by Rian Dundon
Riddim on the rise
your only frame of reference for reggae and Jamaican culture is Bob Marley or Snoop Lion rolling papers, prepare to learn something.
The artist who brought us Redemption Song was only one stop in a long progression of musical genres and styles. Originating from ska and rocksteady in the 1960s, reggae gave birth to more progressive, populist genres like dub, dancehall, and ragga through the 1970s and 1980s.
Emerging parallel to hip hop in America and electronic dance music in Europe, Jamaican dancehall was made possible by the introduction of digital audio production technologies in the early 1980s. By the time King Jammy and Wayne Smith dropped the fully computerized Under Mi Sleng Teng in 1985, it was game over for instrumental roots reggae in Kingston. The era of samplers and Casio keyboards had arrived, along with the streetwise lyrical stylings of musicians like Yellowman and Eek-A-Mouse.
https://timeline.com/one-photographers-amazing-firsthand-look-at-the-1980s-jamaican-dancehall-scene-fb887a8a3d5e?gi=138f386c7e33

The Tribe That Inspired Frida Kalho
That unapologetic unibrow, the halo-crown of jet-black centre-parted flower-adorned plaits, rouged cheekbones and russet lips frame a fearless stare. Her Mexican torzal necklaces, silver filigree earrings and onyx beads you and I could only hope to collect over a lifetime of scouring obscure artisanal markets. No prizes for guessing who she is. But let’s drag ourselves away momentarily from the artist and icon that is Frida Kahlo and turn our attention to the extraordinary Zapotec tribe that was instrumental in her making.
Let’s go way back to the Aztecs, Mayans and Zapotecs of South America who built vast cities of pyramids and palaces, rich with elaborate architectural and decorative pattern work. Stretching across what is now Mexico, this was a world apart from western knowledge until the fateful arrival of the Spanish conquistadors at the end of the 15th century. ‘Mesoamerica’, the twisting ribbon of land between North and South America, was a diverse and thriving cultural hub at the time of the arrival of Christopher Columbus. The central part (what is now Mexico) was fertile and lush, supporting the Aztecs to the west, the Mayans on the Yucatan Peninsula to the north and the Zapotecs to the south. They constituted a loose confederation of city states whose power and influence upon each other had come and gone, waxed and waned over the centuries. The ruins they left are encrusted with decorative religious and cultural carvings: icons, hieroglyphs and complex decorative geometrical patterns. Described as ‘pre-Colombian’ (a rather colonialist reference) these societies were agricultural, militaristic and advocated a definitive calendar that predicted the end of the world.
In the 1930s, Frida Kahlo came to see the Zapotecs and Aztecs as wholesome and earthy cultures, living in harmony with nature. The Zapotecs traded and worked shells, sponges, gold, amber, salt, feathers, furs cotton, spices, honey, cocoa and other naturally occurring materials that were readily available from their immediate environment. They were the most productive goldsmiths in the region, a complex and organised trading society expressing itself through distinctive art and decoration, from clothing to architecture. The stylings of these ancient artefacts survived the test of time and were transferred to other mediums such as textiles and fashion design – the boxy blouses with their distinctive bordered panels Frida so adored, being a good example of this.
​

​https://www.messynessychic.com/2021/11/17/the-tribe-that-inspired-frida-kalho/?utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Weekend+Conversation+Starters&utm_content=Weekend+Conversation+Starters

​https://electricliterature.com/heres-a-bunch-of-science-fiction-books-with-cats-on-the-cover/

She partied with Warhol and fronted a band called The Electric Chairs who were too shocking even for punk. As her extraordinary tell-all memoir is republished, Jayne County relives one of music’s most astonishing sagas
Jayne County is explaining the term “wrecking”, which was a popular pastime among the more confrontational drag queens of Atlanta, Georgia, in the 60s. “Just deliberately trying to freak out the regular people, the solids as we called them,” she laughs. “Shaking people out of their normality, just trying to see what nerves we could push. They need their nerves twisted once in a while.
“We used to do things like go into department stores and ride up and down the elevators just screaming, you know, holding up women’s clothes and saying, ‘Look at this! He’s going to adore me in this!’ One of our big wrecks was going into the men’s room at the Greyhound bus station, a bunch of us queens, maybe four or five. The men were at the urinals with their you-know-whats out and we’d start screaming, ‘Ooh, look how big it is! Look at that one! Oh my God, I think I had that one last night! How is your wife in bed, darling? I’d be a lot better!’ The guys would be rushing to get their zippers up, so uncomfortable with us in there.”
Clad in a dress made of condoms, she sang You Gotta Get Laid to Stay Healthy (and I'm the Healthiest Girl in Town)
Perhaps understandably, wrecking was not an activity without its risks in the deep south of the 60s. “It’s a wonder we didn’t get killed, a wonder we didn’t get in more trouble than we did,” she says, speaking by phone from Atlanta. “We did get shot at. They would actually come by in their trucks and shoot at us for the fun. You could hear the bullets flying past your head – shhhhhhw! Oh yeah, they wanted to kill us. But I think, because people were so shocked, they usually didn’t have time to think about hurting us. They were just too busy being shocked. By the time they got over it, we were gone and they’d be wondering what the fuck happened.”
It was all a long time ago, when Jayne County was still Wayne County, formerly Wayne Rogers, the son of working-class parents, who took to wearing makeup at school and graduated wearing lipstick. “I can’t really hide what I am very well,” she says. County’s story subsequently took her from Atlanta to New York; from the Stonewall riot to the transgressive demimonde that gathered around Andy Warhol’s Factory; from glam rock to punk, where Wayne eventually became Jayne, the world’s first transgender rock’n’roller. It’s one of the most extraordinary sagas in rock history: you read her recently republished autobiography Man Enough to Be a Woman with your mouth hanging open, not least because, throughout it all, County never really stopped wrecking. No matter where she fetches up, she somehow manages to end up shocking not just the solids, but the other people intent on shocking the solids.
It took some effort to emerge as the outrageous one in Warhol’s late-60s circle, but County managed it. New York’s absurdist fringe theatre company the Theatre of the Ridiculous had already staged plays featuring necrophiles and a character based on John Wayne who apparently “gave birth to a baby out of his asshole while doing poppers” – but even they balked at staging County’s play, which came with the thought-provoking title Wanker: Fascist Rhapsody. The glam scene was big on decadence and ambiguous sexuality, but it clearly wasn’t prepared for County singing You Gotta Get Laid to Stay Healthy (And I’m the Healthiest Girl in Town) while clad in a dress made of condoms.
Punk dealt in wilful offence, but at least some punks seemed to draw the line at County’s band the Electric Chairs and their signature song (If You Don’t Want to Fuck Me) Fuck Off. During a performance at CBGBs music club, one of County’s fellow musicians began shouting homophobic insults at her, an action he presumably regretted when County broke his shoulder with a microphone stand in response. Record companies, she sighs, “had no idea what to do with me at all. It was just too beyond their understanding.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/music/2021/may/18/shot-outrageous-life-jayne-county-first-trans-rocknroller-electric-chairs-memoir

