This film was created by groundbreaking animator Lotte Reiniger, all in laborious stop motion, back in 1926. Not only is it the first animation of its kind as far as I can tell, but its detail and artistry are unbelievable. The few clips I'll post can't really give you any idea of the beautiful detail involved, I'd highly recommend renting or buying a copy and watching it on a good full-sized screen. As I said, the attention to movement, facial expression and composition make this far ahead of its time...and the shadow-puppet silhouette animation adds to the period charm. Plus, it's a rockin' tale of Magic, Love, Flying Mechanical Horses and Beautiful Women Who Turn Into Birds! Great stuff.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Don Ross
As a sometime guitarist myself, I feel I have to periodically post some of the great music being played by some of the really great players of the instrument. One you might not know of is Don Ross. He's one of those musicians who not only have the technique to do things seemingly impossible, but to make his compositions beautiful and lyrical as well. His first album of solo guitar, "Passion Session", is a series of breathtaking, gorgeous tunes that can alternately beguile you with his harmonies and melodies, or (especially for fellow guitarists) blow you away with his effortless mastery of the instrument. But enough of my yakkin'. I'll post up a few vids and let you hear it yourself.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Roadside America
When I was young (many millennia ago in the Jurassic age) my folks would take us on annual trips to visit their parents in Montana. On the way, the highway billboards would advertise amazing, magical places like Seashell City or Wall Drug or Reptile House or Mystery Spot, strange locations that I desperately wanted to visit. We would stop for these wonderful haunts all too rarely, and they were highlights in my memories of those travels (well, that and things like my Dad trying to get close-up photos of buffalo...something he found inadvisable quite quickly).
I was really pleased to find Roadside America, a website that loves the same kinds of crazy Americana that I do. It still lives on our highways, although somewhat diminished with the times...and RA also celebrates the wonderfully weird stuff that you can still find all over the US, bizarre and delightful locations like Pet Cemeteries, Giant Paul Bunyans, homemade Stonehenge's, 2-story outhouses and unlikely statues of every description. Plus many museums that must be seen to be believed.
One wonderful thing about the RA website is that it has a function that allows you to plan your trip around various wild and wacky attractions that might just make your next road excursion something really special. I mean, who doesn't want to see the Nun Doll Museum, the Giant Neon Kielbasa, the Upside Down Stove Restaurant and Bar,
the Hiawatha Statue, Mr. Chicken the Plastic-Legged Rooster, or Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum? And hey, those are only a few wonders available just here in Michigan! You better get movin'. Check out Roadside America at:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/
I was really pleased to find Roadside America, a website that loves the same kinds of crazy Americana that I do. It still lives on our highways, although somewhat diminished with the times...and RA also celebrates the wonderfully weird stuff that you can still find all over the US, bizarre and delightful locations like Pet Cemeteries, Giant Paul Bunyans, homemade Stonehenge's, 2-story outhouses and unlikely statues of every description. Plus many museums that must be seen to be believed.
One wonderful thing about the RA website is that it has a function that allows you to plan your trip around various wild and wacky attractions that might just make your next road excursion something really special. I mean, who doesn't want to see the Nun Doll Museum, the Giant Neon Kielbasa, the Upside Down Stove Restaurant and Bar,
the Hiawatha Statue, Mr. Chicken the Plastic-Legged Rooster, or Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum? And hey, those are only a few wonders available just here in Michigan! You better get movin'. Check out Roadside America at:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The Orange Hat
In keeping with my ongoing love of really strange and wonderful indie musicians and multi-media maniacs I'd like to present The Orange Hat. The two principal guys in this organization, Christo and Zeus, have known each other and played together since high school...and look what it did to them! The Hat has been together in some form or other since 1995 or before (accounts seem to vary), and for a few years produced a crazed TV show for Atlanta Public Access Television called "The Orange Hat Hour" (only real problem there was that it was a half-hour show). I can only describe it as a demented blend of Magical Mystery Tour and The Monkees Show, but in the nicest way. I really love The Orange Hat's music, with its melding of Psychedelia, Power Pop and Indescribable Strangeness. Marvel at their website at:
http://web.me.com/christoharris/Orange_Hat/Welcome.html
...And find their CD "Pufferfish" at:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/orangehat
...Finally, I've included some of their YouTube documentation of their music and their TV show below. Enjoy!!!
http://web.me.com/christoharris/Orange_Hat/Welcome.html
...And find their CD "Pufferfish" at:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/orangehat
...Finally, I've included some of their YouTube documentation of their music and their TV show below. Enjoy!!!
The Empress Of Mars
By Kage Baker, "The Empress Of Mars". Best Science Fiction book I've read this year! Baker writes a series of novels featuring "The Company" which I haven't warmed up to yet, but her short story collections shine and "Empress" is a kick-ass novel that's all about what I really like in the genre. I'll paste in some stuff from PW below, but hey, check it out!
