ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS AT PRIMARY SOURCE

My First Days On Junk by William Lee, reprinted in The Beat Generation & The Angry Young Men, 1958.

Paperback writer bios from The Beat Generation & The Angry Young Men, Gene Feldman and Max Gartenberg, 1958.


An Absolute British Beginner at half a crown, 1959.

On the Road in England for a full crown, 1961.

slim volume of Penguin Modern Poets 5 available in blighty for three shillings and sixpence, 1963.


and long may they rot at three shillings and sixpence, 1966.

beat generation ballads hyperlink

all young poets were old once and wore dark romantic beards

Note: Original link to Liverpool's Mersey Beat page archive featuring young bearded Royston Ellis back in the day has been removed since original post. Another link here - far more knowing though.

New Church was little known although influential SF theory/poetry/fiction magazine network codpiece published "for the World's edification". Edited by Cyril Simsa with Patrick Ballin's idea for 'Bakunin tao' drawn by Debora as back-cover design ©1980.

WHEN THE SUN SHINES - A NEW OPTIMISM FOR THE 80's



Jamming! was edited by Anthony Fletcher from Crystal Palace when zine categories mashed into DIY publication after punk. Back in the day before Helen, Olly and Martin the Sound Man made SE19 postcode of comedy podcast with Answer Me This! Cate Blanchett-have-you-ever-tried to-be-like-Bob Dylan-1966-John Cooper Clarke-grandchild-of-albion stands up reading poems. He could be mistaken for a stand-up comic. That's modern comedy. That's poetry. That's 1980s, 1990s, n00ughties popular frontism.

Also back in the day N10 zinester Cyril Simsa generously provided Jamming! with cute strapline 'A new optimism for the '80's'. His duplicated radical artzine Amanita conflated zoology, science-fiction, music, poetry, anarchy and social theory.



Jamming! attracted a poetry scene in London, Leeds and Birmingham.



It got folks making poems public, through homemade books as much as performance, including myself and Peter Butler. Some of it was shit but some of it wasn't.

Among dozens of flyers circulating on the scene I passed this one on to Peter Butler when he moved to Denmark.



from beat generation ballads sequence

Next post I'll scan Patrick Ballin's graphic A Bakuninist Tao from back cover Cyril Simsa's New Church zine. It's cool.

WHEN THE RAIN COMES


Peter Butler once asked me what Beatles single I'd like best. I said 'Paperback Writer' coupled with 'Rain'. The 1980s re-release backside has moptops enclosed behind what looks like refugee cage in Patrick McGoohan - 'The Prisoner' episode. Or maybe they are looking in.

My exchange of correspondence with Peter Butler in Denmark began in early 1984 and ended just before he took his own life on May 24th 2004.

I have one fat off-red folder March 1984 - March 1986, one bulky off-green folder May 1990-December 1999, one slim yellow-manila folder January 2000-May 2004. Peter replaced his manual typewriter with an electric model in 1995. The font changes. I didn't keep everything and didn't keep copies of own responses which were generally handwritten.

Ever the skilled builder, Peter constructed a wooden gallows platform in the bedroom he shared with his wife Lisa, without any assistance from morbid internet sites. Peter abhorred computers and the internet - electronic soccer games really got his goat. Peter's self-exile had turned into a disturbing and disturbed psychogeographical state exile, which was terrifying to witness for his wife and young children as he began to grow a long beard. Final photographs of him from 2004 resemble Osama bin-Laden lookalike and I won't shame google-blog with any of the images.

Peter was promptly diagnosed with clinical depression and became erratic with prescribed medication. As difficult to negotiate way out of as prison in physical and political nation-, US line, or European Union member-states. He'd refused US working visa and maintenance employment solicited at Graceland for him by close US friend and Elvis contact Bill Burk, so Pete must have been in a very bad way.

I've kept most of Pete's letters (handwritten and typed), cuttings, photocopied pages from obscure US popular music zines he always enclosed in large mail-art envelopes with annotated cassettes of music compilations, including rare Presley recordings like hysterical laughing Elvis on take of 'Are You Lonesome Tonight'.

Pete believed he would one day sit at the right hand of the King. That's the King. Elvis Presley. Alongside John Ono Lennon, George Harrison and Billy Fury. In proximity of couple Holdsworthy cycle factory work colleagues, best mate Harry Sharp, and Blue Banton who died tragically young - and 'Busby's Babes' upstairs since 1958.

If that was Pete's final quest I hope it's true for him.

from beat generation ballads sequence.

SAY IT WITH FLOWERS

William Lee - dented suitcase and typewriter case tucked under his feet - leaned against the creaking headrest of an Earls Court hotel bed after interrogation by London airport immigration officials. Lee turned dial to switch on small black and white television set end of bed.

