Rockabilly years

In the mid to late 70s a new generation of music lovers was growing up of which I was one. I lived in a squat (Although we actually paid rent - it was £9.00 per week for an entire house in Hove, Sussex) and didn’t have much interest in the products being churned out by an effete music industry. We would pick up vinyls in charity shops and car-boot fairs) I developed an interest in old juke-boxes and set about discovering original records to fill them up with. You could buy classic tunes for pennies.

The same generation was not interested in propping up the consumer culture by buying ready-made and packaged “Entertainment” It was a lot more fun and satisfying to start your own band or support local groups who had something relevant to say. Thus was born the “New-Wave” and “Punk” culture. Thanks partly to Malcolm McLaren’s genius adoption of the situationist philosophy Punk became the prominent genre but in fact there was a whole swathe of styles and types explored and exploited. The entire back-catalogue of music was rifled and re-invented

In April 1980 I started a shop “C.O.D.” (cash on delivery) at kensington Market, Kensington High St where there was a stronghold of fashion and music sub-cultures - some really great shops - Johnsons, Rock-a-Cha, Cuba. I would trawl Brick Lane Market on a Sunday before dawn looking for 50s and 60s clothes, records and paraphernalia on Saturday mornings I’d be at Swiss cottage Market or Kingsland Road Waste and at Portobello Road on a Friday.

There was a thriving club scene at that time spearheaded by Chris Sullivan and Ollie Maxwell, Steve Strange, Rusty Egan and a small tight coterie of “in the know” cool leaders of fashion - everybody knew everybody else at least by sight and the New Romantic crew, rockabillies and other types tussled with each other through design and retail, music and dance and across night-time London in a multitude of mushrooming night-clubs that appeared and disappeared with startling rapidity.

At that time vintage clothes and cars were being tossed out everywhere and the canny few who appreciated good quality design and style had a field day scooping up treasures.

The photographs here are of Brian Setzer’s  “Stray Cats’”  first British visit where I saw them at Gossips in Soho, Dingwalls and in Brighton. Buzz and the Flyers another New York band played Dingwalls in Camden and the Meteors the original Psycho-Billies from the U.K. played at the Marquee Club, Wardour St, Soho.