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‘Don’t do it for anyone else’: Keith Haring gives advice in rare letter
01.07.2011
11:29 am
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An “ultra-rare hand-written” letter by artist Keith Haring came up for auction last year on gottahaverockandroll.com.

Written in 1987, the letter was addressed to a young artist seeking guidance on their chosen career. Haring gave the youngster sound advice:

Whatever you do, the only secret is to believe in it and satisfy yourself. Don’t do it for anyone else.

 
Via Letters of Note
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.07.2011
11:29 am
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Ryan Richardson Presents Scandalous Teen Groupie Magazine ‘Star’
01.06.2011
10:18 pm
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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.06.2011
10:18 pm
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How ‘Network 7’ televised a revolution
01.06.2011
02:56 pm
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Network 7 was a love it or loathe it British TV series from the 1980s that changed television for good. Launched in 1987, it ran for two series, until 1988, and was aired on Sundays between 12 and 2pm, on Channel 4. There had been nothing like it, but there have been plenty of copies since.

Devised by Janet Street-Porter and Jane Hewland, Network 7 gave a voice to British teenagers and twenty-somethings, sowed the seed of Reality TV, and put “yoof culture” at the heart of the TV schedules.

Strange to think now, but back then youth TV was limited to roughly three shows: the educational Blue Peter, which was a cross between homework, the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides; Top of the Pops, the legendary chart run-down show, hosted by Jimmy Saville and “Hairy Monster” Dave Lee Travis; and The Tube an anarchic live music series from Newcastle. And that was that.

Set in a ramshackle warehouse in London’s Limehouse, Network 7 changed all this by taking its audience seriously and offering feature items, news stories, music and interviews on issues that were topical, relevant and often ground-breaking: from exposes on bank card fraud, to Third World debt, AIDs, bulimia, bullying and gangs. Network 7 was also radical in that it was presented by “yoof”, and made stars of Sebastian Scott, Magenta Devine, Sankha Guha, Jaswinder Bancil and Trevor Ward.

It was easy to see why Ward was the best of the bunch, for he didn’t try and be a traditional presenter, something all the others did (and often badly). No, he was himself, and tackled each story with his own clever and original take. Trevor Ward was the main reason for watching Network 7, it was like having a young Hunter S. Thompson presenting a TV show - for Ward brought a steely journalistic edge to what was basically a day-time series presented by young things.

I contacted Trevor to find out how he got started:

I was working for Mercury Press agency in Liverpool in 1987 under the brilliant and inspirational Roger Blyth when I was 26.  Network 7 was a brand new Sunday morning show, like a thinking-man’s Tiswas.  About halfway through their first series, they said they were looking for a reporter. The following week, they repeated their appeal, but this time they said the applicants had to be Northern.  So I sent in my CV and was invited down to an interview on the set – a load of reconditioned caravans in the middle of a big warehouse in East London.  Janet Street Porter and Jane Hewland gave me a merciless grilling and I drove home convinced I hadn’t got the job.

The next day, a researcher rang me and said I was on the final short list of three, and that we would be expected to come down to London the next Sunday to do a live audition on that day’s show.  The viewers would vote in a live telephone poll for who got the job.

I thought it was a brilliant idea, even though there was a one in three chance it could end in nationally-televised humiliation for me.

That week’s show was coming live from a Rock against Racism festival in Finsbury Park, and we each had to find a story during the programme’s two-hour running time to present to camera in under a couple of minutes about half an hour before the end.

I thought it was pretty obvious that it would have to be a PTC rather than an interview if we were to successfully sell ourselves to the viewers in such a short timespan, so I harvested a load of juicy anecdotes from a bunch of bouncers and turned those into a script which ended with about six of them carrying me off camera. I was unaware of what the other two were upto, and later found out they’d chosen to interview people from worthy causes represented at the festival.

Anyway, I got almost half the votes, so was declared the winner at the end of the show.

 

You can gather from this why Ward was the show’s highlight - he approached stories in an interesting and intelligent way. Every fuckwit would have gone all hang-wringing and worthy, but not clever Trevor, and that’s why he is so good.

