10 Regrettable Examples of 1970s Occult Lameness

THE OCCULTISM explosion which overtook North America and Europe in the 1970s ushered in a level of national fascination that is hard to understand if you weren’t there.  But, as with anything that experiences a surge in popularity, it becomes sabotaged by the Johnny-come-lately offerings riding the gravy train.  In the blink of an eye, the wild taboo becomes irredeemably cheesy.   Such is the territory we shall cover today…

10. THE KNEE OF LISTENING/ SHAVE WHILE YOU HALLUCINATE 

Yeoman Lowbrow

Posted: 22nd, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment

Every True Football Fan Should Stand With Spurs’ Yid Army: Sing What We Want To

GARY Whybrow, 31, of west London, Sam Parsons, 24, of Amersham, and Peter Ditchman, 52, of Bishop’s Stortford, have been arrested and charged with using threatening, abusive or insulting words at football matches. Well, not so much words as a word. That word is “yid”.

The BBC explains it’s meaning to those of you interested in language:

The word, meaning Jew, was allegedly used at Tottenham Hotspur matches against FC Sheriff and West Ham United.

Anorak

Posted: 21st, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Sports, Spurs | Comments (4)

Daily Mail Writes Fake Story About Fake Sun Rising Over China

SO smoggy is it in  Beijing that local crowd around bit tellies to get a look at the sun they once knew. Well, so said the Daily Mail, whose James Nye reported:

The smog has become so thick in Beijing that the city’s natural light-starved masses have begun flocking to huge digital commercial television screens across the city to observe virtual sunrises.

One supposes there is a moon and stars show after dark:

Anorak

Posted: 21st, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

The 15 Most Depressing Songs of the 1960s and 70s

THE LATE 1960s to mid-70s were a manic depressive time period in music, populated by exultant highs and soul crushing lows.  The highs came in the form of disco and bubblegum pop via ABBA, The Bee Gees and their ilk.  The lows came in the form of devastating testaments to inner sadness and existential rage.  Perhaps it was Vietnam, recreational heroin use, and an economy that was in the crapper that caused such a swell in depressing anthems.  Who knows?  What is known is that this time period was fertile ground for misery put to melody, and whittling them down to a list of 15 was a daunting task indeed, but here goes….

15. “All By Myself” by Eric Carmen

Livin’ alone
I think of all the friends I’ve known
But when I dial the telephone
Nobody’s home

It’s not so much the lyrics as the morose delivery under a melody lifted from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto  No. 2.  Carmen sounds so deeply depressed that you half expect to hear a gunshot at the end of the song.

Yeoman Lowbrow

Posted: 21st, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comments (8)

The Plan To Stop Footballers Spitting

ENFIELD Council has sent letters warning football clubs in the north London borough against players spitting. Winchmore Hill FC was once club to have received a letter warning of £500 fines for anyone caught spitting in public –  “the bye-law does provide authorised officers with the powers to prosecute those witnessed spitting. Please cascade this information to your players and those of the opposition team to avoid the risk of prosecution.”

The on-the-spot fines business is a bugbear of ours here at Anorak. But we enjoy the use of the words “cascade”, although shower could have been more appropriate.

Anorak

Posted: 21st, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment

Chewing Gum: Psychedelic Treats And Assorted Oral Wonders

Artist Ben Wilson who paints art on discarded gum, and is also known as ‘Chewing Gum Man’, at work on the Millennium Bridge in London.

BEN Wilson is the chewing gum artist. We say ‘the’ because we can’t find anyone else who paint of splats of discarded, squashed gum.  He is the self-styled ‘Chewing Gum Man’. Today, Ben was painting pictures you can take home on the sole of your shoe on the Millennium Bridge in London.

Anorak

Posted: 20th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment

Mic Wright’s Remotely Furious: Doctor, Who Commissioned This Version of The Musketeers?

Mic Wright’s Remotely Furious

Doctor, who the hell commissioned this version of the Musketeers?

