‘What did you do back in the early days of the internet wars Daddy?’
‘Well son, it was all a lot different back then?’
‘How so?’
‘Well son, we never had the luxury of all the hardware and software you have these days. All these easily downloadable things you take for granted today. The ‘iMind-Puff’, the ‘Smell-Prod App’, the ‘Toolstation’, the ‘Freetard MP3 Tune Dumps’, the ’Ping-Bong My Face’, the ‘Ear-Wax Movie-Probe’, the ‘Footie-Hoolie Kindle’, and the ‘Hormonally-Charged Tracker Twat’ – they never existed back then.’
‘How did you ever survive such technical poverty?’
‘Well my ocularly distinguished young ankle biter, we stayed up until ten o’clock each night on a creaky rickety old BBC Message Board writing about Sun Ra slippers in the most coded language imaginable, lest we be ‘Whacked’ by a ‘Mod’ or ruthlessly barracked by a ‘Lurker’. After 10 it all got shut down, so we all migrated to ‘another board’ belonging to a certain 'Farmer Jay’, where we could all carry on discussing A Flock of Seagulls B-Sides and impending ‘hook-ups’ in subterranean London bars with strangers we’d ‘met’ off the internet. Occasionally 'Farmer Jay', would chase us off his property with a pitchfork (constructed from the handlebars of a chopper) and mutter, ‘Insects!’ as he checked under rocks and cookies. But we would all slowly sneak back again, and once a week, switch on our collective wirelesses, and continue with the coded networking as GP or ‘the teacher’, would ‘drop bombs’ over our heads’.
‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha! What a load of rubbish! You just made all that up didn’t you, Daddy?’
Indeed the world of Technological evolution moves whip fast these days; it’s now been over a decade since ‘Jottings from the Jazz Rig’ first hit the streets (well furtively handed out like a Watchtower pamphlet in subterranean speakeasies) and nowadays the very concept of publishing a paper version of anything is somewhat akin to dressing in hessian sackcloth and remarking that helicopters are the work of witchcraft!
Jottings from the Jazz Rig made it to 10 issues before it was burnt down to the ground (well sea) and I began practicing as a Gestalt therapist, peddling temporary relief from permanent problems.
Described in some quarters as, 'a Shoreditch Twat’ for the post Acid-House Bohemian Jazz Raver' , and in other parts, 'like reading Jason and the Argonauts whilst listening to Joseph’s Amazing Technicoloured Dream Coat in a giant wig.', Jottings From The Jazz Rig was the Xeroxed fanzine to be seen with at all the right clubs. A portmanteau of post punk and post card ideology, an academic dissemination of cultural mores and the in house publication at Puffy Fetlock towers. In fact P Fetlock (as he now likes to be known) once remarked of Jazzrig, ‘Yo, I was proud of working 18 hours a day and sleeping three hours a night. But it's something that turned into a problem for me: not being able to sleep... having insomnia. Not now though, I just turn to my latest copy of JazzRig and within minutes I’m out like a light.’
All the ace faces on the ‘scenes’ would ‘accidently’ leave their copies on the tube, before crying out theatrically, ‘Jeez man! I nearly left my copy of ‘Jazz Rig’ on the train. Thus successfully instilling envy throughout the carriage and beyond. Nowadays the equivalent of that would be photographing your Kraftwerk concert ticket staple-gunned to your forehead, and tagging all your ‘friends’ on Facebook. 1274 friends eh? You want to have a barbeque mate, see how many turn up. Or indeed uploading to your Twitter feed a picture of yourself drinking White Russians and smoking incense sticks in a Basel tree house, whilst singing, ‘We’re all crowing on our summer holiday.’
One critic even went as far as describing it as a ‘Snifin' Glue’ for Pod’s and Munk’s' (Punk Mods or Mod Punks if you will). Paul Morely wrote, ‘Is accompanying Nan Goldin's savagely evocative visual diary slide show The Ballad of Sexual Dependency at the Tate Modern, and his ecstatic, mystical Englishness collided/connected with and regenerated her degenerate, exposed New York-ness, the abstract relationship between his tribe, and hers, between those travelling through a certain intense, occult Lower East Side and those finding themselves in a secret night time London as if the two nervy cities are next door to each other in time and space.’ But that pile of pretentious guff wasn’t about JftJR so just never mind.
It was many things to many people. A manual of recognition for vinyl OCD obsessives. A self-help guide for technicians of spaceship Dada, an Exchange and Mart for Bermuda Dansette buyers and a Moog madness therapy group for Glove compartment collectors. Moreover It was a sartorial knackers yard of stylish shite, and a Sixth Form common room staple; a Free Porko Shrivel benefit moneyspinner and a proud supporter of the Radiohead Crown of Self Loathing: for their argument was that nuclear family conjugal relationships were becoming symmetrical. They believed that a symmetrical arrangement would become more common.
Scarce copies surface only very occasionally and it is not uncommon for the early issues to command three figure sums. Allegedly Sotherby’s recently sold an early signed copy for £500, but that did include the super rare cut out and keep Bathysphere, which was still intact and untainted. It is also said that sealed knot collector societies meet in secluded warehouses and swap copies in masonic style secrecy. Microscopes are not uncommon at these gatherings, used to check authenticity, condition and free gifts.
Recently a gang of Polish printers have tried to flood the market with counterfeit copies of ‘Jazz Rig’, and to the untrained eye, these are incredibly realistic. But to the serious collector they can be spotted a mile off by their lack of the Sun Ra watermark.
For those late to the party and those who were still using domestic phones when all this shizz was going down, here we have all 10 copies of Jazzrig in all their Swedish Svecia screen printed glory.