From Publishers Weekly-
Baker seamlessly expands her 2004 Hugo and Nebula–nominated novella of the same title into tale of nonconformist survival. Widow Mary Griffith and her daughters relocate to an oddly anachronistic Mars, a world dominated by the badly run British Arean Company. Declared redundant by BAC, Mary establishes the first bar on Mars, which prevails despite the moralistic disapproval of her former bosses. Her customers are colorful characters who exist at the periphery of Martian society, from shyster Stanford Crosley to would-be space cowboy Ottorio Vespucci. Mary's family, friends and neighbors struggle to survive economic setbacks, the inhospitable climate and BAC's hostility to all forms of eccentricity. Though the international politics are sometimes threadbare, Baker's tale of individualists battling enforced conformity is a worthy evolution of her novella and will especially appeal to longtime science fiction fans.
Review-
“Most writers’ alternate universes are fun to visit, but Kage Baker’s is one I wouldn’t mind moving to: the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs . . . seen through the eyes of a writer far more poetic, vastly more scientifically literate, and with an infinitely superior sense of humor. Even as science-fictional taverns go, the Empress of Mars is memorable, a joint I hope I’ll be able to return to many times.”
--Spider Robinson, author of Very Hard Choices
"For my money, The Empress of Mars is the one to read.”
--Mike Resnick, author of Starship: Rebel
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns on all of Mars, the Empress is the one to visit. Let's raise a round to Kage Baker.”
--Jack McDevitt, author of The Devil's Eye
From Publishers Weekly-
Baker seamlessly expands her 2004 Hugo and Nebula–nominated novella of the same title into tale of nonconformist survival. Widow Mary Griffith and her daughters relocate to an oddly anachronistic Mars, a world dominated by the badly run British Arean Company. Declared redundant by BAC, Mary establishes the first bar on Mars, which prevails despite the moralistic disapproval of her former bosses. Her customers are colorful characters who exist at the periphery of Martian society, from shyster Stanford Crosley to would-be space cowboy Ottorio Vespucci. Mary's family, friends and neighbors struggle to survive economic setbacks, the inhospitable climate and BAC's hostility to all forms of eccentricity. Though the international politics are sometimes threadbare, Baker's tale of individualists battling enforced conformity is a worthy evolution of her novella and will especially appeal to longtime science fiction fans.
Review-
“Most writers’ alternate universes are fun to visit, but Kage Baker’s is one I wouldn’t mind moving to: the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs . . . seen through the eyes of a writer far more poetic, vastly more scientifically literate, and with an infinitely superior sense of humor. Even as science-fictional taverns go, the Empress of Mars is memorable, a joint I hope I’ll be able to return to many times.”
--Spider Robinson, author of Very Hard Choices
"For my money, The Empress of Mars is the one to read.”
--Mike Resnick, author of Starship: Rebel
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns on all of Mars, the Empress is the one to visit. Let's raise a round to Kage Baker.”
--Jack McDevitt, author of The Devil's Eye
Jonathan Coulton
Here’s another find from our Public Library (I love Public Libraries…free stuff!), a CD that I picked up on a whim. Stuck it in the player on the way home, and by the third song both Cyn and I were saying “Who IS this guy? And why didn’t anyone tell us about him before?”…Some of the best eclectic Pop/Rock music I’d heard in a good while. Great arrangements, cool harmonies, with some very good playing throughout. And most importantly, really amazing, intelligent, poignant, witty songs. All, apparently, done by this one guy…writing, playing, recording, production. So who the hell IS he?
Turns out Jonathan Coulton was working in the IT field up till recently, when he decided to challenge his songwriting and production skills by taking a year off and writing, recording and producing a song a week for that year. He then posted them up on his website as podcasts. This has worked out really well for him, since he’s now writing, recording and touring full-time, and is no longer bound to the IT cubicle anymore (although he’s used it for fodder for his amazing songwriting mill). Success stories in the music biz are not all that common these days; it’s nice to see a genuinely talented person making it happen.
Coulton’s songs do owe a great debt to They Might Be Giants, another self-starter band of prodigious output and imagination (he actually opens their shows on occasion these days), although his style and perspective are somewhat different. Jonathan’s enormous songwriting universe includes an Evil Genius who’s having trouble with his current relationship in “Skullcrusher Mountain”, a strangely cheery family banished to a mining asteroid on Christmas in “Chiron Beta Prime”, an achingly sad song about a Sea Monster who loves the little ships he keeps destroying in “I Crush Everything”, and a former office-mate who’s now a Zombie but still an asshole in “Re: Your Brains”. How could anyone possibly not like that? A great deal of his work is available at his website:
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/
…And his documentation of that year of weekly songs is available in a series of CDs titled “Thing-A-Week”. Also, since he releases his music through Creative Commons, his fans are free to make videos of his songs, and there are a huge number available on YouTube (I’ve included several below). For an excellent perspective on the JoCo phenomenon, get his live performance CD/DVD “Best.Concert.Ever” to see him playing in front of one of his EXTREMELY enthusiastic groups of fans. As a musician, I really appreciate seeing that. Well worth watching!
