John Lennon

John Lennon 9/10/1940 - 8/12/1980

The gang's all here...

Good to see some new posts by That Baldy Fellow, Edward and the long-lost Pete Doree. Quite a few bloggers I Follow have been quiet of late ( damn that interfering Real World! ) so it's a relief to see that some of the best are still keepin' on keepin' on. Perhaps it'll inspire me to post something a bit more interesting than this lame effort :-)

Just another casualty of the Time War

What does James do to his toys?

Pete

Peter Henry Barton

2nd Feb. 1931 - 6th Dec. 1995

Steranko Saturdays: Bring On The Barbarians!

This week Steranko bludgeons us with 3 archetypal sword-and-sorcery images, filled with biceps, babes, bodies and broadswords:

To quote Rose Tyler: "Blimey, you can smell the testosterone!"

Creatures On The Loose 21 and 22 ( Jan. / March 1973 )

Epic Illustrated 19 ( Aug. 1983 )

Soundtrack: All Along The Watchtower, Purple Haze, Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix

Tardis and Tinsel

Courtesy of Blogtor Who, this is the first of the special, Who-flavoured, channel idents the BBC are going to run over Christmas.

Allons-y Rudolph!!

Soundtrack: California Stars by Billy Bragg & Wilco

The Damned: Grave In-TENT-tions

A damned great gig.....

In fact, a great Damned gig.....

Yeah, we're back in the Spiegeltent Majestic in freezing cold King's Square, Gloucester, last Monday night. ( When I say "we" that's me, Glenn and about 300 or so other Damned fans, in the unusually plush venue that is the S/Tent, a welcome change from The Damned's usual haunts such as the dreaded Rock Cafe, Stourbridge, and other such dives. )

After a seemingly-pointless website competition to find a support band ( what about Chinese Burn?! ), The Damned are now playing 2 sets, the first one featuring new material and their more psychedelic side, the second slanting to crowd-pleasing punk rock. This is an extra gig, tagged on to the end of their tour with Motorhead and Girlschool ( is it 1981 again? ) so there's a definite end-of-term vibe to the gig. Much banter between the band members and the band/audience members. At one point Sensible's guitar goes wildly out of tune, he spends ages tuning up ( wot no spare? ), Dave Vanian takes the mickey mercilessly, someone in the crowd shouts "It won't make any difference!"..... Poor Captain! Later on he starts to sing his party-piece, Happy Talk, but the rest of the band bundle him up in a roll of carpet (!) and drag him offstage.

In amongst all this lunacy the band play brilliantly, digging up a lot of rarely-heard gems from back in the day: Generals, Fanclub and Curtain Call all get an airing, along with the expected New Rose, Neat Neat Neat, Love Song etc. etc. And the sound is amazingly clear for what is basically a big tent - even 'though the band manage to blow up the PA at one point, leaving the drummer bashing away by himself.

Before we know it, it's all over. As this is a council-run venue there's a strict curfew of 11:00pm on the dot ( fun-suckers! ) so no encores ( Boo! ). We do get the traditional last-song anarchy of Smash It Up, preceded by the Captain's plea that we don't take the lyrics too literally and rip the lovely Spiegeltent apart. Vanian, Sensible and co. say their goodbyes to a happy but knackered moshpit, the drummer throws some drumsticks into the crowd ( I got one! ) and that's yer lot. On the way out we stop for a chat with Mark, ex-demon guitarist from the almost-mythical Death Planet Commandos - good to see him! - and end up talking dodgy punk bands and dodgier comics. Just like old times in Massacre House, the charitable institution caring for threatening, ugly men with guns and unstable personalities :-)

The Damned, Gloucester Spiegeltent 30/11/09

Here's a great slideshow of images from last night's Damned gig, courtesy of Bri from the Official Damned Forum. Cheers, Bri! ( How the Hell did you manage to take such excellent pictures in that mad mob of an audience? Respect! )

Proper gig review to follow when I'm more awake.....

Spiegeltent

This is the centrepiece of this year's Christmas festivities in Gloucester, the Belgian Spiegeltent. After the rather pathetic ice-rink we had last year, this is a definite improvement. It's part of a "Winter Wonderland" set up in the city's King's Square, featuring Santa's Grotto and a fake snow landscape.

The city council's website describes the Spiegeltent as "an ornate, early 20th Century travelling ballroom, complete with velvet-lined seating booths , mirrors and stained glass panels." The tent is set to host "Dickensian" feasts and cabaret dinners in the evenings. Bands are also lined up to play there, including up-and-coming indie rockers Stornoway, the bloody Wurzels ( God help us! ) and, tomorrow night, living-dead goth-punks The Damned - I'll be there!

We went in yesterday afternoon for coffee and Belgian waffles: very nice!


