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  

Tabula Rasa (a clean slate): a graphic short story by brian koschak

"Tabula Rasa (a clean slate)" is a 4-page graphic short story based on a dream i had a few years ago, just as my inevitable mid-life crisis was kicking in.  it was cathartic working on it over the years, chipping away whenever there was time.  i felt the story became a sort of metaphor/riddle that my brain concocted, and seemed to challenge me to do something productive with. i suspected that once the story was finished, and if i could get it to look just how i imagined, than it might signify the end of the crisis.  and it did.

the unofficial official soundtrack is "Albatross" by Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, from 1968.  it is a beautiful, classic piece of music.  listen to it HERE.

i hope you enjoy "Tabula Rasa (a clean slate),"  and if anyone is interested, there is a free high res pdf available for download HERE.

thanks,

~kojak

the past is gone

it has burned to the ground.

so leap into the future

and chase the unknowable horizon.

"Tabula Rasa (a clean slate)" is copyright 2016 brian james koschak

In Search of Steve Ditko (BBC documentary 2007)

In Search of Steve Ditko is a 2007 BBC documentary following Jonathan Ross on his attempt to track down the elusive comic book titan, best known as the co-creator of Spiderman.  along the way, Ross sits down with Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee and more to discuss the man and his classic work.

 

Milo Manara does Marvel

Milo Manara, the legendary French erotic comics master, unwittingly found himself at the center of a heated debate on the oversexualization of women in American comics with his infamous Spider-woman cover.  Manara did what he has done best over his decades-long career, seductive women in provocative poses, and the internet broke as a result.  His other Marvel covers were cancelled in the wake of the outrage.  America is still a place with rigid Puritanical views on sexuality, yet openly flaunts death and destruction in every available medium, and Manara's work simply doesn't jive with these sensibilities.  It is unlikely we will ever see the Master's work published through mainstream comics on this side of the ocean again, so here is a collection of his Marvel covers, as well as some pages from his 2010 graphic novel, X-Women, written by Chris Claremont (download a Spanish copy HERE, for scholarly review of course).