One of the things that struck me when I recently revisited Chris Steele-Perkins photographs in his and Richard Smith’s Teds book is just how much many of the photographs are a document of a certain kind of British 1970s style.

Although the sharpness of 1950s Teds (which if you look back at you can possibly see the very early roots of mod concerns) is there but side by side with it is a kind of laddishness at points, a looseness to the style: not loucheness necessarily but if there was a 1970s working class subcultural equivalent I’d be using it about now.

Which sounds like I’m knocking the book but I’m not – I think it’s a fine piece of work, a fine snapshot of a particular cultural gathering and point in time.

In some ways, the photographs reminds me of the impression Richard Allen’s 1970s skinhead fiction books can leave you with – tough, rough and tumble 1970s subcultural style and living – without the more overt harshness and violence of Mr Allen’s books.

I suppose one of the things that the book brings home is just how much the 1970s incarnation of teds / teddy boys / teddy girls was an adapting to then modern day times, styles and attitudes, rather than being a slavish recreation.

The original 1979 edition is now long gone and considerably out of print, as is the second 1987 edition, also published by Travelling Light / Exit and I’m afraid to say that the third 2002 edition published by Dewi Lewis has also wandered off the shelves (one of the earlier editions is on the left above, the Dewi Lewis edition is on the right above).

…you can find a copy but it’ll cost you a few pence or more – interestingly when I looked here the original edition was available at not all that much more than the 2002 edition.

Visit the book at Dewi Lewis Publishing here.

View a selection of images from the book at Pony Boy Magazine here and Chris Steele-Perkins here.

I’ve been drawn to David Levinthal’s work for a while… he creates photographic dioramas and still lifes that reflect particular cultures, activities and periods in history, work that could be seen to be a forerunner to the likes Slinkachu’s miniature street life photography that is also created in a similar manner.

On some levels David Levinthal’s work such as his Barbie Millicent Roberts series could be seen as technically proficient photographs of, well, toys…

…but something else seems to happen in the stillness of his photographs and their objects, even when they are shot without overtly contextualising backgrounds or used to create or recreate particular actions, stories and histories.

The Barbie Millicent Roberts series predated the Mad Men-esque trend for the revival of populuxe styling by nearly a decade, alongside a return to Marilyn Monroe like glamour and it takes an iconic toy/doll from over the seas and seems to return it to its pure archetypal form – almost becoming 1950s/1960s prototypes for an idealised American womanhood.

…and here and there, although not as inherently dark in subject matter as say his late night hustler Modern Romance work, the dolls in this series start to tumble towards a Cramps-esque, Poison Ivy-like take on such things and to step closer to mondo, b-movie, beach-party, bad girl-isms.

Visit David Levinthal here (tread gently some of his work is of a more grown-up nature, shall we say).

Peruse the Barbie Millicent Roberts book here.

Well, talking of Bone-Box, I’m not sure if I could encapsulate their world and work better than this quote from the venerable British Broadcasting Corporation:

“Bone-Box weave webs of faded fairytales and cross palms with slivers of shattered tales of the everyday thrown from an out of control carousel… a ghostly gospel of drama and dented dreams far more feral than the plaintive lap-steel sometimes suggests. As an epic whole, they are The Master and Margharita filmed by Glenn Ford and scripted by Tom Waits with executive producer Leonard Cohen.”

A particular favourite of theirs around these parts is Talking Christ Down From The Cross, which can be found on the Death Of A Prize Fighter album.

A paean to a lost soul I think: “First he took to drinking, what better way to speed time… but he took to drowning until he flooded his past…”.

Even though I must have listened to it a fair few times over the years, it has still just made my hair stand on end as I’ve listened to it.

I just loose myself and wander off somewhere when I hear the opening notes of this. Wistful, sad, uplifting indeed.

Fine cover work to: the lost age and art of entertaining a crowd in a very particular way. The painting was commissioned by Jay Taylor* for the album. Commitment to the cause and all that.

(Mr Jay Taylor in a variety of hirsute stances.)

