Mark Mothersbaugh at the Bottom Line, NYC, 1978 (Photo by Sheri Lynn Behr)
 
You know the junkie truism about chasing your first high? For me, the record-shopping equivalent of the initial drug rush was turning over the Pixies’ import-only “Gigantic/River Euphrates” single and finding the Lady in the Radiator’s song from Eraserhead listed on the back. Their actual arrangement of “In Heaven” was not particularly inspired, as I found out when I got the CD home, but that didn’t diminish the thrill of the moment of discovery. What a miraculous world this must be!

As I subsequently learned during years spent hunched over record bins, trying to swindle the plane of gross matter out of another peak experience, Tuxedomoon and Bauhaus had covered “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)” years before the Pixies did. But they were all playing catch-up with DEVO, who obtained permission to perform the song from both of its writers during the very year of Eraserhead‘s release.

Peter Ivers and David Lynch co-wrote “In Heaven”; that’s Ivers’ voice singing the song in the movie. Ivers was the genius musician who recorded for Warner Bros. and Epic and hosted New Wave Theatre before he was murdered in 1983. His life is the subject of a book by Pixies biographer Josh Frank, who writes that Lynch and Ivers met with DEVO in Los Angeles in 1977 after the group expressed interest in performing their song. At Lynch’s favorite restaurant, Bob’s Big Boy, Jerry Casale recognized the Ivers in DEVO and the DEVO in Ivers:

Like Devo, Peter was always testing people, always playing, performing his one-man guerrilla theatre for whomever happened to be there. Had they met in Akron, Peter undoubtedly would have been part of Devo. Lucky for Peter, Casale thought, he wasn’t in Akron.

But he would be with them, at least in spirit, from now on: Devo would bring Peter’s song with them on tour, making it a staple of their live act. Whenever possible, Peter would come to the shows and cheer them on.

As lunch wound down, Casale asked Peter to transcribe the song. Among his friends, Peter was known for his crisp, meticulous handwriting, especially when writing out music. He would crouch over the page, with the concentration of a second-grader taking his first handwriting test. Peter grabbed a napkin from the booth at Bob’s Big Boy, and, temporarily shutting out everything else in the room, wrote out the chords and the words to “In Heaven.” He handed the napkin to Jerry as Lynch polished off his coffee and drew a last, long slurpy sip of his Silver Goblet.

Casale told Frank that DEVO played “In Heaven” every night on their 1979 tour. “Booji Boy came out, we played it on little Wasp synthesizers, and he sang ‘In Heaven.’” In this undated bootleg from that tour, Booji Boy prophesies the future. He tells how one day, DEVO will come back to jam some subsonic frequencies and “we’ll all shit our pants together.” Later, when the hour is ripe for murder, DEVO will return to “kill all the normal people.”

Listen after the jump…

 
For those of us who worship at the altar of art and creativity, the career of Sister Corita serves as something like a proof that exciting and bracing art can come from any source. Another way of stating this is that if Sister Corita had never existed, the art-heads of the 1960s might have been obliged to invent her. Sister Corita was a peace activist, a nun, and a pop artist of considerable stature—all at the same time.

The woman who would later become known as Sister Corita was born Frances Kent in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1918, which incidentally means that she was 45 years old on the day that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed. Her large family moved to Los Angeles when she was young, where she would find educational mentors in a Catholic community of liberal nuns, namely the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart Order. They encouraged her to pursue art. In the 1950s she came upon an old silk screen at the art department of Immaculate Heart College and the wife of a Mexican silk-screen practitioner taught her how to clean and use it.

Her career can be said to have begun then; despite impressive productivity, however, it took about a decade for her work, which incorporated textual elements from the very start, to come into full maturity. The debt that Sister Corita owes artists like Andy Warhol and Peter Blake is evident everywhere, but it should be emphasized that the work of those two men lacked moral and spirital components that came to Sister Corita quite easily. When she zooms in on a package of Wonder Bread with emphasis on the words “Enriched Bread,” it’s almost impossible not to think of Jesus Christ. Warhol’s work has a moral element, for sure, but he wouldn’t have been as likely to meditate on the words wonder, enriched, and bread in the same way. (Warhol was only interested in one kind of “bread”: money!)

In 1967 she said, “I started early putting words into my prints, and the words just got bigger and bigger.” That year the Morris Gallery in New York hosted a show dedicated to her prints. By this time she was a “card-carrying” member of the peace movement; she was quoted as saying, “I’m not brave enough not to pay my income tax and risk going to jail, but I can say rather freely what I want to say in my art.”

