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  • World scoop ! See Barney Bubbles move ! Make your own Barney flip book ! 

    davidwills 1:02 am on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    This amazing inchage filmed by Harvey Matusow and found by skilled Barnophiles on YouTube, are the only moving pictures of Barney ever seen.

    It shews a sequence of Barney walking through the ‘office’ of Friends magazine on the second floor (called the 1st floor in the UK) at 307 Portobello Road, he is wearing a sheepskin vest, and holding a scalpel, he then removes something on a layout at the desk. Further notation will surely follow.

    The YouTube link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgPCDAVTlM and this sequence of Barney Bubbles appears from 2m01s to 2m05s.

    The fireplace in the background is evocative to me of an incendiary event later that year at Frendz, when Tiny Tony (as we called him) lit a newspaper fire that set the chimney ablaze, and started an inferno in the basement, so that I had to yell, “Fire! Evacuate the studio.”

    That maybe Rosie Boycot in the background. (Not so, see comments.)

    comp

    dw0

    dw1

    Mistaken Identity: Phil points out that that may not be Friends editor Alan Marcuson in the 2nd doorway to the right, that was one of the doors to the store-full-of-stalls called Friends Market, the door on the left heads upstairs to the Friends office. The changing scene evolved with the tenants, this format probably lasted a twelve month or so in 1970-71 I think, that so?

    dw2

    Barney signage outside 307 Portobello Road. The store named ‘Friends,’ could be read as either, A. the magazine which was upstairs, or B. the first half of the arcade of stalls called ‘Friends Market.’ The second store, labeled Market, is where there were a few record, beads and bangle micro-biz’s. The wall between the two stores had simply been bashed through to make a mega-mall, the usual remains of a Barney demolition crew, beams exposed, plaster crumbling from the yew-hewn lath poking into to the passage for a while, which was decorously later draped in flowing fabric to cover the deed from officialdom..

    Barney had a secret curtained off corner in the back on the right (it was literally three sided, 3 ft x 3 x 3) where you could stand and hide, no one at the magazine knew about it. He said, “I use it sometimes.” which I did when, one day, I went to visit not wanting to meet Jo Greene (I did not like him at all) et al. It was when b showed the Sutherland Bros art for me to deface, that Miz Moon done do.

    I had a dream the other night, based on a real experience in 1971, of being to the north of Glastonbury Tor and trying to cross one of Mary Caine’s supposed zodiac drainage ditches, that was a gross, deep algae ridden swamp that got deeper and deeper…

    dw5

    Hands of the master surgeon, with a scalpel in his right hand using his left hand as a fulcrum and stand-in mall-stick, to keep his right hand raised so there’s no smudging of the still-wet ink type. He is lifting a waxed photo up to reposition it, I think. (There is a major discussion of the minutia of this clip, see comments.) The scalpels we used must have been supplied by friendly surgeons or nurses to someone in supplies for I seldom, if ever saw anyone use a regular Xacto blade, the scalpels we used were the real thing, wrapped in sterilized foil, ready to cut.

    Unknown

    … and this is the spread in Friends he’s working on.

     
    • rebecca and mike 7:40 am on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      We believe the lady in the background at the typewriter is Nicky Hepworth. She appears in close-up in the YouTube film just before this sequence of Barney Bubbles unfolds (from a different camera angle).

      What Barney’s working on here is a double-page spread from Friends newspaper that (when printed) has a selection of different music-related articles on it. Most of the pictures on this spread (which can just about be seen in the film) are photographs by Phil Franks. The photos are of bands like Quintessence, Mighty Baby and the Pink Fairies, but rather than use them straight, Barney dropped some surprise dinosaurs into the backgrounds, and added the odd cosmic scribble!

    • Phil Franks 8:34 am on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      It’s “Little Tony”, not “Tiny…” (see my link) and I’m not sure it is Alan Marcuson in that shot you mention – the doorway on the right of the shop front is the door into the market, the entrance to the stairs that led up to Friends’ offices is on the left. Alan is seen in the video talking to Nicky.

