Street Life: Alex Turnbull

https://headliner.ai/street-life-2nd-edit-mp3

Uyi

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the point of view My name is Uyi Agbontaen and in today's show, I speak to genuine polymath Alex Turnbull. His journey includes being a skater, filmmaker, uh, musician, DJ, model, and curator of his parents artwork. And we discuss it all, including his long awaited documentary, Rise of the Streets, which is an untold story of street culture from the who's who of the street scene itself.

Alex

We've got a lot to talk about because I've had a pretty mad journey in my life.

Uyi

I'm sure you have. You've had an interesting journey.

Alex

Yes.

Uyi

Very, very interesting journey. So let's start with the street scene, the street culture. You were a, uh, skateboarder?

Alex

Yeah. Uh, I guess street what street means now has become sort of something else. I guess when we were all growing up, it was just counterculture, wasn't it? Was just what was going on. And I guess maybe nowadays got my kids who got a million things that they could do or be into, but when we were growing up, not to sound too old, but it was very different, wasn't it? There was only a couple of things. If you were one of the few people that was counterculture, you did that because it wasn't like you had 50 different things to choose from. So the first thing, I guess, was skating, which I got into when I was about 13 or 14. I mean, had really, like, by chance, a friend of mine who was from America. I went to school without a compound wheeled skateboard, no grip tape that he ended up giving me. And me and my brother used to go to Primrose Hill, met some guys there. Uh, they were like, you've got to go to the South Bank. And then just that one little conversation that could never have happened just changed the course of me and my brother's lives. Because then from that point, every Saturday and Sunday, we were down at the South Bank. Started off as sort of gremlins. So that was the term for people who couldn't skate back then. And then you get your place. Just like martial arts, isn't it? You've got to earn your place. And I think that's one of the great things I still love. I don't really skate anymore. It's sort of a young man's sport, but that's one of the things I love whenever I watch it. It's so creative, and it always evolves. But it's quite old school in that thing, is you can carry a skateboard and wear a van and affect the look. But once you stand on that skateboard, people are going to know if you're a skateboard or not. You're going to get found out if you're not. And so I think that's one of the things I love. I think skating has influenced my life and the way I look at things. And all the people that I was close to then, I'm pretty much close to now. They were really good people, good values, good intentions. Yeah, that was sort of the beginning. We both won like major champions. We were both the top. They had a big nationwide competition that was on TV. My brother came first. I came second in the ramp riding. And we were pretty light, even though it was a long time ago. That was like 76, 77, it was still we were riding pools and riding half pipes and stuff like that. But it was pre the ollie. So that was the beginning of the journey there.

Uyi

So at that time, how big was the skate scene in the UK? Because even today, people associate the skate scene with America, even though it's become global and skateboards in the Olympics. But how big was it in the hundreds of people?

Alex

Like a few hundred people?

Uyi

Yeah, everyone knew everyone.

Alex

Everybody knew everyone. And if you were, uh, a face, or you were one of the skaters, like I said, you had to earn that place at the table. There was no freebies there. Uh, what is interesting for me, and with the project that I've been working on, rise of the Streets, which will come to my film, is that actually, style has always been a huge bit of that journey. And actually, then, if you weren't a great skater, uh, if you had good style, you were kind of okay. So a lot of the kids down at South Bank, some of them weren't brilliant skaters, but they had great style. And a lot of those kids were the first kids. I was a little kid from growing up in Camden Town. It was pretty kind of frugal, uh, shall we say that just to go back a little bit. My dad's Scottish. My mom's Singapore Chinese. They were both artists. But from the people always assume, when you say you got artists or parents, that's like, oh, pop, smoking in the house. It's like, nothing like that. I had the strictest parents. All of my mates scottish and Chinese. And also my dad grew up in the Depression, was a pilot in the war. So I think so would you say.

Uyi

They were quite conservative?

Alex

They weren't conservative at all, but they were strict. Right. And I guess that generation, that war, postwar generation, they had that sort of thing that we've sort of lost now with our kids, where we want to pamper and attend to all our kids needs and showing love and stuff. But I think they only had their own reference points, and it was that sort of period, slightly, of children should be seen and not heard a little bit. Even though my parents were pretty, they were modern artists. They weren't like figurative landscape artists. They were both contemporary. And at that time, art wasn't okay. It's not like now, because there was no money in art. And, um, my parents were struggling to sort of make a living, so we didn't have fancy nice clothes. So actually going down there and seeing some of those West London kids who would have like the Sergeant Pepper sort of military coats or Dunlop green flash seems strange now, but this is before vans. You couldn't even buy vans in this country. You couldn't buy them anything. American people sort of forget how grim the UK was in the cuts and stuff like that. That's why punk rock sort of happened. Any little thing that you saw made a huge impression on you. If you were a player, you had green flash. 599 green flash. I remember waiting for years and then my mum bought me the 299 blue flash, which didn't have the toe cap, didn't have the sponge tongue, and it took a while, you know what I mean? To get your game and get your skating together. But in the end, it was a small community. There was people in Bristol, people in Brighton. When you went to the park, you knew everybody there.

Uyi

It's interesting you said actually that period in the UK in the was really the birth of the counterculture. I was born in the late seventy s, so I don't remember. But obviously I remember people who do remember this. And Margaret Thatcher came into the power in the early eighty s. And before, uh, that the unions were really strong and there were lots of strikes. So London was a very, very different place to what it is now.

Alex

Yeah. And uh, I mean, it was great. It was great. That's what I think. We all loved watching American TV. Now you can get everything everywhere. I probably buy better sneakers here than you can in America. It wasn't the way in the had to go to America, but then in the couldn't buy anything. It was like one shop Slip Willys sold like Procureurs, or if you had the seven quid, but nobody had any money. Um, it was very, very gray and bleak. And people looked a lot to America because it seemed like, wow, this amazing new world that's in color.

Uyi

Who were your influences in terms of the skate scene back then?

Alex

Well, I mean, there's some English guys and some Americans. I mean, I'd say for all of us here, it was the dogtown guys. What's funny is that because you couldn't buy American magazines here, uh, you couldn't buy any magazines here. There was a couple of guys that were American or would have relatives in America, to America. So someone would come back with a copy of Skateboarding magazine and every week that would get passed round and you'd have one week with that magazine to just absorb every paragraph and every photograph. And so you'd spent ages, uh, just fantasizing about what skateboard you'd have with what decks and what wheels. And then I remember at first it was very shorts and handstands and people carving. And then the Craig Stacy article on the downtown guys, the sequential overdrive in one week. It changed everything, the way everyone skated. Tony Albert J. Adams. The two main guys. But, like, Shogo Kugo, Paul Constantino, Wet saw Rumble, there was, like a whole bunch of these guys that were just, like, aggressive, hard, with amazing style. And they dressed like I remember seeing Albert wearing a pair of Nike blazers. And it was like, before everyone knew who Nike was. They were, like, radical. And so everyone just wanted to skate like that. So they were the guys. But there was guys, like, on my team, simon Napa, guy called Jules Gaten, who's been a lifelong friend and I Djed within New York. He moved to New York, became one of the main DJs in the main early hip hop DJs. Kind of an unsung, um, hero guy called Jeremy Henderson. And he was the guy that I think showed us how to put it together. He had tube socks. He had bands. He had more than one skateboard. He was amazing skateboarder. So that's how it's supposed to look because we were all wearing, like, little school socks. And like, it was really took years to get your game together. There was just no access to it then. And then it sort of evolved into music. I started drumming probably around time. I sort of stopped, probably around 78, I think, as I started getting into punk and stuff like that. On the tail end of slightly too young. I was only still 16 then. Went to the roundhouse.

