This is kind of nuts: in March of 1982, Angela Bowie, the former Mrs. David, appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test, reciting poetry, while Mick Karn (RIP 2011), the brilliant bass player from the glam/New Romantic band Japan, vamped on bass. Karn was predictably amazing, but Bowie’s poetry was savaged in the UK press. Getting a drubbing from the notoriously drub-happy British media doesn’t necessarily mean something was actually bad, and I’ve attended readings of far worse poetry than Angie Bowie’s. However, it must be conceded that it seems doubtful she would have been invited onto that program to recite poetry in the first place had she been just anyone not called “Bowie.”
 

 
Though they’d not performed together before this appearance, Karn and Bowie were no strangers—coincidentally, both originally hailed from Cyprus, but they met in the late ‘70s. Karn related the story of how they met, and how their odd TV pairing came about, in a 1984 interview conducted around the release of Karn’s collaborative album with Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy, under the name Dali’s Car:

B: You did the “Whistle Test” with Angie Bowie. How did that come about? It was so funny, we just couldn’t stop laughing! The expressions on your face were just brilliant!

M: Oh! I’d love to see that again! That was weird – Angie and I have known each other for years.

B: How did you first meet – where and when?

M: Must’ve been 1978, just round a friend’s house, we used to keep strange company in those days. The friend happened to be a friend of Angie’s and she stayed about 2 weeks, we were staying there as well. An opportunity not to stay at home with your parents, we’d always jump to in those days. So we met her there. Then she went away for 3-4 years and when she came back we met up again. We’d been on the “Whistle Test” the week before as Japan, I think, and Angie was in the audience watching. After we’d finished we spoke to Mike Appleton, the producer, and he jokingly said, “You know it’d be great to get both of you on the show next week to do something together” and we thought, “That’s a stupid idea! There’s nothing we can do together, she doesn’t play an instrument and I can’t sing!” So we came up with this idea of playing along to her poetry, which he seemed to like. The expressions are probably because we didn’t have time to rehearse beforehand – I had some bass lines in mind – she had some poetry in mind and it was our first time to do it together – live on the show, which was very nerve-racking. So I think the expressions were looking at one another trying to know when one of us was going to finish…’cos she’d finish the poem and I didn’t know that it was over, so I carried on playing! (Everyone laughs)

 
I bookmarked these videos of Malcolm McLaren being interviewed on the intersection of fashion, rock music and marketing to young people a while back but didn’t get around to watching them until this morning. Absolutely fascinating stuff. If you have any interest in the history of fashion or in the wiley Mr. McLaren himself, trust me this is most certainly worth an hour of your time.

What this is is three 20 minute Betacam camera reels (raw footage) of McLaren being interviewed for Rock Influence what is presumably a program firstly about fashion and secondly about music as it relates to and influences fashion trends, in late 1984. In the first of the tapes, he starts off talking about the birth of Parisian couture fashion, and how Christian Dior’s signature La Belle Époque-inspired silhouette ended up being adopted in the 1950s by American girls who “wanted to dance with James Dean.”
 

 
Throughout the hour-long interview, in which the interviewer gets to ask precious few questions—as anyone who ever met him can tell you, “conversations” with Malcolm McLaren were so decidedly one-sided that “monologue” would be a better term to use—the infamous trouble-maker who spun “cash from chaos” spends a lot of time talking about the Beatles and their influence on fashion and contrasting them, and what they stood for, with the Rolling Stones. He discusses clothes being marketed to post-war Britain’s youth for the first time beginning in the mid-1960s, gay fashion in London, Teddy Boys, the “Cinderella” women of Motown and Carnaby Street.
 

 
There’s one particularly interesting section, I think it’s in part two, where he explains the sort of shops that were open on the King’s Road in London in the early 70s when he and Vivienne Westwood first opened their boutique (which had various names like Let It Rock, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Seditioaries, SEX and World’s End). Basically it was stores catering to glam rock and glitter all around them, but what they were doing was simply buying up overstock on the togs of 1959 and reselling it for Teddy Boy and rockabilly revivalists. Consider that even a few years before this, there would have been NO “cool” or “fashionable” section of town, any town, even in a city like London, to begin with. That entire notion was just beginning to be expressed for the first time historically, but already, in one of the small handful of such stores in the capital city at the time, the marketing of nostalgia was starting to rear its head. Today there’s any number of “looks” one can choose in the supermarket of style… punk, hippie, Victorian, Edwardian, that fucking Jeremy Scott look that DAZED magazine always pushes, etc, but at that point and time, selling the clothes of 1959 to young folks was a fairly bold—almost counterintuitive—thing to do. Also, consider that selling 1959’s fab gear in 1972 would be comparable to selling the fashions of 2002 today, for a lil’ perspective.
 