My first live story on Network 7 was on its Death Penalty programme.  Network 7 was brilliant for pioneering viewer interaction, and viewers were regularly asked to vote on a range of issues.  That week it was the death penalty and whether a particular Death Row inmate –whom we had a live satellite link with – should die.  I was handed the London, studio-end of things.  It was incredibly nerve-racking.  My first piece -to-camera (PTC)– at the top of the two-hour programme – was a two—and-a-half-minute walking/talking shot – an eternity in TV time - referring to various modes of capital punishment – all without autocue.

That was the other thing about Network 7 it engaged with its audience, it was like a social network for news stories, features and information. And by god did they pump that screen full of information - from what was coming up, to the temperature in the studio. Even so, for a generation it was compulsive viewing, and opened the gates to more accessible, more informative, more entertaining TV.

Janet Street-Porter went onto to win a BAFTA for Network 7 and was then appointed head of “yoof” TV at the BBC, before, more recently, returning to journalism. Trevor Ward continued as a journalist (writing for Loaded, The Guardian, and working as an editor on the Daily Record) and presenter, and is now a highly respected writer, producer and documentary-maker.

There aren’t many clips of Network 7 out there, and sadly none with Ward, but the few that are do give a hint of what the show was like. This selection ranges from opening titles, an item on gay youth and “coming out” (which was highly controversial subject back then), Madonna in concert, and an interview with The Beastie Boys.
 

 
More clips of ‘Network 7’, plus bonus French & Saunders spoof and Trevor Ward documentary, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.06.2011
02:56 pm
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Jimmie Nicol: The Beatle Who Never Was
01.05.2011
07:34 pm
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John, Paul, George and…Jimmie? It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, does it? But for ten days in 1964, Jimmie Nicol was one of The Fab Four, drafted in to replace Ringo Starr on The Beatles first world tour.

Starr had collapsed with tonsillitis, and rather than cancel the tour, producer George Martin decided to call in a temporary replacement - Jimmie Nicol, an experienced session musician, who had played with Georgie Fame and jazz musician, Johnny Dankworth, amongst others. Lennon and McCartney were fine with the idea, but Harrison was a bit shirty, and at one point threatened to walk off, telling Martin and Brian Epstein: “If Ringo’s not going, then neither am I - you can find two replacements.” It was soon resolved and within 24-hours of the initial ‘phonecall, Nicol was playing drums with the Fab Three in Copenhagen. He later recalled:

“That night I couldn’t sleep a wink. I was a fucking Beatle!”

The next leg of the tour was Australia and Hong Kong, and Nicol soon found himself at the heart of Beatlemania. Fans screamed his name, his photograph was sent around the globe, and he was interviewed as one of the band by the world’s press. Nicol later reflected:

“The day before I was a Beatle, girls weren’t interested in me at all. The day after, with the suit and the Beatle cut, riding in the back of the limo with John and Paul, they were dying to get a touch of me. It was very strange and quite scary.”

He also gave an inkling into The Beatles’ life on the road was like:

“I thought I could drink and lay women with the best of them until I caught up with these guys.”

Ten days into the tour, Ringo had recovered and quickly reclaimed his place. Nicol was paid off by Epstein at Melbourne airport, given a cheque for $1,000 and a gold Eterna-matic wrist watch inscribed: “From The Beatles and Brian Epstein to Jimmy - with appreciation and gratitude.” It was like a retirement present. Within a year Nicol was bankrupt, owing debts of over $70,000, and all but forgotten. So much for his 15 minutes of fame.

“Standing in for Ringo was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Until then I was quite happy earning thirty or forty pounds a week. After the headlines died, I began dying too.”

Nicol went on to play with Swedish guitar band, The Spotnicks, but by the late sixties he quit pop music and relocated to Mexico. It was later claimed he had died, but as the Daily Mail explained in 2005, this was false:

At 66, his square-jawed looks have given way to grey jowls, the smile oblieterated by missing teeth. Anything that might remain of his Beatle haircut is tied back in a scruffy ponytail. But he still has his principles. Despite the lucrative rewards of today’s Beatlemania industry, he staunchly refuses to cash in….

It has even been reported that he died in 1988. This week, however, after a difficult search, I confirmed reports of his death are greatly exaggerated. One morning he could be foind visiting a building society, eating breakfast in a modest cafe, then returning silently to his London home. At this flat you could see sheet music through one window but no sign of any drums. He didn’t answer the door when I rang. If he got my messages about the new book, he didn’t reply.

