Amy RIgby (WIth a bit of assistance from Wreckless Eric) Tour Dates

Lucky UK - Amy Rigby is on tour here (with assistance from her husband Wreckless Eric).  
If this tour had a name it would be  "The antidote to the end of the world doom and gloom blues tour."
Recommend this to your friends.

Backstage story:  For some reason Amy, (and I can't remember WHY she was booked to play Hull but she was booked to play HULL). Yes!  This American girl from NYC, Brooklyn, and Nashville and Ohio (she moved around, but I met her when she lived across the street from me in Brooklyn last century), comes to the UK to play HULL.
Amy sets up for soundcheck and it JUST so happens that the guy doing the soundcheck is a mate of Wreckless Eric. Wreckless Eric JUST HAPPENS to be in HULL visiting. Amy just happens to soundcheck a song by Wreckless Eric called "The Whole Wide World." The sound man phones Eric to tip him off:
Sound man: "Mate, there's this American singer here going to do your song later."
Eric:  Really?
Sound man:  Yeah, come down and hear her.
Eric: All right, I will.

LATER:  Amy on stage with Eric close by, moves the capo on her guitar and says something like, "I'm going to sing a song by someone else now, it's called The Whole Wide World," and Eric says out loud something like, "Not in that key you're not."
Amy:  Oh yes I am.
Eric:  Oh no you're not.
Amy:  But I like this key.
Eric:  But you would sound better if you sang it in (names key)...
Amy sings song. It sounds great.

LATER:  Eric assumes Amy has a boyfriend. Amy assumes Eric has a girlfriend.
Cutting the long story short:  they actually meet up and get together and get married and now they're on tour and sing together and it's great. It's magical even. But most of all it's authentic, real-life, heart-tugging, heart-warming stuff that comes from out of the Milky Way or somewhere. I have no idea how they do it...

meanwhile... in NYC 7th Street and Avenue A

Photo by E. V. Grieve

Joe Corre burns memorabelia ... come yawn with me...

On the cold, rather damp gloomy afternoon that it was here in London today, 26 November... on the River Thames, Joe Corre makes his film crew film "the" burning of his memorabelia.  

SPOILER ALERT:  no one swoops by with a fire-extinguisher at the last minute to save it.

And, it was heavily rumoured, that the reason Joe Corre spoke ill of the dead a while ago (the dead man being his dad, Malcolm McLaren) was because Malcolm left his son Joe a lot of ton of knock-off Seditionaries clothing made in China. Whether Malcolm knew they were knock-offs wasn't clear when overheard in the loud venue but it is 90% likely that the burning could actually be that junk punk stuff. Who knows if Joe has the real stuff in his loft. And as someone else said, "Why couldn't he do it quietly at the end of his garden?"

The streaming video originally posted on youTube has been taken down and this video, with the preamble of Joe's manifesto, has replaced it. 

SPOILER ALERT
No fire-barge comes along side. 

November 25 - Steve Jones LONELY BOY signed copies available

Steve Jones, guitarist... has written his life story and you can buy signed copies of it for £20 plus shipping from Rough Trade Mailing Department

Steve Jones playing guitar

November 24 THE POP GROUP at 100 CLUB

Address: 100 Oxford St, Fitzrovia, London W1D 1LL

Phone:020 7636 0933

November 24 Rough Trade East Book Launch of GOD SAVE SEX PISTOLS

Anthology Editions presents: Book launch for Deluxe Edition of "GOD SAVE SEX PISTOLS"  with host Bob Stanley, photographer John Tiberi (my favourite) and writer-journalist Jonh (not a spelling mistake) Ingham.

Now, mind, the book is a DELUXE book. 
How much do you think it costs?  
It's £120. 
It's in a limited edition run of 2000 and it was sorted out by Johan Kugelberg and Jon Savage.

Rough Trade East tonight at 7.00pm 

In-conversation starts 7pm
7.45pm  -audience questions
8.00pm - signing

Address: The Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane, London E1 6QL

Phone: 020 7392 7788

Museum of London - Punk Debate

Joe Corre

Mark from SS and Lesley Edgar

BOB DYLAN at Halcyon Gallery, London November 5 - 11 December

BOB DYLAN has an exhibition of his drawings, paintings, prints and iron works at
HALCYON GALLERY
144-146 New Bond Street
London W1S 2PF

Open
Monday to Saturday 10-6pm
Sunday 11-5pm

It closes on 11 December.
Recommended.

