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I’ve been acting as a consultant to artist Lucy Harrison on her latest site specific project Carnaby Echoes, which focuses on the culturally fertile area of central London adjacent to Soho. With the starting point of the opening of Murray’s Club in Beak Street in 1913, Harrison is mounting her artistic response to 100 years […]
The Cocoa Song is from the cult British Film Institute-funded multicultural musical Moon Over The Alley, directed by Joseph Despins and William Dumaresq. Released in 1976 with a score by Galt McDermot, a fellow Canadian who is probably best known for his compositions for Hair, Moon Over The Alley is largely set around London W10; […]
As demonstrated by my recent post, the west London house of collector/gallerist Jonathan Ross became a hive for the art/boho/punk crowd flooding the capital in the 70s. Among the visitors were Johnny Thunders and Iggy Pop, who both left their marks in different ways.
//All photos (c) Jonathan Ross// Here are more previously unpublished images from London’s punk demi-monde. Coincident to receiving Joe Stevens’ photograph of the pre-Pretenders Chrissie Hynde and photographer Kate Simon in Malcolm McLaren’s Sex Pistols Nude Boy shirts, collector/gallerist/Londoner Jonathan Ross supplied me with this fabulous selection of Polaroids taken at his west London house […]
This photograph – taken by Joe Stevens in early 1976 in Fulham, west London – is featured in the exhibition Just Chaos!, which opens tomorrow (May 7) at Marc Jacobs’ Bleecker Street NYC bookstore BookMarc. The T-shirts worn by Simon and Hynde were among the first variants of a limited edition designed by Malcolm McLaren […]
Dave Robinson, one of the British music business’s towering figures, has sent me this lovely pop-reggae tune from Madness man Lee Thompson’s project. It’s great for this sunny Bank Holiday; Bitty McLean is on top vocal form. Fair takes me back to seeing Madness in their North London Invaders incarnation support a jazz-rock trio (!) […]
//Hipgnosis fashion shoot for Club International, 1972// An antiques restorer friend has pointed out that the early 70s fashion shoot by design studio Hipgnosis I recently featured here calls to mind the preoccupations with the female form of the late German artist Paul Wunderlich. My friend – who wishes to remain anonymous – has offered […]
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.
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 […]
Tonight I am hosting an event at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum: an ‘in conversation’ with Boy George about the importance and influence of popular culture’s greatest manipulator of visual identity, David Bowie.