When I eventually made contact, the conversation was predictably brief: “I’m not interested in all that now,” he said. “I don’t want to know, man.”

Here is footage of The Beatles’ tour of Australia and Jimmie Nicol’s time as the fifth Beatle - the Beatle who never was..
 

 
Rare clips of The Beatles on tour, plus Jimmie Nicol interview, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.05.2011
07:34 pm
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Games of Old: John Carpenter’s ‘Escape From New York’ on C64
01.05.2011
01:50 pm
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A taste of computer games gone-by. Escape From New York as long play from the the bogus 1999 C64 game. The full video, plus a host of others, are downloadable here at Archive.org (no 276).  And for all you need to know about the Escape From New York game check here.
 

 
With thanks to Clyde Lawson
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.05.2011
01:50 pm
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When Gerry Rafferty and Billy Connolly were The Humblebums
01.05.2011
11:16 am
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In the mid-1960s, Billy Connolly formed a folk group with Tam Harvey called The Humblebums. Connolly sang, played guitar and banjo, while Harvey was accomplished Bluegrass guitarist. The duo made a name for themselves playing venues and bars around Glasgow, most notably The Old Scotia, the famous home to Scottish folk music, where Connolly would introduce each song with a humorous preamble, something that became his trademark, and later his career.

In 1969, The Humblebums released their first album First Collection of Merry Melodies, it was soon after this that Gerry Rafferty joined the band. Rafferty had previously played with The Fifth Column, which also featured his future Stealer’s Wheel partner, Joe Egan, and had scored a minor hit “Benjamin Day” with the group. Rafferty’s arrival into The Humblebums changed the band’s direction and Harvey soon left.

The New Humblebums, or Humblebums as most still called the pairing of Connolly and Rafferty, began to achieve far greater success with their mix of Rafferty’s plaintive vocals and melodies and Connolly’s upbeat tunes and fine guitar playing. That same year, the duo released their first record together and band’s second album, The New Humblebums. The album was a major-hit in Glasgow and was well-received nationally. Amongst its most notable tracks were Rafferty’s “Look Over the Hill & Far Away”, “Rick Rack”, “Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway” (later covered by Shane MacGowan and The Popes), “Patrick” and “Coconut Tree”. While Connolly contributed the single “Saturday Round About Sunday”, “Everyone Knows” and “Joe Dempsey”. The album’s famous cover painting was by fake “faux-naïf” painter Patrick, aka legendary playwright John Byrne, author of The Slab Boys, and subject of Rafferty’s song “Patrick”..

The Humbelbums’ success was compounded with the release of their next album, Open Up the Door, in 1970.  Here was Rafferty’s “Steamboat Row” (later covered by Stealer’s Wheel), “I Can’t Stop Now”, “Shoeshine Boy”, “Keep It To Yourself” and “My Singing Bird”; along with Connolly’s “Open Up the Door”, “Mother”, “Oh No” and “Cruisin’”.

If this had been a Hollywood film, the next part of the story would be international success and world domination, but this was Glasgow, and Connolly and Rafferty wanted different things. Rafferty wanted to concentrate on the music, while Connolly was finding he was more interested in talking to the audience and being funny than performing as a folk-singer. A split was inevitable. Rafferty went to form Stealer’s Wheel with Joe Egan; while Connolly started his career as a comedian.

In today’s press, Connolly is quoted as saying of his friend and former bandmate:

“Gerry Rafferty was a hugely talented songwriter and singer who will be greatly missed.

“I was privileged to have spent my formative years working with Gerry and there remained a strong bond of friendship between us that lasted until his untimely death.

“Gerry had extraordinary gifts and his premature passing deprives the world of a true genius.”

 
“Rick Rack” - The Humblebums
 

 

Bonus tracks from The Humblebums after the jump…


 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.05.2011
11:16 am
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Amazing Home Movie Footage of the Ballet Russes in Australia
01.04.2011
06:09 pm
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This is amazing: home-movie footage of the Ballet Russes playfully dancing on a beach in Australia in 1938.

