It’s been a bad week for disco—first the death of Loleatta Holloway, and now comes the news that Kurt Hauenstein of the German band Supermax has passed on. Supermax were one of the most popular disco bands of their era on continental Europe, managing to seamlessly blend funk, prog rock, sci-fi and sleaze. They had also won over a lot of new fans in the last few years, when the growing interest in revisiting Cosmic and European disco shone the spotlight back in their corner. Their biggest hit was “Love Machine,” which by anyone’s standards is a bone fide classic. Here they are performing it on Dutch TV:
Supermax - “Love Machine”
With his own particular Lemmy-meets-Kraftwerk style (thanks Richard!) Kurt Hauenstein, originally from Austria, was one seriously cool guy. Supermax were still touring up until last year—unfortunately I never got to see them even though I knew a few promoters who wanted to book them (cost permitting). Well, Kurt is jamming away in that big disco in the sky they call Heaven now. Here’s what taste of what a Supermax show would have been like:
Supermax - “It Ain’t Easy” (Live 1979)
These guys were great. If you want to know more about this band, you should check out their website. You can buy the Best Of Supermaxhere.
After the jump, more excellent clips of Kurt Hauenstein and Supermax…
Antonello Branca’s 1967 documentary What’s Happening? is an exciting look at New York City at a pivotal time when poets and painters were prophets revolutionizing art and pop culture forever. Featuring Allen Ginsberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Fred Mogubgub, Andy Warhol, Marie Benois, Robert Rauschenberg, Leon Kraushar and Gregory Corso.
The Manhattan street montages and music provide an additional burst of energy..
Stag loops, X-ploitation movies, French porn, go go dancing and mondo mania meets psychedelic stomps, garage rock, Afrodelic freakouts, punk and Rolling Stones’ outtakes in another installment of M. Campbell’s Psyche Grind series. This one’s called “The Vulva Underground” and it is a steaming pulsating pile of sleazy goodness. Dig it!
01. “Dark Eyed Woman” - Spirit
02. “Sitar Ride” - Madlib
03. “I’m Your Witchdoctor” - Noel Deschamps
04. “Satanic Sessions” - The Rolling Stones
05. “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” - Neil Diamond
06. “That’s All I Know (Right Now)” - The Neon Boys w/Richard Hell
07. “Easy Lovin’ Girl” - Roy Head
08. “The Ballad Of Bertha Gutz” - Amos Boynton
09. “The Edge Of Nowhere” - The Sunday Group
10. “She Got Me” - Masters Of Reality
11. “Dreambox” - The Frogs
12. “Love’s The Thing” - Smoke Rings
13. “Stop And Listen” - The Shags
14. “Mr. Bulldog” - The Mebusas
15. “The Man With The Golden Arm” - Barry Adamson
16. “Why” - The Wanted and Co.
17. “Marie Douceur, Marie Colere” - Marie Laforet
Mondo movie fans, take note: Our friends at Cinefamily, here in Los Angeles are programming another of their weird and wonderful weekend festivals. Focusing on the cheesy paranormal docs and TV shows of the 1970s like In Search Of, the two-day (and night) Phenome-Con 2011 features some outrageous “psychic” fare, that was once surprisingly commonplace in American culture:
In the ‘60s, baby boomers looked for God in a sugar cube, The Beatles seeked enlightenment in India and hippies freaked over Jesus. As the post-summer of love, pre-New Age ‘70s rolled in, it seems everyone went searching for the mysteries of life. Is there a higher power? Is there life after death? Where lies the lost empire of Atlantis? Can plants read your thoughts? How do I bend a fork with my mind? Does yogurt have feelings? Psychic surgery, hypnosis, ESP, UFOs, The Bermuda Triangle—it all held a fascination for Mr. and Mrs. America. It was a Phenomena Phenomenon, if you will. Reflecting these various crazes, a host of “speculative documentaries” quickly cropped up in grindhouses and drive-ins. This weekend, not only will we watch a crop of mind-marinating films, but we’ll also explore pyramid power, mind reading and we’ll search for Bigfoot. Cinefamily invites you to investigate with us the mysteries of our universe—join us for Phenome-Con!
