Talk:Better Badges

Requests for input

I've appealed for input on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Punk_music and Talk:Punk_rock Wwwhatsup 03:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

References etc

as mentioned if the DRV

• Post Punk Diary [1] refers to the Better Badges 'Top Ten' which was printed weekly in the back of the NME, and a recognized indicator of buzz.
• Simon Reynolds' book Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984,P.213 [2], refers to BB's symbiotic relationship with Rough Trade, his source was likely Tom Vague's Pop History Of Notting Hill [3]
• Tony Fletcher in a history of his fanzine Jamming! describes how he came to get it printed at BB [4]
• Marc Johnson's book An Ideal For Living notes that one of Rob Gretton's first acts as Joy Division's manager in 1979 was to order badges from BB [5].
• 2003 Village Voice article Bootlegger's Banquet [6] about MacFie mentions his history at Better Badges.

Context

• Button badges, sometimes referred to as pinbacks, in the UK as badges and in more contemporary times as pins have a history going back over 100 years. There is obviously a need for a general article on the history and use of button badges.
• Wikipedia Jacket lapel mentions punk badge fad starting in 1976.
• Wikipedia Button (disambiguation) evidences a lack decent of a decent article on the button badges, but does direct to the UK usage:
• Wikipedia Badge which in turn links externally to:
  • A History Of Buttons, Pins And Badges! that states:

    It was the arrival of the Sex Pistols and punk in 1976 though that was to make the button badge an essential fashion statement. For the next decade, people all over the world displayed their allegiance to a band, music, youth cult or cause by wearing one or more button badges.

• Wikipedia Punk rock section 3.2 mentions the July 4 1976 show at which MacFie first sold punk badges as being crucial in bringing together the nascent UK punk scene. citing this.

Rough Trade Book and Punk: An Aesthetic

Two recent books cover Better Badges, but both have inaccuracies. Details below.

In Document and Eyewitness - an oral biography of Rough Trade by Neil Taylor, he mispells MacFie's name, having, one imagines, miscopied it from The Face article, which he sources, but does have a nice quote, which was repeated in The Guardian

One of the more overlooked figures in the subculture that swirled around punk rock was a sometime resident of Cambridge named Jolyean McFie (sic). By the late 1970s, he was in charge of a self-explanatory enterprise called Better Badges, who supplied their wares to a range of rock groups, including Blondie and Joy Division. At 30-odd years' distance, it would be easy to think of him as a mere small businessman, but these were times in which even the production of lapel-decorations was charged with real ideological oomph. "We were a proactive company," he recalls. "We never waited for people to ask us to make a badge; we were on the side of fans rather than the bands, though usually, a happy medium was reached. This tied in with the original slogan I had thought up: 'Image is virus, disease is cure.'"

That "supplying Blondie" is also inaccurate, carried over from The Face. There was a friendly debate with Blondie's manager at one point over BB's marketing of Blondie badges, which is what the original reporter was referring to. Definitely no secondary source on that. Joy Division, on the other hand, is well documented in the posthumous publication of manager Rob Gretton's journals.

In Punk: An Aesthetic by Kugelberg et al, there is a major error. The book, recognizing BB's role in firing up the DIY cassette scene, conflates MacFie with KifKif of Fuck Off Records, who produced many early examples of the genre (FO Records deserves an article!). BB merely did the manufacturing, and some marketing assist, under its usual open access system. Which was, as with fanzines and badges, you bring it in, BB'll make it, you can buy at cost, and BB'll help market. One suspects that, since the book reproduces a Better Badges fanzine advert that includes FO Records, that might account for some of the misunderstanding. But it is extraordinary if you look at this video segment where Kugelberg actually encounters MacFie). What the book does have, remarkably, is a rare photograph of the original Better Badges stall at an early punk show at the London Roundhouse. Wwwhatsup (talk) 13:16, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

100 Fanzines/10 Years of British Punk: 1976-1985

An art book 100 Fanzines/10 Years of British Punk: 1976-1985 was published in 2011, containing many covers of Better Badges printed fanzines. See video of an exhibit at MoMA PS1, with MacFie participating in a panel. Wwwhatsup (talk) 13:40, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

i-D 'A Better Badge' article.

i-D 'A Better Badge' article from Jan 18 2013, is about the current business, which appears to have undergone a name change. It has some historic details, confirms a couple of other fanzines printed. I have added both. "They produced the cover art for the Sex Pistols album Never mind the Bollocks." is not, to my knowledge, accurate - although plenty of process camera work was done for Jamie Reid in the earlier days. Wwwhatsup (talk) 10:09, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Removed content

Content removed by User:Sitush in this (series of edits).

