The kind folks over at ModCinema recently sent me a fantastic 2-hour compilation culled from the ranks of the many incredible—and long out of print, or never released in versions with English subtitles—films that they carry. It’s titled Colorspace Vol.1 and covers the “mod” cultural territory of 60s/70s film and television. Interspersed with trailers from films like Barbarella, I Love You Alice B. Toklas and dozens more (many that I’d never even heard of before) you’ll find wonderful vintage TV ads and musical performances from Los Bravos(!), Tommy Roe, Brigitte Bardot, Nancy Sinatra and Colorspace Vol. 1 is especially well art-directed. Professional graphic designers and design snobs will love it.
The Bodhisattva of body builders, the joculator of juice, Jack LaLanne has died at 96.
At 60 he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf handcuffed, shackled and towing a 1,000-pound boat. At 70, handcuffed and shackled again, he towed 70 boats, carrying a total of 70 people, a mile and a half through Long Beach Harbor.
LaLanne’s approach to physical and mental wellbeing had a lot in common with the yogic tradition of the East which hipsters were embracing right and left in the sixties and yet in that decade LaLanne was considered a square. As much as he was goofed on for his comic book adverts and straightedge style, he was in fact way ahead of his time, making the connection between how you feel and what you eat and recognizing that the best cure for feeling like shit is getting off your ass and moving your body. In an era when America was enthralled by the TV dinner, LaLanne was celebrating the therapeutic power of the carrot.
In 2004, LaLanne shouted at a San Francisco Chronicle reporter “Would you give your dog a cigarette and a doughnut for breakfast every morning? People think nothing of giving themselves that for breakfast, and they wonder why they don’t feel good.”
In this clip from 1959, LaLanne appears on “You Bet Your Life” hosted by Groucho Marx. As Groucho waves his cigar around like a lethal wand and attempts to poke holes in LaLanne, the juicerator maintains a Zen cool. You gotta love this guy. His good vibes will be missed.
What is the through-line in this batch of tunes I’ve selected to present to you, the discerning Dangerous Minds consumer? Perhaps it’s what Brian Eno refers to as idiot glee. At least that’s the emotional state that these songs tend to evoke in yours truly. That is until the last few tracks when my stock-in-trade taste for melancholic melody and downer sentiment kicks in. Whatever, hope you enjoy being inside my head for an hour. It’s a weird place to be.
Don Van Vliet - What Are We Gonna Do With You ?
Wild Kingdom - Roma-Destiny
Shoukichi Kina - Haisai Ojisan
Rick Grossman - Mellow Heaven Clout
Bobby Brown - Hawaii Nei I’ll Miss You
Lila Downs - Pinotepa
Albert Ayler & Don Cherry - Ghosts
Aksak Maboul - A Modern Lesson
Can - Turtles Have Short Legs (original 7” version)
Vogel - Flaschenzug
Eno (with The Winkies) - Totalled (I’ll Come Running)
The Van Dyke Parks - Do Want You Wanta
T2 - J.L.T.
Toru Takemitsu - Sky, Horse and Death
Nick Lowe - Endless Sleep
Serious video bonus: The internet debut of the only video footage of the band Wild Kingdom that I know of from my personal collection of New Wave Theatre episodes. I’m truly hoping a member or two of this band will turn up and tell me where the other recordings are (or at least what the incredible drummer ended up doing!)
Oliver Reed and Keith Moon had a bizarre and incredible friendship that brought them close to the edge of madness and ultimately lead to their untimely deaths.
Their friendship began during the making of Ken Russell’s Tommy, as mutual acquaintance Lee Patrick recalled:
I was living with Keith Moon at the time and they were just about to start filming Tommy, Keith and I had spent all morning driving Soho’s sex shops buying dildoes, rubber stuff etc for Keith to use as props for Uncle Ernie.
