on t-shirts and eternal returns
How The Clash are responsible for this newsletter, romantic cannibals, and Dantiel W. Moni's Milk Blood Heat
10 March 23 | Vol 2 Issue 8
A personal edition this week. I won't be offended if you skip out and drop back in next Sunday, when rash conjunctures and poorly thought out consumerist philosophy return.
This is an anecdote about t-shirts, and a shout out to the person who changed my life. I've been meaning to post this since December, but I feared it was a little self indulgent. In receiving an accidental email this week, it seems The Gods of Silkscreen have spoken, and it's necessary to signal boost some love to those still in the game.
I can clearly picture the moment my life changed forever.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say my creative life began. This newsletter is a direct consequence of that single moment and thought.
I had just turned fifteen, it was a Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1978 on Portobello Road’s market. I saw, hanging from a stall, a silk-screened t-shirt featuring The Clash, and I thought That's what I want to do. I want to print t-shirts for bands.
The stall was run by a company called 5th Column, I remember it being their Clash Take The 5th shirt. I have consumed a lot of substances since then, so do excuse me if my recollection is somewhat hazy. The stall was manned by a chap called Chris Townsend and the shirt designed by a fellow called Charlie Paul. Wow, fuck me Julian, you have a good memory. Sadly this is not the case. Those substances I mentioned.
I returned to school and asked my art teacher to show me how to print a t-shirt. This was before Threadless, Redbubble, and print on demand. You had to make your own silk screen by stretching nylon curtain mesh over a wooden frame using a stapler, the design crafted by wielding a scalpel, carefully cut away a layer of wax from its backing paper, then ironing that onto the screen. I made ten t-shirts for my favourite band, Pinpoint, and took them to a gig at the Nashville pub in Kensington, asking if I could do their shirts. Here's their debut single, Richmond.
Amazingly they said yes. Looking back it seems preposterous that they would let a school kid, who was underage even to be allowed in a pub, to handle their merchandising. But they did. Three years later I used the same tactic with my hero Vic Godard and The Subway Sect's comeback gig, and found myself being invited to set-up shop in their studio, formerly occupied by, and owned by the manager of... The Clash. Where, one day, a certain Charlie Paul dropped by seeking approval for a new design.
Nietzsche talks of eternal return, but from my experience the wheel turns a hell of a lot faster. Keeping this short, I ended up replacing Charlie as designer at 5th Column, working with the very same Chris Townsend from that stall. I left after a few years to design record sleeves full time.
See, I told you there was no way I could remember two people from a minute in front of a t-shirt stall 43 years ago. Don't worry, we're getting near the end.
It’s 1990 and rave culture is in full swing, long sleeve t-shirts are in fashion and I get the t-shirt bug again. I create a Consume and Enjoy design. It sells. I have more designs printed. Three years on and once again I get bored of selling t-shirts. At the same time Chris leaves 5th Column to open a cafe. I drop by for a cappuccino. Turns out he's just formed a new t-shirt company, wanting to recapture that make-your-own spirit from those market stall days that originally inspired me. The wheel is complete. I donate my remaining stock of designs to him, and his new business partner Oscar Verdan, to kick start their newly formed MAP t-shirts with.
I designed the MAP logo and label for them, and they turned it into a huge success, eventually selling in TopShop. Times change, we move on, MAP closes. Cut to the present day, well last year, and I start this column, almost twenty years later, repurposing the name from my t-shirt brand. At the same time Oscar also relaunches MAP t-shirts, requesting they can reprint my Diablo design. I'm flattered. I say yes.
Here's a snippet from a post I wrote last May on manifestos, months before my freebies arrived in December.
The new will still be there, waiting for you, without you having skipped something. Sometimes of course you’ll lose your cool kid stripes. My daughter is still amused by my anecdote concerning Oasis. Who I saw performing Supersonic on The Word, thinking to myself that’s a rather catchy little number. A few weeks later finding myself in a record shop and asking if they had heard of the band, to be told “yeah mate, their album, it’s number one”.
This handily illustrates my point, twenty eight years later and it’s still a belter.
Occasionally it can work in reverse, way back in 1980 when I was bunking off school to run my nascent t-shirt business, a punk enthusiast in the year below me asked if I would make a t-shirt for his favourite band, Adam and the Ants. Who at the time were a cult group big on sadomasochistic sexual imagery and knowing camp. I only liked one song by them but who can say no to a whip in a valise, so I created a Sex Music for Ant People design. I printed a few dozen more, packed my bike panniers, and cycled off to the t-shirt shop Fans in Old Compton Street.
A few weeks later Adam and the Ants released “Stand and Deliver”. The nation’s tweenie girls fell in love with Prince Charming, and none of their parents were going to buy them a t-shirt with a maîtresse brandishing a whip on it. That’s even if the thirteen year girl fledging fans recognised it as an Ants shirt, so radical was the group’s make over.
