GBS TOP TENS

 One of the things amost every fanzine ever written has had in common was the Top Ten. Provided by either the editor or one the bands interviewed inside it would be a list of the tracks that they were listening to tracks they wanted you to listen to,tracks that they were listening to that they wanted you to know they were listening to... you get the picture?

well GROOVYBLACKSHADES was no different.

    

 

 

 

"A Scene In Between" by Sam Knee review

So.....it's sort of like this....a while ago I was asked by "A Scene In Between" author Sam Knee if he could use some of my photos in his,then forth-coming,book. I spoke to a few friends,made up my mind and then did bugger all about it.

So....here I am looking at a Press PDF of Sam Knee's new book "A Scene In Between",writing a review thinking "FUCK IT! I could've had my photo's in there!".

(Sam has asked me for some photos for future books.I've listened to a few friends and said yes.)

Anyway,the book.....

 

With punk (and "post-punk"now almost completely documented,indexed,cross-referenced,filed,stamped,briefed,de-briefed,and numbered, and with its sounds and styles totally absorbed into the cultural DNA (one direction-say no more.) it was probably time for a spotlight to fall on what has become known as "indie".A strange time,between the end of  post-punk and the start of "baggy", when the charts had Duran Duran and the New Romantics, punk rockers posed for tourists in the Kings Road-"giz a quid?", and one of the top TV programmes was about a school for the performing arts.

 

Because the majority of the photos involve bands,I have to keep reminding myself that this book is about the FASHION of that period,about the way a disparate group of people,spread across the UK, who slowly came together to create a scene/genre/sub-culture/whatever, actually dressed.

 

From photos of a young Orange Juice,taken in 1980,looking every inch like Echo & The Bunnymen fans through JAMC's black jeans and jumpers,and fuck-off boots,on through Tw**(sadly not quickly enough though),to the stripey topped, bowl-cut My Bloody Valentine, and I didn't even mention the previously unseen photos of an early Smiths gig.

There are interviews with Stephen Pastel and Amelia Fletcher,David Conway and Lloyd Johnson of THAT famous brand of leathers and a simply unbeliveabe amount of unseen pictures.

It seems that reviews of books have to have a pic of a page in them,to show you what it looks like,but to use almost any of the pictures in this book would be wrong. That's because they are UNSEEN you idiots. They derserve to been seen in properly printed book form,not as a jpg on a blog.

 

However  the following page is ok,because they have been seen elsewhere,indeed at first glance I thought I might've taken them myself,but seeing as they were contributed by a certain J.B Brouchard,who was stood next to me that night.....

 

 

 

 

As I said above,this period seems ripe for a bit of another look at,what withc the publication of Alan McGee's autobiography,the resurgance of interest in bands from that time and so on and so on...

 

There's enough style and fashions tips and pointers in this book to last  a good few seasons yet,so I woud imagine that you might see a return to the Cuban Heel and roll-neck top any day soon....

 

 

(its just the sort of thing a 1st year student at the Uni of Westminster might want to take a look at x)

 

 

You can get it HERE