“Kings Of The Road” by Syd Brak, 1985.
 
34 years ago, art director Paul Rodriguez of the Athena art retailer company (established in 1964) had an epiphany—and his vision would go on to become the best-selling poster in British history. Shot by photographer Spencer Rowell in London in May of 1986, Rodriguez’s conception of a shirtless male model holding a newborn baby boy, “Man and Baby” (better known as “L’Enfant”) sold five million copies. Rodriguez got rich, Rowell bought himself an airplane and the model, Adam Perry, claimed that the touching yet titular photo got him laid three thousand times. One of Athena’s other superstars was illustrator Syd Brak.

Before relocating to London in 1978, Brak was working as the assistant art director for advertising firm J. Walter Thompson in his birthplace of South Africa. After making the leap to London, Brak’s work caught the attention of Athena in the early 80s. Long before “L’Enfant” became the it image of the 80s, Brak’s 1982 airbrushed “Long Distance Kiss,” would become the number one selling poster in the world. Here’s Brak on his early work with Athena:

“At the time, the teenagers (in the late 70s) were into punk. Punk was a nice look, very colorful—it was happy. But essentially it was also rather dirty at the same time. And I imagined what would this be like if an Italian designer got a hold of this look and what he would do with it? And that was the result. Airbrushing is a very laborious technique. It makes me very proud.”

The popularity of “Long Distance Kiss” was the first in a kiss-themed series Athena had Brak create to break through to the teenage girl market, who, in Brak’s words, “aspire to maturity and sophistication.” Brak’s glossy, airbrushed images featuring spikey glam rock-colored hair and equally eye-popping David Bowie-esque makeup helped fuel the boundary-pushing looks of the New Romantic movement. They are also reminiscent of looks created by two popular makeup artists from the early 1970s, Pierre La Roche, and legendary Australian makeup artist Richard Sharah—both of whom worked extensively with Bowie, Steve Strange of Visage, Gary Numan, and Toyah. The decade of the 80s belonged to Brak and other airbrush artists, as the medium took over art in that decade, appearing on everything from book covers, to albums, VHS tapes, and of course, posters. Brak was one of the most popular/in-demand artists of the decade. If you are a child of the 80s, Brak’s artwork will be instantly recognizable to you, much like the artwork of Patrick Nagel, intrinsically linked to the neon decade as well. 
 

“Long Distance Kiss.”
 

 

“Electric Kiss.”
 

“Wired for Sound.”
 
Much more after the jump…

 
When it was originally founded by Mark Fischer (along with his pal Rob Syers), Chicago’s SKiN GRAFT was a purveyor of underground/DIY comics and low-brow punk ‘zines ethos. Conceived and furiously drawn by the pair, Fischer’s and Syers’ comics were sold at punk shows in St. Louis, at high schools during lunch, and local comic and record shops. Thanks to several characters they created, such as “The Zeppelin Patrol” a group of outer space hippies (lovingly inspired by one of the kings of underground comics, the creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Gilbert Shelton), “Serious Brown” (best described as a private dick in Muppet form), and “Hot Satan” (who is still proudly represented in the labels logo), SKiN Graft would soon catch the attention of comics giant Caliber Press. At the time, Caliber was considered one of the largest publishers of indie comics in the U.S., and published two issues of SKiN GRAFT, distributing them worldwide before SKiN GRAFT decided to switch gears and try their hand at putting out records. Their first, with St. Louis, Missouri math rock band Dazzling Killmen, combined both aggressive punk rock jams with, of course, comics, for a 7” split in 1991 with Minneapolis spaz-punk band Mother’s Day.

Jumping to 1995 would see the SKiN GRAFT release SIDES 1-4, the first installment in a series of singles and comic book sets featuring bands performing songs “influenced” by AC/DC. Artists on the four-song record included Shellac (formed by Steve Albini and drummer Todd Trainer with the former bassist for the Volcano Suns, Bob Weston), Brise-Glace, Big’n, and Chicago-based noise rock band, U.S. Maple. The release included “crossover” comics—think Batman vs. The Beatles (issue #222, 1970), or one of my personal favorites, the comic collision of Star Trek and the X-Men, in 1996. Instead of having the comics included in SIDES 1-4 directly associated with AC/DC, Fischer and Syers instead hit up their comic catalog, resurrecting Hot Satan, Johnny Oedipus, and Serious Brown in new comics. According to Fischer, the idea for SIDES 1-4 was also inspired by the noise put out by Rene Herbst and his label Gasoline Boost Records in Germany (which included Big’n).
 

Tail Spins #19 (December 1994/January1995). Here Fischer and Syers paid homage to one of the very first comics owned by Fischer, Captain America #203 while homaging the great Jack Kirby. This image is a part of the digital comics released today with ‘SIDES 1-4.’
 
