Today was a day off, and the Vertical Violet folks were nice enough to let us stay with them in Wichita. Waffles were waiting for us in the morning. These people are awesome. Breck, the dad, showed us his awesome record collection and told us how The Smiths got him into industrial (?). Spent most of the afternoon playing Risk….my first game ever. I was eliminating third out of five players, which apparently is decent. George and Cecil got into a pissing contest (not, unfortunately, literally) over the game; George took him, and everyone else, out. After a delicious chili dinner (during which we quizzed Freya the Fairy on various aspects of fairy life) , we spent the rest of the night hanging out, playing Boggle and Aladdin for the Genesis with Freya the Fairy, and petting kitties in the backyard. It’s disgraceful, the hedonism we get up to….
DAY 5
TULSA, OK
The Soundpony (9/10/2008)
Left the VV house, after another great breakfast. We would miss this place, even more so after tonight. We made our way over to Tulsa. I finished Xavier, Season 1. Tulsa reminded me of Des Moines. We ate at an amazing Chinese Thai restaurant Mandy found online called Be Le. All sorts of yummy fake meats. The show was at the bar called Soundpony, which was decorated with various cycling paraphanelia. Free hot dogs and High Life (no veggie dogs, booo….). A lady opened for us, just her and her box full of pedals. Pretty good, I bought her CD for $5. Then we played. During the first song, my eyes were closed. When I opened them, the bar was 97 % cleared out. Oops! We proceeded to play the entirety of our album to the bartender and two middle-aged drunks taking pictures of themselves. Admittedly, it was not a good room for live rock music: all concrete, leading to a very bright, loud sound. We sounded really good, at least. Annoyed, we decided to head on after the show to Springfield, MO. During the drive, we came across a strange building in the middle of nowhere that flashed psychedelic colors. Cecil wanted to stop and sleep there. I said that there was no way we could get in, but that we could go back and sleep by it if he really, really wanted to BUT if he didn’t go now, he couldn’t complain about it later. He said we could keep going. He complained about it later.
SETLIST
The album.
DAY 6
SPRINGFIELD, MO
Outland Ballroom, 9/11/2008)
Rolled into Springfield around 4 A.M. Pulled into a church parking lot and uncomfortably went to sleep. Was awoken a few hours later by the flashing lights of two police cars parked behind us. We were afraid we’d get towed or treated to some “southern hospitality”, but they soon left. Went back to unrestful sleep. Woke up soon after, and wandered around downtown. Went to a coffeeshop. Wandered some more. BORED. Found a nearby cave that you are driven around in, but it cost $20 +. WTF. Found local art museum (which was free) instead. It was ok. Spent several hours at 1984, an awesome arcade with games from the late 70s through early 90s. Really, really fun. Scott set a new Burger Time record. I dedicated a song to it that night. I played Golden Axe, P.O.W. and Space Invaders, mostly. Scott gave the free pass he won for getting the high score to our waitress as part of her tip. The first two bands who played with us, New Madrid and The Verbs, were good and had a crowd. We, of course, cleared the room but of a few people. Do I sense a theme? Andrew from New Madrid let us crash at his place. Really cool guy. We were incredibly sleepy though, and could offer only mumbling in reply.
Today was our CD release show for our first album, A Sense Of Urgency. Two shows, an early all-ages and a late 21 +. Support for the early show came from Adam Robert Haug and The Poison Control Center, while Ross Moffat and Maxilla Blue played with us at the second. For these two shows, we played the entire album. It was kind of a “listen before you buy” thing. All and all, we all think it was a great success. Thanks to everyone who came out, whether it was to see us, one of the other bands or both. We greatly, greatly appreciate it and it got our tour off to a good start.
