Martin Belk

  • • ABOUT, BIO & CONTACT
    • Bio: Martin Belk
    • Contact
  • • BOOKS
    • PRETTY BROKEN PUNKS: lipstick, leather jeans, a death of New York
    • SCOTS WHO ENLIGHTENED THE WORLD
    • 100 BEARDS 100 DAYS
  • • ARTICLES
    • GQ + Gap interview & campaign
    • Port Magazine • ICONIC NEW YORK
    • City AM Tribute to Iain Banks
    • Scottish Review of Books
      ‘A BALLAD OF READING IN GAOL’
    • Prague Writers’ Festival
      SILENCE = DEATH
  • • PROJECTS
    • BANKSOPHILIA
      Farewell website done with & for the late Iain Banks
    • Polmont Young Offender’s Prison Writing Programme
    • flashback ’96: Live @nd InConcert – the first NYC music webcast starring Debbie Harry from Squeezebox! & Don Hill’s
Playwright, Author, Editor
London • Glasgow
Paris • NYC
  • Email
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A Man in a Box: Finding Robert Mappelthorpe

March 26, 2017 by martinbelk

2015, a hot July afternoon in Portugal, my longtime friend Marcus Leatherdale and I were digging for memories in some of his old boxes — packed away many moons ago in New York City. Invitations to parties from Andy Warhol, notebooks with appointments to shoot everyone from Keith Haring to Debbie Harry for the original (and cool) Details Magazine emerged — all great fodder for the new biography of Marcus we’ve begun: What’s Left of Leatherdale.

As the afternoon waned and the arid heat started to mix with a protracted silence and many nose-fuls of New York City dust, we reached the bottom of the last box to find a crumpled envelope containing some kind of plastic sleeves and colour transparencies. We took the mangled stack to the window, and there he was — a young Robert Mappelthorpe, the same one from Marcus’s infamous black and white, in living colour, looking straight at us.

Meticulously conserved, restored and now printed larger than life — these never-before-seen images are available to see (and buy) at  Roman Zangief – 40 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10010 • 28 March – 7 April, 2017.

 

Filed Under: M-L-BLOG: Tagged With: Mappelthorpe, New York City, NYC, Pretty Broken Punks

Martin’s Minute: 9/11 – the greatest show out on earth

September 11, 2015 by martinbelk

Screen Shot 2015-09-11 at 12.16.509/11.

I don’t believe the ‘official’ story.

I will never support the perpetual war and criminals that sprang out of the fall.

Please don’t wave your flags at me,

or tell me how God is on our side,

I don’t have a side.

I have an intellect, and a conscience.

-MLB

Filed Under: M-L-BLOG: Tagged With: New York City, NYC

Martin Belk

June 17, 2014 by martinbelk

Filed Under: Wisdom Tagged With: Fuck things Up, NYC, provacateur, writer, Writing

HEDWIG. TONYS. CONGRATS.

June 9, 2014 by martinbelk

Screen Shot 2014-06-09 at 10.52.01
John Cameron Mitchell 8 June 2014 enroute to Tony Awards.

“Wait a minute: Madonna came? Bowie came? all manner of folks came. The big musical debut at SqueezeBox!, circa 1997, had been a smash hit. Crowds went ape for the music and were going ape for it. And why wouldn’t they? It had a glam drag-queen transsexual, and a story that touched every generation from the Boomers on. By putting a band on stage with Greek myths, offering a new angle to the Berlin Wall, and floating the whole boy-becomes-girl meets boy-loses-boy who then becomes a redeemed rock god taking the entire audience on a glittering catharsis, Hedwig raised the bar. Who needed Vagina Monologues when Mitchell & Company tore the roof off with his Angry Inch? Over a decade later I entered the Jane Street Theatre from the front. [Read more…]

Filed Under: People to Know: Tagged With: Angry Inch, Hedwig, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, John Cameron Mitchell, Mike Potter, Neil Patrick Harris, New York City, NYC, Squeezebox!, Stephen Trask, Tony Awards

Pretty Broken Punks: lipstick, leather jeans, a death of New York

December 5, 2013 by martinbelk

“Full of great memories, names, observations. It brought it all back. Don’t change a word…” –MICHAEL MUSTO, The Village Voice 

“A lithely written, honest and perceptive account of a unique time.” –IAIN BANKS

Filed Under: Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: Debbie Harry, Martin Belk, New York City, NYC, Pretty Broken Punks, Squeezebox!, Writing

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