Nobel economist Michael Spence, working at the behest of the Council on Foreign Relations, has co-authored a startling new paper with NYU’s Sandile Hlatshwayo. The two did an enormous amount of number crunching and analyzing of how the US economy has been structured for the past 20 years, and in particular, they examined employment trends. It was not a pretty picture that emerged from all of those details.

Well, I guess that would all depend upon which side of the fork you’re on, wouldn’t it?

As the output and productivity of the American worker increased—a LOT, I should add—during the past two decades, jobs still continued to be outsourced to other countries with cheaper labor pools, and fewer opportunities for economic advancement presented themselves for many Americans. All the while, the $$$ for all of that increased productivity didn’t go to the worker bees themselves, it went to the top, to the capitalists and investors class. To parasites like Mitt Romney and his buddies at Bain Capital.

The CFR report’s conclusions are particularly grim for people who have found themselves slipping out of the middle class towards precarious lives and who feel hopeless to do anything about it, but it’s Marxism 101 for the economic literate.

It’s a race to the bottom and “tag” you’re it!

From Reuters:

The take-away is this: Globalization is making U.S. companies more productive, but the benefits are mostly being enjoyed by the C-suite. The middle class is struggling to find work, and many of the jobs available are poorly paid.

Here’s how Mr. Spence and Ms. Hlatshwayo put it: “The most educated, who work in the highly compensated jobs of the tradeable and nontradeable sectors, have high and rising incomes and interesting and challenging employment opportunities, domestically and abroad. Many of the middle-income group, however, are seeing employment options narrow and incomes stagnate.”

Mr. Spence notes the benefit to consumers of globalization: “Many goods and services are less expensive than they would be if the economy were walled off from the global economy, and the benefits of lower prices are widespread.” He also points to the positive impact of globalization, particularly in China and India: “Poverty reduction has been tremendous, and more is yet to come.”

I’m sure Americans living in “right to work” states are just jumping for joy to be competing with wage-earners in China and India.
 

 
Free trade and the free flow of capital means lower prices for the consumer, true, but when someone in China or India is doing that very same computer programming job that used to be your job in the midwest—information workers will have the most precarious jobs of all moving forward—it’s not like you’ll be able to afford much more than rice and beans at the Wal-Mart anyway.

Yes, there’s a high cost to low price. The two are pretty well interconnected, as we’ve seen, but this is what the “free market” is supposed to do, silly. And don’t forget, it was Wal-Mart that put the local shops out of business to begin with.

Karl Marx predicted all of this.

And to all of the naysayers who claim that a “command economy” doesn’t work, I present to you Wal-Mart itself, the most successful example of a command economy the world has ever seen!

Mr. Spence’s paper should be read alongside the work that David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been doing on the impact of the technology revolution on U.S. jobs. Mr. Autor finds that technology has had a “polarizing” impact on the U.S. work force — it has made people at the top more productive and better paid and hasn’t had much effect on the “hands-on” jobs at the bottom. But opportunities and salaries in the middle have been hollowed out.

Taken together, here’s the big story Mr. Spence and Mr. Autor tell: Globalization and the technology revolution are increasing productivity and prosperity. But those rewards are unevenly shared — they are going to the people at the top in the United States, and enriching emerging economies over all. But the American middle class is losing out.

It may seem surprising that it takes a Nobel laureate and sheaves of economic data to reach this conclusion. But the analysis and its provenance matter, because this basic truth about how the world economy is working today is being ignored by most of the politicians in the United States and denied by many of its leading business people.

Here’s where it gets much grimmer, as the article’s author, Chrystia Freeland (who has been the Global Editor-at-Large of Reuters since 2010) tells of a recent breakfast at the CFR that she moderated. The speaker that morning was Randall Stephenson, chief executive of AT&T.

If this is the mindset of the leaders of corporate America today, we’re doomed:

One of the Council of Foreign Relations members in the audience was Farooq Kathwari, the chief executive of Ethan Allen, the furniture manufacturer and retailer. Mr. Kathwari is a storybook American entrepreneur. He arrived in New York from Kashmir with $37 in his pocket and got his start in the retail trade selling goods sent to him from home by his grandfather.

He asked Mr. Stephenson: “Over the last 10 years, with the help of technology and other things, we today are doing about the same business with 50 percent less people. We’re talking of jobs. I would just like to get your perspectives on this great technology. How is it going to overall affect the job markets in the next five years?”

Mr. Stephenson said not to worry. “While technology allows companies like yours to do more with less, I don’t think that necessarily means that there is less employment opportunities available. It’s just a redeployment of those employment opportunities. And those employees you have, my expectation was, with your productivity, their standard of living has actually gotten better.”

HUH? Redeployment of employment opportunities? What the fuck IS this guy talking about?

I recently heard a radio report that indicated that there is ONE factory employing around 15 people in Japan that’s responsible for nearly 80% of the world’s output of a certain sized HD screen. Consider how many people would have worked at a Magnavox television plant in the mid-fifties. Where were those employment opportunities ultimately “redeployed?”

Cinnabon?

7-Eleven?

With advanced automation, robotics and so forth, the American worker always was going to become obsolete in the long run, but the speed with which it is happening has gone from a trot to full gallop since the early 90s. Stephenson’s contention that standards of living have improved is ludicrous. Perhaps for him and for all the Cuban cigar-smoking fatcats at the country club in Westchester, but what about the rest of us?

Maybe the all-powerful, wise free market will help us?!?!

(Sorry all of that cigar smoke is making me *cough*)

Mr. Spence’s work tells us that simply isn’t happening. “One possible response to these trends would be to assert that market outcomes, especially efficient ones, always make everyone better off in the long run,” he wrote. “That seems clearly incorrect and is supported by neither theory nor experience.”

Not to take anything away from Mr. Spence and Ms. Hlatshwayo, but there was this famous book written by a Mr. Marx and a Mr. Engels—two of the most dangerous minds in history—a hundred and fifty-some years ago that predicted all of this shit with amazing, laser-like accuracy.

Mr. Spence says that as he was doing his research, he was often asked what “market failure” was responsible for these outcomes: Where were the skewed incentives, flawed regulations or missing information that led to this poor result? That question, Mr. Spence says, misses the point. “Multinational companies,” he said, “are doing exactly what one would expect them to do. The resulting efficiency of the global system is high and rising. So there is no market failure.”

Okay, stop for a second. Read that last paragraph again, won’t you? Now read it a third time.

Mr. Spence is telling us that global capitalism is working, but that the American middle class is losing out anyway.

Yep, exactly like a certain Mr. Marx predicted would happen. What remains to be seen is how long it takes for the average American to wake up to what’s going on, when the elites are so hellbent on trying to keep them as confused as possible.

Mr. Spence admits he has no easy answers. American politicians are focused on a budget debate that is superficial, premature and ultimately about something pretty easy to figure out. Instead, we should all be working on the much bigger problem of how to make capitalism work for the American middle class.

Karl Marx had the answer to that, too: It’s called Socialism!
 

 

 
Dennis Hopper was 13 when he first sniffed gasoline and watched the clouds turn into clowns and goblins. There was little else to do in Dodge City, where he had been born and raised. Catch lightning bugs, fly his kite, burn newspapers, swim. Hopper was, by his own words, “desperate”.  A sensitive child without the stimulation to keep his fevered imagination in check.

He went to movies and watched Abbott and Costello and Errol Flynn. Hopper od’ed on gasoline fumes and became Abbott and Costello meets Errol Flynn, and wrecked his grandfather’s truck with a baseball bat. It was a hint of what was to come.

Signed at 18 on contract to Warner Bros, Hopper identified with Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, but found he was expected to conform to the studio’s whims. Hopper was too sensitive to conform, and his vulnerability saw him bullied and picked on by old time studio director Henry Hathaway, who had him black-balled from Hollywood.

