In 2000, at my favorite outré movie rental shop B-Ware Video, a cheap, bootleg-looking DVD arrived in stock, with a shoddily designed cover announcing its contents to be footage of founding Pink Floyd top dog Syd Barrett’s first psychedelic trip. I never did rent it—though I was keen to see it, I hadn’t partaken of psychedelics or even pot in years by then, so my interest wasn’t so great that there wasn’t always something else I’d have rather rented. So a long succession of “maybe next times” turned into an unequivocal “never” when, to my heartbreak, the store closed. I attended their inventory liquidation, but though I came home with a lot of brilliant stuff, someone seems to have beaten me to snapping up that Syd Barrett DVD; I couldn’t find it, so my curiosity about the formative psychedelic experience of one of the great architects of psychedelic music went unsatisfied.

But time and YouTube heal many of those kinds of wounds, and sure enough, it’s online in all its amateurish 8mm glory. The first half of the film features some dreamy and quite lovely overexposed footage of the young Barrett and some fellow hallucinogenic travelers gamboling through a field and setting a small brush fire - kids, don’t set fires when you’re tripping at home, OK? Then, at about 5:38 of the 11:34 opus, the scene abruptly shifts to the outside of Abbey Road Studios in London, where Pink Floyd are celebrating the signing of their recording contract with EMI. It would only be a few years before Barrett’s gifts were lost to the world due to drug-fueled mental illness, and the band would go on to inconhood without him. The man who shot the footage, Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon, contributed this synopsis to the film’s IMDB page:

I am Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon and I shot this film of Syd on a visit from film school in London to my hometown, Cambridge. We were on the Gog Magog hills with a bunch of friends. David Gale is there along with Andrew Rawlinson, Russell Page, Lucy Pryor and my wife, Jenny. She’s the one in the yellow mac talking to the tree. The mushroom images are iconic and will last forever. It is an unselfconscious film. It was not planned. It just happened. The guy on the balcony is me at 101 Cromwell Road, London SW7. This footage was shot by Jenny. When David Gale wrote about 101 in The Independent he recalled: As the 60s began to generate heat, I found myself running with a fast crowd. I had moved into a flat near the Royal College of Art. I shared the flat with some close friends from Cambridge, including Syd Barrett, who was busy becoming a rock star with Pink Floyd. A few hundred yards down the street at 101 Cromwell Road, our preternaturally cool friend Nigel was running the hipster equivalent of an arty salon. Between our place and his, there passed the cream of London alternative society - poets, painters, film-makers, charlatans, activists, bores and self-styled visionaries. It was a good time for name-dropping: how could I forget the time at Nigels when I came across Allen Ginsberg asleep on a divan with a tiny white kitten on his bare chest? And wasn’t that Mick Jagger visible through the fumes? Look, there’s Nigel’s postcard from William Burroughs, who looks forward to meeting him when next he visits London! The other material is of the band outside EMI after their contract signing. It’s raw, unedited footage and stunning even so. It is silent but many people have subsequently put music to it on their youtube an google postings. Good luck to them.

I’ve heard it told that among the party with Barrett that day was the young, soon to be legendary (and sadly, as of April 2013, deceased) graphic artist Storm Thorgerson, who would go on to co-found the design group Hipgnosis, and to personally design some of the most indelible album covers in rock history, including many for Pink Floyd. But as the actual shooter’s synopsis omits that bit of rock lore, I’m becoming inclined to doubt that legend’s veracity.

The accompanying music is spacey and ambient, and though maybe more than a hair too new-agey, it underscores the film’s dreaminess well. But as is noted in the synopsis, it was added later and it’s not Pink Floyd, and so this relic may not be of significant interest to the band’s more casual fans. But as a document of one of rock music’s consummate originals, it can be enjoyable in its own right so long as your expectations for it aren’t unrealistic. Copies are available for purchase in DVD and VHS formats.
 

 
Thanks to DM reader Rafael de Alday for shaking this loose from my memory banks.