You can listen to/make your own the song on various zeros and ones ether victrolas: last.fm and Bandcamp... or seek them out at Boomkat here and peruse them here.

*Head chap round Bone-Box towers, former Goldblade-er, previously organiser of all things band/live music orientated at The Night and Day in Manchesters and currently organising such things at The Ruby Lounge in same said city. Also a very decent gent it must be said. Somewhat influential and informative in the early days of Afterhours via an interview/natter we spent some time on a few years ago now. Tip of the hat to you sir.

In my own Afterhours work I don’t think the intention had ever been to create an exact replica of times gone by; more to capture a particular spirit of something – a re-imagining that was in part inspired by and filtered through my own experiences, alongside personal cultural explorations, memory and representations…

…and along the way, an interview I read with photographer Nick Clements in Nude magazine (not a nude magazine please note) which quite possibly helped to bring together and coalesce my ideas.

Some of the concepts Nick Clements talked about in that interview seemed to somewhat haunt me for a fair old while – possibly in the way that William Gibson talks about ideas not falling fully formed from his brow, more in the intangible sense that he saw something sprayed on the side of a skip and it haunted him and that formed the basis for a story.

Along which lines, from the interview:

“(My photographs are) reconstuctions… but not of any existing photographs or illustration. Instead they have been reconstructed partly from the memories of those who were there at the time, and partly from my own memories of events, films and photography of the period… the perfect thing about memory is that it is imperfect…

“…if I did it from photographs that would be re-enactment and what I’m doing is re-creation. One comes from memory and feeling and intuition and the other is a historical phenomenon. Many of my “memories” stem from pop culture as seen through television programmes like Happy Days…

“We loved Happy Days as kids but even then we didn’t take it seriously as an exact re-creation. In the same way, the film American Grafitti had lots of historical errors in it: the length of hair and so on, but the emotion that George Lucas put over had a very authentic ring to it.”

The full interview can be found in Bare Essentials: The Best Of Nude Magazine 2003-2011 – which can be found and purchased as part of a somewhat bargainous package along with The Graphic Art Of The Underground.

Nick Clements Simulacra book, where I first saw his work collected together is sadly somewhat rare as hen’s teeth but you can find other of his publications via his Men’s File archive or a collection of related work in The Best Of Men’s File, published by Korero Books.

There was a point where David Lynch seemed to be the go-to chap for accessible but experimental thrillers – around the mid eighties to the turn of the decade – when Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart were either peering into the underbelly of the American picket fence dream or taking the viewer or a rollercoaster ride with Sailor and Lula.

As I was wandering along to this here computer this morning I wandered what category/genre you would put Blue Velvet into? It has elements of neo noir but I’m not sure that’s quite right. Transgressive noir? That’s possibly getting near to the spot.

Anyway, one of the highlights in a film full of highlights (if that’s the right word for a celluloid tale such as this) for me and a part that can stand on it’s own separate to the film is Ms Isabella Rossellini’s music montage in the Slow Club – all crushed velvet plushness, seediness, broken dreams and rather lovely blue lighting that puts me in mind of Kiera Knightley’s tube station during the Blitz singing performance in John Maybury’s Edge Of Love (another director who somehow manages to sneak really rather experimental elements of film making into often quite accessible films).

When I watch it, it tends to make me think (hope?) that somewhere in the world there’s a full album and maybe even a full recording of this performance – well, without the unsettling elements and story that accompany it.

More details on Mr Angelo Badalamenti’s rather fine soundtrack here. Watch the montage sequence here.

Peruse the film here.

Talking of lost corners of the world (see Day #29/365)…

Part of a (smallish) library of books that document Soho back in the day… I used to have this Soho Night & Day book – I think I bought it for tuppence ha’penny back in the day from a charity shop or maybe a second hand shop…

…now, well, it’ll cost you a pretty penny, particularly the hardback edition.

It’s a raw written and photographed snapshot of Soho in the mid to late 1960s and now seems like a capturing of a world far, far away, particularly as the redevelopment (or literal demolishing to give it a probably more precise word) of that corner of the world has gathered pace somewhat.

