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‘Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead’: Nick Cave makes psychotic cameo in harrowing 1989 Aussie prison drama
05.18.2020
10:25 am
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Director John Hillcoat (The Road, Lawless, The Proposition) made his 1989 feature debut with the gripping prison drama Ghosts…Of The Civil Dead, which contains a brief, but unforgettable appearance by Nick Cave. It’s a really amazing film, but one that is sadly little-known outside of Australia (and extreme Nick Cave fanboys—admittedly I saw Ghosts… almost alone, at its sole midnight screening in NYC.)

Perhaps it is a misconception, but due to the worldwide popularity of films like Chopper and the classic camp TV of the women-in-prison soap opera Prisoner: Cell Block H,  I can be forgiven, I hope, for assuming that Australians, on the whole, are a bit obsessed with criminals, violent crime and incarceration. I guess it’s in their blood, so to speak. (I kid, I kid, Aussie readers! Please don’t kill me!) Loosely based on the life and writing of Jack Henry Abbott—the psychotic murderer turned literary protégé of Norman Mailer turned psychotic murderer once again—and research done with David Hale, a former guard at an Illinois maximum security prison, Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead features a cast of real-life ex-convicts, former prison guards and tough-looking motherfuckers they found in local Melbourne gyms. This film is realistic. Scary realistic. HBO’s Oz is a day spa in comparison.
 

 
Narrated by a (fictional) former prison guard, Ghosts… takes place deep in within the bowels of a maximum security prison, somewhere in the Australian outback. The place is an incessantly humming, fluorescent-lit nightmare. Due to outbreaks of violence, there has been a three-year lockdown that is still ongoing. The tension is palpable, the place is a claustrophobic, concrete Hell that no sunlight penetrates, a hatred and resentment-fueled bomb with a very short fuse just waiting to go off.

As events transpire, the viewer begins to see that the prison authorities are actively trying to provoke the prison population, and that they are pitting the guards against the inmates, preying on both to escalate the violence in order to crack down on the prisoners ever harder and to justify building a fortress even more fearsome, inescapable and “secure.”
 

 
Ghosts… has layers of unexpected meaning. Although the script (co-written by Hillcoat, Cave, one-time Bad Seeds guitarist Hugo Race, Gene Conkie and producer Evan English) tells a reasonably straightforward tale of the prisoners—captive in a high security fortress that escape from seems impossible—versus the authorities who manipulate them into chaos, there’s a wider allegorical message of the power dynamic inherent in Western capitalism: Conform. Do exactly what we tell you to do, or there will be consequences. Like this high security Hell on Earth.

Michel Foucault would have most certainly approved of Ghosts…Of The Civil Dead, I should think.
 

 
Although contrary to the way Ghosts… was marketed, Nick Cave is onscreen for just a very short appearance about an hour into the film, but having said that, it is a cinematic moment of pure genius. Cave plays Maynard, a violent psychotic who paints with his own blood. Maynard is an absolute fucking lunatic, deliberately brought in by the prison authorities to make an already bad situation much, much worse. His psychotic ranting and raving riles up the situation into complete murderous chaos. Although he is seen just briefly in Ghosts…, it is Cave’s Maynard who lights the bomb’s ever present fuse.

Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead is extraordinary film, as as bleak and as uncompromising a work of art as I have ever experienced, it might be difficult for the squeamish to sit through. Once seen, it can never be forgotten.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.18.2020
10:25 am
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Brain Drain: Johnny Ramone and his brush with death after a deadly brawl in 1983
08.26.2019
09:53 am
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The cover of the New York Post, August 15th, 1983.
 

“I’m all for capital punishment. I think it should be televised.” 

—Johnny Ramone speaking about his wish for Seth Macklin of the punk band Sub Zero who attacked Ramone leaving him with a fractured skull and near death in 1983. 

