While no one will mistake this for a historic meeting of the minds, it does have its odd charm. The Marshall McLuhan of punk Billy Idol chats with Timothy Leary about rock n’ roll, cyberspace and computers. “Pretty deep,” Joey Ramone observes while Television (the band) let old skool technologies like drums and guitars do the talking.
Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap, Ice-T’s upcoming big budget performance documentary about the legends of rap has been generating a huge buzz since its Sundance premiere.
Dangerous Minds pal Glen. E. Friedman says:
“This is going to be the biggest documentary of all time! I saw it, I know!”
Something from Nothing: features Chuck D, Dana Dane, Ice Cube,Kanye West, Mos Def, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Eminem, KRS-One, Afrika Bambaataa, Common, Anthony ‘Treach’ Criss, Doug E. Fresh, Rakim, Joseph Simmons, Cheryl ‘Salt’ James, Big Daddy Kane, MC Lyte, Marley Marl, Kool Keith, Darryl McDaniels, Melle Mel, Nas, Q-Tip and many others.
Sixty-nine years ago today, Albert Hoffman, the Swiss scientist who discovered LSD, took his first trip.
After some time, with my eyes closed, I began to enjoy this wonderful play of colors and forms, which it really was a pleasure to observe. Then I went to sleep and the next day I was fine. I felt quite fresh, like a newborn.
Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom. I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.” Albert Hoffman.
Connie Littlefield’s engaging documentary Hoffman’s Potion features interviews with many pioneering cosmonauts including Hoffman, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Stanislav Grof and Ralph Metzner. It is a reminder that LSD is a compound that needs to be rescued from the dustbin of history and further researched.
Having had the good fortune of taking Sandoz pharmaceutical acid when it was still legal, I can testify to its deeply spiritual and life-changing properties. Truly a wonder drug that deserves to be respected not rejected.
I think that the possibility to have psychedelic experience is inborn. These psychedelics - very similar compounds are in our brain; of all the compounds which you find in the plant kingdom only the psychedelics are so closely related chemically to these brain factors, which we already have. We speak about the paradise of childhood. When I had this vision and beautiful experience as a child, this is no wonder, because we have these compounds already in our brain.” Albert Hoffman
I was living in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The year was 1964. I was thirteen. Beatlemania was running wild and millions of kids across the USA were buying cheap Japanese electric guitars, drum kits, and forming garage bands. My dad bought me a set of Kent drums at Sears and I formed a group called the Continentals. We covered tunes by The Beatles and The Stones, of course, and had a set list that included “Louie Louie,” “I Got My Mojo Workin”, “Shout,” “Hang On Sloopy” - a couple dozen three and four chord rockers. We played at local firehouse dances, supermarket openings and, along with groups like The Mojos and The Ascotts, the Princess movie theater’s Saturday morning kiddie show. We actually performed songs live as opposed to lip-syncing to some Four Seasons or Jan and Dean tune. We were the real fucking deal.
I had a moptop and it got me into trouble at school, where the rule was no hair over the ears and bangs had to be the width of two fingers above your eyebrows. I broke the rules on a consistent basis. A pattern I would follow my entire life. One day I was sent home for wearing madras pants to school. Those were some fucking slick slacks. But, when all the other kids were wearing Gant shirts and Weejun loafers, my madras pants were an affront to the refined sensibilities of the pre-yuppie status quo of the early 60s. In those days, high school had a caste system composed of longhairs, straights, jocks and greasers. I was a longhair. And greasers hated the longhairs. But I dug the greasers. Cause they were rockers. We were fellow parishioners in the church of rock and roll. It took a woman to help me discover this. Her name was, and I’m not bullshitting, Rhonda.
The Continentals were working the crowd before a screening of a cartoon marathon at the Princess. We were tearing through “Eight Days A Week”, “Not Fade Away” and “Gloria,” working up a sweat under our matching lime-green Nehru jackets, as the audience of pubescent teenyboppers bobbed their heads and swayed in mystical union with the almighty power of rock and roll. I felt like Elmer Gantry with drum sticks. We finished our set, took our bows, and walked off the stage.
