Category Archives: Youth culture

➤ Nathan Barley walks again in Vice’s video serial Dalston Superstars

Posted on 2 Dec 2011 | 1 comment

➢ Click the pic to run the video of Dalston Superstars at Vice.com

❚ IN EPISODE 2 OF DALSTON SUPERSTARS, Vice online’s no-holds-barred East London reality series, Sam, Anna, Maeve, Vee and Stefan try to heal the wounds after last week’s nightclub bust up. Maybe a night out will help? Unlikely, with Dalston’s numero uno sex vixen, Holly Wood, back on the scene. She’s got eyes for Sam — bad luck, Anna!

✰ Maeve learns from Stefan what a Yoko is.

✰ Sam scores a job as a cool-spotter — “I’m not here to make friends.”

✰ “Holly Wood thinks she is Courtney Love circa 94 but she’s actually more like Courtney Love circa 2010.”

✰ “When you come back from LA it’s sort of like you come back from a sauna”

✰ “Tell me what happened with Jared Leto” — “We were tweeting together so that’s like having a thing.”

✰ Anna stages a tantrum and wins the accolade “badass”.

[No scriptwriter gets an onscreen credit but all words and images above are
© 2011 Vice Media Inc]

➢ Catch up with Dalston Superstars, Episode One — “cool parties, cool people” and a fingerboard skate park

Dalston Superstars, Vicedotcom, Nathan Barley, video, hipsters,Stefan, Maeve

Dalston Superstars: Stefan and Maeve networking f2f in hipster London

❏ Subcultural decryption: Dalston is the area of east London that UK hipsters regard as, like, paradise. Unless they live a mile away in Shoreditch, then Shoreditch.

❏ Subcultural analogy: Nathan Barley was a UK television series featuring hipster role models for Dalston Superstars, like, six years ago

TBH, THE #COMMENTS AT VICE ARE
BETTER THAN THE SCRIPT

❏ “I hope this is a joke because as a joke it’s funny.”

❏ “Hipsters mocking hipsters is like Dawn French mocking fats. Doesn’t work.”

❏ “It’s like, funny thinking it’s not funny, because it’s like funny to like, not realise that it’s funny, but then also it’s not funny but it’s funny to pretend it’s not funny like it is funny, even though it isn’t.”

❏ “Stupid people think it’s Cool. Smart people think it’s a joke: also Cool.”

❏ “ ‘Realness’ is particularly hard to put your finger on.”

❏ “Fashankers ridiculing Fashankers… like double irony… or something.”

❏ “They all need a good wash and for someone to tell them they’re not unique, they’re clones of each other in different colour thriftwear.”

❏ “Sam has perfected the ‘confused gormless stare’. Robert Pattinson will be so pissed.”

❏ “This is not real, blatantly — why do people post serious comments on this?”

❏ “This is the funniest and the saddest thing ever. Funny because it’s hyperbole but sad because it’s only slightly exaggerated.”

❏ “Are these real humans?”

❏ Either that or it’s hashtag fail.

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Posted in Fashion, London, Media, Social trends, TV, Youth culture

Tagged Comedy, cool, Dalston Superstars, hipsters, mockumentary, Nathan Barley, Reviews, spoof, TV shows, Vicedotcom, Video

1965 ➤ Teenage Bowie flashes priceless smile to an amateur cine camera

Posted on 27 Nov 2011 | 1 comment

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❚ HERE’S A FAB GLIMPSE OF DAVID BOWIE in a London street, caught on cine film when he was aged 18. It is newly posted at YouTube by 57-year-old Joe Salama from south-east London. Shapersofthe80s asked Joe about his Bowie connection and he replied: “I suppose I have always been a fan of David Bowie’s music certainly since Hunky Dory when as a youngster I drove a minicab for a while with my Hanimex tape player rigged up to some headphones in my Renault 16. I remember delivering some parts to IBM in Birmingham at night and that album kept me going all the way there and back, thrilled to bits with the sound.

“Regarding the 1960s cine clip, it really was a complete surprise to me and needless to say my late father, who had no idea at the time. This exceptional footage was taken by him on a trip up to the West End of London, totally unaware that David Bowie was the young dude who smiles graciously at the camera. Even when I showed him what he had filmed he was none the wiser and couldn’t remember why he focused on this particular chap. He was trying to film my mum whose face crosses fleetingly behind the great man if you look carefully at the shot. Roughly dated to 1968.”