In the year leading up to Johnny Ramone’s near-death-experience in the early hours of August 14th, 1983, tensions between Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Ross Hyman) and the eldest Ramone escalated. One particular incident deepened the division between Johnny and Joey: Johnny’s pursuit of Joey’s girlfriend Linda Danielle, who would later become Johnny’s wife. The band was always suffering both personally and physically. Marky aka Marc Bell was dismissed for his binge boozing, and then there was the 24/7 problem that was Dee Dee Ramone. In December of 1982, the band headed into Kingdom Sound in Long Island to record their seventh album, Subterranean Jungle. The Subterranean Jungle Tour (with Richie Ramone/Richard Reinhardt on drums), would begin in early February and roll all around the country until the band returned for a gig in Queens on August 13th. After the show, Johnny had a run-in with Seth Macklin, a 22-year-old punk rocker from the band Sub-Zero (also known as Sub Zero Construction), over a girl Macklin thought was his own—27-year-old former dancer and punk rock style icon Cynthia “Roxy” Whitney. In her 2015 book, Too Tough To Love: My Life with Johnny Ramone, Whitney chronicles the 20 years she spent as Johnny’s mistress. Whitney and Johnny had been a “thing” since the late 70s when she started showing up at shows outside of the band’s native New York area. 

Jealousy almost killed Frank Zappa in 1971. Now it was trying to take down Johnny Ramone by way of Seth Macklin’s foot crushing his skull over a chick. 

Johnny really never spoke much about the incident publicly, and the band would not perform live again until December of 1983. Following the incident, both The New York Times and The Daily Courier (a newspaper published out of Prescott, Arizona) both ran stories detailing Ramone’s run-in with Macklin. According to both publications, just before 4:00 am, Macklin, who thought he was dating Cynthia exclusively, spotted her with Johnny. Cynthia, on the other hand, was of the mind she and Macklin had an “open relationship” and at this point had been seeing Johnny on and off for several years anyway. In his police statement, Macklin asserted it was Johnny who swung at him first with Cynthia’s handbag, which sounds dubious at best. Macklin then said he hit Johnny “two or three times” in self-defense before the guitarist fell to the sidewalk, hitting his head on a car door on his way down. According to the police report (as Johnny has maintained and was reported by The New York Times), Macklin kicked him in the head after assaulting him, causing the fracture and rendering him unconscious. Johnny’s injuries were so dire he underwent emergency surgery at St. Vincent’s to stop the bleeding in his brain.
 

The article published in the Courier on Johnny’s fight with Seth Macklin of Sub-Zero.
 
In his autobiography Commando (published after his death), Johnny sheds some light on the incident, which, he admittedly did not remember much about—mostly because he spent the majority of it unconscious. What he does remember clearly was arriving at his old apartment on 10th Street in Manhattan in the band’s van after the show in Queens at around 3:00 am. Across the street, he saw Cynthia hanging out on a porch stoop bombed out of her mind chatting with a punk Johnny had not seen around before. Though Johnny and Cynthia were “not together” at the time, he felt uneasy seeing her in a potentially bad situation and approached Macklin telling him to get lost, urging Cynthia to get back inside. Johnny remembers nothing else about the fight. His first memory was instead waking up in the hospital with no hair, a bleeding cerebrum, knocking back anti-seizure medication. The story made the cover of the New York Post on August 15th, with sensational taglines like “Battered punk rock star battles for life,” and “Superstar stomped in 10th St. rage over woman he loves.” After three or so months of rehabilitation and healing, Johnny returned to the band, but, in his own words, people close to him felt he had changed.

