Col. Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and Larry Geller on the set of ‘Spinout’ (via Bodhi Tree.com)
 
In the spring of 1964, Elvis’ hairdresser, Larry Geller, introduced him to the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. The founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship had a lasting impact on Elvis, who often visited the SRF’s Mt. Washington headquarters and Pacific Palisades retreat during his Hollywood years, and developed a close relationship with Yogananda’s successor, Sri Daya Mata.

Priscilla did not welcome the arrival of cosmic consciousness in her life with the King:

Larry was a total threat to us all. He would spend hours and hours and hours with Elvis, just talking to him, and he wasn’t anything that Elvis represented; he didn’t represent anything that Elvis had believed in prior to that time… [Elvis] read books studiously for hours and hours. He had conversations with Larry for hours and hours — he was going on a search for why we were here and who we were, the purpose of life; he was on a search with Larry to try to find it. You know, Larry would bring him books, books, books, piles of books. And Elvis would lay in bed at night and read them to me. That was the thing when you dealt with Elvis: if he had a passion for something, you had to go into it with him and show the same love he had for it. Or at least you had to pretend to.

Of course, these new enthusiasms were amplified by Elvis drugs. Not acid, so much—during the one trip Geller and Elvis took together, they ordered pizza and watched The Time Machine on TV—but friends observed troubling interactions between the King’s diet pills and his Kriya Yoga practice. From the second volume of Peter Guralnick’s Elvis biography:

He felt a new serenity in his life. To the guys it seemed more like madness, and they felt increasingly alienated, resentful, bewildered, and angry all at once. Elvis appeared to be leaving them with his almost daily visions, his tales of going off in a spaceship, his delusions of being able to turn the sprinkler system of the Bel Air Country Club golf course behind the house on and off with his thoughts, his conviction that he could cure them of everything from the common cold to more serious aches and pains by his healing powers.

 

 
Geller’s spiritual counsel did not endear him to Colonel Tom Parker. Guralnick reports Larry’s contention that one terrible number in 1967’s Easy Come, Easy Go was a clear message from the King’s manager:

The inclusion of the musical number “Yoga Is As Yoga Does,” which Elvis performed as a duet in Easy Come, Easy Go, was no accident, Larry felt, but intended, rather, as a direct insult to Elvis’ (and Larry’s) beliefs — but Elvis went ahead and recorded it anyway. Only after the scene in which it was included was shot did Elvis finally react. It was then, in Larry’s account, that Elvis “stormed into the trailer, shouting, ‘That son of a bitch! He knows, and he did it! He told those damn writers what to do, and he’s making me do this.’”

More after the jump…

 
Telescope was a half-hour Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) television series that aired from 1963-73. Hosted and directed by producer/actor Fletcher Markle, Telescope featured examinations of various topics, as well as profiles of notable figures. Their two-part look at the career of director Alfred Hitchcock, “A Talk with Hitchcock,” aired in 1964. The program was assembled as the auteur was working on his latest picture, Marnie, and we’re treated to on-set footage of the man, along with Marnie stars Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. But the focus of the special is the interview with Hitch—shot in his Hollywood office—in which the master of suspense is quite candid, casually discussing his oeuvre. It’s very cool to see him so relaxed, conversing with Markle as if there are no cameras present.
 

 
Hitchcock cohorts Joan Harrison and Norman Lloyd also appear, as does legendary composer Bernard Hermann. Hermann scored a number of Hitchcock films, including Psycho, a picture made all the more terrifying thanks to Hermann’s heart-stopping compositions. I especially enjoyed learning, by way of Hermann, the Psycho murder scenes were originally intended to be silent, though Hermann disagreed. Once Hitchcock watched the scenes without music and then again with what Hermann had come up with, the director changed his mind. It’s hard to imagine the iconic “shower scene”—as impressive as it is visually—lacking Hermann’s brilliant, hair-raising piece.
 

 
“A Talk with Hitchcock” was released on DVD, and though it’s now out of print, a copy can still be had by way of Amazon.

The two-part Telescope episode was recently added to YouTube as a single upload. It’s a fascinating peek into the mind, work, and life of one of cinema’s greatest directors.
 
Watch it, after the jump…

A fantastic embroidered piece by Australian artist, Adipocere.
 
Based in Melbourne, Australia, the embroidery artist known as “Adipocere,” adopted a word that has several somewhat sinister synonyms such as “grave wax,” “corpse wax,” or “mortuary wax.” By definition, adipocere is a light-gray substance produced by a cadaver as their fatty tissue decomposes—making the word a perfect match for the artist’s delightfully dreadful embroidery.

