Once Upon Another Time
#ZeenagersExpo 01 Spring 2024
“Well done for keeping the spirit of rebellion alive” (Patrick Jones)
7th March, Amersham Arms, New Cross (i.e. London’s Sarf x Sarf East!) rock n roll music, poetry, visuals, photography, technology (including audio recordings), Stage Style, creativity and DIY skillz all rolled into a live music social. We are blown away by the all-positive feedback for the evening!
Expo 01 Artists and Allies - links directory:
Find/support each other! Flesh Tetris, Thebigbadsad., Patrick Jones, Petra Palkovacsova of the Femmesocial Press community, Dizzy Spell, Ruby Blue, Ame Kali, Kat Five x Feral Five, SetMixer and TheZineUK, Kick Out The Jams (+ more!) Warm Welcome Blur Fairy, Sonja Amoretti! + #MusicTourism Team - Backstage Bar of Amersham Arms where TheZineUK was conceived! (Venue manager, Andy Palmer, is a star turn musician in his own right - as per The Britpop Show 12th March podcast) all mixing with The Outers, Lisa Knight of Knight PR (great film clips!), 122 Music Management and myself, Caffy St Luce of TheZineUK’s Events Department; Rocklands (Magic Hat by Toast The Goblin Laird). Photographers included Olly Bromidge (thank you to Jean Genie Hayes & Jonny Haze at ASBO magazine for connecting us) and James Lewis: “Excellent poetry performance from Petra Palkovacsova” (images of Flesh Tetris and Thebigbadsad. on FB) + The evening was soundtracked by a Newer Wave Rock n Roll spotify playlist EXPO NO.1 by Dizzy Spell. TikTok blip of TheBigBadSad and more from Zeenagers Expo to come…
“In amongst the joys of catching up with @artbeat.bsky.social amongst others, 2 quality acts played down The Amersham Arms last night TheBigBadSad, ‘gloom rock goth cowboys’ brought the noise, & then some, pushing their sonic mantra to the end Different, ear-catching, eye-catching.” (122MM - link)
Thank you to everyone who performed, bought a ticket and came out to play in person or spirit. We’re all ingredients of an exposition of the interdependent music sector - and whatever happens next.
#24ourPartyPeople
Whoever is WITH/for TheZineUK - YOU are all what the #ZeenagersExpo is about!
Further reading - origins
14th March 2014 - Upload Chapter 1 of TheZineUK multi media tapestry. Situationist whimsy weaves waves that we could not make up.
14th March 2023 - Begin a year’s research into Music Tourism For The People at the British Music Embassy in Austin, Texas (the final real SXSW). End of year, TheZineUK returned to USA, this time L.A. Stage Style stories off the hook.
14th March 2024 - Despite the hostile environment dystopian decayed decade TheZineUK can prove that the alternative arts have created a newer wave of music industrious through uniqulture. Their actions and good souls have resulted in a Fertile Environment worthy of an exposition.
Click OUR STORY page for more but, basically, an Alternative Arts documentary living the skint life of the grassroots venue circuit community. It’s not been dull.
2014 to 2015:
An ideas factory-cum-DIY studio/rave warehouse etc., pop-up HQ ("The Ministry of Fluff and Dreams" run by Menace & McNaughty) rounded off with #No3Expo (42 stalls including a live music stage - The Homosexuals, Nova Twins, seeds of Birthmarks, Cat Bear, Lufe Tempo - and a bar!). It set the tone. #Zeenagers prologue 'Expo Beats' 2014/2015 (YouTube)
Alongside the magick powered situationism and woodland folk heroes in this emerging tapestry, the likes of Cro Cro Land, CUP Soccer Six, Decolonise Fest, This Feeling, Music Venue Trust and LOUD WOMEN are only half a dozen of many prevailing threads.
