The artist draws and paints pictures inspired by “visions.” These are fleeting visions, “images floating in the stream of consciousnesses,” the kind that everybody experiences. The only difference is this artist fixes his visions on paper and canvas. Maybe not the only difference…

We’re not in Kansas, anymore, but somewhere deep in the imagination of Italian artist Alessandro Sicioldr.

Initially they are just quick impressions and I sketch them in one of my sketchbooks. This is the moment where the image has the greatest power in me. The painting or the drawing is a sacralisation of an idea, but the real idea lies in the sketchbook. I am very jealous of them, they are like a diary of inner exploration.

Sicioldr was born in Tarquinia, he now lives and works in Perugia. Art was not his first choice. He graduated in computer science before taking up a paintbrush. He is self-taught, though his father, also a painter, gave him “some basis” in the craft which influenced his liking for Renaissance artists like Piero Della Francesca. But Sicioldr has never been to an art class in his life. Instead, he taught himself by copying paintings. He’s lucky. He lives in a country that filled with great art.

He has a liking for the Baroque, citing painters like Cagnacci, Cavallino, Stanzione, Ribera, as well a taste for Mannerism and for medieval art. Old art is better.

The quality of colours, the beauty of the composition, the technical capabilities, the concepts and the symbology was way greater in the past. I’m not a nostalgist, I just want to study from the best sources, taking inspiration from the entire history.

Once Sicioldr has sketched his visions on paper, he begins the process of “craftsmanship and improvisation.”

I have no rules for references, often I paint from imagination because it is hard to find models like a giant bird chariot with a strange head inside moving on roots with heads inside and pulled by sacerdotes wearing red capes in an icy landscape.

He has claimed he finds it difficult to talk about his pictures, their meaning, and imagery, “since they speak through a visual language which is ambiguous, sibylline.” Coming from a scientific background, Sicioldr is “careful when talking about mind, spirituality, symbolism and topics involving facts that are impossible to prove with rational means.” He just feels some images have an important meaning and so he paints them.

Rules and boundaries are useless when dealing with metaphysics, so I just let my inner world speak without asking questions. These images are important for me and when I think about them I get a particular feeling. They need to be represented and they follow their strange irrational rules. Why do I put an element there, or use that particular color? It is because it should go there, these are the rules of the painting. I don’t think about symbolism because deliberate and intellectual reasoning can spoil the purity of a composition and the result can easily be fake. I recently discovered that a lot, maybe all of my paintings are composed within the rules of the golden section without knowing, I find this incredible but this is how human minds work.

See more of Alessandro Sicioldr’s here.
 

 

 

 
More strange visions, after the jump…
 

 
The heyday of cocaine in our nation’s history was arguably the late 1970s through the early 1980s. In the summer of 1980 Richard Pryor set himself on fire while freebasing cocaine, an incident which Pryor mined for a memorable bit in the 1982 movie Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip. The 1981 movie Modern Problems featured a fantasy sequence in which the protagonist, played by Chevy Chase, exploits his telekinetic powers to vacuum up a roomful of coke, which also brings us, inevitably, to Brian De Palma’s Scarface, which is probably the ultimate cokehead masterpiece in American history. Obviously Woody Allen featured an iconic coke gag in the 1977 classic Annie Hall when he sneezed into a friend’s coke stash.

At the time, there was considerable sentiment around the country that after marijuana, cocaine might be the next drug to “go mainstream.” It was even considered non-addictive! In retrospect, this was never in the cards, however, many people thought it was on the cusp of becoming societally acceptable.
 

 
One of the signifiers of the time were underground “manuals” to the coke life. Since the drug was and is illegal, there was a shortage of authoritative guides to the drug and its chemistry, paraphernalia, and lifestyle accoutrements, and intrepid authors willing to make a fast buck tried their hardest to fill in the gap. We’ve already covered The Gourmet Cokebook: A Complete Guide to Cocaine, which dates from 1972. The subject today, however, is the 1976 guide The Cocaine Consumer’s Handbook by David Lee and his 1981 follow-up/expansion, The Cocaine Handbook: An Essential Reference.

These books are difficult to find today, and they fetch high prices on the collector’s market. And there’s not a lot of information about who David Lee is or was. The two books are much heavier on chemistry than, say, what kind of coke spoon goes with your style of shag rug. They provided useful information about the sources of cocaine and the sequence of events that starts with someone harvesting from the coca leaf, most likely in South America, and ends with a rolled-up piece of legal tender being placed in a user’s nostril. Lee described what happens at each stage, as the product moves from cook to alchemist to dealer to user, and also offered information the laws for all 50 states as well as the location of testing labs and treatment centers.
 

