Weston – who, it’s worth pointing out, is daughter of Galen Weston, the
Canadian billionaire who bought Selfridges in 2003 – says that the
Ultra Lounge is loosely based on a space at the ’70s fashion boutique
Biba called The Rainbow Room, more recently occupied by Barkers on
Kensington High Street. But she also points out that Gordon Selfridge,
who founded the store in 1909, was always obsessed with hosting
‘extraordinary events’. Hours after Louis Blériot crossed the English
Channel in July 1909, his monoplane was towed to Oxford Street to be
displayed in Selfridges. The store later featured the first ever public
demonstration of television, hosted various ballrooms, and has housed
numerous shooting galleries, artists studios, libraries, restaurants,
reading rooms and ‘silent rooms’ over the decades.
Feature continues
Though it’s easy to be cynical, FuturePunk’s line-up does look pretty
good. Over the next fortnight the Ultra Lounge hosts some great gigs,
starting with the Buzzcocks and The Slits this Friday. There is an
exhibition of iconic black-and-white photographs by New Yorker Gruen.
There are screenings of seminal punk films (Don Letts’s ‘Punk
Attitude’, Julien Temple’s ‘The Filth And The Fury’ and Gruen’s ‘All
Dolled Up’ are screened this Sunday with director Q&As, plus there
are films over the next three Sundays about Leigh Bowery, The Ramones
and The Libertines). There will be stalls selling punk-themed records,
posters, magazines and books, plus Katie Grand’s boutique selling
high-end fashion designs. And, in a quaint touch, the Ultra Lounge will
host workshops on badge-making and T-shirt design along with
masterclasses on how to produce a fanzine – teaching teenagers to use a
John Bull printing press and a Xerox machine in an age when everyone
between the ages of 12 and 19 seems to be hosting an MP3 blog from
their mobile phone.
It is now nearly 31 years since the Sex Pistols played their first gig
at Saint Martin’s School Of Art on November 6 1975. More time has
elapsed since then than passed between then and the end of World War
II. No other movement has been as rigorously nostalgised, gentrified
and mythologised as punk. It’s become a glib adjective (to suggest
anything ‘edgy’), a baffling noun (‘Golf Punk’?), and a meaningless
verb (‘Punk’d’). It’s become a political football: Marxists love how it
inverted privileged value judgements; liberals celebrate its DIY
democracy; Thatcherites embrace its aggressive, anti-consensus
libertarianism.
What festivals like FuturePunk do is ask a recurring question. Was punk
an art-school theory that anarchist intellectuals imposed upon
unwitting proletarian dupes – as McLaren suggests – or was it was a
genuine radical uprising that was hijacked by middle-class
situationists, as John Lydon might contest?
‘It was both,’ says Bob Gruen. ‘You can’t separate the two. I remember
going to McLaren’s boutique and being incredibly impressed by the
quality of Vivienne Westwood’s clothes; there’s no doubt that this was
expensive, beautifully tailored fashion. But it would have been
meaningless if it were not for the hundreds of young, broke, DIY kids
who were following them, making their clothes, cutting their own hair,
making their own music.’
As Julien Temple acknowledges, punk has long been a museum piece. ‘Even
by the time of the [Bill] Grundy show it had been absorbed by the
media. Once more round the block isn’t really going to matter.’
FuturePunk launches at Selfridges this Friday.
Time Out London magazine (Issue 1855)