 
One of the hallmarks of Richard Pryor’s comedy was his fearless willingness to attempt and stunning ability to deliver authentic pathos. Humanity flowed from the man freely; especially after his famous 1967 meltdown in Las Vegas that represented a complete sea change in his career, his standup work often seemed almost as sad or heartbreaking as it was hilarious. Pryor had an essential sweetness that allowed him to remain relatable and childlike even when broaching the most delicate topics of race and sexuality, and had the guts, for example, to incorporate the “N word” into his work—not for nothing was his 1976 celebration of America called Bicentennial Nigger. What must have been an emotionally pulverizing childhood in a bordello in Peoria, Illinois, uniquely qualified Pryor as a subterranean spelunker of the human condition. Only someone inured to such pain could make us laugh about it so consistently.

On May 5, 1977, after several successful appearances on Saturday Night Live and a string of profitable movies, NBC gave Pryor an hour in prime time to put on a show of his choice—and the results were devastating. The show was called The Richard Pryor Special? and it included the most gut-wrenchingly honest and heart-breaking sketch I have ever seen—on what was ostensibly a comedy show.

The show started out on a confrontational note, as Audrey T. McCluskey described it in her edited volume Richard Pryor: The Life and Legacy of a “Crazy” Black Man:
 

The opening skit takes place on a slave ship with a whip-cracking captain played by Belushi doling out punishment to the captives. Pryor, a random slave, is given the additional punishment of having his own NBC special. In this short skit Pryor manages to compare his predicament in the white-controlled world of corporate television to slavery. Such barbs against television, particularly against its censorship of his material, characterized his work on network television.

 
You can see Pryor’s horrified reaction to the news that he has been condemned to hosting his own NBC special above. Pryor’s very affability cloaks the sheer gumption it must have taken to open his special with a sketch about slavery, now matter how amusing. I can’t remember Saturday Night Live doing all that many slavery sketches in the last ten years.

The most powerful sketch of the show was almost certainly the one revolving around Pryor’s drunk “Willie” character. The eleven-minute sketch starts out in a bar, where Willie is already on the verge of being asked to leave for his inebriated antics. He berates a few of the bar’s patrons, jawbones with the bartender (played by John Belushi) for a little while, and gets beaten up by the irate husband of one of the tavern’s drunken regulars. So far there have been a few genuine laughs, but it scarcely seems like a comedy sketch—it’s too trenchant and cuts way too deep about the nature of poverty and alcohol addiction. But the sketch is just getting going.

At this juncture Willie stumbles home and passes out on the couch in front of his wife—played by the astonishing Maya Angelou. The last four minutes of the sketch are a monologue by Willie’s wife as she apostrophizes the hapless, unconscious figure of Willie. Her soliloquy is a masterpiece of pain, understanding, despair, and forgiveness, a howl of anguish by the woman who loves him, the man whose poverty-driven tribulations and shame-fueled alcoholism have, it’s fair to say, ruined her life. It’s a bit of trenchant kitchen-sink racial commentary—I have never seen anything else like it on American TV, and don’t ever expect to see anything like it on American TV in the future.

Definitely watch the video below; it’s futile for me to capture its courage, honesty, and brilliance. It leaves me pole-axed every time.

Here’s a special thank-you advertisement that Angelou took out in the pages of Variety that was excavated by the indispensable Kliph Nesteroff:
 

 
According to Billy Ingram, The Richard Pryor Special? was a critical and ratings success, and it led to a regular series of Pryor’s own the following autumn—which lasted only four episodes. 
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Cocaine is a helluva drug: Richard Pryor jams with Sly Stone, 1974
Steve Martin and Richard Pryor on ‘The Tonight Show,’ 1978

This post comes from the Dangerous Minds archives and was originally published on August 8th, 2010, the 27th anniversary of Klaus Nomi’s death.

I met Klaus in the fall of 1977 in the lobby of the Cinema Village after a midnight screening of Eraserhead. We struck up a conversation about the movie and immediately hit it off. Wearing a black leather jacket, black jeans, black lipstick, black eye shadow and jet black, slicked back, widow-peaked hair, Klaus looked like an elegant punk vampire. But despite his dramatic appearance, Klaus was low-key and somewhat shy. I don’t know why we hit it off, but we did. He invited my girlfriend and me over to his apartment for the following night. He told us he was a pastry chef and wanted us to taste his creations. We readily accepted.

