Saturday, August 20, 2016

Angles in August: Rupert Orton



Rupert Orton is the creative force behind Punk Rock Blues - a promoting and tour booking agency based in London working with mainly US roots artists. 

Artists represented by Punk Rock Blues includes The Handsome Family, Dale Watson, Barrence Whitfield & The Savages, Tav Falco & The Panther Burns, Slim Cessna's Auto Club, Daddy Long Legs, Left Lane Cruiser, Guadalupe Plata, James Leg within a roster of more than 30 acts. 

Rupert also programmes live music for festivals including Red Rooster Festival in the UK and undertakes music curation & production for special one - off creative events. 

Rupert is also a musician and was a founder member of The Jim Jones Revue and achieved world wide success as their guitarist and manager until the band finished in 2014. I was thrilled to photograph them for Patterns and Tones in Hollywood back in 2014 for "Soundcheck with The Jim Jones Review".



It is with great pleasure that I present this woven portrait of Rupert and am honored that he has sharied a sliver of his life with a story on how music changed his life.

Julie Green
August 20, 2016

I remember the day that rocknroll came crashing into my life and hit me like a lightning bolt- 19 January 1980. The day The Ramones played my hometown Norwich.  Up until that point rocknroll had appeared on the edges of my teenage radar but The Ramones show was where a metaphorical switch dropped and changed the course of my life.

I had never experienced  a full on,  no holds barred live rocknroll show before so had no reference points, nothing to compare it to. My only guide was a worn out copy of Its Alive- The Ramones  double live album recorded on New Years Eve at The Rainbow in 1977. It’s a great record, probably my favourite live album ever but in no way could it prepare me  for the sensory overload  of  experiencing  The Ramones live. You only get one shot of doing something for the first time and I count myself very lucky my first rocknroll show was The Ramones.


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