Long Beach *the Madman, a greaser from the early 2000s reminisces about the greaser scene in the Los Angeles area with the help of a short clip of the Wanderes, a Hispanic greaser gang from Orange county.
2019 A Greaser isn’t quite the same as a Rockabilly
Here’s a long introspection by *the Madman from Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, about the difference between being a greaser and rockabilly. The Madman graduated from high school in 2007 which means that he was born around 1979. @dawnofthethread2760 3 years ago Early to mid-90s there were “Rebels” in LA. No pomp’s just slicked […]
1956 ‘Sunshine in Soho’ (colourised)
There was nowhere as cosmopolitan in 1950s Britain as Soho, the night-life and coffee-shop capital of London. This half-hour film ‘Sunshine in Soho’ explores the markets and speciality shops of Soho, a long excerpt on the carnival, before turning to the coffee shops towards the end. It’s as good a portrait as we will ever […]
1958 The hand jive
Only one of the dances associated with 1950s rock’n’roll has the distinction of being British, the ‘hand jive’. In 1957 when filmmaker Ken Russell was a freelance photographer, he recorded the teenagers of Soho, London hand-jiving in the basement of The Cat’s Whisker coffee bar, where the hand-jive was invented by Leon Bell of Leon Bell and the Bell […]
1957 ‘The Square’
Here’s Michael Winner’s short film ‘The Square’ shot in King’s Cross, London, in 1957 (it went unreleased at the time). = Argyle Square (says one commentator) The skiffle band are none other than Rory McEwan singing ‘it takes a worried man’ and ‘crawdad hole’ while the local inhabitants jive. The members of the group – […]
1958 Lancashire Teds
‘Morning in the Streets’ a 35-minute poetic depiction in film giving an “impression of life and opinion in the back streets of a Northern City in the morning”was directed by Denis Mitchell & Roy Harris in 1958 by the BBC’s Northern Film Unit (although not broadcast until 25 of March 1959). The city in question […]