Glam! The Performance Of Style – the exhibition which locates early 70s glam rock in the context of fine art and the interplay between “high” and mass culture – is opening at the Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz, Austria later this month.
I was a consultant to Glam!’s curator Darren Pih of Tate Liverpool, where the show opened at the beginning of this year before moving on to Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle for the summer.
Continue reading Glam! The Performance Of Style at Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz
I’m involved in a couple of events which open in London this week: artist Lucy Harrison’s multi-layered project Carnaby Echoes in the West End and photographer Nick Knight’s exhibition Punk at his Showstudio space in SW1.
A fashion shoot styled by Pru Walters and photographed by Karl Stoecker for a 1974 issue of Janet Street-Porter’s secretarial magazine West One foregrounds the importance of Westernwear to London street style in the early to mid-70s.
A few years back I wrote a series of blogs about the so-called “Wild Thing” jacket worn by Iggy Pop on the cover of his and The Stooges’ album Raw Power; in 2008 I had brokered a deal for the jacket designers John and Molly Dove to reissue a t-shirt range – including a version bearing the Wild Thing’s panther head – via Topman.
Around that time I also hooked them up with the current owner of the jacket, US maverick pop culture entrepreneur and collector “Long Gone” John Mermis (who I’d met as far back as the mid-90s at his extraordinary Long Beach mansion).
Continue reading Iggy Pop’s Wild Thing jacket: Not from Paradise Garage
Here’s a selection of photographs from the family photo album of Johnny Deluxe, one of my favourite unpindownable Londoners. Deluxe is an artist, clothes-maker, performer, raconteur and all-round individualist.
I’ll let him tell the story behind each.
This was taken in March or April 1978. I was wearing a Seditionaries Destroy t-shirt and Boy zip trousers, not quite bondage ones, just zips on the pockets, but super drainpipe in bright canvas. I was just about to go to France and be chased by French teddy boys. I got my hair cut at Alphonso’s in Oxford Road, Reading, an old boy’s barber where I asked for an “Elvis” and then hacked into it at home (Alphonso was too old for the modern stuff).
Trevor Myles’ decision to incorporate a flocked and tiger-striped 1966 Ford Mustang as part of his retail space Paradise Garage naturally attracted a lot of attention during the brief existence of this unusual fashion outlet at 430 King’s Road in Chelsea’s World’s End in 1971.
Continue reading Flocked + tiger-striped: The Paradise Garage Ford Mustang
This is designer Ben Kelly at his 1974 degree show at London’s Royal College Of Art.
Kelly adopted the alter-ego The Photo Kid, who is portrayed in the work by which he is standing. The Photo Kid wore clothes – in particular brothel creepers – from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop Let It Rock, as did Kelly; the shoes, pink socks and belt in this photograph all came from there, while the Hopalong Cassidy & Topper top (see Ian Harris’s comment below) was picked up at a Paris flea market.
Continue reading The Photo Kid: Ben Kelly at the Royal College Of Art, 1974
Dazed Digital is featuring a précis of my investigation into the roots of the Anarchy Shirt as sold in Sex and Seditionaries at 430 King’s Road in 1976 and 1977.
Continue reading My Anarchy Shirt archaeology at Dazed Digital
As an addendum to my recent post about the staging of the very special late night London concert given by Ian Dury’s art-rock ensemble Kilburn & The High Roads in 1974, here’s the badge commissioned by manager the late Tommy Roberts to flag up the concurrent release of the group’s single Rough Kids.
Then a neglected pop promotional medium – badges were considered kids’ stuff; the sole prominent champion was Barney Bubbles, who produced a range to go with his branding of space rockers Hawkwind and pub-rock outfit Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers – the pre-punk barbed wire logo button was conceived and executed by Simon Haynes, designer of the ambitious stage set for the Kilburns’ gig at the King’s Road Theatre.
Continue reading Rough Kids badge for Kilburn And The High Road (sic)
As these rarely seen photographs show, when the subject of my last book the late Tommy Roberts took over management of Kilburn & The High Roads he sought to elevate them from the pub-rock scene by upping the visual ante on every front.
