Did you know that the banana was a berry? Yep. Me neither. I also had zero clue that the US was gifted the concept of fish sticks from the Soviet Union as a post-war food. I mean—seriously—what? After reading Christina Ward’s thoroughly enjoyable and informative book American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Spam, Bananas and Jell-O, I have now realized that the sum total of what I knew about food history before I encountered this volume could have fit neatly inside a deviled egg.
 

 
From wealthy people renting exotic fruit like pineapples (before pineapples were readily available) as a dinner table centerpiece to flaunt their class status, to kitchen technology, diet recipes and the development and evolution of canned and potted meats, this book covers a variety of topics that handle far more than “what’s on the plate.” More often than not, Ward’s book is a textbook of incisive connections between invisible or overlooked histories and what is now commonly considered kitsch imagery.
 

 
Each chapter of American Advertising Cookbooks is different and equally rewarding. From the design of the book to the writing and image content, it never fails to educate and entertain in tandem. Images of a recipe for “SPAM ‘n’ Macaroni Loaf” and advertisements for a 1969 Pillsbury meat cookbook are delightfully placed perfectly next to chunks of text discussing the government’s Meat Inspection Act and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, allowing the reader to gain insight and react to the dark humor.

To authentically work with content that a younger generation might adore for a “so bad it’s good” angle or for its camp possibilities is not easy, but this book does it gracefully and with a level of respect for the topic that is obvious. Works like these are harder as many tend to go for the easy laugh or quick sell based on surface nostalgia. Ward’s attitude towards this material is wholly different and that is what makes this book so brilliant. She skillfully places dozens upon dozens of beautifully printed “weirdo” images into historical context giving Ham Banana rolls, Piquant Turkey Loaf and Perfection Salad a whole new life!
 

 
Foods that modern audiences no longer consume in large (or any) quantities like packaged meats and gelatins make them seem very foreign. But today’s food preservation techniques are different. Hey, refrigeration, what’s up? Indeed, many people I’ve met may think aspics look disgusting. I honestly looked at many of these images and saw so much art and dignity put forth in their representation. While this wasn’t something actively discussed, there is no way that one could view all these images and not see people trying to make these dishes look appetizing. Sure, Creative Cooking with Cottage Cheese may not have the same appeal as watching Anthony Bourdain but the Up North Salmon Supper looks really good. And there is something to be said about class aesthetics here. The idea of a home-cooked meal and working-class values is something that Christina Ward most certainly focuses on in the writing, making this book extra gratifying to some of us old school class-consciousness punk activist-y types!

If the mind-blowing plethora of elegant and fastidiously researched recipes, adverts and book covers seems odd or silly to a reader, they are clearly not looking at what a quality piece of literature this book is. Ward’s thorough research, accessible discussions on colonialism, Puritan and Calvinist practices, racism as a marketing ploy (Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben anyone?), and the Christian Missionary connection to, well, fruit make American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Spam, Bananas and Jell-O a necessary addition to anyone’s library who is interested in food, US history, social politics or simply a damn good book.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
For a man as superstitious as Federico Fellini the omens of 1973 were not good.

Too many friends were ill or dying; his private life was the focus of the paparazzi with claims of affairs with various young starlets; his relationship with his wife Giulietta was almost at an all-time low—though she continued to appear with the great director at functions like, as one acquaintance suggested, a politician’s wife out canvassing voters; and his usual life of extravagance was severely curtailed as the tax man was after him for non-payment of taxes. Things were not looking good. And Fellini was about to turn fifty-three which, by his own estimation, was on the back slice of life.

That summer, in need of money and a desire to keep working, Fellini agreed to make a movie on the life of Casanova for producer Dino de Laurentiis.

