FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
That time Ian McCulloch dressed up as Dorothy from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for a photo shoot
05.27.2016
11:38 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
To greet the 1990s, NME commissioned a photo shoot for its last issue of 1989 (December 23-30 issue) featuring Ian McCulloch, the presiding genius of Echo and the Bunnymen, in which he dressed up as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

Here’s the original spread, which appeared under the banner “Screen-Age Kicks”:
 

 
The pictures are an undisputed success, due in no small part to McCulloch’s utter lack of distancing camp affectation or irony. It’s almost as if McCulloch knows damn well that he’s gorgeous, so why not go with it? (Actually, about that. See McCulloch’s remarks on the shoot below.)

Two years ago Buzzfeed did a list explaining why McCulloch was the 1980s version of Kanye West. The list is essentially a collection of astonishingly confident, self-admiring quotations from McCulloch, as in “The Bunnymen are the most important band to ever put an album out. And the Beatles, maybe the Stones. I think we’re up there in the top ten greatest bands of all time.”

Maybe something of that attitude is caught in the photo?

For a “Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes” feature in the pages of Uncut twenty years later, McCulloch reminisced about the photo shoot—his comments are frankly hilarious and a little bit baffling (calling Judy Garland “a bit iffy” and a “weirdo”):
 

The NME were doing this thing—who do you wanna be? Obviously Bono would’ve plumped for the hunchback of Notre Dame. But I thought Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, ‘cos she looked a bit iffy. I thought, to get my own back at the girls on the bus who thought I had lippy on—and I knew at the time, I’m a better-looking girl than you are—let’s jazz this Dorothy up, give her some beauty, not the weirdo Judy looked. Mark E. Smith—whooh! Frank Black—I’d hate to see him doing a picture from Last Tango in Paris. It was down to me. And I did it well.

 

 
In 2011 the well-known someecards company concocted an ecard that poked fun at McCulloch:
 

 
“It was down to me. And I did it well.” As a reminder of what could have given Ian such a massive ego to begin with, here’s a hefty chunk of footage of Echo and the Bunnymen playing the Royal Albert Hall in 1983:
 

 
via Fuck Yeah Bunnymen
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Echo and the Bunnymen rock Liverpool on BBC 2’s ‘Pop Carnival,’ 1982

Posted by Martin Schneider
|
05.27.2016
11:38 am
|
Judy Garland doing ‘blackface’ two years before ‘The Wizard of Oz’
12.04.2015
09:45 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
No, this is not Judy Garland auditioning for the part of “Crazy Eyes” in the original 1938 Orange is the New Black.

It’s amazing that this was not considered unusual in 1938. Two years before she became an immortal megastar with The Wizard Of Oz, Judy Garland performed in blackface in Everybody Sing. This is one of the many ways that Hollywood helped institutionalize racism and there she is, America’s sweetheart, dancing around like a nappy-headed Golliwog and singing goofy lyrics about Uncle Tom’s Cabin! (The year before this, Garland did a number in Babes in Arms as a light-skinned black girl complete with an entire blackface men’s chorus.)

As jaw-dropping as this is, Garland and other performers (like Al Jolson and Mickey Rooney) obviously weren’t conscious of how history would perceive this sort of thing. D.W. Griffiths’ controversial 1916 Birth of a Nation (original title The Clansman) is regarded today as much as an example of a historically significant silent film epic as it is a record of what beastly and commonly held attitudes towards blacks, slavery and the Civil War that Americans held and that Hollywood was portraying well into the 20th Century! (The Ku Klux Klan were the good guys in what is, adjusted for historical and present day monetary value, a film that’s only truly been bested at the box office by Titanic and Avatar.)

In 1938 blackface was still a completely acceptable theatrical convention. But today’s Hollywood knows exactly what it’s doing. Case in point: This year’s No Escape, a xenophobic gore fest starring Owen Wilson in which the bad guys are hordes of bloodthirsty generic Asians from an unnamed country (it’s Thailand). Anybody who isn’t white in No Escape is deadly, faceless and you know, simply brown-skinned. Racism still lives and thrives in Hollywood.
 

Owen Wilson and the Yellow Peril.
 
Coming soon: Adam Sandler’s Ridiculous Six, in which the terrifically unfunny “funnyman” pokes fun at Redskins. I really thought we had outgrown this kind of tone deaf bullshit. You can thank Netflix for bankrolling this turd. We’ll never know if this will be the box office bomb that most of Sandler’s films have been in recent years because Netflix doesn’t publicize any numbers, particularly when something fails.
 

