Design from an island just beyond Babylon
Aug. 21st, 2007 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI'm lucky to live near one of Berlin's most famous specialist record shops, Hard Wax in Kreuzberg. Up five flights of stairs at the back of a second courtyard, Hard Wax feels more like an esoteric supply source for DJs than a commercial record outlet. I'm not, to be honest, terribly interested in the club music they sell there, but I love to pop in to look at the reggae sleeves. It's all on vinyl, much of it is vintage, and the sleeves are simply fabulous.
You know me by now. I'm interested in exquisite, principled cultural otherness, whether that's located in kabuki theatre, the architecture of Rudolf Steiner, or Nyahbhinghi reggae. I'm interested in ways of being in the world which are radically different from the ways I know. These sleeves have that kind of strangeness in spades. They're full of eccentricity and charm, of the warmth, colour and vigour of Jamaica, of the feel of the 1970s, of spiritual values, of struggle and rebellion, and of reggae's doped-up, positive and peaceful vibes. The sleeves I picked to show you were mostly made between about 1970 and 1982 -- reggae's heyday.
There are lots of awful reggae sleeves too, of course. Horrible, horrible compilations, appalling uses of red, green and gold, drop-shadow brush script, crappy copies of gansta rap poses. Since selling out to Babylon is a very central concept to Rastafarians, it's interesting that reggae artists whose complete catalogues I looked at seemed to start releasing eye-hurting sleeves when Babylonian stuff started happening in their careers:
a) they moved from Jamaica to the US.
b) they signed to a major label.
c) they employed the services of a professional designer, or used a computer.
d) 1983 arrived, or any date subsequent.
e) cd replaced vinyl.
When I shared the delights of these sleeves with Hisae, she started telling me about an outsider artist, a 56 year-old black man from Washington DC who's been making his own sleeves, for imaginary soul records featuring himself, since the late 60s. Mingering Mike has "released" 52 albums and 20 singles. There's no music, just these hand-painted covers made of construction paper from the drugstore. The records are cardboard, painted with grooves.
Below you can see a couple of his sleeves, taken from his website. For me, they have quite a similar quality to the vintage reggae sleeves. And although they're homemade parodies of an entirely commercial form, Babylon seems to have had surprisingly little say in their design.
You know me by now. I'm interested in exquisite, principled cultural otherness, whether that's located in kabuki theatre, the architecture of Rudolf Steiner, or Nyahbhinghi reggae. I'm interested in ways of being in the world which are radically different from the ways I know. These sleeves have that kind of strangeness in spades. They're full of eccentricity and charm, of the warmth, colour and vigour of Jamaica, of the feel of the 1970s, of spiritual values, of struggle and rebellion, and of reggae's doped-up, positive and peaceful vibes. The sleeves I picked to show you were mostly made between about 1970 and 1982 -- reggae's heyday.There are lots of awful reggae sleeves too, of course. Horrible, horrible compilations, appalling uses of red, green and gold, drop-shadow brush script, crappy copies of gansta rap poses. Since selling out to Babylon is a very central concept to Rastafarians, it's interesting that reggae artists whose complete catalogues I looked at seemed to start releasing eye-hurting sleeves when Babylonian stuff started happening in their careers:a) they moved from Jamaica to the US.
b) they signed to a major label.
c) they employed the services of a professional designer, or used a computer.
d) 1983 arrived, or any date subsequent.
e) cd replaced vinyl.
When I shared the delights of these sleeves with Hisae, she started telling me about an outsider artist, a 56 year-old black man from Washington DC who's been making his own sleeves, for imaginary soul records featuring himself, since the late 60s. Mingering Mike has "released" 52 albums and 20 singles. There's no music, just these hand-painted covers made of construction paper from the drugstore. The records are cardboard, painted with grooves.Below you can see a couple of his sleeves, taken from his website. For me, they have quite a similar quality to the vintage reggae sleeves. And although they're homemade parodies of an entirely commercial form, Babylon seems to have had surprisingly little say in their design.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 10:15 pm (UTC)BTW I had a dream last night that you were adamant that you worked with Link Wray on his spectacular sessions for WRAY'S THREE TRACK SHACK
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 10:28 pm (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 10:31 pm (UTC)True about the LP art of that era -- the Creation Rockers series is great, early Augustus Pablo and Lee Scratch Perry. One of my favorites is Dr. Alimontados' "Best Dressed Chicken in Town", with a pic of him staggering up a road shirtless with his fly open.
