Maybe She Knows
Cha Cha Charming interviews songwriting legend Ellie Greenwich In addition to being the queen of classic and obscure Girl Group singles (”Be My Baby” etc), she sang backup on Blondie’s “Dreaming”. Didn’t know that.
Also: the San Francisco Chronicicle says goodbye to CDs and lists some alluring alternatives to the old plastic shinies. Personally, I’m just discovering the magic of checking CDs out of the library and copying them onto my hard drive. Today I checked out Loretta Lynn’s Definitive Collection and The Roches’ self-titled album from 1979.
Whatever Happened To Illustration?
For my birthday last month, my parents bought me a copy of the 1920s volume in Taschen’s sumptuous All American Ads series. Paging through this hefty book, I’m amazed at all the gorgeous color illustration and hand-lettered typography that was utilized on a regular basis back then. Probably 90% of the ads collected use the power of art to sell their wares — and not just in an insignificant way, either. Tellingly, the art in these ads was rarely credited or signed. While it would have been a nice (but impossible) gesture for Taschen to have tracked down the artists names, I appreciate their efforts anyway. Two of the artists I do know are Coles Phillips and JC Leyendecker. Both specialized in impossibly elegant renderings of stylishly dressed figures — Phillips for the women, and Leyendecker for the men.
While I’m on the same track, do check out the American Art Archives. I could spend days perusing the cool old art there. It makes me long for the time when illustration was a true calling and not merely a sideline for fine artists.
Shoulder-Padded TV
Could I be the only one psyched about the Knots Landing Reunion coming up this Friday on CBS? This coincides nicely with news of the soaper’s first season DVD set, planned for an unconfirmed release in January (TV Shows On DVD has the artwork). I could just imagine someone watching it all in one sitting, jogging suit on, all the while eating Dove Bar ice cream straight out of the container.
I never watched Knots in the ’80s, but now the Soapnet weekend repeats have me hooked. Currently they’re midway through the 1984-85 season, the only one with Alec Baldwin as hunky preacher boy Joshua Rush. This season’s storylines actually aren’t as compelling as the previous years’. Things are getting too weird. The most notable change that year might be the behind the scenes addition of costume designer Travilla — suddenly the character’s wardrobes went from low key casual to blown-out “Eighties Contempo”, with matchy-matchy ensembles, chunky jewelry and shoulder pads everywhere. Odd.
Passed By
Christopher keeps pestering me: “When are you going to write about Pasadena?” Well, how about now.
The Soapnet channel is about halfway through running this series, which originally had a perplexingly short run on the Fox network in 2001. I’m getting a Desperate Housewives/Twin Peaks-vibe from this twisted family soap opera, beautifully scripted by Mike White (indie films Chuck and Buck and The Good Girl) and produced by Diane Keaton (who often has a hand in quirky, overlooked fare like this). The cast is headed by Dana Delany as the bitchy passive-aggressive mom, the kind of woman who casually observes the family dog eating a lethal helping of rat poison. Actually, the entire cast is superb and the storyline (about a murder in the well-connected family’s past) is very compelling. So, how did something this good not last long? Unfortunately, it premiered in September 2001. Fox didn’t know how to handle something this unconventional (same with Firefly) and canned the show after airing only four episodes. Soapnet is airing all thirteen episodes produced, with the central “Philip Parker” mystery being resolved at the end. Catch it before it goes, and hopefully if the ratings are decent enough there will be a future DVD release.
Gobble, Gobble
This Thanksgiving, we need to bow our heads and take time to remember the woman who invented Stove Top Stuffing. By the way, the Cornbread Stove Top with chopped apple pieces? Excellent. Thanks for the link, Brad.
