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
It’s been a vinyl kind of weekend, starting on Friday with a visit to Deptford where the hardcore diggers descended on new shop Perfect Lives for their opening. Run by Danny and Bruno, it’s a countercultural wonderland of books, magazines, fanzines and records, the likes of you which rarely see or have never seen before. It’s a small spot at 6a Florence Road, London, SE14 6TW and they’re open Wednesday to Sunday, not cheap but you don’t see some of this stuff every day unless it’s in a museum or a book.
Deptford’s really becoming a spot now with Upside Down Records on the high street and new vinyl listening bar, Jazu down the other end. In the arches on Resolution Way across from the train station you have The Shop which sells music gear and records and further up, the Villages bar where we went to hear Huw from Mr Bongos play a Halloween-themed set.
Saturday was the Groovy Record Fayre at the Mildmay Club on Newington Green for as much of a social catch up with a million friends as a dig for the black crack. Despite finding a few bits and pieces I actually managed to leave a clutch of 45s behind at the end because I was nattering.
Sunday was a day of rest but Rich Headland‘s Record Shop Stories has just published the jaunt to the Book & Record Bar in West Norwood that we took a few weeks back. Read it here, give Rich’s substack a follow and pay the shop a visit if this piece piques your interest.
It’s not all records around here though, next week is all about light shows and painting one of my son’s bedroom, then the print fair in Leicester at the Print Workshop next weekend.
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?
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.
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.
International Times newsagents poster, sent to me by Drew Mulholland
Robert Williams illustrated header card for a bag of weed! Not sure the year but looks 70s.
Gorgeous box design for a Philips projector lens.
Original art for an Alex Nino spread from Star Reach magazine no.6 from Heritage Auctions
Beautiful Odyssey computer box design plus computer inside, look at those huge chips! Seen on Facebook Marketplace.
New Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan LP cover – possibly by Nick Taylor? Out next week…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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…
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.“
I’ve compiled some of my favourite Command sleeves for a 4th volume of Forgotten Graphics – 24 pgs, buy here
Or I will have copies with me at Jonny Trunk‘s Groovy Record Fair this Saturday
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.
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
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.
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.
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