//The Stiff Records clock. Concept: Jake Riviera, design: Barney Bubbles, lettering: Caramel Crunch, 1977. No reproduction without permission//

Stiff Records was on fire in 1977.

The British independent record label, with owners Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson snapping up acts and art director Barney Bubbles applying his unsurpassable skills to the visualising of their music, came straight out of the traps 40 years ago this month with the release of the first ‘punk’ LP Damned Damned Damned by – who else? – The Damned.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Caramel Crunch, Dave Robinson, Demon Records, Elvis Costello, F-Beat, Ian Dury, Jake Riviera, Larry Wallis, Max Wall, Mick Farren, Nick Lowe, Stiff Records, The Adverts, Wreckless Eric

//Malcolm McLaren, Las Vegas, January 1978. Photo © Fayette Hauser//

To mark the arrival in London of the legendary founder of The Cockettes Fayette Hauser for screenings of rare films featuring the transgressive troupe, here are some extracts from an interview she gave me for the forthcoming Malcolm McLaren biography.

I’m also featuring photographs Hauser took when she hooked up with the late McLaren on the West Coast after the Sex Pistols had splintered in San Francisco at the end of their January 1978 US tour.

With meetings arranged with record company and movie studio producers and financiers, McLaren stayed at West Hollywood’s infamous Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard, home to the likes of Tom Waits and visiting musicians from Bob Marley & The Wailers to the Ramones and the Velvet Underground (Andy Warhol’s Heat and Trash were both filmed there).

//60s postcard for The Tropicana Motel and Motor Lodge, 8585 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood, CA//

//The Ramones at The Tropicana in 1978. With Joey Ramone (right) is Linda Ramone (in Emmanuelle Khanh sunglasses) and next to Johnny Ramone is Cynthia Whitney (aka Roxy Ramone), who is wearing the Sex t-shirt I Groaned With Pain, designed by McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Photo: © Brad Elterman/Getty//

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Bette Midler, Fayette Hauser, Granny Takes A trip, John Lydon, Johnny Rotten, Las Vegas, Linda Ramone, Little Anthony & The Imperials, Paul Cook, Ray Stevenson, Ronnie Biggs, Rory Johnston, Slash, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Steve Jones, The Cockettes, The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, The Ramones, The Tropicana Motel

//Stills from unedited interview with Malcolm McLaren by Ariel Van Straten, London 1996//

The establishment still aren’t quite able to understand interactive; it’s the street which understands it and is able to use it in a simplistic but very real way. They will be the people who break through; they will make it the most sexy. It won’t be as cerebral as the likes of Peter Gabriel or Eno and that lot.

[Handed underground dance CD]: See look, they’re already emailing, connected to the web, and that’s where it’s all happening.

Web TV, downloading music, graphics and so on is definitely the future, definitely where it is going to go. These guys are on the verge of suggesting in the years to come you won’t purchase your music from shops. Your cultural information is going to come through the Net.

Now it’s about buying the technology so that you can broadcast from your goddamn bedroom across the planet. I think the reason why the industry is holding back is because they know that it is only a question of the technology being affordable and that’s when it will happen.

Malcolm McLaren, London 1996

In the mid-90s photographer Ariel Van Straten interviewed Malcolm McLaren for a film about graffiti art. Entitled Getting Your Name Up, the short was made for a video-only issue of Don’t Tell It magazine, to raise awareness of the plight of Simon Sunderland, who had been jailed for five years for committing criminal damage on the rail network in South Yorkshire using the tag ‘Fista’.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Ariel Van Straten, Brian Eno, Don't Tell It, Fista, Jossie Avrats, Nick Clark, Peter Gabriel, Simon Sunderland