I Can’t Draw

An envelope crammed full of nearly-impossible-to-describe comic booklets is a reviewers nightmare – thanks go to Malcolm Duff for making this bad dream come true. I Can’t Draw is a graphic meditation in which the artist repeatedly re-draws a set of goal posts in his notebook. Each successive drawing improves incrementally in quality and detail. Throughout this task he’s repeatedly interrupted by a teacher towering over him, chiding “You’re holding your pencil the wrong way” and offering helpful sounding but useless advice, such as how to hold a tennis racquet correctly. The artist gradually emerges from under his protective mane of shaggy hair and using the pencil as his weapon nullifies this overbearing authority figure by redrawing and reducing him to a simple diagram.

I Can’t Draw, and many other titles – malcyduff@hotmail.com

Reviewed by Mark Pawson for Variant Magazine

Foie Gras

Foie Gras by Edie Fake is a psycho-sexual, pumpkin-carving, gender-reassigning, (s)witch-hitting, castration-fantasizing, fox-fucking, fairytale-cookbook, complete with an invitingly tactile screen printed cover which is perforated front and back with inviting openings.

Foie Gras – $2 + postage; ediefake @ hotmail

Reviewed by Mark Pawson for Variant Magazine

Anorak & Okido

There’s a new wave of magazines for kids around. I picked up bright, eye-catching copies of Anorak and Okido recently. They’re both crammed full of things to make, do, draw, colour, eat and read/get your parents to read to you. These two independently produced mags are refreshingly free of any TV series spin offs or licensed characters. Okido is completely advert free. Anorak which is the same price with twice as many pages has lot of ads, but they’re aimed at parents rather than kids themselves and there’s several competitions with good prizes, so that kind of balances things out. Neither is overtly educational, worthy or preachy, and they don’t even say “After you’ve finished enjoying this magazine please recycle it”. Perhaps kids just recycle things automatically these days? I prefer the clearer layout of Okido, which is aimed at ages 2-7. Anorak is aimed at older children, more like 6-11, and at times gets a bit too illustratory (artists not software) for my liking (sorry Rob). Beware: there’s a photo-strip story in Anorak about a stuffed toy bear pissing himself with excitement!

Anorak – £3.50; www.anorak-magazine.com

Okido – £3.50; www.okido.uk www.myspace.com/okido

Reviewed by Mark Pawson for Variant Magazine

Duke

Duke is a glossy, full-color, lifestyle magazine – if your chosen lifestyle is that of an ’80s obsessed Australian charity shop addict! Put together by the hyperenergetic duo of Raquel Welch and Emily Hunt (yes, really), it’s a 64 page glimpse into their world of glamour on a budget, outrageous dressing up, dance-offs, crazy theme parties and extreme devotion to duty in the cause of scouring Sydney’s charity shops. There’s interviews with extreme hoarders; chats with grannies in the street; a scary article on stoner style; Raquel & Emily’s A-Z of collecting, a four page guide to their museum-like apartment which I can personally very strongly identify with; a “We live here so you don’t have to” guide to every shop and restaurant in their local scuzzy neighbourhood of Parramatta Road; and a feature on Lady Di’s hats, frilly frocks and pregnancy dresses! Plus plenty of contributions by their artist and illustrator friends, and an all too familiar guide to “Things that ruin our lives in opshops” (trans. ‘charity shops’): the endless who-would-ever-even-have-wanted-that-when-it-was-new items that pointlessly clutter up charity shops creating obstacles and making the hardcore thrifter’s mission to find the good stuff harder. After reading Duke I was exhausted and needed a little rest. There have been charity/thrift shopping zines before, but with Thrift Score and Cheap Date both now defunct, Raquel & Emily have inherited the ill-fitting, slightly scratched charity shopping zine queen crown.

Duke – www.huntandwelch.com

Reviewed by Mark Pawson for Variant Magazine

Hitsville UK

Hitsville UK: Punk in the Faraway Towns is an examination of the UK’s p unk music boom from 1976 to 1984 which avoids the usual clichés and stereotypes. Instead of concentrating on the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned triumvirate as recent publications have tended to do, old punk, lecturer and graphic designer Russell Bestley aims to focus attention on the groundswell of punk bands, including all the uncelebrated provincial punks and none-hit wonders. This booklet and three-poster package examines punk via 7 inch picture sleeves. At the time most chart singles came in plain sleeves with record company logos. Picture sleeves were initially a sales gimmick, but punk bands quickly seized the opportunity to create bold, colourful, eye-catching sleeve designs giving a flavour of the exuberant music inside and picture sleeves quickly became de rigueur.
One side of the posters has a gallery of singles’ sleeves; put these up at home and you’ll instantly recreate the atmosphere of a late-’70s/early-’80s independent record shop. You’ll be transported back to Saturdays spent gazing up at walls festooned with record sleeves knowing you wanted all of them but had enough pocket money for just one single and the bus fare home. The reverse side of these posters joins up to make an enormous punkiodic table: a graph with tiny pictures of hundreds of single sleeves mapped out by release date and geographic location. Most 40-/50-somethings will find this completely absorbing, poring over the posters for hours mentally ticking off all the bands you saw and records you bought. The wealth of information on the posters (the result of many hours of research and scouring eBay) is accompanied by a booklet which covers all possible categories of UK punk, with succinct articles on each: Proto Punk, Pub Rock, New Wave, Novelty Rock, DIY, Post Punk, the Avant Garde, Oi, Street Punk, Real Punk, New Punk, Hardcore and Anarcho Punk – labels which might seem blurred and irrelevant now, but which were fiercely argued and fought over at the time.
This is an excellent package of nostalgia-inducing historical research, all for the doing-it-for-the-kids price of £3.50 – echoing the “pay no more than 99p” slogan that certain punk bands always printed on their records.
Hitsville UK: Punk in the Faraway Towns accompanied an exhibition in May at Millais Gallery, Southampton, but Russell Bestley is looking for other venues for the exhibition to tour to, particularly in faraway towns.

£3.50+postage; russwyd (X) hotmail


Reviewed by Mark Pawson for Variant Magazine