And we are back! It has been a long time since the Sunday Service last ran (late October 2017 when we got stuck in Major Moving Mode – We are not quite done unpacking yet). But hopefully this bit of link bloggery is back for regular weekly installments. It is fitting that we open back up the share trough with a Joe Strummer deep cut (courtesy of Derf, whose True Stories #3 we exclusively debut for sale this week) It’s Love Kills, the theme song from the cult classic Alex Cox 1986 feature film Sid & Nancy. The video is an extreme take-off from the film with members of the original cast–including Strummer, Gary Oldman and Dick Rude. If you are familiar with the story, the ending of the video will blow you away. This blog’s title takes its name from the classic Clash song The Leader, which is still a fitting tune for these very strange days.
[Note: a bunch of these links were discovered last Fall, I make no excuses for any knowledge acquired since. Formatting is also a bit loosy goosy… seeing what works. Super fresh content next Sunday. Maybe.]
Art:
On A Sunbeam is a webcomic you should read by Tillie Walden
Newish animated Queen video All Dead, All Dead. Get the background story at The Guardian.
Douglas Wolk presents The Complete and Unabridged History of the Marvel Universe (A Guide for the Perplexed). The story goes that Douglas has been reading the entire Marvel Comics continuity from some point in the distant past up until the present day.
Check out this two page comic Brandon Graham made about making comics
Sam Winston makes Darkness Visible
Dracula Country: A Transylvania Travel Log by Gahan Wilson on Playboy
Music:
Forget What You Thought You knew about Robert Plant This is one hell of a playlist
The Guardian’s late-2017 Underground Music Series is well worth exploring if you are looking for new sounds
Video:
Pigheaded Skip Williamson
In Search Of Moebius
Tac au Tac with Jean Giraud (Moebius) & Hugo Pratt [tip of the hat to a customer from France who turned us on to this series]
Ballardian:
We are hoping we can get this into the shop. We had Simon’s previous Ballardian book in, so here’s hoping.
Applied Ballardianism: Memoir from a Parallel Universe
“Fleeing the excesses of 90s cyberculture, a young researcher sets out to systematically analyse the obsessively reiterated themes of a writer who prophesied the disorienting future we now inhabit. The story of his failure is as disturbingly psychotropic as those of his magus—cult author J.G. Ballard, prophet of the post-postmodern, voluptuary of the car crash, surgeon of the pathological virtualities pulsing beneath the surface of reality.
“Plagued by obsessive fears, defeated by the tedium of academia, yet still certain that everything connects to Ballard, his academic thesis collapses into a series of delirious travelogues, deranged speculations and tormented meditations on time, memory, and loss.
“Abandoning literary interpretation and renouncing all scholarly distance, he finally accepts the deep assignment that has run throughout his entire life, and embarks on a rogue fieldwork project: Applied Ballardianism, a new discipline and a new ideal for living. Only the darkest impulses, the most morbid obsessions, and the most apocalyptic paranoia, can uncover the technological mutations of inner space.”
Our featured image is the Clash’s Mick Jones’ boombox customized by Futura 2000. Photo source unknown.
