Here’s an intimate look at the much-beloved Poly Styrene. This BBC documentary from 1978 took me a little while to track down, but here it is in its entirety. Well-directed by Alan Yentob.
Poly was such a extraordinary combination of vulnerability and strength.
Integrating voice-overs of Poly reciting her lyrics with live performance footage and life offstage, Who Is Poly Styrene? is an unusually personal documentary of a young artist grappling with the sudden pop stardom from which she would eventually flee.
Identity
Is the crisis
Can’t you see
Identity identity
When you look in the mirror
Do you see yourself
Do you see yourself
On the t.v. screen
Do you see yourself
In the magazine
When you see yourself
Does it make you scream
When you look in the mirror
Do you smash it quick
Do you take the glass
And slash your wrists
Did you do it for fame
Did you do it in a fit
Did you do it before
You read about it
I probably overuse the words “rarely seen” and “rare” when it comes to sharing stuff on DM but in this case the terms are truly applicable. Up until now, this was not easy to find on the net. Enjoy.
It’s OK: The Beach Boys’ 15th Anniversary TV Special aired in 1976 on NBC. It was a weird affair created when Brian Wilson was at the lowest ebb of his struggle with substance abuse and depression. Produced by Lorne Michaels and written by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the show features a barely willing Wilson lured back into the studio and, in a bit that is both funny and sad, onto the beach and a surfboard. As most of us know, Brian was not a surfer and in this clip he’s barely a pedestrian. I have a feeling this may have been therapeutic for Brian.
In January of 1968, a couple hundred Caltech students gathered in front of NBC Studios in Burbank to protest the impending cancellation of the “Star Trek” TV series.
While a war was raging in Vietnam, these proto-hipsters (check out the fashions, man) felt compelled to deal with more pressing matters, a shitty TV show.
The uprising to save “Star Trek” worked. NBC picked up the series for the 1968-69 season.
In Vietnam, two months after the “Star Trek” protests, Charlie Company entered the village of My Lai and the slaughter began. This time, the trekkies stayed home and watched TV, contented as cows on Venusian plains.
Candy Darling, still looking beautiful on her deathbed.
A few weeks ago I posted an article on DM that used the word “tranny,” and which sparked some debate in the comments section. The use of the word is a hot topic in the LGBT community at the moment, after the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) made a statement criticizing Glee over their use of “tranny” in their Rocky Horror Picture Show episode. Susan Sarandon, star of Rocky Horror lest we forget, in turn made a statement criticizing GLAAD, saying they were getting out of control.
Even though my article used the term “queen” wrongly, I asked Elizabeth Veldon (the commentator who called me out) to write a guest editorial for us on the how the word should be used. Here it is:
Recently Dangerous Minds ran an article on a film called Ticked Of Trannies With Knives and it led to a debate on the page over the use of language. No, let’s rephrase that: it led to an all out cyber-brawl with much swearing and pissyness.
First things first: In my opinion, calling a Gender Variant Person (possibly the only non-offensive term I can think off) a “tranny” is no better than calling a Jewish person a “kike” or a black person by the “N word.” Indeed a Jewish Gender Variant friend of mine often suffered combined “kike” and “tranny” abuse and I myself have been “accused” of being Jewish when wearing a black suit on a Saturday. Are transgendered citizens all part of some Zionist conspiracy? Sometimes I wonder…
“Tranny” has its roots in drag performances, which is a fine and upstanding tradition, but not one Gender Variant People, on the whole, wish to aspire to. In fact Gender Variant People are not drag queens, drag kings, cross dressers (god bless ‘em), “poofs” who have gone too far or dykes who couldn’t cope with it and became men. Neither are we defenders of patriarchy, oppressors of women or a drag on the queer scene.
Gender Variant People should be of interest to radicals and liberals everywhere damned as we are to suffer violence, constant discrimination and to have our very bodies commandeered by systems of power beyond our control. But we have been left behind, labeled “trannies” (or worse), and left to the tender mercies of a medical establishments that insist we label ourselves as mentally ill before we are “allowed” to carry out body modification surgery (should we wish to). We are most certainly not mentally unstable crazies muttering over knives in our unheated bed sits.
Genderphobes take ownership of our deaths, medics of our bodies, “queer theorists” of our Identities and anything we have left is destroyed by the catch all term of abuse “tranny.”
So what should you say when you meet a “tranny”? What name should you use? The first problem is that you shouldn’t need a name, or a catch all term for other people. The desire to name, as Adam named the animals, and the name he gave them became their name, is to the desire to determine the nature of a thing. Why not ask? Some people are “transpeople,” some transexuals, some “gender trash,” some “gender queer,” some queer, some gay, lesbian, butch, femme. Just ask.
Finally in response to Isrial Luma [director of TOTWK] I offer a new vision of revenge – not ticked off trannies with knives but Diamanda Galas’s “Wild Women With Steak Knives” (with an apology to the guys I know):
Somehow how I missed this. Must have been because I was eating acid instead of watching TV.
The Hi-5 (Seth Evans, Jeffrey Comanor, Ted Barron, Vic King, Pam Robins) play “Did You Have to Rub It In” and get their hair cut on this episode of I’ve Got A Secret aired on March 7, 1966.
At first I thought the Hi-5 were a bunch of actors posing as a band, but no, the group were real and had a very brief recording career, releasing one single, “Did You Have To Rub It In,” on Vanguard Records.
