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Throbbing Gristle live, 2009: An excerpt from Graham Duff’s ‘Foreground Music: A Life in 15 Gigs’
11.04.2019
10:05 am
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In Graham Duff’s charming new memoir, Foreground Music: A Life in 15 Gigs, the actor-writer looks back on some of his favorite concerts and discusses what was going on during those times in his life. Duff writes about seeing Cliff Richard, Joy Division, Psychic TV, Primal Scream, the Strokes, the Specials, the Velvet Underground reunion, the Fall, and his favorite, Wire.

In this excerpt, Graham goes to see Throbbing Gristle’s concert at London’s Heaven discotheque on Fathers Day, Sunday June 21, 2009. At that time he was 45 years old.

My good friend Malcolm Boyle and I enter the venue. Heaven usually operates as a gay nightclub. But, due to its location and superb sound system, from time to time it’s also used as a rock venue.  Today, bizarrely, Throbbing Gristle have already done a matinee show here.  This helps me keep my expectations of tonight’s show in check. Is it possible the group could channel the amount of energy and passion required for the creation of their music twice in one day? Unlikely I think.

We buy drinks from the bar and survey the capacity crowd.  I spot my friend Andrew Lahman and the Pop Group’s Mark Stewart.  Throbbing Gristle attract a far more eclectic audience than one might expect.  There are men in leathers, both biker style and fetish style.  There are women in their 30s with crimson lipstick and long, straight 60s hairstyles.  There are Japanese boys and girls in their early 20s who are probably art students.  There are people in their 40s who look like they’ve just returned from raving in Ibiza.  There are numerous morbidly overweight men in their 50s, wearing combat fatigues adorned with TG and PTV patches.  Hell, there’s even a substantial gaggle of goths. 

There are also quite a few straight-looking people here tonight.  And I guess, I’m probably now in that camp too.  Long gone are the days where I might daub the word “Resistance” on a T-shirt and wear that.  Gone too are the days where I’d wear a long mac, even indoors.  Now, I wear the clothes that I feel confident and comfortable in.  In my brown linen suit and black cotton shirt, I suppose I look like a father on Father’s Day.

Suddenly, Throbbing Gristle begin to assemble on stage.  No lighting change, nothing.  All around us people are clapping, whistling and whooping.  The sound of awe and respect.  It’s only now, as the group are taking a few moments to sort out their equipment, I realize I have no idea what to expect from tonight’s performance.  Will they play new material?  Greatest ‘hits’?  Cover versions?  All of these are a possibility.

On the left hand side of the stage, stands Cosey Fanni Tutti - impossibly glam in her black diaphanous top, black glittery leggings and shiny candy apple red knee high latex boots, her snub nosed Hohner guitar around her neck. Centre stage is Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.  Hair cut into a sharp blonde bob, s/he’s dressed in a set of very feminine pale pink clothes that are so tastefully styled, s/he could have almost stepped out of the pages of a Toast catalogue. 

At the rear of the stage, occupying the space where you might expect a drum kit to be placed, there’s a table covered with a black cloth.  Sleazy sits on the left hand side, laptop open in front of him.  He wears a white and black gown with a fur trim, which looks part oriental priest and part Cruella de Vil.  Opposite him, leaning over a battery of electronic devices, is Chris Carter, dressed in a white lab coat, looking like a concerned technician in a science fiction film.  Their combination of outfits could be seen to symbolise the unlikely coalition at the heart of the group - the meeting of the beautiful, the grotesque, the camp, the mystical and the scientific. 

“Oh it’s so wonderful to be back in London,”  sneers Breyer P. Orridge, their tone dripping with insincerity.  And yet this still elicits applause and cheers from certain sections of the audience.  “Home of political corruption and asshole politicians.  Don’t you just love this country?  Where no one tells the truth.”  It seems a surprisingly straightforward statement.  Trite even.  But then, just to put a bit of a spin on things, s/he adds “Gordon Brown, I want to suck your cock.”  Hmmm.  As I stand in the densely populated environs of Heaven, I wonder if Throbbing Gristle will still be able to disturb, confound and exhilarate.

Suddenly, all qualms are blown aside, as a deep primeval thud reverberates through the venue.  I can feel it in my guts.  Another enormous thud.  And another.  And another.  This isn’t a rhythm.  It’s a series of timed depth charges.  It’s the kind of sound that seems designed to trigger my fight or flight instinct.  Malcolm looks across at me beaming, yet somehow also looking concerned.  Each thud is coated in a thick, sickly synthetic tone that increases the sense of deep dread.  This is a surprising reinvention of the ironically titled ‘Very Friendly’, one of the group’s earliest compositions. 

