by Tim Forster
Content warning: mentions domestic abuse, violence against women, violence against children
Twisted East Promotion have teamed up with Punk 4 The Homeless to put on a benefit gig at Gringos, Prince of Wales Road, Norwich on 3rd February 2018. The gig will raise money for local Women’s Refuges, Leeway Domestic Violence and Abuse Services and Punk 4 The Homeless, who support homeless children in Central America.
Cuts in public sector jobs, benefits and social services have hit women particularly hard, at the same time as women have found themselves having to fulfil new care responsibilities due to the continued dismantling of public services. As Anna Bird of the Fawcett Society has commented, ‘Women have not faced a greater threat to their financial security and rights in living memory. Decades of steady, albeit slow, progress on equality for women is being dismantled, as cuts to women’s jobs and the benefits and services they rely on turn back time on women’s equality’. Cuts have also caused Women’s Refuges to close, as two women a week continue to be killed by partners and ex partners.
With the slogan ‘Stopping Cops Killing Kids is Punk Rock’, Punk 4 the Homeless have been raising money for homeless children in Central America since 2010, channelling monies made from gigs and merchandise through Compass Children’s Charity.
In an audacious act of simultaneous solidarity with both Leeway and P4TH, Twisted East are bringing together an evening of extraordinary punk bands to raise money for both of these important charities! The mighty Meinhof (whose sound has been likened to ‘a mix of punk, metal and a mountain slide’) make the trip up from London. Radioactive Rats make a welcome return to Norwich with their metal tinged hardcore from Nottingham. These travellers will join Suffolk thrash metallers Kemakil, up and coming Norwich-based ‘probably punk’ outfit Sucking Grunts, and Hotwired/Dark Diversions member and feminist acoustic punk Dandelion Florence. As well as raising money for good causes this gig also intends to destroy the BBC’s constant references to ‘the punk era’ as though it was some sort of historical phenomenon, by proving that punk is very much alive and ongoing as a vibrant, relevant artistic expression of progressive politics and as a musical form that is extremely easy to leap around to!
To appropriate and redeploy a phrase ‘It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of punk!’
Meinhof, Radioactive Rats, Kemakil, Sucking Grunts, Dandelion Florence.
Gringos, Norwich.
3 Feb 2018.
7pm.
Be there.
You can find full details of the show at its event page.
Featured image via Twisted East
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