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Weekend links 206

Nova Express (2014) by Paul Komoda.

• Last week it was Kraftwerk, this week it’s Can in another astonishing 70-minute TV performance from 1970. For those who know where to look in the torrent world there are copies of these recordings circulating there.

• JG Ballard: five years on. Extracts from introductions by John Gray, Hari Kunzru, Robert Macfarlane, Deborah Levy, James Lever, China Miéville and Michel Faber for a new series of Ballard editions.

• Mix of the week: Needle Exchange 147 by Inventions. Also at Self-Titled Mag: Suzanne Ciani on her Buchla beginnings, talking dishwashers, and why no one got electronic music in the ’70s.

• At Dangerous Minds: It’s So Far Out It’s Straight Down, a Granada TV documentary from 1967 featuring Paul McCartney, Allen Ginsberg, International Times, Pink Floyd et al.

• The Wonderful World of Witches: Portraits of English Pagans. A photo-special from the 1960s at LIFE. Related: From 1974, the US TV ad for Man, Myth and Magic.

• Suspicious Minds: Adam Curtis on Stephen Knight, Jack the Ripper, squatters, heists, From Hell, and why people no longer trust those in authority.

• Here be men with beards and syntezators: Andy Votel‘s Top 10 Early Patch-Bay Polymaths From Eastern Europe.

• The New York Public Library has made 20,000 maps available as free, high-res downloads.

• An oscilloscope video by Vincent Oliver & Steve Bliss for Riff Through The Fog by Clark.

• Anne Billson interviewed Alejandro Jodorowsky in 1990.

• At BLDGBLOG: When Hills Hide Arches.

• Do gay people still need gay bars?

• Pixelord Dreams

• I’m So Green (1972) by Can | Nova Feedback (1978) by Chrome | Gay Bar (2003) by Electric Six

Acid covers

LSD: The Consciousness-Expanding Drug (1964).

From serious scientific study, to tabloid concern, to psychedelic exploitation…a brief evolution of acid-related cover art in books and magazines. These are mostly American titles so who knows what else has yet to be rediscovered.

LSD (1966) by Richard Alpert & Sidney Cohen.

LIFE, March 25th, 1966.

See inner pages here.

Newsweek, May 9th, 1966.

See inner pages here.

LIFE, September 9th, 1966.

See inner pages here.

LSD : Trip or Trap? (1966) by Lindsay R. Curtis.

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Lyrical Substance Deliberated

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds from Yellow Submarine (1968).

The advent of spring invariably gets me listening to favourite psychedelic songs, and this year has been no exception. Earlier this week I was idly wondering how many songs there are that follow the Beatles’ lead in telegraphing their drug metaphors by using the initials L-S-D in their titles. Wikipedia’s page for Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (1967) relates John Lennon’s oft-repeated claim that the initialism in the title was a coincidence, and the song itself is really a bit of Lewis Carroll-like whimsy. This might be credible if works of art only ever carried one meaning but they don’t, of course, and the song is both a piece of Lewis Carroll-like whimsy as well as being a pretty obvious paean to the drug experience: “Climb in the back with your head in the clouds / And you’re gone”. Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit (1967) was similarly ambivalent with mushrooms/pills replacing acid.

Among the many things birthed by the enormous success of the Sgt Pepper album, a small flurry of songs or instrumentals have imitated Lennon’s initialism for their titles. The ones that came immediately to mind are detailed below, and they make a curious group. If anyone knows of any others—there must be others…—then please leave a comment.

Burning Of The Midnight Lamp/The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice (Aug, 1967).

The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s B-side not only alludes to LSD but also to STP. The song itself doesn’t go very far before collapsing into freakout mode.

The Trip (1967).

Not a song but included here for that “Lovely Sort of Death” tag. Written by Jack Nicholson! With Dennis Hopper as the acid dealer! See the trailer here, then watch the whole film here.

Lost Soul In Disillusion (November, 1967).

Hard to imagine anyone in London would have heard this in 1967. The Power of Beckett were a Montreal garage group who only released two singles. Lost Soul In Disillusion turned up years later on compilation albums.

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Lovecraft’s Monsters unleashed

I posted my illustrations for this anthology back in December, after which Tachyon also asked me to create a cover for the book, something that hadn’t been planned at the outset. Lovecraft’s Monsters, edited by Ellen Datlow, is in the shops this month so here’s the cover and a few of my page layouts from the interior. I’m very pleased with this one so it’s been good to hear it’s been selling well already, and picking up positive reviews. My illustrations may be seen at large size here while the book itself should be available via all the usual outlets. If you insist on shopping in a river filled with piranhas then here’s a link. (That fish head on the cover is based on a piranha as it happens.)

The big Lovecraft collection from Centipede Press, A Mountain Walked, was also supposed to be out this month but the release has been bumped (again) to May 2014. It’s a huge volume so I’m not surprised if it’s taking longer than expected.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive

The world of the future

Pages from the Official Souvenir Program for the Seattle World’s Fair, 1962. Very typical corporate design by RT Matthiesen and Associates but not bad for all that. The pages give an overview of the exposition, punctuated by ads from its sponsors, while the text sets forth the purpose of the event which was intended to give a taste of life in the new Space Age. NASA’s Project Mercury missions were ongoing during the time the fair was being planned so the ethos of the event was very much tied to the obsessions of the time, obsessions fuelled by Cold War competition and a desire for an automated future. The technocratic side of things is to the fore in the booklet which trots out the usual utopian vision of life in “Century 21” as being one of short working-hours, a great deal of leisure, personal air-cars, and revolving houses. My childhood encyclopaedias were filled with this sort of thing which has only given me a lifelong suspicion of any kind of wild futurology, positive or negative. Those books were also filled with pictures of monorails, and the Seattle exposition had a monorail all of its own which I’m pleased to see is still running today.

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