Two handy guides for you if you happen to have an interest in being a werewolf. Relatively straightforward, I’d say, indeed with a certain amount of ejaculating in public required, some of you may well be ahead of the game. Lycanthropy: A Handbook of Werewolfism by Frater D. Preliminary Exercises Before we get into the […]
The Mad, Sad World of the Boutique Blu-Ray There’s a recently released study which suggests 50% of US vinyl buyers don’t have a turntable to play them on. This study is wheeled out every year, but it’s a fun one that causes much teeth-grinding from many record-playing purists, and a nervous defence from those practising […]
It has been just under 25 years since the band Tad split up. Their final single, ‘Oppenheimer’s Pretty Nightmare‘, was released in 1999, and a collection of latter-day recordings and errant stray tracks, ‘Quick and Dirty‘ appeared in 2018. Since then, Tad (the man) formed the band Hog Molly, releasing one album, ‘Kung-Fu Cocktail Grip‘ […]
By any standards, the last band that you would expect to be still releasing new material in 2023 is Pere Ubu, yet here is their nineteenth long-player, ‘Trouble on Big Beat Street’. Angular, difficult, and not just apathetic to the mainstream but appalled by it, David Thomas and the six musicians accompanying him on these […]
David Rappaport was unquestionably one of Britain’s greatest actors of the 70s and 80s. Intelligent, witty, debonair and at home playing both good guys and bad, that there isn’t a physical tribute to him is scandalous. From the stage to hit television shows on both sides of the Atlantic to blockbuster movies, it was impossible […]
For some time now, my phone’s ringtone has been “Be a Clown” performed by Verne Langdon. There has never been an occasion when my phone has rung and the tune it plays has been appropriate. Not at the doctor’s, at work, at funerals, whilst shopping… it’s guaranteed to provoke weird looks and, for some reason, […]
Such is the reverence now given to Les Baxter and Martin Denny, it’s easy to forget that in many ways it was Arthur Lyman who defined the sound of exotica. Who else but a man born in Hawaii would introduce the sounds of distressed parrots and aroused frogs to a distinctly gentle form of jazz […]
In the rather overpopulated world of what is broadly described as ‘outsider music’, it’s true to say there are one or two frauds, or at least those who have been shoehorned in. Are The Shaggs outsiders? Perhaps it was challenging or even outrageous to insist your clearly tone-deaf daughters perform for the masses – of […]
In 1792, France was revolting; in America, George Washington sanded off his choppers for a second term as president; in England, Joanna Southcott, a farmer’s daughter from Devon announced herself as the Bride of Christ. Busy times for all. It’s easy to envisage cults existing in remote areas of America and pseudo-religions in Asia, with […]
This is what we know for certain about Schlitze Surtees, the sideshow performer – nothing. Not even his name. Actually, we can say that we know he wasn’t born Schlitze Surtees, so maybe that’s a start. Most likely born in The Bronx, New York around 1900 (some estimates suggest as early as 1882 but as […]
