A Schmuck With An Underwood

How I Caught the Hillbilly Fever and Found Out That Everything I Knew Was Wrong - Part 1

2012-01-31T14:33:00.000-08:00

It all started with my uncle’s record.

My uncle, Thomas Fox, was a part time guitar player and singer for most of his life. His one shot at country music stardom came around 1964 when he cut a single for the independent label K-Ark in Nashville. According to the story my dad tells, Uncle Thomas’ agent persuaded him that “Tom Fox” wasn’t a good name for a country singer, and for one of those crazy-hillbilly-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time-but-what-the-heck-were-they-thinkin’ reasons he adopted the stage name of “Toby Rose.” He was apparently trying to impress Wesley Rose, the head of Acuff-Rose publishing and son of legendary songwriter Fred Rose, as if stealing the family name was a good way to do so. (But I’ve already been through that with the hyphenated adjective.)

The record I learned to bop to, daddy-o!

In any case, the record failed to go anywhere in the country music market of the time, despite being a fun novelty record in the vein of George Jones’ country rockers of the early sixties like “White Lightning.” It was cheaply produced record for sure, but it was a great showcase for my uncle’s voice and hot guitar pickin’. Side A was his version (complete with maniacal canned laughter) of “The Burglar and the Old Maid” a joke song that already had miles of whiskers when it was recorded by “Mr. John Terrell” in 1901, but had achieved a bit of a revival thanks to a version by The Big Bopper a few years before. Side B was a hot, twangy version of Hank Williams’ “Howlin at the Moon.”

While Toby Rose may not have gotten many spins on the turntables of radio stations, one place he did get a LOT of play was in our house. Uncle Thomas naturally gave copies of the record to all his relatives, and since I only about a year old when the record was pressed, I grew up hearing it regularly. And of course, once I was old enough and big enough to operate my dad’s hulking turntable myself it got even more play. Because, after all, what’s cooler than having a record by your very own uncle?

Of course this wasn’t the only place I was exposed to country music. Neither my mom or dad were big music fans, but they did like their share of country music. My dad, back in the early fifties when he had been living in Nashville and before he had married my mom, had played at being a country singer for a short while, and had even appeared on a few local radio shows. And he had known a few country music folks, most notably Randy Hughes, a singer, guitar player and talent agent. My Dad and Hughes had become friends through the Masonic Lodge they were both members of, and when Hughes died in March of 1963 - in the same plane crash that killed Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Hawkshaw Hawkins - dad decided to name me after his lost friend.

My dad, Frank Jewell Fox, hammin' it up in the early fifties.

In regards to music, early on I fixated on country tales of bloody death. My mom says my favorite lullaby was always “The Streets of Laredo,” the country western updating of an ancient British ballad of gambling, whoring and death. And when the song “The Green, Green Grass of Home,” the story of a condemned man’s imaginary last trip home in the minutes before his execution, hit in 1966 for Porter Wagoner, I quickly became obsessed with it. The guy dies at the end – how awesome!

But I was not to be a country music fan – yet.

As the seventies rumbled on the occasional country music hit would catch my fancy, but for the most part I was not a big music fan and that went for just about any genre. Oh sure, there were individual songs that I liked or bands that I dug, but my big obsession with music wouldn’t start until my last couple of years of high school, and then kick into high gear my first year of college. When the bug finally did bite me, I started devouring all the histories of rock music I could put my hands on. Rolling Stone magazine supplied much of my introduction to the history of American pop music through The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, The Rolling Stone Record Guide, and The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. Three books that I read over and over again.

But there was a problem – I was being a handed a load of horse manure. Which we will dig into in detail in Part 2.

Charlie Louvin Meets Jello!

2011-11-28T16:03:00.000-08:00

In February of 2007, country music legend Charlie Louvin released a new solo album on Thompkins Square Records. It would be the first of several new releases leading right up to his death in January 2011 from pancreatic cancer, and the start of Charlie’s official “re-discovery” by the Americana crowd.

One lucky result (for me, anyway) of the promotion for the new album was getting Charlie as an in-studio guest for my radio show, The Hipbilly Jamboree, on the now sadly deceased WRVU 91.1 FM.

But it got even better.

No.1 on Jello's want list!

My co-host on the show, Kels Koch, was working for the local record store The Great Escape at the time. A few years earlier, he had met punk rock icon and former lead man of The Dead Kennedys, Jello Biafra. Jello was in town and looking for Louvin Brothers albums, in particular the 1959 classic Satan is Real. He left Kels his telephone number in case a copy of Satan is Real did turn up, and a few months later, one did. Kels hooked Jello up with an original Capital pressing of the Louvin’s harrowing tales of sin and salvation and all was right.

Charlie was scheduled to appear on our show for February 20, 2007 and it just so happened that Jello would be appearing at the Belcourt Theater in Nashville on the same night. That morning, Kels received a phone call from Jello to let him know about the show and that he had put Kels on the guest list. When Kels mentioned to Jello that Charlie would be appearing on our show that evening Jello got really excited and asked if he could drop by the station.

Like we were going to say no…

And so about 50 minutes into the show Jello showed up at the door and the meeting between one of the men responsible for Satan is Real and one of the men responsible for Frankenchrist began. Jello had stopped off at a record store and snagged a couple of Louvin Borthers LPs for Charlie to sign. No copy of Satan is Real, but Jello was still mighty happy.

My favorite off-air moment was when Jello asked Charlie to inscribe the records to him, and Charlie said, “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”

“Jello.”

“Jello! You mean like the dessert?”

Here's a clip of the on-air portion of the meeting. Things were pretty chaotic in the studio as you can tell, not only from Jello showing up, but also the various other WRVU DJs that had stopped by to meet Charlie. The “one line story” that Jello mentions is a off-color joke that Charlie told him that he didn’t want to repeat on the air, and that unfortunately, I have forgotten.

And to hear more about Satan is Real check out the audio archive of my story for Nashville Public Radio about the new reissue of the LP on Light in the Attic Records.

Of Rippers and Creapes!

2011-11-14T11:02:00.000-08:00

I'm honored to be the guest writer?, captioner?, weirdo?, on this week's "Dilation Exercise" over at Alan M. Clark's supremely cool Imagination Fully Dilated Blog. And while you're there, be sure to follow the links to Alan's website and check out his new novel, Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim.

And while I'm here let me go ahead and plug my latest story for Nashville Public Radio, which aired on Halloween -- Sir Cecil Creape: Nashville's Hometown Ghoul!

12 Hours of Terror – 119 Syllables of Horror Haikus!

2011-10-30T21:42:00.000-07:00

For those of you coming in late, every October I watch horror films and write haikus about them. Just got back from the 12 Hours of Terror at the Belcourt Theater – so away we go!

Night of the Creeps – 1986

Directed by Fred Dekker

Frat party tonight!

With slugs’n’blood and formal,

Flamethrowers – thrill me!

Abby – 1974

Director by William Girdler

She got extra soul!

Big bass voice battle, who wins?

Whup that demon ass!

Anguish – 1987 (aka Angustia)

Directed by Bigas Luna

Eyeball collector,

For mommy. is it real, girl?

Kino comes to life!

Zombie – 1979 (aka Zombi 2)

Directed by Lucio Fulci

Zombie bait, big fish!

Wifey gets a woody,

Doh! There goes New York!

Squirm – 1976

Directed by Jeff Lieberman

Zapity Zap worms!

Not from around here are ya?

Dig that worm face, y’all.

Lady Terminator – 1989 (aka Pembalasan ratu pantai selatan)

Directed by H. Tjut Djalil

Need a thesis got,

An eel! Shoot that bitch, boys!

Bring in the mullets!

Return of the Living Dead - 1984

Directed by Dan O’Bannon

Canned goods - out of date,

Leg warmers warm no more for

Trash and party dead.

Horror Haikus 2011 - Part 5

2011-10-28T21:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick one for a movie I hadn't seen since it's original release.

Fright Night - 1985

Directed by Tom Holland

Say howdy, neighbor!

Give my girlfriend a big grin.

Roast Bat for Breakfast!

Horror Haikus 2011 - Part 4

2011-10-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

Two great ones this time! (The movies, that is, not necessarily the haikus...)

Dr. Phibes Rises Again - 1972

Directed by Robert Fuest

Off to Egypt, Phibes!

Boy, does he have toys and a,

Babe to row the boat!

I've been wanting to see this one since I saw a still from it in Famous Monsters nearly forty years ago. It was worth the wait!

It! – 1966

Directed by Herbert J. Leder

Pimm’s got a golem,

A dead mama, a hot blonde,

And an A-bomb – BOOM!

The Mystery of the Muhlenberg County Masks!

2011-10-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

Like just about any kid obsessed with the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland in the sixties or seventies, the ads for Warren Publication’s merchandising arm, the Captain Company, held about an equal attraction to me as the articles and photos in each issue. The Captain Company sold everything the well-heeled monster kid could want and certainly far more than one could afford on an allowance of two bucks every two weeks.

