Showing posts with label punk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label punk. Show all posts

25 Mar 2024

On Torn Edges and the Need to Archive (God Save the Punk Scholars Network)

London College of Communication (UAL) 
(20 March 2024)
 
I. 
 
Held at the London College of Communication - one of six colleges that make up the University of the Arts London - the Torn Edges symposium explored the relationship between punk, art, and design history [1].
 
An international body of researchers, in what is said to be a "relatively new and emerging field within the broader theme of punk scholarship", gave short papers and took audience questions and it soon became clear that punk studies "have moved beyond relatively limited histories of the early scene in New York or London to reflect a much deeper critical analysis of punk music, fashion, politics, philosophy and aesthetics around the globe over a period of more than fifty years" [2].
 
 
II. 
 
The question which arises, however, is this: Is that a good thing? 
 
Because some might argue that the spirit of punk is exorcised in three ways: (i) it is commodified by capital; (ii) it is Disneyfied by the media; (iii) it is intellectualised by academics. 
 
In other words, punk is made profitable, made safe, and absorbed into a seamless cultural history. Any rough or torn edges are thereby given a smooth finish (or de-deckled, if such a word exists).  
 
One of the speakers at Torn Edges - Marie Arleth Skov - addresses this concern about punk ending up in the universities, galleries, and museums in an online conversation with James Campbell of Intellect Books [3].
 
Asked about the importance of ensuring that punk is properly archived, Skov says it is crucial; that we're at the stage now where materials currently held by private individuals need to be preserved and made accessible to a wider public within an institutional framework, before those individuals snuff it and the materials are lost.
 
In other words, old punk rockers (like me) need to overcome their fear of institutionalism and mutualisation and accept that the museums, galleries, and universities actually represent the best (and maybe the only) chance that something of the original punk spirit can survive, in a way that doesn't happen when punk is co-opted by big business or turned into a Disney+ miniseries by Danny Boyle [4].
 
Thus, resistance to this Borg-like process of being archived may or may not be futile, but it's almost certainly mistaken. Ultimately, punk needs those like Marie Arleth Skov and Russ Bestley working in academia and/or the art world who care passionately about subcultures and countercultural phenomena. 
 
God Save the PSN!
 
 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Full details of the event and speakers can be found on the Eventbrite website: click here.
 
[2] I'm quoting from the Torn Edges programme, which, I'm guessing, was written by Dr Russ Bestley who organised the event and is (amongst many other things) a founding member of the Punk Scholars Network.      

[3] Marie Arleth Skov is a Danish-born art historian and curator based in Berlin. She is the author of Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect Books, 2023) and the chair of the Punk Scholars Network in Germany. She is currently researching for an exhibition at ARoS art museum in Denmark on the topic of the body in punk culture.
      James Campbell is a lecturer in education at Deakin University, Australia. He is also Head of Marketing and Sales at Intellect Books
      The 35 minute interview between Campbell and Skov conducted last autumn is available to watch on YouTube: click here. Arleth's thoughts on the need to archive punk begin at 24:58.

[4] For my thoughts on Danny Boyle's Pistol (2022) see the posts entitled 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration' (30 March 2021): and 'Can Anyone Be a Sex Pistol?' (31 March 2021).

 

3 Mar 2024

A Blast From the Past

Wyndham Lewis photographed by George Charles Beresford in 1913
Front cover of the first edition of his Vorticist magazine Blast (1914)
 
"We start from opposite statements of a chosen world. 
Set up violent structure of adolescent clearness between two extremes."
 
 
I. 
 
Despite the fact that there has been renewed critical interest in his work and he is now regarded as a major British artist and writer of the twentieth century, the figure of Wyndham Lewis doesn't mean a great deal to me.  
 
Indeed, I sometimes confuse him with his friend Ezra Pound (to be fair, both were controversial figures associated with the avant-garde movement known as Vorticism and both were unpleasant characters - talented, certainly, but unpleasant).       
 
This year, however, marks the 110th anniversary of Lewis's magazine Blast and I thought I might say something about this short-lived publication in which he advanced the aesthetic ideals of Vorticism on the one hand and vilified his enemies (which, by this date, included Marinetti) on the other.    
 
 
II. 
 
When I say that Blast was short-lived, I mean it was short-lived. In fact, only two editions were ever published; the first in July 1914 and the second in July 1915. Both were primarily written (and edited) by Lewis - although other contributors included Pound, Epstein, and Rebecca West - and both cost 2/6 (or half-a-crown to you and me). 

Although the second issue doubtless contained some interesting material - including poems by T. S. Eliot and a short play by Pound - it's the first issue with its punk-looking bright pink cover that is recognised as a seminal text of 20th-century modernism - particularly English modernism, whose distinct style it helped create; Lewis's use of bold typographic innovations and fonts again anticipating the punk aesthetic of the 1970s.  
 
The illustrated issue featured a (mostly positive) critique of (and extracts from) Kandinsky's pioneering work, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (newly translated into English by Michael Sadleir); a plea to suffragettes not to destroy works of art; a review of an exhibition held in London of Expressionist woodcuts; and an open attack on Marinetti's model of Futurism (dismissed as little more than an up-to-date Impressionism).
 
The opening twenty pages of Blast 1, however, were taken up with the Vorticist manifesto ...
 
 
III.
 
