‘Pets’ poster for sale 40% off at Westgate Gallery

There’s never been a better time to add a multi-region Blu Ray player to a 65” flat-panel TV and program your own private repertory theater/grindhouse. Along with medical marijuana, the avalanche of uncut, HD-remastered transfers of formerly obscure cult titles available to subject your friends and houseguests to, or obsessively watch and rewatch alone in total silence, almost makes up for nothing else today being as good as it was in the 1970s and 80s.

The selection of posters here are for sale at Westgate Gallery which has a 40% sale going on right now!
 

‘Last House on the Left,’ Italian 1-sheet poster for sale at Westgate Gallery

The last word on Wes Craven’s 1972 debut The Last House On the Left is the massively loaded 2-disc/3-cut Arrow box-set of the first post-Manson/Vietnam War horror classic, which cribbed the basic plotline of Bergman’s Virgin Spring for an amalgam of Nixon-era parents’ worst nightmares — hippies, rock concerts, reefer, slutty bad-influence BFF’s, NYC — personified by the shockingly well-acted trio of villains (David Hess, Jeramie Rain, Fred Lincoln) whose blood-soaked antics still pack a queasy punch.
 

‘The Killing Kind’ Italian 4F poster for sale at Westgate Gallery

B-movie cult director Curtis Harrington is at his overheated, dysfunctional, fagnificent best in The Killing Kind, a 1973 psycho-biddy treat in which cuddly paroled sex-offender John Savage moves back into overbearing mom Ann Sothern’s L.A. boarding house and runs afoul of ballsy judge Ruth Roman and ingenue trio Cindy Williams, Luana Anders and Faster Pussycat Kill Kill’s Sue Bernard… Vinegar Syndrome has a limited edition out for Halloween. 
 

Rare Japanese ‘Sisters’ poster for sale at Westgate Gallery

The two best conjoined-twin horror films make a great BD double-feature (we suggest as a warm-up an episode of the bizarro reality show about that poor precious two-headed girl in Minnesota):  Brian DePalma’s witty, twisted Sisters (1973, Criterion) with underrated Margot Kidder as separated sibs Danielle and Dominique and American Horror Story/Nip Tuck writer Jennifer Salt as the spunky columnist from the Staten Island Panorama out to solve a murder mystery and Frank Henenlotter’s 1982 Basket Case, a valentine to the Deuce at its scuzziest, this outrageously endearing Skid Row sickie is that rare gem from childhood that’s even better than you remember in a great stacked Arrow release… 
 

‘City of the Living Dead,’ Italian 2F poster for sale at Westgate Gallery

Arrow’s also about to unleash majorly upgraded special editions of two beloved Italian frightfests, Lucio Fulci’s splatter-classic dress rehearsal for The Beyond, City of the Living Dead aka Gates of Hell (1980) — don’t go in looking for logic, narrative sense or competent dubbing, just immerse yourself in 90 minutes of visually ravishing wacked-out waking nightmare, crammed with unforgettable macabre imagery and still-eye-popping makeup effects…
 
More grindhouse sleaze after the jump…

A shirtless Nicolas Cage lying inside of a banana peel. Get it here. 
 
I’ve seen Cage’s latest cinematic masterpiece of WTF, Mandy at least three times since its release last month. If we have learned anything from Nicolas Cage during his long acting career it is this—never count the man out. Cage has been everything from hero to anti-hero, and even had a short run as a tasty Japanese snack. He’s been a loser, a winner, a punk, a prisoner, a terrifyingly authentic drunk, and most recently a relentless backwoods lumberjack out for revenge.

Of course, a large part of society’s younger members became acquainted with Cage’s incredibly emotive face thanks to a legendary meme of the actor giving us his best crazy face in a scene from the 1988 film Vampire’s Kiss. The Nic Cage “You Don’t Say!” meme is almost as famous as the actor himself and to prove this point, many of the items featured in this Cage-centric post use this image of Nic as well as a variety of others for pillows, bedding and yes, even wallpaper. If you’ve ever wanted to hug a pillow with a photo of a shirtless Nic Cage sitting inside a banana peel (gloriously pictured at the top of this post), then goddammit this is your lucky day.

All of the items in this post can be yours for about twenty bucks or so depending on how deep your love for Nicolas Cage is. I’ve included links below each image in case you just realized how incomplete your life is because you don’t own a fleece blanket with Cage’s mug eerily photoshopped with the Declaration of Independence. Some images might be slightly NSFW.
 