Remarkably, Johnny’s doctors were able to determine he hadn’t suffered any kind of brain damage. The attack did make Ramone “more cautious” around people trying to cozy up to the band. It also made Johnny even more guarded about his personal space, especially his head. He was also very fucking pissed-off at Macklin and testified in court against his assailant who had been charged with first-degree assault in the case—only to serve a few short months in jail for almost murdering Ramone. Here’s a passage from Commando in which Ramone expresses the dark thoughts he had about Macklin: 

“I was very angry. I wanted him killed. I’m all for capital punishment. I think it should be televised. I think they could make it a pay-per-view event and give the money to the victims’ families. So then, I started fantasizing about getting a gun. I thought it would be great to have someone mess with me and kill him. I mean Bernhard Goetz was a hero. He did what everyone else wants to do. He was Charles Bronson. In real life, who the hell would approach Charles Bronson? They go for the Bernhard Goetz’s of the world. In the end, though, I never owned a gun. It was just a fantasy. I was no Charles Bronson.”

 

The second page of the New York Post story. Johnny and Cynthia are pictured. Seth Macklin is the man wearing a hat.
 
Before Johnny passed, he did an interview with New York Magazine rating each album in the Ramones’ discography. His comments on his first post-brain surgery album, Too Tough To Die (produced by former Ramones’ drummer Tommy Ramone/Tommy Erdelyi and a nod to Johnny living through some bad-brain-bullshit) are quite interesting in the context of this story. It is also perhaps another indication of a temporary shift in Johnny’s frame of mind. At least as it pertained to the band’s strained interpersonal relationships:

“All of a sudden, we all got along and stopped worrying about making a hit record. This was our best record of the eighties.”

In the name of “research,” I spent time cruising through the Ramones catalog circa 1981-1984 and was reminded of the groovy jam “Chop Suey” which Johnny hated. It was recorded in 1981, but lots of us 80s kids will remember it from the completely bonkers flick Get Crazy (1983, Lou Reed. NEVER FORGET!). It features the vocals of B-52s Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson and well as Debbie Harry. Also elevating the cool factor of this song is it pinpoints a time in the band’s career (again according to Johnny) where nobody was talking to each other. “Chop Suey” was a byproduct of all kinds of awkwardness. And I love it. 
 

“Chop Suey.”

Posted by Cherrybomb
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08.26.2019
09:53 am
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Did Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler put a curse on a thief who stole Tony Iommi’s guitar?
06.14.2019
07:55 am
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Tony Iommi circa 1980 alongside his SG Custom guitar with crosses on the neck made by luthier John Birch.
 
Cocaine was the most popular party favor during the 1980s. In light of this, it’s reasonable to think that cocaine might have helped fuel a strange article edited by a journalist going by the name of Andrew Epstein, published in the December 1980 issue of Record Review magazine. In a feature called “Bits & Pieces,” Epstein relays a story regarding the alleged theft of Tony Iommi’s prized SG Custom guitar with a 24-fret neck with cross inlays made in 1975 by luthier John Birch who has also made instruments for Iommi’s bandmate, Geezer Butler. The guitar is significant for several reasons including the fact it was the primary guitar Iommi used on the albums Technical Ecstasy, Never Say Die, Heaven and Hell, and Mob Rules. Iommi used this SG heavily in live performances during this time period and fans would get to eyeball the machine, synonymous with the guitarist himself. Now that we have established the importance of this mighty axe, let’s get back to the maybe true story of how some lunkhead thought it would be cool to lift Iommi’s iconic guitar from Black Sabbath’s equipment van during, what I can only presume based on the “facts” in Epstein’s piece, the U.S. leg of the Heaven and Hell Tour.

In the article, it’s noted that the guitar was stolen while the band was in Chicago—this would mean (according to Sabbath’s tour schedule for 1980) this was when the band played the International Amphitheater on August 18th. This is also where the article starts to sound like Black Sabbath fanfiction.
 

Iommi and his John Birch 1975 SG Custom.
 
The story goes on to dramatically describe how Iommi mourned for his sweet SG until it was returned to him on a “cold, moonlit night” with a note attached. The note was not-so-shockingly from the “thief” who felt the need to return the guitar to Iommi after his life was turned upside down (and not in a good way) after he had lifted the instrument. The thief describes how his life has become one of “unending misery,” which culminated with a traffic accident which sent him to the hospital. Here are more alleged words from Iommi’s guitar grabber:

“Take it, take this cursed thing from my life so that I may never see it again.”

