In Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground the sordid tale of the fetish world, this so-called “bizarre underground,” is revealed to be less steeped in the creepy/sleazy milieu it is normally portrayed as coming from. Author Richard Perez Seves details how the fetish subculture had many allies and partners in the supposedly more innocent OVERground world of the happy Fifties and Sixties. This long awaited book tells this story as it should be told, with LOADS of black and white and color art reproductions, histories, collectors’ checklists with detailed descriptions and more. It’s a very “modern” book in the sense that it’s perfect for the short attention span world and can be read in, or out, of order as info is needed.

But I’m not saying there’s not much to read, because there is! And it’s written in an appropriate timeline, with copious notes and a great index. It doesn’t come off like an encyclopedia, nor does it speak down to its audience, and best of all it’s a big hardcover book that is really affordable. It’s actually way cheaper than it should be! Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground can be found on sale as you read this for around twenty dollars on Amazon! Which is insane! Even the queen of burlesque Dita Von Teese has put her stamp of approval on the book.
 

 
Everything I love and collect culturally seems to lead to the same time period, that fuzzy period around 1954 when things started bubbling into what we now know as rock n’ roll, teenage and monster cinema, the Beats, MAD Magazine, and the “bizarre fetish underground.” All of these things were initially seen as a threat to society the minute they became a “thing” that had an identity. This identity represented rebellion and freedom. All of these things had been brewing for varying periods of time, some for very long periods of time, by single-minded freethinkers experimenting with obsession, be it art, literature, music, or sex. But there’s a moment when a rebellious idea becomes a thing, meaning something that other people realize is happening and so they join in and start doing it as well. Then it becomes… a threat! And when kids get involved it makes it easier for the “critics” and politicians with agendas to start the finger pointing, blaming, set-ups and knock downs, political committees and so on.

These “things” were such a threat to the powers that be that they were portrayed as causing Communism, crime, drugs, pregnancies and worse. The premiere form of presentation in print of the fetish underground was, in fact, comics. Of course there were “dirty” photos as well—notably the classic Bettie Page shoots that informed male libidos of several generations—but it’s worth noting that—at the very least—50% of all published fetish materials were comics, which is quite odd and interesting. These were comics that were not read by children. It doesn’t seem like many women read them either, of course.
 

 

The price is from 1958, which is pretty remarkable!
 
Unlike most artists, who simply drew what guys like Irving Klaw paid them (very little) to draw, Eric Stanton was very interested in the sexy subject matter he was working with, which is what injected his art with that extra shiny, whip-cracking “something.” He was also instrumental in bringing Gene Bilbrew (aka “Eneg” and other pseudonyms) into that world. Bilbrew was the yang to Stanton’s ying in a sense in that Stanton was a healthy, very fit, white suburban (at that time) family man, and Bilbrew was, as they say, living the life. Gene was an African-American heroin-addicted jazz musician living in, and at the end, dying in (of an overdose) in a porno bookshop on “The Deuce” (42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenue). Their styles were very similar at first (Bilbrew worked for Will Eisner and Jules Feiffer early on and he and Stanton met at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, where they also met Steve Ditko and struck up a fast friendship). Bilbrew’s art got consistently weirder and weirder as time and his drug addiction went on, becoming so weird that it seemed to be intentional. And maybe it was, but I’m talking weird on two levels, one in subject matter with everyone, including the “pretty girls” used to sell the books he was illustrating becoming monstrous and bizarre (in the traditional sense) and downright ugly! On the other hand he seemed to lose his sense of perspective with arms and legs getting rendered too short, people looking like midgets, really big, almost square, wall-eyed heads, etc. (If all this was , er… on purpose, then Bilbrew has become my all-time favorite artist! Taking a concept as simple as using sexy women to sell hard up guys horny reading material and taking this idea and turning it on its head into a truly bizarre version of itself.)
 

 

 

Three paperback covers, all with Gene Bilbrew art.
 
The big revelation in Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground is the direct connection between the world of the adults-only sex underground publications and the burgeoning creation of Marvel Comics. In this book all the guessing, rumors and wondering that has been whispered about for decades is spelled out in words and in pictures!

Eric Stanton was married to a religious extremist who was massively opposed to what he started to do for a living. Stanton realized more and more how much he was turned on by this world he happened to step into and things went very wrong at home. In classic style Odd Couple-style, Stanton moved his studio into his art school buddy’s space. This friend happened to be one Steve Ditko, who would later go on to co-create Spider-Man with Stan Lee.

Keep reading after the jump…

A candid shot of Raquel Welch (as Captain Nirvana) and Robin Williams as the lovable alien Mork on the set of ‘Mork & Mindy’ in 1979.
 
I was still of a tender age when one of the most gorgeous women to ever woman, Raquel Welch showed up looking a bit like a busty, tanned David Bowie in thigh-high silver boots on Mork & Mindy. Are you with me? Good. Because in addition to Raquel’s role as Captain Nirvana—the leader of the very sexy-sounding fictional alien race, the Necrotons, we also get to see Playboy’s Playmate of the Year (1978), Debra Jo Fondren in a bikini in a golden cage. If any of this sounds like a blatant ratings grab, you’d be right. Originally, the episode “Mork vs. the Necrotons,” was going to be presented as a one-hour special but ended up airing as a two-part cliffhanger. If you remember anything about this show, it is likely this very episode or the perplexing thirteenth episode of the season when Mork became the first male Denver Broncos cheerleader. It’s hard to say. I came across a quote from Williams when he was asked about his feelings on the show, a contentious one for the cast:

“There were a lot of little kids who went through puberty watching that episode, and I think we lost a lot of the audience.”

It’s been well documented that Williams, Pam Dawber and the entire crew were challenged by Welch’s diva demands and behavior during filming. At one point the episode’s director, Howard Storm says Raquel suggested her younger, female hench-chicks should wear “dog masks” and she should lead them on to the set “on leashes.” Usually, this would sound like a pretty terrific idea given the fact that A) it came from Raquel Welch, and B) I rest my case. However, Storm mentioned to Welch she didn’t need to do anything but “snap her fingers,” and the girls would “drop to their knees.” Raquel liked this idea very much, and interestingly, the leash idea made its way on to the show anyway, and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

I rewatched clips from both episodes while putting this post together, because of course, I did, and I laughed nearly to the point of exhaustion at times thanks to the gift which never stops giving—the comedy genius of Robin Williams. Much of Williams’ comedic outbursts on the show were improvised and timing to accommodate the actor to do so was written into scripts early during the show’s first season. After being so pleasantly reminded how great and profoundly weird the show was, I picked up season one and two on DVD for less than twenty bucks and will be binging on the show as soon as they show up. In anticipation of this blessed event, I’ve posted some great photos including some sweet, candid shots of Williams and Welch on the set, and footage of Williams and Welch from the show. Nanu Nanu!
 

Another candid shot of Williams and Welch.
 

 

Playmate of the Year 1978, Debra Jo Fondren (Kama), Raquel Welch, and Vicki Frederick (Sutra).
 