Nicolas Cage mashed up with the Declaration of Independence fleece blanket. Get it here.
 

Nicolas Cage hugging a rainbow. Squeee! Get it here.
 
More Nic Cage merch, after the jump…

Bon Scott pictured with two very excited female fans while arriving at Melbourne Tullamarine Airport, November 27, 1976. Around this time rumors were circulating about young female fans of AC/DC giving each other home tattoos around Melbourne trying to look like Bon (Scott had at least six tattoos).
 
If you think you know the story behind AC/DC‘s riffy homage to a certain big, bad girl “Whole Lotta Rosie,” you might want to hold on as the author of Bon: The Last Highway Jesse Fink goes into even more detail regarding the actual identity of Rosie, with a little help. On The Last Highway blog, Fink discusses the many mythological tales about Rosie, including accounts from brothers Angus and Malcolm, three journalists and respected rock historians, Sylvie Simmons, Phil Sutcliffe (also known as Mike Stand), Mary Renshaw, and Scott himself. Let’s dig into the gritty details of this late-70s backstage, no-tell-motel sleaze, shall we?

In support of Angus Young’s claim of Scott’s preference for dangerously curvy women, both Angus and Simmons recall a regular groupie duo of Bon’s; Angus called them the “Jumbo Twins” and Simmons—who spent a lot of time with the band during the Bon era, referred to them as the “Jumbo Jets.” Another of Angus’ memories of Scott running into Rosie was when the band was in town to play a show in Tasmania in 1976. Angus says after the show the band took to the streets looking to keep the good times rolling when Bon was approached by a woman in a dark doorway—a very large woman which Angus estimated to have the following famous measurements; 42-39-56. Scott happily entered the room and joined the woman and her friend for the night.
 

A vintage ad for AC/DC’s 1977 live album, ‘Let There Be Rock’ using 34 unique words to describe the band.
 
Sutcliffe’s version is slightly different than both Angus’ and Simmons’. Sutcliffe says things went down in the dressing room of Malcolm Young after a show August of 1976. Malcolm and Bon had hooked up with two girls, one of them they nicknamed “Big Bertha,” yet another interlude with a roomy woman many would come to believe was Rosie. Bon said this Bertha/Rosie would have “broken his arm” if he had refused her advances, so he complied. In a 2003 interview, Malcolm told the story, calling the woman “Big Rosie.” Now, let’s get to the story of Rosie told by the late Bon Scott (as noted by Fink on his blog) which is taken from an audio track included on the 1997 box set Bonfire named after Bon’s promise to call his first solo record by the same name. Scott recalls things went down with Rosie (on more than one occasion it seems) at her place where he and the band would often party just across from the Freeway Gardens hotel in North Melbourne. On Bonfire Bon gives us the low-down on getting down with Rosie:

“We were all staying in the same hotel and this chick Rosie lived across the road. She was so big she sort of closed the door and put it on ya’, half your body, and she was too big to say no to. Then she used to look up and see what band was in town and say “hi over there boys” and we’d go over and have a party. She came to one of our shows, she was from Tasmania actually, and she was in the front row. She was like 6’2 and like 19 stone 12 pounds (around 266lbs). That girl was some mountain. So you can imagine the problems I had. So I just sorta had to succumb … I had to do it. Oh my God, I wish I hadn’t.”

Yeah, the old “taking one for the team” isn’t fooling anyone, Bon. We know you liked big butts and we love you for it. Corroborating Bon’s arm-twisting sexy-times story are both AC/DC roadie, Pat Pickett (Pickett has been quoted as saying he was responsible for an “orgy” involving Rosie, Scott, and others and also knew Rosie personally), and author of the 2015 book on AC/DC, Live Wire, Mary Renshaw. Attempts have been made to find Rosie but have never turned up even so much as a concrete lead though there seems to to be no lack of people claiming to know the real Rosie or to have seen the elusive, show-stealing woman.

If you’ve ever seen AC/DC live, you’ve maybe seen the gigantic, inflated Rosie prop used by the band when they kick into “Whole Lotta Rosie” with her bright blonde hair and red lingerie. I’ve also seen a cool vintage embroidered patch of Rosie in all her glory, but never a photo of anyone with Bon (or other members of AC/DC) who looked even remotely like the girl described in the song. Does this mean Rosie was conjured up through the collective memories of Angus Young and others due to Bon’s interludes with various lusty, bodacious women? Let’s me put it to you this way; Bon Scott said Rosie was real. His version is gospel. Period. The End. 

