A postcard with a photo of members of the Scorpions while they were in their teens in 1966. Founding member Rudolf Schenker is pictured to the far left wearing a sweet pair of plaid trousers and a black turtleneck under his button-up shirt.

Most of the images in this post were taken of various lineups of German heavy-metal gods, the Scorpions during their earliest days in the mid-1960s. In this post, you will see a fascinating treasure trove of photos of the band sitting on top of their tour van—an old VW bus with the letters L.S.D. scrawled on it, and candid images of them playing teenage parties. There is no long hair or pulsating chest hair, either. No leather, no studs, no spandex. Instead, we see young versions of the Scorpions looking quite serious at times, wearing proper button-up shirts, plaid trousers, and even *gasp* TURTLENECKS (see above). This post is the equivalent of a proud parent pulling out baby photos of their kid to show to their date before they head off to the prom. And I love it.

I came across the photos via a French Wordpress site called Scorpscollector, most of them are attributed to former Scorpions drummer Wolfgang Dziony. Dziony was with the band until about 1972, or just before they would start to transition from a psychedelic groove machine into a heavy metal band and ruled the 1980s. When they got their start, guitar wizard Rudolf Schenker would trade off vocals with Dziony. The group would also enlist a couple of other vocalists including (according to Dziony) a cat from Berlin by the name of Gerd Andre whom they nicknamed “Jimi Hendric” due to his likeness to guitar hero Jimi Hendrix. Hendric would only hold the spot for few shows in his native Berlin before Hanover, Germany native Klaus Meine would take on the vocal responsibilities sometime in 1969 for the Scorpions—a role he still holds to this day, some 49 years later.
 

The Scorpions playing their very first gig as “The Nameless” in Sarstedt, Germany.
 
In another interesting twist, the liner notes included in a 1997 compilation called Psychedelic Gems 2 provides more history about the younger days of the Scorpions—comprised now of Rudolf and Michael Schenker on guitar, Meine on vocals, Lothar Heimberg (bass), and Wolfgang Dziony on drums. The story goes the boys entered a contest in Germany in 1970 showcasing up-and-coming talent. Apparently, the band played way over their allotted time slot which almost got them disqualified from the contest. As luck and the combination of sheer talent would have it, the Scorpions won and were rewarded with a record contract from CCA Records (the Concert Corporation of Allemania—also, CCA producer Hans Werner Kuntze was part of the judging panel). With CCA they would record two early versions of “I’m Going Mad,” and “Action” which would later be reworked for their 1972 debut, Lonesome Crow.

I cannot lie—I find the discovery of this kind of ephemera very satisfying. It’s sort of like getting ahold of a rare European high school yearbook from a flea market filled with photos of future superstars playing the big dance and acting like the badasses they would soon become, while perched on top of their shitty tour van. In addition to the vintage images of the band below, I’ve also posted a few early singles by the Scorpions that I’m pretty sure you are going to dig.
 

1966.
 

1965.
 

An early lineup of the Scorpions playing a party in 1965.
 
More after the jump…

 
Before our indulgent misuse of technology made us a tad brutish and unsophisticated in our relationships with each other, men and women once had a form of ritual quaintly called “courtship” where a chivalrous young man was expected to woo a demure young woman with subtly, attention, kindness, and flowers. Such actions were supposed to signal his honorable intentions, trustworthiness, and his reliability to furnish his intended with all that she might require. (Oh, how many poor women fell into a life of drudgery because of that? I wonder.) Of course, these young men would also have their needs but they could only hint at these through the saving grace of innuendo and saucy humor, which made it possible to say one thing and mean something entirely different!

