In 1975, the notable British buttrock band UFO released Force It, a barrage of boogie riffs and and double-entendre lyrics about fucking. As hesher-metal albums go, it was fairly interchangeable with a lot of the era’s hard rock, but its cover art has proven durable even as the band’s sound has aged. It’s a photograph depicting what could be read as a coercive sexual advance between a couple of indeterminate sex, one of whom is sans pants. Collaged into the photo are many, many faucets.

Faucet. Force it. You get it, ha ha, let’s move on.

The cover was designed by one of the era’s most distinctive and forward-thinking design studios, Hipgnosis. The firm consisted of designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, and were responsible for singularly surreal album art for Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, and Led Zeppelin, among many, many other clients. Force It was hardly their only controversial work, but it ranked high on that score. The US version of the cover was censored, by making the aggressively embracing couple half transparent. The irony here is that the models for that cover were already known for works that made the Force It cover look kid-friendly. From Neil Daniels’ High Stakes & Dangerous Men: The UFO Story,:

The artwork was risky for the time and because of the amount of flesh on display was almost banned—well, it was the 1970s, a non-PC age, but also surprisingly prudish too. It was toned down for the USA release, where they were even more prudish. One point of interest, is that the gender of the couple remained a cause of debate amongst UFO fans, but the couple turned out to be Genesis P. Orridge [sic] and his then girlfriend Cosey Fanni Tutti.

 

Kissing and buttocks mercifully ghosted for delicate American sensibilities.

Many of this blog’s regular readers know that Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti were, at the time, the principals behind COUM Transmissions, an art group known for incredibly transgressive performances that included heavy doses of kink, up to and including unsimulated bleeding and vomiting, violence, and even live sex—so this “controversial” photo was actually one of the tamest things they’d ever done. The year after Force It, COUM would evolve into the pioneering industrial band Throbbing Gristle, and Throbbing Gristle included in its membership one Peter Christopherson, who in the mid ‘70s was an assistant at…Hipgnosis.

More after the jump…

 
Okay, sure, so this is probably just totally gross and unnecessary, but hey, in my defense, my job here at Dangerous Minds is—often, not always, but often—to expose you, our dear readers, to the bowels of Internet hell. And this, unfortunately, includes posting about cupcakes that look like giant cystic pimples that you can actually squeeze! Blessed By Baking, in California came up with this idea because of the Internets’ obsession with pimple-popping videos on YouTube by Dr. Pimple Popper. Apparently people are strangely satisfied by watching videos of pimples and blackheads being extracted.

So naturally the next step with this obsession is to make squeezable pimple cupcakes, right? Ew.

According to Blessed By Baking, the cupcakes taste awesome. The yellow pus-like substance is actually custard or lemon curd. To be honest, I wouldn’t touch this shit. No way!

 
via Daily Mail

 
Whereas I am certainly no admirer of GG Allin—he brought nothing to rock and roll and may his soul rot in Hell—I admittedly LOL’d at this vintage local news clip about one of his shows in Orlando, FL in the early 1990s reported on by none other than future Fox News anchor Shepard Smith!

During this WCPX-News 6 evening news broadcast Smith told viewers about how clubgoers at the Space Fish Cafe had

“... paid $7 to watch a man defecate into his own hand while he was nude. And that is just the beginning.”

Smith is almost comically unflappable at the notion of an asshole throwing his own shit around a nightclub. No wonder Fox News hired him.

But the real star of the show is the guy who was merely an innocent bystander when the feces-covered Allin ran out of the club. The one who makes the LOL comment about “well-to-do white kids.” I’d quote it here but I’d rather force you to watch it.

Near the end of the report, the club’s owner oddly muses that this is “the first bit of the big city that’s come to Orlando.” What does that even mean in this context? Which big city is he referring to?
 

 
When the fashion designer Alexander McQueen sewed locks of his hair into his 1992 show “Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims,” it probably never crossed his mind that he was giving some scientifically oriented person in the future a way to generate human tissue with his own genetic material.

But the year is now 2016, and that’s exactly what student Tina Gorjanc is doing—and she’s doing it, remarkably, as a way of emulating McQueen himself, by making clothes out of skin grown from McQueen’s DNA.

McQueen, one of the most arresting and experimental fashion designers of our time, committed suicide in 2010; the next year, Savage Beauty, a retrospective of his creations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art curated by Andrew Bolton, was by far the most talked about show of 2011, causing patrons to wait for hours in lengthy lines stretching around the block.

As part of her “Pure Human” project, Gorjanc, a student at London’s Central Saint Martins art school, is sourcing the iconic designer’s DNA from the locks of his own hair that were incorporated into his first collection inspired by Jack the Ripper. She has already filed a patent on it after convincing the owner of the collection to give her some of McQueen’s genetic material.

We’re still a ways away from actual objects made out of skin with McQueen’s DNA. Gorjanc’s designs at Central Saint Martins’ end-of-year show were speculative designs using pig skin offcuts, chosen for their resemblance to human skin, and with layers of colour and silicon applied to the surface of the leather to enhance the similarity.