Madalena Schwartz
​Budapest, 1921 – Sao Paulo, 1993
In 1934, after her mother passed away, Schwartz traveled with her father to Argentina. 26 years later, married with two children, she moved and settled with her family in São Paulo, Brazil, where she lived until her death. She started late with photography; she was almost fifty. She was a member of the Foto Cine Club Bandeirante and the so-called Paulista School, along with other photographers such as Marcel Giró, José Yalenti and Gaspar Gasparian. Schwartz began a series of portraits of personalities from the world of theater and television, such as singer Ney Matogrosso, and others less famous, known in the city’s nightclubs. She also portrayed Brazilian artists, musicians and intellectuals, such as Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and his son Chico Buarque, Clarice Lispector, Jorge Amado and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
https://www.malba.org.ar/en/evento/madalena-schwartz-las-metamorfosis/

​Edited with text by David Jacob Kramer. Text by David Jacob Kramer, Rembert Browne, Melania Gazzotti. Oral histories by John Sinclair, Ishmael Reed, Marjorie Heins, Mariann Wizard-Vasquez, Abe Peck.A glorious design herbarium of marijuana ads from the great underground magazines of the 1960s and '70sThe youth uprising now simply known as the Sixties was fed by one of the greatest booms in publishing history. The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) began as a loose confederation of five papers in 1966, and within a few years swelled to over 500 across the world, including Kaleidoscope, International Times and the East Village Other. They "spread like weed,” said the UPS director, weed dealer and eventual founder of High Times Tom Forcade. The metaphor was apt: the UPS spurred the legalization movement, and weed became its totem—and a helpful means for government agencies to crack down on the UPS, since weed permeated UPS pages, with gaps in text crammed with weed-inspired “spot illustrations.”
Heads Together collects these drawings, shining a light on lesser-known names in the stoner-art canon, and many who weren’t names at all since no signature was attached. It also compiles guides for growing weed from the period that were treated like contraband by the CIA. Activist-oriented, psychedelic rolling papers are showcased too. As pot now fast-tracks toward legalization in the US and beyond, its once-incendiary status is brought into odd relief. Pot’s contemporary corporate profiteers do not reflect those who fought for legalization, or the Black and Latino populations strategically criminalized for pot well before hippies were targeted and long after. The art in this book speaks to a time when pot was smoked with optimism, as something capable of activating transformation in the face of corrupt and powerful forces.
​https://www.artbook.com/9783907236543.html

​One night in 1971, J.D. Souther stopped by a small club on Melrose Avenue at the urging of David Geffen. “I was just complaining about how stupid most pop artists are and how most songwriting doesn’t really get much beneath the surface,” Souther, who co-wrote several of the Eagles’ biggest hits, recalls with a laugh. “And he said, ‘Go see this girl I just signed, Judee Sill.’” 
Souther found a seat in the crowd, and placed his eyes on a 27-year-old musician with long honey-blond hair and round wire-rim eyeglasses holding an acoustic guitar. Someone in the audience yelled out a request for Judy Collins’ “Both Sides Now.” “First of all, Judy Collins didn’t write the song, get that straight,” she curtly replied. “Second of all, if you want to hear her sing it, what are you doing here?” Souther was blown away: “I thought, ‘Wow, I must know this woman.’”  
For a brief moment in the early Seventies, Judee Sill was one of L.A.’s most promising artists. She was one of the first musicians signed to Asylum Records, a label David Geffen started with Elliot Roberts that became famous for its roster of the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and others. Sill was produced by Graham Nash, and her songs were covered by the Turtles, the Hollies, and Cass Elliot. But unlike her labelmates, she never found fame and success. When the decade of the singer-songwriter ended, she ended with it, dying on November 23rd, 1979, of a drug overdose. 

Sill remained obscure for years, a cult favorite for those who discovered her rare, out-of-print records or bought Japanese CDs on the internet. But that all changed at the turn of this century, when a posthumous release and a few reissues made her music accessible again. She’s had ripples of recognition over the years — Lin-Manuel Miranda has gone on record as being a Sill fan, while Greta Gerwig sang Sill’s “There’s a Rugged Road” in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg — but a full resurgence could be on its way thanks to Soldier of the Heart: The Judee Sill Story, an upcoming documentary that’s been eight years in the making
Whether it’s the religious imagery in her lyrics or her ornate, Bach-influenced orchestral arrangements, there’s a mystical force that draws listeners to Sill; rarely are her fans casual. It’s easy to fall down an online rabbit hole while reading about her fascinating and tumultuous life. She robbed liquor stores and gas stations as a drug-addled teenager. She learned to play the organ in reform school, and even spent time in prison, where she fantasized about becoming a songwriter. She was openly bisexual at a time when even Freddie Mercury was firmly in the closet. She was injured in car accidents, one purportedly involving White Christmas actor Danny Kaye. She died alone in her apartment, one day after Thanksgiving. All of this was a stark contrast to her delicate, enchanting music — or maybe the songs were her refuge from the chaos of her life.

Souther waited for Sill after her set that night, and she drove to his home, following him on his Triumph motorcycle. “It was like watching two dogs meet in the park and just go, ‘OK, we’ll go for a walk together,’” he remembers. “A perfect beginning to what turned into a really electric and very strange relationship.”
Judith Lynne Sill was born on October 7th, 1944, in Studio City, Los Angeles. Her father, Milford, was a sound technician for Paramount Pictures. When Sill was a child, he relocated the family to Oakland, where he owned a bar. Sill spent her early years at Bud’s, where she learned to play the piano and sing. “It was so seedy in the bar,” she told Rolling Stone’s Grover Lewis in 1972, in what turned out to be her definitive interview. “People were always fightin’ and pukin’, there was illegal gamblin’, and my parents drank a lot, too.”
Still, these were happy times for the family — photographs show Sill and her brother, Dennis, smiling, having birthday parties, and riding bicycles. But all that changed with the first of many family tragedies, when Milford died of heart failure in 1952. Her mother, Oneta, moved the family back to Los Angeles, where she worked on the Betty Boop cartoon series. 


https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/judee-sill-songwriter-profile-1130869/amp/

Season 1 free here. 
https://tubitv.com/series/4270/the-original-ladies-of-wrestling

