Scene: Opening titles.

A group of sunny So-Cal cheerleaders kick and shake: “Give it an L. Give it an I. Give an S. Give it a Zee. Give it…”

They’re going to do the whole fucking alphabet…

“...an O. Give it an M. Give it an A…”

We’ll be here all day….Jesus fucking Sanchez...

“..Give it an N. Give it an I. Give it an A.”

Wait…

“...What does it it spell…LISZTOMANIA!”

Cue Alan Whicker, for it is he…He speaks into his microphone…

Whicker: The thing about Ken Russell’s most misunderstood and most reviled film Lisztomania is that it has some of his best stylistic devices and some of his worst artistic traits. It is a film that shows the best of Ken Russell while revealing the problems involved in ever fully realizing such a febrile imagination on a shoestring budget.

Cut to: Archive footage of producer David Puttnam in a bank vault counting money while reading movie reviews. In the background hundreds of Oompa-Loompahs are making telephone calls to very important Hollywood producers.

Whicker (in voice-over): This man is God. He is a movie producer. He wants to leave his fingerprint on everything he touches…Today he wants people to know he is making the Ken Russell film that will “Out-Tommy Tommy.”

Note that David Puttnam has a beard. The writer Roald Dahl hated people who wore beards because he thought they were hiding something. Ken Russell sported a beard during Tommy. Two beards could be seen as two negatives. But as Woody Allen once noted, two negatives make a positive.

Puttnam hopes Lisztomania will be a positive.

Unfortunately, Russell shaved his beard before filming and tried out a rather dapper mustache…

Suitable music, cue the blog:

Russell had originally intended to make a film about George Gershwin starring Al Pacino. He was under contract with Puttnam to make six movies on six composers. Together they’d already made Mahler starring Rober Powell and Georgina Hale to mixed reviews though some minor success at the box-office. Then came Tommy, the movie version of the Who’s classic concept album. Tommy had been a major hit with both audiences and critics across the world. Russell’s movie kick-started pop promos and whole new way of cinematic storytelling. At Puttnam’s bidding, Russell wrote two scripts. One on sex-mad classical composer Franz Liszt. One on George Gershwin. The latter was dull, The former interesting...

Scene: Exterior Day: Enter Roger Daltrey juggling fish while walking on water and turning it to wine.

Daltrey was at his peak. He was Tommy. He was the frontman for the Who. He was the one name everyone wanted to work with. Russell wanted to make another film with Daltrey. Daltrey wanted to make another film with Russell—despite 32-takes running barefoot through a mustard field for Tommy.

Puttnam liked the idea of Daltrey and Russell making another film together. He opted for Lisztomania and dropped the idea of Pacino as Gershwin.

Cut to: Ext. Day: Archive footage of Ken Russell on location.

Russell: Roger is a natural, brilliant performer. He acts as he sings and the results are magical. He also has a curious quality of innocence which is why he was a perfect Tommy and why he is the only person to play Liszt.

Flashback: Roger Daltrey discusses Liszt in a TV interview from 1974.

Daltrey: Liszt’s music is just like modern day rock. He was a lot like me. He had this religious thing like me but he still went lusting after women.

Cut to Alan Whicker walking on a surf-washed beach.

Whicker: Lisztomania was the term coined by German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine to describe the mass adulation composer Franz Liszt aroused in his fans. Liszt was mobbed by breathy young women, who swooned at his recitals, chanted his name, plundered discarded detritus for keepsakes (cigar butts, coffee cups, gloves) and dared to touch the hem of his garment.

Many Germans considered Lisztomania to be a genuine fever, but no one could find its cause or its cure. Heine later wrote:

What is the reason of this phenomenon? The solution of this question belongs to the domain of pathology rather than that of aesthetics. A physician, whose speciality is female diseases, and whom I asked to explain the magic our Liszt exerted upon the public, smiled in the strangest manner, and at the same time said all sorts of things about magnetism, galvanism, electricity, of the contagion of the close hall filled with countless wax lights and several hundred perfumed and perspiring human beings, of historical epilepsy, of the phenomenon of tickling, of musical cantharides, and other scabrous things, which, I believe have reference to the mysteries of the bona dea. Perhaps the solution of the question is not buried in such adventurous depths, but floats on a very prosaic surface. It seems to me at times that all this sorcery may be explained by the fact that no one on earth knows so well how to organize his successes, or rather their mise en scene, as our Franz Liszt.

