The Re-launch:

What's NEW

on the

Robert Calvert Site


  NEWS /Aug. 2012
You can find the latest news on the recent activities in music and literature by PETE PAVLI, one of the most important collaborators of Mr. Calvert. You can read the news in the collab-o-relations section.


NEWS; July/Aug. 2011
The Pentameters Theatre, London presents:
"Mirror Mirror" - Nostalgia for the Future
by Robert Calvert
From 19th July-14th August 2011 the Pentameters Theatre Londen will present this - we believe newly discovered - stageplay by R. Calvert.
Read the official press release.

New Entry; July 2007

the world ON Calvert section features a new entry - quite a novelty and certainly dear to me... - a few months ago I did an e-mail-interview with Robert Calvert's youngest son NICHOLAS CALVERT - you'll certainly learn a few new things about his father here, coming from a pretty private and unusual perspective - a(nother) must read.


New Entries; April 2006
some updates have been added:
the world ON Calvert section features a VERY interesting new entry by former Sonic Assassins and Hawkwind keyboarder PAUL HAYLES. Well written, including some funny, interesting and unknown stories from the days of 1978 - a must read.

after the new production of "The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice" at the Pentameters Theatre in London, I've added a collection of reviews - one especially written for this site by Jon Jarrett (thanks!) - you'll find the reviews annexed to the Calvert-works-page(s) or you can click
HERE

I've finally... added the real-audio soundfile of a brand-new cover version of Calvert's song Working Down a Diamond Mine - recorded by Spaceship Eyes / Don Falcone - it's another *world premiere*! - you can find / hear it in the collab-o-relations section - scroll-down the menu to Don Falcone.


NEWS; 18. Aug. 2005
The Pentameters Theatre, London presents:
"The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice"
by Robert Calvert
Pentameters presents the first production in 20 years of this fascinating play, about a little-known and formative episode in the early life of Jimi Hendrix, and the first production of the play since the death of the author in 1988.
The play was written in 1975/76 and was first produced by Leonie Scott-Matthews at Pentametres Theatre in 1976.
More infos HERE


NEWS on the re-launch of this site:
Many of you may know, that the spirit of the p/age has been offline for quite a while. I took it from the web as it looked and felt, well, antique... - and that certainly isn't at all what a/the spirit of the p/age, a presentation of the work of Mr. Calvert should be...

When I got the offer from Jerry Kranitz to host the site on his server, I thought I'd make one last update-effort, imagining it'll take a few weeks... eventually it took almost a year... - first off: to unscramble the ma/ess of data I had accumulated (as it always is, when you do your first website...) - after that I simply had to integrate the new material, that had piled up over the last years, for the simple reason that it's too good to rot in my filing-cabinets... in short: this monster of a site kept growing and growing.....

In general I've tried to focus these updates on the not-so-well-known works of Calvert - so, you won't find loads of new stuff on Capt. Lockheed etc. This is already well-documented, also on other sites - instead you'll find a lot of new material on Calvert's literary works, his "cabaret" and musical projects and the more obscure / unknown parts of his musicial and literary activities. As you will see below, many of these new entries present exclusive / never before seen or heard material.


Following you'll find a list of the most important new additions to the spirit of the pa/age (slightly incomplete for sure, as I lost track myself...) - so:


WHAT'S NEW
on the new Calvert-site / the spirit of the p/age:

(one of) the MAJOR part(s) of this re-launch is the extensive and certainly exclusive presentation of Calvert's (more or less) unknown/unavailable/unreleased masterpiece:


- this extensive special is including the complete soundfiles of all the songs featured in this 'Electronic Musical for the Cybernetic Age', animations from the original staging in 1981, excerpts from the original script, soundfiles of Calvert reading dialogue-parts of the script, an extensive narration of the play and it's plot and much more...- all this is featuring loads of material you've never seen/heard before - incl. the original studio recording of the fabulous Why can't the World be run by Machines?
All the pages on THE KID are featuring loads of images from the original staging in London, 1981. Most of them are taken from the (probably one and only) video-recording of this event - so, you'll finally get a pretty good idea, how this Meisterwerk was staged in typical no/low-budged minimalist fashion. Besides the main pages (narration of the plot etc.) you'll find sepearte pages for each song/lyrics, incl. sound/imageloops... and everything. - in short (after all): you MUST check this out!