Uyi

I saw that because you were living in Camden.

Alex

Yeah. You grew up in Camden Town.

Uyi

She had access to lots of music venues.

Alex

Yeah, but I guess it was scary. I remember going to my first gig at the Roundhouse. I was, like, 1516. It was like it was punk. It was scary. Just like, all these people, everyone was super cool. No one was on that. But actually, it was amazing. I think I saw The Dam, degeneration X and Elf Costello, some of the early sort of punk gigs there. Then I think that was sort of where the music took over and kind of stopped skating and then really got into being in a band. And I was in a band called 23 Skidoo, who were quite an influential, I got to say. I mean, most people don't know who 23 Skidoo are, but the Chemical Brothers first record block rocking beats that they won a Grammy for is completely stolen from one of my baselines. But it was not about that, actually. It was a band. My brother was in schedule, and they'd started at school. They were in the year below. And, um yeah, and then we just sort of started playing.

Uyi

And how big was the band?

Alex

It was like five, six people. Drama, percussionist, bass player, two guitarists, and a singer. Um, we would project films on ourselves. And it was kind of anti pop, you know, if you listen to 23 skywalker records are different, very different. Completely different. Super avantgarde experimental, quite funky and percussive. That was an amazing period in music. Personally, for me, I think it was the most amazing period of music that I've been in. You had Falakoute Ensemble of Chicago, James Blood Alma, these amazing American artists, all the reggae stuff, pablo and like Gregory Isaacs and all that stuff. And then you had all amazing English bands like Certain Ratio, Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat. And we were lucky that in the end we signed with this independent label called Fetish. And the first twelve months we made was with Cabaret Voltaire, who were kind of like some of our heroes. And then our album that we recorded later on was recorded mixed in two and a half days, went straight into number one in the independent charts because it was fresh, because it was just out there, it was just new. If you played it to somebody now, it still sounds more out there, more than someone would make today. I think most of the world wasn't ready for it. Like a lot of stuff, if you're on the cutting edge, you're a bit.

Uyi

Out of time, you're out of time.

Alex

The music was, I guess it's what people would call industrial now. It's quite a big genre and it was very small then, but we were one of the sort of pioneering bands and also because we do a lot of trance drumming with Strobes and we just get these drums and just and so I think that was sometimes cited as sort of being forefathers of the trance scene, even though that wasn't something music that I was ever really particularly into at the time. But that's what we do. We just drum, like, for 20 minutes. A trance like state induced through repetitives of drama and music.

Uyi

I was listening to some of the 23 G tracks and I know that Phil LBT was an influence as well as many other musicians. My parents, being Nigerian, Fellow Cupi was always playing in the house because my dad loved Fella Cote to go to the shrine in Nigeria, see him play and stuff. And I used to do these songs which were big instrumental pieces. And so when I was listening to your albums, I was like, I can hear that.

Alex

Yes. It's like ten minutes before the vocals come in. It's like a 20 minutes track and it's instrumental for ten minutes before.

Uyi

And I think that Zombie and Lady.

Alex

Ah and I Love again, there was no internet stuff, but we'd sort of hear these things about the Kalakuta Republic he'd created, this republic that he sort of declared was independent from Nigeria and that he would play that track, Zombie. They were next to an army base and he would play that to the soldiers. They'd Sing it like over the wall, the dance. Zombie or no turn. Um, left, right, quick step. Left turn, uh, right turn, uh double up. And then that whole thing about them raiding it and killing his mother and stuff like that. So I think we were young and I guess politics was a bit different here. But I think it was very, uh, touched you the story and the politics of it and the rebellion of it, I think. And the sort of slightly anti establishment.

Uyi

Sort of aspect too, you know, the history of philosophy. You know, his mum was very politically active. Massively politically active. She was a teacher and she really organized against the British colonial system in Lagos, where they were trying to tax women who were working and making a living and feeding their families and they were raising the taxes.

Alex

Unbelievable.

Uyi

Yes. And she was really, really strong activist, so she was known in the community massively. And I feel like she was a strong influence on fellow growing up. Like a really strong woman. Yeah, 100% looking his aunt, even 100%.

Alex

Just like I said, it was just an amazing period. Again, I guess it's like hip hop, is it? And I've got a really funny story. I got woken up one morning just by this noise outside in a car. It was like the loudest car stereo I think I've ever heard to this day. Out. Uh, mars. And it was like sun blaring. And it's like 06:00 in the morning. And it was rocket. Herbie Hancock. And I woke up and I was just like, what is this sound? What is this? And I'm sure I went out that day searching, trying to sing, which is how it was back then. That was how you walked into a record shop and you had to make a fool of yourself trying to see. And actually the guy was like, yeah, which is actually I think it's one of those things that the same thing with Dennis Edwards. Don't, uh, look any further. I remember going into groove and singing and I just think I'm going to really catch it here and sing in the bassline. And the guy was like, oh, you meet like this, and he put it on. I was like, yeah, I want to be, uh and I was like that feeling when it's like, yes, and they have it. And then you go away with that record. And again, look, this is kind of pre itunes, prespotify. So to have music was not easy. There was cassettes, but you had to record it physically, yourself, off the record. You couldn't copy cassettes. It was all you did. But they were really shit. And you had to have two cassette players to do that. So nobody did. Nobody copy cassettes. So to get music to have music was really difficult and it was expensive. You know, I remember when it was like you had to go and listen to a certain DJ if you wanted to hear a track because you didn't know what it was, he wasn't telling you. And no one else played it.

Uyi

It's interesting you said that he recorded a podcast a few months ago with a guy called Benjamin Glenn Phillips. And he's a massive music lover. And he said one of his influences was Nirvana, and one of the influences was Black Flag. And he said that back in those days, like you said, you had to physically get I wrote a letter to.

Ben

Their record label and I sent it off to Los Angeles with, like, an intern. And I was like, Can I buy a record? Month or so later, I get a little leaflet in the post saying, hey, Ben, here's a list of what we have. And I ordered Black Flag damaged. So I get this record in and this band that all my heroes are talking about, I put it on, and I'll be honest, it sounds terrible because the production is kind of terrible, the playing is kind of sloppy. How are all these bands that I love kind of into this? This is awful. But it took me about six months to get this record from the initial letter. This is a time when your post to the States took like six weeks or so. I was like, I'm listening to this record. I listen to it. I listen to it. I listen to it, and I love that record.

