#early punk scene
French visionary/ singer/ poet Lizzy Mercier Descloux captured by Michael EstebaninPatti Smith’sNY apartment back in 1975.
Though to some she may appear to have been nothing more than a footnote to the careers of icons like Patti Smith, Richard Hell & Chet Baker, that audacious artist and devotee of Rimbaud&Godard was an innovator who witnessed numerous pivotal moments in musical and cultural history upon her arrival in New York, at a time when the city was becoming a melting pot for various late-’70s subcultures, such as American Punk and No Wave.
An archetypal outsider feeling suffocated in her working class family environment in France, she decided to drop out of Art School and follow her partner Michael EstebantoNew York in themid-’70s, witnessing the birth of punk and no wave with the Ramones, James Chance and Patti Smith. She always stood out from the crowd: she started a punk zine with her partner, who co-founded ZE Records,befriendedPatti Smith who shared a mutual love for Rimbaud, became a muse for Richard Hell, released poetry books, appeared in Amos Poe’s documentary ‘Blank Generation’, made five albums in various no wave/ bouncing pre-Talking Heads post-disco/ Soweto jive/ loose jazz styles and marked herself out as a globe-trotter with more passport stamps than Tintin, living and travelling all around the world from the Bahamas&Rio De JaneirotoSouth Africa&Corsica, where she died in relative obscurity in 2004 from cancer.
Post link
“Shots In The Dark with David Godlis” (2021)
David Godlis’ photos from the 1976-80 CBGB era & crowd come to life as the maestro himself narrates his memories with a rollicking soundtrack in an exciting 7-min-long stop frame/animation short film, masterfully directed and animated by Lewie and Noah Kloster.
Watch this on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/629416589
(
via)
After their infancy as Johnny And The Self Abusers,toddlerSimple Minds can be seen here performing in 1978atMars Bar, Glasgow (where they held a residency during their early days), as shot by Laurie Evans who was the in-house photographer for theEdinburgh listing magazine City Lynx at the time.
In that capacity she was able to capture some of the earliest images of Simple Minds at various gigs at Glasgow and the band’s previously unseen images from those early days were put together in a little photobook entitled “Pleasantly Disturbed”(2020) available via Hanging Around Books or by DM her on her social media accounts on FB&IG.
“The embryonic Simple Minds quickly became the resident band at Glasgow’s Mars Bar (it was the only pub fearless enough to book reformed punks). They played every Sunday night. The band would come on with their backs to the audience, to a tape of weird sounds put together by David Henderson, with a revolving police light in a perspex head casting a blue beam around the cramped environment.
They were writing new songs every week, with tracks appearing and disappearing throughout the year. Some of the songs played never made it to official release, only existing on scratchy bootlegs. By the end of the year, they were under the watchful eye of Bruce Findlay, had signed with Zoom Records, were a support band in demand (having supported The Only Ones, Ultravox, Generation X and The Strangers) and were ready to cut their debut album…”
Post link
Early scenester & later on Mute Records executive and band manager Hilde Swendgaard attending the Sex Pistols gig at Notre Dame Hall, on Nov. 15th, 1976, along with the Clashco-founderMick JonesandTony James & Billy Idol of the newly-formed at the time Generation X, as captured by John Ingham.
(
via)
Post link
A glimpse of New York’s late-’70s nightlife/ bohemian decadence:
early punk scenester & member of the ‘Revenge Girls’ gang that used to run punk hangout & clothing store ‘Revenge’Debbie Wheeler along with the late Anya Phillips, co-founder of the Mudd Club/ fashion designer/ dominatrix, Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys & his then girlfriend and later on thunderous R’n’R bassist Gyda Gash (the quintessential punk couple rivaled only by Sid and Nancy, without the killing-each-other part), captured by Eileen Polkin1978 on the staircase next to CBGB, leading up to Palace Hotel, the biggest flophouse on theBowery that housed hundreds of homeless people per night.
The Palace Hotel space began life in the late 1870s as a tenement house with liquor stores on the ground floor, in an area rife with taverns, inns and saloons frequented by slaughterhouse workers for almost a century after the meat processing industry expanded north on theBoweryfromChatham Square. In1949 the stores became the Palace Hotel Restaurant Bar and in 1969 a man named Hilly Kristal began leasing it. By 1973, when he founded CBGB there, the hotel had gone from palatial to poverty-stricken, providing cheap rooming for homeless, drunks and junkies that lived in the neighborhood.
The rest you already know.
Post link
Bernard Sumner, Ian Curtis & Stephen MorriswithFactoryproducerMartin Hannett during the recording of Joy Division’s legendary anthem “Love Will Tear Us Apart” onJan. 1980, as captured at Pennine Studios, Oldham, by Daniel Meadows (published in paperback edition as “Factory Records 1979–1980″).
(
via)
Post link
Greek post-punks /new wavers riding a bus inAthensca. 1983 while the rest of the passengers pretend to act cool in their presence, as captured bu Manuel Gallagos.
This is actually Nikos Samiotakis, aka ‘Von Klaus’, drummer of the early Athenian post-punk bandFMQ with a friend. The greek punk scene was kind of a late bloomer due to political instability till the mid-’70s as well as the country’s slow transition to democracy. Punk and new wave were really obscure subcultures (so encounters like the one captured in the photo were not exactly an everyday experience), and FMQ [George Makridis(bass),Takis Polichronopoulos(vocals),Natassa ‘Streuberg’ Sireggela(keyboards),Katerina ‘Elle’ Perpinia (guitar/vocals) & Nikos 'Von Klaus’ Samiotakis (drums)], who were founded in 1981, were amongst the earliest acts of a scene which reached its glory days by themid-’80s.
(
via)
Post link
CBGBtales:Klaus Nomi, Jim Jarmusch (photo no.1) & Christopher Parker (photos no. 1 & 2) photographed by GodlisoutsideCBGBin1978.
Back then Chris Parker, dubbed the “Kid With The Replaceable Head” in a song of the same title by Richard Hell, was an obscure teenager regularly hanging out at CBGB’s with the special talent of being the cool kid that connected/introduced everybody to everybody without ever needing to become famous himself. He was also a pal of Jarmusch, still a film school student at the time.
WhenJarmusch began making his debut movie, “Permanent Vacation”, as his thesis film at New York University Graduate Film School, he chose Chris Parker as his protagonist to play the part of a teenage drifter who doesn’t really have any ambitions and avoids responsibilities, doesn’t live anywhere specifically, doesn’t go to school or work, just wanders the streets of late-70’s New York in search of the meaning of life, a character based on Chris Parker’s real lifestyle, since he actually lived that way, just slacking off from one acquaintance’s couch to another.
…And maybe he did find the meaning of life after all: I read a Godlis interview where he recalls getting a call from Charlie Parker some years ago and got word that he had travelled all the way toThailand to find Maureen Nelly, who had been a bartender at CBGB’s 40 years ago, and they got married!
Post link
The night Joe went from StrummertoPunk Rock Warlord:
Joe Strummer, then frontman of pub rock band The 101ers, photographed by Joe Stevens with bassist Dan Kelleher onstage at The Nashville Rooms, London, on April 23, 1976.
The recently formed Sex Pistols had also played in the same venue that night supporting his band for the second time -this was the infamous show where provocateurs Malcolm McLaren & Vivienne Westwood instigated a fight with audience members which got the band the publicity they needed. Seeing their performance was a life-changing experience for Joe Strummer the moment he realized he was looking at his punk rock future:
“They were like a million years ahead,” he later told his biographer Chris Salewicz. “I realised immediately we were going nowhere, the rest of my group hated them…”
(
via)
Post link