SYNOPSIS An unsettled writer with a fantastic mustache, ROGER SHARPE, finds solace and confidence in one thing he has mastered: pinball. When a police raid destroys the only machines he can find in 1970s New York City, he learns the game is illegal. Roger reluctantly joins forces with the Music and Amusement Association to overturn the ban while falling in love with ELLEN, an artist and single mother. Roger’s path to save pinball ultimately rescues him. He and Ellen overcome their pasts and take a shot at love. Roger learns what it means to take a chance—and that commitment is the most rewarding gamble of all. Based on a true story.
In select theaters and on-demand March 17, 2023.
https://pinballfilm.com/

"If I don’t run a few people off, I haven’t done my job," says the motormouthed songwriter, whose unlikely career is recounted in the documentary The Mojo Manifesto: The Life and Times of Mojo Nixon
IT’S WELL AFTER midnight somewhere off the coast of Florida, and Mojo Nixon is leading a cruise ship full of lubricated and rowdy country-music fans in a bawdy singalong of a song titled “Tie My Pecker to My Leg.”
We won’t get into the lyrics here, but the verses touch on everything from barnyard sex to fornicating at a county fair. “This guy just heard the song for the first time,” Nixon, 65, and dressed in his customary Hawaiian shirt and uneven denim cutoffs, says, pointing to a man in the front row. “He’s grinning ear to ear!”
If there’s a safe space for Nixon and his unfiltered brand of worldly-redneck commentary and rambunctious cowpunk songs, it’s probably in international waters, free from any laws that may impede his ability to spout off. “It’s a real divider. If you can’t handle ‘Tie My Pecker to My Leg,’ you’re not gonna like the rest of the show,” Nixon says a few weeks later, back on dry land at his home in Cincinnati. “But if I don’t run a few people off, I haven’t done my job.”Nixon, a shouting singer, button-pushing songwriter, unrepentant shit-stirrer and, since 2004, on-air personality for Sirius XM’s Outlaw Country channel — which is what finds him aboard the 2023 Outlaw Country Cruise — has been making a career out of both entertaining and appalling audiences since the early 1980s. That’s when he and washboard whiz Skid Roper formed a duo and began releasing songs like “Jesus at McDonald’s,” “Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin,” and “Burn Down the Malls.”
His 1987 video for “Elvis Is Everywhere,” low on budget but big on go-karts and sideburns, made the 30-year-old Nixon a staple of the MTV era. Soon, he was performingthe frenetic tribute to Elvis Presley’s die-hard fans on Arsenio Hall’s talk show, casting Winona Ryder in his music videos, and filming a series of promos for MTV in which he sang just-shy-of-dirty harmonica ditties and smashed television sets on a beach.
But around 1989, he and Roper (the Silent Bob to Nixon’s loquacious Jay) went their separate ways and Nixon set out on a solo career. That’s where The Mojo Manifesto: The Life and Times of Mojo Nixon, a new documentary now available to stream, picks up. Directed by Matt Eskey, the film opens with Nixon, riding high on a wave of what would today be called “viral” fame, entering a Memphis studio with producer Jim Dickinson to make his 1990 solo debut, Otis.
“That’s when things got really crazy. I wanted to have a band and I wanted to compete with the Replacements and the Blasters and Los Lobos,” Nixon tells Rolling Stone. With what he estimates to be a $100,000 budget, he hired Dickinson to produce, formed a “cowpunk supergroup” with friends like Country Dick Montana of the Beat Farmers and John Doe of X, and, to piss off the accountants, bought a go-kart with record-label money. “We wanted to have ‘go-kart’ in the budget. Some accountant with a green visor has to see it and go, ‘What the hell is this?’”
The go-kart tale, recounted in the movie by Nixon’s manager of 37 years, the chrome-domed “Bullethead,” is one of the highlights of The Mojo Manifesto, a long-in-the-works documentary that premiered last year at South by Southwest. At just 88 minutes, it somehow covers all the Mojo bases: his upbringing in Danville, Virginia, where he was born Neill Kirby McMillan Jr.; his “Road to Damascus” transformation into the Mojo Nixon character; his devotion to what he calls “raw, primitive rock & roll”; and his unexpected rise to, well, really just a cult hero. That’s as far as Nixon got.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/mojo-nixon-manifesto-documentary-elvis-is-everywhere-1234699029/

Known as the mother of the miniskirt, clad in her signature play clothes and boots, with huge painted eyes, fake freckles and a bob, she epitomized London’s Swinging Sixties.
Mary Quant, the British designer who revolutionized fashion and epitomized the style of the Swinging Sixties, a playful, youthful ethos that sprang from the streets, not a Paris atelier, died on Thursday at her home in Surrey, in southern England. Known as the mother of the miniskirt, she was 93.
Her family announced the death in a statement.
England was emerging from its postwar privations when, in 1955, Ms. Quant and her aristocratic boyfriend, Alexander Plunket Greene, opened a boutique called Bazaar on London’s King’s Road, in the heart of Chelsea. Ms. Quant filled it with the outfits that she and her bohemian friends were wearing, “a bouillabaisse of clothes and accessories,” as she wrote in an autobiography, “Quant by Quant” (1966) — short flared skirts and pinafores, knee socks and tights, funky jewelry and berets in all colors.
Young women at the time were turning their backs on the corseted shapes of their mothers, with their nipped waists and ship’s-prow chests — the shape of Dior, which had dominated since 1947. They disdained the uniform of the establishment — the signifiers of class and age telegraphed by the lacquered helmets of hair, the twin sets and heels, and the matchy-matchy accessories — the model for which was typically in her 30s, not a young gamine like Ms. Quant.
When she couldn’t find the pieces she wanted, Ms. Quant made them herself, buying fabric at retail from the luxury department store Harrods and stitching them in her bed-sit, where her Siamese cats had a habit of eating the Butterick patterns she worked from.
Profits were elusive in those early years, but the boutique was a hit from the get-go, with young women stripping the place bare on a near-daily basis, sometimes grabbing new clothing from Ms. Quant’s arms as she headed into the store. She and Mr. Plunket Greene ran it like the coffee bars they frequented: as a hangout and a party at all hours, with a background of jazz.
And they made their window displays a performance, too, with mannequins designed by a friend to look like the young women who were shopping there — “the birds,” in Ms. Quant’s words, using the parlance of the times — figures with sharp cheekbones, mod haircuts and coltish legs, sometimes turned upside down or sprayed white, some with bald heads and round sunglasses, clad in striped bathing suits and strumming guitars.
Amateurs at accounting, along with everything else, the couple stashed their bills in piles, paying from the top down. Vendors were often paid twice, or not at all, depending on their place in the pile.
A decade later, Mary Quant was a global brand, with licenses all over the world — she was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1966 for her contribution to British exports — and sales that would soon reach $20 million. When she toured the United States with a new collection, she was greeted like a fifth Beatle; at one point she required police protection. Newspapers eagerly printed her aperçus and declarations: “Quant Expects Higher Hem,” The Associated Press declared in the winter of 1966, adding that Ms. Quant had “predicted today that the miniskirt was here to stay.”
There was a Mary Quant line at J.C. Penney and boutiques in New York department stores. There was Mary Quant makeup — for women and men — packaged in paint boxes, eyelashes you could buy by the yard, and lingerie, tights, shoes, outerwear and furs. By the 1970s, there were bedsheets, stationery, paint, housewares and a Mary Quant doll, Daisy, named for Ms. Quant’s signature daisy logo.
“The celebrity designer is an accepted part of the modern fashion system today, but Mary was rare in the ’60s as a brand ambassador for her own clothes and brand,” Jenny Lister, a co-curator of a 2019 retrospective of Ms. Quant’s work at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, told The New York Times. “She didn’t just sell quirky British cool, she actually was quirky British cool, and the ultimate Chelsea girl.”
“I grew up not wanting to grow up,” Ms. Quant once said. “Growing up seemed terrible. To me, it was awful. Children were free and sane, and grown-ups were hideous.”
Barbara Mary Quant was born on Feb. 11, 1930, in Blackheath, southeast London. Her parents, John and Mildred (Jones) Quant, were Welsh teachers who came from mining families and were determined that their two children, Mary and Tony, should follow conventional career paths.
But Mary wanted to study fashion. When she received a scholarship to the arts-focused Goldsmiths College (now Goldsmiths, University of London), her parents made a compromise: She could attend if she took her degree in art education (she studied illustration). There, she met Mr. Plunket Greene, a well-born eccentric (the philosopher Bertrand Russell was a cousin, as was the Duke of Bedford) who wore his mother’s gold shantung silk pajamas to class on the rare occasions he attended and played jazz on the trumpet — a character straight out of an Evelyn Waugh novel (Waugh was a family friend).


