Two of my favorite musical artists, Neil Young and Daniel Lanois, have collaborated on Neil’s new album Le Noise. Daniel discusses the process of making the record.
Le Noise is being released on September 28. It’s just Neil, some guitars, some amps and a mixing board. I dig it, but I can’t help but wonder what it might have sounded like with Crazy Horse in the mix. Still, pretty powerful. SImple yet epic. Zen metalism.
Paul Morrissey, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin and Tim Buckley at Max’s Kansas City, 1968
In 1998, High on Rebellion, the definitive oral history of Max’s Kansas City, the bar/restaurant/nightclub that was THE in-spot of New York’s rock/art demimonde, was published. Written by Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin (once the wife of Max’s founder, Mickey Ruskin) it’s a classic book, one that should rightfully be as well-known as Edie: American Girl, Please Kill Me or POPism: The Warhol Sixties, one of a handful of truly must-read volumes if you want to understand what was happening culturally in New York City during the Sixties and the Seventies. Sadly, the book is obscure, but hopefully it will be republished one day.
At Max’s, the regulars would include names like Alice Cooper, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, William Burroughs, Larry Rivers, Tennessee Williams, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Philip Glass, Halston, Jackie Curtis, the New York Dolls, Candy Darling, Iggy Pop, John Waters, Salvador Dali, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Rauschenberg, Carl Andre, Donald Judd, John Cale, the list could go on and on. Devo, Tim Buckley, Aerosmith, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Bruce Springteen, Tom Waits, Sid Vicious, the B-52s and Gram Parsons all played Max’s and Debbie Harry and Emmylou Harris were waitresses there. As Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler said, “You knew even the assholes would be famous one day. It was that kind of place.”
He’s right about that. Abrams Image has just published a gorgeous new coffee table book of photographs and ephemera (menus, newspaper ads, notes from an art auction) from Max’s, titled, appropriately enough Max’s Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll. Edited by NYC gallery owner Steven Kasher with contributions from Lou Reed, Lenny Kaye, Danny Fields, Lorraine O’Grady and Steven Watson, this oversized volume is one of the best books of this sort to come out in a long.long time. It also makes a nice, decade-late companion to High on Rebellion: If the earlier book was primarily anecdotal, Kasher’s volume takes the opposite approach of a picture being worth a thousand words. When the subject is a place like Max’s—once described by writer Terry Southern as “the lower circles of Dante’s Inferno filled with Bosch and Breughel characters—a well-framed photograph communicates more than words ever could...
For instance, a big part of Max’s legend was the infamous “back room” VIP area where anything could—and apparently did—happen. (The line in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” about drag queen Candy Darling: “In the back room, she was everybody’s darlin’” refers to Max’s). Not only is there a shot in the book of a man (identified as poet/artist Rene Ricard, although you can’t really see his face) giving another man a blow job right in the middle of the restaurant—tell me that’s not context, people!—there is also a photograph of someone standing on a table in the foreground, with people laughing, but in the background, where the camera wasn’t pointed, we see Warhol superstar Taylor Meade, bare-assed naked. Casual nudity seems like the way it was done at Max’s, if these photos are to be believed.
Max’s was open on Park Avenue South from 1965 until 1974 and reopened under different management in 1975. That incarnation lasted until 1981. 213 Park Avenue South, the building that once housed the insanity that was Max’s Kansas CIty is now occupied by a Korean deli (that I went to often). Mickey Ruskin died in 1983.
Below: Some (mostly silent) footage from the heyday of Max’s Kansas City shot by Anton Perich featuring Warhol actress Andrea Feldman (who killed herself at the age of 24), Taylor Meade, Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, a gorgeous young Mary Woronov and towards the end (with audio) Max’s owner, Mickey Ruskin himself.
Generally when Wisconsin’s All Tiny Creatures goes out on tour, band member Andrew Fitzpatrick carries around an old Sony handheld cassette recorder, tapes a bunch of random phenomena then edits the best of it into a sort of abstract personal memento of the experience. Says Fitzpatrick, “I managed to capture about three hours worth of material over the course of 14 days, which I then edited down to about 14 minutes. The process of editing the material is rewarding; it enhances my memories of the trip, and it’s an interesting way to construct a new narrative of sorts.” Makes for good listening, says I.
