Pulp Librarian✓

Hello, and welcome to the pulp library, a bibliothèque of bemusement! You can find my previous threads here:

Farewell Patrick Stewart...

Farewell Elke Sommer...

The Man Who Haunted Himself, by Ralph Martin. Tandem Books, 1970.

Holiday in Aberdeen: the silver city with the golden sands. (1958)

New merch for Dune: Part Three just dropped. "What's in the box Reverend Mother?"

Hia-Karate. This was the cologne women could not resist, or to be more precise the budget fragrance aunties couldn't resist buying their nephews for Xmas. It smelt... vaguely medical? It certainly had some citrus in it, more than enough to make your eyes start to water if you were too liberal with it. You certainly felt it on your shaving cuts. Valerie Leon was the face of the brand for many a year, but here's a more 'sophisticated' cinema advert circa 1976 doing the old trick of pairing fragrances with chess to make them seem more exclusive...

The music for the Pearl and Dean cinema adverts is called Asteroid. It was written in 1968 by Pete Moore. I now want a choc ice and a bag of Revels...

Eagle-eyed readers will note that Pearl and Dean uses Amelia - the de facto typeface of tomorrow. Designed by Stan Davis in 1964 it was used on the Moon Boot, and on pretty much anything that was futuristic.

Don't forget the Kia-Ora...

The Orgy Inspector, by Alan Marshall. Greenleaf Books, 1968. I'd always assumed this was a deregulated industry, but there you go. Also not sure the clarinet is needed here (I don't think it's an English horn?)

RT @GrevilleTombs: Taken from the cataloguer’s social group I’m in.

RT @HumanoidHistory: Chris Moore’s cover art for "The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke, 1991.

Falco meets Brigitte Nielsen: Body Next To Body (1987). Not a duet anyone was expecting, and it's quite bonkers but pretty darned catchy. Co-written with Giorgio Moroder, and with a video best described as Mad Max meets Never Say Never Again, it made No 6 in the Austrian charts but I think it deserves a wider audience. Brigitte Nielsen's pop career is quite interesting. Her 1987 album Every Body Tells a Story is pretty decent, though the title single didn't do too well. She came back in the 2000s as part of the Eurodance band Gitta, and it's pretty fun bubblegum dance: Nielsen can throw shapes in a pink wig with the best of them!

Trashing, by Ann Fettamen (aka Anita Hoffman). Belmont Tower, 1972. Semi-autobiographical Yippie mayhem from a time when Richard Nixon was the ne plus ultra of The Man.

Astrosex, by George Shaw. Midwood Books, 1970. Basically it's a racy version of that sci-fi staple "Let's have R&R on a pleasure planet!"

The reviews were good...

Spanking '70: A Documentary Casebook, by Dr. Guenter Klow. Taurus Books, 1970. You just don't get this level of sociology nowadays...

Fanny Hell Blows Madison Avenue, by Norman Jackson. Midwood Books, 1970. I'm assuming this is a story of a difficult jobs market...

Tears For Fears: Mad World (1982). This was going to be a B-side, but it ended up a deserved breakthrough song for the band. I do have a soft spot for Pale Shelter, but Mad World is just a different class. What I absolutely love about it is the production. Ross Cullum had worked at AIR Studios and Chris Hughes had produced for Adam and the Ants and they get this warmth from the synth-heavy sound that is fantastic. The drum machine is an analogue Roland CR-78 and it works so well with the slow tempo on this one. The build is steady but it's not overpowering, and the way the vocals just withdraw their power at the end of the chorus: chef's kiss!

Farewell Walter Koenig...