Canadian director Kara Blake‘s award-winning short documentary The Delian Mode is an audio-visual love letter to pioneering electronic composer Delia Derbyshire, best known for her spooky rendering of Ron Grainer’s Doctor Who theme music for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1963. (Legend has it that when Grainer heard what she’d done—creating each quavering, alien-sounding note by speeding up or slowing down analog tape recordings of a single plucked string, then cutting and splicing it—with rulers, razor and cellophane tape—before embellishing the results with the sound of waveform oscillators and white noise, he asked “Did I write that?” She answered “Most of it.”). It’s an impressive piece of filmmaking, dreamlike, lyrical and especially pleasing to the eye—and ear—for a documentary. Blake wouldn’t have had a lot to work with (I’ve only ever seen one short film clip of Derbyshire) but does a wonderful job of presenting a well-rounded account of Delia Derbyshire’s work and of her influence on electronic dance music.

You simply cannot watch this marvelous film without concluding that Delia Derbyshire was a creative and technical genius, producing complex music that seemed to come directly from another dimension, yet was wholly constructed via analog means (such as a tape loop that ran all the way down a hallway or slowing down the sound of banging on a metal lampshade.)

The Delian Mode is inspiring, it’s a bit sad (depression and alcoholism plagued Derbyshire’s life) but it’s a story that needed to be told and told with respect. That she was a self-created woman working in what was then largely a man’s space makes her achievements seem all the more remarkable and and especially cool. (At one point we hear audio of Derbyshire describing herself as being a “post-feminist” before the concept of feminism even existed, although there were other women veterans of the BBC Radiophonic Laboratory, notably Daphne Oram, creator of “Oramics,” which controlled sound with celluloid plates, and Maddalena Fagandini.)

Blake interviews Derbyshire’s colleagues at the BBC Radio Workshop, Adrian Utley of Portishead, Ann Shenton of Add N to (X) and Sonic Boom aka Peter Kember of Spacemen 3, Spectrum and E.A.R., who brought Derbyshire into his own work towards the end of her life on the E.A.R. albums Vibrations (2000) and Continuum (2001).

After Derbyshire’s death, 267 reel-to-reel tapes and a box of a thousand pages of music and notes were found in her attic. Her life and work will be celebrated this Saturday April 12th on Delia Derbyshire Day at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester.
 

 
More Delia Derbyshire after the jump…

 
In 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono became very interested in a convicted murderer who had been hanged for a heinous crime seven years earlier. In Britain it was one of the most famous crimes and trials of the era.

What is not in doubt is that in 1961 an individual raped Valerie Storie and murdered Michael John Gregsten, who just a little while earlier had been occupying a car together on the A6 highway in the vicinity of Bedfordshire. Storie was paralyzed from the waist down, while Gregsten, having suffered two point-blank bullets to the head, had died instantly. It does not appear to have been a robbery gone wrong or anything like that, just brutality for brutality’s sake.

There was an initial suspect named Peter Alphon, whom the police held briefly before letting him go. Many people feel that he is the likely murderer. The eventual defendant, the man who would hang for the crime, was James Hanratty. A lot of the ins and outs of the evidence-gathering phase hinged on police lineups. The trial was said to have been the longest in British history for a single murder defendant. The evidence against Hanratty was somewhat circumstantial but also not all that weak either, as far as I can tell. The jury deliberated for an unusually long time and sought clarifications from the judge in the process. Eventually the jury yielded a verdict of guilty. Six weeks later, Hanratty was executed.

A lot of social norms were changing fast in Britain—in 1965 the death penalty was outlawed in Britain for the crime of murder. The excitement over the “A6” crimes never really died down during that era, it had captured the public’s imagination. There were several books exploring the idea of Hanratty’s innocence. Hanratty’s parents and brother appear to have campaigned tirelessly on behalf of his innocence, and they were exceptionally sympathetic.

In late 1969 Hanratty’s parents visited a wealthy friend in Ascot named John Cunningham, who promptly introduced them to his pal John Lennon who lived nearby. John and Yoko quickly seized the case as another opportunity for peculiar protest; they were very much in their “Bed-In” phase.
 

