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23 Skidoo by Julian Biggs

An 8-minute film by Julian Biggs from 1964 (IMDB says 1965) which turns the streets of Montreal into post-apocalypse tableaux.

This short black-and-white film shows eerie scenes of a downtown without people. The effect is disturbing. The camera shoots familiar urban scenes, without a soul in sight: streets empty, buildings empty, yet everywhere there is evidence of recent life and activity. At the end of the film we learn what has happened.

Being a film funded by the National Film Board of Canada, the only place to see this would appear to be on their website. That would be fine if the streaming worked but every time I’ve tried using the latest iteration of their site the connection seizes up. Other viewers may have better luck.

Weekend links 87

Untitled art by Katie Scott.

“…the very fact that people cannot get published by the big-name publishers in the way that they used to has meant that you’ve got some really interesting and often really beautiful little small publishing houses that are springing up and coming into existence. And the stuff that they’re providing is actually a lot better. I’m thinking of people like Tartarus Press, Strange Attractor and various other commendable small publishers that do a beautiful job and that are producing books that are good to have on your bookshelf.”

Alan Moore discussing books old and new in a lengthy interview at Honest Publishing. In part two he takes to task hardboiled moron Frank Miller and offers his thoughts on the Occupy movement. Elsewhere the Guardian finally paid some attention to the importance of design in the book world. Some of us who do this for a living have been saying for years that if publishers want to see physical books thriving they need to maintain (or improve) the quality of their design and materials. Related: The Truth About Amazon Publishing, Laura Hazard Owen at paidContent examines some the figures behind Amazon’s PR.

• “Tenniel argued for several changes to the characters as conceived by Carroll. The croquet mallets are ostriches in the original drawings, and the hoops are footmen bent over with the tails of their coats hanging down over their bottoms like an animal’s. Tenniel left them out. He told the author that a girl might manage a flamingo, but not an ostrich.” Marina Warner again on John Tenniel, Lewis Carroll and the Alice books.

Untitled painting by Christian Schoeler who was interviewed for a second time at East Village Boys.

• Shamanism and the City: Psychedelic Spiritual Tourism Comes Home and Scientists finding new uses for hallucinogens and street drugs. Related: LSD – A Documentary Report (1966), “a totally new kind of record album”.

• More books: Interview with a Book Collector. Mark Valentine, author, biographer and editor was also the co-publisher in 1988 of my adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark.

• The Priapus Chandelier “features six hand-sculpted phalluses cast in translucent resin, which radiate an atmospheric light.”

• Stewart Lee on Top Gear, in which the comedian and Dodgem Logic contributor eviscerates the BBC’s pet trolls.

• The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library put the Voynich Manuscript online.

• The 432-page SteamPunk Magazine collection with my cover art is now on sale.

• Hubble, Bubble, Toil & Trouble: The Haxan Cloak Interviewed

• The Sunn O))) chapter of The Electric Drone by Gilles Paté.

• Colonel Blimp: The masterpiece Churchill hated

• Submergence (2006) by Greg Haines | Reyja (2011) by Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason | The Fall (2011) by The Haxan Cloak.

Cover versions

Design by Peter Whorf Graphics.

Another album cover post, and one I’ve wanted to do for a while. Parody covers are a curious sub-genre of sleeve design, and this post was prompted in part by an email from Easy On The Eye books alerting me to the publication this month of Covered, a collection of cover parodies compiled by Jan Bellekens. Hundreds of different examples are featured, many of them by artists few people will have heard of, the parody cover having always been a good way for unknowns to grab some attention on the back (or should that be the front?) of the very famous.

Some covers inspire more parodies than others. One of my favourites is the perennial inspiration provided by Whipped Cream & Other Delights, Herb Alpert’s hugely popular 1965 album whose cover by Peter Whorf Graphics may now be more well-known than the music it packaged. Dolores Erickson was the model, the “cream” was foam, and the modish typography shows (as did the hand-drawn title on Rubber Soul) that the trend for fluid lettering styles slightly preceded the psychedelic explosion. My mother had a copy of this album so the sleeve was the first album cover to make a memorable impression; my sister and I always thought it slightly “rude” since Ms. Erickson is obviously naked under her cream.

Sour Cream & Other Delights (1966) by The Frivolous Five.

The success of the design can be gauged by how swiftly the parodies followed, and how they show no sign of abating, the most recent one below being from 2008. The selections here are among the better examples, there are many more to be found. Needless to say, Jan Bellekens’ book makes note of this lineage. Covered can be ordered direct from Easy On The Eye.

Spaghetti Sauce & Other Delights (1967) by Pat Cooper.

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Flamboyant excess: the art of Steven Arnold

Invitation to Yin and Yang by Steven Arnold.

“Less is NOT more, MORE is more, less is less.”

Steven Arnold

Thanks to Monsieur Thombeau for pointing the way to The Steven Arnold Archive, a respository of biographical and career detail about Steven Arnold (1943–1994):

…a California-based multi-media artist, spiritualist, gender bender, and protégée of Salvador Dalí. His work consisted of drawings, paintings, rock and film posters, makeup design, costume design, set design, photography, and film.

Arnold’s work with outrageous performance troupe The Cockettes seems to receive more attention today than his other creations so it’s good to see the balance being redressed. It was a surprise, for instance, to find he’d drawn a poster in 1967 for The Matrix club, San Francisco. Similar works are mentioned but the site doesn’t have any examples and I’ve yet to see any elsewhere.

And I haven’t seen the Cockettes film, Luminous Procuress (1971) either. Salvador Dalí unsurprisingly responded with enthusiasm to its atmosphere of androgynous weirdness:

Luminous Procuress is an altogether extraordinary, individualistic phantasmagoria. It was filmed entirely in San Francisco over a two-year period, and describes the adventures of two wandering youths in San Francisco who visit the home of a mysterious woman, the Procuress. She is an elegant emblem of sorcery, her vivid features glowing under bizarre, striking maquillage, and one is not certain who she is or where she intends to lead the protagonists. Although the language she speaks is vaguely Russian, it appears that the Procuress has psychic powers. She discerns a sympathetic response to her on the part of the youths, and by magical means, conducts them through fantastic rooms, on a psychic journey… (more)

Definitely one for the future viewing list. Meanwhile, one of Arnold’s tableaux photos, The Advantages of Modern Marriage, is currently on display in Cruising the Archive: Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1945–1980 at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles. The exhibition runs to April 1st, 2012.

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• James Bidgood

Milton Glaser album covers

Music For Space Squirrels (1958) by Al Caiola’s Magic Guitars.

Having sought out Saul Bass’s album cover designs recently, curiosity impelled me to see what fellow New York designer Milton Glaser had been doing during the same period. I already knew some of Glaser’s covers for the Tomato label in the 1970s but Discogs has many more, including a handful in the Pop/psychedelic style he used most famously for his Bob Dylan poster. Not all of these are to my taste—illustration-wise I prefer Bob Pepper’s art—but Glaser was nothing if not versatile. I’ve no idea what Music for Space Squirrels sounds like although it’s probably less interesting than the promise of those floating rodents.

Medium (1968) by The Mandrake Memorial.

Grieg’s Greatest Hits (1969).

Continue reading “Milton Glaser album covers”