Just came across this card from one of my heroines, Caroline Coon.

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Tags: Caroline Coon, Derek Boshier, Jimi Hendrix

//Collage: Derek Harris.//

This composition of images by Derek Harris from Christopher Gray’s Situationist text Leaving The 20th Century makes plain the significance of the visual vocabulary of the 60s anarchist movement on punk in general and Malcolm McLaren & Vivienne Westwood’s Anarchy Shirt in particular.

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Tags: 1976, Chris Farlowe, Christopher Gray, Derek Harris, Glen Matlock, Jordan, Karl Marx, Leaving The 20th Century, Malcolm McLaren, SEX, Sex Pistols, So It Goes, Steve Jones, Vivienne Westwood

Two “manifesto” designs which emanated from 430 King’s Road – the You’re Gonna Wake Up t-shirt and the Anarchy Shirt – share a reference to “The Black Hand Gang”.

I had long assumed that both referred to Spanish anarchists La Mano Negra, since the group’s name was listed with that of their fellow countryman and revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti.

But on the t-shirt, the absence of an “and” or connecting device had me pondering the possibility this was another Black Hand Gang; maybe the secret society dedicated to Serbian unity (linked to one of the events which triggered the First World War, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914)?

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Tags: bernie Rhodes, Buenaventura Durruti, Christopher Gray, David and Stuart Wise, Don Letts, Franz Ferdinand, Futura 2000, Hiroshi Fujiwara, Jay Strongman, King Mob, La Mano negra, Malcolm McLaren, Notting Hill, Point-Blank!, The Black Hand Gang, You're Gonna Wake Up

//Comic Strip, Point-Blank!, 1971. Derek Harris Collection.//

My investigation into the multifarious strands which fed into the creation of the 1974 t-shirt You’re Gonna Wake Up has, in turn, ignited a convincing set of new theories about the genesis of another “manifesto” design, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s so-called Anarchy Shirt.

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Tags: Anarchy shirt, Derek Harris, Hiroshi Fujiwara, Malcolm McLaren, Point-Blank!, Situationist International, Vivienne Westwood, You're Gonna Wake Up

Place: Golden Square, London W1.

Time: 1pm

Coffee: Nordic Bakery Soho

Lloyd Johnson, Ben Olins and I met on a sunny Saturday for a chat about Rowan Joffe’s recently-released film Brighton Rock. The transposition of the storyline to 1964 has resulted in marketing which leans heavily on the backdrop of the Mods vs Rockers “riots” in British coastal resorts that year.

Pretty Green and Merc are among promotional partners; there lingers the distinct impression of an attempt to reach out to cinemagoers by creating a British version of the Mad Men buzz.

In fact the mod content is a gloss overlaying this stodgy interpretation of the 1947 film classic rather than Grahame Greene’s 1939 novel (despite claims to the contrary; Joffe even chose the first film’s climactic cop-out, against the author’s wish for an unremittingly bleak ending).

An original modernist raised in neighbouring Hastings, Lloyd has considerable first-hand knowledge of the subject and worked on the film which is a primary visual influence: Quadrophenia.

Ben’s fascination for the period is manifested in such activities as the club-night The Fabulous Cellar and certain aspects of his media company Herb Lester Associates.

As a cradle Catholic my heart sank when I heard the word on this; one of the great literary investigations into good and evil recast as a mod rite of passage. Mod really is the mainstream option these days isn’t? So codified as to be meaningless and square beyond belief: all those “rules”, all that conformity. For that, and many other reasons, the film lived down to my low expectations.

What do you reckon?

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Tags: Andrea Riseborough, Andy Serkis, Ben Olins, Biba, Brighton Rock, Craig Parkinson, Cubitt, Densons, Hastings, Helen mirren, Herb lester Associates, John Hurt, Lloyd Johnson, Mad Men, Merc, Philip Davis, Pinkie, Pretty Green, Quadrophenia, Richard Attenborough, Rowan Joffe, Sam Riley, Sean Wilson, The Fabulous Cellar

Come Friday night I like a bit of a cavort, complete with elaborate flourishes and exhibitionist tendencies.

One of my ambitions is to dance alongside self-styled attention whore/gig irritant Beatle Bob.

Watch him go with Roky Erickson to Don’t Shake Me Lucifer:

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Tags: Beatle Bob, Colourmusic, Don't Shake Me Lucifer, Roky Erickson, Yes

Postcards are an abiding obsession, and this, just arrived from Will Birch, is a nice one to add to the collection.

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Tags: Barney Bubbles, biography, Ian Dury, Will Birch

This was shot by GilW the other night at a punk-rock veterans’ book event in Berkeley. The gentlemen sitting left to right are Mike Hudson, Cheetah Chrome and Bob Pfeiffer.

For other, calmer interludes from the in-store, visit here.

Tags: Bob Pfeiffer, Cheetah Chrome, Mike Hudson

Little Feat records were something else, but then again Little Feat were something else.

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Tags: 1975, Little feat, Long Distance Love, Lowell George, Neon Park, Old Grey Whistle Test, Richie Hayward, The Last Record Album

I am delighted to see that Jimmy’s Corner, my favourite Manhattan bar, features on the latest map from Herb Lester Associates.

Jimmy’s epitomises the map’s celebration of “old” New York.

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Tags: Ben Olins, Herb lester Associates, Jimmy's Corner, Manhattan