Written by Lewis, the manifesto is primarily a long list of things that deserved either to be Blessed or Blasted, depending on how he perceived them at the time; one is tempted to say that Lewis woke up one day and suddenly knew which side of the bed he was lying on ... Among those blasted were members of the Bloomsbury Group and among those blessed were hairdressers who, for a small fee, attacked Mother Nature.    
 
Perhaps predictably, the English press was unimpressed, finding the writing dull and describing the artwork and typography as simply a pale imitation of the Futurist style (much to Marinetti's amusement and delight). 
 
Although after the War Lewis attempted to revive the avant-garde and declared his intention to publish a third edition of Blast, essentially the game was up and the world had moved on. Four years of mechanised slaughter and unrelenting horror had put things in perspective and many former revolutionaries were now hoping for a little peace and quiet and looked to more traditional art values. 
 
By 1920, even Lewis had to admit that the age of Vorticism was over and these days Blast is itself a museum piece.       
 
 

3 Feb 2024

Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified

Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified 
(SA/2024) [1]

The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life; 
Sid Vicious on his motor-bike is a promise of life: it will be eternally reborn 
and return again from destruction.
 
 
I.
 
Can it really be forty-five years ago yesterday that Sex Pistol Sid Vicious died, aged twenty-one, from acute intravenous narcotism? 
 
It may seem hard to believe, but time flies and it's absolutely the case that Sid departed this world in the early hours of February 2nd, 1979.
 
 
II. 
 
There's really not much more to say about a death of which so much has already been written. 
 
Besides, I'm not one who mourns or regrets Sid's martyrdom; for his was what we might term a necessary death; fatal in the originary sense of the term and one which secured his tragic status. 
 
It's important to realise that punk was - despite its nihilism and apparent morbidity - a form of thanksgiving and an affirmation of life; that Sid, as its highest representative (i.e., its one true star), was not just a drug-addicted loser, but an ecstatically overflowing spirit who redeemed the contradictory and questionable nature of rock 'n' roll.   

Christ on his Cross counts as an objection to life in its eternal fruitfulness and recurrence. But Sid on his motorbike was a spiky-haired Dionysus who affirmed life whole and not denied or in part - even in its most destructive and terrible aspects.
 
As Nietzsche writes:

"One will see that the problem is that of the meaning of suffering: whether a Christian meaning or a tragic meaning. In the former case, it is supposed to be the path to a holy existence; in the latter case, being is counted as holy enough to justify even a monstrous amount of suffering. The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering: he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deifying to do so. The Christian denies even the happiest lot on earth: he is sufficiently weak, poor, disinherited to suffer from life in whatever form he meets it." [2]
 
In sum: Christ on his Cross places a curse on life; but Sid on his motorbike - or singing on stage at the Olympia, Paris [3] - is a promise that life will be eternally reborn from destruction.
 
 
Notes
 
[1] The iconic image of Sid on his motorbike is from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980): click here. Christ Crucified is an oil painting by Velázquez (1632), located in the Prado Museum, Madrid.  
 
[2] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), section 1052, pp. 542-543. I'm essentially paraphrasing this section throughout this post. 
 
[3] See the post published on 13 October 2018: click here

 

28 Nov 2023

Never Mind the Spiky Tops

All the curly young punks:
Michael Collins and Adam Ant (top row) 
Mick Jones and Me (bottom row)*
 
 
I. 
 
Short spiky hair - often dyed an unnatural shade à la Johnny Rotten - was one of the defining characteristics of punks back in the day. 
 
However, there were plenty of individuals central to the scene who, even in 1977, were proud of their curls and ringlets, including Michael Collins, for example, who was recruited by Vivienne Westwood to manage the shop at 430 King's Road.
 
One thinks also of Stuart Goddard, who abandoned his pub rock outfit Bazooka Joe after seeing the Sex Pistols, transformed his look and changed his name (to Adam Ant), but still maintained his dark curls even at his punkiest.
 
And talking of dark curly-haired punks ... let's not forget Mick Jones; he may have chopped his curls off in 1976 when he formed The Clash, but it wasn't long before his pre-punk (less militant more glam) self reasserted itself.  
 
 
II.

I'm sure there will be some readers by now asking: So what?
 
Well, for one thing, it's always good to be reminded that before it quickly became just another mass-produced fashion and media-endorsed stereotype - as well as a fixed set of values and prejudices - punk was a highly creative form self-stylisation. It was not about following trends, conforming to norms of behaviour, or caring what others thought about the way you looked. 
 
As The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle attempted to remind us: Anyone can be a Sex Pistol - even with curly hair, like me, and, of course, like Malcolm:
 

           
Photo credits: Michael Collins by Homer Sykes; Adam Ant by Ray Stevenson; Mick Jones by Sheila Rock; Malcolm McLaren by Joe Stevens. I don't remember who took the picture of me, but it's dated October 1977. 
 
 
For a follow up post to this one on punks, hippies, and the Boy in the Blue Lamé Suit, click here.
 

26 Nov 2023

Happy Birthday Julien Temple (and in Memory of Malcolm McLaren)

Film director Julien Temple
(the punk generation's Jean Vigo)
 
 
Born on this day, in 1953, the British filmmaker Julien Temple is - without ever really being part of the gang - crucial to the story of the Sex Pistols, which he began to document from the very early days, having come across the band rehearsing in an abandoned warehouse in Bermondsey, South London, whilst drifting around the area admiring the rusting hulks of ships and the general decay of what had once been a thriving centre of industry and trade. 
 
