The cover of Finnish black metal fanzine Hammer of Damnation, February 1993. Read it in its entirety here.
 
After being inspired by coming across the cover of a 1986 edition of Danish metal fanzine Metallic Beast, I went on a long vision quest in search of other fanzines in the black metal and heavy metal arena. Fanzines were the custodians and keepers of artifacts produced by counter-culture heroes and artists on the fringe before the Internet showed up. Bands would often create their own, but the true heroes behind this pop-culture staple are, of course, the fans who tirelessly self-published the zines because they lived and breathed (in this case) all things heavy and metal.

Heavy metal fanzines were incredibly popular in Portugal during the 80s and 90s. Beautifully cataloged here, you can see the grim covers of many of the zines published there such as Abismo, and one referred to as the “most prestigious” metal fanzine in the country, Renascimento Do Metal, or Metal’s Rebirth. Some fanzines have been painstakingly scanned and posted online such as Finnish black metal magazine Hammer of Damnation (pictured at the top of this post), and early-80s napalm nugget, The Headbanger. Launched in Los Angeles by then-teenager Bob Nalbandian, the first issue of The Headbanger came to be in 1982. Nalbandian witnessed the birth of heavy metal in that city, and his fanzine, one of the first dedicated to getting the good word about LA bands like Armored Saint and Malice, was an instant hit. In 2012, Nalbandian and Japanime Publishing (Tokyo) joined forces to create an ebook for The Headbanger in all its DIY glory. Early 80s Brazilian fanzine Rock Brigade would go on to become a fully-realized metal publication by the mid-80s and has since earned the distinction of being the longest-running music magazine in Brazil’s history.

Was it possible for me to post images from all the great fanzines out there praising all things metal and darker? Nope. Not by a long shot. Nonetheless, what follows is a pretty deep dive into the world of metal fanzines from across the globe, some of which you’ve likely never seen before.

Devil horns OUT.
 

Issue #2 of Bob Nalbandian’s The Headbanger fanzine. The table of contents is pictured below.
 

 
More metal mayhem after the jump…

Kembra Pfahler
 
If you are a regular reader of Dangerous Minds, then nothing in the title of this post should surprise you, because we know our readers a) appreciate our dedication to the celebration of high weirdness (and outsider knitting) and b) also appreciate the boundary-smashing performance artist, filmmaker, anti-naturalist actress (and more), Kembra Pfahler.  Pfahler is best known as the vocalist for her band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. For today I’m going to bring to you a version of Kembra done by another talented rule-breaker, crochet artist Shove Mink of Croshame.

We’ve featured Mink’s work here on DM before—but this time I can say without hesitation “you ain’t never seen anything” like Mink’s crocheted Kembras.

They’re even endorsed by their colorful muse:

“I love and support the works of Croshame and her visual generosity and extreme attention to detail. I encourage the collection of these dolls and I hope to include Croshame in shows I’m having in London next year.”

—Kembra Pfahler, 2018

I posted one of the most safe-for-work photos of Pfahler I could find at the top of this, as I can’t really post any of the images of Mink’s adorably naughty—one of them is posed masturbating with a crucifix—crocheted Kembras before warning you first. But let’s be honest, this is precisely one of the reasons you like DM, isn’t it? I take my job of discovering things you can never ever unsee very seriously, and this is about as NSFW as knitted shit gets. Mink also sells some of her creations on Etsy, in case you’re interested (PS: I know you are).
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Family life can be either good or bad and is usually a mixture of both, but all family portraits are terrible. The disparate elements involved in taking a family portrait (posture, fashion, lighting, mood, the talent of the photographer) conspire to make the subjects seem suspect, awkward, and only related by great misfortune or a surprising similarity of attire.

Portrait photography itself is weird, only actors and models (with the aid of Photoshop) look good in such pictures. They are playing a part, which is why they look so convincing, so cool, so utterly natural. The rest of us usually never know what we should be expressing or what character to be or what the hell we are doing. This confusion is often apparent in our family portraits.

But that’s the way it goes. We all tend to look awkward in photos because the camera is an unnatural intrusion which demands we perform. On the plus side, the family portrait can be a delightful momento of a happy shared experience, no matter how awkward or silly we look. Which brings us to these little beauties, strangely awkward and amusing yet utterly normal portraits of families posing for the camera.
 

