The Misunderstood

A bit of a departure from what I should be doing, but…really desirous for a bit of a break from routine, last night found me listening to The Misunderstood’s “Children of the Sun” on repeat play, and at appropriate volume (i.e. very loud!!!), and accidentally reinterpreting a photo of the band from 1966.

This morning finds me exceedingly excited that this image is now on display in the band’s blog and can be viewed here - and, of course, if one clicks back to the profile, one can hear “Children of the Sun”, the equally awesome “I Can Take You to the Sun”, plus four other tracks.

Massive thanks to Rick and the guys for digging this!!!

***

Rock Music critic Jade Hubertz wrote in a 1998 review, "When it comes to the Misunderstood, I have no shame and offer no apologies. "Children of the Sun" is the GREATEST psychedelic track of all time and it's CRIMINAL that the band was taken down in its prime."

In his "Peelenium" (Greatest Songs of the 20th Century) John Peel lists The Misunderstood for 1966, as follows, PEELENIUM 1966: 1. Leonard Cohen - The Sisters of Mercy, 2. The Beatles - And Your Bird Can Sing, 3. The Misunderstood - I Can Take You To The Sun, 4. Jimi Hendrix - Red House, 5. Otis Redding - Try a Little Tenderness.

John Peel also told Index Magazine in 2003, "If I had to list the ten greatest performances I've seen in my life, one would be The Misunderstood at Pandora's Box, Hollywood, 1966. It was the only time I've seen an audience reduced to impotent silence".

***

Certainly, in my opinion, “Children of the Sun” and “I Can Take You to the Sun” stand alongside The Who’s “My Generation” and “I Can See For Miles”, The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High”, and The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”, Cream’s “I Feel Free”, Hendrix’s “Hey Joe”, The Creation’s “How Does It Feel to Feel”, Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play”, The Pretty Things’ “Talking About The Good Times”, as not only tracks which stand out as crucial in the development of music – but tracks which sound as absolutely electrifying now, as they did then.

More info about the band can be found at www.themisunderstood.com

The incredible story of the early life of Rick Brown is told in “Like, Misunderstood” – available from Amazon here

Epic Rites

I am very pleased to announce that I have moved into virtual office space at Epic Rites.

My office door can be found on the main Epic Rites website here. “A New Experience In Food Retail” can be read there.

Clicking on the pablo vision icon/middle finger image on the main page will open the door to my office. “type you fucker, just type…” can be read there, and the artwork for Rob Plath’s “a bellyful of anarchy”, Mark Walton’s “Frostbitten”, and David McLean’s “of dead snakes” can be viewed in full glorious Technicolor. “The House Of The Dead Man” currently completes the written work on show. The office can also be directly entered here. But that would not be half as much fun.

I will be sure to update this blogspot when I put some new stuff up.

There’s all sorts of tremendously exciting things happening at epic rites:

virtual office space also occupied by Wolf Carstens, Rob Plath, Karl Koweski, and RD Armstrong…

links to the Frostbitten website, Rob and Jack America radio show (and archives), Epic Rites and The Thin Edge Of Staring journals, and all sorts of upcoming events and happenings – including the upcoming Riverwood Poetry Festival (five days of destructive madness in Connecticut at the end of June)…

and a very exciting schedule of titles to be released by Epic Rites Press. Watch this space (well, not this space, but the Epic Rites space, obviously)…

Sein und Werden – Philias and Fetishes – reviewed by Grace Andreacchi

Very, very excited by the excellent review of the print edition of Philias and Fetishes by Grace Andreacchi.

The review is a wonderful piece of writing in itself. Sein und Werden has always been a fantastically respected journal, and – as Grace so rightly says – Sein und Werden is going from strength to strength. I’ve said below that this is the absolute highlight of all the things I have been involved in – and this pleasure is not really to do with my own contribution.

There is a story of Jimi Hendrix getting on stage with Cream back in 1966. Jimi had only been in England for a week. Eric Clapton simply walked off the stage in shock to gaze in absolute awe at Hendrix, and said to Chas Chandler afterwards, “Is he always that fucking good?” I’m certainly no Eric Clapton – but I so know how he must have felt!!!

I truly believe that this issue will become highly collectable – and purely because of the content. I will be writing more about this when I catch up with things.

Read Grace’s review here

Grace’s rather impressive Wikipedia entry is here and her website is here

Buy Philias and Fetishes here

Don’t read the review, and don’t buy the journal here – and make the conscious decision to make your life blander than it need be.

Even the most devout of believers, when saying ‘Grace’ before a meal, ought to recite Grace’s review in full – because even God would find it impossible to not ‘do an Eric Clapton’ in this instance.

