‘The Grotto at St. Michel.’
 
A winged subterranean creature fires out of a mountain cave to release, or is it perhaps to devour, a golden bird—or the symbol for the Holy Spirit?—against a blue winter sky. A man in Victorian dress, accompanied by his daughter, cheer the beast on. It looks like some mountain scene Caspar David Friedrich started painting only for Theodor Kittelsen or maybe Félicien Rops to finish it.

And then there is the unwary traveler (huntsman), riding through a cold winter wood, when he is quickly, silently eaten by a monstrous white eel rushing downhill like an avalanche.

Or, the boy in short trousers entering (what looks like) a drained swimming pool room where a monstrous creature, like a bloated dust mite or mutated bed bug waits. Strange shadowy figures peer into the windows above.

These are three paintings by the brilliant Canadian artist Peter Ferguson, whose work disturbs, amuses, and excites like the greatest illustrations from the best book of adventure tales.

I looked to find out more about Ferguson but all I found was the same words used and reused on different sites lifted from the artist’s press release. Then there is his work, which brilliant and beautiful, and strangely unsettling. It has been described as “meticulously painted,” “luminous,” “grandiose,” “humorous,” “paranormal,” “fantasy, surrealism, and realism,” and often described as a cross between Norman Rockwell and H. P. Lovecraft. All of which is true. Technically he is brilliant and his imagination unparalleled. But a lack of the artist’s comment forces the viewer to look at his work without any preconceived notions as to the artist’s intention or the work’s meaning.

We’re fast awake and seeing dreams which we fill with our own peculiar narrative. The ambiguity of Ferguson’s paintings allows us to do so—a tale that reflects our own fears and obsessions. Are the creatures in his paintings innocent victims or truly monstrous? Are the humans good or evil?

Born in Montreal, Canada in 1968, Ferguson was first inspired to draw spaceships and alien creatures after he saw the movie Star Wars as a boy. He decided on becoming an illustrator and attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, graduating in 1992. Ferguson then began a long and brilliant career as illustrator working in oils for companies as diverse as Marvel, the Royal Shakespeare Company, MOJO, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Times. Since the turn of century, Ferguson has been exhibiting his brilliant paintings in group and solo shows. His work is quite literally what dreams are made of. And if I had the money, I’d buy a dozen of his paintings to hang on my walls because I know that everyday I would look at Ferguson’s pictures and see something different, think something different, and know something different about myself.

A new exhibition of Peter Ferguson’s work Skip Forward When Held has just opened at the Roq la Rue Gallery in Seattle, details here. Or check more by this highly original and gifted artist here.
 

‘Pastoral.’
 

‘The Engineer Jules Bernhardt.’
 

‘Mayfair Parlour Shark.’
 
See more of Peter Ferguson’s brilliant work, after the jump…
 

 
I was sad to read on The Quietus today that Moog pioneer Gershon Kingsley—best known for composing the worldwide novelty smash “Popcorn”—died in his Manhattan apartment on December 10th. He was 97 years old.

One half of Perrey and Kingsley with Jean-Jacques Perrey, their two best-selling albums of the mid-60s, The In Sound from Way Out and Kaleidoscopic Vibrations introduced the sound of electronic music to the masses. Their “Baroque Hoedown” provided the music for Disneyland’s “Main Street Electrical Parade” attraction (a fact actually unknown to Perrey until 1980). Their “Electronic Can-Can” became the theme music for the Wonderama children’s program of the early 1970s and the popular 70s game show The Joker’s Wild used their track “The Savers” as its instantly recognizable title tune. (On his own, Kingsley would compose the famous station ident music for WGBH, the PBS station in Boston which was well-known to 70s viewers of Zoom and The French Chef.)
 

Gershon Kingsley, left, and Jean-Jacques Perrey
 
Kingsley conducted several Broadway musicals and composed for film, including 1972’s proto-slasher Silent Night, Bloody Night and the Oliver Stone co-produced softcore crime drama Sugar Cookies the following year. He also worked on TV commercials and was the winner of two Clio awards.
 