SET:
1.) Rabble Rouse
2.) A Sense Of Urgency
3.) Girl Friday
4.) Lovely To Someone
5.) Vulgarity Drifting Diary
6.) Maggie
7.) Every Day, An Elegy
8.) While We’re Young (Sing Me Something New)
9.) You Are My Megalodon
10.) If The Mood Should Strike…
DAY 1
Omaha, NE
(Hotel Frank - East Wing, 9/6/08)
The real first day of the tour, though going to Omaha was downright leisurely compared to some of our other first-tour-date drives. Wanted to leave at 2, ended up leaving around 6:30. This is pretty typical. Spent short Omaha drive getting acquianted with Guitar Hero: On Tour for DS (Verdict: pretty fun, but don’t play for more than 15 minutes at a time or you’ll get carpal tunnel) and watching the first three episodes of Xavier: Renegade Angel, an Adult Swim show created by the guys who did Wonder Showzen. Even though I’ve lost touch/become disenchanted with Adult Swim’s penchant for randomness for randomness’ sake, I liked Wonder Showzen a lot and this was in the same vein. So funny, basically. We were supposed to play at another venue in town for this date but that fell through, so Adam was nice enough to let us play at his house, The Hotel Frank. It’s basically two large, old houses connected by a thruway where apparently, under various different names, it’s hosted tons of shows throughout the years. This show was played in the east wing of the house in a living room with Adam and a band called Honeybee. Honeybee was pretty good, they’re suited for this kind of show. I don’t think we are, though. It was ok, but I felt a bit awkward stripped down and I’m not sure if the kids took to us much. Oh well. Adam was really fun, as always. After the show, most of the crowd went on to another house show. I’m lame though, so I went to sleep instead. Oops!
SET:
1.) Girl Friday
2.) Lovely To Someone
3.) Vulgarity Drifting Diary
4.) Belgian Congo
5.) Every Day, An Elegy
6.) You Are My Megalodon
DAY 2
Lincoln, NE
(Box Awesome, 9/7/08)
Woke up, played with cats aroud the house. We went a couple houses down to McFoster’s, an awesome natural foods restaurant. I got the Mexican omlette with pineapple papaya salsa. Excellent. Afterwards, we made the rounds to the local record shops in an attempt to get our album stocked. Succeeding in stocking one; have to call the other ones to make special arrangements. The one that let us put records in, The Antiquarium, had a “Box of Jandek” on the counter though, tons of assorted Jandek albums for $6. Weird. Bought some windshield wipers!!! Picked up Adam from the Hotel Frank and headed out for tonight’s show in Lincoln. After getting stupidly lost, finally found the venue, Box Awesome. Tonight we played with an interesting instrumental act named Mwumbles and Adam again, marking the end of the brief BP/ARH tour. Darren Keen, who basically is The Show Is The Rainbow, was supposed to play with us, but didn’t show. After we played our set to virtually no one, we had to clear the stage for the late show, some reggae nerd named Jah Roots. As we were loading up, Darren came up and apologized. He had thought it was a late show, and was watching an episode of The Shield when he realized. Oops! But he was a nice guy, honest mistake. It was only as we were leaving that Adam mentioned that Darren is the bass player in a band on Saddle Creek called Beep Beep. Mandy and I both think Beep Beep is awesome, so I would have liked to ask him about their new album and stuff. Oh well, maybe next time. This show was also notable as George, Scott’s uncle joined up with us. He’ll be coming along with us on the road until the 20th, or until he gets bored. Which will probably be tomorrow! Oh well, on to Wichita….
SET
1.) Lovely To Someone
2.) A Sense Of Urgency
3.) E As In X-Ray
4.) Belgian Congo
5.) Girl Friday
6.) You Are My Megalodon
Here’s a link to a hilarious post on The Onion AV Club’s Link Blog, which presents some of the choicest debates raging within the forum on the IMDB page for The Dark Knight. It covers the contingent of women who think The Joker is sexy and how Maggie Gyllenhaal’s perceived lack of attractiveness almost ruined some posters’ enjoyment of the movie. So yeah, basically written by morons and parents-basment types. It’s long, but worth it:
This month Primal Scream releases their ninth studio album, entitled Beautiful Future. Like many of my favorite bands, most people in the U.S. don’t know about/care about/like them. So I thought that, in honor of Beautiful Future’s release, I would take this time to write about Primal Scream and give brief summaries/reviews/whatevers of the albums they’ve made over the past 20-odd years. I’ll also highlight tracks from each that I consider to be superlative and/or representative of their parent album, in case you want to check out some samples. Plus pictures and videos and stuff. Ahem. Anyway, here’s Primal Scream: The Early Years….
