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Dammit Brooklyn: ‘Upcycled’ ladder shelving unit just $395
11.10.2013
12:01 pm
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ladder shelf
 
“Upcycling” refers to the fabrication of a new product from old materials. How this is different from “recycling,” I cannot exactly pinpoint, except that there appears to be an aesthetic milieu attached to “upcycling”- something of a millennial take on shabby chic. Call something “recycled,” it’s someone else’s old crap. Call something “upcycled,” you can sell it on Etsy.

Take, for example, this… shelf, available for the low, low price of $395, a price for which you could afford an actual antique shelf. The seller, however, appears confident that his creation is just as good as any old piece of legitimate furniture. From the Craigslist ad:

This rustic ladder shelving unit is made from a 12’ ladder with two upholstered burlap boards. The ladder comes apart and folds up and can easily be taken apart for transport. I also have another ladder shelving unit that was made from the same original ladder and is also available upon request.

As one of those working class young Brooklynites currently sitting on a dilapidated IKEA couch, in front of a 3,000 pound television set, which lives on planks of wood perched atop cinder blocks, I know how to be resourceful on a budget, and I know how to make due with cheap and free materials. I also know the difference between real furniture and an amalgam of building materials. And building materials, no matter how expertly stacked, do not cost $395.

Thinking, of course, that this must be a Craigslist prank, I was delighted to see that the seller also has an Etsy store, where he does appear to sell some actually cool stuff. Then I saw this:

“Retro Early 1980s Baby Bouncer”
 
high chair
 
“Retro Animals Print High Chair”
 
bounce chair
 
No, Brooklyn Upcycler! Old baby shit is not “retro!” Old baby shit has been recalled. Because baby furniture used to be comprised of nothing but sharp metal and a series of nooses! Baby technology advances because babies have lost their damn little baby limbs on unsafe high chairs and bouncy seats! Old baby shit is neither functional nor aesthetically pleasing! Damn, Brooklyn Upcycler, sometimes you just have to throw old shit away!
 
Via Brokelyn

Posted by Amber Frost
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11.10.2013
12:01 pm
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Bootylicious fertilizer commercial is unfit for children
11.10.2013
11:30 am
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Thai fertilizer commercial
 
This poor farmer in Thailand is busy struggling with his godforsaken tuber when suddenly, out of nowhere, a “Gangnam”-esque beat starts to pulsate throughout the fields and a trio of go-go dancers materializes and relentlessly gyrates as if their lives depended on it. (The farmer’s horrified reactions to all of this, by the way, are fantastic.)

This commercial takes the notion of “suggestive” to brand new heights, complete with an utterly unmissable visual metaphor for successful completion of the sexual act. Watch it and see.

Seriously, don’t show this to kids. But I laughed my ass off.

And then I promptly went out and bought some of this fertilizer.
 

 
via RocketNews24

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Thai Green Crocodile Curry
You’re A Wild Girl: Thai push-up bra ad will have you do a double take

Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.10.2013
11:30 am
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After The Specials came the bittersweet pop of Fun Boy Three
11.10.2013
11:24 am
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Terry Hall. Terry Hall. Terry Hall. There’s only one Terry Hall. Okay, there’s probably thousands of the bastard, but there’s only one Terry Hall.

That dour-faced grumpy-looking singer and songwriter who has appeared in as many different bands as there are Terry Halls out there.

Hall seems to have been around for decades now—longer than the careers of most pop stars, but he’s never achieved the heights of success, despite having the talent, the idiosyncratic voice and that surly sneer. Maybe it’s because he’s “too English”? Maybe it’s because he’s perceived as awkward, moody, and trouble? Maybe it’s because he’s never kissed America’s ass? Maybe it’s because he’s actually quite shy, suffers from depression, and gets so wound-up about writing songs that the stress gives him eczema? I don’t know. All I do know is that Hall has been involved with some incredible bands and has produced a diverse and impressive array of work, with a dozen pop classic songs, and a clutch of superb albums. But all that doesn’t help, for really, who the fuck is Terry Hall?

