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Bruce Conner: The Artist Who Shaped Our World
06.25.2011
04:37 pm
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I find it difficult to watch Adam Curtis‘s various acclaimed documentaries without thinking: how much has he taken from Bruce Conner?

Indeed without Conner, would Curtis have developed his magpie, collagist-style of documentary making?

I doubt it, but you (and Curtis) may disagree.

The late Bruce Conner is the real talent here - an artist and film-maker whose work devised new ways of working and presciently anticipated techniques which are now ubiquitously found on the web, television and film-making.

Conner was “a heroic oppositional artist, whose career went against the staid and artificially created stasis of the art world”. Which is academic poohbah for saying Conner kept to his own vision: a Beat life, which channeled his energies into art - with a hint of Dada, Surrealism and Duchamp.

Conner was cantankerous and one-of-a-kind. He would wear an American flag pin. When asked why, he said, “I’m not going to let those bastards take it away from me.”

He kicked against fame and celebrity, seeing art as something separate from individual who created it.

“I’ve always been uneasy about being identified with the art I’ve made. Art takes on a power all its own and it’s frightening to have things floating around the world with my name on them that people are free to interpret and use however they choose.”

Born in McPherson, Kansas, Conner attended Witchita University, before receiving his degree in Fine Art from Nebraska University. At university he met and married Jean Sandstedt in 1957. He won a scholarship to art school in Brooklyn, but quickly moved to University of Colorado, where he spent one semester studying art. The couple then moved to San Francisco and became part of the Beat scene. Here Conner began to produce sculptures and ready-mades that critiqued the consumerist society of late 1950’s. His work anticipated Pop Art, but Conner never focussed solely on one discipline, refusing to be pigeon-holed, and quickly moved on to to film-making.

Having been advised to make films by Stan Brakhage, Conner made A MOVIE in 1958, by editing together found footage from newsreels- B-movies, porn reels and short films. This single film changed the whole language of cinema and underground film-making with its collagist technique and editing.

The Conners moved to Mexico (“it was cheap”), where he discovered magic mushrooms and formed a life-long friendship with a still to be turned-on, Timothy Leary. When the money ran out, they returned to San Francisco and the life of film-maker and artist.

In 1961, Conner made COSMIC RAY, a 4-minute film of 2,000 images (A-bombs, Mickey Mouse, nudes, fireworks) to Ray Charles’ song “What I Say”. With a grant from the Ford Foundation, Conner produced a series of films that were “precursors, for better or worse, of the pop video and MTV,” as his obituary reported:

EASTER MORNING RAGA (1966) was designed to be run forward or backward at any speed, or even in a loop to a background of sitar music. Breakaway (1966) showed a dancer, Antonia Christina Basilotta, in rapid rhythmic montage. REPORT (1967) dwells on the assassination of John F Kennedy. The found footage exists of repetitions, jump cuts and broken images of the motorcade, and disintegrates at the crucial moment while we hear a frenzied television commentator saying that “something has happened”. The fatal gun shots are intercut with other shots: TV commercials, clips from James Whale’s Frankenstein and Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front. The film has both a kinetic and emotional effect.

REPORT revealed “Kennedy as a commercial product”, to be sold and re-packaged for arbitrary political purposes.

REPORT “perfectly captures Conner’s anger over the commercialization of Kennedy’s death” while also examining the media’s mythic construction of JFK and Jackie — a hunger for images that “guaranteed that they would be transformed into idols, myths, Gods.”

Conner’s work is almost a visual counterpart to J G Ballard’s writing, using the same cultural references that inspired Ballard’s books - Kennedy, Monroe, the atom bomb. His film CROSSROADS presented the 1952 atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll in extreme slow motion from twenty-seven different angles.

His editing techniques influenced Dennis Hopper in making Easy Rider, and said:

“much of the editing of Easy Rider came directly from watching Bruce’s films”

The pair became friends and Hopper famously photographed Conner alongside Toni Basil, Teri Garr and Ann Mitchell.

