014: SHORT BUT SWEET

JUST LIKE STARTING OVER

Good morning from Yeovil, South Somerset where Thunderbirds’ Lady Penelope visited my school when I was a kid.

Well, the pic above was actually taken down by Station Road (by Key Markets, now the local Wetherspoons ‘pub’), a couple hundred yards from where I lived as a kid. (I’m not in the pic, btw, in case yr looking for a squirt in a camo bucket hat). Pen and her six-wheeled pink Rolls Royce, FAB 1, rocked up outside Reckleford Junior School and we were all gently lead out by our teachers into the small back courtyard that looks out on to the dual carriageway to greet her. (Next to what would, many years later, become Yeovil Snooker Club, a venue where I would host Goatfist from the legendary Flemmish blackened-psych-drone label, Funeral Folk.)

I was very excited, as you can imagine, but that bubble soon burst as me and my school chums leaned over the hamstone wall and realised, “Wait. Shouldn’t she be a… puppet? And where the £*%k is Parker?”

(Obviously, I didn’t swear back then like I do now, so substitute a Little Boy-Man Oath, something chipper and cheery that, I dunno, a 60s Kirby Captain America might say…)

When I realised that she wasn’t the real puppet Penelope Creighton-Ward - that she had no strings - didn’t have a disproportionate, over-sized head or move in a jerky, awkward, zero-gravity manner like Steve Zodiac - then the Reality Bubble completely burst for me and I’ve never trusted or believed an adult ever since. Or the Daily Mail. Call me a cynic, but it all felt felt a bit classist and contrived to me. Like I’d been fed a pack of lies.

To be honest, I’ve never fully recovered from that initial de-puppetisation of the world. “Send more puppets!”

(In a bizarre coincidence, I went to the pub with my pal, JM, last night. He had no idea I’d written about FAB 1 but started telling me he’d just had a conversation with his grandad about Lady Penelope’s visit to Yeovil. Weird, huh? Apparently, the real world FAB 1 broke down at the Thunderbirds film premiere and during its promotional tour of the UK it was displayed as a static exhibit. So, this all begs the question: was it being towed round Yeovil from our school to the bottom of town? Man, this is getting less glamorous by the second. See? You just can’t trust adults!)

(PPS: While writing the previous paragraph JM then texted me to say his brother recently met the actor who played Lady Penelope in the ‘04 reboot of Thunderbirds. That would be Sophia Myles, I guess. Jeez, I seem to be at the centre of a FAB 1 Synchonicity Storm! FWIW, I’m not really down with the redesign of the car for that film or the idea that it can fly; I prefer the blocky, cumbersome original Rolls, but hey.)

HUMANE DEBRIS is shorter this time round ‘cos (a) it struck me that many / most of you will be reading this on a phone and loooongfoooorm stuff could be a drag / eye-ache to read. Like parsing Angel Falls or summat; and (b) I’m stoopid busy right now. But, you know, if you really want more / longer stuff - write and tell me, I’d like to know yr thoughts on all this. And anything else, for that matter. And it may turn out that my idea of brevity is probably not very brev.

Und, finally, in the spirit of keeping this one a little shorter than usual, a hearty big hug to any new subscribers who’ve just jumped on board. I had a small surge in the last couple weeks - the newsletter, not me, but I’m seeking profession medical advice - maybe it’s something to do with ppl bailing out of Facebook and Instagram. Anyway, whatever the reason, it’s great to see you here!

But HUMANE DEBRIS ain’t no heartless insurance company call-centre that puts you on hold for hours and only gives new customers the choicest deals: we love those o’ya who keep coming back for more. Honestly, your presence here has kept me going through these dark days. Yr wonderful and crazy and I love ya, you beautiful freaks. Thank you.

Wherever you are - whoever you are - stay warm and stay safe.

Yer pal, Kek

I’m Kek-w… Kek. A freelance writer by day, but musician and artist by night. I’ve written a host of stuff for 2000AD and other publishers like AHOY, Image, etc as well as books and creator-owned strips like Conspiracy Dog.

I’ve now uncoupled from Facebook and Instagram - Yay! - so thank you for joining our cool little tribe of weirdos away from the bustle of a dying, hate-choked, bilious, billionaire-owned internet. We’re kinda like The Monkees, but there are hundreds - thousands - of us! An anti-cult. Why, sure you can wear bells and beads here - we don’t care! “Heed our call. Join ussssss…”

HEY, WHERE’S ALL THE COMIC BOOK STUFF GONE, KEK?

Well, we had a bumper-sized catch-up last time round, but we’ll be back at it soon, I promise, for a chat with Artist / Colourist Extraordinaire, Peter Doherty. 

And I’ll be appearing at Something Scary in the Library in Taunton on Saturday 8th March with my old pal, Shaky Kane, and a host of West Country Comic Book talent. Thanks to Mike Allwood and Susie for the kind invite. Come’n say hello!

And next week I’ll be raising merry musical Hell down in the basement of Cafe Kino, Bristol, summoning forth uneasy, sinister drones and crunching beats, courtesy of those rascals at Liquid Library (as opposed to Taunton Library).

Tix here.

