Yesterday was a good day for Van Morrison completists.

Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks is one of the most important and most special albums of the 1960s. The album was recorded in New York in September/October 1968 and released a few weeks later. Morrison composed the music in Boston during the summer of 1968, and a series of gigs at a venue called the Catacombs, located at at 1120 Boylston Street in the Fenway, proved pivotal to the process.

One of the gigs during that run at the Catacombs was recorded, but the tapes have never been heard by the public.

Until yesterday, that is.

The Catacombs tapes document a show from August 1968. A Boston musician and writer named Ryan Walsh has spent years trying to find them; for obvious reasons the tapes became known as “the Catacombs tapes.” Peter Wolf told Walsh that he had the Catacombs tapes in his possession but had not listened to them for years. He added that a person would have to “bake the tapes” before they could be played; that is, a specialist Wolf knew in Maine would have to literally bake the tapes in an oven, a process that would enable the tapes to withstand playback without disintegrating or being shredded.

Walsh made the Catacombs tapes a pivotal part of a book on Morrison he released earlier this year called Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968. As Walsh pertinently asks in his book, “What did the Astral Weeks songs sound like before producer Lewis Merenstein’s jazz ringers got hold of them?”

Good question.

Yesterday Walsh posted a remarkable series of tweets discussing the decision by Morrison to release the Catacombs tapes on iTunes UK for the likely purpose of retaining copyright to them. Here is that tweetstorm:
 

This is totally bananas.

Today, @vanmorrison unceremoniously released the ‘68 “Catacombs Tapes” as a live album on iTunes UK. This is the legendary recording I spend the whole #AstralWeeks1968 book trying to track down & hear…and, uh, now YOU can too! https://apple.co/2ASrhOL

1) The most sensical interpretation of the terrible cover art & UK-digital-only distribution is that this release is a “copyright dump,” i.e. its main function is to preserve Morrison’s copyright of the recording (otherwise, come January, it would become public domain).

2) Tom and John (the Boston musicians who appear on this recording) let me know they signed releases for Van’s lawyer this fall, so we suspected some kind of release was imminent. I guess we just thought, oh you know, maybe you’d design a nice cover and/or CREDIT Tom & John!

3) To hear this you will need someone in the UK to buy it for you, which is insane, I understand. I’d also imagine these files will be on…all kinds of sites now that they’ve been officially released.

4) This is the exact recording I heard and played for Tom and John except that the audio has been further cleaned and boosted, AND there’s one extra song (“Sit Down Funny Face”), but, yes, this is Peter Wolf’s recording.

5) Tom Kielbania (bass) is over the moon about this release. This is the only audio proof he had anything to do with any of this (and settles the debate about whether he indeed wrote the bassline for ‘Cyprus Avenue’ (and other AW songs) as he has long claimed)...

6)...as well as demonstrating that the Boston trio really did develop the acoustic, pastoral sound of Astral Weeks in the weeks before they were replaced by jazz musicians in New York. You’ll agree when you listen, I’m sure.

7) I still can’t tell you who slid me a copy.

8) The digital liner notes don’t mention the venue name, the other musicians, or even that it was Wolf who recorded it. They left the cool tape-unspooling noises in there instead of fading songs out, which was the right choice.

9) The poster for the concert here, courtesy of the David Bieber Archives (would have made a nice album cover, right?). Here’s Eric Kraft’s review of these concerts for Boston After Dark as well—>
 

 
10) Maybe the ownership of Astral Weeks is set to change-over to Van and he’s planning on a better release of this material as part of a box set package? Or maybe not. This whole thing is VERY Van Morrison.

11) The lone, surviving Astral Weeks studio outtake, “Train” remains unreleased still, of course. This is the song in which Van sings about Cambridge, MA like its the most mystical place you ever did encounter. It’s very cool.

12) “Train” IS on this live bootleg, but gets cut off before the verses about Massachusetts.

13) I truly am so happy you all get to hear this now. I didn’t mind getting pestered about it, but I did start to worry when ppl started asking Marissa about the tapes.

14) Now all we need is a death certificate for Mel Lyman.

 
As Walsh points out, people who do not live in the U.K. will have to wait until they hit “all kinds of sites now that they’ve been officially released.”

This picture, of (L to R) songwriter Jeff Barry, Bang Records founder Bert Berns, Van Morrison, Janet Rigsbee, and Bang Records employee Carmine “Wassel” DeNoia on a boat on the Hudson River in New York City in 1967, which I encountered during research for this article, is rapidly ascending my list of favorite things in the world.
 

 

 
Artist James Kerr was looking for something new to do, so he decided he’d start making GIFs ‘cause he thought that’d be fun. “Somehow,” he tells me, “I figured the best way to learn was to try and make one per day for an entire year, and see where it all went from there. This was back in 2012.”

