Paul Gorman

Vinyl

Photography: Willie Christie on the (No Pussyfooting) cover

No Pussyfooting front
//Front cover (No Pussyfooting), Fripp & Eno, EG/Island, 1973.//

The final piece in Tate Modern’s current Yayoi Kusama show – her dramatic Infinity Mirror Room – brought to my vinyl-fixated mind one of the greatest record sleeves of all time: the gatefold for (No Pussyfooting), the album released in 1973 by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp.

All of a piece with the music it packages – prismatic, playful, calm, cerebral, oblique – the four-part composition was photographed and designed at Eno’s behest by photographer/filmmaker Willie Christie.

Continue reading Photography: Willie Christie on the (No Pussyfooting) cover

Vinyl: John Cooper Clarke’s Innocents EP

Front cover, Innocents EP, 1977.

Chance encounters with heroes can be tricky, but bumping into John Cooper Clarke outside the Festival Hall late one evening last week proved pleasurable beyond all expectation.

Clarke looked the bomb, naturally in dark glasses as midnight approached, his frame draped in a coat worn across the shoulders gangster-style with white silk scarf hanging loose. Charm personified, he returned my compliments with words of praise with which I’m still coming to terms.

It hasn’t taken much to versify them into this lame appropriation of Clarke’s rat-a-tat style:

“I know your work,

I’ve got The Look,

I was first on our block with that book.”

Continue reading Vinyl: John Cooper Clarke’s Innocents EP

Stagger Lee selects: Stone – Prince Alla

Sixth on the gun from guest selector Stagger Lee (click on the title):

Prince Alla – Stone (Freedom Sounds)
Don’t do anywhere near as much reggae DJing as I used to, but this never leaves my big box of 7″s – as good as 70s roots gets. Dug it out for a recent gig and can’t leave it alone.

Catalogues: Son Of Vulgar

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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:

Continue reading Catalogues: Son Of Vulgar