Apparently, when you press down on a marshmallow rabbit’s head it transforms into Kim Jong-un! The resemblance is uncanny. I think I’m going to do this with all my marshmallow rabbits this year. Or maybe not. I’m trying to watch my figure and wouldn’t want to start World War III.
via Laughing Squid
A shot of a crocheted Tura Satana finger puppet (in the image of Tura’s character from the 1968 film ‘The Astro-Zombies’ playing behind her on the television) by Galen Djuna Green.
So I have some good news and some bad news about the strange, crocheted little finger puppets in this post made by artist Galen Djuna Green. The good news is that as recently as last year Green was offering her topless finger puppets for sale on her Etsy page Galendjuna Knitty Titties. So what’s the bad news? Well, there aren’t any up for sale currently on the page. Which is really sad as Green’s naughty knitted bad girls are rather covetable.
I will say this—since the Knitty Titties page is still active that *may* indicate that Green is still taking orders for past designs or new custom requests. Which I really hope is the case as some of her past finger puppets include Siouxsie Sioux, Wendy O. Williams, Kembra Pfahler (The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black), a few fantastic drag queens and an uncanny likeness of Tura Satana based on her “Satana” character from the 1968 film The Astro-Zombies (pictured at the top of this post). Tiny Tura’s little pink top even comes off! I’ve posted a number of images below of Green’s puppets which while small, clearly have big attitudes. They are also very NSWF much like the ladies they are based on themselves.
Wendy O. Williams.
More after the jump…
Last night police were summoned in order to break up a “fully-fledged rave” that started on a subway car on the Bakerloo line of London’s Underground network, known as “the Tube.”
The event was organized by “award-winning MC Harry Shotta” and included flashing lights, a sound system, and (of course) an MC.
Judging from the video, some of the passengers enjoyed it. A passenger named Iain Souttar registered his bafflement on Twitter:
Just experienced a mini rave inside a London tube
— No knees (@IainSouttar) April 10, 2017
However, not everyone was so amused. A woman named Elise Myette wanted to know why this distraction was preventing her from achieving some alone time at home:
Hi Dominic, @bakerlooline can you please let me know why there's some live rap performance holding up trains and keeping me from my PJs? https://t.co/hTXBp7zEOA
— Elise Myette (@EliseDumont) April 10, 2017
Call me when they do a Burning Man on a pedicab.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The Chemical Generation: Boy George investigates how Ecstasy changed the world
Although I could be wrong, in my opinion these are some of the worst album covers I’ve ever seen. A few of these covers have been making the rounds on the Internet for a least a decade (so they’ll probably look familiar to you). Others were new to me and simply godawful but totally funny at the same time. What in the hell were they thinking?
Feel free to add your “worst album cover” in the comments section here on Dangerous Minds or on our Facebook page. I’m curious to see them. I need a good laugh today. But don’t we all?
More after the jump…
One of the best DJs in American history was Rodney Bingenheimer, whose show Rodney on the ROQ was an important force in bringing punk acts to a wider audience in southern California in the late 1970s. Rodney once described his programming philosophy as “anti-Eagles, anti-beards.”
On November 30, 1979, the Germs joined Rodney in the studio for an hour or so of utterly sophomoric fun. The Germs’ only studio album, (GI), had come out a few weeks earlier; the guys make fun of the producer of the album, Joan Jett, saying that her contribution was “sleeping on the couch.”
The general immaturity of the Germs is fully matched by the callers. Right after a guy calls in just to say “Punk rockers have a 10-inch cock,” another dude calls in wanting to know who this band is. The answer given is “Led Zeppelin.” A few minutes later and they’re reading “satellite numbers” on the air, which was a way you could make free long-distance calls. It’s bullshit but this was just the kind of thing that could have landed KROQ in hot water.
Much of the time Rodney is reading plugs for upcoming gigs, which are just mouthwatering. Bands include the Go-Gos, the Busboys, the Plimsouls, Sham 69, Dead Kennedys, Fear, the Bags, X, and Black Flag.
Around the 32nd minute a woman named Michelle calls the show from the Whiskey, where Madness is playing. One of the gang has some urgent information for her: “Snickers has some really good pot for sale, call 312-960-3662. It might be 714 area code.”
Back in the day, there weren’t very many area codes so it would be assumed that Snickers has a 213 area code, which covered all of downtown Los Angeles, unless otherwise specified. 714 covered Orange County and eastern L.A. County.
