New Year's Rave... I Mean Eve...

Go here for event details

BANK HOLIDAY QUIZ & FUNDRAISER, THIS SUNDAY...

Come and enjoy some mid carnival mayhem on Sunday night, where our regular quizmaster, Phil Nice, will be hosting an even more chocolate laden than usual fundraising event for Westminster House Youth Club in Nunhead. After the quiz there will be DJs spinning, funk, reggae, soul and more to help you through the bank holiday... There are more details below about what the fundraiser is for. Do come and support Vicky and her band of merry mums!  

On September 14th 4 local mums are undertaking the Thames Path Challenge. A 24hour, 100km endurance walk from Putney to Henley in order to raise money for Westminster House Youth Club which celebrates it's 125th year. WHYC in Nunhead offers fantastic and much needed support and services to the children and young people of the area and we are working hard to keep it up and running in difficult times. Any amount you can give to this youth club will be much appreciated and a very worthwhile investment in young people.

www.whyc.org.uk

http://www.justgiving.com/teams/whyc125thamespathchallenge

MELODICA SATURDAY 17/08/2013

Delighted to have the Melodica Recordings head honcho Chris Coco back for another instalment of chilled Balearica and a whole lot more, this month joined by Haraket's Ojan. Who is far too talented, young and all the rest to talk about here. Sickening. Anyway, this will be good... You should come...

More Stuff About March, With Food & Art Upstairs & Downstairs

2 Dinners 1 Lunch

2 Dinners 1 Lunch, our mutton based foodathon in conjunction with chef Alan Stewart is now sold out for Saturday 9th March. There are a few seats left on Friday night (8th of March if you hadn't worked it out) which you can book online (and read about what on earth I'm on about) here. 

We also have a few seats for our Sunday sharing feast on the 10th of March. 

It's mother's day. 

Imagine how many brownie points you'd get by bringing her to an exclusive, limited to 30 seats pop up food club in a dressed gallery space above the "best pub for miles"*.

There are a small number available behind the bar, and some left here.

Of course, our celebrated pizzas shall carry on being served throughout this weekend...

*A drunk customer, some time last week...


American Studies

Jim, Dow, who was born and still lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts USA, is coming for a visit and bringing us a treat. We are very excited to be showing some of his works upstairs after the brief supperclub shenanigans! The private view is on the 15th of March, and we are also trying to squeeze in a special event into Jim's already packed schedule for his visit to the UK. This is one not to miss...

Bring On The Dancing Horses

Parallel Point presents Bring on The Dancing Horses, by Adam Laurence Hedley, on the panelled walls of the downstairs bar from the 8th March.

Yes There's Cold on The Way, But Looky Looky

After a couple of days of sunshine, I almost thought spring was on the way, but this weekend there's more cold stuff coming...

Luckily for you lot, the most wonderful Chris Coco is coming down with a Melodica Recordings crew to bliss you up with some Balearic warmth this Saturday. Full details are here

Then we are rolling into March, the pool table will be relocated to it's summertime position so the grumpy old man won't complain quite so much, and we will be heading into Easter with some of our most exciting events yet...

Friday 1st of March sees our favourite friends, The Eccentrics Disco wheel their Genie-esque boxes of tricks and sounds into The G for the perfect way to start your weekend. Last month's was amazing, even though our special guest Severino hurt his ankle so had to cancel at the last minute.
You can hear the full recordings here

That gives us barely enough time to draw breathe before our new pop up project, 2 Dinners, 1 Lunch takes over the upstairs kitchen and gallery space for a weekend of culinary amazingness. There's 3 sittings and only 30 seats in each. These tickets are hot hot hot, available in person at the bar, or at http://grubclub.com

As we roll towards Easter, there are more things planned, and especially exciting is the rescheduled visit of our favourite Italian DJ Severino on Maundy Thursday 28/03/2013, as part of an Eccentrics Disco Egg Hunt Bunny Hop special... More details soon.

You can't call us, it's fkooked

If you are trying to contact us today (and possibly tomorrow, the 15th), the best way would be by twitter or email, or possibly facebook...

