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Drink, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll: Power pop saviors, the Beat, and their rousing 1980 tour of Europe
07.22.2020
01:48 pm
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Photo: Neil Zlozower

Hey, do you know about the Beat? They’re the great power pop band led by Paul Collins, who was in another great power pop group, the Nerves. I’m particularly fond of the Beat’s 1979 self-titled debut, which is just a fantastic rock ‘n’ roll record, front-to-back. Seriously, every song on it sounds like a hit, though, alas, in the States, at least, none of them were. The Beat were better received in Europe, with the band first touring the continent in the spring of 1980. In an exclusive excerpt from his upcoming autobiography, Paul Collins recounts the Beat’s 1980 European tour—one of drink, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

But first, a little more background.

The ‘80s began on a high note for the Beat, with the group taping an appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in February. But this was followed by a disheartening tour opening for the Jam, in which they weren’t even allowed to meet the band. They also learned that Columbia had no intention of getting behind their music; pushing Billy Joel’s Glass Houses was the label’s priority that year. Some good news came when Columbia’s International Department offered to bring the Beat across the pond for a European jaunt, offering full tour support. Soon, the band were flying to Paris to begin the outing.

FYI: In Europe they were known as “Paul Collins’ Beat,” as there was a UK band also called the Beat. In addition to Collins, the lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist, the members of the Beat were Steve Huff, bassist; Larry Whitman, lead guitarist; and Mike Ruiz, drummer. Their road manager, Kevin Burns (“K.B.”), also comes up in the excerpt.

*****

On the evening of March 29th 1980, we arrived at the Orly Airport in Paris. Our guide, a guy named Andre, hardly spoke English, but he was hysterical, and we had great fun with him. Back at the hotel, despite being very tired, I couldn’t fall asleep.

The next morning, I was really spaced out. I had to get my shit together, but there were no drugs, not even a joint. What would I wear for the first gig? I decided to be cool and downplay it, by not dressing up. A jacket, t-shirt, and jeans would do.

 
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Photo: Catherine Sebastian

After breakfast, we were off to the Pavillon Baltard, a fairly large auditorium that held about 800 kids. We were playing with eight other bands, and immediately, we were all on ‘drug recon,’ looking for anything to get high on. We checked out a couple of ska bands, and I met a photographer, who introduced me to a guy from one of the other bands. Finally, we went to the boy’s room and I smoked my first joint in Paris. Ahh… it was great!

A little later, Larry and I were in a tavern around the corner, listening to French rock ‘n’ roll on the jukebox. We met up with some reps from CBS International, named Suzy and Jon-Jacque. We met two crazy American chicks, Jon-Jacque’s friends, and one of them had a huge block of hash. She told me to keep it! Now we had enough hash for the whole trip, and my voice was getting pretty shot.

It was show time, and Steve and I were having trouble tuning our guitars. We were getting worried, until we realized we were a whole key up! I hoped we wouldn’t get booed off stage, but thank god for rock ‘n’ roll. The kids dug us and we got the first encore of the day. Europe here we come!

 
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Much more, after the jump…

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Posted by Bart Bealmear
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07.22.2020
01:48 pm
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Meet Wendy Erskine: An Exclusive Interview with Your New Favorite Writer
07.20.2020
12:37 pm
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There are too many writers in the world. Too many bad writers. I’ll include myself in that group. No, not false modesty, just how it rolls for the sake of this tale. But you see I have an excuse. I use my bad writing to introduce you to good writing, great writing, writing that will change and inspire you. What purpose is there for bad writing other than to make you yearn for truly great writing?

So, here you go…

Wendy Erskine is a great writer. A true original. A writer whose first collection of short stories Sweet Home contains some of the finest tales ever written. Clever, sassy, nuanced, with a rich seam of dark humor. Erskine’s stories of working class life in East Belfast have been hailed by critics as works of brilliance and her book has been nominated for several awards. Though experience suggests Erskine has worked on these stories and crafted them into things of beauty, they appear so fresh, so fully formed, so organic, that they may have just fallen like ripe fruit straight from the tree.

Go on, take a bite.

Born and raised in Northern Ireland during The Troubles that most dangerous and murderous time in the province’s history, Erskine has produced a wry, wise, funny, and utterly compelling collection of stories. She is the kind of writer that makes you fall back in love with reading. A magician who pulls the Ace of Spades from behind your ear while you’re still wondering how it was removed from your tightly gripped hand in the first place.

Her collection of stories opens with a three-part tale that is compelling and disturbing in equal measure. “To All Their Dues” is centered around a beauty parlor, and the lives of three people: the owner Mo, the local villain Kyle, and his wife Grace. Kyle is a psychopathic character with a pulsing menace few crime novelists have ever imagined or described in such chillingly simple and unforgettable terms. But if that weren’t enough, wait till you meet his wife.

Erskine has a remarkable eye for detail, for character evinced through thought and action, that reminded me of John Updike, Fitzgerald, or the Scottish writer James Kelman.

That long thin scar, running along the inside of your thigh, lady in the grey cashmere, what caused that? Those arms like a box of After Eights, slit slit slit, why you doing that, you with your lovely crooked smile, why you doing that? The woman with the bruises round her neck, her hand fluttering to conceal them. Jeez missus, is your fella strangling you? Bt you don’t ask, why would you?

While the second tale “Inakeen” works, its ending felt slightly contrived in a way that J. G. Ballard sometimes forced his stories to fit a purpose. Even so, it’s a small quibble but is another story that sticks long after reading. “Observation” about two teenage girls and an older man is a powerful work about what’s left unsaid between knowing and action. “Locksmiths” is about the troubled relationship between a daughter and her mother just released from jail. “Last Supper” deals with a manager covering for two employees having sex in a diner’s restroom. “Arab States: Mind and Narrative” and the devastating “Sweet Home” (parts of which I had to stop reading because it hit me so hard) show a writer who is in full control of their talent and knows exactly what she wants to say and how best to say it.

But how to interview such a writer? By email of course. But let’s not get too serious, or ahead of ourselves. Let’s start our interview with Erskine as if this was for one of those teen-pop magazines like Smash Hits:

Writer of the Week: Wendy Erskine

Starsign:  Taurus.

Favourite color: Duck egg blue.

First record bought:  “Ma Baker” by Boney M.

Favourite food: Green papaya salad, really hot.

First gig: Depeche Mode, the Ulster Hall, 1983.

Favourite band: Velvet Underground.

