Retro

Click the links to hear the following shows.Robinson Crusoe Dramatisation of Daniel Defoe's castaway classic stars Roy Marsden.Fear on Four Series of horror and suspense tales, hosted by the Man in Black.The Goon Show Classic material from one of the all-time radio comedy greats.The Man in Black A creepy raconteur, played by Mark Gatiss, introduces spooky tales. An Hour with Jon Pertwee The star of Doctor Who, The Navy Lark and Worzel Gummidge entertains an audience with his one-man biographical show.Ian Rankin: The Third Gentleman Cully, the 1790s Edinburgh sleuth, is forced to investigate a series of ritualistic wine-cellar murders. Stars Alexander Morton.Ian Rankin: Rebus Adaptations of Rankin's novels and short stories about his famous Edinburgh detective.Terry Pratchett: Small Gods Dramatisation of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel starring Anton Lesser, Carl Prekopp and Patrick Barlow. In Concert: Sousxsie and the Banshees Chris Hawkins presents Siousxie and The Banshees at the Royal Albert Hall, London in 1988.6 Music Live Hour The Kinks live in 1977, plus BBC sessions from Lotion and Southern Tenant Folk Union. Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone Stuart's featured album is Pat Metheny's debut record Bright Sized Life.

Armourcote commercials are a perfect example of a type of ads you just don’t see as much as you used to and when they do, they are never this involved (although perhaps infomercials are just extreme versions of this). These … Continue reading →

  Copenhagen-based Henrik Dybdahl has put together a great collection of 1930s Zoo Prints. The bold retro graphics in the series speak for themselves, but what is interesting (and obvious from the example above) is that rather than taking Scandinavian artifacts as his inspiration, the prints are recreations of American designs. The designs come from the employment project 'Works Progress Administration' set up in depression-era USA. As well as carrying out construction projects and creating employment, the project was responsible for some great graphic design as these prints show. Since they have now fallen out of copyright, Dybdahl is free to recreate them for a new audience. The A4 prints are sold framed for a very reasonable £19.95 each. Visit Hus and Hem to see the full range.

Primitive London (1965) is a dirty movie disguised as a documentary - and that's what makes it so damn adorable. The early sixties were chock full of so-called documentaries on nudist colonies pretending to be edifying, when in fact they were just looking for a loophole to show bobbies. I understand it. They simply couldn't get away with this level of epidermal exposure without pretending to be some sort of scholarly work. Plus, men could rationalize going to see a documentary, and would feel like hopeless perverts without the academic veneer. On the other hand, it's all so damn hypocritical. The narrator in Primitive London is pompous and judgmental, looking at everything through Limbaugh tinted glasses. We all know this a ruse so male audiences can see some T&A. So, can we skip the virtuous jibba-jabba? And for God's sake, "primitive"? Really? We're not talking about New Guinea. I mean, London in 1965 may have been swingin', but it wasn't anything close to primitive. "Moderately Debased on Occasion" maybe... but Moderately Debased London on Occasion doesn't have the same ring to it. The director is Arnold L. Miller, who made several of these psuedo-documentaries in order to show a little skin on the big screen. Among his many classic works: Nudist Memories (1961), Nudes of All Nations (1962) and London in the Raw (1965). So, the question you're asking is why are we even talking about this movie if it's such a joke? Well, if you can look past the despicable narration, it's a pretty fascinating walk through London in '65. It was filmed in crystal clear color at a time when Beatles for Sale was still on turntables - what a great time capsule! The mod look was in, and the film takes tour of a men's clothing store. The narrator mocks this prancing dandy, but I was highly interested in the clothes on the rack. Another segment analyzes the "rockers" and the beatniks. The beatnik portion was rather intriguing in that a bunch of hipster youths were interviewed, and you could tell it was completely unscripted. In another segment, the "documentary" takes us to a beauty parlor. Although interesting, it was anything but primitive. I'm guessing this was filler. Please Note: The Guardian has an excellent article on Primitive London - far better than my little post, thrown together in about 45 minutes. If you want a well-written, erudite look at this film, I highly recommend it. If you're satisfied with lots of eye candy and the ramblings of man on his third Pabst Blue Ribbon, then stay put. Of course, the London strip club is explored.... for sociological reasons, of course. Several routines are presented, all incomprehensibly bizarre. Take note of the mustachioed chefs in the background. What in the ever lovin' hell? As if to bolster their ridiculous premise that London is primitive, the film wanders from the strip clubs to the street corner, where a modern day Jack the Ripper is loose. Of course, this is complete and utter bullshit, but it furthers the argument that London is a "bad, bad place". In another segment, we get to see a concert by The Zephyrs. They were a good band that should've gone on to more success, but got lost in the British Invasion stampede. Primitive London would have been helped greatly if Jimmy Paige, their session musician and stand-in guitarist, was up their with them. Still, a mighty fine Merseybeat group that I'd love to hear more from, but alas they are not on Spotify. I won't show you an image from the next segment: a tour through a poultry factory farm. Yes, decades before Faces of Death and the numerous anti-industrial farming documentaries that are being churned out these days, there was Primitive London. Of course, this begs the question - in what way does a factory farm make London primitive? Indeed, it was even more commonplace in the States. Yet, somehow, this is shown as further proof tha

