After the breakup of the Dictators, the New York proto-punk band Richard Meltzer credited with returning “THE SPIRIT OF WRESTLING” to rock and roll, their lead guitarist, Ross “the Boss” Friedman, formed the metal group Manowar. A harbinger of today’s Viking and power metal subgenres, the band posed for press photos in silky briefs, wielding swords. Note that their name begins with the word “man.”

(Deep thinker Scott Ian of Anthrax allows as how he “kind of liked the first album” even though he thought Manowar’s image “was a bit gay.” Reading these words, I feel as if Joey Belladonna himself is pouring gallons of boiled farina into a cerebral shunt that empties just behind my right eye.)

During a recent podcast appearance, Friedman remembered how, during the sessions for their debut album, 1982’s Battle Hymns, Manowar cast about for someone to read the narrative section of their “epic” song “Dark Avenger.” Like Odin, the song’s titular hero loses an eye; unlike Odin, he waxes grievous wroth about it and rides a demon horse back home from Hell to waste everybody, “raping the daughters and wives.” Oy.
 

 
Poor penniless Orson Welles dragged his ass into the studio to narrate the Dark Avenger’s katabasis:

He was met at the gate of Hades
By the Guardian of the Lost Souls,
The Keeper of the Unavenged,
And He did say to him:

“Let ye not pass Abaddon.
Return to the world from whence ye came
And seek payment not only for thine own anguish
But to vindicate the souls of the Unavenged.”

And they placed in his hands a sword made for him called Vengeance
Forged in brimstone and tempered by the woeful tears of the Unavenged

And to carry him on his journey back to the upper world
They brought forth their demon horse called Black Death
A grim steed so fiercely might and black in color
That he could stand as one with the darkness
Save for his burning eyes of crimson fire
And on that night they rode up from Hell
The pounding of his hooves did clap like thunder.

For thematic reasons which remain obscure, in the finished album’s sequence, “Dark Avenger” leads into bassist Joey DeMaio’s solo interpretation of the William Tell Overture.

More after the jump…

 
bOING bOING’s resident video guru Eric Mittleman has been one of my nearest and dearest friends for over a quarter century. He’s what is called “a keeper” in lifelong friend terms and is one of my all time favorite people. His new short film was recently premiered on bOING bOING and now we’re showcasing it here.

The filmmaker writes:

This short film is a cautionary tale about our personal and social media data and what can be done with it when it is a little too accessible. When a superfan crosses the line, Jason, a blogger, goes looking for her. He finds something unexpected and his life will never be the same again. The cast consists of Sean Young (Bladerunner), Joshua LeBar (Entourage), Alice Hunter (Another Period) and Claudia Graf (Love & Mercy).  I hope you enjoy it.

One small bit of background information: The main character’s apartment looks exactly like Eric’s own apartment. The TV, the couch. Everything. Except that it’s much, much, much tidier. Weird.

(Runs away)
 

 
Watch ‘Legacy’ after the jump…

 
People, we’re in big trouble.

On the far distant planet of Porno, Emperor Wang the Perverted has his sex ray pointed at Earth and every time he shoots the damned thing everyone goes plum sex-mad crazy. People are fucking in the street. Orgies are piling up everywhere. No one is safe. And the cry goes up, “Is there a hero out there who can save us?”

Too right there is. Name’s Flesh Gordon—who is somehow unaffected by Wang’s porny ray.

That’s just the opener for Michael Benveniste and Howard Ziehm’s schlocky sexploitation flick Flesh Gordon from 1974. If you are cognizant with the original 1930’s Universal serials or have seen the big screen version of Flash Gordon, then you’ll know just exactly how the story goes in this “outrageous parody of yesterday’s superheroes.”

Flesh (Jason Williams) teams up with a young woman called Dale Ardor (Suzanne Fields) and a scientist Dr. Flexi Jerkoff (Joseph Hudgins), who just happens to have a rocket ship ready to blast off to beat the evil Wang (William Dennis Hunt). This unlikely trio zoom off into space, land on Porno, and combat Wang and his band of “raping robots.” Along the way, they encounter Prince Precious (Mycle Brandy) the rightful king of Porno and his band of merry men, Queen Amora (Nora Wieternik), and the Great God Porno—a Ray Harryhausen-type monster voiced by none other than Craig T. Nelson. Thrills, comedy, and sex ensue.