More Mork after the jump…

 
When one thinks about Creedence Clearwater Revival the terms “psychedelic” or “avant-garde” usually don’t come to mind. The Bay Area unit was first and foremost a rock-n-roll group, their unpretentious, southern-flavored style standing in contrast to psychedelic rock, and San Francisco jam bands like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. So, it might come as a surprise—as it’s rarely talked about—but CCR did actually dabble in psych and the avant-garde.

While Creedence’s self-titled debut album, released in the summer of 1968, did include a handful of songs with psychedelic elements, and the group would stretch out on some of their subsequent album tracks, few would categorize any of it as experimental. One notable exception is the final number on their sixth LP.

Released in December 1970, Pendulum did expand on the CCR formula, bringing horns and keyboards into the mix, but even still, this wouldn’t have prepared Creedence fans for the album’s closing number, “Rude Awakening #2.” This instrumental starts off sounding very much like a standard CCR tune, before morphing into something else altogether. It’s definitely psychedelic, but also has dramatic qualities. To my ears, it sounds inspired by the Sgt. Pepper’s track, “A Day in the Life.” It’s definitely weird, but, ultimately, the song doesn’t really go anywhere, and after six-plus minutes, “Rude Awakening #2” simply fades out.
 

 
In his autobiography, Fortunate Son, band leader John Fogerty wrote about the track.

The only thing we ever really collaborated on as a band was the six-minute-plus instrumental with sound effects called “Rude Awakening #2.” (Which begs the question, what was “Rude Awakening #1”?). The Beatles had done this “sound collage” called “Revolution 9”; that type of thing was in the air. I’d recorded a beautiful fingerpicking song that I did with a split pickup guitar. I liked the song, but the stuff added on after it is just free-form nonsense. Doug [Clifford, drummer] farts on the track—that was his contribution. So that’s the one and only Creedence collaboration. A masterpiece? No.

 
I would definitely agree that “Rude Awakening #2” isn’t CCR’s pièce de résistance, but I think the comparison to “Revolution 9” is more apt in regard to an even more bizarre Creedence work.
 

 
A couple of months prior to the release of Pendulum, a promotional-only CCR 45 was sent to radio stations. The two-part “45 Revolutions Per Minute” was described by Fogerty in Fortunate Son as a “little two-sided narrative for the fans.”
 

 
While the text on the cover of indicates the 7-inch is “meant to thank radio disc jockeys,” the record is, in part, a parody of the sort of interviews in which band members are asked the usual, banal questions by dopey DJ’s. It’s also the strangest thing Creedence ever issued, an avant-garde exercise with lots of tape manipulations and sound effects. Think “Revolution 9” and the Beatles’s wild comedy number, “You Know My Name (Look up the Number).”
 
More after the jump…

 
Released in December 1967, Their Satanic Majesties Request had the working title of Cosmic Christmas, and the Stones imagined it on display in the shops at Christmastime with a 12” x 12” photo of Mick Jagger’s crucified, nude body on the cover. Or so I read in Billboard:

… the Stones originally wanted to call the LP Cosmic Christmas and have its cover featuring Jagger naked and nailed to a cross, Jesus-style. The band’s label, aka the only parent left in the room at this point, nixed it.

A vestige of the concept survives on the finished album in the form of “Cosmic Christmas,” aka “We Wish You a Cosmic Joke,” several seconds of music tacked on to the end of side one after “Sing This All Together (See What Happens).” The unlisted track, an electronic rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with psychedelic percussion, is often credited as a Mellotron performance by Bill Wyman, but I believe the few sources that identify the instrument as an oscillator. According to fan lore, you’re supposed to change the speed from 33 to 45 when “Cosmic Christmas” comes on; I’ve embedded a YouTuber’s approximation of the sped-up version below.
 

 
A clever bootlegger pressed “Cosmic Christmas” onto a green vinyl single, mono on one side, stereo on the other, and slipped it into a seven-inch replica of Satanic Majesties’ inner sleeve. A comment on Discogs say this legit-looking “promotional” release came out in ‘78 or ‘79. Could the bootlegger have been trying to steal some Xmas cheer from Keith’s “Run Rudolph Run”? What kind of monster would do that?
 
An amateur comparison of ‘Cosmic Christmas’ at regular and fast speeds:
 

 
More after the jump…

 
According to his parents David Bowie was a smart kid. He was rolling paper into a typewriter and tapping keys writing gobble-de-gook lines and even using a phone—the old-fashioned rotary kind—by the time he was three. His parents thought he was special, just like every parent does, but they were right. They never talked to him as child, no baby talk, no goo-goo, ga-ga, they treated him as a mini-adult because they thought him smart, intelligent, someone who had chutzpah, someone who just might do something. Not that his teachers thought the same. He was an average student who could always do better. One former school friend (Trevor Blythe) said of him:

‘He was a very bright guy, but he never applied himself. He was fairly good at art, but overall he tended to wander through. He was a butterfly. I was old-fashioned and could knuckle down and do the job. He was the opposite to that. There was a creative spirit, but no-one could’ve guessed where it was headed.’

Bowie was born David Robert Jones on a cold foggy Wednesday morning, January 8th, 1947. His old man, “John” Hayward Stenton Jones (b. 1912) was a fairly well-to-do Yorkshire man, who had inherited £4,000 (mega bucks in those days) from his parents which he quickly invested in setting-up and managing a London nightclub near King’s Cross in 1933. It seemed a fairly good investment. Jones met his first wife, a singer called Hilda Sullivan, at the club. They got married. When the club inevitably ran into financial difficulty due to a lack of experience, Jones bailed and spent the last of his inherited wealth on a joint-partnership running a seedy bar in London’s notorious Soho district. He was conned by his business partner who split with most of the cash and left Jones “holding the can.” His fall was buffered by the start of the Second World War. Jones signed-up with the Eighth Army and served the duration of the war. By 1945, his marriage to Hilda was over, but the pair didn’t divorce.

Bowie’s mother, Margaret Mary Burns (b. 1913) came from a working-class family of six ruled by a violent and brutal ex-soldier of a father. Burns was rebellious and left home at the age of fourteen. She became a nanny and had a brief relationship with a wealthy businessman. She became pregnant to this man, who quickly abandoned her, and had a son named Terrance (b. 1937). The child was given to her parents to raise. Burns took up work in a factory where she met another man and fell pregnant once more. This time she had a daughter Myra Ann (b. 1943), who was given up for adoption. Burns never saw her daughter again. After the war, Burns met Jones while she was working as a waitress/usherette. The pair lived together, as Jones was still technically married to his first wife Sullivan. In 1947, the couple’s son David was born, and the family lived in a terraced home at 40 Stansfield Road, Brixton. Eight months later, Jones was divorced and he married Burns.

Bowie was the focus of his parents’ love. His older half-brother Terry was never quite considered part of the family. However, it was Terry who first guided Bowie towards jazz, rock ‘n’ roll and the literature of the Beats.

