And I don't know the answers, 'cause I don't know the questions

Having only heard about the existence of the event the day before yesterday (Paul Burston posted a comment about it on MySpace), I hastily organised tickets to go to the House of Homosexual Culture's "Do You Come Here Often?" event last night at the South Bank. After a clothes shopping in delightful Wood Green (for our first gay wedding bash, to which we are going on Saturday) it was touch and go whether Madame Arcarti would want to go (she hates shopping, and has an early start tomorrow) but since this was an evening focussing on the history of gay clubbing in London, how could we do anything else?

Off we trolled through the drizzle into the bowels of the Festival Hall to the comfy and bijou surroundings of the "Blue Room", which was beginning to fill up as soon as we arrived. Our host Paul B was sparkling from head to toe in sparkly black sequins, and opened proceedings by reading the lyrics of In The Evening by Sheryl Lee Ralph (read my blog about the importance of that particular song).



Without further ado, our guests Tris Penna and Sue Wade entered into a lengthy and educational journey through the way gay nightlife has evolved since the 50s and 60s "hidden" years, when clubbing was basically a refuge, having a bit of a bop to a jukebox behind closed doors in a downstairs bar or coffee shop. In the late 60s, our newly founded emancipation following the legalisation of homosexuality led to the popularity of the famous Lesbian club Gateways (as long as you adhered to their strict "butch and femme" role-playing rules) and gay clubs such as The Catacomb, both on Kings Road.

During the 70s, there was a very slow and gradual relaxation of the "members-only club" tradition, and of course we had the rise of gay Disco, which meant that larger "one-nighters" such as Bolts (which had a home very near where we live now in Harringay) and Bangs (in the Astoria in Charing Cross Road, fore-runner of G-A-Y) could begin to flourish, alongside the emerging leather and "clone" scene, which found a home in The Coleherne in Earls Court and The London Apprentice at Old Street . All are now gone, but one club founded in that decade still survives - Heaven (although according to Tris, it was a vey different and more sleazy place in its early days).

Even into the 80s, Soho was only a minor player in the world of gay nightlife. Heaven was out of the hub of what we now think of as "the gay village" and quite segregated, with its mainly men-only nights. The Fridge in Brixton, Bromptons and the Copacabana in Earls Court and the various clubs under the arches of Kings Cross were ascendant. Blitz Kids and "gender benders" were popularising gay culture in the press. But with immaculate timing, AIDS had begun to make an impact on the gay clubs - particularly the sleazy leather scene.

And then came Trade in Turnmills, which, being off the beaten track and (with a lot of word-of-mouth advertising in the era when dancefloor drugs such as Ecstacy became popular) a very easy-going attitude to what exactly constitutes an "all-night venue", took off massively. Although not without its casualties - for as Tris commented, probably more people were damaged and burned out by the chemical excesses of the late 80s and early 90s than had been directly affected by AIDS over the previous decade.

A direct reaction to these excesses (fuelled by the hedonistic "anything goes" attitude of poly-sexual clubs such as Taboo, which was actually not strictly gay) was the founding of alternative clubs like PopStarz, Kinky Gerlinky and Ducky. But the biggest winners in the 90s were the newly cleaned-up Heaven, which began to attract the glitterati of the time, and latterly G-A-Y, which appealed to a largely squeaky-clean younger crowd and hosted some of the biggest acts around on its stage.

As our speakers observed, however, the age of the "mega-club" and its "mega-star DJs" seems to have petered out somewhat in recent years. For even with a vast variety of drugs and the vastly popular aggregation of gay venues around Vauxhall, it seems that a profusion of smaller club venues and "one-nighters" has begun to emerge once more (possibly in a reaction to recession, as in the early 90s) - in places like Hoxton, and of course Soho.

This was a bit of a "curate's egg" of a discussion, as the speakers veered backwards and forwards between eras, venues, stimulants and perspectives (gay women's and men's experiences), and perhaps some of the details were slightly lost. In their enthusiasm to express how it felt to "be there", and to talk about the people who were responsible for the developments on the scene, we missed where many of these clubs actually were located, for example. However, we were enthralled to hear all these fabulous anecdotes "straight from the horse's mouth", as it were...

But the best was yet to come. In a magnificent finale, and as an acknowledgement of one of the home-grown talents who contributed so much to the gay scene of the 80s, the lovely Miss Hazell Dean took to the stage! We were treated to fabulously belting versions of her gay anthems Who's Leaving Who and Searching, as well as Hi-NRG re-workings of Addicted to Love and the classic We Are Family. She is superb, and her powerful voice has lost none of its impact - brilliant stuff!

I thanked Miss Dean afterwards, and explained to her that it was she who provided the soundtrack to my coming out. As the penny dropped (for both of us) that this was actuallly twenty-five years ago, I decided to casually drop the conversation at this point. Anyhow, here's the lady herself:

Hazell Dean - Who's Leaving Who?

Hazell Dean - Searchin'

Hazell Dean official website