Hi!
Hope you’re well! Not much to report here, finally got a Home Taping Is Killing Music tattoo.
Got an email reminder about some SQL gubbins today and I found this half finished post. I’m just going to post it anyway. Would have been more timely 2 years ago, but, hey. Look at that, this blog is nearly 10 years old.
From about 6 years old I read 2000AD religiously, if you’re of my age (and that’s a distinct possibility) it’s probably had some influence on your own childhood even if it’s only due to the quite awful Sylvester Stallone movie (although this has since been somewhat diminished by the excellent Dredd of late).
My favourite comics though were the one picked up on the corner of Buchanan Street & Argyll Street, a street vendor sold newsstand copies of US comics and other those I had a particular fondness for DC Comics. More specifically I really enjoyed the alternative takes on the heroes such as those from Earth-2 or some other parallel universe where Batman wore the colourful costume of Zur-En-Arh or Superman was made of gold and lived in the Sun or you know, something that was grounded in this reality but slightly warped and alternative.
To go back to 2000AD, the Glaswegian writer Grant Morrison did some work for the comic, perhaps most famously the Superhero saga, Zenith. And again, the most enjoyable chapter of this for me was the war of heroes with many alternative takes from parallel dimensions on long forgotten and not forgotten characters such as an Acid House interpretation of Robot Archie or a grown-up Billy Whizz. All very silly, but I’ve always appreciated a sharp take on alternative histories or the Sci-Fi staple of the Mirror Universe.
Which ultimately brings me to this.
This is the back of the Dayglo Maradona – Rock Section sleeve, a tie-in record to Julian Cope’s novel, One Three One, a Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel. I’d love to tell you more about the novel, but I think I bailed out after about 100 pages as it was a bit too What the Fuck for me.
Anyway, I just wanted to draw attention to the sleeves of the contemporary singles, which I understand were designed by Avalon Cope, and are wonderfully evocative of the era.
edit, 2023, some of this music was recorded other than Rock Section, I’m not sure how easy it is to find but I’ve added Bandcamp & Youtube where I’ve found or added it. Seems to have been mostly issued in 2017 around the time of The Trip Advizer tour and I aimgine it’s out there somewhere in more specialist Julian Cope forums, but I’ve not found them. Anyway, see the Lord Yatesbury label on Discogs for more information.
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