Category Archives: London

➤ Student verdicts on the new Central Saint Martins, contrasted with LCC’s sad home

Posted on 18 Nov 2011 | 1 comment

CSM ,vox pops, King’s Cross , art school, Central Saint Martins

CSM student vox pops on the King’s Cross campus: views range from “good to be under one roof” to “an architect’s ego trip”. Pictures by Matt Writtle for the Evening Standard

❚ THE ARTS AND DESIGN GLITTERATI turned out last night to celebrate the official launch of the University of the Arts’s new home for Central Saint Martins at King’s Cross.

Around 1,000 guests partied in the Grade II listed Granary Building, which has been massively renovated and extended in a £200m scheme that can accommodate 4,000 students and staff. Transvestite artist and university governor Grayson Perry wore full make-up and a vast printed dress-cum-smock while announcing the building officially open. Guests were guided to the party by a colourful light display on the outside of the building, and serenaded as they arrived by Drama Centre London’s Choral Society.

University of Arts , CSM, Grayson Perry, launch party, King's Cross,

Age of the transvestite university governor: Grayson Perry declaring the fab new college open last night

➢ In tonight’s Evening Standard Emma McCarthy tests the temperature on campus: “ After 100 years, fashion’s fledglings have flown the Soho coop. They are coming to roost instead in the heart of King’s Cross, as tonight’s launch party marks the official opening of the new Central Saint Martins campus. The renowned college of art and design — previously spread across six London sites — leaves behind its two most frequented central London campuses in Charing Cross Road and Holborn’s Southampton Row… ” /continued online

➢ Cross Over is the first exhibition at CSM’s new campus, celebrating the work of 2011 graduates, and runs until Nov 24.

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now contrast north of the river with south

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❏ Today the University of Arts (UAL) released this sleek commercial [above] showing us inside CSM’s new building at King’s Cross, talked up in a string of soundbites from celebrity alumni such as Anthony Caro and Terence Conran… In sharp contrast [below], Hollie Cradduck, a third-year journalism student, reminds us in her own video that the London College of Communication in south London — which also belongs to the UAL trust — is in serious need of renovation.

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❏ Meanwhile fashion graduate Oleg Mitrofanov is still hoping to raise funds to finish I Hate My Collection, a film documenting the glorious impact of the old St Martin’s over the past half century…

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➢ Will the magical blasts from the past follow St Martin’s out of Soho? Special feature by Shapersofthe80s

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Posted in Culture, London, Social trends

Tagged art school, Central Saint Martins, CSM, education, Evening Standard, Grayson Perry, Hollie Cradduck, King’s Cross, London College of Communication, Oleg Mitrofanov, UAL, Video, vox pops

➤ Step up Dr Nick Rhodes, honorary scholar at Luton in Beds

Posted on 18 Nov 2011 | Leave a comment

Love the New Romantic outfits! Popstar Rhodes today with the eggheads of Bedfordshire. Photo courtesy Gerard Franklin

➢ From the newsdesk of Duran Duran:

❏ Star names from the worlds of music and cinema joined hundreds of graduates from the University of Bedfordshire at ceremonies today in Luton. Duran Duran keyboard player Nick Rhodes, music producer Peter Asher and film producer Katy Haber were among those being honoured during graduation week at St Mary’s Church. Each received an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree.

Nick Rhodes is being recognised for his contribution to the music industry as a songwriter, performer and producer. Katy Haber, who starred in films such as The Getaway and Cross of Iron and co-produced sci-fi classic Blade Runner, is recognised for her outstanding career in the film industry. Producer Peter Asher is being recognised for his distinguished career in the music industry, working with global stars such as Cher and Neil Diamond.

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➤ Robert Pereno: My road to recovery in the recession

Posted on 11 Nov 2011 | Leave a comment

Robert Pereno , Society Club, cafe, gallery, Soho

The Society Club, Soho: Robert Pereno and tea hostess Daisy. Photograph by Rebecca Reid

◼ WHO ACTUALLY IS ROBERT PERENO? You won’t find him at Wikipedia but may remember him from Shock, a New Romantic music/mime/dance troupe who supported bands such as Gary Numan, Kid Creole and Depeche Mode in the early 80s and had the odd dance-floor hit with Angel Face and Dynamo Beat. In 1983 he metamorphosed into a vocalist with electronic club band Pleasure and the Beast, along with Lowri-Ann Richards from Shock. He became a bit-part actor and then nightclub promoter, notably with Tuesdays at Crazy Larrys in Chelsea. He kept fronting clubs though, in his own words, by the mid-90s his life fell to pieces. In 2005 he suddenly appeared in a TV documentary aptly titled Whatever Happened to the Wild Child? — in his case, a reference to a runaway teenager he married young.

