Been sitting on my arse watching stuff on DVD, starting with...
TWO RARE AS SHIT FILMS by ALAN CLARKE (U.K)...The cinema of Alan Clarke has been getting a bit of how you say 'chi-chi' reappraisal in recent years, most notably via Gus Van Sant and every film he's made since ELEPHANT, which was inspired by Alan Clarke's short film of the same name, as well as alumni of Van Sant, Harmony Korine, who lists Clarke as one of his favourite directors. You also get Clarke's' influence in many of the trendy 'grunge' film-makers, most notably the films - at least up to TRAINSPOTTING of Danny Boyle, and other trendies like Lynne Ramsay who made MORVERN CALLAR or even that guy who recently made that Joy Division movie KONTROL, and then let’s not forget Belgian guns the Dardenne Brothers, who's steady-cammed social realism -owes more to Clarke's films than the easy comparison to Bresson made by 95% of Johnny-cum-lately film reviewers or whatever they call themselves these days.For those that want to dive into Clarke's work, well you don't have to look too far. The most-excellent cult-cinema label BLUE UNDERGROUND put out a box-set a few years back that comprised of his most well-known film, the borstal-basher SCUM, as well as the equally excellent MADE IN UK, THE FIRM and the previously mentioned ELEPHANT. The box-set it OOP, but the titles are available as individual film. Clarke's final film (he died too young in 1990), the dirty-comedy RITA & SUE & BOB TOO is also available from the UK... But Clarke's other stuff is extremely rare, made more so by the fact that most of Clarke's output for BBC television as one off 'movies of the week', so if you know someone who taped them when they screened in the 80s yr in luck...
The first of the two films I saw was the most excellent CHRISTINE, which is pretty much the day in the life of a young, working-class female junkie. Living in drab flat, Christine basically spends her days shooting up, and then walking to her friends’ houses to shoot up some more. Dialogue is kept to a minimum as Clarke's steady-cam stalks his main protag with a low-rent Kubrick styled efficiency. There's no drama, just the blunt, dull and monotonous process of the junkie shooting up, nodding off and then repeating. Clarke uses his signature of 'the walker' to great effect here. A running theme in Clarke's films, despite the overall bleakness of Thatcher's England, is the concept of 'the Walker'..Nearly every character in Clarkes' work is walking through a bleak, almost alien environment, as if they are stuck in a prison, in this case working class England. Steadycam is the method to follow his protagonist’s journey and events literally unfold along the way, in real time. CHRISITNE is no different; she walks, shoots up and nods off, all the way until the last fix, where she may have just found an inner peace...
The second Clarke rarity I saw was THE ROAD...Some rate this one quite highly but it didn't do much for me..based on a play, the film had too much talking heads complaining directly to the camera, punctuated by a brief steady-cam shot of each character...The film revolves around the lives of two disenfranchised woman and two guys they meet at a drab disco. Interspersed are the monologues of a sad old divorcee, a sad old man, and a sad young couple. The film sits very much in that Irvine welsh TRAINSPOTTING type mould with people talking in a heavy British vernacular and complaining about the system and whatnot. The film is a lot more stylised that Clarke's other work, with scuzzy settings and characters mugging for the camera in freeze-frame. If you want to know where Danny Boyle got a lot of his original ideas you should try and check out THE ROAD.
Finally I watched the totally off-its-head JE T'AIME MOI NON PLUS directed by French-frog pop hero serge Gainsbourg. Starring Warhol beefsteak Joe Dellasandro and French-fry junkie-chic Jane Birkin, the film tells the story of Krassky (Dellasandro), a gay truck driver who falls for a chick with no tits and look like a boy called Johnny (Birkin)...Poor Krassky, he thinks he's falling for this anorexic, until he has to sleep with her, and then in frustration can only consummate his love for her Greek-style! Yeah well, how do you interpret this film? To me it was like a Fassbinder movie meets one of the those 70's mid-western acid movies like something by Monte Hellman or an early Hal Ashby film..The premise is more ridiculous when you tell people about it, than when you actually watch it, but the whole film works on such a unique don't-give-a-fuck and provocative manner, that you can't help but be entertained, and realise they just don't make shit like this anymore! Oh, and for those who dig Monsieur Gainsbourg, this film is actually an adaptation of his hit song Je T'Aime Se Nous Plus, so suck on that one!