The storyline for Flesh Gordon was so close to the original that Universal Studios at one point actively considered suing the filmmakers for blatant copyright infringement. Benveniste and Ziehm avoided this calamity by simply stating that their film was intended as an “homage” to the original source material. They also had all the advertising material labeled with the caveat that their movie was “Not to be confused with the original Flash Gordon.”

Flesh Gordon was originally intended as a hardcore space age romp with full-on sex but unfortunately “the filming of such material was illegal in Los Angeles at the time it was made (hard as that may be to believe now)”

...to prevent their prosecution for pandering, the filmmakers were forced to surrender all such footage [to] the L.A. vice squad, and Flesh Gordon was released without explicit pornographic content.

The end result was a rather tame sophomorish comic sexploitation movie that somehow managed to win over its audience with its likeable schlocky charm. It’s fair to say that films like Flesh Gordon along with the likes of John Boorman’s Zardoz or Ken Russell’s Lisztomania or even Car Wash and Saturday Night Fever say as much about the free-wheeling hedonistic zeitgeist of the 1970s as gritty films like Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Get Carter, and The Conversation reflect the converse.
 

 

 
More ‘Flesh,’ revealed after the jump…

“Dante, Divine Comedy, Welcome into the Hell.” A painting by Vlada Mirković.
 
I sadly can’t tell you much about Serbian-born painter Vlada Mirković, though I do believe that his remarkable paintings will resonate with the vast majority of our art-loving Dangerous Minds readers. According to what I was able to glean about Mirković, he has been working as a freelance artist for nearly three decades. He specializes in “figurative art” which, as it pertains to modern art, is the creation of pieces that depict the artist’s vision of the “real world,” especially as it relates to the physical human form.

Here’s a nice synopsis of what seems to make Mirkovic tick written by Swiss art historian Benoit Junod:

“The universe which Vlada leads us into through his paintings is perhaps the one which Alice found beyond the looking-glass. It is not fairground world with light relief or escape routes, although the sky is always blue there. Architectures are rigorous, and a faceless man confronts his destiny and measures himself to it. Maybe Vlada brings us there to give us the privilege of seeking the truth there in. Again proof of fragility, of our own fragility, is present. The balance and harmony, however, contradict what might be frightening in this world which obliges us to introspection. The intelligence of artist is to hold our hand and reassure us, as he leads us along with his pictural path, much as Dante did before him.”

Right on. Below, a selection of Mirković‘s dreamlike paintings, which have sell for as much as $15,000 dollars. Some are slightly NSFW.
 

“Anatomy Lesson” 2015.
 

“Daydreams” 2012.
 
More after the jump…

A photo taken by Guy Bourdin for shoe and fashion designer, Charles Jourdan.
 
Celebrated photographer Guy Bourdin’s career spanned nearly 40 years. In the mid-50s, the young Frenchman got his big break after scoring a dream gig with French Vogue. Bourdin was inspired by the vitally important Man Ray, and the revered American Surrealist would become a mentor to the young Bourdin. In fact, when Bourdin held his first gallery show in Paris in 1952, Man Ray himself wrote the introduction for the show’s catalog.
 

A photograph taken by Guy Bourdin inside Man Ray’s studio in Paris.
 
As the 1960s rolled in, Bourdin’s services would be engaged by shoe and fashion designer Charles Jourdan to create ads for his sexy footwear. Bourdin’s photos for Jourdan were wildly unconventional and routinely featured disembodied legs, nudity, and fetish-like imagery. Jourdan would use a vast number of Bourdin’s images for various ad campaigns until the early part of the 80’s—many of which look more like provocative movie stills than ads for shoes. As you might imagine, Bourdin’s work has been compiled into a wide variety of books including Exhibit A (2001), Guy Bourdin: Polaroids (2010), and Guy Bourdin: A Message for You, (2013). Fans of the masterful innovator say that Bourdin was incapable of taking a “bad” photograph, something I think you will agree with after looking at the examples of his work posted below. Some are NSFW.
 

Another image by Bourdin used by Charles Jourdan.
 

1964.
 
