Lately I’ve been really intrigued by LA-based teen hip hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (or Odd Future for short) and I’ve been going back and checking out their musical output and videos. Odd Future is like the collective id of 4chan set to a beat. As a longtime watcher/commentator on underground culture, I’m thrilled to report that—finally, at long last—there is actually some truly rebellious music being created again by young people. Something as insane, nihilistic and as thrilling as punk rock was for me when I was a kid. I’m not saying I completely understand their appeal or that I necessarily relate to what the members of Odd Future are rapping about, but then again, I’m a married 45-year-old white guy and I don’t think the teenagers in Odd Future give a flying fuck what I think. Or what you or anybody else thinks, for that matter. Nor should they. They’re teenagers.
The kids in this scene are both media savvy and fearless in the extreme—not unlike the Jackass crew, who they have a fair amount in common with, as you’ll see. With the goal being to create a viral YouTube clip, this really is a brilliant example of how you would go about topping what has come before you. This video, “Earl,” features Odd Future’s Earl Sweatshirt (who was 16-years-old when this was made) and friends drinking something nasty and getting way fucked-up, going skateboarding, pulling off their fingernails, vomiting, spitting blood and pulling their own teeth out. You think I’m joking? Hit play.
A lot of you will probably watch this video with shock and disgust, but before you condemn their artform, keep in mind that the object of this video WAS to shock and disgust folks like you! (Pasolini didn’t exactly make Salo to entertain people, either). More than that, it was made to thrill Odd Future’s fanbase and that it does. If you ask me, their artistic strategy is right on the money—Were you a little shocked? Check. A little upset? Check—and 100% successful in delivering on what it promises in extremely NSFW amounts! Say what you like about this video, young Mr. Sweatshirt and co. certainly have the courage of their convictions, whatever these convictions… may be… Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All are the honey badger of hip hop and as we all know, honey badger don’t give a shit.
Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All are booked to play this year’s Coachella Festival but it’s up in the air if Earl Sweatshirt, currently doing time in some sort of “boot camp” for juvenile offenders, will be able to join them. With the lame line-up this year, Odd Future’s set should get loads of attention. I suspect they’re going to go all out, but how do you top something like this? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Kenneth Williams was born today in Bingfield Street, London, just off the Caledonian Road, on the 22nd of February 1926. According to his mother, he was born at two-thirty in the afternoon. She later claimed she remembered this, because it was early closing day and her husband had the afternoon off.
Kenneth’s father, Charlie, owned a hairdresser’s and, Kenneth’s mother, Louisa, worked there part-time. Charlie was known for being bluntly outspoken and highly sarcastic to his customers. “Henna dye on your head?” he’d ask incredulously. “Do you want to look like a tart?” Or, “Stick to your own color. You can’t improve on nature. You ought to know that. You’re old enough, and ugly enough.”
If Kenneth owed his refined looks to his mother, then, it was from his father that he inherited his sharp and acerbic tongue.
With only an older sister, Pat, born in 1923, it rested with Kenneth to take over the family business. But Kenneth aspired to things other than a shampoo and set. He had seized upon acting as a possible, future career. However, his father decried his son’s ambitions, acting, he said: “The women are all trollops and the men are nancies.“
While his sister Pat showed prowess as a swimmer and as an athlete, the rather camp Kenneth stuck to books and art.
“I settled for the books and gramophone and an awful lot of talking to myself. My exhibitionism concealed a sense of inadequacy. The real self was a vulnerable quivering thing, which I did not want to reveal; showing-off, affectation and role-playing I used like a hedgehog uses his spines. The facade was not to be penetrated. My parents respected this privacy. ‘He’s up in his room,’ they’d tell visitors. ‘He likes to be on his own,’ and I was undisturbed in my private world where artists were heroes and the imagination was king.”
One of his school reports ended with the word, “Quick to grasp the bones of a subject, slow to develop them.” The young, master Williams ‘”affected indifference” when his father read the report to him. “It sounded like a reluctant vulture on someone else’s prey.” It was at school that Williams developed a talent for mimicking his teachers, something that landed him in trouble more than once. It was the first inkling of Williams’s desperate desire to be liked, and of the possible outcome such mimicry would incur.
