//George O'Dowd in Street Theatre, 12 Ganton Street, central London, 1978. Photo (c): Boy George Collection//

I’ve been acting as a consultant to artist Lucy Harrison on her latest site specific project Carnaby Echoes, which focuses on the culturally fertile area of central London adjacent to Soho.

With the starting point of the opening of Murray’s Club in Beak Street in 1913, Harrison is mounting her artistic response to 100 years of musical history with archival material and fresh interviews with some of the area’s leading lights.

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Tags: Axiom, Beak Street, Boy George, Carnaby Street, Culture Club, Fans, George O'Dowd, Jon Baker, Lucy Harrison, malcolm Garrett, Mark Lebon, Murray's Club, New Sounds New Styles, Old Compton Street, Peter Small, Roaring Twenties, Street Theatre, Sue Clowes, The Foundry, The Regal

//Robert Watts in front of Products by Implosions Inc. Photographer: unknown//

Malcolm McLaren’s adaptation of the infamous Tits t-shirt is one of punk’s most familiar designs, as applied by he and Vivienne Westwood to shirts sold in SEX and Seditionaries, worn by members of the Sex Pistols and replicated hundreds of thousands of times since.

Such is its distorting androgynous power that a version was chosen along with another McLaren/Westwood design – the Cowboys shirt – to represent the core aesthetic of the movement when the forthcoming Costume Institute exhibition Punk: Chaos To Couture was announced earlier this month.

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Tags: Alice Cooper, Andy Warhol, Charlie Watts, Costume Institute, Fluxus, Jizz Inc, Mrs Gorman, Punk: Chaos To Couture, Robert Watts, Shopping, The American Supermarket, Thomas Kellein, Zandra Rhodes

The Random House/Penguin takeover prompted a visit from photographer Sarah Lee to shoot my collection of Penguin books for illustrative material for The Guardian.

One of her shots has already been used – a set of early 70s Raymond Chandlers with James Tormey jackets.

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Tags: James Tormey, Oliver Wainwright, Random House, Raymond Chandler, Sarah Lee, The Guardian

Time to put away the books, mags, newspapers, pamphlets, catalogues and other materials used as reference for the map The Look Of London, which is published later this week by Herb Lester Associates.

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Tags: A4, Herb lester Associates, Lloyd Johnson: Thge Modern Outfitter, Nine Lives with Goldie, Paul Smith, Peter Bernhardt, Straight with Boy George

The four albums released by Alice Cooper between 1971 and 1973 propelled the band’s international ascendance and the frontman into enduring superstardom.

Cooper and his bandmates never again attained the quality level of the dumb-but-delicious Detroit garage-glam they punched out with such aplomb on these records, enhanced as they were by the crystal-hard production of wunderkind Bob Ezrin.

What is it about the excellence of LP quartets by major artists in this period?

In my vinyl pantheon, the Cooper releases align with those comprising largely original material issued by Rod Stewart (in consecutive years from 1969: An Old Raincoat Won’t Let You Down; Gasoline Alley; Every Picture Tells A Story; and Never A Dull Moment), David Bowie (from 1971: Hunky Dory; The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars; Aladdin Sane; and Diamond Dogs), Roxy Music (from 1972: Roxy Music; For Your Pleasure…; Stranded; and Country Life), Stevie Wonder (from 1972: Music Of My Mind; Talking Book; Innervisions; and Fulfillingness First Finale) and The Wailers (from 1972: Catch A Fire; Burnin’; Natty Dread; Live At The Lyceum).

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Tags: Alice Cooper, Billion Dollar Babies, Bob Ezrin, Craig Braun, David Bailey, David Griffith, Elected, Ernie Cefalu, Frank Zappa, Kachina, Killer, Love It To Death, Muscle Of Love, Pacific Eye & Ear, Pete Turner, Robert Otter, Roger Prigent, School's Out, Shep Gordon, Sound Packaging Corp, Straight, Tom Wilkes, Wilkes & Braun

//From The Sunday Times Magazine, November 28, 1971.//

The joy of writing about a subject as rich as Tommy Roberts is that research turns up an apparently limitless supply of fabulous material.

Even the tangential stuff – such as this from my archive, a spread from a 1971 Sunday Times Magazine  – gets me going.

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Tags: Barney Wan, Boston 151, David Bowie, David Parkinson, Great Gear Trading Co, Kansai Yamamoto, Michael Chow, Paradise Garage, Terence Donovan, Vogue, Ziggy Stardust

My essay on artist Derek Boshier’s engagement with popular music is in the new catalogue from Pallant House Gallery, home to the forthcoming show Derek Boshier: David Bowie And The Clash.

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Tags: Adrian berg, David Bowie, Derek Boshier, Dr Norman Shaw, Pallant House Gallery, Paul Huxley, Paul Weller, Peter Blake, The Pretty Things, Tracey Emin

French newspaper Libération’s coverage of the White Noise show in Chaumont included a section on my Barney Bubbles exhibit The Past The Present & The Possible.

Marie Lechner’s report – see here – points to Bubbles’ “spirit of protest and fun” shared by other White Noise exhibitors such as French design/music magician Shoboshobo (aka Mehdi Hercberg).

Visit Shoboshobo’s site here.

White Noise – curated by Sophie Demay and Etienne Hervy – is on until Sunday (June 10). Thereafter it will be open for a week exclusively for schools, colleges and general educational purposes.

Tags: Chaumont, Etienne Hervy, Libération, Marie Lechner, Mehdi Hercberg, Shoboshobo, Sophie Demay, The Past The Present & The Possible, White Noise

//Kiss Kiss, Go To Work On An Egg, Christopher Logue + Tom Salter, 1968.//

//Go To Work On An Egg, Mather & Crowther, 1964.//

“People do love huge pieces of paper”.

So runs the quote heading up a section in V&A curator Catherine Flood’s excellent overview British Posters: Advertising Art & Activism, published by the museum to coincide with its multifarious design celebrations this Olympic year.

And it’s true. We do.

Or we all did, when this vital form was simultaneously a mass-medium and a highly personal communications device, when huge promotional budgets and lack of urban controls resulted in the accretive papering of our street-scapes. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, we gave posters pride of place on the walls of our bedrooms, bedsits and sitting rooms.

//Top left: Your Britain, Fight For It Now, Abram Games, 1942. Right: Keep Death Off The Road, Carelessness Kills, William Little, 1949.//

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Tags: Abram Games, As You Like It, Carateles la Candelaria, Catherine Flood, Christopher Logue, Eduardo Paolozzi, Hapshash And The Coloured Coat, John Morris, Ken Briggs, Lissitzky, M&C Saatchi, Mather & Crowther, Mike McInnerney, Richard Hollis, See Red Women's Workshop, Society Of Revisionist Typographers, Tom Salter, Typoretum, UFO, V&A, William Little

Album sleeves, photography, magazines and a variety of press cuttings and ephemera underline the widespread recognition for Lloyd Johnson’s designs over the decades. Lloyd paid particular attention to them in the assemblage of the contents of the table-top vitrines and a wall collage on the fifth day of the exhibition installation just before the weekend.

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Tags: Chelsea Space, Lois Gabrin