Tag Archives: Chris Sullivan

2011 ➤ Other picky people’s year-ending Best Ofs in music of all styles

Posted on 31 Dec 2011 | Leave a comment

BEST ALBUMS OF 2011 AT ALLMEDIANY

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❏ AllMediaNY.com offers the next step in the evolution of modern journalism — “free media” — an outlet where journalists and readers together decide on what is newsworthy and what is not. Editor-in-Chief Drew Kolar says it was “a great year for real music”, sadly marred by the death of Amy Winehouse.

50 SEVENS THAT REALLY STRUCK ME AT DIS

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❏ At Drowned in Sound Wendy Roby whittles her year’s reviewing down to a top 50 “that really struck me”, starting at Africa Hitech’s Do U Really Wanna Fight, via Metronomy’s The Look and ending on Jamie Woon’s Lady Luck.

POPJUSTICE READER POLL’S BEST SINGLE

❏ Rihanna — We Found Love feat. Calvin Harris.

RUSTY EGAN: WHAT’S ON MY IPOD MIX

❏ An hour’s-worth of vintage sounds mixed by former Blitz Club deejay Rusty Egan: “Some lost classics here plus some bands born in the 80s that sound like they wrote and recorded the songs in the 80s.”

CHRIS SULLIVAN’S TEN BEST MUSIC
DOCUMENTARIES EVER

Great Day In Harlem,photography,Art Kane, Esquire ,jazz,Count Basie,documentary
❏ A Great Day In Harlem (1995) — “A must for any serious black music aficionado,” writes Zeitgeist-Meister Sullivan at RedBull.com. This documentary by Jean Bach tells the story of one summer’s day in 1958 when 57 musicians from jazz history met at 126th Street in Harlem to have their picture taken by Art Kane for Esquire magazine. Keen eyes will spot such greats as Horace Silver, Charles Mingus, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, English-born Marian McPartland OBE, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie. Kane called it “the greatest picture of that era of musicians ever taken”.

KATY PERRY’S FIREWORK SHOCKER

❏ The video for Firework not only outraged British TV stations into censoring the gay kiss, but it then won Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards. Result: the single remained in the UK charts for 58 weeks, way longer than in Billboard’s.

J J WHEELER’S JAZZ PICK

❏ A refreshing selection of five CDs and five gigs from 2011 offered at The Jazz Breakfast by a much-lauded British drummer/percussionist currently studying at the Royal Academy of Music after graduating from Birmingham Conservatoire. Listen to clips from his own quintet’s imminent album Unconventional at Soundcloud.

MUSIC BOOKS ROUND-UP

Nile Rodgers, books,Le Freak, Upside Down Story, disco, autobiography
❏ A broad survey of the year’s music books by the Evening Standard’s David Smyth reveals that in his collected lyrics Jarvis Cocker says “seeing a lyric in print is like watching the TV with the sound turned down: you’re only getting half the story”… Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco and Destiny gives us a tour of the fascinating life story of Nile Rodgers [pictured] — conceived when his mother was 13, raised by beatniks who’d have Thelonious Monk over, he joined the Black Panthers and jammed with Jimi Hendrix, all before he wrote a vast collection of mega-hits, virtually lived in Studio 54’s bathroom and produced Madonna and David Bowie.

LADY GAGA: GOOD THING, BAD THING?

❏ PopJustice’s 2011 In Review asks singer Will Young: As a notorious homosexual, did you feel empowered by Born This Way by Lady Gaga?
Will replies: “When it came on the radio I thought ‘She’s basically written this song for me’. Amazing. I actually think I shed a tear as I was driving up to Wales. I stopped at a petrol station and I thought ‘You know what, I don’t care what they think’ and I brought some pink bon bons. Normally I would just go for a Wispa.”

STEVE NORMAN’S HOTTEST DANCE VIDEO

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❏ Tightrope by Janelle Monáe feat. Big Boi — “Amazing. Here’s to a year to remember, like 1981 only better!” says Spandau’s sax player Steve Norman.

➢ Don’t miss: Other picky people’s year-ending
Best Ofs from fashion, TV, web and film

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2011 ➤ Picky people’s year-ending Best Ofs from fashion, TV, web and film

Posted on 31 Dec 2011 | Leave a comment

BEST TV SHOWS OF THE YEAR

Being Human, TV series,thisisfakediy,Aidan Turner, Smallville
❏ DIY claims to be one of the most visited underground music sites in the UK. Its TV watcher David Bedwell reckons TV in 2011 was arguably stronger than it ever has been, and picks his ten best shows, from Smallville to Being Human [pictured]. Of series three he writes: “Proud to be able to put a UK show at the top of my chart this year — there was no better central cast than Lenora Crichlow, Russell Tovey and Aidan Turner. They all have the ability to make you laugh or cry, sometimes even both.”