Exhibit A: A set of American postcards dating from 1905 which depicts a young man and the woman of his dreams. These cards were supposed to show our earnest young man’s burning desire to pop the question and ask his fair lady to marry him. But wait, there’s more… These seemingly innocent-looking cards were also a means by which a randy young git could ask his lady friend for his nazzums, his nookie, his how’s your father, his horizontal refreshment, his whoopie, his you know what, you know, get his end away. Of course, women were far too high-minded, civilized, and ever so polite to even know about such things… But...if ever they did, then they’d know only too damn well what his nibs was on about. Indeed, one of these cards does look like it was specifically meant for use by the ladies to send to their beaus in which our eager young heroine suggests that if her reluctant young man would only ask her to marry him, well, then he’ll get it alright.

Though their intention for sex maybe similar, these little cards certainly make a refreshing change from dick pics and unwanted sexting, but plus ca change...
 

The unsubtle: ‘How about it Kiddo?’
 

The subtle: Ask me to marry you and you’ll get what you desire.
 
More after the jump…

A painting by Fabrizio Riccardi from his series ‘Paintings of Pantagruel.’
 
In 1565 Francois Desprez, a publisher, illustrator, and bookseller based in Paris created a series of woodblock carvings The Humorous Dreams of Pantagruel. Historians have noted Desprez‘s strange carvings were commissioned by his associate and fellow printer Richard Breton. Now, it is very likely you have seen Salvador Dali‘s interpretative series Les songes drôlatiques de Pantagruel which the artist produced during the first part of the 1970s. Dali based his series of paintings on François Rabelais’ novel (translated to English), The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Very Renowned Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, Son of the Great Giant Gargantua. While the great Dali’s take on Pantagruel was wild, it almost pales in comparison to Italian artist Fabrizio Riccardi‘s series Paintings of Pantagruel which Riccardi took on starting in 2008.

Riccardi’s paintings will no doubt bring you to immediately compare his style to visionary Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. Most of Riccardi’s images for Paintings of Pantagruel line up numerically with Desprez’s woodblocks from nearly 450 years prior. Riccardi was born in Rome and began his formal artistic training early after relocating to Turin with his family in 1952. There he attended Liceo Artistico dell’Accademia Albertina (or Albertina Academy of Fine Arts) and later the Faculty of Architecture in Rome, though he would leave the institution at the age of 24 in 1966 to marry and start a family. During this time period Riccardi would travel to Belgium, Switzerland, and the U.S. to showcase his work which was quickly embraced by fans and critics alike. I’ve posted an assortment of images from Riccardi’s Paintings of Pantagruel which is quite massive and can be seen in its entirety here. Most of what follows is NSFW.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
I have a pet theory (I call him Malcolm, he likes having his tummy rubbed) that posits the suggestion that maybe vinyl declined all those years ago because there were so many shit covers around. It is possible. Too many shit covers meant people didn’t want their lack of taste in music to be seen by their cool friends, so sales dropped until downloads arrived when nobody knows what shit you’re listening to on your iPod.

I mean, we all have guilty secrets about music, you know, bands we’re not supposed to like but we always seem to find there’s just that one track that awful band did way back when that always hits the spot when we’re feeling all mushy inside or very, very drunk or just loved up on way too many eccies or even possibly having no fucking taste in music whatsoever. You know the kind of thing. If you don’t, well you haven’t been paying attention.

Having a sneaky little taste for something outré or déclassé or just fucking shit meant, back then at least, having to buy the goddam vinyl (there were no downloads then, kids, see above). This meant you would always have the unfortunate evidence of your guilty little pleasure on display for every fuckwit who browsed through your record collection and never let you live it down.

Which, by long way of a preamble, brings me to this fucking collection of shit covers from the 1970s and 1980s that were (somehow) available in Europe, well, primarily Holland, to be fair. Some of these covers look like the profile pics for would-be serial killers on Tinder. These are obviously the kind of covers made by foolhardy record execs who say things like “Who needs a designer, my son’s gotta camera, he can do it….” And you know what, he did.
 

 

 

 
More tasteless record art, after the jump…

A fake Ladybird book cover. Too bad, as my dick-drawing skills could use some help.
 