As the evenly spaced thuds continue to pound into the very foundations of the building, Cosey’s distorted guitar creates darts of noise that pierce the song’s corpus.  Then Breyer P-Orridge begins to intone “It was just an ordinary day in Manchester, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley drinking German wine.”  The narrative goes on to describe the hacking up of a corpse in the couple’s living room, as Eamonn Andrews blithely presents This Is Your Life on the television set.  Blood splashes on the screen and runs down Andrews’ chin.  This is music with a very strong, very sour flavor. 

People sometimes ask why anyone would actively choose to listen to music that makes them feel unsettled or even scared.  Although the question is a valid one, interestingly it’s a question that is rarely asked of cinema, or literature, or fine art.  The paintings of Francis Bacon are unremittingly bleak and unsettling, yet there is no question over his genius or the validity of the work.  Similarly the books of Stephen King, and the films of David Lynch contain huge swathes of material specifically designed to frighten and deeply disturb.  Again we accept that they are masters of their craft.  But it would seem that music, the most abstract of the arts, should expect to be judged by different criteria.

Despite the popular image of the group as purveyors of unleavened doom, they have so much more in their armory than provocation and matter of fact terror.  Unlike many of the Industrial bands that followed in their wake, Throbbing Gristle always engaged with a genuine range of emotions and ideas.  “United” is a sincere love song, “Exotica” is a piece of subtle drifting ambience, “Hot on The Heels of Love” smolders with dance floor sensuality and “AB/7A” exudes electro exhilaration and positivity. 

However, in live performances, Throbbing Gristle do tend to lean more heavily towards the darker side of their work.  And songs don’t come much darker than “Very Friendly.”  After eight punishing minutes, the song closes in a tsunami of echoing vocals.  There’s enthusiastic clapping, cheers and whistles from the packed audience.  I feel relieved the song has finished, but exhilarated by the primal assault.  “Well thank you.  That was the first song we ever wrote, in 1975.”  Says Breyer P-Orridge, before adding “It was a love song.”

Foreground Music: A Life in 15 Gigs is published by Strange Attractor Press on December 10th, 2019. Pre-order here.
 

See what was described above via this crowd shot video of Throbbing Gristle live at Heaven, June 21, 2009.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.04.2019
10:05 am
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William S. Burroughs’ ‘Blade Runner: A Movie’
10.30.2019
11:13 am
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1879: Doctor Benway is addressing a crowd of cowboys in the arid deserts of Nevada.

‘“Now, boys, lissen-up, I have two things for sale today. One a book by some fella named Burroughs, but that won’t really innarest you. The other, the most important thing, is a Quantum Vibrating Egg, which I have especially devised for you lonesome cowboys out on the plains.”
“Whatsitdo?”
“What does it do? You may very well ask. Now this here Quantum Vibrating Egg will lead you to undreamed of pleasures. Sensual delights unimaginable. Each egg when carefully inserted into the anus will begin to vibrate. The device is at zero degrees and will slowly rise to the body temperature of 37 degrees c. As the Egg’s temperature increases so does its vibrating motion, if you’ll pardon the pun, which renders the victim…I mean the er..indulger in fits of unrelenting erotic ecstasy. This here Egg will provide multiple hands-free orgasms. No hands, no wood, what I like to call sissygasms, wave-upon-wave, literally hundreds of them until the individual expires in orgasmic bliss…”
“...Tell us about the book.”
“...What…?”
“Shove yer egg and tell us about the book.”
“The book…? Why does this always happen…Well, okay then…”

 
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William S. Burroughs was an avid reader of low-rent pulp fiction. These kinda books stimulated his imagination. The poet W. H. Auden had a similar interest. He indulged in a passion for cosy murder mysteries written by the likes of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. He even wrote several damned decent essays on the subject including “The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict.” Now, I expect at this juncture some bright bod will notice a pattern and supply a graph showing the correlation between a liking for low-brow fiction and high intellect. It could be true, as anyone who’s read Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs can attest, Old Bull Hubbard liked his pulpy tales of gangsters and the Mafia.

Sometime around 1974, just after Burroughs had quit London and moved into “the Bunker” a converted YMCA building in lower Manhattan, Burroughs got his long slender fingers on a copy of a science-fiction novel called The Bladerunner by Alan E. Nourse. It was a speculative tale of a future where the only way to receive medical treatment was to be sterilized to stop any further progeny polluting the world. This draconian bargain led to a blackmarket of doctors operating on patients who refused to be sterilized. The book’s main character was one Billy Gimp. He was known as the “bladerunner” because he supplied the tools of the doctor’s trade in this dark and dangerous world.
 