 

 

 
More awkward family snaps, after the jump…
 

A photo of Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury (pictured center) training with members of The Royal Ballet (London) in 1979.
 

“They (The Royal Ballet) asked me. They actually thought I could dance. So they asked me to do this charity concert. Then I realized, how I could dance.  I appreciate their discipline and dedication a hell of a lot. I mean, it’s a different kind of dedication than you have to apply to what I’m doing. I don’t think I could ever do it because it’s like learning someone else’s steps. I do things that I want to do and it’s all very free-form.”

—Freddie Mercury on his collaboration with The Royal Ballet in 1979.

In 1979, encouraged by his friend Wayne Eagling a choreographer and principal dancer for The Royal Ballet, Freddie Mercury began training with members of the company for a charity performance to be held at the London Coliseum to raise money for mentally handicapped children. But before we get to the details on this bit of Freddie Mercury mythology, there is yet another fascinating bit of backstory to how this all came to be. Laura Jackson, author of Freddie Mercury: The Biography, met with Wayne Eagling to discuss Mercury’s epic performance with TRB. In the book, Eagling recalls going to the treasurer of the ballet, Joseph Lockwood, as he once held a high ranking job at EMI in the hope he might be able to persuade Kate Bush to guest star in the charity performance. Bush, still in her teens, had just been signed by the label by one of the music industry’s biggest titans, Bob Mercer. According to Mercer, he was “almost certain” Bush had been asked to don a pair of ballerina slippers before Mercury was. Kate’s manager put the kibosh on the idea, and Lockwood told Eagling to talk to his friend Freddie instead.

What isn’t up for dispute is the undeniable energy which exuded from Freddie Mercury like some sort of sonic communication from another planet. Queen’s live shows required high levels of physical endurance by its members, and this was especially true for Mercury. But could he dance? As unbelievable as it sounds, not really. However, there is no denying the man had moves for days and, allegedly, he had always wanted to “try” to dance ballet. Mercury took his training and rehearsals seriously, though he described the experience as “agonizing.” Here’s more from Freddie on becoming a ballet dancer:

“They had me practicing at the barre and all that, stretching my legs… trying to do things in a week that they’d been doing for years. It was murder. After two days I was in agony. It was hurting me in places I didn’t know I had, dear.”

As I’m sure you can imagine, Mercury’s performance was highly praised and even impressed the stuffy ballet regulars at the sold-out event. Of course, Mercury didn’t just dance with the members of The Royal Ballet, he also sang adapted versions of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” while he was being hurled around the stage never missing a note, beat, or pose. Queen drummer Roger Taylor bore witness to Freddie’s debut calling it “brave and hilarious.” The experience made an impact on Mercury, and he, Eagling and other TRB dancers would collaborate once again for the “I Want To Break Free” video in 1984, which Eagling helped to choreograph. In part, the video is based on the ballet L’après-midi d’un faune (Afternoon of a Faun) with an un-mustachioed Mercury mimicking the star of the original 1912 production, famous dancer/choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. Zowie.

So, with yet another Queen history lesson under our belts, let’s take a look at some of the remarkable photos captured during Mercury’s time with The Royal Ballet as well as video footage of Freddy live on stage for one night with The Royal Ballet on October 7th, 1979.
 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

 
Looking at Jeff Gillette’s post-apocalyptic paintings of shanty towns and garbage strewn slums juxtaposed with a ruined and decrepit Disneyland kinda makes you think he must have been mighty pissed off he never got to Mickey Mouse’s cartoon theme park when he was a kid. But that ain’t quite how it goes. In fact, it was almost the other way around. Gillette was a college dropout when he volunteered for the Peace Corps and traveled to Nepal in India, where he witnessed great beauty and wonder, alongside a grim world of poverty, exploitation, and slums as far as the eye could see. “No pictures,” one guide told him, but Gillette sneaked off a few snaps.

As a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal for two years, every couple of months I would travel to India and immerse myself in the urban chaos of all the major cities. There I would engage in self-guided tours of the slums, either by taxi, train or foot. I was overwhelmed by those experiences, so much so that I still try to make it there every year. Back then, when you asked a taxi driver to take you to the slums, they would look at you funny. Now there is an industry of slum-tourism.

