Maidstone a film directed by Norman Mailer in 1971 is a bizarre phantasmagoria of a film. Ostensibly about a movie director who decides to run for President, Maidstone brings to mind the films of Bunuel and Antonioni with a cinema verite funkiness that seems very much a product of the ass end of the sixties. Mailer described it as ” a revolutionary film”. Well, the revolution came and went without much fanfare. The movie died at the boxoffice and has been out of circulation for 40 years. Recently, it’s become available on French gray market DVDS.
While the bulk of the movie is a bit of a self-indulgent bore, the ending has to be seen to be believed.
Mailer had completed principal photography on Maidstone but felt the film was unresolved. So, he and his co-star Rip Torn improvised a scene in which Torn’s character was to kill Mailer’s. Problem was, Torn, who was allegedly zooted on amphetamine and LSD, went waaaay too far, actually smashing Mailer on the head with a hammer, drawing blood and Mailer’s ire. Mailer, in turn, jumped Torn, biting and ripping Rip’s ear. The brawl escalated in full view of Mailer’s screaming children. Film was rolling.
This is the uncut scene. Check out Rip’s facial expressions. Is he acting? Or in need of an exorcist?
A little late night listening inspired by Marc’s post. I felt the need to present one of the best recorded pieces by Yes, the much-maligned yet utterly wonderful UK prog band: The nine and a half minute epic (what else?) Sound Chaser from 1974’s Relayer LP. The by turns angular, noisy (check all the subtle micro-synth bits scurrying across the stereo field) and lovely classically structured song reflects a band emboldened by their huge fame to stretch out and attempt something decidedly outside of pop music. Also our man of the day, Steve Howe is a total demon here. Wild and unpredictable, with a nasty, almost Link Wray-esque tone. This is not your bog standard hippy-prog rock. Once again, please excuse/ignore the goofy visuals in the fan vid below.
It’s the middle of the new series and it’s even better than the last. This go ‘round, I have laughed myself senseless at Richard Ayoade’s Moss enthralling a bunch of idiotic businessmen with his D&D prowess and Moss’s ninja quiz show skills. And Matt Berry… what a comic genius! All I can say is this: I wish there was a drug I could take that would turn me into Douglas for just one day. One day. Is that too much to ask?
I also laughed heartily at the name of the rock group, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, a reference, of course, to the character in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, right? I made a mental note to email series creator Graham Linehan and tell him what a good chuckle I had at this great literary name he’d come up with, but before I did, I decided to Google Sweet Billy Pilgrim just in case. I’m glad I did as it actually is a real group! That would have been really embarrassing.
(Tara, being both from Ohio and a big Guided By Voices fan, wanted me to show you this particular zoom in on some of the details, hence the above screen grab)
Our new blogger Marc Campbell writes: I made the 88 Lines About 44 Women video using rare, and mostly forgotten, footage from some obscure Italian Mondo movies. Of the dozens of 88 Lines videos on youtube, mine is the only one made by someone actually associated with The Nails. RCA (idiots) never released the song as a single, so, as a result, no video was made…until now. This video has been banned countless times by YouTube, but the current upload has somehow averted banishment.
With all of these nutty Bastille Day celebrations going on (huh?) I nearly forgot to mention that Dangerous Minds officially turns one year old today. You can stroll through the very first week’s posts here.
Dangerous Minds pal, Adam Parfrey of Feral House infamy, sent me a remarkable CD a few weeks ago, called Restored to One by Sabbath Assembly and I wanted to highly recommend it to y’all. If any of what you are about to read sounds like it might be of interest to you, then trust me, I think it probably will be. You can buy a copy via Feral House.
There is a bit of a back story to the Sabbath Assembly project. The group got together to perform the actual hymns from the 60s apocalypse cult, The Process Church of the Final Judgement as part of a several city book tour/multimedia performance for Timothy Wyllie’s excellent insider’s history of the group, LOVE SEX FEAR DEATH (See my interview with Timothy Wyllie here). They did events in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, Portland and Seattle. Not to imply they were some sort of occult Monkees, of course, but that’s I believe how this project came to pass. The New York ceremony was officiated by Genesis Breyer-P-Orridge, who has long been fascinated by the Process (and who wrote the introduction to the book).
From the Sabbath Assembly press release:
Restored to One is a modern response to the musical activities of a cult known as The Process Church of the Final Judgment, who used music to spread their visions of Gnostic reconciliation in a time of cataclysmic change. Sabbath Assembly has re-charged the original hymns of The Process Church and worked them into moving renditions that unite the trinity of rock, psychedelic, and gospel into one triumphant re-awakening.
The Process Church was an intensely creative, apocalyptic shadow side to the flower-powered ‘60s and New Age ‘70s. The influential group opened chapters in London, Europe, and across the United States. Dressing in black cloaks and walking the streets with German shepherds, they created their own intricately designed magazines, and promoted a controversial, quasi-Gnostic theology that reconciled Christ and Satan through deeper awareness and love…
So far, so good, right Dangerous Minds readers? It should sound pretty good, on paper, even, because it’s one of the most interesting albums of 2010.
