Jerusalem

Alan Moore
Knockabout

Begging comparisons to Tolstoy and Joyce, this “magnificent, sprawling cosmic epic” (Guardian) by Alan Moore—the genre-defying, “groundbreaking, hairy genius of our generation” (NPR)—takes its place among the most notable works of contemporary English literature. In decaying Northampton, eternity loiters between housing projects. Among saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts, a timeline unravels: second-century fiends wait in urine-scented stairwells, delinquent specters undermine a century with tunnels, and in upstairs parlors, laborers with golden blood reduce fate to a snooker tournament. Through the labyrinthine streets and pages of Jerusalem tread ghosts singing hymns of wealth and poverty. They celebrate the English language, challenge mortality post-Einstein, and insist upon their slum as Blake’s eternal holy city in “Moore’s apotheosis, a fourth-dimensional symphony” (Entertainment Weekly). This “brilliant . . . monumentally ambitious” tale from the gutter is “a massive literary achievement for our time—and maybe for all times simultaneously” (Washington Post).

When this came out in 2016 I knew I'd read it at some point when I was less preoccupied with things like relearning how to walk and it was too big and too pricey for me at the time.  Roll on 3 and a half years and there's a hardback first edition sat in the shop and I have a discount card so the time had come.  All told it's taken me most of about 7 months to read it as I began by deliberately limiting myself to only reading a chapter and interspersing themwith other books but when lockdown hit I got my head into it and read about 900 of its 1174 pages in the ensuing fortnight.

So the burning question is "What's it like?" and the answer quite simply is "It's Alan Moore."  It's pure unadulterated Moore unfiltered by corporate diktat, unsullied by collaborators and unhinged by choice.

Like Moore's first novel, 'Voice of Fire', 'Jerusalem' is set almost entirely in his home town of Northampton, in particular it's set in a neglected and working class area called 'The Burroughs'.  It follows the fates of various members of one family - the Vernalls and later the Warrens - from the Victorian era to, well, to the end of time but mostly to around 2006 and from Lambeth and St Paul's Cathedral to the afterlife, the upstairs or 'Mansoul' as it's called.

The Vernalls / Warrens are eccentrics and artists touched by the Angles, they are the keepers of the boundaries even if, for the most part, they don't know this.  The story tracks various generations along with various folks both living and dead with whom their lives intersect over a couple of fateful days in 2006.  We meet Snowy and the two Mays, we meet Alma (essentially Moore himself) and her / his younger brother Mick, we meet cousin Audrey, Marla the saint, Lucia Joyce (in a painful chapter written in the style of her father's 'Finnegan's Wake' which I'd never wanted to read and now want to even less), John Clare, Thomas and Samuel Becket(t), former slave and now ghostly mayor Black Charlie and assorted other ne'er do wells and luminaries (sometimes simultaneously) but mostly we meet The Burroughs.

Jerusalem is a love story between an author and his home town, it's a travelogue, a love letter and a homage, albeit one with an entire second book set in a ghostly heaven where children run riot and Arch-Angles knock seven shades of gold out of each other with their billiard cues in a gloriously unrestrained cosmic Enid Blyton romp.

At the book's end I was exhausted but fizzing, there were parts that had me laughing aloud, parts that gripped my heart and parts that I'd pay money not to ever have to read again.  I've been reading Moore since I was a kid and in that time he has produced books that hold special places in my affections - DR & Quinch, Miracleman, V For Vendetta, From Hell,  Lost Girls, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and so many others - books that I love dearly.  I will essentially follow him anywhere he wants to go and to my mind he's more than earned the right to do whatever the fuck he wants and if that's a 1200 page cosmic exploration / meditation / conjuration that puts Northampton at the centre of the universe then I'm very happy to go along for the trip because you know that that's exactly what it's going to be.

I'm never reading it again though, that thing was really bloody heavy.

Buy it here - UK / US

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3 Wyrd Things: DJ Food

For '3 Wyrd Things' I've asked various creative people whose work I admire to tell us about three oddly, wonderfully, weirdly British things that have been an influence on them and their work - a book or author, a film or TV show and a song, album or musician.

This month: Kevin Foakes / DJ Food

Kevin Foakes is a DJ, designer and writer most widely known under his Strictly Kev and DJ Food aliases.

Originally a team effort with the members of Cold Cut and others DJ Food is now a Strictly Kev vehicle which most recently he's been using to present ear and eye candy multimedia extravaganzas around artists such as Boards of Canada and Kraftwerk and his design work has graced the covers of albums by folks like Frankie Goes to Hollywood, The The and The Herbaliser amongst others.

