Pancake Mountain was a TV show based out of Washington, D.C., that can accurately be described as a punk rock children’s show. The program featured a puppet named Rufus Leaking (voiced by J.R. Soldano)—among the show’s many guests were the Melvins, Henry Rollins, Deerhoof, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, the Fiery Furnaces, Wreckless Eric, and X. The name of the show comes from the fertile mind of Brendan Canty, a.k.a. the drummer for Fugazi.

Founded by Scott Stuckey, grandson of the man who founded the noted roadside chain of eateries, the show ran from 2004 to 2009 on public access stations around the country. J.J. Abrams became interested in the show in 2010 and briefly attempted to find a home for it, without success. Eventually Pancake Mountain found a home on PBS but it does not appear to be in active production.
 

 
In 2009 Richard Hell gave the show permission to produce a cartoon video for the irresistibly catchy song “The Kid With the Replaceable Head,” off of the 1982 album Destiny Street by Hell’s seminal outfit the Voidoids. The video uses the noticeably cleaner version of the song featured on the 2009 album Destiny Street Repaired, which featured new guitar parts—the new guitar work on “Replaceable Head” was by Marc Ribot. The original guitar part was executed by Robert Quine. For more on the different versions of the song, see this 2011 report by DM’s own Marc Campbell.
 

 
Formed in 1976, the Slits were one of the earliest all-female punk bands—if not the first. The fantastic, feature-length documentary on the group, Here to Be Heard: The Story of the Slits, was recently released in theatres. It’s about to come out on DVD, and we’re happy to say we have our favorite segment from the doc to share with you.
 

 
Here to Be Heard combines archival clips with new interviews of the surviving band members and notable admirers to tell the story of the Slits. The segment that’s getting its web premiere here features exciting early live footage and a spunky band interview excerpt. There’s also a look at how the Slits was covered in the media, and the ways Londoners reacted to a group of females who were smashing societal expectations on how young women presented themselves. As punk journalist Vivien Goldman puts it, “They were provocative, they were outrageous, but also they were having fun,” and doing it all on their own terms.
 

 
The clip is NSFW, but what do you care?:
 

 
July 6 is the date Here to Be Heard: The Story of the Slits will be released on DVD, which will include 20 minutes of bonus content. Pre-order your copy through MVD or get it on Amazon.
 

 

 
In 1995, the Doors’ keyboardist, Ray Manzarek, and biographer, Danny Sugerman, appeared on the Australian music video program rage, smoking cigs on the couch and telling stories about Jim Morrison and Iggy Pop.

In the first clip below, Sugerman describes sharing his home with Iggy in the Seventies (“sort of like staging the Vietnam War at Grauman’s Chinese Theater”) and checking him into the mental hospital after a Quaalude overdose. He credits the quick thematic transition from “Death Trip” to “Lust for Life” to Iggy’s personal growth under the care of Dr. Murray Zucker.  In the second clip, “Iggy’s Homosexual Ballet Dancing Heroin Dealer,” they reminisce about “Gypsy Johnny,” the real-life heroin dealer immortalized as “Johnny Yen” in “Lust for Life.” Sugerman:

His black Porsche said “Gypsy” on it, and he wore a scarf around his head. He used to be a ballerina, and he was homosexual, and very hot for Iggy’s parts—body parts—and “yen” is a term that William Burroughs uses a lot describing the craving for heroin. So in “Lust for Life” there’s a line, “Here comes Johnny Yen again, with liquor and drugs and a sex machine,” and that’s Gypsy Johnny coming up to Wonderland Avenue with his scarves and his drugs and his motorized dildos and whatever else he had, his balloons full of Mexican heroin that was killing all of us.

Continues after the jump…

The March 3, 1979 issue of ‘Record Mirror’
 
Last summer, I posted clips from MrDeMilleFM, the new internet radio venture of former Stranglers singer and guitarist Hugh Cornwell. It’s devoted entirely to movies and their music, and it’s fun. Hugh’s got specials on William Wellman, John Frankenheimer, Lana Turner, Gloria Grahame and Steve McQueen; he’s got interviews with Ken Loach, John Sayles, John Altman, Peter Webber and David Puttnam. Behold his mighty hand!

