It’s a topic that needs to be tackled definitively by the cybersleuths of Snopes.com: DID Marc Bolan, in fact, play guitar on Ike & Tina Turner’s classic “Nutbush City Limits” in 1973? Or was it Ike? Or neither of them?

Although many have tried to get to the bottom of it in recent years, no one seems to really know. Allegedly Tina Turner herself confirmed, in a BBC radio interview that it was indeed Marc Bolan playing guitar on the song. But where is that elusive radio interview? Someone has a memory of it. That memory then gets repeated and “quoted” and ultimately once something comes up enough times in a Google search it becomes a “fact.” True. Or at least true enough.

From the “Nutbush City Limits” entry on Wikipedia:

Typical of the period, none of the session musicians who contributed to “Nutbush City Limits” were given specific mention in the song credits. It has been rumored for years that Marc Bolan, frontman for the glam rock band T. Rex, played guitar on the track. Gloria Jones, his girlfriend at the time—who herself provided backing vocals for Ike & Tina Turner during the 1960s—asserted that this was the case in the 2007 BBC4 documentary Marc Bolan: The Final Word. This claim is bolstered by the fact that Bolan toured the U.S. extensively and resided in the Los Angeles area during the mid-1970s, and is also acknowledged to have played on the Ike & Tina Turner singles “Sexy Ida (Part 2)” and “Baby—Get It On.” However, a 2008 Ebony magazine article about Ike Turner’s death identified James “Bino” Lewis, then a member of Ike & Tina’s backing band Kings of Rhythm, as the guitarist. It has also been suggested that James Lewis is the guitarist on “Baby—Get It On.”

 

 
In a 2010 interview with record collectors magazine Goldmine, Gloria Jones stated again that it was Bolan on the track:

He played on “City Limits” with Ike and Tina Turner. I’ll never forget. I called Ike and said we’re in town and he said, ‘We’re in the studio; you guys come down.’ Marc took his guitar; Tina and I were listening to the song while Marc and Ike were working out their guitar part. Ike said to Marc, “Play what you feel.” That’s when Marc put that “chink, chink” you hear on there. Ike and Tina also really admired him, and they appreciated a lot of the rock acts.

Gloria Jones ought to know. After all, she was there.
 
Continues after the jump…

 
Wakaliga, a small village in Uganda is home to Ramon Film Productions. This small studio has churned out dozens of ultra-low-budget action films in the Ugandan slums which have developed a bit of a cult following on the Internet. The village has been nicknamed “Wakaliwood” and is home to a group of actors, martial artists, stunt-people, and technicians who have signed on with filmmaker Nabwana IGG to make some of the wildest and weirdest z-grade action movies ever seen.

The studio gained some notoriety when their film Who Killed Captain Alex went viral on YouTube.

The hallmark of the Wakaliwood film is lots of fighting and unbelievably over-the-top CGI special defects that are used so shamelessly that you almost forget how terrible they are. There’s something incredibly endearing about these productions. It’s like a modern African take on the whole Little Rascals “let’s put on a show!” aesthetic—peppered with shitloads of fake blood and explosions.

Ramon Film Productions have released a new trailer for their “cooming soon” film, Operation Kakongoliro! The Ugandan Expendables.

Whereas the budget of Who Killed Captain Alex has been stated as $200 USD, this new film has a stated budget of $2000. Obviously that means it’s ten times as good.
 

 
The mind-melting trailer and more, after the jump…

 
Leonard Koren was surely one of the more eccentric people to ever run an influential magazine, although admittedly the category of influential publishers would not be expected to produce the most normal lot by any reckoning. Part of Koren’s charm, for sure, was his straight-faced insistence of sincere obsession over the superficially uninteresting world of baths and bathing. In the 34 issues that were published between 1976 and 1981, Koren’s signature creation, WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing was a tongue-in-cheek celebration of dousing oneself with water with a deadpan tone arguably undercut by Koren’s authentic interest in the subject of wetness.

Pitched somewhere in the general vicinity of Details and Interview and Raw, WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing showed the world, as much as anyone did, what the 1980s were going to be like. True to its title, the magazine’s visual gestalt was dominated by lush depictions of people, often women, bathing or swimming. Based out of Venice, California, it’s a contender for the most ineffably Cali periodical ever, reminiscent of say, the swimming pools artworks of David Hockney, who, surprise surprise, was an interview subject in the magazine’s 28th issue. In its interest in fashion and design, WET also pointed the way to a hard-edged, plastic decade that would be dominated by the likes of Patrick Nagel, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Jeff Koons.

