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Bizarre Profile: Wreckless Eric

21/11/2014

According to Wreckless Eric himself he dropped into the then relatively new indie record label Stiff Records to hand-over his demo tape. Huey Lewis was manning the desk that day and Eric handed over his tape, uttering the now famous words "I'm one of those cunts that bring tapes into record companies." And thus a punk legend was born.

Now 60 years old, Wreckless Eric is still keeping the garage punk ethos alive. When many singer/songwriters of his generation have given up and settled for comfy slippers and doing TV commercials to make ends meet Eric is still touring and writing music and creating art. His iconoclastic rejection of Stiff Records after only 3 albums propelled him into the realms of an industry outsider in true punk style. Uncompromising in his pursuit of his art he even shunned the uber cool American indie record label Sympathy For The Music Industry after the release of his single Joe Meek (1993) by them.

In 2012, the painter Peter Blake named Wreckless Eric as one of the most important pop icons of the past forty years, and included him on the remake of The Beatles Sergeant Pepper’s cover where he takes his place between David Hockney and Grayson Perry.

On December the 10th, Wreckless Eric headlines the launch of the Hull Music Archive website in the city he wrote his classic hit Whole Wide World, acclaimed as one of the best punk songs of all time. Eric took time out of his busy touring schedule to comment on his thoughts about being asked to play at the Adelphi in Hull to launch the website.

I'm honoured and thrilled to be asked to launch the Hull Music Archive. Hull is the city where I began my rock n roll career when I came to the Hull School of Art & Design in 1973. I wrote Whole Wide World on a park bench on Cottingham Road, and my band Ruby and the Takeaways played it every Friday night at the Bull pub on Beverley Road, with Graham Beck on keyboards.Twenty five years later I met my American wife Amy Rigby, not 'on a tropical beach somewhere', but in the Bull where we met and played Whole Wide World together. Hull, to me, is very much the 'home town' gig, and will always hold a special place in my heart'.' X

Eric Goulden, somewhere in the UK, 20\11\2014

Midnight Movies: From The Margins To The Mainstream (2005)

21/11/2014

A documentary that tell the story of six movies that for a short time transformed the cult cinema culture of America. These six consist of El Topo (1970), the movie credited as starting the midnight movie scene at the Elgin Theater in Manhattan. Other cinemas played Night of the Living Dead (1968). The Elgin screened The Harder They Come (1973) and Pink Flamingos (1972). On the midnight after April Fool's Day 1976, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), opened at the Waverly Theater. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and in 1978 they started playing Eraserhead (1977).

So what? Cinemas played movies! Big deal! These movies ran for months, some for years, and a few still are somewhere in the world almost day-in-day out. The glories of cinema's hey-day of spectacle were recaptured by the counter-culture of the Baby Boomers. The movie as the catalyst for a full cinematic experience, as patrons began to engage with the action on screen.

Although the documentary focuses on those six, it also references exploitation cinema cult classics that became part of the midnight movie circuit Freaks (1932) and Reefer Madness (1936). A great introduction into the key players in cult cinema, for anyone wanting to dip their toes into the murky waters.

Weird Retro often covers cult cinema read our article the Top Ten: Exploitation Cinema Documentaries which features Midnight Movies: From the Margins To The Mainstream. The director of El Topo, Alejandro Jodorowsky is featured in our article about his failed attempt to bring Frank Herbert's Dune to the screen, in The Greatest Film Never Made: Jodorowsky's Dune. One of the most famous of the six as far as midnight showing longevity is The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which made the Weird Retro Top Ten: The Horror Of Movie Musicals. And whose opening theme was broken down movie by movie in a Captain's Blog post.

Bring Back British Pub Grub

20/11/2014

Pubs are trying too hard to compete with restaurants for food trade these days. Every back street ex-working man's pub is turning all "gastro". With their slow-cooked Ox cheeks in a raspberry reduction, seasonal veggies and Southern style wedged potatoes. Stop! Stop now!

Back in the 1960s and 70s, even into the 80s, the nearest most pubs got to food was some salted nuts attached to a card at the back of the bar. As each pack was removed it revealed a sexy young lady seductively smiling at you through the remaining packets. Some pubs, usually a slight drive out into the countryside on a Sunday may have actually had a menu a classic pub grub.