As I made my way up the isle to the concession stand, there she was: Rhonda, a greaser goddess from the planet Maybelline. She had a jet-black beehive that defied gravity. Marie Antoinette had nothin’ on this home girl. Rhonda’s do was sculptural: a follicle wonderland where Antonio Gaudi and The Ronnettes sniffed hairspray and dreamed of Mayan pyramids. Rhonda had the fairest skin, the pinkest lips and the palest blue eyes I had ever seen. She was graceful and tall and moved with a slow serpentine stroll. She was way out of my league. This was woman in all her archetypal majesty – Shakti with a serious wighat. To my amazement, she was smitten by me. She said she liked the way I played the drums and she leaned over and gave me a kiss that tasted of lipstick and cigarettes. My knees buckled and I felt for the first time that rock and roll was more than music, it was supernatural.
The Princess theater is now a church. But in its own way, it always was.
This 1967 film footage of a Battle Of The Bands at Pierre Van Cortlandt Junior High School Gym in New York captures that tectonic time when thousands of suburban garages all across America shook, rattled and rolled.
In Kill Your Idols director Scott Crary attempts to find some connection between No Wave bands of the late 1970s like Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, Suicide and Swans with contemporary post-punkers Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Black Dice, Liars and others. The link is too tenuous to stand up to close scrutiny, but the movie is fascinating none-the-less for its exciting archival footage and compelling interviews with New York City’s avant-garde old guard. Listening to Lydia Lunch’s bilious rant about rock and roll’s new breed of hipster bands as a “pandering bunch of mama’s boys” who are “desperate to have their music used in the next car commercial” is a hoot. As are similarly contemptuous critques from Lee Ranaldo and Arto Lindsey.
Contrasting the newer bands with their older influences hits a resonant chord when DNA’s Lindsey describes the 1970’s NYC scene as an era when “we didn’t have a whole industry selling us back to ourselves.” This is the significant difference between creating and re-creating. In their self-consciousness, the new bands lack the vision, fearlessness and recklessness that no-wave’s pioneers brought to the mix every time they stepped on stage. It is impossible to replicate the “shock of the new.” Nothing seems dangerous anymore because everything has been radiated in the pasteurizing glow of our retro-obsessed culture. Rock and roll is disappearing up its own asshole. It wasn’t always this way. With every note, No Wave hit the self-destruct button. Gone. This doesn’t mean that the new groups aren’t good - I love Yeah Yeah Yeahs - but trying to find the link between them and the original no wavers is like trying to find fingerprints on water.
Update: The numbnut who uploaded Kill Your Idols pulled the movie from their Youtube channel. If you have a Netflix account, it is available to stream here.
Filmed in Philadelphia during the first Earth Day in April of 1970, Circuit Earth is a fascinating glimpse at the roots of the ecology movement and a sad reminder of how little things have changed when it comes to humanity’s relationship to our planet in the 42 years since the film was made. The environmental crisis continues and is getting worse as we continue to not learn from our mistakes.
Circuit Earth The idea behind “Circuit Earth” was to draw connections between concern for the environment and spiritual impoverishment manifested by war, overpopulation, mindless consumption, and drug addiction. This “underground” documentary raised issues that are now in the mainstream, including the impact of warfare, climate change, and population growth on the environment. It focused on concerns that are as true today as they were then, such as the dependence on fossil fuels, which is at the core of the energy debate today. Circuit Earth anticipated the need for a holistic and global approach to the environment that requires an informed citizenry as well as knowledge-based political leadership. This film underscores the global nature of technology and the environment, and the complex interaction of natural and human systems.
Featuring Allen Ginsberg, Sen. Ed Muskie, the Broadway cast of Hair, Jerry Rubin, Alan Watts, Redbone and Ed Sanders of the Fugs.
Circuit Earth was shown in 1971 and at a few conferences, but was never in distribution and has not been released on video.
Medical insurance mandates are nothing new, as Einer Elhauge, a professor at Harvard Law Schoo, explains at The New Republic:
In making the legal case against Obamacare’s individual mandate, challengers have argued that the framers of our Constitution would certainly have found such a measure to be unconstitutional. Nevermind that nothing in the text or history of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause indicates that Congress cannot mandate commercial purchases. The framers, challengers have claimed, thought a constitutional ban on purchase mandates was too “obvious” to mention. Their core basis for this claim is that purchase mandates are unprecedented, which they say would not be the case if it was understood this power existed.
