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Send in the clowns: The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army wants you!
01.22.2018
11:31 am
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Trigger Warning: if you are coulrophobic (suffer from a paralyzing fear of clowns), this article is probably not for you. Select another wonderful piece written by the great contributors here at Dangerous Minds, as you will not enjoy the information I am about to relay to you. If you have no fear of Ronald McDonald or Bozo and their ilk, you will be quite interested to find that beginning in the mid-2000s, a clown army was established in order to fight for our right to party.

Okay, so maybe they weren’t exactly fighting for our right to party as such, but CIRCA—the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army—was most certainly established in order to keep The Man from trying to keep us down in a variety of ways. To quote from their now-defunct-but-Internet-Archived-website, CIRCA’s aims were highly political but filtered through the theatrical. They state:

CIRCA is reclaiming the art of Rebel Clowning, it’s combatants don’t pretend to be clowns, they are clowns, real trained clowns. Clowns that have run away from the anaemic safety of the circus and escaped the banality of kids parties, Fools that have thrown away their sceptres and broken the chains that shackled them to the throne.
CIRCA aims to make clowning dangerous again, to bring it back to the street, restore its disobedience and give it back the social function it once had: its ability to disrupt, critique and heal society. Since the beginning of time tricksters (the mythological origin or all clowns) have embraced life’s paradoxes, creating coherence through confusion - adding disorder to the world in order to expose its lies and speak the truth.

Formed in the UK in 2003 by activists John Jordan, L.M. Bogad, Jen Verson and Matt Trevelyan, CIRCA’s creation was catalyzed by George Bush’s visit to London. The group’s practice of rebel clowning was intended to call into play ideas of the foolish, silly and ridiculous, all of which caught authority figures like policemen and the military completely off-guard (pun intended). Nothing like a massive crowd of clowns demonstrating to make a public official feel trivialized or have their dominance questioned. The CIRCA protests were designed to fulfill the group’s stated principles which, as John Jordan wrote, consisted of the following:

Use absurdity to undermine the aura of authority
Ridicule and absurdity are powerful tools against authority. To be effective, authority has to be perceived as such, otherwise people would never obey its commands. On the other hand, who ever takes a clown seriously? Rebel clowning used this slippery dichotomy to great effect, turning the tables on authority in the street by posing in mock-serious fashion next to lines of cops, as well as at the highest levels of power, by pointing out the clownish behavior of George W. Bush and other authority figures.

Get arrested in an intelligent way
Watching police handcuff and bundle clowns into police vans is always entertaining for passersby, begging the question: What did the clowns do wrong? What is this all about? An arrested clown also makes for very mediagenic images. By staying in character during the whole process of an arrest, including giving their clown army names (e.g., Private Joke) and addressees (e.g., the big top in the sky) as their real identity, rebel clowns caused much mirth and havoc in the police stations.

Reframe
Rebel clowning helped reframe the media images of protests during the big summit mobilizations of the mid 1990s. A colorful band of disobedient clowns could easily capture the limelight and shift the narrative away from “violent clashes” and smashed windows.

The kind of Bakhtinian splendor that CIRCA produced on the streets of the UK for Dubya didn’t stay there. The numerous “Operations” they conducted are listed here, along with some passionate communiques from clown leaders such as General Anesthetic, General Confusion and Colonel Oftruth. Operations like the Engagement with CRAP (Capitalism Represents Acceptable Policy) which took place in Leicester Square in 2004 or the various Scottish skirmishes, and the time they informed CIRCA members that they would be “giving hugs to the needy, playing games with all our friends, and other similarly militant activities. We request full cooperation from the public for this operation.”

This kind of thing doesn’t just remain in one place of course. What began in the UK spread. There was the Dutch Clown Armythe Belgian Clown Army, the US Clown Brigades and so forth. It went global, and CIRCA members appeared en force at political events like G8 and elsewhere. For some reason, it’s gotten a bit quiet recently. We’ve really been lacking in the clown army department, so hey—members of CIRCA—any division—if you’re reading this—we could really use a clown manifestation right about now. This time it really IS time to send in the clowns.
 

 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Ariel Schudson
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01.22.2018
11:31 am
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The subversive sculptures of husband and wife artist team Doubleparlour
01.22.2018
10:25 am
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A curious sculpture by San Francisco husband and wife team Ernie and Cassandra Velasco, aka Doubleparlour.
 
