Electric Boogaloo: Remembering the Rock Steady Crew

The Rock Steady Crew in a Charisma Records 

promo photo (1983)

 

 

I. 

 

Apparently, the Rock Steady Crew are still a thing even today; indeed, the name has become a kind of franchise, used by various other groups of hip-hoppers and b-boys in multiple locations. 

 

I have to admit, I like this idea; it's not something that the Rolling Stones ever thought to do and even though Malcolm declared in the post-Rotten days that anyone can be a Sex Pistol, the actual band members were quick to assert intellectual property rights and demand other assets and accumulated royalties during their High Court case against him [1].  

 

 

II.

 

For me, however, the RSC - and I'm not referring to the Royal Shakespeare Company here - will always consist of the six members pictured above: Prince Ken Swift, Crazy Legs, Buck 4, Doze, Kuriaki, and, up-front and centre, 15-year-old Baby Love, who provided the vocals on their international hit single, '(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew' (1983) [2].   

It is, to be brutally honest, a rubbish song; although when I first heard it played in Steve Weltman's office I reluctantly agreed it was 'not bad' [3]. Ultimately, the RSC were just another novelty act, signed by Charisma Records [4] in an attempt to cash in on the surprise success of McLaren's 'Buffalo Gals' (1982) [5] and exploit the burgeoning American hip-hop scene. 

 

Having said that, I remember them with a certain fondness; especially Doze, who was very friendly, very funny, and clearly a talented artist. And it was a shame that they were destined for the same sad fate as befell Adam and the Ants two years earlier - i.e., to make a spectacle of themselves on stage in a Royal Variety Performance ... [6]. 

 

 

Hip-hop meets pomp & circumstance: the Rock Steady Crew 

with a soldier from the Household Cavalry 

(London, c. 1983)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Those who want to know more about this court case - which was instigated by Rotten in 1979, but not fully resolved until 1986 after much legal wrangling - should see chapters 26 and 31 of Paul Gorman's biography The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020). Long story short: Malcolm, unfairly in my view, loses the case and everything is awarded to Lydon, Cook, Jones, and the estate of Sid Vicious (including, ironically, rights to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle).

 

[2] '(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew' was released from the group's debut studio album Ready for Battle (Charisma Records, 1984) and it reached number 6 on the UK Singles Chart. Blue Soldier and Stephen Hague, two of the co-writers of the song, also produced the track; the other co-writer, Ruza Blue, was the Crew's manager at this time. Click here to play the song's promo video on YouTube.

 

[3] This according to a diary entry made on Tuesday 16 August, 1983. Weltman had just returned from New York with the newly recorded song and accompanying video, which I first saw on the 19th, thinking it a pale imitation of McLaren's video for 'Buffalo Gals' in some respects, but noting that Baby Love was certainly easy on the eye. 

      

[4] Charisma Records was founded in 1969 by Tony Stratton-Smith and remained, at heart, a hippie label much loved by prog rockers, despite it's eclectic roster that included Monty Python, Sir John Betjeman, and Billy Bragg. Sadly, Charisma was swallowed by the Virgin shark in 1983 and fully digested by the latter in 1986. Steve Weltman was the managing director of Charisma, 1981-86.   

 

[5] 'Buffalo Gals' was very much a surprise hit - and a hit despite rather than because of the good people at Charisma Records, on whom the track's genius (and revolutionary nature) was completely lost. McLaren later recalled:

 

'It was greeted poorly by almost all at the record company. The radio plugger [...] was so outraged he refused to take it to radio and declared it was "not music" [...] The only person who stood up for me was the press lady: a young American, new in her job.' 

 

Charisma seriously considered legal proceedings against McLaren on the grounds that he had grossly overspent the budget and that he was "in breach of the contractual obligation to deliver music of acceptable commercial value". 

      However, thanks to the hugely positive response Kid Jensen received after playing the track on his Capital Radio show, Charisma were quickly obliged to recognise that they not only had a potential number 1 on their hands, but that they possessed a track capable of causing "a sea-change of significance in popular music terms to rival the advent of punk". 

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren ... pp. 516-517. 

 

[6] On 23 November, 1981, Adam and the Ants played two songs at the Royal Variety Performance, much to bass player Kevin Mooney's obvious discomfort; he thought he'd joined a post-punk band, not a pop pantomime troupe happy to entertain members of the English royal family. Refusing to take the performance seriously - thereby infuriating Adam - Mooney was subsequently sacked. Those who wish to watch, can do so by clicking here. 

      On 7 November, 1983, the Rock Steady Crew performed in front of Her Majesty the Queen at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane: click here. Their being added to the bill is an even more egregious example of cultural appropriation in which a marginalised subculture is ripped out of the urban context in which it derives its meaning, its magic, and its potency simply for the amusement of the rich. And the fact that this was done with the connivance of their record company and, one suspects, either the naive or knowing complicity of the RSC themselves, is doubly depressing.

      It's not often I find myself writing in praise of John Lennon, but I do admire that during The Beatles' set at the Royal Variety Performance in 1963, he sarcastically requested that wealthy members of the audience rattle their jewellery rather than just clap their hands like those in the cheaper seats: click here.

      It's worth noting that The Beatles also refused future requests to appear at the Royal Variety Performance, despite their continued popularity and the fact that all four had been awarded - and accepted - MBEs from the Queen in 1965 (Lennon returning his in 1969, in protest at Britain's involvement in or support for various armed conflicts around the world). 

 

 

In Memory of Two Kings of Graphic Design

The Two Kings of Graphic Design: David King (1943 - 2016)

and David A. King (1948 - 2019) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

When I was informed that the next SIG meeting would be on the graphic designer Dave King, I assumed we were going to be speaking about the British artist who assembled a huge collection of old school Soviet imagery and propaganda; photographs, posters, and other materials commemorating and celebrating the Russian Revolution (1917) [2].

