I’m really looking forward to What About Dancing? at central London’s Garden Cinema on May 14.

The evening comprises screenings of three short films about grief made by artists/filmmakers/writers Tara Darby, Annie Frost Nicholson and Lara Haworth:

• Into Your Light (Darby and Frost Nicholson 2019)

• All The People I Hurt With My Wedding (Haworth 2019)

• Grief Is A Hungry Ghost (Haworth and Frost Nicholson 2023).

Afterwards I’ll be mediating an in-conversation and Q+A with the three filmmakers on their shared and individual approaches, as well as their current project The Triumphant Return of Harriet Frost.

Do come along. Details and tickets are available here.

Here’s the trailer for All The People I Hurt With My Wedding:

Tags: Annie Frost Nicholson, Garden Cinema, Lara Haworth, Tara Darby

‘This book solves the mystery of a spell that was cast on a time that won’t fade away’

Hiroshi Fujiwara

2024 has got off to a good start with the news that the Japanese edition of The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren is going to be published by East Press on January 26, four days after what would have been the great provocateur’s 78th birthday.

This translation includes a new photo selection, the above cover quote from Japan’s style guru Hiroshi Fujiwara and updated text, including much new detail on the visit McLaren made with Vivienne Westwood and Gerry Goldstein to Andy Warhol’s Factory in New York in the summer of 1973.

The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren Japanese edition is available to order here.

Tags: Hiroshi Fujiwara, The Factory

//From the presentation for tomorrow’s event//

Tomorrow I’ll be talking to interiors, homewares and textile designer Sue Timney about the fashion legacy of the King’s Road, the two-and-a-half mile thoroughfare in west London’s Chelsea where the late Mary Quant kicked off the boutique boom by opening her clothes shop Bazaar at 135a in 1955.

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Tags: Ace, Don Letts, Jeannette Lee, King's Road Music & Fashion Trail, Let It Rock: The Look Of Music The Sound Of Fashion, Mary Quant, Peter Golding, Quorum, Sheila Rock, Sue Timney, The Great Gear Market, Timney Fowler

Next Thursday (August 3) I’m going to be in conversation with the prominent writer and photographer Mark C. O’Flaherty at central London’s library/bookshop/bar Reference Point.

//Mark reminisces about his time at Boyz in Totally Wired//

We’ll be talking about the music press – the subject of my book Totally Wired, which is out now in paperback –  it’s history in relation to LGBTQ+ communities and Mark’s experiences working for such magazines as Melody Maker and Boyz.

Afterwards I’ll DJ a vinyl set of music-press-related sounds.

Bag your spot here.

//Totally Wired paperbacks in the Tate Britain bookshop//

Copies of Totally Wired are widely available, including from bookshop.org

Tags: 180 The Strand, Boyz, Mark C. O'Flaherty, Reference Point

//Annie Frost Nicholson with the Fandangoe Discoteca. Pic courtesy of anniefrostnicholson.com//

Next week sees the opening at London’s Canary Wharf of artist Annie Frost Nicholson’s Fandangoe Discoteca, the mini-disco installation where we can shake out our grief and help maintain daily mental health – the programme covers all intersections of grief from bereavement to climate angst to political rage to break-ups.

The design of the kiosk was inspired by De Stijl and Ettore Sottsass and holds up to eight dancers at a time.

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Tags: Amy Taylor, Annie Frost Nicholson, Black Star Liner, Bonzai, Canary Wharf, Dorothy, Fandagoe Discoteca, Guru, Harris Elliott Studio, Horace Andy, Inner City, Joe Smooth, Kid Loco, KLF, Lara Haworth, Le Tigre, Lil Yachty, Linnet Kamala, Mura Masa, Pet Shop Boyts, Raissa Pardini, Rebel MC, Rom Boyd, Stephe Hause, The Fall, The Fandangoe Kid, Timothy Wang, Viagra Boys, Wire

When he launched the small-format 32-page song sheet The Melody Maker in 1926, Tin Pan Alley music publisher Lawrence Wright sparked the media revolution that created the music press.