Bowie was precocious as a child. At junior school he was known as a bit of schoolyard scrapper, but he was always considered bright, smart, and someone to watch, if only he would work just that little bit harder. But Bowie’s mind was elsewhere. He was looking for something else. This came the day he saw one of his cousins dance to Elvis Presley’s record “Hound Dog.” As he later said:

‘I had never seen [my cousin] get up and be moved so much by anything. It really impressed me, the power of the music. I started getting records immediately after that. My mother bought me Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill” the next day. And then I fell in love with the Little Richard band. I never heard anything that lived in such bright colours in the air. It really just painted the whole room for me.’

Bowie was nine years old when that occurred. He formed his first band the Konrads when he was fifteen. He was twenty-two when he hit the charts with “Space Oddity.”
 

 

 
More young Bowie, after the jump…

 
I normally don’t post about a film I haven’t yet seen but I’m saving Possum until the holidays are here—I gotta have something fun to watch—so allow me to concentrate on the film’s remarkable soundtrack. That I have heard, and if the film it accompanies is half as good (or even a quarter as creepy) it’s gonna make for the perfect Christmas day horror movie.

Possum, by the way, tells “the story of a disgraced children’s puppeteer who returns to his childhood home and is forced to confront his wicked stepfather and the secrets that have tortured him his entire life.” The film is the directorial debut of Matthew Holness, who American audiences will know as the star and co-creator/writer of the classic British TV cult comedy Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. (Along with Holness’ hilarious portrayal of self-absorbed/delusional sci-fi and horror writer Marenghi—“author, dream weaver, visionary, plus actor”—this show also marked the breakout roles for Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry and Alice Lowe.) The film is an adaption of Holness’ short story of the same title.

The original score for Possum was created by the recently revived Radiophonic Workshop, the pioneering BBC electronic sound laboratory responsible for the Doctor Who theme and the sound effects for a host of radio and television programs over the past sixty years. You would think that at least once during their long association that the Radiophonic Workshop would have scored at least one feature film for theatrical release, or collaborated on a major score for something together, but this has not been the case. Until now. And what a fascinating and major piece it is, reminding the listener of Ennio Morricone’s anxiety-ridden giallo scores and the darkest soundscapes of Coil.

Holness and the film’s editor Tommy Boulding had used sound cues from the Radiophonic Workshop in their rough cut and approached the newly reformed group about using their archival work in the film. To their delight the Radiophonic Workshop offered to do an original score.

And if all that wasn’t enough to pique your interest—and it should have been—the Possum soundtrack features sound elements and drones taken from the archives of Delia Derbyshire who famously created the original Doctor Who theme. These elements were discovered in boxes of tapes stored in the late composer’s attic, have been restored and were used in the foundations of the film’s scary/tense soundtrack and sound design.
 
Continues after the jump…

 
Matt Groening made his comedic name in the 1980s with the brutally nihilistic alternative comic Life In Hell (a favorite of mine in high school) and went on to far greater fame as the creator of the animated Simpson family as well as the TV series Futurama and Disenchanted.

One of Groening’s early forays into comedy occurred in 1972 when, as a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, he co-directed, co-wrote, and appeared in “Drugs: Killers or Dillers?,” a parody of the many inauthentically “authoritative” anti-drug propaganda film strips of that era. National Lampoon and the Firesign Theatre were a very big deal when Groening, Tim Smith, and Jim Angell teamed up to create the nine-and-a-half-minute movie—and you can see that influence pretty strongly here. The movie is amateurish but pretty good, considering.
 

 
Groening appears in the opening bit as a hippie degenerate who drinks way too much LSD. My favorite gag involves the eventual demise of a pair of cavemen who pop up to illustrate the origins of drug consumption. The montage of the various types of drugs is quite amusing as well.

The first title card of the movie reads “A TEENS FOR DECENCY PRESENTATION.” When Groening appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in 1989—there’s no way I didn’t watch this episode when it first aired—he mentioned that when he was in high school, he started a group by that name because a teacher had referred to Groening and his friends as “teens for filth.” The group’s motto was “If you’re against decency, what are you for?” and all the members secured election to the student body offices, yay.

Oddly, Fox, the network that hired Groening to make The Simpsons—the same network that series would eventually save from oblivion—was run by a man named Diller.
 
Watch the movie after the jump…......
 

Portrait by Laurie Griffiths
 
Graham Duff is a music obsessive and prolific writer. His TV series include Ideal, The Nightmare Worlds of H.G. Wells, Hebburn and Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, plus the radio shows Nebulous, Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show, Stereonation and the forthcoming The Absence of Normal.  He has his own on line music show Graham Duff’s Mixtape and his book Foreground Music is being published in the autumn by Strange Attractor.  Here are Graham’s picks for the best albums of 2018:

20. CRAYOLA LECTERN – Happy Endings

 
Sometimes melancholic, sometimes brimming with love,, Happy Endings is a tender and ambitious collection. Opener “Rescue Mission” sets the tone with its sky bound melody underpinned by Chris Anderson’s thoughtful piano work and keening vocal. Elsewhere, “Barbara’s Persecution Complex” is like a silent film musical soundtrack in miniature, whilst the goosebump inducing “Submarine” recalls Roxy Music circa Siren. Giant Moon Up in the Sky takes things in a more folk-rock (or should that be folk horror?) direction. If you’re a fan of Matching Mole, early Eno or late Cardiacs, this is an album that could easily touch your heart.

19. VESSEL – Queen of Golden Dogs

 
The previous album from Vessel (aka Sebastian Gainsborough) was 2014’s Punish Honey, which mixed an open-ended approach to techno with the celestial strangeness of Coil. Queen of Golden Dogs is something completely different. These pieces largely jettison the beats of previous recordings, in favor of a curiously fashioned chamber music. The album still features Gainsborough’s haunted and occasionally manic electronics, but also foregrounds string arrangements and choral movements. The decorous and courtly “Arcanum For Christalla,” or the largely vocal “Torno-me eles e nau-eu For Remedios” could be the soundtrack to an off-kilter 18th century drama. A unique release.

18. CLOUD – Plays With Fire

 
Tyler Taormina’s Long Island-based ensemble has returned with a wide angled album that takes in a range of textures. The opening “Happer’s Laugh” sounds like a stripped back Spiritualized circa Laser Guided Melodies, all slow waves of distortion and bright arpeggios.  At the other end of the spectrum, “Two Hands Bound” is an upbeat pop tune about being trapped in a job you hate. There is a wonderful balance of sadness and optimism throughout the album and Taormina’s innate sense of taste means both the song’s arrangements and their sequencing combine to make up a classic collection.

17. MAP 71 – Void Axis

 
Brighton-based Map 71 is Andy Pyne on synths, programming and live drums, with spoken words from Lisa Jayne. Jayne’s unaffected delivery is never less than compelling and on pieces such as “The Prefab” she describes scenarios in a prose that is paired down yet extremely vivid. Pyne’s production has a real immediacy, and on “The Future Edge,” he seems to have constructed a compulsive rhythmic loop from a live jack plug being tapped. But the highlight is “Nuclear Landscapes” where Jayne’s calm, near whispered vocal rides over rolling, tribal floor toms, pierced with darts of splintering electricity.