Primal Scream was formed in Glasgow, Scotland in 1982 by friends Bobby Gillespie (in the background and to the right), and Jim Beattie. By the pair’s own admission, the band could barely be classified as such for its first few years of existence; most of the time was spent banging trashcans for percussion and making experimental tape loops in their bedrooms. Around 1984, Primal Scream had managed to become something more recognizable as a band with the addition of members including Andrew Innes and Robert “Throb” Young; concurrently, Bobby began to split his time between the Scream and another Scottish band: The Jesus & Mary Chain.
Bobby played drums with the JAMC at their notorious peak, as their incendiary, feedback drenched live appearances in 1984-5 often ended in riots. Bobby’s rudimentary, Mo Tucker-inspired drumming also appeared on the band’s debut single “Upside Down” and their seminal 1985 debut album Psychocandy. That same year also saw the release of the first Primal Scream single, “All Fall Down”, which was released on Creation Records, a label set up by Bobby’s childhood friend Alan McGee.
Apparently William & Jim Reid (the brothers who led the Mary Chain) saw these extracurricular activities as a threat to their band and gave Bobby an ultimatum: stay with them or stick with the Scream. He opted for the latter.
“All Fall Down” audio
In 1986, Primal Scream released their second single, “Crystal Crescent”. The A-side was a great, horn-fueled piece of pop but it was the b-side, “Velocity Girl”, that would garner the most attention.
“Velocity Girl” audio
Just a mere 90-odd seconds of jangle-pop, the song was featured on a cassette compilation put together by NME called “C86“. This tape was the magazine’s attempt to create a scene using disparate bands from various independent labels that were presented as sharing stylistic and ideological traits.
These supposed common elements included a jangly guitar sound a la The Byrds, Love or The Smiths and a gentle, “fey” style of singing. “Velocity Girl”, admittedly, possessed these qualities and that fact, along with the song serving as the compilation’s opener, led to Primal Scream being considered one of the guiding lights of the “movement”, something the band hated. Nevertheless, the small but enthusiastic buzz created by their perceived involvement in the C86 scene helped them cement a small but loyal following which laid the groundwork for the release of their first long-player, saddled with a ridiculously psychedelic name:
Primal Scream’s debut album was originally meant to be recorded with Smiths/Blur producer Stephen Smith; the band even laid down four weeks worth of material with him before deciding that the collaboration wasn’t working. In his place they hired Mayo Thompson, founder of Texas psych-rockers The Red Krayola. The resulting album deviates little from the sound established on the proceeding singles: a Byrdsian jangle is ever-present, with Jim Beattie providing arpeggio after arpeggio for Bobby to coo over in songs like “Gentle Tuesday” and “We Go Down Slowly Rising”.
The use of pretty melodies to hide barbed lyrics is continued as well; one example being “Silent Spring”, a distillation of Rachel Carson’s book about environmental catastrophe. In spite of the fact that SFG has never been a favorite of critics (Allmusic proclaimed it “pristine but dull”), I’ve always been a fan. I like chiming guitars (see: my Smiths obsession), and I would have loved to hear what Stephen Street might have done with the material; as for the finished product, I think Mayo Thompson did a pretty good job. The songs and style of this album (along with those of their American counterparts in the Paisley Underground) would also go on to influence contemporaries The Stone Roses, who would take the blueprint of SFG and refine it (and, according to Bobby himself, do it much better), as seen on their classic 1989 debut. Another reason this record is of note is that it’s the only Primal Scream album to feature Jim Beattie;as a result of both conflicts that arose during the recording of Sonic Flower Groove and the album’s lukewarm reception (both critically and commercially), Beattie left the band he’d co-founded to ply his jangly wares in Spirea X and later Adventures In Stereo.