The seed was sown in Russell’s brain. Classical musicians like Liszt are the same as pop stars like Daltrey, Mick Jagger or the Beatles.

Cut to the blog:

Actually, Russell originally wanted Mick Jagger to play Liszt. However, the starting point for his script and the film was the novel Nélida by Marie d’Agoult–the “thinly disguised fictional account” of her four year affair with the long-fingered composer Liszt.

Russell saw Liszt, as Joseph Lanza notes in Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films,  as “Romanticism’s baby and the precursor to the modern pop star.”

Like other great names that caught Russell’s eye, Liszt fought internal wars. He was torn between love for his music and his prurient desires, his guilt about leading a cushy lifestyle and sitting idly during the 1849 Hungarian rebellion against the House of Hapsburg, his desperation for the kind of commercial success that would belie his artistic integrity, and most important, the queasy fact that Wagner was eclipsing him as Europe’s symphonic superstar.

Russell saw much to play with here and described Lisztomania as not a straightforward biography but coming:

...from things I feel when I listen to the music of Wagner and Liszt, and when I think about their lives.

Russell wanted to make a film about the rivalry between Liszt and Wagner, and how Wagner plagiarized some of Liszt’s work and ended up marrying Liszt’s daughter, Cosima. However, Puttnam wanted another Tommy full of rock stars and great tunes. Tommy was money. Tommy was Oscar-nominations. Puttnam liked both. But Lisztomania was an unknown quantity. Puttnam forced Ringo Starr on Russell. He added scenes and even included some musical cues that had nothing to do with anything. Russell was beginning to feel frustrated.

Sidebar: When I produced stuff for TV, I saw my job as enabling the director to bring their vision to the screen. Puttnam was of the olde school where he thought a producer had his/her vision on the screen, not so much the director. The problem with creative industries is that everyone thinks they are creative. But in truth: Producers are money and editorial. Directors and writers are talent.

Here’s another interesting piece of casting: Russell allegedly wanted Marty Feldman to play Wagner but he settled for Paul Nicholas. Not that there’s much wrong with “Cousin Kevin” Mr. Nicholas, but he ain’t Marty Feldman…

Russell’s screenplay was only 57-pages long. The script was all in his head. Puttnam insisted on having everything down on paper so he could cost it. The budget spiralled upwards but not as much as Russell wanted. What should have been Fellini became end-of-the-pier cabaret. It probably suited Russell as his imagination soared in adverse circumstances. But the different aims of a producer who wanted a pop promo; and director who wanted to make a film about art, music, and rivalry between two composers, were never fully resolved.

Russell fell back on the comic strip format he had used with his (banned) TV biopic on Strauss Dance of the Seven Veils. The film became a series of dreams which highlighted key moments in Liszt’s life. Russell eschewed any realism using references to Universal horror movies, pop concerts, the rise of National Socialism, mensch und übermensch, Pop Art, comedy, and even some of the movies that most influenced the young Ken Russell.

The resulting film may be considered by some as a mess, but it’s a genius mess. A film that offers up more ideas in one sequence than a dozen studio movies with one-hundred times the budget. As Ross Care correctly noted in Film Quarterly:

Ken Russell is an intuitive symbolist and fantasist, a total film-maker who orchestrates his subjects in much the same manner that a composer might transcribe a musical composition from one interpretative medium to another…

Or as Joseph Lanza wrote:

Lisztomania—[was] the film that established once and for all Ken Russell’s refusal to pay any more token favors to biographical “realism.” Lisztomania contains many relevant facts about Liszt—his music, the people who affected his life, his marital problems, his womanizing, his recourse to religion, and of course, his strained relationship with Wagner—but it goes further into the deep end than even the swastika-adorned portrait of Strauss from five years before.

Released in 1975, shortly after Tommy, Lisztomania continues Russell’s harder, more satirical edge, with more lavish sets, more crazed acting, more frenetic plot pacing, and a premise that is simultaneously silly and fantastic.

Cut to: Alan Whicker up to his next in water on a beach.

Whicker: Cinema and TV was never the same after Tommy. And Ken Russell’s career was never quite the same after Lisztomania.

