch', a pop singer from North London, set sail with a trawlerful of leopard-skinned acolytes, took possession of a disused army fort on Shivering Sands in the Thames Estuary and announced a round-the-clock service of Sutch classics, spiced with readings from Lady Chatterley's Lover.

"If you get Sohoitis, you will stay there always day and night."

 

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The Colony Room Club at 41 Dean Street was originally the first-floor reception room of a domestic dwelling built in 1731 though now much altered. The space retained its domestic proportions which is perhaps why people felt so at home there. Muriel sat perched on a high chair at the far left of the bar, next to the door, head tilted back to display her fine aquiline nose, imperiously waving a cigarette in a long holder as she barked ‘Members only!’ at anyone she didn’t recognize. This was quickly followed by ‘Fuck off!’ if they did not turn immediately to leave, followed by ‘Get a face-lift on the way.’ Members, however, were welcomed with an endearing: ‘Hello, cunty!’ She was a formidable presence; one afternoon a local gangster entered the club looking to set her up for protection money but he had barely announced his purpose before Muriel screamed: ‘Fuck off, cunt!’ so loudly that he backed out of the door and down the stairs.

"You think I'm Vince Taylor don't you? Well I'm not, I'm the son of God"

 

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Terry Taylor had left England in 1963 to live in Morocco, where he pursued the life of an expatriate beatnik. He returned to London in 1966 and introduced a new strand of thought into Britain’s burgeoning psychedelic culture: magic. Taylor is a fascinating character, about whom little is known. He is noteworthy in the history of LSD in Britain because his 1961 novel Baron’s Court, All Change, featured the first fictional reference to LSD in Britain: “‘Really?’ my junkie friend said, sounding interested, ‘What’s it now? Bennies, L.S.D., or Nems?’” Taylor had been encouraged to take up writing by Colin MacInnes, and became the role model for the hero of MacInnes’ tale of emergent youth culture, Absolute Beginners.

the licensing hours are evaded in a number of speakeasies

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As he walked through Stepney, he passed by the all-night caffs that cater for the exhibitionist dregs of the vice trade and where, in the morning, a few survivors from the last night’s marketplace remained: either disappointed hustlers of both sexes who’d failed to connect and slept there, or dissatisfied clients who’d returned from various squalid set-ups whither their earlier imaginings had lured them, not to complain (for this was useless: and who to complain to?), but as the beast returns from the smaller, empty water-hole to the larger. Among them was a sprinkling of the different morning clientele: lorry-drivers, local workers and a few from the west of the city who’d visited the gamble-houses and called in for breakfast to count (mentally) their losses or more unlikely gains. It is at this hour, when someone sleepy is sweeping out among this driftwood, and not in the hopeful afternoon or the intoxicated evening, that moralists should paint their portraits of Gin Lane.