The eras' considered a very rich roots era -- but reggaes' far from dead. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 10:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 11:25 pm (UTC)Lee Perry's "Judgement Inna Babylon" sleeve is one of my faves, with Chris Blackwell as Dracula holding a chalice of chiken's blood in his hand, his face obscured by his vampire cape as Perry stands next to him, frightened, with his hair standing straight up and his headphones flying off of his head.
-Mikey IQ.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 04:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 10:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-20 11:58 pm (UTC)There's a fellow out there by the name of Blake who does collaged faux-album covers, but he puts mot of his energies writing the liner notes on the back, describing in great detail the album he hears in his head, going so far as to provide a biographical background, etc. Each album is a small book. Was thumbing through a few of them last week--a friend collects them.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 02:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 06:36 am (UTC)i realise this comment should really have links to pictures.
Codek Records
Date: 2007-08-21 09:34 am (UTC)some of these reggae covers remind me of the work of designer / label-owner Alex Gloor whose sleeves for his Codek label are among my favorite covers of all time.
see some of this records here:
http://www.codek.com/vinyl.html
eRiC
Re: Codek Records
Date: 2007-08-21 04:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 09:43 am (UTC)The other point is that there's a bit of a sensibility clash between this post -- in which I proclaim myself uninterested in the club records at Hard Wax -- and the current article on Pingmag (http://pingmag.jp/2007/08/20/richie-hawtin-about-minimal-art/), which celebrates Richie Hawtin's minimalist sleeves. These icy, simple designs couldn't be further from the warm reggae clutter I'm celebrating here. One of them looks very much like the Deutsche Bank logo (http://upload.moldova.org/economie/2006/aug/Deutsche-Bank-logo.jpg) -- how much more Babylonian can you get than that?
Hawtin represents a side of Berlin I'm left completely cold by: "minimal house bobbins". I'm interested to see that many Pingmag readers agree: the comments under the Hawtin piece are uncharacteristically negative.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 10:03 am (UTC)In other words, no ideology of "folk soul" = no language for why Babylonian damnation might not be good for you. So you might want to suspect that the very people who condemn talk of "folk soul" are the people who don't want any resistance to Babylon formulated.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 10:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 04:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 04:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 04:33 pm (UTC)der.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 05:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 08:30 pm (UTC)This isn't exactly `political discourse', though.
der.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 09:14 pm (UTC)"Why does folk soul begin and end at national borders?"
or
"Why does fold soul begin and end at skin tones?"
or
"Why does folks soul begin and end at faciality?"
Why, eventually, does 'folk soul' sound like an episode of It's A Knockout?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 10:59 pm (UTC)Well,
Date: 2008-01-19 09:03 pm (UTC)So, let's replay one of those:
"Why does folk soul begin and end at national borders?"
Well, if the national borders have developed *historically* (with the workings and the patina of centuries) and not artificially, it's because the folks whose interacted created such a soul have been constrained in said borders.
In colonial Africa, where borders were drawn artificially on a map by imperialist powers, the national borders do not enclose any folk soul. Borders created historically enclose more of the folk soul. It's also a feedback loop: the existence of borders amplifies the national ties between the inhabitants.
Of course, as with all things where humans and culture are involved, it's not an exact science. This does not mean it does not exist, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 03:26 pm (UTC)http://kunstler.com/eyesore_200611.html
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 04:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 04:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 04:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 09:24 pm (UTC)There's too many intelligent, educated, progressively-minded people who dislike such forms of brutalism; not all of them can be conveniently dismissed as "ignorant" or "reactionary".
This entry (http://kunstler.com/eyesore_200605.html) was rather good. So was this. (http://kunstler.com/eyesore_200608.html)
Novelty is not enough.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 09:39 pm (UTC)http://kunstler.com/eyesore_200707.html
http://kunstler.com/eyesore_200603.html
http://kunstler.com/eyesore_200601.html
http://kunstler.com/eyesore_200512.html
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 11:42 pm (UTC)http://kunstler.com/eyesore_200304.html
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 10:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 10:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 11:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 12:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 03:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-21 12:17 pm (UTC)maybe un-noticed
Date: 2007-08-21 01:50 pm (UTC)FWAH FWAH FWAH FWAAAAH
AH - FWAH FWAH FWAH FWAAAAH
FWAHFWAHFWAHFWAAAAH
Re: maybe un-noticed
Date: 2007-08-21 03:46 pm (UTC)