There’s that old pop riddle of why some bands manage to keep a shambling career going on the basis of one Top 40 single; while others, with more talent and charm, disappear after a residency of two-to-three years in the Top Ten. Fitting into this latter camp is the Fun Boy Three, the band formed by Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple, after they quit Ska band The Specials.

Hall had tired of the chaos and aggression (drugs, drink and bottles being thrown by skinhead fans) of life with The Specials. And after too many years of near constant touring, Terry, Lynval and Neville found joyous release producing their own distinct and eclectic music in the studio.

It was as if the three young lads had gone on holiday, and packed-in their 9-5 Two-Tone suits for sweat shirts, three-quarter-length cargo pants and Terry’s distinctive Shockheaded Peter haircut. Their appeal was instant and the Fun Boy Three were soon all over the music press, and bouncing around like teenyboppers on Top of the Pops. But underneath it all, they were just the same three lads wanting to make music, as Terry Hall explained it to the student magazine I edited at the time:

”We created one of the biggest images last year with stupid haircuts, but our image is ourselves. I have had enough of telling people that I am just the same as them; they think I’m different because I’m in a group, but it’s just my job. A lot of people think record companies control us, but they just distribute our records; we manage ourselves.”

Lead singers always receive the focus, because they’re the ones out front, saying those things so many young hearts want to hear and understand. Listening to Hall’s lyrics it was obvious here was no ordinary lead singer, with his near monotone vocals and withering gaze, he was the maverick talent at the heart of the Fun Boy Three.

”I come up with most of the ideas for our songs. I take lyric writing very seriously. I would like to produce other people’s music, to give myself ideas as much as anything.”

It’s been said that Hall has to wear white gloves when he writes lyrics because he gets so stressed his hands erupt with eczema. It’s one of the stories that if not true, should be, for it makes Hall seem near saintly in suffering for his art.

Together Fun Boy Three produced two classic pop albums and a handful of hit singles between 1981 and 1983. Their debut, “The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)” may have carried on from where The Specials’ “Ghost Town” left off, but Fun Boy Three were no Specials-lite, and their following singles—“T’Ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It)” (with backing from Bananarama), and “The Telephone Always Rings”—offered jaunty, enjoyable pop.

“Commercial success takes a lot of pressure from the band. There is tension among us but we can talk about it, and we try to avoid each other as much as possible. With The Specials tension split us up; but I think all groups should eventually. Changing helps the progression of music like doing cover versions to take music further, the way we did ‘T’Ain’t What You Do…’ with Banarama. Unlike Phil Collins, his version of ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ took music back about ten years.”

 
funboyfacecoverthree.jpg
 
Hall later jokingly dismissed the band’s first album as “crap,” and that it had only been done to make money, which kinda sums up Terry’s sense of humor. A typical joke by Terry (an avid Manchester United supporter) goes something like this, where you have to imagine he’s reading out soccer results:

“Real Madrid, one. Surreal Madrid, fish.”

I liked their first album, but it was their second (and sadly last) album Waiting, produced by Talking Heads’ David Byrne, that hit me directly between the ears. This was no ordinary record, Waiting is classic pop of an exquisite and thoroughly brilliant and enjoyable kind. From its opening track (a cover of the theme music of the Margaret Rutherford/Miss Marple movie, Murder She Said), through the politically barbed “The More I See (The Less I Believe)” with its Captain Scarlet drum riff, to such pop chart gold as “Tunnel of Love” and “Our Lips Are Sealed” (with Jane Weidlin), Waiting is one of pure pop’s genuine masterpieces, or as Hall described it at the time just “a really good LP.”

”It shows we have grown up in a lot of ways. We are taking our music a lot more seriously than last year. We were enjoying ourselves and hoping that people were enjoying us.”