Adipocere (aka “Josh”) has been involved in the craft of embroidery since 2014 and currently his Instagram has 63.7K followers. On his Instagram feed the artist makes note of the fact that he also does embroidery on human skin. His work has been shown in galleries across the world, and according to the artist himself, he is aware of at least 60 people who have tattooed images of his dark embroidery onto their own skin. I understand that he occasionally sells his pieces and also has a few other items up for purchase via Big Cartel. The images below are slightly NSFW.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

Photo by Lynn Goldsmith (via Morrison Hotel)
 
Blondie is, per Kirsty Young, “the most successful American band ever in the UK.” In December of ‘79, having just topped the chart yet again with Eat to the Beat, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein paid a visit to the BBC’s Saturday morning kids’ show Swap Shop—apparently a rival of Tiswas whose full legal name was Multi-Coloured Swap Shop—where guests offered swag to lucky contestants who wrote in with the correct answer to a trivia question. Some of the dry goods on this episode come from the recently completed “rock and roll comedy” Roadie, in which Blondie’s co-stars were Meat Loaf, Alice Cooper, Roy Orbison and Art Carney.

During the best parts of the episode, Chris and Debbie press phones to their ears as the tiny, halting voices of English schoolchildren blurt out questions and wishes for a happy Christmas:

Ian Rutledge: I wanted to ask Debbie, did she participate in any sports?

Beverly Chinnick: Um, Debbie, who designs your clothes, and um, do you choose them?

Samantha Jarrett: Um, um, Debbie, did you name your group after your hair?

Paulette Baker: Can I ask Debbie a question? Was her hair always that fair color, or was it brown like the other members of her group?

Because the proceedings are so sweet, the mention of the disgraced TV host Jimmy Savile, who was revealed to have been a serial rapist of children shortly after his death, is startling. Brace yourself. (Savile does not appear on the show, though the gross likeness of his gross hair does.)

If Wikipedia is right, BBC wiped its archival tape of this episode in the late eighties. Three cheers for home recording.
 
Watch after the jump…

 
Fumio Miyashita was the leader of one of Japan’s most far out space rock units, The Far East Family Band, which also included the future new age composer, Kitaro. The Boffomundo Show was a Los Angeles public access television show focusing on prog rock in the late 70s and early 80s. Boffomundo producers Aaron Weiner and Ron Curtiss partnered with a well-connected guy named Tony Harrington of a label called All Ears Records to create The All Ears Boffomundo Show, which is how Fumio Miyashita came to appear on the show, twice, all of which is soon getting a release on vinyl by Drag City.

I asked Ron Curtiss a few questions via email:

First off, tell the readers about The Boffomundo Show.

Ron Curtiss: Aaron Weiner and I started The Boffomundo Show in 1979, which featured sit-down interviews with our progrock heroes.  As cable television expanded, it mandated a “public access” broadcasting option allowing local subscribers to produce their own shows.  Boffomundo roughly means “big world.” Watching the TV show, Happy Days, and hearing Fonzie say “correctomundo,” I replaced the “correcto” part with “boffo,” which refers to high grosses in show biz talk and voila!  At a progressive music festival in Downtown LA we met a former A&R executive from Atlantic Records called Tony Harrington, who had traveled the world in the mid-70’s with King Crimson, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Genesis. He provided us with a brilliant litany of guests: Robert Fripp and John Wetton (King Crimson); Bernardo Lanzetti (PFM); Phil Collins and John Goodsall (Genesis and Brand X) and of course, Fumio Miyashita. The show continued after Tony, into the 80’s and 90’s, where we interviewed King Crimson’s Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford (Yes, Genesis, King Crimson) and fusion guitarists, Larry Coryell and Al Di Meola. 

How did you come into contact with Fumio Miyashita and arrange for him to be on the show?

Ron Curtis: Tony Harrington had his own record label called All Ears Records.  He had connections to progressive bands in Japan, including Fumio, whose Far East Family Band was already legendary. The award-winning synthesist, Kitaro, was a member and they had the honor of having Tangerine Dream’s Klaus Schulze provide production work on several of their albums. Tony brought Fumio to Los Angeles in 1978, where a new version of The Far East Family Band performed at the world famous Troubadour for two nights in March of that year.  In 1979, Tony invited us to Fumio’s home, where we discussed a solo appearance on The Boffomundo Show.  We had never tried live music before. The studio was the size of a small bedroom, but that didn’t stop us!