Alex

It's expensive. If you're spending 599 or whatever an album was then, and that doesn't seem like a lot, but it was. That record would last you for six months. You would listen to that record every day and all of it. You might have favorite tracks and you might have less favorite tracks. Most albums are like that, right? You would listen to the album, you'd read all the sleeve notes, you'd read the vinyl scratchings in the middle and stuff like that. So you knew everything about that record. Look, it's great that a punter can sit in a club shazam. Um, every track that the DJ plays and by the end of the night have that all in their phone. But it was a great period. And in typical fashion, me and my brother were actually traveling in Asia. We were going to try and study gambling music, and we got a telegram. All the albums coming straight and no one knew I'd come back. Came back and did a tour of the UK and then kicked out the singer and the guitarist. And that was sort of like, that Says Everything about 23 skills. And we played at the First Woman Festival, which came just after that, and did this performance. Everyone was expecting this kind of funky sort of band. We were into messing with people's preconceptions, so we basically did this performance. We painted our faces like Apocalypse Now, like Camo, and did a kind of ritual, uh, a banishing ritual, which we then made the mistake of releasing on a record, which was the nail in the coffin for the record industry as far as 23s could do, because we've been in the press, darlings. They were writing about us all the time in the back pages of Sounds and Melody Maker, new, um, Musical Express and stuff. And then I think they were just like, all right, that's it for you guys. You're done. Um, you never walk into these halls again. And then from that point on, we were just outsiders. And so we started rolling records. And Ronan's really one of the first British ship up record labels. We made Ruth maneuver's first record. We made Stell's first record. It, um, was actually a guy called schiz, who is a really good DJ producer, who made a record called Countryman that my brother was produced. It's like, who's who are British hip hop? Like Ronnie P. Skinny man for life. Cypher, uh, through maneuver. Uh, everybody who's anyone was on that for that time. But it wasn't okay to wrap in a British accent. Then times changed, and I think a lot of what we did there pioneered a lot of stuff. Actually, before that, we made another record called Jailbreak, which was like a kind of early break, beat House, which is like a huge record. But again, I think we're not really businessmen. We're sort of creative, so we didn't have contracts with artists. It wasn't about that. But in the end, you always come a bit unstuck. You learn that later on. It's all right being idealistic. There's a bit of naivety there. You assume that everything's going to be like, no one's going to stick to their words, and it doesn't always run like that. And then I actually did a bit of modeling. And when I look at my book now, it's like Mario toastino Steven Marcel. So it's the superstar of, uh, fashion. But, you know, then fashion was a little world. The only people that were into fashion were interested. The rest of the world wasn't interested in fashion. So, like, so much of this stuff from our culture, it's been sort of appropriated by companies.

Uyi

Yes, by brands.

Alex

And, um, I started DJing in 1983, which is quite a funny story. So I'd come out the skidoo thing, and we were really influenced by this guy, William Barrows. He's an American writer, and he had this thing about cut ups. So we'd basically make cassette loops on the early warping and record stuff. And then I remember going to see Africa Bombarded and Red Alert did a show. There was like, 20 people there in the audience. Hip hop hasn't even started yet. It wasn't called hip hop. And I remember just seeing it might have been Ruler. It might have been Max and Dave M. Max, Alex and David J. But just cutting up John brakes. And Alma drama. And I like funky drums. And I was like, wow, look, they're doing that on time. Because before, the only thing with these cassette loops is they were completely arrhythmic. And you couldn't make them run to like, a beat. And so I was like, I've got to learn how to do this. So I basically got I learned to DJ on belt drive turntables with no mixer. Uh, so I just had two hot wires into the back of the amp. No mixer, uh, and literally so for those who don't know about I guess it's not so relevant now because people don't use turntables, but you DJ on direct drive turntables, which have got a motor, which means when you release them, they go to speed. So techniques twelve hundreds are, uh, direct drive turntables. Belt drives are the ones with the rubber bands that go round a little spindle that drives the platter. And so when you push them, they don't go to speed. But I learned to DJ and mix on belt drive turntables for two years before I got my first technician turntable. And I could mix and do stuff like on these belt drive turntables. So it's kind of one of those sort, uh, of weird things that seems messed up, but in the end, that sort of adversity creates a different type of desire and you have to sort of do stuff. You just have to find your own way of doing it. And then eventually, when I did get one technique, I've been DJing for four years before I had proper equipment. If you think about now, I guess most people, they've got equipment before they even start to DJ, you know what I mean?

Uyi

And like you said, nowadays people don't even need the turntables to do DJing.

Alex

And CDJs are great. I use Serato. I use recordBOX. I've been through everything. So I can DJ using anything but a Stretch Armstrong said to me, there's not many DJs I know that can really slow down that didn't learn on vinyl. So I think it's just that sort of thing that you really understand a little bit. Even my daughter, who's now quite a successful DJ, I taught her on vinyl. I said, you're never going to use this, but you need to understand the roots and the history of how this thing works in its inception. I think the first club I Djed in, and I probably took all my equipment to DJ on a Tuesday night to about 20 people, literally. But it didn't matter because maybe there was two or three clubs, but unless you were one of the big handful of ten DJs, you weren't getting into that stuff.

Uyi

Were your parents into music?

Alex

My dad was actually a very eclectic taste. He liked classical music like Beethoven, Mozart, like opera, but also liked jazz. So we had all Nick Coleman records, junk Train records, Mild Davis records, and then also, like, world music, like Sarkatchi, Japanese fluid, Indian raga music. I never really thought about it at the time, but there was just always music, like, in the house, you know what I mean? I don't know if that consciously. I don't know if that really influenced us to do music so much. I think we both discovered that my brother played guitar and I played the drums. But the same thing wasn't nobody teaching me to play drums or to buy a drum kit. Now probably buying my kids. If they expressed an interest in playing an instrument, you'd be like, yeah, sure. But then it wasn't like that. Save up, do jobs, buy a tiny little drum kit. Eventually, funny enough, Madness were our school band. I went to school william Ellis and they were called the North London Invaders. It was before they made their first record, their amazing Scar Band. And I ended up getting the drummers drum kit and then just practiced and practiced. But I guess I used to DJ at this club in the 90s called Rotation, which was like the big hip hop club in London from 94 to about 2000. People were just like seriously into their music then, you know what I mean? That was one of the amazing things. I mean, like I said, I've been DJing for ten years already. When femme from the young disciples he heard me. DJ club that we were doing in Berkeley Square. I'm, um, a good DJ. I'm not being a big header or anything, but I've been DJing for ten years at that point. Mixed scratch. But then also coming from a slightly different angle and having done all the new stuff before that, musically I had a different feel from maybe some of the other hip hop DJs and what I was into and what I like to play. And remember saying when you come to DJ in this club we're doing and Rotation was pretty cool because basically what it was was every other week they have a guest DJ in the main slot and then on the other, I uh, was the main DJ and it was like the hottest gig in London. If you were an R and B, a hippo DJ, everybody wanted to DJ it. M was like packed. The crowd also like 70% black was like really local. Labor grew up, but the crowd really knew their music, really into their music. So I think for me it was always really great being able to be in there as a person of color, but not somebody who's black and be completely accepted in there because of what I did. That was the people loved what I did in there.