What was wrong with gammon and pineapple, served with soggy chips and hard peas? Or chicken in a basket, beautifully dished-up in a plastic basket with the prerequisite chips. Or if you were feeling flush, going for a starter of prawn cocktail covered in 1000 island dressing, with a side order of garlic bread. Bring back over cooked scampi for the ladies and the full steak dinner with accompanying onion rings for the geezers. All washed down with Babycham for the lady, and a pint of best bitter for the bloke.

Weird Retro Competitions...

20/11/2014

Stay tuned... Coming soon... Weird Retro is going competition crazy!!!

Be part of Weird Retro with the up-coming 'exquisite corpse' writing competition. Where you collectively write a short story along with other writers, but only get 2 days notice to read the previous submission that you must follow. I know!!! The tension of it is killing me too! Plus the Weird Music Christmas Countdown Competition. Vote for the strangest Christmas themed songs of all time, suggested by Weird Retro fans. The most voted for suggestion wins a festive gift!

Details will be revealed over the next few days... It's all so exciting we can hardly contain ourselves!

Retro Gaming: Alien (1982)

20/11/2014

In 1982, in an attempt to cash-in on the success of the sci-fi horror movie Alien (1979), Atari produced a tie-in video game for its Atari 2600 games console. The game itself bore little or no relation to the movie it was supposedly based on. Taking the existing Pac-Man style game format and re-engineering the sprites to look something like elements of the movie. If it wasn't for the game box cover and the instructions, you'd never have guessed that this game was Alien.

The maze, looks like the Pac-Man maze in shades of blues, but was meant to represent the inside of the Nostromo. Aliens are running rampant around the corridors of the spaceship (replacing the Pac-Man ghosts), the player clearing the alien eggs that line the corridors of the maze by running over them Pac-Man style. Yeah, it's just a bad version of Pac-Man with all the fun and cuteness of the original game sucked out of it.

Toy Of The Month: Jarts

19/11/2014

Oh for the love of Jarts, or Lawn Darts as they're otherwise known. The most fun garden toy ever before the idea of health and safety, before parents wrapped their kids in cotton-wool. Jarts ruled the air in many a garden in the 70s and 80s. Kids in fits of hysterics as they looked skyward, dodging the lethal missile hurtling towards them. Even if you started playing the game correctly, the darts soon were sent flying vertical, as high as possible.

Banned in the USA, although there are means of acquiring them through legal means via Canada, Jarts have gone down in history. They've had an out-right ban in the United States since December 1988. To some extent due to the lobbying of David Snow, after the death of his daughter due to a lawn dart accident in 1987. In 1989 Canada banned them also, but alternative versions began to appear. Apparently it is possible to but the parts to lawn darts, and assemble your own. However the sale of kits or complete lawn darts is prohibited.

Weird Music: Cromagnon

18/11/2014

In 1969 a band emerged from nowhere and released just one album entitled Orgasm. A weird experimental whirlwind of avant-garde sound collages and psychedelic rock, unlike anything that had gone before. Subsequently the album has been hailed as an early example of industrial music, as well as underground music scenes like No Wave and Noise Rock.

With such an album and the enigmatic nature of the band that produced it, it's little wonder that a mythology grew-up around who Cromagnon were. The story goes that two pop-music songwriters approached the ESP-Disk record company, asking to record an experimental album.

Given the go-ahead, they went off to a hippie commune to record the album with a group of musicians known only as Connecticut Tribe.

Except that's just a myth that developed around the album. The reality is that the two songwriters were actually Brain Elliot Austin Grasmere a producer and Austin Grassmere the lead guitarist in a band called the The Boss Blues. The two of them recorded the album not in a hippie commune, but in mostly in a make-shift studio in New York City. The band recorded the album with friends, and anyone they could get to join-in. The Boss Blues were a rock band from the Danbury, Connecticut.

The Boss Blues: Sal Salgado, Mark Payuk, Pete Bennett, Austin Grasmere & Vinnie Howley

Make a side-by-side comparison of the "two" bands.

Toys: Fist Faces (1966)

17/11/2014

The Fist Faces Funny Face Toy by Remco is likely one of the most self explanatory and disappointing toys in existence. In the box came a wig, kerchief, a lipstick pencil and four "faces" to make your fist into said "face". That was it. Nothing more to it. Obviously kids were much more easily pleased back in the 1960s.

