I’ll admit it. This Summer mix, all 96 minutes of it, isn’t for every taste. Don’t Make Me Over delves into the scourge of “Golden Oldies” covers that took over the pop charts in the late ’70s and early ’80s. While the vapid California Soft Rock typified by Linda Ronstadt is well-represented here, there’s an intriguing eclecticism here that gives a little insight on the music scene (and its audience) in 1978-83.

It all begs the question: why? The obvious answer? Baby Boomers who couldn’t let go of their childhoods made up a huge portion of the record buying public back then. When Carole King included a couple of mellow covers of ’60s hits she co-wrote with Gerry Goffin on her mega-selling 1971 album Tapestry, it unwittingly set off the trend that continued well into the end of the ’80s. Re-imagining a familiar hit from the recent past was a sure-fire move, for both the artists who enjoyed the creative challenge and the labels who could bank on radio play from deejays seeing a familiar title on a 45 record or long-player. The practice reached critical mass in 1980-81 with a rash of updated oldies hitting the lower rungs of the Billboard Hot 100 – some whitewashed and wimpified, some given a more soulful spin, others with a New Wave twist.

The twenty eight tunes that comprise Don’t Make Me Over can be grooved to in the embedded playlists below, divided into two sections. Shout-out to the ’70s California airbrush artists whose evocative work adorns the covers for this mix: Dave Williardson (above) and Peter Palombi (below). Occasional episodes of cheesiness aside, I find this mix fascinating and hope you will, too.

Don’t Make Me Over- Scrubbles.net Summer 2013 Mix 20130515 1547 1

1. Linda Ronstadt – Just One Look (#44, 1979)
2. Yipes!! – Darlin’ (#68, 1980)
3. Josie Cotton – Tell Him (1982)
4. Elvis Costello & The Attractions – I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down (1980)
5. Phil Seymour – Let Her Dance (1980)
6. Nicolette Larson – I Only Want To Be With You (#53, 1982)
7. Carole King – One Fine Day (#12, 1980)
8. Jennifer Warnes – Don’t Make Me Over (#67, 1980)
9. Deniece Williams – It’s Gonna Take A Miracle (#10, 1982)
10. A Taste Of Honey – I’ll Try Something New (#41, 1982)
11. Eric Hine – Not Fade Away (#73, 1981)
12. Devo – Working In The Coal Mine (#43, 1981)
13. Gentle Persuasion – Please Mr. Postman (#82, 1983)
14. Sandy Posey – Love, Love, Love/Chapel Of Love (1978)
15. Chris Christian and Amy Holland – Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing/You’re All I Need To Get By (#88, 1982)

Don’t Make Me Over- Scrubbles.net Summer 2013 Mix Pt 2 20130516 1558

16. Amii Stewart and Johnny Bristol – My Guy/My Girl (#63, 1980)
17. The Spinners – Cupid/I’ve Loved You For A Long Time (#4, 1980)
18. Melissa Manchester – My Boyfriend’s Back/Runaway (1983)
19. The Tourists – I Only Want To Be With You (#83, 1980)
20. Robert John – Sherry (#70, 1980)
21. The Reddings – (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay (#55, 1982)
22. Daryl Hall and John Oates – You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling (#12, 1980)
23. Gary O’ – Pay You Back With Interest (#70, 1981)
24. Garland Jeffreys – 96 Tears (#66, 1981)
25. Kim Carnes – Cry Like A Baby (#44, 1980)
26. Heart – Unchained Melody (#83, 1981)
27. Andy Gibb and Victoria Principal – All I Have To Do Is Dream (#51, 1981)
28. Bernadette Peters – Dedicated To The One I Love (#65, 1981)

There’s a new girl in town, and she’s looking good – my LitKids Little Bo Peep screenprint, that is!

After getting saddled with a heavy workload throughout the early part of this year, I was so relieved to find some time in the past month to develop a new print. This particular one has been in the works for a while. It started a few years back, when a craft fair shopper asked if I had any nursery-ready subjects for parents with babies. Before blurting out “All of these are great for that purpose, have a little imagination,” I stopped myself and agreed that it was a good idea. Indeed, some kind of print that could serve as a baby shower gift was needed to flesh out the variety of items at the store.

Casting aside the subject matter (which was a delight to draw), I’m really happy with how this print came out. I’m getting better with using the color layers in an offbeat way, and the print quality is coming out less amateurish with each new design. Little Bo Peep and her sheep is availabe, as usual, at LitKids.