Koren had the guts to forge his own path as well as a keen eye for talent. In addition to offering an early site for the work of Matt Groening, Gary Panter, Matthew Rolston, and Herb Ritts, WET featured Koren’s masterful deployment of tone, brilliantly deadpan textual style, and undisuputed visual chops in every issue.

Among other things Koren is a relentless, if frequently amusing, self-promoter, having produced two volumes (of which I’m aware) dedicated to his version of events behind the creation of WET (Making WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing and 13 Books).
 

Koren in San Francisco in 1985, four years after the last issue of WET
 
Koren’s interest in bathing is one of the mainstays of his career. Koren’s first published work, in 1975, was 17 Beautiful Men Taking A Shower, which is just that, seventeen black-and-white pictures of Los Angeles men like Ed Begley Jr. lathering up in Koren’s fancy bathroom. (Koren had wanted to do 23 Beautiful Women Taking a Bath but a friend “suggested that the less obvious artwork for a heterosexual male—and hence the more interesting—was the one with the men.” He took the advice.) More than a decade after the demise of WET, Koren was publishing works with titles like Undesigning the Bath and How to Take a Japanese Bath.

As Perry Vasquez points out, WET’s colorful, playful qualities didn’t necessarily mean that it wasn’t pushing the envelope, as one of the covers late in its run indicates:
 

WET covers consistently presented strong and unforgettable statements. Koren did not shy away from intellectually challenging or controversial material. The image of the copulating pigs that appeared on the March/April 1981 issue is visually unforgettable but caused great anxiety among the ad sales team who feared it would make their job more difficult. By this time, WET was beginning to penetrate the mainstream so it was sold inside a brown paper wrapper to avoid giving offense at the supermarket checkout line.

 
Kristine McKenna, WET’s music editor from 1979 to 1981, aptly writes that the magazine “espoused a post-hippie philosophy of pleasure, sensuality and play,” but methinks in her use of the term “anti-materialist” she doth protest too much. She explains that Koren frequently didn’t pay contributors or staff but that “what Koren offered in lieu of money was an arena for people to develop whatever creative gifts they had.” Fair enough. For his own part, Koren strikes much the same note, saying that “WETs operating bywords were ‘cheap is good.’”

But would an anti-materialist liken his goals to that of the world’s largest soda pop conglomerate, as Koren did in WET’s opening issue? Read on: “WET is a magazine devoted to upgrading the quality of your bathing experience. Hopefully, in the great American tradition of Coca-Cola, doggie diapers and Pet Rocks, WET will become one of those things you never imagined you needed until you find you can’t live without it.”
 

 
Interest in bathing might technically qualify as “anti-materialist”—lavish possessions are not required to enjoy the process of aquatic submersion—but the topics, tone, and visuals of the magazine surely reeked of well-heeled entitlement, pure and simple. The style the magazine had the same shiny and sleek appeal as an expensive container of Voss bottled water when it wasn’t serving as a precursor for that most disposable of ‘80s celebrities, Max Headroom. And Koren’s manner of disbanding the operation had a similarly flippant air redolent of some kind of privilege: Once Koren became bored with the routinized process of running an established magazine, he thought about trying to sell it to someone but decided against it, commenting, “I felt better about dumping the magazine altogether and letting its memory live on undefiled.”

Still, the influence of WET can’t be denied, taking an honorable place alongside Slash, SPY, and Ray Gun as short-lived magazines that cut a bold aesthetic and editorial line that would come to be cherished by the generations to follow. For an issue-by-issue description of every issue of WET and a cover gallery, see here.
 

 

 

 
Get even WETter, after the jump…

 
When Oliver Sacks was starting out on his career in neurology, he noted that many of his colleagues never seemed to read or make reference to any scientific papers more than five years old. Sacks found this strange, for as a teenager in England he had devoured numerous books on the history of chemistry and biology and even botany. However, to his fellow neurologists Sacks’ interest in the “historical and human dimension” of science was considered “archaic.” Undeterred, Sacks was convinced the historical narrative offered a better understanding of scientific investigation.

This became evident with his diagnosis of a patient who suffered incessant jerking movements of the head and limbs. With his knowledge of previous scientific investigations, Sacks was able to correctly identify the cause of the patient’s illness while at the same time confirm a theory put forward by two German pathologists—Hallervorden and Spatz—in 1922, which had almost been forgotten. This only further convinced Sacks of the great insights to be gleaned from having some historical understanding of science.

Something similar is going on here in the phantasmagorical Augsburg Book of Miraculous Signs from 1552—which presents a continuous religious narrative from Biblical stories through historical events, and assumed portents and signs right up to the 16th century—the era when Protestantism became the dominant Christian religion in England, Scotland, Germany and Switzerland.