SIDES 1-4 was only produced on vinyl, and noise-loving music fans consider the album a highlight of their record collection. Starting on June 5th and coinciding with Bandcamp’s June “fee-waving day,” SKiN GRAFT will give fans a chance to digitally download a newly remastered SIDES 1-4, various comic sets and a limited number of 7” vinyl copies. All this talk about Hot Satan, AC/DC, and loud, rowdy punk rock got me, an AC/DC lifer, wondering about how some of the creative minds got behind this project, and how they got their first dose of a band beloved by everyone. I mean, have you ever met a person who didn’t like AC/DC? I know I never have. Here’s how U.S. Maple guitarist Todd Rittman, Bob Weston, SKiN GRAFT’s Mark Fischer remember the first time they had their young minds blown by Australia’s greatest export, AC/DC:

Todd Rittman:

“I remember when Highway to Hell (1979) came out. I was 10 and just starting taking an interest in rock music. My best friend had an older brother who would play us his records, and I remember having my mind totally blown forever by AC/DC, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin. The sound of the guitars and tribal drums, Bon Scott’s voice, and how truly happy he was to be doomed to eternal damnation all really impressed me. All I ever heard growing up was the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. Hard rock brought a whole new palette of colors to my brain. I used to go to a record store called The Flip Side that was within walking distance of the townhouse I grew up in, just look at the LP covers and plan which ones I would spend my money on (once I ever got any). I probably spent the most time looking at the cover of If You Want Blood You Got It (1978) wondering what kind of deranged criminal mind would think of such an image (and actually wondering if it was real!) I’ve never been the same.”

Bob Weston:

“I first heard AC/DC every morning from a boombox that the leather-vested burnouts blasted on the bus to junior high school in 1977. I loved it. Maybe it was “Dirty Deeds”...?”

Mark Fischer:

“I felt the same way as Todd! AC/DC’s cover art seemed a lot seedier and more dangerous than their contemporaries. The album cover of Highway to Hell scared me in all of the right places. I knew my parents would not approve, but it was irresistible - like low hanging forbidden fruit.”

So as we’re all nodding in agreement about Fischer, Weston, and Rittman’s feelings on AC/DC, I have more good news regarding upcoming plans to expand on SKiN GRAFT’s musical exploration and experimentation of/with AC/DC. More covers are planned for the forthcoming SIDES 5-6 such as “Let There Be Rock” by the thunderous Zeni Geva (Japan), and everyone’s favorite AC/DC sing-along about a ding-dong’s two best buddies, “Big Balls” by Palace Contribution (featuring Will Oldham aka, psilocybin connoisseur Bonnie “Prince” Billy). All four songs from SIDES 1-4 can be cranked all the way up below and purchased right here while you scroll through a few of the fantastic accompanying comics in all their delinquent glory.
 

 

An assortment of SKiN GRAFT comic characters.
 

 

ENTER THE KARATE CHIMP!
 

A promotional ad for ‘SIDES 1-4.’
 
HT: With thanks to Mark Fischer and Ron Kretch.

 
On May 29, CAN founder Irmin Schmidt will mark his 83rd birthday with the release of Nocturne, a live recording of his piano performance at last year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. A lightly edited transcript of our two recent conversations by phone, quarantine-hushed Los Angeles to nightingale-loud Roussillon, follows.

How is quarantine in Provence?

I’m in the countryside, and everything is calm and beautiful. 

What do you remember about the performance in Huddersfield that this record comes from?

Since it was the first concert I did—real concert, I did single performances on prepared piano, small things, but it was the first real concert with the prepared piano, with my new thing—I was quite excited about it, and didn’t know what will happen. 

What impressed me was, during the performance, I thought the public had disappeared! It was so silent, I thought maybe they [chuckles]... it sounded as if I’m all alone. They liked it! They listened so concentrated. It went very well.

I actually wondered—on the recording there’s so little audience noise, I wondered if it had been taken out. But no, they were really listening.

They were really extremely silent. There was one very, very little cough, once, in the whole thing. And then the guy afterwards came to me and said, “Excuse me, I had to cough once.” I couldn’t believe it! They were—I mean, as if they weren’t there. 

But it was pure concentration there! There were lots of people afterward coming to me and said they were really sort of hypnotized, they really listened. And that was a great compliment, because I didn’t know how would it be. It was a new thing performing this. Although I have, in the Sixties, I made a lot of piano recitals with contemporary music: Messiaen, and Webern, and Stockhausen Klavierstücke, and Cage, a lot of Cage. But this is long ago; in between there were some different things, and that was the first time I was all alone again, facing a public with my piano, and it was wonderful.

It’s sad; I have so many offers now to play all over—in Norway, in Warsaw, in Prague, in Germany and in France—and I can’t do it.

