Very Sharp

Martin Sharp & Fairley Kingston

Artist Martin Sharp has a new exhibition at the Damien Minto Gallery in Redfern and as always, it's not too be missed. Sharp has been ill for some time but he still made the opening night along with many old pals from the past.
You can also watch the superb ABC TV documentary on Sharp : The Sharp Edge - The Art of Martin Sharp .here
 And of course you can just look across the harbour and beneath the Harbour Bridge to the wonderful entrance face to Luna Park, painted by Martin.

Damien Minton Gallery, 583 Elizabeth St, Redfern, 2016
 Tel : 9699 7551

Graceland : Tue 6 - Sat 17 August 2013

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Earth to the noted Sydney fashion Designer, much beloved by the Sunday tabloid gossip merchants :
When you post your preferred voting intentions on Facebook ( perfectably reasonable) it's probably best not to say the country should by run by businessmen and as a corporation when your own business went belly-up a few years ago leaving dozens of small creditors out of pocket, some who lost their businesses and had to take out mortgages to pay debts, whilst you re-surfaced in a large mansion and opened new boutiques. Why do these words spring to mind : Boliva, marching, powder.

Rupert Murdoch, Dame Edna, The Who, Gallipoli & The Anzacs

Today is Anzac Day and numerous TV adverts are exhorting us to raise a glass to the remaining old soldiers. The last Gallipoli Anzac Alec Campbell died in 2002 aged 101 and even WW2 veterans are now in their 80s while Vietnam Vets are in their late 60s.

 George Lambert's self portrait.
note the pre-Dame Edna Gladioli !

A few months ago it was announced that a film was to be made about the life of Kit Lambert, the rock impresario who discovered The Who and Jimi Hendrix amongst others. Lambert fell on hard times and died in 1981 aged only 41 but led a fascinating life while it lasted. His partner in his rock adventures, Chris Stamp, younger brother of actor Terrence Stamp died last year at age 70.

Kit Lambert & The Who

News filters through to the Shuttle that Fox Studios may be involved in the Lambert film which is being directed by actor Cary Elwes of Princess Bride fame and being produced by Orian Williams who also produced the brilliant bio-pic of rock singer Ian Curtis, Control which won numerous BAFTA & Cannes Film awards in 2007.

Rupert  Murdoch                             Cary Elwes                            Orian Williams                                Sir Keith Murdoch

Will the Lambert film also feature his grandfather George Washington Lambert Australia's first famous artist ?.

Lovers : Margot Fonteyn & Constant Lambert

 Kit Lambert's father was the English classical composer Constant Lambert, George's son . In 1918 George Lambert was appointed as the official Gallipoli War Artist and traveled to Palestine with a young budding war correspondent Sir Keith Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's much loved father and the founder of the News Ltd empire.

George Washington Lambert outraged Australian and British generals when he arrived at the front on a horse in a tailor made uniform and wearing a flamboyant hat be-decked with some towering peacock feathers, looking oddly imperial and outlandish at the same time. He had been urged to shock the assembled generals by Sir Keith who regarded most as incompetent upper class twits who he hated, a trait he passed on to son Rupert.

 As for Kit's father Constant Lambert , he died relatively young like his son, at the age of 46 but not before, as rumors go, he impregnated the famous ballet star, Margot Fonteyn at the age of 17 and she was forced to have an abortion to avoid a scandal.

And today's slebs think they lead outrageous lives !

Here is Joan Baez singing the anti-war song about Gallipoli : "And the band played Walzing Matilda"

The Greens Leader & Jimi Hendrix

Dr Bob Brown (above) the leader who has taken the Australian Greens party to such extraordinary heights with 9 Senators now holding the balance of power in the Upper House for the next six years, resigned today as party leader and as an MP.

The openly gay Brown plans to spend more time at his Tasmanian property with partner Paul Thomas. Needless to say the media, notably News Corp which vowed in an editorial to "destroy The Greens" has already begun to promote conspiracy theories for his resignation, pinning it to the Carbon Price (earth to News Corp-it's a price not a tax) and so on, ignoring the fact that next year Brown would undoubtedly be re-elected and faced serving in the Senate until he was 75.