John Lennon and Yoko Ono with the parents of James Hanratty
 
Together with Hanratty’s parents, John and Yoko announced their intention to make a film to back the campaign for an enquiry at an Apple press conference on December 10, 1969. Apple Films released a documentary with the title Did Britain murder Hanratty? This movie is universally referred to as “John Lennon’s movie” and yet it’s unclear how involved he was. His name isn’t on the movie, and it’s not listed in his credits on IMDb. Well, whatever sells, right? 

The single public screening of the 40-minute movie eventually took place in the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, London, on February 17, 1972.

The fight to outlaw capital punishment in Britain was a large topic of the day, even after it had happened; it was on the minds of a lot of people. Hanratty had a pretty serious criminal record before the A6 crimes, he had spent the bulk of the previous seven years in prison for burglary and auto theft. In 2002 DNA tests apparently confirmed Hanratty’s guilt, although Hanratty’s defenders question that result based on the use of a spoiled sample.

On John & Yoko’s “Live Jam” album (recorded December 15, 1969), which was released with Some Time in New York City, Yoko can be heard shouting “Britain, you killed Hanratty, you murderer!” and then chanting Hanratty’s name throughout the opening bars of “Don’t Worry Kyoko.”

“Don’t Worry Kyoko,” off of Live Jam/Some Time in New York City

 
via Beatles Video Of The Day
 

King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King
 
Flickr user Harvezt imagines what the backside of album cover art might look like. Interesting concept. I’ve never really thought about it before, but I’m glad someone else has.

Harvezt’s series is titled “The Dark Side of the Covers.“

Iron Maiden: Killers
 

Sonic Youth Goo
 

Deep Purple in Rock
 

Kraftwerk: Computer World
 

DIO: Dream Evil
 

Metallica: Master of Puppets
 

The Exploited: Let’s Start a War
 
Via Laughing Squid

 
Scroll down for a chance to win The Beatles in Mono box set or the Bitches Brew: 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition from our sponsor, POPMarket

Although it was made during the first flush of Beatlemania and broadcast on television on both sides of the Atlantic (and internationally) in 1964, “Around The Beatles,” a one-off TV special produced concurrently while A Hard Day’s Night was being shot, is a comparatively “buried” Beatles treasure. It had once been released as a bootleg by Media Home Entertainment (who bootlegged tons of Beatles material in the early days of VHS and Betamax) but most people have never heard of it. A bit of it was used in The Beatles Anthology TV mini-series, and the Shakespeare bit has made the rounds, but YouTube doesn’t even have a complete version currently. Thankfully, there’s a high quality file on Dailymotion, embedded below for your listening and viewing pleasure.

“Around the Beatles” refers to the set, a theater in the round. Fading up from black, John, Paul and George, dressed in Renaissance garb, raise their horns. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is seen and Ringo raises a flag with the show’s title before firing off a cannon with disastrous results (and cartoon sound effects). The opening comedy skit is a shambolic performance of Pyramus and Thisbe (complete with hecklers) with Paul McCartney as Pyramus and John Lennon in bad drag as his beloved Thisbe.

The special was directed by Jack Good, the TV producer and manager who gave the world Shindig!, Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde and others of Britain’s first wave of rock and roll stars (he’s also the guy who convinced Gene Vincent to don that Richard III garb—see a pattern here?). Featured on the program along with the Fab Four were Cilla Black, Long John Baldry, PJ Proby, the Vernons Girls, Jamaican teenage ska sensation Millie “My Boy Lollipop” Small, The Jets and Sounds Incorporated, an instrumental group who were Cilla Black’s backing group as well as the opening act when the Beatles toured. (Both Black and Sounds Incorporated were represented by Brian Epstein’s management company, NEMS. PJ Proby was Jack Good’s charge.)

The Beatles lip sync along to “Twist And Shout,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “I Wanna Be Your Man,” “Long Tall Sally” and “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and a medley “Love Me Do” / “Please Please Me” / “From Me To You” / “She Loves You” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” They also cover The Isley Brothers’ “Shout” and the Fab Four are seen providing (literally) offstage back vocals for some of the other acts.

