King Combrat

Pop-surrealist Ron English gained fame through billboard liberation and other Situationist-style pranks like his amazing cereal-box détournement project. He’s waged war against Camel cigarettes for overtly marketing to children, and against Apple for appropriating crucial 20th-Century social justice figures who were too dead to object to their commercial exploitation. But his broad critique of consumer culture has, like the work of his fellow street-art godhead Banksy, long since found its way into the gallery world, and in contrast with his billboard hijackings, his paintings are slick, highly-polished satires of corporate America’s propaganda campaigns (“…like if Walt Disney was a left-wing propagandist,” he once said in a Hypebeast interview).

English’s newest body of work goes on display this week at DTLA’s Corey Helford Gallery, in a solo exhibit titled “TOYBOX: America in the Visuals.” 36 new paintings will be included, as will installation pieces and sculpture, plus a musical performance by English’s alter-ego DJ POPaganda—the name being derived from a term he coined for his work, and which has served as the title for a book and a documentary, as well. The collected work seeks to examine self-creation and the development of identity as an act of the imagination, a process that starts in childhood through play—particularly play with toys, which can serve as proxy identities—but which continues throughout one’s life. We reached out to English for a comment, and he was kind enough to respond:

It seems these days everyone has an opinion, no one has a clue. Opinions and beliefs have become the currency of modern civilization, and we are in the midst of creating the new mythologies that will define us in the future. This show is a visual and musical intervention into that process.

Here’s a small sampling of the new paintings. A few of them were provided exclusively to Dangerous Minds, and we’re grateful to the Corey Helford Gallery for that extremely cool consideration. Click an image to spawn an enlargement.
 

The Ascension of deadmau5
 

Stroke of Genius
 

D. Menace and Richie T Grin
 
More Ron English after the jump…

 
Statements of purpose don’t get much more succinct than this one on Dallas-based pilot/photographer Bill Young’s Instagram:

I travel for a living. Stay in a lot of hotels. See a lot of carpet.

And with that compact manifesto, Young introduces his collection of photos of hotel carpeting. (I’d imagine this could be done just as well with hospitals, houses of worship, family-style restaurants…) Taken as individual images, it’s pretty amazing how some of them reflect the visual rhythms found in the works of abstract expressionists like Robert Motherwell or Brice Marden. Of course, some of them are just utterly craptacular, but I’ll leave the individual aesthetic judgments to you.
 

A post shared by Bill Young (@myhotelcarpet) on Nov 12, 2017 at 11:20am PST

 

Robert Motherwell, “Elegy to the Spanish Republic”
 

A post shared by Bill Young (@myhotelcarpet) on Apr 26, 2017 at 5:12pm PDT

 

Brice Marden, “Cold Mountain (Open)”
 

A post shared by Bill Young (@myhotelcarpet) on Mar 22, 2016 at 6:47pm PDT

 

Alexander Calder, “Balloons”
 
More after the jump…

 
Imagine deciding to execute your own tarot deck using the photographic arts. Not just the 22 cards of the Major Arcana, mind you, but the whole kit and caboodle—all 78 cards, right down to the 7 of swords and the 3 of cups, every damned repetitive variation. Now imagine that there’s no such thing as Photoshop and that digital photography also isn’t yet a part of our lives either.

How difficult would that be, how much planning would it require? Even if you were able to do it, do you think you could make them turn out good? What are the odds that it would have any artistic merit at all?

Bea Nettles has dedicated her life to photography, and she executed what is believed to be the world’s first-ever photographic tarot deck in the early 1970s. She was enrolled as a printmaking student at the Penland Art School in Bakersville, North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, when in 1970 she had a dream in which she came up with the idea of producing her own tarot deck using the art of photography.
 

