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Posts from the “Music” Category

Guzman: 90s Music Icons

Posted on September 10, 2020

Guzman. Salt N Pepa, for US Magazine, early 1990s.

By the 1990s, the music industry had changed irrevocably. Vinyl was becoming a thing of the past as CDs came to the fore, and music videos skyrocketed in popularity, requiring artists to develop an aesthetic to embody their sound.

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Guzman – the husband and wife photography duo of Constance Hansen and Russell Peacock – helped to define the look of the times with a series of iconic album and magazine covers for everyone from Fishbone to En Vogue. 

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The couple got their start in music photography with the cover of Debbie Harry’s 1986 album, Rockbird, collaborating with the likes of Stephen Sprouse and Andy Warhol. Three years later, they hit the big time, when they photographed the cover of Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 – a groundbreaking album that transformed the course of Hansen and Peacock’s careers.

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Throughout the ’90s, Guzman would go on to photograph some of the era’s biggest acts, among them Lenny Kravitz, Luther Vandross, SWV, and Salt-N-Pepa. Long before industry personnel began crowding photo shoots, photographers and artists collaborated in intimate settings. 

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Read the Full Story at Huck

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Guzman. Lenny Kravitz for Vibe Magazine, 1998.
Guzman. Hole for “Celebrity Skin” album cover shoot, 1998
Categories: 1990s, Art, Huck, Music, Photography

Debbie Harry: Punk’s Platinum Blonde Bombshell

Posted on August 12, 2020

Richard McCaffrey. Debbie Harry of Blondie performs live at The Winterland Ballroom in 1977 in San Francisco, California.

After learning she had been adopted, Debbie Harry would often dream her real mother was Marilyn Monroe, herself a foster child who became the quintessential Hollywood bombshell, radiating an intoxicating blend of vulnerability, seduction, and charm every time she looked at the camera.

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“I felt that Marilyn was also playing a character, the proverbial dumb blonde with the little-girl voice and big-girl body, and that there was a lot of smarts behind the act,” Harry wrote in Face It: A Memoir. “My character in Blondie was partly a visual homage to Marilyn, and partly a statement about the good old double standard.”

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At 14, Harry began dying her hair, going through a dozen colors but always returning to timeless glamour of platinum blonde. In 1965, Harry, then 20, moved to New York City and rented an apartment on St. Marks Place for a mere $67 a month. She worked as a go-go dancer, Playboy Bunny, and waitress at Max’s Kansas City before she found her true calling: rock star.

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Read the Full Story at Jacques Marie Mage

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Gie Knaeps. Debbie Harry, Blondie, Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands, September 21, 1977.
Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Fashion, Jacques Marie Mage, Music

Beyond Heaven: Chicago House Party Flyers – Volume II, From 1981-1992

Posted on July 24, 2020

Julian Perez Dancing Wheels ’85

On July 12, 1979, 50,000 people descended upon Comiskey Park inChicago to attend “Disco Demolition Night”. The promotional stunt, organised by Major League Baseball, saw a crate of disco records get blown up, and the field destroyed. The “Disco Sucks” sentiment was fueled by the global success of disco music; a predominantly Black and gay art form that triggered the worst impulses of white cultural hegemony. 

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Once the mainstream turned its back on the culture, disco went back to its roots, and a new style began to emerge in Chicago’s nightclubs. This was the beginning of house music, which got its name from the Warehouse, a members-only gay club for Black men helmed by legendary DJ Frankie Knuckles.  

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“Knuckles and native Chicagoan Ron Hardy began adding their own twists and turns, mixing in Italo disco, synth, soul, R&B, and even rock occasionally, until their sounds began to find their way outside of these walls,” says Mario ‘Live It Up’ Luna, author, and Brandon Johnson, publisher of the new book Beyond Heaven: Chicago House Party Flyers – Volume II, From 1981-1992 (Almighty & Insane).

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Read the Full Story at Huck

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Get Your Ass On The Dance Floor Centrum ’85
Categories: 1980s, Huck, Music

Janette Beckman: Beat Positive

Posted on November 15, 2019

Group portrait of various hip hop and rapping artists, from left (bottom row): Tony ‘Master T’ Young, Big Drew, and K Rock. Sitting upon Big Drew’s shoulders is MC Lyte, 1990. New York. (Photo by Janette Beckman/Getty Images) Photos Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery

When Janette Beckman learned the “New York Scratch and Rap Revue,” the first Hip Hop showcase in the UK was headed to London, she immediately offered to shoot it for Melody Maker. The year was 1982, and the culture was as fresh as the crease down the front of a pair of Lee jeans. The concert proved to be a turning point in Beckman’s life.

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“Everyone was on stage together at the same time: Afrika Bambaataa was on the turntables. Fab 5 Freddy was on the mic, DONDI and FUTURE were making a mural. The Rock Steady Crew was breakdancing. The Double Dutch girls did their thing,” Beckman says.