The headmaster warned Williams that such “mocking” may win him popularity but that it would also succeed in undermining his own authority. “A facetious front may win you popularity but you won’t be taken seriously when you want to be sincere. People won’t believe you and that will hurt you.” A surprisingly apt prediction.
Kenneth’s need for human companionship saw him attempt to steal away many of his sister’s schoolboy boyfriends. Infuriated by the number of youthful suitors that called for the blossoming Pat, Kenneth merrily told them that his sister was “meeting another bloke” and then, nobly, offered his own services as a date. Such brass-neck inevitably ended in tears.
Norn Cutson is an artist based in New York. His work is beautiful and joyous, and always makes me smile. And that’s probably his intention for he describes himself as “an illustrator in NYC bringin’ lots o’ warmth & humor to the world!”
Most likely, you’ll have seen his fabulous illustrations of singers, actresses and pop stars in magazines, on posters, or in his wonderful art book Record Collection, which tells the story of his life through the music he loves.
The novelist Lawrence Durrell once wrote “Music is only love looking for words.” In Norn’s case “Music is only love looking for pictures.”
In Record Collection Norn has re-interpreted the album covers of the music that has been central to his life - from Blondie and Throbbing Gristle to Yoko Ono and Dionne Warwick. Music has always been important to Norn, as he explained to Dangerous Minds.
‘Music was a huge thing for us growing up. My parents love music and they had big record collections; my Dad’s a lot of Martin Denny, Herb Apert, Jackie Gleason and some classical pretensions; Mom’s lots of musicals, soundtracks & pop. My sister & I quickly learned that you could control the mood of the house by choosing the right music.’
It is said, “Artists are born not made,” which is true of Norn, for as far back as he can remember he has been drawing.
‘Before I could even sit up by myself, my Mom would guide my hand with a crayon, making shapes on paper. As I got older, we would play a game transforming the shapes into animals. So I’ve really been drawing all my life.’
From crayon animals, he started copying the Funnies.
‘I remember at 5 years old locking myself in my room and teaching myself to draw Charles Schulz’ Peanuts characters, because I wanted to tell my own stories with them. You can still totally see that influence in my art.
‘I’m always drawing. Even when I am not physically drawing, I am still working things out. I have more images in my mind than I will ever have time to bring into physical reality.
‘Art is Alchemy. It’s all about snatching the image out of the ether, solidifying it in your mind, forcing the image out of your shoulder, down your arm and out of the body onto paper, so the rest of the world can see.’
His book Record Collection is a wonderful treat, a brilliant collection of pop history that synthesizes Norn’s life thru music and art.
‘My Record Collection series came out of finding a new way to tell my story. I’ve drawn autobiographical comics for decades. I love it, but sometimes when you are using words, there’s too much room for misunderstanding. Plus, I have a tendency to get sappy in my writing.
‘With Record Collection, I can evoke a time & emotion just using imagery, and its better that it’s open for everyone to project their own experience on. Peggy Lee might mean one thing to me, and something totally different for you, but we’ll both have a valid response to her image.
‘One of the things (cartoonist and author) Lynda Barry teaches is to always work in a series; that way, you build momentum from one piece to the next, and before you know it, you’ve got a body of work.
‘Record Collection also came out of that idea. But what would it be a series about?
‘At first, I thought Hindu gods & goddesses, because they would be fun to research & draw; but then I realized, to be authentic, the series had to be something that was meaningful for me, not just something I’d read about. It had to be something that really happened to me.
‘I hadn’t grown up with any religion, so what could I use as symbols that other people could see their own stories in, that was coming from a spiritual place?
‘And then of course, I knew: MUSIC was the belief system we were raised with. And with that, I’ve tapped into a series that can last me the rest of my life.
‘I believe The Goddess sends messages through the shuffle feature of our ipods. She may not be playing what we want to hear, but she’s playing what we *need* to hear. What does this song mean to me now? What did it mean when I first heard it? How does this song apply to my life?
‘Sometimes, you can use music as a time machine to go back in time and fix things, or at least understand them better.’
Volume 2 of Record Collection will be published in March, and then Norn will be working on a book of autobiographical comics. He is also planning another exhibition.
