In case you haven’t heard, this summer marks the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Oh yeah, that’s right—you probably have heard. On this very blog, in addition to Richard Metzger’s glowing review of the recent reissue, there’s also the terrific report from our own Oliver Hall on the curious fact that his grandfather, Huntz Hall of the Bowery Boys, is actually one of the gallery of famous faces on the album’s cover.

Sgt. Pepper’s is a common choice for “Greatest Album of All Time” and lots of people get tired of hearing about it for that very reason. It was and is an undeniably influential album, however, and one proof of that is the sheer number of musical artists who have imitated its cover art, which was cunningly executed for the occasion by Peter Blake and Jann Haworth.

The first band to do a prominent parody of the cover, of course, was the Mothers of Invention, whose third album We’re Only In It For the Money took an unmistakably sneering attitude towards the Fab Four’s latest world-beating project. (They even got Jimi Hendrix to pose for it with them. That’s not a Hendrix cut-outs, it’s Jimi. Zappa put out an invitation to several others, apparently, but only Hendrix showed up.)

If you’re in a band and you don’t know what to do for your next album cover, you can try this: Spell out something in flowers in front of a drum head with some flamboyant text on it, while a throng of notables gathers and poses for an unlikely group portrait. Pink Floyd bootlegs. The Simpsons have done it. The Sex Pistols have had it done to them. Hell, even Ringo Starr has done it (kind of…..). If nothing else you get extra points for “taking on the rock and roll establishment” because nothing is more established in rock and roll than the Beatles and Sgt. Pepper’s.

There are literally dozens of albums that have used this trick, but we’re only showing a small selection. To single out two of my favorites: For the identically titled 1977 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which presented electronic covers of six tracks from the Beatles’ original, Jun Fukamachi reversed many of the elements in the cover, including having the crowd of personages “pose” with their backs facing the camera, all of which added up to an intriguing “backwards” concept. Meanwhile, Macabre’s 1993 death metal album Sinister Slaughter replaced the likes of Mae West and Gandhi with various serial killers and mass murderers.
 

The Mothers of Invention, ‘We’re Only In It For the Money’
 

Ringo Starr, ‘Ringo’
 

Jun Fukamachi, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’
 

The Rutles, ‘Sgt. Rutters Only Darts Club Band’
 
Much more after the jump…....

 
To celebrate 50 years since the August 5, 1967 release of Pink Floyd’s debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Kyle Shutt, the guitarist from Austin, TX’s foremost stoner/doom-mongers The Sword, is releasing a complete cover of that seminal psych/prog band’s most popular album, The Dark Side of the Moon—by far a more metal-friendly album to rework than Piper.

The idea came to me after getting baked and wanting to hear a heavy version of “Time.” I thought, why not just cover the whole album? After sitting down and working out some loose concepts, the arrangement for “Money” materialized and I realized that I could totally do this if I assembled the right band.  It felt a little strange messing with someone’s legacy, but I’m treating it as a celebration of one of the greatest bands to ever rock, a party that everyone is invited to.

 

 
This is far from a new move—baby’s-first-prog-metal band Dream Theater has covered the entire album live, and a CD and DVD were released in the mid ‘oughts. Here’s a YouTube link to a live performance that’s probably my favorite Dream Theater thing I’ve heard. Make of that nugget of praise what you will.

Much more after the jump…

You can get it here.
 
Just in time for summer, it’s… penis squirt guns! Lock and load ‘em, or maybe lock ‘em and shoot a load, I guess? These are definitely not for children. Do adults even play with squirt guns? Well, if you happen to know of anyone who do, I think I’ve found the perfect gift. Loads of fun?

I have no idea about their “squirt range.” There’s not too much information about these guns, which seem fairly self-explanatory. I’m merely letting you know that they exist. Who knew?

I’ve linked where to buy underneath each image. Fairly inexpensive, they are, these penis squirt guns…

You can get it here.
 

You can get it here.
 