For the next few years, Hopper did little work. Instead, he picked up a camera and documented the social and cultural changes that were happening across America, and to himself, during the 1950s and 1960s. He also became a “gallery bum”. Where others went to the beach, Hopper hung around art galleries looking for inspiration for his acting career.

He met and became friends with the young artists whose works were exhibited - Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha - and he started to collect, but it wasn’t about the money.

“My idea of collecting is not going and buying bankable names, but buying people that I believe are really contributing something to my artistic life.”

This short film takes us inside the late actor’s home-studio, where he gives a quick tour around his collection of Modern Art works, from Julian Schnabel, Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Ed Ruscha.

Produced and directed by Kimberly M. Wang.
 

 
It’s still sinking in here that MCA-aka Adam Yauch- has died, and that, in effect, the Beastie Boys are no more. What a fucking bummer.

It’s an inescapable fact that the Beastie Boys are one of the bands that define my generation. If you were a child at any point from the mid 80s up until the late 90s you cannot have escaped their influence. And I’m not just talking about their music; their aesthetic reached everywhere, from film and music videos to magazine publishing and clothes lines.

I feel like my generation (and I use that term loosely) don’t have a singular iconic figure they can point too, like a Prince or a Bowie. You know, that one person that unites an entire age group through sheer talent and poise. Well, the Beasties may not have had the incredible album-a-year productivity rate of Prince or Bowie at their prime (in fact they were legendarily slow at making music,) but their extra-musicular activites more than made up for that, and meant that when their albums did drop it was a major event.

More than just the music on its own, more than the Grande Royale magazine and record label, more than fantastic the art work or the trend-setting X-Large clothing range, it was the Beastie Boys incredible videos that set them apart, and brought their diverse fan base together. They really knew how to work in different media while retaining their core identity, making them some of the first and most successful rap music entrepreneurs, and this placed them right at the centre of the 90s golden age of both hip-hop and music videos. And there steering the helm of most of those awesome Beastie Boys promo clips was Yauch himself, often in the guise of Swiss director Nathanial Hornblower.
 

Nathanial Hornblower cartoon by Evil Design
 

My God, looking back now it’s startling to think of how these videos have influenced my life and my addiction to (and perception of) pop culture.

I caught the raunchy video for ‘She’s On It” on TV when I was about 8 years old and the image of Mike D sliding an ice cube down a bikini-clad model’s back has been seared into my brain ever since. I didn’t quite understand what was going on in that shot at the time (hey, I was too young and too sheltered) but there was naked flesh and it was naughty and exciting. I still remember that tingly feeling of not wanting my parents to walk in and see me watching the video. Even though that’s a feeling that returned often in my teenage years, I guess I can say that seeing “She’s On It” was one of my first childhood sexual experiences. 

When I was 13 the promo for Check Your Head‘s opening track “Jimmy James” was a staple on late night European cable music channels, the kind I would creep downstairs and watch on low volume while my parents were asleep. It was hard to keep the volume on this one down, and the visuals themselves were a hypnotic template for everything I thought rocked in the world at the time - New York subways, vintage go-go strippers, dope looking rappers filmed in fish-eye lenses, burning 8mm film, Jimi fucking Hendrix. At this point the Beastie Boys were a bit of an unknown quantity in the UK press, as their reputation stemmed largely from the License To Ill “frat” period (Paul’s Boutique was still being seen as a costly, if interesting, flop.) Still, “Jimmy James” (and “So Watcha Want”) was THE SHIT, and helped spread the word of mouth amongst listeners and the journos alike about how great Check Your Head was. 

Early 1994 saw the release of “Sabotage”. Sure, the clip was directed by Spike Jonze, but Yauch’s fingerprints were all over it. I don’t think I need to write much about this video, only to say that it really was a cultural milestone for people my age. Almost single handedly it ushered in a new era. Out went heroin-chic and woe-is-me grunge, and in came a new sense of fun (with a healthy dose of irony.)  Here was an appreciation of pop-culture’s bargain bin that tied in nicely with Tarantino, some new looks that were equal parts vintage and street, and most importantly of all an incredibly broad musical palate where anything went.

Beyond the stone cold classic video, “Sabotage” pushed boundaries musically. Yeah, so it may be a straight forward punk song, but how many ‘rap groups’ had ever done something like that? In fact, me and my friends didn’t really perceive the Beasties as strictly a ‘rap group’ per se, even though (obviously) they rapped. They were more than that. Presumably because they were white and played actual instruments on occasion, they weren’t talked about in the same hallowed tones as Cypress Hill or Public Enemy. But they were very much a gateway to those bands, and the more commercial hip-hop that followed, and their blessing of the above mentioned acts with tours and remixes made it feel ok for middle-class white kids to define themselves as “rap fans.”

Last year’s video for “Make Some Noise” brought the band back in to the limelight, not least for the starry cast list: what other modern act would be able to convince Seth Rogen, Danny McBride and Elijah Wood to play them in a clip AND THEN rope in Ted Danson, Kirstin Dunst and Will Ferrell for additional cameos? But the real fan treat was the clip for “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win”, which featured G.I.Joe-style puppet versions of the band doing battle underwater, on ice, and even at a music festival. 

Adam Yauch was a visionary, and should be remembered for his film work just as much as his music. In fact, he brought music and film together better than anyone else up to that point, and for that has to be counted as a huge influence and inspiration on the artistic endeavours of myself and my peers. I probably wouldn’t do what I do now if it weren’t for him.

And he did it while wearing a ginger wig and lederhosen. Here’s a strange (and strangely touching) short film of Yauch David Cross [? - what’s going on here?] as Hornblower, shooting the shit on a NY Street and engaging in a game of chess with a labrador:
 

 
Adam Yauch, aka MCA, aka Nathanial Hornblower (August 5, 1964 – May 4, 2012.)

Rest In Peace. 

After the jump, videos for the above mentioned Beastie Boys songs, and a 1992 interview with the band featuring Yauch (yes, definitely Yauch this time) in full Hornblower attire…

 
The Beastie Boys tore down the walls that existed between rock and rap and did so with such crazy grace and a seamless groove that nobody noticed until the deed was done that these white boys had brought uptown downtown and vice versa. Even people who up-until-then had no place for hip-hop in their lives found themselves smitten. And the hardcore haters were musically bum-rushed so swiftly by the sonic velociraptors from NYC that resistance was futile. Everybody ended up coming to the party and found it worth fighting for.

I remember hearing “Cookie Puss” on the radio for the first time in 1983 and wondering “what the fuck was that?” It defied all categories of music as I knew it…and I loved it. I immediately headed over to Sounds on St. Mark’s Place to buy the 12 inch single. I’d play it for my friends and got a kick at watching their amused and perplexed reactions. This shit was fresh - a simple keyboard and drum riff with some scratching and a taped crank call to a Carvel Ice Cream store melded into something hilarious and infectious and a lot smarter and pioneering than we knew back then - it heralded the coming of a band that played dumb but were possessed of a poetic irreverence that celebrated popular culture while subverting it - yeah, punk rock with a hip-hop sense of the beat. On the surface it sounded sloppy and off-the-cuff. In reality it was perfect. The Beastie Boys had a “fuck you” attitude wedded to a shitload of charm and craft. They elevated the ordinary with the lyrical deftness of a Jack Kerouac or Chuck Berry.

It was announced that Adam Yauch (MCA) died today. I know that what I’ve written reads like an obituary for the entire band. It’s not. Mike D and Ad-Rock are still very much alive and I suspect will continue to create new music, produce films and act, as well as taking up the torch for the plight of Tibet as Adam had done for the past two decades. When someone dies, it brings perspective and an opportunity to remind oneself of how much certain things have meant in one’s life. Adam’s death has given us the chance to appreciate what made his band so fucking amazing. Long live the Beastie Boys!

When the Beastie Boys were inducted into this year’s Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Chuck D was there to celebrate the legacy of one of hip hop and rock n’ rolls most innovative groups. The fact that Adam Yauch was too ill (physically speaking) to attend, made the evening all that much more significant.