November (2)

November 2016

TM 24 October 2016

Westwood book Launch 14 October 2016

Vivienne Westwood's book launch in St James church in Piccadilly last night was a strange affair. Cameras all around the gallery and choir-pews because apparently her son with Malcolm McLaren -  Joe Corre - is making a documentary all about himself and his theory that Punk wasn't about collecting things. Punk, he says, was about living in the moment and that all these collectible and therefore valuable items of clothing should be burned and burned by him and burned by him in public. And he was going to keep a record of the public burning by filming it.  Joe Corre wasn't old enough to be an original punk of course and I couldn't help feeling he was kind of stealing his mum's thunder. Would we call that narcissistic?

Vivienne's book is called GET A LIFE. The irony lost on Joe.

Pamela Anderson was in one of the front pews - in a high-necked Westwood b/w check dress - and looked very girly.

Pamela Anderson with Vivienne Westwood (Photo by Rhiannon Ifans)

The acoustics were very difficult for VW so the Q&A with Deborah Orr (Guardian) was very uncomfortable to sit through. It started off by DO asking VW to "Stand up and tell us about your outfit." Viv stood up and rambled a bit, not about her outfit...
and sat down. 

Next question about the title of the book wasn't answered either. On it went like that.

Her outfit by the way was designed by her partner, Andreas, and was a very well cut, flowery sort of Bowie-inspired (?) catsuit with ruffly shoulders. She wore high tan-coloured platform boots which she said she'd changed into after she'd parked her bike.

Vivienne did qualify what was going on early on - she told us she's gone quite deaf and was struggling with the acoustics - she was aware that she wasn't making much sense saying she'd been working quite hard this week. (I related. I don't make much sense either when I am over-tired.) I couldn't sit through the whole thing. I was actually hungry and having trouble with the acoustics myself. I went to get bite to eat and wait for my mates.


I leafed through the book at a quiet location ... diary entries, lots of pictures and recalled some reviews already published  asking why there's such little great depth or revealing emotion like you might expect from an autobiography. Maybe being over 70, you have so much more to do with Father Time and his Sythe chasing you about.  I found I got absorbed swiftly and I like her writing. It's clear and to the point. I like her honest direct approach. 

When I met my friends later they told me the film crew interviewed a bloke (in a Westwood t-shirt he'd bought on Ebay) having a rant to the cameraman. "BURNING OUR CULTURE? Who does Joe Corre think he is??"  

Of course the collectors are secretly thrilled. It makes the remaining "culture" worth so much more doesn't it? 

There's going to be a PUNK DEBATE on 18 NOVEMBER at the Museum of London at the Barbican. Joe Corre is on the panel with Jordan (who sold her Westwood/McLaren clothing for a small fortune a while back), Richard Boon (used to manage The Buzzcocks) amongst others, and moderated by Punk Professor (NYC) Vivien Goldman (who used to write for Sounds back in the day). 

On the way home my taxi driver told me that he lived in Clapham and used to see Ms Westwood  riding her bike late at night, after his shift, quite often. He has a few of her shirts. "Not cheap, but they fit great. And well cut enough that they don't stop you raising your fist on a peace march."

MOL 12 October 2016

October 2016 - Punk Rock and Roll Art Show

September (4)

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Sept 2016

August 4

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August 2016

July (4)

July 2

July 2016

4 July - Danny Fields Q&A with Jordan, Gaye Black (Adverts)

June 4

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June 2

June 2016

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May (1)

May 2016

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April (3) 2016

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April 2016

March (4) 2016

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march (2) 2016

march (1) 2016

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February 2016

Mekons movie

January 2016 (3)

January 2016 David Bowie leaves Planet Earth

Visiting Vienna.  Woke up and saw the news that David Bowie had died. It was a shock, to say the least, to a lot of fans and people who weren't massive fans too.

His video filmed in what seemed to be a hospital room wasn't about a man getting better. It seemed like a strange dream. It opens, "Look up here, I'm in heaven..."

January 2016 - Elgin New Year

went to a party to ring in the New Year at the Elgin in Notting Hill ...
Surprisingly that night Glen Matlock played guitar with Paul Cook on drums - two Sex Pistols on one stage.  Didn't see that coming.  And then, oops, the first person to kiss me Happy New Year was Glen Matlock.  You stay alive long enough, I guess you never can predict what's going to happen...

I'm very fond of the Rotten Hill Gang. Paul Cook's daughter, Holly, is on the far left here.  She's a natural!