The next night when we arrived at Klaus’s apartment on St. Mark’s Place, he greeted us at the door wearing a chef’s apron. The smell of fresh baked pastry filled his small but impeccably neat home. We ate his delicacies and swooned. They were delicious. And while I felt comfortable in his presence, I also felt as if Klaus was not of this planet. There was something strange and alien about him, but benignly so. Klaus was an unusual being…which he would soon confirm.

While my girlfriend and I sipped wine, Klaus excused himself and disappeared into his bedroom. After about 15 minutes or so, he reappeared with a theatrical flourish in semi- drag, looking like a diminutive Diva: face made-up and wearing a red satin robe. He walked over to his stereo equipment, put a record on the turntable and started singing to an instrumental backing track, some kind of opera. He was stunning. His voice was sublime. I was witnessing something very special. His performance also explained why there were so many photos and paintings of Maria Callas in his apartment.

Later that night I told Klaus that I wanted to help him develop as a performer. I encouraged him to take the next step. The first thing I suggested was that he get a guitar and learn some basic chords. Singing to backing tracks was fine, but he needed to write original material and try to bridge the gap between high culture and rock and roll. I really believed he had the potential to be a star. I invited him to come to some of my band’s rehearsals and try his hand at singing with a rock group. It wasn’t a good fit, but it did loosen him up and point him in a direction that he would later follow.

One day Klaus called me and asked me to help pick out an electric guitar. I was thrilled. He was going for it.  We went to Manhattan’s music district and after several hours of shopping around, Klaus settled on a dark blue Fender Jaguar. He bought it and we went back to his pad and I showed him some basic chords. It didn’t take Klaus long to get the hang of E, A and D. When I left, he was already humming the beginnings of a song.

I never heard from Klaus again. No phone calls, nothing. I made a few attempts to contact him, but with no success. The next and last time I saw him was on Saturday Night Live singing back-up with Joey Arias behind David Bowie. Klaus was on his way to brief stardom. I felt sad to have lost my connection to him, but happy that I had managed to contribute in some way to his development as an artist.

Klaus died of AIDs five years after I met him. He was the first person that I knew to die of the disease. Tragically, the first of many.

A few months ago I asked Joey Arias about the blue Fender Jaguar. Was it still around?  Joey told me it had been sold after Klaus’s death. I was disappointed. I would have liked to have bought it myself as an Earthly memento of a friend who seemed to be visiting from another world, a world that perhaps he’s returned to.

Cold Song is a powerful live performance shot after Klaus was well into his illness. The second video is Klaus and Joey at work and play at Fiorucci in 1979.
 

 
Happy New Year, this is a post from the Dangerous Minds archives, originally published in 2009.

Whenever the discussion of a “favorite” movie comes up, my eyes glaze over. I’ve seen so many films that when pressed, exactly none of them stand out as a particular favorite. Not one. But when the favorite album question gets asked, Nick Cave’s first post-Birthday Party outing, From Her to Eternity comes immediately to mind.

To say that this album was a significant soundtrack to my ill-spent youth is a bit of an understatement. I listened to this record obsessively. I was a huge Birthday Party fan, but From Her to Eternity absolutely captivated my imagination. It was the most intelligent, most literate, most criminally insane rock music I’d ever heard, a quantum leap past everything else that was happening at the time. At the tail end of the post punk era, when once great bands—like the Psychedelic Furs, PiL and Ultravox to name but three—had lost their mojos in disheartening ways, Nick Cave became the standard bearer of intellectual cool in my late teen years. Talk about a dangerous mind, I thought Nick Cave was the baddest motherfucker alive.

True story: For the better part of 1983 and 1984, I lived in the south London neighborhood of Brixton. Today it’s a trendy area, but then it was anything but gentrified, its residents consisting of mostly poor West Indian immigrants, dreadlocked rastas and a small subset of squatters and junkies from all across the globe. I loved it there. One night I was exiting the Brixton tube station with my friend Sam when we were accosted by none other than Nick Cave, looking very much worse for wear, who politely asked us if we could direct him to where he could find some smack, please. (In truth, Cave didn’t ask “us,” he asked Sam, who looked all gothy and weird while I looked like what I was, a preppy, 18-year old American kid. He wasn’t addressing me at all, I was just standing there.)

Sam kindly pretended not to know who Cave was—oh he knew—just shook his head no and kept going. When we walked up the stairs and out of the station, he turned to me and said “That’s the second time he’s asked me that!”

