Photo: Austin Young; Make-up: Travis Pates

Usually when we get requests for Kickstarter, we have to say no because this entire blog would just be Kickstarter links, but Ann Magnuson’s “The Jobriath Medley: A Glam Rock Fairy Tale” project is different because they’ve actually already done most of the thing they want to raise money for, so you can just go online and buy it basically.

For years now, Ann has done a loving musical/spoken word tribute in her live cabaret shows to obscure 70s glam rocker Jobriath Boone (rock’s first out and out “fairy”) and recently she and longtime collaborator Kristian Hoffman have recorded it, with a small orchestra. The new project “combines good old-fashioned storytelling with extraordinarily pretty songs from Jobriath’s phantasmagoric catalogue. Think Mother Goose on LSD!”

Ann writes:

Kristian Hoffman and I both bought the Jobriath albums when they first came out in the early 1880s. Uh, I mean early 1970s. Me as a baby glam rock hillbilly hippie back in West Virginia, Kristian in his suburban enclave in Santa Barbara – where he would sometimes appear along with his best friend Lance Loud on the first TV reality show, AN AMERICAN FAMILY. (FYI: Lance also appears as a character in a pivotal TRUE story told in our glam rock fairy tale!). Oh, and Morrissey also bought the Jobriath albums when he was also a teenage glam-rock-groupie-budding-music-critic-future-rock-star in Manchester England England! (That’s a HAIR reference, by the way. Did you know Jobriath played “Woof” in the original L.A. production? You will when you hear The Jobriath Medley!) Morrissey would later reissue select songs from Jobriath’s two solo albums on the CD “Lonely Planet Boy”. But when we created The Jobriath Medley in 1996 we were unaware of the Morrissey connection (until that Japanese import showed up with the photo of The Moz holding the original Jobriath LP under his arm. A culturally significant moment that was quickly integrated into the text performed at the next live performance of The Jobriath Medley.)

“Grandma, tell me more about the 70s…”

Don’t worry kids, you’ll learn all about that decade of debauchery when you hear The Jobriath Medley! But suffice it to say that back in the early 1970’s everyone was blow, blow, blowing away in platform shoes, glitter eye make up, downing Quaaludes and red wine while being insanely & dangerously promiscuous as we dressed up in glad rags we found in thrift stores so we could emulate the movie stars of the 1930s and 1940s that we watched on The Late Late Show on TV. We were making like Liza Minnelli in CABARET (“divine decadence darling!”) and all we wanted to do was live our lives like we were in a Ken Russell movie!

Jobriath, just like David Bowie and Marc Bolan and Alice Cooper and the New York Dolls among many others, was one of those flaming creatures in the glam rock 70s who didn’t care what other people thought about them. Maybe they really were spacemen from Mars or androgynous aliens or strangers in a strange land OR just glorified hippies dressed up like Christmas trees…

With Kieran Turner’s fab documentary Jobriath A.D. (I loved it) turning a new generation of music fans on to Jobriath, there seems little doubt that Jobriath Boone will be “the Klaus Nomi” of 2012/2013, so jump on the bandwagon NOW and support Ann and Kristian’s DIY tribute to the lonely planet boy.

The Kickstarter page for “The Jobriath Medley” has a number of really great packages for any budget, from a digital download or CD all the way up to one of a kind paintings (Ann is quite expert in painting “fake Basquiats”—I mean to say that she’s fucking genius at it—and one of the packages offers a Basquiat-glam rock themed original artwork).

Dangeorus Minds readers will appreciate knowing that Sparks’ Russell Mael has contributed backing vocals to Ann and Kristian’s cover of Jobriath’s “I’maman.”

Read more about it on Kickstarter.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Lonely Planet Boy: An interview with ‘Jobriath A.D.’ director Kieran Turner

Jobriath: Rock’s Fairy Godmother

Bongwater: The Power of Pussy

Below, Ann talks Jobriath:
 

 
Yikes! This gave me the willies… but in a good way.

As yet, there’s virtually no information about the artist who is responsible for this twisted, yet amazing, make-up. I’m only led to their Tumblr called Monos which is in Japanese.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Flickr user Mr Brick Label says he’s been collecting firecracker and firework labels since 1968. He writes, “I buy, sell and trade firecracker labels.”

I’ve never really studied a firecracker label before, I had no idea how much work and creativity goes into designing a package for something you’re just going to blow up anyway.

Here are a few choice picks from Mr Brick Label‘s never-ending collection.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Super knitter Allison Hoffman created this fun, fun, fun knitted Pee-wee’s Playhouse for the upcoming Sew Nerdy show from June 30 through August 11 in Lauderhill, Florida . She even went so far as to make a life-size working battery-operated Clocky. Holy cow!

All the pieces will be available to purchase online through Bear and Bird Gallery.

I’m lovin’ Miss Yvonne.
 

 

 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Knitted Kraftwerk
 
Via Super Punch

 
Here’s a couple of tasty new Patti Smith videos for you fans out there…and I know Dangerous Minds has a shitload of readers who have come to expect a healthy dose of Ms. Smith’s magic medicine on this site.

