In Anticipation of and Reflections on a Post-Punk Salon (with Dorothy Max Prior and Richard Cabut)

 

 

In Anticipation of a Post-Punk Salon 

 

This looks like, sounds like, good fun, don't you think? 

 

Regrettably, I don't know Dorothy Max Prior and haven't read her book - 69 Exhibition Road: Twelve True-Life Tales from the Fag End of Punk, Porn & Performance (MIT Press, 2023) - which, according to the publishers' blurb, is a 'vibrant, wry, and engaging account of life as an adventurous, queer young person in late 1970s London discovering themselves as an artist, and an individual'. 

 

However, I do (sort of) know Richard Cabut and have read his book - Looking for a Kiss (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020); a true story based on lies (and vice versa), set in post-punk London and featuring a couple adrift in a world of sex, drugs, and the im/possibility of dreams in a time of nihilism. 

 

Cabut - then writing under the name of Richard North - was the man who coined the term positive punk, about which I have written previously on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

 

I completely agree with him that, initially, punk was a defiant and stylish response to the boredom of everyday life. However, whereas he also sees punk as a quest for truth and meaning, I see it as a playful (but nonetheless violent) deconstruction of these and related ideals. 

 

Still, there's no reason why such differences should prevent us being on friendly terms ... And so I look forward to meeting him this evening at this post-punk salon; as I do Ms Prior, who is 100% correct to say that punk - as conceived by McLaren and Westwood - was primarily conceptual and performance art, rather than "just another chapter in the history of rock 'n' roll" [1]. 

 

 

Reflections on a Post-Punk Salon 

 

Well, as anticipated, that was fun! 

 

Sean McLusky's got himself a nice new space just off Tin Pan Alley and this event was far more enjoyable than the Crass book launch at the Horse Hospital last month. I may not be a fan of positive punk, but it's surely preferable to militant asceticism and I would rather spend an evening with Cabut and Prior than Rimbaud and Vaucher [2]. 

 

And that's true even though Cabut's fictional self (Robert) clearly misunderstands that punk nihilism was, in fact, a joyous and active negation of the negative. He, Robert, finds the chaos of punk as lived experience almost unbearable and is petrified at the thought of the ruins [3]. The fact that Cabut chose to echo this fear on the night was disappointing. 

 

As for Ms Prior, she seemed very nice and she has certainly had an interesting life and career. Unfortunately, she remains politically naive in her sex radicalism and the belief that punk, porn, and art not only empower and liberate, but present a real challenge to the established order. 

 

She informed her audience that the punk attitude can be summed up by the phrase just do it. But that's an upbeat, aspirational slogan associated more with Nike [4] than the Sex Pistols, is it not? 

 

And it's the motto also of what Byung-Chul Han terms Müdigkeitsgesellschaft - i.e., a society characterised by an incessant (and ultimately exhausting) compulsion to perform and achieve [5]. Contrast this positive imperative with Malcolm McLaren's instructing us to destroy success. 

 

Still, putting these things to one side, it was a well-organised and enjoyable event and there were some interesting people and colourful characters present; none more so than Cuban cigar-smoking punk dandy Algernon Aloysius St. John-Cholmondeley-Featherstonehaugh, who dispensed wit, wisdom, and matches with great aplomb. 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Dorothy Max Prior, speaking in an interview with Lene Cortina on the excellent blog Punk Girl Diaries (12 March 2018): click here. 

 

[2] I would remind those who organised the event with Crass at the Horse Hospital that, as a rule, it's always a good idea to provide seating and drinks for your guests; particularly when charging an entrance fee and promoting a book priced at £50 a pop. Best also to allow them plenty of opportunity to chat and mingle freely. Nobody, apart from the most committed of Crass fans, really wants to be crammed into a small space and forced to stand for well over an hour whilst being lectured on how the revolution might have succeeded, if only ... by an 80-year-old Penny Rimbaud. See the post 'Crass By Name ...' (12 April 2024): click here. 

 

[3] See pp. 77-78 of Richard Cabut's Looking for a Kiss (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020). Note that Cabut was reading from the revised and extended edition of his novel, published by PC Press (2023), featuring new text, photos and artwork. 

 

[4] Just Do It is a trademarked tagline of sports shoe company Nike, coined in 1988 by the advertising executive Dan Wieden, inspired, he says, by Gary Gilmore, who is alleged to have said 'Let's do it' shortly before his execution for murder in January 1977. 

 

[5] See Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, trans. Erik Butler (Stanford University Press, 2015). The original German text, entitled Müdigkeitsgesellschaft, was published in Berlin by Matthes & Seitz Verlag (2010). 

      I published a two-part post on this work for Torpedo the Ark on 7 November 2021. Click here to read part one - 'On Neuronal Power to Vita Activa' - and/or here to read part two - 'From the Pedagogy of Seeing to Burnout Society'.

 

 

Horses, Horses, Horses, Horses!

Horses, horses, horses, horses! [1]

I.

 

Yesterday morning, I was in a central London café sipping a mint tea when, suddenly, from the other end of the street, a commotion was generating ... 

 

I looked at my companion, who wanted to run. But we stayed sitting as a pair of terrified horses - including a white horse drenched in blood - galloped past, causing chaos as they collided with vehicles and shocked observers [2].

