Topics | Dangerous Minds (2024)

02.23.2017

08:26 am

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A fake magazine designed by Sean Tejaratchi.

Many of you may be well acquainted with the brilliant work of graphic designer and writer Sean Tejaratchi—and as it had sadly been a while since I had visited his awesome Liar Town USA Tumblr. When I did I found it hard to stop clicking on his ludicrous faux books and other odd yet authentic looking magazines and found myself wishing that there was a website that featured photos of things that Marilyn Monroe kicked.

As couldn’t stop yucking it up over at Liar Town USA I thought I’d share a few of my favorite fictional magazines that Tejaratchi put together, most of which center around inappropriate knitwear and unexpected org*sms. Two things that when they appear in the same sentence sound like a great premise for a publication, don’t you think? Someone, please get on that immediately. That said many of the images that follow are NSFW.





More after the jump…

02.23.2017

07:46 am

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International superstars though they may have been, the members of ABBA were not, individually, all that fascinating. If you think the group identity that emerges during, say, their medley of “Pick a Bale of Cotton,” “On Top of Old Smokey,” and “Midnight Special” is less than exciting, check out what Agnetha, Björn, Benny, and Anni-Frid had to say when they met representatives of the press in their capacity as persons. I’m not just being snotty. As I understand it, the absence of personality is a key part of ABBA’s appeal, and I’m all for it. Zero subjectivity—let’s go! In the same way Kraftwerk audiences greet robotic simulacra of Ralf and Florian with ten times the enthusiasm they muster for the actual human beings in the group, I’m counting the days until I can buy tickets to hologram ABBA, even though I probably would not get out of my chair to see plain old meatbag ABBA reform. The collective, or in this case the brand, is everything.

But the ABBA brand itself could not talk to journalists, and compelling TV the meatbags’ interviews did not make. Into this void, BBC cast John Peel, duded up in smarter attire than wardrobe provided on other occasions. Enlivening the proceedings with Peel in this 1993 retrospective were Ray Davies, Elvis Costello, Roy Wood, and Ian McCulloch. Generous helpings of these and other interview subjects, plus clips of ABBA parodies from Not the Nine O’Clock News and French and Saunders, make A for ABBA (in homage to the 1985 TV special A for Agnetha?) the best encapsulation of the band’s story for those of us who are grouchy, impatient, and easily bored.



One thing we cultural anthropologists of the amazing future year 2017 know that contemporary viewers of this program did not: the lone ABBA LP in John Peel’s collection was their disco record, Voulez-Vous. An orthodox ABBA fan, Peel asserts in A for ABBA that Stig Anderson was the group’s fifth member, ignoring the heresy of the Tretowist deviation. Without discipline, the party of ABBA is nothing!

More ABBA after the jump…

02.22.2017

12:40 pm

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Lutes aren’t rock n’ roll, everybody knows that. Lutes are the stuff of medieval folkies. Lutes are for the Incredible String Band or Gentle Giant, not Black Sabbath or Van Halen. At least, that’s what I used to think… and then I heard Dawn Culbertson.

A reclusive but active member of Baltimore’s folk, baroque, and classical scenes for decades, Culbertson was a composer, performer, and radio personality, who hosted an overnight classical music program on John Hopkins University’s radio station for over a decade. She played bass in an avant-garde big band and played lute on the weekends at local restaurants in Baltimore. In 2004, at the still-tender age of 53, she died of a heart attack. She was twirling the night away at a waltz event at the time. If you’re gonna go at 53, you might as well go out dancing.

While she will be surely be fondly remembered in her native Baltimore for her tireless work promoting folk and classical music, to the rest of us, she will remain the undisputed master of what she liked to call “punk lute.” Shortly before she died, Culbertson began performing covers of popular punk and metal songs on her instrument. They are collected on a long out of print and highly sought-after 2011 cassette release, Return of the Evil Pappy Twin. “The Evil Pappy Twin” was her punk lute alter-ego. We all have one. Accompanied by her plaintive, unwavering vocals—a kind of bored monotone drone that really is punk-as-f*ck—these magical covers breathe new life into crusty old nuggets by DEVO, Van Halen, The Ramones, Black Sabbath, the Stooges, Sex Pistols and more, turning them into doomy outsider ballads from the outer edges of sanity.

I honestly like most of her covers way better than the originals!



Check out Culbertson’s desolate take on “Iron Man” below, and listen to the rest of Return of the Evil Pappy Twin here (I can’t embed it).

