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Luke Haines: Psychedelic wrestlers & Xmas tree decorated with portraits of every member of The Fall
07.09.2021
12:01 pm
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Pic via @Bob_Fischer
 
Uncanny Island, the very first solo art exhibition by musician and author Luke Haines is on at the Eston Arts Centre through the end of the month. Should you find yourself in North Yorkshire, you should drop by and check it out.

The exhibit features Haines’ psychedelic visions of British wrestlers from the 1970s and early 80s (echoing his 2011 concept album 9 ½ Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early ‘80s) and a Christmas tree festooned with ornaments bearing the likeness of everyone who was ever in the Fall. (The band had 66 members during Mark E. Smith’s five decade run, in case you were wondering.)

Luke Haines’ latest album is Setting The Dogs on The Post Punk Postman.

I asked the artist a few questions via email.

Is this your first solo art exhibit?

Luke Haines: Yep. First solo exhibition. I’m pleased it’s in the north—away from curators and the dull art people.

Tell me about the Fall Xmas tree?

I’d painted a MES bauble for a friend’s Xmas present. The obvious next stage was to paint every member of the Fall, but I had no reason to embark on such a futile endeavour. Then the artist Neil McNally asked me if I wanted to have an exhibition. It was then that I realized it was time for the Fall Xmas tree.

I know that you’ve described your work as outsider art in the past, but with the Lou Reeds, the Hawkwind paintings, the Maoist Monkees—and of course the psychedelic wrestlers which refer to your own album—it seems more like you’re doing something more akin to “rock snob art”? How do you see it?

My stuff is more like sitcom art. I tend to do the same thing: put popular or unpopular culture figures in absurd situations. Like putting Hawkwind in a balloon carrying esoteric knowledge (The North Sea Scrolls) back to their squat in Ladbroke Grove. If Hawkwind actually did this the world would be improved immeasurably. In the show there are a couple of paintings depicting wrestlers having diabolical fever dreams about It’s A Royal Knockout. I’d like to do a whole art show about It’s A Royal Knockout. Maybe a straightforward reenactment.

How often are you asked to comment on the art of Ronnie Wood, Ringo Starr or Paul Stanley?

I think that worrying about pop stars inflicting their art on an ungrateful world will be the least of our problem post covid. There will a tsunami of ‘lockdown art washing up. It will all be terrible.
 

Mark E Smith Xmas tree bauble
 

The Fall Xmas Tree in situ.
 

Fall Xmas Tree (detail)
 

Liver Sausage (Mark “Rollerball” Rocco)
 

Brian Glover
 

Dickie Davies
 

 
Eston Arts Centre, 176 -178 High Street, Eston, Middlesbrough, TS6 9JA.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.09.2021
12:01 pm
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The Beautiful Game: Amazing photos of seventies English soccer fans

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In the 1970s, British soccer had a bad reputation. It had a rap sheet full of gang fights, stabbings, riots, and murder. Football fans were labeled hooligans. Thugs who, according to some newspaper editors, were on the verge of taking over the streets and destroying society. No one was safe.

Most weeks the tabloids churned out tales of some aggro outside a stadium. The red tops were peddling fear. The public bought it. Once the news starts reporting on something, it becomes real.

These gang fights between rival soccer fans were mixed in with tales of skinheads, bovver boys, razor gangs, and thugs who dressed like Alex and his droogs from A Clockwork Orange out for a little bit of ye old ultra-violence. There was truth in the stories, but soccer violence wasn’t as widespread as often reported. Certain clubs attracted gangs who were more interested in a punch-up on a Saturday afternoon than watching the “beautiful game.”

To put it context, these were kids who had missed the mythical nirvana of sixties excess. The sex, drugs and so-called revolution of the swinging sixties only applied to about a few dozen people who were rich and famous and living in London. For everybody else, the sixties were dire, poverty-ridden, and filmed in black-and-white. Only American TV shows like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Batman, and Lost in Space gave any hint there might be a better, more colorful world out there.

