I’ll be part of the lineup for Profane Illuminations, a day of talks at NYU organized by Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor Press. I’ll present my talk “Music from Elsewhere,” discussing and playing music attributed to fairies, trowies, banshees, aliens, spirits, and angels; as well as music from alchemists, occultists, Cathars, cryptographers, secret societies, and dreams. Other speakers include Erik Davis, Peter Bebergal and Gareth Branwyn, Amy Hale, Kristen Gallerneaux, and Dave Tompkins.

It’s on Saturday, April 27, at Einstein Auditorium (34 Stuyvesant St., at 9th St., between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), NYC, and it’s free. The talks run from 12 to 8 pm; I’ll be on at about 3:30. More info here.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Upside-Down Stories is now available from Black Scat Books!

Charles Cros and Émile Goudeau were quintessential Bohemian poets of the 1880s. Cros also experimented with the phonograph and color photography; Goudeau founded the Hydropathes, who met to declaim poetry while not drinking water. Cros and Goudeau’s only collaboration was a series of five exuberant stories published in 1880, which satirized such hot topics as divorce and capital punishment with bawdy humor and wild flights of fancy. All five stories are included here, plus four solo stories by Cros that complete the series, translated and annotated by Doug Skinner. These dense and nutty gems will surprise you!

Available from Amazon or Black Scat Books.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Romatka made a meager and undependable living as a teacher and editor of poetry. He published this curious broadside about his unpleasant interactions with his clients, written as usual in his tiny meticulous calligraphy. The two columns are one sheet (letter size); I scanned them separately to make them easier to read.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Anton Romatka was a poet, editor, publisher, calligrapher, and teacher, who held forth in Greenwich Village in the 1930s and ’40s. He died in 1948; his body was discovered by the writer John Keel, then a young Village poet himself, working on a magazine with Romatka. You can read the story here.

I found very little about Romatka on the web. It’s a pity, since he seems to have been a sympathetic and eccentric character, and somewhat of a Village institution. Keel kept many of Romatka’s publications, which included poetry, poetry magazines, and instructional manuals on poetic technique, usually lettered in his distinctive calligraphy. Here are two poems printed on cards, both 6 x 8 1/2″, from 1939 and 1945. I suspect they were meant for the annual exhibit by the Ravens Poetry Circle, in which poems were pinned to the fence outside Judson Church, on Washington Square, and offered for sale.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I found this stack of booklets recently; the first seven were published by the Trail Blazers’ Publishing Co., and the last two by W. H. Harper. I assume the two companies were the same. All are from 1943. I found very little about them online, except that there was also a “Trail Blazers Almanac” for many years. I post them here in appreciation of their lively two-color covers.

Drawings of different military aircraft, as well as “U. S. Army Aviation Badges.”

A pictorial guide to army insignia.

The same for the navy. Also includes the navy pay scale, from ensign to admiral.

Each page is a grid of 60 dots. I guess that saves you the trouble of drawing them.

Simple origami.

Card, word, guessing, and other indoor amusements. I’d never heard of Jack Horner: “Blindfold two players. Give each player five marshmallows and tell them to feed each other. This is great fun for all.”

The title promises twice that these are wholesome. Games include Swat the Bear, Hop Shove, Hook On, Red Lion, and Nose Jacks. Most are new to me, but they do seem relatively wholesome.

The game later marketed as Battleship. This version is smaller and cheaper.

The rules for football, baseball, tennis, hockey, and other sports. More importantly, instructions on how to lay out the playing field. There’s even a plan for a ping pong table.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I will be presenting the latest version of my concert/talk on music attributed to fairies, aliens, and other shadowy entities, “Music from Elsewhere,” on March 5 at 7 pm. It’s part of the series Utopia/Dystopia, curated by Morbid Anatomy and Hauser & Wirth. It’s at Hauser & Wirth, 548 W. 22nd St., NYC, and admission is free. You can find more info here. (This event was originally scheduled for November, but canceled due to a blizzard. It’s back!) It’s free, but an RSVP is requested.

