The 100 Club: From Jazz to Blues, Funk to Punk, and Lots of Rock n' Roll.

London is swarming with great live music venues that reek of history and pour out dozens of great concerts night after night.

One of these fantastic little clubs, the 100 Club, is located in Soho, not far from Oxford Circus.

The 100 Club, which began as a jazz club in 1942, has hosted an impressive variety of musical acts over the course of its long history. Over the years, the Sex Pistols, Muddy Waters, BB King, Oasis, The Clash and the White Stripes performed in the small, basement-level club. Perhaps even more impressively, the 100 Club hosted the Rolling Stones after they had already been established.

Texas-based Grupo Fantasma (above) recently played the club.

The band fuses funk and Latin music into exciting albums and electric live performances. The band plays with an incredible amount of energy and a fantastic full sound with ten members, including a powerful brass section.

Fantasma has copious amounts of bongoing and pulsing percussive beats that drive the feverish rhythms and get the audience’s blood pumping.

The group, which formed ten years ago, recently came out with a new album, El Existential. They are currently touring Europe.

- Text by Mark Lauterbach. Image by Chris Diehl.