Longtime Book Companion and Insect Music

During a break from the project today I was flicking through The Visual Encylopedia of Science Fiction, which I've had for 35 years (christ! age reality jolt). To think, it may contain traces of fingerprints from a past when Punk Rock looked like an apocalyptic sci-fi end-of-the-world scenario (if you read The Daily Mail, anyway). It's been with me moving into and out of several flats, dating countless (ha!) girlfriends...you know, adult life. It's a great survey, featuring thematic chapters with essays by top writers. More than that, it's become a close friend, the way books that have travelled so far down the dusty road of life with you do.

                                                                                                                                            

I was looking at the pictures on p88, one of which is a b&w reproduction of this... 

...when a track came on via shuffle that caught my ear, which turned out to be from Graeme Revell's album, The Insect Musicians - spooky, yes? I thought so. Being in 'Songs' mode, I searched insect, for a larf, and got:

Insect Prospectus - Belbury Poly
Insect's World - Edouard Scotto
Interstellar Insect - Joel Vandroogenbroeck
Hynteisist About Insects - Pan Sonic
Insect Friends Of Allah - Richard H. Kirk

All 4-star tracks on my personal Media Player rating scale. There are no 5s which, thinking about it, is kind of weird. Don't I own one perfect track? Of course I do, but something in me back when I started rating tracks said 'Don't rate any 5 out of 5!'' for some unfathomable reason, as if I don't believe in musical perfection despite Ennio, Egisto, Coltrane, Bird, Pierre Henry etc. If they're not 5-star, I don't know who is...

So, insects, and no Adam Ant here, although the search isn't clever enough to pick up definitions, funnily enough. If it was, I could type in 'Sex' and get 23 Skidoo's 'Porno Base'. As it is, searching 'Sex' turns up one 4-star tune, Kreng's 'Na de Sex', and the Peter Wyngarde album, amongst others. Only in the wonderful modern world of file-searching could Wyngarde sit with Kreng.

Mimmo Rotella Décollage - Early Works

For years I wondered what Bill Stickers was going to be prosecuted for. Ha-ha.

Back when, in Italy at least, the bill poster was a wonderful addition to the theatre of the street, Mimmo Rotella ripped and re-pasted Pop imagery. To me they appear both nihilistic and devotional. 

These pieces are from the book, Early Works 1954-1967.

Il grande circo 1963

Stop 1963

Il muro de Berlino 1962

A minuit 1962

Una pelliccia di visone 1958

Untitled 1958

'One thing is the laceration I make in the street, when the poster appears to me as one of the highest moments in nature, and another is the laceration I make in my studios: the latter pertains to an order which is not merely natural but responds to my necessity of vision and of creation of something that must be, even as a "ready made," a metaphor of the world.'

Misc: Not the End of Book-Buying, Andy Stott, Flamenco

Keywords:
Half-cut tinned rice detuning emotion
Synchronised alphanumerical nuclear washing-machine
Electric collie dog hand-wringing speculation
Bug powder aftershave

(these will help attract visitors, so I was told, although he may have been joking)

*** 

Got home to find a package from Amazon which LJ had scrawled on - cheeky moo. Funny thing was that it contained This is Not the End of the Book by Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière. Or in my case, This is Not the End of the Book-Buying - ha! A wonderful read, which basically consists of two clever dicks discussing all things pertaining to literature and the book. Highly recommended.

***

Ode To Andy Stott

The recording artist called Andy Stott

Is someone I've never quite got,

His music is praised as if it's amazing,

But to these ears it really is not.

(Philip Larkin, eat your heart out)

His latest album, the name of which escapes me and I'm not looking it up, garnered more praise, but all I heard was what sounded like slowed-down D&B, a bit of droning, but not enough, and some bird singing indecipherable minimalist words wistfully. Bah!

(I don't usually bother with negative reviews, as you know, being one of the five regular readers, but since this is a casual, chatty grab bag of miscellany, I couldn't resist it)

***

Bought this last week for £1.50 (what do you mean, I was ripped off) - just the kind of gem in mint condition that I like to add to the vinyl collection. Since we went to Seville we've seen flamenco in a new light and every click, stamp, strum and song takes us back to walking the narrow streets of the old town in search of this amazing musical experience. The trouble was that the Spanish night-life starts at midnight, by which time us middle-aged Brits reckon to be tucked up in bed with good books. Still, we did find flamenco.

Recently I found the clip below, which despite being from a Z-Movie (I suspect) contains a stunning dance. 

 TTFN

The Big Smear - W. Howard Baker (1962)

Long-running detective Sexton Blake swings into the 60s here from the pen of  W. Howard Baker, who revived Blake in 1956. I posted from a collection of earlier Blake stories here, not that I've got a thing about the character, just vintage detectives, you understand. Howard had a knack for snappy titles, as you can see here. Anyone who calls a story Dark Mambo is all right with me. I've posted the cover to that below, culled from the Net.