I have very specific memories connected with the posters at Disneyland – approaching the park, driving into the no-longer-there parking lot, striding towards the gingerbread ticket booths, the first concrete thing I’d see of our adventures ahead would be those iconic posters, affixed to the bases of the Monorail pylons and inside the tunnels leading to Main Street U.S.A. Each poster was a trip in itself – the vine-entrenched intrigue of the Jungle Cruise, the topsy-turvy whimsy of Alice in Wonderland, the hitchhiking ghosts of The Haunted Mansion, the kinetic energy of the PeopleMover’s Superspeed Tunnel – a gallery of future memories waiting to be experienced.

Poster Art of the Disney Parks, a coffee table book published by Disney and written by Danny Handke and Vanessa Hunt, comprehensively explores this angle of that pixie dust-strewn universe. As Tony Baxter’s intro explains, poster art is an integral part of the Disney theme park experience. The book’s 11″x14″ size gives ample space to the best posters, with many getting a full page to themselves (although one of my personal faves, the Columbia sailing ship, gets a mere quarter page). Divided into “lands,” the book includes nearly every poster created not just for Disneyland but for all of the Magic Kingdom theme parks (Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom are absent). It’s interesting to note the different ways Disney uses to approach the same attraction in each park, with some intriguing little differences – such as the Euro Disneyland train engine sporting a pair of antlers. The book also contains separate chapters reproducing the Art Noveau influenced designs used for Tokyo DisneySea and the optimistic 1920s to ’50s era throwbacks employed on Disney California Adventure’s recent overhaul.

Two things in particular impressed me about this one. Firstly, they give credit to the unsung artists behind these posters (hooray for that). Secondly, they include lots of fascinating unused poster concept art. Before getting this, I never realized that most of the iconic poster designs from Disneyland’s early years were tied into one talented man – Bjorn Aronson. Aronson’s playful, cleanly modern, eclectic yet unified poster art probably did more to establish Disneyland’s visual identity than anything else. It’s astonishing stuff, and this book reproduces them with vivid clarity.

Poster Art of the Disney Parks can be purchased here at Amazon.com.

• Also: A detailed article and interview with the authors of Poster Art of the Disney Parks.
  

Side-by-side poster comparison for Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Bjorn Aronson’s illustration skill is evident on this close-up of his fantastic Red Wagon Inn poster.

Casa de Fritos and the Lucky Nugget Saloon (Disneyland Paris) in the Frontierland section.

Not a good photo, but at least it gives you an idea of the chapter openings (using another excellent Aronson poster).

An undeveloped Adventureland poster concept is shown next to a printed one.

A demo of the silk screen color-layering process (that looks familiar).

Oh, how I wish they would have made Aronson’s Candy Palace poster design a reality!

Tomorrowland: all about the primary colors.

Cyrk poster, Bohdan Bocianowsk, 1971.

This circus poster, created by Polish artist Bohdan Bocianowski in 1971, will soon be a new addition at 4 Color Cowboy. That image perfectly encapsulates the 4 Color Cowboy aesthetic – a glitzy, once-removed version of the classic American Western themes.

I actually found a ton of great Polish circus poster designs on the web – pieces striking in their bold colors, simplified imagery, and lack of text. While the Polish artwork on ’60s-’80s era film posters is justifiably celebrated, these circus design were totally new – and inspiring – to me. I love how the various artists incorporated the single work “Cyrk” and found unusual ways of depicting typical circus animals. Funky! I chose some of the bolder, critter-oriented designs to share here.

Wiktor Gorka, 1969.

Wiktor Gorka, c. 1968.

Wiktor Gorka, 1970s.

In addition to curating the exhibit, Ware also contributed original art and design to the Uninked catalog, published by Phoenix Art Museum in 2007. I was happy to receive it as a Christmas gift from my spouse, who volunteered at the museum recently (naturally, I dropped a few hints with Christopher about the book being sold at the gift shop). This catalog, a companion piece with the McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern Comics issue Ware edited in 2004, is a work of art in itself. Ware seems to genuinely admire the people spotlighted in the exhibit, a cross-section of artists including old-guard guys from the ’60s Comix movement (Deitch, Jerry Moriarty), a ’70s-’80s trailblazer (Panter), and two from the younger generation (Seth and Ron Regé, whose whimsical work was unknown to me prior to this exhibit). In addition to concise bios and reproductions of all the pieces from the exhibit, the book includes extra artwork not on display in 2007. It’s an intriguing peek at what kinds of work commercial artists create purely for their own expression.

The catalog for Uninked: Paintings, Sculptures and Graphic Work from Five Contemporary Cartoonists was printed in just one run, and it’s apparently getting harder to find. It can be ordered from Amazon.com here.

Kim Deitch art from Uninked, 2007.

Jerry Moriarty pages from Uninked, 2007.

Gary Panter – Clog Area, 2004.