After a lifetime of association with the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, she resigned from the order in 1968, in part because of the unusual demands her sudden celebrity had brought. It’s fascinating to watch her work get progressively darker through the 1965-1970 period. I marvel at the sheer balls it would take to put together a red, white, and blue canvas with the words assassination and violence prominently represented and call it American Sampler—I just know I don’t have them!

For a good overview of her work, by all means do consult Come Alive! The Spirited Art of Sister Corita by Julie Ault. The Corita Art Center has a terrific collection of her images as well.
 

For Eleanor, 1964
 

Mary Does Laugh, 1964
 
Much more after the jump…...
 

 
Okay, okay, perhaps that title is just a little bit disingenuous, but it’s still “close enough for government work,” as the old saying goes.

So no, Frank Zappa didn’t actually bring his rockin’ teen combo to fictional Riverdale High School, and no, this isn’t from Archie Comics either, it’s a National Lampoon parody by Michel Choquette from the September 1970 issue. But it’s probably exactly what would have happened had The Mothers of Invention roared into town.

Betty and Veronica probably would have gotten VD, too.

If you click on the images you’ll get to larger, easier-to-read versions.
 

 

 
Continues after the jump…

 
Who doesn’t need an inflatable black coffin, right? I know I do. I’m not sure if this is meant for a goth pool party or if it’s just an inflatable coffin cooler for absinthe drinks. According to the description, it can be used as a buffet or used on a floor, packed with ice to keep food or beverages cool. Apparently it can hold up to 60 12-Oz cans.

It’s being sold on Horror-Shop.com for $28.95.

I actually found the same item on Amazon for $17.49 here.

 
Perhaps there should be a warning. Maybe something like: “These Ghanaian movie posters may have no relationship to the actual film you are about to see.” But that kinda ruins what these artists are trying to achieve. Their remit was simple: Get as many people to come and see this film no matter what—so paint lots of blood and guts and monsters and big, big, huge breasts. Anything. Just so long as it gets some butts on seats and some moolah in the box office coffers.

The Ghanaian artists who created these posters probably didn’t make much money for their efforts. They probably could earn far more painting walls or street signs or putting down road markings. Each poster could take up to three days to create depending on the subject matter and what the artist could find out about the movie. Their one big advantage was that they could paint whatever they liked so long as it created interest. This inevitably led to a few well-worn tropes: snake women, skeletons, zombies, witchcraft, and even the occasional giant fish—as seen in a few James Bond posters. Some of these efforts are far better than the films they advertised—Van Helsing, for example.

The so-called “Golden Age” of Ghanaian movie posters is cited as the 1980s—1990s, when the boom in VHS players meant films could be screened in the smallest of venues, Most of the posters from this era were painted on grain sacks or just large pieces of cloth. These now fetch around a thousand bucks a pop at the more fashionable L.A. art galleries—considerably more than the few cedis the artist originally made.
 

 

 

 
More handmade Ghanaian movie posters, after the jump…
 

 
We’re leaving Beardsley country. Taking the old dirt road off Harry Clarke county, on thru the inky backwoods and the old lost village long grown green and rotten with tree and weed, towards a place called Vania Zouravliov. The sky’s dark, and there’s movement among the trees that grow too close together to give any idea what that movement might be other than it’s something watching, something waiting. And you know pretty soon you’re going be meeting this something one way or another and the thought of it sends a cold ripple of excitement through your backbone as you push on ahead wanting to get there faster.

That’s kinda like the feeling I get when I look at the artwork of Vania Zouravliov.

Zouravliov is a Russian graphic artist based in London who draws sensuous, intricate pictures of beauty, death, sex, and decay. Born into an artistic family (his mother was an art teacher), Zouravliov was a child prodigy whose earliest works gained him considerable praise and some notoriety—“famous communist artists, godfathers of social realism, told him that his work was from the Devil.” He was drawing “evil hammerhead people” at the age of four, which he has said proves that “Contrary to what most adults would like to believe, a child’s mind can be a very strange and disturbing place.”

By thirteen, Zouravliov was exhibiting his work in Moscow in 1994 and then internationally. He began to travel and later attended art college in Edinburgh where he started his career in earnest producing work for the Scotsman newspaper and then for magazines and comics. He moved to London where he is currently based.

In an interview with Awk Online Gallery, Zouravilov said he found his inspiration everywhere:

[F]rom popular culture to classical art.I get inspired by fashion magazines, books, films, old photographs, music, various cultures, and religions. I think my overall melancholic view on life is represented in my work.