Favourite singer: Small Faces era Steve Marriott

Favourite artist:  Maurice van Tellingen

If you were Prime Minister/President what would be your first law: No one can earn100 times more than someone else.
 
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A full interview with Wendy Erskine, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.20.2020
12:37 pm
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The f*cked up Fumetti of Tanino Liberatore and his friendship with Frank Zappa
05.26.2020
04:23 pm
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The cover of Frank Zappa’s 1983 album, ‘The Man From Utopia’ featuring the artwork of Tanino Liberatore.
 
Tanino Liberatore, (born Gaetano Liberatore) may be best known to music fans for his association with Frank Zappa. The two became friendly after Liberatore created a cyborg version of Frank for the futuristic cover of Zappa’s album, The Man From Utopia (1983). Liberatore named his illustration of Zappa, Frank Xerox—a hat-tip to his fiendish Frankenstein comic character RanXerox, a revered reprobate and the subject of a long series of Italian comic strips, comics and graphic novels dating back to 1978 created by Liberatore and Stefano Tamburini. Here’s Liberatore from a 2012 interview on meeting Zappa in Italy while he was in town doing shows in Naples and Rome in 1982:

“I was at the Naples and Rome concerts where nothing special happened. After the Naples concert, we went dining together to discuss the cover. In the beginning, it should have been a six pages comic strip, but the project was later reduced. Since I don’t like covers with a lot of details or messages, and I prefer a strong drawing to leave a powerful impact, I proposed to draw the front cover according to my approach, leaving to him any decision concerning the back cover. Frank accepted. So in the back, I drew the promoters who worry only about sniffing cocaine, The Pope, the gal who let Zappa know about RanXerox.”

The “gal” Liberatore is referring to was a journalist for the Italian magazine Frigidaire, early publishers and supporters of RanXerox. Her illustrated image even appears in the apocalyptic crowd scene on the back cover of The Man From Utopia, where she is depicted topless, thrusting a copy of Frigidaire above her head. The journalist, only identified by her first name Valentina, played a crucial role in Zappa’s awareness of Libertore, who went into detail about his first encounter with Zappa leading to the infamous album cover:

“And he just saw RanXerox, at least that’s what they told me, he threw out the girl and took what was his Italian handyman, who was from Rome, Bassoli (Italian rock journalist Massimo Bassoli, the editor of Tutti Frutti magazine and friend of Zappa’s), and he told to track me down because he wanted to talk to me because he liked the characters. Then Bassoli found us, it was me and Stefano (Tamburini ), at the Excelsior in via Veneto, we went to his room, where there was his bodyguard, a huge black man, and a few people. And he came out: ‘Hey, Liberatore! After Michelangelo, you are the greatest Italian artist!’ And he believed it, he didn’t say it to piss me, on the contrary. And this was the first impact. Frank Zappa was one of my myths, also because the myths that I had were more musicians than designers, apart from Michelangelo and Caravaggio. Finding myself there in the presence of his holiness, even if records had come out at the time that I didn’t like so much.”

 

A photo of Tanino Liberatore (left), Stefano Tamburini (right), watching Frank Zappa (center) flip through the copy of Frigidaire featuring RanXerox. Image source.
 
As usual, Zappa was far ahead of the cool curve, and it would be about five years before Ranx flipped the lids of adult-oriented comic fans in the U.S. when he showed up in the July 1983 edition of Heavy Metal. As a nearly life-long comic/graphic novel fan, I first became aware of Liberatore and Ranx by way of Spanish comic MAXX, when Ranx appeared on the cover of the January 1986 issue. Initially, Liberatore’s artistic interest was firmly rooted in architecture before he decided to take up illustration for print advertising in 1975. He would meet Tamburini a few years later, and “RanXerox,” the first iteration of RanXerox, would violently spring to life.

Sadly, Tamburini, a hugely respected graphic artist in his own right, would pass away entirely too young, just months before his 31st birthday in 1986. Liberatore would abandon RanXerox and comics for years until he revived his mechanical antihero in the 90s as a character in books by Jean-Luc Fromental and Alain Chabat. His work has also been featured in Hustler, Métal Hurlant, and thankfully, several books, including La Donne (2012), and the soon-to-be-released Ranx: The Complete Collection due in June of 2020, containing his vicious, unsettling, and (at times) confusing illustrations. After the initial shock of seeing Liberatore’s work for the first time 34 years ago (at Newbury Comics in Harvard Square), the impact of his wild style has not diminished. And, if you are not familiar with his work, it will likely have the same effect on your eyeballs as well. That said, with a few exceptions, many of the images in this post are NSFW.
 
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The back cover of ‘The Man From Utopia.’
 

A sketch by Liberatore for the back cover of ‘The Man From Utopia.’ More can be seen here.
 

A sketch of Zappa by Liberatore.
 

Another sketch of Zappa by Liberatore.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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05.26.2020
04:23 pm
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If you like PKD, Burroughs, or Vonnegut then you should be reading Séb Doubinsky
05.21.2020
08:25 am
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At the end of March, the writer Séb Doubinsky should have been traveling across America giving readings from his latest novel The Invisible. Picture him in a busy, crammed bookshop wearing a plaid shirt, leather jacket with steel-rimmed glasses and neatly-trimmed beard. He sits at a table with a pile of books to his left, a glass of water to his right, the audience in front. Some sit in chairs, some stand around the edges with arms folded, heads tilted, all listening to Doubinsky’s strong, clear voice. There are questions then a long-line of bright-eyed readers waiting to shake his hand, take pictures, and get their copies signed.

In another reality this all happened. Turn the page, there’s someone at the back, leaning against shelves laden with bright, clean paperbacks asking:

What is your earliest memory?

Sébastien Doubinsky: My earliest memory is actually a patchwork of scenes from my childhood in America, between 1966 and 1968. I can see myself playing with my favorite toys, which were rubber Mattel astronauts, watching black-and-white Spiderman cartoons sitting upside down on the sofa, riding in my father’s dark blue huge station-wagon, going to Space Needle’s fun park and having a blast… Very vivid memories, in color, which have certainly influenced the very way I write, like Pop Art—or rather Anti-Pop Art, as Rosenquist called it—and Punk well, much later.

But a virus stopped all this. Doubinsky is in lockdown at his home in Denmark. If anyone could have seen such a deadly pandemic coming then it was him. He had already written about a similar outbreak in Absinth—the story of the Apocalypse with ancient Gods attempting a new order, the publishing of a new gospel according to Jesus (“Burn all churches”), and an outbreak of Ebola that claims the lives of the President and the Vice-President. There’s hope for us yet! Doubinsky saw it coming.