After Diaghilev’s death in 1929, a number of Ballet Russes companies formed out of the dissolution of the original Ballet Russe. Between 1936 and 1940, three of these companies visited Australia, in tours orchestrated by the entrepreneur Colonel Wassily de Basil. According to the website Australia Dancing:

The first, a company assembled in London by de Basil and billed as (Colonel W. de Basil’s) Monte Carlo Russian Ballet, toured for nine months between 1936 and 1937. Its sixty-two dancers were drawn largely from the Ballets de Leon Woizikowsky, augmented by artists from de Basil’s own company, and from Rene Blum’s Ballets de Monte Carlo.

The second tour, which took place over seven months between 1938 and 1939, was by the Covent Garden Russian Ballet, presented by Educational Ballets Ltd. In essence, this was the de Basil company of the time. The use of the title Educational Ballets Ltd. related to the need for de Basil to formally distance himself from company management during a legal dispute with the Ballets de Monte Carlo, the company that had been founded by Rene Blum following his split with de Basil in 1935.

By 1938, the Ballets de Monte Carlo was based in America under the direction of Sergei Denham with the financial backing of Universal Art. An attempted merger between this company and that of de Basil early in 1938 ended acrimoniously, with ensuing legal challenges by Universal Art over the copyright of particular works. Prior to this, legal challenges to de Basil over copyright had also been instigated by Leonide Massine during his 1937 move from the de Basil to the rival company as artistic director. Michel Fokine, originally ballet master and choreographer for Blum had, also in 1937, moved in the other direction, joining de Basil. A feature of this second Australian tour was the presence of Fokine, supervising the production of his own ballets.

For the third tour, Colonel de Basil assembled a company that, in addition to his English-based dancers, included a number who were stranded in America on the outbreak of war. These two groups were united in Australia, forming the company that was most commonly referred to as The Original Ballet Russe, although it was also billed as Colonel W. de Basil’s Covent Garden Ballet and Colonel W. de Basil’s Ballet Company. De Basil himself accompanied this tour, which began in December 1939 and, although originally planned to be of ten weeks duration, was, due to the complexities of the war, extended until September 1940.

The Ballets Russes companies brought with them a panorama of choreography, music and design of a kind not previously seen in Australia. Works such as Scheherazade and Le Spectre de la Rose linked directly back to the Diaghilev repertoire, with some, such as Aurora’s Wedding, extending that link back to the Tsarist Russian period. Ballets such as Les Presages and Cotillon introduced Australian audiences to works that post-dated the Diaghilev era. Five ballets, including David Lichine’s Graduation Ball, received world premieres in Australia. In all, a stunning range of forty-four works, most of them Australian premieres, was presented over the three tours.

 

 
With thanks to Henri Podin
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.04.2011
06:09 pm
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When Sparks Met Comedy Genius Jacques Tati in 1974
01.04.2011
02:44 pm
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This should have been something: When Sparks met Jacques Tati in 1974, to discuss Ron and Russell Mael’s’ starring roles in the French comedy legend’s next feature Confusion. N’est-ce pas incroyable, non? As the brothers explain over at the fabulous Graphik Designs website:

Russell Mael: “We were discussing with a guy from Island Records in Europe fun things to do that weren’t involved with being in a rock band and how to just kind of expand the whole thing… JacquesTati’s name was brought up and we just kind of laughed it off. Anyway, he approached Jacques Tati and somehow got him to come meet us. Jacques Tati didn’t know anything about Sparks because he was 67 years old and doesn’t listen to rock music.”

Ron Mael: “We were to be in Tati’s film Confusion, a story of two American TV studio employees brought to a rural French TV company to help them out with some American technical expertise and input into how TV really is done. Unfortunately due to Tati’s declining health and ultimate death, the film didn’t get met.”

Confusion was to be a “visionary project” in which Tati offered a critique of the encroaching globalization of the world through advertising and television. It was planned as a follow-up to his masterpiece Playtime that dealt with the damaging alienation caused by modern corporate life. Tati had even decided on a shock opening to his new feature. In the first reel, his famous comic alter-ego, Monsieur Hulot would be killed off, in a mix-up with a real and prop gun.

The film had Hulot working in a rural TV station and his death leads to the arrival of two young American TV execs (Ron and Russell), who have plans to modernize the TV station.

