Pica~Post No.15

FREE

feat.

a Fanzine

by Oi Polloi

Cords! Blackpool! Grizzly Bears!

AW18

POST

~ PICA The Mixed Bag No. 15

production.

Creative Direction: Nigel Lawson & Steve Sanderson Editor: Sam Waller Design: SJ Hockett / Wonder Room Studio Photos: Adam Hindmarch, Sam Waller & whoever shot the photos for those old postcards of Blackpool Words: Harry Longstaff, Sam Waller & Eddy Rhead Cover Art: Stella Murphy

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PICA~ POST

Pica~Post is an

Cogitation from the Editor's Desk 03 An Interview with Brian Cannon 06 Postcards from Blackpool 10

Illustration: Stuart Fear Styling: Liam Daly & Steve Sanderson Comic: David Bailey Clothes Wearers: Junior Clint, Richard Harris & Ebo Nwabuokei Printed by: MARCs & Push Print Thanks to Brian Cannon, Liam at Lee, the people of Blackpool and the flounders of Morecambe Bay.

www.oipolloi.com @oipolloi

Children of the Cord 24

In Search of the

Sandwich Boys 31

The 'Great' Outdoors 36

Rich Lineage in 'Smashed It' 44

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There’s a lot of stuff out there. Not only are there billions of people, but there’s all the other things too – the trees, the animals, the buildings, the films, the cars, the food, the clothes, the phone boxes, the washing machines, the telescopic back-scratchers and the JML ironing board covers.

There’s no way all these unrelated things can be tied together, so for this issue of this relatively sporadic fanzine, we haven’t tried to. This thing here is a mixed bag - there's no theme or big overarching concept here, just all sorts of unrelated bits and pieces that we’re into.

If variety is the spice of life, then this is our spice rack...

New Stuff!

Shetland Woollen Co. Jumpers

There's warm, there's toasty, and then there's these jumpers from Shetland Woollen Co. If you're the type of humanoid whose legs turn to the consistency of Hartley's jelly every time heat-hoarding, soul-soothing brushed wool is brought into the conversation, you might want to pull up a chair and take a good look at this stuff.

Mystery Mephisto Shoe

We’ve made some shoes with Mephisto. We’re not sure if they’ll have been unleashed into the world by the time you read this sentence – but take our word for it… they’re pretty special.

In this hectic age obsessed with technical gimmicks and throwaway experiences, it's reassuring to know that comfort is still king.

And when it comes to comfort, none do it better than Finn Comfort. Top-notch materials like natural cork and full-grain leather collide with a truly unmistakeable shape to create a real tasty foot-based quiche.

The Mixed Bag

If you're seeking some supremely sleek Scandi schmutter, have a good 'ol ganders at NN07. They've got jackets that make you look like you know about modernist architecture, their shirts make you look like you solely watch incomprehensible four-hour long foreign films, and their knits make you look like you... errr... have good taste in knitwear.

Dogs aren’t just for Christmas, and Superga shoes aren’t just for summer strolls around sleepy Italian towns. These ones here are made from suede so without patronising you too much and telling you stuff you already know, they’re a bit more suitable for autumn days and walking along leafy pavements and eating grotesque amounts of cinnamon out of a carved out pumpkin.

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an interview with

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brian cannon Words & Photos by Sam Waller

this is probably a pretty obvious statement to make, but there’s more to music than just the music. things like melody and chords and all that are fairly important, but there are a thousand other factors that help turn a song, track or album into something more than just a bunch of sound waves smacking into your ear drums. record sleeves are one such factor — and not many have created quite as many stone cold classics as brian cannon. as the man behind the infamous microdot agency, brian was responsible for looking after the visual side of both oasis and the verve, as well as designing covers for bands like suede, cast and inspiral carpets. here’s an interview with him about graffiti in wigan, his trademark ‘in-camera’ style and the logistics of putting a rolls royce in a swimming pool...

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Maybe an obvious first question – but how did you get into designing records? what were you into when you were growing up in wigan?

I specifically set out to design record sleeves, because I was a fan of punk rock. I was 11 in 1977, when I first got into it all.

do you remember the first time you saw ‘punk’?

why do you think it had such an impact on so many people? was it because it was so different?

how did this lead into doing design?

I’m the eldest in my family, so I didn’t have the influence of an older brother – but I did have an older cousin called Tony who was 15 at the time — and when you’re 11, that’s a massive difference. I’d heard about this phenomenon from Tony, and then I saw the Buzzcocks on Top of the Pops — and to actually see it in the flesh — it blew me away.

Exactly, it was totally different. At that time, Top of the Pops was your barometer, and glam rock was pretty much all you had — things like Sweet and Mud — long hair, flares, platforms and mad outfits. But then all of a sudden you had these lads who looked like your mates, with short hair and tight pants, making this fast, aggressive music. And I loved it.

Me and my mates thought, “We’ve got to get a band together.” So we met up at my mum’s house in Wigan, and I realised instantly that I couldn’t play guitar. I just couldn’t get my head around chords.

But I’d always been good at drawing. My dad was a fantastic illustrator, far better than me, but the opportunities for illustrators in Wigan in the 1940s were zero – so he worked as a coal miner and never did anything with it. But he was very much in favour of me doing drawing, and he always encouraged me.

