It’s Friday the 13th: Probably an auspicious time to announce a new major exhibition of the cult psychedelic artist Burt Shonberg at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in Cleveland, Ohio, which runs from August 17th until November 1st. This is the first exhibition of Shonberg’s work since his one and only exhibition in 1967. It includes rarely seen paintings and some of Shonberg’s work belonging to the late science fiction writer, George Clayton Johnson.

Shonberg was an artist who perception of the world was seriously altered after he took part in Dr. Oscar Janiger’s experiments into the impact of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide 25 (LSD) on the creative processes.

During his first session, Shonberg received an injection of 100ml of LSD. This led him to see a hidden structure to the universe where “Humanity is literally hypnotized by the Dream Reality of momentum caused by life (meaning external influences).”

There is an illusion of movement in life which is not the truth. This all relates to so-called time. Time is motion—is evolution. One might say that the Big Criminal in all this is identification. To be apart from the form is the answer to real vision—consciousness. To be awake is to be really alive—to really exist.

March 1961: Janiger carries out a second experiment with Shonberg upping the dose of LSD to 150ml. At first, the artist didn’t think the trip was working but suddenly he was propelled into an experience that led him to believe he had left the clinic and had witnessed an undiscovered world where giants danced in the sky. He quickly understood that this “psychedelic experience” could “possibly reach to actual magic and beyond.”

There are, of course, certain things that one experiences in the transcendental state that are not possible to communicate in the usual way, so new types of parables would have to be created to get the message through. These discoveries I refer to could be insights or revelations into various aspects of the world we live in, nature, the mind itself, the universe, reality, and God.

The experiments radically altered Shonberg and his approach to painting. He continued experimenting with LSD which eventually led him to believe he was a living embodiment of Baphomet—“a divine androgyne, a unification of light and darkness, male and female and the macro and microcosm,” or Aleister Crowley’s pagan, pre-Christian deity, or “the Devil in all his bestial majesty.”
 

 
Shonberg’s reputation has come under considerable reappraisal of late, especially after Spencer Kansa wrote the first biography on the artist Out There: The Transcendent Life and Art of Burt Shonberg three years ago. This summer a documentary called Out Here is described as an “in depth look at the famous Hollywood LSD painter” with contributions from the artists, actors, and friends who knew him.
 

 
More after the jump…
 

 
Although not nearly as prolific—or as world famous—as Serge Gainsbourg, there’s an easy argument to be made that eccentric French popstar Michel Polnareff comes right after Serge on the official list of Gallic musical geniuses. That so many music fans outside of France revere Gainsbourg yet have probably never even heard of Polnareff is a shame, both for them and for this unfairly overlooked performer. The simple fact is, there are very few truly great French rock musicians, and Michel Polnareff stands heads and tails above the likes of Johnny Hallyday and Téléphone.

I first heard of Michel Polnareff via mid-70s ads for his albums in Circus magazine and knew that he did the soundtrack to Margaux Hemingway’s notorious rape revenge film Lipstick, but he was just someone I saw in magazines. I heard none of his music until decades later, but when I discovered his 1971 album Polnareff’s, I played it obsessively. If it was candy, I’d have gorged myself on it until I was sick and then just kept eating. It’s really one of the most amazing and musically audacious albums of the era, up there with what someone like, say, Todd Rundgren was doing at the time (both were extreme multi instrumentalist perfectionists), but heavily influenced by the likes of Burt Bacharach, maybe the Turtles and Moody Blues and certainly Scott Walker and Gainsbourg, too. Meant to be listened to as a single suite of music, like Abbey Road or OK Computer, Polnareff’s is a grandly ambitious and brilliantly realized Baroque orchestral pop album with not a single bad track in the bunch. I’ll go so far as to say that Polnareff’s is probably the second best French rock album of all time, after L’histoire de Melody Nelson. Again second to the great Serge Gainsbourg, but I mean Monsieur Polnareff no disrespect here, obviously. (Third on my list of great French rock albums would be Les Rita Mitsouko’s The No Comprendo, so as you can see, Polnareff’s is bookended by greatness in my estimation.) It’s really one of the most amazing records ever made. Don’t believe me? AllMusic’s Thom Jurek, a man known for his refined rock snob tastes calls it a “psychedelic pop masterpiece.” It is! He also writes that “it’s like an early model for the excesses of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk.” Right again!
 

 
Finding the musicians and recording studios of Paris insufficient for his needs, Polnareff’s first hit was the unstoppably catchy “La poupée qui fait non” recorded in 1966 when he was just 21 and featuring the then-prominent London session musicians Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. The song was covered by Ronnie Wood’s mod group The Birds, Jimi Hendrix and Saint Etienne.
 

