|
Reknaw - Early History
Reknaw was started in 1994 by a handful of squatters
in the Stoke Newington area. Although the previous year's Hackney Homeless
free festival had been a huge success there was a feeling that local punk
bands had been badly under-represented so they demanded to be given their
own stage at the next festival. The name was an in-joke insult chosen
at the last minute. Featuring amongst other Stricknein D.C., Coitus and
Dread Messiah the costs of the stage were covered by running a not very
discreet bar. When at the end of the day this resulted a in a profit of
£300 the decision was made to invest the money in a P.A. that could
be used in risky scenarios.
Soon afterwards Reknaw started providing P.A. for a long running series
of weekly gigs in the Albion pub. Equipment was blagged left and right
and the sound was often pretty rudimentary but it provided the opportunity
to start regularly booking bands from all over England and a venue for
touring foreign punks. From the start however part of the idea of Reknaw
was to get punk played at squat parties and they managed to start doing
rooms at big underground parties with rigs like Immersion, Unsound and
Mayhem. At the time this would often mean 10 rooms of loud Techno and
one room of underpowered punk rock.
In the early days Reknaw was very much a punk community sound system and
although a lot of the work was done by a handful of people it benefited
from scores of others mucking in. Equipment was a constant problem; meant
to be self-funding it was very hard to make enough money to do more than
replace breakages.
When the Albion came to an end other pubs were found and Reknaw also started
providing the P.A for the famous 121 squat in Brixton but the focus stayed
very much on all-night parties. They also managed to get their own stage
at a number of urban free-festivals including Deptford Free, Big Sexy
and Volcano.
Personnel and equipment were given a badly needed boost around 98/ 99
when a number of veterans from the Peckham Dole House got involved and
an equipment sharing deal was made with the Drum and Bass outfit Amorphous.
With this new lease of life Reknaw ran all night stages at several large
illegal festivals including ten days outside Glastonbury 2000 and Stonehenge
2001 (Which ended up happening in Corby!) By this stage a kind of musical
synthesis had happened where they were putting on bands like Police Bastard
followed by drum and bass d.j.s. A high point was the last Exodus festival
where they were the only stage allowed to run all night.
When 121 was evicted south London squatters followed
up with a series of memorable venues including the Button Factory and
the Bacon Factory where Reknaw provided the P.A. By this stage years of
lugging equipment about had taken its toll and one by one the original
crew stopped being actively involved but leaving the rig to carry on with
ever more success ......
- Kel
Back to homepage
|