 
Always remember that the distance from the doo-wop era to Sha Na Na aping it ironically at Woodstock was a mere decade. McLaren makes a pretty good case here—without intending to—that he and Westwood were among the very, very earliest pioneers of marketing “vintage” clothing. Because of the short distance from the beginnings of the modern fashion industry to the 1984 date of this interview, McLaren makes one great point after another that have retrospectively become even more true in the three decades since this was taped.
 
Continues after the jump…

 
Despite the fact that I was a pretty sports-averse youth, growing up in the eighties and nineties, it was basically impossible to avoid having a Saturday morning run-in or two with pro wrestling. The WWF came on right after cartoons, and, like a mosquito to a bug-zapper, you just couldn’t help but find yourself, like it or not, sucked in by the bloviating, vein-popping, pile driving, yelling-and screaming phenomenon.

A strong contender for pro wrestling’s Shouter-in-Chief at the time was Jimmy “The Mouth of the South” Hart. Hart, a Jackson Mississippi native, is famous for being the bullhorn-toting manager for the likes of Hulk Hogan, Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase, King Kong Bundy and The Honky Tonk Man among several others. Hart’s Wikipedia page indicates that he was named Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Manager of the Year in 1987, an award he won again in 1994, facts of which I never thought I would be in possession.
 

Jimmy Hart and Hulk Hogan taking tan to a ‘whole nutha level.’
 
Amazingly however, before he was the “Mouth of the South,” Jimmy Hart lived a life of a different sort, still in the entertainment industry, but as a singer for a modish band of garage rockers called The Gentrys who scored a top five hit in 1965 with “Keep on Dancing,” a cover of a 1963 recording by the Avantis. And, as many of you may already be aware, the band was pretty damned good.

More after the jump…

 
Here’s some confusing cosplay: a woman dressed-up as a sexified version of Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. When you think you’ve seen everything the Internet has to offer, something like this pops up and you’re left speechless. And then you think to yourself, “Nothing is going to top this one.” But something inevitably does… the very next day. Very Aphex Twin, ain’t it?

I demand to see more sexy versions of Tyrion Lannister this Halloween, please and thank you in advance.

 

 

 
via Geekologie

 
Frank Zappa appeared on What’s My Line? on September 23rd, 1971. This is truly weird: June Lockhart, Soupy Sales, Gene Rayburn and Arlene Francis ask the questions. Soupy Sales—who was known for being a super hip guy, of course—had a friend in common with Zappa and correctly guesses his identity with ease.

Zappa was on the popular game-show promoting his 200 Motels movie. The LIFE magazine photo that June Lockhart refers to in the clip is the one above, where the composer/rock star was seen posing with his parents in their own home. Interestingly, the Edward Beardsley painting in the family portrait is the same one used for the first Alice Cooper album, Pretties for You, which came out on Zappa’s Straight record label.
 

 
Did Frank think “I’ve got the perfect album cover for you guys, an oddball painting my parents own!” or was it a gift to his parents after the album came out?

That’s a bit unclear, but Gail Zappa did confirm that it was later stolen. Bummer!
 

 
Gluten Free Museum is a Tumblr dedicated to painstakingly removing all gluten products from famous works of art. Gluten free art is where it’s at now. Get hip to this shit, okay?

The last one I included may not be a classic painting, but it’s pure genius.

 

 

 
More gluten free art after the jump…
 

 
Sometime in the early 1920s the Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy suggested that a new form of “music writing” could be created from the grooves in phonographic records. He believed experimenting with the groves would enable composers, musicians and artists to produce music without recording any instruments. Long before scratching, Moholy-Nagy also believed the phonograph could become “an overall instrument… which supersedes all instruments used so far.”

With the arrival of synchronized sound in movies, as seen and heard in the first talkie The Jazz Singer in 1927, Moholy-Nagy refined his idea believing a whole new world of abstract sound could be created from experimentation with the optical film sound track. He hoped such experimentation would “enrich the sphere of our aural experience,” by producing sounds that were “entirely unknown.”

In 1929, the Russians produced their first talkie, the snappily titled The Five Year Plan for Great Works. The possibility of synchronized sound inspired a trio of pioneers, composer Arseny Avraamov, animator Mikhail Tsihanovsky and engineer Evgeny Sholpo who were fascinated by the curved loops, arcs and waveforms on the optical soundtrack. The patterns made them wonder if synthetic music could be created by drawing directly onto the sound track. Of course, this they did, at first testing out vase-shapes and ellipses then Egyptian hieroglyphs—all with startling results.