So, fret ye not, more comicksing next time round. In the meantime, go check out some of the amazing Pulp and Pulp-adjacent publications put out by Bob Deis, often in tandem with editor / designer, Bill Cunningham. An amazing and extremely knowledgeable pair of dudes. Enjoy:

KID SHIRT’S CRATE DIGS

I think it was 2003 when I first became aware of Sunburned Hand of the Man. I quickly fell down a convoluted rabbit-hole via releases like Rare Wood, Jaybird, Headdress, The Trickle Down Theory of God Knows What, Hoof Trip, etc. Those and a now-legendary gig at the Cube Cinema featuring Sunburned and Jackie-O Motherfucker turned them into one of my all-time fave bands. With a sprawling, fluid line-up and an elastic, open-ended free improv approach to performance that mushed-up drone, krautrock, flanged-out funk and free-form spoken word they were like the gloriously stoned offspring of Amon Düül , Funkadelic, Sun Ra and Lord Buckley. On any given night you never knew who or what you might get.

I interviewed the band for Dazed & Confused (or was it Bizarre magazine? Did it even get published? Can’t remember…) and started a correspondence with drummer John Maloney that ended up with me catching them live on a number of tours, hanging out and getting to know the band’s core members, then actually supporting them on a handful of occasions with Ice Bird Spiral, the psych-drone duo I formed in the mid / late 00s. I have sooo many great, happy memories of those times: watching Ira Cohen’s The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda with Ron Schneiderman (the band had been invited to create a new soundtrack for the movie), hanging outside the Croft with Paul LaBrecque, the small tree that band found and took on tour with them, ‘replanting’ it on each date, covering it with fairy lights and creating an ‘altar’… it’s no exaggeration to say that the group were an enormous personal inspiration: Ron, John and Rob Thomas encouraged me to make and sell my own CDs, to perform, to be proud of my art. They reminded me that there are many different ways to ‘be’ - all of them valid - that there are many more of us outsiders than I realised. They helped me start to connect with all that. Helped me connect with myself. 

I recently saw that SHOTM bassist, Rob Thomas, had a side-project called Amon Düül III. Being a nosy so-and-so I asked him what that was all about and Rob kindly filled me in all the monkey business he’s been up to in a catch-up chat. Thanks, Rob!

“Amon Düül III was a one off affair, a duo featuring my longtime friend & Sunburned member Conrad Capistran. The concept came from Byron Coley who had the idea of booking a series of duo performances on Sunday afternoons at his Feeding Tube record shop to bring some people into the store. He told me "you & Conrad should play as a duo and call it Amon Düül III", and we were off to the races.

“The punchline to this performance was that it just so happens that there is an actual group out there called Amon Düül 3 and they contacted Conrad through Facebook to express their displeasure at our hijacking their band name. So i suppose we are now known as Amon Düül III 2 or perhaps Amon Düül 3 jr...

“Sunburned has been in a bit of a lull for the past few months, no live appearances since a lovely show out near the surf of Rockaway Beach back in September (which is the longest gap between gigs that i can recall in the group's history). In the meantime, we're preparing another album to be released on the great VHF label sometime in 2025 and we'll be performing at all 3 days of the "Thing in the Spring" underground music festival being held in Keene, New Hampshire on May 16th, 17th & 18th. Sunburned will be appearing as a full group & in different smaller configurations as well as featuring sets from side projects like Franklin's Mint, Clear People & Cycles Inside, so it will be an interesting reintroduction to the live scene.

“My good friend Gary War & i released 3 albums together under the name Dalthom between 2016 - 2020 and it looks like we'll be performing together in March for the first time since the pandemic. This will also be at Feeding Tube records in Florence, Massachusetts.

“Stella Kola has been steadily performing and working on getting our second album together. It's been a bit of a struggle to find the time to write & record in the post pandemic reality but we're making some progress. It seemed as though the songs for our first album fell from the sky fully formed, I'm hoping we can open those channels again soon. We also have quite a few live appearances to look forward to.

“i play bass on my friend Willie Lane's new album "Bobcat Turnaround" which he is self- releasing on his Cord-Art label. It should also be available in March or April of '25. Willie has released several albums previously, all in a solo guitar folk/blues realm with a lot of finger picking & slide work with an often blurry & mysterious edge to it. This new record is a departure from his earlier style as it features Willie's vocals & lyrics for the first time (as well as a rhythm section). The songs strike me as having a strong U.S. West Coast 60's influence ala Moby Grape, Skip Spence & Kak.

“Finally, i was asked to write notes for a one sheet for a new collaborative album by my old friend Joshua Burkett & Lau Nau from Finland. It's a gorgeous record (imho) that really taps into a dreamy, late night melancholic bliss zone, i highly recommend giving it a listen. It's released in a small press on Josh's Mystra label & will probably be available in March or April. From my perspective, Josh's first album "Owl Leaves Rustling", which he self-released in 1995, is ground zero for what would later come to be called Free-Folk, Freak Folk &/or New Weird America. Lau Nau's music has become more sophisticated with each new release and the two of them have tapped into something really special by combining forces - a gentle island of twinkling light in a world gone gangrenous, haha!

“That's all i have to report at the moment, Kek, thanks indeed for asking & i hope all is well with you (or as well as possible considering the rapid acceleration of the societal implosion we seem to be trapped within. I hope you manage to persevere amidst the waves of fear, rage, grief, confusion & anxiety that seem to be spewing forth in all directions…”

Thanks, Rob. Much appreciated. All the very best back to you and yours! I’m so glad Sunburned and its interstellar cast of kooks and fellow travellers are still out there doing what they do so wonderfully. We need them now more than ever.

CHILL WITH KIKI

So, did I succeed in creating a foreshortened digest-sized HUMANE DEBRIS? Gas bag that I am, I’m not sure I did. Only you, dear weird reader, can be the judge of that. And on that note, let’s end as we always do: with a picture of Kiki doing what she does best.

Hang in there, people! The sun’s coming out soon, I promise. xx