Strange book and comic book covers

Today's post is on strange and bad book and comic book covers.

Here are three from

http://punkrockpenguin.net/waste/amuse/badcovers

These look like good candidates for the Museum of Bad Art.







A bizarre comic book cover:



http://my-retrospace.blogspot.com/2008/06/bad-comic-book-covers.html


and...






http://comiccoverage.typepad.com/comic_coverage/worst-covers-ever/

The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices

The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, now closed, contained over 250 items. Some of these are now on display at the Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul.

Here are three devices from the collection.

The Battle Creek Vibratory Chair:


http://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/k-chair.htm




This is from around 1900, and was created at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, directed by Dr. John Kellogg, of Corn Flakes fame. It was designed to stimulate intestinal peristalsis, and cure back pain and headaches. it looks about as comfortable as an electric chair.

The Radium Ore Revigitator:


http://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/revig.htm


From 1925, the idea behind this was many health problems stemmed from "denatured' water lacking an essential ingredient : radioactivity! A little radium was the ingredient needed to keep you healthy. Um, not exactly.


Here is another painful looking device, the Prostate Gland Warmer, "designed to stimulate the abdominal brain".




http://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/images/1918lg.jpg


Here is Bob McCoy, curator of the museum, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1998)



Many more videos can be found at the museum's You Tube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MuseumofQuackery

Some great images from Flickr

One of my favorite websites is PCL Link Dump.

http://easydreamer.blogspot.com/

There are great new links there every time I check it out. It's where I found a link to Steve Chasmar's Flickr page>

http://www.flickr.com/photos/opiummuseum/

Here are a few great images from his photostream:

An anti-opium illustration from China, circa 1930

http://www.flickr.com/photos/opiummuseum/3653674430/in/set-72157601035562361/




RSROA is the Roller Skating Rink Operators Association.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/opiummuseum/3524130545/in/set-72157601032697276/


From Burma:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/opiummuseum/1413743652/in/set-72157606864662128/


and my favorite:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/opiummuseum/3703499622/

Abner Jay, one-man band

http://swayingwires.blogspot.com/2009/07/abner-jay.html

Abner Jay was a unique figure in American music. He was a one-man band, playing banjo, guitar, cymbals, and harmonica. His music is a mix of folk and blues with a unique "outsider " element, that's hard to describe.

Born in Georgia, Jay was a member of Silas Greens Minstrels in the 1930's, and led the WMAZ Minstrels , who appeared on Macon radio in the 1940's and 50's. He then toured the country, traveling in a small portable home. He sold recordings that appeared on his own label, Brandie Records. Jay died in 1993. Some of his recordings have been reissued on CD.

An informative blog post on Jay:

http://surenuffnyesido.blogspot.com/2009/03/abner-jay-true-story-of-abner-jay.html

Here is a reminiscence about Jay and a comment by Jay's daughter Brandie. Unfortunately, the audio link is broken.

http://waxidermy.com/?p=2191


Abner Jay at the Grassroots Festival, 1993




Links to a couple Abner Jay songs:

http://purpleheadphones.blogspot.com/2007/01/abner-jay.html

Historic menus

Restaurant menus can be interesting for their artwork, general design, and as a historical artifact. It's interesting to look at prices, unusual items, and different cultural sensibilities. I'm going to start with five menus for this post.

A special game dinner help to honor president Theodore Roosevelt, the Bozanta Tavern, Hayden Lake, Idaho, 1909


Menu details from a reception for the International Hotel Alliance by French government officials:

http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/library/collections/menus/menu-images.html?lm_menuid=909140


More menu details can be found here:

http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/library/collections/menus/menu-images.html?lm_menuid=926104

Check out the other great menus from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.

http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/library/collections/menus/detail.html?id=909140

Three from the Colorado Menus Collection:

http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Library/SpecialCollections/Colorado/Menus.html

Easter Dinner at the Alamo Hotel, Colorado Springs, 1895:






Drink all your milk and get a free lollipop at the Holiday Inn Hotel. (children's menu, 1970?)



Some typical 1950's menu items with typical 1950's prices - just don't get drunk or rowdy at the Holland House in Golden. (1958)





The complete menu can be found here:

http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Library/SpecialCollections/Colorado/menus/hollandhousemay1958.htm

The Museum of Bad Art

I thought a good place to start a series of posts on outsider art would be the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA).

The Museum was established in 1993 by Scott Wilson. It started when Wilson found a painting in the trash. His friends Jerry Reilly and Marie Jackson wanted the painting, and decided to exhibit it, along with another painting, in their basement. The basement museum grew, and eventually moved to the basement of theater in Deedham Massachusetts. A second museum was later in another theater basement in Somerville, another Boston suburb.

