Directed by Bram Van Splunteren, via openculture.com
Rough Kids badge for Kilburn And The High Road (sic)
Apr 24th, 2013
//Photo: Tom Sheehan Collection//
As an addendum to my recent post about the staging of the very special late night London concert given by Ian Dury’s art-rock ensemble Kilburn & The High Roads in 1974, here’s the badge commissioned by manager the late Tommy Roberts to flag up the concurrent release of the group’s single Rough Kids.
Then a neglected pop promotional medium – badges were considered kids’ stuff; the sole prominent champion was Barney Bubbles, who produced a range to go with his branding of space rockers Hawkwind and pub-rock outfit Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers – the pre-punk barbed wire logo button was conceived and executed by Simon Haynes, designer of the ambitious stage set for the Kilburns’ gig at the King’s Road Theatre.
Is Saitch Yer Daddy: Collages by Kosmo Vinyl
Mar 13th, 2013
//Vinyl with The Clash, 1981.Photo: Bob Gruen //
Next month sees the opening of an exhibition of 53 collages tracking the fortunes of West Ham United FC over a season; they are all the product of expat football fan and music industry maverick Kosmo Vinyl.
The show’s title, Is Saitch Yer Daddy, is taken from 60s graffito adorning a wall near West Ham’s home ground. Residency in New York for many years hasn’t dampened the ardour for The Hammers of this figure who played key promotional and managerial roles for Graham Parker, Stiff Records, Ian Dury and The Clash.
Pictures from an exhibition: Glam! The Performance Of Style
Feb 19th, 2013
//Kenny putting on make up, Nan Goldin, Boston, 1973 //
Perhaps it is a matter of displacement – that slippery moment when art becomes commerce, shifting back again into the cultural arena as another kind of commodity. The fact is, even today, few among us are willing to acknowledge that certain mass culture forms and practices may comprise the most significant ‘culture’ of our time, precisely because of their ‘popular’ characteristics.
Marcia Tucker and William Olander, New Museum Of Contemporary Art, 1988.
In the 25 years since Tucker and Olander made this statement, the displacement they sought to define has become, if anything, more slippery.
For this reason alone, Liverpool Tate curator Darren Pih must be applauded for negotiating such tricky waters with Glam! The Performance Of Style, the exhibition he has curated in an attempt to locate the early 70s glam-rock phenomenon in the context not just of a certain area of artistic practice of the period but also more broadly the interplay between “high” and mass culture.
//Fashion spread featuring Mr Freedom and Ossie Clark designs, Nova, May 1970 //
Observer article highlights Met’s embarrassing punk flaws
Feb 17th, 2013
I’m quoted in today’s article in UK Sunday newspaper The Observer about the factual failings surrounding the punk clothing collection of the New York Metropolitan Museum Of Art’s Costume Institute.
At Johnny Rotten’s pad in Malcolm McLaren’s leather jeans 1978: The story behind the photograph
Jan 4th, 2013
This just in from Joe Stevens, following yesterday’s post about his new website: the story behind the photo with Johnny Rotten above, taken in London in 1978.
We were at his Gunter Grove digs in Fulham. Malcolm (McLaren) had left his grotty leathers in my flat in NYC during the Sid and Nancy murder doings. I had them dry cleaned. Never got the $90 for that one.
He had Glitterbest problems in London. So did Rotten. I was over there to do pictures of Public Image Limited.
He made a nice curry. I crashed there with him and Nora (Forster). Ari (Up, Forster’s daughter) would pop by often.
We watched her and The Slits record Heard It Thru The Grapevine and Chrissie (Hynde) rehearsing with her new Pretenders.
Yeah, he’s holding up his trousers with a strand of white cord.
I was later a witness at the High Court trial involving the band versus Glitterbest.
I tried on Malcolm’s leather trousers. Fell in love. It was a first. Went to London in them. Never took them off. Returned two weeks later to NYC wearing them.
Had them cleaned again. This time they didn’t survive. All I got back was swatches of leather in a bag.
Stevens’ new website is here.
‘Because of the economic crisis, people are trying to consume as fast as possible. Ideas are dead; there aren’t any to express the mood. Fashion is irrelevant’: Malcolm McLaren + SEX, November 1975
Aug 13th, 2012
//Sex assistant Jordan, Gallery International, Vol 1, no 4.//
It’s unlikely that cities will shake or nations start to rock under the impact of Malcolm McLaren’s sexual revolution. A few people might die though.
Malcolm McLaren, at 30, is a mixture of entrepreneurial cultist, sexual evangelist, businessman, artist, fetishist and political philosopher; a psychotic visionary in the ephemeral subculture of the fashion world.
David May, Gallery International Vol 1 no 4.
In November 1975 – by which time his charges the Sex Pistols had just embarked on live performances – Malcolm McLaren was interviewed by journalist David May at 430 King’s Road, then in full bloom as radical retail venture SEX.
Glam comes into focus: Karl Stoecker’s fashion shoot for Club International October 1972
Jul 25th, 2012
Tucked away at the back of an issue of British soft-porn magazine Club International was a fashion shoot featuring clothing elements which denoted the crystallisation of the new art-directed glam aesthetic inaugurated by the release of Roxy Music’s first album a couple of months previously.
The photographer was Karl Stoecker, the New Yorker who had been resident in the UK since the mid-60s and was coming into his own with important contributions to Roxy’s visual identity across that LP and its successors For Your Pleasure and Stranded.
Music: Baby’s On Fire – Die Antwoord + Cut The World – Antony & The Johnsons
Jun 13th, 2012
There’s plenty of great new music around at the moment; concurrently I have two contrasting tracks going round in my head, which is dizzying but exhilarating.
Whitney Houston at VH1 Divas 1999
Feb 12th, 2012
I was in the audience at the Beacon Theatre NYC for the 1999 VH1 Divas, where this Whitney Houston performance was recorded.
Her presence during this particular song is electrifying; she exudes vulnerability, a tortured female star (the wrong side of 35 according to the precepts of the global music industry) visibly dealing with the downside of unimaginable fame + fortune.
When Houston wasn’t onstage, she and Bobby Brown were sat a few rows ahead.
They were looped, out there. Brown was wearing what looked like an original South Beach Leather loose-stitched suit (a la Al Green on the sleeve of his Greatest Hits) complete with Po’Boy cap.
When Houston was onstage, he tore it up in the audience, cheering and hollering his support.
I love the skittering It’s Not Right But It’s OK. She nailed it that night.
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