Christmas music & album covers: The Three Suns
To be honest I'm not much of a fan of instrumental group The three Suns, I think they are pretty boring to listen to, but oh boy did they have some great artwork on some of their albums!! Found at Ernie (Not Bert) - a great Christmas music blog!
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Picnic At Hanging Rock
If you haven't seen the Australian movie from 1975 by Peter Weir called Picnic At Hanging Rock I suggest you do that and at the same time I suggest you probably shouldn't read anymore of this post. There will be spoilers ahead. I mean it - REAL spoilers. If you have seen it and liked it you should perhaps think twice about continue reading as well. It might spoil something for you too. You have been warned!
If you are of the category that have seen it you might recall that the movie "tells the story of the mysterious disappearance of three schoolgirls and their teacher during a picnic at a geological formation known as Hanging Rock on Valentine's Day in 1900."
"The reason for their disappearance, whether by human, natural or supernatural agency, is never discovered, but their disappearance has a profound effect upon everybody in their community." - Quote from Wikipedia's article on the film.
The screenplay is an adaption from Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel by the same name.
What you might not know is that the story is NOT based on a true story. Even though it is sort of implied in the movie by it beginning with a text sign telling the basic story: "On Saturday 14th February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without a trace..."
The screenplay is an adaption from Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel by the same name.
What you might not know is that the story is NOT based on a true story. Even though it is sort of implied in the movie by it beginning with a text sign telling the basic story: "On Saturday 14th February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without a trace..."
So, time for the second possible spoiler*: Joan Lindsay wrote another final chapter of the book where everything was supposedly "explained".
"...though it was removed before publication and not released until 1987, two years after Lindsay's death." "It has been argued by many critics that much of the power of the original book stems from the suggestion that it was a true story, and the fact that the mystery in the book was never resolved, and therefore it was a good decision by the author to remove this material."
Summary of the added ending:
"While walking past the hanging rock, the girls experience several incomprehensible phenomena. Driven giddy by some supernatural suggestion of the monolith, they throw their corsets over the cliff, though they never fall to the bottom and instead hang in space in an impossible fashion. The girls and Miss McCraw notice a mystical "hole in space". Marion, Miranda, and Miss McCraw transform into small creatures and crawl into a hole in the rock, which another boulder then covers, leaving Irma alone and clawing at the fallen rock."
Would you have wanted to know that beforehand?
"All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream"
- E.A Poe
* UPDATE:
lliam kindly wrote in the comments of this post: "I had the good fortune of growing up on Joan Lindsey's property "Mulberry Hill" during the 70's, my parents even escorted her to the set during the making of the movie. I also happen to know that she never wrote an alternate 'ending'. She never explained the mystery to anyone even though she received hundreds of requests every year to do so. The so called 'missing chapter' was fabricated after her death in order to cash in on the popularity of the film and novel. She was a great writer and a wonderful friend to my family and I. I'm glad you like 'Picnic' and please be comforted in the thought that the mystery is still un-explained."
As always - you decide what and who you want to believe....
Music: Merit Hemmingson & the Meritones
OK, it's time for a repost. I'll even use the words from last time:
Merit Hemmingson & the Meritones "at the Esquire Club" (or perhaps Discoteque dance a go go if this is not the name of a series of records. Does anyone know for sure?) was recorded live on the 1st of February 1966 and released in 1967. This was the first record Merit ever did and (perhaps) not the most interesting and personal but I definitely think it's worth listening to. I don't believe it has ever been reprinted so until it's released on CD (if ever) here we go:
UPDATE: You can find it at Spotify nowadays.
If this gets you interested in Merit's music please visit Merit Hemmingsons own website.
Our thanks to Erik - the Fettfräsare number 1.
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Music: Who Is Harry Nilsson?
Well, as it is said in the trailer for documentary "Who Is Harry Nilsson? And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?" - either people get it (who he is) right away or they have no idea.
It seems that everyone who do know who Harry Nilsson was will agree that: 1...he was an extremely talented singer and songwriter 2...he was an extremely complicated person "a big bunny with really sharp teeth".
While being a very productive and successful songwriter, both for himself and others, like the song "One" recorded by Three Dog Night, the two largest hits for Nilsson as a performing artist were not written by him. Those songs are the theme from the movie Midnight Cowboy "Everybody's Talkin'" and "Without You".
Nilsson lived a life that took a toll on his body - partying, drinking etc with friends like John Lennon, Ringo Starr and Keith Moon - and Nilsson sadly died in 1993 before the age of 53.
Here follows a collection of the YouTube movies that had a Nilsson connection and that I found worth putting together. There's the documentary trailer, a couple of versions of "Everybody's talkin'", "Without You", "One" with Three Dog Night, "Daddy's Song" - a song he did for The Monkeys, A documentary about some of Nilsson's recording session in five parts and some more... Enjoy!
A great blog: For the love of Harry
Nilsson's MySpace
The Harry Nilsson Web Pages
Harry Nilsson at Bedazzled!
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Art: Henrik Olsson
The art of Swedish artist Henrik Olsson. Finnish and Swedish landscapes and more through his eyes...
Via Canta Piriquito Canta
Animation: Who I Am And What I Want
The Glasgow-based artist David Shrigley co-directed and wrote this little animated film of seven minutes and forty-two seconds. It's well worth the time. I put in a few other Shrigley films in the playlist for your enjoyment too.
Links:
http://www.davidshrigley.com/
http://www.mudam.lu/shrigley/
animate!: David Shrigley biography
http://www.whoiamandwhatiwant.com/
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Vintage fashion: More bad ads from back in the day
The ad has been cropped.
If you dug this one you gotta dig these "bad" ads from Ebony Magazine, 1970-76. Thanks to The In Crowd who is getting real good at sharing. He's The Pimp.
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Album Covers: Matching Album Covers
Matching Album Covers
Via Stationsvakt
This is obviously not the first time this technique has been used. Check out the ones made by Christian Marclay.
...sort of related to:
Art: Olle Baertling
Doctor of Philosophy, Professor emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Stockholm
Links:
Olle Bærtling - Bærtlingfoundation
Olle Bærtling - a modern classic at Moderna Museet (Stockholm Modern Museum) 6th of October - 6th of January
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Design: Japanese manhole covers
Japanese manhole covers
via Drawn!
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Blog: Martin Klasch is no longer unheard of
The observant reader may have noticed that I have added a little button (
Why, oh why, you may ask, and rightfully so. We are not really the text based blog that might benefit from having such a service. We have posts that consists of only an image or an embedded video and hardly any text. Well, the simple answer is that we simply had to test it as soon as we heard about it at Stationsvakt, just for the fun of it. Podcasting may be unnecessary for this blog but I must say that I'm impressed with how the automated voice sounds. I believe they have voices in English, Swedish and French. Maybe you want to test it for your own blog?
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Pets: There are too many cats on internet...
...but this is not a cat - it's a MONSTER!!
Found at Cute Overload
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Art: "Sandra loved her salami"
April Gertler is an artist who works with collage technique sometimes with attached sentences. The result is beautiful, not seldom with an absurd touch or/and displaying a sort of black humor. I really do like it. Maybe you will too. Check them out at her Flickr site, her blog "38" and her website.
By the way, her artwork reminds me of a Swedish favorite - Jan Stenmark.
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Collection: Pocket protectors
Dr. John A. Pojman, Sr. is professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Southern Mississippi, but he is also the man behind The Pojman Pocket Protector Collection - "523 and growing!".
Via Baikinange's StumbleUpon
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