Planet Mars was the biggest, brightest object in the morning sky. Planet Earth and this big red rock are drifting apart for the next generation, instead of coming close enough for an interplanetary handshake every two years, like they've done for the last little while.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from tiny Tamworth in Staffordshire, UK; Louth, Ireland (Gotta be Eavan Brennan!); Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Dundee City, UK; Madrid, Spain; Salt Lake City, Utah (Searching for Wanda Day. I hope they Google'd Theater X-Net for her pictures); Cincinnati, Ohio (Bootsy Collins is doing his James Brown Tribute Concert TOMORROW night) and finally Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Reading about Ringo Starr and Frank Frazetta.)

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: A long day yesterday at the Hockaday Museum of Art -- when we do a group show, it takes a while for everyone to come in and get their work. We cleared Donna Gans' gallery in one afternoon, though! I also had to take a couple of older paintings over to the Abbrescia Gallery for cleaning/restoration -- work that's done by the square inch.

REAL Books: H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath -- a romp through his Dunsany-esque cosmos, with Randolph Carter in the role of a conquering hero instead of as a victim of blasphemous curiosity. Read it online HERE. My friend Brian Aldiss calls Lovecraft "an atrocious writer," and Colin Wilson's opinion was the same -- it makes me laugh that both of them wrote books and stories expanding on his themes. Brian even won an award for The Saliva Tree, which owed much to The Color Out of Space. Aldiss' vivid portrait of the Suffolk marshes was far beyond Lovecraft's skills, but the Providence recluse was undeniably able to weave a certain literary spell.


The Two Queen Azuras
(Click the pic for a better view)
I'm in the midst of updating Spitfires of the Spaceways. Here's a comparison of Alex Raymond's Azura -- Witch Queen of Mongo from the Flash Gordon comic strip in 1935 (above), and Azura -- Queen of Magic from Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars in 1938 (below).

H. P. Lovecraft was still alive and writing when Alex Raymond drew Mongo's Queen Azura as a hot but sadistic femme fatale who outright lusted after Flash. The Martian Azura was frigidly cruel in Beatrice Roberts' portrayal a few years later. Censorship was extremely powerful in 1938, so this Saturday morning serial was as sexually repressed as a traditional East Indian movie. Ms. Roberts entered two Miss America Pagents a decade earlier, and won the Evening Gown competition both times. She was noted for affairs with Robert (Believe It Or Not) Ripley and Louis Mayer, so she possessed a sensual dimension that nobody would have ever guessed from THIS role. Raymond worked from live models after Flash Gordon achieved success, so there were people who actually sported the physiques he delineated in his classic Space Opera.

Light snow falling at 10 PM last night. A Deer meandered through one of the neighborhood alleys, all lit up by Christmas lights -- GOOD! -- I saw it in plenty of time while I was driving on an icy side street.

Sitemeter Sez: A visitor from Danbury, Connecticut was searching for Joss Stone -- I speak well of her. I like a singer who is known primarily for singing, rather than anything else.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Changing shows at the Hockaday Museum of Art, and getting another one ready to tour the state. Goodness, gracious, CRATE scads o' pictures!

Media Watch: I found myself thinking about Dusty Springfield after responding to the Joss Stone search (above). She passed away a few years ago from cancer, after reviving her singing career to some extent. The first great wave of Progressive Rock, which started around 1967, began to put her stardom on the proverbial shelf in the USA. Her stable of British Pop Singers who raced each other up and down the charts eaked out a few more successes with Petula Clark, and Lulu's solitary American hit. Dusty Springfield even scored with Son of a Preacher Man, but Windmills of your Mind, although it was both played on the radio and designated a hit by the industry, was an example of the middle-brow schlock which made my generation turn away from Springfield and her stablemates. (Pet Clark sailed on the Titanic of Finian's Rainbow into Pop Oblivion.)
OK, so I'm telling my view of her story in reverse -- for many years I counted myself a Dusty Springfield fan. I loved certain singles of hers, and wore out my copy of her Greatest Hits album. I thought it was hilarious the way she played the Pop Star game, first as a faux-Folk act with The Springfields, wearing blue denim, a wiglike bob, and singing Silver Threads and Golden Needles, then sporting St. Laurent frocks, a blond bouffant and gobs of masscara after she made a little money, or her management did. Patti Labelle and Nona Hendryx called her "authentic" and "approachable" in their tribute on the BBC award show, and she may have been in private, but she was all calculated Show Business to the American Public -- one cog in an international music-making machine that included P.J. Proby, Adam Faith, Cilla Black, Sandi Shaw, young saxophonist/bandleader David (Bowie) Jones, and dozens of others. Progressive Rock dealt in a lot of hype too, but it pushed London's Denmark Street syndicate aside for a little while.
Hmm -- I should say which Dusty singles appealed to me the most, besides two of the three listed above: Wishing and Hoping (Great Bacharach & David tune, plus a dandy arrangement stolen from them); I Only Want to be With You (I wish all Pop Candy tasted this good -- Samantha Fox and Annie Lennox have also covered this song exuberantly); You Don't Have To Say You Love Me (Magnificently overdone re-worded Italian schmaltz -- greasy broken-hearted cholesteral for the ears. The song was shopped all over Europe. I heard an earlier version, sung by a man, in an Italian James Bond spoof, running on a silly Dick Tracy device which resembled a modern cell-phone video screen); The Look of Love (Bacharach & David again, with a hoarse, somewhat squeezed vocal. I was better pleased by Sergio Mendes' version a few years later -- I preferred hearing Springfield's voice as a trumpet more than a flute.)