‘I’d like to have another show of my work. Seeing people’s smiles when they look at my art is a wonderful feeling. Nothing makes me happier than knowing there’s a place in the word for my images, and that I have the ability to translate them into a form that other people can see and enjoy. I feel if we have that blessing, its our responsibility to serve it.’
I started reading Christopher Isherwood in my late teens when I became a “paying guest” to an elderly spinster who lived in an old tenement in the West End of Glasgow. She lived in a top floor apartment, where I rented the large front room with a view onto the oval-shaped park below. My landlady was in her late seventies, bird-like, translucent skin, who whistled music hall songs and took snuff in large pinches, sniffed from the back of her hand. She had inherited the apartment from her sister, and the interior had remained unchanged since the 1930s. The hallway with its bell-chimes for Maid, Bedroom 1, Bedroom 2, Parlor, and Dining Room, all still worked. In the kitchen was a range, and a small scullery with its fold-down bed, where a servant would have slept. Coal fires were in all of the rooms except mine. Of course, there was the occasional modern appliance, a TV, a one-bar electric fire, and an electric cooker, which was still in its plastic wrapping, and was “not to be used under any circumstances.” Food was cooked over something that looked like a bunsen burner (what my landlady called “a blackout cooker”), and chilled products were kept in a larder. As for hot water, well that was never available—the boiler was kept under lock and key, and toilet paper was sellotaped to ensure I bought my own. The front door was locked at eight o’clock and the storm doors bolted at nine. After ten, she never answered the door.
At the time, I was reading Goodbye to Berlin which as you can imagine very much suited my environment. Like Isherwood’s character, Herr Issyvoo, I was surrounded by “the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle class.” A mantel-clock, a heavy glass ashtray, a green baize card table, orphaned figurines of a shepherd boy and shepherd girl tending to their flocks, a large wooden bed (one leg broken) made in the 1920s. But perhaps most significantly was the fact my landlady had worked in Berlin as a furrier for a department store during the 1930s and she often told me tales of her time in Germany. “Oh those Hitler Youth,” she once said, “Such smart uniforms, but the terrible things they did.”
At times it all made me feel as if I was living in Ishwerwood’s world. In the evenings I would hear the whistles out in the park below. But unlike Herr Issyvoo, these were not young men calling up to their girlfriends but neighbors calling to their dogs.
The son of landed gentry, Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was born in 1904 at the ancestral seat of his family, Wybersley Hall, High Lane, England. His father was an army officer, who was killed during the First World War. His mother Kathleen had a fractious relationship with her son, and she later featured in his stories.
At school he met and became life-long friends with W. H. Auden and Edward Upward. He attended Cambridge University but found he had no interest in his studies and was sent down for writing a facetious answer to an exam question. It was while at university he became part of the famous literary triumvirate with Auden and Stephen Spender, who were hailed by the Left as “intellectual heroes.”
Instead of studying, Isherwood wrote an anarchist fantasy with Upward, centered around the fictional Mortmere:
...a village inhabited by surreal characters modelled on their Cambridge friends and acquaintances. The rector, Casmir Welken, resembles a ‘diseased goat’ and breeds angels in the church belfry; his sidekick Ronald Gunball is a dipsomaniac and an unashamed vulgarian; Sergeant Claptree, assisted by Ensign Battersea, keeps the Skull and Trumpet Inn; the mannish Miss Belmare, domineering and well starched, is sister to the squire, and Gustave Shreeve is headmaster of Frisbald College for boys.
Though none of the stories were published at the time (and Upward destroyed most of them later on), it was the start of Isherwood’s writing career, and led on to his first novel All the Conspirators in 1928.
Stifled by England, Isherwood followed in his friend Auden’s footsteps and moved to Berlin. It proved an historic re-location, one that inspired the first of Isherwood’s important novels Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin. Literature aside, Isherwood’s main reason for going to Berlin was “boys” - blonde, working-class youth.
