Memories in Black and White

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Right this is a bit of a cheap shot. A bit of blog indulgence that takes little effort.

I ran into an old friend the other day. Adrian is from a posh family and back in the day was a high flying university undergraduate.

'What the fuck was he doing running around with you, Waterman?' I hear you ask.

I used to go out with his sister.

Anyway, he decided to do an examination of the cult London Rock-a-Billy scene of the 1980s for his sociology degree. It just so happened that I was part of that cult. It was a cult not unlike the cult of the West Highland Way Race in that everyone knew each other and gathered at the same events except that rather than Ron Hill Tracksters and Inov-8s we wore Levis 501s and dealer boots.

At the time Adrian gave me a load of hard copy photographs he took of us Rock-a Billies. They were in black and white to effect a 1950s feel. Over the years and through moves to West Germany, Canada and Ireland the photographs were lost to the four winds. Forever, or so I thought.

Then, after 25 years I ran into Adrian again and he have me a disk of the lost photographs. So in a cheap shot, an act of blog indulgence, I attach some here. I was about seventeen or eighteen. You will notice that we spent an inordinate amount of time combing our hair (of course I selected specific photographs to illustrate this, but in those days losing your comb was the 80s Rock-a-Billy eqivalent of losing your mobile phone).

If I could achieve this level of skinniness again I might give Jez Bragg a run for his money.












5 comments:

Richard said...

Fuck it, Nic Camen must have been shitting it around you lot.

D'you ever look at mark kermode off the telly (and the bickering on the radio with Dr. mayo) and think: At least someone is flying the flag for us still?

Debs M-C said...

Brilliant. So slick x

Davie said...

How come your mate has three burds and you have none?
as for beating Jez, you would topple over on the downhills with the weight of that quiff.

Anonymous said...

Blimey once a tosser always a tosser - why don't you do the world a favour and crawl into a hole and die!

Unknown said...

Well, ouch!

I thought after you're last blog I'd read the comment by Anonymous myself. It shows remarkable restraint that you've kept the comment there - does he/she know you still have friends that drive tanks, I wonder? Of course they probably do, hence the lack of a name!

Enjoyed reading the post, btw... and the pictures were truly priceless!
:)