With his main musical collaborater gone, Bobby Gillespie took the opportunity to radically change the band’s sound and direction, something which he would continue to do with each subsequent Scream album. Now rotating around the troika of Gillespie, Andrew Innes and Robert Young, Primal Scream ditched the paisley shirts and C86isms of Sonic Flower Groove, replacing them with long hair and hard rock melodicism reminiscent of The MC5, Ramones and New York Dolls. The result was 1989’s Primal Scream, a record that managed to alienate their pre-existing fanbase while providing them no further headway towards breaking through to a wider audience. Self-produced by the band (under the pseudonym “Sister Anne”), it’s a bit of a strange album: lead single “Ivy Ivy Ivy” is a great Raw Power-esque hard pop number, and its template is followed for half the album.
The other half is made up of dark, strung-out ballads like “You’re Just Dead Skin To Me” and “Kill The King”, which finds Bobby contemplating regicide over queasy backwards guitar. These two stylistic approaches are reconciled on the album’s centerpiece, a paean to a jilted lover called “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have”. Primal Scream, like its predecessor, was all but ignored upon its release save for by their small but devoted fanbase, yet in “I’m Losing More…”, the band had unknowingly laid the seeds that would allow them to survive and thrive as the 80s gave way to the 90s, and the dour U.K. music scene learned how to get its groove back…
VIDEOS
“Ivy Ivy Ivy” video
“I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have” live @ T In The Park, July ‘08
I know a lot of people here are big fans of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s seminal comic Watchmen. With that in mind, here is the trailer for the movie version directed by Zack Synder (300):
Last night I was flipping through the channels and stopped on “My Shocking Story“, a show on TLC. This episode was entitled “Half Man, Half Tree”, and detailed the strange, tragic case of an Indonesian man named Dede Koswara. I think when they first showed Dede on-screen, I may have literally yelled “Oh my God!”.I think you can see why:
Apparently, Dede cut his knee when he was 15, at which point he started developing warts, which spread rapidly, leading to the extreme barklike growths you see here . Living in a poor village in Indonesia, Dede was unable to receive treatment and as such the warts continued their growth unabated, resulting in the condition seen above. Frustrated with his inability to work due to the disease, his wife of ten years left him, leaving him to support his two children by performing in a traveling freakshow.
An American dermatologist from the University of Maryland named Anthony Gaspari visited Dede in conjuction with this program, and after performing a biopsy and testing the results back at the university concluded that Dede suffers from a rare condition called epidermodysplasia verruciformis. The disease, caused by HPV, leads to the growth of macules and papules on the skin, especially on the hands and feet.
What made Dede’s condition literally one-of-a-kind is the fact that he also suffers from an immune deficiency virus (Dr. Gaspari initially thought that Dede may have had AIDS, a hypothesis that was eventually disproven), that allows for the rampant spreading of warts that had overtaken his extremities. At the end of the program, Dr. Gaspari seemed hopeful that with regular doses of Vitamin A to help boost his immune system, the extent of Dede’s growths could be lessened to the extent that removal would be a viable option. However, for some reason it seemed that Dede was reluctant to proceed with treatments and surgery, and continued to perform in the freakshow to support his family.
I was fascinated and saddened by Dede’s story, and tried to find out what had happened to him after the show was filmed. Happily, it looks as though he decided to take up treatment, and after several surgeries and regular treatment, he has regained the use of his hands and feet. Though Dede will have to recieve treatment for the rest of his life and will never have a normal body, he can now feed himself and support his family, and no longer has to perform in the freakshow.
