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Post by petrolino on Aug 9, 2019 21:07:30 GMT
Patti Smith & Laurie Anderson : The Poet & The Pioneer
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Patti Smith
Patricia Lee Smith was born on December 30, 1946 in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother Beverly Smith was a jazz singer who worked as a waitress and her father Grant Smith was a machinist. The family moved from Chicago to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then on to Deptford Township, New Jersey. Smith graduated from Deptford Township High School in 1964 and went to work in a factory. Smith was under consideration to become lead singer of rock band Blue Oyster Cult; it didn't happen but she did contribute lyrics to several of the band's songs. She performed her own material with guitarist Lenny Kaye in the early 1970s. She then formed a solid touring group around this nucleus, made up of core musicians who were hand-picked from the New York art scene. The band featured Kaye on guitar, keyboardists Richard Sohl and Bruce Brody, bassist Ivan Kral and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty. Smith has authored poems, penned lyrics, written articles, essays and stories. She's a keen artist whose drawings have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her book 'Just Kids' (2010) is a memoir documenting her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe. 'M Train' (2015) is another memoir that also comes as an audiobook and a spoken word album.
“You could say that Mozart was a punk rocker. I was just looking at an article today about a group called Fat White Family, and I liked very much the things that they were saying, because their whole idea is that punk rock isn’t just reactionary, but is in pursuit of the new, of making space, of not being confined or defined. Artaud, Rimbaud and Daumal: All three of them were very much seeking the new, seeking to topple the gods of the past.”
- Patti Smith, The Independent
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Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips Anderson was born on June 5, 1947 in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a suburb located about 24 miles due west of downtown Chicago. Anderson was encouraged to question by her parents and she grew up to become an exceptional student. She has a range of educational honours and continues to receive citations to this day (Anderson was selected to be the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's first resident artist). She's also an enthusiastic inventor, sometimes working alone, sometimes working in collaboration. Perhaps her most famous musical creation is a tape-bow violin she plays. She's also co-creator of a talking stick and has experimented extensively with synthesisers and vocal filters. Her genre-defying work as composer, performance artist and conceptual artist has allowed Anderson free reign to conduct investigations into memory, psychology, philosophy and astronomy. She's also produced and directed a range of multimedia projects including 'Home Of The Brave' (1986), 'What You Mean We?' (1987) and the transitory diary 'Heart Of A Dog' (2015).
"You know, one thing I’d really like to do is take a year and just make a gigantic landscape painting. It’s something I wish I had the time to do, with really thick paints. I love making paintings. It’s exactly like music. It’s the same thing as bowing—the same stroke, the same decisions. You look at it and think, “Is it complex enough, weird enough, empty enough, full enough, connected enough?” All the same things that you ask about a piece of music."
- Laurie Anderson, Andy Warhol's Interview
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Patti Smith \ Laurie Anderson : 5 Studio Albums
'Horses' (1975) - Patti Smith / 'Big Science' (1982) - Laurie Anderson
"With its confluence of culture and artistic disciplines, New York City in the mid-Seventies was the backdrop to the story of Horses, and its greatest contextual influence. Patti Smith left her working-class town in New Jersey for New York in the late Sixties, befriended future superstar photographer Robert Maplethorpe and became an artist in a complete sense of the word and ideal. Then the city moulded her. She worked in bookshops, met Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs while living at the Chelsea Hotel, starred alongside drag performance artist Wayne County in plays Femme Fatale and Islands, co-wrote with and starred in lover Sam Shepard’s play Cowboy Mouth, and not only read her poetry but performed it, accompanied by her friend, guitarist Lenny Kaye, at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project before a star-studded audience including Warhol, himself. The other major force that helped give birth to Horses is the opening of a certain venue on The Bowery. The rise of CBGB’s and its dynasty of acts including Television, The Ramones, The Talking Heads and Blondie, not only mirror, but frame the rise of Patti Smith and her group. Along with Kaye, Patti enlisted keyboard player Richard Sohl, bassist Ivan Kral (poached from Blondie), and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty from The Mumps to form her group. CBGBs afforded the band the artistic freedom to explore their musical ideas and congeal their interplay, song writing and performance. Journalists and A&R record execs started trekking downtown to check out the commotion and CBs became the nexus of a bonafied ‘scene’. Patti Smith and her group were working hard, and along with Television, performed two-shows-a-night, four-nights-a-week for seven-consecutive-weeks. It was during this stint that legendary A&R man Clive Davis signed her to Arista Records and The Patti Smith Group’s recording career started in earnest. Patti wanted to salute those who had paved the way. The group returned to Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady studios (where Patti and Lenny had recorded their first single) and enlisted John Cale, the former cellist with The Velvet Underground, as their producer as they admired the unbridled sound of his solo work. Having one of the leading forces behind an already legendary group breathing life into one’s debut record certainly racked up the rock points. Within the grooves of the album, Smith summoned up some of the great spirits of rock including one of her idols Jim Morrison who she saw as an angel with stone wings in her dream and she cried for him to ‘Break It Up’, which became the title of the tune she wrote with Televsion’s Tom Verlaine. The album’s closing song, “Elegy” was recorded on the 18th September, the anniversary of Hendrix’s death. Much in the way she paid tribute to her rock n roll heroes, Smith also invokes the spirit of literature, name-checking her muse Rimbaud and referencing the beautiful, sexual male Johnny from her friend William Burroughs’ novel The Wild Boys in her song ‘Land’. Patti Smith 1975 Robert Mapplethorpe 1946-1989 ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008 Finally, there is the musical cross-pollination which again reflected the band’s coming of age in a musically diverse downtown scene with the reggae-inflected ‘Redondo Beach’ or the improvisation inspired by Cale on ‘Birdland’, a song based on Peter Reich’s memoirs about his father Wilhelm Book of Dreams (as is Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting’). There is also a gloriously cathartic punky version of the Van Morrison-penned classic ‘Gloria’. Just like the downtown New York City from which is sprang, ‘Horses’ is marked by a sense of urgency and liberation. It is galvanising in its sense of purpose. But the word that defines it through and through is ‘Freedom’: the social and sexual freedom of the era, the artistic freedom of a crime-ridden and economically decayed city, the freedom of rock n’ roll, the freedom of Burroughs’ Johnny and The Wild Boys, the freedom of wild horses.
- Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, Classic Album Sundays
"It was ahead of its time back in 1982, but now Laurie Anderson's debut sounds just right for a world gone totally wrong. "In September 2001, I was on tour and played 'O Superman' at Town Hall in New York City," writes Laurie Anderson in the liner notes to her newly reissued Big Science. "The show was one week after 9/11, and as I sang, 'Here come the planes/ They're American planes,' I suddenly realized I was singing about the present." "Suddenly?" Methinks Anderson is being a touch disingenuous. On the night of September 11, 2001, Anderson was performing at the Park West in Chicago. The air was heavy with dread, confusion, and anger. Waiting for the show to begin, the crowd was talking amongst itself, conversations running the gamut between those three poles. Anderson herself had allegedly spent much of the morning on the phone with her partner Lou Reed, who was back in New York-- and supposedly sitting on the roof of their building watching the Twin Towers burn-- though she made nary a mention of the day's events once she started performing. The crowd was dead silent throughout, but when Anderson began "O Superman" you could hear the room shift as the already menacing song took on new layers of eerily contemporary meaning. "Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don't know me, but I know you. And I've got a message to give to you. Here come the planes. So you better get ready." The lyrics chimed out like an answering machine message sent to the future, picked up several decades too late. That song's mix of politics, Zen-like aphorism, and sentimentalism hit like a punch to the gut as the nation stood on the precipice of the unknown, and the toll the collapse of the Twin Towers would truly take on this country-- and the world-- hadn't quite settled in. So: "suddenly?" No, surely Anderson recognized the renewed power of her (sole) unlikely hit well before she made it home to New York City. Then again, the almost mystically timeless song was in a way always about the shifting "present." Anderson writes that "O Superman (For Massenet)" was inspired by a composition from Jules Massenet's opera Le Cid, "O Souverain", which in turn reminded Anderson of Napoleon's fall at Waterloo. She had also taken into account the bungled U.S. rescue mission in Tehran. It's a song of military arrogance, failure and the price we all pay, recorded for a modest $500 with an NEA grant. In 1981, it went to No. 2 in the UK. Big Science comprises songs from Anderson's also quite prescient United States project, a multimedia performance art piece cum opera ("It seemed like everyone I knew was working on an opera," she recalls) that depicted America on the brink of digital revolution and capitalist nirvana, where the dollar trumped tradition and the apocalypse-- cultural, political, technological-- loomed large. In fact, given its themes and presentation, much of Big Science sounds every bit about "the present" as "O Superman" does, and its idiosyncratic execution (with stylistic nods to the minimalists and pal William S. Burroughs) has helped the disc weather the passage of time remarkably well. It's less a document of the early 1980s than it is a dark glimpse of the future recorded at the dawn of the Reagan era. Anderson's ingenious move, musically, was utilizing the vocoder not as a trick but as a melodic tool. It's the first thing you hear on Big Science, looped in "From the Air" like some bizarre man-machine synth. The rest of the track revolves around a circular pattern of blurted sax figures and hypnotic drums. There's virtually nothing about it that screams its age as Anderson intones a wry announcement from a (caveman) pilot of a plummeting flight. "There is no pilot," she speaks. "You are not alone. Standby. This is the time. And this is the record of the time." It's a metaphor for every frightening thing about 20th (and now 21st century) living you can think of, and in its spare way it's enough to scare you silly."
- Joshua Klein, Pitchfork
'Break It Up' - Patti Smith & Tom Verlaine
'Radio Ethiopia' (1976) - Patti Smith Group / 'Mister Heartbreak' (1984) - Laurie Anderson
"The fact that things had changed for Patti Smith is clearly indicated on the album cover. This is the Patti Smith Group, not plain ol’ Patti Smith. She’s still the star of the show but Radio Ethiopia is a more collaborative effort. As far as it being a more commercial effort, that might be true, but since it didn’t sell particularly well, there’s no hard evidence to support that assertion, and many of the songs (especially the title track) distinctly lack commercial appeal. In its best moments, Radio Ethiopia is a hard-rocking album with strong attitude and more experimentation than the critics would have you believe. Patti Smith’s vocals are frequently characterized by power and energy, and she had one hell of a band backing her up."
- Altrockchick, Classic Music Review
"Probably the most pop-accessible of Laurie Anderson's recorded work, Mister Heartbreak features a number of stunning luminaries on the cutting edge of popular music at the time. Striking guitar work by King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew permeates this disc -- notably on "Sharkey's Day" -- punchy and angular. The production and bass work from Bill Laswell is superb. Peter Gabriel -- at the time still coming off the buzz of his departure from Genesis -- is featured in a duet with Anderson on "Excellent Birds." There is a heavy reliance on early-'80s synthesizers which would normally be very off-putting, but here they are executed well. Nowhere does the music slip into irreparable '80s cliché; it is still an entertaining listen. Lyrics are typical of Anderson' work -- complex, literate, provocative, difficult to fully comprehend. Haunting "Gravity's Angel" borrows imagery from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Spoken word delivery on "Sharkey's Night" is given by the legendary William S. Burroughs. This is a very satisfying listen and a great intro for those unfamiliar with Anderson's work."
- Mark Allender, AllMusic
'Excellent Birds' - Laurie Anderson & Peter Gabriel
'Easter' (1978) - Patti Smith Group / 'Home Of The Brave' (1986) - Laurie Anderson
"Patti Smith came back from the year-and-a-half break caused by her fall from a stage in January 1977 without having resolved the art-versus-commerce argument that had marred her second album, Radio Ethiopia. In fact, that argument was in some ways the theme of her third. Easter, produced by Bruce Springsteen associate Jimmy Iovine, was Smith's most commercial-sounding effort yet and, due to the inclusion of Springsteen's "Because the Night" (with Smith's revised lyrics), a Top Ten hit, it became her biggest seller, staying in the charts more than five months and getting into the Top 20 LPs. But Smith hadn't so much sold out as she had learned to use her poetic gifts within an album rock context. Certainly, a song that proclaimed, "Love is an angel disguised as lust/Here in our bed until the morning comes," was pushing the limits of pop radio, and on "Babelogue," Smith returned to her days of declaiming poetry on New York's Lower East Side. That rant (significantly ending, "I have not sold my soul to God") led into the provocative "Rock n Roll n****r," a charged rocker with a chorus that went, "Outside of society/Is where I want to be." Smith made the theme from the '60s British rock movie Privilege her own and even got into the U.K. charts with it. And on songs like "25th Floor," Iovine, Smith, and her group were able to accommodate both the urge to rock out and the need to expound. So, Easter turned out to be the best compromise Smith achieved between her artistic and commercial aspirations."
- William Ruhlmann, AllMusic
"It's possible that, in an era of digital magic, the originality of Laurie Anderson's use of technology in the 1980's has been diminished, but one thing that time hasn't affected is her originality. The existence of this concert film/performance art piece is a testament to the unique presence Laurie created out of herself in the 80's and her appeal to a truly appreciative audience of the time. Assembled loosely into small "bytes," the performances in Laurie's concert range from simple statements of fact to speculation, to obtuse poetry, to accessible pop music to challenging political statements, to beyond-surreal vignettes about nothing whatsoever. The overall tone comes off as stream of consciousness, the language filled with dream imagery and non-sequiturs. Hypnotic back-projection accompanies most of the on-stage action, including an eerie, "OZ"-like moment where Laurie's giant, disembodied head floats above the proceedings, glancing around non-committally. At times the whole thing seems to unravel only to come back around to a unified center again--that center always being Ms. Anderson, the ringmaster, who is by turns sexy, cute, scary, androgynous and almost always remote...but with a warm twinkle in her eye and dry sense of humor never far away. That what looks like chaos must indeed be very well choreographed is astounding, and could only have been wrangled with the help of the brilliant musicians Ms. Anderson assembled for this concert. It's also well--if conservatively--filmed. Of course, this was made with college kids in mind and I imagine it was popular with the stoner crowd. However, it works as its own sort of drug, by turns seductive, beguiling, off-putting, obnoxious, bewildering and immensely entertaining. It reminds me somewhat of David Lynch's Industrial Symphony no. 1 but is far lighter in tone and moves a bit quicker. I doubt it's possible to get this anymore and will eventually be forgotten; I'm glad I have it and pull it out now and then when I'm in the mood to sit back and be transported to Laurie's odd 80's world for 90 minutes."
- Tony Dood, Internet Movie Database 1
'Space Monkey' - Patti Smith Group
'Wave' (1979) - Patti Smith Group / 'Strange Angels' (1989) - Laurie Anderson
"Wave," Patti Smith's fourth album, opens with a strong cluster of songs, blending her poetic, occasionally obscure lyrics with producer Todd Rundgren's pop-rock approach. Smith boasted "I have not sold my soul to God" on the rant "Babelogue" from "Easter," but "Wave" has a friendlier view toward the spiritual world, even fusing, in "Dancing Barefoot," religious and sexual ecstasy in the spirit of the Song of Songs. The album's opener, "Frederick," is Smith's love song for Fred (Sonic) Smith, the MC5 guitarist who would become her husband in 1980. That formal first name is quite a handful of phonemes to shape into a romantic tune. Smith delivers one that's sweet, almost teenage naive and giddy, with its images of guardian angels and its citation of the child's prayer, "now I lay me down to sleep," transformed into romantic rapture: "kiss to kiss breath to breath / my soul surrenders astonished to death." Robert Christgau called "Dancing Barefoot" "quite possibly her greatest track ever." Co-written with band member Ivan Kral, it ponders, in a extremely catchy way, her attraction to Smith and the conflation of human and spiritual ecstasy, with its images that make me (if not you) think of whirling dervishes: "Here I go and I don't know why / I spin so ceaselessly / Till I lose my sense of gravity." (The Feelies, by the way, recorded a spiffy remake of Smith's song with a bitchin' guitar solo.)"
- Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Laurie Anderson's third proper studio album, coming over five years after 1984's Mister Heartbreak (1986's Home of the Brave was a film soundtrack), is a near-total departure from anything she had done before or, indeed, anything she did after. The most purely musical of Anderson's albums and the one on which she does the most actual singing (though her trademark deadpan spoken-word passages are still present and accounted for), Strange Angels seems to be Anderson's idea of a straightforward pop album. Of course, given Anderson's pedigree, this is not Whitney Houston territory; the closest parallel would be Joni Mitchell's more experimental, post-Mingus work: pretty but chilly, with a certain emotional distance even on the most immediately appealing songs (in this case, the thrilling "Babydoll" and the dreamy title track). There appears to be no underlying concept to the album, although the lyrical themes of three of the songs are explicitly taken from 19th century American literature. The musical arrangements are remarkably complex and feature cameos from not only Anderson's usual collaborators (Adrian Belew, David Van Tieghem, etc.) but also a motley crew ranging from jazz vocalist Bobby McFerrin to session keyboardist Robbie Kilgore. As a result, the songs are sometimes a little too busy, but Anderson manages to remain the center of attention throughout. An album on which longtime Anderson fans tend to be divided, Strange Angels is a perfect introduction for anyone who might find the deadpan surrealism of Big Science or United States I-IV a bit much."
- Stewart Mason, AllMusic
'Strange Angels' - Laurie Anderson
'Dream Of Life' (1988) - Patti Smith / 'Bright Red' (1994) - Laurie Anderson
"At first I took Dream of Life for that most painful of embarrassments, a failed sellout. Was she unwilling to waste her hard-won politics on weirdos? Proving herself a fit mother by going AOR, only she hadn't heard any AOR in about five years? Sad, sad. But soon I was humming, then I was paying attention, and now I think of this as the latest Patti Smith record. If she doesn't sound as unhinged as last time, she probably isn't, but as matrons go she's still out there. Her prophetic rhetoric is biblical just like always, with a personal feel for the mother tongue I wish more metal Jeremiahs knew to envy. The music is a little old-fashioned and quite simple, controlled but not machined, and the guitars sing. Her Double Fantasy, suggests a Detroit Smith named RJ. Only we don't formalize our equality by doling out turns, adds a Detroit Smith named Fred Sonic. A-"
- Robert Christgau, Dean Of American Rock Critics
"Indelible, Bright Red is a mature, crafted, high-polish, art-avante concept album. I’ve had this album for 15 years. I know it like the back of my hand. I started playing this a lot in 1995 and found it the most fascinating thing I’d ever heard. Creepy. Dark. Haunting. Packed full of meaning. It’s beautiful and smooth – a pure ambient sound, with some severe percussive backtracking on certain songs, while others present an eerie twinkling state-of-the-art clean studio-synth sound. The album is produced by Brian Eno. Lyrically, it’s even more fascinating still. It’s the only album I’ve ever really thought about the lyrics in great detail – a kind of hypnotic poetry set to music. In terms of ‘concept album’, what we get here is a self-referential world, like a spherical concept where songs link up thematically across the whole piece. Certain words and phrases are repeated and brought up to create a network of links between tracks."
- Alan Bumstead, Vinyl Life
'Dream Of Life' - Patti Smith
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2019 16:28:08 GMT
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Post by petrolino on Sept 14, 2019 20:47:53 GMT
'Free Money' is my favourite Patti Smith song. Great video, thanks.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2019 21:58:31 GMT
'Free Money' is my favourite Patti Smith song. Great video, thanks.
Thank you for all the work you put into this thread
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Post by petrolino on May 8, 2020 23:30:16 GMT
Punk Biopics, Punk Documentaries & Miss Suzi Quatro
'Mapplethorpe' (2018)
'Mapplethorpe' is a biopic of photographer Robert Mapplethorope, who's played by Matt Smith, in my favourite performance I've seen him give. It's directed by documentarian Ondi Timoner, founder of Interloper Films. Marianne Rendon plays Patti Smith, who was once in a relationship with Mapplethorpe, and she's terrific as the high priestess of punk.
Marianne Rendon on location with Matt Smith and director Ondi Timoner
Smith previously appeared as a character in the biographical drama 'CBGB' (2013) which was met with disappointment. She was portrayed by Mickey Sumner in the film, daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler. Outside of these films and a couple of others, I don't recall there being many biopics of American punk musicians, as of yet.
Mickey Sumner | Patti Smith
I recommend the movie 'Mapplethorpe' if you're a fan of either Mapplethorpe or Smith. I hope it finds a wider audience in time.
Patti Smith & Robert Mapplethorpe
'I'maman' - Jobriath
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PUNK & Punk-Related Documentaries
01. The Blank Generation (1976 - Ivan Kral & Amos Poe) 02. Punk In London (1977 - Wolgang Buld) 03. The Punk Rock Movie (1978 - Don Letts) 04. D.O.A. : A Rite Of Passage (1980 - Lech Kowalski) 05. The Decline Of Western Civilization (1981 - Penelope Spheeris) 06. Urgh! A Music War (1981 - Derek Burbidge) 07. Stop Making Sense (1984 - Jonathan Demme) 08. X : The Unheard Music (1986 - W.T. Morgan) 09. The Clash : Westway To The World (2000 - Don Letts) 10. The Filth And The Fury (2000 - Julien Temple)
'Sure' - L.A. Girls
11. Hey! Is Dee Dee Home? (2002 - Lech Kowalski) 12. End Of The Century : The Story Of The Ramones (2003 - Jim Fields & Michael Gramaglia) 13. Edgeplay : A Film About The Runaways (2004 - Victory Tischler-Blue)
14. Linnearama (2005 - Various) 15. New York Doll (2005 - Greg Whiteley) 16. Punk: Attitude (2005 - Don Letts) 17. Blondie : One Way Or Another (2006 - Matt O'Casey) 18. Punk's Not Dead (2007 - Susan Dynner) 19. Joe Strummer : The Future Is Unwritten (2007 - Julien Temple) 20. Joy Division (2007 - Grant Gee) 'Santa Monica Blvd Boy' - The Skirts
21. Blank City (2010 - Celine Danhier)
22. The Sacred Triangle : Bowie, Iggy & Lou, 1971 - 1973 (2010 - Alec Lindsell) 23. She's A Punk Rocker (2010 - Zillah Minx) 24. Punk Revolution NYC (2011 - Tom O'Dell) 25. Punk In Africa (2012 - Keith Jones & Deon Maas) 26. Sunset Strip (2012 - Hans Fjellestad) 27. Anarchy! McLaren Westwood Gang (2013 - Phil Strongman) 28. The Punk Singer (2013 - Sini Anderson) 29. Looking For Johnny (2014 - Danny Garcia) 30. The Jam: About The Young Idea (2015 - Bob Smeaton) 'De De Troit (He Hit Me)' - L.A. Girls
31. The Damned: Don't Wish That We Were Dead (2015 - Wes Orshoski)
32. L7 : Pretend We're Dead (2016 - Sarah Price) 33. The Godfathers Of Hardcore (2017 - Ian McFarland) 34. Here To Be Heard : The Story Of The Slits (2017 - William E. Badgley) 35. XTC : This Is Pop (2017 - Roger Penny & Charlie Thomas) 36. Scenesters: Music, Mayhem, And Melrose Ave. 1985-1990) (2017 - Desi Benjamin) 37. Joan Jett : Bad Reputation (2018 - Kevin Kerslake) 38. Suzi Q (2019 - Liam Firmager) 39. Citizens Of Boomtown : The Story Of The Boomtown Rats (2020 - Billy McGrath) 40. The Go-Go's (2020 - Alison Ellwood)
41. 'Poly Styrene : I Am A Cliche' (2020 - Celeste Bell & Paul Sng)
42. 'Blitzed : The 80s Blitz Kids' Story' (2021 - Bruce Ashley)
'Strange Ways' - The Skirts
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Suzi Q
The documentary 'Suzi Q' (2019) is about multi-instrumentalist and serial shredder Suzi Quatro. It's a treat for punk fans as it looks at the profound influence she's had on punk music. Bassists from Gaye Advert to Kim Shattuck have cited Quatro as an influence on their playing styles.
Alice Cooper talks about the Pleasure Seekers (the Quatro sisters' band) and life in Detroit, Michigan in the 1960s. Among the contributors are musicians Clem Burke, Cherie Currie, Lita Ford, Chris Frantz, Debbie Harry, Wendy James, Joan Jett, Donita Sparks, Abby Travis, Kathy Valentine and Tina Weymouth.
Quatro says her high level of discipline is a product of her strict Catholic upbringing. She might be the only American to have ever won Britian's popular 'Rear Of The Year' contest. The first winner was Barbara Windsor in 1976. Musical icons to have been awarded this tabloid-selling title include Lulu (1983), Elaine Paige (1984), Lynsey De Paul (1985), Mandy Smith (1994), Charlottle Church (2002 - which apparently caused controversy due to her being 16 years old at the time though the decision was supported by 'The Daily Mail'), Rachel Stevens (2009) and Amanda Holden (2019).
Quatro gratefully accepted the title of 'Rear Of The Year', even confessing that her more brazen rock 'n' roll alter-ego was fond of wiggling her behind. Sadly, this led to her being interfered with by television presenter Russell 'The Party' Harty on an episode of his cringe-making chat show 'Harty', when he asked Quatro to turn around for him so he could have a good look at her bottom and then proceeded to give it a spank. The price of fame.
'Paralysed' - Suzi Quatro
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In the works ...
There's a new documentary on the Go-Gos in pre-production that might have been halted due to the Covid-19 global pandemic. I hope the Germs, the Skirts and other L.A. punk outfits that knew them will feature in the narrative.
There's also a documentary on Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex which seems to be in production limbo, perhaps due to lack of funding?
Recently, I enjoyed watching a 4-part television documentary series entitled 'Punk' (2019) which was hosted by Iggy Pop.
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Post by petrolino on Jul 17, 2020 23:55:16 GMT
ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL & THE PUNK REVOLUTION
'Rock, rock, rock, rock n' roll high school, Well I don't care about history, Rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school, Cause that's not where I want to be, Rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school,
I just want to have some kicks, I just want to get some chicks, Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high schooool ...'
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JIM JARMUSCH (born January 22, 1953, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, U.S.)
'# The soundtrack for ‘The State Of Things’ includes original music from Jürgen Knieper, as well as tracks from Joe Ely, X and The Del-Byzanteens. Jim Jarmusch was a then member of The Del-Byzanteens which often leads to the misinformation that Jarmusch co-wrote the music score. Leftover film stock from The State of Things was later used on the first third of Jarmusch's 1984 black-and-white film Stranger Than Paradise. Paul Bartel helped finance ‘Stranger Than Paradise’.'
- 'The State Of Things' (1982) at Wikipedia
There have been underground filmmakers over the years like John Waters, Amos Poe, Richard Kern and Nick Zedd who have become known for their outrageous takes on punk sensibilities. If I try to pinpoint when I think east coast cool collided with the industrial midwest in purely cinematic terms, I always think of filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. Spike Lee, who would make his own punk-influenced picture with 'Summer Of Sam' (1999), said he was inspired to go out and make a feature-length movie after seeing Jarmusch's New York picture 'Permanent Vacation' (1980). "The outrageousness of Andy Warhol's factory environment and its transformation into punk nihilism paved the way for experimentation of all kinds. A relationship between filmmakers, musicians and performers developed mainly because they hung out together. The punk scene was totally anti-art and anti-acceptance.
The current bands like Suicide, DNA, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Contortions, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Bush Tetras, and the Heartbreakers rocked the New York clubs. The clubs were a happening scene; Max's Kansas City, CBGB, Danceteria, Club 57 and later the Mudd Club played host to a whole cast of characters. It was in these clubs, rather than in cinemas or alternative spaces, that Eric Mitchell, Amos Poe, James Nares, Charlie Ahearn, Beth + Scott B, Vivienne Dick, Manuel De Landa and M. Henry James showed their films. Super-8 film was cheap and cameras easily available. This opened up the possibility for anybody to make films and conceive of their use in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with Hollywood in production, form, content or ideology save for a type of genre exploitation or image plundering, which, taken out of context, served to make a statement."
- Tessa Hughes-Freeland, 'No Wave - Punk On Film'
"In the mid-to-late '70s, I spent a good percentage{%} of my time in or around CBGB. I dislike nostalgia (and looking back in general), but it was a formative period of my life. The city was wild, life was cheap, and you could do whatever you wanted. CBGB was a rock 'n' roll epicenter, and we were interested in ideas. Nobody was there for the money, 'cause nobody had any, and nobody cared."
- Jim Jarmusch, 'CBGB & OMFUG : Thirty Years From The Home Of Underground Rock'
"I blew all my work study money on classes with Nicolas Ray, the film director who did 'Rebel Without A Cause'. I got to study with him and Jim Jarmusch was his assistant. Jim broke through with 'Stranger Than Paradise' and I was doing 'Underground USA', which is unfortunately unavailable. You can only show that movie in museums now because of all the bootleg music (Supremes, Velvet Underground) on the soundtrack."
- Patti Astor, 'The Fun One'
“I would not cite Wim Wenders as a particular influence any more than any other film-makers whose work I like. Wim works in a different way and often prefers, I think, not to have a script at all and just start filming and then finding the story that way. That's not the way I work. I like his visual sense and a lot of things about his films, but I would not cite him as a primary influence. But he has inspired me and also helped me personally by giving me film material in the very beginning and being supportive, and I have a lot of respect for him.
I loved Robby Mueller's work and I asked Wim Wenders in 1980 how I might meet him. I was going to the Rotterdam Film Festival to show my first film, Permanent Vacation, and at that time in Rotterdam the people who visited the festival stayed on a boat that was harboured there, it had a bar in it, and Wim said, "Just go on the boat and in the bar next to the peanut machine, Robby Mueller will be sitting there." So I went to Rotterdam, I went on the boat, I went in the bar, and next to the peanut machine Robby Mueller was sitting there. (Laughter) Seriously. So I sat down next to him and started talking to him. And we hung out quite a bit at the festival and he saw my first film, and he said to me eventually, "If you ever want to work together man, let me know." That was a big thing for me. I made my next film Stranger Than Paradise with my friend Tom DiCillo, because Tom was working then as a director of photography, but he really wasn't interested in shooting films, so when I wrote Down By Law, I immediately called Robby Mueller. The beautiful thing about Robby is that he starts the process by talking to you about what the film means, what the story is about, what the characters are about. He starts from the inside out, which is really, really such a great way. I've learned that you find the look of the film later after you've found the essence of the film, what its atmosphere is, what it's about and then you look at locations together, you start talking about light and colour, about what film material to use and the general look of the film, and we've worked together a lot now, so we don't have to discuss as many things as other people might because we understand each other.
He considers himself to be an artisan in a way. I remember, especially in Dead Man, the crew and I were joking a lot by saying, "He's Robby Mueller, but don't tell him that!" He considers he has a lens, he has film material and he has light. Sometimes crew members would mention some modern piece of equipment, "We could do that shot with a lumacrane," and Robbie would say, "What is a lumacrane?" I think he's like a Dutch interior painter, like Vermeer or de Hoeck, who was born in the wrong century.”
- Jim Jarmusch speaking at the British Film Institute
Spike Lee & Jim Jarmusch
Jarmusch is interested in cities with character. He returned to his adopted home of New York for 'Night On Earth' (1991), which also travels to Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and Helsinki. In between he'd made 'Down By Law' (1986) and 'Mystery Train' (1989) which visited the musical heritage of New Orleans and Memphis, as well as making an unexpected return home to Ohio to realise 'Stranger Than Paradise' (1984) which utilises several locations in Cleveland (about 30 miles direct from Akron, 40 miles drive). "Recorded in the practice space of the electric eels in late May 1975, Agitated would remain unheard for more than three years: in Ohio, where the band the Electric Eeels came from, there was no local music industry that would countenance something so hostile. In any case, the eels – lower case in honour of the poet ee cummings – were on the point of splitting up even as they recorded the song through, as founder member John D Morton remembers: "Violence, lack of support. Once at a gig, an audience member said: 'You guys are wrong!' Not, 'You guys stink!' or 'I don't like your music.'" Predicting the mood and the musical extremity of punk, two years ahead of time, Agitated bypassed 1976 and 1977 entirely. When it was eventually released on a single in late 1978, it slotted right in with the lo-fi, experimental aesthetic of the time. Indeed, that was the year when a whole range of Ohio music was revealed to British audiences, with spring tours and albums by Devo and Pere Ubu, the June release of the Stiff Records' The Akron Compilation, and the first Pretenders 45 by former Akron resident Chrissie Hynde. Along with songs by fellow Cleveland artists the Pagans and X___X, and Akron's Bizarros, Agitated features on a new compilation put together by Soul Jazz – Punk 45: Kill The Hippies! Kill Yourself! – which, as well as the scenes in New York and Los Angeles, recognises Ohio's importance to the story of American punk and opens up a whole 1970s history that is still underexposed. Although Akron and Cleveland are only 39 miles apart, there are as many differences as similarities. These were flattened out by the steady trickle of music into the UK from Akron and Cleveland that followed the 1978 Devo/Pere Ubu breakthrough: albums and songs by Tin Huey, Jane Aire, Rachel Sweet and the Bizarros (all from Akron), and Cleveland's electric eels, the Pagans, the Mirrors, and New York transplants the Dead Boys. The British media thought of it as a trend, as yet another wave, but it wasn't. What had happened was that, in the space opened up by punk, a whole range of music and activity that had been buried underground came to the surface. In Cleveland's case, the origins go back to the early 70s – with the formation of electric eels, just at the moment when, as Morton remembers, the city "was a vacuum for anyone originally creative". Cleveland – often abbreviated to Cle, after the airport code – sits on the southern bank of Lake Erie. The city looks north over a vast expanse of water, which in winter can deliver devastating dumps of the white stuff. Like Akron – prone to dust storms and saturated with the smell from the rubber factories – Cleveland had been blighted by decades of heavy industry."