 

the list of Calvert's WORKS has been broken up into 6 parts and extended with various new pieces (music, plays a.m.):
> an extensive entry on Calvert's lost play on Brian Jones and Donald Crowhurst

an (again) extensive entry on Calvert's various Krankschaft Cabaret shows in the early 80's - feat. links to the lyrics and soundfiles of many unpublished performance pieces.

the newly released live-recordings with Hawkwind from 1976

Steve Pond's great (and free!) mp3 release of a Calvert w. Maximum Effect gig from 1986

HYPE - the record - now features a "world premiere" (Yeah...) - not one of these so-called bonus-without-vocals-tracks, this is a REAL new / unreleased track: Could't go on - this must be an outtake from the Hype-recordings - and it's quite a gem...- just strange, that it didn't make it on the album....you can listen to it in full real-audio-beauty.

HYPE - the novel - this entry now features the closing chapter of this wonderful description of the dog-eat-dog-world-of-music-biz, which is, sadly long-out-of-print.

THE BOX - another extensive new feature.... - again another unavailable literary work of Calvert...and another (wow!) world-premiere: you can now read the full-transcription of the only remaining copy (i.e. a crackly audio-tape, feat. Calvert reading this stage-monologue) - you can also listen to a couple of audio-files, feat. Calvert's reading.

early short-prose - these texts have been annexed to the entry on Calvert's contributions to the 'Frendz' and 'New Worlds' magazines, in which they were originally published

Test Tube Baby of Mine - another extensively extended entry on Calvert's comedy on the pitfalls of genetic engineering. Annexed to the entry in the list of works you'll find a photo from the rehearsals, description of the play's characters, excperts from the script and more...

Pan-Transcendental Industries - annexed to the list of works and Calvert & Hawkwind pages you'll find another extensive feature on the fabulous 1978 Hawklords tour-concept: Pan-Transcendental Industries - featuring loads of animations, soundfiles and the brilliant / visionary texts from the original tourbook... this is a MUST-READ. (annexed to the Hawkwind pages of that period, you'll also find a couple of new - so far unreleased - images from that tour.)

Annexed to the entry on Calvert's first volume of poetry: CENTIGRADE 232, you'll now find a memory-report on the book-launch-event - and quite a hilarious one it is (was).


NEW TEXTS / LYRICS:
THE BOX (see above)
early short-prose (see above)
TEST TUBE BABY OF MINE (see above)
HYPE (the closing chapter - see above)
Pan Transcendental Industries (see above)

the WORDS section has been broken up in four parts:
The major one (Words) still contains Calvert's poetry and links to the available pieces in prose. This page feature a couple of new poems both from CENTIGRADE 232 and THE EARTH RITUAL.
The two NEW sections are:
UNRELEASED POEMS (from the estate of R.C.) and
PERFORMANCE PIECES - this page features transcriptions from various audience recordings from the early 80's, when Calvert tried out various formats of his cabaret-shows. Another premiere (in writing), I suppose - apart from the texts you can also listen to soundfiles from the original recordings - not in excellent condition soundwise, but certainly worth in terms of content and flair...
3 short prose-texts from the early 70's have been annexed to WORKS section - those were published in the legendary FRENDZ magazine.
And there's still the pretty extensive LYRICS section (in 4 parts), in which you'll find - more or less - ALL the lyrics to Calvert's songs and collaborations. The major new addition to this section are the illustrated lyrics of Insolence Across the Nation - Calvert's collaboration with ICU on one of the weirdest records ever made....


