In this rarely seen television interview from 1971, the artist Christo explains why he knows what he likes, and what he likes is to create art, and he doesn’t care what others think of his art. It’s the kind of interview one would expect from the Daily Mail or, Prim-and-Proper from Tunbridge Wells, where the intonation is bemused, condescending and, at times, aghast by an artist who has achieved fame by wrapping up landmarks and landscape in plastics and rope.
Christo looks like he could be in Pink Floyd, but even his pop star looks doesn’t stop the interviewer from asking such inane questions as: is Christo mad?
Going by Christo’s responses, I’d reckon this interview was cut short - the whole interview only lasts around a minute-twenty, and the package is padded out with voice over and archive, before the interviewer wonders what Christo will do next:
“...Could he be sizing up the sea perhaps? Or, will he plump for a parcel of the whole world, instead?”
Like I said, inane - though, it doesn’t really matter, as Christo didn’t say.
Happy Birthday to Bryan Ferry, who was born today in 1945.
Ferry may have looked the epitome of the suave, sophisticated nightclub singer, sipping cocktails in evening suit and slick-backed hair, but he was one of the most revolutionary and original musicians and song-writers of past 4 decades.
Take a look at his song book and you will realize Ferry has written some of the most breath-taking, beautiful and exciting songs of the seventies and eighties, both with Roxy Music and as a solo artist.
Add to this Ferry’s uncanny ability to produce seemingly timeless tracks that are as startling today as when first heard. You can hear this in songs as diverse as “Virginia Plain”, “The Thrill of It All”, “All I Want”, “Out of the Blue” “Mother of Pearl”, “A Song for Europe”, and “In Every Dream Home a Heartache”, through to the series of solo albums he produced, in particular In Your Mind and The Bride Stripped Bare.
Here is Mr Ferry at his best on a Japanese TV show, The Young Music Show, recorded at NHK 101 Studio in June 9th, 1977.
The band consisted of Paul Thompson (Drums ); John Wetton (Bass); Chris Mercer, Martin Drover, Mel Collins (Horn Section ); Ann Odell (Keyboards); Chris Spedding, Phil Manzanera (Guitars); and Bryan Ferry.
Track Listing
01. “Let’s Stick Together”
02. “Shame, Shame, Shame”
03. “In Your Mind”
04. “Casanova”
05. “Love Me Madly Again”
06. “Love is the Drug”
07. “Tokyo Joe”
08. “This Is Tomorrow”
09. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
10. “The Price of Love”
Behold the contract that signed the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously) Miss Pamela (Pamela Ann Miller, later Pamela Des Barres), Miss Sparky (Linda Sue Parker), Miss Lucy (Lucy Offerall, later Lucy McLaren), Miss Christine (Christine Frka), Miss Sandra (Sandra Lynn Rowe, later Sandra Leano), Miss Mercy (Mercy Fontentot, aka Judith Edra Peters) and Miss Cynderella (Cynthia Wells, later Cynthia Cale-Binion; the Frank Zappa produced all-girl groupie band to Bizarre Records, the label run by Zappa and his then-business partner, Herb Cohen. (Their album, Permanent Damage, actually came out on Zappa and Cohen’s Straight Records and featured the talents of Lowell George, Ry Cooder, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, Ron Wood, Jimmy Carl Black, Nicky Hopkins and Don Preston.
The group started out as “The Cherry Sisters” and then became The Laurel Canyon Ballet Company.
I like how they all signed in different colored pens.
This contract was on eBay a couple of weeks ago, but I got distracted 20 minutes before the auction ended and forgot about it until it was too late.
“I’m in Love with the Ooh Ooh Man,” a love-song about a boy with a first name that’s the same as his last (that would be Nick St. Nicholas, the bass player of Steppenwolf). Sung by Miss Pamela; the music was written by Monkee Davy Jones.
Photographer Michael Jang snapped these glorious photos in 1983 of people auditioning for the weather reporter position at a local TV station in San Francisco.
It’s difficult to describe the music, or the persona, of Reverend Fred Lane, but I will try. The above pictured album cover probably paints at least a thousand words…
Fred Lane is an ultra obscure musical weirdo cult hero along the lines of Half Japanese, Daniel Johnston, Jandek, R. Stevie Moore or Wild Man Fischer, but he’s way, way more obscure than any of these comparatively famous freaks. At least you know the general territory. Lane was/is the stage name of a Tuscaloosa, AL-based artist/sculptor named T.R. Reed who put out two albums under the Fred Lane moniker in 1983, From the One That Cut You (recorded in 1975) and Car Radio Jerome in 1986. These albums were then re-released by Kramer’s Shimmy Disc label in the late 80s.
First the music: cartoony big-band free-jazz swing skronk sometimes bordering on total cacophony with dada lyrics and elements of easy listening, 70s Zappa, spy-fi, The Residents, Spike Jones, country and No Wave thrown in for good measure. It’s truly unlike anything I’ve ever heard before and that’s not a throwaway assessment. The music of Reverend Fred Lane exists in its own very, very specific angel dust funhouse mirror continuum in the same way that a film like Eraserhead or Forbidden Zone stands out when compared to other mere movies.
In the mid-70s there was an Alfred Jarry-influenced absurdest arts group/event in Tuscaloosa called the Raudelunas Pataphysical Revue and this is where Reed’s “Reverend Fred Lane” alter ego was born, as the joking MC for Ron ‘Pate’s Debonairs. No pants. A tuxedo jacket. Coke-bottle glasses, a leering grin and a waxed mustache made the sleazy Reverend’s mad look which was then topped off with Band-Aids. Although it is an act, it’s not one that’s completely obvious at first and Lane might seem to some listeners to be genuinely demented.
From the One That Cut You was literally inspired by an illiterate threatening love note/confession from someone named “Fuear” that was wrapped around a knife that was found in a secret compartment in a 1952 Dodge truck. Reed wrote both a song and also a stage show based on the note for his Fred Lane character.
The note read:
“I hope the paine is gone. This is the one that cut you? P.S. Don’t wear about Jimmy I will take kear of him the same way I took kear of YOU.”
Dig his song titles: “Upper Lip Of A Nostril Man.” “Car Radio Jerome.” “The French Toast Man.” “Danger Is My Beer.” Who could forget “I Talk To My Haircut”? I can’t imagine what this music sounded like to unsuspecting listeners in the 70s and 80s. And how in the world did people find out about it? (Apparently John Peel played Fred Lane on his BBC radio show. I heard of him because Kramer gave me his CD.)
Only two Fred Lane albums ever came out, A guy named Skizz Cyzyk has been working on a documentary about Fred Lane and the Raudelunas collective for over a decade now. He says of the Alabamy art/freak-out scene, “Had it been in NY or SF there would be textbooks written about it by now.”
Interesting point. The Fred Lane CDs are long out of print and sell for upwards of $75 for used copies on Amazon. Fred Lane seems like an obvious candidate for a deluxe collector’s edition CD reissue of some sort. In the meantime, there’s a download link on the Remote Outposts blog
