Great Songs of 2007, Part 17

Caribou - "Melody Day"

Netflix it: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

Roger Ebert tells it like it is:

"The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" has four story threads. It mourns the passing of a time when professional soldiers observed a code of honor. It argues to the young that the old were young once, too, and contain within them all that the young know, and more. It marks the General's lonely romantic passage through life, in which he seeks the double of the first woman he loved. And it records a friendship between a British officer and a German officer, which spans the crucial years from 1902 to 1942.

This is an audacious enough story idea to begin with, but even more daring in 1942, when London was bombed nightly and the Nazis seemed to be winning the war. Powell at first wanted Laurence Olivier to play his title role, but the screenplay ran into fierce opposition from Winston Churchill, and the Ministry of War refused to release Olivier from military duty. Then Powell cast Roger Livesay, a young actor who had worked for him before, and as the German officer, an emigre Austrian actor named Anton Walbrook.

That led to an encounter between Churchill and Walbrook, recounted by the British film critic Derek Malcolm: "Churchill's reaction was furious. He is said to have stormed into Walbrook's dressing room when he was appearing in a West End play demanding: 'What's this film supposed to mean? I suppose you regard it as good propaganda for Britain.' Anton's reply was quite telling, he said 'No people in the world other than the English would have had the courage, in the midst of war, to tell the people such unvarnished truth'."

Ah, but he praised his adopted homeland too soon. Churchill continued to resist. Powell could not borrow gear and trucks from the Army, "so we stole them." The film was at first banned, then reluctantly released in a shorter version, and in the U.S. it lost 50 minutes of its 163-minute running time; the entire flashback structure was replaced by a chronological story line. Only in 1983 was the film finally restored, and hailed as a masterpiece. "It stands," wrote the critic Dave Kehr, "as very possibly the finest film ever made in Britain."

Netflix it: Les Enfants Terribles (1950)

The best French film of the 1950s.

From Criterion:

...
This legendary collaboration between resistant Melville and collabo Cocteau, who also wrote the screenplay and provided the narration, seems neither to have been a grudge match nor a picnic. Cocteau admired Le silence de la mer and approached Melville about filming his novel. Cocteau’s choice of Melville may have been influenced by the writer’s desire to turn his latest flame, Edouard Dermithe, into a movie star (an endeavor likelier to succeed if Dermithe worked with a director besides Cocteau himself). On Melville's part, it would seem odd to follow one thanklessly adapted famous novel with the adaptation of another famous novel, but he genuinely liked the story, and it was a project that was sure to draw money (which was desperately scarce at the time). As Melville probably anticipated, critics endlessly parsed the finished film to decide what belonged to Cocteau and what came from him.

Melville later said he had been "flattered" to be chosen by Cocteau, adding that he "quickly got sucked into it." Cocteau wanted far more control than Melville would give him. When the author tried to change his own script, Melville told him that if he planned to write a new Les enfants terribles, he wasn’t interested in filming it. Melville gave way on two points that he regretted: the casting of Dermithe as Paul and the "updating" of the action from 1929 to 1950. When Cocteau "inadvertently" called "cut" in the middle of a scene, Melville had him thrown off the set. In Melville on Melville, the director acerbically speculates that Cocteau hoped Melville would die during shooting, so Cocteau could simply take over the film. In the end, Cocteau's screenplay turned out to be an almost literal transcription of his book. Melville's transposition is architectural, musical (and to some extent a matter of casting)--like Le silence de la mer, a masterful, poetic rendering of words into images.
...

Great Songs of 2008, brought to you in 2007

Wolf Parade - "Fine Young Cannibals"

Great Songs of 2007, Part 16

Holy Fuck plays "Lovely Allen" in Chicago, 5/23/07.

Great Songs of 2007, Part 15

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - "The World's Greatest"

Netflix it: The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

In crisp black and white MGM takes some not so subtle stabs at Hollywood. According to TCM:

Many contemporary and modern sources have speculated that "Jonathan Shields" was loosely based on producer David O. Selznick and the argument between Shields and director "Von Ellstein" was inspired by Selznick's disputes with director George Cukor when Cukor abruptly departed from Selznick's production of Gone With the Wind (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-40). Some modern sources have speculated that producer Val Lewton also was a partial inspiration for Shields. In The Bad and the Beautiful the film that is the first successful picture for "Fred Amiel" and "Jonathan Shields" was inspired by Lewton's 1942 RKO production Cat People (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1941-50.)
Von Ellstein's character is frequently mentioned as having been inspired by director Erich von Stroheim, and "James Lee Bartlow" is thought by some critics to have been inspired by William Faulkner. "Georgia Lorrison" was also partially inspired by Diana Barrymore, just as "George Lorrison" was based on her father, John Barrymore.

