LUDD'S MILL: ISSUE No.2

LUDD'S MILL: 

THE SECOND ISSUE

OK, so maybe this second issue - two sides of A4, was something of a seat-of-the-pants stop-gap shot. Launched in Spring 1971, with a useful round-up of other counter-culture alternative publishing projects, it nevertheless catches something of the grimy flavor of the time.

I never actually thought much of the name 'Ludd's Mill', although I concocted a selection of dubious explanations for it. I always preferred the title I attempted to infiltrate later as 'publisher', which was variations of 'Eight Miles Higher'. As Steve Sneyd later explained it to me, it was something of a random serendipitous bodge of a process anyway. Pre-launch, the collective was sitting around in the bar tossing around semi-serious suggestions, while Steve - taking the minutes on a notepad already full of poems-in-process, quotes and mystic diagrams, jots them down at angles that cram them into available white-spaces. There was 'Thud!', there was 'Trouble At Mill' - sniping at the Northern Industrial dramas, and there was 'Ned Ludd' - semi-legendary leader of the Luddites. Somehow these titles tended to merge and overlap as the liquid evening progressed, to somehow emerge in the mutant 'Ludds's Mill' configuration. I was never a Luddite. Whereas I approve the idea of direct action, I'm also fond of the way the technology can ease us into tomorrows…

But stick with the story… it gets better...