Footnotes

Provenance:
Lots 71-80 are from the collection of Steven Ashley, a former punk.

Brought up in Norfolk, Steven's musical tastes in the early 1970s were greatly influenced by the first Roxy Music album and especially by David Bowie. The sleeve note reference for Bowie's Queen Bitch on the back cover of the Hunky Dory album, '...some V.U, white light returned with thanks...' prompted his discovery of the Velvet Underground, and subsequently of Iggy and the Stooges and the New York Dolls. Steven was a student at Great Yarmouth College of Art and Design when he first saw the Sex Pistols at West Runton Pavilion in 1976. He had been following reviews in the New Musical Express of the band playing the 100 Club and seized on the chance to see them closer to home. This was before the notorious Bill Grundy interview and the venue was far from crowded. Steven and a handful of proto-punks were joined by the Pistols and Malcolm McLaren on the return coach to Norwich, as far as Cromer, where the band was spending the night.

The venue at West Runton, although located in a small out-of-the-way seaside village, attracted many of the bands and figures comprising the early punk scene, including, notably, Iggy Pop and those on the White Riot Tour (the Clash, Subway Sect, the Buzzcocks and the Slits) and it became a regular weekend destination for Steven and his fellow punks. The Damned were frequent visitors to West Runton but Steven first saw them at a 1976 Halloween gig at the local agricultural college near Norwich, where a friend from art school, Robin Smith (who went on to draw Judge Dredd for 2000 AD) and he spent the pre-gig part of the evening watching the Shirley Bassey show with the band!

Ace Records in Lower Goat Lane was a regular Saturday morning haunt for Steven with friends Dave Black and Jon Vince (who was later to found Norwich punk band Der Kitsch) and was the only place in Norwich to sell the more obscure releases, imports and bootlegs. Steven was also tangentially in touch with the London punk scene, hanging out on the Kings Road, going to the Vortex and to gigs and often staying with an old art school friend Traci (Trace) Newton-Ingham at her squat in Lillieshall Road, which she shared with Viv Albertine of the Slits.

Much of Steven's collection comes from gigs and Ace Records. The sunglasses were given to him at West Runton by Captain Sensible after a game of bar billiards. The T-shirt was bought from Jordan in Seditionaries, a memorable shopping experience, only later equalled by Steven being chatted-up by Marilyn whilst being sold a pair of trousers by Steve Strange in Robot. A selection from this collection was displayed in an exhibition at the Museum of Norwich (the Bridewell Museum) in 2016 under the title of Punk In The East as part of a series of gigs and events to celebrate 40 years since the release of the first (English) punk single, 'New Rose' by the Damned. A proportion of the proceeds of this sale will be made to the website: www.punkintheeast.co.uk