Issue #1 is done! (mostly...)

Thanks to everyone who supported us last week and who came to the launch on Saturday, it's been a pretty fuckin' epic process! We only had about 85 copies bound and ready at the launch, but we collated the rest yesterday and they'll be getting bound next weekend. Big thanks to Simoen who helped collate both times (Friday night AND Sunday). Thanks also to Alice, and sorry about fucking you around a bit on Saturday morning? Big thanks to Penny too, who basically single-handedly organised the launch while Stuart and I were binding with Brad. Brad was/is totally awesome and deserves something overly-awesome for his help! Thanks also to everyone who showed up yesterday to finish the collating. That was a massive job, only made possible by y'all! Will get a couple of photos from the launch up soon (I just didn't get many actually cause I was so busy at it – anyone else get some? Esp of the BBQ area?) ...

While we were working on the mag, Chris was next door working on Stuart's Norton. He did get it going for the launch although not actually rideable, and it needs some engine work now, BUT it was a great end to the night when Stuart kicked it over in the gallery. That got Christian all heat up and so he did a burn out in the gallery on his 350! We then had a great time watching him spend the next half an hour trying to clean the tyre marks off the floor. Good shit! Big thanks to Christian for letting us use bikes from his shop to show in the gallery/launch space too. It looked pretty fuckin' awesome!

Melbourne launch tomorrow!

Holy Fuck!

Publicity Machine goes wild...

http://thethousands.com.au/melbourne/read/head-full-of-snakes-issue-1/

Head Full of Snakes getting loads of hype here in Melbourne thanks to Penny @ The Thousands, and was great to meet Geoff from 'Return of the Cafe Racers' today. Hoping we get this damn printing done for the launch in time! It's gonna be down to the wire time-wise...

Yikes.

HFoS issue #1 in the making...

head full of snakes promo from Aaron Cuthbert on Vimeo.

Aaron from Fuel Tank TV came in yesterday and filmed us hard at work. We've been here basically 24 hours a day since I got here on Monday. It's nuts! Still a lot of printing to do! But, fingers crossed, we'll have this sucker done for launch on Saturday!?

Cheers Aaron!

Printing, printing, more printing...

We've been doing some seriously long/crazy hours printing this thing. It's pretty slow going, but the piles are building up. It's the 4 colour pages that are obviously taking ages as we're doing one colour at a time and have to wait for it to dry before putting the next colour one. Looking pretty fuckin cool though! And we have Christian's bike parked up outside to remind us why we're doing all this... sweet sweet bike...

Printing HFoS #1!

In Melbourne right now printing issue #1 with Stuart. Doing some kind of launch at the Modern Motor Cycle Company on Keele St at about 3pm this Saturday... will be having a bunch of late nights before then!

Ivan Mauger short doco

A great little doco on Ivan Mauger here... made in the 70s. Couldn't embed it so you'll have to bugger off to Youtube to watch it...

That link again is:

http://youtu.be/ZC1cWGMWG2M

Skool

Aaron and I both bought our bikes to school today. We are easily the coolest department in the school right now.

Flexidiscs are here (Paul Elliman recording)

The flexidiscs to go with our first issue arrived yesterday and I'm pretty damn happy with them. I'd wanted to make a flexidisc right from the beginning of thinking I might make this mag, and then when Paul Elliman was here he made a proposal to me for the first one. Paul has made a recording of a 1952 Vincent Black Lightning that is 4 minutes and 43 seconds long, mirroring Richard Thompson's song '1952 Vincent Black Lightning'. The black on black label was Paul's idea, and he's releasing this under the pseudonym Can Robert. The records sound great (thank God, I've had a lot of trouble with getting vinyl made in the past) and are such interesting artefacts. These were made by Pirates Press in San Francisco and I'd highly recommend them. 

Aaron Beehre's CB100

Watched the MotoGP at Aaron's lastnight, and then made Nadine go sit on his bike because I really wanna get her onto something like this. Aaron's only just got this going again after about a year and half off the road. He got this little CB100 about four years ago and it was pretty screwed. I think it's a 72 or 73. He bought a new Chinese engine for about $400 I think? A Loncin 150cc single and had that put in by Joe at Rocky Point garage. At the same time Aaron did the bike up a bit. It's looking pretty cool now and seems to be going good too. Apparently a lot of the bucket racer guys use these little Loncin engines? Anyway it made me really excited again about getting a small bike for round town and for Nadine to learn on. The MotoGP was great too, crazy crash right at the first corner which took out four bikes including both the Ducatis, one of whom was Rossi. Had a great finish between Spies and Stoner, with Spies looking like he had come from 4th to wrap up the finish, just to be beaten by about an inch by Stoner on the final straight. Those Hondas are fast!

HFoS: the business end...

Stuart was here last week and we finally got stuck into things. I had actually organised for Stuart to come over to examine some of my postgrad students, which was great because the uni paid for it, but not so great because the whole first half of the week was taken up with marking etc.