Isherwood supported himself in Berlin by working as an English tutor, and he used this experience to form the basis for his Berlin stories, and the creation of his eponymous central character. “I am a camera,” Isherwood famously wrote at the start of Goodbye to Berlin, for he saw Herr Issyvoo as “unobtrusive, sexless,” someone who could only observe, and examine the lives of those around him. When later asked why he had not been more explicit about his character’s homosexuality, Isherwood said that if he had come out, then it would have been “a production,” something that would have “upset the apple cart” for the other characters. The poet Stephen Spender claimed Isherwood once claimed he couldn’t imagine how people behaved when he was not in the room.
During all this, Isherwood continued to write novels, most notably Prater Violet, based on his first dealings with film-making and the rather brilliant, but under appreciated, Down There on a Visit. On a more personal note, in 1953, he met Don Bachardy, the man who became his life-long partner.
In the sixties, Isherwood achieved considerable success with his “devastating, unnerving, brilliant book” about middle-age, A Single Man. The novel’s central character George, is like Isherwood, and describes a day in his life, when he no longer fears annihilation but survival, and all the debilitating side affects old age will bring. Isherwood said the book was about:
“...middle age, because what I wanted to show was the incredible range of behavior in middle age, part of the time one is quite tending towards senility, and other times one is rash that is way a way boyish, and apt to indulge in lots of embarrassing behavior, at the drop of hat.”
In the 1970s, Isherwood returned to the Berlin of his youth with his autobiographical memoir Christopher and His Kind, it was a crowning achievement to a literary career that had already delivered at least three or four of the twentieth century’s best novels.
Gore Vidal has said Isherwood is “the best prose writer in English,” which is perhaps true as Isherwood’s writing is subtle, clever and is always fresh, even after repeated readings.
This documentary A Single Man: Christopher Isherwood 1904-1986 was made not long after his death and composed from a selection of interviews from British TV from the 1950s-1970s.
For fans of Isherwood, the BBC has just completed a drama Christopher and his Kind, adapted from Isherwood’s book, starring Matt (Doctor Who) Smith in the title role, which will be broadcast later this year. Further information can be found here. The rest of ‘A Single Man: Christopher Isherwood 1904-1986’, after the jump…
As habitual readers of Dangerous Minds know, when I do “product reviews” I try to stay away from debating the merits of the music of “classic rock” acts because, frankly who cares what I think about Neil Young or The Beatles? As for me, I really don’t care what you or anyone else has to say about their music, either. If you don’t like Young or the Fab Four, too bad, buddy, I just can’t help you. They’re awesome, and it’s been long ago settled. Done.
But what I do care about is: Does it sound/look good? Is this newest version a significant upgrade from the last “definitive collector’s edition” they put out? And most importantly, “Is it really worth shelling out the money for this sucker if I’ve already bought this goddamned album in several obsolete audio formats, including 8-track tapes?”
Admittedly, oft-times the answer is “No.” (I don’t think the newly released Tommy Blu-ray sounds all that great, for instance. The surround mix of David Bowie’s Station to Station album is just terrible). Other times the answer is a resounding “Yes!” as in the case of the newly restored Criterion Collection Blu-ray of The Monkees’ psychedelic opus, Head.
Head was written and produced by Bob Rafelson (co-creator of The Monkees) and Jack Nicholson, and directed by Rafelson. The film aimed to deconstruct the “manufactured” image that the Monkees wished to leave behind far behind them in 1968. The group wander through a number of surrealistic scenes, Hollywood sound stages and trippy pop art musical production numbers. Along the way, they encounter the likes of Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Annette Funicello, Terri Garr, stripper Carol Doda, Frank Zappa, Toni Basil, fighter Sonny Liston, and weirdo character actor Timothy Carey. Victor Mature, an over the hill actor known for appearing in Biblical epics and sword and sandals films, played a King Kong-sized version of himself (I’m not old enough to have much context for Victor Mature, but the way I take it is that he’s playing himself in a “human punch-line” kind of way, something that will no doubt be lost on future audiences for whom he’ll just appear to be a weird old giant who appears appropos of nothing).
Head was initially released with a mysterious advertising campaign that never mentioned the Monkees and instead featured the head of a balding man (John Brockman, future literary super agent). The Monkees’ teenbopper fan base must have been mighty confused. These were still the Monkees they loved, but what was with all the lysergic Marshall McLuhan stuff, the Viet Nam footage and the hookahs? Head is an audio-visual mindfuck. Head was a total flop.