Great Songs of 2007, Part 14

Ryan Adams - "I Taught Myself How to Grow Old"

Netflix it: Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

Courtesy of Criterion:

Though Federico Fellini’s 1964 Best Foreign Film Academy Award for 8 1/2 confirmed his place among the world’s greatest filmmakers, he remained as unsure of his ability as when he had arrived in Rome from Rimini in 1939. If the success of the psychoanalytical 8 1/2 persuaded him of anything, it was the need to examine even more thoroughly the sources of his creativity, which lay in dreams, and in his ambiguous sexuality.

To do so, he broke decisively with films like La Strada and La Dolce Vita. Juliet of the Spirits would be his first in color, and the first not rooted in contemporary reality. And for the first time in seven years, he would be directing his wife, Giulietta Masina.

The Fellinis shared a profound belief in psychic phenomena. Giulietta would halt a conversation in mid-sentence to whisper “We are not alone!” Fellini, who mined his films from a rich dream life—“I go to sleep, and the fête begins,” he said proudly—often changed plans on the advice of astrologers and mediums, whom he cast in his films as an excuse to have them around during shooting.

Though Fellini and Masina shared a house, they occupied separate floors and had very different friends. Fellini flirted overtly with women but made his closest relationships with a succession of young gay assistants, among them Pier Paolo Pasolini. In Juliet of the Spirits, superstition and marital breakdown collide as Fellini, behind a smoke screen of fantasy, debates his future. Juliet, a neglected wife moping in her summer home in fashionable Fregene, is recognizably Masina, just as her preoccupied, philandering husband Giorgio is a streamlined Fellini—younger, thinner, and better dressed.

After Giorgio has forgotten their fifteenth wedding anniversary—the Fellinis had just celebrated their twentieth—Juliet’s pleasure-seeking friends draw her into a spiritist séance with Eugenio Mastropietro, who has modestly nicknamed himself “Genius” and claims to be the Rome police department’s official medium. Next morning, she discovers that the passage to the Hereafter has been thrown open. Phantoms crowd down the psychic corridor, invading her home, the nearby woods, and the beach.

An ancient guru named Bishma tells Juliet the spirits are disturbed by her failure to accept Giorgio’s infidelities and neglect: “Love is your religion. Your husband is your god.” But at the same time, she murmurs that sangria (still exotic in 1965), “quenches those who drink it. It quenches our secret thirsts too.” Immediately, such thirsts start to trouble Juliet. She calls on Suzy, a sensual neighbor, whose treetop house disguises a pleasure dome, complete with a giant bath and a slide to enter it. Staying on for an orgy, she’s tempted to have sex with Suzy’s androgynous part-Arab godson, only to flee back to her sterile villa and a showdown with the spirits.

Milanese publisher Angelo Rizzoli, who financed 8 1/2, put up the money for Juliet, but not without wondering if Masina warranted a $3 million film. He suggested an international name, like Katharine Hepburn, but Fellini was adamant; Juliet of the Spirits would re-invent Giulietta as a new star for the sixties.

With psychedelia turning the world DayGlo and OpArt, and even Ingmar Bergman filming in color with an eye to a better U.S. release, he dictated eye-popping decor and costumes for Juliet. Long-time designer Piero Gherardi and cameraman Gianni de Venanzo obliged, confecting an artificial world set at an eccentric angle to modern Rome.

Meanwhile, his writers assembled a screenplay that was all too realistic about the Fellinis’ marriage. “He hasn’t left out a single bizarre or unhappy detail,” noted one insider. Masina felt ambushed. When Fellini told her he wanted her to “play herself,” she snapped that if anyone fantasized about fornicating with girlish Asian princes, it wasn’t her. Increasingly her role felt like Fellini in drag. The arguments became so bitter that friends predicted divorce.
Visiting Hollywood for the Academy Awards, Fellini tried to recruit some Hollywood legends for his film, including Mae West, whom he wanted to play Bishma. After she declined, Fellini cast 72-year old lesbian androgyne Valeska Gert, a fabled Expressionist dancer and choreographer of ’30s Berlin, last seen on screen in G.W. Pabst’s 1931 Threepenny Opera. Suzy was voluptuous Sandra Milo, long assumed (due mainly to rumors she circulated), to be Fellini’s mistress. Valentina Cortese played Juliet’s friend Valentina, spending her days in beauty salons and her nights with handsome young “protégés.”

