Super Weird Substance brings Alan Moore to Liverpool

Author John Higgs and playwright Daisy Campbell will also be present for the 14 Hour Super Weird Happening

Feature by News Team | 07 Feb 2017

Comics legend Alan Moore will be among the main attractions at the 14 Hour Super Weird Happening in Liverpool this spring. The brainchild of DJ and Super Weird Substance record label founder Greg Wilson, the all-dayer takes its inspiration from the The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, a 1967 event in London which served as a focal point for the growing countercultural movement, and hopes to resurrect the spirit of the fabled 'summer of love'.

Taking place at The Florrie – a recently-renovated Grade II listed building, formerly known as The Florence Insitute, situated in the city's Dingle district – the 14 Hour Super Weird Happening is described as a "gathering of the tribes", with a range of live music, DJs, exhibitions, live art, spoken word, panel discussions and performance planned.

Moore, widely renowned for expanding the possibilities of comics and graphic storytelling with 1980s works such as Watchmen and V For Vendetta, will appear alongside his wife Melinda Gebbie, also an influential comics writer and artist. The pair famously collaborated on the controversial three-volume graphic novel Lost Girls, published in full in 2006.

More authors and bands for Super Weird Substance

John Higgs, author of The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds, will also appear at the festival, while Daisy Campbell will revisit scenes from Cosmic Trigger, her successful play about self-descibed "agnostic mystic" Robert Anton Wilson.

Liverpool's own countercultural history will also go under the microscope, with events focussed on the various contributions of Carl Jung, Mathew Street and the city's 70s punk venue Eric's, plus a look at the city's connections with Black American music hosted by local archivists Next Stop New York and hip-hop promoters No Fakin'.

Bands set to play at the 14 Hour Super Weird Happening include house-flecked guitar popsters The Tea Street Band and the label's own Super Weird Society, featuring Kermit Leveridge (ex- of Black Grape and the Ruthless Rap Assassins), The Reynolds and The Reverend Cleve Freckleton. The evening will climax with a DJ set from Wilson himself. 

The full line-up will be announced later this month, with pre-release tickets now on sale. "There will be no fees paid to any of the participants," say organisers. "All proceeds will go to The Florrie, which is constantly in need of funds, surviving largely through the passion of the good people who run it."


The 14 Hour Super Weird Happening takes place at The Florrie on 1 April 2017, 11am-1am.

Pre-release tickets are on sale for a limited period, priced £10

Read our 2010 interview with Alan Moore on Dodgem Logic, Unearthing, and reinventing Cthulu for the 21st century

http://superweirdsubstance.com