 
The resulting deck is often breathtakingly gorgeous. It is also whimsical, homespun, frequently funny, personal and intuitive. Lacking a lion to portray “Strength,” she used a hardy sheepdog instead. The images exploit the Appalachian setting. While it is never far from the spirit of a modernist like Man Ray, it also has a distinctively spooky vibe that is in keeping with the tarot. The project took her several years; in 1975 it was published by Inky Press Productions as The Mountain Dream Tarot. In the deck she posed as the Queen of Pentacles wearing the same black taffeta dress that had inspired her dream.

Nettles was assisted in her project by two professor at the University of Florida, with whom she had worked as an undergraduate. Jerry Uelsmann introduced to her the idea of combining multiple negatives in a single image. Robert Fichter taught her how to paint on photographs and negatives to get various results.

As part of the introduction to her deck, Nettles wrote,
 

The mountain dream tarot came to me in a dream in the summer of 1970. The decision to assemble a photographic set of cards was made in my sleep. I began the next morning at Penland School in North Carolina. I chose models who suited the cards and after reading the card’s description we took a walk to find the right place to make the picture. ... I based my imagery on the classic Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Waite. My cards are an intuitive, not a literal interpretation of the deck.

 
Years later, Nettles said of the tarot deck,
 

If you needed an eagle in an image, you had to find an eagle to photograph…. The same was true with flames, water, boats, swords, and all of the other props. I shot the images with my medium format Yashica D camera, processed the film, and printed either in Penland’s darkroom or my own. The cards in the original deck were machine stitched between 2 sheets of frosted mylar.

 
In 2007 Bruce Springsteen released his 15th studio album, called Magic. On the CD itself (and on the label on the LP) is an evocative image of a heart being pierced by three swords, which—of course—comes from the three of swords card in Nettles’ deck. 
 

 
Today Nettles is in her early 70s and has spent her life as a professor of photography, at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Tyler School of Art, and the University of Illinois, where she is currently Professor Emerita. I’d be shocked if she weren’t a good one.

You can buy prints of her tarot deck from Nettles’ website or buy her stuff on Amazon.
 

Strength
 

The Fool
 

The Chariot
 
Much more from Nettles’ deck after the jump…...
 

Unbox Industries statue of director Alejandro Jodorowsky as The Alchemist from his 1973 film, ‘The Holy Mountain.’
 
Hong Kong-based Unbox Industries is a cult favorite among figure collectors, and I should know as I am one myself. The company is well-known for working with fringe artists such as Japanese manga and horror film hero Hideshi Hino to bring some of his ghoulish characters to (so-to-speak) life. Other collaborations forged by Unbox include Argos Films and a figure based on the 1973 masterpiece, Fantastic Planet, and a series of figures in the uncanny image of David Firth‘s creepy character Salad Fingers, from his wildly popular Internet series of the same name. Recently, Unbox worked with San Francisco sculptor Andrea Blasich to produce two rather stunning statues of director Alejandro Jodorowsky in character as El Topo (from his 1970 film) and The Alchemist from his 1973 mindfuck, The Holy Mountain (pictured at the top of this post). Blasich worked with Jodorowsky to ensure the likeness was up to the legendary director’s standards.

Most figures made by Unbox are not playthings but works of art with hefty price tags. Despite that fact, many of their creations sell out quickly thanks to their dedicated fan base. If you’re interested in picking up one of the Jodorowsky statues, the fourteen-inch El Topo will run you $200 (limited to 200 pieces), and The Alchemist will hit your wallet for $225. I’ve posted various images of both statues below as well as the trio of fully articulated Salad Fingers figures below which retail for 25 bucks a pop.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
I have a soft, fuzzy spot in my heart for bands with animal performers. The genre is often categorized as a mere novelty but, in my opinion, it should be considered as nothing less than it actually is: artistic genius.

I’m sure the first band of this category that will to come to mind for most is the notorious deathgrind band Caninus, once fronted by pit bulls Budgie and Basil. There is also Hatebeak, the Baltimore death metal band with Waldo the African grey parrot as its lead singer. Both groups released a likeminded split EP in 2005 on Reptilian Records.
 

