Showing posts with label the clash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the clash. Show all posts
inoculated city
there's a peculiar thing about money - in large quantities it tends to have a life of it's own, even a conscience of it's own. the power of money becomes very difficult to control. man has always been a venal animal.
the growth of populations, the huge cost of wars, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation - all these things, make him more scared and more venal.
the average man is tired and scared, and a tired scared man can't afford ideals. he has to buy food for his family.
in our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. you can't expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to lack of quality. you can't have quality with mass production. you don't want it because it lasts too long. so you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle to produce artificial obscelescence. mass production couldn't sell it's goods next year, unless it made what it sold this year look unfashionable a year from now.
we have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. but in the loveley kitchen the average person can't produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom, is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the beauty industry. we make the finest packages in the world, the stuff inside is mostly junk.
raymond chandler/the big sleep 1953
version city
In January and February 1983, Joe Strummer produced and directed a fifty-minute silent black-and-white film, Hell W10. The film starred Paul and Mick as rival underworld characters in Notting Hill, warring over a consignment of heroin. The scene at the end where they all get shot was filmed on the bit of waste-ground next to Westbourne Park bus garage.
For years, Hell W10 was believed lost. Then in 2002 the film turned up on a London market stall, and the following year it was included as an extra on the Essential Clash DVD.
the four horsemen
read this article
the blogpost above lead me to a curious train of thought, how will rule-abiding jobsworths who work in the licencing and food trades deal with the concept of men wearing proper hats again..?
i mean, if i go into a venue/cafe/bar wearing a new brixton fedora, can they really tell me to take it off, in the same circumstance that would befall someone who wears a baseball cap, or a beanie pulled down low... those hats are cultural signifiers of a negative self-image, whereas i'm sure that wearing a christy's chepstow, would only have people believe i'm O.G.(as in orginal gangster, ho-ho).
but the crux of the matter is, staff might have to discriminate, otherwise, they are making people remove formal clothing... personally i rarely go into a venue that has any sort of dress-code other than the one i subscribe to already, but how should i react to someone in a faux-police jacket, telling me i must remove part of my wardrobe?
having seen this in action, many, many years ago, whilst out with a friend who always wore hats, on one night he chose a woolen pakul hat which you can read about here. and we got as far as the front door of one long since demolished poser pre-club bar(where i first saw men who had shaved arms, purely out of their own vanity...), where he was told to take it off... this of course leads to issues with ethnic identity, this type of hat also symbolises history and place... as opposed to the baseball cap or the beanie, which is a cultural signifier and is sometimes worn to indicate wannabe criminal affiliations, or to hide behind/under.
i'm not down on baseball caps, i own several john deere caps, and they are excellent, i like wearing them, even though stateside people wonder why i'd want to look like a farmer... and i have a levi's beanie and a thick woollen adidas beanie(from the early 90's).
but it looks as if the rules are going to have to change, otherwise venues will have to supply hat-racks again... what's the point of spending time and effort on finding a good hat, only to be told to take it off, by someone who has no hair!
i know that i hunted high and low for decent hat shops, while travelling around... and i did actually find a traditional hat shop in barcelona.
now of course, i've done the research and have my favourites, baileys of hollywood and the new york hat co. being two not already mentioned here.
good article here, on shopping for hats in new york.
fishnet stockings
hopefully one of the last images from the sunday afternoon session at coventry airport, in what seems like a very long time ago...
we were just about to move house, and go abroad for a couple of weeks, i had a month off work... it was all out of the usual routine.
i originally went along to take photos of the great old aircraft, and of course, this nice couple turned-up in their hotrod... leading me to ask politely if they minded me shooting the bejeezus out of it(camera-wise).
all a bit end of one era, start of a new one for me, as things will be moving apace in the next few weeks... the much-planned website will be up and running over the xmas period, as that's a usefull downtime - and will be a good showcase for my work(although i am just a photographer not a psychic or a business-manager, so who knows what the next step will be!), the book should be out and for sale on the website.
i was supposed to be doing a noir portrait session this afternoon, but with people having bad flu viruses and lots of other stuff going on(ok, i needed a haircut!), it's been postponed until the model and my organisation can get together.
the podcast is stalled at the moment, due to the planned studio space and equipment still not up-and-running following the house move(we take our time here...), but it will be a monthly thing once i get it going, so keep 'em peeled.
i'm planning for it to be a mix of rockabilly and obscure 80's stuff.
i want to do a video for my friend's song, which came out in the summer... it got sidetracked by me going away and then having no internet for a month. i'm not going to let a little thing like not having a video-camera stop me from doing that!
...and if you are interested, i'm reading route 19 revisited by marcus gray, a damn fine book about london calling and all that influenced it...
ok - bring on 2010.
of course, the other major news, is that i will not be using this site much longer, owing to it's habit of cropping my photos to suit itself(see images above)...
from this post on, i will be blogging the usual gubbins from here on tumblr.
that site has a much less cluttered aspect to it's layout, and is photography friendly...
the future is unwritten
i was watching said film this evening(a biog by julien temple about joe strummer), and as they covered the period where joe goes to granada after breaking up the clash...
we climbed it alright... all the way through the gipsy sector and up the steepest path in the world... it was worth it though ten times over!
on the way back it started raining - so we ducked into a flamenco bar built into the caves and had a nice lunch with free drinks!
they had this very view(including the tree in the background), during a voice-over.
this was a hill above granada in the al baicin, where we climbed up to see some cave houses, and came down the road, only to have it rain, and we ducked into a bar that had been carved out of the rock, for lunch.
yours sincerely - gobsmacked.
we climbed it alright... all the way through the gipsy sector and up the steepest path in the world... it was worth it though ten times over!
on the way back it started raining - so we ducked into a flamenco bar built into the caves and had a nice lunch with free drinks!
they had this very view(including the tree in the background), during a voice-over.
this was a hill above granada in the al baicin, where we climbed up to see some cave houses, and came down the road, only to have it rain, and we ducked into a bar that had been carved out of the rock, for lunch.
yours sincerely - gobsmacked.
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