End titles.
 

 

 
More on Ken Russell’s ‘Lisztomania’, after the jump…
 

A vintage business card for The Iguanas.
 
Iggy Pop was only sixteen years old when he became the drummer of teenage band The Iguanas in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Jimmy Osterberg starting playing the drums in his middle school marching band. His pal Jim McLaughlin was also in the marching band and would soon purchase his first guitar, while Jimmy would acquire a small drum kit. Jim’s parents, James Osterberg and Louella Christensen were so supportive of their son’s desire to play music that they vacated the master bedroom in the family’s small trailer home to make room for his kit. Later, Iggy and McLaughlin would form the band Megaton Two, named by Iggy because, in his words, he’s always been into “naming stuff.” Megaton Two would play their first “gig” at Tappan Middle School in Ann Arbor performing two songs, “Let There Be Drums,” a drum and surf guitar duel by Sandy Nelson (1961); and an original guitar jam written by both McLaughlin and Osterberg, which apparently electrified its youthful audience so much that Osterberg and McLaughlin suddenly became much more popular in school, especially with the girls. Which is pretty much why every guy starts a band in the first place, isn’t it?

In high school, Osterberg and McLaughlin would team up with three more aspiring musicians, guitarist Nick Kolokithas, bassist Don Swickerath, and sax player Sam Swisher. In the summer of 1965 the group would soon become one of the house bands at the drug and alcohol-free teen mecca Club Ponytail on Pleasantview Road in Harbor Springs. In its past life, The Ponytail (or as the kids called it “the Tail”), was once a speakeasy and casino inhabited by gangsters during prohibition, filled with fake walls, hidden tunnels and rooms in the event patrons needed to make a quick getaway.

The Iguanas made $55 a night opening shows for The Four Tops, The Guess Who, and the Shangri-Las. Not too shabby for a bunch of high school kids who were now the talk of the town in Harbor Springs, as was Iggy’s hand-made towering drum riser. The Iguanas would record a cover of Bo Diddley’s 1957 single “Mona,” releasing it on their own label, Forte Records. During their time together, they also recorded an original song written by Osterberg called “Again and Again.” Around this time, Iggy would get a job at Discount Records managed by Hugh “Jeep” Holland, the founder of the A-Square Record label in Ann Arbor. Holland was also the manager of The Iguanas’ high school rivals, The Rationals. It would be Holland who would first start calling Jimmy Osterberg “Iguana” while the two were working together at the store. Not so coincidentally, Discount Records was the frequent haunt of Ron and Scott Asheton, who both got to know Iggy while they were loitering outside the store. Here’s more from Iggy on his time at Discount Records:

“I got my name, my musical education, and my personality, all from working at a record store during my tender years. In the ’50s and ’60s, the teen kids used to gather after school at these places to listen free to the latest singles and see if they liked the beat.”

Not long after that magical summer in Harbor Springs, Iggy would start to push boundaries with his appearance. He let his hair grow long and then colored it platinum blonde. He got into trouble with the law and was no longer welcome at Club Ponytail. As 1965 came to an end, so did Osterberg’s timekeeping with The Iguanas, and he got with the Prime Movers where he would officially drop his original first name and adopt a new one—Iggy.

Continues after the jump…

 
If you owned a desktop PC in the nineties, then you must remember weepuls. Your friend’s mom might have even had one on the dash of her ‘99 Honda Accord. They were lovable little critters; pom-poms with googly-eyes, antennae, and flat, adhesive feet. Costumed in a variety of smile-provoking themes and colors - with cowboy hats, sunglasses, suits, dog ears, or wings - weepuls were used as a customizable promotional tools for pharmaceuticals and local real estate agents alike. They were also used as a bargaining chip, a notable bottom-tier prize of the millennial generation’s Elementary School magazine drives. Those, and Tootsie Roll banks.
 
The first Weepul was created in 1971 by Oklahoma City toy company, Bipo Inc. The story of the weepul, which I’m sure during its heyday was a multi-million dollar useless-crap empire,  isn’t all that notable, so I’ll spare you the boring details. Something that did catch my attention though was that these cotton ball creatures led a fascinating second life in the Netherlands, under the oh-so similar name, wuppies. The summer of 1981 was Dutch wuppie madness and apparently everyone had to have one. And interestingly enough, much of that can be attributed to a bizarre man named Vader Abraham, who wrote an entire record about them.
 