What the Corona crisis taught us: all useful people are underpaid and all useless people are overpaid and decide who will live or die.

Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider that gave him, in some unfathomable way, arachnid powers of strength and agility to jump great heights, climb walls, and have a tingling spider sense that alerted him to danger. At some point, most kids want to be Peter Parker, but then they give up on their imagination and subscribe to another’s imposed order.

August 1963, copies of The Amazing Spider-Man #3 were in bookshop carousels when Sébastien Doubinsky was born at a Parisian cinema. Spidey was fighting a new enemy the “grotesque Dr. Octopus.” Doubinsky’s parents had been watching a Hollywood western. They never saw the end of it. Celebrating the birth of a son was more important. Arriving at a hospital, Mother and child were doing fine. Father then found some work in America. Doubinsky spent his early years growing-up in the States watching TV and marveling at the unchanging blue sky. What’s your earliest memory? “I already answered that.”

Back in Paris, Doubinsky discovered a copy of William S. Burroughs’ The Ticket That Exploded while visiting his Aunt’s apartment on the Avenue René Coty. It was a weird looking book with a weird sounding title. Doubinsky sat down and read it. He was blown away. He might not have understood it but he knew he loved it. He had discovered his superpowers.

When did you first think seriously about becoming a writer and why?

SD: It’s rather a difficult question to answer, as there were many stages in this decision—at least until it became a rationally formulated one. I come from a very intellectual background, culturally mixed (Jewish and Catholic, but both my parents were leftists and radical atheists) and extremely open to other cultures. What’s more, both sides of my family had been very active in the French Résistance during World War Two, and I therefore inherited quite a strong human-rights ethic. All this to say that literature was not a passive element of my upbringing, but was seen as a powerful object that could serve the best or the worst causes, and that it was important.

Growing up I loved poetry, and for a long time wanted to be a poet (but also a painter, until I discovered I was colorblind…) but little by little, prose seeped in and took more and more space. I began to write some short stories in my late teenage years, but still not really considering dedicating myself seriously. The tragedy that sealed my writer’s fate was the suicide of my beloved cousin Bruno, then, like me, 20 years old. He had introduced me to punk and New Wave—especially The Cure, Bauhaus and all the darker stuff—and in his last note, he told me I should carry on writing “my great stuff.” That’s when the weight of words and the responsibility attached to writing hit me like a runaway train. That’s the day I really became, in my eyes, a “writer.”
 
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More from Sébastien Doubinsky, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.21.2020
08:25 am
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It’s After the End of the World: The Afrofuturist Dystopia of Gerald Jenkins
05.19.2020
07:52 pm
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Afrofuturism—the term was coined by Mark Dery in a 1993 essay titled “Black to the Future” where he mused about Black science-fiction and art—is a genre agnostic aesthetic philosophy at the intersection of the African diaspora, technology, sci-fi, fashion and what comes next. Whatever that will be. The great Sun Ra is the spiritual godfather of Afrofuturism, his infinite worldview as well as his intergalactic person are the very personification of what the word stakes out. George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic is very Afrofuturist. Rammellzee is very Afrofuturist. So are Wu Tang Clan, MF DOOM, Grace Jones, Janelle Monáe, Lee “Scratch” Perry, FKA twigs, Detroit techno music and Jimi Hendrix. Author Samuel R. Delany is certainly an Afrofuturist and so was Octavia Butler. The Black Panther movie was hella Afrofuturist. I think you must get the gist of it by now.

Visionary photographer Gerald Jenkins’ exquisite new coffee table book, It’s After the End of the World is a fantastic exploration of Afrofuturism, in image, and in text provided for Jenkins’ project by Darius James, Jake-ann Jones, Carl Martin, Little Annie, Michael Gonzales and Norman Douglas. It’s one of the most exciting and impressive things I’ve seen in ages, a truly unique, very personal and vibrant statement. Aside from the quality of the work, it’s an exquisite publication, befitting what is inside its covers, that will look fantastic sitting in your living room. The book is very much an objet d’art itself, 344 glossy pages bound in a sturdy green hardback cover with a black and gold book band. I could say more, but the images, and the artist, can speak for themselves.

Jenkins describes It’s After the End of the World as:

“... a picture novel study of the human spirit in the fantastic and magical and the human soul in the metaphorical and physical”

I asked Gerald Jenkins a few questions via email.

Dangerous Minds: What’s your background?

Gerald Jenkins: In 1985 I was a nightclub DJ and attending a film and TV course in Australia. The Residents toured their 13th Anniversary show and I took some pictures which made me change direction and pursue photography. From there I became a freelance photographic assistant and started my own practice in 1990, instigating two projects. One being musicians’ portraits backstage and the other on Australian indigenous cultures. The indigenous project was a harrowing experience which alienated me from many aspects of Australian society. I exiled to Madrid in Spain in 1999 but soon realized it could only be a temporary solution. In 2001 I moved to London and concentrated solely on my portraiture of musicians backstage.

What inspired It’s After the End of the World?

Gerald Jenkins: I first met the Sun Ra Arkestra in 2003 and began discussing theories on indigenous practice with several members. Theories of time and space which I decided to explore further. Researching Sun Ra and his philosophies was the catalyst and I have been working with the Arkestra themselves in parallel to this completed book since 2009.

Was the work in the book done specifically for this project?

Gerald Jenkins: Yes. I was working in isolation. Aside from about ten pictures in the book I conceived the images in solo.

How did you go about selecting the writers you collaborated with? They’re all such unique—and very specific—voices.

Gerald Jenkins: Initially I only had poems and quotes by Sun Ra, and I was in discussion with KainThePoet to include handwritten lyrics to his piece “Black Satin Amazon Fire Engine Cry Baby” from the album The Blue Guerrilla. My publisher Art Yard suggested I contact Darius James, which I duly did and from there Darius and I devised the structure to include commissioned prose for all the individual chapters. Darius was initially in direct contact with the various writers instructing them in the chosen themes, and I had created layouts of the individual chapters that the writers were given in order to respond to. The written texts are crucial to the work and have been immeasurable in terms of transforming the message. It was easily the greatest enjoyment, personally, to have these brilliant texts accompany my pictures and transform the perception of content.