While I’m fully aware that amusing fictional book covers have been a “thing” on the Internet for some time, for me they just never get old. Especially when it comes to the lengths book cover corruptors will go to for a laugh while abiding by the rule that nothing is off limits.

The doctored covers in question in this post were reimagined with the help of original covers and artwork from various Ladybird Books which have been in publication in the UK since 1914. The actual books, much like their fictional doppelgangers, cover an enormous range of topics, from the riveting pursuit of stamp collecting to adaptations of traditional fairy tales and nursery rhymes—all geared toward children. Between 1940 and 1980 Ladybird published 654 different titles, many which are firmly ingrained in the minds of kids who grew up in the UK reading them. In 2015, two accomplished comedy writers, Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris, teamed up with Ladybird to author a new series of books marketed to adults, Ladybirds for Grown-Ups. The series has been incredibly popular to say the least, and to date the top-three best-selling titles in the collection; How it Works: The Husband, How it Works: The Wife and The Ladybird Book of the Hangover have collectively sold over one million copies worldwide as well as being translated into a dozen languages.

I’ve posted a bunch of fake Ladybird book covers below—some that I honestly wish were real, as kids these days should know how to properly participate in a riot. A few are NSFW.
 

 

 

 

 

GO DAISY!
 
More after the jump…

 
Trigger Warning: if you are coulrophobic (suffer from a paralyzing fear of clowns), this article is probably not for you. Select another wonderful piece written by the great contributors here at Dangerous Minds, as you will not enjoy the information I am about to relay to you. If you have no fear of Ronald McDonald or Bozo and their ilk, you will be quite interested to find that beginning in the mid-2000s, a clown army was established in order to fight for our right to party.

Okay, so maybe they weren’t exactly fighting for our right to party as such, but CIRCA—the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army—was most certainly established in order to keep The Man from trying to keep us down in a variety of ways. To quote from their now-defunct-but-Internet-Archived-website, CIRCA’s aims were highly political but filtered through the theatrical. They state:

CIRCA is reclaiming the art of Rebel Clowning, it’s combatants don’t pretend to be clowns, they are clowns, real trained clowns. Clowns that have run away from the anaemic safety of the circus and escaped the banality of kids parties, Fools that have thrown away their sceptres and broken the chains that shackled them to the throne.
CIRCA aims to make clowning dangerous again, to bring it back to the street, restore its disobedience and give it back the social function it once had: its ability to disrupt, critique and heal society. Since the beginning of time tricksters (the mythological origin or all clowns) have embraced life’s paradoxes, creating coherence through confusion - adding disorder to the world in order to expose its lies and speak the truth.

Formed in the UK in 2003 by activists John Jordan, L.M. Bogad, Jen Verson and Matt Trevelyan, CIRCA’s creation was catalyzed by George Bush’s visit to London. The group’s practice of rebel clowning was intended to call into play ideas of the foolish, silly and ridiculous, all of which caught authority figures like policemen and the military completely off-guard (pun intended). Nothing like a massive crowd of clowns demonstrating to make a public official feel trivialized or have their dominance questioned. The CIRCA protests were designed to fulfill the group’s stated principles which, as John Jordan wrote, consisted of the following:

Use absurdity to undermine the aura of authority
Ridicule and absurdity are powerful tools against authority. To be effective, authority has to be perceived as such, otherwise people would never obey its commands. On the other hand, who ever takes a clown seriously? Rebel clowning used this slippery dichotomy to great effect, turning the tables on authority in the street by posing in mock-serious fashion next to lines of cops, as well as at the highest levels of power, by pointing out the clownish behavior of George W. Bush and other authority figures.

Get arrested in an intelligent way
Watching police handcuff and bundle clowns into police vans is always entertaining for passersby, begging the question: What did the clowns do wrong? What is this all about? An arrested clown also makes for very mediagenic images. By staying in character during the whole process of an arrest, including giving their clown army names (e.g., Private Joke) and addressees (e.g., the big top in the sky) as their real identity, rebel clowns caused much mirth and havoc in the police stations.

