While the word “propaganda” has a rather nasty, manipulative connotation, it isn’t necessarily defined as “lies” per se. All that WPA art encouraging people to brush their teeth and get tested for syphilis? Excellent uses of propaganda! And whether you’re trying to organize a community garden or start your own fascist regime, I think the most effective propaganda follows that same model of simple, informative, attractive messaging, easily interpreted by children or the uneducated. Catch ‘em young, and make it pretty, I always say.

Our Lenin, a children’s biography of Vladimir Lenin, does this perfectly. Translated and adapted from a Russian book, the US version of Our Lenin was published in 1934 by the US Communist Party. Although teaching the kiddies to revere Vladimir Lenin uncritically is certainly problematic (to say the least), the book is a beautifully executed piece of messaging, and the illustrations are just exquisite.
 

 

World War 1
 

Would you like a socialist utopia, or capitalist fascism? Pick carefully now, children!
 

Ohhhh, so that’s how it works. Seems easy enough.
 
Via Just Seeds

 
Attention Firesign Theatre fanatics, two long out of print books transcribing their surrealist comedy classics, have just been republished. It’s fascinating to see their work in the form of plays. We think of Firesign Theatre as writer/performers, but this puts them in a literary context as well.

I asked their longtime archivist and producer, my pal Taylor Jessen (who promised me he was going to make a Firesign Theatre documentary in 2014) to fill us in:

The Firesign Theatre is one of the greatest Shibboleth manufacturers in history. Fans who’ve heard their 1970 masterwork Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers are aware that we’re all marching to Shibboleth – a Shibboleth being, of course, the original Hip password.

No one in the late sixties crossed the Jordan into Hip society without knowing the good word of Firesign: “Shoes for Industry!” “He’s no fun, he fell right over!” “What you don’t mean won’t hurt you!” “He broke the President!” In short, if a stranger came up to you in 1970 and said “No anchovies? You’ve got the wrong man!”, and you didn’t know the next line, man, forget it.

Rolling Stone’s Straight Arrow imprint published all those lines in 1972 and 1974 in the form of the script collections Big Book of Plays and Big Mystery Joke Book. Out of print for more than three decades, they now return in a new one-volume collection, Marching to Shibboleth, available exclusively from the FireSale store. 354 pages; all the words and art from the original books; all the text re-proofed and re-set to match the design and fonts of the original layout; the photos re-scanned from original source material. It’s Firesign’s classic Columbia period totally transcribed – Waiting for The Electrician or Someone Like Him, How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All, Dwarf, I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus and The Giant Rat of Sumatra, plus vignettes, miniatures, a 400-year Fyre Sygne historical exegesis with a lot of really impressive footnotes that you should therefore TOTALLY BELIEVE, plus for the first time the complete script to Everything You Know Is Wrong. All this as well as a new introductory essay by Greil Marcus.

Guaranteed to look great on any comedy lover’s shelf next to Monty Python’s Flying Circus: All the Words and The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts.

Get your copy of Marching to Shibboleth, available exclusively from the FireSale store
 

 
Below, eight minutes of The Firesign Theatre’s “High School Madness” cut to the corny Henry Aldrich movies they were riffing on in the first place, via filmmaker Andre Perkowski:

 
J. G. Ballard’s prose poem “What I Believe” was originally published in the French magazine Science Fiction, in January 1984. It was written in response to a request from editor Daniel Riche for the series entitled “Ce que je crois.” Described as “part poem part prayer” it offers a personal and amusing catalog of tropes and memes, the recurrent imagery, themes, and influences which are to be found in Ballard’s work.

Ballard’s poem subverts the pomposity of the traditional “What I believe” list, where you expect long meanders into politics and self-justification. Ballard’s is more fun, though as equally revealing as those written by Bertrand Russell or E. M. Forster.

The animation I believe or Credo was created for the first exhibition dedicated to J. G. Ballard and his work, which was held at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), Spain, in 2008.