I certainly hope that this post doesn’t come off as exploitative or demeaning in any way. Having suffered from a rare skin condition myself (dermatomyositis), I greatly sympathize with the plight of people like Dede. I’m certainly not trying to compare what I had to what Dede has suffered….any problems or difficulties I may have had are infintismal in relation. I was lucky to have had an expert living nearby who could diagnose and treat me; I was lucky to have parents who paid for incredibly expensive medical treatments; I was lucky to live in a place where such treatments were even an option and I was lucky, throughout the duration, to be able to feed, dress and generally take care of myself. Dede has not been so lucky. I think what really affects me is that if I were in Dede’s enviroment, with his resources, I could have been disfigured for life, crippled or very likely dead. An abnormal medical condition is a very traumatic thing to deal with, something I’ve only been able to admit to myself gradually over time. I commend Dr. Gaspari for helping Dede out, and especially Dede himself, for battling through this condition and for not giving up.
Well, as Allison mentioned further down the page, this past weekend was the inaugeral 80/35Festival here in Des Moines. And like her, I only watched a few full sets. Here is what I saw:
ANDREW BIRD
I’m not super knowledgable when it comes to Andrew…most of what I know is from Scott playing his records and a few albums I got from Mandy. I will definitely make more of an effort to check him out though, as I thought he put on a great live performance. His live band consisted of himself on violin and guitar mostly, another gentleman alternating on guitar and bass and a third gentleman on drums and keyboards. The thing that I was really impressed by was the loops Andrew and his band members used…as far as I could tell, most were looped live, and the violin plucking that Mr. Bird did seemed pretty complex ( at least to my musically retarded ears). I think you would have liked this one, Scott. He played a new song at the end that was pretty good too, though most of the songs were new to me. So, good job Andrew.
THE FLAMING LIPS
This was my third time seeing the Lips in three years and the setlist, by and large, was the same as what they played the first two times, with about half the songs pulled from 2006’s At War With The Mystics. With most bands, this might annoy and/or bore me, but seeing The Lips is such a spectacle and there’s so much good will between the band and the audience that I still really enjoyed it, and probably always will. This time there were dancing Teletubbies on stage instead of aliens or superheroes, but apart from that the basic setup was the same, with the large half-circle screen behind the drums synched up with videos for most of the songs. Presumably this and the confetti cues are some of the reasons why the setlist remains steadfast. Wayne is still, and will probably forever be, everybody’s cool uncle and played that role perfectly. Michael still sits to oneside playing his bass, and Steven stands at the other, speaking to the crowd in his Mickey Mouse voice. And the show is still amazing. It never gets old being covered with confetti, or seeing painted naked girls dancing around a giddy Wayne. I was glad that among the singles from the last few albums they found room for a couple of more obscure numbers, like the excellent Steven-led “Pompeii Gotterdammarung” from Mystics and “Mountain Side”, pulled from In A Priest Driven Ambulance from way back in 1990. Unfortunately, this being a festival show, the set seemed slightly truncated and the rumors I’d read of about the inclusion of some Clouds Taste Metallicmaterial proved, at least for this show, to be unfounded. I really hope this isn’t coming off as me not liking the show; I did, very, very much. I just hope that the next time I see them, it will be in conjuction with the release of a new album, so that I can look on their show with fresh eyes again.
SETLIST:
1.) Race For The Prize
2.) Free Radicals
3.) The Song Remains The Same (Led Zeppelin Cover)
As with The Flaming Lips, this was also my third time seeing Charles Thompson IV live, though the circumstances have greatly varied each time. The first was in 2004 in Minneapolis, at the first Pixies show in 13 years. The second was Frank Black, solo and acoustic at the Sokol Underground in Omaha in 2006. This third time saw CT IV playing under his Pixies-era moniker of Black Francis, which he reverted to a couple years ago in a conscious move to signal a change from the more country/bluesy route he’d been pursuing for awhile to a more angular, punky sound closer to his Pixies work . And this was definitely a Black Francis performance: pretty much all the material he played was from records he’s released since the name change. This included some songs from the part-live/part-studio album CHRISTMASS, a couple from his new mini-LP Svn Fngrs and the entirety of last year’sBluefinger record. I’m sure most people were disappointed that no Pixies songs made it into the set, or even a “Los Angeles” or “Headache” (and I certainly wouldn’t have minded either), but I was more than happy to hear a whole set made up of songs I like that I’ve never heard live before. I’m glad that of the three different times I’ve seen him perform, there’s only been three or four songs played at more than one concert. As a fan, it’s nice to know that each time I see Frank Black Francis or whatever you want to call him, I’m likely to have a different experience with a completely new setlist each time. Frustrating for more casual fans maybe, but hopefully even they can appreciate his desire to showcase new material as opposed to playing “Where Is My Mind?” as an obligation.