It feels like the vision that you explore in the book was prescient. How does it feel looking out your window and suddenly it IS after the end of the world?

Gerald Jenkins: It’s a perplexing thought but I’m going to quote Sun Ra’s mentor Alton Abraham on this.

It is the world we currently live in that is a myth.

Alton states “We had studied the prophecy of the pyramids, the earth stopped back in the thirties, ‘round 1933 I think. After the year 2000: ‘It’s After the End of the World don’t you know that yet?’ This would explain why the spirit of the people is in disarray, because the leaders haven’t taught them properly. They’re teaching from tradition.”

You can order It’s After the End of the World directly from the artist here.



“Ancient Black”


“Don’t You Want to Know The Greater Mysteries of the Universe?”


“Jupiter Way, with Jodie Turner Smith”


“Misfortune’s Wealth”

More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.19.2020
07:52 pm
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Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy: Fifty years ago The Cockettes turned drag upside down
05.11.2020
12:06 pm
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A photo taken by Clay Geerdes of author and Cockette Fayette Hauser wearing a homemade grass skirt ensemble.

The catastrophic effect of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has hit anyone working in the gig economy incredibly hard. Book tours over the years have become big business for authors and independent bookstores hosting author events in support of newly released literature. Many authors, set to embark on Spring/Summer book tours, have had to scrap their plans, with some publishers even holding back on releasing their books. Thankfully, this was not the path chosen by drag trailblazer Fayette Hauser, she of the pioneering gender-bending performance troupe The Cockettes. It is my great privilege to be able to share a bit about her glittery, LSD-drenched book, The Cockettes: Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy—a magnificent 352-page volume detailing the three-years the Cockettes conquered San Francisco and turned the drag community on its magnificently wigged head.

As Hauser recounts in the book, she was “rendered speechless” by a hit of strong acid at a party and soon found herself sitting on the floor only able to sit upright with help from the wall behind her. During this voyage, Hauser became acutely aware of the individuality of the people surrounding her to the point where she was not able to recognize their gender or her own. The year was 1968, and the Summer of Love had led masses of people to detach themselves from modern conformity, liberating their ability to express themselves freely. Eventually, The Cockettes would pave the way for others, whether gay, straight, bisexual, or pansexual, with their provocative performances and their communal way of life by living by the term “Gender Fuck.” And if you’re wondering what exactly is “Gender Fuck,” it made sense to go directly to the source, Hauser herself, to help define this very direct description of a person not identifying as exclusively male or female:

“The term Gender Fuck emerged as many of our descriptive phrases did, in an Acid flash! This term, gender fuck, became a way of describing our look, which was highly personalized, very conceptual, and without gender boundaries. We wanted to mystify the public so that the onlooker would declare, ‘What Is that? Is that a boy or a girl?’ We wanted to open people’s minds to the terrain between the tired gender binary models, which were much too mentally binding and boring as well. We unleashed that open space in between. We explored the fluid nature of the Self, which led to the term Gender Fluid. I think we succeeded in opening that Pandora’s Box of multi-dimensional, organic self-expression through body decor.”

In 1968, after graduating with a BFA in painting from Boston University, Hauser, a New Jersey native, moved out to San Francisco. Soon she would form a collective with like-minded, free-spirited people, and the Cockettes would officially begin their reign in 1969—specifically on the stage of the Palace Theater in North Beach on New Year’s Eve. The ever-growing troupe would first communally inhabit a grand Victorian-style home on 2788 Bush Street and then, after a fire rendered the home uninhabitable, a building on Haight—one of San Francisco’s most notorious streets. There was also a home known as The Chateau on 1965 Oak Street, where members of The Cockettes spent their time devising their next performance, creating costumes and personas, and tripping on LSD. The Cockettes took so much acid that they would often become non-verbal. This would lead to other forms of communication by way of personal adornment using makeup, clothing, and anything else that would convey the silent message emanating by the troupes’ diverse members, including 22-year-old Los Angeles native Sylvester James Jr., soon to become R&B disco queen Sylvester. Before his short stint with The Cockettes, Sylvester was a part of a group called The Disquotays—a performance collective comprised of black crossdressers and transgender women.
 

Sylvester during his short time with The Cockettes. Photo by Clay Geerdes. Unless otherwise noted, all photos provided to Dangerous Minds are for exclusive use.
 
The Cockettes’ performances were the be-there affair for all the counterculture chicks, dicks, and everyone in between. When director John Waters touched down in San Francisco to show off his 1969 film Mondo Trasho, the screening landed the director in jail for conspiracy to commit indecent exposure. The film made its debut at the Palace Theater where The Cockettes performed their knock-out drag shows on the regular. At the time, Waters was not aware of The Cockettes, but that would quickly change for the director as Divine would end up performing with the Cockettes as “Lady Divine”—one of the first times would be in the first annual Miss de Meanor Beauty Pageant at the Palace, where Divine played the pageant host, Miss de Meanor. In addition to confessing to the Tate/LaBianca murders, Divine would lead the other participants in the show (Miss Conception, Miss Shapen, Miss Used, and Miss Carriage) in a tournament to the death, where the queens had to fight with their fists for the coveted crown.

Divine would go on to win the ‘The Miss de Meanor Beauty Pageant’ in 1971. The following year, during The Cockettes’ last official show (another ‘Miss de Meanor Beauty Pageant’) at the House of Good, John Waters wrote a speech for her to read onstage, described by Cockette Scrumbly as “brilliant”. As the idea of Divine reading a speech written by John Waters is everything, I asked the director if he was willing to share any memory he had of this drag-tastic moment, and he very kindly responded with the following:

“To be honest, I’m not sure a written copy of that speech even exists in my film archive at Wesleyan Archive, and if it did, it would be word-slash-words that only I could understand. I do remember it was punk-ish (before the word) in a hippy venue that was bizarrely the Peoples Temple church, that was rented for the occasion after Jim Jones and gang had moved out. Divine ranted about following hippies home, eating sugar and killing their pets, or some such lunacy. I do still have the poster hanging in my SF apartment. I’m glad Scrumbly remembered it because I always did too. Quite a night in San Francisco.”

 

A flier advertising The Cockettes’ last show featuring Lady Divine.
 
