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Ad for The United States Of America from Helix magazine, 1968.
• American composer Joseph Byrd died this week but I’ve yet to see a proper obituary anywhere. He may not have been a popular artist but he was significant for the one-off album produced in 1968 by his short-lived psychedelic group, The United States Of America. Their self-titled album has been a favourite of mine since it was reissued in the 1980s, one of the few American albums of the period that tried to learn from, and even go beyond, the studio experimentation of Sgt Pepper. The United States Of America didn’t have the resources of the Beatles and Abbey Road but they did have Byrd’s arrangements, together with an energetic rhythm section, an electric violin, a ring modulator, some crude synthesizer components, the voice of Dorothy Moskowitz, and a collection of songs with lyrics that ranged from druggy poetry to barbed portrayals of the nation’s sexual neuroses. The album became an important one for British groups in the 1990s who were looking for inspiration in the wilder margins of psychedelia, especially Stereolab, Portishead (Half Day Closing is a deliberate pastiche), and Broadcast. Byrd did much more than this, of course, and his follow-up release, The American Metaphysical Circus by Joe Byrd And The Field Hippies, has its moments even though it doesn’t reach the heights of its predecessor. Byrd spoke about this period of his career with It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine in 2013.
• At BBC Future: “The most desolate place in the world”: The sea of ice that inspired Frankenstein. Richard Fisher examines the history of the Mer de Glace in fact and fiction with a piece that includes one of my Frankenstein illustrations. The latter are still in print via the deluxe edition from Union Square.
• A Year In The Country looks at a rare book in which Alan Garner’s children describe the making of The Owl Service TV serial.
• The final installment of Smoky Man’s exploration of The Bumper Book of Magic has been posted (in Italian) at (quasi).
• At Public Domain Review: Perverse, Grotesque, Sensuous, Inimitable: A Selection of Works by Aubrey Beardsley.
• At Colossal: Ceramics mimic cardboard in Jacques Monneraud’s trompe-l’œil ode to Giorgio Morandi.
• At the Daily Heller: The “narrative abstraction” of Roy Kuhlman‘s cover designs for Grove Press.
• New music: Elemental Studies by Various Artists; and Gleann Ciùin by Claire M. Singer.
• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Archive Matrix.
• Sensual Hallucinations (1970) by Les Baxter | The Garden Of Earthly Delights (United States Of America cover) (1982) by Snakefinger | Perversion (1992) by Stereolab
That Frankenstein illustration is really excellent. Is it all in technical pen/pen&ink ?
Thanks, Tony. The figures were drawn with a Wacom tablet which is now my main drawing tool. All the background elements were collaged from several engraved illustrations of the French Alps. There’s also a bit of white spattered ink added to the background. I wrote about illustrating the novel here:
https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2018/02/28/illustrating-frankenstein/
Ideally I’d prefer to draw an entire scene but with that book I was presented with a request to illustrate each chapter in a rather short space of time. Collaging backgrounds was a convenient solution.
Thanks. It’s brilliantly integrated and a lovely image
One of the fascinating aspects of the novel is how ambiguous Shelley was about how the animation of the creature was actually accomplished. Of course the movies were responsible for the sewing together of body parts and the use of the less understood qualities of lightning. Justin Sledge, over at his site Esoterica, examines the possible occult aspects of the creation of the monster.
Frankenstein and the Occult
Yes, she’s very vague about the actual process, so vague in fact that Frankenstein might as well have been using magic to create new life. I’ve never been convinced by the argument put forward by Brian Aldiss and many other critics that Frankenstein is the first SF novel. Earlier examples get dismissed as mere fantasy yet Frankenstein is just as fantastic in its own way.
The Byrd bios and recordings mentions were much appreciated. I was a college-radio DJ shortly after those releases; maybe that’s how that first album escaped my attention (we got plenty of freebies from Columbia). My first listen had me wishing it hadn’t … but from the interview I gathered that Byrd did alright in the following years!
Re: Joseph Byrd and United States of America.
This is a great album and many thanks for mentioning it.
That song Coming Down is a killer with mind-blowing fuzz bass and kind of echoed drums underneath violin and electronics – trippy in the extreme. Also, it was one of the very few 60s albums to completely eschew the use of electric or acoustic guitar, making it even more unusual.
Thanks again John.
Best,
Richard.