Uyi

And I guess from your sets they could tell that you knew your music.

Alex

Yeah, in the end I was just part of the furniture there, I think maybe the first couple of times. And I think I knew quite a lot of the locals because of the stuff we've done with Ronin. So we work with some of the local kind of dizzy kind of knew me and they knew he had a studio and they knew what we were. Doing in music. It was a great time, actually. It's like my peak DJing period. You are on the stage, you are up in front performing for people, you know what I mean? So it was very, um it was a really good time, actually. I think one of my things as a DJ, I was DJing in 87 when house started, I was DJing this club called Enter the Dragon, and it was just as a house music was starting. So Colin Favour used to play there, trevor Fog, some of the big kind of house music pioneers. Because I was a drummer, I wasn't into the four four on the floor thing. And also when House started, uh, for me, it's like that's the beginning of the commercialisation of underground culture. It took ten years, it was more of a musical thing to be perfect. It wasn't my thing. And I think that actually I'm probably going to catch some shit for this, but I'm not saying there weren't white people that could dance, but most white people didn't dance. Look, clubs, people forget clubs were really underground and really mostly white people didn't dance because if you couldn't dance, then black people would laugh at you.

Uyi

Yeah.

Alex

Ah, it was that hard. It was like that because it was like territory, wasn't it? So unless you're like Barry Sharp or somebody else who could dance, you just stood and nodded your head. Yeah. And I think that actually what's interesting about how's music, the combination of ecstasy and not being able to miss a beat because it's so fast, that's how people learn to dance. And now why people dance, they do all the time and there's really good dancers, but I think a lot of.

Uyi

TikTok is like, what are you talking about?

Alex

They needed ecstasy and a fast beat to be able to bring out that, to open what has always been there for black people, I think has been part of that. I've witnessed this firsthand, so people can tell me, yeah, and I know, I know what I see.

Uyi

You were there, I saw it wasn't.

Alex

People didn't dance, people didn't go to clubs. There was a little underground warehouse, raves, asset, hashes, changed the whole thing for clubbing.

Uyi

We started off actually talking about the street scene and how that's become a culture in itself and it's become popular and you were there from its inception and now it's become kind of mass appeal. And I know you're talking about appropriation and commercialization. How do you feel now when you see everything now?

Alex

So this is another bit of the story that we sort of skipped over, I guess, which is Susie and I was part of the original Stuzy tribe. And how that happened was I was in New York with my friend Jaws and this other guy, Jeremy, who moved back. They were living together there's two other guys I used to skateboard with. And Jaws was like when I went there in 86. Jaws was like the main downtown DJ. Yeah, there were no New Yorkers doing it. They were in the Bronx obviously. But for that basquiat sort of key hiring beastie Boys seen he was the DJ and I used to go there and DJ with him because my brother had bumped into him in the summer and we hadn't seen each other for like five, six years. No mobile phones, so he hadn't kept in touch. They bumped into each other and Johnny, my brother came back and goes, oh George's DJing. I was about three, four years into it. So when I went to New York I took all my records first night went, played with him and he was a great selector but wasn't mixing so much and so I was kind of mixing and scratching and so even with kids in New York like wow, that's really cool. And so I used to go there and play use to Platinums which was this big sort of club where all Tyson and Warhol and all these people used to go and I think uh, maybe 87 it was. They said, oh can we visit this guy? Duh duh duh we went up to this little kind of warehouse. It was just literally too close to Rails and that was the first time I ever saw an institution. It was a guy called Paul Mitchellman who is an important kind of guy in the sort of street where street culture is seen. And he was basically repping Susie in New York but nobody had ever heard of it. But I remember seeing it for the first time and it's like another one of those light bulb moments because it referenced hip hop, it referenced graffiti, it referenced reggae, it referenced skateboarding, it referenced surfing. Uh, wow, what is that? I remember getting a Tshirt, a uh, pair of beach pants and coming back to the UK and was like wow, what's that? What's that? Um, the trip before I come back with a goose down, a double goose down jacket. Only one in London, first one in London. People losing their minds. That next trip, jordan threes came back. Jordan three. Same thing. People like, what? And it was so great then because if you had that, nobody could have it. It's like you get on a plane, go to New York, get it and then they might not be there by the time you get there. So then you had that was your shit. It was like nobody's biting your style, nobody's doing that. And then I came back and met some other guys. A guy called James Lebon and a guy called Michael Copperman who became my best friend. And Michael actually ended up being like one of the key people for Susie. Started importing Stucky and did all the Japanese brands bathing it before anyone knew who they were and was promoting Vizim. All these labels that ah, are huge now for years before anybody was even aware. And so we've had the access to all of this stuff. We'd go to Japan. And then what happened was Sean came over here. Sean Stussi. And Paul introduced us. And I gave Sean a mixtape I'd made at the time. There was a singer called Alexandra O'Neill. Bit post Luther Vandross.

Uyi

Yeah, I remember.

Alex

And he had criticized and big, like around that sort of 80, 86, but on his record, he had this little identity at the beginning of this girl going, alex Alex, baby. Look at you.

Uyi

Look at you.

