This set of photographs was taken by George Plemper when he was a teacher at Riverside School in Thamesmead, London between 1973-78. The nostalgic reverie these images trigger is potent enough to cancel out all my cynical reservations about Friends United and the whole culture of perpetual adolescence. Swept back to the late 70’s and [...]
What I Did This Summer
These are the words and pictures we are left with as the hours withdraw, the sediment and scum left once gentleness fades.
- George Shaw
This is my book of the decade, and probably the one I’ve been waiting for my whole adult life. It’s just a shame that I needed confirmation that I was right all [...]
Batcat
The latest painting in my Project Mogwai series. There were only two possible interpretations for this song – either as inspiredly obscure as the video or to be as literal as the title begs.
Strange Pedicure
I realise what I did was unforgivable, I’m just unrepentant. – Joe Orton
On the 15th May 1962 the Daily Mirror published a story under the curious title: ‘Gorilla In The Roses’. It’s not quite ‘Freddie Star Ate My Hamster’ but it was sure to stand out and catch the eye of the jaded reader hunched [...]
Like Herod
Like Herod is one of Mogwai’s most popular songs, a “live favourite” as they say, but a difficult song to interpret visually. This latest phase of Project Mogwai was completed during a week when the news was full of stories about dead babies and kidnapped children. The British media seems to be maintaining it’s curious attitude [...]
Innocent When You Dream
“People who work in the daytime are suckers.” – Weegee
Somebody once suggested that the most significant influence on Tom Waits was, more than any other artist, the photographer Weegee. You can hear Wait’s hoarfrost growl echoing through every one of his pictures. Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt from a letter written by Weegee in Room 551 [...]
The Witch of King’s Cross
‘Behind the glittering panorama of strip joints and all male shows the Cross has another facade …. mysterious sinister, that ensnares the unwary into Satanic seances and the depraved orgies of black magic. Frenzied sex rites take place which stun and horrify.’ – Attila Zohar, Kings Cross Black Magic, 1965Â
You could be forgiven that the [...]
You Don’t Know Jesus
This is my latest painting in the Project Mogwai series, and a song the demanded a bold interpretation. It was when he was on the witness stand at his trial in 1981 that Peter Sutcliffe first detailed the experience he had in 1967 when working as a gravedigger in Bingley Cemetery:
“I was digging and I [...]
Beyond The Occult
Right on cue, with psychogeography virtually mainstream now, comes this albeit slight-but-useful pocket-sized-primer to everything Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore have been banging on about for the past twenty years or so. John Dee, Emanuel Swednebrog, Nicholas Hawksmoor, William Blake, The Golden Dawn etc. Things get more Fortean with mentions of ley lines and our [...]
We Will Watch Them Burn
I almost forgot that today is the 5th of November, 26 years to the day since I lost my virginity and – more importantly – the night upon which we ritually celebrate the Yorkshireman who almost blew up the Houses of Parliament and, with his co-conspirators, hoped to trigger a popular revolt against the fat [...]