The husband and wife team of Doubleparlour (Ernie and Cassandra Velasco) merged their respective art careers a decade ago to focus on sculpture. Ernie is a talented self-taught artist with both realistic and cartoon-style skills, while Cassandra (who holds a B.A. in painting and photography), is more aligned with traditional artistic expression, with a connection to nature. Although their backgrounds and approaches to their individual work were quite different, they came together beautifully in their joint venture creating puzzling sculptures of odd humanoids and other “creatures” that often defy explanation. Fantastic.

The pair started off using clay as their medium but found it to be unreliable and far too fragile. They then settled on a product called Magic Sculpt which has the same consistency of clay but is much stronger. The figures are sculpted and then painted by hand, turning them into striking, slightly dangerous creations. Since 2007 their partnership has evolved into a thriving business accounting for close to 2000 sales of their surprisingly affordable works through their Etsy shop and their website. Images of the couples intriguing sculptures below; some are slightly NSFW.
 

 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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01.22.2018
10:25 am
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Dig the explosive heavy metal found on White Boy and the Average Rat Band’s obscure LP
01.22.2018
09:40 am
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Reissue cover
 
The little-known heavy metal outfit White Boy and the Average Rat Band hailed from a coal mining town in southwest Virginia. Though the guys were outsiders, residing in the heart of the Bible Belt, they managed to put out one thrilling album in the early 1980s. After decades, they’re back—and so is their coveted LP. 

Led by Mike Matney (a/k/a “White Boy”), the unit recorded what would become their self-titled album in 1980. The LP was released by way of their own label, Tradewind Records. Just 300 copies were pressed, though 50 of them were misplaced at a bus station and were never recovered.
 
Side A
 
Like the best private press records of the ‘70s and ‘80s, the album is a stunning one-of-a-kind. My favorite track is “Neon Warriors,” an explosive number that blends the meta hard rock of Blue Öyster Cult with Judas Priest-like heavy metal.
 

 
The group’s closest contemporaries were part of the then burgeoning scene known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, but that was a world away.
 
Band photo
 
White Boy and the Average Rat Band Played a handful of live shows in the early ‘80s, before calling it quits. In the ‘90s, Mike was shocked to discover that not only was there interest in the White Boy album, but it was selling for three figures. Eventually, bootleg copies began appearing. Recently, the Heaven and Hell label put out the first authorized reissue of the record on CD, with bonus tracks. A vinyl edition is imminent.

I asked Mike Matney a few questions via email.

How did you get the nickname “White Boy”?

Mike Matney: I grew up playing music, and by the time I got to high school in the late ‘70s, I had it bad. I begged my parents to help me get to Nashville after high school. They did. I was eighteen years old and working in a music store in Nashville, when I met Kriss Famous. Kriss invited me to try out for his band, Taboo. He had just lost his guitar player, Ron Keel. Ron was in the process of leaving Nashville and heading off to L.A., where he would find successes with the band Steeler. Kriss’s band was mostly black. He started calling me “White Boy.” It just stuck. After I had moved back home and started working on the album, I put my own band together. So, one day we’re observing our pre-practice ritual on the back porch, with a particularly fine crop, it [the name] just came out.

What sorts of things/events/people inspired the songs on the album?

Mike Matney: I think the inspiration for the album came more as an artistic endeavor. I had just come back from Nashville, where I had spent my time playing in someone else’s band and playing someone else’s music. I always enjoyed writing my own material, so when the opportunity arose for me to record my own songs, I jumped at the chance. I was always pretty eclectic in my taste, as far as what I listened to. I grew up in the ‘60s listening to my mom’s old 45s and the ‘Something New LP from the Beatles. By the time I was in the fifth grade, I had the Black Sabbath album and Alice Cooper’s School’s Out. I was a metal head, I guess.

But it seemed stuff went in one way and always came out a little different on the other side. But the album represents total artistic freedom for me. At the time, people were supportive, and I took advantage of my opportunity. “The Prophet Song” and “Maybe I’m A Fool” are a direct reflection of my struggle to reconcile this secular world with the spiritual one.
 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Bart Bealmear
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01.22.2018
09:40 am
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Girls on the Verge: The subversive art of Zoe Hawk
01.19.2018
11:09 am
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‘In Her Willows’ (2017).
 
