(109) Super City of the Future

Reyner Banham, working class intellectual, pop professor and historian of the immediate future, has been a much missed member of the POWcityblog's guru cadre for decades now. He also had a horrible beard. The beard lives forever online in an ancient and badly worn print of the 1972 BBC documentary Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles.

Yes, we know that in many respects this doc is hopelessly obsolete. Banham was channeling a charming, anarchic, thankful kind of thing that was far too accepting of his subject's temporary historical up side. RBLLA could not be made today. Comparing LA to London in a loose-limbed manner Banham takes us on a psychogeographic mission of a type that should never, ever happen, at least according to the stricter interpretations of the approach: one conducted from a car! But how better to understand and experience the expanded edge cities? RBLLA watches well next to Will Self's lecture in posting 54. Enjoy the hour with Banham and a cool female automated narrator in his white Ford while getting an overview of a city we all know in bits and pieces through movies and television. Obsolete but valuable psychogeography. Just ignore the beard as best you can.

(107) Ghost Town

This song/video is psychogeographic in a spooky, economics-appropriate kind of way.

editor's note: submitted by POWcityblog reader _ICE_ via Telex

(54) Will Self: Psychogeographer at Large

Imagine getting to work at a firm that brings in all sorts of moderne trendy writers to enlighten its workers at lunchtime. If not for our own totally awesome career we might be tempted. Will Self starts out with a reading from a recent collection of non-fiction called Psychogeography. He warms up afterwards sharing his shtick as the UK-resident psychogeographer that he is. At one point he stumbles over the idea of bicycles in psychogeography. This might be an assumption about the driving habits of a California audience? Either way, Interesting stuff and well worth the investment of 54 minutes.

(13) Pictures of Lily

No blog would be complete without at least one cut & paste of song lyrics and the obligatory YouTube movie. Also, the multiple effects of foul weather have restricted the Subaru to base and held back scouting missions so POWcityblog’s Cray III supercomputer was given the assignment instead. It spent much of last week burbling and humming as several teraflops of popular culture was given a scouring. The lights flickered alarmingly and there was a smell of burning silicon throughout the bunker the whole time. Strange bass vibrations shook the floors. At one point I had to confer with my second-in-command in the privacy of a shuttlecraft because we thought the Cray III had processor-locked and gone rogue. We sent a security man up the metal ladder in the air shaft but an anti-vermin laser zapped him in the cheek and he dropped the key. In the wee hours this morning Cray III throttled down and the results were worth the anxiety and backed up plumbing: Pictures of Lily.

A hit for The Who in 1967 it was also going to be the name of this blog. The song is said to be about British vaudevillian Lillie Langtry (the Jersey Lily, as she was known, went over to the other side in 1929) or vintage pin up Lily Bayliss. Either way:



I used to wake up in the morning
I used to feel so bad
I got so sick of having sleepless nights
I went and told my dad

He said, 'Son now here's some little something'
And stuck them on my wall
And now my nights ain't quite so lonely
In fact, I don't feel bad at all

Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful
Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night
Pitcures of Lily solved my childhood problems
Pictures of Lily helped me feel alright

Pictures of Lily Lily, oh Lily
Lily, oh Lily
Pictures of Lily

And then one day things weren't quite so fine
I fell in love with Lily
I asked my dad where Lily I could find
He said, 'Son, now don't be silly'
'She's been dead since 1929'
Oh, how I cried that night

If only I'd been born in Lily's time it would have been alright
Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful
Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night
For me and Lily are together in my dreams

And I ask you, 'Hey mister, have you ever seen Pictures of Lily?'

editor's note: when you see archival tape of The Who none of those bratty 90s Britpop bands have got snot to compare