This afternoon I’m the guest on DJ Gary Crowley’s show on London-based digital station Soho Radio.
I’ll be talking about Punk London: In The City 1975-78 – my map collaboration with Herb Lester Associates which is published on Friday (February 12) – and also playing a highly personal selection of songs in the spirit of the project where we aim to sidestep the cliches and show another side to the oft-told punk story.
As a tribute to the late rock star, I have joined forces with map-makers Herb Lester to create an online guide to David Bowie’s London from his birth at 40 Stansfield Road in Brixton in 1947 through his solo art show in Mayfair in 1995 to the giant retrospective David Bowie Is exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington in 2013.
It is of course very sad to note the death of David Bowie; 69 is too young, particularly for such an important figure in the pop cultural landscape with an evident abundance of creative contributions still to make to our lives.
Below is a fun clip bringing back memories of the 2000 European Merry Mex-Mas tour by El Vez with his Memphis Mariachis and lovely Elvettes.
I am collaborating with Herb Lester Associates on a new map – Punk London: In The City 1975-78 will be published in the New Year as a celebration of the movement which swept the capital 40 years ago and resonates today as an attitude throughout the world.
Continue reading New map in the New Year – Punk London: In The City 1975-78
Director Danny Kleinman’s film about his 70s group Bazooka Joe and the night the Sex Pistols played their first gig as support act is available to view here and at GQ Online.
For GQ I have written an introduction discussing last Friday’s event Be Reasonable Demand The Impossible, where Kleinman’s film was premiered.
View the film below and read my piece here:
The poster for the Sex Pistols’ first performance (on November 6 1975 in the Common Room of St Martin’s School Of Art in central London’s Charing Cross Road) has been found after 40 years – and it doesn’t even mention them!
//Stills from unedited interview with Malcolm McLaren by Ariel Van Straten, London 1996//
The establishment still aren’t quite able to understand interactive; it’s the street which understands it and is able to use it in a simplistic but very real way. They will be the people who break through; they will make it the most sexy. It won’t be as cerebral as the likes of Peter Gabriel or Eno and that lot.
[Handed underground dance CD]: See look, they’re already emailing, connected to the web, and that’s where it’s all happening.
Web TV, downloading music, graphics and so on is definitely the future, definitely where it is going to go. These guys are on the verge of suggesting in the years to come you won’t purchase your music from shops. Your cultural information is going to come through the Net.
Now it’s about buying the technology so that you can broadcast from your goddamn bedroom across the planet. I think the reason why the industry is holding back is because they know that it is only a question of the technology being affordable and that’s when it will happen.
Malcolm McLaren, London 1996
In the mid-90s photographer Ariel Van Straten interviewed Malcolm McLaren for a film about graffiti art. Entitled Getting Your Name Up, the short was made for a video-only issue of Don’t Tell It magazine, to raise awareness of the plight of Simon Sunderland, who had been jailed for five years for committing criminal damage on the rail network in South Yorkshire using the tag ‘Fista’.
This’ll put a spring in your step – Dee-lite performing at Wigstock in 1990, as posted by Hintmag. The second track is What Is Love (Holographic Goatee Mix).
Check it out on Hintmag’s FB page.
Here is the promo for Groove Is In The Heart:
Read my piece on the stylistic changes rung by David Bowie during the early 70s on The Guardian’s men’s fashion pages here.
I discuss his fashion collaborations with Freddie Burretti, Daniella Parmar and Kansai Yamamoto and talk about the Pin-Ups suit from City Lights Studio designed by Derek Morton. Hope you enjoy.