Songs THE CRAMPS Taught Us

LUX & IVY’S FAVORITES

I can’t recommend these FREE DOWNLOADS too highly!*

Here’s the link;

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/02/lux-and-ivys-favorites-mp3s.html

          Even though Atomic Boogie Radio has bombed, I am still trying to find a way to shove weird (but great!) music down your throat.  

          When my family was celebrating Easter, I mentioned to my niece’s fiancé that I was starting my vacation, and wished I could find some big, lavish boxed set of CDs to listen to on my two weeks off. Josh (that’s his name) suggested I download LUX & IVY’S FAVORITES (which I hadn’t heard of) off the internet. What a perfect suggestion!

          Lux Interior and Poison Ivy Rorschach were the leaders of the great punk / garage rock / psycho-billy band The Cramps. (Lux died a few years back, doubly tragic because these two were obviously true soul mates.) It seemed they devoted their lives to collecting wild, ultra- obscure old rock ‘n’ roll records. They gave frequent, lengthy interviews and seemed to drop a record name and recommendation in practically every sentence.

          Thank heavens some obsessive fan has tracked down practically every record they’ve mentioned in those interviews and complied them into a series of eleven downloadable collections.

          If you love rock ‘n’ roll, you’ve gotta hear this stuff!

          As The Cramps used to say, Stay Sick!!!

* Normally I wouldn’t say anything, but since this Blog is connected to a very G Rated comic strip, I guess I need to be an old fuddy duddy and mention that the collections do contain a couple (hilarious!) utterly filthy R&B songs – and NOT in the usual double entendre style – these can only be taken one way!      

ATOMIC BOOGIE RADIO goes Bye Bye

          As of April 30^th, ATOMIC BOOGIE RADIO expires and goes to heaven. I know it didn’t last very long. We were going to put five more hours of stuff on it this weekend, but during last week’s show we were so disappointed we just decided not to bother any more.

          The website it appeared through is called LOUDCASTER. The main thing they do is allow customers to upload MP3s and assign them to playlists which their service then plays back over their website at a time scheduled by the customer. BUT THEY CAN’T EVEN GET THAT RIGHT! They always dropped out songs, or played them back in the wrong order. I know that probably doesn’t sound that serious, but it meant a lot to us to have things presented IN THE WAY WE WANTED! If listeners didn’t like it, OK, we at least would have been allowed to try it our way and fail doing it the way we wanted.

          For example, last week’s show, for tax week, was called “The Money Program”. All the tracks for two hours were about money. After The Beatles’ “Taxman”, we had scheduled a National Lampoon parody of an H&R Block commercial. We had six of these H&R Block parodies that were scheduled to turn up at various times throughout the first hour, creating a running gag about taxes. LOUDCASTER just dropped all of them! We had two songs about money trees – “Money Tree Blues” by Willie Dixon, followed by “Money Tree” by Jumpin’ Bill Carlisle. They moved the Carlisle song to later in the show, no longer playing up the thematic link between the two songs. The end result was just a random bunch of songs about money with no other continuity and displaying virtually NO SENSE OF HUMOR! We had about 50 hours of programs all worked out, and we thought they were pretty clever and entertaining, but LOUDCASTER edited and resequenced all the cleverness out of everything we’ve tried so far, so we quit!.



Don't Forget Kozmo!

04/15/12 This week on Atomic Boogie Radio

PROVIDING FREE ENTERTAINMENT ON TAX DAY! (And every day!)

THIS WEEK ON ATOMIC BOOGIE RADIO

7:00 (All times Central) THE MONEY PROGRAM

We celebrate (celebrate!?!?!?!) tax week, with two hours of songs and skits about filthy lucre. Includes The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Monty Python, The Who, The Kinks, The Everly Brothers, The Drifters, Funkadelic, The Turtles, The Lovin’ Spoonful and many more!

9:00 BLUEGRASS

Marvel at an hour of wild pickin’ and high lonesome harmonies from some legendary virtuosos of Bluegrass music. You’ll hear; Dolly Parton, The Byrds, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, John Hartford, Bill Monroe, Andy Griffith, The Dillards and more!