 

King, a self-confessed communist with Trotskyist leanings, was particularly keen to insert his hero back into the picture after Leon's name and image were comprehensively erased by Stalin from Soviet history and after Trotsky was physically eliminated by a Spanish-born NKVD agent who used an ice pick to make his ears burn [3], in an operation known as Operation Duck (August 1940).    

 

Despite his political leanings, King worked for many years at The Sunday Times Magazine as a designer and art editor and designed book covers for mainstream publishers, such as Penguin, alongside more radical presses.

 

But King is perhaps best remembered as the man who designed many famous album covers - including the controversial cover for Electric Ladyland (1968) by Jimi Hendrix, featuring a photo of 19 naked women by David Montgomery [4] - as well as his graphics in support of the political causes he supported, such as the Anti-Nazi League's red arrow logo on a yellow background (see figure 1 below). 

 

King died, aged, 73, in 2016.  

 

In 2020, Yale University Press published Rick Poynor's book David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian. Poynor, in collaboration with the editorial designer and art director Simon Esterson, also set up a website featuring designs by King from his private archives.

 

 

II.

 

My assumption, however, was mistaken: the Subcultures Interest Group is, rather, going to be discussing the work of David Anthony King; an English American artist and another key figure in the history of graphic design, famously creating the cross and serpent symbol by which the anarcho-hippie band Crass are recognised around the world. 

 

An Essex boy born and bred, King fell in with Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher in 1964, when studying graphic design at a technical college in Dagenham. Later, in the 1970s, he would move into Dial House, the commune set up by the above in rural North Weald and it was here he came up with the iconic emblem (see figure 2 below).

 

In 1977, King moved to NYC and became part of the punk scene there, both as a designer and a musician. Later, he relocated to San Francisco and, in 1990, enrolled at San Francisco Art Institute, where he studied drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, and poetry, producing a substantial body of work in numerous mediums over the next four decades.

 

King's graphics are now a regular feature of exhibitions showcasing punk visual art in galleries worldwide and several collections of his work have been published, including, most recently, David King Publications 1977 - 2019 (Colpa Press, 2024), which comes with an interesting introduction by Matt Borruso as well as plenty of images to enjoy [5].

 

King died, aged 71, in 2019. 

 

He is fondly remembered, however, by those who have long championed scrapbooks, photocopied fanzines, print-on-demand books, mail art, etc. For if anything was at the heart of the punk ethos it was surely the notion of DIY and not caring about anything other than putting one's ideas and images into the world (often at great personal cost and with no thought of financial reward or commercial success).   

 

Fig. 1: David King Anti-Nazi League logo (1977)

Fig. 2: David A. King Crass symbol (1977)

    

Notes

 

[1] The photo of David King is by Anthony Oliver for Eye magazine, issue 48, (2003). The photo of David A. King is by Sean Clark (2016).

 

[2] King assembled more than 250,000 items in a collection which has formed the basis for a series of exhibitions and a special gallery in the Tate Modern. 

      Stephen F. Cohen, a professor of Russian studies, described King's work as 'a one-man archaeological expedition into the lost world, the destroyed world, of the original Soviet leadership. He was determined to unearth everything that Stalin had buried so deeply and so bloodily.'

 

[3] Technically, Trotsky was killed with an ice axe and not an ice pick, but I'm referring here to the lyric of the song 'No More Heroes' by the English rock band the Stranglers. The track was released as a single from an album of the same title in September 1977 (United Artists) and reached number 8 in the UK Singles Chart. Click here to play.

 

[4] King attempted to justify his design for the Hendrix album, Electric Ladyland (1968), by arguing it contrasted with the unrealistic and often airbrushed images of nude women found in magazines such as Playboy. Montgomery's photo, however, was deemed too risqué for the US edition of the album and was replaced by a picture of Hendrix. 

[5] This book was published in conjunction with an exhibition of King's work held at the San Francisco Center for the Book, from 25 October until 22 December, 2024. Matt Borruso explains in his introduction: 

      "The exhibition and book collect a chronological sampling of the publishing work that King made over his lifetime, in addition to flyers, photographs, and graphic design projects. But neither the show nor the book are in any way complete. We are still digging through King's archive, consistently finding new things that he made, and piecing together a better picture of his life and work." 

      Click here for more details and to purchase a copy.

 

 

On Traversing the Excluded Middle

Andrew Weir: Excluded Middle (2019)

Acrylic paint on paper, 36 x 48 cm
saatchiart.com

 

Logicians to the left of me, Derrideans to the right, 

here I am, stuck in the excluded middle with you ... [1]

 

 

I. 

 

In classical logic, the law of the excluded middle (p ∨ ¬ p) states that either a proposition or its negation has to be true.

 

It is the third of the three great laws of thought upon which rational discourse is based; the other two being the law of identity - each thing is identical with itself - and the law of non-contradiction - propositions cannot both be true and false at the same time.

 

But such axiomatic rules don't really mean a great deal to me as someone who is happy to do their thinking in the moral no-go zone that is the excluded middle; i.e., the evil realm of fuzzy logic, dark limpidity, and what Nietzsche terms dangerous knowledge.

 

 

II. 

 

Similarly, as someone who privileges difference over identity and refuses to be haunted by the spectre of logical contradiction, I'm prepared also to cheerfully transgress the other two laws. For as I wrote in a post from a few years ago:

 

'Whether our analytic philosophers like to admit it or not, some forms of thinking rely upon daimonic inspiration and so are not regulated by reason alone. Our very greatest poets, for example, creatively affirm paradox and ambiguity; they are unafraid of appearing inconsistent or irrational and are proud to proclaim that if, like Whitman, they contradict themselves, that's because they contain multitudes.' [2]

  

One suspects that a good deal of the continued hostility aimed towards those who take a more continental approach to philosophy is that we see the latter as more of an art than a science (unless it be a gay science). Nothing enrages the Anglo-American mindset more than logical inconsistency and the idea that some feel free in the excluded middle to affirm the neither/nor and defy the spirit of gravity so that thinking becomes pleasurable.      

