Objects or items related to the Bureau of Lost Culture ethos of exploring the forgotten corners of the counter culture.
Thanks to universalcollage for alerting me to these amazing tape reel boxes, once belonging to Louis Armstrong, now archived in an online museum on his website. There are hundreds of these plus even more pieces of ephemera to see, it looks like someone has gone through every piece of music-related item he ever owned and photographed it with notes for the site.
Thanks to universalcollage for alerting me to these amazing tape reel boxes, once belonging to Louis Armstrong, now archived in an online museum on his website. There are hundreds of these plus even more pieces of ephemera to see, it looks like someone has gone through every piece of music-related item he ever owned and photographed it with notes for the site. Any one of these could be a record cover, sometimes both sides of the boxes are collaged and the ageing sellotape just adds to their appeal for me.
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.
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.
Possibly Susan Morris‘ work above?
Is that an early Spain Rodriguez inking the figure above? The clouds don’t look like his work but the darker ink work does
In this second part of Middle Earth flyers collected from the International Times archive we get to the point where the club moved from their original Covent Garden home to The New Roundhouse in Chalk Farm after numerous raids by the police. At the top we see the Magical Mystery Tour event still advertised on Aug 24th/25th 1968 (see previous post) but by the next issue (two weeks later) it was replaced by a regular gig featuring Traffic, Family and Free but with a large ‘& then’ before announcing The Doors and Jefferson Airplane gig. There’s a uniformity to these ads previously unseen at the old venue, broken by the tall thin ad above right and the circular orange one below which advertises a programme of classical music by the Middle Earth Symphony Orchestra!
Problems with The Roundhouse meant that the club was forced to move again by early 1969, the nearly blank advert above appearing mid February in IT. Following a message in the next issue stating they’d moved to the Royalty Cinema in Notting Hill Gate, a month’s worth of gigs were later listed through March into April. After that things appeared to dry up until a series of tiny ads appeared in September, one a week, stating, ‘Middle Earth is alive and well…’ ‘and coming soon’, ‘is The Power of The Picts’. Then in November, a full page ad announced the rebirth of the night as a record label with a management address in Soho Square. It lasted for two years, releasing five singles and five albums in that time, there’s a short history of it here.
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.
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…
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?
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.
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.
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. 
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 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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Above is an extremely rare UK version of Zap Comics no.0 that is currently on sale on eBay – there’s virtually no info on this anywhere on the web but there it is. There’s a version of Zap no.1 from the UK but this edition of #0 never comes up. Look at the 2/6 price too, that dates it, below is a retooled top half of an inside page that fits with the country of origin better than the original featured below. Below that is the original, full colour cover on all the American printings.
Below is another bootleg, no publisher, possibly a German 2nd edition but of which issue I’ve no idea and no other info on this one. These versions may be a result of an agreement with publishers back in the 60s and 70s whereby all comic material printed by the underground press was allowed to be reprinted in different countries or states.
UPDATE: Here’s one with a colour cover too, same country of origin.
Knockabout Comics‘ Tony Bennett talks a bit about this in the recent podcast I took part in, The Bureau of Lost Culture, where we talk about his adventures in alternative culture publishing from the 70s onwards.
UPDATE: – this one doesn’t actually exist but I couldn’t resist adding it – by Marcatti (Brazil)
And here’s Jim Rugg‘s variant cover for Ed Piskor‘s Red Room #5 
I had the absolute pleasure to spend an afternoon recently at Soho Radio with Stephen Coates and special guest Tony Bennett, the founder of Knockabout Comics – underground and alternative publisher since 1975. We chat to Tony about his history in the counter culture, publishing some of the greats of the genre from Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Alan Moore, Hunt Emerson and more including his run-ins with the law, customs officers and trials for obscenity.
It’s hard to think of another publisher who has done more in the underground comics medium in the UK and Tony was a delight to chat to. He bought along a whole pile of books for Stephen and I including a copy of his very first self-published and very hard to find comic, Trip Strip from the early 70s. Pictured above are just a handful of the comics Knockabout have printed and distributed over the years – for more check their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/knockaboutcomics/
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.
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.
Amazing Rick Griffin billboard poster for a Mama Cass gig that I found online at the excellent Far Out Company website.
