These appeared on the web recently, no one seems to know whether they are original 80’s posters or more recent versions. Fascinating nevertheless.
This little piece of history has been going viral over the last few weeks after being put up on Soundcloud by a user called mjs538.
*UPDATE: Another user: DJMOOG1 has put up a better quality version which I’ve embedded above.
Although not actually by mjs538, the pieces have a strange and convoluted history in themselves as well as portraying the history of pop music based on all the #1 hits in the US charts since 1958. Both mixes use up to 5 seconds of each and every #1 since the mid fifties, in order, up until 1981 in Part 1 and into the early nineties in Part 2. Whilst a herculean effort, even in this day and age of digital editing and online stores to source the material, it’s all the more impressive that the bulk of Part 1 was made in the late seventies using reel to reel tape and a razor blade.
The piece – known as ‘Time Sweep’ – was part of an extensive radio show called ‘The History of Rock n Roll’, made by Drake – Chenault Enterprises for radio in the US which utilized 52 hours to bring the first comprehensive history of rock music to the airwaves. Each year was prefaced with a medley of that year’s #1 hit singles (a ‘Chart Sweep’) and the whole was compiled into a ‘Time Sweep’ to end the mammoth series. The engineer responsible was Mark Ford (above), a veteran of radio jingles and production. He compiled and edited all the selections up until 1977, not only cutting and splicing but also EQing and time stretching sections to make them fit together sonically and selecting and pairing little couplets of lyrics at certain points – Roy Orbison‘s “Pretty woman, walking down the street”, segues into “there she was, just a walking down the street”.
For a little ‘behind the scenes’ info, check out this link on the making of the special
But the story doesn’t end there. For those paying attention, just after the Meco version of ‘Star Wars’ in Part 1, the sound quality noticeably changes in both the stereo field, quality and editing. The reason for this is that a teacher from Maryland University called Hugo Keesing extended and updated the concept of the Chart / Time Sweep for his classes as each year finished up until 1991. With all due respect to Keesing, he isn’t a sound engineer and it shows in the application of edits and production. This is where the piece stops being art and turns to documentation and, as such, loses the essence of its greatness. Keesing was using a Wollensack tape recorder to edit with and had no way to clean up or EQ the tracks. So, the majority of Part 1 is Mark Ford’s original (up until 1977) and then Keesing’s extension, which runs the entirety of Part 2.
Five Seconds Of Every #1 Pop Single Part 2 by mjs538
How this piece came into circulation on the web was via a tape with Keesing’s name on it that was passed to the Evolution Control Committee‘s Mark Gunderson in the 90’s and the piece was widely believed to have been by him in it’s entirety by the cut and paste fraternity unfamiliar with the History of Rock n Roll programme. Eventually Keesing was tracked down and you can read an interview with him over at Jon Nelson‘s ‘Some Assembly Required’ blog.
For a comprehensive overview of the whole story check here, there is also an update of the whole concept from 1993 to 2010 if you can’t get enough of this kind of thing.
A match made in heaven, not sure exactly what he’s doing with them yet but an official announcement was made last week that Ashley Wood has partnered with Bandai, the makers of Gundam figures, to do something. Here’s a first look at a painting he did earlier this week – beautiful
I just went to see Norman Rockwell’s America at the East Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Utterly stunning. It’s only on for another month and they have original paintings, studies and prints as well as over 350 framed covers of the Saturday Evening Post that he did. If you’ve been thinking of giving it a go, make the effort, you won’t see another collection like this in the UK again for a while I think. They even had the original of this April Fools painting below.
Roger Mainwood – ‘Autobahn’ animation cels, Halas & Batchelor, 1979
(330 x 270 mm, pen and paint on acetate).
In 1979 animation studio Halas & Batchelor were commisioned by EMI to make a video to accompany Kraftwerk’s song ‘Autobahn’ for a possible laser disc compilation of the label’s back catalogue. These are two original cels from the film, the background and goggle reflections are lost, the laser disc was never released.
You can watch the film in two parts on YouTube, this frame appears at approx 4.22 in Part 2.
DJ Food – The Crow Animated from Tom Webb on Vimeo.
Tom Webb contacted me with this film he made as part of his 3rd year Illustration Minor project. It’s the first half of the DJ Food track ‘The Crow‘, written by PC, from our ‘Kaleidoscope‘ LP. Here are his comments about the making of it;
“I set myself the task of trying to illustrate the DJ Food album Kaleidoscope. Initially, I was trying to produce stand alone images but eventually decided to dive into the world of animation for the first time. I created a sequence for the first half of The Crow. I was hoping to animate to the whole track, I storyboarded a lot of it but the deadline got the better of me.”
“The images were created as spontaneous responses to the sounds and atmospheres I was hearing inside some of the tracks. I started investigating ‘Full Bleed’, ‘Cookin’, ‘The Riff’, ‘The Crow’ and both the ‘Sleep Dyad‘s’ a lot because of their particular energies.
The idea was to finish making the image before the track finished, so I started painting with my hands to help speed things up and build a small library of personal reactions in texture. I then scanned the images at hi-res and chopped out suitable macro sections which were then imported into the animation. There was a lot of trial and error involved. It’s also the first time I’ve had a go at animating so I had to learn the program from scratch as well.”
