Carl Abrahamsson

WWW.EDDA.SE – Great books on subjects that matter and matters that subject!

Sunday, February 16, 2014

That's sexploitation? To a degree, yes!

Something Weird Video has been the main supplier of fine cinematic sleaze for many decades now. Sadly, founder and main dynamo Mike Vraney died in January but the business continues as before, thanks to Vraney's family and friends. That's good news.

One of the final projects Vraney was involved in is a documentary called That's Sexploitation. A very fitting title, because that really is what it is: a swirling cavalcade of clips to illustrate the history of sexploitation cinema. Intercut with narration by Frank "Basket Case" Henenlotter and interview sequences with sleaze producer par excellence David F. Friedman (1923-2011, "the mighty monarch of exploitation").

Given this quite simple structure, you quickly understand that the film is not really a definitive documentary in any way. Actually it's more like an extended Something Weird-trailer (not unlike the opening section of all Something Weird releases), with the highly entertaining Friedman stories as the real gems. And although those stories are subjective and quite fragmented, they are still invaluable. I mean, who else is still alive today to tell the stories of the good old days?

We are taken on a wild and raunchy ride from the humble beginnings of loops, stag films, sex hygiene and instructional films, peep shows, sex- and drugs-crazes and fears, burlesque developments and integrations, nudie cuties, nudies, roughies and finally some softcore stuff before everything ends in the very early 1970s because of the emergence of hardcore porn. The end of a long and profitable era!

There are some remarkable flaws in this film though. Russ Meyer is mentioned only briefly in passing as the director of The Immoral Mr Teas (1959), and Andy Milligan equally briefly. There should be enough interesting characters and destinies in the history of sexploitation to make a film considerably more substantial than this.

But as an entertaining overview, That's Sexploitation works well. Friedman is/was funny, Henenlotter equally so (he really should have a TV show of his own), and the plethora of mind-boggling clips from movies that have to be seen to be believed creates an overall impression of psychotronic amazement. In that sense, it's a joyride.

I think maybe I'm too jaded, because what I enjoyed most with the film were the clips and photos of old cinemas... Anyway, watch this documentary and keep supporting Something Weird. Their preservation of this tittylating segment of American cultural history is worthy of many honors and commemorative statues. Preferably statues with big boobs!

That's Sexploitation, Something Weird Video, 2013.

A direct link to the THAT'S SEXPLOITATION! trailer.

WWW.EDDA.SE – Great books on subjects that matter and matters that subject!

Friday, February 14, 2014

Psychedelia: Quite A Trip!

Patrick Lundborg's massive tome Psychedelia – An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way Of Life has been out for a while now, and has received much praise and acclaim internationally. Totally in order. It's a well researched and well written book about a subject you could potentially approach from many different angles. Lundborg has chosen a scholarly and informative one and has also done the subject a great favor by looking at the big picture – chronologically as well as in terms of impact. Not an easy task.

Being the author of The Acid Archives, chronicling and cataloging psychedelic music from many decades, Lundborg is a world renowned expert in his field. To take the step into a much wider cultural-anthropological-chemical study of the same cataclysmic catalyst is brave. Very brave. Psychedelia is such an intelligent tour de force that any doubters can go sober up now. This book is perhaps the book to read if you want an initiated and coherent introduction to what it's all really about.

Not only do we get a journey through history and its many occurrences of psychedelic quantum leaps (and some mishaps too). There is of course also a heavy focus on Albert Hofmann's "problem child" itself: LSD. From initial clinical studies and experiments, over Tim Leary et al's anarchic-messianic exploits, to post-Learyean instigators, chemists, artists etc.

Opening a book with chapter titles like "The Philosophy of Hallucinations", "15.000 Years of Getting High", "Electric Tibet", "Head Shrinkers and Mind Expansion" and "The Future Is Psychedelic", to mention but a few, is like being drawn into a colorful vortex of human experimentation, audacity and optimism. And of course it is just that. Lundborg's project more than anything shows how deeply integrated the psychedelic experience has been (and still is) in the development of human culture.

