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All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out: Luke Haines & Peter Buck’s heavy artrock
pandemic statement

02.08.2023
08:51 am
Topics:
Music
Tags:
Luke Haines
Peter Buck


 
There is a new Luke Haines and Peter Buck collaboration out, and I highly
recommend it. All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out was created along with longtime
Buck partners-in-crime Scott McCaughey and Linda Pitmon and it’s a snarling
cauldron of bizarre imagery, psychedelic guitar rock (Buck is very much on form
here), glam, Haines’ signature trenchant societal observations and Lenny Kaye! I
reckon this one is even better than the first one, which I liked a lot.

I caught up with Luke Haines via email.

Love the new album. It’s even better than the first one. Was this also recorded
via the internet, or were you all able to be in a studio together while you were
touring in the UK?

I’m glad you dig the album. We all do too. The album was all recorded remotely.
Primarily because when we started recording (mid 2020) we were in the pandemic.
So, like many people we were just sat around at home , and thought, ‘well we’ve
got an album to do -better get on with it. Maybe, well all be in the same room
for the next one. Maybe not.

Such eclectic subject matter bouncing from one topic to another—as opposed to
the concept albums of your recent past—what inspired this crop of  lyrics?




Well, as I said we were deep in pandemic, so my mind was certainly concentrated
on making some kind of statement. But what kind of statement can anyone make in
a pandemic. Anything ‘lucid’ is doomed to being trite or histrionic. We’re
(maybe still) actually in the abyss. So I think the lyrics are a collection of
pop art psychosis. Or junk art psychosis, a bit like that scene with Richard
Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, when he’s making a model of the mountain out of
mashed potato. That scene is essentially what this album is.

When you’re collaborating at a distance and writing songs, do the lyrics come
first, a hummed melody or a riff or…? How does that work?

I listen to Peter’s demo and just start singing along. I usually have the bare
bones within a few goes. If I can’t come up with anything him or Scott just send
something else. The ‘process’ is not at all precious.

As easy as they are to do, very few artists can put together a truly unique
and/or witty collage—a notable exception being Cold War Steve—what’s the
“message” of your most excellent collage work on the packaging?

There is currently an obsession with NFTs and AI created art work. Whether AI
yields anything worthwhile in the future who knows. I have no interest in
digital art forms. I wanted the sleeve to look very analogue – so collage and
oil paint is as analogue as it gets. The cover is if anything an amalgam of the
last album as well. It is Apocalypse Beach, it’s just that when we recorded the
first album Apocalypse Beach was a fantasy – now it is a reality.

Congrats on winning my coveted “Best Album Title of 2022” award. Truly
fantastic. Who came up with it?

Thank you. I’ve never won anything before. Sadly, I have to admit that Peter
came up with the title. His neighbour, a doctor, said to him pre-vaccine, that
he’d been dealing with infectious diseases all his life, but with this one ‘All
the kids were super bummed out.’ Never let a global pandemic get in the way of a
great album title. I’ll take the award anyway.

The song on heavy rotation on my turntable is the title track. That’s a fucking
good one. That weird shrieking monkey sample really freaks out one of our dogs.
You guys (and gal) should get your Pink Floyd on again for an entire album of
dark psychedelia. That’s my advice. Take it or leave it.

Yeah we’re really into apes. The ape section probably should have gone on
longer. That was me with my commercial head on, ya know – ‘if we have five
minutes of apes they won’t play it on the radio, better cut it down to two
minutes of apes.’ I’‘m totally up for the early Floyd. Syd was great of course.
Their best stuff was from Piper up to Atom Heart Mother. I’m an Ummagumma, man.
Great album!




American tour?

We’d like to do an American tour. Visas are kind of expensive but it hasn’t been
ruled out. So there’s that and because of Brexit it’s now really complicated
playing in Europe. I’m kind of stranded in the UK.

I saved this one for last: What the fuck is going on in the post-Brexit United
Kingdom?!?! 

I’m glad you asked me about this one. I have the answer: Now that the Queen has
gone the royal family are in a perilous position. The Queen was the last one who
had direct lineage to the royal family’s Prussian/German heritage. She was the
last one that shored up the monarchy’s ‘safe’ position after World War I. That’s
all gone now and they are rudderless – they’ll be gone in ten years time and
that is gonna be the game changer. Once they’re gone all bets will be off.
Factor that into an equation that takes in the English Civil War of 1642, the
Essex witch trials, the treaty of Versailles and Maastricht and therein lies the
answer. Keir Starmer (or whichever motherfucker it is) will need to fund a think
tank of academics and historians and find an algorithm that will ‘lead us out of
Brexit,’ which is all the fault of Loaded magazine and those ‘culture’ arseholes
who were writing about ‘cool Britannia’ in the ‘90s. They all write for the
Guardian now or are on the radio where they moan about Brexit, and blame the
people who voted for it, not realising they were largely responsible for putting
the Brexit vote on the table in the first place. You cannot mess with culture.
The clue’s in the name!

Good lord, it’s worse than I thought…

All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out, out now on colored vinyl via Cherry Red and
Drastic Plastic
 








Posted by Richard Metzger
|
02.08.2023
08:51 am
|
1 Comment

709 Shares
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Listen to John Carpenter’s very 80s synth-rock band the Coupe de Villes

01.16.2023
02:34 pm
Topics:
Movies
Music
Pop Culture
Tags:
John Carpenter
1985
Big Trouble in Little China
The Coupe de Villes


The cover of one of only 150 known copies of ‘Waiting Out The Eighties,’ the
sole album from The Coupe de Villes—a trio featuring director John Carpenter,
Nick Castle, and Tommy Lee Wallace.

Horror fanatics, especially those dedicated to the films of director John
Carpenter, are likely familiar with this image taken from Halloween‘s wrap party
in 1978. In it we see three performers all wearing Michale Meyers’ aka The Shape
masks. The trio would then lose the masks and reveal themselves to be John
Carpenter, Nick Castle, and Tommy Lee Wallace or The Coupe de Villes. The
long-time friends would start making music for films in college at USC Cinema in
mid-1971 where Carpenter had become a bit of a go-to for USC students when it
came to providing the music they used in their films. According to Wallace, they
wrote music together with Carpenter and Castle contributing most of the content
which Wallace describes as “kind of satirical, nostalgic send up songs,” that
also happened to be “solid musically.’ Carpenter even snuck some of The Coupe de
Villes’ original music into Halloween during a scene featuring Jamie Lee Curtis
(Laurie Strode) and Nancy Kyes (Annie Brackett) smoking a joint in Annie’s car
with the radio blasting a 1950s sounding jam and the lyrics “Let’s Go!
Sha-na-na-ha, Sha-na-na-na,” before the music in the scene flips back to film’s
unnerving main theme. Carpenter mused about this Easter egg in an interview from
2016 where he also spoke about some of his early musical inspirations:

> “I was into the British Invasion, The Byrds, The Doors and 50’s stuff big
> time. Dark Star (1974) was my first synth score. I started hearing synth music
> back in the 60’s and I realized you could sound big with only a keyboard.
> Claudio Simonetti was a huge influence to me, especially the soundtrack to
> Suspiria (1977) and Deep Red (1975).”

The band would later appear as The Coupe de Villes in Carpenter’s film Big
Trouble in Little China (1985) performing the film’s namesake song. The thing is
this—that same year The Couple de Villes recorded a seven-song album Waiting Out
the Eighties at the Electric Melody Studios in Glendale, California. Electric
Melody is run and operated by Carpenter musical cohort, composer Alan Howarth
who has collaborated with Carpenter on his film soundtracks since 1981.
 

A shot of John Carpenter’s band featuring Nick Castle (a college pal of
Carpenter’s who portrayed Michael Meyers/The Shape in 1978’s Halloween), and
Tommy Lee Wallace (a teenage friend of Carpenter’s who, among many other things,
created the infamous Michael Meyers mask), The Coupe de Villes and their
appearance in Carpenter’s film ‘Big Trouble in Little China.’