Always moving, always progressing, having “no half way house in which to rest”, Conner became part of the San Francisco Punk scene, after Toni Basil told Conner to go check out the band Devo in 1977. He became so inspired when he saw the band at the Mabuhay Gardens that he started going there four night a week, taking photographs of Punk bands, which eventually led to his job as staff photographer with Search ‘n’ Destroy magazine. It was a career change that came at some personal cost.

“I lost a lot of brain cells at the Mabuhay. What are you gonna do listening to hours of incomprehensible rock’n’roll but drink? I became an alcoholic, and it took me a few years to deal with that.”

Conner continued with his art work and films, even making short films for Devo, David Byrne and Brian Eno. In his later years, Conner returned to the many themes of his early life and work, but still kept himself once removed from greater success and fame. He died in 2008.

Towards the end of his life he withdrew his films from circulation, as he was “disgusted” when he saw badly pixelated films bootlegged and uploaded on YouTube. Conner was prescriptive in how his work should be displayed and screened. All of which is frustrating for those who want to see Conner’s films outside of the gallery, museum or film festival, and especially now, when so much of his originality and vision as a film-maker and artist has been copied by others.
 

‘Mea Culpa’ - David Byrne and Brian Eno.  Directed by Bruce Conner
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘The Loving Trap’: brilliant Adam Curtis parody


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.25.2011
04:37 pm
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The Ramones: German TV Special 1978
06.17.2011
06:52 pm
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Kicking off with “Rockaway Beach” this is The Ramones performing live on the classic German TV show Musikladen, in a special recorded on September 13 1978, in Bremen.

Track listing:

“Rockaway Beach”
“Teenage Lobotomy”
“Blitzkrieg Bop”
“I Don’t Want You”
“Go Mental”
“Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment”
“You’re Gonna Kill that Girl”
“Don’t Come Close”
“I Don’t Care”
“She’s the One”
“Sheena Is a Punk Rocker”
“Havana Affair”
“Commando”
“Needles & Pins”
“Surfin’ Bird”
“Cretin Hop”
“Listen to My Heart”
“California Sun”
“I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You”
“Pinhead”
“Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”
 

 
Previoulsy on Dangerous MInds

The Ramones live at New York City’s Palladium in January 1978


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.17.2011
06:52 pm
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‘Dare’ Producer Martin Rushent has died
06.05.2011
05:45 pm
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It’s been a bad week for music with the passing last week of Gil Scott-Heron, and on Friday Andrew Gold. Now we have the sad news that producer Martin Rushent has died at the age of 63.

Rushent was one of the most influential producers of the late 1970s and 1980s, who created the soundscape that defined the era. If you turned on the radio back then, you were guaranteed to hear a Rushent-produced track within minutes, for Rushent was the touch of genius on some of the best work released by The Human League, Altered Images, The Stranglers, Generation X, The Associates and The Buzzcocks.

Though Rushent may be best remembered for his work producing (and performing on) the Human League’s album Dare and its hit single “Don’t You Want Me”, for which he won Best Producer at the 1982 Brit Awards, his influence was not kept to one band.

There was a trick I once heard, which claimed: if you ever travel around London, vaguely point in the direction of old churches and say Hawksmoor, you’re bound to be right, so prodigious was that architect’s work. The same can be said for Martin Rushent, hear any track from the late 1970s and especially the early 1980s, and if you can’t name the band just say, Martin Rushent and you’re bound to be right, for so prodigious, and impressive, was his output.

Dare proved “that synths and drum machines could be used to create mainstream pop.

Rushent also produced The Stranglers first three albums, which as Louder Than War states:

Rushent, born in 1948, produced the Stranglers first three albums – creating that classic sound that was clear, punchy, dark and sleazy and groundbreaking all at the same time. With The Stranglers third album, ‘Black And White’ Rushent with engineer Alan Winstanley created a soundscape that was post punk before the term was even thought of.

He had a trademark sound. Each instrument had its place. he could make the complex sound simple and harnessed The Stranglers weird imagination and pop nous into something totally original and very commercial making them the best selling band of their period with a bass sound that launched a generation of bass players.