This multi-million pound business eventually straddled the Atlantic and simultaneously proved a fertile breeding ground for generations of writers, photographers, film-makers and performers who made their mark in the wider world.

Everyone from Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde and Neil Tennant to Danny Baker, Caroline Coon, Julie Burchill, Barbara Ellen, Caitlin Moran, Miranda Sawyer and movie directors Cameron Crowe and Anton Corbijn (and even Michael Winner) cut their teeth on music magazines such as Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Rolling Stone, ZigZag and Smash Hits.

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Tags: Alan Lewis, Andy Warhol, Anton Corbijn, Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Barbara Ellen, Bob Geldof, Caitlin Moran, Cameron Crowe, Carl Gayle, Caroline Coon, Chelsea Clinton, Chrissie Hynde, Corinne Day, Danny Baker, Darby Romeo, David Salzman, Erica Smith, Grace Jones, Harry Styles, Jann Wenner, Jason Donovan, Julie Burchill, Kate Moss, Kerin Morayata, Lawrence Wright, Mat Snow, Max Jones, Micahel Winner, Miranda Sawyer, Neil Tennant, neville Brody, NIck Cave, Quincy Jones, Roisin Murphy, Stevie Wonder, Time Inc, Truman Capote, Tupac SHakur

//Ellen Willis, c. 1970. Photograph: Ellen Willis’s family//

One of the narrative threads of my book Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall of the Music Press – which is published in paperback next week – traces the ways in which women writers have been forced to fight long and hard against white male dominance of the field.

//Gloria Stavers photographs Jim Morrison 1967. Photographer: Unknown//

This process was kicked off in the 1950s by Gloria Stavers, who transformed the US teen scene as editor and photographer at the huge-selling 16 magazine and went on to champion the likes of the Beatles and others in the 60s on her own terms: while she recognised the charisma of The Doors’ Jim Morrison, she was also his equal and lover.

//Lillian Roxon, mid-1960s. Photo by unknown, Fairfax Archives//

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Tags: Elizabeth Nelson

The September 1975 issue of US music/proto-lifestyle magazine Rock Scene contains an absolute curio in the form of a report on Angie Bowie’s visit to Eton College – ‘Hogwarts for wankers where you’re taught Latin and tax avoidance while wearing full evening dress’* – that year.

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Tags: Angie Bowie, Boris Johnson, Craig Brown, David Cameron, Eton College, Jonathan Pie, Leee Black Childers, Lisa Robinson, Nicholas Coleridge, Richard Robinson, Rock Scene, Roy Martin, Simon Fisher Turner

I have known the Arts & Crafts connoisseur, collector and dealer Paul Reeves since the early Noughties when I approached him for the second edition of my fashion x music book The Look; Paul’s previous career as a designer took in such important 60s and 70s labels and boutiques as Sam Pig In Love, Alkasura and The Universal Witness.

From the off we got on like a house on fire and became firm friends; he was a major contributor to my Tommy Roberts book and the ever-generous Paul has often hosted Caz and I at his wonderful Wiltshire farmhouse.

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Tags: Alkasura, Claire de Rouen, Jermaine Gallacher, Jon Wealleans, Led Zeppelin, Oskar Proctor, Paul Reeves, Peter Grant, Sam Pig In Love, The Universal Witness, TON

The new interiors magazine TON – the first issue is out now –  has two pieces by me on very different but equally extraordinary homes.

TON’s founder and editor-in-chief Jermaine Gallacher – who works with art director Rory Gleeson and editorial director Ted Stansfield – commissioned me to write about Dave Baby’s apartment close to where we both live, in south London’s Stockwell.

As I write, ‘this otherworldly space represents a bewitching realm of desires, sexuality and esoterica with Dave at the maelstrom’s centre, a still figure dispensing wily wit and charm’.

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Tags: Celeste, Christopher Nemeth, Clare de Rouen, Dave Baby, Derek Jarman, House Of Beauty & Culture, Ischia, Jermaine Gallacher, John Maybury, Judy Blame, Luchino Visconti, Mark Lebon, Reference Point, Rory Gleeson, Roxy Lee, Ted Stansfield