The Quomma

BACK BEAT: Still Breathing

2011-03-27T12:27:00.121-04:00

More heavy breathers for your mixes... with a shout-out to Portland, Oregon's 99 Cent Records* where I got my mitts on the most absurd of these and more...

Tombstone Blues (MP3)
by Bob Freedman & Orchestra (1963)

(That's an actual g-string tied to the cover. There's no illustrations or anything underneath it. Some editions advertise it as a "bonus.")

L.S.D. (Librai, Solidi, Denarii) (MP3)
by the Duke of Burlington (1970)

(The above and below titles seem to imply their ecstatic moaning is due to hallucinogens, but...)

Vacilando Con Ayahuesca (MP3)
by Juaneco y Su Combo (1970)

Fluid (MP3)
by Twink (1970)

Erotica (MP3)
by Aguaturbia (1970)

Scented Wind (MP3)
by Fred Miller (1972)

(When I bought mine, it was kindly wrapped for me in wax-lined deli paper to protect it from the rain, which lent a deliciously illicit brown bag feel to the experience, so I kept the wrapping and now that's how I lend my heavy breathers to friends.)

Jungle Fever (MP3)
by Afrosound (1972)

La La La (MP3)
by El Chicles (1974)

(I've read that these are the same studio musicians also known as Chakachas whose "Jungle Fever" the Afrosound covers above.)

Touch Me (MP3)
by Sara Montiel (1975)

Femmes (Part 1 & 2) (MP3)
by Nathalie et Christine con Les Vibrations (1975)

Do You Wanna Get Funky with Me? (MP3)
by Peter Brown (1977)

No No No (2) (MP3)
by Paolo Ormi

Sexy Eiffel Tower (MP3)
by Bow Wow Wow (1980)

(Keep in mind that Annabella Lwin was only 14 years old at the time of this song and this photo. I was 12, horny, and into pirates -- the perfect target. You win again, Mr. McLaren.)

Broken Hearts (MP3)
by Cash Makers Orchestra

*99 Cent's new but not in the new record store guide (which is out now and does have a few additions like Hall of Records and the Record Room, both blending booze & bins, also my fave feature of the Night Owl Record Show -- drinkin', diggin' and deejays). Naturally, Little E and I were fond of last year's guide because of the father & son hayseeds on the cover.

HAPPY SNAPS: Little E in the Sculptcha Gahden

2010-06-28T05:29:00.036-04:00

A day at the deCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Fine Artiste Blues (MP3) by R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders

Museum (MP3) by Donovan

Further viewing:

Little E beats Boston's 100 degree heat wave.

SOUND-OFF: There's Blood (So Stop Drinking Our Milkshake)

2010-06-21T12:25:00.060-04:00

More B-movie trailers (MP3s) for your mixes. Big Spill Edition.

Gas-s-s-s-s (Or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It) (1970)

The Defilers (1965)

Evil in the Deep (1975)

At the Earth's Core (1976)

Up from the Depths (1979)

Creature from Black Lake (1976)

The Green Slime (1968)

The Stuff (1985)

The Man (1972)

Further listening:

As an example of the fun to be had with such clips, here's a little something we like to do for background tunes at Count Drunkula's annual Aw Hell halloween bash. Take funky instrumental tracks -- in this case, from the likes of Clutchy Hopkins and the Whitefield Brothers -- then add movie quotes and ad samples and tah-dah, now they're seasonalized: Listen for the Hissing (MP3)

BACK BEAT: Everything for Less

2010-03-14T12:06:00.110-04:00

Here It Comes Again (MP3)
by the Swingin' Medallions

For this year's post in support of Record Store Day, Little E and I would like to give a shout out to all the junk shops and thrift stores where so much old vinyl collects. In many small towns, they're often the only place to find records. Such is the case in Hendersonville, North Carolina (pop. 10,420), a sleepy mountain town full of retirees.

Here we find "Everything for Less!" But we won't find it here long. It's literally a mom and pop store and, after twenty-odd years, mom and pop are calling it quits. If you're into easy listening or classic country, you might want to hurry up and come on down. Most of the albums only cost a few bucks and there's lots of em -- even more in the storage room. (It looks like you shouldn't even think of going back there, but you can. Mind you take an extra layer. What with the meat locker next door, it's fricking freezing.)

Before you ask, no we didn't buy the pictured Erv Howell album. The wrong LP was in the sleeve. This is a retiree's town, remember. Most of these records came from the collections of folks at least fading if not passed and here you'll find em however they left em. Anyhow, to encourage you to embark on your own vinyl scavenger hunt, me and Little E bequeath to thee some samples below from our finds.

As you can see, these days Little E likes to dig unassisted. Before he could walk, I used to carry him on my chest, thus he'd be leaning over the crates as I dug through them. Naturally, he joined in, so flipping records became a fave game, which it remains. He also used to imitate me by randomly pulling out a record and looking it over. Now it's not just imitation. When he pulls one out, it's because he likes it, for whatever reason, usually for its colors -- though sometimes because a cutie's on the cover, which could be imitation after all. Anyhow, some of these were his picks. I'm not kidding. A one year old found them and wouldn't let them go, so I bought them. But I won't say which. Now go out and get some of your own.•

Record Store Day commences April 17th. "This is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music," explains its website. "Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day and hundreds of artists in the United States and in various countries across the globe make special appearances.... Festivities include performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, djs spinning records and on and on." We'd like to add that there's independent, then there's small town independent whose importance is inversely proportional to population. Where there's less, things matter more. So, for those of you who don't live in big cities, it'd be appreciated twice as much if you'd visit your local independent record shops. So, if you're lucky enough to have one, please do.

(a) Moonglow (b) Theme from "Picnic" (MP3)
by Morris Stoloff & His Orchestra
from Love Sequence

According to the liner notes, Morris Stoloff was "concertmaster at Paramount Studios from 1928 to 1936, in which year he became Musical Director at Columbia Pictures... He was nominated for the best scoring for a dozen different films, including 'From Here to Eternity,' and 'The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.' Moreover, he has been the recipient of two coveted Academy Awards: 'Cover Girl' in 1944 and 'The Jolson Story' in 1946." Coveted? Well, it's my understanding he won for music he neither wrote nor arranged, so I can see how that'd trigger some jealousy. This kind of breezy easy shit bores me to tears, but one of us was fond of the cover.

Mah-Na Mah-Na (MP3)
by Enoch Light & the Light Brigade
from The Best of the Movie Themes 1970

Most people know "Mah-Na Mah-Na" from the Muppets, but it first appeared in Italian softcore director Luigi Scattini's semi-documentary Sweden: Heaven and Hell. As one would guess of any song that could supplement both a mondo movie and a kid's show, it's whacky -- this version perhaps one of the wackest. As the liner notes explain in their obsessive play-by-play: "All the stops are pulled out in this spirited, romping, almost tongue-in-cheek arrangement.The 'shaking' sounds which get things rolling are produced by percussionist Phil Kraus playing the cabaza. He is soon joined by the low, groaning sound (which recurs throughout the arrangement) of Phil Bodner's alto sax, modified and made to sound two octaves lower by the use of a new electronic device known as the 'multivider.' The girls in the vocal ensemble add to the fun as they sing delightful 'nonsense' syllables to this disarmingly naive tune. 'Toots' Thielman (harmonica) and Dominic Cortese (accordion) keep up the spirit with humorous quotations from famous melodies. The arrangement goes romping out with Dick Hyman producing a fantastic 'wah-wah' effect on the clavinet in an improvised repartee with the 'multivided' sound of Bodner's alto sax." To recap, all the words in quotes were: multivider, multivided, nonsense, shaking, wah-wah, and Toots. If I had to choose just one of those to describe the cover photo, I might go with wah-wah, although nonsense it definitely is. I wonder what 1970 movie you'd possibly want to watch naked with your parents or with your kid. My wife simply says: "So wrong." Also from the same percussionist:

Taboo (MP3)
Phil Kraus and Bob Rosengarden
from Like - Bongos!

Black Shark (MP3)
by Duke Hanna & His Caribbeans
from Small Hope Bay Carnival

From Hip Wax: "What began as a way to circumvent slavers' ban on speaking while working, evolved into the very political and social fabric of the Caribbean. Early calypso served as the oral equivalent of smoke signals, as workers relayed their news in song. Sung in a cryptic patois, the messages allowed them even to mock the colonial slavers without detection. The great calypsonians even affected noble titles. And they earned their titles, competing in an annual pre-Lenten Carnival which culminated in the crowning of a king. Traditionally, the king of calypso proved his ability to compose extemporaneously on any topic. Year-round, calypsonians would enter a town, learn the news, and nightly perform irreverent but astute songs about political figureheads, scandalous family members, and rival singers, etc." This 1963 LP is a mediocre outing that lacks the punch of the best calypso, but Little E likes this ditty about skindiving in the Bahamas where -- unlike Florida, Hawaii, and the Caymans -- the diving industry has managed to keep shark feeding and baiting tours from being banned, so the sharks there equate people with food. In other words, file this under nonfiction. And don't forget your speargun.

Ta Hu Wa Hu Wa Hi (MP3)
by Makamia & His Moana Islanders
from Holiday in Hawaii

I believe the cover model's Caucasian, which presents a perfect opportunity to talk about the Hawaiian term hapa haole (half white) and the collisions of race and culture from which this music sprang, except I've already chosen to forget everything I know and just listen to these records in as ignorant of a state as I can. That's how I like my Hawaiian music. Sure it's shallow but, for me, Polynesian albums from this era are kind of like lesbian porn. That is, I suspect most lesbian porn isn't made by or for lesbians, but I'm generally fond of the genre and when I find something in it I like, any questions of authenticity are soon rendered moot. Nor do I require novelty and am in fact quite happy to find the same stuff done again and again. Of course, I might feel differently if I were Hawaiian or Tahitian -- or lesbian. The model on the cover is none of those things, but rather, if I'm not mistaken, an android. Hey lady, could you be stiffer? 'Cause I'm not. If this is you on holiday, I'd hate to see you at home...

Mareva (MP3)
by the Royal Tahitians
from Soft Sounds from the South Seas Vol. 2

If you do care about authenticity: when it comes to Tahitian music, you can always trust the names Eddy Lund and Gaston Guilbert, the latter the producer of this one.

Pineapples, White Sails, and Cocoanuts (MP3)
by Harry Kaapuni & His Royal Polynesians
from Blue Hawaiian Waters

Hawaiian Starlight (MP3)
by Luke Leilani & His Hawaiian Rhythm
from Passport to Romance

These same recordings can be found under different titles on every budget label of the era -- Crown, Spin-O-Rama, Coronet, Diplomat, Bravo, Hurrah, etc. We picked up "Aloha Hawaii" by Harry Kaapuni & His Royal Polynesians, "Passport to Romance" by Luke Leilani & His Hawaiian Rhythm, and "Hawaiian Holiday" by Leni Okehu & His Surfboarders (see below), all of which contain the exact same material though some songs appear under different names. We took the above sample from our Luke Leilani album simply because, of the three, it was the nearest. The same song is called "Hawaiian People Eater" on the Leni Okehu album, which nicely subverts the banquet scene on the cover. ("When you're done dancing, why don't you just lay down right here on the table, okay?")

I can't explain why I feel compelled to keep buying the same batch of anonymous session recordings in all its variant packaging (as if these type of albums don't repeat themselves enough), but I'm always happy to find a new one. ("Hey, it's called 'Hawaiian People Eater' on this Johnny Uke album too!") Though the vinyl rip is mine, I tagged the Leilani MP3 with the above cover scan from Cheerful Earful where such pics are touched up with care to look their utmost (versus my quick shitty snapshots). The actual album at its most mint doesn't look as good. Like the music, I've seen the same picture and others from the same photo shoot (all with that same cheesy grass shack set) used on myriad Hawaiian albums. It reminds me of how many of the early exploitation films ("Child Bride," "Mom and Dad," etc.) all inserted the same few minutes of real birth footage into their dramas. The same scant material can sustain many a hustler, like Jesus's fish and loaves. Although we also have a version of "Blue Hawaiian Waters" by Harry Kaapuni called "Hawaiian Enchantment" by Luke Leilani, the latter just has a tropical landscape on the cover, one of the few versions served without cheesecake.

Bali-ha'i (MP3)
by Andre Kostelanetz
from Lure of Paradise

Easy listening for hard nipples. If albums were like movies and had tag lines, that would be this one's.

Song of the Islands (MP3)
by Hal Aloma
from Songs of the Islands

Little E likes the tinkly bells of this tune. I like how it puts him to sleep. Hotel headliner Hal Aloma gets the assist on the dreamy slide guitar. Leaving dad to dig that tan line...

Ali Baba Limbo (MP3)
by Lord Jayson and His Limbo Gang
from Limbo

This being a cheap session band concoction, chances are, if Lord Jayson looks like anyone in the cover's borrowed stock photo, it's the doughy white dude who, by the looks of it, probably shouldn't let his wife take any private lessons from the Limbo Gang.

Akebono-Jishi (MP3)
by Watazumido-Shuso
from The Exotic Sounds of the Japanese Bamboo Flute

The liner notes say: "Watazumido-Shuso is the head of a sect which he himself established, not fully satisfied with the existing three Zen sects of Buddhism. Through the Japanese flute, Watazumido-Shuso has attained musical and spiritual heights unachieved by anyone else. He is also expert with many other musical instruments and is well known to avant-garde musicians overseas through his records. He serves as advisor to many temples. Instead of using the traditional Japanese 'shakuhachi' flute, Watazumido-Shuso performs his extraordinary music on 'Hotchiku,' flutes made from untreated bamboo of the ordinary type. Through use of 'Hotchiku' flute, the true feeling of the Watazumido sect of Zen can be understood, according to Watazumido-Shuso." I'll just say that, when describing an hour of bamboo flute solos, I'm not sure if Sounds should be plural.

Boublichki (MP3)
by Rapha Brogiotti
from Romantic Gypsy Strings

"Recorded in France by France's Famous Rapha Brogiotti..." They really want you to know this is French. They've even added the French flag like a little logo. I guess that's why violinist and bandleader Brogiotti is pictured on back suavely smoking a cigarette. The cover model seems posed for us to look up her skirt ("I see London, I see France..." -- okay, we get it!) but I can't get past that strangely prominent shin. I even googled shin fetish to see if there was such a thing and found nothing to suggest there is, which I found to be a relief as I really didn't want to know what a shin fetish might entail beyond pictures like this. As for the gypsy music, I'd recommend Latcho Drom -- both the movie and its soundtrack -- instead.

On the Beach at Waikiki (MP3)
by the Mauna Loa Islanders
from Music of the Islands

Henry Kailimai‘s “On the Beach at Waikiki” was a hit at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. That's how old this old standard is. So how do you make such an oft covered classic sound fresh? Add tequila! Shit, while you're at it, add another steel guitar. Hell, add a third. The whole album's like this too.

Harem Midnight (MP3)
by Ahmed Ali & the Sultans
from Harem Midnight

Yet another budget label disasterpiece. On the back, they misspell Ahmed Ali's name as Amend Ali. Of course, I've yet to find evidence that an Ahmed -- or an Amend -- Ali existed, so whatever.

Drums in a Sea Cave (MP3)
by Sandy Nelson
from Boss Beat

I've known drummers with worse practice spaces.

Play Hurdy-Gurdy (MP3)
by Leon Berry
from Merry-Go-Round and Circus Calliope Music Vol. 5

I'm not saying whether me or my son picked this, but I will say that we're equally obsessed with elephants. In my case, it can result in drunken torrents of trivia about elephants, especially circus elephants ("Mary, hung. Topsy, electrocuted. Jumbo, hit by train..."), but since I'm not currently drunk, I will instead suggest to those similarly enamored with the creatures to support The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. Yep, protected elephants ranging freely just outside Nashville. C'mon, how cool is that?

Big Eyed Blonde (MP3) by Carl Stevens with his Orange Blossom Specials

I can tell you that McKinney, Texas and Lake Lavon are just northeast of Dallas, but I know nothing of a Lavon record label nor of singer-songwriter Carl Stevens of McKinney. I've seen "Orchestra Conducted by Carl Stevens" on Mercury country singles by Gary Shelton and Rusty Draper, but can't say if it's him. I'll bet you anything, though, it wasn't her eyes that were big on that blonde of his.

Mesmerizement (MP3)
by Ray Langley

"Mesmerizement" is a stand-up routine that sounds like a scene in a rednecksploitation flick where dumb city slicker kids find themselves in a backwoods bar with some creepy hick comedian telling jokes only his inbred kin and fellow cannibals get. The crescendos make me shiver. The even more hayseedy A-side, "Ole Rover," has been retold by Junior Samples of "Hee Haw" (which you can hear here). If you listen to the Big Show with John Boy & Billy, this may be for you, which is not to knock them, you, or this, but to bring y'all together.

I Only Live Twice (MP3)
by the Tokyo Folk Crusaders

Beat to shit and skips but a wonderfully strange little treasure. If you visit Leg Music, you can not only hear a clean version but see a flash animation interpretation of it with English subtitles of its translated lyrics. The actual Japanese title of the song is "Kaettekita Yopparai" but it was changed for release after the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice was a hit. Songwriter and founder of the Folk Crusaders, Kazuhiko Kato, was later also founder of the Sadistic Mika Band (named after his then-wife who was also a member). In 1975, as the openers for Roxy Music, Sadistic Mika became the first Japanese band to tour England. Sadly, last year Kato hanged himself in his room at a resort hotel. He was 62 and had only lived once.

45 at top of post = "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" b-side.

Update: We ended up spending Record Store Day sharing a Vinyl Beer with owner Angela Sawyer at Weirdo Records in the Central Square neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts. If you've ever heard the term "masshole," you know that many Massachusetts residents take as much pride in as outsiders take exception to their particular brand of New England obnoxiousness. Not so with Miss Sawyer who's a pleasure to meet, not to mention an enthusiastic purveyor of international sounds and visions. Check out the Cantonese opera cassettes she posts on Weirdo's website. Check out her guest post on Radiodiffusion Internasionaal of a Luk Thung (a sort of Thai blues) single. Check out her guest spins on Jesse Kaminsky's unique WMBR radio show, The Intercontinental. And if you're ever in Cambridge, definitely check out her jam-packed, closet-sized storefront. The above picture was taken up the road in Harvard Square. If that sign were in Hendersonville, people would think their tires were going to get punched full of holes.

LORE FOLK: Double Wide

2009-08-15T10:01:00.090-04:00

At the cemetery for the Crab Creek Baptist Church on Jeter Mountain in North Carolina, lies the world's largest granite gravestone, appropriately for Billy & Benny McCrary, the world's largest twins, who weighed 743 and 723 pounds, respectively, with 84 inch waists.

Their gravestone's thirteen feet wide and weighs three tons. You may have heard that it's sinking. Actually it isn't. It's just on a slope. But you can make it look like it's sinking if you tilt your camera, and that's understandably the picture that a lot of folks take.

Yes, pictures of their mini-bikes are etched into their gravestone. No, their bikes are not buried with them. Injuries from a mini-bike stunt gone wrong is what killed Billy and it was his poor mourning brother Benny who oversaw the gravestone's design. The epitaph he gave Billy reads: "A BIG MAN WITH A BIG HEART, LOVED AROUND THE WORLD, WITH A LEGEND AS BIG AS THE MOUNTAINS AROUND HIM." I've been told they were buried in piano boxes. I can't confirm that but share it anyway if only to help keep their legend large.

The story goes that they were discovered by a photographer for Life magazine and used the notoriety of their picture to go into show biz. In their Vegas act, they played trumpets, told jokes, and were accompanied by huge go-go dancers who, at 400 pounds apiece, were still half the boys' size. Their brief turn in tag team wrestling took them to Japan where they appeared as the McGuires due to the difficulty the Japanese had with the word McCrary. But it was their doing daredevil stunts on their mini-bikes, usually while wearing matching cowboy clothes, that became their signature and continued to be their main act until Billy's death.

My wife has family here. When I mention the McCrary twins, it turns out everyone has a story. Her granny says they went to her church and their mother used to give each boy an entire box of a dozen donuts for a snack just to get them through Sunday school. Everyone remembers their mother being small. "Like a little bird," says granny. Her uncle says they went to his barber and they had to be let in the back door and the barber sat them each on a picnic bench. Her cousin says that, after Billy died, Benny ran a pawn shop downtown next to Hot Dog World and every druggie in town knew they could count on Benny to buy whatever useless crap they took him for at least a few bucks. Everyone recalls at least one instance of seeing them ride their mini-bikes through town. Granny still thinks the mother got them fat on purpose to get them in show biz. I decide to believe her -- for the same reason I like to tell people their gravestone is sinking. •

Further reading:

Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar
by Ira Berkow

Because a fat mini-bike rider running a pawn shop reminds me of shopping the stalls at the old Maxwell Street market, the street itself named after one Colonel Maxwell who was known as a "fat man somehow graceful on his horse." I remember asking a vendor about some clothing. What size is that? And being told immediately: "Your size!"

The Quomma's Favorite Fat Songs:

Fat Man (MP3) by Louie & the Fat Men (rip & scan by Kogar)
300 Pounds of Joy (MP3) by Howlin' Wolf

Louie's Fat Man weighs 340. Add Howlin' Wolf and you still only get 640 -- 83 pounds short of the lightest McCrary.

SOUND-OFF: Trailer Wars

2009-06-24T19:25:00.083-04:00

More B-movie trailers (MP3s) for your mixes. This installment is dedicated to Dan Halsted who programs Portland's Grindhouse Film Fest. I was lucky enough to witness Dan bravely battle Lars Nilsen and Zack Carlson of Austin's famed Alamo Drafthouse in a head to head Trailer War. Dan owns 35mm prints of roughly 200 trailers whereas the Alamo's archives contain over seven times that. Being known as Quentin Tarantino's hangout also bolsters the Alamo's rep. So Dan knew he was facing one of grindhouse programming's acknowledged Goliaths. He sweated over his selections. The Alamo boys claimed they just grabbed the box of reels nearest the door. Who won, you ask? The crowd, of course -- as did anyone who caught the Alamo's traveling showcase Cinemapocalypse and everyone who supports local independent exhibitors like the grand and funky Hollywood Theatre where the event took place. Dan's day job is as technical director of Film Action Oregon who runs the non-for-profit Hollywood. According to a recent mailer, current economic conditions have forced FAO to pare down their summer youth program, eliminate a part-time position, postpone hiring new staff, and suspend scheduled raises for current staff. Wrote Artistic Director Richard Beer: "You’re likely unaware of these changes because we’ve managed to keep the doors of the Hollywood Theatre open and still bring you the varied quality programming that you are used to us providing. But more obvious, painful changes are in store unless we get help from people like you." The same may be true in your town. At the very least, you could help with your patronage and go see a movie at a theater you support. Maybe then Mr. Beer won't whine. See you there...

Dr. Butcher, M.D. (recut U.S. version of Zombi Holocaust) (1980)

Pieces (a.k.a. One Thousand Cries Has the Night) (1982)

Black Rodeo (1972)

The Black Gestapo (a.k.a. Ghetto Warriors) (1975)

The Cheerleaders (1973)

Cheerleader Camp (a.k.a. Bloody Pom Poms) (1988)

Invasion of the Blood Farmers (1972)

The Blood on Satan's Claw (a.k.a. Satan's Skin) (1971)

French Pussycat (1972)

Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You (1970)

The Pink Angels (1971)

Angels' Wild Women (1972)

The Big Doll House (1971)

The House on Sorority Row (1983)

Bonus Tracks:

Fiend Discovered and Titles (MP3)
by Marc Wilkinson
from the Blood on Satan's Claw soundtrack
available at Trunk Records

Dr. Fucker M.D. (Musical Deviant)
by The Cramps
from Fiends of Dope Island

I also could've gone with "Mean Machine" from The Cramps' album Flame Job which name drops Blood on Satan's Claw. If anyone has compiled a b-movie version of Lux & Ivy's Favorites, let's see it!

Further viewing:

To see some of the trailers I saw, get yourself a copy of 42nd Street Forever 5: Alamo Drafthouse Edition.

BACK BEAT: Record Hop

2009-03-10T17:36:00.437-04:00

To promote and celebrate the upcoming second annual Record Store Day, Little E and I have bought at least one vinyl 45 or LP from every record store we could find in Portland, Oregon. Yes, my six-months-old son has a favorite: downtown's 2nd Avenue Records, I think because of all the heavy metal and hard rock t-shirts hanging from the ceiling. (See the severed head? Can you say Slayer?) But each and every establishment is worth your visit. I've had a bad time in none. To encourage you to tour your own town's bins, I've shared some of E and I's good times below. By the by, if you're in Portland -- even if temporarily like us -- I don't think you know how good you've got it. Seriously. Go to these joints. Drop a buck or two. Because wouldn't it be cool if my baby boy could go to record stores when he's older? Look at him. Do you really want to tell him no? Yeah, I didn't think so. Now go. And tell em Little E sent ya. • (Photo by Grandpa Charlie)

Note: We didn't listen to any of the records before we bought them. Most stores allow it; we just found it more fun and fair not to. Yes, we know that Record Store Day does not refer only to literal record shops, but there's a turntable in the place we're renting and no ignoring it really. Plus, unlike CDs, records can still be played on hand-cranked devices when the world runs out of electricity. Just saying. Record Store Day is April 18th, by the by. That night, Portland's Night Owl Record Show, billed as the nation's first night time record show, takes place at Eagles Aerie. I had to look up the word aerie. It means a stronghold perched on a cliff or high place. Crate digging at night sure seems like a good time to be high to me.

