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.
If, like me, you were raised on a strict diet of American and Japanese cartoons as a child of the 80s, then you are in for a treat with Space Stallions, which comes across as THE best kids show that never existed. And that’s just on the strength of the intro sequence.
An homage to likes of Ulysses 31, ThunderCats and Bravestarr, Space Stallions was created by The Animation Workshop, and what a great job they did too. We’re particularly tickled by the sword-cum-keytar, and the convoluted plot dynamics that would only make sense to a sugar-rushing 8-year-old:
Terry Ork in his punk rock bunker. Unlike most record execs, Terry was content with a cheap 14th street stereo system. The kind the people who bought his label’s records could afford.
Terry Ork’s loft was a safe house for unsafe music. With money he made working at my favorite store devoted to the movies, the long gone Cinemabilia, Ork funded one of the few really great DIY labels to come out of New York City, Ork Records. Releasing 45rpm records by Television, Alex Chilton, Mick Farren, The Feelies and The Marbles, among others, Ork had a great feel for what made Manhattan’s downtown music scene special.
I would go to Cinemabilia to thumb through the movie books, magazines and posters. I really loved the place and I grew to really like Terry Ork. We’d shoot the shit on film and that’s what I knew him as, a film geek. Although I was a musician with a decidedly punk outlook, I had no idea that Terry had an indie label until one day when I was in Cinemabilia he handed me a record with the Ork label on it. The record was a single by Television called “Little Johnny Jewel” and it occupied both sides of the seven inch vinyl. My already high esteem for Mr. Ork escalated into the stratosphere.
John Belushi left Saturday Night Live in 1979 but agreed to appear on the show on Halloween of 1981 if one of his favorite bands, Fear, was hired as the musical guest. SNL, which was in a ratings slump, didn’t hesitate to agree to Belushi’s terms. Fear got the gig.
In order to create some excitement during Fear’s upcoming performance, Belushi contacted Ian Mackaye, who was fronting Washington D.C.‘s Minor Threat at the time.
“This is John Belushi. I’m a big fan of Fear’s. I made a deal with Saturday Night Live that I would make a cameo appearance on the show if they’d let Fear play. I got your number from Penelope Spheeris, who did Decline of Western Civilization and she said that you guys, Washington DC punk rock kids, know how to dance. I want to get you guys to come up to the show.”
Mackaye agreed to pull together some of his friends to go to New York. Little did he know that he would be in the center of one of television’s great rock and roll moments.
In an interview with Nardwuar, Mackaye describes what happened:
It was worked out that we could all arrive at the Rockefeller Center where Saturday Night Live was being filmed. The password to get in was “Ian MacKaye.” We went up the day before. The Misfits played with The Necros at the Ukrainian hall, I think, so all of the Detroit people were there, like Tesco Vee and Cory Rusk from the Necros and all the Touch and Go people and a bunch of DC people – 15 to 20 of us came up from DC. Henry (Rollins) was gone. He was living in LA at this point. So we went to the show. During the dress rehearsal, a camera got knocked over. We were dancing and they were very angry with us and said that they were going to not let us do it then Belushi really put his foot down and insisted on it. So, during the actual set itself, they let us come out again.
During the show – before they go to commercial, they always go to this jack-o-lantern. This carved pumpkin. If you watched it during the song, you’ll see one of our guys, this guy named Bill MacKenzie, coming out holding the pumpkin above his head because he’s just getting ready to smash it. And that’s when they cut it off. They kicked us out and locked us out for two hours. We were locked in a room because they were so angry with us about the behavior. I didn’t think it was that big of deal.
They said they were going to sue us and have us arrested for damages. There was so much hype about that. The New York Post reported half a million dollars worth of damages. It was nothing. It was a plastic clip that got broken. It was a very interesting experience and I realized how completely unnatural it is for a band to be on a television show – particularly a punk band – that kind of has a momentum to suddenly be expected to immediately jump into a song in that type of setting. It was very weird. Largely unpleasant. Made me realize that’s not something I’m interested in doing.”
Belushi was also among the moshers.
Fear’s SNL debut cost them future gigs with the show, clubs wouldn’t book them, and reputedly an offer from Belushi for the band to do the soundtrack of his next movie Neighbors was rescinded by the studio producing the film after Belushi’s death. All for the love of rock and roll.
