Dearest Awe and All:
Three brief announcements connected to my work and that of Current 93. A longer update is being worked on with more details of the March shows and the lyric book and other areas of Anok.
Love David+++
C93 as Andrew Liles, Baby Dee and David Tibet live stream video fashion 12 January 2011
As previously mentioned, C93 are playing a brief seven minute set on Wednesday 12 January (see here) to celebrate the new clothing collection of his friend Fabio Quaranto, for which David has designed 14 T-shirts. The show, which accompanies the model’s catwalk, will also be streamed live and will start some time between 17.15 and 17.30 Italian (Central European) time/16.15–16.30 Greenwich Mean Time/11.15–11.30 East Coast Time—the time is not precise as it depends on the other collections’ catwalk shows, so go to the link at 17.15 to be sure of seeing the event.
www.fabioquaranta.it (site not live until Wednesday 12 January)
David Tibet shows painting in Berlin
Uwe Henneken has curated a small show in Berlin called ‘When Love Comes Down’. David is delighted to have a painting of his on show there, especially as Uwe is one of his favourite artists. Full details are in the press release below:
Exhibition runs from January 7th–20th 2011 at Cussler, Kottbusserdamm 9, 10967 Berlin.
Opening times: Friday 7th and 14th from 21.00–03.00
And by appointment at all other times: +49 176 60917334.
When love comes down…
…word becomes fleshPeter Böhnisch • Rick Buckley • Björn Dahlem • Susanne Dudda • Maike Gräf • Sebastian Hammwöhner • Uwe Henneken • Oliver Lenhart • Stefan Rinck • David Tibet • Gabriel Vormstein
– Curated by Love –
‘Seasons They Change’: a book by Jeanette Leech featuring C93 and many others
[image 1 175x250]A wonderful, imaginative, insightful and comprehensive book written by my friend Jeanette Leech has just been published. It is highly recommended by me! I asked Jeanette to write something for the Coptic Cat update, which follows:
David has offered me the opportunity to introduce my book, Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk. It’s a long narrative of the innovations in folk music from the 1960s to the present day, covering the artists often called ‘acid folk’, as well as the wider story of experimental attitudes to folk music over the decades.
I interviewed over a hundred artists for the book including David Tibet/Current 93, and many with whom David has collaborated – Shirley Collins, Clodagh Simmonds, Bill Fay and Simon Finn. Other artists covered include Comus, Vashti Bunyan, Espers, Pearls Before Swine, Dredd Foole, Stone Breath, Devendra Banhart, The Tower Recordings, Incredible String Band, Alasdair Roberts, Donovan, Holy Modal Rounders, C.O.B., Pat Kilroy, Mark Fry, Josephine Foster, Islaja, Tim Buckley, The Sun Also Rises, Joanna Newsom, Fern Knight, Marissa Nadler, Simon Finn, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Perry Leopold, Sonja Kristina, Trader Horne, Bread Love & Dreams, Linda Perhacs, Trees, Sharron Kraus, The Owl Service, Mellow Candle, Will Oldham, Circulus, Jane Weaver, Vetiver, Forest, Susan Christie, Dr Strangely Strange, Lau Nau, Spires That In The Sunset Rise… and many, many, many more.
The book can be bought from major booksellers across the UK and US, online retailers, Rough Trade and other record shops, and can always be ordered from your local independent bookstore.
And below is the official press release by the publishers:
Seasons They Change: The Story Of Acid, Psych, And Experimental Folk by Jeanette Leech
Published: November 2010
ISBN: 978-1-906002-32-9
Price: £14.95
368 pages
In the late 60s and early 70s the inherent weirdness of folk met switched-on psychedelic rock and gave birth to new, strange forms of acoustic-based avant garde music. Artists on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan, Pearls Before Swine and Comus, combined sweet melancholy and modal melody with shape-shifting experimentation to create sounds of unsettling oddness that sometimes go under the name acid or psych folk. A few of these artists – notably the String Band, who actually made it to Woodstock – achieved mainstream success, while others remained resolutely entrenched underground. But by the mid-70s even the bigger artists found sales dwindling, and this peculiar hybrid musical genre fell profoundly out of favour. For 30 years it languished in obscurity, apparently beyond the reaches of cultural reassessment, until, in the mid-2000s a new generation of artists collectively tagged ‘New Weird America’ and spearheaded by Devendra Banhart, Espers and Joanna Newsom rediscovered acid and psych folk, revered it and from it, created something new.
Thanks partly to this new movement, many original acid and psych folk artists have re-emerged, and original copies of rare albums command high prices. Meanwhile, both Britain and America are home to intensely innovative artists continuing the tradition of delving simultaneously into contemporary and traditional styles to create something unique.
Seasons They Change tells the story of the birth, death and resurrection of acid and psych folk. It explores the careers of the original wave of artists and their contemporary equivalents, finding connections between both periods, and uncovering a previously hidden narrative of musical adventure.
Author
Jeanette Leech is a writer, researcher, DJ and music historian. She writes regularly for Shindig! magazine, and as part of the B-Music collective she has DJ’d throughout the UK, including at the female acid folk events known as ‘Bearded Ladies’ and the Green Man Festival. She writes extensively in the health and social care fields. Seasons They Change is her first book about music.