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Consume this: ‘American Advertising Cookbooks’ is delicious AF


 
Did you know that the banana was a berry? Yep. Me neither. I also had zero clue that the US was gifted the concept of fish sticks from the Soviet Union as a post-war food. I mean—seriously—what? After reading Christina Ward’s thoroughly enjoyable and informative book American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Spam, Bananas and Jell-O, I have now realized that the sum total of what I knew about food history before I encountered this volume could have fit neatly inside a deviled egg.
 

 
From wealthy people renting exotic fruit like pineapples (before pineapples were readily available) as a dinner table centerpiece to flaunt their class status, to kitchen technology, diet recipes and the development and evolution of canned and potted meats, this book covers a variety of topics that handle far more than “what’s on the plate.” More often than not, Ward’s book is a textbook of incisive connections between invisible or overlooked histories and what is now commonly considered kitsch imagery.
 

 
Each chapter of American Advertising Cookbooks is different and equally rewarding. From the design of the book to the writing and image content, it never fails to educate and entertain in tandem. Images of a recipe for “SPAM ‘n’ Macaroni Loaf” and advertisements for a 1969 Pillsbury meat cookbook are delightfully placed perfectly next to chunks of text discussing the government’s Meat Inspection Act and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, allowing the reader to gain insight and react to the dark humor.

To authentically work with content that a younger generation might adore for a “so bad it’s good” angle or for its camp possibilities is not easy, but this book does it gracefully and with a level of respect for the topic that is obvious. Works like these are harder as many tend to go for the easy laugh or quick sell based on surface nostalgia. Ward’s attitude towards this material is wholly different and that is what makes this book so brilliant. She skillfully places dozens upon dozens of beautifully printed “weirdo” images into historical context giving Ham Banana rolls, Piquant Turkey Loaf and Perfection Salad a whole new life!
 

 
Foods that modern audiences no longer consume in large (or any) quantities like packaged meats and gelatins make them seem very foreign. But today’s food preservation techniques are different. Hey, refrigeration, what’s up? Indeed, many people I’ve met may think aspics look disgusting. I honestly looked at many of these images and saw so much art and dignity put forth in their representation. While this wasn’t something actively discussed, there is no way that one could view all these images and not see people trying to make these dishes look appetizing. Sure, Creative Cooking with Cottage Cheese may not have the same appeal as watching Anthony Bourdain but the Up North Salmon Supper looks really good. And there is something to be said about class aesthetics here. The idea of a home-cooked meal and working-class values is something that Christina Ward most certainly focuses on in the writing, making this book extra gratifying to some of us old school class-consciousness punk activist-y types!

If the mind-blowing plethora of elegant and fastidiously researched recipes, adverts and book covers seems odd or silly to a reader, they are clearly not looking at what a quality piece of literature this book is. Ward’s thorough research, accessible discussions on colonialism, Puritan and Calvinist practices, racism as a marketing ploy (Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben anyone?), and the Christian Missionary connection to, well, fruit make American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Spam, Bananas and Jell-O a necessary addition to anyone’s library who is interested in food, US history, social politics or simply a damn good book.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Ariel Schudson
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06.13.2019
11:47 am
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Stuck in the Mudd! Four decades later, the doorman of the wildest nightclub in NYC lets you in!

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Here’s a drink ticket—enjoy the post!

“If you’ve been standing here for more than ten minutes you’re not coming in” announces Richard Boch in a stern but cute, almost teenaged stoner way. Don’t get me wrong, he means it. This was how “normal people” were greeted much of the time at the door of the Mudd Club (and many other ultra hip clubs in New York City at the time). This made getting in a huge badge of honor and being turned away a major disgrace. Imagine riding on THAT possibility just to pay to go into a nightclub? An anonymous “sniper” refused entrance once even hit Boch with a dead pigeon from a few yards away and sped off in a taxi cab!

Back then these normal people showing up at Manhattan nightclubs were mostly referred to as the “bridge and tunnel” crowd (Queens, Jersey, Brooklyn) a term not heard much these days, but once heard hundreds of times every night in NYC clubs. Some were 9-5ers, some wealthy disco-types expecting to stroll in on the doorman’s view of their Rolex or hot girlfriend. These regular folks were basically told to cool their heels or fuck off while an 18-year-old kid like me dressed to the hilt in what may have looked to them like idiotic rags, parted the seas and strolled in like I was Mick Jagger. This was not Studio 54 as they would find out soon enough. What it was, though, was a trip into known and unknown galaxies of hip culture throughout history, like a living, breathing museum/funhouse/drug den/concert hall/discotheque, mixed with nitroglycerine and LSD and thrown into a blender to create the unknown. The future. THE NOW!

The Mudd Club was almost literally unbelievable. Inmates running the asylum on an outer space pirate ship. This vessel was founded, funded and schemed by Steve Mass, who was on every side of the street all at once. When I first met Steve, he was roommates with Brian Eno and got that input, but he STILL drove me out to my parents’ apartment in Queens to help pull my record collection from under my bed, my parents shrugging their shoulders until reading about us a year later in the New York Times, thereby making it “Okay.” But really he was always very curious, constantly grilling me, getting inside my head. I once told him I thought he should round off the corners and ceiling of the Mudd Club like a giant cave and have live bats flying around the club. He actually considered it! He did this with certain other kids, rock stars, Warhol superstars, models, designers, Hollywood royalty, junkies, freaks and lord knows who else. We all had a bit of our heart and soul in that place.
 
