Erasing The Borders...

6 Magha - Year 1931 (Saka Era)

It was big news in the UK over the X-Mas shopping period last year. Borders UK, the chain of bookstores spun off of the parent corporation in the U.S., was in administration. Competition with on-line retailers, poor management and expensive high-street rents led to it's demise. A couple of weeks after the administration announcement, a further statement was issued, saying that all of the UK shops would close, following a 'shut-down' mega-sale. Now it's being revealed that Borders U.S. will be closing a further 200 stores this year. In the U.K. and the U.S., it looks as if the shopping centers and high streets just got a bit more homogenous, with just Waterstones and Blackwell (in the UK) to choose from (if you get a choice, as Blackwell don't have that many shops).

It strikes me as a bit sad, as Borders (at least in the beginning) tried to be a sort-of 'mom and pop' chain (I know, an oxymoronic assertion). I had never heard of Borders Books & Music before a store opened in Manchester, Conn. in 1994. I did apply to be part of the original crew, when the store was setting up, but I didn't make the cut (I can't imagine how many applications they had, but I suspect it was a lot). I started shopping there regularly, as their CD selection back then seemed truly astounding. There was an 'Out-To-Lunch' section with stuff from Art Zoyd, The Residents, Lard Free and tons of other bands I'd never heard of. Now, I realise that was the work of a clued-in staff, but it's also the result of a laid-back policy in which the staff could order that music for stock. Pretty amazing, for a chain.

I finally got my chance to join up in 1996. I had an interview and an author and music test...no really, I did, for 'product knowledge'. I scored poorly on the author bit, but fairly well on the music. I was assigned to the music dept. (natch!). Disaster nearly struck, when I was offered a full-time job in an architecture firm the same week. As I have a degree in architecture and had never worked in the field, I thought I should take the firm's offer (even though it was only a courier position--gotta start somehwere..). Borders hired me for a full-time job as well..but in another cool concession on their part, agreed to keep me on as a part-timer, helping on weekends. I ended up staying for seven years--mostly part-time, but I did a full-time stretch for a year, when the aforementioned firm made me redundant in 1999. I found a job at another firm in 2000 and changed my hours back to part-time, then cut them back even more to just a contingent (for when regulars called out sick and they needed cover for the evening shift). By then, however, most of the really cool critters that I started with in '96 were long-gone and the company itself slid into corporate doldrums - even toying with the idea of employee uniforms, which I despised from my days at Strawberries and Sears in the early 90s.

I finally handed in my notice in January 2004 - a month before I moved to the UK. I discovered the Borders in Oxford in summer 2003, when visting Pixie for the first time. After the move, I thought "well, if I can't find a job - I could try there." That's pretty much what happened. I temped for a short while and (in a bit of desperation after walking out of my temp gig at Oxfam) applied there in July 2004. I got the job, but couldn't start until September. I stayed for a year, until a 'disagreement' between myself and the general manager forced me to leave in October 2005. While the Oxford store was much more corporatized than even the Conn. store (time-keeping was especially enforced), I still worked with some great people. I continued shopping there every so often and would chat with some of the critters I knew, who were still working in the shop.

Now, as anyone who's worked in retail will know, it's not all a barrel of laughs. Dealing with John and Jane Q. Public for 40 hours per week can be a strain on the calmest, most jovial critters. Some clowns, repeating that "Customer Is Always Right" mantra, used it as a get-out clause to excuse their childish and boorish behaviour. We all had run-ins with difficult customers...I did more than a few times and it would just ruin your day. The pay was crap and Borders also wouldn't allow employees to unionize. As I've mentioned, the corporate symptoms worsened year after year, until the only difference between them and other chain shops was the decor..oh and you could still wear T-shirts and jeans to work--but even that stopped when they brought in red polo shirts for everyone to wear, in the last few years.

For all that, though, there were moments of transcendence. Sometimes, especially in the Manchester store, the whole crew would be firing on all cylinders with jokes, or making insanely great in-store CD mixes or even just getting the mundane work finshed. The shifts seemed to fly by and it made work seem like fun. I strongly suspect almost everyone's had moments like that at a job. I had as well--but at Borders, especially the first couple of years I was there, I never had so many. There was a short while when Jimmy C. and I worked the Friday night shift. We used to have a blast goofing on weird customers, putting together killer in-store mixes and crafting bizarre in-jokes. I swear, there were times when I almost couldn't wait to get there, because it was such a good time. In a sense, we were being paid to listen to music and goof around...in between the mundane stuff, of course--shelving CDs and tidying the department. I used to think "this is what work should be like". For that reason, I will miss working at Borders.

As a wrap-up, here are my Top Ten favourite moments from my time at Borders (both U.S. and UK)...the ones I can remember, anyway. In no particular order:

1. "The Nutter Status Quo Fan" (UK): The Oxford store used to get some fairly high-profile critters for in-store signings (as England is a smaller place and because Manchester, Conn. can't complete with Boston and NYC for the big names..). The Quo's book, XS All Areas, had just been published--so Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi were at the Oxford store for a book signing. Despite numerous placards stating that they would only sign copies of the book...people showed up with CDs, LPs and posters and other memorabilia. One bloke was standing in the queue mumbling to himself and acting a bit agitated. I approached him to let him know that they wouldn't be signing his VHS tape and ticket stubs--he lashed out with "You're not Quo, mate! They'll sign this--you don't know!" and some other related babble. I let the security guys know about him and he was eventually removed from the queue, as he was starting to disturb others, and ejected from the shop. He later destroyed some terra cotta plant pots outside of a restaurant down the street. I guess he really wanted that videotape signed. Oh yeah, Parfitt and Rossi signed the booklet of my copy of the Matchstick Men CD.

2. "Jimmy C. skools Matt D." (U.S.): When I first started at the Manchester store, I was pretty intimidated by the music crew. They were very knowledgeable about lots of crazy obscure music and there was lots of snobbery about. This one guy, Matt, was very into funk and soul. He was cool enough, but he was constantly going on about how prog-rock didn't groove, which I was a bit rankled by. One day, he was talking about the Ohio Players and said "Bill Bruford just can't hit a groove" and prog can't swing, etc. Jimmy goes over to the CD racks, brings back Gong's You and pops it in the disc player. He cues up You Never Blow Yr Trip Forever and lets the intro play. For those who haven't heard it, it has a real funky intro with nice interplay between the bass and drums. Jimmy then starts naming out the time signatures. "5/4"....7/4..." Matt didn't admit that he'd been schooled, but he didn't much of a come-back either, as I recall.

3. "The Righteous Moss" (UK): I made some friends at the UK store, but a few of them were real muso-pals. One of them, Mark P., is defintely a rawker...besides being a funny bloke and all-around freakball. One day, after he had grown his hair out, someone said his hair looked like a big moss. He riffed on that and came up with 'Righteous Moss'. I said that sounded like a great band name. We starting toying around with a goof band concept, where everything would be hooked up to a wah-wah pedal, even sitars and didgeridoos, kinda like Miles Davis's early 70s groups. A Welsh girl called Dominique, who also worked at Borders, volunteered to be a Stacia for the band, plus play Stylophone (hooked up to a wah-wah, natch!). Sadly, we never got it together enough to even have a jam session...but the legend of the Moss looms large.

4. "Promos!" (U.S.): O.K., this one's more of a bunch of moments than one single moment. When the Manchester store first opened, digital listening stations hadn't been perfected yet, so the stations were a carousel-tray CD player hooked up to a set of headphones. Each genre of music had roughly 10 different stations. The labels would send promo discs out to the shops for all of the featured albums every month. Once the month finished and a new bunch arrived - the crew were allowed to take them home. Man, that was brilliant. I beefed up my collection with tons of discs. Good stuff, too...not just the latest crap records that no-one would remember in two years. I got the deluxe editions of The Who's Live At Leeds and Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On, to name just a couple. I was gutted when I started in the Oxford store and found out the listening stations were digital...so no promos. Actually, I did get a promo of Richard Hawley's Coles Corner, but that was it.

5. "The Sunday Night Jam" (U.S.): I can't remember who finagled permission from the general manager, but one Sunday night, after the store had closed, some of us musos brought in our guitars and had a jam in the music section. Zack S. even hauled in his drum kit. I think there were 3 or 4 of us with guitars, 1 with a bass and Zack's kit. Most of it was a sloppy, loose jam. I remember this one guy, Cory, a neo-Dead/Phish-head, started up a three or four chord vamp. I was trying to find different chords in key with his, just to make it a bit more interesting..but he showed me what he was playing, as if to say "this is what you're supposed to be doing", which put me off his jam. Four guitars chugging the same chords in unison sounds very boring to me. I also remember trying to start up an impromptu version of Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive, but my skillz aren't good enough to keep it all together and it floundered after we all finished the main riff. A fun night, though. The Sunday night sessions were supposed to become a regular thing, but as far as my memory serves me, that was the only one.