As a commenter usefully pointed out, Snickers’ real name was Richard W. Scott—as the singer for the Simpletones and the Klan, he was a well-known part of the L.A. punk scene. Sadly, he died of a drug overdose in 1997.
By the way, I tried calling both of the numbers. They were disconnected. Oh well.
Germs play the Whiskey on December 23, 1979:
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘The New Wave’: dorky Hollywood ’77 report features the Germs & Rodney Bingenheimer
‘Product of America’: Members of the Germs and Meat Puppets resurrect a Phoenix punk band from 1978
Yesterday, we told you about “tax scam records,” and the incredible story of Richard Goldman, the exceptional singer-songwriter who made the shocking discovery that two versions of an album—largely made up of his tunes—had been released without his knowledge. But that’s not the end of this strange tale. Decades had gone by, when Richard happened upon yet another LP of his songs, the vinyl pressed up by a similarly mysterious record company. How did this happen—again?
Sweethearts was released by Granya Records in 1977. The album was comprised of studio demos Richard recorded between 1971 and 1974. Sweethearts was distributed by Album World, a division of International Record Distributing Associates (a/k/a IRDA). Based in Hendersonville, Tennessee, IRDA was formed in 1974 by Hank Levine and Mike Shepherd, two record industry veterans. The year they opened for business, the pair told Billboard magazine that IRDA was an “association of small independent labels, with the strength and distribution of a major label.”
Billboard magazine clipping, 1975.
By 1977, IRDA was manufacturing tax shelter albums for a variety of labels, many of which seem to have been established solely to take advantage of the tax credit. Levine and Shepherd were responsible for creating the finished product and then distributing the records via their Album World and Album Globe subsidiaries. It isn’t known how many tax shelter albums Levine and Shepherd distributed, but it’s estimated to be well over 100 titles, including LPs of Beatles and Led Zeppelin material.
‘The Fantastic Dena Carrol,’ Lanark Records, 1977. Distributed by Album World. The cover art recalls both Marilyn Monroe and a certain Lou Reed LP. Note the price tag.
The conventional wisdom among collectors of “tax scam records” is that Levine and Shepherd sold tax shelters to investors and then created new, fake record labels for each release. But that wasn’t the case. What happened was, the labels—companies that were often established for one-time only tax shelter albums—came to Levine and Shepherd. In the tax shelter orbit, it was known that they could do the required work.
I spoke with Jack Millman, one of the biggest players in the tax shelter game. Millman had a trove of master recordings—obtained through various connections in the music industry—which he would sell to individuals who wanted to create a tax shelter album. He told me about the people in his circle, and that included Levine and Shepherd. As part of a 1985 federal case—in which the investor in a tax shelter record was denied tax credits related to said album—the court noted Millman had recommended the services of IRDA to the investor.
Album Globe distributed the tax shelter record comprised of Christmas messages recorded by the Beatles, but Levine and Shepherd were removed enough from the equation that neither they nor their companies are mentioned in the lawsuit filed by the group’s lawyers.
Granya Records was likely just another tax shelter label hipped to the professional services of Levine and Shepherd. Sweethearts is the only known Granya release. Who exactly was behind Granya is still unknown, though I have a hunch.
Through my research, I learned that Granya, Incorporated was established in 1975, listing a post office box in San Marino—a city in Los Angeles county—as their address. The owner of the company is also the CEO of a real estate agency in Southern California. I called the agency, and left messages requesting an interview on the CEO’s personal voicemail, but have yet to receive a response.
In 1977, the year Sweethearts was released, Granya, Incorporated was the only registered company in the United States using the name “Granya.”
But who provided the tape of Richard’s songs? Keep reading after the jump…
American Motorcyclist Association.
I’ll ‘fess up to owning a Laurel and Hardy t-shirt when I was a child. I also had one with Humphrey Bogart saying something memorable from Casablanca. Damned if I can remember what it was now. This was as far as I would go with my counter-culture wardrobe. Most of my school friends were of similar mind. They opted for plus fours, smoking jackets and a fine selection of Arran-knit cardigans. Life was so different in Scotland then.
Of course, there were some who sported denim jackets decked out in assorted patches imported from America. These mass-produced novelties of old men saying things like “Keep on truckin’” or cartoon dogs offering advice about not eating yellow snow always struck me as frightfully quaint yet rather dumb. I suppose I was just confused as to what these badges were supposed to mean. But what did I know? I was merely an innocent child out of step with the current fashion trends.
