Billy Idol wrote Eyes Without A Face after he saw Les Yeux Sans Visage.
It is a haunting bordering on ghastly French horror movie about a surgeon whose daughter is severely injured in a car accident he caused. Her face is severely scarred by the tragedy so the doctor kills a young woman so that he can steal her face to graft onto his daughter's. But the face rots so he has to kill another then another then another. It is a stunning film and made even more intoxicating when juxtaposed with Billy's classic.
At the start of The Pandemic Netflux filled the void w a thrilling train wreck dedicated to tigers and the weirdos who exploit them. The documentary was such a spectacle that it generated major buzz on socials but more interestingly a full mural in Dallas design district. And one if The Vandoloers took his pepper for a pose in front of it
I loved this photo so much I thought that I could use the unexpexted time off to draw it. Sadly covid broke my brain and it ended up taking me two 1/2 years to finally finish it. It was a struggle to finish so my tiger looks positively stoned but I'll take it. Long haul covid has been my nemesis but I'm finally coming out the other side.
Nine Inch Nails music has been a corner stone of my life since I found them in 1989 and I will love them forever. My FAVORITE memory of their live shows was my first one at The Thomas & Mack in Vegas in 1996. When I got frisked for chains at the gate and then saw the most beautiful fairy in all the land. She was a brunette decked out in a pink tutu with massive sparkly wings and in her hand was a severed bloody head.
I drew my vision of her she is still so fresh in my mind.
Marilyn Manson opened and when he jumped from the tops of the mushroons that were part of his stage set up while fondling the detachable penis attached to his skimpy panties my bff screamed NOW THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT.
Flashback to in November of 2013
"And the sky is filled with light....can you see it?"
Nine Inch Nails were back in Vegas for a show when front man Trent Reznor pulled out his phone during their set to facetime with a longtime fan and photojournalist (Andrew Youssef) who could not make the show because doctors had given him only a few weeks left to live. You can hear the crowd chanting his name ANDREW ANDREW ANDREW. Trent dedicated In This Twilight to him. It is a stunning moment full of love and compassion. I love Trent Rezno's kind, gentle & generous heart with my whole soul
When my sweet baby Clementine died in my arms I fell apart. You can't watch your best friend of 10 years be put down and not somehow lose a part of yourself in the process.
I went into a spiral in the wake of her shocking death and it was made worse when vet called a few weeks later and asked me to come by. My warm frito scented bed hogging butt wagging best friend was now ashes. In a box. When someone youve loved for eternity comes home in box how do you cope with that. They never taught that in school and it would have served me better than home ec. or calculus ever did.
Grief is frightening and stalks you like some of the classic monsters of yore. Music and film have always been a great escape from the alchemy of day to day and so too art. I started teaching myself to draw several years ago and its zen meditative qualities are very cathartic.
When I lost Clem my sadness came thru my pencil in what is my most passionate portrait since I started drawing with mere stick figures 6 years ago. I LOVE Monster Magnet and drew a portrait of Dave Wyndorf with the classic Monster Magnet from his youth and the inspiration for the band moniker. And I gave it the job it was meant to do and the monsters are quite stunning for a novice like me whose passion frequently exceeds her talent. This is every tear, every sleepless night, every crack in a heart shattered by loss.
I have a gorgeously demented chart of Supernatural Collective Nouns. A few divine examples include: A persuasion of prophets, a bureau of molemen, a ruminance of bigfeet...the chart is really quite something to behold. And so too are mummies.
In case you ever happen upon a large group of them (as one does), they would be called a liberty. I was fortunate enough to come into contact with a liberty of mummies this past weekend. This is our journey.
I've been in the music business for 20+ years and I will tell you emphatically that Here Come The Mummies are one of the most enthralling, outrageously fun and thoroughly entertaining bands I have ever seen.
Their sound is definitely their own but I picked up an electrifying mix of influential flavors that harken back to P-Funk, Cameo, Earth Wind & Fire, Kool & The Gang, Tower Of Power, Nash The Slash, Player, The Doobie Brothers, LRB, Mothers Finest, The Mystical Knights Of The Oingo Boingo, James Brown & even a sweet dash of Sublime....which is also an adjective I would use to describe the experience of catching not one but two of their live shows.
These particular mummies are Nashvillains and they have been grinding out the wicked funky goodness since the early aughts which was enraging to discover because how am I only just finding them? Thanks to House Of Blues Dallas for the tweet and turning me on to this sensational group.