Of particular interest here is PJ Proby’s wild performance of “Cumberland Gap.” Introduced by Paul McCartney, he brings the house down! On the night this aired in Britain (May 6, 1964, to be exact), PJ Proby—who had been recording for years in Los Angeles without success—became an instant sensation. In the wake of his appearance on “Around the Beatles”, “Hold Me,” his first single released under this name (formerly he’d been “Jett Powers” a name probably familiar to Cramps fans for “Go Girl Go”) was rushed released to the screaming teenagers clamoring for it. (In fact the record was so rushed that they didn’t even finish mixing it, leaving stray vocals after the fadeout on the initial pressing of 45s.) Soon after the special aired “Hold Me” would rise to the #3 spot on the English pop charts, making Proby (who I think is one of the single most talented yet fascinating flawed figures of this era) a star for a short moment.
 

 
This post was sponsored by POPMarket.
 

 
In 1983, a band of five young lads from Liverpool appeared on hip British music show The Tube. The band was called Frankie Goes To Hollywood, who apparently took their name from a tabloid headline about Frank Sinatra, and consisted of Holly Johnson (lead singer), Paul Rutherford (vocals, keyboards), Peter Gill (drums), Mark O’Toole (bass), Brian Nash (guitar). They had a fine selection of songs including “Relax,” and “Two Tribes,” and rather original fashion sense, incorporating boxing and bondage gear. Even so, they were making little headway as were still unsigned to any record label.

They did, however, have management, who financed a demo video to hawk around record companies in hope of a deal, as Holly Johnson later recalled in his autobiography, A Bone in My Flute:

Bob and Sharon Johnson, who had recently become our London-based managers, arranged for us to make a video demo of two songs. Bob had a friend at Arista Records (Simon Potts) who invested six hundred pounds. We recorded ‘Two Tribes’ and ‘Relax’ in a sixteen-track studio in Clapham [London]. A while later Bob hired a video camera, which was operated by a photographer friend of his. We used the basement of the Hope and Anchor to record our performance. During the recording, the manager of the venue drew Bob aside and accused him of using the premises to make a porn video.

We had really gone to town on the bondage look. I wore a pair of leather knickers and an old Seditioneries cropped T-shirt, with unzipped nipple holes and bike tyre pieces on the shoulders. that I had inherited from [Dead or Alive singer] Pete Burns. Paul purloined a pair of leather thigh guards that strapped at the back, which left his arse completely bare. He also waved around a fake Luger. We dressed the boys in denim shorts with the odd bit of leather. Mark wore a black ‘Lone Ranger’ mask and denim shorts. The Leather Pets [backing dancers] were there in studed leather mini dresses and suspenders holding up laddered stockings; we chained them to the scaffolding.

The video was, by Johnson’s own admission, “very seedy and tacky” and included a sequence of “simulated sodomy” that Holly performed on Paul.

For any era this video was outrageous. Unfortunately it didn’t have the desired effect. Bob Johnson hawked the video around several record companies, to no avail. The younger A and R men seemed keen but didn’t think they could persuade their older bosses. Island’s Chris Blackwell supposedly sent a telex saying something like ‘Not on my lifetime’. Simon Draper at Virgin allegedly said ‘We’ve already got one old Queen we can’t sell, why do I need another one.’

However, the performance promo did attract interest from Channel 4’s music show The Tube. The show’s proudcers thought the video was “too lewd to be shown” at teatime on a Friday, but were keen to have Frankie Goes To Hollywood interviewed and perform “Relax.” As it turned out, this was the toned-down performance (though still in bondage gear) that won Frankie and record contract and launched their careers, as Holly explains:

...so they came to Liverpool and filmed us at the newly opened State Ballroom, Liverpool’s glitziest disco. We had the use of the laser lighting, which was the latest thing, and the camera men loved doing soft focus crutch [sic] shots of The Leather Pets.

It was a resounding success when it was shown later in the year. The camera somehow liked me.

A member of Yes, who was recording ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart’ with Trevor Horn, brought the clip to Trevor’s attention. Trevor claimed he could make a number one hit out of that song [“Relax”], then promptly forgot all about us.

