The Urban Spaceman

Volume Two, Issue Six; March 2024

Hi, how are you doing? I thought it was time that I dropped you a line to let you know what's going on here. I've been doing a kind of spring clean, I guess, sorting through the boxes of comics and magazines under the bed, and refiling my hundreds of neglected 7" singles (strictly by decade, though classic punk still has its own section - I won't go any further with describing my filing system as it could take up the whole newsletter), while gradually putting them into clear plastic sleeves, which is strangely satisfying. As ever, I'm mostly just moving things around, ingeniously still finding new ways to squeeze more stuff into an already overstuffed flat. But I have taken a couple of bags to the local charity shops, thrown out some (by no means all) of the ancient songs-taped-off-the-radio cassettes that I have no means of playing, and given a Viking funeral to an old leather jacket that had long since been mortally wounded.

Otherwise, I'm still writing Savage Jubilee, the second volume of my 'American Underground' novel sequence. You'll recall that on January 23, I low-key self-published the first volume, Electric Tibet, as a kind of white-label demo-tape-style limited edition, to generate interest and magical energy. It's still available here if you're interested.

When I grow up I wanna be a beatnik

I'm still hoping for more feedback from readers (I know everyone who bought it probably already has a huge to-read pile) but what I have had has been overwhelmingly positive. One pleasing early result was that Simon Warner asked me to fill out the 'Beat Soundtrack' questionnaire that's a regular feature of his excellent Rock and The Beat Generation blog / newsletter. You can read that here.

Simon and I have history going back to when he was the music editor for the Halifax Evening Courier in the late 80s and I would send in reviews, often of bands I was playing in. Later, he ran the influential Popular Music Studies course at Leeds University's Bretton Hall campus - recently in the news as about to become the first outside-London branch of the Groucho Club. When I had a short story published in the 1997 anthology Disco Biscuits, Simon invited me and Jeff Noon, as the two northern contributors, to talk to his class. Later still, Simon was the organiser of the Allen Ginsberg tribute event Still Howling in Manchester, for which I wrote and performed my poem 'For Everyone', appearing alongside the likes of Michael Horowitz, Barry Miles and Ginsberg / Fugs collaborator Steven Taylor. So it was great to be in touch again and to join the literary luminaries who've contributed beat soundtracks before me.

No sooner had the Beat Soundtrack gone out, than Kev Ring, editor of the long-running and highly respected Beat Scene magazine got in touch to ask for a copy of Electric Tibet. He's just posted this very kind mini review on the magazine's website and has interviewed me for a future issue. As a fan of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs etc. since my early teens, I'm gratified and honoured to have this unexpected support from the British beat community.

Clowns of Cthulhu

Writer and psychogeographer James Burt has also been very supportive of my work, and my current project in particular. You should definitely subscribe to his weekly newsletter of often creepy, deceptively understated short stories, and look out for his frequent pamphlets (all links at Orbific.com). His next book is a collection called True Clown Stories, to be published by Peakrill Press (they put out the Lost Doctor Annual mentioned in the last newsletter). There's a Kickstarter that you can support by buying an advance copy of the book or by taking on one of the other, um, perks (I use the term advisedly - you'll see what I mean).

Speaking of The Lost Doctor, there's a new episode up on Soundcloud now- The Transit of Venus (Part Two) - and if you listen to the end, you'll hear a trailer for 'The Dreamstop Implodes' - the episode I've written for the series, which is going to be recorded very soon. More about that in a future newsletter.

And another Kickstarter of interest: the author, musician, artistic instigator and all-round iconoclast Jeff Merrifield is recording an album of improvised music inspired by HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. What could be better? The Cthulhu Mythos Album even has Richard Stanley, director of Lovecraft-influenced cult movies Color Out Of Space and Hardware, involved as a consultant, and it's all taking place up in the Shetland Islands. This is a cult happening already!

Midnight Movies

One of the most enjoyable developments of this year so far for me has been the inauguration of the East Sussex Psychedelic Film Club (abbreviated, rather wonderfully, as ESP-FC). I missed their first screening, Performance, in January, due to disorganisation on my part, but made it to their showing of A Field In England last month, with a supporting feature of Tony Conrad's experimental 1966 short The Flicker and Field In England director Ben Wheatley in conversation with ESP-FC's own John Higgs.

The atmosphere, attention to detail, and embrace of all things weird and wonderful reminds me of London's much-missed Scala Cinema, where I remember sitting through a typically eclectic all-nighter of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Dougal and The Blue Cat, Frank Zappa's 200 Motels, The Monkees' Head and Thunderbirds Are Go in 1992. Only the ESP-FC is a much more intimate affair, taking place in the compact but bijou surroundings of the Westgate Chapel in Lewes that holds maybe 100 people, with DJ and co-curator Richard Norris and the Innerstrings psychedelic lightshow in the adjoining bar, a zine-like programme for each event and more.

As you can imagine, these events already sell out extremely quickly, so it's too late now to get tickets for next month's screening of freaky 1977 Japanese horror flick House, but you can sign up to their mailing list here.

It was also fun to see John Higgs a couple of nights earlier, in conversation with Joel Gion, the tambourine player from The Brian Jonestown Massacre whose iconic sideburns were captured in the 2004 documentary Dig! Gion's memoir of those years, In The Jingle Jangle Jungle, is a delight to read, giving a funny, engaging and at times poignant account of the BJM's seemingly simultaneous rise and fall, with the band's mercurial leader, Anton Newcombe, playing Dean Moriarty to Joel's Sal Paradise. In parts it reminded me of Julian Cope's Head On memoir, which as far as I'm concerned is the gold standard of rock autobiography. A true head, Gion now has a copy of Electric Tibet too - hopefully he'll dig it (ha-ha, groan) in return.

I'll let you get back to the rest of your day now. Thanks for reading and I'll be in touch again soon.

Ben.