Skull Vision by Michael Ayrton (1943).

The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art: great title for an exhibition, a shame that it’s all the way down in Cornwall at Tate St Ives.

This group exhibition takes its title from the infamous 1962 book by St Ives artist Sven Berlin. It will explore the influence of folklore, mysticism, mythology and the occult on the development of art in Britain. Focusing on works from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day it will consider, in particular, the relationship they have to the landscape and legends of the British Isles. (More.)

Artists featured include Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ithell Colquhoun, Cecil Collins, John Piper, Leslie Hurry and John Craxton. Among the contemporary artists there are Cerith Wyn Evans, Mark Titchner, Eva Rothschild, Simon Periton, Clare Woods, Steven Claydon, John Stezeker and Derek Jarman. Austin Osman Spare is notable by his absence but then that’s no surprise, the major occult artist of the 20th century never rates more that a passing mention from the art establishment. One nice surprise is seeing Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988) featured in her second major British exhibition this year. (Her work is also present in the Angels of Anarchy exhibition running at the Manchester Art Gallery.) Colquhoun was a contemporary of Spare’s whose work turns up in occult encyclopaedias or overviews of the minor current of British Surrealism but she’s still largely unheard of outside those circles.

The Tate exhibition may be awkward to visit but there’s an illustrated catalogue available featuring contributions from quality writers including Brian Dillon, Philip Hoare, Jon Savage, Jennifer Higgie, Marina Warner, Michael Bracewell, Alun Rowlands and Martin Clark. Michael Bracewell has a piece about the exhibition at Tate Etc while Brian Dillon has an excellent essay in the Guardian connecting John Dee’s mysterious obsidian scrying mirror with some of the works on display.

Untitled by David Noonan (2009).

• Artist of the week: David Noonan
• Ithell Colquhoun at A Journey Round My Skull

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism
• A=P=P=A=R=I=T=I=O=N
• In the Shadow of the Sun by Derek Jarman

1 Top Class Manager is a book bearing the subtitle “The notebooks of Joy Division’s manager, 1978–1980″ published this week by Anti-Archivists, Manchester. I’ve been working on the design for this on and off since March although we actually started putting it together this time last year.

Rob Gretton, manager of Joy Division and later New Order, died in 1999 so this is something of a memorial to his work in giving Joy Division the status they have today. Rob’s widow, Lesley, oversaw (and paid for) the production. She and editor Abigail Ward contributed much to my design efforts which underwent considerable back and forth adjustment until we had something everyone was happy with. Some spreads from the book follow below and when I get the time I’ll add larger page views to the book design section of the main site. Music critic and historian Jon Savage wrote the foreword. This was an exciting and fascinating project to be involved, not least for the wealth of rare documentary material which it reveals.

1 Top Class Manager is available via mail order from the book’s website.

Beyond Bowie and Frankie, there’s a whole secret history of gay pop, reports Alexis Petridis

‘Wilder, madder, gayer than a Beatle’s hairdo’

It was the love that dare not sing its name—or was it? Beyond Bowie and Frankie, there’s a whole secret history of gay pop, reports Alexis Petridis

Tuesday July 4, 2006
The Guardian

The year 1966 is known as rock’s annus mirabilis. It was the year the right musicians found the right technology and the right drugs to catapult pop into hitherto unimagined realms of invention and sophistication: the year of the Beatles’ Revolver, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. But the most astonishing record of 1966 did not emanate from the unbounded imagination of Brian Wilson, or from an Abbey Road studio wreathed in pot smoke. Instead, it was the work of hapless instrumental combo the Tornados.

By 1966, the Tornados’ moment of glory—with 1962 number one Telstar—had long passed; they hadn’t had a hit in three years and every original member had departed. The single they released that year, Is That a Ship I Hear?, was their last. Tucked away on its B-side, the track Do You Come Here Often? attracted no attention, which was probably just as well. A year before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, the Tornados’ producer, Joe Meek, had taken it upon himself to record and release Britain’s first explicitly gay rock song, apparently undaunted by his own conviction for cottaging in 1963.

