Gary Warnett 
Website — http://www.crookedtongues.com
Latest Posts
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Apocalypse Aesthetics
May 19th 09, 15:46
Who isn’t a fan of cinematic end-of-the-world scenarios? I love them. Really love them. To the point that I’ll excitedly talk about my favourite mushroom cloud scene in a movie (just for the record, ‘Return Of The Living Dead’) to the point where previously enthusiastic conversation participants sit back fall into deadly silence.
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LIFE Magazine – ‘Chicago Gang Wars’
May 15th 09, 14:32
Fuck technology. I had a blog on Integrity (the band that is, nothing to do with my lack of it) prepped on my BlackBerry, but it lost it. Or I could be lying. Anyhow, before I rewrite a paen to Dwid and company, I can fall back on the lapsing blogger’s friend, the LIFE photo archive. I could trawl through that thing for 72 hours straight like a crack binger and still be fiending for more.You might be familiar with the photo journalism of Declan Haun primarily his documentation of the Civil Rights movement – spending 15 years in Chicago he documented his hometown in depth, and given the Windy City’s gang problem, it was inevitable that he’d be there gaining access to capture it in its formative years.
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Heavy Metal Style
May 11th 09, 14:19
I am, as the blog post I enthusiastically bashed out after Travis the chimp went buckwild may have indicated, a ghoul. I’ve been a ghoul since I was a child. In fact, this post only came about thanks to a tasteless combination of the recent YouTube leak of UK funnyman legend Tommy Cooper’s onstage death – a playground legend the day after in 1984, and last week’s US face transplant revelations. Those two unpleasantries brought one name back from the recesses of my grey matter – Mr James Vance.
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Travel Fox & The Art Of ‘Casualetics’
May 7th 09, 14:33
“My fist is more nastier than Travel Fox/My silhouette inside intensive care, because I like to shadowbox…”
Every decade seems to get an excessive epilogue. The ’60s had team Manson on the loose. The ’70s saw Spielberg set the hit or miss megabudget tone when ‘1941′ flopped. The ’80s had Travel Fox. Something of a mystery to me at the time, the late ’80s were a breeding ground of new shoe brands. Whether indeed they actually served an athletic purpose was superfluous.
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London Graff Books
May 4th 09, 5:45
I’m sub-toy when it comes to graffiti. I have to take the old codger route of not knowing much about it, but knowing what I like. Mind you, in fairness, I haven’t tried to make a living out of blogging my scant knowledge like most people. I know what I hate too – ’street art’ in all its unpleasant forms. And people that get Guardian fame from decapitating posters. I was a shit tagger, a coward at the prospect of getting collared and I promptly ceased with such behaviour in fury at the no-show of my Zephyr t-shirt and sticker set. But I salute those whose wanton destruction livens up my daily commute on the entrance to London each day.
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Warren Oates
May 3rd 09, 15:14
Before I’d even finished typing a lament surrounding the state of the covers on newsagent shelves, things stepped up to contradict me. Whether it’s House Industries blessing Wired magazine (shouts to Sofarok for the heads up on a little ‘making of’ on the House site) or Juxtapoz with Raymond Pettibon heading up the 100th issue, purchase is
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conferred on presentation alone. Happy days.
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Plug Tuning
April 28th 09, 13:59
Before you continue reading, be warned – this blog entry is plug-heavy.
Mainly because those involved are friends, associates or a lot from column a, and a little from column b, but also because London has seemed a little sickly of late – not the porcine coughs, rather an aura of doom and gloom not helped by the disperate feel that the closure of core daytime and post-work socialising spots has made pandemic.
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Bruce Springsteen’s Converses
April 24th 09, 15:14
As a fan of both Bruce Springsteen and the mighty Jack Purcell, I used to feel that Converse has always been the one brand that didn’t seem to need any payola or seeded endorsement. Motherfuck an ‘influencer’ whose sole claim to fame is a prolific WordPress habit – Converse was worn by some true legends. The don’t-give-a-fuck shoe for those who secretly do. A lot. I never fully understood the need to labour the point for the brand’s centenary. A few candid or onstage images was all that was needed in lieu of any art directed, megabucks campaigns. Other brands might need to labour-the-point, but it was a little moot for the All Star.
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The Word
April 20th 09, 14:26
(Apologies in advance for the lack of video embeds – don’t blame me, blame WordPress. If it ain’t YouTube, Quicktime or Vimeo, it doesn’t want to know)
Anyone in the UK of a certain age recognises that ‘The Word’ was a watershed TV moment. Broadcast between 1990 and 1995, it gradually amassed an unjust amount of hatred a couple of generations above the show’s target age. Granted it was a little slapdash, and the presentation was a little wonky, but if you wanted to see Onyx doing a reverse radio edit for a rendition of ‘Throw Ya Gunz’ that rejected the notion of incinerating a choir in favour of going, “…live like a wire, I’ll set ya fucking mother on fire…” or the Pharcyde live alongside a segment on Desert Eagle handguns (most boys going back to school on Monday morning giddy on the notion of shooting your enemy in the head through a car), this was the spot.
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“Are you for surreal?”
