“If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em!” John Waters

I can’t recommend Jennifer Taylor’s new blog thelibrarian.com highly enough.

Over dinner with her and her husband Nic in New York last year, JB revealed her plans for a website celebrating books. This, she felt, would offer an escape from the solipsism which engulfs most forms of web expression.

//Photo: Courtesy thelibrarian.com//

So The Librarian showcases other people’s books, their collections and also the visual culture which surrounds reading and literacy. There are sections on great bookshops, libraries and private collectors, such as the West Coast artist Alia Penner, who I’m proud to say files a copy of my book Mr Freedom on a shelf alongside tomes on YSL, Kenzo and Maripol.

As one would expect from JB + Nic, it’s a fantastic-looking site, simultaneously substantial and diverting.

Visit The Librarian here.

Tags: Alai Penner, JB Taylor, John Waters, Kenzo, Maripol, Nic Taylor, The Librarian, YSL

//Divided Self, 1974. Black and white silver gelatine print. 46.6 x 70cm//

//Sad And Lonely, 2006. Wood, paint, aluminium, fairground lights. 7.4 x 3.7 x 1.5m//

“I work in the belief – or dare – that I can continue to reinvent myself and remain a perennial beginner.”

Sad to note the death of the British artist Rose Finn-Kelcey.

Read Guy Brett’s obituary for this “wonderful artist and great person” here.

Ridinghouse’s recently published monograph Rose Finn-Kelcey – which contains essays by Brett, Sarah Kent and Michael Stanley – is available here.

Visit the artist’s website here.

Tags: Guy Brett, Michael Stanley, Ridinghouse, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Sarah Kent

“Do you know what? I was a no-hoper. Prison was a possibility, you know, an absolute possibility for me. It was probably 50:50 whether I’d end up there or not.

“I was considered a failure. I left school, no qualifications, at 15. I’d come bottom of the class in several subjects. I’d gone from one job to another. I was seen as a drifter within my family, so now I wasn’t going to screw this up.

“If I was going to do this I was going to really do it, because this was the one thing from very young that I knew I was good at. And I’d kind of gone off the path, I’d tried to be like everyone else, I’d tried doing the things I thought I was supposed to do, that other people wanted me to do, and failed at all of them.

“So this meant everything to me really.

“Probably meant too much, you know?

“There it is.”

Kevin Rowland, 2014.

Centred on Dexys’ 2013 residency at London’s Duke Of York’s Theatre and the group’s One Day I’m Going To Soar album, Nowhere Is Home will premier in May.

Tags: Dexys, Duke of York's Theatre, Heavenly Films, Kevin Rowland, Kieran Evans, One Day I'm Going To Soar, Paul Kelly, This Is What She's Like

//Richard Hell + Jake Riviera, outside the Chelsea Arts Club, London, Feb 2014//

I’ve had few, if any, lunches as enjoyable as last week’s hook-up with Richard Hell and Jake Riviera for a piece I am writing for GQ magazine.

Richard and Jake first met outside CBGB in March 1976, having been introduced by photographer Roberta Bayley, who was working the club door that night.

With Dr Feelgood’s Lee Brilleaux, Jake had witnessed Richard in performance the night before with Johnny Thunders in the first – and soon to disintegrate – line-up of the Heartbreakers at Max’s Kansas City.

We dined less than half a mile away from Chelsea embankment, where Richard and the rest of his next band the Void-Oids spent a pretty miserable-sounding sojourn on a leaky boat when in the UK on tour with The Clash in 1978.

As Richard recounts in his fabulous memoir I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp, he and Jake have shared a series of adventures over the years, some of which I will be covering in my GQ feature which should be out in the summer.

I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp is out in paperback this week; buy here.

Tags: CBGB, Chelsea Arts Club, Dr Feelgood, GQ, I DReamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp, Jake Riviera, Lee Brilleaux, Max's Kansas City, Richard hell, Roberta Bayley, The Clash, The heartbreakers

About 10 years ago in a cramped club, an exotic creature whose ensemble included suede chaps and amazing boots joined the throng in my corner, shape-making and slithering to his heart’s content. It was quite a show, courtesy of Martin Degville, whose talents in fashion and music have it seems proved too uncontainable for sustained mainstream acceptance since he first emerged from Birmingham in the 70s.

Today it’s grey and cold, the kitchen floor’s being tiled so the back door has to be open. There is nothing else for it: a restorative jump-up to this wonderfully preposterous performance of Success by Degville, Tony James and the rest of Sigue Sigue Sputnik on Brazilian TV from way back:

Stick around for incomprehensible banter with the TV show host and the play-out over the credits of Rio Rocks.

Ay-ay-ay-ay!

Tags: Brazil, Martin Degville, Rio Rocks, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Success, Tony James

//Exhibition cards and private view invitations, 1973 to date//

I’m assembling materials for Rethink/Re-Entry, the long-overdue monograph of the great British artist Derek Boshier I am currently editing.

The book takes its title from the early Boshier painting which inspired rock’s ultimate art-directed star Bryan Ferry to choose the name Remake/Remodel for the first track on Roxy Music’s game-changing debut LP.