- Jon Savage, ' Cleveland's Early Punk Pioneers : From Cultural Vacuum To Creative Explosion'
"Jim Jarmusch is from Ohio. It's very flat. You dream in very flat places. You learn to solve problems. Six presidents were born there. And Jim."
- Tom Waits, The New York Times Magazine
"I'm from Akron and I've always been a music nut."
- Robert Quine (The Voidoids), Perfect Sound Forever
"We all come from the Midwest and that's where there are 16 hours of horror movies a day on TV usually. We grew up with them."
- Lux Interior (The Cramps)
"Our early shows were like the confrontational 'Dada' events of 60 years earlier : the audience was a big part of it - we always evoked a hostile reaction."
- Poison Ivy (The Cramps)
"We were so insular. We started in Akron, Ohio, and there were just the five of us then. We did everything ourselves. We saw Devo as something bigger than a rock band. We thought that was the most boring thing you could do. We wanted to be a clearing house for concepts and ideas. That's where art de-VO came from. That's why we made films: Even though we had no money, we made the film The Truth About De-Evolution. We designed our own costumes, designed our own artwork and graphics. We designed every album cover that we ever had control of.
The downside of doing everything ourselves and directing our own films and producing our own films and going out and getting the props and coming up with the concept and the ideas was that we didn't really collaborate a lot. It's like, at the time, everybody wanted to work with us. David Bowie, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Iggy Pop - I stayed at his house for a couple weeks. He wanted to record our first album before we did. I was like, "No, we want to do it first," and he was like, "Shut up, this would be so good for you." He was crazy during that time."
- Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), A.V.Club
"Yeah, I have a real fondness for those post-industrial landscapes. There’s something really sad but really beautiful about them. I don’t know if it’s just nostalgia for growing up in Akron, but it is America to me much more than big cities, or clean forests, or anything like that. It’s extremely ugly, but I also find it very beautiful somehow."
- Jim Jarmusch, Film Comment
The Del-Byzanteens
Jim Jarmusch : A Stranger In Paradise
In 'Stranger Than Paradise', Willie (Lounge Lizard John Lurie) is visited in New York City by his 16 year old cousin Eva (Hungarian violinist Eszter Balint) on her way to Cleveland to see Aunt Lotte (Clevelander Cecillia Stark). Willie and his pal Eddie (Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson) decide to head to Ohio to see Eva and then they all go to Florida in search of excitement.
Jarmusch has strong ties to the large Hungarian community in Cleveland; there are many Slovaks living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Poles living in Chicago, Illinois and Czechs living in Miami, Florida. Jarmusch himself has Czech ancestry.
"Lux Interior entered the world on October 21, 1946 as Erick Lee Purkhiser, the second son of a conventional couple from the suburban town of Stow, Ohio. Situated around 8 miles northwest of the county seat and economic hub of Akron, Stow was a growing residential community that had seen industry supersede agriculture as its main source of income during the first half of the 20th century. This shift was mainly due to the Goodyear Tire & Rubber company's main manufacturing facility being located in nearby Akron where similar firms, including Firestone, also subsequently built plants.
Established as the largest rubber company in the world, Goodyear was the prime local employer, with Erick's father among the multitude of workers who passed through its gates each morning. As Akron's industry sought to keep pace with the increasing demand for automotive spares and other vulcanised sundries, the city's population doubled, earning it the title of 'The Rubber Capital of the World.' As constant demand for rubber products increased the need for workers to man the plants, Akron briefly became America's fastest growing city. While Erick's hometown of Stow was pleasant enough, the city where his father worked as a foreman was dominated by industry, with giant smoke-stacks belching plumes of toxic smoke into the skies above, while the nearby Cuyahoga River regularly became clogged with black, heavy oil that captured debris within its visceral flow. In addition to such environmental concerns, those who laboured amid the clamour of Akron's industrial plants were subject to long hours of mundane and occasionally hazardous work carried out in difficult conditions, with the effects of toxic air often exacerbated by humid, sweltering summers.
"It's very repressive," Lux explained. "Everybody works there 40 or 50 hours a week and when the weekend comes they just explode for a night or two, have a horrible headache on Sunday and get over it on Monday morning to get back in and punch the clock and go through another week's jail sentence. People really know how to go crazy in the Midwest."
Had Akron's population been primarily black, its immediate post-war social conditions would have made it a blues hub. As it was, it developed a reputation for being a place where real men did manly things - a notion underlined by the city's rocketing birth rate and an alcohol problem so severe that Alcoholics Anonymous was founded on Ardmore Avenue, situated a few minutes from the city centre."
- Dick Porter, 'Journey To The Centre Of The Cramps'
"Every city in Ohio had a train depot : Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Sandusky and Youngstown, even the smaller towns, Seneca, Barberton, Lodi, Lorraine and the rest. At one time America had the best train system in the world, probably because most of the men who built it were chained to other dedicated workers and not given time off. Along with the tracks that soon spanned America came alot of music because, as well as picking up the heavy chain that bound them, they sang. The slaves gave us tracks of many kinds. By the end of the '50s the extensive passenger-train system was, like the Indian Nation, history, so if it wasn't for the music there would be little else to show for all the hard work."
- Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), 'Reckless'
"John Waters told me I should go into acting. He thought my voice was so strange, he told me I should act. I wasn't all that flattered. I said, 'No, I'm a singer.' And he said, 'No, you should meet my agent.' And I didn't really want to do that, either, but I ended up acting for about five or six years. It was such a lark. I was not really an actor, but people kept hiring me to be their sarcastic best friend."
- Rachel Sweet, The Plain Dealer
"The Waitresses are not, as their name might imply, an all-girl group, although they do include two females - Patty Donahue, who sings (in a fascinatingly dry, knowing drawl) and Tracy Wormworth who plays the bass. For the rest, there's Mars Williams (saxes and stuff like that), Billy Ficca (drummer, once of the renowned Television), Dan Klayman (keyboards), and one Chris Butler, who plays guitar and writes the songs. It's to Chris Butler, in fact that the bulk of my interview is aimed, since he's sort of The Waitresses' leader, and spokesman, and probably one of the songwriters I admire most at the moment. Butler it was who brought the group into this world, first emerging among the crop of bands based in Akron Ohio (remember the Stiff compilation?), then taking them to New York City - where, some months ago, they finally arrived at the current line-up; whose personnel make what they describe as "that Cleveland Akron Chicago New York Delaware sound", a label that I don't imagine will catch on in any big way."
- Paul Du Noyer, NME
Joe Strummer & Jim Jarmusch
The minimalist music score for 'Stranger Than Paradise' is composed by John Lurie. The one song heard again and again is by Cleveland shock rocker Screamin' Jay Hawkins who would later appear for Jarmusch in 'Mystery Train'. Willie and Eva watch cartoons, NFL games, sci-fi & horror movies together. They do get bored, as does Eddie who wants to go to a Cleveland Cavaliers game even though he's heard they stink. When the three of them see the snow in north-east Ohio, they have a spiritual awakening, though it doesn't feel much like it at the time. Filmmaker Sara Driver is in the cast of 'Stranger In Paradise', which is photographed by her fellow director Tom DiCillo. Jarmusch's friends and contemporaries Spike Lee and Wayne Wang have also documented the immigrant experience within a vibrant city on celluloid.
In 2002, 'Stranger Than Paradise' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
"He was this great influence on me. There was this anarchism and wildness about him, this outsider hipster, this anti-authoritarian, blowing things up with explosives that affected me as a little kid. He opened me up to all kinds of weird-a** music; his whole anti-hierarchical appreciation of culture definitely influenced me."
- Jim Jarmusch on Ghoulardi (Ernie Anderson) the Presenter on 'Shock Theater'
"A lot of our songs are about driving. Like “Street Waves” is like, you know, in California they got the surf, and in Cleveland, in the summer, if you work real hard at it, there’s a surf that comes down the streets. And if you work real hard, you can ride that surf. And in Cleveland, that’s real bizarre. You get out on West 25th and Detroit and ride the surf and its real good. Really good. That’s our big summertime thing—you get out there in a car with a radio in it, “a car that can get me around,” and you know, we dress in our swimming trunks and just surf down the streets -snip- We’re not innocent, like the Beach Boys are innocent, cuz nobody can be innocent anymore. But we know what innocence is, and we know we have to try to get back there, even if it is tinged with reality."
- Dave Thomas (Pere Ubu), N.Y. Rocker
"Cleveland has such a rock and roll history that has everything to do with national acts and nothing to do with people from Cleveland. Everybody from out of town came to Cleveland and got a great reception. They got treated like kings. They got huge fame and accolades. But if you were from Cleveland, it was like, “Oh they can’t be any good. I know them!” You know what I mean? They just figured if you were from there you had to suck. So many people — I mean, everybody played there: the Stones, the Beatles on their first tour, Paul Revere and the Raiders. You had the Big Five Show, you had great radio. You had CKLW out of Detroit, and you had two of the first and best FM stations in the country with WNCR and WMMS. Two of the biggest progressive radio stations. But as far as local music was concerned, you had cover bands.
You did have the odd hit — you know, The Choir’s “It’s Cold Outside,” and the Raspberries had a couple of hits and so did the Outsiders. But they never really got the recognition in Cleveland they should have got. Everywhere else they went they did fine, but when they came home they were treated like just another local band. Which I get to this day! I mean, when I go back to Cleveland and they do an interview with me they want to know about my high school days. They don’t care about what I’m doing musically. They want to hear about when I worked at May Company. [May Company was a regional department store based in northeast Ohio.] “So you’re playing music, you’ve got a new band together. Does that mean you won’t be going back to May Company?” (laughter) It’s all very local. So it was a very strange and very frustrating place to grow up — at least musically. Your options were very limited, and I think that’s what all this came out of."
- Cheetah Chrome (Dead Boys), Verbicide Magazine
"Yeh, I liked it in Cleveland."
- Pat Benatar
Pat Benatar ~ Live in Cleveland '79
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PENELOPE SPHEERIS (born December 2, 1945, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.)
Penelope Spheeris has made a few different music documentaries over the years but remains best known in this field for her trilogy consisting of 'The Decline Of Western Civilization' (1981), 'The Decline Of Western Civilization Part II : The Metal Years' (1988) & 'The Decline Of Western Civilization Part III' (1998). 'The Decline Of Western Civilization' is widely regarded to be an essential existing document of the California punk scene of the 1970s, filmed on location from December 1979 to May 1980. Alot of musicians active at the time were written out of the picture so that Spheeris could create a cut + paste portraiture of the 'hardcore' punk colony as raging inbreds who were always getting high. It offers a searing study of the scene, so you could say Spheeris took the right approach, though many of the musicians involved felt it was a far cry from the reality of their working lives (though most acknowledged it to be an affecting piece of work). "The Canterbury Apartments and the Masque were separated by one block off Hollywood Boulevard. Together, they became a refuge for drug addicts, transvestites, and L.A. punks like the Germs, the Go-Go's, and Joan Jett. It didn't last long, only about two years (1977-79), but during that time, the entire L.A. punk scene spilled out over one block that included about 50 punks living at the Canterbury Apartments (the Go-Go's rehearsed there), while at the Masque, Brendan Mullen happily allowed his venue to be covered in graffiti—consistently booking bands like X, the Germs, and Screamers. CBGBs was a hangout, located in a legitimate public venue; the Masque was a basement beneath a pornographic studio. It also didn't require taking the subway. The Canterbury Apartments and the Masque provided a punk rock orgy, within walking distance."
- Art Tavana, L A Weekly
"I became very familiar with the streets of Hollywood. Kind of like the television show 'Cheers', where everyone knows your name. There was always something to do, and we were just a short car ride away. We ate onion rings from a paper bag past midnight at Astro Burger, browsed old literature at Book Soup and even hung out in graveyards just for the fun of it."
- Brenda Perlin, 'L.A. Punk Rocker'
"The great thing about 'A Great Ride' (1979) was that the production company had elected to shoot it in Canada, where they could mow down old timber, scatter endangered moose herds, and squish internationally protected Gila monsters at a great exchange rate. The location shoot left me and the editing team happily "home alone," working by ourselves in the cheapest editing facility in East Hollywood, the back rooms of Producers' Sound Services, a sound effects house on Santa Monica Boulevard that had been providing the film industry with squeaks, bow-wows, and thank-ya-ma'ams since 1943.
Tucked away between boxes of gunshots and rolls of car screeches and crates of donkey brays, I would retreat to do my assisting in between hot dogs at Pink's, combination platters at Los Burritos, and strips of chicken and eggs at Teriyaki Lola's. In my salad days, I rarely went without 8 squares per day, in the form of breakfast, brunch, snunch, lunch, snee, tea, sninner, dinner, snupper, supper, and a midnight snack. This is when I learned that when you are profoundly bored, even 3 packs of Marlboros per day will not stanch your ravenous need for immediate gratification."
- Sharon Oreck, 'Video Slut (How I Shoved Madonna Off An Olympic High Dive, Got Prince Into A Pair Of Tiny Purple Woolen Underpants, Ran Away From Michael Jackson's Dad, And Got A Waterfall To Flow Backward So I Could Bring Rock Videos To The Masses)'
"Punk rockers are the termites in the woodwork of society, but somehow, I love them."
- Penelope Spheeris
Penelope Spheeris in the 'Decline' office
What's great about 'The Decline Of Western Civilization' is getting to spend time with the musicians themselves. The Germs, for example, appear as domesticates while being interviewed in their tiny kitchenette, expressing real worries and concerns while eating green jelly sandwiches, expounding upon their own personal philosophies while doing the washing up. By contrast, you have a tight outfit like X who seem relatively sober and totally switched on to what's going on around them, an asset of this particular band that Spheeris the interviewer finds tough to counter. A top student at high school and keen self-promoter, Spheeris' carefully sculpted documentary films put her on the Hollywood map. Though she claims to have been handed a rough deal in Hollywood because there aren't the opportunities for women that there are for men, it was most definitely her own choice following the enormous success of 'Wayne's World' (1992) to strike the kind of huge cash deals that enabled her to direct the television updates 'The Beverly Hillbillies' (1993) and 'The Little Rascals' (1994). "If New York punk was about art and London punk about politics, L.A. punk was about pop culture, TV and absurdity."
- Greg Shaw, Who Put The Bomp!
"Jane Wiedlin was not originally from L.A., but Wisconsin, home of the Violent Femmes. She was totally not like Belinda Carlisle. Belinda was a party girl, a cheerleader, pretty wild. Jane designed clothing, read books, called herself Jane Drano! (laughter) She was so cute and funny, all the guys loved her, and so did the girls."
- Exstase Breeze (The Juice Cartons)
"Billy Zoom would always give Jane Wiedlin guitar lessons and she was just the cutest, most sweetest person."
- Exene Cervenka (X)
Penelope Spheeris & Poison
Penelope Spheeris : Sweet Suburbia
In between operating as a ground-level documentary filmmaker and becoming a major studio director, Spheeris struck a deal with independent film producer Roger Corman to make the fictionalised feature 'Suburbia' (1983) which pays tribute to the punks of California. Having taken some serious criticism for the way in which she portrayed the musicians in her first feature-length documentary, she made up for it with this heavily romanticised vision of the scene she'd left behind. It's a film I'd recommend to anyone interested in punk rock cinema. It's also my joint favourite among the fictional features she's made, alongside the crime picture 'The Boys Next Door' (1985). "I had a really difficult time getting distribution for the first 'Decline'. It seemed like no one wanted to play a documentary in a movie theater, even though people were going to see them in droves. So I said, "Okay, I know this subject matter and I've learned a lot. And I love these kids, so I'm going to sit down and write a narrative picture about them." So it turned out to be 'Suburbia'. I got Roger Corman to pay for half of it, and some dude from Cleveland who had a furniture chain paid for the other half."
- Penelope Spheeris, A.V. Club
"Directing is hard work. They don’t teach you that in film school. Critics are not aware of it, but it is hard, physical work. For instance, on 'Rock ’N’ Roll High School', I gave my usual lecture or series of lectures to Allan Arkush, and he was dutifully taking notes on everything I was saying about camera position and editing, and one thing and another. And the final thing I said was “Allan, get a chair with your name on it, and sit down as much as you can.” He did not take a note on that, figuring “Well, that’s because Roger’s old. He has to sit down. I don’t have to sit down.” The last day of shooting, Allan was almost unable to complete the picture, he was so worn out. He was working at a tremendously hard pace. So intelligence, the ability to work hard, and the third, which is intangible, is creativity.
Now, with most of the directors who start with us, they start in some other position and they move up and I can judge, particularly with Allan Arkush and Joe Dante. They were in our trailer department, and I could see they had potential, so they became second-unit directors. Jonathan Demme started as a writer, then became a producer and a second-unit director. So I was able to at least get a rough judgment of their creativity before I gave them a film to direct."
- Roger Corman, A.V. Club
Penelope Spheeris & John Lydon
For an alternative take on Californian punk that also captures the scene in vivid detail, I'd recommend two spirited films made by David Markey - 'Desperate Teenage Lovedolls' (1984) & 'Lovedolls Superstar' (1986). Redd Kross play a key role in proceedings and contribute music, while other musicians from the punk scene also make appearances.
These small-scale films are roughly made and really put the viewer inside the milieu. They're funny too and the second one has some nice parodies of '80s pop culture. I find the geography of Californian punk interesting because bands were frequently coming together in Los Angeles having travelled from locations like San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento; they weren't all formed in the same big city. "We went to see Patti Smith in Huntington Beach 'cause we'd heard a lot about her. Lenny Kaye had seen us at the Starwood and he really liked us, so we were backstage talking to him and then we went back to meet Patti, and the second we got to the dressing room she goes: "Get those b*tches out of here." Ivan Kral her guitarist was wearing a Runaways T-shirt onstage. She was being real rude to us for no reason. We were trying hard to be nice and she just walked on by. Lenny said that Patti was only into her own trip and we just weren't in her world. We were getting in her way. I guess she was seeing us as female competition. She couldn't even say, "Would you please leave?" She just threw us out. We were real hurt."
- Joan Jett (The Runaways), 'We Got The Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story Of L.A. Punk'
"As an example of modernity, (Charles) Baudelaire cites the artist Constantin Guys. In appearance a spectator, a collector of curiosities, he remains 'the last to linger wherever there can be a glow of light, an echo of poetry, a quiver of life or a chord of music; wherever a passion can pose before him, wherever natural man and conventional man display themselves in a strange beauty, wherever the sun lights up the swift joys of the depraved animal.'"
- Michel Foucault, 'What Is Enlightenment?'
KISS arrive just in time to see Brews Springstien performing 'Shoot Me In The Dark'
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ALEX COX (born December 15, 1954, Bebington, Cheshire, England)
Alex Cox has had one of the stranger careers in cinema, but a career that befits the former presenter of the film screening show 'Moviedrome', where his provocative introductions to films had British kids of my generation staying up late to watch all manner of unusual movies that operated within all kinds of fantastical genres.
In recent years, Cox has made the lamentable 'Repo Chick' (2009) - a failed spin-off from his Californian punk feature 'Repo Man' (1984) - and put together the deluxe redux 'Straight To Hell Returns' (2010) which it seems no-one has seen. He's also shot material for Wah and The Pogues but more often we've heard from him in his capacity as critic, observer and interviewer. Openly nostalgic, Cox waxes lyrical about returning to places he's visited many times before, providing the perfect punk recipe book for cinema, as boredom breeds repetition (cue refrain). "{First punk gig} : It was either Devo at the Starwood, which was their first Los Angeles performance, or it was an aborted gig at the Elk's Lodge Hall in Los Angeles, which I think The Go-Go's played at. And it was supposed to be the Plugz and X and all these other L.A. bands, but the cops came and shut it down. The man wouldn't let the kids play their music. It was like a police riot: The police were smashing people's heads on the ground and that sort of thing. That was my introduction to the punk-rock scene. Either that or Devo, because both those shows were around the same time. That would have been 1978 or so."
- Alex Cox, A.V. Club
Everything was going right for Cox up to the release of his acclaimed rock biopic 'Sid And Nancy' (1986), a movie that gained a wider audience when John Lydon of the Sex Pistols suggested it was pure fantasy. For me, Cox's masterpiece is 'Repo Man' which came about as a result of his time studying at the prestigious film school UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). 'Repo Man' is arguably the definitive Californian punk film; imaginative, absurd, theatrical and funny. 'Suburbia' (1983) would be in the running too, but I'd give the slight edge to 'Repo Man' in this regard.
"Russ Meyer, the filmmaker who was the best man at my wedding, was asked to make a Sex Pistols movie. He called me because of my teenage movie 'Massacre At Central High' (1976), which anticipated punk ... and so Malcolm McLaren, Russ, Roger Ebert, and myself were supposed to collaborate on developing a movie concept for the Pistols. Roger and myself were to write the script with input from Russ and Malcolm. It was an improbable mix. Russ wanted the movie to be a follow-up to his outrageously campy masterpiece 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls', written by Ebert. Roger was, of course, totally into Meyer's thing. Malcolm had no idea what he had gotten himself into, since the Sex Pistols came from an entirely different world than Russ.
I worked for months writing and rewriting different versions of what came to be called 'Who Killed Bambi?' but I couldn't bridge the chasm that existed between the band and their management at one end and Russ at the other. I shuttled back and forth between the two camps, but there was no way to avert the clash between Malcolm's anarchistic art-school earnestness and the camp sensibilities of the King of the Nudies.
One day Russ yelled at Johnny Lydon to have some respect. He shouted out: "We saved your l*mey a**es in World War II!" It all ended in bitter tears of rage and lawsuits, and Russ would never make a film again. It also cost me my dear friendship with Russ because ultimately I had to root for the Sex Pistols.
Our house became the U.S. headquarters for the Pistols and I was hanging out with them a lot, especially Malcolm, Sid Vicious, Paul Cook, and Steve Jones, who crashed with us and at other houses. Warner Brothers' Mo Austin was seriously wondering if punk could be the biggest thing since the Beatles."
- Rene Daalder, 'We Got The Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story Of L.A. Punk'
Having enjoyed his time spent studying and working in California, Cox embarked upon a new project with numerous 'Repo Man' cast members in tow. He assembled a bunch of punks to make the stranded western 'Straight To Hell' (1986) in Spain. Cox felt this small-scale project would help him to grow his own repertory company while teaching him about how to film in foreign languages, how to budget and operate in secluded destinations, and how to handle hot climates. At the time the idea was conceived, he already had his disastrous political picture 'Walker' (1987) on the horizon (which to my mind remains a really interesting movie). "I had these two very good partners from UCLA: Peter McCarthy and Jonathan Wacks. Everybody who goes to film school wants to be a director, obviously, but they graciously agreed to put their directorial ambitions on hold for a little while to produce a film for me. So I wrote my script, and the budget was going to be too much, so they said, "Go away and write another one." This is the second one I wrote, and it went through 14 drafts over a period of about two years. Finally, the former Monkee, Michael Nesmith, took the project to a studio and they put up the money. At the time, the head of the studio was the guy who'd worked for Roger Corman, a guy who'd actually come out of the Corman empire; his name was Bob Rehme. His idea was to make a lot of films: Make them as cheap as you can and make a lot of them, because some of them will hit. So he green-lit 'Repo Man' and he green-lit Francis Ford Coppola's 'Rumble Fish', both of which are quite unusual."
- Alex Cox, A.V. Club
I enjoy the colourful visions that make up 'Straight To Hell' but its reputation with critics is extremely poor and it's been tagged as being an "indulgent punk workout" that killed Cox's career. This view glosses over the fact that he went on to make some intriguing pictures soon after, such as the Mexican crime drama 'Highway Patrolman' (1991), and 'Death And The Compass' (1992) which was expanded from a television piece he'd directed based on a story by Jorge Luis Borges. Cox maintains that his lift-off point for 'Straight To Hell' was spaghetti westerns, in particular the work of Giulio Questi who is thanked in the end credits, but it feels like a random assortment of artistic references and literary allusions. Its success, if that's not too bold a claim, lies in it being an authentic D.I.Y. project filmed within a miniature township in the Andalusian city of Almeria that was built specifically to be the ideal location to house American actor Charles Bronson for the western 'Chino' (1973). Cox dresses up his cast as grotesques and lets cinematographer Tom Richmond light everything brightly so the entire film feels like it's set in a place of everlasting light. An unruly slab of improvised punk theatre, it brings together faces from Manchester and Liverpool to act alongside a batch of musicians plucked from the London arts scene, representing two closely connected northern English cities that proved to be just as exciting for their emerging bands in the late '70s as the capital. "Liverpool came into existence to move things around: cotton, sugar, slaves and, later, paperwork when the insurance companies moved there. There was a saying that lingers in Liverpool today - the Liverpool gentleman and the Manchester man. Manchester was an industrial city that made things, its workforce stable, drawn from the Lancashire hinterland, dedicated to progressive causes such as the industrial revolution and the campaigns that grew out of it for trade unions and socialism. The Manchester mill-owner had dirt under his finger nails. The Liverpool gentleman engaged in commerce sat in an office in a white collar. The dock labourers, crowded along Scotland Road, formed the largest and densest slum in Europe, famine-Irish in origin, subject to arbitrary labour practices which had more to do with the slave auction than industrial relations. The gentlemen voted Liberal and the dockers right up to the 1930s still saw politics as an extension of the Fenian/Orange struggles over the water. But from the port came an infection of new ideas. The convoy ships that dodged the U-boats during the battle of the Atlantic to bring food to Britain from Canada also brought the records of Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf and the discs changed hands for huge sums in the dock road pubs, the beginnings and origin of the Mersey Sound that grew up in the warehouses that smelled of damp and the cargoes they once held, everything made of brick and iron to avoid combustion. Liverpool's blitz was second only to London's and got a lot less newsreel coverage because of the propaganda value for the Germans of knowing how badly the docks had been bombed. Liverpudlians sat sullen in the cinema as the brave Cockneys grinned into the cameras. What about us, they asked? My father would turn off the TV in disgust when Dad's Army came on. The Home Guard he was part of defended the blazing warehouses after the German bombers came over. When the war ended, Liverpool's heyday had passed, transatlantic shipping was in decline, the unskilled dockers were decanted out of Scotland Road into brand new council estates in Halewood and Speke, and car factories were built to give them work. For the first time since it came into being, Liverpool was a predominantly industrial city, and this state of affairs lasted until the 1980s when manufacturing was eviscerated by successive Tory governments that transformed Britain into a service economy. Liverpool went Labour in the 1970s, but without a strong indigenous tradition of town-hall socialism it was prey to takeovers from the Militant Tendency, to the one-day wonders who strutted the streets in their mohair suits, the Derek Hattons who told the people that if Glasgow, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle caved in, it would be Liverpool that would take on Thatcher, even if it lost and went to the wall. It went to the wall."
- Linda Grant, The Guardian
"It all began back in the late 1800s, where the building of the Manchester Ship Canal changed the face of the North West economy. Before, Liverpool was the economic capital of the North West due to its international port which created many jobs in the city. But the ship canal allowed ships to bypass Liverpool’s ports and go directly to the cottonopolis of Manchester, leading a large amount of job losses in Liverpool. This led to a lot of hatred from the people of Liverpool towards Manchester at the turn of the century. In the '70s and '80s both cities suffered economic decline and shared the pain of mass unemployment leading to a slight mutual respect against a (Margaret) Thatcher government. Recent years though have seen big regenerations projects across the two cities and both now compete to see who can attract the most overseas tourists."
- Tom Belger, Mancunian Matters
'Straight To Hell' plays with corporate identity and conspiracy theories, drawing from history to do this, and there are some funny branding exercises just like in 'Repo Man'. The performances are pitched near delirium and Cox took suggestions from his stock company players as to how their characters should meet their fate (Cox and Dick Rude came up with the basic story while hungover in Cannes, France). The international cast speak with many different accents which makes the town feel like it exists within its own time and place. This dislocated sense of time and place is one of the film's enjoyable aspects. Alex Cox commissioned a soundtrack from California collective Pray For Rain and The Pogues. There are musical contributions made by musicians in the cast who'd initially been brought together for a proposed tour of Nicaragua. Courtney Love said she based her femme fatale Velma on Carroll Baker's iconic performance in 'Baby Doll' (1956). "The film director's career is designed to take you to Hollywood - Alan Parker is a good example. He started on commercials, then he made films that glorify the FBI. Now he's head of the Film Council."
- Alex Cox, The Guardian
"Yes, 'Searchers 2.0' (2007). The idea actually originated with Jon Davison, who started his career with me, first as the head of our advertising department, then as a producer. He went on to produce Robocop (1987) and some giant-sized science fiction films. He’s younger than I am, but semi-retired and he came up with the idea of doing the film and doing it with Alex Cox. The idea seemed to me a very good and interesting one and it wasn’t going to cost that much money, so we did it simply as an experiment. I thought the picture turned out well, I thought Alex and Jon did a very good job ..."
- Roger Corman on the rise of Microbudget Filmmaking, Electric Sheep
I think Alex Cox is a great British filmmaker. He's the first English director I think of when I think of punk rock movies. Other directors like Derek Jarman and Julien Temple may be more readily recognised by critics - perhaps in part because Cox has frequently travelled overseas to shoot his movies - but he's my favourite. Filmmakers Dennis Hopper and Jim Jarmusch play character roles in 'Straight To Hell' which has been restored to dvd by the British Film Institute for future audiences to enjoy.
'Reel Ten' - The Plugz
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Celluloid Punks
01. Toyah Willcox - 'The Tempest' (1979) - With her punk costume gone, the rebellious Toyah was asked to perform a play by legendary playwright William Shakespeare. When she heard it concerned deception and alchemy, she was all over it.
02. Annie Golden - 'Hair' (1979) - Milos Forman was considered the ultimate audition director, a reputation earned during his early years working in Prague, and I've no doubt he could spot a star, which is exactly what he did here.
03. Cherie Currie - 'Parasite' (1982) - Charles Band's influential science-fiction horror features Cherie Currie and session player turned Runaway Cheryl Smith (you can see her in the 1984 film 'Du-beat-e-o') among its cast. It's a magical combination.
04. Debbie Harry - 'Videodrome' (1983) - Having worked with her friend Pat Benatar on 'Union City' (1980), here was a plum role for Harry that was ripe for the picking. David Cronenberg told Harry she needed to eliminate the "high camp" of her Blondie performances, but she was an exemplary performer who always pitched things right, as proven on the Blondie comeback tour many years later. She plays the criminal dominatrix underpinning life's greatest conspiracy in Cronenberg's audio-visual masterpiece.
05. Clare Grogan - 'Gregory's Girl' (1981) - A popular, localised Scottish favourite that employs young actors from the Glasgow Youth Theatre, this beloved drama co-stars bubbly Clare Grogan of Altered Images.
06. Jane Wiedlin - 'Clue' (1985) - She's the Singing Telegram Girl.
07. Wendy O Williams - ' Reform School Girls' (1986) - The Plasmatics' leader teams here with punkette scenester Tiffany Helm.
