Sexually Confused Disco: The Liner Notes Of John Waters, Vol. 2

School is in session again. Your music teacher is John Waters.

I recently promised that, if my first article about John Waters' liner notes received a positive response, I would compile a second one. Well, it did, and I have, so here it is: Volume 2, ready for your perusal. Be gentle. The notes below come from the soundtrack album for Waters' 1998 feature film Pecker as well as two compilation albums he did for New Line Records in the 2000s: A John Waters Christmas and A Date With John Waters. These notes contain all the twisted wit and demented scholarship one would expect from Baltimore's notorious Pope of Trash. These are obviously songs he loves, and he wants you  to love them, too.

And, yes, to the best of my ability, I have once again attempted to preserve all of the spelling, punctuation, and grammar from the notes exactly as they appeared originally. My spellchecker may not like it, but it's important to present history as it truly was. Along the way, see if you can spot any lines that have also appeared in Waters' screenplays. If you know his movies backwards and forwards, some of what you're about to read should seem eerily familiar. You'll also learn a few interesting tidbits about Waters' own life and films.

Enjoy.

Hit Parade Of Hell: The Liner Notes Of John Waters

Your Music Appreciation 101 professor, John Waters.

A stack of John Waters soundtracks on CD.

This will seem impossibly quaint to you youngsters, but music used to be bought and sold as a tangible, physical commodity. In other words, it was a thing you had to go get. In actual, brick and mortar stores, no less! First came the wax cylinder, then the vinyl record, followed by the 8-track, the cassette, and finally, the compact disc. Nowadays, music is all just ones and zeroes to be uploaded and downloaded in the twinkling of an eye over the internet.

For the most part, this change has been a good thing. More music is available to more people more quickly than ever before. But we have lost a few things along the way as we've abandoned physical media. Liner notes, for instance. Remember those? Yes, albums used to come complete with little explanatory essays that told you something about the music contained within. To me, the king of liner notes was cult movie director John Waters. He took obvious delight in penning the notes that accompanied the soundtrack albums for his movies, explaining exactly what these songs meant to him and even giving his listeners instructions on how to listen to the albums for maximum effect.

Much of Waters' writing has been collected and anthologized in book form elsewhere. But, to my knowledge, his soundtrack album liner notes have never reappeared anywhere. So before they vanish from memory completely, I thought I'd showcase them here. I had to scour through my musty, dusty underground storage locker to retrieve these little items, which I present in roughly chronological order. Notice that Waters' texts become more elaborate over time, from a humble paragraph for Hairspray in 1988 to a 450-word essay for A Dirty Shame in 2004.

This collection is not complete. I have yet to transcribe the notes for two compilation albums curated by Waters: A John Waters Christmas (2004) and A Date With John Waters (2007). Perhaps if the reaction to this article is positive, I will dig those up, too. In the interest of historical accuracy, I have tried to present these notes exactly as they originally appeared, with all spelling, punctuation, and grammar intact.

Enjoy.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Magazine Odyssey, Part Fourteen by Greg Dziawer

Hard Tack Harry stares down readers in this vintage Libra Press pictorial.

Daisy Chain Affairs

The cover of Gay Guys Book One.

In previous weeks, we've revisited Ed Wood's efforts in the gay-themed adult magazines released by Pendulum Publishing and its various corporate sisters, including the little-known Libra Press. Curiously, Libra's titles were not filed for copyright, as Pendulum titles commonly were. And now, we've found yet another intriguing Libra Press title: Gay Guys Book One. Likely a one-off "stroke book" rather than an ongoing series, it's undated. And though its contents are recycled from previous Pendulum mags, it is swollen with Wood.

This week, we're sharing two pictorial texts from this issue and wondering aloud if they could have penned by Ed.

Although the contents of this issue of Gay Guys stretch back to original material in Pendulum mags from as early as 1971, an ad late in the issue lists titles from Gallery Press mags from early 1974, dating the issue. Ed is credited within under his own name for the reprinted short story "I, Warlock," which originally appeared in the August/September 1971 issue of Gay Studs from Pendulum Publishers. The identical page layout is carried over from the original publication, as a matter of fact. The remainder of the issue's writing—including the editorial, a feature article, and more pictorial texts lifted from earlier pubs—is without credit, but on the whole suggests Ed's ubiquitous involvement.

The cover and two pictorials within feature Rick Cassidy, a porn star, bodybuilder, and model who appeared in a handful of softcore sex films written by Ed and directed by Stephen Apostolof in the the early '70s, including Drop Out Wife (1972). Cassidy's numerous hardcore films include the allegedly Wood-directed Bloomer Girl (1972).

The pictorial preceding "I, Warlock" in Gay Guys includes the following text accompaniment:

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Loop Orbit, Part Five by Greg Dziawer

John Holmes is ready for his closeup in Fanny Up.

Fanny Up  

This week, we're once again entering the Wood Loop Orbit, in which Edward D. Wood, Jr. possibly played some part in the creation of short pornographic films during the 1970s. In my estimation, the 8mm loop Fanny Up, the sixth loop in the John's Girls series, was subtitled by Ed at very least, to bury the lede.

Logo for the John's Girls series of loops.

There is an evident and genuine artistic concern on display throughout Fanny Up, clearly an evolution for the creative principles responsible for the majority of the Bloom-family loops. Swedish Erotica was about to return, soon the pillar of the Bloom enterprise, and with it came a set of new aesthetics. Bearing copyright dates of 1975/1976, though likely shot a bit earlier, John's Girls was the artistic pinnacle of the second phase of the Bloom-family loop aesthetic. The first phase, the Cinema Classics loops, though initially lacking subtitles, were far more perfunctory and far less ambitious, but not without their Woodian charm...yet another story that will be told.

Back to Fanny Up, a jewel of a loop in a great series: Naked by the strikingly blue pool, a pretty young blonde with heavy blue eye shadow brushes her hair. Her male costar, John Holmes, wearing a powder blue shirt open to the belly button, with an appropriately huge belt buckle, dials the (also powder blue) rotary phone in his kitchen. The girl by the pool, Tonie, puts down her brush and picks up the phone with a suitably long cord. Ed Wood's captions take it from there.