Head Medicine weekly vol 1

Head Medicine Weekly

vol 1

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the first installment of a new feature, a weekly dose of various sights and sounds, 

comics and culture for your eyeballs and earholes. 

a new volume every Friday.  follow on Facebook or Twitter  

too many memorials recently...

Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister   1945-2015

David Bowie 1947-2016

  Nigeria Rock Special

 Psychedelic Afro-Rock and Fuzz Funk in 1970s Nigeria

2008 Soundway Records

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when Ginger Baker, drummer of Cream, arrived in Nigeria in 1970 and hooked up with Fela Kuti, two amazing musical ambassadors' worlds collided.  Baker brought Western acid rock with him and it melded seamlessly with Kuti's Afro-funk sounds and traditional African rhythms. the young people of Nigeria went wild for this concoction, and countless bands sprung up playing a brand new style of psychedelic, fuzzed out afro-rock.  there are several great compilations to wade in to that document this rich musical era, and Nigeria Rock Special: Psychedelic Afro-Rock & Fuzz Funk in 1970's Nigeria will give you plenty of material to sift through.  buy it HERE.

here are a few of my favorites:

The X-Ray Audio Project

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In the Soviet Union during the Cold War, music and records that were not controlled by the state were highly sought after but hard to come by.  an underground market formed, and bootleggers needed to use their ingenuity to create the product.  armed with a record press but suffering from a lack of supplies, these bootleggers used repurposed x-ray plates to fill the demand. 

these albums were forbidden treasures, and their ghostly story is only now starting to emerge.

click HERE for more information on The X-ray Audio Project 

UNKLE

The Runaway

  video directed 

by

Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones

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a scuzzy, down n' dirty track from James Lavelle's long-running UNKLE project, off of their 2010 release Where Did the Night Fall.   vocals by Elle J, with a darkly seductive video by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones.  very, very cool stuff.

Space Riders

Volumen Uno

by

Fabian Rangel Jr, Alex Ziritt, and Ryan Ferrier

  2015 Black Mask Studios

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created by Rangel Jr and Ziritt

written by Rangel Jr

art by Ziritt

lettered by Ryan Ferrier

Space Riders:  Volumen Uno collects the entire introductory 4 issue mini-series, and, from one look at the cover, you know exactly what you are going to get.  there are no subtleties here.  this is a 1970s black light poster hallucination exploding to life.  Rangel Jr's story is properly unhinged, flowing like a stream of consciousness Fletcher Hanks creation, and Ziritt's art looks like a mix of Jack Kirby and Paul Pope on a steady diet of LSD.  it's a perfect blend.  buy the book HERE

the Head Medicine Weekly playlist 

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~kojak  

Marvel black light posters by Third Eye Inc 1971

in 1971, Third Eye Inc, a New York City-based poster company, released a series of Marvel Comics black light posters using art from Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, and John Romita among others.  24 of these designs were made as day-glo silk screened posters on heavy paper stock, and sold around the country (Third Eye also released a series of Marvel greeting cards as well).  i can only imagine how many teenage brains warped in their fogged out bedrooms to these posters back in the day.

images found from several different sources, notably Cool and Collected and  Nick Derrington's Flickr

bootleg movie posters from Ghana

Through the 1980s and 90s in the West African country of Ghana, mobile movie theaters brought American films to the people.  Oftentimes these were nothing more than a tv and vcr, powered by a generator and hauled around in the trunk of a car from town to town.  Local artists were commissioned to create attention-grabbing posters to advertise the viewings, sometimes without having ever seen the movie.  Hollywood eventually brought the copyright hammer down on these bootleg viewings and posters, but these surreal masterpieces remain.  Take a look...