The Louvin Brothers are everyone’s favorite Appalachian close-harmony brother duet (there are plenty of them). Born with the surname Loudermilk, the two brothers, Charlie and Ira, used to perform on a local radio station in Chattanooga as teenagers; in the 1950s they drew the attention of Acuff-Rose Music and eventually signed with MGM. In short order the Louvin Brothers released records such as Tragic Songs of Life (1956), Nearer My God to Thee (1957), and The Family Who Prays (1958). In 1960 the brothers released a gospel album called Satan Is Real, which has long since become a favorite of collectors because it’s an excellent album but also because the cover is just so interesting and odd. In 2012 Charlie Louvin published an entertaining memoir with the same title and cover motifs.
 

 
Last year two country-music-playing brothers named Malpass reached out to a talented bootmaker named Lisa Sorrell for some extra-special custom-made cowboy boots. Christopher Malpass chose to get a pair of nice light-brown boots with his name on them, but Taylor Malpass decided to recreate the cover of one of his favorite albums—you guessed it, Satan Is Real.
 

Sorrell’s initial sketch for the boot tops
 
As she neared completion, Sorrell made the interesting comment that “often with a non-traditional design such as this one, I feel it’s most attractive when it’s flat and putting it on a cowboy boot makes me like it less. I’m liking this design more and more though.”
 

As Sorrell put it, “Satan has tiny hands and protruding front teeth.”
 
If you’d like custom cowboy boots of your very own with the cover of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless or Slint’s Spiderland on them, you can reach out to Sorrell and maybe you can figure something out. According to her website, prices start at $5,000.
 
Here’s a video of Sorrell working on the Louvin Brothers boots:

 
Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” is one of the most iconic songs of the 1980s.  It was a huge song in 1981, and went to #1 on the Billboard charts on August 1st of that year (incidentally, the same day MTV premiered), and stayed there for two weeks. Those who came of age during that period might not realize that Springfield had been in bands since the ‘60s, and had already released a few solo albums. Amongst his early material are a number of tasty bubblegum glam tracks.

The first single released under his own name, the Sunshine Pop ditty “Speak to the Sky,” was a hit in his native land of Australia, and peaked at #14 in the America during October of 1972. This was his only successfully U.S. 45 until “Jesse’s Girl,” though his popularity increased in his home country, where he was promoted as a teen idol. In 1973, Springfield began wearing glam-inspired outfits, including an all-white, superhero-like costume, with a crest consisting of a lowercase “r” and a lightning bolt.
 

 
His second LP, 1973’s Comic Book Heroes, has a couple of glam songs, including the infectious, bubblegummy number, “I’m Your Superman.”
 

 
Springfield continued in this bubblegum glam direction on his next record, Mission Magic, which was the companion LP to the similarly named animated series, Mission: Magic!. The Saturday morning cartoon was an ABC-TV production, and starred Springfield as his animated self.
 

 
Even though it was an American show, the album was—for some reason—only released in Australia. Which is a shame, really, as it’s the best of his early records, with a handful of catchy bubblegum glam tunes.
 
More early Rick after the jump…

Photo by Paul Heartfield, courtesy Abramorama
 
Whatever else you can say about the dread year 2018, it is a sumptuous buffet for the PiL fan. The Public Image Is Rotten, the first officially sanctioned documentary on the group, tells its story with the help of Jah Wobble, Keith Levene, Donut, Martin Atkins, Bruce Smith, Lu Edmonds, John Rambo Stevens, Big Youth(!), Thurston Moore, Ad-Rock, Flea, Don Letts, and numerous other members of the band, its circle and its audience; the new box set The Public Image Is Rotten: Songs From The Heart collects singles, B-sides, 12-inch mixes, outtakes, alternate versions, videos, and TV appearances from four decades of high adventure; and PiL will embark on the U.S. leg of its ongoing tour next week, starting in New Orleans on October 9. I spoke with John Lydon on the phone one morning during the brief interval between PiL’s European and American dates.

How are you?

Not as mentally ill as Tom Arnold, but doing alright! I watched his show the night before. Two episodes. It’s hilarious! I highly recommend it, but by God, is he just out there. Oh, space cadet! But highly entertaining, highly entertaining. And I suppose that was the point of it anyway, I mean, what do you expect from a comedian but comedy? Alright, anyway, that’s an aside; I don’t know why I brought it up, but ignore me!