I like figurative paintings because they tell stories. I like stories. I like paintings that have embedded narratives waiting to be discovered that tells me something about the action contained within the frame and perhaps a hint of the artist’s own experience.

Zoe Hawk paints pictures based on her experience. Her work feature schoolgirls on the verge of womanhood being socialized towards conformity and adulthood. There is something otherworldly about her paintings as if we are looking at an illustration from a fairy tale or perhaps a scene from a play. There is a sweetness in her use of color and light that belies the darkness of the small acts of violence and strange rituals contained in her canvases.

For example, in one painting, “Waterway,” a group of girls gathers by a body of water. The pink sky and the soft pastels suggest a pleasing scene of children out for a day swimming and playing. Then our eye sees the hair of a drowned girl and then the two children abandoned in the water while two others are trying to climb up the rocky outcrop. Is this the moment after some tragic accident? Or, have we interrupted something far more sinister?

Sometimes, there are clues in the titles like “Cry, Sally, Cry” or “Murder Ballad.” Then there are titles that capture the beauty and innocence of childhood like “Candy Stripers” and “Little Lamb, I’ll Tell Thee” that are riven by troubling and subversive content.

Hawk says of her work:

...investigates the complex experience of coming of age. The costumes, colorful dresses, mournful funeral attire, and matching uniforms signify various modes of feminine identity and set the stage for the girls’ interactions. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood—between fairytales and the dark realities of womanhood—these characters develop an intricate play of yearning, contention, camaraderie, and mischief, as they navigate their social and physical environments.

The daughter of a celebrated artist, Hawk was at first intimidated by the thought of being an artist herself, but once she experienced the empowering feeling of putting paint on paper and of creating her own world through pictures she knew there was only one career open to her. Hawk studied Fine Arts at Missouri State University, graduating in 2005. She then went on to graduate as a Master of Arts, Painting and Drawing in 2010 at the University of Iowa. Hawk has been exhibiting her paintings across the world since 2007 and has held four artist residencies in Norway, Belgium, New York, and Qatar. She has been residing in Doha for the past seven years, where she teaches. See more of Zoe Hawk’s work here.
 
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‘Waterway’ (2015).
 
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‘Candy Stripers’ (2011).
 
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‘Little Lamb, I’ll Tell Thee’ (2013).
 
See more of Zoe Hawk’s work, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.19.2018
11:09 am
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That time Bill Murray interviewed William S. Burroughs on Ken Kesey’s farm
01.19.2018
10:46 am
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Bill Murray, Ken Kesey, and the video crew at the First Perennial Poetic Hoo-Haw, 1976 (photo by Clyde Keller)
 
“Everybody with his fucking hand out,” William S. Burroughs slurs, deep in his cups. He and Bill Murray are discussing the custom of bribing officials when traveling south of the border.

Murray calculates how much it will cost to keep things friendly in TJ. “We figure we’d buy off everybody in Tijuana, just give ‘em two dollars every time they came by.”

Burroughs shakes his head. “No, listen—as soon as you give ‘em two dollars, the next time they come back, they want four dollars. It’s geometric!” He pulls another smoke from his pack of Senior Service. “See, you do not get rid of people by giving them money.”

The occasion, I learn from RealityStudio, was Ken Kesey’s First Perennial Poetic Hoo Haw, held on Kesey’s farm and the University of Oregon campus in June 1976. Photographer Clyde Keller says Murray was there as part of the crew from Eugene’s KVAL-TV, and the gig may also have been related to Murray’s work with the TVTV video collective. Too bad the clip of this historic meeting, with Murray in between The National Lampoon Radio Hour and Saturday Night Live, is only a minute long.

But wait—there’s more! Keep scrolling down for the full, hour long documentary Murray and crew shot at the Hoo Haw, which turned up on YouTube about a week ago. The video includes the moment Burroughs and Murray met in Kesey’s blueberry patch, Burroughs’ reading of “When Did I Stop Wanting to Be President,” and performances by Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

Watch it all, after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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01.19.2018
10:46 am
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Outsider Art: Stunning pics of Bowie & Eno visiting mental patients in Austria, 1994
01.19.2018
09:41 am
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In 1994 the well-known artistic impresario André Heller invited his chums David Bowie and Brian Eno to his native Austria in order to spend a day in the town of Klosterneuburg, on the northern edge of Vienna, to visit the Maria Gugging Psychiatric Clinic (universally known as “Gugging”). The visit to the clinic formed one of the primary inspirations for one of Bowie’s longest and most challenging albums, Outside.