Seth pages from Uninked, 2007.

Chris Ware’s back cover art for Uninked catalog, 2007.

Paul Steucke photograph of raccoon in tree, via Today’s Document.

If you peer at the sidebar, you’ll now see something that’s been absent from this site since 2005: a blogroll. Ever since the redesign, I’ve been wanting to get something in there that reflects the variety of weblogs I’m reading now. The problem with blogrolls, if course, is that blogs come and go and personal tastes never stay put for very long. For instance, it surprised me how many blogs I read five years ago that were devoted to junky pop cult collecting, a subject I can now only stand in small doses. Hopefully the sites linked here will stay around for a while.

The current blogroll is made up of personal favorites bookmarked in Firefox over the past year, things I’ve stumbled across at Tumblr via 4 Color Cowboy, and older blogs carried over from the My Big Fat Link Log 3 post of August 2008. The latter was pretty interesting, since roughly two-thirds of the blogs linked there are either abandoned or dropped (I suppose future historians will mark the years 2009-10 as the era of the Great Blog Exodus). On the other hand, it makes me admire all the more those who have been at it for five to ten years, or longer – thumbs up!

Maybe it’s the Pinterest/Tumblr influence, but great imagery is something I never expected to enjoy from others’ weblogs (some of which is shared here). Enjoy.

Photograph by Joseph Kelly, via Battered Shoes.

Book cover design by David Johnson, via Aqua-Velvet.

Photograph of teenagers in New Mexico, via National Geographic Found.

Shopping center architectural art, via damahadaman.

Bobby Hackett LP cover art, via Groove is in the Art.

Last weekend, while cleaning out excess stuff in our garage, I came across this forgotten little acrylic-on-board study I once did back in the ’90s. Although the piece is somewhat derivative of Anthony Russo‘s art, it still appeals to what I’m continuing to strive for in art, and in life: simplicity. When doing art, the temptation is to keep adding on and adding on, when the most effective art (to me) continue to be the pieces that communicate an idea in just a few brush strokes or pen marks. Unfortunately, that concept is easier to think about than to actually do… but I keep trying.

That whole idea of whittling down a drawing to its essence also came to mind when I was perusing the illustrations for a piece of vintage paper ephemera that C. recently acquired. The imagery below comes from a booklet published by the Melamine Council to promote the proper use of plastic dinnerware. It might have been a lost cause in the ’50s and ’60s, trying to make these common household items look elegant and sophisticated, but in the context of this brochure it actually works – beautifully. The uncredited artist (or artists) did a masterful job of paring down the ideas of stylish living, feminine beauty, and cleanliness into simple – yet never simplistic – illustration.

TWA Airlines customer information folder front, circa 1958.

Here’s something new from my Ephemera Flickr set… various take-home paper items made by now-defunct Trans World Airlines in the 1950s. These carry a lot of the kitsch and charm of vintage travel items, from back when people actually dressed up to fly (long, long ago). My favorite piece is the TWA charge card application with cartoon illustration of that archetypical ’50s Man reclining with a bevy of stewardesses tending to his needs, along with a bizarrely placed house cat. It’s the only way to fly. These items were collected by Christopher and are currently up for auction on eBay.

We’ve been back from our California vacation for more than a week now. It’s taken a while for re-grouping, however, since I came down with the flu immediately upon return to home. Now that I’m feeling better, I’m able to share some of the photos I took there. The photos accompanying this post are shot with an iPod Touch 5 and fudged with Wood Camera, an Instagram-like app.

For this trip, we went back to Disneyland. You probably already know that I love Disneyland. My spouse hates it, however, so we go there probably once every 8-9 years as a compromise (I’m actually cool with this arrangement!). In my adult life, I’ve been there in 1987, 1995, 1996, 2005, and now 2013. I’ve enjoyed every time, but it seems like every new visit, the park becomes more tourist-trappy and not so special. At least for this new trip, we had two and a half days of exploring, which made for a more relaxed trip overall. Despite several major attractions being closed for refurbishments, Disneyland was fantastic. We used the Fastpasses wisely and got onto nearly all the rides we wanted (the Golden Horseshoe Revue wasn’t doing any live performances, only serving food). On the newly re-done Star Tours, I ended up being the rebel spy that our ship needed to transport – fun! The crowd at Disneyland was nice and mellow, a change from the somewhat more ghetto-y crowd at DCA the previous night. After our Disneyland day, we got together with the fabulous, unbelievably talented Disney designer Kevin Kidney, who braved a hoarse voice to chat with us for about an hour.