SETLIST
1.) Tight Black Rubber
2.) Threshold Apprehension
3.) Test Pilot Blues
4.) Seven Fingers
5.) When They Come To Murder Me
6.) All Around The World (Trad.)
7.) Bluefinger
8.) (Do What You Want) Gyaneshwar
9.) Captain Pasty
10.) Lolita
11.) You Can’t Break A Heart And Have It (Herman Brood Cover)
12.) Your Mouth Into Mine
13.) Discotheque 36
14.) Angels Come To Comfort You
15.) She Took All The Money
16.) That Burnt Out Rock ‘N’ Roll (Gary Green cover)
MISC.
I saw some of Jakob Dylan’s set while I waited for Black Francis…pretty standard folky/countryish rock. I also saw a bit of Yonder Mountain String Band, who I officially hate. But the hippies shore liked ‘em.
CONCLUSION
Though there were only three performers that really appealed to me, I think, for a first effort, that 80/35 did a good job filling the bill with bands diverse enough to draw enough differing segments of people to create the great turnout they ultimately had. It seemed from my view that Friday was more of the “alt/indie” lineup and Saturday was more “dirty hippie“, but the organizers seemed to know what they were doing booking a jam band and The Roots, as they pulled in the people. Also, unlike the other outdoor festival I’ve been to (Pitchfork), I could come and go from the premises as I pleased. Which was nice. So, all in all, good job 80/35. Looking forward to next year.
One of the most tantalizing prospects for art and/or pop culture enthusiasts is the “lost” work…a piece that once existed and now does not, or something that never was in the first place. An offshot of this is the truncated or fragmented work, where elements of a project are available but, for whatever reason, the final product as envisioned is no longer available or was never allowed to reach fruition. In music, perhaps the most famous example is the album Smile, The Beach Boys‘ follow-up to their masterpiece Pet Sounds. As for comics, Jack Kirby’sFourth World saga was only allowed a few years of publication before being cancelled. But it’s probably the movies that have lost the most: around 80% of all the films made between 1894 and 1930 no longer exist.
The reason for such a low survival rate for movies of this period can be attributed to several factors: the film stock of the time was highly flammable and prone to deterioration, the studios at the time saw little reason to keep movies that had played through their theatrical run and subsequently trashed, or prints were destroyed in order to obtain silver nitrate to strike new prints from, to name but a few. With all of these obstacles in the way of a film from the silent era surviving to the present day, it’s always heartening when one that was thought lost is found; but when a complete print of an all-time cinema classic is uncovered for the first time in 80 years, it’s little short of a miracle. Yet this is what happened when yesterday it was announced that the full 210 minute version of German autuer Fritz Lang’s science fiction masterpiece Metropolis has been found…in Argentina, of all places.
I won’t go into the whole story…if you’re interested, you can click here. Basically, a copy of the original version of Lang’s film was sent from Berlin to Buenos Aires in 1928. There it stayed, changing hands over the decades while the cinematic world believed the full-length version to have been lost forever. Since then, various different cuts of the film have floated around, the most complete of which was released by Kino in 2002. Even so, this version is only 118 minutes long, with missing scenes supplamented by title cards explaining what happened within the gaps. With this discovery of the 210 minute print, a huge chunk of Metropolis can be seen by modern audiences for the first time. Though this print is apparently in rough shape and in need of work, it does seem to be complete. Martin Koerber, the man behind the most recent restoration of the film says that “no matter how bad the condition of the material may be, the original intention of the film, including all of its minor characters and subplots, is now once again tangible for the normal viewer. The rhythm of the film has been restored.”
