HAPPY ENDINGS: a pictorial :(

Judy Speaks

For nearly 40 years, Judy Garland was the icon of the Hollywood life and classed as one of the greatest entertainers of her generation. She was performing on stage and in movies from a very young age and at 16 she brought The Wizard Of Oz to life on the big screen. She followed this with many movies and a staggering amount of concert appearances that broke box office records.

Behind the scenes it was a different story. From an early age, MGM Studios had been plying its young actors with ampthetamines and barbiturates to keep them going through the back to back filming schedules required to keep new movies being released. This went hand in hand with the glitzy lifestyle and constant rotation of work/party/premiere/work that made up the backbone of Hollywood.

Despite a hectic work schedule and much critical acclaim, Judy Garland's personnel life was a shambles. By the early sixties, five marriages and a life long battle with alcohol and drug abuse had taken its toll on her. In a bid to get her back into the public's eye it was decided she would write an autobiography. Enter her agent, Irving "Swifty" Lazar. He supplied the ailing star with a reel to reel tape recorder and got her to use it as a way to get the book started as well as maybe come to terms with her problems.

What follows has become known as the "Judy Speaks" tapes. Still mainlining pills and a ludicrous amount of gin, she sobs and screams at ex-husbands, film executives, her complete distrust of the recording device and pretty much everyone who she believes led her to this point in life.

Bear in mind that its pretty heavy going at times. Her booze soaked rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow is pretty heavy. As legend goes, these tapes got confiscated after her death in 1969 and ended up locked away in a publicist's vault before getting a public release some years ago. Judy's family actually petitioned for them to be denied a release but the court ruled otherwise.

Its pretty heavy going stuff at times. Some brief moments of cohesion and happiness are soon washed away by Judy's gin soaked anger and vitriol. Be warned.

Judy Speaks

BIG NEWS

Right: Me, being excited.

That's right, gang. The image you see above is not just a clever Photoshop creation--Illogical Contraption "Death To False Radio" T-shirts are NOW AVAILABLE (for only $12, plus shipping!) via our good pals over at Hide The Bodies Press (go "like" them on Facebook while you're at it). I think we can all agree that this is a pretty fucking sick design, so save up your fuckin' paper-route money, then head over HERE to buy one. HUGE thanks to Paul and the gang at HTB for making this happen, we will soon grow incredibly wealthy off the hard-earned cash of these idiotic rubes our dear readers and hopefully leave our "internet" jobs forever. God willing.

IN OTHER NEWS: APOCRYPHON MINI-TOUR COMING UP AT THE END OF THE MONTH!

THURSDAY, NOV 29 @ THE COLONY, SACRAMENTO, CA with:

KILLGASM
CHRONAEXUS
EMBODIED TORMENT

FRIDAY, NOV 30 @ SPIKE'S BAR, ROSEMEAD, CA with:

NIHILITUS
DRACONIS
EXHAUSTED PRAYER
INSENTIENT

SATURDAY, DEC 1 @ TIL TWO BAR, SAN DIEGO, CA with:

GHOULGOTHA
DRACONIS
EXHAUSTED PRAYER
ONEIROGEN

SUNDAY, DEC 2 @ MERCHANT'S SALOON, OAKLAND, CA with:

SCORCHED-EARTH
BURNING MONK


IN OTHER NEWS: IT'S FRIDAY NIGHT, AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS...

That's right, bitches! IllCon Radio is back, 10pm-midnight, with a special appearance by everyone's favorite sex-rapper, BLOWFLY! Shit is bound to get weird, as we talk dead Burners, half-speed Rings of Saturn, breakfast food, and explore the personal vendetta between myself and host/ungrateful butthole CORY. You know where to go.

And hey, give us a call, live on the air. 415-829-2980.

COBRAS COMMANDS IT!

PS Happy Birthday, Carl.

Wode - Demo 2011

Its not often I rep local talent or really pay attention to what's going on in my "scene" but every now and then a band comes along that perks my interest. Wode, from my barely frost bitten locale of Manchester, have perked my interest quite a bit lately. Having been fortunate enough to witness them on quite a few occasions over the past year they have blown me away every time. A full on blizzard of harsh but melodic guitars swirling around a rampaging drum assualt and topped with hoarse desperate vocals. Along similar lines to Wolves In The Throne Room combined with touches of Dark Funeral and early Nachtmystium.
If that sounds good then you owe yourself a listen to this beast below.

Wode - Demo 2011

Presence

Buy 

When drawing goes wrong pt3. Photoshop abortions.