How was the European tour?

Oh, very, very demanding. That was something like 39 gigs in nearly as many days, with two weeks in the middle to attempt recording our third album, here, since our reformation. So a lot of hard work, and a lot of promo for the documentary, y’know, the film that’s gonna be doing the rounds, and various like press things that have to be done in advance of gigs. Very, very demanding, really exhausting, and not at all the happy holiday we were expecting. Harder than usual times three or four. And any one of the issues we’re involved with, really, should be a full-time job. But there you go, that’s PiL for you! Moments of relaxation in an intense industry!

Where are you recording?

We went back to the Cotswolds in England. A studio we like, ‘cause we like grabbing that on-the-road, live vibe.

I saw the movie last night. At the end, Lu Edmonds says this thing—he’s talking about the band with [Magazine/Siouxsie/PiL guitarist] John McGeoch, and how things have changed, and he says you’re different now than you were then. And he puts it down to [manager/lifelong friend John] Rambo [Stevens’] influence.

How very sweet of him! Doesn’t anybody ever give me credit? [Laughter] Well, that’s Lu’s opinion; you’d have to ask Lu. Everybody was given an opportunity—I mean everybody, friend and foe alike—to say what they felt, and there it is, and that’s the combination of all those juxtapositions. Of course the band’s very different from when McGeoch was in it. We were again, at that time, enduring record company pressure, which is never an easy thing to put up with, which is what created so much instability in us. The rumor-mongering, all of it, you know, and just the sense of chaos, and trying to maintain any grasp of control, was extremely difficult. And Lu should know that, ‘cause he was one of those difficult people at the time! [Laughter] But through all of that, these are my friends, and we argue all the time about everything. But now look at us: we have a stability, we’re into the making of the third album. Fantastic. And it’s all without record company pressure, or them controlling the purse strings, which is what leads to arguments in the first place.

Well, one thing about the movie, seeing so much time compressed into an hour and a half—

I know, it could quite easily have ended up like War and Peace, but what’d be the point of that?

You could do a whole movie just on the drummers that have gone through PiL. Tony Williams—

[Laughs] It’s a lot of members!

I don’t know if it’s because of the precarious money situation or not, but maybe that made it possible for an amazing group of people to pass through the band.

Yeah, and some of them sorely missed, others glad to be rid of, and then of course there were the blackmailers: “Oh, if you don’t pay me extra, I’m not going to go on tour.” Y’know, that brigade. Very, very difficult times when I look back at it now. It’s like, Jeezus, how did I have the perseverance? ‘Cause there were definite times in PiL history where I thought, I just couldn’t take much more of it. The continual ugly pressure of having to maintain some kind of sense of stability in all this, it does wear you down.

By the time I got to, say, making the album Album, and a very young band I was with, put together quite a lot of the songs on Album with, they just could not cope with the studio, and I couldn’t cope with the budget we had, so I couldn’t afford to keep them in New York until they… got up to par, shall we say. And so put out phone calls, really, not expecting anyone to be too eager, really take anything that said yes, and just absolutely stunned and shocked with the quality of people that were more than willing to help on this album, and no squeak about money or anything like that. I tell you, that really changed my mind, it was like an affirmation that I absolutely needed at that point in my life, and I hope that comes across in the documentary. I’m not sure it does too well.
 

Still from ‘The Public Image Is Rotten’
 
Well, then there’s that story about McGeoch getting hit in the face with a bottle—

Oh, all that stuff! That’s nothing to do what I’ve just said, is it?

Well, the adversity you were facing.

Yeah, the adversity I’m particularly pointing out is inter-band-members, right? Some being ridiculously spiteful for no reason, and just continuing a negative approach in the ranks, and spreading all manner of, like, stupid lies. That kind of adversity. I had that in the Pistols, and I did sort of presume that that’s just the way all bands were. Well, I’m finding out in the making of this third and the previous two albums that’s not the case at all. We’re very, very, very good friends with each other. We have a sense of empathy. And that was always missing in the past. It’s always what I was seeking. But I suppose you can’t have a major record label in there, interfering. Interfering in the thought processes and the purse strings. ‘Cause adversity and animosity is what you end up with.