Today a video interview with Pereno — one of those men who wear a hat indoors — has been posted at YouTube [2018 update: whole channel now deleted]. It seems to be the second in a talk-show series titled The Independent Session and it is effortlessly viewable. Pereno fesses up to his rocking past frankly, fearlessly and perhaps foolishly, should Lily Law be watching. He is vague on the intimate details of his downfall, but as he talks 19 to the dozen, you may not feel that you want to be the reconstituted Robert Pereno Mk2, but you grudgingly admire him for making a huge effort.

Robert Pereno, Shock troupe, Pleasure and the Beast, bands, Blitz Kids,

Pereno in Shock 1980 and in Pleasure and the Beast 1983

He tells us he’s a minor boarding-school Chelsea boy who was born in Turin, Italy, and grew up first in ex-pat Calcutta with a mother who was a nightclub singer, and later in the London pubs where X-Ray Spex and Adam Ant played in the late 70s. With Crazy Larrys “I catered for dysfunctional Chelsea girls and south-London black guys”. On the night it was raided and closed, he says, “it was packed with an extra 25% of people who were all police because there was a lot of drug-taking”.

This autumn he and his wife interior designer Babette opened a discreet little corner shop in Soho called The Society Club which sells literary memorabilia and multi-tasks as cafe and art gallery. Within minutes, namely, this week, it has been reviewed favourably by an Evening Standard restaurant reviewer (though hot meals are actually supplied by Café Soho next door). Pereno gets described as a “flaneur” and as he has a knack for reinventing himself always gives the impression of knowing everybody and being everywhere. In the video he talks energetically of hosting poetry readings, book launches, photo exhibitions (currently Graham Smith and with John Stoddart’s photos and Derek Ridgers’ to follow in the New Year), plus pop-up events including a vintage film club nearby in Soho.

At 54 Pereno is sanguine about the future. “I quite like a recession. I was involved in the warehouse scene — office blocks empty, throw a party. Now with a recession we’ve got a shop and done a deal with the landlord because times are hard. It’s a time for the outsider to make a move.” He gallops with his theme. “It’s probably healthy for the music business. Simon Cowell is already yesterday, because he’s part of what we’ve just had, which is an over-inflated economy. Now is the time for the maverick. I don’t even have a bank account, mobile or television. My wife gives me pocket money… Unfortunately I’m not very good at being single.”

➢ The Society Club shop/cafe/gallery is open daily at 12 Ingestre Place, London W1F OJF (tel 020 7734 3400)

➢ Update: The Promoter (2013), a documentary directed by Ed Edwards – “Robert Pereno should be a household name, but every time he is on the brink of greatness, he somehow manages to mess it up. This is his story.”

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1972–2009 ➤ Andrew Logan’s glistening vision of Planet Earth and all its creatures

Posted on 11 Nov 2011 | 1 comment

“As a cherishable example of alternative British culture,
it makes you wonder why this isn’t the orthodoxy”
— Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

❚ ANDREW LOGAN. BRITISH ARTIST. SOCIAL MAGICIAN. Here is one of the giants of the subcultural landscape during the 70s who helped shape the imaginations of the Blitz Kids of the 80s. In 1972, Logan created the anarchic and outrageous Alternative Miss World Show, a spectacular costume pageant and fancy dress party for grown-ups, which has been reborn in 12 incarnations over the years.   In a new film, The British Guide to Showing Off, director Jes Benstock takes us under Logan’s glittering wing to share this joyous and exotic subcultural event.   Raucous, liberating and sexually charged, The British Guide to Showing Off “speaks to the outsider in all of us”, they say. At the ICA cinema from today.

“Makes Salvador Dali look like a painter and decorator”
— Empire magazine

➢ Former Blitz Kid now international deejay Princess Julia introduces us to the world of Logan at i-D online:
“ Andrew’s eclectic crowd has consisted of musicians such as Brian Eno and Divine and Nick Rhodes, designer Zandra Rhodes who has designed all of Andrew’s she-male stage costumes, fellow artists Duggie Fields, Derek Jarman, Grayson Perry and even David Hockney… a cast which includes models, scene stealers and individualists that have made London so vital from the days of glam-rock to the very present… ”

➢ Click for screenings… at the ICA London Nov 11–24, and afterwards at 60 independent cinemas around the UK

➢ Nov 27: Andrew Logan talks to Jarvis Cocker on 6Music about his new film The British Guide to Showing Off (within the first hour)

➢ Nov 13 update: The 10 best show-offs — in the Observer Andrew Logan, founder of The Alternative Miss World, pays homage to the outrageous, outlandish and out of this world

Two of Logan's choice show-offs: clubhost Daniel Lismore (pic from Rex) and the Binnie Sisters, aka the Neo-Naturists

❏ iPAD, TABLET & MOBILE USERS PLEASE NOTE — You may see only a tiny selection of items from this wide-ranging website about the 1980s, not chosen by the author. To access fuller background features and site index either click on “Standard view” or visit Shapersofthe80s.com on a desktop computer. ➢ Click here to visit a different random item every time you click