This chance encounter was before the band had played their first gig at St Martin's School of Art on 6 November 1975 (supporting Bazooka Joe), so Temple can effectively claim to have been involved with the band from day one and was certainly not some Johnny-come-lately on what would become known as the punk scene, even if he never quite escaped being thought of as a middle class cunt - his words, not mine [1].    
 
Be that as it may, he was young and clearly talented enough to capture Malcolm's attention, and so Temple was eventually given permission to become the Sex Pistols' in-house filmmaker. 
 
Initially, however, McLaren, had opposed such an idea. It was only when the band began to hit the headlines that he was persuaded it would be a good idea after all to document what was going on - particularly when Temple offered to do so for free, although Malcolm eventually put him on a retainer of £12 a week.       
 
When the idea of making a full-length feature film arose - originally to be called Who Killed Bambi? and directed by Russ Meyer - Temple was appointed as the latter's assistant. For one reason or another - actually, for many, many reasons - this film was never going to be made and the project eventually morphed into The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), which is credited to Temple as director, although I'll always think of Malcolm as the film's auteur

Twenty years later, Temple then made The Filth and the Fury (2000) with the band's full cooperation, which is to say Rotten was on board and ready to put the record straight and tell the true story of the Sex Pistols (with tears of emotional sincerity welling up in his eyes). 
 
Whilst the latter rockumentary - not a term that Temple likes or uses - was critically acclaimed, I hate it for its attempt not only to give a more balanced account of events, but to humanise the band and perpetuate the ridiculous idea that poor Johnny was somehow a victim - even though he was also, apparently, the real reason for the band's success: A true star, honest!  

Temple claims he wanted to make The Filth and the Fury because he was annoyed with McLaren saying that the band members were essentially of no great import and that he was the artistic visionary who created everything. But, whilst that's not quite the case, neither is it entirely the fantasy of an egomaniac and, ironically, I think Malcolm's contribution to British popular culture is still hugely underrated [2].
 
Still, I don't wish to debate this here and now, nor say anything negative about Temple as a filmmaker. I simply want to take this opportunity to wish him happy birthday and thank him for the role he has played in recording an important period in British social and cultural history.     
 
 
Jamie Reid badge design 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Speaking with John Robb in 2022, Temple recalls the reaction of the band when he proposed they provide a soundtrack to a five minute film he was then working on as a student: "'Fuck off!' Middle class cunt basically being the subtext." Click here to watch the full interview on YouTube. The line I quote begins at 2:38.  

[2] Not by Temple, who, despite his issues with McLaren, had this to say in an obituary in The Observer (11 April 2010): 
 
"Malcolm was an incredible catalyst for my generation. To be in the same room as him in 1976 was to be bombarded with energy and swept up in a rush of ideas and emotions. [....] But his impact was not limited to music alone. Right across the creative spectrum Malcolm made young people - artists, designers, writers, film-makers - aware that they had a distinctive voice and encouraged them to use it right there and then." 
      
Temple concludes: 
 
"On a personal note, although I worked intensely with Malcolm for only a short period of time and managed to fall out with him pretty spectacularly too, the creative ideas he instilled in me have lasted a lifetime." 
 
 

4 Nov 2023

Jagger is a Punk (2)

Mick Jagger punking it up whilst performing on set during the making 
of the video for 'Respectable' (dir. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, 1978) 
 
 
Some readers may recall the post dated 2 Sept 2018 in which I argued that, at heart, Mick Jagger is clearly a bit of a punk rocker: click here.
 
Mostly I based this on the fact that the Stones' 1966 single 'Paint It Black' [1] is one of the great nihilistic pop anthems and that whilst on tour of the US in the summer of 1978 Jagger (somewhat ironically and provocatively) wore a Seditionaries Destroy shirt on stage.
 
Anyway, I'm pleased to say that I'm confirmed in my view thanks to a recent interview with Keith Richards, in which he describes his bandmate of sixty-odd years as a punk (and occasionally an asshole). 
 
Speaking to a journalist from The Sun, Richards says (somewhat disapprovingly): "The punk side of Jagger has always been there and we'll never get rid of it." [2] 
 
It's there, for sure, in 'Paint It Black', and it's also there, for example, in the 1978 single 'Respectable' [3] and in the expletive-laden new track 'Bite My Head Off' [4].   

Whilst it still slightly pains me to admit it, I think Joe Taysom is right to say of the Rolling Stones that "few bands have embodied the spirit of punk more" [5] and that Jagger is, at eighty, a far better - certainly far fitter - frontman than sixty-seven year old Johnny Rotten. 
 
Indeed, it might even be the case that the former has always been the more interesting figure ...  
 
 
Notes
 
[1] I have written about this song in a post published on 29 Oct 2017: click here.
 
[2] Keith Richards speaking to Simon Cosyns in an interview in The Sun (13 Oct 2023): click here.  

[3] 'Respectable', by the Rolling Stones, is a single release from the album Some Girls (Rolling Stones Records, 1978): click here.
      Jagger would later admit that the fast and aggressive nature of the track was due to the influence of punk on the band at that time, describing the loud three-chord rock song as punk meets Chuck Berry. See note [5] below for more about the influence of punk on the Rolling Stones. 
 