TheZineUK. Officially repping (and therefore reporting) at festivals with either a stage, a logo or a co-promotion every single year from 2014 onwards (lockdown was Balcony On Line Festival) and promoting live music socials fuels the story, courtesy of kind artists/promoters access. In 2024 we are chuffed to be a media partner with #ItsAVanFest - the Austin Texas music festival (Teenage Sequence, The Hollows, more) where the super-sponser is Rock n Roll (We met behind the painted word, “magic”, in 2023)
By 2017
there was a visible and voluble newer wave of music industrious. Audience powered arts, industry and media learning/exchanging biz, tech, journalism whatever skills as their interdependent collective rise in staggered unison, rather than all “pulling up the ladder" behind them. This is how we do it. YouTube Slideshow of our 2021 cast and crew - 2014 to 2017 snapshots: The #MusicPeopleParty begins
2018 - "where do you see yourself in five years?"
The question that no human could have answered. Then between the cast, cats and crew of TheZineUK and an unbelieving world if we are here today then we are all changed. WHAT a soundtrack we got in the Music People Party years.
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
Key blogged conversations and events on PoC in guitar music and AI, rounded off with an Artful Party that included star turn multi-media artivist mavericks Bugeye (who were on tour as special guest of The Bluetones, and will play their biggest show to date, headlining Oslo Hackney on 4th May (tickets) after presenting 2024 with the incredible Cro Cro Land Festival mid April), Colossus (Fckn suPERB debut EP and get a load of the live presence in this #ArtfulFest video blip!), Joyzine, God Is In The TV and and and… these artivists are ALL connected and those conversations are ongoing.
2024
We’ve created. During the most historic era in human history (i..e. largely a binfire of bigoted bollocks)! We promote a punky rock n roll music world angle with diy glam chic, recorded from the reality of post brexit Britain Ireland.
Escapism not extremism. Love is NOT hate! We wanna have a good time, all the time!
Today, Friday 15th March - the music festival conversations are TV’s Glastonbury and Austin’s SXSW. With the latter, ironically, the mainstream media have covered the bands that have dropped out more than the usual attention they give to the line up.
2024, a few days after International Women’s Day shows how the establishment treat Britain’s first Black Woman Politician. Imagine how far down the “food chain” we, The Outsiders Family, are. We’ll keep fighting the nutsies by sharing audiovisual hope. It’s the least we can do.
Sixth sense supernature powers the chapters of TheZineUK. The feedback is always appreciated.
Are you with us, Zeenagers?
Summer 2023: Megan Wyn
Summer 2023: Megan Wyn, new single ‘You Don’t Get It’, sets up her story and headline shows in Manchester and Liverpool will underline her potential. Live photography from Truck Festival by Sarah Gibson.
Read MorePop Of The Tops 2023
Our situationist music socials and their stars, are never “just a gig” then over and finished with - but always an unfolding story’s chapter. Consider this an invitation!
20/4 - Pop Of The Tops 2023 - London
18+ event. £10 on the door, £8 in advance or OTD w/ NUS
(NHS staff card free entry). Grab a £3 early bird entry: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/573847
(Artist support (industry/media) please DM Events Department in advance)
A one-off celebration of the club (2003-2004) that started a season of “New Cross scene” with DIY arts and a punky live music social. If anybody’s around in 2043, celebrate this evening’s 2023 live musical gems, again!
The plan is some visuals from 7.45pm - so come early doors if you wanna experience the full audiovision (live sets until 11pm, after show tunes, then the venue is open until 2am). Trains nearby until past midnight. Buses all night (A2, Continent to The Capital main road).
Sonja The Blur Fairy is our welcoming host and one of the #MusicPeopleParty fam who are gonna be out to play. Come for joy, to scout, to connect, whatever. It’s an inclusive/effusive early start to the weekend and we’d love to see you.
Dizzy (Editor), Caffy (Events) + TheZineUK cast n crew
Mango In Euphoria
Since catching her last-minute addition to a Kick Out The Jams on the famed Amersham Arms stage (Autumn 2021, TikTok clip) been following the UK’s glam-star, Mango In Euphoria.
Fast forward to Spring 2023 where the “Dark Disco Queen” isa released (and highly praised) recorded, reviewed and radio played artist/One To Watch. (Gonna let you into a not-secret: Every name on this event’s line up is acclaimed and tipped. If may be an affordable night but you’ll more than get your money’s worth to support new music and our beloved grassroots venue circuit).