 
Although Kingsley’s compositions were wildly eclectic and varied from poppy novelty songs to funky weirdness, he also produced religious music, but with his own twist. His “Shabbat for Today” was an attempt to fuse traditional Jewish religious music with a more contemporary avant-garde sound, to draw in younger people to temple. The “Shabbat” utilized, of course, the then-futuristic electronic instrument Kingsley helped make famous, the Moog Synthesizer. A televised excerpt from “Shabbat for Today” was broadcast on PBS in 1971, conducted by the composer, and featuring cantor Ephraim Biran, Rabbi Gunter Hirschberg, narrator Alfred Drake and Kenneth Bichel on the Moog Modular.
 

 
In 1999, I was invited by Mr. Kingsley to hear his “Shabbat for Today” performed in a synagogue in Manhattan and it was a wonderful experience. I am pretty sure that recital was held in the same synagogue seen in the video below, Temple Rodeph Shalom, located on the Upper West Side. A compilation of Kingsley’s religious compositions, God is a Moog: The Electronic Prayers of Gershon Kingsley was released in 2006.
 

 
More Moog after the jump…

Tom Savini and Andy Warhol. All photos by Christopher Makos via Pittsburgh City Paper.
 
Before Tom Savini made Andy Warhol look like a character from one of George Romero’s films, he had never met the soft-spoken artist. However, his actor/makeup artist/stuntman younger brother Joe Savini had attended school with Warhol at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. George Romero is also an alumnus of the school. Following the release of Day of the Dead in 1985, Savini would receive a call on behalf of Andy Warhol requesting that he transform Andy into one of his iconic zombies. Given the fact that Pittsburgh is truly the center of the zombie universe, as well as the birthplace of Andy Warhol and Tom Savini, the pop artist’s request to become a zombie was perhaps inevitable. Whatever the case may be, Savini and long-time colleague FX legend Greg Nicotero traveled to meet Warhol in New York to make Andy’s dream of becoming one of the undead a reality.

During their time with Warhol, the platinum-wigged artist sat quietly while Savini and Nicotero worked their magic. Also on hand was Massachusetts native, photographer (and former apprentice to Man Ray) Christopher Makos, who captured a few moments from the threesome’s strange get-together. According to Savini, he himself was unaware Warhol was wearing a wig and gently tried to adjust Andy’s “hair.”
 

Zombie Warhol.
 
It turns out Andy Warhol was very much a fan of Romero’s Living Dead series and zombie culture. In an interview with the Pittsburgh City Paper, Makos, a close friend of the artist, believed Romero’s films—and others like them—were a part of the artist’s “fieldhouse” (though he likely meant “wheelhouse”). Warhol’s 1977 film Bad features a gory scene of a woman tossing her crying infant out of a window. It splatters on the sidewalk next to a woman walking by, spraying blood from its head.

Another aspect of Romero’s films that appealed to Warhol was how the filmmaker was able to make such a strong statement with a relatively small budget. In the case of 1985’s Day of the Dead, Romero saw his initial budget of seven million slashed in half. This forced Romero to make huge concessions not only to the original script and larger scale of the film, but his desire for Day of the Dead to be unrated. If you’re a fan of this film, the reality of the drastic cuts ended up producing some of the greatest practical effects ever, as well as the gift of another Massachusetts native, Joseph Pilato (RIP) in the unforgettable role of Captain Henry—“Choke on ‘em!”—Rhodes, who only got the part as a direct result of the reduction in the film’s budget.

Makos’ photographic legacy is astounding in its own right, and his many images of Andy Warhol can be found in his beautiful books on Andy. Tom Savini has recently released his highly anticipated autobiography, Savini: The Biography.
 

An alternate image of Warhol as a Savini zombie.
 

The trailer for Andy Warhol’s ‘Bad.’