 

 

III. 

 

In sum: without wishing to explicity reject the law of the excluded middle, I don't support its rigid enforcement and, like Deleuze, see le milieu exclu as a zone in which becoming is stamped with the character of being and where not only do new possibilities emerge, but it is reasonable to demand the impossible.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing a lyric from the well-known song by the Scottish folk rock band Stealers Wheel entitled. 'Stuck in the Middle With You', written by Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan. It can be found on their eponymous debut album Stealers Wheel (A&M Records, 1972) - or played by clicking here. 

 

[2] See the post entitled 'Hello Darkness My Old Friend ...' (1 Oct 2021): click here. 

 

This post is for Bryan Kam who probably cares more - and certainly knows more - about this topic (and many others) than I do. London-based for the last 20 years, Kam studied English and Russian literature at Princeton and Cambridge, but is also widely read in both Western and Eastern philosophy. He regularly publishes work on Substack: click here. 

      According to Kam, the law of the excluded middle, born in Athens c. 350 BC, died in Amsterdam in 1908 at the hands of L. E. J. Brouwer. That might be true, but, unfortunately, even dead concepts can still retain an icy grip on our thinking.  

 

 

Reflections on the Exhibition Time to Fear Contemporary Art (17-21 March, 2025)

Time to Fear Contemporary Art  (17-21 March, 2025)

exhibition poster featuring a work by SJ Fuerst

galleryeight.com 

 

 

I. 

 

Although my own interest in art that 'preys on our fascination with fear and plunges contemporary painting into the exhilarating world of horror' [1] doesn't have the same obsessive character as that of my esteemed frenemy Síomón Solomon, I still felt compelled to visit the exhibition currently showing at Gallery 8 and featuring work by a handful of artists [2]. 

 

Whilst relatively modest in scale, the exhibition has the grand aim of countering the recent trend of making art accessible and less intimidating. Whether it achieves this is debatable, but the artists on show certainly did their best to immerse visitors into the dark world of the queer-gothic imagination, showing us how beauty doesn't always have to be tied to the good and the true.         

 

 

II. 

 

Primarily, the work I wished to see was a small oil on panel (40 x 25 cm) by Lizet Dingemans, a London-based artist originally from the Netherlands, entitled Pediophobia (i.e., an intense and irrational fear of dolls and not, as some might mistakenly think, a fear of children). 

 

Now, whilst I have several phobias and anxiety disorders, this, fortunately, isn't one of them; although, having said that, I can see that some dolls are extremely creepy and seem to have come straight from the Uncanny Valley. However, they don't scare me and I don't think they pose an actual threat - except Voodoo dolls, obviously, although that might be more related to my fear of pins and needles (belonephobia). 

 

In fact, regular readers of this blog will recall that, if anything, I have a positive fascination with dolls and other human-like figures. Indeed, some might term it a fetish, although it stops just short of my wanting to have sexual relations with a doll or fall in love with a statue à la Pygmalion [3].  

 

Anyway, returning to Dingeman's work ...  

 

Pediophobia is only one of a series of phobia paintings included in the exhibition; the others being Ailurophobia, Arachnophobia, Ornithophobia, Phasmophobia and, last but by no means least, Thanatophobia. 

 

Why anyone would be afraid of cats, spiders, or birds, is beyond me; ghosts (and other supernatural entities) I can understand - I can even, at a push, see why some people might fear death, although, as Heidegger pointed out, authentic being is a being-towards-death and Angst is a crucial aspect of this seeking for an ontological grasp of one's own mortality and the fact that being rests upon non-being. 

 

Those who would in some way deny us our experience of Angst lessen Dasein's experience of life. In a sense, fear is a fundamental source of freedom [4].

 

 

III.

 

Whilst I was interested in and impressed by Dingeman's work - as indeed I was by the work of all the artists exhibiting - for me, the star of the show (and curator) was SJ Fuerst, allowing the dark undercurrent of her more colourful works of pop surrealism to finally surface, whilst, at the same time retaining her playfulness and sense of humour. 

 

There were no inflatable animals or toy cars in this exhibition (as far as I remember) - and I suppose we might describe her new works as sugar-free - but, nevertheless, works such as Trixie in the Basement and Shattered Psyche made me smile; as did the very amusing and thought-provoking Objects in Mirror (see figure 1 below).  

 

Objects in Mirror was obviously going to seduce me: firstly, as an object-oriented philosopher; secondly, as someone fascinated by the idea of mirror life (or homochirality) [5]; and thirdly, as someone who believes that behind every reflection, every resemblance, every representation, a defeated enemy lies concealed, just waiting to take their revenge [6]. 

 

As Katie B. Kohn says in her essay written for the exhibition, the figure in Fuerst's work seems to defy their own entrapment within the pictures as images. The fact that the female figure is painted (in oil) on a looking glass only enhances the effect and evokes "the spectral reflections of the Daguerrotype as well as the galvanic shocks of the phantasmagoria" [7].     

 

Ms Kohn is also spot on to say that to regard a portrait of oneself too closely (à la Dorian Gray) - or a reflection in a mirror - is to trouble subjectivity; "to find oneself ever so subtly at risk of being unravelled ..." [8] 

 

Nevertheless, that's precisely what I thought I'd experiment with when standing in front of Fuerst's Objects in a Mirror (see figure 2 below) - attempting to see if Bram Stoker was right to suggest that when we look into a mirror it is mistaken to think the figure we see is ourselves; "the glass is a window; on the other side lies a stranger" [9].   