However, the plan is for Gorjanc harvesting McQueen’s DNA into skin tissue, which will then be tanned and turned into human leather.

Gorjanc gave the following comment to Dezeen Magazine:
 

The Pure Human project was designed as a critical design project that aims to address shortcomings concerning the protection of biological information and move the debate forward using current legal structures. ... If a student like me was able to patent a material extracted from Alexander McQueen’s biological information as there was no legislation to stop me, we can only imagine what big corporations with bigger funding are going to be capable of doing in the future.

 
Hey, it might be creepy, but at least she didn’t resort to the collection methods used by fashion desinger Jame Gumb in Thomas Harris’ novel The Silence of the Lambs......
 

 

 
Much more after the jump…....

 
There’s a trend that’s only been getting bigger recently in the tattoo community…. stick ‘n’ pokes. What started out as a jail tattoo (or a kitchen hobby) needing only a pen, needle, ink, bottle cap and a steady hand has turned into something tattoo parlors now offer. And it can be pretty expensive. They charge hourly, of course, and really intricate stick ‘n’ poke work can take a very long time. Or you can get your drunkass friend to do it one convivial late night and end up with something that could be…. well… less than impressive.

Stick ‘n’ pokes seem to be tied up with the more DIY elements of the punk rock community. There is a scene in Penelope Spheeris’ The Decline of Western Civilization where X and friends are seen hanging out in their living room and John Doe is giving a friend, Top Jimmy, a stick ‘n’ poke. In fact, the whole scene is a late night post X show stick n’ poke party.
 

 
Intrigued by this tie in of stick ‘n’ pokes and punk music, I reached out to Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females, someone who has a reputation for stick ‘n’ poking:

Marissa says:

“Stick ‘n’ pokes often come along with a fun story. Tattoos done in a proper studio can come along with a good story as well, but from what I’ve experienced, a DIY tattoo is often born from chaos. I love that sort of abandon, but as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that drunkenly marking someone’s flesh isn’t something I’m so keen on doing.”

As far as learning how to tattoo, she says:

“An artist and musician who goes by the name Ben Snakepit taught me how to give myself a tattoo while Screaming Females was on tour in Austin in 2008. I must have been twenty years old at the time. Ben is well known for an autobiographical comic he makes called Snakepit.”

 

Marissa tattooing her bassist, King Mike’s leg while their drummer sleeps on a couch.
 
Now stick ‘n’ poke parties are becoming trendy. Here’s a flyer for an event that included free stick ‘n’ poke tattoos, music, live painting and drinks. Mainstream culture seems to be celebrating the idea of these simple little lowly tattoos. Get your 10-year-old sister to draw you something, it will be the perfect kitchen tattoo.
 

 
And yet stick ‘n’ pokes can truly be art. Certain tattoo artists have mastered stick ‘n’ pokes as simply another option at the local tat shop. Jenna Bouma aka Slowerblack is one such artist who does amazing work. You would never know her tattoos are hand-poked.
 

 
More stick’n’ poke tattoos after the jump…

A creation of artist Dmitry Vorsin.
 
According to Australian art collective beinArt the Surrealist responsible for the provacative Dali-esque creations in this post is Russian artist Dmitry Vorsin—a 36-year-old based in Moscow.

Though Vorsin originally set his sights on studying ecology when he enrolled in college he decided instead to pursue art—a passion that began when he was a child. The self-taught Vorsin uses ink, pencils and watercolors to weave his distorted figures that contain elements and images inspired by Renaissance-era paintings. Vorsin’s work was included in a fantastic looking book put out by beinArt in 2011 Metamorphosis: Volume 2: 50 Contemporary Surreal, Fantastic and Visionary Artists along with other modern masters of the surreal such as Shawn Barber, Travis Louie, Paul Booth and Swiss surrealist, the late, great HR Giger.

If you are digging on Dmitry like I am, I highly recommend you keep up with the prolific artist over on his Facebook page. A selection of Dmitry Vorsin’s avant-garde creations follow. Many are delightfully NSFW.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

Filming “Rubberband Girl” on the set of “The Line, the Cross, & the Curve,” 1993
 
Photographer Guido Harari, who has a book of Tom Waits photographs to his credit, worked closely with Kate Bush in a strongly creative period stretching from 1982 to 1993, during which Bush released The Dreaming, Hounds of Love, and The Sensual World, among others, as well as her musical short film The Line, the Cross, and the Curve, an offshoot of her 1993 album The Red Shoes.

Harari has a new book coming out with dozens of never-before-seen pictures of the noted experimental pop singer, who is arguably England’s unparalleled Brontë interpreter.

Roughly 300 pictures are in the book, the bulk of which came out of official press photo sessions for Bush’s albums of that era. Many of the photos feature Bush hard at work with Lindsay Kemp, the choreographer who worked closely with the singer from the very start of her career.
 