Caninus
 

Hatebeak
 
Of the non-metal variety, Beatle Barkers was a parody record from 1983 that used animal sounds (mostly human barking) in place of the vocals on Beatles covers. Similarly, acts like popular holiday favorite, Jingle Cats, as well as its 1950s predecessor The Singing Dogs, manipulated animal noises to serve in lieu of vocals. There’s even something now called Whalestep, which has me at a loss for words.

But let’s not forget about the musical groups that are made up entirely by animals. Thai Elephant Orchestra is a rotating cast of up to fourteen elephants in Northern Thailand. Improvised on heavy-duty versions of traditional and mostly percussive Thai instruments, the ensemble has released three records to date and the music is actually quite beautiful. One of the more recent additions to this list is Tuna and the Rock Cats, the traveling feline circus band made up of five cats and a chicken. The Rock Cats play every instrument of your average rock band and, as you would have guessed, their live shows are more of a performance art.
 

Thai Elephant Orchestra’s self-titled debut record from 2000
 

Tuna and the Rock Cats
 
Now that we are all on the same page, I wanted to pay tribute to probably the most famous, yet often overlooked animal musician of our time: Seamus the dog. As the story goes, David Gilmour was caring for his friend’s German Shepherd at some point in 1971 while Pink Floyd was in the studio recording their sixth studio album Meddle. The dog, whose name was Seamus, belonged to Humble Pie and Small Faces frontman Steve Marriott, who at the time was on tour in the United States.
 

Steve Marriott with his dog Seamus
 
Seamus was a dog who responded well to music and as a result, had previously performed a small role barking in the background of Small Faces’ 1968 cut, The Universal. The members of Pink Floyd were quick to act upon the musical capabilities of their new canine friend when it was discovered during recording that Seamus could howl in tune with their instruments. Acting on the bizarre opportunity, the band quickly wrote a twelve-bar, slide guitar blues track for Seamus to “sing” over. Additional instrumentation and Gilmour’s lead vocals were later added. Meddle was released on Halloween of 1971, with “Seamus” closing out side A.

Critics have panned “Seamus” as one of Pink Floyd’s worst songs ever written, claiming the spoof to be dispensable to both the record and the band’s discography. In response to such objection, Gilmour defended the track, once stating that “It wasn’t really as funny to everyone else [as] it was to us.” Perhaps due to song’s unpopularity or the unavailability of its backing vocalist, the group and Gilmour have never played “Seamus” live in concert. That is, with the exception of in their monumental concert documentary, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.

Live at Pompeii was filmed over four days in October 1971. The primary focus of the film is Floyd’s psychedelic concert set in an ancient Roman amphitheater somewhere in Italy. Since the recording coincided with the release of Meddle, most of the songs included on the original version of the documentary were from the new record. The film was re-released in 1974 to include footage of Pink Floyd while recording The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road Studios.

The song “Seamus” made its way onto Live from Pompeii in the form of a segment titled “Mademoiselle Nobs.” The scene presents the song in altered form with David Gilmour playing harmonica and Roger Waters on blues guitar. Laying beside the two is a howling Russian Wolfhound, Nobs the dog. Nobs was a female Borzoi who belonged to Madonna Bouglione (daughter of circus director, Joseph Bouglione). At the request of the band, Madonna brought Nobs to the studio during shooting so they could re-create Seamus’ performance for the documentary. The scene was shot outside of Paris.
 
More after the jump…

 
If you’re looking for something, shall we say? classical yet fashionably eye-catching, then you probably couldn’t do much better than a pair of leggings (or perhaps swim shorts) featuring the most recognizable dick in all of history plastered all across the crotch.

