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IN THE NEWS
TOUR OF THE MONTH
ON THIS DAY IN LONDON
19th March 1944 Tippett's oratorium Child of Our Time, premieres in London
The First All Night Rave
The source of the term 'all night rave' was coined here.
Location: 44 Gerrard Street, Soho, London
Description: This building, now at the centre of chinatown, has a startling musical history.
After World War 2, it housed the West End Jazz Club run by George Melly and the trumpeter Mick Mulligan. It was here that the first all night raves were held and also where the term was actually coined by Mulligan. Melly said:
At seven a.m. the band played its final number and we'd all crawl up out of the sweat-scented cellar into the empty streets of a Sunday morning in the West End. Hysterical with lack of sleep, accompanied by a plump art student, her pale cheeks smeared with the night's mascara, I'd catch the Chelsea bus and try to read the Observer through prickling red eyeballs as we swayed along Piccadilly, down Sloane Street, and into the King's Road. Then a bath, one of those delirious fucks that only happen on the edge of complete fatigue, and a long sleep until it was time to get up and face the journey to Cook's Ferry or whatever jazz club we were playing that evening.
In 1967 it became Happening 44, Jack Braceland's (a pioneering light show artist) a trendy psychedelic club.
Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention and Soft Machine played here, but amazingly it closed down barely 4 months later.
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