Schenkel’s illustration of Zappa for the back cover of ‘The Frank Zappa Songbook.’
 

” If I were, to sum up, his meaning to music and art in this century, it’s as someone who opened new doors by experimenting with so many different things, expanded the envelope, and brought other types of music into Rock.”

—a 2010 quote from artist Cal Schenkel on how he thought Frank Zappa should be remembered.

Future long-time collaborators Cal Schenkel and Frank Zappa first met each other in 1966 when Schenkel was nineteen and hitchhiking around Los Angeles. In a “Dear Hustler, I never thought it would happen to me” moment, Schenkel was picked up by a jeep full of girls and dropped off at a studio where Zappa was recording his first record, Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention. According to Schenkel, his interaction with Zappa in 1966 was unremarkable, and by 1967, the budding artist was back in his hometown of Philadelphia. As you’re perhaps aware, Zappa was an accomplished artist in his own right—something I’ve written about here on Dangerous Minds previously. He also created early artwork and collages for The Mothers of Invention shows and artwork for their first album. In the midst of a six-month stint at the Garrick Theater in New York in 1967, the Mothers played two shows Tuesday through Friday and three shows on Saturday and Sunday. At some point, Frank decided it was time for him to turn over artwork duties to someone other than himself, and this is where Schenkel’s girlfriend at the time, Sandy Hurvitz, comes in. Hurvitz (aka Essra Mohawk) was then performing with the Mothers. When she heard Frank was looking for someone to become his “art engineer,” she immediately got Zappa and Cal together to look at Cal’s work. Zappa was into what he saw, and soon Schenkel, a self-taught artist, would be doing everything from creating artwork for Zappa’s musical projects to photographing the band, even living with the Zappas for a time. The two would work closely together, and often the artistic output would be based entirely on concepts initialized by Cal, then approved by Frank. Here, Schenkel gives some more insight into how he helped bring Frank’s “identities” to life:

“They were Frank’s identities, and he was in control of them, and I was really just satisfying these various concepts. I didn’t create his identities for him in terms of explicit concepts. But in terms of visuals, we worked off of each other. So it was a true give and take, with the understanding that he had the final say. It was very informal and open. It was important to him to have a complete approach to the packaging of himself and his music because he saw himself as a complete artist, from music to visuals.”

To say Schenkel’s work for Zappa helped perpetuate the myth and madness of Frank Zappa would be an understatement. For their first collaboration, and as the only employee of the Zappa art department, Frank had Cal create some artwork used for the Garrick Theater residency. He was also deeply involved in the theatrics for the grueling show schedule, which for Schenkel included filtering lights through melting plastic. Here’s a little more from Frank on the visual effects Cal helped create for the shows:

“We had visual effects that would snuff anything that anyone is doing today, but we were doing it in a 300-seat theatre. We would do all kinds of weird things in there, but you can only do it in a situation where everyone can see it.”

 

A poster for Zappa’s six-month stint at the Garrick Theater.
 
In addition to being Zappa’s go-to-guy for art, Schenkel was also a source of inspiration for Zappa’s jam “For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitchhikers).” Here, my friends, is The True Story of Calvin & His Hitchhikers as told by Cal Schenkel in 1984:

“My 39 Pontiac was in the shop & so I had borrowed a car from Frank. It was this 1959 white Mark VIIII Jaguar that used to belong to Captain Beefheart that Janet (Zappa collaborator and actress Janet Neville-Ferguson Hof), was using at the time. When it worked. You know, the one they slashed the seats in (but I don’t remember that). I just left Frank’s house & I’m stopped at the corner of Mulholland and Laurel Canyon Blvd, waiting for a red light to change when I notice these two hitchhikers, a hippie couple standing there waiting for a ride. The next thing I know, they are getting in the back of the car. I guess they must have thought I offered them a ride (I didn’t tell them to come into my car or motion them or anything—I wasn’t even thinking of it), so I ask them where they are going & they didn’t say ANYTHING! I drive down Laurel Canyon Blvd past the Log Cabin (the famed Log Cabin in Laurel Canyon, Hollywood owned by Zappa), past Harry Houdini’s, past the country store & into Hollywood. I get to the bottom of the hill, I was going to turn right. I kind of asked them, “look I’m turning right, do you want to get out here?” They didn’t say anything. They were just blank. I figured they were on acid or something. I just couldn’t communicate with them. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just continued on to my destination. When I get there, I said, ‘OK, this is where I’m going. Good-bye!’ They just stayed in the car & didn’t get out. So I parked the car, got out, and went up to my studio and started to work. I was working on the album cover for Uncle Meat. This is in my studio that was a dentist’s office over a hotdog joint on Melrose. Every once in a while, I’d look out of the window to see if they were gone, but they were still sitting in the back seat of the car. An hour or two later, I looked out the window, and I noticed they were gone. I thought, ‘finally!’ Then shortly afterwards, I saw that they were back! They went to the supermarket for a loaf of bread and lunchmeat and started making sandwiches in the back of the car. They were eating their lunch! Then they left.”

Another fun fact about the Jaguar Cal was rolling around in: Zappa gifted the nifty automobile to Janet Neville-Ferguson Hof for her birthday. Janet would complain it was always in the “shop,” and the last time she drove it (directly from being repaired at a garage), it blew smoke for three miles and then starting shooting flames through a hole in the floor where the stick shift had once been. Janet and her gal-pal Lucy (Miss Lucy of the GTOs), put out the fire with a coat before pulling over in front of the Whiskey A Go Go, where the jaguar completely burst into flames. It was later taken by someone Janet noted to be a “friend” of Motorhead Sherwood to “fix,” never to be seen again. A few of Schenkel’s lesser-known illustrations of Frank and some comic panels drawn by Cal featuring Zappa follow.
 

Here are images of eight original drawings of Frank Zappa by his longtime art director, Cal Schenkel, unused but intended for the ‘Uncle Meat’ album cover. Sold at an auction, the sketches were found by a former Warner Bros. art director, who, in 1976 while going through “job tickets” (envelopes containing everything to do with an album’s artwork), found them in one of the Zappa tickets for ‘Uncle Meat.’ The images were never used.
 

 

 

An illustration of Zappa by Schenkel for ‘The Frank Zappa Songbook’.
 

 
Much more Cal Schenkel, after the jump…

 
This is a guest post by Nicholas Abrahams.

If you have a spare fifteen whole minutes, you could do worse than check out the new short film John Was Trying to Contact Aliens on Netflix about John Shepherd, a guy who has spent 30 years beaming out obscure music to aliens, constructing a homemade SETI project based at—and taking over—his grandparents home in rural Michigan. We shot the breeze with director Matt Killip.

Dangerous Minds: Firstly, how did you come across John Shepherd, the subject of your new short film on Netflix?

Matt Killip: I first saw a picture of John in the book Messengers of Deception by the UFO researcher Jacques Vallée. The same photo is in my film: John is seated in front of a large bank of UFO tracking machines in a living room, with his grandma next to him doing her knitting. I immediately wanted to know more about this image—what was going on here?
 

 
Luckily I was able to track John down and make contact. When I heard about the circumstances of his personal life I started to realize his story could make a beautiful film. A while later I found some footage of John broadcasting the band Harmonia into outer space. It turned out that John was broadcasting loads of music that I love into the cosmos: Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Terry Riley, Gamelan music from Indonesia, free jazz, loads of reggae and dub ... It was an amazing playlist—in effect a cosmic radio station broadcasting music for aliens.
 

 
DM: He’s quite amazing, playing music into deep space for aliens to come across and make contact. But most people would maybe have a dream of doing this, whereas John takes over his grandparents house to actually do this!

Matt Killip: Ha! Well, John is completely self-taught, he built many of the machines you see in the film himself. He has an incredible technical mind, a deep love of physics and, in particular, electricity. He spent a lot of time hunting in scrap yards and military auctions with his grandfather, who was a machinist and also helped him build some of the equipment. The radar John built was sitting on a tower made out of a scrapped ski lift! But I don’t really explore the science behind what John was doing in my film. I was afraid of getting slowed down in technical details when I was most interested in the fundamentally romantic idea of contact: this search John had for something beyond him.
 

 
DM: Yes , he seems to be on a romantic quest of some kind, to ‘make contact.’

Matt Killip: I know a lot of people might view John’s project as quite eccentric but I would encourage everybody to think about it another way: we are on a planet, that’s part of a galaxy, one of billions with an infinite number of other suns and planets. We don’t know what else is out there ... Why wouldn’t you try to make contact? John was using music as a sign—or even a gift—to other consciousnesses.

DM: You pack a heck of a lot into fifteen minutes.. It has the three act structure of a feature film… in fact it is better than many feature films I’ve seen…

Matt Killip: Thanks!

DM: What are the challenges of keeping a film short? Were you tempted to make it as a feature doc?

Matt Killip: I just wanted to stick to the core of the storytelling. Originally there was a whole section about UFO culture, but I cut it out to make the story flow better. Also, I’ve only made short format films, so maybe I’m a little scared of making a longer one…

DM: Your earlier films are pretty bonkers. There’s one about teenage backyard wrestler and horror filmmaker Ronny Long, and another about a guy who arranges microscopic creatures onto slides in psychedelic patterns. What’s the connection?

Matt Killip: I’m think I’m drawn to people who have found ways to escape everyday reality into other worlds. I’m really sympathetic to that impulse.. I share it to a certain extent, but I’m lacking the obsessive drive needed to see it through. It’s a very singular vision that allows Ronny the teenager to keep creating for his own pleasure, or John to broadcast music for 30 years, never knowing for sure if anyone could hear it.

DM: Tell me more about Ronny. (Full disclosure - I met Ronny Long when he visited the UK to hold an exhibition at the Horse Hospital in London. Ronny is as great as you would imagine from watching Master of Reality.)

Matt Killip: I’ve always loved wrestling for the characters and story lines, it’s like a kind of folk theatre. In the early 2000s my interest led me to Ronny Long’s website “Texas Boneyard Wrestling.” Ronny had started a horror-based wrestling federation in his backyard in the suburbs of Dallas. It was a really elaborate affair and so much thought and effort went into it. He was fifteen at the time. After speaking with him I realised that wrestling was only part of Ronny’s story—he was obsessed with Bigfoot and cryptozoology, was continuously drawing and painting and had been making abortive attempts at horror movies for several years. He was burning up with this stuff. His output was enormous and it seemed like he was compelled to create these things. He was not getting support or encouragement from anywhere—certainly not from school—but he was just off, creating these worlds. I really love that about him.
 

 
DM: Are you still in touch with Ronny?

Matt Killip: Still in touch… These days Ronny is still drawing and painting. He also records a wild talk show in his basement.

DM: I really love his paintings of Bigfoot.

Matt Killip: As a nine-year-old kid he really believed in Bigfoot. They are him. He has something of an outsider quality to him. And yes, his paintings are amazing.
 

 
DM: And The Diatomist?

Matt Killip: I love nature and have made several shorts that could be considered in some way nature films. In the case of The Diatomist, I came across an extraordinary image of an antique diatom arrangement. I couldn’t quite believe that these beautiful microscopic sculptures were actually tiny sea creatures, completely invisible to the naked eye.

In general I get tripped out by the extraordinary variety to be found in the natural world. Looking through books on moths, beetles, mushrooms or lichen, the multiple different forms, related but always changing, are completely amazing to me. It’s as close to a religious experience as I can get. Diatom arrangements completely embody that sublime feeling. After more research I discovered that there was one man, Klaus Kemp, keeping this Victorian art form alive, so I immediately got in touch with him. Klaus is undoubtedly obsessive, but it’s a beautiful obsession. He is practicing an artform that embodies Darwin’s phrase: endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

DM: The films all seem to end in a cosmic way, with the humans somehow part of a great cosmos.

Matt Killip: I guess we are all trying to find our place in the cosmos. It’s just….. there’s a good quote by Carl Sagan… here it is … “The nature of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere are two sides of the same question - the search for who we are.”
 

 
This is a guest post by Nicholas Abrahams.

“Woman with absinthe glass, Moulin Rouge” by Jeanne Mammen (early 1900s).
 

“I have always wanted to be just a pair of eyes, walking through the world unseen, only to see others.”

—a quote from artist Jeanne Mammen from the only interview she would ever do during her career, with art historian Hans Kinkel, 1975.

Described as “artistically gifted” at a very early age, Jeanne Mammen’s family would move from her birthplace of Berlin to Paris when she was five. She immersed herself in French literature—especially that of the great Romantic novelist Victor Hugo and the poet Charles Baudelaire. In 1907, at the age of seventeen, Mammen and her sister Adeline attended Académie Julian. The Académie Julian was an artistic refuge, especially for women who were allowed to enroll and where they had access to nude male models as subject matter. This is important as other art-centric schools had been slow to admit women into their institutions. If they did, women were not allowed to participate in painting or life study classes with their male counterparts.

Jeanne and Adeline would move on to Brussels to continue their studies. Then to Rome, where they attended both the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and the Scuola Libera del Nudo dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma (aka “The Scuola Libera del Nudo,” or “free school of the nude,” for the teaching of life-drawing). The sisters would return to Paris in 1912 only to be forced to flee the city with their family. Unfortunately, their successful merchant father, Gustav Oskar Mammen, was labeled a “foreign enemy” and all of the family’s possessions, including their home, were confiscated. By 1916, the Mammen family was impecunious and living in Berlin doing any kind of work they could collectively find to keep financially afloat. After some time, Jeanne and her sister were able to afford to rent a studio apartment. The small apartment would eventually become a place Jeanne seldom left and where she would bring her observations of Berlin to life. Her work was widely published in magazines, as well as her writing. She was finally, once again, financially secure. But as 1933 and WWII loomed, Mammen would once again find herself out of work, but that didn’t mean she stopped working. Here is another quote attributed to Mammen’s lone interview on how she managed to keep creating despite the Nazis’ best efforts to stop her and other artists whom they categorized as “degenerates”:

“With the advent of the Hitler era, a ban on, or ‘Gleichschaltung’ of, all the magazines I was working for. The end of my ‘realistic’ period. Transition to an aggressive painting style, of fragmenting the object (in contrast to the official art world). World War II: no oil paints, no canvas—all pictures from this period are painted with gouache on cardboard. Ration cards, unemployment registration, hard labor, bombing, forced training as a fireman.”

Influenced by artists such as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Degas, Mammen seemed to embrace Figuratism as early as 1908, painting in this style for approximately six years before her work became more aligned with Symbolism. A wildly prolific artist who worked in various mediums, including watercolor, Mammen’s muses included members of Berlin’s queer community, a plethora of women, and vivid interjections of religious imagery and symbolism. Following the conclusion of WWII, Mammen would allegedly tell her longtime friend, Nobel Prize-winning biophysicist Max Delbrück, that “the ruins of Jeanne can be found in the ruins of Berlin.” After seven decades of creating artwork that still refuses to be defined by a singular artistic description, Mammen would pass away in Berlin at the age of 86. Mammen’s long career and artwork have been the subject of a couple of books including Jeanne Mammen: Paris – Bruxelles – Berlin (2017), Jeanne Mammen The Observer: Retrospective, 1910–1975 (2018). Her work is also featured in Splendor and Misery in the Weimar Republic: From Otto Dix to Jeanne Mammen (2018).

Images spanning Mammen’s impressive career follow.
 

 

“She Represents” (1928).
 

“Two Women Dancing” (1928).
 
More after the jump…

 
Visual artist Jesse Draxler—who has worked with Nine Inch Nails, Daughters, Zola Jesus, Alexander McQueen and many others—has put together a new collaborative art project with the likes of Chelsea Wolfe, Greg Puciato, Trentemøller, Jaye Jayle, Ghostemane and more, called Reigning Cement. 

Draxler gave each of his co-creators a set of 34 soundscape elements to assemble in any way they wanted. These recordings are industrial noises found in Draxler’s LA neighborhood and each artist was given the very same sonic toolbox to work with. Concurrently, Draxler created a visual component to go along with each of the tracks, which are incredibly varied. Reigning Cement pairs a 100-page book of Draxler’s art, photography and collage work with the audio portion of the project (see below for flipbook video).

Today we’re premiering the music video for Chelsea Wolfe & Ben Chisholm’s contribution to Reining Cement, a song titled “Valerian.”

Draxler comments:

“When submitting this track, Chelsea briefly mentioned how the lyrics are an ode to her relationship with Valerian root and its effects on sleeping habits and insomnia. With the video we wanted to echo this notion to create a morphing and echoing sleep-scape, straddling the line between dream and nightmare. The video was created by myself and Rizz (of the band VOWWS), while the footage of Chelsea was kindly given to us by herself” 

Reigning Cement is released on Draxler’s Federal Prisoner label, on September 4, 2020.
 

Above, the video for “Valerian” by Chelsea Wolfe & Ben Chisholm.
 

Exploited Body’s track, “Your Stoic Gaze Changes States Of Matter,” provides the soundtrack for a flip-through of the ‘Reigning Cement’ book.

 
What have you been doing during the COVID-19 Lockdown?

Binging on boxsets? Drinking too much? Self-medicating? Finding all your good clothes have shrunk from lack of wear?

All of the above?

George Miller spent his time lockdown making a set of beautiful marionettes featuring some of the biggest stars of rock ‘n’ roll, country, and R&B.

Miller is a Glasgow-based artist, singer, musician and iconic pop figure who’s better known as the front man to the legendary Kaisers and more recently the New Piccadillys. I’ve known Miller a long, long time. Well, since he dressed like a rocker in a black leather jacket and sported a quiff like a zeppelin, combed back like a barrel most surfers would die for. Something like that, though memory is fickle.

Since then, Miller sang and played guitar with the Styng-Rites (“We got on telly once, made the independent top 20 once, got in the music papers a bit, built a cult following and gigged ourselves to exhaustion.”); played guitar with Eugene Reynolds’ band Planet Pop; then gigged with the Revillos and Jayne County and the Electric Chairs.

In 1993, Miller formed the Kaisers:

“We ended up making six albums and a bunch of 45s, toured the USA twice, Japan once and gigged all over Europe. We did John Peel and Mark Radcliffe sessions amongst others and got on the telly a few times. I think we lasted about seven years and everything we earned just about covered the bar bill.”

Most recently, Miller was involved with the New Piccadillys, worked with Sharleen Spiteri, then toured and recorded with Los Straitjackets across America. About five years ago, the Kaisers reformed due to public demand and will be releasing a new album in the fall—more on that another time.
 

George Miller: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Band.
 
I reconnected with Miller through social media. Over the past few months, he would post a photograph of his latest marionette in progress. Sculpting heads of rock stars like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly or country greats like Johnny Cash. They were beautiful, fabulous models, which were then dressed by Ursula Cleary and placed in boxes designed by Chris Taylor.

How did these marionettes come about?

George Miller: I’d been working on a BBC children’s drama for a few weeks (I’m a freelance Production Designer, gawd help me) and as lockdown was approaching, production stopped so I went from super busy to completely idle pretty much overnight.

I’d made some marionettes for a video a few years earlier and since then had been toying with the idea of making one of Link Wray but never seemed to have the time, so lockdown seemed the ideal opportunity. I liked the notion of spending time making something that had no ultimate purpose other than self amusement and no deadline for completion. With his outfit made by my partner Ursula, Link turned out pretty satisfactorily but after a few days I got the itch again, so I got to work on Bo Diddley, another guitar favorite of mine. Bo gave me a bit of trouble and the first attempt went in the bin. Realizing I’d tried to rush it, I reverted to lockdown pace, which I’ve employed ever since.
 

 
Why did you choose the classic rock ‘n’ roll, R’n'B icons?

GM: I wouldn’t call myself a musical luddite, but nothing has ever thrilled me more than a good rock ‘n’ roll record, so I decided to keep making favorites from the 1950s until my day job resumed. Although a couple of the subjects are still with us, the notion of “resurrecting” the others in some way appealed to me. I like seeing them bursting out of their “coffins.” It’s also a way of expressing my fascination with these people and the music they made. If I start to run out of subjects, I’ll move forward in time, but I doubt I’ll go past 1965 as the joy goes out of it a bit for me around then.

Maybe I’ll fast forward—Joey Ramone would be a good subject.
 

 
Where did the boxes for the marionettes come from?

GM: When I posted a photo of the Buddy Holly puppet, a Facebook friend by the name of Chris Taylor sent me a mock-up of a box label with a great illustration and excellent graphics. Chris got me thinking that this could be a “proper” project and we’ve been working together on ideas for an exhibition and a range of merchandise, as the marionettes have been developing a bit of a virtual fan base online. Chris’s illustrations have a great deal of style and though instantly recognizable, they have their own identity, which complements the puppets which are more rigidly representational. It reminds me of opening a box to find that the toy inside looks different to the illustration, something that always registered with me as a child. Chris’s work has definitely steered things in the direction of an art project, albeit with the (for now) all-important absence of deadline.

Where can we buy these Kaiser George Marionettes?

GM: The marionettes are one-offs and aren’t for sale as they take so long to make. I wouldn’t want to sculpt any of them twice, though mould making could be an option. As someone commented on Facebook, it would be a bit like selling your children. Chris and I are working on a set of bubblegum cards which will be for sale and we’re unashamedly excited about it. Second childhood? Definitely.
 

KGM Trading Cards.
 
What other plans do you have for your rock ‘n’ roll children?

GM: When the “cast” of puppets grows to 20 or so, I’m planning on making a video showcasing their individual musical styles plus a series of short clips based on the photographs of Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran passing time in the dressing room of the Glasgow Empire theater. I quite like the idea of two marionettes in a small room not doing very much, just idle movements.

Now, if I was an enterprising businessman, I would certainly be thinking of investing in mass marketing these to-die-for Kaiser George Marionettes. You know you sure as hell want one. And damned if I wouldn’t be collecting all those trading cards too.
 

 
See more of George’s Marvellous Marionettes, after the jump…
 

“The Plague” by Wolfgang Grässe (2004).
 
Four Allied air raids conducted from February 13th to February 15th, 1945 destroyed the German town of Dresden, reducing it to rubble.

Future artist Wolfgang Grässe, just fifteen at the time, survived.

Following the bombings, he would find his way to Italy to study art with his grandfather Friedrich before returning to Dresden. Upon his return, Grässe was arrested and sentenced to death when, while crossing the border in Germany, his possessions were searched revealing his anti-Soviet cartoon of Joseph Stalin swinging from a gallows. However, instead of hanging the then eighteen-year-old, they changed his sentence to 25 years in one of Poland’s many gulags, where he spent eight long years. Grässe had seen and learned a lot in his short time on earth, and while a prisoner, he would use his artwork to help bargain with his captors, offering to draw them anything they wanted, which he would trade for food and perhaps a little extra looking after. As you probably know, “life” in a labor camp meant non-stop work for those deemed useful, such as physical labor or the production of oil and other industrial materials. Grässe’s horrific early life was nearly impossible to shake for the artist, especially his eight years in the gulag.

At some point, Grässe became a Christian, and his paintings contain religious imagery, which is often combined with images associated with death, the day of reckoning, and vibrant displaced erotica. Here’s Grässe shedding some light on his darkness:

“I paint objective, figurative art with high technical perfection to create beautiful, valuable, and qualitative works with interesting visions. My art is called Fantastic Realism (of the Viennese school) influenced by French surreal and Japanese artists such as Hokusai (Edo period), (Utagawa ) Kunisada, and (Utagawa) Hiroshige.”

Grässe’s work has been associated with Surrealism, but that is not the house he lived in as an artist. He is also clearly inspired by the work of Hieronymus Bosch. However, those familiar with Fantastic Realism will quickly recognize his dedication to this genre. In order to reinforce the distinction between Surrealism and Fantastic Realism, let’s allow Grässe sum up the differences between the two artistic pursuits:

“Fantastic Realism cannot be compared with Surrealism as a garden can’t be compared with a jungle. The fantasy of the Surrealist comes from the subconscious without formal order or relation, whereas the Fantastic Realist uses his images selectively. He uses old and new symbols to express his art purposefully and to show that the human situation never really changes its eternal truths. The automatism of images of the Surrealist are a sharp contrast to the meaningful symbolism of the Fantastic Realist.”

Life & Death: The Metaphysical Art of Wolfgang Grässe was published in 2000. It contains approximately 60 full-color images of the artist’s work, if you can find this rather rare volume. In addition to his artwork, you can also watch a short segment below on Grässe from Australian television. The artist lived out his days painting and exhibiting his work in and around Australia after moving there in 1996. He died in 2008.
 

 

1991
 

 
Much more after the jump…

 
There are certain things you don’t know you’re missing in life until you’re exposed to them, right? EXP TV just might be one of those things. It’s got an aesthetic that hovers around the same territory as Everything is Terrible! and Vic Berger, it even reminds me of Mike Kelley’s stuff, but that’s only going to get you in the ballpark. Which is good enough, but you just have to click on the link and see for yourself. It’s a barrage of strange imagery and is really quite an inspired—not to say elaborate and work intensive—art project. And just in time for a pandemic. Bored with Netflix? Have enough Amazon Prime? Maxed out on HBO Max? You need to tune in, turn on and drop your jaw to the floor at what’s screening on EXP TV.

EXP TV the brainchild of Tom Fitzgerald, Marcus Herring, Taylor C. Rowley.  I asked them a few questions via email.
 
What is EXP TV? What should someone expect to see when they get there?

EXP TV is a live TV channel broadcasting an endless stream of obscure media and video ephemera from our site at exptv.org.  We stream 24/7.

The daytime programming is called “Video Breaks”—a video collage series featuring wild, rare, unpredictable, and ever-changing archival clips touching on every subject imaginable. Similar to how golden era MTV played music videos all day, daytime EXP TV streams non-stop, deep cut video clips filtered through our own distinct POV.

What treasures would reward the loyal Video Breaks viewer?  Ventriloquist dummy sales demos, Filipino Pinocchios, LSD trip-induced talking hot dogs, Liberace’s recipe tips, French synth punk, primal scream therapy seminars, Deadhead parking lots, empty parking lots, Israeli sci-fi, scary animatronics, teenage girls’ homemade art films, Belgian hard techno dance instructions, Czech children’s films about UFOs, even Danzig reading from his book collection. And that’s all in just one hour!

We’ve been collecting obscure media for decades, but we’ve sorted through it all and cherry-picked the funny, the bizarre, the relevant, the irrelevant, the visually stunning, the interesting, the infamous, the good, the bad and the fugly.  We’ve done all that so the viewers don’t have to.  They get to kick back and experience the sweet spot without having to dig for rare stuff themselves or sit through an entire movie waiting for the cool part.

Our Nite Owl programming block features specialty themed video mixes and deep dives on everything under the sun: Bigfoot, underground 80s culture, Italo disco, cults, Halloween hijinks, pre-revolutionary Iranian pop culture, midnight movies, ‘ye ye’ promo films, Soviet sci-fi, reggae rarities, psychedelic animation and local news calamities. On any given night you could watch something like our Incredibly Strange Metal show followed by a conceptual video essay like Pixel Power—our exploration of early CGI art.

Aside from our unique tone and deep crate of video materials, one thing that really sets us apart in 2020 is our format.  We are *not* on demand, we are *not* interactive—just like old TV!  You can tune in anytime and something cool will be on. 

That’s EXP TV in a nutshell.  It’s funny, it’s art, it’s music, it’s infotainment, it’s free and it’s 24/7.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by EXP TV (@exp.tv) on May 18, 2020 at 11:57am PDT

It’s 24/7?

Yes.

What does EXP stand for?

EXP stands for…experimental, expanded, experiential, expert, exploration, expressive, expounded, exposed, explained, expeditionary, unexpected, exponents, expatriot, expedited, expectorant, exposure, expelled, expendable, expensive, express, exploded, expired…EXP TV!

We have a little bumper on our Instagram @exp.tv that illustrates this

How much material did you have in the can, ready to go at launch?

We had been quietly working on the channel for over a year so we had quite a bit of material.  When the pandemic hit, we decided to launch early as a beta so people could have an alternative to the big streaming channels - something totally different.

In this modern world of all these different streaming platforms, it feels like you spend more time deciding what to watch than you do actually watching something.  We wanted to make something you could just turn on and leave on for hours—days even—and you’d be guaranteed to catch something interesting.  We basically just made the channel we wanted to watch.

Right now, we have about 60 hours in rotation and we are regularly adding new material—new Video Breaks, new episodes of our ongoing series, and hatching entirely new concepts for shows. Stay tuned for Kung Fu Wizards coming soon!

More after the jump…

 
Like their masterpiece Eskimo, the story of the Residents’ new album starts with a cryptoethnomusicological discovery: in this case, the complete recorded works of an albino bluesman from western Louisiana named Alvin Snow.

Under the stage name “Dyin’ Dog,” the story goes, Snow cut ten agonized electric blues originals with his band, the Mongrels, before falling off the face of the earth in 1976. Whether the last straw was the death of his pet dog, the death of his elderly ladyfriend, or the death of Howlin’ Wolf, no one can say. Only these screams of rage and shame remain.

(There’s a mini-documentary on the Residents’ YouTube channel about Dyin’ Dog, and Homer Flynn of the Cryptic Corporation discussed the legend of Alvin Snow with us last December.)
 

The Residents’ new album, out July 10

Dyin’ Dog’s songs about sex, death, death, sex and death came out last year on a now quite scarce seven-inch box set released by Psychofon Records. On the new album Metal, Meat & Bone: The Songs of Dyin’ Dog, the Residents interpret the Alvin Snow songbook with help from the Pixies’ Black Francis, Magic Band and Pere Ubu alumnus Eric Drew Feldman, and other high-quality musical guests. The album also reproduces Dyin’ Dog and the Mongrels’ demos in full stereo abjection.

John Sanborn’s video for the Residents’ take on “Bury My Bone,” exclusively premiered below, is mildly NSFW. Then again, in time of plague, work itself is NSFW. And this is a blues song about a dog looking for a hole to bury his bone in, for fuck’s sake.
 

Artist Nathan James’ distorted portrait of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
 

“I once read a thing from the liner notes of the Ramones album, Rocket To Russia. The author wrote that the genius of the band was, with songs like “Rockaway Beach,” their ability to make celebratory pop anthems by inverting rotten, nasty elements from their lives that were actually quite horrible in reality. With those paintings, I’m trying to explore just that.”

—artist Nathan James on defining the term “Pessimistic Pop.”

When London-based artist Nathan James was recuperating from serious back surgery in 2010, he used the downtime to rethink his artistic style. These ideas would be fully realized in his 2013 series “Creepshow.” Described by James as focusing on the lives of the “underclass, failures, perverts and slackers” instead of “beautiful, successful people,” not one of the galleries James was working with were interested in showing his evolved work. He was summarily dropped by his main dealer in London, and a German gallery that had offered to host a solo show stopped responding to his emails. In an interview from 2013, James revealed that in addition to a rather poor academic performance in high school and college, he also failed 11th and 12th-grade art. Mostly because he was too stoned to show up or was so stoned when he did show up, he learned little to nothing. Well, I’m sure that James’ high school art teacher Ms. Balford would be pleased to know the work of her former slacker/stoner student has been compared to George Condo. Condo is credited with the creation of the term Artificial Realism as well as the term “psychological cubism.” Artificial realism as defined by Condo is the realistic representation of that which is artificial,” which is how he described his unique blend of American pop art with traditional European Old Master style of painting. This is also very much in line with the kind of art Nathan James creates.

Many reoccurring themes run through James’ paintings, from glossy pin-ups to cartoon characters, including the curious inclusion of Mickey Mouse’s white-gloved hand. The appearance of Mickey’s hand in James’ work has caused fans to speculate perhaps, as a child, something bad went down between Nathan and the world’s most famous cartoon mouse. When dissecting James’ more current work, the artist has indicated he was inspired by personal experience pertaining to “co-dependence, jealousy, disappointment, and death,” themes we’re are all likely acquainted with, whether we care to acknowledge it or not. James’ also works in grim economic narratives in his paintings, which he pulls from his youth growing up in Kirkland Lake in Ontario, Canada witnessing the economy take a nosedive after the steel industry declined and eventually collapsed. This left the future artist free to explore the empty factories, now filled with their fair share of nefarious folks, and those left behind trying to figure out their bleak-looking futures. Another reason James’ work switched gears was in part inspired by the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-2008 and his realization that continuing on with his pop-art painting of Gil Elvgren-style pin-ups and such no longer reflected any kind of reality. If any of this sounds all too close to home right now, good. Keep on keeping your eyes open.

In 2016 James’ held his first U.S. solo show “Dark Matter” at the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles. The show featured works from his “Creepshow” series as well as another new series called “Faceless.” James posted a few new images on his Instagram in May, so hopefully, we’ll be seeing more from him as, thematically, the shit-show that is 2020 seems like a grim gift, inspiration-wise, for James. A girl can dream!
 

 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
November 2019: Artist Sig Waller garnered considerable praise and caused some controversy when she exhibited a few of her latest paintings at the annual Saarland Association of Artists (SKB) Exhibition in Germany. Waller’s latest work was titled Hell is Empty and featured gruesome, powerful, and bitingly satiric paintings of the Trump family and their associates.

The title Hell is Empty comes from William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, when the spirit Ariel recounts the events of those shipwrecked on Prospero’s island:

...All but mariners
Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,
Then all afire with me. The king’s son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring—then, like reeds, not hair—
Was the first man that leaped, cried, “Hell is empty
And all the devils are here.”

Waller’s paintings makes reference to The Tempest together with pop culture, the occult, and movies like Rosemary’s Baby. Waller’s devils are very real and they rule our lives through politics religion and the media. These people and organisations we are supposedly meant to trust, but they are in fact devils intent on our subjugation and destruction. Their presence means there is no mercy and they intend to make devils of us all.

Waller was born in Swansea, south Wales. Her father was an American historian “who dressed like a tramp,” her mother a German psychologist and housewife. The family foraged for food, brewed ale, collected driftwood and threw wild parties. At eighteen Waller moved to London where she studied Fine Art and Art History at Goldsmiths College. After graduation, she worked in animation, music promos, and film. In 1995, Waller moved to Berlin where she started painting. After the birth of her son Sky in 2002, Waller moved to Brighton, England, where she studied for another Fine Art degree at the city’s university. Since 2010, Waller’s work has been exhibited in galleries across Europe and America. She currently resides in Saarbrücken, Germany. See more of Sig Waller’s work here.
 

 

 

 
See more of Sig Waller’s work, after the jump…