Astoria....were loosing our heritage....

Standing out on Tottenham Court Road on the afternoon of the final Astoria show on Wednesday I had an experience Ive enjoyed many times over the years, but sadly won't be experiencing again. The west end has lost something very historical that no number of regeneration schemes and crossrail stations can replace. The heart of our London will in future resemble cabott square at canary wharf. Homoginized and soulless. A building is more than the bricks mortar and design, it's the memories connected to it, it's emotional attachment to people and their appreciation of it, just look at Lennons house at Menlove Avanue in Liverpool, bought by the national trust and preserved for future generations in all it's semi detached pebble dashed glory.

Standing in front of the Astoria it's shocking how many disastatous buildings were erected behind centrepoint, how much space there is to build and dig and how unnecessary it is to loose the old lady of rock and the beautiful buildings that curve round onto Oxford street with it. Like the skylon and the Euston arch, we'll regret losing this little corner of London.

The Astoria's a valadictory building, a place you play when you think you've first connected with people, a right of passage to go to your first gigs there and dream of one day headlining there, to spill out into the west end late at night and dissapear down alleys to find your favourite caf or late night bar, a hotch potch of people and cultures all colliding and a feeling of great joy bring able to have such a fantastic venue in the heart of one of the greatest musical cities in the world, the experience in future will be all the more suburban. The future? Were heading headlong into a world of music where it'll be a beautifully sanitized tube journey on the Jubillee line, a wander accross the spotless piazza, herded through the cavernous experience of nando's and pizza express into a spanking new arena where we watch music made on the same computers that work the CCTV that watches our every step all the way from Waterloo and back again. Progress? RIP Patrick Mcgoohan... you were way ahead of your time.....