Many an issue of Famous Monsters would fall into my hands, and before long I’d be filling out the order form in the back for books, back issues, monster models, Super 8 horror films, and more. And just as often those order forms would never get mailed, since my wants always exceeded my budget even after making carefully considered choices in an attempt to narrow it down to just those items that “I had to have.”

Quite certainly the holy grail of Captain Company merchandise had to be the deluxe Don Post Masks. Not only did these masks of Frankenstein!, The Creature from the Black Lagoon!, The Mole People!, The Werewolf!, and others look to be the best from their pictures and descriptions, but they even sold monster hands, and in some cases feet (!), to go with the masks. And with an astronomical price tag of $39.95 each for the masks and $19.95 for hands or feet the quality of said masks could not be doubted. In fact, while I can’t remember consciously thinking this, I’m pretty sure my assumption was that say, the Creature from the Black Lagoon mask would be virtually indistinguishable from the version in the movies. I mean, technology had advanced since the fifties, and it was forty dollars for gosh sakes!

The ads that caused thousands of kids to annoy the crap out their parents!

But while actually owning a Don Post mask remained an unattainable dream, dreaming of what I would do with them was another matter. I spent many an hour at school, home, and during church services daydreaming up ways to produce my own 8mm epic monster rallies with a legion of latex-masked monsters enacting tales of melodramatic fury.

By the late seventies, I was drifting away from reading Famous Monsters. In the wake of Star Wars, the magazine had lost its way, and a new generation of fantasy film magazines like Starlog, Fantastic Films, and then Fangoria had stolen its thunder. While the Captain Company may have been a thing of the past, Starlog knew a good idea when they saw it and started their own merchandise company that carried the Don Post Masks. Even though their ads may have lacked the superlative hyperbole of the Captain Company, they did have really nice color printing in most of their ads which showed off the masks really well. Especially the awesome new Human Fly mask and claw that Don Post introduced in the late seventies and which immediately caught my fancy in a big way.

Don Post in Color!

The masks were still tempting, and there was the fact that I was gradually coming into more income, especially when I started working part time after school at the IGA in the fall of 1978. But becoming a teenager also meant there were more varied interests and places to spend my money. So while the idea of owning a phalanx of Don Post masks, all arranged in rows on styrofoam heads in my bedroom, may have still had its appeal, it was not a dream that I spent any real time pursuing. I mean, I had never even seen one these masks.

And then came Halloween of 1979.

The last half of 1979 was a really good time for me. I had turned sixteen in May, gotten my driver’s license as soon as possible after my birthday, and with a used 1976 Pinto in my possession, I had freedom of movement for the first time in my life. That October, word got out that the Central City Fire Department was running a really good haunted house. So one night, probably a Friday or Saturday, I and a bunch of friends headed out to see it.

Now, I had never been to a haunted house attraction before. Perhaps there had been some in Central City previously, but since it was 17 miles down the road from me, I had no easy way to go until I had my own means to get there. And that year, it was a very good haunted house. Someone with a knowledge of horror movies had obviously put a great deal of thought into its production. It was held in an old funeral home and each room presented a tableau drawn from one horror movie, including all the standards by that point – Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, The Exorcist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and more.

But the first thing that caught my eye was the Don Post Masks. They were everywhere! After years of lusting after tiny black & white photos, there were all the masks, right in my face – and worn by someone screaming their lungs out at me. Including the capper -- the awesome fly mask and claw that showed up in the last room of the tour.

"Help me!!!"

While my friends were all impressed with the haunted house experience, I was even more impressed with the masks, and I remember saying as we left, “Someone spent a LOT of money on this!”

The next year, when October rolled around I made sure to hightail to the Central City Haunted House as soon as it opened, mainly because I really wanted to see those masks again. But I was in for a big disappointment. Not only were Don Post masks nowhere to be seen, but the haunted house was a pale shadow of what it had been the year before. The planning and staging just wasn’t there. The mastermind behind the 1979 haunted house was obviously not involved in the 1980 offering.

I’ve often wondered just where all those Don Post masks came from. Who in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky could have had such an incredible collection? Perhaps they were rented, but from where? I suppose if I had followed up at the time I may have found out, but it was awfully hard to stay obsessed about one thing for very long (excluding girls and being generally pissed off at the world) at the age of sixteen.

Whatever the answer to the mystery, I do know that a bunch of latex rubber and fake hair made one Halloween very special for me.

Bits of Seventies Goodness!

2011-10-24T19:39:00.000-07:00

Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” was re-released as a single in 1973 and became a Billboard chart hit for the third time. I loved the song, and when I spotted this cheap LP (probably at the Woolco in the Bowling Green Mall) it had to be mine! Of course, I knew nothing about the low-rent “Pickwick Records” label at the time, and the version on this album was a re-recording of the song by some unknown studio schmuck.

But I also didn’t really care, because I got such wholesome tracks as “Screams of the Torture Chamber,” “The Victims of the Guillotine,” and “Attack of the Incredible Crab” along with it. I spent many hours destroying the grooves on this LP with dull needles on my stereo. Good times, great oldies!

Horror Haikus 2011 - Part 3

2011-09-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

Time to revisit a classic.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers - 1956
directed by Don Siegel

The pods have arrived,
Foamin'n'Poppin'-- you're next!
Load up the truck, boys!

Horror Haikus 2011 - Part 2

2011-09-24T21:31:00.000-07:00

Today's entry is about a British rarity that just about overloaded the WTF meter and that was obviously inspired (ripped off from?) the French horror classic Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face). Boy, the things that seemed like a good idea in 1967...

Corruption – 1967 (aka Carnage)

Directed by Robert Hartford-Davis

Peter hunts for glands,

To de-wafflefy wifey,

Look, a laser show!

Horror Haikus 2011 - Part 1!

2011-09-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

Every October I watch horror movies, for the whole month, and I write haikus about them. Sometimes they’re “reviews” of a sort, sometimes plot descriptions (with “spoilers”) of a sort, sometimes they’re something else.

This year I’m starting a week early because it was a really nasty summer in Tennessee and because I just want to (so there!)

Cry of the Banshee – 1970

Directed by Gordon Hessler

Vincent hunts witches

Roderick is a rascal

Dance, pagan girls, dance!

Master of Horror: Deer Woman – 2005

Directed by John Landis

Hot Indian Babe,

Dances on your giblets,

With two tiny hooves!

More to come!

Bits of Seventies Goodness!

2011-09-08T19:52:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 1973 7-Eleven stores began a promotion for DC Super-Hero Slurpee cups. Of course, there were NO 7-Eleven stores in Muhlenberg County. The closest were in Nashville, 75 miles (!) away.

Fortunately, my Dad had an old friend in Nashville that we would occasionally visit. On the next visit, I begged to stop at a 7-Eleven store and brought home three cups. (A Slurpee each for me, mom and dad, but of course I would have been willing to drink 30 Slurpees if they would have let me!)

I snagged the incredibly cool Wildcat cup, the awesomely swank Vigilante cup, and the fantastically lame “Dick Grayson” cup (Really? Robin without a mask? Really?) Which only became more irritating when some slightly older cousins visited and got a whole evening of guffaws from a fact that I had a cup on display in my bedroom with a character on it named "Dick." (Obviously, they were from the intellectual wing of the Fox family...) Oh, Slurpee, you know not what you spawned.

So it goes...

2011-08-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

I went to see Nick Lowe at the Country Music Hall of Fame last weekend. The show was part of the “Songwriter’s Session” series – which consists of a short interview followed by an acoustic performance. Nick was smart, funny, and very entertaining – a great show.

The first place I heard of Nick Lowe was when the song “Cruel to Be Kind,” off his second solo album Labour of Lust, hit the American charts in 1979. But at that time, musical geekdom had not over taken me – I was still pretty much just devoted to science fiction, comic books and old horror and comedy films. So even when a hit single would grab my attention I pretty much stuck with buying the single, and I didn’t pursue the artist any further. (The same thing would happen with the first Bruce Springsteen song that came to my attention, “Hungry Heart” the next year. There’s a long story that goes with this, but I’ll get to that one eventually.)

Young Nick - Pop Star (with a great jacket!)

Of course that would all change in the fall of 1981. My first semester of college was when I added full-fledged music geekdom to my portfolio of manias. From the moment I started college I was suddenly bombarded with all manner of rock’n’roll that I had missed out on growing up in Muhlenberg County with my head stuck deeply into sci-fi paperbacks. During the period of September to December of 1981 I either had my first exposure to, or bought my first LPs by The Clash, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, R.E.M., Wreckless Eric, Warren Zevon and many others including, or course, Nick Lowe and Rockpile.

Even though Lowe’s first two solo albums, Jesus of Cool and Labour of Lust were acknowledged classics, the rest of the eighties saw him releasing a variety of albums that slid up and down the critical scale. As typical for artists who are the critic’s darlings for their first couple of records, Lowe’s albums from this period are really better than they were usually given credit for at the time. But despite the sometimes poor reviews, I remained a Nick Lowe fan all through the eighties, only losing track of him as the nineties dawned and my interest turned more to exploring older music.