The schedule for Day One, Saturday, March 26:
4:00pm Phenome-Con Saturday Afternoon Party (feat. The Best of “In Search Of…”)
7:30pm-ish The Amazing World Of Ghosts
10:00pm-sh A Bigfoot Celebration (feat. The Legend of Boggy Creek)
Midnight-ish Journey Into The Beyond
2:00am-ish The Devil’s Triangle
Day Two, Sunday March 27:
4:00pm Sunday Afternoon Part feat. more selections from The Best of “In Search Of…”, a casual Sunday patio hang-out, and then it’s time for…
6:00pm-ish The Pyramid
8:00pm Concluding the Phenome-Con will be a special screening and Q&A with director Don Como (hosted by Process Media’s Jodi Wille) featuring his 1978 film, Unknown Powers.
A novelization of the “lost” Doctor Who serial “Shada”, scripted by Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams in 1979, will be published next year, the Guardian reports:
Adams wrote three series of Doctor Who in the late 1970s, when he was in his twenties and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was first airing as a BBC radio comedy. “Shada” was intended as a six-part drama to finish off the 17th season, with Tom Baker in the role of the Doctor.
The story features the Time Lord coming to Earth with assistant Romana (Lalla Ward) to visit Professor Chronotis, who has absconded from Gallifrey, the Doctor’s home planet, and now lives quietly at Cambridge college St Cedd’s. (The Doctor: “When I was on the river I heard the strange babble of inhuman voices, didn’t you, Romana?” Professor Chronotis: “Oh, probably undergraduates talking to each other, I expect.”)
Chronotis has brought with him the most powerful book in the universe, The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey - which, in a typical touch of Adams bathos, turns out to have been borrowed from his study by a student. Evil scientist Skagra, an escapee from prison planet Shada, is on its trail.
Large parts of the story had already been filmed on location in Cambridge before industrial action at the BBC brought production to a halt. The drama was never finished, and in the summer of 1980 “Shada” was abandoned – although various later projects attempted to resurrect it.
Douglas Adams’s Doctor Who series are among the very few which have never been novelised, reportedly because the author wanted to do them himself but was always too busy. Gareth Roberts, a prolific Doctor Who scriptwriter, has now been given the job.
Publisher BBC Books declared the book “a holy grail” for Time Lord fans. Editorial director Albert De Petrillo said: “Douglas Adams’s serials for Doctor Who are considered by many to be some of the best the show has ever produced. Shada is a funny, scary, surprising and utterly terrific story, and we’re thrilled to be publishing the first fully realised version of this Doctor Who adventure as Douglas originally conceived it.”
Ed Victor, the literary agent representing the Douglas Adams estate, said: “The BBC have been asking us for years [to allow a novelisation of Shada] and the estate finally said, ‘Why not?’” Having Roberts novelise the Adams script was “like having a sketch on a canvas by Rubens, and now the studio of Rubens is completing it,” he added. The book will be published in March 2012 as a £16.99 hardback.
Adams died in 2001, and a posthumous collection of his work, including the unfinished novel The Salmon of Doubt, was published the following year. A Hitchhiker’s Guide followup, And Another Thing…., written by Eoin Colfer, was published in 2010, but Victor said there were “no plans at the moment” for more such sequels.
Bonus clip: Andrew Orton’s animation on the Daleks, inspired by Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide.
Whoa. These are really weird. A clearly classically trained singer, one Chris Kent of Nashville, TN., doing very strange and wildly inappropriate vocal arrangements of your favorite Toto and Michael Jackson songs backed by a drunken band teetering on the brink of total collapse for the entire duration. As I observed before about Final Placement, It’s re-assuring to hear such rhythmically wobbly music in this day and age for some reason. Somehow at times I’m reminded of late period Scott Walker and maybe Berlin era Bowie. Huh.
