Iggy Pop strolls around the Losaida, 1993
Directed by Bram Van Splunteren, via openculture.com
Category: New York
Rough Kids badge for Kilburn And The High Road (sic)
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 […]
Is Saitch Yer Daddy: Collages by Kosmo Vinyl
Next month sees the opening of an exhibition of 53 collages tracking the fortunes of West Ham United FC over a season; they are all the product of expat football fan and music industry maverick Kosmo Vinyl. The show’s title, Is Saitch Yer Daddy, is taken from 60s graffito adorning a wall near West Ham’s […]
Pictures from an exhibition: Glam! The Performance Of Style
Perhaps it is a matter of displacement – that slippery moment when art becomes commerce, shifting back again into the cultural arena as another kind of commodity. The fact is, even today, few among us are willing to acknowledge that certain mass culture forms and practices may comprise the most significant ‘culture’ of our time, […]
Observer article highlights Met’s embarrassing punk flaws
I’m quoted in today’s article in UK Sunday newspaper The Observer about the factual failings surrounding the punk clothing collection of the New York Metropolitan Museum Of Art’s Costume Institute.
At Johnny Rotten’s pad in Malcolm McLaren’s leather jeans 1978: The story behind the photograph
This just in from Joe Stevens, following yesterday’s post about his new website: the story behind the photo with Johnny Rotten above, taken in London in 1978. We were at his Gunter Grove digs in Fulham. Malcolm (McLaren) had left his grotty leathers in my flat in NYC during the Sid and Nancy murder doings. […]
‘Because of the economic crisis, people are trying to consume as fast as possible. Ideas are dead; there aren’t any to express the mood. Fashion is irrelevant’: Malcolm McLaren + SEX, November 1975
It’s unlikely that cities will shake or nations start to rock under the impact of Malcolm McLaren’s sexual revolution. A few people might die though. Malcolm McLaren, at 30, is a mixture of entrepreneurial cultist, sexual evangelist, businessman, artist, fetishist and political philosopher; a psychotic visionary in the ephemeral subculture of the fashion world. David […]
Glam comes into focus: Karl Stoecker’s fashion shoot for Club International October 1972
Tucked away at the back of an issue of British soft-porn magazine Club International was a fashion shoot featuring clothing elements which denoted the crystallisation of the new art-directed glam aesthetic inaugurated by the release of Roxy Music’s first album a couple of months previously. The photographer was Karl Stoecker, the New Yorker who had […]
Music: Baby’s On Fire – Die Antwoord + Cut The World – Antony & The Johnsons
There’s plenty of great new music around at the moment; concurrently I have two contrasting tracks going round in my head, which is dizzying but exhilarating.
Whitney Houston at VH1 Divas 1999
I was in the audience at the Beacon Theatre NYC for the 1999 VH1 Divas, where this Whitney Houston performance was recorded. Her presence during this particular song is electrifying; she exudes vulnerability, a tortured female star (the wrong side of 35 according to the precepts of the global music industry) visibly dealing with the […]