08. Linnea Quigley - 'Night Of The Demons' (1988) - I consider this to be the quintessential horror to marry gothic sensibilities with punk attitude. Director Kevin Tenney leaned heavily upon a former gymnast, punk guitarist and accomplished genre performer, who brought the "cosmic ballerina novice" envisioned years earlier by Dario Argento's 'Suspiria' to American life. Quigley has been hired to dance in countless films due to her innate sense of rhythm and musicality. Here, she's the life of a satanic terror party and proves herself to be horror cinema's ultimate baby doll. She'd reteam with Tenney the following year for 'Witchtrap' (1989).
09. Susanna Hoffs - 'The Allnighter (1987) - Pop singer Susanna Hoffs is showcased in a beach movie update for 'The Allnighter'. That's no surprise - it's directed by her mother!
10. Joan Jett - 'Boogie Boy' (1998) - Another former Runaway teams up with Linnea Quigley for Quentin Tarantino's best buddy Craig Hamann and the results are electrifying. This is one of the great gay crime dramas, continuing a strong tradition among punks for breaking down established social boundaries and being all-gender inclusive.
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PETER GREENAWAY (born April 5, 1942, Newport, Wales)
'Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepherds' - Michael Nyman
East Anglia : Tigon Films, Roger Corman & Peter Greenaway
“This was not the first film to mine the sepulchral thrills of seeing Vincent Price at large in the East Anglian countryside. One of the highlights of Roger Corman’s Poe cycle, 1964’s The Tomb of Ligeia, was shot at the priory at Castle Acre, Norfolk. Four years later, however, this 17th-century tale of the manipulative exploits of real-life witchhunter Matthew Hopkins (played by Price) remains Suffolk’s most famous bid for cinematic immortality.
Witchfinder General was directed by the 24-year-old Michael Reeves, who grew up in Suffolk himself, but who would die tragically a few months after the film was released. Made for Tigon British and Corman’s AIP studio, it’s a film that cuts deeper than many of the contemporaneous Hammer horrors in its disturbing depiction of the abuse of power and how morality and faith can be twisted for evil purpose. Suffolk’s low-lying expanses seem both beautiful and desolate, an empty terrain where superstition and fear can permeate. Reeves beat Pasolini (The Canterbury Tales, 1972), Kubrick (Barry Lyndon, 1975) and Harry Potter (Deathly Hallows 1 and 2) to the use of Lavenham as a location, but only here does Suffolk’s picture-postcard medieval village play itself.”
- Samuel Wigley, The British Film Institute
“Few films try harder to visually delight their audience as much as Drowning by Numbers, a black comedy about three related women (Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson) all named Cissie Colpitts and cursed with tiresome husbands. When the oldest woman (Plowright) drowns her spouse, the other two women consider doing likewise. Typical of Peter Greenaway, every scene is utterly beautiful and composed like a painting, even when depicting the grotesque.
The film was shot around Southwold in Suffolk, and makes great use of the coast and landmarks such as the lighthouse and the water tower. The performances are top-notch, especially from Plowright. And if that’s not enough, eagle-eyed viewers can spend their time spotting the numbers 1 to 100, which appear throughout the film.”
- Alex Davidson, ’10 Great Films Set In East Anglia’
“Influencing everyone from Peter Greenaway to Stephen King via Martin Scorsese, the first in Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe cycle, 'House Of Uhser' (1960), remains terrific stuff. Armed with a smart script by Richard Matheson, Corman mines perceptible unease from the tale of a family, headed up by a masterfully creepy Vincent Price, struck by a bizarre curse in a malevolent mansion which itself becomes a tangible character. If occasionally the supporting cast - Myrna Fahey as Price's sister, Mark Damon as her suitor - are as creaky as the old house, the mixture of English Gothic, French Grand Guignol and American low-budget thrills make for an intoxicating brew.”
- William Thomas, Empire Magazine
01. 'The Falls' (1980)
"Now get ready for his 1980 feature, ''The Falls,'' an epic shaggy-dog story that pretends to be a documentary about the decline and fall of mankind after what's referred to simply as VUE, or ''Violent Unknown Event.'' We are told that no less than 19 million people around the world were affected by this catastrophe, the exact nature of which remains as much of a mystery as its epicenter, which may have been either in a ''boulder orchard'' in Yorkshire or outside a London tube station. In the course of ''The Falls,'' we are given the case histories of no less than 92 VUE victims, who are sometimes interviewed, sometimes recalled by loved ones or who sometimes remain as statistics gravely read out on the soundtrack by a series of narrators. To make matters more simple, the film maker has arbitrarily limited his survey to a cross section of those victims whose surnames begin with the letters ''F-a-l-l,'' so that all the people we learn about have such names as Falla, Fallabus and - my favorite - a young woman called Loosely Fallbute."
- Vincent Canby, The New York Times
02) 'The Draughtsman's Contract' (1982)
Peter Greenaway described 'The Draughtsman's Contract' as the result of a decade immersed in experimental film. 'The Draughtsman's Contract' is set in 1694, the year of the first Married Woman's Property Act and the formation of the Bank of England. 1694 is a year in which Greenaway felt modern history could begin to be written. The film is a work of symmetry in various forms, a murder mystery that turns upon its Machiavellian protagonist with playful equipoise. Unlike some of his film-making contemporaries working in British cinema, it might be said that Greenaway embodied what punk in America originally set out to be : art. His question to himself was, should an artist create a work based on what he sees, or what he knows? In America during the 1970s, punks embraced low budget genre cinema, David Lynch's midnight movie 'Eraserhead' (1977) becoming emblematic of a diverse artistic movement.
"Just as 'The Draughtsman's Contract' was based on twelve drawings, and 'A Zed & Two Noughts' on the eight Darwinian states of evolution, 'The Belly of an Architect' is based on the figure seven. The seven hills of Rome, of course, but also, I reckon there were seven clear influences that emanated out of Rome and affected the whole of western civilization."
- Peter Greenaway, Sight & Sound
"As the film's title ('Drowning By Numbers') suggests, the film relies on the elemental nature of water. The numbers alluded to in the title involve the doubling and tripling of characters, the four elements, the visual presence of ciphers, and the frequent allusions to counting. In Greenaway's films numbers play a prominent role, having to do with complex modes of ordering the world and are tied to modes of representation - classification, taxonomy, and symbolisation - that are scientific and visionary."
- Marcia Landy, The British Film Institute
03) 'A Zed And Two Noughts' (1985) A year before David Lynch paid homage to entomologist filmmaker Luis Bunuel with 'Blue Velvet' (1986), Greenaway did so with 'A Zed And Two Noughts', which is photographed by Frenchman Sacha Vierny who'd lensed Bunuel's 'Belle De Jour' (1967). It's the story of an amputee and concerns natural selection, with narration by David Attenborough. Greenaway has said it's his favourite of his feature films even though he recognises it as being the runt of the litter. 'A Zed And Two Noughts' is also remembered for the impact it had on David Cronenberg who drew from it when making his controversial literary adaptations 'Dead Ringers' (1988), 'Naked Lunch' (1991) and 'Crash' (1996). Cronenberg abandoned the abrasive style of his earlier horrors (several of which were shot by mobile cameraman Mark Irwin), opting to craft a more refined style of cultivated film form that utilised the stylish compositions of cinematographer Peter Suschitzky. Canadian filmmaker Allan Moyle worked with Cronenberg in the 1970s before directing the New York punk classic 'Times Square' (1980).
"He successfully played the trick of making the two twins one person courtesy of Jeremy Irons, whilst we tried the much more difficult game of making two actors (admittedly brothers) not only twins, but separated Siamese twins, and not only separated Siamese twins, but separated Siamese twins who wanted to be united."
- Peter Greenaway introduces 'A Zed & Two Noughts'
"The band themselves, David Byrne in particular, were well informed and experienced in modern art and experimental theatre, as well as musical performance. Byrne already had a fairly detailed idea of how the film should look and sound, even down to completed storyboards. But Jonathan Demme efficiently picked up on the effects Byrne wanted and achieved these with slick mastery. Further, Demme developed a smooth and productive working relationship with Byrne, who took Demme's own suggestions seriously and happily incorporated many of them. : Title credits flash across a darkened stage as the live roar of the audience grows in anticipation. David Byrne's feet (wearing white trainers) stroll across the empty box stage, wearing a light cotton two-piece suit. He carries a ghetto-blaster in one hand and has a guitar strapped over his shoulder. Byrne approaches the solitary microphone centre-stage, "Hi, I've got a tape I want to play," he says, quoting a line from 'Videodrome', stands the ghetto-blaster on the stage and switches it on ... : The stage area is deliberately bare and derelict, free of sets and props at the gig's outset. This is an efficacious concept, similar to avant-garde theatre techniques developed by Bertolt Brecht. As other performers, props and instruments are gradually added to the mise en scene, as they are required for the show, the spectator's attention is concentrated on the process of making music and performing. You get to see precisely what, and who, does what and how, unburdened by showy distractions - a demystification of the production process."
- Chris Barber, 'Talking Heads : Stop Making Sense'
04) 'The Belly Of An Architect' (1987) Greenaway's most celebrated work of the 1980s, 'The Belly Of An Architect', has been called his most personal outlet, a measured confessional in which the artist (in this case an architect) resents the use of the exposed female form as indecent intrusion, leaving the artist to fester in his own macho obsessions. Greenaway originally wanted American superstar Marlon Brando to play his mumbling architect but instead settled on Brian Dennehy who carried with him a similarly imposing frame. Fresh from playing Nancy Spungen in 'Sid And Nancy' (1986), Chloe Webb portrays the model who exposes the architect to his own vices. The anxious string section is composed by Glenn Branca who augments an aural accompaniment by the minimalist Wim Mertens that uses concise numerical patterns.
"Russ Meyer, Jonathan Kaplan and Pete Walker walked away from Malcolm McLaren before his marriage of convenience to Julien Temple for the execrable 'The Great Rock N Roll Swindle'. Punk pin-ups The Clash clamoured for a six-figure sum from media major CBS who launched the lucrative "Clash" brand to a wider fanbase, maximising merchandising returns. Each "clash cow" increased profit potential while securing brand legacy, with rowdy sing-a-long anthems like "Clash City Rockers" and "This Is Radio Clash" cementing the bad boys' growing reputation as everybody's favourite punk commercial."
- Steve Warwick, 'Marketing The Punk Revolution'
"I was thinking about all the movies we were making for Roger Corman and New World; Kaplan, Demme, Dante, Arkush and me. We were making little 45 RPM Rock ’n’ Roll movies. Same subject matter as early rock songs and same lack of respect."
- George Armitage, The Lincoln Center Film Society
05) 'Drowning By Numbers' (1988)
The story in 'Drowning By Numbers' concerns a coroner and three generations of women who formulate plots for murder as a way to relinquish tensions exacted by a lack of private fulfillment. A warm, nostalgic sojourn to the countryside, it shows how the common interactions between women can destroy a young boy whose perception of manhood is irrevocably shattered by the casual oppression of his formative years. Inside the hidden cast is Edward Tudor Pole, a punk symbol who'd already appeared twice on film for Julien Temple and twice for Alex Cox. Sacha Vierny's cinematography of Suffolk pastures is entrenched in the moisture of saturated waters which seep from each and every pore of the frame, granting the film an abundancy of natural textures inspired by great rural artists and childrens' book illustrators from British history. The film is graced by Michael Nyman's evocative string suite.
"Punk cinema is not a new genre, nor an original approach to filmmaking. It doesn't represent a significant break with pre-punk cinema and wasn't inspired or augmented by punk rock alone. There's no manifesto or agenda to establish, delineate or lay claim to the punk film heritage. Punk cinema pre-dates punk rock, with examples dating back to silent movies ... That is, films exemplifying the formal concerns of punk. Punk subculture as an eclectic, late 20th century phenomenon, was partially inspired by cinema. Some controversial or cult films were icons for adolescent punks. You would be hard pushed to find an ex-punk rocker who didn't rave about 'A Clockwork Orange' or 'Taxi Driver'. Or ask any punk cine-auteur to name the filmmakers that most inspire them and a handful of directors are repeatedly named - Bunuel, Vertov, Godard, Waters, Warhol ..."
- Chris Barber, 'Punk On Film'
"Hubert Selby Jr. famously said that he grew up feeling like a scream without a mouth. Lydia Lunch, one of his most celebrated - and most uncompromising - literary progeny, delivered scream, mouth, teeth, blood, hair, knife, and adrenaline in her purgatorial masterpiece 'Paradoxia : A Predator's Diary', for which the late legend Selby himself penned the introduction to the original UK edition. When 'Paradoxia' was first published, it was considered extreme. It still is."
- Jerry Stahl, 'A New Introduction To Paradoxia'
06) 'The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover' (1989)
In 'The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover', Margaret Thatcher's Britian breeds urban dreams in the city where self-appointed V.I.P.s trade Michelin Stars for new gourmet banquets in which human suffering is paramount. Also on the menu are the successfully impoverished who get to eat their own human waste. In Greenaway's quest to present films as seamless, perfectly structured numerical facades that confront the viewer with the artifice of the moving arts, his adherence to staging demonstrations of universal themes (sex & death) ensures an honesty for the avid spectator. 'The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover' is Brechtian to its core, yet awash with vibrant colours, Michael Nyman's score being typically cut to precise frame counts.
Punk is minimalism, which is at the heart of the structural building blocks of rock 'n' roll. It's also a philosophy. Greenaway's punk spirit leads to all kinds of artistic exchange.
“Despite the evidence, cinema is not very visual and is really a literary medium. Nobody seems to make anything without writing a script. Most cinema is some form of illuminated text. I would argue that we’ve yet to see any piece of cinema worthy of the name.”
- Peter Greenaway, IBC Accelerators
(EPILOGUE) Achievement
Though born in Wales, Peter Greenaway recalls the English east coast he explored in his youth, from Suffolk down to Kent, as being full of flat spaces. He now lives in Netherlands where he frolics in the flatlands. Performers like Debbie Harry and Madonna have literally beaten down his door looking for work, such is their admiration for him as a filmmaker. This is his legacy.
'Outdoor Miner' - Wire
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Punk Essentials
01. 'The Driller Killer' (1979) - Those who were able to escape from movie theatres screening Abel Ferrara's nightmarish vision of the punk underworld, shared stories of their own traumatic experiences brought on by the film; one lady in New York even claimed to have died and come back to life before the movie ended. The film acts as a document of the times and also happens to be a stomach-churning horror picture. It feels raw and is authentic to the scene. Watch it in a double-bill with horror filmmaker Ulli Lommel's equally corrosive document 'Blank Generation' (1980).
02. 'Rock 'N' Roll High School' (1979) - Allan Arkush & Joe Dante nearly had Cheap Trick playing the band that headlines this playful musical produced by Roger Corman. That would have made for an equally fun movie, I'm sure, but instead they got the Ramones. Arkush went on to make 'Get Crazy' (1983) which also carries plenty of punk swagger.
03. 'Times Square' (1980) - The first film in Allan Moyle's 'Musical Youth' trilogy is the tale of two troubled teenage girls (Trini Alvarado & Robin Johnson) touring the trash parlours of New York who form renegade punk outfit The Sleez Sisters. Meanwhile, city politicians clash with radical DJ Johnny DeGuardia (played by the great Tim Curry). New York street life for kids is spotlighted within the vile cesspool known as Times Square. Moyle would later shatter the suburbs with 'Pump Up The Volume' (1990) and tackle post-modern musical communes with 'Empire Records' (1995). The Sleez Sisters perform with New York Doll David Johansen on an electric rock n roll soundtrack.
04. 'Class Of 1984' (1982) - Action filmmaker Mark Lester inaugurated the 'Class of the Future' series with this violent turf war between teachers and punks. It's one of the scariest pictures to deal head-on with confrontation, conflict, abuse, vice and violence occurring day-to-day in educational institutions. The most diabolical gang member is pink-haired punk priestess Patsy (Lisa Langlois), a bruised violet who positively delights in the protracted suffering of students and disciplinarians alike. Langlois' fellow Canadian Michael J Fox goes bananas.
05. 'Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains' (1982) - Having engineered a series of comic misadventures for Cheech & Chong that brought the Groundlings together with various Sunset Strip mainstays, influential music producer Lou Adler put together a band of reckless teenage runaways to create this rough-edged chronicle of life on the road. This movie was a launching pad for Diane Lane's acting career. It's become a staple part of the punk diet with members of the Sex Pistols & the Clash making appearances (as well as rock 'n' roller Elizabeth Daily).
06. 'Repo Man' (1984) - Emilio Estevez may just be the greatest movie punk of them all in this dark take on the life of an apprentice car repossessor. Alex Cox's science-fiction film is an inspirational tale about working your way up in life. It's co-produced by Monkee Michael Nesmith and filmmaker Jonathan Wacks. The soundtrack is colossal and the film includes a performance from the Circle Jerks.
07. 'Desperately Seeking Susan' (1985) - Orion Pictures had to be convinced that Madonna could override a name actress, but director Susan Seidelman fought the former Breakfast Club drummer's corner furiously, in the most ferocious studio dust-up since Francis Coppola went to bat for failed stand-up comic Al Pacino. Yet it's bored New Jersey amnesiac housewife Roberta who brings punk fever to this production, as portrayed by Rosanna Arquette. The film stands hand in hand with Seidelman's near-formless 'Smithereens' (1982) and robotic 'Making Mr. Right' (1987) as a modern fairy tale about a woman looking for creative love by asserting her independence.
08. 'The Return Of The Living Dead' (1985) - Terror greets the blue moon of Kentucky when a crew of hostile punk posers meet their match in the form of rampaging running zombies with an appetite for live brains! Punk icon Linnea Quigley brings her signature innovations to the show using personal designs, cut-up arts and D.I.Y. techniques that remain unparalleled within the horror genre to this day.
09. 'Class Of Nuke 'Em High' (1986) - Most Troma products came and went but 2 quality offerings spawned long-running brand franchises (see 'The Toxic Avenger' series featuring Marisa Tomei). This one stars the wonderful Janelle Brady, though it's dominatrix Muffey (Theo Cohan) who proves herself to be the most ferocious Tromette in Troma history; she even happily suffocates a nerd by sitting on his head.
10. 'Howard The Duck' (1986) - Here you have the greatest love story between a punk and a duck. This audio-visual extravaganza has it all. Lord love a duck!
11. 'The Chocolate War' (1988) - A chilling adaptation of a novel I've not read by Robert Cormier, this concerns an all-boys school where students are forced to sell chocolates. The one ray of light is Jenny Wright's bold, independent punkette - "You better catch that bus, boy!"
12. 'Tapeheads' (1988) - Countless music industry figures got involved with this failed project produced by Monkee Michael Nesmith, including many talented punk musicians. It's a complete mess and the scattershot soundtrack's all over the shop, but the saving grace remains Katy Boyer's hilarious turn as deconstructionist loft artist Belinda Hart.
13. 'The Big Picture' (1989) - Jennifer Jason Leigh captures the essential being of an eccentric art school punk to perfection, complete with candy-coloured shock wardrobe and bizarre elocution that befits a girl trapped in an old department store warehouse.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Jul 18, 2020 5:43:38 GMT
I always thought The Go-Go's were a criminally underrated band. Pop fluff to be sure, but they were talented musicians. Especially Gina Shrock and Charlotte Caffrey. Jane Weidlin was a great singer and should have shared lead vocals with Belinda Carlisle. In the end, they were probably doomed to split up. Belinda was just too big for the other girls. And the drugs were outrageous.
I had a weird crush on Kathy Valentine. Can't explain it. Female bass players. Tina Weymouth. Jackie Fox.
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Post by petrolino on Jul 18, 2020 23:01:06 GMT
Run, Run, Run, Run, Runaway to the Rainbow Bar & Grill
Joan Jett – Guitar Lita Ford – Guitar & Bass
Cherie Currie – Keyboards & Percussion
Vicki Blue – Bass
Peggy Foster – Bass
Jackie Fox – Bass
Laurie McAllister – Bass Micki Steele – Bass
Sandy West – Drums
'The Runaways' (2010) 'The Runaways' is a feminist biopic of influential rock group the Runaways who formed in 1975 in Los Angeles, California. It's directed by video artist Floria Sigismondi and based on the book 'Neon Angel : A Memoir Of A Runaway' (2010), co-authored by Cherie Currie with Terry O'Neill. As I understand it, this book offers an expanded, revised and updated text based upon the original 'Neon Angel' (1989), which Currie wrote with Neal Shusterman.
"Actresses and vampire lovers Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart are on the big screen now as singer Cherie Currie and singer/guitarist Joan Jett in band bio The Runaways. But Currie's new memoir (on which the film was based, goes even way further than what's up there. What doesn't this book have in its tale of the rise and fall of the '70s all-girl teenage rock band that actually rocked? Shameless jailbait sex promotion, rape, abortion, suicide attempts and near-death experiences, world travel, drugs (LOTS of drugs), booze, sex (straight and gay), catfights, exploitation, family desertions, secrets and blow-ups. And that's just from the "Cherry Bomb" Currie, who may have only joined the group at 15 and left at 17, but managed to pack enough into that time period to make any teen girl's father shudder. And while it shares a title and some chapters with Currie's 1989 Neon Angel, this one is practically a new book, filled with way more article-headlining behavior - Currie and Jett's sexual encounters among them - than in that original slim volume. Between all the substance/skin abuse and the battling among the original five Runaways (Currie, Jett, guitarist Lita Ford, drummer Sandy West and bassist Jackie Fox) is a full-steam-ahead-no-stopping tale in which Currie's stories of her troubled family just as compelling as the studio-and-stage rock and roll retelling. With what Currie was experiencing at an age when most girls are picking a prom dress, it's amazing she (and the rest of the band) made it to the other side at all. But if the cleaned-up Currie - who would quit the group before it imploded, and eventually work as a drug counselor and tree-carving artist in addition to acting and singing - emerges as her own heroine, then the role of villain is lain squarely on Runaways creator/manager/abuser/Svengali Kim Fowley."
- Bob Ruggeiro, Houston Press
Alia Shawkat, Scout Taylor-Compton, Stella Maeve, Kristen Stewart & Dakota Fanning as the Runaways 'The Orchids' ~ The Orchids
Obnoxious self-promoter and self-styled impresario Kim Fowley was as despised in sections of American music as Malcolm McLaren was here in the U K, though I'd contend Fowley was more talented than McLaren. In fact, he co-wrote some great songs during his lengthy career in music, working with a wide variety of musical artists from the 1960s onwards.
In the mid-1970s, Fowley witnessed the emergence of punk rock. He recognised this as an opportunity to fashion something dangerous on the west coast and started recruiting teenage girls with musical skills for a range of creative projects. Before long, accusations of horrific abuses were being laid at Fowley's door and it's hard to separate the artist from the scumbag he appears to have been (though I don't think he was ever tried, convicted or prosecuted over these alleged sex crimes and infractions). I was never a Fowley fan and haven't given him or his career much thought, but I enjoy the Runaways' music immensely. I need to pick up a copy of the 2010 edition of 'Neon Angel' and give it a read.
"Producer Kim Fowley's larger-than-life story continues to add outlandish chapters even after his death. Fowley, who passed away Jan. 15 following a struggle with cancer, cut a colorful path through the record business during his long career, working with a long list of artists that included Frank Zappa, Warren Zevon, Kiss and Alice Cooper -- as well as overseeing the early career of the Runaways, the groundbreaking band that helped erode rock's stubborn gender barriers while launching the careers of Joan Jett and Lita Ford.
According to TMZ, musical taboos weren't the only boundaries Fowley wanted to break. The celebrity news network has filed a (decidedly NSFW) report detailing the unorthodox plans Fowley made for his corpse -- and the somewhat strange turn they've taken in the days since his death. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that Fowley expressed an interest in appearing as a model in a photo shoot for Girls and Corpses Magazine, which is apparently a real thing that attracts enough subscribers to stay in business during the post-print era. According to e-mails unearthed by TMZ's sources, Fowley reached out to the magazine in 2012 to offer himself up, and although the publisher passed on his most extreme requests, they did agree to a cover shoot between his corpse and his girlfriend. The problem now -- at least for the magazine -- is that since that offer was made (and, presumably, money changed hands), Fowley parted ways with his girlfriend and, in 2014, married Kara Wright, his wife at the time of his death. Wright has reportedly been incommunicado since Fowley's passing; as the report puts it, the magazine "can't find her to allow them to shoot the body." It's worth noting that more than a few of Fowley's fans have chimed in at the comments section of the TMZ report, pointing out that he loved getting a rise out of people and may have been hoping to pull off one last shock. If that's the case, then please join us in saying "mission accomplished" ... and in hoping this matter is resolved as quickly and privately as possible."
- Jeff Giles, Ultimate Classic Rock
Kim Fowley 'Big City' - Venus And The Razorblades
'Nervous' - Dyan Diamond
I'm not sure I'd recommend 'The Runaways' as I didn't particularly enjoy the movie. I'm more keen to get a copy of the book, but the movie's done a good job bringing the band's music to a new generation of fans. The Runaways' guiding light, Suzi Quatro, is among the musical artists that appear on the film's soundtrack.
"The Runaways is a curious mix, an exhilarating story of female self-expression that's also a cautionary tale of female exploitation. So as the '70s girl group The Runaways comes together and then slowly disintegrates, there's a simultaneous rising and falling arc — which would be thrilling if writer-director Floria Sigismondi had a structure that could hold it all together. What she does have is punkish audacity: Her first shot is a splotch of menstrual blood on the pavement, as 15-year-old future Runaways vocalist Cherie Currie gets her first period. What makes this even more outrageous is that Cherie is played by Dakota Fanning, now stretched out and filled out. It's as if the director is saying, "Here's your adorable little child star. What do you make of her now? What will she make of herself?" After she's teased by her more worldly sister, Cherie dolls herself up and heads for Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, a well-known L.A. club that's also where Kristen Stewart's Joan Jett heads, after buying herself a motorcycle jacket. She wants to play guitar in a rock band, but in the mid-'70s, the sexist conventional wisdom said girls didn't play electric guitar. Still, when Jett accosts the ghoulish impresario Kim Fowley, played by Michael Shannon, the idea for The Runaways is born."
- David Edelsetein, National Public Radio
Lita Ford, Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, Sandy West & Jackie Fox 'The Wild One' - Suzi Quatro
I would, however, happily recommend Victory Tischler-Blue's in-house documentary 'Edgeplay : A Film About The Runaways' (2004). The soundtrack for this film showcases songs by Lita Ford and Suzi Quatro. Blue directed the music video for Quatro's cover of Goldfrapp's single 'Strict Machine'.
Vicki Blue 'Wasted' - The Runaways
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Post by petrolino on Jul 24, 2020 21:39:45 GMT
Punk Photoplay
Debbie Harry has been photographed by some of the New York punk scene's finest ... David Godlis, Marcia Resnick, Donna Stantisi, Roberta Bayley, Gary Green, Lynn Goldsmith, Ebet Roberts, Julia Gorton, Bob Gruen ...
"More and more lately, I’ve been thinking that I was portraying some kind of transsexual creature."
- Debbie Harry, 'Face It'
* For some California punk photos, check out the work of Linda Aronow, Edward Colver, Brad Elterman, Jim Jocoy ...
Debbie Harry by Brad Elterman
'Here's Looking At You' - Blondie (embracing social distancing)
New York Nightlife
Erotica was an intrinsic part of New York's art punk scene long before Madonna arrived from Bay City, Michigan to patent it. Pop artist Andy Warhol of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was the art punk scene's godfather, a natural voyeur with an eye for lurid detail.
Like Warhol, portrait artist Robert Mapplethorpe is often recalled for his images of masculine bulges and aggressive male members, but he photographed a lot of different subjects during his lifetime. Surrealist Jimmy De Sana created psychedelic images that distorted dimension and rendered gender as amorphous form. Transgressive filmmaker Richard Kern developed longstanding artistic relationships with Lydia Lunch and Sonic Youth who composed music for some of his photography collections and art installations.
The Museum of Sex, now commonly known as MoSex, opened its doors in 2002 and was immediately condemned by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. It's an adult museum dedicated to restoring, preserving and exhibiting New York's sexualised artworks of the modern era, located at 233 Fifth Avenue at the corner of East 27th Street in Manhattan, New York City. I've not been there myself, but its work has been eagerly covered by 'The Daily Mail' tabloid newspaper here in England, notably during a court case involving a giant installation known as the Big Boob Bounce House.
“By the time CGBGs came around, there were more girls involved – and over here as well in the UK. It was the beginning of female intervention - or whatever you want to call it. I think there was more resistance to having girls in bands towards the end of the ‘60s – Cherry Vanilla and Ruby Lynn were very active early on. They probably had it much harder than I did. Though it just seemed like it was part of evolution as far as I could see. I also felt that way about the gay guys fronting bands and it being very apparent – I think they had it a lot harder than me.”
- Debbie Harry, New Musical Express
Mudd Club co-founders Anya Phillips & Diego Cortez by Jimmy DeSana
Elisabeth Carr (Lung Leg) by Richard Kern
'Nurds' - The Roches
A History Of Erotic Art
The crossover between art scenes in New York's concise, distinct districts is perhaps best encompassed by the work of roving photographer Roy Stuart, a somewhat mysterious punk figurehead who's become one of the world's premiere eroticists and is the author of several grounbreaking collections of erotic artworks. Stuart played drums in Pigeons Of The Universe and Numbers, two of the New York underground's more notorious outfits. These groups were connected to the Plasmatics whose controversial live shows evolved from Rod Swenson's adults-only revue, Captain Kink’s Sex Fantasy Theater, in which Wendy O'Williams (still a redhead) performed as part of an anarchic burlesque troupe and displayed a predilection for mooning.
In the 1990s, Stuart's photography career took off while he was living in Paris, France. He'd built a studio there and assembled a small but loyal company of models, performers and technicians. His work mixed a New York sensibility with French impressionist techniques to create a highly individualistic style all his own and he remained an advocate for captured images of shapely behinds. Like Richard Kern, Stuart directed films too; his movie 'Giulia' (1999) became the extended centrepiece of Tinto Brass' project 'Erotic Short Stories', a celebrated 12-story film compendium compiled for Italian television which has since been released internationally to dvd.
The visual artistry of Stuart and imaginative staging of Swenson are both said to have been inspired by European cinema of the 1970s. Stuart is noted for his images of sophisticated ladies taken from behind. A return to this most trusted of civilised artistic formats took hold throughout Europe in the 1970s. Indeed, the hunt for ladies' bottoms was depicted in comedies like Cliff Owen's 'Ooh … You Are Awful' (1972), Sven Methling's 'Tact And Tone In The Four-Poster Bed' (1972), Henning Ornbak's 'Me And The Mafia' (1973) and Franz Josef Gottlieb's 'Bottoms Up' (1974). Women's backsides were envisioned as tools of seduction, counterpoint and distraction in comedies like Lucio Fulci's 'The Senator Likes Women' (1972), Gianfranco Baldanello's 'The Ingenue' (1975), Raoul Foulon's 'The Groper' (1976) and Alberto Lattuada's 'Oh, Serafina!' (1976). Obsessive male tendencies and privately held desires were explored in comedies like Joel Seria's 'Cookies' (1975), Maurizio Liverani's 'The Fishing Hole' (1975), Lucio Fulci's 'My Sister in Law' (1976) and Andrea Bianchi's 'Dear Sweet Nephew' (1977). Paintings were reproduced in cinematic terms in Jean-Francois-Davy's 'Clockwork Banana' (1974), Jean Rollin's 'Fly Me The French Way' (1974), Walerian Borowczyk's 'Immoral Tales' (1974) and Alois Brummer's 'There's No Sex Like Snow Sex' (1974).
Such comedies frequently drew inspiration from ideas observed within a well-documented history of scandalous European art. These traits have been rigorously explored by art historian Caroline Pochon whose extensive research and ability to access interview subjects have led to the creation of several keynote academic texts (these studies are said to have formed the basis for her 2009 publication 'The Hidden Side Of The Bottom' which she co-authored with Allan Rothschild).
"Captain Kink’s Sex Fantasy Theater was a strange mix of vaudeville and live sex, but it was a success – and people who worked there enjoyed it.
