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‘Faceless Forever’: The Residents hit the road for their fiftieth anniversary!
03.14.2023
10:36 am
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THEM! courtesy of the Cryptic Corporation

When everyone lives in the future, the present is au revoir.
—Delta Nudes

Last Christmas marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Residents’ first release, “Santa Dog.” Ralph Records gave away most of the initial pressing as a free gift, mailing copies of the double seven-inch record, which presented itself as a compilation of songs by four groovy groups, to friends, tastemakers, and prominent figures.

If the White House had not refused its complimentary copy of “Santa Dog,” President Nixon, his wife Pat, and their daughters, Tricia and Julie, would not have been deprived of the chance to spin it a few times on the Blue Room hi-fi as the Yule log crackled in the fireplace and the bombs of Operation Linebacker II pulverized North Vietnam. Though side one, “Fire,” credited to Ivory and the Brain Eaters, would have been the Nixons’ likely favorite, the First Family would have read in the sleeve notes that side four, “Aircraft Damage” (B Barnes–C America), credited to Arf and Omega featuring the Singing Lawn Chairs, was “FROM THE RALPH FILM ‘VILENESS FATS’ COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU.”

Fifty years is a long time. Today, Dick and Pat are buried in the cold ground, original copies of “Santa Dog” fetch as much as a Pontiac Grand Prix, and you can tell Tricia and Julie that Vileness Fats really is coming to a theater near them! Sort of: every date of the imminent “Faceless Forever” U.S. tour will open with a screening of Triple Trouble, the Residents’ new feature film, which revisits their abandoned movie project of the early seventies and incorporates some of its footage into a brain-syruping psychodrama about Randy Rose, Jr., a lapsed priest harried by fungus in his encore career as a plumber.

Like the new Residents encyclopedia by Jim Knipfel and Brian Poole (also titled Faceless Forever), the Triple Trouble screenings and live shows are part of the Residents’ fiftieth anniversary festivities. I caught up with the group’s spokesperson, Cryptic Corporation President Homer Flynn, who once again graciously fielded my questions about the Residents’ diet, wardrobe, hair products, LaserDisc easter eggs and CD-ROM cheat codes.


In the atomic shopping carts, 1974 (courtesy of the Cryptic Corporation)

What can you tell me about the tour?

Well, you know, it’s a fiftieth anniversary tour, so it’s really retrospective. I mean, the selection of material for this tour, you know, came about in a kind of almost random, haphazard way. I mean, this is the third time it’s been scheduled. So it started out two, three years ago as a “Dog Stab” tour with the idea at that time that we were mainly interested in having them promote the Metal, Meat & Bone album, which was new at that point. But then we added a good chunk of Duck Stab! material to that. Kind of trying to come up with a balance between what was new and we wanted to promote and what the band wanted to play and then what the fans were interested in. And then that tour got cancelled, and then rescheduled and slightly jiggered around a little bit, and then that one got cancelled.

Well, by the time that happened, we were looking at the fiftieth anniversary and Metal, Meat & Bone, while everybody likes the album, it’s still not as relevant from a marketing and promo point of view. So ultimately, we left a good chunk of Metal, Meat & Bone in there, left a good chunk of Duck Stab! And then ultimately, they filled in with a lot of other classic Residents material. And I think it’s a good set. [Laughs] It’s not the way anybody would have chosen to put it together, but the last three years have been crazy. What can you say?
 

At the Golden Gate Bridge, 1979 (courtesy of the Cryptic Corporation)

I’m still kicking myself for missing the Duck Stab! shows. There was a Third Reich ‘n Roll encore?

There was indeed. Yeah, and you know they had a lot of fun with that. I mean, you know interestingly, there is a guy, [Scott Colburn], an audio engineer in Seattle, who has been doing a lot of the remastering of the back catalog series that Cherry Red has been putting out, and he’s a huge fan. He’s a great guy. And basically, he volunteered to go back and digitize all of the old multitrack original tapes. So all of a sudden, you know, you could take all of the original tracks from Duck Stab! and put them into Logic if you wanted to. And then all of a sudden that material was accessible again, and they got very excited about that idea.

