{"id":2704,"date":"2010-11-13T17:48:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-13T17:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=2704"},"modified":"2010-11-13T17:51:45","modified_gmt":"2010-11-13T17:51:45","slug":"thee-spivs-at-the-hope-and-anchor-islington-n1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/thee-spivs-at-the-hope-and-anchor-islington-n1\/","title":{"rendered":"Thee Spivs at the Hope and Anchor, Islington N1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thee<\/p>\n

Ace rockers (and Offline Club<\/a> regulars) Thee Spivs<\/a> put in a dynamite set last night at a packed Hope and Anchor, in\u00a0Islington,\u00a0north\u00a0London.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Thee<\/p>\n

The songs were sharp, short and snappy, recalling early Clash, Rezillos, Who, Wire with a bit of the Undertones thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n

They’re a whole heap of energetic fun that\u00a0should\u00a0bring a\u00a0smile\u00a0to even the most curmudgeonly old rocker.<\/p>\n

\"Thee<\/p>\n

With the stage being less than a foot high, the line between band and punters did get blurred at times.<\/p>\n

\"Thee<\/p>\n

The crowd went wild, beers got spilt, the blonde guy strutting an\u00a0authentic\u00a01970s New Wave of British Heavy Metal<\/a> look swirled his mane around with gusto, while ambitious crowd surfers risked the low roof.<\/p>\n

Some over-enthusiastic\u00a0moshing saw inadvertent stage\u00a0invaders crashing into\u00a0mic stands with howls of feedback accompanying the\u00a0displaced\u00a0microphones.<\/p>\n

\"Thee<\/p>\n

\"Thee<\/p>\n

Singer Ben Edge finds himself held aloft by the crowd and enjoying an unexpected\u00a0rendezvous\u00a0with the roof tiles as the set comes to a close.<\/p>\n

A few moments earlier, an elderly Elvis Presley\u00a0impersonator\u00a0with what looked like a\u00a0distraught\u00a0black cat on his head \u00a0accompanied Ben for a deeply strange duet.<\/p>\n

I loved the band, and hope to have them back at the Brixton Offline club soon.<\/p>\n

\"Thee<\/p>\n

Dead famous venue<\/strong><\/p>\n

Quite possibly London’s most famous rock music pub,\u00a0The Hope and Anchor’s tiny stage has seen legends like Madness, XTC, The Damned, Joy Division, U2, Ian Dury, The Police and The Stranglers.<\/p>\n

I played there a few times with various bands, including one hideously drink-and-amphetamine fuelled\u00a0night where I ended up\u00a0joining\u00a0various\u00a0members\u00a0of the Boomtown Rats and Graham Parker’s band on a benefit night and – according to the NME – played a “punk version of \u00a0Toad” \u00a0(‘Toad’ being a particularly self\u00a0indulgent\u00a0drum odyssey by Ginger Baker<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Sadly, I have no recollection of any of the\u00a0evening’s events, but I do have the NME clipping, and a photo of me somewhere which confirms my rather alcohoic state – I’ll see if I can dig ’em up.<\/p>\n

On a more pleasing note, here’s a video recorded by north London boys Madness at the Hope and Anchor.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ace rockers (and Offline Club regulars) Thee Spivs put in a dynamite set last night at a packed Hope and Anchor, in\u00a0Islington,\u00a0north\u00a0London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[196,43],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-2704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nightlife","category-music","tag-bands"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/thee-spivs-hope-and-anchor-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-HC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2704"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2706,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704\/revisions\/2706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}