When he launched the small-format 32-page song sheet The Melody Maker in 1926, Tin Pan Alley music publisher Lawrence Wright sparked the media revolution that created the music press.

This multi-million pound business eventually straddled the Atlantic and simultaneously proved a fertile breeding ground for generations of writers, photographers, film-makers and performers who made their mark in the wider world.

Everyone from Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde and Neil Tennant to Danny Baker, Caroline Coon, Julie Burchill, Barbara Ellen, Caitlin Moran, Miranda Sawyer and movie directors Cameron Crowe and Anton Corbijn (and even Michael Winner) cut their teeth on music magazines such as Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Rolling Stone, ZigZag and Smash Hits.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alan Lewis, Andy Warhol, Anton Corbijn, Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Barbara Ellen, Bob Geldof, Caitlin Moran, Cameron Crowe, Carl Gayle, Caroline Coon, Chelsea Clinton, Chrissie Hynde, Corinne Day, Danny Baker, Darby Romeo, David Salzman, Erica Smith, Grace Jones, Harry Styles, Jann Wenner, Jason Donovan, Julie Burchill, Kate Moss, Kerin Morayata, Lawrence Wright, Mat Snow, Max Jones, Micahel Winner, Miranda Sawyer, Neil Tennant, neville Brody, NIck Cave, Quincy Jones, Roisin Murphy, Stevie Wonder, Time Inc, Truman Capote, Tupac SHakur

//The opening spread of my piece, with images from In The Gutter. Left: Pleasant Gehman, right: Caroline Coon//

//The new issue of MacGuffin//

I’ve returned to the excellent MacGuffin magazine with a piece in their latest issue, which adopts the theme ‘The Chain’.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Belmacz, Caroline Coon, Diana Pfammatter, Ernst van der Hoeven, IN The Gutter, Julia Muggenburg, Kirsten Algera, Pleasant Gehman

//World Hotel Room from The Brothel Series, Caroline Coon 1998, Oil on canvas, 122 x 153cm. Photo: Richard Holttum//

“For this solo exhibition to happen in the same year that we celebrate 100 years since some women were legally considered human and therefore entitled to vote is deeply significant for me. The formation of my feminist project always meant that I needed to be a figurative painter – this made me, right from the start as an art student in the late 1960s, a ‘girl’ outlaw in the then Greenbergian-ruled art establishment. I am what Linda Nochlin called, in her 1973 essay, a Realist Criminal.” Caroline Coon, 2018

Liverpool’s The Gallery is staging yet another must-see exhibition: the first solo show by painter, writer, thinker and countercultural figurehead Caroline Coon.

Entitled Caroline Coon: The Great Offender, it is curated by Martin Green and James Lawler, who have selected 29 of Coon’s works and are mounting the show as part of their ‘Perpetual Provocateurs’ 2018 season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Anna McNay, Caroline Coon, David Edward Byrd, James Lawler, Linda Nochlin, Liverpool, Martin Green, Pam Hogg, Peter Ashworth, Roxana Halls, Sadie Lee, Sarah Jane Moon, The Gallery

I once asked gallery owner Angela Flowers for her definition of an artist. Without hesitating she said: “That’s easy. An artist is someone who simply has to paint every day.” Caroline is the personification of that description.

Charlotte Metcalf from her editor’s note, Laid Bare Dairy 1983-1984

A fascinating and frank document of the period of the artist’s personal life conveyed by the title, Caroline Coon’s Laid Bare Diary 1983-1984 is also a  lovingly realised bookwork.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Angela Flowers, Caroline Coon, Charlotte Metcalf, Cunst Art, Laid Bare Diary 1983-1984

//Barney Bubbles pasting up a page layout at Friends office on the upper floors of 305 Portobello Road, 1971//

//Caroline Coon in interview about Release at the drug charity’s premises at 50a Princedale Road, W11//

The BBC TV documentary The Alternative Society is an intelligent snapshot of London’s Notting Hill-based early 70s counterculture.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: 307 Portobello Road, Alan Marcuson, BIT, Caroline Coon, Friends, Harvey Matusow, Hawkwind, Ian King, Nik Turner, Oz, Release, Richard Neville, Teenburger

You would literally paint the news on your t-shirt that day and became part of the news, part of the progress with your artwork and your music…the women in punk were doing that; their style was a demonstration of their visual art, about what they were, where they were at and what they believed in.

Caroline Coon, She’s A Punk Rocker UK

She’s A Punk Rocker UK – Zillah Minx’s 2010 celebration of British female non-conformity – is a fantastic antidote to the current male musings on 1976 and all that.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alex Murray-Leslie, Caroline Coon, Electronic Beats, Eve Libertine, Gaye Advert, Gee Vaucher, Hagar The Womb, Helen Of Troy, Helen Wellington-Lloyd, Julie Burchill, Justine Armatage, Lou Moon, Michelle Brigandage, Nettle Baker, Olga Orbil, Poly Styrene, Rachel Minx, Rubella Ballet, She's A Punk, She's A Punk Rocker UK, Vi Subversa, Yoshoda Mad Mary, Zillah Minx

Today is the 40th anniversary of the gig at central London venue The Marquee by the Sex Pistols which generated their first substantial media coverage, a prescient 200-word review by Neil Spencer on page 31 of the February 21, 1976 issue of the New Musical Express.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Carole King, Caroline Coon, David Cassidy, ECM, Eddie And The Hot Rods, Genesis, Golden earring, Horse, I-Roy, Ian MacDonald, James Last, Jonh Ingham, Julie Burchill, Kate Phillips, Kate Simon, Kursaal Flyers, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Lisa Robinson, Manfred Eicher, Melody Maker, New Musical Express, NME, Patti Smith, Penny Reel, Sounds, Steve Jones, Tony Parsons, Tony Tyler, U-Roy

//Gone Ladies, with Ian Cameron, 1966. Off-set litho, 58 x 44.5cm,(edition size unknown). Published by Vandal Publications for Gear//

One of the exhibitions I’m most looking forward to visiting this autumn is London dealer Rob Tufnell’s presentation of the so-called “poster poems” produced by the late Christopher Logue.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Bernard Stone, Caroline Coon, Christopher Logue, Gear, Germano Facetti, Goliard Press, Ian Cameron, Labour Party, Pauline Boty, Posy Simmonds, Rob Tufnell, Scott King, Stephen Claydon, Stephen Sutcliffe, Tom Salter, Tribune

Taking its title from a song on hippie outfit Quintessence’s debut album, Jo Gannon’s documentary Getting It Straight In Notting Hill Gate – as featured on the BFI’s website – captures the social churn in the west London neighbourhood at the start of the 70s.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BFI, Caroline Coon, Felix de Mendelsohn, Felix Scorpio, Getting It Straight In Notting Hill Gate, Ink, Jo Gannon, John Muggeridge, King Mob, Oz, Pink Floyd, Portobello Film Festival, Quintessence, Release, Teenburger, The Mangrove

//From Radical People, Vol 1, No 2//

Great to see heroine Caroline Coon among the subjects/contributors to the second issue of Radical People, Reba Maybury’s celebration of quinquagenarian-plus non-conformists.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Anna Braun, Barbra Streisand, Caroline Coon, Humboldt University, Muzeum Sztuki, Otis Redding, Pauline Boty, Radical People, Reba Maybury