I was also looking forward to Disney’s California Adventure and seeing the massive changes they’ve made since our 2005 visit, when we saw all we wanted in a mere half-day. The Hollywood Street, made to look like Los Angeles of Disney’s 1927-33 era, is a fantastic place. We loved taking pictures and noticing the real-life buildings they used as inspiration. The whole area is so classy and beautifully imagineered, a complete turnaround from the cheesy, thrown-together look of DCA on our earlier visit. Later on that night, we got a prime viewing spot for their nightly World Of Color water/light show – even the Disney-averse Christopher was impressed with this one, and that’s saying a lot. The photo below is of us, wet and dazzled, ready to get back to the hotel. The merchandise at both parks was yet again overpriced and underwhelming, but overall we came away happy and thoroughly entertained. At the Disney Gallery, I came away with a swell coffee table book – Poster Art of the Disney Parks – as a memento of our trip.

Disnelyand/DCA didn’t make up all of our vacation – the first morning, we stopped at Newport Beach and walked around for more than an hour. It was lovely; we’ve never been to that particular beach, which had some trash issues but otherwise was fine ‘n mellow. On our way back to Phoenix, we traveled to Simi Valley and the Reagan Library for their exhibit of Disney-related objects (of course!). The museum was beautifully laid out, and if the Reagan exhibit was somewhat revisionist/optimistic it was nicely done and very admiring of the man. The Disney part had a ton of great stuff, including a re-creation of Walt’s office (seen for many years in Disneyland) and a fascinating/strange display of the model heads of all the U.S. presidents used for the Walt Disney World Hall of Presidents.

While the imagery with this blog post gives a good idea of our trip’s visual delights, we took a ton of other (unaltered) photos – which are seen in the Flickr set below.

• Newport/Anaheim, California – Feb. 2013 (Flickr photo set)

Animal skull found on Newport Beach, 2/11/2013.

Lifeguard station at Newport Beach, California, 2/11/13.

Nemo Submarine port hole, Disneyland, 2/12/13.

Princess Fantasy Faire diorama at Disney’s California Adventure preview center, 2/13/13.

Matt and Christopher after a long, tough day in Disney’s California Adventure, 2/13/13.

Display of bust maquettes for Walt Disney World’s Hall of Presidents attraction, Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley, California, 2/14/13.

Cherry trees in full bloom at the Reagan Library, Simi Valley, Calfornia, 2/14/13.

Vintage postcard of Fantasyland in Disneyland, circa 1960.

Today I’m looking at artifacts from The Happiest Place On Earth™. As my first trip there in seven years plus six months approaches, I’m pretty excited. Last month, we went to a local paper memorabilia collectors’ show – and in anticipation, I scoured the dealers’ supply of vintage Disneyland postcards for stuff to add to my collection. Mostly I just look for interesting images of bygone attractions, meaning basically not-so-rare items like the Fantasyland one pictured above. There were several I wanted, but I ultimately ended up with the ones pictured here for under $20 – including the rarity seen at the end of this entry.

Chorus girls high kickin’ it at the Golden Horseshoe Revue. Most Disneyland postcards have some sense of the bustling activity of tourists at the park, but I kinda like how this one captures a laid-back dress rehearsal (or maybe it’s just a poorly attended performance). For this next trip, I’m planning to check out places like the G.H.R. that I wouldn’t normally seek out. Since this is one of the few spots in the park basically unchanged since the ’50s, I’m looking forward to checking it out (really, this postcard might look exactly the same photographed today in the same spot).

And now, a view that the Disney Co. suits have casually ruined! The two Mary Blair tile murals in Tomorrowland were among my favorite things in Disneyland as a child – riding the Peoplemover, craning to see all the details and colors in the tiles. Good times. I think Walt Disney understood that things like this, although they didn’t have a “spacey” feel that totally adhered to the tomorrow theme, accurately captured the optimism of the future. As for what they have there now, I don’t particularly care.

The entrance of Adventureland, captured at or around the time Disneyland first opened in 1955. The early D-land card have that sparse look, along with shoddier printing that accentuated the pink/magenta side of the color spectrum. This one was a little more pricey, but I’m so happy I bought it to go along with the early view of the Main Street horse-drawn carriage already in the postcard collection. At first I thought they changed this entrance somehow since then, but I think it’s the mature tropical foliage that has subsequently grown around the structure that makes it different looking.

A lot of Disneyland postcards have a standardized layout on the reverse side, but sometimes one finds a neat graphic like the Tinkerbell below, which was on the Fantasyland card at the top of this entry. What a cute way to say “wish you were here.”

John Alcorn “Birds & Beasts” illustration, 1966.