 
Never without with his iconic bowler hat and thick gray beard, Vader (Father) Abraham from Holland is the singer of such chart-topping Dutch Schlager hits like “Het kleine café aan de haven” and his right-wing populist banger (yep), “Den Uyl is in den olie.” Just from the photos alone, you know Vader is a total tripper. His website celebrates 128 gold and platinum records, but you know back in the day this dude probably partied pretty hard.
 
In 1977, Vader Abraham was asked to write a promotional song for The Smurfs (then big in the Netherlands). The serenading crooner, with his brooding baritone and twisted looks, Vader Abraham wrote the smash hit ‘T Smurfenlied (“The Smurf Song”) - a call and response duet with his chippy little blue friends. And of course, you know what happened next. People fucking loved it. So, he spent the next few years promoting himself as keeper of The Smurfs. He wrote several albums’ worth of Smurfs tunes, and you guessed it, every song sounds the exact same.
 

 
High off the successes of Smurf-mania, but seeing that his glory was quickly fading, Vader Abraham shed his skin as the Smurfs guy and rebranded - as the wuppies guy. His weepul tribute album saw the little throwaway toys as nearly life-sized, animated and singing a high-pitched tune to accompany the Vader’s powerful ballads. Once more, the music sparked a craze that was equally as massive as it was a trading tool for free child labor.
 
See Vader Abraham in action, after the jump…

 
From 1967-1978, the British band the Pretty Things recorded five albums under an alias, though none were sold in stores. Amongst the tracks they put to tape is an apocalyptic acid rocker, and it’s one of the finest psychedelic songs laid down in the 1960s.

Library music is ready-made soundtracks for film, TV, and radio productions. Until the mid ‘60s, instrumental background music was what was commonly needed, but then pop and rock tunes started to become in demand, as well. De Wolfe, a library music company, began looking for an actual band to provide genuine pop/rock songs, and found one in the Pretty Things. Recording under the fictitious, psychedelia-inspired name Electric Banana, the group produced a self-titled record in 1967, the first in a series of late ‘60s albums for De Wolfe. The general format of these records was to have songs with vocals on Side A, and instrumental versions of the same tracks on Side B. More Electric Banana (1968) was album #2, followed by—wait for it—Even More Electric Banana (1969). The latter release was unique, in that the material was destined for a specific project.
 

 
The 1969 film What’s Good for the Goose is very much of its time. Several scenes are set in a swinging, mod discotheque, in which the Pretty Things are seen performing Electric Banana songs from the third EB album. One of those tunes is the stupendous psych rock number, “Blow Your Mind.” After the initial burst of excitement, the song changes course, shifting into a swirling, dramatic instrumental rave-up that never looks back. It’s quite the head trip, and lives up to its title.

Get your mind blown, after the jump….

 
Fuck Winter—Halloween’s coming!

Moving apartment, packing and unpacking boxes of belongings, I rediscovered a few old LPs and cassette recordings of the likes of Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and David McCallum telling tales of terrible things I’d long forgotten. Suppressed memory, you might say. It was quite a discovery, happy and sad, like finding photographs of long lost lovers and knowing the reason you split and why you were such a dick. Recordings of horror stories which were once so very, very important but now much less so. Perhaps

These were recordings of the very best reading great tales that could entice, enthral, and entertain.

I still listen to such today. Downloading podcasts of The Horror from Relic Radio, or listening to Old Time Radio classic tales by Wyllis Cooper and Arch Obler for Lights Out, or those other shows like Suspense, Himan Brown’s Inner Sanctum, The Witch’s Tale, The Hermit’s Cave, or E. G. Marshall and his three-act The CBS Mystery Hour.. Today’s equivalent is the wonderful podcast series Tales from Beyond the Pale devised and produced by Larry Fessenden and Glenn McQuaid.

It’s not that entertainment was somehow better in the past, it is rather there was a bigger and more diverse range of imaginative material produced than all the tawdry remakes, or the repetitive Marvel superhero movies or the tick-box detective shows/sci-fi series available 24/7 today. Imagination has had its wings clipped by money, politics and Twitter mobs, and will never fly to giddy heights in a cage.