Rizzoli infuriated Fellini by ceding an entire panel in the credits to the makers of BriNylon, but without them there would have been no film. Even the grass around the villa is synthetic. Ambling through a role as the languid businessman who makes a play for Juliet, Spanish playboy and writer José Luis de Villalonga disparaged this “nightmare universe of plastic materials.” “Everything around me is fake,” he sniffed. Fellini smiled. “Just like in life,” he said softly.

That, finally, is the charm of Juliet. It admits us to Fellini’s dreams and fantasies, which, truly, were his entire life. With cryptic images like the two uniformed guards who pace silently past Juliet’s window, rain tapping on slick black waterproof capes, the raft packed with naked men and women that nuzzles up to the sunny beach, and the towering bearded figure of authority that erupts into the house, he puts his signature on Juliet of the Spirits to a greater extent than any other of his films.

Fellini and Masina remained together; events left them little choice. After Juliet’s critical and financial failure, the Italian government targeted Fellini for unpaid taxes. Effectively bankrupt, he was forced to sell everything. Then a mysterious malady left him helpless for months. He didn’t release his next feature until 1970—Fellini Satyricon, which, in its frank embrace of the gay lifestyle, showed that Juliet of the Spirits had helped Fellini turn an important corner. But Juliet remains an absorbing film in its own right, not only as a milestone in the development of a great artist, but as an anthology of visual delights that displays the Fellini team of performers, writers, and designers at full and exhilarating stretch.

John Baxter’s books on the cinema include biographies of Luis Buñuel, Woody Allen, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Robert De Niro, and Federico Fellini. He lives in Paris.


Nino Rota - "Suite" (from Juliet of the Spirits)

Great Songs of 2007, Part 13

St. Vincent - "Your Lips Are Red"


From the DUMBO Session:

Great Songs of 2007, Part 12

Frog Eyes - "Bushels"


Live at UC Berkeley, 5/4/2007.

Great Songs of 2008 brought to you in 2007, Part 1

Morrissey plays "All You Need is Me" on Last Call with Carson Daly.

Great Songs of 2007, Part 11

Ola Podrida - "Photobooth"

Great Songs of 2007, Part 10

Scout Niblett - "Kiss"

Great Songs of 2007, Part 9

Josh Ritter plays "To the Dogs or Whoever," as brought to you by Juan's Basement.

Great Songs of 2007, Part 8

Spoon - "Black Like Me"

Hadacol Christmas

Brent Green's Hadacol Christmas, with score by Califone:






View more of Brent Green's work here, including a video for Califone's "Spider House."

Great Songs of 2007, Part 7

Thurston - "Never Day"

Great Songs of 2007, Part 6

Ryan Adams - "Goodnight Rose"

Great Songs of 2007, Part 5

Blonde Redhead - "23"

Great Songs of 2007, Part 4

Iron and Wine - "Boy With a Coin"


At Messiah College in Pennsylvania, 2/10/07.

Great Songs of 2007, Part 3

The National - "Ada"


Live, 5/21/07.

Great Songs of 2007, Part 2

Modest Mouse - "People as Places as People"

Great Songs of 2007, Part 1

Sunset Rubdown - "The Mending of the Gown"

Cassette County would like to announce the grand opening of the new cineplex downtown. Expect extra butter on the popcorn, random cinematic ramblings, and senior discounts. To celebrate the new county renovation, here is a list of the top ten films I watched in the month of October.



10 - Babette's Feast (1987)



The most hunger-inducing movie I've seen since Tampopo.

This would be worth watching just for the hellish large-turtle-for-turtle-soup nightmare sequence.

Try: drinking game wherein players indulge at every utterance of the name Babette.




9 - Songs From the Second Floor (2000)



Ridiculous and surreal with the best magic scene I've ever seen.
I'll just let the trailer speak for itself.






8 - Jules et Jim (1961)

For some reason I didn't like this that much the first time I saw it a few years ago. Maybe it was because the characters are not that likeable. Maybe it was the annoying voice of the narrator. Or maybe I just prefer Jeanne Moreau without a moustache.