The interview from NY1 cable channel is an absolute delight. It’s a really smart overview of Patti’s history and the bard of Jersey really comes across as the spiritual force she has been and continues to be in rock n’ roll, literature and motherhood.

The second video is a performance at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where Patti has her photographs on exhibit, and it features her son Jackson on guitar and daughter Jesse on piano. Together they do a righteously rocking version of “Gloria.”

 
Holy Quentin Crisp, Batman! An extraordinary, and historically significant portrait of Chevalier d’Eon, Britain’s first openly transvestite male, by painter Thomas Stewart, has been purchased by the National Portrait Gallery and is currently hanging in room 15 of the London museum. From The Guardian:

It was the five o’clock shadow that helped give her away – the portrait was not, as it seemed, a rather grand if slightly butch 18th-century lady with a fancy feathered hat but was in fact the Chevalier d’Eon: diplomat, soldier, spy, transvestite.

The National Portrait Gallery has announced the acquisition of its first painted portrait of a man in woman’s clothing; a cross-dresser who enjoyed considerable fame in both high society and popular culture.

Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont, to give her full name, is one of the most important transvestites in history. She was “a fascinating and inspirational figure”, said Lucy Peltz, the gallery’s curator of 18th-century portraits. “We are absolutely delighted to be able to acquire this portrait. D’Eon is a particularly fascinating and important figure from 18th-century British history.”

The painting was discovered by the London dealer Philip Mould at a provincial sale outside New York last year. It was being mistakenly sold as a portrait of an unknown woman by Gilbert Stuart, most famous for painting George Washington on the dollar bill.

“Even in its dirty state it was quite clear that this woman had stubble,” said Mould, who bought it, brought it to the UK and began further research and restoration.

“Cleaning is always a revelation and on this occasion it revealed that not only was it in lovely condition but, more pertinently, the Gilbert Stuart signature cleaned off revealing the name Thomas Stewart, a theatrical painter working in London in the 1780s and 1790s.”

Everything then began to click into place. “What is so unusual about this portrait is that it is so brazenly demonstrative in a period when you don’t normally get that type of alternative persona expressed in portraiture,” said Mould. There is no attempt to soften his physiognomy – basically, he was a bloke in a dress with a hat.”

The discovery was tremendously exciting, said Mould. “We are the main dealers in British portraiture, doing it for something like 30 years and I must have sold two or three thousand British portraits to museums and institutions – but never have I come across something quite so idiosyncratic. I’ve never had anything which is so off-beam.”

The Beaumont Society, which caters to the transgendered community, was named after D’Eon.

“The painting sheds fascinating light on gender in history and one of the reasons the gallery was so keen to acquire the portrait is that D’Eon is such a fantastically inspirational figure and one of the very few historical figures that the gallery can represent that is a positive role model for modern LGBT audiences.” said curator Pelz.

Read more about the Chevalier d’Eonat at The Guardian

 
“Vices Canisters” by Jonathan Adler boasts your drug of choice with its old school drug name proudly displayed on the front.

The pottery ranges anywhere from $28.00 for a small canister to $138.00 for a larger one.
 

 
Via Who Killed Bambi

“Hyper Trophies.” Moving still portrait sculptures. A collaboration with Berlin fashion label Franzius and Stink. More here.

 
Swedish artist Anders Ramsell used 3285 watercolor paintings to create over 12 minutes of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner entirely of watercolors.

This is part one. I suppose more are on the way.
 

 
Via Kottke

 
As many DM readers know, Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin, who is a very dear friend of mine and Tara’s, has recently been treated for breast cancer (and she is doing GREAT. Expect her to be back at Boing Boing fairly soon, I’d imagine).

I just got an email from her alerting me to this and I am absolutely speechless…

“Time becomes plastic. Your experience of time morphs… And when you come out of it, on the strong days right before the next scheduled infusion, all of that time compresses into blurry waves of noise.”

—Xeni Jardin

Time is defined by and within the human experience yet the dominance of ‘linear’ time prevails. We are inextricably linked with time, ‘Life’ is measured in time.

Depending on particular situations our experience of time can be elusive, appear stretched, accelerated, and on occasions all too specifically in synch with defined parameters. Audio recordings, film, Internet, and photography are some of the means by which we choose to mark ‘times’. Such documentary methods signify our need to externalise particular events and also to activate memories.

‘Bioschismic’ is created solely from audio and photographic documentation of Xeni’s time spent receiving chemotherapy. The repetitive drip drip rhythm of the toxic chemicals measured in precise doses over a specific period of time provide the prospect of extending (life) time. Time is the dominant force yet the effects of the drugs change the experience of time to a space that is other worldly - a different time zone - a schism within and for life itself.

—Cosey Fanni Tutti

‘Bioschism’ - inspired and made possible by Xeni Jardin.

This is THE.NICEST.THING.EVER.

So sweet. Such a moving gesture of solidarity from one of the hippest, coolest women on the planet to another.

Wow. Just wow.

(I should probably add that it’s a really great piece of music!)
 

 
Xeni and I interview Throbbing Gristle backstage in Los Angeles, for Boing Boing Video in 2009. A lot has changed since then.