Kerr shares his work under the name Scorpion Dagger. Over the past six years, he has produced hundreds of GIFs featuring artwork from northern and early Renaissance paintings. He has also produced a book which features some of his best and most popular work. But Kerr didn’t start out as an artist, he was a Political Science graduate who spent his time at university hanging “with lots of art school kids who really inspired me to make art.” I like Kerr’s work—they’re funny and clever and remind me of those brilliant animations Terry Gilliam made for Monty Python. I contacted Kerr to find out more about his work as Scorpion Dagger.

What’s with the name Scorpion Dagger? Where did it come from?

James Kerr: Essentially, it’s all to annoy my friends. It comes from working construction with these guys a long time ago, and us joking around about needing some tough sounding nicknames. I came up with Scorpion Dagger, and they all hated it. Them hating on it made me want to try and make it stick even more, so when it came time to name the GIF project, the choice was obvious.

How do you make your GIFs?

JK: At first, it was all made in Photoshop. I’d hunt around for interesting images, cut them up, and animate all in PS. I’ve slowly started using After Effects more-and-more, but there’s some quality issues that I don’t like with it—it’s too clean! I like a slightly messier aesthetic. But, it does save me tons of time, so now somewhere around I’m 50/50.

What brought you to these specific sets of paintings?

JK: It goes back to making GIFs every day for an entire year - it was a real struggle finding inspiration for what to animate, so I would do these totally random google image searches where I would pull out whatever struck a chord. At some point I noticed that I kept going back to these specific paintings, and noticed that the inspiration got easier. I find the paintings from that era to be quite comical on their own, especially those of the Northern Renaissance, and that they were a perfect muse in helping me say what I wanted to say.

What has the response been?

JK: Pretty amazing. During that first year I figured that I may be able to find a gallery show where I would project them all once it was all done, and that would be that. But, as time went on, I couldn’t see myself ending it. I was having way too much fun. Now, this whole silly project has turned in to a career. Definitely lucked out.

You produced a book out—can you tell me something about it?

JK: Do You Like Relaxing? came out a few years ago, and it is (we think) the first ever (and perhaps only) physical book of animated GIFs. It presents itself much like any old art book, with still images and such, but you can animate a good chunk of them on your device using an augmented reality app. It all came about when I was looking around for someone to help me out with an AR project I was trying to pitch, and a friend introduced me the Antesim (the publisher), who were looking for someone to do an AR book with.

What motivates you?

JK: Not entirely sure. Not to sound too clichéd, but at times art feels as if it’s something I need to do. If I haven’t made something in a while, I tend to get this uneasy feeling. In a sense, I just really love making stuff, and don’t feel whole unless I’m working on something.

What’s next?

JK: No idea. I’m sitting on a couple projects that will slowly roll out over the next year that I’m really excited about. One of which is another book, but this time it’s in collaboration with some writers who wrote this fun story. One thing that’s been on my mind is that I would love to experiment a little more, and get back in to posting on my socials a little more regularly, which, for me, I think go hand-in-hand.

You can buy the book Do You Like Relaxing? or follow Scorpion Dagger on Instagram or Facebook or see more of Kerr’s work here.
 

 
See more from Scorpion Dagger plus and interview, after the jump…
 

 
About a year ago, I shared a compilation of wacky telephones that I had found in a novelty collector’s book. Shortly after publishing, I received a bizarre, cryptic email from an anonymous individual, identity hidden for security purposes, with a tip about a far greater hobbyist ring. These were AM/FM radios.
 
We exchanged a few emails. The man wanted to be referred to as “The Buzz.” He claimed that he needed to keep his profile a secret in order to protect the “greater good.” By this, he was referring to the topic of discussion: novelty radios. I wanted to learn more. And then he disappeared.
 

 
It wasn’t until recently that “The Buzz” reappeared. Writing from a burner email account, the message read “IT’S BUZZ. I NEED YOU TO CALL ME: 989-###-####.” The area code is Northeastern Michigan. Without a doubt, I thought someone was fucking with me. The joke wasn’t even that funny to begin with, but I was still curious.
 
We talked for nearly forty minutes. He rambled in an erratic manner, and the reception was very poor. I think he was using a voice modulator. To be honest, I could barely understand anything “The Buzz” was saying. Something about “them” and “they.” This unspecified faction has been tracking his every movement since 1987. The collection of gimmicky AM/FM radios, however, that is what they wanted. Allegedly, “The Buzz” has the largest collection of these plastic oddities known to mankind. And he would stop at nothing to make sure “they never got them.” It was pretty weird.
 

 
There are few allies in the underground world of souvenir radio collectors. I would imagine at one point the resistance had only communicated through their product, but “The Buzz” advised me that encryptions were sent using Hotmail’s MSN Messenger. It’s a growing network and, for some bizarre reason, I could be trusted as an outsider. I wonder if they were originally skeptical because I would write a piece on my discovery - exactly what I am doing right now.
 