The comparison with Eastern religions is not new by now, but here becomes contextualized in a broader sense than, for instance, was the case with Allan Watts and the general 1960s attitude. In sections like "Modernism and Mysticism", "Jessie Weston, Eleusis & Ezra Pound" and "Yeats, Theosophy & Peyote" (again, to mention but a few sections), Lundborg elegantly ties together many strains and attitudes that have helped form not only ancient history or 20th century modernism, but in equal part still vibrates before the presently budding future.

In this overview function we find the book's greatest merit (and it is very great indeed): to not only see chronological traces and patterns of (literally) mystical and consensus-erratic behavior, but also to put them in a wider context of necessary development.

In all, this is not just a good book among others. It feels very much like a definite and invaluable piece of work that will help future psychonauts as well as scholars to grasp a phenomenon/experience that is, paradoxically, almost intangible yet crucially essential to the health and wellbeing of mankind.

Patrick Lundborg: Psychedelia – An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way Of Life (Lysergia, Stockholm, Lhasa, Mojave, 2012)

WWW.EDDA.SE – Great books on subjects that matter and matters that subject!

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

New Musicks: Warpaint, The New Alchemy, Junip

Music... A pretty good thing. Recently, there have been a few albums that have caught my attention and been on heavy rotation here. Try them out for size. They just might fit.

Warpaint's self-titled album was released late January and is the anticipated follow-up to the glorious debut The Fool (2010) and some EP work in-between. I don't know what it is exactly but these LA girls create something undefined and totally beautiful in everything they do. It's psych for sure but not in any way traditionalist. There's also a loose slacker element in their output, but not in a crusty grunge kind of way. There's also a distinct longing for the UK 1980s, when Martin Hannett ruled supreme and everything was rough and elegant at the same time.

Intricate drumming, suave basslines, etheric guitar picks, licks and riffs and beautiful, almost angelic singing. That's the Warpaint package right there. I have no idea what the songs are about and it doesn't really matter. You want Warpaint because you want to step into their musical universe and the distinct atmosphere they weave together so well. It's a universe of melancholia and morose meanderings but it's so beautifully executed that you just want to hang on for as long as it lasts. Then you simply press Play again.

I'm not at all surprised that these brilliant girls have now made an even better album than The Fool. What surprises me is that girls actually have feelings like these. That's impressive!

If you nurture an interest in Warpaint, perhaps you should read my interview with their bass player Jenny right here?

The New Alchemy: Svensson and Lundberg.

The New Alchemy consists of Swedish rock icon Ebbot Lundberg (Union Carbide, The Soundtrack of Our Lives) and artist Per Svensson (White Stains, GOLD), together with American artist Clay Ketter and Swedish saxophone player Mats Gustafsson. Here, we're knee deep in psychedelic tradition-land with heavy fuzz and very challenged focus capabilities. It's like one big blob of slow music shot forth from the center of someone's temporarily monochrome kaleidoscopic vision.

On the Other Side of Light (Subliminal Sounds)is the follow up to 2009's album Organic Universe, and is considerably tighter, darker and less experimental. Ebbot's familiar voice works well in any kind of musical setting basically, and here probably connotes Frank Zappa in vibe more than any other reference I can dig up. Slow soundscapes and pulsating grooves with added topping of voices, sound effects and emotional reverbs. This is not a jolly Technicolor Dream but rather a dark and very late night trip when you're suddenly not really sure if you're ever going to leave your overdrive synesthetic experience that already feels like it's been going on forever. In that sense, there's a strong prog element here too (darkness, eerie improvs, dirt, slow grinds).

The title track could almost pass for a slower kind of The Soundtrack of Our Lives song, but here we find the differentiating fascination and value of production skills. This is not TSOOL's clinically democratic trad rock stuff but rather dense throbs, soft, organic, heavy in bass, faint in drums, and plenty of guitar driven emotions. Plus Ebbot's proto-rock-intonations, here numbed up/down as if on sedatives. It's groovy alright, but not at all in a peace-and-love-ish way.

Saxophone? Hmmm... Horrible instrument usually. Only Steve Mackay of vintage Stooges infamy got away with "blowing his horn" to extreme rock'n'roll. That's still a solid fact. But apart from the integration of "free jazz" vibes through Gustafsson's brass-coated asthma testing, this album is an impressive heavy duty psych-fest that passes with honors. Influences do leak through (The Doors The End in this case lurks behind the scenes) and on a good day we can call that paying respect or "paying the dues". Let this be a good day. On the Other Side of Light is a very good album indeed.

