I have been in the Houston art scene for about twelve years now, shooting everything and everyone, working with major mags like Dazed and Confused and Bloodwars. The Life Of The Exotic is a ongoing project where I explore the lives of the night hawk and the wild child. Its a bit surreal but fun to exploit the habits of the modern misfit.

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For a person with the musical history of ex-The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite frontman, Mick Jones, he is a very unassuming man. I meet him on a humid afternoon in West London as he and a team of helpers are madly trying to finish putting together the Mick Jones Rock n Roll Public Library — an exhibition of some 10,000 pieces of musical and pop culture memorabilia that Jones has been collecting since childhood. While I wait for my time to speak with the man, as he poses for a photo shoot with a London paper and finishes putting pieces of jewellery into a glass case in a room titled American Artefacts, his press officer relays to him: ‘Southampton University want to offer you an honorary doctorate.’ Jones’ response is: ‘Why would I want to do that? I haven’t done anything.’ But that’s far from the truth.

Mick Jones is the guitarist and vocalist from The Clash – the group widely described as ‘the only band that matters’, whose politicised lyrics and musical experimentation continues to influence musicians to this day.

In the 80s he formed Big Audio Dynamite to critical and social acclaim, and currently performs in Carbon/Silicon with Generation X’s Tony James. He’s also a renowned producer, having helmed The Libertines’ breakthrough album ‘Up The Bracket’ and Hard Fi’s ‘Stars Of CCTV’.

It is less than an hour until the media and other invited guests will arrive for the exhibition opening and Jones is just beginning to place the individual contents of a box of old cameras into an upright glass case.

‘We’re not ready, as you can see,’ he says, but is more than happy to talk as he works.

‘The basic idea of all this was that I had all this stuff and I thought ‘it doesn’t do me any good if it doesn’t do anyone else any good’.

‘I’m trying to put something back; give people something that they can enjoy. I get a lot of enjoyment out of my stuff. It jogs my memory. And when people see it, they have their own personal memory, their own trip; it makes them think about things in their life.’

There certainly are a lot of touchstones of cultural value that visitors will relate to around us – from a signed Beatles poster, to gold records, tour passes, posters, records, clothing, photos and too much more to begin to list.

And that’s not to mention the monetary value. In any auction room or even on eBay these items would be worth a fortune, but Jones is unconcerned about such things.

Nor is he worried about any damage that may occur from the extraordinary opportunity he is offering attendees to handle and even copy items with a giant scanner.

‘It’s only stuff,’ he says.

‘I wouldn’t be worried about it. It’s only here to enjoy while it’s here.

‘That’s just the kind of person I am, you know. When we first started (setting up) someone asked if I wanted to make lists (of all the items), or just wing it. And of course we’re winging it.’

But despite the items’ intrinsic value – and sometimes intensely personal nature, like the hand-written note from Joe Strummer, probably once slipped under a hotel room door, admitting defeat and asking Jones for a reconciliation – to him it just ‘is what it is’ and he remains oblivious to, and untouched by, its ‘worth’.

All Mick Jones is concerned about is ‘doing something with it’.

‘People don’t really have ‘stuff’ in the same way as they used to’ he explains, ‘They put all their music on MP3 and they don’t have the space to put ‘stuff’. Or they put it in storage and then go and visit it on the weekends, instead of visiting their parents.

‘It’s part of the dissolution of society, in some way. If we can, I want to redress that,’ he says.

‘Around the turn of the century I started to want to share (what I had) in some way. I felt compelled to do something. I’ve always been a person who likes to try and do things, and I believe the only way to do something is to actually do it. Believing in that is how I ended up doing this.’

But more than a social remedy, and probably most interestingly to his many fans, Mick Jones’ Rock n Roll Public Library is his new musical project.

‘This is my music at the moment. It’s a big musical arrangement, it seriously is.

‘It’s an extension of the music, but in a visual sense. It’s like when you close your eyes and listen to music and pictures come into your mind’s eye. That’s what this is,’ he says.

‘It’s very personal. The whole thing inspires me. I wonder sometimes what I’m doing. It’s almost got a life of its own. It makes me all dewey eyed.

‘However, I gotta say that I don’t spend a lot of time getting all dewey eyed and mushy about the ‘old days’.

‘These are the good old days now.’

And while you won’t get a chance to see The Clash, in any incarnation, playing again – ‘(The Clash and the songs) were the best with the guys who knew it best, the guys who did it the first time around’ – he is giving people the chance to play with, or at the least be ‘produced’ by, a member of The Clash during this exhibition.

Mick Jones explains: ‘There are two other rooms here. A live room provided by Strummerville (the musical charity set up in honour of The Clash’s front man Joe Strummer) and the other room is a replica of my studio in Acton.

