Reasons To Be Cheerful: week of 10/10/08

(This is a compiled repost of items culled from my soon-to-be-extinct subsidiary blog, 'Brief Window')

1. Prepare for a feast of amazing visuals at
Wrong side of the art.

"...Specializing in cult/horror/exploitation/B/sci-fi movie posters, and basically any other genre to which one may refer as 'shit'."

(click on images to ENLARGE in a new window)

(Found via DTYBYWL)




































































































2. Follow link to a stack of compelling visuals: 'I Got Millions of Images' at
WFMU's Beware of the Blog (via NOW STYLE POP CROSSOVER).






































3. 'Sitting in the Dark with Patton Oswalt' (and at a high school graduation ceremony, too)

This film series is already half over as of this writing, and it's only really available to folks in Los Angeles (not me), but still it's an interesting peek into the current happenings of Actor / Stand-Up Comedian
Patton Oswalt and his passion for cinema.

- Click over to Patton's website for details and program notes on the series of double-bills he's programmed at
The New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles (ending later this week).

At left, a lovely poster for the series by cartoonist
Ivan Brunetti!
◀

(click on image to ENLARGE in a new window)

You can also check out
a nice interview with
Patton Oswalt at The Onion's A.V. Club, in which he elaborates further on the movies he's chosen, his history with the New Beverly and with film in general.








- - And as long as you're skirting the edges of Planet Oswalt, head back to his website and read the funny and truly inspiring commencement speech he delivered this past June at his old high school in Ashburn, Virginia.


4. Spin the dial over to The Outland Institute for Eight Theme Tunes No TV Show Could Live Up To.

The question is posed: "Is it possible for a theme tune to promise something so exciting, so spooky, so newsy or so scantily-clad that the television show simply cannot live up to it?"

The institute is located in Melbourne, Australia, which (for me) enhances the exotic qualities of the TV themes chosen (in a series of video clips), even when the shows are somewhat pedestrian.

- - And while I agree whole-heartedly with their inclusion and opinions regarding 'Space: 1999', I personally disagree with the stance they've taken on 'Lost In Space', as I much prefer the theme music to the first two seasons, as opposed to the theme used in the third.


















- - However, the Outland Institute post has also introduced me to 'Chopper Squad' and
'K-9 and Company', so for that I am indebted...

- Some further info has come from the Institute- -
"Curiously, the "K9 & Company" theme was written by Ian Levine who also wrote and produced "So Many Men, So Little Time" by Miquel Brown (two million copies sold), and "High Energy" by Evelyn Thomas (seven million copies sold).

"And they were both terrible too."

'What Will She Do With It?' - - James Montgomery Flagg magazine cover illustration, 1920

This image appeared on the cover to the August 7th, 1920 issue of Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, just a few days prior to the ratification of Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, allowing women the right to vote.

The caption on the cover asks
"What Will She Do With It?", looking ahead to the presidential election coming that November, the first in which women in every state could exercise that right.










Cover artist James Montgomery Flagg
was one of the most in-demand illustrators in the U.S. by the time this magazine appeared.

The popularity of his World War I 'I Want You' recruitment poster just three years prior
(in which, out of convenience, he'd used his own face as a model for Uncle Sam) had certainly helped.

See also:
- An illustrated James Montgomery Flagg bio page at Bud Plant's 'Been Publishing, I'm Back'.

- A previously posted Leslie's Illustrated Weekly cover from the same election year;
'Columbia has her eye on You'

His name was Lloyd Thaxton. (So what)

(Reposted from 'Brief Window')

Television personality Lloyd Thaxton passed away last Sunday. He was 81.

Thaxton was a regular fixture on television in
Los Angeles in the 1960's as host to a musical 'dance party' show along the lines of 'American Bandstand'.

'Lloyd Thaxton’s Record Shop' began airing on L.A.'s KCOP in 1959, evolving eventually into 'The Lloyd Thaxton Show'.

The hour-long program hit national syndication in 1964 and ran until 1968, featuring guest appearances by top rock & pop acts of the day.

(Below, ▼ with Solomon Burke, James Brown and The Shangri-Las)

What set Thaxton's show apart from others was his wacky and irreverent onstage antics, typified by his customary sign-off;
"The name of the show is 'The Lloyd Thaxton Show,' and my name is Lloyd Thaxton."

- - Which would receive an immediate and loud response from his teen-age studio audience - - "SO WHAT!"