Because of the virus.

Because of the virus, yeah. I don’t worry about it so much because I’m so much better off where I am, in this beautiful countryside. I’m much better off than so many other people in towns. So I don’t… lamentate.

If you have to be stuck somewhere, I would think Provence is not a bad place.

Exactly, [laughs] especially where I am, I mean, I have a big piece of land [signal breaks up] I can be alone and it’s beautiful, it’s calm. No reason to complain.
 

Photo by Lucia Margarita Bauer
 
Have you noticed any changes in the environment?

Not really, because I’m living really in the countryside. I mean, it’s springtime, it’s wonderful. There is no change visible because there has never been any traffic in that part of the world. 

I mean, the only thing I realize is there are less planes going above our area. But I don’t know, if that affected something, it’s not visible. Actually I can’t say I noticed anything in the environment, because I am not in the town. In towns, everybody tells me it’s totally different; there are more birds and animals. But where I am in the countryside, it’s like always.

But there is one strange thing. You know, our house is called Les Rossignols, our address, and that means “the nightingales,” because there have always been nightingales. There is some water, there is a pond and there is a creek down there, and there have always been some nightingales. This year, it’s double as much, which is the only remarkable thing. There are more nightingales this spring, singing, which is wonderful. I don’t know why. It cannot be because it’s more clean where I am, but maybe it was easier for them to come, I don’t know. But that’s actually the only change, and that can be just a a coincidence. That must not necessarily be due to the lockdown. 

Can you tell me about the piano pieces in some more detail? I’m curious first of all what the equipment is. I know on the studio album you have two different pianos, one prepared and one unprepared.

Right. Yeah.

Which I think has been your practice for a while, right? 

Yeah, I have two grands in my house. For the studio record, I prepared one and left the other one unprepared, just untouched. On some pieces, I only played the prepared—which, when I say “prepared,” never is the whole piano prepared. It’s never all strings prepared. It’s sort of half of the piano. Because I love this kind of… these vibrations, these sounds of the real piano sound with the prepared, which has harmonics, which create a strange kind of tension between the not-prepared and well-tuned strings, and these prepared ones which have very complex harmonics. I love that. 

Yeah, on the studio record, I played two pianos. In performance, in a concert, I can do only one piano, so it’s half-prepared. And you hear it on the Huddersfield recording, there is this mixture between the sounds of the real piano and the prepared piano, and that’s what I love so much about it, because it makes this kind of tension in the harmonics, and these vibrations which are created by the difference of tuned and prepared [strings]. 

When I made the studio recording, I started with a prepared piano, and the first piece of the studio record is totally improvised. One go. I mean, the time it is on the record, that’s the time I played, and there’s nothing edited and nothing changed and manipulated. That’s how it started. 

And then I made some field recordings. I have a little pond, and around the pond there is bamboo and reeds. So I went through them, and sometimes sort of moved them rhythmically, sometimes just went through this, and we recorded that, and I played to that.

Continues after the jump…

The cover of Frank Zappa’s 1983 album, ‘The Man From Utopia’ featuring the artwork of Tanino Liberatore.
 
Tanino Liberatore, (born Gaetano Liberatore) may be best known to music fans for his association with Frank Zappa. The two became friendly after Liberatore created a cyborg version of Frank for the futuristic cover of Zappa’s album, The Man From Utopia (1983). Liberatore named his illustration of Zappa, Frank Xerox—a hat-tip to his fiendish Frankenstein comic character RanXerox, a revered reprobate and the subject of a long series of Italian comic strips, comics and graphic novels dating back to 1978 created by Liberatore and Stefano Tamburini. Here’s Liberatore from a 2012 interview on meeting Zappa in Italy while he was in town doing shows in Naples and Rome in 1982:

“I was at the Naples and Rome concerts where nothing special happened. After the Naples concert, we went dining together to discuss the cover. In the beginning, it should have been a six pages comic strip, but the project was later reduced. Since I don’t like covers with a lot of details or messages, and I prefer a strong drawing to leave a powerful impact, I proposed to draw the front cover according to my approach, leaving to him any decision concerning the back cover. Frank accepted. So in the back, I drew the promoters who worry only about sniffing cocaine, The Pope, the gal who let Zappa know about RanXerox.”

