With his face smeared with red ochre, that came off the lavatory walls, Lindsay Kemp made his debut dancing Salome as a pupil at an all boy’s boarding school in the north of England. Kemp had always wanted to dance the Seven Veils, ever since he had seen Rita Hayworth seduce on the cinema screen. That night Kemp was wrapped in toilet paper, and made his entrance from a cupboard in the dormitory. Bicycle lamps illuminated his performance, as he danced to the sound of a mouth organ.
This is Lindsay Kemp recalling his first performance in a TV interview. Kemp talks about his performnace, and how he takes everything that is inside and releases it, so that the audience can believe all that he performs is true.
This is a rare and incredible piece of archive, showing Kemp and his brilliant fellow dancers (including The Great Orlando) preparing and performing an extract from Salome, in 1977. In the interview, Kemp goes on to mention how a production of Turquoise Pantomime, caused offense to the Matrons of Galashiels, that led to a bun fight, and the headline “Blue Show Offends Matrons”. Kemp finishes flirtatiously telling the interviewer how some people think he’s impure, because he opens his mouth. Wonderful!
And believe it or not that solo was played on spoons - just like these ones, Blue Peter presenter Christopher Trace tells his audience, at the end of this wonderful, little clip of The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band performing “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey?” on the show in February 1966.
Or to be more precise, here’s a very awkward interview with an out-of-drag Glenn Harris Milstead on the British music television show The Tube, from 1983, which is followed by an excellent performance by Divine of her club hit “Shake It Up.”
While it’s understandable that straight-laced, square TV presenters might not know what to make of Divine (whose very raison d’être was to make people laugh by overturning preconceptions of gender and beauty), you would expect the producers of a supposedly hip, youth-oriented TV show like The Tube to be a bit more switched on.
Instead we get an interview by the bumbling Muriel Grey in which she suggests that Divine is insecure, repulsive, and somehow an affront to women. The hapless Grey comes across as the dullest of squares in this clip, which I guess is a danger to be considered when you go up against a glamor icon like Divine, but unfortunately Grey has previous form in conducting cringe-worthy interviews.
Thankfully, Milstead takes it all in his rather large stride, and reacts with the grace befitting a true star:
In 1988, Dave Gahan and Andy Fletcher from Depeche Mode appeared on the BBC pop interview series That Was Then…This Is Now.
Aired as part of Janet Street-Porter’s “Yoof TV” on BBC 2, the series attempted to break away from the stranglehold of sixties pop, to focus on bands that had come to the fore during the 1970s and early 1980s. Guests included Mick Jones, John Lydon, Robert Smith (The Cure), Joe Jackson, Pet Shop Boys, Spandau Ballet, Martin Fry (ABC) and even (surprisingly) Gary Glitter and Eddy Grant, who were exceedingly popular that year. Shot on 16mm, the series consisted of twenty-two 30-minute episodes, broadcast between 1988 and 1989.
This is Craig Ferguson long, long before The Late, Late Show, performing as his stand-up comedy alter ego, Bing Hitler, at the Pavillion Theater, Glasgow, on October 14th, 1987.
This is 2 years after Bing’s famed gig at the Tron Theater Gong Night, which led to column inches and a variety of shows, ranging from a-one-off at Cul-de-Sac Bar to the legendary Night of the Long Skean Dhus in 1986. Back then, the Cul-de-Sac in Ashton Lane, was an important watering hole for artists, writers, musicians and performers, to meet and share ideas, gossip and alcohol. Of an evening you could find Ferguson at the bar with musicians like Bobby Bluebell, the late Bobby Paterson, James Grant, and writers like Tommy Udo. Even the bar staff had talent like the artist Lesley Banks. These were fun times.
At times in this concert, Bing comes across like a shouty cousin to Rik from Young Ones. Craig has always been a confident, talented and assured performer, but here he was just a wee bit rough around the edges - part of the character - but it’s all good fun, and a great look back.
Bonus clip of Bing Hitler performing at Bennet’s, from 1987, after the jump…
You see, the eighties wasn’t all about big hair, lip gloss, Boy George and Miami Vice. No. It was also the heyday of that redoubtable cabaret duo, Victor and Barry.
Victor Ignatius MacIlvaney and Barry Primrose McLeish, and their theatrical organ, the Kelvinside Young People’s Amateur Dramatic Art Society (KYPADAS), were the masterly comic creations of drama students Alan Cumming (Barry) and Forbes Masson (Victor). Together they traveled across the world (and Glasgow) entertaining audiences with their witty repartee and hand-carved selection of songs.
These ditties included such memorable sweetmeats as “Kelvinside Man” (Kelvinside is a small enclave in the West End of Glasgow, a sort of twee Greenwich Village, where your fruit is a yam, and you buy fish from a van); “Marks & Spencers” - V & B’s favorite department store; and the painful rivalries of showbiz, “We Knew Her So Well”.
This tartan twosome were a musical Julian and Sandy, whose unstoppable success led to the release of their best selling (well, in Kelvinside, and parts of Bearsden and Milngavie, anyway) debut recording cassette, Hear Victor and Barry and Faint. By way of introduction to this fabulous twin-set of talents, here is Victor and Barry singing “Kelvinside Man”.
