WATCH 10 bonkers musical memorabilia museum shrines

l-r myra gail lewis, jerry lee lewis, frankie jean lewis

10 bonkers

musical  memorabilia

museum shrines

the Jerry Lee Lewis Family MuseumLargest Rolling Stones Museum... In SloveniaBritney Spears rural regular Louisianaquirky shrinegirl  MuseumNew Jersey home doubles as The Dylan Shrine

Britney Spears beds Elvis minutiae Johnny Cash AmEx baby marbles Keith Richards fanatics shame

the Jerry Lee Lewis Family Museum

The only musical museum to boast drive-through liquor  is the Jerry Lee Lewis Family Museum, converted from his childhood. 

JLL’s sister Frankie Jean runs thereto his spot, hand-describes his  piano-playing and -sipping.

Largest Rolling Stones Museum... In Slovenia

Here are sights from Slovenia's only Rolling Stones Museum, as seen through the eyes of Slovenia's biggest fan.

You you’re Stones fan?

Slavko Franca has beat The Rolling Stones Museum home in Portoroz, Slovenia.

Franca amassed 1,000 memorabilia,  personally thrown by Keith Richards.

 

Britney Spears rural regular Louisiana

quirky shrine-girl  Museum

The Britney Spears Museum, located inside the Kentwood Museum in the rural Tangipahoa Parish town of Kentwood, is a quirky shrine for fans of the pop superstar who is a Kentwood native. The museum contains memorabilia, fan-donated items such as min

Britney's hometown pride is a wing of permanent focus as a rural, regular Louisiana girl, photos and bed, supreme-fan-donated miniature stage performed HBO concert special.

Elvis Presley genuine 24-hour Elvis shrine, Graceland Too mansion

Elvis’ Graceland mansion–already so obsessed, they erect their own.

First the late Paul MacLeod turned Holly Springs, Mississippi into a 24-hour Elvis shrine called Graceland Too. MacLeod and treasure trove memorabilia entire lot was bought by anonymous bidder (Nicolas Cage?) for $54,500.

And let’s not forget Denmark’s Henrick Knudsen.

He built a replica mansion twice the size of Graceland. According to CNN, the memorabilia housed inside is valued at $1.6 million, including instruments, clothing, and the cuff links he received from President Nixon. There’s even a diner inside that serves–what else–Elvis’ famous peanut butter and banana sandwich

Bruce Springsteen

Anyone can now access  Bruce Springsteen blindedbythelight.com - view handwritten “Born to Run” lyrics, Lil Bruce’s first grade report card, fonts of  Boss’ handwriting (finally!), and items.

ABBA

Abba The Museum

Stockholm’s ABBA Museum is dedicated to connecting fans to the Swedish Superglue—for real though. Somehow they’ve rigged a player piano at the museum to sync up with whatever ABBA member Benny Anderson is playing on studio piano in real time. Similarly intimate, a telephone which only four singers have the number. When it rings, lucky visitors have a chance to talk to  casual fans and play dress up with sparkly satin costumes, and funky flashing floors.

Dolly Parton

In 1986 Dolly Parton became co-owner of an existing amusement park called Silver Dollar City. But that wasn’t gonna cut it. She renamed it Dollywood! The theme park celebrates Smoky Mountain heritage and one of the greatest musical talents to spring from the region—herself. Plus, it’s in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, just minutes from her hometown. Three million people visit every season to ride roller coasters, cool off at a water park, and attend concerts where Dolly herself is known to make appearances.

Johnny Cash

This place has so many art from Cash’s life, it might as well be his closet. The visitors lead the rock legend from marbles, middle school books, American Express, and a letter to June Carter after she died  a heart-wrenching experience, Cash  or not, as  with the music video of  Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt.”

The Beatles

Alaskan Beatlemaniac Larry Flynn is such a fan, he has a “John Lennon Room,” which a sign reads is, “dedicated to the memory and legacy of John Lennon, the leader of the world’s greatest pop music phenomenon,” according to Alaska Dispatch News. Some of the precious items include a painting of the first time Paul and John met, a replica of the yellow suit John wore on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s (tailored to fit Flynn), 300 Beatles books, and LPs signed by all four Beatles.

Mel Prussak is probably the biggest Dylan fan out there. Just check out his resume to see for yourself. His New Jersey home doubles as The Dylan Shrine, not your standard poster book  records, one-of-a-kind sculptural assemblages called “zim-art,” inspired by Dylan.

