Newly discovered ads featuring Zappa and The Mothers of Invention from the LA Free Press. Some, if not all of these, were designed by Zappa in his spindly lettered, collage style. I’ve featured some of these before but they are generally better quality and some crazy person has gone through all the magazines at the link above, scanning the Zappa/Mothers appearances.
I’ve just finished Matthew Worley‘s excellent Zerox Machine book about UK fanzines from punk into the late 80’s. It’s opened up a hidden world and had me going down several rabbit holes online.
Above – Irish fanzine Blast #4 with a Savage Pencil cover, below the three covers of Juniper Beri Beri, a Scottish fanzine by Annabel, Peter McArthur, Jill Bryson and Stephen from The Pastels.
Hand-painted cover of Jungleland #9 – produced by Mike Scott of the Waterboys
A collage page from Adventures In Reality – issue G by Alan Rider
An Ian Wright illustration for 80s magazine The Catalogue
1968 poster for the Robert Markham aka Kingsley Amis’ novel ‘Colonel Sun’
Worlds Fair for Youth poster, 1969, art by Kim Whitesides
Poster for Raymond Bertrand‘s Studio 69 book – image also used on the cover of Suck magazine issue #1.
LSD poster, 1969, artist unknown – originally from Acid covers
Nam June Paik exhibition poster, 1965
Martin Sharp – Art For Mart’s Sake gallery show invite, 1966 (upscaled)
The Velvet Underground at the Retinal Circus poster, 1968.
I found a copy of this at the local carboot at the weekend (with Martin Sharp cover illustration) and had been collecting up other psychedelic book covers around the web, coincidentally most with a Tim Leary connection.
I’ll chuck in this one as it’s in the style of too although not from the 60s or 70s.
Gotta give it up for Jason Galea – just churning out work for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard constantly. Record sleeves, videos, merch and posters like these, almost for every gig they do. Results vary of course but here’s the pick of the bunch from about the last year.
He’s also put together a book of all his work, due out this Winter with over a decade’s worth of designs and other material. You can order it here.
Beautiful poster by Victor Hubinon from Spirou magazine in 1968
A Bryan Talbot cover for Zig Zag in 1976
Ian Wright does the Damned for Zig Zag in 1981
Unknown artist for another Zig Zag cover of the Stones from 1977
One of Andy DOG Johnson’s first commissions – think I’ve shown this before but this is possibly better quality – Kraftwerk for Record Mirror in 1978
Savage Pencil covering Sun Dial, this poster was from 1995 I believe
Robert Crumb illustrates the Whole Earth Catalog’s Last Supplement – see what he did there?
It’s fair to say that Peter Max put his mark all over popular commerce and culture in the 70s. One of the few commercial artists to fully embrace merchandising and recognise that he had a valueable brand, he was arguably better at it than Warhol and had ranges of stationary, puzzles, book, posters and clothing for sale all with his name emblazoned on them at one point. Here’s a selection of stuff I dug up on the web including magazine covers, cookery books, puzzles and a poster for Mary Quant.
Photos I recently rediscovered on an old disc from the UNKLE/Futura 2000 exhibition at the ICA in London, 2003. This was the artwork that became sleeve material for the Never, Never, Land album and surrounding singles, painted in panels and exhibited alongside various toys and ephemera for a limited time. A unique Futura Bearbrick figure was also produced for the show as well which I still have although I’ve bought and sold numerous FT2 toys over the years including the clear multi figure set and the Pointman action figure seen here.
(above) Acid Mothers Temple poster for their Holy Black Mountains Detour tour (below) A tribute to Skip Spence poster by Fez Moreno both courtesy of Neil Rice.
Mike McInnerney prelim poster for the Hoppy documentary screening at the Tabernacle recently (colour to be added)
Holy Man Jam Seven Day Venue original handbill by The Family Dog, 1969 – unsure the artist here.
February – March, 1967 at Filmmakers’ Cinematheque, New York – restored from a faded image found on the web, possibly from the Sterling Morrison collection (see Velvet Underground mentioned at the bottom)
Two Exorcism of the Pentagon Anti-Vietnam posters, 1967 – pink mandala designed by Peter Legeria, black and white by Martin Carey – more information on the event here
There’s not too much info out there about David Schiller, he was American and produced these posters in the late 60s for Sparta Graphics. The company was born from the successful dance concert series that Dave promoted in San Jose in 1966. Fellow student Jim Michaelson submitted the winning poster in Dave’s poster competition and, in the years that followed from 1966-1968, they published 16 posters. Working with San Francisco promoters Bill Graham and Sid Bernstein they created concert posters for The Byrds, The Bee Gees, Buffalo Springfield and Jefferson Airplane among others. Some were printed with metallic inks and some with vivid fluorescent day-glo inks.