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Mudd Club owner Steve Mass. Photo by Kate Simon

The above mentioned Richard Boch is the author of a incredibly well-written new book from Feral House titled The Mudd Club. Boch was the main doorman there and the book is his autobiography or a coming of age story told in pretty much the aftermath of the glorious Sixties during the truly, in retrospect, harsh, dark, real version of what was hoped for, but lost in that previous decade. Richard’s story is all of our stories, those of us lucky (or unlucky) enough to have grown up or wound up in New York City’s grimy punk/art/drugged musical and historical mish-mosh. It was the Velvet Underground’s songs come to life after waiting a decade for the world to catch up to it, or crumble to its level.
 
To quote Richard:

I’ve always referred to the Mudd Club as the scene of the crime, always meant as a term of endearment. It was the night that never ended: the day before never happened and the day after, a long way off. There was nothing else like it and I wound up right in the middle. I thought I could handle it and for a while, I did.

 
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Author Richard Boch. Photo by Alan Kleinberg
 
Boch was given marching orders orders early on to avoid bloated seventies superstars and the limo crowd. On one of his first nights of work he was faced with a huge, loud, and very sweaty Meatloaf. “Definitely not something I wanted to get close to, physically or musically,” Boch says, and ignored him. My first ever DJ gig was early on at the Mudd Club and I was told told by Steve Mass to do things like play Alvin and The Chipmunks records when it got a bit crowded, to “make everyone uncomfortable,” including myself. Of course I had the record. I also gouged a 45 with scissors insuring the record would skip horribly and then pretend that it wasn’t happening. Just long enough to get the asylum to freak out a little bit.

Later this stuff went out the window but it was quite a formative experience. Humor filtered through even to the most deadly serious moments there. The Mudd Club was a place where twenty people could literally have had twenty different experiences on the same night during the same hour as there was just so much happening on different mental/pharmaceutical levels and different floor levels. Everywhere you turned there was someone amazing. From the way I had grown up, seeing Andy Warhol, John Waters, David Bowie and the Ramones within a twenty minute span was “my” Studio 54. Watching Screamin’ Jay Hawkins while standing next to Jean-Michel Basquiat, seeing the Soft Boys, girl groups like the Angels and the Crystals, Frank Zappa, Bauhaus, Nico, the Dead Boys, Captain Beefheart, John Cale, a Radley Metzger film presented by Sleazoid Express or an impromptu freakout by Warhol Superstar Jackie Curtis, well this was my dream come to life!

My dream hasn’t changed in 40 years. I’m still in awe that it happened. And in the middle of all that I was allowed to put on my own demented conceptual events with friends (“The Puberty Ball,” etc.) and be a regular DJ. The people I came to know in the punk world who wanted more found it at the Mudd Club. Our mad obsession with the Sixties, especially the Warhol/New York sixties, informed much of what we did, and at the same time the Warhol Factory itself became more corporate. The Superstars were by then getting older and pushed out, but they were looking for more themselves, and they were looking to us to inform them, making for some extremely insane morality and immorality plays coming to life before our eyes. Mudd had the pull of what the press called “downtown,” and for the downtown types, well our voices were about to be heard loud and clear.
 
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David Bowie and Dee Dee Ramone. Photo by Bobby Grossman
 
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Howie Pyro deejaying at Mudd

Richard Boch understood all this, and was also an artist himself so he knew who everyone in the art world was, as well as all the new punk stars and celebutantes, no wavers, new wavers, culture vulture gods and the ones who would become gods themselves in a year or so. In the book he talks about being nervous about starting working there but man, he was the one for the job. In the pages of The Mudd Club, Boch’s quite candid about everything you’d want to know (gossip but not mean gossip: sex, drugs, more drugs, and getting home at ten AM, having done every drug and a half dozen people along the way—normal stuff like that). It reads in one, two, or three page sections, my favorite kind of book. You can put it down in ten-minute intervals or read it in any order you want, IF you can put it down at all. I have literally read certain sections backwards for 40-50 pages while looking for something and didn’t really notice. It made me laugh out loud, and it brought tears to my eyes. It’s kind of like “Please Kill Me, the Day After,” though it’s not an oral history as such, as it is written from Richard Boch’s point of view, but it has the same immediate anecdotal feel.
 
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‘TV Party’ at Mudd. Photo by Bob Gruen
 
The club’s benevolent benefactor, Steve Mass, was responsible for making this incredible witches brew keep bubbling and kept the happenings happening. He was willing to do anything, just for the sake of doing it. Steve originally owned an ambulance service. For my 19th birthday they had a huge party for me on the second floor of the Mudd Club. Since Steve had medical connections, and since we were ALL junkies (well, a good 85% of us were), he furnished a massive cake with dozens of syringes with the plungers & needles removed so they could put the candles in the open syringes. This of course turned into a massive cake fight with the participants looking like the Little Rascals (with pinned eyes). Steve was always down for this sorta stuff. As for the main floor, the bands, writers and performers that I saw in a single month’s time was staggering! More than some people see in a lifetime.
 
