The Gonzo Daily - Friday/Saturday
I was 12 in 1971, and never saw A Clockwork Orange
during the brief time that it was in the cinema. Even if it ever got as far as
The Odeon in Bideford (long since closed and turned into a block of sheltered
flats for old people) my parents would not have let me go, and my cultural
interests at the time were more involved with reading Biggles books by Capt W E
Johns, or the William books of Richmal Crompton (both of which I still read
today, by the way) than investigating the ultraviolence that Alex and his Droogs
perpetuated upon society.
I finally saw it one night fifteen years ago, when
together with several friends and my then girlfriend I went to the cinema in
Exeter for a special late night showing. The most disturbing bit of the film for
me took place about two thirds of the way through the film. Over to
Wikipedia:
“Two years into the sentence, the Minister of the
Interior arrives at the prison looking for test subjects for the Ludovico
technique, an experimental aversion therapy for rehabilitating criminals within
two weeks; Alex readily volunteers. The process involves drugging the subject,
strapping him to a chair, propping his eyelids open, and forcing him to watch
images of violence. Alex becomes nauseated due to the drugs.”
Today I became Alex. No. I did not disappear with
some malchicks into Burgess’s terrifying Nadsat world. But I did sit in a chair
whilst chemicals were put in my eyes, and I became mildly dizzy and queasy.
It was my annual diabetic eye screening, and when I
came home after hanging around Bideford for three hours waiting for some
medication, I was so tired and queasy I went to bed.
So an appypolly loggy lewdies and droogs. After
having drencom in m’glazz, and a pain in m’gulliver I was forced to leave the
blogs to this evening.
Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream, John Lydon, Grateful Dead, Jon Anderson,
Yes, Hawkwind, and Daevid Allen fans had better look out!
The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#115) will soon be available to read at
www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at
http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/.
It has Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream on the front cover. As you may know he
died about ten days ago. Inside there is a retrospective by Doug Harr and Rob
Ayling remembers his relationship with the man who defined electronic music. I
critique the extraordinary new John Lydon autobiography, and also burble on
about The Grateful Dead. We have news about the Drones for Daevid concert in
Brighton next week, and we send the legendary Roy Weard to a desert island. Xtul
are on the road to Norwich, and there are shows from the multi-talented Neil
Nixon at Strange Fruit and from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the
titular submarine dwellers are still lost at sea. There is also a collection of
more news, reviews, views, interviews and southern dibblers wearing new shoes
(OK, nothing to do with small marsupials in search of snazzy footwear, but I got
carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at.
And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
All issues from #70 can be downloaded at
www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you
have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly
dropbox. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is power
chaps, we have to share it!
* The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to
write for us, please contact me at
jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and
want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at
gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and
spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to
read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more
traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we
all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...
* The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine
(mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But
it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also
do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about
it at this link:
www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/…/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit…
* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to
things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not
responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest
guv!
* Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an
old hippy of 55 who - together with an infantile orange cat named after a song
by Frank Zappa puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown
cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a
small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his
bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of
social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the infantile orange cat?
What has Corinna's column of Fortean bird news got to do with cryptozoology?