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Standing at the nexus of neo-Dada, Performance Art, No Wave, Punk, Fluxus > Mail Art and the as then unnamed aesthetix of the early 80’s is the Image Bank Postcard Show – a box of postcards put together by Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov in 1978. The idea was that the package was ‘an exhibition destined for the mail’, and the 48 images remains a fascinating object of time and place. The roster is distinguished: Ray Johnson, Ed Ruscha, Hermann Nitsch, Robert Mapplethorpe and Peter Hujar amongst others. Many of the images are 70’s noir with more than a hint of late 60’s perceptual mind-fuckery and Warhol-style blank refraction. The brain-child of Trasov and Morris (see here pictured as Miss General Idea 1971-83), the Image Bank was a catchy name and a great idea: a collaborative exercise based on sure Mail Art principles that aimed to subvert the traditional gallery structure in an attempt to reshape the world. Soon after the publication of this box, Morris and Trasov were sued by another, existing New York organisation called the Image Bank, and the idea fell into desuetude.

Tags: Ed Ruscha, Fluxus, General Idea, Hermann Nitsch, Image Bank, Mail Art, Michael Morris, No Wave, Performance Art, punk, Ray Johnson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Vincent Trasov

Posted on December 16, 2011 at 11:58 am  Comments?

Peter Burton, who has just died, had many different lives. During the high sixties – from about 1966 to 1968 – he was the manager of infamous mod/ queer bar Le Duce in D’Arblay Street, Soho. (For a fuller account in Burton’s own customarily clear and concise prose, read his “Parallel Lives” [Gay Men's Press 1985]). Last year we were talking about the club (favourably remembered by Derek Jarman and many, many others) when I asked him what was the soundtrack. A few days later he sent me a list of records on the Le Duce jukebox: heavily dependent on Motown and leaning, as often in gay aesthetics, towards the heart-stopping, the melodramatic and the nakedly emotional.

Here it is:

• When You’re Young and In Love The Marvelettes
• Third Finger, Left Hand Martha and the Vandellas
• Jimmy Mack Martha and the Vandellas
• What Becomes of the Broken Hearted Jimmy Ruffin
• I’ve Passed This Way Before Jimmy Ruffin
• Stop In the Name of Love The Supremes
• I Heard It Through the Grapevine Marvin Gaye
• Tears Of A Clown The Miracles
• You Really Got A Hold On Me The Miracles
• I Gotta Dance (To Keep From Crying) The Miracles
• I Second That Emotion The Miracles
• This Old Heart of Mine The Isley Brothers
• Reach Out, I’ll Be There The Four Tops
• Standing In the Shadows of Love The Four Tops
• The Lover’s Concerto The Toys
• My Girl The Temptations
• Ain’t Too Proud To Beg The Temptations
• My Guy Mary Wells
• River Deep, Mountain High Ike & Tina Turner
• Heaven Must Have Sent You The Elgins
• Bernadette The Four Tops
• Sitting On The Dock of the Bay Otis Redding
• Harlem Shuffle Bob & Earl
• Needle In A Haystack The Velvelettes
• You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me Dusty Springfield
• If You Go Away Dusty Springfield
• My World Is Empty Without You The Supremes
• Stand By Me Ben E.King
• Put Yourself In My Place The Elgins
• Take Me In Your Arms and Love Me Gladys Knight and the Pips

Tags: Bob & Earl, Derek Jarman, Dusty, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Ike and Tina Turner, Jimmy Ruffin, Le Duce, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvelettes, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, Motown, Otis Redding, Peter Burton, the Four Tops, the Isley Brothers, the Miracles, The Supremes, the Temptations, The Toys, the Velvelettes