    • rebecca and mike 9:50 am on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      David, in this post there’s a single isolated frame which you’ve captioned “Hands of the master surgeon, with a scalpel in his right hand lifting a waxed photo up.”

      but… there’s no scalpel in Barney’s right hand. if you watch the footage carefully you’ll see he places the scalpel to the side of him as soon as he sits down. then he picks up a small ’something’ and then gets to work on some other area of the artwork. the isolated frame is the point in time when he is picking up that small ’something’. to add even more microscopic detail, the picture that can be seen in the isolated frame is a comic picture; it is one of the few pictures on that spread that isn’t a Phil Franks photo.

      however, your caption certainly has a better ring to it than “Barney picks something up”!

      • davidwills 1:11 am on November 1, 2009 Permalink | Reply

        Looking closer I think Inspector Phil is onto something here Holmes, dashed if it ain’t a blade, used, sometime yet out of the sterilized pack, a size six F series. Held between thumb and crooked digit to lever up a wax-stuck half-tone.

      • davidwills 3:51 pm on November 6, 2009 Permalink | Reply

        Further scrutiny leads me to believe that the scalpeo handle with loaded blade he carried across the room for show in the movie is lying to the left as discussed, and that the object he picks up, as Inspector Phil points out, is a blade with no holder.
        I think Phil’s suggestion below (which came first, before this comment which is in the wrong time sequence position-wise) of a razor blade is also possible, but despite my guff about surgeon’s blades, what he’s holding looks to be too long and narrow to be a razor-blade, nor yet narrow enough to be a surgeon’s scalpel, but may very well be a broad-blade Xacto. Perhaps my recall of blade-tech is incorrect and we did use Xacto blades at times.
        I wonder if this sort of miopic observation about the detail of paste-up technique can of any interest to our modern electron-aided bodies. But being myopic sure is fun for me. Although I was quicker than any-one else at paste-up, quality as measured by, say, Tom Wolsey, suffered, I became somewhat adept at visually judging off square type, but was quite often wrong. I gradually overcame my inhibitions about well ordered typography and became a punk-ass fuck-up. My skills were of the getting the job done on time variety.

    • Phil Franks 10:32 am on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Barney often used a scalpel blade minus handle, or an old double-sided razor blade.

      Maybe it’s an eraser?

    • Deepinder Cheema 12:34 pm on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      This film was made by the BBC with Harvey(Job)Matusow who narrated throughout. Harvey was a colourful character who requires further attention. I would apreceate further insight as to which issue of Friends, or is it Frendz that Barney is working on. The words Mighty Baby has got me very excited.

    • Phil Franks 1:20 pm on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Back then I had little dealings with Matusow, but some time in 1997 he emailed me and we subsequently became good friends and exchanged many messages. He told me how he’d left his entire archives of copies of Friends, Frendz, IT, Oz and his own correspondence and writings to the library at the University of Sussex.

      I contacted Sussex U hoping to get copies on one of my visits to the UK, with Job’s letter of authorisation. I was just in time because the librarian informed me that the were about to destroy all of his stuff because they needed the space!

      So, I spent a whole day going through boxes and boxes of stuff in the library, and because it was destined to be burned I was allowed to take some original material away.

      I sent most of it to the guy who hosts and designed my website, Malcolm Humes, in the US. Malcolm then became good friends with Job and visited him in Utah.

      Malcolm put this site together with Job before Job’s death:
      http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/MO/matusow/

      (see also: http://ibiblio.org/mal/MO/philm/friends/matusow.html )

      I have no idea what happened to the rest of his archives at the University of Sussex.

    • davidwills 3:03 pm on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      R&M, yes, scalpel to the left, that’s what I first wrote, changed it later. Got to get that detail right, right?