7 - Family Diary (1963)

This one is by underrated Italian director Valerio Zurlini, who also did the very good Girl with a Suitcase starring Claudia Cardinale. The film looks like an impressionist painting and contains many long engaging scenes with impressive acting and great character interaction. Like any bedroom scene in Everybody Loves Raymond.




6 - Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

People are mean.







5 - Jalsaghar (1958)

Music. Loneliness. Death.






4 - Le Feu Follet (1963)

Nostalgia. Love. Friendship.
Jeanne Moreau without a moustache.



Depression. Loneliness. Death.



This is the film that made Richie Tenenbaum want to kill himself tomorrow.


As good a representation as any of what an Erik Satie music video would look like:






3 - Ratcatcher (1998)

Dirty and beautiful and innocent and old all at the same time. If you've ever yearned for The Virgin Suicides as directed by David Gordon Green, with heavy Scottish accents, this is your new favorite movie.

When you netflix it, be sure to watch the excellent short Gasman.






2 - The Cranes Are Flying (1957)







If my writing had as much fluidity, passion, and soul as this film does, my reviews would be much better. This is to the 50's what L'Atalante was to the 30's.






1 - Yi Yi (2000)

The shortest three hour movie I've ever seen.

Hmm. Probably one of the best beginnings and endings of any movie I've seen, and everything in between is gold too.

RIP Edward Yang.

The Misfits - "Hybrid Moments"

The Misfits - "I Turned into a Martian"

The Misfits - "Astro Zombies"

Silver Jews play "Dallas"

Caetano Veloso - "London, London"

Air plays "Alone in Kyoto"

British Sea Power on Later...with Jools Holland.

David Bowie - "Move On"

Brian Eno - "Third Uncle"

Phoenix - "One Time Too Many"

Cassette County digs deep for you, citizens.

Andrew Bird on Jack's Big Music Show.

Beach House - "Lovelier Girl"

The Birthday Party - "Cry"

The Birthday Party - "Capers"

Beach House - "Master of None"

Jim O'Rourke - "Therefore I Am"

Unbeknownst to the band, Grandaddy are joined by a special guest whilst opening for Coldplay. Leave a comment if you can identify the special guest.

Grandaddy - "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot" (Live at Benaroya Hall, Seattle. June 18, 2001)

Buzzcocks play "Love You More" and "I Don't Mind" at Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester, June 1978.

ELO plays "Telephone Line" on Midnight Special.

J Mascis and Lee Ranaldo play "Little Fury Things"

The Cars - "Since You're Gone"

Crooked Fingers' video for "New Drink for the Old Drunk"

Crooked Fingers - "The Rotting Strip" Live in New Jersey




The video for "Straight to You" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Jason Molina plays three songs from Songs: Ohia's excellent Magnolia Electric Co.

"Hold On Magnolia"


"I've Been Riding with the Ghost"


"Just Be Simple"



What's that you say? Still want more?

From www.magnoliaelectricco.com:

magnolia electric co. will release their most ambitious work to date later this summer. on august 7th, secretly canadian will issue a 4xcd, 1xdvd deluxe box set entitled ’sojourner’. it includes all of the projects discussed over the past year and then some. ‘nashville moon’, recorded with steve albini in 2005. ‘the black ram’, recorded by david lowery with all sorts of guest musicians including andrew bird. the ’sun session’ ep, recorded at the legendary memphis studio in one day. and of course, the mysterious ’shohola’, recorded at home by jason molina. but that’s just the stuff you might have heard about. there’s also a dvd including the film ‘the road becomes what you leave’ by todd chandler and tim sutton that follows the band as they trek across the prairie provinces of canada. the amazing set is rounded out by deluxe packaging including a medallion and postcards, all housed in a wooden box.

Andrew Bird plays "Plasticities" on Letterman.

Smog - "Somewhere in the Night"


PopMatters interviews Bill Callahan:

PopMatters: When I asked the last two artists I interviewed what contemporary musicians they liked most, they both immediately mentioned Smog. Richard Buckner even said that he buys everything you release "the minute it comes out". How does that make you feel?

Bill Callahan: I have come to realize that I am really, really fucking good. So much better than almost everything that is going on around me. I am sorry but it is true.

....

PM: How do you feel about having your own entry in Wikipedia, which says that you are "widely seen as one of the important figures of American indie rock in the '90s"?

BC: I told you, I am really, really fucking good. These things don't surprise me. I'm going to be on the cover of Webster's Dictionary next year.

