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Category: 1930s

1920s

Totally Wired: Music publications that made a difference

When he launched the small-format 32-page song sheet The Melody Maker in 1926, Tin Pan Alley music publisher Lawrence Wright sparked the media revolution that created the music press. This multi-million pound business eventually straddled the Atlantic and simultaneously proved a fertile breeding ground for generations of writers, photographers, film-makers and performers who made their […]

June 28, 2023
1920s

First copy of Totally Wired is in!

I’m really jazzed about getting my hands on the first finished copy of Totally Wired, my history of the music press which is published by Thames & Hudson this autumn. Designer Daniel Streat has done wonders with the day-the-world-turned-dayglo jacket concept and my choice of cover star Poly Styrene. There are 60 or so illustrations, […]

August 5, 2022
1930s

‘They had the t-shirt off his back’: The 40th anniversary of the creation of the notorious Cowboys t-shirt + the obscenity debate it sparked in the pages of The Guardian

This month – specifically July 26 – marks the 40th anniversary of the introduction for sale of Malcolm McLaren’s notorious Cowboys t-shirt in Sex, the revolutionary boutique he operated at 430 King’s Road with Vivienne Westwood. The shirt’s status as the most provocative of all punk designs is enhanced by the fact that it made […]

July 11, 2015