From the book:

January 1979. The Cramps freaked out The Mudd Club with a loud Psychobilly grind that included such hits as “Human Fly” and “Surfin’ Bird.” A few months later, the “big names” started to appear…

He goes on to say:

The legendary Sam and Dave got onstage a few weekends later, and it was the first time on my watch that I got to see the real deal. By late summer, Talking Heads took the stage while Marianne Faithful, X, Lene Lovich, and the Brides of Funkenstein waited in the wings.

There were so many great performances: Scheduled, impromptu, logical and out of left field. The locals and the regulars were the staple and the stable and performed as part of the White Street experience. They included everyone you could imagine and some you never could. John Cale, Chris Spedding, Judy Nylon and Nico, John Lurie and Philip Glass were just a few. Writers and poets such as William S. Burroughs, Max Blagg, Cookie Mueller, and “Teenage Jesus” Lydia Lunch all wound up on the Mudd Club stage. The talent pool was so deep and occasionally dark that even Hollywood Babylon‘s Luciferian auteur Kenneth Anger got Involved.

Steve’s willingness and generosity along with his guarded enthusiasm offered support to a local community of artists, musicians, and filmmakers. Together with Diego (Cortez)’ and Anya (Phillip’s) short-lived but “dominating” spirit, the Mudd Club became an instant happening, a free-for-all with No Wave orchestration and very few rules.

Diego described the Mudd Club as “a container, a vessel, but certainly not the only one in town.” What made the place unique was its blank-canvas emptiness. When the space filled up, IT happened and everyone wanted to be a part. A living, breathing work of art, it was beautiful and way off center, a slice of golden time.

I was lucky, and soaked it all in.

 
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Nico playing her wheezing harmonium. Photo by Ebet Roberts

All of us who got to be there were lucky. This was a timeless world of it’s own. A world that could be compared to any and all magical artistic movements, scenes or spaces. Dada. Warhol’s Factory, the Beats in NY and SF, Surrealism, etc.—times, places, people all endlessly written about as there’s just so much to say. Everyone involved had a unique experience, true to themselves. This wasn’t just a nightclub, it was so much more. It almost seemed like a private place where, on the best nights, people’s lives and fantasies were put on display and the public was allowed to watch. The public who just came to do coke and dance (as we all did) but who accidentally got touched by a bizarre and wonderful world that lived in the shadows of the city then, usually just brushing against them like a ghost in the night. Whether they even noticed or not, well, who cares?

This first book on the subject (I guarantee it will not be the last) is Richard Boch’s own experience, peppered with those of us who he interviewed for the reminders. This book is about his eyes opening, his chain-wielding power stance, his blowjobs, his drinks, his drugs, all of which are plentiful. It includes a little of most of us, the people we loved, the ones we lost, the games we played, and the love we shared of each other and our mutual history. Still though, there are a million stories in the Mudd’s microcosm of the naked city, this is just one of them.

And what a glorious place to start: right at the front door.
 
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The trailer for the book
 
More Mudd Club after the jump…

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Posted by Howie Pyro
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09.19.2017
02:47 pm
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Everything you always wanted to know about the Krampus but were afraid to ask
09.23.2016
09:45 am
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Last year here at Dangerous Minds we declared that Krampus had hit the American mainstream, and just a couple of weeks ago we told you “fuck the elf on the shelf, here’s Krampus in the corner.” As we begin to see the department stores trot out their Christmas wares, we are reminded that Krampustime will soon be upon us.

If you’re looking for a Krampusnacht gift for someone special, we have a suggestion:

Feral House has just published the definitive work on Krampus and assorted other dark pagan Yuletide terrors. The exhaustively-researched The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas: Roots and Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil by Al Ridenour explores the origins of the Krampus myth, its recent popularization in the United States, the various celebrations and traditions associated with the creature, as well as similar European Christmas beasts.
 

Click here to order this title via Amazon. 
 
Krampus, for anyone out of the loop, is a horned, anthropomorphic, demon-like creature who, according to Alpine folklore, is a companion to Saint Nicholas. He acts as the yin to Santa’s yang—punishing the naughty children while Saint Nicholas rewards the good. Krampus provides the dark balance to Saint Nicholas’ light. Traditionally, Krampus is thought to beat naughty children with sticks. Children that have been extra bad are treated more severely: they are stuffed into bags and thrown into the river. It’s really quite a brilliant legend: if your kids are misbehaving, scare the shit out of them with the threat of being flogged and tortured by the Christmas devil!
 

 
The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas: Roots and Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil is jam-packed with information on the history and meaning of the Krampus as well as scads of photos and art prints. The dozens of photos of celebrants of myriad regional-variant Yuletide festivals in bizarre and terrifying costumes is worth the price of admission alone. Award-winning designer Sean Tejaratchi has laid everything out gorgeously, augmenting Ridenour’s thoughtful analysis. I really can’t recommend this highly enough. If you have any interest in the subject, this book is simply a must-have.
 
More Krampus after the jumpus…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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09.23.2016
09:45 am
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Color me impressed: Lemmy and David Bowie-themed coloring books are here!


The cover of ‘Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead: Color the Ace of Spades’ coloring book by Feral House.
 
We can now thank the fantastic publisher of fringy Feral House for two more things—a pair of new coloring books based on the dearly departed Lemmy Kilmister and the Thin White Duke himself, David Bowie.
 

