Hello, and welcome to the first Urban Spaceman of 2024. Sorry for the delay between issues. Partly (though far from entirely) this was due to my discomfort with the issue of Substack apparently hosting a small number of Nazi and far-right newsletters, and their frustratingly blasé statement on this, which blew up at the end of last year (they’ve since changed their stance slightly and removed some of the worst offenders). I started writing a whole post about this, but I could see myself clambering up a very tall equine and so I deleted it. Suffice to say, I’m far from happy with the idea of sharing a publishing platform with white supremacists, but right now on balance I’ve decided to keep using Substack. I have, however, indefinitely postponed plans to monetise my writing on here in any way. So, huge and heartfelt thanks to those of you who have pledged, but while I’m prepared to continue using Substack’s very effective infrastructure, I’m not prepared to enter into a financial arrangement with them as my publisher.
Beyond that, I’ll continue to review the situation. I’m anti-censorship and pro-free speech, but please don’t take the fact that I’m still here as any kind of endorsement or legitimisation of Substack’s current position.
We came across the West Sea
How has the year been treating you so far, anyway? After deliberately keeping my head down and being buffeted by the winds of fate during the year of ’23, I’ve resolved to get out more during ’24. Last night I went to see former Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell and his current band at Brighton Concorde 2. Cornwell is 74, now, and looks his age: his guitar playing is a little shaky, though still effective, but his voice is as strong as ever. His two-hour set drew mostly on his extensive solo catalogue of the last 30 years, which I’m not familiar with at all. It was okay. Meat and potatoes rock, for the most part, with a few progressive touches. Any of the songs would’ve sat happily on any given Stranglers album, but none of them would’ve been standouts.
I have to admit, the highlights were definitely the half-dozen Stranglers songs he played over the course of the night: ‘Skin Deep’, ‘Strange Little Girl’, ‘Who Wants The World’, ‘Always The Sun’, ‘Nice ’N’ Sleazy’ and ‘(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)’. There’s always been an element of the Northern Mysteries to The Stranglers, the idea of them as Viking marauders coming across the sea in so many of their songs, but with an element of myth and magic on albums like The Raven and The Gospel According to the Meninblack that was anathema to most of their punk contemporaries. Cornwell was Odin to Jean-Jacques Burnel’s Loki, and It’s no wonder they eventually found they couldn’t work together any longer. Tonight, he was Odin in his incarnation as an old man wandering the wilderness, but flashes of his true majesty occasionally showed through.
Support was meant to come from The Primitives, and I was extremely disappointed when they pulled out at the last minute due to singer Tracey losing her voice. But David Gedge stepped up and played a surprise acoustic set of old Wedding present songs, which was very welcome.
Book News
I have a new book out that you can buy. Electric Tibet is the first volume of American Underground, my projected 180,000-word psychedelic odyssey through the twentieth century’s magical counterculture. It’s written in the form of five interconnected novellas, and I’ve decided to self-publish the first as a kind of white label ‘underground edition’ to raise interest, generate critical feedback, and hopefully give me a bit of financial help while I finish the project.
As I’ve written on the back cover blurb, Electric Tibet is an occult reimagining of the January 1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco that gave birth to the Summer of Love. It's available as a paperback or ebook and is roughly 34,000 words long. I’d love to hear what you think of it. You can get both versions exclusively from my Big Cartel site. More information on American Underground can be found here.
The Universe Next Door
Our friends at Peakrill Press have started the year with a flurry of activity. Previously mentioned in these pages, The Lost Doctor Annual materialised in time for Christmas and it’s a gorgeous looking thing, perfectly capturing the magic of those TV tie-in annuals of yore. Unlike many of those however, it actually offers value for money in terms of content. Besides my imaginary interview with Ken Campbell as the Doctor, it’s packed with episode scripts, annotations, illustrations, games, puzzles, stories, info features and more. Apparently, the team have recently gifted a copy to returning Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies, and who knows what consequences may come of that magnificent connection?
Look out too for the Mycelium Parish News 2023, a handy guide to all the weird and wonderful things that happened last year within our extended post-Discordian network, and a primer for things to come in 2024. Yours for just £2.30 including postage! And Peakrill Panjandrum Dan Sumption’s long-awaited masterpiece, King Arthur Vs. Devil Kitty is finally published too; a retelling of one of the more obscure and unlikely corners of Arthurian myth, with sumptuous illustrations by Max Hartley.
It's great to see a piece on Toxteth Day Of The Dead in the new Fortean Times, which just dropped through my letterbox, though I haven’t had time to read it yet. Finally, I’d like to share this essay I wrote on Donovan’s recently-reissued album A Gift From A Flower To A Garden, which ran on The Quietus back in November. A bit old, but it landed between newsletters so worth another plug, I thought.
That’s all for now. I hope you’re having a good one. I’ll be back in touch soon.
Ben