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November 30, 2005

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.

| Vinyl | Comments (5)

November 29, 2005

Whatever Happened To Illustration?

taschen_ads_20s.jpg 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.

| Rubylith | Comments (6)

November 27, 2005

Shoulder-Padded TV

KnotsLanding.jpg 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.

| Cathode Rays | Comments (3)

November 25, 2005

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.

| Cathode Rays | Comments (0)

November 23, 2005

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.

| Mishmash | Comments (0)

Gruesome Twosome: Limeys Only Edition

_splitenz.jpg 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”.

| Gruesome | Comments (2)

November 22, 2005

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.

| Paper | Comments (3)

November 21, 2005

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.

| Amusements | Comments (0)

November 20, 2005

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!
vm_bullfight.jpg

| Mishmash | Comments (2)

November 18, 2005

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").

| Vinyl | Comments (3)

November 17, 2005

Defiantly Modern

lustig.jpg

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.

| Rubylith | Comments (0)

November 15, 2005

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."

| Vinyl | Comments (4)

November 14, 2005

Silent Sunday

blackpiratecard.jpg 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.

| Celluloid | Comments (5)

November 13, 2005

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.

| Floppies | Comments (6)

November 11, 2005

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.

| Shoegazing | Comments (5)

November 09, 2005

Ahoy There Mateys

Al Lutz of Miceage.com reports on Disneyland's upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean rehab to better theme it to the movie versions. The changes, set to coincide with next summer's sequel, involve adding - yipes - animatronic Johnny Depp figures. Let's just say I'm happy that I got to ride the "classic" version last month. Arrgh.

| Amusements | Comments (3)

November 08, 2005

More One Reel Wonders, Please

Variety reports on unpcoming changes for my beloved Turner Classic Movies in attempting to lure younger viewers. They include an IMDB-style online reference and various new programs. Luckily, TCM's not taking the dumbed-down AMC route (yet). I'm actually looking forward to a weekly feature called Underground, described as "a showcase for movies not usually shown on TCM, such as kung-fu pics, blaxploitation movies and a selection of Russ Meyer's skin flicks."

| Cathode Rays | Comments (7)

Gruesome Twosome: Bacharach A Go-Go Edition

_kerr_reflect.jpg The Anita Kerr Singers: "Are You There (With Another Girl)"
LP: Reflect on the Hits of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, 1969 | BUY

The Renaissance: "I'll Never Fall In Love Again"
LP: Bacharach Baroque, 1970

This time I have two exquisitely arranged Bacharach covers that pretty much scream "60s". Longtime session pro Anita Kerr strikes a contast between tightly clipped vocals and an unexpectedly hot arrangement (dig those drum fills). And how groovy is The Renaissance, with their blend of marvy "ba da ba" vocals and harpsichord? Special thanks to Ion for supplying the Renaissance track - inexplicably, Bacharach Baroque has never seen an official CD reissue.

| Gruesome | Comments (2)

November 06, 2005

Desperate Housewife

housewife.jpg

A selection from EphemeraNow's lovely collection of crystal-clear vintage advertising art. Looking at this stuff, you might believe that everything in the world was at once hyper-real and somewhat scary. The main activities back then were eating brightly colored foods, driving a nice big car, and watching TV on a swank patio.

| Amusements | Comments (2)

November 05, 2005

My iPod's Cooler Than Yours

Slate.com on the Rock Snob (via Vince Keenan). Uses the Minutemen's cover of Steely Dan's "Doctor Wu" as an example of said snobbery. Liking offbeat cover versions, I suppose, is a sign of rock snobbery. While I was reading this, a cover of the Jackson 5's "ABC" by The Living Jazz was playing. The Living Jazz (and The Living Strings and The Living Brass) were really a bunch of faceless studio musicians. RCA Records' used the "Living" brand as a way of repackaging pop hits into the sort of non-offensive instrumentals that even grannies could love. Funnily enough, this cover of "ABC" has a hot guitar solo missing from the original. Anyway. Good article.

| Vinyl | Comments (0)

November 03, 2005

They Can’t Do That on Television

tv_reunion.jpg I have something to look forward to, sort of. Reunion returns on Fox after a month’s absence tonight. This is a really stupid show. A really stupid show that I can’t stop watching.

For such a stupid show, however, it has an intruiging premise. Six people, friends since high school, are reunited after a murder happens. One of them is the victim and another is the murderer. Each episode flashes back to a year in their lives, beginning in 1986, until we get to the present day and find out whodunnit. The victim’s identity will apparently be revealed soon (I'm hedging my bets on the Tom Cruise lookalike), but until then we have to endure a lot of whiny, stereotypical people doing inexpicable things. Part of the fun in this show is how wrong they get the period settings, with the pilot episode being a particularly awful riot of indifferently chosen ’80s clothing, music and expressions. The pretty cast does its best, despite being saddled with lines like “It’s 1987 and we're in New York City.” Who says garbage like that? And how did characters so different stay friends for so long? Despite all this, I’m totally interested in how this will play out. Plus Will Estes is quite a hunk. So sue me.

| Cathode Rays | Comments (0)

November 02, 2005

Glam Slam

mackiehat.jpgCome November 22, Christies will auction several Bob Mackie gowns, costumes and sketches from the mid-’60s to today. This includes some famous getups worn by Cher on her variety shows with and without Sonny, as well as Carol Burnett’s elegant outfits from the Q&A sessions on The Carol Burnett Show. The latter are among my favorite pieces in the auction - very sexy and glamourous, yet understated. You could almost picture your mom wearing that stuff! Thanks to Christopher for sharing this one.

| Rubylith | Comments (0)

November 01, 2005

The Happiest Boy in the Whole U.S.A.

I found this country music discography site while researching Tanya Tucker’s MCA Records period. Very nicely researched, and I get a kick out of the ever-changing parade of goofy hairstyles pictured in the album cover galleries.

P.S. Although I adore Tanya’s music (Ever heard “Lizzie and the Rainman”? Awesome.), her reality show is a huge bore.

| Vinyl | Comments (2)

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