Save The Spitz

• 2nd May 2007

The campaign to Save The Spitz starts now and we need your support. Please go to link and sign our online petition and/or make a donation to the Save The Spitz appeal.

If you would like to get directly involved in the campaign please email mail

The Spitz has been given six months notice to quit our present site in Old Spitalfields Market by our landlord Ballymore Properties. In a worse case scenario, this will mean that The Spitz will cease to exist at the end of September this year.

Another important way to support The Spitz is to use it as much as possible so please don’t forget The Spitz also has a fantastic restaurant and if you bring along a print out of this email we’ll give you 10% off lunch between 12 & 2 pm. Also, all areas of The Spitz are available for hire including the gallery, terrace and restaurant. All ideal spaces for parties, launch nights, talks, etc. We have an excellent programme of live music in the venue including the current Spitz Festival of Blues and the forthcoming Spitz Festival of Country in August and Spitz Festival of Folk in September. The Spitz Gallery also has a very strong programme including the forthcoming Chernobyl exhibition by Magnum photographer Paul Fusco called ”Twenty One Years of Fall Out”.

Please show your support for The Spitz by voting with your feet.

SAVE THE SPITZ!

Quotes

“I am outraged to hear that The Spitz is in danger of closing.”
Beth Orton

“MOJO magazine is distraught at the thought of the Spitz closing its doors for good and all.”
Danny Eccleston, Consultant Editor, Mojo Magazine

''The Spitz is a unique venue which has enhanced the London music scene since it opened. If a classical music venue were under threat, the establishment would rightly be up in arms.”
Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London

Upcoming shows:
This week at the Spitz we've got some great shows for you, starting with a late addition! Enjoy!
The Spitz also appears on BBC1's 'The Apprentice' Wednesday night at 9pm!

Upcoming shows at the Spitz:

Tues 24 Apr
Modular Takes On Scruffy Bird: FOALS + The Softlightes + Bonde Do Role
We've wanted to do a party with our very good friends over at Scruffy Bird for a long time and when they found out SoftLightes were coming from California they said, “the time is now, son”. Their tone freaked us out a bit but we said OK anyway.
So, tomorrow night we're teaming up to throw a killer live line up with three hugely hotly tipped bands, and, to be honest, three bands we really love at Modular and wanted to see play together.
Doors are at 8pm sharp, with SoftLightes on at 8:30pm. It's their first ever UK show….
Take a listen to the bands…we reckon you'll love all of them.
8pm
£4
www.myspace.com/foals
www.myspace.com/thesoftlightes
www.myspace.com/bondedorole

Wed 25 Apr
Moishe's Bagel
Rip-roaring, foot-stomping, jazz-inflected klezmer and Balkan music from some of 's finest musicians. An intoxicating mix of Eastern European dance music, Middle Eastern rhythms and virtuoso performances, Moishe's Bagel bring passion, soul and irresistible energy to Jewish world music. Traditional music as you've never heard it, as well as startling original compositions and improvisations.
'Exhilarating, full-flavoured stuff, often breath-takingly intricate but played with jubilation…the Bagel acquires the momentum of an express train' – Glasgow Herald
www.moishesbagel.co.uk
8pm
£9 / £7 adv

Thu 26 Apr
Spitz Festival Of Blues: The Scientists + Blood Safari + Lot Lizards
Haling from the world’s most remote city-Perth in Western Australia, The Scientists were the original punk blues architects. Along with their peers, the Gun Club and The Birthday Party, The Scientists wrote the first chapter in the punk blues bible. Prefiguring and influencing the likes of Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion with their primal, swampy proto-grunge, The Scientists made machine throb bass and drums with jagged car wreck guitars their modus operandi. Uncompromising in their rejection of the trends rebounding around them, these Australian essentials spurned all but the most rudimentary and elemental of rock structures – along with most other peoples' modes of embellishment. Their nine year narrative involved a series of incarnations, but best remembered is the line up of '81-'85 featuring Kim Salmon, Tony Thewlis, Boris Sujudovic and Brett Rixon. Sadly Brett Rixon died in 1993, but Kim, Boris and Tony now reanimate the monster with the aid of 1985 understudy, Leanne Chowie.
“The Scientists turned my head around and made a man out of me! They grew hair on my palms and made my socks stink! I buzzed like moo cow with a tough outer shell and gargled with broken glass!” – Jon Spencer
www.scientists.com.au
www.bloodsafari.com
www.myspace.com/bloodsafari
www.myspace.com/lotlizardslondon
£10 / £8 adv