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/fashion/mary-quant-dead.html

I’m going to cut right to the chase here and tell you about Jesse Haemmerle—aka Johnny H/John Haemmerle and his connection to Elvis, as it’s too weird to wait for. You may know Elvis’ mother Gladys Garon was set to deliver twins at home in Tupelo, Mississippi when tragically Elvis’ brother Jessie arrived stillborn just before Elvis was born. The loss of his twin weighed heavily on Elvis psychologically for his entire life. Gladys has said she and her husband Vernon gave Presley the middle name of Aaron (an adaptation of the family’s last name of Garon), so he would always feel as though his brother was there with him. Even before his own death, it was said Elvis would have meandering conversations with his deceased brother while traipsing around Graceland. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a kid named John Haemmerle would learn he had been adopted from a family in Tupelo, and his actual date of birth was January 8th, 1935, just like Elvis. 
Okay. 
Elvis-association aside, John Haemmerle was a pretty interesting cat on his own. He served in the Air Force and worked as a police officer for several years. Haemmerle dedicated a large portion of his life to bodybuilding and became good enough to participate in the Mr. America competition in 1968. He was also a member of the impressive sounding organization, the Federation of Arm Wrestlers and built the first opposing grips arm wrestling table in 1969. He scored some television roles and an uncredited bit part in the 1973 film Serpico, but was most successful musically and put out a number of singles under different names including Johnny H in the 50s and 60s, which you could classify as Doo-Wop. He was also known for the creation of his unique space rocket-inspired hollow body V acoustic guitar (pictured at the top of this post). 
In getting back to Haemmerle’s (maybe) Elvis connection, there are many accounts which have been shared over the decades—here are a few.
​Sometime in 1964, Haemmerle claims to have met Elvis and somehow got to lay the story on him he was his brother Jesse apparently speaking to the big E for “hours.”  In an interview with truth-champion The Sun, Haemmerle recounted strange Elvis-related experiences such as seeing an image of Elvis materialize on his cellar wall, and a session with well-known psychic Ann Fisher which conjured up memories of his days in Tupelo prior to his adoption. Haemmerle’s Myspace page contains other ramblings about his psychic visions, including one concerning a recurring dream where he traded clothing with his “twin brother” as he died. Haemmerle also had regular dreams about his custom hollow body V getting ripped off—which it did. Luckily, according to his son, he made two just in case his nightmare came to fruition. At some point along the way, Haemmerle changed his name to Jesse Garon Presley. In 1990 an article published on September 19th in New York newspaper The Reporter cited Jesse for winning a first-place award (as well as several others) at the National Creative Arts Festival in Albany in rhythm/blues/religious category for his interpretation of Elvis’ 1970 hit, “Kentucky Rain.”Now, I’m sure you (maybe) might be thinking “whatever happened to Jesse Haemmerle?” I have a bit of an unexpected twist for you. According to Haemmerle’s 2003 obituary, he was, in fact, adopted and raised by Oscar and Felicia Albarea Haemmerle in the New York/New Jersey area. He is referred to by name in the obit as Jesse G. Presley noting his place of birth as DUN DUN DUN! Tupelo, Mississippi. This all reads like an old episode of In Search Of with Leonard Nimoy, and since the all-knowing Nimoy isn’t around to help me figure this one out, I’m going to wait on passing any judgment regarding the truth behind this very strange story. 
Here are some images of Haemmerle during his bodybuilding days as well as his musical ones. Also included below are some of the musical stylings of the mysterious Johnny H. 

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_story_of_johnny_h._the_musician_bodybuilder_actor_and_his_bizarre_conne