More after the jump…

 
If I say the word “Fruitopia” to you, there’s a decent chance you’ll respond with some comment about the 1990s—the savviest among you might even say “1994” specifically. Fruitopia was the brainchild of a marketing head at Coca-Cola named Sergio Zyman—he also brought the world the overt GenX pandering elixir OK Cola right around the same time. The fruit-flavored tea concoction was a clear attempt to move in on the territory staked out by Snapple, and while Fruitopia had its day in the sun, as is often the case the first product to define a niche gets to own that niche.

Fruitopia is remembered today for its neo-hippie trappings. The flavors had names like The Grape Beyond, Tangerine Wavelength, Citrus Consciousness, and Raspberry Psychic Lemonade, and the marketing consisted mainly of trippy and “deep” kaleidoscope commercials featuring cosmic music scored and performed by Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins and the Muffs, among others.
 

 
Marty Cooke and Andrew Chinich of Chiat/Day oversaw the campaign; they reached out to Bush and were delighted when she agreed to do nine spots for the drink. According to Cooke, Bush indicated that “she was interested in providing a lot of variety, from Japanese drummers to Moroccan music ... and she came through in spades.”

In Graeme Thomson’s book Kate Bush: Under the Ivy, we get this:
 

[Bush] accepted a commission to write several brief pieces of music to accompany the $30m US TV ad campaign for the launch of Coca-Cola’s ne fruit drink Fruitopia…. It seemed an incongruous move. Bush had consistently turned down advances of this nature….

The motivation for her changing tack wasn’t clear but was probably varied: far from the commercial ingenue she sometimes appears, certainly the financial rewards would have been extremely significant; perhaps she liked the tone of the ads, which were relatively innoative and visually stimulating and over which she was given complete artistic control. She may also have recognised an opportunity to cast the net of her music a little wider, while also finding a home for all the melodic waifs and rhythmic strays that had never quite found a home in her “proper” songs. ... [each melody hinted] at a longer piece, several reminiscent of the kind of odd, rhythmic, electronic pop she was making around the time of The Dreaming.

 
Here are the ads—in some of them, Bush supplies identifiable vocals, as in “Fighting Fruit” in which you can hear her chant “Hey hey fruit!” and “Skin,” in which you can hear her uttering a sort of “bol,” or Indian rhythmic syllable, that sounds like “digga dha.”

Kate Bush, “Fighting Fruit”

 
Much more after the jump…...
 

Ozzy reacting the same way I did to the news that photos from his brief stint in an all-nude hippie band have surfaced.
 
Okay, here’s the deal—I’m posting two images of what looks like a very young, and completely nude Ozzy Osbourne for a couple of reasons. Reason one is that I am a lifelong disciple of OZZ and look for any legitimate reason to write about Ozzy, Tony Iommi, and his bandmates in Black Sabbath and beyond. However, today, I’m hoping that one of our DM readers, or perhaps Ozzy himself might be able to shed some much-needed light on these mysterious images. Here’s what I know about them so far. Help us, Ozzy, you’re our only hope. 

According to a site once run by a Germany-based Black Sabbath fan, Black-Sabbath.de, someone sent them two photos of Ozzy from a source in Scandinavia. The first photo allegedly shows a very young Ozzy holding a what appears to be a Fender Precision bass on stage completely nude while sharing a microphone stand with a naked brunette. As much as I’d like to be, I’m no expert when it comes to band gear, and the grainy photos below make it nearly impossible—for me at least—to tell what Ozzy actually has slung over his shoulder. The rest of the all-nude-review includes a drummer—a guy with lambchop sideburns who looks a bit like Monkee Michael Nesmith hitting a bongo, and a beardie nude dude playing a stand-up bass.

The second photo features Ozzy hanging out backstage at the gig with the stand-up bass player and the buck-naked brunette. What makes this strange scenario plausible is the fact that Sabbath played a a TON of gigs in 1969 including multiple stops in Copenhagen. Since I had gone this far, I decided to research the bands Sabbath played gigs with in 1969 in the hope that one of them would reveal themselves to be the nude quartet jamming with Ozzy. Sadly, the closest I got was that perhaps Ozzy’s hippie band might have been comprised of members of English band Bakerloo who at one time were photographed as the “The Bakerloo Blues Line” along with a cute, unidentified brunette who was perhaps a member of the band. Bakerloo previously toured with Sabbath while they were still known as Earth in London and likely elsewhere. However, as there is a naked bongo player in this scenario, it’s possible that Ozzy is hanging out with members of local Birmingham band, Rare Breed.

