Sweet Freedom

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Saturday Music Club: some Continental '60s rock television and other contemporary ferment

The Kinks in France, 1965:

Beat Club (Germany): Pacific Gas & Electric, the Kinks, Chuck Berry (with a Very sober young woman giving background on Berry's career and importance), the Grateful Dead, the Doors (post-Morrison), and the Rolling Stones.

Pop Gear (released in the US as Go Go Mania as the slang didn't travel) with notable molester Jimmy Savile as host--happily, barely onscreen.

Os Mutantes on French TV (which typoes their name): "Bat Macumba" & "Panis Et Circensis"

Fanny on French television--terrible recording of excellent performance of "Badge"; the beginning notes only of "Young and Dumb" (circa 1970).

"Bitter Wine"

...and their first album which features it and the studio cover of "Badge", Fanny and their second, Charity Ball.

Better performance video of Fanny, among others.

The Yardbirds Story

The Ace of Cups: "Simplicity"

The Ace of Cups: "Circles"

The Ace of Cups in 1967 and in 2017
The Ace of Cups: "Afro-Blue"
Abbey Lincoln: "Afro-Blue"

The Luv'd Ones: I'm Leaving You

"Portrait"

The Liverbirds: "He's About a Mover"
(Liverpudlian band, named for local bird species: "Laiv-er-birds")

Friday, January 10, 2014

FFB: Walt Kelly: The Life And Art of the Creator of Pogo by Thomas Andrae and Carsten Laqua (Hermes Press 2012); The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death by Todd Hignite (Harry N. Abrams 2010)

Between the subjects of these two heavily-illustrated celebrations, most of the history of graphic storytelling...or comics, in newspaper strips, comic books and elsewhere...is at least touched on.

I've dealt briefly with the volume on Hernandez before:
While los Bros. Hernandez, Jaime and Gilbert and occasionally Mario, the perpetrators of Love and Rockets, the flagship title for the Fantagraphics comics line (along with their critical nonfiction magazine, The Comics Journal), were probably the greatest impetus for my beginning to read comics again fairly regularly as an adult, and thus to come across Wimmen's Comix and Twisted Sisters and Alan Moore's work and that of others who had been busily advancing the form...though I'd never given up on newspaper strips, and so knew of (introduction author) Alison Bechdel's work in the "alternative" press. I'd actually bought this for my friend Alice, who fell in profound love with Jaime Hernandez's two initially-young LA punk-rocker girl characters, Hopey (Esperanza) Glass and Margarita Luisa "Maggie" Chascarrillo (pictured on the cover) who individually and together tend to be the focus of JH's stories for the comic, at various stages of their lives over the the decades the title has been published (Gilbert Hernandez focuses on the characters living in a Central American town, Palomar, in the 1950s, and their often US-emigrated offspring). Whenever one reads of comics being compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one has probably happened upon a reference to L&R.

True, but insufficient, but I won't have time for the full bore exploration of either book today, either, alas...what's notable, and Hignite and his interview subjects are quick to point this out, is how thoroughly Hernandez, even more than his brothers, draws on so much of the past work in in comics as direct influence, ranging from Alex Toth (the clean lines, the black and white masses) through Hergé, the creator of Tintin, to the compositional style of Wallace Wood (often most consciously in splash pages for the stories in the brothers' magazines, Love and Rockets in its various iterations and otherwise). (And I was drawn to revisit this book in part because Jeff Segal made a gift to me of a slightly chewed up but very inexpensive remainder he'd found.)

Meanwhile, Andrae (an academic deeply interested in comics) and Laqua (who had one of his chapters included translated from German by another) are supplemented in their multi-part study of Walt Kelly by Mark Burstein and Scott Daley. Walt Kelly, of course, was the creator of Pogo, from its newspaper debut through Kelly's death in 1973 the most sophisticated of newspaper-strip commentary on the US scene, rivaled early on by L'il Abner (with which it shared a rustic setting, albeit even more rustic inasmuch as it was a "funny animal' strip set in the Okefenokee swamp), after its first decade by the first of the "alternative" paper strips (the weekly Jules Feiffer strip The Village Voice originally tagged Sick, Sick, Sick) and by the end of its original run by Doonesbury (whose Gary Trudeau cited Pogo with Little Nemo in Slumberland and Krazy Kat as the three most important strips thus far). Another gift, this one from Alice, which I'd been looking at whenever dropping by the comics store next to the supermarket near my parents' house over the last several months, and which fellow Kelly fan Richard Robinson picked up. Let it be noted, again, insufficiently, for now, that Kelly went through a similar process of early imitation of the newspaper strips (there were no out and out comic books in Kelly's childhood) and the precocious creation of new variants, that led to Kelly's early work in the field for Disney and Dell...and somewhat less sharp, but still elegant, animal strip and comic book work was a specialty, before Kelly found his metier in the newspaper world.