16. HOLON – Disruptive Technology

 
Based in Ontario Canada, Holon has been releasing warm melodic electronica since the turn of the century, and with Disruptive Technology, he presents his best set yet. The whole album is very much of one mood, laying rich, propulsive synth lines over craftily programmed beats to create a sound that draws on electronic music’s past as much as its future. “Connection Severed” is constantly unspooling melody evinces a strong emotive tug, whilst “Whatever The Future Holds” strikes an autumnal tone, as sheets of detuned noise are studded with bright percussive beads. If you think electronic music lacks emotion, this album could persuade you otherwise.

15. JUST MUSTARD – Wednesday

 
Hailing from Dundalk in Ireland, the oddly named Just Mustard have a sound that is big, bold and dramatic. There’s more than a hint of shoegaze about their music, with guitars used as much to create atmospheric textures as they are to carve out riffs. But there are other influences at play here. Album opener “Boo” sounds like Killing Joke reimagined by Massive Attack. “Tennis” is a creaking narcotic haze, with airy female vocals floating above the spacious soundscape, whilst the highlight may well be “Pigs” which suggests the grandeur of early Seefeel with its uneasy tones and throbbing bass line.

14. CHEF – AC1D

 
AC1D is an album of two distinct halves. The first six tracks show a firm grasp of the power of electronic minimalism. Here Chef unboxes a strain of sleek, insistent beats that recall the pure drive of early Underground Resistance. These are adorned with the kind of bubbling 303 acid lines that can only lead to the dance floor. On the title track, or the unstoppable “L1F3 15 0N1Y @ DR34M” Chef creates a sensual but hard-edged vision of contemporary acid house. The closing four tracks have a gentler, breezier tone, as if to soundtrack a chill out session following the excesses of the acid drenched first half. But by then Chef has earned the right to change the recipe as he sees fit.

13. IMMERSION – Sleepless

 
Whilst warmly percolating analogue synths are still at the heart of Immersion’s sound, Sleepless sees the duo broadening their sonic pallet to encompass, guitars, drums and bass as well as a guest appearance from Matt Schultz of Holy Fuck. “Off Grid” kicks off with the infectious sound of a four-string tenor guitar, but it’s soon joined by flickering synths and one of Malka Spigel’s characteristically spacious bass lines. “Manic Toys” is a distinctly up-tempo track that comes across as some kind of weird deep space hoe-down. For a duo who once titled an album Low Impact, this is most definitely Immersion in high impact mode.

12. LINGUA NADA – Snuff

 
Here’s a band that appears to triangulate their sound using post-hardcore, experimental rock and some kind of fragmented bubblegum pop. There’s a Beefheartian glee to some of the sudden and unexpected changes in time signature in this Leipzig band’s music, and it has to be said, their arrangements are pin sharp. There’s also an eagerness to frequently change texture and tone. By the end of opening track “Svrf Party,” the band have already gone through enough ideas for a whole album. On “Cyanide Soda,” they take their guitar heavy sound through a series of evolutions that most bands couldn’t begin to navigate, ending unexpectedly with a mid 80’s synth disco groove.

11. WE ARE THE CITY – At Night

 
This is an album that gilds its hooks with ragged edges of dissonance. “When I Dream, I Dream of You” is a gorgeous construction, wherein an aching vocal melody balances atop a heavily phasing and flanging drum loop. At the other end of the scale, “Peachland At Midnight” is a gauzy instrumental with a skeletal piano line walking through a landscape of faint and fluttering synth noises. Meanwhile, the closing “To Get It Right You Have To Get It Wrong Sometimes” sees We the City marrying both approaches.  At Night isn’t an easily pigeon-holed suite of songs, and its greatest strength may well lie in the band’s willingness to embrace imperfections.

10. KING OF THE RING 1998 – Beardless Youth

 
These recordings could easily be labeled as experiments in tape and sound manipulation, thus relegating them to being of only minority interest. Yet KOTR1998 has created an album rich in soul and warmth. “Fear Itself” is an emotional joy ride featuring a sweetly shuddering tape melody, “Neon Narcissist” is a constantly tumbling cluster of lo-fi sound fragments, whilst “Drowning” sounds like a half-speed lounge singer being slowly submerged in a strange sonic swamp—but the end result is oddly moving. This will not please everybody, but for those willing to surrender themselves to KOTR1998’s unusual soundworld, the rewards are substantial.

9. SOPHIE STRAUSS – Hard Study

 
A follow up to Strauss’ luscious 2015 debut Yeah No Fine, this short, sweet album shows distinct advances not only in her songwriting but also in her arrangements. As ever, Strauss’ lyrics largely focus on communication, or the lack of it within romantic relationships. “Joan of Arc” is a sparkling shiver of a song, whereas “Text” is languid and listless, shimmering with unresolved sexual tension. But the album’s centerpiece is “Aphids.” With its gently nagging melody and its chorus of “He hit me, and it felt like shit,” it’s one of the year’s best songs. Strauss’ work is subtle and intimate and demands repeated listening.

8. JOBS – Log on For The Free Chance To Log on For Free

 
Boasting the year’s best album title, this is a debut set that cares little for categorization or trends. Their sound changes throughout the album and sometimes throughout individual tracks.The song “Lover,” with its brooding atmosphere and dark chords, could have been plucked from Scott Walker’s Tilt or Drift, whilst “Come to Take” has something of the busy, criss-crossing guitar lines of Dutch Uncles. Meanwhile, “Hardwood” sounds like a band sliding back and forth across the deck of a listing ship. Yet in spite of these various flavors, what emerges is an album with its own strong and confident identity.

7. CHRIS CARTER – Chemistry Lessons Vol.1

 
Carter has always been a genuinely industrious artist. In recent years, aside from tending to Throbbing Gristle’s back catalog, he’s co-created albums and performances with CarterTuttiVoid and provided classy remixes for numerous other artists. Now, nineteen long years since his last solo album, Carter serves up no less than 23 tracks, that prove when it comes to electronic music, few come close to his mastery. “Gradients” is a foggy miasma of slowly snaking tones, whilst “Xmer48” combines depth charge bass notes with heavily treated voices. Fragments of voice appear throughout, yet there are several points when it feels like we might be listening to a long lost recording by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Much more after the jump…

A stunning image of David Bowie as Pierrot with makeup by Australian artist Richard Sharah.
 
There are few images in rock and roll as recognizable as David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane look. With his hair quaffed in a red mullet and a lightning bolt slashed across his face, it is hard to conceive how anyone would not be at least somewhat aware of Bowie in this context. Bowie’s constantly changing personae are, of course, some of his crowning achievements but as we all know, even the greatest artists didn’t become great without a little help from their friends. David Bowie had many incredible collaborators. Here are two which had the great honor of using his face as a canvas.

Bowie’s secret weapons in the makeup department during the 70s were Algerian-born Pierre La Roche, and legendary Australian makeup artist Richard Sharah. La Roche is the man responsible for creating Bowie’s iconic lightning bolt, and the far-out gold sphere Bowie sported on his forehead as Ziggy. Sharah gets the credit for bringing the Pierrot look used for the cover of Scary Monsters and the “Ashes to Ashes” video to life. However, both men have made other impactful contributions to the world of makeup. Let’s start with the late Richard Sharah.