But there’s a major problem with this line of argument: It just isn’t true. The founding fathers, it turns out, passed several mandates of their own. In 1790, the very first Congress—which incidentally included 20 framers—passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was then signed by another framer: President George Washington. That’s right, the father of our country had no difficulty imposing a health insurance mandate.
Elhauge joined an amicus brief supporting the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. You can (and should) read his entire piece at TNR.
This brings to light some extraordinary “lost history” that the Reichwing needs to consider as they hone their threadbare, tissue-thin arguments to deny healthcare to their fellow man…
Noam Chomsky has long advocated simply reading the Wall Street Journal if you wanted to understand the mindset of the ruling class. No special detective work is necessary to divine the attitudes and intentions of the rich and powerful. In the pages of their house organ you could find what you were looking for, often with unvarnished bluntness.
It’s good advice, but today, the WSJ isn’t the only place to look for hints of ruling class attitudes. In a column published today at Huffington Post, Dr. Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum poses a salient question: If this is the end of Capitalism, then what’s next?
One of the criticisms of capitalism centers on the widening gap between winners and losers due to the so-called turbocapitalism that is a result of global competition. In this context, the so-called Nordic model demonstrates that a high degree of labor market flexibility and social welfare systems do not have to be mutually exclusive—indeed, they can actually be combined to very good effect. This type of economic policy also enables countries to invest in innovation, childcare, education and training. The Scandinavian countries, which underwent a similar banking crisis in the 1990s to that which we are now experiencing in other Western economies, have shown that by reforming regulation and social welfare systems, flexible labor and capital markets really are compatible with social responsibility. So it is no coincidence that these countries are now among the most competitive economies in the world. [Emphasis added]
Other aspects of the criticism of capitalism that are worthy of serious consideration are excessive bonuses, the burgeoning market in alternative financial instruments and the imbalance that has emerged between finance and the real economy. However, we do see some progress in these areas thanks to mounting pressure from the general public, governments and also the market.
So even though capitalism was not laid to rest in Davos, it is fair to say that capital is losing its status as the most important factor of production in our economic system. As I outlined in my opening address in Davos, capital is being superseded by creativity and the ability to innovate—and therefore by human talents—as the most important factors of production. If talent is becoming the decisive competitive factor, we can be confident in stating that capitalism is being replaced by “talentism.” Just as capital replaced manual trades during the process of industrialization, capital is now giving way to human talent. I am convinced that this process of transformation will also lead to new approaches within the field of economics. It is indisputable that an ideology founded on personal freedom and social responsibility gives both individuals and the economy the greatest possible scope to develop.
If this is the sort of intellectual currency that was circulating around Davos this year, I think this is a pretty strong indication that the Occupy backlash is having a big effect. You’d hope that by now the elites must know that the natives are restless!
Obviously a worldwide group-mind consensus is demanding, if not exactly the end of Capitalism, certainly a major rethink/reformation of the way it is practiced in the 21st century. The world is a different place than it was before the Industrial Revolution, it’s high time we updated the operating system to reflect those changes.
It’s just getting to be so fucking stupid, isn’t it?
Michael E. Porter, a Harvard University professor cited by Schwab in his essay, explains why business leaders must focus on “shared value creation.”
Over at Candlelight Stories, writer and film-maker Alessandro Cima has located Stanley Kubrick’s excellent first short documentary film Day of the Fight. Adapted from Kubrick’s original photo-essay for Look Magazine in 1949, Day Of The Fight follows middleweight Irish boxer named Walter Cartier, as he prepares for his bout with middleweight Bobby James. It’s a gripping and effective documentary film, and reveals some of the skills that would shape Kubrick’s later movies.
It was the French thriller Pépé le Moko, with its infamous gangster hiding out in the casbah of Algiers, that inspired Graham Greene towards writing his classic treatment for The Third Man. When he reviewed the Jean Gabin film in 1937, Greene wrote that it:
“...raised the thriller to the level of poetry…
It would take his collaboration with Carol Reed, firstly on an adaption of his story “The Basement Room”, filmed as The Fallen Idol in 1948, with Ralph Richardson and Michèle Morgan, and then on The Third Man for Greene to equal and better his original influence.
In Frederick Baker’s masterful documentary Shadowing The Third Man from 2004, we learn this and a host of other facts, as Baker delves into the making of one of cinema’s greatest films. I’m a great fan of Greene and adore The Third Man and can assure you there is much to treasure in this near perfect documentary.