      Phil, minor erratum, yes I know Tony was called ‘Little Tony’ by most, but I took the trouble to mention “Tiny Tony (as we called him)” since Rosie B (how’s the bones Rosie?) and I called him ‘Tiny Tony’ because we liked the alliteration. R&M seem to think bB was “rubbing something out” so maybe it was a rubber. (Ha ha, a ‘rubber’ is a condom in the US, I say ‘eraser’ now).

      Deep, was H. Matusow a writer too? I seem very familiar with his name for some reason. Get the rest of the footage quick !

    • Phil Franks 4:20 pm on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Yes David, I know what a “rubber” is in the US. That’s why I called it an “eraser”. :-/

      • davidwills 3:47 pm on November 2, 2009 Permalink | Reply

        If Barney was using wax as I know he did at Friends, then there would be no rubber, eraser, or Cow-Gum ball use – the way to clear off any uneeded wax was by using a sclapel to scrape it up. Any use of an eraser on the boards would not be beneficial. For a start we (I worked at successor paper Frendz) didn’t use pencil much, if there was a mark that needed erasing we’d use the scalpel to scrape it off. If the eraser was used on the board the little biddy bits of erazer and lint left over would adhere to the endges of the glued down type on paper and get photographed as part of the art. I’m having fun recalling the micro-detail of the mechanics of paste up in its various forms. All that skill and learning, gone, and who cares, eh? Ok, we used kneaded erasers occasionally. Right, when laying out the page pencil might occasionally be used, but by the time type was pasted down, there’d be no eraser use then, due to the iddy-biddy-crumbs and smudged type possibilities.

    • rebecca and mike 4:28 pm on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      David, we just emailed you a pic of the spread under discussion. Feel free to add it to your post.

    • Deepinder Cheema 4:30 pm on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      I will put out an alert for this documentary!

      I thought Harvey would have prompted some e-flurrying and am pleased to have some reminiscences from Phil. Harvey made an LP called ‘War against the fats and the thins’ on Head Records. The same label as Mighty Baby first LP. Sadly I do not have the LP, but a single called ‘Wet Socks’ a jaunty number on Jews Harp, and the other side Afghan Red. Lets hope David has triggered off a further memory. The University seems to have retained 100 boxes of the Matusow archive. I shudder to think how much has been burned.

    • Phil Franks 4:46 pm on October 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      I’m pleased to discover that Sussex University didn’t burn everything, in fact they still have most of it.
      http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/speccoll/collection_introductions/matusow.html

      I bet they did burn all those multiple copies of Friends, Oz, IT etc.

    • davidwills 5:36 am on October 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      From the University of Sussex’s copyright description of their collection at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/speccoll/collection_introductions/matusow.html I quote, unasked, with the most groveling and humble gratitude this teeny excerpt:

      “Collection Description
      Harvey Matusow with the Stringless Yoyo

      … The Archive also houses … material documenting Matusow’s further involvement with Senator McCarthy, both in the 1952 Presidential election campaign (as pro-Republican speaker) and as assistant in a project to undermine public trust in The New York Times. His prison correspondence is also included.… Increasing bitterness and a sense that he would never be truly forgiven for his acts in the previous decade drove him deeper into counter-culture. …
      … The collection is arranged by subject into 12 sections and described to folder level. The contents of some boxes have an item description. The collection has been rearranged from previous listings into subject area but the order of the original arrangement is shown in the appendix at the end.”

      DW says, Yeah I remember now, I think we all thought he was a CIA spy, but we thought that about lots of people. I guess he had a problem getting over dissing Pete Seager to McCarthy…

      Here’s what’s in Mr Matuso’s box.

      “There are a number of oversized items in the catalogue which are stored separately from the main collection. These items are indicated by the letters ‘BSR’ (Basement Strong Room) at the end of the description. Please give at least 24 hours notice before visiting Special Collections to view these items.

      Box and file number are shown in bold at the end of each folder description. Please give box and file number when ordering items.”

      I would guess that one of the the large items is the School Kids Oz street demo float, a 15 foot high sculpture of R. Crumb’s Honeybunch Kominski, the teenage jail-bait icon named for (or ‘after’) the artist who later became Crumb’s wife.