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baby Johnny Cash's marbles

A post shared by @ christianacef on May 24, 2014 at 5:09pm PDT

The Story of "Bowie: Object" Best Bowie Prank EVER by bowiemyths

david bowie's modern love orig. by Herb Alpert

BOWIE OBJECT – Exclusive Preview!  by bowiemyths

Mindful of the controversy that surrounded the leaking of TOY online, I thought long and hard about whether or not to post this preview of BOWIE: OBJECT.

If it exerts pressure on David and/or his publisher to get the book out, then I think it can only be a good thing and I feel justified in doing so.

Does David really believe that the leaking of TOY was a bad thing? In the absence of any new music, this brief extract is a fascinating and highly revealing insight into David’s life & work which will make his fans happy.

1) This sample material was submitted to the publisher in advance of the contract being signed, and nobody other than David and his editor can be certain whether these texts or images will be included in the final version of the completed book (but this is a similar issue to the leaked version of TOY which did not contain completed mixes or a finalized running order)

2) I am obviously not prepared to name the source who provided me with this material, but I am happy to take down this post upon request should anyone feel their copyright has been infringed. Just message me via the blog, no need for any nasty solicitors’ letters!

3) For the attention of Michael Stimson, also known as Mist, who still can’t or won’t accept this is a hoax, I MADE IT UP! All of it.

The pictures are from Google Images and the text was 100% invented by me, apart from the bits lifted from Wiki.

There’s no “element of truth” in this, apart from the fact that Bowie was reported to have begun work on a book with the same title many moons ago. But he has nothing to do with this, OK?

All of it was written by me, none of it was based on any fragments of manuscript or any ideas by anyone else. I know you don’t like being wrong Michael, but you gotta accept it, dude. Didn’t your ever so reliable contact in New York confirm it was a hoax?

 

Or was he too busy watching the band rehearse for their select European dates?  Amazon states that a different book, entitled “Objects” by David Bowie, will be available in October 2014, but I must stress that I know nothing about that book and it certainly has nothing to do with what I’ve written below. Perhaps Bowie is now trying to hoax me? Maybe Mist can clear it up for us as his track record in this matter is pretty good.

22. Minimoog.

Eno gifted this keyboard to me at the end of our sessions for the album that would become Low at the Chateau d’Herouville in the fall of 1976.

The tilting control panel is truly iconic, the wood finish superb, the feel of the dials top-notch, and the 44-key (F to C) keyboard is a delight — it certainly beats any vintage Model D I’ve played for both speed and responsiveness. Though it weighs in at a hefty18kg, its ergonomics are quite superlative. At its inception, the Minimoog was surprisingly close to being the perfect solo synthesizer; indeed there’s arguably no serious rival for the role even today. Yet soloists demand to express themselves and there the Mini had obvious shortcomings: its keyboard lacks velocity and after-touch, while the pitch-bender and modulation wheels never felt like the final word in performance control. Nevertheless, without becoming lost in the enigma that is the Minimoog, let’s agree that it must have possessed special qualities to set it apart from the crowd for so long — even from others in the Moog stable.

Moog had constructed his own theremin as early as 1948. Later he illustrated the mechanics of a theremin in the hobbyist magazine ‘Electronics World’ and offered the parts in kit form by mail order which became very successful, albeit of limited value to even the most esoteric composers. The Moog synthesizer, on the other hand, was one of the very first electronic musical instruments to be widely used across many popular genres. I only met Bob Moog on one occasion and we bonded not over music, but over the common mispronunciation of our respective surnames. Bob always pronounced his surname – and that of his eponymous electronic progeny – to rhyme with ‘vogue’.

The motifs for all of the instrumental sequences on Low were mapped out on this Minimoog. My fading memories of those sessions are dominated by images of Eno hunched over the keyboard turning dials by imperceptible fractions, as amazed and delighted by the sonic textures he was producing as were Tony V and myself:

“Do you know it has a logarithmic one volt-per-octave pitch control and a separate pulse-triggering signal?” said Eno, breathlessly.

I said, “Brian, if you hum it, I’ll sing it…”

39. Female Mimics Magazine.

Purchased on my first ever trip to New York from an underground bookstore close to Warhol’s second Factory in the Decker Building at 33 Union Square. Five bucks was a hell of a lot of money back in 1971, but I guess that cover image must have lodged itself in my subconscious for now that I see it again, I’m immediately struck by its influence on the Boys Keep Swinging video.

