//Clockwise from top left: Gene Vincent with one of The Houseshakers, Magnet Club, Chelmsford, UK, February 1971. Photo: http://gene.vincent.fanclub.voila.net; Let It Rock assistant in Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps top, Wembley Stadium, August 5, 1972. Photo: Masayoshi Sukita; Vincent’s quote as featured on the Sex t-shirt You’re Gonna Wake Up, 1974//

‘Gene Vincent for me was the embodiment of rock’n’roll’

Malcolm McLaren 1997

On September 22 1971, Gene Vincent was a mid-week booking to play a “rock revival” night at central London club The Marquee.

Times were tough; at just 36, the soft-spoken American rocker was apparently way past his heyday and beset by severe health problems brought on by the combination of alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs taken to dull the constant pain in his left leg. This was the result of a crippling motorbike accident in his youth and the lingering effects of having been in the 1960 car-crash which killed Eddie Cochran.

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Tags: bernie Rhodes, Billy Fury, Gene Vincent, Hal Carter, Jeff Beck, Joe Foster, John Collis, London Rock & Roll Festival, Masayoshi Sukita, Patrick Casey, Rev Ola, The Marquee, Vivienne Westwood, Wembley Stadium, You're Gonna Wake Up

//Left: Poster, 30 x 20″, one of a series of four, for Generation X residency at The Marque, Soho, London, September 1977. Right: Poster, 60 x 40″, one of a series of five for Stiff Records package tour of UK, October/November, 1977. Design (c) Barney Bubbles Estate//

//Installation view of Making Music Modern dominated by Bubbles’ Costello poster. Also note his Do It Yourself sleeve and Generation X poster. Photo: John Wronn//

New York’s Museum Of Modern Art is featuring seven works by the late graphics maestro Barney Bubbles in the current exhibition Making Music Modern: Design For The Eye & Ear.

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Tags: Almost Blue, Billy Bragg, Colin Fulcher, Elvis Costello, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Generation X, High FIdelity, Ian Dury, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Johnny Moped, Making Music Modern: Design For The Eye & Ear, MoMA, Museum Of Modern Art, Philip Johnson's Architecture & Design Galleries, The Marquee

//Shinobu Kanai aka “Shinny” in a Seditionaries top in Episode 9 of the first series of The Return Of The Saint, broadcast November 1978?//

//Kanai  in The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, 1980//

// As “Japanese Woman” in the opening sequence of Insignificance, 1985//

Currently doing the rounds of the punk groups on various social networking sites is this clip from the cheesy 70s revival of classic 60s British television series The Saint.

Entitled The Arrangement, episode nine of The Return Of The Saint was broadcast on November 5, 1978 and starred such UK TV drama stalwarts as Carolyn Seymour, seen here looking glam in a car in Soho’s Wardour Street outside The Marquee where the great Aussie band The Saints are crashing through Swing For The Crime from their Eternally Yours album.
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Tags: Bobo Pheonix, Dead Fingers Talk, Eternally Yours, Groovy Bob, If It Ain't Stiff It Ain't Worth A Fuck, Insignificance, John Lydon, Julien Temple, Nicolas Roeg, Peter medak, Rob Eunson, Robert Fraser, Screen International, Seditionaries, Sex Pistols, Shinny, Sinobu Kanai, Steve Jones, Swing For The Crime, The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, The Internationals, The Marquee, The Saints, The Story Of Brian Epstein, Vivienne Westwood

//Johnny Moped, Dave Berk, Fred Berk, Slimy Toad, 1977. Photo: Chiswick Records//

In an age clogged up with boil-in-the-bag popular music documentaries, I’m looking forward to Fred Burns’ Basically, Johnny Moped, about the unpredictable outsider who emerged via associations with The Damned and Chrissie Hynde during the post-punk period to strut and fret his hour upon the stage.

Moped and his band – Dave and Fred Berk and Slimy Toad – were out and about a lot in 1977 and 1978; I caught them a couple of times, once as part of a bigger bill at Camden Town’s Music Machine (now Koko) and another time in the West End (possibly The Marquee).

Their single Darling, Let’s Have Another Baby was (and remains 35 years later) a stand-out song of the period and Barney Bubbles’ artwork for that and other Moped releases and promotional material sealed the deal.

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Tags: Captain Sensible, Chiswick Records, Chrissie Hynde, Cycledelic, Darling let's have Another Baby, Dave berk, Fred Berk, Fred Burns, Incendiary Device, Jake Riviera, Johnny Moped, Koko, Music Machine, Shane Magowan, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Simon Callow, Slimy Toad, The Marquee