‘We’re getting people to come in and knock out a few tunes. There are people out there queuing now. And other people will be coming down by prior arrangement.

‘Something will come out of it. We’re inviting people to create something. And then we’ll make a creation out of those creations.’

But don’t any preconceptions of what might come out of it. Jones isn’t just into rock and roll, or political messages.

‘There’s still a lot to be said, and I still like the greats, but I am interested in other stuff as well. I like that Rihanna girl and her song ‘Umbrella’, ella, ella, ella. And that song ‘Crazy’ by Gnarls Barkley. I like new shit, I like what’s going on now.

‘I love The Streets. He’s a poet,’ adding, ‘Of course I still listen to Dylan and Bruce.’

And his advice to the musicians out there now – ‘Relax and don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter if they don’t like it.’

And that’s Mick Jones for you, really – the epitome of relaxed.

Rock’n'Roll Public Library, 18 July – 25 August, 2 Acklam Road, Portobello Green, W10 5XL. 11-7 Wednesday-Sunday. Admission is free

New Zealand-born, globe-trotting, communal-living, psych rockers, The Datsuns, have a new album, a relatively-new drummer and a new living set-up, so expect something fresh from the Anitpodean ex-pats. ‘The new record has a lot of different styles and influences’, says The Datsuns guitarist and vocalist, Christian. ‘When we were doing this record a great thing was that we could try different things that we hadn’t done in the past’, he says, thanks to the addition of new drummer, Ben, offering as an example: ‘The last track on the record is an eight minute psychedelic song; it was a pop song but we turned it psychedelic. We said to Ben ‘play psychedelic drums’ and he did. It was completely improvised. He enabled us to do anything we wanted to do’.

Ben actually joined the Datsuns fold around two years ago, when the band’s previous drummer quit just three days before a major tour.

‘Ben’s a very old friend of ours. Between him and our old drummer we’re about the only five guys in (their home) town who play musical instucments’, Christian laughs.

When the previous drummer quit, the band rang Ben to see if he could fill in.

‘He was really hung over, washing dishes and I don’t think he really got what we were talking about’, Christian explains.

‘He rang back about five minutes later and said ‘yes’. He learnt our whole catalogue in three days. He’s been with us for two years now. He’s a really great drummer who can play a lot of different styles from metal to jazz’.

So, with new creative blood coursing through the band’s veins, The Datsuns’ new album, Head Stunts was conceived. But not without a few headaches, first.

‘We all lived together, and always have done the whole time we’ve been together. It’s quite ridiculous, we’re like The Monkees’, Christian laughs.

‘It’s just been recently that we’ve moved apart. I’m the only one left in London now (after the band lived there together for three years). Dolf lives in Stokholm and our drummer is in New Zealand.

‘We’re trying to make it as difficult for ourselves as possible.

‘We recorded the album in Sweden. We were going to record in Germany and we all moved there and lived there for nine months. We rented a flat and rehearsed every day. We did lot of jamming in Germany. We were almost at one point going to do a really psychedelic record, we had all these really long space jams. We got pretty psychedelic in Germany.

‘It was very beautiful (in Germany) but we got very bored and didn’t like the way the record was turning out, so we went to Sweden.

‘Sweden’s really great. They’re really into rock and roll’, he says.

‘(Recording) was a lot of fun. The studio we used was full of old equipment. You couldn’t step anywhere without stepping on stuff.

‘Half of it didn’t work, but that’s the fun bit, plugging in and seeing what you get.’

What they got, Christian explains, is: ‘an eclectic mix of rock and roll’.

‘That is what I like about rock and roll — you can do so many different thing and it’s still rock and roll.

‘This is really what we’re all about. It’s a very good representation of who we are. I’m excited about playing these songs. I hope people enjoy them.

‘We’re all fans of rock and roll and that’s the point of intersection’, Christian explains of the band members’ influences.

‘If everyone in the band had an iPod you’d see a lot of different stuff going on there, that’s what makes us interesting. We all like rock and roll but come at it from a different point of view. I’m into Zeppelin, Dolf’s into the Beatles. When we have a song everyone will see it in a slightly different way and it’s the intersection of different view points that makes it interesting.

‘It’s an interesting record if you’re a fan of rock and roll’.

Interesting also, is how the band came up with the album title, Head Stunts.

‘Naming the record is probably the hardest thing’, Christian says, ‘it seems like it’d be easy to pick a name, but it’s not.

‘One day when we were in Germany, Phil (lead guitarist) found this wall-sized piece of cardboard in the street and dragged it back to the flat and started writing on it. He was writing anagrams for stuff, writing song titles. He covered the whole piece of cardboard with all these names and poems.

‘One of the anagrams was Head Stunts (an anagram of The Datsuns)’.