#underground press

[tinyuglyworld]

Panther's Free Breakfast program in West Seattle

Photographed by the Underground Press Syndicate, 1970

[unspeakablearchives]

The whole idea of "artistic value" is vague, subjective, class-bound, culturally contingent, and notoriously easy to manipulate. It protects the famous, the canonical, the university-approved, the politely transgressive, the books with blurbs and pedigrees and respectable defenders.

But it does not protect cheap paperbacks, exploitation novels, underground comix, anonymous erotica, obscure zines, fanfiction, pulp horror, badly written shock fiction, or the work of people too poor, strange, stigmatized, or low-status to have critics rushing to declare them Important. It is worth pointing out that marginalized sexualities and subcultures have often only been able to speak through these low-status, disreputable forms.

The right to express yourself should not depend on whether your prose is elegant or meaningful in the eyes of a judge or jury. If a human made it, then it is meaningful to them, and that is enough to give it intrinsic value.

I do not defend ugly, stupid, tasteless, or exploitative books because I think they are somehow secretly noble. I defend them because freedom that only covers the respectable is a fraud.

If a book must audition for its right to exist by proving its cultural worth to authorities, then liberty has already been replaced with permission.

[sonicandvisualsurprises]

The Seeds collage - February 1967.

The Seeds in full bloom.

While searching for a photo to include in my reblog of "Pictures and Designs" I stumbled across this fantastic piece of art.

Garage-psych legends in one striking collage.

[savethelifeofmychild]

Detroit Gay Liberator, Dec. 1970

[tilbageidanmark]

Underground cartoonist Ron Cobb.

[designfiend]

INTERNATIONAL TIMES NEWSPAPER

International Times Newspaper was produced by an underground counterculture press starting in the late 60s through the 1993

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

THE '60s COUNTERCULTURE POKES FUN AT THE "NEW KID ON THE BLOCK," A.K.A., THE FIRST WAVE OF UK PUNK.

PIC INFO: Resolution at 1400x2121 -- This month in "International Times" history -- Spotlight on cover page from the British underground counterculture newspaper "International Times" (IT) Vol. 2 #6, published February 1977 and titled "Punk is Dead," indicating it's publication during the heyday of first Wave UK punk rock.

Sources: https://x.com/PulpLibrarian/status/953703609476288513, Bummer California, various, etc...

[nobrashfestivity]

Stephen Shames, Photon West