The Cockettes intermingled with, as you might imagine, lots of famous people who were intrigued by the troupes’ anything-goes take on drag and life. Author Truman Capote called the Cockettes shows “the only true theater.” Alice Cooper, who once jumped out of a cake surrounded by The Cockettes for a PR stunt dubbed “The Coming Out Party for Miss Alice Cooper,” was a frequent guest at the Haight-Ashbury house. And then there was Iggy Pop. When Iggy and The Stooges were recording Fun House in 1970, the then 23-year-old Iggy would start each studio session by dropping a tab of acid (as noted in the book Open Up and Bleed). The band decided to take a break and head to San Francisco for a weekend, playing a couple of shows at the Fillmore with Alice Cooper and Flamin’ Groovies. The first show on May 15th was attended by most of The Cockettes, who bore witness to Iggy on stage clad in the tightest jeans possible and long silver lamé gloves. Iggy was already a sweetheart of the gay community, and as Cockette Rumi Missabu recalls, Iggy distinctly gave them the impression he was “playing just for them.” Following the show, Iggy would become a regular guest of The Cockettes.

In the 2002 film, The Cockettes, Cockette Sweet Pam confessed that the collective “almost brushed their teeth with LSD,” to which Fayette would add, “contributed to the emphasis of flashy costumes.” Although the use of acid was the norm for the Cockettes, their art, sexual autonomy, and fierce expressions of individuality all contributed to the creation of High Drag. And, thankfully, the world would never be the same.

 

Cockette Wally in full regalia. Photo by Clay Geerdes.
 

Cockette John Rothermel Photo by Clay Geerdes.
 

Cockettes’ Dusty Dawn and Wally in pearls. Photo by Clay Geerdes.
 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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05.11.2020
12:06 pm
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That Time They Opened Lord Byron’s Coffin and Found He had a Humongous Schlong
02.20.2020
08:25 am
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At two o’clock on June 15th, 1938, a truck pulled-up outside the church hall at St. Mary Magdalene, Hucknall Torkard, England. The vehicle was packed with planks of wood, picks, shovels, crowbars and other assorted tools. The Reverend Canon Thomas Gerrard Barber watched from a side window as a small group of workmen unloaded the vehicle. The driver leaned against the truck smoking a cigarette. His questions to the men removing the tools went unanswered. Barber had ensured all those involved in his plans were pledged to secrecy. No one had thought it possible, but somehow Barber had managed it. This was the day the reverend would oversee the opening of Lord Byron’s coffin situated in a vault beneath the church. Once the men were finished, the driver stubbed his cigarette, returned to his cab, and drove back to the depot in Nottingham.

Over the next two hours, “the Antiquary, the Surveyor, and the Doctor arrived” followed by “the Mason.” It was all rather like the appearance of suspects in a game of Clue. Their arrival was staggered so as not to attract any unwanted attention. Barber was concerned that if the public knew of his intentions there would be an outcry, or at worst a queue around the church longer than the one for his Sunday service.

Near four o’clock, the “workmen” returned. Interesting to note that Barber in his book on the events of this day, Byron and Where He is Buried, used the lower case to name these men rather the capitalization preferred for The Architect, the Mason, and those other professionals. Even in text the working class must be shown their place. Inside the church Barber discussed with the Architect and the Mason the best way to gain access to Byron’s family crypt.

An old print of the interior of the Church shows two large flagstones covering the entrance to the Vault. One of these stones can be seen at the foot of the Chancel steps. It is six feet long, two feet four inches wide, and six inches thick. It was conjectured that the other large stone was covered by the Chancel steps, and that it would be necessary first of all to remove the steps on the south side of the Chancel in order to obtain an entrance to the Vault. Before the work started it was impossible to obtain any information whatever as to the size of the Vault, and to its actual position relatively to the Chancel floor.

Barber was a strange man, an odd mix of contrary passions.. He was as the Fortean Times noted, “a passionate admirer of Byron and a determined controversialist: a dangerous combination, it transpired, in a man placed in charge of the church where the poet had been buried.” For whatever reason, Barber believed he had some connection with the great poet. He never quite made this connection clear but alluded to it like Madame Arcati waffling on about her “vibrations” claiming he had “a personal appointment with Byron.” He was proud the poet had been buried at his church but was deeply concerned that Byron’s body might not actually reside there.
 
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Between 1887 and 1888, there had been restoration work at St. Mary Magdalene “to allow for the addition of transepts.” This meant digging into the foundation. Though promises were made (by the architects and builders) that there would be no damage or alterations to Lord Byron’s vault, Barber feared that this was exactly what had happened. This thought dripped, dripped, dripped, and made Barber anxious about the whereabouts of the dead poet.

Early in 1938, he confided his fears to the church warden A. E. Houldsworth. Barber expressed his intention to examine the Byron vault and “clear up all doubts as to the Poet’s burial place and compile a record of the contents of the vault.”

He wrote to his local Member of Parliament requesting permission from the Home Office to open the crypt. He also wrote to the surviving Lord Byron, who was then Vicar of Thrumpton, asking for his permission to enter the family vault. The vicar gave his agreement and “expressed his fervent hope that great family treasure would be discovered with his ancestors and returned to him.”
 
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At four o’clock, the doors to the church were locked. Inside, around forty (where the fuck did they come from?) invited guests (er…okay….) waited expectantly for the opening of Byron’s vault (what else where they expecting…vespers?). According to notes written by Houldsworth, among those in attendance was one name that Bart Simpson would surely appreciate:

Rev. Canon Barber & his wife
Mr Seymour Cocks MP [lol]
N. M. Lane, diocesan surveyor
Mr Holland Walker
Capt & Mrs McCraith
Dr Llewellyn
Mr & Mrs G. L. Willis (vicar’s warden)
Mr & Mrs c. G. Campbell banker
Mr Claude Bullock, photographer
Mr Geoffrey Johnstone
Mr Jim Bettridge (church fireman)

Of the rest in attendance, Houldsworth hadn’t a Scooby, other than he was surprised that so many had been invited by the good Reverend. As the workmen opened the vault, the guests discussed curtains, mortgages, flower-arranging, and the possibility of war.

At six-thirty, the masons finally removed the slab. A breath of cool, dank air rose into the warm church. Doctor Llewellyn lowered a miner’s safety lamp into the opening to test the air. It was fine. Barber then became (as he described it) “the first to make the descent” into the vault.

His first impression was “one of disappointment.”