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Nourse had been a medical man who turned to writing sci-fi shorts for pulp magazines like Weird Tales, Astounding Stories and alike. His biggest hit before Bladerunner was his “shock-u-rama” expose of the realities of working in a hospital called Intern which he wrote under the alias of Doctor X.

Burroughs liked the ideas in Nourse’s book but thought he could do something better. He had his amanuensis-cum-editor James Grauerholz write to his agent stating he wanted to adapt Nourse’s novel into a movie and could he sort it out for him?

Burroughs wrote a script or rather he wrote a treatment for a movie. In part, he wrote a prequel to Nourse’s story, examining the events that led to the “medical emergency” which caused doctors to demand sterilization of patients. The culprits were capitalism and big business. But Burroughs then developed his own storyline where medicine or medical aid was limited to only the rich and powerful elite. Thus eradicating the so-called “unfit” or “undesirable” from America. In other words, killing-off ethnic minorities, homosexuals, and those considered as politically transgressive.

He also turned Nourse’s characters of Billy Gimp into a gay revolutionary who indulges in some full-on sex; and made Doc into an aggressive and vituperative medical man—not too far from Naked Lunch‘s Doctor Benway. In Burroughs’ tale the stories of Billy and the Doc run parallel like two separate movies being projected at the same time. Burroughs thought this as a possibility for screening—two separate screens, two separate stories, which merged when the characters of Billy and Doc met. The scripts technical difficulties were nothing compared to the violent, excessively sexual explicit content, which made Blade Runner: A Movie unfilmable. Burroughs supposedly quipped that New York would have to be leveled if anyone ever wanted to make his script into a movie.
 
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The original hardback cover for Burroughs’ ‘Blade Runner: A Movie,’ 1979.
 
Burroughs’ Blade Runner: A Movie was published in a limited signed edition of 100 hardbacks by Blue Wind Press in 1979. It was then issued in paperback format the same year.

Tangerine Press are set to release three different 40th anniversary editions of Burroughs’ Blade Runner: A Movie in November. The books will come in a paperback edition; 100 numbered copies; and 26 lettered editions. The book will have an introduction by Oliver Harris. Gerard Malanga has been commissioned to supply the artwork for the covers of the paperback and the numbered editions. While Peter Blegvad will supply the artwork for the lettered edition. This is certainly something to get your hands on. Details here.
 

 
With thanks to Cherrybomb.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.30.2019
11:13 am
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Witches, bats, and black cats: The fairy tale art of Arthur Rackham
10.15.2019
07:48 am
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An illustration by Arthur Rackham for the story ‘Jorinda and Joringle’ from ‘Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.’ The caption for the illustration in the book read ‘By day she made herself into a Screech-owl. Or a Cat” as the cat is actually a shape-shifting witch.
 
Artist Arthur Rackham was one of twelve children born to Alfred Thomas Rackham, a legal clerk, and Anne Stevenson in London in 1867. Rackham demonstrated a deep, nearly consuming interest in art at a very young age, and when he ran out of paper to draw on, he would use his pillowcase as a canvas. His artistic talent would not go unnoticed once Rackham enrolled in school, and at the age of sixteen, he would travel to Australia, where he would spend many months painting images of the country’s rolling landscape. Other accounts of Rackham’s trip down under indicate the trip was in part to help the young artist combat a state of ill-health. Upon his return, his father, who was not necessarily supportive of Rackham’s artistic ambitions, convinced his son to seek work in a conventional setting, which he did as a clerk in 1855. During this time, Rackham would continue his studies at the highly specialized Lambeth School of Art.

He would soon leave his position as a clerk to pursue his passion for illustration, much to the disappointment of his father. Rackham Sr.‘s annoyance would be short-lived as his son’s style of illustration and painting for children’s books would eventually become the required standard for other artists of the time period to aspire to. Rackham’s influenced not only his contemporaries but also artists for generations to come, including Walt Disney, who was a big fan of Rackham’s artwork. Disney would later request his talented team of artists and background artists to adapt Rackham’s watercolor/pen and ink style for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Deeply proficient as both a painter and illustrator, Rackham curiously viewed both mediums as very different pursuits pointing out how differently illustrations were generally interpreted by the viewer:

“A picture both in subject and treatment must be considered as a work for constant contemplation - a permanent companion. An illustration, on the other hand, is only looked at for a fraction of time, now and then, the page being turned next, perhaps, to a totally different subject, treated, it may even be, in a totally different way. In this branch, bizarre and unusual effects of arrangement, violent actions, exaggerations and other matters of spasmodic interest may find a place almost forbidden on the walls of a room.”

