Oddities: Desktop Image dump

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Wheeling around the internet (as I do) you pick up all sorts of interesting things, here are some that have been cluttering up the desktop with nowhere to go this month. Above is a promo badge – or button as they call them in the States – for the opening of The Kaleidoscope club in 1967, apparently the Grateful Dead played – taken from a RockPosters.com post.

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The cover of the Sexedelic LP, most of which became one half of the Vampyros Lesbos Psychedelic Dance Party compilation on Crippled Dick Hot Wax. Despite owning said comp since the 90s I’d never seen this cover.

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International Times newsagents poster, sent to me by Drew Mulholland

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Robert Williams illustrated header card for a bag of weed! Not sure the year but looks 70s.

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Gorgeous box design for a Philips projector lens.

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Original art for an Alex Nino spread from Star Reach magazine no.6 from Heritage Auctions

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Beautiful Odyssey computer box design plus computer inside, look at those huge chips! Seen on Facebook Marketplace.

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New Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan LP cover – possibly by Nick Taylor? Out next week…

State 51 Singularity series

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Gorgeous designs by Louise Mason for the State 51 Singularity series of lathe cuts, made in conjunction with The Quietus website. Patrons on the highest tier of The Quietus’ subscription service get regular digital releases from various bands championed by the website and these are starting to be made available as limited lathe cut singles via State 51. Each edition (of 50) comes in an embossed box with hand-finished details and features a 20 minute disc of exclusive music from each artist.

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Talking of The Quietus, they desperately need more subscribers to survive so if you want to support good, independent journalism you can sign up to three different options with the site, each of which unlocks more content. Subscribe here.

Posted in Magazines, Music, Records. | No Comments |

When Hip Hop Came To Town article

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I spoke to Tom Ellen at ES Magazine a few weeks back about attending the Def Jam tour with Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim and LL Cool J back in 1987. The piece is primarily with Chuck D in reference to the new documentary Fight The Power: How Hip Hop Changed The World on BBC 3 which started last week and is on iPlayer now. I was being asked for my take on the first appearance on a London stage by PE back in 1987 and how the gig was a seismic event in the history of hip hop in the UK. Tom was led to me by the photos I posted on my blog a few years back, some of which were used in the article and are apparently in the documentary at some point. The article is online here to read too.

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ES LL

Moonbuilding issue 2 out today

Moonbuilding vol.2

The new edition of Moonbuilding, the quarterly magazine by ex-Electronic Sound writer Neil Mason, published by Castles In Space, is out today. It features a 2 page interview with me about my new book, Wheels of Light, and the mag also comes with a free CD of CiS artists appearing at the label’s Levitation festival next month.

You can order it here and there is also an option to get issue 1 or a bundle of both issues.

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Moonbuilding magazine issue 1

MB cover CD

The first issue of Moonbuilding is here! Put together by Neil Mason (ex of Electronic Sound magazine) and published quarterly by Castles In Space, it features guest design work from Nick Taylor, a column by Alex Paterson of The Orb and the return of Steven Appleby’s Captain Star comic strip. Also comes with a 13 track CD
Order via the Castles In Space Bandcamp page

MB CD back

MB Books

MB DH 1

MB DH 2

MB Capt Star

MB Howl

MB Levi

Record Mirror illustrated covers

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I’m mildly fascinated by these rock illustrations from Record Mirror magazines circa 1978-1981 when artists were asked to interpret pop idols of the day for covers and the odd poster. This was back when Record Mirror was a newspaper of the same size as NME, Melody Maker and Sounds before downsizing to magazine format.

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RM Blondie
They LOVED Blondie, she was constantly on the cover, probably because a beautiful woman sold copies. Not sure what to make of the suggestive poster at the top!

RM Bruce

RM BS

RM centre poster

RM Chrisse
Ivor Sexton, Alan Alder, David Street, Bob Zammarchi, Bush Hollyhead, Peter Watson, Mark (Zodiac Mindwarp) Manning, Conny Jude, Chris Chaisty, Chris Preistley and Graham Stevens are just some of the names I can see credited, some are familiar, some not.

