Time for a pulp countdown now, so here's my top 10 book titles that would make great prog rock album titles!
Everyone loves a 10 minute drum solo, right?
At #10: Murdock's Acid Test! Side one is mellow acid jazz, but side two is all stream of consciousness poetry and percussion...
At #9: Into Plutonian Depths! A concept album where Chinese war gongs, the Welsh harp and nine detuned Hammond organs evoke the legend of Persephone...
At #8: Bluebeard's Seventh Wife! Reminiscent of early Soft Machine this album includes an underwater piano AND an electric glockenspiel...
At #7: Thongo At The End Of Time! Trippy free-form eclectic harmonies interspersed with chants from the Upanishads make this album ideal for meditation and/or hot yoga...
At #6: Don't Tempt The Hangman! Old school folk acoustic songs with perhaps more hurdy-gurdy than is strictly necessary or bearable...
At #5: The Light Of Lilith! Unkindly reviewed by Melody Maker as "barely listenable" this album has found a more sympathetic audience recently, and is now rightly hailed as the ur-text of drum & bass lounge music...
At #4: Conscience Interplanetary! Ambient dub soundscapes melding effortlessly with the whispered poetry of e.e. cummings form themselves into an alarmingly intense ASMR cosmic head massage...
At #3: Death Is A Ruby Light! I hope you like post-minimalist interpretive percussion because that's basically all this is, and it's in mono to boot...
At #2: Space, Time and Nathaniel. Recorded live in Antwerp as a War Of The Worlds sequel, the lyrical Moogs and clarinet swirls depict the reawakening of the Earth as the Martian red weed gives way to daffodils and dragonflies...
And at #1: Epitaph For A Dead Beat! A cacophony of jazz fusion harmonies in 5/4 time, undergirded by Mellotron and the bells of St. Oswald's church in Lymington. A classic...
More pulp countdowns another time. Stay cool cats...
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Given the current heatwave, I feel obliged to ask my favourite question: is it time to bring back the leisure suit?
Let's find out...
Now we all know what a man's lounge suit is, but if we're honest it can be a bit... stuffy. Formal. Businesslike. Not what you'd wear 'in da club' as the young folks say.
So for many years tailors have been experimenting with less formal, but still upmarket gents attire. The sort of garb you could wear for both a high level business meeting AND for listening to the Moody Blues in an espresso bar. Something versatile.
Today in pulp I look back at the publishing phenomenon of gamebooks: novels in which YOU are the hero!
A pencil and dice may be required for this thread...
Gamebooks are a simple but addictive concept: you control the narrative. At the end of each section of the story you are offered a choice of outcomes, and based on that you turn to the page indicated to see what happens next.
Gamebook plots are in fact complicated decision tree maps: one or more branches end in success, but many more end in failure! It's down to you to decide which path to tread.
He was the terror of London; a demonic figure with glowing eyes and fiery breath who could leap ten feet high. The penny dreadfuls of the time wrote up his exploits in lurid terms. But who was he really?
Today I look at one of the earliest pulp legends: Spring-Heeled Jack!
London has always attracted ghosts, and in the 19th Century they increasingly left their haunted houses and graveyards and began to wader the capital's streets.
But one apparition caught the Victorian public attention more than most...
In October 1837 a 'leaping character' with a look of the Devil began to prey on Londoners. Often he would leap high into the air and land in front of a carriage, causing it to crash. It would then flee with a high-pitched laugh.