Good morning! Fancy A Fierce Pancake for breakfast?
HOW MUCH IS THE FISH? HOW MUCH IS THE CHIPS?! (Lara! Thank you!)
Egads, how could I have forgotten about these freakwads? I once loved their one-and-only studio album, A Fierce Pancake with the same passion reserved for exceptional goofballs like Primus, Billy Nayer Show, Mr Bungle, Idiot Flesh, Violent Femmes, Fishbone, and Adam the the Ants. But it’s been a long, long time since I last listened…
Is it just me, or does Mick Lynch look uncannily like Siege (yanno, if Siege were crossed with Ed Grimley and a lemur)?
Formed in London in 1983, Stump were a legendary Anglo-Irish indie/experimental/rock group inspired by Captain Beefheart. The lineup was Kev Hopper on bass, Rob McKahey on drums, Chris Salmon on guitar, and Mick Lynch on vocals. They toured a lot in the mid 80s on a couple of brilliant, bizarre EPs, and their energetic live shows quickly earned them a cult following. Then they got signed to a major label, apparently squabbled constantly during the production of AFP and broke up soon afterward, a quarter of a million pounds in debt to their record company, and never to be heard from again.*
The entire album is cracked fucking genius. It’s also very difficult to track down anymore. Beg, borrow, steal a copy if you can.
“Alien Faced People of the World Unite!” by Suzanne Gerber.
The marvelous, oft-mentioned curator/creator/writer Suzanne Gerber recently posted something on her main site, Wurzeltod.ch, that should catch the attention of artistic East Londoners:
I recently came to the conclusion that it’s about time for me to get my own little space for art and exhibitions. I know this is not going to happen from one day to another and I’m also fully aware of all the competition around and the dire economic times, but heck, this is as good or bad as any time to start a business when you put a mind as determined as mine to it and if I never try, I will never know.
I have been wanting to get a shop/show room for a long time now and I know that I’m not the only one with such grand hopes but zero cash. So here I am, asking you, fellow (preferably East) London creative/artist/designer/utopian to join forces with me and share a space for creative endeavours with me. I’m looking particularly (but not exclusively) for:
An artist in need of a studio
A (fashion) designer in need of a shop space
A creative hairdresser in need of a salon
An (art) book/mag/graphic novel nerd/collector in need of a book shop
A restaurateur in need of a small café
A combination of the above
Someone who already owns a space with a creative direction and wants to rent parts of it out
So if you’re any of the above or know of someone who is and if you have been wanting to have a space of your own for a while and are committed, trustworthy, hardworking and willing to make human sacrifices, please do get in touch so that we can discuss everything over a few cups of hazelnut soy latte.
Best of luck, lovely lady. Break limbs and hearts and piggy banks, whatever it takes! Hoping to hear a lot more about this in the coming months.
Who else from the US is long-toothed enough to remember those bunged up old Sterling Educational Film reels that lazy or under-prepped public school teachers often showed in place of real lessons? They were short, vaguely informative features on anything from personal hygiene, to parameciums, to overviews of friggin’ dairy production in Wisconsin. And of course, there was plenty of morbidly fascinating “duck and cover” fare:
I’d all but forgotten watching Tommy and the Atom one morning in my 1st grade homeroom class (this would have been early in Reagan’s first term) until now. But the minute that electrified fox showed up, it all came flooding back: the Rasputinian magician with his beard of lightning, the impassive narrator’s description of good versus bad atoms, the malignant black atom thrashing inside of a bomb, intimation of worldwide destruction at the hands of evildoers… This is one beautifully creepy, potent little slice of cold war propaganda.
“Call me eccentric I haven’t a doubt
I’ll labeled a whole lot worse and far out
When I roll down a springtime grassy green hill
You think I won’t but I betcha I will
Cause I’m over 21 considerably
and I’ve earned the right to be no one but me.”
“Rad Anthem” by Rad Omen. Directed by Nicholaus Goossen.