Skateboarding the mean streets of Manhattan in the 1980s - the concrete Banzai Pipeline.
Along with the Bones Brigade, that’s Christian Hosoi in there with the green hair, along with Dave Hackett (acid-dropping off a semi truck), Ian Frahm (ollieing up onto the wall at the Brooklyn Bridge banks - big trick at the time) and some other NYC locals.
Some great shots of NYC as these urban skafarists ride the wild turf.
Famous visitors and “beautiful people” with “star potential” who visited Andy Wahol’s Factory studio in the 1960s were often shot for Warhol’s “screen tests,” his silent “parodies” of the Hollywood studio system. No one was really auditioning for anything, it was just an excuse to run a single reel of 16mm film through his Bolex camera and engage someone in a staring contest with it, one they normally lost (after a minute or so of trying to look “cool,” the mask was normally dropped and the simple portraits become quite revealing). The two and a half minute reels were then slowed down and printed.
Some of the more notable subjects included Italian model Benedetta Barzini, model/actrress Marisa Berenson, poet Ted Berrigan, Salvador Dalí, Donovan, Marcel Duchamp, Mama Cass, Allen Ginsberg, Beck’s mother, Bibbe Hansen, Baby Jane Holzer, Dennis Hopper, actress Sally Kirkland, Nico, Yoko Ono, Lou Reed, photographer Francesco Scavullo, Edie Sedgwick, Susan Sontag, artist Paul Thek, Viva and Mary Woronov
When Dylan stopped by the tin-foil covered Factory, he is alleged to have taken an immediate dislike to Warhol and the “phonies” of his entourage. It has long been suspected that the spitting lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone,” in part, describe Dylan’s feelings about Warhol—was he “the diplomat on the chrome horse”?—and how he felt about the artist’s perceived exploitation of Edie Sedgwick, who Dylan was at one point romantically involved with (and who was his muse for some of Blonde on Blonde).
After the screen test was shot, Dylan grabbed a large silkscreen (as “payment”) that Warhol was going to give him anyway and headed for the door (before allegedly strapping the canvas to the roof of a station wagon). Such was his dislike of the artist that he later traded the piece to his manager, Albert Grossman, for a couch. That silkscreen, “Double Elvis,” is now part of the permanent collection at MOMA.
Here’s Factory photographer Nat Finkelstein’s account of what happened:
“Andy gave Bobby a great double image of Elvis. Bobby gave Andy short shrift. Shooting and plundering finished, the Dylan gang headed for the door, me and my Nikon on their heels. They left as they had entered…‘Bobby the Waif’ emerging as ‘Robert the Triumphant’. They departed having tied the Elvis image to the top of their station wagon, like a deer poached out of season. Much later, Bobby told me he’d traded the Elvis (now worth millions) to his manager Albert Grossman for a couch!”
The Beatles’ original bass player Stu Sutcliffe died 50 years ago today. Does that make some of you feel old? It does me.
The Compleat Beatles is a very fine documentary on the band that Mr. Sutcliffe quit in order to pursue a life devoted to painting, a life which sadly came to an end when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 22.
He wasn’t really a very good musician. In fact, he wasn’t a musician at all until we talked him into buying a bass. We taught him to play twelve-bars, like “Thirty Days” by Chuck Berry. That was the first thing he ever learned. He picked up a few things and he practiced a bit until he could get through a couple of other tunes as well. It was a bit ropey, but it didn’t matter at that time because he looked so cool.” George Harrison.
Narrated by Malcolm McDowell, 1984’s The Compleat Beatles is chock full of fantastic archival footage of the Fab Four and interviews with the band as well as George Martin, Marianne Faithful, Lenny Kaye, Billy Preston and Brian Epstein.
The Compleat Beatles was released on VHS and is out-of-print. It’s never been released on DVD. This is sourced from a laserdisc and looks very good indeed.
Excellent documentary Stuart Sutcliffe, The Lost Beatle after the jump…
Hippie-exploitation paperbacks bring a smile to my face for a number of reasons:
1. Rarely do the hippies on the book covers look under 30. They look like illustrations from stagmags of swingin’ suburbanites.