And with punk, if you looked at the graphics and the visual identity, it felt like it was in reach. I think that was the point of it. Before punk, bands were like creatures from another planet — but with punk, the whole

it’s interesting how even in your early teens you knew exactly what you wanted to do.

what was that?

what did you do then?

I remember doing this art foundation course, and the tutor was going around, asking us what we wanted to do when we finished our education. He came to me and I said, “I want to design record sleeves.” But straight away he said, “No, no, no – you can’t be so specific, you need to get a job in graphics and learn your way.”

I was almost derided for it – because not only was I going to do record sleeves, but I was going to go freelance from the get go. I think anyone can do it these days, because you just get a laptop and then you’re a graphic designer all of a sudden.

But back then, not only was there no social media and no internet, but the equipment required to do the job of a graphic designer, the forerunner to Photoshop, cost £300,000. It was this machine called Quantel Paintbox.

The Mixed Bag

process was demystified – the man in the street could get involved. That was a massive inspiration to me.

So I married my love of the music with my talent for art, and thought that I’d become a sleeve designer instead.

it was a computer, about the size of your house, with less power than your mobile phone. It was way out of my reach — I could hardly afford a paper and pencil. this punk style was really stark, with high contrast black and white, degraded imagery, and it just so happened that if you photocopied an image over and over, it went like that. And that was handy, because all I could afford to use was a photocopier.

There was a little print shop at the bottom of Library Street in Wigan, and I’d be in there all day, with a scalpel and a tin of glue, putting these things together in the shop – and that’s how it all started.

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how did your first sleeve come about? was that the ruthless rap assassins one?

Yeah — I did a graffiti mural on the side of a warehouse in 1984, and it was noticed by a guy called Greg Wilson, who was a very influential DJ at that time. He’d thought to himself, I’m going to see this New York style graffiti in London or Manchester or Birmingham at some point, but he couldn’t believe it that he’d seen it in Wigan. He sent word out on the street that he wanted to meet whoever had done it, and I was summoned to his house. We ended up becoming friends and I did this sleeve.

And then off it went from there.

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what happened next then?

I met Richard Ashcroft at a party and got chatting, but then The Verve got signed and I didn’t see him for another two years. I ended up bumping into him in a petrol station at six o’ clock in the morning. He said, “Wow, you’re that sleeve guy. We’ve just been signed – do you want the gig?”

So I went to London to have a meeting with Virgin, who The Verve were signed to. Vigin obviously had some big London agency lined up to do this work for The Verve, so they were horrified when Richard Ashcroft said he wanted this unknown student he’d met at a party in Wigan to do the artwork. But they were cool enough to think, “Well, this is what the band wanted.” And then after the first single came about, they were like, “Sorry we doubted you.”

what else were you doing at that time?

On the back of doing the stuff for The Verve, Suede got in touch. And then I met Noel Gallagher. I used to have an office in Manchester on New Mount Street in the same building as the Inspiral Carpets office, and I got chatting to him in the lift about trainers.

what were they?

They were a pair of adidas Indoor Super. I took my mother to Rome for her 60th birthday, and I found these trainers in some tiny backstreet shop.

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wasn’t the oasis logo based roughly on the adidas logo?

was it hard to keep up with it all?

iwas going to ask you about that. as a lot of your images were done without photoshop, ‘in camera’, how did you go about getting them? creating an image like the oasis 'be here now' cover doesn’t look easy.

were you given free reign with all this?

The original was kind of the adidas font – but we binned it, because with the adidas font, the ‘A’ is just like an ‘o’ with a line on the side, so it just looked like ‘oosis’.

I did the logo in ’93, and then their first album came out in ’94. After Oasis it went buck-wild... Ash, Cast, even Atomic Kitten… it was mental.

No, because if you think about it, even a busy band back then would only put out three singles and an album out per year – so even if you’ve got five bands a year, that’s only twenty jobs a year.

Mind you, it was labour intensive as there was no Photoshop.

This is a very important point to make. Because it was all shot on film – we didn’t have the luxury of looking at the back of the camera and seeing what we’d got. We had no idea what we’d got until we got the photos back from the lab. Imagine putting a Rolls Royce in a swimming pool and realising the photos weren’t exposed correctly.

Before the shoot, there’d be a massive process of research and preparation, so when the day comes, nothing was left to chance.

Yeah, it was a beautiful situation.

With both The Verve and Oasis, the record companies just let us get on with it. All they did was pay for the bills.

And that was great, because we knew what we were doing.

Finding a pool that someone’s going to let you put a Rolls Royce

into was the hardest part.

alot of the oasis ones are particularly complicated. what was the hardest one to pull off?

how many shots did you take of that one?

how did you work out which was the best one, when you had a thousand pretty much identical photos to look at?

do you think this real life, ‘in camera’ method of creating these really detailed images helped elevate them a bit?

and it must have been more fun that sitting around staring at a computer.

Putting a Rolls Royce in a pool was pretty tough. Finding a pool that someone’s going to let you put a Rolls Royce into was the hardest part. And then we had to find a Rolls Royce that wasn’t worth £50,000 – because Oasis weren’t that rich.