 
Lee was explicitly “anti-drug” in that he was not an activist pushing for legalization and his guide was mostly meant to increase the awareness of how to test for safe or pure cocaine. Lee described how samples are tested for common adulterants and impurities. His preferred method for testing involved putting the cocaine into Clorox, and if you scour the Internet you can find enough derisive references to it that one can safely categorize the conclusion as “controversial” if not totally debunked (again, depends on whom you ask). One disgruntled reader went so far as to describe Lee as a “shill for Clorox,” which seems a bit unlikely.

What follows are scans of some of the pages from the two books as well as a glossary taken from the longer second book, The Cocaine Handbook, which has been turned into HTML format if you want to experience that. As stated, it’ll run you hundreds of dollars if you want to have a copy on your coffee table (to cut lines on).
 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

 
Probably the most memorable from scene from a A Christmas Story is the infamous leg lamp. Now you can decorate your entire tree (or string them anywhere, really) with the leg lamp light set. They’re kind of adorable in a weird way.

The string of lights come with ten legs and is available here.

 
And if you’re feeling more adventurous, you can buy a a 20-inch replica leg lamp for $39.99 here.

Below, the leg lamp scene:

 
via Boing Boing

 
“An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.” -Lord Chesterfield

Rusty Blazenhoff over at Boing Boing turned me on to these lovely insult teacup and saucer sets by Miss Havisham. The teacups and saucers start at around $60. I’m digging these big time!

According to Miss Havisham’s site:

We are still accepting orders but due to overwhelming demand, please note that any order placed after 1pm Pacific time 11/29 cannot be guaranteed to arrive in time for Christmas. Those placed prior will be shipped in time for the holiday. Our evil cat army is packing as quickly as they can.

Even if I were to get this after the holidays, I’d still be super stoked. The “Witch!” set is by far my favorite.

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
It’s a busy time to be Neil Young. He just released a new album, The Visitor on Friday, with a new single called “Already Great,” a mockery of MAGA. On that same day, he performed an intimate show in a small theater in his childhood home of Omemee, Ontario. That show was live-streamed to Facebook, where it still resides, or you can watch it right here on Dangerous Minds, at the end of this post. On top of that, he announced the full-resolution digital release of every song he ever recorded for 100% free-of-charge streaming on neilyoungarchives.com. Note—it’s every song he recorded, not just every song he ever released, so there is an incredible wealth of unreleased music to be enjoyed. Have fun getting nothing done today!

On December 9th, Julien’s Auctions—notorious for once auctioning one of William Shatner’s kidney stones—are brokering the auction of a huge amount of Neil Young’s property. Over half the lots, to the tune of about 250, are model trains; I imagine there are surely Neil Young super-fans out there who knew this was a pastime of his, but I was kind of astonished by the sheer number of toy trains he was making available! There are clothes and some personal effects on offer as well, but of course, Young is a guitarist, and there are a good three dozen brilliant guitars (and some dross, of course) to be had by the tenacious bidder. We’ve gone through the auction and rounded them up for you. We’ve excluded doubles, and we may have elided an acoustic or two—after combing through three dozen guitars, a lot of those can tend to run together. Should you choose to bid, best of luck to you, any of these would make a great score.
 

 
This is pretty amazing—it’s called “The Whizzer,” and it’s a set of footswitches that activated servos connected to the knobs on Young’s amp—effectively, a pedalboard that altered amp settings on the fly. The auction catalog states that this was used on the 1975-1976 tour, which means the amp in question was almost certainly a 1959 tweed Fender Deluxe.
 

1935 Martin F-7 acoustic guitar, serial number 60204.
 

A 1957 Gretsch Country Club 6182 guitar, in sunburst, serial number 27466.
 
Many, many more after the jump…

A massive Grinch bong made by Smoking Peppers in Durango, Colorado.
 
If your life’s dream has been to get stoned using a pipe that was fashioned after everyone’s favorite Christmas bunny, Ralphie from the 1983 classic holiday film A Christmas Story, then I have great news for you. Such a pipe exists, and it can be yours just in time to meet Santa under the tree so you can smoke a sweet bowl of full of Bruce Banner (one of my preferred strains) together. Christmas is SAVED!

In addition to their sweet Ralphie pipe, California company Chameleon Glass also makes a pipe in the image of the Grinch, the abominable snowman Bumble from the Rankin/Bass’ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), and of course Santa. I also dug up a Frosty the Snowman pipe for 45 bucks here, as well as a couple of cool snowmen bongs. If you’re a fan of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, there are a few bongs and pipes out there that pay homage to characters in the film like Jack Skellington and the Oogie Boogie.