2. Hippies are doped up and super-horny 24/7. Watch out!
3. Hippies buy their fashions from the “youth in revolt” section of the Sears catalog.
4. When they’re not covering their bodies in goofy slogans and day-glow butterflies, hippies are busy raping and pillaging and at least one in every rampaging gang looks like Frank Zappa.
Marc posted here recently about Kieran Turner’s new documentary, Jobriath A.D. and I was thrilled to hear that the film was about to come out.
Kieran was kind enough to share Jobriath A.D. with us and, on many levels, I just loved it and think that a lot of Dangerous Minds readers will really love it, too. Narrated by Henry Rollins and featuring interviews with Marc Almond, Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott, Magnetic Fields’ Stephen Merritt, Ann Magnuson, Kristian Hoffman, Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters and Jobriath’s manager Jerry Brandt, Turner’s film seems set to perform the same task for Jobriath Boone, rock’s first out and proud “fairy” that Andrew Horn’s The Nomi Song doc did for the once similarly obscure Klaus Nomi.
I caught up with Kieran over email:
I was completely wowed by Jobriath A.D. My wife loved it too, and she absolutely hates Jobriath’s music, so that’s really saying something, as well. You won her over.
Kieran Turner Now THAT fascinates me. I had a conversation with a journalist in the UK and wondered what people who didn’t like Jobriath’s music would think of the film. For instance, if you go see this film not having heard anything before and you are exposed to the music and you’re sitting there scratching your head, is the rest of film just a complete wash? Would you just sit there with your arms folded and a sneer on your face every time someone popped up onscreen and offered up some praise? Or could a viewer appreciate the story and say- okay, I don’t like the music, but the guy broke ground, and this is an interesting cautionary tale and great period piece. I honestly didn’t know the answer to that question, and looking at it from my own perspective, I wasn’t sure I could, so how could I expect anyone else to? Because I know everyone isn’t going to like this music and I never expected that in a million years, nor can I fault anyone for it. So to hear that your wife, who doesn’t like Jobriath’s music, was able to take something away from the film and enjoy it- that thrills me to no end.
Jobriath, until the last few years, at least, was not an artist who it was “easy” to find out about. I discovered him myself, completely accidentally at the Sixth Ave Flea Market flipping through albums and going “What’s THIS?” How did you first hear about Jobriath?
You know, I had always heard about Jobriath, as I am a huge music freak and particularly obsessed with the 70s and gay history. I’m too young to have been around during Jobriath’s brief heyday, so I never got exposed to the music. And every time I read about him, he was always described as a joke, so I believed it, since I was unable to hear the music. I guess I stumbled upon the compilation Morrissey put out while I was online, took a chance and ordered it and was just blown away by the music and the talent. And after that, I was obsessed. I wanted to know everything. I was expecting to hear a 70s version of Pansy Division and what I got was a real artist.
I never had any desire to make a documentary. In fact, I had been gearing up to make my 2nd feature film in 2007, and our funding fell through 4 weeks before casting was to begin in NYC and I had nothing going on, no job, I’d sublet my apartment, so I had this chunk of time and I just started researching. I took 14 months to really track down enough people, get enough information, lock the music up (which was crucial) and feel comfortable enough to know it was safe to start the cameras rolling, which we did in January, 2009. I shot on and off for 2 1/2 years, still researching, finding new people, new information, new materials the entire time, and then began editing last summer.
Where did you find the vast treasure trove of images and film footage that you uncovered for Jobriath A.D.?
All different places. Honestly, it was a bitch. And we were finding material up until January of this year. In fact, we had what we thought was a finished cut and then a photographer came out of the woodwork with some fantastic photos of which we nabbed a half dozen and put them in at the last minute. And the interview footage with Jobriath and Jerry Brandt was a complete accident. I had been told that the LA NBC affiliate had filmed Jobriath’s first night at The Troubadour in 1974 and did a simulcast, which I always found very suspicious. Why would a Big 3 network do that? It made no sense. That, coupled with the fact that the filmmakers who were doing a doc about Zolar X, who had opened for Jobriath at those shows, had done a thorough search for the footage and had come up with nothing led me to believe it was a myth. Anyway, my co-researcher found some footage at NBC that matched the time period of the Troubadour, but no one knew what it was, only that it was 30 min. So I paid to have it transfered and they sent over a quicktime. I was so nervous to watch it, I sent it to my editor and the two of us watched it over the phone together. Well, there was NO performance footage, just 10 minutes of rehearsal and then this AMAZING 20 minute sit down interview. I was near tears, I was so happy, because the dynamic between Jerry and Jobriath, which was just missing from the film up until that point, was so clear in this interview footage. You watch one tiny section of it and it sums up their relationship immediately.