..don’t ask me what the title means, you can figure it out for yourself coz I know yr that smart. The other day, being the sad-old-cunt that I am within the 35+ ‘demographic’ that-still-buys-music-as-albums--on-physically-tactile-formats, I picked up probably my favourite UK-indie-shmindie band of all-time, the Wedding Present's sorta-kinda-classic album: BIZARRO. Now I actually bought this album back during the great pre-war days of the earliest 1990’s, though I’d initially lost interest in the band after purchasing their hit-album ‘GEORGE BEST’ a neat, though badly produced record, that was still important in that here was one of the first indie-rock bands that proudly championed their love of sports before it became trendy with fuckheads (the hardcore pnuk scene', and also just before mid- 90s via Ameri-undie bands like Pavement & Yo LaTengo and who seemed to have become sports fans over-night in fear of the great gay-takeover or some shit whilst doing their art-farty humanities course at Uni, and realized they aren’t exactly part of the great ‘art’ dominant paradigm.)
NOWthe Wedding Present in their day (what? 1986 to about 1990 or 1993) were basically up there in the big two of Brit-pop. It was Wedding Present vs. the Smiths), and while the Smiths are still championed for Morrissey’s exquisite charm and pomp and backbone of ALL British musique since 1972, GLAM, the Weddoes were always seemingly ignored because of their natural hetero boy-meets-girl-boy-has-complexity-with-girl-nobody-really-wins bittersweet paradigm. Which as I have been informed by a ex-pat servant-of-the-Empire buddy, made them quite popular with the chicks. I can vouch to that, though all I had was blue-balls-and-frustration/heartbreak with the only chick I ever went out with who was a Weddoes fan (there mighta been another, but she was into droney jazz records amongst the Stooges, and Nick Cave and PJ Harvey. ) In Australia, the Weddoes had fleeting indie-cult appeal with the sorta dancefloor ‘hit’ ‘My Favourite Dress’, that was the tougher antedote to the Smiths juggernaut in their songs ‘How Soon is Now’, ‘Big mouth’ etc…Another thing that didn't win the the Weddoes a fan base outside the UK was they were another trainspotter specialist type band. This was partly due to the fact that they WERE a 100% indie band pre the onset of 90s indie-rock globalizm fracas, while the Smiths already had major label distro in this country. You could and still to a great extent, only buy Wedding Present produce via ‘specialist’ stores or directly from the maker via the Internerd.Adding to this, still to this day, no skerrick of the Wedding Present ‘empire’ have ever been to Australia in the live-on-stage format. As a result being a fan of the Wedding Present immediately put you into a secret cult that almost immediately helped you identify with other secret agents of the resistance or some such shit.
SO we have BIZARRO. Following up to their indie-smash-hit and genre defining ‘product’ - GEORGE BEST - the band created waves in the UK by wrenching post-punk ideals by the balls, taking full ownership of their own work based on their substantial cult-following and having one of the first, we produce-it-and-you-cunts-distribute-it-better deals with a major (RCA) which would become the norm with grunge-etc..(tho’ wasn’t anything really new, since the Rolling Stones pioneered it).