Since that time, two episodes of Cornwell’s old internet radio show, Sound Trax FM, have surfaced in the MrDeMilleFM archive. These will interest DM readers, because Hugh’s guests are Brian Eno and Debbie Harry, playing and talking about their favorite movie music.

Among the records Eno spins during his 80-minute visit with Cornwell are Samira Tewfik’s “Hobbak Morr,” the source for “A Secret Life” on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and “I’m Deranged,” the immortal track from Bowie and Eno’s Outside that David Lynch took as the theme for Lost Highway. Speaking about which, Eno praises the still unreleased album-length improvisation he and Bowie recorded at the beginning of the Outside sessions:

In a room together, we played for 72 minutes a kind of suite, really, which he improvised the singing over, and it turned into this amazingly complex and interesting story which finally became something called “Leon,” which sort of became the backbone of the album Outside. But the original improvisation, which I listened to not very long ago, is absolutely incredible! You think: How could anyone do this without having a plan in advance?

 

 
Debbie Harry’s episode is too short at 47 minutes, but she brings along the best song on the Performance soundtrack and talks about working with David Cronenberg on Videodrome and John Waters on Hairspray.

Tracklists and the shows, after the jump…

 
The psychedelic sci-fi graphic novel Rock Wars concerns a group of twelve volunteers from Galaxcentra (the center of the galaxy), who have been sent to earth—in the form of a rock band dubbed “Children at Arms”—to reunite the Beatles.

Quite a concept, ‘eh?

Published in 1979, Rock Wars came about during an era when there was a strong desire to see the Beatles reunite. The group broke-up in 1970, and rumors that they were going to reform periodically sprouted over the decade. By the mid ‘70s, the interest in seeing a Beatles reunion happen was very much in the zeitgeist. On April 24, 1976, Lorne Michaels famously appeared on Saturday Night Live to make the Beatles an offer of $3,000 to perform on SNL. Later in the year, a New York promoter said he would pay a reformed Beatles $230 million if they played a one-off concert. The public so wanted a Beatles reunion to occur, many believed the 1977 rumor that the Canadian group Klaatu were actually the Fab Four incognito.
 

 
Though Rock Wars didn’t include any creator credits, it was written by brothers James and Kenneth Collier. The Colliers spearheaded the project, bringing in an artist they knew as Shakti to illustrate it.
 

 
The Colliers were certainly motivated individuals. They were the force behind a rock band called Year One, and managed to secure performances for the group in the Grand Canyon and on top of the World Trade Center. The brothers also wrote the lyrics for Year One’s rock opera, which is said to share the Beatles reunion quest concept with Rock Wars (listen to the Year One double album here).

The Colliers were also journalists, and spent decades investigating voter fraud in the United States. The result was Votescam: The Stealing of America (1992).

There was a plan to turn Rock Wars into a film, but as far as I can tell, it was never completed. The murder of John Lennon on December 8, 1980, might have been the tragic reason the movie was abandoned. It certainly put an end to the idea of a Beatles reunion—for the time being.

Both James and Kenneth Collier died in the 1990s.

More brain-warping images from Rock Wars:
 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

 
I’ve never played the video game Deus Ex Machina, released in 1984 by Automata UK for the ZX Spectrum system—not only did I not own anything that could play ZX Spectrum games, I didn’t own any video game console or personal computer until years later. I was the kid who would instantly become transfixed by the Atari 2600 or Intellivision set whenever I visited a friend’s house—the friend in question was usually bored by the thing by that time.

Anyway, if I had played Deus Ex Machina after its release, I would have been exposed to the music of Ian Dury a decade or two before I actually encountered it. There’s no doubt that having Dury’s peculiar brand of geezer punk in my life at that point would have been a very good thing.

