A couple of weeks back I and writer Teddy Jamieson strolled the length of the King’s Road for his piece on the thoroughfare for the Herald Scotland.
Thirty four years ago today The Heartbreakers played The Speakeasy.
The rock business haunt north of Oxford Circus had seen better times by this gig. I was taken by a member, a photographer at the agency where I worked. I remember being embarrassed by his long hair.
I bought this beauty at a second-hand bookshop at Willesden Green underground station in 1983.
I see from the pencil marking on the back it cost £2. Measuring 39″ x 20″, it turns out it is quite the rarity.
Bob Gruen + Nadya Beck’s All Dolled Up is a cast-iron rock-doc.
For three years in the early 70s they toted new-fangled video equipment trailing the New York Dolls, capturing fab performances, photo-shoots, media encounters, backstage delirium, fan interviews, even dancing at Rodney Bingenheimer’s E Club (the precursor to his English Disco).
You can’t beat Iggy for range: balletic posturing, arrhythmic shape-throwing, hand-held-high swaying (with mic lead clamped between teeth), the imploring bit on the knees and all-out floor-grovelling, they’re all here in this clip from 1977.
Rocket From The Crypt and Sympathy For The Record Industry were a great combo, and reached some kind of apex on 1995’s CD-hating 5″ single tribute to The Music Machine.
Last week I recovered this from the back pocket of a pair of trousers; a page torn from a copy of Mojo found on the tube a few months back.
Reading Amanda Lear’s engaging out-of-print memoir My Life With Salvador Dalí brings back memories of a visit to the Dalí Theatre-Museum (“the largest surrealistic object in the world”) in Figueres in 1988.
In the tower of the museum, the “seedy old conjuror” (per the description by John Richardson in his waspish collection of art world pen portraits Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters) was lying on his sickbed; Dalí died just a few months later, in January 1989.
30 seconds into this clip, Humphrey Ocean is called on stage to perform one of his amazing dances with the stars of the Stiff 1977 tour.
Just came across this card from one of my heroines, Caroline Coon.
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