MAU MAU MONDAYS: FIVE YEARS OF ROCK 'N' ROLL ON PORTOBELLO ROAD
The bands, the characters, the £2.50 drinks, the photographs of Jeff Moh and the crazy story of Jay Hirano. A personal journey through a disappearing West London music scene.

There are places you work in, and there are places that get under your skin. Mau Mau Bar at 265 Portobello Road was definitely the latter.

I worked there on and off from 2004 until it closed in 2020. Sixteen years of my life connected to one address. Sixteen years of musicians, promoters, late nights, characters, arguments, laughter and the constant business of trying to make something happen.

If those walls could talk, they'd probably need a frigging good lie down afterwards.

Mau Mau wasn't some shiny London nightclub where everybody was worried about being seen in the right clothes. It had a different feel. You walked through the door and stepped into a world of live music, battered equipment, people talking over one another and the unmistakable smell of a busy bar.

There was the clink of glasses, the scrape of chairs, the murmur of conversations and, sooner or later, the sound of somebody plugging in a guitar.

It was independent London. A place where musicians, artists, promoters, photographers and the occasional lost soul could find themselves sharing the same room.

And I loved it.

MONDAY NIGHT WAS OUR NIGHT
In 2015, I started Mau Mau Mondays.

Monday wasn't exactly the obvious night for a rock and punk gathering. Most people were recovering from the weekend or getting ready for the working week. I thought otherwise.

I wanted live bands, guitars turned up loud, a bit of attitude and that independent spirit that seems increasingly difficult to find in London.

No complicated formula. No corporate sponsorship. No expensive tickets.

Entry was free, doors opened at 7.30pm and we ran through until 11.30pm. A beer was £2.50.

Yes, £2.50.

Try finding that on Portobello Road now.

The flyers even gave directions for getting there, whether you were coming off the tube at Ladbroke Grove or jumping on the 7, 23, 52, 70 or 452 bus.

We weren't trying to reinvent rock 'n' roll. We were giving it somewhere to go on a Monday night.

I'd already spent years managing and promoting bands around Notting Hill and West London. By then I'd crossed paths with more musicians, managers, characters and occasional lunatics than I could possibly remember.

Looking through my old flyers brings so much of it back.

Steve Dior, The Electrics, Taurus Trakker, The Dirty Strangers, Garage Flowers, Smiley and the Underclass, Rotten Hill Gang, Bexatron, Nu Vandals, Neon Animal, Prisoners of Mother England, Caine Dirty Mojos and plenty more.

We even had Serratone travelling down from Warrington, my old stomping ground, and JVNR Juner over from Korea.

There were musicians and characters arriving from all directions.

One of the memorable occasions was our December 2017 Christmas bash, featuring Steve Dior, Taurus Trakker and Ricky Rebel over from America.

Another Christmas celebration saw The Dirty Strangers playing John Proctor's farewell show, alongside Daniel Jeanrenaud and The Camden Cats.

Then there were the characters. Big Alan Clayton, Hippy Joe, the mandolin player from Hayseed Dixie, and Rico from Texas.

Between the bands, DJs Alex Pink, Dr Philgood and Jeffrey Munday kept the music moving.

You could walk in on a Monday and never quite know who you'd bump into.

Of course, August was different. When Notting Hill Carnival arrived, the live guitars took a break and the bar became part of the Carnival soundsystem and DJ celebrations. Even we knew when to give the amps a rest.

JAY HIRANO: THE JAPANESE CONNECTION
There is somebody who deserves a special place in this story.

Jay Hirano.

Jay was the Japanese owner of Mau Mau Bar and, as anybody who knew him through the music scene will remember, he was also the drummer with Smiley and the Underclass.

That combination tells you quite a lot about the man.

He wasn't simply somebody running a bar and watching other people make music. He was a musician himself. He understood the feeling of being on the other side of the room, sitting behind a drum kit, counting in a song and driving a band forward.

Smiley and the Underclass brought together punk, reggae and a wonderful unruly musical energy. Jay was part of that sound.

The band had started playing at Mau Mau, and the intimacy of the little stage was something its frontman later spoke about. You were close enough to the audience to feel the sweat and hear every reaction. There was no great distance between the musicians and the people who had come to see them.

That was Mau Mau.

Jay eventually sold the bar, but that wasn't the end of his story.

He went on to develop his photography career, taking his camera from London's music venues to the extraordinary world of Formula One.

Think about that change of scenery.

One minute you're in a small West London music venue, surrounded by guitars, amplifiers and musicians. Then you're photographing some of the fastest cars on the planet, travelling around international circuits and capturing the speed, noise and spectacle of Formula One.

