Popcorn!

Movie of the Week: Beat This! A Hip Hop History (1984)

 Here's an amazing doc from 1984 from the BBC on the still nascent (at the time) hip hop scene. Astounding & beautiful...

Appearances include Easy A.D., Almighty K.G., Arthur Baker, Afrika Bambaataa, Drew Bundini, H. Rap Brown, Grandmaster Caz, Charlie Chase, Brim Fuentes, G.L.O.B.E., Kool Herc, Lisa Lee, Malcolm McLaren, Pow Wow, Sha Rock, and Tony Tone.

Hat tip to Dangerous Minds

Sex Pistols will play (1976)

A handwritten note from Malcolm McLaren to Ron Watts, confirming the Pistols' appearance at the Punk Festival at the 100 Club in September of that year.

Movie of the Week: Malcolm McLaren, Artful Dodger (2010)

A lot of people have a lot of things to say about McLaren, and he could talk bollocks with the best of them, but mark my words...one day he'll be acknowledged as a great artist.

Hat tip to Glen Friedman

Shot by: Joe Stevens

Kate Simon & Chrissie Hynde wearing their best Sex t-shirts, London, 1976, by Joe Stevens

The above photo, by Joe Stevens, will be featured in the upcoming photo show, Just Chaos!, opening this week at Bookmarc in the West Village. Hey Kate Simon, I know that look! 

UK fashion & music scribe, Paul Gorman, discusses the t-shirts today over at his blog. As usual, he adds a bit of perspective to the story.

Movie of the Week: The Filth and The Fury (2000)

Upcoming Art Shows of Note

Arturo Vega photo booth snaps, 1974, courtesy of Arturo Vega

After finding out about the Times Square Show Revisited exhibit I mentioned last week, a couple of other noteworthy shows have come to my attention:

Come Closer: Art Around The Bowery 1969-1989 will be on at the New Museum will on from Sept. 19 through Jan. 6 of the new year. "Drawing upon the New Museum’s Bowery Artist Tribute archive and the online archive of Marc H. Miller, 98bowery.com, this exhibition features original artwork, ephemera, and performance documentation by over fifteen artists who lived and worked on or near the Bowery in New York." 

Come Closer will feature works by artists including Barbara Ess, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Keith Haring, John Holmstrom, Curt Hoppe, Colette Lumiere, Marc H. Miller, Adrian Piper, Adam Purple, Dee Dee Ramone, Joey Ramone, Marcia Resnick, Bettie Ringma, Christy Rupp, Arleen Schloss, Charles Simonds, Eve Sonneman, Billy Sullivan, Paul Tschinkel, Anton van Dalen, Arturo Vega, and Martin Wong.

Also announced & of note (thanks Liz!), for the more fashion minded, but not opening until May of 2013, is Punk: Chaos to Couture which will be on at the Met as presented by the Met Costume Institute. 

According to NY Magazine, "Photographer Nick Knight will serve as a creative consultant and help devise the exhibit and gala's overall look. Designers whose works will be featured include Haider Ackermann, Miguel Adrover, Azzedine Alaïa, Boudicca, Ann Demeulemeester, Dolce & Gabbana, Andrew Groves, Marc Jacobs, Rei Kawakubo, Alexander McQueen, Rodarte, and Alexander Wang. As usual, the exhibit will be divvied up into digestible sections, each focusing on specific aspects of the punk movement. According to the Met's press release:

Organized thematically, gallery sections will include Rebel Heroes, which will evoke the New York and London music scenes of the mid-1970s, focusing on iconic punk bands such as The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, and The Clash.  The Couturiers Situationists gallery will examine Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s visual codification of punk through the merging of social realism and artistic expression, featuring fashion and graphics they produced for their boutique at 430 King’s Road in London, including Let it Rock, SEX, and Seditionaries.

Pavilions of Anarchy and Elegance will juxtapose punk designs with haute couture creations, focusing on customization and hand craftsmanship.  Punk Couture will explore high fashion’s engagement with punk hardware such as studs, spikes, chains, zippers, padlocks, safety pins, and razor blades.  D.I.Y. Style will highlight the impact of punk’s bricolage ethos on high fashion, including the use of recycled materials from trash culture. La Mode Destroy will examine the effect of punk’s rip-it-to-shreds attitude via torn and shredded garments associated with deconstructionist fashions.

See a slideshow over at Women's Wear Daily.

Shot By: Joe Stevens

Malcolm McLaren, 1976, by Joe Stevens. Check out this story about Joe by Paul Gorman.

Movie of the Week - Dressing For Pleasure

A rare look at the entire 1977 UK documentary on fetish fashion which includes appearances by Malcolm McLaren, Jordan, and others who were the leaders of the UK punk scene. Some of this footage would later appear in McLaren's The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. For more, check out this article on the film, and this article on it's maker, John Samson.

Movie of the Week - The Great Rock & Roll Swindle

Just Because - Malcolm McLaren will sell you some boots

A beautiful shot of Malcolm McLaren, circa 1971 at Let It Rock, by David Parkinson. Courtesy of Paul at The Look.

Memories of Sex

MEMORIES OF SEX FROM FORUM MAGAZINE: One of the most prescient pieces published about 430 King’s Road in its incarnation as SEX appeared, appropriately enough, in sex magazine Forum in the mid-70s. Continued here.

Steve Jones, Unknown, Alan Jones, Chrissie Hynde, Jordan, Vivienne Westwood. By David Dagley, circa 1975.