The “gal” Liberatore is referring to was a journalist for the Italian magazine Frigidaire, early publishers and supporters of RanXerox. Her illustrated image even appears in the apocalyptic crowd scene on the back cover of The Man From Utopia, where she is depicted topless, thrusting a copy of Frigidaire above her head. The journalist, only identified by her first name Valentina, played a crucial role in Zappa’s awareness of Libertore, who went into detail about his first encounter with Zappa leading to the infamous album cover:

“And he just saw RanXerox, at least that’s what they told me, he threw out the girl and took what was his Italian handyman, who was from Rome, Bassoli (Italian rock journalist Massimo Bassoli, the editor of Tutti Frutti magazine and friend of Zappa’s), and he told to track me down because he wanted to talk to me because he liked the characters. Then Bassoli found us, it was me and Stefano (Tamburini ), at the Excelsior in via Veneto, we went to his room, where there was his bodyguard, a huge black man, and a few people. And he came out: ‘Hey, Liberatore! After Michelangelo, you are the greatest Italian artist!’ And he believed it, he didn’t say it to piss me, on the contrary. And this was the first impact. Frank Zappa was one of my myths, also because the myths that I had were more musicians than designers, apart from Michelangelo and Caravaggio. Finding myself there in the presence of his holiness, even if records had come out at the time that I didn’t like so much.”

 

A photo of Tanino Liberatore (left), Stefano Tamburini (right), watching Frank Zappa (center) flip through the copy of Frigidaire featuring RanXerox. Image source.
 
As usual, Zappa was far ahead of the cool curve, and it would be about five years before Ranx flipped the lids of adult-oriented comic fans in the U.S. when he showed up in the July 1983 edition of Heavy Metal. As a nearly life-long comic/graphic novel fan, I first became aware of Liberatore and Ranx by way of Spanish comic MAXX, when Ranx appeared on the cover of the January 1986 issue. Initially, Liberatore’s artistic interest was firmly rooted in architecture before he decided to take up illustration for print advertising in 1975. He would meet Tamburini a few years later, and “RanXerox,” the first iteration of RanXerox, would violently spring to life.

Sadly, Tamburini, a hugely respected graphic artist in his own right, would pass away entirely too young, just months before his 31st birthday in 1986. Liberatore would abandon RanXerox and comics for years until he revived his mechanical antihero in the 90s as a character in books by Jean-Luc Fromental and Alain Chabat. His work has also been featured in Hustler, Métal Hurlant, and thankfully, several books, including La Donne (2012), and the soon-to-be-released Ranx: The Complete Collection due in June of 2020, containing his vicious, unsettling, and (at times) confusing illustrations. After the initial shock of seeing Liberatore’s work for the first time 34 years ago (at Newbury Comics in Harvard Square), the impact of his wild style has not diminished. And, if you are not familiar with his work, it will likely have the same effect on your eyeballs as well. That said, with a few exceptions, many of the images in this post are NSFW.
 
\
The back cover of ‘The Man From Utopia.’
 

A sketch by Liberatore for the back cover of ‘The Man From Utopia.’ More can be seen here.
 

A sketch of Zappa by Liberatore.
 

Another sketch of Zappa by Liberatore.
 
More after the jump…

 
Afrofuturism—the term was coined by Mark Dery in a 1993 essay titled “Black to the Future” where he mused about Black science-fiction and art—is a genre agnostic aesthetic philosophy at the intersection of the African diaspora, technology, sci-fi, fashion and what comes next. Whatever that will be. The great Sun Ra is the spiritual godfather of Afrofuturism, his infinite worldview as well as his intergalactic person are the very personification of what the word stakes out. George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic is very Afrofuturist. Rammellzee is very Afrofuturist. So are Wu Tang Clan, MF DOOM, Grace Jones, Janelle Monáe, Lee “Scratch” Perry, FKA twigs, Detroit techno music and Jimi Hendrix. Author Samuel R. Delany is certainly an Afrofuturist and so was Octavia Butler. The Black Panther movie was hella Afrofuturist. I think you must get the gist of it by now.

Visionary photographer Gerald Jenkins’ exquisite new coffee table book, It’s After the End of the World is a fantastic exploration of Afrofuturism, in image, and in text provided for Jenkins’ project by Darius James, Jake-ann Jones, Carl Martin, Little Annie, Michael Gonzales and Norman Douglas. It’s one of the most exciting and impressive things I’ve seen in ages, a truly unique, very personal and vibrant statement. Aside from the quality of the work, it’s an exquisite publication, befitting what is inside its covers, that will look fantastic sitting in your living room. The book is very much an objet d’art itself, 344 glossy pages bound in a sturdy green hardback cover with a black and gold book band. I could say more, but the images, and the artist, can speak for themselves.

Jenkins describes It’s After the End of the World as:

“... a picture novel study of the human spirit in the fantastic and magical and the human soul in the metaphorical and physical”

I asked Gerald Jenkins a few questions via email.

Dangerous Minds: What’s your background?

Gerald Jenkins: In 1985 I was a nightclub DJ and attending a film and TV course in Australia. The Residents toured their 13th Anniversary show and I took some pictures which made me change direction and pursue photography. From there I became a freelance photographic assistant and started my own practice in 1990, instigating two projects. One being musicians’ portraits backstage and the other on Australian indigenous cultures. The indigenous project was a harrowing experience which alienated me from many aspects of Australian society. I exiled to Madrid in Spain in 1999 but soon realized it could only be a temporary solution. In 2001 I moved to London and concentrated solely on my portraiture of musicians backstage.