Turns out Jonathan Coulton was working in the IT field up till recently, when he decided to challenge his songwriting and production skills by taking a year off and writing, recording and producing a song a week for that year. He then posted them up on his website as podcasts. This has worked out really well for him, since he’s now writing, recording and touring full-time, and is no longer bound to the IT cubicle anymore (although he’s used it for fodder for his amazing songwriting mill). Success stories in the music biz are not all that common these days; it’s nice to see a genuinely talented person making it happen.
Coulton’s songs do owe a great debt to They Might Be Giants, another self-starter band of prodigious output and imagination (he actually opens their shows on occasion these days), although his style and perspective are somewhat different. Jonathan’s enormous songwriting universe includes an Evil Genius who’s having trouble with his current relationship in “Skullcrusher Mountain”, a strangely cheery family banished to a mining asteroid on Christmas in “Chiron Beta Prime”, an achingly sad song about a Sea Monster who loves the little ships he keeps destroying in “I Crush Everything”, and a former office-mate who’s now a Zombie but still an asshole in “Re: Your Brains”. How could anyone possibly not like that? A great deal of his work is available at his website:
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/
…And his documentation of that year of weekly songs is available in a series of CDs titled “Thing-A-Week”. Also, since he releases his music through Creative Commons, his fans are free to make videos of his songs, and there are a huge number available on YouTube (I’ve included several below). For an excellent perspective on the JoCo phenomenon, get his live performance CD/DVD “Best.Concert.Ever” to see him playing in front of one of his EXTREMELY enthusiastic groups of fans. As a musician, I really appreciate seeing that. Well worth watching!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Call Of Cthulhu
H.P. Lovecraft has been a huge influence on writers of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction since he started putting his mad, dark, purple prose out (in the short story "Dagon) in 1919. He certainly had a huge influence on me...I remember as a young teen tucked away in a dark wood lined basement coffeehouse at the U of M, drinking tea and eating Space Food Sticks and reading "The Colour Out Of Space". Heady stuff.
I was in the Public Library recently and found this film adaption of "Call Of Cthulhu" there. After sitting through many bad Lovecraftian films, I was very pleasantly surprised by this one. It's done as a silent film, in the style of classic 20s silents, with a great symphonic score. For a movie done on a tiny budget it's amazingly well acted (again, close to 20s silent style) and it works for the material very well...the brooding dark quality is enhanced by the retro vibe.
If you haven't delved into Lovecraft's work, wassa matta wit you? Fear not the miasma tainted by the fetid ichor of his prose and open the strange book bound in you dare not guess what. And watch this movie, by the way! Make some extra popcorn for me. For more info on H.P., check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.p._lovecraft
And before I go I'll post up the movie's trailer. Watch it, watch it, but beware...your very sanity may be at risk...
I was in the Public Library recently and found this film adaption of "Call Of Cthulhu" there. After sitting through many bad Lovecraftian films, I was very pleasantly surprised by this one. It's done as a silent film, in the style of classic 20s silents, with a great symphonic score. For a movie done on a tiny budget it's amazingly well acted (again, close to 20s silent style) and it works for the material very well...the brooding dark quality is enhanced by the retro vibe.
If you haven't delved into Lovecraft's work, wassa matta wit you? Fear not the miasma tainted by the fetid ichor of his prose and open the strange book bound in you dare not guess what. And watch this movie, by the way! Make some extra popcorn for me. For more info on H.P., check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.p._lovecraft
And before I go I'll post up the movie's trailer. Watch it, watch it, but beware...your very sanity may be at risk...
Monday, March 22, 2010
Martin Newell
First post relating to cool and underknown artists should certainly be about Martin Newell. Back in the 90s when I was working at the Border's music department in Ann Arbor, one of my principal amusements was combing through the bargain bin to find the little cheap treasures my meagre paycheck would allow. It was always strange for me as a musician looking at CDs that people had put their hearts and souls (sometimes) into, sitting in the unloved swill bin of a lousy corporate mega store. Every album has a story. And one day, puttering around there, I found this CD with a strange looking cover..."The Greatest Living Englishman" by Martin Newell, produced by the "New & Improved" Andy Partridge. Well, Partridge I knew from XTC, a band I knew and loved, so I paid the four dollars and took it home. I was floored by what I heard. Newell had played all the instruments (save some drums and a few keys done by Partridge), sung everything, and wrote songs that connected with me in a strange, dark beautiful way.