In 1930, Avraamov produced (possibly) the first short film with a hand-drawn synthetic soundtrack.
 

An example of Avraamov’s early experimentation in ‘ornamental sound.’
 
Meanwhile back at the lab, Evgeny Sholpo was collaborating with composer Rimsky-Korsakov on building what was basically an “optical synthesiser” or Variophone that used an oscilloscope to cut waveforms on small paper discs to produce synthetic music (“ornamental sound”) that was synced to 35mm film, before being photographed onto the same film to create a continuous soundtrack. Kinda laborious, but neat, the end product sounding that sounded like the music to a 8-bit game cartridge.
 

Diagram of a Variophone
 
More Soviet ‘artificial music’ after the jump…

 
Tim Cappello is the legendary oiled-up sax man, most famous for his rendition of “I Still Believe” in the 1987 vampire film, The Lost Boys, as well as his electrifying performances onstage and in MTV videos with Tina Turner in the ‘80s.  His iconic shirtless, cut, oiled physique, and pelvic grinding has been famously parodied by Jon Hamm on Saturday Night Live.
 

Jon Hamm as “Sergio,” parodying Tim Cappello as the sexual saxophone master

We had a chance to sit down for a chat with the surprisingly humble Mr. Cappello, to discuss his career, the parodies, and to find out if he still still believes.

Our pre-conceived notions (stupidly based on nothing more than a few minutes of mid-80’s screentime) of Cappello being a cocky meathead were instantly dashed upon meeting him. He was charmingly modest in discussing his career, from his tutelage under Lennie Tristano to his gigging with Peter Gabriel, Garland Jeffreys, Eric Carmen, and Carly Simon, to his leap into the spotlight with Tina Turner and his Lost Boys role. He was also an exceedingly good sport about being grilled on what exactly it is that he still believes in, because after all—the world needs to know this shit.

Cappello chalks most of his storied history up to the “dumb luck” of being in the right place at the right time. His career began shortly after he left the New England Conservatory to study under his idol, jazz legend, Lennie Tristano. Cappello cites “Turkish Mambo” as the life-changing track that pushed him to seek Tristano’s guidance. His first gig was playing piano behind Billy Crystal’s early stand-up comedy act, which he did for five years before picking up a road gig with Eric Carmen of The Raspberries. From there, Cappello played with Garland Jeffreys, until being brought by school-chum, Jerry Moratta, into Peter Gabriel’s band.

You can check out a young Tim Cappello playing with Gabriel at about fifteen minutes into THIS AMAZING VIDEO. 

A sidelining heroin addiction led him unexpectedly to bodybuilding. Capello relates an incident on his 25th birthday, visiting his parents and having his niece run from the room crying due to his poor, drug-addled condition. A fateful walk down the street took the six foot, 135 pound, Cappello by “dumb luck” to a gym where he encountered “muscleheads” who looked “so strong and healthy” that his life was forever changed. Inspired by the determination of the athletes he saw in that gym, Cappello swapped heroin for protein shakes, got clean, and got totally ripped. With his new iron-bod, not only was his playing in demand, but also his hypersexual look.
 

“Through the pain and through the grief, I still believe.”

Carly Simon took the newly-buff Cappello out on tour until she was benched by acute stagefright, of all things. From there, he was picked up by Tina Turner, who at the time, according to Cappello, was playing “McDonalds conventions” in between “burger skits.” In the middle of this “convention and casino” tour, Turner’s single “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and Private Dancer LP exploded, putting the rock-hard horn-blower into the spotlight. Cappello credits much of his success to Turner’s eye and ear as a band leader and her understanding of both musical and visual presentation. Turner pushed Cappello to explore acting which led to an accidental “dumb luck” casting in The Lost Boys after losing a role in Beverly Hills Cop 2. That role secured a spot for the oiled-up sax man in the collective pop consciousness forever.

The Lost Boys shoot comprised two hours of Cappello’s life, which resulted in a couple of minutes of screen-time that have defined him ever since. Cappello maintains a sense of humor about it, and about the parodies of his signature look and moves, claiming that his original intention with the persona was always to “take it just a little too far” and “have an element of humor in it.”
 

Cappello: “I meant for it to be over the top and a little too much.”