Alex

You're terrible. Look at those clothes. And so, basically, I'd cut the Alex, Alex, baby on this mixtape. And the next thing I know, I get this Dosey Tribe jacket with Alex Baby on it, which wasn't my DJ name, but it became my DJ name because I questioned by Sean. It's really interesting because I think the first time that you have a group of people internationally, not just painters, filmmakers, DJs, other people who were kind of brought together by this sort of thing. And I think Sean was really ahead of the curve. Now everyone seeds gear. He was the first person to do that. And it wasn't a calculated business strategy. It was like, oh, Alex is cool. Um, Michael's cool. Let me just send him a box of gear. Do you know what I mean? And then we'd be like, Look, I've got a personalized jacket. And then you rock that. And then people would just lose their minds. You kind of have stuck. Then sort of another Japanese label, good Enough, and then Bathing Ape and then supreme and such. That's sort of, like, crudely, the sort of streetwear lineage. But Susie is the beginning of it all. And actually, Susie is the blueprint, I believe, for modern brands. This whole idea of gifting and seeding and putting it on people, he was the first person to do that. He didn't do that. None of the other people will be doing that. And actually, I think because there was this sort of international tribe of cool, hip people from London, New York, La. Tokyo, and that was really the sort of connect there. And then in 1990, this guy, Hiroshi Fijiwara, who's a big kingpin in that world. He's kind of like the Shogun of Japan, or like the street where I interviewed this guy aside, uh, who's a really cool kind of big. He's, uh, one of Virgil's, uh, kind of amazing DJ and kind of big British person. But he said, look for street weather should be as a Gap rating. And if you have a brand, Hiroshi should give you as a Gap rating. He's the guy that kind of brought all that culture to Japan and was sort of down with Malcolm McLaren and all that really early on. And basically, they organized this big, stooci, first international tribal gathering in Tokyo in 1990. And it was people from New York, London, La. And Japan. And I think that was like the beginning. And again, look, it took five years for it to sort of crush. It wasn't like something that just happened overnight and just just happened. But I would say by the early 90s, Susie was like, if you were cool, you were wearing Susie. And it's like that thing we were saying, if you were, uh, cool and you were counterculture, you knew about this. And that was the way you identified and you identified other people, like minded people. It's like, look how if he's wearing Jordan, he's an excuse, you start talking because we've got stuff in common for sure. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that. So I think that that was a really interesting part of that journey that it sort of brings me onto my film project, which I've been working on for a long time now, write to The Streets, which is basically the story of all of this stuff. I was sort of beating myself up for a while about it not having been done before. But then actually, what was very funny is it couldn't have been done before because the story wasn't finished before. And actually what was interesting, I was blessed in 2019 to be in Miami. My good friend Sean Susie was doing a collaboration with Kim Jones for Dior. And so basically, Kim, who's an amazing designer, an amazing person, and is really, I would say, one of the real key people in all of this before. The supreme one. He did one with this guy, Christopher Nemeth, who is a very influential, lesser known British designer. And then he did the Supreme One, which I was at. They invited me a couple of nights before and I didn't know because they kept it very quiet. And that was really the beginning of the explosion, I think we all thought when I was interviewing Sean, like the street where horses bolted, we couldn't have imagined that it hadn't even begun. And so that death thing, it was incredible. It was like, oh my God. COVID, uh, almost had to happen because there was nowhere to go after that. It was like, it was a big deal. One of the oldest, biggest, most prestigious fashion houses, doing something with the originator, uh, of the street wear sort of thing and doing it really well. But then I was also like, I can't buy these clothes. They are thousands of pounds. So the people that are going to wear those, it's a different demographic. It's the whole sort of thing. It's a bit like the Virgil doing the metalheads thing and then doing the LV metal heads, record boxes. And it's like, well, that's great for the nine guys that Goldie is taking, but all the other people, some of us can afford that. Do you know what I mean? All going to be have that, but it's sort of just become something else now. And it is very much a case of big companies. Even 15 years ago, the idea of Vodafone using JayZ would have been laughable. People kind of forget. And even at that point, and he was a big star then, it hadn't crossed over yet. You weren't having black rappers on the front row, a big fashion show. Actually, a lot of this fashion is the sort of thing that sort of brought that, uh, ASAP, Rocky, Travis Scott, and obviously Kanye and Pharrell, I think, were two very important people. But it's interesting, with bathing eight, no American would have wear anything Japanese. The Americans got a difficult, complicated thing with Asians because of Second World War Korea and Vietnam, and they've got a lot of problems with people of color. We're going to speak into that because obviously the thing with that people is even worse still. The Chinese people built the railroads. They got kicked out and ran off and murdered and stuff like that. So there's a tricky history. But it was interesting that Pharrell, who was a BMX skateboarder, so actually he was even though he's the most incredible producer, uh, he was kind of also coming from a slightly different, nonstraight up hiphop perspective. And I think it was him hooking up with Negro that began this whole sort of thing. Then that, uh, suddenly then soldier boys rapping about wearing bathing apes and stuff. But for a long time, we were wearing all that Japanese sub. No Americans weren't interested in it's.

Uyi

Interesting when you say that, because from my upbringing and my experience, black people have always loved Asian culture, especially when it comes to cinema. So we're thinking about the Hong Kong cinema, the Japanese cinema. We're thinking about the anime. So I feel like black people always been like, man, I love you. Talk about wutang. Wutang are like man in America.

Alex

There's something's happened recently, and a seed has been. Sown I don't know if it's that sort of thing, or like they're the ones in your neighborhood, they're in the corner shop. A lot of this sort of antiaging stuff. But it didn't happen because it just vented itself. Like Brexit enabled a lot of language that I'd never heard since I was a kid being used. These things just opened things that are there. I mean, I remember watching the Bruce led off and hearing I think it was Karim and Kobe talking about Bruce and martial arts films and that scene with the police and how they identify with that. It's like someone's sticking it to the man. So I guess because of the black experience in America, so I think there is that.

Uyi

I think you've touched on an interesting point, actually. We went through COVID and the Asian community in America 100%, and also in the UK. Received a lot of negativity.

Alex

It was really bad in America, but I think that that was just what was there underneath. And I think that unfortunately, when people are disenfranchised. People want to find other people to make them feel more franchised.

Uyi

I feel like that's just divisive politics. Playback.

Alex

It's a bit like the whole thing with Indians and corn shops here and that present them coming in and taking our jobs. Look, when I was a kid, shops shut at 05:00. They shut half day on Thursday, half day on Saturday. Nowhere. Opened on Sunday. And it was only after the Ugandan thing for Dylanian that we had late night shops because they're the only people that want to work that hard. Women to do that, as migrants often do that, and we should be very grateful to that. But unfortunately, it's always played out a different way. It's always played out like they're taking the job. As we've seen with the wall in America and with Brexit, they're doing all the jobs that people do.

Uyi

Demagoguery, man. It's demagoguery. There has been this rise in its politics of trying to appeal to lowest form of politics, and I think it's happening.

Alex

I mean, you saw yesterday, the Swedish far right group got the second most amount of votes. And Sweden's always held up as, like, this place where we should all move to Sweden because they really got it. So I think you see it everywhere. You see it in Eastern Europe, you know, you see it in France, you see it here, you see it in America, and it's really stupidity. People who are closed minded it and want to go back to a time that doesn't exist. It didn't even exist then, you know what I mean?

Uyi

It's so strange and ironic that in a time where the world is so connected, we've never been as connected as this, ever. And yet we feel like we're disconnected.