Electro-pop on the Amazing Radio playlist. Here’s the brand new video for the recent single, ‘Hollywood’ (So Far So Good Records)
Friends! Coming? Do the Mango tango and bring your own #StageStyle to Pop Of The Tops - we love to see it!
Mango In Euphoria songs on Spotify
The Outers
TheZineUK being a situationist music movement documentary, it felt like serendipity when checking out and falling for the soaring tune ‘Danger Signs’ by up comers, The Outers, late last year, courtesy of the Bad Apple Club launch at The Old Blue Last.
Uptempo engagement of the alt-pop tuned, rocked out kind. Their live show is infectious and performed with a stylish edge that mixed Blur, Jefferson Airplane and Blondie, maybe, but is all their own sound. We were introduced by gig photographer, Mark S., (who we met at our Amersham Arms show last summer). It was meant to be, then.
The Outers ended 2022 with an interview on established music site Joyzine. 2023 started with an again well received show supporting Vandal at a packed Belfast Sunflower and new recordings to step up an even busier year. post-punk-pogo-pop having FUN in the video for ‘Nobody’s Fool’
Woohoo, we’ve also nabbed one of the ultra-groovy Big Richard Records rosta. The pulsing young-n-happening label/promoter and band, Brie, introduced into this tale by Andy at Amersham Arms.
Describing themselves as “Post-Punk cheese music” the lively gigging gang are in the process of finishing off their next project, a 5-track studio EP recorded last year. Their musical output so far vacuums you into their dairytale of beats, bops and dynamics.
Over the last year, Brie have concentrated on making friends, playing shows around London and the UK (some sold-out) and are now it’s the build up to releasing their record. Catch them live and make fondue memories of the “I Was There” type! Descend into happy madness.
“Brie are bringing the rocking party” says Gouda Than War. You bring the cheese puns, then. See You, Mate! Video for ‘CuM8’ by Brie
Jean Genie’s Massive Hugs
Massive Hugs = Magick hugs!
Creator, Jean Genie, is The Bringer Of Sunshine and a great supporter of musical peers, the grassroots scene and a key mover shaker musician, member of the band Alex & The Wonderland, presenter, producer, promoter, booker, music world community leader and connector while the short film she co-wrote with Jonny Hayes ‘Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Search For The Blue Note' was screened in January to amazing response.
In February 2023 on the Bandcamp Friday of Independent Venue Week, Jean Genie’s Massive Hugs offered Preston’s top independent venue, The Ferret a Ray Of Hope with a brilliant pop single rof the year, ‘Ray Of Hope (Ferret Forever)’.
The release is in support of Music Venue Trust’s first nine lives (grassroots gig spaces) of the brilliant #OwnOurVenues investments/donations campaign. A sparkling tune, it’s picking up widespread support (Independent media, + Radio X, Loud Women on Louder Than War, Get In Her Ears and BBC Introducing plays and interviews).
March 2023 ended with #SaveTheFerret a triumph (yay!) and Music Venue Trust going to the line. Will they? Won’t they? By midnight deadline they HAD made the £2.3 million required to start buying venues for the music world to own. (yay!) Get involved, this is just the start!
April 2023, Jean Genie is live on stage at another of her regular independent venues and has a poptastic way with a story and melody. “What a song!” (John Kennedy, Radio X). A sparkling video by Robin Hill:
OMG, so excited that this entire line up can come and play!
TheZineUK
Documenting DIY music movement serendipity. A “story being lived through the arts and poetic actions at the austerity inflicted end of broken brexit britain. The one with the best rock n roll”.
The multi-media Expo, Zeenagers, is being made in twelve parts. The first was March 2023. Pop Of The Tops 2023 is Chapter 2. Be here in person or virtual media spirit? Draw/Take a pic? Wear a chic? Applaud loudly? Dance? Make a video? …or not. We’re doing love, anyway.