What should have been one of the greatest pop-comedy films ever made, sadly never happened after Tati went bankrupt and his declining health put the project on hold. However, Sparks did write a song for the film, Confusion, which appeared on their Big Beat album. Instead of starring roles, the brothers made a cameo appearance in the 1977 blockbuster Rollercoaster. Plans to film Confusion lingered on for a few years, until Tati’s death in 1982 brought the project to a close.
 

 
Bonus clips of Sparks, plus their demo ‘Landlady, Landlady, Turn-up the Heat’ after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.04.2011
02:44 pm
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Francis Bacon’s lost painting of Lucian Freud turns up after 45 years
01.01.2011
08:48 pm
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As Marc Campbell pointed out on DM last month, when a b&w Coke bottle by Andy Warhol sold for $35, “some things are recession proof.” Now, a painting of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon has turned up after being kept in a private collection and not exhibited anywhere since 1965. This triptych goes on sale next month at Sotheby’s, in London, and according to the Daily Telegraph its $10m-$14m estimate “does not seem unreasonable.” Not unreasonable if you think of art as just a money-making exercise, like Warhol once said, “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

Three Studies for a Portrait of Lucian Freud is a powerfully rendered triptych of small, 14in x 12in portraits, and is a testament to one of the most significant artistic relationships of the 20th century.

Bacon and Freud met in 1945 through the artist Graham Sutherland and became close if competitive friends, painting each other on several occasions. At one point, they met on an almost daily basis, frequently at their favourite watering hole, the Colony Room in Soho. But their friendship cooled in the late Seventies after an argument.

Only four portraits of Freud by Bacon have been at auction in the past 20 years. The last was in 2003 when a very similar small triptych sold to Pierre Chen, chairman of the Taiwanese Yageo Foundation, for $3.8 million (£2.2 million), which was record for a Bacon painting of these dimensions.

Since then, the price of Bacon has risen dramatically, climaxing in May 2008 with the $86 million (£44 million) paid by Roman Abramovich for a large-scale triptych.
However, top-drawer paintings by Bacon have been scarce at auction during the credit crunch. Since the summer of 2008, four works of varying quality have been unsold, creating a state of uncertainty in the Bacon market, and potential sellers have been waiting for someone else to make the first move to ascertain its strength. Hopefully for Sotheby’s, that deadlock was broken last November when a late painting of a cricket player belonging to Bacon’s doctor, Paul Brass, sold for $14 million (£8.7 million), comfortably above its estimate.

Considering that two small-format self-portrait triptychs by Bacon made £14 million and more in 2008, the £7 million-£9 million estimate for this triptych of Freud does not seem unreasonable. The only thing against it is that it has recently been offered privately and not sold, but that was for a much higher sum.

Sotheby’s is not saying who is selling the portrait, which was bought directly from Bacon’s dealers, Marlborough Fine Art, in 1965, apart from indicating that it is part of a family inheritance. Trade sources, however, confirm that the painting belonged to the Geneva based collector, George Kostalitz, who died last year. A private man about whom little is on public record, Kostalitz is said to have had a close working relationship with Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Warhol’s $35million Coke Bottle


 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.01.2011
08:48 pm
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When Zappa Met Warhol in 1983
12.31.2010
07:47 pm
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They were two men best known by their surnames, two giants of their disciplines, but when Warhol met Zappa in 1983, on the Pop Artist’s TV show, it was less a meeting of great minds than a few questions from fan Richard Berlin, who did the interviewing for Warhol. Zappa briefly talked about fans, music and fun, and, well, gee, that’s about it. I was left wanting to know what was said off camera. Answers on a postcard, please.
 

 
With thanks to Andrea Nussinow
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.31.2010
07:47 pm
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William S. Burroughs New Year’s Day 1965
12.31.2010
11:44 am
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Abe Books has published part of a transcript from an interview with William S. Burroughs, conducted by Conrad Knickerbocker for the Paris Review on New Year’s Day, 1965. In it, Burroughs discussed “why the visions of art and the visions of drugs don’t mix.” Other interviews available at Abe Books include Ernest Hemingway and P.G. Wodehouse - now that’s a mix to get any Hogmanay party started. Have a great New Year.

INTERVIEWER: When and why did you start to write?