Here’s Chuck D’s Beastie Boys induction speech on April 14:

  Get it! Get it! You know the Beastie Boys? Can we get a ‘Yeah’ to hip-hop? Can we get a ‘Hell, yeah,’ Cleveland? Hip-hop in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before I turn it over because Def Jam, in the words of Billboard, is the last great record label. And this man behind me wants to finish it off because Chess is to electric blues as Def Jam is to hip-hop and this man helped build the house. So as a resident, can you give three and a half minutes to hip-hop and the Beastie Boys for me? Help me out ya’ll!

  [raps with audience] Now here’s a little story – I’ve got to tell about three bad brothers – you know so well It started way back in history with Ad-Rock, M.C.A., and number three – Mike D.

  I know I can read from the teleprompter but I wrote it down. I won’t take much of your time. There’s no adequate measure for the impact that the Beastie Boys had on rap music and yours truly, Public Enemy, during our formative years. Artistically, just like my man back here, they are our role models. They gave us some of our richest support and that’s uncharacteristic of the many advisors in this game. They led and lead by example.

  The very first time the Beastie Boys headlined they toured, it was the ‘Licensed to Ill’ tour, they hit the road in January 1987. They invited us to join the bill in April 1987. The lineup was the Beastie Boys, Murphy’s Law, and Public Enemy. Watching them tear the house up just like 9,000 here tonight, tearing the house up, we learn so much the importance of a great stage show, just like my man back here.

  They made us rethink what we should do on stage and affirmed for us how important our own Beastie Boys, he calls himself Flavor Flav, might be to our success. In that way, the Beastie Boys literally helped us to get our act together by living up to more than their name night after night on the road.
  They were and still are one of the greatest live acts in music. How can we not learn from the way this group has challenged the dimensions in the music business? How they made up their own rules about what it means to be world class hip-hop heads.

  After ‘Licensed to Ill,’ the Beasties left the Def Jam label and broke with their producer Rick Rubin and still kept it going on. Everyone wondered and how many people were pessimistic about how the hell they were going to top their multi-platinum debut, ‘Licensed to Ill.’ But their second album, ‘Paul’s Boutique,’ broke the mold, and with it they accomplished everything they hoped for.

  They kept the band together through a challenging period when most groups would have broken up and gone home. They proved that they can produce themselves when too many folks wrongly believed they were puppets of marketing and production. And they insisted on maturity as a band and as human beings, when the easier thing for the band was to come back with a form that might have been ‘Licensed to Ill 2.0.’

  It was the courage and self-respect that we all learned from, and so right now we make sure we never take the easy way out just to repeat a hit record for a hit record’s sake: never to compromise our faith in ourselves and our artistry.  Besides they were the first hip-hop group on the World Wide Web in 1993, people.

  Two more minutes for hip-hop, people. One of the most – gotta sulk it in – the third hip-hop group ever. Gotta sulk it in. One of the most admirable qualities about the Beastie Boys is that they stayed so true to the game over the years. No matter what was going on with them or hip-hop culture in general, as far as I’m concerned, I quote myself, the trip towards individualism in hip-hop have come a play. Yes, I quote myself. In a [indiscriminate] art form.

  Yet through it all, the Beastie Boys remain a team of MCs, in the style of groups that inspired them – the Treacherous Three, the Crash Crew, the 2007 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Grand Master Flash and The Furious Five. The 2009 inductees salute Run-DMC and Jay Master Jay. And let’s not forget the DJs throughout the years Andre, Dr. Dre, my friend DJ Hurricane, Mix Master Mike, and DJ Double R better known as Rick Rubin.

  And rock and roll fans’ still got to be a fan, it’s the same thing with hip-hop, the Beastie Boys have made a mountain for us all. Be together, play together, stay together, together forever.  A couple of paragraphs, one more minute for hip-hop, they ain’t got nothing on me. Sulk it in hip-hop and rap music it’s been around 30 years, gotta do it.

  Time and time again and in word and in practice The Beastie Boys honor hip-hop. As true musicians they move beyond drum machines and repetitive samples and sometimes pick up their own instruments. It’s their way of paying tribute to musicians who preceded them who built the foundations of hip-hop. More than many, many situations out there the Beastie boys have fought, in particular I’m thinking about somebody who wasn’t able to join us tonight, Adam Yauch, salute M.C.A. I feel him here tonight, you all feel him here tonight.

  And LL got more to say about that. He belongs here with the greatest. It was M.C.A. who committed the Beastie Boys through their lengthy campaign for freedom for Tibet. The campaign that not only helped the shining light on Tibet’s struggle for independence but allowed the Beastie Boys to move from fighting for their right to party to partying for their right to fight.

  Lastly, no matter what your lyrical subjects are on stage parodies, one thing the Beastie Boys never were to me was a joke. They remind us that this is a craft. We were talking about this on the side. This is a craft, this is not a hustle. And I couldn’t be more honored to induct this group along with this man behind me because they represent the best of the hip-hop/rap music idiom.

  I did love and always thank them for doing a hard work of paving those roads for musicians all over the world, and to rock, rap and roll on those roads, especially before people took us seriously as artists. Rap music is here to stay because it pays homage. So, may we all be as professional, distinctive, powerful as this group coming up right here and as this man. The Beastie Boys are indeed three bad brothers that made history.

Here’s more of Mister D talking about the Beasties, rock n’ roll and Bette Midler. April, 2012. It’s pretty much wonderful.
 

 
A crazy good performance of “Fight For Your Right” on the Joan Rivers Show in 1987 after the jump…

 
Noosha Fox is an Australian singer who, in the mid 1970s, fronted the British act Fox, who scored a handful of hits across Europe with their funk and reggae-influenced strain of glam-rock. After the band dissolved near the end of the decade, Noosha embarked on a moderately successful solo career; one of her tracks, “The Heat Is On”, ended up being covered by a solo Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA.

Fox’s tunes are great, and regularly entered high up on the British charts (as some of these clips will attest.) So how come I’d never heard of the fantastic Noosha until very recently?

Thanks to the website Lost Idols (and DM’s own Paul Gallagher,) here’s a bit more information on Noosha and the band:

The band was formed by Kenny Young (the man who got the credits for writing the song “Under the Boardwalk” for The Drifters in 1964). Lead singer of The Fox was Susan Traynor (from Australia) who earlier did backing vocals on Kenny Young’s solo album “Last Stage for Silverworld” in 1973 and also was in a band called “Wooden Horse”. The rest of the band included Herbie Armstrong (guitar and vocals), Pete Solley (keyboards), Jim Gannon (lead guitar), Gary Taylor (bass guitar) and Jim Frank (drums & percussion). Kenny Young played guitars, percussion and vocals. Susan became known as Noosha Fox and their first album “FOX” was a top ten hit in 1975.

It appears that Roger Taylor of ‘Queen’ added backing vocals to the track ‘Survival’ on Fox’s ‘Tails of Illusion’ album. Queen were in the same studio recording ‘A Night at the Opera’.

What happened then?

Noosha Fox (Susan Traynor), had a solo career when she left the band (1977) during the late 70s and early 80’s. She only had one minor hit with “Georgina Bailey”. Herbie Armstrong and Kenny Young moved on to a band called Yellow Dog and later Armstrong worked with Van Morrison in the late 70’s and early 80’s.Kenny Young has been working as a Record producer. Now Herbie is running a Restaurant together with his Swedish-born wife Elizabeth, in Hampshire called The Fountain Inn & Thai Restaurant. the rumour says they combine their talents in running one of the best eating places in the area.

Pete Solley joined Whitesnake on keyboards in 1977 for Snakebite. He’s also played with Procol Harum, Mickey Jupp and many more. He has also produced records for Oingo Boingo, Motorhead and Romantics. Jim Frank worked as an sound engineer for Alice Cooper (“Welcome to my nightmare”) and Peter Gabriel’s first solo album to mention a few. Jim Gannon played with the band “Black Widow” and also did some vocals on Alice Cooper “Goes To Hell”.