Funky News: (from Bootsy Collins' MySpace site)
Say it Loud, an Instrument 4 every Child!
That is what I feel Mr. James Brown really wanted for our creative Artists and Workers of our land. That is one reason why we are honoring him this Sat. Dec. 22nd -- show starts at 8:00PM. Here are some of the Players that will Pee on the show, BucketHead, Triage, FreekBass, IceCream, Lil' Boosie, Chuck D, The Soul Generals -- James Brown's band featuring his son Daryl on guitar, Tommy Davidson & Michael Colyar the Comediens, Danny Ray -- James Brown 's personal MC for the last 50 years.
Vicky Anderson & the Bobby Byrd Band, DJizzle, Zion Planet 10, all the City Officials, James Browns Daughters Deanna Brown, Venisha Brown who looks just like him an will sing and dance like her Dad on the set -- to close out the show the Original JB's.
Rhythm Section: Jab'o & Clyde the funky drummers -- and they brought Catfish Collins and myself Bootsy Collins out of P-Tirement especially for this show. We have to do this for the greatest entertainer of our time for me, maybe because he picked me to play Bass with him when I was just 17 years old! My momma said "Bootsy can only go if you takes his brother Catfish," so here we are now giving our King of King Records his props.
If anybody is interested in coming and or helping out go to:
www.madisontheateronline.com for more details.
You can also stop by www.bootsycollins.com
Hope to see all my funkateers there.
They came, We funked um!
Bootsy!!!


(Lower Left Corner) John (Jabo) Starks was James Brown's tireless "go to" drum-master through the late 60's and into the mid 70's. Clyde Stubblefield, who calls himself "The Funky Drummer," EARNED his title by performing the Class-A solo on Cold Sweat in 1967. When that same track was re-used in the 90's for Sinead O'Connor's I'm Stretched On Your Grave, he was quoted in Rolling Stone as saying "... (Brown) just gave drummers Hell!" Time is a healer, and it is good to see them
playing together in honor of their old boss,
who died almost a year ago.

Snow business this morning! Light and non-sticking in the valley, but deeper and dangerous all around us.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Redmond, Wahington; Jamaica, New York and Concord, North Carolina.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!





Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: All that stuff is going to come DOWN at Hockaday Museum of Art -- Seems like just eight weeks ago when we put it all UP. I'm not complaining, it is GOOD that we install over a dozen shows a year. The college's Honors Symposium is sketched out for next year: Lessons Learned: The Role of Humanities in a Free Society -- Ivan scheduled a variety of events concerning History, Literature, Religion, Art & Design, Poetry, Ethics, and Music.

Media Watch: I saw some more of that odd BBC awards show from last year, which I mentioned earlier on my blog. Singer Joss Stone was calm, professional, and delightful in her tribute to the late Dusty Springfield. The finale featured George Martin conducting the second side of Abbey Road with Queen's drummer Roger Taylor as the "Spotlight" performer. There were some excellent guitarists recreating the solos, and two young singers, male and female, doing lead vocals. A choir solidified the voices, and an orchestra held down the back, as in the original record. Mr. Taylor was VERY busy playing through the WHOLE thing, which was something that Ringo Starr never had to do.
Ringo used to be slagged for his musicianship, even at the height of the Beatles' popularity. It was never fair. I'll bear witness to two occasions. One was George Harrison's Concert for Bangledesh, where he matched studio ace Jim Keltner stroke for stroke. The second was Roger Taylor's obvious work and effort in duplicating Ringo's one and only bit of recorded "flash" during The End, where everything is held together by his distinctive bass-heavy drums and easy (for him) cymbal tirades in between the hard strokes. It was an effective round of skins that set up McCartney's histrionics well, with some much-needed humor. Mr. Taylor's own dynamics were NEVER that mischievous. Ringo's style was inimitable, and part of the Beatles' success, in that his warm, disarming personality showed up in his playing as well as the rest of what he did in the group. Those great records would have lacked a particularly charming vibe if he hadn't been there.
No elite drummer, or studio wonk that I'm aware of had anything like Ringo's aura -- Ginger Baker would have withered beneath the onslaught of those three Liverpudlian egos on the front line, Kenny Jones might have shared Pete Best's fate, since he largely "sat back there." Notice how the Rolling Stones flourished with unflashy but STRONG Charlie Watts on the throne. The study of group dynamics is such an inexact thing!


Make Beautiful Hair Blecch!
Or should I say Ringo in the Eye of the Tiger(s)? The Beatles were so popular the media even made money laughing at them. Mad Magazine helped revive the artistic career of Frank Frazetta in 1964, who had worked for Mad's Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein ten years previously. He'd recently left the employ of Al (L'il Abner) Capp, and was trying to pay his bills working for legendary tightwad Donald A. Wollheim, painting Edgar Rice Burroughs covers (background). Many well-heeled customers sought Frazetta's services when this portrait of Ringo Starr (foreground) made such a "splash." I also think those hot-selling Burroughs reprints helped attract interest too -- one out of every thirty paperbacks sold that year were by E.R.B.