1972 – 1978 Distributed street poems in London and other towns and cities around the UK. Bongo Mike had a number of exhibitions of his Visual Poems during this period, in venues such as the Camden Arts Centre, Camden Lock, Art Meeting Place (Covent Garden), Bath Festival of Alternative Arts…
1978 Spring. Began busking in the street in London. Ran into continual problems with the Police – warnings, arrests, court appearances, fines, etc. Decided to re-locate to the Continent.
1978 Summer –1982 . Performed music as nomadic buskers, in Western Europe, the Balkans and Asia Minor.
Autumn 1982- 2009. Returned to UK, found a viable – if precarious – way to survive as buskers performing on trains, even though it was competely illegal, and we were subject to frequent harassment. Divided our time continually between London and situations we had found abroad.
1983 January. Decided to take action about illegal status of buskers in Britain. The Times reports our initial plan to gain attention for our plight by seeking political asylum in Belgium, and then our subsequent decision to mount instead a complaint against the British Government at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, concerning busking restrictions in UK.
1983 – 1996 . Conducted an extended human rights struggle, centring on an action at the European Court of Human Rights, where we alleged infringement of our right to freedom of expression, as guaranteed under article 10 of the Convention of Human Rights . In conjunction with this, we mounted a series of cases in domestic courts in UK against Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police, London Underground and London Regional Transport, most notably suing the BTP for false imprisonment in 1988, and taking a Judicial Review of LU and LRT’s decision not to allow any busking on the Underground, a case which lasted from 1988 till 1991
1988 Started our independent record company “Newspaper Records”, releasing our first vinyl single “If You Can’t Have A Shave In A Toilet, Where Can You Have A Shave” .
1990 Released second single “I Am The Professor Of The University Of The Street” in Germany.
1991 Performed in peace concert in Skopje, Yugoslavia (now North Macedonia).
1996 Joined forces with London Public Entertainers Collective (LPEC) in fight for buskers’ rights on the tube.
1997 Inaugurated campaigning website “Buskaction”, to co-ordinate further action against busking ban. (This website can still be viewed online, but we ceased updating it in 2010, when we stopped our active campaigning about buskers’ rights, owing to Mike’s ill-health.)
1998 Released CD single “Don’t Know Why?” – a protest against London’s tube-busking ban.
2000 February. Addressed an Opposed Bill Committee in the House of Lords, speaking against a proposal by Westminster Council to allow the introduction of restrictive licensing schemes for buskers in London’s Boroughs.
2000 Limited release of CD album called “Exile in Balkan” – melodic stories of our visits to former Yugoslavia , along with memories of London from a more distant time. This album, which included the “Song For Bayram”, was originally recorded in Skopje, Macedonia, but subsequently re-worked in London, with the help of some “crowd-funding” from appreciative followers of our busking act on the London tube.
2002 Performed at Astoria, London, as support act to rock group “My Vitriol”.
2003-5 Recording and limited release of album “War Sex And Family”…. an artistic response to our witnessing the Macedonian civil war of 2001. The songs made use of rock themes and challenging lyrics.
2009 May. Performed at Troubadour Club, Earls Court, London.
2009 December. Final performances on trains in London
2010 Started YouTube channel “Bongo Mike and Extremely Frank Jeremy” [@NewspaperRecords]
2011-12. Album “Away From Tube Trains” – a contemporary folk project….released online by 33Jazz
2014 Online release of our earlier album “War Sex And Family”
2020 June. Bongo Mike died after a long struggle with small vessel disease.
2021 August. Extremely Frank Jeremy resumes performing in the street as a one man band.
2021 September. EFJ is joined by blues harpist Mal Collins. They perform together, in the street in London for a year, and at occasional venues.
2024 December. Online release of album “Untold Stories”, containing some material from our first album “Exile in Balkan” , and further till-now-unreleased songs from our time in Macedonia.
The Story Of Situation Art 