...LET'S STICK TOGETHER.......

" Let's stick together...........
   Come on , come on , let's stick together "

Sometime in the last week or so Richard Branson ( in an attempt to blow smoke over the abortive Virgin Space mission ? )  came up with an offer of some £500million for the remaining members of Led Zeppelin to reform for a 35-night tour................an offer that , with add-ons , was estimated to be worth some £190 million to each of the band members.....................

To his eternal credit Robert Plant ripped up his copy of the contract in front of the astonished promoters......
........at last, someone makes a stand for artistic credibility over rank commercialism . Led Zeppelin ceased playing as a group around 1978 , but the resurrectionists still want their day........


During the same week I was wined and dined by a couple of people I worked for in the early seventies , reminiscing  over how good we all were together , the manner of my leaving long forgotten.......and I still appear on the photo heading up their web-site ..........obviously still their best line up ....................................

........and - yet again in the same week - we get out of the blue a call in the studio from my ex business partner - with whom I have not spoken for some twenty years - wanting to have a chat with us ' about putting some work our way ' , and ' wouldn't it be great to get the old team back together again.......'.

Dream on , it ain't going to happen ; there are some things that money just can't buy.............and in the words of Paul Mccartney ' You can't re-heat a souffle ...........'

.....I THINK I'M GOING BACK..................

Way back when , somewhere around twenty years ago this week , as it happens , we designed a bar  in the centre of Manchester on Mount Street - Citrus . Not too bad a scheme as it went , but we never got to grips with the basement and like most operations it eventually faded and died.................. 

 The opportunity to revisit a site or a scheme does not happen that often , but in this particular case it did. A few months ago Mark and Sunni from Velvet on Canal Street had an opportunity to purchase the lease of the Mount St site off the then current operator - another fading bar - and asked us to re-vamp the site as Velvet Central . The site is long and thin , with full height windows along one of the longer sides , so quite a different site to the Canal Street one ; we did I think however manage to capture the feel of the first one , and at least had an opportunity to re-address the basement .

.......and we managed to keep the ' fish ' element in the basement.............

...I LIKE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.....

" My buddies all shun me since I turned to Jesus
   they say I am missing a whole world of fun........."

Having done a BA majoring in Italian Renaissance art I am more than familiar with the
iconography of the painted crucifix , particularly the suspended ones that seem specific to
Italy , mainly due to the altar at that time being in the center , towards the crossing.

This particular example is by Cimabue and is suspended above the altar in the church of San Domenico in Arezzo . Stylistically this format was pretty much of a dead end from a pictorial point of view , as  within the nature of the form there was no room for any visual development or storytelling - the only areas available for embellishment were at the four extremities.........

.......or , as in this example , just the two horizontal extremes ; the format thus remained pretty much inert........................... and then I came across this example.............

......' Maquette for Crucifix ' , an illustration from the book ' Gods of Heaven and Earth ' by
Joel-Peter Witkin ; a radical re-interpretation of the form , stripping in photographs at the four median points .............Saints ? Sinners ?..........Gods ?

The book was published in 1989 and was the second book of his photographs to be published , Was it intended as a maquette ?  Did he intend ever to construct the piece as an artwork ? I have no idea but
I found the re-working of the format interesting enough .........................suspended as the highlight of a photographic exhibition it probably would have courted controversy enough......

..GOING TO THE END OF THE LINE.....

" Well it's all right , riding around in the breeze ........
   Well it's all right , if you're living the life you please........"

David Millar rode his last race last week - at least , his last race as a professional cyclist.
Most professional cyclists , mainly road racers , expect three - five years at the top , if they
are lucky. Millar had seventeen.

The Grand Tours are I suppose the highlight of any road racers career - Millar rode in and
finished 5 Giros , 7 Vueltas and 12 Tours . He has said that a couple of stages of Le Tour were for him the most memorable , one in 2002 when he won the road stage into Beziers - " because at
that point I was still clean " , and Stage 9 in the 2010 race , riding in the Alps from Morzine-Avoriaz down to St-Jean de Maurienne , a distance of some 204.5 km. He felt as soon as he started that day , having previously crashed , " that something was not right " , and dropped by the peloton on the first climb of the day duly rode some 194km at the back of the field with two broken ribs , finishing some 45mins behind the stage winner . " .....it wasn't too bad on the flats , but on the climbs I could feel the
ends rubbing together ...."

The stage profile shown above would suggest that there were no too many flats that day .......and the temp was probably in the mid-thirties.

Strapped up , he continued in the race and on the morning of Friday 23rd July we saw him duly ride out at the start of Stage 18 from our home town of Salies-de- Bearn on the stage up to Bordeaux. . He

went on to finish the Tour in Paris on the sunday , Still strapped up.

Sometimes , when footballers being paid upwards of 100k a week complain of ' being tired ' you

wonder ......................

During his two years suspension , and on his road back to eventual redemption , he lived a couple of miles away from where we were living at the time , near Chapel-en-le-Frith in the Peak District .

Unsure at that time of where his future lay , and whether he would ever be allowed back into road racing , he applied for a job as a shop assistant at Borders in Stockport ( anyone remember Borders ?) and realised that he wasn't even qualified for that . 

Once you find out what you are good at , stick with it - through all the ups and downs.

KODACHROME.................

" They give us those nice bright colours........
                                ......makes you think all the world's a sunny day "

..........and if the early sixties were , to my mind at least , captured in black and white - ' The Seven Samurai ' , ' Alphaville ' ,  ' L'Avventura ' , Paris ,  Blue Note album photos , even the iconic images of the early Beatles - then by the mid sixties colour had arrived..............

............and Monica Vitti...................actress , icon ..............' L'Avventura ' , ' Il Deserto Rosso '........

....she's now 83...but some images never date.........below , as 'Modesty Blaise.'from 1966..........................

.......and maybe even resurface decades later having lurked in the subconcious .................................

but then , the original is still the best..........................even in black and white.................................

FOR YOU WERE MY FIRST LOVE.....

For you were my first love......
......and true love never ever dies...........

....... the early 1960's , reading ' On The Road ' and ' The Dharma Bums ' , listening to Miles Davies and Chet Baker , reading Satre and Camus and falling in love with the idea of 'cool ' , of Paris , existentialism and endless coffees , early Godard films - and the beatnik girls , all dark hair , black roll neck sweaters , plain grey skirts , black tights .........everything is in monochrome , black and white........

........and Juliette Greco.............chanteuse , icon    ..what's not to love ?.................

...........its late May , 2014 , and I am down in the south of France ( still in love with France ), on the edge of the Basque country , walking the foothills and painting.................and much to my surprise there she is , Juliette Greco , playing a festival in early June , just down the road at Laas..............

Nnoooooo...............oh my god..........................

She's 87....................

Should I stay or should I go ?

HEROES - just for one day..........

They say you should never - ever - meet your heroes ...................

This is me and Willie Nelson , in a bar somewhere in downtown San Antone , sometime earlier this year .

.......the memory is a little hazy as exactly to where and when ............

'Is anyone here goin' to San Antone ? '