Anything notable that happened behind-the-scenes during the taping?

Ron Curtiss: Fumio showed up at Theta Cable Studios in Santa Monica, CA with many synthesizers, gongs, mixers and various percussion.  Somehow the Theta Cable staff pumped all the sound through one small bookshelf speaker. The speaker sat on a wooden stool with a single microphone!  The sound quality was very good considering nothing like this had never been done in that studio before. In 1980, Fumio with a guitarist and bass player, graced The Boffomundo Show a second time. Both performances are brilliantly captured on the new album. 

How did the release of this come about?

Ron Curtiss: Last August I got a message on our Boffomundo Facebook page from Scott McGaughey at Drag City Records. It seems that he and Animal Collective member, Brian “Geo” Weitz were fans of the show and of Fumio in particular. They wanted to remaster the sound and edit together portions of both the 1979 and 1980 shows for vinyl. Vinyl is perfect.  We are honored to have these shows memorialized and dedicate the record to the memories of Fumio Miyashita and Tony Harrington. 

Will there be more like it?

Since we remastered the old shows and posted them on YouTube some years ago, we have close to a million hits. The old fans and new prog kids support us all around the world. The shows were not seen by a lot of folks at the time. They capture the end of the original progressive rock movement. The highlights are the fresh memories of these amazing musicians, avoiding the softening of opinions over many years. We offered the musicians a forum to tell their tales on TV, in an intelligent, uncommercial venue.  A few years ago I was approached to do a book, Robert Fripp The Boffomundo Interview 1979 and now a record!  We are humbled by the reaction to the old shows and always welcome original ideas to present them to an even wider audience.

Fumio Miyashita Live on the Boffomundo Show comes out on September 22 from Drag City. Pre-order it here.

An excerpt from Fumio Miyashita’s appearance on ‘The Boffomundo Show’

Julie Newmar, 1966
 
Everyone gives George Lois huge props for his attention-getting use of celebrities and his sharp eye for an arresting image, but he wasn’t the only one in advertising or publishing treading that terrain. Through the late 1950s and the 1960s, Smirnoff Vodka had a well-known series of ads that used some pretty hip people, from Vincent Price and Langston Hughes to Woody Allen and Eartha Kitt.

Smirnoff was intent on pushing the Moscow Mule during this phase, so it comes up in a lot of the ads. Kitt and Allen both pose with the same wooden donkey to drive the point home, and a few of the ads feature the distinctive copper cup intended to be used for Moscow Mules.

The campaign used a great many African-American celebrities, which may have been forward-thinking at the time, but it also may have pushed the ball forward on homosexual imagery to some degree. In 2000 the Advocate singled out the Joseph Cotten ad below as an example of a subversive advertisement reaching out to homosexuals in a coded way.

These ads all reek of Sterling Cooper, and Robert Morse is among the celebrities just to make it that much more of a Mad Men kind of post.
 

Woody Allen, 1966
 

Woody Allen, 1966
 
Much more after the jump…...

 
This is interesting—as I always thought Trypophobia was a phobia—but according to Discover Magazine, Trypophobia is an innate response to stimuli and cannot be unlearned like most phobias can be.

Via Discover Magazine:

If this image gives you the willies, you may have what has been called trypophobia–the fear of clusters of small holes. It has been hypothesized that this fear stems from a resemblance of the holes to patterns on poisonous animals. Although thousands of people find images like this really disturbing, it’s not enough to make it a phobia, which is a learned response that can be unlearned. These scientists studied preschoolers to determine whether trypophobia is an instinctive human response that can never be unlearned. To do this, they showed the kids pictures of venomous animals with and without overlaid images of trypophobia-inducing holes. Because only the pictures with holes upset the kids, the researchers believe that the fear is innate, and not a learned association with poisonous animals. So there you have it: if that tree makes you feel horrible, there is nothing you can do about it.

Basically, there’s not a damned thing you can do about it if this image of the hand (above) affects you.

