Sat 12th May
The Dublin Castle
The Bermondsey Joyriders/Nuffin/Anabollic Steroids/Addictive Philosophy
Get Cheap Tickets Here

Gary Lammin’s (Cock Sparrer/Little Roosters) punky garage rhythmn n blues trio return to The Dublin, which can only be a good thing, you couldn’t find a better rhythm n blues outfit in a better setting..“Anyone looking for a crash course in punk spirit should look no further” said Classic Rock, “Loud, fast, cheekily confrontational and distinctly British. See ‘em at all costs” opined Hugh Gulland in Vive Le Rock “A unique spin on punk blues” – Charles Shaar Murray. “Extraordinary slide guitar … witty and original vocals” – Carol Clerk, Classic Rock again. Blending a love of bottleneck Delta blues with a solid background in the London punk scene, but with their fingers on the pulse of contemporary society, The Bermondsey Joyriders are a band as accomplished as they are inventive.

Nuffin are a punk rock enigma it’s a joy to connect with. On 3rd August 1977, Nuffin’ turned up at the legendary Roxy Club to play ‘Audition Night’ , only to find that Janet Street-Porter and a TV crew had taken over (click on the poster above to see this fab clip). Luckily, they were looking for an ‘undiscovered’ band as a counterpoint to all of the hype around at the time. And so a brief snap-shot of the the four Caterham teenagers, strutting their stuff and sharing their take on life, was captured for posterity. With the 40 years in the making debut album about to arrive, Nuffin to lose, Nuffin ventured Nuffin gained, a heart warming story of punk rock longevity.

Anabollic Steroids bring some raucous old school punk to the table, with a hefty dose of charm in it’s studied chaos and excellent dual vocal approach. And Addictive Philosophy open the show. “In the band’s typical style it isn’t backward in coming forward with their views, a forthright statement set to bubbling melody bound to get you up and dancing even as they take you down with their words” – Louder Than War.

Wed 6th June
The Dublin Castle Rock And Roll Book Club
D J Taylor’Rock And Roll Is Life’ Get Cheap Tickets Here
‘The True Story Of The Helium Kids By One Who Was There: A Novel’
‘Rock and Roll is Life’ is the new novel from the country’s leading man of letters, D. J. Taylor. Click on the fabbo image above to hear the latest Bugbear Soho Radio show including special guest DJ Taylor, not to mention The Cockney Rejects’ Jeff Turner chatting beautifully about his new ‘Canning Town Beach’ project with The New Deal. Meanwhile on June 6th in the Dublin Castle DJ Taylor will be in conversation with writer and DC RNR Book Club hostess Julie Hamill as DJ Tony Bugbear provides the aural XTC…..[more]

You may remember the Helium Kids. Back in their late ’60s and early ’70s heyday they appeared on Top of the Tops on 27 separate occasions, released five Billboard-certified platinum albums, played sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden and were nearly, but not quite, as big as the Beatles and the Stones. Three decades later, in the big house on the outskirts of Norwich, Nick Du Pont is looking back on the rollercoaster years he spent as their publicist in a world of licensed excess and lurking tragedy. What follows is not only the story of a rock band at a formative time in musical history, when America was opening up to English music and huge amounts of money and self-gratification were there for the taking. For the tale is also Nick’s – the life and times of a war-baby born in a Norwich council house, the son of an absconding GI, whose career is a search for some of the advantages that his birth denied him. It is at once a worm’s eye of British pop music’s golden age and a bittersweet personal journey, with cameo appearances from everyone from Elvis and Her Majesty the Queen Mother to Andy Warhol.

‘Rock and Roll is Life’ is a vastly entertaining, picaresque and touching novel inspired by the excess and trajectories of the great ’60s and ’70s supergroups, and of the tales brought back from the front line by a very special breed of Englishmen who made it big in the States as the alchemists and enablers, as well as the old making way for the new in the era of the baby boomers. At its heart is one man’s adventure, and the poignancy of the special relationships that dominate his life. D.J. Taylor’s novels include English Settlement (1996), which won a Grinzane Cavour Prize, Trespass (1998) and Derby Day (2011), both long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Kept: A Victorian Mystery(2006), a Publishers Weekly book of the year, and The Windsor Faction (2013), joint winner of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. He has also written several works of non-fiction, including Orwell: The Life, winner of the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Biography and, most recently, The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918 (2016). He lives in Norwich with his wife, the novelist Rachel Hore, and their three sons.