Although they recorded but three albums, Buffalo Springfield was one of the most influential rock bands of the 60s. This Fall, surviving Buffalo Springfield members Neil Young, Stephen Stills, and Richie Furay are reuniting to perform at Young’s annual Bridge School benefit concerts on October 23rd and 24th in Mountain View, California.
Furay told Rolling Stone that got he a text message from Young that read, “Call me.”
“I called and he asked me if I’d be up for a reunion at the Bridge School Benefit,” Furay says. “He said, ‘If you’re into it, I think Stephen [Stills] will be into it.’ The three of us then arranged a conference call, chit-chatted for a few minutes, and planned it all out. The last time I was onstage with them was the last Buffalo Springfield show at the Long Beach Arena back in 1968. Our lives have gone in different directions and I wouldn’t say that we’re close friends, but we’re friends and its an opportunity for us to get together again for a good cause. I’m very excited.”
Rick Rosas (from Neil Young’s band) will sit in for the late Bruce Palmer, with CSN drummer Joe Vitale filling in for Dewey Martin who died in 2009.
Below, David Crosby performs in stead for an MIA Neil Young as Buffalo Springfield sing their million-selling single, “For What It’s Worth” at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Introduced by Peter Tork of the Monkees.
These film stills are taken from ffffilm a website where users can upload and share frames from their favorite films. ffffilm reaffirms the notion that we tend overlook many beautifully composed scenes when watching a film. Looking at these images, I was reminded of a book from the 1970s, which did something similar by examining the best of Laurel and Hardy frame-by-frame, except here you have hundreds of films to look at. It also brought to mind Douglas Gordon’s 24-Hour Psycho, which presented the incredible skill, artistry and ambiguity in a slowed-down projection of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 thriller Psycho.
Abbey Road is pop culture’s most iconic location. It served as the title and backdrop to The Beatles’ eleventh studio album, and is the site of the world’s best known recording studios.
Scots photographer Iain Macmillan was given ten minutes with George, Paul, Ringo and John, to capture one of the most famous and most imitated album covers ever. Now, a live webcam, allows Beatle fans and road lovers everywhere the chance to watch that legendary zebra-crossing 24/7.
For fans of certain foreign films there are no more dreaded words than “American remake”. In recent years, Hollywood has chewed up and spat out English language versions of a half dozen or so superb European and Asian genre films, virtually destroying them in an attempt to reach into the wallets of subtitle phopic American audiences. Recent Americanized versions of A Tale Of Two Sisters, Ringu, Shutter and [REC] are, to varying degrees, vastly inferior to the originals. So, when it was announced that beloved Swedish film Let The Right One In was getting the Hollywood treatment, a collective groan emitted from the film’s legions of fans. I regard Tomas Alfredson’s dark and romantic vampire tale a modern classic. Based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Alfredson created a movie that critics and audiences adored. The thought that anyone would attempt an American version bordered on sacrilege. Unlike many films that Hollywood recycles, Let The Right One In is not a film that succeeded because of a gimmick. It’s a film that is finely nuanced and artful - two words that are to Hollywood what garlic is to vampires. The fact that Matt Reeves, who helmed the unbearable Cloverfield, was going to direct LTROI, was not reassuring. I expected the worst. It was with a sense of dread that I entered Austin’s Paramount Theater this past weekend to see Fantastic Fest’s screening of Let Me In. Imagine how pleasantly shocked I was that Reeves remake not only honors the original but may have actually surpassed it as a work of art.
Let Me In features remarkable performances by the two young lead actors, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz (looking like a very young Nastassja Kinski ). Both actors bring a tenderness and subtlety to their roles that give the movie it’s heart and soul. Director Reeves has a deliberate, patient and delicate approach to his characters that is almost non-existent in mainstream American filmmaking. In this regard he recreates with astonishing clarity the tone of the original film. Where he improves upon the original is in his handling of the gender twisting aspect of the story. He’s deepened it, infused it with a bit more eroticism and hints of romantic connections that the original film kept buried. Overall, this a more gratifying emotional experience.
There are scenes in Let Me In that did not occur in Let The Right One In and scenes that have been omitted. There’s a central character in the new film that wasn’t in the original. And there’s an action sequence unique to the new film that will be the subject of discussion in film classes for years to come. It brought to my mind a similar set piece in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children Of Men.