Alex

Unfortunately, we are. What we're connected to is not each other. We're connected to our technology. And unfortunately, our technology is run by companies that started off being the cool young guys, but have now become the man. And their algorithms are to make their money at all costs. When the Internet came, it was a bit like the Middle Ages and the monks rewriting history kind of got rewritten on the Internet by people that were there a bit. But a lot of them, a lot of them weren't, and a lot of them had become because they've got that airspace, had become the spokespeople or the experts, but a lot of them, how can you know if you weren't there, you might have studied a little bit. My thing was always like, look, it's got to be one of us that tells this story. We can't have some producer come in, misread it, and then that becomes fact. M. And so really, I just set about doing it. It's been ten years I've been interviewing people and I've got everybody from Donaldson, the Clash and Fafi. Freddy Futura, uh, Boy George, Judy Blame, Nella Cherry. There's a lot of other people who I'm not mentioning who are very important, but I'm just mentioning the names that people will know. And then the 3d from Massive Attack. Chassis B. Roche. Sean Stewson Got, James Jebier, then Kim Jones, Virgil Abloh. So right through to the President Virgilo, 2018, we did that, and that was, um, just as the Louis Vuitton thing was announced, but before he went there, but after he'd done the offwhite the Ten, the Nike Ten. And basically I edited these five 1 hour films. But I have to also protect the integrity of the project, which is one of the difficult things, because I've given my word to all of these people, all my friends, that I would do something that they're proud to be associated with that's going to tell the story properly. I'm in a really unique position, having been a skater, having been a drummer, having been a DJ, having been a bit of modeling, having been involved with Stooci. And what I do think is funny is for me, is that I've always been doing different things, but when I was doing it, it wasn't, okay, now everybody does it and everyone wants to be a polymath, but actually, when I was doing it, it wasn't the thing. And it's not like I'm a dillitante or just dabbling like my skating. I was British champion. The band, we were like a really respected band of DJing. I was really good DJ. And so I was doing all these things to like, a serious level. For example, martial arts then started again in 1981 with a guy called Bob Breen, who became a teacher to this.

Uyi

Day in 81 with Bob Green.

Alex

That's back in the day at the Britannia Leisure Center. Wow, that's really kickboxing. And it was super hardcore. It was like full contact.

Uyi

It was this before or after he had brought Dan down to the so.

Alex

I think he'd already done one, but we weren't doing JKD, it was kickboxing. Bob comes from a Wadi Rio background, so he was doing his own kind of version. And then I remember probably eight two, I think we did the first seminar with a Santo, and then the JKD thing and all the ascension and all the Filipino stuff started to kind of come into it much more. I think I finally got my black belt with him in 87, and I've been pretty much training with him ever since. I studied this really interesting Indonesian art, uh, called Penjax celebrity, which is really good art. I've really ever done that does multiple attackers, which is really what combat in the UK or on the streets, most combat is like. So I digress, but what people always say to me are, music and martial arts are so different. How can you do both of those? And for me, I'm like, they're the same. Yeah, it's rhythm, flow, do you know what I mean? Feeling. And in a way, I'm incredibly grateful because I think my martial arts kept me out of a lot of trouble. That a lot of music people I know got into with drugs and stuff like that. You can tell how you are physically. You have a heightened awareness of your sort of physical being and stuff like that. And I think that that's always been, to this day, is something that I'm, uh, incredibly grateful for. And I think the sort of discipline and also the friendship and the people I met, because I've been lucky to train with some of the best martial artists in the world. I trained with Dan, obviously, when I went over to America in the States, took me to the Machados. People don't know. That's the other bit of the graces, but they were the people that Quarrel got to teach at the beginning, and then meeting Mauricio and Roger and everyone at the Academy, then getting to teach the stand up stuff at the Academy. One of my proudest, when Rogers stood up and goes, oh, we got Professor Alex going to come, I was like, wow, that was really amazing. I've been training with you guys, all the guys down there, and it was a really brilliant thing. And I've been really blessed to have met and trained with some incredible people that are just super inspirational guys, you know what I mean? But also super humble. Like a kind of model for how to behave in life, you know what I mean? We don't like arrogant people, do we? Like, if you're a martial artist, you come from that. Obviously, there are those guys in that. But the places where we come from, there's a way to behave. There's a way to handle yourself.

Uyi

And I've met many a dangerous person who is incredibly humble. You'd be surprised.

Alex

Most of them. I can remember standing in a room with four or five, and it's like, wow, people that met these guys. I think the last time I was training with Bob, it was like that, and I was like, uh, people would know. You meet these five guys, you just wouldn't have no idea what was going on, how much death and destruction actually looked like. It's crazy.

Uyi

So you got to be careful. You never know who's going.

Alex

And I think that's one of the good things about it, is you don't know. And it's like, whoever you are, there's someone out there that's got your number when you watch UFC. And I think that just shows that I mean, I remember because I've watched UFC right from the first one, and I remember Hiroshi bringing over a VHS because there was no cable. There was none of that. It was a VHS of the first one. I remember we all sat and watched it. And I remember what the first fight, it's the Hawaiian Sumo and the Neonazi Dutch kickback, uh, Jared Gordon, who comes out and does, like, a four corner Nazi salute in the middle of the ring. And then the next fight, it was.

Uyi

Just like, you didn't say what happened in that fight.

Alex

Well, the sumo guy runs across the ring, trip falls over and the Gordon kicks him in the head, knocks him out, but breaks his foot in the process. Um, and I remember watching the first two fights and just thinking, this is the end of martial arts, as I know because I've been training for twelve years at this point. And then Joyce comes out in his key and you're like, wow, this guy's really cool. He's going to get his ass kicked because he's like teeny, about half the size of everybody else. And at that time, it was three fights in the night. So it was like a knockout tournament. His quarterfinal, semi final fine. You could have had a 20 minutes fight and be fighting a guy who's had a five second fight, I think no time limit. And, uh, the only two, it was like, I'd gouges and fish hooks, even punching was with the real no holes bars, and then watching that and watching how that whole thing panned out. Actually, the first BJJ I actually ever did was with a guy called Chris Houser, who is a really amazing guy. Um, one of the Dirty Dozen, one of the first Americans to get a BJJ blackout, which I think the Brazilians weren't keen to give Americans at the beginning. So he came over with Dan because he's actually one of Hickson's students. But I think he'd also been training with Higgin McIndo. He's like an exmarine. And he came over with Dan and nobody had seen BJJ. I think it was maybe before the UFC even. And I remember they got Chancellor as the purple band. There's like a hundred people at the seminar, like Korea martial arts guy. And it's like, oh, see if you can get out of his guard. And not one person came close to doing it. Everyone's just getting armed by a choke triangle. And then Chris was staying at Bob's, but they were sleeping in the gym upstairs. And I said to them, you come stay at my place. You can't sleep on the cement floor up here. And then Chris was like, okay, but your rent is. We're going to beat you up every day on that. I just got smashed up for it.

Uyi

And you loved it, right?

Alex

Yeah. And another guy I got trained with earlier on, it was a guy called Eric Pollsson yes. Who was one of Dan's. He was in the first extreme fighting, one of the first very first, uh, shooters. He was like the heavyweight shoot champion in Japan. Amazing wrestler. I mean, amazing wrestler doesn't even begin. Eric can lock every bit of your body. Like, if you get on the mat with him, you just tapping it's like a drum solo, you know what I mean? So there were some of the guys I got to train with early on, um, and obviously with Bob. So that's been just a really beautiful bit of my thing that I still do.

