MILL STREET MUSCLE CAR

More pics from yesteryear. My dad always had fast cars and seemed to change them every 6 months but back in 1973 he owned this Mustang Mach 1. An awesome car to be driven around the Wigan borough in. Left hand drive, V8 lump, 8-track music player and candy red leather interior. We once took a three week long family caravanning trip to Italy and Yugoslavia and averaged between 7-9 miles per gallon! I fondly remember my sister and me lying down in the 'folded-down -seat' boot area, looking up through the tinted panoramic rear window at the crystal clear Mediterranean sky whilst listening to Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. Unsure of all the contributing facts but I think the car was sold on pretty quickly after this trip....probably because it was such a gas guzzler!
I'm not really into cars but if I ever had a few grand spare...I would hunt down one of these iconic bruisers.

Viva Montesa!

Whilst trawling through old family photos at my parent's house, I found this gem.

That's my sister and me on my Dad's Montesa back in about 1973. Not a clue why we are both wearing RAF dress hats.

70's MUSCLE CAR MAYHEM

Here they are! Some dumb, pointless yet very entertaining muscle car movies from the Seventies.
Classic American V8 powered cars with way-too-soft suspension crashing into things.
Vividly remember all these trailers on TV when they were released.
I feel a trip to PEP BOYS coming on!
In order we got:
DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY (1974)
GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS (1974)
VANISHING POINT (1971)
DEATH RACE 2000 (1975)
CANNONBALL aka CARQUAKE (1976)

In 1974 my Dad actually owned  a MUSTANG MACH 1 just like the one in GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS!

POLY STYRENE PASSES AWAY ....."OH CANCER UP YOURS!!"

Another idol of mine claimed by cancer at the age of 53. With her band X-RAY SPEX she really was a unque artist. I played the early singles to death IDENTITY, OH BONDAGE and DAY THE WORLD TURNED DAYGLO.

I met her backstage once in London in 1989 on a Youth of Today/Jailcell Recipes tour . She had Krishna beliefs and was friends with Y.O.T. vocalist Ray Cappo, a new Krishna convert. She came down to see what the current punk scene was like. I remember her being very positive about the gig...very sweet and soft spoken and not looking any older than she did in 1977!

LANCELOT LINK......IN COLOR!!

 I noticed that the last few posts have been mainly monochrome...so, for no reason other than to add some color to FULL FROKKUL...here are some Lancelot Link comic covers and a clip from the TV show with the band singing "Evolution Revolution", another song squished through THE STAGS mangle and served up on the DO THE TON album

Roots of UK skateboarding

I stumbled upon a little bit of UK skateboard history by pure accident. The pics in this post came from two entirely separate sources.

Firstly, after watching a 1965 British teen movie BE MY GUEST (starring a very young pre-Small Faces Steve Marriot) I googled the leading actress JOYCE BLAIR. It turns out that she was the sister of famously camp TV dancer LIONAL BLAIR. I also found the shots of Joyce posing in London's Hyde Park on a wonderful Gerry Anderson licenced STINGRAY skateboard!

Fast forward only a few weeks to Christmas time. I received some vintage TV21 comics as a present and there, amongst the pages, was this ad for the very same skateboard. The magazine advert dates the photo to 1964.

It's strange to me that two completely unrelated interests of mine, namely Gerry Anderson memorabilia and sixties beat music led me to learning stuff about a third unrelated intrest!!

AURORA BOX ART

Continuing on the monster tip....take a look at the great box art for the "GLOW IN THE DARK" AURORA MONSTER KITS.
The "long box" non-glow versions issued in the 60's are probably more valuable and sought after.... but these are the kits I remember buying with my pocket money as an 8 year old!
 Aurora Plastics Company had been making figural models of the Universal monsters for a few years and they were really one of the first companies to captilize on the Monster craze of that decade. In the 70's they relaunched the line with a new feature, they now glowed in the dark. Monster items and glowing in the dark is still a prevelant trend to this day..The box art was re-vamped and looks really great, even more ghoulish and lurid.
The last picture of the BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN is a mock up of a kit that was never released.

DON POST CALENDAR MASKS

FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER

THE CREATURE

GORILLA

THE HUNCHBACK

THE MAD DOCTOR

THE MOLEMAN

THE MUMMY

METALLUNA MUTANT

THE PHANTOM

THE WOLFMAN

MR. HYDE

DRACULA

Here at Full Frokkul Fiasco it's Halloween every day of the year! and to labour the point here is a fantastic collection of latex masks from DON POST STUDIOS.