Rob fucking Schneider finally gets a gig… as a Native American?!
 
In light of the recent events in Paris and San Bernadino County, I fully expect a glut of Hollywood movies in which Muslims will be brutally dispensed with as casually as those savage Injuns in the old cowboy movies. But why be surprised? We’re living in a nation where we award prizes to movies like Zero Dark Thirty, which was nothing more than CIA propaganda with a pro-torture agenda. We were meant to feel more for angsty CIA sadist Jessica Chastain than the innocent victims of waterboarding. None of whom, despite what the film would like you to believe, gave up Osama Bin Laden.

Yes, Hollywood is and always has been a useful propaganda tool. Hell, when the hippies started to make waves they killed off two of them in Easy Rider and a whole fucking commune in Joe. Damn peaceniks!
 

 
So yeah this Judy Garland clip is wildly racist—dig the post song scene—but have things really changed that much? I fully expect that the critically praised Beasts of No Nation will be celebrated and receive several awards this season. It’s a well-crafted film with some terrific performances. It’s also a shallow depiction of the brutal violence taking place in West Africa and virtually every African character in the film is a murdering sociopath. What drives the violence is never dealt with in any significant manner. Who cares about that? The movie’s main function seems to be violence for violence’s sake. “Things are hell in parts of Africa.” Period. End of fucking story. The last time I saw a film that depicted Africans as one homogeneous killing machine was Ridley Scott’s lamentable Black Hawk Down. At least the racism in Everybody Sing is out in the open. The new blackface is harder to see, but it’s there.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
12.04.2015
09:45 am
|
Stop what you’re doing right now and watch Judy Garland sing her heart out for the late JFK
06.04.2015
01:45 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
A few weeks ago, I fell (as is my wont) deep, deep down into the audiophile rabbit hole that is the Steve Hoffman Music Forums. Hoffman is a well-known audio engineer and he’s been responsible for hundreds of classic albums getting the deluxe treatment, mostly via DCC, the audiophile label famous for their gold CDs. His website is where audiophiles congregate to discuss and debate the software side of the “perfect sound” equation. I can geek out there for hours on end and often do.

So it was there, reading a thread on Hoffman’s remastering of the famous live Judy Garland album, Judy At Carnegie Hall that it occurred to me—annual TV viewings of The Wizard of Oz when I was a kid aside—that I didn’t really know that much about Judy Garland, considered by many to be the greatest entertainer who ever lived. Numero Uno. #1. Of all time. Never to be equalled. That’s already admitting to a pretty substantial gap in my musical knowledge, ain’t it? I can’t have that!

So I got a copy of Judy At Carnegie Hall, the cherished document of what was probably the single most triumphant night in the career of the great performer. It more than lives up to its reputation. It’s practically flawless. Awe-inspiring. Her voice contains multitudes. Happy. Sad. Resilient. Defeated. Deeply moving—I mean you can REALLY lose yourself in her songs. Wow.

That album is the damndest thing. I played it six times in a row the day I got it. It totally blew my mind. I expected it to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be this good!

What takes Judy At Carnegie Hall to a whole other level though, is not what Garland herself is doing per se, but the reaction to what she’s offering her audience that’s reflecting back from them. I’ve never heard more rapturous applause (and shouting, screaming, stamping) for anybody or for any reason, at any time in my entire life. The audience isn’t merely applauding madly, they are going fucking bananas, creating an affectionate feedback loop between them and the great (and very grateful) performer that takes the whole thing into an emotionally exhausting overdrive. There’s nothing—I repeat—nothing like it. I’ll say it once more: Judy At Carnegie Hall is the damndest thing.

So now that revelation sets me off to find out more about Judy Garland, and if you have read this far, trust me when I tell you that the 2004 PBS American Masters documentary Judy Garland: By Myself is one of the most fascinating—and unspeakably SAD—documentaries you will ever see. [Easy to find on torrent trackers (PBS aired it again in March) and it’s also on the DVD extras of Easter Parade.]

The thing that I was struck with when it was over (other than a deep, deep feeling of sadness I couldn’t shake for days) was how Garland was this mutant force of nature, possessing a mysterious innate source of genius that she could draw from. Even when her frail body was ready to give out, she still gave all for her audiences, even if it meant going home in a wheelchair. Looking at this overview of her 47 short years on this planet, one sees a woman whose magnificent talent will never be forgotten. She died young, but she’s immortal, as many of her performances are woven into the fabric of American history.