Rage On! are currently selling leggings featuring an image of the lower half of Michelangelo’s “David” called David’s Marble Legs. They also have “David” Swim Shorts with a literally butt-hugging seat. Both of these items are bound to inspire conversation and a possible interest in the finer details of Classical Art. One happy customer described these leggings as “amazing” and “couldn’t be happier to make people uncomfortable” which is possibly the intention.
 

 

 
H/T Mommyish, Ufunk, and Rage On!
 

Robert Smith of The Cure answers your questions!
 

“What would you do in “the last three minutes?”

“Cry or laugh; depending where I was and who I was with.”

—Robert Smith of The Cure responding to a fan on how he would spend his last three minutes on Earth from the band’s vintage newsletter The Cure News Issue #2, Autumn 1987.

Cure vocalist Robert Smith was 28 when he started answering questions from his fans in the band’s series of newsletters The Cure News which published its first issue in 1987. During its run, Smith replied to hand-written inquiries sent in about his mythical hair and his aversion to flying—all while slyly avoiding answering a request for his home address. In later newsletters, Smith lets loose on The Smiths/Morrissey and rarely avoids answering intimate questions from fans which run the gamut from amusing to stalker-level weirdness. The vintage Q&As also chronicle Smith’s commentary as it relates to his relationship with his childhood pal, Cure drummer and keyboardist Lol Tolhurst until Lol’s departure from The Cure in 1989.

I combed through every newsletter put out between 1987 to 1991 in search of Smith’s most quotable-quotes—which, I must say, was a shit-ton of fun. I’ve posted loads of Smith’s answers to his fans queries below in the order of their chronological appearance in the various newsletters. I’ve left his answers just as he wrote them, without capitalization and British spellings which in some cases makes them all the more endearing. So without further delay, here’s Robert Smith being very Robert Smith-y while he responds to his fans.
 

A photo of Issue #14 of ‘The Cure News.’
 

Issue #1, March 1987

Fan: How do you get your hair to stick up?
Robert Smith: kms gel and lots of backcombing

Fan: What hobbies do the band have?
Robert Smith: boris rides his motorbike, porl takes photographs and generally arts it up, i read, simon plays computer games (in between searching for the perfect drink!), and laurence…umm…he is interested in spontaneous human combustion.

Issue #2, Autumn 1987

Fan: Do you believe in God?
Robert Smith: no.

Fan: What makes you happy?         
Robert Smith: going to bed.

Issue #3, September 1987

Fan: What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened whilst playing live?
Robert Smith: lol on drums!

Fan: What do you think of the following chart acts?
a) The Smiths
b) Madonna
c) U2
d) Bananarama
e) Curiosity killed the cat (the late 80’s British pop band)
Robert Smith:
a) i am delighted they no longer exist, and all it needs now is a runaway truck and morrissey looking the other way..
b) it has to be someone doing it
c) as predictable as five star, and as boring
d) two out of three isn’t bad….(?)
e) aaaagh!! non-entities inert…

Issue #4, January 1988

Fan: What is your reaction if you are told that someone is totally obsessed with you, thinks about you, listens to you, and writes to you every day?
Robert Smith: if they lived with me for a day, they would be writing to someone else by midnight!

Fan: You say your greatest fear is dying, yet a short (?) while ago you didn’t want to reach the age of 25. What happened to change your mind?
Robert Smith: I reached 26.

Fan: What did you dream about last night?
Robert Smith: crashing in a plane and skiing and eyes.

Fan: If a fairy granted you 3 wishes, what would they be?
Robert Smith: to be able to become invisible, to be able to fly and to never grow up…

Fan: What colour lipstick do you use?
Robert Smith: “mary quant crimson scorcher”!

Fan: Do you hate anybody? Who? And why?
Robert Smith: i hate lots of people for many different reasons - some people and reasons for i don’t even know… but none of them too much of the time…

Issue #5, May 1988

Fan: What epitaph would you like on your tombstone?
Robert Smith: i am not here.