I personally love the syncopation he’s got and the movements from dark to light corresponding to the moods of the track. You can see more of Tom’s work on his blog calamridropkick.com
Brighton residents Snub23 and Req head up a collection of artists presenting work on anything but paper and canvas.
10″ vinyl record, charity shop find, London
Looking forward to this in April:
CHAPTER TWO takes place almost sixty years later in the psychedelic daze of Swinging London during 1968, a place where Tadukic Acid Diethylamide 26 is the drug of choice, and where different underworlds are starting to overlap dangerously to an accompaniment of sit-ins and sitars. The vicious gangster bosses of London’s East End find themselves brought into contact with a counter-culture underground of mystical and medicated flower-children, or amoral pop-stars on the edge of psychological disintegration and developing a taste for Satanism. Alerted to a threat concerning the same magic order that she and her colleagues were investigating during 1910, a thoroughly modern Mina Murray and her dwindling league of comrades attempt to navigate the perilous rapids of London’s hippy and criminal subculture, as well as the twilight world of its occultists. Starting to buckle from the pressures of the twentieth century and the weight of their own endless lives, Mina and her companions must nevertheless prevent the making of a Moonchild that might well turn out to be the antichrist.
Kid Acne – ‘TTC – C’eci N’Est Pas Un Disque’ LP inside cover illustration (full piece), 2001-2
(640 x 380 mm, pen and pencil on paper).
The full piece was created using photocopies of two A3 illustrations depicting the crowd characters. These were then joined and the club background added in thinner pen. The DJs were also added at this stage to complete the scene.
Back at the end of 2006, when Trevor Jackson‘s Output Recordings folded, I put together a 3 hour tribute mix of my favourite tracks. This went out as 3 separate mixes on Solid Steel and I even made a very limited number of facsimile Output CDRs of the mixes. I’ve recently had requests to upload it again so, by the miracle that is Soundcloud, it’s available. I’ve also edited it into one piece finally and the track list is embedded in the Lyrics section of the mp3. Being an avid collector of the label I thought I’d show off the screen printed promo releases and a few other choice pieces.
Further reading from early 2007 can be had on Mark E’s ‘ireallylovemusic’ site.
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The Death of Output by DJ Food
[singlepic id=2609 w=640 h=890 float=left] [singlepic id=2620 w=640 h=480 float=left]
10″ vinyl record, charity shop find, London
Kid Acne – ‘TTC – C’eci N’Est Pas Un Disque’ LP inside cover illustration (right hand side), 2001-2 (420 x 297mm, pen and pencil on paper).
Originally one half of a crowd scene to go on the inside of a gatefold cover for TTC’s first LP. The label couldn’t afford a gatefold sleeve so it was printed on the inside of a single sleeve, the left half is thought to be lost.
I’ve just uploaded this from my archives to my Soundcloud account
The Shamen doing a Synergy mix live on Colin Faver‘s show on Kiss FM from 1991. It’s essentially DJ Sticker and (I think) Mixmaster Morris /The Irresistible Force with Mr C. MC-ing. Only about 50 minutes long, the only tape I had was a free one from a magazine so the last 10 minutes is cut off. An excellent selection of tracks if you can put up with C’s terrible freestyling and patter/patois :).
A pretty influential set for me in my student days when I first moved to London (as were Colin Dale and Colin Favor’s shows). It indirectly hooked me up with Coldcut and Ninja Tune as I went to a Shamen gig because of this, met Mixmaster Morris there and he put me in touch with Matt Black.
Original turntablism / scratch / cut up cassettes from the mid to late 90’s. 
There are also a couple of Skam label and Aphex Twin promo cassettes, now all gone save for the Rob Swift, Cash Money and Vin Roc…
Further to the post about 3D I did last week, I’ve dug out some of the comics I was talking about. Best find was ‘Bizarre 3D Zone’ which is almost Zap Comix in 3D form, including a strip by Robert Williams which works extremely well visually. There were a few underground comics in the the 60’s and 70’s using 3D it seems but not all of them work because the printing is so bad the red/green division can’t be seen too easily.
A company called Blackthorne Publishing spearheaded the 3D comics surge in the late 80’s, buying up licenses to lots of kids shows like Transformers, GI Joe and Star Wars. Their most successful line was, bizarrely, the California Raisins (!?) but they bit off more than the could chew when they acquired the rights to print Michael Jackson’s ‘Moonwalker’ in 3D. The film didn’t do the business expected and their comic flopped, costing them the company. Most of their titles only ran for 1 or 2 issues and the projected Star Wars line (surely a golden ticket?) only made it to issue 3 before the company folded.
In Bizarre 3D Zone there are a few singular page strips that crop up that are quite bizarre indeed, some don’t even work in the conventional 3D way as they are simply only either the green or red. But in amongst the other separated images they give an odd effect and you realise that this is the ultimate in psychedelic comics as it’s playing with your perceptions of the page. I can only imagine what it was doing to hippies on acid way back when.
Part 2 – ‘Part2ism’ outline, 2011 (420 x 297mm, biro on paper)
The first in an occasional, on-going series featuring original objects and art with, where possible, the items that they were made for.