This is the longest stable lineup of the band, right?

Yeah! Yeah. Very noted. The second we were able to declare independence from any label, we set up our own outlet, and here we are now today. Stable! Financially risky, but bloody hell, is it enjoyable to wake up and know that you’re responsible for your own downfall, and not somebody else. A reward.

Can you tell me about the set you’re playing?

It’s one mostly the band picked, numbers that they enjoy doing, so there it is. And they flow well with each other, they jump all over the place time-wise, career-wise, but that’s fine. They connect somehow. There’s a flow in them. There are lines that interconnect. The thought process is there; it’s really just about trying to understand emotions. And that’s what Public Image do: try to understand. Try to understand each other, y’know? And make a bloody good effort at the rest of the human race. And I don’t suppose there’s any other way but through music to share those experiences and learn from them. One of the greatest things about this tour is the small venues we picked, because I can see eye to eye with just about everybody in the building, and that really helps formulate and solidify the songs into the emotions that they’re trying to express. It’s very, very, very rewarding. You can see it in people’s eyes when you’re hitting the right tones emotionally with them. It’s not like—we don’t do cruise ships or bar mitzvahs, I’m not standing there waiting for requests. It’s done on an emotional level. It’s fantastic. And all shyness, gone. I feel so confident with the people I work with now. There’s no sense of the temporary about it, and that’s a wonderful sounding board. Three albums, now, it will be, when this one’s done. That’s an amazing achievement for PiL! ‘Cause rightly or wrongly, earned the reputation there of never the same people twice. Not through choice.

I know the gigs are selling out. You had to change venues in Los Angeles.

You have to up it when it sells out too much, but there’s a limit to us. We won’t go into the ten thousands or the five thousands, not really interested in that, because you lose that emotional response. Or you can, but it’s like a harder struggle, and this is a struggle enough! And if we want to be celebrating our year, this is the way we want to do it. As I say, up close and personal.
 

 
So this box looks really wonderful—

Yeah, very proud of that. Yeah.

I’ve always been especially fond of your singles and 12-inches; I feel like you put a lot of care into those.

A lot. A lot. And using the highest quality recording we can, and also the highest quality materials we can, and to try and keep the price down. It’s a thing of love. That’s 40 years of work, there. I don’t want it to go out in a brown paper bag. Although I could the novelty in that too! [Laughter]

But I meant specifically your singles, all along it seems like you’ve put a lot of work into the singles and preparing special mixes for the 12-inches—

Yeah. Well, listen, pop music is my centrifugal force. I’ve always loved pop music, always will. Sharp simplicity, straight to the point. Sometimes songs I do can be longer than a single would need to be, and involve a hell of a lot more words, because you’re involving yourself in a hell of a lot deeper way, but both ways work for me fine. I do like the simplicity of pop a lot. And always those are the singles, they’re made for that. Not specifically structured as a single, but they happen, chance, in the way we record. There’s no rule book with us. If we’re involving ourselves in an emotion, we’ll involve ourselves fully, and that’s what each song is about, really. Trying to understand ourselves as human beings, and thereby, like I said, deal with the rest.

And there’s a proper version of “Kashmir” on there, too.

Yeah, which I was supposed to sing live! But I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t. I thought it would be sacrilege! Go to all the effort of recording it… which is a glorious tune, it really is, and Led Zeppelin I adore! Physical Graffiti is one of my favorite albums, and “Kashmir” is one of my favorite songs, and I didn’t want to bugger it up. We were gonna start live sets with that, but I thought I’d be letting it down somehow. I really don’t need to be competing with Robert Plant, there, I think he did an excellent piece of work, and there you go. All accolades to.

There’s a few unheard things, too, on this box set, and a lot of film footage.

Yeah, the TV stuff, all the TV appearances.

Yeah, which I thought would be nice for people to have, in one lump sum. And forever; not down to the whims of YouTube.

And better quality.

Oh, by miles, I hope!
 

Photo by Duncan Bryceland, courtesy PiL Official
 
That reminds me of something else. Watching the documentary last night, I’d heard there was video shot of the famous Ritz show—

[signal breaks up] because we were in charge of the cameras. That show was supposed to be us experimenting with their new camera technology, and, hello, one thing led to another, and before you know it, the world’s best soft riot took place! [Laughter]

So no video survived?