Michaelson obviously had a thing for crazy flying contraptions and the poster above was actually painted on wood and photographed with real flowers, it was one of Bill Graham’s favourite posters. It’s not clear whether this influenced Ron Cobb‘s illustration for the cover of the Jefferson Airplane’s ‘After Bathing At Baxter’s’ LP which was released late 1967 but Michaelson’s first gig poster for the band was made in 1966 (see below).
Michaelson passed away in 2019 but his son, Rob, maintains a website in his memory with many other great examples of his work, including posters for Disney https://jameslmichaelson.wixsite.com/artwork/the-60s
The posters below are from some of the gigs David put on and, I presume, by the same graphic team.
He also had a fine line in posters for cities and states – there are at least two variants of the New York poster in different colourways and with different mastheads. I’ve also seen these posters printed on linen.
Michaelson also did at least two calendars, variants of the same images for 1968 and 1969.
Victor Moscoso has been posting pictures of his original art on social media recently – seen here alongside other oddities culled from Heritage Auctions‘ site.
(above) Character from the cover of Rip Off Review of Western Culture #2
Dance Pinnacle Concert collab with Rick Griffin
An alternate (rough?) Zap Comix no.10 front and back cover – pre-colouring!
I’m constantly saving stuff I like the look of from the web, sometimes I need to follow up on an image I come across, other times it’s inspirational or a better quality version of something I’ve seen before. All these were cluttering up the desktop with nowhere to go and, as I treat this blog as a form of scrapbook, consider me adding these to a page. Above, the poster and some screen shots from Be The Fool, a new documentary about two members of Dutch design group, The Fool. This is currently only doing the film festival circuit but hopefully will show up on streaming at some point. Below, a lesser seen poster by Hapshash & The Coloured Coat for an Italian festival in 1968, this recently came up for auction and went for big money.
The backing card for a pair of op-art tights called Kinkies from the 1960s. Available here from the excellent Division Leap seller on eBay.
From the same seller, a flyer for a 1980s San Francisco punk event, Z-RO G.
An alternate front and back cover for comic book Spectregraph by Tradd Moore
Windy & Carl‘s Consciousness LP sleeve, recently reissued I think.
Which my partner has just indignantly pointed out is a huge rip-off of this Archie Shepp album cover
The Who Sell Out promo poster by Adrian George, printed by Osiris Visions in 1967, another one that recently came up for auction and sells for a fair bit. These came with initial copies of the album and were reproduced a few years back for the reissue.
Artist Jeff Keen‘s collage comics from the 60s, Amazing Rayday 1-4, along with other related works. Keen was a fascinating multimedia artist – Jonny Trunk put out an album of his work some years ago. The one-sheet comics came on my radar today so I’ve put them all here for future reference – check Keen’s work out online, there’s films, art, music, poetry…
I recently took delivery of this incredible book, ‘A Decade of Handmade Music Packaging’ by the label Time Released Sound.
The label specialises in handmade limited edition packaging for each release, mainly CD but also lathe cut vinyl.
They’ve made over 100 releases in 10 years which is quite something when you see the work that goes into every one.
The level of detail is staggering as each release is collaged together from found ephemera and assembled by hand. I’m going to have to post more spreads because 10 images just doesn’t do it justice.
For fans of music packaging, there’s never been a book as good as this since the Independent Project Records‘ ‘Savage Impressions’ collection.
Time Released Sound have copies available to buy now, each comes with 2 CDs of music from the label on the inside cover, give them a follow and check out all the wonderful art they make.
Music:
Kosmischer Laufer – Volume 5 LP (UCR)
Soia, Julien Sénélas, Jérôme Vassereau – In C for 11 Oscillators and 53 Forms LP (unjenesaisquoi)
Cate Brooks – Tapeworks DL (Cafe Kaput)
Memorials – Music For Film: Tramps! LP (State 51 Conspiracy)
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – PetroDragonic Apocalypse… LP (Album of the year)
Field Lines Cartographer – Moonbuilding Sessions LP (CiS Subscription Library)
Brian Eno – The Lighthouse radio station (Sonos) (most listened to)
Niholoxica – Source of Denial LP (Crammed Discs)
SareemOne – Olivine Window
Coast Contra – Breathe & Stop Freestyle/Never Freestyle/Scenario Freestyle
Move78 – Grains LP
Heiroglyphic Being – The Moon Dance LP (Apnea)
Raj Pannu – Past Crimes EP 12″ (To Pikap Records)
Gordon Chapman-Fox – The Nine Travellers LP (Castles In Space Subscription Library)
Podcasts:
Oh God What Now?