But back to the point of this post: Halloween’s coming. And here to get in the mood is a gallery of vintage album covers featuring some of biggest names in movies and entertainment (Karloff, Lugosi, Price, McCallum) reading classic tales of terror and imagination. Plus a few novelty records to show not everything was golden in the past…
 

 

 

 
More eerie album covers, after the jump…
 

An illustration by Arthur Rackham for the story ‘Jorinda and Joringle’ from ‘Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.’ The caption for the illustration in the book read ‘By day she made herself into a Screech-owl. Or a Cat” as the cat is actually a shape-shifting witch.
 
Artist Arthur Rackham was one of twelve children born to Alfred Thomas Rackham, a legal clerk, and Anne Stevenson in London in 1867. Rackham demonstrated a deep, nearly consuming interest in art at a very young age, and when he ran out of paper to draw on, he would use his pillowcase as a canvas. His artistic talent would not go unnoticed once Rackham enrolled in school, and at the age of sixteen, he would travel to Australia, where he would spend many months painting images of the country’s rolling landscape. Other accounts of Rackham’s trip down under indicate the trip was in part to help the young artist combat a state of ill-health. Upon his return, his father, who was not necessarily supportive of Rackham’s artistic ambitions, convinced his son to seek work in a conventional setting, which he did as a clerk in 1855. During this time, Rackham would continue his studies at the highly specialized Lambeth School of Art.

He would soon leave his position as a clerk to pursue his passion for illustration, much to the disappointment of his father. Rackham Sr.‘s annoyance would be short-lived as his son’s style of illustration and painting for children’s books would eventually become the required standard for other artists of the time period to aspire to. Rackham’s influenced not only his contemporaries but also artists for generations to come, including Walt Disney, who was a big fan of Rackham’s artwork. Disney would later request his talented team of artists and background artists to adapt Rackham’s watercolor/pen and ink style for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Deeply proficient as both a painter and illustrator, Rackham curiously viewed both mediums as very different pursuits pointing out how differently illustrations were generally interpreted by the viewer:

“A picture both in subject and treatment must be considered as a work for constant contemplation - a permanent companion. An illustration, on the other hand, is only looked at for a fraction of time, now and then, the page being turned next, perhaps, to a totally different subject, treated, it may even be, in a totally different way. In this branch, bizarre and unusual effects of arrangement, violent actions, exaggerations and other matters of spasmodic interest may find a place almost forbidden on the walls of a room.”

Rackham’s work as a full-time illustrator was busy, and his work appeared in numerous magazines and books. In 1900, he would meet his soon-to-be-wife painter Edyth Starkie whose work would inspire the artist to define his own style and not to follow the path of convention as it pertained to his artwork. This same year Rackham would contribute 95 pen and ink drawings as well as a color piece for the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. This experience would be the catalyst for Rackham’s artistic evolution most notably in his work for Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle (1905). Other impactful pieces of literature containing Rackham’s illustrations would follow such as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (J. M. Barrie, 1906), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, 1907) and later in 1909 with the completion of 40 additional illustrations for the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. The demand for books illustrated by Rackham was great, including requests for elegantly bound editions signed by the artist. His decision to leave his clerk position proved to be right on the money, quite literally, as Rackham and his wife would become quite affluent as a result of his success.

Following the conclusion of WWI, interest in books illustrated by Rackham (which were steeped in folklore and fairies), became less appealing to British consumers but he was still in high demand in the U.S. and was offered a huge commission from the New York Public Library to paint a series of pieces based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even with the decline in the consumer market, Rackham had no problem finding work or commissions and in the last part of his life he would add costuming and set design to his vast resume after accepting the task of creating the costumes, background artwork and elaborate curtains for an opera based on Hansel and Gretel-a German fairy tale retold by Rackham’s beloved Brothers Grimm.

When Arthur Rackham passed away, he was memorialized in The Times of London  as “one of the most eminent book illustrators of his day.” His only child, Barbara Edwards, would qualify this statement with her own revealing the core of her father’s ethos:

“To do his job well and give pleasure to as many people as possible was his ambition.”

Below are illustrations by Rackham, and as you will see, he was quite fond of witches (aren’t we all?). Enjoy.
 

 

 

1907.
 