❏ YouTuber momasu comments: “This is spring 1965, and Davie Jones (as he was still called then) is heading into his favourite cafe on Denmark Street, La Gioconda, possibly after recording demos with his new band The Lower Third at Central Sound Studio next door.”

David Bowie , Davie Jones, Manish Boys, 1960s,Denmark Street, Tin Pan Alley,joesalama,YouTube

Pre-Bowie Davie Jones, aged 18: filmed possibly in Tin Pan Alley, London, by Joe Salama’s father

❏ Judging by the numerous photos in Kevin Cann’s meticulous book Any Day Now, two details pin the date of Joe’s film clip down to the early part of 1965: the giant button-down tab-collar shirt Bowie is wearing, and his hair hanging well over his collar, now parted as he moves on from the “helmet” style seen in the 1964 video below. Under the stage name of Davie Jones he had been singing since the previous July with the six-piece R&B band, The Manish Boys, whose hair-length had caused controversy. They record the single I Pity The Fool — produced by Shel Talmy and with a guitar solo by Jimmy Page — which leads to a TV appearance on BBC2’s Gadzooks in March 1965.

17-YEAR-OLD BOWIE ON THE TONIGHT SHOW IN 1964

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❏ Nov 12, 1964: Kevin Cann’s book reminds us that when Bowie, then known as Davie Jones, appeared on the BBC’s Tonight show (above) campaigning for “The Society for the prevention of cruelty to long-haired men”, it was a publicity-seeking ploy. Nowhere in the interview does he admit that the hairy men around him in the studio are mostly The Manish Boys, on a rare night off from touring southern England. The previous night they’d played the legendary home of British R&B, the Eel Pie Island club in Twickenham, and the next they were at the Witch Doctor in St Leonards-on-Sea (though without Davie). Incidentally, this is not his TV debut as some claim — that was on Juke Box Jury the previous June.

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Posted in Film, London, Pop music, Youth culture

Tagged David Bowie, Davie Jones, I Pity The Fool, Joe Salama, Kevin Cann, Memorabilia, The Manish Boys, Tonight (TV show), YouTube

2011 ➤ Wham!’s cunning plan for a Christmas No1 as climax to the 80s revival

Posted on 15 Nov 2011 | Leave a comment

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❚ TWO REASONS TO CELEBRATE. Mother-of-two Shirlie Kemp has just exhumed a load of fab clothes from her heyday with Pepsi Demacque as the all-jiving all-singing girls in Wham! She has piled a load of glam photos of her stage clothes on to her otherwise sedately titled blog, No Place Like Home. We see her Melissa Caplan sheath from the 1982 Top of the Pops debuts of herself as Shirlie Holliman and of the clubland group’s single Young Guns in the lucky TV turning point [above] that broke the group after their first single Wham Rap! had initially failed to take off.

Shirlie Kemp, fashion, Kahn & Bell,Wham!

Shirlie’s bling leather top for Wham! It bears the Kahniverous label. Photo from shirliekemp.com

Shirlie also shows the cowgirl fronded suede top from American Classics in Endell Street, worn in an earlier incarnation of Young Guns.

Most eye-catching of all are those skimpy, gilded, blingy black leathers by the Brummie design duo Kahn & Bell who had shops in Birmingham and Chelsea. However, after a deep search through Wham’s YouTube videos as the first Western pop group into China, we find no footage of Shirlie’s claim that she wore them onstage there in 1985 — see below for Everything She Wants filmed live in China by British director Lindsay Anderson (which is wrongly dated). By then they had achieved three number-one singles in a row in the US with Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Careless Whisper and Everything She Wants, while the Billboard year-ending chart listed George Michael’s Careless Whisper as the US number-one song of 1985.

➢ Click pic for the fizzing Wham Rap! video in a new window

Above — “Man or mouse” Andrew Ridgeley establishes the group’s clubbing credentials in the opening shots of their Wham Rap! video by reading The Face cover story, The Making of Club Culture, written by yours truly in the February 1983 issue

❏ The reason why we’ve been catching glimpses of Pepsi & Shirlie around the media is the second reason to celebrate. An explosive 25th anniversary comeback by Wham! themselves takes the shape of a 27-track 2-CD anniversary edition of The Final, their farewell compilation album from 1986, with its minimalist Peter Saville cover design. Embracing all four years’-worth of output, it contains six UK No 1 hits, plus both George Michael solo singles (Careless Whisper and A Different Corner). A deluxe edition includes a DVD of 13 restored videos.

