This company letterhead was designed by the late graphics master Barney Bubbles for music entrepreneur Jake Riviera during the latter’s tenure at 60 Parker Street in London’s Covent Garden in the late 70s.
Continue reading Barney Bubbles’ cube letterhead design for Riviera Global Record Productions
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
Pete Flanagan, owner of the long-gone Zippo Records in Clapham, south London, has sent me this photograph of the shop interior.
It sums up everything that was wonderful about this unique space, where Pete established a hub for like-minded souls. With staff including Edwin Pouncey (aka Savage Pencil), Pete also released otherwise hard-to-find records via his own independent imprints. These included Heartland, 5 Hours Back and MoFoCo for Julian Cope’s towering LP Droolian.
I bought a lot of music and also an example of every one of the short-run t-shirts Zippo sold, including my favourite, this MC5 number (other owners, and there can’t be many because they were printed in very limited numbers, include Bobby Gillespie).
As a local I was a Zippo regular with our Battersea hound Tom. Pete christened him “The Conqueroo Dog” after the four-legged friend on the cover of his reissue of the Austin band’s 1968 release From The Vulcan Gas Company.
When Zippo closed I bought a whole load of stock and had a few happy years trading in vinyl as a sideline, until my back gave out.
Pete’s still at it, running Soho Music which is now on eBay – see here.
I bumped into Edwin P a couple of years back; he was in the company of another great person who was also a former Zippo staffer. Can’t for the life of me recall his name but hopefully he’ll see this and get in touch.
See what Savage Pencil is up to here.
“What’s to say, save that his contempt was not reserved solely for the music business? Or the art business. Or the business of being human. There were times when he saw with his own dead eyes. But he had the sight to see through them.”
K-LS on the album’s opening track Afoju Ti Ole Riran (Dead Eyes)
Ki-Longfellow Stanshall’s sleevenotes for the 2012 reissue of the lost classic Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead are stunning, filled with anguish and joy, rather like the life and work of the LP’s creator, her much-missed partner Vivian Stanshall.
I treasure my vinyl copy, put out with much love by my old mucker Joe Foster, and heartily recommend the Afro-flavoured grooves Stanshall brewed up back in 1974 with such fellow legends as Reebop Kwaku Baah, Jim Capaldi, Neil Innes, Gaspar Lawal and Steve Winwood.
Buy a copy of PoppyDisc’s vinyl reissue of Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead here.
One day I’ll write a post justifying my view that Kicks #6 is the hands-down greatest music magazine of all time, but for now it’s worth recording that the folks behind Kicks – namely Miriam Linna and Billy Miller – continue to, er, kick out the wildest music and related stuff via their Norton Records and Kicks Books imprints.
To coincide with the publication of the first volume of the trilogy Prophetika – which gathers together a trove of unpublished poetry and prose by the intergalactic visionary Sun Ra – Kicks Books (“The publisher, the parfumier”) has announced a fragrance of the same name which draws on an ancient formula “invoking a mirage of memories and mysteries and inciting a call to action”. Apparently there are hints of Cairo, Chicago…and Casseopia.
The perfume comes in a deluxe 0.5 oz Italian glass bottle in a presentation box and is just $13 – buy your’s here.
FB friend Joss Hutton nailed it with his response to the question as to what Prophetika smells like: “The Future”. Of course.
There’s a shindig to launch the book and niff at NYC’s St Mark’s Church next Friday. Details here.
Visit Kicks Books here and Norton Records here.
Sun Ra in performance with his Arkestra and in interview in Helsinki 1971:
Tonight I’m on Broken Hearts’ Jazz FM show Peppermint Candy talking about Teddy Boy style.
Rocket From The Crypt and Sympathy For The Record Industry were a great combo, and reached some kind of apex on 1995’s CD-hating 5″ single tribute to The Music Machine.
Continue reading Vinyl: Rocket From The Crypt Plays The Music Machine 5″ single