Monoton - Monotonprodukt 7 (Desire Records)

30 years old, reissued on vinyl by Desire Records, this is 'one of electronic music's most important albums' according to Fact (click link for interview with Konrad Becker).

You can tell what all the fuss is about. It's aged better than most modern electronic produkts will, that's for sure. Yes, it got that motorik feel on the first track; an insistent rhythm which despite lasting 9mins seems to whizz you along the M4 of the mind in no time. It's not complex music, but has that something, a tone that runs throughout, a limited palette  perhaps, but hey, if it works...

'Tongogle' exemplifies what's right about this record. Here all kinds of roots can be heard, made (80s) modern, and timeless thanks to it's minimal drive. OK, you can here similar rhythms all over Tangerine Dream albums, but boiled down to this, at 5.09, the effect is very different. Instead of imagining hundreds of hippies cross-legged and bombed out of their brains, we see spacecraft zooming above the raised roads of a futurist city as depicted in the golden age of sci-fi illustration - well I do anyway.

Becker's vocals (mimimalist) expressing single phrases, the meaning of which are incomprehensible to these ears, yet that's irrelevant. I know he's saying 'Starship No. 9 due to leave', or 'android attack imminent', or simply citing a mathematical equation describing the properties of a black hole.

If the past is discernible, so to is the Future as written in the annals of the Detroit Moog cookbook, or Berlin's brutalist sonic architecture. It's a blueprint for much of what would come in the form of similar rhythms with added industrial dancefloor wallop. On 'Singsang', Becker reaches even further back in time to reinterpret the pioneering work of spooked outer space specialists such as Louis and Bebe Barron.

  

How To Write A Novel In 3 Days

Yes, exclusive to Include Me Out readers, here is your guide to writing a novel in three days. That's right, just three days, and those need not be filled with work. In fact, most of the time can be spent on Facebook, watching DVDs, downloading music, sleeping, drinking coffee, eating chocolate; in other words, the things you really love doing. But I guarantee that once you apply this method, you will love writing equally as much. Note that when the introduction mentions momentum over the course of a month, that means the momentum to create at least eight amazing works of fiction. 

Ignore the old-fashioned term 'novel' because that is used ironically. You may call it a 'novel' if you wish, however, just to confound those with old-fashioned ideas of what a novel should be.

So what are you waiting for, start rearranging somebody else's pages today!

The original text

A Handy Guide

Another Expert

Am I Posh? Class And Culture; A Case Of Mistaken Identity

Am I posh? Yesterday a workman came in to fix the tap. He'd interrupted LJ's piano-playing (Debussy's Arabesque, 'cause she's exhausted the Chas 'n' Dave songbook), which she went back to. Later, the workman, having declared his love of Bach (what? you're a plumber!), announced that he'd never been in such a posh flat, to which LJ could only reply 'We're not posh!'. I slapped his back, asked if he'd seen the football last night, offered him a fag, ran out and bought The Sun, showed him Page 3...anything but have him think we're posh! The poor deluded man had seen all my music, some of the books, heard LJ playing Debussy, added two and two together and came up with five.

It's understandable. After all, to collect books and music and play Debussy you've got to be a bit posh, surely. He hadn't accounted for the fact that his company was contracted out to a Housing Association, obviously. Perhaps he thought we were moneyed and, rent-wise, living well within our means.

But then, 'posh' doesn't necessarily relate to income, does it? We have 'posh' taste? We have middle-class taste? I've no idea what middle-class music collections look like, so now I wonder if mine fits the bill...Jazz (oh very middle!), Funk (mmm, maybe), vintage electronic (?), modern electronic (?), avant-garde electronic (probably), reggae (?) - there's just no telling. As for the books, a collection including Ray Bradbury and Baudelaire doesn't say much, does it? The imaginary browser might do better to note what isn't here.

I tell myself that class in relation to culture is rapidly becoming impossible to define because I know a few people with similar taste who aren't 'posh', but then I look around at society and see that the stereotypes still fit the bill. People-watching outside a café the other week, LJ and me discussed girls,what they wear and what it says about them. We concluded that for the average prole girl sporting the Hooker look, celeb dolly birds dressed like tarts are key role-models. LJ's dead against it, of course, but men, strangely, are more reluctant to criticise.

The success of The Only Way Is Essex spurs working class youths to greater heights of gawd blimey bling (except that Essex girls don't say 'Gawd blimey, do they? They say 'Oh my god!' a lot, I think). Well, they must aspire to something. Something superficial - off-the-peg pride. They say it loud, they're airheads and proud. It's a natural reaction in an increasingly polarised society of haves and have-nots. Material success is all, and is not inherently related to class because you could become a working-class TV celeb and get rich, couldn't you? Yes. If not, at least dress like one.

