“It’s kind of beautiful, though, the dark…”

In roughly speaking his Twin Peaks/Wild At Heart era, director David Lynch executive produced—and directed two episodes—of a three-part HBO mini-series, Hotel Room, that was broadcast over two days, January 8 and 9, 1993.

The quirky dramas are strangely absorbing, like most of Lynch’s work, but mercifully a bit more straightforward because he didn’t actually write the scripts. Hotel Room is the work of author Barry Gifford, (who also wrote Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula, the novel Lynch’s film was based on, and the screenplay for Lost Highway) and Jay “Bright Lights, Big City” McInerney.

The stagebound Hotel Room takes place in the same New York City hotel room (number 603 of the Railroad Hotel) in 1969, 1992, and 1936, respectively. The guests change from story to story, but the hotel employees do not. Nor do they age.

In his book of teleplays, Barry Gifford writes in the preface:

“The only rules regarding composition were that the action take place in specific years–“Tricks,” for example, is set in 1969—and be set in a particular New York City hotel room (numbered 603), the corridor immediately outside the room, and the hotel lobby. A bellboy and maid, the only continuing characters in the series, were to be included in the plays at my option…

“Blackout” was written in two days with the admonition from Messrs. Montgomery [co-producer Monty Montgomery] and Lynch that it be “something our grandmothers could watch.” I told Monty that would not be a problem; I’ll write the play, I said, you guys gag and tie up the old ladies.”

Each episode begins with the director solemnly intoning:

For a millennium, the space for the hotel room existed undefined. Mankind captured it, gave it shape and passed through. And sometimes in passing through, they found themselves brushing up against the secret names of truth.

In a note to “Tricks,” which stars Harry Dean Stanton, Glenne Headly, and Freddie Jones as two guys and a hooker, Gifford wrote:

The pace of the play is slow but tense, the actors’ movements almost agonizingly exaggerated, their words deliberate with a kind of mock profundity. The impression should be one or two steps removed from reality.

That it is. The two other stories were McInerney’s “Getting Rid of Robert,” directed by longtime SNL producer/director James Signorelli and starring Griffin Dunne, Deborah Kara Unger and Mariska Hargitay; and “Blackout” with Crispin Glover and Alicia Witt. The soundtrack was provided by frequent Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti.

Speaking of David Lynch and hotel rooms, Lynch has designed a suite at the Hotel Lutetia in Paris. I thought it would have red walls!

Below, all three Hotel Room episodes, back to back.
 

DJs. Criminals with a license to shoot shit into our eardrums.

This commercial, directed by Federico Brugia and Filmmaster Productions, purports to be for Italian Rolling Stone Magazine. I can’t find much about it online except for this information on Ads of the World and Rolling Stone Italy.

It’s either a real ad commissioned by Rolling Stone or else something for the director’s reel, it’s unclear to me. Whatever the case, I’m sure the ad—which is basically calling out DJs as assholes—is going to piss a lot of people off. If the (obvious) object of this exercise is to get people talking about Italian Rolling Stone, I think it worked. Maybe they should consider renaming the magazine “Trolling Stone” if they keep this up!

I must admit, I did mildly chuckle at it. 

Not safe for work.
 

 
Via Nerdcore

 
It’s a little early to be grooving on Christmas merch, but this was too good to resist. The online store Shredders was offering this fucking fantastic Christmas sweater with the Motörhead hell-boar on it, but it’s been yanked. (They used to have a Wu-Tang sweater too, but that one too is no longer available.)

I’m guessing a stern message from Motörhead’s legal representatives put an end to that.

So hey, Motörhead—why don’t you offer an official one? I don’t want to support copyright infringers if I can help it…. I just want my own Motörhead Christmas sweater. Is that too much to ask?

Thank you Annie Zed!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Ace of Spades: Motörhead playing cards
Motörhead Beach Ball

 
By now it’s an article of faith that the Beatles are great, the Beatles were the best band that ever was, the Beatles changed the world, and the Beatles wrote and recorded the best ten thousand songs that ever were. Naturally the scale of the Beatles’ success, especially in the first 2-3 years after they broke, is a big part of the story. The near-universal love for the Beatles on the part of teenage listeners everywhere caused a massive disruption to the entertainment market—in the mythology of the Beatles, it was what World War I was to modernism.
 

 
The Beatles remain as big as ever, but the weird detritus that accompanied their rise, well, that tends to fade. So we kind of ... forget that for a time there, dozens and dozens of acts copied, mimicked, “were inspired by” the Beatles, and not all of them were especially scrupulous about the consumer understanding whether their LPs were really from the Beatles or really from ... BJ Brock and the Sultans, or the Manchesters or The Original or the Blue Beats or on and on. Actually I think these albums were mostly directed at the teens’ parents who wouldn’t have the ability to remember just what moptop band young Gidget kept babbling about at the breakfast table this morning. You can just envision the heated conversation a day later: “Daaaaaaaaaaad, this isn’t the right one! I wanted the Beatles!!” “How was I supposed to know!? It says ‘Beatlemania’ right there!”