The most covetable of the all of the bongs and pipes seen here, of course, is the bong pictured at the top of this post of our beloved grumpy Grinch which was made by a glass artist for Smoking Peppers in Durango, Colorado. The impressive bong was priced at $1200—though I’m unsure if it sold so perhaps you still might be able to give the greatest Christmas gift of all time to yourself or your favorite stoner.

I’ve provided links to purchase the various holiday-themed smoking devices under their images. Stay stoned my friends.
 

Another look at the Grinch bong.
 

The Ralphie pipe by Chameleon Glass. Get it here.
 

Frosty the Snowman glass pipe. Get it here.
 
More festive glass after the jump…

 
Christmas 1965, Paul McCartney secretly recorded an “album” at his home in London as a present for his fellow bandmates John, George, and Ringo. There were only three discs ever made of this special festive recording, which have since either worn out or disappeared. This is how author Richie Unterberger described Paul’s Christmas album in his mammoth book The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film:

Unforgettable

For years, it had been reported that Paul McCartney recorded an album at home around Christmas 1965 specifically for the other Beatles. Supposedly, it included singing, acting, and sketches, and only three copies were pressed, one each for John, George, and Ringo. In a 1995 interview with Mark Lewisohn, Paul confirmed this in some detail, explaining, “Yes, it’s true. I had two Brenell tape recorders set up at home, on which I made experimental recordings and tape loops, like the ones in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ And once I put together something crazy, something left field, just for the other Beatles, a fun thing which they could play late in the evening. It was just something for the mates, basically.”

Continued McCartney, “It was called Unforgettable and it started with Nat ‘King’ Cole singing ‘Unforgettable,’ then I came in over the top as the announcer” ‘Yes, unforgettable, that’s what you are! And today in Unforgettable...’ It was like a magazine program: full of weird interviews, experimental music, tape loops, some tracks I knew the others hadn’t heard, it was just a compilation of odd things. I took the tape to Dick James’s studio and they cut me three acetate discs. Unfortunately, the quality of these discs was such that they wore out as you played them for a couple of weeks, but then they must have worn out. There’s probably a tape somewhere, though.”

If it ever turns up, it might be the earliest evidence of the Beatles using home recording equipment for specifically experimental/avant-garde purposes—something that John and Paul did in the last half of the 1960s, though John’s ventures in this field are more widely known than Paul’s.

Barry Miles in his biography of McCartney Many Years From Now notes the former Beatle had been regularly making experimental tapes for his then grilfriend Jane Asher which pips Lennon to the post as far as pioneering the avant-garde. As McCartney told Miles:

I would sit around all day, creating little tapes. I did one once called Unforgettable and used the Unforgettable Nat King Cole “Is what you are ...” as the intro. Then did a sort of “Hello, hello ...” like a radio show. I had a demo done by Dick James of that, just for the other guys because it was really a kind of stoned thing. That was really the truth of it.

This stoner recording has popped up on bootlegs but thanks to DM pal author, biographer, musician, and all-around good guy, Simon Wells we can share with you the whole of McCartney’s Unforgettable Christmas recording from 1965.
 

 
Thank you Simon Wells!
 

 
Released in 1973, Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood is a low-budget horror film, and a really weird one, at that. Unseeable for nearly 30 years, it’s developed a cult following amongst connoisseurs of off-the-wall ‘70s cinema.

Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood was directed by Christopher Speeth, and was his first feature film. Speeth recruited Werner Liepolt to write the screenplay for a horror film. Liepolt based his work on the legend of Sawney Bean and his family of cave-dwelling cannibals.

Exterior filming took place at Six Gun Territory, a run-down amusement park in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The interiors were shot in a warehouse in the Philadelphia neighborhood known as Germantown.
 

 
Most of the cast were unknowns, who had little to no film experience. One such performer was Denis Dietrich, who played Malatesta. Dietrich was the heir to a family fortune and independently wealthy, thus he didn’t require payment. One of his only other film appearances was in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978).
 

 
A few of the actors did go on to have careers in TV and film. The most recognizable figure is Hervé Villechaize, in a pre-Fantasy Island role as one of the carnies. He has only a few lines, but they’re amongst the strangest bits of dialogue in the entire picture, made more so due to his thick accent, rendering most of his speech unintelligible.
 

 
The production’s budget of $100,000 was pretty low to begin with, but as most of it went towards purchasing 35mm film, there was very little money for things like set design. The art directors used whatever they could get their hands on, including orange bubble wrap, which was obtained for cheap from an Army Surplus store.
 