When I was a child I used to draw animals and birds all the time and now I draw women. I can’t think of anything more interesting or beautiful at this point in my life. I use female characters in my work to say or explain things about myself.

He cites his favorite artists as Ingres, Gustav Dore, Grunewald, Von Bayros, Bakst, Utamar, and Belgian symbolist Fernand Khnopff—whose paintings have an “other-worldly feel to them.”

That other-worldly feel is also there in Zouravliov’s work which is rich, beautiful, and utterly personal. There’s a quote from Zouravliov that’s been bandied about the Internet for a long time which gives his answer to the question “What’s the one thing that gives you the inspiration to keep making art?”

A strong belief that creativity is the only relative freedom we have in this world.

It’s a good answer which I hope is true. See more of Vania Zouravliov’s work here and here.
 

 

 
See more of Vania Zouravliov’s art, after the jump…
 

 
A few months ago, DM brought you news that a legendary postpunk mix that had been bouncing around for years was now officially downloadable in full for the first time. That mix, titled 1981, was the brainchild of a well-nigh bottomless musical compendium of awesome and obscure shit named Ian Manire. That mix exhaustively covered the manifold epiphanies from 1981, and when I say “exhaustively,” I’m talking on the order of 25 solid hours of music. If you’d like to hear more about that, by all means, you really should.

Earlier today, Manire uploaded a relatively modest effort called 1979, which consists of seven new CD-length mixes that organize the postpunk output of 1979 into several broad themes, which was also more or less how the 1981 compilation worked: “Fire,” “Amplifier,” “Brain,” “Cassette,” “Computer,” “Convertible,” and “Ice.” Fans of Talking Heads, Magazine, Comsat Angels, etc. are encouraged to download and burn the mixes for free. Many of the tracks will be known to you, but one of the pleasures of Manire’s mixes is the encounter with less familiar bands, such as Essendon Airport, Essential Logic, and the Embarrassment and even many bands not starting with the letter E.
 

 
In a longer note, Manire said this of the motivation behind investigating 1979 after such an intensive engagement with 1981:
 

I originally made ‘1981‘ because that seemed the year of peak post-punk fecundity, the maximum expansion of its sounds, styles, and energy before it all inevitably had to cool down (though post-punk-rooted artist aged much more gracefully than their rock forebears, see ‘The Dawning’ and ‘Evensong’).  1979 isn’t quite so overgrown with sheer diversity and quantity, but it’s got the quality in spades.  Post-punk might have been ‘born’ in ’78, when all the fomenting strands began to coalesce.  But 1979 seems like the year the spark of punk fully became the post-punk wildfire.  Many of the most well-loved and iconic albums of post-punk were issued in ’79: ‘Fear of Music,’ ‘Entertainment,’ ‘The Raincoats,’ ‘Y,’ ‘Unknown Pleasures,’ ‘Cut,’ ‘Metal Box,’ ‘The B-52’s,’ ‘Quiet Life,’ ‘Replicas,’ ‘Specials,’ and on and on, and those artists are well represented.  But ’79 was already generating remarkable breadth, as many more nascent and less well-known groups were also making incredible music, and a lot of them are here, too. As with ‘1981,’ the gap between the legendary and the mostly forgotten is strikingly non-existent.

 
Here’s a stirring “sampler” from the 1979 mix, just so you can get an idea of what you’re in for. FYI: The first track is “Do the Du,” from A Certain Ratio’s 1979 John Peel session, which is an exemplary kickoff to more than 8 hours of galvanizing, bracing tunesmithery:

 
via Carpet DM
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
For the first time, legendary ‘1981’ post-punk mix is available to download in full

“We don’t just do a musical performance. It’s a 45-minute happening.”—Marc Bolan on John’s Children in 1967

John’s Children were a mod-era proto-psychedelic, proto-glam, proto-punk rock British beat group who are today mostly regarded as a footnote in the career of Marc Bolan. The future T.Rex leader was briefly brought into the group to replace a departing guitarist by manager Simon Napier-Bell (who also managed the Yardbirds, and later Wham!). They were never Bolan’s band, although he did write a few songs for them.

Their flamboyant stage antics were reminiscent of the Who during their “auto-destruct” phase and featured pillow fights, feathers, fake blood and lots of beating up on their instruments. The group wore all white and apparently played quite loud. Their lyrics “went for it” in ways not typically done at the time, with a song like “Not the Sort of Girl (You’d Like to Take to Bed)” and an album that they titled Orgasm which their American label refused to release for four years. As one rock scribe remarked about John’s Children, they were “generally disrespectful and crazed” and once posed for a magazine advertisement wearing nothing more than some strategically placed flowers.
 