Figure 1: SJ Fuerst: Objects in Mirror 

Oil paint on mirror over interactive video installation, 51 x 73 cm (framed size)

Figure 2: SJ Fuerst's 'Objects in Mirror' as viewed by S. A. Von Hell (2025)  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This from the Gallery 8 website: click here. 

 

[2] The five artists whose work is shown in the exhibition are Luca Indraccolo, Lydia Cecil, Lizet Dingemans, SJ Fuerst, and Svetlana Semenova. Here, for reasons of space, I shall only discuss the work of two of the above: Lizet Dingemans and SJ Fuerst.  

 

[3] For those who are interested in agalmatophilia, there are several posts on Torpedo the Ark which touch on the subject: click here. For posts which specifically refer to sex dolls, click here and here. Readers might also be interested in the following paper presented at Treadwell's in October 2012: The Pygmalion Syndrome: Sex-Dolls, Solipsism, and The Love of Statues - available on request.

 

[4] I'm guessing that SJ Fuerst understands this, which is why she included a picture in this exhibition entitled The Anxious Thinker (oil paint on mirror, 37.5 x 43 cm).

 

[5] For a post dated 21 December, 2024 on the idea of homochirality, click here. 

[6] For a post dated 22 December, 2024 on the revenge of the mirror people, click here.

 

[7] Katie B. Kohn, 'Exhibition Essay' - available to read in the exhibition catalogue: click here.  

 

[8] Ibid. 

[9] Bram Stoker, 'The Judges House' (1891), quoted by Katie B. Kohn in her 'Exhibition Essay', op. cit.

 

 

What's in a Word: Queer

Strange, peculiar, odd, perverse ... how queer!

 

"Queer is a term that desires that you don't have to present an identity card ..." [1]

 

 

I.

 

Originally meaning strange or peculiar, the word queer now serves either as a synonym for homosexual - having been reclaimed as a term of pride by gay activists - or as a wider umbrella term for anyone who locates themselves on a colourful spectrum of non-heteronormative sexual or gender identities, but which, nevertheless, remain precisely that; i.e., identities, or expressions of self-sameness by which one wishes to be known. 

 

As someone who finds the empty secret of non-identity philosophically more interesting than the open secret of same-sex desire, I find this problematic and would challenge those who use queer as an overarching, unifying, or trendy academic label for what are often distinct forms of practice and behaviour that have nothing to do with sexuality or gender.  

 

For me, the appeal of queerness is precisely that it deconstructs all categories (particularly those that rest upon binary opposition) and offers a form of resistance to the idea of essential identities as if these were natural givens and thus afforded a privileged relationship to truth and being, rather than contingent cultural-historical formations belonging to an insubstantial world of free-foating and accidental attributes and disappearing cats who leave only a smile behind (to be queer is to be not quite here or there).

 

 

II.

 

Now, I appreciate that some people who assemble beneath a rainbow flag and delight in adding more letters to the ever-extending initialism they repeat like a mantra, will vehemently object to my use of the term queer. They consider this to be at best a dubious reappropriation and, at worst, an offensive misappropriation on behalf of someone who hasn't experienced oppression, discrimination, or violence for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

 

And so, they will argue that as a cisgender heterosexual - their terms, not mine - I have no right to a word which now belongs in their vocabulary and which, whatever its past meanings or etymology, now only means what they say it means. Almost, it laughably becomes a question of intellectual property rights, with queer trademarked as a kind of communal identifier.   

 

But, as I hope to have made clear above, I do not accept that there can be a queer community; nor indeed that any individual can ever say I am queer as a way of informing others who and what they are; queerness is a form of not-being (neither this nor that, or even the other).     

And so, whilst (as a theorist and critic) I feel at perfect liberty to continue using the word, I'm not doing so in order to self-identify, nor am I trying to place myself on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum simply for the cultural and political cachet. 

 

On the other hand, nor am I trying to be gratuitously offensive. I'm simply trying to suggest that queerness is primarily about what Judith Butler terms contestation and it should never be something that is clearly defined, or tied to just one area of life (or one set of life experiences), or owned by one group of people; for to do so is, ironically, to normalise it in some sense (i.e., rob it of its very queerness). 

 

Notes

 

[1] Judith Butler, 'The Desire for Philosophy', an interview conducted by Regina Michalik, Lola 2, (Lola Press,  May 2001). 

      As Butler makes clear, when queerness as a movement first emerged it was very much about suspending the question of identity and challenging the politics of such; it was an argument against normativity.  

Memories of a Duck Rocker

Nick Egan: Front cover of Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock (1983) [1]

and Duck Rock (2023), a mixed media collage on canvas, 48 × 36 in [2]

 

 

I. 

 

I was very pleased to discover that the artist, designer, and film director Nick Egan is alive and well and living in the Hollywood Hills with his wife and family. 

 

I was even happier to discover that he has recently been reimagining some of the record covers he designed back in the 1980s; including Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock (1983), which has been transformed from a 12" square image into a large mixed media collage on canvas, using digital artwork, airbrush, oil pastels, acrylic and metallic paints.    

 

Still referencing the art of Keith Haring and Dondi White [3], which formed such a vital part of the original work, it also includes the magically customised boom box (or ghetto blaster, as we used to say) designed by Ron West, that became known as the Duck Rocker - one of the most iconic objects in the cultural history of hip-hop.   

 

Due to the size and shape of Egan's 2023 work, it reminds one of poster art; and in fact Egan has admitted that this was his intention:  

 

'I saw it as a poster that had been put up on the walls of a New York subway station, with the Duck Rocker retained as the base image, but, as time went on, people would come by and graffiti over it. Some would try to peel it off the wall, and others would stick another flyer over it until it became almost unrecognisable from the original, exactly how it would look if it did appear on a subway wall.'