Lee the paperback writer was on the nod.

On England's only commercial tv channel Patrick McGoohan is Danger Man - secret agent John Drake. Drake flies to Switzerland in pursuit of missing agent Hagan. In plot freelance western agent Hagan is suspected of working for hostile mob. Changing his face and identity to avoid recognition whilst remaining bankrolled by west in Zürich.

Benway-character Dr Brajanska grafts the face of dead patient Wallace, murdered by hostile mob, onto Hagan at Brajanska's sinister Einbeck clinic. Wallace's remains are given to local undertaker, Buchler, whose premises are destroyed by suspicious fire, along with Buchler himself - whom mob believe burned to death.



Dark empty room in clinic. Close up of Lee. Shadows dancing in background. Disembodied voice on slowed-down tv tape. Could be male, female, non-human, half-man half-animal.

Paperback writer awakes from horrible dream. He is sitting in shabby London hotel room. Woman with vacuum cleaner is noisily moving chair around. She finds Lee huddled on chair covered with blankets.

MRS JOHNSON: Mister Lee. Mister Lee. Wake up, Mister Lee. It's gone midday. You said you were going to the British Museum, Mister Lee.

LEE: Yes, the matter of the Akkadian Deluge cuneiform. Tablet of Lapus Lazuli. Thank you, Missus Johnson.

MRS JOHNSON: It's cold and foggy out there. Be sure to wrap yourself up nicely, Mister Lee.

HOTEL CONCIERGE (enters room with rolled cigarette hanging from mouth): What time of day you call this, Lee? When you going to clear out (placing vase of plastic flowers on table). Ideal Home Exhibition coming soon. Bookings for respectable guests.

from beat generation ballads sequence

BUTLER'S MAIL ART

A Peter Butler Elvis and John Ono Lennon decorated envelope from Denmark (June 9, 2000)



on envelope backside 'the legend continues,' with added dedication to 'Britain's finest...'

...WHAT D' YA THINK YOU'RE GOING TO FIND UP THERE, EH? A NEW STRIKER FOR NEWCASTLE UNITED?




Peter Butler produced two homemade publications before self-exile in Denmark, Christmas 1983.

As well as Elvis, Pete was obsessed by Billy Fury, The Beatles (particularly John Lennon - John Ono Lennon as he referred to him on letter envelopes) and Cliff Richard as young British Elvis imitator. What Pete was most obsessed by was dead rock 'n' rollers. A morbid inspiration that drove some of his thinking and writing when down in the dumps.

The two stapled zines were a Billy Fury discography tribute, and hand-drawn entitled 'poems, thoughts and things'. Photocopying done at Adland, 32 High Street, South Norwood, London SE 25. A third zine, also with hand-drawn cover 'rough ideas ...and great works of my times ... a slice of my life' is dated 1984 and produced in Denmark.

Pete's girlfriend Lisa, later to become his wife, contributed drawings to 'poems, thoughts and things'. The text is typed on a manual typewriter. Peter's ode to Elvis Presley 'An American trilogy' is scanned here as visual.

"...UNTIL THE GOOD TIMES ROLL AROUND...YEAH..."





Partly inspired by another British television comedy drama series, this time Auf Weidersehen Pet from 1983 - Peter Butler took Norman Tebbit's advice, got 'on his bike', travelling by ferry to Denmark. In London he'd met a Danish girl and fallen in love. The young woman was named Lisa, forename of Elvis Presley's daughter.

Pete Butler, being Pete Butler, and an Elvis fanatic read into this personal coincidence absolute poetic romanticism. A cosmic gift from the King himself. For Pete, surely it must be the work of Elvis the King? In beat generation take on epic of Gilgamesh, a poet is writing young Brit into new script as likely lad construction worker character, breaking away in self-exile from Margaret Thatcher's UK. Trying his luck in Europe. Divinely guided by a Danish girlfriend with the same name as the King's daughter.

"BUTLER. I MIGHT HAVE GUESSED I'D FIND YOU BEHIND THAT."

Reading Peter Butler in UK workplace Seventies lends representational confusion to On the Buses tv sitcom character Butler. Butler, televisual workplace character, fed ontological factory girl Pete Butler.



In this youtube clip from 1990, Wogan interviews Reg Varney (Stan Butler) and retired cast 20 years on.

As Sir Terry retires from BBC Radio 2 today, the cover to Peter Butler's homemade zine from 1983 is scanned for online beat generation ballads sequence.

'...A WITTY SCIENCE FICTION PARODY...'

Factory girl Peter Butler collected 'The Elvis Presley Story' comic-strip serial in the Daily Mirror between Monday, September 12 and October 21 1977.

Years later he customized photo-copied bookwork from material treated with coloured felt-tip pens.