BURROUGHS: I started to write in about 1950; I was thirty-five at the time; there didn’t seem to be any strong motivation. I simply was endeavoring to put down in a more or less straightforward journalistic style something about my experiences with addiction and addicts.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you feel compelled to record these experiences?

BURROUGHS: I didn’t feel compelled. I had nothing else to do. Writing gave me something to do every day. I don’t feel the results were at all spectacular. Junky [sic] is not much of a book, actually. I knew very little about writing at that time.

INTERVIEWER: Where was this?

BURROUGHS: In Mexico City. I was living near Sears, Roebuck, right around the corner from the University of Mexico. I had been in the army four or five months and I was there on the GI Bill, studying native dialects. I went to Mexico partly because things were becoming so difficult with the drug situation in America. Getting drugs in Mexico was quite easy, so I didn’t have to rush around, and there wasn’t any pressure from the law.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you start taking drugs?

BURROUGHS: Well, I was just bored. I didn’t seem to have much interest in becoming a successful advertising executive or whatever, or living the kind of life Harvard designs for you. After I became addicted in New York in 1944, things began to happen. I got in some trouble with the law, got married, moved to New Orleans, and then went to Mexico.

INTERVIEWER: There seems to be a great deal of middle-class voyeurism in this country concerning addiction, and in the literary world, downright reverence for the addict. You apparently don’t share these points of view.

BURROUGHS: No, most of it is nonsense. I think drugs are interesting principally as chemical means of altering metabolism and thereby altering what we call reality, which I would define as a more or less constant scanning pattern.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think of the hallucinogens and the new psychedelic drugs - LSD-25?

BURROUGHS: I think they’re extremely dangerous, much more dangerous than heroin. They can produce overwhelming anxiety states. I’ve seen people try to throw themselves out of windows; whereas the heroin addict is mainly interested in staring at his own toe. Other than deprivation of the drug, the main threat to him is an overdose. I’ve tried most of the hallucinogens without an anxiety reaction, fortunately. LSD-25 produced results for me similar to mescaline. Like all hallucinogens, LSD gave me an increased awareness, more a hallucinated viewpoint than any actual hallucination. You might look at a doorknob and it will appear to revolve, although you are conscious that this is the result of the drug. Also, van Goghish colors, with all those swirls, and the crackle of the universe.

INTERVIEWER: Have you read Henri Michaux’s book on mescaline?

BURROUGHS: His idea was to go into his room and close the door and hold in the experiences. I had my most interesting experiences with mescaline when I got outdoors and walked around - colors, sunsets, gardens. It produces a terrible hangover, though, nasty stuff. It makes one ill and interferes with coordination. I’ve had all the interesting effects I need, and I don’t want any repetition of those extremely unpleasant physical reactions.

INTERVIEWER: The visions of drugs and the visions of art don’t mix?

BURROUGHS: Never. The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts, and feelings. They are painkillers, pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers - the whole spectrum of sedative drugs. As for visions and heroin, I had a hallucinatory period at the very beginning of addiction, for instance, a sense of moving at high speed through space. But as soon as addiction was established, I had no visions - vision - at all and very few dreams.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you stop taking drugs?

BURROUGHS: I was living in Tangier in 1957, and I had spent a month in a tiny room in the Casbah staring at the toe of my foot. The room had filled up with empty Eukodol cartons; I suddenly realized I was not doing anything. I was dying. I was just apt to be finished. So I flew to London and turned myself over to Dr. John Yerbury Dent for treatment. I’ve heard of his success with apomorphine treatment. Apomorphine is simply morphine boiled in hydrochloric acid; it’s nonaddictive. What the apomorphine did was to regulate my metabolism. It’s a metabolic regulator. It cured me physiologically. I’d already taken the cure once at Lexington, and although I was off drugs when I got out, there was a physiological residue. Apomorphine eliminated that. I’ve been trying to get people in this country interested in it, but without much luck. The vast majority - social workers, doctors - have the cop’s mentality toward addiction. A probation officer in California wrote me recently to inquire about the apomorphine treatment. I’ll answer him at length. I always answer letters like that.

INTERVIEWER: Have you had any relapses?

BURROUGHS: Yes, a couple. Short. Both were straightened out with apomorphine, and now heroin is no temptation for me. I’m just not interested. I’ve seen a lot of it around. I know people who are addicts. I don’t have to use any willpower. Dr. Dent always said there is no such thing as willpower. You’ve got to reach a state of mind in which you don’t want it or need it.

