In the middle of the 1980s I spent a couple of years near Los Angeles. During that time I got introduced to Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation.

This was a touring show that would bring award winning animated short films to theatres in the area, and I always looked forward to it as it was the only way to get access to this wonderful art form (this was pre-YouTube).

Aside: I’m also into stuff like fantasy/sci-fi short fiction, and there are precious few options for finding it. That’s why I always look forward to the Hugo Awards Voting Packet. If you sign up for the annual WorldCon convention, you get to vote in the Hugo awards, and as part of that you get a downloadable “packet” of the nominated works. I can never attend the actual conference but for $50 you can become a voting member and get access to most of the nominees’ work. Best deal you’ll find, if you are into such things.

Anyway, getting back to the Festival of Animation, you could also buy access to a special showing, right at midnight, for the “Extra Sick and Twisted” version of the festival. This would showcase some animated shorts that didn’t quite fit the mold of the main festival, and in reading the Wikipedia article it seems like it was so popular it became the main format in later years.

While some of the twisted films were a bit gory, like Lupo the Butcher, most were just odd or off-color, like Mike Judge’s “Inbred Jed”. It was also the first time I saw Beavis and Butthead.

One year the final piece shown was the amazing “Rejected” by Don Hertzfeldt. It remains the best animated short I’ve ever seen.

One that has stuck with me all of these years was “Sing, Beast, Sing” by Marv Newland (who also did “Bambi Meets Godzilla”). Not only was it odd in a way that really resonated with me, it featured a song called “I’m Mad” by a blues singer named Willie Mabon. I liked it so much I had to do a deep dive to figure out the song and to order an album of Mabon’s work that contained it (remember, this was pre-Internet and pre-Shazam).

Through the magic of the modern Internet, you can see the film today:

When I watch it I can’t help but think that Toledo must be related to the Blue Meanies from Yellow Submarine. Maybe the “Green Meanies” are their opposites and actually like music.

Now jump forward about 40 years (if you want to add to the realism, feel free to wait 40 years before continuing to read this post. Then you can ask yourself “Is it live, or is it Memorex?”)

I hadn’t really thought of Mabon much in recent years, but I came across a news article about a newly found recording of Robert Johnson that was of an unusually high quality. And it got me thinking.

When we moved the previous owners left a Victrola. I find them fascinating as they are completely mechanical. They produce a pretty loud sound without an electronic amplifier. The main downside of the owners leaving the machine was that the records they left were of genres I don’t really care for, such as the Fox Trot.

Listening to the Robert Johnson track made me realize that the Victrola is the perfect way to listen to old blues music, so I set out to see if I could find a 78 rpm of at least one of his songs. I failed, but in the process I remembered Willie Mabon.

It took a bit of searching, but I was able to buy recordings of his two hit songs: “I Don’t Know” from 1952 and “I’m Mad” from 1953. Both were on the Chess label, considered by some to be the “greatest blues label”, so I will be on the lookout for any Chess recordings to add to my collection.

So without further ado:

Mabon died in Paris after a long illness at 59, younger than I am today. Makes you think.

As we spend more time immersed in our devices, it’s cool to play with tech that doesn’t require batteries. I’m sure I’ll post more thoughts about that in the future, but at the moment I’m going to go listen to some tunes.