Richard Thompson, minus the folk

Truth, beauty and great guitar:

Tony Mokbel impersonator, DAVE GROHL, captured!!

"..I'll stick around, I'll stick around...'

Well known Tony Mokbel impersonator DAVE GROHL was captured in Greece today living the high-life with his stripper girlfriend who gave birth to Dave Jr a few months ago. Grohl was found with three mobile phones and a bag of cocaine pellets and a fake passport that said his name was 'Steve Pappas'. The well known rock star had become disenfranchised with being the leader of the worlds biggest Husker-Du cover band, and decided to become a notorious drug-lord with an empire estimated to be worth at least $20million. The fugitive was not repentant. 'Imagine how you would feel screaming stupid lyrics and predictable chord changes to million of fucking stupid bogens who think they are punk and then go on to become middle managers?' Grohl has sold over 20 million album worldwide, but found that selling 'party' drugs was way more interesting and 'rock n roll' than making pedestrian music for pedestrians. 'You know when I was in the Foo Fighters I'd hang out with deadshits like that guy from Queens of the Stones Age and Bjork. I mean people think 'wow' those guys are so zany, but you know they're just 'regular guys' who just happen to fuck hotter people than most other dudes. I mean the drug empire I built opened me up to a lifestyle rock stars can only dream of. You get hot sluts, free entry to heaps of nightclubs, a new penthouse apartment with a plasma TV, surround system and see-thru shower, a new $100,000 car each month and I mean amongst others you get to hang out with rockstars, film producers, actors, politicians, lawyers, doctors, presidents of football clubs - you know REAL HIGH FLYERS, THAT ARE POWERFUL and INFLUENTIAL, unlike those fucken rockstar clowns.'

Grohl will be extradited to Seattle from his idyllic Greek hideaway next week.

Australia's finest no-wave boogie band

I was talking to a mate the other day about how despite all this InterNerd downloading hoo-haa apparently destroying the pope-musique industry, that I've still been buying heaps of music these days, albeit they are all remastered RE-ISSUES..My mate went on about how 'yeah that's because you're getting older and you know there's not much better ahead, so you listen to old shit to remind you of the 'good ole' days' or something.' I told him that's a piece of bullshit, I like 'contemporary' or 'new' bands like the Drones (OK, so they're quickly turning into the new fucking Paul Kelly band or something, but they had their moments as few years back) and James McCann's Dirty Skirt Band and the Eddy Current Suppression Rings and the Hate Rock Trio amongst a handful. Am I'm always checking out young bands to see if they're any good or trying anything different and fucked up. But they reality is the young bands are fucken shit that must be killed. None make music in their own image, they all have an image before they have a sound, and despite the fact that most of the young bands are really fucking adept at playing their instruments, none can actually 'play' and if they do, they sound exactly like the Kinks or Ac/DC or some other fucking shit. I then forced this friend to watch our hip video-clip show on the Telly – RAGE – and all these bands have video clips that are more expensive than the last 5 Werner Herzog movies, they all have that fucking real-drummer-playing-disco-beat sound with a singer that sounds like fucken the guy from fucken Spandau Ballet, and the 'indie' bands are basically just trying to get their stuff endorsed as product by the next season of 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy', and/or sound like B-grade Matador Records bands from the last I dunno 15 years. So I beat my mate in this particular argument, and basically told him that the cool thing about re-mastered re-issues is they sound better and are good value for money in today's expensive I-borrow-more-than-I-can-afford times...SO I start with my favourite re-issue of the minute...

X – At Home With You...Another totally fine and 'value for money' re-issue by OZ-rock re-issue kings AZTEC MUSIC...X – the AUSSIE ONE – in their day were something like the Australian version of Motorhead...They weren't quite punk (just like Motorhead weren't quite 'metal'), were always on the verge of being 'the next big thing', had a strong live following, and were probably the heaviest band of their time (and place)...I was lucky to see X in the middish 80s sorta twice. The first time I walked into the Seaview Ballroom and X had just finished. There were squashed beer cans, vomit and a well known (and dead)skatepunk junkie on the floor. The second time I saw them was at Melbourne University. X headlined a gig that featured Ed Kuepper, Venom P Stinger, and Nick Cave doing spoken word. Everyone had gone home by the time X took the stage. Ian Rilen kept fucking up all the songs. Cathy Green was in a shit mood. They played maybe 30 seconds of a song properly, but when the it, it all seemed to make sense..In those days Australia had a triumvirate of 'grunge' 3-piece bands well before hippie-rednecks from Seattle made it cool. There was the always rumoured killer 3-some gig featuring the Cosmic Psychos, Feedtime and X to be held at the Prince of Wales in St.Kilda, unfortunately it never happened.....Anyway their 'masterpiece' 'At home with you' has been released in a lurvely digipack with extensive liner notes and a great 'live' bonus CD...The quality here isn't much better than the album, though the songs have aged quite well, expect for throwaways like 'you say that you love me'..Everyone keeps trying to pin what 'X' sounded like. Sure they're as punk as you wanna be, they rock n' roll like the best of them, and they even have that pub-rock slobber with the horns and whatnot. Rilen's bass rolls like an alcoholic porno-star, Cathy Green remains truly under-rated as one of the HEAVIEST DUTY female drummer of all-time, and Steve Lucas had a great voice and primal scratch guitar style with classy chops. Put it all together and Aussie X's 'extremeness' made them one hellava great no-wave-boogie band.

The bonus CD was recorded live at the Prince of Wales Hotel, which in it's day was like Australia's version of Max's Kansas City, a place where junkies, fags, alcoholics, transsexuals, recently freed criminals and rock fans could see live music in a suitable decadent and free-think environment that just DOESN'T exist today, despite the great grunge-indie-liberal revolution of the 90s or whatever... The recording initially sounds flat as it was taken off a mixing desk, but once 'Degenerate Boy' kicks in, you'd check yr ears that it was done of the desk, as the remastered job has somehow transcended the general dullness of desk-recorded jobs. Absolutely killer is 'T.V Glue'. Lucas plays a truly transcendent sonic drone chord, loaded with overtones that has to be heard to be believed...

..and speaking of drones and overtones, some old-cunt called LOU REED has released a new album on some indie new-age/meditation label, designed for people to meditate to! Now what LOU has basically done is make a HARDCORE meditation record that will undoubtedly freak-out the Prozac-addicted yuppies that buy this shit. Titled HUDSON RIVER WIND MEDITATIONS, First track 'Move your heart' pulses like those alien-pods out of Luigi Cozzi's CONTAMINATION for about half an hour, while the second drone 'find your note' is basically an update of all that LaMonte Young/Tony Conrad/early Cluster drone. 'Hudson River Wind' sounds like an out-take from the ERASERHEAD soundtrack and closer 'Wind Coda' is just a lazy mish-mash of track 1 and 3 but for only 5 minutes. HUDSON RIVER WIND MEDITATIONS definitely ain't a new age record, nor is it like a true meditation record like Tony Scott's 'music for zen meditation', but it'll definitely work for people who read THE WIRE or the Forced Exposure catalogue, and that ain't no mean feat for an old cunt.