@TheGowlettArms is our tweet thingy

and our true fb page (there are believe it or not, others!) is here

you can email us here

Jx

NEW YEARS EVE TICKETS NOW ON SALE!!

GOWLETT NEW YEARS CARWASH LUCKY 7S

Tickets are selling fast. £15 gets you free fizz, 8 hours of mayhem and free Bloody Mary at the survivors New Years Day Party... I hurt already...

TONIGHT TONIGHT TONIGHT!!

Sack off the office party and come here. You'd enjoy it more...


Eccentrics Disco

Well Festive. And A Little Grumpy.

HO HO HO. And that...

Festive opening times are as follows...

Sat 22/12 - Bar 12 - 01:00am
                 Kitchen 12:30 - 22:30
With Live music from The Hometown Boys

Sun 23/12 - Bar 12:00 - 23:30
                  Kitchen 12:30 - 21:00

Mon 24/12 - Bar 12:00 - 01:00
                  Kitchen 12:30 - 21:00

Tues 25/12 - Bar 12:00 - 14:30
                   Kitchen CLOSED

Weds 26/12 - CLOSED

Thurs 27/12 - CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY

Fri 28/12 - Bar 12:00 - 01:00 am
                Kitchen 12:30 - 14:30; 18:30 - 22:30

Sat 29/12 - Bar 12:00 - 01:00 am
                 Kitchen 12:30 - 22:30

Sun 30/12 - Bar 12:00 - 23:30
                  Kitchen 12:30 - 21:00

Mon 31/12 - Bar 12:00 - 15:00
                  Then 20:00 - 04:00 am Ticket only Car Wash Lucky 7s. Tickets available behind bar £15

Tue 01/01 - Bar 11:00 - 01:00am
                 Kitchen 12:30 - 09:00
All day recovery party with DJs and a lot of Bloody Maries...

Beer Beer, We Want More Beer

It's up. It's tapped and it's nearly all ready... So here's a breakdown of what we've got coming up...

Thursday 8th November

Lucky 7s is 5! five whole years you've been inflicting each others' record collections on everyone, and yet it's still going strong. Some of the ales will be ready no doubt, so if you fancy a sneak preview of what's in store over the weekend, come down from 7pm, and we'll get the ball rolling. Bring some 45s if you want to DJ in the pub later...

Friday 9th November

DJ TAYO joins us on the wheels of steel to funk you into the weekend as our beer festival kicks off proper...

Beers featuring:

TATTON ALES - GOLD
OFF BEAT - OUTLANDISH PALE
ROOSTERS - FORT SMITH
WEETWOOD ALES =- AMBUSH
(All from cheshire, and all jolly good. Thanks to The Yew Tree in Bunbury for the erm lost memories... OK so the Roosters is froim N Yorkshire. But we got it from The Yew Tree...)



AMBER - CHOCOLATE ORANGE STOUT
ATLAS - LATITUDE
BIG LAMP - PRINCE BISHOP ALE
BLACK IRIS - PEREGRINE PALE
BLINDMAN'S - ICARUS
CAIRNGORM - SHEEPSHAGGER GOLD
GRAFTERS - WOBBLE GOB
HADRIAN & BORDER - REIVER IPA
INVERALMOND - THRAPPLEDOUSER
NORTHUMBERLAND - BUCKING FASTARD
TRIPLE FFF - PRESSED RAT AND WARTHJOG
TSA - STERLING BRIG
YEOVIL - SUMMERSET ALE
ALLENDALE - WOLF
BROWN COW - THRILLER IN VANILLA
WYLAM - GOLD TANKARD

PLUS 2 LOCAL GEMS FROM OUR FAVE S LONDON BREWERS CLARENCE & FREDERICKS

Ciders featuring :

BROADOAK - MOONSHINE
BURNARD'S - OAKEY DOKEY
ORCHARD PIG - NAVEL GAZER
MR WHITEHEADS - CIRRUS MINOR.

Saturday 10th November

The beer festival stumbles into another 12 hours of bare existence, ably aided and abetted by our very own King of the Blues IDRIS DAVIES, who will be joined later on by the wonderful ANDREW BAZELY, who some of you will have seen playing a great set on a sunday afternoon a month or so ago... So good we got him back. Later still DJ TESTIFY  will ramp it up a bit from his psychobilly, rock'n'roll and R&B collection.