 

I suppose it's fair to say that Duck Rock is Egan's greatest achievement as a designer of record covers [4]; although his recreation of Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) for the cover of the Bow Wow Wow album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! (1981), will always just top it for some of us [5].

 

 

II. 

 

I first met Nick Egan back in the spring of 1983, at Malcolm's first floor office on Denmark Street, after he'd kindly offered to help find me a six-week work attachment of some description. He was very tall and thin with lots of blonde hair and wore a large punk-style jumper, a pair of striped pirate trousers, and a Buffalo coat from Nostalgia of Mud, so looked good.     

 

He gave me several names and numbers to try, including that of the press officer at Charisma Records, and told me not to worry as he was sure something could definitely be arranged (although unfortunately not at Moulin Rouge, as he and McLaren were both going to be in New York for a lot of the time in April and May). 

Thus it was I ended up at 90 Wardour Street; in the Charisma offices above the Marquee Club, working as Lee Ellen Newman's assistant (and general dog's body). Amongst my more amusing assignments was taking the Duck Rocker to the HMV, where it was to feature in a window display dressed by Nick to promote Malcolm's album [6].

 

Whether this was the original customised boom box - or one of several that were made - I'm not sure; but it looked fantastic and was surprisingly heavier to carry than one might imagine. Judging by the stares of astonishment it received - and the number of people who stopped me as I walked along Oxford Street requesting a photo - it wasn't only the Zulus in South Africa, the Hip-hoppers in New York, or the Hilltoppers in the Appalachian Mountains, who were enchanted by it.       

Unfortunately, I didn't think to have a photo taken with the Duck Rocker. However, here's a picture taken in the Charisma press office, standing in front of a smaller replica (which, I think, was eventually given away as a prize in a Smash Hits competition), accompanied by a photo of Malcolm in NYC with the mighty original [7].

Notes

 

[1] Malcolm McLaren's groundbreaking studio album Duck Rock, produced by Trevor Horn, was originally released on Charisma Records in 1983. Arguably, it has proved to be as influential - if not more so - than Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977). 

      A 40th anniversary double vinyl edition was issued on the independent label State51 Conspiracy in 2023. This featured six additional tracks and was produced in collaboration with Young Kim of the Malcolm McLaren Estate: click here for details.

 

[2] Duck Rock (2023), by Nick Egan, is available to buy from the Wilma Gallery: click here for more details. For those who can't afford the asking price of the original canvas (£22,800), there are some very nice limited edition prints available, starting from just £150: click here. 

      Other works by Egan can also be viewed on (and purchased from) the Wilma Gallery website: click here.     

[3] Keith Haring (1958-1990), was an American Pop artist who emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. At Nick Egan's invitation, he provided the illustration that formed the pink background image of the Duck Rock sleeve (for which he was paid $1000).

      Dondi White (1961-1998), was also an American street artist; he provided the Duck Rock lettering, again having been asked to do so by Nick Egan (unfortunately, I don't know how much he was paid).

 

[4] The album cover artwork for Duck Rock is now included in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art: click here.

 

[5] Amusingly, Egan transformed Andy Earl's 1981 photograph, inspired by Manet's canvas, back into a painting entitled We're Only in it For the Manet (2023): click here for details. 

      By his own admission, Egan always felt a little awkward being credited for the original record sleeve, as it contained none of his graphics; yes, he directed the photo shoot, but the artist responsible for the actual image was Andy Earl. With this new canvas, however, he has made it very much his own.       

      For those who are interested, I explain why I love Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe in a post on TTA dated 27 April 2017: click here. 

[6] According to my diary, this was Monday 23 May, 1983. 

      Amusingly, Malcolm had agreed to dance with a buffalo gal in the store window on the following Saturday, but he pulled out at the very last minute, insisting he must have been drunk to have ever agreed to such; much to Lee Ellen's irritation, as she had already informed several journalists who went along to witness the event.  

 

[7] The photo was taken by Bob Gruen in April 1983. Many more wonderful photos of McLaren taken by Gruen can be found on the latter's website: click here.

 

 

Bonus 1: click here for a fascinating interview with Nick Egan conducted by Mike Goldstein in August 2013, in which he discusses his work with Malcolm on the cover of Duck Rock. As Egan makes clear, he was involved with McLaren as a conceptual partner rather than simply an art director; in other words, he worked on Duck Rock from its inception all the way through its recording and mixing, contributing ideas at every stage. 

      Egan is currently working on a book project which explores the cultural influence of Malcolm McLaren and features his artwork from the Duck Rock period. 

 

Bonus 2: To watch the feature documentary Creative Vandal (dir. Peter Pahor, 2024), chronicling the career of Nick Egan, click here. 

 

Bonus 3: The essential track on Duck Rock is, of course, 'Buffalo Gals', which was released as a single in November 1982 on Charisma Records. The video pretty much captures what was happening in NYC at the time (filtered through the imagination of Malcolm McLaren who directed it): click here.

      For those who might be interested, my post on 'Buffalo Gals' (dated 19 Feb 2019) can be accessed by clicking here.     

 

Reflections on the Miners' Strike (1984-85)

With Arthur Scargill (Madame Tussauds, London, 1985)

 

 

I. 

 

I was surprised that the year long miners' strike, which began in the spring of 1984, wasn't more widely commemorated seeing as we've just passed the 40th anniversary of the ending of what was a significant event not just within the coal industry, but UK history. 

 

 

II. 

 

Led by the charismatic figure of Arthur Scargill, President of the National Union of Mineworkers, the strike was an attempt to prevent the closure of pits deemed by the Tory government under Margaret Thatcher as uneconomic (although the political goal was clearly to smash and humiliate the NUM, as well as weaken the wider labour movement; the fact that the miners had been able to bring down the Conservative government under Ted Heath in 1974 had neither been forgotten nor forgiven).

