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Cheshire Cat Snuggie
11.28.2011
03:30 pm
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Man I loathe Snuggies, but this Cheshire Cat from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland I found on Amazon for $44.99 is rather… evil looking? Is an evil looking Snuggie even possible?

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.28.2011
03:30 pm
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Michael Fish: Apocalyptic fashion from 1969
11.22.2011
07:41 pm
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Fashion designer Michael Fish created some of the most memorable outfits of the 1960s and 1970s, most famously the “men’s dress” as worn by Mick Jagger and David Bowie. His designs were also graced the films Modesty Blaise and Performance.

Here is Mr Fish as he introduces a brief taster of his 1969 collection, from German TV’s Aktuell.
 

 
With thanks to Maria Salavessa Hormigo Guimil
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.22.2011
07:41 pm
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‘Five Years In New York That Changed Music Forever’
11.18.2011
02:55 am
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Jeff Salen of Tuff Darts and Talking Heads’ David Byrne at CBGB, 1976. Photo: Robert Spencer.
 
It has been said that when a city is in decline the arts flourish. I don’t know who said it or when it was said or if anyone actually said it at all. It’s one of those things that sounds true and feels true and when I say it people tend to agree, whether it’s true or not. It certainly seemed true when I arrived with my band in New York City in 1977 to play a Monday night gig at CBGB.

Crawling out of an Econoline van into the humidly dense New York night and having a fistful of Bowery cesspool stench sucker punch me was like being greeted by a Welcome Wagon full of decaying dog dicks. I liked it. I took in a lungful of the jaundiced air and knew immediately that my Muse was there somewhere…stuck like a moth in the viscous Manhattan murk.

The asshole smell of downtown NYC was exactly the kind of reality check I needed after spending six years languishing at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado. I had arrived in 1970s Manhattan ready to have my world dismembered like a frog in anatomy class. I offered my neck to the city’s rusty scalpel with only a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a bindle of blow to deaden the pain. 25 years later, I came out of surgery a changed man. And I have the scars to prove it. Lovely scars that you can count to determine my age.

In the first few years of living in NYC, I spent most my nights hanging at Max’s, CBGB, Danceteria, The Peppermint Lounge, The Mudd Club, Hurrah’s and countless other clubs soaking in the glorious sounds of local bands like The Patti Smith Group, The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Suicide, Tuff Darts, Mink DeVille, The Contortions, Steel Tips, The Dictators, The Mumps… many of whom were gaining international reputations for rescuing rock and roll from the corporate death grip of a dying music industry and from its own artistic stagnation. This was not a commercial strategy, it was something closer to a collective religious epiphany. Poets, painters and philosophers were adding guitars and amplifiers to their arsenals of typewriters, journals and canvas to further expand their medium of self-expression and resurrect a pop culture that had shot its wad at the tail end of the Sixties.

While my main interest was with what was happening in the punk clubs, there were major musical tremors snaking throughout Manhattan,The Bronx and Spanish Harlem. Jazz, rap, disco and Latin music were all drawing from some deep well of inspiration in a city that, on the surface, seemed to be collapsing in on itself. The economy, infrastructure and racial division were crushing Gotham like Godzilla-sized pigeons with restless leg syndrome.

Darkness breeds light and pockets of artists, of every color and cultural background, were conjuring all kinds of magic. And the magic was converging and intermingling in a melting pot, a Hessian crucible, in which alchemical beats, rhythms and song were being transmuted into healing vibrations balancing Gotham’s gloomy Kali Yuga yang into Shakti-powered yin transforming the tortured cries of the city into ecstatic utterance you could dance to, fuck to and get high to. Music was the wave that kept the city from tanking. As the garbage piled up on the streets and triumphant rats were raising flags on mounds of rotting debris like rodent versions of the Marines ascending Iwo Jima, glittering disco balls gaily revolved like tin foil prayer wheels in Studio 54 and downtown The Ramones were generating more energy on the Bowery than Con Edison and the psychotic barker from the Crazy Eddie commercials combined. Music provided the make-up, the blush and mascara that gave New York City the appearance of still being alive.

Will Hermes’ exhilarating new book Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years In New York That Changed Music Forever captures the energy and excitement of New York’s music scene from 1973 to 1978 in all its multitudinous forms. It is richly detailed, never dull, and exhaustively researched. I came to the book knowing most of what there is to know about Manhattan’s punk scene and as someone who was there at the time was pleased to see that Hermes (who was also there) manages to make it all come alive again. This is not a dull slog through familiar turf. Herme’s prose pulses with a rock and roll heart. He loves what he’s writing about. And he’s writing about much more than just what falls within my frame of reference. He sees and connects dots between various scenes creating a kind of musical mandala. From the lofts of downtown avant-garde jazz composers like Philip Glass to the South Bronx and the roots of rap with Kool Herc to disco’s inception spun off the turntables of Nicky Siano to The Fania All-Stars’ explosive sets at the Cheetah Club, Hermes is like a human Google map, giving us the God’s eye view and zooming in right down to the graffiti in the bathroom.