This is a slideshow of the doc’s 2021 cast and crew between 2014-2017. With more people in the story by 2023, let’s make newer-news together! Yes?
Pop Of The Tops?
Yeah, like Top Of The Pops; diverse popular music variety show of 20th century prime time BBC1 TV viewing fame. But 21st Century DIY punked! Independent artists / venue / promoter and creativity welding alternative rock, electro punk and disco pop tuned performances with a creative crowd.
Let’s make a Hallo Gallery on the second stage in the TARDIS of New Cross backstage bar where years of gigs, parties, clubs, theatre and shenanigans (like TheZineUK being born) have taken place – especially over the last decade while musician, Andy Palmer has been making heritage with a staff of mostly musicians as staff. Come, have a laff.
2003, Sarf East London - a community of artists, locals, students, fairys etc. at a weekly live music social.
By the time it was killed off in 2004 Pop Of The Tops (“The CBGBs of SE14”) had spawned acclaimed/widely screened films, an NME compilation of the year, ‘The New Cross’, an Oxford Street riot, a John Kennedy radio special and the Rocklands Party of creativity.
Over the years of shows, festival stages, sessions, collabs and expos, invited music lovers to witness, early or intimate shows by Kae Tempest, Howard Marks, Nova Twins, Anna Wolf, Art Brut, Bloc Party, gglum, Deux Furieuses, MOSES, Feral Five, Ebony Bones, Something In The Lake, Tinie Tempah, Glen Tillbrook, The Heavy, Beans On Toast, Too Many Ts … ah, so many more.
TheZineUK has officially staged and co-promoted at many events/festivals since 2014 and is always looking at the NOW and the NEXT. So come tonight!
An art rock opera in real time. Kicking against the hostile environment pricks – and despite everything – the uniqulture of the Fertile Environment is seeing talent seed and bloom. A pipeline of potential, which the interdependent music world feeds into wider attention. Often works.
Amersham Arms
388 New Cross Road, London SE14 6TY
https://www.theamershamarms.net/
Yes, of course our “2023 is inspired by 2022” TikTok short features Amersham Arms the most!
Buses: 24 hours. Stop by the venue and a minute away outside Goldsmiths Uni.
Trains: Opposite New Cross Station, 5-10 mins to New Cross Gate (both are National Rail / East London Line), 5-10 mins Deptford Bridge (DLR), 10-15 mins Deptford High Street (National Rail/Thameslink).
Access: One-level venue and toilet.
Welcome to New Cross!
Early Pop Of The Tops-ness: "A congregation of creatives lighting up the darkness of south-east London, with musicians, filmmakers, comedians and artists coming together to conjure a modern-day Haight-Ashbury." (Time Out Magazine) * "In London, New Cross and Deptford attract the hip." (New York Times). * "The rock n roll borough" (NME) * "The new Montmartre" (Italian Vogue) * "Forget Buck Palace get down to Deptford." (The London Paper). * "You gotta be kidding!" (Daily Mail)
TheZineUK music social is a safe space.
We will not tolerate any gropeytwat or bigotty BS and neither will this inclusive venue - so please be respectful to each other/yourselves - (tho tbf, we’re whimsical and don’t tend to attract wrongs uns).
Alternative music documenting inspirations
#Zeenagers EXPO is go
As a documentary, #TheZineUK doesn’t function on the chart/competition December/January Listmas format of music sites any more than running regular reviews etc. The following names are from on line conversations, What’s App and gig chats. Nowt from December’s version of Twitter.
As usual, doing our own situationist thing outside “how it’s supposed to be done” and social media trends, the story evolves organically outside of major hype but noticeably. From this tapestry, there are Weekend Recovery, Cold Water Swimmers, Feral Five and Cross Wires amidst albums coming in 2023. Bands who are creating notable legacies for their names.
If you’ve ever been aware of our Picture Story Diary Doc (first uploaded Spring 2014), you’ll notice the Fertile Environment seeding in a variety of real time. Some developing into unimaginable moments that, when they happen, make total and deserved sense. Bands come, go, evolve, get on, sod off as things go right or wrong. When wider attention hits, ya love to see it, right?
