Out There from Herb Lester Associates marks a departure from terra firma for my favourite map-makers: they’re anticipating the wave of space tourism of the future with this guide to three Grand Tours of the Solar System.
Complete with speculative observations from such sci-fi greats as Arthur C. Clarke, HG Wells and Olaf Stapledon (author of the 1930 book The Last And First Men, about the flight of mankind to Venus), Out There voyages from the Tar Pits Of Titan and the Fountains of Enceladus to the “giant space sponge” moon, Hyperion.
The text is by Matthew De Abatua with design and illustrations by Paul Rogers.
Out There’s publication has been accompanied by Trunk Records’ release of a companion space-themed download album compiled by Nick from the much missed west London record store Intoxica!.
//Original print of photo for Club International, 1975. Models include, from far right, Stephan Raynor, Don Letts and Martin Brading. Photo: David Parkinson//
I’ve been enjoying researching materials relating to the late photographer David Parkinson for a feature for GQ magazine, so thought I’d share some of the images I dug out of the Parkinson archive concerning the 70s King’s Road retro clothing store Acme Attractions.
Parkinson’s position as fashion editor of Paul Raymond’s sophisticated soft-porn magazine Club International enabled him to style and present Acme clothing for a wide readership, on occasion using the shop team as models.
Acme was opened by Parkinson’s friend Stephan Raynor (they’d known each other since they were part of a gang of style-obsessed teenagers in Leicester in the early 60s) with John Krivine, previously a Brixton-based jukebox dealer, in 1974.
//As the Parkinson photograph appeared in the magazine, flipped and tinted. Note ref to “Acme Tailors”////Parkinson used ties from his collection – including some sourced from Acme – for this March 1975 Club International feature//
//Drift: New t-shirt from Japanese streetwear company Peel + Lift//
My 2011 post unraveling the threads running through the notorious Naked Cowboys punk t-shirt has itself inspired a new shirt.
The Cowboys t-shirt was designed by Malcolm McLaren in 1975 for sale in SEX, the shop he ran with Vivienne Westwood at 430 King’s Road in London’s World’s End.
Popular with punks and worn by members of the Sex Pistols and their coterie, it was initially known as the Saturday Night Dance shirt because of the presence of the dancehall sign in the appropriated homoerotic cowboy illustration by Jim French.
//Cowboys t-shirt sold at auction in London last year//
The new t-shirt has been produced by Japanese streetwear company Peel + Lift, which reproduces many McLaren and Westwood designs. It is entitled Drift, making overt the presence of 60s radical thinking in McLaren’s artwork: the drift, or the dérive, was a major theme of the Situationist International, which believed individuals should allow themselves to wander urban landscapes and become either repelled or enchanted by what they found (in the manner of the archetypal French urban explorer the flâneur).
//Panel, p3, Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti, 1966//
Do yourself a favour and read Mick Brown’s interview with Kenneth Anger on the Esquire website.
We were fortunate to sit with Mick during part of his preparation for the piece, attendance to the screenings of contemporary work and a q&a with the magus during last summer’s brief Anger season at the ICA. As Brown’s article confirms, Anger’s powers appear undimmed by age; his presence that night was enhanced by a beautiful suit by Agnès Troublé (Agnes B); the pair’s friendship goes back to 1959.
There are few exponents of popular journalism to rival Brown for economy, precision and wit in delivery. Read this fine example of a writer at the top of his game here.
My recent post about the Mr Freedom designs in the V&A collection sparked some memories from graphic artist Ian Harris, who sends this 1972 photograph of himself in a Mr Freedom hamburger print shirt:
//Ian Harris with his then-wife Maggie, Brighton, UK, 1972. Ian Harris Collection////Mr Freedom hamburger print shirt in the V&A’s collection. Note appliqué//
In the 1972 photo, the shirt’s hamburger appliqué is obscured; Harris had worked for Mr Freedom partner Tommy Roberts at his 60s boutique Kleptomania, and gave the late Roberts a number of items relating to his career a few years back. Included was the appliqué which Harris had kept for many years.
As Harris points out, his wife Maggie, a model, is sporting an Angie Bowie-influenced look in the photo above. Here she is in another early 70s shot, taken outside John and Lyris Mann’s Kensington boutique Strictly For The Birds:
//Maggie outside 4 Holland Walk, Kensington, London, 1971. Ian Harris Collection//
Here’s an old and new Christmas favourite; hope they spread holiday cheer.
Feliz Navidad’s blending of the Mexican Christmas carol as popularised by José Feliciano with PiL’s Public Image never fails to please, bringing back happy memories of the UK leg of the Merry Mex-Mas dates in 2000 I helped organise for my dear friend Robert Lopez, aka El Vez, who wowed audiences with his Elvettes and the Memphis Mariachis. This footage is from that tour.
Alan McGee’s Poptones released the accompanying album and the song on a limited edition 7in.