Today, things seems as bleak as they did in New York City during the 1970s. There’s a sense of hopelessness, a sense that things are getting out of control. But underneath the despair there is a subway-like rumbling, a rhythm, a beat, a sensation that something is moving and about to surface and it could be a train entering the station or it could be something like music, something pulling us all together in a movement that thrusts forward into the future and will not be denied. I’ve seen what the power of music can do. I saw it in the Sixties and I saw it again in the Seventies. And right now my eyes are wide open and ready to see it again.

Love Goes To Buildings On Fire is that fine kind of book that takes you backwards and forward at the same time. Will Hermes reminds us that music matters and every revolution, every movement, every cultural and political upheaval, creates its own soundtrack. What will ours be this time around?

Here’s a video mix inspired by Will’s book which includes some seminal songs that came out of New York City in the 1970s.

1. “Jet Boy” - The New York Dolls   2. “Piss Factory” - Patti Smith   3. “X-Offender” Blondie   4. “Born To Lose” - The Heartbreakers    5. “SuperRappin’” - Grandmaster Flash   6. “Darrio” - Kid Creole   7. “The Mexican” - Babe Ruth   8. “Pop Your Funk” - Arthur Russell
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.18.2011
02:55 am
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Cheeky fad: ‘Woman Invents Dimple Machine,’ 1936
11.11.2011
02:05 pm
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Invented in 1936 by Isabella Gilbert of Rochester, N. Y., the Dimple Machine consisted of a “face-fitting spring carrying two tiny knobs which press into the cheeks.” I wonder if it actually worked? I tend to doubt it…

Isabella’s “cheeky” dimple giver is much tamer than what the woman below did: She injected a $10 bottle of personal lubricant into her face to achieve natural beauty.

Plastic surgery… don’t try it at home!
 

 
(via KMFW)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.11.2011
02:05 pm
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Vintage Pathé Fashion Films from 1955
11.10.2011
05:03 pm
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There is something quite charming about these short Pathé News Films from the 1950s.

In the first, model Carol Archer visits a boutique in Soho, London, where she tries on a variety of novelty ear-rings, including miniature champagne bottles, cuckoo clocks, and hands.
 

 
More fab fashion films, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.10.2011
05:03 pm
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Global warming fashion statements: Hot couture
11.07.2011
02:15 am
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Texas has been suffering through a drought for what seems like an eternity. The past year has been the driest since 1895, when the state began keeping rainfall records. Not even Rick Perry’s prayers have brought a respite from the desert-like conditions in my neck of the woods, Austin.

In this collection of photos shot by my wife Mirgun Akyavas at this past weekend’s Fun Fun Fun Fest you can see how some folks dealt with the clouds of dust being kicked up by a steady and unrelenting flow of gusty winds. The fans and bands were assaulted all day Saturday by nasty little dust devils and an incessant mouth and nose clogging mineral mist that resulted in some rather stunning fashion statements both utilitarian and expressive.
 

 

 

 

 
Nomadic rockers Tinariwen (The Deserts), who hail from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali, arrived from their homeland well-equipped to deal with the gritty conditions in Austin. They must have felt at home in the swirl of sand and dust. Their performance at FFF Fest was a highlight of the three day gathering - soulful, bluesy and beautiful. Check out the live footage of the band after the jump. And if you’re not familiar with their music, the new album, one my favorites of 2011, Tassili, is an excellent place to start. Watching their performance at FFF Fest, I was once again reminded of how every culture has its blues music and how fundamentally similar they are. The music goes deep into something universal - the heart that hurts.
 
More dust bowl fashion and the deep grooves of Tinawiren after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.07.2011
02:15 am
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The only known film footage of the inside of Max’s Kansas City
11.02.2011
03:02 pm
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Ciao! Manhattan director David Weisman claims that this is “the only known footage of the inside of Max’s Kansas City.” Of course, he’s not including all the films and videos of performances shot at Max’s. But those don’t reveal what the club as a whole looked like.

A brief glimpse into New York’s epicenter of cool when everything and everyone seemed larger than life.

Viva, Richie Berlin, Ara Gallant and Paul America make fleeting appearances. This was shot in the late Sixties. Weisman narrates.
 

 
Thanks to Leee Black Childers for the photo.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.02.2011
03:02 pm
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Vintage stripper audition Polaroids from the 60s and 70s
11.01.2011
02:35 pm
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Flickr user stripper_polaroids says he bought a box of over 400 photos of strippers trying out for a southern California club in the late-60s and early-70s. He bought the entire collection for $10.

 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.01.2011
02:35 pm
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Amazing Doctor Who ‘Weeping Angel’ costume
10.31.2011
12:46 pm
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BBC America held a “scariest costume contest” online and the winner is Genevieve from North Carolina’s frightening “Weeping Angel” costume.

See the rest of the submissions over at BBC America.
 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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10.31.2011
12:46 pm
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Terrific ‘They Live’ Halloween costumes
10.30.2011
08:12 pm
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Wow! Phenomenal They Live Halloween costumes by Kiersten Essenpreis. There are step-by-step photo instructions for making the masks over on Kiersten’s website. I think I may have to make one these next year—they’re just too good! 
 

 
(via Super Punch)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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10.30.2011
08:12 pm
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