Either Buffed Or Faded Over Time

1984.

'I write Zap10, Ashton is Alien403. We mostly just draw on paper at the moment but at the weekend we're getting some SPRAYCANS'

A letter from Tim, who never got the spraycans, but came to visit me a few weeks later with a copy of Subway Art. I loved the way they painted over the windows and doors and made them disappear. The bright felt-tip colours with the black outlines were like the sprawling crystalline doodles I did in the days before I saw that book.

~~~

Pens: Edding 850s, you could get them anywhere. Except WHSmith where they only had 800s. 30mm Torch Pens, you could only get them at one place that we knew of, they made a fat mark but were very hard to write with .

Paint: My Dad had Dupli-Color and CarPlan in the garage, so that was the first can of paint I pressed down on, and the first illicit surface I marked. Duplis came from Mike's Autospares, CarPlan came from Halfords. A 12 yr old has no business near the paint rack in a motorspares shop, but Halfords has kids bikes and it's huge, much easier. I'd sleeved chocolate bars and stuff before, spraycans were bigger. I stuffed them in my Griffin Savers sports bag, where they rattled and tinkled. One time I took five in one visit.

~~~

First piece: 'KAB' - 'Kids Are Bombing' - broad daylight on someone's council garage in the East Road Estates. Letter K bitten from Sab Kaze piece in Subway Art. Black outline drawn first, then Crimson Red, Prussian and Electric Blue, with yellow cloud, white sparkles. Someone came and opened up an adjacent garage while we were painting, we didn't stop, they didn't say anything. Came back two days later to find a black spaghetti line running through the whole thing. In graffiti some people have always had more fun destroying work than making it.

Dubstars In Your Eyes

I spent a good few years as a toy knowing only names, not faces. Half the point of graffiti is to make the name big, for obvious reasons we try not to become famous for what we look like. And never was the maxim 'you shouldn't meet your heroes ' more relevant than in graff, where the kings of the line, the most up, the writers behind the most awe-inspiring acts of vandalism on the grandest scale and those with a funk and flow you could not comprehend, often ended up being short-arse ugly no-counts, hood nerds. It could be very disappointing.

There was definitely a turning point in my career, when I had been getting up a bit and was getting known for style. Writers wanted to meet me, my name carried a little sheen of respect and when one or two doors opened, all of a sudden I was meeting heroes of the past present and future of London graffiti. I could put faces to the names I saw on the walls of, the tube carriage insides, the stainers on the steel panels of the Mets and Northerns.

All of a sudden writer's faces were popping out of crowds, you might see them on Oxford St, you'd pass them on escalators. I'd be on the bus to Stockwell Motors (a racking spot for Belton paint), and see a couple of writers heading back from there. Now I'd have a heads-up that the shop might be hot, whereas before they would have just been another pair of passers-by.

One night I was with a bunch of writer friends at Metalheadz at the old Blue Note. We started spotting dead ringers for writers - it was uncanny how they kept coming. First a lookalike for Stax at the bar, then a black Teach, a six-foot Sham59. The dominant crew for many years of my era was DDS - The Diabolical DubStars, and 'Stars In Your Eyes' - the ITV 'tribute talent' show was big on television at that time, so on that night 'Dubstars In Your Eyes' was formed. And although it may have evolved and broadened its scope (like all good in-jokes), it persists amongst close friends.

The formula is simple (Take name of graffiti writer that subject looks like) and add the phrase "...in your eyes". for example, "Pulse In Your Eyes". Say it loud or say it discreetly depending on proximity. It's usually reserved for unfortunate comparisons , or ones of comedic potential. It doesn't have to be graff-related, ("Gary Busey In Your Eyes") but there's a lot of funny-looking writers out there.

Lets Take The Pictures And Get Outta Here

Welcome to Mojo Bones, where as I move out of active graffiti writing and into something a bit more solvent-resistant, I'll be trying to put down what is effectively some graffiti memoirs. It's all moving towards a bigger writing project, one that is necessary and important in my eyes, but also unformed and the idea is that it will take shape as Mojo Bones progresses. I'm hoping I can collate not just my stories but those of others I painted with, and people I have yet to meet who share some common experience from the last 20 or so years.