Attention Firesign Theatre fanatics, two long out of print books transcribing their surrealist comedy classics, have just been republished. It’s fascinating to see their work in the form of plays. We think of Firesign Theatre as writer/performers, but this puts them in a literary context as well.

I asked their longtime archivist and producer, my pal Taylor Jessen (who promised me he was going to make a Firesign Theatre documentary in 2014) to fill us in:

The Firesign Theatre is one of the greatest Shibboleth manufacturers in history. Fans who’ve heard their 1970 masterwork Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers are aware that we’re all marching to Shibboleth – a Shibboleth being, of course, the original Hip password.

No one in the late sixties crossed the Jordan into Hip society without knowing the good word of Firesign: “Shoes for Industry!” “He’s no fun, he fell right over!” “What you don’t mean won’t hurt you!” “He broke the President!” In short, if a stranger came up to you in 1970 and said “No anchovies? You’ve got the wrong man!”, and you didn’t know the next line, man, forget it.

Rolling Stone’s Straight Arrow imprint published all those lines in 1972 and 1974 in the form of the script collections Big Book of Plays and Big Mystery Joke Book. Out of print for more than three decades, they now return in a new one-volume collection, Marching to Shibboleth, available exclusively from the FireSale store. 354 pages; all the words and art from the original books; all the text re-proofed and re-set to match the design and fonts of the original layout; the photos re-scanned from original source material. It’s Firesign’s classic Columbia period totally transcribed – Waiting for The Electrician or Someone Like Him, How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All, Dwarf, I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus and The Giant Rat of Sumatra, plus vignettes, miniatures, a 400-year Fyre Sygne historical exegesis with a lot of really impressive footnotes that you should therefore TOTALLY BELIEVE, plus for the first time the complete script to Everything You Know Is Wrong. All this as well as a new introductory essay by Greil Marcus.

Guaranteed to look great on any comedy lover’s shelf next to Monty Python’s Flying Circus: All the Words and The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts.

Get your copy of Marching to Shibboleth, available exclusively from the FireSale store
 

 
Below, eight minutes of The Firesign Theatre’s “High School Madness” cut to the corny Henry Aldrich movies they were riffing on in the first place, via filmmaker Andre Perkowski:

 
This week Creation Records founder Alan McGee, the man who signed The Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride, Oasis and Primal Scream. McGee is the author of Creation Stories: Riots, Raves And Running A Label and the head of 359 Records, a launchpad for new artists.

Gregg Foreman’s radio program, The Pharmacy, is a music / talk show playing heavy soul, raw funk, 60′s psych, girl groups, Krautrock. French yé-yé, Hammond organ rituals, post-punk transmissions and “ghost on the highway” testimonials and interviews with the most interesting artists and music makers of our times…
 

 
Mr. Pharmacy is a musician and DJ who has played for the likes of Pink Mountaintops, The Delta 72, The Black Ryder, The Meek and more. Since 2012 Gregg Foreman has been the musical director of Cat Power’s band. He started dj’ing 60s Soul and Mod 45’s in 1995 and has spun around the world. Gregg currently lives in Los Angeles, CA and divides his time between playing live music, producing records and dj’ing various clubs and parties from LA to Australia.
 
Setlist:

Intro
Swastika Eyes - Primal Scream
Search and Destroy - The Stooges
Shout Bamalama - The Pinetoppers
Funky Side of Town - JB’s
Alan McGee interview Part One
Loaded - Primal Scream
Look Back in Anger - The Television Personalities
Upside Down - The Jesus and Mary Chain
Can’t Seem to Make You Mine - The Seeds
Gbeti Madjro - Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou*
Nervous Breakdown - BLACK FLAG
Ultra Twist - The Cramps
Big Nick- James Booker
Alan McGee interview Part Two
When You Sleep - My Bloody Valentine
No Love Lost - Joy Division
Keep On Keeping On - Nolan Porter
Annalisa - Public Image
I Think I’ve Had it - The Gories
Sex Beat - The Gun Club
Alan McGee Interview Part Three
Shoot Speed Kill Light / Glider - Primal Scream / My Bloody Valentine
You Made Me Realise - My Bloody Valentine
Mr.Pharmacist - The Fall
Outro
 

 
You can download the show in its entirety here.

 
Chinese photographer Peng Yangjun snapped these glorious—and slightly terrifying—photographs of Chinese women wearing colorful rubber face masks which protects their fragile, porcelain skin against the sun’s damaging rays.