The technique is called Fear Selling, it’s how sales and marketing can seal deals by focusing “on the negative consequences of not buying [a] product / service.” A good example of “fear selling” is to be found on The Vivos Underground Survival Network for Surviving 2012 and Beyond, “a privately funded venture, with no religious affiliations,” which wants to help you “survive” the forthcoming catastrophe:
Millions of people believe that we are living in the “end times”. Many are looking for a viable solution to survive potential future Earth devastating events. Eventually, our planet will realize another devastating catastrophe, whether manmade, or a cyclical force of nature. Disasters are rare and unexpected, but on any sort of long timeline, they’re inevitable. It’s time to prepare!
Yep. Time to prepare, and boy is Vivos is preparing by “building a global network of underground shelters, to accommodate thousands of people...[to] provide a life assurance solution for those that wish to be prepared to survive these potential events, whether they occur now, in 2012, or in decades to come.” All for a first down payment of $25,000.
Vivos is in a race against time to complete construction and commissioning of a global network of underground community shelters prior to the predicted December 21, 2012 Mayan date. While this date is the impetus for completing Vivos, the envisioned catastrophic events can happen without notice, this year, next, in 2012, 2029, 2036, or even 100 years thereafter.
Nobody knows if the prophecies will happen, or not. Scientists understand that the Earth has had a number of catastrophic, periodic events that repeat on a somewhat predictable, or even random basis. Many current events, both natural and political are pointing to potential a disastrous change. The process may already be unfolding. NASA reports that 2012 could bring powerful solar storms, at the peak of the solar cycle; while it is also tracking the Apophis asteroid for what may be an Earth devastating collision in 2029, or 2036. What if one of these events happens? We cannot predict, but we can prepare. Time before the storm!
I know they’re hedging their bets here, but I know you know deep down something, somewhere, is going to happen to somebody, sometime, someplace. And that somebody might just be you.
And before you say this sounds like the kind of crap you’d expect from Glenn Beck, wait, Mr Snake Oil himself is on the Vivos site:
Learn about the 10|80|10% rule from a recent Glenn Beck show featuring the author of the Survivors Club. Which group are you in?
Okay, using Glenn Beck’s probably a bad idea, but look, they’ve got some stuff from the History Channel. Yep. The History Channel, or History as its now known, that channel famous for such historical programs as…er, Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men, Pawn Stars and all those documentaries about Hitler.
Many have predicted events around 2012. Vivos is not about 2012, but rather preparation for potential catastrophic events, whether they are in our near future or decades beyond. This History Channel presentation is one of the best on chronicling the Mayan prophecy.
I wonder if History know they’re being associated with this site?
Of course it’s not just the Mayan calendar you have to be worried about, as Vivos points out, there’s various “threat scenarios” from “a pole shift, super volcano eruptions, solar flares, earthquakes, asteroids, tsunamis, nuclear attack, bio terrorism, chemical warfare and even widespread social anarchy.” To help with your decision, they even have a selection of videos that:
...portray many of the most viable threat scenarios that make Vivos necessary for the security and life assurance of your family.
Still not convinced? Well, don’t worry, you have 637 days left to make your mind-up.
The Driver’s Seat AKA Identikit stars Elizabeth Taylor in one of her single most berserk performances and since no one can bring the crazy like La Liz, that is really saying something. This 1974 Italian film is based on a novella by Muriel Spark about a disturbed woman in a foreign country who seeks a man who will tie her up and stab her to death. There is ridiculous (mostly shouted, even screamed) dialogue like: “I sense a lack of absence” and “I feel homesick for my own loneliness.” How about “You look like Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. Do you want to eat me?” She holds up her purse in an airport security check and exclaims “This may look like a purse but it is actually a bomb!?” The best line is this, however: “When I diet, I diet and when I orgasm, I orgasm! I don’t believe in mixing the two cultures!”
The director, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, seems to have had no control over Taylor whatsoever and it appearss like she is making up her own Dada dialogue on the spot much of the time. Andy Warhol has a cameo in the film playing a British “your Lordship” who has a cryptic encounter with Liz in an airport and they meet again later in the film. His voice is overdubbed with an English voice, which is disconcerting but kind of interesting, too. Why isn’t this cuckoo-pops crazy film better known?
