Heavy manners: watching the Four Aces documentary

"That's our history, man. You know what I mean?". So said a member of the audience sitting near me to some of his friends as we sat waiting - and waiting - for the screening of Legacy In The Dust: The Four Aces Story to start. Yep, because I was there last night, patiently - impatiently - waiting for Winstan Whitter's 2008 film to actually appear on the screen at this event at the Mildmay Community Centre in Hackney in east London, only a stones's throw (sort of) from the location of this legendary nightclub. Yeah, instead of connecting with people around me like the estimable "that's our history" bloke, I was sitting there inwardly grumbling, thinking "why don't these things ever start on time?". What a grouch. Anyway, I will admit that the (long) pre-film period was filled out with some excellent background music: a high-quality mix of roots reggae. So what about the film? Yeah, it was ... fine. It's essentially a walk-through of the history of the Four Aces, Dalston Lane's black music hot spot from 1966 to 1989 before it became a sweat-soaked rave venue as the Labrynth, packing 'em in until the building was closed down by Hackney Council in 1999. Whitter's film is a conventional package of talking heads (a lot of them), old video clips and photos. It's dense and - to my mind - a bit too crowded. And it's rather repetitive too. "The emission of a succession of repetitive beats", the infamous anti-rave phrase from the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, is cited in the film, yet the film arguably emits its own kind of repetition - Don Letts banging on about reggae and the punks, Dennis Bovell banging on about how lovers rock was supposedly forged at the Four Aces, Ari Up banging on about police oppression. Hmm, I'm being too harsh. It's true I don't much like these "TV-ready" docs (talking heads ad nauseam, not that much space or ... artistry), but there's still, I must admit, plenty of interesting stuff in Legacy In The Dust. For one thing I don't think I've ever heard Ari Up's speaking voice before, and so it was a slight shock to hear her drawling away with a distinctly Germanic tone. Fassbinder character meets riddim girl uptown. 

Coming soon to a lampost near you: the Four Aces Story

Anyway, a few things that caught my attention from the film: 

*The quiet star of the documentary is, fittingly enough, Newton Dunbar, the man who ran the Four Aces throughout, initially with three others but - it seems - later more or less on his own. Or at least with a shifting team of people he could trust. "The main thing with running a club is the security", says Dunbar, no small thing when the police are constantly raiding your place - hunting "yardies", "cracking down on drugs", or conductung raids, as Dunbar says matter of factly, simply to "amuse themselves", racist policing par excellence. Dunbar wanted to create a place for black people in east London to socialise. To socialise and, in the words of the Four Aces publicity blurb, "dance to the best, Soul, Jazz, Funk, Reggae, Revives and Lovers Rock". He undoubtedly succeeded. Somewhat amazingly he turned this small east London club into a place which could host artists like Desmond Dekker, Roy Shirley, Alton Ellis, Ben E King, Ann Peebles and Jimmy Ruffin. And that's before you even get to the real heavyweights: Jah Shaka, Coxsone Sound, Fat Man, Count Shelly, I-Spy and Aba Shanti-I. At one time Lloyd Coxsone apparently had regular Wednesday and Friday slots at the club. In the film much is made of the fact that numerous musicians in Jamaica had got to hear of the Four Aces and wanted to play there or at least visit. Bob Marley was apparently a visitor, as were those two reggae giants (ahem) Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger.

*Staying with white visitors, Don Letts tells a good story about how, despite the often-mentioned (not least by himself) punk-reggae crossover of 1976-78, the only punk musicians he knows who went to the Four Aces were John Lydon, Joe Strummer and the Slits. And, he says, that was only because he himself "took them there". Hmm, they don't sound so dread now, do they? A funny rider to this is Letts describing how these dub-punks acted in the club. Lydon and Strummer, he says, "stayed at the edge of the dancefloor with their cans of Red Stripe, skanking". By contrast Ari Up apparently charged onto the dancefloor, went wild and caused a minor sensation among the rasta fraternity. In the beginning there was rhythm ... 

*Two key records at Four Aces were apparently Leroy Smart's Ballistic Affair and Lee Perry's Roast Fish And Cornbread, tunes that apparently always resonated with the reggae heads. As a would-be DJ myself, I can confirm that the Perry tune always sounds great played out through a decent PA system.

*I assume the reason why Legacy In The Dust is something like 50% talking heads is the apparent shortage of original footage from the club. I detected very little, especially from the reggae days. Some of the live clips we see in the film are from other locations and were part of Jeremy Marre's 1976 LWT British Reggae documentary, including Roy Shirley's amazing performance at Paddington's Q Club, Aswad playing live somewhere or other, and Coxsone at the Notting Hill Carnival. Meanwhile, among the photos of soundsystem operators, we see the famous Dennis Morris Sunday morning shot of Admiral Ken and his "box men", though again this is an image from Shoreditch and not from Dalston. 

