With apologies (I’d been sitting on this contribution in error for a few weeks) I wanted to post this great piece earlier. Mark Hagen from London was another who was lucky enough to get to the opening event of Mick’s Rock n Roll Public Library – his kindly submitted summary follows:
It was a top event, & the actual installation is brilliant – bigger & better than the previous version. It’s taken over a suite of offices right under the Westway. The rooms are divided up thematically – there’s a DVD room (playing Westway To The World last night), a video room (where you can pick any of Mick’s tapes to play; my 14 year old son enjoyed “Killer Clowns From Outer Space”), a magazine room, a book room, Mick’s office, a working studio, a kind of games room, an American themed room and evrywhere you look tons of, well, stuff…
Image Courtesy Peter Stevens
Also seen: Leo Williams, Gina Birch from The Raincoats, Tessa from The Slits, Gaz Mayall, Lucinda Mellor,Kiera Knightley and more…it spilled out of the actual Library & into an open space under the Westway next door where there were bands playing, beer to be drunk & jerk chicken to be eaten; nothing better on a hot muggy night in Ladbroke Grove.
It’s not all Clash/BAD/CSi related although a lot of it is – Mick’s mum’s scrapbook, assorted stage wear, hats, t-shirts, shoes, toys, memorabilia of all sorts. There’s signed books from Allen Ginsberg, fanzines, magazines, comics, records, tapes, music stuff, football stuff, London stuff, cinema stuff, school atlases, some of those old Cinemascope viewers – literally thousands of objects, often displayed on the actual shelves from Mick’s Acton lock-up.
And one of the really cool things about it is that it’s (nearly) all hands-on. You can play with the toys, read the books & magazines, poke around in Mick’s tape boxes, try on the hats, play the fruit machines and take a digital photocopy of anything you like & put it on a memory stick to take away with you (I think you have to supply the stick though!)
Image Courtesy of Peter Stevens
If it’s at all possible if you can go then you should – and you should set aside a couple of hours at least to take it all in….
—- Thanks again Mark – please note the library remains open until August 25th to still plenty of time to pay a visit.
ROCK N ROLL PUBLIC LIBRARY:
2 ACKLAM ROAD, Portobello Green,
London, W10 5XL
(Ladbroke Grove Underground)
18th July to 25th August 2009,
11am-7pm. Wednesday-Sunday
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