Fellini had often hinted that he would one day make a film about Casanova. He used it as a ploy to raise money for his other film projects—-Yes, yes, I’ll make ‘Casanova’ one day but now, now I want to make this….whichever film was his latest obsession. Fellini probably never had any intention of making a film about the great lover as he loathed Casanova. He saw in him some of his own negative traits which he hoped he could exorcise by making this damned film. He said:

“After this film, the moody and unreliable part of me, the undecided part that was constantly seduced by compromise—the part of me that didn’t want to grow up—had to die.”

Fellini was also aware that he perhaps subconsciously placed all his fears and the “anxiety [he couldn’t] face in this film,” adding that “Perhaps the film was fed by fears.” This unease sapped Fellini’s confidence and led him to believe he should have let this film project go as he feared Casanova would be “the worst film I have ever made.”

De Laurentiis was aware of Fellini’s misgivings but chose to ignore them. He knew with Fellini’s name attached to a film about Casanova, he could break the American market. Indeed, he favored an American actor to play the lead. He considered Marlon Brando, then Al Pacino, before finally deciding on the newly crowned “world’s sexiest man” Robert Redford to play Casanova. One can see the cartoon logic—world’s greatest lover must have considerable sex appeal. Robert Redford has sex appeal ergo Redford is Casanova.

Fellini baulked at the choice. He wanted Marcello Mastroianni—an actor he could depend on. Unfortunately, Mastroianni was unavailable. While de Laurentiis searched for another international name (he also considered both Michael Caine and Jack Nicholson) to sell the picture to the US, Fellini started writing the script with his collaborator Bernardino Zapponi.

Zapponi brought his experience as a writer and knowledge of Casanova to the project. He arrived at Fellini’s office with several volumes of Casanova’s biography, only for the director to tell him such source material was not needed, as facts were anathema to imagination. This, Fellini explained, would not be a biographical film but rather a movie that filtered the director’s own thoughts on sex and death and aging thru the prism of Casanova. As Fellini later explained:

“I never had the intention to recount complacently, amused and fascinated the amorous adventures of Casanova.”

Instead he was to be:

“A prisoner as in a nightmare, as immobilised as a puppet, he reflects continually on a series of seductive and disturbing faces which succeed only in incarnating each time a different aspect of himself.”

Or as he had once said in an interview with the BBC:

Everything is autobiographical. How is it possible to live outside of yourself? Anything we do is also a testifying of yourself. If a creator makes something that pretends to be very objective, it is the autobiography of a man who is very objective…

...How is it possible to do something outside of your myth, of your world, of your character, of your history, of yourself?

It was becoming slowly apparent to de Laurentiis that this was not the sex ‘n’ costumes film he had intended to make. In July 1974, de Laurentiis pulled out, telling Variety other work commitments prevented him from giving Fellini’s Casanova the attention it demanded. Fellini sought to raise the money himself and eventually brought in Alberto Grimaldi to produce the film. He also managed to raise money from Universal Studios by bringing in Gore Vidal to write a new script. While Vidal’s script was shown to the studio to raise cash, it was never used in the final film.

During all these behind-the-scenes manoeuvres, rumors spread through the press that Donald Sutherland was to star as Casanova. It’s difficult to ascertain who exactly first suggested Sutherland but his “candidature” for the role was “built up from simple repetition of the rumor.” To help this rumor along, Sutherland sent Fellini a highly flattering letter and twenty roses. Fellini wasn’t convinced. He still wanted the unavailable Mastroianni.

Looking for advice, Fellini visited a clairvoyant, Gustavo Rol, who claimed to have made contact with Casanova. During a seance, Rol filled page after page of notes from the great Casanova aimed at helping Fellini make his movie. When he left the seance, the director read some of the notes Rol had transcribed, which offered the sexual advice never to make love standing-up or after a meal.

Without Mastroianni, Fellini agreed on Sutherland to play Casanova. When asked why? Fellini declared:

“I need him. He’s a sperm-filled waxwork with the eyes of a masturbator!”

Sutherland told Time Out that he would not have played the role for any other director:

“I’m not playing Casanova. I’m playing Fellini’s Casanova, and that’s a whole different thing.”