Well, there’s bits and pieces, but nothing that would make any sense.

Oh, ‘cause it’s all from your points of view.

Yeah, you know, from where we are, we’re behind the canvas. So you just see a canvas ruffle. There’s not much you can make from that. Another one of those Public Image moments where fiasco becomes something adorable and memorable. You know, a negative becomes a positive. Just the way it is, I suppose; we’re brave enough to take the situation on, and thank you all for noticing.

Yeah, the American Bandstand appearance is one of those moments.

Oh, yeah. My God, asking us to mime! Ha ha! To a song we improvised in recording, it’s like, wow, where do we begin with that? So we just ran wild, and it worked out to the benefit of everybody. Made for a better TV show.

Oh, it’s wonderful TV.

Even Dick Clark said so!

He did? He knew good TV, right?

Oh yeah, he had a list of all-time greats, and we’re up there. We’re well up there. Of all-time greats on his show. Lovely. Us and a bunch of mime artists! Ah, ha, ha.

Is it true, John, that “Annalisa,” a song that’s as relevant today as it ever was—is it true you saw that on a TV show?

Yeah, it was a real story about a young girl, in her coming-of-age early teens, and the parents, like, being far too religious for their own good, assuming she was possessed by the devil. And so in came the exorcist, and the end result was she was starved to death, really. It’s a really, really sad story, a true story. They put a film out of it a couple of years back, you know; I was a bit annoyed they didn’t approach us, ‘cause it would’ve been a wonderful theme for it.

Like a dramatic movie, with actors?

Yeah, like a proper film release, it was quite astounding. And horrific! When I watched it, it just brought tears to my eyes. You could see that this girl just didn’t stand a chance with that zealotry. Cold, indifferent parents, much more into their crucifixes than they were the life of their own daughter.

Sexuality is a strange thing to the religious. For my making [?], that’s what the root core of the problem was.

I imagine you’ve been following the Catholic abuse story with interest.

Ha, ha! All my life! [Laughter] Spent most of my life deliberately avoiding priests. Right up to day one in the Pistols, never even considered singing! I just thought, “No no no, that’ll get me back closer to the priests. It’s not what I want.”

Wasn’t “Religion”—

In fact, wrote “Religion,” a PiL song, while I was in the Pistols, but I knew they couldn’t handle it. Just another reason, really, to have to move on. But PiL was well-adapted to that sort of focus.
 

 
What can we expect in the near future? How far are you on this new record?

Well, we’re quite a few tracks in, but have yet to put vocals on any of them. There are many issues going on that are slowing down the work, one of them being a domestic issue that’s really, really challenging and frightening to handle for me at the moment. And it is coming right in the middle of all of this workload, so it’s, like, it’s taking its toll on me. It’s 24/7 having to be alert, and I’m having to find ways of stopping that. It’s very, very, very punishing, that’s all I can tell you. The second half, the American half, I’ll have to do that alone.

Continues after the jump….

 
The flitttering, the fluttering, they’re coming, they’re coming…

Three minute warning.

The guy you occasionally saw in the bar always seemed amiable enough. You know, funny. Could talk football and politics and tell a joke—someone you’d perhaps say “hello” to and have a beer with. But sometimes you thought there was a hint of something more. You got the feeling, he knew his own mind and knew his own worth and had plans he wasn’t going to share with you yet—if at all. He supposedly had a good voice. Thinking maybe karaoke, belting out a few Smiths tunes or “Karma Chameleon,” that kind of thing—good for parties, bar mitzvahs, and weddings. But what you didn’t understand was this guy could do more than sing, he hadn’t just any voice, he had the voice of a fucking rock god.

....listen…

Two minute warning.

The Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai said his talents as an artist became better with age. He was struck by lightning at the age of fifty in 1810 and once said “Until the age of seventy, nothing that I drew was worthy of notice.”

It doesn’t necessarily follow that being young makes you good—age teaches you how best to use your talents, how to make better art. How to make great art.

...closer now…

One minute warning.

This is your invite to be in at the start of the career of a truly great band—to have something to tell the grandkids about in those far-off years. To be among that handful of people who were there at say, the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976, or among those who elbowed their way through the crowd down some dank cellar steps to hear a band play at lunchtime in Liverpool.

