The Topshop 214 zine arrived today, and inside this fine and dandy publication you will find the 'In The Know' section, edited by yours truly, along with 'The Sounds of the Season' a few pages in, which is a run-down of the latest, greatest audio offerings with which you should be filling your ears. It's time to can Crystal Castles! Mute Morrissey! X The xx! Here are 8 musak types you need to be listening to right now. At least, so that when one of your friends turns to you in a month's time and says 'you know, I just love Alex Winston, don't you?', you don't have to do a Simon from the Inbetweeners and say 'oh yeah, I just love his music!' when in fact he is indeed a her. See, I'm offering a helpful public service here.
What's more, this lovely magazine will cost you zero pennies, which in this day and age, is always a bonus. There was a flurry of re-tweet action the other day when I observed an informative yet apologetic sign up at my local newsagent, informing shoppers that Monster Munch was regrettably now 25p more expensive. That's a lot of p. Some people just don't have that much extra p to throw around, no matter how much they crave some salty, food-colouring infused pickled onion flavour goodness. Mmm, goodness. But I digress. If, in the next week, you are going to be visiting a Topshop retail building, purchasing something from their Web Site or indeed just window shopping said url, do me a flavour and make sure you pick up a copy.
It seems significant (or at least, relevant to my leetle world, even if it has no bearing on the greater universe) that this is my 200th post, which is marked by the publication of my first words on music in an actual magazine that you can actually hold in your actual hands. I'm sure the NME are frantically trying to get hold of me as we indeed speak, however if that is not the case then I will continue flinging my writing all over the Internet.
If you have a spare five minutes, click over to Le Blow - I'm part of their gang now too.
In the meantime, here's a shockingly amateurish video I made of the magazine, just to whet your appetite. Enjoy!
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if JD Sports can lose (reportedly) £700,000 worth of stock during the London riots and Waterstones shops remain untouched, then Houston, we have a problem with the yoof of today. Aside from the obvious propensity towards smashing stuff up and setting it on fire, the biggest problem with kids is that no-one is encouraging them to read. The irony is, if someone had given a book to one of the marauding yobbos who carted off HDTVs, then perhaps they wouldn't have wanted to steal a TV in the first place. Books are an essential element of life (just see my post on the library closures: I get seriously het-up about hardbacks.)
Step away from the TVs! head to your local library! Erm...please?
Thankfully, the smart people at the Evening Standard are doing a Get London Reading campaign, which is a flipping marvellous idea in my humble opinion. However, that is just London - someone, somewhere, needs to come up with a masterplan to get all young people reading more, wherever they live. Before we turn into a nation of morons who can only speak in abbrevs and BBM spk. ARGH IT'S HAPPENING ALREADY.
Step up to the plate, Penguin. No, not my favourite feathered friend, the book publisher. Penguin has been releasing new editions of favourite novels with covers designed by some of the world's greatest tattoo artists. Talk about 'here are a few of my favourite things' forget raindrops on kittens and whiskers on mittens, gimme books and tattoos any day.
Particular favourites are the Valerie Vargas design (she is one of the UK's most popular artists, with a waiting list of about a year) for Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller and High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, designed by Russ Abbott. Both are £10 from the Penguin website.
Forget boring old Kindles (which the rioters didn't even think about nicking, even though they are worth the same as some iPods). Kids need to be able to look at books and think that they look cool. And if they have got tattoo designs on the cover, that has got to help.
On that subject, while I was at Bestival (incidentally, read my review here) I spent a lot of time lurking around the Sailor Jerry's area, and not just for the rum-cocktails-in-a-pineapple. Along with a massive Hula girl pin up statue, this area also contained a shanty shack which had a working tattoo parlour and an exhibition/film dedicated to the life of Mr Norman Collins, aka Sailor Jerry. As I am like a moth to a flame when I hear the buzz of a needle, I took refuge from the crowds of drunk people dressed as Freddie Mercury, and watched someone getting tattooed with some classic Sailor Jerry designs. There were also actual velvet cinema seats, where you could watch a movie about the life and times of Sailor Jerry, who is generally considered to be the godfather of old school tattooing. I knew something of his life, but didn't realise what a genius this man actually was. Not only did he revolutionise the art with his incredibly vivid colour flash, but he introduced new inks that had never been used before and blended his experience of traditional Asian tattooing (which was ironically the pastime of the Western aristocracy, who would get souvenir tattoos on their travels) with Western designs and his experience of Navy life.
Sailor Jerry and one of his iconic pin up girls. What a pretty lady.
What really hit home during the video was some of the things artists who had known and worked with Jerry had to say. They could explain how tattooing then was a way of capturing the spirit of life and making a permanent memory of it - sailors would get tattooed at Collins' shop either on their way back from or going to war, so they would be living life to the full in that moment. Being tattooed meant being part of a club of people who were foolish enough to pay for the pleasure of sitting through pain to leave a permanent mark on their skin - but that was a commitment they had made. It was also a way for sailors to carve out a little piece of their own identity when everything else in their life was uniform and regulated.
This is what I think of when people continue to spout uninformed, negative opinions on tattoos (see: Daily Mail comments section underneath a picture of any inked celebrity) A certain writer at the Times recently wrote an article entitled 'Having a tattoo doesn't make you cool', which should have left me feeling me annoyed. However, all I really felt was a little bit sorry for her; I just thought she sounded old-fashioned and a teensy bit ignorant. But unlike her attitude towards people like me, I won't judge her book by its cover. Each to their own, as I'm sure Sailor Jerry would have agreed.
GL
Images: Sky, Penguin, Victor Frankowski, Sailor Jerry