The cover of ‘David Bowie: Color the Starman’ coloring book by Feral House.
 
Of the things you get to color in the Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead: Color the Ace of Spades book are images of Lem as a metal version of Jesus’ crucifiction into the famous “Warpig” logo and shooting you the bird (because, Lemmy) as well as works by Joe Petangno, the artist behind the cover of Motörhead’s 1986 album Orgasmatron. Bowie’s book, David Bowie: Color the Starman includes artistic contributinons by filmaker and artist Mica O’Herlihy, illustrator Tony Millionaire, Plastic Crimewave (aka Chicago-based music historian and doer of many cool things, Steve Krakow), and underground comic hero Mike Diana.

I’m sure one or both of these coloring books are somehow going to find their way to a large number of our Dangerous Minds readers immediately. I’m also pretty sure either of these books would make a great gift for your Bowie and Lemmy-loving pals. I’ve posted images from inside the pages of both books below which are available now via Feral House for $15.95.

And as if this news isn’t cool enough Feral House is also running a coloring contest that kindly requests that you send a finished photo of your favorite images from either coloring book to them via submissions@feralhouse.com. Your handiwork will then be featured on Feral’s social media and you’ll be entered to win a copy of two of Feral’s upcoming coloring books for 2017—Muhammad Ali—The Greatest Coloring Book of All Time and one that you’ll only really need a purple crayon for, Prince—The Coloring Book.
 

Lemmy and the ‘Warpig.’
 

 

Hawkwind (Lemmy pre-Motörhead).
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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09.16.2016
12:45 pm
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The delightfully sleazy sex paperbacks of the 1960s
06.03.2016
09:39 am
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Last week I hipped a book dealer friend of mine to a decent estate sale score. As his “tip” to me for the heads-up he gifted me a nice-sized box full of old pulp fiction titles with an emphasis on lurid covers.
 

A few of the titles in my gift box.
 
The very same day, synchronicity dropped the new expanded edition of Feral House’s exhaustive study of Sixties sleazy sex paperbacks, Sin-A-Rama onto my doorstep.
 

Now available via Amazon.
 
If you have an interest in vintage erotic paperbacks, either from a literary standpoint or as a connoisseur of the tacky cover artwork, this book is an absolute must-own.

The bulk of Sin-A-Rama consists of hundreds of cover reproductions with date, publisher, author and artist credits. The photos alone make this worth the price of admission—so much delicious eye-candy. But what makes Sin-A-Rama an important work is the twenty-two essays on various aspects of the filthy book business, covering publishers, writers, artists, and themes. The majority of these essays are written by dirty novel experts Earl Kemp and B. Astrid Daley who clearly display an affinity for their subject through their comprehensive research. Sin-A-Rama also contains an index of publishers and authors (with their pseudonyms). The new “expanded edition” contains profiles on “Occult Sleaze,” “Swinging Sleaze,” and the “tawdry taboo stuff that sleaze literature fell into during the 1970s”  that were not included in the original edition.

There are so many titillating, shocking, and hilarious titles on display in Sin-A-Rama—so many I’d love to have in my own collection. Until I find that mother lode of sticky originals at some dirty old man’s garage sale, I’m satisfied to have the cover reproductions included herein.

Dig these kinky covers with their vivid depictions of lusty, busty sexpots:
 

 

 
Many, many more lurid pulp paperback book covers, after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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06.03.2016
09:39 am
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(Way more than) Everything you always wanted to know about the Nazi Skinhead music scene


 
Today’s post is about the new book The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement: UK & USA, 1979 - 1993 released last month by Feral House publishing.
 

 
It should be noted that the use here of the term “Nazi Skinhead” is my own broad-brushstroke, informed by being at numerous ‘80s punk shows ruined by “White Nationalist Skinheads”—sometimes at the wrong end of a Doc Marten. This is not a term used by the authors of The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement to describe their subject.  Having just admitted my own bias on the topic of “Nazi Skinheads,” let me add that as a student of the history of youth subcultures and countercultures, I am endlessly fascinated, as a topic of study, by the Skinhead movement and its extreme right-wing offshoots.

When I first heard that Feral House was publishing the definitive guide to Nazi Skinhead history, my curiosity was piqued because I was fairly certain they would get it right. Feral House’s Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal is the go-to reference on the Satanic fascist Black Metal scene and is an absolutely compelling read. I was hoping for a similarly riveting examination of the White Power Skinhead scene.

Before going into where the book succeeds and fails, I feel the need to point out that the title, The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement: UK & USA, 1979 - 1993, may be a bit misleading. The book is more specifically a history of the “Rock Against Communism” (or RAC) music scene than an overview of Nationalist Skinheads as a political counterculture. Indeed, the original (more appropriate) title of an earlier self-published version of the book was When the Storm Breaks: Rock Against Communism 1979-1993.

It should also be noted that the majority of the enormous 610 page book is devoted to the British RAC scene. Only about 60 pages at the end of the book discuss the American RAC bands, and seems to be an added afterthought compared to the extremely well-researched history of the UK bands such as Skrewdriver, and Brutal Attack and their ilk. Actually “well-researched” is kind of an understatement. And that leads me to the pros and cons of The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement —which are mostly one in the same.
 

