Josh Alan Friedman's Blog, page 5
January 20, 2013
Out Now: WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH!
From the editor's desk:
Regular readers of this blog likely need no introduction to the wild world of vintage men's adventure magazines. Josh Alan has written extensively on the subject here, in the books Men's Adventure Magazines and It's a Man's World and elsewhere.
But the focus of this new book emphasizes an essential aspect of the magazines inexplicably never given its due until now: the magazines' stories.
And so, six decades, countless man hours and hundreds of weasels later, we proudly present Weasels Ripped My Flesh! Two-Fisted Stories From Men's Adventure Magazines of the 1950s, '60s and '70s . Collecting 22 stories by master scribes from three decades of men's adventure writing — most of which haven't seen print since their original publication — Weasels Ripped My Flesh! supplements them with interviews, commentary and reminiscences by the original authors, plus iconic illustrations and wacky magazine advertising from the mags.
Weasels Ripped My Flesh! is your paperback passport to this all but forgotten era of American letters.
To learn more or to buy your copy today, visit the book's official website here.
Regular readers of this blog likely need no introduction to the wild world of vintage men's adventure magazines. Josh Alan has written extensively on the subject here, in the books Men's Adventure Magazines and It's a Man's World and elsewhere.
But the focus of this new book emphasizes an essential aspect of the magazines inexplicably never given its due until now: the magazines' stories.
And so, six decades, countless man hours and hundreds of weasels later, we proudly present Weasels Ripped My Flesh! Two-Fisted Stories From Men's Adventure Magazines of the 1950s, '60s and '70s . Collecting 22 stories by master scribes from three decades of men's adventure writing — most of which haven't seen print since their original publication — Weasels Ripped My Flesh! supplements them with interviews, commentary and reminiscences by the original authors, plus iconic illustrations and wacky magazine advertising from the mags.
Weasels Ripped My Flesh! is your paperback passport to this all but forgotten era of American letters.
To learn more or to buy your copy today, visit the book's official website here.
December 24, 2012
Race Record Ramblings: Gene Casey and The Lone Sharks
Untrained by Gene Casey and The Lone Sharks
Gene Casey is in the driver’s seat with a disc that should wear out jukeboxes across the country. There are no A or B sides—all are sure to be first-rate coin cullers at the jukes. Let it be said at first, the man has a great voice. And the guy knows how to make a record. So does his band, The Lone Sharks.
Kicking off this platter is an autobiographical ditty, “I Think About Elvis Every Day.” He wonders what Presley might say, although about what doesn’t matter. Good riff and holler. They may never let Casey sing “Come Home with Me” on The Ed Sullivan Show (without changing to come out). But “Cadillac For Sale” is a road song that should make inroads at diners and gas stops along Route 66. The tracks also have a dramatic Spector-like drama that cries out for inclusion in movie soundtracks.
Gene Casey’s lower baritone vocals are his strongest weapon, his voice a picture-book blend between Ernest Tubb and Ronnie Spector. With a subtle hint of Lennon. Maybe he was born with golden pipes, but the lyrical diction Casey has developed comes from the ages. He knows how to deliver lyrics, has a good way with vowels and does killer background vocals. (Dig the way he enunciates a “soft p” on “Gone Hollywood,” a cut from his 2008 masterwork, What Happened.)
This may be esoteric praise, but to the masses, Casey is the premier barroom troubador of Eastern Long Island. That includes Montauk, the Hamptons on up to Riverhead and any town with an Indian name. But there’s no doubt he would sweep the Sons of Herman Hall crowd in Dallas off their feet, not to mention The Broken Spoke in Austin. A few $50 handshakes from Morris Levy or Don Roby would secure heavy rotatation in Southern radio markets (and reap teen coin amongst both bobby soxers and aging intellectuals alike).
As a guitarist, Casey has refined the Duane Eddy single-note lead line. But this album isn’t about showoff picking. Americana (which categorizes real music they don’t play on commercial radio) is rarely done with such exquisite taste and production. Untrained squares favorably against the latest Johnny Cash, Johnny Burnette or Junior Brown.
copyright 2012 Josh Alan Friedman
December 14, 2012
"Keith Richards Goes to the Dentist"
In recognition of the worldwide celebration of The Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary—an occasion almost too good to be true—I present this primitive comic strip, which ran in High Times, Feb. 1981. The World’s Greatest Band contains two geniuses, and such grand, fantastical characters, that we are blessed to still have them on earth. But, being Englishmen, there once was this problem with their teeth. I sometimes wondered why The Rolling Stones didn’t have a cartoon series on Saturday morning television, like The Beatles. Perhaps it could have gone down like this:
(click images to enlarge)
Copyright © 1981, 2012 Josh Alan Friedman, Drew Friedman.