New Lou

Meditate, don't masturbate (actually masturbating IS meditative!)

Yep, Uncle Lou has put out an ambient album to meditiate to called 'Hudson River Wind Meditations'...Basically electronic ambient music comprised of drones and the like, nothing really new for Lou since he's been doing that shit since Year Zero, but it's pretty nifty for nervous wrecks like myself. You can only buy this from some 'new age' health joint.

Otherwise, you can always chill out to the last Ryhthm & Sound album, or Eno's 'Music for Airports'.

Ar'll be bark

DRECK MIT LEIBER is a Yiddish saying that literally means 'shit with liver', and probably the perfect word that describes the way-over-the-top sadistically violent 'shoot-a-gook' fest that is the trailer of the world's most famous steroid abuser's latest Rambo vehicle. why couldn't the pussy go out and splatter a few Islamofascists instead of some harmless horries? Anyway my life has been a busy mess, hence no verbal spewage and gulchural vomit, but I have the following lined up for Bloggage:

1. The rest of the best non-Bava-Argento giallos
2. Feeling like a coke-addicted pr0n-star listening to the Sisters of Mercy
3. ..and a review of the great new 'Jason Crest' novel 66MindFuck99

I'm sorry for nothing

In one of the most outrageously nutzoid examples of Conservative pressure, Australia's second best Aussie-rules football player, Ben Cousions of the West Coast Eagles, made a pre-recorded 'apology' to his fans, club and most importantly Corporate sponsors for his recent apparent drug problems. In recent times, Cousins has been known to hang out with drug dealers, and besides being a fan of the socially acceptable 'piss' (alcohol), he apparently is a coke head and in recent times an Ice head. Kinda funny considering the fact this guy earns well over a million bucks a year, is probably the most famous person in Western Australia, and he smokes the cheapest and nastiest loser drug ICE! But enough of that. His pre-recorded 'apology' after his much falooted Malibu rehab session would have made Osama Bin Laden proud. Basically Cousins's didn't give a shit because this media joke is a pure example of 'conservative' or neo-Con pressure on this guy to 'get in line'..It seems kinda obvious Cousins was sent to a drug clinic, where the experts there found him to be a recreational user, not an 'addict' as all these clueless conservatives media 'experts' and sport commentators have painted him. Why don't we take on these bozo ALCOHOLICS in the conservative media at their own game? Just coz it's legal, don't mean it's any better, let alone 'moral'. Sure Cousines is a TERRIBLE role model for kids, but everyone likes an outlaw, especially in sports where these days they're all bloody robots. Imagine how I feel, my team Carlton, used to be like say the Dallas Cowboys, and now we're probably as good football players as the guys in Debbie Does Dallas or something!

ANYWAY I just saw the 'hot' new Aussie 'punque' banmd the EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING. Yeah I like their songs and will buy their album. Their live show was slick, and their rhythm section was tight and pro as the West Coast Eagles midfield that that Cousins guy plays in. This bloke, who is the Molly Meldrum of the indie-internerd-underground has been hyping them as the new messiah of the week. Sure they sound like Wire meets the Modern Lovers meets the Fall with the lead singer on the Victims out front, but part of their popularity is becuase they really sound like the Storkes, I mean Strokes or the Kings of Leon. Good luck to 'em. good night.

Lobby Loyde RIP

Up there with G.O.D and a few other legends...

Thanks to the anonymous bloke who informed me of this via this Blog. Nice to see some people read it! 'Thats what mamma says' off BALL POWER still sounds transcendent. I was lucky to see the Coloured Balls last ever gig in December last year. Lobby was just one of those legend guitar players that occur once a decade. Total rock intensity, originality, method, attack and transcendent/psych/jazz/freestyle woosh. The stuff that, I swear to you, puts goosebumps on my arms and makes me wanna plug into a valve amp and just turn the fucker UP! The missing link for the *true* Melbourne rock guitar sound..Here's a link to probalby Lobby's last ever online interview...Now to check out his 'spacerock' stuff! Have a peaceful time out there.....

more crock action...

You know I'm fat, I'm fat, I'm really, really fat...ham on!

The ears are ringing, the joints are aching, but old man Goldblog here is a strong believer that loud high-energy music (well high-energy doesn't always have to be loud ya know) is good for your all-round life, taken in the right doses!

Wednesday night was spent in a shitty big-commercial rock-barn watching that forever to be trendy Boston band the PIXIES, play in Australia for the first time. Now I didn't give a shit whether I saw this band or not, but a last minute call convinced me otherwise, as well as all the well presented hype on our national broadcaster ie: 3 hour specials of live shows, interviews, etc.., which sorta helped me build some faint hope of excitement. The Pixies were and are a 'first two albums of the late 80s band', up there with Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, etc...etc..etc..In my universe it means that these were bands that I really loved as a late teenager, but seemed to 'magically' lose complete interest in after their second album, when the formula kicked in and all the sonic tricks had well and truly fallen off...But I digress, I paid my drachmas and was lucky to score a ticket after the concert had sold out on the Internet faster than a mouse click. I'd made a choice, but everything was pointing to a dull-night-out (I'm getting that way more and more, only to have things turns around - must be the depression or lack of sex or something....) The venue was bad, the venue was filled

and full of bald guys near or beyond 40 in jeans and t-shirts talking about how 'Trompe Le Monde' is the Pixies most underrated album. There were fat-chicks in black t-shirts everywhere, and the support band 'the Panics' made Crowded House seem like a heavy-metal band, and I HATE Crowded House more than, shit, not much...! And so the Pixies appeared: Two short baldies, a fat-chick with black hair who chain-smokes and a bearded, blading guy who looks like a nutty-professor/hobo. The thing that useta irk me alot about the Pixies, is that despite their first two albums having quite a nice 80s-post-hardcore-punk propulsion, they never seem to translate it on the live recordings I'd heard. Well in this particular live setting, it was good to see that a band nearing 50 in age or whatever, they still had that propulsion. Highlights for me were their 10 minute 'cornfed dames' cover 'Vamous', the two versions of 'Wave of Mutilation' and 'Gouge away'. I was pissed they didn't do 'Broken face'. I mean everyone with a reasonably sharpened head knows in the long run, the Pixies are more Violent Femmes than say Mission of Burma or even Husker Du, but I dunno, maybe not playing together to 15 years or something was a good idea for this band, as they had plenty of zip to highlight that their songs are quality, and the simple fact that the Pixes are infintely BETTER than every fucking shitful band that copied them (no mean feat).