And that brings me to the thing I wanted to call your attention to, Garland’s mind-boggling rendition of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” taped a few weeks after the assassination of JFK, on December 13th, 1963. Kennedy and Garland had been friends. She raised money for him and kept a summer home near his in Hyannis Port. The oft-told story about Garland singing “Over the Rainbow” over to the telephone line to JFK many times during his presidency was no myth of Camelot, it actually did happen, several times.
 

 
After the tragic events in Dallas, Garland, then doing a weekly series on CBS, went to the network executives with the idea to do a tribute to the fallen President. They were very cool to the idea. One of the CBS brass is alleged to have told her that in a month or so, that no one would even remember Kennedy! Undaunted Garland chose to end her next show with a powerful performance of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” that left no one, but no one wondering who she was singing it for. (According to Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft, in the studio Garland had said “This is for you, Jack,” but it was edited out for broadcast by an asshole at ABC.)

This is the most stunning thing. Raw emotion—what the entire nation must’ve been feeling—channeled through the body and mighty lungs of this tiny, frail woman, who’d been told by her doctors only a few years before this that she’d soon become an invalid and be bedridden for the rest of her life.
 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
06.04.2015
01:45 pm
|
Judy Garland speaks YOU SONS OF BITCHES!
05.19.2015
04:50 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 

‘‘I’ve sung, I’ve entertained, I’ve pleased your children, I’ve pleased your wives, I’ve pleased you—YOU SONS OF BITCHES!’’

The 2 CD quasi-bootleg set, Judy Garland Speaks!, has to be one of the single most demented things that a major celebrity has ever left behind for the world to discover several decades after their death. Even people who would normally never care about something Judy Garland-related marvel at the incredible pathos and dark insanity of these tapes, which come off like Garland performing in a one-woman show written by Samuel Beckett.

YES, they are that good.

Recorded between 1963 and 1967 when the great performer was down on her luck financially for the purpose of helping Garland write her autobiography, the tapes are a part of the Judy Garland archive at Columbia University. It wasn’t until Gerald Clarke made use of the recordings in his excellent—and ironically titled—book Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland in 2000, that they escaped to the outside world.

The tapes start off slow, with Garland, alone, obviously drunk and having a hard time figuring out how to use the reel to reel tape recorder that literary agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar had given her for the task. We hear her confused, turning the machine off and on and addressing it as an “obvious Nazi machine.” Soon, though, she’s drunkenly ranting and raving about her ex-husband Sid Luft (who stuck Garland with his gambling debts), how the entertainment industry has ripped her off, speaking to her frustration at the public’s perception of her problems with drugs and alcohol and generally laying her tormented soul bare in a way that can alternately produce titters of nervous laughter or sorrowful tears in the listener.
 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
05.19.2015
04:50 pm
|
Mickey Rooney was a FREAK! His EXPLICIT stories of Ava Gardner, Lana Turner & Judy Garland
01.23.2015
03:21 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
I have such fond memories of Mickey Rooney—or rather, I had such fond memories of Mickey Rooney. Whether it was his understated performance in The Black Stallion or his maniacally enthusiastic chemistry with Judy Garland in Babes in Arms (Hey gang, let’s put on a show!), his work left an indelible mark on my childhood. However after reading excerpts from his biography Life Is Too Short, I want nothing more than to scrub that horny little perv from my brain. The book (which was written right as he coasted into his 70’s) isn’t exactly “tell-all”—and it’s certainly not mean-spirited—but man, does it have an air of “inappropriate grandpa” to it! We get it Mickey—you got a lot of tail! But why did you have to put it like this?!?

[Lana Turner] wasn’t the kind of girl who had much to say or had to say much. Her body said it all, and I got the message, loud and clear. Her auburn locks, her deep green eyes, her long lashes, the tip of her nose, her pouty lips, her graceful throat, the curve of her shoulders, her tiny waste, and, yes, the nicest knockers I have ever seen. When I first saw her at the malt shop on Highland Avenue, she was not wearing a tight pink sweater; this was before her Hollywood handlers put her in sweaters—and I thought, Here is a woman.

My fantasies about her soon came true. When I asked her to go out with me, she said yes. And I soon found out that she was as oversexed as I was, warm, passionate, soft, and moist in interesting places. You may wonder what she saw in me. I don’t know. You’d have to ask her. I do know that on a dance floor I could make her breathless.