 

Of course, it was a battle they could not win; few major trade unions officially backed the NUM and some miners, particularly in the Nottingham area, continued to work throughout the dispute, thereby helping the government keep the lights on (what would D. H. Lawrence have made of this, one wonders; would he have supported the men of Eastwood, or would he have condemned the crossing of picket lines and called them scabs?).

 

I was living in Leeds when the strike started, so it very much felt as if it were unfolding on my doorstep, even if Cortonwood Colliery, where the strike kicked off, was based in South not West Yorkshire and the infamous Battle of Orgreave on 18 June 1984 took place 30-odd miles away in Rotherham [1].

 

In July, however, I moved to London: nevertheless, I followed events with interest and would regularly put what I could in the buckets held by those collecting money for striking miners and their families, for whom it was impossible not to feel tremendous sympathy and with whom, indeed, one felt a sense of working-class solidarity (my own father had gone down the mines after leaving school in Newcastle aged 14, in 1926, just a year after the Montagu pit disaster in Scotswood, in which 38 men and boys lost their lives).         

 

I also remember buying Arthur Scargill and the NUM Christmas cards, though I can't vouch that any of the money from such ever went to the strikers, as it should have done. 

 

And I still have (in a box in the loft) a copy of a 7" single by The Enemy Within called 'Strike' and which featured voice samples of Arthur Scargill. Released on Rough Trade Records in October 1984, I'm pretty sure that proceeds from sales of this did go to the Miners Solidarity Fund [2]. 

 

Despite my meagre efforts at showing support - and despite all the sacrifice made by the striking miners and their families - on 3 March, 1985, the dispute ended with a decisive victory for the Coal Board and the Tory government, opening the way for the closure of most of Britain's collieries [3]. 

 

 

III. 

 

In a diary entry, I noted:

 

This is a very dark day and a very sad day - almost one might call it tragic. The striking miners return to work on Tuesday. Many of them clearly feel betrayed. Rightly or wrongly, Scargill points the finger of blame at the TUC and the Labour Party.

      I suppose this marks the end of militant left-wing opposition to the Tories (at least for the foreseeable future) and Thatcher is gleeful and triumphant. Not sure this is an England I want to live in. Feel a lot of  admiration for the miners - proud men who deserve better. When asked on the news by a reporter what he intended to do now, Scargill simply smiled and said: 'Go home.' 

      Sadly, if his predictions about pit closures and the destruction of mining communities are even half correct, then a lot of people are going to find that might not be an option for them much longer. [4]

   

 

Notes

 

[1] For those who don't know, the Battle of Orgreave was, as the name indicates, an extremely violent confrontation between pickets and a huge army of bluebottles - some of whom were drafted in from as far away as London - at a British Steel Corporation coking plant. It was a pivotal event in the strike and, indeed, British history; one that changed industrial relations forever in the UK and how many people now view the police. 

[2] The enemy within is how Thatcher referred to the leaders of the miners' strike and other militant trade unionists. The single was written by Keith LeBlanc and produced by Adrian Sherwood and Keith LeBlanc. To play both sides of the single (the B-side is a mix of the A-side) on YouTube, click here. 

 

[3] What remained of the coal industry - in public ownership since 1947 - was sold off in December 1994 and by the end of 2015 the last of the deep-mining coal pits, The Big K (i.e., Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire), had closed. Prior to the 1984-85 strike there had been 175 working pits. Many of the coal mining communities have never recovered and some are now ranked amongst the poorest towns in the country. 

 

[4] Entry from the Von Hell Diaries (Sunday 3 March 1985). 

      This retrospectively surprising and slightly embarrassing mixture of sympathy, socialism, and sentiment, is still in evidence the next day, as I continue to heap praise on Scargill and approve of his walking off a TV-am set rather than share a sofa with Chris Butcher, a miner from Bevercotes Colliery - known as 'Silver Birch' - whom Scargill regarded (rightly as it turned out) as a scab and class traitor (Butcher was secretly being funded by the Daily Mail to travel around the country opposing the strike; he was also involved in legal action against the NUM).   

 

What's in a Word: Punk

 'The cult is called punk; the music punk rock ...'

 

 

I. 

 

In a pre-Grundy television interview, Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten is asked by Maggie Norden:

 

"What about the word 'punk' - it means worthless, nasty - are you happy with this word?"

 

A crucial question to which he replies: 

 

"No, the press gave us it. It's their problem, not ours. We never called ourselves punk." [1]

 

It's a somewhat surprising response which every idiot who proclaims that they'll be a punk until they die might care to consider ...

 

 

II.  

 

When Rotten refers to the press, he was more than likely thinking of posho freelance journalist and photographer Caroline Coon, who, having risen to prominence as part of the British Underground scene in the 1960s, attached herself to the new youth movement spearheaded by the Sex Pistols in the mid-70s [2].

For it was Coon, writing for the influential music paper Melody Maker, who famously described this anarchic subculture held together with safety pins and bondage straps as punk - a name by which, for better or for worse, it has been known ever since (despite Rotten's disavowing of the term) [3].

 

Personally, I always think it a pity when something as beautifully fluid, ambiguous, and messed up as the scene that grew out of at 430 King's Road is identified and codified; to name is to know and to know is to kill. Calling the Sex Pistols a punk band was to suggest they were not something radically new or different; that they could, in fact, be compared with other groups and to prevailing rock trends.

 

That's undoubtedly true of the Clash - the band with whom Coon became most closely associated - but it's absolutely not true of the Sex Pistols as conceived by McLaren and Westwood. And not true either of Alan Jones, Jordan, and all those others who either worked at or hung around 430, King's Road. 

 

Assuming that a collective term of reference is at least provisionally needed, what should we call this assemblage of individuals ?   