Privately commissioned in the German town of Augsburg, this “miracle” book was published in “123 folios with 23 inserts, each page fully illuminated, one astonishing, delicious, supersaturated picture follows another.” While church reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin denounced Catholicism for its superstitious and idolatrous beliefs, the Augsburg Book of Miraculous Signs served to remind its Protestant readers of the hand of God working thru various strange and ominous events—earthquakes, plagues of locusts, weird beasts, monstrous births and unusual solar activity. Like many of his fellow reformers, Luther believed such portents signified The End of Days and the coming Apocalypse—a trope that continues to this day. 

But for the modern secular reader, these beautiful water colors and gouaches describe meteorological events—floods, hailstones, storms; seismic activity—the Lisbon earthquake; solar activity; and the cyclical path of comets; all of which—as Oliver Sacks understood—can give science its human and historical dimension.

M’colleague, Martin Schneider previously posted on this wondrous book, stating he wished he was able to read the descriptions accompanying the images. Well, this where possible I have now done or have described the scene illustrated. For those who would like to own their own copy, a facsimile edition of the Augsburg Book of Miraculous Signs has been published by Taschen and is available here.
 

The great flood—in the center what maybe a representation of Noah’s ark.
 

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
 

Moses parts the Red Sea.
 
More ‘divine’ revelation, after the jump….

 
In 1967, the government of Canada established the Canadian Film Development Corporation. In an attempt to stimulate the country’s film industry, the CFDC offered a 60% tax credit to investors who financed Canadian films that promoted Canadian culture. The movies made from 1967-1973 were very Canadian, featuring sensitive characters and Canadian locations. These motion pictures did poorly and couldn’t compete with American imports. In 1974, the CFDC changed the tax credit from 60% to a very generous 100%. With this change, Canadian filmmakers no longer had to make Canada-centric films, and were free to make movies that would appeal to American distributors. This also created a market for tax shelters—potentially fraudulent ones—in which the sole motive was to make a film in order to defer taxable income. The b-movies produced in the Great White North during this period (1974-1982) would come to be known as “Canuxploitation.”
 

The logo for canuxploitation.com

The first Canadian blockbuster to receive tax subsidies from the Canadian government was Bob Clark’s innovative slasher film, Black Christmas (1974). At the time, it was the most costly state-funded production in the Canadian movie industry’s history, with the government pitching in several hundred thousand dollars. It set box office records in Canada and did receive an American release, though it failed to make an impact, financially, stateside. Black Christmas was a high quality film, but many motion pictures from the “Canuxploitation” era are now seen as derivative of American movies, and others as complete trash. Firebird 2015 A.D. (1981) is a motion picture that fits both descriptors.
 

 
The film is set in the year 2015, when gas is so scarce the U.S. government has outlawed automobiles (it’s amusing to note that, as I write this at the end of 2015, gas is still so plentiful that a gallon of the stuff is cheaper than it’s been in years). In this ridiculous premise—why couldn’t the cars be modified to accept an alternate fuel?—those who still illegally own and operate an automobile (labeled “Burners”) are tracked down by the Department of Vehicular Control (DVC). One rogue officer, who seems more than a little off his rocker, changes into Native American garb and shoots to kill.
 

 
Character actor Darren McGavin plays rebellious gas guzzler, “Red.” McGavin, star of such television programs as Mike Hammer and the paranormal series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-75), is probably best known today for his role as “Old Man Parker” in A Christmas Story (1983). He was an American with a familiar face, possibly cast over a Canadian actor so as to appeal to stateside distributors.
 

Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak

Filmed in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, the landscape—complete with corn fields—resembles Middle America, yet there’s nothing at all futuristic about the setting (other than that it’s post-apocalyptic looking, never mind there’s no mention of an apocalypse). Though branded a science fiction film, aside from the fact that it’s set in the future, there’s little in Firebird 2015 A.D. that brings to mind the genre. There are other elements incorporated, too, like the popular image of the American outlaw rebelling against un-American legislation (think Smokey and the Bandit), and there’s also a romantic subplot that takes up a good chunk of the running time.
 

 
Firebird 2015 A.D. has baffled viewers over the years. On the surface, it appears to be such a terrible film that it’s a wonder to many, and was even included in a documentary called The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made. Here are a few excerpts from a review penned by a typically exasperated imdb user::

…it doesn’t make a lick of sense and everything about it is just plain stupid…See, this could have been the plot of a potentially fantastic post-apocalyptic adventure in the vein of Mad Max, but instead it became a really tedious, incoherent, unmemorable and extremely pointless Canadian exploitation effort. The film is a big fat piece of nothing, with chases that are lame and car stunts that are embarrassing. It even becomes worse when the script fully begins to focus on the developing love story…instead of on the rebellion against the system. The portrayal of the year 2015 is weak and cheap looking.

The reviewer is spot-on with these observations, but I think the key to what really happened with Firebird 2015 A.D. is missing from it and all the other reviews that I’ve read: It wasn’t meant to be any good. Though it was seemingly made to appeal to American distributors and audiences, it was likely produced solely as a tax shelter. Meaning, it just had to exist for investors to get that 100% tax credit. If the CFDC reviewed it, the government couldn’t deny the producers didn’t at least *try* to make a motion picture that was worth a damn, one that would interest the average American. Hell, the film is seemingly so pro-American ideals and anti-government it looks like something that could’ve been produced as propaganda by the Tea Party.
 

 
The site dedicated to Canada’s tax shelter films, canuxploitation.com, offers an explanation as to why a film like Firebird 2015 A.D., despite its nearly $1 million budget, looked so cheap:

Unfortunately, the tax shelter legislation which gave birth to this film boom was full of loopholes. Some of the less scrupulous investors began contributing large amounts of money for film budgets on paper, but then only allowing a small portion to be used for the actual production.

 

 
Though Firebird 2015 A.D. did show up in Canadian theaters in 1981, and may have played a U.S. drive-in or two, I couldn’t find any evidence it impressed an American distributor enough to gain wide release in the states. It did come out on VHS, but it seems no one has bothered to put this stinker out on DVD. Well, one was released, though it looks like a bootleg to me.
 

 
Watch the entire film—if you dare—after the jump…

 
Like time itself, the procession of Melvins bass players marches ever onward. That sludgy parade has included luminaries like ur-Melvin and eventual Mudhoney founder Matt Lukin; Lori Black, the daughter of the ridiculously famous 1930s child actress Shirley Temple; Cows’ Kevin Rutmanis; Joe Preston of doom pioneers Earth, who went on post-Melvins to form the wonderful ambient/drone project Thrones; erstwhile Alchemy Records honcho Mark Deutrom; Mr. Bungle’s Trevor Dunn; Karp/Big Business bassist Jared Warren; and, most recently, Butthole Surfer Jeff Pinkus.

My pals and I have long had a running joke—and we surely can’t be the only ones—that this tendency will reach its apotheosis once Minute/hose bass legend Mike Watt becomes a Melvin, but in a way, something close enough has actually happened. It was announced last month that the latest Melvin will be Steve McDonald of Redd Kross, the early L.A. hardcore band featured in Desperate Teenage Lovedolls and Lovedolls Superstar when they themselves were still actual teenagers, making themselves notorious with a gleeful take on hardcore that pushed towards manic power-pop, and a penchant for hilariously nailing near-heretical cover songs. In the mid-‘80s, they made a dramatic turn towards full-blown psychedelia, releasing the unspeakably brilliant Neurotica, an album that would leave a large stain on the grunge movement that was soon to come. McDonald resurfaced in the 21st Century as a member of the hardcore alter-kaker supergroup OFF! with members of Circle Jerks and Hot Snakes, and with Redd Kross again, on the 2012 LP Researching the Blues. He’s reportedly already recorded a Melvins EP called War Pussy, and will perform on this year’s sure-to-be-completely-sick tour with Japanese spazzcore gods Melt Banana and Napalm. Fucking. Death.
 


 
To celebrate this unholy union, Melvins have released a Neurotica mash-up T-shirt, designed by illustrator and onetime Polvo drummer Brian Walsby, who in 2014 gifted the world with a wonderful Melvins/Forever Changes shirt. Preorders are currently ongoing, and quantities are limited to 500 standard Ts and 500 raglan sleeve baseball shirts.

Continues after the jump…

Actress Caroline Munro and “Elle” the robot from the 1978 film, Starcrash
 
I feel like I’ve been on a bit of a throwback kick for a while now, so I thought I’d keep that retro train running with a photo series depicting cool vintage chicks battling (and sometimes just hanging out with) robots. If you’re a fan of robots and girls, you’ll recognize some of the characters in this post like the Daleks from Doctor Who, “Elle” the dutiful robot who sounds like Yosemite Sam from culty-cool 1978 film, Starcrash or the gorgeous Tina Louise glamming it up with the robot that landed on Gilligan’s Island. 
 

