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Post by helrunar on Sept 5, 2017 17:03:36 GMT
Interesting notice about Mr P, alias Savage Pencil:
He is currently a member of the "improvising drone-rock noise band" Pestrepeller, along with Peter Hope-Evans (ex-Medicine Head), Ed Pinsent, Harley Richardson, Nick Neocleous and Rob Brown. They released their third (?) album in May 2006 on Important Records, entitled Isle of Dark Magick, described in the press release as "a gem of free-improvised-found-sound-collage enriched with dark pagan folky vibes and supernatural horror noise dedicated to H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Austin Osman Spare." (end quote)
That's from Wicked Paedophile.
cheers, H.
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Post by pulphack on Sept 5, 2017 18:58:03 GMT
I think Stephen King is a bit like Dan Brown - a writer for readers who like a holiday book but are not big book buyers. I say this having only picked at his fiction, although I did like his 'Danse Macabre' history. It's horror for people who quite like a bit of a thrill but aren't really big consumers of horror. Like most popular writers, he's light on style, strong on page turning story (complete with soap opera elements), and not idiosyncratic or dangerous in any way. I don't dislike him, I just find him a bit bland. But then I'm coming to think that's what really popular fiction - the huge sellers - are: King is Arthur Hailey for the 70's horror generation.
As for Sav Pencil - God, I LOVED him in Sounds back in the lare 70's - Rock'n'Roll Zoo was miles better than Ray Lowery in the NME for me. Pest Repeller did their first album - Nug Yar - for Acme's Prescription imprint about 1998. Noisy avant rock, and none the worse for that. There were six albums in the series, limited to 99 each and only available by subscription. The others were by Azalia Snail, Coil, Quad, Ohr Musik, and Lightkleig (the best for me, and a ringer for very early Kraftwerk) - the idea was to make a krautrock inspired series, but I don't think Azalia got the message as hers is just her usual stuff (which is ok, but not kraut rock).
Mr Pencil has done a lot of work on album sleeves and also things like inscribing a design on the flip of a Lee Renaldo 10" ep, but for me he's never surpassed the invention of DIY-inspired reggae artist Roger the Rastafarian Rawl Plug - an early cartoon I've never forgotten.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Sept 5, 2017 21:06:21 GMT
As for Sav Pencil - God, I LOVED him in Sounds back in the lare 70's
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Sept 6, 2017 0:37:06 GMT
I think Stephen King is a bit like Dan Brown - a writer for readers who like a holiday book but are not big book buyers. I say this having only picked at his fiction, although I did like his 'Danse Macabre' history. It's horror for people who quite like a bit of a thrill but aren't really big consumers of horror. Like most popular writers, he's light on style, strong on page turning story (complete with soap opera elements), and not idiosyncratic or dangerous in any way. I don't dislike him, I just find him a bit bland. That sums it up for me, too. From what I've read about him, he sounds like a nice enough guy--very willing to give credit to other writers and promote their work, even finding some dark humor in his accident. I like a few of his stories, including "Children of the Corn." But for me he just doesn't hold a candle to a number of other writers when it comes to style or creativity. The original version of The Stand was so bloated that I can't even imagine what the extended cut must be like. And The Green Mile has some good bits, but he gave his Jesus Christ figure the initials J.C. Come on, that was cheesy back when John Steinbeck did it.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Sept 6, 2017 2:06:16 GMT
And, now that I've thought about it more, I probably hold King to a higher standard, fairly or not, because he's so prominent and popular. I don't begrudge him his success. Far from it, I think it's great that he's out there publishing commercially viable horror. It's just not for me.
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Post by ropardoe on Sept 6, 2017 8:19:09 GMT
Another nice cutting. There seems to be some backstory about Mr. Pouncey... will have to trawl googly in search of enlightenment. I do appreciate his reference to Ro's expert hand. Respect! cheers, H. I lost touch with Edwin Pouncey many years ago. A shame. Anyway, unfortunately my "expert hand" has been suffering severely from tendonitis for the past year or so, and the other one isn't so good either! Despite the huge amount of help my other half gives with the envelope stuffing, it does tend to make the G&S mail-out something of a painful experience. How I suffer for my art!
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Post by ramseycampbell on Sept 6, 2017 11:15:41 GMT
"Currently working" - oh, if only I'd worked more on the sloppy mess that is The Hungry Moon...
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Post by helrunar on Sept 6, 2017 15:17:10 GMT
Sorry to hear about the tendonitis, Ro. We need to round up some willing, hardy acolytes of the Master to help you out!