Fortunately for us, Heller also invited his friend, Austrian photographer Christine de Grancy, along. De Grancy took plentiful photos of the encounter but quite astonishingly, she desisted from even developing the negatives until about a year ago, on the occasion of Heller’s 70th birthday. Forty-four splendid photographs of that intriguing day are currently on display in the Crone Galerie in Vienna.

The story of Gugging as an enlightened place of artistic healing has dark roots. During World War II, Gugging was the site of the Nazi-sanctioned murder of hundreds of mentally deficient patients. In the late 1950s, a psychiatrist named Leo Navratil chose Gugging to be the site of his project involving the exposure of the artistic process to mental patients as a form of therapy. Rather than hide the patients or shut them down with medication, Navratil felt that the artistic process might yield beneficial effects on even schizophrenic patients. Over time, he did discover that some of his patients had authentic artistic talent, and Gugging became linked with the artistic movement started by Jean Dubuffet known as Art Brut, which in the U.S. we would be more likely to call “outsider art.”

It is likely an oversimplification to say that David Bowie’s interest in the treatment of schizophrenics derived from the fact that his stepbrother, Terry Burns, suffered from schizophrenia; sadly, Burns committed suicide in early 1985 by permitting himself to be run over by a train at the Coulsdon South train station near London. Many have concluded that Bowie’s early song “The Bewlay Brothers” is a meditation on his half-brother. Eight years after Burns’ death, on Black Tie White Noise, Bowie released “Jump They Say,” which was an even more explicit treatment of the subject: Bowie told the NME that the song was “semi-based on my impression of my stepbrother.” (It’s interesting, isn’t it, that with the term “stepbrother,” Bowie semi-consciously places Burns in the category of “not a blood relation.”) “Jump They Say” was Bowie’s last top 10 single in the UK until 2010, when he scored with “Where Are We Now?

One of the motives Heller had in inviting Bowie to Gugging was to remind him that the treatment of schizophrenics can employ different methods—and yield different outcomes. It’s beyond plausible that Bowie may have felt an exceptional connection to the goings-on at the Gugging clinic.
 

 
The date of the visit was September 8, 1994. I was actually a resident of Vienna at the time. He wasn’t on tour, so there wasn’t a concert for me to attend. Pech gehabt. Bowie and Eno interacted with the patients—and some sort of Jause, the Austrian term for a convivial afternoon snack, was served.

Bowie and Eno spent three hours at Gugging, and de Grancy didn’t even take out her camera until an hour had passed, preferring instead to take the temperature of the moment. De Grancy’s hesitancy in this regard demonstrates something that is quite unusual, which is that these pictures show a Bowie that is about as private as you are likely to find anywhere. Bowie was present not as a rock star but in his role as a working artist and a private individual—an individual who nine years earlier had lost a close relative to schizophrenia. Bowie was consumed with observing the inmates, none of whom, recall, had the slightest notion of who David Bowie was. (We are permitted the fleeting thought that Bowie found this odd anonymity refreshing.)

The 1994 visit was not the first time that Bowie and Eno had been to the clinic. In 1995, the Independent on Sunday ran an interview with the two musicians conducted by Tim de Lisle, in which the two men discussed a visit to Gugging that had taken place while they were cavorting about in Berlin in the late 1970s:
 

“Didn’t we go originally way back in the late Seventies?” Bowie says. “To see l’art brut while we were mixing albums?”

“Yes, well, we probably did,” says Eno.

Needing an ashtray, Bowie slips the cellophane off one of the waiting packets and taps his ash into it. Eno, silently, finds the ashtray.

I ask what the outsider pictures were like. Bowie sighs, as if the question is unanswerable.

-snip-

“What I derived from Gugging the first time,” Bowie goes on, “was the sense that none of them knew they were artists. It’s compelling and sometimes quite frightening to see this honesty. There’s no awareness of embarrassment.”

Eno, who has been murmuring assent, says: “It’s very interesting to see people who are not taking part in any of the ideological arguments. Who are neither for nor against Cubism, or anything. It’s like you could suddenly meet people who didn’t care whether there was a God.”