[4] 'Bite My Head Off', by the Rolling Stones (feat. Paul McCartney), is a track on the album Hackney Diamonds (Polydor, 2023): click here.
      Jagger explained of the song: "'I was kind of surprised Paul wanted to play on that track, actually. I wrote so many punk songs for the Stones, and I could never get away with them, but Paul is a very open-minded person - musically speaking.'" Quoted by Joe Taysom; see note [5] below.
 
[5] Joe Taysom, 'The Rolling Stones song Mick Jagger called "punk"', Far Out Magazine, (28 October 2023): click here. In this interesting article, Taysom goes on to write: 
 
"When the punk phenomena took off in the late 1970s, Jagger was intrigued by the prospect, even if The Rolling Stones weren't involved in the scene. While the group have never made a fully-throttle punk record, they did introduce elements of the genre into their sound on the 1978 album Some Girls. Jagger told Rolling Stone that the album's main inspiration was New York City, which injected the LP with 'an extra spur and hardness'. [...] However, despite Some Girls taking influence from New York, Jagger preferred the British version of punk to the American incarnation."


10 Sept 2023

On Punk, Pink, and Dollification


(L) SA wearing a pink gingham check shirt from Child of the Jago [1]
(R) Ken Doll wearing a pastel pink and mint green striped 
two-piece beach set by Mattel [2]
 
 
For me, pink is one of the essential colours of punk: which is undoubtedly why Jamie Reid used it (along with bright yellow and black) for the provocatively lurid sleeve of Never Mind the Bollocks and why, many years earlier, the proto-punk fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli had created a shocking shade of pink to be synonymous with her brand. 
 
Thus, when I wore a pink (and white) ensemble for an event in Bloomsbury recently, I was confidently expecting it to be received within the context of the above history of art and fashion.
 
Unfortunately, there were some young people present that evening whose cultural references are far more contemporary and, in their eyes, I looked like a refugee from Barbie World - which is, arguably, a little unkind, if not entirely unfair: after all, who wants to be thought of as a human doll? 
 
Having said that, if it's okay for Ryan Gosling to be dolled up and dollified, for his role as Ken in the movie Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2023), then why should I worry?
 
And even Sid Vicious was ultimately reduced to the status of an action figure following his death (if not, indeed, years prior to his tragic and untimely demise) - although, sadly, not wearing the pair of pink peg-leg pants that he loved so much ... [4] 
     
 
 Jamie Reid: Sid Vicious Action Man 
£12.50 [3]

 
Notes
 
[1] Photo by Paul Gorman taken on 7 Sept 2023 outside Treadwell's Bookshop (London)
 
[2] Anyone interested in buying the doll (£44.99) can visit the Mattel website by clicking here
 
[3] This image by Jamie Reid was used to promote the Sex Pistols single 'Something Else', released from the album The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979). The original poster is in the Jamie Reid archive at the V&A and can be viewed online by clicking here. Obviously, Reid is critiquing the co-option and commodification of punk by the Spectacle (as well as, perhaps, the exploitation of dead performers, who will never be allowed to rest in peace so long as they can still shift product). 
 
[4] Sid can be seen wearing these pink pegs in a short film on Youtube provided by ITV Channel Television, which shows the Sex Pistols at Jersey Airport in the summer of 1977 about to board a plane, having been officially ordered to leave the island: click here. Paul Gorman informs me that Sid had actually borrowed the trousers from guitarist Steve Jones, who had bought them years earlier from Let It Rock.  
 
 
For a post published back in Feb 2019 on the politics of pink, click here.
 
 

22 Jun 2023

She Flows Lava: On Why the Volcanic Feminism of Betty Hirst is More Effusive Than Dada

Heide Hatry: She Pees Fire (2023)  
 
 
I like Heide Hatry. And I like this image; it's always a pleasure to be reacquainted with Betty Hirst. But I really hate the new title assigned to the picture - She Pees Fire
 
That might work on an ad alerting women to the signs and symptoms of a urinary tract infection and in which humour is used to counter embarrassment concerning the body, but, in my view, puns should have no place in the world of art [1].  

The photo appears in the latest issue of Maintenant, an annual journal featuring contemporary Dada writing and art [2]
 
Unfortunately, I have concerns with this publication and its claim to provide provocative outsider ideas as Dada has done since its inception. For it seems to me that Dada - like punk - was materially embedded in the politics and culture of its time. 
 
To vainly attempt to appear avant-garde by invoking the spirit of something that erupted over a hundred years ago, just seems a little foolish and mistaken to me. It turns Dada into just another -ism (i.e., a practice and an ideology), rather than an Event, (i.e., something unique and chaotic). 
 
I might be mistaken, but I thought the artists involved with Dada during the years 1916-24 aimed to produce works that were completely original; to eradicate all forms of imitation, not found a new school or a tradition in which their ideas and techniques were simply learned and passed on.        
 
Anyway, leaving this debate aside for now, the new issue of Maintenant (#17) argues that war and peace are two-sides of the same coin and that what anti-war protestors should be demanding is not simply a cessation of all military conflicts, but a peacefire. 
 
By this, I think they mean a deconstruction of the binary that forges war and peace into a relationship of co-dependence and obliges us to think of the latter in purely negative terms; i.e., as the absence of war, or the temporary suspension of hostilities.  
 