Not bad post-pop careers there, not bad at all.

Fox are one of those acts who have been unfairly booted into history’s dumpster, casualties of a cultural shift that saw extravagant glam rock relegated to just an embarrassing phase. Although undoubtedly an influence on a whole generation’s burgeoning sexuality (check out the YouTube comments on any of her/their clips,) ask anyone under the age of 40 who Noosha Fox is and you’ll get a blank stare and an itchy scalp.

That’s a real shame, because Noosha and her band were fantastic. With her very distinctive look and sound (silent-cinema star and pinched-nose temptress, respectively) Noosha Fox predated the far-out kookiness of Kate Bush by a good four years, and seems to have been a huge influence on the band Goldfrapp, who have basically re-interpreted her look and sound for the electronic age.

Of course, maybe Fox passed me by because I am not a child of the Seventies. If any of our readers have any memories of the great band/singer, do feel free to share them in the comments. In the meantime (while I try and track down a “best of” album,) here are a selection of Noosha and Fox clips:
 
Fox “S-S-S-Single Bed”
 

 
After the jump, more music by Noosha and Fox, including “Imagine You, Imagine Me”, “Electro People”, “The Heat Is On” and more…

 
Opening Scene:

Blackout.

Though this maybe a fiction, it is all too believable, for nothing is unbelievable when it comes to Lindsay Kemp.

Lindsay Kemp has agreed to give a telephone interview. He is to be called at his home in Italy, by Paul Gallagher from Dangerous Minds, who is based in Scotland. We never hear the interviewer’s questions, only Kemp’s answers and see his facial expressions as he listens to questions.

Photographs of Kemp’s career appear on screens. We hear a recording of his voice.

Lindsay Kemp:

I began dancing the same as everybody does, at birth. The only difference was, unlike many other people, I never stopped. In other words, you know, I love movement. Movement gave me such a great pleasure, such a great joy.

Dance is really my life. I’ve always said for me ‘Dance is Life, Dance is Living, Dance is Life and Life is Dance’. I’ve never really differentiated between the two of them. It’s always been a way of life, a kind of celebration of living.

Kemp is an exquisite dancer, a fantastic artist, and a brilliant visual poet. No hyperbole can truly capture the scale of his talents.

In the 1960s and 1970s, his dance group revolutionized theater with its productions of Jean Genet’s The Maids, Flowers and Oscar Wilde’s Salome.

He shocked critics by working with non-dancers. At the Traverse Theater in Edinburgh, he often cast his productions by picking-up good-looking, young men in Princes Street Gardens - good looks, an open mind and passion for life were more important than learned techniques, or a classical training. His most famous collaborator was the blind dancer, Jack Birkett, aka The Great Orlando – perhaps now best known for his role as Borgia Ginz in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee.

Kemp was the catalyst who inspired David Bowie towards cabaret and Ziggy Stardust. He taught him mime, and directed and performed in Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from mars. He also taught Kate Bush, and choreographed her shows.

As an actor, he gave outrageous and scene-stealing performances in Jarman’s Sebastiane, Ken Russell’s Savage Messiah and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man.

“I’ve never really differentiated between dance and mime and acting and singing. I’ve always loved all aspects of performing, though I still can’t play the trumpet, but I’d like too. Well, it’s never too late to learn.”

He has performed across the world, from department stores in Bradford, through the Edinburgh Festival, the streets and cafes of Italy, to London’s West End and Broadway.

Kemp is a poetic story-teller, and his performances engage and seduce as much as the words that spill from tell such incredible tales. His voice moves from Dame Edith Evans (“A handbag!”) to a lover sharing intimacies under the covers.

Lindsay Kemp is on the ‘phone.

Lindsay Kemp:

Hello. (Pause.) Where are you in Scotland?

(Longer Pause.)

My grandparents are from Glasgow. I always pretend to be Scottish because I was born accidentally in Liverpool when my Mother was saying bye-bye to my Father, who was a sailor, and he was off to sea from Liverpool’s port, you see.

(Longer Pause.)

Well, I don’t quite know where that came from, unless I said it one drunken night, maybe when I chose to be more romantic than Birkenhead, where I was in fact born. I was born in Birkenhead on May the 3rd, 1938, but my family hailed form Scotland, between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and for many years I lived in Edinburgh, when I returned there for the first performance of Flowers, that show that put me on the map, you know.
 
Lindsay Kemp> debuts his new production Histoire du Soldat (‘A Soldier’s Tale’) by Stravinsky on 5th May, in Bari, Italy. You can buy tickets for the World Premiere here.

Lindsay Kemp – The Last Dance is a film currently being made by Producer / Director Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky – check here for more information.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Lindsay Kemp and David Bowie’s rarely seen production ‘Pierrot in Turquoise’ from 1968

 
The full interview with Lindsay Kemp, after the jump…
 

 
There are eighty thousand topics under the sun that can inspire great filmmaking. Out of that ocean of inspiration, the world of literary hoaxes, is not the first thing that comes to mind. But a handful films have come out of this weird wellspring, including Radley Metzger’s Naked Came the Stranger. (Directed under the cinematic equivalent to a purple-prose pseudonym, Henry Paris.)  Originally crafted as a sarcastic response to the lurid and highly popular works of bestselling writers like Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann, the book, “Naked Came the Stranger,” featured twenty four writers coming together to create one tawdry tale of marital infidelity in late 60’s America.

Now, leave it to a maestro like Radley Metzger to take this lovely bit of salacious NY Times chart topping pulp and turn it into a funny, sexy and whimsical film. A din of television noise begins the proceedings, all set in a bedroom riot of early 70s florals and crayola colors. A well executed shot reveals a slow sweep of the room, as an announcer intones “Immortal film classics to fall asleep by!” Speaking of which, an old fashioned alarm clock, with its face displaying a photo of legendary cinematic goddess, Marlene Dietrich, goes off, waking up Gilly (pronounced J-i-l-l-y and played by the woefully unsung Darby Lloyd Rains). Slipping off her sleep mask, she tries to rouse her hubby, Billy (Levi Richards) up with some well intentioned hanky panky before being stopped in her tracks as he calls out the name “Phyllis” in his sleep. Yes, something is afoul in marital Denmark, which is all too apparent to Gilly, from her husband’s bad bluffing about his dream to the comically flirty looks Phyllis (Mary Stuart) keeps shooting his way while the couple prepare for another installment of their radio morning show.

Phyllis and Billy, our two illicit lovebirds, carry on their affair with all the subtlety of a meat hammer, with Gilly finding solid evidence after she follows him down to his mistress’s (nice) NYC apartment. Hanging out on the stairwell, she listens in on their dirty talk, which is undoubtedly the worst kind of its stripe. I’m not talking Barry White, Big Daddy Kane or even Black Oak Arkansas, here, I’m talking the dreaded cutesy baby talk. They literally refer to each other as “love bunny,” much to Gilly’s horror, though it doesn’t stop her from having some manual fun.

This incident ends up being a catalyst for Gilly, feeling that to better understand her husband, she must depart on a series of her own little affairs. No love bunny nonsense here, just a grown woman exploring herself through the willing partners in her life, ranging from a high-strung “ineffectual creep” who is momentarily transformed by Gilly’s transgressive gift to a beautifully shot “silent film” encounter with one suave friend. (How suave? The man invites her to “capture a moment of lost elegance.” Bryan Ferry just swooned.) But the real question remains-will our heroine be able to better understand her husband or realize the grass is greener and move on? (Seriously, “love bunny”??? Grounds for divorce RIGHT THERE.)

