Most journalists, bloggers, writers, and what-have-yous hope to find that one special thing very few people know about and get the opportunity to bring it out to the attention of a wider audience. It’s the one big story most hope to get at some point in their careers. Rarely do stories fall into laps, they have to be earned, written, shaped and created. But then again, sometimes you get lucky.

A couple of weeks ago, I was friended-up on social media by a guy called Immanuel Martin. I had no idea who he was or why he’d think I’d ever be fun to know. A day or so later, a message popped up in my in-tray. It was from Martin. He sent me an email detailing the life and work of a photographer he knew called Mary Lou Fulton. She was now in her eighties and living with her family in California. Martin explained how he had met Fulton when she worked as a photo-journalist back in the 1980s. He said that she had documented the punks, the mods and rockabilly gangs who hung around Los Angeles. Her work had been published in L.A. Weekly. Martin was one of the young teenage punks Fulton had photographed. He first met her and journalist Patrick McCartney at a Social Distortion and Redd Kross gig in January 1983.

“Like many punk shows in LA,” wrote Martin, “that particular night ended up with the LAPD arriving to shut the show down and then ensuing chaos as the LAPD overreacted and the punks rioted. It was across the street on Sunset Blvd where Mary Lou and Pat McCartney caught up with my friends and I for an interview. Mary Lou snapped several photographs and we chatted. Though Mary Lou and Pat were in their 40s, my friends and I were impressed with their genuine interest in our subculture and non-judgmental attitude. They seemed to have real empathy and understanding for us as kids just trying to be who we were but facing constant harassment by the LAPD and media seeking to paint punks in the worst possible light.”

In Reagan’s America there was no place for disaffected youth. Punk was seen as the lowest of the low and considered by some as a genuine threat to the stability of honest, decent, hard-working Americans, kinda thing. It was the same old BS that’s been spun since Cain and Abel.

A month or so later, Martin caught up with Fulton and McCartney again, this time at an Exploited gig at Huntington Park’s Mendiola’s Ballroom.

“It was an epic bill that night,’ said Martin. “with local LA punk bands, CH3, Youth Brigade, Aggression and Suicidal Tendencies. However only Suicidal Tendencies got to play before the LAPD showed up to shut the show down. They arrived in massive force with it seemed only one intention; to beat anyone they came across without regard for their affiliation to the event. The events that night are well documented so I won’t give a play-by-play here. However it was that night, that Mary Lou and Pat McCartney, journalists, faced the same LAPD violence that we faced. Both were viciously struck by the cops with their batons. Mary Lou ended up in the hospital with a broken rib.”

That night was later documented in an article written by McCartney with Bob Rivkin called “Cops and Punks: Report from the War Zone on the Destruction of a Subculture” in October 1983. The article was illustrated by a choice selection of Fulton’s photographs.

Mary Lou Fulton started her career working in advertising before she moved to Hollywood to work on commercials and documentaries. She showed considerable talent and a strong artistic flair. Fulton started taking more and more photographs which led her to becoming a photo-journalist traveling the world and working for various magazines and newspapers.

Sometime in the late-seventies/early-eighties she became fascinated by the punk rockers she met and photographed on London’s King’s Road. She liked their style, their vibrancy, and gallus attitude towards life. Back in L.A. she started documenting the local punks and all the other different youth cultures which were then flourishing in the city and becoming more prominent with the rise of MTV.

Martin and Fulton lost contact. He began his own career while Fulton continued with hers. Years passed, until one day around 2006/7, Martin rekindled his friendship with McCartney. They exchanged emails and kept in touch. It was after McCartney’s death that Martin contacted Fulton. They discussed her photographs and the hundreds of pictures she had taken of youth gangs during the eighties. Martin thought it was imperative that Fulton’s work was brought to a wider audience. He tried various sources but none, sadly, showed much interest. That’s when he contacted me. Like Martin, I think Fulton’s work brilliantly captured the energy and camaraderie of the various youth subcultures in London and Los Angeles during the 1980s. Her work deserves recognition for its artistry and cultural importance. Fulton’s work deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. And I hope this little blog here can start something happening.
 

 

 

 
More of Mary Lou Fulton’s photographs, after the jump…
 

The 1980s encapsulated in one photo.
 
If you remember the eighties, you were probably there. Big hair, bad music, and terrible fashion. Or was it so bad?

This was the decade when no one dominant musical trend dictated the terms—as say the Beatles did in the sixties or as heavy metal, prog rock or punk did in the seventies. Pop culture atomized into many different groups and subcultures. New wave, new romantics, punks, mods, goths, emos, hip-hop, rap, and eventually acid house and rave—which symbolically broke music down into euphoric repetitive beats with little reference to song, substance or subtlety.