Roy Stuart – a struggling drummer, sometime sex film actor, and future erotic photographer – remembers the atmosphere: “I got a job as a stage manager. I met Rod Swenson and thought he was very creative. My job there wasn’t very complex. I would set the small stage, handle the spot light, things like that. The shows were… well, it’s too bad that no one really filmed an entire show. There would be so many different things going on. Sometimes Rod had me wearing roller skates. He would announce, “Hold on while the stage manager resets the stage on his roller skates. I worked there for a year and a half or so. I enjoyed it.” Wendy O'Williams quickly developed a fan-following at Captain Kink’s, but one that extended to the NYPD as well. In a series of raids in the city, she was arrested eight times for live sex performances in a twelve-week period. This was not uncommon. Monica Kennedy, the self-proclaimed ‘most outrageous performer in town’, was arrested for a number of reasons – the most common being for weapons possession on account of the toy guns that formed part of her costume. But in the Spring of 1977, the city – led by Mayor Abe Beame – embarked on a more concerted effort to rid Times Square of smut. And Rod’s Show World, now billed as “America’s Most Outrageous Live Fantasy Theater,” was in the firing line. In March 1977, Beame personally led two police raids that resulted in the closure of an adult bookstore and peep show, a topless bar, and the Show World center itself. The charges against Show World? A building code violation on the first floor of the 12-story building. The violation stated that the building was in imminent danger because it had no sprinkler system. Rod decided to fight back – so he and Wallace Katz, the owner of the building that housed Show World, held a press conference in the theater. In a well-attended event, Rod claimed that the theater shows were in fact “a stabilizing influence in the neighborhood” and that his business employed 60 people. He was adamant that, “Sex between consenting adults is not against the law,” and announced that he was bidding to have the theater re-opened within days."
- Ashley West, The Rialto Report
Debbie Harry
Debbie Harry's screen test for 'Union City' (1980)
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Post by petrolino on Aug 22, 2020 23:40:54 GMT
Punk Bass : Innovators & Technicians
Richard Hell (Neon Boys / Television / The Heartbreakers / The Voidoids)
"We cannot fully recount the glory of rock ‘n’ roll sans the narrative of the bassist, singer, composer, novelist, journalist born Richard Lester Myers. Following frustrating stints with the Neon Boys, Television and Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers, Richard Hell helmed a groundbreaking ensemble which fulfilled his artistic vision, The Voidoids. With the late great guitar virtuoso Robert Quine, guitarist Ivan Julian, and drummer Marc Bell – Hell waxed one of the most influential albums in any era of rock – Blank Generation (1977). To my ears, Hell’s bass artistry evokes comparison to his UK peer Tom Robinson, as both employed rudimentary lines with angular rhythms that embellished their poetic disposition. A musical and fashion innovator with his signature spiked hair and torn safety-pinned haberdashery – Hell sartorially swayed the punk movement. The artist recalls in his memoir (I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp / 2013) an incident wherein Blondie brain-trust Chris Stein observes an image of the Sex Pistols and opines to him – “Here’s four guys who look just like you!” Even the late punk impresario Malcolm McLaren admitted to copying Hell for both the Pistols and his legendary London boutique Sex.
After the release of The Voidoids’ aforementioned seminal collection and the long-delayed follow-up Destiny Street (1982), Hell drifted from the music business for a myriad of reasons; however his vital contributions to the annals of rock ‘n’ roll endure."
- Thomas Semioli, Bass Player
'The Plan' - The Voidoids
Ivan Kral (Luger / Blondie / The Patti Smith Group)
"Ivan Král briefly played with Blondie in the mid-’70s before beginning his long tenure with Patti Smith Group. The composer, producer, and guitarist co-wrote many songs with Smith, most notably “Dancing Barefoot,” from the 1979 album Wave. Král also performed on and wrote for Smith’s debut album Horses (1975), Radio Ethiopia (1976), Easter (1978), and the live album Exodus (1994), recorded in the ’70s. In addition to his work with Smith, Král wrote songs performed by Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Eastern Bloc, and others. In 1976, Král released a documentary of the local New York punk scene titled The Blank Generation. The film—directed by Král and Amos Poe—features footage of Blondie, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Talking Heads, Ramones, Wayne County, and more."
- Madison Bloom, Pitchfork
'Kimberly' - Patti Smith Group
Fred Smith (The Stilettoes / Blondie / Television / The Roches / Peregrins)
"Marquee Moon.
Forty five minutes and thirteen seconds of genius. I know, I know, there's a work of genius hailed in just about every record company press release, but it's a term easily thrown at this week's New Thing and very rarely as justified as it is here. This is music which is at once strangely-familiar and completely alien. It's beautiful, graceful, powerful, fractured, smart and driven, and it's a massive rush from start to finish. A look at the front cover gives you no idea at all what lies in store: what looks like three rock musicians and a geek with a thousand-yard stare. But this is Tom Verlaine, and he's looking into the future. This is Tom Verlaine and soon you will realise that just about all of the guitar players that you've ever heard were, somehow, missing the point. He and Richard Lloyd will mark this album for all time as one of the great electric guitar records. Forget all those bands where, halfway through yet another second-rate rock'n'roll plod, the rhythm section will keep time while the guitar player acts out some masturbatory fretboard fantasy. There is nothing in this album which doesn't seem to belong. Wherever the guitars and vocals go, the whole thing is held together by Billy Ficca's wonderful drums and Fred Smith's elegant, almost-understated bass lines. Just as the really great guitar players know when to play nothing, the great drummers know when to hold back and when to be there."
- Keith Allison, The Wonder
'The Dream's Dream' - Television
Dee Dee Ramone (Ramones)
“Dee Dee Ramone was the archetypical f--k-up whose life was a living disaster. He was a male prostitute, a would-be mugger, a heroin user and dealer, an accomplice to armed robbery -- and a genius poet who was headed for an early grave, but was sidetracked by rock ‘n’ roll.”
- Legs McNeil, 'Lobotomy'
'Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy' - Ramones
Billy Rath (The Heartbreakers / Street Pirates)
"Billy Rath replaced original Heartbreakers bassist Richard Hell in 1976, prior to the recording of the band's only studio album, 1977's 'L.A.M.F.' Although the record was far from a critical or commercial hit, the group caught the eye of the Sex Pistols, who invited them to travel on the Anarchy Tour, which also included the Damned and the Clash; unfortunately, what should have been an opportunity quickly devolved into a disaster, as all but a handful of shows ended up being canceled (due at least in part to pressure from local politicians along the tour's route). The Heartbreakers broke up in 1978, but reformed periodically for reunion gigs, and Rath walked away from the lineup -- and rock 'n' roll in general -- in the mid-'80s.
"I disappeared in 1985 for health reasons or I would have probably died as was rumored," he explained in a 2011 interview. "What I did was go back to school. I now have a BS in Psychology and a Masters in Theology. I was helping/counseling people with alcohol/drug addiction. I also became a minister and pastored a few churches helping people find a better way to live."
- Jeff Giles, Ultimate Classic Rock
'Chinese Rocks' - The Heartbreakers
Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads / Tom Tom Club)
"On the cusp of her teenage years, Tina Weymouth, a California native, found an unexpected musical outlet: at 12, she joined a prestigious youth music group called Mrs Tufts’ English Handbell Ringing Group, which travelled across the mid-Atlantic United States performing medieval melodies and wearing Elizabethan garb. Yet her interests soon shifted to less archaic genres, namely rock ‘n’ roll and folk. A self-taught musician, Weymouth found inspiration in artists like Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul & Mary. In 1971, Weymouth met her future husband (and band mate) drummer Chris Frantz, while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, where they shared a painting studio. Four years later, Talking Heads officially formed in New York City, and Frantz and Weymouth married in 1977 (and remain together, romantically and musically, to this day). The trio’s pioneering sound, with its nods to funk, African, and Brazilian music, and eccentric onstage antics – from David Byrne’s oversized suits to Weymouth’s memorable dance moves – brought them widespread acclaim and multiple records. However, it wasn’t until 1981 when the band took a breather that Weymouth found a sound all of her own. That year, she and Frantz co-founded Tom Tom Club, named in homage to the Bahamian dancehall where they rehearsed for the first time while on hiatus from Talking Heads, and released their dreamy, sonically dynamic and highly danceable debut record to rave reviews. It’s a testament to Weymouth’s talent that club favourite Genius of Love, which has been sampled by countless artists, including Mariah Carey and Grandmaster Flash, remains a timeless classic in 2017."
- Olivia Aylmer, AnOther
'Warning Sign' - Talking Heads
Gerald Casale (Devo / Jihad Jerry & the Evildoers)
"I had four siblings, but Bob was my closest brother in age. We were born four years apart and we bonded very, very early on. We also loved the same sort of music when we were young. We got really great radio stations out of Detroit, so we were listening to a lot of Motown and R&B and Chicago blues. That was our true love other than big pop music hits like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and Kinks and James Brown. Bob was a self-taught guitar player. I started playing bass when I was 17. He began playing guitar when he was 15 and I had gone onto college. His first band was a surf band called the Wipeouters. We didn’t see each other much in that period. We hooked up as musicians when I was in graduate school. We started talking about these Devo concepts and I started infecting him with the Devo bug. Mark Mothersbaugh and I got serious about our concepts so we enlisted our brothers. I talked my brother Bob into it and Mark talked his brother Bob into it. Suddenly, we were a real band. We never played together until we started jamming as Devo in 1974. When Bob graduated from high school he went into radiology and became a radiologist technician. For the first three or so years of the band, he was leading a double life between Devo and his work as a radiologist. He even came into one of the gigs at The Crypt in his scrubs. A lot of people told Bob to stop playing in Devo in those early days. Luckily, he had trust. That’s one of at the advantages of brothers. He didn’t accept disrespectful assessments of our experiments. We were feared and objects of derision all at the same time. They felt sorry for us in a way. We couldn’t even get a date. Devo was certainly, in the beginning, a true unit. We were the Five Musketeers. It took everyone’s energy and everyone’s contributions, whether or not they wre the primary songwriters. Of course, Mark and I wrote all the songs, but without Bob Mothersbaugh and Bob Casale those songs would have never been fleshed out into full Devo expressions. What people liked about us was that we were playing as if we were a machine. But we were playing for real with no click tracks, no sequencers or anything in the beginning. People didn’t believe what they were hearing. It was so tight, like white robot versions of James Brown’s Famous Flames. It really took Bob’s style of guitar playing to complete that, both Bob’s. They could play very staccato very exactly. They both had the willingness to play lines that no self-respecting guitar player would play because that’s not how you use a guitar."
- Gerald Casale, Rolling Stone
'Blockhead' - Devo
Jeff Magnum (Dead Boys)
"Here’s where the Dead Boys started for me. They were the first punk rock band I ever saw. In November 1976, I came down to Boston from Maine — I was attending college there — and tried to catch gigs. It so happened the Dead Boys, who had yet to record their debut album, were at the Rat one night and that’s where I ended up with about 50 other people. It was my good fortune. Punk was starting to gain strength. I’d heard about shows like this — Iggy and the Stooges were infamous for them — but at age 20, I’d never seen anything like it. Stiv Bators was all over the stage, caterwauling and sneering. He cut his bare chest with a broken beer bottle, put his head inside Johnny Blitz’s kick drum, pretended to hang himself with the mic cord — all while the band churned out this nasty, catchy, furious punk rock, songs like “Sonic Reducer,” “Down in Flames” and “All This and More.” The songs — angry, raw and oddly empowering — were new to me and sucked me in immediately.
“People weren’t used to that sort of thing,” Cheetah Chrome says now, looking back at those days. “In a way, it was a lonely existence. We had kind of a rough time because of it. People thought you were weird every place you went. We kind of carried it with us.” Chrome says they never talked about what the Iggy Pop-inspired Stiv was going to do or what his game plan was for the night’s show. “Some nights he’d lose it,” says Chrome, with a slight laugh. “He did some things that didn’t work quite so well, and he was like, ‘Well, I won’t never do that again!’ Like he’d pull my guitar cord over and the amp would come with it across the stage. Sometimes he would go crawling through the drums and knock them out of the way so we couldn’t play and we’d have to stop and fix them. We’d all be standing around for five minutes.”
- Jim Sullivan, The ARTery
'Ain't It Fun' - Dead Boys
Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu / They Might Be Giants)
"I know a lot of drummers who can play to anything. I always thought that in a lot of ways Scott Krauss was a really uncompromising drummer, who could only play if he felt a certain way about something, and I always respected and admired that."
- Tony Maimone, Nadir-Novelties
'Street Waves' - Pere Ubu
Tim Wright (Pere Ubu / DNA)
"The sound of DNA changed when Tim Wright joined the band – he played bass, while his predecessor in the group was a keyboardist – and the trio influenced subsequent punk and underground rockers, including Sonic Youth."
- Erin Coulehan, Rolling Stone
'Heart Of Darkness' - Pere Ubu
Jay Bentley (Bad Religion)
"Dee Murray's talent for finding the lines in a piano-led band are phenomenal. Elton John had a pretty mean left hand, which freed up a lot of space in the middle of the fretboard that I think Dee used very tastefully. He may have been the first player I absolutely recognized as "refrained."
- Jay Bentley, There's Something Hard In There
'White Trash (Second Generation)' - Bad Religion
Lorna Doom (Germs)
"The Germs – whose classic lineup comprised Lorna Doom, Don Bolles, singer Darby Crash and Pat Smear, who later joined Nirvana and is currently in Foo Fighters – formed in 1976. The group released its influential album, (GI) in 1979. Produced by Joan Jett, the album has been heralded by Rolling Stone as one of the “Greatest Punk Albums of All Time.” However, with only one full LP under their belt, the Germs disbanded in 1980 after Crash committed suicide via a heroin overdose."
- Althea Legaspi, Rolling Stone
'Lexicon Devil' - Germs
Chuck Dukowski (Würm / Black Flag / October Faction / SWA / The Chuck Dukowski Sextet)
"If Chuck Dukowski had only played on, say, Black Flag's first 6 releases – and he DID – he'd already be a music legend. Hell, if he'd only written Black Flag's "My War" – which, again, he did – he'd make the history books. But there's much more to the guy than that. Chuck also helped run (and co-owned) the SST label from approximately 1978-1989, the core period which saw the label make its name as the most important American independent label of the 1980's, releasing records by the likes of Husker Du, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Saccharine Trust, Saint Vitus, Sonic Youth, Bad Brains, Dinosaur Jr. and many more, and was, according to Henry Rollins, the great brains trust, "attitude man" and motivator within that milieu (with all due credit to Greg Ginn!). But of course, there's also his history with his first band, sludge-metallers Wurm, and his post-'Flag outfit SWA, a band whose hard-rock fury still divides fans and remain a love-'em-or-hate-'em proposition."
- Dave Lang, Perfect Sound Forever
'What I See' - Black Flag
Klaus Flouride (Dead Kennedys)
"Geoffrey Lyall, aka Klaus Flouride, hails from Detroit, Michigan. Fascinated by early rock and roll records by Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and many others, he picked up the guitar as a teenager and began playing in bands. The switch to bass occurred in 1968 after moving to Boston and playing in a power trio. For roughly a decade, Klaus went back and forth between Boston and New York with various bands and as a freelance player. In 1977, he moved to San Francisco and found a new musical home in the punk rock scene. Klaus responded to a magazine ad by East Bay Ray, auditioned, and shortly thereafter, Dead Kennedys came to be."
- Ryan Madora, No Treble
'Ill In The Head' - Dead Kennedys
Mike Patton (The Middle Class / Eddie And The Subtitles)
"If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in a room with a bunch of record collecting nerd types arguing over who was America’s first Hardcore Punk band, the name of Santa Ana California’s Middle Class had to be thrown around more than once. Their debut seven-inch EP from 1979 Out of Vogue is considered by many to be one of the precursory, blueprint records for the Hardcore scene along with Bad Brains Pay to Cum, Stimulators Loud Fast Rules and Black Flag Nervous Breakdown."
- Tony Rettman, VICE
'Mosque' - The Middle Class
Roger Rogerson (Circle Jerks / The Secret Service Band)
"A founding member of the Circle Jerks, Roger Rogerson perhaps had more musical skills (he was classically trained as a guitarist) than most of his peers in the LA underground, but he was wrecked by a combination of a bi-polar diagnosis and years of drug and alcohol abuse. There was also the issue of his wildly unpredictable personality."
- Carlos Ramirez, No Echo : Hardcore, Metal And Everything In Between
'Operation' - Circle Jerks
Derf Scratch (Fear / The Werewolfs)
"Derf Scratch — real name Frederick Milner — founded the band in 1977 with singer Lee Ving, more or less abandoning his job as a realtor (where he worked with both of his parents) and sneaking off to practice while pretending to be out looking at properties. The group released the single “I Love Living In The City” later that year. A band so rough-and-tumble that it would openly goad its audiences into trying to fight them, Fear developed a reputation as one of the most hardcore acts in a city teeming with them — a reputation that was secured once director Penelope Spheeris documented one of their sets in The Decline Of Western Civilization, during which the group duked it out with the crowd before ever playing a song. Decline also featured a scene where Scratch immortalized the phrase, “Eat my f*ck.”
- Sean O'Neal, The A.V. Club
'Foreign Policy' - Fear
Kathy Valentine (Girlschool / The Violators / The Textones / The Go-Go's)
"I love that when you hear the Go-Go's music, it doesn't necessarily sound '80s. It might not sound real modern, but it doesn't sound dated. It's weird to me that the '80s were so long ago. And it's weird to me that I'm part of nostalgia now."
- Kathy Valentine, Pop Matters
'You Thought' - The Go-Go's
Mike Watt (Minutemen / Dos / Firehose / Unknown Instructors / Floored By Four)
"The Minutemen are a fascinating band and Mike Watt and the Minutemen are so very clearly THE defining influence for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The Minutemen play concise songs that combine frenetic energy, complex basslines, whimsical lyrics, discordant effects, engaging tension & release, driving beats, shredding guitar solos and a blurring of punk and funk music; pretty much the exact same components that define the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In their career high-point endeavor, the Minutemen amazingly released a 43-song album Double Nickels on the Dime, which despite an average song length of about one minute (ah now I get it, the “Minutemen”), contains almost entirely complex and interesting compositions."
- Ryan Dembinsky, Glide 'Joe McCarthy's Ghost' - Minutemen
Bass Duo
Bruce Loose (Flipper) & Will Shatter (Negative Trend / Flipper / Any Three Initials)
"The original quartet — singer and bass player Will Shatter, guitarist Ted Falconi, singer and bass player Bruce Loose, and drummer Steve DePace — played music that was soon notorious. Their slow, glacial groove, Falconi's wall of noise guitar style, the interlocking bass lines of Loose and Shatter, and the relentless timekeeping of DePace's drums created a new, unfathomable style. With decades of hindsight, they can be recognized as the first post-rock band, or the forefathers of the grunge rock movement. At the time, their rhythmic, avant garde noise got them tagged as the band you love to hate."
- J. Poet, East Bay Express
'Shed No Tears' - Flipper
Alternating Bass Duo (Utilising Various Modulating Instruments)
John Piccolo (The Shirts / Chemical Wedding) & Robert Racioppo (The Shirts)
"A first album had been well-received in many countries (if not at home). Basic living standard or not, it was time for the second. For this ingenuously enthusiastic, musically ambitious and positively-thinking group, personal support from EMI London in the late seventies was caring and unconditional. Those were the days when workers at a large corporate record company could feel free to respond on a personal level and make a difference. From this distance, it seems increasingly incomprehensible that a large corporation could exhibit such indie-record company responsiveness: not any more. I dimly remember going out to Heathrow Airport with A&R boss Nick Mobbs and a couple of other company people to pick up and greet the Shirts after their New York flight on arrival at Heathrow at 9am, arriving for their first album recording. Getting up at such a time has always been a serious endeavor for any music type, but we all did it without a second thought. I also dimly remembered another early morning getting-up at the sh*t-house (as it was affectionately known) Shirt House, under the crippling influence of jet-lag and a hangover. CBGB’s club needed to be seen to serve food to keep its liquor license, one aspect of a continuing cat-and-mouse game with the New York City regulatory authorities. Since there wasn’t much call for fine cuisine (the dreadful Phebe’s down the Bowery being the recovery room of choice) there was usually a surplus of raw material at the end of the long night. Balanced on one of the gas stove burners were an aluminum pan and a wodge of good-looking hamburger meat. The pan was on the stove, where it belonged. The meat was underneath it. Domesticating the Shirts never seemed a viable option."
- Mike Thorne, The Stereo Society
'Triangulum' - The Shirts
Bass Unit
Fred Smith (The Stilettoes / Blondie / Television / The Roches / Peregrins)
Ivan Kral (Luger / Blondie / The Patti Smith Group)
Gary Valentine (Blondie / The Know / Essential Logic) Frank Infante (Sniper / Blondie) Nigel Harrison (Silverhead / Blondie / Chequered Past)
"I had known about the occult vaguely from horror films and comic books and things of that sort, but I'd never taken a real interest in magick and the more obvious occult sort of things. But when I was first playing in Blondie in New York in 1975 I was living with Chris Stein and Debbie Harry in this little flat in Little Italy, [and] Chris had this sort of kitschy interest in the occult and black magick and voodoo and Debbie was vaguely into it as this kinda "funny thing". Chris had quite a few books and paraphernalia and there was this one book by an English writer named Colin Wilson called The Occult — a huge history of it from a sort of philosophical point of view. It was very readable and it made it very interesting to me. I was always a big reader, reading tons of books; I just borrowed it and pulled it off the shelf and was fascinated by it. There were also books floating around like Diary of a Drug Fiend. Aleister Crowley was this kind of figure because he was still around from the 60s. The 60s picked up on him as a kind of proto-hippy and his stuff was floating around as debris. The idea that he took lots of drugs was very encouraging to us. Gradually from there it became a fascination — I read more and more about it and took a more serious approach to it. I was involved in a few rituals many, many years ago when I was living in Los Angeles in the late 70s. I got involved in a Crowley group there. I had the robe and the incense and I practiced some of the rituals. I was involved in what is called a gnostic mass and my expectations were "OK, here's where the wild sex orgies and drugs take place," but it was a rather calm sober affair and nothing much happened. I do remember one time, when I was moving back and forth from New York to Los Angeles, I was going to do some ritual and in preparation for it I fasted and took a vow of silence for a day. I was walking around New York going to all the places I normally go to and running into a lot of people and when I wouldn't talk to them they thought I was out of my mind. I couldn't go the next day and say 'Oh the reason I didn't talk to you was because of my vow of silence' — that would probably make it worse. When I was living in LA in in this Crowley group, they had these salutations you'd do three times a day — at dawn, at noon and at sunset. Once my girlfriend and I were in a coffee shop and it was noon and I had to do this thing and she was completely red in the face. It definitely put a damper on our love life. You should try things, check them out, and if they work for you move on to the next thing."
- Gary Valentine, The Quietus
'Atomic' - Blondie
The Singing Bassist
John Doe (X / The Flesh Eaters / The Knitters)
'Universal Corner' - X
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Post by DrKrippen on Aug 25, 2020 7:42:33 GMT
Who needs the White Stripes and Black Keys when Mr. Airplane is around? Two piece ensemble at it's best.
Mr. Airplane Man - Commit A Crime
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Post by petrolino on Aug 25, 2020 16:46:02 GMT
Who needs the White Stripes and Black Keys when Mr. Airplane is around? Two piece ensemble at it's best. Mr. Airplane Man - Commit A Crime
I've not heard of Mr. Airplane. I really like that song. Thanks.
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Post by DrKrippen on Aug 25, 2020 18:27:26 GMT
Who needs the White Stripes and Black Keys when Mr. Airplane is around? Two piece ensemble at it's best. Mr. Airplane Man - Commit A Crime
I've not heard of Mr. Airplane. I really like that song. Thanks.
They were a coupla gals who went out to the proverbial woodshed, in this case a basement in Boston, and did nothing but play The Blues for a year and a half before venturing out to give the clubs a try. They were heavily influenced by them blues, in fact, it's where their name comes from. Mr. Airplane Man was a song done by Howlin' Wolf. Howlin' Wolf - Mr. Airplane Man
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Post by petrolino on Aug 25, 2020 23:00:57 GMT
Punk Bass : Anarchy In The U.K.
Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols / Rich Kids)
"I don't want to just play the bass. I like playing the bass when someone else is singing. I've finally worked it out. All the songs I've ever written, I've written on an acoustic guitar so I just want a chance to sing them and put a record out. Whether people like it or don't like it, at least they get to hear it and decide. That's my main frustration. Hopefully, then people start seeing you as an artist in your own right and not just a side man."
- Glen Matlock, Pop Matters
'Pretty Vacant' - Sex Pistols
Paul Simonon (The Clash / Havana 3AM / The Good, The Bad, & The Queen)
"Paul Simonon, the Clash. Art student naively learns to play bass guitar in such a way that he makes it accessible for everyone! F*cking punk rock! Now add the cool factor and the whole package becomes everything I want to be. My de-facto target player when I'm in doubt."
- Jay Bentley, There's Something Hard In There
'Remote Control' - The Clash
Tony James (London SS / Chelsea / Generation X / Sigue Sigue Sputnik / Sisters Of Mercy / Carbon/Silicon)
“The reason we formed groups was because, like, two years ago, there was, like, no exciting groups about, right? The vision we had of like, the Stones, the Who, Mott the Hoople, the New York Dolls, really didn’t exist on stage, OK? It was like we’d go to see groups and everyone just sat there, like, spending your time watching some dopey group. So like, our vision was, like, a really exciting Rock ‘n’ Roll group.”
- Tony James, 'Punk : The Early Years'
'Paradise West' - Generation X
Gaye Advert (The Adverts)
"I’ve always been drawn to skulls. I try to get away from them and they always seem to come back again!!! I’ve been doing this electronic photo-layering. Obviously I didn’t take the photographs of myself. That was a kind chap called Jeremy who took them at a live gig at The Nashville in 1977 or 1978. He doesn’t mind me using them. The background photographs I took in the Czech Republic.
I like layering photographs electronically and then eating away at bits, making whole new artworks. It’s a nice thing to do in winter when it’s dark and gloomy and you can’t really see what you’re doing. You can carry on working on a laptop into the night."
- Gaye Advert, Brighton And Hove News
'Fate Of Criminals' - The Adverts
Gina Birch (The Raincoats / The Hangovers)
"I call Gina Birch the Raincoats’ bassist, but it might be premature. At the time the band formed, she was an art student, and until about two weeks before their first show, did not actually own a bass guitar. The inspiration to start playing music came, in true punk fashion, from watching other people who didn’t know how to play music get in front of an audience and play it anyway-- in this case, the Slits, a mischievous punk-reggae trio whose frontwoman, Ari Up, was only 15 years old. Birch had seen the show with a Portuguese doctorate student named Ana da Silva, who became the Raincoats’ guitarist. (In several interviews, Birch-- who has described herself as “whiter than white”-- recalls, almost wonderstruck, da Silva’s tan.) Eventually, the Slits’ drummer, a Spanish journeywoman who Clash bassist Paul Siminon nicknamed “Palmolive” because he found it difficult to say “Paloma,” joined, then turned around and recruited a violinist named Vicky Aspinall through an ad pasted on the wall of a bookstore. “Female musician wanted,” the ad read. “No style but strength.” Punk, especially in its infancy-- and especially in England-- was built on loud, confrontational statements. A sampling of early English punk lyrics include the lines, “I wanna riot,” “I wanna be anarchy,” “Oh bondage, up yours,” and “AHHHHHHHHHHHH.” Disciples of punk wore mohawks, safety pins, brightly colored hair, and whatever else they hoped might get the attention of a society they simultaneously hated and yet desperately wanted to be acknowledged by."
- Mike Powell, Pitchfork
'No One's Little Girl' - The Raincoats
Jean-Jacques Burnel (The Stranglers)
"When I was 14 or 15, my parents – who were French – had a restaurant in Godalming near Guildford, and there was a pub there called the Angel which ran a blues club every Sunday night. I was smuggled in by my older friends and I saw Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, and Free before they were called Free, Duster Bennett, Aynsley Dunbar. Chicken Shack… all before they had recording contracts."
- Jean-Jacques Burnel, Guitar World
'Peaches' - The Stranglers
Bruce Foxton (The Jam / Sharp / Stiff Little Fingers)
"Sometimes I wish I hadn’t have done it, especially after the show when I’ve got back ache or leg ache (Laughs). But again it’s not choreographed. It has become, I suppose, a bit on the set where I jump up. But I can’t help myself. It really is, without sounding pretentious, where the music takes me and I get excited, and I can’t help it, I love it."
- Bruce Foxton, Penny Black Music
'The Place I Love' - The Jam
Simon Gallup (Lockjaw / The Magspies / The Cure)
"Simon Gallup was The Cure’s bass player in the definitive early line up (Gallup had first crossed paths with Robert Smith while playing in another band, Lockjaw, at the Rocket pub in Crawley in February 1978). Always volatile, the relationship between frontman and bassist had taken a turn for the worse recording 'Pornography'. Drugs and alcohol were becoming a dangerous crutch for the musicians. To further darken the mood, someone had suggested that they explore disturbing imagery (they have never gone into the details). It added up to six months of unexpurgated hell. “During Pornography, the band was falling apart, because of the drinking and drugs. I was pretty seriously strung out a lot of the time,” Smith confessed to Rolling Stone. “I know for a fact that we recorded some of the songs in the toilets to get a really horrible feeling, because the toilets were dirty and grim. Simon doesn’t remember any of that, but I have a photo of me sitting on a toilet, in my clothes, trying to patch up of some of the lyrics. It’s a tragic photo.” “We immersed ourselves in the more sordid side of life, and it did have a very detrimental effect on everyone in the group,” he continued. “We got ahold of some very disturbing films and imagery to kind of put us in the mood. Afterwards, I thought, ‘Was it really worth it?’ We were only in our really early twenties, and it shocked us more than I realised – how base people could be, how evil people could be.“
- Ed Power, The Independent
'Another Journey By Train' - The Cure
Mick Karn (Japan / Dali's Car)
"Mick Karn rose to fame as a member of the group Japan and played the bass guitar with such a subtle, intelligent artistry that he became one of the most highly respected British musicians of the 1980s. Although Karn's time in the pop spotlight was relatively brief, he continued to make adventurous music throughout his life."
- Garth Cartwright, The Guardian
'Communist China' - Japan
Graham Lewis (Wire / Dome / FITTED)
"Wire's similarities to the other new groups gigging around London in 1977 were superficial: they witnessed punk's foundational moments; they had short hair and straight trousers; they played venues where punk bands performed; their songs were short, fast and noisy; they played the usual instruments, not entirely competently, and they had an intimidating live presence. They even briefly had punk aliases: Colin Newman was Klive Nice (in contrast with Johnny Rotten), Graham Lewis was Hornsey Transfer (a more abstruse pseudonym referencing his art-school background, nomadism and love of football). However, Wire's differences were more striking, as journalists noted almost immediately. "No Pun(k)s Please, We're Wire" proclaimed their first NME cover in December 1977. Wire weren't like the other punks: they shared some of the vocabulary but spoke another language."
- Wilson Neate, 'Pink Flag (33 1/3)'
'106 Beats That' - Wire
Tessa Pollitt (The Slits)
"There were so few female role models for us, and we felt that really, there was just something we had to do. There were so many limitations on women musicians that had to be broken. We didn't want to be labelled or categorised at all. People like to label and categorise: it makes things so much easier for people doesn't it? But we weren't having any of it.
A lot of people were disturbed or unsettled by us. We were too unpredictable, explosive even. But you know I wouldn't like to say I was even a musician at that time. The first Slits gig we played, we played with The Clash. It was in Harlesden. I had only picked up the bass two weeks before. I wasn't a musician. I was terrified, but you know I was just 17, and at that age you have so much energy and excitement in you, it carries you.
I remember at one point onstage, me and Palmolive (The Slits' drummer) looked at each other in amazement as if to say, "What the f*ck are you doing?" We were all playing a different song from each other! But we got away with so much, and the audience didn't care. The energy was what mattered. We were playing from our heart. Literally. With spirit. Our spirit was there."
- Tessa Pollitt, 3:AM
'Earthbeat' - The Slits
Steve Severin (Siouxsie And The Banshees / The Glove)
"Co-opting his stage name from the VU classic “Venus in Furs” the songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, recording artist, soundtrack composer, and bassist born Steven John Bailey co-founded the iconic goth – post punk rockers Siouxsie and the Banshees. A mostly no-frills roots player who uses “upstrokes” with a plectrum on a MusicMan Stingray bass, Steve Severin employs a myriad of ethereal effects ranging from flange, chorus, delay and countless variations thereof to create a signature tonal character."