Fan: What’s your definition of the perfect cure fan?
Robert Smith: a sincere individualist with a hatred of fashion, bigotry, and soullessness.

Fan: What three possessions would you want with you if stranded on a desert island?
Robert Smith: my telescope, my bed, and a beach ball.
 

Lol Tolhurst and Smith.
 

Issue #6, January 1989

Fan: What’s the funniest thing Lol has ever done?
Robert Smith: pretend to be part of the group.

Fan: Why do you all victimize Lol?
Robert Smith: because he is useless.

Fan: Are you usually pleased with how your photos turn out?
Robert Smith: no - very rarely - but it doesn’t really matter.

Fan: What’s the most embarrassing moment on stage?
Robert Smith: there have been millions - whenever i remember something about myself i hate (which isn’t hard)

Fan: What’s your biggest frustration?
Robert Smith: getting old

Fan: If you could change anything in your life, what would it be?
RS: my birth date

Fan: When you were a child what did you want to be when you grew up?
Robert Smith: me

Fan: Do you believe in U.F.O.‘s?
Robert Smith: sometimes

Issue #8, September 1989

Fan: What is the real reason for you sacking Lol? Have you spoken to him since?
Robert Smith: he lost touch with the rest of us; mentally, spiritually and socially. no, i haven’t spoke to him (i hadn’t spoke to him for several years anyway - that was part of the problem).

Fan: Who has replaced Lol as a scapegoat?
Robert Smith: no-one. we don’t need one anymore.

Fan: Do you ever feel that everything you’ve ever done is completely irrelevant and meaningless?
Robert Smith: often! but it’s not only me.

Fan: Were you drunk whilst performing “Lullaby” on Top of the Pops?
Robert Smith: yes!!

Fan: What is the worst psychological torture you can imagine suffering?
Robert Smith: constantly waking up and then waking up…always in a dream, or would this be any different?

Fan: From the list below, what is the most thing you’ve ever experienced?
a) amazing
b) beautiful
c) sickening/horrifying
Robert Smith:
a) hallucinations
b) hallucinations
c) flying

More after the jump…

 
An article in the Chicago Tribune, Illinois, on October 15, 1905, supplied a list of reasons given by people as to why they had been fired from their jobs. The list included such bizarre reasons as tearing a hole in an employer’s pants, having a nosebleed which stained a pair of socks, and perhaps best of all getting sacked for laughing at the boss when he was kicked by a cow—which is something worthy of inclusion in anyone’s resume.

There are also some of the usual no-nos like being drunk, running away, laziness, carelessness, and being impudent, as well as a few unexpected and definitely odd entries like “refused to marry boss’ sister,” “told ghost story,” “joined the wrong church,” and “too good for job.” This list shows how work was shifting from predominantly land-based agriculture to town and city industry/white collar employment. It also suggests work back in those days was very much dependent on the whims and prejudices of the employer. So nothing has changed?
 


 
Thanks to Steve Duffy, via Vintage Blognook.
 

 
Among the many elements of popular culture that the Beatles can be said to have invented, one might add the development of the possibility of women, in numbers, showing acute sexual interest in music stars. Yes, there was Frank Sinatra, and Rudy Vallée before him, but the advent of Beatlemania was an essentially new phenomenon. One of the staples of the mid-1960s is footage of dozens of teenage girls screaming/fainting because they happen to find themselves in the vicinity of Ringo Starr. The general trope of sneaking up to a hotel room in order to kiss a Beatle was surely one of the factors that convinced so many young men to try their hand at the music business.

They came to be called groupies, and some of them even became famous, such as Pamela Des Barres and the Plaster Casters. Des Barres and a few other women briefly became the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously), a kind of groupie band in their own right under the tutelage of Frank Zappa, releasing their only album Permanent Damage in 1969.

That was the same year that another groupie-related album came out. It was prosaically called The Groupies and featured no music at all, merely the recorded musings of a few (unidentified) groupies in a tell-all confessional. It was released by Alan Lorber Productions, one of the few releases put out by the label put together by Lorber, who was a well-known arranger at the time.