Last night my mates the PINK STAINLESS TAIL launched their 3^rd maxi-mini album THE INIFINITE WISODM OF...Now when I first heard these guys, I though they sounded like some Fred Negro St.Kilda band bulldust. Coming off like some sort of sleeper-cell of the Melbourne Mafia (ie: Nick Cave and all his look-alike/sound alikes eg: Dirty 3, Brian Hooper, Dave Graney etc...) - well Harry, Rowland S.'s bro' is in the band, so I guess the link is genetic – the

band are one of those rare entities that seems to have improved over time. Their rollicking, loose, almost retarded shmutter - driven with rusting Teutonic precision by Zonke Rickertson, the most psychedelic-bass-player-in-Melbourne-since-Tim-Hensley, Nick Dodington, and fronted by suit-wearing-Englishman suffering from a rare form of Tourettes-Syndrome as being a well-know skin-flick archivist, Simon Strong – was in top shape last night. Playing a MARATHON set that went well into the night, the boys blew the support acts off the stage, and may have inadvertantly blown half the audience out of the room at the same time! On their night the PST are actually some sort of sloppy

British-invasion-big-beat-garage band for aging intellectuals on one level, or possibly the best 'post-punk' 80s-revival band (in the Fall/early Happy Mondays mould culture), minus the Calvin Klein/Collette Dinnigan/Stella McCartney DNA. But if that's what you want (or definitely wanna fuck), well the kids were definitely there earlier to see Melbourne's seminal guitar legend Rowland s Howard ejaculate his mumblings and two Lou Reed covers over the very good-looking under-25 crowd that were all sitting on the floor, smoking cigarettes and checking each other out. Fellas, if you want to perv at genuinely hot chicks at gigs, well go to an RSH gig. He's the Pied Piper of Melbourne! The other supports included 'New Estate' who I think are ex-members of the hardcore-C86 indie scene. They sounded in parts like YoLaTengo and the AuPairs and had a really nerdy dude playing bass with his fingers which was admirable and really odd at the same time.

Opening slot was by Biddy Connor, who plays fiddle (unlike me who just fiddles), who uses ambient loops and stuff and at times sounds like Henry Flynt, but at others the Dirty3 or Sigur Ros...I guess she's only young, but......

Oy! Those shicksers!

NOTE: When I was younger it useta to shit me that my Semetic genes didn't allow me to have have as good a hairstyle as all those Nick Cave cunts here in Melbourne, and hence I couldn't score those sophisticate art-school biotches that I'd have crushes on that would hang out with drug-addicted-'romantic' creeps like that. I also resented the fact I didn't have a really WASPY sounding surname and most importantly THE MIDDLE INITIAL! I was at one point tempted to change my real name - Aaron Goldberg - to something like Lou Reed or Bob Dylan or Ron Jeremey or Thurston S Howell the 3rd, but I couldn't be fucked, and I ended up fucking one of those sophisticated art-school biotches anyway..NB: Nick Cave's new song is called 'no pussy blues', Iggy sings 'my dick is turning into a tree', now who's the real deal? )

some hot stuff around the traps

LAND OF LOOK BEHIND (Dir Alan Greenberg, 1982) – For many years I used to tell people I liked reggae when I really didn't. When I was a kid the sound of it used to freak me out. Bob Marley used to freak me out. He looked weird, and at the time (very early 80s) there were all these sex-cults run by Rajneeshies and shit, and Bob Marley looked liked one of those guys who ran such a cult. And that wacka-wacka sound that is the reggae groove seemed weird since I'd never heard something sound like that before...SO I generally stayed away until I was a Uni student, via hiphop and that Gary Clail Tackhead On-U stuff. I sorta dabbled in dub, but still didn't get it..It was just, boring, and didn't really seem 'psychedelic' music. Then this dude I went to Uni with was telling me about all this reggae stuff, and took me to a boring gig by the Wailers, but he lent me this video that was really neat, it was a docco about the history of Jamaica as told by musicians and had all these wild interviews with guys like Lee Scratch Perry filmed in his studio, with dogs and cats and little kids running all over the place, and guys with teeth growing out of their lips smoking pot in cigar sized joints, it all seemed so scungy and raw, and started to seem more interesting. Also all these fucking Israelis and Jewish stoner bums who went to Habbo would be into it, especially the Bob Marley stuff, coz they wore Moogen-Doovids and didn't hate or want to kill the Jews, but all those creeps reminded me of the stoopid hippie love-cults I mentioned earlier... Bit I still didn't get reggae. About five years ago I went to this DJ gig run by that Soul-Jazz record label, and well, for some reason on that night I FINALLY GOT REGGAE! I guess it was hearing it in the right environment, and people playing the right tracks, and mixing it with hiphop and shit like that, but there was something that suddenly clicked. Suddenly this aimless, hippy, jockbonghead music seemed incredibly HEAVY. SO I started learning about the Studio-One and Wackies labels, and listening to records by Prince Far-I and Horace Andy and all this German techno on the Basic Channel label...and these days I pretty much can't get enough of the music from Jamaica. It's just played so well, and there's all these little subtleties and inflections in the guitars and keyboards, and the lyrics seem so positive and soulful...ANYWAY, my new favourite DVD label SUBVERSIVE CINEMA had this upcoming film called LAND OF LOOK BEHIND in their 'coming soon' list online. It was their first 'music' film, and the trailer looked interesting and really raw. The music by GREOGORY ISAACs and BOB MARLEY sounded interesting, but this whole package seemed to fit into that raw pre-digital Studio-One style Jamaican music that I have been hooked on the last couple of years. BASICALLY, LAND OF LOOK BEHIND is a documentary in the trippy-transcendent style of Kraut cinema-hero Werner Herzog. Directed by ALAN GREENBERG who worked with Herzog on HEART OF GLASS (and apparently friends with Dylan etc..etc..) and filmed by JORG SCHMIDT-REITWEIN who shot Herzog classics like THE ENIGMA IF KASPAR HAUSER, WOYCZEK and the awesome THE GREAT ECSTASY OF WOODCARVER STEINER (about a ski-jumper!), LAND OF LOOK BEHIND very much looks and feels like a Herzog film. Greenberg went to Jamaica in 1981 to film Bob Marley's funeral and ended up shooting hours of footage of the locals who live in a dense jungle area of Jamaica called the..LAND OF LOOK BEHIND..

