Part 4 of a nostalgic look back at a collection of photographs I took with my Olympus Trip camera while touring America in 1979 and 1980. Looking through the 200 or so photos I took during while touring America, a fair portion of them feature cars. I’d been a fan of 1950s American cars for a while. Shortly before our first US tour, I purchased a couple of books that covered vehicles from this era. I spent hours studying the […]
Welcome to Manhattan Setting the scene: Club 57, Irving Plaza, New York – September 1st, 1979. The second of two consecutive sold-out Buzzcocks shows in the ‘Big Apple’. This one was being simultaneously broadcast by local radio station WPIX-FM. I was heading for the dressing room following our final encore when I was collared by Mike Nolan, one of our road crew. He stuffed $20 into my hand, bundled me along the corridor to the fire escape, told me to […]
40 year old photographs get new lease of life [Main photo: Pretzel seller, E 26th St and Lexington Ave] I was nineteen in 1979. I was about to spend three weeks travelling across America with Buzzcocks – our first US tour. Talk about excitement! None of us had been to America before. I needed a camera! At this stage of my photographic career, I didn’t know the difference between an f-stop and a lens cap, so my first camera had […]
PARDON MY FRENCH Photographer Elisabeth Blanchet called in for a chat and a few photos this summer. The results have just been published in the latest issue of LM – a magazine distributed throughout Belgium and northern France. Unfortunately my command of the French language doesn’t extend to providing an accurate translation. I scraped an ‘O’ level pass in French a couple of weeks after my sixteenth birthday, just before I joined a punk rock band called Buzzcocks. I tried […]
PHOTO PROFESSIONAL – MAGAZINE FEATURE The latest issue of Photo Professional has a six page article showcasing a selection of photographs I’ve taken over the past four years, along with an interview discussing influences, technique and some of the equipment I use. Terry Hope, editor of the magazine also asks about the Leaving Home exhibition and the role crowd funding website Kickstarter played in financing the project. Also available in pdf (0.5MB) Photo Professional Issue 88, is on sale […]
Sharing info posted on the Dutch blog ‘Kettingzaag‘ [Chainsaw]. In the midst of all the Dutch lingo, I spied a couple of name checks. Curiosity getting the better of me, I ran the page through an online translator. No doubt some of the subtleties and nuances of the original post have been mangled in translation but it looks good to me: ‘Buzzcocks’ become the ‘Zoom Dicks’ and yours truly discovers he’s not a ‘Pop Idiot’, despite a recent temporary infraction. My CV has been updated accordingly
The spirit of Elvis Presley is alive and well on the Isle of Lewis, as he sings “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!” to disinterested locals on the bus to Grimshader.