BIZARRO immediately saw the band taking another step forward, album opener ‘Brassneck’ was pretty much a representation of a UK band absorbing the ‘Blast First’ records American-invasion on the indie-underground, immediately pushing this band into a more ‘rockist’ realm, which would aid them immeasurably in the next dam-busting raid that would occur some 4-5 years later over the pond.‘Brassneck’ is basically the Wedding Present interpreting Sonic Youth’s ‘Teenage Riot’ without losing their own unique identity, unlike the shoegazers soon thereafter. No doubt setting up the forgotten fact that BIZARRO is pretty-much one of the DEFINING (or seminal) records of the shoegaze cannon.The next three tracks ‘crushed’, ‘no’ and ‘thanks’ still stick the ye-old-schoolWeddoes ‘sound’ of jingly-jangly Anorak-spangly guitars and ennui lyrics, until the big-one ‘Kennedy’ comes along. Fuck a duck!The first Velvet-Undergound disco-‘floor’ track, with a cha-cha that’s still as limey as Blancmange’s ‘livin’ on the ceiling’, and a track that is more subversively ‘witty’ than anything Herr-Morrissey coulda penned. I crapped on before about the Fall’s BEND SINISTER being one of the first Chmosky-style albums, well ‘Kennedy’ would rate as one of the first Chmosky-stylee bubblegum pop-songs!
One of the great things about BIZARRO is the Wedding Present’s ability to take the ecstatic ‘What goes on’ strum without giving a fuck about the outcome. Critics would write this off as ‘boring indulgence’ since all they are really doing is strumming and not really going anywhere for five odd minutes. The only real flaw in this may not be as much fun for the listener as it is for the artist. But listening with fresh ears in my olde-age, the ecstatic strum-outs sound more like a response to the eccy-trance of the dance music at the time as well as a nod to the Daydream-Nation psych-expanses of the other mob. People forget that the Wedding Present were actually a dancegot ‘what have I said now?’ on the rocker behind me now and contrary to the indulgence, just stopped it’s ecstasy-strum a bit too early! band in the post-punk sense. They were still the offshoot of Joy Division (if Ian Curtis lived would the Weddoes have existed???), Wire, the Fall, but were possibly subconsciously taking a more dance stand via say their New Order or even their Gang of Four stylings. In fact, I got ‘what have I said now?’ on the rocker behind me now and contrary to the indulgence, just stopped it’s ecstasy-strum a bit too early!
But the rest of side-2 (or last 6 tracks or however i-dopes ‘schedule’ music these days) is all fucken great soft-psych jam-out noise bliss/fun/release/groove/meshigarse/primitive ritual –whatever!
Gedge’s lyrics were always as interesting and obscure as the sonics. Whereas Morrissey was always on his Oscar-Wildean via Derek Jarman via (showing my ignorance of UK culture here) I dunno Coronation-Street repression-Marxist-position-of-the-homo-‘other’ encoded-shtick, Gedge would stick to hetero boy-meets-girl-boy-has-complexities-with-girl as only he knows how, and alas pick up all the Morrissey ‘fans’ who knew they could never fuck him! Gedge lyrics have a matter-of-fact rawness and honesty/ awkwardness/neuroticness that makes him some sort of John Cassavettes inspired poet, even if he probably never watched any Cassavettes movies. Similarly, they have that quaint-but-potent interplay, humor, potency and bla-bla-ness that you find in most Eric Rohmer films..
..or even stuff like Godard’s ‘Contempt’ and plenty of Trauffaut (which probably adds to the Weddoes popularity with indie Franco-philes and American indie film-makers!) I was trying to position Gedge with UK film-makers of his time- in the way that it’s so easy to position Morrissey into the Jarman-Greenaway vanguard that was moving at the time - but it’s proving tricky (which is good). Despite having a sort of ‘kitchen sink’ reality about them, for the majority, Gedge’s lyrics were never as blatantly Marxist-leftist as the Leigh/Loach films of the time. The closest they would have resemble (of which I’m not terribly versed in either, remember, I am not a hardcore Anglophile) would have been the cinema of Alan Clarke, and even then, only ‘Rita & Sue & Bob Too’. (NOTE: If anyone wants to add more films or other culture I would never have seen, that might have been in alignment with Gedge’s lyricism, please fill me in I AM interested!)