ANDREW LOGAN’S ALT BEAUTY PAGEANT

British Guide To Showing Off ,Andrew Logan, Alternative Miss World,beauty, pageant

❏ The British Guide to Showing Off was a new movie by Jes Benstock celebrating the 12 incarnations over 40 years of Andrew Logan [pictured] and his Alternative Miss World contest — “Mashed potato for daywear. For evening wear she was a giant chip.”

CHRIS SULLIVAN’S TEN BEST FILMS

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❏ No 4 in ZeitgeistMeister Sullivan’s choice at Red Bull is Almodovar’s stylish thriller The Skin I Live In.

A FEAST OF ART BOOKS

Weather Project ,Olafur Eliasson , Tate Modern , art books,

Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson at Tate Modern, photographed by Dan Chung for the Guardian

❏ The Guardian critic Peter Conrad weighs up the year’s art books discussing the point of galleries and installations such as The Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson at Tate Modern [pictured]. He finds David Hockney enthusing like a teenager about the iPhone and iPad, and genius springing from the man who gave us the shower scene in Psycho.

I-D: A YEAR IN PICTURES

i-D magazine,Terry Jones,fashion

❏ Magazine publisher Terry Jones brought us “32 covers that capture fashion’s diversity” from a year of designer collaborations, and parties such as the i-D and Alberto Guardiani Milanese fashion week rave “which will go down in history”.

PRINCESS JULIA’S TIP-TOP TUMBLRS TO FOLLOW

Hannah Metz , Princess Julia, Tumblr,blogging,
❏ In her wider wrap-up of the year, the international club deejay and Blitz era icon, Princess Julia, elicits even more fave Tumblrs from the five bloggers she chooses, who include the epitome of all that is beautiful and girly, lingerie-designer and artist, Hannah Metz [above].

DONNY SLACK’S 12 PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS

Donny Slack, Chap magazine,❏ The socialite musician, actor and spirit of the night Donny Slack records these highlights of his year at Facebook … Patti Smith’s Mapplethorpe book, Keith Richards’ book,
 PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake,
 Adam Ant at O2, Last Tuesday Society Halloween Party
, The Chap magazine
, Metronomy album, Patrick Wolf’s Lupercalia
, John Waters at the Festival Hall, Alice Cooper’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare album and I’ll Bite Your Face Off single, A Child Of The Jago collections, and Earl of Bedlam launching.

➢ Now visit: Other picky people’s year-ending
Best Ofs in music of all styles

THE THREE BEST-PAID MODELS

Gisele Bundchen, models, Forbes magazine, top-earners❏ Forbes magazine lists the top earners of 2011 beginning with the Brazilian Gisele Bündchen ($45m, pictured), Heidi Klum ($20m) and Kate Moss ($13.5m)… There is no list of the highest-earning male models because they earn a lot less than female models. According to Forbes: “A top male model may take home anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000 annually, but most make a less glamorous living from catalog work.”

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➤ Smith & Sullivan sign off We Can Be Heroes with a sigh

Posted on 23 Dec 2011 | 1 comment
We Can Be Heroes,Unbound publishing, books,Graham Smith,Chris Sullivan,Blitz Kids, New Romantics, Boy George,nightclubbing, Swinging 80s, photography,

Graham Smith: signing advance copies of We Can Be Heroes between coffee and cake today at Soho’s Society Club. Photographed by Shapersofthe80s

❚ THE BOOK OF THE DECADE has arrived and early buyers of the 2,000-copy first edition had it in their hands today. The photo-story of 80s clubland, We Can Be Heroes, felt reassuringly hefty to the touch and we finally discovered the page size to be generous at 235 x 280mm. The five-colour printing gives intensity especially to the black-and-white photography on the high-gloss paper and author Graham Smith’s verdict on the quality was simple: “Stunning.” Collaborator and 80s club-host Chris Sullivan breathed a sigh: “We got there in the end.”

The 320 pages of story-telling and voxpops from perhaps 100 contributors will raise plenty of smiles when the postman delivers the book during the next week. Even if you’ve read Shapersofthe80s from top to bottom, you’ll find as many more quotes and insights from the original Blitz Kids themselves. Deejay Jeffrey Hinton reminds us in the book: “People think this was a premeditated scene but it was not. It was childlike, thrown together. We didn’t do it for the money, we were innocent. It’s all so marketed today.”