Ahhhh, Paris 1975. "Franco assassin" spray painted on the plywood covering the broken windows on the Champs-Élysées. The riot police taking their positions each night, truncheons and shields. The Parisians gathering inside the cafes to watch. My friends and I standing in front of the buildings that had had their windows broken the night before, figuring the protestors wouldn't hit the same building twice if there was nothing to break. And then waiting, patiently waiting until we just got too bored and sleepy and headed back to our cheap flophouse around the corner. We'd never hear the riots, for some reason, because I heard the guy next door farting all night, but each morning we'd go back to the Champs-Élysées to see which businesses had been hit while we slept. There was always broken glass to walk around each morning. From what we understood the protestors would gather each night at the Place de la Bastille and head for the Champs-Élysées. I never saw any of it. I do however have photographs of the police and of the broken windows and graffitied plywood. Good times. Good times. That's the perspective of a stupid tourist in a place where they don't speak the language and you're in your twenties. Click on image to see it larger.

I love the 80′s commercials for this cereal and in fact I still have the back of one of the old cereal boxes; it has a picture of an island on it with a bunch of the animals.

In the early 40s, Superman was a big hit in the comics and on the radio. Paramount held the rights to bring the Man of Steel to the silver screen, but they knew it would be expensive and difficult to depict Superman's amazing abilities in live action. They turned instead to Fleischer Studios, the animation studio run by brothers Max & Dave Fleischer and home of Betty Boop and Popeye. The Fleischers were slowing production of Betty Boop cartoons, thanks to the Hayes Code (an early form of movie content censorship) which demanded that the Fleischers cool down what they viewed as Boop's salacious antics. Superman could be another hit for their studio, a technical showcase for amazing new animation effects work, and of course the chance to work in dazzling full Technicolor. The Fleischers feared that a Superman cartoon might be TOO significant a challenge to bring to life. It wasn't impossible, of course, but the difficulty also stemmed from having a studio staff much more accustomed to drawing funny bouncy animal characters. Hoping to spook Paramount, the Fleischers budgeted the first Superman cartoon at an unheard of $100,000 - many times greater thant the cost of any theatrical short. Surprisingly Paramount didn't flinch. They so wanted to cash in on the Superman craze that they negotiated the Fleischers down to $50,000 for the pilot film, and $30,000 per monthly episode (nearly $450,000 in today's money, and twice what it cost to make a Popeye cartoon). The main challenge was to create a cast of realistic-looking characters, and in the case of Superman to create a realistic character doing things that had never been captured on film before. Even the master draftsmen at Disney's and Warner's had significant difficulty in bringing realistic human forms to animation. Snow White hit theaters just a few years before with a realistic lead character which was achieved mostly through a technique originally invented by the Fleischers called "rotoscoping". In rotoscoping, animators start with specially-shot live footage, and essentially trace the action frame-by-frame onto animation cels. Surprisingly, the Fleischers they employed this technique very little in Superman. They reasoned that it was going to be too difficult to rotoscope actions like picking up heavy objects, and other super feats. Pure animation was the way to convey these actions best. Through some brilliantly efficient techniques and a lot of hard work, Flesicher Studios' animation of the (super) human form has seldom been bested. Not only are these classic 17 cartoons a breakthrough in animation, but they also gave birth to a number of traits that became permanent trademarks of the Man of Steel. The "Faster than a speeding bullet..." pre-amble came from the cartoon (made even more famous by its use in the TV series a decade later), as well as the rousing opening music that was later adopted by the radio series. Most significantly, it is in the cartoon that Superman went from leaping to flying. In the comics, Superman did a lot of jumping around (hence the line "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound"). Once animated, the Fleishers felt that the leaping action looked silly, so with DC Comics' permission, Superman gained the ability to fly. Students of animation should note how effectively the cartoons convey weight and mass, even when Superman is in flight - a feat that animators on Disney's "Peter Pan"would duplicate a decade later. The cartoon series of 17 installments ran theatrically from 1941-1943. The first 9 cartoons pitted Superman against science fiction type enemies; mad scientists, monsters, and some really looking brilliant fire breathing robots. Midway through the series, trouble at the Fleischer Studios resulted in Paramount taking over the animation house and renaming it "Famous Studios". The second block of 8 cartoons maintained the high quality and amazing sense of design established by the first batch, but t

I enjoy looking at the board game section in my local thrift store, but I rarely buy them — mostly because I’m afraid they’ll be missing pieces or the instructions. This one looked like a good one, so I took … Continue reading →