Literary

SKINS AND PUNKS

Gavin Watson

Vice Books

Unless you are allergic to photo books, you should already have come across Gavin Watson’s first offering,

Skins

. This book offered an unparalleled and unsurpassed photographic record of growing up as a young skinhead on the margins of working-class Thatcherite Britain.

Well, we just put out his new book,

Skins & Punks

, which offers a more intimate take on the same period of Gavin’s life. You get touching, amazingly shot images of skins having a go at fancy dress (or “costumes” to you yanks), rock and roll, punk, and eventually acid and ecstasy.

We had a word about it all with Gavin’s brother, Neville Watson, who features heavily in both books, but he didn’t really seem that fussed.

Vice: Do you remember the Superman fancy dress period? Was fancy dress a popular pastime?

Neville Watson:

Yes, I had a full Henry VIII get-up and would walk the neighborhood demanding random beheadings.

What about the pre-skinhead days, like the rockabilly phase? What do you think about that now?

I still love rock and roll, I don’t think that’s ever left me. I suppose it was quite unusual. You had this seven-year-old kid who suddenly decided he wanted to be a Teddy boy, completely off my own back. No one influenced me. My older brother was into Motown and Gavin was a weird kid who collected fossils. All the other kids my age were busy playing with their Scalextric while I was listening to Eddie Cochran and trying out different types of Brylcreem.

What else did you get up to before you were a skin?

Well, considering I was six when I got into rock and roll and 10 when I became a skinhead, I suppose my main phase before all that was nappies.

How do you feel about the skins days, looking back on them now? Any regrets or anything you miss?

Gavin’s book has been so widely received and pontificated upon and I’ve seen all the pictures, fantastic as they are, so many times it’s reached saturation point for me. Actually, it reached saturation point for me about 14 years ago. To be honest, I find it all a bit tedious.

Go here to buy a copy of

Skins and Punks

.

DO NOT GIVE WAY TO EVIL

Lisa Kahane

powerHouse Books

Before you jump down our throats about how we always slag off photo books about old school rap stylez, give us one second. Firstly, they were fine when there weren’t a million of them. Secondly, this is not just another book about freshfaced kids with fat laces and Kangol hats. Lisa Kahane’s book focuses on the destruction of the Bronx in the early 80s. After the Second World War, federal funds built suburban homes and subsidised mortgages, drawing residents away from the old neighbourhoods. Suddenly, landlords found it more profitable to collect insurance than maintain the buildings for new tenants. While the Bronx burned at the hands of property owners, Kahane documented the damage. By the time the fires went out, 75,000 buildings had been lost and no one had been prosecuted for the thousands of acts of arson. It’s a sad story of urban decay that, fortunately, had a pretty good soundtrack.

powerhousebooks.com

LOST IN THE POST

Kevin Boniface, Joanna Shaw, Christopher Shaw

Old Street Publishing

In case you wondered what happens when you put a note with no address in the post box, it doesn’t go to God, or anyone even likely to be able to help. Postmen find them and then they either throw them away or keep them. Kevin Boniface has been collecting sad, weird, and confusing notes he finds on his rounds as well as keeping a diary of the day-to-day life of a postman in Huddersfield, England. This book is the culmination of ten years of work that started out as a black-and-white fanzine called

White Dog Biz

. It takes a selection of the notes Boniface found, excerpts from his diary and then throws them together with photos taken by Shaw & Shaw that tie in perfectly with the heartbreaking, funny, and often mundane realities of life in a completely unremarkable British town.

oldstreetpublishing.co.uk

RAID PACE

Better Off Dead

When you get a roll of film developed and it’s all posed group shots, well-framed landscapes, and neat portraits, you wonder why you feel kind of empty and disappointed. Well, this book has all those amazing photos you never bothered to take because you thought “it wouldn’t come across in a photo” or “it’s too late, the moment’s gone”—and it’s those ones that are beautiful or funny. There’s nothing interesting about another photo of club kids or your buds doing karaoke, playing pool, or sitting on a night bus. Start taking photos of things that look amazing but may not work, and you might just come out with something nearly as good as this book. Chances are though, you’ll just keep getting everyone to smile and hug and never “waste” photos on pictures that don’t have at least one friend in them. God you suck.

betteroffdead.co.uk

VANDAL SQUAD

Joe Rivera

powerHouse Books

Do you have any idea how bored we are by street art and graffiti books? You would not believe how many of them we get sent, and how many emails we get inviting us to live spray-can-offs in warehouses in Portobello with “poetry slams”. Graffiti was interesting when it was about smashing trains up and not doing collabs with H&M. Here, New York Vandal Squad legend Rivera reveals amazing photos of some of the best graffiti in the world, how he chased down the scene’s big names, and who did what, when and where. A shockingly not-bad book.