Ryan Adams - "This House is Not for Sale" on Later with Jools Holland


Ryan Adams - "Anybody Wanna Take Me Home" South Carolina, 2006.

Sunset Rubdown plays "Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings" in Denver, April 2007.

Destroyer plays "Looter's Follies" in Seattle, May 2006.

I read her Eliot, I read her Yeats

Grinderman plays "Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars)" and "No Pussy Blues" on Later with Jools Holland

Owen covers Wilco.

Oh how I love this. Maybe even more than Bowie's version.

Doug Martsch - "Ashes to Ashes" (Live)

Sparklehorse - "Saturday"

Oh that's just Titian

Lambchop - "I Can Hardly Spell My Name"

Wire performs "Heartbeat" in 1979.

Ready with ready-wit

Studio and live versions of "Trouble Loves Me":

Morrissey - "Trouble Loves Me"


Live at Benicassim 2006.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds perform "Supernaturally"

Beck plays "Bottle of Blues" on some show.

How are things in Portland? Preeety good.

Stephen Malkmus on The Late Show.

The Weirdness

Morrissey and Iggy Pop, April 2007


thanks to true-to-you.net.

In honor of my finsishing Strange Fascination, here are two leftovers from the Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust days.

David Bowie - "Bombers"

David Bowie - "Velvet Goldmine"



The book did not end entirely to my liking. I was expecting something along the lines of

"And in a stench-ridden Berlin alleyway half in light, half in darkness from the rising sun, Iggy Pop raised his pistol, and..."

A disorienting gondola ride down the Okkervil River in Italy

a crack on the head is what you get for not commenting.

The Smiths - "Barbarism Begins at Home" on The Tube

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.

Producer Gus Dudgeon explains Bowie recording "Space Oddity" in Italian: from Strange Fascination by David Buckley:

David Platz told me that there was an Italian version of "Space Oddity" by two Italian boys, and that they'd done it really well and that it would obviously threaten the chances of the original version in that country. So I booked a studio and an Italian translator to work with Bowie on his pronunciation. We went into the studio and put the track up, and the guy had it written out phonetically on paper. It was all pretty funny most of the time because Bowie was crackin' up and I was crackin' up and this bloke was saying, 'No no no! You've got to say it alike thees: "Reg-az-za So-lo". Make it a-fall at the end.' We finally get there, and he's happy with it and so Bowie's saying to him casually as he's putting his jacket on, 'You must have had a bit of a problem translating the lyric - the astronaut up in space and that sort of thing' and the Italian bloke is frowning and saying, 'No, is no problem. What you just sing is a love story. It's about a boy, he meets a girl in a mist at the top of a mountain and they fall in love and they have a long kiss and they go home'. But Bowie said, 'Well, my story is about fuckin' astronauts!' But the man said, 'No, no, that's a-no good for Italy,' and Bowie just laughed it off. He said, 'Well, that's hilarious. I've just put in all that time singing some bloody love song about some tart in a blouse on a mountain in a mist falling in love!'

The Legendary Stardust Cowboy

The Ziggy Stardust Companion explains where David Bowie got the name Ziggy Stardust:



STARDUST came from an eccentric American Country and Western singer called Norman Carl Odom who went by the stage name "The Legendary Stardust Cowboy" (also known as "Ledge" to his friends) and who was on the Mercury label with Bowie in 1969. His one claim for fame was a novelty song called "Paralysed" which reached the Top 200 of Billboard (and which Bowie bought!). He appeared on the TV show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In as a serious act but the audience thought he was very funny, and devastated he walked off the stage and cried.

"He was a kind of Wild Man Fisher character; he was on guitar and he had a one-legged trumpet player, and in his biography he said, "Mah only regret is that mah father never lived to see me become a success." I just liked the Stardust bit because it was so silly." - Bowie (1990)



Below is a short clip of the aforementioned Laugh-In appearance.


Legendary Stardust Cowboy - "Paralysed"

Colin Meloy - "I Know Very Well How I Got My Name"

Colin talks Moz in The Believer:

BLVR: I noticed a Morrissey connection, and I know you’ve addressed it in interviews. I hear it in vocal inflections but it’s funny because, to me, your songwriting is nothing like Morrissey’s. He’s known for introspection and here you are writing these third-person narratives about Victorian rogues. Maybe you took that same urgency and desperation and applied it to these characters of yours?

