One of the entries from the Greenpeace competition to rebrand BP.
• What Kenneth Anger was doing inside the Pentagon, October 1967.
• Ghosts Of The Future: Borrowing Architecture From The Zone Of Alienation. Jim Rossignol on Stalker: the film, the game and the reality.
• Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s visionary music. A blog and a forthcoming book by Rob Young.
• Lesbian filmmaker Kiana Firouz isn’t wanted in the UK thanks to the iniquitous asylum laws of the previous administration; the Home Office intends to return her to Iran where gay people are flogged and executed. Coilhouse has details including recommendations of how people can help. Related: Britain’s immigration system is guilty of “institutional homophobia”, according to a new report.
• Cameron Carpenter, a prodigiously talented (and sequinned) concert organist.
• No Barcode: Javier Garcia’s graphic design blog.
• Shapeways: 3D printing from your own designs.
• Spintriae: brothel coins from Ancient Rome.
• Winq magazine: “global queer culture”.
• A steam-powered synthesiser.
• Among The Trees, Michael Chapman on the Whistle Test in 1975.
The brothel tokens are usually spelled “Spintriae”.
Electric Eden has been waiting to be written for a number of years – the closest being “Englands Hidden Reverse ” by David Keenan. I can barely wait………….
Thanks, Mal, I should have checked that.
LCP: Yes, it’s about time someone documented the Old Weird Britain (to paraphrase Greil Marcus) and its influence. Matters haven’t been helped by the persistent philistinism of the music press which for years regarded anything folk-related as a joke.
I think its not folk that they have a problem with, but ENGLISH folk, or anything leaning towards it. It was always ok to be into Appalachian folk or Delta Blues or Irish music (the Pogues!), but English folk is too close to home, too parochial, too geography- teacher- does- morris dancing.
Obviously, these stereotypes are way out, and just serve to deny us our true culture. Its really good that its making the connection with British visionary tradition, which has been buried for too long, at least in popular cultural circles.If the pop kids dont know about William Blake, how are we going to build our new Jerusalem?
Ha, yes, other folk musics have always been given a pass. And I used to waste time trying to point out to people how much of the Blues was derived from or contained traces of English folk.