Gruesome Twosome: Limeys Only Edition
Split Enz: “Six Months In A Leaky Boat”
LP: Time and Tide, 1982 | BUY
Reparata & The Delrons: “Captain Of Your Ship”
Mala Records single, 1968 | BUY
Two psychedelic odes to sea travel and the vagaries of love. The Split Enz track captures them in their usual overlooked brilliance, while Reparata & the Delrons’ (huge in the UK, obscure in the US) single proves that Waylon Smithers was wrong — women and seamen do mix. These files will be available for four weeks. After that, it’s “sayonara”.
A Reader in Phoenix Writes
This is the neatest thing: in their June 15th, 1940 issue, The New Yorker published a colorful two-page map of the 1940 New York Worlds Fair. I came across this paging through The Complete New Yorker (for some reason, the map is not listed in the software’s search engine). I mean, look:
Isn’t that the greatest? I now find that the NYer covered the Fair extensively. They commissioned covers and cartoons, wrote about the exhibits and music presentations, and even ran “Talk of the Town” pieces on such matters as broadcasting radio reports of news from Europe at the fairgrounds (they noted with relief when the practice was stopped).
Actually, I happened to be reading Thomas Kunkel’s swell bio of New Yorker founder Harold Ross, Genius In Disguise. Every time an interesting article is mentioned in the book, I make a note to look it up. In the process, I wind up finding other stuff to make note of, until I have too way much stuff to read. A vicious cycle that never ends. Anyway, some other finds:
- A lively profile of teenage debutante Brenda Frazier by E.J. Kahn, Jr. (June 10, 1939) Frazier was sorta the Paris Hilton of her day, an unpretentious yet glamorous young lady who somehow became Miss Hot Thing of late ’30s New York. Kahn’s profile is actually sympathetic to Miss Frazier and fascinating to read.
- In 1938, Life magazine ran a controversial yet popular photo feature called “The Birth of a Baby”. The New Yorker’s takeoff is a hilarious two pager called “The Birth of an Adult” (April 3, 1938) written by E.B. White and illustrated by Rea Irvin.
- Geoffrey T. Hellman’s three part profile of industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes began in the February 8, 1940 issue. I haven’t read this one yet, but it devotes some space to the Bel Geddes-designed General Motors Worlds Fair exhibit called ‘Futurama’ — ’nuff said.
- There’s also the profiles which made Harold Ross the enemy of powerful men — former friend Alexander Woolcott (March 18, 1939), the famous Henry Luce profile written in Timespeak (November 28, 1936), Walter Winchell (a multiparter that begun in the same 1940 issue as the Worlds Fair map!), Readers Digest founder DeWitt Wallace (November 17, 1945).
Suffice to say that these stories are from only a short period during the Ross Era. Does anyone else have interesting old New Yorker articles to share? It’s going to be a long winter.
More Retro Videogames at Flickr
Someone has assembled a large Flickr pool of retro videogame magazine pages that was inspired by my Videogame Ads of 1982 set. I think I owned this very issue of Electronic Games magazine.
7 More Wonders of the World
This week only, we’re having a blowout sale on vintage View-Master reels at eBay. Most date from the late ’40s/early ’50s and have travel destinations, fairy tales, or TV/movies as their subject. They’re old, they’re cool, they’re going to the thrift store if someone doesn’t buy them!
Can’t Live Without My Radio
Every morning when I do my bathroon stuff, I used to turn on the Music Choice radio stations carried on DirecTV and have them play in the background. There was something comforting about this routine, wall to wall music channels tidily lined up in their own genres, seemingly programmed by robots. It had to end, though. On the 15th, DirecTV discontinued Music Choice and instead are simulcasting stations from X-M Satellite Radio. The change got me excited — not only are there more stations with the new setup, there’s more diversity as well. Cursory listens to several of their stations reveals that they live up to the hype, with some disappointments. I was a little bummed that the X-M stations have deejays and annoying promos, but I guess that’s what most satellite radio listeners want — a listening experience that’s exactly like broadcast radio, only without the ads. For me, the ideal radio experience would be an “iPod shuffle” kind of deal, nothing but music programmed in a way that’s full of surprises. But I guess that’s asking for too much, right? I love X-M’s idea of having stations themed around decades from the past, but except for the ’40s one they’re saddled with unimaginative “fun oldies” style playlists. The most promising station might be an uncategorized one called Special X. When I first tuned in, Lorne Greene’s one-shot hit “Ringo” was playing — performed in French. That’s more like it!
