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.
Design
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.
I love it when you get to the late sixties and suddenly the most unlikely of artists go all psychedelic on you, even if the music rarely translates as wildly or colourfully as the sleeve art. I’m going to use this post as a gallery for various examples that I find along the way.
It’s not every day that you get a text message saying that ‘Donna Summer‘s estate has approved your design’ but that’s what happened a few months back after I designed a zoetrope for the reissue of her ‘Another Place And Time’ album. I even shot and edited this little promo video, yep those are my hands and turntable. The album’s out today on picture disc with die-cut front cover – order here
Use the third party app StroboScopeApp to view it through an iPhone https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/stroboscopeapp/id1260603638
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.
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…
It’s Bandcamp Friday today which means that 100% of the revenue goes to the artist or label if you buy music (physical or digital) from the Bandcamp site. Several releases that I designed artwork for are out today or up for pre-order. Check them out below.
Une – ‘Whirl’ CD on Spun Out Of Control
Paul ‘Damage’ Bailey – Subsurface’ 12″ on De:tuned
Up For Pre-order:
AsOne – ‘AsOne2’ LP on De:tuned
Humanoid – ‘Sweet Acid Sound’ 12″ on De:tuned
Also recently released:
The Home Current with Peter Wix – ‘Controlled Sparks’ CD on Spun Out Of Control
AsOne – The Unveiling 12″ on De:tuned
The Real Tuesday Weld – ‘Blood’ CD edition on Antique Beat
And if you want to support my music then there’s plenty to go round:
DJ Food page on Ninja Tune
https://djfood.bandcamp.com/
The Celestial Mechanic album I created with Saron Hughes to soundtrack Rian Hughes’ book, ‘XX’ on Utter
https://celestialmechanic.bandcamp.com/album/citizen-void
Infinite Illectrik – my digital-only label for Quadraphon turntable experiments (new music coming soon!)
https://infiniteillectrik.bandcamp.com/music
The New Obsolescents – my collaboration with Howlround on Castles In Space
https://thenewobsolecents-cis.bandcamp.com/album/the-superceded-sounds-of
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 looking on the website of TimeWarp Toys.com, a vintage toy store in the Catskills. The website is something to behold for several reasons but their stock is something else. Check out these beautiful designs and objects.
I’ve had these images cluttering up the desktop for too long, seen whilst browsing the web, downloaded and researched later, let’s have a tidy up. Above is something I saw just the other day, an amazing illustrator, Michael David Brown, an American artist who I wasn’t familiar with at all. There’s not too much of his stuff on the web but it’s all good.
Above is a sleeve from the Italo group Easy Going from the late 70s, I love it with the Shatter typeface and the star in the middle placed just so. The track ‘Fear’ is excellent too if you like a bit of electronics with your disco. The original cover is embossed too apparently.
The two covers above were by Franz Altschuler, a German artist who emigrated to America, these seem to be the only examples of this kind of style within his work, very 70s Heinz Edelmann.
The only info I can find on the above is that it appears in an exhibition catalogue, ‘Revolution et Cinema’ and is by the Cuban artist Antonio Fernandez Reboiro, seen in the 70s Sci-Fi Art group on Tumblr. ‘Siempre es 26’ translates as ‘It’s always 26’.
The six images below were created by an artist using AI and I stupidly didn’t retain who it was so if anyone recognises them then please leave a comment. They’ve nailed the collage aspect of the medium which is difficult from experience.
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
Love this poster, well worth checking out Francis Castle‘s Clay Pipe Music label and this night. She does all the design and has been producing a run of 3″ CDs recently, the fourth of which will go on sale at this event, sad I can’t go as I’m out of town that day. See the first three below
Last year I collaborated with the video game company DICE to compile and cut up a visual megamix of 30 years of their games footage for their anniversary.
The main thing I’ve been doing this year is learning new software, lots involving AI algorithms that still seem like some kind of strange magic.
It started last year with the Moises software that can split stereo sound files into individual stems which opens up all sorts of possibilities and continued with NightCafe Creator where you can create incredible images from inputting a line of descriptive text. This has yielded a huge bank of images to draw from, some that have already become record sleeve illustrations (I just didn’t tell anyone). It’s all old hat now because AI art is everywhere on the web with thousands of images flooding our feeds on a daily basis but when I first wrote these words in early 2022 it was extremely addictive, if at an infant stage in its development. Just in the last six months alone AI has taken huge leaps in definition and feels like a giant shift in the art of image-making even if still has trouble with hands, it’s certainly divided people’s opinions.
Another AI app is the Topaz suite of image enhancers, the foremost being Gigapixel AI, the best image enhancer / upscaler I’ve ever seen, this has become part of my daily usage now alongside Photoshop and Indesign as a necessary tool to clean up images along with its Denoiser and Sharpener sister apps.