- Thomas Semioli, Bass Player
'Monitor' - Siouxsie And The Banshees
Jah Wobble (Public Image Ltd.)
“Jah Wobble’s basslines became the human heartbeat in PiL’s music; the rollercoaster carriage that simultaneously cocooned you and transported you through the terror zone.”
- Simon Reynolds, 'Rip It Up And Start Again'
'Annalisa' - Public Image Ltd.
Youth (Killing Joke / Brilliant / The Fireman)
"The mind-bending saga of Killing Joke. Involves maggots, burned flats, gay brothels, police raids, black magic, electric shock therapy, pig’s heads, self-harm, decapitated wax figures, the Great Pyramid, Iceland, leylines, wizards with tattooed faces, Paul McCartney (bassist in the Beatles), immensely powerful music… and the restoration of antique furniture."
- Peter Watts, Uncut
'Primitive' - Killing Joke
Barry Adamson (Magazine / Visage / The Birthday Party / Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds)
"Since the late 1970s, the musician, composer, photographer and filmmaker Barry Adamson has carved out his own idiosyncratic path in music. Born and raised in the Moss Side area of Manchester, Adamson emerged from the punk/ post punk scene as an innovative bass player, first utilised to great effect by Magazine (1977-1981) and then as a founding member of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds (1984-1986), whom he would briefly rejoin for the 2013 album Push The Sky Away album and the subsequent tour. Following his departure from the Bad Seeds in 1986, Adamson announced the start of his solo career with his 1988 dynamic reinvention of Elmer Bernstein’s main theme from the 1956 film The Man With The Golden Arm. This single gave due notice of Adamson’s formidable talents, as a producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist, and indicated the path that his career would follow. His debut album Moss Side Story (1989, Mute) was presented as a soundtrack album for a contemporary film noir crime motion picture that did not exist (long before this had become a trope) – the listener provided the visuals.
Early in his career, Adamson’s evocative soundscapes inevitably attracted the attention of film makers, keen to co-opt his inherent skill for mood manipulation, leading to him composing tracks and soundtracks for a number of motion pictures. These included Derek Jarman’s The Last Of England (1987), Carl Colpaert’s neo-noir Delusion (1991), Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994), key score pieces for David Lynch’s crime mystery Lost Highway (1996), Michel Blanc’s The Escort (1999) and Carol Morley’s drama-documentary Dreams Of A Life (2011)."
- Ian Johnston, The Quietus
'The Great Beautician In The Sky' - Magazine
Dave Allen (Gang Of Four / Shriekback / King Swamp / The Elastic Purejoy / Low Pop Suicide)
"I always enjoyed the element of humour in Gang of Four. I remember when I was producing Killing Joke (their 2003 self-titled album) and Jaz Coleman the singer said, “What's that song about, I Love A Man In A Uniform? It’s crap!” I remember being quite annoyed at the time. Killing Joke are not known for their humour. They're not known for their subtlety. Or irony or sarcasm. So it went… [makes whistling noise while wafting hand over his head]. Yes, but you know what, it is a subtle song to the extent that the US Army was thinking of using it in an advert for recruitment in the 80s, but somebody had a word with General So-and-So and that was dropped. Man In Uniform feels – and is – accessible, but if you go just a little bit under the surface, there are other ideas going on. The song does have this rather nice duality between sexual macho-ness and militaristic macho-ness."
- Andy Gill, Louder
'I Found That Essence Rare' - Gang Of Four
Robert Blamire (Penetration / The Invisible Girls)
"In 1980, Pauline Murray collaborated with The Invisible Girls, which also included Penetration member Robert Blamire as well as other Manchester musicians such as Vini Reilly, guitarist in The Durutti Column, Steve Hopkins and John Maher (Buzzcocks). Produced by Martin Hannett, the resulting album spawned the singles ‘Dream Sequence’ and ‘Mr.X’, with a further non-album single ‘Searching for Heaven’ released in 1981."
- Nick Linazasoro, Brighton And Hove News
'Nostalgia' - Penetration
Steve Garvey (The Teardrops / Buzzcocks / Motivation / Blue Orchids)
"The Buzzcocks were among the most influential bands to emerge from the UK punk – new wave era with their deft combination of pop melodies as penned by Pete Shelley, stripped down arrangements, and boundless energy. Employing no frills four-to-the-bar roots passages to creative counter-melodic motifs, the bassist during the band’s glory years was Steve Garvey, who anchored some of their finest singles along with The Buzzcocks' essential early canon: Another Music in a Different Kitchen (1978), Love Bites (1978), and A Different Kind of Tension (1979). Garvey, who also moonlighted with pop punks The Teardrops (which also included members of The Fall and PIL) and drummer John Maher were a ferocious rhythm section which grooved mightily at a frenetic pace."
- Thomas Semioli, Bass Player
'Fiction Romance' - Buzzcocks
Peter Hook (Joy Division / New Order / Revenge / Monaco / Freebass)
"He changed the main focus of the "bass" from the low notes to high ringing notes. Everyone had gone there, but Peter Hook STAYED THERE. Not that I would ever want to imitate that, but he made it possible for me to go there if I wanted. I remember distinctly the first time I heard them... "he can't do that, he cant do that! but he is doing that" and I still think about that to this day."
- Jay Bentley, There's Something Hard In There
'Candidate' - Joy Division
Bass Unit
Captain Sensible (Johnny Moped / The Damned)
Algy Ward (The Saints / The Damned / Tank)
Paul Gray (Eddie And The Hot Rods / The Damned / UFO) Bryn Merrick (Victimize) Jason 'Moose' Harris (New Model Army / The Damned)
“At one point Lemmy came up to me and said, ‘I wanna have a word with you about your drinking’. Well, when someone like Lemmy says that to you, you listen.
He said, ‘Remember: it’s not what you drink, or how much you drink, it’s how fast you drink.’
I’m pleasantly surprised to have come through it and still be alive.”
- Captain Sensible, Louder
'Liar' - The Damned
Bass Troupe
Andy Warren (Adam And The Ants / The Monochrome Set / Would-Be-Goods) Leigh Gorman (Adam And The Ants / Bow Wow Wow / Chiefs Of Relief / Soho) Kevin Mooney (The European Cowards / Adam And The Ants / MAX) Gary Tibbs (The Vibrators / Adam And The Ants / Zu Zu Sharks / The Fixx)
"Bipolar, the term itself, means up and down, extremes, light and dark. I think any good songwriter has to draw on both – otherwise the music’s going to be pretty boring. So sometimes you have to search inside yourself to go to some pretty dark places to produce the work. So I think that’s why writers and creative people do succumb to it, because they have to go a bit deeper. But the first time I ever heard the term bipolar was in New York City at the end of the Wonderful tour in 1995, when I was told that I had contracted acute mononucleosis from drinking some water at a gig in Mexico. And one of the unfortunate symptoms of mononucleosis is a kind of depression. You get into a state where you literally can’t get out of bed, you can’t move. So unfortunately I did contract that at the time, and that was the first time I actually heard the term. But since then I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some very good medical people, who advised me to try and learn as much about the condition as I can in order to help them with either prescribing medication, or at least knowing what the medication is doing to those parts of the brain that need help. In my case a lot of it is due to overwork, stress and just not stopping. I did not stop from work 1980 until the mid-Nineties. It was like 24/7, and that’s not a sensible thing to do. But nobody could’ve stopped me. There’s that burning desire to create and be top dog, I suppose."
- Adam Ant, Rolling Stone
'Deutscher Girls' - Adam And The Ants
The Showman
Sting (The Police)
'Peanuts' - The Police
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Post by petrolino on Aug 26, 2020 23:40:38 GMT
My Top 20 Punk Drummers (Ranked)
# "The Family" : The Brothers Ramone
Jeff Hyman ~ Joey Ramone ( Sniper / Ramones)
Thomas Erdelyi ~ Tommy Ramone (Ramones / Uncle Monk)
Marc Bell ~ Marky Ramone (Dust / The Voidoids / Ramones / Misfits) Rich Reinhardt ~ Richie Ramone (Ramones) Clem Burke ~ Elvis Ramone (Blondie / Chequered Past / Adult Net / The International Swingers)
Chris Ward ~ C.J. Ramone (Guitar Pete's Axe Attack / Ramones / Los Gusanos)
“It was a disaster. His drumming style wasn’t right. It was very loose, like in Blondie, not as rigid as we need. Double time on the hi-hat was totally alien to him.”
- Johnny Ramone assesses Clem Burke's drumming as Elvis Ramone
'Cretin Hop' - Ramones
20) Scott Krauss (Hy Mya / The Finns / Pere Ubu / Home And Garden)
"This one friend of mine was telling me that there's this really weird band down [DEVO] in Akron. He said, "You're not going to believe this but they all wear these uniforms and sing about the de-evolution of the human race." So we go down to check this out and it was at a little club called the Crypt. It was definitely one of the weirdest bands I've ever seen. I kept wondering, "Aren't these guys afraid of getting beat up?"
I don't know how it all got worked out, but sometimes they'd come up to Cleveland, and we'd take turns headlining. They got into a bunch of philosophical discussions, Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh versus David Thomas and Allen Ravenstine, and it was pretty interesting. I think they got the impression that Pere Ubu was never going to make it because we didn't care whether we made it or not. And we thought they were going to the other extreme."
- Scott Krauss, Nadir-Novelties
'On The Surface' - Pere Ubu
19) Topper Headon (London SS / The Clash)
"Topper Headon remains a hugely underrated drummer, so it comes as a surprise to learn that he arrived at the profession by accident. Aged 13, a broken leg put paid to his footballing ambitions and it was a doctor who suggested the drums as a way of venting his frustration. Within six months he was playing for a jazz band in a Dover pub. When he later moved to London with his new wife Wendy, he was sacked from various drumming jobs for not hitting the drums hard enough, a legacy of these jazz beginnings. Drowning his sorrows at the Rainbow Theatre one night, he met The Clash's guitarist, Mick Jones, who was on the lookout for a replacement drummer. Headon agreed to an audition but didn't bother going; he'd briefly been in Jones' previous band, the London SS, "but they were all long hair and afghans and stuff". He bought that week's edition of the NME, however, "and who's on the cover, but Mick, Joe and Paul [Simonon, bass player], and it was like... 'Oh, I'll be down in a minute, then!' I went in there and went bang! bang! bang! – I had to relearn my whole drumming style." He ended up with his hands covered in blood blisters but he'd got the job on a wage of £25 a week. Being part of The Clash meant Headon had to give up his previous existence. Having set off for the audition in casual clothes and with long hair, he returned home dressed in punk gear, his head sporting hacked spikes. His name was changed next; Simonon rechristened him after deciding their new drummer looked like Mickey the Monkey from the children's comic, Topper. "I wondered: am I doing the right thing? I'd only been in the band a week – I'd had to deny I was married. It was quite intimidating, you had to ditch all your mates and be part of the gang."' There was no room for Headon's marriage, but he bonded with the band through sheer industry and application: life became an endless cycle of touring and rehearsing. It was some time before his drumming skills were fully appreciated by The Clash. His strength and stamina were obvious but his ability to play jazz, soul and funk weren't needed to begin with. Sandy Pearlman, the producer for the band's 1978 second album Give 'Em Enough Rope, was astonished by Headon, calling him "the human drum machine". "I was really on top of my game then," the musician recalls. "I didn't make mistakes. I really could drum." If Headon was gradually encouraging The Clash to play the sort of music he liked, he was also being introduced to reggae by the rest of the band. "I loved drumming, so I just thought, 'Right, I'm going to learn reggae now.' That's the way I was – I've got an addictive personality. All I ever did was drum, drum, drum. Then I went on the road and discovered booze. All I did was drink, drink, drink. Then Mick turned me onto coke and all I did was coke."
- Mark Lucas, The Independent
'Rudie Can't Fail' - The Clash
18) D. H. Peligro (Dead Kennedys / The Feederz / Three Little Butt Hairs / Red Hot Chilli Peppers / Jungle Studs / Nailbomb)
“John Frusciante was an absolute, you know, this interstellar, transcendent, incredible virtuoso musician. And after Hillel Slovak died, he became our guitar player, this 17-year-old kid. And we jammed with him and there was actually a Bay Area guy named D. H. Peligro, who played with the Dead Kennedys, he was in our band for a short while [in 1988] – a great drummer. And yeah, it really was a new opportunity and John gave us so much and he’s someone that I love so deeply.”
- Flea, Alternative Nation
'Riot' - Dead Kennedys
17) Rick Buckler (The Jam / Time UK / The Highliners)
"There was some really great drumming going on at that time, people like Ian Paice with Deep Purple, John Bonham with Led Zeppelin, Paul Hammond with Atomic Rooster. They were all a big influence on me. I knew I couldn’t play that way – there was no way I could be as good as Ian Paice [laughs], you know what I mean? But I still loved to listen to what they were playing. And I suppose like most musicians you pull off little bits: I like that — I’ll have a go at that —. You figure out your own way to do them. Even though these drummers were in what was referred to as progressive rock bands, I still loved the song thing – the three-minute single, which was a lot more engaging than a fifteen-minute rock classic. Even then I thought that was a bit overblown. People started to go back to what I think really matters – a great song from a great band."
- Rick Buckler, Modern Drummer
'Burning Sky' - The Jam
16) Stephen Morris (Joy Division / New Order / The Other Two / Bad Lieutenant)
"He may have been usurped by a drum machine on the notorious introduction of New Order’s biggest hit ‘Blue Monday’, but Stephen Morris is still a hero. As drummer for both Joy Division and New Order, his style adapted from doomy post-punk to danceable new wave, keeping both in the realms of the dancefloor."
- Emily Barker, New Musical Express
'A Means To An End' - Joy Division
15) Jay Dee Daugherty (Mumps / Patti Smith Group / The Roches)
"I was never a great drummer. Never had the chops. My secret was I just hit the damn things harder than anyone else. My influences were Jay Dee Daugherty from The Patti Smith Group, Scott Krauss from Pere Ubu, Dee Pop from Bush Tetras, and Gun Club. And man, Doug Scharin from Codeine has the most beautiful, powerful, minimalist vibe … he takes my breath away."
- David Rat, International Times
'Revenge' - Patti Smith Group
14) Budgie (The Spitfire Boys / The Slits / Siouxsie And The Banshees / The Creatures)
“I started playing when I was 13 or 14 and I did cabaret bands in the North-West of England. At the weekends we’d go out and as a kid you’d be late for school on Monday morning because you’d been out until 3 o’clock with all the old folk. And you had to be careful about the bingo sessions. You did three sets a night – a slow set, a medium-paced set and dance set, faster. It was all the classics, ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’, Ray Charles, and so I was learning waltz time, medium-paced pop stuff, and then rock’n’roll which was the fast set. But I wanted to be John Bonham. I’d heard pop songs but that was the first serious rock drumming I’d heard.
When two guys knocked on my door and said, ‘You play drums?’ I said, ‘No I don’t. I’m an artist.’ I was at art college, ‘I’m going to be a painter.’ I was at college, I had turned my back on music, David Bowie was out there having his clothes pulled off, I was into Marc Bolan but I had left it behind for a couple of years and these guys said, ‘We’re playing tonight, we’re supporting Siouxsie And The Banshees.’ I went, ‘What’s this?’ I’d heard Blondie’s Plastic Letters and The Clash, the first album, but what was also happening was Kraftwerk. There was electronic music coming from Germany and I found that was becoming a bigger influence. There was this thing, here comes the drum machine, what’s going to happen to drummers? I’d only just learned how to drum properly, or thought I had, and suddenly all this dance music was coming in. It was threatening but it was also, what could we take from that?”
- Budgie, Louder
'Christine' - Siouxsie And The Banshees
13) Brian Glascock (The Strangers / The Gods / Toe Fat / Carmen / Captain Beyond / The Motels)
"Session drummer Brian Glascock is the brother of bassist John Glascock (1951–1979), who Richie Blackmore called " ... a brilliant bass player, the best in the business in rock". Like his late brother, Brian is a master technician on his instrument."
- Colin Treadwell, Drum Art
'Careful' - The Motels
12) Zeeek Criscione (The Shirts)
"We all know about the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Blondie, Television ... the seventies list goes as far as you care. Later, when CBGB’s became establishment, more and even bigger names would grace its tiny stage (bathrooms to the left, downstairs). Beginning in the eighties, the club became in demand as a showcase and a film set, thankfully without losing its social street welcome or basic perspective (no velvet ropes here, just the occasional police barricade). Even Spinal Tap would feel honored to play there. But in the seventies’ Golden Age there was another lively layer, of bands that, for various reasons, didn’t make the household-name grade. The Shirts (from Brooklyn, as the description went) was one of these, along with the Laughing Dogs, Manster, the Rudies, the Tuff Darts, Mink deVille, the Miamis, Orchestra Luna, the Sorrows and many more who had what it took but didn’t benefit from the right roll of the dice. In many ways, the Shirts’ erratic progress through hope, failure, despair, experiment and success mirrored the experiences of many others at the time, trying to survive while carving a musical identity in what in retrospect looks like a remarkable and special hothouse. And the Shirts tackled it with a basic, honest, earthy family attitude. No artsy posing here. The Shirts were (are) from Brooklyn."
- Mike Thorne, The Stereo Society
'Teenage Crutch' - The Shirts
11) Johnny Blitz (Rocket From The Tombs / Dead Boys / The Tribe / Raw Dog / Highschool Hookers)
"My band Thundertrain was on the ascent in Boston that year. With a couple of singles getting steady airplay, some Marshall stacks and an amazing following of nubile babes, we were headlining clubs all over the northeast. One night we rolled into the Rat in Kenmore Square for the first show of a 4-night engagement. Jim Harold, the owner, told me in his office that the opening band had just driven 700 miles from Cleveland and were down in the dressing room. The Dead Boys.
Neither of us had ever heard of them. Not expecting much, I went down into the basement club and was confronted with an amazing sight. Sprawled out on the stage, over tables and on the floor was the hungriest, skinniest, sickliest looking band I’d ever seen. Dressed in their shiny pants, pointy boots, scarves and mascara they were even cooler looking than my own band. They were eager to meet me. Cheetah Chrome - the lead guitarist introduced himself. He was very familiar with "Hot For Teacher!" -Thundertrain’s latest record. He asked me if they play through our gear. They had driven to Boston in a small car, bringing only their instruments. No roadies. In fact they didn’t even have a bass player. Since they seemed pretty nice, we said sure. Drummer Johnny Blitz sat down at Bobby’s drums and exploded into action. He looked like a punk, but he had a lot of muscle and was a virtual one-man-band. Guitarist Jimmy Zero was mild mannered and resembled actor Christopher Walken. Gaunt and very cool. Turned out he shared my love of monster movies. Jimmy told me he corresponded with Forrest Ackerman, editor of "Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine". Zero had an amazing collection of monster stuff, including an actual Dracula ring from the Lugosi estate.
Rounding out the crew was frontman Stiv Bators. I found him sitting in the corner of the dimly lit dressing room. Looking intelligent in his reading glasses. He was quietly going over band expenses in a little book. He introduced himself, as "Steve" The name change hadn’t happened yet. It was apparent that he, like myself, was also deeply committed to the pursuit of a "Stones" lifestyle. They had recently changed their band name (from "Frankenstein") and still wore their hair long like all bands did. They were on a quick visit thru NYC and Boston to test the local waters. When Bators hit the stage and the boys launched into the sound check I was taken aback. The mild mannered bookworm and his nice guitarists became the most viscous and jarring thing I’d ever seen on a stage."
- Mach Bell, Glam Punk
'Not Anymore' - Dead Boys
10) Jerry Nolan (New York Dolls / The Heartbreakers / The Idols)
"Hailing from Brooklyn, back when it was still a gang town, Jerry Nolan (1946-1992) was an indisputable force in shaping the look and sound of the city’s biggest glam and punk rock bands. As the drummer for The New York Dolls and The Heartbreakers, Nolan set the pace, crafting the face of hard rock during the 1970s – a distinctive combination that was at once raw, rough and rugged, yet highly dandified and charismatic. “Jerry saw Elvis when he was really young, back in 1956. It reminded him of the gangs he saw in New York,” says Curt Weiss, author of Stranded in the Jungle: Jerry Nolan’s Wild Ride – a Tale of Drugs, Fashion, The New York Dolls, and Punk Rock (BackBeat Books), which released its Kindle edition yesterday. “For Jerry, gangs and rock and roll were interchangeable. It was a secondary family. He never had a dad; his mother kept divorcing, remarrying, and moving around. The only constant men in his life came through gangs or music.” Nolan, who had learned to sew and cut hair, created what he described as a “profile,” which allowed him to stand above the crowd. “People thought he was in a band even when he wasn’t,” Weiss notes. But soon enough, he was. He joined The New York Dolls in 1972 after drummer Billy Murcia died of asphyxiation following efforts to revive him after a drug overdose while on tour in England."
- Miss Rosen, Another Man
'Baby Talk' - The Heartbreakers
09) Gina Schock (Edie And The Eggs / The Go-Go's)
"Charlotte Caffey came up with “We Got the Beat” by herself, on the piano, and worried that she’d be thrown out of the band for writing a pop song. Instead, the Go-Go’s recognized a good tune when they saw it, scored a record deal with a small outfit, and began to attract crowds in L.A. as punk died off. Still, major labels turned them down: Girl groups didn’t sell. But Miles Copeland, the founder of I.R.S. records, manager of the Police, and brother of Police drummer Stewart, saw things differently: “All girls? Punks? From L.A.?” He says. “Even if they were crap you would almost want to sign them. But they were good!” The band went to New York City to record Beauty and the Beat and exploit the Macy’s towel department. While making the album, though, Caffey became a full-blown heroin addict. Later, at a rock festival in Brazil, “Charlotte was so out of control that Ozzy Osbourne threw her out of his dressing room,” recalls Gina Schock, “and that’s pretty f***in’ bad.” A second knockout hit, “Our Lips Are Sealed,” and an accompanying music video made for $6,000 left over from the budget for a Police video launched the girls into the pop stratosphere. “None of us took it seriously. We wanted to get arrested and get that on tape,” says Belinda Carlisle. So everyone jumped in the Electric Fountain in Beverly Hills and frolicked mightily, but no one paid any attention. The thrown-together video became a mainstay of early MTV, and Carlisle’s ability to smile and sing at the same time signaled that the Eighties would be like the sunny spring after an endless winter. Thirty-eight years after the Go-Go’s did it, they remain the only all-female band that played their own instruments and wrote their own songs to make it to the top of the album chart. The Copeland connection earned the Go-Go’s a critical gig opening for the Police on their world tour, which didn’t work out quite the way anyone planned: One day in Atlanta, Sting came into the girls’ dressing room with a bottle of Champagne to tell them that their album had just surpassed the Police’s Ghost in the Machine on the charts. “They were the greatest opening act of all time,” says Stewart Copeland. “Their songs were so bright that they would just light up the room.”
- Kyle Smith, National Review
'It's Everything But Party Time' - The Go-Go's
08) Lucky Lehrer - (Circle Jerks / Wasted Youth / Redd Kross / Bad Religion)
"Roger Rogerson, our bass player, had dreams. I was a “peripheral visionary.” I could see the future, but only sideways. I thought punk was a sort of a joke that would last a year or so. Not that I don’t love the music! But I saw irony, humor, and a good way to sleep with a lot of weird chicks. I was all in for the party. Most of punk garage bands had novice musicians and I didn’t think the scene would last. Wrong again!
Roger was AWOL, hiding from the Navy. He used a number of aliases, including "Dowding." I highly suggest people buy the book The Prodigal Rogerson by J. Hunter Bennett. In a few short pages they’ll learn the story of our enigmatic bass player in the golden age of hardcore punk."
- Lucky Lehrer, No Echo
'Murder The Disturbed' - Circle Jerks
07) D.J. Bonebrake (The Eyes / X / The Flesh Eaters / The Knitters / Auntie Christ)
"I make funny faces when I play. I had a drum teacher who told me I should sing along when I play, so that's what I did. I get into it. It's kind of like scat singing, like what jazz pianists do. But that's why I think musicians are interesting: they all have funny little things about them that makes them different."
- D.J. Bonebrake, Music Radar
'Riding With Mary' - X
06) Alan Myers (Devo / Swahili Blonde)
"In praise of Alan Myers, the most incredible drummer I had the privilege to play with for 10 years. Losing him was like losing an arm. I begged him not to quit Devo. He could not tolerate being replaced by the Fairlight and autocratic machine music. I agreed. Alan, you were the best - a human metronome and then some. A once in a lifetime find thanks to Bob Mothersbaugh. U were born to drum Devo!"
- Gerald Casale, Twitter
'Fountain Of Filth' - Devo
05) John Maher (Buzzcocks / The Invisible Girls / Flag Of Convenience / Penetration)
"We’re almost 40 years on from our first gig with the Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall. Buzzcocks are still talked about here, there and everywhere and cited as an influence by bands old and new. We created some great music and it played an important part in many peoples’ lives. I got a reminder of that the other day. I have a drum kit set up in the workshop. I was having a blast on it before heading home. A total stranger suddenly appeared at the window. I stopped playing and he shouted: “I love Buzzcocks!” I went outside to have a chat with him. He told me how Buzzcocks had changed his life and did I realise what a difference we’d made? Makes you think about your involvement when someone turns up on your doorstep on a remote Hebridean island and feels the need to express their feelings like that! What I’m saying is I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact I was a part of something very worthwhile that continues to resonate. I can now admit to myself and others, I’m proud to have played a part in it. Also, my enthusiasm for playing drums has been fired up again. Initially it was the 2012 Back to Front reunion shows that got me back behind the kit and since then I’ve continued playing and finally got involved in a couple of projects that have seen me back in the recording studio."
- John Maher, Louder Than War
'You Say You Don't Love Me' - Buzzcocks
04) Stewart Copeland (Curved Air / The Police / Animal Logic / Oysterhead / Gizmodrome)
"I’ve created a Stewart Copeland playlist in case you want to follow the references below :
- Signature Hi-Hat Intro Fills - If you listen to “Shadows In The Rain”, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” and “One World (Not Three)” the exact same hi-hat fill is played on each song. When something works, use it!
- Use of Delay - I don’t know any other drummer who, before Stewart Copeland, had the brilliant idea of using delay effects on their drums with such deceptive results. Check out the infamous “Walking on the Moon” (especially after 3.14..he goes absolutely nuts!) and the intro of “Regatta de Blanc”. Also, on “The Other Way Of Stopping” if you like delay on toms.
- Displacement - If there is one thing that makes Copeland stand out from any other drummer, it’s his way of displacing the beat. The way he creates “illusionary” drum patterns is out of this world. In “The Bed’s Too Big Without You” listen how he leaves beat one empty. He plays on beat 2 and 4 the rim click and then he accentuates beat 3 with the kick, creating a different kind of movement to the whole song.
- Ride Cymbal and The Use of Accents - You definitely know Stewart Copeland is in the house when you hear him playing accents on the bell of the ride cymbal. He rarely plays straight 8th of 16th notes both on the hi-hat or the ride. He always uses accents to spice up the groove underneath of what’s going on around him. For this, check out “Contact” or the outro of “Message in a Bottle” (from 3.43 onwards)
- FLAMtastic - If you want to learn how to play anything by Stewart Copeland, then learn how to play flams. Yes, because that’s the “fill” he plays the most on his songs. You can find them usually on downbeats. Very often on beat 4, or if not on each beat, like in the intro for “Driven to Tears” or “Next To You” or in “Roxanne” just before Sting starts singing the first verse.
- Crazy Fills! - Stewart Copeland main characteristic is probably to be able to surprise his listeners with some crazy drum fills. Check out these ones:
“No Time This Time” intro and outro are insane! At around 2.35 on “Voices Inside My Head” Copeland plays a series of crazy snare rolls and crossed rhythms on top of the main groove. In “Man In A Suitcase” 0.16 sounds like a simple drum fill, but the fact that he ends it on a small little splash cymbal, makes everything even cooler! In the first 25 seconds of “Demolition Man” I wished the first verse never started, because Copeland was on fire! Check out also the drum solo in “One World (Not Three)” towards the end, starting at 3.40.
These are just some of the things that I love about this incredible drummer. Even if I tried to emulate his playing I don’t think I could ever get anywhere near, since his energy and unique attitude came out directly through his playing."
- Chris Castellitto, 'Deconstructing The Genius Of Stewart Copeland'
'Roxanne' - The Police
03) Rat Scabies (London SS / The Damned / The Germans / The Gin Goblins / Professor And The Madmen / One Thousand Motels / The Sinclairs)
"New Rose is widely credited with being the song that launched the punk/new wave movement in the mid-1970s, and was covered by the likes of Guns N’ Roses and even Depeche Mode. But it might never have existed had it not been for a perhaps unlikely fanbase: Belgium’s French speakers. “The group that preceded the Damned was called Bastard, and we could not get gigs or any contracts in the early 1970s in England. Most of the music was so bland that no one in the business in London or anywhere in England was interested in an angry rock’n’roll group called Bastard,” said Brian James.
“We were influenced by Iggy Pop and the Stooges at a time when most rock had gone all weird. One of our band members got a job in 1973 at a recording studio in Brussels so, rather than split up, we all decided to move over with him. We started gigging around Brussels and other parts of French-speaking Belgium, and we won over a cult following. That kept Bastard alive and allowed me to come back to England in the mid-70s and keep my interest in rock music. Indirectly, we have Belgians, French-speaking ones not so much the Dutch speakers, for me eventually writing New Rose. Before Belgium I was on the verge of giving up,” James said. The appeal of the track spread far beyond Brussels. Even in conflict-torn Belfast, groups like the Damned inspired teenagers such as Paul Burgess to form bands. Burgess, founder of Ruefrex’, drummer and now novelist said: “My God … New Rose! If you were 17 and immersed in music then the energy and defiant insolence of Brian James’s song, set to a three-chord two-and-a-half minute package, was like mother’s milk. It was a perfect storm of rebellion, belonging and purpose where none had existed before.” James believes the contemporary era of X Factor-style manufactured pop stars and bands who don’t write their own songs calls for another punk-style pushback. “Back in 76, New Rose was a kick up the arse for the music industry. Which is why I am proud of the song and the way it’s getting recognition. This business needs another giant kick up the behind now,” he said. Vive Le Rock sells 20,000 copies worldwide and is regarded as the biggest punk magazine on the planet. Its owner, Eugene Butcher, said James was a trailblazer. “He was a pioneer of angry guitar rock’n’roll while everyone was singing about dragons and wizards and playing banks of synths. Brian turned up the heat with incendiary guitar riffs. He remains one of the greatest guitar players of the punk era.” New Rose starts “Is she really going out with him? Ah! I got a feeling inside of me / It’s kind of strange like a stormy sea / I don’t know why, I don’t know why / I guess these things have got to be.” But James insisted it was a never a love song. “The rush of it – especially Rat Scabies’s drumming at the start and the opening riff – was like the heralding of a new era,” he said. “To be honest, I never thought about the lyrics. I just wrote them down. They were certainly not about a girl as I didn’t have one at the time and love was not on my mind. I suppose the words just fitted the tune. Afterwards I realised the lyrics were about this new era, this new emerging punk scene.”
- Henry McDonald, The Guardian
"We suffered for our art. Now it’s your turn!”
- Rat Scabies
'New Rose' - The Damned
"In 2018, Rat Scabies released his debut solo album, P.H.D. (Prison, Hospital, Debt), a mostly instrumental affair that included a trio of Shinbone-sung tunes. Beyond the enduring power of Scabies’ drumming and wide spectrum of genres, the album totals more than the sum of its parts. Scabies played every instrument on the album. But it is truly with The Damned and that original pop-anarchic lineup of Scabies, Captain Sensible, David Vanian and Brian James that launched Scabies’ life. Like any truly great rock’n’ roll band (Stooges, Dolls, MC5), they were revered and reviled. The drugs and booze, the urinating at will, the calling out of tired old rock dinosaurs, and so on. The Damned lit the flames with unadulterated chaos, sing-song revelry and reckless abandon. More importantly, they could flat outplay any band, anywhere. Scabies’ Keith Moon, drug-induced rock-star tomfoolery reared, all the way from the drumstool of his burning kit at live shows. But the musicianship stood tall, and Scabies kept a mean and versatile beat."