It was a scrap Rolls Royce, with no engine in it, but it still cost us £1,000 to hire it. And then we had to get a crane and dangle it in.

That one was ridiculous, because like I said, we didn’t have the luxury of seeing what we’d shot. For that shoot there was something like 30 odd rolls of film, with 36 exposures on each roll – so it was almost a thousand frames of something that’s really just a still life. That’s excessive.

We stayed there that night, and then we got the films processed in London. Then there was the wait, like an expectant father.

It was like snow blindness. We’d start with the obvious non-starters, and whittle it down and down. It was a very laborious process of elimination, but we didn’t know any other way.

The Mixed Bag By that point we could have easily Photoshopped it, but we just did things for real because it was our trademark, and I enjoyed doing things that way. We started doing it that way out of necessity, because we couldn’t afford computers – but even when we could afford them, we still did things the real way as we preferred it.

Yeah – I loved it. Just to see a Rolls Royce in a swimming pool – it looked amazing.

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what about the definitely maybe cover? obviously now that’s talked about as being one of the best record covers of all time, but were people saying that when it was released?

i suppose there’s a lot that’s tied in with that. the memories that come with it and everything else – it’s a full package. what was the story behind the definitely maybe cover?

that documentary style?

it’s designed to look candid, but what was the reality of it?

No, they weren’t. It’s all very well saying things with the benefit of hindsight. It’s just been voted as one of the top 70 record sleeves of all time – and do you know what? I’m not going to rain on my own parade, because I think it’s a great sleeve — but had that been for a band you’d never heard of, it wouldn’t be in the top 70.

It’s an anti-band shot. That was the idea. There’s a Beatles album called A Collection of Beatles Oldies (but Goldies!), and on the back there’s this shot of them in this dressing room in Japan. And I just loved the fly on the wall nature of it – none of them were looking at the camera. And whilst it looks nothing like Definitely Maybe, that’s where the inspiration came from.

Precisely. The band are having their picture took, and they’re all watching the telly.

It was incredibly staged. It’s too perfect of a composition to just happen.

We positioned everyone very carefully. Even the still on the television was specifically chosen – it’s the shot in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly where he’s got him by the face. It was paused on VHS. That’s how meticulous it was.

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there’s no further explanation required.

My favourite record sleeves, with the exceptions of Never Mind the Bollocks, are photographically based. I just think it’s the best way of doing it.

And that’s why, in the cases of both The Verve and Oasis, there’s very little intrusion with type or logos.

With The Verve, the logo would be in the shot, and with Oasis, the logo would be in the top corner. We’d spend ages coming up for the idea and staging the shoot, we didn’t want to ruin it by plastering a logo in front of it.

it seemed like there was definite styles for each band you worked with. your covers for the verve al ways had real text in the photo. was that a faff to do that? setting the letters on fire on the 'storm in heaven' cover looked tough.

Yes, it was. I had the letters made by a steel fabricator in Oldham, and covered them with this cladding that street jugglers use when they’re juggling fire, and then poured paraffin onto them. The only downside was that the letters gave off loads of smoke – and because we were in a cave, it just wouldn’t clear. We were having to wait about half an hour in-between each shot for the smoke to clear.

where did the idea for that one come from?

I’d never seen letters set on fire and photographed before, but I just thought it’d look good. I do a lot of lecturing at colleges, and I always say, much to the chagrin of the lecturers, that you don’t have to explain everything away.

Some things you just do because they look good – there’s no further explanation required.

very true. maybe a tough question, especially consider- ing what you’ve just said… but what makes a good record cover?

You just know, don’t you? There can be a thousand reasons why one might be bad, but I can’t think of one reason why one will be good. There’s no formula to it. It’s down to the individual too – it’s all opinion.

what do you think the purpose of a record cover is? is it marketing, or is it art?

were the covers always influenced by the music – or sometimes did you just have an idea you wanted to use on something?

from what I’ve read, you weren’t just some guy in an office sending off designs to the bands – you were involved with the bands a lot more, going on tours and things like that.

what was it like being around those bands when they suddenly became massive?

did you have a few people working for you by that point?

I don’t think it’s a marketing tool — I’d regard it as a bonus for the fans. I don’t think it sells records.

I’ve bought the odd record because of the sleeve, but then again, I’m a sleeve designer.

No — that never happened. We were quite vehement about that. Every sleeve was like a bespoke suit, cut for that particular piece of music.

I was of the opinion that the more I got my head around what the band were into and how they thought, the better the visuals could be… and hanging around with a rock and roll band is good fun. I toured America with both Oasis and The Verve, but it was mad, because I was the only person on the tour-bus who had nothing to do.

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Some things you just do because they look good –

a lot of your sleeves are photography-based. was there a particular reason for this?

It was all a bit weird really. Anybody will tell you this – the best bit of any band is that bit when they just start taking off. The best bits are when it’s still pretty innocent.

Yeah – but it was never massive. At Microdot’s peak, there was five or six of us. In the late 90s we started branching out into all sorts of mad stuff. We were running night-clubs, we were publishing magazines, we were managing bands… at one point there was talk of importing Volkswagen Beetles from Mexico.

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a brilliant idea.