 
At any rate, a year after that lovely afternoon in Klosterneuburg, Bowie released Outside, which is technically titled 1. Outside. The album represented Bowie’s reunion with Eno, who had been so instrumental in the creation of Bowie’s Berlin masterpieces. The album takes the form of a fractured narrative, which the unwieldy subtitle of the album refers to as “The Diary of Nathan Adler or the Art-Ritual Murder of Baby Grace Blue—A Non-Linear Gothic Drama Hyper-Cycle.” (Exhale.) The album deals with “art crimes” and “concept muggings” investigated by the “Arts Protectorate of London,” and features characters named Leon Blank, Algeria Touchshriek, and the notorious art terrorist Ramona A. Stone.

At the press conference to introduce the album (see below), Bowie credited his visit to Gugging as forming “one of the atmospheres for the album.” Here’s the full quote:
 

Gugging was an incredible experience. ... A mututal friend of Brian Eno’s and myself, André Heller, who’s an artist and something of an entrepreneur, suggested we might like to do some work there or with the inmates or—somehow, he wanted us to go and see Gugging and see what’s going on. And what it is, it’s a hospital where 100 percent of the inmates are involved in the visual arts. ... So many inmates in hospitals in and around Austria showed a proclivity for the visual arts that they thought it might be a good idea to give them their own wing where they could sort of examine and create things, and this is the, this is really the foudnation of what’s subsequently become called ‘outsider art.’ And we went and talked to the patients there and looked at what they were doing. It reminded me a lot, of course, of a museum in Switzerland called L’art Brut, which is in Lausanne, that was started by Dubuffet, a similar source of ideas, I think. And I just like the sense of exploration and the lack of self-judgment about what the artists were doing, and it became one of the atmospheres for the album. I enjoyed it very much.

 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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01.19.2018
09:41 am
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Cowboys, Pop Stars, Droogs, and Artists sporting the ‘hat that won the west’
01.18.2018
12:25 pm
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Paul McCartney.
 
John Wayne got all those cowboys wrong. So did Clint Eastwood, come to that. Most cowboys didn’t wear Stetsons or ten-gallon hats on two-pint heads but generally anything that came to hand. What came to hand for most cowboys in the late 1800s was the bowler hat. It was durable, strong, and didn’t fly off a cowboy’s head when galloping on horseback across the prairie.

That was partly the reason why the bowler was invented. London hatmakers Thomas and William Bowler were asked by a client, Edward Coke, in 1849 to come up with a hat that wouldn’t be easily knocked off or damaged by low-hanging tree branches when worn by riders or gamekeepers. Most people wore top hats when riding which weren’t very practical. The brothers came up with a design of a hard felt hat with a rounded crown and an upturned brim to give shade and keep off the rain. As the story goes, when Coke was presented with his new hat he threw it on the floor and stamped on it several times. As the bowler withstood his fearsome attack, Coke picked it up, dusted it off, and paid twelve shillings for it.

From that first sale, the bowler became the hat of choice among the working class. It was quickly exported across the world. It was soon being worn by cowboys, sheriffs, laborers, ditch diggers, snake oil salesmen, and politicians. In America, the bowler or the derby as it was called, became”the hat that won the west,” despite all what John Wayne and those American western movies tell ya.

Few hats have been as popular, or as successful, and even on occasion, as subversive, as the bowler. This old hat is the symbol of everyman. It has far-reaching associations with lowly workers and city traders; with the rogues of the Wild West like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; the decadence of the Weimar Republic (see Cabaret); the Surrealist movement (the work and dress code of the artist René Magritte); iconic movie stars like Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy; deadly Bond villains like Oddjob and Nick Nack; the Ministry for Silly Walks and stand-up comics like Jerry Sadowitz; and literature like Waiting for Godot and A Clockwork Orange.

It also has links to more controversial groups like the Orange Order, the group of Protestants who march in their suits and bowler hats every twelfth of July to ironically celebrate a battle the Pope of Rome wanted their hero, William of Orange, to win. In South America, the bowler is now part of the dress of Quechua women after it was first introduced by British workers in the 1800s.

This rich mix of bowler hat wearers led me to collect together a brief gallery of suitably iconic and hopefully interesting pictures. Do feel free to add to with your own bowler hat suggestions below.
 