More after the jump…

 
If you have any trouble remembering, 2016 was the worst year of our lifetimes, as it featured the deaths of Prince, David Bowie, Merle Haggard, Leonard Cohen, and George Michael but much more pertinently, a victory for the “Yes” vote in the U.K. Brexit referendum in June as well as the election of the worst human being we could possibly find to be U.S. President in November. It was a tumultuous year to be sure, introducing U.S. observers not only to the concept of Donald Trump as an undeniably important political figure but an entire panoply of abhorrent political figures in Great Britain, including anti-Europe demagogue/liar Nigel Farage and current PM Theresa May.

When the debate is dominated by scuzzy vulgarians like Rupert Murdoch and Boris Johnson, their opponents will be obliged to resort to satirical measures that are less than…. dignified. Not that satire is usually very august or lofty, but these nitwits and assholes call for special tactics.

This will probably work better if you’re in Britain, but if you want to put up a fake prostitution advertisement in your town square, only featuring the comely/disgusting image of David Cameron, Donald Trump, or Theresa May on it, I urge you to visit the Wankers of the World website, where you can get any of these six posters for fifty pounds each. That’s a little pricy, sure, but for just 10 pounds you can get the “Political Whores Flyer Pack,” a full set of all six flyers that even comes with “a ball of Blu Tack so you can stick them up in your local phonebox or work toilet.” 
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Bones. This is what we come to once we’re dead and the soft tissue has gone. Bones. The sturdy architecture that shapes and protects our bodies. Most of us will end up as dust or ashes, or if very, very lucky, may one day become fossilized and exhibited in a museum as an example of a dumb 21st-century Homosapien. There’s nothing else once we’re dead. No seventy-two virgins (or is it dried fruit?), no Alleluia chorus, no wings and no harp, just the remnants of a structure that once held us together.

Humans are born with 270 bones which gradually fuse during childhood to become the 206 individual bones of adulthood. Bones are damned amazing things. They are tough, flexible, and protective. They are made of a composite of materials including collagen fibers and calcium phosphate. In 1733, William Cheselden (1688-1752) published his Osteographia or The Anatomy of Bones—a lavish and beautifully illustrated book of human and comparative osteology. It was the first fully accurate description of the human skeletal system. Cheselden was already renowned for his previous volume The Anatomy of the Human Body (1713) and now hoped to do for bones what he had done for the flesh.

Cheselden was a surgeon and teacher based in London. He was appointed surgeon at St Thomas’ Hospital in 1720 and then at St George’s Hospital in 1733. His specialty was in the removal of bladder stones, though he later became far better known for his work in eye surgery, especially the removal of cataracts. He was also surgeon to Queen Caroline. As a teacher, Cheselden wanted to share as much of his medical knowledge and experience as possible.

For the Osteographia, Cheselden employed two artists, Gerard Vandergucht and Jacob Schijnvoet, to illustrate the anatomy of bones. To ensure accuracy in the illustrations, Cheselden made use of a camera obscura which transposed the image of each bone onto paper for the artists to copy. However, many of the skeletons were presented in strange so-called realistic positions—for example the skeleton of a cat arching its back at the sight of an approaching dog, or a man kneeling down praying. This was achieved by wiring the skeletons into position, which more often than not detracted from any attempt at factual representation. Thus the book proved to be a failure, though today Cheselden’s Osteographia is considered one of the great historical works of art and science.

Those with an interest can view the whole book here.
 

 

 
More of dem bones, after the jump…
 

 
Somewhere along your personal journey of the universe’s space-time continuum, you stumble upon a mysterious Victorian house. You enter, with caution, as something puzzling has happened to the family who once lived there. Navigating the dizzying portals of this multi-dimensional, kaleidoscopic wonderland, you discover clues that will uncover an imaginative narrative.

Whoa, are you on acid? You are at Meow Wolf.
 
Opened in March of 2016, Santa Fe’s Meow Wolf is part jungle gym, part haunted house, part children’s museum, and part immersive art exhibit. The attraction, located on 2.6 acres in a former bowling alley, was funded by renowned fantasy writer and Game of Thrones author George RR Martin. It took just under two years for the 135 participating artists to create Meow Wolf’s mind-altering magnum opus, the 20,000 sq. foot explorable wonderland “House of Eternal Return.”
 