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I’d gone to Mexico on holiday, and I kept seeing these old Beetles. They were still making them there, and we’d worked out that if we shipped them back to England, and even if we turned them right hand drive, we could still make £2,000 on every one we sold. If we sold 500 of them, we’d make a million quid.

We were all set to go, but Volkswagen head office in Germany had told the Mexicans they couldn’t sell us the cars, as they reckoned it’d harm the Golf market in the UK.

but it would have been mint.

what do you mean by things being, “so microdot.” was there a certain attitude there?

I know. So we then tried the Brazilians as they were making them there too – and this was so Microdot it was untrue. On the street in Shoreditch where we had our studio, there was a little café called Franco’s that was run by a Portuguese family. Now they don’t speak Spanish in Brazil – they speak Portuguese, so I went in to Franco’s one day and I said I’d give the man who worked behind the counter a tenner if he’d come to the office, and speak down the phone to Volkswagen HQ in Sao Paulo.

He did it, but it still didn’t happen.

Absolutely. The reason why it was like that was because I didn’t have any experience of working in an agency. I had no idea how things should be done — we were just making things up as we were going along.

It was bonkers. When we moved to London, we had enough money from Alan McGee to buy this computer, and to set up a studio in Shoreditch. But in this mad rush to move to London, I’d forgotten that we needed somewhere to live, so me and Matt, the lad who worked with me, had to live in the studio. There was one room, and a toilet, and we lived in there for four months. We had a couch that you could take the cushions off, and we’d take it in turns every night – one of us sleeping on the couch, one of us sleeping on the cushions on the floor.

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And we could party hard, because we knew that the only person we had to answer to the following day had been out with us previous night – there was no way Noel Gallagher was going to ring us at nine in the morning, because we’d just left him at seven in the morning. There’d be occasions when a client would turn up, and there’d be somebody asleep on the floor in the studio.

nowadays you do all sorts of stuff – and amongst various design bits, you’ve been photographing northern soul nights. how did this come about?

i suppose that comes from the same place as your record covers – you’re a fan.

alright, I think I’ve pretty much ran out of questions now. Have you got any wise words or anything to finish this off?

That was a massive project for me. It started in 2012, when the renaissance was under way. A friend of mine from Wigan said that I should go along to this club run by these kids who were into northern soul.

I was very aware that when you take photographs of people dancing in dark rooms, they just look like statues at a wedding, but I wanted to get some soul or some atmosphere into the shot, so I thought I’ll use an off-camera flash.

I went to this club-night with my mate John, who was going to be my lighting guy, holding my flash in his hand, at a 45 degree angle to me. But when we get there, his phone rings — his wife was pregnant and her car had got a puncture — so that was my lighting gone. So I just put the light on the stage or on the floor, and worked around that, and the results I got were astonishing, purely by accident – I got these massive long shadows, cast from behind.

Absolutely, growing up in Wigan in the 1970s made it kind of inevitable to be a Northern Soul fan.

Never give in.

I had no idea how things should be done —

we were just making things up as we were going along.

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12 Modernist man Eddy Rhead fights the corner of the misunderstood seaside town

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Postcards From

Blackpool

Growing into acid house adulthood, a night out in Blackpool was always pure hedonism. In Manchester, going to The Haçienda was a serious business — the music, the 'scene', the drugs — it was a full time job. Blackpool rarely takes anything seriously, and the late 80s and early 90s club scene was no different.

Sequins laid the foundation, and then Shaboo with a young whippersnapper called Sasha cutting his DJ teeth, all hands in the air and big piano drops.

Into the 1990s and my mate Nipper was a resident at Hacketts, so a car load of us would go up every weekend — Blackpool providing a welcome relief from the moodiness of Manchester clubs at the time. My 21st birthday was spent in a club in Blackpool. I’m an upstanding, law abiding member of the community now so cannot remember or reveal details of much of the evening, but the highlight was bowling back to some stranger’s house, God knows where, only to find Todd Terry (who had been DJing at the club earlier) sitting in the living room enjoying a big glass of Vimto – the only refreshment the host had to offer. Very Blackpool.

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People who live down South are deprived of many things Northerners have, like friendly shop keepers, chips and gravy, nice tap water and decent bands, but there’s one thing I feel most sorry for Southerners not having – Blackpool.

If you grew up north of the River Trent it’s safe to assume you’ve been to Blackpool. It’s also safe to assume that, as an adult, you’ve only been for one of two reasons ___________ for a stag do or because you have kids.

Blackpool has the facilities and enthusiasm to cater for both of these things in spades (pun intended), but perhaps we’re growing, as a nation, too sophisticated to appreciate the charms of Blackpool. I'm sure many of you look upon Blackpool as being... well... a bit shit, but I’m here to argue for Blackpool as being one on the greatest places in Britain, if not the world.

I like to think of myself as a pretty well-travelled, sophisticated, urbane, rounded and cultured kind of guy. As I get older I have begun to appreciate the finer things in life – nice hotels, decent beer, quality clobber, expensive home furnishings and the like, but as I drift further and further away from my working class roots and turn into a poncey middle class twat, there’s still a part of me that still really, really loves Blackpool — and I don't really have to spend too long trying to examine the reasons why.