Rackham’s work as a full-time illustrator was busy, and his work appeared in numerous magazines and books. In 1900, he would meet his soon-to-be-wife painter Edyth Starkie whose work would inspire the artist to define his own style and not to follow the path of convention as it pertained to his artwork. This same year Rackham would contribute 95 pen and ink drawings as well as a color piece for the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. This experience would be the catalyst for Rackham’s artistic evolution most notably in his work for Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle (1905). Other impactful pieces of literature containing Rackham’s illustrations would follow such as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (J. M. Barrie, 1906), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, 1907) and later in 1909 with the completion of 40 additional illustrations for the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. The demand for books illustrated by Rackham was great, including requests for elegantly bound editions signed by the artist. His decision to leave his clerk position proved to be right on the money, quite literally, as Rackham and his wife would become quite affluent as a result of his success.

Following the conclusion of WWI, interest in books illustrated by Rackham (which were steeped in folklore and fairies), became less appealing to British consumers but he was still in high demand in the U.S. and was offered a huge commission from the New York Public Library to paint a series of pieces based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even with the decline in the consumer market, Rackham had no problem finding work or commissions and in the last part of his life he would add costuming and set design to his vast resume after accepting the task of creating the costumes, background artwork and elaborate curtains for an opera based on Hansel and Gretel-a German fairy tale retold by Rackham’s beloved Brothers Grimm.

When Arthur Rackham passed away, he was memorialized in The Times of London  as “one of the most eminent book illustrators of his day.” His only child, Barbara Edwards, would qualify this statement with her own revealing the core of her father’s ethos:

“To do his job well and give pleasure to as many people as possible was his ambition.”

Below are illustrations by Rackham, and as you will see, he was quite fond of witches (aren’t we all?). Enjoy.
 

 

 

1907.
 

 
Much more after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
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10.15.2019
07:48 am
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Roddy McDowall reads two horror stories by H. P. Lovecraft
10.09.2019
08:38 am
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Of an October evening, as I prep the house for All Hallow’s Eve—water the pumpkin patch and marinade the eyes of newts—I take great comfort in listening to those wonderfully ghoulish tales of horror as told by the likes of Vincent Price or Boris Karloff on the old gramophone. Most recently, I have been attuned to the stories of H. P. Lovecraft as narrated by Roddy McDowall.

Roddy McDowall? The child star of Lassie Come Home and My Friend Flicka? Hardly a name one would associate with the master of the unnameable H. P. Lovecraft.

In his later years, McDowall did star in some jolly decent horror movies like The Legend of Hell House and Fright Night. But in 1966 when he recorded these two readings of Lovecraft’s “The Outsider” and “The Hound,” he was still best known for films like That Darn Cat! or Lord Love a Duck or the stage musical Camelot.

Yet, McDowall is almost a perfect choice to give life to Lovecraft’s words. Though he is not sinister, his light boyish charm seems to fit with the weird and reclusive Lovecraft. His intonation causes a growing disquiet and a dreadful sense of unease. If these stories had been read by Vincent Price or Boris Karloff, we would know what to expect. With McDowall we don’t. Only the nature of the stories alerts expectation. 
 
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Lovecraft published his eerie fiction in magazines like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories. He only had one book The Shadow Over Innsmouth published during his lifetime. He died young, at the age of 46, and it was only through the dedication of his family, friends and admirers like August Derleth that his work gained the attention and success it richly deserved.

“The Outsider” is one of Lovecraft’s best known tales. It has been adapted for radio and television and included in numerous anthologies. The story owes much to the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft described the story as representing his “literal though unconscious imitation of Poe at its very height.”

“The Hound” deals with ghoulish grave robbing and contains the first mention of Lovecraft’s famous fictional text the “forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.” Though there are elements of M. R. James here, the story owes more to Huysmans’ A rebours. McDowall’s reading of this tale is particularly effective.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.09.2019
08:38 am
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Consume this: ‘American Advertising Cookbooks’ is delicious AF
06.13.2019
11:47 am
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Did you know that the banana was a berry? Yep. Me neither. I also had zero clue that the US was gifted the concept of fish sticks from the Soviet Union as a post-war food. I mean—seriously—what? After reading Christina Ward’s thoroughly enjoyable and informative book American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Spam, Bananas and Jell-O, I have now realized that the sum total of what I knew about food history before I encountered this volume could have fit neatly inside a deviled egg.
 