Soon nearly every youngster across our fabled tartan nation was dressed-up like Joseph in his amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat or at least a brazen tatterdemalion. These patches all signified the same thing. I am unique. I am an individual. These are my likes and dislikes. And look, haven’t I got a wacky sense of humor?
Sad to say, all of this fun passed me by far too quickly and I missed out in the pleasures of actually becoming an individual. My taste in t-shirts was understandably laughed at by those far more in tune with the heady zeitgeist of the day. Laurel and Hardy could never compete with some twee tee saying Pepsi was the “real thing.”
Most of the fashionable peeps wore the American patches and t-shirts. Soon, these were rivaled by our very own homegrown patches declaring a love for the Bay City Rollers or tops saying “My girlfriend went to Arbroath and all she got me was this lousy t-shirt.” That kind of thing.
Those crazy delights of that faraway decade can be enjoyed with this fine selection of adverts selling counter-culture t-shirts and some ads and fine examples of the quirkier patches which were then available. If this whets the appetite then I suggest a visit to Mitch O’Connell’s blog which will leave you positively sated.
Hustler 1975.
Gilda Radner in CREEM magazine t-shirt ad.
More crazy delights from the heady 1970s, after the jump…
A promotional image for the Japanese horror film ‘Jigoku’ from 1960.
Also known under its alternate title of “The Sinners of Hell,” Jigoku was directed by Nakagawa Nobuo. An idiosyncratic man who was often referred to as “the Alfred Hitchcock of Japan,” Nobuo was known for wearing traditional wooden Japanese footwear (or getas) which are supported by horizontal platform wooden slabs on the soles, around the set of the film, which while a bit strange paled in comparison to the terrifying, gory and very weird things that happened on screen.
Jigoku takes a cue from the real life murder case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. The pair were two rich white college students who murdered a fourteen-year-old boy after planning what they referred to as “the perfect crime” for months. The case was also used as a plotline for both Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope and Richard Fleischer’s 1959 film Compulsion starring Orson Wells and Dean Stockwell. Though the title of the film seems somewhat straightforward, it is anything but. At its heart, it is a sordid tale of guilt and remorse and how our actions in life may well be predictors for what will be waiting for us once we’ve passed into the great beyond. Nobuo’s narrative also follows along with the various regions and consequences associated with the multiple levels of the Japanese conception of Hell, which is an incredibly complex topic to try to explain on its own. One of the reasons I love this movie so much is the fact that it plays out much like a classic horror film. You know, bad things happening to bad people after they do bad things. There’s even a scene that had me recalling one of my favorite horror films, 1980’s grossly unappreciated Motel Hell. Other Japanese horror films that would also take notes from Nobuo’s Jigoku include the 2002 film Ju-On: The Grudge.
Jigoku was the ninth film in a series by Nobuo with Shintoho, one of the largest film studios in Japan. Shintoho’s primary source of revenue was producing genre specific exploitation films. In a strange twist, the studio found itself almost completely broke during the filming. Although shooting was expedited to help cut costs, some of the actors were actually enlisted—or forced—to dig holes on the set for themselves (!) for an unsettling scene that will stick with you like the fake, red gore that gets slung around throughout the film. By the time Jigoku was released, Shintoho had gone bankrupt. This fantastically gross and frightening film was the subject of a great documentary from 2006 titled Building the Inferno: Nobuo Nakagawa and the Making of ‘Jigoku’ which I highly recommend you seek out after first successfully seeking out Jigoku. I’ve included a number of remarkable stills from the film below. Pretty much all of them are NSFW. YAY!
Remember those holes that the actors had to dig for themselves on the set of ‘Jijoku?’ Here’s one of them with the actor inside having his makeup done.
More after the jump…
Defenders of the faith, Judas Priest.
If you’ve found yourself with a bad case of the heavy metal bed spins after reading the title of this post, you have my sympathy fellow headbangers. And I’m going to tell you right now that you are not alone as many Priest fans are completely unaware that the epic 1978 jam most would credit JP for, “The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown),” was originally done by Fleetwood Mac in 1970 while guitarist Peter Green was still with the band. According to folklore surrounding the song, the influential Green has said that it was the product of a drug-soaked dream involving a green dog. While the revelation that “The Green Manalishi” isn’t a Priest original might be a surprise to some, Green’s drug use, especially the psychedelic variety, was well-known. Shortly after the release of what the guitarist referred to as his “least appreciated” song, Green would succumb to the side-effects of his overuse of party favors and mental illness and bow out of Fleetwood Mac.