Speaking as a longtime Jobriath fanatic—one of your interviewees, Ann Magnuson, told me about 20 years ago that I was probably the only straight guy in America who even knew who Jobriath was—the part about how all of his costumes and belongings were thrown away after he died was so heartbreaking, but now that your film exists, and is such a testament to this vibrant, talented supernova individual who once existed, more people will hear of Jobriath than ever did during his lifetime and that was very gratifying to contemplate. The film seems such a labor of love, what was the impetus behind the doc and how long did you work on it?
It was sort of three pronged, my reasons for wanting to make this. First, I thought it was hugely unfair that Jobriath was a pioneer of the gay community, the first openly gay rock star (and I mean OPEN and not the bullshit bisexual pose of Bowie, et al, who were just using it for shock and had wives and girlfriends to fall back on). And I get very tired of people throwing out other examples of artists they think were openly gay back then. Trust me, I did the research. In America, it was Jobriath, then Steven Grossman, who even fewer people had heard of. You had Long John Baldry, who was very fringe and really in the UK. But I don’t want to hear about Liberace, Little Richard, Elton John and all those others. It was Jobriath.
But I would not have made this film if the music wasn’t good. Really good. Because what’s the point? Then you ARE making a doc about Pansy Division who, all they have going for them is the gay gimmick. And I don’t mean to bash PD. I don’t know them, I don’t have anything really against them. I do find the music to be incredibly reductive and rather infantile, but I also know that people do enjoy it, I guess. I just feel like as a gay man, it doesn’t thrill me to have an openly gay band singing about sucking cock and cruising the local skater boys down at the park. But they do have a following, so they’re doing something right.
With Jobriath, I was just so thrilled that it wasn’t only a gimmick and that there was some major talent there. Of course, not everyone will like the music, but it’s silly to expect everyone to like something. I just thought there was a larger audience out there who wasn’t aware of him and who would get it.
And lastly, I felt like I could identify with Jobriath as someone who is creative and and often has to depend on the permission of others in order to share my creativity with the world, whether it be through funding or reviews or getting my foot in the door. How many of us really just want to share what we’re passionate about with the world, but because someone in power deems it unworthy, we’re pushed aside or have the door slammed in our face? That’s all Jobriath wanted to do, just put his gift out there to the world and the world said “Fuck you.” Before they ever heard the music. Because they didn’t like the image, because they didn’t like being told they should embrace something, because they weren’t the ones to discover it, because they were afraid of it—whatever the reason. And it destroyed him. And who can’t identify with that, with putting yourself on the line for something that you’re passionate about, only to be rejected? And that is why I think this is such a universal story. You don’t have to be gay, you don’t have to like the music, you just have to be human.
Often filmmakers are obliged to cut something out for running time’s sake. Anything juicy that we’ll have to wait for the DVD to see?
Oh yes, we cut out a LOT of material. Jobriath was in the running to play Al Pacino’s lover in Dog Day Afternoon. I found that quite interesting, but we just didn’t have time for it in the film, so there’s a section about that. There’s also a section about a musical he wrote which Joe Papp was developing called Popstar, which I have some material from. There’s also some interesting sort of heresay about him and Bowie in terms of a perceived rivalry. I investigated it fairly thoroughly and the reason I didn’t put it in the film was because I couldn’t come to a conclusion. For as many people who said there was an issue, I had just as many who said there wasn’t. It’s something worth examining and letting a viewer make up their own mind, but it didn’t fit in the film and it didn’t further the story. And there is certainly more about Jerry Brandt, more about the family. I also have a lot more interview material with the musicians in the film (Jake Shears, Joe Elliott, Marc Almond, et al) who I had to cut most of for time. This DVD will be packed with extras, I hope. We have the material, it’s just a matter of what sort of distribution deal we wind up getting. But if you like the movie, you’ll want the DVD.