A set of 9 decorative ‘manhole covers’ found in Camberwell, these are all set into the pavements around the lower part of Denmark Hill, SE5*. I think only one of them is an actual coal hole, the rest seem to be area-specific art installations. If anyone has any info please leave a comment
*Actually I think the Match Girls one is from around Brick Lane
#streetart #lookdown #manholecovers #SE5 #camberwell
(images and text adapted from the pbagalleries website)
A complete set of original 12 Zodiac Astrology Star Sign Posters, commissioned by Jack Leahy (“Funky Jack”), of San Francisco’s Funky Features, in 1967. Funky Features was originally a home recording studio in an Edwardian house that quickly became a popular recording location for Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cold Blood, Steve Miller, and others. Leahy also went on to do artwork for a number of motion pictures, airbrushing the Starship Enterprise for the first Star Trek film. Each poster is by a different artist, uniquely capturing the heyday of San Francisco’s counterculture. Artists include Dick Moore, Tommy Dixon, Lee and Shirley Goddard, Robert McClay, Fred Adams, Primo Angel, Jim Blashfield, and others. Complete sets of all 12 posters are extremely rare, especially in this condition.
In my periodic searches for graphic material from the late 60s I came across several sellers on eBay offering these lovely zodiac posters for sale. I did some digging and found decent resolution copies of most of them and a bit of info about their origins. In 1969, Poster Prints commissioned Simboli Design – Gerry & Joe Simboli – to create a line of graphically strong and colourful zodiac posters, which were sold worldwide. There seems to have been two different designs for Gemini for some reason but finding an original of the fire-headed twins seems impossible, their website seems to suggest it’s a new design.
Paul Smith, the UK fashion designer, found the posters on a website and used them for a line of casual clothing for Neiman Marcus in 2004. Recently, the posters were also used on the set of the HBO series, Vinyl, produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger.
Simboli have a website and they sell some of the originals and Gicleé repros via Etsy, dimensions are 12″x18″ with additional 1″ border for matte. They also have other sets themed around Anti-War, Tea, Coffee, some great logo designs, toys and this lovely robot which was created at some point in the 70s.
There are several more zodiac set by different designers from this era out there that I’ll be posting as I find complete sets.
I always like seeing the psychedelic style of the late 60s adopted by items outside of the immediate area of music. It’s usually a watered down version but it’s always fun to see how some ‘straighter’ mediums co-opted to style of the day to be hip with the kids. Regular comics especially went through a phase of being ‘groovy’, ‘swinging’ or ‘hip’ and it was big with love and romance titles for girls. Here are some covers I’ve collected on my internet trawls, obviously omitting work from the underground sector whose artists helped build the style in the first place.
Early Nick Fury covers really went at it for a short period too
I’ve highlighted The Bureau of Lost Culture podcasts before and in the latest instalment Stephen Coates interviews writer and biographer Paul Gorman about the life of designer Barney Bubbles. Paul wrote the definitive (and only) book about Barney’s work, Reasons To Be Cheerful and recounts his fascinating but ultimately tragic story.
Paul has also recently set up a Barney Bubbles Estate Instagram account where he’s posting examples and rarities from his collection. Even if you’re not familiar with his name, you may well be familiar with his work.
There have recently been a slew of great interviews from The Bureau, focussing on Hawkwind, the history of Goth, Biba, groupies, The UFO club and more. The easiest way to listen to them is via their Soundcloud page
Today I discovered the director Pramod Pati after seeing the incredible film above. Psychedelic India cinema and a great electronic / musique concrete soundtrack to match.
Stephen Coates is a busy man, aside from his The Real Tuesday Weld recording project and his X-Ray Audio talks, exhibitions and book he also has his hand in radio with The Bureau of Lost Culture alongside co-conspirator Paul Heartfield. This takes the form of interviews with people who were present and took part in corners of the counterculture who may not have had their stories heard. First person accounts can differ from the accepted narratives and everyone will have personal experiences associated with events and times that have gone undocumented.
One such example is Nick Laird Clowes, musician and composer with The Dream Academy among other talents, who gives some quite extraordinary experiences in the first part of an interview with Stephen. Recounting going to the Isle of Wight festival at just 13, hanging out at Oz magazine and tales of the underground London scene through the eyes of a fresh-faced young teen, his tales seem to flow endlessly and will make some yearn for simpler times.
If you want more of the same then there are plenty of past shows archived on Soundcloud. Ranging from groupies to psychedelic visions, punk, flexi discs, mescaline and much more.
Update: Part 2!
A few weeks ago I posted a selection of sleeves from the acid house era of Desire records‘ releases which, for a brief moment, showcased some of the best house music to come out of Chicago. The uncredited designer, Andy Vella, was tasked with wrapping these releases in a distinctive house style and, curious about how they came about and who made them, I did some detective work and tracked him down. He is best known for his work with The Cure for the Fiction label (of which Desire was a subsidiary) and I fired him a few generic questions first, to give context and history:
Where, when and what did you study?
I studied at various places, which to be honest were less than effective, however, luckily I ended up at The Royal College of Art and my creative life started to fly.
What was your first notable design that the public would have seen?