Around 2001 I found Lowe again through his album, The Convincer. Although all the building blocks of Lowe’s music – the wit, the country and blues influences, the clever turn of a phrase – was there, Lowe had dramatically reinvented himself, dropping the intellectual court-jester of rock he had been and instead emerging as a deeply introspective and savy songwriter who still understood the basic absurdity of human life and love.

In his interview last weekend, he talked about going through the process of reinventing himself. How he had realized one day that his days as a “pop star” were gone, and that he was faced with the choice of fooling himself into thinking that he could recapture the past or to move on and find a new voice that could appeal to an audience of both young and old music fans that appreciated music beyond the “hot new thing.”

This self-awareness about his talents and the fickleness of his chosen career is something that has always impressed me about Lowe. It was right there on his first album, Jesus of Cool, in several of his songs, including “Marie Provost” – a pop ditty about the sad fate of the eponymous former silent movie screen star. But it’s one thing to be able to say our successes in life are fleeting, but quite another thing to grapple with the fact directly and know when it’s time to move on to the next chapter.

Old Nick - Songwriter Sage (with great hair!)

This is something I’ve thought a lot about this last year. After 12 years at one career, to suddenly have it all end and your future be uncertain can be a pretty heavy blow. But even after nine months I continue to be excited every day about what the future will bring me. I may still be in the period of sorting out the next chapter of life, but whatever it may be I’m looking forward to it, and in fact, really enjoying it. As I’ve said many times, “Other than the fact that I don’t have a steady paycheck right now, I’m happier and enjoying myself more than I have in years.”

Looking back there have been definite periods where the course of my life has changed -- when I was nine and discovered comic books, that first semester of college when I discovered my mania and passion for music and many other interests, and other times since then. But uncertainty about the future is not really bad thing. It’s when we can’t let go of the past – that’s the real destroyer – that unwillingness to turn the page. Because hanging on to the past is the act of trying to cling to something that no longer exists.

A couple of years ago I ran into an old friend from college that I hadn’t seen for 20 years. It didn’t take me long to realize that although he might be married, and have a daughter he was still pretty much the exact same person that I knew in college. He still read the same type of books, watched the same type of movies, played the same role-playing games and still thought about and looked at the world the exact same way he did when he was 21. While living in a state where nothing ever changes may offer security of a type, for me at least, it seems a terribly boring way to live, and furthermore how does one cope when the inevitable big change does come along?

For me, and Nick Lowe apparently, jumping in and struggling with that next big step and figuring out that next change of direction is the only choice. For winners or not, we’re all destined to eventually become the doggie’s dinner, but it’s the choices we make and the different paths we travel before we face that “hungry little dachshund” that make all the difference.

Of Werewolves and War...

2011-08-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

It’s very interesting to see how memories from our childhood get so intertwined with current events of the time and the strange bedfellows these connections create. Here’s a good example, a couple of weeks ago I was in McKay’s Books here in Nashville -- the local supermarket/dumping ground of used and no-longer-loved books. Now while the majority of what shows up at McKay’s is of recent vintage, some really oddball items can turn up at times, and so it was with this little gem that I found on the shelf for a mere six bucks.

The Book of Werewolves – Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition by the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould is a collection of European folklore and legends concerning werewolves (well, duh…) that was originally published in 1865. This edition, a facsimile reprint of the first edition, was published in 1973 by Causeway Books, a small press out of New York who’s other publications included (according to the back of the dustjacket) such titles as Your Psychic Powers and How to Develop Them, The Book of Vampires, and Oragenitalism: Oral Techniques in Genital Excitation – all the fun stuff in other words.

Although Causeway Books were not carried on the spinner paperback racks of the drugstores I frequented as a kid, I did see this particular book for the first time around the start of 1975 when we would shop in Bowling Green or some other city that had an actual bookstore with a remainder/discount books section.

I was, of course, immediately drawn to the book, both by its title and the spectacularly creepy illustration featured on the dustjacket. Plus the 19^th Century text contained within made it look just like a book that Carl Kolchak might have consulted on Kolchak: The Night Stalker, my favorite TV show, which was then limping toward the end of its first and only season. After all, what would I do if a werewolf showed up in Dunmor, Kentucky? I needed to have knowledge and be prepared!

But despite these rock-solid reasons for purchasing the book, the creepiness that attracted me also worked against me, and the price tag, probably a whopping $2.99 or so after the markdown, also held me at bay. So even though I saw it on more than one occasion I continued to pass it by. However, fate had other plans…

In April of 1975, we left Kentucky for week’s trip to Connecticut to visit my dad’s brother and his family. When we got there I was to stay with the youngest of Uncle’s kids, Andy, who was already a teenager and a horror fan. Andy had a collection of Warren Comics magazines Vampirella, Creepy, and Eerie, and for me, being just a few weeks away from turning 12, staying in his room in the basement was awesome indeed. But best of all, Andy also had a certain yellow and black book – The Book of Werewolves.

So here was my chance to read this intimidating tome with absolutely no cash outlay. Over the three or four days we were there I spent time in the mornings and evenings plowing through as many pages as I could.

"You mean the movie lied?"

The first thing I discovered was that traditional werewolf legends were quite a bit different from the “facts” as presented by the spinning, neon Universal globe. There were no tortured souls, cursed to become ravening wolves when the autumn moon is bright. Instead the stories I read dealt with no-goodniks who donned the skin of wolves for transformations or wanton females who rubbed their naked bodies (hot-cha!) with magic wolf grease before their murderous rampages – with their main victims being, more often than not, babies(!).

But while I devoured the tales of lycanthropy, real world tragedies were about to intrude upon me. I can distinctly remember sitting in my cousin’s bedroom the morning of the last day we were there and reading about werewolves with the radio on. When the radio cut to a newsbreak the main story of the day was the end of the war in Vietnam and the fall of Saigon -- forever cementing in my mind a link between the end of the Vietnam War and tales of bestial and murderous transformations.

Of course there’s probably a great metaphor here about the transformation of the American psyche in the wake of Vietnam. Or perhaps the shattering of illusions about Hollywood werewolf lore and the American self-image of righteousness, but for right now I think I’ll just settle down with the good Reverend for tales of wolfish horror and baby-eating and finish reading the book I started over 36 years ago.

In Praise of "Uncle" Gardner!

2011-08-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

From the start of my comic book obsession in 1972 I was almost equally fascinated by the history and creators of funny books as I was with the four-color creations themselves. At that time my favorite comic book was the Justice League of America. Also, DC Comics was reprinting tons of comic book stories from the “Golden Age” of the 1940s right up through the “Silver Age” of the 1960s. (In many ways it was the “Golden Age of Reprints,” but that’s a topic for a future essay.) So even though Gardner F. Fox had left the employ of DC Comics in 1968 (over a dispute about him and other long-time creators wanting DC to pay for health benefits –thank you, greedy corporate bastards…) I pretty quickly became familiar with his name and work.

Of course I would notice his last name, since it was the same as mine, and I couldn’t help speculating at times if perhaps there was a relation between us. Perhaps he could even be a distant Uncle, how cool would that be! (But, as far as I know, there is no relation…)

Gardner F. Fox by Gil Kane

As for his work, Gardner Fox was definitely one of the most prolific writers to ever work in comics. Some historians have estimated that he wrote over 4,000 comic book stories. In addition to the sheer numbers he was also a co-creator of the original Flash; Hawkman; the original Sandman; Starman; Dr. Fate; Zatanna; the first super-team, The Justice Society of America; its successor, the Justice League of America (for which he wrote the first 65 issues); one the greatest science fiction series in comic books, Adam Strange; and the list goes on and on.

Fox’s best stories were tightly plotted little gems, often with puzzles to be solved by his main characters that involved some scientific fact or esoteric knowledge. But although his writing may have been “old school comic pulp” that didn’t engage in the soap opera histrionics that Stan Lee and others employed at Marvel Comics, the comic book stories that Fox was writing for editor Julie Schwartz in the 1960s displayed a far more subtle and solid characterization than they are usually given credit for.

Yes, the characters in his Justice League stories could be rather interchangeable since the plot was king in that book, but on the solo series that Fox wrote – The Atom, Hawkman, and most of all, Adam Strange, he would drop little bits of character into stories that over time would build a really strong picture of his protagonists’ personalities. John Broome, the main writer on The Flash and Green Lantern during the sixties followed this same pattern, and it’s interesting to note that when Fox would script the occasional issue of those two series (usually the ones that would introduce BIG science fiction concepts) you would see no “personality writing” in the stories. Like he was holding back on purpose so as not to “mess with” Broome’s characters. (And it's also interesting how jarring the occasional fill-in by Robert Kanigher on The Flash would be since he would ignore and often contradict all the characterization that Broome had constructed.)