 
There is no map of or guide to the museum. Once you enter its front door, you must let your imagination take the reigns. The building contains seventy unique and immersive spaces, with an intended one-hundred hours of unique, non-linear discoverability of the home’s backstory. Take a look at some photos from the exhibit below, which features caves that uncover a mammoth skeleton, multiple treehouses, a secret fridge portal, playable laser harp, and a trippy 400-capacity music venue. Meow Wolf is located at 1352 Rufina Cir. Santa Fe, NM.
 

Welcome to the House of Eternal Return
 

 
More from Meow Wolf after the jump…

A naughty ‘needleporn’ creation by artist Zachary Nutman.
 
When I first came across the needlepoint of artist Zachary Nutman I could hardly contain myself. Not only are Nutman’s needlepoints, or “needleporn” as Nutman calls them, expertly executed, they are also so completely NSFW that I just want to hand the four-letter warning to Nutman as a prize for his efforts in presenting hardcore scenes of queer sexual interludes using a craft generally associated with your grandma or someone who owns way too many cats.

The young New York-based artist left London when he was twenty and enrolled in film school at New York University. Now 22, Nutman has created more than 30 pieces of queer-oriented needlepoints, many which can take the young artist a staggering 100 hours of work to finish. Much like Touko Valio Laaksonen—better known as the artist Tom of Finland, whom many consider to be one of the very most influential contributors to gay fetish art—Nutman says he isn’t aware of any kind of scenario he would shy away from when it comes to creating his needlepoints. The artist also gets lots of requests from his fans to make customized needlepoints depicting sexual scenarios that involve their partners, so that they can hang on their walls. Awww. All of the work Nutman has done to date are one-of-a-kind, and I’ve featured a large selection of his gloriously-porny needlepoints for you to ogle below.
 

 

 
Much more of Zachery Nutman’s needleporn after the jump…

 
This is one of those “Not the Onion” posts as this actually did happen on June 2, 2017. Meet Alberta-based Theunis Wessels who thought it was more important to mow his damn lawn than to seek shelter from the terrifying looming tornado right behind him.

Theunis’ wife, Cecilia, captured the image as her husband mowed the lawn.

According to Theunis, the tornado was actually far away and was no real threat to him. “It looks much closer if you look in the photo, but it was really far away. Well, not really far, far away, but it was far away from us,” he said.

“I was keeping an eye on it.”

That is some determined commitment to household chores. A dangerous mind indeed… if a danger to himself?

via Times Colonist

 
It was the summer of 1978, and though his first album, For You, had just been released, Prince was already pursuing other endeavors. Acting on a tip concerning a local talent, Prince went to a performance by a sixteen-year-old singer named Sue Ann Carwell. After the show, he asked her if she’d be interested in a project. Carwell was into the idea, so Prince went about writing and recording for her at his home studio.
 

Sue Ann Carwell.

In his 2004 biography, Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince, author Alex Hahn wrote about the Carwell undertaking, which was the first time Prince played the role of Svengali:

From the start, Prince conceived of Carwell as a solo artist whom he would guide from behind the scenes. As he wrote for her, he consciously sought to adopt a female perspective, both in terms of the lyrics and the sound. The coy and bouncy “Wouldn’t You Love To Love Me,” for example, was written from the viewpoint of a woman being pursued by a male suitor. Prince became excited about the potential of a Carwell side project and planned to take a demo of the material to Warner Bros. He began concocting an image for her and proposed that she adopt the name Susie Stone. She balked at the whole enterprise, however, not wanting to have her career co-opted.

It’s also been speculated that the plan was aborted once it was determined that the songs Prince composed for Carwell sounded too similar to his own tunes. Prince’s demos for the two tracks that have been leaked bear this out, as they would’ve been right at home on For You.
 
Much more after the jump…

 
Fidget spinners are the latest inexplicable toy fad, the popularity of which most adults find absolutely confounding.

Parents who fail to remember their disappointment when their own parents bought them a “Rybick’s Cube” or a “Lettuce Patch Doll” or a “Beeny Baby” may make the mistake of picking up a “Widget Spinner” or a “Whirlerz.”

In the tradition of Nightmare Feddy, Robert Cop, and Anna Montana, here’s a collection of sorry knock-offs from the “Crappy Off Brands” Reddit page. 

Spot the difference and survive.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…