 
More Michel Polnareff, after the jump…

If I was a bit younger, I would buy this one. Not for Halloween, but for everyday wear around the house.
 
The other day, whilst looking for something else entirely, I stumbled upon these amazing David Bowie cosplay/Halloween costumes. It really seems quite necessary to me for someone to have done this, you know? This was needed, I believe.

Most of these costumes are by Wanda Cobar Costumes. She also does Freddie Mercury, Elton John and Cherrie Curry cosplay outfits. Check her gear out here.
 

Can you rock and roll with this?
 

Freak out in a white satin daydream, oh yeah…
 

This Ziggy Stardust toddler jumpsuit makes a great gift for when you not sure if it’s a boy or a girl…
 
More Bowie cosplay after the jump…

 
Sorry, but this is not going to be one of those analog vs. digital rants that goofball audiophile types like to indulge in at the drop of a hat. In fact I probably should have just called it something like “Why you should never buy new vinyl versions of classic albums.”

Actually I like digital audio just fine. In fact, until four years ago, I’d have told you that I preferred it. SACDs, HDCDs, High Fidelity Pure Audio Blu-Rays, 24-bit HD master audio files, 5.1 surround sound, DSD files—I have a large amount of this kind of material, both on physical media and with another ten terabytes on a computer drive. I like streaming audio very much. Roon is the bomb! Let me be clear, I’ve got no problem with digital audio. Even if I did, 99.9% of all music made these days is produced on a computer, so there’s really no practical way to avoid it. Analog and digital audio are two very separate things and each has its own pluses and minuses. I like them both for different reasons.

Please allow me to state the obvious right here at the outset: Most people WILL NOT GIVE A SHIT about what follows. One out of a hundred maybe, no, make that one out of a thousand. Almost none of you who have read this far will care about this stuff. If you are that one in a thousand person, read on, this was written especially for you.

Everyone else, I won’t blame you a bit if you want to bail.

Continues after the jump…

 
If this isn’t the catchiest song since, I dunno “Crazy” or “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” then I don’t know what would be. All I know is that I wish this song was 24 hours long and had 2000 verses.

Already feeling a strong “Song of the Summer” vibe about this one. My summer anyway!

So far Wet Leg‘s Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers have only released one song, via the Domino label, and this is it. There’s little information about them, other than what appears on the Domino website:

Amidst a night of hazy scenes in their native Isle of Wight, Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers found themselves at the summit of a Ferris wheel.

They decided to start a band. The band is called Wet Leg.

Arming themselves with guitars, a penchant for French disco, effervescent imaginations and a shared love of the The Ronettes and Jane Birkin, through to Ty Segall and Bjork, they set about making some recordings of their own.

Is that a Faust sample loaded into their drum machine?

Wet Leg will be performing next weeked at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk, England. If you go, mask up for God’s sakes!
 

 
Although she often, and memorably, sang in her onscreen roles—she even wrote all three of the songs she sang in Robert Altman’s Nashville—Oscar-nominated character actress Karen Black never had a parallel career as a musician. However, she did leave behind an album’s worth of original music that was partially produced by recording legends Bones Howe (The Mamas and the Papas, 5th Dimension, Tom Waits, The Turtles) and Elliot Mazer (Neil Young, The Band, Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt). The tapes—caked in mold and other things—were taken to her friend, musician Cass McCombs by her husband Stephen Eckelberry. They took three years to repair. Many of the details of the sessions that produced this music were lost to the passing of time. One of the boxes held a cover of “Question” by Moody Blues.

Dreaming of You (1971-1976) gathers these recordings—including six songs recorded with Howe—together for the first time. They have a Laurel Canyon folkie/Judy Collins feel to them and there is a certain mysteriousness to her confessional compositions. Ever the actress, Black would do multiple takes of a song, each time changing her tone, phrasing or cadence. “We went looking for a needle in a haystack, and ended up with a haystack of needles,” McCombs says.

Black duetted with McCombs several times on his albums and he was in the process of setting Black’s words to music when she died. “She’d given me all of her poetry and I was trying to work them into some kind of meter that would work as songs,” he says. They recorded two of them, “I Wish I Knew The Man I Thought You Were” and “Royal Jelly.” These songs are included as a bonus 45 with the vinyl release.

Dreaming of You (1971-1976) is released this Friday, July 16 via Anthology Recordings.
 