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Anita Ekberg.
 
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Malcolm McDowell as Alex in Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange.’
 
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The iconic cover to Anthony Burgess’ novel ‘A Clockwork Orange.’
 
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Liza Minelli as Sally Bowles from ‘Cabaret.’
 
More people sporting bowlers, after the jump….
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.18.2018
12:25 pm
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Meet Carol Doda: Pioneering topless dancer & friend of The Monkees (NSFW)
01.18.2018
10:41 am
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Exotic dancer Carol Doda held up by Peter Tork of The Monkees, and surrounded by the rest of the band (Davy Jones, far left, Michael Nesmith, left back, and Micky Dolenz, right) in 1968.
 
If you were coming of age in San Francisco in the 60s, you were probably swept up in a lot of things, including perhaps the scandalous news reported in June of 1964 about a woman by the name of Carol Doda. Doda was an exotic dancer who took off her top during a performance at the Condor Club (which also employed a young Sly Stone for a short time) in the San Francisco area of North Beach while on top of a piano. Why was this such big news you ask? Well, Doda has been credited by many as one of the first dancers to perform without her top in the U.S., making her a pioneer in the field. According to an interview with the New York Times in 1988, Doda says she was handed a topless bathing suit (a so-called “monokini” designed by Rudi Gernreich) and was told this would be her new “costume.” Doda mused about being “really stupid” but adding if someone told her to do something, she “did it.”

While this would be more than enough to propel Doda to stardom, she would further capitalize on her worldwide notoriety by injecting her breasts with silicone at the behest of her managers at the Condor Club. In twenty weeks and as many silicone injections, Doda’s bust went from a 34B to a 44DD for a mere 1,500 bucks. Soon newspapers were referring to Doda’s boobs as the “the new Twin Peaks of San Francisco.” However, not everyone embraced San Francisco’s topless establishments and at some point in the year following Doda’s topless debut, San Fran’s mayor at the time John F. Shelley made the following statement—which is unintentionally hilarious—about what was behind the alleged rise in crime in the North Beach neighborhood:

‘‘The topless craze is at the bottom of the whole problem.’‘

As funny as Shelley’s war cry on boobs was, it was followed the next day with action by the police who hit up different topless establishments, arresting the dancers for “lewd conduct” including Carol Doda. The crackdown wouldn’t stick, Doda and others were acquitted, and the topless craze spread like lightning throughout North Beach, which would soon welcome other topless spots such as an ice cream stand and a very busy shoeshine business. A few years later in 1969, Doda would take it all off much to the ire of California Governor Ronald Reagan who granted communities the legal right to stop topless clubs and such from opening in their area. Reagan launched his crusade against the topless industry shortly after winning the governorship in 1966.  There was also an effort to try to ban the word “topless” for use on signage which failed.
 

Carol Doda proudly displaying the newspaper headline regarding her acquittal outside of the Condor.
 
In between all this Doda found herself cast in a role which would earn her a lifetime of recognition by joining the cast of the 1968 film Head (co-produced by Jack Nicholson)—the fantastically weird flick starring The Monkees, with Frank Zappa, Annette Funicello, and Doda as Sally Silicone. Doda would continue to perform sans clothing for over twenty years before retiring from the business, though she would remain a local fixture in SF. She fronted a band called the Lucky Stiffs in the 90s and later ran her own intimate apparel shop, Carol Doda’s Champagne and Lace Lingerie Boutique. She would continue making appearances (now clothed) at various clubs in North Beach until 2009 before passing away at the age of 78 on December 9th, 2015.

I’ve posted photos of Doda doing her thing below, as well as a few choice photos of her with her darling Monkees. Most images are NSFW.
 

Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Carol Doda in a scene from ‘Head.’
 

A photo of Doda from September 7, 1968, in Ramparts magazine, accompanying an article called “Bugging Cops.” The article provided a detailed profile of well-known San Francisco sleuth, Hal Lipset, an expert in miniature electronic surveillance.
 

Doda showing off her newly augmented breasts.
 