10:00 NRBQ

These guys are the best pop/rock band since the Beatles! But don’t just take my word for it – their fans include Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Bonnie Raitt, Elvis Costello, Drew Carey, Penn Jillette and thousands of non-famous people. These two hours present only the tip of the iceberg of great stuff they’ve recorded from 1969 to 2004! Check it out – you may end up with a new favorite band!

The songs will continually repeat throughout the week – but probably not as listed above.

Click on the link to hear it  http://loudcaster.com/channels/1245-atomic-boogie-radio



Harvey Kurtzman -- The Original MAD Man

Harvey Kurtzman cover illustration for "Two Fisted Tales".

I have not yet seen the show "Mad Men". From what I hear, it is something of a satire (or, at least, a mordant take) on the lives of ad man of the early 1960's. There was a guy who was satirizing the world of advertising as early as the 1950's! He was the great Harvey Kurtzman. He founded MAD Magazine, whose home office was on Madison Avenue, back when that address was synonimous with advertising because that's where all the major ad agencies were located. Clearly, Harvey saw this world and it's crazed inhabitants first hand every day he worked. Per Wikipedia;   

Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure (i.e., H. Kurtz-man).
In 1952, he was the founding editor of the comic book Mad. Kurtzman was also known for the long-running Little Annie Fanny stories in Playboy (1962–88), satirizing the very attitudes that Playboy promoted.
Because Mad had a considerable effect on popular culture, Kurtzman was later described by The New York Times as having been "one of the most important figures in postwar America."^[1] Director and comedian Terry Gilliam said, “In many ways Harvey was one of the godparents of Monty Python.”^[2] Underground cartoonist Robert Crumb asserted that one of Kurtzman's cover images for Humbug "changed my life,"^[3] and that another Mad cover image “changed the way I saw the world forever!”^[2] Writing for Time, Richard Corliss touted Kurtzman's influence:

Mad was the first comic enterprise that got its effects almost entirely from parodying other kinds of popular entertainment… To say that this became an influential manner in American comedy is to understate the case. Almost all American satire today follows a formula that Harvey Kurtzman thought up.^[4]