      I recall that the word in some quarters was that our Harvey was a CIA spy, but that it didn’t really matter ‘cos who the hell cared. However, I would wager that he never got pictures of me, I was more circumspect about image apropriation than Barney, and that’s saying something.

      • davidwills 8:50 pm on November 2, 2009 Permalink | Reply

        Richard Adams the designer recently arrived from up North, Manchester way, called me at Oz to say Harvey Matuso was headed our way and I split with Jane, the daughter of a well-regarded Chinese retail and restaurant businessman. No moving pictures of me, no siree. Notice Barney’s head isn’t shewn in the movie, that is not by accident. Ever the director, Barney would have insisted thet the camera was pointed down. Carrying a scalpel across the room is a very dramatic moment and is a skilled and in the wrong hands a potentially lethal activity, so the blade was held gingerly.

    • davidwills 1:11 pm on October 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Persnickety readers may note that I mention wax on the paste up at Friends. Although at Oz we used the proverbial carcinogenic Cow Gum. On Friends/z ’twas wax, I bet the old Friends/z layouts in storage are all falling to bits as a result.
      Odd fact: the ‘paste’ in the computer instruction ‘paste,’ still used as a fossilized reminder of ancient practice in ‘puters, was archaic even back then when we used glue, since nobody in advertising had used water based paste since the thirties.

      • Phil Franks 5:28 pm on November 6, 2009 Permalink | Reply

        Barney did use Cow Gum in his studio at 305, I distinctly remember large tubs of it on his work table. Perhaps what he’s fiddling with is a scrap of typesetting… or Letraset?

        • davidwills 5:38 pm on November 6, 2009 Permalink

          Hi Phil, Hmm. I know we used wax on Frendz and it wasn’t a new thing, those rollers had definitely been used when I got there, I think that maybe Barney would have used Cow Gum in his studio but used wax on Friends perhaps, could easily be wrong, I don’t think I often visited the Friends office upstairs, personality difference,

    • davidwills 3:27 pm on October 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Unrelated to the current topic, but relevant to Barney’s (former) obscurity is that the ‘Conran Directory of Design’ edited by Stephen Bailey in 1985, purports to be an overview of late 20th century designers, yet has not a single mention of our hero Barney – even though he worked for Sir Terry, toiling in the bowels of Conran Design Group backawhen from 1964 to ‘67.

  • Barney B in graphic Kruschev visitation – see the evidence for yourself. 

    davidwills 7:00 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Barney B, , Lissitsky, , SF Unified School District, Stalin, Twiggy

    Connections. Twiggy and Pope’s Grotto…

    Was in the coffee-palace today thinking ’bout my Barney logs and Lissitzky the Russian who worked for Stalin, and how Barney called him a “Hack.” So I pick up a copy of ‘Soviet Union for 1962′ from the  library at ‘Coffee to the People’ filched from the SF Unified School District, History dept. ex libris the James Denman Junior High thinking it might be relevant.

    Soviet Union Book Cover (3)

    And bless my unsullied soul, there on a page with a Kruschev picture, someone had written a pencilled (or more properly a ball-pointed) bubble, with the words  ‘Barney B was here’ inside. For real.

    Kruschev Congratulates Collective Farmers (2)

    Spooky.

    Alessandra the daughter – who knows how to do a contortion or two – says it’s Barney talking from the other side. I’m quite certain that’s what Barney would say too. An example of Serendipity if ever there was.

    And this is a Serendip type event because it was hecka weird when I saw “Barney B” in a bubble coming out of Kruschev’s shiny pate. So this is a good example to illustrate Alexander Pope’s invention of the word, Serendipity, the happy habit of fancival discovery, which was named for (or after) the Three Princes (or were they Princesses?) of Serendip, in what is now Sri Lanka, and used to be called Ceylon, and featured as a mythical place in antiquity, then made fabulous in a 17th Century novel. Recently it was Tiger-territory. Pope’s example to illustrate the word with a story about a camel was not a very apt definition. Mine is better.