- Mark C. Horn, Tuscon Weekly
"It’s terrible with all of the sickness and death and sadness. But, on the other side of the coin, I really like the silence of not having sirens and airplanes constantly flying by. The birds are singing and it’s pretty cool. If the pubs were open, it would almost be the perfect existence."
- Rat Scabies addresses the COVID-19 pandemic and British lockdown response at PunkNews
'I Just Can't Be Happy Today' - The Damned
02) Clem Burke (Blondie / Chequered Past / Adult Net / The International Swingers) "MUSIC lovers may claim that certain drum beats have ‘blown their minds’ but now scientists have revealed how drumming can re-shape the brain with positive outcomes for health and wellbeing. A University of Chichester study has explored what happens to our brains when we learn. The study specifically focused on the networks of the cerebellum which sit below and behind the main structure of the brain and associated with plasticity: the ability to change as the result of experience. Reference is made to the unique requirements of drumming and, specifically, the physical and mental challenge of playing a set pattern whilst integrating tempo, volume and timing. A better understanding of the physical changes which happen in our brains when we learn could lead to interventions which may have a positive impact on neurological disorders such as autism and dementia. The investigation is a collaborative venture between iconic Blondie drummer Clem Burke, the University of Chichester, King’s College London and Hartpury University, funded by the Waterloo Foundation. It is part of a ten-year investigation under the name the Clem Burke Drumming Project, which has also explored the health benefits of rock drumming for primary age school children with additional education needs. The findings from the recently study were recently discussed on a Sky Arts documentary, 'My View: Clem Burke'. The importance of the ability of the brain to learn how to synchronise multiple limbs, either working collectively or independently, will be highlighted in relation to future investigations. University of Chichester senior lecturer Dr Marcus Smith, a Reader in Sport and Exercise Physiology and the co-founder of the Clem Burke Drumming Project, said: “Drumming is a unique activity that is both physically and mentally challenging. It acts as a potent intervention in experimental trials that seeks to provide insight into how humans learn and subsequently behave. Drumming appears to provoke subtle adaptations in sensitive brain structures that have a profound effect on physical capability and psychological behaviour. Following a recent study working with young autistic children aged 12 to 16 years, I was struck by a parent’s comment that her son was able to brush all of his teeth independently, for the first time, because of the increased strength and range of movement he had developed in his wrist since learning to play the drums. Research that makes a difference is important to me. In terms of a therapeutic benefit of drumming there is still much work to be done but the potential benefit for those with neurological disorders, such as dementia, is exciting and will become a focus for future collaborative research projects.”
- University Of Chichester
'Bermuda Triangle Blues' - Blondie
"Yeah. It’s great to play with pretty much our contemporaries and some of the bands that came after us. I mean Devo, they’re all friends of ours from back in the 70s. They used to play at Max’s Kansas City and we used to see them when we played in Cleveland. And over the years, I actually just saw Mark Mothersbaugh at a birthday party for [inaudible 00:03:07] Berry the other day. Yeah, they’re friends. And funny enough, it’s not really been publicized. Echo and the Bunnymen have a new record coming out I think in June and somehow they asked me to play drums on the majority of it, so I recorded that before Christmas with them out in the English countryside. I did the newest Echo and the Bunnymen record that’s not out yet. So yeah, it’s great and it’s great to play and you get to see a lot of the other bands, which is always kind of fun for me."
- Clem Burke, Event Santa Cruz
'I Know But I Don't Know' - Blondie
01) Billy Ficca (Neon Boys / Television / The Waitresses / The Washington Squares / Heroes Of Toolik)
"Tom Verlaine and I, our guitars meshed together immediately. I had studied a kind of classic rock guitar, where you do whole step bends, half step bends. When I was a teenager, I had a friend who knew Jimi Hendrix, and Jimi gave this guy lessons, who passed them on to me, and I met Hendrix and watched him play, so that’s where I was coming from. Tom played with a completely different style. He used the classical vibrato. It’s technical to describe, but it’s like on a violin: you move your wrist back and forth, the finger doesn’t move, but the pitch goes up and down. I don’t know where he got it. It was more like a sitar player, but that was Tom’s style, this magnificent classical vibrato. He’d never do whole step bends, always micro-bends. But our two styles just suited each other beautifully. Between the two of us, we had all the different guitar aspects you could want. I was playing much more classical rock, Tom was playing his odd, in-between thing. But if Tom would show me something, I could play it. The next thing was convincing Richard Hell to play bass. Tom couldn’t do it. Richie said, “I’m not a musician. I can’t do it.” When Tom wasn’t around, I asked him what the problem was. He said, “Listen. Playing with Tom is like going to the dentist. Except you’d rather go to the dentist.” Tom and Richard had tried to do a band before. I said, “But Richard, you’ve got the look. You look like a combination of Elvis Presley and some movie star. You can learn, we’re going to rehearse a lot.” And the compliments got to him. So then we had three. I got together with Tom to talk about drummers. I had a couple in mind, but Tom was insistent the best rock’n’roll drummer he knew was a friend of his, Billy Ficca. I was a little miffed he wasn’t willing to try a few drummers, but we called Billy down. Billy was in Boston, and he’d just left his band, so he had nothing else to do, so he came down, and we started rehearsing. Three days into rehearsals, Tom called me aside and said, “I’m about to pull my hair out. I can’t stand it. Billy’s turned into a jazz drummer.” And Billy was all over the place – but in a good way. I said to Tom, “Look. All the greatest guitarists we know, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix – they all had crazy drummers.” The Who had Keith Moon, Zeppelin had Bonham, just down the line. You know, without a crazy drummer, a guitar solo can sound wimpy. We started rehearsing and we were having a great time. But Tom was already getting frustrated with Richard Hell, because Richard never practiced. That’s one reason why we ended up having weeks of like six, seven days of five-hour rehearsals. Which of course didn’t hurt, but it didn’t make us better, either, between Richard’s lack of skills on the bass – and I loved Richard’s bass-playing, I thought he was like Paul McCartney – and Billy on the drums going nutzoid. Sad to admit, when Christmastime came, and Billy left for a week to go visit his father, we did audition other drummers behind his back. We tried Clem Burke who wound up in Blondie, we auditioned a couple of people who’d play in The Ramones. And they were great players. But it was rehearsing with them that made us realise that no one fit like Billy. Billy’s playing, I think, is a very strong reason why Television is still thought of as a great band."
- Richard Lloyd, 'Friction : The Making Of Television's Marquee Moon'
“To me, it’s all kind of like dance music. A drummer’s job really is to get people to dance, or to move — or to at least think about moving. Doesn’t matter if I was playing fast folk with the Washington Squares or the weird, kind of ska things the Waitresses would occasionally do. My job was the same. And really, that’s what a drummer’s body does when you’re playing — you’re dancing. The way the limbs are working, the way your body moves across the kit … it’s a dance.”
- Billy Ficca, Modern Drummer
Television in rehearsals in Terry Ork's loft in 1974
"By changing the language of jazz, psych and garage into a mesmerizing journey that was simultaneously raw and hypnotic, 'Marquee Moon' paved the way for every ambitious rock record to follow in the next 40 years. While that all might sound like a formula for an esoteric mess, guitarist/frontman Tom Verlaine, his six-string foil Richard Lloyd, and the indomitable rhythm section of Fred Smith on bass and Billy Ficca on drums could just as easily write catchy songs. The album’s longest track, its title cut, comes across as a sort of sonic response to Verlaine’s old girlfriend Patti Smith and her 1975 solo debut masterpiece 'Horses' in its patterns and rhythms. Otherwise, the record fits in equally well with the Soho free-jazz loft scene as it does with the gyrating punk of CBGB. “[Jimi Hendrix] is where I got a lot of what I do on guitar,” Lloyd told me when I interviewed him for Jambase about his 2009 solo album, The Jamie Neverts Story, a collection of Hendrix covers.
“I don’t think, either in Television or my own work, that anybody would have spotted a Hendrix influence. But I didn’t want one to show up. When I teach students, I teach them to play more like themselves. You’re gonna have to find your own voice on that guitar. What Hendrix and Velvert [Turner, Hendrix’s only known guitar student,] taught me is very, very important to me. Both of them are gone, and all I have is the memories. And the fact that I was around then, that’s why I feel like I owe them, as a payment of a debt, to cover some of Jimi’s songs, put it out and let some of that influence—that has always been there—finally show itself.” Finding their own voice was precisely what Television accomplished on 'Marquee Moon'. The band chose acclaimed English engineer Andy Johns to produce the album on account of his work on such early-’70s classics as Mott The Hoople’s 'Brain Capers' and 'Goat’s Head Soup' by The Rolling Stones. However, according to an insightful and neck-deep interview conducted with Lloyd by Scottish author Damien Love for Uncut, a lifestyle clash with Johns and Television produced studio tension from the outset. “Andy is a real child of rock ’n’ roll,” Lloyd tells Love. “He was used to being with people who are also rock ’n’ roll, and you can imagine whatever that means in the 1970s. He was used to people who didn’t mind taking it very slack in the studio. You know: you’ve got a 2 o’clock start, and the engineer shows up at 4.30, and the guitarist shows up at 5 and the singer rolls in at midnight. But Television were not like that. We were punctual. And serious.” “He’d say things like, ‘Is this a Velvet Underground trip? What kind of trip is this?’ ” Verlaine recalled told writer and renowned New York avant-garde musician Alan Licht for the liner notes to Rhino’s 2004 expanded edition of Marquee Moon. “And I’d say, ‘I don’t know; it’s just two guitars, bass and drums. It’s like every band you’ve ever done.’ ” So he said, ‘O.K., I’ll come back after Christmas.’ So he came back and all of a sudden he totally loved the record. He said, ‘Jesus, this is great.’ And he kept comparing all these cuts to all this classic British hard rock.” Once they got on the same page, Johns and Television created a literal master’s class in the kind of crisp yet sharp production that enhanced the angularity of their rhythms without losing their sense of melody and pop appeal. The only other group who was close to doing what they achieved was Be-Bop Deluxe in the realm of progressive rock. And the inventive ways they captured some of those one-of-a-kind guitar sounds transcend any other production work on any other record in 1977 outside of Fleetwood Mac’s 'Rumours'. “We wanted to rent a rotating speaker to get the sound for [‘Elevation’],” Lloyd explained. “But the rental people wanted way too much. So Andy came up with an idea. He took a microphone, and while I did the guitar solo to ‘Elevation,’ he stood in front of me in the studio, swinging this microphone around his head like a lasso. He nearly took my f*cking nose off. I was backing up while I was playing.”
- Ron Hart, The Observer
'Guiding Light' - Television
"It would be a stretch to characterize some of the more meditative pieces on Heroes of Toolik’s latest album, Like Night, as dance music. But Ficca’s dance moves across the cymbals on songs like “8 Miles” and “You Will Not Follow” fill the wide-open spaces tastefully, with washes, pings, and sweet overtones lingering and blending nicely with the rest of the ensemble. It’s a top-down approach to drumming that comes from a love of jazz greats like Tony Williams and Elvin Jones. “Not only did those guys swing, but listen to how they played the cymbals,” Ficca says. “It’s beautiful. That’s why I’ve always been really into cymbals. But not smashing the hell out of them. Just hitting a really nice cymbal the right way and letting it fill some space. I think it’s one of the nicest sounds there is.”
- Patrick Berkery, Modern Drummer
"Tom Verlaine has a prediction. This week, as he prepares for the release of his first album ('Television', 1992) with the band Television in 14 years, Verlaine feels sure of one thing. "The record will fail, exactly like the others did", he says. Commercially, maybe it will. Television - the outfit that helped kick-start the whole CBGB's punk scene in the mid-'70s - saw its previous albums (1977's 'Marquee Moon' and the next year's 'Adventure') flop at the cash register. Aesthetically, though, they loom large. With the intricate, syncopated guitars of Verlaine and Richard Lloyd fighting over a muscular rhythm section (bassist Fred Smith and drummer Billy Ficca), Television's virtuosity stood out in a world of punk minimalists. But the group's history was curt: By the end of the '70s, it was outta here."
- Jim Farber, New York Magazine
Drumming to 'See No Evil'
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Post by petrolino on Aug 28, 2020 22:57:12 GMT
| # i%PUNK TV : 'Orphan Black' ~ A Punk Odyssey |
There's several reasons I enjoy writing extensively on a particular subject like punk, which means so many different things to so many different people. I think the main reason is that I feel I learn a lot more this way. It pushes me to look deeper into peoples' creative work than I might otherwise. If others contribute to the topic being addressed, that's terrific, as I can learn a great deal more.
I enjoy a good number of punk films, or movies with punk characters. I also see a pronounced punk influence upon American films of the 1980s. Despite this, I'm finding it difficult to recall anything punk-related that's affected me in any significant way when it comes to television. I don't recall any great punk tv show from my youth outisde of 'Marmalade Atkins' which was aimed squarely at children.
Apparently, there's a popular Canadian show called 'Young Drunk Punk' which was produced this decade, but I'd not heard of it until I searched for "punk tv" online today. I found the main articles I looked at were voicing much the same thing; that there's plenty of punk movies, but little in the way of punk television. Perhaps the freedoms offered by film were simply too great for anybody to try and mould a punk show on television, I don't know. I'm sure there are some I've not seen or heard of.
Tatiana Maslany in 'Orphan Black'
'Identity' - X-Ray Spex
Fortunately, I bought a television blu-ray box-set some time back that I'd heard touched upon punk subculture and I've recently begun watching it. It's the cyberpunk thriller 'Orphan Black'. From the very first episode, in which small-time grifter Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) is seen wearing a Clash t-shirt ('London Calling'), it's clear there's a strong punk undercurrent to the writing. Sarah's brother Felix Dawkins (Jordan Gavaris) is an artist who makes money as a rent boy and a drug dealer to pay for his loft space, fuelling imagery that's deeply evocative of the 1970s when punks could afford those kinds of living workspaces, pre-gentrification.
Their friends are punks, goths, metalheads and psychobillies and their local haunt evokes the punk bars of old. Of course, everything looks a hell of a lot cleaner as this is a cyberpunk thriller that's been produced for mainstream television, but it's easy to see between the lines. There's also subtle musical and cultural references to enjoy (these arise largely through different clones inhabited by Tatiana Maslany throughout the story).
"I auditioned for it about six months before I booked it, and just fell in love with the character of Sarah immediately. As soon as I read the breakdown for her I was like “Oh wow, who is this girl?” and reading through the script I was like, “I want, I need so badly to play this!” The excitement of playing multiple characters, that challenge made me salivate, I was so hungry for it. You don’t ever get that kind of challenge as an actor. To play six to 10 different characters is just a fantasy. I dreamt about it, panicked, pestered my agent. I did four auditions altogether, the last was a network test and chemistry read with Jordan (Felix), and got to play five different characters with little pieces of costume to help me navigate through them, and it was the most fun and the most terrifying audition I’ve ever done."
- Tatiana Maslany, BBC America
Tatiana Maslany
British Punk Rock Retrospective : The Thatcher Years
A word for Tatiana Maslany. Her work in 'Orphan Black' constitutes one of the greatest pieces of acting I've ever seen on television. She enters the frame as a streetwise career criminal but is soon revealed to be a complex being. Maslany then has the task of charting different individual's evolutions from series to series and I think she does this brilliantly.
Ostensibly, this biological horror is about doppelgangers, clones and shapeshifters, but it avoids the sermonising and hamfisted satire of recent horror films like 'Ma' (2019) and 'Us' (2019). Instead, it remains a resolute character piece that's essentially about the human condition and the role it plays in scientific advancement. Maslany establishes herself here as the ultimate new wave chameleon.
"The grand adventure of a set visit is entering a universe where everyone — absolutely everyone — is a pro at playing pretend. They’re admirably adult about it. They drink coffee and sit in chairs and operate machines, as if there weren’t lights so hot that they banish the winter outside, as if it’s perfectly normal for a sweltering interior to look like a dusty, sunbaked facade. Insides become outsides here, as gravel underfoot transforms a soundstage floor into a sandy desert. But the illusions are particularly vertiginous on the set of “Orphan Black,” the BBC America television show that has the same star many times over. “Orphan Black,” you see, is about a group of persecuted clones, and all of them are played by Tatiana Maslany, a 29-year-old actress who has ridden her multiple roles to cult stardom and critical acclaim. On a recent morning in Toronto, Maslany was wearing a frizzy blond wig and was made up as Helena, the dangerously mercurial Ukrainian clone. Her face was covered in blood and filth. She was not — as far as I could tell — thinking about the Screen Actors Guild Award nomination she received that morning, or (as I was) the circumstances that landed her in the peculiar fishbowl of fame. She was focused instead on butter. The crew was getting ready to shoot the other half of a two-clone scene they had started the day before, when Maslany was playing Sarah Manning, a street-smart con woman and the protagonist of the show. Helena, by contrast, is a cult escapee with homicidal tendencies and a ravenous, animalistic relationship with food. The director of this episode, David Frazee, and Maslany were working through how Helena’s insatiable appetite would affect her behavior in this scene. There was butter present in the shot, but it was not there to be eaten. Would Helena be able to resist? Even a tiny taste? “Are you going to lick the butter?” Frazee asked. The cast and crew of “Orphan Black” labor painstakingly over minutiae like this, in the service of a much grander contemplation (or, perhaps, demolition) of female televisual archetypes. The show’s premise allows Maslany to portray a bewilderingly diverse set of stock characters — the punk-rock con artist, Sarah; the shrewish suburban housewife, Alison Hendrix; the geeky stoner, Cosima Niehaus; the Ukrainian psychopath, Helena; the icily aloof career woman, Rachel Duncan; the pill-popping cop, Elizabeth Childs; and many others — encompassing almost every trope women get to play in Hollywood and on TV. (Maslany’s legions of adoring fans call themselves #CloneClub on Twitter and contend that the credits on “Orphan Black” should say “Tatiana Maslany” nine or more times, once per clone.) In its subject matter, “Orphan Black” broods on the nature-nurture debate in human biology, but in its execution, the show cleverly extends the same question to matters of genre. What does the exact same woman look like if you grow her in the petri dish of “Desperate Housewives” or on a horror-film set in Eastern Europe? What about a police procedural? The result is a revelation: Instead of each archetype existing as the lone female character in her respective universe, these normally isolated tropes find one another, band together and seek to liberate themselves from the evil system that created them. By structuring the story around the clones’ differences, “Orphan Black” seems to suggest that the dull sameness enforced by existing female archetypes needs to die."
- Lili Loofbourow, 'The Many Faces Of Tatiana Maslany' (articled published at The New York Times, April 2, 2015)
Tatiana Maslany & Jake Gyllenhaal
Tatiana Maslany speaks with Seth Meyers
I still have a couple of series of 'Orphan Black' left to watch which I'm excited about, but assuming it doesn't fall off a cliff towards the end (a la 'Game Of Thrones'), this show will easily join my other 2 favourites seen from the past decade, 'Banshee' and 'Magic City'. The scientific narrative is cleverly spun from an imaginative, open-ended premise that roots the unravelling of its kaleidoscopic web of intrigue in themes that are universal. The story doesn't always cut to where you expect it to go, nor does it cut to the characters expected. It has to be technically assured to pull off its premise and I feel it's better than that, it's pretty dazzling.
"I started out as a dancer as a kid; I’ve been dancing since I was 4. So performing was always part of what I was. I don’t know if it I enjoyed the response I got from people or if I liked having an audience, but there’s something in me that wanted to perform. I transitioned into theater and acting when I was about 9, community theater and musicals, being, like chorus-kid-number-78 or whatever. But I just loved it. As a kid you just crave attention, and early on I just felt it was so cool and fun to play around and have people clap for me. But eventually I grew up and fell deeper into it. About 7 years ago I moved to Toronto and kind of took control of it, and realized there’s a depth to this art form, and a reach, and a chance for expression and creation and telling story about human nature and all the contradictions that we are as people. Now I’m really obsessed with characters, I’m really interested in people and I love playing different kinds of people, learning about them and defending them or understanding them better. There’s something in it that’s much better than the attention."
- Tatiana Maslany, BBC America
Identical "Sestras"
'Abstract Nympho' - Chrome
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Post by petrolino on Sept 6, 2020 0:01:52 GMT
Cyberpunk Cinema
George Lucas' 'THX 1138' (1971) was a major influence on the science-fiction film subgenre cyberpunk. John Carpenter's science-fiction crime thriller 'Escape From New York' (1981) was a major influence on cyberpunk cinema and in many ways he's the godfather of the subgenre. A year later came Ridley Scott's science-fiction thriller 'Blade Runner' (1982), an adaptation of a novel by Philip K. Dick. Pioneers of cyberpunk fiction like William Gibson, Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling were influenced by science-fiction authors like Dick, Michael Crichton, Harlan Ellison and cyberpoet Roger Zelazny. Wes Craven originally conceived 'The Hills Have Eyes' (1977) as a science-fiction piece set in the future, but for budgetary reasons, he made significant changes; some ideas dropped were later explored in Joe Gayton's spin-off 'Mind Ripper' (1995). Craven went on to make science-fiction films like 'Chiller' (1985) and 'Deadly Friend' (1986) which were embraced by cyberpunk fans. 'Searching for a story to film, Wes Craven began looking up "terrible things" at the New York Public Library. While going through the library's forensics department, Craven learned of the legend of Sawney Bean - the alleged head of a 48-person Scottish clan responsible for the murder and cannibalization of more than one thousand people. What interested Craven in the legend was how, after Bean's clan was arrested, they were tortured, quartered, burned and hanged. Craven saw this treatment of the Bean clan by supposedly civilized people as paralleling the clan's own savagery. Craven decided to base the film on the legend. Another major inspiration for the project was Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), one of Craven's favorite films. Bloody Disgusting's Zachary Paul says that both films center on a group of vacationers who are "stranded in the wide open nowhere and must protect themselves against a tightly knit family of cannibals" and feature an archetypal "gas station of doom". Like The Last House on the Left before it, the film drew influence from the work of European directors such as François Truffaut and Luis Buñuel. Other inspirations for The Hills Have Eyes were Craven's neighbors and family, on whom the Carters where modeled, the director's nightmares, and John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940). The original script was titled Blood Relations: The Sun Wars and was set in New Jersey during 1984, several years in the future. As producer Peter Locke's girlfriend, Liz Torres, often performed in Las Vegas during this period, Locke saw a lot of desert landscapes as the film was being written, and suggested that Craven set the film in the desert. Due to budgetary constraints, the film was written to have few roles and be set in few locations.'
- 'The Hills Have Eyes' at Wikipedia
"The story of Hansel and Gretel, taken from the fairy tale collection of the Brothers Grimm, can be read as a crisis of survival. With no help from their parents or friends, Hansel and Gretel must free themselves from slavery and ultimately defeat the evil witch. This fairy tale shows us the detours and successful strategies on the way to a final goal, be it eternal happiness or — in the case of a company — economic success. It also shows that the will to change and master a situation must come from oneself, not from others. For the family of Hansel and Gretel, life itself was a crisis. They were preoccupied with pure survival, with having enough to eat. The stepmother proposes a solution that goes far beyond anything that might be deemed normal: she wants to abandon the children in the woods so there will be two fewer hungry mouths to feed. The father, distressed but too weak to fight back, acquiesces. The monstrous decision is made. The following day, the stepmother carefully and calmly carries out her plan."
- Veit Etzold, Boston Consultancy Group
'Hansel & Gretel'
'Forbidden Zone' - Oingo Boingo
Canada has produced cyberpunk titans like David Cronenberg ('Videodrome' & 'eXistenZ'), James Cameron ('The Terminator' & 'Terminator 2 : Judgement Day'), Christian Duguay (the 'Scanners' series & 'Screamers') and Vincenzo Natali ('Cube' & 'Cypher'). Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven has realised cyberpunk visions on screen for decades, notably with 'RoboCop' (1987) and 'Total Recall' (1990), though there are visual shards in several other films he's directed. Peruvian filmmaker Luis Llosa made the cyberpunk staple 'Crime Zone' (1988) and drew from cyberpunk imagery in comic books when creating the visual design of 'The Specialist' (1994). Russian filmmaker Slava Tsukerman made 'Liquid Sky' (1982) in America and it's a textbook example of a film embraced by cyberpunk fans more for its punk credentials than any clear cyber aspects. Italian filmmaker Marco Brambilla made 'Demolition Man' (1993) in America which is the reverse as it has clear cyber elements but goes light on the punk. British director Danny Cannon also deserves a mention for bringing 'Judge Dredd' (1995) to the big screen. "I am a bestselling author of romance and erotica with a passion for romantic lesbian erotica and much naughtier monster erotica. I also specialize in writing interactive pick your adventure style erotica that allows readers to explore their own desires."
- Amanda Clover
'Hot Carbon : Tales Of A Cyberpunk Futa Girl' by prolific monster & elf erotica author Amanda Clover
Science-fiction writer Michal Crichton deserves a mention as he was an accomplished filmmaker in his own right. 'Looker' (1981) and 'Runaway' (1984) are key works. The great neon-lit crime thrillers of the 1980s from filmmakers like Abel Ferrara, Walter Hill and Alan Rudolph carried stylistic similarities with Crichton's genre work. "Scarlett’s voice, whenever you hear her voice, it just takes you to that place. She really is to me the cyberpunk queen.”
- Rupert Sanders, Comic Book
Scarlett Johansson
Kathryn Bigelow, Brett Leonard, Albert Pyun and Fred Olen Ray are among cyberpunk cinema's true pioneers. Bigelow directed 'Strange Days' (1995). Leonard pushed the boundaries of cyberpunk technology with 'The Lawnmower Man' (1992) and 'Virtuosity' (1995). Pyun established and cemented his status with audacious genre features like 'Vicious Lips' (1986), 'Cyborg' (1989) and 'Nemesis' (1992). Ray's essential contributions to the subgenre are 'Cyclone' (1987), 'Alienator' (1989) and 'Droid Gunner' (1995). Steve De Jarnatt ('Cherry 2000' & 'Miracle Mile'), Stuart Gordon ('Fortress' & 'Space Truckers'), David Heavener ('Deadly Reactor' & 'Outlaw Prophet'), Richard Pepin ('Cyber Tracker' & 'Cyber-Tracker 2') and David Prior ('Future Force' & 'Future Zone') have included strong cyberpunk elements in their science-fiction thrillers. In Pepin's 'Cyber Tracker', there's a scene in which the Tracker is scanning a robot and his search history includes the robot model, THX 1138. Artist and musician Roberto Longo was plucked from the underground to helm 'Johnny Mnemonic' (1995), an adaptation of a story by William Gibson that showcases Henry Rollins in a supporting role. Four years later, the Wachowski sisters hit it out the park with 'The Matrix' (1999). They've since delivered the intriguing science-fiction mystery 'Cloud Atlas' (2012) though the less said about the 'Matrix' sequels the better. I shall continue watching 'Orphan Black' which definitely has some cyberpunk elements, including the casting of Matt Frewer who portrayed cyberpunk figurehead Max Headroom in the early 1980's ... Scoring 'Forbidden World' (1982) - Susan Justin
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Post by petrolino on Sept 12, 2020 23:12:30 GMT
Strict Punk Principles, Shifting Political Landscapes And International Film Markets
Cyberpunk art and cinema stretches far beyond the established parameters of America's entertainment industry. It's become a global phenomenon in the digital age and cyberpunk cosplay is growing in popularity. Its rise was concurrent with the growth of punk-influenced political cinema which drew from original literary tracts. Genre filmmakers picked up on different facets of punk culture that could be worked into their films.
I'd like to consider a few national film industries that I feel have benefited greatly from punk, outside of America and the United Kingdom which housed the largest punk movements of the 1970s.
“One of the inaccuracies around punk is that it’s a reaction to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but punk starts before those regimes take power in the mid-1970s. Punk did become a reaction to neoconservative rule. It felt necessary at the time to provide a social resistance against some of those aspects against neoconservative policy, but had longer-lasting effects, as well.”
- Andrew Blauvelt, curating the punk art restrospective 'Too Fast to Live, Too Young To Die : Punk Graphics, 1976–1986' at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York in 2019
'The Origins Of Cyberpunk 1948 - 1989' (2019, Documentary - Indigo Gaming & Shalashaskka)
{"Let's take a journey back to the 1980's and beyond, to discover the origins of the Cyberpunk movement, in literature, cinema, television, video games, comics and more! In this documentary miniseries, we will discover the wonders of Cyberpunk, dating back to the 1940's, all the way through 1989, with each successive episode taking on a new decade."}
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10 National Film Industries
10) Ireland
Ireland has a vibrant punk scene and Celtic punk is as popular as any form of punk flourishing today. Despite this, I don't recall seeing much in the way of Irish punk cinema. This could be to do with the political situation, or perhaps because some of the most prominent Irish punks boarded boats and relocated to London. I can't remember if 'Rawhead Rex' (1986) would qualify as it's been so long since I've seen it. It's based on a story by Clive Barker. But from my own perspective, including Ireland does serve to remind me that I'd like to see the documentary 'Shellshock Rock' (1979) which Thurston Moore listed among his top 10 punk documentaries at the British Film Institute.
'Is this the UDA, Or is this the IRA, I thought it was the UK ...'
- Sex Pistols, 'Anarchy In The UK' (1976)
"In 1976, punk took the United Kingdom by surprise and for one brief moment challenged many of the cultural and social assumptions of British society, shocking public opinion and causing an outbreak of moral panic in its wake. In Northern Ireland people were preoccupied with other problems. 1976 was the year when internees of the Maze prison started a blanket protest after losing their status as political prisoners; the Shankill Butchers prowled the streets of Belfast in search of Catholic victims; a mother decided to establish the Peace People organisation after witnessing the deaths of three children, run over by a fugitive IRA member. In 1976, a total of 297 people lost their lives because of the conflict. All the news reports about Northern Ireland that year seemed to indicate that it truly was Anarchy in the UK."
- Timothy Heron, The Irish Times
Stephen Rea in 'Angel' (1982)
09) Italy
I've not noticed much in the way of punk in Italian cinema. The one exception is the horror genre which sometimes features punks as bait. Working-class Italians in cities like Rome, Milan and Turin typically gravitated towards hardcore punk bands who railed against the nation's corrupt institutions.
Bettina Ciampolini in 'Demons' (1985)
08) Ukraine
Journalists often write about the emergence of punk in Moscow, Russia and its connection there to poetry and protest. You can chart the impact of music in Lviv, Ukraine which has strong artistic traditions. Psychedelia, heavy metal and hardcore punk are part of the modern tapestry that makes up the city.
It's worth noting that many of the great Soviet film directors were born in republics other than Russia. Alexander Dovzhenko, Grigori Kozintsev and Aleksandr Ptushko are three master filmmakers from Ukraine. Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi's extraordinary experimental picture 'The Tribe' (2014) is the culmination of underground punk filmmaking in Ukraine and one of the finest films of the last decade. It's shot in Kiev.
Hippies in Lviv
Yana Novikova & Grigory Fesenko in 'The Tribe'
07) Mexico
Several of the punk bands that formed in California in the 1970s had Latino or Chicano musicians within their ranks, including the Bags, the Brat, the Go-Go's, Los Illegals, the Nuns, the Plugz and the Zeros. Naturally, there was a direct line down to Mexico and it didn't take long for punk to break out in Mexico City where Dangerous Rhythm and Size ruled the roost.
Hailing from Mexico City, horror filmmaker Ruben Galindo Jr. has links to the punk scene and this comes through in the imagery in movies like 'Cemetery Of Terror' (1985), 'Don't Panic' (1988) and 'Grave Robbers' (1989). His work has attracted a cult following on the punk scene.
Maria Rebeca & Erika Buenfil in 'Grave Robbers'
'The Wolf' - The Brat
06) Hungary
Hungary's punk subculture was the source of all manner of subversive materials during the final throes of Sovietisation. While punk was present in other nearby cities such as Bratislava in Slovakia, Prague in Czech Republic and Warsaw in Poland, the movement's cultural centre behind the iron curtain could be found in Budapest.
Filmmaker Bela Tarr has connections to the punk scene. Perhaps the defining cinematic work is Janos Xantus' 'Eskimo Woman Feels Cold' (1984) which stars Marietta Mehes and features a number of other musicians in acting roles.
Marietta Mehes
05) Australia
You'd expect punk to play a major role in Australian cinema as the country produced beloved bands like the Birthday Party and the Saints.