These particular masks are commonly known as "The Calendar Masks". They were released in 1966 and as a marketing ploy, each of the 12 masks were showcased in a full colour calendar available through FAMOUS MONSTERS magazine. Unfortunately, latex doesn't age very well and not many have survived. Original examples, in good condition are highly sought after and sell for big bucks...

The Calendar masks were re-issued in the mid-nineties and can be picked up for a reasonable price but as with most things, the revamped version pales into insignificance compared to the 44 year old originals.

Another negative with the re-issues is, because they have been cast off the originals(the factory molds are long gone) the new masks are somewhat smaller and therefore can't be worn and are classed as display only.

However, it is possible to force the mask over a small childs head for a quick photograph....like we did one time a few years back.....sorry Jake!!

DRASTIC PLASTIC

Earlier this Summer I picked up a big box of assorted AURORA MONSTER MODEL KITS. I had all these kits as a child and unfortunately administered all the usual "melting with a magnifying glass/ air-gun/ fireworks" torture routines. In the 90's, I picked up all the re-issues and these remain mint boxed but it ain't the same as having the originals. I parted with 4 pounds at my local car boot sale for a rag tag, mixed up collection of various tiny kit parts that I recognised  from 20 paces. These kits are the real deal and I have a hunch they could even be 1st issue from the mid-60's. The series was re-vamped in the 70's with various"Glow in the dark" pieces such as hands, heads, rats, bats etc. and not one of the myriad of parts in the box were glow parts. After an hour or so sorting the parts out, I discovered I had a totally complete FRANKENSTEIN(my favourite) and almost complete DRACULA and THE CREATURE. The rest of the kits are AURORA PREHISTORIC SCENES including a WOOLY MAMMOTH, T-REX, TRICERATOPS and a bunch of CROMAGNON MEN / WOMEN

FRANKENSTEIN JR. 1966

The Japanese get all the credit for cranking out outragious, crazy kids shows but this HANNA-BARBERA cartoon from 1966 is pretty insane! Look out for the OCTO-VULTURE monster! I used to watch this when I was a very young kid. I love the vivid colours and the stylized depiction of the mad doctors laboratory. I was totally mesmerised by it and maybe that's a contributing factor to how I turned out as an adult.

Whats not to like.....?

At about the age of six or seven, I remember playing my mums old 45's on her Dansette.....Elvis, The Beatles and The Kinks to name a few. To be honest though, I was perhaps more interested in "the mechanics" of putting the records on the turntable, 6 at a time and letting it run through its cycle. Although I could make myself look very cool by stating that, even as a small child, I knew the importance of those artists....I can't say for sure at that age, that the actual content on the vinyl made any difference at all to the overall experience.
However, by about 1973 I definitely started to form my own opinions about the different bands I was seeing and hearing.
Here are 4 clips from  around '73-'74 that kinda summarise my early interest in music. I wasn't aware of any classifications for bands...Glam, Soul, Heavy etc.....I just liked these bands.

MUD
Great clip of Mud doing DYNAMITE in 1973. This was written by ChinniChap for THE SWEET but they rejected it! I love the Biker-Sweaty dance moves. Mud used a bunch of their roadies doing this dance in the Top of the Pops appearance for TIGER FEET the following year.

SLADE
A really great clip of the band actually playing live. Almost all performances are them 'lip-synching' along to a track. This footage shows what an awesome live band they could be. This track is from the 2nd album PLAY IT LOUD and is actually from 1970 during their "Skinhead" phase, however I reckon this clip is a couple of years after that.

THE ARROWS
TOUCH TOO MUCH from 1974...The Arrows had their own weekly TV show on childrens ITV!
They also wrote the original I LOVE ROCK 'N' ROLL made popular by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.

SHOWADDYWADDY
Earliest known footage in existance from 1974. The band was formed in 1973 by the amalgamation of two groups, CHOISE and THE GOLDEN HAMMERS. This led to an eight member band, with the unusual feature of having two vocalists, a couple of drummers and two bassists! This was the first single, "Hey Rock and Roll" One of the only songs written by the band, it was released in April 1974.