In storage, glossed ink from Elvis Lives! promotional sheet for 'Elvis Shrugged Graphic Novel - (a witty science fiction parody ...)' has impressed itself on plastic cover to Pete's homemade book.






from beat generation ballads sequence

beat generation ballads on youtube

Quality self-publisher Miss Dorothy Squires reads 'Happy Heart' at London Palladium 'Poetics of Linguistically Innovative Rendition' colloquium

beat generation ballads on youtube

Forty years on from their hit Eurovision 'links von mir' ditty, former German Democratic Republic's own Cliff and Livvy, Chris Doerk and Frank Schöbel, celebrate 20 years since bourgeois revolutions of Russia and Eastern Europe at 'Poetics of the Fall of European Stalinism' colloquium event

beat generation ballads on youtube

1968 Eurovision Song Contest with Chris Doerk and Frank Schöbel - East Germany's own Cliff and Olivia - performing singalong toon to London noughties poetry gig pub function-room hearers




Never mind, this video available for embedding but German YouTube visitors excluded. That's odd.

Billboard Toots
2 minimovies

scratch card

'boy dolls kiss kiss (try a little tenderness)' drawing from beat generation ballads sequence

ENGLISH PUNK BALLAD

1977 was year job nut. National Front invade Lewisham. Johnny Rotten beaten up by teddy boys. William Burroughs sends good on yer telegram to Sex Pistols for topping UK hit parade with 'God Save the Queen'. Rockin' Records in Maple Road Penge had copies if Woolworths did not. Colin sold Sniffin Glue and autographed copies of Patrik Fitzgerald's 'Safety Pin Stuck in My Heart' EP with 'Screaming and Shouting (like a kid gone wrong)' track. Pete the factory girl could dance to this.

Peter Butler was an Elvis fanatic. Fan as fanatic. Pete didn't come to work at Holdsworth the day Elvis died. He began an Elvis archive of voice, image, name - self-publishing unique homemade books. Elvis photographs, press cuttings, line drawings reproduced on 1977 photo-copiers. Elvis, king of rock and roll. Elvis, last and first king. Twelve-tablet epic of Lasluz Laserlee. Twelve-ballad epic of Elvis Presley.

In 1970s epic of Gilgamesh President Richard Nixon is troubled King who meets wild half-bull Elvis Enkidu and they become brothers-in-arms as Mesopotanian gods decree. Not later Elvis in comic book superhero jewel-encrusted Vegas jump suit. Elvis young 1950s animal with sideburns.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu return from House of Shadows to great-walled city of Uruk. Return to Graceland. Ann-Margret plays Shamat, priestess of Ishtar.

In the next 25 years Peter was to self-publish two photocopied collections of his writings and poetry; make DIY Elvis books and artworks; contribute to rock 'n' roll fanzines, international Elvis Monthly features; Chinese poetry magazines (one had work by Rod Mengham in it) and write hundreds of letters to Elvis fans from Texas to Tehran.

from beat generation ballads sequence

PAPERBACK WRITER

During the fall of 1962, before second Pan books' printing in England of On the Road with William Eichel backcover photo of Kerouac, American beat writer William Lee gathered together his typescripts and cut-ups for Nova Express.

Lee'll finish his science fiction novel in London. Protagonist anti-hero British-based Scotland Yard nova cop 'Inspector J. Lee'. Writing agent up against cosmic terror. Imagery 1920s Henry Miller and 1930s Lester Dent pulps. Doc Savage villains with terrifying psychic powers.

Lee juggled his time since 1960 between America, Paris, London and Tangiers.

Flight from Washington DC checked in London Airport midday cold March 1963. The writer had spent most of Sunday afternoon with immigration officials, convincing them he was in UK to write and broadcast, not sell narcotics.

"Been clean since 1959. Need to make a call if that is permitted, gentlemen."

Lee'd made literary and arts supporters in Blighty after previous problems applying for UK visitor status. Macmillan's government was in terminal crisis.

"Mr Fixit will have a word with Brooke, Bill."

One telephone call to the Home Office from Arnold Fixit and Lee is given three-month permit to stay.


from beat generation ballads sequence

Billboard Toots

Two linked poems sharing short 'penned in the margin haiku moment' from beat generation ballads:


Tears in the Fence
casual reading issues -
thirty-four to thirty-eight


Bob Dylan's New Morning LP
moonlight on a frozen
theme-timed lake

FACTORY GIRL

I first met Peter Butler in 1977 when he was nineteen-years-old working for Holdsworthy Limited in southeast London as frame-builder at Holdsworth's bicycle factory, Cambridge Grove.


deep topography from archive of now the rubble

The company prided itself on specializing the hand-built Claude Butler model (Peter was not related to Claude Butler).