Naked Came the Stranger is a perfectly polished and funny film. It’s definitely one of the more whimsical efforts of Radley Metzger, with the tone being very light and cheeky. Taking a book that was critically maligned and making a legitimately good movie out of it is a borderline alchemical move, but one that, in the hands of a master like Metzger, feels like a piece of cake.

The cast is terrific, with Rains taking the lead as the plucky and adventurous Gilly. She brings a likability and a strong sense of confident femininity to her role. This is a great contrast to the girlishness of Stuart’s Phyllis. Rains is alternately very funny, beautiful and sexy. The image of her in top hat and tails, Ala Marlene, is a striking one. Darby Lloyd Rains has the kind of powerful gravitas to pull it off without seeming like she is aping Dietrich. Stuart is also good as the cute but love happy annoyance mistress, making this a 180 from her role in Gerard Damiano’s masterful Memories Within Miss Aggie. All of the male actors are good too, but this is really the ladies’ show. (Though, Marc Stevens’ cameo during the costume party sequence is a huge highlight.)

With being a Metzger film, everything looks good. Paul Glickman, who was also responsible for the cinematography for Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann, did an equally wonderful job here, with even the urban jungle of NYC looking a bit dewy and pretty. There is also an assortment of fun touches throughout, including a reference to Metzger’s serious Camille 2000, with the film playing on the television, prompting Billy to remark, “Why don’t they show the Garbo version?” There is also a brief mirror shot, as you see the reflection of Gilly gently remove a wig off of Phyllis. Mirrors and reflection itself tend to be a trait of Metzger’s work, whether it is his softcore work with Camille 2000 and The Lickerish Quartet or his latter works, like Pamela Mann. This all gives further proof that you can have depth with beauty.

Distribpix has once again done right by both Radley Metzger’s work and the viewer by presenting this film in a gorgeous restoration of the original 35mm print. Artists like Metzger deserve to have their work preserved with the level of detail and love that companies like Distribpix provide. In addition to the restoration, there is also a bounty of extras, including a Director’s commentary from Metzger himself, a split-screen featurette comparing the “hot” and “cool” versions of the film, a “film facts” subtitle track, deleted scenes, trailers, ephemera gallery and much, much more. There’s also a photo card and a 40 page booklet, detailing the origins of the book, the movie and even the soundtrack. It does not get much spiffier than this.

Naked Came the Stranger is a fun and sweet-natured film featuring good visuals and a pitch-perfect performance from Darby Lloyd Rains. It would make a fun, couples-stepping-out double bill with the previous year’s Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann.

 
This is where Anna Magnani broke away from 2 German soldiers, ran and threw herself down on the streets. The man is explaining the making of a film, rather than some historical event. It comes at the start of a short documentary on Italian Neo-Realism, from 1973.  She even hurt her knee, he adds almost proudly. A woman’s voice joins in, Aldo Fabrizi was there too. It’s almost religious, a celluloid Stations of the Cross, there should be nuns selling small statuettes of movie cameras, and T-shirts with Magnani’s face miraculously transposed onto 100% cotton.

The man and the woman were recalling scenes from Roberto Rosselini’s film Rome, Open City, when it was filmed in their neighborhood. Rossellini along with Vittorio De Sica were pioneers of Neo Realism. Their films brought a dynamism in form, that was countered by the self-reflection of their content that put Italian cinema at the center of the post-war world. Here was launched the careers of Rossellini, Fellini, Pasolini, Bertolucci, Visconti, Zavattini and De Sica, who described the post war years as a beautiful time - “Beautiful for artists, but ugly for Italians.”

Right after the war, passions were so strong right after the War that they really pushed us, they forced towards this kind of film truth. And this truth was transfigured by poetry, and lyricism. It was because of if its lyricism that Neo-Realism so captured the world. Because there was poetry in our reality.

Films like De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief, Rosselini’s Rome, Open City, and Visconti’s Ossessione presented a new and dynamic way of presenting the world, which went on to influence movements such as Nouvelle Vague and directors as different as Martin Scorsese and Derek Jarman. Neo Realist films dealt with difficulties faced everyday by the working class; stories were rooted in the reality of a war ruined Italy; there were no simplistic morality tales, issues were complex, and often open-ended; actors mixed with non-actors; stylistically the films were loose, fluid, often documentary-like. However, their content did not please some Italians, who thought Neo-Realism only highlighted the bad things about Italy, which they feared might make Italians seem to be just thieves and bums.

This was not how the directors like Bernardo Bertolucci saw it:

“Realism doesn’t mean showing real things, but showing how things really are. It was this definition by Brecht that critically challenged Italian Neo-Realism. Not Rossilini though. Rossilini is the only one in Neo-Realism who didn’t just show us things, didn’t just try to be a realist, but gave us an idea of things. He wasn’t interested in the appearance of things, but in the idea behind the things. Even the idea behind the idea.”

For Cesar Zavattini Neo-Realism was:

“The most important characteristic, and the most important innovation, of what is called neorealism, it seems to me, is to have realised that the necessity of the story was only an unconscious way of disguising a human defeat, and that the kind of imagination it involved was simply a technique of superimposing dead formulas over living social facts. Now it has been perceived that reality is hugely rich, that to be able to look directly at it is enough; and that the artist’s task is not to make people moved or indignant at metaphorical situations, but to make them reflect (and, if you like, to be moved and indignant too) on what they and others are doing, on the real things, exactly as they are.”

For Pier Paolo Pasolini Neo-Realism was intensely political:

“It stood for the first act of critical, political consciousness that Italy had experienced. Italy up to that point had no history, no unified history as a nation, only a history as many divided little peoples, divided little countries, and with a great gap between north and south. And then the last 20 years have been a history of Fascism - the history of an aberrational unity. It was only with the Resistance that Italian history began.

“First of all, Neo-Realism meant the rediscovery of Italy. A first look at Italy without rhetoric, without lies, and there was a sense of pleasure in the self-discovery, even pleasure in denouncing one’s own short-comings, this was common to everything.

“The other common quality was its Marxist character. All Neo-Realist works were founded on the idea that the future would be better, or else [there would be] revolution.”

These quotes are taken form the documentary Neo Realism (1973) which can be viewed here, and contains interviews with De Sica, Fellini, Pasolini, and Bertolucci, amongst others.
 

 
Trailers for Pasolini’s ‘Accattone’ and Rossellini’s ‘The Bicycle Thief’, after the jump…
 

 
Of all the great British post-punk groups, probably the most unfairly overlooked today and the band most long over-due for some sort of critical reappraisal—if you ask me, anyway—is the Psychedelic Furs.

The first Psychedelic Furs album came out (gulp) 32 years ago. I personally think it’s an incredible musical masterpiece—in my top five “desert island discs,” for sure—but ask a younger person if they’ve even heard of the group, and you’ll normally get a blank stare. You mention “Pretty in Pink” and they might mutter something in the affirmative, but that’s about it.

Don’t get me wrong, the Furs largely inflicted this on their own artistic reputation by trying to be all MTV-friendly with their shitty mid-80s “New Wave” music, clothes and hairstyles, and by re-recording “Pretty in Pink” for that Molly Ringwald film. Today they’re a well-oiled touring machine on the 80s nostalgia circuit, but the sad truth is that they were largely responsible for their own fall from grace with their original fan-base. They went from being one of the darkest, smartest, edgiest art-school bands of the era to a dull, radio-friendly bunch of teased-haired Billy Idol wannabes. From the real truly underground thing to the fake version of that in under five years.

This is the reason why Bauhaus will be eternally cool and the Furs never will be: They knew when to call it quits.