The first bit of work the public would have seen was the 60×40 fly poster for the cure’s ‘Primary’ single (it got to number 44 in the charts 1981), I do remember being 18 and walking down Oxford street thinking, ‘that looks familiar’, then realising I had worked on it.
How did you come to work with the Cure and Fiction Records?
Pure fluke really….and as luck has it I am still working with them.
(From the biography of Andy’s website: “It all began when Andy, then a teenage student in Worthing, had a chance encounter on a train with Porl Thompson, some-time guitarist in the Cure. The pair would go on to form the Parched Art design company, but not before Andy’s photographs had caught the eye of the Cure’s front man Robert Smith who asked him to design the covers of the album Faith and its single Primary.”
Looking you up on by name on Discogs, there’s a gap between 1981 and 1988 and this seems to be the golden period of your collaborative work with Porl Thompson for the Cure under the ‘Parched Art’ banner. Obviously it’s not a complete list of your work though as you aren’t credited for any Desire sleeves at all.
I went through a phase of not putting my name on lots as I thought it was uncool.
Whose decision was it to start releasing dance music on Desire, up until the mid 80s it had been sporadically releasing indie rock I think?
Chris Parry, he was also the manger of The Cure and supremo A&R maestro.
Where you into the music? Did you go clubbing in those days?
I loved it. I used to go and hang out with all the guys in Chicago Trax (Chicago of course), they were great and so accepting of me, Fingers Inc, CAN YOU FEEL IT…Yes, Ben Mays, Bam Bam, Destry, Lil Louis was always hanging about.
I remember Chris gave me £20 and an ecstasy tablet and said go to the Café de Paris and design me an album sleeve (In the Key of E) it was great, changed my whole world, shame as later that night ended up in Harry’s and DJ Fat Tony and his mates esp. some bloke who is now a famous author (I should name him) kept referring to me as a rent boy with total hatred in their eyes. Glad I had had the mitsibushi tab otherwise I probably would have thrown them out of the window, homophobic DJs and posse for you.
The world will come and eat you up boys.
You used photocopying extensively for those early sleeves, not just for distorting type but also for texture too, What influenced you?
Being experimental was always key in my design, trying things out.
You were working in largely uncharted territory with very little except the smiley logo and the early DJ International graphics from the US as any kind of look for the genre, were you left to interpret the music in your own way?
Always like a challenge, recently I designed a book for Glen Matlock about the Sex Pistols (Filthy Lucre tour) and like then, coming up with design/art that does not follow the cliche known style is what good design should be.
Were you working in isolation or did you have assistants? Were you aware of what other designers were doing in the field like Trevor Jackson at Champion and Gee Street or the Designers Republic at Warp?
At this time just working on me own and the artists in Chicago, they loved this stuff.
You had a thing for type wrapped around curves, I’m presuming this is was all pre-computer and hand-cut and pasted?
Sure was, its so easy now, every letter cut out and pasted down.
There seem to be several releases that re-use old sleeves folded inside out, was this a money-saving exercise?
It was me being really early into re-cycling, this was in 1989, the printers throw this stuff away, I hated the idea of this, so re-purposed it and used it inside, my fav is ‘In The Key Of E’ printed on the reversed board with the Desire house bag on the inside.
The Charles B ‘Lack of Love’ release has multiple different covers in different colours, was this to distinguish different versions or because of printing errors?
I can’t remember that, maybe I liked the idea of the sleeve forever changing, I did used to swap the printing plates about.
Double Trouble and Rebel MC (both together and separately) were most prominent on the label after ’88 and both hugely successful. The licensed US releases stopped, and your stretch lettering and snakeskin look with them. Why was this?
Not sure, guess it was because it was way more commercial. Later on I designed all the Rebel and his Tribal Bass label and created very nice roots-based paper cut-out graphics, based on African art.
Did you work for any other labels around this time (aside from Fiction) or do other work for dance music like flyers, posters and T-shirts we wouldn’t have seen?
On the back of working with Rebel MC and creating the drum and bass rootsy style, Island records snapped me up and later I worked with many companies and designed all the paperback book covers for Bloomsbury publishing.
The rest of your work seems to have been more in the indie rock sector, was Desire a case of being in the right place at the right time?
Just love designing and creating.
Are you aware that some of those early releases are now considered classics of the genre and worth a lot of money?
That’s nice, eh?
Do you have any favourites from this time, both musically and design-wise?
All of them, I had a blast and still am. I guess ‘In The Key of E’, it’s a great compilation too. Roger Dean of Yes fame always loved ‘In The Key of E’ and asked me to send him a signed version of the cover, I was flattered beyond belief as he was the hero of every school kid when I was growing up, so nice!
Andy’s website is here with an extensive gallery of work, you can see him reference the eye from his ‘In The Key of E’ LP cover above at least twice.