CM: Absolutely. Morrissey has been a huge influence on me and I think he tends to get overlooked as a songwriter just because “Morrissey” as a character tends to outshine what he’s created. I think he is a phenomenal songwriter—an incredibly complex and incredibly intelligent songwriter. He’s writing songs that work on so many different levels. I continually go back to the Smiths and to some of his early solo work and find something new. Come at it from a different angle, from a different mode of experience and think, “OK, OK I think I get it!” So many layers of irony…

I think of his literary allusions, the flaws of his characters, his self-referential tone, and how well he treats that. That’s one of his strongest traits and it’s also what he gets a lot of criticism for: his being this sort of egomaniacal character in songs when in fact there’s heaps and heaps of irony there—I’m talking strata upon strata. Like there is that egoism, but it’s defending a very, very sincere fragility, but also poking fun at that at the same time—poking fun at shyness and extrovertedness.

There are so many different levels to him, and he’s just so funny and cutting and people don’t see how funny he is and what a sense of humor he has. They just see the surface. So, that’s definitely been the inspiration.


The original; a B-side to the Suedehead single, released February 1988:

Morrissey - "I Know Very Well How I Got My Name"

The Constantines play in a hail storm at the Sasquatch Festival.


The Constantines - "On to You"

And singer Bryan Webb tells of a diversion that I know all too well in an interview with Pitchfork:

Pitchfork: You've talked about curling in several interviews, in Pitchfork and elsewhere...

Webb: [chuckles] Well, the hockey strike was on, and we got into watching women's curling. The national women's curling tournament is the Tournament of Hearts. It's actually a pretty amazing sport, and we just kind of all fell in love with the leader of the women's Ontario team, she's a really of charismatic and awesome person. We were watching that a lot while we were recording.

I'm only now realizing I should have started with Safe as Milk instead of Trout Mask Replica**##.

**Not to be confused with Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America...
##But according to Wikipedia, "Robert Rankin paid homage to this album by naming a novel he wrote in 1997, Sprout Mask Replica."

Maybe someday though, I'll change my mind about Trout Mask Replica, like Matt Groening did...from his essay in the December 1993 issue of Mojo Magazine:

The first time I heard Trout Mask, when I was 15 years old, I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony.

Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn't believe Frank Zappa could do this to me - and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realised they were doing it on purpose: they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I'd ever heard.

I played Trout Mask for my blues-loving friends, who all went through the same reaction I had, and we'd sit around saying, Wow, if this is how great pop music is in 1969, just think what it’ll be like in 1984! Of course, we didn’t realise this was the best album of 1984... and it remains the best rock album I've ever heard.

I saw him perform in 1970, when he came to the Paramount Theater in Portland, Oregon, and all seventy-five weirdos in the city showed up. These were the people the hippies had rejected. I remember the lights dimmed, and then Ed Marimba came out with a plastic toy raygun, pulled the trigger a few times to make sparks, and intoned the words 'Raygun, raygun' over and over again . . . finally concluding with 'Ronnie Raygun', who was already Governor of California. Then Drumbo came out and they played a duet for a while, and finally the whole band walked on. It was the best concert I've ever seen, easily.

In 1975, at the very end of an orchestral concert that Frank Zappa did at UCLA, I remember Don came out after the orchestra left the stage and just started blowing his soprano sax. After the show, a couple of friends and I tracked him down and had lunch with him. He showed us this incredible sketchbook, full of stuff that was for more figurative than anything he does nowadays. One of the friends I was with actually bought a picture of a trout that he'd drawn. He got quite nervous when she offered to buy it and called his wife to check that it was OK. Not long ago, I went to a private view of his paintings in Santa Monica and he was there. But by that time weirdness had become hip, so he was surrounded by every hipster weirdo in L.A. And in any case, I got waylaid by Henry Rollins.

But anyway, from Safe as Milk:


Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - "I'm Glad"

Oh well, too bad.

Halo Benders - "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"

Nick Zammuto of The Books explains his Spoonbox:

"This will take a little bit of explaining. I built this prototype of the Spoonbox out of wood, plexiglass, zinc plates, measuring spoons, and closeout radioshack parts. It hooks up to a CD player and small amplifier which cause the spoons to dance. There are small speakers behind the spoons that move in response to the sounds on the CD which I carefully composed using low frequency sine waves and kitchen sounds. The speakers, in turn, blow small puffs of air into the spoons which cause them to bounce/vibrate in rhythmic patterns. It really must be seen to be understood, but this video might give you some sense of what it does."



