‘Scorcha! Skins, Suedes and Style From The Streets 1967-1973’ reviewed by Stewart Home

Scorcha! Skins, Suedes and Style From The Streets 1967-1973 by Paul ‘Smiler’ Anderson and Mark Baxter (Omnibus Press, 2021)

With words and images, Scorcha! sets out to document one strand of UK working class youth culture in the pre-punk era. The pictures provide a far more accurate depiction of late-sixties and early-seventies street style than slick fashion photos using models, stylists, make-up artists and professional photographers ever could. There are a slew of previously unpublished photos of ordinary kids all pilled up and with only a handful of places to go. Some of those in the pictures have also been interviewed – alongside a few pop personalities ranging from former BBC Radio One DJ Emperor Rosko to mod revivalist Paul Weller. Alongside this, there is record art and other promotional schlock I’ve seen before, but it provides needed context.

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Suedeheads, sorts and smoothies – a Creases Like Knives night

“Being a suedehead with its loose links appealed to the new Joe Hawkins. He began to study those other young men on the Underground, trying to separate the wolves from the ewes.”

Saturday Nov 10 from 6:30pm

Upstairs at the Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place, London W1T

An evening of Richard Allen, Skinhead and the New English Library in the West End:

Stewart Home (Pure Mania, Defiant Pose)
Tim Wells (reading from his novel Moonstomp)
DJ Paul Hallam (Old Dog Books, proud purveyors of soulboy/psychobilly pulp)

Presented by Andrew Stevens (Scootering, Dean Street Press)

Followed by book launch for Stewart Home’s Re-Enter The Dragon, his exploration of Brucesploitation for all you Dragon Skins.

All welcome. Entry tax: zero (donations welcome)

1971 london suede

Hardcore Hegelian: an interview with Stewart Home

The likes of the Cockney Rejects and East End Badoes have penned entire albums recently on the subject of East End gentrification, but for Stewart Home it’s a cause to fight. A one-time Neoist but always a novelist, a quick scan of his books since 1988 reveals a range of titles from The Assault on Culture to The Nine Lives of Ray the Cat Jones, via Blow Job and Cunt, naturally. Stevo met the crophead chronicler of pulp and punk at the foot of the Barbican and repaired to a nearby Spoons to talk Marx and mods. Continue reading