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As punk expert/collector and design academic Paul Burgess notes, references to 430 King’s Road turn up in the most surprising places. So thanks to him for notifying me about this photograph of the coolest address in pop culture – and in particular the tiger stripe-flocked Ford Mustang which adorned the street outside during the Paradise Garage phase […]
Stiff Records was on fire in 1977. The British independent record label, with owners Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson snapping up acts and art director Barney Bubbles applying his unsurpassable skills to the visualising of their music, came straight out of the traps 40 years ago this month with the release of the first ‘punk’ LP Damned […]
I am fortunate enough to be able to state that the first live music concert I attended was the midnight double bill of Frank Sinatra and The Count Basie Orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall in May 1970. I was 10 years old. My resourceful mother wangled tickets for the entire family, with one of […]
A few years back I came across Malcolm McLaren’s annotated copy of Indian Rawhide, the anthropologist Mable Morrow’s study of the folk art produced by Native American tribes which inspired the late cultural iconoclast in the conceptualising with his partner Vivienne Westwood of their Spring/Summer 1982 fashion collection Savage. McLaren obtained a copy of Morrow’s […]
As a follow-up to my last post, here is the stunning poster for Eight Young Photographers, the third exhibition to be held at the Photographers Gallery (which opened at its original premises in central London’s Great Newport Street at the beginning of 1971). The image has been provided by Mark Trompeteler, who was one of the […]
Eight Young Photographers was the third exhibition to be held at the newly-opened Photographers Gallery at its original premises in Great Newport Street in London’s West End. The gallery opened in January 1971 with a group show entitled The Concerned Photographer featuring, among others, Robert Capa, and followed that by simultaneously staging three exhibits, including a display […]
In 1971 the great advertising director and photographer Michael Joseph was commissioned to shoot a billboard campaign for the Italian digestif Fernet-Branca.
Martin Stone hopped, pre-dawn, through the Cheshire street market, scavenging books. Winklepickers, tourniquet trousers, mildewed beret, bulging swagbag: Blind Pew impersonated by Max Wall. Cigarette grafted to trembling, prehensile fingers, he was an anthology of retro fashion. And in his wake there shimmered a vortex of gossip and, amazingly, goodwill… Iain Sinclair, The Independent, February […]
I’m really looking forward to visiting the forthcoming exhibition of the photography of Dave Hendley, who died this summer. Hendley is best known for the photos he took of the Jamaican music scene in the 70s, but he holds a special place for me as the man responsible for one of my favourite compilations, the double-LP Rebel […]
“He was a man full of wit and charm who always had an eye for new and exciting things. His special characteristics were kindness and forethought” Jordan Mooney, 2016 Following my recent blogs on the life of the late fashion model David “Piggy” Worth, here is a gem: Sex and Seditionaries superstar Jordan Mooney recalls her […]