//Pages 108-111, The Word, August 2012.//

Out later this week, the final issue of The Word marks a significant staging post in the story of magazine publishing in the digital age.

Champions of the written word and intelligent discourse about popular culture, the editorial team headed by veteran double-act Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have assembled a fine last edition in which I’m stoked to be included, with an extract from Mr Freedom about Tommy Roberts’ involvement in the mid-70s British music scene (including never-previously revealed details of Roberts’ loaning of rehearsal space to the nascent Sex Pistols, the burglary of his shop City Lights Studio by members of the group and Malcolm McLaren’s interest in managing Ian Dury).

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Tags: David Hepworth, Ian Dury, Mark Ellen, Rough KIds, Sex Pistols, The Word

//TV crew sets up in the basement.//

Yesterday I was visited by a camera crew for an interview about the behind-the-scenes individuals who have made the difference to British popular music over the years.

The team, from Kobalt Productions in Berlin, are producing the documentary for Franco-German arts channel ARTE. The director is Simon Witter, who has a fine pedigree in journalism and broadcasting.

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Tags: Andrew Loog Oldham, ARTE, Blur, Boy George, Charles Shaar Murray, Colin Newman, David Bowie, Gered Mankowitz, Graham Coxon, Hapshash & The Coloured Coat, Heaven 17, Jill Furmanovsky, Jon Savage, Kevin Rowland, Kobalt Productions, Lloyd Johnson, Malcolm McLaren, Mark Powell, Martyn Ware, Miles Copeland, Paul Morley, Pennie Smith., Peter Blake, Simon Napier-Bell, Simon Reynolds, Simon Witter, Storm Thorgerson, Wire

I have a piece on mod fashions in the new Mojo special MOJO ’60s.

To mark it, THE LOOK blog is featuring scans from a great interview with the Small Faces keyboard player Ian “Mac” McLagan from Rave magazine, April 1967. See here.

Tags: April 1967, Ian "Mac" McLagan, Mojo '60s, Rave, Small Faces

//From top: Stunt rider, Hines Farm motorcycle rodeo + The Atomic Pirates motorcycle club.//

A chat with photographer/Men’s File publisher Nick Clements at the opening of his show Revival –  which looks at the re-enactment of the styles surrounding American bike culture of the 50s for his Royal College Of Art research project – put me in mind of original black motorcycle clubs the Atomic Angels and the Gypsy Pirates.

I first came across them a decade or so ago when covering another academic study, Matthew Donahue’s I’ll Take You There, for Mojo magazine. Donahue’s book focused on a true cultural phenomenon: Hines Farm in Swanton, Ohio, whose owners Frank and Sarah Hines were the first African-Americans in the region to be granted a liquor licence.

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Tags: Allen Love, Art & Roman Griswald, Atomic Pirates, Big jean Mitchell, Chiquieta, Count Basie, Frank and Sarah Hines, Gypsy Angels, Henry Griffin, Hines Farm, I'll Take You There, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Journalism, Little Esther Phillips, Matthew A. Donahue, Mojo, Ohio, Toledo, Valerie Compton