hillbillys in a haunted house: not merely the best titular pluralization in major motion picture history, but merle haggard’s first film appearance, and sir basil rathbone’s last.
(click for a huge poster image, unless you’re “a chicken come with plenty of feathers.”)
samstag 20 uh 10.oktober ‘81 bremen stadthalle i
montag 20 uhr 12.oktober ‘81 münchen olympianhalle
dienstag 20 uhr 13.oktober ‘81 rüsselsheim walter-köbel-halle
ry cooder, wearing the week’s second-best hawaiian shirt
(from 1978’s antipodean tour poster)
oh, the first seriously sunny sunday of the year! the sidewalks are suggestive and the sun is smutty, but even the shade is soft-core. fleshy thoughts are in the air: it’s finally a good afternoon for listening to a lot of rolling stones.
(more here on their 1973 tour)
not an hour after posting that air video last night, i went to a nice dinner in midtown manhattan where a young frenchman wearing a white v-neck teeshirt under a blazer was sitting next to me. because it was on my mind, i asked him if he knew air. “air?” he said. “ah, yes—air. that is for, what do you say, teenagers.” i nodded, excused myself from the table, walked out of the restaurant, got on the subway, got off the subway, unlocked my apartment building’s front doors, walked up the stairs, unlocked my apartment, opened my computer, put on original motion picture score for the virgin suicides, and spent the next hour calming down by looking at mike mills’ moon safari album art, then his drawings of sammy davis jr and christopher robin from the only way out is through, the lipstick-heavy poster for five experimental music videos for blonde redhead (one of them being that good one with his wife, which i re-watched), then of course i finished off with his humans manifesto. i’m only joking, i nodded and told the young frenchman, “yeah, air, so stupid,” and complimented him on his blazer.
on the subject of jews and the grateful dead, i didn’t have a themed bar mitzvah party (a real missed opportunity) but i do remember picking out several way cool band posters to temporarily decorate the walls of the westchester restaurant where we celebrated my new manhood. this was exactly half my life ago. afterwards i put the posters up in my bedroom, and by far the best one was for the grateful dead, though it wasn’t this 1967 frightener. it was very nice and had multicolored bears on it that were singing, “goin’ down the road feeling bad.” i didn’t know that song, and come to think of it i didn’t know the grateful dead either, at all. i’m glad i didn’t have a mean older brother to point that out.
if i were the u.s. congress in 1974, i would have been a lot less concerned about the fashionably saucy cover of roxy music’s country life than that line in editions of you that warns out of nowhere about “too much cheesecake too soon.” what does that mean! and why is it followed by a line about old money? no one will ever know. it’s the most intimidating pastry-related lyric outside of r. kelly’s ”after cheesecake with all of your friends and family, who’s gonna front the bill? me.”
what jersey girl is to love songs, down by law is to jailbreak films. it includes not only tom waits in a hairnet, but the sweetest husband-and-wife slow dance to irma thomas known to man.
oh this wildly perfect framed zenyatta mondatta poster? no big whoop, just a little police something i picked up this weekend on the street from a scary looking guy for $3. if you’re over to my apartment and using the restroom please keep your eyes peeled.
if the beatles-on-itunes news doesn’t excite you—because, like all normal people, you already own the twelve beatles studio albums, plus magical mystery tour, plus maybe one of those anthology sets, and on top of that you’ve seen a hard day’s night and help! and magical mystery tour and yellow submarine, although maybe not michael lindsay-hogg’s strange 1970 documentary let it be—the obvious solution is to watch let it be. how else will you know exactly what yoko ono looked like when giggling at john’s joke about the queen saying no to pot-smoking f.b.i. members? it’ll be the best 81 minutes you spend online all day: click on the following for pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, pt. 4, pt. 5, pt. 6, pt. 7, pt. 8, and pt. 9. and then if you’re done with all those but unhappy, which is unlikely, you can go look at the exceptionally colorful, boozy and opiate-coated music videos that mr. lindsay-hogg directed for the beatles and stones.