6. "Brushes With 'Slebs'" (U.K.): As I've mentioned, the Oxford store had quite a few high-profile in-store events. While I was there, there were signings from the Little Britain duo, Michael Palin, the aforementoned Quo duo, Rory Bremner, Clive Woodward (the 2003 England rugby team coach), Ray Mears (the survival bloke off the TV), Jon Ronson, Will Self and a bunch of others. The store also attracted some famous critters as well--I wasn't there when ol' Billy Boy Clinton stopped in...but I did ring up Thom Yorke's purchases a couple of times. I found the Scene-It DVD game for Gaz Coombes of Supergrass (really nice bloke, by the way) and had a long-ish chat with Bruce Johnston, of The Beach Boys, but to be honest, he seemed a bit of a tit to me. I think I also rang up a purchase by Mick Quinn of Supergrass and saw Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead perusing the jazz CDs one day. I did leave them alone and didn't get all 'fanboy' on them...it seemed to be the best thing to do.

7. "Guys, Guys...The Supa-Jam!" (U.S.): Ian S. and I would talk from time to time about getting jam sessions together outside of work. A few times, we actually did manage to get the crew over to Joel B's place for a jam and recorded the results. Joel lived a ways away from me, so I didn't get to join as much as I would've liked. Anyway, Ian and I started jokingly referring to the sessions as the "Super Jam". One Saturday shift, we were talking about it, when Zack came running out of the stock-room with a large arm-full of CDs in their theft-proof 'keepers'. He yells out in a really nerdy voice "Guys! guys! The Supa-jam, the Supa-jam!!", then does a crazy prat-fall. The CDs went flying about three feet in front of him and crashed to the floor. There were some customers around and they just stared at him. I seriously nearly pissed myself, I was laughing so much. I suppose you had to be there--but that still makes me smile when I think about it.

8. "The Bluegrass Band" (U.S.): Sometimes on a Friday night, live music would be featured in the department. One night, a bluegrass band played with a girl singer. I can't remember what they were called. They were decent musicians and the woman's voice was alright. I'm not a huge bluegrass fan and while I can appreciate the musicianship involved, it does seem to start sounding the same after a while. They finished their sets and as was Jimmy's and my custom, we heralded the closing of the store by putting Fripp & Eno's No Pussyfooting in the disc player. As The Heavenly Music Corporation started, we watched them pack up their gear and make little asides about the long drones in the music. Eventually, one of them, the mandolin-player (a short, scraggly-looking dude with greasy hair and beard) sidled up to the information desk and asked what we were playing. Jimmy told him and (according to Jimmy - I wasn't at the desk at that moment) he suddenly said in a hushed, conspiriatorial tone, "Those long drones...that's what they used in Waco, man." I'm not sure what Jimmy's response was to that. Hey, just 'cause you're paranoid...

9. "The Local Freaks" (U.S.): I strongly suspect that every Borders store had it's own collection of local weirdos who would practically move into the place. They'd be there every day, or at least every weekend--grabbing a magazine or newspaper off of the racks, plopping themselves in one of the chairs scattered around and well, staying...all day, sometimes into the evening as well. Some would wander around the store, pestering other punters and eventually get thrown out--only to return the next day..or week..or month. I'm not just talking about the garden-variety lechers who show up and ogle the young female staff members--I'm talking about the hardcore nutjobs. The Manchester, Conn. store had some right legends. There was "11-Digit Boy" (I can't remember how he got that name), "Creepy Laughing Guy", who had quit his medication and used to draw in a notebook and emit shrill laughs to himself, "Tweedle-Dee And Tweedle-Dum", a rare double-act--this short fat older guy and a short fat younger guy who used to sit in the chairs all day reading newspapers. There was also "Anti-Claus", an old smelly guy with a huge white beard and glasses. He was eventually barred from the store for weeing all over the floor in the gents. I suspect there were a few more that I'm missing off of this list. The Oxford store had a few, too - like "The Romance Beast" and "The Polish Newspaper Guy"--but nothing on the calibre of Store 60.

10. "Jimmy's Announcement" (U.S.): Another classic moment in the Manchester store. A local jam-ish rock band was playing one night in the music department. Whenever there's an event in-store, the staff has to announce it over the P.A. every so often to remind the punters what time it will be starting and that. Jimmy was given the task of making the announcements for this particular gig. I'm not sure how he got through it without laughing, but he gave the gig time and the usual spiel, then he said at the end of it: "So if rock and roll is on your agenda for this evening, head to the music department." Almost pissed myself again when I heard it and it still makes me laugh now.

15 Years On: P.M. Dawn - Jesus Wept

25 Dey - Year 1388

I can hardly believe it's been nearly 15 years since this album was released. I can already hear the derisive snickers from the 'real' hip-hop crowd, but hear me out, O.K.? I know, P.M. Dawn 'are' a joke to most hip-hoppers and possibly always 'were'. Unlike the Beastie Boys, who managed to claw back their cred after Check Your Head was released in 1992, the Dawn never returned to the dizzy chart heights they scaled with their first full-length, Of The Heart, Of The Soul, Of The Cross..., released in 1991.

After their string of hit singles and then a much-publicised (at the time) beef with KRS-One, the Dawn's second full-length, The Bliss Album?, was released. While most of the tracks continue "Of The Heart"s spacey R&B/hip-hop hybrid, a couple of them show the duo in a near defensive mode after the KRS-One bust-up. Plastic sneers at thug-rap poseurs (remember, this was 1993 and the West Coast 'gangsta rap' phenomenon was all the rage, following Dr. Dre's The Chronic record)--with a dig at KRS-One in the breakdown. "Think I don't know about hip-hop", Prince Be spits, "well what's this..", as DJ Minutemix scratches different tempos. The Nocturnal Is In The House also presents a harder edge (for the Dawn) and a bit of a cynical look at the group's fame: "The ego, the frame, remain unemployed/But they screamin' at me, they wanna be my freakazoid" and "I'm burnin' up son, I think I got the fever/Don't believe the hype 'cause if you do it might deceive ya", attest to the pressure of maintaining their sanity in the "Yo Mtv Raps!" sphere and maintaining their cool in the face of the beefs and some rather homophobic rants.

So they disappeared for a while - aside from a one-off cover of Jimi Hendrix's You Got Me Floatin', which was released on the tribute album called Stone Free in 1993. They returned in October 1995 with Jesus Wept (named after the shortest psalm in the Bible).

The title seems to sum up the contents of the record. Gone are the playfulness of the first album and the occasional anger of the second. In their place is a meditative questing and a sort-of soulful angst. Be's Chrisitianity was hinted at on the first two, but reaches full-flower on "Jesus Wept". Not to worry, though. He doesn't Bible-bash or holy roll--in fact, almost the opposite...he's as unsure of 'God' as a lot of critters, but he wants to believe (like in that X-Files UFO poster). In the intro. to the album, a sample taken from It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown states "...even if you are a fake, don't tell me..I don't want to know." Downtown Venus, the second track and first single, sets up the psychedelic feel of the rest of the record perfectly--making excellent use of a sample from Deep Purple's cover of Hush. You can watch the original video here (though you have to sit through an advert first).

My Own Personal Gravity has a hazy, mellow feel that channels Hendrix, except for the lack a flash guitar solo. Instead, it has a backward-guitar figure that could be right off of The Beatles' I'm Only Sleeping. It could almost be an out-take from Electric Ladyland. Forever Damaged (The 96th) samples Joni Mitchell's Don't Interrupt The Sorrow (from her most experimental record, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns) and contains a tasteful steel drum solo--yes, a steel drum. The track mutates into a kind of down-tempo Caribbean folk-rock. The Puppet Show comes off as a trippy Motown tune, that wouldn't be out of place on The Temptations' Puzzle People. The 9:45 Wake-Up Dream continues the inner-space journey, with a funky organ riff and some nice acid-guitar runs.

Elsewhere on the album are gentle acoustic moments. Sonchyenne, a Joycean pun on the word sunshine, evoking both Jesus (as the alleged 'Son of God') and the Native American Cheyenne tribe. A Lifetime's lyrics of "What's a human/what's a lifetime?" remind me of Robert Heinlein's quote about what a human should be able to do. The weakest tracks, it seems to me, 'are' Miles From Anything and I'll Be Waiting For You. Both seem to be typical Dawn 'smoove' ballads and don't really innovate their sound at all. Having said that, they're probably on par with any of the decent R&B tunes of that year. I do like the way the lyrics can be construed as multi-level, much like Richard Thompson's mid-70s 'love' songs. 'Are' they about a woman, or a deity, or Be's 'higher self' (what Aleister Crowley referred to as "The Holy Guardian Angel")..or all three?

Then there's the final track - which really shows the ambition of the group. Fantasia's Confidential Ghetto is a suite of three covers, and not slavish ones, either. 1999 sees Prince's glam-funk party call-to-arms stripped to just a piano and acoustic guitar. Be sings it in a world-weary fashion, even singing "Tonight I'm gonna cry like it's 1999" at the end of the last chorus. A piano figure lifted from the 1970s Schoolhouse Rock animated short Rufus Xavier Sarsparilla announces Talking Heads' Once In A Lifetime. It's funked up good, even more than the Heads' early 80s experiments. It's almost as if Al Green is repaying them for their version of Take Me To The River. Coconut uses a Three Dog Night (from Mama Told Me Not To Come) sample and even a snippet of The Fabs' Flying for a woozy cover of the Harry Nilsson tune. It's probably the most 'faithful' of all three, but it maximizes the trippy aspect of the song. Brilliant.