When the seventies arrived, for most of the public it was like suffering the biggest hangover after a party to which you had never been invited. Unemployment was on the up. Strikes were almost every week. Power blackouts meant kids lived by candlelight on whatever their mothers could spoon out of a tin. Under the new Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath, a pompous condescending charlatan, politics was being removed from the grubby hands of the working class. Politicians despised the populace. Heath signed up to Europe and the world of white middle class technocrats and academics who would attempt to disenfranchise the working class and their so-called ignorant opinions over the coming decades.

The press were happy to go along with this. They tarred youngsters as ne’er-do-wells, thugs, hooligans, filthy little fuckers who should be sent into the army. Pop fans were deluded. Soccer fans were thugs waiting to kick your fucking head in.

Most of the people who thought this—politicians, journalists, religious leaders—wanted to crush the young. These people were mainly middle-aged ex-soldiers who had fought in the Second World War and returned to a country impoverished, in ruin, and held captive by rationing. The seventies soccer fan represented everything they feared—thuggish mobs ready for violence who if they were ever smart enough to get together might one day topple the establishment. Fat chance.

This was one way of looking at it. The other was how the fans saw it. Soccer was a release. A pleasure to be shared with passion. Something that made youngsters feel part of a community. Fans created their own fashions. Decked their clothes with players’ names, managers, and their club crests. They had their own beliefs. And their politics changed from xenophobic and racist to becoming supportive and champions of multi-ethnicity. White working class football fans had more friends from different ethnicities than any white male government or media broadcaster or board of directors.
 
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Between 1976-1977, Edinburgh-born photographer Iain S. P. Reid documented fans of Manchester United and Manchester City. Reid had graduated in Fine Arts from Sunderland University. He then moved to Manchester where he was studying for his Masters in Fine Art when he picked up his Leica camera and started photographing the two sets of rival fans.

In 1978, an exhibition of his work was held at the Frontline Books, Piccadilly, Manchester. In his introduction to this exhibition, Reid wrote:

I worked on a series of portraits of football supporters. I was given a grant by the Arts Council to facilitate this project. As can be imagined, this caused a minor furore in the local Manchester press. I was infamous for a while. Most of the work was exhibited in 1978 in the Frontline bookshop, 1 Newton Street, Piccadilly.

The chief interest in the whole body of work was the way in which the football supporters of Manchester United and Manchester City used to dress and treat the whole match as if it were a carnival. Despite all press reports, there was very little violence, and the fans I found most helpful in assisting with the project. They were always aware of the angle I was taking with the work. I carried around copies of the photos I was going to be using to show them I was not exploiting them by misrepresenting them in any way.

In the late seventies, Reid moved to Aberdeen, Scotland, where he worked on an oil platform. He then became a social worker. He had a passion for helping others and spent his time working with drug addicts and the homeless.

Reid died in November 2000 from cancer. After his death, boxes of his photographs were discovered. These are now shared via a Facebook page, are available as art prints, and will be published in a book with 15% of profits going to a cancer charity. Reid’s photographs capture more of the joy and camaraderie of seventies’ football fans than all the tales of violence peddled by the media. See more of Reid’s work here.
 
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See more of Iain S. P. Reid’s work, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.19.2020
10:30 am
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‘Show Us Your Belly’: Hilarious short documentary of a spontaneous Super Bowl ’88 street party
02.01.2019
09:52 am
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Show Us Your Belly 1
 
So, you’ve seen and love Heavy Metal Parking Lot, right? Well, one of the filmmakers behind that legendary documentary, Jeff Krulik, has also been involved with a number of other docs, including Show Us Your Belly, a hilarious ten-minute short shot during a spontaneous Washington DC street party that occurred following the Washington Redskins’ 1988 Super Bowl victory. In the video, we see happy and/or drunk fans whooping it up and mugging for the camera, as interviewers ask the sort of things you’d expect in the moment, but then toss out nonsensical questions and requests that have nothing to do with a Super Bowl celebration. Very funny stuff.