It should be noted this is an edited version of Ballard’s “What I Believe,” as read by the author on the documentary series The South Bank Show, in 2006.

“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

“I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, in the peace of the submerged forest, in the excitements of the deserted holiday beach, in the elegance of automobile graveyards, in the mystery of multi-storey car parks, in the poetry of abandoned hotels.”

Here the poem jumps, excising Ballard’s belief “in the mysterious beauty of Margaret Thatcher, in the arch of her nostrils and the sheen of her lower lip…” too problematic for those on the Left in TV, where abhorrence is the expected response to Mrs. T. However, Ballard pointedly goes on to imagine Thatcher “caressed by that young Argentine soldier in a forgotten motel watched by a tubercular filling station attendant.”

Ballard admired Thatcher, and said in an interview contained in RE/Search that he had almost jumped for joy when the Iron Lady was first elected in 1979. But to be fair, so did most of the British voting public, hence Thatcher’s dominance in power over three elections. Margaret Thatcher was the kind of strong woman Ballard admired, though he did later satirize her as the environmentalist zealot, Dr. Barbara in Rushing to Paradise.

Like the artist Francis Bacon,  Ballard reworked his own personal obsessions in his work, he mined a distinctive style of fiction that was instantly recognizable—airport car parks, empty swimming pools, deserted beaches, forgotten motels, etc etc. These are the memories of his childhood in Shanghai, as filtered through the prism of his imagination.
 

 
H/T Suzanne Moore. More on what Ballard believes plus bonus videos, after the jump…
 

 
Experiencing Nirvana: Grunge in Europe, 1989 is one of those perfect records of music history that galvanizes the pedestrian as easily as the aural devotee. Chronicling eight electric (and sometimes volatile) days of Nirvana, Mudhoney, and Tad’s 1989 European tour, Sub Pop co-founder Bruce Pavitt has curated his memories, reflections and beautiful photography in an intimate compendium.On the very cusp of the grunge explosion, Pavitt had the wherewithal to photograph the small moments—moments which provide an ambient framing for this lovely scrapbook.

Bruce was kind enough to give Dangerous Minds an exclusive interview on the book, which helps support Seattle’s Vera Project.

(And for those of you in the New York area, Pavitt is launching a month-long installation exhibit at Rough Trade NYC. This Saturday, he’ll be there signing copies, with a Q&A session lead by Michael Azerrad. I’ll be in the corner fangirling and livetweeting @Amber_A_Lee.)

Amber Frost: How did this book come together?

Bruce Pavitt: My friend and editor Dan Burke and I originally released Experiencing Nirvana as an e-book using iBooks Author. Ian Christe from Bazillion Points then contacted us and offered to release it as a hardcover. The whole project has taken about a year and a half, and it’s been quite a process.

Amber Frost: The concept of a retroactive tour diary is total brain candy. Is it what you had in mind at first? Or did the format take shape as you organized your thoughts and materials?

Bruce Pavitt: From the beginning, we knew that we had a series of images that told a story; in fact we feel that Experiencing Nirvana would make an ideal storyboard for a film! Of course, we realized that the photos needed to be embellished with reconstructed diary entries to fully bring the images to life.

Amber Frost: There’s this strange sense of excitement in a lot of the photos—how much of that was the band’s growing success, and how much was just the thrill of being young and traveling?

Bruce Pavitt: A bit of both. My biz partner Jon and I knew that Nirvana, Tad and Mudhoney were three of the greatest live bands we’d ever seen. Those feelings were validated from both the crowds and the critics overseas. People went off at every show, and it built to a climax when all three bands shared the same stage in London. The photos show our appreciation of both the bands and the awe inspiring scenery.
 

Pavitt’s picture of Kurt Cobain in Rome
 
Amber Frost: What was your sense of the tour’s significance at the time? Did you have predictions? How did they turn out?