Heide Hatry's She Pees Fire is a play on this term, peacefire, which, of course, is a play on the term ceasefire - so we have here a double-layered pun. But, as I've said, whilst mildly amusing, it's not a title I care for. 
 
I also fear it detracts from the power of the image, which, to me, reveals the volcanic potentiality of womanhood; she isn't so much pissing fire, as unleashing Hell - i.e., sending a stream of molten lava flowing into the phallocratic world order from out of the bowels of her being. 
 
It's certainly an effusive feminist image, but, ironically, I'm not sure it works to promote an anti-war message. Nor is it particularly Dadaist in character [3]; for it seems to me laden with symbolic meaning, rather than being nonsensical in character (i.e., it's an art-utterance, not just an absurdist prank intended to shock). 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] I'm all in favour of paronomasia if and when it is itself raised to the level of an art form, but I'm extremely wary of puns (and the kind of people who make puns); not because I find them threatening or seek a level of control over the meaning of language, as John Pollack, a communications expert and author of The Pun Also Rises (2012), claims, but because I think they are an easy and lazy form of wordplay - neither witty, nor particularly clever, and certainly not subversive.  

[2] Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, Issue 17, ed. Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges, (Three Rooms Press, July 2023). 
      For more information and to order your copy direct from the publishers, click here. Alternatively, British readers may find it easier to go to Amazon UK: click here
 
[3] One might remind readers that, for all of its supposed radicalism and revolutionary spirit, Dada was not without its problematic aspects, including what might be construed as misogynist tendencies. See Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity, ed. Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, (The MIT Press, 1999).   
 
 

12 Jun 2023

Why Bambi is Forever Being Killed in My Imagination Thanks to the Sex Pistols

My photo of a local fawn and a poster for the Sex Pistols'
film soundtrack The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1979)

 
Some readers may recall a post from last year in which I attempted to illustrate Oscar Wilde's anti-mimetic contention that life imitates art, with reference to a moth's wing which appeared to incorporate the Cambridge Rapist motif used by Jamie Reid in his work for the Sex Pistols [1]
 
But as someone pointed out at the time, seeing a human face - even, as in this instance, a masked human face - in an object of any variety (be it natural or artificial, animate or inanimate) is a common psychological phenomenon [2], which tells us something interesting about how the brain works, but doesn't really lend support to Wilde's theory. 
 
And that's fair enough, I suppose. 
 
Thus, maybe what the above post primarily indicates is that my personal obsession with the Sex Pistols is such that I often view the world through a punk prism. Take, for example, what happened the other day when walking past the deer herd who have colonised what was once a local playing field ...
 
Seeing the little deer pictured above, immediately triggered thoughts of the shocking image of a dead fawn used to promote the Sex Pistols' film (and film soundtrack) The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle [3]. This, in turn, made me start to sing the chorus from the curious track by Eddie Tenpole: 'Who Killed Bambi?' [4]
 
I can't remember who said it, but it seems to be true; the songs we loved at sixteen, we'll remember and continue to love for the rest of our lives (even those that have become almost unlistenable).
 
 
Notes
 
[1] See the post dated 13 July 2022 and entitled 'Punk Moth (Or How the Cambridge Rapist Motif Haunts the Natural World)': click here.
 
[2] Once considered a symptom of psychosis, pareidolia, as it's known, is now understood to be hardwired into every brain by evolution; we all attempt to impose a meaningful interpretation on the world and to recognise ourselves in things and patterns of light and shade. See the post dated 4 June 2015 and entitled 'Pareidolia and Prosopagnosia': click here.
 
[3] Readers who share my obsession with the Sex Pistols will be aware that Who Killed Bambi? was originally the title of a film featuring the band, due to be released in 1978, directed by Russ Meyer from a script by Roger Ebert and Malcolm McLaren. After this project was abandoned, McLaren eventually made The Great Rock and Roll Swindle with director Julien Temple, the trailer for which included the title shot of a deer being killed, a scene that was not included in the finished film. A song, however, with the title 'Who Killed Bambi?' did feature in the movie, sung by Eddie Tenpole (see note 4 below). Additional footage from Who Killed Bambi? was also used in Temple's documentary on the Sex Pistols, The Filth and the Fury (2000). 

[4] Click here for the album version of the song and here to see Tenpole (or Tadpole, as Irene Handl amusingly calls him) performing the track in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle film. I have written about 'Who Killed Bambi?' previously on Torpedo the Ark: click here


28 Jun 2022

A Brief Note on Beatniks

 
Nedward and Agnes Flanders
Ned's freaky beatnik parents in The Simpsons [1]
 
 
Did anyone ever actually describe themselves as a beatnik
 
Or was the term purely a media invention [2]: a way of reducing members of the Beat Generation to a cool but cartoonish stereotype? Black turtleneck sweater ☑ Black beret ☑ Dark glasses ☑ Sandals ☑ Striped top ☑ Jazz album, bongo drums, or a book of poetry under the arm ☑
 
Amusingly, Allen Ginsberg wrote to The New York Times in 1959, deploring the use of the word beatnik [3]. And his pal Jack Kerouac wasn't pleased either to see their philosophy become just another fad. Both authors feared that a generation of illuminated hipsters, would be replaced by brainwashed fashionistas interested only in looking the part. 
 
