I only went because a friend suggested it, honest. I have to say that in case you were one of the couple of people who read my rant about Punk nostalgia/celebration from earlier this year and think me a hypocritical bastard. Of course I could have taken a stand and said 'No' but hadn't seen him for a while and it's only down the road from our Camden palace, so...
...plus it's Free, small too, thankfully. After a few minutes I suggested to one of the party we do it Ramones style, i.e. fast, run around in two minutes, possibly shouting '"One-two-three-four!" at the start, but that would have been stupid. First room on the right loads of singles...
...good to see them all lined up like that, reminding me of how much of an art movement Punk was in the best sense, not 'art band' or 'art student/fans' but sleeve art, some crude, some polished, but most signalling a new aesthetic, away from just photos of bands or the psychedelic hippy shit of album covers...not one aesthetic, but many, from sharp 60s lines to pictorial and text collage....most still looking good today.
Then there were the fanzines, of course...
...I found LJ listening to Anarchy In The UK on some headphones and laughed, asking her: "You're not listening to that old folk's music, are you?" loud enough to make one fifty-something bloke turn and look. I wonder if I give away my age by the way I look, skin-wise...probably, so he got my joke, although it's possible he mistook me for a much younger idiot...because I'd filled my lines with foundation and had botox that morning (well, not proper botox, just skin pulled back behind my ears, held in place with safety pins, of course!).
Then there was the You're Gonna Wake Up shirt, made from a pillow case...more details about that here...
...probably my favourite item of clothing on display, this tie...done by McLaren...
...and this classic...
...you weren't allowed to take photos so I'm proving how Punk I am by showing you these, which I took - yeah, fuck you establishment librarian bastards! ha-ha...
...well, it was a larf and worth a look if you're in town. Trouble is I felt old straight away, looking at a lot of singles I used to own. Not that I was Mr Punk in '76, or '78, for that matter. Just interested and I saw a lot of the bands at Friars, Aylesbury and elsewhere (someone even hired a mini-bus to go see 999 at Reading University, I think, but recall I was miserable for most of the time, thus proving was an outside-of-the-outsiders rebel I was, at least, that's what I like to tell myself). I did buy quite a few of the records and wore 'different' clothing, which meant anything but flares at the time. Anyway, as Wyndham Lewis would say 'BLESS Punk' all the same...
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