I’m grateful to Peter Stanfield, media and arts professor at the University of Kent, for alerting me to these great images of members of Shakin’ Stevens’ backing band The Sunsets sporting T-shirts designed by the late Malcolm McLaren for sale in his shop Let It Rock at 430 King’s Road in the early 70s.
//In Let It Rock Rock ‘N Roll Lives Chuck Berry T-shirt, 1975. Photo: Ian Dickson/Getty Images//
//Also 1975 – pink pegs from Sex. Photo: Michael Putland/Getty Images//
//At home in London, 1978. Photo: Fin Costello/Getty Images//
//At a Nico show at CBGB, February 1979. Photo: Ebet Roberts/Getty Images//
Guitarist Chris Spedding is one of the unsung heroes of Seventies style.
I’ve been a fan of his music and look since 1974, when I acquired Jab It In Yore Eye. This was the second album by Sharks, formed by Spedding with other survivors of the early 70s music scene after leaving jazz-rock outfit Nucleus and gigging with Jack Bruce.
//Leporello for The Conformist featuring (far left), David Parkinson’s unusual entry in his 1970 photography degree show at London’s Regent Street Poly//
//Paul Kindersley at last night’s exhibition opening//
The Conformist – artist Paul Kindersley’s counter intuitively-titled group show about non-conformity of expression from Emma, Lady Hamilton and Aubrey Beardsley to Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Julie Verhoeven – opened with a bang last night with a private view at Mayfair’s art and jewellery space Belmacz.
//Sylvain in the streets of Austin last week//
On a recent trip to Austin, Texas, I enjoyed many encounters with members of the region’s creative community, not least expat British sci-fi Titan Michael Moorcock and his delightful wife Linda, transplanted Westernwear expert Jerry Ryan and his Heritage Boot emporium and, as previously noted here, the charming duo Jesse Sublett and Lois Richwine.
I also had fun with the visiting New York Doll Sylvain Sylvain Mizrahi, in town for a residency at the Hotel Vegas, on the the city’s hip eastside.
This afternoon I’m the guest on DJ Gary Crowley’s show on London-based digital station Soho Radio.
I’ll be talking about Punk London: In The City 1975-78 – my map collaboration with Herb Lester Associates which is published on Friday (February 12) – and also playing a highly personal selection of songs in the spirit of the project where we aim to sidestep the cliches and show another side to the oft-told punk story.
//1964 promotional shot of Screaming Lord Sutch//
DÉTOURNÉD PAINTING
Intended for the public. Easy reading
Collectors and museums,
be modern
If you have old paintings,
do not despair.
Keep your memories
But detourne them
So they correspond to your time
Why reject the old [paintings]
If one can modernize them?
With a few brushstrokes
Modernize your old culture
Be up to date
and distinguished at the same time
Painting is over
Better give it the final blow
Detourne
Long live painting
Asger Jorn, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Rive Gauche, Paris, May 1959. Translation: Young Kim.
Among the pertinent exhibits of our forthcoming show Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges is the statement disavowing traditional approaches to artistic creation made by the Danish artist and writer Asger Jorn in the late 50s.
//Model wears studded and accessorised Let It Rock ‘Gene’ glitter print shirt, Musik Express, November 1972. Photo: Unknown//
Thanks to Mr Mondo for turning me onto Glam Idols, a goldmine of early 70s music and fashion images.
Lovingly presented and well credited, many of the photographs on the feed derive from continental European publications, like the 1972 shot above of a German model in a glitter t-shirt from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s 50s outlet Let It Rock at 430 King’s Road.
//From top left: Chinese Communist Party pamphlet, 1971; McLaren in Let It Rock 1972; Proclamation by Engels and Marx, 1881; Title lettering, Belgian film poster, 1958//
A year or so ago I established the source material for one of the first designs generated by Malcolm McLaren in the fashion partnership he conducted with Vivienne Westwood in the 70s and early 80s.
Now I can reveal the inspiration: text contained in an unprepossessing Communist booklet celebrating the short-lived “Paris Commune” government of 19th Century revolutionary France.
//Lobby card for High School Confidential!, 1958. This is from the opening scene, where Lewis sings the movie’s title track//
Let It Rock was digging in the ruins of past cultures that you cared about. It was giving them another brief moment in the sun. It wasn’t about doing anything new. It was an homage. It was nostalgia.
Malcolm McLaren to Momus, 2002
Forty three years after its creation I can reveal the source of the Jerry Lee Lewis image which appeared on the Let It Rock t-shirt design “The ‘Killer’ Rocks On!”.
It is from a lobby card for Alan Freed’s 1958 rocksploitation flick High Street Confidential!; an original was just one of the pieces of 50s ephemera adorning Let It Rock’s premises at 430 King’s Road in 1972.
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