Forgetting myself

I was going through a draw of old poems when I came across this self portrait. I can't remember doing it, I don't believe I ever did anything in this style ever again. I can't remember why I did it.
I can recognise the time of my life it represents: when I worked as a silk-screenprinter in World's End, the bottom rung of Chelsea's King's Road. Another memory of that time survives in the poem I wrote about a colleague who had the misfortune to be schizophrenic.

Guitar Magick

A friend, let us call him The Animated Man, shared this link to Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing. It's intriguing in itself, even if, as one sourpuss in the comments there remarks, the Captain was not much of a guitar player himself. It's also a prompt to clear up a misapprehension about the indisputably excellent guitarist, Robert Johnson.

Hear My Train a Comin’: Hendrix Hits London,

I finally made it to Hear My Train a Comin’: Hendrix Hits London, the exhibition at The Hospital Club on Endell Street in Covent Garden. Curated by EMP of Seattle, it celebrates Jimi Hendrix's time in London from September 1966 to June 1967 to mark what would have been the year of his seventieth birthday. On display are some of the best photographs from the time (I know I've seen them all) and artwork in the shape of record sleeves and posters, some of which I had never seen before. There are also videos installed showing interviews with contemporaries such as Robert Wyatt and Chris Squires as well as enthusiasts such as the great Bootsy Collins. Tickets from £5 from here. Residents of the London Borough of Camden are admitted free on Tuesday with proof of address. Until August 31st

My book Jimi Hendrix London is on sale there too. 

Jimi Hendrix: London (MusicPlace)

Ambrotypy

The work of  Serg Shushyn a modern day ambrotypist. He works with the 19th Century wet collodion process - as did Lewis Carroll among others. An ambrotype is photographed onto a glass plate which has been coated with black varnish, so that the negative is the positive because the under exposed areas reveal the varnish. Development and fixing are done in the same way as the paper method which pre-dated glass plates and continued long after them. Unlike paper, a glass substrate has no grain, which allows a better capture of fine detail. How the images are digitalized I have no idea.