Thaxton's obituary from the Los Angeles Times includes an anecdote about a fan letter he'd received;

"...A favorite quote of his was from a fan who wrote one time and said,
'When I first saw your show, I thought you were making fun of rock 'n' roll. And the more I watched, I realized you were making rock 'n' roll fun.' "

























Following the end of 'The Lloyd Thaxton Show', Thaxton went on to host game shows, and eventually moved into producing and directing for television, winning five emmy awards for his work on 'Fight Back! With David Horowitz'.

In recent years, Lloyd Thaxton's blog included news about his current doings as well as reminiscences about his show, his career, and his life.

A blog post he wrote this past May, 'The Do-It-Yourself Obit', is surprisingly upbeat, despite its current layer of poignancy...

See also:
- A rememberance at By Ken Levine

Johnny Carver - That's Your Hang Up (1969)

Leaving behind his Country-Gospel roots in his native Mississippi, singer-songwriter Johnny Carver moved to
Los Angeles in 1965, where he soon became lead vocalist in the house band at the Palomino Club.

He landed a record deal with Imperial in 1967, and recorded this perfect piece of country pop in '69, filling it with catchy hooks reminiscent of 'Memphis, Tennessee' and 'Last Train To Clarksville'.









Listen to:
Johnny Carver -
That's Your Hang Up
(Imperial Records 45, 1969)
(click for audio)

Carver met with greater commercial success beginning in the '70s and a move to the ABC record label.
Many of his bigger hits were with country-fied covers of rock & pop chart-toppers like 'Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Old Oak Tree' and 'Afternoon Delight'.

Browse blog posts in Avril Rayon (1966 print ads)

Clicking on these images will enlarge them in a new window, making it easier to read about fashions from the clothing lines of Mr. P.J., Loungees,
Tom Girl, Raymodes and Lewis Frimel that were all available once upon a time in blends of Avril Rayon.

These advertisements ran in the August, 1966 issue of Seventeen magazine, brought to us by the folks at the American Viscose Division of FMC, who wanted to make us all aware of the inherent beauty and functionality of Avril Rayon fabric (as opposed to other high modulus rayons like Avron and Zantrel).

In 1928, a spray gun manufacturer and a canning company merged to form the Food Machinery Corporation (FMC).

During WWII, FMC built amphibious tanks for the U.S. Army.
Postwar, they acquired more businesses and expanded their range to include insecticides, fungicides, phosphates and nitrates, and changed their name to the Food & Machinery Company.

It wasn't until 1963 that FMC bought American Viscose, a major producer of rayon - - and the rest is history...

78s fRom HeLL: Severino Araujo - Rhapsody in Blue (circa 1946)

Clarinetist and orchestra leader Severino Araujo has led Brazil's venerable dance band Orquestra Tabajara since 1938.

Many thanks to an anonymous reader for sharing this amazing samba reading of the classic Gershwin melody.

The story goes that this recording was a national success when it was released, although at the time it was also met with controversy for not being of Brazilian origin.








Listen to:
Severino Araujo & Orquestra Tabajara -
Rhapsody in Blue
(Continental Records 78, circa 1946)

(click for audio)

- See also:
Severino Araujo at All Music Guide.Com.

Update: A Li'l Mo' Big Ethel

Taking just a moment to direct your attention to the previously posted Riverdale Make-Over: The Changing Face of Big Ethel, where I've added a few more Archie comics scans displaying the charms of Ethel Muggs, from back in the days before she was politically-corrected beyond all recognition...

Louis Prima and Space Junk

(Reposted from 'Brief Window')

Oh, the places you'll go when running a google search in our modern, information-saturated age...

...So there I was, innocently searching the web for any quick bits of background info regarding 'Beep Beep', a mid-1950s song (with proto-space age sound FX) from lounge lord Louis Prima, in preparation for submitting the song (with spoken intro) to a 'songs with sound effects in them' episode of the Contrast Podcast.

One nugget of news I encountered was that the song had been played in December of 2006 as a wake-up call aboard the international space station for astronaut
Sunita Williams.






Among Williams' achievements on her mission was having been the first person to run the Boston Marathon while in Earth's orbit.

A further bit of trivia happened while Williams was on one of several space walks, floating outside the station.
A camera she was carrying became untethered and floated away into space before she could do anything about it.








Where it gets more interesting is that the mishap was captured on video, and that we here on Earth can still watch the incident on YouTube.