He eventually returned to the States and set up home in Orange County, home of Disneyland. Looking back at his photographs and rerunning his memories, the two worlds kinda merged. But still, Gillette does freely admit that maybe not getting to Disneyland as a kid threw him off or maybe:

...my own crappy childhood makes me want to tarnish the feigned joy of a pre-pubescent wonderland for others, or tap into the suspect view of others that see the whole system askance, with the Disney corporation being emblematic of society’s attempt to mask over the overwhelming ills. Maybe me seeing so much of the real world of polluted, overpopulated, impoverished cities has made me feel that a place that proclaims itself to be the ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’ is painfully absurd.

When he was in Nepal, Gillette read Schopenhauer which chimed with a belief that world was a miserable wreck ‘cuz it was ruled by irrationality. Tying this in with own thoughts on Buddhism—we’re here to suffer—gave Gillette a small epiphany.

He started painting pictures of landfill landscapes, “Slumscapes,” or what he terms as “Too-Realism”—images of the what the world is really like for millions of people while the rest of us are caught up in our own little private Disneylands.

Born in Michigan in 1959, Gillette has been painting his Slumscapes featuring Disney characters since 1990. His work was the main inspiration for Banksy’s own theme park exhibition Dismaland in 2015. Gillette’s first Slumscape painting featured Calcutta slums with an image of Mickey Mouse screenpainted upside down on top of the canvas. His work is part satire, part comment:

“I iconocolise stuff. I take stuff, pick at it and f**k with it. When I start messing with something, I see it as an homage. The worst dig at someone is to ignore them. If I bring something up — Disney or Dismaland — it’s a form of flattery in some way, otherwise I wouldn’t bother with it.”

See more of Gillette’s work here.
 

 

 
More Disneyland Slumscapes, after the jump…
 

‘The cross took the form of a crossbow, with Christ as the arrow…’
 
The interview with Philip K. Dick embedded below, recorded in Santa Ana on May 17, 1979, touches on many of the author’s experiences and obsessions—the combat his father saw in World War I, how he came to join the Episcopal Church (“My wife said if I didn’t, she’d bust my nose”), the dying rat who shook his faith, the coming of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point, contemporary attitudes towards homosexuality, compulsory ROTC at the University of California, the time he got pancreatitis from using “bad street dope” cut with film developer, the constant threat posed by authoritarian movements—but I’ve cued it up to this vivid description of a bad, bad trip he had in 1964:

I only know of one time where I really took acid. That was Sandoz acid, a giant horse capsule that I got from the University of California, and a friend and I split it. And I don’t know, there must’ve been a whole milligram of it there. It was a gigantic thing, you know, we bought it for five dollars and took it home and we looked at it for a while—looked at it, we were all gonna split it up—and took that, and it was the greatest thing, I’ll tell you.

I went straight to Hell, is what happened. I found myself, you know, the landscape froze over, and there were huge boulders, and there was a deep thrumming, and it was the Day of Wrath, and God was judging me as a sinner, and this lasted for thousands of years and didn’t get any better. It just got worse and worse, and I was in terrible pain, I felt terrible physical pain, and all I could talk was in Latin. Most embarrassing, ‘cause the girl I was with thought I was doing it to annoy her, and I kept saying Libera me domine in die illa. You know, and Agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi [...] and especially, Tremens factus sum ego et timeo—timeo meaning “I’m afraid”—and I said Libera me, domine! Whining like some poor dog that’s been left out in the rain all night. Finally, the girl with me said “Oh, barf” and walked out of the room in disgust.

It was a little bit like when I rolled my VW. I mean, it was all very messy and strange. The only good part of it was when I looked in the refrigerator, and I hadn’t defrosted the refrigerator for a long time, and there was nothing in the freezer compartment. I looked in, and I saw this giant cavern with stalactites and stalagmites, and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Ashtray, with cigarette butts in it? Most horrible smell I’d ever smelled! But music sounded very beautiful.

About a month later, I got the galleys for Three Stigmata to read over, and I started reading the galleys, and I thought, “Oh dear, I can’t read these galleys. They’re too scary.” Because all the horrible things that I had written about in Three Stigmata seemed to have come true under acid. So I used to warn people then, that was ‘64, and I used to warn people against taking it. I begged people not to take it.

