Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/236916
13 News maltatoday, SUNDAY, 5 JANUARY 2014 o Paceville and back Old photos of performers during Strait Street's heyday Dirty Dick's and New Life Music Hall, among others. University lecturer Dr Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci – whose recollections provide material for both books – remembers The Gut as a vibrant breeding ground for artistic talent, and is unimpressed by comparisons with Paceville. "Malta's Strait Street is Paris' Rue Mouffetard/Montmartre, it is Moscow's Starii Arbat. Imagine changing all this into a Caqnu conglomeration of Paceville 'gangs'… Strada Stretta is the cradle of all our musical heritage: Oscar Lucas, Freddie Mizzi, The Curmis (Puse), The Fitenis, The Schembris, The Bonacis, The Dowlings, the Galeas, The Farrs… all hail from this phenomenal history and all their descendants all today form an integral part of all our proud cultural artistic culture." This culture, he implies, is antithetical to the business plan seemingly proposed by Micallef. "Yes, let us abort everything and 'Paceville-ise' everywhere: what genius, what beauty, what intelligence. Where is the Strada Stretta lobby? Where are the City people? Snoring?" Elsewhere, saxophonist Joe 'Il-Puse' Curmi likewise remembers Strait Street as the "college where one learnt the finer points of music". Curmi began his musical career during the Second World War, aged just 13. "At that time,'" he says, "Strait Street did not sleep. The music then was swing and boogie-woogie and the repertoire included internationally recognised numbers from the likes of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Duke Ellington, and Art Shaw'." This tradition was maintained until the late 1960s. Schofield and Morrissey observe that: "nearly all the bars provided musical entertainment. The larger establishments hosted cabaret and floor-show events, while other bars had live music: jazz, Dixieland, bepob…" The Gut reborn? Though the comparison may be odious, part of this same culture richness can be seen to have migrated to Paceville following the demise of The Gut in the late 1970s. Jazz was for decades one of the mainstays of the Paceville live music scene: largely in the form of BJ's on Ball Street (now closed). Again, there were factors in place to sustain this culture. The emergence of the annual Malta Jazz Festival in the late 1980s furnished a constant supply of top-notch international jazz musicians, and it was not unheard-of for impromptu jam sessions to follow at what was by that time practically the only such live venue on the island. As the decades wore on, musical and entertainment tastes inevitably evolved. If cabaret and swing dominated Strait Street from the 1930s to the 1960s, the 1980s ushered in a sudden culture of discotheques and rave parties: and it was in Paceville that two of the country's most iconic discos, Styx on St Augustine Street, and Axis on St George's Street, reigned virtually unchallenged for over 20 years. And when the Grunge revolution set in during the early 1990s, Paceville sometimes smelt of more than just teen spirit. Crowds now choked the narrow throat of Wilga Street, just off the main square (then dominated by Paul's Punch Bowl, and its underground sidekick the Ace of Clubs), on weekend nights. In an age before enforced closing hours, the resulting mayhem often went on late into the night and well past dawn. Bars like The Alley on Wilga Street (now closed), and also Coconut Grove on the site of present day Burger King (it has since moved down the road), attracted a younger generation enthused by Kurt Cobain and co. – though musical eclecticism remained high on the agenda, with Bryan Adams, Pink Floyd and The Eagles remaining staples of the emerging DJ culture's repertoires alongside Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden and all the rest. And like Strait Street, Paceville was (and perhaps still is) a crucible for emerging local musical talent, too. Remedy above Coconut Grove on Wilga Street is one bar to have cultivated a rich live music scene, catering mostly for the esoteric metal genre. Past live venues included V-Gen on Ball Street: testament in part to a recent punk revival. Some bars seemed to even make conscious allusions to their lineage. Throughout its many incarnations, the Alley always retained more than just a nod of acknowledgment towards its ancestors, the cabaret halls of Strait Street. If the name alone was not enough, there was once the oddly misplaced lamp-post and telephone box (not to mention the occasional 'whore and pimp' theme-nights) to remind the young upstarts where they really came from. More recently another little 'Gut' seems to have opened up in the very the heart of Paceville. St Rita Street – the narrow, stepped alleyway leading from St George's Street almost directly to BayStreet below – is now choking with bars and outlets of all descriptions, where just a few years ago it was widely regarded as a public convenience. There are other more pertinent similarities. Sheila's pitch on Strait Street has since been upgraded to bright neon signs advertising dancing girls outside gentlemen's clubs such as Steam and Stiletto; and police patrols can still tell tales of sporadic scuffles breaking out among rival cliques in busy bars. Then as now, there is ample evidence of an underground reality beyond the capabilities of the police to control. One violent murder outside Bar Bamboo on Elija Zammit Street in 1992 – when a notorious local gangster was machine-gunned down by the owner following an argument in- side the bar – seemed to confirm the widely-held perception of a protection racket in what was effectively a little gangland. Police stats also confirm that the neighbourhood ranks highest in the island for petty crime. Spiritual richness All of which inevitably brings us back to the starting point: what of Strait Street today? Schembri Bonaci argues that any regeneration of The Gut would have to take into account its historic legacy. "I do believe that Jason Micallef has valid managerial qualities, which he is incomprehensibly and unfortunately again undermining himself by not soliciting an expert think-tank around him, so that he could elicit groundbreaking decisions in a potential cultural revolution in Malta." This revolution, he adds, cannot take place simply by importing an alien entertainment concept and expecting it to take root. "To transfer the Paceville debacle onto Strait Street now would just be to butcher both history and Malta's only bohemian oasis. Strait Street is not just a conglomeration of buildings to be exploited by new nouveau-riche parochial entrepreneurship, which would just suffocate its evolutionary characteristic. Its spiritual and cultural richness has to be safeguarded." All photos of Strait Street taken from John Schofield and Emily Morrisey's 'Strait Street: Malta's Red Light District Revealed' One of the many 'gentlemen's clubs', which are becoming a fixture in Paceville The renovated toilets in Strait Street