The Gonzo Daily - Friday
Yesterday was a pleasant and mildly productive day.
Way back in my misspent youth (OK, my late twenties and early thirties) I
travelled around this sceptre'd isle with a beat combo called Steve Harley and
Cockney Rebel. My first wife and I travelled with them for nearly five years,
and during this period made friends with a lanky dude called Roy Weard who was
their soundman. Fast forward a quarter of a century and Roy has written a
delightfully scurrilous autobiography about his life in the music business
working with everyone from Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones down to Stump.
Gonzo are publishing it and I spent much of yesterday with my editor hat firmly
wedged upon my cranium.
Whilst on the subject of new books, Adam Davies'
new tome is definitely a good 'un. He writes: "This book is not a detailed
analysis of the various cryptozoology creatures and their respective merits.
Please look to researchers such as Craig Woolheater, Loren Coleman or Dr Karl
Shuker, Nick Redfern, and the like for that. This book is about how I felt
about, and how I reacted to, the situations in which I found myself, while
hunting for proof of the existence of animals unrecognised by science. Some of
my adventures were exciting, some amusing and some dangerous, but all are
memorable. The expedition with Bryan Sykes and Lori Simmons stands out as one of
the most truly bizarre experiences of my life. I find it somewhat ironic that it
was not on some mountain top in remote Nepal, or in the deep Sumatran jungle
that I was to have the most amazing of my encounters, but rather in the Pacific
Northwest of America, not far from a small town."
Judge Smith, Peter Hammill, Edgar Allan Poe fans,
Wings fans, Carl "Blue" Wise fans, Hawkwind fans, Gong fans and all sorts of
other people, had better look out! The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#99) is
available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/.
It has Judge Smith on the cover, and features an
article by him about the latest performance of his celebrated opera based on
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher". There is also an interview
with him about it. But there's more! We have an interview with Carl "Blue" Wise
about Denny Laine, Wings, Joey Molland, Badfinger and playing alongside some of
the sopul stars of Stax records (amongst other things). Doug Harr goes to see
King Crimson, and Jon asks whether repackaging and remixing and remastering
music is morally acceptable. The new album by Aphex Twin is critiqued and there
are exclusive words Hunter Ayling is backstage at Hawkwind's Hawkoktoberfest.
There are also new shows from the multi-talented Neil Nixon at Strange Fruit and
from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the massively talented Jaki and
Tim are back with their submarine and Maisie the cow. There is a new show from
Canterbury Sans Frontières, but sadly it will be the last for a while. There is
also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and doves making coos
(OK, no musical members of the Columbinidae, 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/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
* 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 54 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?
The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. 