 

Perhaps the best answer to this question was supplied by cultural critic Peter York, who, in October '76, referred to the "Sex shop people" and characterised them as the "extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars" [4]. 

 

That, I think, is spot on: and very much in line with how I think of the Sex Pistols and those closely associated with them - as more funny peculiar than punk; i.e., as unusual, strange, abnormal, deviant, perverse, extraordinary, singular, exceptional, outlandish ... 

 

The photo below perfectly captures just how queer things were before being named and tamed by the media and the music business and before an army of identikit punks emerged.         

 

The Sex shop people: (L-R) Steve Jones, Danielle, Alan Jones, 

Chrissie Hynde, Jordan, and Vivienne Westwood 

Photo by David Dagley (Forum, June 1976)

 

Notes

 

[1] The full six minute interview with McLaren and Rotten - including a pre-recorded performance of 'Anarchy in the UK' - was on the tea-time current affairs show Nationwide (BBC1 12 Nov 1976). It can be found in the BBC Archive on Facebook: click here. A shorter version - without the band's performance - can also be found on YouTube: click here.   

 

[2] Acting on the recommendation of Alan Jones, then working as an assistant alongside Jordan at McLaren and Westwood's shop on the King's Road, Coon attended an early Sex Pistols gig and, like many others, she was captivated by what she saw happening both on and off stage and immediately began to document this new scene.  

 

[3] See Coon's Melody Maker article entitled 'Punk Rock: Rebels Against the System' (7 August 1976).       

      Although the word punk had already been used fairly widely for several years in connection to rock music in the US - and, indeed, has a much longer and more complex history than that: click here - it was Coon's piece that played a crucial role in introducing a slightly revised version of the term to a British audience and helping to identify a novel (but not radically new) genre of music.

      Coon obviously had a gift for this kind of thing as, interestingly, she was also the person who named the hardcore group of friends who followed the Sex Pistols as the 'Bromley Contingent'.

 

[4] Peter York, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. York was writing in an article entitled 'Them', in Harpers & Queen (October, 1976).

 

 

Her Smile Ineffably is Sweet / Divinely She is Slim: On the Sexual Politics of Waitressing

 

 

I.

 

Waitressing isn't perhaps the most glamorous job in the world, but, as Mr White recognises, it's a major occupation amongst non-college graduates and the one honest job that almost any woman can fall back on when times are tough and (just about) earn a living from.

 

And, like Mr White, I agree that women serving table work hard for very little pay and fully deserve their tips (despite the fact that Mr Pink does make some valid points) [1].

 

II. 

 

What they probably don't deserve, however, is to be sexually objectified and leered at by their male customers; either in real life, or, indeed, in the world of the TV sitcom, as Moira the waitress is objectified and leered at by Bob and Terry in a second season episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? 

Watching as she bends over a table in order to collect the tea cups and wipe the surface, Bob claims that whilst he could never actually cheat on his wife, Thelma, he can't help noticing other girls - including Moira and "her provocative body". 

 

Terry agrees that she does possess fantastic legs - "right up to her throat" - and have a "naughty little bum". However, later, when he gives her a suggestive wink, she tuts and looks away in disgust [2]. 

 

 

III.

 

Scenes like this - perfectly acceptable at the time, but less so now - remind one of why there was probably a need for feminist groups like the Waitresses, formed in 1977, and consisting of female artists who also worked in the service sector in Los Angeles.     

The group, active until 1985 and which eventually had over a dozen members, was co-founded by Jerri Allyn and Anne Gauldin, after Allyn, who had been working as a waitress for seven years, watched Gauldin perform a piece at the Feminist Studio Workshop in which she attempted to expose the dark side of the profession (i.e., the everyday sexism, the physical abuse, the poor working conditions and low pay, etc.).

 

The Waitresses also explored the sexualisation of women working in the service industry; how they were not just seen as common and available for exploitation, but encouraged to prostitute themselves by dressing in a sexy manner and acting flirtatiously in order to secure bigger tips from male customers [3].      

For their guerilla performances, the group created playful and provocative characters such as 'Wonder Waitress', who had come to help the harried and hassled waitresses of the world and advise them on how to unionise.

 

In 1979, the Waitresses and their supporters marched wearing waitressing uniforms in the Pasedena Doo Dah Parade, playing pots and pans instead of traditional instruments; they repeated this in 2007 to mark the 30th anniversary of the group's formation, marching in support of equal pay.   

 

 

The Waitresses marching in 1979 

Photo by Jerri Allyn

 

  

Notes

 

The title of this post is taken from a poem entitled 'Weary Waitress' by the English-born Canadian poet Robert W. Service (1874-1958): click here.  

The image by Stephen Alexander is based on a screen shot of Nova Llewellyn, as Moira, in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (see note 2 below).

 

[1] I'm referencing characters in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992); Mr White is played by Harvey Keitel and Mr Pink is played by Steve Buscemi. See the opening scene set in a diner: click here.

 

[2] See the series 2 episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? entitled 'Between Ourselves', directed Bernard Thompson, written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, starring Rodney Bewes as Bob Ferris and James Bolam as Terry Collier. Moira the waitress was played by Nova Llewellyn. 

      The episode, first broadcast on BBC1 on 19 March, 1974, can be watched in full on YouTube by clicking here. The relevant scenes takes place between 20:25 and 21:44.

 

[3] Some who study human sexual behaviour argue that men like to give gifts - including tips in restaurants - to attractive women for much the same reason that male birds like to share food or nesting material with potential mates. So maybe what some regard as sleazy behaviour is rooted deep in the male psyche and has a long and complex instinctual history. 

     Of course, there's always the possibility that a male customer isn't tipping in an attempt to put the waitress under an obligation that might be repaid sexually, but is simply being generous; although, as researches have also pointed out, good deeds among men tend to increase when there's even a remote chance they may get to copulate. 

