Paul Gorman is…

“Bring me your dented and bent out of shape”: Johnny Moped documentary is on the way

Jun 3rd, 2013

//Johnny Moped, Dave Berk, Fred Berk, Slimy Toad, 1977. Photo: Chiswick Records//

In an age clogged up with boil-in-the-bag popular music documentaries, I’m looking forward to Fred Burns’ Basically, Johnny Moped, about the unpredictable outsider who emerged via associations with The Damned and Chrissie Hynde during the post-punk period to strut and fret his hour upon the stage.

Moped and his band – Dave and Fred Berk and Slimy Toad – were out and about a lot in 1977 and 1978; I caught them a couple of times, once as part of a bigger bill at Camden Town’s Music Machine (now Koko) and another time in the West End (possibly The Marquee).

Their single Darling, Let’s Have Another Baby was (and remains 35 years later) a stand-out song of the period and Barney Bubbles’ artwork for that and other Moped releases and promotional material sealed the deal.

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The master tailor’s tale: Il Sarto di Picasso

Jun 2nd, 2013

In her review this weekend of TJ Clark’s new book Picasso And Truth: From Cubism To Guernica, Financial Times art critic Jackie Wullschlager writes about how meaninglessness replaced absolute truth in the 20th century epoch of terror and totalitarianism, and that “in our age of performance and body art, Clark brilliantly posits a Picasso who replaced a truth project with a performance project, playing, dazzling, persuading.”

//Picasso sketches a priapic portrait of Michele Sapone at his villa La Californie, Cannes, 1957. Photo: DD Duncan//

//Pastels given to Sapone by Picasso, including the portrait made on April 1, 1957//

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