Diane di Prima was an American poet.
Her book Memoirs of a Beatnik (1969) was a fictionalized, erotic account about her experience in the Beat movement.
Di Prima is featured in Gang of Souls (1989), the Maria Beatty documentary on Beat poets.
Tag Archives: 1934
RIP Bob Northern (1934 – 2020)
Bob Northern was an American jazz French hornist.
Sound Awareness (1972) was one of the nine records David Toop recently posted on his Facebook as documents from the audio recorded stage of an internal war of 400plus years (in which many were complicit).
RIP Mark Barkan (1934 – 2020)
Mark Barkan (1934 – 2020) was an American songwriter and record producer.
In 1966, Barkan produced the album Psychedelic Moods by The Deep, credited as the first psychedelic album.
While researching his death, I came across the song “A Great Day For The Clown” (1967) which is a song not hard to fall in love with. It is also supposedly an Northern soul classic. Love the horns. Who does the horns?
RIP Alasdair ‘Lanark’ Gray (1934 – 2019)
Alasdair Gray was a Scottish writer and artist.
His magnum opus Lanark (1981) features a skin disease called ‘dragonhide’.
Adjectives applicable to this work are grotesque, fantastique and rabelaisian.
The book has a tendency to depress.
Update: The skin disease ‘dragonhide’ reminds me of Maldoror: “I am filthy. I am riddled with lice. Hogs, when they look at me, vomit. My skin is encrusted with the scabs and scales of leprosy, and covered with yellowish pus.”