They only did, that was kind of like, I call it the “California mini-tour.” It was the tour a year and a half ago that then ultimately, most of it was canceled other than four or five, three or four California shows. So they never really got to the point with the Third Reich ‘n Roll material where they were super comfortable with it, because part of what’s happening is stuff is coming from the original tapes, and then part of it is being played, and it’s all pretty loose. And I think everybody would agree that some of it works better than others.

But I think they have in mind going back and revisiting that again. I mean, you know, they could do a suite from Eskimo if they wanted to. There’s a lot of possibilities with that material.

Since you mentioned it, there was a plan for an Eskimo opera or stage show at one time, right? But I don’t think that’s ever been a live show.

No, there never has. I mean, interestingly, this is my favorite story about that: there is a guy who was a programmer at the South Bank Center in London, a guy named Glenn Max. And Glenn was a big Residents fan. He booked them for a few different festivals and events while he was there. And there was a period, I don’t know, ten or twelve years ago, something like that, when the South Bank Center was shut down for remodeling, and he had it in his mind, he was looking for other venues around London in order to try to do different shows. One of his ideas was to do a version of Eskimo on ice.

More Residents, after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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03.14.2023
10:36 am
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Michael Jackson vs Donny Osmond, the KKK and space aliens in insane new cult musical!! (The Return)
02.22.2023
05:15 pm
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NOTE: This post, written by the late Howie Pyro, was originally published in 2020, when For the Love of a Glove had just opened. It’s back! Go see it if you live in Los Angeles!
 
Julien Nitzberg. Shit-stirrer, rebel director, artist, punk rocker and genius are some titles bestowed on this forward-thinking, back-slapping smart-ass. You might know him from his earliest documentary on Hasil Adkins—lunatic rockabilly one man band-he thought the guy in the radio made the music that way. Hasil sang about beheading his girlfriend so she “can eat no more hot dogs.” At that time he met Adkins’ neighbors the White family, who were the focus of his next documentary, the VHS cult sensation The Dancing Outlaw, about Jesco White, hillbilly clog dancer and Elvis impersonator. If you added up all the views just on YouTube of the different clips of this film alone it adds up into the millions.

Fast forward to 2009, Johnny Knoxville and Nitzberg make the cult hit The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. In between these Nitzberg did many other projects Like Mike Judge presents: Tales From the Tour Bus and the controversial The Beastly Bombing operetta, an equal opportunity love/hatefest about, well…the subtitle of the operetta is “A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love,” if that helps. You can read about it here.
 
All I knew about For the Love of a Glove going in was Julien’s history and sense of humor and that it was about Michael Jackson. That alone is at least a Godzilla’s worth of possible satiric destruction in the hands of Nitzberg, and that’s putting it mildly! It seems all of MJ’s bad behavior is blamed on aliens that look like glittery gloves who come to take over humanity. Oh did I mention it’s also a musical? And a puppet show? With life-sized puppets? The main one being Donny Osmond, Michael’s mortal enemy? There’s even one of Corey Feldman! And Emmanuel Lewis!!

The show is a non-stop comedy clobbering of the senses, with a very small, very talented cast, great original music, cool effects, etc. Most of the actors play as many as four roles, and being that much of the cast is African American it was odd/funny and visibly uncomfortable (to some) when these actors donned white hoods for the big Ku Klux Klan musical show stopper! But if you know Julien…
 
jgkvoiuyt
 
In these days of modern mass paranoia and casual racism, over-sensitivity and dumbing down of all things, even I had a flash of looking behind me (as I saw others do) and wondering if this was cool to like, who was getting offended, who was laughing, and right then at that moment I realized I have been way more affected by all this modern bullshit than I thought. We need people like Julien Nitzberg to remind and instill in us that it is not only okay, but quite necessary to think, laugh (at ourselves AND at others) and learn.
 
oyboruibd
 
I spoke to Julien Nitzberg and cast member Pip Lilly about all of this.
 
Howie Pyro: Okay so why now? When did the idea come to you & what brought MJ to the top of your creative lunacy? 