Side A (MP3)
from Holiday in Oregon

Found for four bucks at Rad Summer (vinyl). I don't think I could've found a better intro for this post. Did you know Bing Crosby and Mel Blanc were from Oregon? I didn't. Old weird tourist records are fun. One of my favorites is this Sound-souvenir Record about the Detroit Zoological Park. Holiday in Oregon isn't as thick with sound-effects as that because it keeps stopping for celebrity monologues. Oddly, legendary vocal actor Mel Blanc performs his as a French man questioning a Mexican in voices you might recognize from the generic background characters supporting Pepe Le Pew and Speedy Gonzalez -- a strange choice of ethnic stereotypes when neither peoples particularly populate the region. At least he didn't do a toothy ah-so Asian. Since the Oregon Trail gets mentioned, I have to say that if you drive it, which I have, you can (and probably should) tie a rope to the steering wheel and take a nap while your car crosses Nebraska. It's literally a straight shot through torturously boring flatness for what seems like days. One of the three methods of hypnotizing chickens is the Chalk Line Method where you draw a straight line about a foot or so long then hold the chicken with its beak on one end, staring straight down the chalk line til they're stuck. Paralyzed. Zombified. And that's what'll happen to you after hours of staring at the Nebraska highway's center stripe. I'm sorry, but you know who settled Nebraska? People who fell out of their wagon and broke their leg or for some reason couldn't make it to Oregon. Nebraska's state motto ought to be "Go On Without Us." Oregon's is "Alis Volat Propiis," Latin for "She Flies With Her Own Wings," the "She" being Oregon, "Her Own Wings" referring to the formation of its government in 1843 as dependent neither upon the British to the north nor the United States to the east. If nothing else, I think you have to agree with its designation of Oregon's gender -- if only because using pissy poetry to tell everyone you don't need them sounds like a tweenage girl.

Don't Fight It (MP3)
by Rex Garvin & the Mighty Cravers
from Raw Funky Earth

Found for twenty-eight bucks at Jump Jump Music (vinyl). Larry Grogan at the great Funky 16 Corners writes: "Between 1957 and 1969 Garvin, as a solo, as leader of the Mighty Cravers and as a part of various groups recorded a number of 45s (and at least one album) for no less than fourteen different labels, only hitting the charts once in 1966 with ‘Sock It To Em J.B.’. Yet for all that work, and at least a few sides of soulful dynamite, the Rex Garvin story is limited to the print of the labels of those records." Larry's favorite Garvin cut is "I Gotta Go Now (Up on the Floor)" which he calls "one of the single most powerful soul 45s ever created." My favorite, however, is "Emulsified." How can you not dig an R&B blaster that compares love to the mixing of two unmixable liquids? And my second fave is the ominous stomper "Strange Happenings" which is actually the first record of Rex's I heard and where my craving for more Mighty Cravers began. The promo photo on the back of this LP is the only pic I've ever seen of Garvin and I wish it were in color. You just know those suits are something. From the liner notes I learned that the Mighty Cravers were an NYC band that eventually branched out and toured the coast, becoming "the funkiest group in towns throughout the East and as far west as Florida." Yes, as far west as Florida. If you're a diehard New Yorker -- like the kind that's never learned to drive because in Manhattan you never need to -- that's actually a sensical geographic statement, and my guess is that's the kind of New Yorker that Rex Garvin was. Now if we can just find out what borough... [P.S.: The Bronx it turns out. Found a short bio of Garvin here.]

Excerpt (Jock Strap Blues - The Cash Customer ) (MP3)
by Bert Henry
from The Uncensored Humor of Bert Henry

Found for twenty bucks at Shadow House Collectibles (vinyl). By day, Bert Henry was a scrawny nerd who worked in a chorus at Disneyland, but at night, he was an L.A. burlesque club comic who cut a series of raunchy stag party albums for Fax Records (Bert Henry in the Raw, Bert Henry the Hard Way), all of which similarly feature a nude woman on the cover. His recording career ended, however, when the head of the label was murdered along with the man's mistress who was found in a pose not unlike that of the model adorning this LP: "A manufacturer of risque records and an attractive nude woman were found in their bungalow at 7671 Fountain Ave., where they had been shot by an intruder on November 10, 1963. William H. Door, 46, identified by police as a widely known distributor of pornographic material, was lying fully dressed and face down with his feet bound on the dining room floor. Mrs. Ernestine Ellen Criss, 30, Door's mistress, was sprawled nude on her back in a king-size bed in one of the one of the two bedrooms. A pillow covered her face. Door, was shot twice, once in the back of the head and once in the hand. He had also had received two severe blows to the head, apparently in a struggle with his killer. Mrs. Criss was shot once in the mouth but was not beaten. Detectives theorized that Door and the dead woman may have been victims of a grudge killing by some of Door's associates in the pornography rackets. Friends said he had made a number of enemies through his rough handling of female models for the films and photographs he reportedly produced. Police believed Criss, who had been living with Door for at least a year, was awakened after retiring for the night and was shot through a pillow being held over her head to muffle her screams. Her killer then probably ambushed Door as he returned home. The bodies may have been in the house for as long as 12 hours before they were found at 8:30 a.m. by the cleaning lady. Door was said to be the owner of the Crescendo night club building on the Sunset Strip and had been associated in the past with The Garden of Allah, the Sphinx Club, Le Madelon and the Interlude. He was also said to have been a star football player at Temple U and for the Philadelphia Eagles." Found that info in a brochure for guided tours of notorious Los Angeles homes. A lot of lower California's detritus ends up in Oregon. Reminds me of dearly departed Dr. Gonzo's old quip: "The scum also rises."

Dancing Frog (MP3)
by Wynder K. Frog
from The Touchables

Found for twelve bucks at Exiled Records (CDs, vinyl). The Touchables is a 1968 British mod movie in which four hot English girls dress up as nuns then kidnap a cocky, womanizing rock star from swinging London and take him to the countryside where they keep him as a sex slave in their giant, see-through plastic dome home (or "pleasure bubble" as one critic called it). There's also a subplot about a gay pro wrestler who gets jealous and tries to muscle his way into the action. The wrestler's played by Ricki Starr, a real pro wrestler who used to incorporate his ballet training into his ring style (see photo). The film's written by Ian La Frenais and Donald Cammell (who co-directed Performance) and directed by Beatles photographer Robert Freeman (who shot the cover for Rubber Soul). The title song is by cult flower pop band Nirvana (known post-Cobain as Nirvana U.K.). Wynder K. Frog is the alias of Hammond organist Mick Weaver. You can see the movie's trippy trailer here or here. This song's dying to be sampled.

.
C.R.E.A.M. (MP3)
by the El Michels Affair
from Enter the 37th Chamber

Found for twelve bucks at the Game Exchange on Hawthorne (vinyl, CDs, DVDs). The clerk had just put this on when we walked in. It was a first listen for him as well and we all dug it right off. After a tune or two, I asked about it and learned the El Michels Affair is a group of studio musicians who used vintage equipment to record these old-style soul instrumentals based on Wu Tang Clan songs and the store had just bought this and other records from four dudes in a white van who drove down from Seattle with crates of vinyl titles carried by their distribution company Light in the Attic which they hawk store to store all down the coast, this time around heavily pushing their two reissued psych-folk albums by Rodriguez (they say Latino Dylan, I say Latino Donovan) and unloading lots of Serge Gainsbourg and The Monks. Later, I looked them up and found the four man van had chronicled their trip on their site. Meet today's traveling salesmen:

For a fun triple feature, here's the Wu Tang original plus the sampled source of its theme which I wonder if the El Michels Affair has heard. If I were them, I would have purposely avoided it.

C.R.E.A.M. (MP3)
by the Wu Tang Clan
from Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers)

As Long as I've Got You (MP3)
by The Charmels

Love is Love (MP3)
by Alemayno Eshintay
from Love is Love

Found for ten bucks at Discourage Rock & Roll (CDs, vinyl). Like Jackpot and Green Noise, Discourage runs a label along with a shop. Yet, when I asked the proprietor for recommendations -- what was he listening to lately, for example -- he didn't pitch his own stuff, but instead hipped me to this comp put out by his fellow Portlanders at Mississippi Records. During E and I's binge, whenever I've revealed that we're out to visit every record store in town, we've discovered much love from each establishment for another. Exiled Records also loves Mississippi. Like me, SMUT loves Green Noise's Sunday man Martin and his notes. And they both hipped me to this record sale out of some dude's garage -- where the record I wanted was forty bucks which I didn't have on me because, unlike my mother, I wouldn't think to bring that much to a garage sale unless I was looking for furniture. Lack of experience. And poverty. Still had a good time, though.

Love is Love is a collection of rare African singles. As the liner notes explain, "The styles of music featured on this LP are: R&B, Highlife, & Dry Guitar Music. The music on this LP was recorded between 1955 & 1972... with the exception of Chemirocha (which is incidentally an ode to the yodelin' brakeman - Jimmie Rodgers). We hope to release 3 more compilations of this type of music over the next two years. Unfortunately, due to our distaste for mass production & our limited budget, these future releases will also be of an exceptionally limited edition. Please record this LP & all others in this series onto cassette tape or digital files for any of your friends who you think may enjoy it. We need to stop sending rockets to the moon, & start taking care of each other here on earth." My notes on their notes: Dry Guitar is sometimes used to simply mean acoustic guitar but the term originated as a description of a specific playing style that came out of Congo. Says National Geographic: "In mining towns in the south-eastern province of Katanga in the 1940s and '50s, Jean Bosco Mwenda, Losta Abelo and other singing guitarists invented a troubadour style out of local thumb-piano patterns, Cuban sones and American country music. This gentle Swahili sound spread from Katanga to Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya, where it was called 'dry guitar'." Highlife is a West African genre featuring jazzy horns and multiple guitars. By limited edition, the label means pressings of 500 to 1,000 copies -- vinyl only -- sold at a reasonable price (say, 8 to 10 bucks). The blog Big States has taken them at their word and digitized many Mississippi Records releases, including their early mixed cassette tapes, and posted them for your pleasure. I didn't realize we were still sending lots of rockets to the moon, but I like the thought that my listening to these tunes somehow helps the world. I wonder what effect my listening to The International Vicious Society has.

Wee Wee (MP3)
by The Daniels
from The International Vicious Society Vol. 4

University of Vice Records says: "The most crazy compilations of 50's and 60's music from around the whole world!!! NO fusion-ethnic-world-muzic shit here! Instead, what you get is Italian Afro-Twist, Spanish Hillbilly, Polynesian Surf-a-twist, Mexican Psycho-Cats, American Voodoo, Chinese melodies from England, German Frat'n'Roll, Spage-Age Instro from Denmark, Belgian Stammering R'n'R, Uruguay's Psychotic Voices, Dead Chicken Dance from Holland, Mexican Psychocats, Folk 'N' Roll from Colombia, Martian Zounds from USA, French Arabic-pop, American Troglodyte Stomp, Cramps style instros, New Orleans Swamp Country, Gothic-Western from Argentina, Beat-Punkers from Switzerland, and more... !!! KRAY-ZEE!" If you hurry, you can find volumes 3 and 4 right now at Mississippi Records. For obvious reasons, my son is quite fond of this song.

Looks Like It's Going to Rain (MP3)
by Ken Nordine
from Word Jazz

Found for eight bucks at 360 Vinyl (vinyl, CDs, DJ gear). I'd heard this before and knew I wanted it. The clerk loved that I found it and started reciting "Black" from his own favorite Nordine album Colors. I, in turn, love that Nordine's work gets respect from young beat seekers, samplers, and DJs like those who work and shop at 360. Even if you haven't yet heard his jazz poems and sound-collage monologues, you'll probably recognize Nordine's deep resonant voice from his umpteen commercials and movie trailers. Here's how Tom Waits puts it: “Ken Nordine, yea I know that guy, I heard his voice 1000 times, he’s the guy in the bus station that says 'go ahead I’ll keep an eye on your stuff for you,' and you see him the next day walking around town wearing your clothes. He broadcasts from the boiler room of the Wilmont Hotel with 50,000 watts of power. I know that voice, he’s the guy with the pitchfork in your head saying go ahead and jump, and he’s the ambulance driver who tells you you’re going to pull thru. He’s the guy in the control tower who talked you down in a storm with a hole in your fuselage and both engines on fire. I heard him barking thru the Rose Alley Carnival strobe as samurai firemen were pulling hose. Yea he’s the dispatcher with the heart of gold, the only guy up this late on the suicide hotline. Ken Nordine is the real angel sitting on the wire in the tangled matrix of cobwebs that holds the whole attic together. Yea Ken Nordine, he’s the switchboard operator at the Taft Hotel, the only place in town you can get a drink at this hour. You know Ken Nordine, he’s the lite in the icebox, he’s the blacksmith on the anvil in your ear.” I picked this track because, in Portland, the only time it doesn't look like it's going to rain is when it's raining already. We were warned by a local pal that using an umbrella, however, would mark us as tourists. Apparently, we can either stay dry or stay cool, our choice. For over forty years, Ken Nordine has impossibly stayed both. Hear for yourself at Word Jazz.

Little E's Excerpt (MP3)
by DJ Afrika Bambaataa
from Death Mix 2

Found for seven bucks at Platinum Records (vinyl, DJ gear). According to Afrika's own organization, the Zulu Nation, his name translated means "affectionate leader." Hip-hop has so thoroughly conquered music culture and for so long that it's pretty effing amazing to stop and think about how much what Bambaataa did has led to. Mixes like this, though, is where it all started. Two turntables. Beats and breaks. Live, improvisational editing. Keeping the party jumping. Making schizophrenic, minimalist dance music using mere moments from songs repeated and twisted and scratched. And they'd find those moments in all manner of music, anything committed to wax. Like aural explorers, they combed every culture and genre in search of a few exquisite seconds of sound. Then they employed the actual, physical, vinyl record as an instrument. It was all so raw and hands-on and alive. Some deep homegrown avant garde shit. And that's not even discussing the groundbreaking dances and fashions that went with it. On top of which, after reading Jeff Chang's Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, I think a case could be made that Afrika Bambaataa was, in his way, a successful peace activist. But hey, you read it (I mean it, go read it) and tell me. One of the things that struck me when I read Chang's chapters on those days was how, for its original participants, hip-hop was a brief, passing phase already long dead and over by the time the rest of the nation discovered it. Paul Winley Records released the original Death Mix in 1983. Death Mix 2 is a recently discovered alternative version. All depending on how you look at it, you could say both were posthumous releases. Little E's Excerpt is my son's favorite part of Side A to which he loves to literally hop. I don't know if that makes him hip.

Joumana (MP3)
by Rafic Hobeika
from Music for an Oriental Dance Vol. 1 - Danses de Nadia Gamal

Found for seven bucks at Q is for Choir (vinyl). I think the store name is ha-ha clever but I couldn't get my wife to agree. She says it's because she's a chronic misspeller, she doesn't think jokes about misspelling are funny. The dancer on the cover looks a lot like my dirty hippy friend Ho. Ho's not her name but what she is and not the most clever nickname, I know, but I call her like I see her. Who the dancer really is, though, is Lebanese legend Nadia Gamal. I don't know if Nadia was a ho, but I do know her most distinctive trait was her passion. The Hollywood Music Centre describes her dance style as "fiery, yet infinitely feminine. She gave 110% all of the time, in every step, movement and gesture she made while dancing. Her stamina and energy levels were unsurpassed. Even towards the end of her shows, her dancing was just as vibrant and fresh as when she first entered the stage." She starred in a handful of Egyptian and Lebanese films and later produced instructional videos of her Middle Eastern dance workshops which are still available so, luckily, if you want to see the legend in action, you can. If you're in Portland and want to see a belly dancer in person, you can go to Moroccan restaurant Marrakesh or Lebanese restaurant Al Amir. If you want to hear more belly dance music, check out Portland's own Radio Bastet. If you want to learn how to belly dance, you can easily find cool, inexpensive how-to records. I found this one for five bucks at Jackpot:

Misirlou (MP3)
by George Abdo and His "Flames of Araby" Orchestra
from The Joy of Belly Dancing

George Abdo was known for fusing American music methods with traditional Middle Eastern tunes, creating -- for lack of a better term -- a truly Arab-American sound. This particular LP comes with an instruction booklet for a complete and original belly dance routine as demonstrated by Juliana, the unusually buxom dancer on this and other Abdo covers. Another dancer named Vina wrote the routine. A dancer named Amber plays castanets. I don't know why, but all Abdo's dancers go by their first names only. I prefer it when strippers and wrestlers avoid last names so they don't pick monikers better suited for porn stars, drag queens, or bar room limericks. I'm not sure about belly dancers. Ozel Turkbas sounds grander than just Ozel -- or does it? Anyways, here's some sample instructions from Juliana:

Arousal (MP3)
by The Arousers
from Do The Arousal with The Arousers

Found for six bucks at Crossroads Music (vinyl, CDs). Over 35 music dealers maintain their own inventory on a consignment basis at Crossroads. (Which makes it, essentially, 35 stores in one. Jump Jump Music told me this is unheard of and I won't find a record store like it anywhere else. When I asked why not, he said because in other towns, the record dealers don't like or trust each other.) If memory serves, I got this from the fellow who has a section for records with nude and cheesecake ladies on the covers. What aroused my interest in The Arousers was that they cover Mad Mike. I saw "Made in the Czech Republic" on the sleeve and had this whole fantasy of them being Eastern European, playing "The Hunch" sloppy drunk with the fervor of crazed gypsies while maintaining deadpan faces beneath greased towers of hair like Gogol Bordello meets the Leningrad Cowboys. Alas, I think they're just Limeys. They sound better, though, when I pretend they're Slavs. Mad Mike, if you don't know, refers in this case to iconic Pittsburgh radio jock Mike Metrovich. It's been nice to see that almost every record shop in town is carrying Mad Mike Monsters, which I can't recommend enough: three volumes (thus far) compiled by Norton Records of the wild 45s discovered and popularized by Mad Mike during his prime on-air years in the late 1960s. I have to admit that I bought my favorite record of our binge at Crossroads -- another Norton release, Hannibalism!, featuring highlights like "Jerkin' the Dog" from the career of The Mighty Hannibal, my favorite ex-pimp soul singer (sorry Darondo -- hey, you're still my favorite ex-pimp cable access show host). The Studs Terkel-style liner notes based on interviews by Billy Miller and Miriam Linna are awesome. At one point, Mighty Hannibal tells us, "I was rich and young, but I had a heroin habit. I ended up getting a $79,000 tax bill. My brother was my accountant. He said, 'Jimmy, where did this $79,000 go?' 'Up my nose!' I went to the penitentiary for 18 months. John Mitchell, the Attorney General, was my neighbor in the next cell." Just thought I'd share that bit of trivia since it pertains to another record coming up.

Found for six bucks at Anthem Records (vinyl, CDs). I bought this because my baby mama is a beautiful Southern blonde who's a quarter Japanese, so I thought somehow this might make a cute gift. But the more time I've spent with it, the more it freaks me out, so I haven't even shown it to her yet. It's basically a bunch of classical music that's supposed to soothe your baby and make them smarter, which maybe explains the kid's big alien head.

Lumberjack (MP3)
by Johnny Cash
from Ride This Train

Found for five bucks at Vintage Pink, an antique mall and retro boutique where many of the consigned sellers have record bins. More on this song soon. Also still to come, our finds from Craig Moerer's Records by Mail and Vinyl Resting Place.

Tequila and Squirt (MP3)
from Squirt Does Its Thing

Found for five bucks at SMUT (So Many Unique Treasures) (vinyl, cassettes, DVDs). I've dug some product promo 45s -- like "The Sand Step" by The Nilsmen (for Camel cigarettes) or 7-Eleven's "Dance the Slurp" -- so I figured there was at least a chance for a cool tune here. Sorry. I should've known. First off, Squirt is a lame soda. Compared to The Dew, it's The Don't. It is soooo not extreme. I mean, how sissy and unsexy of a tag is The Semi-Soft Drink? Even if semi-soft is meant to suggest in a glass-half-full way that it's also semi-hard, it's a horrible adjective made even worse by coupling it with the otherwise uplifting and jizzy name Squirt, resulting in equating your soda with something that instead issues forth from flaccidity, namely urine. "Tequila and Squirt" is the one original number written specifically for this album and if that title doesn't reinforce the thought of piss then perhaps you don't drink as much tequila as I do. Anyways, I should've known. And so should you. There's no reason you should listen to this. Really. But am I glad I bought it? You bet. I'd say it definitely falls under the category Unique Treasure. And I know the perfectly perverted culture junkie who'll love this for the cover and its golden shower subtext and should be receiving it shortly.

Tom's Song (MP3)
by The Fabulous Trammps
from The Legendary Zing Album

Found for five bucks at One Stop Records (CDs, vinyl). Located in a boring concrete slab of a building between its other two tenants, a classic black barbershop called Texas T's and a storefront gospel church, One Stop reminds me how few non-pale-ass-white folks seem to populate Portland. As far as I've found, this building may in fact be, in and of itself, the black part of P-town. Some may recognize The Trammps from "Disco Inferno" which hit the charts three years after this not-so-legendary LP's release. Twenty-five years after that, one of the band members beat his wife with a handgun on Valentine's Day because he thought she'd cheated on him. Four years or so from now, he'll be eligible for parole. Frankly, the full denim look the band's sporting on the cover gives me prison vibes now that I know that. As you can see from the sticker on the cover, "Tom's Song" is one of the cuts Bhudda Records suggested to DJs was worthy of airplay. To the contrary, rock critic Robert Christgau counts it among the album's "three soggy originals, all of them orchestral intros disguised as songs." I think they're both right. Sometimes soggy pseudo songs deserve airplay too. Especially at small town roller rinks still stuck in the Farrah era of perms and pokies which is where this took me. Hope it transports you too. Not to prison, though. Maybe forget that thing I said about their outfits. Sam Prekop fans should check this.

Teardrops (MP3)
by Marvin Rainwater

Found for three bucks at Sonic Recollections (vinyl). The photo on back is of Wade Holmes, the Carolina Playboy, who inexplicably sings all the songs on side two. At left is a picture of Marvin Rainwater from his rockabilly heyday. I've read that he's a quarter Cherokee, but I've also read that he actually has no idea whether he has any Native American in him or not; it was just a persona he came up with that went with his name. According to the discography on Marvin's website Bluebird Corners, this LP came out in 1972 but contains demos recorded at a Washington, DC studio in 1953/54. Bluebird Corners is the name of the burned-out convenience store in Aitkin County, Minnesota behind which Rainwater lives in a turquoise trailer. (He moved to the snow country, as he calls it, in the 1970s to recover from a battle with throat cancer and regain his voice.) It's also a nod to his biggest hit single "Gonna Find Me a Bluebird." In a 1998 interview by Leif Enger of Minnesota Public Radio, Marvin, then 73, discussed the slippery nature of success and how, after hitting the charts, a small studio where he'd recorded early demo tapes sold the tapes to a number of disreputable labels who dubbed new tracks over the demos then released them. "They sold a million of my albums at eighty-eight cents apiece, and it destroyed my career," he lamented. "My credibility was shot on account of those cheap records, they were demo tapes, not even actual recordings, and they dubbed music in on top of it, got out of meter, didn't know the melody or anything. It was horrible, and the sound was real cheap you know; on account of me having 'The Bluebird', this was after I did 'Bluebird', then they put all this stuff in the market, see, flooded the market with these cheap albums -- and my credibility was shot." I don't know whether this demo is one of those. Nor do I know how Rainwater's faring these days. His website hasn't been updated for a while. But check out this poem he posted in 2001. The title asks How'd Ja Like to Be Me?

MAMA DIDN'T WANT ME & DADDY WAS GONE
I GUESS YOU MIGHT SAY ..WASN'T MUCH OF A HOME
JUST A BIG OLE HOUSE FULL OF FIGHTIN' KIDS
AND NOBODY CARED MUCH WHAT I DID

WELL I KNOW YOU MIGHT SAY IT'S ALL MY FAULT
'CUZ I'VE HEARD YOU SAY I AIN'T WORTH MY SALT
WELL...HERE'S MY SHOES..PUT 'EM ON YOUR FEET
AND THINK ABOUT ME WHEN YOU HIT THE STREET

NOT SURE WHERE TO GO NOT KNOWING WHERE TO TURN
BUT YOU'LL FEEL THAT RAGE THAT STARTS TO BURN
YOU'LL TURN YOUR BACK ON THE ONES YOU LOVE
AND YOU'LL HAVE NO TIME FOR THE MAN ABOVE

DON'T WORRY 'BOUT TOMORROW JUST LIVE FOR TODAY
'CUZ YOU AIN'T GONNA LIVE TO SEE YOUR HAIR TURN GRAY.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO TAKE MY KNIFE
AND HERE'S MY GUN
JUST DON'T LOOK BACK
WHEN YOU START TO
RUNNNNNnnnnnnnnnnn............

Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean (MP3)
by The Creep
Mr. G. Records 826

Found for three bucks at Music Millennium (CDs, DVDs, vinyl). With lines like "We might have had flaws, like bending the laws, but God only knows it was for a good cause" or "It just isn't fair to take all of the blame when all we were doing was playing the game," updating this 1973 novelty song about Watergate and its unapologetic co-conspirators might take little more than changing the names. Listening to them sing about "one little bug" reminds you how quaint the Nixon crew's crimes were compared to today's widespread warrantless surveillance, not to mention our international infractions like a baseless preemptive war and programmatic state-sanctioned torture. Personally, I don't want Obama to bother explaining to me why we're not prosecuting the Bush-Cheney crew for the four treaties they've broken, I want him to go to the nearest reservation, look the oldest Indian he can find in the face and try explaining it to them. But, hey, I'm a stay-at-home dad, so I watch waaaaay too much news and am easily triggered into political tirades. Which is why I bought this song. I was so happy with my purchase, I was excited to visit the other Music Millennium branch, but sadly found it boarded up and for lease. Painted in large letters on the outside of Music Millennium's remaining store is the motto KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD. In Texas, it's KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD and KEEP ASHEVILLE WEIRD in North Carolina (although lately we've been seeing more succinct and bitter bumper stickers like "Don't Move Here"). The Music Millennium website explains that keeping it weird means supporting local businesses and entrepreneurs and maintaining a balance between a city's unique culture and homegrown commerce and national corporate chains. For many small businesses these days, it's do or die time. Andrew Stout writes in the latest Portland Mercury that, in the five-year period leading up to the first Record Store Day last year, about 1,500 independent record stores closed. That's not good. But what is good is that Portland's Mayor Sam Adams has not only declared Saturday officially Record Store Day in his direct support of all these fine establishments Little E and I have been visiting, he's even DJing at a free party that night and spinning records himself. Weird, huh.

I Want to Be Loved (MP3)
by The Lovers
Post 10007

Found for three bucks (not five like it says) at Green Noise Records (CDs, vinyl, cassettes). The description written on the sleeve by Martin (a.k.a. "the guy who works Sundays") reads: "Husband & wife R&B duo, very cute, the chick is great (reminds me of little Nanette Culpepper in 7th grade, she used to put her soft brown hands over my eyes and whisper in my ear 'Guess who,' I loved that girl, still do) Okay but could you talk about the record, Martin. Okay, it's got that sweet innercity black girl group-like charm, the chick was made for girl group. 'I wanna be loved' has a super cool guitar, busts into a rockabilly bridge, both sides kinda corny but I love that side." I've bought a few more records because of Martin's notes. Sometimes he even draws little illustrative doodles. I haven't met the man and I'm not sure I want to. I kind of like having him as a pen pal of sorts. Martin also writes that this is actually a 1960 re-issue of two 1957 A-sides originally on LAMP Records. I've added two more records from Martin at the end of this post. I want him to be loved.

Mockingbird After Midnight (MP3)
by Pansonic Records

Found for two-fifty at Jackpot Records east (CDs, vinyl). I love how the previous owner wrote COLLECTORS ITEM on the front of this. Before you criticize them for their clear ignorance of collectors, check the liner notes on the back and you see they've drawn arrows to the phrase "collector's item" -- which is already in quotes, mind you -- and have also helpfully underlined "bird lovers everywhere," qualifying for whom this rare-for-a-reason recording is considered a so-called collectable. My guess is this was a gift to just such a person. (See, "bird lovers everywhere" -- that's you! A "collector's item" -- well, that's when I knew you had to have it!) Of course, who really wants a record like this is a geek like me. I don't own the Folkways classic release Sounds of North American Frogs by Charles M. Bogert out of irony or for samples. I'll actually put it on and listen to it while cleaning house. Another reason I wanted this was because of Texas. As a child, I asked my great-grandmother about our family's ethnic heritage. She mumbled through the branches of her family tree ("Well, he was German, but I think she was Swedish...") until she finally and firmly decided: "We're Texan." Also, this is pressed, strangely I think, on vibrant red vinyl. If you've even read this far, then you're at least interested or insane enough to deserve a bonus, so here it is, another in the narrow niche of Texas wildlife records:

Fox, Coyote, Cat - Calling Instructions (MP3)
by Burnham Bros.

Marble Falls, which calls itself the Granite Capitol, is about an hour west of Austin. Burnham Brothers has been making its world famous animal call devices there for over fifty years now. This is a demon-stration record for a caller that makes the sounds of a squealing rabbit, mainly to attract coyotes. As you see on the label, "actual rabbit squeals" are also presented to serve as both example and comparison. Obviously, there's always the chance that this may cause one or more of you to join the FBI and track serial killers until the rabbits in your head have stopped squealing, but I like the narration.

Whiskey (Wash the Pain from My Heart) (MP3)
by Ralph Richardson and Skip Dowers with La-Tex Swamplanders
Goldband 1314

Found for two-fifty at Jackpot Records west (CDs, vinyl). This is the kind of song that belongs on Barstool Mountain. If you look at the handwriting on it, you'll see it was signed by the violinist Ralph Richardson, dated 3/11/86, and inscribed "Happy Birthday Anita." Gosh, what a great gift to give a woman. Yep, here's a song my pal Skip wrote about a guy at a bar who just learned his wife's been cheating on him so he's asking his whiskey to help him figure out how he's going to go home and kick her out then explain to his kids in the morning that their mom's gone and she's not coming back. But don't worry. Skip ain't that guy. Hell, he likes his whores too much to ever get married and I don't think he's had a drop to drink since he started them pills. And the gal ain't you. I mean, I don't know you, but you look like the kind that sticks with whatever they're stuck with. So it's just a song, you know. But we hope you like it. Anyway -- Anita, was it? Here ya go. Good to meet ya. And good luck with getting old.

Southern Fried (MP3)
by Earl Bostic and His Orchestra

Found for two bucks at Reflections in Time (vinyl, CDs, cassettes). From Space Age Pop: "Bostic's distinctive style, strong on the sax and heavy on the beat, was quite successful in the rhythm and blues market in the 1950s. One of the few jazz musicians of his generation with formal training, Bostic studied composition at Xavier University in New Orleans in the early 1930s, and then spent several years performing with territory bands in the Midwest as well as with Fate Marable, who led one of the last Mississippi riverboat bands. His reputation as a superb instrumentalist earned him an invitation to come to New York City, where he played with Hot Lips Page and Lionel Hampton. After a couple of years with Hampton, during which he became more and more active as an arranger, Bostic left to work as a free-lancer, writing for bands such as Jack Teagarden's and Louis Prima, and taking occasional playing jobs. He was a regular at the legendary sessions at Minton's nightclub, where Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and others helped create what became known as bebop, and Bostic was considered one of the hottest players on that stage. Then, after the war, he bucked the trends and formed his own band while others were folding theirs. His success at first, recording for the small label Majestic, was nothing special. But then he trimmed the group down to a seven-piece ensemble and adapted his arrangements to emphasize a simple melody line on sax and a strong dance beat, and switched to the Gotham label, where he had a Top 10 R&B hit with a cover of 'Temptation.' Two years latter, Syd Nathan lured him away to his Cincinnati-based label, King, and Bostic remained one of King's featured artists until his death. Ironically, Bostic sold better in white markets than black, perhaps the only black artist of whom that could be said. Bostic went on to place four other tunes, including his most famous single, 'Flamingo,' in the R&B Top 10 list. Although he kept a core group that included Gene Redd (later a successful R&B producer) on vibes, the list of musicians who spent time playing for Bostic is pretty impressive: John Coltrane, Stanley Turrentine, Blue Mitchell, Don Byas, Cozy Cole, Tiny Grimes, Sir Charles Thompson, Jackie Byard, Benny Golson, Richard 'Groove' Holmes, and Earl Palmer, just to name a few. Although Bostic's sound was rather strident on most of his King hits, Art Blakey once said that, 'Nobody knew more about the saxophone than Bostic, I mean technically, and that includes Bird.' In the late 1950s, Bostic suffered from severe heart problems and stopped performing and recording for nearly two years. He moved to Los Angeles and resumed performing intermittently in 1959, but he never returned to the pace of the early 1950s. He also returned to recording, but this time with a more laid-back kind of soul-tinged jazz. He died after suffering a second heart attack while playing a hotel opening in Rochester. John Waters used Bostic's version of 'Jungle Drums' to good effect in his 1992 film Cry Baby."

Warner the Drummer (MP3)
by Triumphs
Wand 11228 B

Found for a dollar at Mississippi Records (vinyl, turntables). It was in the Soul/R&B section and had "Drummer" in the title, so I was hoping for a beat, maybe a break. Warner, however, ain’t no funky drummer. Which is why I didn’t dig this at first, but it’s hard to explain why I do now. For me, rightly or wrongly, this song comes from that same realm of endearing rock moronics mined by fictions like Flight of the Conchords or Almost Famous. The drama of the electric piano opening, for inst, is so of its era, it just begs for bold karaoke and/or interpretive dance. I can totally see the Solid Gold dancers striking some Fosse pose on those hi-hat notes then snapping their fingers like Sharks and Jets. As my wife would say, it’s redunkulous. Then you get this CCR guitar chugging chorus with a walking blues bass line and later some Memphis horn stabs. It reminds me of trying to explain what kind of music Kurt Wagner’s band Lambchop makes. But I think I keep listening to it for the lyrics and the awkward sincerity in their dumbness. I like to believe this song’s a true story, one musician’s “I love you, man” to another. Hell, I bet Warner’s not only real but that’s his real name. Or maybe I simply can’t understand the aesthetic choice of Warner if the name’s made up. Anyways, Warner’s a cool dude. Spends all day with his drums, all evening with friends. A mellow fellow, sweet, kind of quiet. Has at least two good male friends who'd do anything for him, both of whom are described here as “whimsical.” And I think one of them wrote this song to try to cheer Warner up. What happened was Warner had this Foxy Young Lady who left him for a fast-talking agent named Steve. (I think Eminem would appreciate how Steve rhymes with dream and keen. Like Warner, the name Steve doesn’t seem chosen because it helps a rhyme scheme or sounds cool, but because it’s probably the guy’s real name.) Warner didn't try to stop her or get her back. He didn't confront Steve, though he could have. It was Warner, after all, who was wronged. But he didn’t do anything. The friend who wrote this song for him wants Warner to know that doing nothing was the cool thing to do. Turned out Steve was married with three kids and wasn't about to leave his family for the Foxy Young Lady. So she got dumped by that bullshitting, babe-stealing, no-balls Steve and by the time she tried to get back with Warner, our boy had already moved on and was dating one of his friend's little sister. Because that’s the kind of guy Warner is, the kind you’d let date your sister. A Nice Guy, in other words. Which is why the moral of the story is for the women to learn: see, this kind of shit is what you get, girls, if you choose some flashy dude when you could have a Nice Guy like Warner. You can just see the singer and drummer exchanging meaningful male-bonding looks on stage. Ah, bromance. This is the kind of pep talk that usually comes with a beer and a fuck-that-bitch pat on the back. Which begs the question: why does Warner even need cheering up? He’s got a new girl, a good life. Why's he still bumming about the Foxy Young Lady? Because that’s how foxy she was -- the kind the front men, not the rhythm section, usually score. So, ultimately, this may not be funky, but at least the drummer gets some.

Besame Mucho (MP3)
by The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett
from 50 Guitars Go South of the Border

Found for a dollar at a coffee shop on 37th and Belmont. “All major music producing studios in Hollywood, with one exception, were strangely dark and silent on three evenings last February,” the uncredited liner notes tell us. “Guitars and guitarists, an essential part of any modern recording session, were not available for regular duty. Instead, every guitar virtuoso in the film city had been booked to record en masse in three night-long sessions at Liberty Records. During those sessions, in a huge studio alive with the sounds of music, Liberty added a chapter to the history of guitar. That chapter, entitled 50 Guitars Go South Of The Border, recorded the combined efforts of the world’s most renowned guitar soloists. Playing together for the first time, they produced a new string dimension -- the sound of the guitar in depth.” I love those phrases “a new string dimension” and “the guitar in depth.” I know what they’re trying to say and it might apply to Dennis Coffey’s overdubbed electric guitar sound in “Scorpio” but I’m sorry, a large group of acoustic guitars playing the same bar chords in unision just sounds like a private music school putting on a recital. Although I've chosen the track that's the least guilty of it -- and for that very reason -- I think you can still hear what I mean. I can neither affirm nor deny whether there are, in fact, 50 guitars. There's no movie credits-like scroll of names, just this: "The solos of Laurindo Almeida are backed by the elite choir of Mexican and jazz guitarists, including Barney Kessel, Howard Roberts, Al Viola, Bob Bain, Tiny Timbrell, Bill Pitman, Jose Barroso and many others whose exclusive contracts do not allow their names to be included here." If you count Tommy Garrett, that's only nine. But still...

Pizza & Beer (MP3)
by Louis Prima & Keely Smith
from On Broadway

Found for a dollar at Everyday Music west (CDs, DVDs, vinyl). Everyday Music stores are so named because, yes, they are open every day -- New Year's, Christmas, Thanksgiving, your birthday -- from 9AM to Midnight. First heard this song on WFMU’s Teenage Wasteland years ago and offer it up here in case you've been looking for it since back then, too. You may notice Keely Smith's name is misspelled on the cover. I've read that she's part Cherokee and part Irish. Racial profiling would suggest that's not someone you'd want to make angry. But it does sound like someone I'd want to drink with. With its slew of microbreweries and microdistilleries, Portland’s a great place for beer. Oregon-grown foods and wines are also generally quite good and carried by many area grocers and restaurants. I’d say Portlanders are rightly proud to be in front of the Local Food movement. I find their particular brand of pride a bit funny, though. It’s like they wish they could be smug (as, say, San Francisco), but no one’s paying them any attention, so they just kind of puff their chests long enough to look in the mirror, then breathe out, let it go, and move on. Stephen Colbert’s right: Oregon really is California’s Canada. As for pizza, I used to live in Brooklyn so Portland could have the best pizza in the world, which it doesn't, and you'd see me sell my sister on the corner before you heard me say so. (Defend Brooklyn!) That's also why my favorite thing about this song is how ugly the girl from New Jersey is.

Just a Closer Walk with Thee (MP3)
by Al Hirt
from Struttin’ Down Royal Street

Found for fifty cents at Everyday Music east (CDs DVDs, vinyl). Commemorates the music of what trumpeter Al Hirt calls the New Orleans Negro funeral. “The pattern of the funerals,” explains the liner notes by Leonard Feather, “was a firmly established tradition. On the way to the graveyard, the musicians played slowly and solemnly, following the trumpeter or cornetist.... Generally, there were one or two cornets, one or two clarinets, banjo, tuba and drums. After the burial... the band would turn around and march back toward the center of town, swinging bombastically and contagiously all the way.” One of the reasons I offer up “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” is because it accompanies the turn in the turn around. It begins with a somber dirge played graveside, then the band leaves behind the dead and the past and starts the synchopated dance back to town. A gentle yet forceful shift of mood and direction. It doesn’t demand you stop mourning, but urges you with the inertia of necessity to return to life, to celebrate life, to keep living. It seems somehow appropriate for these times in which an acheing world seeks so many reversals of fortune. It reminds us that, in the grand scheme of things, we’re all headed for poverty and catastrophe eventually and damn lucky fuckers to be here at all. Life's too short to spend too much of it crying. So march on, people, march on. (And while we're now moving forward, let us please for the love of fucking God make some real goddamn headway on rebuilding New Orleans. Amen.)

Chicken Necks (MP3)
by Don & Juan
Big Top 3079

Found for fifty cents at The Needle thrift shop (vinyl). From Oldies-dot-com: "Don And Juan were a US R&B vocal duo who recorded one Top 10 ballad that has since become a doo-wop classic: 'What's Your Name' (1962). Don (Roland Trone) and Juan (b. Claude Johnson) were members of a vocal quartet called the Genies in Brooklyn, New York, USA. In 1959 the Genies released the up-tempo single 'Who's That Knockin'', which reached number 71 in the US charts on Shad Records. Unable to follow it with another hit, the group was dropped from the label, and subsequent recordings for Hollywood Records and Warwick Records also failed to chart. Trone and Johnson left the group and became house painters in the Long Island, New York area, until they were rediscovered, this time by an agent named Peter Paul, who arranged for the pair to sign with Big Top Records. Under their new name, they recorded 'What's Your Name', which reached number 7 in the Billboard charts in February 1962. Only one other single, 'Magic Wand', charted, although Don And Juan continued to record until 1967. Trone died in 1983 and Johnson rekindled the act with Alexander 'Buddy' Faison, another former member of the Genies, as the new Don." Insert mafia joke here. "Chicken Necks" is the much better b-side of their Top 10 classic. I can't stop singing it. "Chicken heads... chicken feet... chicken necks is all I eat!" I found the below recipe for stuffed chicken necks at Mimi's Cyber Kitchen:

Title: BUBBE'S STUFFED HELZEL (FALSA KISHKA)
Categories: Jewish, Main dish, Poultry
Yield: 1 servings

1/2 c Flour; or matzo meal
1 lg Potato; mashed
1/8 ts Salt
1 md Onion; grated
1/4 c Schmaltz; melted or soft -uncooked
Egg; if needed, or chicken fat

1. Combine all ingredients. Sew up the small end of chicken neck and fill 3/4 full. Sew up other end.

2. Wash with cold water, then pour boiling water over. This will make skin smooth.

3. Roast in oven with meat or chicken or by itself in well greased pan.

Recipe may be doubled or tripled. This may also be made with a combination of flour, matzo meal, oatmeal, or farina. Bread crumbs may be used instead of flour and browned diced onion may be added to crumbs. Season as you like; more onion, fine; a little garlic, why not. Use your imagination.

NOTE: My Grandmother made 'False Kishke' this way...she used the neck skin of the turkey or chicken instead of the cow's kishkies. If you don't know what a kishke is; maybe you shouldn't ask...

Hiilawe (MP3)
by Alfred Apaka
from Hawaiian Village Nights

Found for a dollar at the Game Exchange on Mississippi (vinyl, CDs, DVDs, video games). If you heard this song at a trendy coffee shop, you might mistake it for David Byrne, but as you see above, it’s actually velvety vocalist Alfred Apaka, an Hawaiian-Chinese-Portuguese crooner who used to appear on Bob Hope’s radio shows. What drew me to this album, though, is what’s right behind him. As Rick Ward’s liner notes explain, “The recording herein was made in the unique Kaiser Aluminum Dome at the Hawaiian Village Hotel, Waikiki. The first structure of its kind ever built, the Dome is constructed of diamond-shaped aluminum panels geometrically arranged and bolted together, requiring no interior support.” Although invented by the great Buckminster Fuller, this geodesic dome was commercially called a Kaiser Dome after Henry J. Kaiser, the industrialist who owned the license to mass produce it. Not coincidentally, Kaiser also owned the Hawaiian Village Hotel. I believe it’d be beneficial in these times to re-examine some of Fuller’s ideas, especially concerning design science and its impact on global prosperity. I also just think it’s neat to hear music that was played in one of the first geodesic domes. That’s the kind of nerd I am. Coincidentally, this LP has a song called "Ka-lu-a" on it which turns out to be a totally different song than the one sung by Louie Roberts, one that doesn’t chant or yodel the word but still hyphenates it. And I believe the conductor, Don Costa, is the father of the Funky White Bitch, Nikka Costa. As for the Kaiser Dome, it was demolished in 2001 and replaced with the Kalia Tower. It was 44 years old.

Ka-lu-a (MP3)
by Louie Roberts

Found at 2nd Avenue Records (vinyl, CDs). The Hawaiian word kalua means to cook in an underground oven called an imu. Kahlua is a sweet Mexican liqueur made from coffee. Louie Roberts was an obscure country singer from Greenbrier, Tennessee who was 14 at the time he crooned this tune and likely neither drank liquor nor cooked. The picture at left is from a TV performance he did when he was 12 that's now playing on You Tube. I had never heard of him and bought this because of the title. Especially because of the hyphens. I thought they might signify a rhythmic or chantlike chorus, but discovered instead something more like proof that Southern angels not only have red clay wings, they yodel. I'm just saying when Louie hits that first "lu," you'll hear why it's singled out. I scored five 45s for a dollar here, meaning this only cost me 20 cents. The reason I've mentioned the prices of the records I've posted is because I know times are tough for many out there and sometimes we need to be reminded that we can still do a lot for a little. And we can still give ourselves those small gifts that get us through our days, like spending the next three minutes letting our minds float in the mysterious faux-Hawaiian heaven of “Ka-lu-a.”

Bonus Songs:

Thanks Portland. Here's back atcha.

Pacific Honky Tonk (MP3)
by The Don Rays
Capco 103

Columbia River Song (MP3)
by J.J. Jones
Rex 5023

The Look of Love (MP3)
by Mystic Moods Orchestra
from Moods for a Stormy Night

Green Noise's Sunday man Martin describes "Pacific Honky Tonk" as "garage, honky tonk/rockabilly instrumental, great shit, cool fuzzy twangy guitar + hollars, maybe not great but pretty damn cool." He describes "Columbia River Song" simply as "a Northwest country classic." I think Portlanders will uniquely appreciate the absurdity of the Mystic Moods formula: rain + muzak = sex.

HAPPY SNAPS: Little E in P-Town

2009-02-26T11:31:00.152-05:00

The Baby Book, pg. 473: "There will be days when your adult mind will need more than Mother Goose. Read your favorite magazine or book aloud to baby, pepping up the story for a baby's ear." I've learned: you can still take advantage of mutual interests.

Tit Stop Rock (MP3) by Chinga Chavin

The Baby Book, pg. 92: "If you have a baby who really needs a pacifier, then use it, don't abuse it, and quickly try to lose it." I've learned: using a dumb one encourages ditching it. And I will, just as soon as it stops being so fucking piss-my-pants funny....

Catching Flys with My Teeth (MP3) by The Lonesome Organist

Glad You're Here With Me (MP3) by Papa M

I hate to contribute to the overuse of a catch phrase, but a friend and I have decided, in order not to take our forced joblessness personally, that the economy's just not that into us. Luckily, my wife has found work. Other men in my circle are in this same situation. I’m the only one among them, though, who also has a baby son to take care of. Yes, the recession has made me a Mr. Mom. I'll admit, if you knew me like I know me, you’d want to snatch him away like a goddamn dingo. I wouldnt argue with you, either. The boy would be better off. Instead he's now in the hands of a known degenerate and drunkard. Someone who credits smoking more pot for his finally being able to quit smoking cigarettes. Someone who so consistently and creatively curses with no regard for social context that all his kinfolk swear the kid's first words will likely be some form of fuck. Not to mention the relentless cynicism and paranoia which can't possibly be healthy for anyone. Plus I’m clumsy. I mean I drop things all the time. And did I mention I’m smoking more pot? No, I wouldn’t argue. But I’d fight you. And I’d advise you not to mess with papa bear.

Where Yo Is (MP3) by Fat Daddy Holmes

Fun facts about where we are: there's no sales tax, the mayor's openly gay, and you're not allowed to pump your own gas. Yes, we're back in Portland, Oregon, whose warm, dry summers and temperate, rainy winters create the ideal conditions for growing roses, hence the city’s many rose gardens and its most common nickname, The City of Roses. (These same conditions have also proven conducive to the area’s other favorite crop, but this hasn’t yet led to a nickname -- like oh, say, Potland.) It's also known as Stumptown, a name derived from the days of its founding when all the timber here was cleared. Nowadays, Portland often shows up on lists of greenest places to live, thanks to its approach to urban planning. It contains 92,000 acres of green space and over 75 miles of trails. It was also the first U.S. city to enact mandates to reduce carbon emissions. There's biofueled buses, light rail lines, and an extensive network of bike lanes, plus a small fleet of hybrid cars the city loans out to select citizens like library books. The solar-powered parking meters waste paper by printing stickers, and the solar-powered public toilets Portland has patented and hopes to market to other cities may be another imperfect exercise of the same good intentions, but their examples at least prove that even under such often overcast skies, things can still run on the sun, so shame to any city's excuse of lacking light.

Bacon Fat (MP3) by Andre Williams

My favorite tidbit, though, is the disputed but locally beloved boast that Portland contains the most strip clubs per capita in the U.S., including a pirate-themed strip club in a building shaped like a giant jug of rum and the world’s first vegan strip club (Casa Diablo) whose ironically un-p.c.motto offers “meat on the pole, not on the plate." (Which reminds me of the bacon-maple long john at Voodoo Dough-nut. The doughnut itself is vegan. Then topped with maple icing and two pieces of dried bacon. A simulation of an overly-syrupped pancake breakfast. I would go so far as to say that, for me, the bacon-maple long john nicely symbolizes the sinner/savior duality of Portland. While I'm at it, I'd like to mention my fondness for the Bacon Bloody at Genie's. I have to give P-town props for realizing, as we do in the South, that bacon is, among other things, a condiment.) When I asked why so many strip clubs, I was told that males out-number females something like 2 to 1, but really more like 3 to 1 because half of the women are lesbians. If you think about it, this also means if you suspect some woman you spot on the street is a stripper, odds are she is one. All around, a lovely city.