I ran across this video several years ago, and it never fails to amuse and inform. In keeping with the mock-academic trappings of the informal “Adult Education” lecture series held at Park Slope’s Union Hall, its title is “Yeah Yeah ... Uh, No: Exploring the Audiovisual Phenomenon of Beatles-Lookalike Long-Playing Albums,” but it’s really a vastly entertaining slide show, a comprehensive look at the year or two in which the marketplace saw a glut of albums masquerading as Beatles product. Few people know this terrain better than WFMU DJ Gaylord Fields, and it’s a pleasure to behold his geeky wonder (and corny jokes) at the naked greed and deception on display here. Misleading text and pictures, outright lies, all in the name of conning people into thinking that some band’s bassist just might be George Harrison if you squinted just so. It’s a parable for our times, a parable ... of America.
 

 
Really this is a lesson about capitalism first and foremost. You can’t have a mass phenomenon without a mass market, and, as Fields rightly emphasizes, the real start of the story isn’t so much the Beatles themselves but rather the reaction of countless record executives waking up the morning after the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show determined to sell a Beatles album come hell or high water, whether the Beatles were involved or not. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and popularity inspires copycats.
 

 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Beatlemaniac hell-bent on generating army of John Lennons from tooth DNA
Two hours of Beatlemania: ‘The Compleat Beatles’

 
Published in 1993 by the Queer caucus of the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, (formerly the above-ground auxiliary to the Weather Underground), this sly little bit of radical propaganda was handed out during the 1993 National Lesbian/Gay Rights March in Washington, DC. The event was far from culturally or ideologically uniform, with Sir Ian McKellen, RuPaul, Eartha Kitt and Urvashi Vaid (radical, anti-assimilation queer activist) all present.

At the time, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” was becoming a high-profile issue, and as gay rights began to seep into the mainstream, the more radical queer communities began to push back with a critique of the newly “family-friendly” direction of the movement. Of course, now queer rights are almost wholly represented in mass media as naught but marriage and military service, and those who want no part of the US military or the wars they fight are dismissed as marginal malcontents.

Given the scatter-shot state of the anti-war movement at present, maybe we can bring this guy back as a new mascot?
 
Via Bolerium Books

 
I normally dislike it when B&W photos get the colorized treatment. I feel like it takes a certain je ne sais quoi from the original image and the photographer’s intention to catch a particular moment in its own time. However, these colorized photos by redditors from /r/colorizedhistory and /r/colorization I kinda dig. I still prefer the original B&W images, but they do somehow make you feel like the past isn’t so… distant.

You can view the rest of the collection on Imgur.

Mark Twain in the garden, circa 1900
 

Auto wreck in Washington D.C, 1921
 

 
More colorized photos after the jump…
 

 
Talk Talk’s journey from their start as opportunistic Duran Duran wannabes to the final shape of their most lasting influence as an innovative, atmospheric, experimental wonder - who inspired not just Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac albums but the entire post-rock genre via Tortoise and Bark Psychosis - is one of the most amazing stories to emerge from New Wave. That story has been told in depth elsewhere, so I’ll not rehash it further here except to note that discussion of their early work sometimes tends to dismissively focus on how awesome it wasn’t compared to their last two albums, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock.

I beg to differ. Not only were none of their pop chart contemporaries doing anything that approached the depth of songs like “Such a Shame” and “I Believe In You,” even their first album’s blatant attempts at hitching on to the popularity of the New Romantic trend showed that the seeds of later greatness had already been planted - this was absolutely not a fallow period. The most telling comparison is not between early and late Talk Talk, but between Talk Talk and The Reaction, TT leader Mark Hollis’ prior band. There’s an actual A/B comparison to make there, since Talk Talk’s namesake debut single was in fact a remake of a song by the earlier band, which probably would have been lost altogether had it not turned up on a Beggars Banquet label comp. Check it out.
 

The Reaction, Talk Talk

And now, here’s the version the of-a-certain-age types will remember from its saturation airplay on MTV.
 

 
As goofy as Hollis’ over-emoting in that video seems, there’s still no contest. The original is kinda meh even without comparing it to the later hit version, and then Simon Brenner’s piano solo just absolutely cements Talk Talk’s superiority - it gets me every time - and he’s the guy that bailed when the band started its drift towards art-rock! (Probably not a terrible thing, all in all - here’s one of his solo efforts. I give it less than a minute in before you get why you’ve never heard of him.)

But while “Talk Talk” didn’t become a good song until other musicians re-worked it, The Reaction did release an enjoyable single - “I Can’t Resist/I’m A Case.” Enjoy it here via YouTube user toorlooo, whose page is a treasure trove of rare and interesting Talk Talk material.

The Reaction, I Can’t Resist
 

The Reaction, I’m A Case
 

 
Gingham and strawberries… because punk rock.