Jeff Krulik’s friend Seth Morris, who Jeff says “was pretty much the mastermind” behind the shoot, provided us with some background and details on how it went down.

Show Me Your Belly was filmed the evening of January 31, 1988, and it was a fun little project that required a little bit of planning, and for the Washington Redskins to upset the favored Denver Broncos during Super Bowl XXll.

Jeff Krulik and I have been very close friends, and partners in crime, since meeting at WMUC-FM, the University of MD free-form radio station, and have been hanging out ever since. I did a punk show and a comedy show at WMUC and, from 1983-93, did Corn Between Your Teeth, a weekly Saturday night comedy/spoken word show on WPFW-FM. Jeff and I have always been Redskins fans and, to give you an idea of just how old we are, when we were young, the Redskins were consistently Super Bowl contenders.

 
Show Us Your Belly 5
Seth and a reveler.

I loved Mal Sharpe’s man-on-the-street interviews, played his material on my show quite often, and had him on my show. Jeff was the Public Access Director at Metrovision Cable and had access to all this cool gear, which served him well with Heavy Metal Parking Lot, and other really great films. Jeff should have been born 150 years ago as he would have given P.T. Barnum a run for his money. Jeff Krulik is also the case study of how you don’t have to do drugs to be absolutely insane, and I say that with great affection. For example, Jeff somehow finagled his way into the maximum-security wing at St. Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital, ostensibly to videotape a soul concert where we mixed with the inmates hoping to run into John Hinkley Jr., Ronald Reagan’s attempted assassin. Jeff looks perfectly normal but, trust me, he’s fuckin nuts!

Although Super Bowl XXII was 31 years ago, I do remember very clearly the day of the game because I had Jeff, my girlfriend Pat Goslee, housemate Liz Evans (who hauled around the 1980’s super-heavy monster battery pack and cables), Steve Kiviat (also from WMUC and has been writing music reviews for nearly 40 years), and some other friends over to my place to watch the Super Bowl, with the goal of heading down to Georgetown with the video gear and asking moronic questions of happy drunk people—if the Skins won the game.

 
Show Us Your Belly 18
 

By halftime, when it was clear the Redskins were going to win, we packed up the insanely heavy 1980’s 3/4 video gear and headed to historic Georgetown right as the game ended. Georgetown is the party center of the city, and nobody in DC had to be told that that’s where people were going to go ape-shit. It was unseasonably warm, so I wore my bathing suit (a young woman pulled it down, fortunately off camera), and we just plowed in. People were just ecstatic, jumping up and down, black, white, Latino, Indian, young, old, rich, poor and perfect strangers were hugging each other. The police were cool, nobody was getting hurt and it was a big love-in. When they saw the camera, they assumed we were from a TV station, so everyone asked, “What channel is this?”

 
Show Us Your Belly 11
 

The goal was to pay homage to the legendary Mal Sharpe and lift one of his classic questions, but directed to extremely drunk and happy revelers. I did many of the interviews, Steve Kiviat did a few with his classic facial expressions, Jeff asked a few as well, and Pat at the very end.

 
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The ultimate goal was to come away with some funny material, give a nod to Mal Sharpe, and try to add a goofy little time capsule to a really great night in DC sports history. I think we succeeded.

 
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A four-minute cut of Show Us Your Belly was screened during the Don’t Quit Your Day Job Film & Video Festival, which took place on February 5, 1990, at the American Film Institute Theater at the Kennedy Center. This was its only public showing. The program was presented by Jeff Krulik and his collaborator on Heavy Metal Parking Lot, John Heyn.
 
Postcard
 
Embedded below is the complete, ten-minute version of Show Us Your Belly, which was uploaded to Youtube by Jeff. See more videos he’s added to the platform, including some of the other shorts screened during the Don’t Quit Your Day Job fest, here.
 
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Now, enjoy the craziness:
 

 
Thanks to Jeff Krulik and Seth Morris.