Posted on November 13, 2011 at 5:59 pm  1 Comment

Despite all the histories, there is still much of the 1970’s to explore: the almost forgotten arenas of Mail Art, Performance Art, Postcard Art and Neo-Dada – tracked in the pages of General Idea’s FILE, or VILE magazine, or in the Image Bank’s 1977 “Post Card Show” collection (more of which later). Robert Lambert was part of this world, and in late 1975 produced a brilliant publication called “Egozine” – a visual biography from childhood, through a thorough immersion through pop culture, to his triumphal “Meat Dance” sequence at the party to celebrate the ‘one million and eleventh anniversary of the birth of art’ in February 1975. Extolling the ultimate principle of Pastiche – ‘in a Pastiche Format time is compressed, one only has enough to present the essence, and then move on’ – Lambert tells a still secret history of the 70’s, with plentiful material from his period in the Bon Bons, conceptual mainstays of the Rodney’s English Disco scene, and a pretty good tour through the multiple variations in gay fashions during that period. Like he says, ‘the future is here for those who live it’.

Tags: 70's gay fashions, FILE, General Idea, Mail Art, Performance Art, Postcard Art, Rodney's English Disco, The Bon Bons, the Image Bank, VILE

Posted on August 8, 2011 at 1:09 pm  Comments?

This photograph was taken in autumn 1977. Judy Nylon, who was then in Snatch, asked me round one day to witness an event. She was going to be tattooed: with her friend Ruth Marten, Judy had decided to do a homage to Man Ray’s 1924 work Le Violon D’Ingres, where he superimposed two violin shaped f holes over a photograph of his model and lover Alice Prin (aka Kiki de Montparnasse) – which was posed, as the title suggests, after a painting by Jean Dominique Auguste Ingres. Judy had decided to get the f holes tattooed into her back and wanted me to be there. The tattoos are definitely real: I held her hand during the long process and from the pressure she exerted, I could tell that it hurt. I then took this quick photograph – in the living room of Jonathan Ross’ house in Fulham, where she was then staying – and that was that: art work completed and recorded. In a Sounds interview soon after (22.10.77) she gave an explanation of her commitment: ‘the tattoo is a window into the psyche of the person who’s being tattooed. Its a line you cross and you don’t go back – it’s one of the few things you choose’. There’s a lot on Judy Nylon on the internet – focussing on her work with Snatch and her great solo album “Paul Judy”. There’s a good interview at http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/oct2001/interview_judy_nylon.html Ruth Marten also contributed to “The Secret Public” at that time: for more on her work, go to http://ruthmarten.com/.

Tags: "The Secret Public", Alice Prin, Jonathan Ross, Judy Nylon, Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray, Paul Judy, Ruth Marten

Posted on April 14, 2011 at 12:35 pm  4 Comments

Some youtube trawling from the dawn of youth culture in the Thirties and the Second World War: these clips bring the period to life. The first is by the Mills Brothers, with their huge 1943 hit Paper Doll. Not only did it return them to the charts after a lull, but it was so popular amongst American kids that they attached paper dolls to their up-to-the-minute, Teen Age fashions:

Paper Dolls by Mills Bros

Next up, Dorothy Dandridge and Paul White with A Zoot Suit (For My Sunday Girl), from a 1942 soundie: dig the jive talk, as well as the splendour of the clothes themselves:

Which got the adolescents who wore them into big trouble in the June 1943 Zoot Suit Riots that raged for several days in the Downtown LA area: here is a great montage of photos from these disturbances, which pitched conscripted, usually white servicemen against local Mexican/ American kids:

One of the originators and popularisers of the blackamerican style that spread throughout the US and, eventually, to Europe during the later 30′s was Cab Calloway – who published his “Hepster’s Dictionary of Jive” in 1938. Here he is in 1934, live from the Cotton Club, with Zaz Zuh Zaz – the tune whose clanging syllables helped to inspire the Parisian Zazous half a decade later:

And here’s the forte number from the white band that helped to make Swing the main motor of American youth culture, just as it was about to become the Teenage: it’s a clip of “Sing Sing Sing” from the 1937 film, “Hollywood Hotel” with Gene Krupa on drums:

Tags: Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway, Dorothy Dandridge, Gene Krupa, Mills Brothers, Teen Age Fashions, Zazous, Zoot Suit Riots

Posted on March 11, 2011 at 6:51 pm  Comments?