Paul Gorman is…

Hipgnosis in fashion with Daisy Roots

Apr 21st, 2013

Fashion shoots were little known aspect of the practice of design studio Hipgnosis, whose co-founder Storm Thorgerson died on Thursday.

In line with the approach Thorgerson and his partner Aubrey Powell took with their raft of album sleeve commissions, the series of fashion spreads Hipgnosis produced for Club International in the early 70s were visually arresting and often high concept.

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Just as the independent labels and self-published fanzines Paul Gorman chronicles built their own alternative economies outside the mainstream music industry, today's digital subcultures are experimenting with decentralised currencies that move value without banks or borders. Part of that wave has reached the world of sports and casino entertainment, where crypto-friendly wagering has found a particularly enthusiastic audience in Turkey under the name bitcoin bahis —a form of play that lets users stake and cash out with digital coins rather than conventional payment rails. Anyone tempted to try it should treat it strictly as entertainment, stake only money they can afford to lose, and first confirm the platform's licensing as well as the gambling rules in force in their own country.

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The story behind a long-lost single sleeve design

Apr 18th, 2013

Read the story behind this obscure record sleeve design – for a single which failed to dent the Top 75 on release 30 years ago – over on the Barney Bubbles Blog.

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When Kilburn + The High Roads played the King’s Road Theatre 1974: Ian Dury in Let It Rock ‘Alan Ladd’ suit + feather tie and Sue and Simon Haynes’ extraordinary Tower Bridge stage set

Apr 12th, 2013

//Keith Lucas and Ian Dury onstage at the Kings Road Theatre, November 1974. Photo: Simon Haynes Collection//

As these rarely seen photographs show, when the subject of my last book the late Tommy Roberts took over management of Kilburn & The High Roads he sought to elevate them from the pub-rock scene by upping the visual ante on every front.

//From left: Lucas, Dury, David Rohoman, Charlie Sinclair and Davey Payne//

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Bowie Style tonight: In conversation with Boy George at the V&A

Apr 9th, 2013

Tonight I am hosting an event at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum: an ‘in conversation’ with Boy George about the importance and influence of popular culture’s greatest manipulator of visual identity, David Bowie.

//George O'Dowd overlooked by Big Brother in his room at a squatted house in Carburton Street, central London, 1978.//

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Another of Mr Freedom’s ‘monstrous oddities’: Sue + Simon Haynes’ giant blue fun-fur gorilla

Mar 18th, 2013

//Mirabelle, May 2, 1970//

From the archive of the late Tommy Roberts, this image from British teen fashion magazine Mirabelle shows a particularly outré commission from fashion’s master of flamboyant retailing: a 7ft high rendition of a King Kong-style gorilla in blue fun fur created by the design team Sue and Simon Haynes.

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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.

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Graphics: Simon Haynes’ designs for City Lights Studio 1972

Mar 11th, 2013

//Swingtag, printed card, 4" x 2", 1972//

Artist/designer Simon Haynes has allowed me access to some of the treasures in his archive. Over the next few weeks I’ll be dipping into it and presenting a selection of artworks, display items, stage sets and graphics he has created over the years.

//Design on silk swatch for fabric for shop interior fittings, 1972//

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Previously unpublished: Rejected book review of Stone Free by Andrew Loog Oldham

Mar 5th, 2013

A couple of months back I was commissioned to review Andrew Loog Oldham’s latest book Stone Free for a website, but my copy was rejected on the basis of my use of  “criticism”; they prefer to keep things – in their words – “upbeat”.

I like the commissioner, think the site is good and had no problem with the rejection, but thought it may be of interest, so here it is:

Print

“I have little use for the past and do not give it much thought.”

Now that is rich.

One anticipates and has often applauded bare-faced sauce from the music business maverick turned self-chronicler Andrew Loog Oldham, author of Stoned (384 densely-packed pages of reflection on life from birth in 1944 to the point of managing the Rolling Stones in 1963, with “drug-cuts” into the 70s and 80s), 2Stoned (480 pages on his four-year stewardship of same) and a “fictionalised biography” of Abba (on which we need not dwell).

When this confession – even if it is soon qualified – arrives 10 chapters and 140 pages in to Oldham’s new digital-only tome Stone Free, it produces a whoop not of glee but of derision.

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Scenes from the launch of The Look in Soho 2006: Boy George, Pippa Brooks, Mark Powell, Kevin Rowland et al

Feb 28th, 2013

This film by Rik and Jane Gadsby of the May 2006 London launch of the second edition of my book The Look has just been posted online; it really evokes the good time that everyone had that night.

Pippa Brooks and her band All About Eve Babitz played and DJs included George O’Dowd.

The party was held at the premises of Raymond Revuebar, which by that time was Two II Much (dunno what it is these days). I was very touched when Kevin R. talked about how important he viewed the book and my work. “This is our culture,” he says in the clip above.

Enjoy.

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The origins of the Tits tee: Robert Watts + Products for Implosions Inc

Feb 28th, 2013
Robert Watts, Implosions Inc, 1966.

//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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