 
By far my favorite show all year has been La Luz. They’re one of those rare bands with a referential sound that still manages to feel innovative and gutsy (a precious rarity when so many groups sway derivative, “retro,” or kitschy). The songs are sexy and sleepy and mournful and absolutely gorgeous. The musicianship is deliberate but elegantly raw. And the band is simply hypnotic on stage. Seriously, check them out.

Unfortunately, the group’s van was hit by a semi the night before last, totaling their transportation, destroying nearly all their equipment, and injuring members. They’ve been forced to cut their tour short, and their record label has taken up a recovery collection. From their Facebook:

Last night was probably the most terrifying experience of any of our lives. But we’re ok! Thanks for the love and well wishes everyone. We lost a lot of things (pretty much everything we had) and got pretty banged up when we were hit by a semi on our way to Seattle last night, but we’re just awfully glad to be alive and we’ll be back on our feet in no time. For those of you who want to help out financially, Hardly Art set up this paypal to help us pay for some stuff and money we lost. Love to you all!

While no one can tend to every tragedy, I know the folks at Dangerous Minds have the best taste in music. A young, all-woman outfit creating fantastic tunes is the very sort thing we’d all like to support when we can, right? So, if you’d like to donate to their recovery fund, you can do it here (You might have to be logged into PayPal for the link to work). Remember folks, musicians don’t get disability, sick days, or medical insurance. Get well soon, ladies!
 

 
“Bubbafication” is a term referring to the affectation of redneckishness by a refined, cosmopolitan, wealthy, or otherwise privileged person. Why would you do such a thing? Well, endearing oneself to the reactionary, white working class can pay off big.

For example, George W. Bush, born into a millionaire family (with an alleged “pork rinds” fan for a patriarch) went to Harvard and Yale. That didn’t stop him from buying a ranch and playing cowboy, an act he conveniently trotted out most frequently during election season. And here we have Morton Downey Jr., son of a famous singer, already quite rich and famous in his own right as the king of trash TV, singing a Merle Haggard song about the supposed decline of America, a subject he gleefully monetized with his every utterance.

I won’t go so far as to say I’m sympathetic with Merle Haggard, but I will say I understand his particular brand of resentment and disaffection. Those are the people I come from—not “Okies from Muskogee” per se—but a rural, southern, culturally insular, god-fearing folk. Many of them manage to be conned by wealthiest of the wealthy politicians, over and over again, so that no matter what happens in their shitty lives, they always manage to blame immigrants or black people or feminists or the decline of religion or god knows what else.

Check out some of the lyrics to Haggard’s “Are The Good Times Really Over”

I wish a buck was still silver
It was back when the country was strong
Back before Elvis
Before the Vietnam war came along

Before The Beatles and ‘Yesterday’
When a man could still work, still would
The best of the free life behind us now
And are the good times really over for good?

Are we rolling down hill
Like a snowball headed for Hell?
With no kind of chance
For the Flag or the Liberty Bell

Wish a Ford and a Chevy
Could still last ten years, like they should
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?

I wish Coke was still Cola
And a joint was a bad place to be
It was back before Nixon lied to us all on TV

Before microwave ovens
When a girl could still cook and still would
The best of the free life behind us now
Are the good times really over for good?

It’s all been downhill since Elvis? Ah, that bullshit nostalgia for those non-existent “good ole days!” It’s the very zeitgeist of the Republican base! What’s earnestly ignorant in Merle Haggard is ambitious and unctuously detestable in Morton Downey Jr, but man if it doesn’t work, over and over again. You know damned well there must be dozens of Republican pols kissing the asses of the Duck Dynasty and Hillbilly Handfishin’ casts, even as I type this.
 

 
The Move—vocalist Carl Wayne, guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Roy Wood, bassist Trevor Buton and drummer Bev Bevan—performed a ten song set on Colour Me Pop, one of the BBC’s earliest color shows, on January 4, 1969. Due to the BBC’s penchant reusing videotapes most of the Colour Me Pop programs, including a set by the Kinks and a Strawbs outing that featured David Bowie doing mime, have been lost to history, although a small handful survive, including outings from Moody Blues and The Small Faces performing selections from their Ogdens Nutgone Flake concept album. Thankfully this stellar set from The Move also escaped the BBC’s degaussing magnet.

1. I Can Hear The Grass Grow
2. Beautiful Daughter
3. The Christian Life
4. Flowers In The Rain
5. The Last Thing On My Mind
6. Wild Tiger Woman
7. Goin’ Back
8. Fire Brigade
9. Something
10. Blackberry Way

(“Blackberry Way,” which is Wood’s sardonic answer to “Penny Lane” was one of The Move’s best numbers, great to see it included here)

Although they were inarguably one of the top British bands of the era—they scored nine top ten singles—The Move only ever played a small handful of American gigs including an October 1969 opening set for The Stooges in Detroit, a show in LA and and two shows at the Fillmore West in San Francisco.