I have always prided myself on my ability to be at the right place at the right time…

Cut to 1986. CDs had been on the market for a couple of years, but at that time it was still all stuff like Billy Joel, Tina Turner and Phil Collins that got released on the format. I was stomping around New York City with a Sony Walkman clamped to my ears and I was slowly beginning to understand the concept of hi-fidelity audio. I was curious about CDs, but there wasn’t that much there to lure me in just yet. Finally things I cared about started slowly trickling in, but it wasn’t until Kicking Against the Pricks, Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s third outing, an all covers collection, came out, that I decided to bite the bullet and buy a CD player (which used to cost $500!). If Kicking Against the Pricks on CD could sound even better than it did on the cassette version I’d been listening to, then sign me up.

The first 3 CDs I bought were Kicking Against the Pricks, Nancy Sinatra’s The Hit Years comp and the first Psychedelic Furs album. Later that day, eager to hear more of this newfangled digital audio, I bought Marc Almond’s Mother Fist and Her Five Daughters, Julian Cope’s World Shut Your Mouth and John Zorn’s Morricone tribute, The Big Gundown.

Cut to December 2009. Since about 2002 I had been buying multi-channel SACD and DVD-A audio discs, but since I had only a stereo system, I was just able to listen to the two channel versions of some of my favorite classic albums, but never the 5:1 mixes. Once again it was hearing that the Nick Cave catalog was coming out, remastered and in 5:1 that caused me to get antsy about upgrading the audio gear to a surround system. I’d managed to keep a lid on my once unparalleled ability to buy massive amounts of CDs for a good 3-4 years now and my lovely, but financially cautious wife, agreed to loosen the purse-strings for a major refurbishment of the home entertainment electronics.

Since it would be ridiculous for me to “review” an album I’ve already told you at the outset is probably my top, top favorite record, I’ll spare you the middle-aged fanboy rhapsodizing and instead concentrate (mostly) on the matter of the “Okay, I already own this CD, do I need to buy it again?” equation. In my case, in the past, I have purchased the album, the audio cassette and the CD of From Her to Eternity. The CD has always sounded amazing, how much better could it get?

Mute Records has been redoing certain major artists’ back catalogs (Depeche Mode, Can, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) with significant sonic upgrades in recent years. They do a consistently great job and these audiophile editions are quite good value for the consumer, especially ones with the high end audio systems to fully appreciate what’s on offer. It’s these consumers who are, let’s face it, just about the only dependable audience left anymore for the purchase of actual discs and it’s good business for Mute to cater to them. Aside from the new King Crimson releases (which sound amazing), Mute’s refurbishment of the Nick Cave catalog is one of the few major efforts in the audiophile arena, at least for pop music, this year or last. Jazz and classical see quite a few SACD, DTS and DVD-A releases each year, but the rock and pop category fewer and fewer. The pop marketplace seems largely to have abandoned the space. Even the Stones and Dylan SACDs have been replaced now with standard “red book” CDs. Considering that the Stones SACDs can rarely be found for less than $80 these days, used, it shows, once again, how short-sighted most of the record industry is. Then again it is the record industry, isn’t it? Visionary business practices are hardly what we’ve come to expect.

Which is what makes the Mute Nick Cave reissues all the more worth savoring. To answer the question posed above, are they worth buying even if you already own them on CD, the answer is a strong yes. They did a fine, fine job on these reissues, each one a 2 disc set, consisting of the album on a regular CD to play in the car or rip to iTunes, and a DVD with fantastic multi-channel versions of the album, in both Dolby 5:1 and DTS. As objects, they’re quite sweet to unwrap. Each of the albums comes in an ultra glossy gatefold sleeve with intelligent liner notes by Amy Hanson and graphics faithful to the original releases, but better. There is a multi-part documentary spread out over the span of the catalog called “Do You Love Me Like” I Love You directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. Key members of Cave’s orbit, well-known fans and writers—everyone but Cave himself (and Anita Lane)—are interrogated under harsh lighting not unlike a forensics video. Watching this film before listening to the music really whet my appetite to hear it afresh.

For an album that had always sounded so amazing, no matter what format, the improvement in sound quality would have to go some way, by my own personal subjective standards, to move the needle much on my jaded audiophile reviewer’s scale. When I got to the choice of which surround mode to listen in, I chose the Dolby 5:1 because it generally sounds better to me than DTS.