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Andy Warhol interviews Frank Zappa (whom he hated) without uttering a word
Andy Warhol meets the Cars: The notorious NSFW ‘nude’ version of the ‘Hello Again’ video
Oh, you pretty thing! Polaroid portraits of Andy Warhol in drag
The Andy Warhol episode of ‘The Love Boat’

Phast Phreddie & Thee Precisions

Phast Phreddie Patterson is notable character of the Los Angeles punk scene of the 1970s and 80s. He wrote for Slash, New York Rocker, Rock Scene and Billboard, he produced an early fanzine called Back Door Man, managed the Zeros and DJ’d at Madame Wong’s West, the Starwood and the Cathay de Grande. In fact, the very first Runaways gig was held in his parent’s livingroom in Torrance. Not only that—and how is this for cred—his vast record collection and deep knowledge of American roots music saw Phast Phreddie play a major factor in the musical education of the Gun Club’s Jeffrey Lee Pierce. These days he is an archivist at the ARChive of Contemporary Music in New York and a club disc jockey who specializes in what he terms “Modernist Vintage Astro Sounds” under the Boogaloo Omnibus banner.
 

 
During the eighties Patterson led his own band, Phast Phreddie & Thee Precisions, which is what concerns us here. In the midst of the LA punk scene, Patterson decided to go in a different direction and started a group to play beatniky swing, jumpin’ jive and be-bop, pulling the likes of Blaster Dave Alvin, Plimsouls frontman Peter Case, Gene Taylor, Marty Jourard of the Motels, Steve Berlin from Los Lobos and the aforementioned Gun Club leader in into his revolving cast of players. Phast Phreddie & Thee Precisions would play on bills with punk bands and released an EP “West Hollywood Freeze-Out” in 1982 and a full-length album two years later titled Limbo, both on the Martian Records label.

Early next year Manifesto Records will be releasing a 2 CD set comprised of those two releases along with a second CD of rarities, demos, and live cuts. In order to facilitate tape transfer, remastering, etc, Phast Phreddie’s got a Kickstarter set up where he’s asking anyone who plans to buy the CD to just order it in advance to help fund the prep work. Phast Phreddie & Thee Precisions will be performing a reunion show at the end of February in Burbank, CA.

In the meantime, here’s a clip of Phast Phreddie & Thee Precisions with Peter Case and Jeffrey Lee Pierce miming along on cable access TV’s ‘Li’l Art’s Poker Party’ in 1984. Others in the clip are Paul Body, Chris “Poobah” Bailey, and Dan Perloff.
 

 
Now in its 80th year of operation, it would be difficult to quantify exactly how influential the Blue Note Records label has been in popular culture. Blue Note, obviously, is synonymous with jazz music in all of its many forms—the label began with traditional and small group jazz, but moved to the “hard bop” sound in the 1950s, and later towards more modern and avant garde jazz—but beyond that, the label’s album covers are known for being basically a school unto itself in terms of their utterly distinctive graphic design (done by Reid Miles) and exciting portrait photography (mostly shot by longtime Blue Note financial exec Francis Wolff). Blue Note’s signature packaging defined for all time what jazz looks like.

And not only that, but aside from James Brown, it was samples from Blue Note artists that built the foundations of hip-hop. A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur, Ice-T, Busta Rhymes, Ice Cube, De La Soul, and the Beastie Boys all found inspiration in Blue Note grooves. While many labels were busy suing the first generation of hip-hop artists into penury, longtime Blue Note president Bruce Lundvall was inviting them to plunder the goods. Flash forward thirty years later and the likes of Flying Lotus, Mad Lib, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West and J Cole are still digging deep in the crates marked Blue Note.

The Blue Note name strongly represents quality. Very high quality. Quality music, quality records and top quality presentation of this music to the consumer. No other record label in history has been as consistent as Blue Note has been in terms of sticking to the founding fathers’ vision and ethos for turning out high quality products, and long after they were gone, too. In short, Blue Note Records was, and always has been, a label operated first and foremost by music fans for other music fans and the imprint’s reputation for quality is something deeply inherent in the multi-generational appeal that Blue Note has. They put out stuff they want to hear.
 

 
Alfred Lion, one of Blue Note’s cofounders—the other was Communist political activist Max Margulis, but he was more of a funder—was inspired to start the label after attending John Hammond’s famous “From Spirituals to Swing” concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1938, where he would have heard the likes of the Count Basie Orchestra, “Big Joe” Turner, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, boogie woogie pianist Albert Ammons and many other black artists. Starting a record label would not have been seen as a safe—or particularly smart—career move in 1939. There was precious little retail infrastructure at the time, so distribution was difficult. It simply was not a business that anyone—not back then at least—would have wanted to have gotten involved with. Unless you weren’t doing it for the money, but for the love of the music. Alfred Lion clearly felt a calling to help birth, nurture and archive what would become one of the dominant art forms of the 20th century and beyond. He’s a pivotal character in the history of jazz. Imagine for a moment that this man was never born. And that Blue Note never existed.
 

