R.I.P. SAM ANDREW

Rest in peace musician Sam Andrew. Some may dwell on his appearance in Monterey Pop but my fave is his and Big Brother and the Holding Company's "Combination Of The 2" in Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead which remains one of the all time best utilizations of music to action in films. This saying a lot as matching just the right songs in his movies remains one of Martin Scorsese's major forte`s.

CAROLYN WONDERLAND LIVE at The Mint 2.4.15, L.A.

 

Audaciously great Texas blueswoman Carolyn Wonderland rocked The Mint, L.A. joined by fellow world class singer Lisa Kekaula for a version of Valerie Simpson/Nick Ashford ditty that was a smokin' hit for Ray Charles "Let's Go Get Stoned" that approached F5 tornado status. Both are featured singers on R&R Hall of Fame Stooges' guitarist James Williamson's recently released Re-Licked solo album. 

Also above, Carolyn sings Janis Joplin's "What Good Is Drinkin'" in true method actor style. The set featured covers by Freddie King and other assorted blues supplementing Carolyn's own raucous songs (plus one ballad.)

Carolyn's fabulous guitar work, genuinely soulful vocals and easy rapport with her audience are all part of her, well, let's face it, mind-blowing talent. Cole El-Salah remains her longtime keyboardist and key-bassist in the trio.

 (Video snippet
by unknown party link)

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL DRESS IN THE WORLD...

 

...was designed by Bernard Newman to glorify Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire in their dazzling  Cheek To Cheek sequence in the film Top Hat, 1935. Watching Fred Astaire dance with any woman is sort of like watching good pornography, so the sartorial emphasis was imperative. Yes, those are marabou feathers, but in the official Conservation Status chart, they are the in the "least concern" category, which means no problem. Plus they are nasty fellow bird cannibals. The light blue dress was completely backless for, to use an archaic term, sensate focus...

GUY WEBSTER, FAMED PHOTOGRAPHER book signing

 1.21.15: famed celeb photographer Guy Webster signed his Big Shots: Rock Legends and Hollywood Icons: the Photography of Guy Webster book in Venice CA at a well attended event at In Heroes We Trust boutique around the corner from his studio. 

Webster has photographed the top echelon of actors and musicians for the last half century, beginning with his notorious bathroom portrait on the cover of the debut LP of million-selling, 1960s hipster vocal group The Mamas and The Papas. He is known for bringing a studio quality to candids and vice versa, but I associate his style with that of summoning dreamlike memories of stars rather than playing up their most stereotypical qualities, infinitely better.

Above, the book's co-author and West Coast entertainment biz historian Harvey Kubernik displays my copy of Cinema Magazine with Webster's cover portrait of The Mod Squad-era Peggy Lipton, which Webster, seated behind his tome, graciously autographed (below right.) The photographer said even he didn't own a copy of the periodical. As a teen in 1968 I had purchased it because an acquaintance was featured modeling in a full page ad. Of course the rest of the magazine proved enlightening to future cinema and photography interests. Below left, Kubernik and Webster confer.

 

 Below, Webster signs panties, hence the rock vibe...

 

DOG TALES: CONSOLATION

All dogs newly banned from the horse boarding ranch, so they stay home and console one another after playing in the rare morning fog. Our abode in same at bottom...

SAD QUAGGA TALES

First pic: this Quagga mare died in 1878 in a zoo, the only living quagga ever photographed. The very last of her kind ever died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883. When DNA studies of unfortunate taxidermed specimens were studied, tests pointed to the extinct Quagga having been a subspecies of Plains Zebras, still thankfully around. The Quagga Project, spearheaded by South African zoologist Reinhold Rau then began selective breeding to bring out the recessive traits of Plains Zebras commensurate with Quagga coloring, and are on their 5th generation (second pic.) These animals live in an assortment of game parks, no culling. 

I hope they succeed and show the world the magnificence of quagga-like zebras, and how we should do anything to avoid future extinctions which deplete our earth's treasures.

FONE FOTOS of MY HORSE INDY VS. EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE

 

Tech notes: Rectifying the absence of pics of my horse Indy on my phone, I went to photograph him walking in the turn-out paddock. When he suddenly began cantering, I rested the phone on a pipe corral railing to minimize camera-shake and twisted it to pan his action, which didn't last more than about 20 seconds. My theory is get the action shot, don't stop to futz with equipment-- there's always post-production for any inadequacies.

Musing: two years ago Indy was recovering from multiple genetic malaises that essentially lamed him. With corrective shoeing, electrowave therapy, medication and a patient year of regaining ground in the tiniest of increments, he is a happy, healthy riding horse again, just not up the steepest hills anymore. For those readers who aren't horsepeople, not every injured horse comes back to recovery...

Further musing:

 Video LINK

  

from these still photos: 

Indy's various canter strides are reminiscent of a fascinating chapter in proto-motion pictures. Eadweard Muybridge, an adventurous type who survived a serious stagecoach crash and murder charges, photographed still shots in of a galloping horse in 1872. When seen in rapid sequence they present a movie of same. Leland Stanford funded the complex project of tripping shutter releases to stop the action to win a bet, that all four feet of a horse are off the ground at a gallop. This gait had always been stylized by artists as front feet sticking straight out with back legs sticking straight out, as in this Currier & Ives print print and all Western art prior. The proto-motion picture proved that this schematic was impossible for horses in real life, and more natural depictions followed thereafter...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOWIE and ELVIS

Happy Jan. 8th birthdays to David Bowie, seen on his first Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars tour, 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and to Elvis Presley. For the latter I'm posting 2 pix (photographers unknown) of his Tickle Me co-lead Jocelyn Lane, his only co-star who truly inhabited the hip 1960s in his films with her long straight hair done up in Jane Asher or Pattie Boyd ponytails, and Mod makeup (dark eyes, light lips.)

No behind the times square she! (and some of his filmic love interests proved conservative indeed: one became a nun, Mother Dolores Hart.)

 

GIA BY STARLIGHT

Young predator with prey traverses the blueblack midnight Serengeti plains, 

pausing only to espy intrepid nightvision wildlife photographer...

I'm waxing very "Calvin & Hobbes"* here, aren't I? 

*late, lamented comic strip by Bill Watterson.

FIRST PHOTOGRAPH OF 2015

 First photograph of 2015, early morning 

frost on our backyard weeds, uncharact-

eristically taken with my telephone as I

was impatient to go watch the Miramar

Miramar Scripps Saddlebreds and other 

horses in the televised Rose Parade.
(Screen capture below of 2015's caprisoned 
Saddlebreds, photographer unknown.)