Fri 27 Apr
Spitz Festival Of Blues: Robert Belfour + Duke Garwood
Along with R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and T-Model Ford, Robert re-defined the blues genre with records released on the maverick Mississippi record label Fat Possum. Unlike the electric driven blues of RL, Junior and T-Model, Robert plays clear and powerful acoustic hill country blues. Robert was born into the rich musical heritage of the North Mississippi Hill Country in 1940. His father Grant Belfour taught him the guitar at a young age. Robert continued his tutelage in the Blues from Mississippi Hill Country legends Othar Turner, R. L. Burnside, and Junior Kimbrough. Kimbrough, in particular, was a profound influence on Robert. With most of his contemporary’s now sadly passed on, Robert Belfour is the last living authentic acoustic North Mississippi Hill Blues musician still playing out. Robert’s Spitz Festival of Blues show is a rare opportunity to witness Robert performing live outside Memphis and Mississippi.
www.fatpossum.com/artists/belfour.html
www.dukegarwood.com
www.myspace.com/dukegarwood
*SOLD OUT*

Sat 28 Apr
Spitz Festival Of Blues: T Model Ford & Lightnin’ Malcolm
T-Model Ford learnt to play the guitar in his late fifties after his third wife left him inspired by his hero’s Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. He has played out in the Mississippi Delta ever since. In fact T-Model is the only musician still playing Nelson Street in his home town of Greenville since the violent crack trade replaced one of the Delta’s most vibrant musical streets with prostitutes and drug dealers. T-Model has released four bone crunching raw punk blues records on the Mississippi label Fat Possum Records and contributed the star turn, ‘Take a Ride With Me’ to NTSOBC’s own sampler record ‘This is Punk Rock Blues Vol #1’ released on Punk Rock Blues Records.
Basically, if you’re looking to experience one real deal authentic gangster blues player in your lifetime, T-Model is your man. Or in his own words, “T-Model Ford is going to remember you sorry fuckers how it’s done.”
www.fatpossum.com/artists/tmodel.html
www.lightninmalcolm.com
*SOLD OUT*

Sun 29 Apr
LAYASUTRA
A Nepalese cultural evening and fundraising event. Featuring traditional Nepalese music, dance and food.
www.freewebs.com/layasutra
£8 adv

Mon 30 Apr
FELIX LAJKO + Paprika Balkanicus
Felix Lajko is a Magyar from . Largely self-taught, he is a highly accomplished experimenter: he is constantly exploring the limits of his instrument with a boundless passion. He defies stereotypes whilst wielding the skill of each musical idiom – jazz, classical, gypsy as well as folk. His work has inspired many contemporary musicians, including Warren Ellis of the Dirty Three, who will be putting him on at their curated ATP festival this month. This Spitz show is his only headline show.
www.lajkofelix.hu
£11 / £9 adv

This week in the Gallery:

24 Apr – 6 May
‘Chernobyl Legacy’ – Photography by Paul Fusco
In 1986 in Chernobyl, Ukraine a nuclear reactor exploded blasting 160 tons of radioactive ash into storm winds that swept across Belarus poisoning 25% of the population and land and water. 21 years after that explosive catastrophe the awful legacy can be seen in the surviving immediate victims and now, thousands more who were born with radiation caused deformities and diseases, and forever more , those who continue to build up a dangerous levels of radiation in their bodies from the food they eat and the water they drink.
Chernobyl Legacy commemorates the 21st anniversary of the disaster and focuses on the health, economic, socio-psychological and enviromental consequences. The exhibition is timely, as politicians are proposing to build new nuclear power plants throughout the UK, as a viable source of ‘clean’energy. Nuclear energy with its inflexibility, generation of waste, inherent danger and security implications as well as its hidden costs, undermines economic development, social development and environmental protection.
The exhibition stands as a testament to the unacceptable risk of Nuclear power to the environment and humanity.
“The child victims of Chernobyl offer living proof of the impact of technological disasters on human society and bare testament to it’s ravages, offering to the outside world the gift of example and witness that this tragedy might not happen anywhere else on this fragile planet.” – Adi Roche Executive Director, Chernobyl Children’s Project, Ireland
“The Legacy of Chernobyl will be with us and our descendants, for generations to come. If we forget Chernobyl, we increase the risk of more such technological and environmental disasters in the future. Alas errors of this kind cannot be remedied but their reoccurrence can be prevented.” – Secretary General for the United Nations, Kofi Annan.