MY first problem with The Musketeers is that it isn’t a live action remake of The Muskehounds. With any luck if the BBC decides to make a new version of Around The World In 80 Days it’ll have a lion as the lead and an acrobatic cat as Passepartout. If we have to have humans, The Musketeers was fun but scheduled at entirely the wrong time. There was too much sex for it to be a CBBC series – d’Artagnan and Milady are schtupping already – but not enough shagging or bloody violence to make it feel worthy of a 9pm slot. France’s modern day potato-face President Hollande is getting more action than the Musketeers.

Mic Wright

Posted: 20th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment

Embarrassing Endorsements: When A Famous Name Damages Your Brand

THE Nicolas Anelka ‘quinelle’ controversy has taken a dramatic new twist, as West Bromwich Albion’s sponsors have threatened to end their shirt contract if the club continues to pick the French striker.

Zoopla are not the first people to find that association with high-profile individuals can be a double-sided sword…

Anorak

Posted: 18th, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts, Sports | Comment

Mikaael Kular: The Exciting Possibility of A Crime

MIKAEEL Kular is missing. He’s three. His mother, Rosdeep Kular, him last at 9pm on Wednesday, at his home in Ferry Gait Crescent, Edinburgh. That was when she put him to bed. He lives there with his four siblings. He noticed he was missing at 7:15am.

His coat gloves and shoes were also gone.

Anorak

Posted: 17th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)

Dispatches From The 70s: Women’s Lib Akin To An Irritating Rash

Bra Burning Party

IT is a common misconception that the 1970s were this wildly liberal time where every tradition was fair game. Sure, there were a lot of ‘progressive’ philosophies that entered Main Street which had heretofore been relegated to liberal back alleys.  However, with each New Idea came the predictable resistance.  Nothing epitomizes this better than the Women’s Lib movement which gained traction in the late sixties and became a buzz word for the ensuing decade.

Yeoman Lowbrow

Posted: 17th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)

In 1980 Lee Scratch Perry Tried To Bust Paul McCartney From A Japanese Jail With This Letter

One time producer for reggae legend, Bob Marley, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, performing his own style of dub reggae, which was mixed by the ‘Mad Professor’, at POD on St. Patrick’s Day, in Dublin, Republic of Ireland.

ON January 16th of 1980,  Paul McCartney was busted for weed. Japanese customs officials at Narita International Airport found  7.7 ounces of cannabis in the former Beatle’s singer’s bags. For his pains – he’d been travelling with his four children and wife, Linda –  Macca scored 10-days stay in a Tokyo prison. The Japan leg of the Wings tour was cancelled.

Anorak

Posted: 16th, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (3)

5 Outrageous and Unexpected Moments of Sexual Innuendo on TV

THERE HAS BEEN plenty of blatant sex on the television in decades past.  Shows such as Benny Hill and Three’s Company weren’t afraid to show the playful side, while soap operas and gritty crime dramas took a more serious bent.  But naughtiness belonged in those places; it didn’t need to be masked.  In this article I’m talking about when they unexpectedly lay it between the lines in the most outrageous manner possible.  The kind that leaves you asking, “Wait – what just happened?”

However, we must to be careful, or else we’re seeing phallic references around every corner…

Yeoman Lowbrow

Posted: 16th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment (1)

Did Somebody Drop His Mouse? Harry Nilsson And The Pensioners Sing ‘I’d Rather Be Dead Than Wet My Bed’

Anorak

Posted: 15th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment

15 Curious and Intriguing Beatles Covers

THE FAB FOUR had barely left Ed Sullivan’s stage before their songs were being covered like mad across the entire planet. You’d be hard pressed to find a single artist from the mid-sixties to mid-seventies who didn’t have at least one cover in their repertoire. Then royalty rates went up, and it naturally became harder to include a Lennon/McCartney track on an album…. and finally, in July 1978, The Bee Gees famously ruined the idea altogether.

Herein are fifteen from the Golden Age of Beatles Covers – when everyone from Deep Purple to Peter Sellers had a Beatles song to make their own. Enjoy.