Bonus clips, plus ‘Hear Victor and Barry…and faint’, after the jump…
Confidence has nothing to do with David Lynch’s endless supply of ideas. He credits meditation for that. It helps his ‘ideas flow through like these beautiful little fish, and you catch them,’ as he tells Miranda Sawyer, in this interview from The Culture Show in 2011.
The interview is loosely anchored around the release of Lynch’s album Crazy Clown Time, and bobs around various subjects before fading out on Lynch’s flow of ideas.
Going by how long the likable Ms. Sawyer is on screen (compared to Lynch), this interview has been heavily edited. Perhaps because Lynch rambles? Or, is he too intelligent for BBC viewers? Or, more likely he wasn’t giving the Beeb the sound-bites they required - which is always an issue with interview packages like this.
And note also, there are no cutaways of Mr Lynch, or any shots of the great man pottering about the beautiful Idem Studio in Paris, where he was working last year. Still, these are minor quibbles, as Lynch, with his Jack-Nicholson-on-helium voice, and Stan-Laurel-grimace, is always watchable and never less than interesting.
A common refrain seen in comments across the blogosphere of late is that an Obama win in November would be the best thing that could possibly happen for “opposition” Fox News.
I’m not so sure about that.
Even as but a “casual consumer” of what Fox News has on offer—I’m someone who usually only sees the gnarliest Fox clips belched up by the Internet—I can’t help but notice just how fucking tired it all seems lately. The same people saying the same damned things over and over and over again. It goes without saying that Fox News viewers tend not to be the sharpest, or best informed, marbles in the bag, but I would imagine that even those low IQ Jim-Bobs and Billy-Joes are getting tired of hearing the same people saying the same damned things over and over and over again. The obvious repetition of Republican talking points and constant, never-wavering anti-Obama kvetching—can it really go on like this for another four years without a major reinvention and a totally clean slate of new faces?
Fox’s audience share, while still strong, has been falling for years. Even if its audience doesn’t exactly desert Fox News, it’s an unavoidable fact of the yawning grave awaiting us all that their audience is dying off in great number with every passing year. Cranky old white guys aren’t being generated by the gene pool fast enough anymore. Certainly not in number enough for the Republican Party to survive, that’s seems demographically assured, so why should Fox News be any different?
Not only is Fox News becoming mind-numbingly repetitive—or even MORE mind-numbingly repetitive than it’s been for years, I should clarify—which is quite difficult, if you think about it, being a business which should theoretically thrive on novelty, it’s increasingly feeling completely anachronistic, like seeing the Spice Girls turning up again at the Olympics. Moving forward who is going to advertise on the network save for Geritol, Depends adult diapers or those “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” informercials? Fox News has a demographic every bit as, um, finite, shall we say, as print newspaper subscribers.
Fox News saw an overall 17% decline in viewership in March 2012 and there was a 27% drop with younger viewers from the year before. In May, Fox News was down about 21% during prime time in the 25-to-54 group. The only demographic sticking with Fox seem to be Social Security beneficiaries. I’d love to see the numbers for the percentage of Fox News viewers puttering around with portable oxygen tanks or who drive one of those scooters you always see advertised on the network.
Sean Hannity? Sarah Palin? Laura Ingraham? Ann Coulter? Who the fuck cares anymore what these people think? We already know. They must be bored saying this shit. Are you in the least bit curious, or do you really wonder how much Sean Hannity will hate on anything and everything that Obama says or does? Do you expect any surprises from his show? EVER? I mean this is some of the worst, weakest shit on offer. No one watches CNN anymore (it’s good for the treadmill as far as I am concerned) but compared to Fox News, it’s like at least they try!
Doesn’t this clip from last night’s O’Reilly Factor feel like you’re watching some sort of “nostalgia” news channel for old people? How much longer will Fox News president Roger Ailes think Sarah Palin is doing his network more good than harm? AIles should try to renew his network’s mission and inject some fresh blood into the team before it’s too late. If he’s legacy-conscious, it’s imperative that he act now. Ailes needs to get rid of the deadwood and dead-brained Fox “talent” who still think it’s 2009. If he doesn’t reinvent Fox News soon, at 72, he runs the risk of seeing his brainchild croak before he does.
For that special Whovian in your life: A handmade Doctor Who chess set by Emmi Visser.
In time for Christmas, this is a completely unique, highly detailed, high quality chess set inspired by Doctor Who. Every single one of the 32 pieces is handcrafted from scratch. Finally you will be able to have your own adventures in time and space! And when you have briefly set your interstellar quarrels aside, this set is sure to attract the attention of your visitors!
Only ONE set will be sold. I will NOT make another set! So this one is completely UNIQUE. (I did make a chess set last year featuring the tenth Doctor. This one features the eleventh Doctor.)
The chess set is for sale at Visser’s Etsy shop, priced at $949.00 + shipping. Damn, I wish I had the money for this.