I don’t want to ever hear the phrase “moist in interesting places” from anyone that isn’t describing a steak. Also, I understand there’s a temptation to take artistic license recounting one’s own sexual history, but that little humblebrag is fooling no one. Mickey also doesn’t quite get Judy Garland right.

[Judy] always idolized her own charming father—only to learn, after she’d grown up, that he was a homosexual. She couldn’t accept that in him. And then, she had an even harder time accepting a trace of that in herself. She had an affair with a female singer and, caught up in the guilt, couldn’t accept herself. So she tried to lose herself in a never-never land where reality faded and her dreams drifted, just out of reach.

I still think I could have helped Judy, but she kept dodging me. I guess she felt guilty about her addiction. She should have known that being hooked on barbiturates didn’t mean a damn thing to me: after all, I ad been there. I understood what she was feeling. So, in fact, did many of her fans. They, too, would have understood. And they would have been far more loving with her than she was to herself.

Oh come on, Mickey! As studious Tumblr fact-checkers have already pointed out—Judy Garland knew her dad was gay from a pretty young age, and while she was conflicted and confused, it was no great source of guilt-ridden anguish, nor were her her (alleged!) lesbian affairs. This is just bitchy, speculative gossip, Mickey—for shame! But the absolute nadir of tawdry is his account of Ava Gardner—do not read further unless you are prepared to have your idea of a lovable old Hollywood icon sullied beyond repair.

We were both athletic in bed, and pretty verbal, too. Once Ava lost her Southern reticence, she seemed to enjoy using the f-word. And I didn’t mind a bit, when, for example, she would look me straight in the eye, raise a provocative eyebrow, and say, “Let’s fuck, Mickey. Now.” Some years later, Hedda Hopper would say of Ava, “That girl was made to love and be loved.” I had to agree with that judgment.

Oh, we told ourselves that we were very much in love, and our sex life helped us in that particular piece of self-deception. Once Ava got into the spirit of things, she wanted to do it all the time. And she quickly learned what it was that turned me on about her. Let me count the ways: a smoldering look, a laugh, a tear, kicking off her shoes as soon as she got in the house, getting all dolled up, not getting all dolled up, coming down to breakfast in a pair of shorts—and no top at all. In bed, let’s just say that Ava was…well, she had this little rosebud down there at the center of her femininity that seemed to have a life of its own. I am not talking about muscles. One gal I knew had trained her muscles, so that she could snap carrots in her pussy, not hands. But Ava had something different. She had this little extra—it was almost like a little warm mouth—that would reach up and grab me and take me in and make my, uh, my heart swell. She also had big brown nipples, which, when she was aroused, stood out like some double-long golden California raisins. And I sucked those warm breasts, I did taste her mother’s milk.

Ewwwwwwwwwww!!!

Mickey Rooney’s sex life is explored in this marvelous animation from new Dangerous Minds contributor Cris Shapan:
 

Posted by Amber Frost
|
01.23.2015
03:21 pm
|
Roddy McDowall: Hollywood Home Movies from 1965

image
 
Other people’s homes movies, like their holiday snaps, can sometimes be terribly dull. But Roddy McDowall’s silent home movies are different, mainly because they have a cast list to die for - from Simone Signoret to Lauren Bacall, Ben Gazzara to Paul Newman, even Judy Garland and Dominick Dunne.  Also, Mr McDowall was a film fan, and there’s a fine sense of his enjoyment and wonder at the Hollywood stars larking about at his Malibu beach home. These are fun artifacts, a last hurrah for a golden age of Hollywood.

The films were uploaded onto You Tube by soapbox, who was personally given the home movies by Roddy McDowall.
 

Jane Fonda, Tuesday Weld, Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Natalie Wood, Judy Garland, May 31, 1965.
 
Plenty more of Roddy McDowall’s Hollywood Home Movies, after the jump….
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
03.10.2012
06:33 pm
|
Judy and Liza go grocery shopping
11.30.2011
09:01 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
I was happy to see that those purveyors of fine campy video products, Punchy Players, have returned with another animated adventure of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli.

This time, the mega-talented mother-daughter duo goes grocery shopping and meets Ann Miller. It’s pretty great. Like all their other ones.
 

 
Via our friends at World of Wonder

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
11.30.2011
09:01 pm
|
Judy Garland’s Cream of Wheat
05.25.2010
11:42 pm
Topics:
Tags:

 
This is every flavor of awesome. More in this Judy series are promised by the creators, Punchy Players. I’d like to see more of these.

Thank you, Marc Campbell!

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
05.25.2010
11:42 pm
|