Phil Spector before the fall.
 
Photographer Brad Elterman was smack dab in the middle of L.A.‘s rock and roll vortex at a pivotal time in the 1970s. His camera caught some of the energy of the moment in sharply etched fragments of time.

Elterman’s career started with a borrowed camera at the age of 16. His first photo, of Bob Dylan performing onstage, was published in 1974.

That lead to endless nights of covering the rock scene in Hollywood encompassing pop, punk and rock bands including Joan Jett and The Runaways, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, the Sex Pistols, Kiss, Queen, Blondie, the Ramones, the Bay City Rollers, Abba, Boney M, Kenny Rogers, The Who, Leif Garrett, Michael Jackson, etc.

“It was my education in life,” says Brad, who left school to travel with bands and visit European magazine editors at the age of 19. “I had a front row seat in life which took me everywhere from Munich to Tokyo to Rio.” Brad toured Japan with teen idol Leif Garret, traveled to South America with German pop stars Boney M, and did tour dates with The Eagles and Rod Stewart, just to name a few.

Elterman has an almost Zen gift of being in the right place at the right time, capturing unguarded moments that seep through the cracks of his subject’s facades. 

He’s published a collection of his extraordinary black and white photos in a limited edition of 500 copies. While “Like It Was Yesterday” seems to have gone out of print, Amazon has a few for sale here. You can also purchase prints of Elterman’s work at his website, which is worth visiting for more detailed views of these and many more photographs and his fascinating descriptions of how they came about. I’m waiting for his memoirs.
 

 

 

Cherie and Marie Currie.
 
A video interview with Brad Elterman and more photos after the jump…...

Not The Eggheads.
 
Long Island’s The Eggheads make a rare network TV appearance on the Gary Moore Show in 1964.

I’ve searched the Internet for more info on The Eggheads and have come up snake eyes. Anybody got the lowdown on this group? I know they released a single called ‘Foolin’ Around’ on Bell Records in 1964 and that’s all I know. Based on this terrific little video (in which they sing “Foolin’ Around”), the band seems worthy of some documentation somewhere.
 

 
Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band perform at the Knebworth Festival, England, 1975-07-05.

Headlining was Pink Floyd, with the Steve Miller Band and Captain Beefheart in support. The festival also had Roy Harper with Trigger, Linda Lewis, John Peel and Monty Python‘s Graham Chapman and Friends.

Ben Waters at Captain Beefheart Radar Station writes:

Beefheart was introduced by John Peel with the words “Here he is, the guv’ner, Captain Beefheart!” The drums beat a couple of times, and they launched into a gloriously lurching, cacophonous version of “Moonlight on Vermont”. There were two distinct reactions from the audience. The Pink Floyd fans put their hands over their ears and looked at each other as if to say “What is this shit?!”. The Beefheart fans lunged forward, electrified by the sound. It was so off kilter; so alien; so “other” to what we’d been hearing all day, yet so much better, deeper; so RIGHT.

The line up was a strange one: Winged Eel Fingerling and Ella Guru Davidson (who he?) on guitars; Drumbo on guitar and drums; Jimmy Carl Black (introduced as Indian Ink) also on drums; and, instead of a bassist, Bruce “fossil” Fowler on trombone, or air bass as Beefheart called it. You couldn’t really say they were tight; one or two songs sort of slowed down halfway through, and the trombone made the rhythm kinda slurry; but it was a great sound; like a load of drunks trying to play impossibly complex music, and threatening to collapse into chaos at any moment, but always just avoiding it.

Captain Beefheart Don Van Vliet vocals, saxophone, harmonica
Indian Ink Jimmy Carl Black drums, percussion
Greg Ella Guru Davidson guitar, slide guitar
Bruce Fossil Fowler air bass, trombone
Drumbo John French drums, percussion
Winged Eel Fingerling Elliot Ingber guitar, slide guitar

Here’s the whole show, track-by-track - sound quality isn’t perfect, but it’s Beefheart.
 

01. “Moonlight On Vermont”

02. “Abba Zabba”

03. “Band Introductions”  04. “Orange Claw Hammer”
 
Full concert performance plus bonus TV clip, after the jump…
 

 
In this entertaining BBC documentary from 1972, Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles, architectural critic/writer/professor Banham takes us on a tour of the four ecologies of L.A. which he described as Surfurbia, The Plains Of Id, Foothills and Autotopia. A landscape of mini-malls, strip clubs, tiki huts, Watts Tower and the Lovell “Health” House designed by Richard Neutra are among the many fascinating sights in this wonderful vintage video.
 

 
The package, the parcel, the meat house, the fruit basket, the lunchbox, or just plain old junk - call it what you will but the bulging male crotch has a long and noble history in popular music. From the banned-from-the-waist-down wiggling hips of Elvis Presley, to the King of Pop’s trademark grab-and-yelp, all the way up to the nut-busting, skin-tight jeans of the Kings of Leon, VPL (Visible Penis Line) has taken root as a firm fixture right at the very heart of rock’n'roll culture. Generations of hormonal girls (and even some boys) have long stared at glossy posters hanging above moistened teenage bedsheets, and sighed longingly at the thought of what mysterious pleasures lay behind the zippered fly.

Before the internet, before the iPhone, before sex tapes and the widespread consumption of free pornography, a well defined package (visible only through a thin layer of pant material) could be the making or breaking of a wannabe pop Adonis. The times may have moved on, but the crotch still holds a magnetic attraction to music fans. With that in mind, here is a selection of some of the finest packages that rock and pop have had to offer over the last half century:
 

 
EDIT
 

 
Much more crotch action after the jump - NSFW!

 
Hackgate - parody movie trailer created by Paul and Lisa at Handface.
 

“When groundbreaking television writer Dennis Potter learned he was dying of cancer, he sat down with Melvyn Bragg for a final interview. The subject of media mogul Rupert Murdoch came up.”

Yes it did! OUTSTANDING!
 

 
Thank you, Jonathan Owen!

 
A young Christian couple in South Carolina believe they have found the face of Jesus in a Wal-Mart receipt:

Jacob Simmons and his fiancee, Gentry Lee Sutherland, said they bought some pictures from Walmart on Sunday, June 12.

The following Wednesday, the couple had just come home from a church service when Simmons spotted the receipt on the floor of Sutherland’s apartment. He says the receipt had changed.

“I was leaving the kitchen and I just looked on the floor, and it was like it was looking at me,” Simmons said.

A dark gray mark on the receipt seems to show two eyes, a nose and a mouth in a thickly bearded face.

“Then the more you look at it, the more it looked like Jesus, and it was just shocking, breathtaking,” Simmons said.

The couple said the image seemed to answer a question they had just been asked at church.

“We had a message on knowing God, abiding in him,” Sutherland said. “(The preacher asked) ‘If you know God, would you recognize him if you saw him?’”

Good question.

I don’t know… to me this looks EXACTLY like the homeless guy who lives behind the liquor store around the corner. Or Charles Manson. I also see Harry Dean Stanton, but I see him everywhere (and yes, I’m on medication for that).
 

 
Via Christian Nightmares

 
Based on twenty-five interviews with Kurt Cobain, About A Son recreates the singer’s early life and career, through the intimacy of Michael Azerrad’s recordings, and director A J Schnack’s ambient portraits of the landscape that Cobain called home - Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle.
 

 
No, this isn’t an Aphex Twin album cover or “Kimmy Gibbler” from 80s shitcom Full House. It’s an advertisement on the side of a truck spotted by Redditor BitchPleeze.

Click on the top image to see a larger version.

 
(via reddit)