Browsing my contacts’ uploads at Pinterest, I was taken by some sweet, eye-catching art from illustrator John Alcorn. The imagery came from a 1966 book, The Fireside Book of Children’s Songs (which I tracked down – thank you, eBay). As someone who loves art inspired by that funky, stylish Push Pin Studios aesthetic, this volume was a winner. The 192-page book is a simple concept, presenting sheet music for classic kiddie singalongs such as “There Was An Old Lady” and “Did You Ever See A Lassie?” The retro display fonts and Alcorn’s inventive artwork complement the songs in a cute, very ’60s-patchwork kinda way.

Alcorn’s folksy, whimsical art made him a very active man in the ’60s and ’70s – his art graces the fabulous packaging for Eve cigarettes, for one. The Fireside project must have been a huge endeavor for him; just about every page is packed with drawings printed in hot pink, mustard gold and burnt orange. The sampling of pages pictured here nicely represent the book’s art, and yet I might break out the scanner and put some more on my flickr account. There’s a veritable bushel-full of wild, fun, inspirational imagery in here, which makes me happy I bought it.

The Fireside Book of Children’s Songs.

“Mules”

“The Animal Song”

“Good Morning and Good Night”

“All Through The Night”

“Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!”

“The World Turned Upside Down”

Christopher Geoffrey McPherson – The Babi Makers (2013).

We’ve spent the last few weeks working on the release of Christopher’s latest book, a cautionary sci-fi tale called The Babi Makers. The very concept of the book had my creative gears spinning, and I immediately thought of doing something that was contemporary, yet also evocative of funky old sci-fi things like Omni magazine art and paperback book covers from the ’50s and ’60s. I originally thought to have just a landscape in the bottom half, meant to represent the community of Nové depicted in the book. It wasn’t quite working, however, and that’s when Christopher thought up the idea of including figures looking over a cliff. That’s where it finally clicked.

The Babi Makers is available as a Kindle download, or as a paperback. Below, some imagery that guided me along in the design process.

Wassily Kandinsky – Variegated Black (1935).

Sci-fi paperback book covers, 1960s (Avon edition of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy).

Early OMNI magazine covers and art (July 1981 issue).

Within the pages of the colorful, fun It’s Kind of a Cute Story, legendary Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump shares memories of an extraordinary life with the help of MiceChat.com writer Jeff Heimbuch. Since Rolly was heavily involved with the planning of Disneyland landmarks like the Enchanted Tiki Room, it’s a small world, and the Haunted Mansion, I knew I was going to enjoy it (and I wasn’t disappointed). What really makes the book special, however, lies in how it gives a sense of Crump’s enthusiastic personality and eclectic interests – interests that have taken him well beyond the Disney company.

Prior to reading this book, I was vaguely aware that Rolly Crump was one of the more interesting guys at Disney. For proof, one needs to look no further than his interviews on the Disneyland: Secrets, Stories and Magic DVD, where Rolly is seen (presumably in his home) with tasteful framed art of a naked woman hanging in the background. Boobies on a Disney DVD! The artwork in question, a portrait of entertainer Josephine Baker (reproduced in this book), sums up Crump’s funky, laid-back California vibe pretty well. That casual/cool feeling is reflected in the imagery generously spread throughout this book’s pages – and in the chatty, “cute” stories Rolly shares within. And what memories! Whether it’s being a grunt in the Disney animation department in the ’50s or overseeing massive projects for Jacques Cousteau and gambling titan Steve Wynn, he’s had an extraordinary career.

Were I to sum up the Crump aesthetic, I’d say it’s a little bit Disney, a little bit ’60s surf/beatnik culture, a little bit midcentury modern, and a whole lot of charm. One can definitely see the appeal his work had for Walt Disney in developing Disneyland (Disney obviously valued the younger, funkier insights Rolly had over his fellow imagineers). It kind of surprised me to read how much of Crump’s handiwork is around at Disneyland, even today – not just the obvious such as the still awe-inspiring small world façade or the charming statuary in the Tiki Room forecourt, but little things as well like the trash cans (and those themed figures churning the butter in the park’s popcorn machines? Crump’s idea.) Elsewhere, Crump delightully recounts his ideas for the earliest incarnation of the Haunted Mansion (when it was conceived as a walk-through attraction), preparations for the 1964 New York Worlds Fair, and his contributions toward various pavilions at EPCOT. While the Disney stuff is fascinating in itself, Crump also goes into detail on various projects involving other theme parks – and the efforts of his own company, Design 27 (this book is not authorized by the Disney company, which is a huge asset in my opinion).

Although the printing on this book leaves a little to be desired (the paper is thin), I would recommend It’s Kind of a Cute Story not only for Disney fans, but also for those who’d enjoy getting to know a unique guy who marches to his own, propeller-festooned drummer. The book is available here at Amazon.com.