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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02.01.2019
09:52 am
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Tiny Tim, the Cleveland Browns and a bear made a sword and sorcery movie
11.09.2018
08:30 am
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As an answer to “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” the 1986 Cleveland Browns released this short fantasy film on home video. It co-stars Tiny Tim and a trained bear.

Masters of the Gridiron concerns a beautiful dream Browns center Mike Baab has after sustaining a massive head injury on the field—you know, the kind that causes permanent brain damage in people who play football. After losing consciousness, Baab awakes in an enchanted realm, transformed into a sword and sorcery hero, “the Baabarian,” who must confront Tiny Tim’s evil Lord of the League in the quest for a magic ring. Hometown heroes the Michael Stanley Band provide the soundtrack for the Browns’ LARP battles with the bear and some ninjas, filmed at the local landmark Squire’s Castle.

I’m sure this movie contains a lot of inside jokes for football fans; I don’t understand the rules of football, or why it is played, or how it is watched, though I have a vague sense that the Cleveland Browns must be all right, because Pere Ubu probably roots for them. I just like Masters of the Gridiron because it contains some of Tiny Tim’s best work. He is riveting as the Lord of the League, who issues his challenge in verse.

Talking to USA Today in 2013, Baab said Tiny didn’t work with bears:

He was terrified of the bear and would not come down from the top of the Squire’s Castle until the bear was back in his trailer. He thought the bear wanted to eat him.

If you watch nothing else, skip to Tiny’s first appearance at 7:18. Tell me it isn’t one of the best things you’ve ever seen.
 

Posted by Oliver Hall
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11.09.2018
08:30 am
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What if every band had its own British football logo?
07.31.2018
08:08 am
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Some witty and likable folks with art school credentials and/or graphic design skills presumably residing in the British Isles recently started a Twitter presence for those of you out there who unaccountably are interested in both rock and roll music and athletics. The presence is called Bands FC and I urge you to go check it out, it’s very amusing.

The account’s geezer-ish slogan runs thus: “How it works. Bands as football teams. Football teams as bands.” There’s a lot of visual punning going on that requires some basic knowledge of Premier League Football logos. Every now and then they throw up an entry with the text “This is how we do it” that explains the concept to newcomers. Here’s one of the only ones that I actually understood without the help:
 

 
The logos are often quite clever, but they’re not afraid to go obvious when it suits them, as with Spinal Tap’s three “goes to 11” knobs or Nirvana’s smiley face.

The knowledge of the conventions involved in football logos runs deep. Sometimes the names of the band members are listed (“SIXX NEIL LEE MARS”), sometimes not. Sometimes there’s an “EST. 1967” (Fleetwood Mac) thrown in for fun, sometimes not. All in all the person or people who made these understood that the goal of a sports logo is to foster worship among the masses, and also the colors have to lend themselves to expression in the form of a garish winter scarf.

Below are some of my faves but there are lots more at the source.
 

 

 
Tons more after the jump…........
 

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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07.31.2018
08:08 am
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Bring It: Meet the Gorgeous Ladies of Japanese Wrestling
07.16.2018
08:53 am
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A photo of the female professional wrestling team The Beauty Pair. This image was used to help promote a film based on their exploits in the ring.
 
Professional wrestling has a long, storied history in Japan. Active cultivation of the sport was started following WWII as the country was collectively mourning and recovering after the horrendous bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing approximately 200,000 people and other wide-spread, war-related devastation. The sport became hugely popular, and sometime in the mid-1950s wrestlers from the U.S. would make the trip to Japan to grapple with the country’s newest star athletes including an all-female “Puroresu” (professional wrestling) league, All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling Association, formed in 1955. Just over a decade later, the league would become All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling (AJW), and instead of going at it exclusively with American or other foreign wrestlers, the sport started to pit female Japanese wrestlers against each other which is just as fantastic as it sounds.