Richard Sharah’s unique makeup style helped inspire the looks of the New Romantic movement. Sharah’s working relationship with designer Zandra Rhodes (who dressed Freddie Mercury and Queen during the 1970s) lasted for decades. Sharah was slightly color blind—something his fans and students believed only enhanced his artistic ability. Taking things a step further, Sharah also made his own products, therefore, creating truly singular work for his clients which in addition to Bowie included Visage’s Steve Strange and a makeup icon in his own right, Divine (pictured below).
 

Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead) in makeup done by Richard Sharah.
 
Pierre La Roche left his native Algiers and made his way to France while still in his teens, though he wouldn’t stay long. His next move was to England, where he worked for cosmetics giant Elizabeth Arden. While with EA, David Bowie would hire La Roche to do his makeup for his 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, keeping him around to take care of business for the 1973 live concert film where Bowie retired Ziggy. Here’s more from LaRoche on Bowie’s “perfect” face:

He had the perfect face for makeup, even features, high cheekbones, and a very good mouth.

And boy, the man should know, as he spent the better part of the 1970s working on Bowie’s beloved mug. In 1971, he painted Bowie’s eyelids blue to compliment the famous turquoise suit worn in the “Life on Mars” video. In 1973 for the album Pin Ups, La Roche made both Bowie and supermodel Twiggy look gorgeously futuristic. In 1975 La Roche would work on the influential cult film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where he was given the opportunity to create Dr. Frank N. Furter’s diabolical, sweet transvestite face, famous tattoos, as well as other characters for the film. As history has proven, this and the other images he concocted for RHPS are indelible, as are his other contributions, which strongly influenced the look of glam rock.
 
Much more make-up, after the jump…

 
Christmas Evil is a psychological horror movie about a unstable man obsessed with Christmas. He becomes increasingly unhinged over the course of the film, eventually donning a Santa Claus costume to deliver toys—and kill. First screened in 1980, Christmas Evil is a high quality B-movie, and has developed a much deserved cult following over the years. Its most famous supporter is John Waters, who’s been a vocal fan of the film for decades. Lewis Jackson, the writer/director of Christmas Evil, credits Waters with both the picture’s revival and his own re-embracing of a project he had put so much into decades prior, before it all slipped from his grasp.

Filming of Christmas Evil largely took place during the November-December 1979 holiday season, a moment Jackson had been preparing for for some time. He first came up with the idea for the film after he smoked a joint and saw an image of Santa Claus holding a knife.
 

 
Jackson worked for years on the script, and envisioned a mainstream, big budget movie. While Hollywood liked his finished script, they felt the concept was just too strange. Jackson did secure a modest $450,000 to shoot the picture—a budget he would ultimately exceed by $400,000.

For the crucial lead role of Harry Stadling, Jackson had met with a number of famous actors, including Peter Boyle, but they all passed on the project. Jackson was then introduced to a little-known actor who was primarily a Broadway performer. This was Brandon Maggart.

I met him, and I saw something. It was a gamble, because basically his looks were not like a movie star. But he brought something to it. When I look back now, there were some moments with him in the screen test where you see the performance completely whole. He brought that musical comedy quality to it. It comes from another place. It’s off kilter. It appealed to me. I cast him and we started shooting a couple of days later. (from Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990: A State-by-State Guide with Interviews)

Maggart’s the father of singer/songwriter Fiona Apple, who was three years old when Christmas Evil was released.
 

 
In the opening minutes of Christmas Evil, we see Harry, as a child, witnessing a sexually-charged exchange between his mother and father—who’s dressed as Santa Claus—which greatly disturbs the boy. The film then fast-forwards to the present, in which an adult Harry is preoccupied with Christmas, and either thinks he is, or wants to be, Santa. He spies on neighborhood children, noting whether they are “good” or “bad.” At the same time, he maintains a job at a toy factory, seeming to live a normal life to those around him, but privately becoming more and more crazed. It’s all very creepy and unnerving.
 

 
On November 6th, 1980, an advance screening of what Jackson was then calling You Better Watch Out took place at a theater in Pittsburgh. “It’s about the myth of Santa Claus as he was known in the 19th century,” Jackson told The Pittsburgh Press, describing his film. “He was regarded then as a moral arbiter, a figure to denote good and band. The idea was: Be good or Santa will bring you something bad.” He also equated it to a fairy tale, in which “violent and lovely things,” as well as “horrible and fantastic” events occur.
 

 
Though he had to work with a smaller budget, Jackson found that because there wasn’t as much at stake, financially, he was able to stick to his vision—for the most part. He did lose some control over the final edit, and the title was changed. Jackson didn’t realize it would be called Christmas Evil until he was a handed a poster with that title.

Christmas Evil was the first film to depict Santa Claus as a killer, and there were expectations that the movie would be a slasher, in the spirit of Halloween. But the movie is really a character study, with the pacing of an art film, and the first murder doesn’t take place for a while. Horror ‘zine writers, who were expecting gore—and lots of it—were disappointed. After a bunch of negative reviews and just a few screenings, Christmas Evil faded away.
 

 
One viewer who totally understood the film was John Waters, who first saw Christmas Evil in a Baltimore theater. When it came out on VHS, Waters would screen the picture during his Christmas parties. In the “Why I Love Christmas” chapter in his 1987 book, Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters, the Pope of Trash unironically praises Christmas Evil, writing that it’s the “best seasonal film all time,” and a “true cinematic masterpiece,” adding, “I wish I had kids. I’d make them watch it every year and if they don’t like it they’d be punished.”

Much more after the jump…

‘Thomas Jefferson’ by N. C. Wyeth

“Ideas of justice are as timeless as fashions in hats,” the philosopher John Gray writes. Consider a bill submitted to the Virginia Assembly in 1779, proposing some liberal reforms to colonial laws: Bill 64, “A Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments in Cases Heretofore Capital,” penned in Thomas Jefferson’s own hand. Seeking to make murder and treason the only capital crimes, it was progressive legislation for its day. Bill 64, a product of two years’ deliberation by the Committee of Revisors, grouped rape, polygamy and sodomy together, and prescribed the same punishment for each:

Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro’ the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least.

The bill’s extensive footnotes review legal authorities from antiquity through the 18th century on criminal law’s greatest hits, such as arson, robbery, counterfeiting, manslaughter, murder and treason, along with some old standards known to very few of today’s felons, like asportation of vessels and horse stealing. When it comes to the rationale for drilling holes in women’s noses, the footnotes are silent, but there is a lengthy disquisition on buggery. Properly considered, Jefferson writes, buggery subsumes two distinct crimes: buggery of people and buggery of animals, the first of which is a serious transgression, the second a hilarious indiscretion.

Buggery is twofold. 1. with mankind, 2. with beasts. Buggery is the Genus, of which Sodomy and Bestiality are the species. 12.Co.37. says ‘note that Sodomy is with mankind.’ But Finch’s L.B.3.c.24. ‘Sodomitry is a carnal copulation against nature, to wit, of man or woman in the same sex, or of either of them with beasts.’ 12.Co.36. says ‘it appears by the antient authorities of the law that this was felony.’ Yet the 25.H.8. declares it felony, as if supposed not to be so. Britton c.9. says that Sodomites are to be burnt. […] The Mirror makes it treason. Bestiality can never make any progress; it cannot therefore be injurious to society in any great degree, which is the true measure of criminality in foro civili, and will ever be properly and severely punished by universal derision. It may therefore be omitted. It was antiently punished with death as it has been latterly. Ll.Aelfrid.31. and 25H.8.c.6. See Beccaria §.31. Montesq.