 
From wealthy people renting exotic fruit like pineapples (before pineapples were readily available) as a dinner table centerpiece to flaunt their class status, to kitchen technology, diet recipes and the development and evolution of canned and potted meats, this book covers a variety of topics that handle far more than “what’s on the plate.” More often than not, Ward’s book is a textbook of incisive connections between invisible or overlooked histories and what is now commonly considered kitsch imagery.
 

 
Each chapter of American Advertising Cookbooks is different and equally rewarding. From the design of the book to the writing and image content, it never fails to educate and entertain in tandem. Images of a recipe for “SPAM ‘n’ Macaroni Loaf” and advertisements for a 1969 Pillsbury meat cookbook are delightfully placed perfectly next to chunks of text discussing the government’s Meat Inspection Act and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, allowing the reader to gain insight and react to the dark humor.

To authentically work with content that a younger generation might adore for a “so bad it’s good” angle or for its camp possibilities is not easy, but this book does it gracefully and with a level of respect for the topic that is obvious. Works like these are harder as many tend to go for the easy laugh or quick sell based on surface nostalgia. Ward’s attitude towards this material is wholly different and that is what makes this book so brilliant. She skillfully places dozens upon dozens of beautifully printed “weirdo” images into historical context giving Ham Banana rolls, Piquant Turkey Loaf and Perfection Salad a whole new life!
 

 
Foods that modern audiences no longer consume in large (or any) quantities like packaged meats and gelatins make them seem very foreign. But today’s food preservation techniques are different. Hey, refrigeration, what’s up? Indeed, many people I’ve met may think aspics look disgusting. I honestly looked at many of these images and saw so much art and dignity put forth in their representation. While this wasn’t something actively discussed, there is no way that one could view all these images and not see people trying to make these dishes look appetizing. Sure, Creative Cooking with Cottage Cheese may not have the same appeal as watching Anthony Bourdain but the Up North Salmon Supper looks really good. And there is something to be said about class aesthetics here. The idea of a home-cooked meal and working-class values is something that Christina Ward most certainly focuses on in the writing, making this book extra gratifying to some of us old school class-consciousness punk activist-y types!

If the mind-blowing plethora of elegant and fastidiously researched recipes, adverts and book covers seems odd or silly to a reader, they are clearly not looking at what a quality piece of literature this book is. Ward’s thorough research, accessible discussions on colonialism, Puritan and Calvinist practices, racism as a marketing ploy (Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben anyone?), and the Christian Missionary connection to, well, fruit make American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Spam, Bananas and Jell-O a necessary addition to anyone’s library who is interested in food, US history, social politics or simply a damn good book.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ariel Schudson
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06.13.2019
11:47 am
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The Family Acid takes a psychedelic look at the Golden State in ‘California’
04.08.2019
09:35 am
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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.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.08.2019
09:35 am
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The stop-motion cartoon of William S. Burroughs’ ‘Ah Pook Is Here’
03.22.2019
08:49 am
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The 1979 collection ‘Ah Pook Is Here and Other Texts’
 
William S. Burroughs envisaged Ah Pook Is Here, an extension of the comix serial The Unspeakable Mr. Hart, as “a picture book modelled on the surviving Mayan codices.” However, after nearly a decade collaborating with artist Malcolm McNeill on an illustrated version of the tale, Burroughs was unable to find a publisher for his graphic novel avant la lettre. Instead, it appeared without images in Ah Pook Is Here and Other Texts, a 1979 collection of Burroughs’ researches into Mayan, Egyptian, and space age magical techniques. (McNeill has since published his artwork for Ah Pook Is Here in a separate volume.)

Burroughs’ novella concerns an American plutocrat named John Stanley Hart, whose fear of his own mortality leads him to disturb the gods of the Mayan pantheon. Hart is a junkie with a jones for the suffering of others, especially poor people and ethnic minorities. Narcotized by the “blue note” of their pain, congenitally selfish and incurious, he can’t imagine that calling down awful deities from another dimension might have unwanted consequences: “Mr. Hart has a burning down habit and he will burn down the planet.” Before you know it, blood is spurting from delegates’ every orifice at the “American First” rally, and the Acid Leprosy has eaten a hole in time.
 