All-female wrestling in Japan in the 1970s was a glorious wonderland full of tough, athletic women happily defying cultural and gender norms. Matches were broadcast on television and a duo going by the name The Beauty Pair (Jackie Sato and Maki Ueda) were huge stars. Teenagers themselves, Sato and Ueda, were inspirational to their young female fans leading to the pair (and Sato as a solo artist), to be signed by RCA, producing several hit singles. They starred in a film based on their wrestling personas and sales of magazines featuring The Beauty Pair and other girl wrestlers were swift. The masterminds of the AJW—Takashi Matsunaga and his brothers—knew their ladies-only league was now unstoppable.
 

Japanese wrestling duo The Crush Gals, Chigusa Nagayo, and Lioness Asuka.
 
Female wrestling in the 80’s and 90’s in Japan was reminiscent of American producer and promoter David B. McLane’s magical GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), and introduced more theatrics into the sport by way of heavy metal makeup, wild hairdos, and eccentric individual personas. In the 80s, televised matches would glue an estimated ten million viewers to the tube much in part to the insane popularity of The Beauty Pair’s successors, The Crush Gals. Both women had signature closing maneuvers; Chigusa Nagayo was known for her Super Freak and Super Freak II, and her partner, Lioness Asuka often finished off her opponents using one of her go-to moves like the LSD II, LSD III and the K Driller (a reverse piledriver). Like their predecessors, The Crush Gals were also musicians and put out a few singles during the 80s, often regaling viewers with songs during matches. Other ladies of the AJW such as Bull Nakano, Dump Matsumoto, Jumbo Hori and others had their own personal theme music. And since lady-wrassling was such a sensation (as it should be), the theme music created for various stars of the scene was compiled on a neat picture disc called Japanese Super Angels in 1985. Video games based on the goings on in the AJW started making the rounds in the early 1990s with titles from Sega and Super Famicom.

So, in the event all this talk about Japanese female wrestling has you wondering if it is still a thing in Japan, I’m happy to report it looks to be alive and well. I’ve posted loads of images taken from Japanese wrestling magazines, posters, and publicity photos from the 70s, 80s, and 90s featuring some of the ballsy women which took on the game of wrestling in Japan and won. Deal with it.
 

Bull Nakano and Dump Matsumoto.
 

Dump Matsumoto and her partner Crane Yu pictured with referee Shiro Abe after winning the WWWA Tag Titles in February of 1985.
 

 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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07.16.2018
08:53 am
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Avalanche Bob is the yodeling outsider musician promoting the ‘snowboard revolution’
07.09.2018
01:52 am
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If you’re a frequent listener of The Best Show, then you may already know Avalanche Bob. He’s one of those unknown “regulars” who relentlessly calls into independent (and otherwise) radio stations in search of that precious airtime. There may be someone like that on your town or city’s college station or morning show. While the nature of the discussion might be for casual banter and a couple of “look at this guy” laughs, lest not we forget that these are some of the world’s best self-promoters on the line. Most of which have something menial for sale, like their music or other obscure offerings. And they will just keep on hustling to get by with life. 
 
Avalanche Bob was born Robert Cribbie in Hudson, New York. At an early age, young Bob picked up the unfamiliar form of singing known as yodeling. Bob describes his dedication as having stemmed from a dream he had, in which he heard a sound that he could not describe. That sound soon became a yodel and it was then realized that any song could be sung through yodeling. Having recognized that his bizarre form of music could potentially materialize into something other than just a gimmick, Cribbie hoped to push “rock yodeling” into the mainstream.
 

‘Rockabilly Yodel’ by Bob Cribbie (1959)
 
Bob released his first single in 1959, appropriately titled “Rockabilly Yodel.” I’m not entirely sure how the song was received back then, but it was his last for nearly sixty-years. Despite the huge, unexplained gap in his musical narrative, Bob has never stopped yodeling. He has recorded “thousands” of original songs to tape, half of which were written about the extreme sport of snowboarding. Oh, and he doesn’t want to perform as Bob Cribbie any longer - now he’s Avalanche Bob.
 