The Happiest Planters on Earth, atop Tomorrowland’s stylish bandstand.

Crump’s layout of the Knott’s Bear-y Tales attraction.

The it’s a small world happy face clock? That’s Rolly’s, too!

Crump’s more recent stuff gets a lot of play here as well.

The funky Crump style in full flower.

A detail from the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room chapter.

Fun chapter headers and page footage mirror the Crump style nicely.

Since we’ve entered a fresh new year and avoided getting destroyed in a Mayan-predicted apocalypse, I believe it’s time for a new mix. Ladies and gents, He Doesn’t Love Me: Girl Pop 1964-66.

Female-sung pop from the ’60s counts as one of my favorite musical genres, but I haven’t had a mix that focuses exclusively on it until putting together He Doesn’t Love Me, a 31-track set that represents a bumper crop of under-appreciated gems from the years 1964-66. Having it focus on those three years is important – conventional pop history wisdom says that this period happened when the “Girl Group” sound was on the wane, steamrolled by The Beatles and a more aggressive Rock sound. The energetic, sometimes goofy, always fun tunes on this mix clearly show, however, that Girl Pop was mutating into something special (especially in England, where the Fab Four’s influence is more evident). Who cares that it wasn’t as popular? I’d even venture to say that much of this stuff can hold its own against The Beatles and their guy-group contemporaries. The passionately sung, impeccably arranged songs here betray the fact that most of them are b-sides, album cuts and failed singles.

This time, I decided to have the download as separate mp3 and m4a files, instead of the continuous mixes offered previously. Simply download, drag all the files into a playlist and enjoy.

Download He Doesn’t Love Me: Scrubbles.net Winter 2013 Mix (116 MB Zip file)

He Doesn’t Love Me is also available here (with a few substitutions) on Spotify.

Track listing:
1. Sharon Tandy – “Now That You’ve Gone” (Pye UK single, 1965)
2. Petula Clark – “Life and Soul of the Party” (My Love LP cut, 1966)
3. The Supremes – “Mother Dear” (More Hits By The Supremes LP cut, 1965)
4. Jan Panter – “Put Yourself in My Place” (Pye UK single b-side, 1966)
5. Lulu Porter – “Nobody Hurt But Me” (Pep single, 1965)
6. Skeeter Davis – “Don’t Let Me Stand in Your Way” (RCA Victor single b-side, 1964)
7. Reparata & The Delrons – “Bye Bye Baby” (Whenever A Teenager Cries LP cut, 1965)
8. The Rag Dolls – “Society Girl” (Parkway single, 1964)
9. Denise Germaine – “He’s a Strange One” (ABC Paramount single, 1964)
10. The Lewis Sisters – “He’s an Oddball” (V.I.P. single, 1965)
11. Molly Bee – “He Doesn’t Want You” (Liberty single, 1964)
12. Jeanne Thomas – “Too Good to Be Bad” (New Voice single b-side, 1965)
13. Gerri Thomas – “Look What I Got” (World Artists single, 1965)
14. Piccola Pupa – “Put Two Extra Candles on My Cake” (Warner Bros. single b-side, 1965)
15. Yvonne Prenosilova – “Come On Home” (Pye UK single b-side, 1965)
16. Tina Britt – “The Real Thing” (Eastern single, 1965)
17. Martha & The Vandellas – “Never Leave Your Baby’s Side” (Gordy single b-side, 1966)
18. Julie Grant – “As Long as I Know He’s Mine” (Pye UK single b-side, 1965)
19. Sandra Barry – “You Can Take It from Me” (Pye UK single b-side, 1965)
20. The Essex featuring Anita Humes – “Don’t Fight It Baby” (Roulette single, 1964)
21. Cathy Carroll – “Where the Roses Are Growing” (Rotate single, circa 1964)
22. Connie Haines – “What’s Easy for Two Is Hard for One” (Motown single, 1966)
23. The Marvelettes – “Little Girls Grow Up” (Tamla recording session outtake, 1965)
24. Tracey Dey – “I Won’t Tell” (Amy single, 1964)
25. The Breakaways – “He Doesn’t Love Me” (Pye UK single b-side, 1964)
26. The Royalettes – “It’s a Big Mistake” (MGM single, 1966)
27. Toni Carroll – “Welcome Home Baby” (MGM single, 1965)
28. The Sherry Sisters – “Sailor Boy” (Epic single, 1964)
29. Christine Cooper – “S.O.S. (Heart in Distress)” (Parkway single, 1966)
30. Jackie DeShannon – “So Long Johnny” (Imperial single b-side, 1966)
31. Lesley Gore – “I Just Don’t Know if I Can” (Mercury single b-side, 1966)

Recently, our local library held a huge sale of cast-off books, movies and music which filled a space formerly occupied by a Mervyn’s department store. Considering its size, the sale was a bit of a bust – but I did find a few goodies. An oversized booklet published in the ’70s by the U.S. Department of Transportation, geared toward elementary school teachers, was one. Un Viaje al Aeropuerto/A Trip to the Airport jumped out at me because of the strange cover art – psychedelically colored kids gazing at an airplane set against an oppressive, cloudy sky.