(drawing by Ian Leino)
To catch up with all that I had missed....I spent the past two weeks in hot devil mode laying down on all their super cool music, flapping arms wildly and absorbing every single beat, rhythm, nuance & lyric. I was determined to be ready for their show and when the time came I'm proud to report I sang and danced my guts out with all the other passionate mummy acolytes.
I KNEW the show was going to be good based on what I had seen on yt. But their show in Dallas surpassed even my wildest expectations and was so good that I decided to hit the road and drive four hours to see them again in Houston.
Thank you to Garrett their manager who hooked me up with a free pair of tickets. A cherished and treasured gift for which I will be eternally grateful.
After my first mummy I went apeshit on social media and my bff, who has been off the grid for a few weeks, came back and asked "what the hell are all these mummies in my feed?" What can I say when I love... I love big and without fear or inhibition.
Here Come The Mummies fill my music loving heart in a way that previously only Prince could. That is the highest compliment I can give them. They are first and foremost passionate and dedicated musicians. Artists so in tune with their craft and talent it is impossible to tell where the artist stops and the instrument begins. They have fused together in a way that borders on magic. The staggering amount of work they must do behind the scenes is visible and audible in their wildly entertaining live shows.
Did I mention they are dirty? Yes they are literally and lyrically. This too is a compliment.
If you say the words "kinda lingers" really fast it sounds like something completely different and rather delightful. PS chewing gum for an hour a day is great exercise and will mitigate the lockjaw discussed forthwith.
Mummies are lovers. Mummies are frisky. Mummies lyrics are hilariously risque. They have a song all about pants, the live performance of which drove the crowd to rapture from the very opening riff. The cheers when the song started were, for this author, augmented by a question from the nearest drunk guy who asked "wait...are the mummies cumming? IN THEIR PANTS?"
Chortling into my ample cleavage I gently reminded him of the band's moniker. I watched in awe as the hamster on the wheel inside of his head slowly caught its breath. Then the drunk guy's eyes lit up and he raised his beer and warbled "FUCK YEAH!"
I will always remember my first mummy. The show begins with a drumline that enters thru the crowd and it was an exciting taste of the fun to come...hmmm inadvertent pun. Mummies are infectious. Now I have the sickness.
The mummies first song My Party sets the stage and tone for the show which at the outset is devoted entirely to celebrating all y'all freaks. PROTIP: If you don't know any... guess what chicken butt? The freak is probably you and that is cool AF. Welcome home little one.
"You're free to be a freak among freaks."
Their song Friction is so tantalizing, thick and creamy it should be served warm on toast. It is a must for your sexy time playlist because "thrust is a must" and friction is basically all thrust.
And THAT BEAT!!! That beat is so deep it should come with a condom or it might just get you pregnant.
The sparks literally flew in this song and the mummies have some wicked dark lords whose sole job is to basically whip the floor like a naughty lover. The effect of it is intoxicating and mesmerizing.
Booty. Oh Booty. This song is my anthem, probably because I am highly blessed. The mummies smack their own butts during this song and that spectacle is worth its weight in gauze. I love it when The Flu falls to his knees to pray for the booty...LMAO Amen.
I LOVED Underground too another sick sexy af beat and I felt a little like a drunk cobra standing there swooning over the multiple hypnotic horn solos
Triple Double is another fave because witnessing a liberty of mummies running amok all over the stage is always a scream.
Forgive my camera brainfart and behold the glory of the magical mystical musical mummy journey, I am enchanted, entranced and smitten with his incandescent joie de vivre
Before I go any further on the music I want to take the time to applaud the HCTM lighting designer. They are as much an artist and star of this show as the band members basking under, above and within it.
The lighting was hypnotic & transcendent.
Every song had a mood and even the beats within each song would frequently be a lighting cue.
The lighting took what would have been a great concert and made it a spectacular theatrical wunderkind.
This ties into the literal filth I mentioned earlier. The gray, black and brown make up on their pockets of exposed skin gives them that freshly dug up sex appeal that you crave in your garden variety mummy. And the costumes take that a step further. The dark spots with what I can only describe as a graveyard dirt effect on their perfectly tattered wrappings are balanced by sporadic bright white strips which catch and reflect the lights in ways that give the mummies a positively supernatural glow throughout the show.
The stunning lighting, stage design, costumes, & choreography in conjunction with the electrifying music were what took this way beyond a mere concert experience and deep into the realm of performance art. The impact was thunderous and eternal.