First things first; it’s probably best not to overthink Blackpool – you just go with it. It’s the perfect place to forget all that pretentious crap I described myself as earlier. Nobody really cares how cool you are in Blackpool and as such you can cast off all your inhibitions and just have a good laugh. I’ve been there at least once a year almost every single year of my life and I’ve almost always had a brilliant time.

As a little kid in the 1970s we would all pile into my dad’s Cortina and battle to be the first to spot Blackpool Tower as we were going down the M55, usually mistaking an electricity pylon in a field just outside Preston for it in instead. We would inch down the prom at night, taking in the illuminations, jealous of the poshos who had a sun roof they could stick their head out of.

When we were a bit older we went on a school trip and some of us 'got lost' in the Pleasure Beach, shaking off the teachers, spending all our money in the first twenty minutes and getting back to the coach (and some angry teachers) hours later.

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Growing older and having children myself, I still love going now. As long as you are happy to provide the kids with an endless supply of money for the arcades and sugar-based treats they’re happy, and if the weather is nice and the tide is out, the beach is beautiful. The promenade has had millions of pounds spent on it in recent years with good landscaping, improved sea

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defences, and public artworks.

My personal favourite is They Shoot Horses Don’t They by Manchester based artist Michael Trainor, which is, at six metres in diameter, the world’s biggest mirror ball — referencing Blackpool’s long history of dance clubs.

The glamorous Tower Ballroom is world famous and has provided a venue for dancing since 1894, in the 1970s Ian Levine at The Blackpool Mecca provided a more disco and progressive alternative to the largely derivative Wigan Pier Northern Soul scene and, as mentioned, clubs like Shaboo in the 90s offered up a uniquely Blackpool experience.

Blackpool can be a cruel mistress at times and I shall admit that when the weather is crap (and the weather can be REALLY crap), Blackpool can be pretty grim. But when the sun is shining there is no greater place and, because of where it is situated on the West Coast and sitting in a very wide, open bay, the sunsets at Blackpool are some of the most magical you will ever see.

I haven’t got time or space to go too deeply into some the great architecture in Blackpool but along with obvious highlights like the Tower

and the Winter Gardens, there are some real hidden gems. The Casino at the Pleasure Beach is covered in tacky additions nowadays, but underneath it all is pure 1930's sleek modernism – designed by renowned architect Joseph Emberton (who also designed the Fun House, which mysteriously and conveniently burnt down a few years ago).

Five of the rides in the Pleasure Beach are listed structures, with my favourite being The Flying Machines, the oldest operating amusement ride in Europe (designed by Hiram Maxim, the man behind of the first portable machine gun!) Other Blackpool architectural treats are the former Woolworths, just beneath the Tower, from 1936 and the former Odeon. Opened in 1939 this was the largest Odeon in the country able to seat 3000 people — it’s now Funny Girls, a huge 'burlesque, cabaret show bar'.

Blackpool, I concede, may not to be to everyone’s taste — it has many social problems and you don't have to go too far from the bright lights of the promenade to see poverty and deprivation — but it has been serving holidaymakers for three centuries with unpretentious and unbridled fun.

It’s rarely anyway an old me can pretty

a place that disappoints, and — anywhere that misery guts like have fun must be special.

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Greetings

Fro

m

Blackpool

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Children of the Cord Favoured by everyone from sharp-dressed geography teachers to bold and courageous quail hunters, it’s safe to say that corduroy is one of life’s true wonders.

So when we sat down with the work-wear founding fathers at Lee to draw up the blueprints for some new garb, it didn’t take us too long to work out what we wanted to do.

We’ve taken the time-honoured 101Z jeans and the Rider Jacket, and blessed them with some super-classy, wide-waled jumbo cord in three autumnal shades.

Very nice, if we may say so ourselves.

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B E AT T H E D I S TA N C E !

TRAINING SHOES

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5.

6.

4.

7.

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1. adidas BW Army £129.00 Campus £85.00 Continental 80 £75.00 Forest Grove £69.00 Forest Hills £75.00 Indoor Comp SPZL £99.00 Indoor Super £85.00 Lowertree SPZL £99.00 Mallison SPZL £89.00 Marathon TR £89.00 Montreal 76 £75.00 Munchen Super SPZL £ 89.00 Nizza Hi £69.00 POD-S3.1 £99.00 Punstock SPZL £109.00 Ultra Tech £99.00 UltraBoost Clima £159.00 Wilsy SPZL £85.00 ZX 452 SPZL £109.00 ZX 500 RM £119.00

1 Marshall Street, Soho London W1F 9BA +44 (0)207 734 2585 soho@oipolloi.com

2. Converse 1970s Chuck Taylor £75.00 All Star 1970s Chuck Taylor £65.00 All Star Ox One Star

4. Novesta Oi Polloi Star Master £49.00 Star Dribble £55.00 Star Master £49.00

7. Superga 2390 Cotu Classic £52.00 2750 Cotu Classic £50.00 2390 Suede £75.00

5. Reebok ACT 300 £85.00 Aztrek OG £80.00 Classic 83 £75.00 Club C 85 MU £75.00 Phase 1 MU £75.00 Workout Clean MU £80.00 Workout Plus MU £75.00