RM Clash

RM Elvis 2

RM Elvis 3

RM Elvis

RM Grease

RM Led Zep

RM Linda

RM Marley

RM Metal
There was a trend for this kind of caricature around this time with a whole raft of posters released in similar styles (one of which – the Siouxsie centre spread – is featured here). I’ve posted about them before and there’s more to come…
RM Nick Lowe

RM PIL

RM Sexism

RM Siouxsie 2

RM Siouxsie

RM Stevie

RM Who

RM Springsteen 2

Posted in Art, Magazines, Music. | No Comments | Tags:

Punch covers by Geoffrey Dickinson

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I was alerted to the Punch cover above by the excellent Instagram account ephemeramablog and it sent me down a rabbit hole to find more. Geoffrey Dickinson did a fair bit of work for Punch over the years as far as I can ascertain as well as numerous other magazines. From the blog:
Geoffrey Dickinson (1933-1988) created these two cover illustrations for Punch magazine. Born in Liverpool, Dickinson studied at the Royal Academy Schools with the intention of becoming a landscape painter. He became a teacher while also freelancing, producing graphics and animations for BBC TV. Dickinson began contributing to Punch in 1963 and produced numerous covers. He took the position of Deputy Art Editor at Punch while continuing to freelance, working for Reader’s Digest, Which?, Esquire, Highlife, Hallmark Cards and more. In 1966, he also created the notable “Swinging Sixties” cover for Time Magazine. In 1984, Dickinson left Punch and joined the Financial Times, producing a daily pocket cartoon and illustrations for the weekend supplement.

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Food in the press

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There have been a couple of articles about the Kaleidoscope reissue/companion album in actual physical magazines recently – a 4 page article in DJ Mag (Todd Edwards cover) and a 6 page interview with not only PC and myself but Matt & Jon from Coldcut/Food too in the current issue of Electronic Sound (Drive cover). There was also a 2 page lead review of the album(s) in the previous issue of ES (Field Recording cover) too. Lots of rarely or never before seen pics too.DJ 2 DJ Kal review ES Food 1 ES Food 2 ES Food 3 ES Food 4 ES Food 5 Kal review ES

East Village Other covers pt.2 – Underground Comix edition

p15932coll8_56807_full More pages from the Wisconsin Historical Society G.I. Press Collection of The East Village Other papers I came across, all scanned in high res, (much higher than here). As the 60s heading to a close The Other started featuring a selection of the underground cartoonists of the day, namely Robert Crumb, Vaughn Bodé, Susan Morris, Spain Rodriguez, Kim Dietch and Charles Francis Winans. As well as striking covers, several artists did comic strip ads for Douglas Records and a lot of this art – save for some of the Crumb works – I’ve never seen reprinted elsewhere before.

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East Village Other covers pt.1

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Perusing the Wisconsin Historical Society G.I. Press Collection I came across a stash of East Village Other papers, all scanned in high res, (much higher than here) and started going through them. Here’s a selection of things that caught my eye from the covers and back pages.

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Possibly Susan Morris‘ work above?

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Is that an early Spain Rodriguez inking the figure above? The clouds don’t look like his work but the darker ink work doesp15932coll8_57300_full p15932coll8_57353_fullp15932coll8_18538_full

Grunt Free Press

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I was sent a link to the Wisconsin Historical Society G.I. Press Collection online which is a treasure trove of alternative and free press publications surrounding the US military 1964-1977. One of the best finds was a monthly paper called the Grunt Free Press, full of counterculture news and graphics from the hippy years including colour double page spread posters in the psychedelic style. Here are some of my favourite details.

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Middle Earth flyers part 1.5 – The Magical Mystery Tour

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The full page back cover advert above appeared in the 9th Aug 1968 issue of International Times magazine, promises much and looks like some sort of insane bargain for the princely sum of £3. The idea of the event, as you can read from the text, was to take 3,000 paying punters on a Magical Mystery Tour via a fleet of blacked out buses. 90 minutes later attendees would disembark inside a ‘walled Pleasure Garden’ with deer roaming in the grounds  for 48 hrs of music, mischief and mayhem. Undoubtedly taking its name from The Beatles’ song of the same name released the previous year, there were reportedly the first showings of the film of the same name due to take place but I’ve not been able to confirm this.
The first sign of the impending gig was a small ad in the back of the 12th July 1968 issue of IT with just these words…
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This also seems to coincide with the moment when Middle Earth at the King St. address in Covent Garden moved to The (New) Roundhouse in Chalk Farm with some reports suggesting that this event even took place at that venue. Again this seems to be pure speculation and hardly fits the bill of the advertised ‘lawns and woods within the walls’ plus how would they do a six hour firework show indoors?

Magical Mystery Tour ad IT magicalmystery Haphash colour
Above is a full colour poster for the event by Hapshash & The Coloured Coat although it’s been credited solely to Michael English too. A version of this image also exists for the First International Pop Festival in Rome earlier the same year, and it appears that the poster may have been over-printed, adding new band names whilst obliterating the original festival name and date. According to Middle Earth club DJ, Jeff Dexter, this was, “put together by Giorgio Gomelsky with Dave Howson from Middle Earth.” I’d speculate that they wanted to add to the promotion for the event with an eye-catching poster at short notice, thinking that few would have seen the Italian festival poster? Hapshash had of course done many posters for both UFO and Middle Earth and were pretty much the premiere poster designers for that era in the UK along with Martin Sharp. If anyone has any further info on this I’d love to know more.

First International Pop Festival
Below are both sides of a poster (or possibly flyer) designed by Ozmosis – who had also assembled the ad at the top of this post plus the smaller flying baby one. I’ve not been able to dig up anything about who Ozmosis were from anywhere –  Jeff Dexter didn’t know, psychedelic poster collector, Peter Golding had heard the name but no more, antique book and magazine seller, Adrian Sclanders of Beatbooks drew a blank and artist and ex-IT arts editor Mike McInnerney hasn’t so far got back to me.Magical Mystery Tour posterMagical Mystery Tour poster back
So what happened? Any eye witness accounts, footage or reviews of the event are missing in action whereas there are plenty for the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream or The Million Volt Light & Sound Rave. You’d think something as ambitious as this would be up there as one of the events of the era? The answer seems to be in a small news piece in the 23rd August 1968 edition of IT.
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Jeff Dexter again, “The Mystery tour never happened due the weather and lack of sales, but there was a quickly put together event by coaches from Covent Garden to a very smart reception space the ‘Baronial Hall’ in the City of London.”
The Doors / Jefferson Airplane gig mentioned here two weeks later has of course passed into legend though…

Middle Earth flyers part 1

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Middle Earth was one of the original, late 60s psychedelic clubs in London, coming shortly after The UFO (pronounced You-Fo – Underground Freak Out) club on Tottenham Court Rd. and pitching itself up in King St, Covent Garden. It actually started out as The Electric Garden in May 1967 but, after a disastrous opening weekend with completely misjudged vibes, heavy security and bizarre VIP areas, it had a change of name as well as management and became Middle Earth in September.
Electric Garden
See below for eye witness details of the opening event – all these clippings taken from the International Times magazine online archive which is an invaluable resource of the times. Orange flyer above taken from Jill Drower’s excellent book on The Exploding Galaxy, ’99 Balls Pond Road’.

IT_1967-06-02_B-IT-Volume-1_Iss-14_012 Middle Earth raided

Middle Earth, an obvious Tolkien reference, John Peel was one of the resident DJs along with Jeff Dexter who would play to the crowd and the dance floor rather than Peel who would play more for the listeners out there. Jeff told me that they would be situated under the lighting rig for the light show until a small booth was built for them out with the stages for the bands to make them more part of the events. A regular track for him was The Lemon Pipers’ ‘Through With You’ apparently, the nearest thing to an anthem for the nights, he liked this because it was nearly 10 minutes long so he could go for a smoke.

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Above, the listing for the re-opening week, I like the way they were closed on the Friday that UFO was on rather than give the impression that they were competing.

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There was no consistent art direction with the adverts featured in IT and most were dictated over the phone and the magazine would come up with the designs for the issue.

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Below right: A benefit for Oz magazine with a ‘sexy Barney Bubbles Light Show’Barney Bubbles being the alias of Colin Fulcher who went on to design so many great sleeves for Hawkwind, Stiff Records and many more. Along with other pioneers like Liquid Len, he got his nickname from doing light shows where he would heat ink and oil under glass clock faces and project it across the club after witnessing this on the hippy scene in San Francisco on a trip to the States.

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One of the mysteries of the Apple Middle Earth 3 Day festival listed above was that it never officially happened, something I’ll cover in another post, but things were changing for the club around this time. Middle Earth was raided repeatedly by the police and was eventually forced to move to another venue, The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, which I’ll cover in part 2.

UFO Club adverts from International Times magazine

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Recently researching light shows in London around the mid 60s I was perusing the International Times archive online and noticed that the UFO Club had various ‘flyers’ present in each issue around its tenure at the Blarney Club and The Roundhouse during ’66-’67. It’s no surprise as UFO initially gave money to IT and you’ll notice the first event was called Night Tripper / UFO as they couldn’t decide on a name.
There was no format, some had to be decoded and the 27th October ’67 issue featured a piece stating that UFO is Dead! Reading between the lines you can detect some general annoyance that some promised cash flow had been cut off. The final image here maybe or may not be connected but it was on the same page as the club obituary and features lights in the sky.

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There was a posthumous analysis of what killed UFO in IT nearly a year after it closed, comparing the audience’s locations as the popularity grew.

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Rian Hughes’ XX book featured in Electronic Sound

ES XX spread

Very pleased to see Rian Hughes’ new book ‘XX – A Novel, Graphic’ featured so prominently in the new issue of Electronic Sound magazine with a double page of layouts.If you want an idea of what the book’s about then Sci-Fi Now has a very good review.

ES XX Right

The Celestial Mechanic album that I created with Saron Hughes and Robin the Fog soundtrack’s the novel and also gets a mention – you can hear that here https://celestialmechanic.bandcamp.com

Print

 

Infinite Illectrik featured in the new issue of Electronic Sound magazine

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My customized turntable – the Quadraphon as I sometimes call it – is featured in the opening spread of this month’s Electronic Sound magazine including a piece I wrote about it. Once again, the magazine is full of so much it’s hard to know where to start – Suzanne Ciani, Sonic Boom, a tribute to Florian Schneider and a peek inside Neil Arthur’s memorabilia collection as well as tech news, tons of reviews and an exclusive Suzanne Ciani 7″ if you subscribe to the double bundle each month. It’s also still one of the best designed mags on the shelves.

But with a lot of major newsagents and record shops closed they’re relying on subscriptions and mail order right now so if you’ve been meaning to take out a subscription then now’s the time. There are also plenty of back issues and other vinyl in their online shop but those bundles sell out pretty fast.

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Beastie Boys article in Mojo

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I missed this last month but the March 2020 issue of Mojo did a feature on the Beastie Boys circa Paul’s Boutique and has asked me for reminisces from the time as well as a photo from the era. I didn’t realise they’d also asked the Dust Brothers, Bill Alder and Chuck D! pretty weird to see my 18 yr old face in that company, especially as I was a rabid fan at the age and would share a bill with the Boys a decade later on the London date of the Hello Nasty tour.

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And here’s the original that was taken from, my 18/19 yr old self photographed short after spraying the piece in the background on a friend’s bedroom.Kevin Foakes:DJ Food 1988
and around the same time with a hand painted jacket I used to wear in college – note graffiti photo join-ups and copies from Subway Art on the wall, car posters and hanging model aircraft were my brother’s. Bottom right, my first stereo that I learnt to scratch on.

Beastie Boys jacket

Print ads from Scientific American magazine

Industrial TectonicsI was recently sorting out a small book collection for someone and ran across a stash of Scientific American magazines from the 60s. Some of the adverts are just beautiful examples of design, from typewriters to paper, electric and gas suppliers and general engineering companies. The standard is very high, considered and fun, attempting to make the banal interesting. Here are some of my favourite examples.

Celanese 2 Celanese 3 Celanese 5 Cornell Aeronautical Lab

The three ads below for Fairchild Semiconductor are double pagers – look at that font!

Fairchild Semiconductor 1 Fairchild Semiconductor 2 Fairchild Semiconductor 3 Los Alamos 1 Los Alamos 2 Los Alamos 3

The Olivetti ones below are just stunning, there seems to have been so many of these ads throughout the years, enough to make a huge coffee table book easily. I’ve found them in Graphis annuals and architectural magazines before, there must be hundreds, all seemingly different.

Olivetti 2 Olivetti 3 Olivetti 4 Olivetti equation Public Service Gas & Electric RCA flower I love the little illustrations at the bottom of these Riegel papers ads, they are small sidebar ads near the back of the magazine so I’ve lumped them together in one image.

Riegel Tech Paper 5 UpJohn