Julian Cope (born 21 October 1957) is an English rock musician, author, antiquary, musicologist, poet, and cultural commentator. Originally coming to prominence in 1978 as the singer and songwriter in Liverpool post-punk band The Teardrop Explodes, he has followed a solo career since 1983 and worked on musical side projects such as Queen Elizabeth, Brain Donor and Black Sheep. Cope is also an author on Neolithic culture, publishing The Modern Antiquarian in 1998, and an outspoken political and cultural activist with a noted and public interest in occultism and paganism. (More from Wikipedia)
There are actually a lot of websites out there that talk about Blair 1523: It might be surprising to some that a search of the band name in quotes brings up 18,100 hits on Google. The first page of Google hits has a YouTube video of “Fantasy of Folk”, the Bomp! Mailorder site where the “last copies” of the CD can still be purchased plus another listing on Amazon.com, the mention of the band in my Wikipedia article on the Outcasts, the Allmusic review and the Julian Cope blog mentioned above, a listing on last.fm that actually has some information and even a photo of Blair 1523, and more barren listings on mtv.com, Discogs, and Rate Your Music. Further Google pages bring up other barebones listings – the one on Ticketmaster that offers concert tickets and tour schedules for a band that broke up 20 years ago is particularly hilarious – and other places to buy the CD and rate the music and see the lyrics and download “free” MP3’s (Napster lives!).
(September 2013)