The museum's purpose is not to collect art that's kitschy (such as velvet Elvis paintings), but paintings and sculptures that are a serious attempt at good art, but have failed in a way that's truly distinctive and noteworthy albeit due to sheer awfulness. It's reminiscent of the best of the "song-poem" records discussed in an earlier post. The paintings come from the trash, thrift stores, and donations.


Here is "Lucy in the Field With Flowers", the painting that started MOBA. The painting was identified by Susan Lawlor, who read a newspaper article about MOBA, as being her grandmother, Anna Lally Keane.


"Peter the Cat"



"Juggling Dog in a Hula Skirt"
"Inauguration Day, 1961"


All pictures are from the MOBA website.

http://www.museumofbadart.org/index.php


A tour of MOBA:



An ABC Australia story on MOBA: (embedding disabled)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQJ6w9q3zVo

The Wikipedia post on MOBA is excellent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Bad_Art

The wonderful world of vintage paperbacks

In addition to collecting records, for many years I collected vintage paperbacks from the 1940s , 50s and 60s. I collected these largely or their artwork, although there were many, particularly by "Noir" writers such as Jim Thompson and David Gaddis that were well worth reading . There were others I liked for their bizarre plots, poor writing, or because of the way they sensationalized issues of the time , such as juvenile delinquency.


Here are some great covers from the golden age of paperback art.

Three from the website "Good Girl Art"

http://www.goodgirlart.com/gallery.html



Williamson was a prolific science fiction writer with a PH.D. in English who taught for many years at Eastern New Mexico State University.





Brown was one of the great writers of the vintage paperback era. He was primarily a writer of science fiction and mysteries.






The early works by writers who later became well known sometimes started out as paperback originals. The first edition of Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan" was released in 1959. The first hardback edition didn't come out until 1961.






Frances Crane was a mystery writer, who wrote a series of novels featuring the exploits of Pat and Jean Abbott. She wrote regularly for the New Yorker, and had an interesting life. She lived in Nazi Germany for several years, and was eventually expelled for her views.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Crane




The cover of an early Charlie Chan novel.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16007871@N00/1270631622/

Ephemeral Films: Jim Morrison gets rejected at Florida State University; The Prelinger Archives

The Prelinger Archives were established in 1983.They are a collection of "ephemeral films", including home movies and educational films. The Library of Congress acquired them in 2002. Over 2000 of the 60,000 films in the collection are available online through the Internet Archive. I'm going to be featuring these films from time to time . It's an amazing and very varied collection.

I'm going to start however,with an clip of a promotional film from Florida State University. An archivist looking at some of the films in their archives a couple years ago realized that the young man in the film who gets rejected from FSU was played by Jim Morrison, who was a student there at the time

Here is the clip with Morrison.




A link to the entire film:

http://www.floridamemory.com/photographiccollection/videofilm2/video.cfm?vid=22


From the Prelinger archives:

An amateur film of the 1941 Mardi Gras week activities - silent, and in color. It's all well worth watching; the Mardi Gras parade coverage starts at about 5:30 into the film.



A 1953 film on auto safety: "A Cool Hot Rod"



From 1928, a silent film: "Teeth: A Film Lesson in Health and Hygiene"



A 1946 etiquette film: "Arranging the Tea Table"



A 1962 animated film from Bell Labs- "A Missile Named Mac" - a Cold War film about guided missiles that never mentions nuclear weapons or war.

First Disney post - Disneyland opens

As often happens, I was looking up information for a potential post, and was sidetracked in an interesting way.

Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955 to a specially invited group of guests, and to the public a day later. The special opening was plagued by multiple problems, including heels sinking into melted asphalt due to the excessive heat, food shortages, water fountains with no water, drink stands that had run out of drinks, broken rides, etc.





One of the most interesting things about opening day was how scarce Mickey and Minnie Mouse were..Later to be come the iconic Disney figures, they appear in the coverage only briefly in the parade, and for three minutes towards the end of the event.

Here are a very different looking Minnie and Mickey Mouse.



The highlights of opening day were broadcast on an ABC special. I'm not sure how many of you will want to watch it due to it's length (It's well over an hour long) it drags in places, but overall it's really worth watching. It's filled with bloopers, as live coverage from multiple vantage points was fairly primitive at that time. Numerous celebrities appear, including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr, and Gale Storm .There are three hosts for the show: Bob Cummings, Art Linkletter and.... "Ronnie" Reagan.



You can link to the rest of the segments from here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf2TMwtCUr4&NR=1

Martha Washington and Educational Currency

This will probably be my last post until Sunday, since I'm working on an article I need to finish.