Yangiun’s slightly twisted series of bathing suit beauties is titled, “Beach.”

I get wanting to protect your skin and all from the sun, but why just the face? Why not an entire rubber gimp suit? I mean, if you’re going to do it, do it right!
 

 

This woman knows what I’m talkin’ about.
 

 
A few more after the jump…
 

 
This is a guest post from Jason Toon

Socialist skinhead soul outfit The Redskins were so conceptually perfect, that they seemed like something someone made up. And they sort of were. Head ‘skin Chris Dean wasn’t some snaggletoothed bootboy urchin from a cement skyscraper. Dean wrote for the NME, he was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, and he had a head full of ideas about youth culture, Trotskyism, and the power of the proper trousers. It was from those ideas, not from the “streets,” that The Redskins sprang.

But The Redskins were a real band, they did inspire a real (if small) left-wing skinhead movement, and most importantly, they did make real (and really great) records. Their 1982 debut single, “Lev Bronstein” b/w “Peasant Army”, paired a post-punk-soul A-side with a chugging Oi! B-side, all produced by Jon Langford of The Mekons and released on his CNT Records. Intriguing enough, especially considering the strident left-wing poetry of the lyrics, but The Redskins really caught fire with their second single, “Lean On Me,” a hyperfast take on ‘60s soul analogous to what the 2-Tone bands did with ‘60s ska. It hit #3 on the UK indie chart, and made The Redskins an electric presence in the ‘80s left-wing pop ferment. When the miner’s strike heated up in 1984, The Redskins’ socialist stance resonated like a brass section.
 

 
If you found Crass too tuneless, if Billy Bragg was too quiet, if The Style Council was too slick, The Redskins were your band. And Dean wasn’t afraid to call the others out for insufficient ideological rigour: “If there’s a tour organized by the Labour Party, one thing you can be sure of is that it’ll sell out,” he said about Red Wedge, Labour’s attempt to mount a travelling anti-Thatcher pop circus. And Dean called Bragg “Neil Kinnock’s publicity officer.”

Touche! But the people in those acts are still around, still doing something. Where’s Chris Dean now? It didn’t take long for his revolutionary fire to burn itself out. After a stack of classic singles and one great LP (Neither Washington nor Moscow), The Redskins fizzled out by the end of 1986. Dean was great at writing stirring anthems like “Keep On Keepin’ On!” and “It Can Be Done!”, but alas, failed to walk the walk. He reportedly retreated to a reclusive life in Paris, leaving the rest of us with a totally unique example of how to weave a handful of diverse cultural and political threads into a thrilling band. Whatever you think of The Redskins’ Trotskyist politics, music could use this kind of commitment, imagination, and style today.

The Redskins perform “Lean On Me” live:

 
Chris Dean and Martin Hewes talk about the band and show the video for “Keep On Keepin’ On!”:

 
More from The Redskins after the jump…

 
I didn’t know what to expect when I hit play for Flula Borg’s “Slow Mo Beatboxing” video, but it certainly wasn’t a Georgia O’Keeffe/David Cronenberg collaboration that spits out farts!

According to Borg, his luscious lips are “like the vagina of a brontosaurus.”

Can we please have a video of Biz Markie slowmotion beatboxing, next? Seriously. 
 

 
Via Laughing Squid

 
In the puzzling biographical blurb on his website, the artist Diddo claims to have “aroused the curiosity of creators and tastemakers, receiving requests from the likes of Sasha Baron Cohen, Kanye West and Lady Gaga.” It also says that he “was born on the luckiest day since the sixth century (7-7-’77).”

Diddo’s most recent work, “Ecce Animal,” poses provocative questions about the human condition, such as “How much does that fucking thing cost?” It’s a skull measuring roughly 5 x 7 x 8.5 inches—I’m neither a doctor nor a medical examiner, but I’m going to go ahead and call that “life-sized”—and it’s made of “street cocaine.”