Simply put, the immersive aural experience of the multi-channel version of From Her to Eternity—supervised by Mick Harvey from the original recordings by Flood—blew my doors off. To stand inside the violent maelstrom of sound that is the Bad Seeds, with Blixa Bargeld’s anarchic slide guitar in that speaker, the skull-cracking thwap of the drums coming from behind, the rumble of Barry Adamson’s bass in the subwoofer, and hear it like you were in the studio with them, is something awesome and fearful to behold. The album is heavily percussive—whether the drums, piano, vibes or the guitars—there is a lot of banging on this record. If anyone knows how to record percussion, it’s Flood (who subsequently worked with U2 and Depeche Mode). The extra channels of audio give even more room ambiance and “air” around the various instruments. Far greater nuance is achieved here than would be possible in a stereo mix. The album is rife with moments where a sonic crack appears in the proceedings, and something crawls into your ear for a split second before scurrying off into the floorboards. Listening to From Her to Eternity in multi-channel caused me to think of the way Stockhausen often used a moment of dissonance to capture listener’s attention, although I doubt he was an influence here.

The real test came for me with the final song, “A Box for Black Paul.” An enigmatic narrative about the final resting place for a Baudelaire-esque character, when someone asks ‘what’s your favorite song?’ this one, like the album it’s from, comes in at my #1 spot. It’s the final tour de force on an album consisting of one wildly uncompromising tour de force after another. I stood in the middle of the room, in the multi-channel “sweet spot,” as it were, and listened. “A Box for Black Paul” is not a piece of music that anyone could listen to casually. It was stunning, exquisite. The sustain on Cave’s piano and the close-mike recording of his vocals truly sounded like you were in the room with him during the performance. By the time its nearly ten minute long running time had elapsed, I was limp, exhausted and exhilarated.

And that brings me to my final point about the new version of From Her to Eternity and why it is worth acquiring this edition even if you already own the admittedly already great sounding earlier CD. Although I stated at the outset of this essay that it was the first thing that came to mind when someone asked me what my favorite album was, it’s still not really something that, after 26 years, I pull out and listen to all that much. By offering the consumer such a rich package, the documentary, the extra tracks, the substantial liner notes, it achieves what releases of this sort should achieve, and that is to say, it allows the deep fan the chance to really immerse themselves in the music again and to hear it with fresh ears, like the first time they heard it. I must have played this album 30 times all the way through since I got it and when you can hear new things in music that is meaningful to you personally, this is a fun, great thing and actually worth supporting with your hard earned dough. I find it pretty difficult to get a hard-on for buying a regular CD anymore but I do find myself actually returning to the record stores and Amazon these days to look for multi-channel releases. If the record industry gets smart and starts to look at Mute’s quality repackaging of its major artists back catalogs as a model to emulate, maybe just maybe, they’ll coax more middle-aged rock snobs like myself back into the record stores. I wouldn’t bet on that happening or anything (!) but Mute should be singled out and commended for actually giving music fans a real value for their money.

Below, Nick Cave—and not the Bad Seeds exactly, but the Cavemen, as they were then called—live at The Electric Ballroom in London, November 1984.
 

 
I first encountered this in 2009, when I was writing for Emdashes, a website dedicated to The New Yorker magazine. It tickled me then, and it tickles me today still.

You may be hearing a lot of virtuous, communitarian, “generous” lists of resolutions today, but there’s another imperative that may take precedence, and that is to take care of Number One. Legendary American man of letters Edmund Wilson printed up a card to fend off the countless demands on his time and attention. Wilson’s approach is so stern and resolute that it can’t help being funny, which I think is how it was intended. Plus I think he often did end up doing lots of the items on his list, but the card represented a necessary intervention to secure his own sanity.

Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him to:

Read manuscripts,
Write articles or books to order,
Write forewords or introductions,
Make statements for publicity purposes,
Do any kind of editorial work,
Judge literary contests,
Give interviews,
Conduct educational courses,
Deliver lectures,
Give talks or make speeches,
Broadcast or appear on television,
Take part in writers’ congresses,
Answer questionnaires,
Contribute or take part in symposiums or “panels” of any kind,
Contribute manuscripts for sales,
Donate copies of his books for libraries,
Autograph books for strangers,
Allow his name to be used on letterheads,
Supply personal information about himself,
Supply photographs of himself,
Supply opinions on literary or other subjects.

