Charles Radcliffe [1-2] and Christopher Gray [no. 2]

Heatwave 1-2 [Complete]

Item #4640

London, 1966. 4to, 40, 36 pp, each issue mimeographed from typescript and
drawing. The first issue side-stapled into printed orange card wraps, and the
second issue loose sheets laid into a printed folder, as issued. The first issue is a
second printing, issued the same year as the first.

All issues published of one of the most important and influential, if little known
periodicals of the 1960’s. Radcliffe conceived of Heatwave after editing the sixth
issue of the Rebel Worker, out of Chicago with Franklin & Penelope Rosemont.
The experience made him want to start a journal of his own, and further inspired
by the Situationist publication Watts 1965, the first issue of Heatwave came out
in 1966. This first issue was illustrated with cartoons and line drawings, and in
its anarchic style struck a new and welcome tone in radical journals. This issue
features a report on the Provos in Amsterdam by Radcliffe, an extract from
Paul Garon’s The Expanded Journal of Addiction, describing his struggle with
heroin, and a review of Dave Wallis’ Only Lovers Left Alive by Ben Covington (a
pseudonym of Radcliffe). The centerpiece, however, is an early and important
article entitled “The Seeds of Destruction” by Radcliffe which surveyed youth
cultures, and sections on Teddy Boys, Beats, Ton-Up Kids, Mods, and even
a section on the original Ravers. According to Savage, the article “laid the
foundations for the next 20 years of sub-cultural theory.” (Savage, p. 32).
The second issue was jointly edited with Christopher Gray, and was heavily
influenced by a meeting with Debord and the induction of both editors into the
SI. It includes a translation into English of Attila Kotanyi and Vaneigem’s Unitary
Urbanism, and prints a couple of texts from Jonathan Leake’s Resurgence Youth
Movement.

A third issue was planned, but shelved after both editors abandoned the SI. Rare
complete, and important as all hell.

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