In 1983, Fun Boy Three appeared on TV show Switch, where they performed “Well Fancy That,” “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “Farmyard Connection.” Their opening number, the jaunty yet hellishly disturbing “Well Fancy That,” detailed Hall’s sex abuse at the hands of a teacher on a “school trip to France.” It’s like a depth charge, as the meaning lyrics only hit you after you’ve started humming along to the carnivalesque tune.

”You took me to France
On the promise of teaching me French,
We were told, to assemble, to meet up at ten,
I was twelve and naive,
You planned out our route
I sat in your car, my suitcase in the boot,
On the M1, and the A1, until we reached Dover,
Through passport control, you pulled your car over
On the liner, we stood on the deck, we left port,
My first time abroad,
A school trip to France.”

Who else but Terry Hall would make such a naked admission in such a public way? As David Byrne pointed out at the time:

“He didn’t tell his mum, he didn’t tell his friends, but he’s going to tell everybody.”

Hall later said writing the song was cathartic:

“It was about me being sexually abused as a kid by a teacher,” says this father of three.

“The only way I could deal with the experience was to write about it, in a song. It was very difficult for me to write, but I wanted to communicate my feelings.”

 

 
I bet it was. Every critic nearly peed their pants when John Lennon sang about his mother obsession and his Primal Scream therapy, but along comes Terry Hall singing about his sex abuse as a child, and not one hack says peep, or even “how brave.” No, I seem to recall they were all rubbing their nipples over Flock of Seagulls’ asymmetric haircuts, and Bono’s enormous ego. Plus ca change..

Terry Hall’s approach to such a horrific event reveals something of the essence of the man. Hall has always done things on his own terms. He has chosen how best to deal with his own private demons; and he has followed his own career path from The Specials, to Fun Boy Three, through The Colourfield, Terry, Blair & Anouchka, then Vegas (with Dave Stewart), to his own solo career and back to The Specials again. Hall is an artist who is only ever been beholden to anyone but himself and his own muse. This has meant some people, some journalists, have pettily and foolishly written Hall off. But wait, stop, and take a look at what he has achieved. Hall has a highly impressive and significant body of work, both as a solo artist and through his various bands. And together with Staple and Golding as the Fun Boy Three, Hall has produced some of pop’s best and most lasting songs.
 

The 1983 Switch performance.
 

 
Fun Boy Three live on ‘Rockpalast’ plus more, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.10.2013
11:24 am
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Guillermo del Toro refused to insert a ‘Poochie’ into ‘Wind in the Willows’
11.09.2013
06:31 pm
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The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show!
 
For my money, “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show,” episode #14 in the 8th season of The Simpsons, ranks as one of the most effortlessly resonant episodes they ever did. If you recall that one, the TV execs, worried about slipping ratings for “The Itchy & Scratchy Show,” decide to insert an “extreme” dog character named “Poochie” into the program. The surfboard-toting Poochie wears sunglasses, a backwards baseball cap, and torn shorts and generally behaves like the parody of edgy youth behavior he was intended to be. Eventually the kids start to hate Poochie because he always drags down the action, and they kill off the character. In a “meta” point to drive the point home, in the episode an additional, sassy Simpsons sibling named “Roy” materializes, whom all the characters acknowledge as always having been there.

The episode is studded with great dialogue, but here’s a bit in which all the relevant nonsense about Poochie is laid out in detail:
 

Network Executive Lady: We at the network want a dog with attitude. He’s edgy, he’s “in your face.” You’ve heard the expression, “let’s get busy”? Well, this is a dog who gets “biz-zay!” Consistently and thoroughly.

Krusty: So he’s proactive, huh?

Network Executive Lady: Oh, God, yes. We’re talking about a totally outrageous paradigm.

Writer: Excuse me, but “proactive” and “paradigm”? Aren’t these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I’m accusing you of anything like that. [pause] I’m fired, aren’t I?

Roger Myers Jr.: Oh, yes.

