Barney Bubbles – Page 14

Oh Yeah by Charles Mingus

Oh Yeah (1962). Sleeve design by Loring Eutemey.

“People say that I’m hollering. Man, I feel like hollering.” Charles Mingus.

Listening to this great album this week had me searching for the equally great sleeve design from the vinyl edition which vanished from the CD reissue. The cover that replaced it is a dour photo of a gloomy-looking Mingus, completely unsuited to an album full of joyous noise. Happily there’s a Japanese edition that preserves the original design. As far as I can gather Loring Eutemey was a house designer at Atlantic, responsible for many of their jazz sleeves but also providing covers for rock albums including Iron Butterfly’s dumb psychedelic opus, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Lots of playful typography evident in Eutemey’s designs and bold, hand-drawn graphics à la Saul Bass, a style very popular in the Sixties not least because of Bass’s considerable influence.

Designs by Loring Eutemey: Born Under A Bad Sign (1967), In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968).

That playfulness especially suits an album where Mingus set aside his bass to play piano and sing (or, more correctly, holler) his way through seven tracks of energetic craziness. There are some amazing solos here from Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a blind musician famous for playing two saxophones at once, one in each hand. The opening Hog Callin’ Blues is one of my favourite jazz pieces, a number where bop rawness approaches the equivalent rawness of Fifties’ rock’n’roll or Chess blues. Always great to play (loud!) to people who think jazz is all polite cocktail music and studied cool. Mingus recorded lots of great albums, of course, and I imagine this is regarded as a throwaway novelty by many of his more dedicated listeners, but it remains one I keep returning to.

Charles Mingus—piano and vocals
Rahsaan Roland Kirk—flute, siren, tenor sax, manzello, and strich
Booker Ervin—tenor sax
Jimmy Knepper—trombone
Doug Watkins—bass
Dannie Richmond—drums

1 Hog Callin’ Blues (7:26)
2 Devil Woman (9:38)
3 Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am (4:41)
4 Ecclusiastics (6:55)
5 Oh Lord Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me (5:38)
6 Eat That Chicken (4:36)
7 Passions Of A Man (4:52)

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Japrocksampler

Julian Cope’s Krautrocksampler is one of my all-time favourite music books, an expert guide to the psychedelic jungle of German rock from 1968–1975. (And it seems to be out of print. Damn.) Now he’s written a follow-up.

Julian Cope, eccentric and visionary rock musician, hip archaeologist and one time frontman of Teardrop Explodes, follows the runaway underground success of Krautrocksampler, a cult deconstruction of German rock music, with Japrocksampler. Japrocksampler is a short history of Japanese youth culture in the post-war years. It explores the clash between traditional, conservative Japanese values and the wild rock and roll renegades of the 1960s and 70s, telling the tale of six seminal groups of artists in Japanese post-war culture, from itinerant art-house poets to violent refusenik rock groups with a penchant for plane hijacking. Cope tours regularly and has just brought out a new album, Dark Orgasm. His website, Head Heritage, is widely acknowledged as containing some of the most entertaining and insightful album reviews on the web. Julian’s fans (Copeheads) as well as the generally interested reader will lap up this take on the Jap Rock phenomenon.

Via Arthur.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Chrome: Perfumed Metal
• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer
• Metabolist: Goatmanauts, Drömm-heads and the Zuehl Axis
• The art of Shinro Ohtake
• Maximum heaviosity

Revenant volumes: Bob Haberfield, New Worlds and others

The Singing Citadel (1970).

Michael Moorcock’s Elric books are being prepared for republication by Del Rey in the US next year. I’ve assisted with some minor parts of this preparation, including sourcing pictures from Savoy’s edition of Monsieur Zenith the Albino. (Anthony Skene’s albino anti-hero is a precursor of Moorcock’s albino anti-hero.)

Discussion of the Elric books with Dave at Savoy prompted my excavation of this battered Mayflower paperback from the retired book boxes. This slim volume collected four fantasy stories: the title piece (possibly the first Elric story I read), Master of Chaos, The Greater Conqueror and To Rescue Tanelorn…. I’d forgotten about the garishly strange cover, one of many that Bob Haberfield produced for Moorcock’s books during the 1970s. Haberfield is one of a number of cover artists from that period who worked in the field for a few years before moving on or vanishing entirely. The swirling clouds derived from Tibetan Buddhist art identify this as one of his even without the credit on the back; later pictures were heavily indebted to Eastern religious art and while technically more controlled they lack this cover’s berserk intensity. Haberfield’s site has a small gallery of his splendid paintings, including a rare horror work, his wonderfully eerie cover for Dagon by HP Lovecraft.