Footage of AC/DC from 1979 during a live gig in Paris ripping “Whole Lotta Rosie” apart follows. It includes an appearance by a very talented AC/DC roadie.
 

An embroidered patch of Rosie from the early 90’s.
 

 
I’m a huge Soft Cell/Marc Almond fan and I have been ever since “Tainted Love” was a hit and their memorable 1982 Solid Gold TV appearance—where Marc beat the stage with a leather belt and generally camped it up bigtime—caused my father to become visibly agitated and angry. It was an incredibly subversive thing to see on such a goofy middle-of-the-road disco hits program—one that usually followed The Lawrence Welk Show or Hee-Haw on Saturday evenings, depending on where you lived—and I wholeheartedly approved.

From that point on, I had every Soft Cell album, EP, 12” remix, book, VHS, fan club issue, bootleg, you name it. I still have them all along with practically every Marc-related release, Dave Ball’s solo album, everything by The Grid and many things produced or remixed by Dave Ball. I even own the entire discography of Vicious Pink Phenomena. In short, I am not only qualified to properly evaluate their new career-summing box set Keychains and Snowstorms: The Soft Cell Story, I am squarely within the fanboy Venn diagram that this exhaustive compilation is meant to appeal to. Truly I am the target audience for this product by any metric.

Admittedly after the above preamble, it will probably come as no surprise to anyone who has read this far to find that I’m absolutely unashamedly nuts about this compilation. If you’ve only ever heard “Tainted Love” and are intrigued enough to still be reading, this box set might be for you. I’m admittedly biased but I think it’s the best thing I’ve heard all year. Let me count the ways…
 

 
Soft Cell were—and still are—practically unknown in America. However true that statement might be, everyone in this entire country aged nine to 99 knows “Tainted Love” as it’s still played on oldies radio and in drugstores, shopping malls and supermarkets nationwide on a daily, even hourly basis. It’s playing in a CVS or a Walgreens location somewhere in America—if not several of them—right this very second. “Tainted Love” has never left the outer periphery of popular awareness since it first hit the American top ten in 1982. That song has a uniquely ubiquitous pop culture persistence, a staying power rivaled only by the likes of something by Fleetwood Mac or the Beach Boys, even if virtually no one on this side of the Atlantic has ever heard a second song by the duo who recorded it or could name the group themselves. (The more culturally savvy might have noticed the heartbreaking use of quite a long swatch of “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” in the big final scene of series two of Master of None.) Anyway, think of that as an opportunity. If you are looking for something “new” to listen to, look no further.

It’s TEN discs. Freaking TEN discs from a band who have only released four proper albums in their career and if you already own those albums—and every Soft Cell fan does—almost nothing from those albums is repeated here. (The exception is that their 2001 reunion album, the annoyingly overlooked Cruelty Without Beauty—one of the finest “comeback” albums I can think of—is excerpted heavily here with the strongest tracks present plus three great numbers left off the album that would have made it an even better release. As few heard this album, I agree with this approach. Those songs are worthy and should be heard.)

There is very little (none really) overlap with last year’s similarly packaged Marc Almond career box. Speaking of, the packaging is glossy, sturdy and first rate. The design, by Philip Marshall, is elegant and slick. The extended essay by Simon Price is terrific, even someone who has followed the duo from the start will find much new information and insight into the creation of their music and the insanity of being shoved to the forefront of the global music industry the way these two were. It’s a great story, well told and a thoroughly good read.
 

 
Here’s a rundown of what’s on each disc.

Disc #1 has each of the 12” extended versions of their Phonogram singles. With most acts, this sort of thing holds no interest for me, however with Soft Cell the opposite is true. Their extended mixes had additional verses, and new instrumentation. Ball didn’t merely slice and dice their music like everyone else, he resculpted it and redid it in a radically different fashion from the 7” and album versions. I tend to hate remixes and find them generally speaking pretty useless as a listener, but not here.

Disc #2 has the B-sides from these 12” singles. They might have only released three albums during their first incarnation, but they actually did release a fair amount of material during their brief run, issuing several extended EPs and their B-sides were never throwaways… (“Tainted Dub/Where Did Our Love Go?” which leads off this disc is included in the Spotify playlist below selected by yours truly, along with several more tracks from this disc. Note the two John Barry compositions—“You Only Live Twice” and “007 Theme”—and Barry’s obvious influence on Dave Ball and the Soft Cell sound.)

