Punk – Nigel Ball

Nostalgia aid

This month, Just For One Day: The Live Aid Musical, opens at The Old Vic in London. While in 1985 the focus of the original Live Aid was all about raising money for famine-struck Ethiopia, despite Just For One Day giving 10% of all profits to The Band Aid Charitable Trust, nostalgia appears to beContinue reading “Nostalgia aid”

Resituating Gee Vaucher

In 2016 I started a review of Gee Vaucher’s Introspective exhibition by saying: “…[as] a teenage punk in the early 1980s it would have seemed inconceivable that Gee Vaucher’s artwork might ever grace the walls of a gallery…”. In 2023, the same thought crosses my mind about what ‘teenage me’ would have made of Vaucher’s life andContinue reading “Resituating Gee Vaucher”

Survival guide

I’ve just written a review of the excellent Gee Vaucher exhibition, Introspective, at Colchester’s Firstsite gallery for Eye Magazine’s blog. Read it here.

Burn baby burn

I do like a good stunt, which is why I’m looking forward to Joe Corré burning all of his punk memorabilia in a protest about Punk London in November. Corré, the son of Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westwood, has amounted a collection of punk atifacts he claims to be worth over 5 million pounds. Despite thatContinue reading “Burn baby burn”

Punk philosophy

You could argue the need for yet another publication about punk. The ‘1976 and all that’ narrative has been told so often now that it reads like a dull pantomime with all original relevance of the story bled dry through over telling. There have been some publications in the last few years that have gone beyond this nostalgic rehash,Continue reading “Punk philosophy”

Overpowered by junk

In my teens and early twenties I was a big Clash fan. Then as my music tastes matured, and I started to tire of rock music’s clichés, I started to fall out of love with the band’s early work, which traded so heavily on rock clichés. Half of Black Market Clash, and all of SandinistaContinue reading “Overpowered by junk”