But in addition to all those funny book stories, Fox was also cranking out paperback novels. Between 1944 and 1982, he wrote at least one novel a year, sometimes more, in the genres of historical adventure, science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, spy fiction and more -- under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms. A few years ago I started picking up novels by Fox when I find them in decent condition, and all the ones that I have read so far have been well-written, entertaining and imaginative.

Frank Frazetta on the left, Gray Morrow on the right, what's not to like?

Right now I’m finishing up the two books in Fox’s Llarn series, a neat little planetary fantasy series that is of course, a John Carter of Mars imitator, or perhaps you could say Adam Strange with more sword fights and no worry about being whisked back to Earth when the time comes for the hero to get down with his space sweetie.

Reading these books and seeing the disappointing (though still fun on some levels) Green Lantern movie got me to thinking about Gardner Fox so I naturally looked him up on Wikipedia and also this really fine bio on the Hawkworld website. The result is that I found out two interesting facts. One is that 2011 is the 100^th anniversary of his birth, something I’ve seen no mention of on the Internets, and two is that his birthday is one day after mine, May 20^th! So a belated Happy Birthday to my “Uncle” Gardner and thanks for all the great adventures!

"Essentially a story should be entertaining. It should lift you out of the fact that you're sitting on a brownstone stoop, as I was when I read The Gods of Mars for the first time. Or the subway; the subway should disappear, and you're living in the world of the story. That is the ideal of the story." -- Gardner F. Fox

Zoinks! I'm Back at Last!

2011-07-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

Wow, getting back on that blog horse is a lot harder than I thought it would be. When I (finally) started blogging I swore to myself that I would never write blogs about the problems of trying to write blogs – no tail chasin’.

So, no excuses, whys or wherefors. I’m back, even if I have to write short stuff to get there.

And short stuff it is. Here’s a link to my old school professional wrestling article that just appeared in this week’s issue of the Nashville Scene. It was a blast to research and write!

"Lords of the Ring"

Nashville wrestling fans, rejoice — it's the return of Jerry Lawler, Bill Dundee and the fabulous Jackie Fargo:

And if you're looking for more stuff to read by me that's printed on actual paper hurry(!) to your newstand in case they still have the Summer issue of Twisted South magazine with my column on the Louvin Brothers' Satan is Real album. Also, get ready to head back there in a couple of weeks for the Fall issue of Twisted South which will have three, count 'em, three articles by me appearing in that issue. But more on that later.

More to follow, soon, I promise, really, for true…

The Big Show Time Machine

2011-03-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

This week's post is a look at the past, in two ways. The article below was originally written back in 1998 for the third issue of John Hudson's excellent video fanzine, The Rewinder. (You do remember when you had to "rewind" movies don't you?) Due to complicated circumstances issue three never saw the light of day, so here it is at last.

I had originally wanted to write a full history of The Big Show, but I couldn't find anyone that worked in programming for WLAC in the seventies. My only sources were memory and microfilm (remember that too?) of TV schedules from the Tennessean. Still, I think the piece turned out rather well and hopefully, can be enjoyed by anyone that grew up with a weekly afternoon movie on local TV. So grab a can of Pringles and a grape Nehi and enjoy!

AFTER SCHOOL MONSTERS, GANSTERS & COWBOYS

A REMEMBERANCE OF THE BIG SHOW

Okay, here's the deal. The bell rings at three o'clock on the dot. Fifteen minutes to get on the bus before it pulls out, that is if they don't hold it up for some stupid little kid that's messing around. The ride home takes about 35 minutes -- in the house throw the books down, ten minutes to go. Mom bugs you about your chores and you promise her to do them later. She's in a good mood, so she lets you slide. A big glass of Kool-Ade, some chips, and on the couch, shoes off -- crank the volume up. It's four o'clock and time for The Big Show.

For more than twenty years, The Big Show was a weekday ritual for kids in the Nashville television viewing area. Growing up in the sixties and seventies meant rushing home from school to catch the latest showing of Son of Frankenstein, Commanche, Tarantula, Pinocchio in Outer Space, A Night at the Opera, Tickle Me, or any of the other hundreds of movies that would come blasting out of WLAC-TV, Channel 5 every afternoon at four.

While syndicated movies were a staple of most local television programming -- filling up time on weekends and late nights -- WLAC did not begin programming weekday afternoon movies until October 29, 1956 with Screen Hit Theater. The afternoon movie continued under that title until February 18, 1957 when it changed to the name it would carry for the next twenty years, The Big Show. Unfortunately, the Tennessean and the Nashville Banner did not list the titles of individual movies in their programming guide at that time, so the debut title of The Big Show is lost to history. Judging by the movies listed in 1958 and 1959 it's likely the first Big Shows were comedies, dramas, and musicals from the thirties and forties -- titles like Words and Music, Damsel in Distress and A Likely Story. Add to these, series films like Henry Aldrich and the Bowery Boys, and various horse operas.

As the sixties began, movie producers learned what a valuable market television presented, and more and more films poured into syndication. WLAC also seemed to learn that its main audience in the afternoons was kids, and kids wanted to see action. Westerns, gangster films, and horror and science fiction epics soon became the mainstay of The Big Show. The comedies, musicals and dramas didn't disappear from the schedule. They were mixed in, making for some breathtakingly eclectic weeks of viewing. A look at one week's worth of Big Shows from October, 1966 reveals the 1958 Fred MacMurray western Day of the Badman on Monday, followed by 1959's monster and hot rod epic, The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow on Tuesday. The Jeff Chandler 1958 adventure yarn, Raw Wind in Eden, followed on Wednesday, with Hedy Lamarr in the 1958 drama The Female Animal on Thursday. Closing out this already mixed-up week was the 1959 Roger Corman beatnik-horror classic, A Bucket of Blood.

Of course, rare was the kid that watched all these movies, every day. But part of the charm of The Big Show was its demonstration of the diversity of American film. Can't stand Lucille Ball in the Fuller Brush Girl? Well, tune in tomorrow for Brando in The Wild One. Can't handle Doctor Blood's Coffin? Just come back the next day for The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.

As The Big Show moved into the seventies, the size of WLAC's film library continued to grow and, despite the occasional theme week, like John Wayne, Frankenstein, Elvis, etc., the bulk of The Big Show's programming remained wildly diverse. One new wrinkle was WLAC's weatherman, Bob Lobertini, becoming the host of the show. First appearing as a kiddy host in the guise of "Captain Bob," and later hosting the "Dialing for Dollars" segment during the movie, Lobertini became a face and name known to every kid in Middle Tennessee and South Central Kentucky. You had to trust the forecast given to you by the man that had just introduced Gamera that afternoon.

Probably one of the most exciting experiments with The Big Show's format came in the seventies when WLAC aired the complete 1944 Republic serial, Captain America, showing one episode after each movie for three weeks in a row. While the experiment may have not been successful, since WLAC never showed any other serials in this manner, I can testify from personal experience that kids at my grade school were hooked. Even if the movie was boring, you just didn't miss Captain America.

The end was coming for The Big Show, however. In the fall of 1976, WLAC moved The Big Show from its traditional 4:00 time slot up an hour to 3:00. This made it impossible for most kids to make it home for the start of the movie. After one year in this new time slot, The Big Show came to an unceremonious end on August 12, 1977 with the 1958 Van Heflin Western, Gunman's Walk. The following Monday, WLAC began showing standard afternoon rerun fare -- The Munsters, Gilligan's Island, Gomer Pyle USMC, and The Doris Day Show.

The Big Show may be gone, but it left an indelible imprint in the hearts and minds of the kids that grew up with it. Not only did its eclectic schedule introduce a wild mix of American movies, but it was a lesson in creative anarchy. Where else could you see a movie like The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies on the day after Thanksgiving, or rest assured that Christmas would bring another showing of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

For many people in the Nashville viewing area, The Big Show fostered our love of movies, and we felt a loyalty to it. I remember watching the 1966 Batman movie on late night television several years after the demise of The Big Show. I was shocked and dismayed to find out there were several scenes that I had never seen on The Big Show presentations. How could The Big Show have betrayed me? But of course, with only ninety minutes minus commercials to show movies, The Big Show frequently cut films to ribbons. Another failing was it tendency to show the same films over and over. Frankenstein week almost always consisted of Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The other Universal Frankenstein films were seldom seen even though WLAC held the syndication rights to show them.

Despite its shortcomings, The Big Show still served up fun movies every day, and for that, a lot can be forgiven. There was a specialness in having random access to a variety of movies every day after school. When I started researching this article I called WTVF, the successor to WLAC. No one I contacted had any information on The Big Show or programming from that time, but Mark Benda, the current programming manager, described in affectionate terms the afternoon movie show he grew up watching in New Jersey.

Today, with cable, satellite TV, and videotapes, The Big Show may seem like quaint nostalgia, but it was an important part of many kids' lives. You knew if you missed The Curse of the Fly on The Big Show, you were looking at least a year before you would see it again, if then. But even if you did miss it, you knew the next day there'd be another movie probably as equally cool and as equally unmissable.