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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01.18.2018
10:41 am
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Four songs from Yo La Tengo’s new LP ‘There’s A Riot Going On’
01.18.2018
10:37 am
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Since their emergence as college radio and critical faves in the late ‘80s, Yo La Tengo have been among the most revered and influential standard-bearers of American independent rock music. Though they’ve they’ve been regularly releasing music of consistently high quality since 1989’s President Yo La Tengo, they’ve never transcended cult status, but their role seems to suit them, and they’ve availed themselves fully of the creative freedom that comes with relative obscurity.

Their new album, There’s A Riot Going On, is due for release in mid-March, but we’re sharing four of its songs for your enjoyment today. The album is a departure for the band in method and in style. The album is longtime bassist James McNew’s first recording credit outside the self-recorded solo work he’s released under the band name “Dump.” He recorded the band bit by bit in their rehearsal studio, with no music written in advance, combining improvisations with unused ideas, sometimes going years between tracking sessions on some of the songs. Though YLT are most readily associated with noisy back-to-basics indie rock, Riot flows dreamily, like a post-rock or shoegaze album, recalling the hazy and elemental passages that cropped up much on 1997’s wonderful I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One.
 

 
The process sounds like the painstaking collaging Mark Hollis and Tim Freise-Greene did to make Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock, and There’s A Riot Going On is as uncannily coherent as that experimental masterpiece. That could be due to the final mix by John McEntire (My Dad Is Dead, Bastro, Tortoise, Gastr Del Sol, Red Krayola…) The band has never played any of these songs live, and are currently working out how to do so before their tour begins at the end of March.

Before we get to the music, we really need to address the title—obviously there’s a nod to Sly and the Family Stone’s difficult, cynical, and dejected (but still badass) 1971 LP There’s a Riot Goin’ On. If there’s a musical or lyrical connection intended, I am unable to detect it. The YLT press release offers this:

In 1971, when the nation appeared to be on the brink of violently coming apart, Sly and the Family Stone released There’s a Riot Goin’ On, an album of dark, brooding energy. Now, under similar circumstances, Yo La Tengo have issued a record with the same name but with a different force, an album that proposes an alternative to anger and despair.

 
Have a listen, after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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01.18.2018
10:37 am
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Richard Pryor, Timothy Leary, Beach Boys and more talk psychedelia on Canadian TV, 1968
01.18.2018
09:41 am
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Canadian DJs Fred Latremouille and Red Robinson on the ‘Let’s Go’ set, 1964 (via Tom Hawthorn)

The CBC television series Let’s Go, which grew out of a segment on Alex Trebek’s Music Hop, brought the music of the Sixties into Canadian houses. Along with US and UK imports—Jimi Hendrix, the Yardbirds, Country Joe & the Fish, Eric Burdon and the Animals, et al.—Let’s Go promoted Canadian acts such as the Poppy Family and the Guess Who.

Apart from a sitar performance of “Downtown,” there is hardly any music in this special episode from 1968, a report on the effects of the “psychedelic revolution” on the Vancouver scene. The camera crew talks to local hippies and peeks inside a head shop and a coffeehouse, but most of the broadcast consists of celebrities arguing for or against acid rock and its cultural appurtenances. Timothy Leary, sitting in a field, pleads the case for consciousness change; Frank Sinatra Jr., interviewed on the soundstage, rails against the heads for making the Kingston Trio uncool. The Everly Brothers and Ray Charles also weigh in on the LSD question, and Al Jardine, Mike Love and the Maharishi put in a word for TM.
 

 
The show’s editor must have been a fan of “Tutti Frutti,” because this episode serves up a cold plate of revenge from its author. At 16:32, a clip of Little Richard is expertly deployed, interrupting Pat Boone’s windy sermon on the destructive power of Beatles and Stones lyrics and flushing the crooner’s sorry ass down one of those single-gender toilets of which he is so fond:

Oh, I think it’s great. I love it. I’m talking about the music. I think it’s fantastic. Because I think a person is expressing what he feels. He’s not going by anything that is written on paper. This man is playing, he’s not playing just for money, he’s playing because his soul within is driving him to push, to let his feelings go out in music, and I believe that it’s one of the greatest things that ever happened to the field of entertainment—which, psychedelic music is rhythm and blues, of course.

Naturally, my favorite philosopher, Richard Pryor, seems to know more than all the rest of the showfolk combined. Let his wisdom unfold your mind like a thousand-petaled lotus.

Watch it, after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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01.18.2018
09:41 am
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