Cartoonist Kayfabe
Jonny Trunk’s Patreon Show
What Goes Around
The Bunker
The Bureau of Lost Culture
Not A Diving Podcast with Scuba
Gigs / Events:
Art of Noise @Jazz Café, London
The Light Surgeons – SuperEverything launch @iklectik, London
Quadraphon debut @Ramsgate Music Hall, Ramsgate
Beyond The Streets exhibition @Saatchi gallery, London
Pop Up Subculture festival, Stroud
Holotronica, @IMAX Bristol
Sunroof / Finlay Shakespeare @iklectik, London
0282 Club, the library, Burnley
Paul Cousins @iklectik, London
The Light Surgeons – The Consensual Hallucination @iklectik, London
Memorials at the State 51 Summer Psych party @State 51, London
Queens of the Stone Age @Glastonbury
FogFest2 @iklectik, London
JG Thirlwell & Emsemble @Bush Hall, London
The Book & Record Bar 10th anniversary party, London
Machina Bristronica, Bristol
Visiting Peel Acres with Eilon Paz of Dust & Grooves
Nihiloxia @the Jazz Cafe, London
NEXT Festival, Bratislava, Slovakia
Design / Packaging:
Yves Malone – A Hello To A Goodbye LP (Castles In Space)
Drumetrics – Phuzzle (Drumetrics)
Waclaw Zimpel – Train Spotter LP (State 51)
David Boulter – Factory 3″ CD (Clay Pipe Music)
Fluctuosa – Wetware EP 12″ (Analogical Force)
Fluxus – Orbit & Shine LP (Castles In Space)
Floating Points – Birth4000 12″ (Ninja Tune)
Cate Brooks – Easel Studies LP + badge (Clay Pipe Music)
Brian Eno – Top Boy OST CD (Beatink)
Artists:
Kallamity
Soda
Nick Taylor (Spectral Studio)
Louise Mason
Francis Castle (Clay Pipe)
Tradd Moore
KO_Computer
Kishi Omori
Autone1
Mike Mignola
Geometric Love
Anna Readman
Zoe Thorogood
Colin & Maria @ Time Released Sound
Books / Magazines / Comics:
Medical Grade Music – Steve Davis & Kavis Torabi (White Rabbit)
Doctor Strange – Fall Sunrise – Tradd & Heather Moore (Marvel)
Tales To Enlighten – The New Testament – Matt King and James Edward Clark
Beyond The Streets exhibition book
Pop – Milton Glaser (Phaidon)
Kevin O’Neill Apex Edition (2000AD)
Mark Stafford – Salmonella Smorgasbord (Soaring Penguin Press)
Savage Impressions – Bruce Lichen (Independent Project Records)
Hexagon Bridge – Richard Blake (Image)
Monica – Daniel Clowes (Fantagraphics)
Acid Valley – Luke Insect
Petrol Head – Rob Williams & Pye Parr (Image)
Lawless – Dan Abnett & Phil Winslade (Rebellion)
Giant Robot Hellboy – Mignola/Fegredo (Dark Horse)
Facelss & The Family – Matt Lesniewski (Oni Press)
Film:
Barbie
Squaring The Circle : The Story of Hipgnosis
Another year over and what have I done?
Designed a retro jungle cover for District 1727 release Rinse Out The Raw Steel
Opened for The Art of Noise two nights running at the Jazz Cafe
Designed The Home Current & Peter Wix and UNE CDs for Spun Out Of Control
Performed at Candlemas with Julian Hand, Heena Song, Paul Naudin and Whyte Light Visuals
Started working with visual artist PuttyRubber with my Quadraphon turntable at live gigs
Designed the Stasis 12″‘Quondam Sequences’ for De:tuned
Edited a short video for Holotronica after their Bristol event (not sure this ever got broadcast/finished actually)
Restarted my Infinite Illectrik label with 7 monthly releases from May
Mixed two new volumes of The Funky Eno with selections provided by Nohbodhi
Gave talks about Wheels of Light in Stroud and Brighton
Collaborated with Graham Dunning live with visuals by PuttyRubber and Chromatech for FogFest2
Appeared on the 45 Live and What Goes Around podcasts
Wrote the theme for the new Why? podcast
Remade and remixed Amon Tobin’s Permutation LP artwork for the 25th reissue
Continued the weekly Mixcloud Select series of archive mix uploads
Designed and illustrated Wonders of the Undersea World LP for Trunk Records including a sheet of stickers to make your own cover design.
Designed zoetropes for T Rex, Donna Summer, Dr Who, Lily Allen and Steps(!)