Black River Publishing – Literary Bitch

Very pleased that a submission from an eternity ago (one I had forgotten about) has gone up in Black River Publishing’s first issue of the online journal Literary Bitch. An older piece too. As Jethro Tull say in the liner notes for their 1968 album, ‘this was how we were playing then – but things change’ – however, in the case of Jethro Tull they immediately changed into a band so embarrassingly awful, that it is hard to comprehend just how good ‘This Was’ is. Fucking hope the changes I am making are for the better, rather than Jethro’s parlous descent!

Anyway, you can read “Hollywood Blood Bat Fiasco” here and you can read David McLean’s lyrically sensitive, and fragrant, poem “the night smells of piss” here

Misc Update

Seems like much exciting stuff is happening while I’ve been kind of snowed under with things (but not, unfortunately, snowed under in some cocaine kind of way; nor in the way that a few inches of snow can bring London’s airport, bus and rail network to a complete standstill (that kind of way is the sort of retrogressive progress that can put a vehicle on the moon many decades ago, but replaces high-speed internet with carrier pigeons - or allows Chuck Palahniuk to be considered as anything other than predictably mediocre)).

Well, I’ll try and catch up with my shit as soon as I can in subsequent posts. But briefly: I stopped writing stuff at the end of November – I may, or may not, return to doing this in the future. I’m taking a break from it – but if I enjoy the break from it too much – who knows? It is not really my intention to do much submitting of stuff to zines from this point on. There are a few ancient and outstanding submissions that might filter through – but many journals die, lose submissions, don’t get them (but not in a ‘you just don’t get it, man’, kind of way), or (quite possibly) struggle to tactfully say: ‘this might be the biggest pile of shit anyone has ever sent us’. There will be occasions – often idiosyncratic – where I do occasionally submit. Mostly I just want to be doing something a bit different. I am not writing a novel, and I never will – it would be fucking awful (and fans of Chuck might then grunt about pots and kettles – or, more probably, gesticulate inarticulately to that effect).

I’ve been doing some artwork for book covers recently, and enjoying that tremendously – although, once again, a bit swamped with things. I guess the reason for putting this shit on my blog is just to say to the various people I have said ‘no’ to for various things of late - or anyone feeling ‘neglected’ on various ‘networking’ sites – it is not any kind of arrogance: I’m often just very busy and very lazy. But, of course, without any inconsistency, keep the suggestions coming in – I might be up for doing something, or else get an enormous sense of self-importance saying ‘sorry, can’t do’! (A perfect win/win situation for me, that more than compensates for any hurt caused to anybody else!)

I’ll be shortly moving into virtual office space at Epic Rites – and will say more about this when I’ve got some stuff together to put up. I am massively honoured to be joining some kick-ass people there, and secretly hoping for inappropriate sexual harassment from anyone with the slightest inclination. There are a number of really fucking exciting things happening at Epic Rites\Epic Rites Press, so extremely pleased to be involved with some of this. Wolfgang Carstens has been fucking awesome to work with – and matches ‘monster’ ambition with a lot of fucking hard work.

So, if there is brevity with a lot of my stuff, excuse the brevity with the exciting stuff I mentioned at the start of what is not a particularly brief post:

David McLean’s Of Dead Snakes should be out very soon at Rain Over Bouville, and, I believe, the excellent novella – Henrietta Forgets – forthcoming with Isms Press. There is already tons of great stuff you can buy (and links to many great pieces online) – so you know where the link is to Autoerotic Elegies…

Constance Stadler has got two excellent and powerful collections out – or out soon – Tinted Steam and Sublunary Curse. Check out the reviews and links for info at Connie’s blogspot…

Antony Hitchin has got The Holy Hermaphrodite coming out soon, and other exciting things in the pipeline – keep up to date with all of this at Antony’s blogspot…

And finally, but the exact opposite of least, very excited that one of my two most favourite journals is out and live – there is a link to a truly astounding collection of pieces in the link to Jennifer Chesler in MungBeing (on the right-hand side), that demonstrate why 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22 and 24 is my favourite numeric sequence.

Hell, I’m sure there must be loads of other stuff that I have forgotten to mention – but if one considers that this morning I put some bread in the microwave to defrost for three minutes, and went to put some rubbish/garbage out while waiting, and, on my return, I thought the beeping of this ‘special’ oven was the smoke alarm going off due to the excessive smoking of menthol cigarettes – or, that every five years or so, I have to ask my mother if she had killed someone (when in fact this was my father) – one must conclude that I’m just not very good at retrieving information from - and retaining information in - my brain, and am some sort of idiot savant (well, maybe half true)…