Reframe
Rebel clowning helped reframe the media images of protests during the big summit mobilizations of the mid 1990s. A colorful band of disobedient clowns could easily capture the limelight and shift the narrative away from “violent clashes” and smashed windows.

The kind of Bakhtinian splendor that CIRCA produced on the streets of the UK for Dubya didn’t stay there. The numerous “Operations” they conducted are listed here, along with some passionate communiques from clown leaders such as General Anesthetic, General Confusion and Colonel Oftruth. Operations like the Engagement with CRAP (Capitalism Represents Acceptable Policy) which took place in Leicester Square in 2004 or the various Scottish skirmishes, and the time they informed CIRCA members that they would be “giving hugs to the needy, playing games with all our friends, and other similarly militant activities. We request full cooperation from the public for this operation.”

This kind of thing doesn’t just remain in one place of course. What began in the UK spread. There was the Dutch Clown Army,  the Belgian Clown Army, the US Clown Brigades and so forth. It went global, and CIRCA members appeared en force at political events like G8 and elsewhere. For some reason, it’s gotten a bit quiet recently. We’ve really been lacking in the clown army department, so hey—members of CIRCA—any division—if you’re reading this—we could really use a clown manifestation right about now. This time it really IS time to send in the clowns.
 

 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

A curious sculpture by San Francisco husband and wife team Ernie and Cassandra Velasco, aka Doubleparlour.
 
The husband and wife team of Doubleparlour (Ernie and Cassandra Velasco) merged their respective art careers a decade ago to focus on sculpture. Ernie is a talented self-taught artist with both realistic and cartoon-style skills, while Cassandra (who holds a B.A. in painting and photography), is more aligned with traditional artistic expression, with a connection to nature. Although their backgrounds and approaches to their individual work were quite different, they came together beautifully in their joint venture creating puzzling sculptures of odd humanoids and other “creatures” that often defy explanation. Fantastic.

The pair started off using clay as their medium but found it to be unreliable and far too fragile. They then settled on a product called Magic Sculpt which has the same consistency of clay but is much stronger. The figures are sculpted and then painted by hand, turning them into striking, slightly dangerous creations. Since 2007 their partnership has evolved into a thriving business accounting for close to 2000 sales of their surprisingly affordable works through their Etsy shop and their website. Images of the couples intriguing sculptures below; some are slightly NSFW.
 

 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

Paul McCartney.
 
John Wayne got all those cowboys wrong. So did Clint Eastwood, come to that. Most cowboys didn’t wear Stetsons or ten-gallon hats on two-pint heads but generally anything that came to hand. What came to hand for most cowboys in the late 1800s was the bowler hat. It was durable, strong, and didn’t fly off a cowboy’s head when galloping on horseback across the prairie.

That was partly the reason why the bowler was invented. London hatmakers Thomas and William Bowler were asked by a client, Edward Coke, in 1849 to come up with a hat that wouldn’t be easily knocked off or damaged by low-hanging tree branches when worn by riders or gamekeepers. Most people wore top hats when riding which weren’t very practical. The brothers came up with a design of a hard felt hat with a rounded crown and an upturned brim to give shade and keep off the rain. As the story goes, when Coke was presented with his new hat he threw it on the floor and stamped on it several times. As the bowler withstood his fearsome attack, Coke picked it up, dusted it off, and paid twelve shillings for it.

From that first sale, the bowler became the hat of choice among the working class. It was quickly exported across the world. It was soon being worn by cowboys, sheriffs, laborers, ditch diggers, snake oil salesmen, and politicians. In America, the bowler or the derby as it was called, became”the hat that won the west,” despite all what John Wayne and those American western movies tell ya.

Few hats have been as popular, or as successful, and even on occasion, as subversive, as the bowler. This old hat is the symbol of everyman. It has far-reaching associations with lowly workers and city traders; with the rogues of the Wild West like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; the decadence of the Weimar Republic (see Cabaret); the Surrealist movement (the work and dress code of the artist René Magritte); iconic movie stars like Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy; deadly Bond villains like Oddjob and Nick Nack; the Ministry for Silly Walks and stand-up comics like Jerry Sadowitz; and literature like Waiting for Godot and A Clockwork Orange.

It also has links to more controversial groups like the Orange Order, the group of Protestants who march in their suits and bowler hats every twelfth of July to ironically celebrate a battle the Pope of Rome wanted their hero, William of Orange, to win. In South America, the bowler is now part of the dress of Quechua women after it was first introduced by British workers in the 1800s.

This rich mix of bowler hat wearers led me to collect together a brief gallery of suitably iconic and hopefully interesting pictures. Do feel free to add to with your own bowler hat suggestions below.
 

Anita Ekberg.
 

Malcolm McDowell as Alex in Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange.’
 

The iconic cover to Anthony Burgess’ novel ‘A Clockwork Orange.’
 

Liza Minelli as Sally Bowles from ‘Cabaret.’
 
More people sporting bowlers, after the jump….
 

Exotic dancer Carol Doda held up by Peter Tork of The Monkees, and surrounded by the rest of the band (Davy Jones, far left, Michael Nesmith, left back, and Micky Dolenz, right) in 1968.
 
If you were coming of age in San Francisco in the 60s, you were probably swept up in a lot of things, including perhaps the scandalous news reported in June of 1964 about a woman by the name of Carol Doda. Doda was an exotic dancer who took off her top during a performance at the Condor Club (which also employed a young Sly Stone for a short time) in the San Francisco area of North Beach while on top of a piano. Why was this such big news you ask? Well, Doda has been credited by many as one of the first dancers to perform without her top in the U.S., making her a pioneer in the field. According to an interview with the New York Times in 1988, Doda says she was handed a topless bathing suit (a so-called “monokini” designed by Rudi Gernreich) and was told this would be her new “costume.” Doda mused about being “really stupid” but adding if someone told her to do something, she “did it.”

While this would be more than enough to propel Doda to stardom, she would further capitalize on her worldwide notoriety by injecting her breasts with silicone at the behest of her managers at the Condor Club. In twenty weeks and as many silicone injections, Doda’s bust went from a 34B to a 44DD for a mere 1,500 bucks. Soon newspapers were referring to Doda’s boobs as the “the new Twin Peaks of San Francisco.” However, not everyone embraced San Francisco’s topless establishments and at some point in the year following Doda’s topless debut, San Fran’s mayor at the time John F. Shelley made the following statement—which is unintentionally hilarious—about what was behind the alleged rise in crime in the North Beach neighborhood:

‘‘The topless craze is at the bottom of the whole problem.’‘

As funny as Shelley’s war cry on boobs was, it was followed the next day with action by the police who hit up different topless establishments, arresting the dancers for “lewd conduct” including Carol Doda. The crackdown wouldn’t stick, Doda and others were acquitted, and the topless craze spread like lightning throughout North Beach, which would soon welcome other topless spots such as an ice cream stand and a very busy shoeshine business. A few years later in 1969, Doda would take it all off much to the ire of California Governor Ronald Reagan who granted communities the legal right to stop topless clubs and such from opening in their area. Reagan launched his crusade against the topless industry shortly after winning the governorship in 1966.  There was also an effort to try to ban the word “topless” for use on signage which failed.
 

Carol Doda proudly displaying the newspaper headline regarding her acquittal outside of the Condor.
 
In between all this Doda found herself cast in a role which would earn her a lifetime of recognition by joining the cast of the 1968 film Head (co-produced by Jack Nicholson)—the fantastically weird flick starring The Monkees, with Frank Zappa, Annette Funicello, and Doda as Sally Silicone. Doda would continue to perform sans clothing for over twenty years before retiring from the business, though she would remain a local fixture in SF. She fronted a band called the Lucky Stiffs in the 90s and later ran her own intimate apparel shop, Carol Doda’s Champagne and Lace Lingerie Boutique. She would continue making appearances (now clothed) at various clubs in North Beach until 2009 before passing away at the age of 78 on December 9th, 2015.

I’ve posted photos of Doda doing her thing below, as well as a few choice photos of her with her darling Monkees. Most images are NSFW.
 

Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Carol Doda in a scene from ‘Head.’
 

A photo of Doda from September 7, 1968, in Ramparts magazine, accompanying an article called “Bugging Cops.” The article provided a detailed profile of well-known San Francisco sleuth, Hal Lipset, an expert in miniature electronic surveillance.
 

Doda showing off her newly augmented breasts.
 

 
During these cold dark winter nights, I’ve been catching up on some those still-to-be-read literary classics like Biggles Flies Undone, Where’s Dildo? and improving my vocabulary by watching reruns of Deadwood. In between such high-brow pursuits, my time has been thinly spread like Jell-o enjoying way too many bad European horror movies. My current favorite (and by favorite I mean: “Film so bad I have to share it with people I don’t know”) is The Vampire Happening or Gebissen wird nur nachts, to give its proper title in German which translates as Bitten at Night.

This (weak) comedy-horror from 1971 was directed by the legendary director/cameraman Freddie Francis, who helmed quite a few classic horror films like The Skull, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Tales from the Crypt, The Creeping Flesh, and Legend of the Werewolf. He also won an Oscar for his cinematography on Jack Cardiff’s Sons and Lovers and worked as a cinematographer with the likes of David Lynch (The Elephant Man, Dune) and Martin Scorsese (Cape Fear). Francis had the credentials but he didn’t always make the right choices especially if he had to make a buck. Like The Vampire Happening which Francis signed-up to direct after a deal to make a big-budget American movie fell through. It was perhaps an odd choice, as the movie was a kind of vanity project by producer Pier A. Caminnecci for his then-wife actress Pia Degermark to star in.

Degermark also had some good credentials. She was best known for her critically-acclaimed and award-winning performance in Elvira Madigan in 1967, but not much interesting work had followed, other than say, The Looking Glass War sourced from John Le Carre’s novel. In 1971, Francis was given the task of directing Degermark in a hybrid comedy-horror featuring considerable nudity, lewd innuendo, and vague allusions to classical literature—the scriptwriters freely “adapted” some plot lines from Théophile Gautier‘s short story “La Morte Amoureuse.” Yet, such lofty ambitions were quickly leveled by the quality of the script which reaches a height of wit with the following repartee:

“Human sex,” enquires Count Dracula (Ferdy Mayne), “what do you say about that?” “Well,” comes the reply from Betty Williams (Pia Degermark), “It’s a helluva lot better than blood-sucking…”

One of the reviews for The Vampire Happening described the film as something Francis produced while channeling Ken Russell—which is unfair on Russell—though it does capture some of the more wacky and surreal imagery contained in the film. The story concerns a young actress Betty Williams (Pia Degermark) who inherits an old family castle in Transylvania unaware the place is still home to her vampire ancestor Baroness Catali (also played by Degermark). It sounds like a good idea. But add in a horny monk (who makes a few some nods to Jenny Agutter eroticizing trees in Nic Roeg’s Walkabout), an incompetent beau, a confused faithful retainer, a kind of swinging sixties “happening” and some truly atrocious dubbing, then all intentions towards making something smart are left way behind.

That said, it’s still a diverting 100 minutes with a groovy soundtrack by Jerry van Rooyen. So, if you’re in the mood for eating a lot of popcorn then you can watch the whole movie (after a selection of lobby cards and the trailer to whet your appetite…).
 

 

 

 
Watch ‘The Vampire Happening,’ after the jump…