It certainly was different as Sutherland soon found out when they met:

Walked into La Scala, him warning me that they wanted him to direct an opera and he was not going to do one. I remember three guarded doors in the atrium as we walked in. At the desk the concierge, without looking up when Fellini’d asked to see the head of the theater, demanded perfunctorily who wanted to see him. Fellini leaned down and whispered, truly whispered, “Fellini.” The three doors burst open.

With that word the room was full of dancing laughing joyous people and in the middle of this swirling arm clasped merry go round Fellini said to the director, “Of course, you know Sutherland.” The director looked at me stunned and then jubilantly exclaimed, “Graham Sutherland,” and embraced me. The painter Graham Sutherland was not yet dead, but nearly. I suppose the only other choice was Joan

Sutherland had two millimetres filed from his teeth, his eyebrows removed and his hairline shaved back by two inches. He wore a false nose and chin. Fellini had turned Sutherland into a puppet—a mere mechanism for telling his story. On set, he never called him “Donald” or Mr. Sutherland” but addressed him as “the Canadian.” He offered little in the way of direction or support and could be very disparaging. “That poor guy,” Fellini said, “He believed he was going to become him.”

“Sutherland!—the incarnation of a Latin lover. He had two tons of documentation under his arms. I told him: ‘Throw out the lot. Forget everything.’”

Yet Sutherland was magnanimous in writing about his experience working with Fellini:

I was just happy to be with him. I loved him. Adored him. The only direction he gave me was with his thumb and forefinger, closing them to tell me to shut my gaping North American mouth. He’d often be without text so he’d have me count; uno due tre quattro with the instruction to fill them with love or hate or disdain or whatever he wanted from Casanova. He’d direct scenes I wasn’t in sitting on my knee. He’d come up to my dressing room and say he had a new scene and show me two pages of text and I’d say OK, when, and he’d say now, and we’d do it. I have no idea how I knew the words, but I did. I’d look at the page and know them. He didn’t look at rushes, Federico, the film of the previous day’s work. Ruggero Mastroianni, his brilliant editor, Marcello’s brother, did. Fellini said looking at them two-dimensionalized the three-dimensional fantasy that populated his head. Things were in constant flux. We flew. It was a dream. Sitting beside me one night he said that when he had looked at the final cut he had come away believing that it was his best picture. The Italian version is really terrific.

The film’s production was delayed by strike action and then seventy-four reels of film were stolen and ransomed. This meant Fellini had to change his film. Some scenes were dropped, others edited to fit the footage available. The finished movie bombed with the critics. At best, it was considered a misfire, at worst a disaster. Sutherland was given the unenviable task of attempting to deliver an intelligent and considered performance to a director who only wanted a marionette to play the role. Fellini’s abhorrence of Casanova undermined his ability to make a work of art or even a film that would resonate with an audience. The film could be admired but not always liked.

Fellini’s final verdict on Casanova was that it seemed to him his “most complete, expressive, courageous film.”
 

 

 
More ephemera from Fellini’s ‘Casanova,’ after the jump…
 

 
Many consider the first rave happenings to have taken place during Ken Kesey’s notorious “Kool Aid” Acid Tests held in California during the winter of 1966. Another core influence would be England’s “Second Summer of Love” and the explosion of acid house in the late-eighties. Or maybe it really was Deadmau5 that started it all…
 
Early raves were punk rock. Outcast to the fringes of society, nights tended to be transcendental and unpredictable. There were no meme totem poles, weed leaf pasties, or Kandi. Corporate interests had not yet tapped this corner of the underground.
 

 
The primary way to reach people was through vibrant (yet discreet) rave fliers. You’ve probably heard folklore of xeroxed maps and phone numbers that played back the address of a warehouse or generator in the middle of nowhere. It was viral guerilla marketing prior to the smartphone era. Fuck your Facebook boosts and admat.
 