There had been vague intimations of homosexuality in a few 1960s rock records, not least the Beatles’ You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, but Do You Come Here Often? was something else entirely. Opening with a dementedly perky organ instrumental, it’s topped off with two male voices, seemingly recorded in the toilet of a gay club, trading camp badinage: “I’ll see you down the ‘Dilly!” “Not if I see you first, you won’t.” Quite what the Tornados made of their pill-maddened producer’s latest wheeze, let alone anyone who heard the song in 1966, is an intriguing question—but four decades on, it still sounds remarkable.

“It’s almost like a hidden track, because you’ve got these two minutes of instrumental music, you’re thinking, ‘OK, and?’ Then suddenly it happens,” enthuses author and journalist Jon Savage, who spent 20 years trying to track down a copy of the single. “I think Joe Meek wanted to get a slice of gay life on to a record. Nobody bought it. It was completely hidden, but it was still released on EMI.”

Best known for his celebrated punk history, England’s Dreaming, Savage has recently developed a sideline in compiling acclaimed CDs of forgotten music, most notably Meridian 1970, which sought to disprove the theory that said year was a musical wasteland. His latest collection, on which Do You Come Here Often? is just one of a string of revelations, comes with the self-explanatory title From the Closet to the Charts: Queer Noises 1961-1978.

Even by Savage’s standards, this is an extraordinary album. There are a sprinkling of well-known tracks, including the Kinks’ oblique 1965 hit See My Friend and Sylvester’s out-and-proud disco anthem You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), which provides the collection’s crescendo and cut-off point. Mostly, though, it’s concerned with exposing the secret gay history of rock and pop.

Among the revelations uncovered by Savage are a lesbian-themed glam-blues 1973 single by Polly Perkins, best known as a star of short-lived BBC soap Eldorado, and the vicious early 1960s drag queen Jose, whose albums appear to have been sold to a straight audience as risque adult party accoutrements (”These naughty subjects are tickling America’s funnybone!” cries one sleeve, promising “a fantastically funny insight into the lives of ‘those fellows’”). Among various early 1970s gay singer-songwriters is Peter Grudzien, purveyor of “overtly gay country music”. Then there’s LA rent-boy punk Black Randy, who seems to have come to the conclusion that the Ramones’ famous paean to male prostitution, 53rd and 3rd, was too demure for its own good. “Schools and factories make me sick,” he snarls. “I’d rather stand here and sell my dick.”

Not everything on the compilation is a lost masterpiece. “If you’ve never heard any of this stuff, it’s probably with good reason,” chuckles Savage. And yet, it is, by turns, fascinating, touching, funny and startling—and occasionally you find yourself listening with your jaw hanging open.

The latter is certainly true of the track that started Savage collecting gay records 15 years ago. Released in 1967 in a crude handmade sleeve, Kay, Why? by the Brothers Butch features a string of double-entendres about lubricant jelly over a sub-Beatles backing track. “A friend gave me a copy. I wasn’t aware that stuff like that existed,” Savage says. “You think: why did somebody pay somebody to go into a studio and do this? I can only assume that by 1967, there was a firmly established, very limited market for explicit gay records. Presumably they would have been advertised in the back of early gay magazines or in gay shops or gay clubs. It wasn’t made with any hope of great sales, so it’s very direct.”

A similar sense of mystery surrounds Queer Noises’ other big revelation—that, in the mid-1960s, California had a gay record label, Camp, which advertised its wares as: “Wilder, madder, gayer than a Beatle’s hairdo!” Not even queermusicheritage.com has been able to uncover who was behind the label’s 10 pseudonymous singles and two albums, but Camp was certainly ahead of its time. A decade before the Village People, The Shower Song (I’m So Wet) revealed precisely what “hanging out with all the boys” at the YMCA might entail.

“It’s quite an explicit slice of early 1960s gay life,” says Savage. “They put out a song called Down on the River Drive, about a guy going cruising and getting arrested by a plain-clothes cop. Someone must have been convinced that there were enough gay people with enough money to buy this stuff.”

Camp’s releases went unnoticed by the wider world, but a decade later, things had changed: fuelled by David Bowie’s “I’m gay” interview in the Melody Maker, glam rock was the sound of pop finally coming out. But Savage’s album largely eschews glam in favour of a more obscure early 1970s musical development, in which straight black soul artists began giving hearty endorsement to the gay lifestyle in song. Harrison Kennedy of Chairmen of the Board weighs in with the cheery Closet Queen, while, on Ain’t Nobody Straight in LA, the post-Smokey Robinson Miracles inform the listener that “most everyone is AC-DC”, then elect to spend the evening in a gay bar, on the grounds that “some of the finest women are in gay bars”. “Hey, but dig, how you know they women?” protests a troubled Miracle. “Gay people are nice people too, man!” avers one of his bandmates sternly. That seems to settle it: off they go, for an evening with “those fellows”.