What inspired It’s After the End of the World?

Gerald Jenkins: I first met the Sun Ra Arkestra in 2003 and began discussing theories on indigenous practice with several members. Theories of time and space which I decided to explore further. Researching Sun Ra and his philosophies was the catalyst and I have been working with the Arkestra themselves in parallel to this completed book since 2009.

Was the work in the book done specifically for this project?

Gerald Jenkins: Yes. I was working in isolation. Aside from about ten pictures in the book I conceived the images in solo.

How did you go about selecting the writers you collaborated with? They’re all such unique—and very specific—voices.

Gerald Jenkins: Initially I only had poems and quotes by Sun Ra, and I was in discussion with KainThePoet to include handwritten lyrics to his piece “Black Satin Amazon Fire Engine Cry Baby” from the album The Blue Guerrilla. My publisher Art Yard suggested I contact Darius James, which I duly did and from there Darius and I devised the structure to include commissioned prose for all the individual chapters. Darius was initially in direct contact with the various writers instructing them in the chosen themes, and I had created layouts of the individual chapters that the writers were given in order to respond to. The written texts are crucial to the work and have been immeasurable in terms of transforming the message. It was easily the greatest enjoyment, personally, to have these brilliant texts accompany my pictures and transform the perception of content.

It feels like the vision that you explore in the book was prescient. How does it feel looking out your window and suddenly it IS after the end of the world?

Gerald Jenkins: It’s a perplexing thought but I’m going to quote Sun Ra’s mentor Alton Abraham on this.

It is the world we currently live in that is a myth.

Alton states “We had studied the prophecy of the pyramids, the earth stopped back in the thirties, ‘round 1933 I think. After the year 2000: ‘It’s After the End of the World don’t you know that yet?’ This would explain why the spirit of the people is in disarray, because the leaders haven’t taught them properly. They’re teaching from tradition.”

You can order It’s After the End of the World directly from the artist here.

“Ancient Black”

“Don’t You Want to Know The Greater Mysteries of the Universe?”

“Jupiter Way, with Jodie Turner Smith”

“Misfortune’s Wealth”

More after the jump…

A photo taken by Clay Geerdes of author and Cockette Fayette Hauser wearing a homemade grass skirt ensemble.

The catastrophic effect of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has hit anyone working in the gig economy incredibly hard. Book tours over the years have become big business for authors and independent bookstores hosting author events in support of newly released literature. Many authors, set to embark on Spring/Summer book tours, have had to scrap their plans, with some publishers even holding back on releasing their books. Thankfully, this was not the path chosen by drag trailblazer Fayette Hauser, she of the pioneering gender-bending performance troupe The Cockettes. It is my great privilege to be able to share a bit about her glittery, LSD-drenched book, The Cockettes: Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy—a magnificent 352-page volume detailing the three-years the Cockettes conquered San Francisco and turned the drag community on its magnificently wigged head.

As Hauser recounts in the book, she was “rendered speechless” by a hit of strong acid at a party and soon found herself sitting on the floor only able to sit upright with help from the wall behind her. During this voyage, Hauser became acutely aware of the individuality of the people surrounding her to the point where she was not able to recognize their gender or her own. The year was 1968, and the Summer of Love had led masses of people to detach themselves from modern conformity, liberating their ability to express themselves freely. Eventually, The Cockettes would pave the way for others, whether gay, straight, bisexual, or pansexual, with their provocative performances and their communal way of life by living by the term “Gender Fuck.” And if you’re wondering what exactly is “Gender Fuck,” it made sense to go directly to the source, Hauser herself, to help define this very direct description of a person not identifying as exclusively male or female:

“The term Gender Fuck emerged as many of our descriptive phrases did, in an Acid flash! This term, gender fuck, became a way of describing our look, which was highly personalized, very conceptual, and without gender boundaries. We wanted to mystify the public so that the onlooker would declare, ‘What Is that? Is that a boy or a girl?’ We wanted to open people’s minds to the terrain between the tired gender binary models, which were much too mentally binding and boring as well. We unleashed that open space in between. We explored the fluid nature of the Self, which led to the term Gender Fluid. I think we succeeded in opening that Pandora’s Box of multi-dimensional, organic self-expression through body decor.”

