There isn’t exactly what you’d call “a whole lot” of performance footage of the great Harry Nilsson out there—apparently he didn’t really enjoy performing on television all that much and he never, ever toured—but luckily what does exist tends to be magical. Like a charming clip from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968 where he sang with Tommy Smothers and discussed songwriting, a visit to the Playboy Mansion with Hef and the bunnies, or the Nilsson meets orchestra performance of A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night a team-up with Sinatra arranger Gordon Jenkins broadcast on the BBC in 1973.

But what is undoubtedly the very best example of Harry Nilsson “live” is the BBC In Concert show that was taped in 1971 at the BBC Television Theatre (now the Shepherd’s Bush Empire) and first broadcast on New Year’s Day, 1972.

Here’s the thing: although Nilsson is playing live, there’s no audience present save for the technicians. The audience (very briefly) seen here was edited in from another show of the In Concert series! The (intermittent) applause? Canned.

Dig especially the emotional performance here of The Point‘s “Life Line” and an early version of Son Of Schmilsson‘s “Joy” that’s better than the studio version. “Walk Right Back” wouldn’t see release until the Harry Nilsson box set. Comedy nerds will recognize the visual tribute to Ernie Kovacs’ “Nairobi Trio” during “Coconut.”

Set list:
Mr Richland’s Favourite Song / One 0:00
Gotta Get Up 3:48
Walk Right Back / Cathy’s Clown / Let The Good Times Roll 6:28
Life Line 10:37
Think About Your Troubles 15:09
Joy 17:32
Are You Sleeping? 21:03
Without Her 23:23
Coconut 25:31
1941 30:03
 

Photo: Matt Hoyle
 
After graduating college in 1992, I was lucky enough to be able to move to Vienna, Austria, where I ended up living for three years. Because of connections through friends and family there, I was essentially paying no rent, and in that time I took a number of odd, off-the-books jobs and generally had fun exploring the city and trying my damndest to learn German. Mostly what I did is read books (in English) and—especially—watch movies. I’ve read that the French call the twenties the age of movie-going, and that was certainly true of me. I was in my twenties, and I was fairly obsessed with movies. At that time in Austria, every Friday would bring one or two American releases; partly as a link to home, I watched a good deal of those movies, many of them awful, in the theater (there was no such thing as DVDs or streaming, remember; libraries were not plentiful; video rental stores were inconveniently located and pricey). So it was that I watched a category of movie I would probably have avoided at any other time of my life, movies like Another Stakeout and Sliver and Striking Distance and Pacific Heights and Unlawful Entry and Hero and Sommersby and Guilty as Sin and Malice and countless others. Most of these movies were terrible, of course, but not all of them were. In addition to the current Hollywood movies I was seeing, I was also getting drunk on American independent movies and foreign movies and hardy studio-system/auteurist fare, trying to achieve a minimal level of mastery on directors like Jarmusch and Hartley and Wong Kar-Wai and Buñuel and Mike Leigh and Rohmer and Kieslowski and Linklater and Abel Ferrara and Hawks and Ford and Sirk and on and on and on. Vienna’s a good town for revival cinemas, and I was using my gift of free time to catch up in a hurry.

I think it took a generational compeer such as Patton Oswalt (just a year older than myself) to write a book that brought me back to those heady days so powerfully. In his new book Silver Screen Fiend, Oswalt covers with fearful accuracy and depth his own late twenties in which, while pursuing a career as a comedy writer and developing his standup persona, he also attempted to fulfill a personal bet of sorts in which he would spend as many evenings in a movie theater as possible. In a long appendix Oswalt lists what movies he watched on certain dates from 1995 to 1999, and in among the classics of the golden age of cinema (The Philadelphia Story) and foreign masterpieces (Band of Outsiders) and schlock standouts (The Man from Planet X), you can see Oswalt taking in whatever new product Hollywood was issuing as well—Space Jam and Turbulence and Double Team and so on. It was this latter point that made me realize how similar Oswalt and I were, we both felt this inexplicable urge to consume just everything relating to movies.
 