 
While Alfred Lion’s direct and indirect influence on culture worldwide is incalculable, there’s another less obvious way that his legacy is still having an effect: Blue Note was one of the first “audiophile” record labels, even before that term entered common usage. Blue Note sessions were recorded in some of the finest studios by some of the best producers and engineers (like the legendary Rudy Van Gelder) and the albums the label released not only looked amazing, they sounded great, too. With the post WWII economic boom and the concurrent craze for “hi fi” stereo gear, the higher quality Blue Note pressings held special allure for record collectors for the simple reason that they were of a consistently greater value (on every level) than what was on offer elsewhere. In that department, Blue Note set the standards. All of ‘em. [I often say something along the lines of how a certain unexpected album “got the Blue Note treatment” and everyone always knows exactly what I mean when I say that.]
 

 
Which brings me to some recent and upcoming Blue Note projects that I think you should know about, namely the deluxe releases in the Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series launched earlier this year. The Tone Poet series is produced by sonic guru Joe Harley (he is the “tone poet”) and features all-analog, 180g audiophile vinyl reissues that are mastered from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray of Cohearent Audio (one of the best in the business, when you see his name, go for it). The Tone Poet vinyl is manufactured by RTI in Camarillo, California, and packaged in what are known as Stoughton Printing “Old Style” Gatefold Tip-On Jackets. In other words, heavy duty, whisper-quiet wax and covers that are about as sturdy as hardback books. Jazz classics released in 2019 under the Tone Poet shingle—such as Wayne Shorter’s Etcetera, Dexter Gordon’s Clubhouse, Introducing Kenny Burrell and Donald Byrd’s Chant (among a few dozen other choice platters)—will be joined soon by Hank Mobley’s Poppin’, Stanley Turrentine’s Comin’ Your Way, Chet Baker Sings, Grant Green’s Nigeria, Money Jungle by Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Max Roach, and Herbie Hancock’s The Prisoner. And that’s only what’s coming out in the first quarter. And there are still dozens more in the Blue Note 80 series.

This has to be the most ambitious reissue series ever undertaken by a major label. These no compromise records sound great. They look great. They feel heavy in your hands. The quality is announced to you, Jack, before you even slap it on your turntable.

If any of this sounds good, you know what to do.
 

Blue Note Records president Don Was and “tone poet” Joe Harley show what goes into the Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series.
 

 
Jonathan Miller first considered the possibility of making a film of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland during a party in the early 1960s. Miller was discussing the book, over the percussive clink of ice cubes on glass and the tidal rise and fall from excited chattering voices, with the playwright Lillian Hellman. Miller explained that although Carroll’s book had been filmed before it had never been done properly. These previous efforts, he claimed, had been “too jokey, or else too literal..and…had always come unstuck by trying to recreate the style of Tenniel’s original illustrations.” Copying Tenniel might work in animation but never, oh never on film.

Miller considered Alice in Wonderland “an inward sort of work, more of a mood than a story.” Before he could turn it into a film he wanted to make, he had to discover “some new key” with which to unlock the book’s hidden feeling. To find the possible answer, Miller asked:

What was Charles Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll) about?

and:

What is the strange secret command of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)?

His answer, as he explained in article for Vogue, December 1966: “Nostalgia and remorse.”

Like so many Victorians, Dodgson was hung up on the romantic agony of childhood. The Victorians looked on infancy as a period of perilous wonder, when the world was experienced with such keen intensity that growing up seemed like a fail and a betrayal. And yet they seemed to do everything they could to smother this primal intensity of childhood. Instead of listening to these witnesses of innocence, they silenced them, taught them elaborate manners, and reminded them of their bounded duty to be seen and not heard.

Lewis Carroll’s novels about Alice in a magical wonderland were books “about the pains of growing up.”

Everyone Alice meets on the way…represents one of the different penalties of growing up. One after the other, the characters seem to be punished or pained by their maturity.