If you’re hoping to score yourself a copy of this ultra-rare record, forget it.
Only 150 copies were ever pressed. Financed by Carpenter’s wife at the time,
actress Adrienne Barbeau, all copies were then divided evenly between the three
members of The Coupe de Villes. The album was mastered by Bernie Grundman, a
rather legendary Hollywood-based mastering engineer with over 5000 credits to
his name. Many fans have wondered if Grundman still has the master tapes for
Waiting Out The Eighties, hoping the coveted album might someday see a re-press.
At the time of this writing, I found one Mint/Near Mint copy of the elusive
record for $3500 plus another five and a half bucks for shipping. Now that we
all have yet another reason to dig the work of John Carpenter, let’s check out a
few tracks from Waiting Out the Eighties while wishing him a very happy 75th
birthday today.
 
Have a listen, after the jump…

READ ON▸


Posted by Cherrybomb
|
01.16.2023
02:34 pm
|
1 Comment

402 Shares
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‘Space Baby’: Blast off with outsider rocker, J.T. IV (a DM premiere)

01.13.2023
07:00 am
Topics:
Music
Tags:
J.T. IV


 
Part of our mission here at Dangerous Minds is to hip readers to artists
they—that’s *you*—may not be aware of. That’s certainly the case with this post,
as we present J.T. IV. Even if you know this enigmatic man’s music, we have a
song of his that you’ve surely never heard before.




Born in 1961, Chicago native John Henry Timmis IV had an eventful, yet
miserable, childhood. He grew up in an abusive household, and after his parents
split up, he stayed with his mother, though he ran away several times. He
struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, and when he was a teen his
mother had him committed. After his year-long stay in a hospital, Timmis was
released.
 

10th grade.

During his high school years, J.T. got really into David Bowie and the Velvet
Underground, and was inspired to pick up the guitar, which he taught himself to
play. He got together with his buddies for some stoned jam sessions, which were
taped. From these recordings came his debut record, the first of a handful of
45s he put out on his own label—albeit in small numbers—during the 1980s. The
tracks on the singles alternated between a loner folk style and “Destructo
Rock,” his unique blend of glam, punk, and classic rock.

In lieu of live shows, faux applause was woven into studio tracks, and unhinged
live events were staged and documented on video. J.T. was crafting his own
legacy.
 

 
In 1987, material from the 45s were culled for the Cosmic Lightning LP. Just 150
copies were pressed. Not long after the album was released, J.T. packed his bags
and relocated to Ohio, where he faded from view. In 2002, Timmis passed away. 

In 2009, Drag City/Galactic Zoo Disk reissued the scarce Cosmic Lightning, along
with a DVD of video footage.
 

 
Drag City and Galactic Zoo Disk have teamed up again for a new J.T. IV release,
The Future. The double album contains the fifteen songs from a rare and
essentially unknown Timmis demo tape, which he entitled The Best of Johnny
Zhivago Retrospective 1979-1993 (a recipient of the forgotten cassette came
across it during the COVID-19 lockdown). Four stray tracks round out the
release. Among J.T.’s originals are covers by such notables as Roxy Music, Lee
Hazlewood, Brian Eno, and the Velvet Underground.
 

 
Dangerous Minds has the premiere of J.T. IV’s “Space Baby” from The Future. It’s
a song about going to outer space and bedding an extraterrestrial—and the
narrative goes on from there. What, not intriguing enough for you, dear reader?
Well, it also features several minutes of face melting guitar work.
 



The Future by J.T. IV



 
Pre-order The Future via Bandcamp or Drag City’s website; it’s also on Amazon.
 








Previously on Dangerous Minds:
That time in 1966 when the Velvet Underground played a series of shows without
Lou Reed and Nico
The explosive teenage garage rock of Pittsburgh proto-punks, the Swamp Rats
Earliest known Lee Hazlewood recordings discovered on lost and found demo tape
(a DM premiere)



Posted by Bart Bealmear
|
01.13.2023
07:00 am
|
1 Comment

225 Shares
176





Across the Bowieverse: Brett Morgen’s ‘Moonage Daydream’

12.17.2022
02:33 pm
Topics:
Movies
Music
Tags:
David Bowie


 
This is a guest post by Spencer Kansa, author of Wormwood Star: The Magickal
Life of Marjorie Cameron, Zoning and Out There: The Transcendent Life and Art of
Burt Shonberg. Perfect gifts for the festive season!

In the welter of pre-publicity for Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream, Bowie fans
were baited with the promise that the filmmaker had been granted enviable access
to the Bowie archive, an Aladdin’s cave of five million audio-visual treasures
which, for the hardcore devotees amongst us, sounded like a mouthwatering
prospect. That was until Morgen subsequently claimed to have stumbled upon the
“Holy Grail” of lost Bowie booty: an unseen travelogue of the ever-elegant
Englishman sauntering around the streets of Bangkok and Singapore, filmed during
the final Asian leg of his all-conquering Serious Moonlight Tour of 1983.

Problem was, as any fan would know, this was simply not true: Richochet, as the
documentary is titled, has been in wide circulation amongst the Bowie faithful
for decades. The BBC had already borrowed far too heavily from it for Five
Years, the first in what became their own Bowie trilogy of documentaries, and,
sadly, like far too much of the content in Morgen’s film, it already exists on
YouTube.
 








 
Similarly, Morgen’s much-trumpeted inclusion of the ‘Jean Genie’/‘Love Me Do’
rock-out with Jeff Beck, during the encore of the final Ziggy Stardust show, has
been in the possession of fans, in grainier bootlegged form, for decades, ever
since it was first broadcast on ABC-TV in 1974 and, at a later date, by the Rai
network on Italian television. So, even before viewing this eagerly anticipated
movie, alarm bells were ringing in some quarters.

Aside from the color correction and sound restoration that has been done,
Morgen’s film is essentially an editing job pieced together in a collage fashion
from the embarrassment of riches placed at his disposal; but based on the
results, it would’ve been a wise move if he’d consulted more widely with Bowie
connoisseurs before launching and landing the project.

While there has been some unfair criticism for what the film is not – a
traditional, chronologically-paced documentary replete with exposition and
talking heads – many of the rave reviews for Moonage Daydream appear to have
been penned by casual fans, whereas for those in the know, the reaction has been
decidedly more muted. And the reasons are manifold. Firstly, the fast cutting
that Morgen periodically employs is often unnecessary and distracting,
especially when your focus is the most supra-charismatic and aesthetically
pleasing subject ever to appear in front of a camera. (During the ‘90s ‘Hallo
Spaceboy’ section, a shot of an Earthling-era Bowie confabbing backstage at the
Phoenix Festival with the Prodigy’s Keith Flint, which I’m sure both sets of
fans would like to have savoured, flashes by in the blink of an eye.)

While the interpolation of classic films – from Bowie favs like Metropolis and
Un Chien Andalou to clips culled from Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle,
B-movie sci-fi schlockers and even The Matrix – is an act of supererogation, and
the abstract visuals that animate several of the musical interludes are equally
superfluous. 

In its favour, the film offers some welcome behind-the-scenes antics and
alternate camera angles from the Ziggy farewell concert at Hammersmith Odeon,
including risqué upskirt shots of the Leper Messiah that clearly made the
filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker blanch when he saw them as they never made it into his
final cut. (Bear in mind, given the time it was filmed, Pennebaker even overdubs
the words “well-hung” when Ziggy recites his resume.)

Bowie’s felt-tip pen storyboards for the proposed Diamond Dogs movie are neatly
brought to life. There are some on and off-camera extras from his chin-wags with
Russell Harty, and private glimpses of his mid-70s video-television art
experiments that prompted John Lennon to nickname him “Video Dave.” Another gem
is the previously unseen footage of Bowie live on stage in ‘Gouster’ mode,
grooving while decked out in beret and fatigues and crooning a coke-hoarse
rendition of ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me’, taken from Philly Dogs shows, the
seldom-seen soul revue that cannibalized the abandoned Diamond Dogs Tour to air
cuts from his new but then-unreleased album, Young Americans.

Excerpts from the hotly coveted Earls Court concert from 1978, originally filmed
by the actor/director David Hemmings, that Bowie shelved for undisclosed
reasons, include tantalising teases of ‘Warszawa’, ‘Sound and Vision’ and
‘Heroes’, although this abridged version of the latter lacks the mesmeric power
of the one captured in its entirety by London Weekend Television on the second
night of this Earls Court run for their Bowie special.