 
Oswalt’s first book, 2011’s Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, touched on his cinephilia (it covers his youthful stint working at the Towncenter 3 Movie Theater in Sterling, Virginia) but was mainly about the making of a nerd, if you will, focusing on comic books and standup. Whereas that fine book was a loosely connected collection of essays, Silver Screen Fiend exploits the obsessions of Oswalt’s twenties to give the book a stronger narrative. Oswalt starts the book in 1995, in thrall to his five chosen cinema bibles (Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film et al.) and emerges in 1999, better informed on cinema to be sure, but also having progressed enough as a person to have moved on from this particular “Night Café” (a useful trope developed by Oswalt that anyone can use to track significant challenges in one’s life), free of the need to cater so doggedly to this particular whim. In other words, he had tackled this particular demon and conquered it, he could move forward as an accredited movie maven and achieve success in his chosen fields of comedy and acting.

The book should be a delight to any obsessive movie freaks out there. In an effort to avoid an inflated ego, Oswalt has a slackerish (hey, I’m one too) tendency to be excessively hard on himself, as in his eviscerating depictions of himself as an employee of Mad TV in the mid-1990s. I think I can speak for most of his readers when I say that I hope Oswalt can find a way to let himself off the hook!

Oswalt kindly took time out of his holiday schedule to answer a few questions for Dangerous Minds:
 
Dangerous Minds: I recently saw some of Clint Eastwood’s early directorial triumphs, including Play Misty for Me and High Plains Drifter. High Plains Drifter in particular is a sorely underrated movie. Any thoughts on those movies or Eastwood as a director?

Patton Oswalt: He’s doing that classic Hollywood studio system thing that Scorsese’s been doing in a sneaky way. In other words, he just keeps making movies. Some are terrific (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Invictus) some not so good (no comment) but he keeps expanding the canvas, and challenging himself, and he’s on a much bigger journey than dwelling over reviews and box office. I’m glad that’s still happening in moviemaking.

I read somewhere that you wanted to program John Huston’s Fat City in a film festival but it wasn’t available. Boy, Susan Tyrrell is really something in that!

I eventually got to screen it. And there was a chance, up ’til the last minute, that Stacey Keach would be available for a q&a, but his schedule wouldn’t permit it. Oh well. It’s still a fantastic movie. That opening scene, where Stacey Keach is pulling himself into consciousness in the hotel room, is all of 70’s cinema distilled.

I feel like the greatest of all Blaxploitation movies is really Cotton Comes to Harlem but it doesn’t get mentioned as much. It’s full of humor and music and mountebanks and schemes and crazy clothes d crazy interior design. It’s got so much energy but later Blaxploitation movies feel a little co-opted by comparison. Do you agree?  What are some of your favorite Blaxploitation moments?

I’m more partial to movies like Superfly (with the genius push-pull of the images being negated by the chiding, mournful soundtrack) and The Mack. Even something like Sweet Sweetback has a too-simple agenda, at times, despite its wild, incredibly alive filmmaking. The Mack and Superfly sting more because when you watch them they simply… are. They respect you enough to make up your mind about what you’re seeing. And I’m a huge Chester Himes fan, and I don’t think Coffin Ed and Gravedigger have ever been well-depicted onscreen, Cotton Comes to Harlem included.

In 1981, I was 11 years old, and my parents took me to see Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey within two weeks of each other—and in between, I secretly watched Ken Russell’s Tommy on TV, which is an incredibly fucked-up movie for a preteen to watch. That was the month I realized that there was this thing called “grown-up movies” waiting for me up ahead. Do you remember the first movie or movies you ever saw that made you realize that movies were an adult pastime that you could look forward to?

When I was 11 my dad took me to see Excalibur. It was my first R-rated movie in a theater. And I remember being excited, of course, for the tits and violence. But I ended up being more intrigued by the new dimensions being opened up to me. It was the first time I realized that a lot of the time, kids are given the basic outline of the story—the sword in the stone, the grail—and adults get all of the in-between, filled-in details. The adultery, the selfish sorcery, the petty politics that humans live under and subject themselves to. It was a terrific thing to realize at such a young age—that growing older afforded you darker dimensions. I couldn’t wait!
 

The Man from Planet X
 

 
Tony Hawk is synonymous with skateboarding, a living, breathing human trademark for his sport. An icon, he’s also a brand, running a business empire with tentacles in video games, amusement park rides, action sports exhibitions and his new YouTube channel, RIDE, which features Hawk himself in “Tony’s Strange Life.” He’s also known for his philanthropic activities, helping to build skateparks in low-income areas with his Tony Hawk Foundation, which has given away more than $3.4 million to help construct over 400 parks around the US.

We sat with Tony Hawk and asked a few questions about where he’s been and where he’s going next.