8. Vans UA Authentic 44 £57.00 DX Anaheim Factory

£65.00

3. Nike ACG Dog Mountain £85.00 ACG Ruckel Ridge £119.00 Air Max 1 £99.00 Air Max 1 Premium £109.00 Air Max 93 £109.00 Air Revaderchi £135.00 Air Vortex £75.00 Air Vortex Leather £75.00 6. Spring Court EXP-X14 £105.00 G2 Classic Canvas £67.00 G2 Classic Heavy Twill £75.00 Oi Polloi G2 £75.00 Classic Canvas

W W W. O I P O L L O I . C O M

UA Classic Slip-On 98 £60.00 DX Anaheim Factory UA Era 95 DX Anaheim Factory

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UA Old Skool 36 DX Anaheim

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UA Style 36 Decon SF

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IN SEARCH OF THE

The Mixed Bag

A lot of people reading this will probably be familiar with the Paninari — a band of young and carefree Italians with a penchant for fast food, dirt bikes and slick garb who populated the piazzas of Milan and Rome in the mid80s. A European take on the American dream, the Mediterranean cousins of the casuals — lug soled Timberlands... Best Company sweatshirts... technicolour ski-jackets... Levi’s jeans... Superga pumps... Burlington socks... burgers...

But what else was involved? Where did they come from?

Where are they now? Was there more to it all than just wearing fancy clothes? For a subculture referenced, namechecked and generally nattered on about so often, there’s very little information out there beyond a few photos and a few old magazine articles.

Here’s a fairly loose attempt at trying to fill in some of the gaps.

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Whilst the (and their female counterparts - the Paninare) were a product of the 1980s, it might be said that the seeds were planted back in 1976, when a decision was made to allow private television channels to broadcast locally in Italy. This point might sound fairly irrelevant, but this small fact meant that by the early 80s, thousands of new television channels had popped up, filling up the hours of dead air with low-end soap operas, music television and brash action films, all shipped over from America.

Italy’s 1982 World Cup win and Reagan’s free trade push might have also played a part in this new age of confidence and Yank-influenced consumerism.

Andrea Cane is the creative director for WP Lavori (one of the first places to stock things like Vans, Paraboot and Filson in Italy), and was there for the early days of Paninaro. Here’s how he saw it...

“I think that the American film industry influenced a lot of the Italian environment. Movies such as Rocky, Top Gun and Rambo were pushing the American dream into the quiet Italian family homes. Actors like Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro were wearing products that we recognized as iconic American statements.

The teenagers wanted to be different from the classical Italian stereotype.

They wanted to break the rules of the previous generations, they felt powerful and fearless to risk and to try — they wanted to be cooler and international.”

This influx of Western culture offered a window into a world of flash cars and fast food that seemed a million miles away from old, historic Italy — and the youth, keen to distance themselves from their more traditional parents, hoovered it up wholesale. It wasn’t long before the influence of American television spread out from the living room and into the street.

And what better place to congregate than the burger bar — the true symbol of American splendour and the modern, fast paced life-style these kids wanted a slice of. Tom Cruise didn’t want to spend hours slaving over the perfect pasta dish, and neither did Italy’s teens. It was around the newly opened fast food restaurants of Milan that the Paninari (an extension of ‘panino’, meaning sandwich) got their name, as Andrea explains.

“The first appearance was at Al Panino — this was the place which gave the only ‘made in Italy’ subculture a name. It was the land of rich teenagers, and their only aim was to be fashionable and curated in order to be the best: it was like a challenge.”

This competitive element and love of American culture combined to create a truly unique uniform of brightly coloured ski jackets, cuffed-denim and massive cowboy belts as one-up-manship led them to seek out only the finest Western wear.

Like the rockabillies that gather at Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park, this lot looked more ‘American’ than any real Americans.

Dirt bikes were also immensely popular, and the brightly coloured 125 scramblers from companies like Zundapp, Cagiva and Gilera offered yet another way to trump your mates in the endless competition to become ‘el gallo’ AKA the cock AKA the top boy.

Another thing worth mentioning is that for some reason the Paninari really buzzed off Walt Disney characters. This seems like a strange ingredient for a subculture juiced on Rambo and dirt bikes, but beneath all the macho stuff this lot had a real fondness for intricate embroidered effigies of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.

It wasn’t long before Italian labels got in on the act. Olmes Caretti merged bright colours and outdoor imagery (and loads of ducks) for Best Company’s ultra popular sweatshirts, and Massimo Osti plucked functional detail from vintage military gear to create outerwear perfection under the C.P. Company and Stone Island names.

1986 was also the year The Pet Shop Boys immortalised the subculture in their aptly-titled synth-based stomper,‘Paninaro’, and comedian Enzo Braschi appeared on the silver screen as a stereotypical burger-loving Paninari in Italian Fast Food (as seen above in full Moncler puffer/washed denim get-up).

It could probably be said that by the time a ‘movement’ or ‘subculture’ has got a name, a uniform and a hit song by a London synth-pop duo, it’s got too big to sustain itself, and by the late 80s things had moved on. Not only did the older devotees trade in their down jackets and El Charro belts for Gucci suits and high-powered office jobs, but American clothes, fast food and action films were no longer the exotic commodity they once were.

In the same way the branded trainer in the North West of England slowly morphed from a niche curiosity to a part of everyday life, the brash Western garments once seen as shocking to leathery-faced traditionalists had become commonplace.