So now it’s its time to put my pinhead hat on and do my lame attempt at charting the impact of this band that seem to have been written out of Brit-roque history. From my R&D the Weddoes were definitely the next step from the Joy Division/New Order sonic paradigm, and interestingly used the whole Factory-records ‘indie’ model for their show-business affair before nearly any bands of their generation. This probably set themselves apart from their Marxist (marx brother-ists?) C86 peers. The Weddoes weren’t afraid, to use the capitalist paradigm to their advantage, in fact they were probably more organized and together in the head than their peers, and probably were reviled for having such ‘careerist’ agenda (and tags that were wrong, but fuck the critic wankers)..Despite being emerging from the C86 thang, they were always a bit rougher and ‘rockist’ than their polite passive-aggressive contemporaries. That basically beat their own path.They also pledged allegiance to more ‘rockist’ post-punk groops like Wire, the Fall and the Buzzcocks (but then so did the fucken Fine Young Cannibals - aint pop music strange at the best of times?), not forgetting the Velvets, the birthday Party (apparently Gedge was paranoid there were too many similarities in name, that never ever occurred to me until I Googled it recently!) and elements of American hardcore via the faster-louder paradigm. But BIZARRO would create its own unfairly forgotten cross-the-and -in-pond tremors. The whole shoegaze thing owes a debt with the softer-louder dynamics of BIZARRO’s side-2, the early 90s Amerindie ‘sound’ was shaped as much by the Fall as the pop-accessibility of the Weddoes, from Superchuck, Pavement, whole pockets of the eastern-board US undieground, to fuck I dunno? the Strokes, the strumarella of the Arctic Monkeys?? Many more decorated and possibly more eloquent and better dictioned rock writers bemoan where British rock disappeared and re-emerged in it’s own right, it never ceased to amaze why the Wedding Present were never considered, and there’s probably smarter dudes who could tell me why. (NOTE: The Weddoes drummer ain’t too shabby!)
..with INLAND EMPIRE (the DVD), David Lynch gives us a double-album’s worth of film. Prolly better as two 120 minute blocks, it isn’t dissimilar to Tarantino’s KILL BILL 2-fer, but with Lynch you get a real paen to experimental or ‘underground’ American cinema, especially when it comes to the 70-minutes of ‘more things that happened’ DVD extra.
‘More things that happened’ basically works off two story strands. The first features an Eastern European super-model, who contemplates buying a watch off a dodgy Slavic who only wants to hold her hand…The second story features another male-Slavic crossover point, this time Laura Dern improves sad ‘confessional’ memories to what looks like a sloppy PI, goes through a great trippy reality-warp via creepy doorways and staircases and hallways and weird rabbits, only to confess some more, before we find our supermodel as an LA whore - actually a gaggle of whores who all have various states of herpes!
It’s Lynch. It’s experimental, and works more in the favour of yr hardcore American avant-garde set like yr Ken Angers and Brackages and Michael Snows, albeit with a slightly more ‘mersh bent, than anything else. The music is great, verging from yr usual ‘body-w/o-organs-gripping-drone' to some ‘hearing it from another room doof’ trip-hop to some lovely Cage-ian piano plonks, to the final dubby Blues-shuffle, that sounds like Lynch trying to do Horace Andy or Dawn Penn or something….
Yep it’s a double album of Lynch, some of it could be shorter, but when it hits ya, you know yr in safe hands.
(NOTE: The last few shots are very Kubrickian, made even more amazing by the fact it was done on a PD150!)
And it was on the 14th Day of Teshrei in the year 5478 of the Holy Calendar that lapsed Hebrew tribal-member and all-round legend -
Richard Meltzer - wrote in his holy tome THE AESTHETICS OF ROCK (which may have been written under the addled influence of mind-expanders, just like those bananas in the Mid-East did once upon a time many moons ago), that Bob Dylan - ‘the voice of the disaffected 60s generation and every generation until Armageddon’ or something like that - rather than give us meaning in his music, actually FREES us from meaning (I will quote the exact page and lines when I get home)…And so I sit in the ‘Common Era’ or A.D (After Death of Hesoos) date of14th January 2008, in a $5.50 el-shnorrer session to see ‘the greatest film of the last three months’ as voted by every critic and semiotics student and cult of Humanities students preparing papers to justify their courses, ‘I’M NOT THERE’ take two-odd hours to tell me what Meltzer said nearly 40 years ago in less than one sentence! …So did I like this film?