You basically have eccentric characters describing their lives, talking about Jah, smoking lots of pot and thats about it. The film drags a little in the middle, but some great live footage of Gregory Isaacs brings thing back in line. The film was shot in 16mm, so has a raw, grainy feel which adds to it's rootsy ambience. The initial soundtrack music done by electronic muso K.LEIMER has that very trippy

Popul-Vuh synth type vibe that works really well with the surreal landscapes. Extras include some great interviews with Greenberg and Herzog himself, a commentary track and a nifty booklet written by director Greenberg talking about the difficulties making the movie. Also the first 5000 come with a soundtrack CD that has nice tunes by Marley and Isaacs amongst others. The soundtrack has been OOP for quite some time, so hardcore reggae nuts will probably want this pretty soon. All up a good night in with a joint and brew or two.

...I guess everyone in the whole world knows there's a new STOOGES album out. The STOOGES gig at the Big Day Out was one of the biggest disappointments in recent times for Moi. Stuck in a field with 25000 bogens, with the sound waffling through the air and watching Iggy via a video screen wasn't inspiring to say the least. I'd already seen Fat Ron Asheton blow my ears with DARK CARNIVAL and saw IGGY at his legendary BDO gig about 12 years ago, so I'd pretty much seen what I needed too..ANYWAY, I heard some tracks of the STOOGES new rec on the radio, and they made me wanna vomit. The song MY IDEA OF FUN sounded like a shit Sonic Youth song, with Iggy sounding like a male version of Kim Gordon, who any person with an IQ higher that 5 realises, shouldn't be allowed near a microphone. I downloaded the record, and initially it sounded like the last two shitty Iggy albums. Underplayed, over -emoted rubbish. Albini's production is underdone to say the least. The wanker can't record anything that isn't plugged into a wall. His recording of Steve McKays sax is pathetic. Albini really needs to be punched up badly. He's a smart arse dork who thinks he knows everything, but is really a one-trick pony when it comes to recording. His future is well and truly behind him...Pushing that simp Albini aside, though, the real winner here is RON ASHETON. His playing on the WEIRDNESS is FANFUCKINGTASTIC, his solos fly, he still has some weird riffs up his sleeve and the wah-wah still wah-wahs all over the place. Scott Asheton pounds mechanically away, and Mike Watt really pins down the rhythm section, though it'd be nice if Albini recorded it BETTER..and Steve McKay back on board is pretty cool, though I wish he played on more of the tracks..Iggy sings HORRIBLY on some tracks but really well on others, and I don't mind his idiot lyrics, I reckon they're funny. There's some really bad press going around about this record, but I think time will treat it better than well, the real let-down being Albini's uninspired production more than anything chronic...So far my fave tracks are 'Trollin', 'Free and Freaky' and 'Mexican Guy'..It's funny, the better tracks on this album sound like something CRIME woulda done back in the mid-70s, in fact a lot of the album sounds like CRIME, maybe the STOOGES shoulda got Eliot Mazer to produce it instead of Mr.Al-Weeny?

The Psychadelic Stooges

THE STOOGES - EXTENDED PLAY (Easy Action)

I been on a bit of a Stooges binge lately. It's funny you know, coz I picked up the first album and FUNHOUSE 2-disc re-issues new in the bargain bin at the JB HiFi chain stores here in Melbourne. In some weird cosmic-rock synchronicity I picked up the first album on vinyl for 10-bucks in a bargain bin at a suburban import-shop some 18 years earlier! Anyway, I'm one of the 100 or so fucken sad-freaks that has 'adopted' that failed sonic technology called DVD-audio. The 00s version of Quadraphonic-4, DVD-audio basically pipes your musique into a 5.1 speaker layout. Technically, or in terms of soundspace that means you have the vocals in the centre, gtrs/keys/bass in left and right, and drums in the surrounds, or the band in the front three and FX or crowd or farting noises in the surrounds. Either way, a good mix can emulates that 3D-psychedelic sound you get when you take hallucinogenic substances (which i don't do anymore)...SO think of my surprise when I found out that THE STOOGES have a DVD-audio 5.1 mix! I thought, shit, I'm having a drug relapse or something. But I didn't expect much, because really these 5.1 'remixes' can only be done with good source material, and considering most of the STOOGES source material was fished out of rubbish bins, well, what can you expect...This recent 'Extended Play' is basically 5 tracks done in DVD-audio 5.1 Hi-Definition and 3 on normal CD..Apparantly these recordings in their current state or whatever have never been released before, and there might be some STOOGES archivists out there that can prove this. They seem to be either RAW POWER out-takes or demos done around the time the band were based in London. Regardless, the recordings still prove out-right that the Stooges were the greatest modern-rock-n-roll band. THE band that invented 'heavy metal' as we know it, laid down the template for grunge, and punk and any other minimalist/maximalist mega-heavy rock as well know it. The bands that re-arranged the 'chugga-chugga' and 'boogie-woogie' or the old rock n' roll and turned it inside out into this new, technologically refined greyhound of sonic crunch n thump n grind. The 5.1 surround opener 'I got a right #1' sounds fucking GLORIOUS. Williamson has this pure crunch guitar, the song speeds along laying the raunch template for Poms like Motorhead and Williamson spazzs out well before Greg Ginn. The surround mix is slight and a bit gimmicky, but the sound quality reproduction here in terrific for a demo. The 'Louie Louie' cover is pretty crappy, and 'Gimme some skin' and 'I got a right #2' have pretty nice mixes and pack into more chorderama which of course would be mimicked by Radio Birdman. You can here it all in pure and simple detail on this DVD-audio, which will make your ears cry.
The CD sticks to the typical bootleg fidelity we're all used to for rare Stooges recordings. Though this one is really good, they've used some sort of technology to get rid of the waffly sound caused by shitty tapes, and the rock action is all smoking.'Hard to beat' is basically another version or 'Raw Power' with some burning soloing, 'Head On' well we all know that's the great unrecorded Stooges classic, though this version doesn't sound as spiteful as the one on the Whisky Au-Gog-Go bootleg, but still sounds like a meaner version of the Exile Period Stones via the Doors. CD closes out with an VERY psychedelic version of 'I got a right' that features Iggy's vocal acid-echoed to the max. It will blow your fuck from your bonged-out loungeroom to Uranus or somewhere.

Favourite songs

DENNIS

1. RIVER SONG - DENNIS WILSON : The sound of what happens when a Beach Boys finds god and cocaine simulataneously. Also he was the drummer, so this piece of ULTRAPURE (columbian) pop swings and rollicks in its epic glory. You WILL beleive.
2. FINAL SOLUTION - PERE UBU : Flat chat white-soul-funk. Laughner's guitar solo is the great air guitar solo freakout ever.
3. BLANK FRANK - BRIAN ENO : simulataneously acknowledge the Velvet Underground and Bo Didley, throw all meaning once the beat kicks in and the machine gun electronics take over.
4. HOLIDAYS IN THE SUN - THE SEX PISTOLS : smash your head! smash the fucken!
   