At the top he’s written on this one, “I don’t live readings [sic] either unless I’m offered a very large fee.—E.W.”
 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
R. Crumb’s reject New Yorker cover art

There is a humorous recipe for “Martin Burgers” that Dean Martin came up with (grill some ground beef, pour a shot of bourbon, done!) that was posted by Letters of Note that reminded me of my own encounter with the legendary entertainer. It also involves hamburgers. And bourbon. It’s one of my favorite stories to tell. Gather ‘round, children…

This event took place in, I think, 1992, when I was 26 years old. I’d recently read Nick Tosches’ excellent biography of Martin, Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, and I was on a Dean Martin “kick” that culminated in me having a professional photo house make me a 6 ft. by 6 ft. photo mural of the above Dean Martin album cover (which Boing Boing’s Mark Fraunenfelder once described in Wired. I still have it, but it’s not hanging up).

I was absolutely fascinated by Dean Martin, the very definition of the devil-may-care roué who truly wasn’t impressed by anything or anyone. Beauty? He had more women than he knew what to do with. Fame? Come on. Money? Please! Dino didn’t care if you were the President of the United States, some hot piece of ass or the head of the Las Vegas Mafia. The man, to paraphrase the Super Furry Animals, simply did not give a fuck. Weltschmerz as an art form! Ennui deluxe! I reckon Dean Martin must’ve been the coolest man ever to live.

Janet Charlton, the Star magazine gossip columnist, seen frequently on Access Hollywood,  ET and similar shows back then, told me that Dean Martin—who was generally thought to be a complete recluse, sitting home drunk in an armchair watching movie westerns, basically—did in fact dine out nearly every night at the Hamburger Hamlet (an upscale LA burger chain) on Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills.

A few weeks after she told me this, Mike and Roni, two pals of mine from New York, arrived on my doorstep unannounced. They seemed quite amused by my gigantic Dean Martin album cover and when I told them that he was a regular at the Doheny Drive Hamburger Hamlet, we all three enthusiastically agreed that this was where we’d dine that evening. And we brought a camera.

I generally like the Hamburger Hamlet chain, but the one in Beverly Hills has got to be THE restaurant in LA with the oldest clientele, hands down. It’s the sort of place where grandparents take their grandchildren out to eat and the grandchildren are in their seventies. I’m talking OLD. Palm Springs old. Miami Beach old. A few of the faces seemed extremely familiar from sixties television, character actors who might have been on The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza or Green Acres, but who I could not place exactly due to the passing of years. What made walking into this place seem even more surreal is that it is merely a block away from all the rock clubs on the Sunset Strip.

So we get there and valet the car. I asked the maître d’, who must’ve been all of 19, if we could be seated near Dean Martin’s table. He took the money I put into his hand and looked at me like I was an idiot. Not a stalker mind you, but a complete idiot. “Oookay,” he whistled dismissively and rolled his eyes.

Martin was not there, he told us, but they did expect him. So we sat in the lobby and we waited. And waited. And waited. After looking at the grub the waiters were serving up, we decided he wasn’t going to show up and split to grab a steak at Dan Tana’s. As the valet handed me my car keys I asked him, “We heard that Dean Martin eats here all the time. When is a good day to see him?” He replied “Mr Martin? Oh, his chauffeur just phoned ahead, he’ll be here any minute.”

I tossed my keys back to him and we returned inside and were seated in the back section of the restaurant. Within a few minutes, the sultan of suave, secret agent Matt Helm, the roast-master general hisself, Dean Martin stumbled in, completely shit-faced. His eyes were bloodshot red and he looked old and he looked drunk. Very drunk. It was probably a very good thing that he could afford to employ a full-time driver, let’s just say…

As soon as he took his seat, the waiter slammed down several shots of bourbon and two beers in front of him. Dino downed two shots immediately and two more were placed in front of him in a flash.

We made our move before they brought his food out. Roni got her camera ready and asked politely, “Mr. Martin, can I get a picture of you with these guys? They’re big fans of yours!”

He looked at us like “Yeah, right” and replied quietly “Most of my fans these days are old broads.”