Disc #3 consists of new extended mixes of less obvious tracks by Ball that utilize, with rare exception, solely the original master tapes from the era. I didn’t expect to like this disc as much as I did, but I did like it, very much. It also made a lot of sense in the overall sequencing of the set. It might seem like a daft comparison but the way the music is broken down into its component parts and reassembled throughout this entire set reminds me of Yabby You’s Conquering Lion album in the way that the constant repetition of certain themes and phrases start to sound almost like a symphony of sorts. The mixes here sounds “analog” and not like something some smartass did on a laptop.
 

 
Disc #4 is the “curios” collection and includes the early classic “The Girl With the Patent Leather Face” along with things like their incredible “Hendrix Medley” (“Hey Joe”/“Purple Haze”/“Voodoo Chile” done ala Soft Cell will fry your mind) and the harrowing “Martin” based on the George Romero creepy loner vampire film. All of these, and the 7” edit of “Numbers”—AS IF a song based on a John Rechy novel was going to get played on the radio!!!—are included in the playlist below.

Disc #5 collects demos, early punky DIY experiments, some things recorded with MUTE’s Daniel Miller and their first release the Mutant Moments EP.

Disc #6 collects various radio sessions and the strongest tracks from their 2001 reunion album Cruelty Without Beauty. Also included are three additional tracks from those sessions that were not selected for the album, but perhaps should have been. “God Shaped Hole” is one of the best Soft Cell songs, period, so why was it left to languish on an obscure Some Bizarre compilation? (Listen for yourself as it’s included, along with their excellent cover of Frankie Valli’s “The Night,” in the playlist below.)
 

 
Much more after the jump…

The Italian sleeve of the Blue Maxi’s 1970 single (via Discogs)
 
Keyboardist Dave Greenfield had been playing in rock and roll bands for over a decade when he joined the Stranglers in 1975. I have not yet managed to hear the pre-Stranglers groups the Initials (pictured below), Freeway or Credo, but Greenfield’s old prog band Rusty Butler, whose name suggests a particularly arcane and challenging sex act, has a few tracks up on this YouTube channel, and a record survives by a combo called the Blue Maxi.
 

The Initials in Germany, 1967; Dave Greenfield on organ at far right (via SMART)
 
Here’s what the Stranglers’ “authorised,” “uncensored” and way out-of-print biography No Mercy has to say about Greenfield’s early years in music:

Dave left school at 17 before his A levels, and spent the whole of his 18th year in Germany playing covers at gigs in American bases and civilian clubs. The next half-a-dozen years or more were spent travelling to and from the continent, working in England to raise the capital to finance a music career in Germany. In the late 60s and early 70s, Germany was home to some of the greatest talents in the pantheon of rock – Kraftwerk, Can, Faust, Cluster and Tangerine Dream . . . But Germany was also an important market for more mainstream pop acts and had a booming club circuit, ideal for both the journeyman professional or the ingénue keen to learn his or her trade. Back in Brighton in the frequent gaps between tours, he earned some extra cash tuning piano and mastering the now out-of-date technique of compositing for his Dad’s printing firm. Like JJ, he also developed something of an infatuation with motorcycles, although his interest has not maintained the Burnel proportions of idolatry still in evidence to this day. Dave was the only one of the band who was a true musician before becoming a Strangler and, in his spells in the UK had worked professionally in groups such as The Initials, Rusty Butler, and Credo.

 

The French sleeve of the single (via Discogs)
 
In 1970, Greenfield played on the Blue Maxi’s lone 45, a bubblegum (psych-pop?) cover of Jerry Keller’s 1958 teenage idyll “Here Comes Summer,” released on the Major Minor label. Greenfield’s organ is lower in the mix than it is on the Stranglers’ records, but that’s unmistakably him pictured on the sleeve of the French single, third from the left, flashing a peace sign. To my ears, the Blue Maxi sounds like it would have been at home on Buddah Records. Enjoy its sunny, uncomplicated groove below.

