epub or mobi, with thanks to the original sharer
Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, who had, for
years, run a very dedicated scene called the Blues and Barrelhouse Club, now
opened in the Moist Hoist, a notoriously evil cellar opposite Ealing Tube
Station. They opened with amplifiers full on and Dick Heckstall-Smith on tenor.
Something was happening to the sincerity and authenticity cult. The group moved
to the Marquee fairly quickly where they attracted not only mods but also an
even more sophisticated crowd from the art schools. Purple hearts appeared in
strange profusion. Bell bottoms blossomed into wild colours. Shoes were painted
with Woolworths lacquer. Both sexes wore make-up and dyed their hair. The art
students brought their acid colour combinations, their lilacs, tangerines and
lime greens from abstract painting. The air in the streets and clubs was
tingling with a new delirium. The handful of art-student pop groups appeared,
with their louder, more violent music, their cultivated hysteria, their painful
amplifiers, the Rolling Stones, the Pretty Things, the Kinks.
'Kinky' was a word very much in the air. Everywhere there were zippers,
leathers, boots, PVC, see through plastics, male make-up, a thousand overtones
of sexual deviation, particularly sadism, and everywhere, mixed in with
amphetamines, was the birth pill. The established business world, the square
commercial world, the promoters, the deathwishers, were completely
out-distanced. All they could do was run to keep up, for unless they could keep
up an appetite for living might emerge.