But although it may be said that the scene itself had faded out by the 90s, that distinct Paninaro flavour may still be tasted to this day. Dirt bikes might have been swapped for smart phones, but the act of knocking around town in well-made, functional garb is now a truly worldwide obsession, from Milan all the way to Middleton. Burgers are pretty popular too.

The Mixed Bag

This obsession with image and style (and disregard for more serious matters) might all seem a bit shallow, but with Italy coming out of a long fought battle between fascism and communism, these more trivial things were a much needed relief from past tensions.

Whilst most other subcultures made at least some attempt at pretending to be political or intellectual, the Paninari, for the most part, just wanted to eat burgers, wear American clothes and talk to girls.

By the mid-80s, the style had spread from Milan and Rome out into the smaller towns and cities of Italy, and magazines with names like Wild Boys and Preppy (full of daft comics and massive down jackets) had popped up to cater for the insatiable demand for anything vaguely related to this new phenomenon.

England had also got wise to the new look from the continent, and in the August of 1986, i-D magazine ran a full article on what it termed ‘Italy’s biggest teen sensation’, complete with a full glossary of Paninaro terminology (‘faggiano’ meant ‘dickhead’, whilst a ‘ciffone’ was a ‘dreadful girl’) and a soundtrack of approved bands (including Bronski Beat and The Communards).

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The Mixed Bag

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Backwoods Hijinks on the Silver Screen Something strange happens when the winter starts to rear its frosty noggin' — we all start thinking we're roughand-ready outdoorsmen – kitted out with big anoraks and Gore-Tex boots like some kind of 21st century Shackleton.

But it’s not long after the first slip on black ice, the second bout of flu, or the third Christmas market breakdown when we're forced to confront the fact that all our adventurous fantasies will forever remain at arm’s length.

With that in mind, here’s some similar cinematic city folk who are equally as hapless as the rest of us when faced with foreign outdoor realms and miserable weather.

Words: Harry Longstaff Pictures: Stuart Fear

The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino 1978

It goes without saying that being dropped in a war zone and getting tortured is no one’s idea of a good time, nor is it a situation any sane man would find themselves equipped to deal with well. It's no wonder Mike (played by Robert De Niro) and his buddies have such a traumatic time in 'Nam. What I'm more interested in is when Mike returns home, and is unable to find the peace and solitude that he once coveted while hunting game in the mountains.

A stand-out example of this is when Mike, a once-proud hunter who insists on taking a buck with one shot, is unable to kill a deer, instead firing his rifle blindly in the air, and yelling “OK?” to no one in particular. It is a profoundly sad moment in a film chock-a-block full of profoundly sad moments.

Still, at least he’s got that slick Holubar mountain parka to cheer him up.

The Mixed Bag

Starting things off, here’s Michael Cimino’s controversial classic The Deer Hunter. For those that don’t know, The Deer Hunter concerns itself with a trio of small-town steelworkers whose lives are changed irrevocably after their participation in the Vietnam War. Unfortunately for those seeking a cinematic equivalent of the arcade classic Big Buck Hunter, this film deceptively doesn't feature much actual deer hunting. Fans of Russian roulette should be pretty pleased though.

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GRIZZLY MAN, WERNER HERZOG – 2005

Next up, here's an example of just how wrong gallivanting in the wilderness can go – Werner Herzog's masterful documentary Grizzly Man. Grizzly Man is a quietly devastating and somewhat tragicomic tale of grizzly bear enthusiast and environmental activist Timothy Treadwell, who, after 13 summers of living among grizzlies in Alaska, was killed alongside his girlfriend after a deadly encounter with... an angry hive of wasps. Just kidding: they were eaten by a grizzly bear. No prizes for seeing that one coming.

A controversial figure far before the release of Grizzly Man, Timothy was consistently criticised by park rangers and bear experts for his grizzlyrelated antics in Katmai National Park. Treadwell believed that through his work ‘protecting’ the bears in Alaska, he had ‘gained their trust’. Park rangers, on the other hand, disagreed with Timothy, proclaiming that by familiarising the bears with human contact, Treadwell increased the likelihood that they would approach human habitation seeking food, and cause a confrontation in which humans would most likely be forced to blow their furry little heads off.

While what happened to Timothy could be read as the ill-advised follies of a city-loon, I think there's something overwhelmingly touching about his passion for the bears, his desire to be 'one' with nature, and his dissatisfaction with the human realm. Without sarcastic judgement or smug pretentiousness, Herzog arranges the film to show us a flawed, but passionate man; a man who confessed he wouldn't mind dying while doing something he loves, as he believed it would give his life meaning.

The world might have secretly scoffed at Treadwell becoming bear scran but perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, he'll get the last laugh on us.

There's a moral there, that I'll let you figure out for yourself.

WEEKEND, JEAN-LUC GODARD – 1967

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Those seeking a more metaphysical take on 'man vs. nature' need look no further than Weekend: one of cinema's most anarchic black comedies from one of the world's most divisive filmmakers — Jean-Luc Godard.