 
The whole episode is a stone classic, and (in my mind at least, and I know I’m not alone) the word “Poochie” ever since has always been synonymous with gratuitous attempts to pander to audiences.

Everybody gets that Poochie-type behavior is a daily occurrence in Hollywood—but surely the makers of The Simpsons were exaggerating, right? To judge from the experience of Guillermo del Toro, apparently not!

Around 2003 del Toro was attached to a Disney animated adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s 1905 children’s favorite The Wind in the Willows. In an interview from Rotten Tomatoes’ “Dinner and the Movies” series, del Toro revealed that he had to leave the project because of the Disney execs’ request to “Poochie” up the character of Toad:

Wind in the Willows, which I adapted to do animated. ... “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” and all that - it was a beautiful little book, and then I went to meet with the executives and they said, “Could you give Toad a skateboard and make him say, ‘Radical, dude!’ things,” and that’s where I said, “It’s been a pleasure!”

The section with the Wind in the Willows stuff is embedded below, but you can watch the entire interview (12 files) if you like.

All in all, del Toro’s decisions to walk away from material—which happened often, apparently—seemed to work out well. He’s one of Hollywood’s most inventive and sought-after directors, and he just published a terrific book called Cabinet of Curiosities which we posted about a month ago.
 

 
Thank you Mark Davis!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Watching 100+ episodes of The Simpsons at the same time
The Simpsons laughing it up in Chernobyl
Guillermo del Toro’s incredible ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ sketchbooks to be published

Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.09.2013
06:31 pm
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‘The Visitor’: The brown acid of science fiction films
11.09.2013
03:13 pm
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To attempt to explain the plot of The Visitor would be like trying to draw a portrait of a frog while it was being liquefied in a blender. There’s just no way. Made by an Italian crew and shot in Atlanta, Georgia, this 1979 sci-fi/horror schlockfest is one of those flicks that has to be seen to be believed. Words won’t do the madness justice.

Here’s what I can tell you: The Visitor stars some A-list actors that must have been looking for some quick lunch money, including John Huston, Glenn Ford (is that a herpes sore on his lower lip?), Shelly Winters, Lance Henriksen and Mel Ferrer. It also features a cameo by Sam Peckinpah. Everyone involved seems heavily medicated. The film twerks along like it was edited by a blind man with a meat cleaver. The musical score is full of a lot of bombast signifying nothing. Every time Huston appears on screen an orchestra blasts an over-the-top “Hawaii Five-O “-like theme that probably herniated the entire horn section. It makes absolutely no sense because Huston doesn’t do much more than lurch stiff-legged through the movie like a man who’s taken a dump in his slacks. I guess the director was so thrilled to have Huston on the set he instructed the composer, Franco Micalizzi, to herald the crusty old actor’s every appearance with God-like fanfare.

With its cast of zoned-out actors, cheesy special effects, incoherent plot and surreal dialog, The Visitor is a bizarre and surprising experience that manages to be awful while keeping you in some kind of hypnagogic thrall. There are moments so wildly improbable and disconnected from any conventional type of narrative that the movie veers into the very rare space inhabited by the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky (“El Dopo”), Luis Buñuel , David Lynch and John Waters. Of course, none of this is intentional but it’s the kind of happy accident that makes really bad movies butt up against really great ones. I mean could John Waters have come up with anything as inspired and demented as Shelly Winters dressed up in a maid’s uniform singing “Shortnin’ Bread”? Well, The Visitor‘s director Giulio Paradisi did and for that he has earned my begrudging love and so has his film. That and the fact that the first few minutes of The Visitor is an eerie bad acid trip that is genuinely unsettling and super evocative of Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain.
 

 
The Visitor is one of those demented flicks that falls into the “so bad it’s good” category and films like that are rarer than people realize. It takes a certain genius to fabricate cinematic fever dreams this wonderfully warped. It made me giddy. Enjoy it with some Thorazine-laced popcorn.