Further proof that punk is a state of mind, not a costume.

02.22.2017

12:08 pm

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One of the more startling musical transformations in our era was the one that Radiohead pulled off between their 1993 debut album Pablo Honey and their 1995 follow-up The Bends.

It wasn’t just Thom Yorke’s blond locks that cause quite a few critics to liken Pablo Honey to watered-down Nirvana. Pablo Honey got generally lukewarm-to-good reviews at the time—3 stars out of 5 from Rolling Stone, which is the same rating it currently receives at Allmusic.com (it must be admitted that Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s brief review is far more charitable than that rating suggests). And Radiohead’s later successes haven’t shielded the album from vitriol. At Pitchfork, notoriously one of Radiohead’s most unshakable defenders, Scott Plagenhoef gave it a piddling 5.4 out of 10 as late as 2009.

Even that tepid Rolling Stone review ended with the words “Radiohead warrant watching,” but if you had said in 1993 that in less than a decade, Radiohead would be doing arenas with a highly worshipful following and the most ironclad critical reputation in all of rock music, that possibility would have seemed remote indeed. The Bends and OK Computer in 1997 were the astounding one-two punch that few saw coming and set Radiohead up to be the top rock band of the 2000s.

So when I come across a piece of Radiohead press from 1993, I’m inclined to pay attention. I was at the Library and Archives of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland recently, thumbing through a stack of old copies of Ray Gun magazine from the 1990s, something you can only do at a place like that. One of the 1993 issues had a little piece on Radiohead that was inexplicably formatted in an actually readable typeface (rare for that magazine). Here it is (if you click on it, the image will get quite large):



The last bit of the piece reports Yorke’s feelings on whether Radiohead qualifies as “pop” thus:

“Yesss,” he says slowly. “My definition of pop is tapping into something…. my ideal pop song is one that says something people want to hear lyrically and that grabs them by the neck musically. And one that has some sort of depth that moves it beyond a happy tune that you whistle at work. Songs like ‘Under Pressure,’ something that makes you want to fall down on your knees. That to me is the perfect pop song.”

More after the jump…

02.22.2017

11:55 am

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Super Deluxe had a chance to go behind-the-scenes at the RealDoll factory, located in San Marcos, California, and show you how the dolls are really made. There’s nothing, and I mean nothing sexy about the manufacturing of these dolls. In fact, it’s downright creepy. Almost in a Dexter kind of way. The soundtrack to the video doesn’t help either with its creepiness level.

The video, obviously, is NSFW even though it’s only latex body parts. You’ve been warned.

02.22.2017

11:27 am

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‘The Butcher’ (1990).

Not every Russian citizen was pleased to see the end of Communism in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the 1980s and 1990s. Some, like the artist Geliy Korzhev (1925-2012) thought the changes wrought by perestoika were a betrayal of all the lives sacrificed in order to bring true equality to the Russian people. Korzhev thought the great socialist revolution had hardly started before it was being betrayed and abandoned by the politicians who had lived so well from it, while others had paid the price.

Korzhev was a hardline Communist who never gave up his political beliefs. In the 1980s, he began painting grotesque and surreal paintings of this new world of Russian capitalism he and his fellow Soviets were being forced to embrace.

Geliy Mikhailovich Korzhev-Chuvelev studied at Moscow State Art School from 1939-44, where he excelled at drawing and painting and went on to become one of the greatest artists of the approved style of Socialist Realism. According to the Museum of Russian Art:

[Korzhev] is recognized by contemporary Russian art historians as one of the most influential painters of the second half of the 20th century; his work has influenced the style and subjects of two generations of post-WWII Russian artists.

Unwavering in his views, in the late 1990s the artist refused a state award bestowed upon him by the government of the new Russian Federation.

In a note explaining his decision, Korzhev wrote of his motives:

“I was born in the Soviet Union and sincerely believed in the ideas and ideals of the time. Today, they are considered a historical mistake. Now Russia has a social system directly opposite to the one under which I, as an artist, was brought up. The acceptance of a state award would be equal to a confession of my hypocrisy throughout my artistic career. I request that you consider my refusal with due understanding.”

It is said that Korzhev “did not seek to openly criticize the political or social system of contemporary Russia” but from his paintings during this time it is difficult not to see how the political loss of faith in the Soviet state did not affect his work.