‘The Unspeakable Mr. Hart’ from Cyclops magazine (via Virtual Library)
 
Philip Hunt made this stop-motion film of Ah Pook Is Here as a student at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in 1994, taking the sound from Burroughs’ collaborations with John Cale on the Dead City Radio album. At six minutes, it is a distillation of the story, but a good one: death gods disturbed by a grotesque people-thing.

Given the vintage of Ah Pook Is Here, I can only interpret the suicide-by-shotgun at the end as a reference to the death of Burroughs’ former collaborator, Kurt Cobain—an unlikely candidate for Mr. Hart.

Posted by Oliver Hall
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03.22.2019
08:49 am
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Legendary R.E.M. performances captured before they were famous, 1981 (with a DM exclusive)
03.21.2019
08:43 am
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Flyer
 
The band R.E.M. were a highly successful and respected indie act that went on to became one of the biggest bands of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. But they started out as just another local group in the Athens, Georgia music scene—though they immediately stood out. An upcoming book examines their formative period, and Dangerous Minds has an exclusive excerpt. We also have some vintage live R.E.M. audio and video to share with you.

Begin the Begin: R.E.M.‘s Early Years will be published soon by Verse Chorus Press, and author Robert Dean Lurie has provided us with a preview. The passage focuses on R.E.M.‘s early shows, which thrilled audiences in and around Athens. 

R.E.M. began their live career with an advantage few bands are granted: their first performance at their friend Kathleen O’Brien’s massive birthday party in April 1980 had gone over so well that practically overnight they became one of the most popular bands in Athens, Georgia. So R.E.M. never belonged to the art scene, even if their immediate circle of friends hailed from that group. They didn’t go through an incubation period of playing the kind of intimate Athens house parties where men walked around in dresses and women wore outrageous wigs. Quite the contrary: they were, in the words of Party Out of Bounds author Rodger Lyle Brown, “dude rock.” And though Michael Stipe would later come to be known for his oblique lyrics and distinctive voice, his most notable contribution to R.E.M.’s early success was visual.

How to describe the 1980-1982 Stipe stage persona? Let’s try it from several angles. Imagine a malfunctioning robot trained as a whirling dervish. Or Elvis attempting to do his swivel-hipped dance while being assaulted by a gang of poltergeists. Or James Brown having an epileptic fit. Stipe would careen around the stage wildly, with apparently no self-awareness, narrowly avoiding collisions with his bandmates. He was in a constant state of frenetic motion, and, no matter how strange his movements, he remained locked into the beat. This might be hard to fathom for people who are only familiar with the “Losing My Religion” video, but the guy was a hell of a dancer. And when you saw him onstage going crazy to that music, you couldn’t help but start moving yourself. Dancing was absolutely intrinsic to the vibe and the success of early R.E.M. The mystique and the thoughtfulness would come later. R.E.M. were, first and foremost, the premier party band in town.

 

 

The band’s local shows alternated between Tyrone’s O.C. and a new club called the 40 Watt. The former served as R.E.M.’s home base for about the first two years of their existence. The latter, which had been founded by Curtis Crowe of Pylon and his friend Paul Scales, went through a number of locations and eventually became Athens’s signature club. The Side Effects, who had made their debut alongside R.E.M. at the party, played the Watt’s inaugural show, Pylon was a mainstay, and R.E.M. became regulars as well. They would do spur-of-the-moment surprise gigs there to test-run new material long after they hit the big time—a practice that continued into the early 1990s.

 
Tyrone's
R.E.M. at Tyrone’s O.C., 1981.

As for Tyrone’s O.C. (which stood for “Old Chameleon”—a nod to the club’s former name), it had begun hosting a New Wave Night right around the time of Kathleen’s party. R.E.M. came to quickly dominate this slot and were the club’s most popular weekend draw. Tyrone’s could only legally hold six hundred people, but it was not unusual for R.E.M., once they hit their stride, to draw a thousand. In an attempt to accommodate everyone, the club’s owners would remove any piece of furniture that was not nailed to the floor. “The way we figured out that R.E.M. was the biggest band in town,” says Billy Holmes, a local musician who went on to play in Vigilantes of Love and a mid-2000s iteration of Love Tractor, “was that the rest of us were charging $1.00 and $1.50 cover at Tyrone’s. They were charging $2 and the place would be packed. It was like, ‘Wow…R.E.M. charges fifty cents more a head than we do. They must be very big.’

