CAMEO HAIRCUTS

Socialising, taxes and other matters have hindered my blogging aptitude this week, so all I can do today is recycle other things and call myself a “content creator” or “curator” or whatever. First things first, I finally saw this Supreme shoot by Tyrone Lebon in the new ‘Arena Homme+’ (which has an interesting take on the Osti archive in it) that I wrote some accompanying text for. It was fun to mention 2 Chainz in a writeup for ‘Arena’ but my scanning skills are weak so I lost the left side of the pages, so if you want to read what I wrote (and it’ll teach you veterans absolutely nothing new about the brand), you’ll have to buy it or go and treat WH Smiths like a library. Shouts to Rory for listing me as a “contributing editor” though — that’s fake importance at its best.

For reasons unknown, I’ve been pondering the mystery of Task Force jackets and the lesser-seen Task Force shoes today. That warrants the wholesale theft of pieces from the ‘Spin’ magazine b-boy special of 1988 that included Doctor Dre (as in the Original Flavor/MTV Raps Dre) breaking down some slang, Flav in Troop and some MCM and Dapper Dan talk, Big Daddy Kane on Cameo haircuts, ‘DMC’s Culinary Guide to Queens’ taking you around some of the boroughs’ finest junk food spots and a meeting-of-minds with Fab 5 Freddy and the legendary Max Roach. It’s naive with the benefit of retrospect, but there’s a lot of fun content here from a deeply significant year — the inclusion of DMC and the next wave who’d take the baton and take their shine makes it doubly interesting.

I have to take some time out to salute my friend Sharmadean Reid for putting out ‘The WAH Nails Book of Nail Art.’ I’m unlikely to get a Nike Safari print on my thumbnail anytime soon, but the book’s a smart distillation of the whole WAH worldview into a hardback book with plenty of cues from the ‘WAH’ fanzines in there too. Now everybody’s on that hop into print wave, but Sharma was putting out her own magazine (complete with Ecko sponsorship) before she hit 20. The spirit of ‘Sassy’ is peppered throughout all things ‘WAH’ (salutes to the Monster Children crew for finding away around the deletion of ‘Sassy’ spinoff ‘Dirt’s lost issue #8) but crucially, it offers a whole lifestyle angle that’s oddly aspirational. Let’s note forget hat most of this blog is a flagrant bite of the WAH blog circa 2006. Shar’s more of a role model than most of the males I’ve dealt with in this industry, many of a whom are backstabbing, two-faced bunch of burnt out chancers. But that’s a rant for another day. Salutes to Sharmadean and the WAH team.

STUSSY & NARDCORE…

While it’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever pick up a book called ‘Cult Streetwear’ (they seem to have put an ‘l’ in where they surely meant to add an ‘n’) but there’s glimmers of hope from some big brands that it hasn’t all gone to shit. I won’t lie – some recent questionable releases, and the Letraset-style use of Shawn’s handwriting had me losing faith in Stussy a little this season, but the Brits came and knocked it out the park via the Cassette Playa hookup, and lately, while the tees aren’t necessarily my thing, Tyrone Lebon’s Stussy Deluxe x Greensleeves video is very good indeed.

It brought back memories of the hard-to-find 1992 World Tribe VHS, filmed by Tyrone’s uncle, the legendary James Lebon. That family atmosphere extends to the use of Clash members’ and Mr. Don Letts’ children in the video – a nice extension of the spirit of the recent Buffalo family shots in the Neville Brody designed Homme+. It’s the best re-up of Stussy’s original appeal in a while, and a more thoughtful use of the Clash than the recent Supreme tees too, harking back to a time when a cap with that surname in a familiar script was the stuff of daydreams. I think I should’ve had more faith in Stussy as a brand in 2010.

The video’s up there with the well-chosen Jaime Hernandez tees from last winter in terms of intelligent collaboration. While Tyrone’s video harks back to a time when to be affiliated with a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend in the London Chapter would’ve been an honour, the Hernandez tees, steeped in ‘Love & Rockets’ were defiantly left coast, channeling that LA skate-punk atmosphere that arguably birthed streetwear as it relates to cotton and screenprints. Don’t write the Hernandez brothers off as bookish art-kids – they were deeply involved in the ‘Nardcore’ (Oxnard represent!) scene, where Sims team riders and future White Sox pitchers made some hedonistic punk rock – some has aged well…some less so, but the heavily detailed aesthetic of those sleeves still packs a punch.

Dr. Know had some Hernandez art, but off all the albums of the era, 1983’s ‘Don’t Be Mistaken’ by Agression still feels fresh. It’s ripe for a proper remastering. Agression seemed to fall through some gaps, and should’ve been bigger – this 1983 LP brought the group’s live intensity to the turntable with relative ease, but as a onetime comic book disciple, it let my favoured cultures collide in a way that validated my geekdom – was that controversy-baiting ‘SS’ a Kiss-homage? Surf Nazi styling? An early example of credible skate-rock, the Glen E. Friedman cover shot is classic, while Jaime Hernandez’s skeleton rendition of the band was strong too. Word to the Better Youth Organization. Rather than being a mere funnybook tribute, Jaime’s Stussy work was steeped in the subcultural nucleus of the brand. Would this be a good time to revisit 1988’s ‘Comic Book Confidential’ too? A great documentary that throws back to the days when we got very po-faced (“It’s NOT a comic! It’s a graphic novel!”) about the artform…

On a barely-related note, the Supreme book is good, but if you paid over the odds for a slipcase version I feel bad for you son. Can anyone else verify that Levi’s tried to sue Supreme for using a logo in a red rectangle a few years back, assuming the Kruger homage was a bite of the Red Tab Device?

Shouts to Chris and the hip-hop OCD crew at Diggers With Gratitude for being obsessive enough to get in touch with Boston’s deeply underrated (hope they get Orangeman to reissue his LP too) T.D.S. Mob for a ‘Treacherous, Devastating, Supreme’ package on vinyl and CD. There’s room in my heart for some golden age rareness as well as Drumma boy productions, and favouring these new-fangled CDs, Chris and the boys hooked me up with the CD/DVD package.

The 7 audio tracks are hard as hell – that it takes a predominantly UK-based team to recognise greatness is both depressing and deeply heartening – some of these artists should’ve broken out beyond regional appeal, but DWG projects aren’t another bootleg operation – they’re executed in conjunction with the artists themselves, who I imagine are a little perplexed when they get an email from the team, announcing their intentions. the DVD has a couple of effective videos from 1989 and 1990, some live footage and video magazine chatter, and in the stills section is that the mythical ‘adidas Tree’ that’s mentioned in this essay? With some occasional gear from local brand Reebok, the 3-stripes is prominent across the videos – adidas should be celebrating this heritage – motherfuck N-Dubz and that Hudson character. Dead the downloading for a minute and invest.