In 2001, he said:

“For those who are running the country I have, as Saint-Exupery put it, a deep dislike. Those circles that are currently flourishing and are now at the forefront hold no interest for me. As an artist, I see absolutely no point in studying that part of society. The people who do not fit into this pattern, however - now they are of interest. The ‘superfluous’ men, the outsiders - today, they are many. Rejected, ejected from normal life, unwanted in the current climate… I am interested in their fate, in their inner struggle. As far as I am concerned, they are the real, worthy heroes for the artist.”

Among his last works were a hammer and sickle and portraits of the new Russian Adam and Eva.


‘Real’ (1998).


‘The Butcher #1’ (1990).


‘Mutants’ (1990-93).

More of Korzhev’s weird paintings, after the jump…

02.22.2017

10:44 am

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Enjoy this stellar collection of rare lobby cards that once graced movie theaters all over West Germany. Included in this collection are films from late ‘60s British cinema: comedic spy-fi Modesty Blaise (1966) starring Monica Vitti and Dirk Bogarde, The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966) starring Daliah Lavi, spy comedy film Casino Royale (1967) starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, and Woody Allen, Fathom (1967) starring Raquel Welch, Privilege (1967) starring Manfred Mann’s Paul Jones, The Day the Fish Came Out (1967) starring Candice Bergen, The Jokers (1967) starring Michael Crawford and Oliver Reed, Diamonds for Breakfast (1968) starring Marcello Mastroianni and Rita Tushingham, Duffy (1968) starring James Coburn, spy thriller Hammerhead (1968), swinging sex romp Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968), Oskar Werner drama Interlude (1968), Sebastian (1968) starring Dirk Bogarde and Susannah York, crime film The Strange Affair (1968) starring Michael York, space western Moon Zero Two (1969), and Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969) starring Judy Geeson.


Modesty Blaise (1966)


Modesty Blaise (1966)


Modesty Blaise (1966)


The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966)


The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966)

More after the jump…

02.22.2017

07:33 am

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There’s this intriguing skirt that’s a perfect item for the woman who loves The Shining, Stanley Kubrick’s endlessly compelling 1979 Stephen King adaptation, but doesn’t always want to be too obvious about it. I noticed it at a bar yesterday when I witnessed one woman pay another a sartorial compliment for wearing it. The wearer instantly mentioned that it depicts part of the helicopter shot from the opening sequence of The Shining.

This got my attention, so I inquired further. As fans of the movie will remember, the opening sequence is a lengthy series of shots of a fantastic natural landscape, most of it a bird’s-eye view of a car driving on a road. But the car isn’t in the very first shot; the very first shot was executed over a body of water, a landscape shot taken at Saint Mary Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana.

Here’s a basic shot of the skirt:


Here’s a closer look:


Here’s a picture of the very first shot of The Shining:


It sure as heckfire seems like the same place from the same angle. You can even see a slight irregularity on the base of the mountain on the right side of the picture, it’s the same in both pictures. They’ve f*cked with the colors a bit and given the setting much more of a radioactive neon feel, but it’s the same place.

More after the jump…

02.21.2017

06:56 pm

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Model Pat Evans on the cover of the 1972 Ohio Players album, ‘Pain.’ Photograph by the late Joel Brodsky.

Though it appears at this point we are all collectively reviewing a daily damage report of sorts when it comes to the news, I have more for you to digest today. Though I’m not comparing the heartbreaking losses in the music community in 2016 to the ones we’ve had thus far in this still young year, I have to tell you 2017 hasn’t been all that kind when it comes to the departure of more of our heroes to the great beyond. Case in point is that late last month we lost Walter “Junie” Morrison. The almighty “Funky Worm,” Morrison was an instrumental part of the success of the Ohio Players and long-time Funkadelic, Parliament, P-Funk All-Stars, and George Clinton collaborator. He was only 62.

If it came down to living out the rest of my days listening to music only produced during the 1970s, it would be a sweet, finger-licking piece of cake. Growing up in Boston my folks had a record player and a nice stash of records that they kept in a built-in cabinet in the wall. I would spend a lot of time going through the albums just to look at them, opening up gatefolds and reading liner notes and lyrics. I especially remember being way too big of a fan of the original soundtrack to Star Wars by John Williams and The London Symphony Orchestra which I played over and over again until my folks got tired of that endless loop and started buying other records for me. My love of vinyl (especially vintage vinyl), was instilled in me very early on. So after Junie passed, I started looking back into the OP catalog and became obsessed with the images that graced the group’s early records, most of which feature the enigmatic, instantly recognizable model Pat Evans.


