Love is a Martyrdom (1965) by Stephanie Godwin. See Joscelyn Godwin’s Flickr pages for more.
• David Shire’s synthesizer score for Apocalypse Now was the first music recorded for the film but was abandoned when Shire was fired due to other commitments. 39 years later, his score has been released by La-La Land Records.
• Moon Safari by “French band” Air was released in the UK on January 16th, 1998. Jeremy Allen looks back at an album that was more successful here than elsewhere.
• On the occasion of the US publication of Iain Sinclair’s The Last London, Geoff Nicholson presents an A to Z of the author and his works.
This is the story of how two artists fell in love with each other, with Kelmscott Manor, and with William Morris, the poet, craftsman, and socialist who had made it his home. As Kelmscott’s first tenants afer the Morris family, Edward and Stephani Scott-Snell rented the historic Oxfordshire house throughout the Second World War. There they created an aesthetic and erotic paradise based on a fantasy land called ‘Thessyros’, and produced a body of figurative painting unique for its time. Much of this was done under the influence of a legally-obtained drug they called ‘Starlight’, making many of their paintings early examples of psychedelic art.
The Starlight Years is a book by Joscelyn Godwin about his artist-parents and their strange relationship
• Mixes of the week: FACT mix 634 by Minor Science, Secret Thirteen Mix 243 by Moa Pillar, and XLR8R Podcast 524 by Burnt Friedman.
• At The Smart Set: Marian Calabro pays a visit to the Brussels apartment where René and Georgette Magritte lived from 1930 to 1954.
• Hormone Lemonade, a new album by Cavern Of Anti-Matter, will be released in March. The Quietus has a preview.
• At the Internet Archive: QZAP, the Queer Zine Archive Project; 551 downloadable publications from 1974 to 2015.
• At Dennis Cooper’s: Briefly recounting Tim Buckley‘s short, inconvenient stylistic trajectory.
• Musician and bookseller Richard Bishop recommends a handful of rare occult volumes.
• At Kickstarter: Arsgang, a short psychological horror film by Harry Edmundson-Cornell.
• “A Sloppy Machine, Like Me”: Michael Grasso on the history of video synthesizers.
• At Flashbak: 27 Snapshots of Manchester in the 1960s.
• At Strange Flowers: 18 books for 2018.
• Love Is Strange (1956) by Mickey & Sylvia | Love Is Peace (1970) by Amon Düül | Love Is The Drug (1980) by Grace Jones
Wow, had no idea Shire worked on Apocalypse Now. He created some of the most paranoid scores of the 70s, including The Conversation. There is a second discarded score for A. Now by members of The Grateful Dead, it was released in the 80s but I have not seen it again since. Thanks for creating this blog, it really is wonderful. What I like the most about it is how it conveys, without nostalgia, how a weird and beautiful time the 70s were.
Speaking of the queer ‘zines at the Internet Archive, a great piece on Boyd McDonald is here: https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/reviews/straight-to-hell/
Hi Francisco, and thanks, I’m glad you enjoy the posts here.
I didn’t know about Shire’s score either, although there’s a chance I may have read something then forgotten about it. I have two books about Apocalypse Now that are pretty detailed. The other score you’re referring to is the album by the Rhythm Devils which is one I have on CD:
https://www.discogs.com/Rhythm-Devils-The-Apocalypse-Now-Sessions/master/93721
Strictly speaking it isn’t an alternate score, more a collection of outtakes from the percussion sessions by Mickey Hart and co. The score for the finished film is a combination of music by Coppola’s father played by a number of synth musicians, with percussive material blended into this. Coppola says in the notes to the Rhythm Devils album that he wanted the score to seem simultaneously primitive and futuristic, something I think they all achieved.
Mitchell: Thanks, that’s one I’d missed.