I am so lucky to have stumbled across the book - Searching for the Perfect Beat: Flyer Designs of the American Rave Scene - at my local library. It depicts a decade’s worth of rave fliers from across the United States, so you can get a sense of just how psychedelic things truly were. Peace Love Unity Respect.
 
Lose yourself (and find yourself) at the virtual flier rave, below:
 

 

 

 
More rave flyers after the jump…

The Replacements and Johnny Thunders in the late 1980s.

In the spring of 1989, Johnny Thunders opened a couple of shows for the Replacements. For those of you who don’t know, Thunders was a founding member of one the best glam bands, the New York Dolls, and when he and drummer Jerry Nolan quit the Dolls in 1975, they promptly formed the proto-punk unit, the Heartbreakers. Both groups influenced the Replacements, but it was the Heartbreakers’ rousing blend of energy, attitude, slop, and catchy tunes that impacted the ‘Mats’ early development the most—perhaps more than any other group. The Heartbreakers only released one studio album, the essential L.A.M.F., but it was another record of theirs that made the biggest impression on the young Replacements. When the Replacements were experiencing their first hint of mainstream success in the spring of 1989, it made sense they’d invite Johnny Thunders to be their opener and then bring him up on stage with them—but it nearly didn’t happen.

In late 1979, Paul Westerberg brought a handful of records to the first rehearsal of the band that would eventually be named the Replacements, including the New York Dolls’ debut and the recent Heartbreakers release, the rowdy and fiery Live at Max’s Kansas City ‘79. During this initial jam session, the new four-piece played “I Wanna Be Loved” and “All by Myself,” which they learned from the Heartbreakers live album. On July 2nd, 1980, the first Replacements gig took place; their eighteen-song set contained three Heartbreakers covers.

The young ‘Mats blazing through “I Wanna Be Loved” in 1981:
 

 
By the dawn of the 1980s, Johnny Thunders was already a legend, but not always for the right reasons. His loose guitar playing style had loads of character, and he wrote some good songs, but he was also a notorious drug addict, who frequently appeared out of it on stage. In late July 1980, Thunders came to Minneapolis for a couple of gigs with Gang War, the group he formed with Wayne Kramer from the MC5. The Replacements really wanted to open the shows, but the slots went to Hüsker Dü. The night of the first concert, Westerberg and ‘Mats drummer Chris Mars were in the audience. When, after a delay, Thunders finally came out, he was obviously a wreck, and Westerberg took notice.

[Westerberg:] “The moment he walked on . . . I saw it.”

The look on Thunders’s face—imperious and desperate all at once—struck Westerberg: “He was frightening and beautiful and mean at the same time,” he said. “Like a child.”

Physically struggling through the show, while battling an audience hurling brickbats, Thunders had been rendered a prisoner of his own addictions and cult infamy. “When Johnny was playing, it looked like he was walking dead,” recalled Westerberg. “It was pitiful, like watching a guy in a cage.”

That image of Thunders lingered with him. The following morning Westerberg sat at home with his guitar, rejiggered the chords to the Heartbreakers’ “Chinese Rocks,” and turned out a haunting ballad, a requiem called “Johnny’s Gonna Die.”  (taken from Bob Mehr’s Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements)

 
Much more after the jump…

 
In 2017, we told you about the time when David Bowie was in Iggy Pop’s band, specifically the final concert of The Idiot tour. But that’s not the last time Bowie and Pop performed together in public—there would be two additional times. Both moments had the element of surprise.

During the 1979 recording sessions for Iggy Pop’s album Soldier, David Bowie dropped by the studio. Initially there just to offer his moral support, he ended up co-writing the song “Play It Safe,” and singing backing vocals on the track. Iggy’s spring 1980 European tour in support of Soldier included an April 27 club show at the Metropol in Berlin. The city had been the stomping grounds of Iggy and Bowie for a couple of years; the two shared a Berlin apartment, and embraced the city’s culture, frequently attending area bars and nightclubs, as well as art shows and museums. It was an intense period of creativity for them, with Pop’s The Idiot and Lust For Life (both with significant contributions from Bowie), and DB’s Low and “Heroes”, all coming out in a single calendar year (1977).
 