NICHE HOMO 1

Self-released

This has a really long interview with the homo who edits

Vice

’s UK edition so if you want to find out all manner of secrets from his shadowy past then I guess you will have to order it from that URL down there. Oh, the interviews with the Shitty Limits, Mob Rules, and serial Vice contributor Eugene Robinson are none too shabby either. They even managed to squeeze in a review of “The Women Of

Hollyoaks

”. Features like that are what zines were invented for. Issue two soon please.

myspace.com/lonklonklonk

BEIJING BUBBLES

Fly Fast Records

We know that the freaky, totally out-there idea of punk rock in China has been everywhere for the last two months. But this book offers a great insight into the scene in China’s capital. It also offers an insight unhindered by gasps of surprise and condescending pat-on-the-back descriptions of Chinese punk shows.

Beijing Bubbles

is based on the successful documentary of the same name that swept through film fairs worldwide. The DVD of the film is stuck on the inside cover, making this an ideal companion for anyone wanting to get a primer on the world’s new favorite music scene.

fly-fast-records.com

THE END OF LIVING THE BEGINNING OF SURVIVAL

Dash Snow

CFA Berlin

If you don’t know who Dash Snow is you probably haven’t read many issues of this magazine beyond the last couple of years. Dash used to appear in these pages constantly in various stages of undress and intoxication. For the Party Issue he even recreated one of his trademarked (literally) “hamster nest” parties for us, which involves booking yourself and your buddies into a hotel room, covering the room with shredded paper and making, well, a nest. You then proceed to party so much that you have to hibernate to survive. As well as getting fucked up, Dash is also very good at art and these days sells work for squillions of dollars to international collectors like Charles Saatchi and shows work at the Whitney and stuff. This book collects a bunch of Dash’s collage work and photography. And it’s really, really great.

cfa-berlin.com

SEX BEAT 1

Self-released

There is this guy Paul who works in our London office. Initially everyone thought he was some indie guy, mainly because he has one of those swoopy fringe haircuts that every cunt and their dog who sings in a tight-jeaned “ohoh- oh” indie band seems to have. Turns out Paul is a really nice guy who is into good stuff like Black Flag and Gun Club and when he’s not booking all the acts for our pub the Old Blue Last he runs his own night (which is named after a Gun Club song) called Sex Beat. Now

Sex Beat

is also a zine. If you like Black Flag and the Gun Club but have a silly haircut you’ll probably like it. How many times can you mention the Gun Club in one review?

myspace.com/sexbeat_london

THE MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES

Alan Aldridge

Thames & Hudson

You might think that you don’t know Alan Aldridge. In a way you might be right. You might never have heard his name spoken out loud before or read it in a magazine. But you do know Alan Aldridge. The sleeves of

The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics

, The Who’s

A Quick One,

Elton John’s

Captain Fantastic

, and Cream’s

Goodbye Cream

? All Aldridge. This book isn’t just great in terms of highlighting the impact Aldridge has had on anyone who has ever put pen to paper and drawn squiggly psychedelic stuff but serves as a massive inventory of just how hard the guy worked. Movie posters, a whole host of Penguin covers, and a couple lessembarassing- than-you’d-think Heineken ads. The guy was a psychedelic drawing machine.

thamesandhudson.com

DON’T TAKE YOUR LIFE – TRUE STORIES BY JUSTIN MAURER

Justin Maurer

Future Tense Books

Despite looking a little like a cross between Dennis Pennis and Krusty the Clown (seriously, check out his photo on the back cover), Justin used to be in stern-faced screamy hardcore band Clorox Girls and is actually really good at writing stuff. We constantly receive submissions by email that we wish were sent the old fashioned way so that we could use them to shore up the constant lack of paper in the toilet. But stuff like Justin’s turning up once every few blue moons is like a little reassuring pat on the back that says there are actually people out there who can still write great short fiction. Except that these little vignettes might be true stories. We’re not sure. It’s nicer not knowing. Justin: Please don’t ever tell us the truth.

futuretensebooks.com

VARIOUS FOLK TALES VOL. ONE

Eighty-Eight Shades Press

I initially struggled to find any info on this one until I looked at the publishers and remembered that we reviewed a zine called

Eighty- Eight Shades Of Grey

a while back. The constant presence of Nottingham Forest shirts and NG7 landmarks confirmed this. So you get a lot of snapshot photography of skaters drinking and being drunk mixed with moody landscape shots and more than your fill of urban decay as well as Nottingham’s unique take on combating pedophilia (such as graffiti proclaiming that “Brian is a fucking kiddy fiddler”). Decent UK photo zines are thin on the ground. Let’s hope more people follow these Midlanders’ lead. How expensive can some A4 paper, a printer and a stapler be?

INKY FINGERS 3

Handmade Dirtcheap Productions

Putting out a zine and calling it

Inky Fingers

is a little like just calling it

Any Zine

. This one was subtitled “The Vice Special” but in a massive blow to our egos it had nothing to do with us. It didn’t even try and parody us like that “Vice Issue” of

SugarApe.

In fact, it just contains loads of black and white ink drawings and cut and paste headlines that do a really good job of holding your attention for just the right amount of time. Maybe they should have just called it

Any Zine

after all.