A recent conversation with artist John Frankland about the work of Mervyn Peake has brought me back to one of my most treasured possessions: the 1970 Penguin edition of Peake’s masterpiece Gormenghast.

Designed by Robert Hollingsworth, the three illustrated paperbacks Titus Groan (first published in 1946) Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959) were housed in a case decorated with Peake drawings.

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Tags: Anthony Burgess, Barquentine, Belsen, Fuschia, Gormenghast, Irma Prunesquallor, John Coulthart, Langdon Jones, Maeve Gilmour, Mervyn Peake, Penguin, Robert Hollingsworth, Steerpike, Titus Alone, Titus Groan

Can’t beat a bit of Chuck for a frolic.

Watch him move.

I saw him live a year or so later at The Rainbow. He played a 35-minute set and brought on his daughter for the lovey-dovey finale. It may have been South Of The Border.

When the Teds realised he had vamoosed rather than play an encore they tore up the place.

Twenty-odd years later I was in the green room for an edition of The David Letterman Show which featured him and was shot in London. What struck me was Berry’s bearing and the agile grace with which he moved among the throng of well-wishers and fans.

That and the fact he was wearing the same pair of yellow Lionels I’d seen on him at the Rainbow…

Tags: Chuck Berry, Let It Rock, The David L:etterman Show, The Finsbury Park Rainbow

Here’s another from from Stagger Lee‘s trick bag (click on the title):

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club – A Smashing Indictment Of Character (Alternative Tentacles)

Not well know in the UK, which is a shame, this Denver band operate somewhere between the Violent Femmes, The Bad Seeds, The Handsome Family and Th’Legendary Shack Shakers, so we’re talking a whole lot of southern gothic fire’n’brimstone’n’fornicatin’n’whiskey. Probably the best recent band I’ve discovered lately, even though they’ve been around a decade or more.

TAGS: None

//Longhorns Dance by Colt (Jim French) from Manpower! issue 7, 1974.//

My theorising over the roots of the Cowboys t-shirt has uncovered the true source of the main image: a 1969 drawing by the artist Jim French reproduced in a 1974 issue of his magazine Manpower!.

French has an international following for his gay-themed photographic + illustrative work, via his Colt Studio image-bank and work as “Rip Colt” and “Luger”.

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Tags: 1969, Colt Studio, Jim French, Luger, Malcolm McLaren, Margaret Walters, Nat Gozzano, Rip Colt, Ted Polhemus, The Male Nude, Vivienne Westwood

Patti Smith is the focus of the latest Beatbooks sale, which is accompanied by a printed catalogue up to the usual high standards of the archive’s curator Andrew Sclanders.

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Tags: A Clockwork Orange, Al Hansen, Albert Camus, Andrew Sclanders, Anthony Burgess, BeatBooks, Charlotte Moorman & Nam June Paik, Gotham Book Mart, Harry Partch, Jim Carroll, John Cage, Jospeh Byrd, Karen Finley, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Larry Clark, Patti Smith, Richard hell, Richard Prince, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tod Dockstader, Vali Myers, Witt

This is Lee Perry really mixing up the medicine with his dub of The Heptones’ 1976 song.

It’s billed as Party Time 2 on the great Arkology 3-CD set from quite a few years back. I was given my now tattered, battered, partied + cherished copy by the much missed Rob Partridge.

Wherever you are: TURN IT UP!

Tags: Lee Perry, Party Time 2, Rob Partridge, Scratch, The Heptones

MY SPECULATION HERE SPARKED A TRAIL TO THE TRUE SOURCE OF THE MAIN IMAGE: THE ARTIST/PHOTOGRAPHER JIM FRENCH, WHO DREW THE COWBOYS FOR A SERIES CALLED LONGHORNS IN 1969 (SEE LINK AT END OF THIS POST).

The late Malcolm McLaren said he could never remember the origins of one of the most potent designs to emanate from 430 King’s Road in its six-decade history as a fashion emporium: the Cowboys t-shirt.

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Tags: André Bertrand, Atomage, Derek Harris, Dressing For Pleasure, Granny Takes A trip, Guy Debord, IT, John Sutcliffe, Johnny Trunk, Jordan, Malcolm McLaren, Michael J. Pollard, Michelle Bernstein, Mike Wallington, Miles, SEX, Strasbourg University, Tom Vague, Vivienne Westwood

Nathaniel Lee Jones and Pippa Brooks have created a world of wonder with their M. Goldstein stand at the Battersea Decorative Fair.

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Tags: Battersea Decorative Fair, Davina McCall, Emporium, Jon Hale, M. Goldstein, Nathaniel Lee Jones, Pippa Brooks, Reginald Alan Westaway, Rodney Bewes

//From top: Stunt rider, Hines Farm motorcycle rodeo + The Atomic Pirates motorcycle club.//

A chat with photographer/Men’s File publisher Nick Clements at the opening of his show Revival –  which looks at the re-enactment of the styles surrounding American bike culture of the 50s for his Royal College Of Art research project – put me in mind of original black motorcycle clubs the Atomic Angels and the Gypsy Pirates.

I first came across them a decade or so ago when covering another academic study, Matthew Donahue’s I’ll Take You There, for Mojo magazine. Donahue’s book focused on a true cultural phenomenon: Hines Farm in Swanton, Ohio, whose owners Frank and Sarah Hines were the first African-Americans in the region to be granted a liquor licence.

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Tags: Allen Love, Art & Roman Griswald, Atomic Pirates, Big jean Mitchell, Chiquieta, Count Basie, Frank and Sarah Hines, Gypsy Angels, Henry Griffin, Hines Farm, I'll Take You There, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Journalism, Little Esther Phillips, Matthew A. Donahue, Mojo, Ohio, Toledo, Valerie Compton

These photographs of SEX shop superstar Jordan appear in the photographer Harri Peccinotti’s illustrated career resume HP.

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Tags: Alan Jones, Forum, Harri Peccinotti, Nova, Pamela Rooke, SEX