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Short-lived, almost-forgotten satire mag ‘Americana’ took a shiv to FDR’s America


 
We think of the era of below-the-belt satirical media with a left-wing edge as a thing that was more or less invented in the postwar era, particularly the 1960s and 1970s, as the rise of alternative newspapers ushered in a style of humorous, scurrilous, no-holds-barred sloganeering that was unafraid to transgress the usual borders of propriety. Before that, most of the good comps come from continental Europe, especially in the welter of strident and audacious movements that sprang into existence in the first decades of the 20th century, including surrealism, dada, and expressionism.

Not coincidentally, George Grosz, one of the leading lights of expressionism after World War I, was involved with a genuinely bracing and angry left-wing political magazine in the unforgiving terrain of the U.S.A. Its name was Americana, its editor-in-chief and founder was a colorful young man named Alexander King, and a host of publications such as The East Village Other, The Black Panther, The Berkeley Barb, and The Realist, whether they knew it or not, all owed Americana a great debt.

The imagery of Americana, unlike a lot of stuff that is more than eight decades old, still resonates. The images strike one as what might happen if the original editorial minds behind The New Yorker in the 1920s and 1930s were somehow given the task of publishing the International Times of the late 1960s and early 1970s, albeit with a modernist fibrousness to the art that The New Yorker mostly lacked. (Basically this means that Americana was, unusually, willing to be ugly if it achieved other aims.)
 

King as an older man in the 1950s, here with Jack Paar; photo taken during Paar’s stint as host of The Tonight Show
 
Publishing historians who track Americana cite it mainly for two things: its impressive roster of contributors and its exceedingly brief publication run. Americana existed only for 17 issues in the calendar years of 1932 and 1933, a moment when America was obviously in the throes of a catastrophic depression. While FDR tried to save capitalism from its own successes, Americana, consistently and with great vitriol, challenged the premise that capitalism was worth saving in the first place. To give an idea of what the folks of Americana thought of the likelihood of Roosevelt solving the problems of the working class, here is what Gilbert Seldes wrote in the issue following Roosevelt’s first election:
 

I will suggest to the editors of Americana that they reform. No more sadism. Only pretty pictures of sweet communists welcoming Trotsky back from exile; sweet capitalists washing the feet of the ten million unemployed, and sweet editors of liberal magazines smiling broadly at love triumphant.

 
In his book An Autobiography Grosz reminisced about editor King and Americana:
 

The only person who took me as I was was my friend Alexander King, who put out America’s first and only satirical magazine, Americana, and regularly published my things. He trimmed neither my wings nor my fingernails: “Scratch their eyes out, George,” he would say to me, “the harder, the better!”

 
Featuring names like William Steig and James Thurber, Americana did have a fair bit of cross-pollination with the aforementioned New Yorker. (King managed to run an interview with New Yorker grandee Alexander Woollcott in which the acerbic writer allowed that the New Yorker “is got out by a shiftless reporter with the help of two country bumpkins,” the latter two being non-East-Coast-ers Harold Ross and Thurber.)

In addition, Americana published contributions by E.E. Cummings and Nathanael West. Americana’s run coincided precisely with the West’s first great productive period, during which he wrote and published A Cool Million and Miss Lonelyhearts (The Day of the Locust arrived a few years later)—it’s not too much to say that Americana was an near-perfect periodical correlative for West’s corrosive fiction, and it’s not surprising that he found a warm welcome there. Americana was also an early venue for the work of Al Hirschfeld, who later became much more renowned for sticking the word “NINA” into the whiskers of Orson Welles and the locks of Bernadette Peters.
 

A remarkable editor’s note from Americana
 
Not surprisingly, King himself was from the Continent—he was born Alexander Koenig in Vienna in 1899. In his later years he became a talk-show personality and wrote several books which did very well. In its review of King’s 1960 book May This House Be Safe From Tigers, Time magazine summarized the author’s eventful life, with some affection, as follows:
 

an ex-illustrator, ex-cartoonist, ex-adman, ex-editor, ex-playwright, ex-dope addict. For a quarter-century he was an ex-painter, and by his own bizarre account qualifies as an ex-midwife. He is also an ex-husband to three wives and an ex-Viennese of sufficient age (60) to remember muttonchopped Emperor Franz Joseph. When doctors told him a few years ago that he might soon be an ex-patient (two strokes, serious kidney disease, peptic ulcer, high blood pressure), he sat down to tell gay stories of the life of all these earlier Kings.

 
It’s my impression, researching this topic, that there is just damn little out there about Americana, which is a real shame. However, the images of the publication have aged remarkably well in my estimation, still possessing the power to catch the eye and even to shock, whether it’s the casual yolking of the “modern messiahs” Stalin and Gandhi (!) or the unflinching presentation at the suffering of the destitute. Here is a representative sample of images from the magazine, but by all means there’s more here.
 