The Dawn had a top-notch band for the sessions, but an MVP citation must go to guitarist Cameron Greider for the nice, jazzy solos and folkie strumming. Despite the record being a spiritual heir to the Native Tongues posse's output (if not musically), it was largely ignored. "Downtown Venus" had a very modest showing on the singles chart, but '95 was the year that Trent Reznor wanted to shag everyone like an animal, while wearing his crown of shit, upon his liar's chair. Smashing Pumpkins sang about bullets with butterfly wings and Rage Against The Machine were raging against machines. Gangsta rap was still flourishing and no-one wanted to listen to Be's questing gnosticism. The Dawn were in the company of The Orb and Spiritualized, whose '95 albums also received low-key praise (at least in the States).

P.M. Dawn disappeared again (aside from another one-off--the single Gotta Be..Movin' On Up) and surfaced in 1998 with Dearest Christian, I'm So Very Sorry I Brought You Here, Love Dad, their entry in the awkward long album title stakes. The tone went from sombre to near-despair and the music veered even further away from orthodox hip-hop. The hipster mafia 'were' probably correct...it's not necessarily hip-hop, but a trippy hybrid of R&B, psychedelia and ambient--in "Jesus Wept"'s style. They were quiet throughout the Noughties, with just the obligatory record-company stop-gap, The Best Of P.M. Dawn, released in 2000. A follow-up album, reportedly called P.M. Dawn Loves You, has yet to be released. Prince Be suffered a massive stroke in 2005, but still managed to appear on the U.S. teevee talent show, Hit Me Baby One More Time (which the Dawn won) and a tour of small clubs in 2006. Minutemix left the group after the TV show and their cousin, Dr. Giggles, joined up for the '06 tour. At the moment, Doc G. is the only active member of the group.

So while I wait for "P.M. Dawn Loves You", which may turn out to be another Smile or Get Back..or the follow-up to Loveless, I'll spin "Jesus Wept". It seems to be one of the definitive psychedelic hip-hop records to me..even if it 'is not' really that to others.

Never Liked Him That Much Anyway..

Mois de Nivose - Annee de la Republique 218

I suppose it must be me, 'cos thousands of critters really like the bloke, but I never really enjoyed Garrison Keillor's Prarie Home Companion radio show. I watched about an hour of the film (directed by Robert Altman!??!) one late night for about an hour, before I realised that I didn't give a shit about what was happening in it - I was that bored.

I never really liked that 'aw shucks/down-home' Midwest humour. I guess I appear to be a coastal-interlectural-snawb, but what can I say. If I don't find it funny, I don't find it funny...or endearing...or whatever. Sorry, hordes of Keillor-ites.

This op-ed piece* in a Baltimore (figures...) newspaper's website really made me cringe. I couldn't get my head around whether ol' Garry was joking, with a serious undertone--or if he actually meant the whole thing! Maybe both? The lame quips about Harvard 'geeks' and digs at Unitarians aside, what the fuck was that line referencing Jews writing X-Mas songs about?? I don't mean I don't literally know the meaning of it - I gather that Jewish song-writers have penned well-known Christmas tunes. I mean, was the guy joking, or does he seriously have a beef with Jews for 'messing about' with his sacred 'Christian' holiday (which, incidentally, was brought in by The Church to cover up all those narsty pagan solstice celebrations--it seems to me, anyway). Maybe Keillor should grow a small mustache and start goose-stepping around? O.K., that was harsh--but it seems to me he needs to lighten up. I don't want to think of him as a crypto-fascist, even though I'm not a fan of his.

So, I'm left with....Garrison Keillor: uber-twat? I'll leave it for you to ponder.

*Cheers to C-Dog for linking to the article at his blog.

Happy Bob-Mas!

21 Pausa - Year 1931

Three years already, since the great man headed off into the bardos and beyond - leaving his meat-suit behind. Hopefully, his fans will celebrate in some fashion. I'm stuck at my wage-slave confinement today, otherwise I would fire up my Maybe Logic DVD and soak up Bob's woids yet again.

Here's a (still relevant, unfortunately) thought from his website:

WAR AGAINST SOME TERRORISTS
7 Ways of Looking at a Monkey-House

September 29, 2001 e.v.

Just as the War Against Drugs would make some kind of sense if they honestly called it a War Against Some Drugs, I regard Dubya's current Kampf as a War Against Some Terrorists. I may remain wed to that horrid heresy until he bombs CIA headquarters in Langley.

I turned on CNN a few days ago and a White House robot announced that the rebels in Chechnya "were" no longer freedom fighters but "are" now terrorists with "clear" links to Osama bin Laden.

CNN provided no details about whether the transformation occured in a sudden miraculous flash like the transubstantiation of the host in a Catholic mass, or happened slowly and gradually like Darwinian evolution.

In a related bulletin, Russia pledged its support in the 'War Against Some Terrorists', and will presumably start with those bastards in Chechnya.

DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MIND: IT IS REALITY THAT IS MALFUNCTIONING

The plight of Bill Maher reminds me of something Ezra Pound wrote about London in 1919: "A single intelligent remark can destroy a man's entire career."

A friend in Israel just sent me an email quoting George Bush saying we should all go to Disneyland. It didn't surprise me. I kind of suspect George lives in Disneyland all the time, with Mickey and Goofy and Osama bin Laden and all the "faith-based organizations" in the world. As Voltaire said, "The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity."

Pfui.

Cold Snap - January 2010

Pungenday, Chaos 8, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3176

The Noughties Fade Away

29 Zeus - Year 88 p.s.U.

The first decade of the Gregorian millennium is wrapping up. It seems unreal...what's that line from the Floyd?: "And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you/No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun..."

Ten years ago I was sitting in a somewhat modest apartment in Manchester, CT. It was New Year's Eve and I was hoping that 'Y2K' bug would manifest itself in some form. The girl I was kinda/sorta seeing at the time had gone home and I sat in the darkness near midnght, looking out of the living room window--waiting for something to happen. Even just the streetlights shutting down for a few minutes. Nope. Nothing. So much for the big scare. That's how 2000 started for me...I didn't even party like it was 1999.

What's happened in the last ten years, in my view? I'll try to write a short summary...

• September 11, 2001/The War On Terror: It'll be a cultural touchstone for ages. Where were you when the planes hit the Trade Center? It also gave King George II carte-blanche to start a never-ending war...on terrorism. That's right--he actually thought he was going to 'git all them tererists'. Starting with that known Islamic fundamentalist, Saddam Hussein...leader of a secular Middle East gubberment. Now, I'm not saying Hussein was an innocent..far from it--but it seemed his ties to al-Qeada (who became the new threat--like the Russians were in the 1950s and early '60s) were fairly faint. That didn't stop ol' George and his cronies. It worked really well, too--as Iraq is now a peaceful, democratic place, full of contented citizens all praising the U.S. for their action. Soon, Afghanistan will be doing the same. That "War On Terror" was a great idea. Feel the sarcasm, George & Karl & Rummy & Dick & Condie & on and on...

• The Rise of "Z-lebrities": I'm not sure when this all started. Maybe it had it's seeds in the 70s or 80s. All I can observe is that one day, critters like Paris Hilton and Jodie Marsh were being feted for....well, not doing much at all. They were given television shows, perfume contracts, film roles, music deals, etc. Most of them seemed to have no particular talent, even when various secret (or not-so-secret) sex-tapes surfaced. I suspect maybe Charlie Brooker or Stewart Lee has already taken this topic on with more finesse, but hey, I can have a bash as well. I'm hoping most of them go away in the next ten years...or at the very least, get off of my Tee Vee and computer screens.


• Reality Shows: Urgh! They started out innocently enough, I suppose. Survivor...Big Brother. Then they were all over the shop--tons of 'em. I think some channels in the UK were nothing but 'reality programming'. The worst side-effect, to me anyway, were that these shows became breeding grounds for Z-lebrities, whose 'careers' were fed by magazines like Heat and Hello!. There seems to be hope, however, as the UK "Big Brother" may be cancelled, given that the last run had the lowest ratings for any of the series. I've definitely had all the 'reality-TV' I can take.
• The X-Factorisation Of Pop Music/Talent Shows: Yes, I know - the pop charts have always been a place where a slick producer with access to studio musicians and a gullible moppet can make a quick fortune off of a hit record. The past ten years, though, have been a boon to the charlatans (no, I don't mean the 60s psych band or the Madchester outfit). Simon Cowell has made more than a fortune with Pop Idol and it's more famous off-shoot, The X-Factor. He brought it to the States as American Idol and so on and so on. I realise I come off as a snob and I also realise there is a market for slickly-produced love songs for the teenage set--but really, some of this stuff just seems like dreck to me. A treadmill of one-hit wonders and disposable singers. It shows no signs of slowing, as Willy Wonka would say. Oh dear. Some bright spark also thought it would be nifty to have an 'X-Factor'-type show, but open it up to all kinds of fame-hungry critters with various talents..and so Britian's Got Talent was splattered all over the toob. Great--thanks for that.
• Global Warming: The bugbear that's divided critters of all stripes. Me, I don't know if it's really happening...but something seems to be happening. 'Is' it man-made, or the natural cycle of the planet? I don't know and I strongly suspect nobody else really does either. I try to ignore the zealots on either side of the debate and work out what I can from the information available. As my man Robert Anton Wilson used to say: "Don't trust your own belief-system 100% and don't trust anyone else's B.S. 100% either." I suspect more will be revealed in the next couple of years.
• 2012 Theories: As that year now looms on the horizon--the theories are heating up. Some bleak, death-trip scenarios about the Earth snuffing out humankind are abounding. Those seem to be mostly the domain of religious types and misanthropic cranks. Terence McKenna thought it would be an immense enlightenment, a massive concresence of 'novelty' bringing about an evolved humanity. I lean more toward McKenna's view, but again, I don't know what will happen. I try to remain as agnostic as possible about what may take place in December 2012.

