Friday 19 February 2016

The Last Miner's Gala in Wakefield, June 1984



I have been rummaging around in the loft looking for all my old photographs from the time of actual film that never made it into albums. I really wanted to find my photographs from the last Miner's Gala in Wakefield in June 1984. All my life there had been Miners' Galas with their bands and speakers in the park. These had always been very happy times. This time I had a camera and these photographs are from a time that has gone. Margaret Thatcher and her government's hatred of the coal miners forced the Miner's Strike of 1984/85  which led to the devastation of an entire industry and its communities. Unity Works, Wakefield is holding the WITH BANNERS HELD HIGH 2016 event which started me off on my search for my photographs of the Gala. Here are some of them:



























Saturday 24 May 2014

Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, Jimi Hendrix Experience Fillmore Auditorium - Part 2: Hoepla


This poster was designed in 1967, apparantly at the request of Jimi Hendrix himself.


In this guise it is an advertisement for a series of concerts at the Fillmore West in June 1967.

Fillmore Auditorium June 20-26

There is a variant which omits these dates.

These concerts were booked for Hendrix before he flew to California for the Monterey Pop Festival which was to make his name in the USA. The festival was on 16 - 18 June with the Jimi Hendrix Experience playing on the evening of the 18th. The concerts at the Fillmore were planned to be a three-performers event with the Experience on first, then the jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo and then headed by the Jefferson Airplane. This is the original poster for the event:

Fillmore Summer Series by Clifford Charles Seeley

However, it did not go quite that way and there are several explanations of what happened. It appears that Hendrix was on an amazing roll following the festival and he blew everyone off the stage, the Airplane took fright and either pulled out blaming Grace Slick's throat problems allowing Janis Joplin and Big Brother to step in and open, with Hendrix at the top of the bill, or the Airplane and Hendrix swopped positions on the bill. I find it difficult to understand how these two can recall events as they do:

Sam Andrew (guitarist, Big Brother): "I remember that date very well, which could only mean that I was there in a professional capacity. I remember Gabor Szabo and the whole deal, so I am sure that we filled in. I know Big Brother was there."
     

Jorma Kaukonen (guitars, vocals, Jefferson Airplane): “I can not imagine that we would have dumped a top-billing spot, no matter what. Or dumped a gig. I find that really hard to believe."


But, whoever else was playing, the Jimi Hendrix Experience played from the 20th to the 25th, not the 26th as the Hapshash and the Coloured Coat poster has it. However, the Experience did play a free concert in The Panhandle (an SF park) on the 26th.

There is yet another version of this Hapshash and the Coloured Coat poster which was used for a backdrop for the Jimi Hendrix Experience in November 1967 when they played on the Dutch TV programme Hoepla.



This programme became famous for shocking the Dutch public with the nude 'performances' of Phil Bloom and the rock bands who played the show.

Phil Bloom having read her newspaper

There are a few photographs of the Jimi Hendrix Experience playing Hoepla and I have pulled some together, especially those showing the enlarged poster. The set was filmed in the morning of 10 November. There are a few which may be staged with the presenter (Roselie Peters) in the foreground:

Roselie with the Jimi Hendrix Experience from the Hoepla book

Enlarged poster visible behind Mitch Mitchell





A few others before or after the performance:






And then others 'in concert':








From these photographs the poster looks to be a perfect enlargement, although it is clearly black and white. It does look as though the right hand edge has been cut off as a silhouetted tree and the right hand border are missing together with the tip of Jimi's bow and the flights on his arrow.  

It would be fabulous to have this wonderful enlargement.

Following the TV gig, The Jimi Hendrix Experience travelled to play the Hippy Happy festival at Ahoy, Rotterdam later that day.



Monday 19 May 2014

Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, Jimi Hendrix Experience Fillmore Auditorium




As I said in my earlier post about the Hapshash and the Colour Coat poster UFO Coming, I had bought two Hapshash and the Coloured Coat posters in the late 1960's: one of Pink Floyd and the other of Jimi Hendrix:

Jimi Hendrix Experience Fillmore Auditorium (signed by Nigel Waymouth) 1967

It is a really great image and the story is that it was designed for Hendrix and not for the Fillmore concerts it names. Printed on gold paper in 1967 it has some of their favourite Hapshash and the Coloured Coat details: UFOs, mystical and astrological symbols, Mucha-style borders, silhouetted trees, flowers and the dragon from Mucha's poster Lorenzaccio (which was also used on the cover of the mysterious magazine, Albion.) Certainly it represents Hendrix resplendent in native American ('Indian') costume possibly more akin to his thoughts than the Indian artwork inspired cover of his second album Axis: Bold as Love, released in December 1967.

Axis: Bold as Love LP cover

The Mucha dragon looms above the mystical symbols, as it does on the cover of Albion.

Hapshash and the Coloured Coat: Jimi Hendrix detail
Firstly, as in the Albion cover, the all seeing eye in the magical triangle which is surrounded by the Zodiac signs for Cancer and Virgo (which I suspect are the birthsigns of Michael English and Nigel Waymouth) plus the astrological symbol for Jupiter which is, apparently, exalted in Cancer. All this is contained in an arrangement of concentric and sometimes offset circles/ovoids containing various elements, but, importantly, flowers which are repeated in UFO Coming. This circular/ovoid graphic trope is one Hapshash and the Coloured Coat use in other graphics, for example the LP Supernatural Fairy Tales by Art (1967)

Art: Supernatural Fairy Tales

Welcome Cosmic Visitors


which has the added dimension of the zodiac, Save Earth Now and OZ No 13

OZ 13: Catherine and the Wheel of Fire, June 1968

There is a message hiding in the circular motifs to the right of Jimi's leg.

Hapshash and the Coloured Coat secret message
HAPSHASH AND THE COLOURED COAT SENDS LOVE TO ALL
YOU BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE ON EARTH...
...AND IN HEAVEN

There are some variants of this beautiful poster. One has an adddition of an advertisement for Are You Experienced with the Track Records information.

Also omitted on this variant are the details of the concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium. Are You Experienced was released in May 1967, so this variant must have been produced around this time. The Fillmore concerts were a month or so later, in late June 1967, which would suggest that that version was completed in June or July. One variant of this is shown in High Art by Ted Owen: on page 125 the copy seems to be on green-gold paper and all the blue colour is a much lighter turquoise shade. 

Recently the artwork for this poster was sold and it shows the variant with the Fillmore Auditorium concert dates.

The original artwork





Sunday 2 March 2014

Hapshash and the Coloured Coat - Dragons and Magic(k) - Addendum the Second



So how do you search for a specific but un-named image? A dragon, say, but not just any dragon. Well google search gave me lots of dragons, many as tatoos, but none were the dragon from the cover of Albion and the Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore Auditorium poster.
     Back to first principles: I had quoted Michael English as saying:

       I was fascinated by the sinous yet romantic shapes found in Mucha's posters and the work of  Beardsley and Rackham

This was the clue: I would look for dragons in Mucha's art. And I found:


which clearly included the dragon I was looking for. Here is a close up:


It is clearly the original of the dragon on the Jimi Hendrix poster whereas the Albion cover had a mirror image version with more of a 'space monster' head. But the spines down the neck, the hands, the shoulders and wing shape were all identical.
     One final point: on the Albion cover, at the bottom left is a circular figure which contains the words: Hapshash and the Coloured Coat. So I feel that this cover is not a solo work by Michael English after all.