Flipthrough - COAST KINGS The Pioneers of Brighton Graffiti by Tom Dartnell

[00:00:07]This one I've been waiting for for ages.

[00:00:08]This is Coast Kings. Coast Kings, the pioneers of Brighton graffiti by a Tom Dartnell.

[00:00:15]Big shout out to Errol 1 for for sorting me out the book. It's a fantastic book.

[00:00:21]Check out of this. Nice and fat, big hardback, bit like the old Showko books.

[00:00:27]Put out by Taz.

[00:00:29]Similar kind of era.

[00:00:32]It's hefty.

[00:00:34]It's It's a really good one.

[00:00:37]I don't want to waste any time. Let's get into it.

[00:00:39]So, Brighton scene. For those of you who don't know who weren't around back then or who uh who come from shores further afield Brighton is on the south coast of England and has a very very rich graffiti tradition. There's that Gaslight piece.

[00:01:02]You'll see that in a bit.

[00:01:04]Mhm, some fantastic old-schooly stuff. I'll tell you what, I'm not going to hang around too much because there's a lot of this.

[00:01:13]And uh obviously uh Tom Dartnell would like you to buy the book, support his work.

[00:01:19]It's taken a lot of work to put this book together.

[00:01:22]So uh I'm just going to flip through it. I'm just call a bits of bits of stuff as we go, really.

[00:01:29]Brighton very famous for writers like Neema, obviously. Um Wrek She uh Fire, of course. Fire, rest in peace.

[00:01:42]As well, that's a DFM set network southeast. That panel piece, that's uh if memory served, the Freeze Mob.

[00:01:51]And uh yeah, so yeah, we we were hearing about Brighton back then.

[00:01:57]Even though they were uh tucked away down there on the South Coast, they were getting busy. There was a lot of graph happening there. They had a great scene.

[00:02:06]And Tom Bownal has done an amazing job of putting all this together. See, I used to love all this stuff back then.

[00:02:12]This is the sort of stuff, random kind of, you know, spray stuff.

[00:02:18]Random locations, gorgeous.

[00:02:22]Absolutely lovely. Oh, yeah, this is what '86 is it? Yeah, you got '86.

[00:02:32]First wave, golden age of uh UK graph. This sort of stuff.

[00:02:42]Some great interviews in here. I've just had a I've had a tiny dip in.

[00:02:46]Read some stuff. Ooh, look at those.

[00:02:49]Fantastic '80s hand styles there. That's '87, by the looks of things.

[00:02:58]Just love this. Love these little sets, gorgeous.

[00:03:02]Great piece. So good. Oh, that's uh that Yeah, that's Wrek '87.

[00:03:07]Really beautiful balanced bar kind of dancing letters. Lovely. Lovely work.

[00:03:22]Yeah.

[00:03:25]Hand styles like this.

[00:03:29]Just the absolutely live for this stuff.

[00:03:31]Yeah, great interviews. That's what I was saying earlier, great interviews in here.

[00:03:37]There's some really interesting stuff.

[00:03:40]Um it's interesting um '80s '80s UK graph. Cuz obviously we uh we taking the work from subway art, style wars, >> [snorts] >> spray can art, that sort of stuff.

[00:03:55]And really run with it. And certain themes began to develop sort of independently, really.

[00:04:05]One of the big themes that used to run through UK 80s graph was sci-fi. There was a sci-fi theme.

[00:04:13]I should point that out as we go through it when I spot it, really.

[00:04:17]If I spot it.

[00:04:21]There's a real You see, this is very There's something about the font work and everything which is quite science fictiony. Can you see that?

[00:04:31]And it's mirrored in the characters.

[00:04:38]Again, this is very kind of uh There's this slight kind of uh cyberpunky sci-fi theme to it.

[00:04:48]And there was throughout the whole country. This was uh this was a running thing.

[00:04:52]I absolutely loved it. 2000 AD was was a huge influence on a lot of British UK writers and uh It's still around today, 2000 AD. It was uh It was much bigger back then. It was huge back then.

[00:05:07]It was influencing everybody.

[00:05:12]Particularly those of us who were obsessed with characters.

[00:05:18]But yeah, you begin to see obviously the the European influence of Shoe and Delta, Bando, TCA generally, obviously Mode 2, people like that.

[00:05:30]That influence is really starting to shine through as well.

[00:05:34]So, you start to see that in uh in both letter form, just character types, uh productions generally, composition.

[00:05:48]That's mere stuff.