But hey now - it's not all war and death and famine and AIDS. It seemed to me there were some good things in the past ten years, too:

• Music Files/Blogs: Don't ask me who it was (I can't be bothered to look it up), but some critter figured out how to turn music tracks into files. Not only could someone copy a CD (blank recordable CDs were a cool thing, too), but they could post it up on a page for others to download. Then Napster came along and headed up the whole 'peer-to-peer' network movement. The creators were forced to go legit and charge for tracks after a big court battle--but others sprung up in it's place. Another groovy development was the rise of music blogs, which showcase a lot of obscure, long out-of-print albums. Most of the albums were copied from LPs onto hard-drives, then converted to files. The only problem with that is, now there's almost too much music to listen to. I suppose some of those records are unknown precisely because they weren't good enough to make the wider muso conciousness. Still, if you want to hear some Hungarian progressive rock or Japanese art-punk, there's a blog out there for your perusal. Now, I don't condone down-loading albums that are still available or 'leaked' copies of new albums. I mainly stick to bootlegs and out-of-print stuff...support the artists when you can by actually buying the CD or files, especially directly from the artists's website.
• The Internet: Yep. That collection of servers, computers and satellite connections that lets me type this post out and you to read it. Pretty fascinating. Just over 10 years ago, I was pretty much an internet virgin. I had sent a few e-mails through a work e-mail address and checked a few sites out. Since then, I've posted on 4 blogs, I've got two personal e-mail addresses, signed up on several sites to purchase music and other stuff, and on and on. I mean, yeah, it seems the Internet has gobbled up a lot of my spare time, but I still wouldn't trade it in. I've been able to catch up with old school friends and read about subjects that would've taken me ages to track down in a library. No, this isn't an ad for anything - it just seemed to me that the Internet definitely changed a lot of the way critters view their worlds in the past decade.
• Humanity Gets Smarter: Er...actually, maybe I'll hold off on this one....

Heroes Who Checked Out: Robert Anton Wilson, George Harrison, Rick Wright, Syd Barrett, Arthur Lee, Paul Newman, George Carlin, Terence McKenna, Michael English, Alton Kelley, Joe Zawinul, Hugh Hopper, Philip Jose Farmer, Stanley Kubrick, Kirsty MacColl, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer...and to any others I may have forgotten, rest in peace!

The Solstice Arrives!

Kull-i-Shay 1 - 9 Vahid - Year Vahhab

Another winter has officially started--it definitely feels like it in Britain. The weathercritters predicted snowfall..and lo!...snow fell. We didn't get much, in our little area of the country. We did get plenty of ice on the pavements and frost on the grass.

Apparently, Rage Against The Machine have 'won' the..ahem..'coveted' No. 1 X-Mas spot on the UK charts, over yet another fresh-faced, scrubbed-down X-Factor winner. This year, it's a Geordie called Joe McElderry and his single is The Climb, a syrupy cover of a syrupy original, sung by the annoying Miley Cyrus (I watched her interview on Alan Carr's Chatty Man show--she does seem to be one of the most irritating critters I've witnessed in a long time...it does make me thankful I don't have children, so I don't have to watch her programme or listen to her music). A more-or-less 'grass roots' campaign started to knock McElderry out of the top spot by buying Rage's Killing In The Name (famous for it's "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" lyric), first released in 1994. This critter has some compelling arguments about why the Rage campaign seems an ultimate failure. While it would please me to see "X-Factor" mastermind Simon Cowell upset that his latest pop-by-numbers ballad hasn't dominated the charts, I strongly suspect he's not really bothered at all. The latest run of the show was the most popular by far and I doubt ITV will let it's main cash-cow disappear, despite Cowell's intimations that he may end it for good. A lot of folks have also remarked on RATM's contract with Sony Music, one of the corporate music giants. Ah the irony, fighting the corporatising of music by buying a song released by a corporate giant. "Killing In The Name" seems dated to me now - it's only known for the "Fuck You.." bit. The tune itself seems like generic 90s skate-metal - couldn't anyone have picked a better tune? I thought maybe Pink Floyd's Welcome To The Machine, which describes McElderry's fate almost perfectly, would be a better choice - but then EMI, another corporate giant, would get the money. Oh, I don't know - I don't really give a shit about the charts, so I'm going to stop thinking about it now.

It's also nearly X-Mas...thankfully! X-Mas season seems to go on too long now, especially since some retailers insist on getting the seasonal clobber out in the third week of October! I suppose I'm becoming more of a Scrooge as I grow older. I really can't stand most of the standard tunes (Walkin' In A Winter Wonderland, Jingle Bell Rock, Let It Snow (though I have to admire it's coy 'bad weather = seduction' ploy), etc, etc, ad infinitum..). I'm even tiring of some of the tunes I still kinda enjoy - like Wizzard's I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day and Slade's So Here It Is (Merry Christmas). I did make my own holiday mix a couple of years ago, entitled Have Yourself A Psychedelic Christmas...And A Progressive New Year, as an alternate to all the old warhorses. I think I might give it a spin. See, I'm not a complete Grinch. Remember, war is over....if you want it.

To my regular readers - I apologise for the lack of content this past Gregorian year. I blame Facebook, eBay, Amazon.co.uk and getting out of the house for actual activity. O.K., so the last one seems good to me...otherwise my eyes would've morphed into mini-computer monitors. The others have sucked away a lot of my 'free' time--though I did get some nifty stuff and got back in touch with a lot of old friends, so it appears not to be a total loss. I will attempt to do a bit more blogging in the new year, but I can't promise anything. Thanks for your visits, even if it was just once in a while, or maybe just once.

I'll close this post with some more greatness from Cassetteboy. This time he's taking on the putrid and repulsive Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP. Cassetteboy does a killer splice-n-dice job with Griffin's appearance on Question Time a couple of months back. It's not as belly-laugh funny as the Alan Sugar Apprentice remix, but it does what it's supposed to do--lampoon a racist twat. Check out Cassetteboy's blog, too. Enjoy.

The Beatles Never Broke Up!

10 Agrahayana - Year 1931

David Jay Brown posted a link to a site on Facebook a couple of days ago. The site's owner claims to have a 'lost' Beatles album in his possession. Not only that--he's claiming the cassette that the music is recorded on comes from a parallel universe, where the Fabs never broke up! Far out, you say? Too much, you say? Well, read the story...

A bloke calling himself 'James Richards' has set up a whole page relating to the story of how he acquired this tape...it seems that on September 9th, 2009 (the very day of the Beatles CD re-issues and Rock Band video game release), he tripped (hmmm...) in a 'rabbit hole' while chasing after his dog in the desert and was knocked unconcious. When he awoke, he was in a strange house and somehow could tell he was in a populated area when, before his fall, he was in an empty desert. A guy named 'Jonas' explained that he had saved James by opening a 'portal' near to where he fell...and grabbed his dog, too. They talked for a while, including about music. James noticed that Jonas had some Beatles albums..well, mostly on cassette. Jonas played him some Fabs stuff that James had never heard. James told Jonas how (in our universe) they had split in 1969. Jonas replied that they stayed together and continued to release albums in the 1970s and 80s. No word on whether they're still around in the parallel universe, however.

James asked Jonas to make him a copy of one of the albums, but Jonas adamantly refuses, stating that James cannot return to this universe with anything, including a cassette. Luckily, Jonas gets distracted by another visitor to his house, and James grabs one of the cassettes, called Everyday Chemistry. He shuffles the other tapes around, so Jonas won't cotton on that one of them is missing...for a little while, anyway. Enough time for he and his dog to be transported back by Jonas. James states that he's in fear of Jonas coming back for him, because of the blatant disregard of the warning James was given.

That's pretty much it--James goes into more detail on the site. Phew! Now, in my current mix of education and ignorance - James's story seems about 20% 'true' to me. I strongly suspect it's a really clever viral marketing campaign for one bloke's re-mixes-n-mash-ups of Fabs out-takes, band and solo. I haven't heard every Beatles out-take...hell, I've only heard maybe 10% of the 1969 Get Back sessions. I've listened to Over The Ocean so far (you can down-load individual tracks or the entire 'album' on the page) and while it does sound 'new' to me - honestly, it's a bit light on the lyrics..something that the three songwriters in the group never skimped on..at least in this universe.

I also wonder why James never bothered asking about Jimi Hendrix, or Jim Morrison, or Brian Jones or Janis Joplin...John Bonham...or Marc Bolan. Maybe they weren't fortunate in that parallel universe either.

