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![]() Punk gigs were reflecting that mood, that feeling that was enveloping the British society at the time." "But it's not like everywhere else was nice and calm and punk gigs were violent. Punk taps into that, it exaggerates it, performs it and plays with it, which was what was exciting about it at the time and why it resonated. The Jam gig crowd in 1980 (Image: Mirrorpix) "I'm down in the tube station at midnight." The song starts with the sound of a Tube train rushing through the tunnels, but ends rather tragically: "I glanced back on my life, and thought about my wife, 'cause they took the keys, and she'll think it's me. He's attacked by a gang of men who "smelt of pubs, and Wormwood Scrubs, and too many right-wing meetings". ![]() "I think a lot of the punk songs, including Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, picked up on that mood as everything's getting tense, everything's getting fractious."ĭown in the Tube Station at Midnight tells the story of a man travelling on his own, who goes into a London Underground station at midnight to get the last train home. Join the My Olde London Facebook group here. You can also share your anecdotes from north, south, east, west and central London and connect with other people. Whether it's old schools, sorely missed shops or nightclubs you wish you could have one last drink in, you can post your nostalgic pictures in this group to see who else can remember. We've created a Facebook group for people who want to share their memories of London. "Bit of squatting here and there, just like the hippies did, but also taking over clubs - it's where you get the beginning, really, of London club culture. "What's exciting about that time is you've got lots of people, partly generated by punk, I think, taking advantage of that and creating their own spaces in and around the city. "The mood of the 1970s is a mood of decline, as if everything was somehow falling into disrepair and disarray. Kind of dark, dingy, slightly sleazy, slightly rundown, lots of empty buildings, shadows cast. "It's still depopulating - people are leaving the city rather than coming to it, so all around the centre of London was quite run down, really. READ MORE: What Freddie Mercury's famous 'outrageous' parties were like at his Kensington home ![]() ![]() "London is interesting in the '70s," explained Professor Matthew Worley, historian at the University of Reading. This feeling of decline and conflict fostered the punk movement, with bands like The Jam, The Clash and The Sex Pistols rising in popularity through the growing punk subculture. London in 1978, when The Jam's Down in the Tube Station at Midnight was released, was a city on the brink of Thatcherism: dysfunctional and depopulating, governed by a mood of decline, urban decay and societal fracture. ![]()
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