 
When an author goes about compiling information for the definitive history of a subject—particularly a subject they may have an affinity for—they are forced to decide between paring that knowledge down to a narrative which would make for a fascinating read to the novice, or sharing every shred for the like-minded obsessive seeking an authoritative reference. Authors Robert Forbes & Eddie Stampton took the latter route here. The wealth of information culled from interviews and historical records (mostly fanzines, naturally), would be a boon to those already immersed in the White Power music culture—not simply your basic Nazi Skinhead, but your Nazi Skinhead music über-nerd. If you are a member of this small target-audience, then you will likely find no fault with this weighty tome. If you happen to be taking all of this in as someone with a passing interest in the history of the Oi! music scene and its racist offshoots, then you are likely to become bored with plowing through the minutae of every RAC gig and band-member change. Because it’s ALL in there. I’ll be honest, this book was a struggle for me to make it through—simply because it was just TOO MUCH. Sure, it’s fascinating to see how the popularity of a group like Skrewdriver unfolded from their beginnings as an “apolitical” punk band, through line-up changes, to finally finding a rabid audience among White Power Nationalists; but entire portions of interviews with scenesters are reprinted describing “what it was like the first time I saw Skrewdriver,” when one or two pull quotes would have sufficed. The whole premise is bogged down under the weight of trying to include EVERYTHING.
 

 
The authors seem close to their subject matter. One of them perhaps too close for comfort, if you are the sort of person who is a stickler about giving your money to those who hold opposing ideologies to your own. According to this review of When the Storm Breaks, “Eddie Stampton is involved with the Nationalist movement, Robert Forbes writes from a neutral position, intrigued by the subject but not involved in the dogma.”

The end of the book contains the following disclaimer:

The political views expressed in this book may or may not necessarily be those of the authors. No hatred is aimed at any people or races mentioned within, however, for realism when relating to certain events or situations, the authors feel some quotes from others will need be entered into the text to make the mood or feelings of those at said events or situations as true as possible. The authors must stress their own aversion to any acts of hatred or violence towards others. This book is a historical commentary, nothing more and nothing less.

At the same time, the front of the book contains a “Rest in Peace” dedication to notable Nazi Skinheads, including Clive Sharp of No Remorse, Ian Stuart of Skrewdriver, and Nicky Crane (famously violent Skinhead who later came “out” as homosexual). Some may be bothered by the inclusion of such a dedication, while others will overlook it in the interest of having an authentic insight.

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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01.04.2016
08:14 am
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American Grotesque: William Mortensen, Photographer as ‘Antichrist’
10.21.2014
05:04 pm
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This is a guest post from Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey regarding two fascinating new books related to photographer William Mortensen.

Now that smartphones have become the camera of choice, it seems strange that photographers once belonged to divergent schools that battled one another, and sometimes quite viciously at that. The style that integrated painterly techniques with film technology was called Pictorialism. The “modernists” who dismissed complex photo techniques called themselves Group f/64 before they enlarged their influence, ultimately becoming known as “Purists.” For the Purists, sharp focus was the only natural way to photograph an image, and nature itself was the preferred subject.

Purists like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston did brilliant work in their careers, but it seemed important to them to remove Pictorialism from textbooks, galleries and museums. Their bête noire was none other than William Mortensen, who had for decades published many instructional manuals and reproduced his work in major photo magazines of the time, most notably Camera Craft. Mortensen specialized in a style that emphasized a grotesque look, which tended to feature many nudes. Compared to the trees and mountainsides that Ansel Adams shot, Mortensen’s work was accused of being exploitative and distasteful.

Purist hate was so intense that Adams even referred to Mortensen as “the antichrist.”

I had first heard of Mortensen from Anton LaVey, who had a photograph called “Fear” hanging in his Black House kitchen. In this photo a distressed woman is enveloped by a black-cloaked demonic entity. Anton acknowledged that Mortensen’s book The Command to Look: A Master Photographer’s Method for Controlling the Human Gaze changed his life, teaching him the basics of what he called “Lesser Magic.” LaVey also co-dedicated The Satanic Bible to Mortensen.

When Photoshop techniques and manipulated digital photography took hold in recent decades, the Pictorialist style once again became quite prominent though by then the Purists had long ago successfully bounced Mortensen out of public recognition. This was the reason I found it important to publish both Mortensen’s The Command To Look, which also includes Michael Moynihan’s article on Mortensen’s influence on occult researcher Manly Palmer Hall and Anton LaVey. We have also published a Mortensen monograph called American Grotesque: The Life and Art of William Mortensen, that includes an illuminating biography by Larry Lytle, a great deal of heretofore unpublished images and Mortensen’s textual battles with Purists from photo magazines. We hope that this evidence of William Mortensen’s brilliance once again revives his reputation and cements his rightful place in the history of the Photographic Arts.

—Adam Parfrey.

