The Bill Cosby Sweater legacy

Last Saturday I went to a dinner party for a friend's birthday. The fact that he was the birthday boy wasn't the only thing that made him the focal point of the evening, his knitted cardigan made him the centre of attention as well! Opinions varied on his - what I would classify as a - Cosby sweater.

It's pretty amazing what an enormous influence Bill Cosby's sweaters have had; I mean, there's a whole type of garment named after it. And they still prove to be a source of inspiration to artists and designers today, even after a 30 odd years. Now I only recently found out that the guy who designed the sweaters is Dutch! His name is Koos van den Akker and he left fashionless Holland for New York in the early sixties. Vice interviewed him recently in his NY studio (watch it here - highly recommended!). Koos hits the nail on the head when he looks at the sweaters and says, with a very cute Dutch accent: 

"This is a very thin line between absolutely awful and something of genius. Somebody can look at this and say 'What the fuck is this? This is the most horrible thing I've ever seen' and you know, somebody else says.. 'it's inspiration'".

  

Inspired by this (pizza??) sweater, pictured above, Andrew Salomone created this jumper on a HACKED electronic knitting machine from the 1980s (God, I wish I was so nerdy as to be able to hack a knitting machine!! Watch the tutorial here on the Craft site). Bill on the sweater is wearing the sweater, so there's a nice Droste-effect!

 

Another Cosby sweater inspired project is The Cosby Sweater Project. Kelly Tucker makes drawings of patterns of all the knits worn on the show. Maybe it was the outrageous 80s, but everybody in the Cosby show seemed to wearing awesome sweaters!

Even musicians have been inspired by the sweater: a quick research shows the garment gets a mention in songs by Ghostface Killah, MF Doom and Yelawolf. In 2008 Oh Snap!! released The Cosby Sweater EP. This remix by Hostage is a proper banger, with a nice Miami Bass-y intro. "... the elbow's leather and there's pink and green and o and blue..." hahaha.

Oh Snap! - Bill Cosby Sweater (Hostage Remix). Download it here.

Girlschool

My eyes have scanned an enormous amount of secondhand junk over the (extended) weekend. Sadly it was mostly just junk and I've come home with just a few items..

On Thursday I went to an auction for charity at a convent. That was to say, I went to the viewing. Because apart from an needlework portrait from the 1980s (God knows how it ended up with the nuns!) there was nothing of interest to me. The portrait was a bit like this (less Madonnaesque but I think you get my drift):

Imagine this in needlework! It truly was a masterpiece, but I dreaded the thought of having to sit through the whole auction. I even skipped the homemade cupcakes and tea, and went straight for dinner in town instead.

Today I went to my usual car boot sale. I did manage to scoop up some great 7" singles for just 20p a piece. I bought ten, including songs by Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield, The Smiths and The Specials. And the vendor recommended me a cover of Soul Man by Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave) and Lou Reed. Of course Lou Reed's version is completely soulless, which is pretty hilarious.

Saturday I went to some charity shops on the other side of town. Fresh junk! Maybe the fact that my friend and I were chatting so much explains my meager score, but I only bought one item, spending a whopping 99p: a record by Girlschool. Girlschool is the best British all-female metal band from the 1980s. Well the best (female) metal band ever, period. These girls were clearly respected for their music and virtuoso guitar riffs and not for their looks!

I've got their first three albums and the one I found yesterday is their fourth, Play Dirty (1983). Like all the metal from the mid 80s their sound is more stadium like (and more mid-tempo) on this one. Commercially it wasn't such a success as their previous albums, but the songs are still good and catchy. Personally I prefer their earlier work as well, so here are two of their hits from way back in the days. I suggest you download them (and get all their other hits), put them on your iPod, listen to them while you're on your bike and I promise you'll get to where you need to be in a jiffy!

Girlschool - C'mon Let's Go. Download it here.

Girlschool - Demolition Boys. Download it here.