Un Viaje al Aeropuerto follows a boy named Carlos as he and his class take a field trip to the airport. About two-thirds of the book consists of wide-format illustrations with simple descriptions in Spanish and English, somewhat clumsily done to fill up the space allotted. The uncredited artwork honestly isn’t very good (much of it looks traced from photos) – but I love the way the artist went nuts with the zip-a-tone patterns and liberally applied spot color in hot red. It’s a trip, man, in ways the artist probably never intended.

The images link to larger-sized versions posted on my flickr account. Dig.

Sears catalog models, welcome aboard.

Aircraft parts never looked so groovy.

Strike a pose on the moving sidewalk.

Gettin’ crazy with the zip-a-tone.

Found, in our twice-weekly trips to the trash alley behind our house: this cardboard box panel from a Major Matt Mason Fireball Space Cannon, manufactured by Mattel in 1968. We tend to find a lot of crazy/weird stuff back there, but a 44 year-old box flap? That’s a first.

Although I’m a firm skeptic on the topic of messages from the Great Beyond, part of me wants to believe that this was some sort of sign from my friend (and Scrubbles.net reader) Brad, who passed away suddenly a year ago. Brad was a huge Major Matt Mason fan who used the MMM logo as his online avatar. Were he still around, I’m sure he would have gotten a big kick out of this find.

Major Matt Mason Space Mission Team activity set, 1960s.

Major Matt Mason frame tray puzzle, 1960s.

Major Matt Mason catalog insert, 1966.

Montgomery Ward’s Major Matt Mason catalog page, 1968

Bambi title spread, Junior Deluxe Edition (1956).

My bedside reading table is mostly stocked up with non-fiction, but sometimes pieces of classic literature get fit in from time to time. Felix Salten’s short, bracingly realistic Bambi, A Life in the Woods is the latest. The copy I read (pictured above) might have been an abridged version of the 1928 original. One thing’s for certain, however – this isn’t the Disney version, not by a long shot. In describing the title deer’s maturity in a deceptively calm forest, Salten’s elegant, plain-spoken prose takes on a grimly factual outlook that makes the animated version look, well, cartoonish. In the book, animals are born, seasons change, predators kill, and the things that the forest creatures admire or fear turn out to be expertly constructed illusions (no wonder the Nazis hated this book).

There are many other differences between the book and screen Bambis. Thumper and Flower are absent; Faline is more prominent and they have another deer friend named Gobo (who becomes the deer equivalent of an Uncle Tom after he’s domesticated by He, the human). And the relatively sedate hunting scenes from the movie are depicted as a devastating, full-blown massacre in print. Cool. Below are some nice images from various incarnations of Bambi in book form – including the Disney version (can’t help it, the film’s imagery is lovely if overly cute-ified).

Bambi: A Life in the Woods German first edition cover (1926).

Bambi: A Life in the Woods U.S. first edition detail (1928).

Bambi first U.S. paperback edition (1939).

Bambi: A Life in the Woods illustration by Mirko Hanak (1967).

“Bambi Finds the Meadow” illustration by Charles Harper (1963).

Walt Disney’s Bambi, page from film tie-in storybook (1941).

Grin – All Out (Spindizzy, 1972)

I’ve been a paying member of Spotify for about four months now. While I mostly use it to furnish some unobtrusive yet stimulating instrumental backing while writing, it also serves as a great vehicle for music I’d enjoy but not actually buy/download (whether it’s current mainstream pop or something ephemeral/fascinating like Barry Gray’s Stand By For Adverts). Sure, Spotify makes it easy for people to upload what’s already on their hard drives so they can hear their old faves on their smart phones/tablets/whatever, but you know I’m not interested in that. Weird crap stuck off in the corners fascinates me the most, and in that respect Spotify’s playlist assembling aspect serves as a fabulous way to explore the unknown.