After reuniting with his SG, Tony’s guitar would be stolen again in Dallas—this would have been at the Convention Center Arena, though a quick review of Sabbath’s tour schedule, it would appear Epstein might have gotten his dates confused as Sabbath stopped in Dallas on July 5th, 1980, and then hit up Chicago on August 18th. The distinct possibility Epstein transposed locations does give this bit of magazine mythology some legs—until we get to the part where it reports that Geezer Butler put a “hex” on the second thief who likely only existed in Andrew Epstein’s imagination. Here’s the “warning” issued by Iommi to the thief:

“I know there are a lot of people who won’t believe this, but I’m very concerned about the person who has stolen the guitar. It’s bad luck for anyone other than me to have that axe, and I don’t want anything terrible to happen.”

Continues after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
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06.14.2019
07:55 am
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‘I thought I was dead’: Frank Zappa’s brush with death after being pushed off stage by a jealous fan


 

“I did it because my girlfriend said she loved Frank.”

—Trevor Howell on why he pushed Frank Zappa off the stage during a show at the Rainbow Theater in London in 1971

Ah, jealousy. The ugly sometimes side-effect of falling in love. Recently we told the story here on Dangerous Minds about the time Axl Rose threatened to kill David Bowie because he thought Ziggy was trying to make time with his girlfriend, Erin Everly. This horrifying incident is far worse, though, and involves Frank Zappa plummeting approximately fifteen feet off the stage at the Rainbow Theater in London.

Zappa and The Mothers of Invention had just survived a massive fire at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland the week prior. After Zappa and the group returned onstage for their encore, 24-year-old Trevor Howell shot out from the backstage area and assailed Zappa causing him to fall from the stage where he landed on the concrete floor of the orchestra pit. As if this wasn’t bad enough, as he lay unconscious in the pit, a monitor fell on top of him. In his book Zappa: Visual Documentary biographer Barry Miles recalled the scene inside the Rainbow after Frank fell:

“A chaotic scene ensued outside The Rainbow where the audience for the second concert were joined in the street by the audience from the first show. Wild rumors that Frank had been killed flashed through the massive crowd, and for upwards of at least an hour no one knew what was happening.”

 

The frantic scene following Zappa’s unscheduled landing in the orchestra pit.
 
But wait! It gets WORSE. After coming to, Zappa was taken away by ambulance to the Royal Northern Hospital in Holloway. There he was treated for the following conditions: an acute concussion/head trauma, a fractured leg, a broken rib and a series of fractures and other injuries to his neck, legs and back, as well as suffering from temporary paralysis of one of his arms. The fall even managed to crush Zappa’s larynx, which dropped Frank’s voice a third of an octave lower, making it more throaty and gruff. So what about the man who attacked Zappa, nearly costing him his life? In the book The Real Frank Zappa (written by Zappa and Peter Occhiogrosso), the revered musician wrote about two possible scenarios as to why Trevor Howell, who by various accounts had dropped a bunch of acid that night, came for him while he wasn’t looking:

“He (Howell) gave two stories to the press. One of them was that I had been “making eyes at his girlfriend.” That wasn’t true since the orchestra pit was not only fifteen feet deep but was also twice as wide and the spotlight was in my face. I can’t even see the audience in those situations—it’s like looking into a black hole. I never even saw the guy coming at me. Then he told another newspaper that he was pissed off because he felt we hadn’t given him “value for the money.” Choose your favorite story. After he punched me, he tried to escape into the audience, but a couple of guys in the road crew caught him and took him backstage to hold for the police. While I was recuperating at the Harley Street Clinic, Howell was released on bail, so I had a twenty-four-hour bodyguard outside my room because we didn’t know how insane he was.”