You’ll see it’s volume number two; now, if any completists out there have a spare copy of number one, do please let me have your PayPal address.

50. Wiss Haberdashery Scissors.

“When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.” – WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Long before computer programs existed to juxtapose arbitrary segments of text, I employed the same methods as those trusted by literary innovators such as Burroughs (who had been introduced to cut-ups by the painter Brion Gysin), T.S. Eliot and Tristan Tzara: namely scissors and paste.

Being large, weighty haberdashery scissors, it’s entirely possible these may have originally belonged to Natasha Kornilof, though I really cannot say for sure. Natasha created stage-wear for Freddie Mercury and for myself over a number of years – the Ashes To Ashes pierrot being perhaps the most iconic, but she also designed and made the clothes I wore for the 1978 tour and for the Glass Spider tour. Certainly these actual scissors were in my box of tricks when I first began to experiment with cut-ups writing material for the Hunky Dory album around 1970, and I’d done a television recording of one of Lindsay Kemp’s shows shortly before that for which Natasha had overseen the costumes, so the chronology fits. I’m often accused of stealing ideas, but here and now I freely admit to past thievery in a more literal sense, though I’m happy to say I did eventually curb my natural kleptomaniac tendencies.

I’d like to be able to say that the texts I cut up were obscure occult works and philosophical treatises, but that would be fibbing. I remember cutting up speech bubbles from Marvel comics, paragraphs from Georgette Heyer and other ephemeral library fodder, fashion editorials from newspapers, and much more besides. It was all pretty unremarkable stuff, but for me, the inspiration offered by a juxtaposed image or a sudden, unexpected turn of phrase is incomparable.

The very first song I recorded where the lyrics had been formed using this process would have been either The Bewlay Brothers or Life On Mars? but I do remember it was the latter which gave me a true sense of how important a creative breakthrough the cut-up technique would be for my lyric writing. Thereafter, these scissors quickly assumed talismanic properties and I used them to greater or lesser extents on pretty much every album right through to Scary Monsters; I got them out again during the writing of Heathen in preference to using the Verbasizer program on my Mac. Cutting paper and physically rearranging words and phrases is a more satisfyingly tactile process than tapping at a keyboard.

These are not, however, the scissors seen in the BBC’s Omnibus documentary and used to demonstrate the assemblage of the Moonage Daydream lyrics; that sequence must have been recreated later in a London studio because they weren’t even my bloody hands!

64. Prototype Ziggy Stardust Boots.

Before I came under Japanese influence, the costume for Ziggy was largely based on the uniform of the Droogs in A Clockwork Orange which was another contemporaneous obsession of mine. I wanted to devise a multicolored version of the Droogs’ monochrome ensemble of white jumpsuits and black boots. Prototype footwear was made by a chap called Stan at Greenaway & Sons in Penge, South-East London. Unfortunately though, these prototypes proved unsuitable: the patent leather was far too rigid to wear on stage as it restricted the mobility in my ankles, added to which the iridescent finish (described by Mick Ronson as looking like “a melted down bowling ball”) was quite dramatically out of keeping with the rather more muted colours of the costume fabrics.

I think it must have been dear old Lindsay Kemp who recommended Anello & Davide, so legendary was this historic London firm in the firmament of dance. Not only had Anello & Davide made bespoke theatrical footwear for generations, but I believe it was they who had been responsible for adapting the traditional Chelsea boot for The Beatles by the addition of the higher Cuban heel of a flamenco boot. Anello & Davide used to be located diagonally opposite English National Opera at the lower end of St Martin’s Lane, but last time I was in London I noticed that the site is now occupied by a ubiquitous coffee shop chain.

Anello & Davide created the boots I wore on stage which were made from a softened leather in darker, matte colours with a much thinner rubber sole, plus those all-important sweat-proof, non-rust eyelets. But the unworn “bowling ball” prototypes have remained in my closet, hoarder that I am, for nigh on forty years. “My, my, the time do fly”.

66. Gillette Supermax Pro 1300 Hairdryer.

This hairdryer was one of Suzy Ronson’s which accompanied me to the Café de Paris after Ziggy was laid to rest at Hammersmith Odeon. Suzy suggested I take it to tart myself up in my suite before coming down for the party, but unfortunately the diffuser had become detached somewhere between Hammersmith and Piccadilly –  and a diffuser, as any good coiffure will tell you, is the secret to the fluffy-on-top style that Ziggy wore. I washed, dried and re-dried my hair countless times, eventually resorting to lacquer and even soap to combat a bad hair day of near catastrophic proportions. Even now, I can’t look at the photographs taken that night without shuddering.

