“Five Lost Worlds” is my latest Pitchfork column – probably my most ambitious, possibly too ambitious. It’s about trying to understand the mid-70s from the perspective of not having consciously lived through them, and (more obviously) about the idea of “lost worlds” – the irrecoverability of past experience. Anyway, this is a cheat sheet for the piece: a bunch of links to stuff either mentioned in it or lurking behind it.
Nik Cohn/Guy Peellaert: The amazon.co.uk link for Rock Dreams is here – but if you see it get the earlier edition, with Dylan, Lennon etc. as kids sitting lined up in a diner on the cover. Supposedly the more recent edition squashes some of the art. There’s a reprint of the introduction to Rock Dreams, by Michael Herr, at the Taschen site – I’ve not read it yet though (I don’t remember it from my copy so I guess it’s from the new edition.). Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom is in print again.
“Jungleland”: The bits about superhero kids being made real by our wishes is this month’s Grant Morrison reference, specifically the climax of his Flex Mentallo miniseries, which you can’t buy anywhere because the Flex Mentallo character was based a bit too heavily on a Charles Atlas advert, though it is available from unscrupulous interweb pirates. You can hear “Jungleland” on this fan-made video (I haven’t watched the video, as it appears to have human beings in rather than superhuman avatars of doomed rockdom).
Roy Harper: Frustratingly, “When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease” is not on YouTube – I’ve uploaded it for this post:
The John Major speech referenced is probably his most famous – it was given to a private audience of Conservatives so isn’t on YouTube or anything either, and in fact the speech in general isn’t famous at all: just that bit. The article about young brass band players is from the Guardian, and the Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band have a somewhat old-school website.
Reading Festival 1976: This whole section (and in fact the whole piece!) draws on this Livejournal discussion, from Mark’s journal. Particular props to anatol_merklich for drawing Sassafras’ album names to my attention! The other album mentioned, Beat of the Street, is of course by the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver. Details of the mudbath and canbath are taken from a “memories of Reading” site. For a close look at the cover to the Festival programme go here.
The Titanic Sails At Dawn: Mick Farren keeps a blog. The “Titanic” article is probably best read in the context of the rest of the NME in 1976 (which is how I first encountered it via the Bodleian library!) which would let you appreciate better how much of its style is house style and how much of its analysis is interesting. But obviously this isn’t really an option, so just take it for what it is!
The column was going to be called “The Days Before We Came”, a reference to the ABBA track “The Day Before You Came”, where you get the impression the “You” is annihilating as much as he’s resolving. But I decided nobody would get it and thought I ought to be more obvious about the broader link between the sections.
And finally, I wouldn’t have written this piece had I not got my Popular skates on recently! Thanks comments crew!