...they’re here…

Army of Moths are a three-piece band consisting of David Sheridon, Debz Joy, and JP Coyle. Their talents spread across the map between Glasgow, Scotland, and Bristol, England and everywhere in between. The band formed in January 2018, after a brief run-out with an EP as the Polymorphic Love Orchestra late last year. All being over the age of thirty means just like Hokusai they have honed their talents over the years to produce better music, better art. This month, Army of Moths released their debut album, Sorry To Disturb You, which to be frank is one of the best debut records ever released by any band. While the music industry pumps out the same dull crap week in, week out, Army of Moths have stolen their jewels, taken top prize, dropped an A-bomb of brilliance on their on merits, on their own terms, with very little publicity, hardly any promotion, just their talents as collateral.

Sheridon, Joy and Coyle know their stuff.  Sorry To Disturb You a DIY, lo-fi classic that mixes pop, rock, ambient, and indie, with nods to Bowie, the Damned, Gong, the Stranglers, Adam and the Ants, Syd Barrett, and the Cardiacs. I’ve had it stuck on repeat play since I got it on Monday, and know many of you will be doing the very same soon.

In an exclusive interview with Dangerous Minds, David Sheridon fills you in on what you need to know about the band you should be listening to right now.
 

 
Read more about and listen the brilliant debut album from Army of Moths, after the jump…
 

 
The ongoing triumph of digital is pushing into the grave many art forms once so ubiquitous (and tethered to low commerce) we hardly think of them as arts. Packaging art dives into decline as physical media formats become obsolete; screen printed concert posters become a pricey commodity-fetish item as Facebook becomes every promoter’s kiosk. Somehow, and encouragingly, event postcards continue to thrive, but really think about this—when was the last time you decided to see a movie or buy recorded music based on a newspaper ad?

Longtime Fangoria editor Michael Gingold remembers when the local daily was THE way to keep up on movies, and in fact, it was the lurid daily print ads for trash horror films—rendered all the seedier by the way cheap black ink used to block up on cheap pulpy newsprint—that sparked his lifelong interest in the horror genre. Gingold even kept a scrapbook of them, and eventually published them in a xeroxed ‘zine called Scareaphenalia.

Arranged on a desk in the back of my junior high homeroom was the communal stack of Daily News for teachers to pick up. There were always a couple of ’em left over, and the first Friday of that month I grabbed one and flipped through to the movie section. There they were: boldly arresting ads for Richard Franklin’s Patrick and David Cronenberg’s The Brood, both opening that day. I was vaguely aware of Cronenberg’s name, but otherwise, these films were a mystery to me. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to see them both.

Although I didn’t get to, at least not at the time, I was so enthralled by those ads that I cut them out of the paper and saved them. And every Friday thereafter, I’d grab a leftover Daily News edition and scour it for whatever lurid gems might be advertised in its pages. Any that I found, I clipped and added to my growing collection, and soon I was doing the same with the occasional bigger genre movie announced in The Times. By the end of the year, assembling those ads had become an ongoing passion project.

The foregoing quotation is from Ad Nauseam: Newsprint Nightmares from the 1980s, a new book that reproduces Gingold’s collection, with his annotations, and excerpts from contemporary reviews. His annotations are insightful, naturally, but the inclusion of reviews was a wonderful choice—it’s interesting to be reminded that while gore-operas like The Driller Killer, The Evil Dead, and Friday the 13th are regarded as classics which boast undying (sorry) cult followings, such films were excoriated in their day by critics who practically tripped over each other in their rush to condemn the films’ violence and lord their self-presupposed moral superiority over the genre’s fans. Even A Nightmare on Elm Street received mixed reviews that grudgingly praised its creative premise, wit, and atmospherics, as they went ahead and condemned it anyway, because a slasher film simply couldn’t be offered unqualified praise. (By the time its sequel came out, critics seem to have figured out the point.) Interestingly though, of all the reviews reproduced in Ad Nauseam, astonishingly few take the genre to task for its notorious misogyny—this was the era, after all, in which the murder-as-punishment-for-female-sexuality and “final girl” tropes were codified, and while young women’s suffering was typically dwelt-on in mortifying detail, the psychotic killers themselves sometimes went on to become the “heroes” in long-running and profitable franchises.

