Bill Mason Band: Billy & The Rotas (1979)

Dodging the brick busses labbed from Moss Side, we gloomed steadily into the metropolis; a rickety sweat room above Jilly’s Rockworld on Oxford Rd, cloaked in shadow & smoke as sweet & sickly as patchouli. Each step up the stairs was another beckoning increment of Elysium as riffs wafted to greet us, the doorway at the top was a throbbing mouth which greedily swallowed us alive. A young teenager in the early 80’s, I had never been to a gig before. And this was a special gig, clad in leather with wide hollow eyes darting each & every which way, keen as prairie winds. A petulant strobe punctuated the swollen red glow of the room. Christian punk? Incredulous though it sounds even now, The Bill Mason Band were that rarest of things; animal, organic and raw with a Medieval purity spewing baleful St. Anthony’s Fire in every lyric. The End Times were here, tonight. I had wagged it from school earlier just to see them on TV debuting Mr. G from their only album No Sham! On screen, in the born again clinique of white studio lighting, overexposed & immaculately buffed the BMB were a shimmering contrast with tonight’s hedonistic fervour. Here, in the dark, the primal sweat and orgy of irrepressible raw sound, strangers became one animal, the Body of Christ lashing frantically at invisible phantasms of Hell, finding redemption in the storm of the strobe & driven like hail in the razor sharp pulsar of Dave Rawding’s snare.

You can forget all your troubles in this place

Forget your name, forget your face

Feel y’ heart suddenly begin to race

I thought this was a dancin’ concert

You got me here under false pretences

What a swizz! Talkin’ ‘bout God & heavenly showbiz!

Review:

Jesus Freak Hideout

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Be Here Now: Ram Dass

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Jodorowsky’s Dune

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Alfred Wainwright

This is a great documentary about Alfred Wainwright. Apart from filling me with a sense of awe at his prodigious technical output and stoic mountain fortitude, it was also reassuring to know he was a merciless curmudgeon, eschewing crowds of school kids on the peaks, and bemoaning encroaching commercialization. It inspired me to get yet more of the major Wainwrights under my belt in future. This documentary is the opening episode in the Wainwright Walks Coast to Coast series, with soggy biscuit Julia Bradbury, notable as in this episode there are thankfully relatively few soft porn shots of her huffing & puffing uphill for the camera. One of my teacher colleagues relayed a story about his friend who was up walking on the West Pennine Moors near Blackburn years ago. On the tops he came across a myopic old man smoking a pipe, and they agreed to walk down together. It was only after the old man had gone on his way that my colleague's friend realised he had been in the modest company of Alfred Wainwright. To delight in anonymity; to feel alive only when wrapped in the solitary cool breezes of the mountain; Wainwright is someone from whom we all can learn.  

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Meditations on the Peaks: Julius Evola

Meditazioni delle Vette (translated as Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest) is a work by Italian esoteric writer Julius Evola. A collection of articles from between 1930 and 1955 as assembled by Renato del Ponte. Published in 1974 by La Spezia: Ed. del Tridente; English translation by Inner Traditions, 1998. The excerpt is from pages 22-23. Images are from a walk I did around Dovesone Reservoir in April this year. The descent was treacherous; partly through white rapid river, partly through ravine. I had to hang at full stretch in places just to get down through the slippery rocks. The words of Evola echoed through my mind. If they are the last words to go through my mind before falling to my death I thought, they are good words and worthy of an heroic end.

“In this way, beyond the natural symbol of the mountain, which is directly perceived by the senses, we can access its doctrinal and traditional symbolism, namely, the deeper content of all the previously mentioned ancient myths in which the mountain appears as the seat of divine natures, immortalizing substances, forces of solar and supernatural regality (for example, the solar mountain referred to in the traditions of the Hellenized Roman Empire and the mountain as the seat of Mazdean glory), as spiritual center (Mount Meru and the other symbolic mountains conceived as poles), and so forth. In fact, in all this we see the various depictions, personifications, and projections of transcendent states of consciousness, or inner awakening and enlightenment. These projects are said to be real when they no longer represent something vague, mystical or fantastic, but rather when they are perceived according to the evidence and normalcy of a superior order that regards as abnormal everything that was previously regarded as familiar and habitual.

“It is possible that the ancients, who ignored mountain climbing or only knew some rudimentary techniques (and therefore knew the mountain as an inaccessible and inviolable entity), were consequently lead to experience it as a symbol and as a transcendent spirituality. Considering that today the mountain has been physically conquered and that there are few peaks that man has not yet reached, it is important to keep the conquest from being debased and from losing its higher meaning. Thus, it is necessary that the younger generation gradually come to appreciate action at the level of ritual and that they slowly succeed in finding again a transcendent reference point. It is through this reference point that the feats of audacity, risk, and conquest as well as the disciplines of the body, the senses, and the will that are practiced in the immovable, great, and symbolic mountain peaks, lead men to the realization that all in man is beyond himself. In this way these feats will be justified in the context of the spiritual revolutionary movement that is currently emerging among our people.”