Horn didn’t quite forget about Frankie Goes To Hollywood, as he did go on to produce their single “Relax” (which did go to number one) and their excellent debut album Welcome to the Pleasuredome, which all helped FGTH dominate the charts across most of the world in 1984.

This is Frankie’s debut appearance on The Tube, where they performed an early version of “Relax” and were interviewed by Jools Holland.
 

 
More Frankie Goes to Hollywood after the jump, including bits from the “lewd” video deemed too extreme for early 80s British telly…

 
This show is SO fucking good, I really wish more of our readership could understand what they’re saying. In 2007 Nina Hagen did this reality TV show called We are Family! So lebt Deutschland (The second part translates as “This is how Germany lives”). It seems it was on the ProSieben cable network. I don’t know “how Germany lives” when the focus is on other subjects, but in Nina’s case it meant sending a camera crew out to LA and following her around for a while. They were able to generate three solid hours of programming, and it’s all up there on YouTube for all to see.

When this was filmed, Nina was 52 and her son Otis, then 16, was living with her. The announcer explains that Otis was raised in France and a few other places, and didn’t live with his mom until a few years ago. They’ve been in LA for four years. In the show, Nina takes Otis to take his driver’s exam, they go shopping, and they visit a nice house for sale with a realtor (Nina doesn’t think much of the house, apparently). The entire thing’s in German, and well, obviously Nina is a force of nature who transcends any attempt to boil her personality down to the weird confines of ANY reality show. She says whatever she wants, whenever she wants, often cackling with mischievous glee. She clearly so does not give a shit, it’s extremely refreshing. Obviously she is wearing the most garishly colorful outfit she can put together without making it seem like she gave it any thought whatsoever. In America the trend is to show “normal folks” or somewhat marginalized (i.e. desperate) C-list celebrities—it’s so awesome to see a reality show with someone who’s pretty intelligent, worldly, discerning, and so forth.

There’s a seven-minute “teaser” that just corresponds to the first seven minutes of the entire thing, which runs three hours. If you speak German or just can’t get enough of Nina no matter how little you understand—believe me, I get it—then you can enjoy both of those. Note that the long-form version has a small but irritating watermark in the middle of the frame, but you can still see everything just fine.
 

Nina inhaling deeply the alluring scent of cabbage
 
Otis seems like just about the most normal 16-year-old guy ever, which isn’t a dis; you just wouldn’t automatically assume that he was the son of the extravagantly extroverted genius who conceived and recorded Nunsexmonkrock. Otis is trilingual, it seems—his German is perfectly OK, but he does speak with an accent, it’s clearly not his go-to language. Most of what he says in the teaser is pretty innocuous, like Nina’s a great mom and they get along great, stuff like that. He doesn’t like those environmentally friendly detergents because they make his clothes smell weird.

For the shorter video, well, I’m far too lazy to translate the stupid announcer’s patter or Otis’ utterances (even if he seems very nice), so I reckon what people really want to see is what Nina says. So here is that, everything she says, in chronological order. I missed a couple things here and there, but that’s okay, and it’s loosely translated, like I gave a pretty close idea if not perfect. If you read this while watching the video it should sync up pretty sensibly. (Hint: the part where she talks about how amazing the cabbages smell, she says that when she’s smelling the cabbages.)
 

When you’re 18 years old you can destroy the environment as much as you want!

We’re like an old married couple, aren’t we? Ha!

How can you POSSIBLY live without an auto?!?

Why are they showing us this? I’ve lived in several heavenly places, I know what that looks like, more or less.

Right, left, straight ahead. Where are you, my little boy?

I love LA, here is where I feel the best, in California I can recharge my batteries, here I can make my ideas a reality the best, so I can bring them back to my home country. I belong here. I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t belong here. Hey, my colleagues at the German embassy are also here in Los Angeles. Ask them why they’re here and not in Paris. Because our karma, our destiny, positioned itself here.

Goodness, cabbage! Look Otis, have you ever seen anything like this? It makes my mouth water. You have to get me away from this container (slurps) because it smells so delicious! Cabbage! My god. (smells) [something about how sour it is] It’s delicious, what do you put it in?

