NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
LONDON, ENGLAND WITH THE JOSHUA ZERO
INTRODUCTION
My name is Joshua, I’m nonbinary and you may know me from playing with my art-rock project Joshua Zero on various tours around the country. You may also know me from my punk-centric side projects and features with Long Legged Creatures, Burning Bones, and Horspit. I live in London, you may have heard of it. It’s big, colourful, multi-cultural and chaotic. It's full of history and promise and it's the city I was born in. I haven’t lived there my whole life, when I was 11 my parents moved from Wembley to Harpenden, a middle-class suburb in Hertfordshire. My school changed from being mostly black and Asian to being all white and the
conservative values of the place strengthened my need to be different. This is where my need to play the guitar very very loudly began. In 2015 I moved to Leeds to study music, my only passion and success in school. It was here I learned that there were plenty more musicians like me in the world and I drank, drugged and played with them.
However, in 2020, Leeds began to feel small so I 30
decided to move back to the capital. And since my family have moved to Bristol, it’s the only place that I can consider to be my roots.
THE SHIP, SOHO
So that’s enough about me, time to talk about London. The first place I’d like to talk about is in the black heart of Soho. The Ship branches off from Piccadilly like a third arm or a sixth finger. It’s a punk bar with a rock’n’roll history that would make your face melt. Positioned next to the old Marquee Club (RIP), it frequently hosted the likes of The Who, David Bowie, The Clash, Jimi Hendrix, and a plethora of others. It's been referenced in songs like ‘Born Slippy’ (Underworld) and ‘A-Bomb on Wardour Street’