Bruce Pavitt: I’ve never taken more photos, neither before nor after. I instinctively felt that this tour would be historically significant, and both Jon and I believed that this London showcase would put Seattle on the map. As it turned out, NME proclaimed Nirvana to be “Sub Pop’s answer to the Beatles.” Our gamble paid off.

Amber Frost: You describe a lot of stress on the tour—particularly with Kurt wanting to simply go home. How fragile or stable did the band feel?

Bruce Pavitt: Both Tad and Nirvana were fairly ragged after zig zagging across Europe in a shared van for almost 6 weeks. By the time we met up with the crew in Rome, Kurt was out of patience. It was just day by day after that, until the band finished up in London.

Amber Frost: A lot of Nirvana’s legacy is obscured by the tragedy of Kurt’s death, so much so that his personality is often simplified into depression and addiction. How would you describe him as a person?

Bruce Pavitt: Kurt was essentially a sweet and sensitive guy, creative, humorous and a true fan of indie music. He was also moody, introspective, and appreciated his alone time.

Amber Frost: In the book you obviously talk about Mudhoney and Tad as well Since grunge was gaining popularity as a movement, did you predict at all that Nirvana would becoming its unwitting “stars?”

Bruce Pavitt: My Sub Pop partner Jon Poneman was Nirvana’s earliest and biggest fan. However, by the time Nirvana played London in December of ’89, I was a true believer.

Amber Frost: With the genre name no longer in use, and Sub Pop now an institution, what do you think the “legacy” of grunge is?

Bruce Pavitt: Grunge was very welcoming and inclusive. For a not-so-brief moment in time, anyone with a flannel shirt and a pawn shop guitar could feel that they had a chance to change the world. I welcome a resurgence of that attitude.

 
For those of us who grew up during the golden era of VHS, the shelves at the local Mom & Pop video store were the equivalent to visiting some king of gloriously mutated version of Disneyland. The beauty of that era was that because the format being new, all kinds of movies came out of the woodwork. Films like First Blood or E.T. had a great chance of playing in theaters ranging from the metropolitan to box-shaped bergs in the smallest of corn-town America. But what about titles like Psychos in Love, Death Spa or Black Devil Doll From Hell? Forget it, but that was the beauty of VHS is that it truly made the movie going experience more personal and democratic.
 

 
This was never more true than for the horror genre, with the 1980’s being the apex decade for some of the most lurid, grue-filled, nudity-ridden and straight up crazy films in the field. Thanks to the fine folks at Headpress, there is a funhouse ride of a book dedicated to these films. The tome in question? Bleeding Skull: A 1980’s Trash-Horror Odyssey. Originally a website started back in 2004 by Joseph A. Ziemba, who was later joined by Dan Budnik, Bleeding Skull, both as a website and book, is a compendium of all the horror films that more academically minded or overall discerning writers would quickly bolt from. This is, naturally, a highly positive thing!

That fact alone makes Bleeding Skull worth noting, but the added bonus is how entertaining both Ziemba and Budnik are to read. They both have the whole “snark with love” vibe down to a fine art. There are some incredibly funny lines in this book, but they never override the overall reviews. There’s a sensibility to the whole thing of a guy sitting next to you at a bar,  telling you about this weird movie that he just saw that was directed by the guy that made The Giant Spider Invasion and stars Tiny Tim as a sweaty and depressed clown named “The Magnificent Mervo.” (The film in question, by the way, is Blood Harvest. and yes, it exists. Glory.) Who else is going to talk about obscure, made in Wisconsin horror films with Tiny Tim as a clown in them? Not many but that right there captures the essence of Bleeding Skull.
 

 
Another impressive thing about this book is that Ziemba and Budnik have truly combed the depths of ultra-obscure horror films for your enjoyment. This was an area of film that before reading this book, I was fairly confident that I knew more than the average bear. Which, while I still do, compared to these guys, I AM the average bear. If it was a no-budget, shot-on-video one day wonder from two guys in Duluth, Minnesota, then dollars to donuts, it is written about in this book!