David Bowie and Iggy Pop in Berlin, 1976.

In April 1980, Bowie traveled to London to finish up Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). Knowing Iggy was in Berlin, Bowie then made his way to visit his friend and colleague. During Iggy’s set at the Metropol, Bowie stunned everyone by jumping on stage to play keyboards, sitting in for two songs.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
When Marty Feldman met Francis Bacon drink was involved.

Before he became internationally famous for his performance as Igor in Young Frankenstein, Marty Feldman was a very successful and hugely influential comedy scriptwriter with his long-time writing partner Barry Took.

One night in London, sometime during the almost swinging sixties, Feldman and Took had been working late finishing off another episode of their hit radio show Round the Horne. It had been a good day, a productive day, and now Feldman was on his way home to see his wife, Lauretta. As he walked through the city he heard jazz coming from an art gallery. The band were playing “Night in Tunisia.” It piqued his interest. Feldman had started off as a jazz musician when he was fifteen playing trumpet with his own band and occasionally filling in with other combos. He wandered towards the gallery. A small crowd stood around clinking glasses. Ah, jazz, art, and free booze.

Feldman snaffled a couple of cocktails and had a look at the paintings. Not bad. Interesting. Certainly different but not really to his taste. Against one bare white wall there stood a man who looked like he was losing his battle to keep himself or the building up. He had the look of an aged choirboy gone to seed. A round turnip head, with dyed hair slicked back, and just a hint of rouge on his cheeks. He wore a leather jacket, a white shirt (top button undone) and blue paint splattered denims. Feldman thought he looked familiar but wasn’t quite sure where from?

What was said, we can only imagine, but it apparently began with the man against the wall commenting on Feldman’s distinctive face.

“I could use that face,” he might have said
“Well, I’m using it myself at the moment,” Feldman replied in our imaginary dialog.
“Your eyes,” returned the first.
“Yes, they’re my eyes.”
“You don’t understand, I. Have. To. Paint. You,” almost like Edith Evans’ “handbag” in The Importance of Being Earnest.

The man against the wall leaned towards Feldman as if attempting to capture something invisible between them.

“I,” he continued, “must paint you. You look the sort of man I could do something with.”

Feldman thought what sort of things this man might want to do with him then decided this strange character was trying to pick him up.

“Here, take my number,” the man said. He wrote something down on a scrap of paper. Feldman took the paper and watched the man who was no longer holding up the wall stagger off into the night.

The next morning, over breakfast, Feldman told his wife Lauretta about the man at the gallery who had tried to pick him up. “He wanted to paint my portrait, ” he added.

“Who was it?” Lauretta asked.

“Dunno. He wrote his name down.”

Feldman retrieved the slip of paper and said, “Francis. That’s all it says.”

Lauretta asked Feldman to describe this painter. He did. Lauretta then suggested her husband had met Francis Bacon.
 

Francis Bacon in his studio.
 
Moving forward a few months: Feldman spent the day writing with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in a local pub. It was a long day’s writing and drinking into the night. Eventually, the threesome were “poured out of the place hammered” trying to remember who they were and where they lived. Somehow they got lost and ended up (surprise, surprise) at another art gallery party.

Once again, Feldman tucked into the cocktails, this time joined by the equally drunk Cook and Moore. And once again, there was that man Francis holding up a wall. As Feldman recounted the incident in his autobiography eYE Marty:

I spotted my old pal Francis standing at a distance and pointed him out to Peter, who knew my story because I had become obsessed with what-ifs. Bacon’s work was fetching high prices and it would have been fun if he’d painted a portrait of me and I hadn’t told Lauretta, just inviting her to a gallery and pretended it was no big deal.

