Jordan Swartz-The Rad Times #24

This issue of The Rad Times you’re reading marks two years of sending this newsletter into the world. It grew from something called Follow Friday. Before instagram was totally destroyed, every Friday I would share my favorite things I had found on the internet that week. Years before that I co-ran a zine and book publisher, it started as a blog sharing the work of photographers we liked, soon that wasn’t enough and I wanted to see their work in the real world. We released over 40 publications in six years and held multiple group shows working with over 600 photographers in that time. The goal for me has always been sharing the work of others and building a community, a rising tide lifts all boats.

Seeing this newsletter grow has brought me tremendous joy and I hope it has done the same for you each month. With that, I have a favor to ask, if you enjoy reading this newsletter each month, pass this one along to a friend, share one of the stories, or show them how to sign up. And on the other side, if you find something you think I may like, send it my way; articles, artists, music, books, movies, etc.

Thanks for hanging!
Be good to each other.

The new year is off to a busy start. I have 3 collages (pictured above) in a show at The Purple Door in Portland, OR. They are doing 2 nights for the opening- Friday, February 20 and Saturday, February 21, both nights 5-9pm.

This month I will also be installing a large collage display at the Lancaster, PA Amtrak station. The collages reference the history of Lancaster through a variety of sources and it’s role through the history of the U.S.

I wrapped a couple identity projects and started a couple more, as well as having two websites that are in the finishing stretch. I’m also stoked to be working on a record packaging project. If you’re looking for something, reach out.

There are a few prints for sale in my store (use the discount code TheRadTimes for 20% off.) It’s a small group of photos from my travels over the last year. A couple of which were made last year in Westport, WA., I was there as the artist-in-residence at LOGE Camps. The work made there is part of an ongoing series called King Tide, about the PNW and human impact on nature.

Originally started by the Beastie Boys as a newsletter zine for their fans, Grand Royal quickly grew into a widely circulated magazine featuring music, culture, and whatever else they wanted to include (sound familiar?). There’s articles about paintings by Evel Knievel, the best hotel pools to break into in LA, an interview with Ted Nugent where the interviewer calls him out for being racist, a report from a Harlem Globetrotters basketball practice, Adam Yauch’s dad’s frittata recipe, an interview with the Dalai Lama, and that’s just from two issues. It’s also credited with the first print appearance of the word mullet.
Publishing 6 issues between 1993 and 1997, Grand Royal is a time capsule of a band at it’s peak, and like the rest of their world, a place where enthusiasm reigned (again, hi). Physical copies can be quite pricey but a few years ago I found a download for issues 1-5, if anyone out there has issue 6 please send it my way.

What A Way To Go was recommended to me by my friend Brian after we had both recently watched The Apartment (one of my favorite movies). Shirley MacLaine is a wealthy widow who wants to donate her wealth to the IRS (it was a different time) because she believes she is cursed. Each of her husbands have found success and then an untimely death. Each marriage is played out through a different film spoof/ genre and has an unreal cast. Every one delivers across the board and it’s just genuinely an enjoyable time.

During WWII, Armed Services Edition paperbacks were designed specifically for the troops. There were over 122 million copies, made up of over 1,300 titles, shipped overseas to soldiers between 1943 and 1947. Designed to fit in a soldier’s pocket they would print two books on a page and cut them horizontally, giving the books a distinct landscape format, with each page having two columns of text with extra leading, so they could be more easily read in low light. As the soldiers returned home they helped bolster a desire for paperback books that existed but was less than thriving pre war. There’s also something to be said for the number of books sent overseas at a time when the Nazis were burning books.

This one is a bit of a two parter. I’m a big movie fan and really enjoy the Criterion Closet videos. Getting to see what your favorite actors and directors watch and gain inspiration from harkens back to the days of reading band’s liner notes and thank yous to find other bands to listen to. The part of Simon Pegg’s video that stuck out to me is when he says his daughter hated Blue Velvet, “sometimes entertainment is an overrated function of art.”

That brings me to the second part. I first learned of The KLF from their 1994 project K Foundation Burn a Million Quid, and I was immediately interested in their story. I’ve tried to write about them in almost every issue of this newsletter and have never found the words. I tried again here, I had 3 long paragraphs written and still felt like I wasn’t even beginning to scratch the surface. Essentially a record A&R guy and a musician decide to start a band, change the music sampling and dance/ house/ ambient music landscape, write a book on how to write a hit single, quit the industry at the BRIT awards and destroy their entire back catalog, start an art foundation, aggressively give away 40,000 pounds, then burn a million pounds on a remote Scottish Island, and swear not to talk about it for 23 years. That’s not even the start of it. Like Simon Pegg says in the Criterion Closet “sometimes being made uncomfortable is the point.” I’ve read about and watched documentaries on The KLF for years now and every time I feel like I have more questions and know less but it also makes me so excited that people can still raise questions and push the pop cultural boundaries.

I am who I am because of print and magazine design. Devouring skateboarding, music, and art magazines as a kid wholly informed who I am now. I got into design by making zines and eventually books and magazines. Monster Children is the one magazine that I have collected over the years, I’ve been reading it for almost 20 years now (when did that happen?!) A mix of surf, skate, art, music, and travel, it has long been the combination of all my other favorite magazines with a distinct design style to top it off. After a couple of quiet years they’re back with a new issue and the ink smells just as good as it always has. Go make things people can hold and in the mean time go buy some issues of your favorite magazines.