Back to top
77.
An original flyer announcing ‘All Night Rave To Launch New Underground Newspaper International Times. The Soft Machine The Pink Floyd Steel Bands Strip???????? Happenings?????????? Trip??? ?????Movies’ at the Roundhouse, October 15, 1966.
Single sheet, mimeographed in black on white stock. 25.4x20.4cm. Announces the paper’s launch party, advertising the event as a ‘Pop/Op/Costume/Masque/Fantasy/Loon/Blowout/Drag Ball’, invites the audience to ‘Bring Your Own Poison & Flowers & Gas-Filled Balloons & Submarine & Roket Ship & Candy & Striped Boxes & Ladders & Paint & Flutes & Feet & Ladders & Locomotives & Madness & Autumn & Blowlamps’, and offers a ‘Surprise For The Shortest/Barest Costume’. The flyer’s lower section comprises a ticket application form and a list of ticket outlets (Indica, Better Books, Granny Takes A Trip), with the original entrance price of 7/6 reduced by hand in blue ink to 5/-.
The flyer’s other side prints a pre-publication report on International Times, dated October 6, 1966 (the fifth such report, probably written by Tom McGrath), providing a prospectus for the new fortnightly paper and describing it as being “in the same spirit to London what newspapers like the Village Voice, East Village Other and Los Angeles Free Press are to their communities; however, since no equivalent European newspapers yet exist IT will be international in its coverage.” It also solicits help with advertising and distribution (mentioning the ‘You Can Get It Here’ display sign), and invites contributions, comments and suggestions.
The legendary all-night rave announced by the flyer is well-documented in most accounts of the period: it was Pink Floyd’s first major gig, for which they received their first national press (Hunter Davies in the Sunday Times), and Soft Machine’s first as a quartet (Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers, Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt). The audience of 2500, many of whom were handed sugar cubes by Miles, Hoppy and David Mairowitz as they arrived (though they were not laced with acid), included Paul McCartney (dressed as an Arab in a vain attempt to avoid recognition); Michelangelo Antonioni (in London to film “Blow Up”); Monica Vitti; Kim Fowley; and Marianne Faithfull (wearing a very short nun’s habit, for which she won the ‘shortest/barest’ prize announced on the flyer). Films by Kenneth Anger, and “Towers Open Fire” by William Burroughs and Antony Balch, were projected on to a sheet hanging from the balcony, while below Simon Posthuma and Marijka Koger told tarot cards in an incense-filled fortune telling tent. The event’s success launched International Times on to the London scene and paved the way for future multi-media happenings, in particular the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream.
Soft diagonal crease to upper right corner, o/w a Fine copy of this extremely rare flyer, one of the earliest to mention Pink Floyd.