We're here for a few months, during which Little E and I have at least one post planned. We hope to have time for more, but we'll see. For now, here's a loving shout out to sex advice columnist and Pacific Northwest resident Dan Savage: Hey faggot! My brother took some of these pictures. We're a pair of fine looking fellows don't you know and now whenever we hang out, we've discovered other people's first assumption is that we're a gay couple who've adopted. Me and my bro are both straight, married liberals who think the passing of Prop 8 was tantamount to a hate crime. We recognize that in such moments of mistaken identity, we become representatives of issues like gay marriage and gay families. And because we support such issues and always try to do our part, we've tried to behave less idiotically in public. But there was this estate sale. See the above picture. I found a ventriloquist doll's head and was showing it to E. He's teething and puts everything in his mouth. My question is this: if he did exactly that and in fact put his mouth on the doll's mouth so that it looked like he was making out with the dude while his two gay daddies encouraged him and laughed, was that bad? If so, we're sorry.

Goo Goo Muck (MP3) by Ronnie Cook & the Gaylads

BACK BEAT: Obamix

2009-01-21T15:24:00.020-05:00

Here's the set we played during the opening hour of our inaugural party for the First and Forty-Fourth, because what Red, White & Blue needs now is Black and Green (71MB MP3).

Priests' Invocation
"Easy Going Fellow" Roscoe Shelton
"The Prayer" Ray Scott
"Cigarette" The Visions
"Money is a Thing of the Past" Ronnie Haig
"What About Us" The Coasters
"Don't Hit Me No More" Mable John
"Sweet Talk" Bunny Paul
"I'm Gonna Spend My Money" The Poor Boys
"Freeloaders" Fred Carter
"White House Party" Hank Marr
The Black Avenger
"Fine Brown Frame" Nellie Lutcher
"Let Me Do My Thing" The People's Choice
"Beautiful Day" Spider Harrison
"I Love You and Buddha Too" Mason Jennings
"Yes We Can (part 1)" Lee Dorsey
"Listening Man" The Bees
"The New World" The Knitters
"Devil Behind That Bush" The Cramps
"Life is Still Sweet" White Hassle
"Good Times" Dave Grusin
"Thing Like That" Giant Sand

O.W. at Soul Sides posted a much more mature and coherent Obamix by King Most back in September which we also played:

Intro/Smoked Sugar: I'm A Winner
Roy Davis Jr.: People Get Ready
Jackson 5: We're Almost There (DJ Spinna Remix)
Erykah Badu: Solider (Sasaac Remix)
Masta Ace: Beautifull
Black Spade: We Need A Revolution
Skull Snaps: It's A New Day
Marvin Gaye & The Mizzel Brothers: Where Are We Going?
James Brown: Mind Power
Antibalas: Si Se Puede
Grandmaster Flash: The Message (Next Message Blend Version)
DJ Day: A Place To Go
Double Exposure: Everyman For Himself
Donald Byrd: Change Makes Ya Wanna Hustle
Stevie Wonder: Blackman (Kay Sputnik Re-Edit)
L.T.D.: Love To The World
Cymande: Bra
Pitbull: American War
The Dynamics: Move On Up

Official Obamixes include Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement and Change is Now: Renewing America's Promise.

CINEPHOBIA: The Ghosts of Christmas Present

2008-12-30T11:07:00.016-05:00

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984). IMDB: "A young boy watches his parents killed by a thief in a Santa suit. He spends his youth in an orphanage, staying quietly to his self, but his mind is further bent by an ironhanded Mother Superior. He eventually gets a job at a local store, where he finally snaps when he is required to wear a Santa suit, and goes on a killing spree that leads him slowly back to the orphanage." Wikipedia: "The PTA fought to have this film removed from the theaters due to its subject matter and the fact that it was shown around Christmas, although an earlier film with a similar synopsis had gone unnoticed. Upon its original release in 1984, the film created serious controversy. Siskel and Ebert condemned the film and went so far as to read the film's production credits on air, saying 'shame, shame' after each one."

SANTA ON MURDER SPREE AT EX'S PARTY (Associated Press, Dec. 27, 2008): "Stinging from an acrimonious divorce, a man plotting revenge against his ex-wife dressed up like Santa, went to his former in-laws' Christmas Eve party and slaughtered at least eight people before killing himself. Bruce Pardo's former wife and her parents were believed to be among the dead. Investigators planned to return to the scene overnight to sift through the ashes of the home, which Pardo set ablaze using a homemade device that sprayed flammable liquid."

BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974). IMDB: "The story is simple: right before Christmas break, an unseen psycho sneaks into the attic of a Canadian sorority house, menacing the girls with obscene phone calls, and starts to kill them one by one."

MAN FOUND LIVING IN FAMILY'S ATTIC (WBBH-TV, Dec. 29, 2008): "Stanley Carter apparently just wanted some place to spend the holidays - plus a few Christmas gifts. Police in Plains Township, Pennsylvania, found a 21-year-old man in the attic of a duplex apartment after the occupants reported missing cash, a laptop computer, and an iPod. Footprints were spotted in a bedroom closet where a trap door leads to the attic. When Carter emerged, he was wearing clothes he apparently pilfered during his days in hiding. Police say he kept a list of everything he took, and labeled it Stanley's Christmas List."

SOUND-OFF: Escape from the Terror of the Ghost of the Castle of the Valley of the Planet of Death

2008-12-15T15:36:00.049-05:00

As always, more B-movie trailers (MP3s) for your mixes.

99 Women (1969)

Booby Trap (1970)

Bummer! (1973)

The Chinese Connection (1972)

Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde (1976)

House of Dark Shadows (1970)

Mark of the Devil (1970)

Mom and Dad (1945)

Mondo Balordo (1964)

Night of the Ghouls (1959)

Shanty Tramp (1967)

She-Devils on Wheels (1968)

Swinging Barmaids (1975)

Three Dimensions of Greta (a.k.a. Four Dimensions of Greta)

Women in Cages (1971)

Bonus tracks:

Je T'aime -- Gainsbourg's classic heavy breather performed with comic Nordic gusto by the multi-dimensional Greta herself, Swedish pin-up Leena Skoog. And check out Anders' hander.

Man Buried Alive -- Promo stunt by the producer of Mom and Dad, exploitation film marketer extraordinaire Kroger Babb.

Further viewing:
Mau Mau Sex Sex: A True Story of America's Oldest Independent Filmmakers

Sex and Buttered Popcorn (Vol. 1: Tease, Sleaze & Social Disease, Vol. 2: Sex, Sin & Salvation, and Vol. 3: Granddad's Forbidden Follies)

Schlock!: The Secret History of American Movies

And here's a picture of the "stomach distress bag" mentioned in the trailer for Mark of the Devil. From the barf bag collection of MIT Media Laboratory's Vision & Modeling Group (a.k.a. VisMod), viewable online at the Air Sickness Bag Virtual Museum.

For more trailers: Bedazzled Blue.

BACK BEAT: Take a Breather

2008-08-20T10:15:00.347-04:00

Heavy Breathing: The Sounds of Sex is a four-disc series put together by IntimDJ Capt. Schneider from Munich, Germany of "hot and steamy songs from every genre" ("whether it's blues, techno, house, disco, soul, easy listening, downbeat, new wave, rhythm & blues, reggae, electronica, italo-house, exotica, rockabilly, funk, hip-hop, jazz, or prog-rock... because lust has no musical blinkers..."). You can listen to 30-second teasers of all 68 tunes at the Heavy Breathing website. Despite the title, not all the selections are heavy breathers. And wisely so. Many a mix can be enhanced by an orgasmic track or two, but they're better served as a side dish than a meal. With that in mind, here are some heavy breathers to be lightly sprinkled amidst your own mixes. I think you'll agree with me that, when it comes to such aural pleasures, they just don't fake em like they used to.

Little Girl (MP3)
by John & Jackie (1958)

James Austin, producer of the Rhino box set Rockin' Bones: 1950s Punk & Rockabilly, claims the idea for the compilation came to him when he discovered a 45 of John & Jackie's "Little Girl": "I could not believe what I heard, and I started thinking, these are really oddball songs. They're rockabilly but they're so hardcore. And I came up with literally hundreds of them." Austin's argument for rockabilly as pre-punk seems to make sense. Both share a rebellious youth with a tough and rumble tude releasing DIY recordings of hard-hitting minimalist music to regional scenes. But reviewer John Nova Lomax of the Houston Press disagrees: "I don't buy it, and sex is one reason I don't. Rockabilly was perhaps the most sexually charged music American white people have ever made. It was full of supple, slap-bass-driven rhythms, and while it was as manic as two high school kids having a quick one while their parents were away, it still swung, and swing is a sexual rhythm. Punk, on the other hand, has always been a singularly sexless music -- they got 'Too Drunk to Fuck' and they liked it that way. The guitars were distorted, and the rhythms were static and straight-ahead." I would argue that Lomax misses the timing of each rebellion. The fifties were famously repressed while the seventies proved too permissive, so it makes perfect sense for fifties rebels to promote sex and for seventies rebels to dismiss it. "Little Girl," however, is no mere rebellion, but a riot -- a duet between a man and a woman where his singing drives her into an orgasm every verse. I've read that rockabilly artist Gene Maltais, who wrote the song, didn't like how Aladdin Records handled it and left the label before signing a contract, so I'm guessing Jackie's ohs weren't his idea.

Untitled Track (MP3)
from Tortura: The Sounds of Pain and Pleasure (1965)

You can download this whole album at Beware of the Blog, web journal of the world's greatest free-form radio station, East Orange, New Jersey's WFMU, as part of the online collection of obscure records known as the 365 Days Project. Writes 365 contributor Sid Safari: "WhatCha waitin' for... a whippin'? Dirty boys and naughty girls here is YOUR call. Relax in the twilight of your upcoming evenings listening to the sounds of whipping, beating, screaming, moaning, crying, groaning and laughing. To be listened to by the whip-wielding dominatrix to the lonely soul awaiting the next afrodisiac. My recommendation is that next time you leave your home you should play this recording at a very loud volume for your neighbors to start a local rumour mill." Excerpts from Tortura 2: An Evening with the Marquis de Sade are also posted, but WFMU DJ Brian Turner claims that "there is not much of a difference between these two records, honest. And if you are the type of person who can discern the subtleties, I do not wish to make your acquaintance."

Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus (MP3)
by Serge Gainsbourg with Brigitte Bardot

Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus (MP3)
by Serge Gainsbourg with Jane Birkin (1969)

Wikipedia's entry [my comments in brackets]: "'Je t'aime... moi non plus' (French for 'I love you... me neither') is the title of a French song written by Serge Gainsbourg, arranged by Arthur Greenslade and sung by Gainsbourg and his lover at the time, Jane Birkin. The song was originally written for and recorded in 1968 with Gainsbourg's then girlfriend, Brigitte Bardot. However, Bardot pleaded with Gainsbourg not to release their recording of the song: she was married at the time, to German businessman Gunther Sachs. Gainsbourg complied. Later that year, Gainsbourg met, and fell in love with, English actress Jane Birkin, on the set of their film Slogan. 'Je t'aime... moi non plus' was re-recorded with Birkin replacing Bardot, and was released early in 1969." [You can almost see this story play out in the above cover art. Bardot stands there with her arms crossed, jaw set, a cold shoulder toward Serge, whereas Birkin is, as she often was, readily disrobed.] "The lyrics are written as an imaginary dialogue between two lovers during a sexual encounter. Phrases from the song include: 'Je vais et je viens, entre tes reins' ('I come and I go, in between your loins')... The explicit eroticism of the song was declared offensive at the time of its release. The lyrics are commonly thought to refer to the taboo theme of engaging in sex without love, and were delivered in a breathy, suggestive style." [Here the entry takes a strange turn into Snobsville.] "This interpretation of the song as basic 'soft porn' is, however, a misconception. For all who've some knowledge of Gainsbourg, here we find -- as in all his work, always profoundly cerebral -- the note of desperation, of angst (all in casual disguise) which has been at the core of his best work. One key line is precisely: 'L'amour physique est sans issue' ('Physical love is a dead end'), which could only be singled out by someone speaking French -- and even then: by 'intellectuals'." [For the record, I have some knowledge of Gainsbourg and don't always find his work -- like, say, the zips and whizzes of "Comic Strip" -- profoundly cerebral. And I'm not sure how deep or desperate it is to sing that sex without love is pointless, although it's at least interesting to say so while you're banging the likes of Bardot. As for whether it's a misconception to interpret the song as soft porn, I'll just say that denouncing taboos is exactly how most exploitation films get away with showing them. Anyhow, now leaving Snobsville.] "The song culminates in simulated orgasm sounds by Birkin: mostly because of this, it was banned from radio play in Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, and denounced by the Vatican in a public statement. The song was a commercial success throughout Europe. Arguably, the publicity the controversy created was partly responsible for its success. In the UK, it was originally released on the Fontana label, but, after reaching number 2 on the charts, it was withdrawn for sale by the label. Gainsbourg then arranged a deal with prominent independent label Major Minor and, upon re-release, it reached number one." [The Bardot version was released, finally, in 1984.]

Zoom Party (MP3)
by the Albert Van Dam Orchestra (1966)

Erotica (MP3)
by Rita (1969)

Nothing but rumors are really known about the vocalist on this song. The same vocal track also appears on the similar-looking but more psychedelic-sounding "Erotica" single by the band Man [here]. Man's producer John Schroeder once floated the story that the vocals were real sex sounds made by a woman they picked up at a pub down the street from the studio. When a rumor surfaced that the vocals were really by one of the secretaries at Pye Records, Schroeder didn't deny the claim but said it wouldn't be fair to name the performer. Either way, it sounds like someone had a Girls Gone Wild moment with a mic. Rita's "Erotica" was released in the U.K. by Major Minor, the same label that just had a hit that year with "Je T'aime" but not so much with this one. Man's "Erotica" can be found on Mondo Porno, volume twelve of the legendary Mood Mosaic series which sports more rare heavy breathers like the examples below.

Amame (MP3)
by Claudia Vita
available on The Mood Mosaic Vol. 3: The Sexploitation

Mondo Porno (MP3)
by The Blow Jobbers
available on The Mood Mosaic Vol. 12: Mondo Porno

Separation (MP3)
by Philippe Nicaud (1970)

Writes Waxidermy: "With an artwork by the famous painter 'Aslan', this one is my french Holy Grail. The music is as good as the cover. Philippe Nicaud is a french comedian from the sixties who acted in wack parisian plays. The music go from bossa to jerk or funk orchestra. Nicaud doesn't sing he speaks, the lyrics are not explicit but there's innuendo! I think that this lp is musically better than the better Gainsbourg LP from the 70's. All the ingredients are there: horn, strings, male and female scat over funky breakbeats. A must have for french amateurs or funky beat lovers."

Modern Sex (MP3)
by the Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra (1970)
available on Peter Scores: The Erotic World of the Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra

The 1994 re-release of the soundtrack for the 1967 Bavarian-French sci-fi series Raumpatrouille [Space Patrol] sparked a rediscovery of prolific German TV and film composer Peter Thomas' work, which includes more breezy erotica like this as well as spy jazz, space pop, go-go beat, mod rock, symphonic orchestrations, vocalese lounge, and early electronica (for which he even invented his own twelve-oscillator synthesizer, the Thomwiephon, now enshrined next to the Theramin at the Deutsches Museum), all of which is now widely available in various compilations and packages. Peter Scores, a collection of his softcore cuts, was put together with the assistance of Thomas himself.

Hiasmina (MP3)
by Jean Seberg (1971)
available on Women in Lounge: A Female Vocal Excursion in the Dreamy Land of the Italian Movie Soundtracks

From "The FBI Kills an Actress" by Bill Van Dyk: "Jean Seberg was seventeen and wholly unprepared for Hollywood when she was chosen from among 3,000 girls to play Joan of Arc for Otto Preminger. The movie was a failure and Seberg's performance was panned, but she went on to star in Breathless, one of the most influential films of the 1960's. She became a kind of icon of the 1960's, as unlike Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, and Doris Day as Bob Dylan was unlike Dean Martin. She was the real thing, one of the first post-modern celebrities. She was her own girl. She held strong political views which led her to support the Black Panthers. The FBI took note and spied on her and decided to plant a story about her in the press. They persuaded the L.A. Times and Newsweek to publish the rumour that she was pregnant with the child of an un-named member of the Black Panther party. Seberg, devastated, took an overdose of sleeping pills and lost the baby. She showed the stillborn body to the press, to prove that it was not mixed race. Every year thereafter, on the anniversary of the baby's stillbirth, she tried to commit suicide, and finally succeeded in September, 1979, with barbiturates and alcohol." "Hiasmina" appears on composer Berto Pisano's soundtrack to Kill!, a cheap and nasty 1971 Euro thriller about secret agents, drug dealers, and porn merchants which was released in the U.S. three years later under the amusingly amplified title Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!.

Miss Fenjala (MP3)
by Claudio Szenkar
available on Popshopping 2: More Music from German Commercials 1962 - 1977

Brochure blurb: "The brand Fenjal was launched by the Swiss company Doetsch Grether in 1962 with a Creme Bath Oil. Over the last four decades Fenjal has become a full range of body care products including Shower Cremes, Body Milks, Body Lotions, Deodorants, Soaps, Foam Bath, and Creme Bath Oil. Fenjal is sold in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K.." Yeah, the woman in this ad sounds like she's having a cream bath, alright.

Coming and Going (MP3)
by the Ray Brown Orchestra (1970)

From Cool Cinema Trash: "The average filmgoer might be fooled by the lush music and artistic backdrop used in the opening credits of The Adventurers (1970). But any true fan of cool cinema trash will recognize these flourishes as vain attempts at cinematic respectability. When the names of producer Joseph E. Levine and novelist Harold Robbins appear onscreen, you know you're in for a genuinely trashy experience. In the fictional South American country of Corteguay, young Dax Xenos (Loris Loddi) plays on a verdant hillside with his puppy. Their carefree frolicking is soon ended when the dog is shot dead. Now, what kind of movie kills a puppy in its opening moments? This kind. Hang on tight, because there's lots more sex, violence and melodrama to come." This album is not the lush original score, however, but Quincy Jones' funky re-arrangement of composer Antonio Carlos Jobim's soundtrack. This particular track's Vocal Inspiration (as it's called on the album credits) was supplied by actress and singer Sally Kellerman, best known for her role as Hot Lips Houlihan in Robert Altman's classic film M*A*S*H, released the same year. Bjork sampled some of the beats from this LP for her first solo release, 1993's aptly named Debut, which makes me wonder what it'd sound like if Bjork applied her own vocal gymnastics to an over-the-top heavy breather like this -- which I also mention so I can post a picture of Bjork instead of one of Sally Kellerman.

Orgiastic Ritual (MP3)
by the South African Combo (1972)

Riti, magie nere e segrete orge nel Trecento (Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies in the 14th Century) is a low-budget Euro horror film that, until its recent release by Redemption on dvd as The Reincarnation of Isabel, was thought to be lost forever and now has many reviewers wondering whether it ever should have been found. Not because of the sadistic whipping, branding, blood drinking, heart eating, witch burning, or virgin burying. Not because of the rampantly bad dialogue like "I say, I think your ectoplasm's showing." Not because of the laughable continuity errors like day shots in night scenes, night shots in day scenes, or a woman in a skirt suddenly in pants then back in a skirt again. Not because of the outrageously awful musical decisions like playing Dixieland jazz during the climactic threesome. No, what seems to be the main complaint is that, despite some characters taking five minutes at a time to try to explain it, the movie just doesn't make sense. I agree, however, with the reviewer at Esotika Erotica Psychotica that it's not supposed to. Rather, like Jean Rollin's lesbian vampire films (also released on dvd by Redemption), its only aim is to sustain a certain gothic tone and feeling. I don't think there'll be any arguments over the aim and effectiveness of this song from the soundtrack, though -- another rare gem you can also find on the aforementioned Mood Mosaic series.

Jungle Fever (MP3)
by Chakachas (1972)

This Belgian band's BBC-banned top ten hit appears in P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights and on Master Sounds 98.3, Grand Theft Auto's fictional radio station. I think big nappy fros you can hide things in are hot.

Strange Movies (MP3)
by The Troggs (1973)

I have a huge soft spot for The Troggs and dig some of their misses as much as their hits. Originally The Troglodytes, they were formed by four lads from Andover, a brick manufacturing town viewed by the rest of England as the sticks where the hicks were as thick as their bricks. A slur to be sure, but the truth is The Troggs were not the brightest bunch, bless their hearts, but so adorably entertaining because of it. Hence the Troggs Tapes -- the legendary recording of the band spatting in the studio, beginning with the failure to establish a drum beat and devolving into a moronic argument of hilariously profane proportions ("Put some fucking fairy dust over the bastard!") said to have inspired bits in the classic mockumentary Spinal Tap -- still circulates in the industry today. What makes Andover the key to understanding The Troggs, though, is that they wanted above all else to avoid shitty blue collar jobs and the kind of dead end lives they saw all around them. That's why, after they lucked out at the start with their big hit "Wild Thing," most of their subsequent effort was really just about trying not to let the ride end. As with "Wild Thing," they were at their best when at their most primal and libidinous ("Lover," "Come Now," "Gonna Make You," "I Can't Control Myself," etc.). As I say, though, I often still enjoy them at their worst, which usually occurred when they tried to stay hip to trends they didn't really understand. (My favorite example of this is "Everything's Funny," their ridiculous attempt to cater to the hippie scene with a drug song when the strongest drug any of them had ever tried was a warm pint of Guinness.) Whether this almost-glam rocker about attending a porn flick falls into the former or the latter, well, I don't know -- maybe both -- but I dig it.

Sesso Matto (MP3)
by Armando Trovaioli (1973)

From Vincenty Canby's 1976 review of the 1973 Italian comedy Sesso Matto a.k.a. How Funny Can Sex Be?: "Watching Dino Risi's 'How Funny Can Sex Be?' is to be on the point of death and to have every Italian comedy ever made pass in front of your eyes instead of your life. It's a disappointment not easily remedied. The film, which opened yesterday at the Trans-Lux East, stars Giancarlo Giannini and Laura Antonelli in eight sketches that parody Italian sexual manners in ways that run the gamut from harmless to painfully predictable to slightly nasty, as in the sketch in which he plays a young man hopelessly attracted to elderly women, the older and uglier the better.... Among the topics touched on but never successfully sent up are the impotence of a village Romeo, a pre-meditated murder effected by overindulgence in sex, and artificial insemination. Laura Antonelli, a stunning beauty and a talented comedienne, also wastes her talents, though the unadorned sight of her helps the time pass more quickly."

Love to Love You Baby (MP3)
by Donna Summer (1975)

The story goes that Donna Summer suggested the line "love to love you baby" to producer Georgio Moroder who turned it into a full disco song with lyrics so explicit they made Donna Summer uncomfortable. She reluctantly agreed to record a demo, but Moroder was so impressed with Summer's erotic moans and groans, he persuaded her to let him release it. A tape of the song was sent to Neil Bogart of Casablanca Records who played it at one of his parties and liked it so much, he played it over and over all night, then called Moroder and told him the song should be longer -- a lot longer. Moroder brought Summer back in and she was even more nervous this time, so the studio lights were dimmed and she layed on the floor in the dark. The final recording lasted over sixteen minutes and, according to Time Magazine, contained 23 orgasms (the BBC claimed it contained 22). Yet, in an interview with Penthouse Magazine, Summer claimed she faked all the orgasmic sounds and heavy breathing without thinking any sexual thoughts: "I know it sounds funny. During the recording of the record, I had much more romantic thoughts than the record led you to believe. You know, there are ecstatic moments in life that are physical, that are like an orgasm. For a mother, I should think, there are moments -- touching her child, realizing that this miracle is hers -- that are ecstasy." I think we both know what she means but if you hear anyone making sounds like this while touching a child, please imprison them.

Ecstasy (MP3)
by The Tee Cees
from Disco Love Bite (1978)
(vinyl rip by American Athlete)

La Via Della Prostituzione (MP3)
by Nico Fidenco (1978)
available on She Had a Taste for Music

Dusty Groove describes Nico Fidenco's scores for Joe D'Amato's Emanuelle movies as having "a sound that's different from a lot of these other Italian soundtracks, and which sounds a bit like some of the French stuff of the 70's, particularly the scoring that was being done by Serge Gainsbourg at the time. There's lots of isolated instruments, slowly gyrating basslines, choppy guitar, and cool electronic bits on keyboards..." This particular cut is from Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade, the fifth and final film of the series. From The Video Vacuum: "This time out Emanuelle takes on the white slave trade but BEFORE she does that, she masturbates while she watches her friend fuck a black mechanic, goes on an African safari, has a lesbian tryst in the shower, balls a wealthy prince, smokes a hookah in India, has a threeway, watches a nude photo shoot in New York and makes love in a darkroom. THEN she decides to do an exposé about white slavers. When she tries to escape (with the help of a friendly transvestite) she gets captured and nearly gets lobotomized by the evil doctors at 'The Clinic'. Fortunately she escapes in a laundry basket, hops aboard a ship home and balls the crew to pay for her voyage." I haven't seen the film and can't say when this song plays, so just imagine whatever bit of that you wish while you listen.