At lunchtime Keith decided to drop into Ken Russell’s office and mentioned that he’d like to meet Ollie before they started filming, Ken immediately got on the phone to Ollie and suggested a meeting, Ollie invited us to Broome Hall afternoon so we were off to Battersea Heliport where we boarded a helicopter to take us there. We arrived on his front lawn shortly afterward, unfortunately frightening his pregnant horses, Ollie was standing there in the doorway holding two-pint mugs whisky for us. He was a charming host and invited us to stay for dinner.
Dinner was served on a huge medieval oak table and before we started eating Ollie jumped up and grabbed two large swords which were hanging on the wall, giving one to Keith. The two of them ended up having a sword fight up and down the table, that was the appetizer! After dinner Ollie invited us down to his local pub, The Cricketers, where we all got very drunk, with Ollie and Keith undressing, each one trying to outdo the drunken antics of the other, they were so alike that it was no wonder they became great friends.
Later on, back at Broome Hall, Ollie insisted we stay the night, we were up for that, expecting to be sleeping in a magnificent bedroom, however, his entourage took up all the furnished bedrooms and we were led out to the stables!! Keith said we would pass up his invitation and go home, but Ollie would have none of it, and next thing we knew he was standing there pointing an old shotgun at us, so we said OK we’ll stay, we ended up sleeping on couches in the living room!
Reed was Britain’s highest paid and most successful film star, something he was always keen to let any scandal-mongering press know:
‘I’m the biggest star this country has got. Destroy me and you destroy the whole British film industry.’
He had also been voted the sexiest actor alive and told Photoplay magazine:
‘I may look like a Bedford truck, but the women know there’s a V-8 engine underneath.’
Though he also claimed the film world wasn’t where his ambitions lay:
‘I have two ambitions in life: one is to drink every pub dry, the other is to sleep with every woman on earth.’
It was disingenuous, for Reed was quite serious about his acting. He was “always word perfect and unfailingly courteous to colleagues and technicians.” Reed was well respected as an actor, and according to Michael Winner, a professional on set. Off set was something else entirely. Reed had once been within “a sliver” of replacing Sean Connery as James Bond in the film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but Reed’s reputation as a hell-raiser meant the part went to George Lazenby.
By 1975, Reed had made an impressive range of films, including I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (the first film to have the word “fuck” in it); The Jokers; The Assassination Bureau; Hannibal Brroks; The Shuttered room; Women in Love (first male-full frontal nudity, a scene which was not in the original script, and was only included after Reed encouraged Russell to film it); Sitting Target; and perhaps his best film, The Devils.
Reed had formed a creative partnership with Ken Russell, the director he called “Jesus Christ,” since they had worked together on the BBC TV drama The Debussy film. It was because of this partnership that the non-singing Reed was cast in the role of Frank in the musical Tommy. Moon hoped Reed would help him develop a career as an actor. But as the pair capered and drank copiously off set, their boozing was to have a debilitating effect for Moon on set:
Reed’s part got bigger and bigger as Keith Moon’s got smaller and smaller, probably due to Ken Russell’s familiarity with Oliver, and the fact that he could drink himself into stupor at night and show up on time and line-perfect in the morning, while Moonie remained stuporous.
Their friendship was an unstable chemical compound based on drink, drugs, sex, and pranks, as Reed once said:
‘I like the effect drink has on me. What’s the point of staying sober?’
The life of excess has but one destination, and as Cliff Goodwin wrote in his definitive biography of Reed, Evil Spirits, the end came during Reed’s 40th birthday party at a swanky hotel in Hollywood, when Moon decided to liven things up with his impersonation of a “human helicopter”. Moon jumped onto a table, grabbed the blades of an overhead fan and began to spin around, above the heads of the invited guests. Unfortunately, the blades had slashed Moon’s hands and arms and he splattered the A-list celebrities with gore.
It was the moment that Reed realized the genie was well and truly out of the bottle and that he or Moon would die from their life of excess. Tragically, it was Moon who died six months later. Reed never recovered from Moon’s death, and later claimed a day didn’t go by when he didn’t think about Moon the Loon.