Deus Ex Machina, it seems, was a game of some ambition and excellence. The creator of the game, Mel Croucher, wrote a book about the game with the humblebraggy title Deus Ex Machina: The Best Game You Never Played In Your Life. Croucher was a true video game pioneer; trained as an architect, he established Automata UK in 1977 and released Pimania and Groucho before Deus Ex Machina. Dury’s son Baxter, a tween at the time who today is a musician of considerable note, was a fan of Automata UK’s products—which opened the door for Papa Ian to get involved.
 

 
According to Chris Priestman, Deus Ex Machina was “a surreal, hour-long journey from womb to grave adapted from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It, about our insignificance and the impossibility of living a perfect life.” Dury agreed to record a track for the game, noting that he desired to help provide an alternative to the violent video games in the marketplace, which he characterized as “a load of old fucking electro bollo.” Croucher asked him “to play the sperm,” as he puts it in the book, and Dury recorded a track about fertilizer that can be heard if you heed the videos at the bottom of the page.

The author of “Spasticus Autisticus” suggested Marianne Faithfull as a possibility to be the voice for “The Machine,” but it didn’t work out—during the early 1980s Faithfull was in the throes of serious drug addiction.

More, plus video evidence after the jump…....
 

“The Last Trip” by Victor Brauner 1937.
 
Born in Romania, Victor Brauner was a significant player in the art world in the early 20th century publishing the avant-garde magazine 75HP in Bucharest in 1924 when he was 21. After heading to Paris for a short time, he met another young Surrealist, Yves Tanguy. Tanguy was already deeply involved with Surrealism, and his work had been shown in group exhibitions along with Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso and many other influential creatives not only in Paris but New York, London, and Brussels. Tanguy would introduce his new friend to the Surrealist circle in Paris in 1933. A year later, the leader of the Surrealist movement in Paris, André Breton wrote a glowing introduction for Brauner in honor of his first solo show in the city. Although the Parisian Surrealist community dug Brauner, the reviews for his fledgling show were disparaging, and Brauner moved back to Bucharest to try to sort things out.

Brauner returned to Paris in 1938 where he would experience an incident thought by some to have been foreseen by the artist for several years. If you are familiar with Surrealism’s ethos, then you understand at its core it embraces the concept of tapping into the subconscious mind without restriction in order to create. Setting his unconscious mind free was not difficult for Brauner and his work is full of complexity, warped configurations of people, and perhaps a prophecy concerning his own eyes. Eyes were a widely recurring theme in Brauner’s work, appearing regularly in his paintings as early as 1931 when he painted a self-portrait of himself with his right eye gouged out. Seven years later Brauner would have a run-in at a bar with Spanish artist Óscar Domínguez trying to defend his friend, another Spanish Surrealist, Esteban Francés. In a drunken rage, Domínguez hurled a glass at Esteban. Brauner threw himself in front of his friend and the glass collided with his left eye, ripping it from its socket. 
 

“Self-portrait” 1931.
 
Just before the outbreak of WWII Brauner ended up in Switzerland after deciding not to re-apply for citizenship—a new requirement for all Jews living in France. This was a good move considering what was to come, and the fact Brauner painted a fantastically unflattering portrait of Hitler in 1934 made it all the more so. Following the end of WWII Brauner went back to Paris where he would continue to work until his death in 1966. Images of Brauner’s work including an odd piece of taxidermy he created in 1939 called “Loup-table” (or “Wolf-Table”) inspired by two of his paintings done the same year, “Fascination” and “Psychological Space” depicting an angry wolf incorporated into a table, follow.
 

“Suicide at Dawn” 1931.
 

“Chimera” 1939.
 
More after the jump…

 
David Lynch has a new memoir out named Room to Dream, and it looks fantastic. He co-wrote it with journalist Kristine McKenna. Lynch also did the audiobook, which is great news because that means we now have fifteen or so more hours of Lynch saying “bladder” and “pretentious bullshit” and other interesting words.

In the book Lynch tells a story about a movie script that he generated with Robert Engels around 1994 that never got made with the name Dream of the Bovine. Around the same time Engels co-wrote Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me with Lynch.
 

 
The things Lynch and Engels have said about this screenplay are really weird. Engels actually said of the script that it was about “three guys, who used to be cows, living in Van Nuys and trying to assimilate their lives.” For his part, Lynch has said of the project that it was “a really dumb, really stupid, meant-to-be-pitifully-bad-quality budget thing” and also that it was to be a “very stupid comedy.” On The City of Absurdity, a website devoted to Lynch, it is stated without attribution that the action of the movie “should take place in Paris 1911.”

In the new book Lynch discloses more about Dream of the Bovine in which we learn that Brando enjoyed mirth with tomatoes at every opportunity. The part about Brando’s conception of the project comes at the end.
 

Around that time I was also trying to get Dream of the Bovine going. Dream of the Bovine is sort of in the same realm as One Saliva Bubble in that they’re both about misunderstanding and stupidity, but One Saliva Bubble is more normal and is kind of a feel-good movie. Dream of the bovine is an absurd comedy. The script needs a lot of work, but there are things in it that I really like. Harry Dean and I went up to talk to Marlon Brando about the two of them doing it together, but Brando hated it. He looked me and I and said, “It’s pretentious bullshit,” and he started telling us about these cookies made out of grass that grows in salt water that he wanted to promote. Then he told us about a car he wanted to build that had this bladder underneath that would cook this grass and make fuel, like the car would digest the grass. You could never tell if Marlon was putting you on or he was serious.

The thing about Marlon was, he just didn’t give a shit about anything. Every business has bad behavior going on, but there’s something about this business, with all the egos and lies and backstabbing, that makes you want to do something else rather than be in it. For sure, if anybody had that feeling it was Brando. He played the game for a while, then he couldn’t do it anymore because it made him sick, and he’d reached a point where he just wanted to have fun. In a weird way I think he was having fun, too, and it was fun talking to him. This was around the time he went on The Larry King Show and kissed Larry King.

He came here to the house a couple of times. One time he came up here by himself––I guess he’d driven himself––and he came in big, you know, just being Brando in this house. It made me a little nervous because I didn’t know why he was here or what we were going to do. I figured I’d make him a coffee, but right after he got here he says, “So, you got anything to eat?” I thought, Oh my God, but I said, “Marlon, I don’t know, let’s go look.” There was one tomato and one banana in the kitchen and he said, “Okay, that will do,” so I got him a plate and a knife and fork and we sat down and started talking. Then he says, “You got any salt?” So he was salting the tomato and cutting it up and eating it while we were talking. Then Mary came over with Riley, and Brando says, “Mary, give me your hand, I want to give you a gift,” so she put her hand out. He’d made a little ring out of the Del Monte sticker that had been on the tomato and he slipped it onto her finger.

Marlon was dressing in drag now and then during that period, and the thing Marlon really wanted to do was dress up as a woman and have Harry Dean dress up as a woman, and the two of them would have tea together and ad-lib while they were drinking tea. Think about that. It would’ve been fucking incredible! All I’d have to do is turn the camera on, but Marlon chickened out. It would drive me nuts. He should’ve done it!

 
More after the jump…...

Actor Bruce Campbell and his childhood pal director Sam Raimi.
 

Yeah, you know my kids, fortunately, have seen enough of my working life that they know it’s not all blowjobs and limousines.

—actor Bruce Campbell on the reality of being Bruce Campbell

The last week of April was a sad time for fans of Bruce Campbell after the veteran actor (and author) broke the news he was “retiring” from portraying the chainsaw-wielding Ashley Joanna Williams from the trifecta of awesomeness that is the Evil Dead film series. The story of how Ash and The Evil Dead came to be is a pretty sweet one when it comes to Hollywood folklore beginning when director Sam Raimi and Campbell came across each other in high school. When they first met, Campbell thought Raimi was a “creepy weirdo” and he tried hard to avoid him until they found themselves paired together in the same drama class in 1975. Campbell agreed to be Raimi’s assistant for magic shows he had put together for the class and the academic venture would inspire the teenagers to start making movies. According to Campbell, he, Raimi and four other aspiring drama kids joined forces spending as much time as possible making Super-8 films sharing the responsibilities of actor, director, scriptwriter, and camera operator. A short six-years later Raimi would release his first full-length film, The Evil Dead starring his buddy Bruce as Ash Williams—a role Campbell reprised in 2015 for the television version of the film series Ash vs. Evil Dead, 34 years after the wisecracking character came to be in 1981. Before the somewhat surprise cancellation of the show, Campbell said he would pull the plug on Ash himself if cable network Starz yanked the show. Once the ax fell on Ash vs. Evil Dead, Campbell confirmed his days playing Ash were over.