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“It was a Renaissance moment for me. I was used to people in leather jackets thrashing it out on stage and here were these people making art, music, poetry, and dance in this wild, crazy, creative thing.”

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Read the Full Story at The Luupe

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The Ultramagnetic MCs pose outside on a New York city street, 1989. (Photo by Janette Beckman/Getty Images) Photos Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Music, Photography, The Luupe

Show Me the Picture: The Story of Jim Marshall

Posted on November 14, 2019

Johnny Cash off the bus at Folsom State Prison, Folsom, California, 1968 Photography by Jim Marshall, taken from Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019

In March 1984, Michelle Margetts, a 19-year-old journalism student at San Francisco State University, met Jim Marshall (1936-2010) at a bar in downtown San Francisco, to interview him for a ‘Where Are They Now?’ assignment. Marshall, who had famously shot Johnny Cash flipping the bird during his historic 1969 performance at San Quentin State Prison and Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, was, in the words of Annie Leibovitz, “the rock ‘n’ roll photographer”.

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But Marshall, then 45, was down on his luck after being arrested on a gun bust in 1983 and doing work release to avoid prison time. “When I met him I found him hideous: a malevolent gnome,” Margetts recalls of the man who would become a short-term boyfriend and lifelong friend. Given the opportunity to talk, Marshall poured out his heart, revealing the deep vulnerabilities that lay beneath his gruff exterior. Then, just before it was to be published, Marshall sabotaged the entire thing and the story disappeared.

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Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

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Restaurant in Harlem, New York City, 1963 Photography by Jim Marshall, taken from Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Music, Photography

Luke Jenner & Justine D. Look Back at the Last Era of Underdog New York

Posted on October 15, 2019

Courtesy of Justine D.

Now that we are living in a landscape fueled by the 24/7 flow of digital content from every corner of the globe, the recent past seems very long ago. The rapid-fire pace dictated by extremely online culture is mirrored by the sweeping transformation of the American landscape, where once-battered cities like New York are being gentrified at a dizzying rate.

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In retrospect, the turn of the millennium seems positively quaint, with its dial-up modems, payphones, film cameras, and fax machines in wide use—but the seeds of our present era were being spread far and wide. New York in the 00s was a crossroads between two realms: the past and the future squaring off against one another—perhaps best illustrated by the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll that emerged this decade.

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In her vibrant oral history, Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001–2011, author Lizzy Goodman takes us back to the last era of underdog New York, when bands like The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, and Vampire Weekend brought rock ‘n’ roll back to the forefront. Goodman recently teamed up with Hala Matar to curate Meet Me in the Bathroom: The Art Show, a group exhibition organized by UTA Artist Space and The Hole. Now, in an exclusive conversation for Document Journal,Luke Jenner of The Rapture and DJ Justine D. take us back to this transformative era in New York nightlife.

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Read the Full Story at Document Journal

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Courtesy of Justine D.

Categories: Document Journal, Music

Antoinette “Tony” Sales on Designing Costumes for Rock Stars

Posted on September 27, 2019

Antoinette “Tony” Sales at Norman Seeff’s studio on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles, 1977 © Phil Fewsmith.

Over the past 50 years, American artist Antoinette “Tony” Sales has traveled through the rarefied world of rock royalty, designing and making stage clothes for icons including Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Stephen Tyler, and Exene Cervenka. The mastermind behind Freddie Mercury’s iconic rhinestone fingernail gloves and Nick Lowe’s legendary Riddler suit has always believed that, “Each of us inherently has within us the ability to create the life of our dreams.”

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Though shy and demure, the willowy blonde Texan has always been possessed by a fearless streak. “If I wanted to do something, I would,” Tony tells Document Journal from her home in Los Angeles, where she continues to create stage clothes for film, television, and music videos. It was a lesson gleaned as a child when her father, science-fiction writer and US military personnel Keith Laumer received an assignment to move to London in the early 1960s, and brought his family along.

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“My older brother, Tom Wright, was Mr. Cool American with real Levis and all the good records. He went to Ealing Tech Art College, where he met Pete Townsend and they became lifelong friends,” Tony says. “Tom had walked into the lunchroom and this real shy guy was sitting alone, strumming his guitar, and all of a sudden, he went, ‘schwaaang!’ Tom said, ‘Oh my God. Do that again!’ Pete has said, ‘If it wasn’t for Tom coming into my life, there would never have been a Who.’”

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Read the Full Story at Document Journal

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Drawing of Dolly Parton © Antoinette “Tony” Sales.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Document Journal, Fashion, Music

A Multi-Faceted Portrait of the Genius of Jim Marshall

Posted on September 25, 2019

Man outside a liquor store in Oakland, California, 1962. From Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019 © The Estate of Jim Marshall

When most people think of photographer Jim Marshall (1936-2010), scenes from rock and roll history come crashing to mind: Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire during the Monterey Pop Festival; Johnny Cash flipping the bird at San Quentin State Prison; Janis Joplin lounging like a vixen in a sparkly mini-dress with a bottle of Southern Comfort in hand; the Charlatans playing the Summer of Love concert in Golden Gate Park.

