Abe Gurvin album covers

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Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965–1968 (1972).

Reading this article last week about Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets compilation I realised I’d never looked up the album’s cover artist, Abe Gurvin (1937–2012); this despite owning two copies of Kaye’s compilation, one of which, an expanded box of four CDs, includes additional Gurvin art (see below). Nuggets was released in 1972 on Elektra, a label for whom Gurvin worked regularly as a designer as well as an artist. The only other cover of his I definitely recall seeing before is for one of Mort Garson’s electronic novelty albums, Cosmic Sounds (credited to The Zodiac), although some of the classical recordings on Elektra’s Nonesuch imprint look vaguely familiar. Nonesuch were using vivid art and graphics on the covers of their classical albums from the mid-60s on, years in advance of rival labels; Gurvin, along with Bob Pepper, Gene Szafran and others, provided the cover paintings. In the 1980s many of these albums turned up cheap in British remainder shops, hence the familiarity, although I can’t say whether it was Gurvin’s art I remember seeing.

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Disc art from the four-CD Nuggets box (1998).

The subtitle of the Nuggets album—”Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965–1968″—always promised more than it delivered when only a quarter of the songs could be called psychedelic. Without Gurvin’s artwork providing a contextualising frame it’s hard to imagine the compilation sustaining its reputation as a psych classic, whatever the subtitle might suggest. Gurvin’s florid aesthetics were put to similar use elsewhere, not only on classical recordings. Some of the examples below are a result of attempts by art directors to give artists like Gene Pitney a trendy spin.

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Cosmic Sounds (1967) by The Zodiac. “Must be played in the dark” says a note on the back cover.

Nuggets, incidentally, was beneficial in its influence even if its psychedelic quotient is lacking. Without its success there might not have been the 28 psych/garage compilations known as Pebbles, a bootleg series that retrieved from obscurity many minor bands and one-off singles; and without Pebbles we wouldn’t have had further imitations like Boulders (11 discs) and all the many series that followed, including my personal favourite, Rubble, a 20-disc collection of British psychedelic singles.

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The Dove Descending: Choral Music (1966) by The Canby Singers.

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Haydn: Symphony No. 21 In A Major / Symphony No. 48 In C Major (“Maria Theresia”) / Symphony No. 82 In C Major (“L’Ours”); Chamber Orchestra Of The Saar, Karl Ristenpart / Gürzenich Symphony Orchestra Of Cologne, Günter Wand (1966).

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Sweet, Sweet Lovin’ (1968) by The Platters.

Gurvin’s contribution to this one is the hand-drawn title design.

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Weekend links 642

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A light wheel. Via.

• “Part of the instrument’s draw is its fallibility. Famously, or perhaps infamously, every Rhodes is different: some freakishly responsive, some with keys that stick like glue, and all with uneven registers, darker corners, and sweet spots.” Hugh Morris on the delicate art of reinventing the Fender Rhodes.

Rambalac’s YouTube channel of first-person walks through Japanese locations is a vicarious pleasure, especially on a big screen. It’s not all city streets but if you like urban meandering then Tokyo walk from day to rainy night – Higashi-Ikebukuro, Mejiro, Ikebukuro is a good place to start.

• At Igloomag: Chang Terhune interviews Stephen Mallinder in a gratifyingly lengthy piece which covers Mallinder’s recent solo recordings and collaborations, his work with students on his sound-art course, and (unavoidably) the late Richard H. Kirk and Cabaret Voltaire.

What I think might be a useful approach—perhaps impractical, but bear me out—I think that if we were to reconnect magic and art as a starting point, because they’re practically the same thing anyway, make art the product of your magical experiments, the way that Austin Spare did for example, then that would give magic an enormous sense of purpose and I think it would also lend art the vision that it seems to be lacking at present. A lot of modern art seems rather empty and hollow conceptualism that lacks any real vision or substance or power. A linking of magic and art would help both of those fields. Then, once you’ve done that, maybe linking art and science. There’s plenty of work already done in that regard.