Jefferson wrote Madison that the bill’s punishment for rape was a hard sell in the Virginia Assembly, where his colleagues found it “indecent and unjustifiable.” He also would support changing the punishment for rape, but only because, as written, “women would be under [the temptation] to make it the instrument of vengeance against an inconstant lover, and of disappointment to a rival.” I think both reasons amount to anxiety about what women might do with the power to hand out gonadectomies like jaywalking tickets, a development that certainly would have made high school U.S. history textbooks more interesting.

None of these considerations seems to have affected the fate of Bill 64. When it was defeated in 1787, Madison attributed its failure not to the brutal penalties for sex crimes, but to the current “rage against Horse stealers,” who would have faced hard labor rather than the gallows under its permissive code.

Laws come and go; below, Charles Manson dispenses timeless wisdom in his song “Don’t Do Anything Illegal.”
 

 
October 30th may have been what they call a ‘slow news day.’ Gangster Whitey Bulger was murdered in prison. Pharrell sent a cease-and-desist letter to Trump. Kanye now wants to distance himself from politics. Woman who has had sex with twenty ghosts is now engaged to one. Wait wait, hold on - what happened?
 
To me, this was the day that I read one of the most incredible stories of my lifetime. It was a headline that should have run in the National Enquirer or the Daily Mirror. In fact, it probably did.
 
The suspicious timing near Halloween made this international news. I even got a push notification about it. The woman’s name is Amethyst Realm and she is from Bristol, UK. And, as the headlines have stated, she is marrying a spirit. I know what you are probably thinking - this is rubbish. I would think so too, if I didn’t believe her.
 
I needed to learn more about this paranormal love affair, so I reached out to the source herself. We spoke on my radio show about her prior relationships, proposal, and plans for the wedding. If any of the below speaks to you in ways like it impacted me, remember, she’s working on a book.
 
Bennett Kogan: Okay, just to make sure I understand this correctly. Your fiancé is – a spirit?

Amethyst Realm: Yes, that’s correct.
 
And this isn’t your first spirit lover… let’s hear a little bit about your past experiences with the occult.

I’ve always been very open spiritually and aware of other presences. When I was around eighteen, I moved into a new house and met my first spirit romantically. And since then, I’ve had a few lovers. It’s been… yeah.
 
But that was your first time with a ghost?

Romantically, yes. I’ve always been aware of them. It’s something that’s been sort of normal to me. I can pick up on different presences - like if I were to walk into a room. I’ve always had that kind of sense.
 
How does an intimate relationship with a ghost compare to one with a human?

In a lot of ways, it’s pretty similar. For me it’s totally normal, so I find it quite difficult to explain. We’ll still go out on dates and things like that, but we don’t really need to communicate in the same way than with a partner of this realm. It’s much deeper and a lot more emotion based. And intimate.
 
What was the realization that these encounters would become something that was meant to last for an eternity?

It was just something that felt so much more real and serious. Kind of in the same way if you met someone in the living world that you fell in love with instantly. It was love in first sight, in a way. “Love at first sense,” maybe. When you meet someone, you look into their eyes and feel something. You feel that energy. For us, it’s just that energy.
 
The spirit that you are now engaged to, how did that introduction occur?

I was in the outback of Australia, not looking for anything. Just walking and enjoying the amazing scenery out there. When suddenly I just felt their presence. And it just felt right from the start. I just knew it was a real, serious thing. It wasn’t gonna be a fling.
 
Were you able to address him by a human name?

We never really bothered with names. It wasn’t important. I have now given him a name because it makes it much easier. He showed himself in photo that a friend took of me. He appeared as a ray of light shooting across the photo. So now, I call him “Ray.”
 
Can you visualize his face?

No, because I can’t see him. He definitely has a presence. His energy and emotions form like an emotional shape almost.
 
Are there certain characteristics that you’ve been able to sense since first meeting him?

I guess he feels strong. And very solid and there. Recently I got a reading with some psychics who told me a little bit about what they felt his history was in his past life. And now, I can say that he is male. Before that, it was so unimportant to me what he looked like that I didn’t know what his gender was - and it didn’t matter to me.
 
Is Ray there with you right now?

Yeah, he came back on the plane with me to the UK.
 
And that’s where the proposal occurred?

We went up to Somerset one weekend. And while we were there he really wanted to go to the Wookey Hole Caves, which are quite a ways away. I was a little bit confused by it. Because I’ve always trusted him, but thought maybe he’s got an ex-phantom lover there, or something? It’s a quite heavily haunted spot. So, we went on a tour around the caves. While we were there, he asked me to hang back from the rest of the crowd. And then he proposed.
 
So now you’re engaged and looking forward to the big wedding. What type of ceremonies do you have prepared?

We’re planning a spring wedding, I think. I want kind of something based around a hand-binding ceremony, rather than a traditional wedding. Because obviously, spirits don’t have hands. I’ve been referring to it as a “soul-binding” ceremony. We’ve got a really special venue lined up as well, which is very exciting.
 
Your family and friends, what were their initial reactions to this kind of news?

They were really happy for me. My family and friends are quite alternative, so they’re just happy that I’m happy. They understand that there is more to this world than what you see.
 
It was interesting how the media portrayed your story. I’m looking at a headline right now that just states, “Woman who had sex with 20 ghosts is now engaged to a spirit.”

It seems that the world at the moment is really interested in the concept of alternative relationships versus the traditional ones that everyone has. Of course, I expect some people to disbelieve me. I hope I’ve made those that are having the same experiences as me feel a little more comfortable with it. Or those that aren’t satisfied with a normal, mainstream relationship can feel like there is an alternative.
 
I’m sure people have been reaching out to you since your news went viral.

So many people are asking me if Ray can set them up with one of his spirit friends.
 
I’m definitely open to the opportunity.

I’m in talks with publishers about writing a guide about how to seduce a ghost. It seems like so many people want to do it. I’m hoping that I can educate some people and maybe help them along their path.
 
I’m sure that our everyday paranormal encounters could have escalated into the same experiences that you’ve had. For those who are reading this now and aren’t convinced by your story, what advice do you have to offer them?

I know what’s going on and I know what’s real for me. Keep an open mind and heart. And just be aware of the signs, really.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘GhostWatch’: Before ‘Paranormal Activity’ Banned BBC Drama

 
Each year around this time, I compile a list of what I consider to be the best Christmas gifts for that difficult-to-buy-for rock snob in your life. You know the one. And if you happen to be the rock snob reading this, this is the good stuff. Buy it for yourself.