First up we made some business cards on the riso. We were both just really keen to 'make' something tangible... quickly. I think. That was pretty satisfying, and also meant we purchased www.headfullofsnakes.com and got email addresses too. The cards were (obviously enough I guess) based on the 'calling cards' you can see here a couple of posts ago.

We then got busy with the actual mag. We're still waiting for some content, but hopefully it'll all be in this week, and we got a lot of layout sort of stuff done anyway. Stuart doesn't fuck about and procrastinate over every small decision like I do, so having him here really pushed it on a lot! I'm planning to go to Melbourne so we can print the thing together at the end of November. We'll also hopefully do some kind of launch while I'm there. It's good to have a deadline in sight now...

Despite being pretty busy we managed to fit a quick ride in on the Friday night. Went to the Brewery in Woolston and then over to Lyttelton where we couldn't get a table and had to come back to town for food. Stuart rode the Norton and Nadine and I went on the Triumph. Was great to see someone else riding the Norton, to see how it sits on the road etc. It's still running a bit shit, but John's loaned inlet rocker cover seems to have taken care of a good deal of my oil spill!

Oil leaks...

On Saturday I cleaned up the engine on the Norton, sprayed it with degreaser and got it really spotless so that I could try and see exactly where all the bloody oil was coming from. Went for a quick ride round town and noticed that a lot of it seemed to be coming from the inlet rocker cover you can see here. I pulled this off and saw it had been punched through and re-welded at some point. I went to see John on Sunday morning and we looked at his cover off his 750. Mine looks like it's a bit porous round the weld, and also the nut holding his one on actually has a shoulder on it which winds down into the cover. Mine just had a nut and a washer. John's loaned me his cover for a bit so I'm gonna clean it up again and go for another ride as soon as I get a chance and see what kinda difference it makes... I'm hoping that maybe I can avoid a head rebuild, for the summer at least!?

It's running like crap though, and John's suggested I strip the carb, so will get onto that asap. 

Trevor Paglen: 'Symbology'

Max sent me a link to this here, it's a project by Trevor Paglen that's part of this big graphic design show that's on at The Walker Art Centre at the moment. The show's called 'Graphic Design: Now in Production' and features a whole bunch of the usual suspects mostly – think 'Forms of Inquiry'... the 'Critical Design' gang. More about it here. I might come back and write something more about this exhibition? Maybe? I could I guess is my point. But really what I wanted to do was just store this particular project here as a reference for myself.

From what I can tell (off the Walker's blog) Paglen hasn't 'made' these patches, he's collected them. From "classified military and intelligence units". Which makes them all the more genuinely sinister. I was interested in these though because I have seen things like this before. A few years ago now, 2006 I think, I went to spend Xmas with a friend's family in Washington DC. I knew her dad had been in the military but I didn't know what exactly his role had been. Turns out he was a General and was in charge of ALL the nuclear missile bases throughout the 80s and during the thawing of the Cold War. Anyway he had all this nuclear missile memorabilia all over the house. Crazy shit, like models of the missles, photographs, bits of gear and uniforms etc. It was pretty interesting, but I didn't talk to her dad much because I found him pretty intimidating and also he was a pretty hard core Christian and I was worried I'd say something wrong. However he found out I was a graphic designer and one thing led to another and he ended up pulling out this hat – it's like a baseball cap sorta thing, a truckers cap, you know whit the spongy front. Anyway this hat is totally covered with all these little badges, and every single badge is like these patches here. Each badge represents a particular nuclear missile base, and each has some weird name or tag-line. And then he gave it to me! I didn't know what to do with the thing to be honest. It's been in a box for years. I don't have a photo of it, I'd kinda forgotten about it. But I really wanna dig it out now...

Gang 'calling cards'

I swiped these from the 'We Are Supervision' blog here. Stuart emailed me a link to them a while back, and I found them again today, mostly because I've been starting to play around with what this zine we're about to do might look like. There was something I remembered liking about these – the simplicity largely, the 'alchemist/freemason' sort of vibe (like there's some big seceret you're missing out on), and then also the amateur aesthetic. Actually they remind me quite a bit of some of Dylan 'Phats' Herkes work, especially the poster he did for the Tape Men and Damned Evangelist tour a couple of years ago. Anyway, just storing these here for my own reference really. Here's what 'We Are Supervision' had to say about them:

"Today, we are pulling out some goodies from the archives for everyone.  Every city has its own gang history, part of Chicago's are Gang cards, most prominent in the 70's and early 80's, back in the day when a gang was more of a neighborhood crew then what it is today.  Fists, bats, and bottles days, before guns became the norm in the gang.  Most of the gangs were just about the neighborhood and hanging out together.  Stock art from the printer as well as some hand drawn illustrations were the back bone of many of the cards.  Some cards are pretty humorous, with some off the wall illustrations, logos, sayings, and rhymes.  They don't make them like they used to..."