INTERVIEWER: You regard addiction as an illness but also a central human fact, a drama?

BURROUGHS: Both, absolutely. It’s as simple as the way in which anyone happens to become an alcoholic. They start drinking, that’s all. They like it, and they drink, and then they become alcoholic. I was exposed to heroin in New York - that is, I was going around with people who were using it; I took it; the effects were pleasant. I went on using it and became addicted. Remember that if it can be readily obtained, you will have any number of addicts. The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It’s as psychological as malaria. It’s a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them. In Iran, for instance, opium was sold in shops until quite recently, and they had three million addicts in a population of twenty million. There are also all forms of spiritual addiction. Anything that can be done chemically can be done in other ways, that is, if we have sufficient knowledge of the processes involved. Many policemen and narcotics agents are precisely addicted to power, to exercising a certain nasty kind of power over people who are helpless. The nasty sort of power: white junk, I call it - rightness; they’re right, right right - and if they lost that power, they would suffer excruciating withdrawal symptoms. The picture we get of the whole Russian bureaucracy, people who are exclusively preoccupied with power and advantage, this must be an addiction. Suppose they lose it? Well, it’s been their whole life.

 
Previously on DM

William S. Burroughs ‘The Junky’s Christmas


 
Via Abe Books
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.31.2010
11:44 am
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Gooble Gobble: Tod Browning’s Notorious Horror Film ‘Freaks’
12.30.2010
12:06 pm
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Tod Browning’s career never fully recovered after he made Freaks in 1932, the notorious horror film that was centered around the lives of sideshow performers. Browning was at the top of his tree when he made the film. He had a to-die-for CV, after a string of hits with Lon “The Man of a 1,000 Faces” Chaney, and had topped it all with the previous year’s smash-hit Dracula (1931), the movie that launched Bela Lugosi’s career. Browning was the studio’s blue-eyed boy, but his next picture Freaks finished all that.

Based on the short story “Spurs” by Tod Robbins, Browning altered the tale and added in elements from his own early experience working in a traveling circus. It was his desire to give the film authenticity that proved controversial, as Browning insisted on casting actual carnies, instead of actors in make-up or costume.

Among the characters featured as “freaks” were Peter Robinson (“the human skeleton”); Olga Roderick (“the bearded lady”); Frances O’Connor and Martha Morris (“armless wonders”); and the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. Among the microcephalics who appear in the film (and are referred to as “pinheads”) were Zip and Pip (Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow) and Schlitzie, a male named Simon Metz who wore a dress mainly due to incontinence, a disputed claim. Also featured were the intersexual Josephine Joseph, with her left/right divided gender; Johnny Eck, the legless man; the completely limbless Prince Randian (also known as The Human Torso, and mis-credited as “Rardion”); Elizabeth Green the Stork Woman; and Koo-Koo the Bird Girl, who suffered from Virchow-Seckel syndrome or bird-headed dwarfism, and is most remembered for the scene wherein she dances on the table.

Even before its release, MGM flipped and demanded changes: a prologue was added; the attack on Cleopatra edited; the castration of the strongman Hercules cut; and the film given a so-called “happier ending,” where Hans is reconciled with his true love Frieda. Still, all this wasn’t enough:

When the film was released it was greeted with revulsion and disgust by both the critics and the public and enjoyed only a very short cinema run in the United States before being withdrawn by MGM. In the UK the film was refused a certificate altogether. At the time the only categories available for films were ‘U’ and ‘A’ and it was felt that the film exploited for commercial reasons the deformed people it claimed to dignify. Even the arrival of the ‘H’ category for horror films later the same year failed to save the film.

The press reviews generally damned the movie:

The disparity of the film’s press reviews was astonishing, ranging from outright condemnation to a subtle warning to exhibitors to shy away from this touchy piece of merchandise unless they had “the courage to go through with a play date.” Almost all the reviews had this in common, an attempt to keep the younger patrons’ morals from being corrupted by the “shock” nature of the picture.