Na Na Na - Yeh Kya Karne Lage Ho (MP3)
composed by Kalyanji & Anandji, performed by Hemlata
from the soundtrack Bombay 405 Miles (1980)

From Music from the Third Floor: "All out disco from da funk brothers, one that usually commands high prices on eBay. Which mostly has to do with the hugely popular (it was once anyway) 'Na Na Na - Yeh Kya Karne Lage Ho'. Sexy spoken vocals, panting, giggling; a great Blaxploitation-like groove with horns, wah-wah guitars and moogs... this is the Hindi 'Je T'Aime' (or, Hemlata is the Hindi Donna Summer). Silly, funny and steaming all at once, the definite highlight of 'Bom-bay 405 Miles'." (Also available on The Bombay Connection Vol. 1.)

Sexy Safari (MP3)
by the Afro Rhythm Group (1985)

Leibesgeflüster (MP3)
from the Narciss Intim-Serie 45
(vinyl rip by Berlin Beatet Bestes)

A German phone sex 45 found at a flea market. Looking at the cover you can see both why the blogger who bought it and posted it did so and why others before him hadn't.

The Isle of Lesbo (MP3)
by Brenda & Vivienne
available on Mondo Erotico

Mondo Erotico is not an album, but a homemade comp by a German netizen named eftimihn. He has other mixes floating out there as well, including Mondo Erotico 2.

Theme from Claudine '69 (MP3)
by Alfredo Luna
available on Nymphomania: A Collection of Sexy European Go-Go Music from the '60s

The three volume Nympho-mania series were mixed CDRs made in the late 1990s by Frank Conakry, a.k.a. DJ Soulpusher, a.k.a. DJ Franc O. His bio: "DJ Soulpusher first came to New York during the summer of 1996 when under the name Franc O. he established his legendary and decadent night Vampyros Lesbos featuring exotic dancers, French ’60s pop and obscure Euopean soft porn soundtracks. But under the Guiliani crackdown on nightlife it became more and more difficult to continue a night that included scantily clad go-go girls, ’70's soft porn projections, and a notoriously misbehaving clientele. So in August 2000, Franc O., along with Go Go Girl Manuela, packed their bags and moved back to old Berlin where, now as DJ Soulpusher and Boogaloo Pussycat, they together started a party called Soul Explosion which soon became Europe's biggest night for rare and hard-hitting funk 45s. This continued until 2005 when again the two felt an urge to change the scenery; they got married and moved to Conakry, the Capital of Guinea on the coast of West Africa. Here DJ Soulpusher dedicated all of his time to building up an incredible collection of rare Afrobeat and African funk records. After digging for old vinyl in various local stores, DJ Soulpusher started traveling all over West Africa. His first trips led him to Sierra Leone where he explored the cities of Freetown, Bo and Kenema. The largest finds he turned up, however, were in Benin – the only country in the world where Voodoo is officially recognized as state religion and practiced by the majority of its people. The Funk music that was recorded in Benin from the late 60’s until the late 70’s was partially influenced by the hypnotic dance music of the Voodoo ceremonies, most notably the Sato, a traditional rhythm that sounds pretty much the same as what later was called Afrobeat. Benin had a multitude of record labels and two even operated their own pressing plants, a very unique feature for such a small African country. Soulpusher’s adventures across Africa (as well as lengthy mixes featuring his most coveted finds) are documented on his highly trafficked blog Voodoo Funk." Frank returned to New York this summer.

Orgasm (MP3)
from the Butterflies soundtrack (1974)

In 1973, American sexploitation director Joseph Sarno shot a softcore Euro horror flick for producer Chris Nebe. Veil of Blood (a.k.a. Vampire Ecstasy) was made in Munich and starred up-and-coming Swedish nudie queen Marie Forsa. The film did poorly but Nebe and Sarno got along so well, they decided to team up again. They chose to base their second film on something that happened on their first. According to Michael Bowen's essay for the DVD re-release, Forsa had "stunned the cast and crew of Veil of Blood with her unquenchable sexual appetite. Those affiliated with the production testify that -- outside of director Sarno -- Forsa instigated sexual dalliances with nearly every member of the film, male and female alike." So Nebe and Sarno figured why not produce a contemporary erotic feature in which Forsa played a sexually adventerous character like herself. The result was Bibi: Confessions of a Sweet Sixteen (a.k.a. Girl Meets Girl). Thanks to the success of Deep Throat, however, American exhibitors were now more interested in graphic hardcore pornography and less so in visually restrained softcore like Sarno's. They wanted money shots; Sarno gave them emoting. Nebe and Sarno had tried to adapt by increasing the amount of sex scenes in Bibi, but it still didn't help them get bookings. They simply weren't artistically interested in hardcore, but knew they had to cater to the new tastes when they tried again the next year with Butterflies. Writes Bowen: "Nebe and Sarno knew that unless their new production came as close to hardcore explicitness as conceptually possible, its chances for survival in the dog-eat-dog world of adult film exhibition were next to nil. As a result, the filmmakers seem to have settled upon two strategies. First, they agreed -- in keeping with Sarno's longstanding directorial preference -- that all of the sex shot for the production must be real. 'That is real fucking going on in that film,' Nebe emphasizes, a fact that the Sarnos also corroborate. Marie Forsa's casting in the principal female role was certainly not unrelated to this lust for authenticity; while Forsa would not lend herself to actual hardcore footage, her prodigous sexual appetites provided her with a perfect foundation for the long hours of frantic fornicating the film would require." Their second strategy was to hire the male lead from Deep Throat, American actor Harry Reems. (Despite Reems' prodigious talents, Forsa wore the porn star out, which you can clearly see in the film's most rigorous sex scene.) But the film still couldn't quite crack open the U.S. market. At one point, a U.S. distributor added hardcore inserts to the film so he could promote it as a triple-X feature. The odd result was a picture in which Marie Forsa had real sex that was filmed like faked sex with cutaways to real penetration footage by a fake Marie Forsa. Retro-Seduction Cinema's Girl Meets Girl Collection contains DVDs of all three Sarno/Forsa films plus a CD of some songs and audio from their soundtracks, including this -- presumably real -- coital crescendo. •

CINEPHOBIA: Do the 23 Skidoo

2008-08-20T10:13:00.040-04:00

From Dada & Surrealist Art by William S. Rubin: "Among Surrealist techniques exploiting the mystique of accident was a kind of collective collage of words or images called the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution. The technique got its name from results obtained in initial playing, 'Le cadavre / exquis / boira / le vin / nouveau' (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine).... These poetic fragments were felt to reveal what Nicolas Calas characterized as the 'unconscious reality in the personality of the group' resulting from a process of what [Max] Ernst called 'mental contagion.' At the same time, they represented the transposition of Lautréamont's classic verbal collage to a collective level, in effect fulfilling his injunction -- frequently cited in Surrealist texts -- that 'poetry must be made by all and not by one.' It was natural that such oracular truths should be similarly sought through images, and the game was immediately adapted to drawing..." (Drawing samples from exquisitecorpse.com.)

In 1990, editors of RAW magazine invited cartoonists to take part in a comix variant called The Narrative Corpse. Each of the 69 artists was asked to write and draw three consecutive black & white panels that were then forwarded to the next cartoonist on the list. Each partici-pant was sent a three panel grid accompanied by a character sheet for the simple stick figure (Sticky) that would act as the unifying central protagonist. The cartoonists were only allowed to see the three panels that immediately preceded their own. An example:

I suggest here one method for employing the Exquisite Corpse in cinema. Let's call it 23 Skidoo because its contents are 23 short con-secutive films. Why 23? Well, it doesn't have to be, but I happen to like 23. I like the myth of it, how it's become fraught, however self-fulfillingly, with a sort of synchronistic significance. Technically, as you'll see, there's 24 films. One could then perhaps argue for the number 24 -- because film works at 24 frames per second, days are 24 hours, etc. -- but, either way, if the end result comes close to feature length, it can then be fitted for a traditional indie release, although it seems to me more suited for digital distribution (say, like Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog by Joss Whedon).

A rough draft of the rules:

1) Each short film features a song and lasts only as long as the song with the optional exception of a brief bridging scene to aid in transition to or from the inherited section. No sound but the song is allowed except during this transitional scene. Such transitions are hoped to be unnecessary, however, and thus discouraged.

2) Each filmmaker is only allowed to see the section that either precedes or follows their own, depending on which they are given. No filmmaker is allowed to alter or collaborate on any other section's writing or directing.

3) Each short must be about lovers and at least one of the lovers must be derived from the inherited section. Frank depiction of consensual sex is permitted.

4) Each short must contain at least one minor character, making for a minimum of three characters per section. Each short must also derive at least one prop from the inherited section and add a new one. Any contemporary setting is allowed.

5) Each song must be chosen by the filmmaker and be roughly standard radio play length. Songs with previously existing videos or films, songs written and/or performed by the filmmaker, ad jingles, and national anthems are strictly forbidden.

6) Each filmmaker is given the same budgetary restrictions and time limits for shooting and editing. Producers determine production budget, schedule, and the order in which filmmakers play. The "story" begins with the central section, provided here, then continues for eleven linked segments in either direction.

The rules follow the same logic employed by The Narrative Corpse. Cartoonists used a stick figure because it's the most basic and any cartoonist in any style could draw it. I would argue that marrying moving pictures to music is basic to -- and, in fact, the beginning of -- cinema. Songs also limit length in the same way the cartoonists were only given three panels. The option to replace one of the inherited lovers allows for the inclusion of various races, ages, types, physiques, and sexual preferences. Theoretically, some extremely talented actor could make it through the whole cycle as one or many types of people, but this is as unlikely as it is unwanted.

The central section (working title: Pretty Vacant) is itself a gimmick, what I refer to as a pallindrama, a scene that plays the same forwards and backwards. As such, it provides a true fulcrum, leading to the end and back to the beginning of the overall film with the same momen-tum. So as not to limit the geography of the game, the setting is a type of place that can be found at the edge of just about every city, a recognizable architectural cliche. Likewise, the "characters" are presented as archetypal outlines awaiting further development by the next two players. Complexity thus accrues in both directions. Because it's highly improbable that the next two players will create the same characters from such blank slates, this section's literal stripping down of the characters' identities makes their transformation nearly inevitable. A person enters a revolving door and exits as a new them. Think of it structurally as the shape of an hour glass:

The hour glass on the left represents the central section which starts the game. The lines emanating from it are the two paths of 11 films each, one moving forward into the future, the other backwards into the past. My proposal, represented by the hour glass on the right, is to shoot the same exact scene again using one lover from each path's end (scenes 1 and 23), thus creating a loop which can play endlessly and be entered at any point. How this works will be better understood after reading the central section's script. The scene is essentially a classic tryst at a seedy motel.

SECTION TWELVE - "PRETTY VACANT"

CUT to:

EXT. MOTEL - MAGIC HOUR

The neon sign changes from VACANCY to NO VACANCY.

CUE MUSIC.

WIDE on the twilit lot of a no-tell motel on the edge of an unseen city. A spectral sin zone, as dingy as it is cheap. Just a few cars.

Among them, a battered TAXI CAB with empty beer cans on string tied to the back fender below a misspelled cardboard sign:

J U S T M A R R E D

By the ice machine, we find TUX, a homeless man still sporting the tattered tuxedo he wore for the wedding at which his bride-to-be failed to appear. He's been drunk ever since. He steps up to the dumpster, lifts the lid, revealing:

A rummaging ALLEY CAT who looks up at

TUX, his face ruddy, dull, impassive.

CLOSE on the cat's eyes, glowing slits of guarded tenseness.

DISSOLVE to:

INT. MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT

The TV FLICKERS with bad reception.

As the only interior light source, the TV static has the random flashing effect of an electrical storm, temporarily illuminating the various objects that litter the room. In a horseshoe-shape around the bed, we find: Emptied sacks from sex shops, department stores, pharmacies. A random batch of PARTY PROPS and their packages, the more bizarre still left unopened. Liquor, condoms, fruit, candles, wigs, hats, Halloween masks, handcuffs, silk scarves, sex toys, pills... Evidence of extreme sexual activity and altered moods. In this moment, however, they’re unneeded.

LOVER GIRL and LOVER BOY lay side by side in the bed, staring at the ceiling, naked, glistening with sweat, exhausted, eyes vacant. They slowly turn and look at each other. As if hypnotized, Lover Boy rolls over and lays on top of Lover Girl.

LOW ANGLE as she lazily drags her heels up his legs then wraps her legs around his waist. He thrusts in.

HIS HAND grips the sheets, clenches into a fist.

HER HANDS slowly drag her nails up his spine.

She leans her head back, closes her eyes. He slides a hand under her neck and lifts her head off the pillow, out of frame.

THEIR FACES meet against the backdrop of the blinds, the neon glow outside leaking through the dusty slats. As soon as their lips meet, the lovers darken into silhouette for a LONG, SLOW, TENDER KISS.

Then it all REVERSES:

The kiss parts and light falls back on their faces...
her head slowly lowers onto the pillow, then she opens her eyes...
her nails drag down his spine...
his hand unclenches...
he pulls out and her legs unwrap from his waist, then her heels slide down the back of his legs to the end of the bed...
he rolls off her and they lay there side by side looking at each other, then they both turn away and stare at the ceiling...
the TV flickers, illuminating unused sex toys...

DISSOLVE to:

EXT. MOTEL - MAGIC HOUR

The cat returns to rummaging in the dumpster...
Tux closes the lid, steps back by the ice machine...
a “Just Marred” sign on a taxi...
the motel lot (dusk light now dawn light)...
the sign changes from NO VACANCY to VACANCY.

END MUSIC.

Preliminary experiments show that the reversal looks terrible if done simply using the same footage run backward. The actions must be duplicated in reverse by the actors for the same duration as the forward half of the film. The kiss, however, lasts longer and occupies its own space without need for mirrored motion since it is the center, the heart, what the lovemaking builds to and falls away from, the fleeting intimate connection that cannot be kept from collapsing.

As for this section's thematic responsibility in exploring the lives of lovers, it is inspired both by Wilhelm Reich's Orgasm Formula (charge, tension, discharge, relaxation) and by the following paragraph from legendary rock critic Lester Bangs' 1981 fictional fragment "Maggie May" which in turn was inspired by the hit song by Rod Stewart and can be found (along with the greatest essay about The Troggs ever written) in the book Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, the best introductory collection to Bangs' work:

When they were done dogfucking they sprawled back awhile to rest and pant and contemplate just exactly what they mighta forgot to try. Licking assholes? They talked about it but agreed it was finally neither’s style. Mild B&D/S&M? Well, both were tired. So they tried something really daring, truly avant, beyond the pales of known thrash: they snuggled up for warmth, and hugged and kissed, with full passion but also gently and tenderly, sometimes just barely grazing each other’s liptips (which really reactivated the lust-postules in both bodies), for about twenty minutes. They kissed. Like kids, which was what he in fact was, and made her feel like all over again, which was the best feeling she’d had in years if not ever. When fully reprimed, they fucked once more, a long, slow, languorous workout in nothing but the Missionary Position, and when at last they came it seemed as if some timeless primal river was unleashed headwaters between the two as they writhed in one slow sliding tangle of YES from the core to YOU and no other... it was almost like some sort of, well, religious experience, mystical somehow, certainly elemental, the mindless melding of two principles always drawn together yet always warring everywhere, no confluently conjoined once in lifetime-memorable rapture among all manner of fucks high and low and every pitstop in between but this was one of the few ever that anybody’s lucky enough to get which really actually on some intangible certainly beyond verbalization level matters... what you keep on looking for every time you lie down, and suspicion or nerves or reminiscence of some past lover who warn’t so hot or drug-numbness or outright hatred or simple bone-weariness or god knows whatall else seems to come between you and it every time damn near... and True Love has nothing to do with it, on one level it’s nothing more than pure chemistry, though on a level a high degree of in-front mutual trust helps plenty, and finally maybe it’s just dumb luck: THIS TIME.

You'll notice no specific song has yet been chosen for this section. I suppose any number of songs would work, though I've tended to imagine an instrumental. It's not necessary that the song has the same reversible structure and I'm not yet aware whether such a song exists. Feel free to offer suggestions. For my part, I'll pitch this one:

Lonesome Side of Lonely Street (MP3) by Gene Woods

SOUND-OFF: Return of the Curse of the Son of the Bride of the Monster of the Island of Vengeance

2008-06-27T18:55:00.033-04:00

As promised. More B-movie trailers (MP3s) from various sources.

Battle of the Amazons (1973)

The Brain Eaters (1958)

Bury Me an Angel (1972)

Cannibal Girls (1973)

Frogs (1972)

Humanoids from the Deep (a.k.a. Monster) (1980)

The Human Tornado (a.k.a. Dolemite 2) (1976)

Invasion of the Bee Girls (a.k.a. Graveyard Tramps) (1973)

Lady Frankenstein (1971)

Nurses for Sale (1971)

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Queen Boxer (a.k.a. Chou) (1972)

Schizoid (a.k.a. Lizard in a Woman's Skin) (1971)

Sugar Hill (1974)

Swingin' Swappers (1973)

Virgin Witch (1972)

Bonus track:

Lucio's Message to His Fans -- From Schizoid's famed Italian director and master of the eye gag himself, Lucio Fulci.

Further reading:

Trash: The Graphic Genius of Xploitation Movie Posters by Jacques Boyreau

What It Is... What It Was! The Black Film Explosion of the '70s in Words and Pictures by Andres Chavez, Denise Chavez, and Gerald Martinez

Nightmare, USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents by Stephen Thrower

Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies, 1956 - 1984 by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs

HAPPY SNAPS: South of the Border

2008-06-20T23:01:00.109-04:00

The funnest fact about South of the Border is what border it sits south of: the state line between North and South Carolina. This isn't a part of the south -- like, say, Texas -- where a Mexican theme makes sense. But then, this isn't the kind of Mexican theme you could get away with anywhere lots of Mexicans live.

MP3: Southern Fried Frijoles by the Jimmy Castor Bunch.

It's not near any town I could see. It's not near any attraction. It apparently thinks it is an attraction. I started seeing signs for it at least half an hour out -- tacky technicolor billboards with so-bad-they're-good puns and occasional three-dimensional adornments like huge jalepeños -- counting down the miles with increasing frequency the closer I got. The first thing I noticed as I neared it was the lookout tower in the shape of a festive sombrero. The tower was out of order, so I can't say what view it offers, but there's really nothing around except this absurd roadside oasis.

MP3: You're a Gas With Your Trash by The Four Pennies.

It was dead. A handful of folks had stopped to pee, but all the other cars belonged to the terminally bored employees who haunted the stores and restaurants. South of the Border is essentially a decon-structed strip mall, its shops randomly placed throughout two huge parking lots. There's gas stations and grub joints, groceries and liquor, motels and toilets. Also fireworks, a leather shop, a t-shirt shop, a coffee shop, an arcade with pinball and pool, and almost every business bears the name Pedro's. After the lookout tower, the next main amusement is the miniature golf course called, yes, the Golf of Mexico. But the day I was there, it was closed too.

MP3: Empty Hands and the Long Walk Home by Pinetop Seven (featuring the whistling of Andrew Bird).

There's statues along the road and outside every store. They include lots of cacti that look ripped right out of a Road Runner cartoon and a random assortment of animals, few of which would be at home in the desert: an ape, a hippo, a rhino, buffalo, flamingos, bears, a pair of giant chickens, some circus elephants -- and, uh, Mexicans.

MP3: Poor Little Critter on the Road by The Knitters.

I'm tempted to go back to see what kind of obstacles the mini golf course contains. If it's like the rest of South of the Border, it'll simply be a haphazard arrangement of random animal statues with a few happy Mexican peasants mixed in, perhaps with some signs in grade school Spanglish about El Clubhouse. You can see more of what this S.O.B. offers for yourself at their website, Pedroland. As their motto proclaims, "Pedro has sometheeng for every juan." •

MP3: El Rauncho Grande by The Raunch Hands.
MP3: We're in Charge of Fun by Z Amigos.

Further reading:

¡Ask a Mexican! by Gustavo Arellano, a collection of his columns from The Orange County Weekly wherein he answers questions from gabachos (Mexican slang for white Americans -- according to señor Arellano, "Only gringos call gringos gringos") about Mexicanos, Chicanos, and their culture. For instance, what's the fascination Mexicans have with Elvis? Answers Arellano: "As recounted in Eric Zolov’s 1999 book, Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture, the King largely sparked the roots of rock en español by inspiring groups such as Los Locos del Ritmo and Los Teen Tops to pirate his style beat-for-beat, pompadour-for-pompadour, uh-huh huh-for-uh-huh huh. This initial love affair ended in 1957, when Mexican newspapers published — without proof — that Presley said, 'I’d rather kiss three black girls than a Mexican girl.' Seeing an opportunity to crack down on a burgeoning youth movement, Mexico’s civic fathers denounced Presley as a maricón and negrito-lover and organized Elvis-memorabilia burnings. Mexicans being Mexicans, most dutifully followed instructions. Elvis wouldn’t receive a fair hip-shake from the country — not even after Fun In Acapulco —until the 1970s, when his visage became the backbone of the borderlands’ burgeoning black-velvet-painting industry. Wabs [the Orange County version of 'wetback'] have largely loved the King since, as they realized he was more Mexican than an eagle on a cactus. Remember the comparison I made between rednecks and wabs a couple of weeks back? Consider Elvis and his similarity with Mexicans: skinny as a youngster, obese by the end, but still caliente; a hardworking country boy corrupted by the big city’s excesses; a taste for big belts and shimmering suits; a propensity for unhealthy food and bedding underage girls. And have you heard his versions of the ranchera standards 'Guadalajara' and 'Allá en el Rancho Grande'? No gabacho can sing those songs that well — and I’m even including Charles Bronson." Send your own questions about Mexicans to: themexican@askamexican.net

MP3: En El Barrio by El Vez, the Mexican Elvis.

BACK BEAT: Asian Fetish

2008-04-27T09:24:00.375-04:00

Cute Devil (MP3)
by Mari Atsumi

April 18th of this year was the first Record Store Day. During its promotion and celebration, among the many quips and quotes I heard in support of buying records, the most repeated was country singer Shelby Lynne's "You can't roll a joint on an i-pod." But my favorite was by Jack White of The White Stripes who praised "music you can hold in your hands." The holding is even better, of course, when the package is as cool as the tunes. And, for collectors, the pleasure is often intensified by the rarity of the object, as well as its overlooked cultural value. Which is why I'd like to praise some of the lost treasures recently unearthed and re-issued in Japan, especially the Oriental Erotic Sunshine series by Tokyo based Tiliqua Records, a series of one-time limited CD pressing re-releases of erotic Japanese LPs from the sixties and seventies which I highly recommend you try to get a hold of. Housed in mini-LP gatefold sleeves adorned with the original artwork and including extensive liner notes, you'll want these beauties in your paws and not just in your i-pod.

Known as iroke kayokyoku, Japan's aural erotica genre generally features the naughty vocalizing of beautiful B-movie starlets who coo, purr, groan, moan, giggle, whisper, and sigh while lustily narrating over groovy tunes ranging in style from lounge, new age, and jazz tracks to sleazy disco, usually packaged with nude portraits on the cover, centerfold inserts, and the occasional fold-out poster. (It's the kind of record Scarlett Johansson should have cut instead of covering Tom Waits. Husky-voiced phone sex scenarios and an R-rated photo spread -- seriously, how could she lose?) The starlets tend to be from pink films (pinku eigu), a type of softcore sexploitation that, like iroke kayokyoku, is distinctly Japanese. Pink films can be broken down into various sub-categories, such as roman porno and pinky violence (koshoku rosen). Roman porno (short for romantic porno-graphy) includes such niches as S&M films (the more extreme of which may also classify as ero guro, or erotic grotesque). Pinky violence, as per its name, blends action and titilation, often quite succinctly in the form of topless heroines brandishing weapons.

As a belated contribution to Record Store Day, here's a digressive and haphazard (in other words, bloglike) appreciation of Japsloitation sounds and visions -- beginning not with pink, but green...

Hedorah (a.k.a. the Smog Monster) (MP3)
from Howl: The Grunts & Growls of All Toho Monsters

From Million Monkey Theater's review of the 1971 kaiju (giant monster) film Godzilla vs. Hedorah: "Here we meet a young lady named Miki Fujiyama, played by 23-year old Keiko Mari. This was Mari's very first feature film acting role, and since then has mostly stayed on television series, including stints on such wonderfully named series as Star Wolf, Science Taskforce Dynaman, Solar Taskforce Sunvulcan and Dinosaur Taskforce Koseidon. Since 1982, she has also been a regular cast member of the Japanese version of Sesame Street. Where first we see her, she's gyrating atop a table wearing a skin-tight body suit painted with all sorts of crazy symbols. Her hair here is long and flowing and shaggy. She has a nice body, but the context of the scene and the poor lighting do not allow us to appreciate it that much. And then she begins to sing. The song is 'Save the Earth' and it is an uncatchy 1960s hippy song about saving the planet from pollution. Thankfully, my DVD didn't subtitle the song, so I just listened to the actress sing it in Japanese. Keiko Mari apparently sung the song herself, as well as several others we hear throughout the movie, and her voice is quite good. Since she will prove to be a TERRIBLE actress, I can assume she got the role solely because she was a singer and was pretty." After listening to this album, released the same year, our young reviewer may suspect there were other reasons for casting Miss Keiko.