And there are eye-catching rushes from the suspenseful ‘Jump They Say’ music
video, featuring the Duke at his most dashing, as well as arresting bonus scenes
from the bewitching collaboration between Bowie and La La Human Steps siren,
Louise Lecavalier, extricated from the ‘Fame ‘90’ promo and the scrim
projections of the accompanying Sound and Vision Tour for which they were
originally conceived.

But despite such enticements, Moonage Daydream is a frustrating watch at times,
especially those moments when Morgen maddeningly muffs the money shot. The
sublime segue from ‘Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud’ into ‘All the Young Dudes’ is
one of the key moments of the entire Ziggy Stardust concert film, but instead of
letting it play out to cast its spell, as the original footage does, Morgen cuts
away to solar flares and ruins the effect.

When Bowie’s Lincoln Town Car arrives backstage for his concert at Earls Court,
Morgen switches to fans filing into the arena, at precisely the wrong moment, so
we don’t actually get to see the star of the show and his entourage emerge.
(It’s hard to imagine that David Hemmings, who shot the actual footage, would
have pulled away at that precise moment.)

While a montage, set to ‘Let’s Dance’, to showcase what a tasty little mover the
Dame was, features his impressive tap dancing sequence from Absolute Beginners,
but leaves out the crucial climax from the musical’s big production number
(‘That’s Motivation’), where he out-Sinatra’s Sinatra and is winched into the
air, Flying by Foy, to hand jive on top of a rotating globe. Morgen even excises
the ending of the famous quote uttered by the bubbly moon-eyed fangirl outside
the Diamond Dogs concert: “I’m just a space cadet – he’s the commander!”

I’m also surprised the filmmaker hasn’t received a litigious letter from the
BBC, as he replays, in expanded form, pertinent Ziggy-era interviews about the
rising importance of individualism and the rock star as false prophet that have
already aired on their own Bowie documentaries. And he recycles two set pieces
from their celebrated Cracked Actor doc. Firstly, by sampling the scene where a
life mask is made of Bowie’s face, which Morgen marries to the very same song,
‘Quicksand’, albeit an alternative, non-album version. And although the ‘Cracked
Actor’ live performance from the same programme is enhanced with some new
footage, rather than cutting away, as the BBC does, to a waxwork of Elizabeth
Taylor and other mannequins from the Golden Age of Hollywood, to help illustrate
the theme of the song, Morgen merely superimposes stills from the famous photo
session of Bowie with the movie queen instead.

And it’s not only major media corporations that Morgen’s recycled ideas from.
The section dedicated to Bowie’s definitive film role, as Thomas Jerome Newton
in The Man Who Fell To Earth, is scored with ‘Subterraneans’, an idea already
realised, far more effectively, by Bowie superfan/film restorer, Nacho.
 








 
Furthermore, the insertion of Ziggy declaiming ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’,
inartfully juxtaposed with the Pepsi TV advert Bowie shot in exchange for their
sponsorship of his highly ambitious but expensive to run Glass Spider Tour, that
a couple of critics have taken as a rebuke to his, quite literal, ‘80s
commercialism, doesn’t appear that mercenary at all if you already know that the
money generated from it was used to pay for another stage – which took three
days to assemble and pack down – so that Bowie could leapfrog shows and keep up
a gruelling schedule.

The inclusion of late 60s deep cuts ‘Cygnet Committee’ and ‘Memory of a Free
Festival’ (Bowie’s denunciation and celebration of hippiedom), which somewhat
bookend the film, is another curious and unwelcome choice considering both are
lower-tier tracks in his canon, and neither are indicative of the major themes
that forged his legend during his Imperial Period that began when he left that
decade for dead and relaunched himself into 70s rock superstardom.

And there are other strange anomalies. There’s a close-up of a widely seen
schoolboy shot of the young master Jones, only his head has been transplanted
from an even earlier school picture – for no reason whatsoever – so it makes him
look like the younger brother of his classmates. And the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ promo,
which was the life-changing moment for many second-generation Bowie fans, and
remains one of his most magical moments, is marred by the oversaturation of
colour that renders it a blur.

We expected so much more. Where’s the Ziggy rehearsal footage filmed at Haddon
Hall? The recovered but still under-wraps performance of ‘Starman’ on Lift Off
With Ayshea? The long-rumoured existence of Bowie’s full performance in The
Elephant Man play? The Good Morning America interview with Rona Barrett? The
unexpurgated footage of the Duke’s hero’s welcome at Victoria Train Station? The
never-released concert footage of Bowie headlining the final night of the US
Festival, in 1983, in front of an estimated 300,000 peoploids. Or Bowie being
stalked and attacked by his alter-egos, in sinister puppet form, from the
mothballed ‘The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell’ promo?

Inexplicably, the final chapter of the film, sees Morgen rerunning previously
shown clips of Bowie riding the Escheresque escalators in the Singapore shopping
plaza, and miming a flower blooming from an earlier seen outtake from ‘The
Heart’s Filthy Lesson’ promo, for no apparent purpose. In fact, it seems like a
shoddy oversight. And you can’t shake the nagging suspicion that, by now, Morgen
has been so overwhelmed by his project that he’s resorted to just throwing stuff
at the screen, and only makes you lament the other unseen material that could
and should’ve been used in its place.




In this regard, Moonage Daydream has been rivalled for the Bowie highlight of
the year by this recently shared pro-shot footage of a Serious Moonlight concert
held at the Sydney Showground, which has lain unseen for nearly forty years.
 





 
Despite my misgivings, the film has struck big with cinema audiences, raking in
millions at the regular box office and from special IMAX screenings, as well as
via streaming services, where not only votaries but those uninitiated or new to
the Bowieverse await. For the cognoscenti, the Earls Court concert footage is
worth the price of admittance alone, although your appetite may be whetted, it
won’t be satiated until the Bowie estate finally releases the full show. And how
much longer are they going to wait? First-generation Bowie fans are now in their
dotage, and us second-generation fans are getting up there in years, too. If the
estate doesn’t start sharing some of the untapped jewels in the archive soon,
many will no longer be around to see and appreciate them. And yet, the estate
seems far more concerned with squeezing every last shekel from the fanbase –
from licensing his name on Barbie dolls, NFTs, Stylophones and pop-up stores –
to care.

Moonage Daydream is screening in select cinemas, and on streaming services, and
is available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray.


Posted by Richard Metzger
|
12.17.2022
02:33 pm
|
8 Comments

387 Shares
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DEVO’s Gerald V. Casale talks about going mano a mano with ‘The Invisible Man’!

12.06.2022
07:26 pm
Topics:
Animation
Art
Movies
Music
Punk
Tags:
DEVO
Jerry Casale


Illustration from ‘The Invisible Man’ by TOMO77

The poster that came with DEVO’s 1981 New Traditionalists album depicts the band
sheltering an ethnically diverse triad of babies from the worst elements in
American society: a horde of pirates, pushers, concert promoters, and Puritans
looking to instrumentalize these newborns for their own unspeakable ends.
Arrayed against this mob in matching JFK pompadours and Nutra work outfits, the
men of DEVO face the challenge with poise and sangfroid, ready to open a cold
can of whup-ass on these would-be baby-wreckers.




In the background, the uncredited artist represents the USA as a rolling lawn
ornamented with a few topiary trees, their branches shaped into stacked orbs
that taper like the steps of the DEVO energy dome, three leafy cocktail onions
of descending size impaled on toothpicks stuck in the horizon. This is the
landscape on which DEVO’s Gerald V. Casale stretches his legs in the music video
for his latest solo release, “The Invisible Man.”

Once again, it’s “morning in America,” except for the glans-pated dweeb who dogs
Jerry’s steps on the yellow brick road, subjecting him to sexual harassment,
humiliation, and abuse. But as the story plays out, Jerry begins to suspect—his
opponent’s neck tattoo of the D.R.I. logo notwithstanding—he’s once again doing
battle with The Mark Inside, old Number One from The Prisoner.

Dangerous Minds caught up with Jerry by 21st-century videophone on November 22,
2022.
 

 
Before I ask you about “The Invisible Man,” it’s November 22. I’ve read a lot of
DEVO interviews and I don’t know if you’ve spoken about this very much, so I
thought it would be interesting to ask what you remember about the Kennedy
assassination, and how you think that event affected your young minds.