“Father Yod just gave me a thought for you. He wants me to tell you, ‘Camelot.’”
On a Zoom call in March from her home in Oahu, Hawaii, Isis Aquarian recounted her time in the Los Angeles spiritual commune the Source Family, which she — through telepathic messages from the group’s leader — likened to the romantic symbol of the Arthurian world.
In the 1970s, dressed in stylish, flowing gowns, caftans, robes and headscarves, she all but resembled Guinevere. “It was pure Camelot for all of us. For those who experienced it, it was something else,” she added. For Isis, the Family was tantamount to utopia.
Known for its pioneering in California lifestyle staples like health food, yoga, psychedelic rock and hippie fashion, the group’s leader, Father Yod, née Jim Baker, “left the body” in 1975, after a hang gliding accident in Hawaii, where the Family relocated in 1974. But Isis, now 80, said their union — she was one of Yod’s 14 spiritual wives — never ended. “He’s still the big guy to me, still my man,” she said. “When you live in both dimensions, the veil is very thin.”
To an outsider, Isis’ casual references to telepathy and interdimensional existence may sound delusional. But for members of the Source Family, a group that some call a cult, it’s a way of life honed over decades of study and ritualism based in Western esotericism. Their beliefs amalgamated principles developed by Kundalini yoga progenitor Yogi Bhajan; the astrological concept of the Age of Aquarius; the teachings of Manly P. Hall, founder of the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz; the freemasons and others. Father Yod bestowed each member with a first name; they changed their middle and last names to the Aquarian. Like many religious and spiritual groups, the Source Family placed their faith in things invisible to nonbelievers.
Most recently, in November, Isis, curator Charlie Kitchings and filmmaker and publisher Jodi Wille, who has previously worked with Isis on a book and a feature documentary, released “Family: The Source Family Scrapbook” in conjunction with the independent record label Sacred Bones. The book includes previously unpublished photographs and ephemera from Isis’ archive and detailed captions that contextualize the images. Isis also moved her archive, around 50 boxes of materials, to the American Religions Collection at the UC Santa Barbara library. In conjunction with the book’s release, a series of Source Family events took place in Santa Barbara, Los Feliz, Malibu and Culver City in late March.
And now, Hollywood is getting involved.
At a private dinner in Malibu on March 25 sponsored by the media company Atlas Obscura, guests including actors Patricia Arquette and Mark Ruffalo, music producer Rick Rubin, actor and producer Ben Sinclair, original Source Family members and other curious parties were invited on “a journey into the cult roots of health food.” The menu, inspired by dishes at the original Source restaurant, featured seven courses including “psychedelic toast,” “multidimensional soup” and a re-creation of the restaurant’s “aware salad,” served by staff engaged in Source Family cosplay, dressed in flowing white frocks and wigs. Isis and fellow Source Family members Venus, Zerathustra and Galaxy Aquarian blessed the meal with a ritual they performed in the Family. “As above, so below, and around, we go, YaHoWah,” they chanted with corresponding hand gestures, as if guiding energy around the 40-person table decorated with poppies, dill flowers, wheat and cut papaya, a flower child’s rendering of a medieval banquet.

​https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-04-12/source-family-cult-l-a-father-yod-mark-ruffalo-rick-rubin-vegetarian-restaurant?fbclid=IwAR3VKzl4SBApva3FfW_FSuwCfbSCmDfAVxPGPMBIcpxplGQp8uamVggHpmQ

An Artist Reversed The Gender Roles In Sexist Vintage Ads To Point Out How Absurd They Really Are
"Show him it's a woman's world."
Eli Rezkallah is a 31-year-old visual artist/photographer who recently created a photo series entitled, "In a Parallel Universe" that reimagines sexist ads from the mid-20th century with the gender roles reversed.
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https://www.buzzfeed.com/crystalro/this-artist-re-created-sexist-vintage-ads-with-the-roles

1967 Cookbook Features Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, Barbra Streisand & More
Am I alone in thinking that the “dozens of nutty, turned-on, easy-to-prepare recipes” in 1967’s Singers and Swingers in the Kitchen bear more than passing resemblance to the festively photographed dishes in Betty Crocker’s 1965 New Boys and Girls Cook Book?
Could Sonny and Cher, Simon and Garfunkel, and Herman’s Hermits – to name a few of the “top scenemakers” Singers and Swingers author Roberta Ashley designates as the “grooviest gourmets happening” – really shared a common palate with Betty and her child-chefs?
It’s hard to imagine 1967’s rock stars” eating this stuff, let alone making it. The Rolling Stones’ “Hot Dogs on the Rocks” sounds more suited to Mick Jagger’s hot pot at the London School of Economics than the back of a “Ruby Tuesday” era tour bus. I don’t recall Keith Richards mentioning them in Life.
(Though take away the recipe’s three middle words, and you’re left with the title of a certain multi-platinum double hits album. Coincidence?)
Moving on to Singers and Swingers’ salad course, Monkee Peter Tork’s “Mad Mandarin Salad” (click here for ingredients) sounds like it would taste quite similar to the New Boys and Girls Cook Book’s “Rocket Salad”, above. Canned fruit features prominently in both, but “Rocket Salad” is way more phallic, and thus more rock n’ roll.
“Barbra Streisand’s Instant Coffee Ice Cream” sounds sophisticated, mayhaps because coffee, like alcohol, has no place in the Betty Crocker New Boys and Girls’ realm. It seems like it would uphold the Singers and Swingers’ mandate by being “easy-to-prepare”. Dare I say “easy enough for a child to prepare”? So my own mother told the Indianapolis Star sometime in the late 60’s. The evidence is below. Just like Barbra’s, my mother’s recipe required marshmallows and a blender.
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https://www.openculture.com/2014/02/1967-cookbook-features-recipes-by-the-rolling-stones.html

'May I have the pleasure of seeing you home?' The 'flirtation cards' 19th-century men used to woo ladies (but they had to be returned if she wasn't interested)
Long before mobile phones came along - allowing single men and women to flirt behind the comfort of a glowing screen - shy love-seekers had to resort to other tactics.
In the case of late 19th-century America, it was the 'escort card' - not to be confused with the explicit sort you might imagine today - but rather a comical printed card men would hand to women they found attractive.
Collector Alan Mays has unearthed a treasure trove of these vintage ice-breakers, which bear phrases such as: 'May I be permitted the blissful pleasure of escorting you home this evening?'
According to The Encyclopedia of Ephemera, there were two types of cards used in the 1870s and 1880s.
One was referred to as the 'calling card' and would be used by gentleman to formally introduce themselves to new acquaintances - much like the modern business card.
The second, as seen in Mr Mays' collection, was a novelty variety reserved for more casual encounters, namely men seeking the company of women, known as an 'escort card'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3052889/amp/The-flirtation-cards-19th-century-men-used-woo-ladies.html

Easter Was Better in the 70s
Black and white photos of the annual New York City parade by acclaimed photographer Meryl Meisler.
On Easter Sunday 1977, while humming the words to a classic Irving Berlin song, I pretended to be Judy Garland:
In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it,
You'll be the grandest lady in the Easter Parade.
I'll be all in clover and when they look you over,
I'll be the proudest fellow in the Easter Parade.
On the avenue, Fifth Avenue, the photographers will snap us,
And you'll find that you're in the rotogravure.
Oh, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet,
And of the girl I'm taking to the Easter Parade.
There I was, in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral's in New York, attending—and photographing—my first Easter parade. Even though I wasn't brought up as Christian (I'm Jewish), I've always been interested in how other people celebrate their holidays. Adults and children (and even some pets) showed up wearing their best hats and bonnets. Many were walking in and out of the cathedral, while others looked like they had been partying since Mardi Gras.
I took their pictures, and now it's 40 years later. Looking back, it's easy to see that things change—that styles come and go, that traditions take new forms. But we're still one community, one people, one planet.
Meryl Meisler is an artist based in New York City. She is author of the internationally acclaimed photo books A Tale of Two Cities: Disco Era Bushwickand Purgatory & Paradise: SASSY 70s Suburbia & the City. Meisler is working on her third book in a trilogy about the 1970s.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bme8kv/the-big-hats-and-classy-clothes-of-a-70s-nyc-easter-parade?fbclid=IwAR1LFWJHJonOJ9leTJdyqhCoXw8hAo8GnQkqUWXgsnpj1X5NA8GGwu0DTF8