Uyi

It's interesting when you said that people say, oh, music and martial arts, like, they're completely separate, and you're like, no, they're absolutely connected. And it's the same way I look at it. But for me, when I think about music and martial arts together, I think about Sugar Ray Robinson, who was just this incredible boxer, ah, like pound for pound, one of the greatest, if not the greatest and incredible dancer, right? So just seeing him, he would do boxing exhibitions and then start dancing in a ring, and his rhythm was just incredible. And then, obviously, because we've talked about Bob and we talked about Dan, so, ah, people don't know about Gikundo. Gikundo was the martial art philosophy that Bruce Lee created. And Bruce Lee, if people don't know, was an amazing dancer, right, charge champion, and had great rhythm kind of links to what you said about being a DJ as well. Because he had rhythm, he could also break the rhythm as well. Like, he knew where the brakes would come in. And so that made him incredibly effective when it came to martial arts and combat, I think.

Alex

And also, he's the godfather of MMA at that time. Even in the into the 80s, if you studied Taiwan der Karate, you couldn't do another art because the teachers were really not into it. So I think he was really ahead of the time and ahead of the curve, and he was doing it in the 60s for sort of combining martial arts. And even if you look at that intra scene, enter the dragon in the temple with Samuel Hong Kassic, and they're wearing fingerless UFC gloves and little black shorts, and he does an arm bar. And at the time, everybody was like, what's? He doing some wacky wrestling move? And then 20 years later, for the first ten years of the USC, I think that was the dominance. And also, the other thing I think that's really interesting about Bruce Lee is with Kareem and with Jim Kelly as well, is that if you look at sort of black floatation movies and what they were like doing and how black people were sort of represented, he was even Asian people. Don't get me started on that, because I think actually, in the interim, black people have had much better representation and role models. Whereas with an asian kid, um, well, I got John wu and jackie chan. It's like there's not a whole lot of people to I'm a very firm believer that the representation of Asians in films and television is still very medieval. White people are saying, what do you mean? Uh, yeah, you don't notice it because you don't look, you don't feel it, and it doesn't offend you in the way that it offends me. But you very rarely see people in positions of power or. In any 100%. And then they had crazy, rich Asians, and everyone was like, Alex, you've got to watch that. And I guess it was good. I didn't watch it at first because I was like, no, most Asians aren't rich. And actually, that's still a stereotype. But I guess in a way, it's different from Launderettes and kind of takeaway restaurants, which is sort of like the staple for a lot of people might want to disagree with it, but just have a look next time and see you just have a look at what that represents. But going back to what we were saying about I thought the way that he represented Jim Kelly, who's one of the best characters in Enter the Dragon, after Bruce was sort of brilliant, was, like, strong. They had that dojo. He kind of beats up the cops. And then with the, you know, I'll pick you. I'm sorry. It's been a long time. I'm a good fan. But it was a total, full on, um, powerful sort of thing. So I think that he was really ahead of his time.

Uyi

He was a pioneer. He was a pioneer. And actually interesting because obviously we're talking about you and your experiences and your journey, but actually, you've been in a lot of these areas that were pioneering at the time, in terms of the fashion, in terms of the skating, in terms of the music.

Alex

Um, I've never really thought of it like that. And actually, it's funny, I was talking to somebody because I'm the oldest sort of biracial Asian European. It was so taboo in both cultures that I think it's only because my parents were artists that they didn't really can't care about that. But now it's everywhere, you know what I mean? And it's great and it's brilliant. But I remember talking to a guy, I was talking about this thing about representation and role models, and he actually said to me, I've always looked at you as one. You're a guy who's out there doing all this stuff. To be perfectly honest, I never really thought about it like that at all, because I guess everything I've been doing, I've just done, because that's what I wanted to do.

Uyi

So you never felt like you were, uh, representing anything or anyone? You're representing yourself?

Alex

Yeah, but in the end, I mean, if I have or if anyone saw that, then that's brilliant, that makes me really happy. But I never did it because I was sort of thinking about that. When you were young, you were kind of embarrassed. You wanted to be like everybody else, being half Chinese. And I had a Chinese name when I was a kid, which was very cool and hip with my parents, but was very uncool for me.

Uyi

What was your Chinese name?

Alex

Chuan. But no one outside my family ever said it properly. Twang. Right. And I went to a big comprehensive school. I ended up fighting a lot I bet. And so I think probably when I was about nine or ten, I just said, look, can I just have my English name, please? Because I looked a bit different anyway, a different hair. I can't just be called Dave or Mike, please. And it's only, I guess as you get older and you grow into yourself, you're like, yeah, I'm unique. That's good, that's great, right? And I think probably for me, it was when I realized I realized, I think at the beginning I felt half, half. And then I think when I realized, no, I'm twice. I'm not half, I'm twice, because I've got the benefit of both of these cultures. And actually, both my parents were amazing artists. In fact, me and my brother, the only thing we were told we couldn't be was artists. By who? By my parents.

Uyi

Oh, why?

Alex

Because you never make a living, you never be able to make money doing this, because that was what it was like. And I think they had a thing that it was like, if you can be discouraged, you don't have what it takes. In the end, it just our creativity was always going to be there because we grew up around it just had to manifest itself in other ways. So that was like skateboarding, music, DJing I think the thing I really learned, that they really taught me, was the ability to follow your own belief as well. And it doesn't matter what other people think, because my dad was really one of the main British modern artists, but because his work was considered a little abstract, certainly back then, like, very figurative work, but he was with Jacob and Brancuzi in Paris, he was with Roscoe and Newman in New York. So he's really like the international artist, but he's always been a bit sidelined.

Uyi

Um William Turnbull.

Alex

William Turnbull. And my mum, too. She was completely forgotten when she died. And I guess this is the other bit. Perhaps 1516 years me and my brother have been looking after their work. It's something I never thought I would be doing. As I said, we were discouraged from doing art. I never paid attention. I didn't get into the art module at school. I didn't have any. We'd go to the openings, but our creativity was a more modern and art was very quite old fashioned there. It's not like it has become in the last 15 years, where it's all parties and DJs and art jumped onto that like all of the rest of the culture. It was quite old school and in a bad way. Think more like their attitudes were quite closed, it was quite close minded, it was quite closed shop. So my parents were there doing their thing regardless, but they're always outsiders, and so it's been really nice looking after their work and protecting it, and now seeing them both getting their rightful placement. My mum has just blown up in the last three or four years, I.

Uyi

Was going to say, actually, because going back to looking at the representation of Asians just globally, but in the west, and I 100% agree with you in terms of film and TV, it's been lacking and it's been quite stereotypical. There's slight changes. But you're right, if you say to people, can you name some Asian actors or some Asian artists? They'll be like, Well, I can only name, like, three or four if they could even do that. But then in terms of the art scene as well, I can name maybe two or three Asian artists. The representation just hasn't been there.