Egads, what a disgustingly perfect, perfectly disgusting piece of work. Very “Dick in a (Happy Meal) Box”. One of those indelible wee slices of cultural tongue in stripper cheek that makes one want to spit, laugh, cry, vomit, and masturbate all at the same time.
The four reigning icons of American fast food (Ronald, Jack, The Colonel and The King) get together for a boy’s night out and proceed to rampage up and down Sunset Strip like the douchiest of all popped collar, Entourage-aping broheims, gorging on drugs/booze/casual sex before retiring to Carney’s for late night refueling and condiment abuse. (The only thing missing is a cameo from the “yo quiero Taco Bell” chihuahua. Thankfully, comedian Nick Swardson’s appearance as Wendy the stripper more than makes up for that omission.)
As Steven Gottlieb at Video Static puts it, “why wouldn’t fast food mascots live fast? After all, if they actually subsist on the shit they’re selling, it only stands to reason that they’d be just as tasteless with other aspects of their lives.” He goes on to state that the video “dry humps the line between parody and defamation” and I’d have to agree. It’s not as full-on chaotic neutral as “Smack My Bitch Up” or as viciously intelligent as “Windowlicker“. I’m amused, but also left feeling the same vaguely irked “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG” sentiment that I get watching a mindless sausage-baster like “Country Girl“. Displays of entitled douchebaggery + vapid disco shitbeats + the unbidden, deeply personal olfactory memory of being accosted with the stench of other people’s McDonald’s = INSTINCTIVE WRATH.
So. Is this conscious social commentary, or just another music video that –albeit more cleverly than most– panders to the lowest common denominator? Either way, it got a strong response from me (I certainly didn’t intend to ramble on this long about it)! Kudos. Now I’m off to alleviate this emotional hangover by fixing myself a huge, healthy salad.
Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema.
–Andrei Tarkovsky
Stalker (1979)
This is a heads up for the Andrei-lovin’ Zobotron as much as anyone else in SoCal: starting today (Jan 23), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art begins a complete retrospective of Tarkovsky’s films, with supplementary material. They will be screening Solaris, Ivan’s Childhood, Stalker, The Mirror, Nostalghia, Andrei Rublev, The Sacrifice, and two documentaries about Tarkovsky and his apocalyptic, mesmerizing work. Not to be missed.
Remember those mind-blowing Heather Parisi clips we were all gaping at a few months ago? Well, it’s time for Heather to scooch her bedazzled Mickey Mouse-clad tush over on that giant Rubik’s Cube pedestal we built for her.
Make room on the throne, and in your hearts, for another star of numerous 80s Italian television variety shows, the inexplicable Miss Sara Carlson:
I’m just gonna give your guys a minute to process that clip. Deep cleansing breaths, people. Zalright? Zalright.
The commentary on Carlson over at Nobody Puts Baby in a Horner is sharper and better than anything I can come up with at this late hour, with the fabric of my reality in tatters:
I recognize that, in the era of YouTube clips, what probably made sense in a particular time to a particular group of people is reintroduced to the world in a contextual vacuum. Without meaning, these videos become a veritable playground for camp, a place where the indecipherable message is the first language of ironic detachment and surface aesthetics the currency of visual pleasure. As such, perhaps I’m inherently biased towards this Fellini meets Lady Gaga pinnacle of unadulterated, uninhibited batshit insanity.
Several more clips and further spot-on commentary from Benjamin after the jump.
Quickly! A sneak peek of some (very happy, glowy) people we’ll be featuring in Issue #05:
photo credit: Allan Amato/Coilhouse
(And everybody goes “AWWWWWWW.”)