Cor blimey! The wonderful Mr. Miller had an incredible intellect, a polymath, an immensely talented polymath who seemed to want to rationalise everything he encountered. But often, perhaps too often, in doing so, the dear old doctor took some of the magic away. I greatly admired Jonathan Miller, he was one of my childhood heroes, but I am willing to believe in the rhinoceros under the table (or the elephant in the room) as much as there ever so might just be fairies at the bottom of the garden—as G. K. Chesterton (jokingly) believed. Or, as the great comedian Eric Morecambe once joked about religion: Two goldfish swimming in a goldfish bowl. One said to the other, “Do you believe in God?” “No, of course not. Why?” “Well,” the first replied, “Who changes the water?”

It’s all about perspective.
 

 
Miller cut Carroll’s artifice of wonderfully exotic creatures (the White Rabbit, the Gryphon, the Caterpillar, and so on) and turned them into the academics he believed they were based on. A startlingly brilliant idea at a point in history when everyone was supposedly questioning everything about the Establishment and the old tenets of Queen and Country, religion and class—all of which were (rightly) under attack. As Miller noted:

The animal heads and playing cards are just camouflage. All the characters in the book are real, and the papier-mache disguises with which Carroll covers them all up do nothing to hide the indolent despair.

Once this was clear, the way to make the film fell neatly into place. No snouts, no whiskers, no carnival masks. Everyone could be just as he was. And Alice herself? Not the pretty sweetling of popular fancy. I advertised fro a solemn, sallow child, priggish and curiously plain. I knew exactly what she would be like when I found her. Still, haughty and indifferent, with a high smooth brow, long neck and a great head of Sphinx hair.

Apparently, seven hundred children applied, or at least their parents did, but Miller did not interview any of them, until he chanced upon a photograph of Anne-Marie Mallick, “a dignified schoolgirl of Indian-French stock with a mane of dark hair.” Who, as Miller’s biographer Kate Bassett notes, represented an Alice who “was exclusively a child of the director’s era, manifesting the auteur’s (rather than the original author’s) divided personality and ambivalence towards authority figures.”

The former co-star of Beyond the Fringe, recognised Carroll’s satire as “amusing youngsters by sending up old, sententious types” which “tallied with the spirit of the 1960s.”

Thus the perceptive viewer of the film was able to see double: the two decades translucently overlaid, though a century apart, as if it were a pleat in time.

Made for BBC Television, Alice in Wonderland was filmed over nine weeks in a dreamy English summer. Miller created a masterpiece of television and film—which was as much influenced by Orson Welles’ The Trial as it was by Ken Russell’s The Debussy Film or Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. All of which Miller acknowledged. Miller wrote the screenplay, and did collect one of the best casts imaginable including Peter Sellers, Peter Cook, John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave. Alan Bennett, and Leo McKern, amongst others, all for a flat fee of £500 each. And the music score by Ravi Shankar is highly effective.
 

 
Watch the rest of Miller’s ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ after the jump…
 

 
On September 23rd, 1991, Nirvana headlined a sold out show at the Boston nightclub Axis, with support from Smashing Pumpkins, and area acts Bullet LaVolta and Cliffs of Dooneen. The occasion was the birthday party for local alternative rock radio station, WFNX. At the time, Nirvana were on the rise. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released to radio on August 27th, then to retail two weeks after that, and MTV was airing the “Teen Spirit” video here and there, though it wasn’t ubiquitous on the channel—yet. It was the eve of the U.S. release of Nevermind, which would come out September 24th.

Excitement about Nirvana was growing at a fast pace. The night of the gig, a line formed outside of Axis as far as the eye could see. Once everyone lucky enough to have a ticket was inside, the club was so packed the fire marshal nearly shut it down. But the show did go on.
 

 
While a few minutes of video from Nirvana’s September 23rd gig at Axis has been online for a while, previously uncirculated footage from the show has recently been uploaded to YouTube. This new video is of the first four songs from their set, “Aneurysm,” “Drain You,” “School,” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” plus the closer, “Negative Creep.” Only “School” is complete, with the footage synched up with an audience recording of the show; for the remaining initial numbers, still images from the gig were added where there isn’t any video. The conclusion of “Negative Creep” was essentially tacked on at the end. In all, there’s fourteen minutes of footage in the clip, which is just shy of seventeen minutes total.

