The News Review:
- The untidiest place I know
- José González Q&A
- Skins: Looking back at a youth cultural glitch
The untidiest place I know
Pakistan Dawn – Sep 29, 2007
I had five of these hourglasses covering my carpet like murky inerasable ink stains and they were lovely to touch. The shape of their frames were carved delicately and painted so as to give it a shiny gleam as pretty as a bright star in the sky blinking like an eye and the contours of glass voluptuous curving inwards gracefully. The music which always blared out from my room was punk music much to the annoyance of my parents and it added a more defiant rebellious nature to my room full of jumbled junk. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t change my room for its untidiness and for all it was worth; it gave me a personality and each of my possessions (even the scents) gave it a disordered feel which I liked very much. Although I had outgrown some of the property I owned in the room each and every piece of ‘junk’ was valuable to me. All this ‘junk’ made the room less aesthetically pleasing to others but for me all of it would always be priceless as gems my whole life.
José González Q&A
SFStation.com – Sep 29, 2007
There was Silvio Rodriguez the Cuban singer and some Brazilian music. That interested me a lot and whenever I hear an old recording of a metal string guitar I get nostalgic. It’s cool because that is not the only music that inspired me. When I was a teenager I played in punk and hardcore bands and had lots of different kinds of influences. SFS: Can you tell me more about your punk-rock past?JG: When I was 14 I started playing bass in a punk band for a year. I was very inspired by Black Flag and The Misfits. Later I formed a hardcore band and I still played bass and did some of the screaming.
Skins: Looking back at a youth cultural glitch
The Independent – Independent – Sep 29, 2007
The High Wycombe skins were somewhat improbably defined by their knitwear. “We would go to jumble sales looking for cardigans or our mums would make them for us” says Watson. “I was proud to wear my mum’s knits!”Along with the music and the clothes the sense of danger was irresistible. “You could get killed walking into the wrong area looking like that. People were scared of us so they often reacted with aggression. On one level that really upset me as I was a decent kid but on another it was exciting and empowering. Looking back the whole thing was contradictory… By the early Eighties xenophobia had begun to creep into the culture though Watson maintains that was not the defining part of being a skinhead. “For us it was all about working-class rebellion more than anything else. It was a punk attitude a statement of ‘this is our tribe’. Sure there was a definite racial divide. We were always conservative in our clothes and our outlook however misplaced that is. The right-wing extremists I knew were pretty damaged people and full of hatred. “It’s an issue that was recently addressed in Shane Meadows’ semi- autobiographical film This Is England a coming-of-age story set in 1983 about a 12-year-old boy who is adopted by a gang of skinheads.