Indeed, so exasperated was Kerouac by the popularity of the term that he declared to a reporter in 1969 (shortly before his death in October of that year): I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic [4].
 
Personally, however, I'm more interested in the way the stereotype of the beatnik became part of popular culture, changing the latter and being changed by it, rather than Kerouac's spiritual convictions, or his quest for religious salvation.
 
And if, eventually, the term beatnik was used by all kinds of people in all kinds of ways and some of those people were frauds and some of those ways were false, well, it doesn't really matter and one gets tired of puritans demanding authenticity. 
 
I mean, is there anything squarer than wanting to keep things real? [5]                          
 
 
Notes
 
[1] See The Simpsons episode entitled 'Hurricane Neddy' [S8/E8] (1996), written by Steve Young and directed by Bob Anderson, in which it was revealed that religiously uptight Ned Flanders is the son of anti-disciplinarian, freaky beatnik parents (Nedward and Agnes). Click here for a short (but hilarious) clip on YouTube.    
 
[2] The term beatnik is usually credited to Herb Caen, writing in his column in the San Francisco Chronicle, in April 1958.
 
[3] See The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, ed. Bill Morgan, (Da Capo Press, 2008), p. 221. Commenting upon and quoting from this letter, James Campbell writes:
      "The Beats dislikes the appropriation of 'beat', and its melding into 'beatnik'. 'The foul word is used several times', wrote Ginsberg in a letter to the New York Times Book Review [...] in response to an uncomplimentary article about Kerouac:
 
'But the 'beatnik' of mad critics is a piece of their own ignoble poetry. And if 'beatniks', and not illuminated Beat poets, overrun the country they will have been created not by Kerouac but by industries of mass communication which continue to brainwash Man ...'"

      In other words, Beat was a state of being or an identity; beatnik was just posing and dressing up. See 'The Birth of the Beatnik', in This is the Beat Generation, by James Campbell, (University of California Press, 1999), chapter 10, pp. 245-271. Lines quoted are from pp. 245-46.
      Amusingly, I remember a similar discussion around the term punk in the 1970s, with Johnny Rotten rejecting the term as just another lazy label and form of media shorthand: click here to see what he says in a 1976 TV interview (go to 3.04). Punk was an attitude and not a fixed way of looking and thinking and real punks - who, like Rotten, often refused the term - were scornful and contemptuous of so-called plastic (or part-time) punks hanging around Kings Road trying to look trendy and pogoing in their bedrooms in front of the mirror (but only when their mothers had gone out). 
      For a fascinating discussion of the etymology and history of the word punk, see the essay by J. P. Robinson on medium.com: click here
 
[4] This interview with Kerouac by Jack McClintock from 1969 was republished in the Tampa Bay Times (20 March 2013) and can be read online by clicking here
 
[5] Amazingly, there are still some cats who get het up about the manner in which Beat became absorbed into the culture industry and commodified as a lifestyle or look. Denise Enck, for example, founder and editor of the arts and literature site Empty Mirror, published an article in July 2013 entitled 'The Beat Generation vs. "Beatniks"', in which she accuses the latter of being shallow and writes: 
      "The Beats were looking for real meaning, authenticity and a deeply personal self-expression in their lives and work, not conformity in a black turtleneck and a cheesy beret. [...]  The truth of it is that certain details associated with the Beat Generation writers were picked up, twisted, and amplified, almost beyond recognition and wildly embellished by the media and the marketing departments, into the 'beatnik' stereotype".
      To read the article in full, click here. Readers interested in this topic might also like to see a piece by Matthew Wills on JSTOR Daily entitled 'How the Beat Generation Became "Beatniks"' (5 May 2019): click here. This is a reading of the longer essay by Stephen Petrus, 'Rumblings of Discontent: American Popular Culture and its Response to the Beat Generation, 1957-1960', in Studies in Popular Culture, Vol. 20, No. 1 (October 1997), pp. 1-17, which, conveniently, can also be found on JSTOR: click here
 
 
Musical bonus: 'Beat-Nik' by Jimmy Van Eaton (Rita Records, 1960): click here Daddy-O!


26 Apr 2022

The Last of the Groupies: In Memory of Nancy Spungen

Nancy Spungen (1958-1978)
 
What d'you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with 
a society that abandons her and treats her like trash? 
You get what you fucking deserve!

I. 
 
It might be argued that Nancy Spungen was the last of the great American groupies [1]
 
For whilst there were - and probably still are - many young girls happy to starfuck their way to notoriety post-Nancy, I can't think of any by name and in the #MeToo era even the term groupie now seems dated and problematic.
 
Similarly, whilst the rock 'n' roll circus continued after the Sex Pistols imploded in 1978 - the year of Miss Spungen's death - it has never really recovered from the blow dealt it by punk and I'm pretty sure that when cultural historians look back a hundred years from now, rock's golden age will be identified as lasting from the mid-1950s until the end of the '70s (i.e., from Elvis to Sid Vicious). 
 
 
II. 
 