Walter “Junie” Morrison and model Pat Evans.

Evans appeared on several OP album covers in empowering, thought-provoking photographs, many of which were taken by Joel Brodsky. The most famous, but by far not the most controversial being the cover and gatefold of the 1972 album Pain on which Evans’ appears in a leather studded bikini, Rob Halford-style spiked armbands, defiantly clutching a cat o’ nine tails in her hand. And if you think that sounds like a good time, you should see the inside of the gatefold. Damn. Here are a few words from the late Mr. Morrison on the photos, which were his concept and working with the impossibly perfect Evans back in the day from an interview he gave in 2015:

I think the idea of Pain as it was conceived by me in that particular instant, was taken a bit out of context by others with different life experiences. To me, it had to do with a love affair gone wrong, something that most teenaged people can attest to from time to time. My limited experience was translated by New York photographer Joel Brodsky into something a young man from the early ‘70s Midwest would never have imagined. Pat’s incredible presence was carried forth through the remaining Westbound/Ohio Players offerings and to some extent, to their Mercury albums, as well.

Evans would make several more appearances on albums for the Ohio Players including the 1974 album Climax, their last one on Detroit record label Westbound. The gatefold image, again shot by Brodsky, shows Evans appearing to stick a knife in the back of the lucky/unfortunate guy on top of her. The image was chosen by Westbound as a dig at the band who dumped the label and went on to sign with Mercury Records. A year later their first album with Mercury would produce what most consider their most risqué cover for the album Honey. And instead of Evans and Brodsky, it featured Playboy magazine’s Miss October of 1974, Ester Cordet shot by Richard Fegley who photographed, ahem, 69 centerfolds during his 30-year tenure with the magazine.

I’ve included a pretty steamy selection of album covers from the Ohio Players catalog, and every single one of ‘em is NSFW.


The gatefold image inside of ‘Pain.’


Pat Evans and friends in the gatefold image for the 1973 album ‘Ecstasy.’

More after the jump…

02.21.2017

12:28 pm

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Last night I saw a concert by Billy Bragg, whose socialistic music and entire socialistic stee*z has taken on new ultra-relevance in an era in which Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America. Bragg was suitably fired up, and you can be sure he whipped the audience at Cleveland’s Music Box Supper Club into a righteous frenzy before the night was out.

Opening was the venerable Jon Langford of the Mekons, and he told an amusing story from the stage involving Johnny Cash. The starting point was the ‘Til Things Are Brighter project, which Langford and former Fall member and later BBC deejay Marc Riley spearheaded as a way to pay homage to Cash. This was the late 1980s—seven years after Cash was nearly killed by an ostrich in 1981—and Cash’s stock was at a relative nadir. As Langford explained, Cash was a bit dejected because it looked for all the world like his productive career was over and he had little to look forward to beyond a lengthy dotage and an inevitable slide to obscurity.

The roster of musicians is rather eye-popping. The album opens with Michelle Shocked, whose breakthrough album Short Sharp Shocked came out the same year, doing “One Piece At A Time.” Pete Shelley of the Buzzco*cks covered “Straight A’s In Love” while Cabaret Voltaire‘s Steven Mallinder took on “I Walk the Line.” The Triffids’ David McComb gave “Country Boy” his best while Langford’s Mekons and Riley played “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Wanted Man,” respectively.

All thirteen backing tracks were recorded by Langford and Riley and their house band in one day at RikRak Studio in Leeds, and the vocal tracks were picked up as various opportunities arose over the next several weeks. As the Guardian’s Graeme Thomson wrote in 2011,

Langford recalls that Marc Almond, the one “proper” pop star taking part, came in and “told me I’d cut “Man in Black” in the wrong key. He had a horrible fit in the studio. Sally [Timms, from the Mekons] talked him down and coaxed this fantastic performance out of him, but I think he was a bit nervous. It was maybe a bit odd for him to be doing Johnny Cash songs.”

Odd perhaps, but Timms did some good work there—Almond’s vocal track is arguably the best thing on the album.

One of Langford and Riley’s clever ideas was to have Mary Mary, the (male) singer of the Grebo band Gaye Bykers on Acid execute a cover of Cash’s classic song “A Boy Named Sue.” They were concerned that Cash might not be enthusiastic being covered by anybody associated with a band of that name, but not a bit of it, he was totally open to it and found the idea entirely amusing.

Keep reading after the jump…