[00:05:52]I'm flipping through fast, but obviously that's because there's a lot of this stuff. There's a lot of it.

[00:05:57]89 and Also, but the whole point of these videos is you go and buy the book. Uh sci-fi kind of sci-fi hip hoppy skate boardy Yeah, you see it a lot in in the work of uh Nonstop and um London Giants.

[00:06:35]you know.

[00:06:36]You see real kind of like space AG stuff.

[00:06:44]Those guys Those guys were were influencing everybody.

[00:06:57]Yeah, lovely.

[00:07:00]This sort of stuff.

[00:07:02]If you were around at that time, this kind of thing was just you know, and will always be like nectar.

[00:07:12]I remember I had like a big fat blue Oh, no, it wasn't No, it wasn't mine. It would belong to somebody else. It was a It was an Edding 850.

[00:07:22]And And I had quite a nice hand style, and somebody said uh he put our um put our crew up.

[00:07:34]So, I did. I remember, and it was this It was this kind of style.

[00:07:40]This kind of font style.

[00:07:42]Very happy memories.

[00:07:47]Again, this sort of stuff, you know, bombed walls. This sort of stuff that seems very ugly to members of the general public.

[00:07:53]Which seems so uh so beautiful to us.

[00:07:59]Of course, walls don't look like this anymore, either.

[00:08:05]Love that. Absolutely love that.

[00:08:09]I'll bet I put my name on that today.

[00:08:18]Yeah, I seem to recall Wrek was uh somebody was doing a lot of photo realism and experimenting with a lot of stuff.

[00:08:26]All kinds of uh fills and avant-garde styling. Look at that.

[00:08:36]I remember that one. I think that was printed in uh in Hip Hop Connection, I think.

[00:08:44]It was definitely printed somewhere because I've seen it before.

[00:08:47]I never saw it in person.

[00:08:52]Can't go wrong with that, can you?

[00:08:55]Classic '87, I'd say. Oh, no, much later. I'm wrong.

[00:09:00]'89.

[00:09:03]I would argue that it's uh Oh, you can tell by the tagging, actually. See the tagging, how it flares out? It starts smaller, gets bigger.

[00:09:12]That started sort of very late '88, '89.

[00:09:20]Ooh, there's some tube work here.

[00:09:28]Yeah.

[00:09:30]Cool.

[00:09:33]Love that.

[00:09:34]Absolutely love that.

[00:09:37]Right.

[00:09:38]Swords. I don't know know any of the areas in Brighton, unfortunately. Ooh.

[00:09:43]Pop's up.

[00:09:44]Pop's on a visit. Of course, he was from the Midlands.

[00:09:48]Nottingham.

[00:09:53]Just it Just pointing out that that everybody was coming in.

[00:09:57]Again, lovely sci-fi space AG feel to that one.

[00:10:06]Look at that.

[00:10:07]Bombed wall he's painting over there.

[00:10:11]Love it.

[00:10:23]Try.

[00:10:28]Tarnaland, '89, '91.

[00:10:34]A cool horn, representing.

[00:10:43]Nice Nice little shot in the paper there.

[00:10:56]Nice.

[00:10:57]See, what's great about the stars of the day is that you see this sort of experimentation going on.

[00:11:03]People are trying stuff.

[00:11:06]And it's honestly, it's as equally satisfying to see the the failures and what like led to later successes as it is the successes themselves.

[00:11:17]Cuz this is proper foundational stuff.

[00:11:20]I really love that. I don't know if it's half finished or if it was meant to be like that, but I don't really care.

[00:11:26]Really nice. And it's really nice to see chrome with a with a dark with a dark blue outline on it.

[00:11:37]And some beautiful old school highlights on. And that's 90 that one, 99.

[00:11:48]Some lovely stuff here. Lovely.

[00:11:51]Nice some Oh, that's She. Yeah.

[00:11:54]91.

[00:11:57]That's She as well as Zinc.

[00:12:04]Top date one of style.

[00:12:14]Really lovely style She one.

[00:12:21]And we're looking at She one's letters and thinking, "Yeah, these are These are These are on a joke.

[00:12:33]They're having a dance.

[00:12:36]Love this kind of a wall.

[00:12:38]Absolutely love.

[00:12:45]Oh, yeah. You don't get any walls like this anymore.

[00:12:49]Not just like this.

[00:12:51]All right.

[00:12:53]Great. Takes me back.

[00:12:59]Ooh, I like that as well.