 
The majority of the photos have never been published in any form, a group that includes test Polaroids, contact sheets, film outtakes, and personal notes from Bush.

The book is called The Kate Inside (obviously a reference to Bush’s 1978 debut album The Kick Inside) and is expected to become available in September. You can pre-order it from Wall of Sound. The regular edition is priced at 90 Euros (about $100) and the deluxe edition, personally signed by Harari and Kemp, will go for 390 Euros (about $430).

An exhibition in London’s Art Bermondsey Project Space will coincide with the book’s publication (September 13-30).
 

With Gary Hurst and Douglas McNicol, shoot for “The Dreaming,” 1982
 

“Hounds of Love” shoot, 1985
 
Many more photos after the jump…....

 
One of our stock moves here at Dangerous Minds on a slow traffic day is to post something related to David Lynch. Like almost anything about the guy or even tangentially Lynch or Twin Peaks-related (like a cherry pie recipe) is guaranteed to be shared on social media. A lot. People seem to love David Lynch… or do they really?

To be honest, I’m not so sure how genuine all this supposed rabid Lynch fandom actually is. I think people think they’re supposed to like his work and if they don’t get it, then they aren’t cool. How else to explain the Emperor’s new clothes-ishness of Lynch fans, most of whom, if pressed, have rather a difficult time explaining why they like his films so much. Even smart people will twist themselves into pretzels offering pointless interpretations and tenuous excuses for his work. Ask one of them to be specific sometimes, the resulting word salad, it’s a good laugh.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the earlier part of Lynch’s filmography: I first saw Eraserhead projected on a wall in my parents’ basement on a 16mm film projector with a print that was acquired via an interstate film library lending system. I’d read about it and I HAD TO SEE IT and that’s the kind of hoops I had to jump through back then to be able to clap my eyes on the film. I saw The Elephant Man in a cinema by myself when I was 14. I must’ve watched Blue Velvet five times in a movie theater. I saw each and every episode of Twin Peaks as it aired. Wild at Heart, I’ve seen this multiple times, too.
 

 
But after that… I mean come the fuck on! From Lost Highway onwards, his films (for the most part) simply stop making sense. Moody? Sure. Sexy? Often. Nice to look at. Okay. They’re also incoherent self-parodies and ultimately say nothing. Frankly I think people extolling the virtues of Lynch’s incomprehensible later films are fooling themselves into believing that there is some occult profundity contained therein. The message? Go ahead and search for one. I’ll just wait here until you’ve given up.

Writer/director Joe McClean seems to feel the same way I do about David Lynch. McClean made a step-by-step guide on How To Make A David Lynch Film and cleverly disguised it as a David Lynch film within a David Lynch film.

It’s plain and simple. I watch David Lynch movies and I just don’t understand them. I decided I was going to try and figure them out so I stapled my eyes open and had a Lynch-a-thon. It didn’t help. I thought if I forced myself to watch, at some point it would just click and it would all make since. That never happened. I believe that good and bad are subjective terms so I allow others to spew forth praise and amazement at the genius of Lynch’s work, and I fully believe they have a right to their opinion.

This movie is my opinion.

See if you agree too, after the jump…

 
I’m a bit late to the game with this one. Like a week late. But it’s the Internet. And the Internet is a very big Internet. This young lady deserves to be here on Dangerous Minds, because clearly she has one.

What you’re witnessing is a young woman in what appears to be a marching band playing the keyboard like nobody’s business. She’s feeling it. Do I think she’s possessed? No. She’s just in the zone.

The video gained its popularity on Facebook and has been viewed almost 2 million times. I see a bright future for her as the opening act for Marilyn Manson or Slipknot. She’s the shit!

 
via Everlasting Blort 

The cover of Sex magazine, December, 1926.
 
Sex was a monthly adult-oriented magazine published in the U.S. back in the mid-to-late 1920s that featured racy and often nude photos of women and men that also took on hard-hitting topics such as “Are all beautiful chorus girls dumb?” and “The reason gentlemen prefer blondes.” Ah, the roaring 20s—when the biggest problem faced by society (according to Sex magazine) was trying to figure out how girls operate.
 

‘En Guarde!’ an image from Sex magazine, 1926.
 
Back in 1926 and 1927 Sex only cost a quarter and while I’m sure that some folks claimed to find the publication of interest due to its “articles” I’m quite sure that it was the gorgeous, dreamily captioned portraits of nude and semi-nude women and men that helped sell the magazine’s classy take on erotic photography. Of the images that follow there are two that note the names of the models—one turned out to be a celebrity of sorts back in the 20s named Orville Stamm who was known as the “Boy Hercules” and “Strongest Boy in the World.” In 1917 and at the age of seventeen Stamm shot to fame for his Vaudeville shows of strength such as being able to support a stand-up piano (along with its player) on his stomach while in a “crab position.” Zowie. Vintage images from the magazine follow and as the magazine is called “Sex,” most are NSFW.
 

1926.
 
More ‘Sex’ after the jump…