 

 
Dick put one of the characters in A Maze of Death through the same religious bummer, and he wrote about the ways the psychedelic experience resembled mental illness in two mid-sixties essays, “Drugs, Hallucinations, and the Quest for Reality” and “Schizophrenia & The Book of Changes.” The latter includes a passing reference to the eternity he spent in Hell one night:

Yes, friends, you, too, can suffer forever; simply take 150 mg [sic] of LSD—and enjoy! If not satisfied, simply mail in—but enough. Because after two thousand years under LSD, participating in the Day of Judgment, one probably will be rather apathetic to asking for one’s five dollars back.

Biographer Lawrence Sutin reports the eyewitness account of Dick’s friend Ray Nelson, who remembers the author “sweating, feeling isolated, reliving the life of a Roman gladiator, speaking in Latin and experiencing a spear thrust through his body.” Sutin also quotes this portion of a 1967 letter Dick wrote to Rich Brown, which discloses a few more details of the acid vision of God:

I perceived Him as a pulsing, furious, throbbing mass of vengeance-seeking authority, demanding an audit (like a sort of metaphysical IRS agent). Fortunately I was able to utter the right words [the “Libera me, Domine” quoted above], and hence got through it. I also saw Christ rise to heaven from the cross, and that was very interesting, too (the cross took the form of a crossbow, with Christ as the arrow; the crossbow launched him at terrific velocity—it happened very fast, once he had been placed in position).

Listen to what the man says, after the jump…

 
Dave Goodman was a record producer, sound engineer, musician, and songwriter. He’s best known for his work with the Sex Pistols. Goodman first caught the band on April 3, 1976. That night, the Pistols opened for the 101ers, Joe Strummer’s pre-Clash group, at the Nashville, a pub in London. After the show, Goodman went backstage and offered to rent the band his PA. From that point on, Goodman mixed their live sound, right up until the Pistols left for their American tour in January 1978.

He also produced demo sessions for the group in July and October 1976, as well as January 1977. A couple of tracks Goodman was behind the board for ended up as B-sides, including “I Wanna Be Me,” which was the flip of “Anarchy in the U.K.” When it came time to choose who’d produce the Sex Pistols’ debut album, Goodman was passed over for Chris Thomas.
 

 
The 1977 Sex Pistols bootleg Spunk, consisting of Goodman’s studio recordings, surfaced just prior to the October 1977 release of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Many preferred Goodman’s raw production over the glossy Bollocks. It’s still a mystery as to who provided the tapes for Spunk, though Goodman has always been a suspect.
 

 
In July 1978, the Dave Goodman and Friends 7-inch came out on Goodman’s own label (christened “The Label”). Both Paul Cook and Steve Jones—drummer and guitarist for the Sex Pistols—play on the A-Side, “Justifiable Homicide,” though they couldn’t be listed in the credits due to contractual reasons.
 

 
Cook and Jones also had a hand in writing the tune, which is sung by Goodman. Unsurprisingly, parts of the song sound very much like the Sex Pistols.
 
More after the jump…

 
Sterling Morrison died on August 30, 1995, just after he turned 53. A few days later, the movie Antártida, with music by John Cale, hit Spanish screens; on the soundtrack, Morrison and Maureen Tucker joined Cale for a rendition of Jim Carroll’s rock litany, “People Who Died.” (Chris Spedding and the Lounge Lizards’ Erik Sanko also sat in on this quasi-reunion of the Velvet Underground.)

Back in 1984, Carroll joined Lou Reed’s band onstage at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, to sing “People Who Died.” If you play Cale’s version back-to-back with Reed’s, all the original Velvets will be gathered together again, in a way, for a moment, and you will remember some people who died: Sterling Morrison, Robert Quine, Jim Carroll, Lou Reed.

Make your own Velvets reunion mash-up, after the jump…

 
Without knowing the full provenance of this footage featuring golden couple Paul and Linda McCartney larking about in front of a camera, it’s a wee bit difficult to know if it is outtakes from a music promo or indeed, as claimed by the man who transferred and uploaded it to You Tube, Larry Jamieson, a “lost” home movie made by the McCartneys while holidaying in New Zealand sometime during 1997:

This is a damaged super 8 film of Paul and Linda having some fun making a home movie. I restored what was left of this film many years ago and forgot about it. It is over exposed and out of focus in parts, but it is a personal treasure.

