A Photographic Memory #4
eidetic • /aɪˈdɛtɪk/
Part four of my memory backup…
Let there be… Disco!
In 1977 I had a bit of a strange dichotomy relating to the nightclub experience. Having a rather eclectic taste in music, I could find just as much joy at a Discotheque as a Punk Rock gig, and this cover of Time Out from my cuttings collection was published only 6 months after the ‘Punk’s Home Movies’ edition from my previous post. Punk and Disco almost coexisted.
This was the time of the Hoya™ Starburst filter on my camera lens, which became a bit of a minor obsession for a while, and as you can see by the Time Out cover above, it wasn’t just me!
My Display team colleague, Peter, had invested heavily in his own Discotheque equipment which was pretty forward thinking for someone who was still in his teens, and he even had a regular spot, DJ’ing at a local nightclub called Dr Jim’s, which was THE place to go to at the time.
Dr Jim’s Discotheque in 1977, holds a special place in my heart. As Donna Summer’s ‘Love to Love You Baby’ throbbed away in the background, I found myself making out with a girl for the first time, a girl who happened to be French, and totally looked the part, with her Marinière shirt, and black bob haircut, she had a very chic French girl aesthetic. I still can’t understand why I didn’t ask for her phone number, but as Oscar Wilde once said, ‘Youth is wasted on the Young’.
Anyway, back to Saturday Night Fever, which was a pretty important film at the time, and instigated a bit of a craze for us teenagers. To be sure I’m using the right word here, ‘Craze’ is defined as ‘an enthusiasm for a particular activity which appears suddenly and achieves widespread but short-lived popularity’. So that sounds about right, because at this time I was roped into going to Saturday Night Fever dance lessons with my pal Karen Jimpson and her punkette friend Sue. I need to point out, that at this time in my life most of my friends were either called Karen or Sue!
Karen lived in the hardware store just down the road from my house and was a really fun person to hang out with. She was also responsible along with her friend Lorraine, for trying to embarrass me during my stay at my aunt’s house in Canada, by sending me heavily perfumed fake love letters, which absolutely reeked of Nina Ricci’s L’Air Du Temps perfume. My aunt seemed slightly bemused when she tentatively handed them to me after the mailman had gone. The smell of those letters lasted for years!
Anyway… ah, yes, Saturday Night Fever dance lessons. We went to those a few times and managed to get into the groove, but it wasn’t something you’d want to replicate on the dance floor of an actual discotheque without looking like a plonker. Above is my ‘Starburst Frenzy’ photograph taken just outside the cinema in Leicester Square before the film started. It’s evident to me now, discovering all of these photos that I seemed to take my camera just about everywhere.
The one thing I really wanted was one of those Discotheque oil projectors, and I got my wish when I discovered that Boots the Chemist in Croydon was selling them of all places! Having said that, Boots was renowned for selling things other than pharmaceuticals. I distinctly remember them having racks of Tretchikoff’s Blue Lady paintings on display as a much younger kid. I can’t remember how much this oil projector cost, but I had to have it.
Before we moved house, the best use I’d made of it was projecting it out of my bedroom window one dark winter’s night onto the snow covered pavement below, and freaking out the passers by, as a myriad of giant multicolored blobs morphed their way along the street.
It was around this time that Cheryl Ladd joined the ABC tv series called Charlie’s Angels, as Kris Monroe, to replace Farrah Fawcett-Majors. I can’t remember where I got it, but I had a life-sized poster of her on my bedroom wall, and this inspired a few more photographs featuring Susan, who was now regularly turning up at my parent’s house with her friend Carole, from the cosmetics department at Gatwick Airport. Above is our own version of a Charlie’s Angels publicity photograph.
When I think about it now, our photographic experiments were pretty disruptive, and I really appreciate in retrospect, just how easy-going my mum was, putting up with photoflood lights in the kitchen on the other side of that door, to create photos like the one below.
Disco was everywhere, and the three of us used to regularly go to a Discotheque not far from Sue’s home in Oxted. I can easily time-stamp this period by recalling the track that Carole used to play in her car. She was a major-league Rod Stewart fan (which I wasn’t) and ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ was his top hit at the time. The year was 1978, I was now 18 or 19, and I was working in a Display department just across the road from Debenhams, in another, more prestigious department store called Allders of Croydon.
Allders had regular celebrity signings, and I managed to get this shot of Joanna Lumley during my tea break. I was a big fan of The Avengers, and The New Avengers, so getting a photo of Purdy, even if she no longer had her iconic Purdy hairstyle was a bit of a coup for me at the time. The look on that kid’s face is priceless.
Our Display team hideout was behind one of the windows, located just off the perfumery department. The Allders visual merchandising department was far larger than the one we had in Debenhams, and the photo above shows just a few of our team members.
Right, let’s talk about the Mod Revival in London in 1979. Having suffered no visible changes by his broken nose (mentioned in a previous post), Maurice, my colleague at work, agreed to join Sue and Carole for a photoshoot with a Mod theme.
The Mod revival was borne out of the disillusionment of the whole punk scene, and preempted the release of the film Quadrophenia. Paul Weller and his band, The Jam, were partly responsible for this revival and had adopted the style for themselves to suit their mix of punk, mod and ska.
Maurice had recently bought his M65 fishtail Parka during a trip we’d made to London’s Carnaby Street. If my memory serves me, I think I’d tried photographing him in an alleyway in Soho, but the shots were too dark, so I suggested the studio set-up instead.
Another piece of Mod style was the Harrington jacket, and Maurice had a cream coloured one that he’d decided to wear the night we went to a gig featuring a punk band called Splodgenessabounds. They’d just had a hit single enter the charts with three tracks. ‘Simon Templer’, ‘Michael Booth’s Talking Bum’, and the rather frenetic ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please’.
It was one of the most insane concerts I’d ever attended. It was hot, it was sweaty, it was packed to the rafters, and it was extremely loud. There was also a rather obnoxious punk habit on display, affectionately known as ‘gobbing’. This involved the audience showing their enthusiasm towards the band by spitting at them. Before we knew it there was a barrage of phlegm being hurled at the singer. Unfortunately for him he had his mouth open when one of the projectiles landed in his mouth. Without a second thought he spat it back into the audience, at around the same time people started pogoing and launching themselves off our backs. This was our signal to exit, and getting out onto the street was a massive relief, marred only by the fact that Maurice now had Dr. Marten™ boot prints all over the back of his nice new cream coloured Harrington jacket.
I know I must have taken this in 1979, because I’d been heavily affected by the premier of John Carpenter’s groundbreaking Halloween movie just a few weeks previously, and wanted to try and create some kind of horror scene. It’s quite frankly ridiculous, but that’s all a part of experimentation, and it makes me laugh, so I’m happy to share it. Maurice was a good sport playing the masked intruder and finding another use for his Parka, and I think I’d borrowed the silver mask from the display department at work.
I’ll finish up with another favourite of Sue and Carole. My parents had a few antiques dotted around the house, so this vintage telephone made an interesting looking prop. I’d been getting inspiration from fashion magazines such as Nova which produced some pretty stylish covers, and I really wanted to try and emulate something like that.
Next: Superman, Toothpaste, and the London phone box…
The starburst filter effects looks much like cosmic superheroes glowing with energy. No wonder you (and I) like it!
Inevitably, this draws my mind to Supernature by Cerrone and Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip (especially doing Starship Troopers). Going to take a cold shower now.
Although we do share similar tastes in most things, sadly I have to part company with you on Disco. I detested Disco with a passion. Great post though!