3:AM Magazine

Fitzrovian historian, author of North Soho 999 and Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia: The Biography of Julian Maclaren-Ross, as well as the recent biography of Paul Raymond, Members Only, Paul Willets will be joining Cathi Unsworth alongside the curator of Fitzrovianoir Art Trails Garry Hunter to lead a walk into the shady streets of North [...]

For me, Cardiacs was love on sight – sharing a bill at the old Wardour Street Marquee with John Shuttleworth, the first incarnation I witnessed in 1987 featured Tim on vocals and guitar, his brother Jim (the only other constant in the line-up) on bass, his wife Sarah on saxophone, William D Drake on keyboards, Tim Quy on percussion and Dominic Luckman on drums. All except Sarah, who wore a ballgown, were dressed in oversized school uniforms, their faces grease-painted deliberately badly. They looked almost scary, a shade of something from a half-remembered folk tale, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were some future members of The League of Gentlemen in the audience that night taking notes too.

Cathi Unsworth salutes The Cardiacs in the company of Bic Hayes.

People have this idea of the music that we listen to, and it’s always wrong. I have always got more ideas from Tamla Motown and Kate Bush than from anywhere else. I don’t really like English folk music, it’s too twee, but I grew up with the English countryside and there is something about English traditional music, which Kate Bush has got lots of. It’s sort of Ralph Vaughan Williams, how he romanticised the British landscape, I have a love of that. And so did Robert.

Cathi Unsworth interviews Justin Sullivan of New Model Army.

…and what will be left of them? * Thomas Edison and Henry Ford go camping (via). * Mark E. Smith’s guide to writing. * Tom McCarthy: bad on moths, bad on the causes of moths! * Is Tom McCarthy a modernist writer? * Tom McCarthy in conversation with Michael Silverblatt. * Art-school novelists. * The [...]

New French publisher Asphalte has just published a French translation of Cathi Unsworth‘s London Noir anthology, which features 3:AM favourites Max Décharné, Stewart Home and Ken Hollings, as well as the mighty Barry Adamson. The will be a party to launch the book in Paris on Thursday 21 October at Longtemps bookshop, 22 avenue Mathurin-Moreau, [...]

JACK THE STRIPPER’S LADBROKE GROVE Presented by Cathi Unsworth ~ Author of Bad Penny Blues ~ Sunday 17th October 2010, 3pm Meet your guide, a blonde dame with a black streak, under the plane tree in front of Holland Park tube, where she’ll be clutching a shocking pink copy of Bad Penny Blues. It was [...]

The radical bookseller Housmans, (still) tucked away on the backstreets of Kings Cross, is organising a second year of talks under the London’s Burning banner. Two of 3:AM interest, Cathi Unsworth on ‘Soho Noir’ (with Paul Willetts) on August 7 (5pm) and Clive Bloom on ‘Violent London’ on September 4 (5pm).

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What you (may have) missed on 3:AM this week: Non-fiction: ‘Obscenity is Whatever Gives a Judge an Erection’, Charlotte Young on the Semina book launch; ‘Syntheses of Resistance & Transformation’, John-Patrick Ayson on Joseph Beuys’ I Love America.. & Harold Jaffe’s Jesus Coyote Reviewed: Cathi Unsworth on Barry Miles’ London Calling: A Countercultural History of [...]

London Calling is a comprehensive history of those places within the city that exert the siren call: the Soho of dandy writers and woozy poets, of rackety drinking clubs and jazz basements. The Ladbroke Grove of radical politics, Pop Art and Performance. The King’s Road fashion youthquake from Mary Quant to McLaren and Westwood. The East End that housed both Throbbing Gristle’s Death Factory and Derek Jarman’s waterside warehouse paradises.

Cathi Unsworth responds to the siren call of Barry Miles‘ history of the post-war counterculture.