Ad Nauseam’s publisher, 1984, were extremely cool about letting us reproduce a generous sampling of Gingold’s collection. We’ve eschewed the bigger-name films in favor of the book’s more endearingly trashy offerings—you’ve seen the poster for Halloween a million times by now anyway, right?
 

 

 

 
Many more after the jump…

 
What’s library music, you ask? Library music is ready-made soundtracks for film, TV, and radio productions on a budget, who couldn’t afford to hire a composer. The tracks commissioned by music libraries circulated the recordings to just those working within those industries, but eventually these discs ended up in used record stores, and were subsequently picked up by intrigued collectors.

My first inkling that library music—which experienced its heyday from the 1960s through the 1980s—was a genre unto itself, came via the 2000 compilation, Cinemaphonic: Electro Soul. I fell for the sounds heard on the collection, which ranged from jazz-funk to the avant-garde. A track like “Creepy Street” was designed to elicit a certain mood—and did just that. The comp was curated by record collector David Hollander, and was the first such collection of American library music to be widely distributed.
 

 
Earlier this year, a book Hollander penned concerning the subject was published. Unusual Sounds: The Hidden History of Library Music is packed with awesome images and rarely told stories. One such tale comes from Keith Mansfield, who’s amongst the composers who elevated what was considered a lower form of scoring into an art form. An excerpt from his late 1960s piece, “Funky Fanfare,” will be recognizable to many as the music that was once used in American movie theaters in association with trailers and the feature presentation. This edit was later heard multiple times in the 2007 salute to exploitation cinema, Grindhouse, which was the work of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.

“Funky Fanfare” appeared on a 1969 collection put together by the KPM music library, but this well-known library music number didn’t actually begin as such. Here’s Mansfield detailing how “Funky Fanfare”—which was originally recorded during a session for Decca Records signee Tony Newman—came to be:

We spent two hours [at Decca] doing the A-side, had a break, then we did the B-side and I left. It turned out, of course, that they turned the record over and the B-side became the A-side. But before the session started I said to the producer, “Oh by the way, I didn’t have time to write a new piece of music, I’ve had to write [adapt] one of those that I’ve written for KPM.” Of course, he thought that was fine. And then of course it became the A-side, but it wasn’t called “Funky Fanfare,” it was called “Soul Thing.” So the first recording of “Funky Fanfare” is called “Soul Thing,” and it’s a Tony Newman record, a proper produced commercial recording done at Decca studios. Ten days later I record the same piece of music in Cologne for Robin [Phillips, who ran KPM] and we called it “Funky Fanfare.” (excerpted from Unusual Sounds: The Hidden History of Library Music)

 

Images of Keith Mansfield conducting an orchestra during a KPM recording session.

You may only know the brief, famous excerpt of “Funky Fanfare,” but the entire track is fantastic. The song has the opening slot on the upcoming Unusual Sounds compilation, which is due November 9th.

Dangerous Minds has the remastered premiere of “Funky Fanfare”:
 

 
The collection will be released by Anthology Recordings; pre-order yours here. The label’s publishing arm, Anthology Editions, put out the Unusual Sounds book; get it here.

Some striking library music cover art from years past, courtesy of Anthology:
 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

The beautiful ramen noodle bowl bong. Get it here. 
 
As the legalization of marijuana spreads like a wonderful, happy cloud of Pineapple Super Silver Haze across the country, other businesses adjacent to pot production have boomed. I wrote about the expansion of the glass blowing community in Washington State previously on Dangerous Minds thanks to the help of legalization here five years ago, and much like the recreational industry, it hasn’t slowed down. I’ve been a bit desperate for anything to distract my ears and eyes from the news, and know I’m not alone in this quest. So here’s what we are going to do—we are going to take a look at some wildly creative bongs and glass pipes modeled after food because as all stoners know, it’s fun to smoke weed out of things you can eat.

The image which launched this stony-ship of a post was referenced in the title and is pictured above—a functional bong that looks like a delicious cup of ramen noodles with all the fixings really exists. This find logically sent me off in search of other foodie-styled smoking apparati. Being intrepidly curious is a blessing and a curse and it’s unclear to me how much time I actually spent in dank Internet alleys looking for a bong modeled after a loaded taco before I found one, but it was worth it. You can see the glorious glass taco bong, his pal the glass banana pipe, as well as one shaped just like 1/2 an avocado because, hipsters ruin everything. I’ve included links where you can pick up most of the items in this post along with the images below.
 