 
Much more after the jump…

‘Crepe and Black Lamp,’ by Don Van Vliet, 1986 oil on canvas, 148 x 122 cm / 58.25 x 48 inches
 
And here it is, the thing you never thought you’d see, a $1285 silk designer shirt emblazoned with a painting by Don Van Vliet, the artist formerly known as Captain Beefheart. I did a search on Beefheart this morning and soon afterwards I was served up a banner ad by Google advertising this shirt.

Produced by the label Enfants Riches Deprimes (“Depressed Rich Kids”), this horrible garment can be pre-ordered directly from the label.

Christ this is hideous. I don’t know what else to say. At least I hope his widow is being compensated for this shit. The rest of this label’s gear is equally heinous, like Ed Hardy on steroids. Most of it looks like it was designed by—and FOR—Jared Leto.
 

 

 

 

The good Captain makes an appearance on ‘Late Night with David Letterman’ on November 11, 1982.

 
In the early 1970s, the original lineup of the Byrds reconvened, and though the reunion was short-lived, a self-titled LP was produced for David Geffen’s Asylum Records. Based on founding member Gene Clark’s contributions to the record, Clark was signed to a solo deal by Asylum, and his debut for the label, No Other, was put out in 1974. Though the album bombed in the marketplace, the LP’s always had its share of fans, which has only grown over the years. And for good reason—No Other is incredible. After 45 years, the record has been given the deluxe box set treatment, and its release is approaching. As a preview, Dangerous Minds has not one, but two tracks to premiere from the set.

No Other was recorded at the Hollywood studio, Village Recorder, with a variety of session musicians and back-up singers. Though recording costs bloomed to an astonishing $100,000, it was all seemingly worth it, as Clark produced a stunning work. Incorporating country rock, folk, psych, funk, soul, and gospel into the mix, No Other is a sublime album that sounds like, well, no other.
 

 
The LP opens with “Life’s Greatest Fool,” a solid blend of country rock and soul. As with much of the record, a lovely sort of sadness permeates the mid-tempo track. Clark’s lyrics are cryptic but still revealing, and on this song and others on No Other, he seems to be addressing the fickle nature of the music business and his own lack of solo success. “Silver Raven” is the first of the hazy tracks on the album, in which the listener feels like they’re under the spell of something illicit. “No Other” is a favorite of mine. Possessing a wicked keyboard part, this funky, woozy number has a percussion-driven middle section that’s one of the most transcendent moments on the entire record. The dramatic “Strength of Strings” is the centerpiece of the album, and here Clark’s voice is especially strong, but still drenched in melancholy. “Some Misunderstanding” is most obviously about the music business and his career, and is epic, at eight-plus minutes. “From a Silver Phial” is heavenly, and another gospel-tinged song, “Lady of the North,” closes the record. While redemptive, there are still shades of darkness in the final track. 
 

 
Unfortunately, one key individual didn’t think No Other was all that—and that was David Geffen. Shocked and annoyed that a $100,000 investment didn’t produce more than eight songs (though long rumored, Clark didn’t record a double album’s worth of material), Geffen couldn’t see the album’s brilliance…

More after the jump…

 
Of an October evening, as I prep the house for All Hallow’s Eve—water the pumpkin patch and marinade the eyes of newts—I take great comfort in listening to those wonderfully ghoulish tales of horror as told by the likes of Vincent Price or Boris Karloff on the old gramophone. Most recently, I have been attuned to the stories of H. P. Lovecraft as narrated by Roddy McDowall.

Roddy McDowall? The child star of Lassie Come Home and My Friend Flicka? Hardly a name one would associate with the master of the unnameable H. P. Lovecraft.

In his later years, McDowall did star in some jolly decent horror movies like The Legend of Hell House and Fright Night. But in 1966 when he recorded these two readings of Lovecraft’s “The Outsider” and “The Hound,” he was still best known for films like That Darn Cat! or Lord Love a Duck or the stage musical Camelot.

Yet, McDowall is almost a perfect choice to give life to Lovecraft’s words. Though he is not sinister, his light boyish charm seems to fit with the weird and reclusive Lovecraft. His intonation causes a growing disquiet and a dreadful sense of unease. If these stories had been read by Vincent Price or Boris Karloff, we would know what to expect. With McDowall we don’t. Only the nature of the stories alerts expectation. 
 

