 |
|||
| Similar Pages | |||
 |
WHO IS
SwankHipster?
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
the pompadour.
the grease.
the poetics.
the jazz.
the sharp drapes.
the goofiness.
the man.
the silly-assed semi-myth.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Read the
PANDORA'S COLLECTIVE
interview with T. Paul
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
T.Paul...that's his name...What makes him Swank?...a Hipster? Whaddaya mean by "swank" and what the hell's a "Hipster? If you be a sharp dressed devil-dawg like him, with the luxurious drapes, the panther-like gleaming grease slicked pompadour, the 2-tone shoes & shiny acoutrement ..if you have all of these things , would it warrant YOU such a glowing title, or is there more?
Closer inspection is required - Let's begin....
DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS:
swank (swank)
noun
1. Flashiness, ostentation, etc; boastfulness.
Thesaurus: ostentation, display, boastfulness, show, swagger, spectacle, array; Antonym: modesty, restraint.
adj
(especially US)
swanker, swankest
1. Swanky.
Example: Wow! What a swank car!
hip•ster (hip•ster)
noun
[Formed from hip2 + -ster]
Slang.
1. a person who is hip.
2. hepcat.
3. a person, esp. during the 1950s, characterized by a particularly strong sense of alienation from most established social activities and relationships.
4.someone who rejects the established culture; advocates extreme liberalism in politics and lifestyle
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
My first album purchase - "THE DRUM BATTLE" with Buddy Rich & Gene Krupa
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
One of the most popular U.K. Teddy Boy bands "CRAZY CAVAN & THE RHYTHM ROCKERS"
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
We see by the definitions that to be a SWANKHIPSTER is mucho, mucho more than the flash that you're wearing - hell, you could be in your scivvies and still be a SwankHipster. It is in the HOW you wear what you wear and the WHY behind who you are and how you present yourself - your attitude - your very lifestyle.
We see the synonyms for hipster - hepcat, beat, jazzy, liberal.
Hipness cannot be truly attained by simple affectations, though god only knows there's enough phonies out there puttin' on airs in hopes of being percieved as being "hip". We can smell them a mile away - they stink...bad. Unfortunately, in our day & age, the "urban hipster" concept is prevelant. These days "urban hipsters" worry more about what they own, what people think of them and their matching conformity/uniformity - they are in fact "anti-hip" if we're to accept (and I do) the dictionary definition of the term. For argument's sake, we're goin' with HIP like a HEPCAT, JAZZ LOVIN', LIBERAL MINDED FELLA.
And SWANK...well, swank is SWANKY, spectacle, sharp, spiffy, boss!
WHAT MADE THIS PARTICULAR "SWAKHIPSTER"?
a brief life history...
This fella, this SWANKHIPSTER is me, T.Paul Ste. Marie, and I come by it honestly. The hipster in me I partially blame my pops for. Pops took me to see all of the jazz & musical greats who were still alive in my childhood from Woody Herman & His Thundering Herd, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Rich, Miles Davis, Count Basie on through to Roy Orbison & Tony Bennett.
I knew that I was destined to be a hepcat, a hipster when, after getting a wee stereo for Christmas when I was 8 years old, I took my paper route money and bought my first album - "The Drum Battle - Gene Krupa/Buddy Rich at JATP". To this day, I still have Buddy's drumsticks on my wall wth a poster signed by him & his band. My friends at first couldn't figure it...jazz? what the hell? They eventually came 'round to diggin' this album for it's high octane, ultra intense beats.
My grandpaps was a tailor through both world wars & onwards. He made uniforms for the troops. When it wasn't war time, this man made the swankiest suits, shirts, pants, dresses & acoutrement! I still have some of the pairs of pants he had made for my pops when pops was 18 - they fit me now! I'd visit him at his workplace, Goudie's Department Store in Kitchener, Ontario and watch him operate the push pedal sewing machine that he favoured. My taste for sharp lines in suits and well cut pants, porkpie hats & camel hair coats was an obsession when I was a child. I remeber being ecstatic when gramps tailored me my first suit, all green wool with coloured flecks, boxy-shouldered and razor sharp pleated. I felt like a sall Ricky Ricardo in it! With that gift, that same Christmas morn came my first overcoat, a navy blue job with red lining...ahhhhh! At last!
Throughout my formative years, I was confounded by my own natural displacement, my sense that everyone was missing something - lots of things. Things that seemed inexplicably beautiful to me. Ideas that never occured to the other kids in the schoolyard. And I was voiciferous...god, was I ever. My sis & I went through an unfortunate public school system which now, incidentally, is being taken to court for ignoring the complaints of students for all kinds of things (yup - beatings, diddling, demeaning, ignored bullying from students & teachers). We had mutual teachers who called us both stupid or dumb. Good thing I knew otherwise..I just sat in class thinkin' ';bout all of the bigger pictures. I eventually gave the teachers what they wanted & played dumb all the while reading well beyond my grade level. Kids didn't get me, and that frightened them I suppose, to the point of getting down right nasty on the physical end of things.
