Bands like The U-Men don’t come along often. A Seattle band at a time when the phrase “Seattle band” carried zero cultural cachet, The U-Men kitchen-sinked Gun Club rootsiness, classic garage rock ‘verb-and-twang, punk sneer, gothic darkness, and Ubu/Beefheart artiness into a single coherent sound that galvanized a hinterlands underground scene and directly influenced the grunge explosion. In the words of Mudhoney’s Mark Arm:

They were the only band that could unify the disparate sub-subcultures and get all 200 of those people to fill a room. Anglophilic, dress-dark Goths; neo-psych MDA acolytes; skate punks who shit in bathtubs at parties; Mod vigilantes who tormented the homeless with pellet guns; college kids who thought college kids were lame; Industrial Artistes; some random guy with a moustache; and eccentrics who insisted that they couldn’t be pigeonholed: all coalesced around the U-Men.

 
The band’s individual members, unsurprisingly, never got to reap the dividends of being influential. The bands they formed after their 1989 breakup—Gas Huffer, Love Battery, The Crows—all left variously sized marks on the ‘90s underground, but even in that indulgent period, only Love Battery ever got to grab the brass ring, and only after the lone U-Man in their lineup, bassist Jim Tillman, had already bailed. So while the bands they inspired went on to lasting repute, The U-Men remained a connoisseur’s buy. Their profile wasn’t helped by the fact that they only released one album, 1988’s Step on a Bug, somewhat after they’d receded from the height of their powers. For most of their existence, their output was limited to EPs and 7”s.

That’s being rectified somewhat by Sub Pop Records (who else, right?) who’re soon releasing U-Men, a comprehensive U-Men anthology sweetened with some previously unreleased goodies (a 1999 collection, Solid Action, contains only about half of what the new one boasts). Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt actually released the band’s first E.P on his pre-Sub Pop label Bombshelter before the band moved on to greater exposure on Homestead Records, and they even released a late-‘80s single on the then-nascent Amphetamine Reptile—that label’s notorious honcho Tom Hazelmeyer was in fact a U-Man for a whole four gigs.
 
Continues after the jump…

 
What would be really surprising, in retrospect, is if there had been no Freddy Krueger novelty records at all. But most of us will do much worse things for money. Aside from the Fat Boys’ “rappin’ Freddy” single, “Are You Ready for Freddy,” the big item in the child killer’s slender discography is the 1987 LP Freddy’s Greatest Hits, credited to the Elm Street Group.

The title is misleading, and not just because there weren’t any hits. Freddy’s only contribution to many songs is a joyless cackle that sounds like the devil’s laughter in Chick tracts (“HAW! HAW! HAW!”). The actual lead vocals, usually performed by one Stephanie Davy, emerge from a band that sounds like it has run out of drugs midway through scoring a contemporary Chevy Chase vehicle. Does Freddy get the chance to stretch out, to demonstrate his range, his imagination, or his gifts as an interpreter of songs? Did Freddy and the Elm Street Group keep after, say, “Moon River” all night long, through take after nicotine-stained take, until the song finally opened up like a thousand-petaled lotus long after everyone had grown too tired to think, and a hush fell over the studio as the sun stole over the horizon and the last notes died away because everyone knew they had just played “the one,” the take for all time, and they could still feel it hanging in the air? No. On his recording debut, Freddy mostly says “HAW! HAW! HAW!”
 

 
What can this flawed collection tell us about the artist? Freddy is a Boomer, apparently. Four of the nine tracks are covers of Fifties and Sixties rock hits: Freddie and the Dreamers’ “Do the Freddie,” Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs’ “Wooly Bully,” Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” and the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” While the latter two selections are obvious enough jokes, the inclusion of “Do the Freddie” and “Wooly Bully” reveals a surprising dimension of Freddy’s character. He wants you to dance!

More Freddy after the jump…

 
This armor battledress for Princess Diana of Themyscira, Daughter of Hippolyta, aka Wonder Woman, is certainly something to behold. Made from intricate, handcrafted leather by Samuel Lee at Prince Armory, this superhero outfit is “truly one of a kind.”

I recently saw the new Wonder Woman movie with a girlfriend who thought the most impressive thing about it was the way Princess Diana’s hair and makeup stayed immaculate throughout. To be honest, I never noticed, being too busy contemplating why this Amazonian superhero needed the irritating Captain Kirk and his gaggle of geeks along for the ride. As any fule no, Wonder Woman don’t need nobody to beat-up the bad guys—though this leather battledress would definitely add to her coolness.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

A shot of Mary (pictured on the left) and Madeleine Collinson on the set of Hammer’s 1971 film ‘Twins of Evil.’
 