Meanwhile I’m adding Nick Lowe’s Christmas At The Airport to my list of hardy perennials; the video’s great and it was fabulous to see Nick at our Christmas drinks a couple of weeks back, fresh from yet another hit American tour.
It’s from his new album Quality Street which is as off-the-wall as you like.
Hope you enjoy both songs. Thanks for following my blog and Happy Holidays to you.
“There is a moment when ‘good taste’ becomes dead; what has been considered ‘bad’ is suddenly found to be invigorating. Fashion today has little to do with la mode and the tacky is often accepted as an essential part of the necessary ‘total’ look. It can be fun.”
Cecil Beaton, introduction to the catalogue for the 1971 V&A exhibition Fashion: An Anthology
Recent visits to the V&A’s Archive of Art & Design have proved fruitful, particularly a viewing earlier this week of the collection of Pop Art clothing sold through London boutique Mr Freedom in the late 60s and early 70s.
//Design: Diana Crawshaw, 1971////Kiss Off t-shirt, Jim O’Connor, 1971////Design Christopher Snow/Trevor Myles, body design: Diana Crawshaw, 1971////Design: Pamla Motown, 1971//
//Vivienne Westwood in felt Inside Out Jacket with assistants Debbie Wilson and Michael Collins in Seditionaries, 1977//
While updating his rich and varied archive, photographer Homer Sykes came across these superb photographs taken inside Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s boutique Seditionaries at 430 King’s Road in the spring of 1977.
The images capture the air of raw uncertainty surrounding the shop and the McLaren/Westwood coterie in this period. McLaren’s charges the Sex Pistols had recently been signed to their third record company in six months – Virgin Records – after being publicly excoriated for their behaviour and bounced out of EMI and A&M. The national media had seized upon punk as a source of sensationalism and the release of the Pistols’ explosive God Save The Queen was a matter of weeks away.
//Debbie Wilson (aka Debbie Juvenile) sports Hangman Jumper, Seditionaries, 1977. Note the studded Venus Top and leather jacket on the wall behind the counter////Westwood expounding against the photographic mural of Dresden after WW2 air-raids, Seditionaries, 1977. Note Collins’ Cambridge Rapist design produced by Westwood’s partner Malcolm McLaren a couple of years earlier////Behind the customer in black bondage jacket is the wall-size inverted photographic mural of Piccadilly Circus, Seditionaries, 1977//
On Saturday August 20 1977 Sykes again took to the King’s Road to document the atmosphere of unrest embodied by the outbreaks of violence caused by marauding Teddy Boys targeting punks and such boutiques as Seditionaries and Boy.
//Young Ted bops while another’s jacket mourns Elvis Presley’s recent death, King’s Road, 1977////Musician/actor Gary Holton and girlfriend Tracy Boyle lead a demonstration against violence between Teds and Punks along the King’s Road. Far left is punk Mick Bladder//
Some of his photographs feature the punk Mick Bladder, whose arrest on that day in August 1977 was featured in Wolfgang Büld’s Punk In London. This documentary shows how the movement’s initial creative burst swiftly dissipated, while Sykes’ images capture the ways in which a cult movement had entered the mainstream, infiltrating the media, music, fashion and the wider culture.
Sykes’ archive covers the waterfront, from social unrest including the Notting Hill Carnival riot of 1976 and the riots in Toxteth and Brixton in the early 80s, to the on-the-road antics of Paul McCartney & Wings and Sigue Sigue Sputnik, the New Romantic haven the Blitz club, Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World and Quentin Crisp . Visit www.homersykes.com.
//Le Gun’s Planet Frottage, one of the group works featured in Space Is Deep//
Tomorrow sees the opening of Space Is Deep, the latest exhibition from art collective Le Gun.
The show, at London’s Daniel Blau gallery and featuring contributions from fellow travellers such as Wildcat Will Blanchard, Andrzej Klimowski and Will Sweeney, marks a departure for the group; for the first time work in colour is included alongside Le Gun’s trademark monochrome representations.
“We felt the time was right to introduce some colour and started off by making two technicolour free-form ‘nightmare paintings’, says Robert Rubbish, who founded Le Gun in 2004 with fellow artist/illustrators Bill Bragg, Chris Bianchi, Neal Fox and Stephanie von Reiswitz and designers Alex Wright and Matt Appleton.
“Then we reassessed our approach, fine-tuned our colour pallet and made three space-inspired paintings, taking references from the likes of (horror/scifi comic artist) LB Cole and Tintin’s adventure Explorers On The Moon.”
Here’s a cure for year-end cookie-cutter rock-doc fatigue.
Basically Johnny Moped, Fred Burns’ exemplary documentary about Paul Halford (aka punk rocker Johnny Moped), has been selected for a week of screenings at London’s ICA.
The mini-season kicks off next Tuesday night with a post-film chat and q&a with Moped conducted by Burns.
