ToughBondageBottom

That can't be true.

Noosed hogtie

Growing up skin through ska in the early 1980′s

In remembrance of The Specials’ John Bradbury (16 February 1953 – 28 December 2015)

BBC TV’s Top of the Pops was ‘must view TV’ for anyone into pop music for over 40 years from 1964 to 2006.

For me the early 1980′s were formative: I had shaved my head while still in school a couple of years earlier, and got shit as ‘the skinhead’ in my snooty grammar school – Latin School for you Yanks. 

Skinheads were thought to be extreme right wingers, white power National Front and British Movement guys who started riots in immigrants’ areas. Bands like Sham 69, which had both left- and right-wing skinhead followings saw their live performances broken up by neo-nazi skinheads.

Top of the Pops turned out to be a musical salvation for me, with bands that had a decidedly non-racist or anti-racist bent and appealed to skins as well as many others. 

My first introduction to ska was Madness with Baggy Trousers, which not only took my breath away, but also right back to school, and that was soon followed by Driving in My Car – yeah! I got my driving license, and to drive my dad’s car! And bought a motorcycle! 

If you want to check out the skinhead appeal take a gander at Madness they call it Madness, a mashup of a live performance and a music video.

For me Madness succeeded on every level, from the music, the Monty Pythonesque humour, and, oh yes… Suggs was a total heartbreaker.

And then there were The Specials, an edgier, rocksteady and reggae influenced ska that was just made for skanking.

The Specials burst on the scene with ‘Gangsters’ in 1979.

‘Ghost Town’ followed soon after.

‘Racist friend’ has been described as didactic and repetitive, but given the British skinhead scene – and parts of society in general – in the early 1980′s it was a pretty important song. It has a special place in my heart. Quite a few years ago I went to one of the gay skinhead events at the Boots in Antwerp. The sex was fun, but as a ‘skinhead’ event it was a pretty dismal affair. 

It took a lot of pestering to get the organizers to put on some ska and Oi! in the ‘skinhead only’ basement, and that got me talking to a few guys who were actually into the music.

When the Boots closed, a few of us went to a bar across the street which had a small dance floor in the basement. They were playing ska, and even though I was dead drunk and tired like everybody else, I just had to skank – and was followed on the floor by a nazi skin who had commented on my SHARP buttons earlier. 

We skanked a bit wearily for a while and it was OK – at least we could share the music. Then ‘Racist Friend’ came on and the nazi shot me a ‘that’s more than I can put up with’ look, and I had the dance floor to myself.

Here are John Bradbury and The Special AKA performing ‘Racist Friend.’   

‘Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment,’ Twenty-Five Years Later

Today commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the obscenity trial sparked by the artist’s controversial exhibition “The Perfect Moment” at the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati.

To mark the moment, the New Museum in NYC will host a panel discussion on Thursday, November 19, 2015. The Guardian has a piece about Mapplethorpe and the trial, ’Whipping up a storm: how Robert Mapplethorpe shocked America’

Showed him off at the NYC Eagle like this. 

Paul Cadmus was born on December 17, 1904, in New York City. 

After traveling through France and Spain, he and fellow artist and lover, Jared French, settled in a fishing village on the island of Mallorca. In 1933 they returned to the United States after running out of money, and Cadmus was one of the first artists to be employed by the New Deal art programs, painting murals at post offices.

In 1934 he painted ‘The Fleet’s In!’ - above - while working for the Public Works of Art Project of the WPA (Works Progress Administration). The painting, featuring carousing sailors and women, was the subject of a public outcry, and was removed from exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery. The publicity helped to launch his career.

The painting depicts US sailors on rowdy and lecherous shore leave, and it aroused the anger of Navy top brass not only for its depiction of the Navy, but also its obvious sexual connotations that fed into the myth of naval life. 

Handsome young sailors are carousing with gaudily attired, then called ‘loose women’, with everyone in an unrestrained mood that is undoubtedly helped along by alcohol.

While all of this was controversial enough, on the left a sailor is shown accepting a light from a man wearing a red tie, considered at the time to be one of the secret dress code signals that gay men used to identify one another.

The sailor’s near unconscious mate is being dragged away by his female companion, while he and the gay man look intently into each others eyes. Within that raucous, sexually charged atmosphere, they are the only ones actually paying attention to each other.

Cadmus worked in commercial illustration as well, but Jared French convinced him to devote himself completely to fine art. In 1979 he was elected to the National Academy of Design as an associate member, and became a full member in 1980.

Jon Andersson, Cadmus’s companion of 35 years, was a subject of many of his works.

Cadmus died in 1999 in his home in Weston, Connecticut, due to advanced age, just five days shy of his 95th birthday.

Arno Arr Michaelis IV, author of ’my life after hate’ in his punk/skinhead days.