Searching for more Haberfield covers turned up these two examples, both part of the SciFi Books Flickr pool, a cornucopia of pictures by vanished illustrators. Browsing that lot is like being back inside the In Book Exchange, Blackpool, circa 1977. The digitisation of the past continues apace at the Old-Timey Paperback Book Covers pool and the Pulp Fiction pool. Don’t go to these pages if you’re supposed to be doing something else, it’s easy to find yourself saying “just one more” an hour later.

And in other Moorcock-related news, Jay alerts me today to the existence of an archive of New Worlds covers, something I’d been hoping to see for a long time. New Worlds was one of the most important magazines of the 1960s, mutating under Moorcock’s editorship from a regular science fiction title to a hothouse of literary daring and experiment. As with so many things in that decade, the peak period was from about 1966–1970 when the magazine showcased outstanding work from Moorcock himself, JG Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Harlan Ellison, Samuel Delany, M John Harrison, Norman Spinrad and a host of others. For a time it seemed that a despised genre might be turning away from rockets and robots to follow paths laid down by William Burroughs, Salvador Dalí, Jorge Luis Borges and other visionaries. We know now that Star Wars, Larry Niven and the rest swept away those hopes but you can at least go and see covers that pointed to a future (and futures) the world rejected.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer
• 100 Years of Magazine Covers
• It’s a pulp, pulp, pulp world

Happy birthday { feuilleton }

It was a year ago today that I sat down and wrote some words of Charles Fort’s, “One measures a circle beginning anywhere…”, as a headline for the first entry on this page. Some posts over the ensuing year have been more popular than others (and it should be pointed out that the “most popular” list in the sidebar has only registered hits since a new plugin was activated). Referral links and Del.icio.us adds are a good guide to popularity so here’s the top five:

• Watchmen (June 24th). An old Fantasy Advertiser interview with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons about their graphic novel masterwork. I knew this would be popular, not least because it’s one of the best interviews I’ve read about Watchmen, and one conducted quite soon after the story had been completed. Good to be reminded that the book’s creation owed as much to the artist as it did to the writer. As Alan Moore’s popularity has grown there’s been a tendency on the part of critics to see him as the sole author of his comics, all of which are collaborations with different artists who invariably contribute to the work themselves. From Hell artist Eddie Campbell has recently been showing examples of these working methods on his excellent weblog, The Fate of the Artist.

• Atomix by Nike Savvas (August 5th). A big surprise this. I spotted pictures of this installation in passing on a Yahoo! news page, thought it looked interesting so made a little entry about it. Many hits later people are still searching for pictures. Ms Savvas would be advised to tour this artwork, people love it.

• Aldous Huxley on Piranesi’s Prisons (August 25th). Another scanned article and another surprise. I remember thinking ?no one will want to read a long-dead writer talking about a long-dead engraver.? The moral, then, is never underestimate your audience.

• The boys (various dates). Despite the groaning tubes of the interweb being stuffed with every shade and variety of porn, some pictures of unclothed young men remain more popular than others. So people arrive here searching for Eugen Bauder (very popular indeed), Felipe Von Borstel, Brian Joubert and others. I often feel as though I should apologise for not having any exclusive material but surfers of the one-handed variety are probably only stopping by for a moment before flitting elsewhere.

• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer (January 20th). Very gratifying that this has been received with enthusiasm as this is the kind of post I like best, something that makes up for gaps in the pool of web data. These entries take time to prepare so it’s good to know that people appreciate the effort; I’m hoping there’ll be more to come (work allowing) in 2007.

Thanks for reading!

John x

The art of Arik Roper

Semyaza (2007).

Witch Banner (2006): Witch South x Southwest banner.

Eyehategod NYC (2005): NYC show poster.

Arik Roper produces much band artwork and design (including for Boris who I’ve been listening to a lot this week). He’s also part of the splendid Arthur posse. Go thou to his work and marvel.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Underground history
• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer