Roman Booteen is a master of crafting hobo nickels. He carves intricate designs featuring icons from pop culture, literature, history and film onto American nickels and silver dollars. Based in Yekaterinburg, the fourth largest city in Russia, Booteen’s incredible one-off coins sell for hundreds to thousands of dollars each. In 2017, his “1921 Morgan Dollar Hobo Nickel” was sold for a staggering $10,101. Nice.

Modifying coins by carving a bas-relief onto their surfaces has been around since the middle of the eighteenth-century. Such decorated coins were given as gifts and love tokens or worn as jewelry on bracelets or necklaces. In America, this kind of coin carving grew in popularity with the introduction of the Buffalo nickel in 1913, as the nickel had a larger, more malleable surface which was especially suitable for carving minute detail. These modified coins were called “Hobo nickels” as they were mainly crafted by itinerants as a way to make money or exchange their handicraft for food.

Booteen’s work has evolved from simple bas relief to one coin featuring a “gold bug” which can open its wings (inspired by the story by Poe) and another that has a finger trap with teeth which can literally chomp thru wood. Little is known about Booteen. He keeps a low-profile which has led to him being described as a “man of mystery.” However, he shares his work via Instagram and Facebook and his hobo nickels sell on eBay. He also does a wild selection of engravings for Zippo lighters (see below) and Hotco.co will be releasing a limited replica edition of his “The Trap With the Golden Bait” this year.
 

 

 

 

 
Henry Cow was one of the most distinctive (okay, difficult) of England’s ‘70s prog-rock groups. They are impossible to categorize and are totally an acquired taste, but once you “get” their music, you come to see how Henry Cow fills in several boxes of the “everything that can possibly be done with the popular music artform” grid all on their lonesome. If you’re a Zappa-head or a Sun Ra fan then Henry Cow might be up your street.

For about three years in the late ‘70s, I saw the same Henry Cow album, In Praise of Learning, sitting pricey and unsold in the “Imports” bin of a Musicland store in a St. Clairsville, Ohio shopping mall, where artists like X-Ray Spex, Renaissance, Suzi Quatro, New York Dolls, King Crimson, the Velvet Underground, Fairport Convention, The Damned, Tangerine Dream, Nektar, Klaus Schulze, John Cale, The Stooges, Gentle Giant, Magma, Gong, and The Sweet were all placed in the context of a catchall “foreign music”/out of print in America/expensive category. “Imports” covered a lot of musical territory, even bringing In Praise of Learning to a town where not one single, solitary person even cared.

There was a quote on the back, from the Scottish filmmaker who coined the term “documentary,” John Grierson: “Art is not a mirror – it is a hammer.” The lyrics seemed smart and mysterious, and I wanted to understand them.

One of the clerks there told me, “If you’re into groups like Genesis and Yes, Henry Cow is supposed to be like a weirder version of that.” I don’t think he’d ever heard them either—the record was still sealed—but that was sort of their reputation.

Despite the fact that I loathed both Yes and Genesis, it was that quote, “Art is not a mirror – it is a hammer” that eventually made me so curious about what was going on in the mysterious grooves of that record, that I finally succumbed and bought it. I think I paid $12 for it at a time when domestic LPs cost around $5.98 list.

I fucking hated it. The cool Marxist lyrics aside, it did nothing for me, but then again, I doubt that the band members of Henry Cow were sitting around in 1975 thinking “Hmmm, you know, how do make our unorthodox experimental music appeal to a teenage dickhead living in rural West Virginia?”

It would take several years, in fact, before I ever listened to In Praise of Learning again, after those first few bewildered spins, and then I began to appreciate the sheer bloody-mindedness of what these musicians were trying to do. Eventually I got really obsessed by it, especially the song performed in the clip below.

It’s not an album I pull out often. Would I ever, say, decide to listen to In Praise of Learning in the car? Well, no probably not. If you ask me, the way to appreciate Henry Cow, if you are approaching this work for the first time, is to look at them as a group of Marxist poets creating together. It’s certainly musical, but there is an “extra-musical” component that I appreciate about In Praise of Learning, especially in the epic polemic, “Living in the Heart of the Beast,” with lyrics by Tim Hodgkinson:

Situation that rules your world (despite all you’ve said)
I would strike against it but the rule displaces…

There I burn in my own lights fuelled with flags torn out
of books, and histories of marching together…
United with heroes, we were the rage, the fire.
But I was given a different destiny - knotted in closer despair.
Calling to heroes do you have to speak that way all the time ?
Tales told by idiots in paperbacks; a play of forms
to spite my fabulous need to fight and live.

We exchange words, coins, movements - paralysed in loops
of care that we hoped could knot a world still.
Sere words, toothless, ruined now, bulldozed into brimming pits
- who has used them how? Grammar book that lies wasted :
conflux of voices rising to meet, and fall,
empty, divided, other…

Clutching at sleeves the wordless man exposes his failure :
smiling, he hurls a wine glass, describing his sadness twisted
into mere form : shattered in a glass, he’s changed…
How dare he seize the life before him and discompound it in
sulphurous confusion and give it to the air?
He’s rushing to find where there’s a word of liquid syntax
- signs let slip in a flash : “clothes of chaos are my rage !”
he shrieks in tatters, hunting the eye of his own storm.

We were born to serve you all our bloody lives
labouring tongues we give rise to soft lies :
disguised metaphors that keep us in a vast inverted silliness
twice edged with fear.
Twilight signs decompose us
High in offices we stared into the turning wheel of cities
dense and ravelled close yet separate : planned to kill all encounter.
Intricate we saw your state at work its shapes
abstracted from all human intent. With our history’s fire
we shall harrow your signs.

Now is the time to begin to go forward - advance from despair,
the darkness of solitary men - who are chained in a market they
cannot control - in the name of a freedom that hangs like a pall
on our cities. And their towers of silence we shall destroy.

Now is the time to begin to determine directions, refuse to admit
the existence of destiny’s rule. We shall seize from all heroes and
merchants our labour, our lives, and our practice of history: this,
our choice, defines the truth of all that we do.

Seize on the words that oppose us with alien force; they’re enslaved
by the power of capital’s kings who reduce them to coinage and
hollow exchange in the struggle to hold us, they’re bitterly
outlasting… Time to sweep them down from power
- deeds renew words.

Dare to take sides in the fight for freedom that is common cause
let us All be as strong and as resolute. We’re in the midst of
a universe turning in turmoil; of classes and armies of thought
making war - their contradictions clash and echo through time.

This was music made for the coming revolution that never came, but the artists involved successfully freed their heads. No, this music isn’t for everyone, but it’s heroic, man!

Below, Henry Cow: Georgina Born – bass guitar, cello; Lindsay Cooper – bassoon, oboe, recorder, sopranino saxophone, piccolo, piano; Chris Cutler – drums; Fred Frith – guitar, violin, xylophone, piano, tubular bells; Tim Hodgkinson – organ, alto saxophone, clarinet; Dagmar Krause – voice—performing “Living in the Heart of the Beast” in Vevey, Switzerland for the Swiss TV program Kaleidospop on August 25, 1976. The entire 75-minute concert can be found on Henry Cow’s 40th Anniversary Box Set.

Stay with it. Some of you might not be able to take it, but if you can go with it, by the end it will make total sense. Fred Frith’s guitar solo in the latter half is utterly mind-blowing and it’s amazing to watch Christ Cutler in action.
 

 
After the Grammy Award-winning success of their exquisite Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition box set Ozma Records, the imprint founded by bOING bOING’s David Pescovitz and his business partner Tim Daly, are back with a gorgeous coffee table art book celebrating the Golden State.

The Family Acid: California takes a trip with Roger Steffens, a name instantly recognizable to reggae fans, as Steffens is known worldwide as one of the foremost historians of Jamaican music and a biographer of Bob Marley, in addition to being an NPR interviewer and DJ. He’s also a traveller who has had a camera in one hand (a joint in the other) as he’s spent the past five decades seeking out the psychedelic, the eccentric, the outlandish and the transcendent:

Roger Steffens is an intrepid explorer of the fringe but he’s also a family man. He met his wife Mary under a lunar eclipse in a pygmy forest in Mendocino, California while on LSD. Soon after, they conjured up a daughter, Kate, and son, Devon. Family vacations took the foursome up and down the West Coast, from the gritty glam of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip to reggae festivals in Humboldt, fiery protests in Berkeley to the ancient redwoods of Big Sur and the wilds of Death Valley. Along the way, they’d rendezvous with like-minded freaks, artists, musicians, and writers, from Bob Marley and Timothy Leary to actor John Ritter and war photographer Tim Page, the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s character in Apocalypse Now.

They’d take in the wonders of nature—hallucinatory sunsets, expansive mountain vistas, the dreamlike haze engulfing foggy mountain roads. And, of course, the adults would occasionally lose their minds in psychoactive celebrations of creativity, freedom, and hope. Set and setting were everything.

This book is a collection of snapshots taken between 1968 and 2015 during Roger, Mary, Kate, and Devon’s freewheeling adventures across the visionary state they call home. Think of it as a family album belonging to a very unconventional family.

Some of the photographs have appeared on The Family Acid Instagram feed, but the lavishly-published The Family Acid: California contains hundreds of full-color images, most never seen before, with detailed captions and an original essay by Roger Steffens. Pre-orders of the 192-page book come with a limited-edition photo print on perforated LSD blotter paper (undipped, sorry!), 6.25” x 10”, and signed on the verso by Roger Steffens. The blotter print is available with the book at a special package price or separately.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The blotter paper print.

The Residents’ ‘Mole Box,’ new from Cherry Red
 

We had to borrow money from our parents to get us this show! It takes, it takes three weeks for a check from Louisiana to clear the banks! All he wanted to know was, who were—who were the Chubs and who were the Moles? It—it—it seemed like an easy question. I mean, we were the Moles, that was real obvious, we figured that—just like that, we figured that out immediately.
                                                —The Mole Show Live at the Roxy, 1982

The Mole Show—a stage production based on the Residents’ ambitious Mole Trilogy project, a kind of science fiction epic about labor, race and rock music inspired by The Grapes of Wrath—was the first show the group took on the road. Dramatizing the conflict between the ugly and industrious Moles and the cute, suburban Chubs, it was emceed by Penn Jillette, whose role was to make the audience want to kill him. He would begin by insulting the band (“Rather flashy, in a low-tech sort of way”) and come unglued as the show went on, culminating in a total meltdown between “The New Machine” and “Song of the Wild”; long after his mike had been cut, he’d be dragged offstage screaming “THIS IS A FUCKING RIPOFF! THE RESIDENTS ARE TAKING YOU FOR A GODDAMN RIDE!” Jillette would reappear onstage for “Satisfaction,” but Groucho-glassed, gagged and handcuffed to a wheelchair—”a castrated clown in the seat of a cynic.”

The show’s success in Europe did not save it from becoming, in the words of band biographer Ian Shirley, a “financial disaster.” As the Beach Boys abandoned Smile, the Residents left the Mole Trilogy unfinished, at an incalculable cost to American culture.
 

Penn gagged and handcuffed (via residents.com)

Audiences at the Residents’ first tour would see the band members as silhouettes performing behind a burlap scrim, while stagehands and dancers in Groucho glasses manipulated the props and scenery illustrating the first part of the saga, concerning the Moles’ exodus and subsequent conflict with the Chubs. Painted canvas backdrops represented the alien landscapes of these beings’ all-too-familiar worlds; years later, as if to exorcise the memory the show, the Residents cut the backdrops into strips and sent them out with Ralph orders, which explains the piece of the Mole Show set I have in my closet.
 

The Residents behind the scrim (via residents.com)

Even with the show scripted to fall apart, everything went wrong. Penn Jillette’s appendix exploded in Madrid shortly before the band performed on the TV show La Edad de Oro, and the tour’s stage manager took on the emcee’s role, antagonizing the audience and mocking the show. Uncle Willie’s official Residents guide explains how this Brechtian element of the performance was supposed to function: 

The Mole Show was conceived to tell a fable about a culture that is forced to co-exist with a different culture, and, naturally, the inevitable “anger, confusion, and frustration” inherent to the situation. But, The Residents knew that just telling an audience about this would never do. They scripted the show so that a major character would “rebel” against the performance. In an illusion of “breaking the proscenium,” he would express his “anger, confusion and frustration” over his role in the show thereby bringing the whole performance to an awkward and disturbing end. The audience would leave confused as to what was real and what was not. The Residents were successful. Audiences left the theaters in Europe and the USA feeling just as The Residents expected, “angry, confused and frustrated.”

 

via residents.com

Anger, confusion and frustration haunted the Mole Show. Two members of the four-man Cryptic Corporation, Jay Clem and John Kennedy, had quit just as the Mole Show was getting off the ground, contributing to the parlous state of the Residents’ finances. Ian Shirley writes that the tour ended in a deep hole of debt, with the band’s gear confiscated by an English shipping company and the members swearing off touring forever on the flight home. In order to mount the show one last time at the New Music Festival in Washington, D.C. in October ‘83, a gig the band took to pacify its creditors, the Residents had to cobble together an approximation of their live setup and rebuild all the sets and props from scratch. (This was the storied last performance of the production included in this set: the “Uncle Sam Mole Show,” all of it previously unreleased except “Happy Home/Star Spangled Banner.”)
 

via residents.com

These disasters probably explain why the Residents never finished the series. The group had envisioned the Mole Trilogy in six parts, “a trilogy of pairs”:

Initially the project was designed to be a collection of six albums: three of the LPs were intended to tell an epic story, connecting several generations of two fictitious races, while the three additional albums were designed to serve as musical “illustrations” for this story. It was to be a trilogy of pairs, with each contributing both to the narrative and cultural context of the ongoing saga.

The first pair of albums, Mark of the Mole (1981) and The Tunes of Two Cities (1982), followed this scheme: Mark told the beginning of the narrative, while Tunes presented ethnomusicological artifacts of the Chub and Mole cultures. While releases bearing the disclaimer “THIS IS NOT PART THREE OF THE MOLE TRILOGY” proliferated—Intermission, The White Single, Residue of the Residents, George & James—Part Three never appeared. But its complement, Part Four, did: an album by the Big Bubble, a group that sings in the outlawed language of the Moles. Their big break comes at a rally for the nationalist Zinkenite movement, which celebrates the Moles’ traditional culture, even though most of its members are products of mixed Mole-Chub marriages. This, presumably, was to have been the story told by Part Three of the Mole Trilogy.
 

Black Shroud recording artists the Big Bubble, from Part Four of the Mole Trilogy, ‘The Big Bubble’

Mole Box, the latest in the Residents’ pREServed series of expanded reissues, collects all the surviving pieces of the Mole Trilogy. This means all the canonical Mole releases: the studio albums Mark of the Mole, The Tunes of Two Cities, and The Big Bubble, along with the excellent Intermission EP, a collection of “extraneous music” from the Mole Show. Each of the albums is supplemented with outtakes, demos, live recordings, or other material from the Residents’ vaults.

The Residents Present the Mole Show Live in Holland is the record of the tour already in circulation. Here, in its place, we get recordings from the beginning and end of the tour, with an October ‘82 performance at LA’s Roxy on one disc and the final “Uncle Sam Mole Show,” recorded a year later, on another.

The final disc is the real treasure. Early instrumental mixes of the Mark of the Mole sessions are quite beautiful (“The New Machine”!); they’re represented by the Residents’ new 25-minute edit, “MOTM Mix One Concentrate.” Among much other material of interest on this disc (including all of Intermission) are two never-before-heard tracks likely to have come—the Residents won’t say for sure—from Part Three of the Mole Trilogy, “Going Nowhere” and “Now It Is Too Late.” A third track, “Marching to the We,” taken from the download-only Mole Suite, seems to provide another glimpse of the abandoned LP.

Do you realize what this means? It means that, for all the world’s problems in 2019, at least the Residents fan can, at long last, stand tall, clutching a copy of the Mole Box, and proclaim, in good conscience: “THIS MIGHT BE PART OF PART THREE OF THE MOLE TRILOGY!”

Mole Box comes out today, April 5, on Cherry Red Records. Below, Penn Jillette and the Residents appear in a feature about the Mole Show on the BBC’s Riverside.

“Iggy Pop 1970”
 
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.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
The train services in Scotland are dreadful. Probably the worst in Europe, possibly the worst in the world. Trains are never on time, often delayed, regularly canceled, while empty carriages flash by stations without ever stopping. Tonight was no different. All trains going to where I was going were delayed then canceled and finally replaced by a bus.

But there are always good things to be found even in the most frustrating of times. The replacement bus was crammed with passengers—tired, weary, cold, just wanting to get home. I managed to find a seat beside a young woman who was returning from a conference on Bioinspired Nanomaterials. She explained how one day it will be possible to make organs (livers, kidneys, hearts) in laboratory conditions from these nanomaterials. One day. Maybe five years from now. But at present it’s a question of getting the cell replication correct. A cheery young man on the seat in front turned around and said what a fascinating conversation—which was certainly not because of my input—and started asking about the practicalities of these future technologies. It turned out this fellow was equally smart—a quantum mathematician. He explained how this will one day help computers to become faster. Computers, he explained, work on binary code 1 and 0. Quantum math is working towards using a particle that is at once both 1 and 0.

These kids were super smart and I felt like Grampa Simpson, which will explain if I get anything I heard wrong. Too soon, it was my stop. But it was the kind meeting, two ships in the night-kinda thing, that makes life good, richer, much more fun and far more interesting.

I got off the bus wondering if the late genius mathematician Simon Norton had ever gotten around to completing his formula and theories on getting buses to run on time would it have ever helped the trains in Scotland? These thought of mathematics, binary, and cell replication made me think of M. C. Escher with his seemingly impossible yet beautiful artworks like Relativity, Waterfall and Metamorphosis III.

Escher (1898-1972) was never an academic. He was by his own admission bored by school. His only passion was art, but even at this he considered himself just average, graduating with a seven in his studies. As his parents encouraged him to find a profession, Escher briefly studied architecture at the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. Here, he learnt how to make woodcuts. It was his woodcuts that first attracted the interest of graphic artist Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, who encouraged Escher to abandon his architectural studies and concentrate on art. It was one of those Pauline moments, where Escher’s life path was utterly altered.

He developed his artistic skills during the thirteen years he spent living and traveling in Italy and Spain from 1922-35. He was inspired by the geometric designs and shape of the Italian landscape and its buildings rather than the more obvious beauty of the country’s Renaissance and Baroque architecture. In Spain, he was particularly influenced by the Moorish designs at the Alhambra, which first started his intricate and complex tessellations. He became almost obsessed with these designs, spending days working on one image, admitting that he had become “addicted” to producing such drawings to the point of “mania.”

His work attracted fan mail from mathematicians, which led Escher to study geometric and mathematical forms as a basis for his designs. This led him to produce works like House of Stairs and Ascending and Descending, which was largely inspired by the Penrose stairs—an impossible object devised by psychiatrist, geneticist, and mathematician Lionel Penrose.

Escher’s work can be divided into two categories—the early work inspired by nature, and the latter, gradually growing more abstract, inspired by mathematics and geometry like Gravitation, Möbius Strip II and Circle Limit.

Not long before he died in 1972, Escher was filmed for a Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ film Adventures in Perception, by fellow artist and filmmaker Han van Gelder. The film captured Escher at work and offered a portrait of an artist whose work intuitively visualised the essence of many mathematical theories and ideas.

Escher once said he never thought of himself as an “artist”:

This name, artist—I’ve always been very suspicious about it. I don’t actually know what it means. I don’t even know what art is. I do know what science is, but I’m no scientist.

 
H/T Hi-Fructose.
 

An enchanting movie poster for the Czechoslovakia film ‘The Fabulous Baron Munchausen’ (aka ‘The Outrageous Baron Munchausen’/‘Baron Prášil’) directed by Karel Zeman (1962).
 
I suspect the vast majority of Dangerous Minds readers have seen Terry Gilliam’s’ multi-multi-million dollar film, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)—though I also believe that many of our devoted followers are probably also acquainted with the rich, cinematic history (at least eight shorts and more than a handful of films exist) based on the tall-tale-telling Baron who was actually a real person. It should also be noted that any George Harrison superfan likely knows a bit more about the Baron’s 200-year-old history as Harrison was an avid collector of the work of Gustave Doré, the great illustrator and engraver who conceived the quintessential image of the Baron.

As he notes in the extras of the Second Run Blu-ray of The Fabulous Baron Munchausen Terry Gilliam gives much credit for his vision of the story to director and special effects artist Karel Zeman saying Zeman’s influence on his own work is “continual,” and he’s “pretty sure” he has stolen many of Zeman’s artistic methods for his own films. Other fans of Zeman’s work include Tim Burton and special effects legend Ray Harryhausen who has said he “deeply appreciated” Zeman’s talent. As it relates directly to this post, one of the films the former Monty Python member perhaps pilfered from was The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (aka The Outrageous Baron Munchausen/Baron Prášil).

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen was directed by Zeman who also created the multi-layered, dreamlike special effects in the film. Here is Zeman (as seen in an interview with the director in the Second Run release), on his vision for the movie:

“I wanted to capture the surreal world of Baron Munchausen. I wanted this romantic fantasy to be unleashed from the mundane reality. So I used imagery resembling prints from the period. At the same time, I decided to treat color like a painter on a canvas. I put in only when it was necessary.”

 

Zeman on the set of ‘The Fabulous Baron Munchausen’ giving direction to actors Milos Kopecký (Baron Munchausen) and Rudolf Jelínek (Tonik). This image is part of a large collection of Zeman’s work displayed at the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague.
 
Every shot in The Fabulous Baron Munchausen contains some variety of extravagant special effects, and Zeman’s vivid imagery—much of which is based on Doré‘s original illustrations, fill every inch of every frame. According to Zeman’s daughter Ludmila, her father was an avid reader and collector of comic books and would often incorporate jokes or gags he found amusing into actions performed by his actors. Zeman even recruited Ludmila for The Fabulous Baron Munchausen and the then fifteen-year-old got to ride a horse as the stunt double for Jana Brejchova, the stunning Czech actress (and former wife of director Miloš Forman) who played Princess Bianca in the film. The Fabulous Baron Munchausen is widely considered a masterpiece thanks to Zeman’s determination to make a very different film than German director Josef von Báky’s beloved Nazi-funded version of Munchausen’s story, 1943’s Münchhausen or The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

The budget for Báky’s movie was estimated at $6.5 million dollars (or approximately $95 million dollars if it had been made in 2019) and was commissioned by Nazi propaganda pusher Joseph Goebbels. Interesting, the screenplay for Báky’s adaptation was written by Emil Erich Kästner whose novels were regulars at Nazi book burnings. Kästner was in fact banned from publishing his literature in Germany between the years 1933 and 1945. The wildly opulent film was intended to rival The Wizard of Oz, but with an adult-oriented twist including a scene full of topless harem girls and other fantasy-based, “grown-up” scenarios. Despite the fact the film intended to serve as a mechanism for war propaganda, it ended up a luxurious, over-the-top take on the amorous, adventurous, cannonball-riding Baron.
 

George Harrison and Eric Idle on the set of Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.’
 
As previously mentioned, Python super-fan George Harrison would be the main conduit for the last of the final big-three Baron Munchausen films, Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. In 1979 he showed off his large assortment of Munchausen stories and shared his love of artist Gustave Doré with Gilliam. Then, Gilliam’s pal musician Ray Cooper gifted Gilliam with a copy of a book full of the stories of Baron Munchausen written (though published anonymously) by Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen (1720-1797), encouraging the director (if not daring him) to make a film out of them. Allegedly $46 million (though Gilliam says it was “nowhere near $40 million), flowed into the lengthy, arduous production that was already over budget by two million dollars before filming began. Though it was a financial box-office bomb, it received high praise and would collect three British Academy of Film & Television Awards, and was nominated for four Oscars. The stories from the set have become legendary, such as Oliver Reed being perpetually drunk and hitting on a seventeen-year-old Uma Thurman, who plays Venus/Rose in the film. Gilliam’s finished product will forever be considered a triumph in the realm of fantasy filmmaking and “fantastical exaggeration” which the real Münchhausen perfected and unwittingly passed along over hundreds of years through other storytellers fond of hyperbole.

If you’d like to learn even more about the history of Baron Munchausen in cinema, film historian Michael Brooke provides a fascinating, in-depth exploration of the Baron’s many appearances on the big screen on the Second Run Blu-ray for The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Baron Prášil). Far-out images and trailers from all three films follow.
 

A still of actor Hans Albert as Baron Münchhausen riding a cannonball in 1943’s ‘Münchhausen’ or ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.’
 

A curious scene from ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.’
 
More after the jump…

Vocalist for The Runaways Cherie Currie on stage at the Starwood in West Hollywood covered in fake blood. This and the other photographs in this post were taken by veteran rock/nature/surfer photographer Brad Dawber. Dawber has generously allowed Dangerous Minds to publish his rare photos of Currie. Use of these copyrighted images without consent will get you in trouble.
 

I’m a blond bombshell, and I wear it well
Your momma says you go straight to hell
I’m sweet sixteen and a rebel queen
I look real hot in my tight blue jeans

—lyrics from “Dead End Justice”

It’s well known that The Runaways vocalist Cherie Currie drew inspiration from David Bowie for her own stage persona, as did the rest of the band who aligned themselves image-wise with other musicians like Suzi Quatro and even Gene Simmons.  Photographer Brad Dawber was at the Starwood one summer night in 1976 and would capture Currie and The Runaways performance during which Currie would end up covered in fake blood. Here’s more from Dawber on that night and others he spent at the Starwood:

“Rodney Bingenheimer introduced the band that night. After the show, we went to Bingenheimer’s English Disco, and it was another scene there. Band guys, groupies, wannabes, etc. Sometimes Iggy Pop would make an appearance.”