Yeah! Probably, that was like the opening salvo in a barrage of timed traumas
that just continued the next seven years, that pretty much twisted up everything
in my life and set me on a fork in the road, kind of like the proverbial red
pill in The Matrix.

I remember everything. I was in French class in my high school. We had a
particularly sexy French teacher who was a graduate student, so she was
probably, I don’t know, six or seven years older than us, and wore more trendy
clothing, like herringbone-print skirts that were above the knee, and black
boots, and little blouses that got the boys going. Anyway, suddenly the
principal walked in, middle of class, and said, “Class, I have to tell you that
the president of the United States has been killed today.” And [laughs] you
know, you’re just, like, almost unable to process what you’re hearing, like it’s
kind of real, but not really real? And then some of the girls start bursting out
crying, and he goes, “And as a result of that, we decided to suspend all classes
for the day and send you home.”

And it was interesting, ‘cause [laughs] a girl that I was really interested in,
in this kind of puppy way where I didn’t even understand what I was doing, she
was crying, and something in me, despite the fact that I was really freaked by
what I’d just heard, and kind of understood how serious that was, or how
frightening that was, to the United States, I of course used it to offer to walk
her home [laughs]. So, you know, the little budding man in me started taking
over, and I felt all, like, you know, it was a real, I don’t know, what was it,
Stand By Me moment, like these coming-of-age comedies. And I walked her home,
and I had my arm around her, and had her holding my hand, and I felt so, like,
brave and excited, and scared at the same time.
 

Detail from the ‘Village of the Damned’ poster
 
And then I didn’t go home right away. I thought I’m not going home, I’m not
going home to my parents, ‘cause I was already at odds with them. ‘Cause they
were blue collar and authoritarian, they didn’t understand me, they were
policing my reading list and always criticizing me, and I felt like they didn’t
understand how smart I was. So I decided to freak them out by just doing
something I never did, which is I walked downtown and I went to the movie
theater. I forget what was playing now; it was a black-and-white film, of
course. It might have been Village of the Damned, English, great film.




And then, you know, when I got out of the theater it was already dark, ‘cause it
was November in Ohio and it got dark at like five o’clock. And the moment I
walked home, of course, I got attacked and talked to and screamed at. But then
the television was on, and it was wall-to-wall coverage of the assassination.
And, believe it or not, and I don’t know if other people have told you this, but
you know the famous Zapruder film, where this guy was shooting, innocently, the
arrival of the president in Dallas in his motorcade with a Super 8 camera, and
it became the primary evidence of what the Warren Commission kind of
bastardized. We saw it unedited, played over and over on TV. There were only
three channels, they were all national, so the news—there was real news then,
guys like Walter Cronkite just presenting things—would show it. I guess the
country wasn’t centralized enough into some kind of CIA disinformation clampdown
where you could see the impact, over and over and over! You could see the shots
and her crawling on the trunk, Jackie Kennedy. You’d never see the Zapruder film
that way again, because once the Warren Commission got ahold of it, they edited
it, and what you saw afterwards in history, after that weekend, is never really
the film.

And Ι saw the assassination then on Sunday, you know, we were Catholics and
forced to go to church, so Sunday morning, television’s on, we’re watching
[them] taking Lee Harvey Oswald from the Dallas police station to his court
hearing, and we saw live the assassination of Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey
Oswald, right there, with my parents [laughs] while we’re waiting to go to
church! I was fifteen.
 

 
So it sorta blew a hole in everything, it sounds like.

Yeah! And then soon on the heels of that came the assassination of Martin Luther
King, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the assassination of Malcolm X, as I
was coming of age and reading and getting politicized and protesting against the
Vietnam War. And it just all jelled. And it ended then with, you know, the
National Guard killing four students and wounding nine on May 4, 1970, right in
front of me.

There’s a kind of a straight line between those events, for you? Do you see it
that way?

Yeah, it’s pretty much a three-stage rocket [laughs] right to supreme rage.
Where you consciously put it all together, and you make a decision, and you’re
on a path that sets you against all illegitimate authority forever. You’re a
“difficult person,” resistive to authority. And that’s really what made me who I
was, and really, I don’t think without it DEVO would exist.

I’m a big fan of the EZ listening stuff. There’s some EZ listening stuff on the
new EP—




With vocals! With vocals, for the first time.

It reminds me a little bit of the Last Poets.

[Laughs] Well, I am one of the last poets now.

You are, Jerry. But as I look back at that stuff now, I wonder if there was a
kind of idealism—there seems to be a real nostalgia underneath, maybe, for that
New Frontier, early Sixties…

Yeah. And that’s understandable; we were fed a big heap of fantasy. And it was
presented using science. When they showed you the future, it was based on
innovation and technology and science. So the flying cars, the domed cities, the
end of labor, it was a pretty fine middle-class fantasy of leisure and
prosperity! It was a complete brainwash job.
 

Promotional photo from 1981 by Robert Matheu (via Club DEVO)

I keep waiting for that World’s Fair vision to materialize myself.




Yeah, well, forget it.
 
Read more after the jump…

READ ON▸


Posted by Oliver Hall
|
12.06.2022
07:26 pm
|
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Naked Vegas: Kelly Garni’s Images of the Showgirls, Strippers & Sex Workers of
Las Vegas

10.24.2022
02:52 pm
Topics:
Feminism
Music
Sex
Tags:
photography
Las Vegas
nude photography
Kelly Garni
Quiet Riot
Naked Vegas


A photograph by Kelly Garni that graces the cover of his new book, ‘Naked Vegas:
The Highs and Lows of A Photographers Journey’ (2022).
 

Kelly Garni has led a pretty storied life, his entire life. As a young teen, he
became best friends with another teen, as kids do. Except Garni’s friend
happened to be Randy Rhoads—a then budding guitar prodigy who would define the
ultimate heavy metal sound with his instrument. Garni, who played bass, and
Rhoads would go on to form Quiet Riot in the mid-70s along with vocalist Kevin
Dubrow and drummer Drew Forsyth. The music put out by this original
configuration of Quiet Riot is foundational, not just to heavy metal, but to
glam and punk not just musically, but also in the way they dressed. Bow ties,
polka dots, spandex and leather, with lots of the outfits coming from the ladies
department. Their appearance created a stir at Garni and Rhoads’ high school, so
much so they would routinely leave school quickly to avoid getting beat up by
students who just didn’t get it. This changed once Quiet Riot started getting
the attention they had worked so hard for and deserved. They were so popular,
they were invited to play their high school prom even though Garni and Rhoads
were barely attending classes anymore. Their classmates were no longer lining up
to give them a beatdown, they were cheering for them in a swanky ballroom in
Burbank. They would open for Van Halen who was coming up at the same time in
Southern California. Garni’s time in Quiet Riot came to an abrupt end after an
incident involving a gun and a drunken threat to kill Kevin Dubrow.
 

An early photo of Quiet Riot (Kelly Garni is on the left) and a ticket stub from
their gig with rivals Van Halen, April 23rd, 1977. Photo by Rob Sobol. Source.
 
In a transitional move not unlike David Lee Roth’s in the same decade, Garni
became an EMT in Los Angeles in the early 90s. As detailed in his wonderfully
conversational new book Naked Vegas: The Highs and Lows of a Photographer’s
Journey, he recalls the day his ambulance driver brought a 35mm camera along
with her. Garni had never really used a camera and after getting some tips from
his driver, he was hooked. At least until the demands of his job saving lives in
LA became too time consuming, and his infatuation with photography waned.
Thankfully that wouldn’t last and in the early 90s after going through what
Garni describes as a very “painful divorce” he would rediscover his love of the
lens. He spent time studying in the library and would chat up employees at
camera stores. He built his own darkroom. Garni has never had a lack of
self-confidence, and this of course worked to his advantage as he was embarking
on what would become decades of photographing beautiful women merely by
approaching them offering to take their photo and give it to them for free in
order to hone his craft. So enthralled with the idea of photography becoming a
legitimate career move, he quickly went into a bit of debt building a
photography studio in his home in Las Vegas. Then Garni got the call that
started it all from a modeling agency in Las Vegas that had seen some of his
images. In a stroke of luck (or more likely Garni’s eye for a pretty girl),
several of the girls he had recently photographed were actually working models.
He would spend the next two decades taking photos of Vegas showgirls, strippers,
models and sex workers, mostly in the setting of the Nevada desert. Here’s Garni
on what he calls his favorite part of his life thus far:

> “The next 20 years of my life (beginning in 1993) were by far my favorite. It
> was everything I loved. I made good money, was constantly around beautiful
> women, it was a non-stop party, and I was only in my early 40s. All that works
> for me. I had timing on my side when I started this. Timing and luck, the
> single greatest pairing in the history of the world for anything good that can
> happen to you.”