Headpress continues to cement their already solid reputation as one of the finest purveyors of fringe culture with Bleeding Skull. So crack open your favorite libation, dust off your VCR that’s been gathering dust in your attic and be prepared to read about some of the best, worst, trashiest, sleaziest and gonzo trash-horror films from one of the darkest decades in cinematic history.

Below, for your viewing pleasure (?) Blood Harvest starring Tiny Tim as “Mervo the Clown”:
 

 
So, Peter Capaldi has finally arrived as the new Doctor Who, making a promising (though fleeting) appearance at the end of a rather indulgent (and dire) Christmas Doctor Who special. I do hope Mr. Capaldi brings the tired series back to some quality story-lines, and less of the puerile, narcissistic, self-referential navel-gazing of recent years. (Or, in the words of Elvis Presley, the series needs “A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action.”) Capaldi certainly has the pedigree to deliver this, as he is already an Oscar-winning film director and writer, who picked up an Academy Award for his fabulous short Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life in 1995.

Capaldi’s film features Franz Kafka (wonderfully played by Richard E. Grant) suffering a frustrating bout of writer’s block, as he works on the opening line to his story Metamorphosis:

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

Brilliantly imagined, with superb supporting performances from Ken Stott, Elaine Collins and Phyllis Logan, this is a perfectly enjoyable winter treat.
 

 
There was, for slightly better than a decade, a “golden era” of insanely decadent, yet terribly smart and sophisticated New York City nightlife. For sake of argument, let’s say it began with Studio 54 opening in 1977 and ended in the late 80s due to several factors, including AIDS, the invasion of the “club kids” and the general financial difficulties of operating anything requiring significant amounts of space in such an expensive city. Some (arguably most) of it happened before my time, but I did get to personally experience a lot of it. When I was younger, I went out just about every single night. I felt like if I stayed in, I might miss something. At the time, this was most certainly true and I made it a point to try to cram in as many crazy experiences as I could. Quite successfully, I might add…

Although I can’t say that it was personally my favorite nightclub (the Danceteria was more what I was into, with hot girls my own age), I would have to say that AREA was probably the best or greatest New York club of the 80s, at least in my experience. Every six weeks, a team of about 30 artists and carpenters would work around the clock to ready the club for the opening of a new and quite elaborate artistic “theme” like “Red” or “Confinement” or “Suburbia.” To get across what a spectacularly mind-bending and magical place it was, here’s what I saw there, with my own eyes, coincidentally on my very, very first night as a “real” New Yorker:

I arrived in New York City in late November of 1984. After setting myself up in a (surprisingly decent) $50 a night hotel, I scanned the Village Voice for something fun to do, before deciding to go to the Danceteria. Not quite understanding what was the appropriate time to show up at a Manhattan hot spot at that age (I had just turned 19 and was in fact too young to even be there legally) I arrived too early, before practically anyone else had shown up. I sat on a couch and watched Soft Cell videos as the bar staff set up for the evening. Soon I was joined by a couple about my age—a sharp-dressed black guy and his blonde Swedish girlfriend. We struck up a friendly conversation and he revealed to me that he had cocaine—about a kilo’s worth—and did I want any? The answer to that was a resounding “Yes!” and he used a NyQuil cup to scoop out at least an eight-ball from a big ZipLoc bag and just handed it to me.

So this is New York, huh? I think I like it already!

Soon we were joined by another pair of early birds, future “club kid murderer” Michael Alig—then a first year student at Fordham University in the Bronx—and a female friend. They, too, were offered some a lot of coke, accepted gladly, and Michael (who was later played by Macaulay Culkin in Party Monster) asked if we were planning to attend the opening night of AREA‘s “Faith” theme later?
 

 
I’d just gotten to town and had never even heard of the place. He insisted that he had the pull to get us all in for free, and that it was going to be amazing, so around midnight, we hopped into a cab to 157 Hudson Street, just below Canal, and disembarked into a teeming throng of people waiting to get in, waving their arms at the doormen, Day of the Locust style. True to his word, the sea of people parted and Michael got us all in for free (we were dressed weird so that helped), but as I was between the taxi and the door, I could see that there was a procession coming down the street, carrying a man on a cross with arrows—in my mind they were flaming arrows—in his stomach, like St. Sebastian. It was attention grabbing, I can assure you.
 

