IS VINYL OVER?

GIRLS ALLOWED

OBSERVER MUSIC MONTHLY OCTOBER 2005

The dawn of the digital music age is sweeping over those dusty record sleeves quicker than you can say 'limited picture disc'. Industry predictions show that by 2009, digital business will reach £330 million, accounting for almost a third of all music sales. And, judging by new statistics out this month , the majority of these gadget-friendly punters will be women.

SMOKE THIS

THE LAST GASP

INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2004

Merton Council building, Morden, Surrey. Outside, the streets are soaking up the hammering rain with an insatiable thirst. Inside, it's dry, but equally depressing. In a small L-shaped room with no windows, a few plastic chairs and rows of bare coat-hangers overhead, council workers huddle in the corner indulging in idle chitchat, puffing away on Marlboro Lights.

UP CLOSE & PERSONAL

BEENIE THERE, DONE THAT

GUARDIAN SEPTEMBER 2002

One of the biggest stars of Jamaican dancehall, Beenie Man's outgrowing the reggae charts and going global. Lulu Le Vay meets him as he gets set to conquer the UK.

BLOODY HELL

spirit: blood money

INDEPENDENT AUGUST 2005

Blood accounts for one 16th of our body weight, but is it possible that our personalities are determined by the blood group we belong to? That's the controversial theory which is gaining ground in the US and Japan, thanks to the work of a number of proselytising scientists and authors.

FEELING DIZZEE

what a rascal

XRAY AUGUST 2004

Tuesday July 29th. It has only been three weeks since teen ghetto rapper turned breakneck industry sensation Dizzee Rascal was pulled off his scooter in Cypriot Garage City resort, Ayia Napa, and stabbed, in broad daylight, five times in his back, buttocks and chest. He was kept under police protection until he discharged himself from hospital two days later. Poor sod. This, his first visit to Ayia Napa, was certainly not one for the holiday photo album.

PLAYING SAFE

THE TOUGHEST TEST OF ALL

INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY NOVEMBER 2003

It has been six years since I was last tested for HIV. This is the kind of activity that is easily put off, sometimes indefinitely. But for all those who are sexually active, of any persuasion, the risks of infection are omnipresent. Not just with HIV, but with other diseases such as gonorrhoea, syphilis, herpes and chlamydia. Not the kind of words that one would choose to utter as sweet nothings during that moment of unbridled passion, especially when you are too high, too drunk, too into living dangerously to slap on a condom. We have all been there.

REAL LIFE STORIES

I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE, BUT I WAS HAPPY. FOR THE FIRST TIME

INDEPENDENT DECEMBER 1999

MARK WAS 24 when he was diagnosed HIV positive in 1991. A bright Oxford University student who graduated with a First in Classics, he found himself in a well-paid PR job (which he loathed) in the City of London in the late Eighties. One Friday night in April, Mark went bed, exhausted, with a painfully sore throat. The next day he woke up with a temperature of 104.

happy father's day?

WHO'S THE DADDY?

INDEPENDENT JUNE 2005

This morning, over coffee and croissants " and, if they are lucky, while still tucked up in bed " millions of fathers across the UK will have been showered with gifts and cards for Father's Day. But for many, the consumer-led occasion has little to do with their relationship with their own fathers. Divorce, remarriage, adoption and a few family secrets can make the day a lot more complex.

WEEDING OUT THE FACTS

CANABIS: CAN IT REALLY DRIVE YOU MAD?

INDEPENDENT JANUARY 2006

I smoked my first joint aged 13. The ritual in my family was to be "initiated" by an older brother by the fallen oak tree at the end of our rambling East Sussex garden. But in my case, one particular brother, a decade my senior, decided to pop my pot cherry in a club in north London. He produced a bag of weed that nearly knocked me out just by smelling it.

CLUBBED TO DEATH?

TIME OUT MARCH 2007

Lulu Le Vay wonders whether the time has come to read the last rites to the humble flyer.