He was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1989
As a child he drew Ikey and Mikey, a regular comic strip done in chalk on sidewalks. In 1939, Kurtzman entered a cartoon contest in Tip Top Comics, winning a prize of one dollar. Kurtzman attended New York's High School of Music and Art, where he first met future collaborators Will Elder, Harry Chester, Al Jaffee and John Severin. After graduating from Cooper Union, he freelanced for such second-tier comic book companies as Ace and Timely. It was at Timely that he drew his first humorous "Hey Look!" one-pagers, which Timely used whenever an issue was a page short. Kurtzman also produced a comic strip, Silver Linings, which ran in the New York Herald Tribune from March 7 to June 20, 1948. He was strongly influenced by the English cartoonist H. M. Bateman.^[5]
Kurtzman found his niche at Bill Gaines' EC Comics, editing the war comics Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales. Kurtzman was known for a painstaking attention to detail, typically sketching full layouts and breakdowns for the stories he assigned to artists and insisting they not deviate from his instructions.^[6][7] Despite (or because of) his autocratic approach, Kurtzman's early 1950s work is still considered among the medium's finest.^[8][9] With Mad he satirized genres in the first issue but then introduced specific media parodies in the second issue, spoofing one of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy villains with "Mole!" This tale of prisoner Melvin Mole's escapes, digging a tunnel with a nostril hair, left readers eager to see where Kurtzman's new comic book was headed. With "Mole!", illustrated by Will Elder, Kurtzman had created a turning point in American humor, and the circulation increased as more parodies of comic strips, films and television shows appeared in the comic book.
This evolution of Mad paralleled Kurtzman's recognition of his own value and talents. The comic book owed its existence to Kurtzman's complaint to publisher Gaines that EC's two editors — himself and Al Feldstein — were being paid substantially different salaries. Gaines pointed out that Feldstein produced more titles for EC and did so more swiftly. The men then agreed that if Kurtzman could create a humor publication, Gaines would raise his pay substantially.
Four years later, amid an industry crackdown on the comic books that EC was producing, Kurtzman received an offer to join the staff of Pageant. When Gaines agreed to expand Mad from a ten-cent comic book to a full-sized 25-cent magazine, Kurtzman stayed with EC.^[10] Although retaining Kurtzman was Gaines' prime motivation, this 1955 revamp completely removed Mad from the Comics Code Authority's censorious overview, thereby assuring its survival. Kurtzman remained at the helm of the magazine for only a few issues, but it was long enough to introduce the image soon named Alfred E. Neuman, the publication's famous mascot.
During the early 1950s, Kurtzman became one of the writers for the relaunched Flash Gordon daily comic strip. Soon after, the strip would become one of Mad's targets, when his 1954 "Flesh Garden!" parody was illustrated by Wally Wood.
In April 1956, with Mad sales increasing and all of EC's other titles cancelled, Kurtzman demanded a 51% share of Gaines' business. Gaines balked and hired Feldstein to replace Kurtzman as editor.^[11] The incident has been a source of controversy ever since. There are some^[who?] who feel the magazine critically peaked under Kurtzman and never again regained its magic, settling into a predictable formula. There are others^[who?] who think Kurtzman's own formulaic tendencies would have worn out their welcome more obviously, if not for his early and sudden exit. Kurtzman's departure may have allowed his fans to fantasize about a magazine-format Mad that never was, in which his satiric eye never fogged, as it did outside of Mad.^[12]
The "art vs. commerce" showdown between Kurtzman and Gaines (in which Kurtzman had the hero's role of David while Gaines played the vulgarian Goliath) has long been a compelling characterization for some. But it's likely that no 1950s publisher other than Gaines would ever have printed Mad in the first place.^[13] Even so, when Kurtzman and Feldstein were producing humor comics at the same time (Feldstein edited EC's lesser sister humor publication Panic), it is generally recognized that the difference in quality was vast. Thus, Feldstein got a reputation as the craftsman who replaced the genius.^[14]
However, it is inarguable that Mad's greatest heights of circulation and influence came under Feldstein,^[15] while Kurtzman never again recaptured his share of the public's support or edited another magazine of equal success. Nothing Kurtzman produced after his original Mad run approached it for observational wit. In the end, and for all his substantial achievements, Kurtzman's career was forever colored by a sense of "what might have been."^[16]
Kurtzman was also the editor of Trump, published by Hugh Hefner in 1957. It presented Kurtzman's Mad sensibilities in a glossy, upscale magazine format. Trump only lasted for two issues. They reportedly sold well, but were expensive to produce, and publisher Hugh Hefner shut down the project during a costcutting crunch. Kurtzman later led an artists' collective of himself, Will Elder, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee and Arnold Roth in publishing Humbug. Despite their efforts, and those of business manager Harry Chester, Humbug failed to overcome distribution and financial problems.^[17] It folded after 11 issues.
After the demise of Humbug, Kurtzman spent a few years as a freelance contributor to various magazines, including Playboy, Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, TV Guide and Pageant, the magazine that had made a fateful job offer to Kurtzman in 1955.
Kurtzman's last regular editorial position of note was at the helm of Warren Publishing's Help! from 1960 to 1965. Relying heavily on photography, Help! gave the first national exposure to certain artists and writers who would dominate underground comix later on, such as Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson. The magazine also provided a brief forum for John Cleese and Terry Gilliam, who first worked together under Kurtzman's direction, years before Monty Python. In his 1985 film Brazil, Gilliam gave Ian Holm's character, the boss of protagonist Sam Lowry, the name "Kurtzmann". The assistant editor of Help! was Charles Alverson, who later collaborated with Gilliam on the screenplay for Jabberwocky (1977).
The most notorious article to appear in Help! was "Goodman Beaver Goes Playboy!", a ribald parody of Archie Comics that resulted in a lawsuit from Archie's publisher. Despite a talented roster of friends and contributors including Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Gloria Steinem and Gahan Wilson, along with the above names, the magazine folded after 26 issues.
Kurtzman's career remained eclectic. His Little Annie Fanny began its 26-year run in Playboy in 1962, though some admirers felt it was "known more for its lavish production values than its humor."^[2] He co-scripted the animated film Mad Monster Party, which was released in 1967. In 1973, Kurtzman produced several animated shorts for Sesame Street,^[7] and that same year he appeared in a Scripto TV commercial drawing Little Annie Fanny on the wall of a prison cell. A series of reprint projects and one-shot efforts appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, including Kurtzman Komix, published in 1976 by Kitchen Sink Press.
In his later years, Kurtzman continued to work on anthologies and various other projects, as well as teaching a cartooning class at the School of Visual Arts. Beginning in 1988, the Harvey Awards, named for Kurtzman, were first given to the year's outstanding comics and creators. In the years before his death, Kurtzman returned to Mad for a brief stint, along with long-time collaborator Will Elder. Their pages were simply signed "WEHK".
Kurtzman died of liver cancer at the age of 68 on February 21, 1993.
In the end, Kurtzman's critical reputation has outlasted his career valleys and the formulaic or disappointing projects. He is routinely celebrated for his visual verve and artistic successes and is often cited as a key influence by many leading cartoonists. In its much-critiqued 2000 list of the century's Top 100 comics, The Comics Journal awarded Kurtzman five of the slots:

• 8. Mad comics by Harvey Kurtzman and various
• 12. EC's "New Trend" war comics by Harvey Kurtzman and various
• 26. The Jungle Book by Harvey Kurtzman
• 63. "Hey Look!" by Harvey Kurtzman
• 64. "Goodman Beaver" by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder

Comics Journal publisher Gary Groth noted that Kurtzman's style "...achieves some sort of Platonic ideal of cartooning. Harvey was a master of composition, tone and visual rhythm, both within the panel and among the panels comprising the page. He was also able to convey fragments of genuine humanity through an impressionistic technique that was fluid and supple.”^[2]
Along with Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Robert Crumb, Gary Panter and Chris Ware, Kurtzman was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan from September 2006 to January 2007.^[18][19]
In 2009, The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics, a comprehensive 256-page survey of Kurtzman's drawings, paintings, comic strips, graphic stories, comic books, magazines and paperbacks, was published by Abrams. Written by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle, the book includes both preparatory work and finished pieces. Kitchen commented:

Too often, especially with the collaborative work, Kurtzman’s contribution is quite literally unseen. Harvey was masterful with compositions and the interaction of figures. Since he often worked with brilliant cartoonists like Will Elder, Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Al Jaffee and others, it’s easy for a casual reader to assume they were responsible for the imagery and Harvey "just wrote" or "just laid out" the stories. By showing how complete and vigorous his layouts are, it’s much clearer that he was a true director of the finished work.^[2]

040812 This week on ATOMIC BOOGIE RADIO

THIS WEEK ON THE ATOMIC BOOGIE SHOW Sunday, 040812

7:00 PM Central BABY, BABY, BABY!

People used to joke that the worst thing that could ever happen to the pop music business would be if the word “Baby” was banned from the airwaves. Tonight’s Atomic Boogie Show provides 2 hours of examples of why that’s true – featuring songs with the word “Baby” in the title, or featured prominently in the lyrics. Also, some novelty records and classic comedy skits that are literally about babies. Star studded playlist includes The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, Buddy Holly, Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe, The Coasters, Ted Nugent (as a member of The Amboy Dukes), Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks, John Belushi (from The National Lampoon Radio Hour) and many more!

9:00 The LOVIN’ SPOONFUL

Enjoy an hour of good time music with this classic, eclectic folk rock band of the mid 60’s. In just under an hour we’ve managed to squeeze in all their hits, their entire classic “Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful” album, plus some rarities!