 
As you entered AREA, there was an impressive castle-like stone hallway, with windows on the right-hand side like you might see in a department store, but with works of art, displays, people, animals, performance art and all manner of things going on inside them. Soon the crucified guy was being carried down the hallway before he was ultimately deposited upright into a shark pool in the lounge. AREA‘s “Faith” theme saw the entire nightclub transformed into a gigantic gallery of campy religious iconography and spiritual irreverence (The bathrooms, notoriously unisex, I recall having video monitors with the Pope, Jim Jones and Jerry Falwell over the urinals at eye-level).
 

 
Utterly astonishing to me, Andy Warhol was there. Michael asked “Oh, do you want to meet Andy?” I said “Sure!” and he promptly pushed me at the great artist, from behind, as HARD as he could, with both arms. So hard that I nearly knocked Andy Warhol on his ass. (Luckily for me, Warhol had seen what had happened and directed his annoyance at Michael and not at me, so I was able to slink away, mortified, and move to another part of the club.)
 

 
The crowd AREA attracted was eclectic, to say the least. You had the freaks, the beautiful people, the up-and-comers, the semi-famous, the very famous, the very wealthy, fashionistas, artists, gallerists, professional liggers and hanger-oners, art students, rich Europeans, frat boy Wall Street-types (the ones who actually paid to get in and for their drinks) and just about any type of human being you can imagine, really. It was the sort of place where you could look around the room and see Joan Rivers, the B-52s, Boy George, Allen Ginsberg, Billy Idol, members of the Psychedelic Furs or Duran Duran, John Waters, John Sex, Ann Magnuson, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Byrne, Malcolm McClaren, Lauren Hutton, Matt Dillon, Federico Fellini, Barbara Walters, Peter Beard, Michael Anderson (the dwarf from Twin Peaks), Nile Rodgers, Stephen Sprouse, Steven Meisel, transsexual model Teri Toye, Calvin Klein, Sting,  etc, etc, etc, all potentially on the very same night. Their opening parties, especially, were not to be missed under any circumstances. Everyone in attendance knew there was no cooler place to be that night anywhere else in all of Manhattan, if not the entire planet.
 

 
It was an extraordinary nightclub for an extraordinary time in New York’s history. The city was a wild, creative and dangerous (define that how you will) place then. AREA was a reflection of the best of what the city had to offer, a place where uptown wealth met downtown chic. It’s one of the longest-running, most brilliantly realized art projects—one pulled off by a small army of weirdos (many of AREA‘s hardworking artists were junkies), visionaries and money men—probably, I don’t know… ever. That they were able to sustain it for so long, night after night, theme after theme at such a high level creatively and then go out while they were on top makes it seem all the more remarkable.
 

 
But as an art form, a party, no matter how legendary it becomes in the minds of the people who were there, is still a very ephemeral thing. Aside from memories, there are only photographs, videos and mementos left (AREA was well-known for their elaborate invitations. How I wish I’d have kept mine!). The multi-leveled social/artistic/business genius that was AREA has now been commemorated in what I’d rank as perhaps the very best art/art history book of the year. If you were there, Abrams’s AREA: 1983-1987 is a must and chances are that you already own it. If you weren’t there, it’s fascinating record of an amazing, once in a lifetime scene that will hopefully inspire some new crew to take on something this elaborate again one day. It’s a book with a cult audience, to be sure, but a cult audience that will absolutely treasure it.
 

 
Put together by AREA‘s Eric and Jennifer Goode, with an introduction by Glenn O’Brien, principal text by Stephen Saban (beyond a doubt the very best person for the job) and the photography of Volker Hinz, Ben Buchanan, Patrick McMullan, Wolfgang Wesener, Michael Halsband, Dana Buckley and others. On every level, I’d rate this publication a perfect 100/100, as a book (in literary, historical sense) and as a beautifully designed object.

