Gigi Gaston, The Black Flower, was a hugely popular and tragic sixties French pop star who in reality never existed. She’s the creation of conceptual artist, and former art director of New York Magazine, Josh Gosfield. He’s done an astonishingly convincing job of documenting a life that never was, through photo-shopped pictures, a mock documentary, a video shot by Jean Luc Godard (not), newsclippings and fictional biographical ephemera.

We see her Gypsy family’s escape from Bulgaria, her affair with her stepbrother, her first guitar, her rise up (and fall down) the charts,  the car crashes, funerals, love triangles and the murder trial. All this played out in a garish media spotlight before the insatiable eyes of her public.

I was initially fooled by Gosfield’s elaborate hoax and went looking for information on the French chanteuse, including checking Amazon for cds, only to discover that I’d been had.

Gosfield has included fictional quotes from icons of the era, including this one by Norman Mailer from a nonexistent Esquire article.

As Norman Mailer wrote, in a 1974 Esquire story:

Could this Black Flower with a voice like Piaf have guessed that when she bloomed into a teenage singing idol for post-war European youth, and later became the Continental fashion icon and sexy French pin-up girl on the bedroom walls of the hippest kids, that the future would strangle her dreams of normalcy, like the protagonists in one her romantically fatalistic songs? No, of course not. Because the characters of Greek tragedies are always the last to know their fates.

Here we a have Gosfield’s perfectly realized faux Jean Luc Godard video and the trailer for the documentary.

Check out Josh’s website and be prepared to be amazed by the depth of detail and work that went into creating his pop fantasy.
 

 
More photos of The Black Flower and the documentary trailer after the jump…
 

Based on the cover of “Batman and the Outsiders” #1

Great Comics That Never Happened #12: Batman & Motorhead

(via Nerdcore)

 
My mother is French and in my early teens I lived in Cannes and Paris. I developed a love for French rock and rollers - Sylvie Vartan, France Gall, Johnny Hallyday and, above all others, Francoise Hardy.

I had a Philips portable battery operated record player upon which I would play Hardy’s 45s non-stop, taking the player with me wherever I went like a prehistoric Walkman. I couldn’t be without her. She was my first teenage crush.

I’d sit on the beach at Cannes, smoking Gauloise cigarettes (which got me high) and listen to Tous les garçons et les filles and Le premier bonheur du jour for hours. It was just me and Francoise on the Riviera watching the thin line separating the blue Mediterranean from the perfect blue sky.

I had yet to discover The Beatles. American rock, with the exception of Chuck Berry, didn’t interest me. Francoise was my pop culture goddess. Nothing else mattered. Nothing. Well, actually, there was one record that I would allow to share the turntable with Francoise: The Lonely Surfer by Jack Nitzsche, a song with an almost Zen melancholy about it, spinning off into the void.

The year of my romance with Francoise and Gauloise and melancholic surfers was 1963. It was September and Hardy was scheduled to play in Cannes. My mother had bought me a ticket. For weeks I could think of nothing else but seeing my goddess perform. On the day of the show, I was dressed to impress in my pegged pants, loafers and turtle neck. I was ready for love. We ascended the steep marble steps of the concert hall and arrived at the ticket booth to be greeted by my worse nightmare…the show had been canceled! I was heartbroken. My mother and I walked back to our apartment building in total silence. I was beyond myself with disappointment. I felt as though I had been stood up on my first date. I felt shunned, abandoned. I suddenly understood the electric yearning in the twang of Nitzche’s lonely guitars. I was the solitary surfer, crashing against waves of youthful despair. Oh, Francoise, why, why?

I carried the torch for my Gallic lover until the following month when the trivialities of young love were washed away on November 22, the day Kennedy was assasinated. Things changed after that. Innocence was gone. I discovered Bob Dylan and soon The Stones, The Beatles and the rest. Eventually I moved back to the States and Francoise Hardy became a fading memory. It wasn’t until a couple of decades later that my crush was revived and I found myself buying every vinyl record I cound find of hers. And to this day, Francoise is my eternal teenybopper flame, the beatnik princess of my dreams.

Here are three clips of Francoise (one she sings in Italian). Two have not been readily available on the internet, the other has been seen my millions. I present them to you in all their pristine glory.
 

 
more loveliness after le jump…

 
Big Love and God Lays Her Love On Me are tracks from my forthcoming album, Tantric Machine, produced by Hugh Pool.

Tantric Machine was recorded at Excello Studios in Brooklyn. The idea was to create an album that sounded post-apocalyptic, as if the recording equipment and instruments had been salvaged from the rubble of a dying civilization. So, we used lots of pawn shop rhythm machines, synthesizers, cheap shit microphones, antiquated effects boxes, analog equipment, etc.

I wrote the music and lyrics over the course of a few months in 1999. The album was recorded in 2000 and I just sat on it. It took pressure from friends who had heard it and liked it for me to finally decide to release it.

The album cover is by Alex Chavez.

I humbly offer Big Love and God Lays Her Love On Me for your listening and viewing pleasure. The album will be released later this year.

 
God Lays Her Love On Me after the jump…

Bob Marley’s No Woman, No Cry vs.The Beatles Let It Be.

I’m a big fan of mashups and this one by Brazil’s DJ Faroff is nicely done. Bravo.