A Message from the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion

2011-03-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to plug the new issue of Twisted South that has my feature article on Wanda Jackson and the first installment of my new column - Hillbillies, Hepcats & Honky Tonkers – “Charlie Feathers and the Sound From Another World." For a list of stores that carry Twisted South (nationwide!), just check out their website at: http://www.twistedsouth.com/cms/index.php?page=stores

My Autumn of Aliens, or Why a Swiss Hotel Clerk Owes Me $1.25 (Plus Tax!) – Part 3

2011-03-11T13:37:00.000-08:00

So as the seventies rumbled on my interest in UFOs and all manner of weird stuff continued. But along with my interest in the “weird stuff” came my growing interest in “slightly less weird stuff,” such as more conventional science (mainly astronomy and space exploration) as well as science fiction. While I was still a comic book collector, the number of titles I was buying began to slack off as I turned more of my budget to buying science fiction novels and magazines. Not to mention the explosion of movie magazines that began to appear in the aftermath of the release of Star Wars and the growing popularity of Star Trek.

In the fall of 1977, I started high school, and one my best friends was a big time science and astronomy geek. This association would only push me more in the direction of “conventional” science. Also, that fall the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released. At the time absolutely loved it, in some ways even more than Star Wars. It struck me as great science fiction with a really positive message about “man’s place in the cosmos.” (I should interject here that my opinion now is less glowing, but no need to get into that...) So I was rather surprised when one of my main literary heroes of the time, science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, came down so hard on the movie – criticizing it for promoting “pseudo-science” over “true science.”

And Asimov wasn’t the only one. I had also discovered astronomer Carl Sagan through his many appearance on television talk shows and documentaries, and he was fast becoming a hero of mine. Sagan was not only a brain, but he had a lot of natural charisma and really understood how to use television to his advantage. He was a staunch supporter of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial life, but could also be an incredibly harsh critic of UFO reports and many of the self-proclaimed “experts” in the field.

So for a while I was torn between two masters. Even though what people like Asimov and Sagan were saying made sense in a logical way, flying saucers and all the other associated weird stuff were just so darn cool. I finally settled on a middle ground where I felt it was good that someone was too skeptical, because that would be the only way the real truth could eventually come out. Yeah, that's the ticket...

"Just the facts, ma'am..."

And Close Encounters had done its job well on the pop culture scene. Following the movie there was an immediate explosion of UFO books, magazines, documentaries and even TV shows. One my new favorites was the Jack Webb produced Project U.F.O., even if the show was a bit of a cheat at times. The typical episode would start off with some person witnessing an incredibly detailed sighting, often with occupants, but by the end of the episode Major Gatlin and Staff Sgt. Fitz would demonstrate how they had actually seen a flock of birds, swamp gas, or maybe a runaway balloon animal. Still, the Dragnet-just-the-facts formula worked for the show, and eventually the writers starting ending most episodes with some small bone that seemed to show what the person had seen really was unearthly. (They just needed a big “THE END?” before the credits to make it complete.)

But the end to my days of high strangeness was approaching fast. As part of my new fascination with hard science I had discovered the truly excellent PBS documentary series, Nova. In March of 1978, Nova produced the special episode, “The Case of the Ancient Astronauts.” While I expected some serious debating of von Däniken’s theories, I was not prepared for the epic smack-down that Nova delivered.

Point by point, the calm, collected narrator ripped the arms off ancient astronauts and beat them to death with their own detached limbs. The one that still stands out in my memory, and what I think was the tipping point for me, was the examination of the famous “spaceport” photo. In Chariots of the Gods? von Däniken had presented the photo with the caption, “Another of the strange markings on the Plain of Nazca. This is very reminiscent of the aircraft parking areas in a modern airport.” Nova showed the lines from the exact same angle and then had someone walk down the “landing strip” to show that it was about two feet wide, and then pulled back to show that the lines were plainly the leg of a giant drawing of a bird!

What the TV Guide had to say about the smack-down of the millennium!

I was furious. This wasn’t just a matter of debating the interpretation of evidence. This was out and out fraud. And I had sacrificed six comic books for this? After the episode concluded I yanked my copy of Chariots of the Gods? off the shelf and took a black magic marker to spine in order to black the “Non-“ in the word “Non-Fiction.” Take that you lousy Swiss hotel clerk!

But my fury wasn’t totally reserved for ancient spacemen. Even though I didn’t take the magic marker to the rest of my library, the fun of UFOs, bigfoot, ghosts and the like seem to have vanished. Although there was not as clear of dividing line for the rest as there had been for ancient astronaut theories, the old thrill and appeal, not to mention the creepiness, just wasn’t there anymore.

Skip forward to the late nineties. Although my interest in weird stuff was occasionally sparked by episodes of Unsolved Mysteries or Fox’s incredibly goofy Sightings, not to mention the “Alien Autopsy” shell game or The X-Files, I never experienced a real temptation to return to my UFO “research.” The skeptic in me was pretty hardened, not to mention the mythology that had developed since the seventies – abductions, the elevation of "Roswell" to scripture, “Grays,” government conspiracies, anal probes and the like – struck me as boring for the most part, and quite frankly, just not any “fun.”

It was on a road trip to Chicago in 2002 that my friends Jack Daves and Dave Conover got into an extended discussion about John Keel’s classic tome of weirdness, The Mothman Prophecies and the movie that had just been released based on the book. At the first mention of the word “Mothman” they had my attention – the old favorites never fail, and even though the book had been published in 1975 I had never encountered it.

When we got back from the trip I tracked down a copy and made several great discoveries. Keel was one of the first researchers to completely reject the extraterrestrial theory in regards to UFOs. Instead he postulated the UFOs were merely the latest “form” of a phenomenon that has been going on since the dawn of recorded history – and the way the phenomenon is perceived is determined by the culture and prejudices of the time. Of course this is a much oversimplified version, but the point is that both the skeptic and, even more important, the 10-year-old boy tucked away inside of me could accept this as a possibility.

But even better than a palatable theory was the fact that the book scared the crap out me. Now, I love horror fiction and horror movies, but I’ve reached a point where they don’t scare me. Maybe a small scare at the time I’m reading or watching, but not of the good old lying-in-bed-at-night-staring-at-the-ceiling-waiting-for-the-boogerman-to-get-me kind of fear. What I discovered was reading books about UFOs, bigfoot and the like really got under my skin – even in a case when I knew what was written was mostly B.S. It still gave me that old exquisite feeling of irrational terror. And so my hobby of collecting pre-1980s UFO and bigfoot books began. And fortunately, I also found that a new generation of weirdness writers, who probably cut their teeth on books with “the font,” are rejecting the anal probes (can you blame them?) and conspiracies of the eighties and nineties and writing some fun and funky stuff.

But when it comes to von Däniken’s books, I won’t touch ‘em! Us crackpots got to have some standards!

My Autumn of Aliens, or Why a Swiss Hotel Clerk Owes Me $1.25 (Plus Tax!) – Part 2

2011-02-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

“A mild curiosity about UFOs can turn into a destructive obsession. For this reason, I strongly recommend that parents forbid their children from becoming involved. Schoolteachers and other adults should not encourage teen-agers to take an interest in the subject.” — from Operation Trojan Horse by John A. Keel

So my course was determined. I had to own a copy of Chariots of the Gods? no matter if the cost was equal to six comic books and a package of Wacky Packs (the preferred currency of the day…)

Now of course, living in Dunmor, Kentucky, my only access to paperbacks were what happened to be in drugstores in the surrounding area. Even though the sought-after tome had been a bestseller, it had been out a couple of years, and that meant a trip to an actual bookstore. So the next time my mom made the fifty-mile trek to Bowling Green, Kentucky I was ready. Not even the always tempting stock of Aurora monster models at Woolco could distract me from my quest to secure the knowledge of ancient astronauts.

Grabbing the book from the wire rack in the bookstore I discovered that von Däniken had authored more than one book – Gods from Outer Space, The Gold of the Gods (which had awesome gold embossed letters in “the font” – but I knew I needed to start at the beginning, more advanced studies could naturally follow. Paying a grand total of $1.31 I left the store as a possessor of great knowledge. The photo section in the center of the book alone confirmed that my purchase was wise, and I wasted no time diving into the text.

And things were going fine until I hit Chapter 4: “Was God an Astronaut?” Being a good little Southern Baptist boy meant that I was no stranger to Sunday School, and Training Union, and Wednesday night prayer meetings, and revivals in the spring and fall, and church camp for a week in the summer and so on. I was totally hip to some ancient mythological Egyptian or Mayan “god” scootin’ down to Earth on a space scooter, but the mere suggestion that GOD could be anything other than, well, GOD was deeply disturbing to me in a way I couldn’t articulate.