More photos of AREA here.

Below, this John Sex video, “Hustle With My Muscle,” directed by the late Tom Rubnitz, is one of the few examples I can find of inside AREA on YouTube. The theme at this time would have been “American Highway” in 1986. Sadly, you really can’t get a sense of the size of the club from what you see here.
 

 
“Libertarian feminist” Camille Paglia is getting press again, and every time Camille Paglia gets press, feminists are obliged to immediately declare their respective camps. There’s a camp that’s perpetually incensed with Paglia, a (dwindling) camp cheering her on, and then there’s my camp—the camp of feminists who hope that if we ignore her, she will simply go away.

To keep a very long story short, Camille Paglia just doesn’t really like women, preferring to decry her youngers, whilst simultaneously dismissing her foremothers. In fact, the only people she seems to really respect are men. Check out his charming excerpt from her latest essay in TIME, some lameass troll-bait titled, “It’s a Man’s World and it Always Will Be.”

Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!

If I may dust off an old chestnut, “Cool story, bro.”  I’m sure those noble icons of manly labor are all really pleased that some bullshit academic “feminist” wrote them a weird love letter in TIME. And the prose is downright Randian in its reverence.

Yes, as far as Paglia is concerned, no one else’s feminism is quite smart enough for her—a point which she’ll readily make to you with 9,000 words on post-structuralism and a libertarian tirade. Unfortunately, I work on the Internet, which prevents me from totally ignoring her, so maybe reminding everyone how terrible she is would make me feel better? Here’s a 1993 interview with Paglia where she acts like a sputtering, defensive fool when confronted with video evidence that her former idol, Susan Sontag, had never even heard of her (or was at least pretending not to).

There’s something sickeningly gratifying about seeing such an egotistical narcissist so miffed. And though I often find Susan Sontag’s work pretentious and politically unsound, the record of this moment alone is enough for me to want to defend her entire career. I have a sneaking suspicion that Sontag was probably in the “Let’s ignore her and maybe she’ll go away” camp. (Here’s Paglia’s meltdown.)
 

 
There’s less than a week left before Christmas. You’ve got someone on your list who is really difficult to buy for? A sophisticate?

We’ve got you covered.

Yesterday I remarked to my wife that if I stacked up all of the amazing stuff I’ve been sent in just the past two months alone from publishers, publicists, and record labels, it would far surpass my best Christmas haul… ever. Some of it I asked for, but most of it came unbidden. Every day’s post saw a crazy new treat arrive.

Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult Dayal Patterson (Feral House). I found this book as fascinating as I found a new issue of RE/Search or Mondo 2000 when I was younger. I’m putting this book at #1 on my list because, believe it or not, I think it would appeal to the largest cross section of people. Me, I didn’t give a shit about Black Metal, but when I opened the package and pulled this book out, I sat right down and read the majority of it in one sitting. If you want the satisfaction of seeing your rock snob friend, lover or relative sit down on Christmas day and bury their nose in YOUR gift, go with Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult. You’ll find a more in-depth review here.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman: The Complete Series (Shout Factory) I received this a few weeks ago and we’re already, as of last night, 81 episodes into it. If I only got the MH, MH box set (38 DVDs, 325 episodes, plus ten episodes of Fernwood 2Night with Martin Mull and Fred Willard) this year, it would still be my best Christmas ever. It is astonishing how well this show has aged, and just how far ahead of its time the humor was, too. In a longer post about Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, I said that this long lost, fondly-recalled series was arriving just in time for the binge watching generation and owing from the way Tara and I have been ravenously devouring it, I’d have think that there’s going to be a full-on MH, MH cult revival coming soon. By the time it gets onto Netflix streaming, well, forget about it. (I also predict “Mary Hartman” will be a popular Halloween costume next year for hipsters—male and female alike—mark my words…)

White Light/White Heat 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition The Velvet Underground (UMe) The second installment of Universal’s “Super Deluxe” VU reissues, White Light/White Heat has surely never sounded better, but it’s the inclusion of the stunning 1967 live show from The Gymnasium that’s the crown jewel of this set. Read more here and listen to “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore,” one of the most amazing VU performances you’re ever going to hear.