I told him about my giant 6 ft. mural of his album cover and that I was born and raised in Wheeling, WV, just across the Ohio River from Martin’s hometown of Steubenville, OH. He softened a bit and said “I remember Wheeling, WV. I used to swim there and mess around and hang out there when I was a boy.” (No matter how slowly I ask you to imagine this sentence being said, you’re going to make it faster in your mind than he spoke it. Pause after each word as if there is a period… or a wheeze).

Today Steubenville has dozens of things named after Dean Martin (they also hold a yearly Dean Martin festival). I asked him when was the last time he’d visited his hometown and he just snickered.

“Do you mind if we get a picture?” Roni asked again.

“I don’t think they allow that here,” he demurred, trying to avoid it.

“Who’s gonna stop us? Let’s just do it,” she replied.

Martin shook his head and exhaled with undisguised annoyance, parted his lips and clicked on a a very fake smile. Through his gritted teeth he said “Go ahead, I don’t give a shit.” Something about his manner let Mike and I know that he meant NOW, so we squatted beside his chair.

After the flash went off, his smile vanished, he looked down at his drink and completely ignored us. We knew this was our cue to leave and we took it. Outside his limo was waiting. It sported a vanity plate reading “DRUNKY.”

The story doesn’t end there: Two weeks later I get a package of two big prints of the photo and several smaller ones from Roni. I laughed my ass off, DELIGHTED at seeing this memento of our loopy encounter with Dino. I left them out on the kitchen counter and every time I walked past them I grinned and marveled at the fact that a photo existed with Dean Martin and ME in it.

Then the phone rang. It was Roni asking had I gotten the package. I was looking down at the picture when she asked me: “Did you notice that his…”

No, I hadn’t noticed it, but I did then: His pants had been unfastened and un-zipped old man-style so his gut could hang out and the camera had caught this!

The photo I had been admiring all day became a million times better before my very eyes.

But the story doesn’t end there, either: At the time, I was in the middle of writing a script with Kramer (he of Bongwater and Shimmy-Disc fame) and I gave him one of the larger prints, which he hung in his Noise New Jersey studio. Around this time, he and Penn Jillette had formed a band called Captain Howdy and they were doing a bit of recording. Apparently Penn asked Kramer who the old guy in the photo was, but he refused to believe it when told that it was Dean Martin. Eventually he relented, and the Captain Howdy song “Dino’s Head” was apparently inspired in part by the below photo (and Penn getting to use Dean Martin’s “special” German shower head when Penn & Teller were performing in Las Vegas, as is explained in the song).
 

Click on photo to view larger image.
 

 

It doesn’t end there, either. Last month, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher used the Dino photo in a bit comparing JFK to Reagan, as seen below

 
In Portugal the refuse collectors are on strike, so people are leaving their garbage outside the banks.

According to Euro News, the garbage has been “piling up on some of the streets of the Portuguese capital Lisbon – where refuse collectors have been on strike for three days over plans to privatise the sector.”

Unions representing the refuse collectors estimate 85% of the workers support the strike, which is due to end on 5th January.
 

 
Via Matt Bloom, H/T Trevor Ward

 
Warble in the new year with these eclectic renditions of the perennial classic, “Auld Lang Syne,” performed on theremins.  Why?  Because you know you want to! 

Anyway, I know I did. That’s why earlier today I did a quick web search, found a handful of “Auld Lang Syne” theremin gems and curated the group for your New Year’s listening pleasure. Here’s what I turned up:

This jazzy version:
 

 
This fabulous one:
 

 
This thing of odd, David Lynchian beauty:
 

 
This one, shot from above with singing accompaniment:
 

 
This headless robot playing theremin along with a flautist (really):
 

 
And then there’s this one, which is virtually unlistenable.  Actually, this version doesn’t quite count as it was performed on a KOOKALALY.  It’s what happens when a ukulele and a theremin join forces and, apparently, it was invented by the guy who posted the video: 
 

 
Be safe out there, people.  It’s a strange world. Happy 2014!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Drawdio: Turn Almost Anything Into a Theremin
Cats playing a Mini Theremin

 
If you didn’t have enough reasons to love Vincent Price, here’s one more.

Vincent Price loved animals, in particular dogs, and his favorite dog was the one he owned, a dog called Joe.

