Tag Archives: 1934

RIP Diane di Prima (1934 – 2020)

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlF_al8QuF4&ab_channel=J.ChristianGuerrero
Gang of Souls (1989), di Prima is from 2:20 onwards

Di Prima is featured in Gang of Souls (1989), the Maria Beatty documentary on Beat poets.

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.

‘Out There’ featuring Alasdair Gray.

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.”