Weekend links 42

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Blasphemous Rumours (2009/2010) by Ryan Martin. The artist now has a dedicated site for his paintings.

The Museum of Censored Art, a mobile gallery, will be showing the withdrawn David Wojnarowicz film outside the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, until their contentious gay art exhibition closes next month. Related: Bishop of Mallorca criticises calendar—which shows Catholic youths posing naked—for ‘not respecting Christian symbols’.

• Didier Lestrade published French gay zine Magazine in the 1980s, and later co-founded Têtu. He’s interviewed at BUTT and has started uploading the entire run of Magazine about which he says: “I don’t want to stamp some kind of logo on this material. It’s gay. It’s gay history. It belongs to everybody. If you want to take a piece of it, please try to mention the origins of it, a simple code word “Magazine” will be enough. If you wanna be more specific, be my guest.”

HMV, Britain’s last big music chain, is closing 60 branches. Yet a new wave of CD stores is thriving. Oh, HMV, how I’ll miss your £17 CDs (and double-CDs at £34)… On second thoughts, no I won’t, your wretched retail barns always exemplified the greed endemic in the music business.

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Love Comes/Destroyer by Stephen Kasner.

• Artist Stephen Kasner‘s work has adorned music releases by Sunn O))), Isis and others. He’s currently another American creator in need of assistance with medical expenses. Details here.

The Ghosts of Old London: the gloomy Victorian metropolis in all its deteriorated splendour. See also: In Search of Relics of Old London.

• “It’s time to recognise [Sandy] Denny as not simply a folksinger but one of Britain’s great poets of song,” says Rob Young.

Louis Pattison talks to Locrian about JG Ballard, old VHS tapes and their new album The Crystal World.

The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of: Lebbeus Woods’ big drawings.

Hannes Bok portfolios at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

An Iranian rapper named Salome. Also here and here.

A Moment of (Alan) Moore.

RIP Mick Karn.

Book Worship.

Sons of Pioneers (1981) by Japan; Tao-Tao (1982) by Masami Tsuchiya; Glow World (1983) by Bill Nelson.

7 thoughts on “Weekend links 42”

  1. Thanks for all these, but especially the Ghosts of London one, which is wonderful and chiefly brings to mind (for neurological reasons I’m probably happier not fully understanding) the Steptoe & Son films, with their long-lost crumbling locations. Well, it’s probably because they were among my main sources of information on London when I was growing up.

    A few of the later photos are not unlike certain remaining parts of Northampton, if you know where to look. Up, generally.

    I’d somehow missed the HMV news, too. I expect ours is probably safe as there seems to be no shortage of high rollers queueing up there to support the entertainment industry by honourably pay the RRP. If it did close I’d miss being able to browse the shelves in the traditional manner before ordering the things I find from Amazon.

    But if HMV decide to close our Waterstone’s then I believe our our only bookshops will be WH Smith and the Bargain Book Warehouse, leaving us with a financially-driven choice between this year’s Top Gear tie-in and last year’s Top Gear tie-in. And much as Waterstone’s pricing policies reflect HMV’s, I do like the idea of having a bookshop in the town.

  2. Sad to hear about Mick Karn – i was never a huge Japan fan, but they were obviously a cut above most of their peers. To see someone of that generation die makes me feel very mortal.

    The Ghosts of Old London site is wonderful, isnt it? Ive said it before, but i love these weekend links. Always something fascinating to follow up.

  3. 3lbFlax: Yes, films also have that quality of showing us the streets as they used to be. A Taste of Honey is a good one for its views of Manchester in the 1960s when the buildings were still black with soot. As for HMV’s troubles, Waterstone’s is affected and I suppose that means Fopp will be as well. Tim Waterstone has tried to buy back his shops in the past, maybe this will give him another chance before they go under for good?

    Lord Cornelius Plum: Thanks, these posts are easy to do and were the best solution to making note of things I’ve seen elsewhere. Regarding Mick Karn & Japan, I only really liked Tin Drum and wasn’t keen on Karn’s solo things but he played on a lot of albums I do like, such as the Masami Tsuchiya and Bill Nelson works linked here.

  4. Yeah, A Taste of Honey is another good example. I think the Steptoe movies (and Amicus horros and On the Buses, my not-so-secret shame) resonate with me because they prod at some of my earliest memories – the area I grew up in was modernised when I was very young, and my grandparents and great-grandparents lived in archaic conditions with coal deliveries and so on while the rest of the world was discovering Atari and digital watches. In the course of a Sunday round of visiting I might find myself moving between my dad’s friend with his chunky remote control and chess computer, and my great-granddad with his tin bath and 78s. Of course, nostalgia’s a curse and I dearly wish I’d paid more attention to the latter.

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