Paul Gorman is…

As John Waters said: ‘If they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em!’ Instead visit a great new website, The Librarian

Feb 26th, 2014

librarian“If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em!” John Waters

I can’t recommend Jennifer Taylor’s new blog thelibrarian.com highly enough.

Over dinner with her and her husband Nic in New York last year, JB revealed her plans for a website celebrating books. This, she felt, would offer an escape from the solipsism which engulfs most forms of web expression.

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//Photo: Courtesy thelibrarian.com//

So The Librarian showcases other people’s books, their collections and also the visual culture which surrounds reading and literacy. There are sections on great bookshops, libraries and private collectors, such as the West Coast artist Alia Penner, who I’m proud to say files a copy of my book Mr Freedom on a shelf alongside tomes on YSL, Kenzo and Maripol.

As one would expect from JB + Nic, it’s a fantastic-looking site, simultaneously substantial and diverting.

Visit The Librarian here.

 

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‘I work in the belief – or dare – that I remain a perennial beginner’ Rose Finn-Kelcey: 1945-2014

Feb 25th, 2014
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//Divided Self, 1974. Black and white silver gelatine print. 46.6 x 70cm//

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//Sad And Lonely, 2006. Wood, paint, aluminium, fairground lights. 7.4 x 3.7 x 1.5m//

“I work in the belief – or dare – that I can continue to reinvent myself and remain a perennial beginner.”

Sad to note the death of the British artist Rose Finn-Kelcey.

Read Guy Brett’s obituary for this “wonderful artist and great person” here.

Ridinghouse’s recently published monograph Rose Finn-Kelcey – which contains essays by Brett, Sarah Kent and Michael Stanley – is available here.

Visit the artist’s website here.

 

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It’s just never enough: Nowhere Is Home, the new Dexys film

Feb 14th, 2014

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“Do you know what? I was a no-hoper. Prison was a possibility, you know, an absolute possibility for me. It was probably 50:50 whether I’d end up there or not.

“I was considered a failure. I left school, no qualifications, at 15. I’d come bottom of the class in several subjects. I’d gone from one job to another. I was seen as a drifter within my family, so now I wasn’t going to screw this up.

“If I was going to do this I was going to really do it, because this was the one thing from very young that I knew I was good at. And I’d kind of gone off the path, I’d tried to be like everyone else, I’d tried doing the things I thought I was supposed to do, that other people wanted me to do, and failed at all of them.

“So this meant everything to me really.

“Probably meant too much, you know?

“There it is.”

Kevin Rowland, 2014.

Centred on Dexys’ 2013 residency at London’s Duke Of York’s Theatre and the group’s One Day I’m Going To Soar album, Nowhere Is Home will premier in May.

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Lunch with Messrs Hell + Riviera

Feb 10th, 2014
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//Richard Hell + Jake Riviera, outside the Chelsea Arts Club, London, Feb 2014//

I’ve had few, if any, lunches as enjoyable as last week’s hook-up with Richard Hell and Jake Riviera for a piece I am writing for GQ magazine.

Richard and Jake first met outside CBGB in March 1976, having been introduced by photographer Roberta Bayley, who was working the club door that night.

With Dr Feelgood’s Lee Brilleaux, Jake had witnessed Richard in performance the night before with Johnny Thunders in the first – and soon to disintegrate – line-up of the Heartbreakers at Max’s Kansas City.

We dined less than half a mile away from Chelsea embankment, where Richard and the rest of his next band the Void-Oids spent a pretty miserable-sounding sojourn on a leaky boat when in the UK on tour with The Clash in 1978.

As Richard recounts in his fabulous memoir I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp, he and Jake have shared a series of adventures over the years, some of which I will be covering in my GQ feature which should be out in the summer.

I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp is out in paperback this week; buy here.

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I like a bit of a cavort: Sigue Sigue Sputnik perform Success on Brazilian TV

Feb 6th, 2014

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About 10 years ago in a cramped club, an exotic creature whose ensemble included suede chaps and amazing boots joined the throng in my corner, shape-making and slithering to his heart’s content. It was quite a show, courtesy of Martin Degville, whose talents in fashion and music have it seems proved too uncontainable for sustained mainstream acceptance since he first emerged from Birmingham in the 70s.

Today it’s grey and cold, the kitchen floor’s being tiled so the back door has to be open. There is nothing else for it: a restorative jump-up to this wonderfully preposterous performance of Success by Degville, Tony James and the rest of Sigue Sigue Sputnik on Brazilian TV from way back:

Stick around for incomprehensible banter with the TV show host and the play-out over the credits of Rio Rocks.

Ay-ay-ay-ay!

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Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-Entry – assembling the materials for long overdue monograph

Feb 5th, 2014
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//Exhibition cards and private view invitations, 1973 to date//

I’m assembling materials for Rethink/Re-Entry, the long-overdue monograph of the great British artist Derek Boshier I am currently editing.

The book takes its title from the early Boshier painting which inspired rock’s ultimate art-directed star Bryan Ferry to choose the name Remake/Remodel for the first track on Roxy Music’s game-changing debut LP.

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//Rethink/Re-entry, oil on canvas, 1962//

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