Found while looking for something else

On the other side, also in my writing: "Charlemagne! How do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-N-D-S" which is clearly a play on the old Rolaids advertisement. Proof that I was destined for marketing all along.

The paper opens up to a flier that asks, on the other side, "Would You Be Interested in Tutoring? The Learning Center Has Tutoring Opportunities..." All the 'o's are shaded in and there's another sketch of a Greek goddess in profile in the margins. Her proportions are slightly off.

Well, it's like Tom Leher said "Bright college days, oh, carefree days that fly, To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high..."

I do like the oars coming out of the wheel-wells on the bus though!

"Gimme a 'D!' Gimme a 'U!' Gimme a 'C!'..."

Yes, the famous Country Joe McDonald DUCK cheer. Heard many a time over the years. Latest incarnation this morning on KFOG, live from the historic Poster Room at the Fillmore.



(This image and other Rick Griffin artwork on display at www.myraltis.eclipse.co.uk/griffin)

Jeremy Harding on Syd Barrett

Last Thursday, I searched the LRB archives in vain for this article. It is clear that the editors have since made a decision to put it online, and -- even more to the point -- have made it available for free without subscription. Full article at link.

Afternoonishness

...Barrett's afternoonishness was far more supple and engaging. It superimposed the hippie cult of eternal solstice on the pre-teatime daydreams of one's childhood, occasioned by a slick of sunlight on a chest-of-drawers or a snatch of plainsong in the radiator - a daydream that quickly filled with gaudy archetypes and very private, custom-built creations. Barrett's songs are full of both: bog-standard gnomes on the one hand, homeless mice called 'Gerald' on the other. His afternoonishness is lit by an importunate adult intelligence that can't quite get back to the place it longs to be.

Remarkably, Barrett created the same, precocious longing in adolescents who heard his music at the time. I remember 'See Emily Play' drifting across a school corridor in 1967 - I was 15 then - and I remember the powerful wish to stay suspended indefinitely in that music, just as I wanted to hang about for ever in another, much darker song of the same period, 'My Eyes Have Seen You', by the Doors. I also remember the quasi-adult intimation that this wasn't possible. Which may have been why the first strains of 'Emily', even then, marked the onset of sulkiness and regret; the thing you adored was eluding you even as you heard it. Roll on teatime...