 
Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood brings to mind two previous low-budget pictures: George Romero’s groundbreaking zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead (1968), and the spooky art film made on a shoestring—which was also set in an amusement park—Carnival of Souls (1962).
 

 
The plot: Under the guise of needing work, the Norris family take jobs at a creepy amusement park to look for their missing son/brother, believing he disappeared while visiting the park. Before long, they are hounded by a horde of cannibalistic ghouls who live in a bizarre subterranean world under the park. The ghouls are controlled by the evil Malatesta,
 

 
Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood is far from flawless, but like so many B-movies, its imperfections add to the enjoyment. For example, the camera work is often great, with some interesting, unusually framed shots, but since the production could only afford single takes, some glaring goofs are captured on film. For many viewers, the main issue will be the lack of clarity—the script was abandoned halfway through filming—but, for me, that only enhances its dreamlike qualities. I think fans of weird ‘70s horror will really enjoy Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood. It’s undoubtedly full of amazing imagery, with some of the more color-saturated shots reminiscent of the sort seen in Dario Argento’s giallo films.
 

 
In 1973-74, the film was widely distributed, but mainly played the southern drive-in circuit. Speeth wasn’t paid to make the picture, and was supposed to receive a share of the profits, but the distributor stiffed him. He never received a cent.

Believed for decades to be a lost film, a print was eventually discovered in an attic.

Continues after the jump…

A look at the Christmas “Belovesie” from the Utah-based company, Beloved.
 
Like it or not, onesies for adults are a thing and have been a thing for a while now. We’ve featured novelty onesies on Dangerous Minds before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one more terrifying than the one I came across today by Utah-based company Beloved. According to their website, Beloved calls their brand of onesies “Belovesies,” and they seem to sell a lot of them, including their super sleazy looking Christmas Belovesie with an all-over print of Santa Claus—but not the jolly traditional image of Santa in his red suit. Because what fun would that be?

The Christmas Belovesie from Beloved features a realistic-looking all-over print of Santa wearing a pair of skimpy red underpants which exposes his tattooed, hairy body. The image is further accentuated with a couple of round glass ornaments dangling from his nipples. To make matters even worse (or much better if you’re into this kind of thing) is that the getup zips up over your damn head making your transition into sleazy Santa complete. The terrifying one-piece will run you $129.95 and if you want one in time for the upcoming holiday season, the order deadline is December 7th. Good luck with that.
 

The back of the Christmas “Belovesie.”

 
On December 1st, 1991, members of Nirvana played a stealthy acoustic gig in a Scottish bar. The group’s second album, Nevermind, had been released a few months prior and was steadily increasing in popularity. The “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video was all over MTV, and the band were consistently covered by the rock music press. It was in this moment that Nirvana were asked to play a benefit show in Edinburgh. Recently, after 26 years, audio has surfaced from this historic performance.

Nirvana was in the midst of a U.K. tour when they played Calton Studios in Edinburgh, Scotland on November 29th, 1991. Scottish group Captain America, led by Eugene Kelly of the Vaselines, and Shonen Knife opened. Kurt Cobain was ill, and the gig was nearly called off when a doctor advised Kurt not to perform. But Kurt blew off the suggestion and loaded up on painkillers prior to show time.
 

Dave Grohl and Kurt during the Calton Studios gig.

Edinburgh band the Joyriders had asked Nirvana if they’d like to join them for a December 1st show, which would benefit a local children’s hospital. The event would take place at a nearby bar. The group agreed, and after Nirvana’s Calton Studios performance, the Joyriders passed out handbills for the upcoming benefit, noting the appearance of “very special guests.”
 

 
The night of the show, a large crowd assembled inside the Southern Bar. Since it was only a rumor that Nirvana would appear, many eventually split, leaving less than 30 in attendance when the band walked in.

Kurt and Dave set up on the bar’s small stage for an acoustic performance. For reasons unknown, bassist Chris (now Krist) Novoselic didn’t take part, though he was present. Rather than play the drums, Dave borrowed Chris’s acoustic bass. The duo was introduced as Teen Spirit.

After some amusing pre-show banter with the rowdy locals, they launch into “Dumb,”  then an unreleased tune (it would turn up on In Utero), followed by a Nevermind number, “Polly.” The third and final song on the audio recording is the Vaselines’s “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam”, which Nirvana had been opening their shows with, and would be played during their 1993 performance for MTV Unplugged (as would the previous two songs). Unfortunately, it fades out before completion. Witnesses have noted that they also played Shonen Knife’s “Twist Barbie,” (the band members were in attendance) and one or two more.

Listen after the jump…