When he appeared in court to answer the charges on March 8th, 1972, Howell was sentenced to twelve months in jail after he admitted to “maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm on Mr. Zappa”. Initially, Howell stated he attacked Zappa because his “girlfriend said she loved Frank” (who doesn’t?), but when the judge presiding over the case queried Howell as to why he had assaulted Zappa he said he thought that “Mr. Zappa was not giving value for the money” adding that Zappa and The Mothers of Invention were treating the audience like “dirt” (noted in the book Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story Of Frank Zappa). Zappa would end up spending almost a year rolling around in a wheelchair following the incident and his body never completely healed, specifically his fractured leg which, once deemed healed, was shorter than his other leg. Frank would later write a song about his wonky leg “Dancin’ Fool” including the lyric “Ì don’t know much about dancin’, that’s why I got this song. One of my legs is shorter than the other and both my feet’s too long.” Proof that you really can’t keep a good man down.

A few images of Frank Zappa in his trusty wheelchair follow, along with a clip of “Dancin’ Fool” from 1978…
 

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.25.2019
08:18 am
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Thomas Jefferson on buggery, sodomy and bestiality
12.13.2018
08:43 am
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‘Thomas Jefferson’ by N. C. Wyeth

“Ideas of justice are as timeless as fashions in hats,” the philosopher John Gray writes. Consider a bill submitted to the Virginia Assembly in 1779, proposing some liberal reforms to colonial laws: Bill 64, “A Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments in Cases Heretofore Capital,” penned in Thomas Jefferson’s own hand. Seeking to make murder and treason the only capital crimes, it was progressive legislation for its day. Bill 64, a product of two years’ deliberation by the Committee of Revisors, grouped rape, polygamy and sodomy together, and prescribed the same punishment for each:

Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro’ the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least.

The bill’s extensive footnotes review legal authorities from antiquity through the 18th century on criminal law’s greatest hits, such as arson, robbery, counterfeiting, manslaughter, murder and treason, along with some old standards known to very few of today’s felons, like asportation of vessels and horse stealing. When it comes to the rationale for drilling holes in women’s noses, the footnotes are silent, but there is a lengthy disquisition on buggery. Properly considered, Jefferson writes, buggery subsumes two distinct crimes: buggery of people and buggery of animals, the first of which is a serious transgression, the second a hilarious indiscretion.

Buggery is twofold. 1. with mankind, 2. with beasts. Buggery is the Genus, of which Sodomy and Bestiality are the species. 12.Co.37. says ‘note that Sodomy is with mankind.’ But Finch’s L.B.3.c.24. ‘Sodomitry is a carnal copulation against nature, to wit, of man or woman in the same sex, or of either of them with beasts.’ 12.Co.36. says ‘it appears by the antient authorities of the law that this was felony.’ Yet the 25.H.8. declares it felony, as if supposed not to be so. Britton c.9. says that Sodomites are to be burnt. […] The Mirror makes it treason. Bestiality can never make any progress; it cannot therefore be injurious to society in any great degree, which is the true measure of criminality in foro civili, and will ever be properly and severely punished by universal derision. It may therefore be omitted. It was antiently punished with death as it has been latterly. Ll.Aelfrid.31. and 25H.8.c.6. See Beccaria §.31. Montesq.

Jefferson wrote Madison that the bill’s punishment for rape was a hard sell in the Virginia Assembly, where his colleagues found it “indecent and unjustifiable.” He also would support changing the punishment for rape, but only because, as written, “women would be under [the temptation] to make it the instrument of vengeance against an inconstant lover, and of disappointment to a rival.” I think both reasons amount to anxiety about what women might do with the power to hand out gonadectomies like jaywalking tickets, a development that certainly would have made high school U.S. history textbooks more interesting.

None of these considerations seems to have affected the fate of Bill 64. When it was defeated in 1787, Madison attributed its failure not to the brutal penalties for sex crimes, but to the current “rage against Horse stealers,” who would have faced hard labor rather than the gallows under its permissive code.