Everything was considered equally valid, equally worthy, equally saleable, yet completely disposable.

Pop music was a teenage rite of passage; an entertainment business that vied with rudimentary computers and video games for attention. The revolution was no longer about class war it, was televised concerts to raise money to feed the world and discussions about what kind of trainers to wear. There was nothing to fight for. Affluence was king, feigned poverty was chic (ripped jeans for $100), gangster culture fashionable, and existential angst labored under a ton of makeup and hairspray. The eighties were all about dressing up and having fun which is kinda borne out by these photographs of youngsters from the decade.
 

Does my hair look big in this?
 

It’s all about… me.
 

The pained look of teenage angst.
 
More teenage fashion victims (and a few fashion victors, too) after the jump…

 
So, this is what Mom wore in the eighties. And maybe you did too.

Big hair, teased and permed to perfection, crimped, hot rollered, feathered like Farrah’s, with a side high tail,  or a whale spout. Colors were in. High colored fluorescents like something Disney had puked up. Pastels and neon, tartans and stripes. Leggings and leg warmers, dancewear, and Spandex, revealing cotton shorts with vests, tracksuits. Jordache jeans, ripped jeans, and stone washed jeans. Fanny packs, scrunchies, and shoulder pads. Reebok, Adidas, and Swatch. Everything was either way too loud or just a tad too soft like something granny might wear. There was no in between in the 1980s.

These found photographs of teenage girls from the 80s certainly give some idea of what the decade was like for mostly affluent, mainly white people back then. It’s a better portrait than say that CNN documentary series, as it doesn’t concentrate on the headlines but on what people looked like, what they wore, and how they had fun.
 

 

 
Flashback in time with more photos of 80s teen fashion, after the jump…

 
In 1981, Madness the greatest septet since The Magnificent Seven—no, not that crappy remake, the original with Yul Bryner—starred in their very own feature film Take It or Leave It.

Now, Take It or Leave It is not the catchiest of titles I know, but one, I suppose, that reflects the band’s attitude to whether you like their music or not….or even if you like this movie. Or not.

Thankfully—nearly everyone in the whole wide world loves them some Madness so this film could have been called Pig Fuckers from Hell and millions would still have queued to catch a glimpse of their heroes. Mind you, I suppose that’s not really saying much as millions would probably queue to go and see a film called Pig Fuckers from Hell even if Madness had nothing to do with it, or at least watch it on their laptops—I know I would.

And don’t go by that Nouvelle Vague-looking poster above, the original poster was the Nutty Boys draped with reels of shiny celluloid and surrounded by cans of film all against a dazzling red background—which probably gives a better flavor of what this film is all about.
 

The original movie poster.
 
Anyway.

What is this thing all about?

Well. If you’ve ever wondered what’s it like to be in a band or ever considered the strange quirks of fate and character that bring together a group of disparate talents to form a band in the first place, then this film will answer your questions.

Take It or Leave It is a very likable comic docudrama that tells the story of seven individuals who manage to come together through trial, error, hard work and ambition to form a band called Madness. Rather than have some young look-alikes play the band members, Madness step up to the mark and play themselves from earliest beginnings in 1976 to all-out success in 1981.

It looks almost like a documentary and includes some exceptional footage of the boys playing gigs in local pubs and clubs with quite a few tracks that haven’t been or were not released until very recently. The story as such is a series of episodic scenes telling the story of Chris Foreman, Lee Thompson, Mike Barson, Suggs, Dan “Woody” Woodgate, Mark Bedford, and Chas Smash—the fine bunch of wayward characters who together make up Madness. There was a script of sorts but there was also a fair bit of ad-libbing. Some of these scenes were true and some were not—like Chris didn’t work at the post office but it kinda felt right and is a funny scene. The acting gets better as the movie goes on and by the end, I was thinking, their acting is so much better now than at the beginning that this is where maybe they should have reshot the first part of the film.

But wait.

The acting’s not the important thing here. What is important about Take It or Leave It is that it’s probably the best music film ever made about being in a band. It’s like a cinéma vérité counterpoint to that seventies rock classic Flame which starred Slade. Both of these movies presented a side to the music business too often excised at the script stage or removed by producers during the edit. Add into this fine mix an album’s worth a classic Madness tracks, then the whole thing is a bit of a joy to watch.
Watch Madness in ‘Take It or Leave It,’ after the jump…