Here are some examples of William Mortensen’s work from American Grotesque
 

“Fear” aka “Obsession”
 

“A Family Xmas, 1914” 1932
 

“The Strapado”
 

“Belphagor”
 
More Mortensen after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.21.2014
05:04 pm
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Black Metal: Evolution of The Cult
12.03.2013
10:13 am
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Apparently yesterday’s “Cyber Monday”—a great American tradition, right?—was the single biggest online shopping day “in history.” (That’s how it’s being reported this morning, with a straight face). As someone who positively loathes the holiday season, the rampant consumerism, the hoards of mindless shoppers and all the rest of it, I think I have something DM readers might be interested in, and even if it’s not exactly your thing per se, it still might make a seriously rockin’ gift for someone you know. Especially for someone who really hates Christmas…

First off, to show you how objective my opinion truly is, I didn’t even know this book existed until it arrived in the post on Saturday. I did not seek it out. Secondly, it’s not on a topic that really tends to interest me all that much, either. But there it was, right in front of me. It was weighty to hold and a quick perusal said “definitive” to me loud and clear, obviously an attractive quality in a book. It looked interesting. It appeared to be very comprehensive. It’s a nicely produced object, too. It was calling out—in a voice that sounded oddly just like Mercedes McCambridge’s—“Read me, read me,”

It was thus that I promptly dropped whatever it was that I was doing and spent most of the day Saturday and part of Sunday between the covers of Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult by Dayal Patterson (Feral House). It’s a fascinating overview of Black Metal written by a seriously otaku expert on the genre. At nearly 500 pages, it’s instantly the defining book on Black Metal, even a kind of minor masterpiece of the rock book form, featuring dozens of interviews with the luminaries (would that be the right word?) of the Black Metal scene. I got totally lost in it. I mean, hey, who doesn’t like books on extremist musical sub-cultures?

I got something from this book that I didn’t get from Didrik Søderlind and Michael Moynihan’s Lords of Chaos—which was more the tale of the church burnings, suicides, murder and general mayhem of the Norwegian Black Metal scene. Lords of Chaos, a classic in its own right, was a sociological examination of Black Metal, even a bit of a “true crime” book, whereas with Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, I came away with a list of albums that I had to hear. NOW.

My idea of what Black Metal sounded like, frankly had a lot to do with the personalities and the criminal incidents that many writers have focused on. I had never really listened to it, just read about it. What was presented to me, well, it just struck me as idiocy—drunken Viking idiocy mixed with a healthy dollop of goofy Lord of the Rings playacting and blasphemy. Blasphemy? Really guys? Blasphemy was kinda cool when John Lydon or Crass did it, but the idea of a bunch of Venom-obsessed Vikings on a bender singing about how they hate God and worship “evil” and stuff just struck me as something I’d never be interested in listening to in a million years.

I’m not saying this is necessarily accurate—it’s partially accurate to be sure—but it’s the idea that I had of the genre. All very interesting from a sociological perspective, but when I read Lords of Chaos, I didn’t rush out looking for any of the music. After finishing Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, I couldn’t wait to hear some.

Thank you, Internet. The first thing I listened to—and I turned this shit up so loud it felt like there was wind in the room—was Mayhem’s 1994 album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, an iconic album generally agreed upon as one of the pinnacles of the Black Metal art form, an unholy grail if you please. Owing to the fact that to describe this music with adjectives like “Satanic” or “evil” would be utterly pointless when you can just hit play, crank this as loud as your speakers can possibly go, or right at the pain threshold if you’re wearing headphones.
 

 
Holy shit, right? Two of the members of this band were dead before this album even came out. One was the vocalist, a fellow called “Dead” who blew his head off with a shotgun, the other was the guitarist, “Euronymous” who was killed by the former bass player, Varg Vikernes, AKA “Count Grishnackh.”

Vikernes, who spent years in prison for the murder (and who has been in the news again recently for inciting racial hatred and glorifying war crimes) released this utterly demented one-man band album, Filosofem, under the name Burzum. I’m not endorsing this guy’s repulsive political views in any way (or that he named himself after an orc from Tolkien), but Filosofem, like De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, is an utterly mind-boggling work of art. It’s music that feels like it’s devouring you. It probably helps not to understand what he’s singing…
 

 
In any case, you can see what kind of fun I had with Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult. To me, there’s no gift better than new music, or a book like Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult that draws back the curtain on a musical genre perhaps previously overlooked, providing plenty of grist for the rock snob mill. Am I likely to become a raging middle-aged Black Metal fan? That’s perhaps a little far-fetched, but as I fan out through some of the groups that seem the most interesting according to the author, I’m liking what I hear. I think most serious music fans who would get this book as a gift would appreciate it as much as I have. It’s a winner, one of those books that leads to further (rewarding) discovery. I really can’t recommend Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult highly enough.

Below, Burzum’s closest thing to a single, “Dunkelheit,” the epic opening track from Filosofem. How the fuck did something like this ever get on VH1???
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.03.2013
10:13 am
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Pure Filth: Perversions on Parade

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Without a doubt, America’s most dangerous independent publisher is Adam Parfrey’s storied Feral House. In a career marked by by such gleefully transgressive volumes as Apocalypse Culture, Extreme Islam and the recent coffee table recreation of the Process cult’s freaky 60s magazines, Parfrey may have staked out some of his most risque territory yet with his upcoming publication of a limited edition book for… “specialists.”

Has it been a decade since Feral House signed up the Jamie Gillis / Peter Sotos collaboration, Pure Filth?

Well, yes it has.

Power of persuasion convinced me to do this project way back when. And why? Peter Sotos called it a “dogshit” book, and we’ve always wanted to publish dogshit books.