 

And not only did I hear Patti Smith singing from out of the remote past, but I remembered also something D. H. Lawrence once wrote: "While horses thrashed the streets of London, London lived." [3]

 

 

II.

 

Today, still upset at seeing such noble beasts in obvious distress, I ironically went with a friend to the Horse Hospital, to take another look at the artwork of Gee Vaucher, which, to be fair, is better than I first thought (even if the overtly political nature of the work does get a bit tiring).

  

However, the thing that really caught my attention was a nude female mannequin, posing provocatively, wearing a horse's head mask and standing before a large red plastic bin at the top of the ramp that leads to the first floor ... 

 

As my friend, a longtime member of the kink community who was distinctly unimpressed by Vaucher's work amusingly remarked: I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Fig. 1: Patti Smith photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe on the cover of her album Horses (Arista Records, 1975): click here to listen to the three-part track 'Land' (part one: "Horses" / part two: "Land of a Thousand Dances" / part three: "La Mer(de)"). 

      Fig. 2: A mannequin with a horse's head was one I took at the Horse Hospital earlier today.

     Fig. 3: Quaker (the dark horse in the foreground) and Vida (the white horse bleeding profusely), taken in central London yesterday.  

 

[2] This sounds as if I'm recounting a nightmare, but it actually happened. Apparently, five military horses were spooked and bolted when building materials were dropped from height at a construction site in Belgravia, next to where they were on a training exercise. For a BBC news report, click here.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 102. 

 

 

Crass By Name ...

Penny Rimbaud peering out from behind the Crass logo

I.

 

The Horse Hospital is a Grade II listed building in Bloomsbury, built by James Burton, in 1797, as a place of rest for sick and tired horses, notable for its unique stone tiled floor.

 

Since 1992, however, it has been an independent arts venue exhibiting work by those who like to think of themselves as being underground, countercultural, or avant garde. The kind of place that boasts about not only championing the outsider, but, by rejecting professionalism and the market, refuses to sell out:

 

'We are alternative, celebrating individualism, anti-conformism, sincerity and integrity ... Embracing the romantic and the life affirming.'

 

But then, having said that, it prides itself also on the fact that it is 'firmly established in the London arts and fashion industries' and has worked in conjunction with many prestigious organisations: 'giving the Horse Hospital international recognition'.

 

It also isn't shy about asking for financial donations from would-be supporters and selling 'Everything from original Artworks, Posters, DVDs, Books, Magazines, CDs and T-shirts to just mad shit we think you'll like' (the latter including an official Horse Hospital pin badge for £10, which works wonderfully on any lapel).   

 

Readers can make up their own minds about this, but, needless to say, it's not really my kind of place and it seems to me that in the transition from purpose-built stable to progressive arts venue the honest smell of 19th-century horseshit has been replaced with an odour of sanctimonious bullshit.    

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly in light of what I say above, three members of the anarcho-hippie art collective Crass [1] - Gee Vaucher, Steve Ignorant, and Penny Rimbaud - chose the Horse Hospital last night to launch their new book, CRASS: A Pictorial History 621984 - 4022024 (Exitestencil Press, 2024) [2].

 

Whilst I have time for Vaucher and her artwork - and would recommend the recent study by Rebecca Binns; Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avant-Garde (Manchester University Press, 2022) - I am less sympathetic to Messrs. Ignorant and Rimbaud. 

 

Ignorant - a young Clash fan who fell under the influence of Vaucher and Rimbaud when staying at Dial House [3] - was the Crass vocalist who provided the group with a certain working-class credibility. And he still seems to happily play this role now; a kind of punk court jester wearing his cor blimey trousers and effing and blinding like a trooper. 

 

The perfect comic foil, in fact, to Rimbaud's philosopher-king, and, despite all the pretence that Crass operated as a community of equals, I think it was pretty clear that Rimbaud - or Pen, as his friends and devoted followers like to call him - is the first among equals. 

 

If I was interested in what Vaucher had to say and vaguely amused by Ignorant, I was taken aback by the ramblings of Rimbaud who, it seems, has learnt absolutely nothing in the last 40 years, still maintaining his belief in revolution and still aching like Walt Whitman with his love for universal humanity (born of his romantic idealism rather than any true feeling for others).

 

There was something senile and self-regarding about Rimbaud that I really didn't like and so I'm glad that I didn't have to pay the £5 entrance fee, as I wouldn't wish to have given even a penny for his thoughts [4].

 

 

Gee Vaucher and Steve Ignorant

 

Notes

 

[1] I know some people will insist that Crass are first and foremost an anarcho-punk band, but I always felt they were rooted more in the Summer of Love than the Summer of Hate; just because hippies wear black that doesn't mean they stop being hippies. Steve Ignorant may belong to the punk generation and have something of the punk attitude, but Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher clearly have a very different background and perspective and are often dismissive of punk (and youth culture in general). 

 

[2] The numbers are dates: though keen-eyed readers will note that they have either missed out a zero in the first date or mistakenly added a zero in the second.

 

[3] Dial House is the large, Grade II listed, 16th-century farm cottage on the outskirts of Epping Forest, Essex, where Penny Rimbaud and his partner Gee Vaucher established an open-house and creative arts centre in the 1960s. It remains an anarcho-hippie haven to this day.   

 

[4] Nor would I pay the £50 asking price for the book being promoted, though plenty did; they even waited patiently in line to have the book signed by their heroes (bless).