The Horror Of Party Beach

That's right, everybody! Get ready to do the Zombie Stomp with the way-out Del-Aires, while bearing witness to a strange invasion from the sea by unusual monsters looking for blood!

Anyone who is even remotely tuned in to the goofier (read "joyous") back alleys of popular culture, is probably familiar with this movie. Long story short, actor and industry gadfly Del Tenney decided to try and cash in on the surf culture craze of the early 1960s and the drive-in draw of monster movies at the same time by making a monster-in-the-surf film; not in sunny California where Gidget was shimmying with the Beach Boys, but in the chilly waters of the Atlantic off the New England coast! It was touted as the first horror musical (which is inaccurate because the infamously dull The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies beat it to the punch by months.) The movie has been dismissed as one of the worst movies of all time, and ravaged by everyone from Leonard Maltin to Stephen King, but darn if it isn't fun enough to survive. 

In 1989, Indiana Junk Rock band Sloppy Seconds included an homage to the film on their album Destroyed, and a decade later the movie gained cult film stock points when it was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Click to watch trailer for The Horror Of Party Beach.

Great, you might say. That's all neat-o and everything, but what am I doing here, on this blog thingy, reading about it? Well, it just so happens that in 1964, a fumetti-style photo comic of the film was published by Warren Magazines, the gang that gave us Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, and other horror-themed comic titles. This over-sized photo comic essentially breaks the film down into stills, tweaking a few things here and there. For example, in the comic version you can see someone has gone through and painted big scary piranha teeth into the mouths of the monsters. In the actual film, the creature's mouth is full of mollusk-like protuberances that make it look like it's walking around with a mouth full of hot dogs. 

I have a copy this here publication, and thought, since we're dealing with actual horrors and dangerous weather here in the upper Midwest, why not try to bring a little levity and joy into things. Should you be so inclined, the entirety of the The Horror Of Party Beach comic is available for download here, to peruse at your leisure.*

*Note about the files: The magazine was scanned in single page jpeg format. The download is an uncompressed file folder containing the jpegs. 

Ghosting The Waves with The Phantom Surfer!

Howdy from the not-so-Great White North! 

Aside from the usual extreme temperature advisory (we're supposed to have wind chills at or around -35 degrees Farenheit over the next 48 hours), we're also currently under siege by our own government. This isn't a political blog in any way, shape or form – if anything this is my one surcease from the constant barrage of all of that – but I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention it. 

The current luau status: unlikely.

Long story short, there's a lot of reasons folks here in Minnesota are staying inside right now. And, of course, what so often happens here during the most brutal depths of the winter months, at least for me, is that I start romanticizing and longing for the warmer days of summer. 

Well, I can't move May closer to January, so the next best thing (I guess) is to try to invoke a sense of the warmer climes with a bit of summer-related ephemera. And today's comes in the form of a haunting surfer story from Ghostly Tales #71, published in January of 1969 by Charlton Comics.

Aside from the obvious signature on the Jim Aparo cover above, there are no credits to be found in this comic. The story in question, " The Phantom Surfer", is clearly illustrated by Steve Ditko. Whether he wrote the script for it as well, I have no idea. 

The story is ok for what it is. It has characters making odd choices and the ending has sort of a fun conclusion (I almost said "twist") that you can predict the second Larry decides to surf out to impersonate the mythical phantom surfer. Ditko's art here is fine. It's not my favorite period of his. I enjoy a lot of his early pre-Marvel work for horror and dark fantasy titles like The Thing and This Magazine Is Haunted, and of course the initial runs of Spider-Man (whom he co-created) and Dr. Strange (whom he created). In my opinion much of his work that followed appears sloppy and amateurish and the characters he created for DC Comics like Hawk & Dove, The Creeper, The Question and Shade, The Changing Man are silly half-baked embodiments of Ditko's worldview or oddly complicated notions rather than competent or interesting comic book characters. 

You can see that my copy is in pretty rough shape. Some of the pages couldn't be scanned straight on because of how deteriorated the spine is, but please do enjoy this spooky, summery surf tale via Steve Ditko and magazine host Mr. L. Dedd. I've included the ads from this particular issue because I thought they might be enjoyed as part of the nostalgia of the reading experience.

Surf's up!

To Zine Or Not To Zine! [with 2 Free Zines!]

 That is the question! 

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of overhead and effort with no promise of dissemination, or to just say, "Yeah, I really like making them and sharing them, but they're just going to sit in a closet somewhere until I recycle them in eight months, because ain't nobody giving a toot about what I have to say about what I give a toot about!"

It's a conundrum that's puzzled the minds of creative types for centuries. That's why Hamlet ultimately scrapped his zine, Moody Leotard Lads, and decided to upend his royal household. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I do love me a good zine, though. I made them in high school and college, sought them out at comic conventions and record shows over the years, and even held long-standing subscriptions to a few (does Video Watchdog count as a zine?).