Then, the MOVE. At age 11 in 1977, we moved to Camden Town, London England. This was at the beggining and into the peak of social explosions manifesting themselves with the Punks, spitting on Thatcher, sayin' "FUCK YOU" to the monarchy and all that jazz. This was the year that the IRA bombed London, the Queen's Silver Jubilee, the Sex Pistols release God Save The Queen, the King of Rock'n Roll Elvis Presley dies, Marc Bolan died in a car crash, Johnny Rotten is attacked by razor-wielding thugs in North London, NY Supreme Court rules that David R. Berkowitz is competent to stand trial as the accused "Son of Sam" killer , Bob Crane from "Hogan's Heros" was murdered, "Rocky" hit the silver screen. Suddenly, I wasn't such a freaky kid. Pompadoured, garbed in the sharpest drapes, armed with a straightrazor, the world was our oyster - our 11, 12, 15 year old oyster. Kids...Teddy Boys & girls spending pocket dosh on records of Crazy Cavan & the Rhythm Rockers , going out to the local pubs at night for live music, whether it be rockabilly, punk or ska, hangin' on the high street corner tryin' to look tuff. It was one of the most profoundly life changing times in my life. Aside from the Ted action, I met Mary Tullett, my first love. Blonde haired (with a goofy lil' cowlick smack in the middle of her forehead) ice-blue eyed, lanky legged, poverty stricken Mary. She lived in a one bedroom flat in the row housing 'round the corner from us, sharing it with 12 others - mum, dad, aunt, uncle, cousins & brothers & sisters.She was sweet & tuff & older by a year and a half. She took me down that sweet carnal path...introduced me to the wonders of her lovin' & kissin'. I began writing poetry at that age - love poems about Mary, beat inspired situational pieces and so on.Carnaby Street was still a happening place in '77, and Mary and I would bus then tube there, walking around watching all the wonderous freaks and punks, fops and mods, trendsetters and tourists. We would often take my dosh, go to the hovercraft terminal along the Thames, pay our fare & spend the entire day walking around Paris, exploring museums, smoking cigarettes, fumbling with the language & with each others awkward, young kisses. Many days, I spent alone wandering 'round London Zoo, just a 15 minute jaunt from home, or lingering around Palmer's Pet shop on the high street talking with the lovely obese woman who ran the place & cared for the animals. My family and I would attend West End plays, concerts, exhibits and museums. My sis was also seeing someone, a West End actor 21 years her senior - he shall remain unnamed, as I have zero respect for the tawdry old fart. Summers were spent at Brighton, or travelling through Scotland & Ireland & France...the most formative years of my life.
Returning to Canada wasn't so glorious. I was tossed back into a bland, boring and nasty school system in Kitchener, Ontario. This is when I discovered acting through a teacher by the name of Cathrine Carlson - we're still fast friends. This became one of my creative outlets, alongside writing and music. I had a wonderful english teacher as well who would let me do the assignments around the books that the rest of the class was reading that I had already devoured years before and then grade my poetry & short stories. The garb I had worn in London altered. I began showing up to school each day as someone different, always sharply dressed. One day, I'd don a suit & thin tie & fedora, the next a black mod-like parka and peg-legged jeans, then full on leather clad rocker the next. It kept people angry and confused with their inability to categrorize me, so I then must've been a "fag". I dispelled that myth with Dana, my highschool sweetheart. I swear we spent more time finding places to sneak away and snog than we did in class. Good ole Grand River Collegiate, I can safely say, has been christened with sweaty teenage sex in every possible hiding place you could imagine. Well, I could hardly wait to finish school and get my bored and dissaffected ass to Toronto and begin my real life - my life as an actor.
Toronto opened up a hole new can'o worms for me, from being the youngest member of Q-ART THEATRE CO-OP where I performed in and did the publicity for plays like TWELVE ANGRY MEN, Dario Fo's ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST, MEDEA, DIARY OF A MADMAN, Jean Genet's the MAIDS and more. I hit every jazz & blues club in the city, refound my sharp dress of London years before, did the art opening schlepping, the parties - all that stuff. I worked at all kinds of jobs, from colourizing B&W films at COLORIZATION, managing & doing the bookings for CHICAGO'S DINER on Queen St. (the place where Jeff Healy got his start), managing CHRYL LYNN'S DINER a fantastic tiny greasy spoon, worjking in wardrobe for IATSE on tons of shows. The wardrobe work, which kept my fingers in the theatrical pie when I wasn't acting, was perhaps the most fortuitous & life expanding carreers I ever had. I met BOB FOSSE , the late great jazz coreographer, director & filmmaker, shortly before his death while he directed SWEET CHARITY in Toronto. This career choice saw me travelling to Jupiter Florida inWest Palm Beach and working on DREAMGIRLS at the BURT REYNOLDS JUPITER THEATRE. Yup - I was one of Burt's employees for a couple of months. The cast & crew clubbed it up, played pictionary with Burt & Bert -hell, I learned to water ski being pulled behind THE BANDIT, Reynolds' boat!
TO BE CONTINUED
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
BOB FOSSE
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
TED JOANS
beat poet / musician / filmmaker / surrealist / friend
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
TOM WAITS
one of my heros
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
one of my not-so-secret hair ingredients
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| page created with Webpage Designer (NS) |