 

Garni getting artistic in the desert. All photos courtesy of Kelly Garni.
 
Garni’s assertion about this being the favorite part of his life makes sense,
especially given the fact that he was living in Las Vegas during the 90s when
“mega-resorts” were being built as quickly as possible. In ten years time Vegas
would build massive themed “family style” resorts such as Bellagio, MGM Grand,
the Luxor, Treasure Island, Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, Paris and Excalibur.
Along with this, the resorts featured enormous convention facilities to help
accommodate the 900 or so conventions held in the city each year. At the time,
modeling agencies were making a ton of money by deploying “booth babes” to hand
out company-specific merch to attendees in an effort to lure them into the
all-important sales pitch from the staff inside. Garni would end up creating
something called a “Zed Card” for loads of booth babes, which naturally got his
images more lip-service within the Las Vegas photography industry. Though he
also did other kinds of photography, demand for his nude photography soon took
up 50% of his overall business. Interestingly, in his book, Garni makes it very
clear that while he loves photographing women (as one should), he does not
derive any kind of “enjoyment” in full-frontal nude photography as he feels it
is “demeaning” to women. However, prides himself in not turning any client down,
regardless of the nature of the request. Garni is a lot of things, has seen a
lot of things, and has done a lot of things. Sometimes bad things (remember his
desire to kill Kevin Dubrow?). But that does not make him a bad guy, and his
catalog of photos in Naked Vegas convey a deep sense of admiration and respect
for his subjects, even if they are buck naked. Now you might be wondering, did
anything the level of “what happened in Vegas, stays in Vegas” happen to Garni
during one or more of his shoots? You better believe it. And just like the
debaucherous stories intertwined within the world of rock and roll, Kelly has a
few shady stories about some of his clients which also reinforce his work
ethic—never turn a client down. Here’s a doozy:

> “Some people made this business down right creepy. This middle-aged couple
> came to me for pictures of a worship service at their church. They were both
> pastors. I guess they did alright, they had about a hundred people there
> donating right and left. They first asked me to do family pictures, and later,
> some senior pictures of their two sons. Finally, they asked about the wife
> doing some nudes. I thought the request was a little strange, I mean, these
> two were preachers. But I suppose there’s nothing wrong with a married pair of
> people of the fi=aith wanting some spicy pictures. Except they wanted shots
> that were VERY spicy. The creepy part was that during the entire shoot, the
> husband stood behind me. Watching. Breathing heavily. It made my skin crawl.
> The guy was really getting off on this. My mantra is to turn down no work no
> matter the nature, they became good customers in that they did these shoots
> several times with the husband getting more excited each time, which was
> always uncomfortable for me. I heard they got divorced. I don’t miss them
> though—they were icky to work with.”

 

A few call girl cards featurning Garni’s photographs.
 
In addition to the women who worked in Vegas, Garni also did quite a lot of
photography for aspiring Playboy models. And many of the images in his 153 page
book are of women projecting that image. His photographs were also widely used
by Vegas call girls for their business cards. If you visited Vegas during the
90s, you will remember being bombarded by people, sometimes kids, aggressively
handing out fliers and cards on the strip. Most of these handouts ended up on
the sidewalks of the strip itself (something I can attest to as well), creating
a sidewalk plastered in photos of half-naked women with red dots on their
nippples (or not). As Garni never turned any work down, he would joke that when
people asked him where they could see his photographs, he said just go to the
strip and “look down.” Garni spent quite a while photographing Vegas sex workers
and to say he’s seen it all is an understatement. He formed friendships with
many of the women he photographed and would always ask them this question; ”
What’s the weirdest thing you ever had to do for a client?” As you might
imagine, Garni has an arsenal of sordid tales, including one wild one about a
customer the girls called “The Balloon Guy.”

> “Given the number of girls who have told me about ‘the balloon guy,’ he must
> have spent quite a bit of time doing ‘his thing’ around Vegas. And he must
> also be very rich, and very old. Balloon guy would book a large suite in a
> major hotel. Then he would make some calls. He’d order close to a thousand
> balloons, small, medium and large, but not filled with helium as he wanted
> balloons laid on the floor. He had ‘balloon people’ spread the balloons all
> over the suite, covering every inch of the floor, carpet, or tile. The bathtub
> would be filled with water and then covered in balloons. Then the girls would
> arrive, strip naked and remove all their jewelry. Balloon guy was naked too,
> Viagra-fueled and ready to go. It was showtime. The girls were then told to
> sit hard on the balloons and pop them using only their bare bottoms. Hence no
> jewelry. Apparently, that’s cheating. Pop! Pop! Pop! He would follow them
> around whacking off, and then, only when the last balloon left this Earth, did
> he himself pop so to speak. The girls said this all took about an hour.”

The Balloon Guy sounds like he belongs somewhere in Quentin Tarantino’s
character lexicon, as do some of the other stories in Naked Vegas. In it, Garni
takes us along with him on his journey through Las Vegas with his eyes and lens
pointed squarely on the women of Las Vegas—models, sex workers, strippers, and
exotic performers, you name it. Through his photos and experience, he
illuminates the some of the underbelly Vegas is known for, by navigating it
himself for the first time as a self-taught photographer. Naked Vegas: The Highs
and Lows of a Photographer’s Journey, is available now via Garni’s
soon-to-be-redesigned website or here. Like the other images in in this post,
most are NSFW. But you didn’t like that job anyway.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
With many thanks to Kelly Garni and Marcy Johnson.

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Under the Neon: Mole People of Las Vegas
Art Spiegelman: The Playboy Years
Bunny Hop: Peep inside the Playboy Clubs of the 60s, 70s & 80s
Playboy Playmates recreate their iconic covers 30 years on
Salvador Dali’s bizarre but sexy photoshoot for Playboy, 1973
Woody Allen gets into a pillow fight with a six-foot brunette in the pages of
Playboy, 1969



Posted by Cherrybomb
|
10.24.2022
02:52 pm
|
5 Comments

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‘Massacre at Central High’: Did this film concerning teen-on-teen violence
influence ‘Heathers’?

09.13.2022
06:00 am
Topics:
Movies
Tags:
cult films
Massacre at Central High
Heathers


 
The brilliant black comedy Heathers (1988) has frequently been compared to
another gem of a cult movie, Massacre at Central High (1976). This lesser-known
film is considered by many to have been an influence on Heathers—but was it
really? The truth is probably not what you think.




In the mid 1970s, Dutch filmmaker Renee (a/k/a Rene) Daalder was approached by a
couple of film producers about making a movie, for which they had a couple of
stipulations: nine high school kids had to be killed, and the picture had to be
called Massacre at Central High. Daalder accepted and went about penning the
script, imagining it as a political parable. He would also direct. 

In Massacre at Central High, a new student, David, arrives at the high school
and discovers it’s run by a band of bullies, a unit that includes Mark, who
David knew previously and had once defended against similar tormentors. David is
appalled by their actions, and that Mark is running with them. Once David makes
his opinions known to the junior fascists, he becomes yet another target of
their wrath. After David is hospitalized following an accident instigated by the
rulers of the school, they begin to drop.
 

 
The cast includes Robert Carradine, best remembered today as Lewis from the
Revenge of the Nerds series, and Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith, who appeared in many
other notable B-movies throughout the ‘70s and early ‘80s, including Phantom of
the Paradise (1974) and alongside Carradine in The Pom Pom Girls, released the
same year as Massacre.
 

L-R: Robert Carradine, Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith, and Lani O’Grady.

For nearly all its running time, no authority figures of any kind—teachers,
parents, police—are seen on screen, giving the proceedings a lawless, uneasy
quality. Another interesting element are the murders of the bullies, which are
executed with a slasher-like level of creativity, as they all involve gravity.
 

