RECOMMENDED READING

My time management is weak this evening, so this is a blog update for the sake of blog updates. I had something to throw up here, but an embargo deaded that plan. There’s plenty on the internet at the moment that’s better than this blog. First up, this Wall Street Journal piece entitled ‘Made Better in Japan‘ is very good — it did the rounds the other day, but the talk of Spanish napkins at a tapas bar, baristas barred from foamers or espressos due to inexperience and Hitoshi Tsujimoto of the Real McCoy’s owning around 100 Warhols makes it amazing. My friend (and one of the reasons I have the job I have now) Mr. Chris Aylen’s Trash Filter site has an excellent interview with Futura 2000 to coincide with his ‘Expansions’ show in Paris. It feels like a well-executed sequel to the old Spine Magazine (I really, really miss that site) interviews from the early ’00s that made me want to enter this whole miserable subculture in the first place. Now it’s considered remarkable to offer up content that could be in print online, but back in 2000, Spine was doing that. I think a proliferation of cornballs (and in a preemptive answer to any “Was that aimed at me?” emails or Tweets, yes it was) dumbed things down to the point where it seemed novel to offer real writing. Salutes to Spine and props to Chris for resurrecting that style on Trash Filter.

On the Futura subject, was I the last to notice his work in Heavy D & the Boyz’ ‘Now That We Found Love’ video from 1991? I knew Lee Quinones was involved, but Ernie Paniccioli’s snapshot of Lenny with some video vixens on set and watching the video again reveals a substantial input from him too. I’m also late to the party in studying Steven Hagar’s (who wrote ‘Hip-Hop: The Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music and Graffiti‘ which trounces David Toop’s revered ‘Rap Attack’ and ‘Art After Midnight‘ on the East Village art and music scenes) blog, which contains some fine hip-hop trivia. Mr. Hagar is selling both those long out-of-print tomes as ebooks for $2.99, and they’re worth your time. What’s even better, is THE ENTIRE FUCKING SCRIPT TO ‘BEAT STREET’ FROM WHEN IT WAS CALLED ‘LOOKING FOR THE PERFECT BEAT.’ That’s the script Hagar sold that was altered significantly, resulting in the much-loved but tacky cinematic rap classic. I’m assuming that might be of interest to a few of my fellow nerds out there.

I’ve let you down on the word count today. Two other things of interest are a UK Blu-ray release for Monte Hellman’s sparse and deeply influential road movie, ‘Two Lane Blacktop’ courtesy of EUREKA!s Masters of Cinema series. It isn’t as extensive on the extras as the Criterion DVD was, but it’s Blu-ray and you need to admire Warren Oates’s knitwear (my second favourite selection of Oates outfits after his inappropriately light suit for the dirty duty of severed noggin retrieval in Peckinpah’s ‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’) as well as a beautiful scenery. ‘Drive’ proved that there’s still mileage in unnamed drivers — word to James Taylor. This 1970 ‘Rolling Stone’ article is another recommended read. I don’t own it, but I’m deeply jealous of anyone that recieved the (camera phone image retrieved from Soldiersystems.net) Arc’teryx LEAF V.I.P. pack at the SHOT shooting, hunting and outdoors trade show a few weeks back. Arc’teryx Moleskines look good, but the Cordura Brand fabric t-shirt, made from the same material that lines the Talos Halfshell jacket and the Arc’teryx LEAF GORE-TEX camo iPad cover are my kind of giveaways. Mr. Charles Morgan put me onto this action figure of firearms instructor Chris Costa that’s got a scaled down Arc’teryx Hyllus jacket (and an Arc’teryx hat on one variant) in addition to his other brand-name garments of choice.

RAY

This week was a good one. As a result, there’s no rants on here whatsoever. The highlight was meeting Ray Barbee briefly at the Vans OTW spot in Berlin. It’s not cool to fan out, but it’s a natural response if it’s somebody you looked up to as a kid. I’ve only felt the lurching out-of-body fan reaction when I’m speaking to my childhood heroes — it happened during a conversation with Big Daddy Kane a few years back, and it very nearly happened during throwaway words with Mr. Barbee. It’s that flashback during an interaction to watching something or gawping at an LP cover with a feeling of distant awe a few decades prior, then realising that you’re chatting with that near-mythical individual. In 1988 and 1989 I watched Steve Saiz, Ray Barbee, Eric Sanderson and Chet Thomas’s ‘Public Domain’ section on repeat. I even held a tape recorder up to the TV speakers to get an audio copy of McRad’s ‘Weakness.’