Dangerously Close to Love: Hommage à Steve Jones (Sex Pistol and Style Icon)

 

Steve Jones wearing an Anarchy shirt and pair of 

Seditionaries boots and looking like the coolest man alive

Photo by Wolfgang Heilemann (August 1976)

 

 

I. 

 

If Johnny Rotten was the face of punk - and Malcolm McLaren the brains - then Steve Jones was the genitalia; the one who supplied a lot of the stylish swagger and foul-mouthed humour to the Sex Pistols; the one who called Bill Grundy a fucking rotter ...

 

Perhaps that's why I always had a lot of affection for Jones, who, in 1972, co-founded The Strand [1] with former schoolmates Paul Cook and Wally Nightingale [2]. They were the band from out of which the Sex Pistols would eventually evolve, sans Wally, but with the crucial addition of Glen Matlock on bass and, later, John Lydon, as lead vocalist and frontman; a role that Jones was never comfortable in. 

 

In fact, Jones was probably much happier nicking musical equipment from wealthy rock stars and clothes from the King's Road store owned by McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. We might discuss whether Vicious is fairly labelled as The Gimmick - or Rotten as The Collaborator - in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), but Jones certainly loved to steal and so his being cast as The Crook is hardly unjust.    

Fortunately for Jones, Malcolm seemed extremely fond of him and in mid-1975, after years of constant pestering from Jones on the matter, McLaren reluctantly agreed to become the group's manager - but only on the condition that Cook and Jones agree to fire Nightingale (which they did). 

 

Mclaren was also keen that the band change their name and, after suggesting various alternatives, it was agreed that they would be known as Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols ...

 

For McLaren, the latter part of the name not only referenced his and Vivienne's store, then called SEX, but it also hinted at the idea of young assassins for whom everything was permitted and to whom it was reasonable to demand the impossible. 

 

As for the first part of the name ... well, Kutie was a word much favoured by pornographers to describe a young female model; thus it was, for example, that a vintage fetish magazine published in the late 1950s and early 1960s was entitled QT, punning on this term, as well as the idea of it being something that those in the know kept quiet about [3].

 

 

II. 

 

Why did Wally have to go? 

 

Partly it was because he was, at heart, more pub rock than punk rock and he and Jones found themselves constantly at odds over the band's musical direction; the former favouring a traditional R&B sound, whereas the latter was very much into Bowie, Roxy Music, and the New York Dolls.  

 

But it was also a question of style, not just music; Nightingale didn't look the part, whereas the rest of the band - Cook, Matlock, and especially Jones - were as obsessed with fashion as they were with music; particularly the unique designs sold at 430 King's Road, created by McLaren and Westwood.  

 

This is evidenced by the above photo, taken in August 1976, in which Jones can be seen wearing a pink striped Anarchy shirt, accurately described by Paul Gorman as "the visual equivalent of the music made by McLaren's charges the Sex Pistols; jarring, violently expressive and an act of collage representing an exciting and scrambled manifesto of desires" [4]. 

 

This variant of the shirt contains several of the (now) familiar elements, including the Karl Marx silk patch, the chaos armband, and a stencilled slogan that greatly amused McLaren: Dangerously Close to Love.  

 

Jones is also wearing a pair of Seditionaries boots; if hippies liked their Birkenstock sandals - and skinheads loved their Doc Martens - then the footwear of choice for those punks who could afford to buy a pair was this refashioned suede and leather jodhpur boot, commisioned from the famous English shoemakers George Cox, that came complete with bondage-style straps and buckles.  

I'm not sure about the blue denim jeans - or the slightly dodgy-looking barnet - but Jones looks the business in this picture - as indeed do the rest of the band (before punk became just another uniform):

 

The Sex Pistols: Rotten, Matlock, Cook, and Jones

Photo by Wolfgang Heilemann (August 1976)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The band took their original name - later changed to the Swankers, at Wally Nightingale's suggestion - from the Roxy Music song 'Do the Strand', written by Bryan Ferry and found on the album For Your Pleasure (Island Records, 1973). Steve Jones has often spoken of his love for Roxy Music during the glam rock period. 

      Those who don't know the song - as well as those who never tire of hearing it - can click here, or here to watch a live performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC2, 3 April 1973). Surprisingly, 'Do the Strand' wasn't released in the UK as a single until 1978, when it failed to chart.  

 

[2] The guitarist Wally Nightingale is arguably the Pete Best of the Sex Pistols story; it was he who suggested to Cook and Jones that they form a band and he would happily assist the latter in stealing instruments and equipment. He is also credited with writing the music for 'Did You No Wrong', a song which featured as the B-side of the Sex Pistols' single 'God Save the Queen' (1977) - a song that I hated then and still hate now; but which can be played by clicking here.  

      Unfortunately, McLaren didn't think he fitted the image for the band that he had in mind. And so he was fired and Jones became the guitarist. Within six months of Nightingale leaving, they had found a new singer and played their first gig as the Sex Pistols (6 November, 1975) - and the rest, as they say, is history. Sadly, Nightingale died, aged 40, in 1996; still somewhat bitter about his expulsion.    

 

[3] Published monthly by the London-based company Concord Publications, QT ran for 94 issues between late 1956 and the summer of 1964. Click here for more details. In 1974, the magazine was revived under the title New QT, again featuring the work of Britain's top glamour photographer Russell Gay and published by Concord.  

 

[4] Paul Gorman, 'The Anarchy Shirt', Dazed (1 May, 2013): click here.  

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Silly Thing' is a song written by Paul Cook and Steve Jones and which features the latter on vocals. It was released as the third single from the The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), reached number 6 in the UK charts, and is a fresh and crisp example of punk popcorn: click here.