Before twin sisters Madeleine and Mary Collinson appeared in Hammer’s 1971 film Twins of Evil, they would become the very first twins to pose for Playboy magazine as the “Misses October” for the October 1970 issue. According to Madeleine, the occurrence of twin births was incredibly common for their family noting that nearly every woman in the Collinson clan had given birth to twins “one time or another.” In fact, Madeleine and Mary’s mother, a former model, would later give birth to a second set of twins.

Madeleine Collinson was apparently a big fan of horror films which made her a natural fit to play Frieda Gellhorn, the “evil” twin in Hammer’s 1971 film Twins of Evil. Her sister Mary would play opposite her twin as the demure, virginal Mary Gellhorn. The sisters had just arrived in London two years earlier from Malta, where they did some modeling in their early teens as well as a few television commercials. Mary would be the first to leave Malta and head to London followed by Madeleine when they were just seventeen. They were instantly hounded by photographers and filmmakers hoping to capitalize on the twins’ unique good looks. Success came quickly to the twins and after being invited to attend a party in London to hang out with other European movers and shakers they met Victor Lownes—Hugh Hefner’s right-hand man and Playboy’s managing director. According to London high-society mythology, Lownes convinced the girls to move into his mansion in London and then sent them off to the original Playboy Mansion in Chicago to meet Hef and pose for the magazine. As I mentioned previously, the twins would earn the distinction of being the very first set of twins to ever appear in Playboy. Over 800 photos of the girls were taken for their Playboy spread, a new record when it came to photoshoots for the magazine.

Madeleine and Mary would appear in a handful of other films though it would be their joint appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson followed by their roles in Twins of Evil that would make them a hot commodity. Most if not all opportunities that were presented to the girls involved them appearing together, not as individuals. This scenario was less than appealing to the twins, and in 1972 both Madeleine and Mary moved to Milan and removed themselves from the limelight ending their brief but spectacular brush with fame. I’ve posted photos of the gorgeous twin sisters in character from Twins of Evil (though only Madeleine played a vampire chick in the flick), and a few shots from their appearance in Playboy, making it safe to assume much of what follows contains nudity and is NSFW.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Just released, Chris Ware’s Monograph is a hardbound book with a 13"x18” format and weighs more than 8 pounds. One of the most enduring messages of Ware’s oeuvre is that he doesn’t give a hoot about the specifications of your bookshelf because hardly anyone has a media storage/display system that can capably accommodate his output. Another Ware entry in my possession, the 2005 edition of The Acme Novelty Library (aren’t all of his books called that, somehow?), has a similarly shelf-denying 9"x15” silhouette, although that volume was not nearly as hefty.

Chris Ware’s output is so excellent and so extreme in various ways that the critic is faced with a set of questions that wouldn’t apply to anyone else. With any other writer of comix, a question one might ask is, “What made her come up with that plot point?” With Ware, common questions include, “How on earth did he find the man-hours to execute all of these incredibly meticulous pages?” and “Isn’t he actually a squadron of artists instead of just one man?” and “Will he ever feel better about himself?” Nobody packs as many brilliant, deadpan jokes per square inch, and damned few are as gifted with the written word, which is an odd, yet apt compliment for an artist whose assets are so thoroughly absorbable without access to any human language at all.

The point is that Ware is operating on a higher level than just about any other comix artist. In many ways his career appears to be a relentless assimilation of all comic book history for the entirely generous purpose of homage and regurgitation in an enhanced, late 20th- or early 21st-century format. The overweening complexity of Ware’s layouts means that he is more likely than your average goat to accomplish multiple tasks at once. So in the same image Ware can (a) invent a form that nobody knew was there to invent, (b) depict the nature of temporality in a way that advances the comix medium, (c) appropriate and rejigger an old-school comix hero like George Herriman or Winsor McCay, (d) crack wise about any number of publishing conventions, (e) tell an honest-to-goodness gut-wrenching & tear-inducing account of a fictional human being’s lonely progress on this planet, (f) deplete you of any spare hope you may have entered the transaction with, and (g) probably a few other things too.
 

 
When I was a kid I owned a book called Peanuts Jubilee that served as a kind of coffee table biographical portrait of Charles Schulz as filtered through his work. That book blended documentary artifacts (report cards, old photographs) with an evolutionary account of the development of Peanuts. Monograph is Ware’s Jubilee, one might say—a detailed survey of Ware’s life and career, with intensive input from the artist, featuring a look at every stage in his career up to this point.