The inclusion of the Reynolds quote is a style decision. The rest of the body is a question of sourcing. Hopefully the disappearance of the history project that hosted the first teo ELs is temporary. The other images may indeed be added to commons. Wwwhatsup (talk) 17:01, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Lede

“ A short walk from Rough Trade, at the far end of Portobello beyond the Westway, stood the former premises of Sixties underground paper International Times. By the late Seventies it was occupied by a company called Better Badges. Wearing your allegiances--political or musical--on your lapels was the thing to do in those heady days, and Better Badges was the market leader. But the guy behind Better was no "breadhead." An original hippie who had worked as an editor at International Times and legendarily hadn't cut his locks since 1968, Jolyon McFie started an idealistic "print now/pay later" scheme to help fledgling fanzines like Jamming get off the ground. The editors could then lug the copies down the road to Rough Trade, whose burgeoning distribution network would get them into independent record stores across the nation. ”

History

1976 4 July, First punk badges sold at The Ramones and Flamin' Groovies show at The Roundhouse, London. The Better Badges stand went on to become a fixture. Mail order service started. Slogan: "Image as virus, disease as cure"

1977 May, First mass-production of punk badges for sale at Mont de Marsan festival in France. (replaced with ref)

MacFie purchased a process camera, which, apart from badges was used by various artists for record cover art including Jamie Reid (Sex Pistols) and Stewart Copeland (Klark Kent). Commenced weekly badge top ten feature in NME.

U2 ref - http://pinstand.com/pins/u2.html

Royalty system ref - http://pinstand.com/pins/joydiv.html - replaced with New York Law School.

{donation of badges ref -The Clash at Lyceum Ballroom 1981 (scroll down about halfway). (recovered from web archive).

The Raincoats - replaced with ref.

DBC ref - http://dbcs.multiply.com/ DBC story - broken link replced with new ref.

1982 Suffering cash flow problems, BB was forced to vacate Portobello Road and move to premises in Bethnal Green.

1983 MacFie sold the business to the staff and left for the USA. Replaced with ref.

1985 The staff, in turn, sold it to the current owners, who ceased publishing, restricting activity to manufacturing only.

Staff

Many musicians, notable or otherwise, worked at Better Badges including Duncan Sanderson of the Pink Fairies, Neneh Cherry, Gabby Glaser of Luscious Jackson, Wayne Preston of Youth In Asia, Hamish Macdonald of Sex Beatles/Sexbeat, Val Haller of The Electric Chairs, Eric Débris of Métal Urbain, Angela Jaeger of Pigbag, Nick Godwin of Zounds, and John Walker of Warsaw Pakt.

In-house designers included Megan Green, Slim Smith - recently with Artrocker, and Derek Harris.

External links

• STATE OF INDEPENDENTS Chapter 7 (pages6/7) of Tom Vague's history of Notting Hill. ^pdf

• NOTTING HILL BABYLON Chapter 8 (page5) of Tom Vague's history of Notting Hill. ^pdf

• Veg Wedge Essay by Steven Wells in NME, 23 May 1987, references BB as punk establishment.

• April 1978 Better Badges ad in International Times.

• 1979 Better Badges Ad

• Better Badges office Marlene Zampelli's photo of Joly MacFie at work in 1982.

References

Undo move?

In these diffs MarioNovi made the article subject the current descendent of Better Badges rather than the punk era operation which is the source of notability. This was done without consultation and is arguably inappropriate. Since I have an acknowledged COI I will not reverse but I invite other editors to consider doing so. I suspect the name change was caused by bankruptcy but have no source on that. Wwwhatsup (talk) 02:28, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

A good reference

• Dannus, Raphaëlle (September 2013). "London Punk Fanzines 1976-1984: The Celebration of the Every Person" (Masters Thesis). University of Paris. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Fanzines were also particularly plentiful at the beginning of 1980s thanks to the action of the firm Better Badges. Better Badges was initially a manufacturing company of badges settled in a garage of Notthing Hill, and managed by a hippy called Joly. Joly equipped its shop in the spring, 1979 of a printing lithograph machine, and became one of the first alternative printers in London to propose to fanzines a publication in colors and doubled sided A4, by managing all the iconography, and at a "pretty decent price"197 according to the writer of Jamming. Very quickly, Better Badges took care with storing and with distributing the printed fanzines by selling them to concerts, by correspondence, and to stores which supplied at its place with badges. From 1980, with these printing presses, Better Badges became one of the main printers, and distributors of fanzines with Rough Trade. Advertisements for Better Badges were present in most of the fanzines; the readers had the possibility to order any title published by the firm.