Visit Drew Friedman.net
(click images to enlarge)
Copyright © 1981, 2012 Josh Alan Friedman, Drew Friedman. Visit Drew Friedman.net
December 8, 2012
"As Chanukah Passes Me By"
To watch on YouTube, click the image above. To watch via Vimeo, click below.© 2002, 2011 Josh Alan Friedman
Video by Wyatt Doyle & Josh Alan Friedman, with artwork by Drew Friedman. Visit DrewFriedman.net
November 21, 2012
"Thanksgiving at McDonald's in Times Square"
To watch on YouTube, click the image above. To watch via Vimeo, click below.Josh Alan's first 45.
To purchase your digital copy of the original "Thanksgiving at McDonald's in Times Square" single, click here.© 1988, 2011 Josh Alan Friedman
Video by Wyatt Doyle & Josh Alan Friedman, with artwork by Drew Friedman. Visit DrewFriedman.net
Josh plays "Thanksgiving" live here.
November 11, 2012
Why Joe Franklin Matters
The storm, the election. . . Now, let’s get back to why Joe Franklin matters. . .
In September I received a request from Joe Franklin to take down a blog that originated from this site. It contained a few parodies of Joe my brother and I, then known as The Friedman Bros., did in the 1970s. I was happy to oblige. This might constitute a breach of journalistic ethics if it involved anyone but Joe Franklin. At 86, he is Olde Times Square’s foremost senior statesman. An intimate of Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor who still walks amongst us. Like Hugh Hefner, Joe cares about his image and legacy. Even the minutiae of what appears on esoteric blogs.
Here are several reasons Joe Franklin’s legacy is so valuable:
He was New York’s—and therefore the world’s—first TV talk-show host, circa 1950. The ABC studios on West 66th Street were a former horse stable when Joe broke his new format there. Seated at a particular angle, nose-to-nose, eyeball to eyeball, at a desk, the microphone positioned just so. According to Franklin, his very first week on the air included guests John Wayne, Cary Grant and (17-year-old?) Kim Novak. There are no records to prove this or the hyperbolic lore surrounding who may or may not have appeared through the decades. But that is not the point. (Joe himself would swear Abe Lincoln was on the show.) From Joe’s humble format sprung the TV talk show. That may sound like a curse unleashed, considering the cesspool of programs that appear today. But once upon a time, the format had some dignity.
Joe Franklin invented nostalgia, but more importantly, he was the first to rescue silent films from oblivion. That is the primary reason Franklin should be honored. With the exception of Chaplin, silents—ruthlessly passé after 1930—were utterly forgotten when Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane came on the scene. (It was Lillian Gish who wisely remarked that movies should have begun with talkies and evolved into silent films.) The last silents were only 25 years old at the time Franklin began rescuing old two-reelers from warehouses to broadcast on his show. This ultimately led to film restoration, preservation and pioneering academic study of early film by Kevin Brownlow. Today’s moving picture archaeology involves search and rescue of volatile nitrate film canisters to reassemble lost films. The whole silent era could have disappeared without Franklin’s intervention.
Thirdly, I might add some lore on Franklin the man. It is implied in his autobiography (Up Late with Joe Franklin, Scribner, 1995) that notches on his bedpost include Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Veronica Lake. And that these actresses literally threw themselves at him. More likely, however, he might have banged Kate Smith. He worked for her at the time when Kate Smith was at the cutting edge of patriotism, the country was at war, Joe was young and anything seemed possible. Should we not honor Joe for those conquests alone? Sarah Silverman can only wish she had a shot with Franklin, were he not 50 years her senior.
As a reliable source of misinformation, his capacity for tall tales is legendary. Especially the Franklin telephone buttering-up process, upon which he heaps praise and promises into a high art of hyperbolic show-biz malarkey. But Joe gets a pass on this conceit.
Joe did indeed did collaborate with Marilyn herself on her first (extremely rare) autobiography. He also may have had Elvis on his show before Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle—but there is no kinescope to prove it. He booked Eddie Fisher’s first TV appearances, along with the earliest Streisand, Woody Allen and Robert Redford appearances. Yet not a moment survives on kinescope or video of Franklin’s show from the 1950s or ’60s, excepting 39 seconds of Japanese silent screen star Sessue Hayakawa on Memory Lane in 1957:
Sessue Hayakawa, hugely popular 90 years ago, in 1957 on Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane.
Thus, Joe’s YouTube series is reduced to titles like "Joe Franklin Remembers _____." Minus the kinescope or video, Joe is reduced to recalling hundreds of guests, including five U.S. presidents. He recalls a lineup of 20th century giants, some who rarely, if ever, did intimate TV interviews: Irving Berlin alongside Sophie Tucker and Ethel Merman, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rocky Marciano, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny; all surviving silent screen actors, as well as bedroom conquests Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Veronica Lake. There was no studio audience, so it was the only time you heard comedians like Milton Berle talk without playing to an audience. If the footage existed it would comprise an archive like no other at the NY Museum of Television and Radio, where Franklin should be canonized.