 
By 1981, KISS was on the ropes. Due to a number of factors, including the release of two pop-oriented albums, the group had alienated much of the KISS Army. In an attempt to revitalize their carrier, the decision was made to go big with the type of LP that would impress both critics and rock fans: a concept album. There was the belief amongst some in the KISS camp that the record would be a critical success and a commercial blockbuster. But it was ultimately neither—it bombed. Years later, long after the failure of what’s remembered as KISS’s weirdest album, something surprising happened: an ambitious musical based on the LP was staged by an American high school.

KISS should be given some credit for at least trying something different with their 1981 concept album, Music From ‘The Elder’, but those who pushed for the band to go in this direction—Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, and producer Bob Ezrin—didn’t go far enough. It was shortsighted and naïve to think that the record’s formulaic story of a “hero’s journey,” which was half-assed in execution, was going to both win over a press that had consistently dismissed KISS, and appeal to those who bought that recent blockbuster concept album Pink Floyd’s The Wall (which Ezrin produced). To make matters worse, the powers that be at KISS’s label, Polygram, didn’t believe in the project. The suits insisted that the two tracks they thought would have the most impact in the singles market (“The Oath,” and “A World Without Heroes”) be moved to start each side of the LP, which KISS agreed to. With those changes, an album that was already hard to follow was made effectively impenetrable. 
 

 
When Music From ‘The Elder’ was released in November 1981, all it really did was confuse everyone. Most critics, remaining KISS fans, and those in the general public still paying attention, couldn’t understand why KISS would release such a record. The album sold poorly, and the band abandoned the project by March 1982 or so. Guitarist Ace Frehley was against the concept album idea from the beginning, and was so frustrated by the entire Elder endeavor, that it contributed to his eventual departure from KISS.
 

Japanese picture sleeve.

Initially, a lavish tour was planned, as well as subsequent albums continuing the concept. The three principals had such blind faith in the The Elder, that the record’s success was considered a foregone conclusion. When Music From ‘The Elder’ ends, there is the implication that what you have just heard is only “part one” of the story, and even the title of the LP alludes to the eventuality of a film. This makes the failure of the project that much greater, as there obviously was the belief that Music From ‘The Elder’ was only the beginning.

Over the years, Simmons and Stanley have dissed the album, stating that it was the completely wrong approach for KISS, and admitting that their egos got in the way. They have seemed embarrassed by the album and its commercial bombing, and given the impression that they wish the record would just disappear from their discography.
 

Italian picture sleeve.

Surprisingly, a cult surrounding Music From ‘The Elder’ has grown over the years. While many fans of the group either don’t like the album or are simply unaware of its existence, there is a portion of their fanbase that delights in the oddity of the record. Simmons and Stanley first appeared to warm to The Elder during their acoustic tour of KISS conventions in 1995. “A World Without Heroes” was consistently a part of their set and was included on the Unplugged album. When convention audiences shouted out requests for Elder songs, the band would often attempt to play the material, seemingly bemused by the overwhelming positive responses.
 
Much more after the jump…

 
Les dents du singe (The Monkey’s Teeth) is the directorial debut of René Laloux, the animator who made Fantastic Planet and Time Masters. This, his first short, came out of the experimental La Borde clinic at Cour-Cheverny. As supervisor of artistic activities at La Borde, Laloux staged therapeutic puppet shows with the resident malades mentaux during the years before he gave them their big break in the motion picture business. 

According to his obit in Positif, Laloux and his patients were aided in writing the screenplay for Les dents du singe by Félix Guattari, later the co-author of a number of influential books with the philosopher Gilles Deleuze; the group’s screenwriting method was something like a combination of “automatic writing, exquisite corpse, and Jung’s tests.” In 1960, Guattari was working at La Borde as a therapist. He had been drawn to the clinic by its founder, the Lacanian psychiatrist Jean Oury.

The biography Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives conveys a sense of life at La Borde:

Oury baptized his clinic as soon as it opened in April 1953, writing a constitution that he dated Year I (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the French Revolution) and that defined the three guiding principles for this collective therapeutic undertaking. The mangers were protected by democratic centralism, reflecting the Marxist-Leninist ideal that was still popular in the year of Stalin’s death. The second principle reflected the idea of a communist utopia whereby each staff member would alternate between manual labor and intellectual work, which effectively made any status temporary. Tasks were assigned on a rotating basis: everyone in the clinic switched from medical care to housekeeping, from running workshops to preparing theatrical activities. The last principle was antibureaucratic, so things were organized in a communitarian way whereby responsibilities, tasks, and salaries were all shared. Although the term “institutional psychotherapy” had not yet been coined, many of its themes were already in evidence: spatial permeability, freedom of movement, a critique of professional roles and qualifications, institutional flexibility, and the need for a patients’ therapy club.

