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151.
OZ #34 (Sydney, NSW: OZ Publications Ink Limited, April 1967).
Ed. Richard Walsh and Dean Letcher. 4to. Stapled wrps., 20pp. Printed in black ink, with spot colour printing in yellow and orange on some pages.
The cover art by Mike Ramsden (then married to Jenny Kee) features an illustration titled “Psychadelicatessan”, representing hippies and the use of LSD (the Psychedelicatessen was a contemporary head shop in New York’s East Village), and includes a slogan satirising Timothy Leary: “Turn on - Tune in - Drop Dead”.
Contents include Richard Walsh’s review of London’s “main [underground] newspaper The International Times, which gives as good an account as any of what’s happening”, and Martin Sharp’s double-page collage, “The Somewhat Incredible Turning On of Mervyn Lymp”, a psychedelic spoof in which a “respectable bank clerk… strolls absentmindedly into a bookshop”, turns on to pot, changes his name to Frisco, becomes a poet, stages a Happening (inspired by the Destruction in Art Symposium), makes an underground film, and eventually leaves for “Kathmandu, where he could enjoy the permanent high of the trendy third eye operation.”
The original and longer version appeared in the first issue of London Oz in February 1967, and its visual style reflects the transformative effect of Sharp’s recent acid trips (Sharp first experienced LSD during a Pink Floyd gig at UFO in December 1966).
Very short split at head of spine, o/w about Near Fine.