April 16th 09, 15:10
Beyond the day-job, in these testing times there’s always the inclination to engage in some freelance. For friends and topics close to my heart, more often than not, money isn’t the incentive. But for anything rolling with a corporate juggernaut behind it, I want to repeat the quoted-to-death but perennially relevant “Fuck you, pay me”. Marketing budget slashed? Fuck you, pay me. Advertorial commissioned as a gesture of goodwill? Fuck you, pay me. Event funding siginficantly less than promised? Fuck you, pay me. Assuming I grin on some Louis Armstrong shit and forsake all fees when I see my name in print? Fuck you, pay me. You get the idea. Oh yeah, and on the third chat about work, telling me that “…promises were made that weren’t kept” by a third party unknown to me? Once again, four words – fuck you, pay me.
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Sartorial Detox
April 13th 09, 12:51
When I first read, courtesy of The Look (still one of my favourite blogs and books, and this entry on Dexys is one of the best online pieces ever) that Kevin Rowland named their deceptively simple Mark 2 look ‘athletic monk’, I briefly flipped out. For those out there still under the impression Dexys Midnight Runners are a one-hit-wonder non-entitity, you’ve got homework to do, and Kevin was sporting the selvedge and Redwing look while you were still hunting behind sofas for Dunk change. Now Kevin seems to have switched to a pencil-tached, sharp-dressed spiv look, once again, he’s made another reinvention.
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Steve McQueen’s Final Outfit
April 10th 09, 13:53
“I came here to drink, not to talk.”
Writing about Steve McQueen’s vice grip on style is, by and large, done to death. He was, in base terms, a man incapable of looking like shit onscreen. But contrary to everyone else’s opinion, his getup in ‘Bullit’ (as detailed in the US poster copy, “You look at the Italian shoes and the turtleneck and you have to wonder…”) isn’t my thing – too streamlined. Despite the forward-thinking opening titles, soundtrack and car chase (though I’m a ‘To Live & Die In LA’ man when it comes to vehicular action), it fell beneath some gritty thrillers from the following decade like ‘The Laughing Policeman’, ‘The French Connection’ and ‘Black Sunday’ in my underage estimation, all of them introduced to me by my father.
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Great Magazine Covers #1 – Sonny Liston & Esquire
April 5th 09, 13:36
“The statements inside (of a magazine) are useless unless there is a statement on the outside.” George Louis
Magazine covers nowadays are, for the most part, atrocious. Wandering past a newsstand, or visiting Borders is a numbing experience. As print media slowly chokes around us (only this week, Maxim UK followed its US sibling to the grave), I feel for the displaced staffers and freelancers, but I won’t mourn a few less aesthetically displeasing publications trying to lure me into a browse through an exclamation mark overdose. Wired UK relaunched after it’s ill-fated 1995-97 outing (the whole sorry saga is relayed here) and the new edition, released this month lacks the flair of its US counterpart. The Guardian featured a gallery of the original UK covers, and honestly, I’ll take a sand-faced Neil Gaiman, given the choice of that and the staggeringly obvious. Still, it’s early days.
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Harry Partch
April 2nd 09, 14:58
Once again, apologies for my blog tardiness. Thankfully the verbal diarrhea by way of keyboard has been corked by the Imodium of a heavy after hours workload.
Passing the time revisiting ‘Rain Dogs’, ‘Swordfishtrombones’ and ‘Bone Machine’ by RZA-fan Mr Thomas Waits, who, as much of a middle-class hobo act it might be, makes the don’t-give-a-fuck look work a treat, having honed the anti-fashion ensembles since day one – and whereas with any multi, even single decade career span, I can find at least a couple of sartorial missteps, I can’t find any for Tom.
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DJ Muro & some other things…
March 29th 09, 12:42
4 days between blogs. Lazy. I’m afraid I had to take some time out to ruminate over the fact I found myself attracted to a heavily hyped spaceshoe this week. I never saw that one coming. I’ve also been guilty of hypocrisy too – after damning the unavailability of good US-made heritage ranges outside of Japan a week ago, I’ve also been celebrating the fact that the far east still holds gems you just don’t see elsewhere. I’m not just talking retro Danner Mountain Lights in all their Vibram Cristy soled glory and Cushman sweatshirts – that’s covered to death on the studious looking neo-hype sites – I like the bits that defy the homogenised online community.
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More posts from Gary Warnett
Apocalypse Aesthetics
Who isn’t a fan of cinematic end-of-the-world scenarios? I love them. Really love them. To th... more
LIFE Magazine – ‘Chicago Gang Wars’
Fuck technology. I had a blog on Integrity (the band that is, nothing to do with my lack of it) pre... more
Heavy Metal Style
I am, as the blog post I enthusiastically bashed out after Travis the chimp went buckwild may have ... more
Travel Fox & The Art Of ‘Casualetics’
“My fist is more nastier than Travel Fox/My silhouette inside intensive care, because I like ... more
London Graff Books
I’m sub-toy when it comes to graffiti. I have to take the old codger route of not knowing muc... more
Warren Oates
Before I’d even finished typing a lament surrounding the state of the covers on newsagent she... more