Head’s reputation grew during a couple of national CBS late night TV airings in the 1970s. A VHS was released in the mid-80s during the revival of interest in the group brought on by MTV screening The Monkees for a new generation. Today Head is properly considered a odd milestone in Hollywood history—it’s one of the highest budgeted rock films of the era and one of the first counter culture films to be produced by the studio system. What a stylish time capsule of the era it is! In his liner notes, Chuck Stephens called Head, “the Ulysses of a hip New Hollywood about to be born.” What he said!
I’d have to say that of all of the various music related Blu-rays discs that have passed through my BD player since I got it last year, Head is the very best of all. It’s THE thing I’d reach for to geekily demonstrate my sound system for a guest. Seldom are things done this right, but when you consider that it’s Criterion behind this issue of Head, of course it makes more sense. I have no doubt that seeing this new Criterion version on a large HD screen with a good surround system is a superior experience even to seeing it in a movie theatre when it was first released. How could it have been better then? 42-years after Head’s initial release, we have the technology!
So, is it a significant upgrade from the Rhino DVD of Head, still on the market? Hell, yes. There’s simply no comparison, either in the video quality—Rhino’s DVD sucks on that count, they used a scratchy fullscreen print, whereas Criterion’s disc is letterboxed and immaculate, transferred from a 35mm negative—or in the audio department, either, as Head has been gloriously remixed in 5.1 surround. Holy shit did they do an amazing job with the audio.
Head’s opening moment, where Micky Dolenz runs through the dedication ceremony and jumps off the bridge, has, of course, as its soundtrack, one of the greatest numbers the Monkees ever did, “Porpoise Song.” The pristine quality of that scene’s solarized underwater footage combined with the HD DTS surround mix is nothing short of astonishing. Visually, it’s like looking at a stained-glass window. The audio is deeply immersive—like you’re standing in the midst of a strange waterlogged orchestra—and the video so vibrant that I must’ve played that one scene ten times in a row before moving on to “Circle Sky.” Again I wasn’t disappointed, the group’s presence is immediate and electrifying—Head’s performance of “Circle Sky” is the first time a “live” rock performance was used in a Hollywood film. I’ll say it again, they usually never get it this right. As far as slick audio/visual products go, Criterion’s Head deserves a special award.
At the moment, Head is only available as part of the Criterion Collection box set America Lost and Found: The BBS Story. Although the rest of the films in the set—Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, The King of Marvin Gardens, Drive, He Said and the first ever release of Henry Jaglom’s A Safe Place (with Nicholson, Tuesday Weld, Orson Welles and Dangerous Minds pal Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theatre)—are all worthy, frankly I’d sooner have just had Head. Although it’s not on their current release schedule, I’m sure Criterion will release Head solo on Blu-ray soon enough. Surely the word of mouth, in the meantime, will continue to spread.
[A personal anecdote here: In 1994, I met Micky Dolenz and his (super cute) daughter Ami, at the Whisky Bar in New York. He was really cool and a gas to talk to, but after about 20 minutes I sheepishly revealed to him that although I could not have possibly had any forewarning that I was going to meet him, earlier that day I’d actually bought a CD of the Head soundtrack that I had in my coat pocket. The conversation got slightly awkward for a minute until I changed the subject and he politely allowed me to do so. I got the feeling that he had about as much desire to talk about something he’d done 30 years ago as most people would.]
Below, one of the best musical numbers in Head, Mike Nesmith’s powerful “Circle Sky.” Who says The Monkees weren’t a good live band? Also. keep in mind as you watch this, that as cool as this clip is, it’s still a pale comparison to the crisp, vibrant new Criterion Blu-ray release with six channels of audio coming at you:
. Although the rest of the films in the set—Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, The King of Marvin Gardens, Drive, He Said and the first ever release of Henry Jaglom’s A Safe Place (with Nicholson, Tuesday Weld, Orson Welles and Dangerous Minds pal Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theatre)—are all worthy, frankly I’d sooner have just had Head. Although it’s not on their current release schedule, I’m sure Criterion will release Head solo on Blu-ray soon enough. Surely the word of mouth, in the meantime, will continue to spread.