 
Probably the most notable John’s Children number is a powerfully strange ditty for the era titled “Smashed! Blocked!”:

Please! I’m losing my mind
Help me now before it’s too late
Try to bring me back
Everythings spinning
My eyes are tired
I’m losing my way
Where are you, where am I?

 

 
A few years ago a “Smashed! Blocked!” clip of somewhat mysterious origin turned up on YouTube. The group’s lead singer, Andy Ellison had this to say:

This is strange film clip, that Chris, John and myself (Andy Ellison) filmed for our first single, at the then famous, basement, ‘Establishment Club’ (Peter Cooks, satirical venue in Greek St Soho), 1967. The clip is made up from bits of film left on the cutting room floor. A technician must have kept them. And Somehow they have made it to YouTube! No Idea what happened to the proper film.

He went on to add:

SMASHED was a mod term for drunk and BLOCKED was a mod term for being pilled up (high on amphetamines).

Now ya know. Original copies of this single can sell for big bucks on Discogs.

 
Between them, the members of instrumental quartet Double Naught Spy Car have served as side players for too many greats to list, but highlights of their collective CV include stints with Lydia Lunch, Nina Hagen, Nels Cline, Josie Cotton, Taj Mahal, Robert Fripp, and Stan Ridgway. As DNSC, they’ve served as the backing band for live performances by crime novelist James Ellroy. Their sound is an all-embracing classicist homage, drawing from surf, exotica, lounge jazz, prog, and Ennio Morricone spaghetti western soundtracks. (Amusingly, the CD Baby page for the release categorizes them as “Jazz: Weird Jazz.”) Their kitchen-sink methods were described thusly to L.A. Weekly by the band’s guitarist Paul Lacques:

We don’t pay off for fans of any genre. If you‘re a surf fan, we’re really gonna let you down. If you‘re a jazz fan, we’re gonna offend you. If you‘re a rock fan, good luck. If you’re a country fan…well, maybe we‘re reaching a country audience. We sort of mock genre, and at the same time we’re trying to create our own genre.

Their sixth album, MOOF, is set for release in a week, and it’s DM’s privilege to premier the entire album for you today. It includes a lot of high-powered guest performers, including Nels Cline, Mike Watt, Sylvia Juncosa, Joe Baiza (Saccharine Trust), Joe Gore (Tom Waits), and Ben Vaughn. That last name gave me a laugh to read—despite having penned the surfy theme music for 3rd Rock from the Sun he’s far from a household name, but he’s the artist behind one of my desert island albums, Designs in Music, a marvelous record that MOOF’s kitsch-obeisant ethos and slick production immediately reminded me of.

Here’s that LP stream for your examination. High points to our minds are “Hairsuit,” “Rhymes of Chimney,” “The Hesher Variation,” and “Loose Cannons in Tight Quarters.”
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Beck & co do Skip Spence - watch Nels Cline soar!
Mike Watt is still on the move with Il Sogno del Marinaio: an exclusive video premiere

 
Imagine someone sneaked into your bedroom when you were asleep, peeled back your eyelids and scooped out your very worst nightmares then turned them all into sculptures.

Well, that’s kinda like what Mexican artist Emil Melmoth has achieved with his gruesome, morbid, yet strangely compelling sculptures of deformed creatures and unnamed things that dwell in the night—he has made the terrors of darkness visible.

Melmoth takes his inspiration from religious iconography, medical anatomy, death culture, the circus, the freak show, and the downright macabre. His sculptures may look like expensive props for a deeply disturbing horror movie but they are intended to engage the viewer in some serious thinking. Fusing wax, ceramics, resin, nails, and bone, Melmoth creates meditations on the human condition that juxtapose “ideas of religious immortality and paradise with the reality of bodily imperfection, dissection, and truths of scientific knowledge.”

[His] wax, anatomical models revel in a dark and surreal environment, and where his depraved sculptures live in affliction: fragile beings in an eternally harrowing state of mind. Melmoth projects the sublime and ethereal concepts of death onto his creations, portraying pessimism, nihilism, existentialism, the question of transcendence beyond death, mental instability, and self-destruction, all ideas represented in his invigorating constructs.

An exhibition of his work is currently on show at the Last Rites Gallery (until September 9th) but if you can’t make that then you can follow Emil Melmoth on Instagram and Facebook.
 

 

 

 
See more of Emil Melmoth’s nightmarish sculptures, after the jump…