Further comments via Cokemachineglow:

CMG: Yeah, I was looking at your website and I saw the Spoonbox. That’s amazing. How did you come up with the idea for that?
NZ: Thanks. Sound is motion of the air, that’s all it is. Motion of the air is created by various things, speakers being one of them. I wanted to use that to create not only movement in the air but also movement through objects. One idea that I came up with was to use a small puff of air from a more bass-y end of the frequency to use the spoons while there are other sounds coming out of the speakers as well. It plays with inside and outside a lot as well—what’s in the box and what’s coming out of the box. It bridges the gap between recorded medium that’s representational and one that’s purely phyical or visceral.
CMG: Then I’m guessing you’re probably behind the drums on “An Animated Description of Mr. Maps” as well.
NZ: Yeah, I had that idea a long time ago. It sort of reared it’s ugly head years ago, to install a subwoofer inside of a filing cabinet and sort of play on the whole idea of industrial music. I went to Wal-Mart and bought this really cheap filing cabinet and put a subwoofer inside of it. It sort of had this resonant frequency to it already, which became the tuning for the track. It was roughly C-Sharp. We tuned everything to that.

The Books - "An Animated Description of Mr. Maps"

John Fahey playing "In Christ There Is No East or West" in 1969.

Brian Eno - "By This River"

I never knew a Grizzly Bear could fit inside a shower.

Sunset Rubdown in Chicago

this subject loves you

Jets to Brazil - "Chinatown"

Jets to Brazil - "King Medicine"

"Conrad" live at the Empty Bottle, 11-14-98


"King Medicine" live at the Empty Bottle, 11-14-98

Blue Cheer on Beat-Club.
Crazy zooms, lots of superimposed band-on-band images. Killer.

I'm pretty sure this is what one hundred chimps would sound like if you gave them one hundred instruments in exchange for their one hundred bananas.

The Monks on German tv show Beat-Club in 1966. From AMG...

"One of the strangest stories in rock history, the Monks were formed in the early '60s by American G.I.s stationed in Germany. After their discharge, the group stayed on in Germany as the Torquays, a fairly standard beat band. After changing their name to the Monks in the mid-'60s, they also changed their music, attitude, and appearance radically. Gone were standard oldie covers, replaced by furious, minimalist original material that anticipated the blunt, harsh commentary of the punk era. Their insistent rhythms recalled martial beats and polkas as much as garage rock, and the weirdness quotient was heightened by electric banjo, berserk organ runs, and occasional bursts of feedback guitar. To prove that they meant business, the Monks shaved the top of their heads and performed their songs -- crude diatribes about the Vietnam war, dehumanized society, and love/hate affairs with girls -- in actual monks' clothing.

This was pretty strong stuff for 1966 Germany, and their shocking repertoire and attire were received with more confusion than hostility or warm praise. Well known in Germany as a live act, their sole album and several singles didn't take off in a big way and were never released in the U.S., it was rumored, because the lyrical content was deemed too shocking. They disbanded in confusion around 1967, but their album -- one of the most oddball constructions in all of rock -- gained a cult following among collectors, and has ironically made them much more popular and influential on an international level than they were during their lifetime. Bassist Eddie Shaw's 1994 autobiography, Black Monk Time, is a fascinating narrative of the Monks' stranger-than-fiction story."

I've always liked this one.

The Damned - "Smash it Up" (Pts 1 &2)

and here they are playing that and "I Just Can't Be Happy Today" on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1979.

Isobel Campbell - "Time is Just the Same"

Charlotte Gainsbourg - "5:55"

Belle and Sebastian at Amoeba in LA (March 2006)

Q: Which is the better moment in this video?

a) when the camera tries to take a bite out of Stuart.

b) when Stevie finally decides to walk on stage and play along and commences to steal the whole song.

Please write your answer in the comment section with a #2 pencil.

Here is Nico covering "Heroes" whilst looking like the cover of I See a Darkness. The clip cuts out early, but I don't think you'll mind.

Who has better hair in this clip: Nico or Lou?
Place your vote in the comment section, please.

Why is Andrew WK there?
Why does Conan look like he wants to punch Bonnie when he goes in for the handshake?
Why is this even better than the album version??

Answer these questions in the comment section.

Marc Bolan is my brother

T. Rex - "Teenage Dream"