These are fine introductions to the work of the men in question, Hernandez beginning to publish just under a decade after the passing of Kelly, though, of course, the various Fantagraphics collections (or the older Simon and Schuster volumes of Kelly) are even better introductions...

See, for example, Locas and Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo....

for more of this week's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

Zen

This week's selections for (usually) unfairly overlooked or obscure audio/visual presentations at the links below...and the possibility of a few more to be added over the course of the day. As always, thanks to all you who read as well as those who contribute these...and if I've overlooked your or someone else's review or citation, please let me know in comments.

Bill Crider: Father Goose; [trailer]

Brian Arnold: L. A. Doctors

B. V. Lawson: Media Murder

David Cranmer (as Edward Grainger): Tom Selleck's westerns

Masters of Sex

George Kelley: Masters of Sex

Evan Lewis: Overlooked A/V (mostly films) of 2013

How Did This Get Made?: Deck the Halls

Iba Dawson: Oscar Micheaux

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: East Side, West Side; The Last Tycoon

Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Santa Claus and the Tenth Avenue Kid"

Jackie Kashian: Corey Olsen, of The Tolkien Professor

The Losers

James Reasoner: The Losers (2010 film based on comics series)

Jeff Flugel: The Year in Review

Jeff Segal: This feature-length interview with [the recently late Something Weird Video label founder) Mike Vraney dates back a few years but reveals how he fell into the cult video market, came to associate with a score of exploitation directors and producers and details his many adventures searching out this stuff. Once dvd superseded laser and video, Vraney really could have fun, cramming all of those extras onto each dvd, which, as Pearce noted, were often superior to the motion picture they were supporting on the disk. This "mix tape" aspect of Something Weird dvds is covered quite extensively in the interview.

Jerry House: "The Butcher Boy" (1917 Keaton/Arbuckle short film)

John Charles: 2013: The Year in Movies

Kate Laity: Pingu's The Thing...remade with cats rather than penguins: (Why?)

Kliph Nesteroff: Pat Carroll: The Kraft Music Hall with Don Rickles; The Steve Allen Show with Johnny Carson

Laura: Man Bait; Scotland Yard Inspector

Birds of a Feather

Lucy Brown: Birds of a Feather

Martin Edwards: The Thirteenth Tale

Father Goose

Marty McKee: Ninja: Shadow of a Tear; 672 television shows

Mike Tooney: 2 Ironside episodes

Mystery Dave: In the Loop

Patti Abbott: M*A*S*H: "Abyssinia, Henry"

Peter Enfantino, John Scoleri and Jack Seabrook: Our Favorites from 2013

Prashant Trikannad: Michael Crawford

Randy Johnson: Three Strangers; Sabata (aka Ehi amico...c'e' Sabata, hai chiuso!)

Rick: The Hasty Heart; Hercules in the Haunted World; Sapphire and Steel

Rod Lott: Grand Slam; The Psychic (1977 film)

Ron Scheer: Zen

Scott Cupp (returned from the electronic infection wars): Solomon Kane

Endless Night

Sergio Angelini: Endless Night (1972 film); Marple: "Endless Night"

Stacia Jones: Law Enforcement in the Films of John Huston

Stephen Bowie: Richard DeRoy

Steve Lewis: Goin' South

Vince Keenan: Henny Youngman documentary project

Yvette Banek: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

***Related:

Ascetic Shopper: Tim Russert and food porn (Press the Meat)

Kelly Robinson: The Worst Typos (including in electronic media) of 2013

Todd Mason: 1966 nostalgia/pop culture/humor magazine P. S.;

& the worst, if also the only, film about humans (and only humans among all life on Earth) being turned into small piles of sand by a solar flare, directly or indirectly:

Where Have All the People Gone? (The Movie of the Week, 1974 ABC)

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Have you seen me? P. S. magazine, the nostalgia/pop culture/humor magazine from 1966...

I've been looking for reasonably priced copies for years...indices courtesy the FictionMags Index. If ever a magazine called out for a facsimile re-issue...