Alan Moore talking to Miles Ellingham about the usual concerns plus his new story collection, Illuminations

Wheels of Light: Designs for British Light Shows 1970–1990 is a book by Kevin Foakes (aka DJ Food) which will be published later this month by Four Corners Books. The author talks about his book here.

• “The Sandjak of Novi Pazar always sounded as if it were a title, like the Sultan of Zanzibar or the Dame of Sark…” Mark Valentine on discovering outdated maps in forgotten books.

• “My brief was to find tracks that had been left by the wayside or disregarded.” Lenny Kaye on 50 years of his influential garage-rock compilation Nuggets.

• Mixes of the week: XLR8R Podcast 768 by Lawrence English, and King Scratch (Musical Masterpieces from the Upsetter Ark-ive) by Aquarium Drunkard.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on Shirley Jackson The Haunting of Hill House (1959).

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Slag.

• This Wheel’s On Fire (1968) by Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity | Cosmic Wheels (1973) by Donovan | Wheels On Fire (1985) by Haruomi Hosono

Digging the Rubble

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1: The Psychedelic Snarl.

A few words in praise of Rubble, the 20-disc collection of (mostly) British psychedelic singles released by the Bam Caruso label from 1984 to 1991. A reader of Rob Chapman’s Psychedelia and Other Colours would find the Rubble series an indispensable companion to the second half of the book which explores the unique styles of British psych. Ideally you’d read the book while having these and other compilations close at hand, something I didn’t manage so I’ve been going through the discs myself this week, listening out for some of the many singles that Chapman discusses. The Rubble title is a nod to Lenny Kaye’s 1972 collection Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968, the first reappraisal of the garage/psych era whose success spawned Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964-1969, a not-so-good attempt to do the same for the UK, and Children of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era, 1976-1995. The original Nuggets was followed by the long-running Pebbles series which sprawls over 28 discs collecting obscure garage singles.

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2: Pop-Sike Pipe Dreams.

What I like about the Rubble series, apart from its covering a favourite zone of musical history, is the way that each volume is titled in a suitable manner beyond a mere number: the title of volume 8, All The Colours Of Darkness could have been used by Coil during their LSD period. Then there’s the sleeve designs by the great Phil Smee, one of the founders of Bam Caruso, the collector of many of the featured singles, and a first-rate artisan of psychedelic graphics: there’s a Louis Wain cat on volume 2, and more of those letterforms by Roman Cieslewicz on volume 10. Smee deserves a post of his own but covering such a lengthy career would be a daunting task: Discogs lists 784 separate releases, and that’s only his design work. The design on the first run of Rubble albums was credited to “Harvey S. Williams”, a Smee pseudonym playing on the name of Elektra Records art director William S. Harvey. Harvey S. Williams was also the designer of the short-lived and rather wonderful Bam Caruso magazine, Strange Things Are Happening, issues of which are advertised in the inner sleeves of the early Rubble albums. (The magazine borrowed its title from a 1968 single by Rings and Things which is featured on Rubble 4.)

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3: Nightmares In Wonderland.

The Rubble series has been reissued on CD many times, and is currently available as The Rubble Collection, a glossy cube containing all 20 discs in card sleeves together with two booklets that reprint Phil Smee’s original sleeve notes and band photos. The Rubble albums sound a little rough today when many of the songs which were taken directly from old singles have been resurrected and can be heard elsewhere in better quality. Subsequent compilations have also cherry-picked many of the better selections but this is still the ideal place to start if you want to immerse yourself in the toyshop/kitchen sink surrealism that is British psychedelia.

• See also: Richard Norris reminiscing about working at Bam Caruso, and choosing 20 favourite British psych records.

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4: The 49 Minute Technicolour Dream.

Continue reading “Digging the Rubble”