On a related note, I've been meaning to mention that, after literally a couple of years of waiting, probably the best website dedicated specifically to the Malcolm McLaren/Vivienne Westwood-era of 430 King's Road has finally relaunched! Visit Only Anarchists Are Pretty now!

Too Fast To Live - rare footage from the UK

Here's some incredibly rare footage, circa 1972, showing some teddy boys getting their hair done, and poncing around in front of the second incarnation of Malcolm McLaren & Vivienne Westwood's boutique on Kings Road in London, Too Fast Too Live To Young To Die. Thanks to T.Tex for the youtube link.

From YouTube:


From British Pathe. According to them, this footage was unused. Unused from what, I have no idea. Click on the photo to view the clip:

"I can't discuss what I wrote, why I wrote it, or what I should or shouldn't have written. Frankly, I have no idea." Or, Who Killed Bambi?

A few weeks ago I linked to Roger Ebert's story on his involvement in the early days of Malcolm McLaren's film, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. Well, a couple of days ago, Ebert shared his original screenplay in it's entirety, written for the film in the summer of 1977, on his Chicago Sun Times page. The title of this post comes from his original suggestion for the film title, and his introduction below. He also includes a video clip of some of the involved parties discussing the whole thing. Very, very interesting.

This, for the benefit of future rock historians, is the transscript of a screenplay I wrote in the summer of 1977. It was tailored for the historic punk rock band the Sex Pistols, and was to be directed by Russ Meyer and produced by the impresario Malcolm McLaren. It still carried its original title, "Anarchy in the U.K.," although shortly after I phoned up with a suggested title change, which was accepted: "Who Killed Bambi?" I wrote about this adventure in my blog entry McLaren & Meyer & Rotten & Vicious & me. Discussions with Meyer, McLaren and Rene Daalder led to this draft. All I intend to do here is reprint it. Comments are open, but I can't discuss what I wrote, why I wrote it, or what I should or shouldn't have written. Frankly, I have no idea. Continued here.

Contempt and the punk narcotic

"Contempt is something few can carry, primarily because it argues ultimately for either murder or suicide. Godard named it with his film which involved international film production itself, but in popular culture it was probably a New York thing even then, introduced and branded as we now say by Andy Warhol." Joe Carducci riffs on Malcolm McLaren in this week's issue of the New Vulgate.

All three books referenced are well worth reading.

McLaren & Meyer & Rotten & Vicious & me

Film critic, Roger Ebert, spills the beans on the seldom told tale of how he & Russ Meyer almost made "The Great Rock & Roll Swindle." Read it here. Thanks to T.Tex for the tip.

The Johnny Rotten Show

Tommy Vance: So if you could start again, would you do it exactly the same way?

Johnny Rotten: Well, yeah. It's not as laid out as that, I mean we just did it, it was spontaneous. Everything we did was straight away. I think that's the only way you should do anything. It's the way you understand it, because it's honest. When you plan out your future it's not such fun.

Leave it to Dangerous Minds to beat me to the punch, I somehow missed this post from them in my RSS feed yesterday. A friend of mine sent me the same link to these recordings of a young Johnny Rotten guesting on Tommy Vance's show on Capital Radio in London on July 15, 1977. It may have been July 16.

What we get is a little over two hours of interesting talk & incredible musical selections from a young man who, at the time, was under what must have been quite some pressure - the Pistols were arguably at the peak of their notoriety, they had the white hot heat of the media spotlight on them, and as you'll hear, were the victims of random violence. Fascinating stuff. And in light of Malcolm McLaren's death, it seems like a good time to revisit this bit of "audio ephemera."

Part One (1:10:36):


Part two (0:53:34):


TRACK LISTING
01. Tim Buckley - Sweet Surrender
02. The Creation - Life Is Just Beginning
03. David Bowie - Rebel Rebel
04. Unknown Irish Folk Music / Jig
05. Augustus Pablo - King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown
06. Gary Glitter - Doing Alright With The Boys
07. Fred Locks - Walls
08. Vivian Jackson (Yabby You) and the Prophets - Fire in a Kingston
09. Culture - I'm Not Ashamed
10. Dr Alimantado & The Rebels - Born For A Purpose
11. Bobby Byrd - Back From The Dead
12. Neil Young - Revolution Blues
13. Lou Reed - Men Of Good Fortune
14. Kevin Coyne - Eastbourne Ladies
15. Peter Hammill - The Institute Of Mental Health, Burning
16. Peter Hammill - Nobody's Business
17. Makka Bees - Nation Fiddler / Fire!
18. Captain Beefheart - The Blimp
19. Nico - Janitor Of Lunacy
20. Ken Boothe - Is It Because I'm Black
21. John Cale - Legs Larry At Television Centre
22. Third Ear Band - Fleance
23. Can - Halleluhwah
24. Peter Tosh - Legalise It
(For more track info, and a full interview transcription, visit Fodderstompf)




(NME story clips courtesy of Van der Graaf Generator. Click the pix for a closer look.)

Malcolm McLaren RIP

Malcolm McLaren - RIP. Wow, this is huge...My condolences go out to his friends & family. The influence of this man on culture - fashion, music, politics (in certain circles), even just ideas - is incalculable. He made a lot of enemies along the way, but I'm sure he had his friends as well. I'm sure there will be much, much more over the next several days & weeks as far as memorials & remembrances go, so keep your eyes on the web.