You will perhaps sense a bit of a 50th anniversary theme going on here, nonetheless, first let me recommend the super deluxe reissue of The Beatles’ White Album. On last year’s Sgt. Pepper’s box set, Giles Martin bestowed upon the world the album that the Beatles would have made had there been 5.1 surround sound in 1967. It stayed true to the original, but nicely expanded it for 21st century audio system capabilities and consumer expectations. In short, it was mind-blowing. This season his gift is this nicely enhanced White Album. Unlike Pepper’s more uniformly hi-fi sound, the White Album is a hodgepodge of various musical and recording/production styles that’s all over the map, which of course is the reason why the collection is so revered five decades later. A different, dirtier, animal, if you will, from its cinemascope predecessor, Martin’s newfangled White Album in 5.1 reveals much and lets each instrument and voice have its own PLACE in the mix. It’s a cleaner White Album to be sure. Obviously there’s more bottom end—McCartney’s bass lines have been nicely accentuated in all Beatles releases issued since 2009—and there are certain elements that stand out in ways they didn’t before, many of them drum fills courtesy of Ringo Starr and the nicely accentuated backing vocals. It also comes with the so-called “Escher Demos” recorded at George Harrison’s house, a sort of “White Album Unplugged,” the original 1968 mono mix in 24bit and outtakes galore. The highlight for me was hearing “Revolution #9” in 5.1 surround. Apocalyptic!
 

 
Isn’t it about time that the Kinks got a pricey box set to call their own? Seems like it’s no coincidence that the 50th birthday of The Kinks are The Village Green Preservation Society is being celebrated with this bursting-at-the-seams box which contains no fewer than FOUR—I mean FIVE—versions of the exact same album. Vinyl in mono, stereo and the Swedish issue (with different cover and two additional songs). CDs with mono and stereo mixes, alt versions, session tracks, audio tracks from BBC TV appearances, live numbers, interviews, etc. You could say that it’s a bit repetitive, overkill even—and you would not be wrong about that—but we’re talking about a Christmas gift here. To be honest, just the Swedish album on vinyl would probably have been enough for me if I was paying the tab, but if I got this as a gift, yeah, I’d be pretty pleased.
 

 
And what do you know there’s a 50th anniversary box set of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland? Who’d have thought someone at the record label would want to turn that event into product? Well…I gotta say, this one is a ripper. In terms of the new 2018 5.1 surround mix, this has to be at, or very near, the top of the list of the best examples of a classic rock album getting a multichannel remake that I’ve ever heard. When Electric Ladyland was originally released it was considered one of the finest illustrations of the capability of two-channel audio (stereo) as had ever been created up to that point and THIS SURROUND MIX DOES NOT DISAPPOINT. As I wrote in a longer post about the 5.1 mix, the “velocity” of Jimi’s playing is taken to another level here entirely; a song like “Crosstown Traffic” makes it from point A to point B without its tires ever touching the ground. This one is safe bet for almost any rock snob, even ones who are only lukewarm Hendrix fans. After this gift, they’ll become the most rabid Jimi fans, trust me. Also unlike the two north-of-$100 items listed above, you can pick this one up for less than fifty bucks. With lots of outtakes, a documentary, book and a new stereo mix, but the star attraction here is the inspired surround mix.

I am a huge, massive, very very big Bobbie Gentry fan. What a great talent she is, occupying a self-created niche somewhere between Joni Mitchell and Las Vegas showbiz. Everything you could possibly want—and more—is present and accounted for on The Girl From Chickasaw County: The Complete Capitol Masters, an 8 CD set in a slick package. The book-length essay about Gentry’s pioneering career—not only was she one of the first major female artists to write and produce her own albums, she was an extremely shrewd businesswoman, and one of the first to collect a really huge paycheck from doing a Vegas residency—is first rate, giving proper context for Gentry’s work for those too young to remember her. I’ve heard that this box set completely sold out of the first run and it rightly deserved to.  A very high quality product. Any major artist would be lucky to get this treatment, even ones that didn’t totally disappear off the face of the Earth nearly 40 years ago.
 

 
Keychains and Snowstorms: The Soft Cell Story box set boasts ten discs (nine CDs and one four-hour long DVD) which is quite a feat for a band that only ever put out three albums proper during its short existence. Much of the material here comes from their 12” releases and EPs, of which there were many. Soft Cell always put a lot of effort into their remixes and b-sides and the quality here is uniformly very high. The mastering is muscular and charges the atmosphere of your listening room like a nightclub’s booming sound system (I could easily see my woofers moving). This is one of those extremely completist sets (like the Gentry box above) where it’s easy to lost in something new. Not that Soft Cell is exactly new, of course, they broke up for the first time in 1984, but it’ll be new to anyone who doesn’t know them beyond “Tainted Love.” With an extremely good book length essay on the career of these unlikely deviant chart toppers.
 

 
I’ve been getting into a lot of 60/70s English folk music during past year—aided ably by Rob Young’s book Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music, an exhaustive 650 page volume that would make a great Xmas gift itself for your rock snob—and I consider the Dust in the Nettles 3 CD anthology (Grape Fruit/Cherry Red) to be an indispensable collection for someone who is always looking for “something new to listen to” as dozens of leads are to be found there. Subtitled “a journey through the British underground folk scene,” it starts off strong with Pentangle’s “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme,” which is immediately followed by the seductive “Willow’s Song” from The Wicker Man soundtrack. (Listen to those two songs in a row and see if you don’t agree.) Also included are stunning numbers by Joan Armatrading, Bill Fay, the Incredible String Band and Vashti Bunyan, but the song here that I became obsessed with is “Amanda” by Steve Peregrin Took’s Shagrat, the tale of a smiling cropier, gambling on love and much amphetamine. I simply cannot recommend Dust in the Nettles highly enough, it’s amazing from start to finish and it’s a gift that will keep on giving with the discovery of new artists on it. (If you don’t have anyone to buy this for, just buy it for yourself.)
 

 
In late 2017 several early Brian Eno classics came out pressed across two twelve inch 180 gram vinyl platters that play at 45rpm. Using the half speed mastering process at Abbey Road, albums like Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) and Here Come the Warm Jets had a new coat of audiophile gloss put on them that I found mighty attractive and now they’re releasing four of his ambient albums, Discrete Music, Ambient 1: Music for Airports, the enigmatic Music for Films and the mighty On Land, which is my favorite. The sound of these is, predictably, the best you’re ever gonna hear, much more tactile than any CD could ever be, but I couldn’t help but to notice that the meditative “put it on in the background” functionality of Eno’s ambient works is disrupted, if not made entirely moot, by the fact that you have to get up and flip the platter every ten minutes! (The first piece on Discrete Music is cut in half.) Still they’re pretty cool and I will admit to listening to On Land loud enough to threaten a tectonic shift underneath my house. Background music? Only if you want it to be. These also comes in standard single LP 33rpm versions which are apparently made from the exact same master.

Dylan Jones’ superb oral history David Bowie: A Life came out last year, but I was a bit Bowie’d out at the time and although I bought it, I never actually picked it up and read it until recently. Having read practically every major book about David Bowie (starting with The David Bowie Story by George Tremlett, which I had memorized when I was a lad) this is without question my favorite of them all. I enjoyed it immensely and wish it had been ten times as long as its 500+ pages. It’s a terrifically entertaining book full of candid and charming anecdotes about the man. The matter of his work ethic (even when he was out of his mind on heaps of cocaine) comes up often, as does his graciousness and true kindness. David Bowie as a human, in other words, not a rock god. The wonderfully hilarious Roger Moore story is my absolute favorite, but there are several more.