Faroff will be spinning at the monthly ‘Bootie’ mashup party at Echoplex in L.A. on August 21.

 
Amongst the many gems and oddities being unearthed as part of The Beatles’ Apple Records catalogue and soon to be lovingly re-issued is a funny little single from 1969, never properly released, by an artist named Brute Force (nee Stephen Friedland). King of Fuh (listen below) is a silly, stoney, naughty hippy tale incorporating as many uses of the phrase fuh king as possible. Get it ? Lennon and Harrison (who arranged it) evidently found it hilarious and although they knew EMI would never distribute it pressed up 2000 copies anyway, presumably to give to friends. Who fuh-king knew?
 

 
Thanks Kevin Laffey and Rick Potts!

 
In 1971 Los Angeles television station KTTV refused to air this 60 second commercial for Captain Beefheart’s album Lick My Decals Off, Baby.

Conceived by Beefheart and directed by Larry Secrest and Jon Fizdali, the ad was considered to be ‘crude and unacceptable” by KTTV management. They also deemed the album obscene and refused to air the spot on that basis as well.

The National Association of Broadcasters banned the ad on their member stations, stating the commercial didn’t fit into their standards, which were to…

[...] enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation, and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has towards his society.

Beefheart’s record label, Warner/Reprise, stood by the Captain and declared the spot…

[...] really different, it does everything a commercial is supposed to do. It begins with a cigarette flipping through the air in slow motion several times with Beefheart singing ‘Woe-is-a-me-bop.’ There are long silences, Beefheart finally appears doing his famed Hand and Toe Investment. Rockette Morton, one of the guys in Beefheart’s Magic Band, crosses the screen with a black sack over his head working an egg beater. The Captain kicks over a bowl of white paint in slow motion. It is non sequitur stuff that’s funny, attention getting, and pure Beefheart. It’s unfortunate that the station should be so frightened by it.”

In watching the commercial, one has to think that David Lynch had to have seen it at one point in his early development as a filmmaker. It’s a bold and surreal piece of film making that would have certainly baffled and spooked American audiences of the time. It’s still provocative.
 

 
Karel Gott’s version of ‘Paint It Black’ reminds me of Arthur Brown’s ‘Fire’. The screams, the apocalyptic urgency, the sheer mania. Amazing. I’d love to hear him take on Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ and Deep Purple’s ‘Child In Time.’ I can imagine him fronting Rammstein.

Known as the ‘the Golden Voice Of Prague, Gott released ‘Paint It Black’ in 1969 on his album In einer Welt für uns zwei.

Gott is a huge star in Czechoslovakia and throughout Central and Eastern Europe and he’s still performing.
 

Raquel Welch photographed by Terry O’Neill. Available at the SF Art Exchange.
 
Raquel! was a multimillion dollar 1970 TV variety special starring Raquel Welch, Tom Jones, John Wayne and Bob Hope. It’s a camp time capsule full of Bob Mackie dresses, Paco Rabanne spacesuits and Bob Hope singing Rocky Raccoon wearing a Davey Crockett hat. It was shot all over the world, in Paris, London, Mexico City, Los Angeles, the Big Sur coast and elsewhere. 

A treat for the eyes (in every way) it was. For the ears, not so much. Welch sings a number of pop standards of the day, often with dancers in fully choreographed production numbers. There’s often a thematic disconnect of the material to the visuals, such as when Welch croons California Dreamin’ with the Eiffel Tower behind her. This contributes greatly to the “offness” of the proceedings. One reviewer compared Raquel! to “a community college production of Barbarella.” A highlight is Tom Jones lip-syncing I Who Have Nothing as he gazes longingly at the jaw-dropping sex bomb in front of him.

This first came out on VHS in the early 90s and I used to give it frequently as a gift. I gave one copy to Pizzicato Five’s Maki Nomiya and she later told me that she had a dinner party in Tokyo when she screened it for a group of friends and it went down a treat. That’s how this it should be viewed, in a group, with at least 2 or 3 drag queens in the mix, and a lil’ herbal “entertainment insurance.” It’s a guaranteed recipe for party success! It’s out on DVD now.

 
Back in May Richard, myself and Elvin Estela (aka DJ Nobody) had the notion to make a pilot episode for a possible Dangerous Minds radio show. The format is a round robin wherein we three music nerds each take turns presenting tunes we think the others (and hopefully the listening audience) would enjoy hearing along with some bits of information and personal anecdotes. In short, a radio/podcast version of what we do every day on the blog. So after some hemming and hawing, as you do, here’s what we came up with. We’re thinking of making this a regular feature for the site. Let us know what you think !
 
Alan Hawkshaw - Blarney’s Stoned
Armando Trovaioli -Sesso Matto
Keith West- On A Saturday
Alex Oriental Experience - Derule
? - My Name Is John (seriously, we don’t know who this is, help !)
Alison Gross - Naturally
The Oimels - A Day in the Life
Desmond Dekker - Come Together
Leon Russell - I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
Marcos Valle - Mi Hermosa
P.J. Proby - The Day Lorraine Came Down
Baths - ♥
Monitor - Beak
Scotty - Clean Race
Focus - House of the King
 

 
To download this episode or subscribe to the podcast please go to our internet radio partner Alterati.com
 
Listen to Dangerous Minds Radio Hour episode 2