I've been frustrated by the occasional odd critic on yt & in my Twitter mentions who dismisses the costumes as a "gimmick" saying they are not necessary for artists who are clearly very good at what they do. Conveniently contrarian criticism like this is willfully obtuse and misses what makes HCTM so unique and separates them from other talent in a beautiful and profound way. And p the fuck s what is wrong w a gimmick if it works? KISS had a hell of a run and so have many others like Daft Punk, Slipknot, Marilyn Manson, Alice Cooper, King Diamond, Hatebeak, Mac Sabbath, GWAR, Kraftwerk & some guy named David Bowie. Ultimately it's all about the music and for the mummies their talent is sacrosanct & irrefutable.
The mummies bring with them a show that fully engages their fans with an inventive mind/body experience. So along with the stunning and super tight musical performance the mummies go one step beyond and deliver an enticing and thoroughly addictive visual spectacle. A performance so different and so fun that it flips a switch, lights up your mind and inspires powerful and innate creative forces. Doubt my word? Look at all these photos. I am not a photographer. My pictures usually come out grainy and totally worthless. These HCTM images from Dallas and Houston are from a run of the mill cellphone and I honestly have no idea what I did right. When I talk about mummy magic I mean it.
Even off stage the mummies are working hard. The mummies merch booth was a cut above the rest. I go to hundreds of shows and the merch situation is always a little maniacal and harum scarum. It is typical at a show to find the merch booth run by a curt, harried scruffy guy who pulls stuff out of dirty, bent boxes haphazardly laying around all over the floor. And if a shirt or jacket is involved there is usually a struggle and an excavation process to find the size you want.
Here Come The Mummies have one of the most organized merch booths I have ever seen with a carefully presented table display of cds freak flags and other swag. And their band tshirts which are available in every size are folded and placed in their own special cubby.
A post shared by Here Come The Mummies (@hctmummies) on
There is a creative, thoughtful and detail oriented mind at work behind the scenes at mummies headquarters. No detail is too small for these mummies to tend to which should tell you a lot about how they feel about their fans. They must love and respect us passionately to go as hard and as far as they do. So if you are a mummy who finds this review by happenstance, thank you. The love and respect is mutual.
Finding Here Come The Mummies has been such a blessing for my wounded aching heart. Prince's death hit hard and deep. His loss brought a pain I had never experienced before and getting past it seemed impossible. Here Come The Mummies music lifted up my shattered soul and reminded me there is a way to keep going. That the best way to remember Prince is by connecting with other free spirited artists who lived as he did...by making real music with real musicians.
That a group of mummies is collectively known as a liberty is fitting because this particular unbridled fearless batch bring with them a music, an energy, a creativity, a passion & a showmanship that will surely set you free.
“Pan had begun to live in his memories, an unhealthy symptom in anyone, suggesting as it does that life has peaked"
~Tom Robbins
A few years ago I had a dream about an old boss who I had not thought about in many years. Richard Reed hired me to work at KOMP when I first moved to the states in the mid 90s. He took a lot of heat for it too because there were a number of jocks in the cluster on other stations hoping to get on KOMP and I essentially took their place. He also knew I was struggling and let me work on a sister station. I was only part time and the extra hours kept me from having to eat sleep for dinner.
My first night on the air was running the board for a multi jock simulcast from the strip for the implosion of The Dunes. I remember one of the jocks groaned when he heard I was running the board. He didn't know I was in the room when he asked "does that bitch even know what the fuck she is doing?"
It turns out I did and I rocked it as much as a board op could lol and over the next year I grew enough to be offered morning sidekick position with Mike O'Brien on The Point. It wasn't really a fit for me because I was a rock girl and my first love would always be KOMP. The overnight position was soon available and I begged for it which was shocking to anyone in radio at the time. "you want to do OVERNIGHTS when you are doing mornings?" they gasped. The answer was yes. Because I wanted to rock and I wanted my own show.
I got the gig and it was a blast. I don't think the overnight shift even exists anymore because of voice tracking which is one of the worst things that ever happened to radio second only to the Telecommunications Act. Both were terrible blows to the creative side of the industry.
My stint in overnights was shortlived though because 103.5 The Edge came calling with a mid day offer and that was when my career really blossomed. 1996 to 1998 were the absolute greatest years of my professional radio career because I worked for people who believed and nurtured my talent. The freedom and creativity our crew had just boggles my mind. We were blessed to be so free.