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Posted in Culture, Europe, Film, London, Media, Social trends

Tagged 1970s, Alternative Miss World Show, Andrew Logan, Blitz Kids, British Guide to Showing Off, eccentrics, ICA, Jarvis Cocker, Jes Benstock, movies, performance art, Princess Julia, show-offs, Stephen Jones, The Observer, trailer, Video

2011 ➤ Peter Frampton: how Bowie changed my life at Bromley Tech

Posted on 8 Nov 2011 | Leave a comment

Peter Frampton, Frampton Comes Alive,world tour 2011,1954 Les Paul Custom

Frampton then and now: the 1976 gatefold sleeve shot for Frampton Comes Alive! by Richard Aaron... and earlier this year playing live at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, photographed by Wenn... Both pictures are united by Frampton’s signature guitar, the solidbody “Black Beauty” 1954 Les Paul Custom, which was re-finished with three pickups by the Gibson factory in 1970. In fact the original Black Beauty (left) was lost in a 1980 cargo plane crash, after which Gibson’s crafted another guitar in the image of the 1954 Les Paul Custom but with a slim-carved neck profile for optimum speed plus ebony black finish (above right)

❚ 35 YEARS AGO BRITISH-BORN GUITARIST Peter Frampton was a rock god, given two Rolling Stone covers within months of each other, the second declaring him Rock Star of the Year. His appeal has evidently been reignited by this year’s 35th anniversary world tour of his multi-platinum album Frampton Comes Alive!, drenched as it always was with West Coast sunshine. The “better than ever” tour has been extended from this Friday with extra dates in the UK and Europe, and yet more in the US from February. There is no support and the show runs for three hours. FCA! is the first set, including a 14-minute arrangement of Do You Feel Like We Do to re-create his epic stadium concerts of 1976. The second half features newer work, but also earlier numbers that resulted from forming the supergroup Humble Pie with “little” Stevie Marriott of the Small Faces in 1969.

Peter Frampton, Rolling Stone, magazines, Rock Star of the Year,

Cover star: in April 1976 Frampton Comes Alive! won him the cover of Rolling Stone. Afterwards, he feared the shirtless photo by Francesco Scavullo “turned me into a pop idol” and would reduce his career to 18 months... Fortunately by the following February he was photographed by Annie Liebovitz as Rock Star of the Year

It has taken this comeback to remind us, or for most of us to reveal, that Frampton learned to play the rock classics at the feet of another Beckenham boy, David Bowie, when they were students together in south London.

➢ The Bowiezone website supplies these (and other) childhood details:
“ [Frampton] first became interested in music when he was seven years old. Upon discovering his grandmother’s banjolele (a banjo-shaped ukulele) in the attic, he taught himself to play, and later taught himself to play guitar and piano as well. At the age of eight he started taking classical music lessons.

Both he and David Bowie were pupils at Bromley Technical High School where Frampton’s father, Owen Frampton, was head of the art department. The Little Ravens played on the same bill at school as Bowie’s band, George and the Dragons. Peter and David would spend time together at lunch breaks, playing Buddy Holly songs.

At the age of 11, Peter was playing with a band called The Trubeats followed by a band called The Preachers, produced and managed by Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones. He became a successful child singer, and in 1966, he became a member of The Herd, scoring a handful of British pop hits. Frampton was named The Face of 1968 by teen magazine Rave!. ”

➢ In an interview this summer with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Frampton himself added this first-hand account:

“ I got to know [Bowie] when I was 12 and he was 14, 15, maybe. I said, ‘What music do you like right now?’ He said, ‘Buddy Holly.’ I said, ‘Teach me that.’ I remember sitting on the stairs at lunchtime with two guitars and him and George Underwood — who became the artist who did the covers of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane — and the three of us would hang out and play Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly numbers.”

While in school, Frampton became lead singer and guitarist of the Herd. In 1969, he formed Humble Pie with Steve Marriott of the Small Faces and also did session work on albums, including George Harrison’s classic All Things Must Pass. After five LPs with Humble Pie, he went solo in 1971. ”

Bowie and Frampton in New York rehearsing for the Glass Spider Tour, 1987: Peter contributed to the album Never Let Me Down, Bowie’s follow-up to Let’s Dance, then played lead guitar on tour. Photograph by David McGough

The Bowie connection was rekindled in 1987 when Frampton was hired to play on the Never Let Me Down album and then as lead guitarist for that year’s Glass Spider Tour. Echoes of Bowie can often be heard in Frampton’s own vocals, especially his acoustic version of Baby I Love Your Way — shown below in impressive footage recently released from promoter Bill Graham’s archive.

➢ Bowiezone recently published an interview with Mick “Woody” Woodmansey, the drummer on Bowie’s early 70s albums

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