Cook told Moore about Bacon’s offer to paint Feldman’s portrait.

Without hesitation, Dudley went up to Bacon and told him that Marty was now ready to be painted.

Unfortunately, the temperamental Bacon told Moore that he had “never seen or talked to [Feldman] in his life.”

Though Bacon may not have known Feldman, he was bound to be at least acquainted with Cook and Moore, as he had often visited Cook’s Establishment Club, and had been at parties also attended by Pete ‘n’ Dud. Perhaps, as Feldman suggested, Bacon saw the state the trio were in and thought they were just “a bunch of drunken wankers.”
 

Pete ‘n’ Dud.
 
More shenanigans from Feldman, Bacon, and co, after the jump…
 

Paul Stanley of KISS.
 
KISS recorded their 1976 album Destroyer at Electric Lady Studios in 1975 with a little help from Alice Cooper guitarist Dick Wagner (who filled in for Ace Frehley, a chronic no-show to KISS’ sessions at Electric Lady) and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. It also featured contributions by Juno Award-winning producer Bob Ezrin’s children, who can be heard making background noise on the song “God of Thunder.” Ezrin was fond of wearing a whistle around his neck which he used to help “motivate” the band during the sessions, described  by Paul Stanley as a kind of “musical boot camp.” According to Stanley, Ezrin always had the “final vote” when it came to how the songs on Destroyer should sound. This came into play several times while KISS was recording their fourth album, including “God of Thunder,” a song as synonymous with Gene Simmons as fire-breathing and spitting up blood.

According to Uncle Gene, the song was inspired by a rag session he had with Stanley during which Simmons accused the guitarist of only writing “monster songs like ‘God of Thunder’” and “stuff like that.” Stanley then chided Simmons saying all he was good for was writing songs like “Christine Sixteen.” If Simmons is to be believed, both he and Paul went home and re-wrote each respective song in the style the other would normally have employed. Stanley’s demo version of the song sounds like it belongs on KISS’ disco-tinged 1979 album Dynasty—and hold on to your hair—it’s really fucking good, something you already know if you own the massive KISS box set released in 2001.

Ezrin didn’t necessarily disagree but upon hearing Paul’s demo made the executive decision to have Gene take over the vocals. Here’s more Ezrin from a 2016 piece published in Rolling Stone on his choice to have Gene sing the song which would become his musical calling card:

“That decision was made not based on sound, but on the fact that these guys were playing characters. To me, Paul was the band’s romantic lead, if you will. So he’s the guy who sings “Do You Love Me.” And Gene was both the monster and also the cocksman of the band. So Gene gets to play the “God of Thunder.”

Much more after the jump…

 
Despite the fact that he is said to have sold 40 million records and his albums sit atop the Italian pop charts for half a year, every year, going platinum five times over, outside of Italy, few people have heard of camp superstar Renato Zero. In some respects, Zero could be said to be the inventor of glam rock. He was, you know, just being himself even before Bolan or Bowie put on eyeliner or platform heels.

He even had a punk nickname long before Sid Vicious or Johnny Rotten!

So flamboyant that he makes Freddie Mercury (or even Jobriath Boone) seem positively macho, Zero has steadfastly refused to either confirm or deny that he is gay throughout his now five decade long career (as if there would be much speculation.) From what I can tell, his lyrical themes are matters like “don’t give up on your dreams,” “fight to live the life you want to lead” and so forth.

Often called “The Emperor of Rome,” Renato Zero is still a huge star today, performing spectacular diva-like concerts that would make Lady Gaga jealous to a devoted fanbase. Ladies and gentlemen, take a look at pioneering genderbending Italian mega-performer, Renato Zero!