If you were being cynical, you might suggest that Kennedy and the Miracles had taken note of the burgeoning demand for black music from the nascent, primarily gay disco scene and made a pragmatic decision to court their new audience. Savage isn’t convinced. “The Miracles were just telling it how they saw it,” he says. “You wouldn’t get a major R&B act recording that now, would you? Things have actually gone back from the 1970s. The point of this album is that it’s about the struggle of gay people to get out of the closet, out of the ghetto into the mainstream, and they successfully did that on their terms with Sylvester. Gay people won freedoms, but they’re very fragile freedoms.”

He has a point. A few years after Sylvester’s triumph, explicitly gay music—Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Bronski Beat, the muscle-bound thud of high-energy dance music—was accepted into the British charts in a way that Joe Meek or the shadowy figures behind the Brothers Butch and Camp Records could never have anticipated. Twenty years on, Radio 1’s breakfast show presenter is using the word “gay” as an insult.

“Lad culture has been a disaster for pop music,” says Savage. “That definition of a heterosexual man—beer and football, Nick Hornby—is so restrictive. It’s important that pop musicians play around with gender and sexual divergence. The fact that it’s gone back to Oasis from the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger being very camp, is just pathetic, it’s a complete failure. People are scared of nonconformity in music, so this album is a less-than-fragrant reminder of a time when pop music was less sanitised than it is now.

“A friend of mine said, ‘Fucking hell Jon, I thought it was going to be quite tasteful, but there’s some real horrors on here.’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s time to unleash the beast.’”

From the Closet to the Charts: Queer Noises 1961-1978 is out now on Trikont (via Shellshock).

tracklist
01. Jose: At The Black Cat 02:09
02. Rod McKuen: Eros 01:42
03. Mr. Jean Fredericks: Nobody Loves A Fairy When She’s Forty 03:56
04. Byrd E. Bath & Rodney Dangerfield: Florence of Arabia 03:40
05. B.Bubba: I’d Rather Fight Than Swish 03:16
06. The Kinks: See My Friend 02:40
07. The Tornados: Do You Come Here Often? 03:53
08. The Brothers Butch: Kay, Why? 03:13
09. Teddy & Darrel: These Boots 02:22
10. Zebedy: The Man I Love 03:09
11. Curt Boettcher: Astral Cowboy 02:18
12. Harrison Kennedy: Closet Queen 03:43
13. Polly Perkins: Coochy Coo 03:19
14. Michael Cohen: Bitterfeast 03:09
15. Jobriath: I’m A Man 03:30
16. Chris Robison: Lookin’ For A Boy 03:57
17. Peter Grudzien: White Trash Hillbilly Trick 02:56
18. Valentino: I Was Born This Way 03:20
19. The Miracles: Ain’t Nobody Straight In LA 03:43
20. The Ramones: 53rd And 3rd 02:19
21. The Twinkeyz: Aliens In Our Midst 03:17
22. Dead Fingers: Talk Nobody Loves You When You’re Old And Gay 04:30
23. Black Randy & The Metro Squad: Trouble At The Cup 01:53
24. Sylvester: You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) 03:45

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gay book covers

Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo, FM 2008, 1982.

Since I made a post earlier about bad album design, it’s only right to redress the balance somewhat. Neville Brody has long been a favourite designer and something of an influence since it was looking at his work during the 1980s that made me think seriously about design when I’d previously had little interest in the field.

Pow-wow by Stephen Mallinder, FM 2010, 1982.

The record sleeves Brody produced for Fetish Records from 1980–82 are great examples of post punk style that showcase his particularly individual approach to design. This involved much use of hand-crafted elements, whether painted, printed, cast or carved. (In the days before computer design everything had to be pasted together from paper cut-outs, film overlays or PMT [photo-mechanical transfer] prints, with type provided by a professional typesetter.) Some of the Fetish sleeves used three-dimensional work that was then photographed, such as the wooden carvings or plaster hands on the 23 Skidoo sleeves. This approach might have provided a new direction for other sleeve designers but was quickly passed over as the decade progressed in favour of a weak pastiching of Modernist styles and the cultivation of a slick corporatism, much of it watered-down from Brody’s highly influential innovations for The Face magazine.