One of the best bands of the whole “grunge” era, here’s L7 rocking the fuck out of Letterman (and his band) in 1992 with their stone cold classic “Pretend We’re Dead”. For no other reason than it’s very cool and they look like they’re having a blast:
Interviews with Television are few and far between. Here’s one which aired a few months ago on MTV Brazil
There’s an amusing bit where a visibly pissed-off Tom Verlaine responds to a clip in which a member of Gang Of Four condescendingly describes CBGB and the Seventies New York City rock scene.
The guy doing the interviewing is Chuck Hipolitho of Brazilian punk band Forgotten Boys. He’s clearly thrilled to be in the presence of musicians he obviously loves but the band is about as warm and fuzzy as a school of Coney Island white fish floating down the East River during the dead of winter. Comeon guys, give the kid some love.
Tom Verlaine, Billy Ficca, Jimmy Rip and Fred Smith together again. When’s the tour?
This piece on new wave and punk rock appeared on TV show 20/20 in 1979. It’s actually pretty level-headed and contains some nice vintage footage of Talking Heads, Blondie, The Clash and more.
The clip cuts off mid-way through a short piece on Klaus Nomi. You can see the rest after the jump.
Heresy, I suppose, but I was more pissed off at the demise of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band than I was by the splitting of The Beatles, the retirement of Ziggy Stardust, or the return of Take That. The Mop Tops were grown-up music and a different generation, and after Stardust there was always Aladdin Sane, but neither could have inspired me to run home from school as I did for Vivian Stanshall, Neil Innes and co. when they shared billing with the proto-Pythons, Palin, Jones, Idle and Gilliam on Do Not Adjust Your Set. Now that’s the kind of thoughtful anarchy parents should encourage their children to watch, not Glee or High School Musical, but something with wit and humor that leans towards culture and art and thinking about life, with all its wrinkly absurdities.
It was always Vivian, of course, that rather scary looking Ginger Geezer, who was the Peter Cook of Pop, a chummy Evelyn Waugh, a more interesting Stephen Fry, the missing link between The Beatles and Monty Python.
I saw Vivian Stanshall’s Week when it first went out in 1975, then or thereabouts, and was mesmerized by the great ginger god’s wit, surreal humor and seemingly boundless energy, who, I knew (as did everyone else, surely?), made life that little bit more fun.
The print of this documentary is water-color cloudy, but honestly it does somehow underline the unreality that such a superb human should have ever visited this blue marble planet and in our life time to boot. Well, dearhearts, how lucky are we?
Now here’s what the blurb says:
‘In this film shot in 1975 (after the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and before the Sir Henry movie) Viv articulates his interests and obsessions with his usual surreal humour and some intoxication by the river.
“If I had all the money I’ve spent on drink — I’d spend it on drink.”
Video filmed backstage at a Rolling Stones concert, from the Hampton Coliseum, Virginia, in 1981.
Alway wanted to know about the backstage antics???
Here’s your chance to be with the Stones before they go on stage.
I guess the routine of touring has gotten to the point of ...well this!
Warming the crowd before they go on is George Thorogood & the Destroyers, on stage in the background.
Your Backstage pass says “ALL ACCESS”.
Please follow through this door and onto your left!
Taken from the December 18 performance, this was broadcast as The World’s Greatest Rock’n'Roll Party on pay-per-view and in closed circuit cinemas - the first use of pay-per-view for a music event.
It’s interesting footage, inasmuch as it belies the backstage tales of excess most associated with the “World’s Greatest Rock’n'Roll” band.
Highlights of Debbie Harry hosting a certain late Saturday night show from 1981. The clip includes what is now believed to be the first appearance of a rap act on national US TV - the Funky Four Plus One More.
The Videodrome Discothèque is pleased to present these excerpts from the rarely seen 10th episode of the ill-fated 6th season of a certain rather popular late-night weekend entertainment program.
Fronting a marvelous one-off band, Ms. Harry offers up fabulous versions of both “Love T.K.O” (made famous by Teddy Pendergrass) AND Devo’s “Come Back, Jonee”. Chris Stein plays on both, with Clem Burke joining in for “Come Back, Jonee”.
