Monocle Rose provide a timely opportunity to check out the Hope and Anchor before Little Fish play here on Thursday. The Hope & Anchor is very small, smaller than it was in it's heyday of the late 70s. My most vivid memeory of that period is sitting upstairs whilst the Dammed played downstairs. We could have gone in, but didn't need to; we had all gathered at the Dammed gig because our friends would be there. Actually paying to go in would have spoilt the social occasion (too noisy to talk), so we didn't. The best example of this was Toyah; I don't think anyone I knew thought she was particularly good, but it was a gig everyone went to because your friends would be there. Because your friends were cool, like you, the gig itself became cool. Anyway I never saw Toyah at the Hope & Anchor and I'm sure Monocle Rose weren't born when I was ignoring the Dammed upstairs, or even when I did go downstairs to see the Bodysnatchers. I've got a feeling I saw Madness here, or maybe it was the Specials. I know I wasn't there when Joy Division played their first London gig here. It was definitely bigger then , whoever it was I came to see. Now there is a bar and a huge sounddesk area. Surely you can't get a hundred people in here now. Its all a bit cilvilised, but at least they have lights like a proper venue. In 2008 people can't be expected to walk upstairs to buy a drink (although you have to if you want a pint of decent beer for £2.80) and a band have to be made to look as if they have jaundice because venues think that using coloured gels to spoil perfectly good lights somehow makes the venue cool.