His social media is one of the most joyously enthusiastic places where he shares his love of all things music, movie and comics and the mixes he shares on his mixcloud account are compulsive listening.

We are very happy to present to you his 3 Wyrd Things and should you be intrigued you can find him via the links below.

http://www.djfood.org
https://twitter.com/djfood
https://www.openmindesign.uk/
https://www.mixcloud.com/strictlykev/

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Book
Big Book of Everything
Hunt Emerson
Buy it here

I chanced upon this compendium of Hunt Emerson’s work for British underground publications around the the mid 80s, hidden away in a book shop in Crawley. Not yet living in London and with comic shops at that time only the provision of the big cities, I used to scour new and used book shops for anything that looked interesting. The art sections of the larger shops would sometimes have the Paper Tiger imprints, Roger Dean, Rodney Matthews, the Album Cover Albums and books from the odd US artists like Rick Griffin or Stanley Mouse. If you were lucky you’d find an H.R, Giger book or a British translation of a Moebius collection, not that I could afford them.

Somehow Hunt’s book was on the shelves too (remember this is long before ‘graphic novel’ sections were a thing in book shops) and, intrigued by the artwork, I bought it, determined to find out more. Just the contents page alone opened up a whole hidden comic world that was unknown to me with each publication listed that the material was taken from. Streetcomix, Knockabout, Yikes, Escape, Commies From Mars, Fortean Times, Moon Comix - where could I find all these? The truth was, nowhere for a long time as many of them were small press titles, the internet and eBay were years away and even now, some of these are still rare.

But that didn’t matter, the characters presented : Calculus Cat, Max Zillion, Alan Rabbit , Shekel & Shark and Hunt’s constantly shifting, Krazy Kat-inspired backgrounds were like nothing I’d ever seen before. This book led me to seek out Hunt’s work anywhere I could find it and my first trips to Forbidden Planet and comic marts in London yielded his excellent Thunderdogs comic, Firkin, and of course, Knockabout Comics. This in turn led to Zap Comix, Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and the American underground scene. Years later, and with a fairly decent underground comix collection to show for it, this is the one that opened the door.

TV
The Pall Bearer’s Revue
The Jerry Sadowitz

From Wikipedia:
The Pall Bearer's Revue is a 1992 sketch and stand-up comedy show written by Jerry Sadowitz and starring Sadowitz and Dreenagh Darrell. Each episode featured a mixture of sketches, comedy monologues from Sadowitz, as well as magic tricks including a special section dubbed "The Roy Walton Moment" in which Sadowitz would perform a magic trick invented by his mentor, famed magician Roy Walton. Although not as abundant with profanity or scatological humour as Sadowitz' live stand up, the show nevertheless made heavy use of tasteless and aggressive blue comedy and has been described as one of the most controversial comedy series ever broadcast in the United Kingdom. The final episode ended with the studio being invaded by the armies of all the countries Sadowitz had offended over the course of the series, who then gunned down Sadowitz and Darrell.

As a result of the record number of viewer complaints sent to the BBC, The Pall Bearer's Revue was rescheduled to a late night slot, had negative continuity announcements air before the show, and has never been repeated or released on home video or DVD.

I watched this as it went out each week (and still have the video tape of each episode) with open mouth as it was very extreme for TV, a bit like seeing the Young Ones but a decade later, older and wiser, still a shock. A show like this couldn’t be made today as the political correctness inherent in our society (in most cases, quite rightly) would never let it get off the page. It was also my first introduction to Sadowitz the magician, something I was unaware he was even involved with having only heard his album ‘Gobshite’ and of his fearsome reputation. He is a genuinely spellbinding performer and the magic balances the comedy superbly in the show. There’s nothing of this I can find online so maybe I should encode my copy but I hear he’s very good at keeping his material off the web. Definitely one of the UK’s forgotten comic treasures.

Music
My Life In The Bush of Ghosts
Brian Eno
Buy it here

Eno’s importance in my life extends in many directions. The music is of course primary but his installations, creative thinking and work outside the music industry is always of interest too. I was a late-comer to his works, only really discovering him in the early 90s via the resurgence in ambient music. I’d missed Roxy Music (too young for his period with the band and uninterested in the 80s version), also just too young for his No New York years with Devo and Talking Heads. As with most things he was always ahead, had just left the party, arriving before most had even heard one was on, finger on the pulse and by the time you’d caught up he was onto something else.

In this respect he’s an inspiration, an artist who means many things to many people in many different spheres. Many cite Bowie in this respect but his music never meant as much to me (good as some of it is) as Eno’s. His 70s and 80s period records and collaborations are virtually faultless and still fascinating when shown in context with the times they were released in, he certainly never followed fashion. His 90s discography is a patchier affair but one which I’ve been digging into recently and it’s yielded some treasures for sure. I’ve also found myself more susceptible to his generative installation soundtracks of late when in need of some calm and non-distractive music to work to.