Loose Joints’ “Is It All Over My Face” is a classic of forward thinking disco from 1979. A collaboration between avant-garde musician Arthur Russell and DJ Steve D’Acquisto, and remixed to another level by Paradise Garage’s Larry Levan, it’s a staple of disco clubs and the gay/drag ballroom scene (see Paris Is Burning below). Arthur Russell died in 1992, but there has been a huge resurgence of interest in his music in the last decade and quite a cult has grown around him. Always open to re-interpreting his own music (with recurring melodies and themes in a lot of his work), a new generation have taken his baton and run with it.
Arthur’s Landing is a group of musicians based in New York City, some of whom played on Russell’s original recordings, who come together to play his compositions. They have just released an album on the UK’s Strut label, and tomorrow night sees the US launch party in New York (details further down). Here is one of their slow, hypnotic versions of “Is It All Over My Face”, now given the song’s original title of “Love Dancing”. This version does not appear on the album, and is perfect Sunday afternoon listening material:
Band member Steven Hall told Dangerous Minds about the beginnings of the group:
“It was originally just a bunch of friends getting together to play Arthur’s songs for pleasure. Steve D’Acquisto heard us play and wanted to record us live, so he produced several days of recordings in a huge studio (Excello) in Brooklyn many years ago. Nothing happened for years and in the meantime Arthur’s music became more and more popular.
After I put the band on MySpace, then Facebook, we got a tremendous response and started playing gigs—we found a ready-made audience who already liked us because they loved the material. So we didnt have to “pay our dues” in the traditional showbiz sense, although ironically we have been playing these songs for more than thirty years. Now suddenly we are getting a lot of attention. This makes us feel good because we enjoy sharing this amazing music!” More Arthur Russell and Arthur’s Landing after the jump.
Released twenty years ago this year, Paris Is Burning is one of the all-time great music documentaries. It’s not really about music though, it’s about the mid 80’s gay/drag “vogue” subculture that sprung up in New York City, and the adverse social conditions overcome by the contestants (mostly black and Hispanic transvestites and transsexuals). The music is in the background, but plays as important a role as the clothes, the make-up, the settings or the interviews.
This time, this place, and unfortunately most of these people don’t exist anymore. This upload won’t for long either, as it keeps getting yanked - so seriously, if you haven’t watched this film before, watch it now while you can. The director Jennie Livingston has never made another film that garnered as much praise and sadly, for most of the queens involved, this was as famous as they were ever gonna get. Despite being some of the most funny, articulate and charming people ever seen on film. They never had a penny to their names, which is probably why they threw the best parties in the world.
Voguing wasn’t just some hyped up fad that was hot for a New York minute (well, maybe if you are Madonna), - it has a rich, complex history and is just as big a subculture now as it was then, bigger maybe, with the dancing developed to new super-athletic extremes and the balls bolder events. Vogue dancing and vogue balls are an overlooked part of both gay and black history and culture, but more and more they getting the attention and recognition they deserve. Due in so small part to this remarkable film.
EDIT
As I thought, this film wouldn’t last long on Vimeo. However, someone has thankfully uploaded it to YouTube too:
In the first video, The Cramps tear it up in Germany 1998. This was broadcast on German TV network Viva II. The audio sounds like a half dozen feral cats thrown in a blender. But watching Lux and Ivy in super fine form makes up for the deficiencies in sound quality. It’s amazing footage. Lux destroys the stage like a one man horde of Mongols. And Ivy and her man’s mating dance is bootlicious.
Harry Drumdini on drums and Slim Chance on bass in both videos.
This second video is The Cramps on Croatian TV also in ‘98.
Imagine being a kid somewhere in Croatia and seeing this on TV. Nothing’s goin’ on in your shitty life, you live in a country the size of West Virginia and just as polluted, heroin is everywhere, jobs are hard to find. So you turn on the TV to escape and bang there’s this band tearin’ things up and going wild and it feels real good and the two members of the band start talking about rock and they make it sound so liberating and beautiful and exciting and you decide maybe to get a guitar and you do end up getting one and you learn to play 3 chords but that’s all you need and suddenly you’re feeling free and you’re not as angry and you’re starting to dig life a little bit more yeah it’s not so bad and you start thinkin’ maybe I could do what The Cramps are doing going on the road traveling making music believing in something doing something real not just talk not just politics not just shooting the shit with your friends who are too fucking afraid to be real because they haven’t received the message from on high the gospel the teachings and that’s when it it hits you that’s when you realize that yes Lux and Ivy were talking to you and everything they said they were saying to you and that just makes you more determined more fucking driven to be a rock and roller, a punk whatever, a revolutionary for love and music and energy because fuck man you’ve been chosen rock and roll has chosen you!