It was totally different from what I had imagined. I had seen in my imagination a large sepulchral chamber with shelves inserted in the walls and arranged above one another, and on each shelf a coffin. To find myself in a Vault of the smallest dimensions, and coffins at my feet stacked one upon another with no apparent attempt at arrangement, giving the impression that they had almost been thrown into position, was at first an outrage to my sense of reverence and decency. I descended the steps with very mixed feelings. I could not bring myself to believe that this was the Vault as it had been originally built, nor yet could I could I allow myself to think that the coffins were in their original positions. Had the size of the Vault been reduced and the coffins moved at the time of the 1887-1888 restoration, to allow for the building of the two foot wall on the north of the Vault as an additional support for the Chancel floor?

Pondering these questions, Barber returned to the church. He then invited his guests to retire to the Church House for some tea and refreshments while he considered what to do next. The three workmen were left behind.
 
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With their appetites sated, the Reverend and his guests returned to the church and the freshly opened vault.

From a distant view the two coffins appeared to be in excellent condition. They were each surmounted by a coronet… The coronet on the centre coffin bore six orbs on long stems, but the other coronet had apparently been robbed of the silver orbs which had originally been fixed on short stems close to the rim.

The coffins were covered with purple velvet, now much faded, and some of the handles removed. A closer examination revealed the centre coffin to be that of Byron’s daughter Augusta Ada, Lady Lovelace.

At the foot of the staircase, resting on a child’s lead coffin was a casket which, according to the inscription on the wooden lid and on the casket inside, contained the heart and brains of Lord Noel Byron. The vault also contained six other lead shells all in a considerable state of dissolution–the bottom coffins in the tiers being crushed almost flat by the immense weight above them.

Then Barber noticed that “there were evident signs that the Vault had been disturbed, and the poet’s coffin opened.” He called upon Mr. Claude Bullock to take photographs of the coffin. With the knowledge that someone had opened Byron’s coffin, Barber began to worry about what lay inside.

Someone had deliberately opened the coffin. A horrible fear came over me that souvenirs might have been taken from within the coffin. The idea was revolting, but I could not dismiss it. Had the body itself been removed? Horrible thought!

Eventually after much dithering, Barber opened the casket to find another coffin inside.

Dare I look within? Yes, the world should know the truth—that the body of the great poet was there—or that the coffin was empty. Reverently, very reverently, I raised the lid, and before my eyes there lay the embalmed body of Byron in as perfect a condition as when it was placed in the coffin one hundred and fourteen years ago. His features and hair easily recognisable from the portraits with which I was so familiar. The serene, almost happy expression on his face made a profound impression on me. The feet and ankles were uncovered., and I was able to establish the fact that his lameness had been that of his right foot. But enough—I gently lowered the lid of the coffin—and as I did so, breathed a prayer for the peace of his soul.

 
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His fears were quashed, Barber was happy with what he had done. Basically dug up a grave for reasons of personal vanity. The Reverend Barber does come across as a bit of a pompous git. He was also disingenuous as the one thing he failed to mention about Byron’s corpse was the very attribute that shocked some and titillated others.

Barber was correct someone had already opened Byron’s coffin. But this did not happen during the church’s restoration in 1887-88 but less than an hour prior to his examination of Byron’s corpse. Houldsworth and his hired workmen had entered the crypt while Barber and his pals had tea.

Houldsworth went down into the crypt where he saw that Byron’s coffin was missing its nameplate, brass ornaments, and velvet covering. Though it looked solid it was soft and spongy to the touch. He called upon two workmen (Johnstone and Bettridge) to help raise the lid. Inside was a lead shell. When this was removed, another wooden coffin was visible inside.

After raising this we were able to see Lord Byron’s body which was in an excellent state of preservation. No decomposition had taken place and the head, torso and limbs were quite solid. The only parts skeletonised were the forearms, hands, lower shins, ankles and feet, though his right foot was not seen in the coffin. The hair on his head, body and limbs was intact, though grey. His sexual organ shewed quite abnormal development. There was a hole in his breast and at the back of his head, where his heart and brains had been removed. These are placed in a large urn near the coffin. The manufacture, ornaments and furnishings of the urn is identical with that of the coffin. The sculptured medallion on the church chancel wall is an excellent representation of Lord Byron as he still appeared in 1938.

There was a rumor long shared that Byron lay in his coffin with a humongous erection. This, of course, is just a myth. As Houldsworth later told journalist Byron Rogers of the Sheffield Star newspaper the idea came to the three workmen to open the poet’s coffin when Barber and co. had disappeared for tea:

“We didn’t take too kindly to that,” said Arnold Houldsworth. “I mean, we’d done the work. And Jim Bettridge suddenly says, ‘Let’s have a look on him.’ ‘You can’t do that,’ I says. ‘Just you watch me,’ says Jim. He put his spade in, there was a layer of wood, then one of lead, and I think another one of wood. And there he was, old Byron.”
“Good God, what did he look like?” I said.
“Just like in the portraits. He was bone from the elbows to his hands and from the knees down, but the rest was perfect. Good-looking man putting on a bit of weight, he’d gone bald. He was quite naked, you know,” and then he stopped, listening for something that must have been a clatter of china in the kitchen, where his wife was making tea for us, for he went on very quickly,  “Look, I’ve been in the Army, I’ve been in bathhouses, I’ve seen men. But I never saw nothing like him.” He stopped again, and nodding his head, meaningfully, as novelists say, began to tap a spot just above his knee. “He was built like a pony.”
“How many of you take sugar?” said Mrs Houldsworth, coming with the tea.

Whether any of the Reverend Barber’s guests saw Lord Byron’s corpse in the flesh (so to speak) and what they made of it, has never been recorded, other than some of the women felt faint when leaving the crypt, but there may have a light of admiration dancing in their eyes. Barber later returned to the vault on his own at midnight to keep his “personal appointment with Byron” and to most likely to ogle at the size of the great poet’s knob.

Lord Byron—poet, adventurer, rebel, adulterer, and a man hung like a horse.
 
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H/T Flashbak and Fortean Times.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.20.2020
08:25 am
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Satan is back! With boobs, pubes and rock and roll
12.26.2019
09:27 am
Topics:
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In the world of adult magazines, the devil girl has always been one of the standby icons. And not just there, but in comic books, film, art, tattooing and just about anywhere else you might look. Almost always a positive thing and a fantasy bigger than all the Bettie Pages, Marilyn Monroes and Jayne Mansfields combined. By the 1950s fantasy and reality started having blurred lines. Oh it always existed, but in the late 1940s when John Willie created the first full on fetish magazine, Bizarre, the devil girl was made flesh. This magazine influenced Irving Klaw and all the publishers of the now beloved “vintage smut” (a major hashtag on Instagram and other hashtaggy photo display sites). Magazines like Exotique, the art of Eric Stanton, Gene Bilbrew (Eneg), and others became a long running mainstay. Many of these magazines existed to display personal ads for things, even now, that many people just couldn’t come out and say they were into. Even today, the bizarre content of these 50, 60 and 70-year-old magazines is truly BIZARRE! These are the most collected adult magazines the world over.
 