As far as the theatrics behind the bloodbath are concerned, here’s a little backstory on the concept: During the band’s set, Currie “pretended” to hurt her ankle during the song “Dead End Justice.” Jackie Fox (Fuchs) and Lita Ford then used their guitars to “shoot” Currie, following up the fictional assault by “stomping” and “kicking” Currie while she was lying on the stage floor. During the for-show skirmish Currie would periodically puncture the blood packs she was armed with, and when she finally stood up after her beating, she looked like something out of a horror movie. The girls pulled off this show-stopper pretty regularly during “Dead End Justice” but nobody ever managed to capture it as vividly as Dawber.

The images shot by Dawber during Currie’s complete transition from ass-kicking vocalist to blood-drenched vixen are extremely rare, and it appears no video footage of the show that night exists. However, as it has been said before, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words—and Dawber’s NSFW photos of Currie looking more like horror-film icon Carrie (played by actress Sissy Spacek in the film of the same name) at the Starwood absolutely fall into this category. Interestingly, Carrie was released in November the same year as these photos were taken—maybe Brian De Palma caught one of The Runaway’s shows during their blood splatter phase? A girl can dream about such things being true, can’t she?

Many thanks to Brad Dawber for letting Dangerous Minds share his incredible photos of Currie below. Dawber has been taking photographs for decades, and I highly recommend checking out his site and Instagram to see more, as many of his other images of Debbie Harry and other notables are available for purchase.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Mingering Mike dreamed of making it big. The D.C. native came into his own during a period of turmoil in the nation’s capital, where drugs, crime, and political frustration ruled the streets around his home. His mother died from leukemia when he was six and without a father figure present, Mike’s oldest sister Cathy raised him and his siblings when she was just a teenager. Mike was shy growing up, still is today. He preferred to watch the world go by at his window. It was a challenging upbringing, but he had his music.
 
Mike still hasn’t learned to play a musical instrument. Cathy was part of two spiritual groups and would often sing at home. Mike liked to sing, too. He performed his songs in the bathroom where the acoustics were better. Oftentimes family members would contribute to his original compositions, lending an additional voice to mimic instrumentation. To date, Mike has written over four-thousand original songs, but only a few rough demos were ever recorded. When I spoke with him, Mike told me that he wants a hypnotist to help him recall some of his vast, forgotten discography.
 

Mingering Mike’s “There’s Nothing Wrong with You Baby.” Recorded in 1969
 
Music of the District’s African American community flourished in the Sixties. At the center of it was the historic Howard Theatre, where Mike’s older brother was a manager. The time Mike spent watching performers at the Howard, along with an early-age obsession with record collecting, led him to fantasize about the life of a famous musician. So he decided to become one.
 

 
With limited resources, Mike created his first album in 1968; the appropriately titled Sit’tin by the Window. The record was the first of many chart-topping hits, jumpstarting a prolific music career that would last Mike ten years. When he called it quits in 1977 to get a real job, Mingering Mike had self-released over fifty full-lengths on record labels he also founded. Of these releases were smash-hit live albums, greatest hits compilations, a tribute to Bruce Lee, a benefit for sickle cell anemia, and soundtracks to his many films. That’s right - Mike wrote, directed, and starred in over nine feature length films. He also produced and collaborated on legendary works by artists like Joseph War, Audio Andre, and the Outsiders. The ensemble traveled the world together and performed to sold out crowds.
 
It was a music career of infamy, but the thing was, Mike never actually released any music. In fact, his name isn’t even Mike. His LPs were one-of-a-kind, painted record sleeves with fake liner notes, copyright info and packaging. Each release even came with a cardboard cutout “disc,” complete with painted grooves. It was in Mike’s imaginative world that he was the soul superstar that he often dreamt about.
 
The records promoted social justice, protested the Vietnam War, decried drug usage. Like a true musician, Mike expressed his heartfelt emotions through his albums. When the draft slip arrived for Vietnam, Mike wrote the hit song, “But All I Can Do is Cry.” Refusing to serve, Mike went AWOL and spent most of his time working on music indoors, hiding from the military police. The unsettling environment of the era gave him a lot to think about.
 

 
Despite leading a bountiful career in an imaginative cardboard world, the fable of outsider artist Mingering Mike had remained unknown to anyone on the outside. After calling it quits in showbiz, Mike took a final bow and his discography was placed in storage. Once he fell behind on a payment, his entire collection and was sold off. In December 2003, crate-digger and soul devotee Dori Hader was scoping bins at a D.C. flea market and stumbled across the myth of Mingering Mike. Confused at its significance, Dori posted photos on the record collector forum Soul Strut and he, along with fellow discoverer Frank Beylotte, were able to track Mike down at home. Today, his story can finally be told.
 