This morning, I received a discreet file-sharing link to a folder with hundreds of pictures. Yes you guessed it, each a photo of different, beautifully categorized novelty radio. There wasn’t much context behind the immense image dump, but it definitely came from “The Buzz.” He gave me his blessing. Now I wonder, by ‘largest collection’, did he mean in physical or digital form? Because this, what you are about to see below, this could be what he was referring to along. These photos could be what “they” are after - and I could be risking my life by sharing them with you. I tried giving “The Buzz” a call to clarify, but alas, his voicemail was full.
 
Take a look at some of the greatest novelty radios in human history below:
 

 

 
MANY more novelty radios, after the jump…

 
The fanzine Ben Is Dead was, and still is, a fucking LEGEND as far as ‘zines go so, interviewing founder Darby Romeo about her life and times was other-level-cool for me. Growing up in Los Angeles, certain things remain indelibly printed in my memory: driving by the enticing Anti-Club sign just before my mom got onto the 101 South, the sexy smell of leather jackets from rock shops on Hollywood Blvd, and this principle: comic book stores and coffee shops could be judged on quality based on whether you could find a copy of Ben Is Dead in their publications area. So therefore the mighty Bourgeois Pig, on Franklin Ave., rocked.

Ben Is Dead had collaborators from all walks of life, featured punk bands, performance artists and gender activists and didn’t believe that there was anything that couldn’t be talked about. It was an honest read and they had fun. Mostly run by women—and men who respected women—that, in itself, was something that my friends and I noticed. Ben Is Dead was a glowing engine that couldn’t be stopped—celebratory and wise-beyond-its-years, that ‘zine was a reflection of people, places and movements that were forces in and of themselves and could (and would) never be repeated again. It served as an unintentional documentary of life, art, culture and human existence in El Lay. And it was fucking cool, man.
 

Lorraine Mahru, left, one of Darby Romeo’s many Girl Fridays from Ben Is Dead, and Darby Romeo, right.
 
Ben is Dead’s founder, Darby Romeo briefly went to Pierce College, studying to be a graphic designer but quit school to get a job. She was temping and developing computer skills with the MacSE40 that she got from her father when she ended up temping as a secretary at Grey Advertising. She told the art director at Grey that she had graphic design training, and they ended up hiring her as an art director. I asked her about the beginnings of Ben Is Dead.

Darby Romeo: In the late 80s, I was already making $25/hr at Grey Advertising, and my only good friend there was this comic and the guy in the mailroom who sent out all the Ben Is Deads for free. But that’s basically what paid for Ben Is Dead. So I got the computer from my dad, I got this job at Grey, and that was it because you didn’t really make money on it [Ben Is Dead and ‘zines in general] you just spent money on it. So Grey Advertising kinda started Ben Is Dead. And the LA Times doesn’t really know this but they kinda helped us do our first issue for us! My dad would’ve hated that we did this but I kinda considered it to be like pro-bono and that they should be supporting zines, y’know? But I remember that this was right before the first issue came out and I was talking to someone at Flipside [another well-known and beloved LA punk-rock fanzine]  and I was like, “We’re gonna make 1000 issues!” or something like that and they [seemed unimpressed]. Cuz I didn’t know what I was doing! So someone from the LA Times snuck us in there at two in the morning and we printed another 1000 on the LA Times’ huge copy machines. So, thank you, LA Times! I don’t know what the statute of limitations on that is but, there’s a little known story!

How do you feel now that there is now a dedicated space at the UCLA Library Special Collections Punk Archive for the preservation and archiving of the entire Ben Is Dead collection?

Darby Romeo: I’m really thankful that this nerdy librarian lady came—what year did she come?—I think her name was Julie Graham, I can’t remember, but she would come over to the Ben Is Dead offices, I can’t remember the hook-up, but we would go through all the issues and I was looking at the archive and there were 78 boxes of ‘zines. We went through each one so that she could archive it. Like who would be that patient? We even archived the [letters to the editor] and included those, just knowing that there are people who are willing to do stuff like that—especially for ‘zines since they’re not online mostly, like 95% of the ‘zines are not online, and these libraries and people like her are vital! Having UCLA treasure these and keep them safe is amazing. So many of them are fading or falling apart or getting thrown away and in a few more decades those are going to be the only places besides your grandpa’s collection in the attic where you’re going to find them.

And we’re working on putting ours online but you can’t trust online as much as you can trust an archive that isn’t going to get tossed. Libraries are so important. And it’s so funny because in creating Ben Is Dead, we created it before there was an Internet. There was no Internet to find a photo, there would be a whole long process to print a photo! So it was a whole different thing creating ‘zines back then and having them in a place where we don’t have to worry if the Internet goes down, they’ll always be there, y’know?
 