In an interview with Uncut Rushent recalled recording The Buzzcock’ biggest hit:

“Pete [Shelley] played me ‘Ever Fallen In Love…’ for the first time and my jaw hit the floor. I felt it was the strongest song that they had written-clever, witty lyrics, great hooklines. I suggested backing vocals-to highlight the chorus and make it even more powerful. No one could hit the high part-so I did it. I’d sung in bands in my youth and I also worked as a backing singer.”

Before his career with Punk, New Wave and Electronic bands, he worked on records by T Rex, David Essex and Shirley Bassey.

Rushent was said to be working on a 30th anniversary edition of Dare at the time of his death.

A Facebook page has been set up by Martin Rushent’s family to collect memories of the great man, which you can add to here.
 

The Stranglers - ‘No More Heroes’
 

Human League - ‘Open your Heart’
 
More Rushent-produced classic tracks, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.05.2011
05:45 pm
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Excellent documentary on New York City’s mid-1970s’ music scene
05.31.2011
01:16 am
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The stage at CBGB. Photo: Chris Stein.
 
Fuck yeah, this is good! Lots of very cool 1970s era film footage and music in this well-researched BBC documentary on the birth of punk, disco and hip hop in New York City. Directed by Ben Whalley.

With David Johansen, Patti Smith, John Cale, Richard Hell, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc, Nile Rodgers, Chuck D, Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein, Fab 5. Freddy, Lenny Kaye, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, Syl Sylvain, Nicky Siano, David Mancuso, DJ AJ, David Depino, Jayne County, Lee Childers, Nelson George, Victor Bokris and Vince Aletti.

Once Upon a Time in New York: The Birth of Hip Hop, Disco and Punk.
 

 
Parts two, three and four after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.31.2011
01:16 am
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Joe Strummer’s bizarre film ‘Hell W10’ starring The Clash, from 1983
05.17.2011
06:30 pm
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The Clash’s Joe Strummer wrote and directed this rather strange gangster filck, Hell W10, which stars fellow bandmates, Paul Simonon as Earl, and Mick Jones as kingpin gangster, Socrates. The film centers around a tale of rivalry and ambition, murder and violence, mixing the style of 1930’s gangster movies with 1980’s London. It’s a reminiscent of something Alex Cox might have made (who later directed Strummer in the punk spaghetti western Straight to Hell), and while the film self-consciously meanders, it holds interest, and is aided by a superb soundtrack from The Clash. Watch out for Strummer as a mustachioed cop.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.17.2011
06:30 pm
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Superb documentary on Malcolm McLaren from 1984
04.13.2011
11:14 am
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This excellent documentary on Malcolm McLaren was originally shown as part of Melvyn Bragg’s South Bank Show in 1984, when McLaren was recording Fans—his seminal fusion of R&B and opera.  Apart from great access and behind-the-scenes footage, the film and boasts revealing interviews with Boy George, Adam Ant, Bow-Wow-Wow’s Annabella Lwin, Sex Pistol, Steve Jones, as well as the great man himself.

Everyone whoever came into contact with McLaren had an opinion of the kind of man he was and what he was about. Steve Jones thought him a con man; Adam Ant didn’t understand his anarchy; Boy George couldn’t fathom his lack of interest in having success, especially when he could have had it all; while Annabella Lwin pointed out how he used people to do the very things he wanted to do himself.

All of the above are true. But for McLaren, the answer was simple: “Boys will be boys,” and he saw his role was as:

“To question authority and challenge conventions, is what makes my life exciting.”

It did, Malcolm, and still does. Enjoy.
 

 
Previously on DM

Who Killed Bambi?: the Roger Ebert Sex Pistols screenplay


Scenes from the Malcolm McLaren funeral


 
More from Malcolm McLaren after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.13.2011
11:14 am
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New York City in 1977: A beautiful rock and roll hellhole
02.09.2011
02:14 am
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Blackout.
 
Punk, disco, hip hop, the blackout, Son of Sam, Tony Manero, CBGB, Studio 54, Max’s Kansas City, Show World, Paradise Garage, cocaine, polyester and leather—1977 in New York City was exhilarating, a nightmare, fun, dangerous and never boring. It was the year I arrived in downtown Manhattan with a beautiful woman, no money and a rock and roll band. I hit the streets running and never looked back…unless it was to watch my back.