In 1974, a group of London art students founded the feminist print collective See Red Women’s Workshop. They taught themselves plumbing and carpentry skills while transforming a derelict building with no electricity into a fully functional screen-printing studio and meeting space. For the next 16 years, the more than 40 women organized consciousness-raising sessions, designed graphic posters railing against the division of labor, and educated youth groups about sexual and reproductive health.
The book See Red Women’s Workshop, published February 28 by Four Corner Books, traces the collective’s evolution in archival photographs of the printing process. The collection features correspondence letters with bookstore distributors, meeting memos, and preliminary sketches of poster designs.
Some prints are calendars riddled with blunt one-liners about workplace barriers (example: “Over 40, promotion given to younger man, go back to 29.”) or expectations at home (“Housework in the evening, exhausted.”) In 1979, one year after a coalition of black and Asian women put out the newsletter FOWAAD! to highlight how the women’s liberation movement often ignored issues affecting women of color, a See Red member created a poster that read, “Black Women Will Not Be Intimidated.”
In other illustrations from See Red’s early years, disgruntled women are shown scrubbing dishes and ironing clothes with subversive or irreverent text. One print with the slogan “Sisters! Question every aspect of our lives” shows women vacuuming, grocery shopping, and applying lipstick. While much of the group’s early work focused on attitudes toward marriage and domestic chores, later campaigns targeted equal pay, reproductive freedom, gay rights, and more racial inclusivity. Other campaigns targeted the closure of a women’s hospital in South London; the imprisonment of women in Armagh, Ireland; and the use of public money in funding Queen Elizabeth’s Silver jubilee celebration.
Printing was a male-dominated profession in the U.K. in the 1970s. See Red members graduated from art schools where less than a third of the students were female, and the instructors were all men. “The male students took up all the studio space,” one member explains in the book, and “there was little respect for our ideas: the assumption often was that we were probably only doing art as a hobby.”
The National Front, a far-right political group, frequently attacked See Red’s workshop space — pouring ink over the presses, cutting phone wires, posting neo-Nazi stickers on doors, urinating on their mail, and in one instance throwing bricks through a window.
In addition to external conflicts, there were also significant fissions within the group. As member Sue Field Read explains, “There were quite a few downs, mistakes and mis-printings, high emotions and disagreements — but then I suppose this happens whenever there is a group of people working very hard, with little financial support, with the serious aim of spreading important ideas in an uncaring selfish world.”
In 1982, See Red was awarded a government grant that allowed them to pay some members regular wages. This led to a series of irreparable divisions, as some members advocated that the paid positions should be filled by black, working class, and gay women, while others wanted the original collective members to assume paid positions. Buoyed by donations, calendar sales, and various commissioned print projects, See Red remained active until 1990.
Click through to see how the group deconstructed social expectations and fought for wage equality.
​
https://www.thecut.com/2017/02/see-striking-posters-from-feminist-see-red-womens-workshop.html

An essential part of learning history is questioning it, asking what has become part of our cultural memory and what might have been left out. When it comes to the history of punk music, there are few bands who have been as overlooked as Pure Hell.
The band’s story began in West Philadelphia in 1974, when four teenagers – lead vocalist Kenny ‘Stinker’ Gordon, bassist Lenny ‘Steel’ Boles, guitarist Preston ‘Chip Wreck’ Morris and drummer Michael ‘Spider’ Sanders, set out to follow in the footsteps of their musical idols. A shared obsession with the sounds of Iggy, Bowie, Cooper, and Hendrix inspired them to create music that was louder, faster and more provocative than even those artists’ most experimental records. Pure Hell’s unique sound led them to New York, where they became characters in a seminal subculture recognised today as punk. As musicians of colour, their contribution to a predominately white underground scene is all the more significant. “We were the first black punk band in the world,” says Boles. “We were the ones who paid the dues for it, we broke the doors down. We were genuinely the first. And we still get no credit for it.”
The title of the ‘first black punk band’ has, in recent years, been informally given to Detroit-based Death, whose music was mostly unheralded at the time but has since been rediscovered and praised for its progressive ideas. But while Death were creating proto-punk music in isolation in the early 1970s, Pure Hell was completely entrenched in the New York City underground scene, living and performing alongside the legends of American punk. Arriving the same month that Patti Smith and Television began their two-month residencies at CBGB and leaving just after Nancy Spungen’s murder, Pure Hell’s active years in the city aligned perfectly with the birth and death of a dynamic chapter of music history. “I don’t want to be remembered just because we were black,” says Kenny Gordon. “I want to be remembered for being a part of the first tier of punk in the 70s.”
Being just 155km from Greenwich Village, Philadelphia was somewhat of a pipeline of New York subculture – Gordon remembers his teenage years at the movie theatre watching John Waters films like Polyester and Pink Flamingos, and hanging out at Artemis, a spot frequented by Philly scenesters like Nancy Spungen and Neon Leon. “I heard (The Rolling Stones’) ‘Satisfaction’ and knew it was the kind of music I wanted to play,” recalls bassist Lenny Boles. “I was too poor to afford instruments, so if someone had one, I would befriend them.” 
The quad quickly gained notoriety on their home turf. “Growing up in West Philadelphia, which was all black, we were some of the craziest guys you could have possibly seen walking the streets back then,” says Gordon. “We dressed in drag and wore wigs, basically daring people to bother us. People in the neighbourhood would say, ‘Don’t go into houses with those guys, you may not come out!’”
Pure Hell swan dove into the New York underground scene in 1975, in pursuit of the people, places, and sounds they’d read about for years in the pages of Rock Scene and Cream magazine. The band moved into the Chelsea Hotel, the temporary home of a long list of influential characters, including Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Edie Sedgwick, Patti Smith, and Robert Mapplethorpe. Their first gig in the city was hosted at Frenzy’s thrift, a storefront on St. Marks place, where guitarist Preston Morris “rather memorably caught the amplifier on fire due to a combination of maximum volume and faulty wires”, says Gordon. Drummer Michael Sanders’ friendship with Neon Leon led the band to the New York Dolls, who were acting as mentors for younger artists like Debbie Harry and Richard Hell at the time. Pure Hell was soon invited to perform for the Dolls in their loft.
https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/40942/1/pure-hell-first-black-american-punk-band-history
​