In 1968, after graduating with a BFA in painting from Boston University, Hauser, a New Jersey native, moved out to San Francisco. Soon she would form a collective with like-minded, free-spirited people, and the Cockettes would officially begin their reign in 1969—specifically on the stage of the Palace Theater in North Beach on New Year’s Eve. The ever-growing troupe would first communally inhabit a grand Victorian-style home on 2788 Bush Street and then, after a fire rendered the home uninhabitable, a building on Haight—one of San Francisco’s most notorious streets. There was also a home known as The Chateau on 1965 Oak Street, where members of The Cockettes spent their time devising their next performance, creating costumes and personas, and tripping on LSD. The Cockettes took so much acid that they would often become non-verbal. This would lead to other forms of communication by way of personal adornment using makeup, clothing, and anything else that would convey the silent message emanating by the troupes’ diverse members, including 22-year-old Los Angeles native Sylvester James Jr., soon to become R&B disco queen Sylvester. Before his short stint with The Cockettes, Sylvester was a part of a group called The Disquotays—a performance collective comprised of black crossdressers and transgender women.
 

Sylvester during his short time with The Cockettes. Photo by Clay Geerdes. Unless otherwise noted, all photos provided to Dangerous Minds are for exclusive use.
 
The Cockettes’ performances were the be-there affair for all the counterculture chicks, dicks, and everyone in between. When director John Waters touched down in San Francisco to show off his 1969 film Mondo Trasho, the screening landed the director in jail for conspiracy to commit indecent exposure. The film made its debut at the Palace Theater where The Cockettes performed their knock-out drag shows on the regular. At the time, Waters was not aware of The Cockettes, but that would quickly change for the director as Divine would end up performing with the Cockettes as “Lady Divine”—one of the first times would be in the first annual Miss de Meanor Beauty Pageant at the Palace, where Divine played the pageant host, Miss de Meanor. In addition to confessing to the Tate/LaBianca murders, Divine would lead the other participants in the show (Miss Conception, Miss Shapen, Miss Used, and Miss Carriage) in a tournament to the death, where the queens had to fight with their fists for the coveted crown.

Divine would go on to win the ‘The Miss de Meanor Beauty Pageant’ in 1971. The following year, during The Cockettes’ last official show (another ‘Miss de Meanor Beauty Pageant’) at the House of Good, John Waters wrote a speech for her to read onstage, described by Cockette Scrumbly as “brilliant”. As the idea of Divine reading a speech written by John Waters is everything, I asked the director if he was willing to share any memory he had of this drag-tastic moment, and he very kindly responded with the following:

“To be honest, I’m not sure a written copy of that speech even exists in my film archive at Wesleyan Archive, and if it did, it would be word-slash-words that only I could understand. I do remember it was punk-ish (before the word) in a hippy venue that was bizarrely the Peoples Temple church, that was rented for the occasion after Jim Jones and gang had moved out. Divine ranted about following hippies home, eating sugar and killing their pets, or some such lunacy. I do still have the poster hanging in my SF apartment. I’m glad Scrumbly remembered it because I always did too. Quite a night in San Francisco.”

 

A flier advertising The Cockettes’ last show featuring Lady Divine.
 
The Cockettes intermingled with, as you might imagine, lots of famous people who were intrigued by the troupes’ anything-goes take on drag and life. Author Truman Capote called the Cockettes shows “the only true theater.” Alice Cooper, who once jumped out of a cake surrounded by The Cockettes for a PR stunt dubbed “The Coming Out Party for Miss Alice Cooper,” was a frequent guest at the Haight-Ashbury house. And then there was Iggy Pop. When Iggy and The Stooges were recording Fun House in 1970, the then 23-year-old Iggy would start each studio session by dropping a tab of acid (as noted in the book Open Up and Bleed). The band decided to take a break and head to San Francisco for a weekend, playing a couple of shows at the Fillmore with Alice Cooper and Flamin’ Groovies. The first show on May 15th was attended by most of The Cockettes, who bore witness to Iggy on stage clad in the tightest jeans possible and long silver lamé gloves. Iggy was already a sweetheart of the gay community, and as Cockette Rumi Missabu recalls, Iggy distinctly gave them the impression he was “playing just for them.” Following the show, Iggy would become a regular guest of The Cockettes.

In the 2002 film, The Cockettes, Cockette Sweet Pam confessed that the collective “almost brushed their teeth with LSD,” to which Fayette would add, “contributed to the emphasis of flashy costumes.” Although the use of acid was the norm for the Cockettes, their art, sexual autonomy, and fierce expressions of individuality all contributed to the creation of High Drag. And, thankfully, the world would never be the same.

 

Cockette Wally in full regalia. Photo by Clay Geerdes.
 

Cockette John Rothermel Photo by Clay Geerdes.
 

Cockettes’ Dusty Dawn and Wally in pearls. Photo by Clay Geerdes.
 
Much more after the jump…

A very happy looking Frank Zappa, age fifteen, posing next to his winning illustration for the California Division of Forestry in 1955.
 