Ah well, it seems to be akin to a UFO abduction story...guy alone in the desert has a mysterious experience which, with a lack of witnesses, no-one can fully prove or refute. I'll let you reach your own conclusions as to the veracity, or lack, of the story. James is happy to answer questions about the experience, as shown on the FAQ portion on the page--though I do notice that he kinda-sorta dodges direct queries about the tunes being re-mixes. At the very least, it shows that the Fabs' legend continues, even if their physical form disappeared, in the space-time we're accustomed to.

Return Of The Pot-Head Pixies - Gong: O2 Academy, Oxford - November 28, 2009

12.19.16.16.2 - Haab: 0 Mac/Tzolkin: 4 lk

Having not been to a live gig (not counting the Cropredy festival) in two years, I probably couldn't have picked a better one to attend than the re-formed Gong. That's right, the Alien Australian and most of the 'classic' line-up are back spreading the P.H.P. gospel, including Gilli Smyth, now 76! Amazing. Steve Hillage and his longtime partner Miquette Giraudy have re-joined the fold, as has Mike Howlett, who played bass on the awesome Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy albums. At the moment, Didier Malherbe has decided not to tour (though he does guest on the latest studio album, 2032), and Tim Blake, Gong's early-70s keyboard-player has also declined to join the latest incarnation. It still promised to be a great concert.

Pixie, myself and my muso-mate Will arrived at the O2, after dinner at Subway and a pre-show pint at the Cape Of Good Hope, with enough time to grab a beer at the bar and for Pixie to grab a Camembert Electrique T-shirt for me , as an X-Mas gift, before The Steve Hillage Band took the stage. I was surprised that there weren't any dedicated tour T-shirts, but never mind. Hillage was assisted by Giraudy, Howlett, Chris Taylor on drums and Theo Travis on sax and flute. They ran through a selection of tunes from Steve's 70s solo albums and a few instrumentals. Hillage proved he can still act the guitar hero and work the fret magic, even when playing one of those ugly Steinberger guitars. Giraudy churned out the spacey synth drones and Howlett and Taylor make a tight rhythm section. We were a bit back in the crowd, so we were able to watch both the band and the psychedelic graphics that were shown on the video screens behind the soundboard. The highlights of the set were a nice Hurdy Gurdy Man, covered on the 1976 album L and Salmon Song, from Hillage's solo debut, Fish Rising. They wound up their slot with a funky jam and came back out for a short encore.

After about a half-hour, the Radio Gnome intro. spilled out of the speakers, and the 2009 model Gong hit the stage. Hillage and crew started up a signature Gong-type riff and then Daevid Allen walked out, dressed as a wizard, to loud cheers. The beginning instrumental finished and they tore into an energized You Can't Kill Me. Gilli Smyth took to the stage during the tune, to more applause, and joined in with her patented 'space whisper' vocals. Digital Girl, from the "2032" album, followed...leading into Dynamite/I Am Your Animal, another rave-up from the group. Yoni Poem, a Smyth 'solo spot' followed, which led into Zero The Hero & The Witch's Spell (also known as Tic-Toc). Allen surprised me with his energy - he would swoop all over the stage, raise his arms in mystic gestures and occasionally grab a guitar and play some rhythm under Hillage's psychedelic lead riffs. Malherbe was missed, but Travis ably filled his shoes on a great version of Flute Salad/Oily Way (from the classic Angel's Egg record). Other peaks for me were a very trippy and very rockin' Master Builder, toward the end of the gig, which started with a slow version of the chant on the You album. They also played Wacky Baccy Banker, off of the new album - it's a kind of update on Kevin Ayers' Stranger In Blue Suede Shoes - I couldn't really hear the lyrics because of the muddy mix for the mics.

They played for two hours, including the encore--though Allen and especially Smyth, had to take a few breaks in the set--but hey, I hope I have as much life in me when I'm in my 70s. The encore was a sort-of improvised chant of "I Am You, You Are Me", while Hillage, Giraudy, Taylor and Travis played a spacey tune. The lights came on and the space dust settled. I had a great time and despite a few..erm...'over-enthusiastic' fans (read: nutters) weaving around the crowd, doing the tai-chi hippie dance and singing lyrics in punter's faces, it seemed to be an excellent gig to me. That's the thing with a band like Gong, though, you really have to expect a few nutters in the crowd. Ah well, they looked like they were enjoying themselves, so more power to 'em. If you get the chance to see the band on this tour, I would recommend you do so. In my view, they still manage to out-psychedelic a lot of the younger bands practising the genre. If you want to see the real deal before it's gone...get yer pointy hat on and get glidding!

Setlist (as much as I can remember):

The Steve Hillage Band:

Instrumental (?)

Hurdy Gurdy Man

Instrumental (?)

Hello Dawn

Aftaglid

Sea Nature

Salmon Song

encore:

Instrumental (?)

Gong:

Radio Gnome intro.

Portal

You Can't Kill Me

Digital Girl

Dynamite/I Am Your Animal

Witch Poem/Zero The Hero & The Witch's Spell

I Never Glid Before

Flute Solo/Flute Salad/Oily Way

Yoni Poem/Dance With The Pixies

Wacky Baccy Banker

IAO Chant/Master Builder

Guitar Zero/Jam/Selene

encore:

I Am You, You Are Me chant

Cinema Corner #309

25 Heshvn - Year 5770

Time for some thoughts on a couple of films:

The Boat That Rocked - I really really wanted to like this, despite it being directed by Richard Curtis, of such rom-com fare as Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill. You can see why I had some trepidations. But hey, Nick Frost is in the cast, and that won me over. Turns out it's not that great, though the film premise, based on one of the English 'pirate radio' ships in the 1960s, is an interesting one. I should say very loosely based, because there are lots of historical inaccuracies. At one point, Chris O'Dowd's character tells the main character, played by Charlie Rowe, to "think outside the box..pretend the box isn't there." Hmmm...now, I wasn't on the planet during the 60s, but I strongly suspect that counter-culture types weren't using lame late-1990s corporate-speak. In another scene, one of the DJs plays The Rolling Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash, to herald the return of another jockey who left the ship to 'find fame in the U.S.' I think the year the film was supposed to be set in was 1967 and seeing as "J.J.F." wasn't released until 1968 makes that another glaring error. The plot, such as it is, involves Rowe being invited to the boat by his godfather, played with his usual posh-ness by Bill Nighy. Apparently, Rowe's a bit of a wayward child, though he looks like a massive, soppy bookworm. Nighy's character has supposedly invited him aboard to keep him out of trouble...riiiiiiight. On a boat filled with proto-hippies with sex and drugs and rock-n-roll all over the shop. Of course, you never see any of that - well, a little bit of sex, but certainly no drugs. It transpires that Rowe has heard that his estranged father is on the boat and is looking to reunite with him. There's also a tired 'coming-of-age' story about him falling in love with Marianne, another godchild of Nighy's, but then her breaking his heart by shagging Nick Frost's character (they actually play Leonard Cohen's So Long, Marianne during the scene where he's all lovelorn - how cheesy is that?)--don't worry, true believers...they get back together at the end.

There's also "The Count", an American DJ, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (as usual, doing his best with a so-so script) and Gavin Cavanaugh, played by Rhys Ifans as a sort-of psychedelic Howard Stern, another anomaly for the 60s, who's keen to freak out the squares. Kenneth Brannagh plays a drab, humourless government official who's determined to shut down the pirates...with Jack Davenport playing "Mr. Twatt", his assistant. Yes, that gag does get old after about the fifth time Brannagh refers to him by his surname. Curtis does the good/evil thing to death - with the pirate DJs engaging in wacky antics and having colourful Hapshash posters tacked up all over the boat--while the government offices seem cold and grey and all the button-down officials dressed in black or grey all the time. I dunno, maybe London in the late 60s 'was' that polarised, but I suspect things weren't so much. Anyway, the posh kid finds his dad, gets the girl and they all live happily ever after...in the 60s created in Richard Curtis's mind. Oh yeah..the boat sinks. Oop, that's a big spoiler. Ah well, you weren't going to watch it, were you? Good.

2012 - You may have seen this in the past couple of weeks:

That's right. It's the new 'blockbuster' action/disaster film from the guy who directed Independence Day and some other CGI'd crapola. For those who have been following the 2012 meme for a while, you'll know that Terence McKenna had been talking about the 2012 phenomenon since the mid-1970s and even wrote a book about his "Timewave Zero" software and the Mayan calendar called The Invisible Landscape. He posited that 'novelty', or advancement in human critters' thinking would be so fast by December 2012 that a 'new age' would dawn. It would be the 'end of the world', but not really in a literal sense, more of a metaphysical one. James Joyce referred to it as "waking from the nightmare of history".

It seems that the meme was hijacked by various other groups, including some Christian eschatologists. They are taking the more literal translation - that there will be super-storms, floods, earthquakes and on and on. According to them, the world will end in December 2012. They use global warming and the various wars and unrest around the globe to lend credence to their theory. Enter Roland Emmerich and his film. Playing on these fears, he's concocted yet another 'the-humans-are-doomed-but-there's-a-glimmer-of-hope' scenario. He and his cronies started a viral marketing campaign with fake websites and teaser clips. One of the websites offered a lottery system, so visitors could win a place in the remainder of humanity, after the shit hit the fan. Nice way to stoke the hysteria.