I hope the radio waves will be captured in interstellar space and a future civilization will behold The Joe Franklin Show. But let us honor this man now.
copyright © 2012 Josh Alan Friedman
portrait of Joe, © 2012 George Seminara
In September I received a request from Joe Franklin to take down a blog that originated from this site. It contained a few parodies of Joe my brother and I, then known as The Friedman Bros., did in the 1970s. I was happy to oblige. This might constitute a breach of journalistic ethics if it involved anyone but Joe Franklin. At 86, he is Olde Times Square’s foremost senior statesman. An intimate of Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor who still walks amongst us. Like Hugh Hefner, Joe cares about his image and legacy. Even the minutiae of what appears on esoteric blogs.
Here are several reasons Joe Franklin’s legacy is so valuable:
He was New York’s—and therefore the world’s—first TV talk-show host, circa 1950. The ABC studios on West 66th Street were a former horse stable when Joe broke his new format there. Seated at a particular angle, nose-to-nose, eyeball to eyeball, at a desk, the microphone positioned just so. According to Franklin, his very first week on the air included guests John Wayne, Cary Grant and (17-year-old?) Kim Novak. There are no records to prove this or the hyperbolic lore surrounding who may or may not have appeared through the decades. But that is not the point. (Joe himself would swear Abe Lincoln was on the show.) From Joe’s humble format sprung the TV talk show. That may sound like a curse unleashed, considering the cesspool of programs that appear today. But once upon a time, the format had some dignity.
Joe Franklin invented nostalgia, but more importantly, he was the first to rescue silent films from oblivion. That is the primary reason Franklin should be honored. With the exception of Chaplin, silents—ruthlessly passé after 1930—were utterly forgotten when Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane came on the scene. (It was Lillian Gish who wisely remarked that movies should have begun with talkies and evolved into silent films.) The last silents were only 25 years old at the time Franklin began rescuing old two-reelers from warehouses to broadcast on his show. This ultimately led to film restoration, preservation and pioneering academic study of early film by Kevin Brownlow. Today’s moving picture archaeology involves search and rescue of volatile nitrate film canisters to reassemble lost films. The whole silent era could have disappeared without Franklin’s intervention.
Thirdly, I might add some lore on Franklin the man. It is implied in his autobiography (Up Late with Joe Franklin, Scribner, 1995) that notches on his bedpost include Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Veronica Lake. And that these actresses literally threw themselves at him. More likely, however, he might have banged Kate Smith. He worked for her at the time when Kate Smith was at the cutting edge of patriotism, the country was at war, Joe was young and anything seemed possible. Should we not honor Joe for those conquests alone? Sarah Silverman can only wish she had a shot with Franklin, were he not 50 years her senior.
As a reliable source of misinformation, his capacity for tall tales is legendary. Especially the Franklin telephone buttering-up process, upon which he heaps praise and promises into a high art of hyperbolic show-biz malarkey. But Joe gets a pass on this conceit.
Joe did indeed did collaborate with Marilyn herself on her first (extremely rare) autobiography. He also may have had Elvis on his show before Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle—but there is no kinescope to prove it. He booked Eddie Fisher’s first TV appearances, along with the earliest Streisand, Woody Allen and Robert Redford appearances. Yet not a moment survives on kinescope or video of Franklin’s show from the 1950s or ’60s, excepting 39 seconds of Japanese silent screen star Sessue Hayakawa on Memory Lane in 1957:
Sessue Hayakawa, hugely popular 90 years ago, in 1957 on Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane.
Thus, Joe’s YouTube series is reduced to titles like "Joe Franklin Remembers _____." Minus the kinescope or video, Joe is reduced to recalling hundreds of guests, including five U.S. presidents. He recalls a lineup of 20th century giants, some who rarely, if ever, did intimate TV interviews: Irving Berlin alongside Sophie Tucker and Ethel Merman, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rocky Marciano, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny; all surviving silent screen actors, as well as bedroom conquests Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Veronica Lake. There was no studio audience, so it was the only time you heard comedians like Milton Berle talk without playing to an audience. If the footage existed it would comprise an archive like no other at the NY Museum of Television and Radio, where Franklin should be canonized.
I hope the radio waves will be captured in interstellar space and a future civilization will behold The Joe Franklin Show. But let us honor this man now.
copyright © 2012 Josh Alan Friedman
portrait of Joe, © 2012 George Seminara
October 16, 2012
Josh Alan in Doc Pomus doc, WEASELS in San Diego
Doc Pomus in the studio, 1950s Per Josh Alan:
"I will be in attendance (and onscreen) to talk at the Austin Film Festival premiere of AKA Doc Pomus on Friday Oct. 19th (9:30 pm). The doc on Doc has been garnering emotional rave reviews."