The 'Mad Max' franchise was helmed by George Miller and its post-apocalyptic landscapes are populated by rogue punks. 'Centrespread' (1981) is icy, new wave erotica about the art of photography. The action feature 'Dead End Drive-In' (1986) is one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite movies and it carries a strong punk vibe.
Natalie McCurry in 'Dead End Drive-In'
04) Spain
The punks of Madrid are well-known throughout Europe. The death of General Francisco Franco in 1975 ended years of suppression and artists could finally break down the walls of censorship. In doing so, they went a bit crazy, creating artworks that seriously pushed the boundaries in terms of explicit content. Punk was the perfect catalyst for change at the perfect time.
Spain's most famous living filmmaker, Pedro Almodovar, came up on the punk scene. His early work is indebted to the scene and it dominates 'Pepi, Luci, Bom And Other Girls Like Mom' (1980). His contemporary Bigas Luna also had links to the punk scene. They both knew musician Alaska who even had her own surreal punk show on television, 'The Crystal Ball'.
Comedians capitalised on the popularity of punk too, including legendary funnyman Andres Pajares who often worked alongside comedians Fernando Esteso and Antonio Ozores. My favourite of Mariano Ozores' genrebusting comedies are from this period including 'The Bingueros' (1979), 'The Energetic' (1979), 'The Erotic Masked' (1980), 'I Did Rocky III' (1980), 'The Blower' (1981), 'Magic Witches' (1981), 'The Prick' (1981), '¡What A Joy To Be Divorced!' (1981), 'Shake Before Use' (1983), 'The Worker' (1983) and 'La Lola Takes Us To The Orchard' (1984). Having appeared in most of them, Pajares collaborated with director Ramon Fernandez on the punk comedy 'The Donor' (1985) and Juan Ignacio Galvan on 'The Pregnant' (1987) which co-stars punk performer Carmen Grey.
"Part of what makes Pedro Almodovar's films revolutionary is that the storylines tend to orbit around a cast of strong women and members of the LGBT community. As is the case in fascist regimes, the Franco rule was intransigently patriarchal; women played a supporting role for husbands and children. "In Spain," historian Ricardo García Cardel writes, "feminism arrived late, and it arrived poorly." To cast flawed, highly sexual, ambitious women in his films was risky; to make films featuring men in drag was self-destructive. It's no coincidence that Almodovar's early work is heavily imbued with Spanish new wave and punk-rock culture. As his films progressed, they became increasingly sophisticated and complex, musically speaking. The music in his films, as co-host Felix Contreras notes, has always functioned as another character unto itself. Almodovar picks musicians who, like his characters, are vibrant, imperfect and larger than life. He famously rescued legendary Mexican singer Chavela Vargas from alcoholic oblivion; he has sustained a decades-long love affair with tragic queen of Latin soul La Lupe, and more recently he worked with legend-in-the-making Concha Buika."
- Jasmine Garsd, National Public Radio
Alaska in 'Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom'
Alaska in 'The Crystal Ball' 'Abracadabra' - Alaska
03) France
Punk is an intrinsic part of French culture which always weaves new ideas into the fabric of the arts. Even filmmaker Eric Rohmer, who leaned against the use of non-diegetic sound, cast punk icon Elli Medeiros in the romantic comedy 'Full Moon In Paris' (1984). A group of young stylists was responsible for pushing cyberpunk to greater cinematic extremes. This included Jean-Jacques Beineix, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Luc Besson and Leos Carax whose groundbreaking work came to exemplify the stylistic film movement known as "cinema du look".
Thuy An Luu & Richard Bohringer in 'Diva' Isabelle Adjani in 'Subway' Marie-Laure Dougnac in 'Delicatessen'
Elli Medeiros in 'Full Moon In Paris'
02) Germany
Punk in Germany is similar to punk in France in that it's omnipresent. This is reflected in the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ulli Lommel, Wim Wenders and Uli Edel, to name a few. Edel filmed Christiane Vera Felscherinow's autobiographical book 'We Children of Zoo Station' (1978) as 'Christiane F' (1981) which was scored by David Bowie and Jurgen Knieper. Today, Germany is at the forefront of d.i.y. digital filmmaking. Horror filmmaker Jochen Taubert once made shoddy, low budget works that I feel were best forgotten but he's developed into one of the nation's leading directors in more recent years, achieving success with 'The Return Of The Forklift Drivers' (2013), 'Play My Limb Until Death' (2014), 'Dead Or Alive' (2015), 'Juliet & Romeo : Love Is A Battlefield' (2017) and 'The Pope's Daughter : We Come In The Name Of The Lord' (2020). In stock company player Alina Lina, he also has Europe's leading cinematic punk icon to call upon.
Also worth seeing are the recent low budget films of cinematic philosopher and provocateur Roland Reber who's similarly improved as he's gained experience. I'd recommend Reber's existential seriocomic excursions 'Angels With Dirty Wings' (2009), 'The Truth Of Lie' (2011), 'Illusion' (2013), 'Taste Of Life' (2017) and 'Cabaret Of Death' (2019).
The Kitties in 'Cabaret Of Death'
Alina Lina in 'The Pope's Daughter : We Come In The Name Of The Lord' Shooting on location with Alina Lina
01) Canada
'O Canada! O Canada! O Canada! We stand on guard for thee, O Canada! We stand on guard for thee.'
I've already mentioned Canadian directors in the post I made about cyberpunk so I won't repeat myself. You can also see Canadian punks in other films I've mentioned on this thread, from 'Class Of 1984' (1982) to 'Breaking The Rules' (1985).
I'll add three more movies to the mix that revel in punk ideas and imagery; Rene Bonniere's comedy 'Perfect Timing' (1986), Jean-Claude Lauzon's thriller 'Night Zoo' (1987) and Rafal Zielinski's drama 'Fun' (1994).
Lynne Adams in 'Night Zoo'
Renee Humphry & Alicia Witt in 'Fun' 'It's The Evil' - White Lung
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Post by petrolino on Sept 18, 2020 23:25:32 GMT
Whip It! : The Unbreakable Bond Between Punk & Horror
The Ramones are among the many punk groups that wrote songs explicitly referencing some of their favourite science-fiction, fantasy and horror movies. In this sense, they were building on the work of proto-punk bands like Chrome and the Dictators. Towards the end of their recording career, the Ramones fully embraced the world of genre movies with albums like 'Animal Boy' (1986), 'Halfway To Sanity' (1987), 'Brain Drain' (1989) and 'Mondo Bizarro' (1992) which featured songs like 'Freak Of Nature', 'Worm Man', 'Pet Sematary' and 'Zero Zero UFO'. On the New York scene, Blondie were also dedicated pop culture nuts. At their early live shows, b-movie fans would call out for songs like 'Attack Of The Giant Ants', 'Kung Fu Girls', 'Bermuda Triangle Blues (Flight 45)' and 'Contact In Red Square'.
The Plasmatics were devotees of all forms of "exploitation" cinema. This informed their sound, their look, their lyrics and their stage shows. Bassist Jean Beauvoir worked in various capacities with the Ramones and later co-wrote the horror anthem 'Shocker' which was recorded by hair metal supergroup the Dudes Of Wrath.
"I don't object to the term "exploitation" in any way. That's what they were called, and I accept the word. B-movies, classically, meant the second half of a double-bill of pictures that were made in the '30s to bring the audiences in during the Depression and give them two pictures for the price of one. So, from a technical standpoint, I never made a B-movie in my life. However, today the term "B-movie" is applied to low-budget films, so, on that basis, I guess I did make B-movies."
- Roger Corman, The A.V. Club
Joey Ramone & Debbie Harry
'Hollywood' - Suzi Quatro
The Ohio invasion injected fresh streams of pop culture junkiedom into the New York underground's multimedia playground. Hailing from Cleveland, Dead Boys and Pere Ubu were committed genre fans and this was evident in the work of their parent group, Rocket From The Tombs. Pere Ubu would later compose underscores for experimental horror movies including Herk Harvey's 'Carnival Of Souls' (1962) and Roger Corman's 'The Man With The X-Ray Eyes' (1963). Over in Akron, Devo were in many ways an extension of science-fiction cinema. Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh both went into film scoring, composing music for films like 'Doctor Detroit' (1983), 'Fright Night' (1985) and 'Slaughterhouse Rock' (1988). Several years on from Circle Jerks portraying a lounge act in Alex Cox's science-fiction sleeper 'Repo Man' (1984), Devo played the mysterious Ministry of Science in 'The Spirit Of '76' (1990).
Devo's fellow Akronite Chrissie Hynde led the Pretenders through the sonic instrumental 'Space Invader' which riffed on sound effects created for the popular arcade game 'Space Invaders' which was launched commercially in 1978.
'Horror punk is a dark style of music mixing Gothic and punk rock sounds with morbid imagery. Often, song topics are taken from horror movies, but the best horror punk creates atmosphere by telling tales through the song. Usually with poetic lyrics.'
- Urban Dictionary
Debbie Harry in 'Videodrome'
'Starlight Lady' - Suzi Quatro
California had the advantage of being home to Hollywood and this was amply demonstrated by the state's punk music. In Los Angeles, the Skirts were a hardcore horror band led by guitarist Linnea Quigley, one of the horror genre's leading exponents. The Skirts rehearsed next door to the Go-Go's who referenced folklore, fairy tales and mythology within their lyrics, as suggested by the wordplay behind the title of their debut album, 'Beauty And The Beat' (1981).
Oingo Boingo emerged as the musical wing of the street theatre troupe, Mystic Knights Of The Oingo Boingo. Troupe founder Richard Elfman went on to become a horror filmmaker, as did his creative associate Matthew Bright. Band members Steve Bartek, Danny Elfman and Richard Gibbs all went on to compose music for television and cinema. Hardcore attractions Social Distortion and T.S.O.L. (True Sounds Of Liberty) became purveyors of bouncy deathrock. They were gothic-leaning but fun and unafraid to get political. Contemporaries Adolescents explored science-fiction themes in songs, skate punks Agent Orange displayed their own gothic tendencies and Christian Death slowed things down a bit to produce a murkier form of hardcore gothic sludge. "You might not be familiar with the music, but you definitely know the look: tall fluorescent-colored mohawks, silver spikes protruding from black leather, steel-toed combat boots, ripped jeans, and unusual objects dangling from their ear piercings. During its formative years, punk rock was perceived as a threat. Concerts would often erupt into riots. Gang violence and drugs were prominent in the community, and parents feared for their children, fuelled by news reports and an Afterschool Special called 'The Day My Kid Went Punk' (1987). The zeitgeist of the era made punk rockers the ultimate villain and goon in 1980s cinema. Gangs of punks would lurk around in alleyways late at night, waiting to jump an unsuspecting passerby, like in 'Howard the Duck' (1986). Armed with switchblades, chains, and spiked bats, smiling mischievously and bug-eyed from ingesting handfuls of drugs. Should their victims attempt to escape on foot, the hoodlums would jump onto their motorcycles or pile into beaten-up cars, hooting and hollering as they chased down their prey. When they’re not harassing and assaulting innocent people on the street, they can be found in cramped underground clubs, characterized by dirty walls covered in graffiti. The front of the stage is complete chaos; kids are moshing and stage-diving, the band is playing loud and spitting on the crowd, while those on the sidelines are either making out, throwing beer bottles against brick walls, or overdosing on some bad smack. In schools, punk gangs terrorized classrooms (though the actors playing the students were at least 25 years-old) and verbally abused the teachers. During their lunch breaks, they roamed the hallways, bullying nerds and dealing drugs. In 'Class of 1984', teachers are so afraid of their students that they bring guns to class for protection. When one teacher decides to take a stand against the gang leader, he ends up paying the ultimate price when the punks invade his house and kidnap his wife. In its follow-up, 'Class of 1999', schools have devolved into warzones for rival gangs. In response, a private military company develop cyborg teachers programmed to kill any misbehaving students. In 'Class of Nuke ‘Em High' (1986), nuclear waste from a nearby malfunctioning chemical plant transform model students into grotesque punks with a bizarre sense of fashion. Even the marijuana that they forcefully sell to the student body has been infected with the toxic waste, causing abnormal mutations in the lead lovers. In the climax of the film, the punks take over the school, driving their motorbikes through the walls. Punk rockers appear in numerous films produced by Lloyd Kaufman’s Troma studios, mainly because the film company share many of the same DIY ethics of many punk bands. Both are able to pull off masterpieces on a shoe-string budget, while keeping the rawest aspects. When civilization collapses and society falls into anarchy, punks become scavengers, raiders, and cannibals. Post-apocalyptic movies like the Mad Max franchise, 'Escape From New York' (1981), 'Waterworld' (1995) and 'Doomsday' (2008) are chock-full of tattooed and pierced brutes who enhance their survival with sadism. Although, they may look tough, punk baddies often underestimate the strength of their targeted victims. When confronting The Terminator or Jason Voorhees in 'Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan' (1989), these goons end up with broken bones and running for the hills. Probably the biggest example of the tables being turned on punks is 'Return of the Living Dead' (1985), a classic zombie film that’s very popular among the punk community, so much so that bands have used clips of the movies in their music. The punk gang in the film is lead by Suicide, who imposes himself by clutching his black leather jacket and stating “You think this is a f*cking costume? This is a way of life!” Shortly after, Suicide is bitten in the head by the Tarman, a zombie with melting black skin. One-by-one, the rest of the gang is devoured by the living dead, hungry for brains. Then, something happened. The 1990s rolled around. Punk bands that dominated the late 70s and most of the 80s were either broken up, or had completely changed their sound. Newer bands like Green Day and Blink 182 gave up on aggressive vocals and started singing more melodically. Punk was no longer perceived as a threat once it was co-opted by the mainstream; it was less about anarchy and more about selling shoes. Punks were no longer perceived as big scary goons looking for a fight. Their image changed into scrawny misunderstood kids bored of living in the suburbs. The ideal horror victim."
- Chris Aitkens, Nightmare On Film Street
Debbie Harry in 'Tales From The Darkside'
'Suicide' - Suzi Quatro
Over in San Francisco, the Nuns built their ornate spirituals with the aid of authentic gothic machinery and crafted post-apocalyptic soundscapes dripping in nihilistic, sado-masochistic imagery, some of which drew from sacrilegious films condemned by the Catholic Church. They gained a hard-earned reputation as being the San Francisco underground's doom merchants, a band whose pervasive gloom was alleviated only by their musical prowess.
Dead Kennedys were similarly pop culture junkies with a passion for genre cinema. The Kennedys' controversial third album was greeted with intense hostility within sections of America's bible belt; it's called 'Frankenchrist' (1985).
"Every idea I submitted was considered too strange, too weird; every idea they had seemed too ordinary to me. Ordinary pictures don't make money."
- Roger Corman discusses his studio contract with Columbia Pictures
Jennifer Miro
'The Nuns' ~ The Nuns
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Suicide Pact
At times surreal, at others supernatural, Suicide's desperate working-class anthems would take lengthy detours into purgatory, hell and parallel worlds. Lydia Lunch was a dedicated fan. Here in the U K, the Damned, Siouxsie And The Banshees, the Cure, Buzzcocks, Magazine and Joy Division are among the punk bands that employed icy keyboards in the wake of Suicide's work. As the gothic scene became increasingly more electronic, bands experimented in ever-darker guises.
Like their contemporaries in New York and Ohio, Suicide were pop culture fanatics. Their early club anthem 'Ghost Rider', for example, is based on a Marvel comic book. The outfit most commonly credited with coining the phrase "punk music" in relation to their own music were also among the scene's ultimate nerds.
"Suicide: Alan Vega and Martin Rev, the follow-up to Vega and Rev's vaudeville-for-arsonists debut, lacks the rusty-screwdriver-as-equalizer skinny junky twitching rage of their first record, but has its own '70s CBGB's sleazeball vibe. The emaciated Harlem thug of the debut has moved on from t-shirt and bellbottoms to wide-lapel seersucker suits, neck chains, mirror shades and a slathering of cheap cologne. He's still a nervous, fast-talking chain smoker, but he can now sit still for a few minutes every once in a while, mid-twitch. If Dion and the Belmonts dropped daily doses and spent their evenings in a NYC disco, ca. 1979, this would be them. But while they chased the drugs on the debut with copious quantities of Schlitz and Old Crow, these suddenly leather lounge synthpunks for the first time can afford cocktails."
- L. Leland, Rate Your Music
Martin Rev, Debbie Harry & Alan Vega
'Creature Feature' - Suicide
The Cramps : Crawl Of Creationism
The Cramps are often referred to as the godfathers of psychobilly having influenced a generation of sedentary roots rockers to tune out and punk it up. Their journey was an unusual one, leading to the development of a rock 'n' roll unit that California, Ohio and New York can all lay claim to. Frontman Lux Interior was from the industrial city of Akron, nicknamed "the rubber capital of the world". Accordingly, his ring attire consisted largely of black leather, latex, polyvinyl chloride and rubber. The Cramps' majestic rhythms allowed Interior to masquerade madness while pleasuring his microphone and gyrating for the audience. He was a skilled painter, photographer and visual artist. Guitarist and bassist Poison Ivy was a musical stylist and technical virtuoso from San Bernardino, California. Her interest in design prompted her to showcase the shape and arches of her stringed instruments. She exposed the feral qualities they possessed beneath furbished refinement while exploring the deep valleys that connected neck and body. Her heightened sense of dynamics and demonic shudder guitar reflected a base interest in hipsway and booty-shaking. Guitarist Bryan Gregory was a science-fiction, fantasy and horror fan with a passion for monster movies and creature features. He designed jewelry, clothing and horror costumes at his base in Cleveland, Ohio and was also an active make-up artist. A Catholic, Gregory was also a human rights activist. Miriam Linna was an instinctive drummer. Linna was also a fanzine writer and a paperback book collector. She's now recognised as being one of America's leading authorities on juvenile delinquent fiction and has a keen interest in "jd" cinema too. When Linna departed, Nick Knox of the Electric Eels took over the drum stool. Knox laid down the mammoth beats that became the foundation of the Cramps' deep psychedelic trance. Knox nailed down every beat with control, economy and authority.
"Published 1984-85, Bad Seed was Miriam Linna’s celebration of Juvenile Delinquency, the “overnight plunge into general degeneracy” among US teens in the 50s. At the time the JD scare prompted a media frenzy which was accompanied by an explosion of books, music, flicks and fashions. All of these aspects of JD are sampled in the pages of this 8.5″ x 5.5″ stapled zine produced by one-time Cramps drummer Linna, whose work with partner Billy Miller has manifested itself in such ventures as garage band The A-Bones, enduring reissue label Norton and, imho, the greatest music magazine of all time, Kicks. This is where the notion of teenagers as a threat to society was minted, and via a variety of archives, Linna explores all the angles, from dope and STDs (“JD!! VD!! OD!!”) to the pulp fiction of Harlan Ellison, lyrics for JD classics, promiscuity, gang violence and the exploits of teen murderers Charles Schmid and Charlie Starkweather (whose Nebraskan killing spree with girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate inspired Terence Malick’s Badlands). Linna isn’t a fan of Badlands, which she believes romanticised the pretty abject behaviour of Starkweather + Fugate. With Bad Seed she provides an unblinking insight into the symbiosis at the heart of JD: serious derangement and sensationalised reportage."
- Paul Gorman, 'Bad Seed : The Kicking 1980s Juvenile Delinquency Zine And T-Shirt'
Poison Ivy
'What's Behind The Mask' - The Cramps
The B-52's : Quiche & Cake On Surfer's Moons
There are rare examples of symbiosis behind the playing of the B-52's that can become positively infectious. They weren't all long for this world but they were all multi-talented, well-seasoned and extremely well-rehearsed. Fred Schneider, Ricky Wilson, Cindy Wilson, Keith Strickland and Kate Pierson powered a beat combo that captured the raw energy of the drive-in and did so through manic episodes of inter-galactic space travel. To see Pierson playing synthesiser melodies with her right hand and bass patterns with her left hand while using her voice as a harmonic instrument, is just about as good as it gets.
"I think bands, because we have a sense of humor, we are not always taken as seriously. I hope our legacy will be enduring and that people think of us as an important band."
- Kate Pierson, VICE
Kate Pearson & Cindy Williams
'Hero Worship' - The B-52's
Misfits, Malfeasance & Malcontents
The Misfits are generally regarded as the godfathers of the horror punk subgenre. They hail from the hard-nosed, horror-loving state of New Jersey, home to two fifths of the B-52's (the three fifths are from the state of Georgia where the band was established). In 1999, longtime bassist Jerry Only and the rest of the then-Misfits line-up enjoyed a brief stint in World Championship Wrestling (WCW), one of sports entertainment's leading promotions. They aligned themselves with the wrestler Vampiro. I believe Only competed against Dr. Death in a steel cage match and won. That's a measure of the Misfits who also appeared in the science-fiction drugs drama 'Animal Room' (1995) and George Romero's mystical horror 'Bruiser' (2000) around this time. In their early punk days, few bands could keep up with the ferocity of the Misfits who gave hardcore bands a run for their money. New Jersey became the de facto capital for horror punk as the Misfits birthed such unholy abominations as Kryst The Conqueror, Rosemary's Babies, Samhain and the Undead.
"First of all, you've got to define horror. For me, politics is horror. Religion is horror. True crime is horror — but it's not as horrific as hundreds of thousands of people being killed in a genocidal war. So who's the bigger murderer? Some politician who decides he's gonna off tens of thousands of people at a time or Charles Manson, who may or may not have been involved in the killing of four or five people and didn't actually kill them? Are people who get killed in drone strikes any less dead than the people that get killed in their apartment?"
- Glenn Danzig, Revolver
Glenn Danzig
Glenn Danzig on 'Portlandia'
45 Graves ~ Deathrock Around The Clock
"Formed from putrefying remnants of The Germs, The Consumers, The Bags, The Gun Club, and The Screamers among other L.A. punk outfits, 45 Grave were arguably the first American Goth/deathrock band and inarguably one of the best. Fronted by the Exene-meets- Vampirella vocal and visual stylings of Dinah Cancer (still one of the greatest stage names in a punk rock genre full of ‘em), 45 Grave also featured Paul B. Cutler on guitar, Don Bolles on drums, Rob (Ritter) Graves on bass, and Paul Roessler on keyboards, and from that all-star line-up came 1983’s Sleep in Safety, their lone studio release and only recording with the band’s original members.
Probably most famous for the first appearance of the horrifyingly graphic, true-crime track “Partytime,” the single version of which was subsequently cut in 1985 and featured on The Return of the Living Dead soundtrack (both versions appear on our Expanded CD Edition), Sleep in Safety also offered the early MTV track “Evil” and the band “theme song” “45 Grave” among other blandishments for those who like their rock and roll with a side of the macabre."
~ Real Gone Music
'Black Cross' ~ 45 Grave
'Weathered Statues' ~ T.S.O.L.