I haven't seen the film, nor do I intend to. I actually sat through that Day After Tomorrow fiasco--not in the cinema, mind - just on the toob. I seriously wanted the two hours of my life back after it finished. I also sat through a rental of Deep Impact and wasn't impressed with that either. Sure, "2012" looks nice, with it's CGI depictions of Vatican domes collapsing and highways crumbling....hundred-foot high tsunamis crashing into beachfronts and skyscrapers being snapped like kindling. Mainly, it just seems like a monument to fatalistic thinking and the co-opting of yet another counter-culture meme by greed-heads. If you've seen it, I hope you had your money's worth. If you haven't - try not to give your money to these cretins. Fuck Roland Emmerich and his death-trip vision. As McKenna said: "I don't know what's going to happen..it may be that people just get a little smarter and legalise marijuana or something similar."

Edward Woodward: Sadly, the man has passed away. Aside from his brief stint on East Enders earlier this year, the last thing I saw him in is the hilarious Hot Fuzz. He was also in the decent 80s TV show The Equalizer and of course, the awesome Wicker Man....the original, not the shit re-make with Nicolas Cage. I also remember watching Breaker Morant on cable in the early 80s. I didn't understand the complexities of the Boer conflict, but I did think Woodward was brilliant. R.I.P. Edward - the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance won't be the same without you.

Kaleidophonic Stroboscope 2.0

12 Aban - Year 1388

I was recently checking out another podcast site--Harold's Attic Radio, in fact - and I was impressed by their site layout. They were set up on My Podcast and maybe became tired of M.P.'s limitations. I must say that their new set-up looks much better and with a lot more options.

I liked it so much that I decided to give it a go myself. H.A.R.'s main page uses WordPress - so I headed there to find out how to set a site up. W.P. advises getting a web host, but you don't really have to - you can set up a blog on it's own. I thought it would be kinda cool to have a domain name for the podcast. I chose the web host that W.P. recommends, BlueHost. It's fairly cheap for a year's cost (well, if you break it down monthly - though you have to pay for a year in advance). You get all kinds of features - the ones I might use would be the FTP and "Web Disk" storage feature.

I set up a page using WordPress and chose a groovy template (much, much more choice than My yPodcast offers..). I hit a massive snag, though...in that I couldn't figure out how to load my shows through W.P. The memory allowance is quite small and the allowance through BlueHost isn't much better, which seems annoying to me--especially after forking over some coin of the realm for the host priviledges. I was about the ask the H.A.R. crew how they got around that...when I found Podcast Machine. You can upload your episodes there - then just copy the HTML code for their player and add that to your post in WordPress...fairly painless. You do have to do that for each episode you create, but it does only take a minute.

For all that, I give you the new (and hopefully improved) version of The Kaleidophonic Stroboscope! I'm adding the remaining epsiodes from the MyPodcast site in the next couple of weeks and then I'll work on a brand-new one. I'm going to try and tweak the template a bit, too, as well as add a few more widgets. Let me know what you think.

Season Sickness/Visually Enhanced

28 Asvina - Year 1931 (Saka Era)

Urgh. My first cold of the year. I've been really good the past 10 months avoiding various flus and bugs. I suppose I had to ingest at least one airborne virus sooner or later. I ended up calling out of work for three days last week. It's one of those head colds...plugged-up sinuses, mild fever and achy muscles. I feel a bit better now, but I'm still not fully recovered. I did manage to drag myself back to work this week, like the good little wage-slave that I am. Ah well, hopefully this means that I've paid my illness dues for another year.


I was trawling eBay looking for LPs, when I thought I would check for some vintage psychedelic posters from the late 60s. I was specifically looking for art from the UK psych scene, particularly from Hapshash and The Coloured Coat and Martin Sharp. To my amazement, there are some available - though mostly cheaper reprints of the 60s originals. I tried a Google search and found a few independent art dealers with small stocks of 1st printings. I warn you, though, if you're in the market for a copy, they're not cheap. A first printing of Hapshash's Pink Floyd/CIA v UFO poster in excellent condition will cost you about £300 and a near-mint copy of Sharp's Donovan metallic poster are going for around the £400/£500 mark. The rarer Hapshash posters, like the one for the Fifth Dimension club in Leicester, or the UFO Coming poster, may go for even more dosh now. Hapshash also created a couple of posters for OZ Magazine - one called Catherine and The Wheel Of Fire (pictured above) and one called Position 69. I managed to get my hands on a copy of the "Catherine.." poster by buying (not cheaply) an original OZ issue off of eBay. It's in good shape...a bit creased here and there, but the colour is still intact. I'm going to have it archive-framed at some point.

I only just discovered now that Michael English, half of Hapshash, passed away on 25th September of cancer--a loss of a great artist. A website is dedicated to his artwork over the years - though, curiously, it doesn't mention his death. You can purchase his 1970s posters, usually mundane objects air-brushed in amazing detail, for fairly decent prices on eBay and elsewhere on the web. I've ordered used copies of both of English's books, 3-D Eye and Anatomy Of Illusion. His partner in the collective, Nigel Waymouth, is still on the planet and also has a site. Waymouth is selling reprints of the more famous Hapshash posters, but I haven't e-mailed him to ask about prices.

Besides Hapshash and Sharp - the Dutch collective The Fool were psychedelicizing art in the UK in the late 60s. They were responsible for the (in)famous mural on the exterior of The Beatles' Apple boutique in London - as well as Eric Clapton's trippy Gibson SG guitar (he played it while a member of Cream) and Procol Harum's 1967 stage clothes. They also designed part of the set of Wonderwall, Joe Massot's groovy 'Swingin' 60s' film, starring Jane Birkin and featuring a soundtrack by George Harrison--and even appeared in a party scene. The Fool weren't quite as prolific as the others in poster creation, but the few they did publish seem to be quite excellent to me. The A Is For Apple poster is probably the most well-known. You can buy a reprint from the official Beatles on-line shop for a modest price (originals fetch about £250-£300 now). I bought one and it's quite good. It's a digital scan, so the colours probably aren't quite as bright as on a vintage '67 printing. They're printed on heavier card stock, rather than thin poster paper, so they're sturdy.

When The Fool split in 1970, Barry Finch and Josje Leeger moved to Amsterdam and are still together, though I don't know if they still create artwork. Marijke Koger, one of the original members (Barry and Josje joined after the others moved to London), moved to America, got hitched and still creates paintings and prints. She too has her own website, where you can buy original paintings (pretty costly) or reprints of some of her 60s poster designs. The reprints are giclees, but the quality seems to be good. I can't give a first-hand assessment, because I haven't purchased any at the moment. Simon Posthuma, also one of the Fool founders, moved back to Holland and also has a site, but there doesn't appear to be anything for sale.

There's a few other notables from the English psychedelic art scene. Alan Aldridge, who created drawings for The Beatles and illustrations for various magazines. Mike McInnerney, the cover artist for The Who's Tommy album (see the link for the details of his "Tommy" artwork) and several Oz and International Times issues. He doesn't have a website or even a Wikipedia page, so I'm not sure what he's up to these days--keeping a low profile, certainly. John Hurford also contributed to Oz and created a few gig posters, of which originals are pretty much impossible to find now. There is a book available covering most of his late 60s and early 70s work, as well as his creations to the present.

American psychedelic posters seem to be all the rage at the moment, too. I'll cover the U.S. scene in another post. If you've got any Hapshash or Sharp art you want to sell, give me a shout.

The Reign Of The Crimson King

13 Tishri - Year 5770

Along with other many other landmark albums reaching their 40th anniversaries this year (Abbey Road, Let It Bleed & Aoxomoxoa, to name just a few), is King Crimson's debut. In The Court Of The Crimson King is often called the first true expression of the genre that would subsequently be called "progressive rock" or "art-rock". Prog-rock, which started as a mainly English phenomenon, was melded together from psychedelia, European classical strains and even a bit of outre jazz. The idea was to subvert the usual three-minute constraints of a pop chart single, which had already been stretched and even broken by psychedelic music - but progressive bands continued the experimentation. Adding in virtuoso performances, themed poetic/fantasy lyrics and multi-part suites (that sometimes took up entire album sides)..prog-rockers hoped to make rock-and-roll as legitimate an art form as jazz, classical..or even folk and blues. They seemed to see Blonde On Blonde, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn as standard-bearers for a new kind of rock, only one that didn't really have a name at the time.

The band that recorded "In The Court..." consisted of a few chancers from the Bournemouth area, a woodwind player they met, and a good-looking young bass player from Poole. Most of them were barely out of their teens. Robert Fripp, the guitar player, Michael Giles, the drummer and Peter Giles, bassist - had recorded one album as Giles, Giles & Fripp, which was released to some underground acclaim in 1968. Peter was replaced by Greg Lake (out of psych outfit The Gods) and Ian McDonald joined the band, playing keyboards and wind instruments. They practised hard and gigged for six months, then entered Wessex Sound Studios for about ten days between June and August 1969. They were originally to be produced by Tony Clarke, who had guided The Moody Blues through their psychedelic excursions on In Search Of The Lost Chord and On The Threshold Of A Dream. The sessions with Clarke broke down and the boys were essentially left alone to produce themselves (rumour has it that Lake did most of the production work himself).

