A Word from St. Julian!

Dear Jim,

Thank you so much for the Wicked Lester book. Whoa, a whole new propellent laid out in front of me! It throws up as many questions as it answers and shook me to the corpse to think that, had Greil Marcus not excluded the heavy metal writings, I for one would be far further down the path that I've had to tread virtually blind save for my own post-classical intuition. As you would say - Damn! As a Utopian who blesses anyone with a positive word to say, I can't diss Dr. Greil's methodology. From what I learn about him from your wonderful book, he probably works with one hand tied behind his back as a result of his education. But I'm a forward-thinking Motherfucker and big-hearted, too, so my compassionate self is just vibed on the fact that he even bothered to take so much time preparing Psychotic Reactions. But it all makes so much more sense once the veil is lifted - Lester's book was the first time I really picked up on him and those constant mini-mentions of Blue Cheer and his recognition of their pre-Five sonic yawp always made this British Ignorant wonder why he never went the whole hog. Of course, the truth is He Did! I just never had the facility to know about those other writings. It's quite weird to see all those references to Sir Lord Baltimore, Blue Cheer and Sabs in your biography and have no knowledge of just how he wrote about them. Is that stuff easily available? Could you help me get copies of those 'heavy' reviews? I've hated the way rock'n'roll's aesthetic has been sewn up in the 1990s to exclude the proto-barbarians. Over here it's all Q Magazine and Nick 'Hurt' Drake's Bryter Layter. Pink Moon, yes! But Bryter Layter? Much later! As an artist who always thought the Troggs' 'Feels Like a Woman' segued very naturally into the 1970 uberschlock, as Lester would have termed it, I spent the '90s trying to lay traps of all kinds to hit the supposed hipsters where it hurt most.

Many of my own fans are distasteful when they discover that I sampled the start of Deep Purple's 'Fireball' for the end of my 1994 Autogeddon LP, and I'm trying to turn them all into compassionate, non-judgemental free-thinkers, but nowadays it's much worse in these post-everything days of Oasis (E.L.O. and the Rutles, what did you start?)

Anyway, I'm rambling like a kackhound, so I'll leave you with this message: Thanks for being a righteous MoFo and kicking the 21st Century off with the Lesterest of Bangs! You Rock! <BR>

Awl love on Ya!

JULIAN COPE

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