Also included: a sketch featuring Debbie & Joe Piscopo, as well as the performance of Debbie’s special guests, The Funky Four + 1 More.
If you love Reggae, if you love music, then you’ll love this excellent 3-part documentary - Reggae: The Story of Jamaican Music. Originally shown on the BBC in 2002, parts of this documentary have been on YouTube over the years, but now some kind soul has uploaded the whole series for our delight. How wonderful. Enjoy.
Nelson Sullivan was a highly talented and prolific videographer, who documented New York’s art, club and youth scene of the 1980s. His filming style was fluid, raw and breathless, with jump-cuts and in-camera editing, all fabulously complimented the city’s dynamism, as it focussed on luminaries Keith Haring, Michael Alig, John Sex and RuPaul.
Just as he was about to produce his own cable TV show, Sullivan died of a heart attack in 1989. It was a sad demise to such a genuine talent
Back in December 1988, Sullivan filmed Quentin Crisp at the Flaunt It Club.
The Flaunt It Club was another brilliant publicity stunt created by Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey to promote their disco act The Fabulous Pop Tarts. It was was presented every Sunday night at LImelight NYC and gave other aspiring performers the chance to appear alongside established personalities in a talk show format broadcast, broadcast later that week on Manhattan public access television. Quentin Crisp was the celebrity guest this night, and the event was documented on video by Nelson Sullivan. Robert Coddington edited this from Nelson’s original videotape.
The brilliant Fenton Bailey once pitched a documentary on Nelson, where he described “Nelson’s epic canvas of Downtown” as an:
“...anthropological documentary that takes us beneath the fashionable surface and shows us the reality.
The reality is that Downtown is a tribe, a loose-knit collection of cultural refugees socially bonded by their rather anti-social ambition to make it. Although not an apple-pie Main Street nuclear family, it is an extended family much like a chorus line. Indeed Nelson’s work shows us, in addition to the glorious highs when the show goes on, the individual lows when its all over, the lonely moments of vulnerability. He was able to do this because most of those he filmed were his friends who trusted him, and who - given that Nelson’s camera went wherever he went and was for at least ten years as natural an extension of his body as his arms or legs - simply forgot that the camera was there.
And so the most captivating and poignant part of Nelson’s work is not the famous who have emerged from Downtown, but the people who are left behind and who strive in vain for the limelight. One of them himself, Nelson filmed the wannabees, the never-will-bees and the has-beens. While he captured the glorious orgy of self-invention of those seeking fame and fortune, he also captured the price it often exacted, the despair and self-destruction that followed repeated frustration and failure.
This is Sullivan’s film of Quentin Crisp at the Flaunt It Club, which reveals a delightfully at ease Mr. Crisp, enjoying the company of NY’s young things.
DM’s Richard Metzger writes about Nelson Sullivan here.
Phil Lynott was Thin Lizzy. The talented, beautiful, iconic Irishman was the band’s heart and soul, and its demise in 1984, presaged Lynott’s early death on January 4th 1986 - fifteen years to the day Thin Lizzy started recording their first album.
Bad Reputation is an honest and affectionate documentary that tells the story Ireland’s greatest band. Starting with guitarist, Scott Gorham and drummer, Brian Downie remixing the classic Jailbreak album, the film quickly revisits the band’s early incarnation as The Black Eagles, Orphanage, and then Thin Lizzy, named after a character from the comic the Beano.
Produced and directed by Linda Brusasco, the film includes very rare footage of a young Phil at the start of his career, and includes revealing interviews with him through the highs and lows, together with interviews from nearly all of the key players, Brian Downie, Scott Gorham, Eric Bell, Brian Robertson, Midge Ure, Bob Geldof, and legendary record producer, Tony Visconti.
The reformed version of Thin Lizzy are currently touring, check here for details.
This little clip of a puppet Rupert Murdoch, having an editorial with his vulturous editors, is almost as fresh today as it was twenty-five years ago, when it first aired on the satirical sketch show Spitting Image.
Is it a surprise that twenty-five years ago Murdoch was seen as a ghastly, untrustworthy, muck-raking shit?
How could anyone have forgotten?
The fact that so many did, and the fact that Murdoch became so very, very powerful over those twenty-five years, fully underlines the extent to the unhealthy and undemocratic relationship maintained by past governments with the media tycoon.