What is less well known is that Brown in 1970 as a young doctor having graduated from Sydney University was working as a locum at St Mary's Hospital in South Kensington when Jimi Hendrix's body was brought in.

Brown says it was obvious Hendrix had been dead for some hours and the presumption was that he had died from a drug overdose. Despite talk at the time that Hendrix had been murdered, Brown says there was no way of proving as much by an autopsy which he assisted with and he was never spoken to by police over the matter.
And it was Bob Brown who faced the British media that morning to announce that Jimi Hendrix had passed away.
You can hear an interview Brown gave on the subject some years ago to 2GB here on the Greens website.

G.W.Lambert self portrait 1920

Kit Lambert

## Jimi Hendrix who died in at the age of 28 had another Australian connection with some degrees of separation. It was Kit Lambert, the man who discovered The Who who was the first to realise the potential of Hendrix when he saw Jimi performing in a pub in West London. He recalled later :
"He was amazing, not only playing the guitar with first his right hand, then left but eventually with his teeth. I had to have him and in my mind I created an instant record label, Track Records and signed Hendrix before we even knew how a record was produced".

Lambert was the son of the English classical composer Constant Lambert who was the son of one of Australia's first great artists and the Official War Artist at the WW1 Gallipoli campaign, George Washington Lambert.

Exclusive : Rock legend Jimi Hendrix was a pedophile !

Well that's possibly the headline a tabloid like Britain's The Sun would run today.

A new autobiography just released by former pop singer and music business identity Jonathan King who had a string of hit records in the 1960's through to the 80's relates the story of how the late rocker Jimi Hendrix had sex with a 14 year old fan and caught a venereal disease from her.

In his book Jonathan King, 65 My Life So Far King says he used to "nag Hendrix to scale down the drugs and have sex with a 'better class of girl' ". He writes "At least 3 times in private Hendrix whipped out his reasonably substantial dick to reveal to me a vast amount of discharge oozing from his infected organ."

" Did I think he had VD again?" he'd ask King innocently. And once swore, when I confirmed it, 'Christ she can't have been more than 14 years old! " said Hendrix referring to the young female fan he had just had sex with.

Jonathan King is his pop star days

King's book contains a host of bawdy revelations and tales of sexual romps involving some of the biggest names of the rock world from the 60's to the 90's and includes revelations about bi-sexual orgies he attended with former Beatle John Lennon (see story below).

Others stories including King's own claim he slept with 12 girls in a row after his number 1 hit " Everyone's Gone to the Moon" written and released when he was still a university student can be found on the Madame Arcati blog.

King holds back nothing in his book and goes into great depth about his 2001 conviction on sex charges for which he spent nearly 4 years in jail for. During his incarceration he spent his time assisting other prisoners prepare appeals against their convictions. On his release he made a highly amusing movie about his ordeal which can be viewed on-line at Vile Pervert

And here is King's 1965 first big hit record which sold 4 million copies:

just for fun

Richard Neville and portrait

Martin Sharp & Neville Wran

One of the nation's true eccentrics, artist Martin Sharp has been given his first retrospective exhibition by the National Trust at the Sydney Museum. Sharp designed record album sleeves for 1960's greats like Cream and Jimi Hendrix and was the illustrator for the infamous Oz Magazine which landed many of it's originators including Sharp in jail twice-in Australia and England. In both the highly publicized cases the defendants were finally released upon appeal and in the course of the trials helped relax strict censorship laws in both countries.

The English trial defending barrister was a young Geoffrey Robertson QC-now a pillar of the British establishment whilst in Sydney another bright young barrister Neville Wran QC helped free the accused.

Wran, now in his 80s and a darling of the left went onto to become NSW premier for many years and launched Sharp's show with a speech about the trial , describing the jailing magistrate as a 'mongrel' to much applause.
No Sharp exhibition would be complete without works based on the showman Tiny Tim whom Sharp helped launch into stardom.