“The most important thing in art is the frame. For painting, literally, for other arts, figuratively—because, without this humble appliance, you can know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to but a “box” around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?”

—Frank Zappa quoted in The Real Frank Zappa Book (page 140).

Before he illustrated the winning entry for an annual poster contest held by the California Division of Forestry, the then fourteen-year-old Frank Zappa, a 9th grader at Grossmont High School in San Diego, had spent some good portion of his youth drawing. The story behind Zappa becoming interested in drawing is about as Frank Zappa as you might imagine. Here’s more from Frank on that:

“I had some basic interests in art, and since I was a kid, I was able to draw things. So I saw a piece of music, and I drew a piece of music. I had no idea what it would sound like or what was going on in it, but I knew what an eighth note looked like – I didn’t know it was an eighth note. I started drawing music and that was it.”

Zappa kept a sketch scrapbook as a teenager and also enjoyed entertaining his younger sister Candy by creating illustrations for her. Three years after winning the poster contest, Zappa would win another state-wide art contest for his abstract painting “Family Room,” this time sponsored by the California Federation of Women, and the Hallmark Greeting Card company. In the press clip announcing Zappa’s win (featured in the book Cosmic Debris: The Collected History and Improvisations of Frank Zappa), he was described as a “highly versatile” young person who had no plans to “confine” his artistic interests to painting. It was also noted that the young Zappa was writing a book. When asked if either art or literature were in the cards for his future, his answer was “music.” Zappa was now seventeen and already playing in a band called the Blackouts and was fully engaged in music lessons and musical composition. Before his graduation from high school, Frank was given the opportunity to conduct the Antelope Valley Junior College orchestra, who performed two of Zappa’s original compositions, “Sleeping In A Jar,” and “A Pound For A Brown On A Bus” (noted in the book, Frank Zappa FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Father of Invention).

Getting back to Zappa’s art, the majority of images in this post are of work Zappa created from the mid-‘50s to the mid-60s. If you’re a fan of Zappa, you’re likely aware he created early collage-style showbills for Mothers of Invention gigs. The very cool artwork of a young Frank Vincent Zappa follows.
 

A sketch from Zappa’s high school scrapbook.
 

An illustration by Zappa for his kid sister Candy, “A Day at the Beach.” This image was published in her 2011 book, ‘My Brother Was a Mother: Take 2.’
 
Much more of Frank Zappa’s youthful artwork, after the jump…

Self-portrait by Patti Smith, 1969.
 

“The first time I saw art was when my father took us on a trip when I was 12. My father worked in a factory, he had four sickly children, my parents had a lot of money problems, and we didn’t go on excursions often. But there was a Salvador Dali show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that included the painting “The Persistence of Memory,” and my father found Dali’s draftsmanship just astounding, so he wanted to see the show in person. So he dragged us all to the museum. I had never seen art in person before. And seeing paintings - seeing work by Picasso, John Singer Sargent - I was completely smitten, I totally fell in love with Picasso, and I dreamed of being a painter.”

—Patti Smith on her first exposure to art.

The sublime Patti Smith once described her drawings as the “merging of calligraphy with geometric planes, poetry, and mathematics.” While in her early 20s and living with artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe at the Chelsea Hotel, the inseparable lovers would draw together side-by-side for long periods. Mapplethorpe would be a constant stream of encouragement to Smith, empowering her to keep creating despite the noise in her head telling her she wasn’t good enough. She would draw images of Mapplethorpe as well as his gorgeously aggressive X-rated photographs. In 1978, Smith and Mapplethorpe would sign on with New York art dealer Robert Miller who had just opened his art gallery on Fifth Avenue a year earlier. 1978 would mark the first time, at the age of 32, that Smith would show her original works of art alongside Mapplethorpe’s photographs—including a variety of his portraits of Patti. As I will never tire of hearing stories told by Patti Smith, here’s a bit more from the high priestess of punk on the wonderful thing that is “creative impulse”:

“The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can’t give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work. And that continuous exchange—whether it’s with a rock and roll song where you’re communing with Bo Diddley or Little Richard, or it’s with a painting, where you’re communing with Rembrandt or Pollock—is a great thing.”

Her artwork has been exhibited everywhere from New York to Munich, and in 2008 a large retrospective of Smith’s artwork (produced between 1967 and 2007) was shown at the Fondation Cartier pour I’Art Contemporain in Paris. In 2019, Smith’s illustrations were used for the album, The Peyote Dance, a collaboration with Smith and Soundwalk Collective (Stephan Crasneanscki, Simone Merli). So, without further adieu, let’s spend some time perusing a few of Patti’s illustrations produced over the last four decades.
 

Self-portrait, 1974.
 

“Ohne Titel,” 1968.
 

Portrait of Rimbaud, 1973.
 