I’ve read that you were a really hyperactive child and that discovering skating helped you burn off that excessive energy. Is this why it’s so important for your charity to build skateparks in needy communities? So that other kids might find that same kind of focus you found through skating?

Tony Hawk: Yes, but it’s also important to me because I grew up near one of the last remaining skatepark of the ‘80s and I only realized later how lucky I was. It was a huge part of my life and gave me the opportunity to practice my passion, while spending time and sharing ideas with other skaters. I want to help provide the same type of opportunities and facilities for youth in difficult areas.

How do you tame that same hyperactivity today as one of the most successful entrepreneurs in sports? What keeps you centered and on target at this stage of your life?

My kids. Keeping up with them while trying to manage a career in skateboarding is a constant challenge. But I enjoy the challenges that being an “elder” skater and entrepreneur provide. It’s a whole new era of skateboarding and I am living the dream.

Sponsorships are obviously a large part of the business of Tony Hawk and you’ve always had A-list companies behind you. Tell me about some of those relationships. For example, you’ve worked with Nixon for a long time. How did that come about?

I have always admired Nixon‘s products and marketing, even before I was sponsored by them. I might be the only skater that begged my way onto the team, and I am proud to fly the Nixon flag in all my endeavors; they truly understand our culture. 

What’s the project that’s currently got you the most excited?

My next video game, coming out in late 2015 for newer consoles. It’s already looking on point.

Sponsored by Nixon

 
I was not cut out for skating. I tried, but no dice. In the mid ‘80s I had a G&S Neil Blender deck, the graphic on which I still think was freakin’ awesome, a friend of mine had a half-pipe in his back yard, and I had a ton of friends to go street skating with (this in the era during which, contra the assertion on the bumper sticker, skateboarding often WAS a crime, at least in Ohio), but I never got terribly good at it, and when I watched a good pal take a spill and saw his badly broken ulna sticking out of his bleeding arm I was pretty much done. Ten years ago, that friend and I attempted a misguided relive-our-youth tour of skate parks in Oregon which, though it was a great time, resulted in an ankle injury I still haven’t recovered from. Yeah, I was not cut out for skating.

But if I wasn’t cut out for that scene—which, in my experience, was mostly just a way for dudebros in the hardcore scene to flex their jock impulses without crossing tribes into school-sanctioned team sports (another reason I was a bad fit)—where could Nick Cave have fit in? The music of a tall, lanky, heroin/goth figure like him was anathema to the adrenaline anthems skaters tended to favor (still another reason I was a bad fit). But though Cave was never even remotely associated with the skate scene I knew, that hasn’t stopped Australian company Fast Times from making a really gorgeous Nick Cave deck.

True legend of Australian music, Good friend and Customer Nick Cave has teamed up with us to produce an exciting and rad collection! After discussing lyrics and a theme, It was agreed Nature Boy best suited the Melbourne Skate Scene and vibe of Fast Times. The Lyrics are taken from ‘Nature Boy’ A track from’s Nick’s Abattoir Blues album which also features on the accompanying Fast Times Skate clip.

Once the mood was set Artist Chuck Sperry hailing from San Francisco worked with us to come up with a design, One of Chuck’s dames is seen tangled in her long golden locks wrapped in a psychedelic bed of flowers. The Boards feature a full wrap metallic graphic which feels and looks like an amazing piece of art.

 
More after the jump…

 
To the extent that he’s known at all, SPOT is known for his time as the in-house producer for SST records in the 1980’s. His were the hands on the board for unimpeachable classics like Meat Puppets II, What Makes a Man Start Fires?, Zen Arcade, Milo Goes to College, and the first four Black Flag albums. He eventually retired from producing (and really, not even he could have saved What The…) to focus on performing music.

But all that time, he had another, lesser-known talent as well—as a photographer. The new book Sounds of Two Eyes Opening collects SPOT’s photos of L.A., spanning from the surf/beach scene of the ‘60s to the punk/skate scene of the ‘80s, and he is (was?) a very fine shooter, with a solid eye for composition. From the publisher’s hype-sheet:

Spanning the late 1960s through the early 1980s, Sounds of Two Eyes Opening offers an amazing portrait of Southern California coastal life: surfing, bikinis, roller skating and skate boarding’s fledgling days are set in contrast to iconic shots of all the key denizens of hardcore punk rock as it is being invented; candid shots of Black Flag, The Germs, Minutemen abut those of everyday punks, fans, cops, clubs and now-shuttered rehearsal spaces.

