"City Lights Print Out Used Guitars Vol. 2: Black Sun Tabloid" by Skip Henderson, spiral bound (2025), New Orleans, LA.
This is the all-new SECOND volume complied from the incomparable "New Journal of Civilization...Your Pathway to Cosmic Truth by Mail!" This printed work of art is fully the equal of the first hit volume and beyond, with nearly 100 pages more of madness, wisdom and instrument prices that will bring tears to old and young alike, causing much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. It's all true, buckaroos...we were there.
In the pre-internet world of the 1980s and early '90s if you were addicted to hunting old guitars (especially in the NY-NJ area) you were aware of City Lights Music of Elizabeth and later New Brunswick, NJ. The fevered brainchild of maverick, mercurial genius Skip Henderson the "City Lights Print Out" was the shop's mailed-out calling card/stocklist. Far beyond a mere listing of guitars for sale, this was as willfully bizarre and delightfully individual a publication as has ever traveled the US Mail. This once-every-few-months Xeroxed and stapled wonder did list a small part of the shop's (often already sold) inventory of used guitars and myriad parts, but also a range of "Mojo, Religious Icons and Curios" and other items not commonly found elsewhere in the bleak Reagan/Bush-era 1980s. If you were on the mailing list, it was always an event when the Print Out arrived like a wandering prophet's screed in the mailbox, and it was essential to immediately scour it for that special item that would already be gone if you called Skip even an hour later.
Several of us here in Retrofret world were party to the City Lights carnival ride in the 1980s; this volume begins with the tale of Skip, Bob Guida and out own Steve Uhrik's ultimately ill-fated pilgrimage to Graceland. Whether you remember or just want a taste of what the wilder side of guitar obsession was like "back Inna day" Skip's *second* 95-page treasury continues to be a kaleidoscopic cornucopia sure to stagger the mind. A '68 Telecaster for $450? '63 SG Junior $385? Acres of obscure and now completely unobtainable parts all well under $100? Read 'em and weep, but don't forget the pink dice valve stem caps, High John the Conqueror Root Spiritual Guidance bags, original 1950s Cadillac bumpers, Nu-Nile hair pomade, stuffed frogs and rattlesnakes, Elvis prayer shawl and the occasional Human bone. AND that's not ALL folks! Each page is festooned with fevered artwork assembled with clippings from an incredible assortment of obscure random publications now lost to the modern world. Each page is a magical assembly of print and visual collage enough to trip the brain into "Mystic knowledge, Miraculous Inventions and Contact with the Space Brothers". AND NOW, as a special bonus each first edition copy of Volume 2 contains a genuine "I WAS ASKED TO LEAVE GRACELAND" bumper sticker, with the black National Enquirer-style font splashed across a roadsign-yellow background.
WARNING: Some Political Incorrectness and Cheesecake Nudity will be encountered. Available in the NY/NJ home turf area ONLY from us at Retro fret.
Height is 11 in. (27.9 cm.), 8 1/2 in. (21.6 cm.) width. New Condition.