After four on a Saturday afternoon, housewives, grandmothers, and young fearless children watched grown men in swim trunks hurl each other across a canvas ring. These men weren’t just wrestlers, they household gods worshipped by generations: Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Les Kellett, Mike Marino, Jackie (“Mr. T.V.”) Pallo, the masked Kendo Nagasaki, and my favorite, “the man you love to hate”, Mick McManus.
British wrestlers were more like stage entertainers, who traveled around the country fighting 4 or 5 times a week in different venues across England. They mixed the camp (Gorgeous George, The Gay One) with the bizarre (Catweazle, Rollerball Rocco) and the best (Mick McManus, Kendo Nagasaki), and by the time wrestling became the biggest hit for ITV’s Saturday’s World of Sport, most of the big names were in their late thirties and early forties, but it didn’t stop these podgy, middle-aged men from becoming sex symbols.
The people’s favorite was Big Daddy (aka Shirley Crabtree), who had made his name as a rugby player before wrestling under the names of The Blonde Adonis, Mr. Universe and The Battling Guardsman, in the 1950s.
Crabtree, with his ill-fitting leotard (decoratively embroidered by his wife) was coaxed out of retirement and became the most successful and best-loved wrestler of the 1970s and 1980s - even Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was a fan. Though limited by his size and age, Big Daddy brought such novel wrestling moves as the “Belly-Butt” and “Belly-Splash” to the audiences’ delight, who chanted “easy, easy, easy,” whenever the likable Daddy stepped into the ring.
Big Daddy’s had feuds with various wrestlers, most notably Giant Haystacks, the 6 foot 11, London-Irish wrestler, who at one point weighed 48 stone. How this giant of a man was ever beaten by Big Daddy is unbelievable, and led to suggestions the sport was fixed. This was later confirmed in 1985, by “Mr T.V.” Jackie Pallo, in his autobiography You Grunt, I’ll Groan. Pallo was a flash, show biz wrestler, with long hair and striped trunks, who claimed referees carried razors to nick wrestlers’ ears to add authenticity (Pallo preferred to bite his lip) and said the sport was TV entertainment:
“Of course it was, it was pure showbiz right from the start.”
Pallo had a career in TV, appearing in The Avengers, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and regularly on stage in pantomime. Where Palo was a showman, wrestlers like Mike Marino, Les Kellett and Mick McManus took the sport seriously. The short, dumpy, balding McManus was the sport’s anti-hero.
He won his first wrestling title, the British Welterweight Championship, in 1949, by defeating Eddie Capelli. He lost it to Jack Dempsey in 1957 but regained it, then lost it again. In 1967, McManus won the British Middleweight Championship with a victory over Clayton Thomson. He also won the European Middleweight Championship in June 1968 by defeating Vic Faulkner. Though lost it again to Faulkner the following year. Never fear, McManus won it back in 1971, and held onto it for 7 years.
McManus was brilliant, always entertaining, and bent the rules to allow him to sneak in some questionable blows. He was famous for his fore-arm smash and Boston Crab and relished the audience’s jeers. He never seemed to change, and thirty years after his hey-day I once saw McManus in a bar, immaculately dressed in a suit, and looking no different than he did back in the 1960s and ‘70s.
McManus is credited as an influence on Kendo Nagasaki (real name Peter Thornley), who refused to reveal his identity, and disguised himself behind a samurai mask. Nagasaki was another brilliant wrestler, who mixed Martial Arts, Eastern philosophy with incredible skill. He was famously robbed of the CWA World title by Giant Haystacks, after Haystacks ripped off his mask, forcing Nagasaki to abandon the contest.
It was McManus and Nagaski who inspired British Pop Artist, Peter Blake to paint his wrestler series.
Another brief star of wrestling was the world’s first DJ and legendary Top of the Pops host, Jimmy Savile, who fought in golden leotard and boots, before giving it up after losing too many fights.
These fabulous posters from the golden age of British wrestling has been compiled by Jane McDevitt on her fantastic Flickr stream, which can be seen here. Check out some of the pics and names - wonderful.
With thanks to Tara McGinley
More fabulous posters of these wrestling legends, after the jump…