Here is what the AllMovie Guide has to say about The Driver’s Seat:
A beautiful but mysterious woman goes on a journey that has dangerous consequences for her and those around her in this offbeat, arty drama from Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Patroni Griffi. Lise (Elizabeth Taylor) is a woman edging into middle age who is nearing the end of her emotional rope. Needing some time away from her job and responsibilities, Lise flies to Rome, and on the flight she meets Bill (Ian Bannen), an eccentric health food enthusiast who makes it clear he wishes to seduce her, and Pierre (Maxence Mailfort), a curious man who is wary of Lise and goes out of his way to avoid her. Lise informs anyone she speaks with that she’s come to Rome to meet her boyfriend, but it soon becomes clear she has no specific plans nor anyone to see. Lise whiles away the afternoon shopping with Mrs. Fiedke (Mona Washbourne), a chatty older woman from Nova Scotia, and in time crosses paths with Bill again, but it’s not until she meets up with Pierre that her real reason for coming to Italy, as well as the depth of her madness, becomes clear. As Lise wanders through Rome, a team of police detectives is seen investigating a crime that seems to involve her. Also released as Identikit and Psychotic, The Driver’s Seat features a brief appearance from Andy Warhol as a British nobleman.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to stunned silence and it has been suggested that Liz at one point tried to buy up the rights and all prints of the movie. The filming began one day after she filed for divorce from Richard Burton and she reportedly said to director, Griffi, “It takes one day to die, another to be reborn.”
The Driver’s Seat is not out on a proper DVD release, but you can often find bootlegs at a “99 Cents Only” store. Or watch the highlights here:
As all true John Waters fanatics know, the Pope of Trash’s favorite film of all time is Boom! director Joseph Losey’s preposterous adaptation of Tennesse Williams’ 1963 play The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. Waters considers Boom! a bit of a litmus test: He’ll show it to friends and if someone doesn’t like it, he won’t talk to them anymore. Seems a bit much, but he’s John Waters and I respect that!
Boom! reveals itself as a cinematic atrocity almost from the film’s very first frames—not that this is a bad thing, mind you. A clearly drunk—and I do mean clearly drunk, okay?—Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton star, respectively, as Sissy Goforth, the richest woman in the world, and Chris Flanders, a penniless poet who has the uncanny knack for showing up just when some rich lady is about to kick the bucket, ready to relief them of their personal possesions. We know this because Flanders’ nickname is “The Angel of Death.”
When we meet her, La Taylor is seen swanning about her private island wearing insanely elaborate Karl Lagerfeld clothes and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Bugari jewels. She is attended to by fawning servants (including a surly dwarf!) as she dictates her memoirs and asks for constant “injections” for her pain (as if she could feel any due to all the booze and prescription painkillers she was on, but I digress).
Burton arrives on her island and is nearly ripped apart by a pack of her guard dogs. She asks him to stay and offers him a change of clothes, which includes a Samurai sword which he sports—inexplicably—for much of the film. They spend much of their screen time engaged in (obviously) drunken screaming matches. It’s AWESOME!
At one point, Noel Coward (as “The Witch of Capri”) shows up for a dinner party—carried on the shoulders of one of her servants—and gives her the goss on Burton/Flanders, who he thinks is a gigolo and warns her of his “angel of death” reputation. (Worth noting that the role of the “Witch” was originally offered to Katherine Hepburn who was insulted and turned it down).
In one bio of director Losey, he admits that all the principals on Boom!—including himself—were shitfaced drunk for the entire filming. Burton later fessed up that there were several films he made in the 60s that he literally had no memory of making. Odds are this is one of them!
Boom! wasn’t even released on VHS until 2000 and it’s never been put out on DVD (except for a recent Region 2 release in the Netherlands). Very occasionally you might see it on TV. Next time it’s on, grab yourself some herbal “entertainment insurance,” invite a few friends over and gorge yourself on the glorious, gorgeous mess that is Boom!
And if you don’t believe me, here’s what John Waters has to say about the film:
