Post by South-Punk Admin on Oct 19, 2015 15:31:28 GMT
Southend Punk was saddened to hear of the passing of Jane Allain. Graham Burnett has written a lovely piece about her:
"I was saddened to learn of the recent death of Jane Allain, I'd not seen her in about 30 years, but she was one of the co-founders of the Southend Action Group for Arts, who did much to promote grass-roots creativity in the Southend on Sea area, including putting on music festivals (Southend Sounds 76 at Roots Hall Football Stadium opposite my house, headlined by Alvin Lee and Fairport Convention amongst others!!!), and gigs such as Henry Cow in the dilapidated Queens Hotel, also live events in Southend High Street including putting on proto-jazz punks Red Square to the bemusement and horror of the Saturday afternoon shoppers, some of whom are still in recovery some 40 years later, plus also publishing Southend's first (as far as I am aware) grassroots arts and poetry magazine, BANG!, printed on a Gestetner duplicator in her back room, in one of those houses that had that sort of smell of incense and whole foods that you used to get in the late 70s/early 80s, with sacks of dried beans, lentils and brown rice lying about and Thorsons Vegetarian cookbooks on the shelves... The magazine was also my first foray into print, as they included some somewhat adolescent poems I'd written, as well as a few gig reviews. When the magazine upgraded it's production values (ie, they started printing it using photocopying!) Jane sold me the Gestener machine for the princely sum of ten pounds (alot of money in those days!!!), and I began publishing my own fanzine New Crimes. It also got used to print other local fanzines such as Necrology, produced by Steve Pegrum of Kronstadt Uprising and Confidential Waste, produced by our now local Labour Councillor Julian Ware-Lane. There's a direct lineage between those early inky sheets (my mother still hasn't forgiven me for the ink I used to get all over our living room carpet) and Spiralseed, the self-publishing enterprise that I still run to this day. RIP Jane, and thanks for all the early inspiration, help and encouragement. Thanks to Adrian Green for passing on the sad news."
Further Information can be found at:
www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/oct/04/jane-allain-obituary