A friend of Fripp's, Barry Godber, painted the striking images that would become the album artwork. Sadly, he passed away some months after the album's release. The screaming face on the front is said to be "The 21st Century Schizoid Man" and the smiling face on the inside of the gatefold sleeve is either referred to as "The Wizard" or "The Crimson King". Gatefold sleeves became de rigeur after "Sgt. Pepper.." and especially for progressive rock albums after "In The Court.." was released.

The band had already previewed the material in their live sets. They had a short residency at the Marquee Club in London and they had also been one of the support acts for The Rolling Stones' free concert at Hyde Park in July 1969 (along with Third Ear Band, Family, Battered Ornaments and a few others). Their set was fairly short, but they managed to wow the crowd with their alchemic blend of styles. "In The Court.." was released by Island Records in October 1969. The band began to fragment soon after an American tour, which soured McDonald and Giles on the prospect of long-term touring. The original line-up split at the end of 1969, leaving Fripp to continue on with the K.C. name. He offered to leave, instead of Giles and McDonald, but they both agreed the group was "more his than theirs". Lake also left, to join The Nice keyboardist Keith Emerson and Crazy World Of Arthur Brown/Atomic Rooster drummer Carl Palmer to form prog 'supergroup' Emerson, Lake & Palmer, in 1970. He did agree to help out on the follow-up to "In The Court..", In The Wake Of Poseidon.

The music? If you've never heard the album..the tunes range from the near-heavy rock of 21st Century Schizoid Man to the gentle balladry of I Talk To The Wind to the kitchen-sink prog of the title track. The important thing to remember about this record, it seems to me, is that it's a true band effort--contrary to the belief that Crimso was Fripp's band from the very start. Lake's vocals, McDonald's exemplary flute and sax-playing and Giles's almost martial drumming all contribute to the tunes. Peter Sinfield, the band's lyricist and light-show operator, provided some complimentary baroque and mock-profound words for Lake to sing. Fripp himself proved a wonder, if a little unsteady, on his trusty Gibson six-string. He became a new sort of guitar-hero - the understated egghead. Contrast him with Jimmy Page, Alvin Lee, Hendrix, etc. and his unwillingness to strut and act the showman is miles away from the others. His playing relies little on the blues roots of most other rock guitarists of the day and even when he attempts some jazzy noodling in the center section of Moonchild, it doesn't sound like what one would expect as 'jazz'.

In a live setting, the band were even more of a monster, with "21st Century Schizoid Man" sounding ever more sinister than the studio version..and yes, they were able to do all of the stop/start rhythms. If you haven't heard any of the shows from 1969, check out the Epitaph set, released in the late 90s. There's also a Collector's Club disc, which features one of their Marquee sets from July 1969.

After "In The Wake..", Fripp really did become Crimson's guiding force, with an ever-changing line-up helping him to release records at the vanguard of prog-rock. The 1973-1974 line-up of Fripp, Bill Bruford (ex-Yes), John Wetton (ex-Family and Mogul Thrash) and David Cross nearly matched the 1969 roster for brilliance, especially on the Larks Tongues In Aspic album. Fripp finally split Crimson for good early in 1975 and went into session work for the likes of David Bowie and Brian Eno. He reformed Crimson in the early 1980s and then again in the mid-1990s, while balancing those incarnations of the band with a solo career. The future of King Crimson is unknown, but there may be one more reformation. I don't think it will be of the 1969 vintage, though. That one's left to the recordings and the memories of the band members and the audiences who were lucky enough to be there.

Discipline Global Mobile, Fripp's label that he set up in the early 1990s, are commemerating "In The Court.."s anniversary with a 2-CD set, a CD & DVD-A set and a massive boxed set, with 5 CDs and a DVD-A. The boxed set is rumoured to be packaged in a 12"X12" case...pretty much LP-sized--like Mike Oldfield's Ultimate Tubular Bells set, released earlier this year. You can find the details of the various versions here. I think I'm going to go for the box, myself. Steven Wilson, of Porcupine Tree, helped R.F. with the re-mixing. There's also re-issues of Red and Lizard soon to be available..and the rest of the 70s Crimson albums should be re-issued in the coming months. Summon back the firewitch, it's time to hang out in the court of the Crimson King again!

Happy Autumn, All!

1 Shawwal - Year 1430

Wogan Walks/Ursa Psychedelica

18 Shahrviar - Year 1388

The morning impresario of Radio 2, Sir Terry Wogan, is hanging up his mic soon. Radio 2 has reported that Chris Evans will be taking his morning-show spot. Evans does annoy me a bit - I dunno, maybe he tries too hard to be "zany". I will kinda miss hearing Wogan waffle on about TV shows and performing those horrible skits with the rest of his crew. In honour of 'Sir Terry', here's a vid of the excellent Peter Serafinowicz parodying Wogan and portraying him as a mellow stoner. If only...



I've started reading The Brotherhood Of Eternal Love, by Stewart Tendler. The Brotherhood were a cabal of psychedelics dealers whose idealistic (if somewhat naive) goal was to turn on as many critters as possible. In their view, the more folks who had been 'experienced', the more peaceful the planet would become. The book seems pretty good to me so far--it's quite a task to try and weave all of the various threads of the story together.

One of the main protagonists in the first half of the book is none other than the chief 'Acid Chemist' himself, Augustus Owsley Stanley III. Owsley's name was synonymous with good-quality LSD in the late 60s. He made a lot of money cooking up batches of psychedelics, of which a lot was spent supporting The Grateful Dead and other projects throughout California. Stanley's nickname was (is) "The Bear" and his acid-operation was called Bear Research Group. He made many recordings of The Dead, amongst other S.F. psych bands. Some were even released as legitimate albums, the most famous being Bear's Choice. I especially like the 'three-eyed bear' graphic on the back cover of the LP (er..at least that's what it looks like to me). I hadn't heard anything about ol' Owsley lately and I thought maybe he wasn't on the planet anymore. I did a search and yep, he's still around. He's even got his own website, where he sells his art pieces. The site's pretty low-tech, but he explains why on the face page. Apparently, he moved to Australia in the early 80s and pretty much stayed there. He does make occasional visits to the U.S., as shown in this 2007 article.

He's survived throat cancer and most of his 60s contemporaries...Leary, Kesey, Garcia..the list goes on. He even survived most of his 'enemies', too..Nixon, Reagan..maybe even ol' Neal Purcell, the Laguna Beach cop who busted Leary in 1968, which led to Tim's conviction and prison sentence. At 74, "Bear" is alive and fairly well and still convinced that psychedelics can benefit the human species. More power to him, I say.

Now back to the book...

September un-Furls

13 Elul - Year 5769

"Summer was gone and the heat died down...and Autumn reached for her golden
crown" --Nick Drake

The ninth month of Gregorian calendar year 2009 has arrived. Another British summertime has passed. Ah well, it was a bit nicer than last year. We had a good camping trip in Dorset and a decent Cropredy. We had less rain this summer, or maybe it just seemed that way.

Pixie and I spent the August Bank Holiday taking walks, looking after Smudge, a silver Siberian cat who belongs to a co-worker. He was staying with us for the past couple of weeks, while she and her family were on holiday. We also visited Slimbridge, a wetlands preserve featuring many species of waterfoul and even an indoor display of amphibians. The entrance fee seems a bit pricey, but the place is quite large, so you do get your money's worth. The park is set up by areas of the world and you walk down the path and observe the birds. Photos are allowed and some of the birds are tame enough to approach the path.

I never realised how many different species of duck exist, having only seen mallards. I attempted to hand-feed some geese--I succeeded with one and was bitten by another..ah well. There are three types of flamingo at the park and they are the major attraction. It's interesting to know that their colouring derives from the food they eat, not from any natural pigmentation. That nice man Stephen Fry said so on QI and that's good enough for me.

Pixie's parents held a barbeque at their place on Bank Holiday Monday. At first it seemed like it would be an indoor affair, as dark clouds were overhead most of the day. The sun finally managed to burn through in the late afternoon, so we all basked for awhile, full of good food and lager (well, I was full of lager anyway). The neices are all growing so fast - soon they'll be taller than I am. Two of them decided it would be fun to round up the caterpillars who're munching on the brussels sprout plants. They loaded up five or six plastic cups full of the critters. Their intention of keeping the caterpillars at their house was kiboshed, so Pixie and I led an expedition to a nearby field to let the crawlies go.

We had both booked Tuesday off, for an extra long weekend. We didn't do much, other than clean the house (and vacuum up all the cat fur). I did buy an original stereo pressing of The Fab's Sgt Pepper LP off of eBay. It weren't cheap, but it does have The Fool's groovy red-and-white inner sleeve (which was short-listed for the album cover at one point) and the "Pepper" cut-outs. I seriously am turning into a bit of a vinyl snob. I'm looking for original pressings or specific labels (Island's pink "i" label, "Deramic Sound System", Vertigo "swirl", etc.) and for the record to be in fairly good condition. I did make an exception for a copy of Van Der Graaf Generator's The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other. The record isn't in great shape - but the label is the original Charisma pink scroll design, so I can live with it.

Speaking of the Fabs, the re-issues are due out next week! I've pre-ordered Revolver, "Sgt. Pepper.." & Abbey Road - my three faves. I'll order The White Album and Rubber Soul next--then get the rest eventually. I've avoided the box sets - though I might splash out for the mono set at some point.