I (finally) got myself an iPad so that I could learn Procreate and again, a whole new world opens up with the possibilities this incredible app gives you. I never could justify getting a tablet, but seeing one of my sons drawing on his, wanting to go digital with some of my comic-buying and having a decent surface to learn Ninja Jamm on made it a necessary piece of kit. Learning to paint on it with one of my sons was among one of my favourite moments this year.
In the analogue world another revelation was a record cutting process pioneered by Ben Soundhog at Plastidisc where software that can convert an image into a waveform then cuts that image as a playable disc. The possibilities are endless and you can make a record without even playing one note.
My own experiments with the refining of my Quadraphon turntable have made for a sleeker, more portable and adaptable design along with the fantastic 4 channel Omnitronic TRM-402 mixer and the Ninja Tune/Erica Synths Zen Delay FX unit. I can make analogue tracks via one deck on the fly and jamming with this set up can yield hours of material, a refreshing new way to make music. Also becoming an author on good old fashioned paper felt pretty good too, I think I might have the book bug now. I hope you all have a Happy New Year and a riproaring 2023…
Music:
Clocolan – Empathy Alpha LP (Redpan)
Brian Eno – The Lighthouse (Sonos HD)
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Omnium Gatherum LP (Flightless)
Twilight Sequence – Trees in General: and the Larch 12″ (Castles In Space)
WTCHCRFT – Drugs Here 12″ (Balkan Vinyl)
Ghost Power – Ghost Power LP (Duophonic Super 45s)
Dexorcist – Night Watch 12″ (Yellow Machines)
Project Gemini – The Children Of Scorpio LP (Mr Bongo/Garden’s End)
Regal Worm – Worm! LP (Quatermass)
The Advisory Circle – Full Circle LP (Ghost Box)
Fenella – The Metallic Index (Fire Records)
S’Express & Daddy Squad – Music 4 The Mind DL
Podcasts:
The Bureau of Lost Culture (Soho Radio)
Cartoonist Kayfabe (YouTube)
We Buy Records (We Made This)
The Jonny Trunk Podcast (Patreon)
Oh God, What Now? (Podmasters Prod.)
The Tone Generation – Ian Helliwell
Peel Acres – Tom Ravenscroft (BBC Sounds)
The Bunker (Podmasters Prod.)
Gigs / Events:
Lux @ 180 Strand, London
Victor Vasarely – Universe exhibition @ Selfridges, London
Premier of Who Killed The KLF? @ Leake St, London
The Orb play U.F.Orb @ The Fox & Firkin, London
Bring The Paint festival, Leicester
Staying in a restored Futuro House, Somerset
Fogfest @ Iklectik, London
Glissando Guitar Orchestra @ Club-85, Hitchin
Funki Porcini’s Lasarium @ Iklectik, London
Wheels of Light launch event @ Raven Row, London
The Trunk Groovy Record Fayre @ Mildmay Club, London
At Home With The Boyle Family film launch @ Iklectik, London
Magnetic Flow exhibition, @ LaVallée, Brussels
Design / Packaging:
Night Cafe / Midjourney – the most fun/frustrating web AI creation tools
Jed St. Christopher – The Further Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 10″ lathe cut (Buried Treasure) by Nick Taylor
Twilight Sequence – Trees in General: and the Larch 12″ (Castles In Space) by Zeke Clough
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Ominium Gatherum LP by Jason Galea
Sculpture – Malculus / Photo Synth 7″ + zoetrope pack by Rueben Sutherland
The Advisory Circle – Full Circle LP (Ghost Box) by Julian House
Clay Pipe Mini Pipe 3″ CD series by Francis Castle
Monochrome Echo – The City & The Stars LP (Castles In Space) by Nick Taylor
Drumetrics – Phuzzle 10″
Artists incorporating AI into their work:
Ko_Computer
Douggy Pledger
Alex Klim
Will Toulan
Scott Wetterschneider
Stuart Smith
Steve Scott (image below by Steve Scott)
Books / Magazines / Comics:
Grrrl Scouts – Jim Mahfood (Image)
99 Balls Pond Road – Jill Drower (Scrudge Books) – now reprinted in text-only paperback and retitled ‘The Exploding Galaxy: Performance Art, LSD and Bent Coppers in the Sixties Counterculture’ – an absolute must for 60s counter culture historians
Radio Spaceman – Mike Mignola & Greg Hinkle (Dark Horse)
Mental Hygiene – Kate Gibb
A-Z of Record Shop Bags – Jonny Trunk (Fuel)
Mud Sharks – Dave Barbarossa
Good Pop, Bad Pop – Jarvis Cocker (Vintage)
House Music – Andy Votel (The Modernist)
Judge Dredd – Brian Bolland (Apex Edition)
Contemporary Collage magazine (digital)
Defying Gravity – Jordan Mooney w. Cathi Unsworth
The Delaware Road deluxe edition – Alan Gubby, Dolly Dolly (Buried Treasure)
69 Exhibition Road – Dorothy Max Prior (Strange Attractor)
Judge Dredd – Mike McMahon (Apex Edition)
It’s Lonely At The Centre Of The Universe – Zoe Thorogood (Image Comics)
The Black Locomotive – Rian Hughes (Picador)
Film /TV:
The Book of Boba Fett (Disney+)
Get Back (Disney+)
Who Killed The KLF?