But the clip’s provenance doesn’t really matter as what we have here is the Mozart of pop music, Paul and photographer, activist, and musician Linda McCartney making a sweet little film which is all the more moving because we know how this particular story ends.

Linda McCartney’s usual long, blonde, flowing locks have been cropped short as she was then undergoing treatment for breast cancer, which had spread to her liver. Sadly, McCartney died in Tuscon on April 17th, 1998. As a grieving Macca suggested at the time, perhaps the best way to remember Linda is to donate to a breast cancer charity—one that doesn’t support animal testing—or better still “go veggie.”
 

 
With thanks to Simon Wells.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
When Paul McCartney Met Jack Kirby
Listen to Paul McCartney’s ‘lost’ experimental Christmas disc for his fellow Beatles from 1965
Paul McCartney on the bust-up with Lennon
Jesus tries to cheer up Paul McCartney with a Lamb Chop sock puppet
In 1977 Paul McCartney released a cover album of ‘Ram’—and kept his involvement secret for years
The time John, Paul, George and Ringo took a ‘trip’ to buy a (fascist) fantasy island

Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash.
 
One of Brooklyn’s finest, Neil Diamond, was 29 when he joined one of his heroes, 38-year old Johnny Cash on Cash’s short-lived variety program The Johnny Cash Show, which aired on February 7th, 1970.

After leaving Brooklyn for a short stint (Diamond’s father Kieve was in the military), the family ended up in Cheyenne, Wyoming where Neil would discover “singing cowboy” movies, exposing the young Diamond to the genre of country music. Later when the family returned to Brooklyn, Neil’s folks gave him an inexpensive acoustic guitar for his birthday. Diamond was already performing with his high school chorus along with another Brooklyn native, Barbra Streisand. A talented fencer, Diamond’s swordplay (not with Babs) got him a college scholarship where he would enroll as a pre-med student. Though “Dr. Neil Diamond” has a nice ring to it, Diamond, already a rabid songwriter, succumbed to his passion for music and dropped out to make it as a musician.

When Diamond appeared on The Johnny Cash Show, he was basking in the glow of his success as a songwriter and a solo artist. In 1966 he penned the monster hit “I’m a Believer” for The Monkees and also had a smash of his own the same year with “Solitary Man.” Interesting Cash/Diamond side note; 34 years later, Johnny Cash would cover “Solitary Man” on his deeply moving album, American III: Solitary Man. For Cash’s show, Diamond chose to perform a gospel-inspired number called “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show” from his 1969 album of the same name. The invigorating single irritated evangelical southerners, due to Diamond’s twist of recording and performing it in the style of a proselytizing evangelical preacher. At one point during the three-minute jam, Diamond does, in fact, deliver the song’s lyrics with some preacher-on-the-pulpit fire and brimstone. I’m sure at this point you may be wondering how this went over with Johnny, a religious man to say the least. Well, he loved Diamond and considered him, as we all should, one of the era’s greatest songwriters and performers.

I can’t imagine anyone not being a fan of Neil Diamond, and even if you think you aren’t, just try to NOT sing along to “Sweet Caroline” the next time you hear it. Diamond was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and in January of this year, he announced he would be retiring from touring. This did not stop the 77-year-old Diamond from putting on a special show (which you can see here), this past Saturday for firefighters battling the horrific Lake Christine blaze in Colorado which has been burning for almost four weeks.

I’ve posted footage of Diamond’s appearance on The Johnny Cash Show below which includes a short interview segment between the pair of musical gods. Now, go turn on your heartlight, then turn this one up.
 

Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash chatting on the set of ‘The Johnny Cash Show’ in 1970.
 

Neil Diamond joins Johnny Cash on ‘The Johnny Cash Show.’ The show originally aired on February 7th, 1970.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Thunderball’ opening credits with the theme song that Johnny Cash submitted
How Johnny Cash was nearly killed by an ostrich in 1981
New black tarantula spider species discovered near Folsom Prison is named after Johnny Cash
‘The Pot Smoker’s Song’: Neil Diamond’s terrible anti-weed anthem
Neil Diamond fans, this excellent BBC ‘In Concert’ show from 1971 is a must-see