The simple instructions (as if you needed instructions) claimed that "Your fist becomes a real face". Which is somewhat creepy. It goes on to say that the face will "Move", that it "Talks" and that it "Wiggles 'n' Twitches". Now I'm really freaked out. Afraid to sleep, in fear that my hand will take on a life of its own and attempt to kill me.

Weird Retro Fact: In 1967 Remco produced an Animal Fist Faces, as a tie-in to the movie Doctor Dolittle.

Horror Hosts: Morgus The Magnificent

16/11/2014

From the 1950s through to the 1980s, Morgus the Magnificent was the horror host for the New Orleans region. Ex-radio DJ Sidney Noel (Rideau) starting playing the mad scientist Morgus on WWL-TV's House of Shock, which lasted from 1959 to 1962.

Morgus (full name Momus Alexander Morgus) was wonderfully camped up by Noel, as a bumbling yet super intelligent (IQ of 300) scientist, along with his side-kick Chopsley who always had his face covered with an executioners mask. Apparently he'd had a face transplant that had gone badly wrong. Along with E.R.I.C. (Eon Research Infinity Computer) the talking skull, who would open the show Morgus Presents. ERIC didn't actually become integrated into the computer until the 1980s, but hey I that's progress for you.

Morgus often tried to break free of his lab in an upstairs garret over the Old City Ice House in French Quarter of New Orleans, as there were attempts to syndicate the show Morgus Presents in Detroit in 1964. But Morgus always ended up back in New Orleans, returning to WWL-TV from 1965 to 1967. Moving to WDSU-TV from 1970 to 1971, before quitting the show. The show was revived briefly in the 1980's, Morgus has lived on cable-TV in the New Orleans area since 2005.

There was also a one-off featured film made as a vehicle for the Morgus character, called The Wacky World of Dr. Morgus (1962). In the movie, Morgus invents a machine that can change people into sand and then back again. The theme song for the movie was a record entitled "Morgus the Magnificent" (1959) by Morgus and the Ghouls (a.k.a. Frankie Ford and John "Mac" Rebennack, better known around the world as Dr. John). It was the bright-lights of possible movie stardom that sent Morgus to New York, to seek his fortune. But via Detroit he ended up back in New Orleans, where he still delights old school schlock horror fans to this day.

Stupidly Outrageous Band Names That Make Me Giggle Like A Little School Kid!

15/11/2014

A.C.'s 1996 album I Like It When You Die

There's a history of punk bands, death metal and also grindcore bands choosing ridiculously offensive and silly names for their bands. A perfectly offensive example is Anal Cunt, the American grindcore band whose persona and lyrical content does everything it can to offend.

There are a lot of bands out there that have also made the decision to give themselves as offensive name as they can come up with. Some are done for outright shock value, others have a sense of fun about them. I was recently reading through a massive list of such bands, and some of them genuinely made me snigger out-loud at their down-right tongue-in-cheek swaggering bravado.

Some bands it would seem literally opened a dictionary of offensive words and slammed them together, some picked bizarre or taboo sexual acts, while others went for weird cultural referencing with a sick twist. However these bands chose their names is of no consequence, but here is a few that made me laugh. It maybe my twisted sense of humour, but here you go! Either they'll leave you feeling a bit dirty or they'll make you spit your coffee on your keyboard.

As with Anal Cunt, the rear-end seems to be a popular motif for a band name. With the likes of American grindcore band Anal Blast and Peruvian (yes Peruvian) death metal band Anal Vomit. But the one that makes me snigger is the Belgium folk/goth/darkwave band Kiss The Anus Of The Black Cat! What were they on when they came up with that one? Sticking round the back for a minute, faecal matter is also a popular theme for band names. Bathtub Shitter from Osaka Japan is one that did make me chuckle, but I want a T-shirt from the Brazilian gore band I Shit On Your Face.

Coming round the front, so to speak, genitalia is an obvious theme for bands attempting to offend. There's a least 3 bands that have called themselves The Clits, and there is Cunts, using little or no imagination. However when it comes to male genitalia, male dominated bands seem to have a more irreverent take on names. From Cheap Knob Gags to Broken Penis Orchestra, via the great name of LA horror punk band Penis Flytrap. My favourite (and I am bias here) is Gobble And The Cocks, a punk band from my home town of Hull. Often shortened to GATC, being the letters used for the nucleotides that make up DNA. The story goes that once a journalist asked them what GATC stood for and they said Gobble And The Cocks as a joke, the name stuck!