Interestingly, after Rob Halford returned to Judas Priest in 2004 following his departure in the early 90s, bassist Ian Hill said that when the band finally got to perform again the first song they would rip into was “The Green Manalishi.” Nice. So how did one of the heaviest bands from the NWOBHM get the idea to put their own spin on Joan Baez’s devastating, “so long love” song about her ex, Bob Dylan? Vocalist Halford recalls it happened like this:
It was 1978 and I remember we were all together and someone from the label or the management came in and said, ‘Listen to this song. The label would like you to consider covering it.’ And when we put it on, all we heard was Joan Baez singing this song with the guitar, and your knee-jerk reaction is, ‘Are you fucking crazy? We are a heavy metal band.’ But again, typical of Priest, we’re like, ‘What’s the logic behind this?’ And then after a couple of listens, we decided it was a good song. And a good song will take any kind of interpretation. It opened the door for us in radio in a lot of ways, and I think that for the first time, a metal band was able to get the kind of accessibility.
Dylan and Baez in happier times.
So what did Baez think when she heard Priest’s version of “Diamonds and Rust?” She loved it, just like I do. Now, let’s get on to JP’s cover of a Spooky Tooth song found on the final album from the Carlisle band with their original late-1960s lineup, “Better by You, Better than Me.” If you had a pulse and paid attention to the news during the mid-80s, you will likely recall that the song brought a lot of horrifically unwarranted heat on Priest after the 1985 suicide/suicide attempt of Raymond Belknap and James Vance who both shot themselves on a church playground after a six-hour long alcohol and drug infused session listening to Priest’s 1978 album Stained Class. Belknap’s death was instantaneous, however, and despite the fact that he suffered massive facial injuries, Vance would survive though he never quite recovered from the incident physically or mentally. Three short years later he was dead, too.
In court, the song became one of the primary targets of the prosecution who alleged it was a harbinger for subliminal suicidal messages that infiltrated the drug-addled minds of the two young Judas Priest fans. The story is immensely troubling and it is difficult to comprehend how “Better by You, Better than Me” could be considered the impetus for what Belknap and Vance did at the behest of imaginary hidden messages on the version recorded by Judas Priest.
More after the jump…
The Creation, ‘66-‘67
Hipgnosis is the kind of creative entity that could be said to be exactly the kind of thing that Dangerous Minds readers know about that maybe isn’t common parlance to the rest of the world. If you’re reading this, I’m going to guess that you know all about (to pick almost at random) the cover for Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and the cover for Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy and Peter Gabriel’s first three albums and maybe the words “Throbbing Gristle” flitted through your head as well.
In 1968 Cambridge natives Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell were approached by Pink Floyd to do a cover for A Saucerful of Secrets, and that partnership proved incredibly fruitful, as Hipgnosis was an absolutely perfect correlative for the music of Floyd, both being so very strong on concept and strong on execution at the same time.
I think of an album cover like Hipgnosis’ design for Def Leppard’s second album High and Dry as the kind of thing that cannot happen by accident, you need professionals with vision, daring, and resources to make an image of a perfectly vertical diver flanked by a crowd of people curiously staring upward to work. If you’ve seen that cover just once, that’s enough for you to remember what album it is every time you flip past it in the LP rack.
Hipgnosis did many covers for 10cc and Genesis and Bad Company and Wishbone Ash and many others. What made their ad-ready covers stand out was their enigmatic feel for drama, and they weren’t short on humor either, as their cover for Scorpions’ Lovedrive would establish forevermore. Many of their covers involved high-definition photography and staging, that was their thing.
The style that Hipgnosis so excelled at didn’t live much past the 1970s, but they’ve continued to be active and they did a great many covers including a few for bands you didn’t know they were associated with. On the occasion of Vinyl . Album . Cover . Art: The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue, an utterly mouth-watering book to be released by Thames & Hudson in May (quite affordable at under $30, pre-order here), we call your attention to the sustained excellence of Hipgnosis, even on albums you might not have known or not known they had anything to do with.
Ian Dury, Reasons to be Cheerful
The Police, “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” single
XTC, “This Is Pop?”
Much more after the jump…....