Julien Nitzberg: The initial idea for this show came to me almost seventeen years ago. I was approached by a major cable TV network to write a Michael Jackson biopic. I’ve been a Michael Jackson fan since I was a little kid and watched the Jackson 5 cartoon on Saturday mornings. I tried to find an interesting way to tell Michael’s story, but the later years were just too bizarre and I couldn’t find a normal way to tell it. How could anyone explain Bubbles the chimp, trying to buy the Elephant Man’s bones or sleepovers with kids. It was all too bizarre. I decided that the only way to tell it was to find a surreal way into the story. I pitched them the idea that all the boys and things in Michael’s life weren’t his choices. Instead his glove was an evil alien trying to take over the world who forced Michael to do all the bizarre things in his life. The alien gave him his talent so Michael was forced into doing things that he was severely embarrassed by.

The execs laughed at this idea but then asked me to do the normal version.  I knew it would turn out terribly, so I said no. Over the years my mind kept returning to Michael’s life and finally I decided to write my version of his life as a musical with all original music.

I spent a couple of years researching Michael’s life trying to find the most interesting obscure parts to talk about. I decided to have it focus on his religious upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness.  Jehovah’s Witnesses have a really fucked up attitude toward sexuality. They teach that masturbating can turn you gay because as a man you get used to a man’s hand on your penis and want other mens’ hands on your penis. I thought this was hilarious. How did MJ get raised in the religion and then his most famous dance move winds up being him grabbing his own crotch?  I then realized he didn’t do the crotch grab, his alien glove forced him to do it!

I also found out more about his rivalry with Donny Osmond. The Osmonds were clearly patterned to be the white version of the Jackson 5. Five brothers singing, dressing similarly. It was creepy.  The Osmonds first big hit was “One Bad Apple.” It sounded so much like the Jackson 5 that Michael’s mom thought it was the Jackson 5 when she heard it on the radio.

The Osmonds clearly ripped off the Jackson 5 and what was worse they were Mormons which at the time taught that all black people were cursed with the “Mark of Cain” and were not allowed in their temples. They even taught that if you were black and converted to Mormonism you could go to Heaven but would be a servant to white people in Heaven. It’s some of the most fucked up religious shit you can dream of.  They also taught that at the end of days when Christ returns all black people will have the curse of the “Mark of Cain” removed and turn white. Of course, Michael did this in his life so that became a big part of the story.  We even have a song that Donny sings to Michael called “What a Delight When You Turn White.”

I felt like now was a great time to do the show. Everyone is talking about how our country has been ruined by fucked up racist and homophobic religions. We deal with one of the clearest cases of cultural appropriation that ever existed - people who belonged to an openly racist church going out and trying to sound like the biggest black music act of the day. It all felt like things that are in our country’s cultural conversation right now.

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Howie Pyro
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02.22.2023
05:15 pm
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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
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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
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02.08.2023
08:51 am
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Listen to John Carpenter’s very 80s synth-rock band the Coupe de Villes
01.16.2023
02:34 pm
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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…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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01.16.2023
02:34 pm
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‘Space Baby’: Blast off with outsider rocker, J.T. IV (a DM premiere)
01.13.2023
07:00 am
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JT 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
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.
 
Vidoe still
 
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.
 
Cosmic LIghtning
 
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.
 
The Future
 
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.
 

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

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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01.13.2023
07:00 am
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Across the Bowieverse: Brett Morgen’s ‘Moonage Daydream’
12.17.2022
02:33 pm
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.

 

Posted by Cherrybomb
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10.24.2022
02:52 pm
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‘Massacre at Central High’: Did this film concerning teen-on-teen violence influence ‘Heathers’?
09.13.2022
06:00 am
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Massacre at Central High
 
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.
 
David outside of school
 
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.
 
Cast members
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.
 
First death
 
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.
 
Explosion 
Heathers screenwriter Daniel Waters has been quoted as saying that although he didn’t see Massacre at Central High prior to writing Heathers, 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.
 
Beach sex
 
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.
 
Outside
 
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
 

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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09.13.2022
06:00 am
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The Material Girl Goes Punk: Listen to Madonna’s Rare Demo Tape From 1979
08.23.2022
04:53 pm
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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.’

Posted by Cherrybomb
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08.23.2022
04:53 pm
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