Early in his career, Ware’s work found a place in Art Spiegelman’s RAW, and more recently he has become a frequent designer of covers for The New Yorker. He ran an ambitious series for the New York Times Magazine called Building Stories. His work has often escaped from the parameters of “comix” in the form of this animated short for This American Life, that “Date Book,” that other mural for Dave Egger’s literacy project 826 Valencia. All attest to Ware’s breathtaking range and daring, and all are lovingly examined in Monograph.

If you enjoy Ware’s work, there can be no doubt that this volume is an absolutely essential purchase. It’s selling on Amazon for $37.42, which is frankly a ridiculous steal if you consider what you get, in a world where hardback novels routinely list for $30.

The emphasis on the sheer size of this book is necessary to reference the somewhat contradictory nature of almost everything Ware has put out. Jamming hundreds of lush, text-heavy images into a massive, 9-pound book in a bewildering variety of formats (many are situated sideways and much of the text is actually upside down) ensures that vanishingly few people will ever read the lovingly honed prose—and indeed, that anyone who actually tries to do so runs the risk of throwing his or her back out. Seriously, this is a book that well-nigh demands its own custom-fashioned furniture in order to consume it—and it would surprise me not at all to learn that Ware has actually mass-produced that furniture already, complete with sardonic koans etched into the woodwork. Rather like the forbidding plinth in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Monograph glancingly reminds one of, it’s there as much to be worshiped as anything else.

It’s often been noticed that Ware’s work is more depressing than a busful of Idaho widows, a trait that connects to his evident self-loathing. It’s not actually true that the best art is the bleakest, but at least there’s little doubt that Ware sincerely hews to the notion as a strategy for producing good work.

One fact that Monograph imparts is Ware’s incredible facility with three-dimensional, constructed, wooden artifacts—boxes, dolls, toys, hand-made booklets, and on from there—a habit Ware picked up on very early and surely influenced the complexity of his two-dimensional work as well. (By the way, one of the many incredible aspects of Monograph is that there are several stapled, multi-page mini-comix actually affixed to the pages for you to read.) A doll of an early potato-shaped character who is frequently blinded in the panels is given the following description: “When the string is pulled, the toy gouges himself in the eyes with a pair of scissors,” which is about as epigrammatic a summation of Ware’s approach as I could ever find.

Like David Letterman and a few other midwestern pop geniuses, you will seldom, if ever, find Ware praising himself in any way, to an extent that is distracting. His favorite adjective for his own output is “awkward,” and one accomplished oil canvas is titled simply, Bad Painting. The juxtaposition of this self-abnegation with such obviously accomplished work is off-putting to say the least, while also being the evident pre-requisite for the production of such obviously accomplished work. It’s annoying that Ware can never be caught admitting that he is good at what he does, but we’re the better for it, because we are the ones who get to consume his lacerating stories about the authentically Kafkaeque crew of Jimmy Corrigan, Quimby the Mouse, Rusty Brown, and the rest.

Fortunately, if you can get past the tripwires designed to prevent you from consuming Ware’s work (and they are surely there), one is (of course) rewarded with the endlessly entertaining output of the dominant comix artist of our time.
 
Check out several incredible Ware images after the jump….....
 

 
In the United States, August 1969 will primarily be remembered for two things: the concert at Woodstock (August 15-18) and the Manson slayings (August 9-10). Another thing that happened that didn’t get as much attention at the time was that a Detroit band called the Stooges put out their first album (August 5).

One wonders which of these events made a sufficient impression on Bob Woodford (no, not Bob Woodward—he wouldn’t become famous for a few years yet), who made a minor splash in the last week of August when he came out with a special wig for men, designed to conceal the existence of long hair.

According to news reports at the time, Woodford was a 31-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., who worked as “a developer of prototype scientific instruments.” His wigs cost in the $40 or $60 range.

Hilariously, an AP report insisted that Woodford “operates the Underground Wig Establishment” in Washington. WTF?? I can scarcely believe that such a thing actually existed. Anyone with a long, loooooong memory care to corroborate?

At some point that summer, Woodford had the insight that some people might be torn between expressing their true nature as a scruffy longhair and yet desire employment in the armed services—or, in an example that probably would not spring to mind today, pumping gas: “When you own a gas station you don’t want a guy with long hair pumping gas. The customers will go to another station.” 
 

