Vintage car-inspired handbags

I don't get the whole designer handbag thing. I'm just not the kind of girl who lusts after £2000 receptacles. But in the case of these va-va-voom totes I'll make a massive exception. Although actually, they don't even cost even half as much as your typical Dior monstrosity.

Designed "in honour of classic cars and the ladies that drive them" these bags are like those 1950s gas guzzlers - shiny, over the top, revved up and firing on all cylinders. The kind of bag that will repay its cost in drinks bought for you in expensive tiki bars. They're expensive (between $150 and $350) but, my oh my, every penny shows.

And there are shoes to match...

You'll find them in the VIP lounge at Revamp Productions.

Mr Frosty

I'm pretending that the weather isn't in a big wet and cold grump and making like it's summer hot. I realised today that those 'Mango Blast' crushed ice drinks from places like Starbucks are just overpriced versions of Mr Frosty's fabulous beverages.

If you don't remember, Frosty was the toy of choice during long hot childhood summers. You'd load him up with ice cubes, turn a handle, squirt some juice from his pal Percy Penguin onto the slush, and away you'd go.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
I've looked for a Mr Frosty, but he seems to have been given a disastrous down-with-the-kids makeover. He looks terribly smug. And that's not a quality you want in your drink dispenser.
















So I'll be getting this Peanuts version from Fred Flare instead.

The Everlasting Genius of The Who

I was going to go and see The Who play this weekend. But now I'm not. Nor am I going to Glastonbury, where they're headlining. The Who are the kind of band you can come back to again again and always find something new and fresh and vital. I love their 70s rock opera pomp as much as their 60s young man's blues rock n roll sparkiness.

Here are some ace face Who videos I found on YouTube to console myself at missing their current crop of UK shows. Singalong now.



They're on sensational here. Old enough to be on top of their game, but still with fire in their bellies. I can never decide who my favourite member is. In order at the moment it has to go Townshend, Moon, Entwhistle, Daltrey. It'll change next week.


And here they are looking young and beautiful.



The first clip is from Tommy, which you should buy, and the second from the wor'ds greatest rock n roll documentary, The Kids Are Alright.

Mitch O'Connell Tattoos book

Lucky me. A spanking new copy of Mitch O'Connell's book of tattoo art just landed on my desk. Over 250 low brow, high colour pieces of flash art ready to rock on to your arm, back, or bum.

Mitch's hyper colourful style suits tattoo art so well. It's the kind of ink that you see on the coolest girl on the door at a seedy garage punk club. Tattoos that are super cool but have a spanking sense of humour.

I'm not sure that personally I would ask for the pink elephant wearing a hat with a flower and the motto "Don't forget to get drunk". But one of Mitch's tiki ladies or an angel toting a gun might look good tucked behind one of my other tattoos. Hmmm.

Spoilers alert!

My dear friend Sarra sent me this t shirt (close up of design right). She says "this t-shirt design at threadless.com rules! Spoil all your friends with it!" Buy it at ace online shop, Threadless...


And she's right. Luckily, I think I've seen all the films ruined by it. I'm thinking of getting my own version printed up with "the policeman did it" and strolling past the queue of tourists outside long-running West End pensioners' show, The Mousetrap daily.

You should own a Monks album

You should go and buy Black Monk Time by The Monks.

Formed in 1964 by a bunch of American GIs stationed in Germany, The Monks were the paranoid, dark, existential progenitors of punk.

While the Beatles were singing “She Loves You”, The Monks sang “I Hate You”. Their songs were pounding, drum-driven, with unconventional structures, cynical lyrics, scratchy banjo, and howling and scowling vocals.

Bass player Eddie Shaw described the day they discovered feedback, crucial to their sound, "Just imagine the sound of the Titanic scraping along an iceberg," he said. "It was like discovering fire."

The band wore nooses around their necks, and shaved their heads into monk-like tonsures. They sang about Vietnam “People go to their deaths for you,” and resentment, “You know why I hate you baby? It's because you make me hate you baby.” Their debut and only album, Black Monk Time was released in 1966 to a wall of indifference. They split up in 1967, shortly before a planned tour of Vietnam.
Since their split, however, they have become the cult band’s cult band of choice. ‘Complication’ appeared on seminal garage punk compilation, Nuggets. Jello Biafra, The Beastie Boys, Jon Spencer and The Fall have all acknowledged their debt to the band. Jack White said of them, “Their melodies were pop destructive and must be played to your younger brother.”.

The Fall have covered various Monk songs, one for the forthcoming Monks tribute album, Silver Monk Time, which also includes contributions from hot now bands the Gossip, Mouse On Mars, The 5.6.7.8s and Chicks on Speed.

The band reformed in 1999, to play the Cavestomp festival in http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifNew York. Roger, their drummer, died in 2004, but the band continue to play shows in Europe and the USA, with the same intensity and passion that fuelled them in the 1960s.

I'm in all girl Monks tribute band, The Nuns. Do come and see us play some time.


And here are the far out friars on German TV in 1966

Lovely Lady Air Stewardesses

Elisa Stein has compiled a wonderful book that features air hostesses from days gone by. Days when the women (and it was predominantly young, good looking women) in charge of high flyers were capable, glamorous, and wore fabulous uniforms.

I'd feel far safer flying with these ladies to attend my every whim than the gormless glasseyes in orange that EasyJet employs.



Buy it here

The Horrors - She Is The New Thing

I love the new video from The Horrors, for their new single, She Is The New Thing. It's a Gerald Scarfe/Edward Gorey collision. They have plenty of naysayers, but I love The Horrors' mucky soup of high gothic posturing and garage punk grit.

They antagonise people, as all good bands do, from The Monks to The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Manic Street Preachers. And also, as those bands did, wear black shirts, and very tight trousers and winklepickers.



Buy top Horrors music here

The Thursford Collection, Norfolk

I've been on holiday in rainy Norfolk for the last few days. Camping. My tent blew away, but it was still amazingly good fun.

During my trip, as the leaden skies wept uncontrollably onto my already dripping jeans, I took a jaunt to the living anachronism that is the Thursford Collection, a brilliantly mad museum in the middle of nowhere.

For a mere £6 (students £5.25) you can stroll around an array of steam engines, fairground rides, and street organs (the bizarre, oversized, highly decorated precursors to jukeboxes that you'll find in town precincts and at 'fun days' across the country).

Best of all, the collection is home to an enormous white Wurlitzer organ, the fourth largest in Europe, which was formerly installed in the Paramount Cinema in Leeds. Thrice daily, it's played by pipe maestro, and Bob Downe lookalike, Robert Wolfe. We stayed for two performances, which included such glories as the Dambusters March (which accompanied footage of the bombers) and I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside.

Robert is a grinning, showboating genius, and the moment when the organ sunk back down into its pit, only to stop abruptly halfway down, due to the short height of the stage was one of the best things I have ever seen.

Girls and Corpses website makes it into print

At a time when too many magazines are closing down, it's cheering to hear that one of my favourite web sites, Girls and Corpses has made it into paper-based form.