General Motors’ Motorama was a trade show which toured numerous major cities in the U.S. between 1953 and 1961. It grew out of a 1949 event staged at the Waldorf-Astoria that was billed as “Transportation Unlimited.” From the very beginning, these shows had an obsessive quality about them. When it was discovered, for instance, that the Waldorf’s freight elevator wouldn’t hold a full-size automobile, crews were called in to disassemble and reassemble cars for display on the second floor. By the time these exhibitions had evolved into the touring Motorama shows, it was as if the presenters were attempting to transport the whole of Disneyland’s Tomorrowland from city to city and staffing it with Broadway-style casts and circus performers. This is one of America’s great, unique, contributions to the mass psyche of the arts. Elements of stagecraft, lighting, choreography, storytelling and multimedia effects collided into a curious spectacle the likes of which have yet to be matched. This book is a visual feast. The cars which starred in these pageants frequently resembled spaceships on wheels. The giddy enthusiasm of the performers is set into utterly moderne pavilions. Every detail from the cantilevered platforms to the bursting-atom light fixtures conveys an optimism about “things to come” that verges on hysteria. Besides the auto enthusiasts who will immediately respond to the dream cars featured here, there is a larger audience of sociologists, set and stage designers, and futurists who will find a lot between the covers of this book. SA

Publisher: Classic Motorbooks
Paperback: 136 pages
Illustrated

This is the sort of book that tempts one to drag out the thesaurus and start laying on the superlatives. It not only chronicles the events and conditions that led up to the advent of punk rock but it conveys the energy of the explosion. It is as if Savage had a front row seat and full perspective. The book is divided into five sections which explain how the momentum was built: from December l971through August 1975, and January 1978 through May 1979. At center stage is Malcolm McLaren and his many projects, which included the store Sex, the scene it spawned, and the Sex Pistols. Into this narrative is woven the many threads of trend and circumstance that effortlessly segue “the human history of architecture” into the evolution of rock ‘n’ roll culture, punctuated by quotes from Jung and lyrics from Pere Ubu.
What’s truly amazing about this hook is its scope. Without ever losing its focus, England’s Dreaming constantly manages to carry the reader along tangential, concurrent events showing direct cause and effect. This is by no means an easy feat given the geographical diversity of the parts which were collected to form the whole. And while the author’s choice of which facts to include creates a subjective narrative, great care and effort were used to solicit a wide variety of “versions of the story.” The sociology employed here is not of the shallow pop variety, but a measured consideration rife with insight. The book concludes with an encyclopedic discography of many of the most important bands of this period which is defined by not a regional geographic focus but an ideological one. SA

Publisher: St. Martin's
Paperback: 602 pages
Illustrated

During those glory days of early punk [1977-1979), Search & Destroy was widely considered to be one of the most eclectic and intelligent publications going. Based in San Francisco [a magnet, itself, for misfits), it covered not only the local scene, but those evolving in Los Angeles, New York, the British Isles and Paris. Whenever the magazine interviewed somebody the writer would frequently include a list of the subject’s favorite books and records or even interesting things that happened to be on the coffee table or desk. A reading of these issues, which have aged remarkably well, captures the sense that something new and exciting was happening. The staff of Search & Destroy knew how to guide an interview into intelligent subjects and would throw in a monkey wrench if an interview got too self-serving or rote. Many of the most interesting interviews are the ones with people who didn’t go on to become famous. So clear off a table and set the Way-Back Machine. SA

Publisher: V/Search
Paperback: 142 pages

During those glory days of early punk [1977-1979), Search & Destroy was widely considered to be one of the most eclectic and intelligent publications going. Based in San Francisco [a magnet, itself, for misfits), it covered not only the local scene, but those evolving in Los Angeles, New York, the British Isles and Paris. Whenever the magazine interviewed somebody the writer would frequently include a list of the subject’s favorite books and records or even interesting things that happened to be on the coffee table or desk. A reading of these issues, which have aged remarkably well, captures the sense that something new and exciting was happening. The staff of Search & Destroy knew how to guide an interview into intelligent subjects and would throw in a monkey wrench if an interview got too self-serving or rote. Many of the most interesting interviews are the ones with people who didn’t go on to become famous. So clear off a table and set the Way-Back Machine. SA

Publisher: V/Search
Paperback: 148 pages

One might imagine that the author of the Hollywood Babylon books would have reason to shudder at the thought of his own biography seeing print. This book is, however, a loving tribute. Anger’s films are described in lavish detail, and some sense is conveyed of how much impact each film made. Anger is lauded for his work with the Kinsey Institute. This is an important document for anybody with an interest in the development of the American underground film movement. It illustrates the struggles involved when working outside of the mainstream, and the consequences of swimming against the current of Hollywood protocol. SA

Publisher: Harper Perennial
Paperback: 290 pages
Illustrated

The short version is that “Pinocchio wasn’t written ‘just for kids’” and that with the advent of the various “isms” that started popping up in the art world around the turn of the last century, the “ists” began to embrace the idea of childhood’s innocence along with the carnival and fairground motif. Puppets were a good way for people with Dadaist, Cubist, Symbolist and Futurist (etc.) outlooks to portray the plight of humanity. Covering the period between 1890 and 1935, in such diverse locales as France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia, this book tirelessly and joylessly explores the role of puppets in European avant-garde drama. One certainly can’t fault the book for shoddy scholarship. The bibliography is a full 10 pages. There is much information in this book, but it fails to evoke any sense of the excitement that is the nature of a good puppet show. It’s ironic is that in attempting to document what in essence was a longing for a return to simplicity, the author has created something large and unwieldy that any right-minded little puppet would mock and batter with all its might. SA