Designed the Pulse Five EP, poster and postcards for FSOL, working with Jonas Ranson again on the screenprint
Designed the De:tuned 15 logo and T-shirt for the label’s fifteenth year in 2024
Designed the Clerkenwell Kid Junkyard Melodies album + ephemera and 3″ Xmas Winter Warmers companion CD for Stephen Coates/The Real Tuesday Weld
Designed the A’bear album sleeve for Castles In Space
Contributed vintage graffiti photos to the second Old So Kool book about the UK graf scene in the 80s
Ongoing research into at least three other book projects…
RIP:
Alan Rankin, Jeff Beck, David Crosby, Burt Bacharach, Raquel Welch, Alain Goraguer, Lee Purkis aka In Sync, Paul O’Grady, Al Jaffee, Jah Shaka, Mary Quant, Mark Stewart, Frank Kozik, Andy Rourke, Peter Jones (Colourscape designer), Martin Amis, Kenneth Anger, Tina Turner, Astrud Gilberto, John Romita Snr, Glenda Jackson, Jane Birkin, Paul Rubens, Jamie Reid, Michael Parkinson, David McCallum, Mark the 45 King, Benjamin Zephaniah, Ian Gibson,
Looking forward to:
Candlemas II
Gary Hustwit’s Eno film
The Time Released Sound Book – A Decade of Handmade Music Packaging
Furiosa – A Mad Max Saga
The Hoppy documentary
Richard Norris’ autobiography, Strange Things Are Happening
Sophia Satchell-Baeza’s ‘Sensuous Laboratories’ book
The The’s new tour
Doug Shipton’s new Fundamental Frequencies label
More collaborations
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.
#22. Old So Kool book 2 – The Lost Years
A huge second volume of 80s UK graffiti photos and interviews compiled by Paul Pilgrim and Steven O’Hara. 400+ pages sourced from photo albums and black books from back in the day and a follow up to the first volume from last year – an incredible feat in such a short space of time. I was supposed to have photos in the original but didn’t get my shit together so made up for it this time round.
The Lost Years expands upon the first volume, covering the same time frame (the 80s) with a couple of differences. There are a few standalone sections aside from the geographical locations most of the book is grouped into, namely a look at the legendary Bridlington Jam, a tribute to departed writers and a ‘where are they now’type round up of key contributors. These slightly sparser chapters work well and serve to break up the visual overload of the other sections in which as many images as possible have been fitted on every page.
That such a sprawling urban artform grew out of a few books, films, record sleeves and magazine articles is fascinating, us 80s kids were certainly inspired – Subway Art being ‘the original handbook’ for most. You can see styles evolving all over the country but with a uniformity from writers who would never even see each other’s work – let alone meet – as everyone was cribbing from the same limited sources for a while. Of course the Americans were the first inspiration – you can see the character styles of Doze Green or Gnome copied here and there but unique styles and voices were held in highest regard. Cribbing off of other UK writers was inevitable though, The Chrome Angels being the most obvious as they were the most visible initially unless you were lucky enough to be able to travel abroad. You can also see British comic characters from 2000AD and computer games cropping up to replace the Marvel superheros and Vaughn Bodé lizards and wizards, a more angular computer style here, an abstract piece there.
I remember many trying to find their own identity rather than fit in with existing styles but for the most part though it’s a name and a character, with complimentary backgrounds and tags – in every conceivable permutation. There are few huge productions as you see regularly these days, a ladder was as far as you got, no cherry-pickers here and the paint quality was sometimes dubious at best with photographic skills even more sketchy. This is my only bugbear with the book, in trying to document so much it sacrifices quality for quantity and there are pieces that I personally would have disqualified on grounds of picture quality or artistic merit.
But then the graffiti world has always had its own set of politics and guidelines and maybe it’s a good thing that Paul and Steven haven’t played gatekeepers to what was a budding sub culture, learning from itself with sometimes the most meagre of resources. They’ve compiled a vast and unique snapshot in time of an urban artform’s formative years from all over the UK, something no one’s attempted before on this scale. Coupled with the first book, The Lost Years offers a time capsule of thousands of artworks, 99% of which I’d wager no longer exist, and a peek into the imaginations of a generation of kids who decided to make the streets their own galleries. And that’s to be applauded.
https://oldsokool.co.uk/store/
The piece middle right above was the first piece of graffiti in my home town of Reigate, it appeared in two halves initially (hence the ‘Rusty again’ tag) and word spread around the town like wildfire. This was painted by Russel Mears aka Rusty Spray who is now sadly no longer with us – more about him here.
South London heads: Dan Lish‘s excellent Egostrip book of hip hop portraits gets a reissue via Velocity Press next week & he’ll be at the independent print market in Peckham on Nov 18th to sell and sign copies. Also stalls from Castles In Space, Moonbuilding mag + more
Later that day at 3pm Dan will be the cHip sHop, Brixton for a Q&A about the book too.
I was struck by the cover art to Floating Points‘ new single, ‘Birth4000’ the other week as it resembles the liquid light shows I so love. On further investigation, it seems that’s not far off as the artist, Akiko Nakayama, projects her ‘Alive Painting’ onto huge canvases from microscopic sizes. Her website is well worth some investigation and she made a video for the single which you can see below as well as a billboard that Ninja Tune showed off somewhere in London recently.
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…