Yeoman Lowbrow

Posted: 15th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment

Kenya’s Gay Hatred Is Rooted In A Global Evangelical Movement

Riot police stop Orthodox protesters who are trying to interupt Ukraine’s first gay pride demonstration in Kiev, Ukraine, Saturday, May 25, 2013. About a hundred gay and lesbian Ukrainians and those from other countries took part in the gay pride rally, protected by hundreds of riot police. Antipathy toward homosexuals remains strong in Ukraine. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

IN Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan has put his signature to the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. Among a range of anti-gay laws, homosexuals can be jailed for ten-years for displaying affection in public. Helping homosexuals avoid detection is also a crime.

It’s getting to be like Eastern Europe and some people’s visions of a better USA in sub-Saharan Africa. The links between the bigotry in Africa and what’s happening in parts of Europe and the UK has links to US missionaries.

Anorak

Posted: 15th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

A Field Guide to 1970s Men’s Sweaters

WITH so many “important things” going on the world, why spend time looking at forty year old sweaters?  Simply put, the brain needs a break from the barrage of jarring images of a world on the brink.  A tour of 70s men’s sweaters is exactly what the doctor ordered.

So, sit back, relax and enjoy a cornucopia of magnificent vintage sweaters.  And you’re welcome.

Left: I’m not a fashion connoisseur, but I do have a general rule of thumb:  Avoid sweater vests with built in belts.

Center:  Add a cape and it’s almost superhero-like.  Don’t for a minute think that superheroes are somehow above sweaters when they have no problem prancing around in Spandex unitards.

Right: Looks like he just stole Janis Joplin’s belongings.  Poor sap. Her sweaty clothes are probably so saturated with drugs, he’ll be dead soon.

Yeoman Lowbrow

Posted: 14th, January 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)

The Beatles Remastered: Artist Rutherford Chang Plays 100 White Albums Played At Once

Beatles George Harrison and John Lennon, background, sit on rocks by a river in Rishikesh, India, in 1968. They are studying transcendental meditation with their yogi.  Date: 01/01/1968

RECORD collector, artist and New York-based Beatles fan Rutherford Chang has collected 918  first-pressings of 1968’s The White Album, the band’s least butchered album in which George Harrison came into his own.

Anorak

Posted: 14th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment

Gimme Shelter From Hell’s Angels: Meredith Hunter, Alan Passaro And The Rolling Stones Horror Show

MEREDITH Hunter. He was the 18-year-old stabbed to death by a Hell’s Angel at the Rolling Stones’ Altamont Free Concert on December 6 1969.

The show took place just four months after Woodstock. This time peace and love did not win out. But it might have done.

Michael Azerrad sets the pre-show scene:

…a scene at a helipad on a pier on San Francisco Bay. The Grateful Dead are there, cavorting in zonked-out hippie fashion, waiting for an overdue helicopter. Jagger comes sweeping in, surveys the unruly scene. and says with amused disbelief to no one in particular, “What is going on?” He gets the lay of the land from a chuckling and ultra-mellow Jerry Garcia, attired in an outtasite lavender wool poncho, and chats warmly with Ian Stewart. The vibe is sweet and playful.

The chopper won’t arrive until 2:00. “Right, film people, let’s do something!” Jagger proclaims. “We’ve got ten minutes.” He pulls some hippie chick aside and imperiously directs the cameraman (probably Albert Maysles) to go “Tighter tighter tighter tighter tighter tighter” on her face, adorned with a groovy beaded headband and massive square shades. He plants a kiss on her forehead and steps away. Then he orders Charlie, poor, long-suffering Charlie, “Do the same thing as I did. Kiss the young lady, please.”

Watts demurs. “Love is much more of a deeper thing than that,” he replies, with mock hauteur, although he clearly kind of means it too. “It’s not flippant, to be thrown away on celluloid. No.”
Jagger laughs at his disobedient drummer. “OK,” he says sheepishly, straight to camera, “we cut.”

And then they headed off to Altamont.

Anorak

Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment

Peculiar Fun for the Whole Family: 20 Odd and Interesting Board Games

THERE have been thousands of boxed games (board games and their ilk) published over the years. For your convenience, we’ve pulled together twenty of the most peculiar (in no particular order).  Don’t say you weren’t warned.

1. GAY MONOPOLY (1983)

Alas, “The Parker Sisters” company was sued by Parker Brothers, and is subsequently with us no more.  Thankfully, copies of their games still remain, including this gay themed Monopoly game featuring such real estate options as Castro Street and bath houses.  In the place of the familiar boot and iron is a stiletto heel and blow-dryer.  Naturally, there are $3.00 bills.

Yeoman Lowbrow

Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comments (3)

Checking The Mail: Sherlock And Bashing Benefits Claimants

A misspelled sign on the house of ‘Fungi’ on James Turner Street in Birmingham, as residents of the street appear in the Channel 4 series Benefits Street.

CHANNEL 4’s documentary Benefits Street has been an absolute boon for The Daily Mail. The sound of the boners popping up must have been audible in the office as the hate-filled shitstirrers of The Daily Mail’s crack Poor People Hating unit grew aroused at the thought of some easy targets. And lo, as it was foretold, the stories of “odious” benefits ‘cheats’ have been spewing out of the Mail’s collective maw faster than crumbs flying out of Paul Dacre’s gob at lunchtime.

Mic Wright

Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment (1)

Fear of A Fat Planet: Billy Bunter Is Now An Enemy Of The State

FAT is bad. The top-down message is consistent. The Mail leads with news that Obesity is “worse than we first feared”.

Whose afraid of a fat planet? As the BBC reported this year: “Obesity quadruples to nearly one billion in developing world.” In the report “Implications for agriculture and food prices”, Sharada Keats and Steve Wiggins, note:

Over one third of all adults across the world –  1.46 billion people – are obese or overweight.

Overweight is bad? Don’t moderately chubby people look better and outlive the skinny? If we are all getting dangerously fatter, why are we living longer?

Anorak

Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment

As Hitler’s Boxer Said To The Actress: Silent Anny Ondra Was Hitchcock’s Star Of Britain’s First ‘Talkie’

IN1929 almost everyone in the British film industry was convinced that the newfangled talking films would be nothing but a flash in the pan. But as the director Michael Powell once said of that time, “some flash, some pan”. Hitchcock knew before most that the era of silent films was over – “nobody wants ‘em,” he said to the aforementioned Powell, “they’re a dead duck”. So Hitchcock borrowed some German equipment and halfway through directing Blackmail he started to make a sound version of the same film and this, subsequently, became Britain’s first ‘talkie’.

Rob Baker

Posted: 12th, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment

Singers and Swingers In the Kitchen: The 1967 ‘Scene-Makers Cookbook’

ROBERTA Ashley’s 1967 Singers and Swingers in the Kitchen is the “scene-makers cookbook”. The cook book features “The Scene Makers Cookbook Dozens of Nutty Turned On Easy-To-Prepare Recipes From The Grooviest Gourmets Happening”. Ready for “hip, mod, delicious recipes”.

Theses cats were the original celebrity master chefs. With recipes from The Rolling Stones, Leonard Nimoy, The Byrds, Leonard Nimoy, Omar Sharif (Southern Fried Chicken), Barbra Streisand, Peter Tork, Liza Minelli, Simon & Garfunkel, the Mamas & Papas, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Paul Anka, Party Spaghetti and The Buckinghams (if you have to ask, you just weren’t there).

As Roberta noted: “Give it a try, the recipes are mostly easy ones and remember a year ago, Barbra Streisand couldn’t cook at all”.

Not all stars are into Extreme Dieting, like The Who’s Keith Moon was.

Anorak

Posted: 12th, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment

Free Tony Miano: If You Love Free Speech Let The Anti-Gay Christian Preacher Talk

OUR increasingly intolerant society, which seeks to be offended by anything and then whine about it until the offender is shamed into conformity, has seen to it that a preacher has been arrested in Dundee.

American street evangelist Tony Miano had been talking about sexual sin. Mr Miano – a former policeman in Los Angeles – was in fully cry, telling passers by about which sins Jesus could save them from – adultery, promiscuity, homosexuality – when a woman took offence. She said that as the mother of a gay man she was offended.

Anorak

Posted: 11th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (9)