It contains transcripts, images and introductions to Jamie Gillis’ “Gonzo” porn videos, rare things from that strange, dull, and life-sucking genre. The late Jamie Gillis, who possessed charm in person, is most widely known as a weasly porn performer from its “golden age.” As a side project, Jamie went out on his own with a ho and video camera, inveigling various masturbators found in adult books parlors to be filmed having actual sex instead. The Gonzo films became more notorious than purchased, inspiring dozens of offshoots in contemporary television, as well as Burt Reynolds’ character in the Hollywood movie Boogie Nights.

Jamie sent Pete some strange, sadistic videos that had never even found popular distribution. This wasn’t porn, this was despair, and Pete became motivated to transcribe the existential scenarios of sadism, masochism, and most of all, showoff self-hatred.

When I had dinner with the authors at a San Francisco North Beach Italian restaurant, Jamie pleaded with me to allow him to sell what he called a “memoir” before Pure Filth was released so as not to horrify the big ticket NY publishers. It turned out that the memoir proposal horrified them anyway, what with a recounting of ’70s party scenes, including one in which a 12-year-old girl offered her blowjob services to Jamie, and he gladly accepted them.

No kiddie sex in Pure Filth, we promise, but transcripts of horrifying, embarrassing human degradation.

The book will be available in a very limited, numbered hardcover edition beautifully designed by Hedi El Kholti, known for his designs of Feral House books Lexicon Devil and It‘s a Man’s World. The price is $69, and we expect that they’ll be available in early May.

I’ve heard about this book for a long time and whereas I’ve never seen any of the videotapes that came to be known as “Jamie Gillis’s Secret Stash” (the really twisto videos from his “gonzo” first-person On The Prowl series) they were once vividly described to me by no less of a “specialist” than Marilyn Manson. I can’t say I really wanted to see them after his description, but according to all who have seen them, the tapes don’t work on a “porn” level (unless you’re a totally sick puppy without hope of redemption!) but due to the “interviews” and darkly psychologically bullying “pep talks” that Gillis would subject these people to beforehand as he tried to, um, persuade them to, uh, do stuff and what it might take (such as money) to get them to do these, um, certain things on camera.

I’m not talking about mere sex acts here, either. Imagine, say, what happened before and after they shot “2 Girls, 1 Cup” and then transcribing what remained on the cutting room floor. According to Adam, the transcripts on the printed page of Pure Filth—and what they reveal, shorn of their audio-visual component—are more starkly disturbing than the videos themselves.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.02.2012
03:04 pm
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Sabbath Assembly: Restored to One
07.14.2010
08:42 pm
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Dangerous Minds pal, Adam Parfrey of Feral House infamy, sent me a remarkable CD a few weeks ago, called Restored to One by Sabbath Assembly and I wanted to highly recommend it to y’all. If any of what you are about to read sounds like it might be of interest to you, then trust me, I think it probably will be. You can buy a copy via Feral House.

There is a bit of a back story to the Sabbath Assembly project. The group got together to perform the actual hymns from the 60s apocalypse cult, The Process Church of the Final Judgement as part of a several city book tour/multimedia performance for Timothy Wyllie’s excellent insider’s history of the group, LOVE SEX FEAR DEATH (See my interview with Timothy Wyllie here). They did events in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, Portland and Seattle. Not to imply they were some sort of occult Monkees, of course, but that’s I believe how this project came to pass. The New York ceremony was officiated by Genesis Breyer-P-Orridge, who has long been fascinated by the Process (and who wrote the introduction to the book).

From the Sabbath Assembly press release:

Restored to One is a modern response to the musical activities of a cult known as The Process Church of the Final Judgment, who used music to spread their visions of Gnostic reconciliation in a time of cataclysmic change. Sabbath Assembly has re-charged the original hymns of The Process Church and worked them into moving renditions that unite the trinity of rock, psychedelic, and gospel into one triumphant re-awakening.

The Process Church was an intensely creative, apocalyptic shadow side to the flower-powered ‘60s and New Age ‘70s. The influential group opened chapters in London, Europe, and across the United States. Dressing in black cloaks and walking the streets with German shepherds, they created their own intricately designed magazines, and promoted a controversial, quasi-Gnostic theology that reconciled Christ and Satan through deeper awareness and love…

So far, so good, right Dangerous Minds readers? It should sound pretty good, on paper, even, because it’s one of the most interesting albums of 2010.

To begin with, the “sound” of the recording is fairly stunning. It’s quite difficult to achieve a truly authentic early 70s rock sound, but the group, consisting primarily of The No Neck Blues Band’s Dave Nuss, San Francisco-based doom/psych singer Jex Thoth and Sunn O))) producer Randall Dunn perform ably in this regard. If someone played this CD for you and said “Hey, listen to this rad, witchy-sounding metal album from the early 70s that no one’s ever heard before” you’d not question it. (Although having said that, a typical rock snob like me might say “This sounds like Coven. Or Amon Düül” Not that this is a bad thing, of course!)

