“call me oz”
The banned card.

MUSICIAN, SINGER, SONGWRITER & LYRICIST: in short a 'rockpop' badboy card, the musicial alter ego. If everybody wants to be a pop star then this may be my personal Mr Hyde.

The 'naked yardie boy' character was developed with a modern British identity in mind. An urban expression of freedom and independance, an act of cultural subversion, in recycling the past. A testiment to sampling culture, merging a 21st century Sabbath styled gothic etiquitte to hiphop rhymes and electro blues. 'Yardie boy' stands proud ready to party, "living for today, no looking back"*. Carpe diem.

Questions remain unanswered, for example, if I was a rock star what kind of music would I make, what messages would I want to communicate, what do I have to say? Oz has always been my nickname, like my namesake with this title comes a responsibility to entertain, an expectation to be the clown to make others happy even when you are down.

'Yardie boy' bites back, with neon fangs, he takes no prisoners. A menacing ghost masked inside of a black hoody, his identity is paired down to pure and absolute energy. His body is tense, with a torque generated from raw unrealised talent, ready to explode in all directions, a frozen moment before a nuclear fusion of pubescent creativity and self-expression.

Naked to the world, he confronts all civizlised conventions, ready to overturn our established docterines and to pee on our sacred verses. An unlikey hero in a modern world. He represents hope, as a self-empowered individual he is an icon, the embodyment of a 60's virtue that it can only takes one person to change the world, to make it a better place.

Bollocks. Let's rock!

*Nosedive Karma, The Gaye Bikers On Acid, 1987.

David Osbaldestin lectures in the Department of Visual Communication, BIAD, UCE in Birmingham and IVE in Hong Kong. Specialising in graphic authorship, digital folk art and viral media, he is currently researching viral disemination of new art and freelances as an artist, designer, writer and educator.