Pic via @Bob_Fischer
 
Uncanny Island, the very first solo art exhibition by musician and author Luke Haines is on at the Eston Arts Centre through the end of the month. Should you find yourself in North Yorkshire, you should drop by and check it out.

The exhibit features Haines’ psychedelic visions of British wrestlers from the 1970s and early 80s (echoing his 2011 concept album 9 ½ Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early ‘80s) and a Christmas tree festooned with ornaments bearing the likeness of everyone who was ever in the Fall. (The band had 66 members during Mark E. Smith’s five decade run, in case you were wondering.)

Luke Haines’ latest album is Setting The Dogs on The Post Punk Postman.

I asked the artist a few questions via email.

Is this your first solo art exhibit?

Luke Haines: Yep. First solo exhibition. I’m pleased it’s in the north—away from curators and the dull art people.

Tell me about the Fall Xmas tree?

I’d painted a MES bauble for a friend’s Xmas present. The obvious next stage was to paint every member of the Fall, but I had no reason to embark on such a futile endeavour. Then the artist Neil McNally asked me if I wanted to have an exhibition. It was then that I realized it was time for the Fall Xmas tree.

I know that you’ve described your work as outsider art in the past, but with the Lou Reeds, the Hawkwind paintings, the Maoist Monkees—and of course the psychedelic wrestlers which refer to your own album—it seems more like you’re doing something more akin to “rock snob art”? How do you see it?

My stuff is more like sitcom art. I tend to do the same thing: put popular or unpopular culture figures in absurd situations. Like putting Hawkwind in a balloon carrying esoteric knowledge (The North Sea Scrolls) back to their squat in Ladbroke Grove. If Hawkwind actually did this the world would be improved immeasurably. In the show there are a couple of paintings depicting wrestlers having diabolical fever dreams about It’s A Royal Knockout. I’d like to do a whole art show about It’s A Royal Knockout. Maybe a straightforward reenactment.

How often are you asked to comment on the art of Ronnie Wood, Ringo Starr or Paul Stanley?

I think that worrying about pop stars inflicting their art on an ungrateful world will be the least of our problem post covid. There will a tsunami of ‘lockdown art washing up. It will all be terrible.
 

Mark E Smith Xmas tree bauble
 

The Fall Xmas Tree in situ.
 

Fall Xmas Tree (detail)
 

Liver Sausage (Mark “Rollerball” Rocco)
 

Brian Glover
 

Dickie Davies
 

 
Eston Arts Centre, 176 -178 High Street, Eston, Middlesbrough, TS6 9JA.

 
Rufe Davis was an American actor, singer and “imitator of sounds.” He was best known for his “rural” comedic radio act, “Rufe Davis and the Radio Rubes” during the 1930s, for being a co-star along with Hoot Gibson, John Wayne, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers in dozens of Hollywood B-Westerns and for his role as “Floyd Smoot,” the train conductor of the “Hooterville Cannonball” on the 60s CBS TV comedy series, Petticoat Junction.

Davis’ rendition of “The Old Sow Song” was his musical calling card for obvious reasons and something that those of us of a certain age might remember from a popular 60s kiddie record made by Mel Blanc and others called Bozo And His Pals (which is where I first heard it—and loved it—as a tyke), although it was originally released as a 78rpm record many years before that. The same song was also given away as a cardboard record in cereal boxes. His version of the song was probably what kept the song alive in the 60s and 70s, and even beyond, but there was another famous version that we’ll get to in due course.

Maybe you heard “The Old Sow Song” from one of your grandparents singing it to you? They might’ve heard it in a vaudeville theater. It might also be something that was passed down from long before that, an actual working class English folk song. I’ve also seen it described as a Yorkshire farmer’s song. It’s claimed by Scotland and Ireland, too. One of the earliest recorded versions was one done in 1928 by Albert Richardson. It was also recorded by Cyril Smith and Rudy Vallee, as well as by opera singer Anna Russell. Novelty songsmith Leslie Sarony did his hit version of “The Old Sow Song” in 1934. Apparently John Ritter performed the song on Three’s Company but sadly I could find no clip of this. According to YouTube comments, Hee-Haw featured more than one rendition of “The Old Sow Song.”

Perhaps many of you learned “The Old Sow Song” at summer camp or grade school, where I am guessing it can still be heard to this day, since children’s songs with farting noises never truly die. This evergreen sing-a-long is up there with “Bingo was his name-o” and “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” but neither of them has blowing raspberries as an integral part of the song. Can you imagine what the sheet music must’ve looked like?