“I did see the very first R.E.M. show at the 40 Watt, and there were three things that stuck in my mind. One was: Boy, these guys are really bad! Number two, the chemistry between them was just amazing. It was a powerful thing—you could feel it. And three, the place was packed wall-to-wall. I went up to Pete Buck afterward and I said, ‘Hey, you guys don’t need to add a keyboard player, do you?’ And Peter said, ‘Are you kidding? We can’t get it together with bass, drums, and guitar. How are we going to get it together with a keyboard player?’”

 
Buck
Peter Buck at Legion Field, University of Georgia, 1985 (photo by Joanna Schwartz).

Paul Butchart of the Side Effects was also at that 40 Watt performance. “This is hard to describe,” he says, “but I remember the crowd was dancing so much that the floor was moving up and down and the windows were pumping in and out like an accordion. It was just too crowded up there for me. The windows were sweating and all that stuff. If one of those windows had popped or somebody had opened the door downstairs, the floor would have collapsed—because it was like a big air chamber.”

Things were definitely moving for R.E.M., and these hometown gigs functioned as a means of fortifying morale as the group began to strike out across the Southeast and beyond, into places where they were most certainly not the biggest band in town. There are many good-quality live recordings from all phases of the band’s history in circulation, but an argument can be made that none touch the mad energy of the shows they played at Tyrone’s between July and September 1981, which were captured for posterity on Pat “The Wiz” Biddle’s soundboard tapes. This was not R.E.M.’s best period as songwriters or musicians, but to this writer’s ears they never sounded better as a live unit, and I’m guessing that few of the attendees of these shows would disagree. Pat says that the September 22 and 23 shows were “two of the most exciting nights I ever worked in my career. The crowds were electric and so was the band. Their performance left an indelible mark on my memory.”

 
Mills and Buck
Mike Mills and Peter Buck, early 1980s (photo by Joanna Schwartz).

And what made the crowds so electric? R.E.M. were not riding the wave of an album release (though the “Radio Free Europe” single had just come out). Nor were they the beneficiaries of any coordinated PR campaign. The energy of the audience on these two nights derived from a confluence of two factors: the strong word of mouth that had developed around R.E.M.’s live shows and the sudden surge in Athens’ population of 18-to-22-year-olds due to the start of a new academic year at the University of Georgia. “It’s fall quarter!” Stipe declared at the September 22 gig. “A show of hands for first-quarter freshmen!”

Freshmen—apparently a not-insignificant portion of the audience—brought with them the twin exhilarations of being away from home for the first time and finding themselves surrounded by hundreds of similarly unsupervised peers. They may have also felt some of the trepidation that usually accompanies newfound freedom. The returning students were likely feeling a mix of excitement at seeing their friends again after the summer break and just a bit of sadness at the passing of summer itself. New classes meant new routines, new ideas, a new start, but also long hours spent hunched over books. All of these factors contributed to an irresistible urge on the part of many to get blotto and dance the night away. And with cheap beer serving as the fuel, R.E.M. were the vehicle that would get them to that destination.

 
Radio Free Europe
 

To hear these recordings is to catch a sonic glimpse of that energy. It’s not a patch on being there, but Biddle’s carefully preserved tapes have ensured that the listener can hear R.E.M. at least as clearly as the audience did that night, if not more so. The band’s playing is not perfect—Peter Buck, in particular, fumbles his way through certain passages—but the synergy of the four musicians working toward a shared goal makes this perhaps their finest hour (onstage, at least). And all this before they ever signed a record deal. Rarely have I heard Stipe so locked-in vocally, and never before or since have I heard Bill Berry play so enthusiastically. This snapshot of a small-town band playing to a “perfect circle of acquaintances and friends” captures R.E.M. at the tail end of their apprenticeship phase. As a live unit they had fully arrived; as a songwriting entity, they were just getting started.

 
Book cover
 
Pre-order Begin the Begin: R.E.M.‘s Early Years via Amazon.

The legendary R.E.M. performances recorded at Tyrone’s O.C. on September 22 and 23, 1981, are on YouTube. The September 22 show was uploaded just this week.
 

 

 
The below live footage was captured at the 688 Club in Atlanta on February 20, 1981. The video begins with the band in the midst of “Rave on,” which was made famous by Buddy Holly. The first sign of Stipe cutting a rug occurs at the :48 mark.
 

