The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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RIP Maha Dev

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I’m sorry to say that Dave Codling – Maha Dev – has passed on, after a relatively short terminal cancer diagnosis.

Dave was best-known as Quintessence rhythm guitarist 1969-72 and later enjoyed some success in Los Angeles band Made in Japan, who featured in the 1980 cult film ‘New Year’s Evil’.

Dave was a fine art graduate from the Royal College and gave up teaching art when Quintessence suddenly took off in late 1969 – subjects of a record label bidding war within weeks of the band forming in the Ladbroke Grove area. He kept what you might call the Ladbroke Grove spirit all his life. He also kept painting, and illustrated a number of children’s books in recent years – living with wife Rose in a lovely house outside Leeds – alongside periodic musical adventures.

Dave was always helpful to me in terms of interviews and information for CD sleeve notes and magazine pieces on Quintessence, from around 2009 onward. Mrs H and I had the pleasure of visiting Dave and Rose a couple of years back and Dave stayed with me a couple of times when he had US Embassy business in Belfast (Belfast being one of » Continue Reading.

Quintessence amazon oddness – crowd-sourced help required

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For a while this year I noticed that the most recent Quintessence archive CD I worked on, ‘Spirits From Another Time: 1969-71’, wasn’t appearing when one searched for the band name on amazon.co.uk in their CDs & Vinyl section – weirdly, though, when one searched using the album title a note came up saying ‘some adult items may be restricted’ and if one carried on, there it was – a Quintessence album, hidden from the world for no good reason!

Brian at Hux Records just rang to tell me that he’d noticed orders for this release (but not other Quin CDs on his label) have fallen off a cliff and he couldn’t figure out why.

I explained the amazon thing. We both checked the site, while on the phone, and – deeply weirdly – while I can now find the album (seven down the page when searching for ‘Quintessence’ under CDs & Vinyl), Brian couldn’t! He read out what he could see and everything was in the same order as on my screen EXCEPT that ‘Spirits from Another Time’ was missing.

I emailed him the URL of the pge I was seeing and when he looked, he was still » Continue Reading.

The Way We Were – The Alternative Society 1971

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I found this on David Hepworth’s Twitter feed. It’s a fascinating look at the underground scene around Notting Hill in 1971. Some of it is more than a little self-conscious and cringe-worthy now, but it’s still very interesting, especially to those of us who lived there at the time.

All the usual suspects are here: Richard Neville (looking super cool and talking very earnestly), Caroline Coon (beautiful and frighteningly articulate as always) and, of special interest to @colin-h , there’s footage and interviews with Quintessence.

There’s lots of stuff about Oz, It and the underground press in general and it’s a wonderful snapshot of a more innocent (some would say painfully naïve) time when life was so much simpler.

At 9:33 check out the poster for Danish progsters Burnin Red Ivanhoe on the office wall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-61zkjz8G98

Getting It Straight In Notting Hill Gate

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Here is a fabulous piece of anthropology: a half-hour doc on 60s countercultural lifestyles in London, featuring nearly 5 mins of Quintessence rehearsing the title track at All Saints Church in 1969 (from 17:10 – 22:00).

http://player.bfi.org.uk/film/watch-getting-it-straight-in-notting-hill-gate-1970/