Mind Alive

This was originally posted on the old Found Objects a few years ago, but got lost/deleted earlier in the year. But rummaging through some old USB sticks I have found some previous posts and images. So without further ado here is more Mind Alive.
Mind Alive is a new kind of encyclopedia that is published in 120 weekly Parts and builds week by week into a complete eight-volume work of reference.
Text in italics taken from  the inside sleeve of the 1968 Marshall Cavendish Publication Mind Alive. A while back a friend of mine came across a large number of these and very kindly passed a few of them on to me. 3'6 which if I remember right is seventeen and a half pence. Bargain! Some pages from these editions of Mind Alive were posted previously on Found Objects here

Time Out, time was

                                                
                                               
                                           
                                                 

                                                 

                                                  


                                                       

                                                                                                    

Before it became a yuppie magazine.

Table of Contents.

 I’m not sure if it’s just me, but each time I open a novel and find one of these lists of named chapters, I can’t help momentarily imagining it as the track list for some kind of extraordinary psychedelic/prog/baroque-pop concept album.

This one, from ‘Ghost in the Water’ (posted here) works particularly well in that regard. (It has a bit of a “best album Boards of Canada never made” feel to it in places.)

I’ve always thought it could be a pretty enjoyable collaborative project actually… assembling a load of bands and artists, and getting them to each come up with a track to fit one of the titles, or somesuch.

(I’m not sure I have the time or talent to do justice to ‘A Plan of Fiery Holes’ or ‘What Happened to Abigail Parkes?’, but hopefully I could at least have a bash at the self-explanatory ‘The Sampler Smashes’…)

Three Puffins.

(1968 / cover illustration by Peter Warner) 

 (1976) 

(1982) 

Simon’s post about the ‘Dark is Rising’ cover last month got me thinking about some of my own favourite Puffin cover/design/title combos, so… here are three of them. Shamefully, I’ve not actually found the time to read any of these, but the last two in particular sound very interesting; is anyone familiar with them?

Class (1968) and The Pop Process (1969)

Early works by the author of The Unofficial Countryside and Food For Free.

Resistance Through Rituals (1975) and Working Class Youth Culture (1976)

Letters to the Editor.

(From 'True Detective' magazine, September 1959.)

EXPO 67

Cover and pages from a book found at a car boot some time ago. EXPO 67 was held in Quebec , Canada in 1967. Photographed by John de Visser, Harold Whyte and Peter Varley. Published by McClelland AND Stewart Ltd. 1968.

An Edwardian Railway and the Ghosts of Punks Past

In June 1903 The Meon Valley Railway was opened and operated with passengers until 1955. Goods traffic remained on sections of the line until it finally closed completely in 1968.  As the years went by nature took over and it all became very overgrown. Then the old railway was cleared up and became the 17.5 km Meon Valley Trail. The trail is great. Lots of overgrown old bridges, Railway sidings, platforms and all sorts of Railway goodies to explore and find.

I decided one morning to have a walk along the old Railway line. After walking for about 10 minutes I was just crossing one of the many old bridges. The bridge was fairly overgrown in places, but I noticed something white underneath all the greenery. I started to clear this away and saw some painted words. Ge  r   on X. I pulled more of the greenery away and realised the word was Generation X. I then looked to the left and saw more white paint obscured and hidden. I tore at that and in white was Sex Pistols. I looked over to the other side of the bridge and could just make out white paint there as well. After a while I had pulled all the weeds and other greenery away and to one side. I surmise that between late 1977 and early 1978 a group of youths went up to the disused line as it was then, with a tin of old paint, a packet of Players 10 No 6 Cigarettes maybe a few tins of Skol, Colt 45 or even a Watneys Party Four. Finding one of the old bridges this group of youths then decided to daube the bridge with the names of their favourite/current bands. Sex Pistols, Clash, Generation X, XRay Spex, XTC, Adverts, Stranglers and Menace. 40/39 years later I came across this old graffiti in grotty old white paint (must have had a brush with them) Do the perpetrators of this defiant act (Anarchy in Wickham Village) still live in the Wickham/South Meon area? have they ever gone back to view their handiwork? did the bands they so loved at the time then fall from grace with them, to be swiftly replaced by the next musical phase?

These are the remnants of the rural Ghosts of Punks Past.