A “Retro Hell Party” complete with Hostess HoHos. Party people include: Darby (blue dress), Reverend Al Cacophony (in black), Noel Tolentino of Bunnyhop (wearing a McDonald’s Grimace party hat)
 
What’s the difference between analog and digital research and how important were libraries to the creation of Ben Is Dead?

Darby Romeo:: We used the libraries much more back then than people do now… I just remember how much time I would spend in the microfiche section. I loved microfiche! I loved just sitting there and looking for old stuff and just going into the basement of the downtown LA Library and that smell and the old bookstores. But the libraries were important and the photos from Ben Is Dead—a lot of them were because my friend ran the photo department of AP. He was the archivist, basically of AP, so he’d slip us a bunch—so thank you AP for supporting Ben Is Dead!
 

 
While BID had many striking qualities, one unique aspect was the way it platformed the symbiotic connection that LA punk rock has with local queer icons and performance artists like Ron Athey and Vaginal Davis. Tell me about the Sean deLear video tribute that will be playing at the 30th anniversary Ben Is Dead Festival.

Darby Romeo: Stuart [Swezey, from Amok Books] was going to show Desolation Center [but then it was unable to be shown] and he came up with this bright idea and it’s so awesome and so touching because everyone loved Seande [Sean deLear] and Seande was such an influence in the scene and was such a big part of Ben Is Dead and played one of my favorite shows at Al’s Bar during our “Gross” issue. I love chickens now so I feel awful but everything was gross—we had chicken feet in bowls at the bar, and I remember people were throwing them at Seande and he was throwing them back during his set with Glue. Yeah, he was really vital. And we were all really shocked when he passed last year and we are really honored that Stuart is going to put together a documentary about his life because he did some interviews with him just before he passed for Desolation Center and stuff, so that will be playing early on in the day at the Zine Fest on Saturday.
 

 
Tell me some of your wildest Ben Is Dead stories…

Darby Romeo: A crazy story? Probably when Kerin wanted to interview Anton LaVey. I mean, you grow up goth dancing at Phases and Odyssey [local LA dance clubs] and all but I’m not into the REAL darkside or whatever. So [Kerin] was planning with Anton and his wife at the time a Ben Is Dead interview and he really liked the magazine. It was supposed to be me and her going [up to San Francisco] for the interview but at the last minute I’m like: Um, I don’t wanna meet Satan, nope, uh uh, I’m not going up there, nope nope nope! So I call up [Germs drummer] Don Bolles and I tell him that he has to go up there and do the interview instead and I’m just like freaking the fuck out. I just tell him “Go with Kerin and do this interview. She wants to do this interview.” And he said, “Okay, cool.” And then Anton said, “Nope.” It was like he knew I was petrified! He could just sense it! He was like we’re not doing the interview without Darby. And I was like “Nooooo!”

So we get to his house and they sleep by day and are up all night so we get there at night and he has this old house and it just smelled like Europe. We go in and we’re in the waiting area and his wife—Blanche was her name—she has her new baby with her and she leaves the baby alone in the room with us! So we go and check the baby to see if there’s a 666 on top of its head. We really did! They were so sweet and nice but Anton would not allow me to record the interview and that was like the worst nightmare because now you have to take notes and remember everything!  The Anton LaVey interview was the only interview we ever did that we gave someone permission to approve. And the thing was, he didn’t ask for any changes, he just approved it!
  

 
So we go to his favorite restaurant—Olive Garden—and I’m still distraught, I remember begging them to let me use my tape recorder, I remember hiding it for a little bit at one point, I remember having it in the bathroom at one point talking into it, saying some of the stuff he’d already said, documenting it out of my mouth. Then we go back to the house and his other favorite thing was animal cookies—the frosted ones [Mother’s brand, pink and white with little sprinkles]. So we’re sitting there, he’s playing the organ, we’re eating animal cookies, and I’m trying to write notes and it’s going on all night because that’s their daytime because they sleep all day and I’m wishing that we still did drugs! But the piece came out great and he was happy and he was a really nice guy but I never ended up joining the Church of Satan or whatever. 

You’ll probably never think of Olive Garden in the same way again.

There were a lot of stories around the “Sex” issue too [Most issues of Ben Is Dead had themes: the “Gross” issue, the “Broke” issue, the “Black” aka “Death” issue.] That’s when we actually started selling it and when we realized that we had a lot of fans. Like Jon Spencer was like, “Your “Sex” issue really inspired the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion,” um, what? Okay. Then we interviewed Malcolm McLaren and gave him the “Sex” issue and the same technological issues that just devastated us every single day—our voicemail system would sometimes just eat our voicemails—our voicemail being our Ben Is Dead Hotline which was how you found out about shows every week. So he calls and in his British accent he says, “Darby, this is Malcolm McLaren, y’know that ‘Sex’ issue I just want to tell you…” and it gets cut off! Fuck! What about the “Sex” issue? I go into the voicemail place and tell them that I need this voicemail back, where is this voicemail, and I think I got three months free and that was it! 
 