When I was growing up I collected coins. I bought a few, but most of my collection consisted of coins I found in change, or got from family members. Every time I saw my uncle I would always ask him if I could "check his coins". It became a running joke with us, and I always asked him that long after I stopped collecting.

I discovered a few years ago the world of U.S. paper money. I've never collected this myself, since most of the really desirable currency is really expensive, but I've seen a couple collections of it. It's filled with wonderful engraving, particularly the paper money of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Those of us in the United States see $1 bills with George Washington's picture every day, but what amazed me was discovering an 1886 $1 bill with Martha Washington's picture on it.





The 1896 series of "Educational Currency" is considered to be the height of U.S.money design. The bills were issued in $1, $2 and $5 denominations. Here are the fronts of the $1 and $2 bills. For the $5 bill, and the backs of all three bills, check the Wikipedia article, which provides a good description and discussion of the meaning of the bills.. George and Martha both appear on the backs of all three bills.






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_Series

This is a good summary of the history of educational currency.

http://www.harrybassfoundation.org/curintro.asp

Song -Poems

"Song poems" have been a favorite musical genre of mine, since I discovered them years ago on a collection called "Beat of the Traps: MSR Madness Volume 1"


Song poem recordings are roughly analogous to the vanity publishing industry, where anything you write, and are willing to pay to have published, will be accepted by the publishing company. Owners of song-poem labels would place ads in the back of comic books, tabloids etc. to send in your poems. Some potential customers would send in music as well, though usually they would just send lyrics. No matter how poor, strange or unmarketable the lyrics were, the customer would get a letter saying that that their submission was excellent and potentially a hit. For a fee the company would press up a small quantity of records, and promise to promote them,although records were never properly promoted since the likelihood of the record actually becoming a hit was near zero. None of the vast number of song-poems out there has ever become a hit.


Once the deal is made, the music is quickly composed,arranged and recorded. The musicians on the recordings are often top-notch studio musicians, since they are recording music they haven't really rehearsed or in some cases have never seen before. The vocalist often hasn't even read the lyrics until he or she is singing them. Some fit broadly into another genre, such as the disco song poem "Jimmy Carter Says Yes", but others seem to sound like nothing except for other song poems. Most song poem recordings have insipid and banal lyrics and aren't worth hearing, but there are a number I love either because they have totally bizarre lyrics, ideas, and subject matter in combination with the hard to describe music.

PBS made a pretty good documentary on song poems called "Off the Charts" The film includes an interview with Gene Marshall ,who is featured on countless song poem records. Marshall worked with a number of successful musicians, including Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. A song poem recording session is included.in the film. The highlights of the film are the interviews with several writers of song poems. None of the people l interviewed seem overly concerned that their records didn't sell; they are happy just have their songs recorded, The movie is touching; sad and funny in places. It's a tribute to the human spirit, and well worth watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOqn-I5u1MY


Here are several song poem recordings:

A Gene Marshall recoding with indescribable lyrics/ "We are the men counting sheep... we're not Little Bo Peep..."




Gene Marshall - "Jimmy Carter Says Yes"




Rodd Keith was considered the best song poem performer. He was extremely talented, and eccentric, and had major substance abuse issues. he either fell or jumped from an overpass onto the Hollywood Freeway in 1974. Rodd's son, Ellery Eskelin, is featured in "Off the Charts" and wrote this article about his dad.

http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/Rodd.html

Rodd Keith - Space



Rodd Keith - "Like the Lord Said"

One of the few song-poem records collectible for it's musical value, it's a major "Northern Soul" collectible




WFMU's Beware of the Blog has posted many the song poems that used to be on the American

Song-Poem Music Archive

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/02/songpoem-archived-music-volume-1.html

A good overview of song poems from the American Song-Poem Archives

http://www.songpoemmusic.com/what_is.htm

The Enchanted Highway

I love the "Enchanted Highway ".Gary Greff , a teacher and principal, began building a series of giant roadside metal sculptures along a 32 mile stretch of highway north of his hometown of Regent , a small town in western North Dakota, in order to promote the town as a tourist attraction. The sculptures include "Geese in Flight", which at at 110 feet tall and 154 feet long is the worlds largest metal sculpture.

I've driven along the Enchanted Highway. There are seven sculptures in all; one every few miles. I kept wondering what someone would think if they just happened to drive by, and knew nothing about the project.

I love the "Pheasants on the Prairie" sculptures.When you drive through the back roads of western North Dakota, you see pheasants everywhere, often sitting on the road.




"The Tin Family" is also wonderful. These sculptures are 23, 44, and 45 feet tall.






http://www.enchantedhighway.net/