Jay became a Formula One photographer in 2022. His work has also been exhibited by Fujifilm in Tokyo.

It's quite a journey from the drum kit at Mau Mau.

And there is another chapter.

In April 2026, Jay opened a Japanese ramen restaurant in Camden called Umami Lab.

I love that progression. From a Japanese musician helping run an independent London music venue to the world of international motorsport photography, and then back to creating something rooted in Japanese culture and food.

Umami Lab specialises in Sapporo-style ramen, drawing on the food traditions of Hokkaido, where Jay comes from.

There's something rather fitting about it. A man who has spent years creating and capturing experiences is now inviting people to sit down and enjoy a proper bowl of Japanese food.

Different surroundings, a different atmosphere, but still bringing people together.

You can find Umami Lab at 5–6 Plender Street, Camden.

Jay's story is a reminder that the people you meet through music often have lives and adventures that go far beyond the stage.

JEFF MOH: THE MAN BEHIND THE CAMERA
Then there was Jeff Moh.

If I was busy organising the nights, dealing with bands, sorting out the usual problems and making sure everything was running, Jeff was busy documenting it all.

Jeff was the photographer who captured the musicians, the performances and the people who made Mau Mau what it was.

He was recording the scene while we were living it.

His photographs show the bands on stage, the posters, the faces and the atmosphere inside the bar. He caught those moments when a singer leans into the microphone, a guitarist loses himself in a solo or the audience gets caught up in the music.

There is something about a good live music photograph. You can almost hear it.

You look at an image and remember the noise, the heat, the crowd, the feeling of being there.

A gig lasts a couple of hours. The band packs up, the audience disappears into the London night and the floor gets cleared for whatever comes next.

Memory starts to blur.

But Jeff made sure there was a record of it.

His photographs weren't simply promotional pictures. They became part of the visual history of Mau Mau and the wider Portobello music scene.

He even captured some personal moments, including photographs of me with my son Tommy Jnr inside the bar.

That means something to me. Among all the bands, gigs and late nights, there are photographs of my family too.

When Jeff died, the people who knew him clearly felt the loss. His contribution was remembered by the musicians and friends around the Portobello scene, including a tribute gig with The Dirty Strangers, The Electrics  Taurus Trakker and Bexatron in 2023.

I don't want his name lost in a list of musicians and promoters.

Jeff Moh was part of the story. He was the man preserving the evidence.

A BUILDING WITH A MUSICAL HISTORY
Mau Mau didn't arrive on Portobello Road without a past.

Before becoming Mau Mau, 265 Portobello Road had been home to the Motown Majic Company's Original Soul Bar.

The building had already seen generations of music lovers pass through its doors.

By the time I knew it, it had become a familiar part of Notting Hill's independent music scene.

Different musical worlds existed under the same roof. Jazz Re had its long-running Thursday residency, bringing extraordinary musicians into the venue, while Mondays became our corner of the rock and punk world.

That's something I always liked about Mau Mau. It didn't need to be just one thing.

There was room for different sounds, different people and different musical tastes.

And when the bands were playing, you could feel the room come alive.

SIXTEEN YEARS OF MEMORIES
When I look back at the acknowledgements in my book Notting Hill Ponces , written in May 2020, I realise just how many musicians and friends had become part of my life over those twenty years.

The list was already too long to include everybody.

Some I managed, some I promoted, some I simply shared a stage, a drink or a good night with.

All of them left something behind.

I also want to thank the staff at Mau Mau. Venues don't run themselves, and the people behind the bar and working away in the background are often forgotten when the stories get told.

In 2020, Mau Mau was sold and its doors closed to the music community that had made it such a familiar London address.

Another independent music venue disappeared.

For me, it was the end of a chapter that had begun in 2004.

I had started Mau Mau Mondays in 2015, giving us five years of rock, punk and everything that came with it.

I still have the flyers. Jeff's photographs are still out there. The bands have their own stories to tell, and the people who were there will remember it in their own way.

London is very good at celebrating its musical heritage, but that heritage wasn't created by famous names alone.

It was built by independent venues, small promoters, musicians, photographers, bar staff and people who turned up because they loved the music.

Jay Hirano was part of that story. So was Jeff Moh. So were every band that played, every member of staff who worked behind the bar and every person who came through the door.

We weren't making history. We were just getting on with it.

But looking back, perhaps that's exactly how history gets made.

I'm proud to have been part of it.

And I'm glad we have the photographs to prove it.

Rock 'n' Roll saves lives.

Tommy Kennedy IV