In a beautiful act of symmetry to round off stories of late comings and musical acts, last August my friend Kay, who keeps abreast of the new thing on the streets via her daughter, sent me a track by a band called Wet Leg. Damn good it was too. I dutifully sent it on to my daughter, who has been raised to appreciate a good trash guitar song. Low and behold, who should then message me only last month, but my very same daughter, asking if I’d heard this new group whose album had just hit number one in the charts... yes, Wet Leg.
Before I get to see the design reprinted, Oscar emails a link to it on the web site, here's the hero shot.
Yes, Ellis Durand from Wet Leg wearing the Diablo shirt.
An anecdote 43 years in the making. If you're still reading, thank you for indulging me. This week is really a shout out to Oscar and Charlie, both of whom, through life's weird tangled dance, are subscribers, and to Chris in particular, for their parts in making me who I am, leading to this exact moment, right here, right now.
My recommendation is bleeding obvious, a Diablo t-shirt from MAP
map-london.com/collections/shop/products/diablo-unisex-t-shirt-on-overdyed-fresh-green
If you would like to see the Consume and Enjoy design reprinted leave Oscar a comment below ; ) Somewhere I still have the t-shirt I printed myself in The Clash’s studio using the screens from their various stage clothing.
After starting several books, with none of them gelling, wrestling extremely pedestrian prose — no naming the guilty, not in Consume & Enjoy’s playbook — bailing on another short story collection as it seemingly veered towards the tragic and downtrodden, I picked up Dantiel W. Moni's Milk Blood Heat. If you’re feeling distracted, finding the right read can be tricky. Style, tone, plausibility, or just plain depressing can all be off putting, short stories are a safer bet.
I felt right at home with it before even opening the cover — It’s on the Kobo actually, so technically pressing the screen, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it — simply because of the similarity in title to Melissa Broder's Milk Fed which I thoroughly loved.
I’ve only read the first story so far, it hit the spot, I finished it and I’m ready for more. I can't remember buying it although I must have for it to be lurking in the Kobo. The stories mostly centre around black women and girls living in the Jacksonville area a quick search tells me, but makes it sound way more woke than it is. Given my limited progress through it so far, it may be rash to issue judgements, but it’s far less race relations and more the liminal space adolescence brings.
The writing has a crispness and vim to it without descending into contrived or quirky, so far, with a preoccupation of mortality it feels very Florida Gothic, making her bedfellows with early Karen Russell, but more death, less sex. The second story is available to read online at joylandmagazine.com/fiction/feast, although I should warn it’s not that chirpy.
Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moni | Buy here
Feast also segues nicely into Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All. Described as a romantic horror, because I’m a hopeless romantic, I’m going to hold out for straight romance — with cannibalism. Guadagnino is famous for his homoerotic coming of age Call Me By Your Name, and two of my stand-out films of recent years. The remake of La Piscine, his A Bigger Splash emblazoned by Ralph Fiennes’ nerve shredding intense performance, running against his usual characters of repressed coldness. As well as the brilliant and somewhat bonkers remake of Suspiria.
I’m squeamish, so yes, although I put my hand over the screen for a couple of shots, no way does the gruesome parts (over very quickly) detract from the beauty of the film. It renders the badlands of America with the same grace the lush cinematography captured Call Me’s North Italy and A Bigger Splash’s Pantelleria [1 ]. To reiterate, it’s not about cannibalism, that’s just a device to explore the film’s true meaning of belonging, acceptance, and knowing love when you see it, truly seeing someone for who they are, and loving them bones and all. Recommended.
Don’t watch the theatrical trailer, it will ruin all the fun, although there is a certain joy watching a film with someone when you know what’s coming next and they don’t, thinking you’ve picked yet another boring arthouse film. Here’s the official trailer, more of a mood piece and a better indicator of the film. Which you should watch.
This weeks heroes are Rhian Teasdale and Adam Ant — hoping someone will do a mash up, Kings of the Wild Chaise Longue — illustrated with verve by our artist in residence, the meat loving Fatima Fletcher. Show Fatima your appreciation by following www.instagram.com/fatima.fletcher. Her work is for sale at fatimafletcher.com, where she’s available for commissions. Her wonderful orchid place mats are for sale at fatima-fletcher.square.site/s/shop.
This week featured me. Meeeeee.
Buy me a coffee at www.buymeacoffee.com/vfnIE9P0Ta
References
https://almostginger.com/call-me-by-your-name-locations/
https://almostginger.com/a-bigger-splash-filming-locations/
Legally I have to tell you I might get five pence or something from Bookshop dot org should you purchase something, but really I just want to stick it to Amazon and keep independent bookshops alive. Yeah, rebel me, bringing the man down from the inside etc etc.
on t-shirts and eternal returns
Tips for squeamish viewers are always VERY much appreciated!
oooh would love a reprint of the CONSUME & ENJOY shirt -- that is a beaut!