The taco rig. Source.
 

Donut-shaped glass pipes. Made by KGB in good-old Maine, these pipes are the size of an actual donut. See them all here.
 

The avocado pipe. BTW, it’s 89.99 when available.
 

Cheeseburger pipe. Get it here.
 
More after the jump…

 
The first show Henry Rollins ever played in the Los Angeles area as a member of Black Flag took place at the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa, on Friday, August 21, 1981. It was a 3 p.m. show, as the flier above indicates. Black Flag were the headliners, with Wasted Youth and Circle One, two hardcore bands from the O.C., serving as openers.

Purportedly the location of the first-ever slam pit, the Cuckoo’s Nest was open from 1976 through 1981, and even that run was only possible because owner Jerry Roach was constantly in court trying to keep the joint open. Every L.A. punk band of note played there, as well as a large number of notable acts passing through (The Ramones, Bad Brains, Violent Femmes, et al.).

In 1981 Paul Young released a short documentary about the club called Urban Struggle: The Battle of the Cuckoo’s Nest. Much like the club, the movie has also had its share of turmoil in the legal system. In 2010 Young sued Jonathan W.C. Mills’s documentary We Were Feared, which is also about the Orange County punk scene.
 

 
An important aspect of the Cuckoo’s Nest was its hatred-fueled relationship with the bar next door, named Zubie’s, which catered to suburban cowboy-wannabes. The place actually had an electric bull! The intense fights between the Zubie’s shitkicker crowd and the punks at the Cuckoo’s Nest became the stuff of legend. The Vandals immortalized that conflict in a song called—not coincidentally—”Urban Struggle.”

According to Stevie Chick’s Spray Paint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag, Dave Markey filmed the show when Rollins made his SoCal debut and took some footage with his 8mm camera: “Everyone was like, ‘Black Flag’s coming, they got a new singer, some kid from D.C.’ Henry had gotten the Black Flag bar tattoos done the day of that show, and when you looked at his arm, you could see how fresh the ink was.” Unsurprisingly, the great photographer Glen E. Friedman was also at the show—any sweet b/w pics you find of Black Flag at the Cuckoo’s Nest come directly from him.

Urban Struggle: The Battle of the Cuckoo’s Nest is a terrific document of one of the country’s most important punk scenes. It features killer footage of Black Flag playing “Six Pack” (you can even see Henry’s new tattoo) as well as performances by Circle Jerks and T.S.O.L.
 

 
Out of all the “things” that have developed over the last few centuries, public health and hygiene propaganda is probably one of the most fascinating. To me, at least. From Victorian advertisements that looked more like S&M show-and-tell than healing tools to the wild VD films shown in US sex ed classrooms throughout the late 20th century, America has certainly had a strong history with weird and wacky ways to promote well being. I’m sure as shit not going to knock our flavor of crazy “stay healthy” publicity works since I own a good amount of 16mm films on how to prevent STDs and what fruits and vegetables you need to eat to stay balanced and pooping good. Wall to wall actors in fruit and veg costumes prancing about on a screen are great Friday night fun! Who needs bars when you have talking tomatoes and dancing grapes??

On the international side, however, I’ve become quite interested in Chinese public health posters and their history. First of all, many of them are incredibly beautiful. Their design and composition is quite a thing to behold. Considering that they are discussing how not to die of fatal diseases or some such topic, many of these communally shared images are awfully detailed and aesthetically pleasing. Others…well, their honesty and bluntness is admirable! And if nothing else, this is something I probably respect THE MOST about public health propaganda materials: they are there to tell you that you should really not fuck with the bad shit. The problem is so bad that they had to commission a poster for it. You might die.  It’s all about extremes in public hygiene education. There really is no middle ground.