Alex

But also, I think there's another reason for that as well. I can say from kind of close understanding of that, is that art, and particularly modern art, is not such an Asian thing. And it's to do with and again, I don't want to kind of speak in broad strokes, but Asians, they're good business people. And so I think a lot of Asians were like, Ah, what is that like? Waste of bloody. And actually, that was the prevalent attitude in the UK, even into the was only the YBAs that started in banksy and hears, that started to change that perception. And it took a while, you know what I mean? Um, but art, when I grew up, you got beat up for saying you liked art. People like waves of space, get a proper job. But I think in Asia, art isn't something that is considered a valid sort of thing till recently. So that was what was so mad about my mum. Aged 17, in the 50s, she came here to study art. She died, unfortunately, very prematurely. She was only 61. That's one of the questions I always wanted to ask. And then the traveling from Singapore to the UK in 90, 54, you didn't even know where you were going or what it was going to be like. So I think that in a way, they were both real pioneers because they were just our mum and dad, and we just had painted steel in the garden that we washed for pocket money. All that stuff was just normal. We assumed that everyone had that in their garden. Uh, to our friends, we come around from school and they'd be like, what's that? And you'd be like, what do you mean? You don't have big steel things in your garden as well. But I think I got a lot of that stubborn self belief or just your ability to follow through, even when everyone's telling you, you never standing me in good stead with Rise of the Streets, because it's been a long project. Look, it's really interesting, isn't it? I remember when most people didn't wear sneakers. It's, uh, not that long ago, like the 90s, really. And now nobody doesn't wear sneakers. Everybody knows about Virgil, avlow and offwhite and Jordan. So in a way, that sort of thing of having those things to yourself. It's sort of gone now. Anyone can buy anything anywhere, but you can still tell when somebody's wearing it if they got style or not. And that's one of the sort of end questions when I do my interviews, that a lot of people have said, that's the best interview I've ever done. Because, like, I was just having a chat like this. Um, and I would start off with, like, what's your first style memory? And from people going to see the Rolling Stones and walking down Oxford Street barefoot in the seeing this Confederate hat in Woolworths, or somebody seeing skateboarding. Then at the end, I, uh, kind of asked, like, about style. It's very interesting, isn't it? Because it's completely intangible, but you can tell when someone's got it, even if they're not wearing what you like, you.

Uyi

Can just tell me.

Alex

And just because you have all the stuff doesn't make you started. And I think that that's sort of where it sort of got a bit lost. Like, I'm all for, uh, streetwear and all of this stuff, and I think it's amazing. I think supreme, what James has done is incredible with that company. It's a little skateboard shop, and now it's like the biggest brand in the world. Louis Vuitton wants to partner with them to make them hip, you know what I mean? It's like they have that power that these big fashion houses now all want. Palace and Calvin Klein dabadan and gucci dapper dan. That was the hoodiest shit. You had to go to Harlem. I remember my mate James went to Harlem. All the people there were like, wow, fuck, you really brave, like, respect. So they all let him, like and he came back with an MCM goose, like, put MCM leather on his head, sneakers and stuff. But that was hood, hood shit, you know what I mean? And now they've all come round Louis Vuitton injuncted supreme 15 years ago for doing a mock like Louis Vuitton cap. It is really interesting how this thing has grown. And in a way, it's sort of taken over culture, because I think with phones, there hasn't been so much new culture. This amazing period that we were lucky enough to come up in, from the mid seventy s to the mid ninety s or two thousand, and that's it. If you look at modern culture, the last 20 years, it's all been formed from that period. I'm not trying to diss anything or anybody, you know what I mean, but I think one, it was an amazing period. 70, uh, six to 81 looked far from the M. Skinners. You had punk, you had Color Revival, you had New Wave, you had two tone, and then you had hip hop. In five years, that's 2017 to now, that's like iPhone ten to iPhone 14, which looks exactly the same. Not much. There's not much stylistically, this is what I'm saying, in five years, because everyone settled on this period.

Uyi

Here's a question, though, Van, because obviously you said before that these things weren't so accessible. You had to go literally travel to another country to access it. So now, because of the Internet, because of technology, because of mobile phones and digital accessibility, do you think that people have been less creative?

Alex

No, we're lazy. I'm sorry to be like because you can be, because you don't have to not be. And so I think that that is the downshot. And everyone's concentration span has really diminished. People can't even watch films now, you know what I mean? They've got to watch, like, little tidbits of people, like, uh, OK, can we break this down into kind of small deliverable sound bites? Not technology. That's the problem. It's people, the way people use it. And I'm sure it will change, because I think that's the one thing about humans, if we don't destroy ourselves first, we'll find a way.

Uyi

It's like Pandora's box. There's still hope there. So, Rise of the Streets, you started this project ten years ago and nobody's.

Alex

Actually ever attempted to tell how culture connects. So it's not about the New romantics or about the punks or about hip hop. It's about how culture connects and how these things came together and then spawned other things. So it's like a three dimensional constellation, and I've tried to do that with the films. It's not a linear a bit like oriented. It's not like a straight linear thing because it doesn't go like that. And there's things that from 20 years ago that connect to now. And even though we've sort of flowed backwards and forwards, I think that's a bit like how it is. Something happens and then 15 years later, it manifests in something else. And people that have just come to it now don't understand where it's come from. I'm dictated to by my journey and how I've come to this place through these sort of weird little signposts.

Uyi

So we've been chatting for an hour and 45 minutes. We've had an amazing chat. I, um, really appreciate you coming and spinning the time because I know you're massively busy and I managed to get you in a window. I'm really keen to see when Rise of the street comes out. Do you have a rough timeline?

Alex

I would say this year, I think, knowing the film business, and there's still a few more interviews I want to get in there. I'd say 2023, which it's the time now. And actually, I was sort of building it from the back to the front. But I think now what we're going to do is maybe even go front to back. All right, so actually start with now.

Uyi

Yes, doing it.

Alex

Because actually the challenge is that most of my heroes, my kids don't know they are. Yes, we talk sold to Soul and Massive Attack, you know what I mean? Because we have a different generation, man.

Uyi

So where can we follow you? I know you're not a huge fan of the social, but where can we follow you and where can we find out about Rising the street?

Alex

So my instagram is at Alex Turnbull, 23 private. So you're going to have to get through my gate. I just don't want that crazy wacko people. Do you see these people that have got like 300 posts, no followers, and following 2000 or at Rise of the street again, there's a lot of stuff that's on there. There's a lot of stuff that isn't on there. There's the vibes and the people and that's like a visual sort of interpretation of what the scope of the project.

Uyi

Cool. Amazing. Thank you again, Alex, for spending the time. It's a real pleasure, man. Amazing listening to your journey, bro.

Alex

Thank you.

Uyi

Okay. Thank you for listening. As always, you can find more details about my guests in the show notes. If you liked this episode, I highly recommend you check out episode 16, iconic with music producer Raphael. And episode 15 taylor Maeve with Benjamin Dan Phillips. See you in two weeks. You.