Posh culchur is the last thing a working-class boy or girl wants to aspire to; things like Classical or avant-garde music, and books that aren't celeb biographies, Harry Potter, or E. L. James. Sadly, all that glitters in mini-skirts 'n' vertigo-inducing heels is not gold, but more like 50 shades of gormless grey.

In case you're thinking I equate certain forms of culture with intelligence, I should state that I'm pretty stupid. The average school kid would do better than me in exams...unless they were juniors...although even there I'm doubtful. No, all I'm thinking is that books, music and films of depth, or artistic integrity and daring, do us all good, if only by stretching the imagination and, yes, intellect. Anything made for sheeple does the opposite, it confines, confirms ignorance, and cashes in on it. I'm sure that all I've read, seen and heard has enlarged my mind (m-a-a-n), and there was/is plenty of room for enlargement, believe me.

Anyway, here's to the Bach-loving plumber. He may have read us wrong, but at least he defied what would have been our stereotyping of him. There's hope yet.

Conceptual Art

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

- Aristophanes

More Art

Be An Artist

Would-be artists, your country needs you!

Meanwhile, whilst waiting for evening TV to start, I killed time by messing around with some images...

More art here

Minimalism

Soliloquies - Bernd Reichert

Took a trip to oh-so-trendy Hoxton on Saturday, not to go clubbing (perish the thought!), but to visit the bookartbookshop for the first time. I'm all for making books and small press publishers, although I confess to not having spent much money on them. I feel bad about this, and next time I see someone in the street with a bucket pleading for passers-by to support book artists I shall donate, have no fear of that.

Meanwhile, it's a great little shop. Magnus Irvin's Poo Cards seemed popular, as first LJ showed me one, then two women came in and had a good laugh at them. I can't help thinking that, despite all takings being good, the assistant must be rather tired of punters giggling at cartoon poo instead of thrilling to either the artistic or theoretical goods on offer. Oh well, that's life, and our good ol' British toilet humour.

I was bamboozled by the sheer amount of creative work on offer, from notebooks to cards, 'zines to books, and all manner of print in-between. After about an hour I settled for this little beauty by Bern Reichert, having spotted his work almost straight away. Only twenty were made, and I got number twenty. With his permission, here are a few pages.

More Bernd Reichert can be seen here on his site.

Men Only Magazine 1950 Cartoons & Ads

Nice find last week - for 99p. Founded by C. Arthur Pearson in 1935, it stated in the first issue: 'We don't want women readers. We won't have women readers...' ! That's women told then. Smutmonger Paul Raymond took it over in 1971, no doubt taking it to new lows, although I can't vouch for the quality of it's content before that, of course. There's just one very soft nude pic in this issue. I particularly like the second cartoon - bloody bohemians! There's an article on ferrets too. It's just called 'Ferrets'. Thus, town and country tastes were catered for, and it all seems pleasingly tame compared to what it turned into.

Cecil Taylor/Niklaus Troxler Poster

Finding this poster for a 1989 Cecil Taylor gig naturally inspired me to reach for Taylor's music and I chose Nefertiti, The Beautiful One Has Come, on vinyl, which has a partially ripped label (see below), and this makes me love it even more, lending as it does an exaggerated air of time-worn nostalgia to the artefact. I love to put the needle to a side of this double album, and proceed not to listen. Not to listen consciously, but allow it to seep in subconsciously, as it inevitably does. Yes, I know we all put on music then don't listen, but the nature of Taylor's music is such that is both challenging and easy, ambient (played quietly), yet persistent when it comes to worming its way into your brain. The concert has since been released on CD with bonus tracks, which is now rather pricey, but you can always listen hear to an earlier version.

The poster was designed by Niklaus Troxler who, along with his brother, started running Jazz gigs from their Swiss home in the mid-60s. You can view more of his amazing work here. 

Naked Lunch In John Boorman's Catch Us If You Can

A rare, possibly unique appearance of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch in a mainstream film. Imagine my surprise when actor Clive Swift is seen reading it in John Boorman's Catch Us If You Can. Rewind - pause - yes, there it is. Although it's a battered copy, this John Calder edition was published in '64 and the film was released a year later, so it was pretty hot off the press. 

I can't help wondering why Boorman, if it was his idea, placed such a significant item of 60s counter culture in the hands of one of the film's baddies. Perhaps it's a joke for the cognoscenti of cool. Swift plays a henchman of the powerful company that owns the star of the ad they're filming and he's engrossed in the most outrageous novel of it's time. Is he conducting research to see what all the fuss is about? Or trying to get into the mindset of the young generation? Going deeper, since the ad they're filming is to promote meat, could Boorman have known Ginsberg's poem about Naked Lunch? If so, hats off to him for planting such a hip and very obscure reference.