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When the 60s rolled around and free love, paganism, communal living, more open nudism and—furthest from center, Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan—split the population in two as far as people interested in these activities. In pre X-rated adult films, adult magazines were approaching porno rapidly. There were the people that actually lived this stuff and even more people who wanted to know about it, but couldn’t possibly do it! This audience created the massive business we are about to discuss.

The slightly older suburban set (not the wife swappers and swingers, but the lonely uptight fellas) really wanted a glimpse into this other world, and there became the essence of adult and underground film and publications, especially the kind you could secretly take home. This audience is what is known in the adult film world as “the raincoat crowd”—horny guys who went alone to the theaters in Times Square and other places like it around the country. Many of these films are so insane they must be seen to be believed and most of them, literally thousands of them, can be bought or downloaded from Something Weird Video.

There was a great interest in the Church of Satan as they used nudity and sex magick and weren’t just some stuffy new religion, but seemed like the ultimate party! LaVey and his church got so much magazine play (they’re in movies as well including a documentary on them, Satanis The Devil’s Mass, just reissued on Blu-ray). This subject proved so popular that a cottage industry of Satanic porn magazines, some lighthearted, some very dark popped up. As innocence ended with the advent of mass-produced, readily available porn, everything rushed out the door as fast as it could be printed. These particular magazines are just about the rarest, most collectible and most expensive porn mags on the collectors market.
 
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I had heard about an underground cult of collectors putting out a compendium of these almost secret magazines and set out my feelers to find and talk to them. When I found them I had to agree to their terms and be put in a car, blindfolded, and driven to an amazing space where I sat with a man in a leather mask. Offered a drink, I steadfastly refused. Here’s the interview…
 
So…do you represent some newfangled vintage smut collecting anonymous devil cult?

Vintage smut collecting is a solitary path. There is no unity or group activities that we promote. While we often encourage collectors to communicate with others regarding the titles they are actively hunting since this sort of networking may aid the buyer in searches, our sense of community does not proceed much further than communication among peers to meet collecting milestones. Sharing this material with others, is often beneficial for amorous rituals. So, it is advisable to view with one or more partners in a sensual setting to facilitate sexual rites. Publishing this book allows us to share our unholy sacrament with the chosen few. So, these interested individuals can finally obtain the hidden knowledge and elusive ritual tools that will allow them to explore this realm for themselves.

I hear just a lucky few get the wild evil record made in conjunction with this book. What does one have to do to get it and what’s on it?

To spice up this already mega tasty publication we wanted to include one of our favorite bands; the mysterious slime hard rock psycho band Ball. In the past Ball has really managed to summon the crazy satanic and murky occult vibe of these mags, in their song and video “Satanas” for example. So, we bribed them with smut and asked if they to record a new song that could be featured on an exclusive flexi-disc single for a few select copies of the book and they came up with the crazed “Horny Highlights from Debauched”. The ways to actually procure a copy are most mysterious but probably includes a solemn request directly to Ball.

How long did it take to amass this incredible collection & what else do you collect? Are there more volumes in store?

The collection has been growing in size for roughly seven years. Satanic Mojo Comix and Jason Atomic was the catalyst that first awakened our interest in these devilish artifacts. Collecting vintage magazines currently consumes most of our waking hours. All other pursuits have been obliterated to focus on “adult slicks.” The records, jukeboxes, Italian horror fumetti, and original art acquisitions are all currently sidelined and paused. Magazines reign supreme in the top collecting spot, draining bank accounts and sending us scrambling like rabid addicts to our local post office whenever a delivery is missed. There are more volumes currently in the works, and we are more than excited to continue sharing the wealth with open minded adults over the age of 18, seeking to learn more about vintage smut. There have been numerous recent 60s and 70s magazine discoveries by our acquisition team that will blow minds and leave the reader breathless and begging for more. At this precise moment we look forward to continuing and enhancing our current exploration of witchery and devilry in the next volume, being assembled in our labs.

 
Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Howie Pyro
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12.26.2019
09:27 am
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Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ was his sly way of calling attention to the poor of Victorian England
12.24.2019
03:22 pm
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So, this is Christmas and…no matter what you’ve done, may I wish you all the very best Compliments of the Season, Happy Holidays and a very Merry Christmas.

Ah, Christmas. This magical pagan-Christian festival which owes as much to the Victorians and Charles Dickens for the way it is celebrated as it does to good ole Jesus and a bunch of Druids. In many respects it’s fair to say, Dickens was the man who revitalized (or some might say reinvented) Christmas with his classic tale A Christmas Carol. Dickens became so associated with Christmas that when he died in 1870, there was a suggestion that if Dickens could die then so could Father Christmas. But his inspiration was not religious or even superstitious but rather his book was written as a response to the grim inequalities of Victorian England.

Originally, Dickens considered writing a political pamphlet to highlight the issue—An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child—but figured such a pamphlet would have only a very limited appeal to well-meaning academics, enthusiastic charity workers, liberal politicians and rich philanthropists.

It was after he addressed a political rally in Manchester, in October 1843, where he encouraged workers and employers to join together in order to bring about social change, that Dickens decided it would be far, far better to write a story that would carry his message to the greatest number of people.

He reworked a story he had previously written in The Pickwick Papers—”The Story of the Goblins who Stole a Sexton” as the basis for A Christmas Carol. He wrote it in a furious burst of creative energy in between completing chapters for his serialized novel Martin Chuzzlewit. His story of an old miser called Ebenezer Scrooge being given a chance of redemption through the visits of three ghosts was his response to the horrific working conditions Dickens had seen in London and Manchester. During the writing of the A Christmas Carol, he would often wander out at night around the grim and impoverished London boroughs, sometimes making a loop of ten-fifteen miles in a night, witnessing firsthand the extreme poverty endured by working class families—in particular their children.

Published on December 17, 1843, A Christmas Carol sold 5,000 copies by Christmas Eve. Dickens believed this book was the greatest success he ever achieved, becoming his best-known book which has never been out-of-print since its first publication.