Fortunately, I was soon able to resolve this conflict by using the same method that mankind has used to resolve religious contradictions and conundrums throughout history – I ignored it. Skipping over the chapters on biblical matters, I found myself back in the realm of faraway lands and religious beliefs not endorsed by my mom and dad – more comfortable territory. And although I was firmly convinced that aliens may have tampered with the history of mankind, the disturbing feeling I came away with in regards to any biblical hanky panky by alien angels sapped my desire to follow-up with any of von Däniken’s other books. Instead, I refocused my attention to current alien intrusions.

"That's the way it was" in 1973!

And the media of the day was only too glad to oblige me. Even though the massive wave of UFO sightings in the fall of 1973 began to subside, magazine and book publishers were only cranking into gear. Weekly Reader, the small magazine distributed to grade-schoolers kept the weirdness torch burning bright, but my biggest discoveries of 1974 would be the wonderful little book, Living Monsters: True Stories of Real Monsters by Ann Marie Drozd and the Gold Key comic book UFO Flying Saucers.

Living Monsters was pure B.S, but it was wonderful B.S. Basically it was a quick cash-in book for kids that drew from the seventies craze for UFO and mysterious beasts. Ms. Drozd took a few bare facts about bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. and turned them into short "gotcha" stories. While not great literature, it did introduce me to two concepts that I loved dearly and still do to this day.

Weekly Reader and school book club books, all purchased
"off budget" of course!

The first was the cover story – “Mothman.” While the story in the book had more in common with “hook killer” urban legends than with the bizarre incidents and sightings that took place in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966 and ’67, the big concept of “Mothman” got under my skin and burrowed deep into my psyche. Just the idea of the big bugman became a favorite of mine and remains so to this day.

The other story that got me was “Momo: The Missouri Monster.” Basically it was the story of bigfoot sightings in Missouri and Illinois, but this one connected with me because those were both border states to Kentucky, which meant the odds of Momo in showing up in Muhlenberg County were much better than those of his northwestern cousin making the cross-country trip. And even better was the tidbit that Momo sightings were tied in with UFOs. Because, as everyone knows, alien mysterious hairy primates trumps plain ole Earth-based mysterious hairy primates any day of the week!

On the funny book side, Gold Key had some of the most erratic and nonsensical publishing schedules of any comic book publisher, and the title UFO Flying Saucers had only squeaked out three issues between the years 1968 to 1972. But after the UFO wave of 1973, the title returned and managed to keep a pretty regular schedule through the rest of the decade.

UFO Flying Saucers #4

The first issue I encountered, in the fall of 1974, featured a not-too-accurate but still chilling portrayal of the Pascagoula, Mississippi abductions from October of 1973. While the earlier issues had mainly focused on visual sightings of UFOs, the sheer number of occupant encounters from the 1973 wave gave the comic book plenty of creepy material to draw from, and Gold Key’s stilted artwork and strangely detached style of writing made the stories even more effective.

Looking through the back issues now, pretty much every major UFO case from the 1940s to the 1970s was adapted into the pages of UFO Flying Saucers (with the exception of the Antonio Villas Boas case, but since that one is all about boinking an outer space babe, I can see why they let it slide…) The comic book also inspired me to start my own career as a “UFOlogist” as I compiled records of sightings – mostly drawn straight from the pages of the comic book and supplemented by a few tall tales told to me by schoolmates.

So here I was, amateur UFOlogist, monster hunter, true believer. As the seventies continued, so did my love for this wacky stuff. Little did I know that I was on a collision course with a disappointment of cosmic dimensions, but that’s what we’ll be getting to in Part 3.

My Autumn of Aliens, or Why a Swiss Hotel Clerk Owes Me $1.25 (Plus Tax!) – Part 1

2011-02-09T15:03:00.000-08:00

Before I launch into this entry, a disclaimer of sorts: This blog entry is about weird stuff. I mean really weird stuff. Not just funny books, or scary movies, nope, we’re talking about UFOs, bigfoot and other such foolishness (or foolishness perhaps not?)

Yes, I admit I love reading about this stuff. Do I believe in all of it? I didn’t say that. I said I love reading about it. If you mention that you’re into this stuff people tend to automatically think you’re (1) crazy, and (2) that you must believe all the popularized stories – extraterrestrial invasion, abductions, probes (ouch!), Roswell, etc. etc. While number one may be the case, number two certainly is not the case. It’s kinda like the reaction I used to get when I mentioned I enjoyed watching Professional Wrestling – “It’s all fake!” Well, yes, perhaps a good portion of it is, but what does that have to do with my enjoyment of it?

UFO writer, researcher, and yes, B.S. artist, Gray Barker used to say, “I believe in everything and I believe in nothing.” And that very zen statement pretty much sums up my current feeling on the subject. But there was a time that I truly did believe, with no disclaimers…

1973 was the year that aliens invaded America.

Sure, the “modern UFO age” began in June 1947 with private pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of several mysterious objects flying at supersonic speeds over Mt. Rainier blah, blah, blah ad infinitum. But when the little alien buggers really took over and let their presence be known was in 1973, culminating in a mass orgy of WTF-ness during the months of October and November of that wonderful, screwed-up year.

It was the year of the year that a Vice-President would resign over scandal; that the word “Watergate” would enter our language, lead to the resignation of a President, and forever and change the way Americans thought about politics; the year the U.S. pulled combat troops out of Vietnam; the year of the OPEC oil embargos and gas lines; and the year of Yom-Kippur War between Israel and Egypt which we now know brought the U.S. to very brink of using nuclear weapons in the Middle East. In other words, it was a VERY scary time to be an adult in America – everything that had falling part since the sixties suddenly seemed to be shifting into overdrive.

And then, just to spice up all this worry and stress, came the aliens. America had experienced UFO waves before, most notably in 1947, 1952, and 1965, but we had never seen anything like the year of 1973. Concentrated mainly in the southern and eastern U.S., reports of mysterious lights, strange aircraft performing impossible maneuvers, and best of all, sightings of all manner and variety of creatures – ranging from dwarfs, to reptilians, to hairy giants were popping up like some type of cosmic whack-a-mole game. (This was the “good old days” of UFOology before those wimpy-ass, little “Greys” became the accepted norm for saucer pilots). It’s hard to imagine what it was like now, but during the peak period of August to November that year UFO reports were on the nightly TV news, both local and national, several times a week. And these weren’t just “here’s a funny story” fillers, they were quite often lead stories.

None of those panty-waist Greys in Mississippi, no sir!

I suspect that for many adults it was just one more sign that America was going to hell on a sled, but to be a kid, especially a ten-year-old boy who was already hooked on science fiction and fantasy, it was an awesome experience. Here was some anxiety that I could relate too. Incomprehensible wars in the “Holy Land” or political scandals in Washington were not something I could dig, but the chance to see a flying saucer taking off from a nearby pasture, or to be kidnapped by eyeless, claw-wielding alien-robots – that was the stuff of exciting times and exquisite nightmares.

At this point I can’t remember for sure when I first got turned-on to the notion of UFOs. My first exposure to the concept may have come much earlier (and in fact I have some vague memories of seeing the TV show The Invaders during its original run of 1967-68), but the magic autumn of 1973 was when the obsession took hold. And the pop culture machine of the time was only too happy to encourage me and millions of others.

With most of my allowance going to my growing comic book addiction, I had to be very selective about what paperback books I bought. At that time most paperbacks cost between 75 and 95 cents – the equivalent of three to five comic books! But I had discovered a method of getting around this budgetary problem thanks to the Weekly Reader and Scholastic book clubs. Since these were paperback books that were ordered through school I had managed to hoodwink my mom and dad into believing they were all “educational” books that I needed for school. Nevermind that the selections I was making were limited to all titles related to the paranormal, monsters, Peanuts comic strips, or science fiction and fantasy.

Although this plot covered anything that was available through the book clubs, there were a lot of really cool looking books that were beyond my means. Fortunately, the bookmobile that would visit our school every few weeks (Dunmor Elementary was a very small school – library? Ha!) kept a good supply of the latest paperbacks on UFOs, ghosts, bigfoot, the Bermuda triangle, and so forth. And they were easy to spot.

1970s Paranormal Books with "The Font"

In the early seventies books about the paranormal were all the rage, and somewhere along the way block letters with shadows became the “official font of foolishness.” I think Bantam Books may have been the first publisher to use this typeface, but many others followed. Even the Christian publisher that was printing Hal Lindsey’s books of Biblical prophecy (y’all remember the

U.S.

being wiped out by nuclear attack in the 1980’s don’t you?) jumped on the block letters bandwagon. I learned pretty quick to look for that type of lettering on the spine of a paperback book and creepy goodness would follow.

But even with the bookmobile subsidizing my connection to weirdness, there were some books that appeared to be so important, the knowledge contained within so earth-shattering, that I must own them! That was the case when I discovered an ad in a UFO magazine for Chariots of the Gods? by former Swiss hotel clerk (and convicted embezzler) Erich Von Däniken. Electric batteries thousands of years old ?! Cave drawings of ancient astronauts in space suits?!?! Landing fields for alien spaceships in South American deserts?!?!?! Holy crap, this was a book that most be owned! I would need to consult the knowledge contained within over and over again!