The Visitor is being distributed by the always reliably weird Drafthouse Films. It has already opened in New York, L.A. and Austin and should be opening soon in a theater near you or on VOD. See the release schedule here
 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.09.2013
03:13 pm
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‘Clash fan’ at Universal Music Group sends the most idiotic ‘cease & desist’ letter, perhaps ever…
11.08.2013
06:23 pm
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When art hero Billy Childish released his “Thatcher’s Children” pastiche/tribute/piss-take to the tune of The Clash’s “London Calling” back in 2008, probably the last thing he thought he would get would be a disgruntled letter from a conservative Clash fan, offended by the way Childish supposedly misrepresented the politics of the notoriously left-wing group. But (apparently) he did receive such a letter and it came from a legal representative of the Universal Music Group. At the end of an otherwise ordinary cease and desist letter, the UMe attorney just couldn’t resist adding the following clueless coda:

On a personal note as a fan of The Clash may i point out that your illegal use of the music of London Calling politicises the original tune in a way never intended by members of the group.

I appreciate that in its formative years The Clash may have been perceived as “anti-establishment” but the anti-right wing message contained in the lyric of Mr Chyldish is both insulting to the memory of Baroness Thatcher and President Reagan, and surely a sentiment that the mature songsmith Strummer would never have condoned. Such association could also jeopordise future commercial interest in London Calling by corporations who both fund and support politics that you misrepresent and hold up to ridicule, thereby depriving his family of income.

Wrong ‘em, boyo! I mean how much more wrong could this child of Thatcher possible be? Surely if Joe Strummer had outlived the Iron Lady, David Cameron would have asked him to speak at her funeral! Afterwards they could kick back at Strummerville!

To commemorate this stupidity of this “Clash fan,” Billy Childish is releasing a limited edition box set of “Thatcher’s Children” featuring a “God Save Margaret Thatcher” poster image he did in collaboration with Sex Pistols artist Jamie Reid and a sleeve that, ahem, strongly alludes to Pennie Smith’s iconic London Calling cover photo of Paul Simonon smashing his bass guitar (the lettering on that was inspired by an Elvis cover, so it’s not like there wasn’t already a precedent for this kind of thing. Quite a long precedent!)

Childish is also including a lithograph of this classically clueless letter from the Tory nincompoop at UMe, who deserves this disrespect, every drop of it… You can order it from L-13. You can also read the full letter there.
 

 
Below: Even better than the original?
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.08.2013
06:23 pm
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‘Danse Macabre’: The twitch of death
11.08.2013
03:15 pm
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The multiple award-winning 2008 short film Danse Macabre is the work of visual effects director Pedro Pires and the celebrated Canadian theatrical artist Robert Lepage. In it, a death sets the stage for a dark choreography:

For a period of time, while we believe it to be perfectly still, lifeless flesh responds, stirs and contorts in a final macabre ballet.

Are these spasms merely erratic motions or do they echo the chaotic twists and turns of a past life?

The original idea and the choreography are by AnneBruce Falconer. Pedro Pires and Robert Lepage have collaborated on a new feature length film, Triptyque, based on Lepage’s ambitious theatrical project Lipsynch.

Nothing particularly lurid here, still you might not want to watch this where you work…
 

 
Thank you, Christian Rivera!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.08.2013
03:15 pm
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John Lydon reveals Mick Jagger ‘secretly’ paid Sid Vicious’ legal fees
11.08.2013
01:15 pm
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jaggersid.jpg
 
John Lydon may have said The Rolling Stones looked “silly” performing at Glastonbury earlier this year, but the former Sex Pistol and PiL frontman has only praise for Mick Jagger.