[00:13:01]Is that the seafront? I don't know. I can't tell.

[00:13:12]Yep, I'll never get tired of this sort of stuff.

[00:13:18]Look.

[00:13:21]Bear in mind, this is the area where uh where paint is getting racked. There's that ghastly piece.

[00:13:30]That was fire and curves. Oh, yeah.

[00:13:38]Yeah, someone was wrecking their paint.

[00:13:41]Planning their schemes. School piece there.

[00:13:44]The first school piece we've seen.

[00:13:47]School used to get busy down in Brighton.

[00:13:49]I don't know if School used to live down in Brighton.

[00:13:59]Nice School piece. Lovely that in a school.

[00:14:02]And of course Fire.

[00:14:07]So, you can really start to see the sort of yeah, a big big production piece.

[00:14:14]That has more in common with production piece you've seen now.

[00:14:18]And this is '93, which makes sense.

[00:14:21]So, this is the 7 years on from from the real sort of the the first wave. I know, you know, I know that stuff started in '84, '85, but not many people were doing it back then.

[00:14:36]There wasn't much happening. '86 is when it really started to pick up.

[00:14:41]'87 is when people like me were jumping on.

[00:14:44]And uh Look at that one.

[00:14:49]Talks about a whole car new more fire new more fire fire new Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:53]Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:15:08]>> [snorts] >> I love commission pieces.

[00:15:15]Yeah, graffiti very exciting at the time. To see a commission piece go up is great as well.

[00:15:22]Cuz they would they could take their time.

[00:15:25]They got an exact paint choice because it was being bankrolled by somebody else.

[00:15:31]I think he used to see them really bright commissioned bits going up and down.

[00:15:36]See that's interesting styling, isn't it?

[00:15:43]>> [snorts] >> Great old one there.

[00:15:49]88 I think.

[00:15:51]Short wheelbase.

[00:15:57]That's a nice long shot.

[00:15:59]This is then old Network Southeast trains.

[00:16:04]Used to run back then.

[00:16:08]In the red, white, and blue.

[00:16:13]Yeah.

[00:16:15]Loads of these.

[00:16:16]Sub.

[00:16:20]It's getting busy on the Network Southeast, mate.

[00:16:24]Yes. Ooh, that's a great one. That looks like an old mail train.

[00:16:30]Yeah. Sweet.

[00:16:32]Outside Brighton Depot 98.

[00:16:43]Ooh, yeah. A bit of old 1960s rolling stock there.

[00:16:48]Has the window down.

[00:17:06]I'll tell you what, what a photo collection.

[00:17:10]I don't know if all these photos have come from Tom Darnell, but there's a lot of them.

[00:17:14]And I I tell you what, I bet he rooted through them just to find the best ones.

[00:17:18]He's probably got 10 times this this amount.

[00:17:22]Great shot.

[00:17:36]So, you're seeing a lot of old school stuff. Obvious comment, but just making a point, which is uh seems to span the years. I don't know if this is official or not, but seems to span the years of '86. Diabolical Dubstars there.

[00:17:52]Nema.

[00:17:53]Uh '86 to '93.

[00:18:01]The golden years, basically.

[00:18:03]That's what that is.

[00:18:05]The golden years of UK graffitis movement in the book. So, it's a bit more in camera.

[00:18:10]I don't really mind that it's cut off because I don't want it to be a sort of you know, these These flip-throughs are not meant to be a sort of absolute perfect kind of uh unless it's an old out of print thing, you know.

[00:18:22]These are These are sort of These are sort of adverts, really, for the books. That's what they are. And the idea is I'm going to put a a link in the description and you can kind of get one for yourself.

[00:18:36]Cuz you want to hold it in your hands.

[00:18:37]That's That's what this business is all about. Look at that.

[00:18:41]Jacket piece.

[00:18:46]I've got a good jacket piece.

[00:18:48]That I absolutely adore.

[00:18:53]Great chunky letters.

[00:18:56]Yeah.

[00:18:57]Nice.

[00:19:01]All right, two inch to now.

[00:19:04]That's the score piece. Lovely.

[00:19:07]Okay.

[00:19:09]Ooh.

[00:19:12]Interesting. Okay.

[00:19:16]Yeah, lovely.

[00:19:22]These are nice smaller walls. They look about what? Nearly 6-ft walls, maybe.

[00:19:28]It's not the ideal height for a wall.

[00:19:30]You want a wall a bit bigger than that, really.

[00:19:34]Uh obviously, you know, anything's better than nothing. Love that. That's great.