Peter was six-foot five and wore a pretty pink ribbon to tie his waist-length hair in a pony tail. The factory's health and safety regulations forbade long hair worn loose. Pete's persona and stance was one of contradictory compliance and defiance. It showed.



from beat generation ballads sequence work-in-progress

'Ishtar & the Bull of Heaven' from beat generation ballads sequence

JACK LOOKS GOOD BUT ELVIS WAS BEST

'A' is not equal to 'A' - Sean Bonney, the commons II (Openned Press, 2009)

In 1969 I meticulously copied a photographic image of Elvis Presley from Picture Show Annual 1958 after copying William Eichel's backcover photo of Jack Kerouac. Made my own On the Road Jack in pencil and yellow crayon with wash.

Jack looks good but Elvis was best drawing ever using soft B and 2B leads. Elvis in pencil on cartridge paper. Something else. More than just another fan pic.

Elvis had recorded a little known Bob Dylan song 'Tomorrow Is A Long Time' in 1966. Featured as bonus track on Spinout (US California Holiday) movie soundtrack album.

The Elvis recording and drawing sparked visual poem for printmaking entitled Have You Ever Tried To Be Like Bob Dylan (no question mark) for five design exhibits (one design per page) with Presley drawing pride of place design 'A'. Other designs 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E' followed to complete sequence.

In 1970 I touted the sequence around London looking for fine art or limited edition publisher-printmakers to produce an edition. Thought I'd found an art agent who said he'd got me publisher and exhibitor - naive of me to believe this shit - only commercial advertising studio/printshop experience. No literary or art world contacts. No higher, further, or even Sixties art school education. 'Like a complete unknown' (in the words of the song).

When I didn't hear anything and returned to collect the sequence, design 'A' was missing, stolen perhaps from offices of dodgy art agency.

So like Epic of Gilgamesh this 78rpm bakelite ballad has broken lacuna.

visual association: Sophie Robinson's titling of poem concerning loss of young life (Aerin Davidson) as
lower case

a

Missing Elvis design 'A' compensated by other visual associations:: Peter Butler's fanzine poems American Triology & Reason to smile::: Jeremy Reed's The Sun King: Elvis the Second Coming & Heartbreak Hotel:::: the Elvis of Thom Gunn's Sense of Movement::::: Bono's Elvis: American David.

because I have forgotten it is all gone

'Have You Ever Tried To Be Like Bob Dylan: Missing Elvis' from beat generation ballads sequence

MJ Weller work-in-progress blog try out

Images from beat generation ballads sequence scanned for screen reading

'modern sounds in country and western'



'Gilgamesh and Enkidu'



'Ginger Spice, Kate Moss & Amy Winehouse as three suburban goth cartoon fates'

"...comic goodness..." at the verbal arts centre (courtesy of John Robbins, Inside Outsiders #42)

London Under Construction

visual association for Harry Godwin

EGNEP's London mini-tour March/April/May. North, South, East, West (dig that city psychogeography...and look out for Michael's fictional selves & home'baked characters: Mick Weller, two or three Mike Wellers, MJ Weller, Professor Michael J. Cox, and others. Gigs around a fiver to get in (organisers may listen to special pleading from impoverished attendees) on entry, start around eight pm (except Cafe Oto which'll be like watching/listening lazy terrestrial afternoon tv/radio alternative 1981)

Wed 4th March: Klinker South - Ivy House 40 Stuart Road Nunhead SE14
Thurs 5th March: XING THE LINE (multi-hand benefit for Paul Sutton) - Leather Exchange SE1
Sun 15th March: Sundays at the Oto - Cafe Oto 18-22 Ashwin Street Dalston E8
Tues 21st April: The Blue Bus (other reader: Jow Lindsay) - The Lamb 94 Lamb's Conduit St London WC1
Thurs 7th May: Klinker North - Cross Kings 126 York Way N1

all been & gone - dark daddy whispers night night

Ween Film

Give Way (location for movie)
1st VOICE: That's the building there?
2nd VOICE: Yeah.
1st VOICE: We're standing in the middle of the road and a car is coming.

Fairview Road location of viewers

controlled zone

video stop

"Let Him Have It" movie
Oh Wheel of Fortune

"Let Him Have It" movie
IRIS: Have you got your record?

location block




DEREK: Have you got Wheel of Fortune?
STELLA: Kay Starr? Sure.

Queen Adelaide Road location shoot 2008

Queen Adelaide Road location shoot 1992

"Let Him Have It": locations for movie vs location of viewers

St Matthew's Drive location shoot 1993



St Matthew's Drive location shoot 2008

zone ends

"...when comics weren't shy..." (Andrew Luke 's 24-hour comics review)

Mick Weller Simpsonized