Hollywood has not yet produced many tales about bike-riding simians meting out justice at the dentist’s office, but I expect we’ll see a “reboot” of The Monkey’s Teeth before long.

 
via Reddit

 
Recently, I was saddened to learn that Johnny Strike, singer/guitarist for the pioneer punks, Crime, had passed away. Crime’s debut 45 came out in 1976—Year Zero for Punk Rock—and bursting from the grooves was a raw ‘n’ ramshackle combination of ‘60s garage rock and Raw Power-era Stooges. A few years later, Crime refined their sound, embracing new wave. When they disbanded in the early ‘80s, Strike and another member of Crime formed a group that took what the late period lineup had been exploring to a place that was both darker and more mysterious. Recordings were made, but an LP never materialized. That’s about to change.

It was late in the summer of 1979 when Crime found themselves in need of a bass player. Joey D’Kaye, who had been their sound guy/roadie, was recruited to fill the role. As the band changed direction, D’Kaye switched to the synthesizer. Crime’s third single reflected their new sound, though this would prove to be the group’s final release.
 

 
By 1982, Crime was finished, but Strike and D’Kaye decided they still wanted to work together. The two had similar interests, including soundtracks to science fiction films and electro-punk–elements they’d incorporate into their next venture. Initially called the System, the duo recorded their synth-based tunes from 1983-84, laying down enough material for an album. In ’84, after they changed their name to Vector, a tape of their demos received some Bay Area radio airplay, but nothing more became of the recordings. Soon, Strike and D’Kaye were being pulled in different directions, and the two went their separate ways.
 

 
It would be decades before Strike and D’Kaye would dust off the tapes they had made in the ‘the ‘80s and begin preparing them for release. Though it’s taken some time to make it happen, HoZac Records is about to put out an LP. Credited to Vector Command, System 3 is a collection of creepy, atmospheric tracks that are strangely danceable (think dark wave). Some songs are more experimental, resembling sci-fi/horror film scores. One number, “E.M.W.,” is a remake of Crime’s weirdest tune (it was originally called “Emergency Ward Music”). It dates from a 2001 session, in which Strike and D’Kaye briefly revived the project. The track was the perfect Crime number for the duo to tackle, and sits comfortably amongst the ‘80s recordings on System 3.

Dangerous Minds has the web premiere of “E.M.W.”
 

 
Vector Command’s System 3 LP will be released on October 19th. The first pressing is limited to 500 copies. Pre-order yours here.
 

 
Towards the end of his life, Johnny Strike reunited with Joey D’Kaye, along with fellow Crime alum, Hank Rank, to form the group Naked Beast. In 2017, they released their self-titled album.

A 1980 live clip of the synth-era Crime reveals the band in a state of transition. Strike and fellow guitarist/vocalist, Frankie Fix, are wearing DEVO-inspired outfits, while the other members, including D’Kaye, are still wearing the garb the band was known for donning—police uniforms. They’re playing an unreleased number known as “Space Face,” which is an update of an older song of theirs, “Samurai.”
 

 
Tiny Tim is one of the great eccentrics of the classic era of rock. Born Herbert Buckingham Khaury, he was a pretty dorky tween, holing up at the New York Public Library learning about the ancient heroes of the early days of recorded music and learning how to play the violin, the mandolin, and (of course) the ukulele. His first album, God Bless Tiny Tim, is a classic of a sort and featured the only song he would ever become famous for, “Tip-Toe Thru’ The Tulips With Me,” a song that dates from the 1920s.

He sang with a falsetto and for many years was pretty much the only human being actively associated with the uke. He had terrible teeth and terrible hair and never, ever seemed to lose his sunny disposition about just about everything. If you check out pictures of him online, he sure did smile a lot, and it didn’t seem remotely like a put-on.

For reasons that are impossible to reconstruct from this distance, his 1969 marriage to Victoria Budinger was a gargantuan sensation—it happened on The Tonight Show and it landed the best ratings in the history of that show—including Johnny Carson’s final show in 1992.

Tiny Tim is a picture-perfect one-hit wonder, but the issue with such figures is, what do you do for the next 30 years of your life? Various people have tackled that issue in different ways. Tiny Tim did not release a huge amount of material but did release several albums, most of which centered on renditions of decades-old curios and self-consciously odd covers of far more recent material. Interestingly, most of his covers dispense with both the falsetto and the ukulele, relying on regular rock guitar and a surprisingly rich and deep vocal style.