[00:19:41]But yeah, generally, I like to pattern a 9-10 ft wall.

[00:19:52]Gives me the uh requisite height for the character.

[00:20:13]Crackside Cromes.

[00:20:16]And this road Lewis is an area down I know this is Lewis Road, but Lewis is an area down there as well.

[00:20:23]Somewhere down there. I don't know the geography very well.

[00:20:27]To be perfectly honest, geography not my uh not my strong suit, should we say.

[00:20:34]Probably worse than maths. No, maths worse than everything.

[00:20:39]Yeah, maths, physics, terrible. That's fine.

[00:20:44]Man wasn't very good at school.

[00:20:48]But then uh you've probably already guessed that.

[00:20:52]I don't know many graffers who were.

[00:21:06]This looks like this is some really old stuff in 1890.

[00:21:09]1890.

[00:21:10]1890, yeah. Early early stuff.

[00:21:20]So, if you were seeing these walls back then, you'd have looked at them and just gone, "Ah, I want to do that. I want to do that."

[00:21:29]That's how it was.

[00:21:40]Wow, they were killing these last night.

[00:21:42]That's gold one as well. Killing these crimes, weren't they?

[00:21:47]Love that. So, quick there.

[00:21:52]The rough fill.

[00:21:54]Sketchy fill.

[00:21:55]This was in HAC. Pretty certain of that.

[00:21:58]Quest piece, old school AD Quest piece.

[00:22:01]Yeah, that was definitely in HAC.

[00:22:03]I remember it.

[00:22:09]Classic writer. Look at that character.

[00:22:12]Wicked.

[00:22:27]That's nice stuff as well. That's sort of pale blue outline over a big background like that.

[00:22:33]Wicked.

[00:22:34]Is that Wrek again?

[00:22:36]Yes, it is. Oh, and that's She again, yeah.

[00:22:41]Super inventive.

[00:22:45]That's definitely, um, Wrek and She, isn't it? Oh, that's No, I think that's just She.

[00:22:51]And that's She as well, yeah.

[00:22:58]>> [sighs] >> Oh, love that name there.

[00:23:06]Oh.

[00:23:08]I mean, a lot of writers say getting up, you know, doing pieces on the regular.

[00:23:17]Getting busy.

[00:23:23]It's always been a really great scene. I love that piece.

[00:23:26]Absolutely love it. Love character. Love that. Great.

[00:23:32]Yeah, it's always been a really, really great scene. It's always good stuff coming out of there.

[00:23:36]In more recent years, you know, rare kind and all that sort of stuff.

[00:23:41]With Daze down there and uh Yeah, really healthy. Snug painted amazing amazing mural down there one time.

[00:23:53]I've seen it.

[00:23:56]I've been down to Brighton for ages. I'm well overdue a visit.

[00:24:03]Some couple bit of sun. Get a bit of sea. They have an amazing pier down there as well.

[00:24:10]Or boardwalk, I think uh Americans call them.

[00:24:20]Color as well.

[00:24:21]Some of these bits I've seen them before in uh probably HAC and uh Graffuturism.

[00:24:35]Yeah, particularly these Nema pieces.

[00:24:41]Nema five and score and Yeah, this is um I think this is uh definitely been printed before.

[00:24:53]Score.

[00:24:56]Fiz. Fiz characters.

[00:25:06]Yeah.

[00:25:10]No good production.

[00:25:15]And there we have it.

[00:25:18]Oh, look at that. That's the uh That's that wall from '89. It's all battered and old, but nobody's gone over it.

[00:25:28]Cuz I wonder if that's present day. Oh, it's 2016. Meas foundation piece from '89 is still hanging on in 2016. That's amazing, isn't it?

[00:25:37]I don't know any pieces in London that that still run from that time.

[00:25:43]Cuz we had the Robo piece, but Banksy went over it.

[00:25:46]Old London Giants piece in East Dulwich that was blitzed when somebody bought the building. I don't know. Anybody know any really old bits that are still alive? Proper pieces, you know.

[00:25:59]Pop up in the comments. I don't know of any now.

[00:26:03]Well, that is amazing that that's still incredible. So, yeah, Tom Dalziel, big ups, man.

[00:26:11]Put together an amazing book there, Coast Kings, the pioneers of Brighton graffiti.

[00:26:17]I will put a link in the description. Go and buy one. Support the man and his work.

[00:26:23]And uh I'm dining out on some old school East Sussex, Brighton, South Coast graff.