5. OH SWEET NOTHING - THE VELVET UNDERGROUND : more religious hand-holding, the song 'Hey Jude' never was!
6. FOUND A JOB - TALKING HEADS : just for the last 5 minutes where they rip off Parliament.
7. ROCKS OFF - THE ROLLING STONES : more mileage out of a high E chord than any band except the Velvet Underground.
8. BOSS HOSS - THE SONICS : this song makes me want to get drunk in a good way.
9. MOTHER SKY - CAN : a song that starts in the midlle of a song and never stops with the second best guitar wank lead break ever
10. BONZO GOES TO BITTBURG - this song by the Ramones makes me cry.
    

About a tree and a well

Painting a Quince

As you can see from my reviews, I like to mix the very high with the very low brow's of art, though my general orientation is towards the low-brow stuff...But every now and again I like to have my synapses massaged by some really slow, really artsy-fartsy Euro cinema, where nothing happens, landscapes are everything, psychology is thrown out the window and EXISTENCE is all that matters. Victor Erice is one of those Euro directors I describe as 'elemental'...His films ooze natural rhythms and colour, most of them being orange browns and dark greens, and the sounds are ambient winds and rains. I saw his 'Spirit of the Beehive' a few years ago in a cinema after smoking a few joints, and yes the slow languid arthouse pace was almost putting me into a coma, but there was something else going on, from the rustling trees to the endless landscapes to the slow shots of a young girl walking across a barren landscape – the whole spaciousness of the film riveted me. Erice's cinema's is organic and wide. So after having it sit on my shelf for some special occasion I pulled out his 90s film 'El Sol Del Membrillo' (the Quince Tree of the Sun), which is basically 2 and a bit hours of Spanish painter Antonio Lopez painting a quince tree (interesting to note that Lopez does lots of moderns urban landscapes). Yep, a movie about a guy painting a tree. Now this is no ordinary tree, a Quince tree is like a pear tree. The Quince has a firm, rounded texture and is is bright yellow. It is, by for all intents a purposes and very 'artistic' tree, in that is has lots of surfaces and textures. Erice doesn't miss a beat in capturing thought surfaces and textures, but then capturing the more important aspects that surround or enliven the tree visually – light, shadows, visual composition. This is a move as a painting and a film about making a painting. Erice takes the 'visuality' of cinema to the core of all visual art – painting – a makes it interesting in it's own right.

The jungle

In between Lopez battles with elements, talks with other artists about like and art, while the world around his changes in complex synchronicity with his emerging work. This is deep stuff without hitting you on the head with morality and psychology, it's a film that just happens – a tree grows, a painter paints it as it grows, and then the fruit falls, dies, decays until next season. Life.

Life is a rotten quince..

The DVD I got is a killer, it's a Spanish release with English sub-titles. It's not perfect hi-def quality , but image quality is nice, there are screen artifacts to keep it all real – the print is approved by Erice himself. There's also some great extras including s Spanish TV interview with both Eric and Lopes and a fantastic video sketchbook of Lopez painting done by Eric himself. All up a quality film and a quality, 'exotic' DVD package.

I finally watched the bootleg I've got of Budd Boetticher's fantastic western 'the Tall T'..Boetticher is quickly becoming 'the bloke' when it comes to American westerns in my headspace. His compact, violent and meaningful B-westerns are all worthwhile. The ones I've seen – 'Seven men from now' and 'Commanche Station' – are all A-grade stuff contrary to their status, but 'the Tall T' is what I'd call a killer. Randolph Scott once again plays the good moral guy Pat Brennan, who comes to a small outpost and promises the son of a friend some candy. On the way though he loses his horse, and hitches back with a newly web couple. Upon return to the ranch they find it taken over by ruthless thugs, his friend and son both murdered, and a hostage situation ensues when the pussy-husband uses his wealthy wife as a bargaining chip for their freedom. This is dark, violent stuff, especially for a 50s movie, but it proves that
even in violence and immorality you can still play tough but fair: Brennan shoots the motherfuckers in the front not back, which in todays fuckhead world is the norm.

Dont mess with Mr. T..!

It's also proudly politically incorrect, having one of the thug be a psycho Asian called 'Chink. Scott is once again solid as a rock, Richard Boone adds complexity to Frank Usher, the thug's leader, and Henry Silva, known for his roles in Italian poliziescos, like the classic 'Manhunt', plays the outta control 'Chink. It's a crime that such a great, brutal Western like the 'Tall T' isn't on DVD, and buggered if I know why it's called 'The Tall T'!

Turkish Delight!!!

This film looks totally fantastic. And that psych-guitar!

On a faraway beach...

Sealers' Cove : 4th Jan, 2007, 7:41am

Heppy News Year! (well thats how my mum says it)..And according to my horoscopes this will be my best year in 10 years because Jupiter is in the way of Saturn blocking out the view of Pluto rising between the Sun and the moon and arrr, fuckit...Anyway hopefully they represent something good since 2006 was officially a grande annulus horribulus for this blogger... So I kicked off 2007 with a 20km round-trip hike that has left me awed and sore..As you can see the loverly beach I ended up at was called Sealer's Cove down a Wilsons Promontory, one of the most spectacular spots on this here lucky-Cunt called Australia. And it was all WORTH IT. This was one of the first decent hikes I been on for nearly 14 years. The last was in the early 90's, climbing Mt. Warning in Northern NSW, and before that, I went on a hike to the Dead Sea in Yeretz Yisrool on my birthday , to be treated to 'Biblical' views of some desert and Masada, coupled with soldiers graduating and F16's buzzing the joint. It was pretty kewl...

But back to the bizniss of this Blog, which is me talking shit about shit I like. 2006 was a Pathetic year for anything 'new'. No interesting music, a smattering of films and book. So I'll start:

BEST MUSIC 2006 : THE ZEN VISION:M 30gig multi-media MP3 player etc...I finally was bought of those new Walkmen things after 5 years too late, and after research picked the Creative anti-iPod. It sounds great, has a video player that I never use, displays photos, magazine, Podcasts etc... So basically I have been digitising my own records that I hardly have time to listen to and listen to them again. Rediscovering that Nick Cave is horribly dated and BORING and should be put out to pasture, indie-music of the 90s doesn't cut it with me at all for the most, though the first couple of Palace records could be genius. Yo La Tengo are another band with a serious law of diminishing return , up there with Dinosaur, Pavement, shit ANYTHING on Matador Dreckords. The first Teenage Fanclub record and SeaMonsters by the Wedding Present were the best two English records of the 90s, or even this decade for that matter. Techno music is as dated as Nick Cave. Hip hop has a great future behind it. BOOTLEGS ARE THE ONLY WAY> Unadulterated, shitty recordings of bands in their prime (or worse) never seem to date. Hence I been listening to bootlegs by the Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Palace Music, etc..etc... But the BESTEST sonic adventure this year would hafta be the bootleg DTS-DVD 4.1 mix of Pink Floyd's DARK SIDE OF THE MOON...Yep, the ultimate drongo album, biggest selling record of all-time bootlegged off a SURROUNDSOUND mix done in the 70s by Alan Parsons or someone, and it sounds t-riffic, especially on my 5.1 surround system. In fact it's one of the very few 'surround' recordings thats worth the listen on this new format. And it's FREE via a torrent download which took me nearly three months to complete. Oh well, good things take time I guess.