That much is undeniable, but based on the evidence of their first three albums, they were one of the most brilliant and awe-inspiring bands of that era. Truly I come here to praise the Psychedelic Furs, not to bury them. When I was a kid, they were one of the main groups I followed, along with Throbbing Gristle, Talking Heads, PiL and Kraftwerk. I wore a small badge of their first album cover (the British one, I’ll have you know) on my black trench coat and I have even gone to see them play live two nights in a row. Believe me when I tell you that I loved the Psychedelic Furs and that I want you to love them as much as I did back then…

Lead singer Richard Butler was one of the coolest fuckers around in the early 1980s. Employing blasphemous stream of consciousness free verse and sarcastic Dylanesque wordplay simply dripping with rancor, Butler’s venomous lyrics, especially on that astonishing first record, were probably the very best of the post-punk era. None of his contemporaries were in his league as a lyricist. Seriously, who else came even close? His lyrics were positively Joycean:

I’m in love with Anthea and Donna, All that shit that goes uptown top ranking!

It took me years to figure that one out.

I idolized Richard Butler. I wanted to BE him.  Even before David Bowie totally went crap with Let’s Dance, it was Butler (and John Lydon) to whom my teenage allegiance had shifted. That’s really saying a lot! (I told this to Richard Butler personally about ten years ago at a cook-out in upstate New York. I’m guessing that I’m not the first person to tell him such a thing).

And then there is the band. Their beautifully chaotic wall of sound, that dense, pounding, propulsive, barely-controlled evil energy the Furs were known for. Especially on their self-titled Martin Hannett and Steve Lillywhite-produced debut record, their apocalyptic racket, to my mind, was as titanic and as powerful as what was heard on PiL’s first album. The Furs’s junkyard thrash was anchored by Tim Butler’s booming, metronomic basslines and Vince Ely’s thundering drums, then layered by the twin guitar attack of Roger Morris and (criminally under-rated) John Ashton. These gentlemen gave the group’s music a blunt force and the sleazy, squealing saxophone of Duncan Kilburn positioned right on top of everything else lent a free jazz element to the proceedings, which, along with Butler’s raspy, cigarette-strained vocals, gave the group its signature sound.

No surprises, the music of the Psychedelic Furs sounded divine when you were tripping on LSD. Trust me, I’d know…

On the first album’s lead-off number, “India,” after a slow, dramatic build-up that sounds like hissing radiator pipes being manipulated by Brian Eno, a storm of shattered glass, car exhaust fumes, cigarette butts and used hypodermic syringes descends upon your head. Deny the hit-and-run power of this song!
 

 
“Pulse”:

My baby paints herself red
She paints her hair
Her hair is dead
She’s living in the city
with the bodies that scream
“We are all Jesus”
We all dream
See the dancer in there reeling
Paint the sky upon the ceiling
Four useless gods upon a day
so blinded by the filth on sunday
Saying the words what an idiot you are
Miracle drivel
Optical sewer
 

 
“Flowers”:

There’s flowers all around his feet,
there’s flowers in his heart
If you take the needles out
his body falls apart

Make a god of politics
Make a god of police
Worship it with automobiles
Worship it with screams
 

 
“We Love You”:

I’m in love with The Factory
I’m in love with the BBC
I’m in love with your T.V.
They’re so in love with you and me

“We Love You,” lip-synced here in front of an audience of American children!
 

 
More after the jump…

 
You may remember a few months ago I posted about Joyce D’Vision, the world’s first drag queen tribute band to Joy Division (of which I am a member) and our adventures on UK primetime TV with the comedian Harry Hill.

Well, we have finally managed to wrangle Joyce herself into the studio to record some vocals, and the first fruits of this labor are cover versions of “She’s Lost Control” and “Isolation.” Both are iconic, classic tracks, that have been covered before (by Siobhán Fahey, Grace Jones and Wino & Conny Ochs, as featured in yesterday’s Roadburn post) but I like to think we have put our own unique spin on them.

While some people find the idea of Joyce D’Vision highly offensive, to me it’s as Northern English as Eccles cakes and Boddington’s bitter. People in Manchester have a sly, sometimes wicked sense of humor, and they are not above taking the complete mickey out of themselves and the stultifying, retro-based “Madchester” culture industry that seems to have a stranglehold on this town (check the blog Fuc251 for proof.) Unfortunately Joy Division are very much a part of this frozen-in-amber, Manchester music-heritage industry, which goes against the iconoclasm inherent in the band, and is ironic as they were sorely under-appreciated in this town when they did exist. 

And that’s where we come in. It’s all in the best possible taste, darling, with hints of Vic & Bob, The League of Gentlemen, Kenny Everett and Frank Sidebottom (a legendary Manc comic who famously covered “Love Will Tear Us Apart” on a Casio). We’re not doing this because we hate Joy Division, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Joy Division have helped us get through as much teen angst as the next wrist cutter, but the band’s hallowed status doesn’t mean they are above a bit of fun poking. Every religion needs its satirists. Because let’s face it, if what we’re doing is somehow ruining your teen dreams or memories of a JD goth paradise, then those dreams and memories were not very solid in the first place.

I am well aware of Ian Curtis’ mental health problems (duh!) and I’m 100% convinced he had that same sly, piss-taking, Manc sense of humor as everyone else who grew up within the city’s grey-and-redbrick confines. I think he would have had a giggle or two at a bearded drag queen singing his songs.
 

Joyce D’Vision with Harry Hill on the set of TV Burp
 
But more to the actual point, I wonder what Peter Hook thinks?

If you’re not aware, original JD/New Order bassist Hook has formed a new band with jobbing Manchester musicians called The Light, whose purpose is to cover the work of Joy Division. He’s the only original member, and now the band are embarking on a tour playing “Unknown Pleasures” in full.

Originally Hooky himself was on vocal duties, but after he shamefully forgot the words at an infamous Manchester show a couple of years ago, he has brought in Rowetta (ex-Happy Mondays and Britain’s Got Talent) to sing instead. Not to mention some of his celebrity-fan pals when they have the chance - The Light have performed JD tracks with Billy Corgan, Moby and Perry Farrell on vocals, among others. They sing from a lyrics book open at the front of the stage.

So is what we are doing with Joyce D’Vision really any worse than what Peter Hook is doing with The Light? In a sense, both are karaoke, but only one has an actual on-stage lyrics sheet. And it’s not the band with the drag queens. Which of the two acts, Joyce D’Vision or The Light, are going to do more to shatter your teen-goth memories of Joy Division?

I don’t doubt that The Light has got something to do with New Order reforming recently without Hook and his iconic bass sound, a massive “fuck you” statement in his general direction. A lot of people in Manchester are happy they did this, but there’s also many people wondering if New Order can properly function without Hook on bass. I’m not sure, but either way, I do wonder now what Barney and Steve (original JD members, remember) and Gillian (a HUGE drag inspiration for our band) make of Joyce D’Vision?

Time will tell. For now, here are our first two tracks:
 
Joyce D’Vision “She’s Lost Control”

 

Joyce D’Vision “Isolation”

You can make friends with Joyce D’Vision on Facebook.

 
So Coachella is happening. Everyone with even a passing interest in live music knows this (and most likely from the holographic Tupac performance that has become quite the meme already.) And yeah, Coachella looks cool and all, but what if that’s not your kind of thing? What if you want music that’s a bit darker, a lot heavier, basically more extreme? Well, while you are definitely in the minority there, don’t worry because you are not alone.

Happening over the same weekend as the first part of Coachella, but thousands of miles away (both literally and metaphorically) Holland’s annual Roadburn Festival is a celebration of all things doom, drone, experimental, noisy and heavy. This years festival saw performances from Michael Gira, OM, Voivod, Doom, Sleep, Kong, Yob, GNOD, Bongripper, The Obsessed, Jucifer, Black Cobra, Urfaust, Electric Orange and the very fun-sounding Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation.

Roadburn takes place over four days in the Dutch town of Tilburg, and has been steadily attracting a growing fan base over the last few years, enough to start its own record label (affiliated with Burning World Records.) Next year’s headliners have already been confirmed, and it will be industiral legends Godflesh performing their classic album Pure in its entirety.