A HUGE part of the time I spent on this update went into my own favourite section:


this section features illustrated and (by now mostly) animated versions of various poems and lyrics of Robert Calvert.
Almost all of the entries on this site have been extensively - or in most cases: completely revamped. Apart from this, Calv-Art features a great number of new entries - in the LYRICS section:
Death Trap
In the Egg
Test Tube Conceived
Ned Ludd
Isadora
Bugatti
The Widow Song
The Little Bit that Won't Lie Down
Welcome to the Future

New / completely re-newed entries in the POEMS section of Calv-Art are:
Bicyclepoem
Fly on the Screen
Swing
The Red Baron Regrets
the legend of ezra pound
Voodoo Child
The Clone's Poem
Fahrenheit 451
Scarecrows
Married
The Action Man Explains
The Sad Ballad of a Soldier

All these pages contain links to real-audio files of the original recordings of the songs or readings of these poems.
Again: All the files in Calv-Art have been re-vamped...you better check out all of them... ----and when you do so...keep in mind, that many of these pages are pretty heavy in terms of the featured data - especially the flash-animations, that are cotaining lots of sounds etc - just be a bit patient...and don't forget to turn on you SPEAKERS.

this section of the site is - obviously - as much my baby as the one of Mr. Calvert. The pages you'll find gathered here, are both an interpretation and a combination of his work (supplying the source material) and my own, translating it into something that could -hopefully- be called web-art. I am not at all sure, that Mr. Calvert would agree to all the interpretations and transformations I did with (or to?) his work. That's a natural/inevitable fact, when it comes to interpreting/transforming another artist's work - however, I am convinced, if Calvert would still be amongst us, that the web would be one of his favourite workspaces by now - hard to say in which form, but he'd surely be online quite a lot, trying out suitable formats for his ideas - and - obviously - I am equally convinced that his work, in all it's fascinating variety, should be a part of this online-world, which he predicted so early on in many of his works.

The works of Calvert which I've chosen as special features in the Calv-Art section are not necessarily "the best" or "representative" - they simply had to suite an online-transformation, meet some of my available material and ideas etc... - naturally I have a special liking for all of them for various reasons - still, I'd like to recommend a handful of them.
My favourite, as I think it's a very suitable audiovisual adaptation of the poem AND the (still extremly important) situation/setting that it describes, is FLY ON THE SCREEN.
The same applies (hopefully), though in a more playful manner to THE ACTION MAN EXPLAINS.
A real beast of a file, in terms of data-masses is VOODOO CHILD, Calvert's ode to Jimi Hendrix. However, if you are patient enough, you'll have a real jukebox on your hands, combining the sounds of Hendrix and the voice of Calvert - inviting yourself to be the DJ. (beware, this can be a very noisy experience!)
I also like SCARECROWS a lot for its 'simplicity' - and as a bonus, you can hear Calvert reading this poem - another unreleased audio-file from his estate. You also should check out SWING, which - differing from the other files, also includes non-Calvert sound-files, by the Finnish band Nemesis, which, I think, accompany the poem extremely well. Aanother rec. would be The Red Baron Regrets - an example for Calvert's lifelong fascination for the ambiguous hero - and I think this one captures the tone and atmosphere of the poem pretty accurately.
(Not only) the HAWKWIND fans among you should definitely try out the three-parted DEATH TRAP animation, a real audiovisual minefield - again: heavy files, with lots of loops and noises... - the same goes for STEPPENWOLF - on the first look not entirely new...but feat. a lot of new sounds and animations - the same goes for UNCLE SAM'S ON MARS. These files work almost like animated jukeboxes of those songs.
(A re-vamped version also exists of CATTLE AT TWILIGHT, a short prose text from 1974)


other updates:

HAWKWIND AND CALVERT
these four pages may - on first sight - look relatiely un-altered....however, they do contain a LOT of new stuff - but in order not to overload them EVEN MORE, I annexed most of the new material into various new (pop-up) pages....just check out the links. These pages feature a great variety of interviews, articles etc - and a lot of new images - many of them may be new, even to the "devoted" Hawkfan. (I hope). A highly interesting new comment here comes from Nigel Ayers, member of Nocturnal Emissions, who's acknowleging Hawkwind's/Calvert's pioneering role for some of the (some years later) up-coming industrial bands.
annexed to the list of works and Calvert+Hawkwind pages you'll find another extensive feature on the fabulous 1978 Hawklords tour-concept: Pan-Transcendental Indutstries - featuring loads of
animations, soundfiles and the brilliant / visionary texts from the original tourbook...
annexed to the Hawkwind/Hawklords pages you'll also find a selection of new - and so far unpublished - photos by Peter Zabulis from the gig at Leicester De Montford Hall in 1978 - these are truly great shots. Don't miss them.