Two bathing beauties and a robot hanging out at the beach, 1920s
 
The encyclopedic site Filmsite.org has an exaustive list of films that feature robots dating all the way back to the age of silent films in the early 1900’s. And thanks to that list, I’ve added a few robot-themed films to my queue like 1965’s Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (starring Vincent Price, Frankie Avalon and a bevy of robot women in gold bikinis), which for some strange reason I have never seen. Loads of images of retro girls and robots (sometime behaving badly, making them NSFW), follow.
 

Nude dancers and a robot, 1920s
 

Bikini girl with a Dalek, 1960s
 
More retro babes and robots after the jump…

 
A week before Christmas, Netflix posted F is for Family, a new animated series based on the politically incorrect outlook of acerbic stand-up comedian Bill Burr. Co-written by Burr and frequent Simpsons scribe Michael Price, the show also features the vocal talents of Laura Dern, Justin Long, Sam Rockwell, Phil Hendrie and others. F is for Family is set in 1973, a time of prog rock, when dads were kings of their castles, kids were left to play unsupervised on construction sites and “the Japs” were beating our asses with their cheap imported cars. Burr plays Frank Murphy, a rant-prone typically angry blue collar 70s dad—we all had one—who works in baggage handling at the local airport and watches a lot of TV.

I liked it a lot, but then again I get all the jokes since I was seven the year it supposedly takes place. If you like Bill Burr—and who doesn’t love a man who can do THIS—it doesn’t disappoint. It’s smart and funny, somewhat self-consciously playing like a Norman Lear comedy with a fuck of a lot more swearing.

The show has an opening title sequence that is set to 1974’s AM radio hit “Come and Get Your Love,” which I think is one of the best songs of like all time. It’s an unbelievably catchy earworm that evokes a nice summer day, with the wind in your hair, just being young and carefree and this is what we’re grooving along to as we see a young Frank graduate from high school, optimistic and flying through the clouds, ready to go out and conquer the world before a draft notice smacks him in the face. Before our eyes we see him get paunchier, a pair of glasses and a bald spot along with the nagging responsibilities of his wife and three kids (“They’re animals”). It’s the most perfect way to introduce the character of Frank—or any father of that generation.
 

 
The reason I mention this is because if you’ve seen the show—you might know the song (or have heard it elsewhere, such as Guardians of the Galaxy) but do you recall the group who did it? Probably not. They were called Redbone and billed themselves as the first Native American/Cajun rock group. They were really amazing musicians who are worthy of “rediscovery” by rock snobs.
 

 
Redbone (not to be confused with Leon Redbone, the idiosyncratic Canadian Tin Pan Alley-style singer-songwriter) was formed by brothers Pat and Lolly Vasquez-Vegas in 1969. Previously they had been hotshot LA session musicians known professionally as the Avantis and later as the Vegas Brothers—their paths crossed in the studio with the likes of Glenn Campbell, Snuff Garrett, Sonny & Cher, Delaney Bramlett, Leon Russell, Elvis and many other notables—but two Mexican guys playing surf rock wasn’t really something that they felt the entertainment industry wanted at the time, hence the switch to the more overtly Native American image with a bit of Cajun spice. They had two big hits, the first being “The Witch Queen of New Orleans” (about 19th century voodoo practitioner Marie Laveau) in 1971. By the time of Cher’s “Half-Breed” in 1973—“Redbone” being Cajun slang for someone of mixed heritage—it must’ve felt like the right moment for the group to take advantage of this nascent Native American chic.

More after the jump…

 
This is so dumb, but by the end of it I was nearly hyperventilating from laughing so hard.

Some genius put together this superb supercut of David Lee Roth jumps and kicks—which would have been amusing enough on its own—but then they took it completely over-the-top with the addition of grunts, whoops, and yells pilfered from Roth’s “Runnin’ With the Devil” vocal take.
 

“Whoooo!”
 
By now everyone’s probably heard the hilarious acapella track from the sessions of Van Halen‘s debut album. It’s taken on an Internet life of its own, first as a viral YouTube video, and then having been used in countless mashups (including the “Can Halen” track we wrote about a couple of months ago), and even as the soundtrack to a David Lee Roth-themed, asteroids-inspired video game. But THIS, my friends, is by far the best use of that track yet.

The video starts to get REALLY good about 40 seconds in as it reaches a fever pitch. I absolutely lose it on the “Oh God!” at 1:03.
 

 
Thank God, the final nail in the coffin for the whole “Disney Princesses Reimagined As (insert whatever the hell you want here)” craze. I thought this meme would never, ever die. I can’t think of a better way of cementing its demise than ending with an actual cement mixer… reimagined as Disney princesses.

 

 
More after the jump…