If you're interested in Ebbot Lundberg, perhaps you should read my interview with him (in Swedish)?

If you're interested in The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, perhaps you should read my (tear-eyed) review of their final concert ever?

Junip. Photo © Kiara Andreasson

Stepping back in time... I stumbled upon a classic album some months ago which has also since then been played "on repeat". I'm talking about José Gonzalez' project Junip. Their album Fields (2010) is such a masterpiece I'm really angry with myself I didn't catch it when it originally came out. I have certainly compensated for that by listening to this record many, many times now.

Very few-chordish simple pop, playful, innovative, beautifully arranged and produced. Swinging back and forth with Gonzalez' sensitive voice on top. Spellbinding simplicity. It really is a masterpiece.

Of course I have indulged in their most recent album too, Junip (2013), but unfortunately it doesn't cut the mustard for me at all. It seems Junip peaked with Fields. I hope for more to come though, because what they create together is intelligent and emotional pop of the very finest kind. And Fields is by far the best example of that – to date.

WWW.EDDA.SE – Great books on subjects that matter and matters that subject!

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Sleaze, please!

John Szpunar's hefty brick of a book Xerox Ferox: The Wild World of the Horror Film Fanzine takes you on a gloriously sticky memory lane trip to the golden era of Horror- and Sleaze film fanzines. It's massive (800 pages!), packed with interviews with writers and editors and creates a longing back to an era of a relentless will- and passion-driven love of movies. As such, an invaluable book.

Early 80s up until the internet buds of the early 90s. Postal networking and printed matter. The dawn and heyday of cassette culture and home video. VHS collecting and fanzine devouring. Tape trades and xeroxed xeroxes. Every little scrap of Entartete information and outsider esthetics was regarded as gold and jewels in a mainstream 1980s culture that was tasteless and truly horrible beyond belief. Sleazy diamonds in the rough buried deep in the pastel-colored and Stock-Aitken-Waterman-sounding fields of normality manure.

It's hard to describe what a passionate era this was. I was stuck in my own little spaceship in Stockholm, yet was in touch with a whole bunch of weird, similar-minded people. They all had some kind of cottage industry going, whether it was the illicit spreading of "cult" films or publishing fanzines about them. To be a consumer part of that psychotronic culture was an adventure and a schooling that I can still tap today. It was also a huge inspiration for my own fanzine attempts with Lollipop and Acts Of Interstellar Torture (1985-1988).

It goes almost without saying: the more extreme, the better. Gore- and splatter epics with non-existent budgets and non-existent morals (a great combination). Sexploitation and roughies laughable by the standards of the day, but you could sense how vile they had once been, only 10 to 20 years earlier. Monster movies, sex, violence, giallos, mondos, cannibals, sensationalism and cheap thrills conveyed by second (or third) generation VHS cassette copies, duplicated by manic sleaze hounds all over the world for the benefit of the likeminded. Outsider solidarity drenched in fake blood.

Those of us unfortunately not present on 42nd Street in New York or other Hell-hubs had to rely on the printed matter. Or xeroxed matter, rather. Cheap fanzines like Gore Gazette, Sleazoid Express and Fear of Darkness complemented the subscriptions to Fangoria and other slick magazines. There were reviews, interviews, retrospective articles, filmographies and unbelievable human destinies banged out on imperfect typewriters and then cheaply copied just for the hell of it. No financial gain possible, or even desired. Just a love of sharing that odd, offbeat, oscillating, human (all too human), loser, outsider culture.

John Szpunar's Xerox Ferox takes you right back to that ultra-creative vortex of gonzo publishing. It's a book that reveals how nerdy the scene actually was, but also how passionate it was – perhaps that's actually the same thing? A lot of the people interviewed in the book share trails: late night American TV and its B-movie horror fillers, the last throbbing era of grind house cinemas, Forrest Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, etc. It was indeed a generational phenomenon.