Vincent was so enamored with his four-legged pal that he wrote an entire book about him called The Book of Joe, in 1961, which begins as follows:

“This is a tale of how I went to the dogs or, to be numerically correct, to the dog. Now please do not expect this book to end with a glorious proclamation of rehabilitation. Not a chance. After fourteen years I’m incurably hooked on, intoxicated by, and addicted to - my dog Joe.”

I had never heard of Mr. Price’s foray into canine biography before, but now have it on my growing list of books I would like to read,  and going by some reviews on Good Reads, it sounds like a treat:

If you are ever lucky enough to find this out of print and rare book, you will be delighted by the WONDERFUL stories it contains. Told as elegantly and masterfully as only Vincent Price could tell. I could hear his distinct voice within every written word. A real rare gem for Vincent Price fans or Dog lovers in general.

This book tells not only the story of Joe but of other Price pets. Including apes, camels and roosters, just to name a few. The book is somewhat auto-biographical in nature as it relates to his love of animals. Sometimes sad but often hilarious, I laughed more often than I cried. I always enjoy a happy ending and so Mr. Price deliveres as the climax and ending becomes triumphant yet poignant.

This book helped me remember that the world lost not only a great Actor when Mr. Price died, but a loving husband, father, gourmet cook, art critic, and one of a dog’s best friends.

It appears Vincent Price’s The Book of Joe is a much sought after and rather difficult to find book, so I guess until I’m lucky enough to own a copy, I will have to make do with these charming ink drawings by artist Leo Hershfield, which illustrate Mr. Price’s book.
 

 

 
More from Vincent and Joe, after the jump…
 

 
When he was in exile in Zurich in 1916, the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin once visited the DADAist club Cabaret Voltaire. This according to performer and DADAist drummer Richard Hülsenbeck. Lenin was living in an apartment across from the club. He was busy writing his revolutionary plans for a future socialist Russia. The Cabaret Voltaire was founded by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings, with the intention of making it a cabaret for radical artistic and political purposes. It was also a focal point for refugees and conscientious objectors, who had fled to Switzerland to avoid fighting in the First World War. According to Ball, from his apartment Lenin would have certainly heard the music and noise that emanated from the cabaret.

Lenin considered himself quite the revolutionary, but what he thought when confronted with the noise and nonsense poems, the shouting and verbal abuse and the endless drumming, is open to conjecture. Was he confounded by DADA? Did he wonder whether this was perhaps how real revolution truly began? Indeed, were these performers more revolutionary than Lenin himself? Or, were they just privileged petty bourgeoisie play-acting at being bad-ass revolutionaries? It is tantalizing proposition to imagine. Lenin certainly did wonder about his revolutionary zeal, as he remarked one night in a conversation with the poet Valeriu Marcu:

”I don’t know how radical you are, or how radical I am. I am certainly not radical enough; that is, one must always be as radical as reality itself.”

DADA was like Punk, but without the Rock. It was subversive, dangerous and revolutionary. European DADA was originally created as a protest movement against war. It was formed by a small group of immigrants from Germany (Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Richard Hülsenbeck), Romania (Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara), and Austria (Walter Serner). These individuals were politically motivated, and wanted to express an new kind of mentality, a “destructive agitation against everything”:

No more painters, no more writers, no more musicians, no more sculptors, no more religions, no more republicans, no more royalists, no more imperialists, no more anarchists, no more socialists, no more Bolsheviks, no more politicians, no more proletarians, no more democrats, no more armies, no more police, no more nations, no more of these idiocies, no more, no more, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING.

Thus we hope that the novelty which will be the same thing as what we want will come into being less rotten, less immediately GROTESQUE.

DADA may have been a small movement, responding to the “moral bankruptcy” of the day, but its influence has touched upon almost all major artistic and cultural movements of the twentieth century.

Helmut Herbst’s 1968 documentary An Alphabet of German DADAism presents a comprehensive A-Z of the Germans artists and writers who contributed to DADA. Produced and directed by Helmut Herbst, with Hans Richter and Richard Hulsenbeck, featuring sound-artist Kurt Schwitters, satirist George Groz, and artist Max Ernst.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Kurt Schwitters performs ‘Ursonate’: ‘The Greatest sound poem of the 20th century’