Viv Albertine

I want to down tools and read this book all day long, cant put it down but don't want to finish it. If you have any interest in pioneering women, punk, surviving life's challenges this is the best read ever; Viv Albertine's autobiography, 'Clothes clothes clothes, Music music music, Boys boys boys'. Don't buy it from those online tax evaders NO, get it from a proper bookshop. I bought my copy at a great independent book shop on Broadway Market in North London; The Broadway Bookshop. You may not get a few pounds off but your pounds will be going to a decent business (not a greedy machine) which will be in keeping with some punk ethos you can brush up on in this read.

Punk Roots in Paris on the Radio

I only recently discovered Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service on BBC 6 Music, what great company from 4-6pm!

The last show's feature was about the roots of Punk in Paris and that aspects of the movement emerging there pre-dated London and New York; certainly the philosophy.  Nothing could be more up my alley on a grey Sunday afternoon in the studio than this programme. Jarvis talks to Andrew Hussey about his BBC Radio 4 programme 'Liberty, Fraternity, Anarchy. Listen again to both but hurry as they usually only last a week. Learn a bit about the Situationists. It's hard to imagine a similar burst of energy happening quite like that again - because we have so much entertainment now, whereas Punk was about creating your own and grew out of boredom and frustration. There weren't the screens to have your face and mind glued to.
It made me think that my chandelier efforts probably developed strongly because I lived without TV for 16 years, making do. Negotiating the deluge of technology and material out there to watch and listen to is daunting and I loathe the amount of trash it's given rise to.
Having said all that I do see the irony of having my face glued to the blogging screen (of my now apparently vintage laptop) discovering programmes like this on live on-line radio!
p.s. indulge me with the photo, I get a childish kick out of seeing my name so large and graphically stylish when in Paris.