One of my favorite Instagram Pages. Please Follow! 
https://www.instagram.com/longlostpersonals/

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https://www.instagram.com/richwexlerphotographer/
http://richwexlerphotographer.com

’m going to cut right to the chase here and tell you about Jesse Haemmerle—aka Johnny H/John Haemmerle and his connection to Elvis, as it’s too weird to wait for. You may know Elvis’ mother Gladys Garon was set to deliver twins at home in Tupelo, Mississippi when tragically Elvis’ brother Jessie arrived stillborn just before Elvis was born. The loss of his twin weighed heavily on Elvis psychologically for his entire life. Gladys has said she and her husband Vernon gave Presley the middle name of Aaron (an adaptation of the family’s last name of Garon), so he would always feel as though his brother was there with him. Even before his own death, it was said Elvis would have meandering conversations with his deceased brother while traipsing around Graceland. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a kid named John Haemmerle would learn he had been adopted from a family in Tupelo, and his actual date of birth was January 8th, 1935, just like Elvis.
Okay.
Elvis-association aside, John Haemmerle was a pretty interesting cat on his own. He served in the Air Force and worked as a police officer for several years. Haemmerle dedicated a large portion of his life to bodybuilding and became good enough to participate in the Mr. America competition in 1968. He was also a member of the impressive sounding organization, the Federation of Arm Wrestlers and built the first opposing grips arm wrestling table in 1969. He scored some television roles and an uncredited bit part in the 1973 film Serpico, but was most successful musically and put out a number of singles under different names including Johnny H in the 50s and 60s, which you could classify as Doo-Wop. He was also known for the creation of his unique space rocket-inspired hollow body V acoustic guitar (pictured at the top of this post).
In getting back to Haemmerle’s (maybe) Elvis connection, there are many accounts which have been shared over the decades—here are a few. 
Sometime in 1964, Haemmerle claims to have met Elvis and somehow got to lay the story on him he was his brother Jesse apparently speaking to the big E for “hours.”  In an interview with truth-champion The Sun, Haemmerle recounted strange Elvis-related experiences such as seeing an image of Elvis materialize on his cellar wall, and a session with well-known psychic Ann Fisher which conjured up memories of his days in Tupelo prior to his adoption. Haemmerle’s Myspace page contains other ramblings about his psychic visions, including one concerning a recurring dream where he traded clothing with his “twin brother” as he died. Haemmerle also had regular dreams about his custom hollow body V getting ripped off—which it did. Luckily, according to his son, he made two just in case his nightmare came to fruition. At some point along the way, Haemmerle changed his name to Jesse Garon Presley. In 1990 an article published on September 19th in New York newspaper The Reporter cited Jesse for winning a first-place award (as well as several others) at the National Creative Arts Festival in Albany in rhythm/blues/religious category for his interpretation of Elvis’ 1970 hit, “Kentucky Rain.”
Now, I’m sure you (maybe) might be thinking “whatever happened to Jesse Haemmerle?” I have a bit of an unexpected twist for you. According to Haemmerle’s 2003 obituary, he was, in fact, adopted and raised by Oscar and Felicia Albarea Haemmerle in the New York/New Jersey area. He is referred to by name in the obit as Jesse G. Presley noting his place of birth as DUN DUN DUN! Tupelo, Mississippi. This all reads like an old episode of In Search Of with Leonard Nimoy, and since the all-knowing Nimoy isn’t around to help me figure this one out, I’m going to wait on passing any judgment regarding the truth behind this very strange story.
Here are some images of Haemmerle during his bodybuilding days as well as his musical ones. Also included below are some of the musical stylings of the mysterious Johnny H. 
​​https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_story_of_johnny_h._the_musician_bodybuilder_actor_and_his_bizarre_conne
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Ep 27: Amos Poe (Punk and No-Wave Filmmaker) 
Amos Poe is one of the leading figures of the No Wave Cinema movement (75-85) that grew out of the bustling East Village music and art scene. The No Wave paralleled the punk music explosion and included Jim Jarmusch, Abel Ferrara, Eric Mitchell, James Nares, Beth and Scott B, Vivienne Dick, Sara Driver, John Lurie, Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Bette Gordon, Melvie Arslanian, Charlie Ahearn, among others - they embraced B-movie genres, the avant-garde, & the French New Wave to create a fresh, vibrant American art cinema.
Over 40 years of creating for the screen, Poe has directed, written for and collaborated with a host of impressive figures of the film, music and art worlds, namely Iggy Pop, Blondie, Patti Smith, Television, Richard Hell and the Heartbreakers, The Ramones, Talking Heads, and Wayne County, as well as Debbie Harry, Vincent Spano, Run DMC, Anthrax, Steve Earle, Burt Lancaster, Macaulay Culkin, Bill Pullman, Richard Edson, Gina Gershon, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. We talk about his start in shooting the early NYC punk scene, his films, his influences, and more.  This was a huge honor.