So far, 2010 has indeed been a happy nude year for musician Amanda Palmer and her beau, author Neil Gaiman. On New Year’s Eve, Amanda joined the Boston Pops Orchestra for the second year running to perform both Dresden Dolls and solo material (as well as passionately ravish Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1), and at some point during the course of the night, Neil proposed. They publicly announced their engagement on January 15th. A day later, the lovebirds met up with our wondrous Mister Allan Amato in NYC, who took these photos for an upcoming Coilhouse Magazine feature on their creative life together. They like that top portrait so much, they’re using it as their official engagement press photo. Yay!
photo credit: Allan Amato/Coilhouse
At 4am the next morning, they boarded a plane to LA and went directly to the Golden Globes, where, as the Huffington Post put it, Amanda “immediately became the most interesting thing at the awards.” (Heeee hee hee hee hee. Some things never change.) Congratulations, you two.
So, hey… things are kind of chaotic around here for the next few days, owing to the Whitechapel residency and all of us juggling multiple balls. Please forgive me for consolidating the following announcement with the Gaimanda Impending Nuptials Declaration, but my co-editors and I would also like to mention that Coilhouse Issue #04 has OFFICIALLY SOLD OUT in the online store.
Wow. It’s been what, a month?! We’re floored. Thank you for your overwhelming support and patronage! For those of you (in the States, at least) who missed the cutoff, fret not. There are still copies available in select Barnes & Noble stores across the country. Full list of stores here. Just be sure to call ahead to reserve your copy. There’s also Meltdown Comics in LA, Wildilocks in Australia, and… well… me in New Zealand. (Kiwis, just pipe up in comments and I’ll arrange to get your info.)
Onward and upward, comrades! Please do drop by the Whitechapel thread if you get the chance. There’s some really lively discussion happening over there, and we’d love to see more of our beloved blog readers chime in.
Ironically, one of the more quietly endearing moments from one of the most fascinating television shows of all time:
SO many reasons why this clip makes the heart glad. Where to start? Agent Cooper and Gordon Cole’s matching outfits? David Lynch’s oddball stentorian delivery? The quirky scrumptiousness of Shelley Johnson? Harry’s hangover? Log Lady’s grumpy wisdom? The sweet, cherry pie purity of it all? It was charming little scenes like these that made Twin Peaks’ darker, more surreal and confrontational moments all the more devastating.
Two thumbs up, and a cup of coffee, please. Black as midnight on a moonless night.
New Yorkers with a taste for the deeply weird and gorgeous and ridiculous, you owe it to yourself to go see Hausuplaying at the IFC Center this week. Actually, y’know what? Correction– you owe it to ME to go, since I live thousands of miles away and won’t be able to.
Comrades, we are talking about something unprecedented: a high-end screening of an actual print of what was long considered one of the most legendary horror bootlegs in existence. As far as I know, this fantastical film has been nigh-impossible for Westerners to view any other way. Until now.
Kudos to comics/film guru Ben Catmull for turning me onto this raging brilliant nutterfest.
Shot in 1977 by experimental Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi (and based on a story written by his 7 year old daughter), Hausu is one of the most spectacularly, riotously demented movies ever committed to celluloid. There’s plenty I could tell you about it (and there are tons of rabid, frothing film geek reviews online if you want to go exploring) but my instinct tells me it might be best to go unprepared, as I did, and just give yourself over to being repeatedly tit-slapped by the technicolor Japanese KRAY ZAY. My virgin viewing experience was similar to seeing The Forbidden Zone or Eraserhead or The Billy Nayer Show for the first time– mindblowing, seminal, beautiful, and fucked up as all hell. Seifuku Koo Koo!
Come to think of it, there are a lot of wonderful things happening in New York imminently: Throne of Blood (a completley different flavor of Japanese cinematic genius) is showing at Film Forum, BAM is celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King on Tuesday, and tomorrow there’s the Knickerbocker Orchestra’s WFC performance of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, with Neil Gaiman narrating. Plus, two ultra high-concept Coilhouse Issue 05 photo shoots that have been in the planning stages months are finally happening. We’ll divulge more about those shortly.
Meanwhile, seriously, DO NOT miss seeing Hausu in the theater. GO, GO, GO. If my fervent urging hasn’t yet convinced you jaded bastards that this screening is not to be missed, click below for several more clips and stills.