On Burroughs' Work

The method must be purest meat

        and no symbolic dressing,

actual visions & actual prisons

        as seen then and now.

Prisons and visions presented

        with rare descriptions

corresponding exactly to those

        of Alcatraz and Rose.

A naked lunch is natural to us,

        we eat reality sandwiches.

But allegories are so much lettuce.

        Don't hide the madness.

Allen Ginsberg, San Jose, 1954

Boorman's debut, a vehicle for the Dave Clark Five, shows no hint of the directorial brilliance he would bring to later triumphs such as Point Blank and Deliverance, although Pauline Kael said at the time 'It is one of those films that linger in the memory'. It's the appearance of Naked Lunch that lingers in mine, along with the title song, unfortunately.

The kids, starlet Dinah (Barbara Ferris) and stunt man Steve (Dave Clark), flee the set in an E-Type and finally head for the West Country, pursued by agents of the evil ad company who wish to own Dinah body and soul. The best scenes are an encounter with a hippy tribe, portrayed as unhappy lost souls of the blank generation, and a middle-aged couple in Bath. Robin Bailey, as the husband, puts in a star performance, especially during the scene in his room. Yootha Joyce, as his wife, hints at things to come in her most famous role as Mildred, the desperate housewife in the 70s sitcom, George And Mildred. 

Any points about the futility of dreams and a controlling media establishment are washed away by dull musical sequences and obligatory 'wacky' 60s behaviour. The script must have been about twenty pages thick, and the two lead characters are one-dimensional cut-outs from the book of stereotypes (her: posh, frothy, naive; him: silent, moody).

On the plus side, the Jazzy incidental music is provided by Basil Kirchin, who's first full-length soundtrack, Primitive London, would appear in the same year. As for this film, to paraphrase the Dave Clark Five hit, I was glad when it was all over.

Battle For The Mind - William Sargant (Pan, 1959)

The media and politicians battle for our minds every day. When it comes to religion, I'll take mine in the form of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's homage to old-time testifyin' (see clip below), thanks. Battle For The Mind was first published in 1957, a couple of years before Richard Condon's novel, The Manchurian Candidate. Mind control was a hot topic. These days it seems to be the sole preserve of cranky conspiracy theorists. 

Vatican Shadow - Ornamented Walls (Modern Love)

AK-AK-AK! WHAM! THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP! Vatican Shadow, cutting through your ear canal like an Apache Longbow helicopter. Strafing neural networks as he goes, Dominick Fernow  takes no prisoners. His mission: secure your psyche and make it his. A one-man infantry who’s carried out more sonic sorties than most over the last year, Fernow now moves to Modern Love as a platform for his latest assault. Arabic text, military portraits, titles from press headlines; from this peculiar framework a quasi-mythological canon is created. How long can he keep this up? For as long as war rages, probably, and that should be for some time.

Jordanian military songs on worn tape shimmer through static like mirages in the desert, a howling electronic storm of sound, enough to make you delirious as beats clang and clatter – total war on tape. The three parts of 'Operation Neptune Spear' fire up a tour de force of fractured sound skirmishes, incomplete missions that whiff of cordite and corrosion yet are utterly captivating.

Taking Luigi Russolo for his word, Fernow breaks the circle of pure sound and conquers the infinite variety of ‘noise sound’. Hitching it to the running gear of rhythm differentiates him from pure noise merchants, and weapons in his sonic armoury vary in tone and tempo, yet all come beautifully soiled. He operates by stealth as well as shock and awe. You might say the muted atmosphere of 'India Has Just Tested A Nuclear Device' sounds like the heartbeats of tormented souls contemplating the terrible potential of their creation having just witnessed it’s deadly force, but I wouldn't, for fear of being considered pretentious.

The city of a thousand minarets remains haunted, followed here by 'Nightforce Scopes', a magnificently predatory exercise in escalating menace, filtered through dub that’s finally devoured in a maelstrom of noise. I'm tempted to call Ornamented Walls his best work yet, but with simultaneous operations under way (such as the epic techno grandeur of 'Jordanian Descent') Fernow attacks on all fronts, and with equal force. At this rate, we’ll all need a long spell of R&R to recover.

David Hurn Photos Of Soho, London, 1961

At times I felt like one of the 'Men from nowhere, with nowhere left to go' when I walked the late-night streets of Soho in the 80s, crunching broken dreams underfoot as I went from bar to bar. Ah, but there were good times too because The Wag Club provided a whiff of swingin' old Soho with it's Monday night Jazz sessions. Well, here's a photo shoot from Rogue magazine (May 1961). In the magazine it's followed by an article on Soho by none other than Nelson Algren. Set the tone by playing Tubbs before having a look, perhaps...

Some Rogue covers here

In 1960 David Hurn featured in Ken Russell's A House In Bayswater (from 11. 50 mins) and would be the subject of Russell's Watch The Birdie 3 years later.