Tackling a proverbial boat-load of lofty, philosophical ideas, Weekend is a super-satirical story of a perpetually-bickering bourgeois couple who travel from Paris to the French countryside as civilization crashes and burns around them. As you can probably guess, it's dead popular with unshaven, beret-wearing, Chomsky-quoting, Che Guevara-wannabes that litter the smoking areas of many a fine Mancunian watering hole.

Throughout Weekend, Godard shows us a countryside that's been overtaken by the absurdity of city-life. In the film's most famous sequence, the couple becomes stuck in a traffic jam on a country road that seemingly never ends. Godard's camera tracks for just under ten minutes, revealing to us the consistent, escalating horror that's caused this mess.

While you'd have to have a textbook on hand to understand all the political and philosophical ideas it references, Weekend isn't some incomprehensible arty-farty piece of twaddle – it's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Packed full of jokes that'd ostracise you from your friendship groups if repeated, Weekend is a belly-laugh-laden yuk-a-thon that's leagues more thoughtful than the average.

DELIVERANCE, JOHN BOORMAN – 1972 The Mixed Bag

Based on the 1970 novel of the same name by James Dickey, Deliverance is the story of four suburban friends seeking 'deliverance' from the stresses of modern life through a backwoods canoe trip on the picturesque Cahulawassee River. After a particularly... errr... unpleasant run-in with the locals, their idyllic wilderness jaunt quickly becomes a desperate fight for survival.

Deliverance is widely appreciated as a no-holes-bared, adrenaline-fuelled thrill-ride, but I think there's a subtext to the film that deserves a bit more natter than it gets. While the film makes horrifying antagonists out of the wilderness and those who lurk in it, the 'civilised' characters are shown as the primary instigators of conflict. In one of the film's earliest scenes, the gang stops off at a mountain petrol station and proceed to condescend the locals, an action which eventually leads to the foursome being brutally attacked later on.

There's also a strong environmental undercurrent that punctuates the film.

The gang's canoe trip is framed within a desire to witness the area's unspoiled nature before the Cahulawassee River valley is flooded by construction of a dam, destroying much of the local landscape in its wake.

Similarly to Weekend, Deliverance shows how reliant civilization is on exploiting and ruining the natural landscape that surround our cities and societies, and how apprehensive we, supposedly 'civilised folk', are to admit that fact, until the worst arrives, and apologies become redundant.

That last paragraph might make me seem like a hempsmoking, poncho-wearing, long-haired eco-warrior; if it does, I apologise. I forget to take the recycling out in time for the bin men and end up just pelting it in the normal rubbish dumpster like the best of 'em.

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NANOOK OF THE NORTH, ROBERT J. FLAHERTY – 1922

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Right, let's end this one on a slightly lighter note – Robert J. Flaherty's landmark 'documentary', Nanook of the North. This film follows an Inuk named Nanook, as he gets about his daily 9-to-5 — which includes hunting a massive walrus, building a big 'ol igloo and trading with the civilised folk of Quebec.

While Nanook of the North is presented as a true-to-life documentary, a large portion of the film is scripted and staged. For example, when Nanook, perplexed at the sight of a gramophone, tries to eat a record (story goes that Nanook knew exactly what a gramophone was, but Flaherty thought it'd be a laugh to watch a man try and eat a slab of phonograph), and when the Inuit gang hunts a whale with traditional weapons even though they’d used guns for years.

And Nanook's name isn't even Nanook.

According to other cast members, his real name was Allakariallak. Suppose Allakariallak of the North isn't quite as snappy, is it?

That isn't a critique in any way: considering the film was made in 1922, it’s impressive that someone was experimenting so boldly with the cinematic form, a medium that was still very much in its infancy.

But yeah... still not quite a documentary.

So there you have it. Hopefully this has made you realise that it's not everyone's lot in life to be some kind-of Jim Whittaker-type.

Some people are born to explore forests, map jungles and climb mountains, while others are born to enjoy central heating, sofa-surfing and fawning over outdoor clobber from the comfort of their own home. There’s nowt wrong with either.

Besides, isn't enduring the Arndale’s Christmas-zombies almost as arduous as trekking up Everest anyway?

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Crash! Bang ta Wallop! Wha down jacket!

Battenwear main-man Shinya Hasegawa has truly gone to town here, and by town, we mean remote fishing village in the Arctic Circle that’s only accessible via skidoo and only sees the sun for five minutes a day.

This thing is a true winter coat of the highest order and all inferior coats must bow down in its presence.

And Wander are a really, really futuristic Japanese outdoor wear brand that sits somewhere between Snow Peak and...errr... we’re not really sure. Starting out in 2011, And Wander meld high-falutin’ technical details, mind-melting fabrics and forward-thinking fits with designs that are sure to turn heads whether your weekends are spent gulping hot Vimto atop Scafell Pike, or slurping suds in a city-centre beer garden... and if there’s mountains on Mars, this is presumably the stuff you’d wear to climb ‘em.

The Patagonia Retro Pile Jacket

The Y.M.C. Beach Jacket

A prime cut from the forefathers of fleece.

Loads of zip pockets, and softer than a bag of lambs. Delightful.

The ultimate garment for mildly miserable trudges along the coast. Aggressive seagull not included.

The Adsum Flop Fleece

Dead toasty... pockets for your mitts... bonus bit of fabric around the neck region to caress the jugular.

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