P.S. [v1 #1, April 1966] ed. Edward L. Ferman (Mercury Press, 60¢, 64pp, 8" x 11")

Details supplied by Cuyler Brooks.

3 · Don Sturdy and the 30,000 Series Books · Avram Davidson · ar
12 · Would You Want Your Product to Marry a Negro · Alfred Bester · ar
16 · The Gentle Art of Brick Throwing · Ron Goulart · ar
24 · Freaks · Gahan Wilson · ar
32 · Child Things · Russell Baker · ar
34 · The Lost Lovely Landscapes of Luna · Isaac Asimov · ar
39 · Lugosi: The Compleat Bogeyman · Charles Beaumont · ar
42 · When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed · Ray Bradbury · pm
44 · Joe Louis in Atlantic City · Jerry Tallmer · ar
49 · The Thirties Quiz · Robert Thomsen · qz
50 · Sweet and Lowdown: The Lost Jazz Years · Nat Hentoff · ar
58 · Captain Ahab Is Dead; Long Live Bob Dylan, Or, Are the Beatles Really the Andrews Sisters, In Drag? · Jean Shepherd · ar

P.S. [v1 #2, June 1966] ed. Edward L. Ferman (Mercury Press, 60¢, 64pp, 8" x 11")

Details supplied by Michael Ward.

5 · The Student Rebel: Then and Now · William Tenn · ar; 1930’s vs 1960’s.
8 · It Only Hurts When They Laugh · Gahan Wilson & Evan Phillips · ar; college pranksters.
12 · The Fabulous Freebie Fire Fighters · John Major Hurdy · ar; volunteer firefighter anecdotes.
20 · The Audience Is Dead · William Redfield · ar; wretched current state of drama and its audiences.
26 · The Guys in the Trick Suits · William F. Nolan · ar; superheroes.
34 · Tear Off a Box Top · Ron Goulart · ar; cereal premiums.
39 · Department of Yellowed Journalism · S. Harris · ar; old engravings with new “funny” captions.
42 · The Lion · Nicholas Breckenridge (Knox Burger) · ar; memoir of his father, Carl Burger, the commercial artist.
48 · The Papers — They Publish Her Face · Gerald Carson · ar; history of the society pages in newspapers, from The Polite Americans, Morrow 1966.
66 · The Forties Quiz · Robert Thomsen · qz; from Questions, Anyone?, Doubleday 1965.

P.S. [v1 #3, August 1966] ed. Edward L. Ferman (Mercury Press, 60¢, 66pp, 8" x 11")

Last issue. Details supplied by Cuyler Brooks.

5 · The Private Eye · Ron Goulart · ar
8 · I Dunit · Ed Lacy · ar
16 · The White Rabbit Caper · James Thurber · ss The New Yorker Nov 19 1949
20 · An Interview With Rex Stout · Anon. · iv [Rex Stout]
27 · Addendum, With Straw Hat · Avram Davidson · ar
28 · The Michelson-Morley Case · Lou Myers · ar
32 · My Mother Was a Witch · William Tenn · nf
36 · Main Currents in Applied Comedy · Carlton Brown · ar
44 · The Most Unforgettable Toys I’ve Ever Met · Harvey Aronson · ar
50 · Triviata Globus · Jean Shepherd · ar
52 · When Radio Rules the Waves · Mary Jane Higby · ar
57 · Here’s Looking at Bourbon · Gerald Carson · ar
66 · The Detective Quiz · Anon. · qz

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

"Mbube" > "Wimoweh" > "The Lion Sleeps Tonight": Saturday Music Club on 1 January

Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds (1939): "Mbube"

The Weavers (1954 Carnegie Hall recording): "Wimoweh"

The 1952 (hit) studio recording, The Weavers with the Gordon Jenkins Orchestra and Chorus.
The 1952 Yma Sumac (with the Martin Denny Orchestra) recording.
The 1952 Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra recording.
The Kingston Trio variation on the Weavers' version, in concert (late 1950s/early '60s)
The Karl Denver Trio (1962 version on 1964 television)

Miriam Makeba: "Mbube" (1960)

Angelique Kidjo in concert, 2010
The Mahotella Queens, ?1970s

The Tokens: "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (1961)

The Nylons' elaborated version.
The Next Edition Quartet, featuring Bill Crider

Ladysmith Black Mambazo & the Mint Juleps: "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"

The Soweto Gospel Choir, undated

The history of "Mbube"...an appropriately if somewhat excessively jaundiced view...