Via a link from the revised BIOGRAPHY page you can now pay a visit to Robert Calvert's grave. Another link from the bio-page leads to a bio-sketch, written by Calvert himself in 1981.


The QUOTES pages, feat. selected statements and interview-pieces of Calvert on his work and a wide variety of his manifold interests and obsessions have been extended.


new entries to The World ON Calvert
here you'll find a couple of additions, including two MAJOR ones...
the most important is surely the extensive interview with JILL CALVERT - a voice on the life/work... of Robert Calvert, that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't been heard publically - yet... - here you'll certainly get a few more new angles on this truly complex persona...not so much, as usually, from the music, but from the "private" world...
the other major new entry is an equally extensive interview with NIK TURNER. Well, that one doesn't need a comment, eh?
a very interesting new entry comes from NIGEL AYERS, member of NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS - here's (finally) a member of the diverse community of industrial musicians/artists who's acknowleding the pioneering work of Hawkwind and Calvert for the industrial scene that unfolded in the mid/late 70's.
another new entry has been written by FRED REEVES , member of Inner City Unit and The Maximum Effect, the band that accompanied Calvert in his later years.
You'll also find an extended entry of DAVE BROCK on Calvert - hopefully I'll be able to include an extensive interview with him, in the not-too-far-away-future - we'll see. Also other pages of this section, like the one of Peter Hammill on Calvert, have been revised and extended.



The Collaborators:
a new (and long overdue) entry on Pete Pavli - one of the most important and innovative musicians that Calvert worked with on a couple of his best projects, like THE KID FROM SILICON GULCH.
the page(s) on Michael Moorcock have been extensively updated and broken up in two parts - feat. new texts, images and soundfiles - incl. an illustrated and suitably noisy version of SONIC ATTACK
the page on the finish electro/ambient group Nemesis have been expanded and updated - as a special treat they now feature 2 Calvert cover-versions as real-audio tracks. A definite recommendation!
another new page in this section is devoted to Don Falcone - the main man behind Spaceship Eyes, Spirits Burning and a couple of other bands and projects. This page also features audio-files of both Calvert-cover-versions, and tracks that integrate/sample some original Calvert material - alongside a wide range of original Falcone-projects/tracks - highly recommended!


IMAGES (in general):
> you'll find LOADS of new images - spread all over the site....just snoop around

SOUNDS
> all soundfiles (and you'll find A LOT of them, spread over the entire site) have been revamped - i.e. they are playing in higher quality now...

the page on Calvert's poem WHITE DYNASTY features an extended. excerpt of an unreleased Calvert-song ("Sanctions")


...that's -more or less- IT. As always: many THANKS to each and everyone who contributed to this site. Feel free to send your comments, cash and criticism.



and now...?
In regard to the future of this site: you shouldn't expect regular updates - this simply eats up too much of my time, which I'd rather devote to my own/other projects. However, in case any 'really' interesting / important material comes my way, I think I won't be able to resist... - but as it is, the site should be extensive enough for a couple of re-visits.


ps: whatever happened to the "rest" of the project...
Those of you, who visited the spirit of the p/age in it's earlier format may remember that it also announced the plan to expand this site into an offline project and a video/tv-documentary. Those weren't just fantastic plans - I've really tried, especially in terms of the documentary - but, despite good and initially promising contacts, without luck. Seems like even the editors of the so-called fringe programmes would rather produce the 15th programme on Madonna or Pink Floyd, than one on a more or less unknown and hard-to-categorize artist as Mr. Calvert was, however fascinating and far ahead of his times he/his work was (IS!). It's, as we know, all about ratings, even on the edges of television, where that odd thing named 'culture' is supposed to hibernate.

There were also some other plans like compiling a Calvert-covers project, the release of (still) unreleased works (both music and writings) - again: this is a matter of time. I just don't have it - or like to spend it on such activities - and apart from that, it's something that simply has to be worked out with the estate of Robert Calvert - so, someone who is (geographically) closer, would be a far better person for such plans, however intriguing and worthwhile they surely are. If anyone should step forward and take up the task, I'd surely be willing to assist as best I can - and forward the tracks (some VERY interesting ones) that have been sent to me in the meantime.

(more than) enough now.... -
so, check the menu below and enjoy... - K.G.





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