Shower (MP3) by Petite M'Amie
from Girl Friend Baby Doll (1971)

Says Tiliqua Records: "Petite M'amie's Girl Friend ~ Baby Doll is without a doubt the rarest of all recorded iroke kayokyoku artifacts and copies of the original album -- if they surface at all -- change hands easily for about 1500 ~ 2000 dollars.... Originally recorded and released on May 5th, 1971, Petite M'amie was the nickname for Mari Keiko. Although she does not get naked on the cover like all the other starlets, the music she hushes out into being is utterly depraved, spiked up with an unheard quality of forlorn sleaziness, an erotic hushing and uttering that would make even Ike Reiko blush.... But where Ike Reiko's effort was drenched in a sultry pornographic vibe, Petite M'amie's benchmark recording is instead bustling over with an innocent -- almost childlike -- erotic sensuality that sounds harmless but is even wilder and more deranged than Ike Reiko's take on eroticism. Mari Keiko's hushes, sleazes, breathes and hovers like Nobokov's Lolita all over this one, teasing her lover, laughing in ecstasy, moaning, singing about erogenous spots and so much more while the music dwells in a psychedelic road trip towards the bedroom. Just delusionally erotic."

Memai (Shiseikatsu) [Dizzy] (MP3) by Reiko Ike
from Kokotsu no Sekai (1971)

Reiko Ike was the undisputed queen of pinky violence. According to former Flesh Eaters frontman and punk raconteur Chris D. -- a.k.a. Chris Desjardins, programmer for the Los Angeles repertory theater The American Cinemateque and author of Outlaw Masters of Japanese Cinema: "[A]lthough at the time looking grown-up and worldly for her age, [Ike] hadn’t even hit 21 when she became one of Toei’s most provocative cinematic bad girls. Still in her late teens when she first materialized on the big screen in 1971, the stories of how she was discovered are inconsistent, one rumor assert-ing she was scouted at a nightclub, another that she was spotted as a model. Whatever the case, she didn’t seem to have been enamored of the idea of appearing naked in compromising, sometimes humiliating situations on film. Apparently, her family was also less than happy about the antics Toei [Studios] proposed she get up to for the sake of box office success in the Girl Boss series. Yet, after all was said and done, there she ultimately was, in all her courageously defiant, nubile glory projected many times bigger than life in a multitude of Japan-ese cinemas. One can occasionally see Ike’s conflicted feelings shine through in her pinky violence movies, and it’s her transcendental performances that remain the most memorable -– simultaneously beautiful, fearless and heartwrenching."

テンプテイション (MP3) by M. Kawahara & the Exotic Sounds
from Ecstasy (1970)

The liner notes to Kokotsu no Sekai describe Reiko Ike's vocal style as an "erotic presence" that "flutters across a multitude of erogenous non-verbal modes -- moaning and uttered shrieks of ecstatic pleasure, sibilating suffocated whispers of excitement, and grunting and growling like a bitch in heat." The musical backbone and arrangements were provided by band leader Masami Kawahara whose own iroke record of funky Latin-flecked porn jazz was released the prior year. The liner notes to Ecstasy include an interview with Kawahara who says he doesn't remember the name of the girl who provided the saucy sound effects on his album, but does recall she had to be played like an instrument and touched or petted on cue whenever a moan was required.

ライブ・セックス (MP3) by Sandra Julien & Miki Sugimoto

In her third film, director Norifumi Suzuki's Modern Porno Tale: Inherited Sex Mania (1971), Reiko Ike co-starred with French erotic actress Sandra Jullien. The Japanese film-rating board objected to the graphic lesbian scenes between the two and the film had to be severely cut before its release. Later that year, Jullien put out her own iroke record entitled Sexy Poem. Says Tiliqua Records: "[A]part from the lovely jacket and pictures/poster that were included with the LP, the musical contents are just deliriously fantastic and stand quality-wise shoulder to shoulder with Ike Reiko's Koukotsu No Sekai as the most sexiest disc ever recorded worldwide. Just imagine this: a French nymphet singing and moaning in the Japanese language impregnated with a heavy sultry French accent. How much more erotic can music possibly get?" Well, I'll tell you. How about a duet with Miki Sugimoto wherein the two starlets engage in a lengthy lesbian session of sighs and groans over tribal bongos and frenetic go-go horns? Hopefully, Tiliqua will find a way to re-release this one. If you're lucky, you can find it as one of the six CDs in the out-of-print Oiroke Box.

Du Ar Min Enda Karlek (MP3) by Christina Lindberg

In 1973, Reiko Ike starred in Norifumi Suzuki's awesome Sex and Fury. Her co-star this time was Swedish sex kitten Christina Lindberg whose rape and revenge classic Thriller - A Cruel Picture (a.k.a. They Call Her One Eye) came out that same year (and I believe is still banned in Sweden). Christina never made an iroke record, but she did pose nude for the cover of her sole 45 ("Allt Blir Tyst Igen"/"Du Ar Min Enda Karlek"). The buxom doe-eyed beauty began her career as a centerfold at 18, appeared in over twenty sexploitation films, then began writing for men's magazines while studying journalism, eventually becoming editor-in-chief of the largest aviation magazine in Scandinavia. She also became an avid mushroom picker and even released an instructional video in 1993 called Christina's Mushroom School. The school she's most known for, however, is the hormonal high school she attended in Schoolgirl Report, a 13-part German pseudo-documentary series about the sexual temptations of teens.

Sexy Girls (MP3) by the Gert Wilden Orchestra
from Schoolgirl Report (1970)

From 1971 to 1974, Reiko Ike starred in seven of Toei Studios' Sukeban (delinquent girl or girl boss) films and all four of the Terrifying Girls' High School films. Her recurring co-star throughout these films was the super cutie, pouty-lipped Miki Sugimoto. Sometimes one would have the lead, some-times the other. Sometimes they played rivals, sometimes partners. Together they would bare breasts, blades, and guns as they sparked rebellions and sought revenge. Sugimoto was a fashion model and starlet of the Japanese TV series Go-Go Girl in All Night Fuji. She made her film debut in 1972's Hot Springs Mimizu Geisha, but was best known for her lead role in the 1974 pinky violence classic Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs. She left the film industry in 1978 to marry a former classmate-turned-businessman and became a nursery school teacher. Pink film starlets often sing on the soundtracks of their films and you can find a few tunes sung by Sugimoto on the Hotwax Trax compilations Sukeban Guerrilla and Yakeppachi Rock. Various selections from films featuring the delinquent duo can be found on the Hotwax CD Miki Sugimoto vs. Reiko Ike: Onno Bancho Nagaremono/Futen Gurashi.

Shinjuku Carmen (MP3) by Miki Sugimoto

恐怖女子高校女暴力教室 (MP3) by Masao Yagi
(from the 1972 Ike & Sugimoto film Terrifying Girls' High School: Women's Violent Classroom)
from the CD Sukeban Guerrilla

Soundtrack selections from the previously mentioned films Sex & Fury, Hot Springs Mimizu Geisha, and Modern Porno Tale: Inherited Sex Mania, among others, can be found on the Hotwax Trax comp Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture, named after the 1973 Reiko Ike classic about which Amazon writes: "Set in Meiji-era Tokyo circa 1905, the outlandish story kicks into high gear when renegade thief and gambler Ocho (Reiko Ike, fully recovered from the bloodbath in Sex & Fury) is joined by a 'lone wolf' drifter (Ryohei Uchida) in pursuit of a gang of murderous thugs with connections to the gruesome 'crotch gouge' murders (involving deadly injuries that are best left to the imagination). By the time they close in on a disgusting kingpin who's been enslaving prostitutes to smuggle Chinese heroin in their nether regions, Ocho has recruited a small army of sexy, sword-wielding hookers who aren't feeling the least bit merciful. The result is an outrageous orgy of boobs, bullets, and bloodshed..." Perfectly pinky album art, too:

Reiko Ike ran afoul of the law in the late seventies -- once for drugs, once for illegal gambling -- but continued to appear in films until the end of the decade, including appearances in two of the five install-ments of Kinji Fukasaku's masterwork series tracing the history of the yakuza, Battles Without Honor & Humanity (1973 - 1979).

Battles Without Honor Theme (M-15) (MP3) by Toshiaki Tsushima
from Hotwax Trax Composers Series: Jingi Naki Tatakai

Hotwax is a Japanese magazine about music and cinema that began publishing in 2005. Each issue comes with a CD of music to accompany the articles. Like the Tiliqua discs, you'll want these in your hands and not just on your hard drive. Recently Hotwax released its first bilingual issue, Queen of Japanese Movie -- 160 pages worth of info and full-color photos, covering 24 select bad girl films from 1970 to 1974 (during the major studio rivalry between Nikkatsu and Toei), including a lengthy section on the Stray Cat Rock series of violent girl gang flicks starring cult film icon Meiko Kaji.

Sex Hunter (MP3) by So Kaburagi
from Nikkatsu New Action: Stray Cat Rock

From Cult Sirens: "Masako Ota was born in Tokyo on March 24, 1947. Nothing much is really known about her youth. She started her movie career in the mid-sixties, for the mighty Nikkatsu Studio, quickly co-starring along the legendary Sonny Chiba. But these first projects stuck her in minor roles. The pivotal moment in her career took place in 1970. Changing her name to Meiko Kaji, she was elected to be the main star in a series called Alleycat (or Stray Cat) Rock, which mainly followed the doings of a gang of female delinquents. Meiko portrayed the leader of this gang, already creating the imperturbable screen persona that became her claim to fame, in Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter." Don't let the title fool you, though. The Stray Cat Rock flicks aren't pink films and Meiko Kaji purposefully avoided becoming a pink film starlet. In 1971, when Nikkatsu moved into the financially lucrative erotic market, Kaji moved to rival Toei.

Sister Street Fighter Theme (MP3) by Shunsuke Kikuchi
from Legends of Toei Action Movies

At Toei, Kaji could be a cool action heroine and keep her clothes on, leaving the sex and nudity to supporting players. Such was the treatment given another of Toei's action starlets, Etsuko "Sue" Shihomi. As a teenager, Shihomi wrote fan letters to Sonny Chiba which surprisingly resulted in an invitation to audition for and then join Chiba's elite Japan Action Club of martial artists. A skilled gymnast, she quickly rose through the ranks. She appeared in a few supporting roles in Chiba action films, including his most popular, The Street Fighter, then was given a starring role in a spin off, Sister Street Fighter, which was popular enough to foster two sequels. She was known as a risk taker who liked to live on the edge and would pull promotional stunts like jumping from one high building to another over a crowd. She was married for a number of years to Japanese folk singer Nakabuchi Tsuyoshi, but they later divorced after he was caught in an affair with another actress. When martial arts films faded in popularity, she moved into period films then faded in popularity herself. In 1975, Shihomi came out with the title single for the Toei movie Gangs of Youth: The Thirteen Steps, which can be found, along with the blaxploitation-style soundtrack music for all three SSF flicks, on the Legends of Toei Action Movies CD.

Sister Street Fighter (MP3) - Trailer (1974)

From the introduction by Trash Video's Andrew Leavold for Brisbane Channel 31's Friday Night Schlock Treatment: "The first Street Fighter was a grim exercise in brute force and nihilism; this pseudo-sequel designed to cash in on the Street Fighter tag is more a frenetic pop-art collage that owes more to Batman than Bruce Lee. With crash zooms and exaggerated camera angles, a fight scene every five minutes to a fantastic Seventies action score, and a bizarre array of masked and caped villains, including Hammerhead and his thugs in wicker basket hats, it’s so fast-paced and deliriously nutty you can’t possibly fault the plotholes and insane logic. Sonny Chiba has little to do as 'Sonny Kawasaka' other than show up in two epic fight scenes and utter a few howls from underneath his knotted monobrow. It’s really Sue’s film, and Sister Street Fighter proved so successful it turned Sue Shihomi into Japan’s top female action star and prompted two of its own sequels. So sit back, snort a line or two of wasabi and enjoy the rush of watching not one but two of Japan’s greatest trash icons at work..."

女囚さそり第 41 雑居房」~劇伴 (MP3) by Hajime Kaburagi
(from the 1972 film Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41)
from the CD Go! Cinemania - Reel 4: Screaming a Go Go

At Toei, Meiko Kaji met director Shunya Ito and together they made a trio of films that made her famous throughout Japan. From Midnight Eye: "The Golden Decades of Sexploitation saw a plethora of women-in-prison flicks in which the imagined ongoings of bare babes behind bars formed a convenient backdrop into which to slot the requisite number of catfighting, lesbian, torture and communal shower scenes... Don't be mistaken however, the Female Convict series is worlds apart from these sleazy productions, being both far better made, far less exploitative and adopting an almost fantastical approach to the material. In fact this film [Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41], episode two of the series, spends very little time inside the prison walls at all, instead focusing on the girls' escape from their warders through a bizarre succession of surreal encounters... Kaji was apparently unhappy with the original portrayal of the character of Sasori [Scorpion] on the page, especially the perpetual stream of obscenities flowing from her mouth, so the script was tailored to allow her to play the role almost silently." Thus was created the legendary Meiko stare.

Flower of Carnage (MP3) by Meiko Kaji
from Lady Snowblood (1973)

In the fourth installment of Female Convict Scorpion, Toei replaced director Shunya Ito with Yasuharu Hasebe, so Kaji left the series and instead took on the lead role of Yuki, "a child of the Netherworld" born for vengeance and armed with a sword that masquerades as an umbrella, in Lady Snowblood and its sequel Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance, a pair of period films based on a manga written by Lone Wolf and Cub author Koike Kazuo.

Ending Theme (MP3) by Hideakira Sakurai
from Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril (1972)

Lone Wolf and Cub chronicles the adventures of disgraced Shogun executioner turned killer-for-hire Ogami Itto and his three year old son Daigoro. In the fourth installment of the six-film series, the Lone Wolf is hired to slay Oyuki, a topless tattooed assassin played by Michie Azuma, previously known to Japanese audiences from her appearance on the popular TV series Playgirl.

Weak Point (MP3) by Kuwabara Yukiko
from Kuwabara Yukiko to Anata (1974)

Kuwabara Yukiko appeared in a wide variety of fashion and nude magazines as well as a string of movies such as Yukio Noda's 1968 juvenile gang film Delinquent Boss. (Also known as Wolves of the City, Delinquent Boss was inspired by Roger Corman's 1966 drive-in biker flick The Wild Angels starring Peter Fonda, which was hugely and unexpectedly popular in Japan. Delinquent Boss in turn inspired 16 increasingly ridiculous sequels -- not to be confused with the much more enjoyable Delinquent Girl Boss series featuring pinky violence starlet Reiko Oshida.) Kuwabara is most widely known, however, for having starred in 287 episodes of the erotic action series Playgirl. Imagine Charlie's Angels with a lot more Angels, brightly colored mod sets, badly mimed martials arts, and randomly bared breasts, and you have a general idea of the cheesy fun to be found in Playgirl. The series ran for five successful seasons, from 1969 to 1974 (Charlie's Angels debuted two years later in 1976).

Opening Theme (MP3) to the 1969 season of Playgirl

Writes Beyond Japan Hero: "During its run, a whopping twenty two actresses were part of the 'PLAYGIRL(s)' at one time or another. Most of the actresses were regular bit players of Nikkatsu and Toei Films. Some were also models, pinups and/or singers. Usually each episode featured no more than five of the girls at one time. Each episode would try to rotate the cast around but inevitably some of the actresses were featured more often than others, due to their popularity among audience members. With its unique brand of risqué humor, sexy action and touch of T & A, the show commanded at one time almost an unprecedented 17.8% rating."

Casbah No Onna (MP3) by Tamaki Sawa (vinyl rip by Crud Crud).

The show's theme song was written by Yamashita Takeo and sung by the starlet who played the leader of the Playgirls, Tamaki Sawa, who started her career as a jazz singer in the 1950s. After retiring from show business, Sawa was elected to the Japanese parliament in 1998 where she served one term then decided to return to acting. In 2003, she reprised her most famous role in a stage play revival of the series, Playgirls Inc. She died later that year at the age of 66.

Zoku Emanieru Fujin (MP3) by Taguchi Kumi
from Tokyo Emmanuelle Fujin (1976)

Taguchi Kumi achieved instant fame after appearing in Toei Studios' Tokyo Deep Throat in 1975. She switched over to Nikkatsu Studios and followed with a string of roman pornos including Memoirs of a Call Girl, Emmanuelle in Tokyo, and Emmanuelle in Tokyo: Private Lessons, all in that same year. In 1976, she served up a few more, including International Stewardess: Erotic Flight and Cloistered Nun: Runa's Confession. At the end of that year, she released this compilation of songs which she'd performed for her porn flick soundtracks. Says Tiliqua Records: "Taguchi's effort... is more mid-seventies discoed-down and funked-up. Hot dance floor hoedowns spiced up with erotic moaning and hissings. Erotic and sensual mid-seventies night clubbing with a psyched feel attached to it.... Taguchi even ventures into the realm of deep throating and leaves nothing to the imagination. A release that once again proves that late sixties and early seventies Tokyo was a wicked and perverse place to be."

Showa Kare Susuki (MP3) by Tani Naomi
from Modae No Heya (1979)

Says Tiliqua Records: "Tani Naomi was Japan's finest bondage and S&M Queen who tore up cinema screens during the better part of the 1970s. This album [Modae No Heya, or Room of Agony], originally recorded and released in April 1979 was Tani's farewell statement to the world of porn. Here she delivers one of the finest examples of Showa-induced feminine erotics, hovering sexually tinted narrations over a background of kayokyoku themes and lush orchestrations. Tani recorded this album to commemorate her withdrawal from the porn business. Seen in retropsect, the disc stands out as one of the top 5 erotic albums to come out of Japan. Still her musical endeavor is an odd one amongst the other Iroke chanteuses. Right from the opening on, Tani's direction becomes clear with her narrating in a teasingly melancholic way over a kayokyoku backing track. The effect is stunning, an utterly fornlorn sense of the Showa erotic. Compared to the hard stuff she depicted on screen, the album feels muted in a cloud of pink. But still, she brilliantly succeeds in conveying the atmosphere of true Japanese eroticism, a fleeting and fragile emotion that evaporated in the cynical miasma of the eighties."

Tani Naomi took her screen name from popular Japanese writer Junichiro Tanizaki and his 1925 novel "Naomi." Like her own, Tanizaki's work usually focused on shocking erotic obsessions. Says Wikipedia: "Known for her remarkable dedication to her work, Tani would perform even the most extreme of S&M scenes without complaint. During the twelve years she worked as an actress, she never went to the beach or allowed herself to get a suntan, feeling that it was important to keep her skin very white, so that it could be seen turning red during some of the scenes involving such things as whippings or melting candle wax tortures.... Her willingness to submit herself to scenes of extreme physical difficulty led director Shinya Yamamoto to famously utter, 'Naomi Tani is a monster!' The quality of her performances was recognized by the mainstream Japanese film establishment. She was nominated for best actress by the Japanese Academy for two of her Nikkatsu Roman Porno films, Black Rose Ascending (1975), and Flesh of the Rose (1978). Director Masaru Konuma says as an actress Tani was, 'Stylish. No matter what she did -- her behavior, her attitude, her body-- everything became a perfect picture.'" In Japanese, the word Tani means valley and is also slang for cleavage. In her retirement, Naomi opened a restaurant she named Ohtani (Big Tani, or Big Valley, or perhaps Big Tits).

Wake Mo Naku (MP3) by Mabuki Junko

From Chris's Soundtrack Corner (where I just ordered my copy): "A new installment in Tiliqua's seemingly never-ending Erotic Oriental Sunshine series brings you this time the first re-release of Mabuki Junko's sole recorded artifact Ai no Dorei [Slave of Love], originally released as a cassette-only by Victor Records back in 1980 as part of their 'Yoru no Driver' series tapes. The series was de-signed specifically to target the sexually frustrated, long-distance trucker demographic in order to bring them a little erotic aural companionship on those grueling overnight hauls. Junko appeared on the scene of hardcore bondage and S&M flicks after Tani Naomi had thrown in the towel.... [P]ossibly the most perverted and sexually deranged recording ever to be released, Ai no Dorei is built on a lush instrumental carpet of covers of famous enka tunes, upon which Mabuki Junko rolls and writhes, enacting hardcore BDSM fantasies, perversions and degenerate sexual dramas for her lonesome big-rig listeners.... Due to the triple X-rated nature of its contents, Victor Records refrained from releasing this historical gem on vinyl, thus confining its existence to gas station and truck-stop cassette racks. For the same reason and in order to escape domestic morality claims, Tiliqua decided to keep a low profile and release this gem as a limited edition CD only, LIMITED to 500 COPIES." So buy yours now. •

Album art at top of post: Yoru no Tame Iku by Atsumi Mari. Says Tiliqua: "Fully fledged sex kitten, adult movie star and seasoned early seventies porno heroine Atsumi Mari had it all being a body built like a pleasure dome of unbridled sin, a husky voice filled with enough overdriven sex appeal to make you horny for weeks on a row and looks that could defrost even the most seasoned of male chauvinist pigs. An all round dreamboat chick and pink porno witch.... The original artwork that adorned the LP made that copies were all too quickly snapped up by Iroke fetishists making that the LP almost instantly disappeared. The music on the other hand is what counts here and stands as one of the best examples of the Iroke genre, filled with derailed passion, horny lyrics and love desperation all set against a lushly orchestrated background, cocktail lounge settings and psychedelic micro-dotted textural elements, turning it into a whirlwind of obsolete and adulterated psyched-out lust and desire." Easiest place to see her: Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice, another series based on a Kazuo Koike manga, this one about a medieval constable with a giant cock.

SOUND-OFF: Trailer Trash

2008-04-02T20:18:00.069-04:00

B-movie trailers (MP3s) from various sources, including from the archives of Ratso Russo's Groovy Movie Soundtracks radio show (KUSF 1997 - 2002). Because I like to include bits and pieces of them in mixes and you might too. More to come in the future.

The Acid Eaters (1968)

Astro Zombies (1968)

Asylum of Satan (1975)

Black Mama, White Mama (1972)

Blood Feast (1963)

The Curious Dr. Humpp (a.k.a. La Venganza del Sexo) (1971)

Death Race 2000 (1975)

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)

The Erotic Adventures of Zorro (1972)

Equinox (1970)

Ghetto Freaks (1970)

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964)

The Manhandlers (1975)

The Mind of Mr. Soames (1970)

The Naughty Stewardesses (1975)

Scum of the Earth (1974)

Teaserama (1955)

Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975)

Further listening:

Sound collage artist Wayne Butane uses snippets from trailers like these (as well as samples from a vast -- and I mean vast -- array of other sources) to create meticulously crafted routines of immature aural mayhem. WFMU calls him "the master of milk-through-nose, zero-attention-span
cut-up tomfoolery."

Further viewing:

To see the trailers for "The Erotic Adventures of Zorro," "Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman" and "The Curious Dr. Humpp," sure you could search YouTube, or you could shell out ten bucks and get the Extra Weird Sampler from Something Weird Video which includes over 100 such cinematic delights. All titles are available on dvd from SWV so, unlike other trailer collections, it's backed by the opportunity to see the full movies. We let this loop in the background at Count Drunkula's last Halloween party.

Further reading:

Cinema Sewer: The Adults Only Guide to History's Sickest and Sexiest Movies

Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grind-house Cinema of Times Square by Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford.

Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Film by Felicia Feaster and Bret Wood.

Youth in Babylon: Confessions of a
Trash Film King by
David F. Friedman.

TITTY TWISTER: Seeing Red

2008-04-02T08:36:00.050-04:00

Step 1: Cut out the knees...

The movie's story concerned the arrival of America’s early white settlers and its makers wanted to be historically accurate in their portrayal of the Native Americans. According to their research, however, many women of the depicted tribes often went topless. This was obviously an issue to the studio who wanted to be able to show the movie on prime time TV at some later date. The budget wasn’t large enough to accommodate the shooting of dual versions of scenes (one safe and one uncensored), a practice more common than most people realize. Wanting to allow the highly acclaimed director the freedom of his vision, the producers tried to argue that the nudity in question was minimal, usually in the background, and of the harmless anthropological type seen in National Geographic. The studio replied that backlash from Janet Jackson’s boob flash during the Super Bowl (a.k.a. Nipplegate) had created an atmosphere in which it would be impossible for them to argue this distinction to the major networks. Meanwhile, the living descendants of the indigenous tribes to be portrayed were heatedly divided amongst themselves over whether employing such nudity was in fact historical and also whether it would turn out to be exploitive regardless of being true to life or not. (Such splits and spats are not uncommon among Native Americans when it comes to their past and traditions. As one of their on-set consultants explained, “One Indian, you’ve got an expert. Two, you’ve got a conversation. Three, you’ve got a fight.”) The issue then shifted dramatically when the director cast a real minor to play the tweenage native princess about whom the story revolved.