8 Eyed Spy by 8 Eyed Spy, FR 2003, 1981.

Brody has said of the Fetish period:

The musicians on Fetish were also totally open to the idea of me working under my own steam; there has been such a shift in this respect—most groups now take a much bigger hand in design which does not necessarily make for a better cover.

The Graphic Language of Neville Brody, 1988.

The situation is just as bad, if not worse, today. The open-ended nature of digital art has created a situation whereby a given design can be subject to endless revision merely because the client knows that the technology allows changes to be made.

Brody continues to work as a designer even though he’s less visible now, heading his own Research Studios.

Diddy Wah Diddy by 8 Eyed Spy, FE 19, 1980.

Wipe Out by Z’ev, FE 13, 1982.

Pow-wow by Stephen Mallinder, FM 2010, 1982.

Five Albums by Throbbing Gristle, FUX 001, 1981.

Things That Go Boom In The Night by Bush Tetras, FET 007, 1981.

Thirst by Clock DVA, FR2002, 1981.

The Gospel Comes To New Guinea by 23 Skidoo, FE 11, 1981.
(This is actually the cover of a CD compilation which somehow gained
three circles that weren’t on the original sleeve.)

Mambo Sun by The Bongos, FE 18, 1982.

Update: added a couple more sleeves (Bush Tetras and Clock DVA). Since there’s little information about the record company available, I’ve also added Jon Savage’s sleeve note from The Last Testament (1983), the final Fetish release and a compilation which acted as a celebration and epitaph for the label.

I’D IMAGINE IT TO BE SYMPTOMATIC that the word Fetish should have changed in the middle to late 70s, from being a slogan on an obscure Mail Art T Shirt to becoming the tradename of an internationally renowned record label—Maida Vale’s own ‘Home of the Hits’—but that’s showbiz.

AS WAS PRACTISED FOR A BRIEF TIME: Fetish now appears a product of a particular period when the separate streams of pop and avant-garde—the difference being in self-estimation as much as anything else—were thought expedient, cool and all those things, to crossover. In practice, this tended to mean press coverage disproportionate to sales, plenty of amusing attitudes struck, and streams of ill-advised people like myself being persuaded to view such artistes as are on offer here in dark and dingy basements. These last would always give the lie to pop’s brave new world pretensions.

IN THIS PULSATING SCENE, Fetish represented an opportune, if haphazard, meeting of New York, Sheffield, and Hackney. All of these spots have been glamourised to a greater or lesser degree, so you would have thought that this brand name was onto a winner. It is, however, an undoubted sign of human perversity that Fetish’s greatest success was to occur at the point when mogul Rod Pearce was shutting up shop: in early 1982, 23 Skidoo’s ‘Seven Songs’, produced by noted noisemakers Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson, became NUMBER 1 in the indie charts. Phew! Luckily, insufficient interest combined with too much time spent promoting the Bongos meant that this incredible success was nipped in the bud: disheartened at rock ‘n’ roll’s indifference, Pearcey announced that Fetish was to cease operating. People in polytechnics wept.

MAY I NOW IMAGINE YOU holding what I hope will be a beautifully designed sleeve (although you never can tell) and wondering why you should part with the money? (And, as they used to say, if you’re not going to, please don’t leave fingermarks all over Neville Brody’s labour of love). Apart from all the usual ‘unreleased’ and ‘live tracks’ sales points, you will own 12 tracks from a brief, hothouse period, a temporary delay in the long slide from the Sex Pistols to ABC. You will find preoccupations of the times faithfully represented: the full flowering of ‘industrial’, mature works from your favourite New York noisemakers, and the first UK meshing of punk and funk

1980! 1981! THOSE WERE THE DAYS! Those heady days of idealism are over. The fragile dividing line between art and commerce which Fetish represented has now shattered: Rod Pearce and Perry Haines are now prostituting themselves with King, Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson with Psychic TV, Adi Newton with DVA, and Neville Brody with the Face. I too, am deeply implicated, having sold my soul similarly to PTV and the Face. How worlds change! Isn’t life tough?

JON SAVAGE

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The lost art of sleeve design