    Daught Aless’ current pin-up is the 60’s London model Twiggy, the thin, but healthy model, who lived in a house close by Pope’s Grotto in Twickenham, a grotto under the road made of shells and dubious antiquities cobbled together in a faux mithras alcove. Twiggy’s house was a detached pebble-dash ’30’s builder’s special, front lawn with gate and central path through the roses. The house was, and quite probably is still, about one hundred feet from the Odeon cinema that Barney did a drawing of. The front of the flick-house was built in Egyptian mode, in that suburban British tile-factory way that some admire.

    In other news: Twig-tech, a play on Twickenham Tech, is the contemporary expression of the wicker or wattle arts, also hedgerow weaving. I studied advanced Twig-tech with Faye Schoolcraft the sculptor in the ’80’s. Current expression of the latest advances in Twiggery are to be  found in the architcture of the raised beds in my garden.

     
  • davidwills 5:34 am on November 9, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    Bevin , a charismatic singer with the intesity of a Janis who’s played the subway, sang at the bewailing for Mary Fields. Great occasion, not to be misssed.

     
  • There’s the svelte photographer, Penny … 

    davidwills 12:10 am on November 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    There’s the svelte photographer, Pennie Smith, on the left – looking a little unsure of the outcome of Colin’s rumble in the rugby field.

     
  • Colin Fulcher photographs his graduation, but not himself. 

    davidwills 11:54 pm on November 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    1963. I realized that this graduation picture, that recently became positive, after a lifetime of negative obscurity, is from the missing Fulcher shoot of the class of ‘63. “It must be there, I know it was.” he stridently asserted. I said I’d never seen ‘em, which was true until yesterday. He is apparent by his absence from this, his own show. I’m sure there are some of these engaging loons still around, Pete Brown of the Muleskinners, Mrs, Wordsworth who paints with skilled brazen guache, Bob Priest of Esquire, Mac McLagan of The Small Faces etc., Stephen Goy off to the left, Susan Wallbank who makes the most beautiful lino-cut views-of-the-Thames series as cards, Pennie Smith the photographer, they are all in there and still jiving. These cavorting with car photographs were taken by Colin Fulcher with my Yashica. That’s Roy’s Morris, he’s standing on his head. The other shoot, mourning over the bed of droopy flowers in the Quad were taken by me. None have e’er been seen before.

    It’s amusing that there’s a coming-of-age movie out now about a 16-year-old girl who is in her last year of school at St. Margaret’s in Tickenham of 1961, the year I graduated.

    Graduation1

     
    • rebecca and mike 8:04 pm on November 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      whose idea was it to pose around a car with L plates? the photographer’s (ie Barney)?
      and whose car was it?

      • davidwills 9:00 pm on November 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply

        Colin M Fulcher Esq. imaged this scene. The car was the Morris belonging to Roy Burge that we later deep-sixed, ablaze, in a flooded quarry, one grey day on Hounslow Heath. The photographs, ‘L’ for Learner, and the grave site in the quad, that I took, do education from cradle to grave.

        • davidwills 9:04 pm on November 8, 2009 Permalink

          Ha, of course, above it all, that’s Her Grace, Lorry one-day-to-be-Sartorio looking into the future.

        • rebecca and mike 9:11 pm on November 8, 2009 Permalink

          was the education-cradle-to-grave thing a thought that was had at the time the 2-part pics were taken, or just a modern musing on your part now?

    • davidwills 3:33 am on November 9, 2009 Permalink

      I think the sequence was that Fulcher idead the shot around Burge’s idea of using his car, they’d just made the cowboy movie, so by now they were more ’30’s Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger type card-sharps. I thought of the L-plate because they were learners, Fulcher thought it cool, and arranged and took the shot while i wasn’t there, then I arranged the Quad shot and the idea of the grave took form, some kids on the right started kneeling and praying and i encouraged it, recognizing the cradle to grave thing, so it wasn’t thought out to begin with, but developed as a communal thing. Remeber this was Fulcher’s last year, so this was two years after aI had left.

