#philo calhoun

“Without the techno dabbling it still wouldn’t have been a great record, but it would have been ten times better.” - JOHN PLATT re: the DINOSAURS

BUCKETFULL OF BRAINS Issue #18 February 1989 (page 20) JON STOREY, Editor

BUCKETFULL OF BRAINS

The Dinosaurs are the very same dinosaurs who forced Dinosaur to change their name to Dinosaur, Jr in 1987.

PHILO CALHOUN was a pseudonym for JOHN PLATT. According to Ptolemaic Terrascope’s PHIL MCMULLEN when interviewed in Foxy Digitalis by Nuno Robles, “…of course we must never forget the late John Platt – aka Philo Calhoun in Bucketfull of Brains magazine (most of the time; actually I acted as a ghost-writer on a couple of occasions when he was unable to contribute): John’s ‘Comstock Lode’ magazine was just phenomenal. We all looked up to John. Funnily enough I was talking about this just the other evening with Nigel Cross and Colin Hill. The three of us enjoyed a rare “get-together” at a gig in London recently, and I suggested that someone somewhere really ought to be writing a book about the whole scene before it’s too late. We’ve already lost John Platt – who knows who else will be next? People like Pete Frame and John Platt and John Tobler and Nick Ralph and Brian Hogg (whose ‘Hot Wacks’ fanzine I remember fondly, though I never much rated ‘Strange Things’ magazine that he was associated with briefly later on) – plus of course Nigel and Colin themselves – and I suppose me too now, though I never really like to think of myself as being in the same league as those guys; we’ve produced an incredible body of work between us which has largely never been properly catalogued or documented, and even though many of them are almost household names amongst underground rock fans, nobody really knows who they are or what makes them tick. I think that’s such a shame, y’know?”