However, the cost of this important tome was a whole $1.25! But of course that just spoke to the value of the knowledge. I must secure a copy!

Little did I realize that I was heading for the first spiritual crisis of my young life and eventually a spectacular fall from faith that would take me twenty years to overcome. But we’ll get to that in Part 2…

Mr. Sandman, bring me a slithering, gibbering thing…

2011-02-02T12:12:00.000-08:00

I love really wacked out dreams. The weirder the better – even if they turn into nightmares that’s okay. If the subconscious is running wild it’s worth the cold sweats and twisted covers. And last night paid off in spades…

Maybe it was the apocalyptic winter storm that was marauding across the Midwest last night, maybe it was repeated listening to the Louvin Brothers’ album Satan is Real last week, or perhaps it was the viewing of a Roy Rogers movie right before bedtime (those singin’ cowboys will get you every time), but last night was a lulu.

All night long I was swinging between Keelian visions of Mothman and shadow people and Lovecraftian slithering, gibbering, mind-blasting horrors. What does it mean? I’ll leave the interpretations and symbolism to others. I like to think it just means I’ve got some weird stuff in my noggin’, and it’s a blast when it all comes spewing out at once.

He sees you when you're sleeping...

Here’s the one dream I remember the most vividly:

I was in a very large movie theatre. The lights were dim, but you could still see fairly well. I thought I was alone at first, walking up one of the aisles. Suddenly, I hear a voice behind me.

“Cough drop,” it says.

I look back and see a man, hard to make out, but he kind of resembles the old comic book horror host, Uncle Creepy. I say, “I don’t have one,” and start walking faster.

“Cough drop,” the voice says again.

“I said I don’t have one!” not looking back this time.

Suddenly the man comes speeding past me, too fast to make out. As he passes me, he shouts out, “IT’S TOO LATE!”

Looking back I see a slimy, amorphous blob that is gaining on me fast, making obscene sucking and slurping sounds. I take off running and wake up in a panic. After a minute to re-orientate myself to reality, I think, “Good one…”

Lewisburg, Kentucky – Gateway to Adventure!

2011-02-01T10:26:00.000-08:00

Let’s talk about drugstores. Yes, that’s right, drugstores. There was a time, not that long ago, when drugstores were full of wonderment and delight – doorways to all sorts of exciting worlds and mind-expanding adventures, and it had absolutely nothing to do with pharmaceuticals.

I think about this every time I walk into the massive crackerboxes of crap that pass for drugstores now days. (Usually built at the busiest intersections possible to maximize traffic clusterf*cks and if possible, on ground where historic buildings previously stood – but I digress…) Even though these miscarriages of modern architecture are ten, twenty times larger or more than the drugstores of my youth there is nothing in them you really want, stuff you need and have to have sure, but nothing that you want.

It didn’t used to be this way. Not only was going to the drugstore each week something I looked forward to with excitement, but any chance I had to go into a previously unexplored drugstore was even more exciting. The attraction of these pharmacies of yore, could be primarily expressed in terms of three – magazines, paperback books, and comic books. Maybe you could find these in newsstands or bookstores in them there “big cities,” but out in the rest of America, drugstores were where it was at. For me, my primary source during the formative years of my life was Gower’s Drugstore in Lewisburg, Kentucky.

Like a lot of smaller towns in America, Lewisburg had been an “Average Deal” (not a “Big Deal” just “Average”) in the days of passenger railroads, but by 1972 the days of folks traveling by rail in western Kentucky were long gone. The “main” street of Lewisburg was about three blocks long with the businesses still stuck in decaying building that all faced the train tracks and the empty field where the depot had once stood. In addition to the drugstore there was a bank, a barber shop, a hardware store, a feed store, and a few other businesses and that was it. For a supermarket we had to drive another 10 miles to Russellville.

Although my parent’s original plan in having me take piano lessons was to make me the next Liberace (but without being gay, which of course, they had no concept of anyway…), the real result was that it fed my growing and eventual lifelong addiction for comic books, monster magazines, Mad magazine, and science fiction paperbacks. My piano lessons were on each Tuesday in Russellville, on the way there Mom would always make a stop in Lewisburg to go to the bank and drugstore. And that’s where my downfall began.

At Gower’s Drugstore they had wooden shelf racks (much like what magazines are typically displayed on today). The top section was magazines, the bottom section was paperback books stacked vertically with their spines facing out, but the middle section was all comic books. The very first comic book that I can remember buying with my own money was Flash #210 in September of 1971 – purchased at Gower’s of course. Although I loved it and re-read it many times, for some reason the funny book bug didn’t get a bite on me.

American history according to funny books!

But the bug got another chance in the following April when I bought Justice League of America #99 and from then on I was off. Piano lessons didn’t really matter; it was getting to Gower’s each week to see what new comic books were on the stands. I had to have that fix! And even if I couldn’t afford to buy everything, there would be those days when I could at least look through, or maybe even read whole issues that I didn’t purchase.

Early on I realized that Jack Kirby's work was just too much for me. His stuff was just too powerful and totally creeped me out in a way I couldn’t understand. I very rarely worked up the nerve to buy any of his books, but I looked at them. (Of course, now he’s my favorite comic book artist of all time, ah youth…) I can still vividly remember standing in Gower’s reading Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth #1 every week until it disappeared from the shelf.

But even though the local drugstore brought wonderment and joy it also brought frustration. Comic book and magazine distribution back then was crazy and unreliable. Even though I was in Gower’s every week, it was not unusual to miss issues, just because they never showed up for sale. This drove a kid crazy, because back then if you missed an issue it was gone, daddy-o. The only hope you might have finding a back issue was trading with someone else, or the coverless, three for a quarter packs you could pick up at country markets (and there’s a whole blog comin’ about those babies). That’s why anytime I had the chance to duck into a “foreign” drugstore I took it. It was better than hopping over the Berlin Wall to check out the types of shampoo available in the West, you never knew what treasures you’d find.

Not me, not Gower's, not 1973, but you get the idea...

This catch as catch can method of distribution also shaped my buying habits in a big way. For example Grower’s Drugstore never had a copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland on the shelf. So I was reduced to buying only the occasional issue when I would find one at a drugstore in Russellville or Greenville. My friend John Hudson’s regular drugstore was the one in Greenville. They did carry FM (but not every issue of course, grrr…), so his collection of monster magazines quickly exceeded mine.

The “golden age” of Gower’s came to screeching halt in the spring of 1975. One week I walked into Gower’s and noticed there was nothing new on the shelves. The books were the exact same ones as the week before. The next week it was the same. The next they were still the same. Panic really had me in grip its by this point, so I had to ask what was going on. They explained they were changing distributors and the new ones hadn’t started showing up yet. In the meantime I had to find another source and started frequenting drugstores in Russellville that I had only hit occasionally before. Even though Gower’s eventually did get some new product on the shelves, the bloom was off the rose. I had moved on.

Finally, all the comic books, magazine and paperbacks disappeared from Gower’s. In just a few years Gower’s would relocate out on the main highway that runs through Lewisburg, next to the new IGA supermarket and across the road from the new Lewisburg Bank building. Nowadays when I drive through Lewisburg on my way to visit my parents I pass right by these businesses without giving them a second thought. Now Lewisburg is just a small rural community where you make sure to slow down a bit and not get caught in the local speed trap, and perhaps stop for some gas and cup of coffee at the convenience store. But there was that time when it was my own private gateway to adventure.

Charlie Louvin and Tragic Songs of Life

2011-01-26T12:12:00.000-08:00

Two small bits of bidniz…

First, I want to send a Deadly Mantis-size thank you to my good buddy Norm Partridge for being so kind to plug A Schmuck with an Underwood, in his great blog American Frankenstein. If you’re not familiar with Norm’s writing, buy, beg, borrow or steal a copy of his novel Dark Harvest right away. Or for that matter any of his books. It will be well worth any prison time you may have to serve as the result of the acquisition. Trust me on this…

My personal goal is to get a new bog entry up every week, but a really good freelance opportunity came through for me two weeks ago with a very short deadline, which is why there was no new entry for last week. (And rest assured I will be shamelessly plugging the magazine when the stories I wrote appear in print!) While I’m working on this week’s entry, and it should be up no later than Friday, I wanted to go ahead and get something posted about Charlie Louvin, hence today’s entry.

I just found out this morning that Charlie Louvin passed away. If you don’t know who Charlie Louvin was you really need to get yourself educated. As one half of the Louvin Brothers (with his older brother Ira) Charlie was one of the biggest country music stars of the 1950s. The Louvins were, and still are, one the most successful and most influential duo acts in country music.