I own Metropolis, but have yet to watch it. Part of me wants to wait, and see the full cut someday the way Fritz Lang intended. Another part wants to watch the 118 min version, in order to compare it to the complete one. Regardless, this is an amazing find: the complete version of a masterpiece from one of the most influential directors who ever lived. It also allows for hope that other lost movies may be rediscovered. I plan on writing another post about lost and/or recovered films soon. In the meantime, hold out hope that your favorite “lost” work might be found….it’s probably just behind someone’s couch in Peru, waiting to be rediscovered…
Bernie Krigstein is an unknown figure, even to most comic art devotees. I’ve been reading comics and books about comic history for most of my life, and sadly have only the most cursory knowledge of the man’s work. Most of what I do know comes from mentions made by Frank Miller acknowledging the mammoth influence Krigstein had on him. He was only in comics for less than a decade but during that time, and especially during his tenure with E.C. Comics, he experimented with a style based in gritty noir that was decades ahead of its time in how comics could be created, in its subject matter and pacing.
Even though his time at E.C. led to his most acclaimed work, he was still under the strict confines of his editors, who routinely changed his artwork and wouldn’t let his stories go over eight pages. The only time Krigstein was allowed to do a story exactly as he envisioned it was in the pages of “Impact”, a short-lived anthology title mostly made up of twist-ending shockers. Tucked away at the very back of the first issue of “Impact!” was “Master Race”, which, admittedly, could also be classified as a twist-ending shocker, with a major difference: It dealt explicitly with The Holocaust, something that was barely seen in mainstream media at the time, let alone in a comic book.
Taken from Wikipedia:
“When EC published “Master Race” in 1955, there was little in the mass media about the murder by the Nazis of millions of Jews, Gypsies, political oppositionists and homosexuals. The images of crowded gas chambers, mountains of corpses piled like cordwood, and smoke from the burning bodies continuously spewing out of tall chimneys had not yet established themselves in the public consciousness. The material was there, however. You just had to look for it. Margaret Bourke-White’s Life magazine photograph of almost-dead staring faces behind barbed wire — shot at the evacuation of a concentration camp) at the end of World War II — was sometimes reprinted. This now-familiar photo is echoed in page four, panel five of “Master Race,” as well as in Art Spiegelman’s 1972 version of Maus (in his book Breakdowns). Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz, a harrowing account by Olga Lenyel, a death camp survivor, was published in 1947. Eugen Kogon’s Theory and Practice of Hell, detailing the horrible workings of the German death camps, was published in 1950. The facts began to surface about the incredible numbers murdered and the cold-blooded, single-minded efficiency with which it was done. Many Americans began to discuss the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust, but most just found it all too hard to believe. Krigstein’s “Master Race” was therefore an exceptional undertaking. As their contribution to the anti-German propaganda effort, wartime movies and comic books had shown concentration camps and Nazi brutality. But never had they shown the death camps (as distinct from concentration camps) and the unique atrocities such as “medical” experimentation on living people… Krigstein’s piece didn’t spare the sensibility and complacency of the postwar reader. On page four, panel seven, ordinary citizens cover their noses with handkerchiefs against “the stinking odor of human flesh burning in the ovens… men’s… women’s… children’s…” Book burnings, mass live burials, a quiet clinical scene of an operation on a human guinea pig — “Master Race” starkly depicts the madness of the Nazi period in Germany as well as the burning vengeance inspired by these unspeakable crimes.”
It’s really a shame that Krigstein wasn’t given more control over his work, because if “Master Race” is anything to go by, the results would have been absolutely phenomenal. I’m excited to read the art book of his work published by Fantagraphics, in conjuction with a volume of his selected comics work. As for “Master Race”:
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