Sunday 11th November - OUR 9TH GOWLETT BIRTHDAY!!


If you came last year, you know no trip to The Gowlett Beer Festival is complete without a large portion of meat. This year we will be serving up Hoggett (year old lamb) and Blytheburgh free range pork back to back on a charcoal spitroast... Local hero turned ex-pat Steve Smith is back as one half of THE RETRO BROTHERS playing a not to be missed set from 2 til 4, and if everything works out we will have a very special guest band, THE HOMETOWN BOYS, appearing early evening, to leave THE MIGHTY TREVOR to close things up... There may even be a cake for me to fall into...

Phew... I'm off to bed. This looks like it could be a very large few days!

jonny

I know, I know

Yes, our page never gets updated. But I promise over the coming months to be a lot better. Or at the very least get someone who's better at it than me to do it...

Anyhoo, the reason for my sudden burst of blogtivity (I do hope I just invented that), is that there's loads of exciting stuff happening over the next few weeks...

Next week on the 26th sees the return of our favourite Friday nighters, The Great British Eccentric Disco, who make the place feel even more lovely than it normally does with their amazing ballearica, their uber sweet speakers and their almost too sexy for words Urei 1620 mixer. At least I think it's a 1620. It looks like one to me. Whatever, they play top tunes and it sounds amazing. Once they're done we are all heading off to The Bussey Building for the first installment of Boom Boom Room, but you can read more about that here

Whilst we are on the subject of exciting, The G is 9 next month, and like last year we are going to rip the arris out of it, throwing a 4 day long set of parties with DJs, live bands, hog roasts, BBQs, all alongside our annual beer festival. This year there will be 20 casks in the garden, 4 ever rotating ones inside, and at least 6 ciders from around the country. Our main focuses beer wise this year is Scotland and Cheshire, the beers have been selected and we are literally gagging to try them. All of them!

Our current special pizza features @smokedinpeckham home cured spicy wild boar, gowlett rooftop grown yellow tomatoes & red peppers, and pecorino. Hurry though because when it's all gone it's all gone.

I'll be back next week(or possibly the one after) with more inane nonsense, but do get in touch if you feel the urge to find out more.

jonny@thegowlett.com

Even New Yoikers Need A Good Local

I know I'm about 5 months late updating the blog but have now moved back into the pub and have a permanent home again. So this is one of the first aims - to improve the blog site.

Whilst I was fairly idle t'interweb wise, the lovely people at The New York Times wrote this rather amusing article : Explaining Londoners

Interestingly, a lot of the feedback has been very positive, but I am enjoying all the negative comments about London Pride, like it's the only beer we sell...

Coffee is my next attack. We have just received some lovely new cups and barista equipment from the good people at Coffee Hit and are attempting to entice the barista and roasting supremos at Ozone Coffee with pizza, beer and Sarf London good times (oh, and some cash I expect) in return for the supply of their fresh roasted beans and some high end barista training... I can see foam wars already, and all I did so far was buy a couple of new jugs...

Lucky 7s tonight, and then tomorrow myself and Sash de Clash will be spinning some tunes tomorrow for the start of the bank holiday weekend. We're open til 2AM, so don't go away for the weekend until Saturday morning. You know it makes (awful) sense.

Our special pizza this week already looks like being a sure fire permanent fixture... Same pizza toppings, 2 ways  - Cappricciosa / Quatro Stagioni ; Prosciutto, olive, artichoke heart & porcini.

The Gowlett's 8th Birthday Weekender Bender

Wow.

The Fire's On

Our fave time of year... Mark, our lovely if a little, erm, perculiar, logman came at the weekend with a cubic mtre of logs. He delivers and stacks em if you get him a pint... Here is his blog :


thelondonlogcompany.blogspot.com

My Head Hurts. Again.

