New projects for old reasons

In case anyway is watching who may be interested, these are some the comic book projects that I am currently doing or would like to do in the future:
- MOON MAGICK, a long manga with a Japanese artist, about a Japanese girl struggling to learn and cope with her ESP abilities. It involves her finding out about the REAL Chizuko and Sadako, who partly inspired the RING series.
- THE BREAKING OF TEN, about a man who loses his wife and child in a car crash and decided to take revenge on God by deliberately breaking all ten commandments.
- THE QUEST OF THE EAST, I am currently doing with a well known Chinese artist, Jianyi. A straight fantasy story about the search for a lost kingdom in the vast areas of China. (see art above by Jianyi as an example of his work)
- 20 FAMOUS SCOTS, a comic book of 3 page short bios of, er, 20 famous Scots, ranging from Robert the Bruce to Sean Connery.
- FRANZ KAFKA short stories, illustrated version of his very short stories, such as 'An Imperial message.'
- ANARCHISM, I want to do a book that tell some of the theory and history of the real theory of anrachism within a historical story.Possibly centred around Emma Goldman or the Haymarket bombings of the 1870's.
- My own autobiographical comic called ONCE UPON A TIME IN MORNINGSIDE, centred around my childhood in that part of Edinburgh.

Ya!

The Clientele and my manga on radio

'The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga' (vol 2), that my STORY OF LEE IN EDINBURGH in it features an appearance by the band 'The Clientele' singing 'Since K got over me'. The real band featured in the strip, have been telling people about it on their recent US tour:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/06/01/clientele/

"They're out on the road in support of their recently released album, God Save The Clientele. They talked about making their very first trip to Australia and New Zealand; a cool museum trip they had planned but missed; how it came to be that they will be featured in The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga (vol. 2)."

Nice...

And while we are on the subject of music... it reminds me of a dying artform. The cassette tape compilations with cool home made covers! In the 80's to early 90's this was a very creative form of expression for a whole subculture in the UK. Swapping tapes that you put together yourself from various 60's and indie records of the time... plus, of course, making a unique cover for it.

Normally it was a photocopy of some cool 60's thing or person, but done in a very creative way. Cut and paste technique, bits thrown together, old sweet wrappers glued on (Tunnocks tea cakes in Scotland!), or even drawn yourself. Cut it up into tape size, fold it and insert it along with the track listing on the inside. They looked fucking great! Someone should do a book collecting this very energetic and street level art together - its the expressive graffitti of the 80's bedsit! A treasure trove of small scale artistic effort.

Here are photos of compilations that i did in the late 80's and early 90's, named after the first club i DJ'ed at in Edinburgh, DANDELION CLOCK. I did 25 volumes of these (!) and gave away to various friends, including Alasdair Maclean of The Clientele. Who recently told me " You dont know how hard I've tried to replicate in the studio that wonderful warm sound those old Dandelion clock tapes had!"






Darling Alasdair wrote to me to say I should write the track listings down, as some Clientele fans might be interested. As these "legendary" Dandelion Clock tapes were instrumental early influences on him, and look where he is now! Seriously, Im proud of him. We used to sit around in cafes in Edinburgh 15 years ago talking about literature, music and our own creative plans. Now his great band are on their 4th or 5th album and I just finished my 12th book. Not bad going so far for a couple of 'shit kickers' as Ringo once said... So to start the ball rolling, here is the track list for volume 19 that can be seen in the photo above:

Dandelion Clock volume 19 (made in 1993/94)

SIDE ONE
(intro section from 'Camberwick Green', British childrens programme, 1967 onwards. "Here is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready to play.")
Bob Dylan - Meet me in the Morning
Roy Orbison - Candy man
Nancy Sinatra - Drummer man
Unrelated segments - Story of my life
Sonic Youth - Hey joni
Spencer Davis group - Im a man
Tony Christie - Avenues and Alleyways
Ray Pilgrim - Hold me
Love - My flash on you
Rolling Stones - Everybody needs somebody to love
Booker T and the Mg's - soul limbo
Small Faces - Odgen's nut gone flake
Chocolate watchband - Baby blue
Electric Prunes - I had too much to dream (last night)

SIDE TWO
(intro section from Basil Brush, British childrens programme, late 60's onwards)
Badfinger - I cant take it
Softmachine - Save yourself
Wings - 1985
Small Faces - I feel much better
The Walker Brothers - Saturdays child -
George McCrae - Look at you
West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - Till the poorest of people
have money to spend/ As the world rises and falls
The Zombies - I want her she wants me/This will be our year
George Harrison - My sweet Lord
Kaleidoscope - The Sky children


That is quite a mixture of styles and periods. Well it's still mostly from 1966 and 67! The early Dandelion Clock tapes were almost all psychedelic and garage punk music. But as my tastes developed and time went on I included more folk rock, soul, northern soul, RnB, straight 60's and 70's rock, pop, soundtracks, etc. All of these tapes were introduced by some comedy or odd song/radio excerpt. In this volume 19 there is quite a lot of relatively 'mainstream' stuff - George Harrison, Wings, Roy Orbison, etc. Some of the other volumes contained very rare stuff that only 60's music fanatics know of... but its all good. The 'Camberwick Green' opening words were used on many of them for side one, which says: "Here is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready to play. But this box can hold a secret inside. Can you guess what is it in it today?" Then the first song started right in!