10:00 to Midnight 70’s PUNK !!!

People in the U.S. were so threatened by punk that they never gave it a chance – despite the fact that some good ol’ rebellious rock ‘n’ roll was just what the 70’s airwaves (chock full of Disco and Barry Manillow type sappy ballads) sorely needed. Nowadays this just sounds like REAL ROCK ‘N’ ROLL, always from an eccentric perspective and usually with a refreshingly quirky sense of humor. As we used to say in the 70’s “Try it, you’ll like it!” Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, The Ramones, The Damned, Pere Ubu, Wire, X, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, Stiff Little Fingers, Buzzcocks and more!

If you miss the shows Sunday night they should (HOPEFULLY!!!!!*) repeat all week.

* In our first week, due to a technical glitch songs played randomly throughout most of the week, ruining the “theme effect”. They’re assuming this week should go better.

Click on the link to hear it  http://loudcaster.com/channels/1245-atomic-boogie-radio               

Tribute to the Great Earl Scruggs

Eerie photo of Bill Monroe & his Bluegrass Boys. Earl is front and center. Bill is behind him to our right. Where is Lester? Maybe he took the picture.

          I’m a little shocked at how often I am compelled to write an obituary for some great musician I admire. I always wish I’d written something about them when they were alive!

          Of course, I’m referring to the fact that pioneering banjo virtuoso Earl Scruggs died March 28^th of natural causes at age 88.

          Earl revolutionized the art of banjo playing when he joined Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys in 1945. Scruggs was the first banjo player to ever play for a national audience in the elaborate three finger picking style – a style as fiery as Monroe’s jet propelled mandolin playing. After 19 year old Scruggs auditioned for Bill Monroe, the legendarily understated Monroe leaned over to singer / guitarist Lester Flatt and asked, “Is he any good?” Flatt’s response was, “I don’t care what you pay him, he’s worth twice as much.”

         Scruggs may not have invented the three finger picking style – other banjo players, Ralph Stanley and Don Reno mastered the style around the same time. However, Scruggs always claimed he could still remember the day he was practicing and the three finger style miraculously fell into place, apparently from out of the blue and inspired by no one else.

          Bill Monroe is credited as the creator of bluegrass – the only style of music known to be invented by an individual. However, it never really sounded like bluegrass until Earl contributed his three finger banjo picking – a signature element of the bluegrass style.

          Membership in Monroe’s band brought with it regular performances on The Grand Ol’ Opry, recording dates and nationwide touring. Scruggs was a sensation in a sensational band. Unfortunately for Monroe, this, his dream line-up ( Monroe – vocals & mandolin, Flatt – guitar & vocals, Scruggs – banjo, Chubby Wise – fiddle & Cedric Rainwater – bass) only lasted from the time Scruggs joined in late 1945 until 1948 when Flatt & Scruggs left the band to form their own Foggy Mountain Boys. (The soft spoken and eminently sensible Scruggs felt threatened by Monroe’s freewheelin’, womanizing lifestyle. Apparently, Monroe was carrying on an affair with the wife of a highway patrol trooper, and was often speeding on the highway with this particular girlfriend and his band members in the vehicle. Scruggs feared what would happen if that particular ARMED police officer would pull them over and then learn that someone in the band was having an affair with his wife.)

          Flatt & Scruggs maintained a successful partnership for 21 years. They recorded for Mercury Records, and most successfully for Columbia. During the 60’s Flatt and Scruggs were the second most popular country act to record for Columbia, their success exceeded only by that of Johnny Cash. Even though the hillbilly sound and pious, old fashioned lyrics of bluegrass seemed anachronistic to the psychedelic hippy era, bluegrass thrived during the 60’s. Their popularity was helped no doubt, by their frequent appearances on the top rated “The Beverly Hillbillies”. Their extremely stiff “acting” had an awkward charm of its own, and of course their music was always great. Their “Beverly Hillbillies Theme” was heard weekly on the show, although it’s lead vocal was sung by Jerry Scoggins. They scored a surprise late 60’s hit when their 1940’s recording “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” was featured in the ground breaking film “Bonnie & Clyde” (Despite the fact that bluegrass music did not yet exist in the time of Bonnie & Clyde.) Also, bluegrass in general was helped by the fact that the hippy generation were quite appreciative of “folk” artistry as a reflection of the views of The People.

          Admittedly, their Columbia Records are a bit odd. The team was regularly given current hits to re-record. Their takes on Ian & Sylvia’s “Four Strong Winds”, Bobbi Gentry’s mysterious “Ode to Billie Jo” and especially Bob Dylan’s “Down in the Flood” were excellent. Material like “The Universal Soldier”, “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Everybody Must Get Stoned” (What the hell were they thinking !?!?!?) were ridiculous. Clearly it was profitable for Columbia Records to have Flatt & Scruggs record songs written by other artists signed to their label, even if they weren’t remotely appropriate for Lester and Earl’s personalities. Flatt asked the rhetorical question, “Why do they have us record all of Dylan’s songs when they already have them by Bob Dylan?”

          Their individual reactions to having to record contemporary material are the exact opposite of what I would have expected. Earl was all for it – despite the fact that there was virtually no room for banjo picking in these songs. Flatt was against it, despite the fact that I would think these modern songwriters were providing intriguing lyrics for a vocalist to sing.

          They broke up (apparently pretty amicably) in 1969. Columbia made them such a lucrative offer, that they recorded their final album six months after their break-up.

          Earl went on to form the more progressive Earl Scruggs Revue with his sons, and Lester went back to his beloved old bluegrass style. Although Earl’s legendary status was already established, neither he, nor Lester would duplicate the popularity they had enjoyed as a team.

Per Wikipedia, ”Flatt and Scruggs won a Grammy Award in 1969 for Scruggs' instrumental "Foggy Mountain Breakdown". They were inducted together into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985. In 1989, Scruggs was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship. He was an inaugural inductee into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor in 1991. In 1992, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. In 1994, Scruggs teamed up with Randy Scruggs and Doc Watson to contribute the song "Keep on the Sunny Side" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization.
In 2002 Scruggs won a second Grammy award for the 2001 recording of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown", which featured artists such as Steve Martin on 2nd banjo solo (Martin played the banjo tune on his 1970s stand-up comic acts), Vince Gill and Albert Lee on electric guitar solos, Paul Shaffer on piano, Leon Russell on organ, and Marty Stuart on mandolin. The album, Earl Scruggs and Friends, also featured artists such as John Fogerty, Elton John, Sting, Johnny Cash, Don Henley, Travis Tritt, and Billy Bob Thornton.^[9]
On February 13, 2003, Scruggs received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year, he and Flatt were ranked No. 24 on CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music.
On September 13, 2006, Scruggs was honored at Turner Field in Atlanta as part of the pre-game show for an Atlanta Braves home game. Organizers set a world record for the most banjo players (239) playing one tune together (Scruggs' "Foggy Mountain Breakdown"). On February 10, 2008, Scruggs was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.”

Lester Flatt died in 1979 – he was only 64.

Charles Manson update

Charles Manson is up for parole again, but the parole board says he is not a model inmate. He has twice been caught posessing a contraband cell phone. As punishment he has had 30 days added to his sentence. Cest la vie!

LOUDCASTER -- It's geting better! (I think)

If you have tried Atomic Boogie Radio and it sucked, I apologize. The tracks are meant to be heard in a specific order, within a specific context in which they are interesting and they "work". Loudcaster played them right for about the first 24 hours, then for a day they were just playing randomly. I am all for musical variety, but it makes no sense to randomly play, say, an old anti communist diatribe followed by Jimi Hendrix, followed by a big band era song of the forties! LOUDCASTER says they are trying to get this straightened out. It appears the songs are now at least playing in the propper groupings they were meant to be heard in when I programmed this stuff. (ie All the pyschedelic records together, all the beatniky stuff together etc.)