Cappello takes the persona, and those who have poked fun at it, in stride. He has recently been selling a line of body oils (seriously!), and has done an updated recording of “I Still Believe.” So far that recording exists only as a CD single available from Cappello at shows, but it seems ripe for a vinyl issue by one of the current crop of horror soundtrack reissue labels—we’re looking at you Death Waltz and Waxwork Records!
 

 
As Cappello was willing to look back at his legacy with good humor, we decided to hone in on his signature tune, “I Still Believe,” and ask him what he believes in. We were quite surprised with some of his answers. When we asked “Do you believe you would win in a fight against Alice Cooper guitarist, “sexy axe man,” Kane Roberts?” Capello revealed that he and Roberts were good friends from school, and both had similarly used body-building to beat drug addictions. Who knew that the ‘80s two most notoriously muscular musicians grew up together and shared almost identical life stories?
 

Kane Roberts, the “sexy axe man” foil to Tim Cappello’s “saxy sex man.”

We were also taken aback by Cappello name-checking Noam Chomsky in his answer to the question “do you believe that burning jet fuel can melt steel beams?”

And if you want to know if Cappello believes in “sax on the first date,” or if he believes that “workers control the means of production”, or if he believes in “exfoliating before oiling”, or if he believes “the Illuminati is conspiring to form a one-world-government”, or if he believes that “I Still Believe” is a better song than “Don’t Stop Believin’,” then you’ll just have to watch the video after the jump…

 
Imagine world in which one of the most idiotic fantasies of ignorant right wing homophobe creeps were true, and homosexuality was not only a choice one could make, but that young people were actively recruited into gayness by a sinister cabal of persuasive pipefitters. Now imagine a world where your recruiter—your tour guide through the forbidden delights of Sodom!—wasn’t a fit, handsome, and just dead charming older student at the campus mixer with a fabulous smile, flawless hair, and an impish gleam in his eyes, but a diner.

Not as in someone who’s dining, I mean a diner as in an actual restaurant.
 

Turned Gay By The Living Alpha Diner
 

Lars is simply looking for a place to grab a bite and take a load off. But he bites of more than he can chew when he meets Turk, a handsome, living diner. The loads come later!

Lars and Turk take to one another immediately, and soon Lars finds himself putting it all on the line for an erotic future with this gorgeous, gay restaurant.

That’s pretty much how it goes in the world of writer Chuck Tingle, who trades in homoerotic eBooks that he calls “Tinglers.” I haven’t actually read any of them, as it’s not my zone, and anyway I don’t have a Kindle, so I’m unabashedly judging books by their covers here. But MY GOD, WHAT GLORIOUS COVERS! Tingle, or his go-to cover artist, definitely has the template nailed—while it’s of a type with lots of self-published eBook art, it absolutely has a certain something all its own. There’s always a come-hither beefcake image right up front, behind which, in brightly saturated colors, is an almost Pen & Pixel-ishly improbable collage depicting said beefcake’s mate. And it has to be a collage, as said mate is never simply another human guy. The not-of-this-world cover art is a match for the curious quirks in Tingle’s oeuvre. It seems to break down into four distinct and imaginative motifs. To start, there are his protagonist-pairs-off-with-an-anthropomorphic-object tales.
 

I’m Gay For My Living Billionaire Jet Plane
 

Trained By The Living Biker Train
 

HEAVY META! Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt

More, more, more after the jump…

 
When I think of my family’s first VCR, a massive, noisy metal box, I think of one of the machine’s early missions: recording a rerun of Steve Martin’s 1980 NBC special Comedy Is Not Pretty (not to be confused with Martin’s album of the same name). It’s a brilliant collection of sketches, and as a lad I put even more wear on that tape than I put on the local library’s copy of Cruel Shoes. The dry-cleaning evangelist bit with Louis Nye, the insurance ad for “Mutual of Steve,” Socrates drinking hemlock, the search for the Abominable Snowman, the date with Joyce DeWitt—they’re all solid gold.

The special’s greatest moment, however, is an ambitious fusion of the sublime and the stupid that comes right at the beginning. In the opening sketch, Martin, a burro, an elephant, and a cast of simians dramatize Marty Robbins’ love-and-death gunfighter ballad “El Paso.” There has never been a spectacle quite like this on TV, and—dare I say it?—there never will be ever again.

There’s not much else I can tell you about this wonderful artifact, but I will pass along a suggestive detail: according to a biography of Robbins, Martin opened for the country singer at the Sahara Tahoe in March 1973. Might that encounter have contained the germ of this sketch?
 
Only “El Paso” is embedded below, but you can watch all of Comedy Is Not Pretty on Hulu.