That freedom and joy was palpable on the air and the ratings and the buzz on the street were legend. I did personal appearances everywhere especially Drink and I also hosted The Hollywood Swing Parties at the Hard Rock Hotel. Every radio station desperately wanted and fought for the chance to get that contract but it was my spec commercial and passion that eventually sealed the deal and those parties are my greatest memory of Vegas.
Sadly The Edge's days were numbered because of the horrendous telecommunications act Bill Clinton signed which decimated radio. We were a lively mom and pop station and our owner George Tobin could not compete with the craven and debauched corporate behemoths who came stomping in like Godzilla Meets Bambi and pounded the creative guts out everything we had worked for.
I will never forget the day they changed our format. I was numb on my way home and an obnoxious competing station who used to pay their listeners to antagonize me at personal appearances, was on the air. Their jock was laughing, drinking champagne and playing Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead toasting our demise. That still hurts.
The loss of The Edge was when my new journey began and when a surprising letter turned up in my mailbox. It was from Richard Reed who I had not seen or spoken to since my days at KOMP. It was a letter of recommendation he had written to help me on the next leg of my career. I read it stunned and it left me in tears. I had never read anything so passionate, so beautiful, so charming and so gracious.
It helped me get work at my next station in Philly and then on to Los Angeles. I had not thought about that letter or Richard in awhile until two years ago when I had a dream so visceral and alive that I awoke with a gasp and the clear sensation that Richard was in the room. His presence was palpable. All I remembered from the dream were the two words he kept repeating"the letter, the letter, the letter"
I immediately got up and went to find it. It was tucked away in a box of precious memories and still as beautiful and powerful as the first time I read it. I got online to see if Richard still worked at KOMP, he didn't. So I googled his name to see if I could find him perhaps reconnect and tell him about how much I appreciated his treasured gesture.
That was when I found his obituary. He had died of an aneurysm in Rio just a few days before my dream, I sent a private message to the site hosting his memorial thanking him for the countless ways he had helped me in the early days in Vegas. I framed his letter and I read it every few weeks to remind myself that there was once someone out there who believed in me so passionately that he would take the time to write it down and share it with the world.
I never thought I would leave radio, it has been such an integral part of my life for so long that it is hard to imagine my life without it. But as I was filling out yet another job application tonight I realized it is time to let go.
Thank you Richard. I think you would be proud of me. I had a long and extraordinary ride in radio and as I say goodbye to my career and to you I want you to know how grateful I am you gave me a chance. You were my champion and I will remember you forever.
The great poet Pablo Neruda once wrote the most sublime love poem for his SOCKS. For the uninitiated, it is a poem that celebrates the power of mundane things we take for granted until their need becomes an imperative...and here we are.
I got a package in the mail today that had "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL YOUR BDAY" on the outside of package. Now dear reader I am an aries which is sanskrit for IMPATIENT AF. The individual who send this package KNOWS this and was practically daring me to ignore the stated directive...and here we are.
In my own defense the package "slipped" off the table and the sheer velocity of the fall ripped open three layers of tape and the container item was packaged in...and HERE WE ARE. Behold the majesty and glory of the worlds most certifiably unhinged pencil sharpener. Much like Nerudas infamous socks I never really fully appreciated the possibilities of a pencil sharpener until this one was literally staring me in the face. I cannot stop laughing
I think her name is Sadie and she is a Living Dead Doll
She has the same feeling about pencil shavings that I do about okra, brussels sprouts and politics. She spits them out in utter disgust. If you needed a measuring stick for how to win the day. This is it. Sadie is the greatest addition to my art and I will treasure her wild wicked weirdness forever.
I got my hair done today and the process can be a little tedious so i Intertained myself and the ladies near me by horsing around on my IG stories and took this bitch to the next level by adding the apprpriate tuneage thanks to Peter Garrett. This song is golden. And perfect.
28 years ago Nine Inch Nails recorded their album The Downward Spiral in the house where Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger Wojciech Frykowski & Stephen Parent weremurdered. Trent Reznor was personally confronted by Sharon's sister Patti about it. He told Rolling Stone:
"While I was working on the Downward Spiral, I was living in the house where Sharon Tate was killed. Then one day I met her sister [Patti Tate]. It was a random thing, just a brief encounter. And she said: 'Are you exploiting my sister's death by living in her house?' For the first time, the whole thing kind of slapped me in the face. I said, 'No, it's just sort of my own interest in American folklore. I'm in this place where a weird part of history occurred.' I guess it never really struck me before, but it did then. She lost her sister from a senseless, ignorant situation that I don't want to support. When she was talking to me, I realized for the first time, 'What if it was my sister?' I thought, 'Fuck Charlie Manson.' I went home and cried that night. It made me see there's another side to things, you know?"