Pistol (Disney+)
The Boys (Amazon Prime)
In The Court of the Crimson King (Toby Aimes)
Another year over and what have I done?
Finished The Real Tuesday Weld’s ‘Dreams’ LP/CD and ‘Late Night Reveries’ cassette artwork
Appeared on the Bureau of Lost Culture podcast, 45 Live show, mixed an episode of new online show, Genius & Soul (still not broadcast)
Re-designed an old classic logo for The Herbsmen
Adapted The Designers Republic’s Humanoid artwork for a FSOLDigital CD release
Designed Hawksmoor’s ‘Head Coach’ CD for Spun Out Of Control
Recorded with Dave Barbarossa for a future music project
Finished and published the Wheels of Light book for Four Corners Books with press coverage from The Quietus, Shindig!, The Observer, Velocity Books, Moonbuilding, Electronic Sound, Creative Review and more.
Had a track featured on the Diary of a Madman compilation on Bibliotapes in aid of Ukrainian Red Cross
Refined my Quadraphon turntable into a Mk.3 version
Got featured in the 2000AD Summer Special, music edition, talking about my love of the comic
Made a record by etching a playable image into a disc
Compiled, remixed and edited 30 years worth of games footage for DICE’s anniversary, making an 11 minute version then condensing it into 90 seconds.
Redesigned The Cinematic Orchestra’s ‘Every Day’ LP for the 20th anniversary edition from original design concepts
Designed Stasis, AsOne, Paul ‘Damage’ Bailey and Humanoid 12″s and reinterpreted Mike Dred’s ‘OverMind’ LP art for De:tuned
Also designed the AsOne2 LP for De:tuned
Had a collage featured in Contemporary Collage magazine
Mixed a new religious-themed set for the Tales To Enlighten 2 Kickstarter
Reformatted Dave Barbarossa’s Mud Sharks book for publication.
Interviewed Zoe Lucky Cat Baxter, Andy Votel, Alex Paterson and DJ Format for Dust & Grooves book 2.
Designed The Real Tuesday Weld’s 3″ CD Xmas card.
RIP:
Sidney Poitier, James Mtume, Meatloaf, Barry Cryer, Ian Kennedy, Douglas Trumbull, Bamber Gascoigne, Betty Davis, Jan Pieńkowski, Philip Jeck, Chantal Passamonte, Garry Leach, June Brown, Jordan, David McKee, Klaus Schulze, Neal Adams, George Perez, Vangelis, Rat Records, Alan Grant, Bob Rafelson, Bernard Cribbens, Olivia Newton-John, Lamont Dozier, Raymond Briggs, Queen Elizabeth II, William Klein, Jean-Luc Godard, Ramsey Lewis, Pharoah Sanders, Kim Jung Gi, Robbie Coltrane, Joyce Sims, Keith Levene, Nik Turner, Wilco Johnson, Tom Philips, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Manuel Gottsching, Terry Hall, Martin Duffy, Mike Hodges, Pelé, Vivienne Westwood, Anita Pointer.
Looking forward to:
The Out in 2000AD
Supporting the Art of Noise at the Jazz Cafe on Jan 4th/5th
Conform to Deform – The Weird & Wonderful World of Some Bizarre – Wesley Doyle (Jawbone Press)
The The – 1$ One Vote 7″ (Lazarus)
The conclusion of The Real Tuesday Weld’s Swan Songs trilogy?…
Tales To Enlighten: The New Testament
The Kevin O’Neill Apex Edition (Rebellion)
The return of Rave Wars
Spider-Man – Across The Spider-Verse
John Doran from The Quietus about my book, Wheels of Light and we dug into what light shows are all about and how I came to make the book in the first place. I sent them a few images not in the book including the rare Orion Star Wars wheel above, shot at Larry Wooden‘s place from an original film from his archive. Remastered versions of all his FX wheels are available from Larry via www.orioneffects.co.uk and he has some originals for sale in the heritage section as well as new designs.
Read the interview here
Buy the book here
This always comes round so quickly, for the last four years I’ve designed the 3″ Xmas card for Stephen Coates‘ project The Real Tuesday Weld. The previous years have seen a complicated fold out origami cover which sometimes sent us insane but this year we’ve let you do the folding with this build-it-yourself Antique Beat Stereogram and vinyl effect 3″ CD. The five tracks on it are new or exclusive and point the way towards the final release in the Swan Songs trilogy, Bone, which will hopefully appear next year to accompany Blood and Dreams as the curtain falls on Stephen’s two decade long alias. You can find Mid Winter Melodies here