//5 Silverthorne Road, London SW8, 1978.//

Alan Freeman (BBC DJ): “The popular music press always branded Henry Cow or Art Bears as ‘left wing’. “
Chris Cutler (drummer, Henry Cow/Art Bears/etc): ”Of course. Extremely. If you hate this government, and everything it stands for.”

I witnessed Henry Cow live for the first time at a “free” concert held one afternoon in a room at Finchley Town Hall in 1974 supporting The Global Village Trucking Co.

The culmination of the performance came when guitarist Fred Frith trod on a tatty and evidently useless acoustic and brought the hat around to “pay for repairs”. Recognising this as a piece of “show”, I was simultaneously bamboozled and excited by the incomprehension I felt at their improvisations.

I also appreciated the anti-rock/agit-prop stylings, particularly Frith’s beanie hat and cricket jumper, and the insistence on sitting down during even the most energetic extemporising (was Jah Wobble also taking note? I shall have to ask him).

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Tags: Alan Freeman, Art Bears, Chris Cutler, Henry Cow, Kevin Coyne, south Lambeth

This was produced by Billy Childish and his associates before they formed The Stuckists.

I went along to a few Stuckist exhibitions and events, but preferred this manifesto to The Stuckists’; their’s seemed mere reaction when applied to artists of lesser stature than the soon-to-exit Childish.

Yet The Stuckists were worthwhile in their verbalisation of discontent at Britpop Blairite Britain’s rampant YBA smugness (and gave rise to the track with the ever-pertinent title Art Or Arse?).

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Tags: Billy Childish, Eugene Doyen, Sexton Ming, The Stuckists, YBA

“It didn’t matter what side of the bed you were lying on, as long as you were lying on it. Everybody from (author/actress) Anne Lambton to (Sex Pistols guitarist) Kutie Jones to (socialite and writer) Anthony Haden-Guest – they were all flattered. Just goes to show how everyone loves to have their moment – good, bad or indifferent.”

Malcolm McLaren, The Look, 2006

It’s coming up to five years since I posted my marathon dissection – including extensively researched links to sources and references – of the divisive 1970s punk manifesto t-shirt design You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On!

Here is a new version of that post, revised and updated with fresh links.

Enjoy!

Sixty years after Blast, the You’re Gonna Wake Up list t-shirt adopted a similarly truculent tone in an attempt to ring the alarms amid a culture rendered flaccid by the failure of the 60s dream.

You’re Gonna Wake Up – which went on sale in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s boutique Sex at 430 King’s Road in the autumn of 1974 – was conceived by fellow traveller and soon-to-be manager of The Clash Bernie Rhodes and realised with contributions from McLaren and their friend Gerry Goldstein.

Of course, it is best known for carrying the band name McLaren had recently granted to a bunch of teenagers hanging around the shop: “Kutie Jones and his SEX PISTOLS”.

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Tags: Alexander Cockburn, Alfred Bester, Anne Lambton, Anthony Haden-Guest, Bernard Wolfe, bernie Rhodes, COUM Transmission, David Cooper, David Holmes, Elton John, George Dangerfield, John Gunni Busck, John Lacey, Konstantin Paustovsky, Mal Huff, Marian and Doloures Price, Mel Ramos, Mervin Jones, New Statesman, pat Arrowsmith, Patrick heron, The Clash, Victor Lownes, You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You've Been Lying On!