Nahman is in the UK next month to sort out some tax stuff. He'll be 'round mine & with contacts in London.
I've got my voice recorder ready.
Great stuff! Hard Bop Hank for president and quite a few galaxies and universes too!
Seconded.
HBH has been a Soul Brother from the start. He was with me in the NYC FT even. Also he produced the original merchants list for the Ivy Style blog. Fact!
- If he wants the gig & has the time I'd love him front of house here while I drink my soup. Fancy it, Hank?
Best -
Jimmy
Always open to offers!
Kenny might fancy steering the ship for a spell?
Hank! You are our archivist par excellence. Wow - you have it all there at your fingertips. Your observations on my life are spot-on. I was temporarily flattered by the attempt to depict me as a crackhead and general low-life - this did wonders for my street cred and made the dull realities of my existence seem less suffocating. My life - up at 6.30, feed kids, dress kids, shout at kids, take them to school, jump on bendy bus, flog a few books in West End of London, then my moment of glamour : a quick espresso in Bar Italia where suddenly my chambray shirt, black knitted tie, corduroy suit and desert boots trigger my notoriously vivid British imagination and I am at one in a world of hipsters and hustlers, actors and models, low life and high life, and then...Paul Weller and Paolo Hewitt walk in and I feel the humdrum wash over me again... Back home on the bendy bus, feed kids, bath kids, shout at kids, read them 'Max and the Lost Note' for the 1000th time (they still like it), make dinner, drink too much cheap red wine, a late night grappa and sleep. Just too fucking glamorous, too hip, unbearably cool.
Actually, last night, I was living the life for a couple of hours - saw Charles McPherson at Pizza Express Dean St (why don't they rename that place? The Cellar on Dean St, the Soho Jazz Club, anything other than bloody Pizza Express). Anyway he was great and my pizza, an Etna on a Romana base, was perhaps even more memorable. Not many cats in the audience though...
GG
I'm jealous... I'll be starting some new job tomorrow and I feel too ill to even type these little messages...
but you can't call in sick onthe first day of the job, can you?
I'm interested in this shift from a bohemian style to a "professional artist" attitude that you can find both in the jazz scene as well as in the art scene of the '50s...
I don't think that the "Soho Boho" died out in 1958, but I think he was slowly replaced by a new type of artist or musician...
Maybe "replaced" is the wrong word, but there was this other image, the smart "Mad Men" type of artist... A look that was more cosmopolitan and that represented both the commercial side and the avant-garde side of art...
This is similar with the jazz scene: The sharp Ivy Look was the new style instead of a bohemian amateur skiffle look or instead of the old American look, which was more like the 1940s Hollywood look, maybe even a bit like the "Gangster" suits. The movement towards the smart Ivy style or the sharp Italian look emphasized the artist, not the entertainer, the professional, not the amateur...
It's an interesting cultural shift...
If you know your art history, you will know that nothing in art exists or is true without its opposite...
This is not post-modern relativism, it is just about the dynamics at work... action, reaction, etc....
Last edited by Hard Bop Hank (2011-03-31 12:57:40)
some more stuff from Chens:
http://www.ivy-style.com/family-guy-the-richard-press-interview.html#comment-5737
and from the comments section:
# Comment by Chris C — March 30, 2011 @ 10:48 pm
"Thank god I’m not the only one who thinks J. Press suits have gone from natural shoulder to pseudo-natural more boxy-like. In fact, I would say most American suitmakers these days (including Brooks) have switched to more boxy, padded shoulders, yet somehow continue to market them as “natural” shouldered. They really seem no different from any other generic imported suit when it comes to its shape (though with higher quality fabrics.) A shame really, it certainly is one way to differentiate from the other masses."
not a bad interview actually, sometimes it's okay to have a look over there... He's not always being a shill, and if he doesn't have an agenda (or a personal vendetta ), he can write something that's true...
Last edited by Hard Bop Hank (2011-03-31 13:36:03)
# Comment by Scooby Dubious — March 30, 2011 @ 12:34 pm
@Christian
Good stuff.
…but what about the beatniks? (wink)
There was a post over there, too:
http://www.ivy-style.com/bohemian-in-a-brooks-brothers-suit.html
of course, that's Brooks Brothers own story in 1950... You might believe that there was nothing but the #1 sack since 1917...
but there was so much more, as this thread shows:
http://forums.filmnoirbuff.com/viewtopic.php?id=8023
1940s Brooks Brothers.
Again ,thanks to carpu65!
He's our man if it's about the history of the style!
Check these threads as well:
http://forums.filmnoirbuff.com/viewtopic.php?id=8024
1925 Ivy League sack suits
and
http://forums.filmnoirbuff.com/viewtopic.php?id=7876
Ivy Double Breasted?
I think there was one more thread on the history of the look, but I couldn't find it right now...