 
Is it true that you promised Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran that you would find him a massage therapist?

Darby Romeo: I told him I would get him a masseuse and the one lady that I thought I hooked up cancelled! I had a couple Girl Fridays over the years, and Jessy, Jessica Jones, was one of them—so I was like “Jessy! I have to go over to Simon LeBon’s! Help me get dressed!” And I put that red velvet dress on and the Elvis Penis [a wig Darby nicknamed the Elvis Penis—it was huge and bouffant-style], she stuck flowers from the vase that we had that we had gotten from Mrs. Gooch’s [a local LA health food store] in my hair and I go and I get in the car and the wig is hitting the top of the car and I go and I drive over to the Beverly something—they always stayed there.

So I get there and I’m valeting the car and I didn’t even know at the time that you’re supposed to have a massage table, right? That would make sense? So I have sunglasses on, and the car guys are like what the fuck is this? And I think I had my Fluevogs on—yeah, my Fluevogs, it was tragic—with (of course) this bright red lipstick, and I go to Simon’s door, and I knock and he opens the door and he looks and I’m like [in fake European accent] “Hello, I’m your massage therapist,” and he looks at me and he’s like what the fuck is this? And he didn’t know what to do so he opened the door and he’s like, what the fuck? And he sees that I don’t have a massage table but I don’t know that that’s a thing.

I later go on to become a massage therapist—I’m now a licensed massage therapist, by the way—so I’m sitting there on the couch and he knows me but I’m all dressed up with the glasses and everything and we’re having this full on conversation and he’s just trying to figure out what to do with me. Like “Who sent you? Darby knows you? What are you…?” And after about ten minutes I just busted out laughing and told him, “I couldn’t get you a massage therapist, I’m sorry!” and the fucker made me massage him anyway! I’m in this velvet dress with this Elvis Penis wig, he takes off all of his clothes, puts a towel on the floor, lays there, and I’m like: I have no idea what to do so I’m just kinda mushing him and stuff? And I don’t even think I had massage oil? Anyway, he had a cute little butt and he was a very sweet guy but…he didn’t even tip me!
 

 
And of course I have to ask about I Hate Brenda…

Darby Romeo: The thing about I Hate Brenda—and people never got it right then and the only reason we did it—was that we were on the side of the victims. The victims were like security guards at clubs who were like, “God, we’re getting abused because she [actress Shannen Doherty who played “Brenda” on TV’s Beverly Hills 90210]  was at the door, yelling at us because she’s not on the list and she’d be like, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’” and we just kept getting these stories and different stories [of Doherty terrorizing people] from labels and people in the scene and they just kept coming to us and we had no plans on doing a newsletter… at the time the fax machine was like social media so we made our version of a flyer or our version of a meme and it had Brenda on it and it said “I wash my hair in Evian” which was her thing and we pretended it was the “I Hate Brenda Newsletter” and we sent it out to everyone and they were like, “Oh my God! When is the I Hate Brenda Newsletter coming out? Oh you gotta include this and you have to interview Eddie Vedder! Oh you have to do this and dadadada and this story and this happened to me and all this stuff!” and that’s how that ended up happening. It’s not like we were really going to do anything but yeah. And what’s kind of weird in the scheme of things is that we would all go to bars or knock on the neighbor’s fucking door just to watch 90210. We’d be working in the offices and there was some model next door and we’d bang on her door and say, “No, you have to let us in! 90210 is on!”
 
Continues after the jump…

 
1979: After a four-year break between studio albums, Roxy Music regrouped and recorded their sixth LP Manifesto. The question was not whether it would be any good, but whether Roxy Music was still relevant in a post-punk world? A week may be a long time in politics, but four years is one helluva career in pop.

Not that Roxy’s key members Bryan Ferry, Andy MacKay, Phil Manzanera, and drummer “the great” Paul Thompson were slouches during the band’s downtime. Ferry had established himself as a highly successful solo artist. MacKay had worked on two seasons of the ground-breaking TV series Rock Follies for which he had co-written 49 songs. Manzanera had recorded and released two solo albums Diamond Head (1975) and K-Scope (1978), the first being correctly described by Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone as “one of the great British rock albums of the mid-Seventies.” Thompson gave his talents to his bandmates’ solo projects and played with other bands.

That’s the backstory to 1979.
 

 
As a band, Roxy Music was the sound of the future filtered through the past. Just their name alone suggested a 1930s dance band with some Brylcreemed lead singer crooning love songs into a silver microphone. The music, starting with the debut single “Virginia Plain” in 1972, was unique, utterly original, and influenced a host of bands from the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees (who apparently met at a Roxy concert) to Madness and Duran Duran. During their first decade, Roxy Music produced a body of work—eight classic studio albums—which sounds as new today as when they were first released.
 