I’m truly delighted that a vintage visual representation of “The Old Sow Song” exists. I don’t have an exact year for the clip, but it’s described as a “talkie” or “soundie” in the descriptions of the various uploads which might indicate that this was an early sound film, and yet there is a Hitler reference, so I think it might be a bit later than the uploaders think. Maybe an early kinescope?

I high recommend taking any—and all—drugs that you have handy before hitting play. If Rufe Davis’s face doesn’t turn green and if time doesn’t seem to bend like taffy and come to a complete standstill while you watch this, then you clearly haven’t taken enough drugs. So take more.
 

 
After the jump, the Doctor Who connection!

The cover of the upcoming graphic novel, ‘Motörhead: The Rise of the Loudest Band in the World’ due in September 2021.

When it came time for author David Calcano to pen the graphic novel take on Motörhead’s illustriously loud, 40-year career, he, the folks at Fantoons, and illustrator Mark Irwin (fittingly a former art director for Heavy Metal magazine), took the project very seriously. You may recall that Calcano has authored various other music-related graphic novels on artists such as Billie Holliday, and a few eclectic coloring books featuring Frank Zappa and Marillion (!). Calcano’s latest graphic novel, the 144 page Motörhead: The Rise of the Loudest Band in the World, (due on September 7th, 2021), begins Motörhead’s debaucherous story with Lemmy (as it should) back when Kilmister was working as a tutor/instructor at a horse riding school in North Wales. At the time, the teenager and soon-to-be-hellraiser thought working with horses was what he would do for a living. It was, after all, according to Lem, a great way to “get along with women.” To back up this legend about the legendary Lemmy, here are a few shots of Lem and his horse friends.
 

Lemmy: “I used to ride horses a lot, there wasn’t much music then, rock and roll and that sort of thing.” Image via Twitter.
 

Lemmy’s former Hawkwind bandmate Dave Brock also recalls Kilmister’s fondness for horses. The photo above shows Brock alongside Lemmy sitting on a “spirited” horse named “Dynamite” at a ranch in Kansas. This photo is so metal it makes my hair hurt.
 
Thankfully, after his ears were exposed to artists such as Little Richard and Elvis (specifically the jam “All Shook Up”), Lemmy’s work with horses was history, though equines would continue to be a part of his life, for nearly all of his life. Here’s a look at some of the illustrations from Motörhead: The Rise of the Loudest Band in the World which wouldn’t be complete without a few panels of Lemmy clutching a large bottle of his beloved drug of choice, speed, and a naked chick. 
 

 

 

 

 

 
HT: Metal Injection

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
A super-cringey interview with Lemmy Kilmister & Sigmund Freud’s great-grandaughter in bed
Lemmy Kilmister gets ambushed by three of his ex’s on TV in the late 90s
The Stranglers’ 1979 cricket match against the UK music press, featuring Lemmy and a bag of drugs
Well that sucks: That time Lemmy passed out after getting too many blowjobs in 1980
How Motörhead became the ‘Loudest Band in the World’ & the fake teen journalist who heard it all

 
A few days ago, whilst idly wasting time on the internet, I googled some images of 70s horror vixen/Bond girl Caroline Munro. As you do. Anyway an image of her with huge 80s hair (and Gary Numan!) caught my eye. That led me to a 2019 Guardian article that touched upon a musical project from the mid-1960s, from when she was just a teenager, that might be of interest to our readers.

The story goes that a photograph of Munro taken when she was 16 won the Evening News’ Face of the Year competition which had been judged by David Bailey.  Fame beckoned, and so did an offer to make a pop record:

In 1967, Munro, who had sung in her church choir, released her first single, a breathy ditty called “Tar and Cement,” recorded at Abbey Road. Her backing band was Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, better known as Cream, alongside the future Yes guitarist Steve Howe. She remembers Baker driving her up the Mall in an open-topped Jaguar to the photoshoot; an image in keeping with the Austin Powers-ish tang of her life at this time. But it’s the B-side, This Sporting Life, the 70-year-old Munro sings to me today over coffee. “‘I’m getting tired of hanging around / Think I will marry and settle down / Because this old night life / This old sport life / Is killing me.’ I was only 16, just out of convent school when I sang that. It was ridiculous, really. I didn’t know anything about living a sporting life.”

The session was produced by Mark Wirtz, then coming off the hit of Keith West’s A Teenage Opera. It’s not bad at all!
 

 
The single’s A side, “Tar and Cement” is also pretty decent:
 

 

 
Bonus, “Pump Me Up,” the song Munro cut for Gary Numan’s Numa label in 1984. It’s really a pity there’s no music video for this song.