‘New weekly Saturday night party at exclusive venue!" coos new East End Bash Get Out, from earthy-hued, burlesque, bunny girl-inspired graphics. 'First 50 people get in free!' entices Adventures In The Beetroot Field, drawing attention to its Easter Thursday party from amid a visual din of barking apoplectic puppies. London clubbing compacted onto a piece of card, approximately 10,000 of which will be distributed all over the capital - individually or in flyer packs - from record shops and clothes stores through to bars and cafes, in the hope of hooking in the punters. Flyers has been the mouthpiece and pulsating heartbeat for generations of clubbers; the source of after-hours information that jacks into the veins of night owls who are scouring for the hottest dance floors to throw some shapes on. But the question is, is it still? In the all-consuming digital age, when myspace.com, e-flyers and texts compete in spreading the word, is it time to mourn the demise of the cardboard flyer?

The club flyer first appeared in the early '80s but the early versions advertising one-nighter events were mostly simple black-and-white efforts. Flyers were then flung onto popular culture’s radar when Acid House emerged in a triumphant drug-fuelled haze in the summer of 1988. This whirlwind of night time activity which boasted more smiley faces than you could shake a glow stick at needed a voice to reach out to the people. And thus, a community was born. And we all wanted a piece of the action. Not only did the flyer act as a channel of communication to what was going on where, but made us, the punter, feel part of a thriving subculture - the flyer being its badge-of-honour, a mark of one’s identity. And the creative sector rose to the challenge. Alongside the onslaught of the party massive came the opportunity for young designers to flex their innovative muscle, who were to later shine as stars within their field. The Face magazine’s original Art Director Neville Brody and Factory Records’ Peter Saville both turned their hand to flyer design in their formative years, as did the likes of Output Records boss and Playgroup ringleader Trevor Jackson, who was creating flyers for underground warehouse parties across London such as EC1 Express over a decade before his music career took off. The cult of the flyer has been most infamously documented by ‘Fly - The Art Of The Club Flyer’ (Thames & Hudson, ‘96) which has ended up on every dedicated raver’s bookshelf.

20 years on from hands-in-the-air-like-you-just-don’t-care old school raving London town is overrun - DJ bars, club nights and events are on every block, which has created a clubbing market oversaturated by promotional material - you’d be hard pushed to pull out more than a handful of decent flyers from the paper mountain. But now it seems that this once flourishing tower of flyers is about to topple, as continually more promoters are opting to sack them off completely, and use more digitally-friendly sources of promotion, such as Myspace and e-flyers. The next time you stumble out of a club at 5am, just take a look - the hectic scuffle of promoters thrusting their wares into your sweaty mitts has now been replaced by a couple of geezers in mid-yawn wishing they were home tucked up in bed. Flyering companies such as Don’t Panic have been forced to diversify their services - they now offer cut rate deals for distribution; have an online magazine; and pay-per-download streams of live events. It might not be long before they knock off the ‘Don’t' and are called just 'Panic'.

But who knows, perhaps a rebirth is around the corner. “Flyers will always have their place in a campaign, alongside the e-flyer, Myspace and posters” defends Matt Robinson of East End events company My Beautiful City. “The slump in flyers has meant we’ve been pushed to produce beautiful graphics and photography and experiment with typography, so our events stand out from the rest. The printed flyer still very much has a function.”

Clubbed to death? There may just be a yap of life in the old flyer dog yet.

STOCK MAGAZINE

BOUTIQUE LITERATURE

As well as writing for various newspapers, websites and magazines, I also edit boutique publications. The most recent is STOCK, the in-house magazine for the Andaz Hotel -formerly the Great Eastern - on Liverpool Street, London. STOCK is a guide to not just the services within the hotel but what's what in the world of music, fashion, nightlife, food and sports in the East End. STOCK features writing from some of the UK's finest journalists, pooled from publications such as The Observer, Arena, The Sunday Times, Dummy, Metro and the Big Issue.

http://london.greateastern.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/index.jsp