Though it’s incomplete (it’s possible it’s all that was taped that night), and the camera work is messy at times, the picture quality is incredible, appearing to be sourced from a low generation tape. The footage we do get to see is blistering, captured as Nirvana were on their way to becoming a cultural phenomenon. Enjoy.
 

 
H/T: LiveNIRVANA.com

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Audio surfaces from a Nirvana acoustic gig that took place in a bar during the ‘Nevermind’ tour
Nirvana playing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ live for the very last time
Watch Nirvana sabotage Buenos Aires stadium show, opening with (still) unreleased song, 1992

Debbie Harry by Andy Warhol.
 
On December 8th, 1977, Blondie were set to make their first appearance in Brisbane, Australia. But the show didn’t go on as scheduled, and it would become known as the only show the band would be forced to cancel. In Australia, Blondie’s first record, Blondie was a huge hit, and fans were rabid as they waited at Her Majesty’s Theater, a former opera house, for the band to take the stage. And, as the title of this post indicates pretty clearly, that never happened. Here’s the story about how Debbie Harry’s alleged overindulgence on a fruit close to my heart, cherries, resulted in a good-old-fashioned punk rock riot.

As the story goes, the turnout for the show was about 1200 strong. After waiting around an hour for the show to start, drummer Clem Burke came out on stage to personally apologize to the crowd, letting them Blondie wouldn’t be able to play because Deborah Harry was “ill.” The cause of Harry’s illness was blamed on the singer eating too many cherries, and was apparently so acute a doctor was dispatched to the theater to treat the ailing singer. Ray Maguire, the band’s road manager, would later make a curious statement supporting the cherry-theory:

“In New York, we don’t see very much fruit, but out here, we’ve been going mad on it. I think that Deborah just had a few too many cherries over the last few days.”

I don’t know about you, but I had no idea there was some sort of fresh fruit crisis going on in New York in the 1970s. Anyway, after apologizing to the crowd, Burke was loudly booed and pelted with an object thrown by someone in the audience. As bottles and cans started to fly at the stage, Burke made a hasty exit while local Brisbane punk band The Survivors (known initially as Rat Salad, just like Van Halen) were begging show promoters to let them play. Some attendees started to leave while a group of five tried to get on stage and ended up throwing their fists at members of Blondie’s road crew. The fisticuffs continued backstage as crew members battled to eject the punchy fans, a few who were arrested by the police.

Meanwhile, other angry ex-Blondie fans somehow managed to remove a huge iron gate and iron bar from the premises and using their makeshift weapons to try to bust open the door. They were eventually able to hurl the iron bar over an opening at the top of the door, where it nearly landed on top of fans trying to leave what was pretty much a riot in progress. A riot attributed to an unnamed, unemployed twenty-year-old youth and three minors charged with willful destruction of property. The youngsters were tried in Children’s Court.
 

An article in the Telegraph describing the riot at Her Majesty’s Theater.
 
In a fantastic twist to this story, Australian writer and culture vulture Clinton Walker (author of many books, including the incredible biography on Bon Scott, Highway to Hell: the Life and Death of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott) literally had a front-row seat when the riot began and, according to Walker, his pal Bob Farrell (later of the band Laughing Clowns) was one of the kids who stormed the stage. In Walker’s account of the riot, cherries were perhaps not to blame for Harry’s illness, but instead the ingestion of potent Australian heroin. The acclaimed author admits it was a “scurrilous” thing to say, but confirms it to be very much a part of the mythology behind the cancelation of Blondie’s first gig in Brisbane. Walker was also at the poorly attended make-up show ten days later on December 18th at Her Majesty’s Theater, where the band concluded their set by smashing up their instruments. Nice.
 