There are strict laws and union guidelines regarding minors and nudity in American films. After studying them, it seemed not only that the underage actress could never go topless, but that she couldn't even be in the same shot as any woman who was. In order to secure funding, the producers had to make a formal agreement with the studio to deliver a TV-friendly film rated no higher than PG-13. They then discussed what all these limits meant with the maverick director. It was finally agreed to try clothed, painted, and mud-covered native women, to use tattoos and necklaces to obscure any naked breasts, to shoot any unobscured breasts using non-revealing angles, and to digitally cover during editing any nipples that still remained visible. However, the appropriately obscuring mud and paint designs found and eventually used were, by necessity and choice, inspired by those of African, not American, tribes. Thus began the compromises of historical accuracy. The director also lost a layer of complexity he had intended to inject in regards to the reactions of white Christian settlers to a bare-breasted culture. The absence of the issue was reminiscent of the lack of black people in the early days of Oregon when the state wouldn’t let them live there, not because it didn’t accept and support their emancipation, but because it was hoping to avoid the same conflicts that had just caused a long, bloody civil war. “We like you, but you’re trouble...”

Step 2: Insert into package...

Historical accuracy in films is a tricky, complicated subject. We all know not to accept movies as truth or textbooks, but the images still stick and are recalled when we picture the past. The producers did their best, and better than many would have. For instance, in a rare move, they arranged the story to be shot near its actual location (in a certain history-obsessed commonwealth about whose citizens a popular joke claims it takes three to change a light bulb: one to put the new bulb in and two to talk about what a good bulb the old bulb was). They invited various state-level organizations, university departments, historical societies, and tribal advisors to participate and witness. Every expert the director wanted, they gave him. He met with bird experts, frog experts, plant experts, bug experts, weather experts, ship experts, language experts, you name it. Unfortunately, like Bush’s war in Iraq, the stated goals and pageant of procedures became less and less relevant to the actual result as messy situations arose and had to be solved on the spot. Production in fact occurred during the budding War on Terror when our government was busy both limiting its own citizens’ rights and convincing the world its mission was to establish those same rights in the countries occupied by its troops. Similarly, the film’s script centered its themes on the winning and loss of freedom, and served to remind us that our nation was founded, just as it is apparently maintained, by interfering with and often destroying the freedom of others in order to have our own. And yet, if this particular film is any indication, we have not yet allowed ourselves the freedom to look at how freely those who lost freedom so we could gain it once lived, perhaps for the very reason that they were freer than we’ll ever be.

Or perhaps the problem is in trying to picture it. For Schindler’s List, Spielberg chose not to include in his depiction the impaled corpses that lined the paths of the real concentration camp because they overwhelmed the set with such horror that it seemed exaggerated, unreal, unbelievable, and removed viewers from absorbing the story. Maybe extremes of freedom are as impossible to accept as extremes of its opposite. Or maybe we’re simply so used to boobs being taboo we can’t be trusted not to be titillated even by a tame historical look at people who didn’t have that problem. I recall a friend of mine telling me that just once he'd like to look at his girlfriend getting out of the shower without her blushing back at him like he's leering. And knowing she's right. Then looking away... •

The Quomma's Favorite Fun But Wrong
Songs About Native Americans (MP3s):

Indian Rock by the Musical Linn Twins.

Cherokee Dance by Bob Lenards with Willie Joe and His Unitar. (Cherokee because you dance "until your face turns red.")

The Mohawk by D.C. Washington.

Big Chief Hug 'Em & Kiss 'Um by Jimmy Shaw, a.k.a. the Mighty Hannibal. ("Baby, let's sweet talk, put down tommy hawk...")

Your Squaw is on the Warpath by Loretta Lynn.

Coincidentally, I recently stopped at Loretta Lynn's restaurant in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, outside of which stands this bison statue staring straight at the neighboring burger joint, like a Before and After diorama of white America.

BACK BEAT: Nudie Tunes

2008-03-24T12:25:00.192-04:00

Diablo Cody, award-winning screenwriter of Juno, wrote in her memoir Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper: "I wasn't sure how strippers were ideally supposed to move, so I tried to visualize Star Search spokesmodel and Warrant video stunt-cunt Bobbi Brown. In the seminal 'Cherry Pie' video, Bobbi swings her drape of platinum hair, purses matte red lips that appear to be plumped with cadaver fat and catches a falling slice of pie in the Y of her crotch. I lacked the hair, the lips, and the magical pie-catching hoo-haw, but I could pout, strut and chicken-flap just like Jagger..." Whereas "Cherry Pie" served Cody as inspiration, her fellow hip lit ex-stripper Lily Burana would rather have the use of Warrant arrested.

In a 2001 interview with Salon.com, Burana -- novelist, essayist, and author of the memoir Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America -- said she'll scream if she sees another stripper in a schoolgirl outfit dance to Aerosmith's "Rag Doll" and that "Cherry Pie" should be forever stricken from titty bar playlists: "That song doesn't exist anywhere but strip clubs and you just think OK, I wasn't having such a good time in the late '80s, early '90s to begin with and this kind of music is part of the reason why. My irony meter is not yet pegged to accept 'Cherry Pie.'"

Both ladies, however, agree on Def Leppard. Says Burana: "[T]he no-fail, can't-miss song of all time seems to be 'Pour Some Sugar on Me'... I'm not sure if this is due to the celebratory, unabashed corniness of the song or if there's a direct link between glucose and the male libido, but there you have it." Cody calls Def Leppard's album Hysteria "a valentine to strippers if there ever was one" and "Pour Some Sugar on Me" appears as Number 4 in her list of Ten Best Songs to Strip To. (This prompts her to mention that she once knew a stripper who, like Def Leppard's drummer, only had one arm, which in turn prompts me to point readers to Josh Alan Friedman's Tales of Times Square and its chapter on Long Jeanne Silver, the one-legged erotic dancer and '70s porn star. I wonder if Jeanne's seen Planet Terror. I don't doubt, however, that Robert Rodriguez has seen Long Jeanne Silver.)

I used to be friends with a pair of stripper sisters, Celine and Sunshine. They were identical twins and learned to never work in the same club if they wanted to avoid the inevitable requests to perform some incestuous routine or to privately engage in same. (For men out there with this fantasy, I refer you to the Sorell and Collinson twins. Alicia and Annie Sorell appear in the direct-to-video-and-pay-TV crapfest Cruel Intentions 2, Madeleine and Mary Collinson in the cheapy 1969 sexploitation flick Some Like It Sexy. In both cases, the relevant incestuous scenes are thankfully tempered with humor as their real focus is on the reactions of stupefied men who witness the naked twins kissing. Personally, I just felt sad for the Collinsons and frankly afraid of the Sorells, but I refer you to them anyway so you know where to take your twin fantasies and will then spare the Celine and Sunshines of the world from having to slap you.) Eventually, Sunshine differentiated herself from her sister by dying her hair and getting a boob job, becoming a buxom blonde who went by the stage name of Marilyn. The emcees would often get confused, however, and assume Marilyn was her real name and Sunshine was her stage name, which they'd quickly learn was not the case when they'd introduce her as Sunshine only to have her storm off the stage and spit curses in their face like Billy Martin assaulting an umpire. Anyhow, the twins would invite me to see their respective shows and I too soon learned about the overplay of "Cherry Pie" and other staple go-to rock songs. (By the way, am I the only one who thinks "I'm Bad to the Bone" is a strange message to get from a stripper? In context, it comes across as "I'll wreck your pecker," suggesting either a lousy lay or sex so extreme it'll put your dick in a sling, or even a more menacing threat of castration.) The black girls alternated and updated their hip hop and R&B with much more frequency, but the white chicks were -- and, judging by Burana and Cody's observations, still are -- in serious need of new tuneage.

To that end, I humbly offer the following few suggestions. (I realize the fault lies with the guys, not the girls. The girls are just playing the songs they know the guys like. But guys like ruts and routines and hence have turned Classic Rock into Blue Collar Muzak. Girls, why bore yourselves on their account if you don't have to? If these songs don't work, you can always go back to "I Touch Myself" and "Hot for Teacher." But for now, let the standbys stand by. And so...)

Ooba Gooba (MP3) by The Charts (from Las Vegas Grind Part 4).

Go retro. In this vein, I highly recommend perusing the six CD set "Las Vegas Grind" which can be found floating around the web on such fine music blogs as The Twilight Zone, among others. You should also check out the Juke Joint pages at Martin's Titty Shakers blog. And dressing the part is easily done with a vist to Pinup Girl Clothing.

Like a Bad Girl Should (MP3) by The Cramps. The rhythm's a perfect mid-tempo grind with stops, starts, and cymbal crashes just begging for dramatic gestures: clothes ripping, hair whipping -- hell, whip out a whip and crack the cigar out of that fat man's mouth. (Or save that for your routine to "Love Whip" by the Reverend Horton Heat, another recommended roadhouse rauncher.) You'll want to wear black leather for this one, although the lacey little number guitarist Poison Ivy sports on the cover wouldn't be a bad choice either. Anyone unfamiliar with The Cramps need only scan their lengthy catalogue's song titles ("Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?", "Monkey with Your Tail", "Bend Over I'll Drive", etc.) to know you can count on them for the kind of lusty filth that's fun for all. Sleazy listening at its innuendous best.

The Shirelles' Putty (In Your Hands) (MP3) as covered by the Detroit Cobras (now with insurgent music specialists Bloodshot Records). Cobras front woman Rachel Nagy (the blond) is herself an ex-stripper -- and, even cooler, an ex-butcher. Nagy has a raspy rocker voice that sounds like she could still handle a cleaver -- like she's lived in bars, ridden the back of bad men's bikes, and wouldn't be putty in anyone's hands, much less yours -- but that just adds to the trashy sexy cool of the tune and makes it even more appropriate for the dichotomous power relation involved in stripping. (Not her on the cover.)

Let's Just Get Naked (MP3) by Joan Osborne. As you can see by the photo at left, she already has -- and now it's your turn. Yes, this is the same woman who sang that awful soft rock hit about Jesus on a bus that I still hear at the grocery store on occasion. In fact, this song is on the same album. It's actually a rather innocent ditty about two bored female roommates, but the titular invitation is all your patrons will probably hear. (And if they do catch the song's real story, well hey -- naked roommates!) The guitar chords are fuzzed and heavy and the pace is ploddingly, tantalizingly slow. Your goal with this one is to put the saps in a slobbering, four-minute-long trance.

And finally, the Funky White Bitch. I'm talking Nikka Costa. Why this lady ain't bigger than Beyonce is beyond me. Watch her video for "Like a Feather" and try to tell me she ain't the coolest thing since beer in cans. Not only is she an incredible performer, but as a singer she has a five octave range (a piano, by comparison, has seven). For you topless boppers, I recommend I Don't Think We've Met (MP3) which includes a vocal cameo by Prince. "Do we know each other?" he asks. Replies Nikka, "I don't think we've met." Then, in a high-pitched scream that rivals any Prince has ever wailed himself, she adds, "BUT I REALLY WANT TO! I REALLY NEED TO!" And isn't that just what the rubes in the front row want to hear?

When you're done listening to and choosing your music, do yourself a favor and visit Live Nude Girls Unite, a website for the 2001 documentary film about the first successfully unionized nude theater, the Lusty Lady in San Francisco. Along with information on the film and its subject, you can find contact information for the Exotic Dancers Union who will gladly send you tips for running a do-it-yourself unionizing campaign. You go -- I mean go-go -- girls. •

To hear one of the most hilarious songs ever about stripping -- "Please Don't Go Topless, Mother" by Troy Hess -- go here. Also available on the country & western compilation "God less America."

Further reading:

Stripped: Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers by Bernadette Barton

Flesh for Fantasy: Producing and Consuming Exotic Dance edited by Danielle Egan

The Art of Pole Dancing: A Spin by Spin Guide

MAD SCIENCE: Where Is That Dick?

2008-02-09T21:23:00.171-05:00

"History is written as we speak, its borders are mapped long before any of us open our mouths, and written history, which makes the common knowledge out of which our newspapers report the events of the day, creates its own refugees, displaced persons, men and women without a country, cast out of time, the living dead: are you still alive, really?" -- Greil Marcus from The Dustbin of History

In December of 1997, an eccentric white-haired scientist with no money, no job, and no affiliations to any university or institution walked into a major genetics conference and announced, in what the New York Times called a "vague and rambling" speech, his grandiose plans “to produce a two-month pregnancy in a [human] female within a year and a half’s time” by means of cellular cloning.

It’s been ten years.

Sixty-nine year old reproductive biologist Dr. Richard Seed’s announcement sparked a worldwide media frenzy, upset many of his colleagues, and frightened the state of California and 19 European nations into signing immediate bans against human cloning. White House spokesman Michael McCurry told the press, “The scientific community ought to make it clear to Dr. Seed -– and I think the President will make it clear to Dr. Seed -– that he has elected to become irresponsible, unethical, and unprofessional should he pursue the course that he has outlined today."

McCurry’s statement took a lot for granted. For one, it assumed that there existed a clear and universal understanding of the ethics, responsibilities, and standards involved, which was and is no more true of human cloning than any other issue involving reproductive rights or biotech's expanding frontiers. It also assumed that a renegade like Dr. Seed would be affected by peer pressure from a group who wouldn’t have him as a member (“I’m an independent thinker...”) and by a president (“He doesn’t have the power to stop me...”) who at the time was acting just as unprofessionally and unethically as he was (“As far as I’m concerned, he’s slick, sleazy Willie...”). "You can't stop science," Seed liked to say. But before anyone stopped Richard Seed*, we stopped paying attention.

Beginning with sensational headlines, then spurred by Joe Palca’s ten-minute profile on NPR, and developing into a flurry of appearances on network news and morning talk shows, the spotlight had just begun to turn full-force on Dr. Seed when the Clinton-Lewinsky affair erupted and upstaged everything. The doctor's fifteen minutes of fame was about to run out, anyway. The mainstream media had quickly soured on his story once they realized Seed was essentially a quack and the underlying issues were much more complex and consequential than anyone had time for or really wanted to tackle. The networks especially were already looking for an exit and were just lucky to come across Monica's dress after Bill did. What followed was that dizzying post-modern move where they switched the human cloning story to a self-analysis of how they covered it, for which they scolded themselves a bit, then let it drop.

The context in which they did so was this: A national bioethics commission had just presented Congress with 109 pages of reasons to ban human cloning. Most developed countries already had legal restrictions in place prohibitting the growth of experimental human embryos, but not the United States. A year earlier, in response to the news that an adult sheep had been successfully cloned in Scotland, President Clinton had banned the use of federal funds for human cloning research, but legislation to ban privately funded research stalled in the final session of Congress. A new Congress was scheduled to revisit the topic in the weeks ahead when Dr. Seed made his announcement. Clinton responded to Seed by reiterating his earlier ban and asking the private sector to observe a similar ban voluntarily until the law caught up. He then conceded, however, that even with such restraints in place, there was still no real way to stop a very rich man from setting up an island laboratory for endlessly cloning himself once such a thing became possible.

It was a strange, science fiction scenario to hear from our Commander in Chief, reminiscent of one of William Burroughs’s paranoid fantasies about black market medicine -- like the short story “Immortality” in which an old trillionaire, Mr. Hart, is looking to transplant his ego, which he believes resides in the mid-brain at the top of his head: "Well he thinks couldn’t we just scoop it out of a healthy youth, throw his in the garbage where it belongs, and slide in MEEEEEEE. So he starts looking for a brain surgeon, a 'scrambled egg' man, and he wants the best. When it comes to a short order job old Doc Zeit is tops. He can switch eggs in an alley... "**

Meanwhile, Seed was moving ahead with his plans to open a Human Cloning Clinic in Chicago and then, if that proved profitable, to expand to ten or twenty around the country, maybe five or six abroad. He had already negotiated with a local fertility clinic whose name and location he never disclosed but whose facilities allegedly contained all the equipment his project required. In addition, he had four couples who'd signed up in advance. (Three had one infertile partner. In the fourth, both were. "There are no sperm and eggs," Seed pointed out, "so the only way for them to transmit their genes is to clone.") Seed said he was prepared to take them “offshore” if necessary, to move his operations overseas, perhaps to the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas he half jested, if human cloning were outlawed here. He also spoke of relocating to Tijuana where, after paying a half-million dollar bribe, he would open a free medical center in a poor part of town “to buy good will” so they would have a harder time tossing him out. He was even considering using such a tactic on his own city government. “Hey, what if I put up a free medical clinic in the Chicago Housing Authority?” he once mused. “This is worth thinking about!” According to all reports, not counting the significant technological challenges, his only major roadblock remained his lack of proper funding. He claimed it was only going to take $2 million and that he already had some of the money and a full lab staff lined up. He also had two agents ready for the potential book and movie rights if he did create the first human clone. In fact, he felt that so much money could be made, he was willing to pay $50,000 apiece to the first three successful clone-bearing mothers. Thanks to the burst of publicity following his announcement, Seed was confident that funders would emerge and he could soon begin work. And that’s when the coverage stopped. To Be Continued... except it wasn't.

It's been ten years.

MP3: Frankenstein's Den by The Hollywood Flames

The son of a prominent Chicago surgeon who helped pioneer blood banking in the 1930s, Richard Seed sported three degrees from Harvard, including a PhD in physics. He was variously described as brilliant, mysterious, rude, impatient, cold, calculated, insufferable, haunted, dangerous, dynamic, defiant, demonic, and deeply committed to radical science. He was known to be habitually distant to his children, inspiring to his colleagues, and completely maddening to his wives. He was called a Bible-thumping prophet, a one-man cult, a maverick, an oddball, a fruitcake, and a flop. He was portrayed as Dr. Frankenstein, for what he wished to bring to life, and as Franken-stein’s monster, for how he was brought to life by the press. Tribune columnist John Kass even compared Seed’s freakish celebrity to a sideshow, with otherwise responsible journalists acting like carnie barkers “selling tickets to the tent of Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy.”

He was also brazenly honest, quick to speak his mind, and admittedly not very good at relating to people he considered unintelligent which, coming from someone who once introduced himself as “the smartest man in the world,” basically meant he had a hard time relating to anyone. In perhaps his most revealing bit of self-assessment, he referred to himself as “a former near genius”: a genius, he said, because God gave him an extraordinary amount of creative and inventive talent, near because he had come close but never quite made the kind of enormous contribution to society you would expect from such a mind, and former because he was almost 70 years old and "you lose a lot of brain cells as you get older." The undying arrogance, the sting of failures, the peculiar mechanistic thinking -- you could hear it all in that single phrase.

One brave reporter elicited the opinion of Seed’s second wife, Zaroohy, who claimed her ex-husband was mainly driven by the desire for money (which he would get then promptly “shit down the toilet”), followed by the need for a scientific challenge and the quest for immortality. (She said that he once wanted to be preserved cryogenically but, if he had been, she would have pulled the plug.) Although one might tend to question a bitter ex's perspective, even the briefest glance at the doctor's past confirmed her diagnosis.

A devout member of the First United Methodist Church in Oak Park, Illinois, Seed was convinced that human cloning was part of God’s plan. "In the first two chapters of the Old Testament,” he explained, “we learned that God made man in his own image. He intended the union of man and God. Is this union spiritual or in body? I think it is talking about the body.” Seed reckoned that cloning was the first step toward becoming one with our creator, and the second was the manipulation of our genetic material to end the aging of the cells. “Indefinite life extension,” he called it. "Eventually, we are going to have almost as much knowledge and almost as much power as God.” So, according to Seed, all we have to do is live long enough and then we'll know every-thing. (No one asked what we'd do about the increasing overpopulation of a planet whose populace won't die. It was probably assumed immortality would be the ultimate luxury that only the privileged few could afford -- but, despite the President's island scenario, no one broached that subject either.) As far as the mainstream media was concerned, he might as well have started ranting about UFOs. I'm not sure what kind of person we thought would be the first to attempt cloning humans, but the networks seemed less concerned about a man with Seed's quirks tinkering with our genes and more worried about how they looked giving so much airtime to such an obvious nut.

In a related bit of personal expression, Dr. Seed told foreign reporters during a visit to Scotland that he would not clone homosexuals, whom he described as “genetic defects,” at his clinic. According to polls at the time, homosexual couples, for obvious reasons of procreative inability, represented a good number of the more than 5 million Americans who said they would consider cloning themselves. Anya Palmer of the gay pressure group Stonewall said Seed was dreaming if he thought he could use genetics to wipe out gays. (Seed also said he would only treat couples “who look nice,” for which Palmer then acccused him of trying to create a master race of “good-looking heterosexuals.” This was as close as Seed got to inviting a discussion of eugenics.) Seed just shrugged her off and said there's always an argument whenever someone like him tries to do anything new.

MP3: The Mad Scientist by The Zanies

Throughout his life, Seed was always trying something new. And like many experimental minds, he had a habit of leaving lots of unfinished work in his wake. He seemed to abandon the scientific challenges he so daringly pursued once the challenge had gone out of the science. “He has a problem with follow-through," said his son Russell. "He has no sense of closure.” In the 1950s, for instance, Seed began a semi-conductor business in his basement, back when few people had heard of the device. He left the company right before semi-conductors became the infrastructure of the computer industry, just missing out on his chance to cash in. Then he went into gas lasers and the same thing happened. His son likened his attention span to a toddler’s.

He was briefly famous in the 1970s when, with his brother Randolph, he ran Embryo Transplant Corp., a company which produced high-yield milk cows through a non-surgical procedure that involved super-ovulating the most productive cows, flushing the embryos out of the uterus, then implanting them in other cows, producing up to 12 calves from one “super cow.” The farming industry was in trouble that year, though, and Seed’s company, which depended on the strength of agribusiness, went bust along with the farms. As the 1980s approached, he tried using this same animal technique to transfer fertilized embryos from one woman to another for Fertility and Genetics Research, Inc., a company he helped found. Out of that, he got one paper published and one woman pregnant. The eggs didn’t flush out as easily from humans, so the technique never caught on. Technology surpassed him soon after and quickly phased his company out.

He also tried a variety of get-rich ventures throughout his life, such as attempting to get a North Shore venture capitalist, Walter G. Cornet III, to invest $35 million in a scheme to acquire seven small fishing fleets with which Seed claimed, in all seriousness, that he could corner the world market in fish-meal. “I thought he was a couple of bubbles off plumb,” Cornet quipped. It was a clever idea, though, which might have worked, but Cornet didn’t have the funds and Seed didn’t pursue it any further. Instead he went into mortgage financing with his son Russell, where, bored and careless, he quickly lost his shirt. The summer before his big announcement, his own Oak Park home of 12 years was finally foreclosed, forcing him to live in a modest suburban home owned by two of his children while being supported on a secretary’s salary by his wife. By the time he became a celebrity, he was totally broke. "Bad investments," he explained.

The media reported these patterns but missed what they suggested. With his typical sense of timing, Seed had arrived on the human cloning scene early and perhaps prematurely as many of his critics suggested. However, he had already displayed over and over a knack for finding fields of science which were likely to boom and beating everyone else to the punch. Like an old prospector, he seemed able to tell where a gold rush was going to hit. Whether Seed would or could succeed at human cloning was almost irrelevant. His mere presence at the forefront was an alert to the possibility that human cloning might soon develop into a profitable trade. Although he usually failed at the business end himself, it should have been noted that he almost always accomplished his scientific task. Thus, if these patterns were about to repeat, the clinic he had planned was likely to collapse and he'd probably stay poor, but he'd make human cloning happen. It was inevitable, he said: “If not me, someone else. If not here, somewhere else. If not now, then.”

It's been ten years.

The New York Times said he seemed like “a recruit from central casting”: a white-haired scientist with a beard, twinkling eyes, a mischevous smile and a checkered past. An eccentric prone to outrageous comments, he was a natural candidate for media star. But more than that, Dr. Seed was an unequalled American character. He was so utterly American, from his short attention span to his warped Christian thinking, that he appeared at times to have been invented. Even though human cloning was seen as futuristic, for him the pursuit was almost old fashioned. On one level, it was really nothing more than a brave individualist effort to climb from rags to riches and fame -- an Horatio Alger tale for the 21st Century. But then he amplified Alger like no one had done before, because for him human cloning was also the first step toward realizing his own personal vision, a dream which, when distilled, gave voice to the ultimate rendition –- if not the underlying essence –- of the great mythic American Dream: to be a rich immortal genius with a unique relationship to God.

It's been ten years. I wonder how he's doing. •

* Even after the mainstream media had decided the whole episode was nothing but a tragic joke, what the Tribune termed a “sad comedy,” everyone still held back the most obvious punchlines. Although the subject was reproductive technology and journalists are generally addicted to irony and puns, no one noted, for instance, that this man who said he could asexually impregnate an infertile woman with her own genetic duplicate was named, of all things, Dick Seed. One New York Times article noted how the doctor’s name “gave his procreative adventure a sense of destiny,” but the comment pertained to his last name only. No one noted that his entire name sounded like a euphemism for semen, an otherwise vital component of the reproductive process that remained conspicuously absent in his work.

** If we're going to give Nostradomus credit for Hitler from Hisler, we might as well give Burroughs credit for Dr. Seed from Doc Zeit. Seed's plans, after all, included literally scrambling some eggs.

