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

Sunday 17 September 2023

Friday 30 December 2022

Punk Beijing











What can I say...

This blog wouldn't exist without Punk. I was too young be one in 1976, and certainly too Catholic. Fast forward to 1999 and one of my newest and closest friends (professional troublemaker) Blue Doran sat me down in his Bangkok apartment over bottles of Sangsom and underneath his vintage movie poster collection (Midnight Cowboy and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid) draping the walls, he explained Punk to me from his first hand experience of following the Sex Pistols around as a fifteen year old from Worcester, and my mind was blown. I got the concept, I got the sizzle and I got the history all in one night, from a living witness and nothing was ever the same again. By coincidence my daughter's Aunty was a punk inspired designer in Thailand with the widely loved Scotch-Soda clothing brand.


On one of my returns to the UK I stayed with Rob, my former design lecturer at Uni, and he had a very expensive Vivienne Westwood collection for both himself and his partner. 

She tossed her prezzies out when they separated and Rob mentioned it was about 20 grands worth. That's just the stuff she was given. Back in the 90's she also refused a chance to be a model for one of the Vivienne Westwood collections. Super Croydon girl is Audrey (went to school with Kate Moss), totally grounded and couldn't give a shit about any attention seeking lifestyle. In a way that's about as punk as it gets.

While at Robs we took the opportunity to go and see Vivienne's retrospective at the Victoria & Albert museum and that's when I really got into her work. He also gave me Jane Mulvagh's biography of Vivienne, An Unfashionable Life, to read. It's a really good book and provides a bit more dispassionate granularity than most biographies.

Raised in Derbyshire from working class stock, Ms Westwood established LET IT ROCK with Malcolm 'Svengali' McLaren on the Kings Road. I dare say Tavistock were all over the show, without even letting them know. Nobody wants to talk about that so let's roll on. After leaving the rock (let it rock, black rock, tavistock... quarry men then the rolling stones and G Brethren and so on and so forth).

I can't let it go



In a way it's Tolkienesque right? 

In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. 

Next thing, we're in Rivendell

Perfect

All around the alleged globe, the British don't quite understand that of course the people are loved, but the empire?

... nah... the international community want to punch the football into the net like Maradona, unless it's filling Kiev's MuthaWEFFer pockets or the EU or the WHO or do I really need to continue?

If you consider yourself British (i'm a space mongrel) I can assure you there's lot's of British historiography around the world (all over the world)


Vivienne as it were.

You will only see two British iconographies from the slums of Rangoon to the Showrooms of Beijing. 

Those are Bentley Motors & Punks

All strata of society around the world know those two and till recently the Queen and the Beatles.

Prove me wrong

Sunday 20 July 2008

Trouble at mill

I just found out that maybe the last two weeks posts didn't make it out to you through Dynamo London's post over here. It has to be down to me meddling with Feedburner (Does this mean I'm a geek?) a while back and if it wasn't for them or Sam I'd be posting away oblivious to the technical problems. I hoped I've fixed it but you could do me no better a favour than leave a comment or drop me a mail here if this post feeds your RSS reader. That would be great. Thanks

Monday 7 April 2008

Twittercloud

Tweet clouds - The bigger the word the more often I have twittered it. I am looking forward to coming back to this maybe in six months. Very revealing.

Via Russell Davies

Sunday 17 June 2007

Is Blogging the new Tamagotchi?

Talking to the Mark McGuinness at Interesting2007 I was explaining my emerging relationship with this blog. How if I neglect her it feels like she's content starved or being taken for granted. I also feel it makes sense to introduce this blog when meeting up with any of the distributed village posse in case it facilitates conversation by navigating quickly through the small talk or helps to locate me at a later time. Notice a pattern here? Guilt through neglect, burden of provision and requisite introductions in social situations? Lets face it, this blog could easily be 'the wife' to use a certain vernacular couldn't it? Anyway it was Mark who nailed it. "Blogging is the new Tamagotchi". We were both pleased with ourselves for having a conversation that concluded on this line.