Harold von Braunhut – born plain old Harold Nathan Braunhut – was one of the greatest marketing geniuses of his age…possibly of any age. Taking snake oil to brave new pastures, he was the Emperor of Comic Book ads. He created dozens upon dozens of crackpot novelties, available for only a handful of coins. Yet, despite […]
With recent collections springing up covering Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, it’s no surprise that Righteous now turn their attention to Les Baxter. So, where does Les fit into the exotica landscape? Well, Les is the exotica landscape. He started it, built the roads it still travels on and wrote many of the themes which […]
New Documentary Looks to Shed Some Light on The Darkness Here’s your timeline: 2002 – The Darkness are unsigned 2004 – The Darkness have sold over one million copies of their debut album 2006 – The Darkness split up ‘Welcome to the Darkness’, the long in gestation documentary on the band, looks to fill in […]
Thee Headcoats’ Classic 1990 Album Gets a Well-Deserved Reissue from Damaged Goods Some 33 years ago, when the Earth was young and the future held nothing but honey and peacocks for us all, Sub Pop released Thee Headcoats‘ ‘Heavens to Murgatroyd, Even! It’s Thee Headcoats (Already)’ a grammar-packed album which was doubtless already their umpteenth […]
When The Alarm Clock Rings – A Compendium of British Psychedelia 1966-1969 The impression you get from talking heads and social media is that “if only such-and-such were released on vinyl, I’d definitely buy it”. The truth, as many labels saddled with even modest runs of niche (and sometimes not so niche) boxes of unsold […]
Lost Scores in Genre Films It took an awfully long time but it’s fair to say that composers for film scores are now given the same respect as their equivalents in the classical world, with several breaking out into becoming something approaching a brand. But many battles have been fought and lost along the way […]
Founded in 1939, Ben Cooper Inc. was the manufacturer of choice for children who demanded the very latest in Halloween fashion. So dazzling and far-ranging were their choice of costumes and masks that it blinded not just children but parents into accepting incredibly flammable, unrealistic plastic junk into being worn year in, year out for […]
The Rubettes – The Singles 1974-1977 (Cherry Red Records) As of mid-2023, The Rubettes have had a total of 32 band members, putting them on a par with the funk conveyer belt, Funkadelic. To make sense of their lineage would be an article in itself and would be a miserable experience for all involved, not […]
John Eckhardt, Jr., known as Johnny Eck, was born in Baltimore, Maryland at 622 North Milton Avenue in 1911. One of twins, unlike his brother, Robert (and their elder sister by fourteen years, Caroline), was born with only half a body due to a condition called sacral agenesis, a rare birth defect affecting the development […]
Little evokes as eye-watering a Proustian rush as images of Waddington’s Horror Top Trumps. Despite my best efforts, I have not been able to ascertain the artist of the two packs of cards released in the 1970s, their felt-tip pen work now sadly attributed to ‘anonymous’. It was a German company, Dubreq, who first devised […]