I’m very curious to find out what my American cousins make of Russell Brand. Yes, I know you know he’s a comedian, and it’s pretty obvious that guy has the gift of the gab. His reboot of Arthur has just been released (to some pretty damning reviews) so we’re seeing a lot more of his promotional material at the moment. But have you seen him in a context like this? His mouth is off the leash here as usual, but the focus is not on wackiness and jokes but on serious conversation and in particular ruminations on celebrity culture, media narrative and his part in that.
Newsnight is the BBC’s nightly investigative news broadcast, and Jeremy Paxman is the BBC’s masthead “serious” anchorman (Chris Morris’ character in The Day Today is basically Paxman amped up). It’s safe to say they are taking this interview seriously, and it’s great that Paxman doesn’t patronise or talk down to Brand but speaks directly to his intelligence.
Brand has been a well known TV personality in the UK for the best part of a decade now. He really hit his stride as the host of Big Brother’s Little Brother, a daily, live, audience-based re-cap show where he developed his motor-mouth dandy routine. To see him handle a large crowd of drunken, excited young-people with nothing but the power of words was very impressive. As with Andrew WK, it’s refreshing to see someone dropping their public persona and revealing themselves to be highly intelligent:
I just thought I’d put up a few under-viewed clips of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark performing on Top Of The Pops in the early 80s—why the hell not? I know we have a few fans lurking out there amongst the readers (and writers) and these could do with a few more views. I have a confession to make though—OMD pretty much passed me by until very recently. I dunno why that is to be honest. Maybe it’s the glut of other early synth bands from the same period whose back catalogs I was more urgent to check out. Maybe it’s my vague hazy childhood memories of the band being that they were not particularly cool. Maybe it’s the connections I can see now between OMD and the haunted Ariel Pink/John Maus sound casting the band in a new light. Whatever. I don’t wanna question it too much. I just wanna enjoy:
OMD - “Souvenir” (live on TOTP)
OMD - “Messages” (live on TOTP)
After the jump “Genetic Engineering”, “Joan Of Arc” and “Maid Of Orleans”
Rastamouse, the reggae-playing, crime-fighting mouse who’s become something of a phenomenon since hitting TV screens at the beginning of this year, will make his worldwide live debut at this year’s Festival, with a daily performance alongside his Easy Crew.
I’m guessing they will be performing the single “Ice Popp”. Yes, the show has been so popular that they have released a single. Here’s the video, and you can buy “Ice Popp” here.
Rastamouse and The Easy Crew ft Toots, Gladstone & Ice Popp - “Ice Popp”
From a one-off collaborative 1979 LP by Italian composer Roberto Cacciapaglia and American born singer Ann Steel, this is a wacky and wonderful clip and the song itself contains much to love. I’m mainly intrigued by her yellow canteen.
It may have ended in disaster for Jackie Gleason, but it launched the TV career of Roald Dahl. In 1961, Gleason was supposed to make his “triumphant return” to television with his celebrity quiz show You’re in the Picture, where famous guests had to place their heads through holes in a picture and by asking pertinent questions guess what picture was about. It was a bomb, but let’s not smirk too soon, as I am sure some dick TV exec is currently contemplating how to make this idea work again.
You’re in the Picture was so bad that when Gleason went on air the following week, he apologized to the American public. A big gesture, and one that today’s politicians and TV producers should think of adopting. The series was binned and a replacement show had to be found, pronto. In came producer David Susskind with an idea to capatilize on the success of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone which was then dominating the schedules. Susskind contacted Roald Dahl to help front a science-fiction and horror anthology series ‘Way Out. Dahl was suited to this role of series host, as he was best known for his sinister and darkly amusing tales of horror and fantasy, published in the New Yorker.
The idea was for Dahl to introduce each show with a brief amusing monologue, which related to that episode’s story. It was also decided that Dahl’s science-fiction/horror story “William and Mary” would kick the series off. It was a fun and frenetic time, as Dahl later recalled:
“There was a hell of a rush. And there was always a rush subsequently. The whole thing was done at a hectic pace. I mean, having gotten mine done, he (Susskind) then had to rush around and find other suitable stories, get them adapted quickly, and line up the cast. Jackie Babbin (‘Way Out‘s producer) did sterling work. David Susskind likes operating at a white heat and he’s very good at it.”
On March 31 1961, the first episode of ‘Way Out premiered to rave reviews.”:
Calling this first episode an “auspicious debut,” the New York Times praised the show for a tale “told tightly and lightly, with wry and brittle dialog.” A West Coast review added that “‘Way Out‘s chief asset could be its host Mr. Dahl, who practices literary witchcraft in the realm of the macabre and whose introduction to the series and the opener (which he wrote) was a joy… The story we were about to see, he said with a gentlemanly leer, was not for children, nor young lovers, nor people with queasy stomaches. It was for ‘wicked old women.’”
Dahl was described as “a thin Alfred Hitchcock, an East Coast Rod Serling.” But, while the series proved a hit in all the major cities, it didn’t fare so good across middle America, and after 14 episodes, the plug was pulled. A dam shame, one which Mike Dann, then head of CBS Network Programming has explained by saying the stories featured on ‘Way Out were:
“perhaps a little too macabre, a little too odd for television. Roald Dahl’s show simply was just too limited to be that successful.”
Perhaps, but sometimes it’s worth the risk of forgetting what the middle ground wants to achieve something better for all. Was ‘Way Out any good? I think so, but decide for yourself with these “lost episodes” from the series, including the first episode taken from Dahl’s story “William and Mary”. Enjoy.
‘Way Out: “William and Mary” (1961)
Roald Dahl introduces more episodes of ‘Way Out, after the jump…