We Can Be Heroes,Unbound publishing, books,Graham Smith,Chris Sullivan,Blitz Kids, New Romantics, Boy George,nightclubbing, Swinging 80s, photography,

Ringleaders who shaped the style of the 80s celebrated in We Can Be Heroes: Chris Sullivan, Fiona Dealey, Lee Sheldrick, Stephen Linard and Kim Bowen — the rebels within St Martin’s School of Art, all photographed by Graham Smith

We Can Be Heroes,Unbound publishing, books,Graham Smith,Chris Sullivan,Blitz Kids, New Romantics, Boy George,nightclubbing, Swinging 80s, photography,

Bournemouth was the destination on bank holidays: good-natured hijinks brought London clubbers to the south-coast resort, and Smith has included many of their snaps in We Can Be Heroes

While the main images reveal just how small in number was the coterie who initiated the sounds and styles of the 80s, Smith has supplemented his own portfolio of pictures with many snaps from clubland wags themselves whose ambitions were liberated by the spirit of collaboration inspired in 1980. Nevertheless, designer Fiona Dealey makes a valid point in the book: “When anyone has written about the Blitz it has been by the same few blokes giving the same old soundbites with never a mention of what the women were up to. The Blitz was our youth club and I feel they hijacked it.”

Today John Mitchinson, the book’s publisher, said he was reasonably confident that a commercial edition of Heroes might follow in the autumn of 2012. In the meantime a limited number of copies of the first edition are still available only from Unbound Publishing.

➢ 1976–1984, Creative clubbing ended with the 80s — we profile three of the bright sparks behind We Can Be Heroes and how they shaped the decade

➢ View Shapersofthe80s video — Chris Sullivan telling his “ribald tales of excess” from the Blitz era at a launch party for We Can Be Heroes… with Graham Smith and Robert Elms on video too

We Can Be Heroes,Unbound publishing, books,Graham Smith,Chris Sullivan,Blitz Kids, New Romantics, Boy George,nightclubbing, Swinging 80s, photography,

Chris Sullivan signing today: “Now people can see the book itself we might shift a few more copies.” Photographed by Shapersofthe80s

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2011 ➤ Party of the year recreates the Swinging 80s at the legendary Beat Route (down, down past the Talk of the Town)

Posted on 9 Dec 2011 | Leave a comment

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Graham Smith,Chris Sullivan, photography, books,youth culture, We Can Be Heroes , Swinging 80s,Beat Route, clubbing

Le Beat Route recreated for one night only: One of our heroes, MC Sullivan, sharing the best sounds in London last night

Beat Route, nightclubbing,We Can Be Heroes, books

2011 and it’s Thursday night Beat Route! The same underground club emanating a spookily familiar spirit of place

❚ WITHOUT DOUBT the party of the year filled the former Beat Route, Soho, last night as photographer Graham Smith and writer Chris Sullivan launched their photobook We Can Be Heroes, which is winging its way from printers to the lucky buyers who invested in the first edition. Smith and Sullivan became crucial to leading and documenting the explosion of Eighties club culture in London. Le Beat Route, founded in November 1980 by crimper Ollie O’Donnell and stylist Steve Mahoney with Fidel Castro fan Steve Lewis as its deejay, became the cool Friday-nighter that served the post-Blitz crowd for the next three years while the scene moved gradually overground.

More exclusive pix are coming on Shapersofthe80s.com once I can wade through the many brilliant soundbites offered by everybody out last night to celebrate the Swinging 80s…

➢ Although the first edition of We Can Be Heroes
has sold out, a special clothbound edition is now on sale
for £35, plus a Deluxe edition for £350, at the
Unbound Publishing website

Beat Route, nightclubbing,Graham Smith, Chris Sullivan,We Can Be Heroes

Thursday night Beat Route! Hosts, authors and 80s deejays Graham Smith and Chris Sullivan

Beat Route, nightclubbing,We Can Be Heroes,1980s, Steve Lewis, Jay Strongman

Thursday night Beat Route! Seminal club deejays of the 80s Steve Lewis and Jay Strongman

Beat Route, nightclubbing,Lesley Chilkes, Boy George, David Holah,We Can Be Heroes

Thursday night Beat Route! Lesley Chilkes, Boy George, David Holah

[ Exclusive party pix courtesy of sandromartini.com ]

Graham Smith,Chris Sullivan, photography, books,youth culture, We Can Be Heroes , Swinging 80s,Beat Route, clubbing

TNBR! Last night’s other chief hero hosting the party of the photobook of the 80s — snapper Graham Smith and his lovely wife Lorraine (Northern Soul veterans, both)

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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

Making up the rules of 80s clubbing: Robert Elms, Phil Dirtbox and Chris Sullivan at Friday’s nostalgia fest. Photograph by Shapersofthe80s

Fanatical about music: Chris Sullivan, Jo Hagan (remember 1983’s Gold Coast?) and Darrell Gayle at the Society Club. Photograph by Shapersofthe80s

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