Decolonise Fest stars Big Joanie, Nova Twins and Bob Vylan playing this year’s Glastonbury Festival and being half of the inaugural MOBO altnernative music group nominations this year, is a strong case in point.
There are so many more of our cast and crew from TheZineUK pages and socials! We couldn’t make it up. We don’t have to. Bang Bang Romeo toured with Pink, False Heads in the charts, Benefits all over the place. Here’s 42 Seconds of The Mysterines by Monefa Walker for her interview with them for TheZineUK, early 2020. They’re on tour with Arctic Monkeys in 2023.
Working Class women powered (with Tory-unfriendly-heritages and political views) TheZineUK’s 2023 adores the diversity of backgrounds and foregrounds of generation tremorists (i.e. all ages, it’s the 21st century!) in the vanguard of newer wave music industrious movement.
Big up the grassroots venue circuit, the likes of Music Venue Trust and Independent Venue Community and please play respect to all the technicians, promoters, producers, presenters, DJ and expanded fun-fam of media/industry and audiences support that makes this a genuine game changing era. The documenting by photographers, writers and film makers is incredible. The illustrations and graphics are part of the exhibiton. We need each other.
This music site x events creator may be only a small “Rocking Pebble” or “New Whimsical Express”, but our inclusion ain’t delusion. Everybody’s invited, watch all their/our spaces.
Uniqulture’s tapestry weaves through the interaction, co-promotion and collaboeration of friends, strangers or otherwise. We’ll document 2023 with a view to creating the Zeenagers Expo from the reality of soundtracking escapism from dystopia’s now and next…
Some 2022-flavouring artists to look out for in 2023
Anna Wolf
Arxx
Bugeye
Cobain Jones
Coco and the Lost
Colossus
Dictator
Eternum Joy
Fitzroy Holt
Gen and the Degenerates
gglum
Glytsch
Hotwax
JW Paris
Kill The Icon
Lime Garden
Lufe Tempo
Mango In Euphoria
Megan Wyn
Nadia Sheikh
Noah and the Loners
Ramona Marx
Ruby J
Small Miracles
Something In The Lake
Spangled
Teenage Sequence
The Dead Freights
The Kairos
The Molotovs
The Now
The Outers
The Velvet Hands
Venus Grrrls
Weekend Recovery
Wharves
Albums
Adwaith 'Bato Mato'
Arctic Monkeys 'The Car'
Asylums 'Signs Of Life'
A Void 'Call Of The Void'
Bait 'Sea Change'
Beabadoobee ' Beatopia'
Berries 'How We Function'
Big Joanie 'Back Home'
Black Country, New Road 'Ants From Up There'
Bob Vylan 'The Price Of Life'
Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard 'Backhand Deals'
Deux Furieuses 'Songs From Planet Earth'
Dry Cleaning 'Stump Work'
Enjoyable Listens 'The Enjoyable Listen'
Fontaines D. C. 'Skinty Fia'
Ghum 'Bitter'
Gwenno 'Tresor'
Johnny Marr 'Fever Dreams'
Kid Kapichi - 'Here’s What You Could Have Won'
Louis Tomlinson 'Faith In The Future'
MOSES 'I Still Believe! Do You?'
Nova Twins 'Supernova'
Peaness 'World Full Of Worry'
Pillow Queens 'Leave The Light On'
Rina Sawayama 'Hold The Girl'
Sinead O Brien 'Time Bend And Break The Bower'
Soccer Mommy 'Sometimes Forever'
The Assist 'Council Pop'
The Linda Lindas 'Growing Up'
The Shop Window 'A 4 Letter Word'
The Snuts 'Burn The Empire'
The Smile 'A Light For Attracting Attention'
Wet Leg 'Wet Leg'
Witch Fever 'Congregation'
Wynona Bleach 'Moonsoake'
Thanks for reading/creating/performing/supporting this genuine arts movement.
Dizzy Spell (Editor)/Caffy St Luce (Events)
JPGs of above mentioned artists: