Just announced – the Castles In Space Levitation event is moving down South to Bedford Esquires after three years in Whitby. Just look at that line up! I’m not sure how they’re going to fit all these in on the day (I think there are three rooms but don’t quote me) but I’m so pleased to be asked to reprise the modified turntable set I did with Graham Dunning at Fog Fest last year. Colin was manning the merch table that night at the back of Iklectik and saw the whole thing so knows what we’re capable of. Tickets are here, I know it’s months away but the early birds are already gone so be quick.
There are two other very special gigs on the horizon that will be announced shortly that I’m equally excited about too – stay tuned…
Poster / flyer
The second edition of Brian Eno‘s turntable is showing at the Paul Stolper Gallery in London this month. Prices last time were eye-watering and actually went up as the edition sold out giving an incentive for early buyers.
Gary Hustwit‘s Eno film premiered at the Sundance Festival in January to rave reviews, it compiles a different film with each showing from 168 hours of footage. You can buy these limited prints or Sundance Poster, designed by Build, from Hustwit’s site
And if that wasn’t enough Eno for you, there have been more tracks added to his radio station, The Lighthouse, on Sonos. At the end of 2023 there were 424 but 447 and 448 cropped up today, The Lighthouse is a continuous stream of largely unreleased tracks from Brian’s archive that play randomly 24 hours a day – am investigating…
UPDATE: There are at least 25 new tracks from 2023 and 2022 added as of Feb 2024 bringing the total of tracks up to 449.
A daily post throughout December of records, CDs, books, comics or other ephemera that I’ve bought or been given recently from independent artists, labels or publishers who would welcome your support.
#9. Luke Insect – Acid Valley book + posters
A3 sized catalogue for the recent Acid Valley exhibition documenting all the posters Luke has designed for Trades in Hebden Bridge and the Golden Lion in Todmorden. He also has limited copies of the posters for sale too if you contact him.
https://lukeinsect.bigcartel.com/product/acid-valley-a3-poster-book
https://cargocollective.com/lukeinsect
https://www.instagram.com/lukeinsect/
Tomi Ungerer isn’t a name that’s normally associated with the psychedelic poster movement but he illustrated these posters for the Electric Circus nightclub that existed between 1967 and 1971 on St. Marks Place, Manhattan, New York. The club was a multi-media environment with light shows that hosted the psychedelic bands of the day to the avant garde minimalists and everyone in between. Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable was there as were Jackie Cassen and Rudi Stern‘s ‘Theatre of Light’ shows (also revived some 30 years later).
Ungerer created six posters and one advert in 1969 for the club – subtitled ‘The Ultimate Legal Entertainment Experience’ – focusing on people using electric items in odd ways. His playful work swung from children’s books to political critiques to people interacting with perverse sexual machines – check out his Fornicon works if you can find/afford them.
There are many ads and other posters for the Electric Circus on the web but few are in high quality unfortunately. The main logo typeface (and possibly a lot of the ad layouts) was designed by design company Chermayeff-Geismar, a world-reknown practice who are still in business today.
Also just premiering is a new documentary about the club entitled Psychedelicized: The Electric Circus Story which can be watched in person if you’re in NYC or online at the end of the month https://www.docnyc.net/film/psychedelicized-the-electric-circus-story/
KLF and Justified Ancients of Mu Mu watchers will have been excited by the news a few weeks back that not only had Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty delivered their entire recorded output to the British Library, warts and all, for the public to trawl through at will but they also announced a DVD of most of their film and video work which will be released in November. This is exciting enough but I was tickled to see the cover of the DVD featuring their classic ‘T Speaker’ on fire at night which bore more than a passing resemblance to a couple of the fake KLF posters I made back in 2003 to accompany Mr Trick‘s and my mix, ‘The Sound of Mu(sic)’. I messaged Jimmy and he confirmed that it was the inspiration which is mighty fine by me :). With the transferral of the KLF Re-enactment Society to the hands of fans (an online repository for any KLF-related homages or fan made artifacts) could this be the first case of a re-re-enactment instigated by the band I was spoofing?
In my periodic searches for graphic material from the late 60s I came across several sellers on eBay offering these long zodiac door posters from 1969. Designed by Bruce Krefting, printed by Wespac Visual Communications Inc. from San Francisco and standing at 70 inches tall, they form an impressive set of psychedelic typographic designs. Wespac was one of the printing houses that sprung up at the end of the 60s in San Francisco and they produced a number of psychedelic black light posters as well as these. I’ve pieced these together as best I could from various sources on the web but it took a long time to find these in any kind of decent quality. July (Leo) and Nov (Sagittarius) have so far alluded me in any kind of usable quality but I’ll add to the post if I find them.
Continuing the occasional overview of British psychedelic club advertising I’ve been compiling over the years…
I’ve not come across too many posters for the Middle Earth club, the psychedelic happening in Covent Garden that sprung up and eventually succeeded the UFO club in 1967 through to 1969. Michael English illustrated possibly the most famous poster for the club above and the original art was sold some years ago at auction.
From the auction blurb: “Michael English’s detailed explanatory letter explains that this was the last, and technically the most sophisticated, poster created under the Hapshash name. Printed by offset lithography rather than the usual silkscreen process, the image takes its theme from J.R. Tolkien’s books, from which the Middle Earth derived its name.
“In typical post-Freudian Hapshash style the content was heavily sexualized but the less explicit version of the two lovers was printed and used for promoting the club’s concerts. Above the lovers, entwined in foliage very much in Alphonse Mucha style, are two windows into two worlds, one of darkness, one of light. Locked in eternal balance, they are a symbol of the symmetry of space-time, as are the lovers – a reflection of each other, independent, yet inter-dependent. English recalls that, at the time, he felt it was somehow dishonest to hide the boy’s genitals in the printed version as it somehow diluted the force of their love and consequently weakened the message.”
Below is the background colour printing plate and below that a rather aged example of an original print.
There’s little info about this landscape poster except the credit at the bottom and the names Marc Tracy and Paul Bennett hidden in the hair. The V&A hold a copy in their archive, originating from 1967 but despite the title, ‘A Trip To Middle Earth’, it’s not clear whether this was for the club or just a Tolkien reference.
Below is a strange anomaly I found; a minute scan of a Middle Earth poster or advert – now upscaled – that cribs its main image and type from an American poster by Clifford Charles Sealey for the Summer of Love festival in San Francisco, dated March 1, 1967. From the dates on the British poster it must be from late 1967, over six months after the American event, I guess the similarity of the name was too good to pass up and they swiped it.
Recently found whilst looking for something else, four posters by French illustrator Nicole Claveloux ranging from 1970 to 1973. Above appears to promote taking the pill from 1970 and below is an Aviation Tourism poster for the UTA Company from the same year in collaboration with Bernard Bonhomme.
The Love poster above is from 1973 and was Danish in origin, as was the Romeo & Juliet poster below, both designed for a Dutch bank, Sparekassen. The former was for the annual ‘Savings Day’ in 1973, the latter as a giveaway for new account openers in 1970 and published by Minerva Poster, Copenhagen. Ahhhh, the 70s…
The Kaleidoscope was a psychedelic rock venue run by the management of the band CANNED HEAT. It only lasted about a year from 1967 into 1968 and was one of many unsuccessful efforts to create a viable Fillmore type venue in Los Angeles. A mixture of police pressure and bad management did for it in the end but it had some fantastic posters, which were always circular, mostly numbered and designed in all manner of styles of the day. The strong typographic design of the logo was used liberally across their advertising, sometimes being sliced in half or half hidden but so readily recognisable that it didn’t matter. I’ve tried to find as many of the posters as possible and put them in the order the nights appeared in below.
(images sourced from around the web including RockPosters.com and Heritage Auctions).
After the first three nights in 1967 the club took a break and relocated to 6230 Sunset Blvd where it reopened in 1968 and stayed for most of the year, the venue was renamed The Aquarius Theatre starting with the LA residency of the musical HAIR.
There seems to be no visual record online of posters numbered 11 or 12 but the dates suggest maybe whoever was numbering them made a mistake as no.10 is only a week before no.13
Below is a promo postcard which had a couple of months worth of dates on the back, whilst it was not numbered as #17 in the series the time frame suggests it would have filled that spot.
After poster #20 there seem to be no visual references for physical posters but these newspaper ads in the Los Angeles Free Press featuring circular designs with one numbered ‘No.24’ suggest that the series was ongoing.
Below is a rare promo sticker for the club which came up for auction a while back, similar to the promo badge I posted before, this is pretty rare.
Unconnected but in a similar vein, the promo badge below was also auctioned recently, I love oddities like this.
Rock Posters.com has opened up their archives and is selling some of the original art to some classic posters by Wes Wilson and Lee Conklin.
I love seeing original art of any kind, it gives a further look behind the curtain at the process and prowess of the creators. None of this is cheap, mind, but given these are one of a kinds it’s no surprise. I’ve included the originals alongside the posters here.
The printing plate (or one of them) was sold some years ago at auction for this too, seen here in red on metal, the poster was in purple and green inks.
Beautiful poster that appeared earlier this week on the Pink Floyd socials, looks like a Mark Boyle/Boyle Family liquid image transposed into a screen printed poster. It dates from 1968 which was when Boyle was doing lights for them.
A beautiful poster for Edgard Varése‘s ‘Poéme Electronique’ at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, Belgium that I ran across online and upscaled. There’s a good short reconstruction film here that explains what and where it was used.
I was watching a Jamiroquai video – NO, stay with me! Why was I doing that you ask? Well, the song is a bit of an electro pop banger and Jay Kay is some sort of robot coming out of hibernation in a post-apocalyptic world who just wants to see the sun. It’s supposed to be a warning against living a digital life and that we should get back to nature, which is fair enough really. To make you believe he’s an automaton (the title of the song) he has an automated headdress that lights up and at one point stops in a subway to focus on an old poster on the wall.
Weirdly it’s a joint Madam Tussaud’s / London Planetarium poster, designed in the style of Peter Max or Milton Glaser, that popular pop style made famous by Heinz Edelmann’s Yellow Submarine. I very much doubt it was done by either Max or Glaser because they generally sign their work but it looked cool enough for me to google it as I’d not seen it before. Typing in ‘Madam Tussauds Planetarium poster’ only netted two results, different shots of the same poster, on the wall in a subway in the disused Aldwych underground station. One of the shots, by Payne & Gunter, was very well framed so I downloaded it.
On close inspection it was pretty obvious that it was the same poster, so we all know where parts of the ‘Automaton’ video was shot at the very least. The wear and tear of time, coupled with what looks like a few people stubbing cigarettes out on parts of the image (that dates it!) mean that the poster isn’t in the best condition. So I couldn’t resist cleaning the image up and restoring it to some of its former glory. What an amazing design!
Talking of Milton Glaser, there’s a stunning looking book of his work coming out next month via Phaidon.
Pre-order here
And talking of Peter Max, I just acquired this set of his Book of Red, Blue and Yellow from the excellent Book Cellar in Camberwell. Max is sadly embroiled in a guardianship case in the US whilst suffering ill health, his daughter has been trying to extract him for some time now, for more info follow Free Peter Max
Mainline Love, artist Unknown, 1969
High Meadows is a new account showcasing an incredible collection of psychedelic posters inherited from a lifelong collector who has many obscure examples I’ve never seen before. As well as prime examples of classic posters by the likes of Hapshash & The Coloured Coat there are many uncredited images including black light posters that would have been sold in head shops and Op Art designs that rarely crop up in the usual exhibitions or books. Well worth checking out on Instagram and Facebook, they’re posting new examples daily at the moment – all images and info here are taken from their site.
Ass Id Egg by Nick Nickolds, 1967
Cyclops by LeRoy Olson, 1971
Electric Pig by Joe Roberts Jr, 1969
Inner Zonk, Artist Unknown, Year Unknown
International Image by Ian Andrew Galbraith, 1967
Orange Eye Circle, unknown artist, 1968
Untitled, Asher Ein-dor, 1972
Ziggy Stardust by Joseph Pentagno, 1972
A selection of gig posters for the Retinal Circus. The Circus nights, promoted by Roger Schiffer, ran from summer 1967 to the end of 1968 in a basement venue in Vancouver, Canada and would play host to many of the top bands of the day in the late 60s. The main poster artist was Steve Seymour who managed to weave all sorts of intricate typography into each image including dates, bands, start and end times and even a dot-to-dot puzzle which spelt out ‘surprise’ when filled in. The main exception I can see being the Velvet Underground one by Frank Lewis who also did other posters around Vancouver, early Afterthought ones being an example, Vancouver’s psychedelic venue before the Retinal Circus.
There was also a light show called The Retina Circus in Seattle at the same time but they weren’t connected, the main two house lighting crews were called Addled Chromish and Ecto Plasmic Assault.
*Thanks to Greg Evans from the Acid Rain light show in Victoria, Canada for additional info.
It’s back! The return of the Trunk Groovy Record Fayre. My Further partner Pete Williams and I will be having a stall again this October at the Mildmay Club, Newington Green. I will have lots of dance 45s if that’s your thing, some records from my personal collection and copies of my new book, Wheels of Light, among other things. Do stop by, the last one was excellent as was the pop quiz and party afterwards.
Do stop by, last year’s was amazing (see photos here), from the daytime fair to the evening pop quiz and after party get down.
And it’s FREE!
October 29th, Mildmay Club, Newington Green, London, N16
A few gigs coming up – supporting Funki Porcini on the Sunday date of his weekend residency at Iklectik, London, showing his Laserium set which has to be seen in a dark place. I’ll be bringing my Quadraphon turntable for some multi-armed action.
Tickets: https://iklectikartlab.com/funki-porcinis-laserium/
In two weeks I’ll be opening the Create Music Village festival at Coachworks in Ashford, Kent with an Audio Visual DJ set – come to party.
Tickets: www.ticketweb.uk/event/dj-food-support-casey-coachworks-tickets/12480335
Mid October I’ll be honouring a gig that was cancelled due to Covid all those years ago and returning to Belfast to play what may well be the final outing of my Selected Aphex Works audio visual set at the Ulster Sports Club.
Tickets: forthcoming…
There’s also a launch party in East London for my forthcoming book on Oct 19th, more about that soon…
This gorgeous Riso print with metallic gold ink by Raimund Wong will be on sale at the Suzanne Ciani gig this October at EartH in Hackney. The line up is a no-brainer with The Oscillation / Vanishing Twin / Tomago’s Valentina Magaletti also on the bill. Tickets still available here
Set up as a fund raiser to help International Times magazine, the hastily-organised event took place in the Alexandra Palace in North London with stages at each end competing sonically for dominance and a huge line up of the counter culture’s who’s who of the day. Reports vary as to how successful it was, it probably depended what drugs you were on but ultimately it raised very little despite thousands attending. Large numbers of tickets were either stolen or given out with payment required later, a news piece in the next issue of IT berating dishonest resellers who had not yet paid up.
The main poster by Mike McInnerney was printed in a variety of fading ‘split fountain’ colours making it highly collectable. Beware of fakes which have separated colour combinations and John Lennon‘s name added to the line up near the bottom of the list, he was there as a punter but was never down to perform.
You may have seen that Kool Herc‘s estate is going under the hammer at Christies this month. Everything from turntables and disco equipment to glasses, photos, belt buckles and records from the man called The Godfather of Hip Hop. Most interesting to me are the reams of flyers for the old Bronx jams featuring home made, hand drawn and collaged examples of the earliest form of Hip Hop promotion. There are plenty by Buddy Esq. probably the most gifted and well known exponent of early rap design work and there are fascinating little details dotted throughout about the way jams used to be from a time long since passed.
Below are my favourites and you can view the full auction online here:
“no drugs, no weapons, no sneakers”
“first 25 jazzy ladies free” – who decided?
“sneakers one nite only” love how cut and paste this is
How young are the Furious Five here?
That’s a lot of acts on the bill!
‘Guaranteed to perform’, the others might not be there but…
How many typefaces?
“giving away $50 to some lucky person, sincerely, Flash” – also “Creole’s got something special for the young ladies”
“Shea, please call me, love always, herc” – flyer done by Herc