This album is titled Fans. It’s about wearing your emotion on your sleeve, just as fans scream out from the audience or want to get on stage so they can kiss him or are terrified they’re going to have a nervous breakdown if he don’t come round the corner and sit beside them. They all bear the frustration… we’re all fans waiting to jump out.
//Westside Sharpies Mick Emery and Steve M sporting Connies outside Flinders Street Station, Melbourne, 1978. Photo: Jacques Kosky, courtesy Stef Egan//
The ‘Connie’ cardigan was an essential element of dress for Sharpies, the tough and stylish Australian music/fashion youth subculture active in Melbourne’s blue collar suburbs from the 60s to the early 80s.
Designed by a Mr Conti, a Greek clothier in the Thornbury neighbourhood to the north of the city, Connies were picked up on by Sharpies for their tight fit.
//Sharpies sport Connie variants outside Young & Jackson Hotel, Melbourne, 1972. Photo from Tadhg Taylor’s Top Fellas//
//Sydney Morning Herald, November 9, 2014//
My legal claim against Vivienne Westwood, her co-author Ian Kelly and publisher Picador over plagiarism of my work in the recently published memoir of the British fashion designer has been featured across the Australian media.
I was interviewed in Melbourne by Jason Steger, literary editor of The Age, whose article about substantial plagiarism from my book The Look as well as a multitude of factual errors, potential libels and serial failure to correctly credit photographers was picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald and Australia’s book industry magazine Books + Publishing.
//Food writer and map compiler Leanne Clancey at the launch of An Appetite For Melbourne at the city’s Kelvin Club. Photo: Brook James//
My wife and I are happy to have hooked up our friends at mapmakers Herb Lester Associates with her one-time schoolmate and these days prominent Australian food writer Leanne Clancey.
As a result Clance, as she is known, produced the excellent guide An Appetite For Melbourne in collaboration with US designer Ross Bruggink.
//Photo: Brook James//
//Top fellas and brushes in the 60s and 70s. Photos courtesy Tadhg Taylor//
For my money, Sharpies beat all other youth cults hands down, so news of the publication of the third edition of Tadhg Taylor’s Top Fellas is cause for celebration.
A few years ago on THE LOOK blog I explored the style and musical tastes of this unique subculture which blossomed among Melbourne teens from the 60s to the early 80s, and never tire of the clips from Greg Mcainsh’s 1974 documentary which captures the top fellas and brushes in the prime.
Witty companion, workaholic, optimist, stoic, computer-phobe, special occasion facilitator, raconteur, moralist, compulsive green thumb, avid theatre and concertgoer, roof gardener, summer pudding-maker, painter, rememberer of birthdays, punster, voracious reader, film maker, museumolic, snappy dresser, sequiner, harpsichord player, party giver, flower arranger, supplier of bon mots, delightful travel companion, regular sender of postcards (sometimes 6 at a time) for 43 expatriate years…and much, much more.
Richard “Dickie” Lowe – who died earlier this year aged 67 – was a smashing bloke, as the words above from Alexandra and Leigh Copeland’s Melbourne Age obituary attest.
I encountered Lowe on but a handful of occasions; he never failed to charm and delight.
Although he had lived in the UK since the late 60s, Lowe’s Larrikin spirit was undimmed to the last. His singularity was made manifest in the magnificent decor of his central London apartment, which communicated an interest in and knowledge of Egyptian art, miniature Australian landscapes, postcards, bric-a-brac and curios of all varieties, and has now been documented by photographer Peter Waldman.
//Two views of Robert Hughes, London, 1967.//
Sad to note the death yesterday of the great journalist and author Robert Hughes.
| Paul Gorman is a writer. This is his blog: art, books, conversation, cults, dancing, design, encounters, environments, events, film, galleries, groups, individuals, invitations, magazines, music, opinions, performance, photography, places, press, privacy, spaces, style, thoughts + views. |
© 2009 Paul Gorman is…. All Rights Reserved.
This blog is powered by Wordpress and Magatheme by Bryan Helmig.
Recent Comments