      We should make sure the guys get to see these. Guess that what the log’s for.

  • Realized that the graduation pictures th… 

    davidwills 11:32 pm on November 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply

     
  • davidwills 10:29 pm on November 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Mary fields, Waterfall

    Girding up for a garden party. Bringing out the winch to deliver party supplies from the third floor. Tom The Grill is coming by two hours early to prepare the fixins. There gonna be song and dance, young-folk – and the other, jaunty attitudes, Waterfall will sound the conch, and there shall be a respectful bewailing for Mary Fields, who passed.

     
  • davidwills 10:05 pm on November 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    Re-aranged the tiles into two bodies with ceramic mask heads. One small and knobbly in cool colors, the other with a long nose, in warm colour browns, all on a mid-tone grey tile.

     
  • Fulchers surveys his handiwork with trusted aid, Lorry Sartorio by his side 

    davidwills 4:42 pm on November 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    1964, Heeeeeeeeere’s Barney! Fulcher akimbo in proto-executive bemused stance, and Lorry looking well pleased with the results of their handiwork, Colin is wearing his office Minette Street attire with waring grid checks, knitted tie, rolled sleaves and button-down collar. Lorry in mascara-city with Vermilion hi-neck T,  Shiny velour, Vandyke brown and rose-pink Victorian trousers, and low slung belt.Barney2They are looking at the contents of Lorry’s portfolio in which Lorry has painted, for maybe the fifth time, a Rose Malmaison rendering of a blob, on an Azure ground. Each time the Malmaison reacts with the Azure and changes its tonal value. This eases the shimmering clash as the eye adapts and readapts to the vibrating color-line at electrical speed.  As a result of all the repainting the formerly flat-art has a raised, three dimensional surface that Fulcher enjoys.

    This is in the back room at the end of the 1A Leigh Court, 35-foot corridor we used as a shooting arcade on one or two occasions. I had an air-rifle and we’d make impromtu targets and left indented evidence in the door of a raid by deranged air-pellet weilding people.

    The set back above their heads was a cornice that covered a mysterious gurgling pipe, which chunked and bribbled at odd moments. You can see evidence of the Fulchurian exactitude in the methodical arrangements of push pins lined up to support some long-gone thing.

    If the picture is too big for your support group, write a letter to your local MP.

     
  • davidwills 6:14 am on November 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    I now hold a trove of scanned pictures i took in the sixties at home in Leigh Court and at work and play. Lotso’ fun I’m writing captions, and will post the first of them as time goes by.

     
  • davidwills 1:25 am on November 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: David WIlls

    DWills@uamail.albany.edu David Wills original research was in Surrealist poetry but his published work has concentrated on literary theory, especially the work of Derrida, film theory and comparative literature.
    In which writing functions as a technological in/outgrowth of the body. Wills’ major work, developed first in Prosthesis (Stanford, 1995), concerns on the one hand the originary technology or “non-naturalness” of the human, and on the other, the ways in which writing functions as a technological in/outgrowth of the body. Those ideas are extended via what he calls “dorsality,” a thinking of the back and what is behind – the other of the facial – where the emphasis is on certain ethical, political and sexual implications of a technological rewriting of identity. In recent work he also investigates the question of conceptual invention against the background of musical improvisation, for example in jazz, and the instrumentality or technology of the voice.

     
  • davidwills 12:02 am on November 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: David Wilkls, MoHA, Museum of Haght Ashbury, Wall Street Journal

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125737254573529027.html We got ink in today’s Wall Street Journal for the Museum of Haight Ashbury, MoHA ! Did you know that the local, Coffee to the People, the best buzz in town, is offring MOCHA’s (Mighty Organic Haight Ashbury’s) at low prices, as a special to those who contribute to the Street Fair. Join the throng, come along, dance for the Street Fair. Hand your $20 bills to David Wills or Michael at Clippers. Get your Certifate of Compliance now.

     
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