 
Which brings us to Manifesto. Though the album was eagerly anticipated there were questions as to what exactly a group of thirtysomethings could offer the music world after the seismic shift caused by punk, new wave, disco, synth, and the early hints of New Romantics. Though the album could be described as a mix, it was still an exceptional A-.

In some respects, it was a kind of work-in-progress that tapped into the early, “futuristic sound” of Roxy and the new, mature, soulful, sophisticated rock that would reach its zenith with Roxy’s eighth studio album Avalon. Ferry was always a crooner. Listen to him on the second-half of “Mother of Pearl” or the beautiful and haunting “Chance Meeting.” He was once (aptly) described by writer Michael Bracewell as “Jay Gatsby meets Marcello Mastroianni.” He had always been a crooner, a soulful singer, who gave his very own distinctive vocal-sound to Roxy’s artpop.  Now he was creating a new sophisticated sound which was best indicated by his song “Dance Away” and those co-written with MacKay (“Angel Eyes”) and Manzanera (“Trash,” “Still Falls the Rain,” and “Manifesto”). The opening lyrics to “Trash” (“Are you customized or ready-made?”) suggest Ferry’s own ambiguous role of being both an artpop-provocateur and a traditional singer. He was moving away from the youthful “rock” to more plaintive ballads. This switch can be heard in the startling difference between the album version of “Angel Eyes,” which was more rock ‘n’ roll than the lush and superior sounding single version. Roxy Music was now on the verge of their greatest success, as Manifesto saw the band score big in the US market and become a staple of FM radio. 

More, plus Roxy Music in concert, after the jump…
 

 
Season 4 of Better Call Saul, which wrapped up a few weeks ago, is on the shortlist of my favorite seasons of television ever. The Emmy people have not shown Better Call Saul undue respect—it has never won a single Emmy for anything—but in my view the Vince Gilligan/Peter Gould creation is running rings around every other show in a bunch of different ways. It’s got the best acting, the best writing, and the best direction, for starters. Particularly in the writing arena, it’s a little preposterous that any other drama would beat Better Call Saul, at least that’s my opinion.

One of the amusing aspects of Better Call Saul is that it showcases so many different depictions of excellence in its narrative. Jimmy McGill (later to become Saul Goodman) is a world-class con artist, his brother Chuck is a genius-level attorney, Mike Ehrmantraut is an unusually gifted all-purpose security dude, Gustavo Fring is a regional/international drug kingpin of distinction, and Jimmy’s girlfriend Kim is a pretty gifted negotiator of plea deals and the like as a sideline to her regular gig of representing multinational corporations (with Jimmy, she also grifts unwitting saps for fun). The show has a deep abiding interest in professionalism and excellence in all of its forms.
 

 
As portrayed by Jonathan Banks, the utterly unflappable Mike Ehrmantraut has become the object of no small fascination. I know several people who’d swap places with him in an instant, given the option. Until he landed the role of Mike in Breaking Bad, Banks was a respected if by no means famous character actor whose notable credits had included the TV series Wiseguy and the movies Freejack and Gremlins.

One of Banks’ early credits was a bizarre self-help videotape from 1985 called You Can Win! Negotiating for Power, Love and Money. The videotape was intended to showcase the penetrating insights of a lady named Dr. Tessa Albert Warschaw. I’m guessing that You Can Win! was tolerably successful in its day—before most everyone had the ability to call up life advice on the Internet—for as recently as 2015 she was appearing at a TEDxPasadenaWomen event discussing the importance of resiliency.

In You Can Win! Banks is given the task of portraying the idealized “type” of “the Dictator,” the unpleasant, exacting prig who has precise expectations in every interaction. The video alternates between explanations from Dr. Warschaw and demonstrations of the insights by a team of NYC actors who are really not bad at all, the whole thing is really fairly good but just horribly dated. Skip through it for the bits involving Banks (who knows, you might have a use for a clip of Banks saying the words “Massage! ... ha ha ha ha ha ha, don’t be perverse”). But mainly it’s best to think of it as a highly bizarre conceptual play.
 

 
via r/ObscureMedia
 

 
Sub Pop is one of the most important and influential American record labels. Started in 1988 by Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt, and based in Seattle, Sup Pop put out early recordings by such groups as Mudhoney, the Afghan Whigs, the Flaming Lips, Soundgarden, the Screaming Trees, and Nirvana. Poneman and Pavitt not only have good taste and a keen sense for what will sell, but are also masters at branding and marketing. For example, their Sub Pop Singles Club, in which subscribers willingly fork over their money with no prior knowledge of the participating bands, was a game changer, and the label came up with a t-shirt with the word “Loser” emblazoned across the front, and the Sub Pop logo on the back. The shirt is now iconic.

