Displaying items by tag: London

Like many parents from all generations since the Second World War - I worry about the music and cultures that my children are drawn to.

This is a wee treat: Johnny Rotten gives a guided tour of London, circa 2009. Full of his usual face-gurning, straightforward honesty and acerbic ...

Nina Bumbalkova’s was born in Prague in 1987. Nina has recently just released her debut Documentary Men in A Box, she works predominantly in photography, but also makes films. With her images, she aims to record an inside view of the city’s subcultures and urban spaces.

I can’t say for certain when I developed my love of Ska music. There was no defining moment when I heard “Willow Tree” by Alton Ellis and my world was turned on its head. My coming of age was in the dark and distant nineties, a world of MDMA fuelled warehouse parties and the guitar bands of Manchester.

The 1960’s was a golden period for Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club. An FA Cup/League Double ensued in 1960/61 before following that up with another FA Cup in 1962.

Screenwriter and novelist GF Newman (22nd May 1948) best known for the creation of TV character Judge John Deed (2001-2007) starring the talented and versatile Martin Shaw, a maverick judge who forgoes the usual pomp and circumstance associated with our legal system, in particular the courtroom, and New Street Law (2006-2007), a drama about two rival law firms of barristers based in Manchester,

The Origin

Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novella, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde published in 1886, is the renowned story of Dr Henry Jekyll, socialite and experienced doctor, yet underneath his positive persona Dr Jekyll is fighting a psychological battle between the good and evil within himself and believes that medicine would be able to contain the malevolent aspect of his personality.

In 1963, Mods, the then newest British youth culture, and their predecessors the Rockers, were making the news. The first British youth culture Teddy Boys, from the fifties, had faded away, until their revival in the seventies. The media not only notified the British public of the Mods and Rockers’ different taste in terms of fashion, music and transport, the press started to generate panic,

In the mid-sixties, the world saw the birth of hippies. A counterculture which questioned so much about society, and was not afraid to suggest an alternative lifestyle to the norm. A spectacular movement, with colourful clothes, magnificent music in the guise of The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and many more, with mind-bending drugs and free love. An ethos that went way beyond being a bored teenager and got the entire world thinking.

Although it’s important to enjoy and promote the artistry of the Mod era, just as it is important to celebrate the colourful lives and loves of those who drove it, sometimes it’s hard to resist a brutal examination of just how much things have changed since the days of the racing fifties and Swinging Sixties.