Here we go....easing into Autumn.

Cropredy Capers 2009

27 Sravana - Year 1931

It can't be the 18th of August already?? What have I been doing? Well, last weekend, Pixie and I were at the Cropredy Festival. Since we missed it last year, we thought we'd amble on down there (plus, Green Man seemed too expensive and too far of a drive - it's boasting an incredible line-up, though). Here's my breakdown, day by day:

Thursday, 13th August - We decided to leave extra early this year, as Fairport had asked festival-goers to travel via the M40, instead of driving through the village, to ease congestion. We were also hoping to be placed in a field closer to the stage. We arrived at 10:30 a.m. to find that all the fields were filled, except for the ones we've usually camped in. WTF??! It took about an hour and a half to set up the tent and move our gear from the car to inside the tent. After that, we had a quick stroll around the village. I found a bloke selling vinyl near the SPAR shop, so I had a quick look-see. Talking Elephant Records had their usual stall set up as well, though it was much smaller this year. The wristband marquee had virtually no queue (one of the advantages of arriving so early), so we exchanged our tickets for 'bands and entered the stage area. Starting off the afternoon was Harlequinn, a local girl-band - a proper one though, not a Girls Aloud/Sugababes clone. They were O.K., a bit emo for my liking. They played well and did a decent cover of Michael Jackson's Beat It (minus the Eddie Van Halen pyrotechnic git-tar solo). We missed some of 4Square's set - I thought they were alright as well...good players, but sorta kinda 'heard-it-before'. Still, they were reprazentin' da folk yoof. Ken Nicol (of Steeleye Span--no relation to Fairport's Simon Nicol) and Phil Cool (old comedian-type bloke) were up after and while Nicol is a good guitarist, his songs seemed kinda average to me. Cool does a decent job mimicking Rolf Harris, Paul McCartney and a few others - but to me, their set was the low point of the day. Buzzcocks stormed on-stage with Pete Shelley shouting "Let's get some punk rock in this fuckin' place!" and they tore through their set, no pauses, no banter, no nothin'. Shelley and Steve Diggle had more energy than Pixie and I did. Pretty good for a couple of grizzled 50-something punk-rockers. I suppose it helps having a younger rhythm section to keep them on pace. They played nearly all the "hits" (What Do I Get?, Orgasm Addict, Ever Fallen In Love..., etc.) and a few of off their newest record. Steve Winwood headlined and while it was good to see a legend still treading the boards...the pacing of his set could've used a little oomph. Winwood opened with a decent I'm A Man, but then it went sorta languid and mellow. He and the band ran through a few off of the Nine Lives album and a slowed-down Can't Find My Way Home (the Blind Faith 'hit'). Carefully avoiding his 1980s chart-fodder albums, ol' Stevie cranked out Traffic classics like Pearly Queen and Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys. The inevitable closers Dear Mr. Fantasy and Gimme Some Lovin' had the crowd going, but I was slightly disappointed by his set overall. Back to the tent and a night of rough sleep, only to find we had been invaded by these aphid-looking brown insects. Spent about a half-hour clearing out as many as possible.

Friday, 14th August - We decided to head into the village after breakfast, for a bit of shopping and supply-gathering (bug spray, etc.). I bought a couple of LPs off of the bloke by the SPAR shop (Gordon Giltrap's Visionary and Neil's Heavy Concept Album (a.k.a. Nigel Planer - who played hippie Neil on The Young Ones)). A shower was in order after clearing the tent of insects (again!) - this year, we had a shower block in the field where we pitched, which was very convenient. By the time we reached the stage area, ColvinQuarmby had finished, so I can't give you a review of their set. I did hear a couple of songs by Megan & Joe Henwood. Megan has a nice voice, but the songs I heard were just alright - maybe I wasn't listening close enough (I was wending my way through the crowd to get to the T-shirt tent). They did have an all-star backing band, though, including Barriemore Barlow (from the classic 70s line-up of Jethro Tull). 'New folkie-songwriter sensation' Scott Matthews followed. I dunno, maybe his slot wasn't the best for his sound, but I didn't really get into his tunes. Too melancholy for the afternoon in an outdoor setting, or summat. I mostly tried to doze during his set. Adrian Edmondson (speaking of "Young Ones" alumni) took the stage with his Bad Shepherds band-mates (including another old Tull-ster, Maartin Allcock). They play trad/Celtic folk versions of 70s punk & post-punk tunes. It sounds kinda naff on paper, but live it sounds pretty good. We were treated to covers of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, I Fought The Law, Kraftwerk's The Model and The Talking Heads' Once In A Lifetime. They also sang an acapella cover of the English folk tune, famously recorded by Steeleye Span, All Around My Hat. They added a 'punk rock' change in the lyrics. You can see it here. I really enjoyed their set. Up next was The Dodge Brothers, featuring an American guy who looks a bit like Hunter S. Thompson and the quiffed doofus from the Culture Show, Mark Kermode. They play skiffle and sorta jump blues-y stuff. I have to hand it to Kermode--he's actually a decent upright bass-player and he's not too shabby on harmonica, either. The band are O.K., but there's only so much skiffle I can dig before it all starts sounding alike. We headed back to the tent for more lager and our camping chairs and by the time we returned, the John Jorgensen Band were into their set. Jorgensen's a flash guitarist from the ol' skool, so there was plenty of high-speed soloing (including the obligatory finger-tapping). He's a technically gifted player and he wrangled some interesting sounds out of his axe--but again, I couldn't help thinking that I'd heard it all before. His tunes seemed run-of-the-mill blooz-rockers to me and the instrumentals weren't really enough to keep my attention focused. Richard Thompson bounded out on-stage after Jorgensen..and really, what can I say. The man was up to his usual excellence. The surprises in the set were a nice Genesis Hall, which RT dedicated to Sandy Denny. He also played The Sun Never Shines On The Poor, from the Hokey Pokey album. The closers were, of course, Wall Of Death and A Heart Needs A Home, sung with female accompaniment. I didn't catch the singer's name, though - but most of the time - they'll make me miss Linda Thompson's vocals. Back to the tent again...but less insects to shoo away this time.

Saturday, 15th August - We both slept a bit better than the previous night, though the sky looked fairly ominous, with dark clouds approaching fast, when we woke up. Pixie suggested we pack up early, as she wanted to get home that night, which meant missing out on Fairport's set. I wasn't that bothered, having seen them a few other times at Cropredy. The only highlight this year was that Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) would be joining them on-stage for a mini-set...and RT would probably join up for a few tunes as well. We're cat-sitting for a co-worker this week and it would've been too hectic to get home Sunday morning, un-pack everything and tidy up the house for our guest. We ate, then got everything together fairly quickly. There was a car boot sale at the Cropredy F.C. ground and I was hoping to score some good (and hopefully cheap-ish) LPs. I wasn't disappointed (only by the lack of cash to buy more..heh heh). I found a couple of Steve Miller LPs for a couple of pounds each. Another table had some excellent stuff, though a bit pricey (between £7 and £10 per record) - I ended up buying Quintessence's first album, In Blissful Company, Fripp & Eno's No Pussyfooting and the Philips issue of Van Der Graaf Generator's H To He, Who Am The Only One. Nice! I also found a beat-up copy of the Hair original stage show LP, ELP's Tarkus and a near-mint copy of Tangerine Dream's Force Majeure--plus, an original In Search Of The Lost Chord by The Moody Blues. A very good haul, I'd say. Back at the stage field, Richard Digance was on--luckily, he was nearly done with his set. He seems a bit too trad and jokey-but-not-funny, to me. The Churchfitters were on after and while they were lively, the stock Irish rhythms they played got same-y toward the end of their appearance. Pixie wanted to watch Feast Of Fiddles and I quite like them myself. I was wandering around the field, looking for a T-shirt stall--where I spotted a groovy 'Green Man' tie-dye, so I wasn't paying rapt attention--but I do remember them playing a fine Battle Of The Somme. Always good to see Fairport veteran Dave Mattacks on the drum stool, too. Dreadzone were up next. I had only vaguely heard of them and had never seen them live. To me, they played one of the better sets of the entire festival. Their mixture of sampling, dub, techno & reggae got the crowd moving, even in the intense heat. The folk purists probably turned their noses up, but I really enjoyed it. I'm thinking on buying a few of their albums. We had to leave just then, but we did stay for a tiny bit of Nik Kershaw's set. Yep, the 80s-popster played a half-acoustic/half-electric show. Chris Leslie of Fairport has confessed to being a fan of Kershaw's. The stuff we heard was just O.K., but then I was never really into his music. I give him credit for showing up and not being overly embarrassed by his back catalogue. We made our way to the car, stowed our camping chairs and the rest of the things we had with us and made our way home.

Afterward: By all accounts, Fairport played a blinder and the mini-set featuring Yusuf was excellent. D'oh. Ah well, what can you do? There were reports of trouble in Fields 1 and 2 over the weekend...mostly groups of drunken teenagers. We didn't see any of that and all was relatively quiet in our field. All in all, another enjoyable Cropredy. If we don't end up trying our hands at Green Man next year, I'm sure we'll be back there.