I’m currently working on a book, tentatively also entitled Music from Elsewhere, including essays on not only fairy and alien tunes, but music that is lost or imaginary, musical ciphers and constructed languages, occult and hermetic music, music from seances and angels, music from fraternal orders, didactic music, kitchen symphonies and toy instruments, music from dreams, and other departures from standard practice. It’s slated for Strange Attractor Press; it may take me a while…

I’m also working on a translation of the “Upside-Down Stories” of Charles Cros and Émile Goudeau: nine bursts of hilarious and tasteless provocation from the founders of the Hydropathes in fin-de-siècle Paris. They’ve never been available in English, and it’s high time they were.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Best of Le Scat Noiris now available! It collects memorable gems from the online journal edited by the ebullient Norman Conquest, in a large, full-color trade paperback. I have a number of pieces in it, as do many others, to wit: Paulo Brito, Paul Kavanagh, Erik Satie, Samuele Bastianello, Alice Pulaski, Pink Buddha, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Jason E. Rolfe, Eckhard Gerdes, Harold Jaffe, Tom Whalen, Darlene Altschul, Madalina Tantareanu, Sheila Pell, Samantha Memi, Opal Louis Nations, Alphonse Allais, Francisque Sarcey, Carla M. Wilson, Terri Lloyd, Mercie Pedro e Silva, Georges Hugnet, Norman Conquest, Paul Rosheim, Carol White, Michael Leigh, Nile Southern, Mantis Man, Tom Bussmann, Edward Lear, Mark Axelrod, Adao Iturrusgaral, Jim Johnson, Rick Krieger, Pippa Anais Gaubert, Rebecka Skog, Frank Pulaski, Jim McMenamin, Gail Schneider, Franciszka Themerson,  Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, Tom La Farge, Theodore Carter, Nick Frost, Farewell Debut, Quixote, Robin Wyatt Dunn, Allan Bealy, Angela Pankosky, Brett Stout, Uwe Taubert, Iacyr Anderson Freitas, Desiree Jung, Andy Koopmans, Jim Meirose,  Russell Helms, Peter Payack, Adrienne Auvray, Gelett Burgess, and Eugene Ivanov.

You can find it at Black Scat Books!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Army Navy Hit Kit gave soldiers and sailors a folio of popular songs, in piano arrangements. It began in 1943, and was published monthly. It was never sold, and, for some reason, had no standard size. I’ve seen copies that indicate a month and year; these are identified only by letters (P, S, and X). The covers were contributed by a variety of cartoonists, particularly those in the military. The one above is by Fred Lasswell, who had taken over “Barney Google and Snuffy Smith” in 1942, and was then serving as a flight radio operator in Africa. Those below are by Sgt. Ralph Stein, cartoon editor for Yank and future artist for “Popeye,” and Cpl. Stephen Douglas, who edited and drew covers for Famous Funnies.

As the title indicates, the songs are mostly commercial, although there are also a few traditional tunes. A period note: it was assumed the readers could read music and play the piano, although guitar chords are also given.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Yoyo, or, to give it its full title, Tales n’ Tails for the One n’ Every Yoyo, was published in January, 1972, in NYC. It advertised subscriptions, but this seems to have been the only issue, cheerily numbered 00.

It was published and edited by the painter and cartoonist Gerard Millan Perichon, who usually drew under the name of Babi (or Baby) Jery. He contributed to the New York Times, the East Village Other, and the National Lampoon, among others.

Yoyo is a sort of underground comic book in a magazine format, a big book at 96 pages. The contributors are an interesting bunch: veteran underground artist John Thompson (with an uncharacteristic doodle), Michael O’Donoghue (with a photo funny), Tomi Ungerer (with an excerpt from his book Compromises), the Belgian animator Picha. Perichon includes a couple of his trippy stories; the illustrator Paul Spina has pages of his hallucinatory art; and the Hawaiian painter Byron Goto indulges in a raunchy story about cowboys. Thirty pages are devoted to “The Scarecrow,” an inscrutable and inky picture story by Brad Holland, who went to become an influential illustrator. It’s an odd mix: underground comics by artists who usually didn’t draw comics.

Here are some samples. Click on those last three to enlarge them:

John Thompson

Babi Jery

Paul Spina

Brad Holland

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

This miniature deck (about 1 3/4 by 2 1/2 inches) is embellished with simple line drawings of animals, each with its name. There is no indication of date or publisher; the box has a drawing of a cat, and proclaims it “Maotou Renzipuke,” which is, I believe, Chinese for “Kitty Cat Reading Deck,” although I could be wrong.

And here’s the joker; “mimi,” according to the dictionary, means “meow.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)