On June 9, 1989, Sub Pop’s “Lame Fest” was held at the Moore Theater in Seattle. Nirvana, Mudhoney, and another young Sub Pop group, TAD, were on the bill. It was a wild night, with the bands and the crowd battling the security guards.
 

 
Dangerous Minds has an excerpt from the upcoming Gillian G. Gaar book, World Domination: The Sub Pop Records Story, in which details of the event are told. The passage also gets into the second Lame Fest, as well as the Nirvana contract, insisted upon by the band, that would one day benefit the label. The text begins with reference to the recent attention Sub Pop acts had received in the British press.

Sub Pop’s profile was further heightened stateside at the label’s first “Lame Fest,” held on June 9 at Seattle’s Moore Theatre, featuring Nirvana, TAD, and Mudhoney and billed as “Seattle’s lamest bands in a one-night orgy of sweat and insanity!” Initially, there had been doubts that the show would make any money; local bands played clubs, not a fifteen-hundred-seat theater. But the concert ended up selling out.

“Booking the Moore was an epic gesture, which is how we did things,” Bruce Pavitt notes with pride. “The bands were killing it live, so we knew Seattle would go o if we could get people there. The theater’s manager let most of his security staff go prior to the show, thinking that nobody would show up. And there was complete pandemonium. Google those YouTube videos, kids, it’s an epic moment!” The show doubled as a release party for Nirvana’s first album, Bleach (the first thousand copies on white vinyl).

Nirvana had also recently become the first act to sign a record contract with Sub Pop. Earlier in the year, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic had turned up at Bruce’s house one evening, demanding a written contract; previously, Sub Pop had only made verbal agreements with its artists. Jon [Poneman] hastily drafted a one-year contract, with options for two further years; the contract was signed on June 3 but backdated to January 1, 1989. “Righteous heaviness from these Olympia pop stars,” was the Sub Pop catalog’s assessment of Bleach. “They’re young, they own their own van, and they’re going to make us rich!”

The success of the first Lame Fest led to a second one being held overseas. “Jon and I had very little resources but a lot of enthusiasm at that time,” Bruce recalls. “And we were constantly brainstorming and trying to piece together strategies that would help convince the rest of the world that Seattle had an amazing rock scene. Once we saw that model work in Seattle, we were really dead set on getting all three bands playing in London and getting as many press people and photographers there as possible.”

With Nirvana, TAD, and Mudhoney all touring the UK and Europe that fall, a Lame Fest date was arranged for December 3 at London’s Astoria Theatre. Bruce cites the concert as “a true turning point in the international stature of the Seattle music scene.”

 
Much more after the jump…

Raybeez, Jimmy Gestapo and Lemmy at the Ritz, 1986
 
This video of two members of Warzone on The Morning Show with Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford has been circulating due to the recent death of Todd Youth, whose improbable career connected Agnostic Front and Glen Campbell. When Todd was 16, he and four other members of the scene shared an enormous couch belonging to WABC. He’s sitting next to Natalie Jacobson, the show promoter and writer then attached to Jimmy Gestapo of Murphy’s Law; to his right are a Pratt student named Christine, Todd’s late bandmate Raybeez and fanzine writer Debbie. 

Natalie complains about her treatment on a recent episode of Donahue (“I’m sorry Phil, but you really blow”) and the way Peter Blauner portrayed her in a New York Magazine profile of NYHC bands and fans. But what may seem like a friendly reception from Regis and Kathie Lee is really just the inability to listen, see or think that made the hosts favorites of the morning-show audience. Kathie Lee wonders how the HxCx crew is different from the beatniks of her childhood; Regis asks Dr. Joy Browne to explain the hardcore phenomenon from a psychiatrist’s point of view. If you need any more proof of Schopenhauer’s doctrine that perception is an intellectual faculty, just watch Regis and Kathie Lee trying to size up the struggle and the streets.
 

 
via Reddit

Hardy Fox, 1945-2018 (via hardyfox.com)
 
Almost nine years ago, I was interviewing Hardy Fox, the president of the Cryptic Corporation, by Skype. He was telling me about hopes the Residents had expressed over the years for advances in stage technology: touring holographic productions that would fit on a disk, music that would cause everyone in the audience to have a simultaneous orgasm. And then he said the most surprising thing anyone’s said to me during an interview:

Actually, they always wanted to have an album, like a gatefold album that when you opened it, it was just a hole—and it would give you instant vertigo, like you would be terrified to open it because you could fall into it and get lost.

Like a bottomless pit—inside the record? Is that what you’re talking about, Hardy?

Exactly. It opens up—it would just terrify you because it would just be so empty.