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But Marshall’s roots go deeper than rock: they thread through the history of jazz, in the nightclubs and festivals where he honed his skills as self-taught photographer coming of age in Jim Crow America. A perennial outsider, Marshall championed the underdog, the spaces where the oppressed and exploited transformed their pain and sorrow into beauty and art.

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As a man of the streets, Marshall understood the power of the activist to transform the way we see and think. He used the camera as his instrument, to tell the story of the people and the times — not just the headlining names but the regular folks who fought for the cause that we’re still fighting for more than half a century after he made some of his most indelible photographs.

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Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

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Thelonious Monk and his family in their apartment’s kitchen, New York City, 1963. This photo was shot for a Saturday Evening Post story. From Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019 © The Estate of Jim Marshall

Jimmy Rushing backstage at the Hunt Club, Monterey Jazz Festival, Monterey, California, 1960. From Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019 © The Estate of Jim Marshall

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Music, Photography

Heaven on Earth: FESTAC ’77 and the Dream of a Pan-African Utopia

Posted on September 12, 2019

Calvin Reid, FESTAC ’77, Lagos, Nigeria, 1977.

Calvin Reid, FESTAC ’77, Lagos, Nigeria, 1977.

For the past century, the dream of Pan-Africanism has captivated the global consciousness, inspiring black leaders from Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X to advocate for a collective self-reliance that would restore to Africa and its peoples all that has been usurped through systems of colonialism, slavery, and racism over the past 500 years.

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The Pan-African philosophy is an inclusive approach that brings together the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of black cultures on the continent and across the diaspora, aiming to forge new canons of history, spirituality, politics, the arts, and science. It even has its own flag, designed nearly 100 years ago: the red, black, and green symbolizing the bloodshed, the people, and the land for which they fight — a restoration of Africa, the home of original man and woman.

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A utopian vision with mass appeal, Pan-Africanism was recently popularized once again with the glittering image of Wakanda in the blockbuster film Black Panther. But one does not need to go to Disney World to discover Pan-Africanism realized on Earth. In January 1977, some 16,000 people from 56 nations across Africa and the diaspora descended upon Lagos, Nigeria, to attend FESTAC ’77: the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture.

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Read the Full Story at The Culture Crush

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Calvin Reid, The Mighty Sparrows, FESTAC ’77, Lagos, Nigeria, 1977.

Calvin Reid, Sun Ra, FESTAC ’77, Lagos, Nigeria, 1977.

Categories: 1970s, Africa, Art, Music, Photography, The Culture Crush

New York: Club Kids by Waltpaper

Posted on September 10, 2019

SKID, Waltpaper at Limelight, 1992 Copyright SKID. All Rights Reserved

“When the Club Kids came along, we brought this idea that our identity was enough; we didn’t have to do anything else,” Walt Cassidy tells Another Man. “It’s very much ahead of the time. We were criticised at the same time the way people criticise the Kardashians: ‘You’re interesting looking but what do you do?’”

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Cassidy puts that question firmly to rest in his magnificent new book, New York: Club Kids (Damiani), which charts the history of the last underground subculture of the analogue age. Cassidy, also known as Waltpaper, was an integral figure in the groundbreaking New York nightlife scene of the 1990s, when a new group of upstarts transgressed boundaries with singular aplomb, deconstructing the realms of fashion, music, drugs, gender, pop culture, and media to recreate themselves anew every week.

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Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

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SKID, King and Queen of Manhattan pageant at Limelight, 1993. (Left to right) Bella Bolski, Lady Bunny, Aphrodita, Amanda Lepore, Olympia, Arman Ra
Copyright SKID. All Rights Reserved

SKID, Keda and Kabuki at the opening of Webster Hall, 1992
Copyright SKID. All Rights Reserved

Categories: 1990s, AnOther Man, Books, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Michele Saunders Old School Rules for Nightclubbing

Posted on August 22, 2019

© Michele Saunders

“My life lead me to the Garage,” Michele Saunders tells Document Journal. Growing up in France, her father would play jazz records, nurturing a lifelong passion for music that took shape when she moved to America to attend Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. On Wednesday nights, she’d road trip down to New York to catch the world famous Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

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In 1979, she met her soon-to-be husband Andre Saunders, who was producing Billy Nichols’s disco classic, “Give Your Body Up to the Music,” mixed by Larry Levan, resident DJ at the Paradise Garage. Andre invited her to see Nichols perform—an experience that would change her life.

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“The very first time I went, I was backstage, dressed in a Norma Kamali outfit with high heels and a fur coat,” Saunders recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh my God! I am going to be back next week by myself, no husband, no high heels, no fur coat. This is where my new home is going to be.’”

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Read the Full Story at Document Journal

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© Michele Saunders

Categories: 1980s, Document Journal, Manhattan, Music, Photography

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