Just for fun, I did some playlists drawn from rock critic Robert Christgau’s year-by-year listings of his favorite albums, as listed in the back of his book Rock Albums of the ’70s: A Critical Guide. Although a few of the albums he mentions in the lists are out of print, I was able to locate most of them and include from each a sample track (a song Christgau mentioned in his original review, a hit single, or even a quirky title that jumped out at me). Taste-wise, Christgau is definitely one of those typical rock-crit types who think music is somehow more meaningful if it’s played a) on real instruments, b) live, or c) by a grizzled old black man. Even so, he recommended some refreshingly off-beat, eclectic choices within these years, especially once the heavy-handed Jimi/Janis/Doors ’60s rock he favors gives way to more organic, worthwhile musical styles. Miles Davis’ meandering jazz-rock of this era is well-represented (dissonant and not too easy on the ears, but interesting at least), along with lots of homey hippie-rock by overlooked artists like Delaney & Bonnie, Joy Of Cooking, Grin and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. I found myself grooving along with the Soul/Funk, Country and Blues he selected as well – especially in 1973, a year that one wouldn’t normally think of as a musically outstanding one.

If you have Spotify installed, clicking the links below will take you on a one-way trip to hippie-rock nirvana:

• Christgau’s Picks – 1970 (48 tracks)
• Christgau’s Picks – 1971 (39 tracks)
• Christgau’s Picks – 1972 (41 tracks)
• Christgau’s Picks – 1973 (36 tracks)

While listening to these, try to resist the urge to roll a joint and say “heavy, man” – and enjoy a sampling of the imagery from these years’ album covers (a very orange and brown era in LP design, I might add).

Delaney & Bonnie & Friends with Eric Clapton – On Tour (Atco, 1970)

Charlie Rich – The Fabulous Charlie Rich (Epic, 1970)

Mott The Hoople – Mott (Columbia, 1973)

Ann Peebles – Part Time Love (Hi, 1970)

Dr. John – Dr. John’s Gumbo (Atco, 1972)

Endpapers, A Mary Blair Treasury of Golden Books (2012).

Shortly after being gifted with a nice, hefty Amazon gift card last month (thank you, Mom and Dad), the beautiful hardback collection A Mary Blair Treasury of Golden Books was the first thing I ended up choosing. While the immensely talented Mary Blair (1911-1978) is perhaps best known for her involvement with Walt Disney’s films and theme park attractions, she actually had a successful non-Disney career as an illustrator in the ’50s and ’60s. Treasury draws from this aspect of Blair’s art, reprinting the colorful, charming work she did for the Little Golden Book company. Along with a brief intro from animation historian John Canemaker, the book includes the full contents of four of her beloved Golden books – Baby’s House (1950), I Can Fly (1950), The Golden Book of Little Verses (1953), and The Up and Down Book (1964). Well-chosen selections from a fifth book, The New Golden Song Book (1955), are also included.

The first thing about A Mary Blair Treasury of Golden Books that struck me was how physically big it is – pages that were originally published in the classic, kid-sized Little Golden Books format are enlarged here by roughly a third. Another pleasant surprise is that much of the artwork is sourced from Blair’s original paintings, rendered in brilliant gouache. It really allows artsy nerds to get in there and study her technique. A few of the I Can Fly pages are lesser-quality scans from book pages, but at least they look as nice as they can (no noticeable moiré patterns or off-set colors). The artwork is pretty nifty, overall. I particularly enjoyed the pages from The Up and Down Book, since it shows her experimenting with a more graphic, simplified (yet still quintessentially Mary Blair-ish) style. Her work from the Golden Song Book is also notable for its wonderful intricacies and the skillful way some of it employs just two colors.

Paging through A Mary Blair Treasury of Golden Books makes it obvious why she continues to inspire artists and craftspeople. The book is available here (at a good price, I must add) at Amazon.com.

Jiri Trnka – The Song of the Prairie (Arie Prerie) (1948)

I’m coming up with some interesting stuff to share at 4 Color Cowboy. The Song of the Prairie, a 1948 Western operetta parody from Czech animator Jiri Trnka, is one of them. A charmingly stylized tale of a cowboy serenading a lovely maiden while the black-hatted villain wreaks havoc, this stop-motion short film is similar in style to the George Pal Puppetoons. The 20-minute film isn’t available on DVD, but it can be viewed here. Even digitized on a computer screen, the animation and character designs amaze.

Although obscure in the U.S., Song of the Prairie is apparently a cherished classic in its homeland (similar, I imagine, to what we feel about the Rankin-Bass animated TV specials). The song warbled by the cowboy in this film became so popular, in fact, that it was reprised in another Czech Western parody, the 1964 live action musical Limonádový Joe aneb Konská Opera, a.k.a. Lemonade Joe. This film has its own adherents, especially considering that its broad, subversive take on Western clichés came along a decade before Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles. At 4 Color Cowboy, I assembled a bunch of poster designs that show how Lemonade Joe was sold throughout Europe and in the U.S. Based on the fun, cartoony images on those posters alone, I’d so love to seek this one out.