Musically, Restored to One consists of earnestly rendered doom-folk, ominous proto-metal, gothy call and response gospel and other minor key favoring musical genres. Some of the 40-year-old lyrics are intensely devotional, others quasi-blasphemous.  As you might expect, this being from the Process, the lyrics name-check Christ, Jehovah, Satan and Lucifer. They sing of GODS and not God. The entire project is charged with a special kind of energy. The performances are inspired, in a way that only religious music can be (save for Christian Rock, natch). Religious music has a different quality to all other types of music—I think that makes sense, right?—and the Sabbath Assembly project is infused with that soaring, ineffable quality. As with the films of Kenneth Anger, there is a beautiful evil at the center of the art form, and a lot of conviction behind what they are doing. As a listener, you feel it.

Then there is the voice, the heavenly pipes of Jex Thoth, possessor of a powerful set of lungs and a uniquely retro sounding singing voice. I know the concept of having a “retro” voice seems absurd, but once you hear her voice, you’ll know what I mean by that. Overall the Sabbath Assembly sound does remind me of Coven, which is an obvious comparison, but an appropriate one, nevertheless, but Coven fronted by “Mama Lion” Lynn Carey. If this sounds even remotely like something you’d like, I urge you to check out this unique recording.
 

 

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.14.2010
08:42 pm
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Thee Industrial Poppy Cult Has Come

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Dangerous Minds friends Feral House / Process Media are having a Winter Solstice Mega-Sale. FH/Process are the publishers of the recently mega-covered books Thee Psychick Bible and Love Sex Fear Death. They have a buy-2-get-1-free sale. Which means that you could buy the two books above and get a copy of any of their fine books… including the just-released Opium for the Masses. Which means you could be in a candy-colored-cloud and doing godawful sorcery in NO TIME. FH says:

For you Solstice gift givers, we offer you a special HOLIDAY BOOK SALE: for the next three weeks only, buy any two books from Feral House and get a FREE book of your choice! (Book must be of equal or lesser value to the least expensive book). Offer good until January 1, 2010.

(Feral House / Process Media: Thee Industrial Poppy Cult Has Come)

Posted by Jason Louv
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12.16.2009
04:44 pm
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Thee Psychick Bible Now Out!
12.02.2009
09:16 pm
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It gives me great pleasure to announce that Thee Psychick Bible, the complete magickal writings of Genesis P-Orridge and Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth, is now shipping. (I edited it.)

Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth, or TOPY for short, was the group responsible for popularizing body piercing and tattooing, acid house music, and magick, all aimed at personal liberation and the construction of a model of life outside of, and very opposed to, the status quo of the 1980s and beyond. They did a tremendous amount of work at shifting our culture in new and creative directions, and I am proud to be able to help showcase their work in this new, expanded edition of the book.

The group was, of course, conceived and headed by Genesis P-Orridge, the lead singer of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV; the endeavor played a crucial role in the survival and modernization of magick.

The book is hardcover, 544 pages, limited to 999 copies, and comes with a DVD of Psychic TV performances and Derek Jarman videos. (There’s also an introduction written by me.)

From the Feral House website:

Thee infamous PSYCHIC BIBLE from Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth receives an updated, expanded, corrected edition,complete with dozens of new visuals and essays. The Feral House edition is handsomely presented in smyth-sewn hardcover with a red ribbon. Thee 544 pages within are printed in two colors on high-quality 60-pound stock on acid-free 100% recycled paper stock.

This signed, numbered limited edition (999 copies only) is also presented with a remarkable DVD of impossible-to-find videos from P-Orridge archives of early Psychic TV and TOPY creations which includes the work of Peter ?

Posted by Jason Louv
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12.02.2009
09:16 pm
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Process Church of the Final Judgment Event in NYC

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Artforum covers the recent Process Church event in NYC:

LEGEND HAS IT that a young L. Ron Hubbard once bragged to his friends that he was going to start a religion and make a million dollars. We all know how that went. Less known is a far smaller rogue offshoot of Scientology that exerted disproportionate influence on late-1960s and early-?

Posted by Jason Louv
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10.14.2009
02:00 am
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Love Sex Fear Death: Inside The Process Church of the Final Judgment with Timothy Wyllie
09.15.2009
05:25 pm
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The Process was the apocalyptic shadow side of the flower-powered 60s and perhaps the most notorious cult of modern times. Timothy Wyllie was the first member and the art director of the cult’s magazine. The group’s apocalyptic theology brought on accusations of sinister conspiracies as scores of black-cloaked devotees swept the streets of London, NY, New Orleans and other cities selling magazines with titles likes Love, Fear, Sex and Death. Timothy Wyllie is the author of Love, Sex, Fear, Death published by Feral House.

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.15.2009
05:25 pm
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LOVE, SEX, FEAR, DEATH: The Process Church of the Final Judgment

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Our friends at Feral House and Process Media are co-hosting this event at The Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles:

Was The Process Church truly “one of the most dangerous Satanic cults in America”? Or were they an intensely creative apocalyptic shadow side to the flower-powered ‘60s and New Age ‘70s? Scores of black-cloaked devotees swept the streets of New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, and other cities selling magazines with titles like “Sex”, “Fear”, “Love” and “Death”, and a theology proposing the reconciliation of Christ and Satan through love. Marianne Faithfull, George Clinton and Mick Jagger participated in Process publications and Funkadelic reproduced Process material in two of their albums. The inside story of this controversial group has at last emerged with Feral House’s LOVE, SEX, FEAR, DEATH by Timothy Wyllie and other former members. Feral House and Process Books present a re-creation of an actual Process Church ?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.05.2009
12:15 pm
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