PS If you want an interesting online radio experience, try Pandora (thanks Brad!). Simply type in the name of a favorite artist, and Pandora comes up with an eerily accurate playlist of similar yet diverse sounding music. Pretty cool, and it even prompted me to buy a great song off iTunes that I’d never heard before (that would be Marlena Shaw’s dynamite rendition of “California Soul”).
Defiantly Modern
Biomorphic shapes and beautiful colors galore from Alvin Lustig (1915-1955), via Veer.com. Lustig’s designs are very simple and “of their time” in the best way possible. The variety of things he accomplished across such a brief career is amazing.
Bottom of the Pops
Just finished a mix devoted to songs that placed on Billboard’s “Bubbling Under The Hot 100″ chart between 1966 and 1981. Quite a fun disc to assemble, with samplings from New Wave, Soul, Country, ’60s Pop and Disco. On a similar note — Pitchfork’s Worst Record Covers (via MetaFilter). Good for a few laughs; contains this priceless observation: “One day, the dawn of Photoshop will be seen as the absolute nadir of human artistic endeavor.”
Silent Sunday
I used to complain about the lack of revival film showings in the area where I live. Not anymore. Recently, a group of local film lovers decided to do a series of silent movie presentations with live organ accompaniment. The films have been shown at The Orpheum, a beautifully restored 1920s movie palace in downtown Phoenix. Last night they presented the early Technicolor Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler The Black Pirate. We went with a couple of friends and had lots of fun, even if some of the details weren’t quite as perfect as they could be.
The program began with a couple of early animated shorts – Walt Disney’s Puss In Boots and Felix the Cat in Hollywood. Both had the rudimentary feel of comic books in motion, with thought balloons growing out of characters’ heads and simple, repetitive actions. But they were also quite funny in their own clumsy way. I appreciated the lampoonings of then-current stars like Rudolf Valentino, Gloria Swanson and Ben Turpin, as well as the dated lingo coming from the characters’ mouths. It was an experience very similar to when Bart and Milhouse watched that 1920s Itchy and Scratchy cartoon on The Simpsons
When it came time for The Black Pirate, I was disappointed to find that the only print the theatre had was blurry and dark — and in black and white, not color. Plus, the title cards were set in a goofy looking font called Ad-Lib. Couldn’t they have found a typeface that even sort of looks old? The film unfolded at a somewhat pokey pace, but things pick up once Dashing Doug bombards a ship and tries to avenge his father’s death (all the while courting the lovely Billie Dove as a princess). I was surprised to find several scenes that I already knew – Fairbanks slashing his way down a giant ship sail, Fairbanks’ body being effortlessly lifted by his pirate minions, and a bizarre scene involving dozens of male extras hung by wires (they’re supposed to be swimming). Seeing an older film like this in its proper setting was a blast. I’m going to have to go back again soon.
Videogame Ads of 1982 at Flickr
Out of pure nostalgia, I bought a pile of old Games magazines on eBay. I went through the mags, scanned the videogame ads, and posted them on Flickr for your enjoyment. I almost forgot how many weird, obsolete systems there were. Anyhow, enjoy.
The Great Depression
Print magazine’s regional design annual is out this month — without my Subversive Cross Stitch buttons. I thought they might have a decent chance of getting in there, but no. I’ve always had a problem with these annuals, anyhow. It claims to be an even-handed survey of U.S. design as divided by geographical region, yet Phoenix (6th largest city in America) always gets lumped in with the entire states of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico in the “Rest of the Southwest” section. This year’s selections from that area wound up being a total of two pages in a phone book sized magazine! We can’t be that terrible, can we?
Print magazine sucks.