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University
Paperback: 372 pages
Illustrated

Don’t throw away your old Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film. With a few minor exceptions, none of the listings in this video guide duplicate those in the first volume. Not only that, but there are references to movies in the second volume that are listed in the first one. Keep them together on the shelf for cross referencing since it is uncertain in which volume a film might be listed. It’s purely the luck of the draw.
Each listing includes the director, screenwriter, producer, editor, key actors and music credits. Most of the films here are American B or genre films. Germany is the source of a lot of silent-era listings and ‘60s B movies, and the British also produced a number of films between the ‘50s and the ‘70s that bear inclusion. Italy, however, is the largest foreign producer of the crème de la psychotronic. In addition to the alphabetical title listings are such bonus features as “Directors who made the most psychotronic films” and “What are mondo movies?.” SA

Publisher: St. Martin's
Paperback: 646 pages
Illustrated

“Throughout history there have always been forms of art alien to established culture and which ipso facto have been neglected and finally lost without trace.”—Roger Cardinal
As the first of the Rapid Eye books was about to go to press in 1989, editor Dwyer experienced a bit of kismet. He had been looking for a word which might describe the sort of material that these books would be dealing with. A friend called him to say that he was opening a bookstore which he would be calling Occulture. “This new word obviously suggests both culture and the occult,” Dwyer observed. “To me this ‘occulture’ was not a secret culture, as the word might suggest, but a culture that is in some way hidden and ignored, or willfully marginalized to the extremities of our society. A culture of individuality and subcults, a culture of questions that have not been properly identified—let alone answered—and therefore do not get a fair representation in the mainstream media.” Rapid Eyes are a marvelous tonic for people who think that art has run its course, that it’s all been done before and that there’s nothing new under the sun. Perhaps that is so. But Dwyer has scoured the globe and packed these books with a feast for thought.
Rapid Eye 1 contains: “The Fall of Art” by W.S. Burroughs; Psychic TV; Aleister Crowley; information about Brion Gysin’s Dreammachine; C. John Taylor on the Cosmos; Situationism and Death TV; interviews with Hubert Selby Jr., William Burroughs, and Mr. Sebastian; Neoism; Austin Osman Spare; Hitler and Nazi UFOs; Tantra, Derek Jarman, Colin Wilson on sex crimes and the occult; Chinese footbinding; and a memorium to Brion Gysin. SA

Publisher: Creation
Paperback: 248 pages
Illustrated

Jello Biafra describes Yates’ work as lying somewhere between Jenny Holzer and The Crass. Most of the work was produced for a self published sociopolitical graphics magazine called Punchline, which Yates started producing in 1987. Most of the works are stark, powerful collages, using a minimum of imagery and a few well-placed words to evoke ironic statements. (The strongest piece portrays rows of flag-draped coffins with the caption “Mom, we’re home!”) The older viewer might recognize elements of a style that was especially prevalent in the 1970s—South American mail art. The book’s most haunting and original work is part of a series entitled “The Smear Campaign” created by moving montages on a photocopier. This is the first time they have been reprinted in a collection and probably the best reason to seek out this book. Without the use of words they manage to convey the inherent dread that lies within this imagery. SA

Publisher: AK
Paperback: 136 pages
Illustrated

Early in his career, John Waters was quoted as saying that if he were given a huge budget for a single movie that he would actually use it to make several. When George Kuchar was asked the same question, he replied that he would stop making movies because he couldn’t work that way. John Waters took the money, suitably tailored his product, and it can be seen at the local multiplex. George Kuchar teaches film, does the lecture circuit and is usually only screened at cinemateques and art museums. In spite of these glaring contrasts, the roots of their aesthetics are surprisingly similar.
George and his twin brother Mike were born in 1942 and have been producing films since their childhood. By their early 20s they were associating with the likes of Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger and Jack Smith at the Charles, the Bleeker Street and the Gramercy Arts Theaters, which were then playing host to an exploding “underground” film scene. By the early ‘60s, John Waters had started sneaking up from his home in Baltimore to these screenings and, inspired largely by the Kuchar brothers, began to make films of his own in 1964. In both cases, the auteurs used repertory casts of nonactors. As John Waters has been more tenacious about publicizing himself and his efforts, much more is known to the general public about his body of work. The Kuchars have stayed very underground and prove generally more difficult to chronicle. This book has done an admirable job of presenting its subjects in a serious and scholarly light. The section on Waters includes interviews with such stalwarts as Divine, Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pierce and Miss Jean Hill. Despite the oceans of ink devoted to Waters‘ work elsewhere, this is a completely fresh and multidimensional look at the man and the filmmaker.
The book’s real coup is the inclusion of lucid interviews with George and Mike Kuchar, who are notoriously elusive and playful subjects when in the wrong hands. The author gained their trust and did his homework. For possibly the first time, the Kuchars are given the opportunity to discuss their art, their craft, their influences and their lives in a way that shows how their inner machinery works. Marion Eaton, the star of Thundercrack (written by and co-starring George), provides an added dimension to understanding the brothers Kuchar and especially the perils involved when a “legitimate” actress gets stigmatized by her work in underground movies. Most impressive is the exhaustive filmography the author has assembled. Truly underground films are harder to track and catalog than are features and frequently only a single copy of a film survives in a private collection. SA

Publisher: Creation
Paperback: 256 pages
Illustrated