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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03.21.2019
08:43 am
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Off with your nose!: A look at the long, strange, cinematic history of Baron Munchausen
03.19.2019
08:51 am
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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…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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03.19.2019
08:51 am
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The obscure teen film that inspired ‘Captain Midnight’ the infamous HBO hacker
02.22.2019
08:35 am
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VHS
 
During the early morning hours of April 27, 1986, a Florida man by the name of John R. MacDougall hacked into Home Box Office’s satellite signal. MacDougall owned a satellite dish company, and was upset that HBO and other cable networks had begun scrambling their signals so their programming couldn’t be seen by dish owners any longer. MacDougall, desperate because his business had suffered, decided to send a message. As HBO subscribers were watching an airing of The Falcon and the Snowman, the following appeared on their screens for more than four minutes:
 
Captain Midnight on HBO
 
MacDougall came up with the alias “Captain Midnight” not long after viewing the 1979 teen film, On the Air Live with Captain Midnight.
 
Clipping
Newspaper clipping, July 27, 1986.

The movie chronicles the adventures of a southern California high school student, Ziggy, who’s the voice of a pirate radio station. Captain Midnight has elements of the “teen sex comedy” film type, though it’s relatively tame compared to the onslaught of raunchy R-rated movies that came to define the genre in the 1980s. Anyone who came of age during the decade and remembers sneaking into theater showings of flicks like Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), The Last American Virgin (1982), and Porky’s (1981), or staying up late to watch them on cable—all without mom and dad knowing—is going to love the awesome new book, Teen Movie Hell: A Crucible of Coming-of-Age Comedies from Animal House to Zapped!. Author Mike “McBeardo” McPadden has penned reviews for over 350 films, from the “hard R’s” of the ‘70s and ‘80s, to softer fare such as Captain Midnight, and early teen sex comedies like the 1925 silent picture, The Freshman. McPadden examines these films, many of which are decidedly not politically correct, in the context of our current world, acknowledging, for example, the problematic aspects of Revenge of the Nerds (1984). There are also insightful essays from various contributors, and loads of stunning, vintage poster art that will take you back. 
 
Book cover
 
Teen Movie Hell hasn’t been published just yet, but Dangerous Minds has a preview for you. We’ve got McPadden’s review of On the Air Live with Captain Midnight, along with pages from the book, which will follow. We’ve also included screenshots from the Captain Midnight film.

A fun trifle from interesting husband-and-wife schlock filmmakers Beverly and Ferd Sebastian (they also made the sexy 1974 bayou action flick Gator Bait and the crazy 1984 heavy metal movie Rocktober Blood), On the Air Live with Captain Midnight seems to have been unofficially and without acknowledgment remade in 1990 with Christian Slater as Pump Up the Volume. Technically, Pump is the better film, but in terms of conveying the movie’s subject—a teenager turned pirate radio star—the Captain rules the high seas all the way.

 
Title card
 

Tracy Sebastian, son of directors Bev and Ferd, stars as Ziggy, a high schooler who works part-time at a local radio station to make payments on his sweet van. While futzing with the van’s CB radio, Ziggy’s chubby nerdlinger pal Gargen (Barry Greenberg) accidentally takes over an FM broadcast signal. Ziggy immediately grabs the mouthpiece and launches into a rock-jock rap, introducing himself as “Captain Midnight.”

 
Ziggy
 

Every kid at school happens to be tuned in at just this moment. Instantly, Captain Midnight becomes a campus mystery and a hero. Ziggy-as-Cap keeps his good thing going, spinning tunes and spewing truths from his mobile outlaw broadcast station, building the legend each time he hits the airwaves.

 
Gargen
Gargen, a teen movie nerd archetype.

The FCC catches wind of the Captain and dispatches Agent Pierson (veteran tough-guy actor John Ireland) to stop the madness. Real-life Los Angeles FM legend Jim Ladd, as “Disc Jockey,” voices support for the radio renegade.

 
Ziggy and the DJ
Ziggy and the Disc Jockey.

Ziggy finally deigns to save Captain Midnight by destroying him. He announces he will parachute into Magic Mountain theme park, where devotees will finally get to press flesh with their underground idol. As the climactic scene unfolds, a local news report claims five thousand Cap fans have assembled amidst the amusements. The same locale also welcomed the band Sparks in Rollercoaster (1977) and Kiss in Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978). On-screen, the crowd of “thousands” appears to number perhaps a few dozen extras.

 
Girls
 

Though the movie adventures of Captain Midnight end with the big airborne stunt, his spirit lived until at least until 1986, when a satellite TV tech jammed HBO’s Florida signal for five minutes and broadcast a message of outrage against the network’s service fee. The video protestor was named John R. MacDougall, but his on-air live handle was Captain Midnight.

 
Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Bart Bealmear
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02.22.2019
08:35 am
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