I was living in the decaying Hotel Earle in the West Village when NYC went black. The power failure of July 13, 1977 knocked the city to its knees. I was sitting on the window sill of my room keeping cool or as cool as one could keep during a sweltering summer night in the city. I was drinking a nice cold beer and listening to the music of the streets when at around 9:30 p.m. everything suddenly went completely dark…and I mean dark, dark as Aleister Crowley’s asshole. It was the strangest fucking thing you could imagine. One moment the city was there, then next it was gone. The only illumination came from automobile headlights lacerating the night like ghostly Ginsu knives. My girlfriend and I clutched hands and felt our way down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. We walked to Bleecker street in spooky darkness. We weren’t alone. The avenues were teeming with the dazed and confused. Not that unusual for the Village, but the confusion was different. Was the world coming to an end?

By midnight the streets were mobbed with people who had figured out that civilization wasn’t ending, it was on vacation. There was a festive vibe in the air. It was like Mardi Gras for the blind. The bars and pubs that stayed open were candlelit and booze was flowing for free. Refrigerators weren’t working and there was no way to keep perishables from spoiling so instead of facing the prospect of throwing food away some joints were feeding people for free. A few cabbies got into the spirit of things and maneuvered their taxis in such a way as to shine their headlights into the cafes providing diners with surreal mood lighting. It was a prison break theme park. And this wild night was bringing out the best in New Yorkers. But it didn’t last. As the blackout continued through the next day and night, things started to change. The novelty of the crisis wore off and it got ugly. What had started out as a party turned into looting and violence. An unexpected payday for the poor and desperate.

The blackout put the whole gamut of what makes New York marvelous and miserable on display: the “I got your back, brother” slamming into the “fuck you!”

These were times when the city was an unseemly beast, a scabrous, moulting fat rat that was exciting to look at but terrifying. Part of the excitement came from the ever present sense that things could go haywire at any minute. I lived intensely in the moment, acutely aware of everything around me, jacked up in a state of heightened consciousness that was both Zen and manic. Being in the here and now of New York City in 1977 wasn’t a hippie thing, it was survival. And when I got inside the safety zone of Max’s or CBGB, among my tribe, I was ready to get fucked up, to get high, to dance and celebrate.

In the city of night, we went to bed at dawn and rose at dusk. We were vampires before vampires became hip. 

NY77: The Coolest Year In Hell is a terrific documentary that captures a pivotal moment in the history of a city and its pop culture. Here’s the whole beautiful mess.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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02.09.2011
02:14 am
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Early, unreleased Television track ‘Horizontal Ascension’, featuring Richard Hell
01.28.2011
10:38 am
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“Horizontal Ascension” is an early recording by Television from a 1974 rehearsal, when Richard Hell was in the band. It appears on the bootleg Poor Circulation.The title “Horizontal Ascension” was ” ...lifted from an Elevators album’s esoteric notes,” and as Richard Hell recalled:

“I was in the band for a year…But the peak of my participation in it probably came at about three or four months…It sounds more like what the Neon Boys sounded like than like Marquee Moon-era Television. As great as the guitar playing is on Marquee Moon, the original band was more to the point. It’s more like…it came at a time when music was really…boring, you know? It was a return to the values of the Kingsmen and the Sonics and Them and the Velvet Underground. It still had this really beautiful guitar talent — ecstatic, explosive guitar — going on as well as this lyrical quality, but it was more driving and crazed.”

For more early Television recordings check here.
 

 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.28.2011
10:38 am
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John Holstrom and Legs McNeil of ‘Punk’ Magazine on Australian TV
01.15.2011
11:23 pm
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John Holstrom and “resident punk” Legs McNeil of groundbreaking New York City rock and roll zine “Punk” interviewed in 1977 by Stephen Maclean for short-lived Australian music show Flashez.