 
Lovecraft published his eerie fiction in magazines like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories. He only had one book The Shadow Over Innsmouth published during his lifetime. He died young, at the age of 46, and it was only through the dedication of his family, friends and admirers like August Derleth that his work gained the attention and success it richly deserved.

“The Outsider” is one of Lovecraft’s best known tales. It has been adapted for radio and television and included in numerous anthologies. The story owes much to the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft described the story as representing his “literal though unconscious imitation of Poe at its very height.”

“The Hound” deals with ghoulish grave robbing and contains the first mention of Lovecraft’s famous fictional text the “forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.” Though there are elements of M. R. James here, the story owes more to Huysmans’ A rebours. McDowall’s reading of this tale is particularly effective.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Boris Karloff & Roddy McDowall go batshit crazy in this wild 50s TV version of ‘Heart of Darkness’
Roddy McDowall: Hollywood Home Movies from 1965
‘Planet of the Apes’: A behind-the-scenes home movie of the 1968 classic film
Ghouls, H.P. Lovecraft & beyond the beyond: The deeply creepy creations of artist John Holmes
For H. P. Lovecraft’s birthday: Mark E. Smith reads ‘The Color Out of Space’
For your HP Lovecraft-themed Thanksgiving: The Cthurkey, octopus-stuffed turkey with crab legs
A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft action figure
I squid you not: H.P. Lovecraft inspired tentacle dildos are a thing
H.P. Lovecraft HATED T.S. Eliot
Nightmarish sculptures of H.P. Lovecraft’s terrifying cosmic entities

 
While the approximate year of when punk rock actually “broke” into the mainstream differs from who you talk to or the weight of cultural references, it could be said that the year 1991 was an indication of a shift in the underground. Or at least it is according to Dave Markey, filmmaker and denizen of the West Coast punk rock scene, known for certain achievements as the We Got Power! fanzine, The Slog Movie, Sin 34, and the Black Flag music video for “Slip it In” (filmed at my high school). After seeing Mötley Crüe perform “Anarchy in the UK” on TV while on a European tour with Sonic Youth and Nirvana, Markey proclaimed that 1991 was the year punk rock finally broke, which became an ongoing joke throughout the tour. The catchphrase even became the title of the Super-8 documentary that Markey was filming.
 
In ways, the tour was a “calm before the storm” for Nirvana, who were supporting Sonic Youth on the run and on the verge of colossal mega-fame. Just a month later, they would release Nevermind and we all know what came after that. If you haven’t seen Markey’s incredible documentary, 1991: The Year Punk Broke, do yourself a favor and check it out. An incredibly genuine behind-the-scenes look at indie-grunge royalty as they traverse Europe during a pre-Lollapalooza era. Oh, and some pretty memorable live performances by Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr, Babes in Toyland, and the Ramones (sans Dee Dee).
 

Flier from Sonic Youth / Nirvana show in Cork, Ireland
 
While the doc originally saw limited release in 1992, legal disputes with Nirvana’s estate kept the film from making its way onto DVD - that is until 2011, when Universal coincided the release with Nevermind’s 20th anniversary. Eyeing its eventual reissue, Markey began to assemble a postscript companion piece made up of unused outtakes and other footage from the documentary, titled (This is Known as) The Blues Scale. The name originated from a statement that Cobain yelled to Markey while ripping through a guitar solo on stage.
 

Thurston watching Nirvana at the Pukkelpop Festival
 
Since it is all b-side material, the film presents a unique look at another side of the tour - more-so how these performers were ‘performing’ offstage. There are a few live cuts, but since they were originally excluded from the opus concert doc, it’s more focused on the hijinks and personalities of the tour. And in that sense, Blues Scale is an even more raw and honest look into 90’s rock history. Like, for instance, there’s a story about how Nirvana got kicked off MCA after Kim Gordon wrote “Fuck You” on a card the label left in their dressing room. Or that Kurt Cobain thought up a gimmick that involved him hanging himself onstage. There are also scenes with Sonic Youth at an amusement park, a giddy Cobain playing spin the bottle, Thurston Moore’s take on emocore (“Mick Jagger is the king of emocore”), and cameos by Courtney Love, J. Mascis, Epic Soundtracks, and longtime Black Flag roadie, Joe Cole.
 
More after the jump…