“Not only is it the last hairdryer of the tour…”

83. Black Satin Eye Patch.

I’ve seen it said that I adopted the eye patch for a while in 1973 because of light-sensitivity symptomatic of the anisocoria in my left eye. To this I say pish, twaddle and tosh: the truth is altogether more prosaic. A nasty case of conjunctivitis on the day I was due to record a promo for a Dutch television show necessitated a hasty cover-up. We toyed with a blindfold (referencing the G.F. Watts painting ‘Hope’ – guitar replacing lyre) and a monocle with a violet lens (referencing Elizabeth Taylor), but the eye patch beat them hands down for piratical swagger and I grew rather fond of my latest sartorial affectation, wearing it again many times over subsequent months for photo shoots and television recordings – perhaps on the Russell Harty Show? Someone will correct me, I’m sure; most probably Kevin Cann.

90. Garden Gnomes.

A Haddon Hall housewarming gift from Ken Pitt. Not the original Laughing Gnome (although Ken’s delightful accompanying note did refer to the smaller of the pair as being “his brother whose name was Fred”), but nor is this one a leering, Hogarth Toby Jug-with-legs as so many modern garden gnomes tend to be.

Unlike their indolent fishermen cousins, the original gnomes modeled in Germany and Austria were always depicted as industrious artisans (harking back to their origins in Teutonic mythology), hence the apron and the hand held busily aloft. This little fellow has a hole in his left fist where presumably he once held a hammer or chisel, but which comfortably holds half a dozen incense sticks too – and that’s precisely what we used him for at Haddon Hall. Perhaps not what Ken had in mind when he sent them, but hell, this was 1969, maaannn. The gnomes perched on a teak coffee table for the duration of our tenure, ankle deep in ash by the time we departed.

I like to think that his facial hair may have partly influenced The Spiders’ bass guitarist, Trevor Bolder.

Sadly, this is one of those stories that has leaked out way ahead of our intended announcement.

It first surfaced last week on the Publishers Weekly site and it looked like it had slipped by unnoticed for a few days. But, as ever, we didn't reckon on some of you eagle-eyed spotters out there.

We still don't want to give too much away just yet, suffice to say that David Bowie has been working on a book entitled Bowie: Object.

There's no firm publishing date in place, but we can give you a little more detail.

Bowie: Object is a collection of pieces from the Bowie archive, wherein, for the first time, fans and all those interested in popular culture will have the opportunity to understand more about the Bowie creative process and his impact on modern popular music.

Bowie: Object features 100 fascinating items that give an insight into the life of one of the most unique music and fashion icons in history. The book's pictorial content is annotated with insightful, witty and personal text written by Bowie himself.

Designed by Barnbrook, Bowie: Object is simply and boldly designed and each of the objects is photographed in a clean, contemporary style.

The publication will be available in a number of colours, each one in a corresponding colour to make it a striking object in itself.

On November 3rd 1975, David took possession of a Kirlian Photograph Machine, (see image at top of this item) a gift from Dr. Thelma Moss at the Dept. of Parapsychology, UCLA.

Some of the results from the contraption were reproduced for the first time in the 1976 Isolar programme, actually those particular images can be seen in the booklet for the Station To Station Deluxe Box released tomorrow!

The programme was available to buy on Bowie's 1976 Station To Station tour. Above is a 35mm slide with some similar pictures to those that appeared in the programme

What's this all got to do with Bowie: Object you may well ask. Well, the Kirlian Photographic Device could very well be just one of the 100 objects that appear in the book, but then again...

Stay tuned for much more regarding Bowie: Object in the foreseeable future.

And there's a little more information here:

Quote:

Then there’s Bowie: Object by David Bowie (no U.S. pub, delivery Dec. 2010), which the agency says is the first in a series of books by the pop icon in which he explores his creative process by featuring 100 things from his “archive.” Each item will be “accompanied by a witty, personal text.”