Holstrom exemplifies New York attitude in his description of the London punk scene. As I remember it, and I remember it well, New York rockers were not nearly as obsessed with the fashion scene as were the British kids. You didn’t see $100 bondage pants with bum flaps in CBGB. It was mostly jeans, t-shirts and leather jackets. In downtown Manhattan you dressed for speed and protection, not style.

In the following video there are a few moments of silence during the photo collage sequences. This is intentional.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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01.15.2011
11:23 pm
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Peter Cook Hosts TV’s Punk ‘Revolver’
10.23.2010
07:08 pm
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In the late 1970s, while Dudley Moore was off starting his career in Hollywood, Peter Cook entertained himself and a new generation of fans by hosting one of British TV’s first Punk Rock music shows, Revolver.

Produced for ATV by famed impresario, Mickey Most (best known for producing Herman’s Hermits, Suzi Quatro and Jeff Beck) Revolver had Cook introducing acts like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Buzzcocks, The Jam, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, who all played live in front of a studio audience. There was also a twat of an in-house DJ, but the less said about him the better. Of course, there was the occasional roster of crap record company acts, but this was the 1970s, when there were only three TV channels in the UK, and the national anthem ended proceedings every night on two of them. It was a new style of program-making, chaotic, rude, funny and at times required viewing - as the BFI explains:

Revolver‘s most innovative element was designed to evoke the confrontational atmosphere associated with punk gigs. Peter Cook was invited to guest on the programme on the strength of the notorious Derek and Clive recordings, which shared with punk a kind of adolescent, deliberately puerile nihilism. In the guise of the seedy manager of the rundown nightclub rented out to the TV company, Cook would appear on a video screen, sneering at the acts and antagonising the studio audience. One guest, Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley, recalled Cook distributing porn magazines, which he encouraged audience members to hold up during sets to put off the bands. Not surprisingly, Cook’s contribution is better remembered than that of nominal host Les Ross.

For all its punk credentials, the show’s music policy was often bewildering - appearing alongside the likes of X-Ray Spex, Ian Dury and Siouxsie and the Banshees were Kate Bush, Lindisfarne, Bonnie Tyler and the avowedly anti-punk Dire Straits.

Revolver‘s engagingly chaotic presentation makes it perhaps an ancestor of Channel 4’s controversial The Word (1990-95), but in 1978 it drew critical derision and failed to impress ITV managers. Unpromoted and buried in a late night Friday slot (ironically the exact post-pub slot in which The Word thrived), the series was starved of an audience and was pulled after just seven editions.

 

 
Bonus clips of Siouxsie and the Banshess, The Jam, and more, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.23.2010
07:08 pm
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Very cool documentary on the New York City/London punk scene of the 1970’s: Watch it now!
10.15.2010
02:18 am
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More rock and roll goodness from The Seven Ages Of Rock.

A tale of two cities, London and New York and the birth of punk. Each city created a bastard child that marked the biggest and fundamental shift in popular music since Elvis walked into Sun Studios. ‘Blank Generation’ examines the relationship between the bankrupt New York and the class and race-riven London of the mid- 70’s and explores the music of The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, The Damned and Buzzcocks

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.15.2010
02:18 am
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Derf Scratch Of Pioneering Punk Band ‘Fear’ Has Died
08.02.2010
08:38 pm
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Derf Scratch, a founding member of Los Angele’s punk pioneers Fear, died on July 28. Derf (Frederich Milner) formed Fear with lead singer and vocalist Lee Ving in 1977.

Fear was one of the best punk bands to come out of L.A. They were musically solid, intense and had an outrageous sense of humor. Their songs were confrontational, nihilistic, lewd : throwing satirical jabs at the punk scene, political correctness, feminism, gays, Christians, anything that moved.

Derf left the band in 1982 shortly after Fear released their debut album on Slash Records. It was not an amicable split. He and Ving had fallen out over work habits, drugs, ego. He sold his Fender bass to Mike Watt of The Minuteman and dropped out of the music scene.

Derf died of an undisclosed illness.

For a thoroughly entertaining interview with Derf check out citizen mag

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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08.02.2010
08:38 pm
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