The GTOs were an L.A. act, but judging by their accents (and the tales they tell), the women on The Groupies are pure New York City, reminiscing about learning to hook up with pop stars at the Brooklyn Fox Theater or discos like Cheetah or Ondine. The women on the album sound pretty young, which can be seen in their primary choice of euphemism for sex, which is “making piggies.”

It’s a curious album and may make the perfect backdrop for your next key party.

Amusingly, the makers of the album tried to immortalize the ladies’ banter by featuring a “groupie glossary” on the back cover, which is simply a listing of the terms they use, almost invariably in an ad-hoc manner, on the album. In other words, it’s too much to call this the widespread accepted terminology of a subculture but it is at least an accurate rendering of typical vocabulary.
 

 

Groupie glossary:

poxie: physically repulsive
plaster caster (The Plaster Casters): girls who cast plaster molds of the genital organs of male pop stars.
kinky: attractively weird
randy: horny, sexually obsessed
puny: small as in male genitals
piggies (making piggies): sexual intercourse
The Fox (The Brooklyn Fox Theater): scene of early sixties rock shows usually m.c.‘d by Murray the “K”
Goof: an event that occurs contrary to normal social behavior; sometimes just for the fun of it.
slaggy: low-life groupie
pop star: the artist with the hit record; major recording artist with international popularity
head (gave him, to give): oral copulation
whank-off: to masturbate
dosed-up: having contracted a venereal disease
creamies: reference to the physical properties of venereal disease
downs: pills with mental and physical depressant qualities
ups: opposite effect of downs
messed-up: a state resulting from excessive drug involvement
fling-on (to fling-on someone): a groupie who physically throws herself at a pop star.
stoned: mental and physical state of being resulting from the intake of mind-expanding drugs
gross: ugly, repulsive person or scene
rock-geisha: an elite groupie
hang on the wall: wait around in a rock club for the action
freak scene: sexual orgy
Prince Charming: as in “Cinderella”
up-sexed: Freudian slip for “upset”
leader: lead singer or the star of a pop group
roadys: road managers who accompany pop groups
out of it: stoned to the point of being out of it
pop people: those people involved in the music scene including recording, producing and all related fields

 
Here’s the full album. For some reason the people who made the album made the choice to introduce each side with a curious echo effect that may dupe you into thinking you’ve opened two instances of the same recording—you probably haven’t.

 
The Mad were one of the more interesting New York shock bands during the transition between “punk rock” and what would become known as “New York Hardcore.” The band put out two incredibly awesome seven-inchers, the “Eyeball”/“I Hate Music” single and the “Fried Egg” EP—originals of each go for major bucks on the collector’s market.

The band was, perhaps, best known for their two tracks (“I Hate Music” and “The Hell”) which appeared on the widely-distributed New York Thrash cassette released in 1982 by the ROIR label.

Their theatrical lead singer, Screaming Mad George, went on to fame as a special makeup effects artist, working on films like Big Trouble in Little China, Predator, and a couple of the A Nightmare on Elm Street sequels.

The video below comes to us from Paul Tschinkel, who recorded it for his punk and new wave cable TV show, Inner-Tube, which ran for ten years on Manhattan Cable. We’ve written about Tschinkel and Inner-Tube here before.

In the video, which was recorded at the infamous Max’s Kansas City, we are treated to a wild performance by Screaming Mad George and The Mad—with surprisingly good audio and sound for the time. One wishes that the video lasted for more than one song, but the song is great—sounding a bit like a slowed-down Bad Brains of the same era (1979)—speaking of which, Schinkel also recorded some amazing songs from the Bad Brains for Inner-Tube the following year, which you can watch HERE.

We wonder if there is more footage of The Mad in the Inner-Tube vaults. If so, we’d love to see it!