Some writers were tougher than others and the monsters of B-land were sometimes not enough – predominantly those writers blessed with access to real sinning and real sleaze. New Yorkers generally accepted the area around Port Authority and Times Square as disgusting areas of decay. But the sleaze hounds of course loved it. Not least for the cinemas that ferociously mixed without ever matching: porn, horror, art films, whatever. Cinemas decidedly not safe to enter, for many different reasons.

Sleazoid Express was seminal in this environment and both Sleazoid protagonists Jimmy McDonough and Bill Landis are interviewed in Szpunar's book. As is Stefan Jaworzyn of Shock Xpress. As is Jim Morton, who was instrumental in the groundbreaking west coast endeavor for RE/Search: Incredibly Strange Films. As is Chas Balun (A Deeper Shade of Red), Robin Bougie (Cinema Sewer) and Steve Puchalski (Slimetime). And many, many others.

Szpunar asks Jimmy McDonough what it was about the films of Milligan, Meyer, Sarno and Lewis that made the era so special and memorable:

McDonough: "They were handmade. When the budget is $1.50, the personality can't help but bleed through. As well as grimy reality. If you want to know what a certain year feels like, find an exploitation film from that time. You can smell the hot dogs. These days, slickness is available to everyone for that same $1.50. Not so exciting, if you ask me. But that's the way of the world. You can't go back. I'm just glad I was there to see some of it, even if it was only the death rattle."

McDonough's answer about the movies could equally well sum up the fanzine scene of those days. Obsessions and personality leaked through on every xeroxed page and made you, as a reader, want to indulge even further in whatever these people were writing about.

The internet changed a lot of course, for good and bad, and killed off the DIY printed matter endeavors. RE/Search's wonderful Incredibly Strange Films and Michael Weldon's The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film carried the torch onwards on a higher level and the interest as such didn't fade. Reality did, however, and 42nd Street being cleaned up in the early 90s became the best (worst!) symbol of the end of an era.

Through loving and intelligent endeavors like Szpunar's Xerox Ferox, those of us who remember the good old days can become vitalized again. I still have all of my VHS cassettes (probably close to 500 tapes) and now feel motivated to drag them out again. For those slightly younger who may think that VHS is a disease of sorts (in a way, it is), the book presents a great overview of a culture that was instrumental in presenting many forgotten films again. Thereby saving them not only from oblivion but also possibly from terminal extinction.

If the subject matter interests you, you might want to read my interview with Sleazoid Express' Bill Landis from 2005.

Xerox Ferox: The Wild World of the Horror Film Fanzine, by John Szpunar, Headpress, London 2013.

All material on this blog is copyright © Carl Abrahamsson, unless otherwise stated. The beautiful images from 42nd Street have been appropriated from various online sources. Please let me know if you own these images and feel their use here is not OK. Thanks.

WWW.EDDA.SE – Great books on subjects that matter and matters that subject!

Saturday, January 25, 2014

The uncommon sense of nonsense

"Do you remember how, when we were children, we'd leaf through picture books and, pretending we could read before the children older than us, fantasize about the images we saw there? Who knows, I thought to myself, perhaps unintelligible and alien writing could make us all free to once again experience those hazy childhood sensations. At the time, the quest for this new alphabet seemed to me to be the most urgent thing that had to be done." (Luigi Serafini)

So, finally, Luigi Serafini's masterpiece Codex Seraphinianus has recently been re-published by Rizzoli. This masterpiece of creative imagination has never been surpassed since its latest release in 1981. There is simply no other book like it. I don't think there ever will be either.

On page after page we can study exquisite color pencil drawings of weird warps of perception made by Italian architect, artist and designer Serafini between 1976 and 1978. Figurative beauty melts away into grotesqueries, ordinary things are rearranged into extraordinary, perspectives are skewed and screwed, colors are saturated to enhance extra dimensions... Hundreds of drawings get stuck in your mind, which reacts to each single one with a flashing question mark and a soft tilt of the entire perceptive system.

Close by the literally incredible drawings are writings in a language and alphabet entirely of Serafini's own making. It's a beautiful script which makes perfect sense in its own way. Of course, one becomes curious... What does it say? What is the meaning? But those kinds of petit-bourgeois angles become redundant already on page one. There is nothing to be understood here. Or everything. You can decide for yourself (I hope).