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Peel Monument vs Darwen Tower

Height	39m	26m
Year	1852	1898
Location	Holcombe Hill, Ramsbottom, Bury, Lancs	Darwen Moor, Blackburn with Darwen, Lancs
Synonymns	Peel Monument, Holcombe Tower	Darwen Tower, Jubilee Tower
Height above sea level	335m	374m
Architect/ Builders	William Grant	James Whalley
Commemorating	Sir Robert Peel, former Tory Prime Minister, textile capitalist, and founder of the modern Police force; “Bobbies or Peelers”	Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and also to celebrate the victory of the local people for the right to access the moor.
Access	Peel Tower is open to the public when the flag is flying from the top, but these occasions are limited. It was closed when I went.	Open all times. Access via an internal spiral staircase. The tower dome came off during strong winds on 11 November 2010. A replacement powder-coated stainless steel dome made by WEC Group of Darwen, which cost more than £35,000, was winched into place by helicopter on 13 January 2012.
Views	Ramsbottom Moor, Manchester, into Cheshire basin, some of North Wales.	North Yorkshire,  Morecambe Bay, Blackpool Tower,Cumbria, the Isle of Man, North Wales,  Derbyshire, elsewhere in Lancashire, and surrounding moorland.
Steps	148	65 stone + 17 iron = 82
Cost	£1000 by public subscription.	£650 devoted in aid of the Nursing Association by public subscription.
Aesthetic Opinion	Manchester Evening News: Peel Monument is “not a specimen of architectural beauty"	James Jarret: “The finest Prospect Tower in Lancashire”

The Verdict

I’m all behind Darwen Tower in this architectural face off. Sure, its shorter, cost less to build, and looks like a 1950’s Pinewood Studios space rocket. But it was built to commemorate free access to the moor, which resulted from hard fought and bloody battles with greedy landowners. Plus the view from Darwen Tower is pretty phenomenal too. All Peel Monument can boast is testament to twice Tory PM Robert Peel, founder of the rozzers. No contest!

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Mahlon Blaine: The Exotica of Erotica

Mahlon Blaine’s best work walked the razor's edge between the grotesque and beautiful. Though few facts of his life are verifiable, insomuch as anyone can gather, he lived in that no man’s land as well. A childhood accident left the artist – who was born in 1894 - blind in his left eye, an accident that contributes to the flattened perspective that marks his work. Though he alleged to have seen combat in World War I, the Army rarely drafted the half blind. A well-documented chronic injury to his left arm was unlikely to have come from a war wound. The plate in his head of which he boasted was probably fictional. Few photographs of the artist survive, but his self-portraits further the likely fake war hero persona.

In 1928, Blaine depicted himself as a typical, pipe-smoking veteran from the Lost Generation, an archetype that could be mistaken for a Hemingway dust jacket. After the war years, Blaine led a transient existence, toiling in Hollywood in the era of avant-garde silent films, and bouncing back and forth from the West Coast to New York City as his marriage to b-movie actress Duskal Blaine smoldered, exploded, and then reignited.

According to his own count, Blaine and his wife married and divorced no fewer than three times. But of course, Blaine’s count is not to be trusted. Though he was beloved by his friends for his poetic approach to life- his storytelling style was once compared to haiku, containing just a glimmer of meaning for the listener to deduce- his life is best pieced back together by tracking his career. For decades Blaine labored in the factory-like setting of the underground New York erotic literature scene. Working closely with Jack Brussel, the energetic antiquarian book dealer who published and sold erotica first at his Ortelius Book Shop and then at other Fourth Avenue locations, Blaine illustrated symbolist classics like Paul Verlaine’s Hashish and Incense, the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, fast-money low-market fetish pornographic booklets, and everything in between.

Blaine’s devotion to the macabre, the bizarre, and the sexual aspects of his art put the brakes on his commercial career. Though, patrons bought his original works during his lifetime, his cult status today emerged only through his rediscovery by sci-fi collectors and underground cartoonists. Still, Blaine’s admirers during his lifetime were fierce. Along with magician Jack Dunninger, who literally kept Blaine fed during lean times (often complaining about the artist's prodigious appetite), Blaine gathered fans in the elite of New York City's design world.

How much of Blaine’s obscurity in his lifetime came from his emergence during the depression years, when high end glossy work was scarce, and how much was due to a form of self-sabotage may never be entirely clear. Haunted by his own demons, Blaine spent the early 1940s under the psychiatric care of Greystone Hospital’s Dr. Archie Crandall. This period marks the only known break in Blaine’s working life. After ironically completing illustrations for a reissue of E. Thelmar’s 1909 autobiography of madness The Maniac, Blaine slipped out of public view, before returning to the New York art scene in the 1950s.

Text from:
Grapefruit Moon Gallery

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