When Cribbie first got into songwriting in the 50’s and 60’s, the Beach Boys and surf music were what was popular. Everyone wanted to be part of the phenomena, but only few actually lived near the ocean to participate. But it didn’t matter so much because it was more of a rhythm and a feeling. That sensation is what Avalanche Bob is going for with his recent discovery of a so-called “snowboard revolution.” According to the revolution, snowboarding is the solution. To what, you may ask? Bob didn’t exactly specify. But, someday snowboarding could be “as big as the WWE,” Cribbie often cites. Maybe someday. The high-velocity brand was originally to be centered around skiing, but I can see why Bob went with snowboarding.
 

 
So with a little backstory, it now partially makes sense why Avalanche Bob has dedicated at least some of his life to yodeling and the snowboard revolution. Last year, Cribbie teamed up with New York musicians Owen Kline and Sam Kogon to self-release Avalanche Bob’s debut record, High Power Snow Power! To The Stars! Protect The Earth! With hits like “Drivers of the New Rock (Snowboarding Nation),” “The Hoodoo Man,” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll to the Winter Olympics,” Bob transforms doo-wops into “snow-wops” with his truly imaginative and oftentimes unhinged style of songwriting. It’s all about the powder and the slopes for this yodel-punk maestro.
 

Robert Cribbie self-portrait
 
Avalanche Bob has yet to actually go snowboarding. At eighty-four years old, he is hopeful that he will someday. Cribbie has already been on Kimmel, however, and was the subject of a 2017 indie short that bears his moniker. Bob’s main focus right now is to get his commercial idea to Red Bull and, let’s not forget, to release the thousands of songs he has allegedly already written. He also has four musicals ready for Broadway.
 
It’s been a bizarre and even supernatural journey for Avalanche Bob. A true-to-life outsider musician and a cosmic yodel-punk navigating the mountains of the snowboard revolution, one cannot help but to love the guy and everything that he’s pushing for. And once again, I’m not entirely sure what that is.
 
Listen to Avalanche Bob’s debut record ‘High Power Snow Power!’ after the jump…

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Posted by Bennett Kogon
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07.09.2018
01:52 am
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Ian MacKaye’s article on DC skateboarding for Thrasher magazine, 1983
04.04.2018
09:04 am
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All photos by Glen E. Friedman
 
A few months ago, I told you about the Cedar Crest Country Club and the importance it played within DC’s skate punk scene. The political climate of the capital in the early eighties inspired a revolution significant of the times, one that would continue to influence underground culture up until present day. And we have Ian Mackaye to thank for much of it.

The origins of skateboarding are rooted in Southern California surf, but many can say its attitude came from DC punk. Bands like Government Issue, Bad Brains, SOA, and of course Minor Threat, brought a much needed edge to the sport, substituting the sunny beaches with grit and concrete. The only issue was, in DC there was nowhere to skate. So, the punks had to improvise. Later in 1986, the ramp at Cedar Crest Country Club opened, a steel halfpipe oasis just an hour outside the city.

In October 1983, Ian MacKaye, founder of Dischord Records and frontman of Minor Threat, Fugazi, Embrace, and Teen Idles, penned a “scene report” for skateboarding magazine, Thrasher. The article, set to describe the skate vibe of the nation’s capital, characterizes Ian not as a hardcore punk legend, but rather as a DC kid who lives to skateboard. The young MacKaye was a member of ragtag boarding crew Team Sahara, along with another punk forefather, Henry Garfield (now known as “Henry Rollins”). Ian’s piece is a nice little snapshot of the spirit of skate culture during the era; his feature goes on to describe the team’s favorite ramps, a legendary wipeout by Rollins, their first empty pool, and an infamous team session at the Annandale halfpipe. Also in the issue is a photo spread of vertical sequences, a story on a Swedish skate camp, competitions in Del Mar and Oceanside, and a music piece on a punk band called The Faction.