The mysterious impressions of such an ambitious project naturally got metaphysical problem-solvers started already after the first editions of the book... Is there perhaps a code in the Codex? Is there a hidden meaning? Comparisons with the Voynich Manuscript of the 15th century have been made, and speculations have been overflowing... In comparing the two as phenomena rather than as single books, it's not unlikely that Serafini has been inspired by the Voynich Manuscript. But that in itself says nothing of coherence or meaning in either volume. Which is probably a good thing.

Serafini himself discloses some of the genesis of the project in a booklet called Decodex (included in the book). As a 27 year old artist, he was making drawings of humans with strange prostheses and realized he needed some texts and captions to go with them. To get back to the childlike fascination and amazement when flipping through encyclopedias, he simply made up his own.

The idea is of course interesting. The execution is that of a master's. But, let's not forget that he himself also ascribes many of the ideas for both drawings and letters/sentences to a stray white cat that he took in at his apartment in Rome. The symbiosis with the cat was apparently instrumental in the creation of the book. Echoes of Lovecraft and Burroughs, anyone?

Petty provocations create petty responses. But a book such as Serafini's, besides being a truly magnificent work of art, is a penetrating provocation on so many sophisticated and subtle levels that I wouldn't hesitate to call it almost "corrupting". Not in any essentially "moral" way, but simply in how it so elegantly draws you into a world overwhelmingly alluring and attractive, yet also completely coercive and persuading in its relentless energy. It's very hard to leave the Codex Seraphinianus once you're inside. And why would one want to leave this remarkable universe?

In terms of creative mania, perhaps one could compare Serafini with Henry Darger or similar more pathological artists. But the comparison stops there, in the intensity and devotion to a massive and more or less incomprehensive oeuvre. Where Darger's legacy left us/the art world with a million pathetic and slackered infantilists, regurgitating the same baby-noir mannerisms over and over, Serafini's work is like a Leonardo da Vinci's for the imminent apocalypse.

He delves through flora, fauna, technology, the human being, construction, engineering and fantasy in an inimitable way – he might as well have illustrated a "real" flora and would have done a great job at it.

This brilliant perversion of figurative skill is the very essence of the art of the 21st century that will be deemed valuable in the future. Valuable, as in carrying an "impact", and not necessarily based on monetary worth. The more upheavals of the anticipated, the greater the possibility of healthy mutations in a stagnant, entropic western culture. Serafini is a master not only on detail level (each drawing, each sentence) but also on the bigger one (the book in itself is an artwork: an encyclopedia for those who strive to know everything and nothing in new ways). This psychedelic Magnum Opus stirs and jolts the sedated minds of complacent art consumers in ways that can perhaps (hopingly) open the door to a more vital sense of humor and wit on general levels.

So, what is it? Mere mind games in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp and other pun-driven brainiacs? Trip art for armchair psychonauts? Surrealism taken to a contemporary level? A nonsensical mockery of the rational? A celebration of human ingenuity taken out of utilitarian context? The questions are basically as many as there are pages in the book. And of course they don't have to be answered at all. Perhaps they shouldn't? It's quite enough to just enjoy the book. Let the images sink in and who knows...? Perhaps you too will morph into a new kind of being stemming from the pen and genius of Luigi Serafini?

Luigi Serafini: Codex Seraphinianus, Rizzoli, 2013.

WWW.EDDA.SE – Great books on subjects that matter and matters that subject!

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Handshakes and Mindquakes

Mere frat clubs or real deal-changers on the grand and global scale? Murky conspiracy strategists or beacons of individual liberty? Esoteric dreamers or intelligent architects of human development? The Feral House book Ritual America (by Adam Parfrey & Craig Heimbichner) presents a wonderful and quirky peek into a freemasonic world most of us can only fantasize about. Or... Perhaps you, dear reader, are a mason? Even so, this book is amazing in its abundance of radical and sensational(istic) tidbits and images from a world of secret handshakes and initiatory mindquakes.