Count Shelly Sound System at Four Aces (pic: Dennis Morris)

*Some of the most interesting content in the film is the stuff on its second-life period as a rave club, when rave impressario Joe Wieczorek was seemingly given a free hand to book the DJs and flood the place with smiley t-shirted dancers. Evidently, soul-reggae man Newton Dunbar was happy to see Four Aces transform itself into a venue serving up house music for a predominantly white audience. No doubt money was a big part of this, not least as the formerly small Four Aces venue become far bigger as they opened out lots of unused rooms in the sprawling building which - in an earlier life - had been a huge Victorian theatre. At its height Labrynth apparently comprised ten rooms on five floors, with different DJs playing different music - happy hardcore, trance, drum and bass etc - in different rooms. Interestingly, one former DJ recalls how the early Labrynth days saw one music under one roof (essentially rave house), whereas later things split off into specialist areas. It also seems that Labrynth gradually became identified as a D&B club, with punters coming from all over London (even the whole country) to check out its sweaty excitement. Apparently it was so hot that funnels of sweat would run down the walls and drip off the ceiling after only an hour of the place being open. 

*Other Labrynth tidbits: Kenny Ken was a key DJ, they installed a mega "Eskimo Sound" PA system which apparently pumped out 10,000 watts per channel (far louder and clearer than in its reggae days), and Prodigy played their first ever show there (February 1991). In fact, I found Legacy In The Dust's almost inevitable focus on the Prodigy stuff slightly irksome, with Prodigy members being asked to recall all the details as if they were rock royalty. That said, Wieczorek's anecdote about how he casually said "I'll give you £80" (£10 for each of Prodigy's eight members, including their resident dancers) was interesting enough. Evidently a nervous Prodigy went down a storm at this Friday night show and were asked back the following Saturday, which saw huge queues up to Dalston Junction.

*Another Labrynth factoid: it appears - somewhat surprisingly? - that Pigbag played there in 1989. If so, I reckon that would have been pretty good.  

Long live May Day (pic from the Labrynth Facebook page)

*Though, to be honest, I found the account of the Four Aces' sudden reggae/rave transformation slightly unclear, it appears to have been partly prompted by Dunbar's realisation that the police were less likely to raid the club if it was full of mostly white people. Still, its metamorphosis seems to have been pretty abrupt. One of Legacy In The Dust's untold stories, I think, is the effect that this must have had on the older black crowd who for years had gone to the Four Aces for the reggae. Either way, I sensed that the Mildmay screening audience (about two-thirds black) was far more interested in the soul-reggae stuff, with the Labrynth days just a more or less amusing epilogue. 

*The Met Police may have initially laid off the club in its early Labrynth incarnation but, as Legacy In The Dust explains pretty well, they began to go after it in the early 1990s. Wieczorek seems to have borne the brunt, with his house raided multiple times and he personally being the subject of months of police surveillance ("I knew someone was following me"). Irrepressible as he seems to be, a years-long Customs & Excise case against him finally seems to have worn Wieczorek down.  

Yeah man, heavy heavy manners. Anyway, though I've perhaps been over-tough on Whitter's Four Aces film, it's nevertheless well worth a watch. Whether or not it qualifies as an artistically strong bit of film-making (I don't think it does), it's still packed with informative reminiscences, mini-stories and plenty of affection and enthusiasm. Overall, it's almost as much a film about police repression as it is about music. It tells the age-old story of the police being unable to abide young people - especially young black people - gathering to dance to loud music. There's a slight irony, therefore, in the council not the police being the final bad guys in this story, with their compulsory purchase order and forced closure of the Four Aces in 1999. When I first moved to Hackney in 2000 (as ever, late to the party), the Four Aces/Labrynth was just a closed-down, mouldering monstrosity I'd see from the bus on my way to and from work. Well-established plants grew in the guttering and there were slogans painted on the crumbling brickwork. I recall seeing squatters going in and out, including some Italian and Spanish crust-punk types. Yeah, let them have it, I thought. These days almost all trace is gone, and in its place stands Dalston Square: expensive high-rise flats, a nice-enough concrete-and-trees plaza, the pleasingly-designed Dalston CLR James Library (I use it regularly), and the Windrush Line Dalston Junction station. At the screening, as we heard of the building's 2007 demolition, there was murmured outrage from some of the audience. I heard numerous people loudly tutting and making remarks. Dunbar himself has criticised the naming of the residential tower blocks - Dunbar Tower, Labrynth Tower, Marley House, Wonder House and Collins Tower - seeing it all as an unwarranted act of cynical gentrification. And true enough, a three-bedroom flat in Labrynth Tower will currently set you back a not-inconsiderable £850,000. I dunno, though. Hackney house prices are undoubtedly far too high and tokenistic cultural remembrance is always irritating, sometimes infuriating, but I don't, either, think you can - or should - cling on to places like the Four Aces club. Given the building's age and condition (the Prodigy noted it was clearly in poor shape in 1991), it was surely almost inevitable that it would eventually be demolished. Meanwhile, the Labrynth name now has a (dubious?) afterlife as the Labrynth: Spirit Of The East II club night brand. During its long life the Four Aces hosted great music and played a key part in UK black music's history, but nothing lasts forever. One quite touching story in Legacy In The Dust is how during the club's lifetime Newton Dunbar and his staff planted a garden at the back of the building, including a tree in remembrance of those who died in the infamous (and very likely racist) New Cross fire in 1981. You can't preserve a musical moment like the Four Aces, but at the very least the developers and their bulldozers who swept through the Four Aces building in 2007 should have spared this tree (or even the entire garden), perhaps replanting it in Dalston Square. I don't think they did though.