 
Massacre at Central High is a thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining
B-movie. Given Daalder was tasked with writing and directing nothing more than a
low budget exploitation picture with a sordid title and specific body count,
it’s remarkable that he created such a substantial film. It’s certainly better
than it needed to be.

There are several similarities between Massacre at Central High and Heathers.
Both involve a loner who’s transferred to a new school and goes about knocking
off the popular kids. The ruling cliques in both films are factions of four—male
in Massacre, female in Heathers—with one being a somewhat reluctant member of
the group, who has a close relationship with the killer. Both movies address the
power vacuum that takes place when the domineering students at a high school are
murdered. In addition, the intense finales of Massacre and Heathers, which
concern a plot by the killer to blow up the school, are remarkably similar.
 
 
Heathers writer/director Daniel Waters has been quoted as saying that although
he didn’t see Massacre at Central High prior to making his film, he had read
about it in one of Danny Peary’s Cult Movies books (specifically Cult Movies 2),
which were treasured by fans of obscure, wonderfully weird flicks looking for
guidance in the in the pre-web ‘80s. Here’s Waters:

> I most definitely had not seen the movie, but I do remember reading about it
> in the beloved book Cult Movies by Danny Peary . . . so I guess it was
> rattling around somewhere in my subconscious. (from Heathers by John Ross
> Bowie, 2010)

Intriguing, eh?




While Heathers is a comedy, albeit a dark one, Massacre at Central High takes
its subjects of teen violence and hierarchy seriously. But that’s not to say
it’s without depictions of less heady subjects found in similar teensploitation
films of the day.
 

 
In 1976, the movie came and went without much notice. Well after its release,
noted film critic Roger Ebert went out of his way to praise Massacre on Sneak
Previews, calling it “an intelligent and uncompromising allegory about the
psychology of violence.”

One of the common criticisms of Massacre is its use of a maudlin song that airs
a couple of times, including over the opening credits. “Crossroads of Your Life”
sounds like a lame TV show theme, but it’s not Daalder’s fault; it was forced on
him by the producers. Daalder, who was also a composer, had written a theme that
Derrel Maury, who played David, heard at the time and has said was an
incredible, haunting piece of avant-garde jazz.
 

 
On the international front, the Italian release was edited to include—if you can
believe it—depictions of hardcore sex (not of the original actors) and retitled,
Sexy Jeans.

For decades, Daalder wanted nothing to do with Massacre, believing it had been
taken from him, but he did embrace the film in his later years. He died in 2019.

In 2020, Synapse Films gave Massacre at Central High it’s Blu-ray debut, issuing
a fantastic, restored version of the film—supervised by Renee Daalder—as a
limited edition SteelBook. A standard version of the Blu-ray has just come out.
Among the bonus features are interviews with Daalder and cast members, along
with a making of documentary entitled, Hell in the Hallways. Get the Blu-ray via
the MVD Shop
or on Amazon. 
 





Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Seventeen’: Shocking made-for-PBS documentary on American teens was too real
for TV
Edgar Wright’s brilliant fake trailer for ‘Don’t’ spoofs exploitation films of
the ‘70s & ‘80s





Posted by Bart Bealmear
|
09.13.2022
06:00 am
|
4 Comments

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The Material Girl Goes Punk: Listen to Madonna’s Rare Demo Tape From 1979

08.23.2022
04:53 pm
Topics:
Music
Punk
Tags:
Madonna
1979
Breakfast Club


Madonna just wants to be punk. Doesn’t everybody?

In 1979 Madonna was dating musician Dan Gilroy of the Breakfast Club. The pair
were living in a converted synagogue in Queens, New York, poor but happy
pursuing their respective careers which at the time for Madonna was her quest to
be a dancer. Things weren’t exactly going great in that department for Madonna
so Gilroy taught her how to play the drums, which she took to pretty quickly.
This led to an explosion of creativity from the 21-year-old pre-Material Girl
Madonna—she wrote lyrics, and the music to accompany them. She learned to play a
few chords on the guitar and sing. In 2008, The Daily Beast released tapes
recorded by Gilroy back in the day when he and Madonna were together. He also
spoke about some of the first songs she wrote and recorded on his old cassette
player. The article itself refers to this work as the “lost Madonna tapes.” And
that description feels accurate as the songs you are about to listen to,
written, performed, and recorded by Madonna along with Gilroy, Angie Smit on
bass, and Dan’s brother Ed on guitar, come from her short time fronting the
Breakfast Club. They were self-released by Madonna on cassette in 1979. She had
only been in New York for about a year beforehand. She would, with Gilroy’s
encouragement and help, travel to France to work as a dancer and backup singer
in a Parisian disco. By 1981 she was singing her first record contract with
Gotham and, as they say, the rest is history.


Madonna (center) and the Breakfast Club. Photos via Youtube.
 

 

A photo of dark-haired Madonna during her time in the Breakfast Club.
 

Hardcore Madonna fans are likely aware of this period of Madonna’s development
as a pop star thanks to the 2019 documentary, Madonna and the Breakfast Club
(it’s out there streaming on multiple platforms if you’re interested in checking
it out). Hardcore fans will also know Madonna has been known to perform versions
of these songs (and other early material) live. Here’s the thing—much like the
early days of the Go-Go’s, Madonna is definitely flexing her affinity for punk
rock while mixing it with her own brand of spirited pop which the entire world
would soon embrace and others would emulate. Now, if you’ve never heard this
version of Madonna, and dig your punk with a side of pop, you are going to love
these raw jams. It’s also quite compelling to hear them, knowing what was to
come from Madonna in a few short years. The demo itself (which contains other
recordings), went to auction in 2009 and sold for an astonishing $6400.

So before it disappears online (as it does from time to time), listen to four
songs from the demo right here.








Four songs from Madonna’s self-released demo cassette with the Breakfast Club,
1979. Includes ‘Shit on the Ground/Safe Neighborhood,’ ‘Shine a Light,’ ‘Little
Boy,’ and ‘Love Express.’

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
French and Saunders read a poorly translated Hungarian interview with Madonna
The Devil’s discotheque: Madonna’s half-time show a Satanic Ritual
When Madonna met William S. Burroughs
Young Madonna performing at Danceteria, 1982
Unknown Madonna opens for The Smiths, completely fails to impress them, New
Year’s Eve, 1983
Nirvana and Steve Albini prank Evan Dando about working with Madonna, 1993



Posted by Cherrybomb
|
08.23.2022
04:53 pm
|
1 Comment

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Watch teaser for ‘Lost Futures: A Film About Mark Fisher’ with music by Mark
Stewart

07.26.2022
05:44 am
Topics:
Movies
Music
Politics
Tags:
Mark Stewart
Mark Fisher
Niall McCann


Photo of Mark Stewart by Chiara Meattelli and Dominic Lee

Mark Stewart on Mark Fisher:
“HE CAME FROM THE PRESENT TO SAVE THE FUTURE AND CHANGE THE PAST.”

The question Mark, is this: Where to begin the discussion of the great
free-thinker and theorist that was Mark Fisher – when the object was somebody
who dealt with the ambiguity of time itself?

Can I outdo the last intellectual missive on the matter? I very much doubt it.
Should I want to? If I learnt anything about Mark, I can wholeheartedly say no,
I shouldn’t.  He would much rather I invest my time reaching the audiences, who
as yet, are entirely unaware of both him and his work.  Or, better still,
devising methods of my own, capable of derailing the deluge of despair, that
dictates your cyclical resignation to “whatever will be, will be”, as Doris once
sang.  Mark’s switching of the baton to me, is not a position of privilege that
I, and I alone hold, you understand? Mark made the case for all to seize it –
and in turn pass it on – if we are to achieve what is required to tack through
the ill-wind that blows. And that is poignant. For it was Raymond Briggs, who,
with his graphic novel When The Wind Blows (pub. 1982), made his much needed
anti-nuclear narrative, accessible to children.  Briggs, like Fisher and other
great writers, recognised that in order to avert what is seen by some as the
inevitable future – one must reach the youngest of audiences.  Far too many of
those – now in their 40s and 50s – are fully accepting of all that their
political ‘leaders’ feed them. 




