Monday, 31 August 2009

Bad Grannies

Loads to choose from when browsing the site of Pollak Menace, London based Independiente co-conspirators, but these "Bad Grannies" are a personal favourite. Just the thought of seeing one wandering through town makes us chuckle.

Check out their work both commercial and art at www.pollakmenace.com

For info on work that's for sale, let us know and we'll hook you up...






Vintage Motorcycles

Barnabas, Independiente graphic designer and jazz officianado came across these beautiful things online... even if you don't care about old bikes, they're pretty amazing looking things... Top one being a BMW, still don't have an identification on the burgundy monster...





Monday, 24 August 2009

KLF - For Sale


Something of an oddity this one. Was browsing through eBay and came across a rather knackered looking old Triumph motorbike. Innocently clicking the link, I discovered that it is actually Jimmy Cauty's old bike, 1/2 of mental acid house/stadium house/general madness pioneers, KLF. For more on KLF, read this, it's a potted history of their existence including dropping dead sheep on stages at award shows, burning £1,000,000 of their record deal advance, along with other weirdness...

The description of the bike says it all really:

"Historic motorcycle used by the KLF to go to meetings circa 1987-1991. jimmy cauty purchased this bike
in 1976,crashed it 8 times, seized the engine twice, and badly maintained it over
3 decades, has been rotting in his garage for 15 years and is totally unroadworthy."

On further inspection, you find this is not the only historical KLF item. Back in the days, KLF
were predisposed to building some pretty heavyweight soundsystems,
many of them built to military spec, under the name of Advanced Acoustic Armaments
(see website). So now, on ebay, for reasons only known to Messrs Drummond and Cauty,
you buy one of these soundsystems on ebay here.

A bit of UK music history at a knock down price.

Ecseri Art for the blind



A trip to one of the best markets in Budapest can reveal lots of great stuff. It's famous for the antiques, great 60s furniture and other oddities... but nothing can prepare you for when you walk round a corner to be presented with this. An airbrushed picture of various US "celebrities" posing with their appropriate drinks or food. What on earth the artist was thinking I have no idea... Snapped for your amusement...

A word to the wise


Courtesy of tee-totaller and all-round moral beacon, Jeremy at Tezla Shoes, this video highlights only too realistically the dangers dabbling with "da 'erbal"... The voice over is particularly sweet, with it's petrifying tale of how one clean living man threw it all away to stay with the "in"crowd...

Friday, 24 July 2009

People Power - this is glorious!



Guys, in a band, flying United Airlines, travelling with their guitars. The airline assure him that it's safe, then the band see the luggage guys chucking the guitars into the plane.

Airline breaks guitar, refuses to compensate, band writes a song about it then gets 4,000,000 hits on youtube.

This is very satisfying.


A victory against lazy PR



Great story here about how supermarket giant Asda in the UK launched the "cheapest" bike in the UK earlier this week - flat pack version that you have to put together yourself. Much to the annoyance of the PR honeys who launched it, it turned out that the ad agency who created the TV advert, er, accidentally fitted the front forks the wrong way for the shoot. Which basically, if used in that way, would turn it into cheapest deathtrap in the UK.

Crap product + Crap advertising + Crap PR = terrible PR nightmare... :)

check the link for the full story...

Friday, 10 July 2009

Flying MacBook Pro


God knows what it's for, presumably a French postal service... But man does it look great!

Watch the video at:

Dig it.




Porno Placement Issues



Stumbled across this at Budapest Airport a few weeks ago... I had to double take it at first. The sheer frightening incompetence of placing these two shelves together is mind-blowing...

Graveyard of Ambition...



Loving this. A place where great ideas go to die...

Monday, 6 July 2009

Old Wrigleys promo hoarding



God knows where it's from, how old it is, or why it was there, but this hoarding outside some old cafe in Lake Balaton, Hungary caught my attention. Nicely faded in the sun. Sweet, authentic looking, without even knowing it...

Bread and Butter Berlin





An interesting trip to Berlin last week, to see our founding client, El Ganso's stand at the biggest European clothing trade fair in Europe. A huge event, with many of the best streetwear brands in attendance, with many of the big names on fully closed stands to stop spying eyes checking out the next years trends... The whole show was held in Berlin Templehof, a disused airport in the centre of town, incredible place, great setting.

Always interesting to see how big multi-national brands present themselves a
t these events. With some, despite the economic downturn, seemingly willing to lavish
hundreds of thousands of euros promoting themselves on stands that resembled small towns. Scotch & Soda a great example of this, with a two floor stand, complete with full bar facilities downstairs. Whether this kind of investment pays off when smaller brands like Fred Perry went for much more sedate, is anyone's guess.
Free stuff everywhere, t-shirts and bags galore, along with enough pin badges to sink a battleship. Two points deducted from Bjorn Borg for handing out a badge to me which snapped and cut my wife's arm open in 3 days. Saying that, I didn't get bombarded with the kind of printed material I had expected to receive, but people must have to cut back somewhere... Presumably printers were having a lean year, while badge makers are holidaying in Barbados.

Anyway, there's a few pics from the show (brands didn't like you taking pics on their stands), plus some El Ganso clothes shots...

Monday, 29 June 2009

Welcome to the house of Independiente

Thanks for checking out the the new Independiente blog... Over the coming weeks and months, we'll try to keep it up to date with all that we think is worth talking about.

Coming up: Bread & Butter Berlin review and up in a few days