Over the years the perception has grown up that Ira was the “wild-ass” of the two brothers – hard-drinkin’, mercurial, onry, and a ladies man. The truth was hardly that simple. Charlie could be just as mercurial, onry, and a ladies man (at least as far as harmless flirting was concerned) – just without the drinkin’ and a whole lot more common sense. After the brothers split in 1963, Charlie went on to a successful solo career with thirty chart hits between 1964 and 1973. However, through the seventies and the eighties, the Louvin Brothers and Charlie seemed to slip from the consciousness of country music.

I first heard of the Louvin Brothers in early nineties when I was engaged in a full speed, whole-hog emersion into the history of country née hillbilly music. I don’t even recall where I read about their album Tragic Songs of Life, but I knew I had to find a copy. I finally did, granted a copy of the Rounder Records late-eighties reissue which had one of the ugliest covers you’ve ever seen, but the music, oh my! It was of those defining moments where you hear music and you mind cannot comprehend how it could be that you have lived as long as you have without knowing about this!

I first met Charlie at the opening ceremonies for the new Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000. We were in the VIP section, but there was a red carpet ceremony for all living Hall of Fame members, which astonishingly, did not include Charlie. I spent some time talking to Charlie who was friendly, but something was obviously bothering him. As the ceremony began I said, “You should be walking down that red carpet, Charlie.”

“Damn right I should be,” he said without skipping a beat.

Fortunately, the powers at be did induct the Louvins into the Hall of Fame in the very next year, and the last ten years has seen a major revival for Charlie as a solo artist and for recognition of the Louvin Brothers. But the best way to remember Charlie is with the music he did so well…

The Communal Deadly Mantis, or “Movie, good! Piano, bad!”

2011-01-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

Now kids, put down yer I-Phones and stop yer textin’ cause yer ol’ Uncle is gonna tell you a story…

Once upon a time in a far distant land known as Kentucky there was a little boy named Randy. Now this boy would be known today as geek or possibly a nerd, but in that ancient time those words weren’t common usage yet – at least not in Muhlenberg County…

And one of the biggest weekly thrills was the arrival of the TV Guide. Sure the arrival of the mail was major event every day (and that’s a topic for a future blog – see how easy this stuff is?), but the TV Guide came every week, on the same day, and from the second I pulled it out of the mailbox, I was scouring the listings like a hellhound on the trail of Robert Johnson.

In Dunmor, Kentucky our main television connection was with Nashville. There was Channel 2 (ABC) which we could barely get, and was often quite snowy and unwatchable, Channel 4 (NBC) which was always slightly snowy but still very watchable, Channel 5 (CBS) which was almost always clear, Channel 8 (PBS), usually snowy but still watchable, and Channel 13 (ABC) out of Bowling Green, Kentucky which was always clear (and consequently the main source for ABC programming).

There was also Kentucky Educational Television (PBS) on Channel 53 out of Bowling Green and Channel 7 (ABC) and Channel 9 (PBS) out of Evansville, Indiana (which always struck me as transmissions from a parallel Earth.) And, on very rare occasions, a fleeting ghost of Channel 3 from far away Louisville would drift on to the set.

And that, was it – no HBO, no TCM, no Encore, no SyFy, no nothing. It all had three letters and ended it either a “C” or “S.” And it was wonderful.

But back to the TV Guide… Every issue not only brought a short listing of the network series episodes and movies of the week, but more importantly there were the listings of what would be playing in all the various local station movie slots. For Channel 5, WLAC in Nashville they had The Big Show every afternoon. And checking those weekly listing were better that than waiting for a $40 million Powerball drawing. Would it be a week of boring dramas or perhaps a week of monster movies?

But with the gigantic mirths there were also equally gigantic melancholies to be suffered. There was nothing more crushing than finding a listing for a movie that you HAD to see only to be followed by the desperate realization that it was scheduled for a time where you would be separated from the TV set.

This dilemma resulted in me never seeing the classic Bride of Frankenstein until I was an adult. Oh, it was shown, sure enough. Each fall The Big Show would have a “Frankenstein Week” that would feature five of the Universal Frankenstein movies. But since Bride always fell on a Tuesday, and that was the afternoon for my piano lessons, well, let’s just say I never figured out a successful way to fake broken fingers for one week.

With the only access to older movies being the limited number of spots of network and local TV (the closest we ever got to a “revival house” theater might be a re-release of Smokey and the Bandit…) my generation was the last to view the ability to see older movies as a valuable and demanding privilege. In just a few short years the introduction of consumer VCRs and the spread of cable TV would change everything.

And though I wouldn’t trade my bloated library of DVDs and the ability to instantly access just about anything in a short time, there was a special sweetness to knowledge that if you missed that 4:00 pm showing of The Angry Red Planet, Wednesday, on Channel 5, you might NEVER get to see it(!), or, at best, it might be YEEEARS before you did(!!!)

But it wasn’t just the rarity of viewing that made it special. Movies were a communal activity. This was true since the beginning of motion pictures when they burst forth onto big screens, and it had continued on through their transition to the cathode ray tube. When I plopped down in front of the TV to watch the CBS Movie of the Week showing of The Planet of the Apes (and you better believe I won the fight to make that the viewing for the evening!) there were millions of boys all over

America

doing so at the exact same time. And at school, or church, or wherever kids gathered it was never “I saw a movie last night…” it was “DID YOU SEE!?!?”

One of my favorite memories of childhood was winning the argument with my parents to be able to stay up until 2:00 am on a Friday night for The Deadly Mantis. Not only was I treated to the sights of a big bug munchin’ down on New York City, but I had achieved something truly special. And in retrospect, I can’t help but wonder how many other kids in the Middle Tennessee/Southern Kentucky viewing area had won the same prize that night as our monster lovin’ souls mingled in the ether and pushed the big ugly critter on in its reign of devastation -- at least until the credits rolled or we passed out on the couch.

American Pop Culture is Dead! Long Live Its Zombiefied Corpse!

2011-01-03T13:43:00.000-08:00

A blog, oh my god!!! Yes, it is true I have finally dove into the blog waters (and yes, I fully realize how disgusting that sounds.) As for what this blog is about, well, it’s about things I’m interested in, and if you know me, that is a lot of various and sundries. If you don’t know me, welcome, and hang on because you’ll find out…

Things Fall Apart

One topic that I will writing about a lot on this blog is the period of 1972 to 1976, with a particular emphasis on the simply magical, and totally screwed-up and scary year of 1973.

Now, I’m sure a big part of my recent fascination with this time period is because I’ve reached the point where I can’t forestall “middle age” any longer, and that ole debbil mortality is starting to peek over the horizon at me. But as I’ve been digging into some personal archeology, I’ve made the discovery that a tremendous number of my best memories, and my first exposure to the pop culture that would shape my attitudes and tastes for the rest of my life hit in 1972 to 1974 with a major epicenter being the autumn of 1973.

Looking back from the first tenth of the 21^st Century one can see an uninterrupted lineage of American pop culture that began around the time of World War I and extends into the late seventies – and then everything began to change. Part of the change was technology, part of if was in the psychological make-up of how America viewed itself, part of it was how the world had changed, but whatever the reasons, the old internal combustion engine of 20th Century American Pop Culture began to sputter and miss and would never run the same again.

Now don’t mistake what I’m saying here. I’m not saying that what came next wasn’t as good, (although I may feel that way sometimes…) but it was different. Through the Eighties everything was in transition – music, movies, fiction, comics, art, design. At the time there was a feeling that we were on the edge of something. We didn’t know what, but we could feel that something was about to change.

I think The Replacements captured that moment perfectly in their 1985 tribute to Eighties “alternative” rock and college radio, “Left of the Dial.” The excitement, the spark, is there. Not in the lyrics necessarily, but in the whole feeling of the song. If you were there at the moment I’m talking about it’s a feeling you know well.

But along with the excitement there was a bit of foreboding. Seen through the rearview mirror of the last twenty-five years, part of that excitement was the undercurrent of “This is our last chance to get it right.” Now again, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m not declaring that everything went to crap with the dawn of the Nineties (although I may feel that way sometimes…) What we were really sensing was the final winding down of the 20^th Century American Pop Culture machine. Once Nirvana went to number one and REM became millionaires, once there was a Star Trek TV series that not only managed to stay on the air but become a success with “mundanes,” once movies became accessible any time you wanted to watch them, once Watchmen made comic books into “novels,” there was no going back.

As the Nineties began with remakes and “retro” what we were really seeing was the birth of 21^st Century Pop Culture. And the first thing this petulant progeny did was devour its parent whole. Nothing can now be made without the knowledge and awareness of what came preceded it. Sure this happened before. The pulps of the 1920s and 1930s had devoured and regurgitated the newspaper serials and dime novels of the 19^th Century. Early country and “race” music had its roots in tin pan alley and minstrel shows of the 19^th Century. But unlike before, the threads, roots, and illicit liaisons and conceptions are all fully on display. Pop culture has become self-aware.

So, how did I get so far away from 1973? It was a magic time for me because I was ten years old, but it was a weird and magic time for many other reasons too. But that is for subsequent blogs…