So, about a week ago I had what I deemed a great idea for a new zine; I'd settled on the titles Junk Drawer or X-Ray News. I thought Junk Drawer would be a good title because it could metaphorically encompass the scattershot menagerie of seemingly unrelated interests I would include: everything from record reviews and other music highlights, vintage comic book history, film insight, jabber about literature, art, graphic design and, well, who knows what else. Certainly not me! X-Ray News was gleaned from a Hercule Poirot book – The Labors of Hercules (1947) – and I thought it sounded cool. Almost like a Richard Sala comic or an obscure The Fall b-side or something. 

I'd even mapped out the first two issues. One would be about beach/surf culture, specifically from a Midwesterner's perspective ('cause you know we got 'em here, too), and would include reviews and info about my favorite surf records, spotlights on some fun beach-related films, etcetera. The second issue I had started to sketch out was related to party planning. What? That seems abstract and pointless, you might say. Back when VHS was king of the home media and companies needed a constant flow of product to spice up quickly stagnating production catalogs, all kinds of needless (and downright odd) novelty videos were released, providing everything from the opportunity to get fit with grannies to learning how to be a hit at any party. There were apparently a whole lot of "How To Party" adjacent videos produced, and a heck of a lot of them are up on the internet for casual consumption. So, obviously, someone needs to uncork this magic and get it out to the world, right?! Pair that with some of the most bizarre party snack recipes from cookbooks of yore, and tips on making the perfect party mixtape, and BAM: you got yourself a very niche publication that might appeal to...only you.

And then that voice that sneaks in when you're caught up in the gusto of a new creative endeavor, filtered into my thoughts; y'know, the one that says "No one wants this! You're going to spend a chunk of change to make a publication that isn't saleable. Why don't you divert your time to a worthwhile hobby and take up clog dancing or something?" 

"Isn't this blog a digital version of that idea, already?" you might say. Yeah, I guess. But I'm sort of stuck on physical media and the artifact is kind of the charm of the medium.

So here I sit, concept in hand and unsure which definition of "execute" I should pursue with it. I'll probably just continue with this here online thingy, because that's free and I can include video and audio media, I guess.

Aside from using this blog to ruminate on my own artistic insecurities, I thought it might be a novel idea to include full copies of two of my most recent zine productions. One on pinball and another on...well, the goal was to have all original material with the set parameters of it making me laugh while I was making it. They were both produced under the title 4PM FRIDAY, with the idea that 4 PM Friday is the gateway to the weekend! So, y'know, fun times were ahead and whatnot. That hasn't actually been a reality since I was sixteen years old, but it wasn't the worst title idea I'd come up with when workshopping it.

If you read these and like them, feel free to download and share them. Please just give me credit when you do so.

Enjoy!

* You can download/read 4PM FRIDAY: PIN BALL ZINE here.

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* You can download 4PM FRIDAY "BEACH STAR" ZINE here.

Roll Out The Barrel Of Polka Records

 

 

 

 

 

Yah sure, yoobetcha! Today I'm talking about Polka!

It's odd to think it, but at this point there are possibly entire generations of youngsters who don't even know what polka is. Weird, when you think how culturally pervasive it was as recently as forty or fifty years ago. In the 1940s, '50s and '60s, band leaders, jazz musicians, country swing groups, and even household name crooners worked polkas into their repertoires, because it was such a popular art form!

Especially in the small rural communities here in the upper Midwest, it was a go-to form of social engagement to catch up with the community on Saturday night. Not to mention a key component to shaking off the stress from the previous week–on the farm, at the factory, what-have-you–and limbering up for that quickly encroaching Monday morning, where the reins of the ol' weekly drudgery would be dangling, waiting to be strapped on again.

 

What was once a major component of the country's popular culture has been diluted from the main stream, settling in stagnant pockets along the fringe known as "niche culture". Polka has gone from pop to outré. I mean , there was a time when Lawrence Welk was as big as Elvis Presley (albeit to septuagenarians)! Being from Minnesota, it's always been a kind of minor thread stitched into the fabric of my existence. I'm not sure when I first heard it or became aware of it. I'm sure being a lifelong "Weird Al" Yankovic fan helped cement it into my consciousness; but even aside from that, it had been steadfastly present in most of the corners of my life since I was a tot. My grandmother used to watch reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show, Saturday evenings on PBS, and occasionally my parents would drag me to some supper club or bar, like Bass Camp, in Minnesota City, where there would be a guy with an accordion and another guy with a tuba, rolling out the barrel, so to speak.  And maybe because older folks in Minnesota and Wisconsin embraced polka as part of their cultural identity, and much of my childhood was spent with senior citizens, it was difficult not to be aware of it while growing up here.