Wham!, The Final, albums, Peter Saville The Final is such a double-whammy of greatest dancefloor hits that its November 28 release is a calculated pitch for the top spot in the Christmas chart. And with Duran’s magnificent comeback year all but spent musically, Wham!’s cunning plan will represent the last major chart assault by the 80s revival that has warmed our cockles for a full two years.

Wham! went out on a high 25 years ago with an eight-hour grand finale of a concert at Wembley Stadium which coincided with their farewell single The Edge of Heaven hitting No 1 in June, 1986. Pepsi says: “A lot of thought went into stopping when we did — we were at our peak, it was such a high and that’s why we can celebrate Wham! The Final now, because we all still have great memories and we’re all still great friends.”

➢ “Maybe George was going through a cowboy phase” — this week’s interview with Pepsi & Shirlie for RealMusic Blog

➢ Rich List puts George Michael top of the popstars
from the un-lucrative 80s

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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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1980 ➤ Ribald tales of excess as the kids from The Blitz took over West End clubbing

Posted on 6 Nov 2011 | 1 comment

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❚ FRIDAY NIGHT WAS AN EXCUSE for the wags to tell their tall tales of clubbing in the 80s. This was the first reunion in recent memory of the bright sparks the media once called Blitz Kids and New Romantics. We’re talking about the straighter faction tonight — the make-up brigade had their day at Boy George’s 50th birthday party in June. All of them, whatever their persuasion, were diehard nightowls, the spiritual offspring of the mighty innovator who shaped the 1970s pop scene almost singlehandedly, David Bowie. He taught them to adopt stances: individualism, transgression. He bequeathed them principles for living amusing lives: disposable identities, looks not uniforms. In turn, they then shaped the sounds and styles of the Swinging 80s set in motion by 1976 and the birth of punk, along with a passion for black dance music, on through the decadent glamour of the Blitz Club years, to the watershed of Band Aid in 1984.

On Friday, photographer Graham Smith took over Soho’s newest rendezvous, the Society Club, for a gallery show of his 80s photographs, which capture the panache and derring-do of style leaders such as PX, Stephen Jones, Kim Bowen Melissa Caplan, Stephen Linard, Fiona Dealey, John Maybury and such nascent popstars as Spandau Ballet, Visage, Animal Nightlife, Sade, Blue Rondo à la Turk and others.

Our two videos capture the essence of Smith’s collaborators, Robert Elms and Chris Sullivan, powering through their often unprintable anecdotes, edited on video down to bite-sized chunks and garnished with Graham’s images. The highspot was meant to be Sullivan as guest speaker, but when he was reportedly “still on his way”, in stepped writer and broadcaster Elms to recall the early one-night clubs he also helped to run. He sounded genuinely shocked by the precociousness of his peers — “We were kids!” — who persuaded West End nightclubs to hand over door control to them as teenagers. Eventually, Sullivan arrived in the guise of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and of course excelled at spinning his “ribald tale of excess” about the mayhem he helped cause in clubland, en route to running Soho’s Wag club for 19 years.

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The photos form a dossier creative endeavour, as we’ll soon see in We Can Be Heroes, a 320-page coffee-table book containing 500 mostly unseen images and 100 voxpop interviews by Graham Smith. Warts-and-all main text is penned by the mellifluous Welshman Sullivan, with other contributions from Robert Elms, Boy George, Steve Strange and Gary Kemp.

We Can Be Heroes, Graham Smith, Chris Sullivan, Robert Pereno, Society Club , Soho ,books,Unbound Publishing,photography, exhibition,afterparty, Aviary Bar, Robert Elms, Boy George, Gary Kemp ,Steve Strange, Blitz Kids,Wag club,

Smith & Sullivan’s invitation to a party

➢ Visit the publisher Unbound.co.uk to place your order for We Can Be Heroes and secure your name in the limited first edition. This month the authors aim to hit an advance sales target by this new “crowd-funding” technique in order to guarantee publication.

➢ Visit The Society Club, London W1F 0JF where Graham Smith’s photographs are on sale until Christmas. Subjects include Boy George, Sade, Steve Strange, Spandau Ballet, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie Sioux, the Sex Pistols and many more.

➢ Skimmable list of media coverage of We Can Be Heroes so far