 
Much more after the jump…....
 

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.24.2018
10:21 am
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Screw haunted houses. This Halloween, let’s all go to Grampa Jerry’s Clown Museum!
09.27.2013
01:33 pm
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Clown Museum
 
When I worked in a daycare, one of our “special guests” for the preschool-age children was a volunteer clown who often visited children’s hospitals to cheer up sick kids. I have no idea why there’s this whole sick kids and clowns thing. The majority of children are scared shitless of clowns, because children have a natural and understandable aversion to the grotesque. This woman’s/clown’s act had a very clever component, though. She actually arrived with no make-up, and talked to the children as she applied it, explaining that clowns are actual people underneath the wigs, and face paint, and rubber noses. Clowns are human, too!

All well and good, but I feel like we could have cut out that step entirely by banning clowns outright. Most adults are creeped out by clowns, so why should we attempt to eradicate the healthy fear of them residing in childish minds?

To some, however, clowns are symbols of joy and levity, which is why Grampa Jerry’s Clown Museum is such a labor of love for its curator. The roadside attraction, located in small-town Arriba, Colorado off the side of a desolate highway, is literally a pink shack filled with an estimated 5,000 pieces of clown iconography, and you couldn’t pay me enough to go in there alone. But while the idea of a damn clown mausoleum chills me to my bones, the story behind it warms my heart.

“Grampa” Jerry began started his collection in 1978, and just kept on going, right up until his death in 2010. His wife, Dale Ann, now runs the museum and continues adding to their collection, cheerfully archiving clown after clown. You can hear the genuine love in her voice as she reflects on her husband’s eccentric opus below. While she’s gone on record saying she understands the uncanny nature of clowns leave some folks a little shaken, for her the museum is a connection to a man she clearly loved very deeply.
 

 
Still though. Neither bribes nor threats nor liquid courage could get me into that accursed building. One of the clowns is made from a cow’s hairball! You cannot convince that doesn’t have some kind of dark voodoo power. Nope. No damn way. Not enough tequila in the world.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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09.27.2013
01:33 pm
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‘Oh Susannah’: Track from new Neil Young and Crazy Horse album
05.01.2012
01:53 pm
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image
 
Personally, I think this is punk as fuck. Neil Young and Crazy Horse (Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina and Frank “Poncho” Sampedro) rock the garage with “Oh Susannah”—the first video from the new album Americana —coming June 5th.

The vintage film footage in the video is quite striking and may cause a bit of a stir. There’s a kid smoking in it. YouTube busted one of my videos (“88 Lines About 44 Women”) that had a kid smoking in it…but I’m not Neil Young.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.01.2012
01:53 pm
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Bee & Flower: Live tonight at the Zebulon, Brooklyn
04.14.2011
11:08 am
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image
 
If you like your folkish Americana with a large twist of David Lynch, then Bee & Flower should be right up your deserted stretch of backwoods road. It’s maybe hard to push boundaries in this particular genre, but then I guess that that’s not really the point. It’s more about atmosphere and quality songwriting, and those are things that Bee & Flower have in spades.

The group was formed at the start of the century by the multi-talented Dana Schechter, who up til then had been playing in Michael Gira’s post-Swans group Angels of Light. Since then she has gone on to collaborate with a veritable who’s who of alt-Americana, including members of Sparklehorse, Calexico and The Bad Seeds, not to mention having string arrangements supplied by Jim “Foetus” Thirwell. If a collab list like that doesn’t pique your interest, then truly I fear for your soul. If you’re after more tangible evidence, however, here’s some music:

Bee & Flower - “I Know Your Name”
 

 
Bee & Flower - “Homeland”
 

 
Bee & Flower - “Green Glasses”
 

 

Although Bee & Flower formed in Brooklyn, Schechter now resides in Berlin where the last couple of B&F albums were recorded (2007’s Last Sight Of Land and the upcoming Suspension). Tonight however she and the band will be back in Brooklyn for a one-off, free gig at the Zebulon (258 Wythe Ave) along with four other acts. They will also be giving away copies of their 7” single “Dust & Sparks” to 3 lucky people to help celebrate Record Store Day.

Yes, I said the show is free (the favored price of the next generation) so if you are around be sure to check it out. If you’re not lucky enough to live in Brooklyn or New York, here is a live video of B&F in Berlin from 2007.

Bee & Flower - “Don’t Say Don’t Worry”
 

 

For more info on Bee & Flower, this is their official website, and here is band’s tumblr.

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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04.14.2011
11:08 am
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