More after the jump…

Actor Peter Cushing in a contemplative moment playing his war games with his minature models.
 

“Television is a rather frightening business. But I get all the relaxation I want from my collection of model soldiers.”

—veteran actor Peter Cushing explaining his love of model soldiers in 1958.

The 2004 biography about his life, In All Sincerity, Peter Cushing, is a revealing read about the actor who, by all accounts, was one of the most gracious and kind people to ever work in film. Regarded as one of the UK’s finest actors, Cushing cut his remarkable acting chops early in life and, at the same time, pursued his love of drawing and art. While Cushing was still trying to make his name in cinema, he sold scarfs he hand-painted himself. In addition to painting watercolors, Cushing held on to a part of his childhood, collecting and painting model soldiers and trains. His love of miniature models would last his entire life, during which the actor would amass over 5,000 individual models (not toys mind you) of soldiers, trains, trees and landscape, horses, castles, historically accurate battle gear and more. All of which he painted by hand.

A proud member of the British Model Soldier Society, Cushing used his models for formal gameplay in accordance with H.G. Wells as outlined in his book Little Wars (1913), and its companion, Floor Games, published in 1911. Known as “hobby war games,” the games would take hours to complete, and (according to Cushing) if played to the letter, approximately nine hours would be consumed by one war game. The British Model Soldier society was formed in 1935 by a group of fifteen, all-male members (Wells denoted in his book that the games were to be played by boys between the ages of twelve to one hundred), who would meet up at a pub. Cushing was so serious about his therapeutic pastime he engaged the services of Frederick Ping—a pioneer of model soldier art. Considered a master of the medium, nearly all of Ping’s figures were forged from scratch, and in addition to Cushing, his figures were revered by aristocrats and the well-to-do. Cushing would commission Ping to create soldiers for him, which he would, in turn, paint meticulously by hand. The only thing more intriguing than the man who played Dr. Van Helsing, Victor Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who and Grand Moff Tarkin are the photos and television footage of Cushing with his massive model collection.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Footage of Peter Cushing showing off his miniature models and soldiers.

A now all-too-relatable painting by Gertrude Abercrombie, “Woman in a crumbling cell,” 1949.
 
By the time she was five, Gertrude Abercrombie had already lived in Austin, Texas (her birthplace), Berlin, Germany, and then Aledo, Illinois. Two short years later, the family of three would finally settle down in Chicago, a place Gertrude would spend the majority of her life.

Though still quite young, Abercrombie developed a keen interest in linguistics during the family’s time in Berlin, where Gertrude had become fluent in German. Additionally, Abercrombie’s parents were part of a traveling opera company, and Gertrude would also develop her musical chops as a vocalist with a penchant for jazz. Her formal education included earning a degree in Romance Languages from the University of Illinois (1925), then later exploring her artistic yearnings with commercial art courses at the School of the Art Institute and a brief stint at American Academy for Art in Chicago. She would then pursue a career in art after finding a job as a department store commercial artist. These endeavors would convince Abercrombie she should focus full time on developing her painting skills, which she did starting in 1932 at the age of 22. One year later, she became a part of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP). The PWAP was launched during the Great Depression as a way to help support artists by engaging their services to decorate public dwellings. Paid anywhere between $38-$46.50 a week, Abercrombie was one of nearly four thousand artists that collectively created 15,663 pieces of artwork based on images associated with the “American scene” (think Grant Wood’s 1930 painting “American Gothic”). Gertrude was empowered by her inclusion in the PWAP, and this sense of inclusion with her peers would help inspire the young artist to further develop her style.

Success would come reasonably quickly for Abercrombie, and by the early 40s, she was the toast of New York after her first solo show in the city. Gertrude would return to Chicago and hold a show at the Art Institute’s Chicago Room, after which she would be referred to as “the queen of the bohemian artists” and the “Queen of Chicago.” Her solitary style of surrealism often included lonely self-portraits and nocturnal images of cats and owls. A quote attributed to Abercrombie shed some light on the starkly beautiful visions of the artist and how she came to create them:

“I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange. My work comes directly from my inner consciousness, and it must come easily.”

When Abercrombie wasn’t painting, she was busy hanging out with luminaries of the jazz scene like Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughn, and Sonny Rollins. To say the least, her life was busy, if not chaotic, and she would struggle with vice – like many of her famous friends—specifically alcohol. In contrast to her life, her paintings depict calming, isolating scenes, many of which were conjured from her memories as a child growing up surrounded by the landscape of Aledo, Illinois. As we are all spending a lot more time alone right now, I found Abercrombie’s paintings somewhat comforting and very relatable. I hope you do too.
 

“Strange Shadows (Shadow and Substance),” 1950.
 

“Flight,” 1946.
 

“The Stroll,” 1943.
 
More after the jump…