I first bumped into Iain at a heated public meeting where the community were demanding that the Council explain itself for auctioning off all of its shops over the heads of its tenants in Broadway Market. One of the speakers was Spirit who, from ruin, had built his Nutritious Galley and his home above the shop and who’d become a figurehead of the campaign. I’d also spoken up about the plight of the surviving Dalston Lane Terrace traders – whose shops had also been sold off at auction in one lot to an off-shore developer. Iain cornered me as we dispersed and he later wrote about our conversation in his book “Hackney, that rose-red empire”. It was later, at the OPEN Dalston meeting to celebrate the re-opening of St. Barnabus church and hall, when Iain heard me play music and invited me to collaborate. I’d performed Michael Rosen’s “Regeneration Blues” that night , on alto saxophone in the Dulce Tones jazz quintet, and Michael had then auctioned the Dalston Slab’s £63million bus stop for the bargain price of £7.50p.
After a trial run with Iain at Dalston’s Vortex jazz club, I found myself on stage with him in the South Bank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall talking and playing tenor saxophone to extracts from “Ghost Milk” on the theme of exhumation of the radioactive wastes buried in the landfill dumps beneath London Olympic 2012 site in Hackney Wick. Hearing of the event a friend, the photographer and investigative journalist Mike Wells, came with a film camera and recorded our performance for posterity in his film “Gold Dust”.
More gigs followed – an art event fundraiser for the Golden Lane Estate campaign, performances at the Poets Library and Passing Clouds and others, all in the jazz tradition of ephemeral improvisation. Then Iain suggested we commit something permanent to vinyl. Our CD “Under Offer” resulted, with my son Adam handing the recording and production as well as contributing compositions and playing. It was released alongside Iain’s book “The Last London” – famously banned by Hackney which was a great boost to sales. We performed to a sold out Cafe Oto crowd with the gig building to a frenetic climax with “Shardenfreude”. I was well chuffed by a glowing review in the Financial Times.