Here’s a statement taken from the Roadburn website (which also features details on travel and booking tickets):

Holland’s very own Roadburn Festival has become Europe’s leading underground festival for psychedelic, avant-garde, doom or any other variation of leftfield sonic pleasures that push the boundaries of music.

Originally a spin-off of the Roadburn website, the Roadburn Festival has emerged as an event in its own right. It brings together bands, fans & media from around the world. Despite it’s international acclaim, Roadburn Festival retains an underground vibe and ethics, but with seriously big-league production values.

In addition to the music, Roadburn has earned a reputation as having a unique camaraderie between the festivalgoers, bands, organizers and staff, and ranks as one of the best and most laid-back festivals to be experienced. It is one of the festival’s primary goals to make the Roadburn experience second to none, not only for the fans but for the artists as well.

Check out the Roadburn website too for video and audio streams of past performances, and details on travel and tickets.

And while, ok, an extreme music festival is definitely not going to be to everyone’s taste (I think I’d have trouble listening to non-stop doom and drone for four days solid), it warms the cockles of the heart to know that something like this exists. Or maybe chills the cockles would be a better phrase?

Super 208 Productions have uploaded a series of video reports on the festival, one for each of its four days. Here’s part one, featuring music from Aggaloch, Michael Gira, OM,  Red Fang, and Voivod:
 

 
After the jump, Roadburn video reports parts 2-4 featuring live music from Sleep, Celestial Season, Bongripper, Purson, Kong, Valiant Thorr, Barn Owl, GNOD, Wino & Conny Ochs, Nachtmystium, Urfaust, Black Cobra, more Voivod and many more…

 
According to the great director Fritz Lang, it was his meeting with Joseph Goebbels, the Mad Man of Nazi propaganda, that led him to flee Germany the very same day.

As Lang tells it, this fateful meeting came sometime around Goebbels’ ban on Lang’s 1933 film, The Testament of Dr Mabuse, which was outlawed for its veiled attack on Hitler and his vile policies. Amongst the oft quoted similarities between Lang’s film and the insane Furher, was Dr. Mabuse’s devilish plan for a 1,000 years of crime, and Hitler’s desire of a 1,000 year Reich. The unstated connection between brutal criminality and looney-tunes Nazis was there for all to see.

It’s a good story, but one that has little bearing on fact, as it now appears that the meeting never took place. Goebbels’ diaries have no mention of the alleged meeting, and Lang’s escape from the jackboot of National-Socialism didn’t happen until several months after the alleged job offer from Dr Joe.

More damaging in hindsight was Lang’s failure to make any reference to his own Jewish ancestry. His mother, Paula was Jewish, though she converted to Catholicism after marrying Lang’s father, Anton. Instead Fritz described himself as an “Austrian director”, at a time when the persecution of those of Jewish faith was a brutal reality on the streets of Germany. Indeed describing himself as an “Austrian director” could have been construed as aligning himself with the birth country of the Furher.

Later, while living in the safety of the United States, Lang said in his entry for Current Biography - “While many famous Jewish directors had to flee Germany because of the ‘Aryan’ work decrees, Lang, a Christian, fled only because he is a believer in democratic government.”

Okay, so Lang could argue that man made laws had no rule over him, as he believed in the Higher Court of his Christian God. Fine. But why persist in re-telling a fanciful tale forty years on?

Almost everyone tells lies, and the lies are not important. Some people are loved because of their ability to tell great lies, and we listen expectantly for them to tell their biggest and best whoppers. And so it is with Lang, as he tells tale after tale in this entertaining and immensely watchable interview with director of The Exorcist, William Friedkin. From running away from home, to surviving by his wits, to making his classic films Metropolis and M, to meetings with criminals and murderers - one killer kept the hands of victims under his bed, to his meeting with the Nazi Mad Man, to Hollywood and after, Lang, looking rather like Dr Strangelove, describes his hugely fantastic life.
 

 
With thanks to Wendy James
 

 
As I have continually slimmed down my record collection over the years, the works of certain artists who I knew would never, ever come out on CD tend to be the things that I keep. Translation:  I have a weirdly lopsided record collection that veers sharply—there is no “in between” to speak of, to be clear here—from several dozen live PiL bootlegs to the collected works of one Jeannie C. Riley. I have other records, various and assorted things, mostly autographed records and one off collectibles, but the only two sizable chunks anymore are the PiL bootlegs and my Jeannie C. Riley albums, which are all in pristine, perfect condition.

Jeannie C. Riley? Doesn’t ring a bell? Remember “Harper Valley PTA”?

Of course you do. Jeannie C. Riley was HOT, HOT, HOT—a late 60s/early 70s mini-skirted corn pone minx of the Nancy Sinatra variety—but Nashville-style. She had been working as a secretary in Nashville when country music impresario Shelby Singleton heard her demo and signed her to his label, Plantation Records. Riley’s single “Harper Valley PTA” became a worldwide smash hit in 1968, winning her a Grammy for the Best Female Country Vocal Performance and ultimately becoming one of the best-known country music songs of all time.
 

 
In her super-short mini-dresses and knee-high leather boots, Jeannie C. Riley was a staple performer on shows like Hee Haw, The Johnny Cash Show, Bob Hope holiday specials and things like that when I was a kid. I thought she was just mega-sexy and over the years I collected each and every one of her long-playing efforts, each record that sounded just like the ones that had come before it, and the ones that would come after, too. Each trying desperately hard to come up with another hit song, a second “Harper Valley P.T.A.” but never quite succeeding.

But that doesn’t mean she didn’t get close! Several times in fact. The finest songwriters and musicians in Nashville were put to the task of trying to catch lightening in a bottle twice for the lovely Mrs. Riley. Over and over and over and over and over again she—and they—tried. They threw a certain kind of thing against the wall again and again and again.

You could say that Shelby Singleton and Jeannie C. Riley took “formulaic” to a new level with the Harper Valley P.T.A. album OR you could choose to see it like she was the first country music artist to record a concept album….
 

 
I’m actually being semi-serious here.  “Widow Jones”, “Sippin’ Shirley Thompson,” “Mr. Harper” and other characters from the original hit have their own songs on the long-player. There are tales of naive and foolish girls (“The Cotton Patch,” “Box Of Memories”), teen pregnancies (“The Girl Most Likely”) and small town hypocrisy (”Satan Place” and the title track). What more could you ask for? Even if it wasn’t intended to actually be a “country opera,” that is in fact how it comes off, so fuck it. Who are we to judge such a musical masterpiece?

Admittedly, being a “fanatic” for Jeannie C. Riley is something that’s pretty difficult to justify, but if you will bear with me here and sample the multi-media links both above and below, you’ll either become a fan yourself, or at least you will be highly amused, I’m reasonably sure. Even if she never really made another hit song quite as memorable as “Harper Valley P.T.A.” some of the results that were achieved are pretty great as you can see for yourself.

An amazing clip of gorgeous Jeannie C. Riley doing her biggest hit:
 

 
After the jump, a ton of Jeannie C. Riley for your listening and viewing pleasure…

 
I’m not entirely sure when Sex Gang Children and their charismatic leader, Andi Sex Gang, first came into my life but ever since, the magic and texture behind this man has entranced me. Often sounding like the exotic love child of Bowie and Brecht, but firmly remaining to this day his own man and artist, Andi Sex Gang is undoubtedly one of the most underrated figures in music. All of that despite his band charting repeatedly on the UK indie lists in the 80’s and then going on to work with the legendary Mick Ronson. (The latter must have felt invigorated to work with someone truly unique,vital and not expecting him to rehash the Diamond Dogs blues.)

The journey of any artist with bone-bred integrity and an unwillingness to whore is going to be a rocky one and Andi is no exception. Luckily for us all, his life and musical journey has been covered in one hale and hearty documentary, Bastard Art. Before getting to watch this film, I was just excited to know that someone took the time and energy to cover the man. After watching this film, I was excited to know that a guy like Andi Sex Gang is featured in a well made, lovingly researched and incredibly accessible documentary. It’s the perfect mix of being thorough and surprising enough to woo the hardcore fans but pieced together in such a way that it will lure anyone unfamiliar with Sex Gang Children.