Via Pub Med:

“In the past 10 years, thousands of people have claimed to be affected by trypophobia, which is the fear of objects with small holes. Recent research suggests that people do not fear the holes; rather, images of clustered holes, which share basic visual characteristics with venomous organisms, lead to nonconscious fear. In the present study, both self-reported measures and the Preschool Single Category Implicit Association Test were adapted for use with preschoolers to investigate whether discomfort related to trypophobic stimuli was grounded in their visual features or based on a nonconsciously associated fear of venomous animals. The results indicated that trypophobic stimuli were associated with discomfort in children. This discomfort seemed to be related to the typical visual characteristics and pattern properties of trypophobic stimuli rather than to nonconscious associations with venomous animals. The association between trypophobic stimuli and venomous animals vanished when the typical visual characteristics of trypophobic features were removed from colored photos of venomous animals. Thus, the discomfort felt toward trypophobic images might be an instinctive response to their visual characteristics rather than the result of a learned but nonconscious association with venomous animals. Therefore, it is questionable whether it is justified to legitimize trypophobia.”

Now, to make matters worse, here are some images of tiny clusters of holes!

 

 
More after the jump…

 
As 1968 rolled around, Ike and Tina had been performing as the “Ike & Tina Turner Revue” since the early 60s, doing tons of television appearances but they were only treading water, especially in America. Their luck had started to change in England in 1966 when they had a big hit on their hands in the UK thanks to producer Phil Spector and the song “River Deep – Mountain High” (written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich—the prolific husband and wife songwriting team who gave us, among other earwigs, “Da Doo Ron Ron.”). Though Ike is credited on “River Deep – Mountain High,” he was allegedly paid $20,000 by Spector to fuck off during the session which according to Tina was about as much fun as “carving furniture.” Spector considers the song to be his single greatest achievement, but when the single didn’t do that much in the U.S. this is what seemed to prompt his withdrawal from the music industry. That didn’t stop the Rolling Stones from tapping the Revue to open a dozen shows for them during their British tour that same year. (Where do you think Mick got his moves from? Tina Turner and Inez Foxx!)

Still, the Revue was still technically without a hit in the U.S. Undaunted, Ike, Tina and the band would take up a residency in Las Vegas. They also recorded a few albums that year and in 1969 including, The Hunter, which would yield a Grammy nomination for Tina for her vocal work on the title track. Ike would also get a Grammy nod in the Best Rhythm & Blues Instrumental Performance category for his record A Black Man’s Soul while leading his other funky outfit, Ike Turner & The Kings of Rhythm. At the end of 1969, the busy Revue was touring yet again with The Rolling Stones.

Here’s a clip of Tina’s absolutely incendiary performance of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” taken from Gimme Shelter documentary.
 

 
Much more Ike & Tina after the jump…

 
I’m not entirely sure how I managed to missed this one, but in 2015 photographer Inge Prader brought Gustav Klimt’s paintings to “life.” Prader shot these gorgeous images for the 2015 Life Ball in Vienna. (Life Ball is an annual AIDS charity event.)

These are simply jaw-dropping. The details are impeccable. If you’d like to see more of Prader’s series, please visit DesignBoom.

Click on images to enlarge.


Recreation of Gustav Klimt’s “Death and Life”
 

Recreation of Gustav Klimt’s “Beethoven Frieze”
 
More after the jump…

“Mammon.” A painting by Alex Gross.
 

“Past success is no guarantee of future success, and anything is possible. It’s something that I try not to forget.”

—Artist Alex Gross on what keeps him going.

 
You may already be familiar with the work of New York-based artist Alex Gross as his striking surrealist pop creations have been seen in many publications including The Los Angeles Times. His warped, hyperrealistic artwork was also compiled into a couple of books—one in 2008 by Bruce Sterling, The Art of Alex Gross: Paintings and Other Works, and another published in 2014, Future Tense, Paintings by Alex Gross, 2010-2014.

It’s clear from Gross’ take on modern times that, like many of us, he may have already abandoned hope for the future. And his most recent gallery show, “Antisocial Network,” his first in nearly ten years back in February of this year, is a perfect example of his perhaps dim outlook on our collective existence. The work featured in the show was the result of two years of observation and reflection while the world began its downward spiral and the U.S. somehow ended up with a “president” that says shit like this.

Many of the paintings I’ve featured in this post involve people interacting with their smartphones while mayhem ensues behind them, unnoticed, which seems entirely plausible as it happens every goddamn day. I mean, people are so attached to their smartphones that they have panic attacks when they can’t find them and quite literally fall into holes in the sidewalk because they can’t bear to not stare into them while simply walking down the street. Despite perpetuating the notion that we all might end up in a hole in the sidewalk never to be seen again, Gross says that he hopes that his work helps people connect with each other. I’m all for that.

If you’d like to add some of Gross’ artwork to your collection, you can pick up limited edition prints at his website.
 

“Android.”
 

“Service Industry.”
 
More after the jump…