***
This sleeve for Joseph Beuys’ 1982 single is featured in Son Of Vulgar, the latest “scratch” catalogue from Maggs Bros’ counterculture department.
With 24 lots, it’s a typically eclectic affair.
Here is a selection, from a Malcolm McLaren promotional brochure for Bow Wow Wow and a Roxy Club membership card through US transgender photography of the early 20th Century to the LAPD’s report on the Symbionese Liberation Front and a book by Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo:
Thanks to Neal Purvis for alerting me to these captivating photographs taken in London in the hot summer of 1976 by German holidaymaker Klaus Hiltscher.
As Neal points out, Hiltscher captures the mood of the city in that specific period; I don’t believe my recall is playing tricks on me when I write that every day – from May through to September – was glorious in terms of the weather, and more often than not eventful in a variety of ways.
NAME: Jeff Dexter
RESIDES: North London
OCCUPATION: Man about town
Trace the progress of popular culture over the last six decades and you’ll find Jeff Dexter at some of its crucial stages of development: demonstrating the twist to modernists at The Lyceum Ballroom and advising the Beatles on which boots to wear in the early 60s; DJing for the noonday underground at Tiles a few years later and then moving into London’s counter-cultural underground as a mainman at Middle Earth and The Roundhouse, where his Implosion nights set the scene for the rise of such friends as Marc Bolan and David Bowie.
There’s Jeff hanging out at Hung On You, booking bands for the first Glastonbury and Isle Of Wight festivals, managing chart-topping America, announcing The Clash at one of their early gigs and DJing for Paul Weller at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire a couple of years back as part of the Island 50 celebrations.
And now he’s answered the Blokes Of Britain questionnaire:
Hi Jeff. What’s with your look these days?
Eclectic and vintage. I mix anything from the past, from another culture, with the standard look which has been ingrained in me since childhood. I looked at some photos today and realised I’ve been doing this since 1968!
A couple of weeks back I and writer Teddy Jamieson strolled the length of the King’s Road for his piece on the thoroughfare for the Herald Scotland.
Thirty four years ago today The Heartbreakers played The Speakeasy.
The rock business haunt north of Oxford Circus had seen better times by this gig. I was taken by a member, a photographer at the agency where I worked. I remember being embarrassed by his long hair.
Continue reading Posters: The Heartbreakers at The Speakeasy (1977)
Just came across this card from one of my heroines, Caroline Coon.
This composition of images by Derek Harris from Christopher Gray’s Situationist text Leaving The 20th Century makes plain the significance of the visual vocabulary of the 60s anarchist movement on punk in general and Malcolm McLaren & Vivienne Westwood’s Anarchy Shirt in particular.
Continue reading Blessed & Blasted: Roots of the Anarchy Shirt part 3
Two “manifesto” designs which emanated from 430 King’s Road – the You’re Gonna Wake Up t-shirt and the Anarchy Shirt – share a reference to “The Black Hand Gang”.
I had long assumed that both referred to Spanish anarchists La Mano Negra, since the group’s name was listed with that of their fellow countryman and revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti.
But on the t-shirt, the absence of an “and” or connecting device had me pondering the possibility this was another Black Hand Gang; maybe the secret society dedicated to Serbian unity (linked to one of the events which triggered the First World War, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914)?
Continue reading Blessed & Blasted: Roots of the Anarchy Shirt part 2
My investigation into the multifarious strands which fed into the creation of the 1974 t-shirt You’re Gonna Wake Up has, in turn, ignited a convincing set of new theories about the genesis of another “manifesto” design, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s so-called Anarchy Shirt.
Continue reading Blessed & Blasted: Roots of the Anarchy Shirt part 1
Publication: The Guardian Weekend supplement, Dec 3-4, 1988.
I have collected and kept magazines, newspapers, fanzines and all sorts of publications for decades.
From the launch edition of The Weekend Guardian, this was the first in a series of think pieces by prominent people on aspects of design.
Paul Smith could tell what was coming; the desecration of Britain’s High Streets – and thus independently operated, individual and often idiosyncratic retail outlets – at the hands of the giant chains of faceless stores.
Continue reading From the vaults: Paul Smith on the threat to the High Street (Guardian 1988)