Perhaps there is an inherent human need to be a part of an order structure, ie a collective with very set rules and regulations that are more concrete than those of society in general? If you have a structure like that, some esoteric bling to dazzle with and promises of something revelatory higher up on the initiatory ladder, you're in for success. The interesting thing about fraternal orders is that they often claim to be models of an ideal structure but quite often become overwhelmed with the ego-driven chaos and disorder emanating from the "real" outside world anyway.

Care to join the Shriners?

Freemasonry is especially interesting not only on this psychological level but of course also because "they" have really been an integral part of creating large chunks of modern history as we know it. The usual example given is the history of the USA, a country or phenomenon that simply wouldn't have existed without masonic engineering (and perhaps that's still the case). If we generalize and say that the USA is a masonic blueprint for the rest of the world and an experiment still in the making, then we have to seriously look at both the ups and downs so far. There are many of each, and we are presented with them both daily in the media. The greatest mistakes this far, from a strictly masonic perspective, have been constitutional upheavals or changes. The bedrock of the masonic presence and thought exists in the American constitution. When one messes with that, the nation as such no longer exists as a masonic experiment. What then remains...?

For good or bad, the republican, democratic and individualistic energies have all been mason-driven for the past 250 years, both in America and Europe.

But what happens when things are in (masonic) place? When there's an existential platform to build one's life on in liberty and, most often, peace? Then the fraternal aspects become more social, visible and generally nepotistic of course. This is where Ritual America comes in handy. It's not a heavy study or analysis of masonic history, themes or ideas as such. It's rather a highly entertaining volume of ephemera and freeze-frames from a wonderfully bizarre piece of American/Western history. Where masonry has always been a conservative and esoteric business/endeavor in Europe (the Scottish & Swedish rites, for instance), its sections in America have taken on a multitude of expressions (with ditto costumes and hats) not only in masonry proper but also in the kook contingent (Ku Klux Klan, Shriners, Elks et al).

Shriners showing off a good fraternal spirit in style...

It's no secret that freemasonry (and its many offshoots) is an integrated part of the civilized world. The conspiracy buffs' paranoid delusions about global control via masonic orders must be taken with a huge pinch of salt though. The general consensus among freemasons I've talked to in different countries is that there is a strong need for new blood and influx. The organizations have become static, stagnant and geriatric. When young people prefer to get their networking kicks and possible nepotistic fringe benefits online, it's hard to compete.

It's no secret either that freemasonry, just like other more minor occult orders and groups, attracts oddballs and crazies. Most often perhaps just dreamers steeped in a lore and mythology of ancient teachings and magical secrets, happy and satisfied to pass through psychodramatic rituals together with equally romantic "brothers". Considering how many people are masons in the world today, no wonder that there are also unwanted or renegade expressions. From earlier offshoots with even more goofy, humorous and perhaps cosmic theories (the Benevolent Order of Monkeys, the Ancient Order of Froth Blowers, the Supreme Order of White Rabbits et al) to concrete and contemporary criminals like mass murderer Anders Breivik (who was immediately expelled from the Norwegian freemasons after his assassination spree in 2011).

Serious study would likely show that influx into masonry has been greatest during times of general depression. When people become angst-ridden because of existential movements beyond their personal control, they look for solutions that are safe and solid and integrate the individual in an environment that promotes mutual assistance and gradual self-aggrandizement – real or illusory.

Hollywood tough guy John Wayne receiving his masonic 33°.

"... Sometimes the richest and most exotic aspects of the fraternal brotherhoods can be seen in personal snapshots, newspapers, magazines, and period scrapbooks – the extraordinary once passed over as ordinary and, to those who opposed the uncoventional, perhaps the profane was made mundane." (Parfrey & Heimbichner, from the book's introduction)

As with many books from Feral House, this literally great tome serves as an introduction to the kooky, sinister and oddball side of things. Packed with incredible illustrations, quotes, illuminating passages and much fodder for thought, Ritual America sums up a part of Western culture that is usually either kept unnecessarily secret by the protagonists or unnecessarily exposed by the antagonists. The truth usually lies somewhere in between. Ritual America is an entertaining introduction to that sphere of strange inbeteweenness.

Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society – A Visual Guide, by Adam Parfrey and Craig Heimbichner, FeralHouse, 2012.