During the previous two installments, here and here, it gradually became apparent that even amongst the bad album artwork that plagues the Internet and peoples music collections there are even worse examples of dreadful artistic vision and crap delivery. Previous posts concentrated on art that was in the most part actually drawn/painted/dribbled out by someone. They might not have had much of a idea about anatomy or have ever seen a women naked but they at least possess, in the loosest sense, charm.

Tonight's post deals with those most heinous of culprits when it comes to bad album artwork. The Photoshop abortions. Your technology can't save you.

To kicks things off, IllCon follower SoulReaper recommended this blinding piece of ham fisted photo shopping nonsense. Dismal Euphony....dismal euphotoshoppy. Sorry.

This was always one of the first things that came into my head whenever anyone mentioned bad photo-shopping. You have all manner of tools at your disposal  yet you can't even get the lower jaw of a skull right!

Not content with making it look like some pre-1997 PC game art they just go and use the most basic, default font.

You'll never get anything started slacking off like that Mr Speckmann.

Another example of not only being dreadful ( I mean look at it!) but knocked even more for having a bog standard font. Plus, a dreadful album title.

I can wager that if this image, an angel being defeated and having its life force sucked out by a demon inside a church, had been hand drawn and coloured I would probably have thought it pretty cool. Sadly someone got to it with Photoshop first.

If ever a single image summed up the plight of the regular IllCon follower then this album cover is it.

I like Benediction. I don't like this artwork. 

I still haven't been able to work out if this band are a joke or not. I could only get about 20 seconds into this video. This artwork and album title certainly suggest its all a joke.

The soft-porn/1997 "adult" PC game vibe was perfectly nailed on these two covers by everyone's favourite band we all claim not to like.

German engineering perfection. No.

Another example of quality band let down by PS1 quality artwork. it doesn't really fit.

You send something off to the printers, you send it at the right resolution don't you. I have been aware of this one for ages but I never knew the actual band name, I still don't.

Not often do tasteless album title/artwork concepts combine with bad Photoshop. But when they do the results are pretty special.

I can spot a circular saw, cyborg eyes, pink hair, robotic boobs and what looks like parts of a motorcycle. its not a magic eye image either.

Its like the cheap version of a Minotaur. A bemused armadillo. Doesn't really chase you round the maze. Just sits there looking confused.

Hypocrisy have quite a few probable entries lurking in that back catalogue of theirs. Funnily enough nearly most of it has been reissued in recent years with different artwork. I'd like to think that's because they looked back in horror at the below image.

To top it off is the one that got mentioned the most in past correspondence. Iron Maiden have done many great things for metal but this artwork certainly wasn't one of them. In my research I came across a story about how this was originally a mock up of the concept. The band saw it and decided to use it. Maybe save a bit of money. It may be true it may not be, it does sound like something you would say after many years of reflection and you slowly come to the realisation of how lame your album art is. I always like to think that Iron Maiden don't really need to go near computer technology. keep the two separate. Ed Hunter was bad enough.

Once again I will leave it up to you guys to let me know if there are any that deserve inclusion? In all fairness I spent quite a bit of time trawling the Nuclear Blast, Spinefarm and Roadrunner back catalogues and its almost another full post on some of the lame art those guys have hidden away.

DARKTHRONE - SOULSIDE JOURNEY (1991)

Hate to disappoint the wax-moustache-and-skinny-pants crowd, but I've never been much of a Darkthrone fan. Transilvanian Hunger (just about everyone's original introduction to the band, it seems) always struck me as a low-quality, repetitive bore, and their following albums just got worse and worse as the years progressed. I even tried tuning back in recently after reading some positive press on their "newer" stuff (F.O.A.D., Circle The Wagons, Black Flags, et al.), but I found those albums to be a cross between laughable and cringe-inducing, just sloppy black and roll with some of the worst, self-referential lyrics possible ("I Am The Working Class"? Huh?). Honestly, I just don't get it. Fenriz is probably a rad dude to sit and guzzle suds with, but I'm just not feeling his jams. Sorry. Any and all hate mail should be sent directly to illogicalcontraption(at)yahoo(dot)com.
There are exceptions within Darkthrone's lackluster discography, though, mainly (and predictably for ol' Uncle Cobras), their "death metal" album Soulside Journey. I fucking love this album, and even the handful of scratchy demos that preceded it. Sure, it's not much of a departure from the millions of other DM albums that were floating around Scandinavia at the time, but the riffs are pretty cool, the grooves are crushing, the drum work is solid, and the overall tone, atmosphere, and aesthetic is just leaps and bounds beyond the generic corpsepainted cemetery tomfoolery that this band immediately adopted upon the release of 1992's A Blaze In The Northern Sky.
Boring band, awesome album. Let's fight.

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Metallum/Last.FM

LOLS.