Love and Haight: 1967 again
Another Summer of Love retrospective piece. Big feature, great stuff.
Category: {psychedelia}
Psychedelia
Oh Yeah by Charles Mingus
Oh Yeah (1962). Sleeve design by Loring Eutemey.
“People say that I’m hollering. Man, I feel like hollering.” Charles Mingus.
Listening to this great album this week had me searching for the equally great sleeve design from the vinyl edition which vanished from the CD reissue. The cover that replaced it is a dour photo of a gloomy-looking Mingus, completely unsuited to an album full of joyous noise. Happily there’s a Japanese edition that preserves the original design. As far as I can gather Loring Eutemey was a house designer at Atlantic, responsible for many of their jazz sleeves but also providing covers for rock albums including Iron Butterfly’s dumb psychedelic opus, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Lots of playful typography evident in Eutemey’s designs and bold, hand-drawn graphics à la Saul Bass, a style very popular in the Sixties not least because of Bass’s considerable influence.
Designs by Loring Eutemey: Born Under A Bad Sign (1967), In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968).
That playfulness especially suits an album where Mingus set aside his bass to play piano and sing (or, more correctly, holler) his way through seven tracks of energetic craziness. There are some amazing solos here from Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a blind musician famous for playing two saxophones at once, one in each hand. The opening Hog Callin’ Blues is one of my favourite jazz pieces, a number where bop rawness approaches the equivalent rawness of Fifties’ rock’n’roll or Chess blues. Always great to play (loud!) to people who think jazz is all polite cocktail music and studied cool. Mingus recorded lots of great albums, of course, and I imagine this is regarded as a throwaway novelty by many of his more dedicated listeners, but it remains one I keep returning to.
Charles Mingus—piano and vocals
Rahsaan Roland Kirk—flute, siren, tenor sax, manzello, and strich
Booker Ervin—tenor sax
Jimmy Knepper—trombone
Doug Watkins—bass
Dannie Richmond—drums
1 Hog Callin’ Blues (7:26)
2 Devil Woman (9:38)
3 Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am (4:41)
4 Ecclusiastics (6:55)
5 Oh Lord Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me (5:38)
6 Eat That Chicken (4:36)
7 Passions Of A Man (4:52)
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive
Japrocksampler
Julian Cope’s Krautrocksampler is one of my all-time favourite music books, an expert guide to the psychedelic jungle of German rock from 1968–1975. (And it seems to be out of print. Damn.) Now he’s written a follow-up.
Julian Cope, eccentric and visionary rock musician, hip archaeologist and one time frontman of Teardrop Explodes, follows the runaway underground success of Krautrocksampler, a cult deconstruction of German rock music, with Japrocksampler. Japrocksampler is a short history of Japanese youth culture in the post-war years. It explores the clash between traditional, conservative Japanese values and the wild rock and roll renegades of the 1960s and 70s, telling the tale of six seminal groups of artists in Japanese post-war culture, from itinerant art-house poets to violent refusenik rock groups with a penchant for plane hijacking. Cope tours regularly and has just brought out a new album, Dark Orgasm. His website, Head Heritage, is widely acknowledged as containing some of the most entertaining and insightful album reviews on the web. Julian’s fans (Copeheads) as well as the generally interested reader will lap up this take on the Jap Rock phenomenon.
Via Arthur.
See also:
• Les Rallizes Denudes
• Keiji Haino / Fushitsusha
• High Rise
• PSF Records
• Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective | AMT concerts at the Internet Archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Chrome: Perfumed Metal
• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer
• Metabolist: Goatmanauts, Drömm-heads and the Zuehl Axis
• The art of Shinro Ohtake
• Maximum heaviosity
The poster art of Marian Zazeela
top: Jon Hassell: Solid State. Richard Maxfield: Memorial Concerts.
bottom: The Theatre of Eternal Music Big Band. Pandit Pran Nath: Evening Ragas.
Artist Marian Zazeela’s beautiful hand-drawn posters can be seen (and bought) at the MELA Foundation website. Most of these were created for the Dream House productions hosted by Zazeela and partner La Monte Young. Zazeela has also used her distinctive calligraphic design on the sleeves of recordings by La Monte Young, Terry Riley and raga master Pandit Pran Nath.
• A gallery of Marian Zazeela posters
Previously on { feuilleton}
• The poster art of Bob Peak
• Posters by Josef Müller-Brockmann
• A premonition of Premonition
• Perfume: the art of scent
• Metropolis posters
• Film noir posters
1967: The summer of love
1967: The summer of love
“It was the moment that flower power went mainstream. But was it really a riot of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll? Forty years on, leading figures recall their part in the revolution.”