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Bringing word of the Ende Tymes here... not the radio preacher last month, his gospel was false. This is the good news about next weekend, where hundreds of sound weirdos from across the planet will descend on The Silent Barn and bring warnings of plagues or whatever the hell else they do...
Here I am doing my part, asking three of the Ende Tymes prophets a few questions, first Bob Bellerue because this is his creation, second GX Jupitter-Larsen, who has performed as or with The Haters since the dawn of time, and Chicago's Jason Soliday.
Bob Bellerue
When you were first exposed to experimental music was it in a live setting or via recordings? Do you remember what it was?
i think it was "Reality Asylum" by Crass off of "The Feeding of the 5000" which was the first extended music techniques i'd heard (around 1984). i'd been exposed to much of Jimi Hendrix' catalog by then too, and the Electric Ladyland became sacrament to me (it was released the same month i was born).
the first live experience of real out-there music i had was Crash Worship (1988) when i was in San Diego. i got turned on to some amazing music down there, and scored my first Merzbow record around 1992, and was heavily influenced by running sound for extreme bands like Zeni Geva, Crossed Out, Man Is The Bastard, and Drive Like Jehu. but i don't think i saw any true noise performances until 1998 when i moved back to LA and started witnessing Damion Romero, Bastard Noise, etc. i'd been making noise starting in 1992 but hadn't ever been to a thinking-person's noise show until then
In a round about way, Boyd Rice has led a charmed life. But in a lot of ways, maybe not always a charming one. He's been called a Nazi, a Fascist, a Social Darwinist, a Satanist, a misogynist, a misanthropist, an abusive alcoholic, and in no uncertain terms, an asshole. He's been appointed to high ranks while also harboring a strong friendship with Church of Satan founder Anton La Vey, and he's visited Charles Manson on a daily basis at one point in the 80s, also rallying, if only symbolically, for the lifer's release from time to time. Christian Radio Televangelist Bob Larson interviewed Rice in the early 90s, where he faced the mother of Sharon Tate in favor of Manson and Satanism.
He's got an ex, Lisa Carver, the mother of his child, that wrote a book where nearly half of it portrays him in a, let's just say, a highly unfavorable manner. Earlier in his career, he encountered a fair amount of protest, especially regarding his collaborations with the neofolk band, Death In June, whose lyrics and art allude to Nazi imagery. Rice has appeared in a teen magazine with a member of the American Front and on a racist television program called Race and Reason. Some of his recorded material employs ideas akin to Social Darwinism, and even in some cases, he describes people in general as a “stupid, lifeless, shuffling horde”. An album called Hatesville details a fun loving kind of sadistic mind state, a single by his one-off side project The Tards mocks the less fortunate, and a song called Alone With The Calm describes a peaceful place away from disruptive noise and “unruly niggers”. Some of his writing, even if, perhaps in jest, portrays women as a species of people who are only in power because a man allowed them to be. And in the face of a world oozing with political correctness, disillusioned by American culture's omnipresent lip service to equality and diversity, as well as a pervasive onslought of “professional victims”, as Adam Parfrey put it, Boyd Rice refrained, more or less, from apologizing or explaining himself in any kind of empathetic manner. To be fair, he has casually mentioned that he would prefer to hang out with a dominant black person than a dull one of any race, and when he describes fascism, he speaks of it as if it is something that happens in nature, not something that needs to be enforced by a group of idealists. Rice, at one point,said that women are often too emotional (to say the least), but he also said that, like people in general, he gets along well with plenty of women who stand apart from the rest. And further, all of the aforementioned has happened over 15 years ago, some of these views have clearly morphed over time. Still, it might seem like this is an introduction to a brooding sociopath on the surface; surely a person who is brutally honest, for good or ill. But speaking to him on the phone, both on and off the record, he's a soft spoken gentleman with a strong sense of humor. Almost every account of meeting him comes with a resounding: "He's the nicest guyyou couldever meet.". Where most people see two sides to every coin, Boyd seems to see 3, 4, or 5, and overall, it is because of making this observation that I decided to write a letter to Boyd Rice, asking him to grant me an interviewon my radio show close to 5 years after his last one, and more than a few years after his proclamation that he would no longer grant interviews outside of personal inquiries.
JA: Yes, many. I’ll tell you about one, which is interesting. Orwell’s dictum, “He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future,” was never truer than it is now. With digital archives, with these digital repositories of our intellectual record, control over the present allows one to perform an absolutely untraceable removal of the past. More than ever before, the past can be made to completely, utterly, and irrevocably disappear in an undetectable way.Orwell’s dictum came about as result of what happened in 1953 to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. That year, Stalin died and Beria fell out of favor. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia had a page and a half on Beria from before he fell out of favor, and it was decided that the positive description of Beria had to go. So, an addendum page was made and sent to all registered holders of this encyclopedia with instructions specifying that the previous page should be pasted over with the new page, which was an expanded section on the Bering Straight. However, users of the encyclopedia would later see that the page had been pasted over or ripped out—everyone became aware of the replacement or omission, and so we know about it today. That’s what Orwell was getting at. In 2008, one of the richest men in the UK, Nadhmi Auchi—an Iraqi who grew rich under one of Saddam Husain’s oil ministries and left to settle in the UK in the early 1980s—engaged in a series of libel threats against newspapers and blogs. He had been convicted of corruption in France in 2003 by the then magistrate Eva Joly in relation to the Elf Aquitaine scandal.