It would be wrong to pretend that Nancy was simply a nice Jewish girl at heart. Because, whilst she was indeed Jewish and raised in a respectable middle-class home, she wasn't composed of sugar and spice, so much as madness and spite and all things vice [2]
 
An emotionally disturbed infant and young child, prone to screaming fits and violent behaviour, Nancy was already prescribed barbiturates at just a few months of age in an attempt to pacify her [3]. Finally, at fifteen, having attempted suicide the year before, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
 
An obviously bright girl, Nancy excelled at elementary school, but made few friends. At age eleven, however, she was expelled due to repeated absenteeism. She had also by this age threatened to kill her babysitter with a pair of scissors and attacked her shrink after being accused of simply wanting attention and this also caused the school authorities some concern.  
 
Nevertheless, Nancy graduated from high school in April 1974 and was accepted into the University of Colorado. Unfortunately, after being twice arrested - firstly for purchasing marijuana from an undercover police officer and then for being discovered in possession of stolen property - her student life was cut short. Indeed, it was only on condition that she leave the state of Colorado and agree to parental supervision that Nancy avoided jail. 
 
At seventeen, Nancy left home and moved to New York City. Here she supported herself by whatever means she could; a little bit of freelance music journalism, some temporary work at a clothes store, stripping, and prostitution. She also decided she wanted to become a groupie and began to follow various rock bands, including Aerosmith, The New York Dolls, and the Ramones [4].
 
In 1977, Nancy flew to London with The Heartbreakers and decided she wanted to get herself a Sex Pistol. Initialy she had set her sights on Rotten, but when he showed no interest, she turned her attention to Sid. And so began a fateful eighteen-month relationship that came to a bloody end at the Chelsea Hotel in October 1978; one I have written of elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here.   
 
Nancy was buried in the King David Memorial Park in Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Deborah, published a memoir in 1983 with a title taken from a poem by Vicious: I Don't Want to Live This Life [5]
 
Whilst often still demonised by those who should know better (and, in many cases, didn't know her), Nancy Spungen has cemented her place within popular culture and I do think, over forty years since her death (aged just twenty), we might retrospectively view her with a little more kindness.  
         
 
Notes
 
[1] For an earlier post on groupies - those muses with dirty faces - click here.
 
[2] Having said that, I don't think Nancy deserved the epiphet Nauseating placed before her name, no matter how unpleasant she may have seemed. For whilst even his fellow band members may have found her behaviour objectionable, there's no doubting that Sid was besotted with Nancy, describing her as an intelligent and humorous woman who possessed not only beautiful eyes, but the most beautiful wet pussy in the world - and a fab taste in clothes. 
      Ultimately, perhaps being nauseating is preferable to being nice anyway; certainly when one recalls that the latter derives from the Latin nescius, meaning unknowing, ignorant, foolish - terms which cannot be applied to the streetwise Miss Spungen. 
 
[3] Although no brain damage was recorded at the time of her birth, one wonders if the fact Nancy had emerged into the world bright blue due to oxygen deprivation played a part in her later mental health problems; after all, no one likes to be strangled by their own umbilical cord (or carry an unconscious memory of such). 
 
[4] When I say follow, I of course mean rather more than this; Nancy supplied numerous rock stars with drugs and sexual favours. Before meeting Sid, she had slept with many of those on the New York scene at that time; David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, Syl Sylvain, Jerry Nolan, Richard Hell, Iggy Pop ... et al
 
[5] Those who are interested can listen to Deborah Spungen talk about her daughter, her book, her memories of Sid Vicious, etc. in a 42-minute radio interview (23 Nov 1983): available on YouTube: click here.  
 
 

17 Apr 2022

Chrysopoeia 3: No More Gas, Just Gold He Said - Gold on My Head!

Do you love Annabella? 
Gold is what she holds.
 
 
I. 
 
Having confronted the perceived greyness of English culture with nihilistic blackness during the punk period, McLaren and Westwood dramatically changed tactics (and shop design) during their pirate phase: now gold was the colour by which to challenge the three things they hated most: puritanism, provincialism, and poverty.  
 
Just to be clear: by the latter, we refer to a certain spiritual condition; to individuals bereft of ideas, imagination and a sense of adventure, rather than those without money for the gas meter; to individuals whose vision of a post-punk future involved either wearing raincoats and moaning about being on the dole, or adopting a gothic persona and pretending to be one of the undead.  
 
Contra this model of either bleak or morbid miserabilism, Malcolm and Vivienne offered a new romanticism that was all about sun, gold, and piracy ...
 
 
II. 
 
Thus it was that Seditionaries gave way to Worlds End and Malcolm's new group, Bow Wow Wow, was fronted not by a spiky-haired, pale-faced punk with green-teeth, but by an exotic-looking, 14-year-old girl called Annabella, who informed us that she didn't care about having no money, because she had gold in her hair. 
 
And, besides, thanks to TEK technology, sang Annabella, she could steal the songs she loved to listen to by illegally taping them off the radio: "No silver, no copper / Cassette on my shoulder / I'm richer than Richard III / I don't need to work" [1].
  
The idea that you can look rich and feel powerful - without having any money - is an interesting one, rooted in both the concept of a natural (or savage) nobility and dandyism. It suggests that what matters most is not what you have in your wallet, but how you walk, talk, and present yourself; a combination of style, swagger and attitude. 
 
And it's always important to be reminded that, for Malcolm, punk was about fighting for the right not to work - Cos work, is not the golden rule - and I happily endorse his suggestion that the unemployed be issued roller skates and paid in gold dust [2].  
 