I stumbled upon this description of the book online which seemed to sum up the book/s rather well:

“…a gravelly love letter to Soho, London. About 40 or 50 so real life vignettes written by Frank Norman, detailing both the history of the once notorious streets of Soho (Old Compton, Dean, Brewer, Greek, Poland, Berwick, Wardour, Romilly) and the stories of the larger than life characters who once graced its streets, restaurants, clip joints, alley ways, bars and clubs like old neon bulbs which once lit up a once upon night but whose names are largely forgotten or have entered urban folklore.”

(Indeed, the book was written/photographed by two of those whose names have to different degrees entered those annals of inner city folklore from lives, living and (sometimes) working amongst those streets – Frank Norman and Jeffrey Bernard.)

Peruse the paperback here and if it’s still there – a resonable sized preview of the book here. The above writing can be found in full here.

A fair few years ago now, along with my sister, I had a shop/gallery called The Last Chance Saloon in Waterloo, London.

It was one of the first places in the UK that sold/had exhibitions of what came to be known as lowbrow art – a kind of loose movement that amongst other things often mixed pop-art, a kind of graphic cartoonery, rock’n’roll, hotrod-esque and Cramps-esque culture into some kind of mondo swirl. The work of Robert Williams and Juxtapoz magazine would be good starting/reference points.

Along which lines, we had the first UK exhibitions by Frank Kozik and Coop but drawing from this side of the big pond we had what I think was the first ever exhibition by Vince Ray (followed by another two).

I can’t now remember which of the three exhibitions featured his Death Of The Teenage Death Song painting although it’s one of the few times that I’ve really wanted to buy a piece of original art but I didn’t quite have the money at the time I think.

The artwork here is a later version of the painting – I have a vague memory of taking some photographs of the original painting but I’m not sure I did and I’m less sure than that about where they would be if I had.

Ah well. I have the memory.

Visit Mr Vince Ray in the ether here. Visit The Last Chance Saloon here. Juxtapoz magazine is here.

If you should be interested in more along the lines of lowbrow art/graphics then The Graphic Art Of The Underground book could be a place to wander to (and you may well come across a link back to the aforementioned The Last Chance Saloon).

From afterhours wanderings…

Now, if you’re going to be a Soho rogue, well you probably couldn’t do better than this photograph. Something of a template for such things and indeed Afterhours Sleaze and Dignity itself.

It’s the playwright/author Frank Norman, from Daniel Farson’s Soho In The Fifties book and could well sit quite nicely next to the work of that other heart of town rascal and sometimes shutterbugger John Deakin.

As an aside Frank Norman co-wrote the musical Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be, various memoirs including Bang To Rights and the Soho ‘angin’ around tome Stand On Me, alongside co-authoring Soho Night And Day with a further fellow heart of town gent/scriber Jeffrey Bernard and later writing the 1971 fictionalised memoirs of a fairground gent Dodgem Greaser – which puts me in mind of the almost similar 1973 That’ll Be The Day film, with Mr Ringo Starr doing a turn as a ted.

As a further aside, I seem to remember going to see an exhibition of/that included Dan Farson’s work in the basement of – also heart of town-esque- Mark Powell’s tailors shop a few years ago now. I think it may have been part of A Celebration of Style – Cool London Through the Photographer’s Lens (more on which can be found here).

Peruse Soho In The Fifties here and here.

Well, talking of archetypal images that seem almost too perfect to be real/that seem to exist in some other imagined world (see Florence Stonebraker and pulp fiction archetypes)…

This image of a showgirl getting ready for the Folies Bergere show at the Hotel Tropicana, Las Vegas in 1969 is something of a favourite of such things…

It puts me in mind of almost hyper-real fable like, populuxe-esque simulacras of America in the 1960s… not a million miles away from something that might tumble from Mad Men, Magic City or some of the work of Erwin Olaf.

Discovered I’m not quite sure where but rediscovered via here.