Mad Scientist Lego found on Brick Brothers, the Lego builders blog. Marilyn Monroes by Andy Warhol, the king of cloning art. John Carradine probably played more mad scientists than any actor ever, but a bigger geek than me will have to confirm this. Man trapped in hour glass illustration by Jim Steranko. The Han Solo in Carbonite Mini-Fridge is an example of pitched but rejected Stars Wars merchandise. Others include headphones in the shape of Princess Leia's hair and a BBQ grill in the shape of the Death Star. "Eat My Fear" was David Lynch's contribution to the New York Cow Parade in the year 2000 which was banned from the public art exhibition for being too gruesome. Detourned comic from Garfield Minus Garfield. Save Clone High was an attempt to keep M-TV from cancelling the 2003 cartoon series which tackled such teen issues as "whether ADD can be caught from toilet seats." Clone High now airs on Teletoon in Canada. The Rollin' Clones are a Rolling Stones tribute band. Meet the Clones was a fake punk band flyer created by collage artist Winston Smith in 1978. At Cafe Press, you can buy t-shirts for fictional bands from movies and TV shows, such as Citizen Dick from the film "Singles" and the Frozen Embryos from the series "My So-Called Life."

Further reading:

Reader beware. All books on this subject tend to be biased in some form and it may simply be impossible not to be. These two titles attempt to collect essays of various opinion to present a general overview, thus providing an entry point at least to the issues.

Clones and Clones: Facts and Fantasies About Human Cloning edited by Martha Nussbaum and Cass Sunstein.

The Human Cloning Debate edited by Glenn McGee, Arthur Caplan, and Roopali Malhotra.

Further viewing:

O Clone (a.k.a. El Clon, or The Clone), is a syndicated Brazilian soap opera (in Portuguese) set in Morroco which airs in the U.S. (in Spanish) on Telemundo. The main storyline sounds like some-thing you might expect from Charlie Kaufman: a love triangle develops between Jade and Lucas and, yes, Lucas's clone, pitting the poor guy against his own younger, less bitter self.

Some lesser known movies about cloning and/or human duplication:

Cat O'Nine Tails (1970). IMDB: "Franco is a blind man who lives with his young niece and makes a living writing crossword puzzles. One night, while walking on the street, he overhears a weird conversation between two men sitting in a car parked in front of a medical institute where genetic experiments are performed..." (Directed by giallo master Dario Argento.)

The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler (1971). IMDB: "A U.S. Senator is spirited away to a secret New Mexico medical lab after a serious car crash. His injuries are completely healed by a secret organization that has developed advanced medical technology. What does the organization want in exchange for saving his life? Meanwhile, a reporter who witnessed the accident decides to investigate the Senator's disappearance..." (Dated precursor of the 2005 movie The Island.)

Anna to the Infinite Power (1983). IMDB: "Anna Hart was always an odd child -- a genius, a shoplifter, desperately afraid of flickering lights, with strange prophetic dreams. Anna is watching TV one night and sees someone who appears to be her exact double..."

Night of the Lepus (1972). "Ladies and gentlemen, attention! There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way and we desperately need your help!" (Actual quote, which you can hear and download for yourself at BadMovies.org.) A hormone intended to alter the breeding cycle of rabbits overrunning ranchlands instead turns them into flesh-eating, 150-pound monsters. If you think you haven't seen it, guess again. Footage from Night of the Lepus appears briefly in The Matrix and randomly throughout Natural Born Killers. In case you were wondering what the people who made Black Sheep were thinking...

CINEPHOBIA: All Movies are Zombie Movies

2008-02-06T23:09:00.023-05:00

In voodoun theology, the soul has two parts, the gros bon ange and ti bon ange, or big good angel and little good angel. The big good angel is your soul portion of the overall spirit of the universe. This returns to the universe when you die. The little good angel is your will, your energy, your own individual soul. This travels in dreams and after death and momentarily leaves your body during extreme fear and/or pleasure. The little good angel can be lost or captured and you must constantly guard it from evil. But nothing can harm the big good angel, because the big good angel is God’s. A zombie is one whose little good angel has in fact been lost or captured, thus they lack any individuality or will. If it weren’t for that portion of God inside them, the big good angel, they’d have no soul at all.

Cinema simulates the dreaming experience. The little good angel travels in dreams. Violent and/or erotic imagery is common in films. The little good angel leaves the body during extreme pleasure and/or fright. Does this mean you could lose your will and individuality while watching a movie? According to voudoun theology, yes.

Wade Davis, a Harvard scientist who studied the ethnobiology of zombies in the early 1980s (known for his memoir "The Serpent & the Rainbow," the source material for the fictional Wes Craven film), attended one of the first screenings of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in Haiti. According to his account, the climactic scene where spirits shoot out of the ark triggered pandemonium in the little crowded theater. One person screamed out a warning to all pregnant women and another advised people to quickly tie a ribbon around their left arm. There were repeated shouts of “Loup garou!” (This is usually translated into English as werewolf, but refers to a more complex idea of a shapeshifter to Haitians.) While images of freed spirits were projected before them, these viewers feared actual bodily possession.

The confidence game works not when you put your faith in con men, but when you allow con men to put their faith in you. Perhaps, then, movies borrow our traveling soul, shift its shape, then show it back to us, fostering the illusion that the film itself has a soul, while we watch the entire spectacle soulless, without will, generalized, easily conned into letting the film put its faith into us. In voudoun terms, a film might be likened to a canari, the clay jar used to shelter or capture the little good angel during rituals. The movie ends, the jar breaks, and the priests let us go on living, our souls restored. •

Glow-in-the-Dark Flesh-Eating Zombies Playset from Archie McPhee.

Zombie vs. Shark! Film stills from Lucio Fulci's "Zombie 2." Which is not a sequel. The idea was to confuse people into thinking it was. In 1978, George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" achieved worldwide success and spawned a wave of Italian zombie films. In Europe, "Dawn of the Dead" was released under the title "Zombie." The following year, Fulci released "Zombie 2." Such titling tricks were common among Italian filmmakers of the era, the most famous example being Joe D'Amoto's series of one-m "Emanuelle" films starring Laura Gemser following the success of the French two-m "Emmanuelle" films starring Sylvia Kristel. Confusing the issue, some dvd versions of Fulci's film have taken the 2 off and just call it "Zombie" (which is the version available at Vidiots, for example). Buyer beware. Lucio Fulci's "Zombie" and "Zombie 2" are the same movie -- and I don't mean in the way "Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead 2" could be called the same movie, I mean the same exact movie. To see an even stranger zombie versus shark scenario featuring scuba-diving nazi zombies, see 1977's Shock Waves starring Peter Cushing.

Zombiewalk.com is a forum for organizing annual public gatherings where people dress like zombies. Similar to Santacons, Zombie Walks are becoming increasingly popular. Last Halloween, Pittsburgh's Zombie Walk broke its own Guinness World Record of 894 zombies, established the previous year, when over 1,100 zombies walked through the Monroeville Mall (the mall that served as the set for Romero's "Dawn of the Dead"). To celebrate the screening of "The Zombie Diaries" at Film4 Fright Fest, London tried to break the record but failed. I have not yet attended a Zombie Walk. I was in Portland, however, for last year's Santacon. On three separate occasions in one evening, other onlookers -- locals, strangers -- asked if I'd read the essay about Portland's Santacon by Chuck Palahniuk. That same week, I was telling someone about this cool vacuum cleaner museum I'd found in the back of a vacuum shop, and again was asked if I'd read the Chuck Palahniuk essay about it. I'd read his novels ("Fight Club," "Choke," etc.), but not his essays. In his hometown, that apparently meant I hadn't read enough. Don't let this happen to you. Read "Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon" by Chuck Palahniuk before you go there. And if you see dogs in Portland parks chewing on what appear to be the bloody stumps of severed limbs, they're not flesh-eating zombie dogs. Palahniuk passes out plastic toys like the Gory Arm to dog owners at some of his readings.

I found this picture at a blog called Blonde Zombie.

Read selections here from "The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks. I sent a copy to my friend Mustache Pete (who no longer has a mustache now that he lives in L.A. because "they just think it's ironic"). Pete actually has a zombie phobia. I didn't believe it at first, but his girlfriend concurred that he jolts awake in sweaty terror after zombie nightmares and has made her promise that if he ever becomes one, she'll shoot him. Max Brooks used to write for Saturday Night Live. What makes this book funny is how seriously it's presented. Mustache Pete, however, didn't think it was funny. His girlfriend later told me that he took the book at face value and has been debating its assertions. So, when you read it, know that there's at least one guy out there who thinks it's real.

Further reading:

"Raise the Dead" by Leah Moore & John Reppion. Hardcover edition of the 4-issue comic. Cover art by Arthur Suydam, introduction by Max Brooks.

"Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema" by Jamie Russell
"Eaten Alive!: Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies" by Jay Slater
"Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti" by Maya Deren
"Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie" by Wade Davis

And while you're reading, you can listen to this record I found. Comprised of the only four songs of a planned LP completed before his death in 1954 at the age of 70, Papa Celestin's "Golden Wedding" turned out to be Papa's farewell. The Louisiana legend made a hell of an exit, though, with his last words on wax being this cult classic cut about New Orleans' most infamous voodoo queen.

Marie La Veau (MP3) by Oscar "Papa" Celestin

TITTY TWISTER: Check Your Local Listings

2008-02-06T08:09:00.042-05:00

Perusing the Chicago Municipal Code, one will find, along with one of the nation’s toughest building codes (intentionally designed to make compliance impossible) and other curiosities (such as the archaic forbiddance of a Museum of Anatomy), various regulations regarding the exposure of women’s breasts. Although nipples are clearly the main concern, the word nipple never appears. Within descriptions of Obscenity, Adult Entertainment, and Indecent Exposure are references to the female breast “below a point immediately above the top of the aureola,” “at or below the upper edge of the aureola,” and “at or below the aureola thereof.” It’s never “Don’t swim in the river,” but “Okay, so here’s where the shore starts...”

Especially in these sections, the language is almost charming in its struggle for precision. It is unlawful, for instance, if a man has a noticeable boner in public. Unlike nipples, the hard-on needn’t be naked. A rise in the Levis suffices. The code specifically speaks against “covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state,” even if they are “completely and opaquely covered.” Turgid is always the word. To nitpick, the entire genitalia doesn’t swell when a man is aroused, merely the primary dangling appendage. If my testicles started swelling, I’m not sure what I’d do. But I hear that’s how some guys like it. My gay friends tell me about a craze known as “plumping” where men enlarge their scrotum using saline solution. One says he knows a hardcore plumper with nuts the size of grapefruits. My reading of the code would suggest that, even though plumped balls are consistently swollen and thus don’t indicate arousal, they’re still indecent if easily noticed. And who wouldn’t notice a guy with two grapefruits in his pants? Perhaps someone should warn the city about the dangers of getting into any kind of size issue with queens. My gay friends like male genitals to be discernible at all times, not just during turgidity. Hence the first thing they do with new jeans is sandpaper the crotch to make it appear as if their bulging cock stresses the fabric. They’re a particularly randy bunch and would like nothing better than to drop trou for an officer who suspected their indecency just to show him they’re simply blessed. In any case, what’s really hard is trying not to wonder about the discussions from which these descriptions arose, and also the reasoning behind them. Like why treat nipple like an N-word?

I find it somewhat poetic that, while the nude women on stage at a strip club are considered Adult Entertainment, it’s the fully-clothed men attending the show who are at risk of Indecent Exposure. Obviously, Chicago cops don’t raid titty bars, line the men against the wall, and bust the ones with boners. The definitions for Obscenity and Adult Entertainment are instead designed like the infamous building restrictions, as narrow and confining guidelines rarely put into practice in full but there on the books for their potential leverage in disputes or as a tool for those in power. For instance, a liquor license could be at stake. A business cannot be granted a liquor license if “any live act, demonstration, dance, or exhibition” exposes to public view 1) “genitals, pubic hair, buttocks, perineum and anal region or pubic hair region,” 2) any device, costume, or covering which gives the appearance of or simulates the same*, or 3) the female breast. In the mind of Chicago’s municipal imagination, it’s best for everyone if nudity and drunkenness don’t mix. Hence in Windy City strip clubs you can either have “near beer” and full nudity or real beer and pasties. Choose your simulation. As for bars with live entertainment, let’s say a female act suffered a wardrobe malfunction -- would you have to stop serving? I once saw the band Nashville Pussy perform at Lounge Ax and Ruyter Suys (at left) had her nipples slip from her bikini top I don't know how many times while she wailed on guitar. If bared breasts are in fact reason enough to revoke a bar’s license, could she conceivably strip her way through the local circuit until every club in the city went dry? Imagine the new temperance movement with its Carrie Nation flashing her hooters instead of swinging a hatchet. “Men, I have come to save you from drunkards’ fates. Behold the instruments of our Lord...”

You almost have to give the code makers artistic credit for including the perineum within civic infractions. Try for an experiment to expose your taint without flashing any balls, bush, or butt. Were they worried some clever mooner might defend themselves with a perineum loophole? (“Look judge, all she saw was the runway ...”) Did they want to add further counts against such offenders? (“Let the record show that the witness is pointing to the defendant’s anus, genitals, pubic hair region and perineum...”) If they wanted to provide an obsessively detailed inventory of all the naughty body parts for posterity, then why not mention nipples? The Indecent Exposure definition even redundantly adds the vulva to the list, perhaps the result of a tax-funded discussion on shaving. The breast restrictions for Indecent Exposure are also phrased differently, referring to “any portion of the female breast below the upper edge of the aureola thereof of any female person.” One could conclude that if a non-female person were somehow in possession of a female breast, they could freely expose it on Chicago streets. Good news for hermaphrodites. Imagine packed among the hard bodies, bathing beauties, and wannabe bunnies on North Beach, roving gangs of topless chicks-with-dicks gleefully kicking sand on all the bikni-clad silly cones, mocking strap lines and flaunting their tans. Perfectly legal, you could argue, until one got a hard-on. •

Topless band photo = The Ladybirds. You can buy a photo reprint of them playing the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas in 1967 from Vegas Retro. If they were around today, could they play in your town? Check your main public library branch for a copy of your municipal code. Here's another topless band picture. Is it them? Different guitars. Different hair. But the breasts... Am I wrong?

* Re: "any device, costume, or covering." Although things that look like a penis, a pussy, or an ass are out, luckily for drag queens, you can still perform in things that look like tits. This scarf and these slippers would make a great matching set. (The hat just reminds you how many hats -- and the people in them -- already look like a boob.)

Further reading:

"The Book of the Breast" by Robert Anton Wilson (Playboy Press). As Homer Simpson said of the movie "Naked Lunch": "I can think of two things wrong with that title." No, Wilson's book will not treat you to centerfolds, but rather school you in the treatment of the female breast in a host of civilizations throughout history. Using his own unique blend of Freudian anthropology, Wilson outlines how societies that tend to repress the female breast also tend to demonstrate “patrist or anal” values, such as a restrictive attitude toward sex, inferior treatment toward women, a deep fear of homosexuality, an ascetic fear of pleasure, an authoritarian political structure, and a father- or god-based religion. And conversely, societies that tend not to repress the female breast are shown to demonstrate “matrist or oral” values, such as a permissive attitude toward sex, equal rights for women, a deep fear of incest, a hedonistic acceptance of pleasure, a democratic political structure, a progressive encouragement of revolution and research, and a mother- or goddess-based religion. I've tried to apply his thesis to our own society but can’t quite identify a dominant trend, unless one counts a tendency towards hypocrisy and paradox. It’s taxing enough just trying to place where things fall in the spectrum. Take "Girls Gone Wild." Hedonistic celebration? Inferior treatment? Reaction to repression or ironic support of it? Call me treasonous, but what would the French say? I’m not sure but, ever since reading this book, I've found myself even more attentive to tits than I was already. Order a copy direct from the author.

"Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film" by Jimmy McDonough. Soon to be a major motion picture. Until it is, the best and often only way to get a hold of Russ Meyer's films is through his own company, RM Films International, where one is additionally treated to Russ's self-written ad copy:
"FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL! KILL! is the story of a new breed of SUPERWOMEN emerging out of the ruthlessness of our times. We are introduced to three BUXOM Go-Go girls: VARLA, ROSIE, and BILLIE, wildly dancing the Watusi before the leers, jeers and lecherous come-ons of their drooling all-male audience. The violence, implicit in the girls' tease, is quickly moved out of the microcosmic bar into the outside world as they literally let go of themselves, embarking on a wild, violent, deadly journey of vengeance on all men. VARLA, the outrageously abundant KARATE MASTER leader of the pack, breaks the arms and back of one man, runs her Porsche over two others, grinds a fourth, a muscleman, against a wall and, eventually, deliberately goes down the path of her own self-destruction, dragging her two BUXOTIC cohorts along with her. Filmed in glorious black & blue."

Read excerpts from The Big Book of Breasts by Dian Hanson here.

While you're reading, you can listen to a full-frontal double-bill of hard rocking fems featuring Nashville Pussy and Tits of Death.

Or listen now to Quomma fave Boobs A Lot (MP3) by The Fugs.

VERSUS: Abu Ghraib vs. Collegefuckfest.com

2008-02-05T00:21:00.003-05:00

Click photo for larger image.

For an accompanying comparison, an excerpt from the chapter PINKERTON vs. AIDING AND ABETTING from the United States Department of Justice’s Criminal Resource Manual (1999):

The Pinkerton rule was pronounced in Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 66 S.Ct. 1180, 90 L.Ed. 1489 (1946). Walter and Daniel Pinkerton were brothers who were charged with violations of the Internal Revenue Code. The indictment alleged the Pinkertons committed one conspiracy count and the ten substantive counts. A jury found each of them guilty of the conspiracy and several of the substantive counts. The main issue arose from the facts that there was no evidence to show Daniel Pinkerton participated directly in the commission of the substantive offenses although there was evidence showing these substantive offenses were in fact committed by Walter Pinkerton in furtherance of the unlawful agreement or conspiracy existing between the brothers. Id., 328 U.S. at 645, 66 S.Ct. at 1183.

The question was submitted to the jury on the theory that each brother could be found guilty of the substantive offenses if it was found at the time those offenses were committed the brothers were parties to an unlawful conspiracy and the substantive offenses were, in fact, committed in furtherance of it. Id. Daniel Pinkerton was not indicted as an aider or abettor, nor was his case submitted to the jury on that theory. Id. at n.6.

Daniel argued United States v. Sall, 116 F.2d 745 (3d Cir. 1940), in support of his contention that participation in the conspiracy is not in itself enough to sustain a conviction for the substantive offense even though it was committed in furtherance of the conspiracy. Id., 328 U.S. at 646, 66 S.Ct. at 1183. Sall held that, in addition to evidence that the offense was in fact committed in furtherance of the conspiracy, evidence of direct participation in the commission of the substantive offense or other evidence from which participation might fairly be inferred was necessary. Id.

The Supreme Court took a different view. It noted the facts showed a continuous conspiracy with no evidence that Daniel attempted to withdraw from it. Id. Therefore, he continued to offend. Id. So long as the partnership in crime continues, the partners act for each other in carrying it forward, and an overt act of one partner may be the act of all without any new agreement specifically directed to that act. Id., 328 U.S. at 647, 66 S.Ct. at 1184. The criminal intent to do an illegal act by one of the conspirators in furtherance of the unlawful project is established by the formation of the conspiracy. Id. Each conspirator instigates the commission of the crime. Id. The unlawful agreement contemplated what was done in the substantive acts, the substantive crimes were performed in the execution of the enterprise. Id.

Basically, the scenario goes like this: two brothers decide to rob banks then do so. Then one gets caught, but the other keeps robbing banks. And for every bank the free brother robs, the brother in jail is held equally responsible. The driving notion behind the Pinkerton rule is if you're part of the idea, you're part of the crime. •

SURVEY SAYS: It's Not Jesus, George, It's You

2008-02-04T23:01:00.016-05:00

"There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president." -- Kurt Vonnegut

During his presidency, Ronald Reagan had two notable bouts with cancer. In 1985, surgeons detached a tumor from the lining of his bowels. Two years later, they removed a basal cell carcinoma from the tip of his nose. Although they carefully avoided drawing any correlation, it's clear a case could've been made that the malignancies were transferred by direct physical proximity. In other words, we had not only his behavior to go on, but legitimate medical reasons for suspecting that the president had his head up his butt. This condition, technically known as rectal-cranial inversion, would have explained everything from his countless misspoken statements to his excessive so-called napping, not to mention solve the mystery of how his hair always stayed so black. If such a speculation had been made during his stay in office, maybe it might've made some difference. Instead, in 1995, Reagan had another carcinoma removed, this time from his neck. Sadly, the problem had deepened. We always talk about how much we loved him, yet we all sat back and watched as the once-Great Communicator crawled up his own ass and died like the rancid old fart he'd become. But did we learn? No, then we did Clinton.

MP3: Impeach the President by the Honey Drippers.

In 1997, the magazine Scientific American reported on the medical maneuver known as Valsalva and what can happen when this simple technique is performed without knowledge or care. For instance, after inflating over 20 balloons in an hour before a party, a 24 year-old man in Wales ballooned himself up. Wrote the article's author Steven Mirsky: "His examination turned up pockets of air trapped under the skin on the man's shoulders, chest, neck, abdomen, back, arms, legs, and, providing a built-in whoopie cushion effect, derriere." To perform Valsalva, a subject deeply inhales then tries to forcefully exhale without first opening up the glottis. Balloon blowing is in fact one of the best examples of how to do this. But the lung's alveoli -- the tiny air sacs where gas exchange usually occurs -- can be burst if it isn't done right, and then large volumes of air can be pushed into and under the skin. According to the article's quoted physician Stuart Elborn, this happens most frequently to saxophone players, due to the harsh wind intake which accompanies their often aggressive breathing style, and marijuana smokers, who will unwittingly perform the Valsalva while trying to hold in the fumes. Contrary to his defense of certain allegations, I believe we were well aware that Bill Clinton likely belonged to both groups. He was thus doubly susceptible to accidental self-inflation. His very apparent bloating while in office was repeatedly noted as were the sexual scandals that dogged him throughout his career, but no one stopped to consider the possibility that he had a legitimate swelling disorder. Once again we saw the symptoms but didn't make the diagnosis, namely that Slick Willy was just full of hot air. This would have explained everything, from his near compulsive need to let off steam through (aptly named) blow jobs to his V.P.'s intense sensitivity to global warming. It seems so obvious once you see it, but we're not even looking anymore.

MP3: Funky President by James Brown.

We've let our presidents down. We're supposed to watch them and we haven't been. At least, not closely enough. We certainly haven't spotted each man's damage like we should. Instead, we let them fall apart, even knowing that we fall apart with them. Some-thing as simple as a pair of tongs could've saved Reagan, and perhaps a small pressure guage was all it would've taken to keep Clinton from ruin. They were treatable. So what did we do? Elect someone who isn't.

MP3: Christ for President by Billy Bragg & Wilco.

According to "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," a 1976 study by Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes, the left half of the brain is where speech functions reside, as well as our reasoning and logic. The right half is instead connected with recognition of shapes and patterns. An artist with left brain damage becomes inarticulate but can still draw, whereas an artist with right brain damage remains eloquent but can't draw a lick. (This is reversed for left-handed people.) The left brain is where we generally dwell, our sense of "I," the half that copes with life. When Mozart claimed that melodies walked into his head fully formed and all he had to do was write them down, he was describing the experience of informa-tion traveling from the right side of his brain to the left. Akin to this, Jaynes noticed that in most ancient literature -- the Bible, "The Iliad," etc. -- the heroes are always "hearing voices" and are also lacking what we'd call an inner self. Jaynes eventually surmised that human subjectivity didn't exist before 1250 B.C. Instead of having the ability to look inside themselves and ask "What do I think about this?*", ancient generations experienced their own mind as something alien and mistook messages received from the right brain as the voices of gods. This is why George W. hears Jesus. He has a 3,000 year old brain. It's no wonder he doesn't believe in evolution. Our error has been believing he's stupid. What he lacks isn't smarts so much as self-reflection -- which may be just as dangerous as idiocy but markedly different. He has ideas; he's just incapable of understanding that not every idea he has is heaven sent. To the degree that he is an idiot and thus has fewer ideas than most people is actually in our favor.

Of course, it's this very habit of relying on ignorance to save us from unawareness that keeps us from saving our presidents, from deflating them when they need to be and pulling their heads out of their asses. Do what Dubya can't do: think about it. Now look at our new batch of candidates and ask yourself: WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? And please, keep your answers scientific. •

MP3: When Did I Stop Wanting to be President by William Burroughs.

Bureaucrat with head up butt line drawing copyright John Pritchett for Consumer Education Foundation, found at pritchettcartoons.com.

Homer Simpson's X-Ray appeared on China's official Xinhua News Agency's English website China View in July of 2007 as an accompanying "file photo" to a Health section article, Two New Genes Found for Multiple Sclerosis. According to Computerworld, the Chinese media has fallen prey to American satire before, including in 2002 when the Beijing Evening News ran an article from The Onion about the U.S. Congress threatening to move out of the capitol building unless it were upgraded with a retractable dome.

* An example of where one could use a quomma.