Well, yes, it’s a kaleidoscope of bio-pic, post-modern hipster mix-mash of hip European directors like Godard and Fellini and Mark Lester and even Tarkofski, and well fill in the rest..The film blunders around a bit as the two ex-Aussies in it overact to buggery, and Christian Bale doesn’t get enough screen time, but it all looks nice and is so intricately pieced together that there’s really not too much to dislike. It makes Dylan an icon on top of an icon, it fiddles with Haynes’ ‘identity’ politics deal, and never once mentions or addresses his Judaism. I dunno, was Mel Gibson a silent investor in this venture? It’s basically SPINAL TAP, but about a ‘real’ person or something like that (am I making sense? It’s all so Deleuzian or something…)
..Then I sit down in front of the Cable-Babel TV and watch another cool film, ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, directed by Terry Zwigoff, who has now made three really good films, but hasn’t quite made a great one. ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL is basically a loose remake (or re-imaging?) of Fritz Lang’s great SCARLETT STREET. It’s also a semi-autobiographical story about EIGHTBALL legend Dan Clowes (who wrote it), and his struggle to get laid and respected as an artist with TALENT and SKILL in art-school. It’s very funny, very honest, has a bit of thriller/gialloaction to boot, and a reallysheyner shicksa with a nice toochus.
For a shlepper like me, what more could I need?
(Actually I'm gonna waste more time watching 'The Lab with Leo Laporte which makes things like Blogging seem 'sexy'. NOTE: It still hasn't got ME laid!)
Yes, I have been SLACK...Yes I should do more...Yes I will be back...Geezz I'm starting to sound like a POLITICIAN, and what we do have an erection, I mean ELECTION coming up, so the bullshit is squeezing out...But I have been busy, tired, depressed, excited and just plain lazy (prolly a combo of all the above!)...
In that time I have converted to UBUNTU< style="font-style: italic;">shnorer uber-Nerd operating system, that used Lurvely pictures like the one above as their 'official' wallpaper! How can you NOT like that? And it's all free! SO no more Mac dreck for the Yuppy-fartsys and no more PC cuck for the Johnny-come-lately computer 'genius'..It's hardcore fiddling and wasting time with Ubuntu, and hence the dearth of posts as I learn to use the fershtinkener O/S from scratch! But at the end of it, it works, and at thew end of it, you feel a sense of achievement, like building a model aeroplane or something....
So I just saw David Lynch's new film INLAND EMPIRE. A 3 hours slog, that rubs the synapses no better nor worse than any of his other meshigarse, on reflection I kinda liked it. I really like the fact that I sat in an un-airconditioned cinema with narrow seats, and an under 30s audience that were so cool they couldn't lower the temperature in the fucken cinema, but I'll stop kvetching as this point. Basically the film is about some actress that gets a warning, enters a dual-identity headfuck, and then it goes on for three hours. The film reminded me in look to Sukhorov's RUSSIAN ARK, with an abundance of baroque interiors and exteriors. It also reminded me of Phillipe Grandrieux's LE NOUVELLE VIE, which I reviewed somewhere on the blog last year, basically cozalot of the film is set in Poland, and there's sex-trade. Nice boobs make an appearance as well. The image above doesn't happen in the film per-se, but something similar does. Lynch has made the best AmericanDV movie so far. I always find it interesting how guys like David Lynch, as they get older, seem to always find a younger audience. I guess that means he's pretty hip. End of Part.1
Well known Tony Mokbelimpersonator 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 fuckenrockstar clowns.'