Jobriath A.D. aside from reviving an interest in Jobriath, as both a musician/composer and also as someone who will ultimately be seen as an important and pioneering gay figure in the arts, also seems like it could provide one last big wave for Jerry Brandt to ride. Something like a Broadway musical, as he says in the film, is entirely plausible, don’t you think?
You know, who knows what will happen? Jobriath is a niche figure. I certainly don’t expect FunKo to go into production on a series of Jobriath bobble-head dolls, if you know what I mean. I think everyone involved with Jobriath needs to take it one step at a time. I mean, the music is back out of print, so let’s start there before we make lunchboxes. I’m being facetious, of course, but I think Velvet Goldmine has proven exactly what sort of a market there is out there for fictionalized glam rock.
While the 1987 BBC documentary The Confessions Of Robert Crumb lacks the intensity and insight of Terry Zwigoff’s masterful Crumb it is still an invaluable introduction to one of the world’s most fascinating and enigmatic artists. Fans of Crumb will find it short on revelations but initiates should be charmed.
Love him or loathe him, there is no denying that Crumb was way ahead of his time when it came to toppling sacred cows and shattering taboos. Discovering his comix as a teenager in the late Sixties was one of those formative events that fucked me up for life…in a good way.
“My role is that of a reporter.” – Mike Wallace on the debut of The Mike Wallace Interview
With the death yesterday of TV journalist Mike Wallace at age 93, we’ve already seen many remembrances of him as the man who—along with producer Don Hewett—created the American institution we know as 60 Minutes in the tumultuous American year of 1968. It’s impossible to short-change Wallace’s 38-year legacy as both gate-keeper of that show and pioneer of the “gotchya question” interview technique that defines much of our current news media landscape.
But it behooves us to also have a good look at the man’s stint as the host of The Mike Wallace Interview, the spartan and penetrating late-night program that broadcast nationally from 1957 through 1960. Wallace was 18 years into a broadcast career (mostly as a radio announcer and game show host) as he launched the show based on Night Beat, a similar and more groovily-named program he’d hosted locally in New York a couple of years earlier. During the show’s tenure, he brought a fascinating array of folks to the American public eye, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Pearl Buck, Eric Fromm, Lily St. Cyr, Aldous Huxley and many others.
Besides its solid bookings and now-surreal-seeming live-ads for its benevolent sponsor Philip Morris, TMWI distinguishes itself with a bare-bones visual setting to focus viewer attention on the substance of the personalities interviewed. Dare I say the only two journalists I can think of who’ve truly adapted the show’s black-background format with similar grace and talent are Charlie Rose and Dangerous Minds’ own Richard Metzger.
Do yourself a favor and check out the digitized collection of interviews from the first two years of the show that Wallace donated to the Ransom Center at the University of Texas. Meanwhile, here’s Wallace throwing down with a 54-year-old Sal Dali on death, religion, politics and the fact that “Dali is contradictory and paradoxical in any sense.”
A nicely preserved, young—approximately two and a half years old when it died—mammoth was recently discovered in Siberia as part of a BBC/Discovery Channel-funded expedition. The mammoth is believed to be over 10,000 years old and its blonde-red fur and flesh are still there. Pretty incredible if you ask me.
Read more about the mammoth and expedition at Discovery.
McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters born ninety-nine years ago today, at Jug’s Corner, Issaquena County, Mississippi. The legendary Father of Chicago Blues and influence on artists from Jimi Hendrix to The Rolling Stones, Angus Young to Led Zeppelin
Muddy Waters had always wanted to be a great musician, as he once told writer Charles Shaar Murray for the N.M.E. in 1977:
“....ever since I can remember, this is what I wanted to be. Something outstanding. If I couldn’t make it in music, I’d be a big preacher, a great ball player.
“I didn’t want to grow up with no one knowin’ me but the neighborhood people. I wanted the world to know a lot about me. I thank God I got it through…”
Nearly thirty years after his death, Waters is still as relevant, and as important, as Murray summed up back in 1977:
“The reason that Muddy Waters is still a great and not just an honored ancestor, a museum grandaddy, is that no one can do it like Muddy Waters.
And somehow I don’t think anyone will.”
And here’s the proof, Muddy Waters at the Blues Summit in Chicago from 1974, with Dr. John, Michael Bloomfield, Koko Taylor, Junior Wells and many more.