 

 

 
Some editions of the book come with an Ed Templeton-designed picture 7” featuring SPOT’s song “Too Wise to Crack.” I scoured the web in vain for a streamable version to play for you, but I turned up squat. I quite like it though, it’s a loose, free, and economical piece of music with spoken vocals that recalls moments from Funambulist, Worldbroken-era Saccharine Trust, or Keith Morris’ Midget Handjob project—and what an idiot I was to search for videos of that band.

Sinecure Books were kind enough to share these images from Sounds of Two Eyes Opening. Enjoy.
 

 

 

 

 
Fun on wheels after the jump…

 
The wildlife of NYC is much maligned, and yet every honest-to-God New Yorker knows these scrappy, hard-bitten creatures are an integral part of experiencing the city. Maybe you saw a rat as big as Corgi attack a Corgi the size of a slightly smaller Corgi!? Perhaps you encountered a roach trying to sell you a Rolex? I was mugged at knifepoint by a Central Park squirrel–-we all have our stories! But is this delicate ecosystem ready for a new player?

Meet the Gowanus Bunnies—the roughest rabbits you’ll ever meet and the latest addition to the brutal fauna of the five boroughs. In a Brooklyn neighborhood best known for the opaquely polluted waters of the Gowanus Canal, these flinty Leporidae found a home in a dirt alley next to a tire shop, and while their fuzzy-wuzzy cuteness hasn’t gone completely unappreciated by the neighborhood, the urban bunnies may be becoming a problem.

For one, they reproduce in accordance with stereotype, and their famed fecundity has bolstered the colony’s ranks into a verging swarm. That may not sound very threatening, but rabbits burrow, and a lot of important and delicate stuff goes on underground in New York, including electrical work and the foundations of some very old rotting buildings. Others fear a more Night of the Lepus situation, noting the rabbits seem to have developed a taste for chicken wings (could human flesh be much further down the road?!?).

Local Joel Bukiewicz, who owns a knife shop across the street from the rabbits, has seen the bunnies fighting viciously:

“I think of rabbits as friendly, innocent and sweet,” Bukiewicz said. “These are angry, hardened city rabbits and possibly carnivorous. These are Gowanus rabbits. I wouldn’t want to bring one home.”

Of course attached to all of this is a “New York person”—30-something piano teacher Dorota Trec, who calls her pets “erotic,” and maintains that there’s nothing unsavory, dangerous or unethical about her rapidly multiplying herd. Animal welfare advocates disagree, and Trec is currently facing potential action from the health department who are probably rightly concerned about an animal hoarder who appears to be ground zero for a new pest epidemic. I hope they get them all spayed, but I don’t hold out too much hope for adoption—I’m not sure these rabbits can be rehabilitated back into society.
 

 
Via DNAinfo

 
Well someone had to do it, right? Painter and sculptor Jessine Hein has created dentures of David Bowie’s old teeth because why not? They’re made of denture acrylics, plaster and acrylic paint.

Personally, I liked Bowie’s natural, crooked teeth vs. the porcelain, Chicklet-esque veneers he has now. They gave him character, IMO. Once he got his teeth fixed, he started showing up on shows like Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee. I blamed the veneers then and I still hold them responsible!

So far the denture sculpture is not for sale, but you never know…

 
I don’t know what these pictures are or where they came from, but pretty clearly it’s Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield of Metallica having fun in the sun years before they became worldwide metal heroes, much less inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

As I write this in Cleveland, Ohio, the temperature is 13 degrees and it’s snowy out. Suffice it to say I would prefer to be wherever these pictures were taken….
 

 

 

 
More fun in the sun after the jump…

 
The Henry Miller Odyssey, a fantastic biographical film directed in 1969 by documentarian Robert Snyder is told in Henry Miller’s own words as the embattled, passionate, often censored and eventually celebrated author discusses formative moments in his life. He includes encounters with his unhappy, overbearing mother, the influence of the streets of his Brooklyn upbringing and the liberating feeling of walking out of his job at Western Union to once and for all make his living as an author in 1924. As Miller recounts his own biographical narrative with the still strong New York accent of a serious scrapper, the septuagenarian author adds frequent words of wisdom about finding strength through humiliation and transcending the world’s absurdities through struggle, intimate encounters with creative minds and sheer determination.