Mark’s work, as well as being a call to arms, is an open invitation to be
challenged in order to instil agency, and ignite – with a ferociousness like I
have never seen before – an anarchical phenomenon that has reached even the eye
of Chile’s president, Gabriel Boric. Therefore, proving itself capable of
playing an entirely different game, and winning. Which, in itself, brings me to
my penning this and contributing to Niall McCann’s forthcoming film about Mark
Fisher’s life & work – Lost Futures.  Niall is committed to making Mark
accessible to as many and varied an audience as possible. Let’s assist. For
every person who’s aware of Mark Fisher’s work, there are infinite others who
aren’t.  If his unparalleled discourse is to hold the status of his ‘lasting
legacy’, which we, his devotees rightly bestow upon him, then it is us – those
already well-versed in his vision – who carry the honour of the arduous task of
spreading his word. And yes, it will be arduous, but that’s the least we, who
claim to admire Fisher, should be prepared to shoulder, if we are worthy of
declaring ourselves to be forever changed and inspired by his work. It’s worth
remembering the integral role that the blessing and a curse – that is the
internet – has to play, in facilitating these necessary connections.  When
Fisher cast his critique of the net, so ably identifying all its holes, he did
so in the hope that it would all be stitched up with better solutions. After
all, there is no catch to be had, without the means to captivate what lies
beneath. He plunged us to the depths in helping us to understand the effects of
social media, so as to provide us with the determination to surface, with all
manner of attached material coming up for air with us.

Mark wanted everyone to be in on the act.  He was more than capable of
disproving his most ardent ‘academic’ critics, but he’d sooner awaken the
opposition than rebuke them. He never favoured wallowing in one-upmanship over
the wonderment of a new inductee to the cause.  Mark knew full well that the
most vital respondents to his cries, were not those with enviable résumés they’d
had the privilege of designing themselves, but instead those that had theirs
dictated to them. The people who’ve spent a life being underestimated for all
manner of reasons beyond their control, but most of all, their lack of access to
a formal licence to question EVERYTHING. We need them. 

Mark talked much about his belief of the links between mental health and
circumstance, so if little blue pills that help get it up, or surgeries that
leave patients feeling fuller, less flat, are made readily available on the NHS
prescriptions list, then shouldn’t Fisher’s back catalogue be on it too? He
stabs right at the heart of the mental health plague. No amount of therapy slugs
or anti-depressants can better arm the depressed with the tools they need to
understand their plight, than Mark Fisher, surely?  And where better to reach
the afflicted, than the environments that see very little material that speaks
to our contemporary natural condition.

I spoke to Niall McCann (director of ‘Lost Futures’) about my writing this piece
and he made reference to a quote that Fisher had once said of prisons: “Only
prisoners have time to read, and if you want to engage in a twenty year long
research project funded by the state, you will have to kill someone.” No greater
truth. And right there, lies one of our biggest opportunities, staring us in the
face.  For as well as the need to reach the youngest of audiences with thought
provoking material to avoid the continuation of the status quo, is it not
equally important to reach all – who, by definition of their circumstances – are
a ‘captive audience’? Prisoners; long-term hospital patients, mental health ward
patients; ATU admissions; care home residents? After all, it is they, who tend
to have unrivalled lived experience of the effects of privatisation. None of the
settings in which these potential audiences reside are considered hip so get
overlooked – and so too does the opportunity to learn from those within. 

Surely this has to change?  How to achieve that? Answers on a postcard to the
usual address please, or perhaps better still, a deleted one. See it as a random
act of kindness. Remember those? It’s time for retiring ‘radicals’ everywhere,
to cast aside the copies of Keep Calm And Colour In Unicorns and instead
inundate the mail boxes of anybody and everybody you would ordinarily deem to
‘have nothing in common with’. What’s the alternative? That you continue with a
life of blinkered, onanistic self-assurance, immune to the truth of the
surrounding landscape? Is this who you want to be? Only satisfied when you’ve
fulfilled your own needs, regardless of who or what it denies in the process?
It’s time to diversify and digress from the barely tolerated diet, and instead
force yourself to swallow your most unpalatable hypocrisies. Break them down
with a good glug of acid and permit your imagination to transform them into
first class fertile matter, to enable new life to flourish in pastures new. 

I asked Bobby Gillespie and Obsolete Capitalism to summarise what they believe
to be the essence of Mark Fisher’s work for inclusion in this piece.




Bobby Gillespie:

> “The beauty of Mark Fisher’s laser sharp critique of the destructive effects
> of life under Neoliberalism, was that it spoke to ordinary people in plain
> language that went beyond the often-hermetic intellectual world of academia. 
> He is greatly missed. We need more voices like Mark’s, more than ever.”

So, let’s assist in courting the audience Mark craved to reach the most. In
another conversation with a friend I’ve recently introduced to Mark’s work, they
said: “It feels to me like there is a feast of fawning over Mark’s theories and
a famine of practice out there.” A valid point.  There are people pushing
themselves to continue his praxis – one such example that comes to mind is
Oneohtrix Point Never. There are numerous others, but why stop there?  What can
be gained by knowing much of what is wrong and how it occurred, if we just hoard
the horrors in the hope that somebody else will pick up the slack in remedying
them? It ain’t gonna happen. Meanwhile, the tendency to promote oneself as one
of Fisher’s dedicated disciples to the already switched on, on social media,
prevails.  Perhaps a sin we are all guilty of to a greater or lesser degree I
expect, but as the expression goes: about as much use as an ashtray on a
motorbike.  If you’re already familiar with Mark Fisher’s work, by now, you
might be vexed that I’ve made little or no reference to Capitalist Realism, or
Hauntology…etc. Maybe that’s because primarily Mark was my mate. I miss him. And
for me, promoting the generosity of Mark Fisher the person, will always come
first before his works. Mark gave you those. They are all available to be
devoured and shared. Please do. The last word goes to Obsolete Capitalism,
proving that although Mark wanted to appeal to everyone, he had a habit of
impressing upon some of us an acuity that felt special, and unique to our
innermost thoughts and experiences.

Obsolete Capitalism, June 2022:

> “Like other great thinkers of the past – Nietzsche and Deleuze among others –
> Mark Fisher is a writer with “no mediation”. What is left when he tears away
> with a simple and definitive gesture, the enveloping screen on which the great
> epic fable of ‘capitalist realism’ is projected?  Only emptiness.  Instead of
> living in an age ‘saturated with history’ as Nietzsche wrote, Fisher has
> clearly and capably described our age as ‘saturated with emptiness’.  While
> this “emptiness” expands into every corner of capitalism, it also discharges
> the supposed systemic alternatives opposing it.  Helping us in liberation from
> ‘horror vacui’ and recognising the emptiness in the false fullness of the
> Real, is his most generous and enduring intellectual legacy.”

A statement about film-in-progress Lost Futures from director Niall McCann:




> The video we have produced for “Storm Crow” is an attempt to visualise Mark
> Fisher’s ideas and combine them with music which comes from a similar place.
> An experiment in matching his ideas to Mark Stewart’s music in a playful way,
> recontextualizing old TV advertisements—which both Marks would have grown up
> watching—zombie movies, along with pivotal social and political moments which
> helped bring us to what Fisher called “Capitalist Realism” which is the idea
> that it is now easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of
> capitalism.
> 
> The vast body of work Fisher left behind explores capitalism’s unassailable
> role in our lives, the closing off of any sense of a future different from the
> present, and the effects of this on us as individuals. His writings lifted up
> the veil and showed the world afresh to his readers, and that’s the core idea
> in the music video.
> 
> The film itself revolves around something which is central to Mark Fisher’s
> work: the future. When I was young the future was everywhere. It could be
> anything, it seemed rife with possibilities, for something better. Now, it’s
> only talked about as a more terrifying version of the present. This is a film
> about the futures we have lost and how we might start imagining new ones
> again.
> 
> We will use Mark Fisher’s life and his brilliant ideas as a guide through some
> of the most urgent questions of our time.