In the “Laboratory” section of his website, he drops such risible bon mots as “The analysis started with the preparation of the 100% Cocaine standard and sample solution. An amount of standard was dissolved in a mobile phase followed by a series of trial runs to calibrate and identify the HPLC method that gave adequate separation of the standard. ... The retention time of our sample matched the Cocaine standard, albeit with
 a much smaller peak. This is because the sample is diluted with so-called ‘cutting agents’. The purity of the Cocaine in percentage lies in the range of approximately 15% to 20%.”
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
via designboom

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
I ♥ the cocaine, I ♥ the cocaine
Charlie Chaplin on cocaine

 
The Residents, if you didn’t know, are a long running cross-media band who are pretty much the yardstick by which high quality avant-pop weirdness is measured. Last time DM checked up on them, they were delivering the single most jaw-dropping trove of band merch ever to a superfan in Indiana who had fat cash to burn and priorities with which we cannot argue.

Since then, The Residents have successfully reached the crowd-sourced fundraising goal for the completion of their film The Theory of Obscurity, a history of the band by filmmaker Don Hardy (no relation to the tattoo artist/douchebag t-shirt guy). The latest trailer is the longest, most generous taste yet of the doc’s contents, and features members of Residents-influenced bands like Devo, Primus, Ween and Talking Heads chiming in on the band’s history, innovations, and legacy.
 

 
On Tuesday, the band posted this long lost interview on their Facebook page. In it, Hardy Fox, then and still one of the band’s longtime spokesmen, discusses on a New Zealand TV program the then-recent theft of one of the band’s trademark eyeball masks, their musical influences, and the concepts behind the band’s ongoing commitment to anonymity, and some of anonymity’s consequences. But one of the best moments comes within the first half-second of the thing, when the interviewer’s accent makes Fox’s first name sound like “hottie.” Rrrowwwwrrr.
 

 
The Residents’ latest release is Mush-room, though at the rate they put stuff out, it’s probable that that album will effectively be an oldie within a couple of months.

 
Captain Beefheart aka Don Van Vliet was born on this day in 1941. The Cubist blues howler and great avant garde outsider composer and bandleader retired from his musical career in 1982, to become a widely respected abstract expressionist painter.

If you’ve never seen his paintings (aside from his album covers) why not click over to The Radar Station and have a look. Worth mentioning that most of them are quite big in person, and really impressive. His application of paint is practically as unique as his music is.
 

 

 

 

 
Below, Captain Beefheart & Magic Band performing “Sure ‘nuff ‘n Yes I Do” at the Midem Festival, Cannes, France, January 27, 1968:

 
We have a tendency to perceive long-since-passed pop culture crazes as “tame,” especially in our current, Miley Cyrus-infected times. The Charleston definitely falls victim to that misconception. Beyond the knee-cross, hand-switch move that has become short-hand for old fogies, most people don’t even know what the dance actually looks like. So I insist you watch this Josephine Baker number from the 1927 silent film, La Sirène des Tropiques, which features the dance in an amazing, grandiose routine. It may be her first film appearance (release dates for others are debated), but it is her first acting role.

Though Baker’s talent was never as celebrated in her home country as it was in France, she was beloved for far more than dancing topless in a banana tutu. The consummate entertainer, she could go from glamour-puss to comedienne, from a sweet smile to a smoldering gaze. Her acting was captivating, her singing voice sweet, and she remains, to this day, one of the most bombastic, athletic, and creative dancers ever to grace the stage.

Baker’s title card comes in at 1:50, but it’s worth watching the chorus line number that proceeds her, which provides a dramatic contrast to Baker’s fresh, new moves and unorthodox grace. Don’t get me wrong—I love a chorus line, but the great Josephine Baker blows them right out of the water.
 

 
Ah the 1980s. Things were simpler then—especially video games!

Take for instance this goofy—and impossibly rare—Atari 2600 curiosity, “Red Sea Crossing.” The primitive “run and jump” game—watch out for those snapping clams and snakes—was created by an independent designer named Steve Stack in 1983. Obviously, the Old Testament story of Moses parting the Red Sea served as the basis of the game, which was advertised in religious magazines. It came packaged with an audio tape narrated by—who else—Dale Evans Rogers and a coloring book. (WHO was the target market for this item?)

The game was never sold in stores and was was only available for $34.95 from the manufacturer. As a result, it’s one of the rarest Atari 2600 games, what’s been describe with tongue only partially in cheek as a “holy grail” for collectors. The game wasn’t even known to exist by the collectors market until one cartridge was found at a garage sale in 2007. That cartridge was auctioned off for over $10,000 in 2012.

Below, a look at the gameplay of “Crossing the Read Sea”
 

 
Thank you kindly ifthenwhy!