Let Me In also pays homage to Hitchcock in ways that Let The Right One In did not. Echoes of Rear Window and Psycho resonate throughout the film
It’s late. I’m tired. I want to discuss the religious and socio-political aspects of the film. Why does Reeves so strongly emphasize that the film occurs in the Reagan 80’s thrusting the fact repeatedly, thru 80’s pop hits and television images of Reagan, into the foreground? Were the 80’s the culmination of the final estrangement of kids from their parents, the annihilation of the nuclear family? Why did Reeves choose to locate the story in Los Alamos, New Mexico the home of the atomic bomb? Further nuclear annihilation? Are vampires, like Elvis, everywhere because we are a society of the living dead? It’s late, I’m tired.
I’m rather certain that Let Me In is going to be a box office hit. If it is, it may encourage other American filmmakers working within the system to do what Matt Reeves has done: make a film, whatever it’s its source, that elevates the form, that doesn’t pander to the lowest common denominator, and shows a little faith in the American public’s ability to embrace well-crafted storytelling, with or without subtitles.
The following video was shot on Thursday, Sept. 23, the opening night of Fantastic Fest, before and after the screening of Let Me In. Following a short prologue, director Matt Reeves, the film’s music composer Michael Giacchino and actors Kodi Smit-McPhee and Elias Koteas discuss the film.
Tessa Dick, Philip K. Dick’s widow, is facing some financial trouble and will be auctioning off this letter from PKD, with a minimum bid of $900 at her blog.
Pedro Antonio Marín, alias Manuel Marulanda o Tirofijo, right, and Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez, alias “Mono Jojoy” in happier times.
Jorge “Mono Jojoy” Briceño, the military chief of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) a narco-trafficking Marxist group that has been fighting the government since the 1960s, was killed yesterday during a military raid.
Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos told Associated press that Jojoy’s death was “the most crushing blow against the FARC in its entire history” and that for his fellow countrymen, “[...] it is as if they told New Yorkers that Osama bin Laden had fallen.”
The 57-year-old joined the FARC as an illiterate teenager and spent his entire life in the jungle. At one point his 11,000 thousand man force ruled half of Columbia, making him—by some measure—the world’s most powerful narcoterrorist..
Since his death yesterday, something interesting has come out about the way the US-backed Columbian military found the rebel leader, in El Mundo:
He suffered from diabetes which, combined with the rigors of the life in the jungle, had caused painful injuries on his feet. That was the reason why he had to order a new pair of special boots. And that was when Operation Sodoma started and his death begun.
The guerrilla command sent a message asking for these special boots, which was caught by Colombian intelligence. The Colombians were able to intercept the boots and rig one of them with GPS circuitry. When Mono got them, his fate was sealed.
The Colombians made sure that he got the boots and started to track the GPS signal. They knew exactly where he was, and that’s when they decided to launch the attack against the base.
57 aircraft, jetfighter and helicopters, attacked the complex with fifty bombs, preparing the way for the Colombian ground troops, who took over the camp with little opposition. In fact, only one of their explosives-sniffing dog died in the attack.
Soon after arriving to the camp, the Colombian commandos found Mono Jojoy’s body, along with other members of the FARC’s elite.
, the definitive oral history of Max’s Kansas City, the bar/restaurant/nightclub that was THE in-spot of New York’s rock/art demimonde, was published. Written by Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin (once the wife of Max’s founder, Mickey Ruskin) it’s a classic book, one that should rightfully be as well-known as 
, 
or 
, one of a handful of truly must-read volumes if you want to understand what was happening culturally in New York City during the Sixties and the Seventies. Sadly, the book is obscure, but hopefully it will be republished one day.
. Edited by NYC gallery owner Steven Kasher with contributions from Lou Reed, Lenny Kaye, Danny Fields, Lorraine O’Grady and Steven Watson, this oversized volume is one of the best books of this sort to come out in a long.long time. It also makes a nice, decade-late companion to High on Rebellion: If the earlier book was primarily anecdotal, Kasher’s volume takes the opposite approach of a picture being worth a thousand words. When the subject is a place like Max’s—once described by writer Terry Southern as “the lower circles of Dante’s Inferno filled with Bosch and Breughel characters—a well-framed photograph communicates more than words ever could... 