In an interview with the Daily Record, Lydon has revealed that Jagger ‘secretly’ paid Sid Vicious’ legal fees, after the Pistol’s bass player had been charged with the murder of girlfriend Nancy Spungen. As Lydon told journalist John Dingwall of the Record:

“Nancy Spungen was a hideous, awful person who killed herself because of the lifestyle and led to the destruction and subsequent death of Sid and the whole fiasco. I tried to help Sid through all of that and feel a certain responsibility because I brought him into the Pistols thinking he could handle the pressure. He couldn’t. The reason people take heroin is because they can’t handle pressure. Poor old Sid.

“Her death is all entangled in mystery. It’s no real mystery, though. If you are going to get yourself involved in drugs and narcotics in that way accidents are going to happen. Sid was a lost case. He was wrapped firmly in Malcolm’s shenanigans. It became ludicrous trying to talk to him through the drug haze because all you would hear was, ‘I’m the real star around here’. Great. Carry on. We all know how that’s going to end. Unfortunately, that is where it ended. I miss him very much. He was a great friend but when you are messing with heroin you’re not a human being. You change and you lose respect for yourself and everybody else.

“The only good news is that I heard Mick Jagger got in there and brought lawyers into it on Sid’s behalf because I don’t think Malcolm lifted a finger. He just didn’t know what to do. For that, I have a good liking of Mick Jagger. There was activity behind the scenes from Mick Jagger so I applaud him. He never used it to advance himself publicity-wise.”

Read the whole interview here.

Below, Sid Vicious near last TV appearance on Efrom Allen’s Underground NY Manhattan Cable show from September 18th, 1978. Vicious appeared alongside Nancy Spungen, Stiv Bators and Cynthia Ross (of The B Girls). Spungen was dead less than a month later.
 

 
Via the Daily Record

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.08.2013
01:15 pm
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Hüsker Dü crank out ferocious ‘Pink Turns to Blue’ and ‘Eight Miles High’ on French TV, 1985
11.08.2013
12:59 pm
Topics:
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SST tour
Hüskers, UCLA, 1985, Ackerman Ballroom
 
Here’s a French TV news report from 1985 about this American punk band Hüsker Dü. The YouTube filename indicates October 1985, which I’m sure is correct, but the footage is from earlier in the year, I think. According to the video this was shot at “UCLA, Westwood”—research indicates that the Hüskers hit UCLA in March, as part of “The Tour,” a label showcase tour that SST put together that included The Minutemen and The Meat Puppets as well, to hit a few California locales. So despite the French voiceover, those punkers and freaks outside the venue in the footage are probably not French, they’re probably from SoCal. Can anyone identify the building looming behind them in the interview portion? UCLA campus, right?

According to reports (1, 2) that UCLA show was marred by an incident in which someone in the crowd dinged Grant Hart with a beer bottle.

Anyway, enjoy la musique punk du Midwest, complete with Bob’s 1975 Ibanez Flying V and incontrovertible evidence that without Grant Hart, there’s no Dave Grohl.
 

 
Thank you Aaron Civil War!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
WTF? Robert Palmer covers Hüsker Dü then Sonic Youth covers Robert Palmer
Can we talk? Do you remember Hüsker Dü‘s 1987 appearance on ‘The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers’

Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.08.2013
12:59 pm
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Animation cels from ‘Yellow Submarine’ to be auctioned off soon
11.08.2013
12:31 pm
Topics:
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On November 20 & 24, Heritage Auctions in Beverly Hills will be holding a huge event, the Animation Art Signature Auction. The sale features a ton of truly amazing items—there are animation cels from classic Disney films (plus some Disneyland concept art paintings), Mr. Magoo, Dr. Seuss, Peanuts and many more. The public can walk through the items starting on the 19th. All in all, there will be 126,980 lots for sale.

But what is of special interest are the 80 pieces from The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine film, which are expected to collectively sell for over $125,000. Still, at this point, with the auction two weeks away, some of the Yellow Submarine cels are pretty cheap. Some haven’t even been bid on, while others are ranging from $20 to a few thousand dollars.
 

 

 

 
More cels after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.08.2013
12:31 pm
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