The “rock” memoir is, I will admit it, one of my favorite literary genres, and Playing the Bass with Three Hands by Will Carruthers—who’s been in Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Spectrum, and others—is one of my favorites in recent memory. Extremely well-written, this look back at a life lived to the chemical extreme, often in hand-to-mouth poverty and working (literally) shitty jobs to avoid penury whilst a member of several world famous rock bands, has got to be the most brutally honest rock memoir since… The End by James Young? Carruthers has a gift for charmingly observed first person narration that makes this book such a pleasure despite all the drugs, destitution and offal. In the future this book will be read as history to understand what it was like to live in the 80s and 90s.
 

 
And lastly there is the beautifully published Stories for Ways and Means published by Waxploitation’s Jeff Antebi and featuring “grown up” children’s story collaborations from the likes of Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Joe Coleman, Laura Marling, Alison Mosshart, Gary Numan, Gibby Haynes, Kathleen Hanna, Anthony Lister, Frank Black, Devendra Banhart, Will Oldham and many others. The world of contemporary art meets some of the most compelling storytellers in music and the results are between the cover of this gorgeous, slick book with a mission of supporting nonprofit children’s organizations and NGOs around the world. Buy it here.
 

Watch ‘Circus,’ an animated short of Joe Coleman’s art set to a short story by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan and narrated by Ken Nordine, as seen in the book ‘Stories for Ways and Means.’
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Jimi Hendrix REALLY HATED his album covers
Electric Xmasland: Jimi Hendrix dressed as Santa Claus, 1967
Life is Unfair: Black Box Recorder want you to kill yourself or get over it
Animated children’s stories by Nick Cave, Gary Numan, Will Oldham, Tom Waits, Laura Marling & more!
Keychains and Snowstorms: The Soft Cell Story

Surgery to correct strabismus, a misalignment of the eyes.
 
The artist Francis Bacon spent many hours poring over illustrated medical books looking at surgical procedures on mouth and tongue cancer, hare-lip correction, and tracheotomies. He declared these image beautiful, in particular the way in which the artist had used color to represent a tongue or a mouth. It was something he tried to recreate in his own paintings. Bacon was a voracious reader. After his death, more than 1,000 of his books were donated to Dublin’s Trinity College History of Art Department and the City Gallery, the Hugh Lane. Among this collection are works by Beckett, Nietzsche, T. S. Eliot, De Beauvoir, Elizabeth David cookery books, and a well-used set of medical textbooks, some illustrated by Frank Netter, others containing work by Joseph Pancoast (1805-82).

Pancoast was an American surgeon who pioneered many techniques in surgery and in particular plastic surgery. He also wrote the highly influential book A Treatise on Operative Surgery, first published in 1844, which compiled various surgical procedures or “processes” that exhibited the “state of surgical science in is present advanced condition.” The book contained some 80 color-plates and 486 illustrations, and was further enlarged in 1846.

Illustrations from another medical book that caught Bacon’s interest was Précis iconographique de médecine opératoire et d’anatomie chirurgicale by Claude Bernard (1813-1878), a French physiologist, who has been described as “one of the greatest of all men of science.” Bernard was the first to use “blind experiments” by which information is kept from the participants to eliminate any possible bias. He also believed scientists must endeavor to disprove their own theories as scientists can “solidly settle” their ideas “only by trying to destroy [their] own conclusions by counter-experiments.”

Like Bacon, I’ve had a long fascination with old medical textbooks and their illustrations as I find the artists’ depictions of surgery and disease beautifully capture the essential frailty of the human condition. However, some readers may find a few of the following illustrations potentially disturbing. You have been warned.

 

The removal of cataracts.
 

Surgery for correcting a harelip.
 

Ear surgery.
 
Far more disturbing surgical procedures, after the jump….
 

 
Pete Shelley died late last week, a very sad day for all of us at Dangerous Minds. He will be missed.

Everyone reading this knows that Shelley played an important role in the UK punk scene as the lead vocalist and songwriter for Buzzcocks and was an important new wave innovator as a solo artist. Over the weekend John Coulthart called attention to an aspect of Shelley’s career I hadn’t known about, his innovative use of computer technology to create alternative means of enjoying music in the televisual age.

On the cover of Shelley’s first proper solo album, 1981’s Homosapien, a dandified version of the artist perches awkwardly in an extremely 1980s sort of “office” that featured (among other objects) a pyramid, a phrenologist’s skull, and, significantly, a Commodore Pet, which was one of the first personal computers sold directly to consumers, in the late 1970s. Wittingly or no, that Pet would signal a bold direction Shelley would take on his 1983 follow-up, XL•1, which featured a suite of “videos” to accompany each of the album’s songs that consisted entirely of computer graphics. The program was programmed by Joey Headen for the ZX Spectrum, a home computer of that moment that served as the approximate British equivalent to the Commodore 64 in the United States. (Remember: If you’re not pronouncing it “Zeddex Spectrum,” you’re not saying it right.)

According to Headen, Shelley, an early adopter of the ZX Spectrum, wrote a simple program in BASIC that would display the words to one of his songs in response to a series of key presses. Eventually, with the help of some computer-savvy friends, Shelley put together a test of a program that would run without requiring human intervention—using Wire’s “A Question of Degree” as the guinea pig. Shelley liked the results so much that for a time he would enthusiastically show the program off to houseguests.
 

 
Shelley’s producer Martin Rushent was (like Shelley) quite technophilic and thus instrumental in making the ZX Spectrum version of XL•1 come into being. Rushent’s home studio was technologically forward-looking enough that in 1983 the magazine MicroComputer Printout would quip that his mixing desk “looks like something out of Star Wars.” Rushent invited Headen and another programmer named Francis Cookson up to his home studio to work on the program while Shelley cut the tracks for the album. Headen later reminisced:
 

We decided the program was going to be divided into 10 different sections, one for each song. Each song was going to have a different graphical look.

The lower third of the screen, 8 lines of text, would contain the lyrics. I had devised different methods for the text appearing: instantly, slowly, from the side and from the top. These could be used depending on the song. The top part of the screen would be used for graphics. The graphics were kept simple—pixels, lines, circles, color blocks, scrolling horizontally and vertically.

With three weeks until the album was to be finished, I moved down to the hotel to work on the program full time. This was crunch time, and Francis and I spent most of the time working in the hotel room. In fact it took us three days before we realized that there was only one bed in the room and we had to change rooms.

 
Here’s one of the pages Headen saved from that month of work—a lyrics sheet in Shelley’s handwriting for XL•1‘s first track “Telephone Operator.” I’m not sure but the numbers on the right might have been some kind of notation for Headen to keep track of the program’s cues.
 

 
The program was crude but anyone who remembers 1983 at all will testify that such oddities didn’t seem crude whatsoever at the time.
 
After the jump, experience the full multimedia experience of XL•1….......