The Gowlett was happy to host a lot of thirsty, friendly punters last night for yet another memorable, although instantly hazy due to the quantities of booze imbibed, Lucky 7s. We were particularly pleased to welcome one Mr George Wise, of Oop North Extraction. Hopefully he gets back to Yorkshire safe today, and doesn't miss the pub too much... Well played, Wise.

Anyhoo, below is the link required to take you through the night again if you were here, or to see what you missed if not..

http://soundcloud.com/hairyredman/lucky7s271011

I need to go back to bed. With a few codine and a can of coke. But first, I am curing a side of organic salmon for next week's special salad (Gravadlax with a tricolour beetroot salad & dough balls...). Then I need to cure more venison ready for smoking. We've run out, because I really didn't expect as many of you to love it, so it should be ready for next weekend... And then it's off to the QED Charcuterie Festival @ The Southbank Centre. So bed will have to wait. But the coke and codine can come right now thank you very much...

This week it went a bit wrong...

I'm having a bad day. Self inflicted, so spare me no sympathy, but as a result, I have drunkenly done something to last night's recording. I've got it all here, but in 2 different formats, and my twatbook doesn't let me import them from one to the other. Anyhoo, in the meantime I will post the unedited 3 and a half hours for your listening pleasure... As soon as my head starts working again, I'll repost a snappier version. Enjoy.

http://soundcloud.com/hairyredman/lucky-7s-061011-mkii

Lucky 7s. Still the best legal 3 hours you can spend on a Thursday

Wow. 2011. Almost October. And I thought that it would be a good idea to record a lucky 7s session. Well over 15 years after being at Zion Train's first ever webcast gig. Which only about 20 people could probably see in the world, as the only people who owned the correct soft and hardware... I digress.

The important thing is that you, dear reader (and very soon listener) are about to be furnished with a way to pretend you were at tonight's Lucky 7s.

Lucky 7s is almost 4 years old. It came about when my mate Niko said he had a great idea to bring people down to the pub we were running in Nunhead. People bring their own 7" singles and DJ themselves. I promptly told him it would never work there (and I was right, we did try several times) but that it was perfect for The Gowlett. And there you have it. Nearly 4 years later, every Thursday night a normally sane and peaceful corner of Peckham's South West reaches - and a vital 200 metres before the postcode and the size of one's horizontal stripes, apparently -changes. More of that another day maybe... It's a celebration of music, pure and simple. There is no bad music or good music in my humble opinion, just music. Sure there are arrangements of the 7 available notes and their variations that some may feel are better than others, but without the sh1te you wouldn't truly appreciate the sublime.

There are few rules to Lucky 7s, but it seems prudent to mention them:

1) You bring records. 45s. 7" singles. Whatever you choose to call them.
2) You play them till the fool with the mic tells you it's not your turn any more (generally 15 minutes)

No censorship (other than due to mahoosive scratches). No complaints (other than from our neighbours). No extra time (even though most people seem convinced they more than anyone else deserves at least one more choon).

And that's it really. Never could we have imagined quite what a several headed monster we would unleash upon The Gowlett, but Thursdays will never be quite the same. Sometimes 200 people, sometimes 20. OK, only once or twice 200, but it has happened, and my god what nights they have pretty much all turned out to be... For many many reasons, across a large spectrum of brilliance. So now we are going to record it all and post it here. Who knows what next? Well I do, if I'm honest : a few terse looks in the school playground at drop off time on a Friday morning from neighbours, a stinking hangover and at least one memorable snippet from the night before. Christ, I hope I can shake Wuthering Heights from my head before I attempt sleep...

Not sure if this will work, but here is the file for tonight's brilliance. If you getup before me, let me know if it does work. Or wake me up with a tweet @TheGowlettArms . That always makes me laugh, forgetting to stop the noises on my phone...

Seems it doesn't work. But I will post a link tomorrow. When I've worked out how. Oh dear.

Hey. Guess what. I think that by the time you lot wake up, this should work!!

http://soundcloud.com/hairyredman/lucky-7s-290911

Getting There... Slowly

Well done you. You are among the first people to find our new look website and news feed...

You will notice changes as we smooth out the issues we discover over the coming weeks, but we promise it will run (ahem) smoothly as we work out how to type interesting relevant text. But don't hold your breath...