PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Pigheaded 2016

Pigheaded is a 2016 documentary about Skip Williamson. He was one of the underground cartoonists who started back in the 60s. His first published cartoon was in an issue of Help in 1961. Bought by editor Gloria Steinem. Small world, huh. He ran a Chicago underground newspaper with Jay Lynch in 1967. Later the two added Robert Crumb and the Chicago Mirror became Bijou Funnies. One of Skips characters Snappy Sammy Smoot was played by Carl Reiner on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

Undergrounds as a money maker didn't last that long, just a few years. Only the big names like Crumb continued to sell comics through the years and make some money. Skip worked as art editor on Gallery, then Hustler in 1974, and Playboy in 1976. He created the Playboy Funnies section which brought some underground artists to much better light.

The documentary covers a lot of Skip's career and it spends some amount of time with Skip and his family. Sadly, Skip would die the year after this came out. He sure had an interesting and varied career. Some of the people who worked with him are interviewed: Stephen R Bissette, Kim Deitch, Denis Kitchen, Jay Lynch. Glad to have seen it.

Prisoners Of Gravity 1989 - 1994

I had never heard of Prisoners Of Gravity until I saw it mentioned on Facebook. Finding it helps justify time on Facebook somewhat. It's a 1989 Canadian show that aired on TVOntario for 5 seasons. From season 2 on it also appeared on PBS in the US. I checked on YouTube and sure enough someone has about 50 episodes of the 139 that they made. It was co-created by Mark Askwith and Daniel Richler.

It's hosted by Rick Green, he was in The Frantics comedy group, they had a great sketch comedy show called Four On The Floor. Rick played Bill Smith on The Red Green Show, a series he co-created and wrote for the 11 seasons.

Prisoners Of Gravity has Rick escape the Earth and go live in a space station. Each week he talks about SF, in pretty much any format you can find, and some about comic books. He's got interviews with all sorts of creators that were conducted by a team that went to SF conventions. In the few that I sampled I saw Will Eisner, William Gibson, Stan Lee, Neil Gaiman, Bob Kane and Harlan Ellison. I downloaded the lot and will take a look at them in the future.

Gorgon Video Magazine Vol 1 & 2

Here's the two editions of Gorgon Video Magazine. They came out in the 1980s and exist only as VHS screeners sent to the video stores of the day. The shows are hosted by Michael Berryman. He has guests, some comedy bits, and clips from horror and cult films. The quality isn't that great but the other alternative is to find a VHS tape. There's a couple of copies on Amazon for $35 - $55 a volume. Since they made the last VHS recorder a couple of months ago it might get hard to find a working deck in the future. I'll be happy with the copies I downloaded from YouTube for as little as I would want to watch them.

Volume 1 has interviews with Wes Craven, the guys from KNB, Gwar, Linnea Quigley and Lloyd Kaufman with a dark beard.

Volume 2 has interviews with Stuart Gordon, Penn & Teller, Dominique Othenin-Girard, Screaming Mad George, and more. There's a short segment with several underground comics artists like S Clay Wilson and R Crumb.

Autumn Stone

 

That's the illustration on the record bag at the Autumn Stone. It's a record and head shop that I used to frequent back in the 1970s. I bought a lot of records there, both new and used, and it was the first place that I saw underground comix. I have had this bag for ages. I liked the illustration enough to keep it. Now that I'm scanning everything I can toss it out. I don't remember much about the store but I did find an article from the Winnipeg Free Press by John Einarson. He remembers more than me.

Your one-stop hippie shop

Autumn Stone was the coolest place in the city -- until disco came along

Unquestionably one of the hippest shops in Winnipeg in the 1970s was Autumn Stone. Named for a Small Faces album and located at 304 Kennedy Street, north of Portage Avenue, the Autumn Stone was your all-purpose one-stop hippie shopping experience. "We were one of the first places in the city to sell used records along with new records," notes co-owner Andy Mellen. "Plus we weren't just a record store. We had all the head-shop stuff, hip comics and a leather shop. All these things added to the attraction. You could come down and get your smoking needs, hear some great music, check out the comics and get a leather vest made."

What made the shop so cool? "The people who ran it," Andy insists. "We were a good reflection of the times. And the store didn't look like your typical record store; the funky atmosphere, the tapestries, the old wood."