Barbee in ‘Public Domain’ evokes a summer of listening to Run-DMC’s underrated ‘Tougher Than Leather’ and being apprehended by local metallers who were at least six years older than me who saw my ‘Killers’ t-shirt and asked me what my favourite Iron Maiden album was — on claiming that it was ‘Seventh Son of a Seventh Son’ they said, “Fuck off! It’s got keyboards on it” and proceeded to rub crisps into my mullet hairdo. Traumatic times. I have strong evidence that one of the gang was Chris Law, formerly of Crooked Tongues, adidas Originals and now a Converse resident in Boston. I’ll have my revenge one day.

Other than the KP/hair incident, it’s a time I remember fondly, but Ray and his boys had style, flow and an aggression, fluidly merging vert and freestyle elements with something new that transformed everybody’s perception of the landscape around them as we rode like grems — barely able to ollie — while performing our best vocal impressions of the ‘Weakness’ riff. I was a terrible skater, but in my head I was in that sequence. The skating, soundtrack and black and white film was an epiphany moment for me — it never made me a pro skater, but it fueled my preoccupation with sub-cultures. My mum said that preoccupation would never get me anywhere…and she was nearly right. But it got me to Berlin to meet Ray Barbee.

Now Stacy Peralta’s ‘Bones Brigade’ has debuted at Sundance (according to Hitfix, “Bones Brigade” also features cameos from the likes of Shepard Fairey, Ben Harper and Fred Durst, whose every appearance earned loud and vocal derision from the premiere night crowd.”), I assume that I won’t be alone in this 1980’s skateboard nostalgia this year. Flicking through a book and finding a RAD magazine sticker reminds me of the stickers that preempted the quest for Supreme box logos. These things are as evocative of 1988 as Powell’s VHS effort. I’m no OBEY fan, but their ‘Who is Chuck Treece?’ video on that story behind ‘Weakness’s inclusion from 2010 was excellent, as was Slap’s Ray Barbee ‘Public Domain’ commentary. Ray Barbee seemed like a nice bloke.

Another of the week’s highlights was the news that Giorgio Moroder would score Kim Jones’ menswear show for Louis Vuitton in Paris on Thursday. My preoccupation with Moroder’s work has been made clear here many times. Donna Summer, his classic ‘From Here to Eternity’ and ‘Midnight Express’s soundtrack are implemented and bombers, sharp, slim tailoring and some more eccentric elements are perfectly deployed to the tempo. The shiny metallic details, PARIS belts and headwear evoke something very contemporary, with some cues from a time when McDonalds coffee stirrers were perfect for cocaine usage (I like how the long-cancelled 1970’s freebies are listed as McDonalds Coke Spoon on eBay) for those doing bumps on a budget. So we know about Giorgio’s Cizeta-Moroder supercar creation and that he was trying to put together a musical called ‘Spago’ but ended up giving the name to Wolfgang Puck for his restaurant, but there’s always time to re-up this image of him openly doing a hefty line of chop, with his yayo carrier looking on. Giorgio Moroder…legend. Salutes to Fast Fashion for upping the Louis, Kris Van Assche and Rick Owens shows. 

‘Men’s File’ magazine has such a pleasant price point and a deeper level of content than any heritage cash in, that it’s more than a fad rider — the Uncle Ralph co-sign and frequent emphasis on motorbike culture, makes it seem like something targeted at those people who like to learn the history and profiles some of the individuals who seem to pull off past looks as if they never left, rather than looking like they just wandered off one of those sepia-effect wild west family photos at a theme park. With their pop-up opening the other week on Lamb’s Conduit Street, issue six of the magazine dropped too. Their The Curator online store deals in replicas, so if you can pull off a 1950s motorcycle cap without looking like a laughing-stock, you’re probably one of the chosen few who’d end up in the pages of the magazine. The new issue has dogs, vintage garments and profiles on bare-bones custom bike build pioneer Shinya Kimura and another hero of mine, Mr. Hitoshi Tsujimoto of The Real McCoy’s.

I also enjoyed this interview at ‘A Fist in the Face of God’ with Kick and Sindre of Nekromantheon that discusses the creative benefits of drinking corpse water.

Anybody else perplexed at Quentin Tarantino’s dismissal of ‘Drive’ in the “Nice Try” category of his best and worst of 2011 lists? Is there only room for one film in the wilfully surface level car movie throwback stakes? ‘Drive’ wasn’t ‘Grindhouse’ fodder, but it could easily have slotted into a 1985 video store themed sequel.