Careful, careful, a sauerkraut-bomb.

God, the poor kid must be ashamed of his mom—because she’s so loud.

My son Otis is an absolutely honest guy, he’s up for anything. He knows what friendship means. And he’s still living with his mom—thank God.

My daughter somehow got away from her mother and brother very early, but we still have a very friendly and familial relationship, we talk on the phone every day, we’re always happy when she returns to LA, it’s always a great pleasure when she turns up in LA, and the two of them have a totally wonderful and special relationship, the two siblings. In spirit she is always here with us.

Why did you get Clorox? That isn’t one of the “green” ones.

He doesn’t give a shit! He wants to buy this detergent, I say it’s totally poisonous for the environment, the other supermarket has totally healthy ones.

So for a 16-year-old French-German-American young man, he’s not so interested…..

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Jones Street, West Village, New York City
 
This idea may have been done before this, but I can’t remember seeing it before now. Lots of notable album covers were taken in city streets, so why not overlay some popular album covers onto Google Street View? I once had to take a picture of the building on the cover of Physical Graffiti for a scavenger hunt, so I know exactly where that one is. (You’d never notice it just walking around. For one thing, the big red letters are missing.) I’ve been to London a dozen times and I’ve never done the Abbey Road saunter. I think I’ve been to Ludlow and Rivington and thought about Paul’s Boutique once, not sure.
 

Moving Pictures, Rush. Ontario Legislature, Toronto
 

Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin. St. Mark’s Place, East Village, New York City

 

Animals, Pink Floyd. Battersea Power Station, Wandsworth, London
 

Late for the Sky, Jackson Browne. Hancock Park, Los Angeles
 
More after the jump…

 
Gary Numan‘s star has been on the rise again in recent years as the pioneering electro pop musician’s back catalog has come to the attention of younger fans via the enthusiasms of Trent Reznor, Prince (who calls him a “genius”) and even Kanye West, whose minimalist 808s & Heartbreak album was profoundly influenced by Numan’s cold, sleek sound. In 2008 West said “I was listening to Gary Numan and I ended becoming more polished as a designer. I started to design my tracks.”

Now that is what you might call a sincere compliment from one musician to another.

An even better compliment is when you have your first top 20 album chart entry in thirty years and can mount a world tour after decades in the record store “has bins.”

Numan’s latest, Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind) is an inspired, dark and heavy piece of work and the new single “I Am Dust” has a uniquely low tech new music video made with an old Hi-8 video camera. Utilizing modified vintage video gear by Tachyons+, a video glitch synth designing team, it was directed by Logan Owlbeemoth with effects by Omebi Velouria.

Like Numan himself, it’s oddly timeless. And… analog.
 

 
More Gary Numan after the jump…

 
By far the majority of artist-run record labels exist as mere vanity imprints, releasing an album or two by the musician/would-be entrepreneur him/herself, and that’s that. Noteworthy exceptions are certainly around—Trent Reznor’s Nothing Records and Null Corporation, Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe, and Jack White’s Third Man are a few artist-run labels that have achieved significant successes.

An early example of such an artist using his own label to bypass the strictures of major label deals is, unsurprisingly, the iconoclastically independent-minded Frank Zappa. In the late ‘60s, when Verve Records inexplicably missed their deadline to re-up Zappa’s contract, he and his manager Herb Cohen used that leverage to establish their own production company and label, to retain creative control, and to release artists they favored. The labels they established were Straight Records and Bizarre Records. Between them, in a mere five years of existence, the labels released albums by Lenny Bruce and Wild Man Fischer, and now-immortal recordings like Alice Cooper’s Love It to Death, Tim Buckley’s Starsailor, and Captain Beefheart essentials like Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off, Baby.
 

 
Tom O’Dell’s 2011 documentary From Straight to Bizarre tells the labels’ story in detail, through interviews with Pamela Des Barres, John “Drumbo” French, Sandy “Essra Mohawk” Hurvitz, Kim Fowley, Alice Cooper’s Dennis Dunaway and the Mothers of Invention’s Jeff Simmons, among many others. YouTube user Treble Clef has broken the feature-length doc into short chunks for your piecemeal viewing convenience. There’s a lot of illuminating stuff herein, so please, enjoy.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
Mottt the Hoople’s Ian Hunter wrote one of the best ever books written about life on the road. It was called Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, and in it Hunter told the story of Mott’s American tour in November and December, 1972.