Highpoints of the film include Miller’s reading of a long passage from his 1936 novel, Black Spring and then visiting a variety of locations around Paris that were important to him during his early, often grueling but productive years as an indomitable writer living by his wits and his bootstraps and sometimes literally starving in pursuit of his art. Miller later discusses his room in the Villa Seurat where he wrote many of his major works including the third and fourth drafts of Tropic of Cancer, along with Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring. During the course of the film Miller meets with several Parisian compatriots including Alfred Perlès (on whom the character named Carl in Quiet Days in Clichy was based) and engages in lively and philosophical discussions with his former lover and muse, Anaïs Nin. Contemporary footage of Parisian street life is interspersed with Miller’s musings providing a genuine feel for how the city itself became such a large part of his writing and belief system.
 

 
Miller seems genuine and candid. He’s animated and full of life and ideas. He comes across as a man who’s overcome years of hardship and is enjoying the life of the mind that he’s (to hear him tell it) earned for himself. 

The Henry Miller Odyssey is one of four films that director Robert Snyder made about Henry Miller. Snyder (who incidentally was married to Buckminster Fuller’s daughter, Allegra) also made Henry Miller: Reflections On Writing, Henry Miller Reads and Muses and a film called Henry Miller: To Paint Is To Love Again that was completed in 2004 after Snyder’s death. 
 

 
The Yo! MTV Raps edition of MTV Unplugged dropped in May of 1991, featuring the considerable talents of De La Soul, MC Lyte, A Tribe Called Quest, and LL Cool J for a glorious half-hour of bootylicious rhymes. It was a very interesting moment for a show of this type to run. A lot was happening in the world of hip-hop right around then, including increased respectability among mainstream critics—but ironically, in the years to come the very rappers who had earned that reputation were about to become marginalized. Just a year or so earlier, one of the biggest rap-related news stories was the obscenity trial of 2 Live Crew, who while wonderful in their way may not have been the most ideal poster children for the budding artform. One would have been forgiven for ridiculing the notion of an “unplugged” rap show in 1991; the music was strongly associated with sampling and scratching (not to mention cursing), and its R&B roots, which had been there all along, had been somewhat obscured.

The rap world was in a massively sampladelic phase at that point, what with recent masterpieces like Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, and De La Soul’s Three Feet High and Rising. However, practitioners must have been aware on some level that the days of rampant sampling were about to come to an end. Sure enough, six months after this episode of MTV Unplugged debuted, a judge named Kevin Thomas Duffy began his ruling in a court case in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York called Grand Upright Music, Ltd v. Warner Bros. Records Inc. with the biblical commandment “Thou shalt not steal.” Duffy held that Biz Markie had infringed on Gilbert O’Sullivan’s copyright when he used O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” for his own song “Alone Again,” which appeared on his third album I Need a Haircut. The hip-hop world was about to learn how to do without sampling as a primary component of the music. (For an insightful reaction to this case from the time, check out Robert Christgau’s article “Adventures in Information Capitalism: Gilbert O’Sullivan Meets Biz Markie” from 1992.) The performers here may not have known it, but an exhibition of the musicality of rap was about to become a key part of the defense of the artform.
 

 
When this was taped, Arrested Development was right around the corner, but their time in the spotlight wouldn’t last. The music here sounds a bit like the Roots, no? Black Thought and Questlove had formed the band already, in 1987, but were still two years away from releasing their first LP, Organix. The lineup of A Tribe Called Quest, MC Lyte, LL Cool J, and De La Soul was highly NYC-centric, and another influence that was in the process of defining hip-hop in the 1990s was gangsta rap, led by the musicians associated with N.W.A., out of Los Angeles, who released their first album, Straight Outta Compton, in 1988. (The East Coast/West Coast battles between rap factions would soon become an unfortunate staple of the hip-hop scene.) Putting it mildly, the gangsta revolution in rap would serve as one solution to the sampling ruling, while also marginalizing acts like De La Soul and Tribe for the time being.

The centerpiece of the show here is clearly LL Cool J’s galvanizing rendition of “Mama Said Knock You Out,” which he performed shirtless. The rampant booty-shaking that is evident during that cut should serve as the rebuttal to anyone who ever thought that an unplugged rap show was a silly idea.
 

Setlist:
A Tribe Called Quest, “Can I Kick It”
MC Lyte, “Cappucino”
LL Cool J, “Jingling Baby”
LL Cool J, “Mama Said Knock You Out”
De La Soul, “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)”

 
Thank you Joe Yachanin!