What’s Cookin at The North Star


The North Star, Browning Road 7.45pm Sunday night (just now) and it’s throbbing, barely space to stand, What’s Cookin has rolled in with a regular blues night. The act, Little George, sits huddled between the speakers peering out of plastic undergrowth. The mostly middle-aged audience stood around in a semi-circle heads nodding like some kind of South Pacific tribal ritual. There’s a liberal spattering of pork-pie hats and at least one yellow Stove Pony Records t-shirt stretched clingfilm-tight across a proud pot-belly. This is the E11 beat generation, greying, with enlarged prostates but still going. The possible closure (then rebirth) of this brilliant boozer because of a bureaucratic licensing difficulty gives the night a millenarian vibe – will they be kicking out the blues here on Monday night or will the stiffs at the town hall have closed it down. Nobody seems to care that much if the dancing is anything to go by.

london

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