I used to try to explain Martin's work on that album as "Imagine if John Lennon had come to his senses and left Yoko, gone back to England and his Beatles roots, gotten a little more mature and a lot more cynical, and made another album". But really this album is very different from that, it has a different kind of poetry and Martin never really left England or his amazing Post-Beatles sensibility. There's an incredible beauty and a strange Autumnal quality that, if you're the right kind of listener, will draw you in and keep you there forever.
And if you like this particular record, there's a lot more. Martin Newell had a lot of great albums, mostly self-produced and released as underground cassettes, with his band The Cleaners From Venus back in the 80s, and many of those songs are available now on collections (obtainable through Amazon for one, yet another corporate monster although perhaps a slightly friendlier one). And with his spin-off project from that group, his Brotherhood Of Lizards was the first (and only, I think) band to tour England by bicycle as an early green experiment. The BOL album is wonderful, by the way, and seems to go in and out of print, but it's well worth seeking out. Although his later solo CDs are more eclectic and sometimes more uneven, there are fantastic songs on all of them as well. Martin makes his living these days as a journalist, and is also famous as the most published poet in England, due to his years as resident poet for the Independent newspaper. He performs poetry readings and occasional music, usually not straying far from his home in Wivenhoe.
Martin's own website is at http://www.martinnewell.co.uk/ and if you enjoy reading blogs (which if you're STILL with me I must assume you are) I'd highly recommend checking his out. Literate and hilarious! I'll leave you with a few songs from "The Greatest Living Englishman".
I used to try to explain Martin's work on that album as "Imagine if John Lennon had come to his senses and left Yoko, gone back to England and his Beatles roots, gotten a little more mature and a lot more cynical, and made another album". But really this album is very different from that, it has a different kind of poetry and Martin never really left England or his amazing Post-Beatles sensibility. There's an incredible beauty and a strange Autumnal quality that, if you're the right kind of listener, will draw you in and keep you there forever.
And if you like this particular record, there's a lot more. Martin Newell had a lot of great albums, mostly self-produced and released as underground cassettes, with his band The Cleaners From Venus back in the 80s, and many of those songs are available now on collections (obtainable through Amazon for one, yet another corporate monster although perhaps a slightly friendlier one). And with his spin-off project from that group, his Brotherhood Of Lizards was the first (and only, I think) band to tour England by bicycle as an early green experiment. The BOL album is wonderful, by the way, and seems to go in and out of print, but it's well worth seeking out. Although his later solo CDs are more eclectic and sometimes more uneven, there are fantastic songs on all of them as well. Martin makes his living these days as a journalist, and is also famous as the most published poet in England, due to his years as resident poet for the Independent newspaper. He performs poetry readings and occasional music, usually not straying far from his home in Wivenhoe.
Martin's own website is at http://www.martinnewell.co.uk/ and if you enjoy reading blogs (which if you're STILL with me I must assume you are) I'd highly recommend checking his out. Literate and hilarious! I'll leave you with a few songs from "The Greatest Living Englishman".
Welcome to the Funhouse
I just want to say I'm creating this blog from pure peer pressure. After regaling my friends and family with recommendations for things I enjoy...music, art, bizarre culture, mad websites, cults, ethnic recipes, dance troupes, roadside attractions, etc. ....I had a crowd of my people draw me aside and suggest, in the nicest possible way, that I create a blog about it so they could read it and turn their friends on to what I was on about. At least it seemed nice at the time. They had the hoses and the lead pipes, but they didn't actually use them, which I sure thought was nice.
So here I am, up in my humble garret, bats fluttering around my head, figuring I'll try and post up something once in a while to possibly amuse my friends and incidentally keep the hoses offa my head. Thanks, Bruce, Richard, everybody else, you can put those away now, I'm typing already!
If I wind up writing about something you're already hip to, well, congratulate yourself on your pre-existing hippitude, and maybe next week I can turn you on to something you haven't heard about yet. And feel free to be reciprocal about this...if there's something you think I should know about please write and let me know, that would be great! I've found some great things out just stumbling around, but perhaps if we all stumble around together we can make our lives even more interesting and cooler too.
So here I am, up in my humble garret, bats fluttering around my head, figuring I'll try and post up something once in a while to possibly amuse my friends and incidentally keep the hoses offa my head. Thanks, Bruce, Richard, everybody else, you can put those away now, I'm typing already!
If I wind up writing about something you're already hip to, well, congratulate yourself on your pre-existing hippitude, and maybe next week I can turn you on to something you haven't heard about yet. And feel free to be reciprocal about this...if there's something you think I should know about please write and let me know, that would be great! I've found some great things out just stumbling around, but perhaps if we all stumble around together we can make our lives even more interesting and cooler too.
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