Where are those goddamned meddling kids and their snack-happy dog when you need them?

Despite my heroic heavy metal efforts to resolve this mystery, this is where my investigation into Ozzy’s nude (maybe) Scandinavian escapade ends. You can see the intriguing NSFW black and white photos for yourself and draw your own conclusions, after the jump.

Wait are you waiting for?

Debbie Harry and one of writer/blogger Toby Weiss’ illustrations of Harry that was done by Weiss in 1979.
 
I’ve said it before a thousand times—I love my job here at Dangerous Minds. And today that fact is especially true as I will be sharing a few choice vintage illustrations of Debbie Harry done by one of her teenage superfans.

Posted on her blog M.E.L.T., St. Louis-based writer Toby Weiss chronicled her devotion to the fabulous Ms. Harry by revealing a handful of her charming illustrations of the pop icon that she did between 1979 and 1983. Here’s a little bit from Weiss concerning her adoration of all things Debbie Harry:

“I’d never experienced anyone like her; she was so beautiful and powerful and talented that she seemed more like a comic book hero. Everything I needed to know about life, sex, fashion, and music, I looked to Debbie. And because American media was now as infatuated with her as I was, it was easy to get all the advice I needed.”

Fantastic. Weiss’ adorable, self-described “teenage scribbles” of Harry below.
 

June, 1979.
 

November, 1979.
 
More after the jump…

 
From what I can gather, the earliest erotic pocket watches date back to the 17th-century when they were intended as prized erotica for a small but wealthy market. Some of these early designs were made as saucy keepsakes for loved ones, while others were specifically manufactured for the Chinese market, in particular the Emperor and his entourage, where many of these naughty timepieces were given as gifts to cement trade and diplomatic agreements.

By the 18th-century, erotic automaton pocket watches—that is timepieces with painted dials and movable parts depicting explicit scenes of sexual congress—were popular with royalty and the upper class. These watches usually featured a brightly painted erect penis that swayed back and forth in time with the second hand. One such watch, the Henry Capt, Musique d’Amour sold for $216,880 in 2011. Of course, back in the day, being caught with a porny timepiece could lead to its confiscation and public censure. Today we’ve got the Internet…

These pocket watches weren’t just cheap knock-offs, they made by some of the finest and most famous clockmakers in the world like Cortébert, Breguet et Fils, and Doxa. In the 20th-century, companies like Omega and Smiths-Ingersoll continued the tradition producing a limited but highly collectible selection of erotic watches—including one in which Snow White entertained the Seven Dwarves.

The following selection ranges from Breguet et Fils “Cavalcade” (1820), which depicts a couple on on horseback, to the mid-20th-century Swiss designs of randy gentlefolk enjoying some outdoor sports.
 

 

 
More titillating timepieces, after the jump…
 

 
Giorgio Moroder, born Giovanni Giorgio Moroder, emerged in the mid-1970s to become a pioneering force in electronic disco, not only with “I Feel Love” and his many other chart-topping hits with Donna Summer but with his own albums From Here to Eternity and E=MC² as well as his 1978 collaboration with Chris Bennett, Love’s in You, Love’s in Me. After establishing himself, Moroder found a home for himself in movie soundtracks, composing music for Cat People, American Gigolo, and Scarface among many others.

Moroder grew up in South Tyrol, Italy where he was raised in a dual-language household (German & Italian)—his mother even called him “Hansjörg” growing up. He spent the late 1960s in Berlin, where he released a minor hit called “Looky Looky” in 1969.

Animator Nicolo Bianchino, who lives in Brooklyn, recently released a playful video homage to Moroder’s early years, based on the third track off of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories in which Moroder explains how hard it was to break into the music scene ... even living out of his car for some stretches: “I would take my car, would go to a discotheque, sing maybe 30 minutes—I think I had about seven, eight songs—I would partially sleep in the car because I didn’t want to drive home, and that helped me for about, almost two years to survive in the beginning.”

Moroder explains that he wanted to incorporate the “sound of the future” in his music. Eventually he realized, “Wait a second… I know the synthesizer—why don’t I use the synthesizer, which is the sound of the future? ... I knew I needed a click so we put a click on the 24 track which then was synched to the Moog Modular. I knew that it could be a sound of the future but I didn’t realize how much the impact would be.”

Watch after the jump…