In Bastard Art, we get to see Andi go from a little boy with a natural instinct for song writing and singing to a squatter in the punk scene. In fact, it was his friend from that same scene, George O’Dowd aka Boy George, that gifted the band name, Sex Gang Children, to him. (A name undoubtedly with origins from music savant Malcolm McClaren, who had worked with a pre-Culture Club George.) From there, we get interviews with former band mates, friends and musical peers. But most importantly, we get and receive a bounty of interview footage from the man himself, Andi Sex Gang.

The man is the star of the show, not just because he is the subject matter, but because his natural charisma, smarts and sheer will of survival draws you to him. There are performers that are good artists but have rocks for personality but that is far from the case with Andi Sex Gang. The amount of bowling balls this man has had to jump, ranging from bad music deals, facing fake criminal charges that ranged from rape to carrying explosives and an industry that acts more like the ravenous center in the lake of ice in “Dante’s Inferno”, is harrowing. Weaker souls have been eaten by that very machine, but weak is not a word associated with ASG. Scrappy and tenacious, absolutely, but not weak.

Director Vince Corkadel, who has worked previously with both Andi and Sex Gang Children, has a lot to be proud of here. The key to any truly great music related documentary is having the music paint the right picture over the canvas of information. For me, there are few things more frustrating than a documentary about a musician that features little to none of their music. It would be like watching a bunch of people talking about a painter and never showing even a scrap of one of their paintings. Beyond frustrating, but Bastard Art is a film that thankfully does not suffer that fate.

The pacing is tight and flows very well. There are zero lulls and it does exactly what this type of film should do; leaving you wanting more and wanting to devour more of the great art featured. Safe to say, Bastard Art is one of the best documentaries to have come out in the last few years. What’s inspiring about this is that guys like Corkadel and Larry Wessel (Iconoclast) have proven that one can make a vital and culturally rich documentary while sticking to a true independent, DIY approach. This is no Sundance indie, which is safe in its bigger budgets and often homogenized layers. Instead this is a film born out of pure love, determination and years of hard work and research.

No matter what labels people will throw on the works of Sex Gang Children and Andi, none can ultimately stick, proving not only the folly of “genres” but also the folly of trying to box in an artist you love. A guy like Andi Sex Gang, who continues to be as prolific and active as ever, will set fire to that box, and like a pale faced shaman with a mind of darkness and heart of light, will continue this fight of life. And nowhere is this ever more present than in Bastard Art.

For more information about Bastard Art, check out the official website.
 

 
It was at a funfair, early one summer evening, amongst the lights and music, the calls to “Try your strength and win a prize”, the coconut shies, and bird-like squeals of laughter and fear, that my love for horror began.

The sign read: “Do You Dare To Enter The Corridor of Fear?!?!” I was 6 and perhaps too young to have blagged my way into this gruesome diversion. Taller than my years, I knew confidence paid out more than acquiescence. I also had an older brother as surety. We bought our tickets and made our way to the short flight of stairs up to a drab, curtained door, beyond which was an unimaginable world of terror. Or, so I hoped.

Inside was a long a darkened, corridor, its metal walls glistening with luminous paintings of vampires, werewolves, unholy creatures, and living dead. Hidden in the walls were a series of sliding panels from whence malevolent-masked carnies pounced, to grab and grope, prod and tickle, the unsuspecting marks.

At the top of the stairs, two teenagers who laughed nervously and shoved each other, too scared to enter inside. I pushed forward and saw the cause of their concern- a panel slid open and a skull-headed figure reached out. I held back, and once the panel closed, the youths ran into the darkness. My brother and I followed. Adjusting to the dark, I saw limned ahead the youths being goosed by a green glowing monster. There was a feeling of dread, of terror, and now anger as hard fists hit flesh. The mood had changed from panic to anger. I turned, there was no curtained exit, instead a wall had opened and partitioned us in. From inside this wall, a leering skull, its boney hands reached out towards me. I ducked the embrace, and crawled on hands and knees through the legs in front. Above, the struggle seemed no longer a game – harsh, menacing voices, breathless pleas. My brother followed and we escaped into daylight - heart racing, weak-limbed, face drained of color, I’d never felt more alive.

My love of horror started then, and still continues today, looking for that great sense of exhilaration and fun.

One writer who certainly knows how to mix the best of horror with a deliciously wicked sense of fun is Anne Billson, who has 3 superb novels, The Ex, Stiff Lips, and Suckers, just released as e-books.

Billson knows her genre better than most, and is a highly respected film critic, writing for the Guardian and Sunday Telegraph, who has specialized in writing definitive critiques on Let the Right One In, John Carpenter’s The Thing, as well as Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

In her fictions, Billson confounds all expectations by re-inventing the accepted traditions of the Horror genre, creating her own distinct and authorative voice.

When her first novel Suckers was originally published in1993, it was hailed as a startling and original debut, which contained “one of the most chilling moments in all Vampire Literature.” It was also highly praised by Salman Rushdie, who described the novel as a witty assault on 1980’s Thatcherite greed. The books success led to Billson being named as one of Granta’s prestigious “Best Young British Novelists”.

In 1997, Anne wrote the chilling and darkly comic ghost story Stiff Lips, which led to even better reviews and greater praise. Both of these novels are being re-released along with Anne’s latest horror, a ghost story The Ex, which is set to build upon the success of the first two.

I contacted Anne at her home in Brussels, to ask what attracted her to Horror fiction?

“I don’t think I’ve ever grown out of fairytales; the best fairytales are already quite dark, and horror just takes it further. I like stories where anything can happen, and which appeal to the subconscious as much as to the intellect.”

Do you think that where once it was Science-Fiction, it is now Horror that offers the best way to comment on the contemporary world?

“I think so. Horror provides us with a way of reflecting on subjects which in their unadulterated form would probably be too vast, distressing or embarrassing to contemplate - and which could be boring or pretentious in a more realist or self-consciously literary genre. But horror increasingly overlaps with SF, as well as with crime and other genres - particularly in this era of mash-ups. It’s getting harder to slot things easily into distinct categories.”

How do you define yourself as a novelist?

“I write a kind of horror comedy, though I’m reluctant to use the word comedy because I certainly don’t set out to be funny, which would be the kiss of death. Maybe it’s my worldview, which is a little odd, I don’t know.

“Publishers in the past have tried to pigeonhole what I write as satire or chick-lit - and I don’t think it’s either of those. Maybe a new term is needed.

“I feel very in tune with that streak of British comedy which is often more scary or surreal than funny - The League of Gentlemen, Shaun of the Dead, Spaced, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and so on. It might be presumptuous on my part, but I think we have something in common.”

What are your influences?

“How much time have you got? The usual suspects - MR James, Robert Aickman, The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (of which Aickman used to be an editor), Fritz Leiber, Philip K Dick, Nigel Kneale. And films, of course - Night of the Demon, The Innocents, The Haunting, Cronenberg, Romero… as well as Vincent Price films like Theatre of Blood and The Abominable Dr Phibes, and Amicus portmanteau horror films like The Vault of Horror and Asylum. Plus I’ve stolen ideas from Conrad and Balzac. Astute readers can probably spot the more blatant borrowings.”

Where some writers fight shy of their association with the Horror genre, Anne has no such qualms:

“If I had to choose between being categorized as a Horror writer or a Literary author, I would opt for Horror writer every time.

“Horror writers seem to be nicer, more generous and more convivial than Literary authors. Perhaps it’s because they direct all their fears and insecurities into their work, which makes them better company.”

The Ex, Stiff Lips, and Suckers are available here.

Anne is on twitter and her blog site Multiglom is always worth reading as are her Guardian columns.

Spoliers a collection of Anne Billson’s film writing is also available.