Below, Renato Zero as Mephistopheles, seller of happiness, singing “Vendo Felicita” in the pioneering Italian rock opera, Orpheus 9
 

 
More after the jump…

 
Lavinia Schulz and Walter Holdt were a wife and husband partnership briefly famous in Germany during the early 1920s for their wild, expressionist dance performances consisting of “creeping, stamping, squatting, crouching, kneeling, arching, striding, lunging, leaping in mostly diagonal-spiraling patterns” across the stage. Shulz believed “art should be…an expression of struggle” and used dance to express “the violent struggle of a female body to achieve central, dominant control of the performance space and its emptiness.”

In his book, Empire of Ecstasy—Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910–1935, author Karl Toepfer notes that “Husband-wife dance pairs are quite rare on the stage; in the case of Schulz and Holdt the concept of marriage entailed a peculiarly deep implication in that it also referred to a haunting marriage of dance and costume.”

The couple created dances and costumes together and at the same time, so that bodily movement and the masking of the body arose from the same impulse. Schulz was a highly gifted artist whose drawings and sketches invariably startle the viewer with their hard primitivism and demonic abstraction, but Holdt assumed much responsibility for the design of the costumes and masks; for most of the costumes deposited in Hamburg, it is not possible to assign definite authorship to Schulz. The mask portions consisted mostly of fantastically reptilian, insectoid, or robotic heads, whereas the rest of the costumes comprised eccentric patchworks of design, color, and material to convey the impression of bodies assembled out of contradictory structures.

According to Toepfer, these costumes “disclose a quality of cartoonish, demonic grotesquerie rather than frightening ferocity.” The couple gave these designs descriptive names like Toboggan, Springvieh, and Technik, which they also used as titles for their performances. Their designs sought something pagan, pre-Christian, that tapped into the “redemptive organic forms of nature and the animal world.”

Little is known about Holdt. What is known about Schulz could be written on a postcard. Born in Lübben in 1896, Schulz studied dance and performance in Berlin in 1913. She became associated with the Expressionists who rebeled against the rigid, traditional forms of art in favor of a more subjective perspective. In dance, this meant abandoning the austere, mechanical, and precise choreography of ballet for more expressive, fluid, and personal interpretations. Schulz moved to Hamburg, where she married Holdt in April 1920. The couple had a tempestuous relationship. Schulz has been described as possessive and jealous, while Holdt was considered “untrustworthy” which I take to mean he played around a lot. The difficulties and emotional insecurities in their relationship fed into their work. According to Toepfer:

The Schulz-Holdt dance aesthetic does seem to embed a powerful masochism, not only in the marriage between dancers but in the equally passionate marriage of mask and movement. But the dances of this strange couple were also a kind of bizarre, expressionist demonization of marriage itself, the most grotesquely touching critique of pairing to appear in the whole empire of German dance culture.

The couple moved away from Expressionism and sought inspiration from the supposed purity of pre-Judeo-Christian, Aryan-Nordic culture—which kinda almost sounds vaguely National Socialist. They lived an austere existence in direst poverty. Their home was basically one room with little in the way of amenities or even a bed—they slept on straw. They wanted to live without money and desired a society where everyone was given an equal share on the basis of their needs. Between 1920-24, the couple performed their dance routines to the bewildered and often antagonistic audiences of Hamburg. Though some critics appreciated the pair’s talent and startling originality, this praise was never enough to pay the rent.

In 1923, Schulz gave birth to a son. In 1924, the couple were photographed in their costumes by Minya Diez-Dührkoop. That same year, on June 19th, four days before her birthday, Schulz, no longer able to withstand Holdt’s (suspected) adultery, shot her husband in a jealous rage several times at point blank range before turning the gun on herself. The couple were discovered dead lying on their bed of straw with their infant son between them.

Schulz and Holdt would have been long forgotten had not their designs and costumes been gifted to the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) in 1925. These precious artefacts were rediscovered in 1989 and are available to view online in the full glory of color.

Below are some of Diez-Dührkoop’s original photographs from 1924 of Shulz and Holdt’s costumes.
 

‘Toboggan.’
 

 

‘Technik.’
 