In 2007, Hadar published the book Mingering Mike: The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar. The book contains scans of Mike’s incredible album covers and backstory. The Smithsonian acquired the collection and in 2015, exhibited Mike’s discography at the American Art Museum. David Byrne had even reached out to produce a tribute album based on the enlightening story. Today, Mike’s album imagery lives on through releases by Daptone’s The Ar-Kaics and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck. It had been nearly fifty years, but Mike had finally gotten the spotlight he had once envisioned.
 
Take a look at some of Mingering Mike’s iconic album covers, after the jump…
 

‘Self-Portrait’ (1556).
 
You don’t have to be no punk rock star or drug addled cult writer to earn the tag of a dangerous mind. A Renaissance artist who painted court portraits can equally fit the bill. The artist was Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532-1625), a brilliant and pioneering female painter who worked at a time when women were considered only suitable as the subject matter for a canvas rather than the one applying the paint. When Sofonisba started her career there were no women artists in Italy, or rather no recognized women artists. Art was not a career suitable for a woman—no matter how talented.

Sofonisba was exceptionally talented. The drawings and paintings she produced as a child drew considerable interest but little help in establishing her career as an artist. Yet at fourteen, she somehow convinced her father to allow her to train under the tutelage of portraitist Bernardino Campi. However, she could not be apprenticed to Campi, like any other young male artist, as this was considered morally dangerous for a woman, and even sinful. Therefore, Sofonisba’s father arranged for his teenage daughter to stay at Campi’s studio as a paying guest. This enabled her to watch, learn, paint, and develop her talents.

In her hometown of Cremona, Sofonisba was hailed as “among the exceptional painters of out times.” Though her subject matter was very much limited as women were banned from hiring models to pose less they be corrupted. This was a minor irritant for Sofonisba who focussed on painting her father, mother, and siblings.

After Campi left Cremona, Sofonisba’s father began promoting his daughter’s work by giving away as much of his daughter’s work as possible in the (unlikely) hope of finding a rich patron. One sketch was sent to Michelangelo, who was so impressed by the drawing asked for another. This was duly sent and a correspondence began between Michelangelo, who was then in his eighties, and the young Sofonisba. In 1554, she traveled to Rome to meet and work with the great artist. This association attracted the interest of the Spanish court and led to Sofonisba being offered the position as lady-in-waiting and court artist to Elisabeth of Valois the third wife of the Spanish king Philip II.

Elisabeth was just fourteen when she married Philip II in 1559. Sofonisba proved a deeply loyal and trustworthy consort for the young queen. When Elisabeth died at the age of twenty-two, Sofonisba remained at the palace in Madrid and helped raise the royal children. Throughout all of this time, she painted portraits of Philip, Elisabeth, their family, and members of the court. She also met and married a Spanish grandee, who died in what some describe as “mysterious circumstances”—he drowned in a shipwreck in 1578.

This could have been the end of Sofonisba’s career, who was now in her forties and no longer the court artist (having been replaced by Peter Paul Rubens) or even a lady-in-waiting. She decided to return to Cremona to continue her life as an artist. But things took a surprising turn, as on the voyage home Sofonisba met and fell in love with the ship’s captain, a much younger man called Orazio Lomellino. It was a passionate affair and the two were married in 1580. They set up house in Genoa but then moved to Palermo. It was here, towards the end of her life in 1624, that another young artist, Anthony Van Dyck, came to pay her homage. Though Sofonisba was 96 years of age and almost blind, Van Dyck said that she told him what she had learned from Michelangelo and gave him the best advice on painting and portraiture which he used in his own career as court painter to the English king Charles I.

Sofonisba had a remarkable life, one that almost reads like the plot to a novel, but she also faced considerable obstacles in achieving success. Many of her paintings were wrongly credited to male artists as there were those who could not or rather would not accept a woman could paint as good as or even better than men. Her work prefigured Caravaggio and she produced a considerable number of self-portraits (mainly from a lack of subject matter) long before artists like Rembrandt. 
 

‘Three Children with Dog’ (c. 1570).
 

‘The Chess Game’ (1555).
 

‘Family Portrait, Minerva, Amilcare and Asdrubale Anguissola’ (c. 1559).
 
More of Sofonisba Anguissola’s work, after the jump…