 





 
‘Storm Crow’ by Mark Stewart also features on On-U Sound’s Pay It All Back Vol 8
compilation. Listen / Order Pay It All Back Vol 8.
For more information about Lost Futures, a film about Mark Fisher currently in
development, head here.
Niall McCann (Redemption Films)
Mark Stewart Official Website
Repeater Books
Obsolete Capitalism

Words by Mark Stewart, June 2022 ©




Posted by Richard Metzger
|
07.26.2022
05:44 am
|
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The Baker Street Regulars: The Obscure ‘70s band that featured former members of
Big Star

07.25.2022
05:53 am
Topics:
Books
Music
Tags:
Big Star
Chris Bell


Big Star’s original lineup. L-R: Andy Hummel, Chris Bell, Alex Chilton, and Jody
Stephens.
 
Listen to the second part of my appearance on the Discograffiti podcast,
reviewing the Big Star catalog, at the end of this article. Part one is here.

The following post was first published in 2018; it’s been lightly edited.

Being a big fan of Big Star, I was excited to receive an advance copy of the
oral history book, There Was a Light: The Cosmic History of Chris Bell and the
Rise of Big Star (HoZac Books). I started flipping through it and was
immediately drawn to the story of the Baker Street Regulars. The band existed
for a brief period in 1976, and featured two former members of Big Star, Chris
Bell and Jody Stephens. Considering this was a seldom discussed part of the Big
Star story, I asked HoZac Books if we could run the Baker Street Regulars
passages in the book. They not only said “Yes,” but provided us with the
majority of the images here—many of which have rarely been seen before. There
Was a Light author, Rich Tupica, has even written an introduction just for us.
 

Chris Bell in Ardent Studios, pre-Big Star.

> Often overshadowed by his iconic Big Star bandmate Alex Chilton, the genius of
> the late Chris Bell wasn’t truly uncovered until years after he was tragically
> killed in a car wreck in December 1978. The 27-year old remained in obscurity
> until 1992, when I Am the Cosmos, his posthumously released solo album was
> finally released to much praise.
> 
> Today, Beck and Wilco cover the enigmatic songwriter’s works, while members of
> R.E.M. still praise his work when asked about their favorite bands—yet at the
> time of his death, Bell was anything but a rock ’n roll legend. After the
> release of 1972’s #1 Record, Big Star’s debut LP on Ardent/Stax Records, Chris
> suffered a bout a clinical depression and heatedly exited the Memphis-based
> group—the band he masterminded from the ground up. He also had a falling out
> with Ardent Studios owner and Big Star producer John Fry. His life was in
> shambles and he realized his dream of breaking Big Star into the mainstream
> wasn’t going to happen.

 

Big Star in Alex Chilton’s bedroom, posing for a ‘#1 Record’ promo photo.
(Courtesy of Carole Manning)




> With Bell out of the picture, Alex Chilton and John Fry took the reins and
> kept Big Star going for two more equally acclaimed albums, Radio City and
> Third/Sister Lovers—but with little financial successes, the band fully
> dissolved.
> 
> Meanwhile, Bell not only became a devout born again Christian, he also
> attempted to launch a solo career. He even moved to London with his older
> brother David Bell for much of 1975 and pitched his reels of solo material to
> any A&R rep who’d meet with them. They were ultimately turned down by every
> label. By 1976, America’s Bicentennial, Chris was back in Memphis living at
> his parent’s upper-class estate in Germantown.
> 
> For money, Bell flipped burgers at his successful father’s fast food chain,
> while in the evenings he played as a sideman guitar slinger alongside fellow
> Memphians Van Duren in a short-lived band called the Baker Street Regulars.
> The band would never record a single track, but its short list of dates at low
> key Memphis bars would be the only time a full band would ever play Chris
> Bell’s solo material in front of an audience.

 

Chris Bell on stage during a Baker Street Regulars gig. (Courtesy of Van Duren)

The following excerpt is a portion of Chapter 20 from There Was a Light: The
Cosmic History of Chris Bell and the Rise of Big Star (HoZac Books), which
details this period of Bell’s life.

> Chapter 20: Baker Street Regulars: 1976
> Within weeks of his return from England, Chris connected with Van Duren and
> promptly formed the Baker Street Regulars—a Memphis-based bar band named after
> the Sherlock Holmes characters. The group—which also comprised former Big Star
> drummer Jody Stephens and guitarist Mike Brignardello—played Van’s and Chris’s
> original tunes along with some semi-obscure covers. For the first time since
> his pre-Big Star days, Chris played music just for fun.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Mike Brignardello — Bassist, Baker Street Regulars, Nashville session player:
> I grew up in Memphis, then hit the road immediately after high school in the
> early ’70s. I was in a little club band and learning about being a musician,
> then I came back in the mid-’70s. Big Star had come and gone in my absence,
> but I heard about them when I got back. They were local heroes, already a
> semi-cult band. One of the first guys I met when I came back to Memphis was
> Van Duren. We hit it off and started playing together. He was the guy who
> hooked us up with Chris and Jody.
> 
> Van Duren — Musician, songwriter, solo, Baker Street Regulars: The Baker
> Street Regulars was the name when the band first started—Chris thought of it.
> In December of ’75, we started to get together and rehearse, but we had been
> kicking around the idea of forming a band for months before that. The first
> time I went out to the Bells’ house, Jody took me over there for our first
> rehearsal. We turn off down this street and it turned into this winding
> driveway. You couldn’t even see the house from the street, the property was so
> huge.

 

Chris Bell poses in front of his parents’ home, Christmas 1977. (Courtesy of
Bell Family Archive)

> Mike Brignardello: Chris lived in, to my eyes—at least back in the day—a
> full-blown mansion. I remember turning down the driveway and driving, and
> driving, and driving and thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me! He lives on
> this estate?” I had grown up as a poor kid in Memphis. He had us set up and
> play in the living room because his parents were overseas for like a month. I
> was like, “Who goes overseas for a month?”
> 
> Van Duren: Chris was different, obviously upper crust. I come from a
> blue-collar background, so that was a new world for me. He was from privilege
> and he acted that way sometimes, but he could also be quite humble. He always
> had a twinkle in his eye, much like Alex in a way. Sometimes you couldn’t tell
> if he was putting you on or being serious.
> 
> Mike Brignardello: We practiced in a corrugated-metal storage room—it wasn’t
> insulated or anything like that. We’d just roll the door up on hot, humid
> Memphis days and rehearse. My girlfriend got that photo of us in there. I
> thought it perfectly summed up where we were at. We were hungry to play. We
> sweat through those rehearsals.

 

The Baker Street Regulars in the metal storage unit. L-R: Chris Bell, Mike
Brignardello, Jody Stephens, and Van Duren. (Courtesy of Beverly Baxter Ross)

> Van Duren: It was pretty miserable in that twenty-foot-by-ten-foot mini
> storage—those things were brand-new in 1976. It was on Lamar Avenue and was
> the first of its kind in Memphis. One day, Chris showed up two hours late for
> rehearsal out there. He walks in wearing these tennis togs with the sweater
> wrapped around his neck and says, “Sorry I’m late, Tommy Hoehn and I had a
> vision on the tennis courts.” I didn’t know if it had to do with his religious
> beliefs, or if I was supposed to take him seriously or not. I was a little
> bent out of shape, but I just laughed when he said that. It wasn’t the first
> or the last time he was late. He operated on Chris time. Even so, by January
> of ’76, we were out playing.
> 
> The Baker Street Regulars landed shows at now-defunct venues, like Aligahpo’s
> on Highland Street by the University of Memphis, Procapé Gardens in Midtown on
> Madison, and the High Cotton Club, just south of Overton Square.
> 
> Van Duren: We played those three clubs about three times each, but the first
> gig was in the springtime in Oxford, Mississippi at Ole Miss at a fraternity
> party. We did originals and some cover material—but the covers were Beatles,
> Bee Gees and a lot of fairly obscure things at the time, like Todd Rundgren.
> We played things nobody had picked up on yet, especially in Mississippi. We
> threw in my songs, some Big Star songs and a few of Chris’s songs. We’d do “I
> Am the Cosmos,” “Make a Scene” and “Fight at the Table.” We learned Chris’s
> songs by listening to what he was calling demos—what later emerged as his solo
> album. It was a wonderful experience, even though when we played gigs we were
> pretty much ignored. That’s probably why we didn’t play much in the six months
> we were together.

 
Continues after the jump…

READ ON▸


Posted by Bart Bealmear
|
07.25.2022
05:53 am
|
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