music and tales
In 1845 Capt. Sir John Franklin, famed Artic explorer, set off to finish what he started: mapping a sailing route through the Arctic above Canada so ships could sail from Greenland to Russia across a Northwest Passage. He had lead […]
Hi everybody. The sessions are complete, the entire show is recorded and over the next 2 weeks i will be mixing, mastering and putting the finishing touches on the project. Since that process isn’t really newsworthy or particularly exciting to […]
Best invention of the Victorian age? Probably the light bulb. Telephone is up there. But where would our ipods and CD players be today without the great grandmother that started it all, the victrola. That’s actually not quite right. Thomas […]
In continuing our recent discussion about the Penny Dreadfuls that populated the Victorian era, it’s worth pointing out that almost all of the popular characters who once defined the era, Spring Heeled Jack, Varney the Vampire, Dick Turpin, Ching Ching, […]
One character who was an early fixture of penny dreadfuls was Spring Heeled Jack. He would leap in out of nowhere, slap you, cop a feel, or rip your dress and then leap away. He could leap over tall shrubbery, […]
From 1830 to 1870, the exact time the macabre and violent incarnations of the penny dreadful were being published, otherwise known as penny bloods, a complementary form of theater was also taking place, Penny Gaffs. The penny gaff alludes to […]
For decades, since their conception in 1832, Penny Dreadfuls, 8 pages of lurid tales printed on cheap paper and sold for a penny, specialized in highly gruesome material. For the first 10 years or so there was a fair amount […]
The comic book probably remains the dominant medium for fanciful, fantastic literature pumped out industriously for youth consumption. Actually if you ask me, the comic book has been replaced by the video game, but if we stick to just literature it’s the […]
In Imperialist Russia, the Cossacks roamed the plains and mountains of the vast empire, nomadic badasses whose legends survive even today. What is interesting, is that unlike their gypsy Roma counterparts, they were not a specific race or bloodline. They […]
Meanwhile, in Victorian era Russia, an entire other universe of interesting things were happening. The Tsars were at their most opulent and various seeds of unrest were stirring, led by self proclaimed anarchists long before the communists, which would one day coalesce […]