Blondie live at CBGB’s in May of 1977.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Gigerstein’: The extraordinary guitar that H.R. Giger designed for Blondie’s Chris Stein
‘What is it?’: Björk, Blondie & the story of the fish from Faith No More’s infamous video for ‘Epic’
Blondie: Live on German TV from 1977
Debbie does Mick: Blondie performing The Stones’ ‘Obsession’, 1977
Debbie Harry covering The Ramones 27 years ago

 
For decades, Peter Aaron of the Chrome Cranks has been intermittently worked on a compilation that would document Cincinnati’s subterranean music scene of the mid 1970s through the early 1980s. Initially conceived of as a cassette release as far back as 1987, the project has finally seen the light of day as We Were Living in Cincinnati: Punk and Underground Sounds From Ohio’s Queen City (1975-1982). Put out jointly by HoZac Records and Shake-It Records, the collection includes obscure tracks from little-known vinyl releases, as well as previously unreleased recordings. Dangerous Minds has selected a handful of highlights from the set for you to check out.

The anthemic “Long Gone” was, appropriately, the A-side of the Customs 1980 single. The group was formed by guitarist Peter Greenberg—formerly of the Boston band DMZ and later of the Lyres—after he moved to Ohio to go to the University of Cincinnati. “Long Gone” is about getting the hell out of Cincinnati. 
 

 

The Customs, 1979.

“Blonde Debbie,” a lustful power pop/rockabilly tribute to a certain Ms. Harry, is the B-side to the Rockers’ only 45, which came out in 1980.
 

 

Picture sleeve.

“Working Girls” is a driving punk rocker courtesy of Dennis the Menace. This catchy tune is taken from their only record, a self-titled 7-inch EP that was released in 1980. Though their discography is limited, Dennis the Menace were a staple of the Cincy scene.
 

 

Picture sleeve.

“Inside Out” by the Erector Set, a ska punk number that’s simply irresistible, was included on their 1981 single. The group also put out a 12-inch, and opened for some high-profile acts, including Squeeze and U2.

When writing what you’re reading here, this author had been sick for days, but still had to get up and dance like a lunatic when playing “Inside Out.”
 

 

Flyer, 1981.

HoZac/Shake-It has just released We Were Living in Cincinnati on vinyl in a limited edition of 500 copies. The 18-track LP also comes with a bonus download of an additional 15 songs—for free—plus a two-sided poster with photos, band family tree, and liner notes by Peter Aaron. Get We Were Living in Cincinnati via Bandcamp or HoZac’s site.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Matt Gimmick’s rare 1979 EP, with covers of unreleased Stooges songs, returns (a DM premiere)
Vector Command: The dark and mysterious recordings by former members of Crime —a DM premiere

God in Three Persons 2020, courtesy of the Cryptic Corporation

Next month, the Residents will perform their 1988 narrative album God in Three Persons at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The show will combine new video projections by the artist John Sanborn with a live performance by the Residents and vocalist Laurie Amat, whose contributions to the original LP are memorable. 

Homer Flynn, the president of the Cryptic Corporation, has handled the Residents’ affairs since the 1970s. I called him just before Thanksgiving, interrupting his graphic design work on an upcoming release involving the Mysterious N. Senada to pepper him with questions about the Residents’ next moves.

Dangerous Minds: Has God in Three Persons ever been performed in front of an audience before?

Homer Flynn: Well, not in the way that it’s being done now, I’ll put it that way. You know, the Residents always felt that God in Three Persons was probably the thing that they had done that most lent itself into being expanded into more of a theatrical-slash-visual form. And one way or another, they’ve kind of worked around with that for some time now. But what happened was that they made contact with a producer, a guy named Steve Saporito in New York, and, you know, one of the Residents did a solo performance, I don’t know, seven or eight years ago, in San Francisco and New York. It was called “Sam’s Enchanted Evening.” And Steve, that producer, was the one responsible for getting that to New York, and afterwards he asks, “Well, what else are you interested in doing?” And the first thing in the meeting that came up was God in Three Persons. And so, in a lot of ways, that kind of picked up the energy, in that way. 

But they did a reading of God in Three Persons for ACT, the American Conservatory Theater, which is a very well-established theater in San Francisco, and that happened, I think, a little over two years ago or a little over three years ago. They got some interest at that, but then the woman who was the artistic director left, and there was a big changeover. And they are still interested, but meanwhile, in between, they’d also been talking to the Museum of Modern Art, and the interest really started picking up there, so the energy started going in that direction.

