"Clapham Common: even longer, noisier events" Tories say. If only....

When the music's over....After three days of music festivals attended by tens of thousands of fans, the grass of Clapham Common looked in surprisingly good nick.

A new free sheet dropped through the letterbox last week, with a big headline on the front page: "Clapham Common - Even longer, noisier events". Arriving just before the annual SW4 dance music fest that usually turns most of the common into a mudbath. But this year it did not rain, and there was a third day of music - the Madness "House of Common" reggae festival - tacked onto the end, using the same arena and stages.

The rain came after the festivals, so less than a week later the Common looked like nothing at all had happened there.

This paper - Clapham Matters - turns out to be  just a new version of the local Tory party's newsheet, hence making big news out of the latest flare-up in a very long running battle over what Clapham Common should be used for and who should decide. The headline in fact refers to a Lambeth Council plan to stage more events on the common next year, which was very old news by the middle of August when this paper arrived on our doormat.

Its events strategy, agreed on July 15, would allow up to eight major events (that it, likely to attract over 20,000 people) next year. It also proposes raising the maximum permitted volume of music.

Shock horror! (yaaawn...)

If you've read other posts on this blog you'll know I'm not Lambeth Council's biggest fan, especially on its libraries and housing policies. But if this rather dull, flat wide open bit of land can raise a lot of money to help fund better community services then I am all for it.

Red rags to the bulls of Clapham Tories, The Friends of Clapham Common, and Tory-led Wandsworth Council, all of whom are up in arms about what this will mean for their voters - the generally pretty damn stinking rich people who live in the big houses and apartments flanking wide open spaces.

Well, I live about 5 minutes walk from the common so think I have right to a view as well. I love the Lambeth Country Show in Brockwell Park and wish we had similar free events on Clapham Common. I'm far too old for the EDM of SW4 but if it raises plenty of dosh for the council, so be it. I was around for part of that weekend and witnesed no serious anti-social behaviour. It was actually  rather good to see so many smiley young clubber types pouring across the common.

I have to say I am more worried about the way every weekend of the year the common is infested with the so-called military fitness groups of poor lycra clad souls being shouted at by bulked-up blokes in fatigues. How much does the council make out of these highly commercial and deeply unsightly activiti
es?

Does it charge commercial dog walkers? I know this will be unpopular but I think we're past the cur-to-human ratio tipping point. On any given weekday morning there seem to be about 6 dogs per human on the common. Even if they clear up all the crap, they don't  actually wash the grass, do they?

So - more paying music events, fine, let's have a wider range of music. Remember all those great open air concerts of the 80s, anti-Apartheid, CND, the reggae sunsplash, Archaos, and an event which, if I remember rightly, involved Transglobal Underground and Skunk Anansie and a lot of others out of the warehouse rave scene.

It is a Common, for heaven's sake, not a precious botanical garden or a private field for dog-walkers and sports lovers.

Sheer joy: Osibisa in Brockwell Park

eye-iko-bee-eye-ay-oh-my-lord-eye-eeko-bee-eye-ayyyy!!!!!!! 

Ay-ee-ko-b-i-a, oh my Lord!

Ay-ee-ko-B-I-A!

O-b-i-a!

O-B-I-A!

oooh-bee-aye-yeh....

O-B-I-A!

O-S-I-B-I-S-A!!

Oh my God, another crazy nostalgia trip for old sod in Brockwell Park, as Osibisa play all their old favourites with such energy and joy that even the crowd of demob-happy GCSE-age school kids just can't help themsleves and start dancing to this music that - 40 years ago - introduced London to contemporary African pop and rock and jazz - a sort of North London version of Santana mixed with a bit of Sly, and this well before most of us had even heard of Fela Kuti.

Ok, I admit it. This blog - is it a blog really? - has been getting too damn moany of late, too grumpy old fool, all the usual targets of the post-midlife male sourpuss. But today I can only gush ridiculously, in a way that I haven't been able to do since at least last year's carnival.

I have a new reason, and it's just like all the old reasons to be cheerful, it really is like a throwback.

(And yes, I loved Ian Dury so much, and yet I only saw him once - at a free concert at Crystal Palace back in 1981, the royal wedding day. A free concert, you get me).

I have been so stingy all my life - but then I have managed to see and enjoy many, many great things, many great musicians and bands - without paying. Quite often thanks to Ken Livingstone or other elected London local government people.

So, today I had another reason to be cheerful for  the minimal outlay of a bottle of fizzy water. The Lambeth Country Show in Brockwell Park is one of the last big London events that still reminds me of those massive free GLC festivals of the 1980s. It's one of the last of those big public-sector events, and it has all the benefits and the drawbacks that such an event would have, in this age of cuts and health & safety and all the rest of things that make 2013 very unlike 1986.

All the more remarkable, then, that Lambeth has managed to keep this show on the road, and to keep it so good, so damn good, that they can bring on acts of such stature to play full-length sets. And if you don't get the value of an event paid for out of your Council Tax, just look around - everyone who wants to be here is here. No-one is here on a corporate freebie. There's no sponsorship, no VIPS, no 3m high steel fence. It's not SW4 or any other of those ghastly yuppie-fests on Clapham Common - thank Christ the Lord. 

This afternoon kicked off  with the Manasseh sound system, perfect warm-up for the Madness spin-off Ska orchestra of Lee Thompson, they wroked so hard and it eventually paid off, they had everyone moving by the end. And they were a fine support band for the big, big, legendary main act of the day.

Legendary? Osibisa? It's quite hard to remeber how big they veryu nearly were, back at the endof the 1960s, it could have been them - instead it was Bob marley and Fela Kuti who really broke through.

But even so Osibisa were big and they were a vital component at hat time, in that emergence of Afrobeat and funk and sould and reggae.Well, they are to me, because I remember my best friend at school urging me to listen to this LP, back in 1970 or so - African music, even before we had heard of Fela Kuti, despite the efforts of Ginger Baker.

And this afternoon, Osibisa were brilliant. The crowd was very mixed - the family show is a wonderfully diverse event, bringing dog-grooming, dressage and organic farming into close and intimate contact with a bit of dub step here, some grime over there, loads of wannabe gangster rappers  and maybe some traditional African dance there plus all the hippy-trippy stuff that Herne Hill can muster on a hot summer afternoon. Plenty, in other words.

Plenty of variety, most it boozed up and most already happy after the ska knees-up set from the Madness gang, all sweaty in their tight suits and pork-pies. All boozed and gassed up, all aftere their different things, all happily soaking up the sounds and the sun, which, with a sort of miracle-like retunr from retirement, shone for at least three-quarters of the afternoon.

Yes, today was bliss. I am still living it, and thank Osibisa, Lambeth, and everyone there for an unforgettable afternoon of music and dance.