cheers, H.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 6, 2017 19:20:09 GMT
No idea how long for, but Edwin seems to have doubled as the NME's horror & supernatural correspondent. The Evil Read (10 December 1988) is a string of reviews, all of them favourable, comprising Prime Evil, Peter Straub's Koko, Christopher Palmer [ed's.] The Collected Arthur Machen - which "Neglects (tragically) to include the original The Great God Pan but makes up for it by reprinting his masterpiece, The Hill Of Dreams" - Simon Marsden's Visions Of Poe portfolio, Richard Dalby's Virago Book Of Ghost Stories, Burrage's Warning Whispers and, from the non-fiction/ "non-fiction" dept., Xanadu's The Black Magic Murders: Horrifying True Tales of Death & Devily (whose contents include Seabrooks Dead Men Working In The Cane Field and a pair of reprints from the super Odhams anthology, Fifty Strangest Stories Ever Told, suggesting the editor had little budget to work with). Franklin, The Lurkers' Freak Show cover illo really suits. EP cheekily appropriated the Arrow More Not At Night bat-man on reverse of the Fall's Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul smash almost-hit. I also like his sleeve art for Sonic Youth's Death Valley '69 and Rocket From the Crypt's On a Rope.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 7, 2017 8:26:06 GMT
"Currently working" - oh, if only I'd worked more on the sloppy mess that is The Hungry Moon... Did Sounds send you a copy at the time, Ramsey? It seemed something very different for them, probably influenced by the popularity of Goth which they covered a little more sympathetically than their trendy rivals at the NME. I was an avid, cover-to-cover reader of both in those days ( Melody Maker, less so), found it comforting to be reminded on a weekly basis that the music I liked was the pits and all the bands I hated were the last word in superbness. The sporadic horror & supernatural coverage was especially welcome ( Sounds followed the booklet with a rock orientated companion, Psycho Killers, featuring Roky Erickson, Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Iggy, Nick Cave, The Gun Club - all the usual suspects - and Throbbing Gristle in the centrefold). It's maybe telling that The Sounds Book Of Horror devotes four of sixteen precious pages to an extract from Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat (God help us) and three more to screen adaptations based on Stephen King's novels and stories. Makes perfect sense to me. There's at least a possibility that a sizeable proportion of the Sounds audience would be familiar with Interview With A Vampire and any one of King's novels, if only via, say, the Salem's Lot min-series, regardless of whether they read "horror," or even novels, as a rule. For all I know, Sandy may regard King's work as superior to that of Machen, MRJ, Edgar Allan Poe & Co. - and why shouldn't he? - but it really doesn't matter a jot who he stuck on top of the tree (a decade earlier, a different critic, and there's a strong possibility it would have been Dennis Wheatley in pole position). Any top ten is there to be disagreed with. "Where's M. G. Lewis?" "What about Shirley Jackson?" "Why no REH/ CAS/ GNS?" "You forgot Charles Birkin!" "What have you got against Shudder Pulps?" "Robert Aickman too brainy for you?" "Why no Pierce Nace?" etc. We'd be here for the rest of the decade. I like to think that there's somebody out there read the quotes from 'Canon Alberic's Scrapbook' and 'Pickman's Model' in the margin and decided then and there "I have to check this stuff out."
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Post by pulphack on Sept 7, 2017 8:40:53 GMT
Best way to get anyone interested in digging deeper into a subject is to mention the big names that everyone knows as a hook, and then signpost them to lesser-known but perhaps 'better' names. 'Better' as in more distinct voices, something a bit unusual, something off the beaten track. Without wanting to get into pointless arguments about 'good' and 'bad', it's perhaps a useful rule of thumb that the more general something is, the more appeal it has simply because it has less to turn people off. Which is one hell of a skill or knack to have. I remember Charles Shaar Murray writing about heavy metal once, and he stated that he found one band indistinguishable from another as he listened to very little and heard only the basic form in each band, whereas a fan who listened to lots of metal could tell the nuances. He likened it to apples - he didn't like them much so an apple is an apple when he ate it, whereas someone who ate a lot of apples would be able to tell one variety from another easily. He was being snobby about metal at the time, but his basic point is sound.
As for my point - I've forgotten what it was...
Roky Erickson - now there's a horror rocker of wonderfulness: the 1980 album on CBS is one of my faves, even thirty three years after picking it up. 'Creature With The Atom Brain' - now there's a classic toon...
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Post by dem bones on Sept 7, 2017 9:15:12 GMT
Too true, my prog pal! Night of the Vampire is another stormer, likewise I Walked With A Zombie. Dear God, just about anything and everything he ever recorded is immaculate. And *spooky* to veer us back on topic, the title of his 1979 live album is .... Casting The Runes.
* By the way, Mr. Hack. The Curse of Gr**nslade has struck again. This time the bastards landed me in hospital! *
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Post by ropardoe on Sept 7, 2017 9:57:11 GMT
A previously-unreprinted interview with M.R. James? The 1956 Whistle and I'll Come to You? Will the previously- The issue is at the printer now and I should be mailing out copies starting late next week. Your letter is in it, Michael. A week earlier than expected, the magazine and supplementary booklet are back from the printer! The contributors' copies will be going out this week, but, because of the aforementioned tendonitis, I'll be taking it a bit easier with the rest. All should be in the mail within a couple of weeks though.
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Post by pulphack on Sept 7, 2017 9:59:14 GMT
There is not a duff track on the Aliens album, and I shall prove that to Mrs ph by playing it later, and no doubt annoying her (she's very into Foreigner at the moment - don't ask). There's recentish concert footage of Roky on youtube and he looks well and happy after decades of illness and abuse, so that's very pleasing. I understand that he had a Nick Lowe moment* and got a cheque for a large amount after one of his toons ended up on a movie soundtrack, which gives us all hope. And was no more than Roky deserved after the private hell of the seventies and eighties he seems to have gone through.
(*Nick Lowe once related how he was sitting at home in Brentford when a cheque popped through the door for about a million bucks - Curtis Stigers' version of 'What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love And Understanding' had been on The Bodyguard soundtrack album and he was due some royalties! He rented the movie and had to watch it three times before he caught the 30 seconds that appeared in the background of one scene.)
As for Greenslade - the curse of the three hour bass solo strikes again?? How??
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Post by ramseycampbell on Sept 7, 2017 10:07:37 GMT
Did Sounds send you a copy at the time, Ramsey?[/quote] Forgive my fading brain, but I can't recall - I think they may have.
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