Harrison’s Reports commented: “Any one who considers this entertainment, should be placed in the pathological ward in some hospital. Terrible for children or for Sunday showing.” Richard Hanser of the Buffalo Times echoed this warning with: “While the story may tax the credulity of the onlooker, it has the fascination of the horrible. It must surely be a nightmarish spectacle for children and they had better be kept away.” Similarly, The New Yorker chimed in with: “I don’t think that everyone on earth should see it. It’s certainly not for susceptible young people.”

In the Kansas City Star, John C. Moffit’s caustic wordplay nearly burnt through the printed page with: “There is no excuse for this picture. It took a weak mind to produce it and it takes a strong stomach to look at it. The reason it was made was to make money. The reason liquor was made was to make money. The liquor interests allowed certain conditions of their business to become so disgraceful that we got prohibition. In Freaks the movies make their great step toward national censorship. If they get it, they will have no one to blame but themselves.”

Freaks remained banned in the U.K. for thirty years and is allegedly still banned in certain US States. However, in the 1960s, the film was:

...rediscovered as a counterculture cult film, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s the film was regularly shown at midnight movie screenings at several movie theaters in the United States. In 1994, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.”

 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.30.2010
12:06 pm
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Amy Winehouse’s To-Do-List, aged 17
12.28.2010
01:08 pm
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A selection of Amy Winehouse’s teenage lyrics and a “to-do-list” has been found in a “stash of dumped school books,” Britain’s Sun reports:

They also include diary entries the Rehab singer made when 17 in 2001, the year before she landed a recording contract.

In one Amy, who has fought cocaine and booze addiction, urges herself to “live like the bombshell I really am”.

In another she tells of her lust for a fella named Felix and writes: “There’s too much sexual tension.”

Amy, now 27, scrawled lyrics amid course work for an English Literature A-level. She wrote “Amy’s Songs” on the front of a red notebook.

Lines include: “I’m digging myself into a hole/These days I’ll just work when once I had so much soul.”

Another verse starts: “Drain my drink & order more.” And a third - “Find someone with whom I can come undone” - predicted her future with junkie BLAKE FIELDER-CIVIL.

The books were found in rubbish on a North London street.

Amy’s to-do-list includes: buy a flat, buy a car, buy a sunbed, get a gym membership - all of which pales into insignificance when compared to what Amy eventually did do.

Full pics and story here.
 
Amy’s youthful longing.
 
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The shape of things to come?
 
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Via The Sun
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.28.2010
01:08 pm
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When Paul McCartney Met Jack Kirby
12.27.2010
07:15 am
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This is the moment Paul McCartney met comic book hero Jacky Kirby in 1975. It was at the Forum, Los Angeles, where McCartney and his band Wings, were booked to play three concerts. This was Macca’s first time back in LA since touring with The Beatles. Wings had just released Venus and Mars, which contained the track “Magneto and Titanium Man”, a song inspired by Marvel’s X-Men created by Kirby and Stan Lee. The pair met backstage at the Forum, where Jack presented Macca with a line drawing:

Then around the corner came Paul. “‘Ello Jack, nice to meet you.” Jack gave Paul and Linda the drawing which they thought was “smashing.” Paul thanked Jack for keeping him from going bonkers while they were recording the album in Jamaica. It seems that there was very little to do there, and they needed to keep their kids entertained. Luckily, there was a store that sold comics, so Paul would go and pick up all the latest. One night the song “Magneto and Titanium Man” popped into his head. The thing about Jack was that within a few minutes you felt as if you were best friends, so Paul too was soon laughing it up with Jack as if he had known him for years.

 
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Previously on Dangerous Minds

Hockey Puck…Jack Kirby Meets…Don Rickles

 
Via Scheme 9
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.27.2010
07:15 am
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The Complete Beatles Christmas Records
12.24.2010
08:28 am
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As you sit around rolling the traditional Christmas joint (presents, surely? - Ed.) or preparing the Molotov cocktails (Egg Nog, surely? - Ed.) for the glorious day, (Holidays? - Ed), we thought you might like to hear the complete Beatles Christmas records , which some groovy people have posted on this site here.

Alternatively you can listen to all of these jolly festive discs below.

Have a glorious May Day. (You’re fired! - Ed.)
 

 
Complete Beatles Christmas Records 1963-1969, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Steve Duffy
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.24.2010
08:28 am
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