Read Ian MacKaye’s article in Thrasher magazine, along with a complete transcript below:
 

 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Bennett Kogon
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04.04.2018
09:04 am
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That time Frank Zappa invented ‘The Wave’ in 1969


 
We are currently amid Zappadan, an annual observance that pays tribute to the late Frank Zappa. Beginning on the anniversary of his death of December 4th, the holiest of all Zapptist occasions concludes blissfully on December 21st, the creation date of the almighty. While it would be difficult to list his every achievement and influence over the years, Frank Zappa is best remembered as a rock & roll innovator, a spirited free-thinker, and a cultural mad scientist. Oh, and I guess he invented The Wave?
 
I have always been curious of the origins of The Wave. The popular spectator pastime involves a stadium crowd to lift their arms in succession, thereby creating a pulsating human current that ripples and crashes. A simple Google search of the subject reveals a man named Krazy George Henderson to be its creator. George was a local celebrity and self-proclaimed “professional cheerleader,” who would often show up at sporting events to invigorate the crowd. It was at an Oakland Athletics game on October 15th, 1981 where Krazy George was believed to have orchestrated the very first wave. After years of perfecting his craft, it was here when George’s vision was fully realized. But apparently he wasn’t the only one. Television host Robb Weller claims that he had led the first wave at a University of Washington football game on October 31st, 1981—mere weeks after Krazy George’s first tube had barreled over in Oakland. Regardless of who did it first, it was at the widely-televised 1986 FIFA World Cup that incited the tradition. For that reason, many sports fans refer to the popular activity as the “Mexican Wave.”
 

Krazy George
 
I don’t intend to be brazen with my skepticism of the subject, but The Wave wasn’t created by Weller or Krazy George. It was invented by Frank Zappa. On June 27th 1969, Zappa and the Mothers of Invention performed at the Denver Pop Festival, a psychedelic three-day concert held at the Mile High Stadium in Colorado. Joining the Mothers on the bill were some serious heavy-hitters of the era, including Creedence Clearwater Revival, Big Mama Thornton, Iron Butterfly, Three Dog Night, and the very last performance of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hendrix even performed the “Star Spangled Banner” at the Denver Pop Festival, an event that would soon be obscured by the peace & love behemoth that was Woodstock just two months later. Unlike Woodstock, however, unruly attendees and gatecrashers were tear-gassed during Hendrix’s set, causing disturbance to those in the grandstands.
 

 
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention played before Iron Butterfly on the first day of the festival. Their set contained a whimsical array of classic Mothers numbers including “Hungry Freaks Daddy,” “The String Quartet,” and “A Pound for a Brown on the Bus.” The last song of the performance was more of an improvisation, wherein Zappa attempts a stunt that he refers to as “Teenage Stereo.” Playing conductor to an audience of 50,000, Zappa calls on successive sections of the crowd to make gestures and odd noises (such as clapping and vomiting sounds) when pointed at. The sound travels throughout the stadium in a metachronal rhythm, thereby demonstrating this new human instrument “in stereo.” What Zappa hadn’t realized, however, was that his playful experiment would eventually become a sports fan phenomena that continues to make “waves” to this day.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Bennett Kogon
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12.18.2017
11:29 am
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‘You’re the One for Me, Fatty’: Amusing Morrissey-themed skateboard decks
09.25.2017
08:47 am
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“You’re the One for Me, Fatty”
 
Paisley Skates has produced these rather amusing Morrissey-themed skate decks. Each one is done by a different artist including Todd Bratrud, Sean Cliver and Dave Carnie. Every deck is signed on the top by the artist and sells for $70 a pop. I dig the “Vicar in a Tutu” board by Sean Cliver.

Dimensions: 9.25 x 33.125

N: 7.125 / T: 6.875 / WB: 14.75

Click on any image to enlarge for more details.


“Vicar In A Tutu”
 

“Bigmouth Strikes Again”
 
via The World’s Best Ever

Posted by Tara McGinley
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09.25.2017
08:47 am
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