LEFT: Peggy, Doc Pomus, girl singer, Josh; Lone Star Cafe 1982 RIGHT: Josh, Ginger, Doc, Ratso Sloman, Peggy; Bitter End, NY 1989
For more information on the film and screenings, check out the AFF website here .
Also this weekend:
Black Cracker Online moderator and Josh's co-editor on the upcoming Weasels Ripped My Flesh! book, Wyatt Doyle, will be appearing at the San Diego Comic Fest this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A very limited advance edition of the Weasels anthology will be available for sale there, while they last!
Highlights of the weekend will include a Live Weasels! talk and presentation by Wyatt, Sunday at 10 am, and Weasels Ripped My Reading!, Saturday at 2:15 pm, an all-star performance of the book's toughest, sweatiest highlights, delivered from the Fest's re-creation of Twilight Zone writer George Clayton Johnson's legendary beatnik coffee house of the 1950s, Café Frankenstein .
For more information about Comic Fest, visit SDComicFest.org .
September 2, 2012
Josh Alan on KNON and LIVE! in Dallas
Tomorrow night—Monday Sept. 3—point your ears to KNON 89.3 at 7 pm Dallas time to hear Josh Alan debut two new, upcoming blues hits: "(You Can Kiss) My Big Black Ass" and "This Radio Don't Play Nothin' But the Blues." Dig the premiere on Texas Blues Radio with JMac, KNON 89.3 (Dallas-Ft. Worth, but available by streaming
here
.
Then, Friday night in Dallas...
Black Cracker author Josh Alan Friedman presents a solo performance/reading and signing to celebrate the new edition of the Friedman Bros.' notorious Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental from Fantagraphics.
Fri. Sept. 7th, 8pm-11 tickets $10
The Hi/Lo Speakeasy at The Mason Bar
2701 Guillot St. (in new State-Thomas/Uptown district)
Dallas Texas 75204
Josh talks Any Similarity... here .
View Larger Map
Then, Friday night in Dallas...
Black Cracker author Josh Alan Friedman presents a solo performance/reading and signing to celebrate the new edition of the Friedman Bros.' notorious Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental from Fantagraphics.
Fri. Sept. 7th, 8pm-11 tickets $10
The Hi/Lo Speakeasy at The Mason Bar
2701 Guillot St. (in new State-Thomas/Uptown district)
Dallas Texas 75204
Josh talks Any Similarity... here .
View Larger Map
August 25, 2012
WANTED! More Readers Like...
From the editor's desk:
Heavy Metal Parking Lot
. Heavy Metal Picnic. Neil Diamond Parking Lot.
Hitler's Hat
. Ernest Borgnine on the Bus! And that's only a sampling.
If you're not already a fan, get thee to his website(s), his Vimeo channel and his Borgnine on the Bus YouTube channel —a world of wonderful strangeness awaits you.
And if you're lucky enough to be in Los Angeles this weekend, you can catch him in person.
Ladies and gentlemen, filmmaker Jeff Krulik does the cover.
Black Cracker is available NOW; signed copies are available here.
photo © 2012 Wyatt Doyle
Heavy Metal Parking Lot
. Heavy Metal Picnic. Neil Diamond Parking Lot.
Hitler's Hat
. Ernest Borgnine on the Bus! And that's only a sampling.If you're not already a fan, get thee to his website(s), his Vimeo channel and his Borgnine on the Bus YouTube channel —a world of wonderful strangeness awaits you.
And if you're lucky enough to be in Los Angeles this weekend, you can catch him in person.
Ladies and gentlemen, filmmaker Jeff Krulik does the cover.
Black Cracker is available NOW; signed copies are available here.
photo © 2012 Wyatt Doyle
August 14, 2012
Josh Alan LIVE in Dallas, Friday, Sept. 7!
Josh Alan Friedman presents a solo performance/reading and signing to celebrate the new edition of the Friedman Bros.' notorious Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental from Fantagraphics.
Fri. Sept. 7th, 8pm-11 tickets $10
The Hi/Lo Speakeasy at The Mason Bar
2701 Guillot St. (in new State-Thomas/Uptown district)
Dallas Texas 75204
Josh will also debut two new upcoming blues hits: "(You Can Kiss) My Big Black Ass" and "This Radio Don't Play Nothin' But the Blues." Josh will premiere these songs Mon. Sept. 3rd, 7pm, on Texas Blues Radio with JMac, KNON 89.3 (Dallas-Ft. Worth, but available by streaming here .
Josh talks Any Similarity... here .
View Larger Map
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