Grohl will be extradited to Seattle from his idyllic Greek hideaway next week.
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.
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'.
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:
The rest of the best non-Bava-Argento giallos
Feeling like a coke-addicted pr0n-star listening to the Sisters of Mercy
..and a review of the great new 'Jason Crest' novel 66MindFuck99
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. Thisbloke, 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.
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.....
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 3rd 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? )
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?
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 JBHiFi 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 unrecordedStooges 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.
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.
FINAL SOLUTION - PERE UBU : Flat chat white-soul-funk. Laughner's guitar solo is the great air guitar solo freakout ever.
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.
HOLIDAYS IN THE SUN - THE SEX PISTOLS : smash your head! smash the fucken!
OH SWEET NOTHING - THE VELVET UNDERGROUND : more religious hand-holding, the song 'Hey Jude' never was!
FOUND A JOB - TALKING HEADS : just for the last 5 minutes where they rip off Parliament.
ROCKS OFF - THE ROLLING STONES : more mileage out of a high E chord than any band except the Velvet Underground.
BOSS HOSS - THE SONICS : this song makes me want to get drunk in a good way.
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
BONZO GOES TO BITTBURG - this song by the Ramones makes me cry.
The first of the two films I saw was the most excellent CHRISTINE, which is pretty much the day in the life of a young, working-class female junkie. Living in drab flat, Christine basically spends her days shooting up, and then walking to her friends’ houses to shoot up some more. Dialogue is kept to a minimum as Clarke's steady-cam stalks his main protag with a low-rent Kubrick styled efficiency. There's no drama, just the blunt, dull and monotonous process of the junkie shooting up, nodding off and then repeating. Clarke uses his signature of 'the walker' to great effect here. A running theme in Clarke's films, despite the overall bleakness of Thatcher's England, is the concept of 'the Walker'..Nearly every character in Clarkes' work is walking through a bleak, almost alien environment, as if they are stuck in a prison, in this case working class England. Steadycam is the method to follow his protagonist’s journey and events literally unfold along the way, in real time. CHRISITNE is no different; she walks, shoots up and nods off, all the way until the last fix, where she may have just found an inner peace...
The second Clarke rarity I saw was THE ROAD...Some rate this one quite highly but it didn't do much for me..based on a play, the film had too much talking heads complaining directly to the camera, punctuated by a brief steady-cam shot of each character...The film revolves around the lives of two disenfranchised woman and two guys they meet at a drab disco. Interspersed are the monologues of a sad old divorcee, a sad old man, and a sad young couple. The film sits very much in that Irvine welsh TRAINSPOTTING type mould with people talking in a heavy British vernacular and complaining about the system and whatnot. The film is a lot more stylised that Clarke's other work, with scuzzy settings and characters mugging for the camera in freeze-frame. If you want to know where Danny Boyle got a lot of his original ideas you should try and check out THE ROAD.
Finally I watched the totally off-its-head JE T'AIME MOI NON PLUS directed by French-frog pop hero serge Gainsbourg. Starring Warhol beefsteak Joe Dellasandro and French-fry junkie-chic Jane Birkin, the film tells the story of Krassky (Dellasandro), a gay truck driver who falls for a chick with no tits and look like a boy called Johnny (Birkin)...Poor Krassky, he thinks he's falling for this anorexic, until he has to sleep with her, and then in frustration can only consummate his love for her Greek-style! Yeah well, how do you interpret this film? To me it was like a Fassbinder movie meets one of the those 70's mid-western acid movies like something by Monte Hellman or an early Hal Ashby film..The premise is more ridiculous when you tell people about it, than when you actually watch it, but the whole film works on such a unique don't-give-a-fuck and provocative manner, that you can't help but be entertained, and realise they just don't make shit like this anymore! Oh, and for those who dig Monsieur Gainsbourg, this film is actually an adaptation of his hit song Je T'Aime Se Nous Plus, so suck on that one!