So in answer to your question, they did do a reading of it at ACT about three years ago; they also worked with an American classical composer and conductor who was doing a museum show at a contemporary art museum in Rotterdam, and they performed some pieces of it with him as part of a museum installation. And then they did some more pieces of it at a performance in Bourges, France, just this past April. So they’ve done pieces of it here and there, but they’ve never done anything nearly as extensive or ambitious as what they’re doing now.
 

Homer Flynn, courtesy of the Cryptic Corporation
 
Can you tell me how it compares to the original touring show that was planned? I don’t know how far along that got.

You know, that really didn’t get very far. They had some conversations with BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, oh, back in the late Eighties, about potentially doing God in Three Persons with them. But ultimately, what happened was that, one, they felt like they were not gonna be able to do justice to it in a touring scenario, and then also, two, before anything could happen, they completed their King & Eye album, you know, which was all Elvis covers, and they just felt like that was gonna lend itself much more to touring than God in Three Persons. So at that point they kinda dropped God in Three Persons as a performing piece and moved towards The King & Eye, which ultimately became their Cube-E tour. That was probably about ‘89.

It would probably have been harder in a number of ways to stage God in Three Persons in ‘89. For one thing, you have the video doing some of the work in this version—

Absolutely.

—but also the content. The end, I find it hard to imagine taking that on the road with the ending it has, which I think is still pretty shocking, actually.

Yeah. Well, in some ways, it almost seems like it’s more shocking now than it was then. But it also feels, in a lot of ways, you know, the whole idea of the twins being very gender-fluid—you know, that idea was kind of completely off the charts, at that point, and now it actually feels very much in line with the times, in a lot of ways.

Is [genderqueer porn star] Jiz Lee playing both of the twins?

Yes. Right. Correct. There are a few shots that John did where he brought in another one, another person that looked very similar to Jiz, so there would be some times when both of ‘em were in the frame, and he wasn’t having to do video doubling or whatever. But for the most part, Jiz plays both twins. 
 

‘Holy Kiss of Flesh,’ the ‘almost danceable’ single version of ‘Kiss of Flesh’ (via Discogs)
 
I have a sense that the story of God in Three Persons is about show business, more than anything else, and I wonder if the Residents see it that way.

Well, it’s interesting that you would say that. How do you make that connection?

Maybe the horrible celebrity environment we live in has just permeated every last fold of my brain. There’s something about the Colonel Parker aspect of Mr. X, and the road show, freak show aspect of the story.

Well, it’s interesting you would say that, especially given the fact that Cube-E, you know, The King & Eye, with Elvis and the obvious Colonel Parker connection, and then Freak Show were the next few things that came after that.

Right. Elvis is a thread, in a way.

In a way, yeah. The Residents—well, they’ve always found connections in, shall we say, unpredictable ways. 

One of the things that’s interesting about seeing what the Residents are gonna do at MoMA is, with this piece, the lyrics carry so much of the story, it seems like there would be a lot of really interesting staging decisions. At some places what’s happening in the lyrics is really explicit, and in other places, I’m not exactly sure what’s going on in the story. Can you tell me about the staging?

In the same way that the original piece is really a monologue set to music, the staging will be similar, but there will be other performers. The primary additional performer will be a shadow Mr. X, who will be a dancer that, at times, will be like a kind of a doppelgänger, in a way, echoing Mr. X. And then, other times, there will be three projections in the performance. One will be the primary projection which will go all the way across the back of the stage. But then there will be another narrow vertical screen that will kind of come up and down, and it will bisect that larger screen. And then there will be a third screen that the shadow Mr. X will carry, at times, and then there will be another performer holding a hand-held projector, in order to project upon the hand-held screen. So that’s the basic setup, from a performance point of view. And then, of course, all the music will be live.

Staging Mr. X with a double: I can’t help but make the connection with the songs that inspired the album: “Double Shot,” which is two, and “Holy, Holy, Holy,” which is about the Trinity. And that’s kind of what the story is about, right?

Right, exactly. Yeah. But, you know, the Residents kind of love dualities, and you see dualities reoccuring throughout their pieces all the time. The twins are a certain duality, and Mr. X and the shadow Mr. X become another duality, and there’s probably other ones in the same piece, too. It all kinda fits in with the Residents’ world.
 
Much more after the jump…