Almost 10 years later The Man In Black Johnny Cash would record his own version of the song for his 87th album American IV: The Man Comes Around. The video was filmed by Mark Romaneck who was racing against the clock because Johnny was 71 and his health was rapidly declining. The video was shot at The House of Cash, a museum that was also Johnny's private home, in Nashville.Mark said in this interview
"It had been closed for a long time, the place was in such a state of dereliction. That’s when I got the idea that maybe we could be extremely candid about the state of Johnny’s health - as candid as Johnny has always been in his songs."
Johnny died 7 months after this was filmed. And The House Of Cash burned down in 2007.
When Trent Reznor heard Johnny's version of Hurt and saw the video he said he was deeply moved, that it was so beautiful and meaningful that "this song isn't mine anymore."
They were my final interview at my last Edgefest before the station broke my heart by flipping formats. Saw them again right before thanksgiving 2016 and literally turned their album into a cake (see below)that looked so real some fans were pissed because they thought they had missed out on pink vinyl lol. GC is coming back to HOB 11/11/18. Get tickets HERE
The sobbing purple bananas poured out of my pencil in a wave of tears at The Foshay in Minneapolis in June of 2016 & captured the eternal anguish that still ravages my shattered heart 6 years after Prince transitioned. I had gone up to pay my respects to Prince and to TRY to say goodbye. It was an onerous and impossible task trying to let go and I have yet to do it.
Dear reader my precious bananas have been on a journey.
The bananas were inspired from a line in Let's Go Crazy where Prince sings "Let's look for the purple banana until they put us in the truck" so I drew a bunch sobbing in the back of a weeping one and the elephant and flowers just sort of fell out of my pencil as elephants sometimes do.
Pancake Dan helped me secure them to the memorial at Paisley Park and he put them right next to one of many of his own portraits so he could keep an eye on them. It is really nice when someone offers to keep an eye on your bananas just so you know.
My weeping elephant and bananas were on the Paisley Park memorial for months and hung there on the fence near the entrance along with my shirt that I wore to the NPG tribute show at The Parkway and was still there raggedy faded but in tact when I went back in September that same year.
The original bananas/elephants drawings were not very well insulated from the elements and the purple skied people running everywhere storms Prince sang about Minnie took their toll. Dan emailed me to say they were looking rough. He didn't know how much longer they would last as the mold and water damage were becoming more visible with each passing day.
I printed copies, sealed and reframed them with a poem by Maya Angelou
When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety.
When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken.
Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance,fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignoranceof dark, cold caves.
And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.
I mailed the refurbished tribute to Dan who replaced my deteriorating originals. SIDE BAR: In the meantime I was banned from facebook for my bananas because sex or something
Yes yes Zuck I was trying to sell banana dildos on fb. You caught me. Spanking earned. **scowling emoji
Dan sent my original purple bananas and elephant drawings back which he had graciously cleaned up and which I had framed with special protective glass surrounded by black suede and are now safe and sound at home. They have been thru a lot.
I. went back to Minnie in September for the Revolution reunion and drew a cherry moon portrait which was surprising because I have not been able to draw with the 14 hour a day fervor I had prior to Prince death. His loss was hobbling in so many ways. I still can't find my passion for it so the cherry moon drawing was a gift, A blessing. A release.
There was deep catharsis and comfort drawing it and then making the 45 minute drive to Chanhassen to revisit the memorial. I left it on the fence next to the replacement bananas
Sadly I don't know what happened to the copies and the other items I left on the fence because the jackals that are running the estate have gone out of their way to be as revolting and disrespectful as possible. First by dismantling the fan tribute then adding a sickening sign discouraging any further tributes. So it went from this:
to this
The first wave of mementos left in April and May were collected by the Minnesota Historical Society. But the second wave were left in the dirt and mud by insensitive bozos who dgaf. That still hurts, deeply. A therapist told me that closure was a myth and that was a jolt. We've been duped for so long I couldn't believe and still can't that it doesn't exist. I'm reminded of Ann Lamott who presciently wrote about loss and pain saying "...It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp."