BEST FILMS : a few goodies actually: 1. MIAMI VICE – coulda been better, and really it was just an episode of the TV series with a bigger budget, more explosions, blood and swearing, but boy was this film one of the nicest to look at this year, if anything else (and aint cinemah supposed to be a 'visual' medium?)
2. CLIMATES – Turkish arthouse film, also done on the HiDef digital. Like all decent arthouse films, the story of a love-affair breakdown, done with slow shots, landscapes and a pretty rough and ridiculous sex scene. It also looked really nice and moderne just the way I like to see movies.
3. THE PASSENGER – Antonioni's 'lost' movie got a cinema release before getting the 'budget' DVD release. Jack Nicholson goes for an identity swap in an Arabian desert while getting to bonk Maria Schneider and then have something 'mysterious' happen.

4. THE RED DESERT – yeah so I been on a bit of an Antonioni trip this year, watching the Passenger, La Notte and L'Eclisse, this baby got a semi-decent DVD release here in R4/Australia. LURVELY and surreal movie and Antonioni's first in colour, so he's made everything pretentiously perfect and lurid and composed, but fuck, thats alright with me. But the RED DESERT is foremost seminal , esp. on the like of Tarkovsky, and sheeit, even the Turkish guy who made CLIMATES.

another faraway beach : The Red desert

5.SUCCUBUS - I also been on a bit of a Jess Franco trip. Yeah, that crazy Spanish guy who is compared to Ed Wood Jr, and made really bad pornos, but his late 60s/early 70s stuff is really, really good – shit I'd say 'great'. Geared specifically for the 'counter culture, Swinging 60s crowd', Franco's drug-fried kinky mod-sex sagas make little sense, over-use the zoom-in, but generally have great soundtracks, sexy-chicks, confused vampires and sex- demons and shots of exotic locales. If you have at least 3 seconds of time for say David Lynch, you'll have plenty for Franco. SUCCUBUS involved some woman who does a live S&M show, some guy who wants to bonk her, trippy soft-focus nude frolics and people namedropping Stockhausen and the Rolling Stones. I mean what's NOT to like?

6. THE PARTY GIRL – got this off a torrent. Nick Ray does it again. Hard-boiled story of a stripper and her links to the mob. Shot in Scope, it's as colourful and gay as a musical is supposed to be, even the bits where a mob psycho pistol smashes a guy in the face! Yep.

7. MATCH POINT – Voody Ellen does a good one. In fact he does a Chabrol film but with Scarlett Johansen's ass in it. This will prolly be the last decent film Ms. J does before she becomes the new Melanie Griffith or something.

8. THE RED QUEEN KILLS 7 TIMES – you know what, I can't get enough of these crazy European psychological ghost/vampire films. From the hot Euro babes, to the crazy stories of infidelities to the wonky mythologies of hauntings and vampires, to the classy Modish locations and decadence. Yep it's all so early 70s exploitation, grindhouse vernacular cinema and while some may pass these films off as camp and trash, well there seem to be heaps more going on (thematically, visually) than yr general arty-farty flick and they're FUN to watch to boot, well at least better than drunken fathers and gay cowboys – thats for sure!

9. THE DUST DEVIL – I had reservations about this flick and the guy who made it – uber goth-geek Richard Stanley – who made one of the worst, most rubbishy films I've ever seen (but a cult with heroin addicts and fans of industrial music like Ministry)HARDWARE..I read an interesting article with Stanley in a book a few years ago and he was crapping on about Leone and Tarkovsky, and how DUST DEVIL was him trying to be like that..Well sorta...More Leone than Tarkovsky, the film is really 90s pulp-kitsch, but it had enough moments to keep me in there, and the fact that it was a genre film that was creating it's own mythology made it a moire than interesting experience. I guess the fact that this was an el-cheapo release with 5 discs of doccos and interviews of varying quality prolly touched my inner schnorrer more than some other grander aesthetic thing, but in the end I enjoyed the sucker more than say the Departed....

10. MARY – Abel Ferrara is still one of the best directors in America, and seem to be the only director who knows how to get a performance out of Matthew Modine. MARY made PASSION OF THE CHRIST look like the bloated, gory, self-important and ultimately stooooopid film that it was. Unlike Gibson's chest-beating Fulci movie, Ferrara actually gets religion and its inherent paradoxes, without actually having to preach it.


11. A SCANNER DARKLY – just. Not a great film, but still the most 'literal' and true PKD adaptation.. He coulda done just as good a job without the bullshit Macintosh animation crap.

BESTEST BOOKS

Hmmmm....I really liked James Lee Burkes' TO THE BRIGHT & SHINING SUN, Jonathan Lethem's AMNESIA MOON, Burroughs NOVA EXPRESS & Artuads WATCH FIENDS & RACK SCREAMS..

...non-fictionally I dug FX Feeney's MICHAEL MANN coffee tabler, Legs McNeil's THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD, and Mikel J Koven's LA DOLCE MORTE about the giallo genre.. the very worst book I read was Bret Easton Ellis' LUNAR PARK. What a piece of shit.

There's a time to f@ck, and a time to crave..

Welcome to the 'new life'

LA VIE NOUVELLE - Dir: Phillipe Grandrieux

..if there's one concept the French are really, REALLY good at it's nihilism. This is probably due to the fact that they're a pack of hypocritical cowards, that love to pick fights, but to not actually fight them..And when it comes to culture, they are 'experts' at nihilism. I've recently been reading the excellent 'Watchfiends & Rack Screams', a collection of the late-period writings of French nut-bar visionary, Antonin Artaud. An ex-surrealist, Artaud spent most of his life in mental asylums scribbling a feverish poetry that explored the boundaries of human-physicality, yet he despised sex, so instead or yr 'Salt, Saliva, Sperm and sweat' (asper Phillip Brophy's experimental short film), yr left with ;Salt, saliva, sweat and ...*cough,cough*, Kaka! Yep Artaud was a pretty out-there case, and he's poetry of self eruption, while at time hard to read, seems to get under yr skin. It's pretty powerful, abstract stuff, but reading it, it's undeniable to see how his work influenced the likes of Jim Morrison, Patti Smith, Bukowski, Arrabal, Jodorowsky, hard-core metalheads and self-headjob-giving performance artists amongst others. That he was kicked out of the surrealists for being anti-politics and Marxism adds to his enduring legend and their subsequent demise as a relevant creative movement..

..Artaud started his own movement called THE THEATRE OF CREULTY in which he used extreme performance relating to the body, sound and vision to 'shock and awe' audiences.. Mexican surrealists like Arrabal and Jodorowsky were heavily influenced by Artauds' THEATRE of CREULTY and recently watched a torrent-bootleg of the oh so very nihilistic and French and Artaud influenced movie LA VIE NOUVELLE by French experimental-nihilist film-maker Phillipe Grandrieux, which could be described as a CINEMA OF CRUELTY circa 2003. Now I been reading about Grandrieux for a while, especially here and here. And just like every other these uber-hip film that 'everyone must-see' that you read about (no different to the music of the same must I add), it's almost impossible for the average-schmo like myself (who is always curious to expand the parameters to these types of culture) to actually see (or hear). So after about a week of torrenting, I was able to download a bootleg of this film. Luckily the film has very little dialogue, it plays like a silent film, that gives it vastly more visual and experimental edge. Let me just stress now, if you like David Lynch you will love this film, if not, stop reading. The story basically revolves around a love-triangle that revolves around an Eastern European sex slave her captor and an American client. The film uses a very natural, modern visual style for the most, made up mainly of close ups, shaky handheld and natural light, as is the norm for contemporary Euro-cinema. But Grandrieux takes things an extra step utilizing blur, out-of-focus and night-vision to push the film into a really edgy, surrealistic realm. The film plays a lot like one of those really nightmarish Chris Cunningham videoclips where everything is based on extreme claustrophobic sensation, and the threat of extreme violence lingers at the edge of every frame, made even more powerful by the fact that no-one really says anything. Obviously the paradigm is sex and death, throw in the location of Eastern Europe - where life is cheap, nasty and very COLD - and you have a dark nihilism personified. Music and sonics play a big role in this film. The whole film has that dark-industrial drone through it that bedrocks the feel of pervasive thread, and the throbbing 'doof' of the sex-club makes the film come off like some post-decadent techno nightmare. Throw in Grandrieux's dizzying 'concrete' visual style and you've got the cinematic equivalent of a Jeff Mills Detroit-techno album. LA VIE NOUVELLE is a dark, modern, nightmare, where the human soul is bought,sold and pulverised at 125bpm.

..in Eastern-Euro HELL!

G.O.D in my backyard.

The Coloured Balls - Ball Power (Aztec Music)

Sometimes you get lucky living in the Lucky Country especially when it comes to popular-gulcha and music. I mean, I must confess, for such a little pisher country, we produce some very fine hedonistic, psychedelic rock n' roll music un-fettered by politics , Political correctness and bad artists in general. Another thing is that I was fortunate to be a city-slicker (well suburban slicker) in my up-bringing, as opposed to 95% of Farmer and Faygel nobs that make up the 'cultural elite' that gives Aussie art and culture such a snore inducing rep in the first place. Well anyway, as a kid, I remember once some family friends of ours son came over, he happened to be some sort of burnt-out drug-casuality who'd been in rehab and mental hospitals and the like, and somewhere along the line he mentioned this bloke LOBBY LLOYD, and was saying things along the lines that Lloyd made (Billy) Thorpie look like a Poonce. He was MENTAL, his guitar was louder than anything on earth, and he used to live in Centre Road East Brighton ( a reasonable, though not ostentatious upper-middle class suburb to boot!), which was around the corner from where I grew up! SO I had Aussie punk rock history in literally my own back yard! Now at the time I was getting into a lot of garage punk music via 80s bands like the PAINTERS and DOCKERS and COSMIC PSYCHOS, and LOBBY LLOYD's name useta get mentioned as he owned or had something to do with RICHMOND RECORDERS here in Melbourne, that was where all these shitty Melbourne punk bands used to record and end up sounding like rubbish. ANYWAY, in the late 80s and early 90s I used to see loud-garage rock bands from Geelong and Camberwell (funny how in Australia you had rich kid dropouts making music with poor drop-outs and they all rocked the same, I guess that's DEMOCRACY in the purest sense, eh?)...But this Lobby Lloyd influence would never go away. He produced the Aussie X, the Painters and Dockers, the megaultrahardcorethrashmetal DEPRESSION and I think a BORED! record or two. BORED! covered 'Human Being' in their live sets, and I was lucky to hear the Cosmic Psychos version of 'Guitar Over-Dose' in the studio, where it sounded great, until I heard the CD version. Then this mate of mine had an art teacher called Phil Brophy, who useta dress up like a 'sharpie' which was pretty much the main subcultural audience of the COLOURED BALLS. The 'sharpies' were this mutant working-middle class youth culture of the 70s here in Australia, that mixed the look of English 60s mods/skinheads and David Bowie Ziggy Stardust(!!!) into one. But instead of them being bisexuals, they'd drink beer and break each others noses and knife each other and shit. Initially the 'sharpies' meant the way you dressed, but this was quickly punched-in-the head, and came to mean the sharpness of yr flicknife you carried, or bottle you smashed to rearrange some bozo's face with. The 'sharpies' existed for most of the 70s until punk came along. The 'Sharpie' look is sorta trendy now, but alot of it moved to the country and mutated into the 'bogen' subculture, which the Cosmic Psychos cashed in on in the 90s. But it was the Psychos who kinda piqued my interest in this Lobby Lloyd bloke, as this 'G.O.D' track was awesome, amphetamine, motoronic pounding psychedelic ROCK. I said to myself meekly that Lobby Lloyd was a legend. And yesterday the stars aligned, the bank balance was in the black and a beautifully remastered, repacked and LOCALLY PRODUCED CD version of the long out-of-print, impossible to find BALL POWER album emerged. In my hand I had the new Bob Dylan record and BALL POWER, and I said fuck-it, I will support my own PRODUCT!!! Bought the bugger, popped it in the car CD abd floored it all the way home as 'Flash' blasted out of my quadrophonic-4 stereo system via the tunes' Who-meets-MC5 propulsive "yeah"! Then you get some so-so boogie-woogie numbers until the Sabbath rifferama of 'Human Being' and a really up-beat version of 'Whole Lotta Shakin' comes along, but Lloyd plays the chords in a higher key that makes it more psychedelic and droney than the usually chugga-chugga style. Album killer is the 10 minute plus neo-Pink-Fairies workout 'That's what Mama said' that features some very nice primal-electronics that sound like Sun Ra's Kahoutek mixed in via a rousing chant like chorus that'll get even the most drunken slob dribblin the words out in no time. There's a collection of six singles as extras, that vary from some dated boogie-woos Oz-Rock vomit, to prolly the best song on the whole albumand the best song the Who never did 'Love me girl' and the very Punk Fairies or High Time MC5 rocker 'Devil's disciple'... Album closes with a totally remastered to get blastered-to 16 minute version of 'Guitar Overdose' recorded live at Sunbury in 1973. You are unlikely to find a more transglobal, psychedelic, elevating, teeth gnashing, smash yr head more than an Islamic Mullah dose of energising rock anywhere in the known universe. And it makes me feel even better that G.O.D lived in my back yard! Amen!

another TEN on the ZEN

..a proper post soon to come, but here's some filler for the toilet break, random Zen shuffles:

1. JANDEK - 28-8-05 LIVE @ AUSTIN bootleg - part of the Perplexed-one's on-going world tour. His guitar meanders down the fret board as he whines about wanting to be loved, really he's not that different to Elton John or someone, ya know.
2. U2 - IN GOD'S COUNTRY - Christian rock, it even has that fucken tooty-flooty sort of sound that Briar-butt boys play. Gee the Irish are a pack of cunts.
3. MUSIC MACHINE - TALK, TALK - Nuggets gold. Fuzzed out to shit with lotsa keyboards. This one reminds me of THE SHOWER SCENE FROM PSYCHO, that Melbourne 80s band. Could also sound like one of those Timbaland tracks.
4. MY BLOODY VALENTINE - TREMOLO - this sounds like the Beatles when they went psychedelic, especially something George woulda done. There's even a timbla or whatever those Indian percussion things are called.
5. WIRE - KIDNEY BONGOS - a mate of mine reckons this is perfect 80s pop. It's actually pretty shit.
6. ROLLING STONES - SHAKE YOUR HIPS - The guitars on this sound like they were done a four-track. Bloody smart-arse limeys.
7. HOWLIN' WOLF - HOLD YOUR MONEY - You can't go wrong with Howlin' Wolf. Sounds like it was recorded in a really small and really packed juke-joint with Negros high on speed. You see, this stuff, it just swings.
8. KIM SALMON - YOU GOTTA LET ME DO MY THING - Salmon wishing he was doing soundtracks for John Holmes films, of course, there's a flute in there.
   
9. THE GUN CLUB - GOODBYE JOHNNY - this sounds tinny and shit. It influenced a tinny and shit Aussie band of the same name as the track. Pack of fucken junkie alcoholics. Now there's a band called the Drones who sound even MORE similar, just not as tinny.
10. THE MAGIC MARKERS - WE ARE THE MAGIC MARKERS - the youth of the SOnic Youth who have emerged as part of Thurston Morre on-going no-wave social-project. At least they're better than SOnic YOuth. Lots of angry young art-fuckers saying 'fucken' and over-distorted lo-fi blare, they remind me of Black Flag for some reason. It's alright.
    

THE RETURN OF THE 5 BEST NON-ARGENTO/BAVA GIALLI!

Women drivers - DEATH LAID AN EGG

NUMERO TRES : EQUALIZIO: DEATH LAID AN EGG and THE FIFTH CHORD

Run to the Vatican coz its back...!

My next two 'Best non-Argento/Bava' gialli, while don't really figure so much in the story/plot or boobs/blades and blood department, definitely do so in terms of there succinct visual style and to a large extent weirdness. The first is DEATH LAID AN EGG. Yep its premise is very fucken STRANGE to begin with, coz literally, it’s about eggs and death. There's this guy called Marco, played by IL GRANDE SILENSIO' Jean-Louis Tringitgnant. who owns a hi-tech poultry farm and is married to Gina Lollabrigida and has a hot sorta blonde secretary that he wants to fuck, and you sorta know the rest. But if sexual infidelities and murder are the basic templates, it’s the mind-fucked visual cut-up style that raises this film above the sum of its parts. Giulo Questi, who directed the great and very violent-and-off-its-head Spag-Western DJANGO KILL, IF YOU LIVE..SHOOT! tries his hand at the giallo genre (as did nearly every other director from Italy in the late 60s early 70s) and does a pretty diffracted, but no less interesting job. For one the premise involving a high-tech Poultry Farm is pretty weird, especially when you have some loopy subplot involving mutated chickens. But then you have this completely LSD flash-backed visual style with erratic jump shots and a completely acid-fried title sequence that makes everything feel a bit nisht. And the soundtrack. Well think of all that weird musique concrete stuff from the 60s that all theses sonic mathematicians were doing in European Universities, and yr pretty much there, in fact this whole film feels kinda musique concrete for that matter.. The visual colour scheme uses lots of yellow, keeping with the genre and maybe due to the fact that there's chicken and eggs and whatever in there somewhere. In many ways this film comes off like one of those late-60s acid-fucked Godard movies like WEEKEND or 2 or 3 THING I KNOW ABOUT HER but using the giallo framework, there's also lots of weird architecture and sexual violence like some sort J.G BALLARD novel, and Gina Lollabrigida shows some booty just to keep things nice and orderly.

Spinning out with the FIFTH CORD

Italo-cult legend Franco Nero stars in the FIFTH CORD as a shicker journo who becomes a suspect in a murder, done by some guy chopping off fingers of a glove that he leaves next to his victims (turns out he’s an Australian from Sydney). The film borrows heaps from BAVA's gialli like BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, and for most of it, is a bit of a snore-fest, but like EGG the film is redeemed by its visuals. In this case, the film was shot by uber-Italian-legend-cinematographer VITORIO STORARRO. Now I have a friend who is some-sort of cinematographer and he like many other people of this talent, swear by the work of STORARO. Some of his work includes film like APOCALYPSE NOW, ISHTAR, THE LAST EMPEROR, THE CONFORMIST, the mod-giallo THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and *ahem* THE LAST TANGO IN PARIS. THE FIFTH CORD was one of Storarro's early efforts, and what an effort. In fact I think this is one of the first films I've ever seen where the cinematography is more interesting than the film itself. Storraro's sugar-shit-sharp lensing gives the film a cold-clinical look, and his usage of muted colours gives the film a relentless atmosphere, despite the fact that not much is really going on. In many ways this film works like an Antionioni-giallo (innaresting as Ant-o refers to LA'AVENTURA as a giallo in reverse!) with it's nice usage of space and architecture to create a cold environment and atmosphere of emotional dislocation. The Blue Underground DVD has been remastered off High-Def or something, so everything looks super-duper clear. The film is nowhere near as kinky or shocking as the liner notes say, but yeah, the cinematography is STUNNING, and probably the best seen on any gialli this side of an Argento one. But that’s the whole point of this list, ‘aint it?

Looks like the cover artwork of some band from THE WIRE magazine