(Found via Kempton Ideas Revolutionary, where you can also listen to Prima's
'Beep Beep'.)

What's more, that wayward camera is now among thousand of pieces of space junk circling the globe, all currently being fastidiously tracked by NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office.

Like bits of space junk in orbit, little 'pearls' of trivia collide and bounce off one another in interesting ways, but can soon become a dense cloud of data and just all too much to take in...

Reasons To Be Cheerful: week of 10/03/08

(This is a compiled repost of items culled from my soon-to-be-extinct subsidiary blog, 'Brief Window')

1. Normally I don't care for big lists, especially if they try to be 'definitive'.

I loved Tom Spurgeon's post yesterday at
The Comics Reporter:

'The 50 Things That Every Comics Collection Truly Needs'

- - Not just because it included a small link to a Pogo cover gallery I posted last year, and not just because I agreed with so many of the choices and smugly recognized so many things from my own collection.

(The collection that sits in storage while I do my current 'limbo shuffle'... sigh)

Even with inevitable omissions and the fun differences in opinion that such a list elicits, this is still a great list of great stuff.

It speaks to the warm & fuzzy joys of a lifetime spent reading funny books and the surprising breadth of territory that such a journey can cover.



















2. - The Record Cabinet
Cool Hunting reports on a new, mid-century styled record cabinet from Atocha Design.

(found via Monoscope)

"...the first offering from Jenn and Nick Atocha (the husband and wife team behind Atocha Design), is the happy result of two music fanatics needing a home for their newly combined vinyl collections. Unlike most LP storage systems, which store records sideways allowing you to only see the spine, the Record Cabinet allows you flip through your collection savoring the artwork in full frontal view. Jenn elaborates, 'The whole MP3, digital music world doesn't make sense to me. So many musicians are visual people and you really need the LP at a minimum to see their vision. So much is expressed in album cover art that becomes part of how you hear the music. Pick any Beatles record, or Bowie, or Bjork, or Beck, just to stick with the letter B, and imagine hearing it without the artwork. You can't!'"

"...Each piece is made to order and pricing is based on size, materials and design requirements. The option pictured has six LP drawers and four CD drawers and is priced at $12,500."

- - So, just the thing for storing all those cool Reader's Digest 'Easy Listening' records you found at the thrift store, yes - -?

3. Follow link to:'50 Inspiring Vintage Advertisements' at WellMedicated, the 'web design overdose' blog.

Two little shrine updates

Just a quick note to mention a light sprinkling of new media that have been added to two previous posts;

Please revisit The Ruth Buzzi Shrine and 'In Praise of Michael J. Pollard' for a few more images and other stuff that wasn't there before.

(And don't miss the oh-so unexpected 'Michael J. Pollard For President').

In Crowd of the month: The Living Guitars (1965)

Among producer Ethel Gabriel's many credits during her tenure at RCA Records was the creation of George Melachrino's
'Moods for Music' series of albums in the 1950's, which she followed up by masterminding the 'Living Strings' series of easy-listening LPs for RCA's 'budget' label, Camden.

The 'Living Strings' concept blossomed into several other instrumental series, including 'Living Guitars', which Gabriel put under the direction of prolific session guitarist Al Caiola, who was already working on a seemingly endless string of albums recorded under his own name at United Artists.

From the LP
'Teen Beat Discotheque'
(RCA-Camden Records, 1965),
listen to:

Living Guitars -
The "In" Crowd
(click for audio)


- Click here to see the LP liner notes in a new window.









See also:
- Al Caiola listed at Space Age Pop and atAll Music.Com

- As of this writing, the Living Guitars 1968 'San Franciscan Nights' LP is available for download via CUEBURN.

- Also as of this writing, 'Living Pizza', a Living Guitars, Living Brass, Living Strings, Voices, Organ, etc compilation is available for download via Licorice Pizza.

- Follow this link to hear the Living Guitars LP 'Flamingo' at Vinyl Lounge Hut.

- In a 2007 audio slideshow from the Pocono Record, record producer Ethel Gabriel reminisces about her long career with RCA Records.

- Click here for this entry and all the previous 'In Crowd of the month' posts together on one page.

Podcast Alert!

Whoosh! There went last month.

Pow! Here comes a new month.

With it comes another nifty blast of podcast, poised near to the top of that lovely brown sidebar.

Dig it! (UPDATE: Time for digging has passed, another one buried. You might try exhuming this one at the Audio Annex)

Thanks for noticing.