Soundtrack:
Soul Shakedown Party by Bob Marley & The Wailers
I'll Sing A Love Song To You by Candi Staton

William Blake's Great Red Dragon

Yesterday, November the 28th, was the birthday of the visionary artist and poet, William Blake.

Here are two of a series of watercolours Blake produced to illustrate the Bible, in this case specifically the Book Of Revelations. Just to confuse matters the painting above is titled The Great Red Dragon And The Woman Clothed In Sun, while the one below is called The Great Red Dragon And The Woman Clothed With The Sun ( italics mine ).

The paintings are referenced in Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon and its two film adaptations, the wonderful Manhunter and the totally superfluous remake Red Dragon.

Steranko Saturdays: More 4

Two Steranko covers from Fantastic Four no.s 130 and 131, Jan. / Feb. 1973, inked by one of the mainstays of the early FF style, Joltin' Joe Sinnott.

Last week the mighty Mark from Bad Librarianship Now commented that the Steranko-ness of these covers gets sublimated by the Sinnott-ness of the inks. He's got a point: Sinnott's Marvel "House-style" does overpower Steranko's idiosyncracies somewhat. But even a conformist Steranko is streets ahead of most anybody else, in my opinion.

NB: Note the tag-line for issue 130 is "The World's Greatest Comix Magazine!" I don't know if this misspelling was an attempt to appear hip and groovy to the Underground Comix readership, but it only lasted for 5 issues before reverting back to "Comics". How sad am I to notice that kind of thing?

Soundtrack: Where Is My Mind? by Pixies

Favourite Gig Fridays: Primal Scream

January 2000, first gig of the new millennium, the Scream!

Amazingly, Primal Scream have been around since 1982. In that time they have changed and mutated from "C86" fey jangle-pop, to psychedelic revivalists, to indie-dance icons, to today's eclectic rock royalty. When I saw them in 2000 at the good ol' Gloucester Guildhall ( with my mate Glenn ) they were warming up for their Xtrmntr tour, the single Swastika Eyes having just hit the UK Top 40 and the album reaching number 3 in the charts.

As the band came on stage Bobby Gillespie warned us "We're Primal Scream and we're here to f**** your heads up....."

And that's what they proceeded to do. Most of the set was the new Xtrmntr material which, although strangely lacking in vowels, was bloody good stuff. Songs like Accelerator, Shoot Speed / Kill Light and Kill All Hippies were explosive and expansive epics, with extra guitar pyrotechnics courtesy of My Bloody Valentine man Kevin Shields, and held together by Mani's dirty, funky bass-lines. Bobby threw some classic rock 'n' roll shapes while revisiting Screamadelica-era standards like Movin' On Up and Come Together, and faux-Stones rockers like, er, Rocks. As usual, he looked to be at death's door but managed to survive until the end of the set.

A great night of rock, psychedelia, old skool rave-rock and even a shot of ( shh! ) jazz into the bargain. Strangest sight of the gig: "Mad" Richard Ashcroft of The Verve striding through the venue wearing a huge Afghan coat and aviator shades, followed by two minders. We're not worthy!

Soundtrack:

MBV Arkestra ( If They Move Kill 'Em ) by the Scream.

Blog Bicentennial

200th Blog Post! I had planned to post something a bit more special but real life got in the way as per usual. So we'll have to make do with a nice Jack Kirby FF cover, which was - I think - the last one published while Kirby was still alive.

Double the size! Double the action! Double the thrills!

Soundtrack:

Whiskey In The Jar by Thin Lizzy

Fisherman's Blues by The Waterboys

Shining II ?

It's been reported by Contactmusic, via Digital Spy, that Stephen King is writing a sequel to The Shining.
Er, why? Surely you don't need the money, Steve?

Happy Birthday, Doctor!

46 years ago today this mysterious, cantankerous old man first appeared on British TV screens in flickering black and white. At first an untrustworthy and selfish character ( he more-or-less kidnapped his granddaughter's school teachers and plunged them all back into the Stone Age ), the Doctor soon mellowed into a charming and mischievous old rogue, who could still hold his own against Daleks and Cybermen, kings and emperors.

The Doctor has come a long way since those humble beginnings in 1963 and we will soon see him change again when David Tennant makes way for another tenant ( sorry! ) in the Tardis. But it's worth remembering that it all started with this strange old man and his Police Box, hiding in a junkyard in London, waiting to take us on adventures in time and space.....

So, here's to all the hundreds of people who have worked on the show over the decades, and especially the late, great William Hartnell who first brought the character so vividly to life.

"Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? Have you? To be exiles? Susan and I are cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day we shall get back. Yes, one day, one day....."

The Doctor - An Unearthly Child, November 23rd 1963.