You can find out more about him at his website.  
http://www.amospoe.com/cv.html


HELP AMOS! HE HAS A RARE FORM OF CANCER
Filmmaker Amos Poe was recently diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer that has left him too weak to continue working. Following a recent barrage of testing, a treatment plan is finally coming together. His family and friends are hoping for the best while knowing the road to recovery will be a long and grueling one.
The costs of care and testing leading up to treatment have been astronomical, even with insurance. The treatment itself and the aftercare will be nearly insurmountable without all of our help.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/amos-poe-is-our-friend-and-now-he-needs-all-of-ushttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vintage-annals-archive-outsider-podcast/id1645791721?i=1000606672015
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Chronicles of an Affair with his Secretary, Found in an Abandoned Suitcase
The briefcase was found three decades after the affair took place, abandoned in a German apartment and later sold at auction. The contents of the suitcase, an extraordinary collection of materials that chronicled the adulterous relationship between a businessman and his secretary in the late 1960s and 70s.
Exposed to our own voyeurism, a recent exhibition in New York invited the curious to discover an archive consisting of hundreds of photographs of the same woman, identified only as “Margret S,” posing in hotel rooms and enjoying secret getaways.
Her illusive lover and man behind the camera, is married Cologne businessman and construction company owner, Günter K. He is 39 when the affair begins in May 1969, and Margret is 24, also married.
We know this because Günter meticulously documented the affair like a compulsive accountant. Not only did he endlessly photograph Margret, but he took detailed notes of the affair, written with a typewriter and inscribed with dates like they were official records.
He kept receipts from hotels, restaurants, casinos, spas and shopping sprees, as well as travel documents, theatre tickets and even held on to empty contraception packets and had samples of Margret’s hair.
“The couple go on ‘business trips’ in Günter’s Opel Kapitän,” observes curator Veir Loers in his introduction to the original exhibition of ‘Margret’ in Austria. “Then the trysts begin to take place in an attic flat in Günter’s store building … Margret prepares roulades and redfish filets with cucumber salad. They drink Cappy (orange juice) with a green shot (Escorial, strong liquor) and watch “colourful television.” Margret dresses for him in the clothes he has bought her.”
Indeed, his notes reveal that his wife Leni is aware of the affair but chooses to endure the humiliation. In one of the first long notes, typed on a page from a calendar, Günther describes a confrontation between Margret and his wife:
[Roughly translated from German]
Monday 7.9.1970: At lunch Leni (Günthers wife) says to Margret: Madame, you are a lesser character, you are disrupting a good marriage.
Tuesday 8.9.1970: Around 10 a clock Margret says to me: You let this insult from your wife against me pass? No more sex, you can jump on your own wife. Whatever you do, you are not allowed to jump on me anymore.
Later, my wife has to apologize to her at lunch on 8.9.1970.
That afternoon they go upstairs again to make love and the note ends with:
Devil salad is eaten. Everything is okay again. 
The affair takes place at the dawn of the sexual revolution and yet old conventions prevail. One only hopes he didn’t type up his reports in the living room accompanied by his wife. Or would it even make a difference?
“He, the perfect lover, in truth is a macho man who wants to have everything under control”, concludes curator Veit Loers, who was first to exhibit the archives. “She [Margret] enjoys his attention, his generosity, is happy to let herself be manipulated, is jealous, becomes pregnant despite the pills, and has an illegal abortion − for the third time in her young life.
As the voyeur, we find ourselves in an even more conflicted space as the obsessive nature of the relationship becomes increasingly obvious.
During one of their “business trips”, Günther makes a list of all the times they made love….
Wednesday 12 Aug. 1970: 17 18.15  1x
Beginning of her period (tampon) Initiation party anyways.
Tuesday 18 Aug. 1970: 15.15 -15. 20.
Yellow chair in front of the aquarium (sitting) 1x
Wednesday 2 Sept. 1970: 17. 05-18.00 1x
With beautiful music, resting afterwards
As the affair progresses, his descriptions get longer, become more bold and explicit.
From the earlier black & white photos to later ones, we also observe Günther’s apparent transformation of his secretary from a shy, simple, mousy-haired girl to a modern, sophisticated woman with a fiery red high-maintenance beehive do.
She loses the glasses and starts smoking. He buys her pink satin dresses, jewellery and lingerie and photographs it all.
The relationship appears to come to an end just before Christmas in 1970 when reports and photographs of Margret begin to break off. According to Günther’s notes, she tells him that “after Christmas the f***ing will be over and you will not dance at two weddings anymore.”
He gets involved with other women at the request of Margret who wants him to go on dates with other women, presumably to quell suspicion from her own husband.
There is Giesela, who Günther describes as “sexually starving”, and Ursula, a “big and skinny” 21 year-old who “looks really good. White boots, green dress, black hair.” Günther reveals Margret’s subsequent panicked jealousy, begging him not to fall in love with Ursula. He also mentions that despite him still being involved with Ursula, Margret fights with her husband and asks for a divorce.
His last note is a long description of him and Margret making love. The story is left unfinished, fragmented, there can be no real happy ending.
And the questions linger. What makes a man document his affair so meticulously? Did he want to preserve the relationship to relive it later? Was this industrial businessman searching for a creative platform to express his love? Or merely the confirmation of his control over the situation, as he mastered the art of adultery?
The book ‘Margret: Chronik einer Affare – Mai 1969 bis Dezember 1970’, published in German in 2012 is now out-of-print. The White Columns Gallery exhibition in New York was the first presentation of ‘Margret’ in a non-German speaking context.
https://www.messynessychic.com/2015/03/25/chronicles-of-an-affair-with-his-secretary-found-in-an-abandoned-suitcase/
​

The Incredible Posters of Tadanori Yokoo
Yokoo Tadanori (also known as Tadanori Yokoo) is possibly the greatest major influence on contemporary poster design. But does the current generation of designers even know who he is? Here’s a primer: In the mid-60s, Yokoo rose to prominence through works such as Koshi-maki Osen and La Marie Vison. These works doubtless influenced the psychedelic style in the U.S. at the time. His posters are even more important in Japan because, rather than following foreign styles, they define a Modern Japanese graphic design aesthetic.
Now, thanks to Christopher Mount, who “mounted” an exhibition of the Russian poster masters, The Stenberg Brothers, in New York in 1997 at MoMA, there’s a major exhibition titled “The Complete Posters of Tadanori Yokoo” that opened on July 13th at the The National Museum of Art, Osaka. Mount wrote the main essay for the catalog, which includes more than 800 images, being published by Kokusho.
“This may be the last time this kind of extensive exhibition will be put together of his work,” Mount tells me. He adds: “He has the cultural status and following of a rock star or movie star in Japan. Yokoo is considered one of the great postwar cultural figures right along side Kurasawa, Mishima, Ono, Kusama, Ando or Miyake. I was surprised once when I met him for lunch at MoMA many years ago and a group of teenage Japanese tourists swarmed him for pictures and autographs. Everybody in Japan knows who he is. We don’t have graphic designers like that here in the U.S. My hope is that he can receive more of his proper due here in the U.S. and the West in the coming years.”
Yokoo’s creative life eventually expanded to include a wide range of fields such as painting and literature, but as he continued to produce design throughout his career, the poster remained at the core of his artistic output. “His work has a level of experimentation and personal expression impossible in most Westerners’ understanding of what graphic design can be,” Mount explains. “His work is a kind of contemporary and unrestricted version of the Ukiyo-ei. Thus, Yokoo is able to exceed in terms of creativity anything we expect posters to be.”
Is there a chance that a Yokoo exhibit will come to the U.S.? Mount has spoken with museums on the West Coast and hopes to have interest on the East Coast. “An exhibition of this sort could be particularly appealing with the recent popularity of artists such as Murakami and Nara, and the current fascination with Anime, Manga and popular Japanese culture. Yokoo is the progenitor and otherwise had such a strong influence on so much of this,” he notes.

​https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/the-incredible-posters-of-tadanori-yokoo/

And an article on their animated work. 
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/pop_goes_japan_tadanori_yokoos_amazing_60s_animations