A Christmas Carol isn’t really a traditional ghost story of the kind later made famous by M. R. James or Algernon Blackwood. The real horror of the story is not the ghosts but rather the horrors of Ignorance and Want hiding in the cloak the Ghost of Christmas Present:

They are Man’s and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.

While the emotional (or rather sentimental) heart of the tale rests with Bob Cratchit and the fate of Tiny Tim. Moreover, as G. K. Chesterton pointed out though Dickens considered himself “to be a brisk man of the manufacturing age, almost a Utilitarian,” he defended the medieval feast of Christmas (food, alcohol, and dancing) “which was going out against the Utilitarianism which was coming in. He could see what was bad in medievalism. But he fought for all that was good in it.”

The story has inspired numerous movies (the one with Alastair Sim being a personal favorite), musicals (yep, I dig Leslie Bricusse score for Scrooge), comedies, and of course radio and TV versions—most recently a “woke” interpretation starring Guy Pearce as Ebenezer.

In 1971, the brilliant, nay genius animator Richard Williams made his version of A Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge, Michael Hordern as Marley, Melvyn Hayes as Bob Cratchit, Joan Sims as Mrs Cratchit and Michael Redgrave as the narrator.

Williams, who died earlier this year, was one of the most innovative and original animators of the past sixty years. His work ranged from his award-winning debut animation The Little Island to the titles for What’s New Pussycat? and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum to the animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit and his great magnum opus which was wrestled from his hands by philistine producers The Thief and the Cobbler.

A Christmas Carol was first broadcast on U.S. television by ABC on December 21, 1971, and released in cinemas the following year. The film deservedly won Williams an Academy Award for Best Short Animation. It’s magical, beautiful film, which is suitable for getting in the mood for today.
 

 
Warmest wishes to { feuilleton }.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.24.2019
03:22 pm
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Down the Rabbit Hole: Watch Jonathan Miller’s Swinging Sixties ‘Alice in Wonderland’
12.12.2019
05:34 am
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Jonathan Miller first considered the possibility of making a film of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland during a party in the early 1960s. Miller was discussing the book, over the percussive clink of ice cubes on glass and the tidal rise and fall from excited chattering voices, with the playwright Lillian Hellman. Miller explained that although Carroll’s book had been filmed before it had never been done properly. These previous efforts, he claimed, had been “too jokey, or else too literal..and…had always come unstuck by trying to recreate the style of Tenniel’s original illustrations.” Copying Tenniel might work in animation but never, oh never on film.

Miller considered Alice in Wonderland “an inward sort of work, more of a mood than a story.” Before he could turn it into a film he wanted to make, he had to discover “some new key” with which to unlock the book’s hidden feeling. To find the possible answer, Miller asked:

What was Charles Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll) about?

and:

What is the strange secret command of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)?

His answer, as he explained in article for Vogue, December 1966: “Nostalgia and remorse.”

Like so many Victorians, Dodgson was hung up on the romantic agony of childhood. The Victorians looked on infancy as a period of perilous wonder, when the world was experienced with such keen intensity that growing up seemed like a fail and a betrayal. And yet they seemed to do everything they could to smother this primal intensity of childhood. Instead of listening to these witnesses of innocence, they silenced them, taught them elaborate manners, and reminded them of their bounded duty to be seen and not heard.

Lewis Carroll’s novels about Alice in a magical wonderland were books “about the pains of growing up.”

Everyone Alice meets on the way…represents one of the different penalties of growing up. One after the other, the characters seem to be punished or pained by their maturity.

Cor blimey! The wonderful Mr. Miller had an incredible intellect, a polymath, an immensely talented polymath who seemed to want to rationalise everything he encountered. But often, perhaps too often, in doing so, the dear old doctor took some of the magic away. I greatly admired Jonathan Miller, he was one of my childhood heroes, but I am willing to believe in the rhinoceros under the table (or the elephant in the room) as much as there ever so might just be fairies at the bottom of the garden—as G. K. Chesterton (jokingly) believed. Or, as the great comedian Eric Morecambe once joked about religion: Two goldfish swimming in a goldfish bowl. One said to the other, “Do you believe in God?” “No, of course not. Why?” “Well,” the first replied, “Who changes the water?”

It’s all about perspective.
 
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Miller cut Carroll’s artifice of wonderfully exotic creatures (the White Rabbit, the Gryphon, the Caterpillar, and so on) and turned them into the academics he believed they were based on. A startlingly brilliant idea at a point in history when everyone was supposedly questioning everything about the Establishment and the old tenets of Queen and Country, religion and class—all of which were (rightly) under attack. As Miller noted:

The animal heads and playing cards are just camouflage. All the characters in the book are real, and the papier-mache disguises with which Carroll covers them all up do nothing to hide the indolent despair.

Once this was clear, the way to make the film fell neatly into place. No snouts, no whiskers, no carnival masks. Everyone could be just as he was. And Alice herself? Not the pretty sweetling of popular fancy. I advertised fro a solemn, sallow child, priggish and curiously plain. I knew exactly what she would be like when I found her. Still, haughty and indifferent, with a high smooth brow, long neck and a great head of Sphinx hair.

Apparently, seven hundred children applied, or at least their parents did, but Miller did not interview any of them, until he chanced upon a photograph of Anne-Marie Mallick, “a dignified schoolgirl of Indian-French stock with a mane of dark hair.” Who, as Miller’s biographer Kate Bassett notes, represented an Alice who “was exclusively a child of the director’s era, manifesting the auteur’s (rather than the original author’s) divided personality and ambivalence towards authority figures.”

The former co-star of Beyond the Fringe, recognised Carroll’s satire as “amusing youngsters by sending up old, sententious types” which “tallied with the spirit of the 1960s.”

Thus the perceptive viewer of the film was able to see double: the two decades translucently overlaid, though a century apart, as if it were a pleat in time.

Made for BBC Television, Alice in Wonderland was filmed over nine weeks in a dreamy English summer. Miller created a masterpiece of television and film—which was as much influenced by Orson Welles’ The Trial as it was by Ken Russell’s The Debussy Film or Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. All of which Miller acknowledged. Miller wrote the screenplay, and did collect one of the best casts imaginable including Peter Sellers, Peter Cook, John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave. Alan Bennett, and Leo McKern, amongst others, all for a flat fee of £500 each. And the music score by Ravi Shankar is highly effective.
 

 
Watch the rest of Miller’s ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.12.2019
05:34 am
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