 
Anyone who is currently enjoying The Deuce on HBO (which takes place two years after the advent of the “establishment wig”) will appreciate Woodford’s quasi-admission that he was hawking a ridiculous product when he stated that “I was in New York City, and nobody needs a short hair wig in New York for anything.” But that concession was made in the service of bringing up the New Jersey Turnpike, where the police were purportedly targeting longhairs. “I drove into the Holland Tunnel with long hair,” he said, “and when I came out I had short hair.”

As that example implies, Woodford had something in common with the proprietor of another hair-related enterprise, the Hair Club For Men, in that he was not just the president, he was “also a client.” One of the articles depicts Woodford himself wearing the product, as seen above.

The AP story made the rounds across the country during the last week of August. The News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware, alerted readers that “Wigs Puts Longhairs Straight,” while the Adirondack Daily Enterprise blared, “Short-Hair Wig Handy for Long-Hair Crises.”

The ad for Sir of Hollywood on Hollywood Boulevard let potential customers know that they also offered “MOD CUT, CURLY, NATURALS.”

Almost precisely one year later, the August 12, 1970, edition of the Los Angeles Times ran a story by Robert Rawitch on Woodford’s wigs—or a similar product, anyway. The featured customer of that article was named Gabe Kanata, a teenage drummer employed as a stock clerk, who was pictured letting his freaky locks fly and then wearing the wig. The difference was indeed striking, as seen below. Kanata had a court appearance that made the “establishment wig” a desirable option. “Judges just don’t dig long hair,” he was quoted as saying. 

A couple months later, in October, the Lansing State Journal in Michigan ran a story on the wigs, with a Kanata mention, under the headline “Men Don Wigs to Avoid Shearing, Stay in Establishment.”
 

 

 
I must admit that reading Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream changed my life. A friend gave me a copy during our first year of college saying that it was his favorite book. I was already a big fan of Jack Kerouac—who Thompson hated and referred to as “empty-headed”—so I was a little skeptical at first. That all changed after I read the first few pages of the book, especially the memorable passage below, one of many in the book that leads one to believe that Fear and Loathing might be as far away from a work of fiction as you can get.

“The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of highspeed driving all over Los Angeles County – from Topanga to Watts, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”

At the time I was a journalism major but dropped that shortly after reading Fear and Loathing and subsequently learning that there weren’t really any other “journalists” who wrote like Thompson, making the idea of pursuing a career in the field uninspiring to me. I did continue to write and eventually, my years of dedication to the craft paid off. Am I in any way comparing myself to the diabolically druggy writer? Not by a long shot of whiskey and a handful of amyl nitrate, but thanks to both Thompson and my friend who hipped me to him in my youth, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. Anyway, let’s get to the point of this post which is the nothing-short-of-brilliant graphic adaptation of Thompson’s book by Canadian author and artist Troy Little. Little discovered Thompson in the late 90s and could barely contain himself when he was granted permission by the HST Estate along with his publisher Top Shelf Productions to take on an illustrated version of Fear and Loathing. Staying true to Thompson’s original tale of his evil twin “Raoul Duke” and his debauchery in the desert with his attorney “Dr. Gonzo,” Little decided to include all of the original text from the book in his graphic novel.

When it came out in 2015, the book was an instant hit leading to a second print run in 2016. Better yet, Little’s version of Fear and Loathing is hardcover bound, which just makes it seem even cooler, and it’s pretty fucking cool, to begin with. Copies of the book will run you $16.95 here. I’ve posted images from the book below—check ‘em out!
 

The cover of Troy Little’s graphic novel adaptation of ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.’
 

 

 
More after the jump…

Fashion of a woman, wearing a long gown, floating in water, Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida, 1947.
 
Toni Frissell (1907-88) was one of the greatest photographers of the 20th-century. During her lifetime, Frissell produced a staggering amount of diverse work including fashion photography, photojournalism, and portraiture.

In 1971, she donated her entire photographic collection of some 340,000 items to the Library of Congress. This included “270,000 black-and-white negatives, 42,000 color transparencies, and 25,000 enlargement prints, as well as many proof sheets.” Some of her work has yet to be processed for public use.

Frissell came from a well-established and fairly affluent family. Her grandfather was the founder and head of the Fifth Avenue Bank in New York. Having the stability of a wealthy family allowed Frissell to pick and choose what she wanted to do. She originally trained as an actress then worked in advertising before taking up her career as a photographer. Her brother Varick, a documentarian and filmmaker, taught Frissell the basics in photography. After Varick was killed in a freak explosion (along with 26 others) during the making of his feature film The Viking in 1931, Frissell started her career as a photographer in earnest. She apprenticed herself to Cecil Beaton (whose influence can be seen in her early photos) and began working as a fashion photographer for Vogue.