Andy Mellen working in the shop. Just listen to the tributes:

"I loved going to the Stone. I always discovered something new and interesting. It was the coolest record shop I've ever been in. I bought my first Thin Lizzy album Jailbreak because it was playing in the store. Opus 69 [located down the street at 294 Kennedy] felt like a library to me. The Stone felt like Heaven." -- Rick Carpick

"I loved the vibe and I loved the cool music they played. It was a musical education for me." -- Craig Hobson 

"Autumn Stone was the coolest record store I'd ever been to. I was mesmerized by all the promotional photos on the wall and the four-foot-tall speaker cabinets. Worlds away from Eaton's record department." -- Gary Gurniak 

"I bought all my Fabulous Freak Brothers comics there." -- Dave Perich

Initially opened on Graham Avenue in 1971, partners James Speiss, Eric Green and Bill Kelly modelled the shop on Minneapolis's hip Electric Fetus. By the time it moved to Kennedy Street the following year Winnipeg Free Press music columnist Andy Mellen had come onboard. For most regulars, Andy would become the face of Autumn Stone. As John Tataryn recalls, "My friend Craig and I would spend hours there absorbing musical knowledge from Andy. It was a real education. It's because of Andy that I came to know and love Rory Gallagher, Robin Trower, and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis." Adds Darren Duke, "Andy Mellen was the bottom line attraction for me. He picked the music and turned us all on to it. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Budgie, old Pink Floyd... I could list a hundred albums I bought from Autumn Stone."

"I never tried to steer people toward music I didn't believe in and they trusted us," confirms Andy. "Plus we had a killer stereo system with these giant Tannoy speakers because not only did we want to listen to good music all day but we also wanted people who came in to hear it too. I'd put a Groundhogs album on and people would be asking, 'Who is this?!'"

The shop's ability to stock its shelves to suit its tastes was a further bonus. "We were too small for the individual record labels to bother with," Andy explains. "Instead we got stock from local rack-jobber MCTR. I would go there with a list of what we wanted and bring it back that day."

There are plenty of stories of hijinx and celebrity spottings. Members of Cheap Trick, Nazareth, even Lenny Breau dropped by as did Handsome Dick Manitoba of The Dictators. "Burke Shelley from Budgie came in to do an interview with me and ended up bagging records for customers," Andy recalls. The police would also drop by. "I got really good at spotting the narcs in their fake hippie clothes," he chuckles.

"There was always a hint of pot smoke as staff and visitors often slipped out a side door to a hidden smoking spot between buildings," says Mike Furnish. "Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick snuck out there with the boys while [guitarist] Rick Nielsen searched through the used records."

Eric Green managed Harlequin from a second-floor office while the basement served as a leather shop where a lovely woman known only as Juicer, along with Frank McNichol and Stuart Munn, crafted beautiful leather products. I still have an ornate guitar strap made for me by them. A character known to all as Fly ran the head shop department. For a time Winnipeg rock guru Howard Mandshein worked the front counter of the record shop.

"I was a huge Howard fan from the CJUM afternoon shift," recalls Kevin Ducheminsky, "and I used to hang out at Autumn Stone just to get an 'H' sighting." Local punk-rock pioneer Mitch Funk also worked the counter as did Wendy Perry among others.

By the latter '70s, the Stone's allure was fading. "Times changed, we didn't," states Andy. Disco came in, the world was changing, and cassettes started outselling vinyl. The shop closed its doors in January 1980.

"If it could be said that a business had a personality, then Autumn Stone had a personality," Andy surmises. "It was a friendly place with a funky atmosphere. We were guys who were honest and upfront about music and wanted to sell you good music. It wasn't about the profits. It was a great time in my life and a great time in music. I miss those times dearly."

I didn't realize that the store had closed so soon after I left. I used to like hanging out there. I'd talk to the clerks and once in a while someone I knew would showup. I didn't know at the time that they had based their store on the Electric Fetus here in Minneapolis. I used to hang out there some but not as much as some of the other record stores in South Minneapolis. The Fetus is still there, where they've been for decades, but I hardly ever visit anymore. I don't buy much music anymore so there's not much need.

Zap Comics Article

A clipping from the Star Tribune 2/21/99 about Zap Comix. More stuff I'm scanning.

