Danny Lyon's 'The Bikeriders'

Not the greatest article here, but interesting to see that Danny Lyon's book 'The Bikeriders' is being rereleased in its original form. Very much 'up-my-alley' I guess. I have one of the early 2000's reissue versions:

But they're nothing like the original:

Can't wait to compare 'em in the flesh.

Fragments 2

This has been sitting here for a while 'cause I've been wanting to write something decent about it, but I thought I better photograph it and give it back to Jimi, who got it from Trademe recently.

What it is is a photography/poetry magazine published in Christchurch in the late 60s or early 70s I'm guessing, there's no date on it. At the back it says "Published by Fragments and printed by Designprint Press Limited, Christchurch", and that's it for info really.

Jimi's dad may know one of the photographers involved and I was kinda keen to see if I could talk with him about it.

Initially I thought it was a bike mag when Jimi told me about it, but yeah it's not, it's just this issue – issue #2. The first half of the issue is this "photographic essay" of what appears to all be the same MC. Mostly patches aren't shown but there's an Epitaph Rider in there on the fold out poster that comes with it. I presume they're all Christchurch based?

It'd be cool to know more about this as the design and printing are noteworthy for it's time too. I have to admit I'm not as interested in the poetry part (which I haven't reproduced here), but it is interesting that someone wanted to put all this stuff together? I've been reading the new book on gangs here, 'Patched', and in it the author talks about the relationship between the early MCs here and the hippy counter-culture movement. I wonder if this is an example of that kind of cross-over? It'd be good to get a date on this sucker!?

Danny Lyon 'Iron Horse' interview

I found this on the Greasy Kulture blog. An interview with Danny Lyon in an old copy of Iron Horse. I'm a big Danny Lyon fan and there's some interesting stuff in here. The interviewer, David Snow, sounds like an idiot at times, carrying on about things being 'real' or not (actually if you read the post on the Greasy Kulture blog here, you'll see Snow chips in with comments, kinda bagging Danny Lyon actually. Could be truth to it, who knows? You definitely can tell when reading this that they are from two different worlds, and that Snow is looking for something he's not going to get from Lyon. It has a weird air to it. But yeah it's worth a read, there's insights into Lyon's practice here that I haven't found elsewhere, esp in relation to his college days and the Outlaws etc. I printed this and tried to read it. Don't! It's easier to read on screen... I ended up reading it in Photoshop!

Photos by Mark Gore

Mark Gore took these photos for HFoS issue #1 out at the art school last Thursday night. The top bike is one of Johnny Moore's and the bottom one is James Oram's (which has been on here before, but photographed terribly by me in the middle of the night). These are going to be used to illustrate Johnny's ode to small bikes. I wasn't going to put stuff for the zine up here, but when these came in they looked so goddamn good I just couldn't help myself. Makes me want to get Mark to do all my photography!