{"id":28883,"date":"2025-11-08T19:00:43","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T19:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=28883"},"modified":"2025-11-08T14:31:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T14:31:51","slug":"weekend-links-803","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2025\/11\/08\/weekend-links-803\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend links 803"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"USA-ad.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ad for The United States Of America from Helix magazine, 1968.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2022 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<\/a> 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<\/em>. 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<\/em><\/a> is a deliberate pastiche), and Broadcast<\/a>. Byrd did much more than this, of course, and his follow-up release, The American Metaphysical Circus<\/em><\/a> 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<\/a> in 2013.<\/p>\n

\u2022 At BBC Future: “The most desolate place in the world”: The sea of ice that inspired Frankenstein<\/em>. Richard Fisher<\/a> examines the history of the Mer de Glace in fact and fiction with a piece that includes one of my Frankenstein<\/em> illustrations. The latter are still in print via the deluxe edition from Union Square<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 A Year In The Country looks at a rare book in which Alan Garner’s children describe the making of The Owl Service<\/em><\/a> TV serial.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The final installment of Smoky Man\u2019s exploration of The Bumper Book of Magic<\/em> has been posted (in Italian) at (quasi)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 At Public Domain Review: Perverse, Grotesque, Sensuous, Inimitable: A Selection of Works by Aubrey Beardsley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 At Colossal: Ceramics mimic cardboard in Jacques Monneraud<\/a>\u2019s trompe-l\u2019\u0153il ode to Giorgio Morandi.<\/p>\n

\u2022 At the Daily Heller: The “narrative abstraction” of Roy Kuhlman<\/a>‘s cover designs for Grove Press.<\/p>\n

\u2022 New music: Elemental Studies<\/em><\/a> by Various Artists; and Gleann Ci\u00f9in<\/em><\/a> by Claire M. Singer.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Steven Heller’s font of the month is Archive Matrix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Sensual Hallucinations<\/em><\/a> (1970) by Les Baxter | The Garden Of Earthly Delights<\/em><\/a> (United States Of America cover) (1982) by Snakefinger | Perversion<\/em><\/a> (1992) by Stereolab<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ad for The United States Of America from Helix magazine, 1968. \u2022 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 … Continue reading “Weekend links 803”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Weekend links 803","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,50,30,42,4,29,22,48,3,16,13,41,19,10,23],"tags":[634,94,4158,13685,13168,13273,250,9284,14278,14276,6646,7531,615,14277,4282,1878,8525,2407,5142],"class_list":["post-28883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-beardsley","category-black-white","category-books","category-design","category-electronica","category-horror","category-illustrators","category-music","category-occult","category-science","category-sculpture","category-television","category-typography","category-work","tag-alan-garner","tag-aubrey-beardsley","tag-broadcast-group","tag-bumper-book-of-magic","tag-claire-m-singer","tag-dorothy-moskowitz","tag-frankenstein","tag-giorgio-morandi","tag-jacques-monneraud","tag-joe-byrd-and-the-field-hippies","tag-joseph-byrd","tag-les-baxter","tag-portishead","tag-richard-fisher","tag-roy-kuhlman","tag-smoky-man","tag-snakefinger","tag-stereolab","tag-the-united-states-of-america-group"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-7vR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}