It was more than obvious from the outset Frissell was a natural photographic talent. Her fashion work pioneered the use of outside locations, often photographing models in a highly cinematic style against famous monuments or exotic locations. She claimed she preferred working outside as she didn’t “know how to photograph in a studio.” Whether this was her being disingenuous or not, Frissell did shoot the majority of her work outdoors using natural light.

When America entered the Second World War in 1941, Frissell volunteered her services as a photographer to the American Red Cross. She worked with the US Airforce then became the official photographer for the Women’s Army Corps. After the war, Frissell still continued with her fashion work but mainly concentrated on photojournalism and portraiture—capturing some of the most famous names of the day from politicians like Winston Churchill and the Kennedys, to artists like Frida Kahlo, and Hollywood stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Rex Harrison.

Unlike many other photographers who find one style and keep reproducing it time and again, Frissell developed, changed, and pioneered many different styles throughout her career. Her work is now rightly regarded as among the most influential and iconic imagery of the 20th-century.
 

Fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives poses with an English bobby in background on a railway station for Harper’s Bazaar in 1951.
 

Fashion shoot, Washington DC, 1949.
 

Back view of fashion models in swim suits for Harper’s Bazaar, 1950.
 
More iconic photographs, after the jump…
 

 
I suppose some may say, “It’s not big. It’s not clever.” But still, it is quite amusing. Artist provocateur Hogre is waging a war against capitalism, consumerism, right-wing politics, and religion one advert at a time.

Hogre illegally takes over large billboards and bus stop advertising displays across London and reinvents them with subversive messages. Santa Claus is no longer celebrating Christmas with a Coke but preparing to start the revolution with a fiery Molotov cocktail. Neighborhood Watch is really Neighborhood Snitch. And car companies are shitting all over the world because “Why worry about Global Warming? We all die anyway!”

Originally from Italy, Hogre’s been making his presence known for about ten years with his clever, amusing stencils and inventive acts of vandalism. It’s all jolly good fun and thought-provoking to boot but I do wonder if such well-intended artistic anarchy is more likely to result in Hogre’s work being curated in an art gallery than awakening the “sheeple” from their addiction to consumerism. But I suppose one can hope.

See more of the mighty Hogre’s art here.
 

 

 
See more of Hogre’s sterling work, after the jump…
 

 
Ah, to be a rock star. Reading Rod Stewart’s autobiography, aptly titled Rod: The Autobiography, it’s clear that he and Elton John are close. They twit each other, as friends everywhere do, only with the budgets of fabulously wealthy rock stars. There’s a passage recounting their playful war of Christmas gifts. One year Rod hit upon the perfect gift, a novelty portable refrigerator: “You plug it in and press the button and its door opened automatically, and it lit up and a bottle rose out of it in a cloud of vapor.”

That year Elton made Rod a gift of an original Rembrandt drawing. As Rod writes,
 

A fucking Rembrandt! I felt pretty small-–although not as small as Elton presumably wanted me to feel when he later referred tartly to my present as “an ice bucket.” It was not an ice bucket. It was a novelty portable fridge.

 
A couple years later, Elton marked the joyous occasion of Rod’s marriage to Rachel Hunter with a Boots voucher worth ten quid and the note “Get yourself something nice for the house.”

You get the idea. Rod and Elton have the kind of expensive fun together that you would hope famous rock stars have together. On one occasion, Rod and Elton spent an evening at a Los Angeles house Queen kept there, hanging out with Freddie Mercury. During what was presumably mirthful conversation, someone hit upon the idea of joining forces for a ridiculous supergroup consisting of the three of them:
 

We traveled together a bit, too, or sought each other out when we were abroad. The band Queen rented a house in Bel Air, Los Angeles, for a while, and Elton and I spent a long evening there with Freddie Mercury, a sweet and funny man whom I really adored, discussing the possibility of the three of us forming a supergroup. The name we had in mind was Nose, Teeth & hair, a tribute to each of our most remarked-upon physical attributes. The general idea was that we could appear dressed like the Beverley Sisters. Somehow this project never came to anything, which is contemporary music’s deep and abiding loss.

 
The detail that makes the anecdote is that last one, about the Beverley Sisters, who were kind of an English version of the Andrews Sisters from the United States. They sang tightly harmonized songs, several of which are Christmas classics in the U.K. Here’s a picture of the Beverley Sisters:
 

 
via That Eric Alper