While these posters may make you laugh or giggle, there is a fairly serious element in much of the content—they meant what they said. It seems strange to us now in today’s technologically advanced world, but when these posters were the social media platform, this was how messages about health were communicated. So just as a warning to those with a weak stomach, there may be an image or two here that are not completely, uh, ready for prime time…

It didn’t surprise me to discover that the US had a hand in China’s medical structure, nor was I shocked to find out that it was the Rockefeller family that introduced Western medicine to China. Good ol’ John D. helped to establish the China Medical Board and the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) in the early 1920s (a medical school that still exists and is still highly respected). THAT SAID, the PUMC was certainly not an accurate reflection of the Chinese people. Based on the US John Hopkins model, the medical facilities did not truly attempt to include traditional Chinese medicine and thus many saw the PUMC and its work as Western colonization and were not super stoked on Rockefeller’s “contributions.” The tech may have been more advanced but it managed to completely steamroll over Chinese health and medical culture in its attempts to “modernize” what they interpreted as an underdeveloped society.

But y’know that was Western colonial thought. Fun times.

Anyways, above and beyond the obvious issues that arose from Old White Dudes fucking up (as usual) and deciding to make medicine and life-saving procedures a political issue (sound familiar?), some really fascinating health propaganda material came out of it.  Let’s look at it, shall we? (I could have captioned these, but that would have distracted from the art of these things. Plus it’s more fun to just imagine what’s going on if you don’t read Chinese.)
 

 

 
Many more after the jump…

 
Over the weekend, I got a message from writer, cultural historian, and all-round-good guy Simon Wells. He’s a DM pal and has written a shelf-load of books on the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, cult movies, Charles Manson, and a hip cult novel called The Tripping Horse, all of which are well-worth reading. Now we’ve had the introductions, let me tell you that Wells sent me a link to an hour-long audio he was sent of Yoko Ono recording her “diary” during the overdub sessions for The Beatles White Album. As Simon explained:

During the early days of her relationship with with John Lennon, Yoko Ono would dictate her thoughts on life with Lennon into her own personal recorder - presumably to be given to John later. This, often personal, tape was made during the overdub session for “Revolution 1” at EMI Studio number 3 on 4th June 1968. Parts of Yoko’s tape would be later used in the sound collage “Revolution 9”

This audio has been been discussed on various music forums with the general opinion that 1) it’s genuine; 2) Ono comes across as a bit of an “airhead”; 3) it’s great to hear The Beatles working on the mega-length version of “Revolution.”

During various points in the recording, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and producer George Martin can be heard discussing technical issues like:

GM: Let’s do it.

J: Voices on the, which one, with the new voices.

GM: You want that flange as well.

J: Well, for the final one. You don’t have to do it now, though.

GM: We can do it now, if you want, then. As long as we know where it happens.

J: Well, it just happens all the way through, whenever they’re in. Just straight flange.

Y: John made a beautiful loop and he’s throwing that in the Revolution. It’s very intense and onto. . .

GM: Okay, let’s go then, let’s go.

J: So we just leave them on then, flange.

GM: Leave them on, yeah.

J: And just mess about a bit when it’s guitar part in.

Engineer: Don’t want to flange the verses always.

J: The new . . just the one that goes ‘mommy daddy mommy daddy’.

E: They come in and toss anyway, and just flange the rest.

J: But what else is on it, there’s nothing else on that track.

E: No. But we have to set on that machine, what we want to flange you see.

J: We only want to flange, so it won’t harm it, would it? So what are you saying, then?

E: What am I saying? He’s confused me.

J: I see, right. Let’s go baby! [cut]

Over this, Ono talks about her relationship with Lennon (“I miss you already again. I miss you very much”); her feelings of paranoia (“I wonder maybe it’s just my paranoia to think that you don’t understand me.”); her thoughts on McCartney (“being very nice to me, he’s nice and a very, str- on the level, straight, sense”); her apartment in London (“overlooking the park, the Hyde Park, it’s quiet. It’s on the third floor, both rooms are facing the park and the sky”); and the shooting of Andy Warhol.

Of course, the big question some doubters will ask is whether this is all an elaborate hoax? Well, if it is, then it’s beautifully constructed as someone has taken considerable time to make it. However, the details contained on the tape (all rather personal), together with the background music and the interaction between Ono and other people in the room suggest it’s all (probably) genuine-see above.

My two cents (for what it’s worth) is that Ono’s voice sounded deeper and spoke less rapidly and used the phrase “you know” a lot. Hey, but what the hell do I know? Make your own mind up. A full transcript of Ono’s recording can be read here.
 

 
With thanks to Simon Wells.