Kitchen Sink Comix Poster

An old poster I have. It's by Pete Poplaski who worked for Kitchen Sink. Not sure what he does now.

Prints 1974

I published 2 sets of Underground Comic art prints in 1974. One set was by Larry Todd and the other was by Tim Boxell. The sets were signed and numbered and limited to 300 copies. When I got back the signed copies from Larry I found that he had hand colored #61.  Wow, was I ever pleased. I certainly kept that one. 

Tim Marion was asking about the Larry Todd prints the other day and he wondered if there were anymore. Sadly Larry and Tim were it. The prints didn't sell well enough to continue with the series. In the 1980's I used the left over prints as covers on my fanzines. I had another Larry Todd illustration that I included as a bonus print when someone bought both sets. The sets had a certificate with a nice logo by fantasy fan artist Stephen T Riley. You can see the whole set over on Flickr.

Misfit Lit Art Show 1991

  

Back in 1991 I was more interested in the underground comix scene than I am today. In 1991 there was an art show called Misfit Lit Art Show and it opened December 7 1991. i went and these pictures above are from the show. I wish I had more but I was mostly there to see S Clay Wilson. On the 6th S Clay was at Dreamhaven signing. I got to hang out and, lucky me, it turned out that he was pals with Roldo who was an old pal of mine from Winnipeg. That lead to S Clay drinking all the beer at Sperhauk's house and me letting S Clay buy me a middle of the night breakfast at Perkins. I still remember the evening fondly even if I can't remember all the details. There was a fair bit of beer involved and who knows what else.

On the 8th there was a panel discussion with S. Clay Wilson, Gilbert Hernandez, Reed Waller, Kate Worley, Jackie Urbanovich and Pete Wagner. Pete was the only local and while he did publish some of my stuff in his book, he never returned the artwork. Now you can see the panel on YouTube above. There's a bit of an interview with some guy before hand.

Richard Corben Films

When I visited Kansas City in the 1970's I got a chance to visit Richard Corben at his house. He was a good host, let me poke about his studio and showed me how he made his airbrush art, then he showed us a couple of his short films. Neverwhere was one and I think that the title of the other was The Oblong Box. I found Neverwhere and The Dark Planet on YouTube.

Neverwhere - Corben created Den as the protagonist of a film short titled Neverwhere while working at Calvin Studios, an animation company in Kansas City. The film is animated, with framing sequences filmed in live-action. Corben played the title character himself and his boss at Calvin played the boss in the movie. He drew the whole animated sequence by hand in his spare time. His employers, impressed by his work, helped him to finish it by editing it and adding a new professional soundtrack with actors' voices. It was submitted to film festivals and won several awards, including the CINE Golden Eagle Award. The story continued in comic form from then on. (From the Wikipedia.)

The Dark Planet - I remember hearing about this 1989 film by Corben and Bruce Jones on the back of Corben's comics. It was $30 bucks for a VHS tape back then and that was more money than I wanted to spend. The edition sold out quickly and I never thought much about it after. Now that I've seen it I think I'm glad that I didn't spend that money. I found the simple line drawings of the short more watchable than the murky smoke filled feature. The movie moves along pretty darn slow and there isn't much happening. At least you can see it for free on YouTube.

The Three Robbers by Erik Smit and Gene Deitch

 
Funny how unexpected links pop up and lead you down an interesting road to a new surprise. I always say the more you know the more jokes you get. Erik Smit adapted a children's book to bricks and posted the story to Flickr.  The Three Robbers by Tomi Ungerer is a 1961 illustrated children's book about some robbers that collect a vast treasure by robbin' coaches. Sounds like fun to me. During one robbery they find nothing in the coach but a small girl who's delighted to meet them. Rather than let he go off to live with her wicked aunt they take her with them to their hideout where they hoard their gold. She gets them to use their treasure to help orphan kids. The whole story is depicted in those 20 pictures above. I like the micro castle and town. The coach looks intriguing. Erik puts a link to a short 1971 film adaptation by Gene Deitch. The film was entertaining enough. He didn't mention it on Flickr so I am betting Erik might not know that Gene Deitch is the father of underground comic artists Kim and Simon Deitch. Kim is still producing entertaining comics of an oddly strange nature.