Cambell, aka The Chin, as he is often affectionately referred to, celebrated a birthday this past Friday—his 60th—hanging out in Sacramento, California while the Fandemic Tour dropped in for the weekend. To date, he has at least 125 acting credits to his name and many of Campbell’s fictional alter-egos, such as Ash and his portrayal of an elderly, infirm Elvis Presley in the 2002 cult film, Bubba Ho-Tep have helped to further mythologize Campbell as an actor with the ability to create characters so believable they become one and the same. Much like their days making Super-8 flicks in high school, filming The Evil Dead was a collaborative effort in every sense of the word, Campbell, Hal Delrich/Richard DeManincor (Ash’s pal Scotty in the film) and other actors routinely did their own stunts which regularly sent them off to the emergency room after being injured on set. Bruce Campbell lost a couple of teeth in a freak accident involving a cameraman and actress Betsy Baker (Ash’s girlfriend Linda in The Evil Dead) lost all of her fucking eyelashes after having a prosthetic mask removed from her face. Raimi would elude to this occupational hazard at the film’s premiere by hiring ambulances to park in front of the theater helping to build the hysteria around the blood-drenched flick. After filming principal scenes during conditions so cold it froze cameras and wiring, many actors bailed never to return The remaining crew—thirteen to be precise—took up residence in the cabin in Morristown, Tennessee where the movie was being filmed. There was no running water, no heat and as filming came to a close, the crew took to burning furniture to keep warm. The Evil Dead was a hit as was the follow-up, 1987’s Evil Dead 2, and the final film in the series, Army of Darkness.

So, in honor of Mr. Campbell reaching his seventh decade of being undeniably groovy, I thought it would be fun to take a look at photos taken on the set from all three Evil Dead films. Remember, all of this is possible thanks to a bunch of 20-somethings brave enough to go into the woods with lights, cameras, and a shit-ton of fake blood—hell-bent on creating horror history. Pretty much everything I’ve posted below is NSFW. Bow to the King, baby.
 

Bruce Campbell taking a look at Bad Ash with director Sam Raimi on the set of the 1992 film ‘Army of Darkness.’
 

Campbell in full prosthetics with cameraman James Fitzgerald on the set of ‘Army of Darkness.’
 
Much more after the jump…

 
Skip Tracer, a 1977 Canadian film about debt collectors, shares some striking similarities with Alex Cox’s 1984 cult classic, Repo Man. The roots of Repo Man date from the late ‘70s, the same time period Skip Tracer was released—could Cox have been swayed by it?

The work of first-time writer/director, Zale Dalen, Skip Tracer was conceived during the era of “Canuxploitation”. The term “skip tracer” refers to someone who tracks down people who haven’t paid their debts. The movie concerns a cold-blooded collection agent, John Collins (played by David Peterson, in his film debut). The character has no feeling for those who are experiencing financial difficulties, and hounds them without mercy. Eventually, though, John begins to feel empathy for these people, resulting in an identity crisis.
 

 
Aside from fact that Skip Tracer and Repo Man are centered around a debt collector—an uncommon protagonist in film—the most obvious similarity is the mentor/mentee relationship. In Skip Tracer, John is paired with Brent, a younger employee looking to learn from the finance company’s “man of the year.” Fans of Repo Man know there is the similar team-up of Otto and Bud, though Otto is certainly more resistant to the idea. The lead characters also question the profession in both pictures.
 

 
Repo Man began as a graphic novel while Cox was a film student at UCLA. Around this time, Skip Tracer was making the rounds on the festival circuit, receiving a theatrical release stateside in January of 1979.

More after the jump…