 
Jordan wearing a golden outfit from the 
Worlds End Pirate Collection (A/W 1981)
Image reworked from a photo by Michael Costiff
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Lyrics from the Bow Wow Wow song 'Gold He Said', which originally featured on the 8-track mini-album Your Cassette Pet (EMI Records, 1980). Whilst Dave Barbarossa, Leigh Gorman and Matthew Ashman came up with the music, it was McLaren - a uniquely gifted lyricist - who came up with the words. Click here to play. 

[2] This is something that all those dreary left-leaning punks who earnestly believed themselves to be part of a drab socialist revolution never understood. I would have loved to have been paid in gold dust when I was signing on during the 1980s - far more exciting than having to cash a giro at the post office every fortnight. I'm a little surprised, therefore, that Paul Gorman dismisses Malcolm's proposal as preposterous (though maybe he's a fan of Absurdism and means that in a good way); see The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 456. 
      Finally, note that the line quoted in italics is a lyric (again written by McLaren) from the second Bow Wow Wow single 'W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don't)', (EMI Records, 1981): click here to play the extended version. 


20 Feb 2021

Apple Maggots


Apple with maggot linocut by linocutboy
 
 
I. 
 
In a short piece of fragmentary writing, D. H. Lawrence laughably declares himself to be a good Catholic at heart; one who believes in an all-overshadowing God, recognises the divinity of Jesus, and accepts the authority of the Church, including "the power of the priest to grant absolution" [1].
 
On the religious fundamentals, says Lawrence, there is no real battle between himself and Christianity and no major breach between himself and the Church of Rome. 
 
Only, of course, there is: for whilst acknowledging the divinity of Christ, Lawrence also insists that Jesus is not, however, the only Son of God; that there are in fact many saviours and to teach otherwise is disastrous and hateful. 
 
Now, I'm no theologian, but I'm pretty sure that the idea of Christ as the one and only true path to God is crucial to Christianity's brand identity and its exclusivity. And that to deny this is heresy, is it not? Lawrence would immediately - and rightly by the terms and conditions of membership - be excommunicated from the faith were he in fact a Catholic (which he wasn't).                
 
 
II. 
 
Ultimately, queer and quirky individuals such as Lawrence require their independence above all else; they are isolated outsiders who instinctively shun all attachments, reject all dogma, and question all authority - even their own: Never trust the artist. Trust the tale [2].
 
Nietzsche calls such individuals free spirits and rightly points out how they are highly unsuitable as members of any kind of political party or faith-based organisation [3]. For just as they eat their way in to the body of such, so too do they quickly (and destructively) consume their way through it and out the other side. They can't help it. It's their nature - they're like apple maggots. 
 
Now, without claiming to be a free spirit in the mould of Nietzsche and Lawrence, I've often wondered why it is that I could never quite fit in or join in with others; could never belong to a group or society or movement, with the exception of punk, which, of course, was always a loose association of odd-bods and weirdos who came together on the basis of hating everyone else even more than they despised one another and which had no rules and only one imperative - do it yourself: Don't be told what you want / Don't be told what you need [4].    
 

Notes

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'There is no real battle ...', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), Appendix I: Fragmentary writings, p. 385. 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Final Version (1923), 'The Spirit of Place', p. 14.  

[3] See Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Vol. I., Pt. 9. §579.  

[4] Sex Pistols, 'God Save the Queen', (Virgin Records, 1977). 
 
 
This post is dedicated to the the free-spirited feminist Afiya S. Zia.


9 Apr 2019

Punk Friends Reunited



I remember with vague fondness my time at Trinity and All Saints College, which was then a small Catholic institution affiliated with the University of Leeds, but which has since gained full university status and autonomy.

Although I was there under the pretext of studying for a degree in Sociology and Media, essentially, like many undergraduates at this time, I was more interested in extracurricular activities that might broadly be categorised as messing around and fucking about. 

This included the cultivation of my own punk persona, Jimmy Jazz - after the song by the Clash - and becoming part of a small gang of misfits that numbered amongst its members:

(i) Clive Hooker, a drummer and DJ from Northampton, with a speech impediment that unfortunately made him sound like Klunk from Stop the Pigeon.

(ii) August Finer, a bass player with a knicker-invading smile and a mohican haircut; ultimately, a nice, middle-class Jewish boy, from Knutsford, posing as a punk (but who did have a brother in The Pogues).     

(iii) Kirk Field, a drama student (who couldn't really act) and a vocalist (who couldn't really sing), but a clever, funny, charming personality with a quiff and a penchant for magic mushrooms who went on to become a successful tour operator and events organiser for people who like to party.

During the years 1981-84, we four were as thick as thieves. But, amazingly, the moment we graduated the magic spell that bound us together was completely broken; even my friendship with Mr. Field, which had been extremely intimate and intense, didn't long survive the move to London.

I suppose there were reasons for this - but no real reason - and I'm told that it's a common phenomenon; that adolescent friendships often blossom with spectacular colour, but then quickly fade and die and that it's pointless trying to hold the petals on.

Regrets? I have a few. But then again, too few to mention. Besides, any lingering sense of loss only adds a delicious poignancy to nostalgic reflections like this; which is how dead friendships can continue to give pleasure.           

If the opportunity ever arose, I'd be happy to meet any or all of the above for a drink. But I suspect there'd be moments of awkward silence. And underneath the delight of seeing them again there'd be a slight sense of boredom and embarrassment and a longing to get away as soon as possible ...