Belbury is an English market town with a picturesque 11th century church, and some notable modernist architecture, including the Polytechnic College. None of which exist except in the constructed world of the
Ghost Box record label, whose founder Jim Jupp records under the name
Belbury Poly, and publishes the
Belbury Parish Magazine.
[more inside]
posted by reynir
on Feb 11, 2012 -
4 comments
In the 1970s and 1980s, Chicago gangs distributed
gang cards to stake their neighbourhood claim. Full gallery available
here.
posted by gman
on Jan 20, 2012 -
44 comments
"You're going nowhere, son. Just you, me ad the walls. So wipe that bloody grin off before it's shot off, and don't slouch. You toe rag. You bin
. Pay attention when I break you. And break you I will, boy. You're in my manor, now." Buck up! It's Terry Finch's
THE REPRISALIZER! Follow
Bob Shuter, whose mission of reprisal against his brother's killers, their families, associates, progeny and property takes him across the desolate wasteland of 70s Britain, primarily Kent AKA
FINCHLAND. Finch, writer of The Reprisalizer and
DRAW!, the cowboy whose name means death, is soon to be the subject of
a major motion picture from Matthew Holness, creator of
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.
posted by Artw
on Dec 13, 2011 -
15 comments
Despite appearing early in his career, Aguirre, the Wrath of God is for me the quintessential Herzog movie. ... It deals with possibly the most obsessed group of people in history, the Spanish conquistadors, and their desperate hunt for the most magic of all Grails, the elusive golden land of El Dorado – leaving destruction and death to millions in their wake. A few lines in an old chronicle is all that remains of the historical facts, thus leaving plenty of room for Herzog to employ his imagination and re-arrange the facts. In short: an ideal topic for a visionary director, tackled with just the right crew, and on a location guaranteed to make the shooting an ordeal in itself.
posted by Trurl
on Nov 24, 2011 -
40 comments
Wherever you go, H
u-
g
o-
hip
po-
potamus
The
nightmarish and psychedelic 1976 children's movie
Hugo the Hippo features a score of hippos who save the port of Zanzibar from
"cap-wearing sharks decked out with biker jewelry", only to be massacred by the Sultan's greenish advisor (voiced by
Paul Lynde), leaving poor Hugo an orphan.
The soundtrack [flash player] includes songs by Burl Ives (as the titular
hungry hippo),
Jimmy and
Marie Osmond, and the Ken Williams Quartet. There is no official DVD release, but the
Hugo fansite has some options for obtaining the movie, and it's available on Youtube
[links above].
The story is based on a real Hugo the Hippo, who terrorized farmers near
Dar es Salaam:
"Game workers dug a 7-ft. pit along Hugo's dinner trail, lowered a big wooden crate into it, covered the top with branches, and baited it with three succulent pumpkins, Hugo's favorite dessert."
Gyorgi Peluce, the color designer responsible for
The Simpson's unique hues, is a Hugo alumnus from the Hungarian
animation company PannóniaFilm.
Previously on AskMe: 1, 2
posted by benzenedream
on Aug 9, 2011 -
19 comments
Pop quiz! What do these musicians have in common: Lou Reed, E Street
Band keyboardists Roy Bittan and Danny Federici, rhythm section Andrew Bodnar and Stephen
Goulding of The Rumour, dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, erstwhile
SNL bandleader G.E. Smith, session horn section the Brecker Brothers, LaBelle alum Nona Hendryx, guitar virtuoso Adrian Belew, and David Johansen of the New York Dolls? Answer: they were (most of) the studio band on the 1981 album
Escape Artist by
Garland Jeffreys. Which raises the question,
"Garland who?" [more inside]
posted by FelliniBlank
on Jul 19, 2011 -
22 comments
Jason Zinoman, author of the newly-published
Shock Value, a study of horror films from the late 1960s/early 1970s, presents a four-part essay in which he diagnoses the ills of the modern horror film and presents a few solutions. (
1 2 3 4)
[more inside]
posted by kittens for breakfast
on Jul 8, 2011 -
39 comments
Smash Hits! was a UK music magazine, first published at the end of 1978. It charted the progress of pop styles, including
the rise of 2-Tone, and
included a number of freebie discs, first as
flexi discs, and later on CDs. The magazine faltered in the 1990s, and
closed shop in 2006. Since then there have been a few one-off "special editions," first
a 2009 tribute to Michael Jackson, and then
a Lady Gaga special in 2010. 30 years after the first issue went on sale,
a fan posted the first issue online. So far,
new scans have been posted fort-nightly, following the original release schedule. 73 issues are online to date, each three decades after they first were sold. (
via MetaChat)
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 14, 2011 -
20 comments
Peter Grudzien lives in New York and makes psychedelic country music or at least used to, since only two albums of his material ever came out,
The Unicorn in 1974, and
The Garden of Love, which is mostly a collection of demos. His songs are varied, ranging from noise music to straight up country, and their subject matters are equally wide-ranging, from strange fare, such as
lyrics about his clone being at Stonewall, to
straight-up love songs. His best known original is probably
The Unicorn, a beautiful song whose
lyrics recast the early 70s New York gay demimonde in terms of a barren zombie-filled wasteland which will be reborn when the titular unicorn is found by the queen. Other songs on YouTube are
White Trash Hillbilly Trick,
New York Town and an instrumental cover of the Georgia Gibbs hit
Kiss Me Another. Finally,
here's a lovely cover of The Unicorn by Calgary folkie Kris Ellestad.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 21, 2010 -
16 comments
Women's Pro Tennis Turns 40. Women's professional tennis was launched by
World Tennis magazine publisher
Gladys Heldman 40 years ago on September 23, 1970, with a tournament that had nine entrants and $7,500 in prizes. The
original nine were Billy Jean King and Rosemary Casals along with the lesser known Peaches Bartkowicz, Judy Dalton, Julie Heldman, Kerry Melville, Kristy Pigeon, Nancy Richey and Valerie Ziegenfuss. A year later, King became the first female athlete to earn six figures in her sport. In the '80s, Martina Navratilova became the first to earn $1 million. Today the
WTA Tour is an $85 million-a-year sport. "We wanted to make sure that any young girl, if she was good enough and if she wanted to, would have the opportunity to make a living playing tennis," King said.
posted by rcade
on Sep 24, 2010 -
14 comments
Jo Guldi writes
a fascinating entry about social engineering and geography in the 1970's. "The geographers located answers in American zones of isolation and hopelessness. Bill Bunge organized his fellow professors into the Detroit Geographical Expedition, leading frequent trips to document the slums of Detroit and later Toronto. Their findings were equally provocative. In 1968, the Society published a map entitled “
Where Commuters Run Over Black Children on the Pointes-Downtown Track.” Life and death, they argued, were not merely the commodities available to any hard-working American, but hung upon the thread of a special kind of privilege, the privilege of safe territory."
Guldi is a historian at the Harvard Society of Fellows.
[more inside]
posted by cashman
on Feb 12, 2010 -
10 comments
Funkytown: The Montreal Disco Era. Studio 54?
Qu’est-ce que c’est? By the late 1970s, “Montreal had platinum-status admission to the VIP lounge of coolest-of-the-cool disco cities.” An oral history of the city where no one bats an eye at going out to dance at 1:30 AM in –20°C weather. (Contains links to MP3 of CBC Radio documentary.)
[more inside]
posted by joeclark
on Oct 21, 2009 -
14 comments
