German illustrator Florian Bertmerconfesses that he is “horrible at social networking.” To a certain extent this appears to be accurate, as it seems the now-LA based artist has never given an interview over the course of his career. He also drinks too much coffee, draws a lot, and likes dogs because they make him laugh. Since these attributes are clear indications of a person who has aligned their priorities correctly, let’s all try to learn a little more about the somewhat mysterious artist by way of his artwork which, if you are a fan of hardcore bands and jams, will be familiar to you. Also, if you happen to be a fan of all things satanic, or dabble in diabolism, Bertmer’s work will probably speak directly to you.
Bertmer’s earliest work dates back to his youth spent in Münster, Germany illustrating fliers for local hardcore bands. In 1998 he would get his first credit for album artwork for German hardcore punk band Highscore. The following year Bertmer and his band Cheerleaders of the Apocalypse put out their first recording, Bloodfeast 99. Florian is credited for his “Wacky Screaming” and the cassette’s artwork. That same year, Bertmer would illustrate his first of many album covers for hardcore band Agoraphobic Nosebleed. More recently, Bertmer has worked with screen-printing industry giant Mondo to create original posters for classic horror films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hellraiser, two of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s esoteric films, The Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre, as well as for the animated TV mind-fucks that are The Ren & Stimpy Show and Rick and Morty. Bertmer’s admitted ineptitude at social networking hasn’t hurt his career, and his illustration style is continually evolving. Over the last few years, fans of Bertmer’s work have noted the influence of classic Art Nouveau intertwined within occult symbolism and imagery inline with David Mann, an artist who masterfully captured outlaw biker culture with his paintings and contributions to biker bible/magazine Easyrider.
Bertmer’s numerous collaborations with Mondo have been wildly successful, and his reasonably priced limited edition prints (many of which are featured in this post) often sell out. When they do appear on auction sites such as eBay, some of his more culty works, such as his riffs on Ren & Stimpy, and his Jodorowsky movie posters routinely fetch $300-$400 each. More of Bertmer’s work follow—a few are NSFW.
A piece by Bertmer in the spirit of the artwork of David Mann.
Bertmer’s poster for Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in honor of the 40th anniversary of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.’
King Khan! Man of many bands and many hands. Satanic, shamanic, bananic, messianic and more and more titanic, King Khan spurts to the beat of his own cum drum. He goes in all directions at once (including inward), has made many forms of music on all the coolest labels around with The King Khan and BBQ Show, King Khan and the Shrines, Tandoori Knights, Black Jaspers, Almighty Defenders, Louder Than Death and he’s made records with The Spits, Black Lips and William S. Burroughs! He’s unstoppable, and never stops, well that is and isn’t the same thing really if ya think about it.
I speak with Khan regularly. We’re premiering his new video here today and he’s just starting a tour so I thought to do a little interview as well. Check out the record and tour dates here. Ready? Hold your nose! OK, let’s jump!
Howie Pyro: What makes chicken so psychedelic?
KK: Well I don’t know if you know this but their gobbles are full of DMT, and the challenge is how you smoke it. Chickens don’t appreciate lighting their gobbles on fire…. I know far too many farmers who have lost an
eye trying to get high with a chicken. If I had a penny for each of them I would be the Indian Col. Sanders.
HP: This song has so many layers…. LSD, a goat’s tooth, rats with scabies, birds and bees on fire, even a rabid cook… How did you come up with these lyrics?
KK: I always admired the chef named “Barf” on You Can’t Do That on Television, which was a Canadian kids show that I grew up watching. I would want him to have goats teeth, and be in a kitchen filled with rats with scabies making me chicken. I just imagined him trying to make a romantic dinner for me and my concubine. What would be his version of an aphrodisiac and would it lead to some wild ass baby making? These are the things i fantasize about…. Ever since I accepted the films of David Cronenberg into my life, things ain’t the same…. I neeeed help…. Death to Videodrome… Long live the New Flesh!
HP: Did working with Alejandro Jodorowsky have a permanent effect on you?
KK: Yes, ever since I became one of his spiritual warriors I have this attitude towards art. If art does not mutate you than it has failed. I feel like in order to follow the path of illumination you must seek the path of least resistance, and once that is found, everything that you create must not be feared…. creation has to be a brutal/beautiful experience and if it does not help mutate the viewer than it hasn’t achieved anything that matters.
HP: How have your experiences been with psychedelics?
KK: I started at about 15-years-old with LSD, took a lot of it up until my mid 20s. I did a lot until it suddenly felt redundant. It was like i had figured out the puzzle and didn’t need it anymore to make any profound realizations. I began smoking DMT a few years back, but have only really broke through twice. That was the best experience I had with tripping. The first time I sat and spoke to a praying mantis with a golden crown, she spoke in her language and I could understand it. When I looked around I saw Anubis and other Egyptian deities and they were all sitting at a table like the last supper and I was an honored guest. It was so beautiful, they were throwing me a party, and it was all so real, yet completely bonkers. I think psychedelics are tools for us to use carefully, they make you see things that can be so spiritually powerful that they heal you.
HP: I would have asked if you remembered what the mantis language sounded like!
KK: Yes… it sounds like this…“Khrawk khrawk sss khrawz khrawk scuzzzzzzz carawk…”
HP: And wondered how you kept your wild willie to yourself (therefore not being devoured after)?
KK: Smearing hot mustard on my willie could protect it from non gourmands, and could also induce tears during fellatio which could be kinda romantic.
HP: How long does it take to incubate five acid chicken babies, one for each point of thee pentagram? [See video below] What is the seed that they grew from and who “planted” it?
KK: The seeds were provided by yours truly. I didn’t realize that we placed the acid chicken spawns in a pentagram…. I guess it was really a subliminal message of sorts. I am glad you pointed it out!
It takes a special sort of man to spot the invisible pentagram in poultry.
HP: I’ll put a dirty feather in my cap (cluck cluck)... Any wild outfits/stage wear planned for this big tour starting on 9/11? Wait 9/11? And finally, what is the sound of one mant crapping?
KK: One “mant” crapping? Does said “mant” have a human anus or a “mant” hole?
9/11? That is just a coinkiedink!
HP: A Mant-is ...a half man half ant that appears in a movie within a movie (Matinee), loosely based on director William Castle…
KK: Ahhhh well I ASS-ume it would sound like poetry… bugged out insect rap…I mean sorry C-RAP!
HP: What inspires you to make such glorious punk rock?
KK: I like to always go back to a passage by William S. Burroughs from Cities of The Red Night. I picture him the captain of my ship and I feel like he was the first inspiration for me to seek out the underground and find myself…. I think this passage sums it up the best. It’s quite the mouthful…. the perfect words to end all ends…. and begin all beginnings….
“This book is dedicated to the Ancient Ones, to the Lord of Abominations, Humwawa, whose face is a mass of entrails, whose breath is the stench of dung and the perfume of death, Dark Angel of all that is excreted and sours, Lord of Decay, Lord of the Future, who rides on a whispering south wind, to Pazuzu, Lord of Fevers and Plagues, Dark Angel of the Four Winds with rotting genitals from which he howls through sharpened teeth over stricken cities, to Kutulu, the Sleeping Serpent who cannot be summoned, to the Akhkharu, who such the blood of men since they desire to become men, to the Lalussu, who haunt the places of men, to Gelal and Lilit, who invade the beds of men and whose children are born in secret places, to Addu, raiser of storms who can fill the night sky with brightness, to Malah, Lord of Courage and Bravery, to Zahgurim, whose number is twenty-three and who kills in an unnatural fashion, to Zahrim, a warrior among warriors, to Itzamna, Spirit of Early Mists and Showers, to Ix Chel, the Spider-Web-that-Catches-the-Dew-of-Morning, to Zuhuy Kak, Virgin Fire, to Ah Dziz, the Master of Cold, to Kak U Pacat, who works in fire, to Ix Tab, Goddess of Ropes and Snares, patroness of those who hang themselves, to Schmuun, the Silent One, twin brother of Ix Tab, to Xolotl the Unformed, Lord of Rebirth, to Aguchi, Master of Ejaculations, to Osiris and Amen in phallic form, to Hex Chun Chan, the Dangerous One, to Ah Pook, the Destroyer, to the Great Old One and the Star Beast, to Pan, God of Panic, to the nameless gods of dispersal and emptiness, to Hassan i Sabbah, Master of Assassins. To all the scribes and artists and practitioners of magic through whom these spirits have been manifested….
The cover of the New York Post, August 15th, 1983.
“I’m all for capital punishment. I think it should be televised.”
—Johnny Ramone speaking about his wish for Seth Macklin of the punk band Sub Zero who attacked Ramone leaving him with a fractured skull and near death in 1983.
In the year leading up to Johnny Ramone’s near-death-experience in the early hours of August 14th, 1983, tensions between Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Ross Hyman) and the eldest Ramone escalated. One particular incident deepened the division between Johnny and Joey: Johnny’s pursuit of Joey’s girlfriend Linda Danielle, who would later become Johnny’s wife. The band was always suffering both personally and physically. Marky aka Marc Bell was dismissed for his binge boozing, and then there was the 24/7 problem that was Dee Dee Ramone. In December of 1982, the band headed into Kingdom Sound in Long Island to record their seventh album, Subterranean Jungle. The Subterranean Jungle Tour (with Richie Ramone/Richard Reinhardt on drums), would begin in early February and roll all around the country until the band returned for a gig in Queens on August 13th. After the show, Johnny had a run-in with Seth Macklin, a 22-year-old punk rocker from the band Sub-Zero (also known as Sub Zero Construction), over a girl Macklin thought was his own—27-year-old former dancer and punk rock style icon Cynthia “Roxy” Whitney. In her 2015 book, Too Tough To Love: My Life with Johnny Ramone, Whitney chronicles the 20 years she spent as Johnny’s mistress. Whitney and Johnny had been a “thing” since the late 70s when she started showing up at shows outside of the band’s native New York area.
Jealousy almost killed Frank Zappa in 1971. Now it was trying to take down Johnny Ramone by way of Seth Macklin’s foot crushing his skull over a chick.
Johnny really never spoke much about the incident publicly, and the band would not perform live again until December of 1983. Following the incident, both The New York Times and The Daily Courier (a newspaper published out of Prescott, Arizona) both ran stories detailing Ramone’s run-in with Macklin. According to both publications, just before 4:00 am, Macklin, who thought he was dating Cynthia exclusively, spotted her with Johnny. Cynthia, on the other hand, was of the mind she and Macklin had an “open relationship” and at this point had been seeing Johnny on and off for several years anyway. In his police statement, Macklin asserted it was Johnny who swung at him first with Cynthia’s handbag, which sounds dubious at best. Macklin then said he hit Johnny “two or three times” in self-defense before the guitarist fell to the sidewalk, hitting his head on a car door on his way down. According to the police report (as Johnny has maintained and was reported by The New York Times), Macklin kicked him in the head after assaulting him, causing the fracture and rendering him unconscious. Johnny’s injuries were so dire he underwent emergency surgery at St. Vincent’s to stop the bleeding in his brain.
The article published in the Courier on Johnny’s fight with Seth Macklin of Sub-Zero.
In his autobiography Commando (published after his death), Johnny sheds some light on the incident, which, he admittedly did not remember much about—mostly because he spent the majority of it unconscious. What he does remember clearly was arriving at his old apartment on 10th Street in Manhattan in the band’s van after the show in Queens at around 3:00 am. Across the street, he saw Cynthia hanging out on a porch stoop bombed out of her mind chatting with a punk Johnny had not seen around before. Though Johnny and Cynthia were “not together” at the time, he felt uneasy seeing her in a potentially bad situation and approached Macklin telling him to get lost, urging Cynthia to get back inside. Johnny remembers nothing else about the fight. His first memory was instead waking up in the hospital with no hair, a bleeding cerebrum, knocking back anti-seizure medication. The story made the cover of the New York Post on August 15th, with sensational taglines like “Battered punk rock star battles for life,” and “Superstar stomped in 10th St. rage over woman he loves.” After three or so months of rehabilitation and healing, Johnny returned to the band, but, in his own words, people close to him felt he had changed.
Remarkably, Johnny’s doctors were able to determine he hadn’t suffered any kind of brain damage. The attack did make Ramone “more cautious” around people trying to cozy up to the band. It also made Johnny even more guarded about his personal space, especially his head. He was also very fucking pissed-off at Macklin and testified in court against his assailant who had been charged with first-degree assault in the case—only to serve a few short months in jail for almost murdering Ramone. Here’s a passage from Commando in which Ramone expresses the dark thoughts he had about Macklin:
“I was very angry. I wanted him killed. I’m all for capital punishment. I think it should be televised. I think they could make it a pay-per-view event and give the money to the victims’ families. So then, I started fantasizing about getting a gun. I thought it would be great to have someone mess with me and kill him. I mean Bernhard Goetz was a hero. He did what everyone else wants to do. He was Charles Bronson. In real life, who the hell would approach Charles Bronson? They go for the Bernhard Goetz’s of the world. In the end, though, I never owned a gun. It was just a fantasy. I was no Charles Bronson.”
The second page of the New York Post story. Johnny and Cynthia are pictured. Seth Macklin is the man wearing a hat.
Before Johnny passed, he did an interview with New York Magazine rating each album in the Ramones’ discography. His comments on his first post-brain surgery album, Too Tough To Die (produced by former Ramones’ drummer Tommy Ramone/Tommy Erdelyi and a nod to Johnny living through some bad-brain-bullshit) are quite interesting in the context of this story. It is also perhaps another indication of a temporary shift in Johnny’s frame of mind. At least as it pertained to the band’s strained interpersonal relationships:
“All of a sudden, we all got along and stopped worrying about making a hit record. This was our best record of the eighties.”
In the name of “research,” I spent time cruising through the Ramones catalog circa 1981-1984 and was reminded of the groovy jam “Chop Suey” which Johnny hated. It was recorded in 1981, but lots of us 80s kids will remember it from the completely bonkers flick Get Crazy (1983, Lou Reed. NEVER FORGET!). It features the vocals of B-52s Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson and well as Debbie Harry. Also elevating the cool factor of this song is it pinpoints a time in the band’s career (again according to Johnny) where nobody was talking to each other. “Chop Suey” was a byproduct of all kinds of awkwardness. And I love it.
After launching in September of 1970, the music television show TopPop, the Dutch response to Top of the Pops, would give the British show a run for their money by providing bands, musicians, and performers a venue to creatively mime for their lives every week. During its eighteen-year run, the show hosted pretty much every band and musician known to man and a fair share of Nederpop (a word coined to describe the pop scene in the Netherlands). Loads of them such as Slade, David Bowie, Queen, Debbie Harry and Blondie appeared on the show multiple times. Many acts also filmed exclusive video content for the program, especially during the 1970s as promotional video material was not yet a regular industry practice. If for some reason a musical act wasn’t able to make it to the Netherlands, the show had a secret weapon—Dutch ballerina and choreographer Penny de Jager. The gorgeous de Jager and her ballet troupe went all out when the opportunity presented itself, such as her Aladdin-themed dance-off to Queen’s “Someone to Love,” or turning the TopPop studio into the Dutch version of Soul Train for the Commodores soul standard, “Brick House.” There are a few instances of TopPop traveling to film their guests like heartthrob David Cassidy, who the show shot on the grass at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. Then, in 1974, TopPop packed their bags and flew to Los Angeles to film Barry White at his home.
A photo of Brian Eno from his appearance on ‘TopPop’ in 1977.
TopPop stands out in the vast sea of music-oriented television programming thanks to their creative presentation of their guests’ performances. This included various mind-enhancing stage designs, optical effects, or perhaps mini-narratives in a vein that would later become the norm on MTV. I can personally tell you that your life is not complete unless you have seen Brian Eno yodeling while he falls through a backdrop of trippy 70s-style effects. And, since I’m a special kind of Black Sabbath geek, one of their more infamous TV performances was filmed for TopPop, a fantastic black and white video of the band grinding out “Paranoid” while some sort of bizarre motorized art project spins behind them. Sure the bands were lipsynching, but that didn’t have to mean it had to look dull.
Iggy Pop was another of TopPop‘s regulars, and you’ve probably heard about him trashing TopPop‘s studio during what was supposed to be his lipsynched performance of “Lust for Life.” This would be one of many times Iggy would appear on TopPop seemingly with no other goal but to fuck everybody’s mind up. Following Iggy’s unhinged destruction of the studio, Dutch journalist and TopPop contributor Mick Boskamp interviewed Iggy, perhaps for damage control purposes, asking him if he rehearses his “acts” or do they come to him “spontaneously”? Iggy replied that trashing a European television studio wasn’t something he would rehearse because it was just not something he “does.” “I just come in and do it.” Which accurately sums up his unhinged ambush of TopPop‘s defenseless studio.
There are over 3000 videos from TopPop on their YouTube channel, so feel free to use the rest of your lifetime digging through the Dutch treats it contains. A few of my personal favorites are posted below.
Brian Eno doing “Seven Deadly Finns” on ‘TopPop.’
One of Iggy Pop’s gonzo performances of “Lust for Life” taped for ‘TopPop’ during which he destroys a chair in 1977.
A vintage concert shirt from Billy Idol’s Charmed Life Tour featuring Faith No More.
When Billy Idol asked Faith No More to join his Charmed Life Tour, he was still recovering from a near-fatal motorcycle accident which almost cost him his life and one of his legs. Idol’s extensive injuries are also the reason you only see the rocker from the torso up in the video for “Cradle of Love” as the wreck left him temporarily paralyzed. Before hooking up with Idol, FNM had been on the road with Soundgarden and Voivod. The would officially join Idol in early September for a run of approximately 30 shows with their final gig scheduled for Seattle on October 31st, 1990. Reviews from this leg of Idol’s tour with Faith No More are full of all kinds of stories including FNM pissing off crowds by pissing on them while opening for Idol at the Cow Palace in California. However, nothing on this tour would live up to the debauchery witnessed by the 18,000 in attendance at Seattle Center Arena (now Key Arena) on Halloween night in 1990.
Based on a review of the show published in Seattle publication City Heat by writer Michael Edward Browning, Mike Patton walked out on stage in a pair of gorilla pants and, according to Browning, a “Doris Day” wig. However, with a little more digging, it appears Patton’s intention was not to look like Doris Day, but, most likely, Nirvana vocalist Kurt Cobain. Take a look:
Mike Patton on stage at Seattle Center Arena on October 31st, 1990.
Patton would then devolve into his signature manic arm waving/drunken sailor trudging/octave-smashing self, which Browning overheard a fellow audience member (who he referred to as a “mother”) describe as someone doing a good imitation of a “retarded person.” Yeesh, this chick. As Faith continued thundering through their set, they launched into their single “Epic.” During the song, Idol’s road crew rolled out a huge pile of smelt on a lightning rig and dumped it on the stage floor. After the initial shock of having 40 pounds of dead fish suddenly appear on stage, Patton started stuffing them in his gorilla pants. The rest of the band proceeded to lob the smelt into the crowd before returning to the stage to perform their cover of the Commodore’s soulful classic, “Easy.”
Now it was time for Idol to take the stage and for Faith No More to get a bit of revenge for Idol’s fish fuckery. And they didn’t waste any time.
While Idol was strutting around during “Cradle of Love” a member of FNM (likely Mike Patton) appeared on stage dressed in a gorilla costume and started coordinating dance moves with Idol’s backup singers. The rest of Idol’s set would go on without any other antics until his encore. While Billy was crooning out the moody jam “Eyes Without a Face” Faith No More would return to the stage in the nude with their heads and faces covered by masks, towels, and bags. Patton, Roddy Bottum, James Martin, Bill Gould and, Mike Bordin formed a naked dancing prayer circle around Idol until Billy joined them. There has been some question in the past as to the identities of the nude marauders but in a Tweet from 2013 Idol confirmed it was Faith No More on stage that night au naturel. On an even weirder note, Idol would end up having the last hee-haw by letting five miniature pigs and a fucking goat loose in FNM’s dressing room. After returning from their heroic naked hijinks, it looked more like a barnyard than a backstage party as the piggies and their goat friend chowed down on trays of leftover food in their dressing room.
Footage or photographs from the show (with the exception of the one in this post), do not appear to exist. To try to make up for this, check out this “performance” by FNM from Top of the Pops. As you may know, bands on Top of the Pops were required to lipsynch and at around 1:24 you can see Mike Patton not giving a single fuck about TOTP’s rules.
Whereas I was not exactly a Crass punk myself, I was definitely sort of Crass punk adjacent. The image conjured up of a Crass punk tends to be one of a smelly squatter, a stinky dole-scrounging vegan anarchist smoking roll-ups and sniffing glue. In 1983 and 84 I was a teenage squatter in the Brixton area of London (and before that in the infamous Wyers squat in Amsterdam), but I was a well-groomed American kid who saw no reason to stop bathing, or to change out of my normal clothes when I went to see a punk band just so I would fit in. I found it funny to show up for a Flux of Pink Indians gig at the Ambulance Station wearing a pink tennis shirt or penny loafers and white Levis to a Poison Girls show. At least it was amusing TO ME. Plus I’d have looked like a dummy in punk clothes. I never had any interest in “being different” like everybody else. Wearing the uniform of non-conformity, one which was apparently collectively agreed upon, had little appeal for me. In 1984? I saw it a bit like I saw tie-dye to be honest. Perhaps I was just prematurely cynical. I’ve never been much of a joiner.
But many of the people I knew and interacted with daily living in squats were full-on, very idealistic Crass punks and through their influence I was introduced to the decidedly non-cynical ideas of communal living that the band espoused and inspired. Take for instance the daily ritual of “stolen stew” whereupon items shoplifted from Tesco, or discarded vegetables gathered from the dumpsters of Brixton market were thrown into a large cooking pot at the end of the day by two German girls, both Crass punks to the hilt. (On days where I was stealing sugar packets to keep my stomach quiet, these improvised communal meals tasted better than anything I’ve ever subsequently eaten in a three star restaurant.) Veganism, obviously was a huge part of that subculture and Crass were THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT REASON that the vegan lifestyle first began to gain popularity, initially in the squats of South London and then spreading out worldwide from there. (This is a fact, don’t argue with me, I was there. Where do you think Morrissey got it from?). Animal rights and the anti-vivisection movement. And oh yeah, all the politics, that was pretty big, too, what with the anarchy and all. Class War was read and discussed and Ian Bone (a truly great English character) was around at times. I took part in the infamous Stop the City demonstration, the first anti-globalist rioting that shut down London’s financial district—or at the very least annoyed and intimidated many bankers and stock brokers for the better part of a day. Stop the City was more of a CND thing, but was mostly populated by sulfate-amped anarchopunks and the Crass logo was seen on half of the backs there. (What’s amazing to consider in 2019 is how several thousand people, most of them with no telephones at home, managed to show up that day. I recall being there early, thinking it was going to be a bust and then suddenly BOOM, Threadneedle Street was packed with young spiky-haired weirdos looking for trouble.)
These things don’t ever leave you.
Although an inspiring flesh and blood political ideal—the notion of what Crass stood for was obviously very, very important to me when I was younger—musically they weren’t my cup of poison. PiL, Throbbing Gristle, Gun Club, Virgin Prunes, Nick Cave, Soft Cell and the Slits were what I was into then. I would rather read their lyric sheets than actually listen to Crass’ music. The thing was, none of the Crass punks who I knew really listened to Crass either. I realize that this will sound just plain wrong, but it was none other than early UB40 that seemed to be the preferred soundtrack to anarcho-punk life, and not the abrasive racket made by Crass themselves. The early Cult were another group that a lot Crass punks listened to. Crass gigs yes, Crass records not so much. That was my directly observed observation.
Fast forward to today and I hadn’t listened to an entire Crass album for… well… quite a long time. To be honest, I tended to think of their music as being a shambling low-fi mess with a yob from Essex screaming over the top. The only Crass CD I own is the Best Before 1984 compilation, but I will admit to having a look at Discogs a few months back to see how much copies of original Crass records go for, just to own them as objects of cultural importance, not thinking I would listen to them much. I’m glad that I didn’t do that because One Little Indian have repressed the classic Crass albums on vinyl for the first time since they originally came out and from what I have seen and heard so far, these releases are exceptionally well realized. Not only is Gee Vaucher’s artwork faithfully reproduced, they’ve been remastered by Alex Gordon and Penny Rimbaud at Abbey Road studios and they sound, dare I say it, GREAT. Picture an archival copy of Stations of the Crass that’s been given the Blue Note treatment! These pressings are ridiculously quiet 180 gram platters that allow the listener to hear deep into every particle of amp buzz on the master tapes. My memories of listening to Crass albums is of hearing scratchy records played on crappy record players in filthy places. Little did I suspect how well-recorded their albums were. They sound shockingly good, these new One Little Indian releases. I don’t want to overstate the case but these are legit near-audiophile pressings that seriously took my head off. It felt like I was spinning a buzzsaw capable of great violence on my turntable. It sucks to realize how little things have changed in the world since these albums were recorded, but it means their angry vitality, so unique at the time, is curiously undiminished, either as art or agitprop.
Penis Envy stands out the most among Crass’s albums, not the least for its lack of Steve Ignorant’s trademark ranting and the female voices taking over for the entire record. It’s their most experimental and avant garde work. The guitars are savage, lacerating, Rimbaud’s signature drumming is crisp and martial and Pete Wright’s bass is taunt. I’ll say it again: These albums were NOT recorded poorly, they were recorded very professionally indeed. If you believed otherwise, as I did, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Minimally Penis Envy and the Best Before 1984 comp (on 2 LPs for just $20 and offering the best of Steve Ignorant’s songs) are what you’d want to have of Crass in your record collection. I also have Stations of the Crass, and will probably pick all of them up save for the first album. That one sort of blurs into angry screamy white noise to my ears and live Crass is the bridge too far for my tastes. But the rest of it? Yes please.
Highly recommended.
Penny Rimbaud discusses remastering the Crass catalog in a recent interview.
Artwork from Vestron Video and their UK VHS for ‘The Return of the Living Dead.’
Before we take a deep dive into the deviant classic that is 1985’s The Return of the Living Dead lets demystify the collection of films by late director George A. Romero and his partner John A. Russo. The first was Night of the Living Dead, released in 1968. Romero wrote the script for the film during his freshman year of college after meeting Russo while he was visiting Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh where he was studying graphic arts. After passing the script back and forth, the pair finally agreed the zombie antagonists in their film would be of the flesh-eating variety, not primarily brain consumers. With respect to zombie film super fans, this distinction has often been lost on connoisseurs of the genre, and Romero himself has publicly lamented about being constantly asked to include the words “Eat Brains!” while signing autographs—even though his zombies were just not into eating human brains. Initially, the title of the film was “Night of the Flesh Eaters,’ which was later modified for its theatrical release in order to avoid confusion with the 1964 film, The Flesh Eaters. However the release lacked notation of copyright, errantly placing the film in public domain where by definition an artistic work is considered common property.
In 1974 Russo would pen his first novel based on Night of the Living Dead. Four years later would see the publication of Russo’s second book Return of the Living Dead, which served as the basis for his dark screenplay (written with another Romero collaborator, Rudy Ricci) and subsequent 1985 film adaptation of the book. According to an interview with Russo in 2018, none other than Frank Sinatra had agreed to finance the film but withdrew after his mother Dolly Sinatra was tragically killed in a plane crash. After it was clear George Romero wasn’t interested in directing, the late Tobe Hooper was tapped but pulled out to direct Lifeforce (1985). Eventually, Russo and Ricci’s original screenplay would end up with a man of many talents and connections, Dan O’Bannon (Heavy Metal, Alien, Total Recall and, coincidentally, one of the writers behind Lifeforce) who revamped it completely so much so Russo has said he’d still like to see his (and Ricci’s) original screenplay get the film treatment someday. Ultimately, this about-face wasn’t a bad thing at all, and at the urging of the film’s distributors, dialog and scenes were at times meant to be darkly humorous. The pioneering O’Bannon would end up in the director’s seat for the first of five Living Dead films, this being the only one directed by him. Thanks to many factors and concepts influenced or directly implemented by O’Bannon, the film would become one of the most beloved zombie flicks of all time.
Think I’m wrong? Let me help you with that starting with one of the film’s stars, actress and heavy metal fitness enthusiast Linnea Quigley, and the trick behind her long nude scene in the movie.
Actress Linnea Quigley as Trash getting ready to do her graveyard dance in the nude. Sort of.
Part of the plan for the release of the film was that it would also, at some point, be shown in an edited-for-TV form; devoid of most of its nudity and questionable language. At first, Quigley, who spends pretty much all of her time on camera nude, had pubic hair. The story goes, one of the film’s producers just so happened to be visiting the set while Quigley was doing her graveyard striptease and freaked out at the sight of her bush and ripped Dan O’Bannon personally, telling him that pubic hair could “not be shown on television.” The then 24-year-old Quigley was sent off for a quick Brazilian at the beauty parlor, which further horrified the producer (said to be line-producer Graham Henderson), who responded that you could now see Quigley’s “everything.” This guy. The job of disguising Quigley’s down-under parts would go to the film’s art department who created a mannequin-like prosthetic for Quigley’s hoo-hah, which made her lady parts look like a barbie’s plastic vulva. So for those of you of a certain generation which grew up believing you saw Linnea Quigley’s hairless crotch in The Return of the Living Dead, I’m sorry.
With 40+ years of groundbreaking musical activities under their belts, it only seems right that hugely influential British art-rockers Wire should (finally!) receive the feature documentary treatment. And who better to give it to them than lifelong Wire megafan Graham Duff, the writer/director/actor best known for creating the Johnny Vegas cult favorite sitcom Ideal.
Duff and producer/co-director Malcolm Boyle have set about creating the definitive cinematic portrait of Wire, and the film, still in production is entitled People in a Film:
“We’ve already shot serious in-depth interviews with all the members of Wire, including original guitarist Bruce Gilbert who has given the movie his blessing. And we also filmed Wire writing and recording their new album at Rockfield Studios in Wales. It’s fascinating to see how the band work together. Lots of harmony, but quite a lot of friction too.
It seems ridiculous there hasn’t already been a documentary about them. So we want to make something which mirrors the strange and often surreal world of Wire. They really are a unique proposition. Their intensity is only matched by their often silly sense of humor. Who else but Wire would perform a gig inside a row of cubes? Or employ a support band to play their entire 1977 debut album in full, so that they don’t have to?”
Duff and Boyle are currently looking for investors to help them finish the movie. “We’ve just launched a crowdfunding project to fund the recording of the last batch of interviews and edit the final film. One of the things we want to do is come out to the US and shoot interviews with Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins.”
If any band deserves a documentary it’s Wire. If you want to find out more about how to help get People in a Film finished, follow this link to the crowdfunding site.
In a secret world of forbidden knowledge,
power comes at a terrible price.
A tour of every department of our media saturated society,
the most explosive conspiracy ever conceived,
the people shapers at every turn
we see ourselves as they want us to be.
Immersed in their options,
surrounded by their representations,
reality melts.
—Mark Stewart, “Favour”
The latest installment in On-U Sound’s Pay It All Back series of compilations, named after William S. Burroughs’ demand in Nova Express, gathers new music by Gary Lucas, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Roots Manuva & Doug Wimbish, Nisennenmondai, African Head Charge, Coldcut, Ghetto Priest, Sherwood & Pinch, Little Axe and Horace Andy, among others. Best of all, side three of the double LP kicks off with “Favour,” the first new solo material from Mark Stewart since 2012’s The Politics of Envy and its ghostly dub twin Exorcism of Envy.
Adrian Sherwood and Mark Stewart, London, 1985 (photo by Beezer, courtesy of Mute)
The video for “Favour,” directed by Stewart and Ruth Perry, sets the song’s opening lines, about emerging from a coma, deep in the sidereal void. Parched after his long sleep, the singer asks for a soda and receives dynamite—a better deal than Howlin’ Wolf got.
Everything in “Favour,” from the symbols of circular time suspended onscreen to the drum the size of New Jersey reverberating on the soundtrack, suggests a vast mental space where all that is solid has melted into air. The only landmarks are memories that vanish as soon as they surface, represented here by footage from Tøni Schifer’s documentary On/Off: Mark Stewart (Pop Group to Maffia). Perry and Stewart have processed these images from the singer’s life to resemble the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” sequence of 2001.
Mark Stewart told DM in January that he’s got “like two or three albums worth of new stuff” in the can, so keep your eyes on the stars.
A new company called Wax Face Toys is launching with a remarkable figurine of Iggy Pop. Wax Face make licensed figures in resin and vinyl featuring cult heroes from the world of music and film. The Iggy figurine was sculpted in London by former Madame Tussauds artists and measures 15.7 inches (40 centimeters). It is based on the well-known photograph taken by Thomas Copi of the Stooges performing at the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of 1970. There was a previous Iggy sculpt that was sold via the now defunct Toys ‘R Us website, and although it was done well, it depicted Iggy in his 60s, not his youthful, out-of-his-mind prime. The Iggy depicted here is 23 and obviously full of piss, vinegar and other assorted psychoactive snacks.
There’s an interesting history behind Iggy’s iconic pose:
The Cincinnati music festival—which also included Alice Cooper, Traffic, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, Mott the Hoople, Ten Years After, Bob Seger, Tommy Bolin’s band Zephyr and several other acts—took place on June 13th, 1970 at Crosley Field the soon-to-be former home of the Cincinnati Reds. (The Reds would play just a few more games there before moving on to Riverfront Stadium, probably the only reason why the promoters were allowed to hold the event there.)
The leaflet for the event read:
‘Bring blankets, pillows, watermelon, incense, ozone rice, your old lady, babies, and other assorted goodies and do your own thing’
Hippie-flippy and trippy, my finger-poppin’ daddio, but unfortunately a small number of the audience decided to get drunk and break shit, causing over $6000 of damages to the baseball diamond. It was Cincinnati after all!
The festival was shot with three video cameras and cut live like a sporting event with play-by-play commentary. It was later edited down to a 90-minute program titled Midsummer Rock that was broadcast on local television station WLWT and syndicated elsewhere. The producers felt they could tap into the same sort of counterculture youth market as the Woodstock film (which was actually playing in Cincinnati movie theaters the week of the festival) except for television, so they brought in 58-year-old Jack Lescoulie, a square announcer from The Today Show, to make it all seem a little less scary for TV audiences.
I’m not altogether sure how successful they were with that. Iggy—in what is perhaps the only extant sync-sound footage of the original Stooges—was clearly pumped full of drugs. LOTS of drugs. He paces the stage shirtless, seething, frantic, with silver gloves and a leather collar, like a big cat on meth. He jumps into the audience several times before convincing audience members to hold him aloft as he walks across their hands like he’s Jesus Christ walking on water. You can actually see the moment when Copi got his shot when a bright flash goes off precisely at the right moment. Then all of a sudden Iggy has a large tub of peanut butter that he smears all over himself and gleefully throws into the audience. It’s one of the great rock and roll moments.
Years later Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys took credit for bringing the tub of peanut butter from his parents’ house in nearby Dayton and putting it directly into the Iggster’s hands, knowing fully well what he would do with it. You can hear Jack Lescoulie’s startled reaction to what’s going: “That’s… peanut butter!” he says.
The black resin Iggy figure will be available to purchase from 11AM EST on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2019 online at www.waxface.com. The price is $199 + postage and handling. Orders will ship in June.