To begin with, the “sound” of the recording is fairly stunning. It’s quite difficult to achieve a truly authentic early 70s rock sound, but the group, consisting primarily of The No Neck Blues Band’s Dave Nuss, San Francisco-based doom/psych singer Jex Thoth and Sunn O))) producer Randall Dunn perform ably in this regard. If someone played this CD for you and said “Hey, listen to this rad, witchy-sounding metal album from the early 70s that no one’s ever heard before” you’d not question it. (Although having said that, a typical rock snob like me might say “This sounds like Coven. Or Amon Düül” Not that this is a bad thing, of course!)
Musically, Restored to One consists of earnestly rendered doom-folk, ominous proto-metal, gothy call and response gospel and other minor key favoring musical genres. Some of the 40-year-old lyrics are intensely devotional, others quasi-blasphemous. As you might expect, this being from the Process, the lyrics name-check Christ, Jehovah, Satan and Lucifer. They sing of GODS and not God. The entire project is charged with a special kind of energy. The performances are inspired, in a way that only religious music can be (save for Christian Rock, natch). Religious music has a different quality to all other types of music—I think that makes sense, right?—and the Sabbath Assembly project is infused with that soaring, ineffable quality. As with the films of Kenneth Anger, there is a beautiful evil at the center of the art form, and a lot of conviction behind what they are doing. As a listener, you feel it.
Then there is the voice, the heavenly pipes of Jex Thoth, possessor of a powerful set of lungs and a uniquely retro sounding singing voice. I know the concept of having a “retro” voice seems absurd, but once you hear her voice, you’ll know what I mean by that. Overall the Sabbath Assembly sound does remind me of Coven, which is an obvious comparison, but an appropriate one, nevertheless, but Coven fronted by “Mama Lion” Lynn Carey. If this sounds even remotely like something you’d like, I urge you to check out this unique recording.
Well before Steve Howe became a prog-rock guitar God, he was in a scrappy sixties r&b band called The Syndicats. In this BBC video, Howe lays down a Bo Diddley beat while lead singer Kevin Driscoll, looking like Bruce Foxton of The Jam doing a Mick Jagger impression, growls some solidly punk vocals.
Imagine if Howe had said no to Yes and continued to pound out great rock and roll instead of bloated six string symphonies. We would have been spared the mindnumbing agony of Tales from Topographic Oceans.
The Syndicats released a handful of singles, three of which were produced by Joe Meek, before disbanding. Singer Driscoll died in 1982. Howe continues to shred.
Hausu (House), directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, is the kind of movie that sends a writer scrambling for adjectives in an attempt to christen a new film genre. You pound your frontal lobes in the hope that you’ll dislodge some electrifying catchphrase that will be absorbed into film geekdom’s lexicon. I’ve been trying to come up with something hooky to describe the virtually indescribable mindbender that is Hausu. It’s not a J-horror film, it’s not a head film, it’s not some avant-garde psychological torture test, it’s not a cult film with an ironic smirk, it’s not…Well, I’m telling you what it is not. Let me try to wrap my brain around this and tell you what I think it is: Hausu is to cinema what a dream is to reality. It’s not just a simple record of events, it is the event itself. Hausu refers to nothing outside itself.
Though a mashup of pop memes, Hausu exists in a world of its own, devouring “reality” and puking it back up in glorious Technicolor. It’s a mixtape compiled by a demented Carl Jung - immersive, repellent, hysterical and visionary - forging a new consciousness composed of scraps of dead worlds.
Hard as it is to believe, Hausu was made in 1977. It feels as fresh and looks as startling experimental as anything being made by David Lynch or Guy Madden…except wilder.
Oh, the plot is about a demon possessed house, but that’s not important.
As for my new catchphrase, it’s a play on hypnagogic, that state between being awake and falling asleep. Hausu is hipnagogic.
Hausu will be released by Criterion in August on DVD.
Thanks to XLR8R staff writer Cameron Macdonald for the heads-up. No, that’s not Cameron above.
In a heartland drenched in booze, Oxy, Xanax, sugar, and TV, it only makes sense for parents to take action on the hugely important issue of their kids listening to mind-altering sounds, right?
We’re back here again, are we, Mr. and Mrs. America?
The whole thing seems to have started this spring when KFOR NewsChannel 4 reported on a letter that Mustang, Oklahoma school administrators sent to parents about the “new and dangerous fad…called I-Dosing, or digital drugs.”
LP. The by turns angular, noisy (check all the subtle micro-synth bits scurrying across the stereo field) and lovely classically structured song reflects a band emboldened by their huge fame to stretch out and attempt something decidedly outside of pop music. Also our man of the day, Steve Howe is a total demon here. Wild and unpredictable, with a nasty, almost Link Wray-esque tone. This is not your bog standard hippy-prog rock. Once again, please excuse/ignore the goofy visuals in the fan vid below.
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