Laws come and go; below, Charles Manson dispenses timeless wisdom in his song “Don’t Do Anything Illegal.”
 

Posted by Oliver Hall
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12.13.2018
08:43 am
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Was the Yorkshire Ripper serial killer a devoted Joy Division fan???


 
In his 2012 memoir, Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, Peter Hook tells the tale of how he and Joy Division drummer Steve Morris were questioned in 1979 by police investigating the then-unsolved Yorkshire Ripper murder case. That year, Peter Sutcliffe’s reign of terror was at its height and Joy Division’s touring itinerary took them to some of the very same neighborhoods where the serial killer had killed his victims. With their touring schedule not dissimilar to the murderer’s movements, they were questioned about their activities around the North West of England that year.

Interviewed on Xfm radio, Hook explained:

“What happened was that every club we played in was run by a dodgy promoter in some dodgy part of town. We managed to play in the red light districts of Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds, Manchester and probably London as well. The police had asked the public to note down the license plate numbers of any strange cars in the area, so they could investigate them later. Somehow mine and Steve’s cars had gone in the system a couple of times and basically we got picked out!”

“Steve was very very nervous in those days and when the police questioned him, he lost it. He got taken to the police station and his mum had to come and rescue him. It was very frightening – they basically asked you straight out if you were the Ripper.”

 

 
Sutcliffe, who was questioned and released an incredible ten times, was pulled over by police for driving with false license plates in January 1981, and he ultimately confessed to being the Yorkshire Ripper. Now 72, he is serving 20 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment for murdering thirteen women and attempting to murder seven more.

This anecdote begs the question: Was Peter Sutcliffe was a devoted Joy Division fan? Perhaps he followed them around? Has anyone ever asked him?
 

Joy Division play “She’s Lost Control” live at Bowdon Vale Youth Club, Altrincham. Video by Malcolm Whitehead.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.28.2018
08:55 am
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Inside the Hollywood estate auction of Sharon Tate
11.20.2018
09:06 am
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As we approach 2019, let us take a moment to brace ourselves for the oncoming onslaught of Manson Family “tributes” destined for the 50th anniversary year of the Tate-LaBianca murders. Here at its epicenter, in the city of Los Angeles, it seems like every other week that there are murmurings about the new Tarantino flick, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And I wasn’t aware of this, but apparently there will be two additional Sharon Tate films released next year as well - The Haunting of Sharon Tate and Tate. Manson’s orders may have led to the gruesome murders of eight innocent individuals between August 8-10, 1969, but we will always remember Sharon Tate.
 
Our frame of reference today may primarily recognize her as one cult’s sacrifice to Helter Skelter. Had these random, senseless killings not occurred, however, Tate would have been known for her promising career as a beloved Hollywood actress and style icon. Emerging onto the Hollywood scene in the early Sixties, Tate was part of a new generation of actors during a renaissance of film making known as the “American New Wave.” Beautiful and naturally talented, she starred in a number of films including Eye of the Devil, Valley of the Dolls, and The Fearless Vampire Killers, the prelude of her marriage to famous director and certified-creep, Roman Polanski. It was at Polanski and Tate’s home where the murders on 10500 Cielo Dr took place.
 

 
Over the weekend, located just three miles and essentially one long street from the scene of the crime, Julien’s Auctions of Beverly Hills held an estate auction of the property of Sharon Tate. While there were plenty of theories online as to why, the sale’s coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Tate’s untimely death seems aptly timed. The auction was arranged in accordance with Sharon’s sister, Debra, the owner of the former belongings and someone who has been vocal over the years toward victims’ rights and preserving her sister’s image. An excerpt of her intent to auction Sharon’s memorabilia is below:
 

When Julien’s first approached me with the idea of doing an auction of my sister’s considerable collection of clothes, accessories, and personal effects, I was immediately apprehensive. For 49 years I had lovingly stored and preserved these items as a way of keeping Sharon close by. While my sister is never far away in spirit, over the decades I have always been able to turn to these treasures for comfort and as a tangible reminder of the wonderful times we spent together.