I strongly suspected Hardy had more to do with the Residents than he let on, but I was too much a fan of the band to have any interest in unmasking its members, which would not only spoil the mystery, but unmask me as a discourteous jerk. Invading the privacy of the coolest people in the world doesn’t make you a brilliant sleuth; it makes you an asshole. Who wants to be the guy staking out Thomas Pynchon’s apartment with a telephoto lens? So I didn’t bring it up, nor did I have to, considering how he ended our conversation:

Actually, I feel honored that someone of your youth seems to have as much knowledge and information about things that I have spent my life working on, and so that somewhat honors me that it wasn’t just working out into the void that’s inside that album cover, waiting.

I supposed he could have been talking about all the marketing work he’d done for the Residents, but it sure didn’t sound that way.
 

 
Hardy’s former role in the Residents has been hiding in plain sight for some time now on the home page of his website. It’s right there in the first paragraph of his bio:

Hardy Fox grew up in Texas. After college he moved to San Francisco reveling in the free love days of 1967-68. He co-founded the much loved cult band, the Residents, where he was primary composer.

Hardy retired from The Residents in 2015 but continued to compose for the group through 2018. In addition to his work with that band, he has recorded as a solo artist under various names including Charles Bobuck, Combo de Mechanico, Sonido de la Noche, Chuck, TAR, among others.

Hardy talked about leaving the Residents and undergoing heart surgery in an interview with Musique Machine earlier this year. Last month, the dates “1945-2018” appeared on Hardy’s website and Facebook page, and he sent out a message to the Hacienda Bridge mailing list that began: “I’m 73. Dying of a head thing that will get me soon. So what.” On Tuesday morning, this notice turned up in my inbox, accompanied by the photo of Rod Serling below:

RIP
BRAIN CANCER
HARDY FOX
1945 - 2018

 

 
That evening, the Residents posted this obituary at residents.com:

It is with with great sorrow and regret that The Cryptic Corporation announces the passing of longtime associate, Hardy Fox. As president of the corporation from 1982-2016, the company benefited from Hardy’s instinct for leadership and direction, but his true value came from his longtime association with The Residents. As the group’s producer, engineer, as well as collaborator on much of their material, Fox’s influence on The Residents was indelible; despite any formal training, his musicality was nevertheless unique, highly refined and prolific. Blessed with a vital sense of aesthetics, a keen ear, and an exquisite love of the absurd, Hardy’s smiling face was a constant source of joy to those around him. He will be missed.

After a series of recent health problems, Hardy succumbed to a brief illness. He is survived by his husband, Steven Kloman.

Ave atque vale, Hardy Fox. Thanks for a billion hours of musical pleasure.
 

 
We’re on the eve of Netflix’s worldwide debut of The Other Side of the Wind, Orson Welles’s legendary unreleased film. After four decades in limbo, the picture was finally completed earlier this year. A new documentary on Orson Welles and Wind, entitled They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, will be available via Netflix on the same day as Wind, November 2nd. Though now obscure, there’s another documentary—directed by Welles’s friend and right-hand man—that largely focuses on The Other Side of the Wind.

Gary Graver was Orson Welles’s cinematographer from 1970 until Welles’s death in 1985. Graver was hired by Welles after cold-calling the maverick director, and the first picture he shot for him was The Other Side of the Wind. In 1993, the documentary he directed, Working with Orson Welles, was released. The doc zeros in on The Other Side of the Wind, which might seem odd, as only Orson’s most faithful would’ve known about the picture, but it speaks to Graver’s belief in the project. Working features interviews with some of the cast and crew (which often overlapped on Wind), including Peter Bogdanovich, Curtis Harrington, Peter Jason, Cameron Mitchell, Susan Strasberg, and Frank Marshall, who wore many hats during the original production, and as producer played a major role in the completion of Wind. Graver also talks at length about the movie, and some of his test footage for it is seen in the documentary. Everyone expresses their fondness for the enigmatic Welles, and while they acknowledge that he was often difficult and unpredictable, one gets the sense they wouldn’t trade the experience of working with Orson Welles for anything. There’s a lot of love here.
 

A candid shot of Gary Graver, Oja Kodar (actress and Orson Welles’s longtime companion), and Orson Welles on the set of ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ (photo by Frank Marshall).

Graver’s documentary was a straight-to-video release, and is now out of print. The doc is low budget, tends to jump from topic to topic, and is short on clips from Welles’s films (due to licensing issues, no doubt), but I think most Orson fans will look past its shortcomings and dig it. With anticipation high for the pending release of The Other Side of the Wind, the time for Graver’s documentary is now. It’s made all the more important as Mitchell, Strasberg, and Graver are now deceased.
 

L-R: Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, Oja Kodar, Gary Graver, and others on the set of ‘The Other Side of the Wind.’

‘Working with Orson Welles’ has recently been uploaded to YouTube. Watch after the jump…