Mott the Hoople was one of the greatest (and sadly under-rated) bands of the 1970s, who were saved from disbanding in 1971 by David Bowie (a fan) gifting them “All the Young Dudes” to record.

During thier five week American tour, Hunter kept a diary detailing the adventures, the tedium, the groupies, the second-hand guitar shops, the performances and meetings with David Bowie, Frank Zappa and Keith Moon. It’s an enjoyable read, more so because of Hunter’s enthusiasm, and child-like wonder at the novelty of life in the States.

One night, towards the end of the tour, after the band had played Memphis, Hunter (a little worse for wear) decided he wanted to visit Elvis Presley (as you do), and begged his driver Ike to take him to “the legendary Gracelands, home of the king himself”.

“We get out at the gate (the one with the notes) and survey total unreality in the cool Memphis night air. One of his many cousins comes out and we ask boldly if we can drive up the little road to his place, but the guy’s not having any. Elvis is in. He’s been here two or three days, and he’s just got back from the pictures an hour and a half ago so they won’t let anybody near the place. The best he can do is open the gate so we can get a clear view and he gives us a picture postcard. In my drunken state I decide this ain’t enough.”

The driver distracted the guard’s attention, and Hunter was pushed up onto a small sidewalk, where he casually made his way to Elvis’s front door.

“...I’m expecting any minute to be pulled back. Miraculously, the guards didn’t notice, and I was wearing an afghan, so they must have been bloody blind and I just went on.”

It was just before Christmas and Prelsey’s lawn had an illuminated nativity scene.

Blue bulbs outlined the driveway, and outside the front of the house were red, yellow, blue, green Christmas trees either side of the main door. It’s not really a huge house, in fact quite modest for the size of the grounds. There seem to be columns by the front door and two huge flashy chrome cars stood outside.

Hunter moved towards the back of the house, where there were more cars, and he heard dogs barking, “but you know what it’s like when you’re pissed.”

I walk across under the patio and there’s the back door. I turn the knob and it opens. Fuckin’ hell! Am I dreaming? I’m in the dude’s house; he’s somewhere within 50 feet of me now, but I daren’t go further. Inside the door there’s two more doors - one on the right looks like a sports room, but I’m a bit too far gone to tell properly, and the one on the left looks more like where he’d be - plush carpeting, a short hall and what looks like a staircase. I’ll never know if these doors opened or not because I didn’t try them. Instead, I knocked loudly. No answer. I knocked again and a black lady, very nicely dressed, peered at me through the window. I’ve since found out that it was probably Alberta, Presley’s maid.

‘I’ve come four-and-a-half thousand miles to see Elvis Presley - is it possible to see him?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Presley’s tired and he ain’t seeing anybody.’
‘Are you sure I can’t see him?’
‘Yes, I’m definitely sure.’
‘Well I’m sorry for the inconvenience, and I’ll go back to the gate. Don’t worry, I’m knocked out to have gotten this far. Thanks anyway.’
‘You’re welcome. Good night.’

I felt elated. I didn’t really want to meet the guy - he’d have only gotten angry at me staggering in in the middle of the night and invading his privacy. I felt like a 14-year-old groupie - but I’d done it for the buzz, and it had been great! To tell the truth, I’d get a bigger buzz out of Jerry Lee Lewis, but there I’d been, in the king’s house, and fooled the entire army. Actually I hadn’t fooled them that well because as I wandered round the front a wagon was waiting.”

 

 
Mott the Hoople reformed in 2009 and 2013 for a series of concerts, and the brilliant Ian Hunter continues to perform and produce records of the highest quality (most recently the superb When I’m President), and has a series of tours with the Rant Band in the US and Europe organized for later this year, and if you have the opportunity, I recommend you catch him, details here.
 

The BBC’s Ballad of Mott doc.