I met him once, at his studio in Notting Hill, for a launch party for something he’d been involved with. A friend had invited me, knowing of my love of his work and thinking I’d get a kick out of it. We were chatting in a corner as guests swanned around, checking out the audio visual creation in a side room and admiring the huge collection of DATs on the wall, most of which were probably unreleased. We were talking about a clip of journalist Dick Flash interviewing Eno for a Warp Records promo film to go with his album, Small Craft on a Milk Sea.



In the clip Dick throws questions rapid-fire at Eno only to interpret his every answer with one of his own to the increasing annoyance of Brian. During the clip you soon realise that Dick is actually Eno interviewing himself, thus puncturing the usual pro-faced promotional guff that these exercises usually consist of. Suddenly at my side, there was Eno himself, joining our group and conversation, ‘Ah yes, Dick Flash, he was fun to play’. I can’t remember much of what else was said but I’d been to the Notting Hill Book Exchange on the way to the event and found a pop annual with a 4 page interview with Brian, post-Roxy. Producing it from my bag I showed him to which he even remembered the journalist who’d written the piece (and who had slagged him off late apparently). After cheekily asking him if he’d sign the book, he obliged and was gone, melting back into the party. The perfect example of meeting one of your heroes.



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Lost Girls

Alan Moore (author)
Melinda Gebbie (artist)
Knockabout / Top Shelf

For more than a century, Alice, Wendy and Dorothy have been our guides through the Wonderland, Neverland and Land of Oz of our childhoods. Now like us, these three lost girls have grown up and are ready to guide us again, this time through the realms of our sexual awakening and fulfillment. Through their familiar fairytales they share with us their most intimate revelations of desire in its many forms, revelations that shine out radiantly through the dark clouds of war gathering around a luxury Austrian hotel. 

Drawing on the rich heritage of erotica, Lost Girls is the rediscovery of the power of ecstatic writing and art in a sublime union that only the medium of comics can achieve. Exquisite, thoughtful, and human, Lost Girls is a work of breathtaking scope that challenges the very notion of art fettered by convention. This is erotic fiction at its finest.

On the eve of the first World War three remarkable women meet at a hotel in Austria.  Alice, the Lady Fairfax, Wendy Potter and Dorothy Gale.  The three are immediately drawn together in the heady sexualised surroundings of the Hotel Himmelgarten and over one summer relate to each other the stories of their lives.

What Moore and Gebbie have created here is a tour de force of erotic fiction (for the prudish) or pornography (for the specific).  They have taken three beloved characters from 'classic' literature and reimagined their stories as a series of sexual experiences; Dorothy's Kansas farm as OZ, Wendy's London park Neverland and Alice's Wonderland of English high society.  Each characters story is seamlessly transported from their respective books as locations and characters become mundane (even if the events do not) and each adventure is given a splash page coda that provides a single easily understood direct reference to the apposite chapter of the source material.

Moore is, of course, the consummate storyteller and as such the book is a joy to read.  Through their actions, their conversations and their reactions to the stories told by those around them the central characters grow and evolve and we are allowed deeper insights into the lives of these three generations of women.

The art is provided by American artist Melinda Gebbie who displays a style grown out of the US underground comix scene and I can see elements of both the Crumbs (Aline Kominsky- and Robert), Spain and more in her art which at times means it feels an odd fit with the style and setting of the story but this doesn't detract from the fact that it is utterly beautiful.  It's never going to be to everyone's taste but I am a long time fan of the artists I mentioned and so to my eyes it's spectacular.  It becomes even more so when she pastiches the styles of other, period, artists such as Aubrey Beardsley, and the frankly stunning level of skill on display is breathtaking.

As a book 'Lost Girls' was problematic from the start and the time between the story's original appearance and it's completion was quite considerable.  It's eventual publication in 2006 was accompanied by an article by Moore (in Arthur magazine and reprinted by Harry N. Abrams as a hardback book entitled '25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom') that is very much a continuation of the dialogue he is having in 'Lost Girls' which makes for a vivid and bold discussion on the very nature of pornography and the roles it plays and also on both personal freedom and repression.  The stories and behaviour of the three women and the supporting cast are presented without judgement.  Those characters who indulge and those who with-hold are treated equally so it's left up to the reader to make of the events what they will.  For myself I found it to be a beautiful and poignant read that, as Moore has been want to do throughout his career, challenged, intrigued and entertained in equal measure.

Buy it here -  Lost Girls