 For a long time I assumed it was just a Midwest thing. Of course, being a child who had never traveled much further than LaCrosse, WI, until I left for college, how was I to know that Polish, German and Scandinavian settlers had scattered across the country, setting up pockets of polka-happy peoples from upstate New York to Southern California? I was also under the early impression that polka music was a German thing, since nine times out of ten when I was subjected to it, the perpetrators were garbed in lederhosen and some sort of Tyrolean wool hat with a crimson feather jabbed into the hatband. They generally had the look of the stock "European villagers" from Universal monster movies. There was more than one instance where I sat patiently waiting for the Frankenstein monster to stagger through a wall and chase the oompah men away. Sadly, this never happened.

It was decades later that I learned that this is not the case. But go to any of the Gasthauses or Bierstubes in or around the Twin Cities area, and you'll be certain to see the expected polka band with the lederhosen and the Tyrolean hats, as if it's as German as Käsespätzle mit Weißwurst. Not to say it isn't recognized in parts of Bavaria, but it seems we Americans broadly associate it with Germany more than any given German might. Is it of Polish origin? A coworker once thanked me for playing polka music in the workplace on the shared office Pandora account, because it was "the music of her people." "People", it turned out, meant Polish. I don't know how Polish she actually is, she seemed predominantly Republican American, to me. But no, it isn't traditional Polish folk music. Polka is actually Czech in origin. Has it been embraced by Germans and Poles and incorporated into their own forms of folk music? Absolutely!

 Polka has also been wholeheartedly embraced and adopted by cultures throughout the entire world. Or at the very least other cultures have developed similar forms of music along parallel lines, prominently featuring the accordion and syncopated 2/4 time signature. Don't believe me? Listen to Mexican Norteño music. Around 2006 I was working as an "Entertainment Specialist" for a certain big box retailer. The store I worked in was in a Latino-affluent part of Saint Paul, and we not only carried CDs by Taylor Swift and Green Day, but also a lot of music from the likes of Los Tigres Del Norte, Los Huracanes Del Norte and a bunch of other Del Nortes.  The constantly cycling music video loop that would play on the TVs in the store's electronics department, would have Latin artists interspersed with whatever Rihanna and Justin Timberlake videos were all the rage at the time. The first time I heard it, I thought to myself "Hey, this sure sounds a lot like the polka music I used to hear as a kid." An experience similar to when I had been taking film studies classes in college, and suddenly I'm watching Emir Kusturica films and hearing Serbian music that sounded similar as well! And more recently, being exposed to the similarly different sounding work of Balkan brass band Fanfare Ciaocarlia, and the Serbian hornmeister Boban Markovic, that may have different instrumentation and play at different tempos than your standard polka fare, but has a similar spirit to it. At least similar enough to me to trigger the same synapses that make me think about the oompa-pa'ing I was exposed to as a child.

See?! We're all connected! Maybe the UN could benefit from a Polka Summit.

I've come around to polka. Not that I ever hated it, but as a child I felt more like I was subjected to it, rather than enjoying it. So why the change in attitude? 

 There's zero pretension to the music. Look at the album covers I've interspersed throughout this article; no one is posturing as if this were the game changing moment where the world wows at how cool they are. Not to say there can't be egos within the polka community, but ain't nobody gracing any of these album jackets referring to themselves as "The Boss", "The Edge" or "The Papa Roach." There's no reason for any of these people to be making any of this music for reasons other than fun and/or love of the game! No one here is too cool for school. With musicians calling themselves "Whoopee John", "Li'l Wally", "The Six Fat Dutchmen" and "Uncle Fuzzy And The Cousins", you know they're not taking themselves too seriously. 

Secondly, it's so goddamned happy!Yeah, if you've heard three polka songs, you've probably technically heard all polka songs, but try not to enjoy yourself while listening to it! There could be a tune called "Gonna Hang Myself With An Electrical Cord Because My Wife Is Shtooping The Mailman Polka" and darn if it wouldn't be as jaunty a half-step tune as any other given polka number!

I'm not saying everyone should love it, and even for someone like myself who enjoys it, a little can go a long way. But if you've been polka shy, or don't even really know what it is, I recommend giving it a try.

You can watch Dick Sinclair's Polka Parade, broadcast from Minneapolis's own KTLA in 1957 here. Try to tamp your vomit down when looking at those Farmer John's Meat Products!

You can listen to the recently wrapped but delightfully unhinged archives of WFMU's Dance With Me Stanley with DJ Stashu Program here. 

If you want to see what else is out there as far as weekly polka radio shows, upcoming events, etcetera, you can check out the MPA - Midwest Polka Association here.

You can take a peek at local PBS affiliate's Funtime Polka program here.