People Using Telephones

Hello again.

Today I found a truly bizarre, but fascinating item in YouTube: People Using Telephones:



It comes from the Huntley Film Archive, is 28 minutes in length, surely a record for YouTube, and is the worst piece of editing I have ever come across - by a large margin.

Nevertheless I found it irresistible and I hope that you do too.

After I got about halfway through I found myself regarding the telephone, an instrument usually taken for granted, in a detached way. An interesting experience indeed.

Until the next time.

"Malcolm the Red"

Apparently the T-shirt reads "Cash from Chaos"

Malcolm McLaren, described once upon a time as "pop Svengali" has died, apparently from a rare cancer.

There is a good article in the "Telegraph" written by Mick Brown, here which gives a pretty good outline of the man's achievements, amongst which was the organising in May 1968, of a "sit-in" at Croydon Art College.

And this is the reason I chose to write about Mr McLaren's demise: I was actually at the sit-in despite not being an art student. At the time I was in that most dingy of occupations: I was an accounts clerk. Coming home one day from the office, I met a bloke on the bus who had a collection of Elmore James records under his arm. Being a guitarist myself I got into conversation with him and ended up finding myself invited to join in a jam session at the college. I stayed the whole weekend and had a wonderful time: after hours of blues, massive fry-ups in the middle of the night, and on Sunday morning an hilarious reading of some play, the name of which has escaped me. Monday morning was not so good after all the excitement.

There was a coda though: another central character at the sit-in was one Robin Scott (slogan "education, not indoctrination"). A year later I bumped into him on the steps leading into the Roundhouse, and the result was we (me Robin and his girlfriend) spent a week in Cornwall busking and drawing and hanging out... Another ten years passed and Robin made his fortune as the face of M, selling over five million records - "Pop Muzik"

Somehow all the success eluded me, but I can say that at least I rubbed shoulders and I suppose that's how things were meant to work in the 1960s!

The "Telegraph" article reports that McLaren's website reads "Malcolm will be back."

I doubt it!

Until the next time.