Fanfare Jonathan Wilson (Downtown) I’m already on record as calling Fanfare the best and most important album of 2013 and I will stand by those words (and direct you to my original review here). I do want to mention here, though, that Wilson is a total analog freak in the studio and his vinyl releases are done to a very exacting standard (and weigh a lot). Vinyl head on your shopping list this year? Go for the two-record set of Fanfare.

Instant Replay Deluxe Edition The Monkees (Rhino Handmade) I played this so many times in the weeks after I got it that I thought my wife might break it if I didn’t let up. Instant Replay came out after the Monkees TV series was cancelled—and Peter Tork was gone by then, too—although many of the numbers were recorded prior. The album, as originally released in 1969, was somewhat uneven, but with the inclusion of several great extras, I’d give this an A-. It’s not the best Monkees album, no, but it certainly still deserves to stand alongside their earlier albums that everyone knows. “Someday Man,” “You and I” (a Davy penned song with backing from Neil Young on guitar) and the inclusion of nearly all of Mike Nesmith’s “Nashville Sessions” made this, for me, a must have.

Moondance Deluxe Edition Van Morrison (Warner Bros.) I posted about this the other day, so I’ll keep it brief. Classic album, one of the all time greats of the rock era, but you already knew that. Four CDs of a nicely remastered stereo Moondance, alternate mixes, discarded takes and mono versions. For me, though, the glorious 5.1 surround mix by one of the recordings’ original engineers, Elliot Scheiner, is the main event (on a Blu-ray in high quality HD DTS so you can really hear the difference, too).

Comme à la Radio Brigitte Fontaine (Superior Viaduct) This album is one of the most far out things I’ve ever heard. The (to say the least) eccentric Fontaine teams up with The Art Ensemble of Chicago, employing their unique talents to realize her bohemian Beatnik musical vision—a kind of wild, arrhythmic, Arabic free jazz—that brings to mind PiL, Serge Gainsbourg and The Master Musicians of Joujouka in various measures. If you want the satisfaction of seeing your giftee forcing this album on all their musically inclined mates, go with Comme à la radio, on CD or deluxe vinyl from Superior Viaduct.

Theres a Riot Going On: Gold Edition Sly and The Family Stone (Get On Down/EPIC) Well-known for their super creative packaging, the folks at Get On Down did not disappoint with this deluxe gold disc release of this mind-crushing classic. There’s a Riot Goin’ On is never going to sound truly “great” from an audiophile point of view—the tracks of the master tapes were recorded and re-recorded on too many time for that—this is probably the best sounding version there is. With a nice full color hardback book essay on the album and an embroidered cloth patch of the cover’s black, white and red flag, this is a sweet collector’s trophy piece.

Recollection “Le Ducks Box Set” Neil Innes (Neil Innes.org) One of the things I listened to the most in 2013 was this absolutely stellar three disc, one DVD collection of material from the Innes Book of Records TV series. I did a long interview with Neil Innes over email about this release—only available at his website—so I will direct you to that post, which has plenty of fantastic video clips. If there is a Monty Python fan on your shopping list, this one is, for sure, a knockout of a gift.

Cal Schenkel’s amazingly cheap art sale: Long associated with Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, American artist Cal Schenkel has created some of the most striking, freaky and enduringly classic images ever seen on album covers. I’m a big admirer of his work and I was floored to find out how inexpensive his prints—and even his paitings—are going for on his site. Any Zappa or Beefheart nuts in your life? They will love you long time for a piece of art from the great Cal Schenkel!