God Bless Tiny Tim featured a cover of Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” with Tiny Tim singing both parts, of course. It’s as odd a cover as you’re likely to find, but certainly not unpleasurable to listen to. Another early cover that featured a canny blending of falsetto and non-falsetto parts was his version of the Doors’ “People Are Strange,” which he recorded as a demo; it appeared on Rhino’s 3-CD reissue of God Bless Tiny Tim.
 

 
In 1980, for an album called Chameleon, Tiny Tim essayed a cover of the recent smash hit “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees, a song that is also notable for featuring falsetto singing, which Tiny Tim didn’t use in the cover. You can find a quote online from Maurice Gibb that runs, “Tiny Tim? Anyone could sing like that. It’s atrocious. It’s hideous, really.” Ouch. I don’t know the facts of the matter, but I would imagine Maurice probably said that back when Tiny Tim was first a sensation—in any case, it’s fun to imagine Tiny Tim doing the cover as a cheeky form of revenge/solidarity.

At some point Tiny Tim perceived the tender underbelly of a certain kind of rock song that he could totally do something with. In 1993 he released an album called Rock, the second half of which is consumed mainly with jukebox hits from the 1950s. But the first half tackles three songs that might be considered classics of the arena rock era, AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name,” and Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell.” All of them are quite listenable, although the Billy Idol cover stands out for being in excess of 20 minutes long! Your imagination might be concocting some nightmarishly unlistenable track but I’ve listened to it and it’d be more accurate to say that Tiny Tim just ran with it. Indeed, you might say he was genuinely inspired by it.

In 1996 Tiny Tim had a heart attack while on stage playing his hit “Tip-Toe Thru’ The Tulips With Me” and died shortly afterward. This event led to this unusual headline:
 

 
A couple of years earlier, Tiny Tim had released an album for Seeland/Ponk called I Love Me, which featured a number of unusual tracks such as “I Saw Mr. Presley Tip-toeing Through The Tulips” and “She Left Me With The Herpes” as well as a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).” 

Listen to it all, after the jump…....
 

 
Artist Alex Eckman-Lawn started drawing comic books as a kid, he taught himself to draw from the pages of one of those How to Draw Marvel Superheroes books his old man photocopied at the local library. He was good, he was smart, he had talent. Born in Philadelphia, his parents met at a seminary and were once religious. For a time, Eckman-Lawn attended a Quaker school but “that shit bugged me out because I thought it was so creepy—people all chanting and stuff together is fucking weird—and also powerful in a way.”

So a lot of my work is trying to get that feeling—that weird mysterious feeling, like you’re almost scared and intimidated. It’s something bigger than just sitting there in a room with people, but also sort of fun.

Eckman-Lawn is known for his graphic and comic books (the Eisner Award winning Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream, Awakening volumes one and two, and Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard among others); his many designs for album covers by bands like Psyopus, Architect, Yakuza, Maruta, Krieg, Nero Di Marte, Hacride, Nesseria, and many more; and for his strange and disturbing collage artworks. He describes himself as “a scumbag illustrator who lives in the gutters of Philadelphia. He spends his days making comics and album artwork, and his nights stealing blood from local hospitals.”

His collage work reminds me of those maimed and wounded First World War soldiers who returned from the Front their faces scarred revealing the hidden substance beneath. Instead of bone and tissue, Eckman-Lawn’s disfigured faces show cats, flowers, skulls, or unnameable horrors. A graduate of University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Eckman-Lawn says his work is about “ownership and control, organizing the chaos and uncertainty of my life into orderly prisms.” His work tends to deal with the fear of his own body, which he describes as “the feeling of being trapped in a decaying cage.”

His collages are multi-layered, culled from old photographs and the pages of old medical books. He dissects his paper sculptures like opening up a cadaver—sometimes sticking the old blade in “violently.”

I burrow into the body, creating caverns and uncovering new spaces. The result can be harrowing, but at times comforting as well. In cutting through the layers of paper, I am given the opportunity to play both surgeon and architect, for once in complete control over what lies inside.

See more of Alex Eckman-Lawn‘s work on Instagram, Twitter, and at his website.
 

 

 

 
More postcards from Hell, after the jump…