This might actually be interesting to read, and at the very least it is good to see he is 'exploring his creative process'

David Bowie is The Man Who Fell to Earth • Documentary • Nacho's Productions

David Bowie is The Man Who Fell to Earth • Documentary 2017

Nic Roeg: "What a great documentary - so interesting"

Candy Clark: "Spectacular footage and commentary about the making of The Man Who Fell To Earth. Made me cry seeing David and listening to his pride about his work.. Learned a lot that I didn't know. He was brilliant..Just brilliant."

David Bowie is The Man Who Fell to Earth • Documentary 2017 from Nacho's Productions

This is a film about a film - Nic Roeg's 1976 esoteric science fiction movie - The Man Who Fell to Earth. Roeg's film has beguiled and baffled audiences since it's release. It explores, often in abstraction and allegory, the themes of alienation, power, love, trust and betrayal.

David Bowie is The Man Who Fell To Earth is an attempt to partly explain the movie. And it is a look at the way the film came together, and at Roeg’s working methods, and at the creative process itself. And because it is a film about the creative process, it was felt that it should also in itself, try to also be creative.

It is quite widely known that Bowie and his music were greatly influenced by Roeg and the time he spent working on the film. And so David Bowie is The Man Who Fell To Earth also tries to paint a small portrait of Bowie and his music during the era – from latter part of ’74 up to the January 1977 album, Low.

Bowie also created music that was intended for the soundtrack to The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Famously, it was never used and remains almost unheard to this day.

However, parts of the unused music were later incorporated into his albums Station To Station and Low.

And so, as part of the story telling in David Bowie is The Man Who Fell To Earth, some of Bowie’s music from those albums is used with re-edits of scenes from the movie, worked in with the interviews and commentary.

Whether or not David Bowie is The Man Who Fell To Earth is actually successful in these endeavors, you may judge for yourself.

At the very least it is an hour in the brilliant and highly enjoyable company and art of Nic Roeg, David Bowie and Candy Clark.
_______________________________

Was Newton an alien?

In the first TV interview where he talks about the movie, Bowie becomes visibly irritated when host Russel Harty describes Bowie's Thomas Jerome Newton character as an alien, and he almost chastises Harty for his presumptuousness; "…it's assumed he's an alien from outer space, but it may not necessarily be true".

Yet on the surface at least, Newton is an alien, who has come to earth to transport water back to his own dying planet. And in interviews Roeg always refers to Newton as an alien. Whereas Bowie doesn't seem so certain about Newton’s origins, or his mission. In the 1992 The Man Who Fell To Earth commentary, Bowie says, "Newton knows he's going to be betrayed, it's very obvious, but he seemingly doesn't do very much about it. So he must be here for some other purpose". As Bowie points out, there are Christ-like parallels. We can hypothesize that Newton’s falling to earth without any evidence of a space ship, is a kind of Immaculate Conception. And he arrives apparently a very pure being, who helps humanity advance and only seeks for himself a way to help his people. What are we to think is the "other purpose" for him being here? Perhaps he came, like Christ to test human-kind? And then of course there is the betrayal. But in the end Newton wasn't born again. He becomes a ruined and lonely reflection of the contemporary culture of decadence and self-destruction.
______________________________

The majority of the footage used here is of course from The Man Who Fell To Earth. But in addition another approximately fifty video and audio sources were used.

Fourteen partial David Bowie tracks were used, as re-imagined parts of the movie soundtrack, and also fairly gratuitously as excuses to just add some rocking tracks that had new or revised videos put together for them.

All tracks and sources are listed in the credits at the end of the film. And listing them here would also be a kind of a spoiler - so let’s not do that!

Like a lot of my video projects, this thing happened by accident. Whilst I was working on the video for Subterraneans, I decided that it would be good to have an accompanying video that compiled in a very simple way, all the relevant interviews with Bowie where he talks about the film. I imagined that at most, it would be a thing of about 15 or 20 minutes. However, as is usually the case with me, I went very deeply into it, and found a lot more material than I bargained for. It quickly became clear that here was a great story that needed to be told in film, and the thing just kept growing in size and in complexity.

 

In the end I have been working on it consistently and compulsively for the last 3 months and put in perhaps 700 hours of work.

David Bowie is The Man Who Fell to Earth • Documentary 2017https://t.co/W4ksvKPOVj@bowiesongs@BBC6Music@Tonuspomus@DavidBowieReal@mikegarson@bowieww@dark_shark pic.twitter.com/dDvdgu2tJF

— mrjyn (@mrjyn) January 25, 2019

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