//Rethink/Re-entry, oil on canvas, 1962//

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Tags: 1979, Bryan Ferry, Central Saint Martin's School Of Art, David Bowie, David Hockney, Hayward Gallery, Joe Strummer, Let's Dance, Lodger, Loves, Remake/Remodel, Rethink/Re-entry, Richard Hollis, Roxy Music, Steve Johnston, Thames & Hudson, The Clash, Whitechapel Gallery

//From Vacant by Nils Stevenson, photo: Ray Stevenson//

If you are of a London gig-goer of a certain (getting on to be advanced) age you will remember “Jesus”, an enthusiastic audience member at many musical events in the capital from the 60s to the late 70s.

//Detail: Hynde, Rotten, Matlock and Jesus. Photo: Ray Stevenson//

Jesus was notable because a) he was personable and b) would often discard his clothes as he energetically idiot-danced stage-front. Jesus liked to frolic with abandon, more often than not exposing much, or even all of his rail-thin body.

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Tags: Bachman turner Overdrive, Brian nevill, Chuck Berry, Clive Jellett, Glastonbury Fayre, Jeff Dexter, Jesus, Johnny Rotten, Magic Michael, Mick Jagger, Mr Fish, Nils Stevenson, Patti Smith, Ray Stevenson, Rolling Stones, Sex Pistols, The Marque, The Nashville Rooms, The Rainbow, The Ramones, UFO, Vacant

Out There from Herb Lester Associates marks a departure from terra firma for my favourite map-makers: they’re anticipating the wave of space tourism of the future with this guide to three Grand Tours of the Solar System.

Complete with speculative observations from such sci-fi greats as Arthur C. Clarke, HG Wells and Olaf Stapledon (author of the 1930 book The Last And First Men, about the flight of mankind to Venus), Out There voyages from the Tar Pits Of Titan and the Fountains of Enceladus to the “giant space sponge” moon, Hyperion.

The text is by Matthew De Abatua with design and illustrations by Paul Rogers.

Out There’s publication has been accompanied by Trunk Records’ release of a companion space-themed download album compiled by Nick from the much missed west London record store Intoxica!.

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Tags: Arthur C. Clarke, Herb lester Associates, HG Wells, Hyperion, Intoxica!, Mars, Matthew De Abatua, Olaf Stapledon, Paul Rogers, Sonny Day, Titan Venus, Trunk Records

//Original print of photo for Club International, 1975. Models include, from far right, Stephan Raynor, Don Letts and Martin Brading. Photo: David Parkinson//

I’ve been enjoying researching materials relating to the late photographer David Parkinson for a feature for GQ magazine, so thought I’d share some of the images I dug out of the Parkinson archive concerning the 70s King’s Road retro clothing store Acme Attractions.

Parkinson’s position as fashion editor of Paul Raymond’s sophisticated soft-porn magazine Club International enabled him to style and present Acme clothing for a wide readership, on occasion using the shop team as models.

Acme was opened by Parkinson’s friend Stephan Raynor (they’d known each other since they were part of a gang of style-obsessed teenagers in Leicester in the early 60s) with John Krivine, previously a Brixton-based jukebox dealer, in 1974.

//As the Parkinson photograph appeared in the magazine, flipped and tinted. Note ref to “Acme Tailors”//

//Parkinson used ties from his collection – including some sourced from Acme – for this March 1975 Club International feature//

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Tags: Acme Attractions, Antiquarius, Club International, Don Letts, GQ, Jay Strongman, Jeanette lee, John Krivine, Lord Snowdon, Martin Brading, Paradise Garage, princess Margaret, SEX, Steph Raynor, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Vivienne Westwood

//Drift: New t-shirt from Japanese streetwear company Peel + Lift//

My 2011 post unraveling the threads running through the notorious Naked Cowboys punk t-shirt has itself inspired a new shirt.

The Cowboys t-shirt was designed by Malcolm McLaren in 1975 for sale in SEX, the shop he ran with Vivienne Westwood at 430 King’s Road in London’s World’s End.

Popular with punks and worn by members of the Sex Pistols and their coterie, it was initially known as the Saturday Night Dance shirt because of the presence of the dancehall sign in the appropriated homoerotic cowboy illustration by Jim French.

//Cowboys t-shirt sold at auction in London last year//

The new t-shirt has been produced by Japanese streetwear company Peel + Lift, which reproduces many McLaren and Westwood designs. It is entitled Drift, making overt the presence of 60s radical thinking in McLaren’s artwork: the drift, or the dérive, was a major theme of the Situationist International, which believed individuals should allow themselves to wander urban landscapes and become either repelled or enchanted by what they found (in the manner of the archetypal French urban explorer the flâneur).

//Panel, p3, Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti, 1966//

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Tags: All The King's Horses, André Bertrand, Bobby Busnach, Derek Harris, Gerry Visco, Guy Debord, Jim French, King Mob Echo, Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti, Longhorns - Dance, Michelle Bernstein, Naked Cowboys, Peel + Lift, SEX, Sex Pistols, Strasbourg University, Tom Vague, Vivienne Westwood