{###}
Microshock Cinema, Digital Versatile Discs & The Indie Horror Revival
'Plantlife' - Autolux
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American Horror (2000 - 2020)
25 Franchises
1) Species (1995 - Roger Donaldson) / Species II (1998 - Peter Medak) / Species III : (2004 - Brad Turner) / Species : The Awakening (2007 - Nick Lyon)
2) Scream (1996 - Wes Craven) / Scream 2 (1997 - Wes Craven) / Scream 3 (2000 - Wes Craven) / Scream 4 (2011 - Wes Craven)
3) I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997 - Jim Gillespie) / I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998 - Danny Cannon) / I'll Always Know What You Last Summer (2006 - Sylvain White)
4) Mimic (1997 - Guillermo Del Toro) / Mimic 2 (2001 - Jean De Segonzac) / Mimic : Sentinel (2003 - J.T. Petty)
5) Wishmaster (1997 - Robert Kurtzman) / Wishmaster 2 : Evil Never Dies (1999 - Jack Sholder) / Wishmaster 3 : Beyond The Gates Of Hell (2001 - Chris Angel) / Wishmaster 4 : The Prophecy Fulfilled (2002 - Chris Angel)
6) Blade (1998 - Stephen Norrington) / Blade II (2002 - Guillermo Del Toro) / Blade : Trinity (2004 - David S. Goyer)
7) The Blair Witch Project (1999 - Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez) / Book Of Shadows : Blair Witch 2 (2000 - Joe Berlinger)
8) Lake Placid (1999 - Steve Miner) / Lake Placid 2 (2007 - David Flores) / Lake Placid 3 (2010 - Griff Furst) / Lake Placid : The Final Chapter (2012 - Don Michael Paul)
9) The Erotic Witch Project (2000 - John Bacchus) / Erotic Witch Project 2 : Book Of Seduction (2000 - John Bacchus) / Witchbabe : The Erotic Witch Project 3 (2001 - Terry M. West)
10) Final Destination (2000 - James Wong) / Final Destination 2 (2003 - David R. Ellis) / Final Destination 3 (2006 - James Wong) / The Final Destination (2009 - David R. Ellies) / Final Destination 5 (2011 - Steven Quale)
11) Killjoy (2000 - Craig Ross Jr.) / Killjoy 2 : Deliverance From Evil (2002 - Tammi Sutton) / Killjoy 3 (2010 - John Lechago) / Killjoy Goes To Hell (2012 - John Lechago) Killjoy's Psycho Circus (2016 - John Lechago)
12) Goreface Killer (2002 - Jason Matherne) / Goregasm (2007 - Jason Matherne) / Grimewave (2013 - Jason Matherne)
13) Wrong Turn (2003 - Rob Schmidt) / Wrong Turn 2 : Dead End (2007 - Joe Lynch) / Wrong Turn 3 : Left For Dead (2009 - Declan O'Brien) / Wrong Turn 4 : Bloody Beginnings (2011 - Declan O'Brien) / Wrong Turn 5 : Bloodlines (2012 - Declan O'Brien) / Wrong Turn 6 : Last Resort (2014 - Valeri Milev)
14) Saw (2004 - James Wan) / Saw II (2005 - Darren Lynn Bousman) / Saw III (2006 - Darren Lynn Bousman) / Saw IV (2007 - Darren Lynn Bousman) / Saw V (2008 - David Hackl) / Saw VI (2009 - Kevin Greutert) / Saw 3D (2010 - Kevin Greutert)
15) Boogeyman (2005 - Stephen Kay) / Boogeyman (2007 - Jeff Betancourt) / Boogeyman 3 (2008 - Gary Jones)
16) The Gingerdead Man (2005 - Charles Band) / Evil Bong (2006 - Charles Band) / Gingerdead Man 2 : Passion Of The Crust (2008 - Silvia St. Croix) / Evil Bong 2 : King Bong (2009 - Charles Band) / Evil Bong 3 : The Wrath Of Bong (2011 - Charles Band) / Gingerdead Man 3 : Saturday Night Cleaver (2011 - William Butler) / Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong (2013 - Charles Band) / Evil Bong 420 (2015 - Charles Band) / Evil Bong : High 5 (2016 - Charles Band) / Evil Bong 777 (2018 - Charles Band)
17) Hostel (2005 - Eli Roth) / Hostel : Part II (2007 - Eli Roth)
18) Bikini Bloodbath (2006 - Jonathan Gorman & Thomas Edward Seymour) / Bikini Bloodbath Car Wash (2008 - Jonathan Gorman & Thomas Edward Seymour) / Bikini Bloodbath Christmas (2009 - Jonathan Gorman & Thomas Edward Seymour) / Bikini Bloodbath Shakespeare (2013 - John B. Reed)
19) Hatchet (2006 - Adam Green) / Hatchet II (2010 - Adam Green) / Hatchet III (2013 - BJ McDonnell)
20) See No Evil (2006 - Gregory Dark) / See No Evil 2 (2014 - Jen Soska & Sylvia Soska)
21) Halloween (2007 - Rob Zombie) / Halloween II (2009 - Rob Zombie)
22) Laid To Rest (2009 - Robert Hall) / Chromeskull : Laid To Rest 2 (2011 - Robert Hall)
23) Porkchop (2010 - Eamon Hardiman) / Porkchop II : Rise Of The Rind (2011 - Eamon Hardiman)
24) The Hospital (2013 - Tommy Golden & Daniel Emery Taylor) / The Hospital 2 (2015 - Jim O'Rear & Daniel Emery Taylor)
25) Death-Scort Service (2015 - Sean Donohue) / Death-Scort Service Part 2 : The Naked Dead (2017 - Sean Donohue) / Taste Me : Death-Scort Service Part 3 (2018 - Chris Woods)
Suzi Lorraine
'Swan Song' - Giant Drag
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FILMS
Bless The Child (2000 - Chuck Russell)
Bruiser (2000 - George Romero)
The Convent (2000 - Mike Mendez) Crocodile (2000 - Tobe Hooper) The Doorway (2000 - Michael B. Druxman) Drainiac! (2000 - Brett Piper) Hollow Man (2000 - Paul Verhoeven) Lost Souls (2000 - Janusz Kaminski) Pitch Black (2000 - David Twohy) Psycho Beach Party (2000 - Robert Lee King) Scary Movie (2000 - Keenen Ivory Wayans)
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The Thirteenth (2000 - John Blanchard) Sideshow (2000 - Fred Olen Ray) Supernova (2000 - Walter Hill) What Lies Beneath (2000 - Robert Zemeckis)
Ruby Larocca, Linnea Quigley & Victor Bonacore
The Attic Expeditions (2001 - Jeremy Kasten) The Forsaken (2001 - J. S. Cardone) Ghosts Of Mars (2001 - John Carpenter) Horror Vision (2001 - Danny Draven) Mulholland Drive (2001 - David Lynch) Night Of The Groping Dead (2001 - Rich Hillen) Session 9 (2001 - Brad Anderson) Shredder (2001 - Greg Huson)
Tina Krause
Angel Blade (2002 - David Heavener) Bubba Ho-Tep (2002 - Don Coscarelli) Bundy (2002 - Matthew Bright) Cabin Fever (2002 - Eli Roth) Demon's Kiss (2002 - Brad Sykes) Demon Under Glass (2002 - Jon Cunningham) Despair (2002 - Mark Baranowski)
Eight Legged Freaks (2002 - Ellory Elkayem) FeardotCom (2002 - William Malone) Flesh For Olivia (2002 - William Hellfire) Ghost Ship (2002 - Steve Beck) Mummy Raider (2002 - Brian Paulin) The Rats (2002 - John Lafia) Runaway Terror (2002 - Mark Baranowski) Satan's School For Lust (2002 - Terry M. West) Silk Stocking Strangler (2002 - William Hellfire) Slaughter Studios (2002 - Brian Katkin) They (2002 - Robert Harmon)
Danielle Harris
Cheerleader Autopsy (2003 - Stu Dodge) Cheerleader Massacre (2003 - Jim Wynorski) Delta Delta Die! (2003 - Devin Hamilton) Dr. Jekyll & Mistress Hyde (2003 - Tony Marsiglia) Expendable (2003 - Mark Baranowski)
Flesh For The Beast (2003 - Terry M. West)
The Hazing (2003 - Joe Castro)
King Of The Ants (2003 - Stuart Gordon) Leeches! (2003 - David DeCoteau) Love Object (2003 - Robert Parigi) Lust For Dracula (2003 - Tony Marsiglia) Screaming Dead (2003 - Brett Piper) Vampire Vixens (2003 - John Bacchus) The Witches Of Sappho Salon (2003 - Tony Marsiglia)
Erica Duke
Bite Me! (2004 - Brett Piper) Club Dread (2004 - Jay Chandrasekhar) Dawn Of The Living Dead (2004 - David Heavener) Frankenfish (2004 - Mark A.Z. Dippe) Ghost Game (2004 - Joe Knee) The Halfway House (2004 - Kenneth J. Hall) The Hazing (2004 - Rolfe Kanefsky) The Machinist (2004 - Brad Anderson) Orgasm Torture In Satan's Rape Clinic (2004 - William Hellfire) The Rockville Slayer (2004 - Marc Selz) Sin By Murder (2004 - Mark Baranowski)
The Sisterhood (2004 - David DeCoteau) Toolbox Murders (2004 - Tobe Hooper) Wilderness Survival For Girls (2004 - Kim Roberts)
Erin Brown (Misty Mundae)
'Death Dreams' - The She's
Bikini Girls On Dinosaur Planet (2005 - William Hellfire)
Cry_Wolf (2005 - Jeff Wadlow) Cursed (2005 - Wes Craven) The Devil's Bloody Playthings (2005 - William Hellfire) The Devil's Rejects (2005 - Rob Zombie) Edmond (2005 - Stuart Gordon) The Exorcism Of Emily Rose (2005 - Scott Derrickson) Hostel (2005 - Eli Roth) House Of Wax (2005 - Jaume Collet-Serra) Mortuary (2005 - Tobe Hooper) The Naked Monster (2005 - Wayne Berwick & Ted Newsom) Pervert! (2005 - Jonathan Yudis) Shadow: Dead Riot (2005 - Derek Wan) Shock-O-Rama (2005 - Brett Piper) The Skeleton Key (2005 - Iain Softley) 2001 Maniacs (2005 - Tim Sullivan) Venom (2005 - Jim Gillespie)
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Abominable (2006 - Ryan Schifrin) All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006 - Jonathan Levine) Behind The Mask : The Rise Of Leslie Vernon (2006 - Scott Glosserman) Big Bad Wolf (2006 - Lance W. Dreesen) The Breed (2006 - Nicholas Mastandrea) The Covenant (2006 - Renny Harlin) Dark Corners (2006 - Ray Gower) Dark Ride (2006 - Craig Singer) The Devil's Den (2006 - Jeff Burr) An Erotic Werewolf In London (2006 - William Hellfire) The Gravedancers (2006 - Mike Mendez) The House Of Usher (2006 - Hayley Cloake) Knight Of The Peeper (2006 - Jose Sombra) The Lost (2006 - Chris Sivertson) The Marsh (2006 - Jordan Barker) Nightmare Man (2006 - Rolfe Kanefsky) Satanic (2006 - Dan Golden) Stump The Band (2006 - JoJo Henrickson & William Holmes) Turistas (2006 - John Stockwell) Whispers From A Shallow Grave (2006 - Ted Newsom) The Woods (2006 - Lucky McKee)
Eliza Dushku
Black Devil Doll (2007 - Jonathan Lewis) Buried Alive (2007 - Robert Kurtzman) 1408 (2007 - Mikael Hafstrom) I Am Legend (2007 - Francis Lawrence) Left For Dead (2007 - Christopher Harrison) The Mist (2007 - Frank Darabont) The Rage (2007 - Robert Kurtzman) Skin Crawl (2007 - Justin Wingenfeld) Solstice (2007 - Daniel Myrick) Splatter Beach (2007 - John Polonia & Mark Polonia) Splatter Disco (2007 - Richard Griffin) Stuck (2007 - Stuart Gordon) Through The Night (2007 - Insane Mike Saunders) The Wizard Of Gore (2007 - Jeremy Kasten) Zombie Cheerleading Camp (2007 - Jon Fabris)
Elissa Dowling
Bad Biology (2008 - Frank Henenlotter) Bitten (2008 - Harvey Glazer) Blood And Sex Nightmare (2008 - Joseph R. Kolbek) Bonnie & Clyde Vs. Dracula (2008 - Timothy Friend) Dark Reel (2008 - Josh Eisenstadt) Demon Divas And The Lanes Of Damnation (2008 - Mike Watt) Frat House Massacre (2008 - Alex Pucci) The Happening (2008 - M. Night Shyamalan) Legend Has It (2008 - Jason Bolinger & Insane Mike Saunders) The Midnight Meat Train (2008 - Ryuhei Kitamura) Mirrors (2008 - Alexandre Aja) Monster From Bikini Beach (2008 - Darin Wood) Parasomnia (2008 - William Malone) The Ruins (2008 - Carter B. Smith) Sea Of Dust (2008 - Scott Bunt) Slumber Party Slaughterhouse : The Game (2008 - VARIOUS) Spring Break Massacre (2008 - Michael Hoffman Jr.) Transsiberian (2008 - Brad Anderson)
Untraceable (2008 - Gregory Hoblit) Wicked Lake (2008 - Zach Passero)
Mena Suvari
Bikini Girls On Ice (2009 - Geoff Klein) Blood Night : The Legend Of Mary Hatchet (2009 - Frank Sabatella) Drag Me To Hell (2009 - Sam Raimi) Faces Of Schlock (2009 - VARIOUS) Grave Danger (2009 - Jim Haggerty) The Haunted World Of El Superbeasto (2009 - Rob Zombie)
The House Of The Devil (2009 - Ti West) Infestation (2009 - Kyle Rankin) Malibu Shark Attack (2009 - David Lister) Mister Dissolute (2009 - Mark Baranowski)
Nine Dead (2009 - Chris Shadley) Orphan (2009 - Jaume Collet-Serra) Pandorum (2009 - Christian Alvart) Run! Bitch Run! (2009 - Joseph Guzman) Skull Heads (2009 - Charles Band) Sorority Row (2009 - Stewart Hendler) Spirit Camp (2009 - Kerry Beyer) Strangers Online (2009 - John Huckert) Terror Overload – Tales From Satan's Truck Stop (2009 - Brant Johnson, Kevin Myhre & Jason Stephenson) The Unborn (2009 - David S. Goyer) Witchmaster General (2009 - Jim Haggerty) Zombieland (2009 - Ruben Fleischer)
Tiffany Shepis
'Love Is' - Dude York
Black Swan (2010 - Darren Aronofsky) From The Inside (2010 - Jim Haggerty) The Last Exorcism (2010 - Daniel Stamm) My Soul To Take (2010 - Wes Craven) Nude Nuns With Big Guns (2010 - Joseph Guzman) President's Day (2010 - Chris LaMartina) Red, White & Blue (2010 - Simon Rumley) Shutter Island (2010 - Martin Scorsese) Stake Land (2010 - Jim Mickle) The Taint (2010 - Drew Bolduc & Dan Nelson)
Lauren Lakis
Chillerama (2011 - VARIOUS) Climb It, Tarzan! (2011 - Jared Masters) Creature (2011 - Fred M. Andrews) Dear God No! (2011 - James Bickert) The Disco Exorcist (2011 - Richard Griffin) Drive Angry (2011 - Patrick Lussier) The Innkeepers (2011 - Ti West) The Orphan Killer (2011 - Matt Farnsworth)
Raymond Did It (2011 - Travis Legge) Red State (2011 - Kevin Smith) The Sex Merchants (2011 - John Niflheim) Shark Night (2011 - David R. Ellis) Shriek Of The Sasquatch! (2011 - Steve Sessions) Swamp Shark (2011 - Griff Furst)
The Thing (2011 - Matthijs Van Heijningen Jr.) The Victim (2011 - Michael Biehn) Witch's Brew (2011 - Chris LaMartina) The Woman (2011 - Lucky McKee) You're Next (2011 - Adam Wingard)
Sarah Nicklin
The ABCs Of Death (2012 - VARIOUS) Bad Kids Go To Hell (2012 - Matthew Spradlin) Creeper (2012 - Matthew Gunnoe) Dark Shadows (2012 - Tim Burton) Girls Gone Dead (2012 - Michael Hoffman Jr. & Aaron T. Wells) Inhuman Resources (2012 - Daniel Krige) Kiss Of The Damned (2012 - Xan Cassavetes) The Lords Of Salem (2012 - Rob Zombie) Murder University (2012 - Richard Griffin) Prometheus (2012 - Ridley Scott) Play Hooky (2012 - Frank S. Petrilli) The Raven (2012 - James McTeigue) Scream Park (2012 - Cary Hill) Sinister (2012 - Scott Derrickson) The Sleeper (2012 - Justin Russell) Slice (2012 - Terence Muncy)
Vamps (2012 - Amy Heckerling) When Death Calls (2012 - Jim Haggerty)
Zombie A-Hole (2012 - Dustin Mills) Kaylee Williams
Axeman (2013 - Joston Theney) All Cheerleaders Die (2013 - Lucky McKee & Chris Sivertson) Babysitter Massacre (2013 - Henrique Couto) Bath Salt Zombies (2013 - Dustin Mills) Blood Slaughter Massacre (2013 - Manny Serrano)
Bunni (2013 - Daniel Benedict) The Cemetery (2013 - Adam Ahlbrandt) The Conjuring (2013 - James Wan) Die Die Delta Pi (2013 - Sean Donohue & Christopher Leto) Easter Casket (2013 - Dustin Mills)
Frankenstein's Hungry Dead (2013 - Richard Griffin) Horns (2013 - Alexandre Aja) Ghost Shark (2013 - Griff Furst)
The Green Inferno (2013 - Eli Roth) Night Of The Tentacles (2013 - Dustin Mills)
Ooga Booga (2013 - Charles Band) Rapture-Palooza (2013 - Paul Middleditch) Return To Nuke 'Em High Volume 1 (2013 - Lloyd Kaufman) The Sacrament (2013 - Ti West) Skinless (2013 - Dustin Mills) Slink (2013 - Jared Masters)
Izzie Harlow & Henrique Couto
After School Massacre (2014 - Jared Masters) Annabelle (2014 - John R. Leonetti) Big Driver (2014 - Mikael Salomon) Call Girl Of Cthulu (2014 - Chris LaMartina) Camp Massacre (2014 - Jim O'Rear & Daniel Emery Taylor) Cheerleader Camp : To The Death (2014 - Dustin Ferguson) Club Lingerie (2014 - Jared Masters) The Coed And The Zombie Stoner (2014 - Glenn Miller) Deadly Punkettes (2014 - Jared Masters) Deadly Weekend (2014 - Jason Sutton) Don't Blink (2014 - Travis Oates) Ghoulish Tales (2014 - Brad Twigg)
A Good Marriage (2014 - Peter Askin) The Guest (2014 - Adam Wingard)
Haunted House On Sorority Row (2014 - Henrique Couto) It Follows (2014 - David Robert Mitchell) Jailbait (2014 - Jared Cohn) Lost After Dark (2014 - Ian Kessner) Naughty, Dirty, Nasty (2014 - Chris Woods)
Scarewaves (2014 - Henrique Couto) The Sins Of Dracula (2014 - Richard Griffin) 666 : Kreepy Kerry (2014 - David DeCoteau) Starry Eyes (2014 - Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer) Stonehearst Asylum (2014 - Brad Anderson) Teenage Slumber Party Nightmare (2014 - Richard Mogg) Varsity Blood (2014 - Jake Helgren) The Voices (2014 - Marjane Satrapi) Zombie Pirates (2014 - Steve Sessions)
Sarah French (Scarlet Salem)
'Bad Idea' - The Paranoyds
Alone In The Ghost House (2015 - Henrique Couto) Badass Monster Killer (2015 - Darin Wood) Ballet Of Blood (2015 - Jared Masters) Bastard (2015 - Powell Robinson & Patrick Robert Young) Dangerous People (2015 - Garo Nigoghossian)
Fangboner (2015 - Nathan Rumler)
The Fappening (2015 - Sean Weathers) Flesh For The Inferno (2015 - Richard Griffin) Knock Knock (2015 - Eli Roth) Milfs Vs. Zombies (2015 - Brad Twigg)
Other Halves (2015 - Matthew T. Price) Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse (2015 - Christopher B. Landon) Secret Santa (2015 - Mike McMurran) Seven Dorms Of Death (2015 - Richard Griffin) $kumbagz (2015 - John Miller)
Tales Of Halloween (2015 - VARIOUS)
Sara Paxton
All Girls Weekend (2016 - Lou Simon) All I Need (2016 - Dylan K. Narang) Cannibal Claus (2016 - Sean Donohue) CarousHELL (2016 - Steve Rudzinski) Chaos A.D. (2016 - Chris Woods) Chupacabra Territory (2016 - Matt McWilliams) Don't Breathe (2016 - Fede Alvarez) Fiendish Fables (2016 - Brad Twigg) Frankenshark (2016 - Bill Zebub) Frankenstein Created Bikers (2016 - James Bickert) The Horde (2016 - Jared Cohn) Hunters (2016 - Adam Ahlbrandt) Lights Out (2016 - David Sandberg) Little Dead Rotting Hood (2016 - Jared Cohn) The Love Witch (2016 - Anna Biller) Model Hunger (2016 - Debbie Rochon) Night Of Something Strange (2016 - Jonathan Straiton) Plank Face (2016 - Scott Schirmer) She Wolf Rising (2016 - Marc Leland) Sorority Slaughterhouse (2016 - David DeCoteau) Terrifier (2016 - Damien Leone) Tonight She Comes (2016 - Matt Stuertz)
Sadie Tate
Aliens Vs Titanic (2017 - Jeff Leroy) Bad Kids Of Crestview Academy (2017 - Ben Browder) Big Hair, Long Lashes (2017 - Jared Masters) Get Out (2017 - Jordan Peele) House Skark (2017 - Ron Bonk) Killer Campout (2017 - Brad Twigg) Land Shark (2017 - Mark Polonia) Locked Up (2017 - Jared Cohn) Mother! (2017 - Darren Aranofsky) Party Night (2017 - Troy Escamilla) Return To Return To Nuke 'Em High Aka Vol. 2 (2017 - Lloyd Kaufman)
Space Babes From Outer Space (2017 - Brian Williams)
Jessica Cameron
Amazon Hot Box (2018 - James Bickert)
The Executioners (2018 - Giorgio Serafini) Ghoul Scout Zombie Massacre (2018 - Eric Eichelberger)
Alyss Winkler, Brian Papandrea, Allison Maier & Ellie Church
Art Of The Dead (2019 - Rolfe Kanefsky)
Crossbreed (2019 - Brandon Slagle)
Earth Girls Are Sleazy (2019 - VARIOUS)
Girls Just Wanna Have Blood (2019 - Anthony Catanese)
The Hart-Break Killer (2019 - Sean Donohue)
Slaughterhouse Slumber Party (2019 - Dustin Mills)
Haley Madison
Clown Fear (2020 - Minh Collins)
Naked Cannibal Campers (2020 - Sean Donohue)
Carmela Hayslett (Roxsy Tyler)
'YFLMD' - Giant Drag
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Global Horror (2000 - 2020)
1 Franchise
[Rec] (2007 - Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza) / [Rec]² (2009 - Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza) / [REC] 3 : Genesis (2012 - Paco Plaza) / [REC] 4 : Apocalypse (2014 - Jaume Balaguero)
Alina Lina
Head Wound City at Bedrocktoberfest
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FILMS
Deep In The Woods (2000 - Lionel Delplanque)
Faust : Love Of The Damned (2000 - Brian Yuzna)
Ju-On : The Grudge (2000 - Takashi Shimizu)
Sacred Flesh (2000 - Nigel Wingrove)
Brotherhood Of The Wolf (2001 - Christophe Gans) Cradle of Fear (2001 - Alex Chandon) Dagon (2001 - Stuart Gordon)
Kannibal (2001 - Richard Driscoll) The Others (2001 - Alejandro Amenabar) The Barber (2002 - Michael Bafaro) Dark Water (2002 - Hideo Nakata) Darkness (2002 - Jaume Balaguero) Fallen Angels (2002 - Ian David Diaz) Wolfhound (2002 - Donovan Kelly)
A Tale Of Two Sisters (2003 - Kim Jee-Woon)
Creep (2004 - Christopher Smith) Decoys (2004 - Matthew Hastings) Dracula 3000 (2004 - Darrell Roodt) Frost (2004 - Domink Alber) House Of Voices (2004 - Pascal Laugier) Romasanta (2004 - Paco Plaza) Rottweiler (2004 - Brian Yuzna)
Beneath Still Waters (2005 - Brian Yuzna)
Cello (2005 - Woo-Cheol Lee) The Descent (2005 - Neil Marshall) Feed (2005 - Brett Leonard) Forest Of The Damned (2005 - Johannes Roberts) Fragile (2005 - Jaume Balaguero) Man-Thing (2005 - Brett Leonard) The Nun (2005 - Luis De La Madrid) Wolf Creek (2005 - Greg McLean)
Black Christmas (2006 - Glen Morgan) Cold Prey (2006 - Roar Uthaug) 5ive Girls (2006 - Warren P. Sonoda) Sheitan (2006 - Kim Chapiron) Silent Hill (2006 - Christophe Gans) Sukeban Boy (2006 - Noboru Iguchi) When Evil Calls (2006 - Johannes Roberts)
Exte : Hair Extensions (2007 - Sion Sono) Sick Nurses (2007 - Piraphan Laoyont) Tokyo Gore Police (2007 - Yoshihiro Nishimura)
Book Of Blood (2008 - John Harrison) Credo (2008 - Toni Harman) Donkey Punch (2008 - Olly Blackburn) Gutterballs (2008 - Ryan Nicholson)
The Legend Of Harrow Woods (2008 - Richard Driscoll) Love Exposure (2008 - Sion Sono) The Machine Girl (2008 - Noboru Iguchi) Martyrs (2008 - Pascal Laugier) Ogre (2008 - Steven R. Monroe) Red Mist (2008 - Paddy Breathnach)
RoboGeisha (2009 - Noboru Iguchi) Splice (2009 - Vincenzo Natali) Triangle (2009 - Christopher Smith) Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009 - Naoyuki Tomomatsu) Zombie Women Of Satan (2009 - Warren Speed)
Lullaby (2010 - Juliusz Machulski) Monstro! (2010 - Stuart Simpson) Mutant Girls Squad (2010 - Noboru Iguchi) Psychosis (2010 - Reg Traviss) Rabies (2010 - Aharon Keshales & Navot Papushado) Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010 - Eli Craig)
Macarena Gomez
'Bonfire' - Magik Markers
Deadball (2011 - Yudai Yamaguchi) Guilty Of Romance (2011 - Sion Sono) Inbred (2011 - Alex Chandon) Sleep Tight (2011 - Jaume Balaguero) Strip Mahjong : Battle Royale (2011 - Makku P. Foeva) Tomie : Unlimited (2011 - Noboru Iguchi)
The Wicker Tree (2011 - Robin Hardy) Zombie Ass : The Toilet Of The Dead (2011 - Noboru Iguchi)
The ABC's Of Death (2012 - VARIOUS) Dead Sushi (2012 - Noboru Iguchi) Dracula 3D (2012 - Dario Argento) The Facility (2012 - Ian Clark) Fresh Meat (2012 – Danny Mulheron) The Girl From Nowhere (2012 - Jean-Claude Brisseau) Slasher House (2012 - MJ Dixon) Strippers Vs Werewolves (2012 - Jonathan Glendenning) The Tall Man (2012 - Pascal Laugier) Three's A Shroud (2012 - VARIOUS) Tower Block (2012 - James Nunn & Ronnie Thompson) Truth Or Dare (2012 - Robert Heath)
The Return Of The Forklift Drivers (2013 - Jochen Taubert)
Under The Skin (2013 - Jonathan Glazer)
American Burger (2014 - Johan Bromander & Bonita Drake) Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla (2014 - Stuart Simpson) Devil's Tower (2014 - Owen Tooth) The Editor (2014 - Adam Brooks) Girlhouse (2014 - Jon Knautz & Trevor Matthews)
Play My Limb Until Death (2014 - Jochen Taubert)
The Quiet Ones (2014 - John Pogue)
Dead Or Alive (2015 - Jochen Taubert)
Deathgasm (2015 - Jason Lei Howden) The Devil's Woods (2015 - Anthony White) Even Lambs Have Teeth (2015 - Terry Miles) The Lure (2015 - Agnieszka Smoczynska) Secret Santa (2015 - Mike McMurran) Tag (2015 - Sion Sono) Tale Of Tales (2015 - Matteo Garrone)
Female Zombie Riot (2016 - Warren Speed) The Limehouse Golem (2016 - Juan Carlos Medina)
Peelers (2016 - Seve Schelenz) Sneekweek (2016 - Martijn Heijne) We Are The Flesh (2016 - Emiliano Rocha Minter)
Juliet & Romeo : Love Is A Battlefield (2017 - Jochen Taubert) Revenge (2017 - Coralie Fargeat)
Necrologies (2018 - Fabien Chombart, Guillaume Defare, Nathalie Epoque, Francois Message & Alexis Wawerka)
The Pope's Daughter : We Come In The Name Of The Lord (2020 - Jochen Taubert)
Kyrie Capri Mayberian Sanskulotts at Kepler Studios
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Post by petrolino on Sept 26, 2020 22:37:11 GMT
Shortboard Thruster : Surfing On The A-Frame
Blondie, the Ramones, the Cramps, the B-52's and the Dead Kennedys are among the many punk bands that have utilised surf rock techniques in their music. Surf punk has been called "a revival of the original surfing sound" and it's true there's a strong connection. Agent Orange recorded covers of 'Miserlou' (a folk song from the east Mediterranean reinvented by surf rock pioneer Dick Dale), the Bel-Airs' 'Mr. Moto' and the Chantays' 'Pipeline'.
"It wasn’t long after the invention of rock ’n’ roll that artists started making their own styles of rock, including the reverb-heavy surf rock, made most popular by Dick Dale and later, the Beach Boys."
- Alyssa Quiles, Alt Press
Surf Punks
'The Dummies' - Surf Punks
The pioneers of what might be called "pure surf punk" included the group Surf Punks who formed in Malibu, California, and Insect Surfers who originated in Washington D.C. which is technically landlocked. Insect Surfers opened for the B-52's in 1979.
"One of the best things about Surf Punks is they were exactly what they said they were. In the late 1970s, the Malibu band aimed to apply the no-frills surfer ideal to punk in the same way the Beach Boys had applied it to rock 'n' roll in the 1960s. It was a novel idea, for sure. But, for a time at least, it succeeded, even if the Surf Punks story was weird and fragmented. Adding to Surf Punks' unlikely premise was the fact that co-founder, producer, and drummer Dennis Dragon was the younger brother of "Captain" Daryl Dragon of the soft-rock duo Captain & Tennille. In another odd twist, both Dragon brothers had played with the Beach Boys themselves. Fronted by vocalist Drew Steele, Surf Punks self-released an album in 1979. It was later picked up by Epic, who issued it as My Beach the following year. Punk's first wave was already dying out, and the band moved to indie Restless/Enigma for the 1982 follow-up Locals Only. Then, they disappeared for six years."
- John Bergstrom, Pop Matters
Insect Surfers
'Up Periscope' - Insect Surfers
One of the most dedicated surf rock bands is Man Or Astro-Man? who draw heavily from punk music. They apparently released a split 7" single with Chrome in 1996 but I've not heard it.
Californian Super Surfer ~ Jennifer Aniston
'Told You So' - Paramore
- - -
Noseslide Grind : Skating To The Death Wobble
Around the same time that surf punk broke through, skate punk emerged as a major musical movement. Skate punk went on to become a global phenomenon whereas surf punk has remained a niche market. Suicidal Tendencies are one of the more innovative skate punk bands, blending thrash metal with hardcore punk to fashion an arresting hybrid. Suicidal Tendencies were formed in Venice, California which had a strong skate punk scene and was also home to Excel. As surf punk gripped the west coast, some of the leading skater punks could be found inland where they were spread across the south-west. The seeds of subgenre pioneers JFA (Jodie Foster's Army) were planted in Pheonix, Arizona though they also had links to California's punk scene.
“I decided to start a record label because I could see the future of punk.” Doug Moody, still laser-sharp well into his 80s, is the founder of Mystic Records, a California-based label that released early albums, singles and compilation tracks from many of the bands that would become synonymous with the skate-punk movement of the 1980s – bands like JFA, Suicidal Tendencies, Ill Repute, RKL, DRI and Dr. Know. “I decided to record 500 bands, and they came from all over, everywhere, even Holland,” he says. “The trick for Mystic was to give a voice to people who wanted to tell the world how they felt. You can only capture that before you have the responsibilities of bills and children. "Most of the bands were between the ages of 16 and 18. That’s when you have the vehemence, the drive to tell the world what you really think. I saw myself in these kids, and that’s why I started Mystic.” Moody made his fortune in the 50s and 60s, recording soul and R&B acts on his Philadelphia-based labels Herald and Ember, including some early work with influential country and blues guitarist Lightnin’ Hopkins. “When I moved to the US from England,” he says, “the only people that would accept me were black. So that’s the kind of music I recorded. The people that played this music were dirt poor, they’d come in with holes in their trousers, and with hand-me-down instruments. "Fast forward to the 1970s, when I started recording punk bands for Better Youth Organization in California, and I saw the same things – kids with holes in their clothes, and with hand-me-down instruments. They were poor. It was like the 50s all over again. And I knew they were all skateboarders, because they would come into the studio with their skateboards.” One of these early skate bands was Dr. Know. Brandon Cruz was their first singer, although he left the band before their more well-known ‘crossover’ era, and the frontman recounts how a bunch of scruffy, angry skateboarders started an entire musical movement. “We were all skaters before we were punkers,” he says. Cruz was from a Los Angeles suburb called Oxnard, which quickly became ground zero for skate-punk. “In Oxnard, where Aggression, Ill Repute, Dr. Know and Stalag 13 all came from, we surfed year round and skated in empty pools when it didn’t rain. In 1975 or 1976, this was before punk rock, they built a skate park in Oxnard, and all the guys from Venice would come up to skate there. Some of the guys from Venice included Jim Muir and his little, little brother, [future Suicidal Tendencies frontman] Mike Muir. We all skated, and we all skated to heavy metal and southern-fried rock back then.” The following year, however, the musical landscape changed radically. “The summer of ’77 I came back from England, and there was a band from Moor Park called the Rotters. They started playing, and by 1978 they were playing high school parties, and we would go and crash the parties. We heard those guys playing, and we said, ‘Oh, we can do that.’ The guys in Aggression were a few years older, so all us guys that would later be in Ill Repute and Dr. Know, we just sat and watched to see how they did it. Then we all sorta came together at my mom’s house. That’s where our guitar player Ismael coined the term “Nardcore”, and it all sorta got going from there. The band started in late ’79, and it really got going by 1981.” “The original name for the music we put out was thrash, or skate-thrash,” says Doug Moody. “Punk music was Exploited, Discharge. The bands coming from England, and the bands that copied them were punk bands. The stuff we were producing was an original form of Californian music, thrash, or skateboard punk. It originated here.” The movement was aided by the emergence of LA hardcore bands like Black Flag, The Circle Jerks and the Adolescents, bands that were fast and raw, which replicated the feel of skating. Soon, skate-punk bands starting cropping up all over California and, indeed, the rest of the country. Arizona’s JFA (or, as they were more formally known, Jodie Foster’s Army) are one of the longest running. Lead singer Brain Brannon recounts the early days of the scene. “You had bands in Orange County and LA, you had Oxnard, which is central California, you had skate-punk coming out of San Francisco, like the Drunk Injuns, San Jose had a big scene. They were sprouting like weeds. It was going on all over. It wasn’t really a movement until Thrasher magazine started putting it all together. Thrasher was a really big catalyst in helping everybody join together. With it you can find out what town has what band so you can hook up and tour, go to their spots to skate and hang out.” At the same time skate-punk began developing as a loosely-knit but far-reaching community, a per nicious influx of gangs crept into the LA skate-punk scene. The most notorious were the Suicidals, known as much for their low-slung bandanas as their propensity for brutality. Venice Beach skate thrashers Suicidal Tendencies were, naturally, at the eye of this particular hurricane. Their shows became so violent that by 1983, they could no longer even play in Los Angeles. “Suicidal blew up ridiculously huge”, says Brandon Cruz. “A lot of the East LA guys delved really deep into the gang lifestyle, to the point where you couldn’t even refer to them by their real names anymore, they had all these nicknames and stuff. Back in the 80s, punk rock gang fights were, at the worst, somebody with a stick. "They were fistfights. But after a while, people were getting jumped for no reason, and it just got stupid. The violence in that scene is legendary, but it was brutal to be a part of. I’m a small guy, but I got punched a bunch of times at gigs by people where I didn’t know who they were or what I’d done. It was like a random thing.” As if random face-mashings weren’t enough, around 1983-1985, a strange new influence crept into skate-thrash: heavy metal. Seemingly overnight, scores of once-staunchly anti-metal punk bands began to add scorching lead-guitar solos and wailing vocals into their songs. It was a like some sort of lead-infused virus, and it claimed an impressive roster of skate-friendly punk bands, including Dr. Know, DRI, Suicidal Tendencies, Corrosion Of Conformity, Septic Death, Agnostic Front, SSD and many others. Brandon Cruz was one of the few purists who refused to ‘go metal’. “I don’t know how it happened,” he shrugs. “I just remember in 1983 hearing the initial rough versions of songs that were going to be on our Plug-In Jesus record and looking at our guitar player Kyle and realising, ‘Wow, he’s growing his hair out and listening to a lot more Motörhead and Black Sabbath lately,’ and this isn’t what I thought we were going to do."
- Ken McIntyre, Louder
Suicidal Tendencies
'Tapping Into The Emotional Void' - Excel
Big Boys and the Dicks both played in Austin, Texas and were a key influence on the Red Hot Chilli Peppers' funk-fuelled sound. Together they recorded a joint album, 'Big Boys & The Dicks -- Live At Raul's Club' (1980), which is now enshrined as a skate punk classic. There were countless hardcore bands active in cities like Dallas, Houston and San Antonio that pretty much sounded the same, but several bands in Austin sought to add groove to their frenetic thrash.
"Skateboards and the cinema are no strangers. They’ve had a relationship stretching back more than 50 years. One of the earliest examples is Skaterdater, a 15-minute short with zero dialogue. It’s a classic boy-meets-girl story soundtracked by the surf rock group Davie Allan and the Arrows, which was released way back in 1965. Skating or ‘sidewalk surfing’, as it was known back then, was almost lost to history as a passing fad until the 1970s saw the invention of the polyurethane wheel, which allowed riders to hit bigger and tougher terrain. Soon, skaters such as Tony Alva and Jay Adams, members of the legendary Z-Boys skate crew, were pushing all previous boundaries, and photographers and filmmakers were keen to capture their exploits on camera. This resulted in a 70s spike of skate-based films, including Freewheelin’ (1976), Skateboard (1978) and Skateboard Madness (1980). Narratively shaky, these were essentially cinematic vehicles for skaters to showcase their skills and tricks. The budgets were low but the enthusiasm behind them was enough to give the new genre traction, leading to the release of an increasing number of skate-inspired films. Before long, more mainstream movies began to have central characters who were skaters, as the skateboard became emblematic of youth identity or rebellious unconventionality."
- Tom Jones, The British Film Institute
Robert Rusler & Pamela Gidley relaxing on set during the filming of 'Thrashin' (1986)
'Institutionalized' - Suicidal Tendencies
The great legacy of skate punk is the world-conquering bands it's inspired. NOFX, the Offspring, Green Day, Pennywise and Blink-182 are just some of the rock groups that owe a huge debt to the skater scene. What was perhaps most shocking however, were the rabid levels of machismo fostered in skate punk circles. At times, it seemed like hardly any women were active within any of the major bands.
"Skate punk is something taken seriously in the desert. We're always looking to finish an argument about what constitutes a good slab of skate punk wax. Phoenix has a long history with both skateboarding and the music most closely associated with it. Skate punk (or skate rock, which many see as interchangeable terms), is any music created by skateboarders and/or a provider of the sufficient inspiration to risk life and limb on four wheels and a deck of wood. Local heroes Jodie Foster's Army (JFA) debuted in 1981 and are considered by some to have started the whole thing. However, JFA actually does have peers that predate the Phoenix quartet in terms of first gigs and recordings so we won't coronate them as the original skate punks just yet. For many of the progenitors of the genre, the sound is equal parts of the following bands: The Sonics, The Ventures, The Who (specifically the early '70s Isle of Wight-era Who), Black Sabbath, Ramones, and Devo. The popularity of skateboarding on a national and international level has grown steadily since the mid-'80s, but it has been a popular sport in our "but it's a dry heat" corner of the globe since the 1970s. It is also safe to say we no longer need to preface the word "sport" with "alternative" or "extreme" in 2015, as skateboarding finally has matured enough to no longer be seen as a fad or anomaly in the sports world. To put it in perspective in another way, we're just a little over a year away from having a 40-year-old skate shop in greater Phoenix, as Scottsdale's Sidewalk Surfer will celebrate its ruby anniversary in 2017."
- Tom Reardon, Pheonix New Times
JFA
'Blatant Localism' ~ JFA
No Doubt were an accomplished rock group who married ska punk with skate punk to create their own unique sound and aesthetic. Vocalist Gwen Stefani at times seemed like a lone voice in the wilderness. When the class of the 2000s emerged with strong record sales, there were again hardly any women active on the scene. As such, Canadian skater Avril Lavigne (she surfs too) became a figurehead for the movement, as did songwriter Hayley Williams who fronts influential rock band Paramore.
Californian Collegiate Skateboarder ~ Jodie Foster
'Hard Times' - Paramore
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