Q
April 1997

Waaaah!

Glen E. Friedman: boy, he took some spunky photos.

Glen E. Friedman was afforded his first photographic break documenting the mid-70's West Coast skateboard scene, a cult whose codewords and anti-Establishment stance leached into the punk rock and hip hop culture that Friedman went on to capture in his pictures. His FUCK YOU TOO collection (Consafos, distributed by Turnaround), a powerful, scrap book-style appendix to his previous FUCK YOU HEROES portfolio, follows a punchy exhibition at London's ICA in January and offers some of the grittiest portraits of Public Enemy (Friedman took the cover shot for Yo!Bum Rush The Show), Henry Rollins, Fugazi, Misfits, and Run DMC extant- all assiduously captioned.

" You'll find the Dog Town (West L.A.) skateboarders were getting a reputation for being rowdy and obnoxious long before the Sex Pistols came along," lectures Friedman, citing his former SkateBoarder magazine champion C.R. Stecyk as the world's first punk hack. Punkers like Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye (later of Fugazi) solicited Friedman's lens work and Friedman turned hardcore evangelist, walking in on the inception of rap with an invite from the former white punks Rick Rubin and The Beastie Boys.

" The Fugazi [actually Black Flag] shots are still my favourite," he motormouths. "They're so organic, and back then the chaos on stage was fucking unbelievable, and the amount of emotion, the trouble and pain they went through just to have the shows put on - I just hope my pictures capture that."

DE

(1/3 page w/ one photo from F.Y.T)

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