SAVE OUR SPITZ HERES THE SKINNY. Just the facts - Spitz longstanding cultural epicentre, a beacon for alternative nation Klezmer, folk, punk, country, blues n soul n rock n rap, n electropsychedelic wonderment all in the heart of East City of LOndon is faced with closure. The Landlord wants to house another - in a lets bring bring the tone of the area up stylee- fancy restaurant in the building that currently houses the Spitz Bar restaurant and Live music venue. Just what the world and London’s Square Mile needs - another bunch of yuk nogs farting and belching; drinking and eating . Another bigger kitchen spewing out the cleaning fats that clog up the overworked sewer system. And - most crucially - another buncha minstrels with nowhere to go… Ladies and gentlemen, Sisters and Brothers. Are we gonna fucking take it….? Well…. The cultural priorities of the new modern horror complex, the public private finance eyesore of Broad Street, the extended New Europe Gateway, on the fringes of the Square Mile City of London stock market, are telling. In years gone by, thrusting upwards to a dazzling new future or otherwise, Londoners knew how to keep things in perspective. They had certain…priorities. Show me a major settlement with an on site tube station and I could show you the 3D London Underground logos on easy to see signs. Not any longer - approaching Liverpool Street Station from the Shoreditch High Street end of Bishopsgate the shape of the future city nightmare becomes ever clearer. Faceless office blocks. The Steel and Glass that Lennon sang of. The logo and insignia of coffeee shops and coffee chains and newspapersellers and juice bars and fast food outlets. The proscribed access routes and seated areas patrolled by private security staff. A tube sign? Screw your eyes up and look at those little gold on black arrow pointers on the size zero route markers - there might be a logo on there. But a tube sign that would tell outsiders (or remind insiders that know) what’s under the clear perspex canopy ? A symbol of our communal togetherness, competing, toiling, working, living, travelling and commuting together ? A little of that valuable bought and paid for public space given over to the underground? In a city that is (still hoping) to host the olympics? Forget it. Its a money machine churning out ever more hollow example of what a public space can bring, be and issue forth. The East London development around this area is huge and its just hotting up leading to the Olympics. New train lines, more office blocks, housing (a percentage of it - why do I think as small a percentage as the contractors can legally get away with? - affordable). The rest? Possibly as obscenely overpriced as the housing in the freemarket/public housing racial social interface that is “Jesus” Green. Areas like that will continue to provide headaches for whatever replaces the New Labour Smarm Machine when the development is complete. But then who will care?. After all the contracts have been paid off. Once the brandy and stogies are passed round, hands shaken and backs slapped. Those who made the mischei possible will by that time be off soaking up rays on some Caribbean haven. Or, possibly, getting it together with International Bankers and Financial lions on their golf course of choice. And if they cant even manage a tube sign …well why would they care about The Spitz? We hear alot these days about community and caring for the environment. Of creating equable living space in places where it is often - literally and metaphorically - hard to breathe. The Spitz is a cultural oasis. It is almost opposite the beautiful but ominous Hawksmoor Church in Spitalfields, almost directly opposite the Ten Bells at the centre of the Jack The Ripper Tourist Trail, a short walk from the teeming cultural life of Brick Lane, Banglatown, the private homes of Gilbert and George, Tracey Emin and writer Jeanette Winterson. It makes everything around it better by being there. And The Spitz isn’t part of the 24 hour City drinking boom that The Standard wrote about this week on their front page. The Spitz has what is, in this era of myspace downloads/everyones a blogger and a DJ culture, a rarity… LIVE MUSICIANS. Making magic quicksilver in their hands. Most recently Marissa Nadler’s ravishing goth folk. Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby… In the past - Wilko J, Laura Veirs, Jenny Lewis and on and on and on. It gives a musical pulse to a community otherwise constricted and restricted, concretised, entombed in modernity. Heremetically sealed by the planners perogative. The Spitz allows a little freedom away from all of that. Oh I don’t deny I am a little self interested in saving The Spitz. I have witnessed some great music there. Met and bonded with some real lovely peeps, fans and music makers from all over the world. The Spitz is one of those venues that people remember - it is on a mystic international trail of pickers and slappers. Musicians remember its unique design, its special acoustic with the high wooden celings, its dressing room housed on a wooden platform above the stage. Songbirds and axemanglers, elctroboffins and turntablists - sound makers of every stripe - have all come there to make the city sound real and sweet. To help us remember ourselves. We forget that - or let the landlords, the planners, the money men, who ever - allow us to forget it - at Our Collective Peril. Perhaps I could make like Jarvis Cocker and just put it down to the C words running the world. But I do hope there’s some move to the Brother D option - agitate, educate, organize. Because - sure as shit smells - the Spitz is more than just another music venue….Its a line in the fucking sand is what it is…
