Monday 21 September 2015

NYC: Q&A, 1975.

This is great. John in the Dakota, ca. autumn/winter 1975, sharing his thoughts about NYC for local radio station WNEW. The programme this was intended for never made it to air, but, in the way of these things, the tape has now surfaced. And here 'tis.
Thanks to Lizzie Bravo for the link.

Sunday 20 September 2015

Lennonology: Volume 1.

If you are interested enough to occasionally peruse these pages, then ye will no doubt already be aware of Chip Madinger and Scott Raile's forthcoming tome Lennonology, volume 1 of a 3 or possibly 4 part work, which should be the definitive guide to John and Yoko's joint lives and art. This first volume takes the form of a diary, beginning in 1966 (for obvious reasons) and running up to 1980 (ditto).

What you may not know is that the entire first three chapters are now up on the Lennonology site, and freely available to preview; '66 and '67 are fairly short (given that the focus is on John and Yoko together), but '68 is a huge and hugely informative piece of research (some of the fruit of 15 years' worth) in which, regardless of how much you know, you'll learn something new with every few entries, and also come away with a much clearer understanding of what happened when, where and why.

To take one example: the date and chronology of the Two Virgins night has never been satisfactorily explained. Previous attempts haven't made much sense even on their own terms, but the new order of events given by Madinger and Raile does (though we'll have to wait for the publication of the notes to see how they arrived at this conclusion).

The book is being privately published by them, in a strictly limited edition, so it's not cheap, but if you can afford it (or can manage to lay off the beer for a while to save for it) then it's clearly going to be a major contribution to all this (whatever this is) and one for the ages. Go HERE for the previewed chapters, and HERE for the Lennonology home page, where clicking through will take you to the order form.

Friday 4 September 2015

Pepper: dolls.


Apologies for the lack of activity round these parts of late; it's surprisingly time consuming to get even a scrap of this rubbish together, and free time is in short supply these days. Anyway, there's no shortage of stuff to post, as and when, so... gerronwithit.
I hadn't seen these pics before. I'm sure no red arrows are needed to recognise the basket's contents, but nevertheless:


There are also another couple of dolls (or toys) in there:


Various photos showing the construction of the Pepper sleeve reveal lots of other stuff that didn't make the final cut, and there are a few such things evident in this splendid pic o' Mal:


Ye can waste yer own time identifying them, but here's one for starters - a small collection of figures:


And whither the doll? As is often the case... I dunno. PS Note luggage tag (haha)(it couldn't be, could it?).