The Rock Snob’s Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Rockological Knowledge David Kamp and Steven Daly (Three Rivers Press) Evocative title, eh? An amusing A-Z of exactly what you think it’s about. Co-author Daly (who did a guest turn on the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour and was the original drummer for Orange Juice) is an old pal of mine. He told me when the book was published that it was 1/3 based on my record collection, so with that in mind—and since they coined the phrase—I can recommend this one unreservedly as a sweet stocking stuffer.

SONOS speakers. Like I was saying earlier, this has been a wonderfully bountiful holiday season pour moi, and (by far) the biggest reason for that is the two rooms worth of wireless audio gear that SONOS’ ace marketeer Austin Brown sent my way. I’ve got a SONOS surround system in the bedroom (it would have been very awkward to use wired speakers in that particular room, so these were quite welcome, I can assure you) and two SONOS Play:5 speakers that are flanking me on either side as I type this. The first thing I played when I hooked these babies up was “The Suit” by Public Image Ltd., a song that’s practically a part of my DNA I’ve listened to it so many times, and sure enough, I heard things I have never heard before with the Play:5s, which are just incredible. The SONOS subwoofer weighs about 40 lbs! They have SONOS listening stations at Target, so you can check them out there. I reckon they’re some of the best sounding speakers I’ve ever heard, engineered from the ground up by some very smart people. (A big thank you here for Mr. Chris Holmes.)

Speaking of speakers and smart people, Alexander Rosson is the CEO and chief scientist/inventor behind the high end Audeze headphone line. While Audeze headphones are pretty pricey—the top model, the LCD-3 sells for $1945.00—they are actually worth it. A bit like having tiny Magneplanars strapped to your head, it could be argued that for someone who aspired to own a $20,000 dollar stereo, but will never be able to afford it, that these puppies are actually a bargain. The Audeze cans are featherlight and covered in supersoft leather. If Audeze are the Bentley of headphones, then Beats would be like the Pinto.

 
Harlan Ellison describes himself as “a child of the Disney era,” whose first taste of the magic of cinema was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. But Disney’s latest movie (made in collaboration with BBC Films) Saving Mr. Banks has so pissed off the already notably cantankerous Mr. Ellison that he has felt it necessary to post a rather disconnected (one might say rambling) video on YouTube calling out the film as “bullshit.”

Saving Mr. Banks stars Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as P. L. Travers, the author of the book Mary Poppins, which was first published in 1934. The film concerns Disney’s attempts to convince Travers to allow him to film her famous novel. It took Disney over 20 years to achieve this, and eventually his company filmed Mary Poppins, with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, in 1964.

Ellison has great praise for Hanks and Thompson in the film, but his main beef with Saving Mr. Banks is not the acting but a pivotal scene at the end of the movie, which he claims is bogus and bullshit. One can surmise what this scene may entail, as Ellison declares how Travers hated the movie, and went to her grave regretting her decision to ever allow Disney near her work.

Ellison gets all fired up about this, which (I suppose) is understandable as Ellison is a writer who is deeply proud of his own work, and sees anything he writes as sacrosanct. However, I (like no doubt millions of others) have known for decades that P.L. Travers hated Disney’s Mary Poppins. It’s not new news.

When musical impresario, Cameron Mackintosh asked Travers, who was then in her nineties, if he could produce a musical version of Mary Poppins, Travers stipulated (confirmed in her will) that this musical must be adapted by English writers and no Americans, or anyone involved with the film or the Disney empire were to be directly involved with the creative process of the musical. Mackintosh adhered to Travers’ wishes, and the musical opened in London’s West End in 2004, where it ran for four years.

Okay, so it’s not news, but what Ellison is really getting at is his disdain for the…

“...refurbishing of Disney’s god-like image, which he spent his entire life creating, and it is so fucking manipulative…”

Particularly when this involves the misuse of a writer’s work, especially when that work is exploited and bastardized for commercial reward, and in this case, to create propaganda to “burnish” the image of Walt Disney.  Which probably is something to be pissed-off about.