More expressionist delights from Shulz and Holdt, after the jump…
 

 
With any longstanding musical career, fans tend to favor one particular era of a band or performer’s back catalog—the years that provide your go-to albums—and this is usually at around the point where you came in. Early Fall? Brix-era Fall? Post Brix-Fall? We all have a preference. Will you only ever bother with the gloomy first four Cure albums, or do you prefer their poppier late 80s/early 90s albums after they broke through in America? Sixties Zappa or Joe’s Garage? When faced with a choice of thirty albums to choose from the same source, we almost always tend to stick with our top two or three favorites, the cream of the crop. Who wants to listen to the 29th best Rolling Stones album, the 22nd best Kinks record or god forbid middling Jandek?

The Residents are a group whose fans have strong opinions about when the band was at their best. After all they’ve put out over a hundred releases. For me, it’s the run of albums that goes from 1977’s Fingerprince to 1980’s Commercial Album. I recently expressed this to a friend of mine who opined that once the Residents reoriented what they were doing in service to their live performances and starting incorporating MIDI into everything, that there was a noticeable drop-off in musical quality. I think this hits the nail pretty squarely on the head.

The album that is, to me at least, the very apex of the Residents singular art form, is their 1979 album Eskimo. Although quite different to everything that preceded it and all that came after, too, Eskimo is an album that stands tall among the classic post-punk albums released that year (Metal Box, Cut, Fear of Music, Unknown Pleasures, Secondhand Daylight, 154) and one that stands apart from all of them as well. It’s also when their famous eyeball costumes debuted. There is literally nothing else like it. Not by the Residents, not by anyone. Eskimo is the Residents’ avant-garde ambient poetic masterpiece.

If you’ve never heard it before, Eskimo is a purported (it’s totally fake) ethnomusicological “documentary” study of the lives of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic Circle, as if it’s assembled from phony field recordings. Each track is paired to a loose narrative in the liner notes which is “acted out” sonically with sound effects, howling winds, nonsensical chanting, grunts, whistles, homemade instruments, seal and walrus sounds. What you hear on the album is the product of the Residents working in the studio alongside of Henry Cow’s Chris Cutler on percussion, former Mother of Invention Don Preston on synthesizers, and Snakefinger on guitar. It’s not exactly “music” but it’s close enough.

In the context of the Residents’ ongoing Cherry Red pREServation series, Eskimo was recently re-released along with bonus tracks like the “Diskomo” single, the 20-minute long “Eskimo Acappella Suite,” the Residents’ songs from the classic Ralph Records compilation Subterranean Modern as well as unreleased demo recordings from the Eskimo period and later related rehearsal and live recordings from the 80s. It’s excellent and obviously comprehensive.

But what comes next seems almost unprecedented for musicians who have so seldom offered any insight whatsoever into their creative process. Eskimo Deconstructed (available only on vinyl) is a two LP set that basically provides Eskimo‘s component parts in a manner that allows the listener to discern exactly what went into the making of this oddball concept album. In other words all of the layers of Eskimo, the chanting—listen for “Coca-Cola adds life,” “Don’t squeeze the Charmin,” “Are we not men? We are DEVO,” “You asked for it, you got it” (a mid-70s Toyota tagline) and “You deserve a break today” (from a McDonald’s campaign)—the tape manipulations, conversations in gibberish, the ship’s mast creaking in the wind, splashing water, crying babies and other sound effects are laid out like an autopsy. There’s even a CD of synthetic wind sounds that, being a fan of Don Preston’s Filters, Oscillators & Envelopes 1967-82 album, I’m going to guess is Preston making an hour’s worth of howling wind noises on a Minimoog to serve as a sound bed for the work. He’s so adept at achieving this sound that for some time it’s impossible to tell if it’s an analog synthesizer or someone holding up a microphone in a particularly vicious snowstorm. Cutler’s and Snakefinger’s key contributions, laid bare as such, can also be appreciated for what they brought to the party.

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