Uploaded to Youtube by 60sgaragebands.com, this is truly rare 8mm footage of Illinois garage rockers The Shadows Of Knight performing at the 1966 Teen World Fair in Chicago.
There is almost zero live footage of The Shadows Of Knight on the Internet. WTF? These are the guys that turned “Gloria” into a smash hit! So this is a nice piece of rock history.
Update: The Shadows Of Knight vocalist and guitarist Jerry McGeorge provides some insight on the Teen World Fair footage:
The tunes we were playing when the vid was shot aren’t the same as the sound track. “Long Time Comin’” is a Tom Schiffour tune from late ‘66. The cut is probably from the Chess sessions we did around that same time. A fun video all the same. We managed to piss off every DJ in Chicago during that series of gigs. Too loud and too many smart asses on stage all at the same time!
60sgaragebands.com is compiling home movie footage of 1960’s garage/rock bands “in order to preserve the footage and offer it to collectors of garage rock from the 1960’s.”
Here’s a sample of some of the footage they’ve compiled so far. I love this stuff and can’t wait to see more. This was an era in which garages in suburbs across America were the breeding ground for the devil’s music and there was a rock band on every block. Silvertones ruled.
Will George O’Dowd still be Boy George when he hits his half-century later this year? Man George doesn’t have the same hook to it - sounding like something a porn star would use; and we can never think of him as Middle-Aged George, even though that’s closer to the truth. For the wonderfully soulful-voiced O’Dowd has been a fixture of pop culture for thirty years, and he is now as lovable a character as the Queen Mum was to London cab drivers. Add to this his back catalog of hits and a shelf-full of notable tales - from his own fair share of ups and downs as internationally successful pop star, actor, writer, ex-druggie, ex-convict and DJ - and you’ll see why Boy George is a modern pop culture hero.
In 2000, George presented The Chemical Generation a fascinating documentary examining “the Acid House, rave and club culture revolution and also the generations favourite chemical - ecstasy.” This gem was first broadcast in the UK on Channel 4, on the 27 May 2000, and it is:
...the story of British club and drug culture from the early days of acid house. The documentary includes interviews with promoters, bouncers, drug dealers and the clubbers themselves, shot in clubs and bars around London and club footage from across the country. Interviewees include (DJs) Danny Rampling, Judge Jules, Nicky Holloway, Pete Tong, Lisa Loud, Mike Pickering, Dave Haslan, along with Ken Tappenden (former Divisional Commander of Kent Police) and writer (Trainspotting) Irvine Welsh.
The background to rave in the UK goes something like this:
In 1987 four working class males, Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, Nicky Holloway and Johnny Walker found themselves in clubs across Ibiza, listening to the music which was to make them legends in the dance scene and transform the face of youth subculture in Britain. Not only did they discover the musical genre of Acid House, played by legendary house DJ’s Alredo Fiorillio and Jose Padilla in clubs such as Amnesia and Pacha, they were also crucially introduced to the drug MDMA, more commonly known as ecstasy. Johnny Walker describes the experience:
“It was almost like a religious experience; a combination of taking ecstasy and going to a warm, open-air club full of beautiful people - you’re on holiday, you feel great and you’re suddenly being exposed to entirely different music to what you were used to in London. This strange mixture was completely fresh and new to us, and very inspiring”
The Chemical Generation covers their story and more, and giving an excellent history of Rave Culture, its drugs, its stars, and its music.
Bonus clip, Boy George sings ‘The Crying Game’, after the jump…