Sharon was the sweetest, most gentile, most giving soul you could ever hope to meet - even more beautiful on the inside than she was on the outside. She had a special radiance, beyond the perfection of her features, that touched everyone she met. As her husband Roman Polanski said, “In those day, she was not just the love of my life, she was the love of everyone’s life.” And it’s true.

And as the years pass I have come to realize that my sister’s enormous popularity, both as an actress and as a ‘60s fashion and style icon, is continually growing. Sharon’s signature style - whether in couture, hippie chic, or her classic “Hollywood” look in Valley of the Dolls with the dramatic eye makeup and cascading blonde hair - are constantly referenced on the runway, the red carpet, and in magazine editorials worldwide. Today, my sister is loved and adored by so many fans and admirers. For this reason, and after much consideration, I now feel the time is right to share a little of Sharon with others.

As the world knows, in 1969 my sister was involved in an event that changed America in ways that still resonate. Through her fame, and the hard work of my family and I, she has become the face of a cause - Victim’s Rights - that continues to save lives to this day. That said, I always felt it was very unfair for her life to be remembered primarily for its final moments. Sharon had a magnificent life. Born into a family who loved her very much, she had a wonderful childhood. She traveled the world. She was talented. She became a film star. She met and married the man of her dreams. She experienced impending motherhood. She achieved so much in such a brief time, made a significant impact, and continues to fascinate and delight. It is important that her life be celebrated.

 
Among the items for auction were some of Sharon’s most favored dresses, including the one worn at her wedding, and those from film premieres, the Golden Globes, Cannes, photo shoots, etcetera. Also on display were clothing accessories such as jewelry, coats, bags, and sunglasses. And then there were souvenirs from her home, which were most likely present the night of her murder. Items like framed photos, makeup kits, treasured books, dishware, and other decorative items. Every single piece had a starting price from the hundreds to the five-digit thousands (the wedding dress sold for $56K). It was an ominous feeling in such an alluring setting. And while no one mentioned Manson, everyone was obviously thinking about him.
 
I was able to obtain some scans from the official Julien’s Auctions estate catalog, available below for the first time:
 

 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Bennett Kogon
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11.20.2018
09:06 am
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Neil Hamburger reads Nixon’s resignation speech (and other greatest hits)
08.09.2018
08:36 am
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Richard Nixon resigned from office 44 years ago today. Many of your pundits, eggheads, critics, and other nosebreathers have never tired of kicking Nixon around. But on Independence Day 2002, one citizen had the guts to meet Dick on his own terms, in the arena: America’s $1 Funnyman, Neil Hamburger.

In the Neil Hamburger catalog, perhaps only his tribute to Princess Diana so touches the heart, and I’m not just talking about the stirring, patriotic strings in the background of “Hamburger Remembers Nixon.” No, as few others could, Neil captures the warmth of Nixon’s straight-talking 1952 speech about the joys of dog ownership; the magnanimity of his gracious concession of the ‘62 California gubernatorial race to Jerry Brown’s father; the bold vision of his remarks at the ‘68 victory party on the relative friendliness of handheld signs. Hamburger also pays tribute to the April ‘70 “pitiful helpless giant” TV address, the November ‘73 “I’m not a crook” press conference, and the August ‘74 “we don’t have a good word for it in English” farewell speech.
 

 
Listen after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
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08.09.2018
08:36 am
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Jello Biafra and his father interviewed at the ‘Frankenchrist’ obscenity trial
06.22.2018
08:54 am
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Jello Biafra in court, 1987 (via Heather Harris Photography)
 
In December 1985, a Southern Californian teenager named Tammy Scharwath bought the Dead Kennedys’ latest album, Frankenchrist, from the Wherehouse at the Northridge shopping mall. Then her mother saw the poster of H. R. Giger’s “Penis Landscape” included with the record and lodged a complaint with the Los Angeles city attorney, setting in motion a series of events that culminated in the breakup of the Dead Kennedys and a 1987 obscenity trial for singer Jello Biafra.

The hysteria that surrounded rap and rock music 30 years ago is hard to imagine today, now that the anti-smut crusaders have elevated Mr. Obscenity himself to the White House, but the incoherent language of the reactionary right hasn’t changed much: at one point during the trial, in an ecstasy of outrage, the prosecutor compared H. R. Giger to the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez. (Biafra discusses the PMRC “porn rock” panic and recounts the whole ugly Frankenchrist mess from his point of view on his second spoken word release, High Priest of Harmful Matter.)

During the trial, the Canadian TV show The NewMusic sent correspondent Erica Ehm to Los Angeles, where she interviewed Jello and his father at the courthouse. How cool was Jello’s dad?
 

Posted by Oliver Hall
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06.22.2018
08:54 am
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Here’s how to hack an election
06.13.2018
08:34 am
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Election hacking has been a pretty hot topic recently. Now that we know it is possible, you know, controlling the fate of a governed body through manipulated misinformation, we must acknowledge that it could happen again. Especially in a place like Manitoba, Canada.

The term “hacker” has been around for much longer than you think. The first reported case of an unauthorized entry into a private network was conducted on June 4th, 1903—by a magician. By this point on our technological evolutionary timeline, electromagnetic waves had been discovered and were being experimented with to communicate wireless messages. Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi had gained much international attention for his accomplishment of the first successful wireless transmission across the Atlantic ocean (2,200 miles). Marconi claimed his methods to be impenetrable and Nevil Maskelyne, the skeptic British magician, sought to prove him wrong. During a very public demonstration at the Royal Academy of Sciences, Maskelyne tapped into Marconi’s signal, which was being broadcast from Cornwall, over three-hundred miles away. The hacked messages appeared in morse code on a projector screen and consisted of several jabs at Marconi and his “secure” network. Turns out, besides magic, Maskelyne was also employed by the Eastern Telegraphic Company, whose wired system would suffer from these new innovations to communication technology.

And then came phreaking. In the 1960s, it was discovered that one could “hack” into the public phone network through the manipulation of sounds. The most notable figure of the “phone freak” movement, which predates the personal computer, was a man who went by the alias of Cap’n Crunch. Mr. Crunch got his nickname from a toy whistle that came in specially marked boxes of the sugar cereal. When blown, the whistle could emit a frequency at 2600Hz, which, it was discovered, allowed a user to tap into nexus of the AT&T phone system and place free long distance calls. More advanced techniques of phreaking soon developed, through use of “blue boxes” that were built to replicate unique tones and frequencies. Before they started Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak sold blue boxes to the hacker community. The first example of a fictional hacker in popular culture came with the Firesign Theatre’s 1971 comedy album I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus where the main character causes an audio-animatronic Nixon robot to malfunction by asking it surreal and confusing questions.
 

Phreakers unite
 
2600: The Hacker Quarterly was started amid the phreaker scene in 1984. The seasonal publication, edited by a guy with the Orwell-inspired pen name of Emmanuel Goldstein, has served as an important resource within the hacking community as it has evolved over the years. Rather than focusing on the deliberately destructive and malicious tactics of hackers often portrayed in the media, 2600 benefits the less illegal intentions of the “grey hat hacker,” who is merely demonstrating his/her capabilities of penetrating into an off-limits system. In our complex digital world, the publication today has taken on more of an activist approach toward our digital and personal freedoms.

More of a dark-grey hat than anything, the Autumn 2007 issue of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly contained an article about hacking an election.

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Bennett Kogon
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06.13.2018
08:34 am
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