Recently I went to The Netherlands for the Roadburn Festival. Thanks to Duane Harriot for running the Fun Machine for a week and not wrecking the gears! Last weeks episode was a full three hours of music and photos from the most enjoyable fest I have ever been to, and if you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it (not because it's my program, mind you - it is my taste, but it was really programmed by those who put Roadburn together- thank them, not me)!
Since last year's festival was disrupted by a pesky volcanic eruption, I thought it would be wise to take an extra day ahead of the festival and eliminate the stress factor. I made my ever important sleeping bag connection ahead of time, and decided to head over to the town of 's-Hertogenbosch to check out the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center.
All of Bosch's works are in name museums, so I was not sure what to expect. This town probably would have no one paying attention to it except for their famous, intensely talented son. I'm not going to even go into describing his artwork here; if you are unfamiliar, go check out a link or two and get the scoop on this man.
The Art Center is housed in what had once been a church. It looks like a church, but when you step inside, all your senses tell you nearly right away (there's a large red curtain that separates the entrance from a lot of the exhibit area) that you may have actually stepped into a delightfully quirky version of hell. There is a telltale sculpture outside as well to tip you off, that in most ways, this was not going to be a religious experience, at least of a churchgoing nature.
The helpful women at the desk were concerned with the size of my backpack and could see I was being taxed by it's weight. They took it off my hands immediately although there was no coat room. The entrance fee was laughably cheap and I was given an audio guide to boot. It was when I got to the other side of the curtain that I thought to myself "I'm going to be here for hours and hours"...
Here's a sweet record I picked up many years ago, featuring a group with the unwieldy but very descriptive and specific name of The Medical Missionaries of Mary Choral Group. All I know about this record is that it was recorded in Ireland. The attraction for me here is on the A-Side, "Angels (Watching Over Me)",
Over a very simple but beautiful accompaniment of acoustic guitar and bass, the Choral Group sing their equally pretty song, featuring appropriately heavenly harmony throughout. The song, probably because of how it is presented here, quickly wormed its way into my head, and has stayed there for all these years since.
This record was promoted as a potential hit at the end of 1965, and actually charted for a two weeks on the "Bubbling Under the Hot 100" chart in Billboard in early 1966, peaking at #117. The flip side, also included here, is called "Spring".
You thought you couldn't get any cleaner, BUT THINK AGAIN! Reverend Billy, of The Church of Life After Shopping, works himself into a FREEFORM FAITH LATHER. And for a minimum pledge of $15, YOU CAN TOO! Call 1-800-989-9368, or pledge online and contribute to WFMU's 2011 Marathon. Scrub yourself on us!
I felt like Ernie Anastos after he told the weatherman to "Keep fucking that chicken" during a live broadcast. Externally I had to just keep smiling through, while inside my mind was screaming that whatever madness had just passed my lips had the potential to devastate all that I held dear. And all I had said was, “Yes, sir.”
Rather than further contemplate this horror, however, I snapped a salute to Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, spun on my heels, and exited his tent into the smothering Afghani heat. Until now, I had barely seen the general, let alone spoken with him. All orders passed from Caldwell to Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, my CO, and then down to me. But it seemed that the general and the colonel weren’t seeing eye to eye lately, so Caldwell had sought me out as a potential ally in his private campaign.
"Operation Four Star," Holmes had derisively nicknamed it. Caldwell wanted to use our psyops team against visiting Congress members to prop up flagging support for the war. There was no threat Congress would move to actually end the occupation, but attention would shift back to Iraq, the boys in Baghdad would start getting all the headlines and funding increases, and the next thing you know our $20 billion-a-year air-conditioning budget would be slashed.
It'd take three or four years before Iraq would start feeling hopeless again, the press would start screaming about the great Taliban threat, and we would get our AC back. Nope, that wouldn't do at all; the generals, with their promotions depending on AfPak s continued prominence, were not going to lose this pissing contest, even if it meant some Senators needed a little light brainwashing. And I'd just agreed to help with the scrubbing.
Perhaps some of you may fondly recall at times a favorite venue for magically finding unusual old vinyl on a regular basis. A treasure trove/mother lode of incredibly cheap wonders to delight the ear and eye. For me, still in my earlier collecting days, aside from salivating over big trunks of old, unbagged comic books at the Skyview Flea Market, one of my most magical places for vinyl excavation during my early 1980's days in Santa Cruz was going to the Goodwill Bargain Barn, where my girlfriend would peruse the clothing by the pound, under the watchful eye of the unforgettable 'Ray' the proprietor (for which priviledge people lined up way before they opened the doors), while I would troll the newest cardboard barrels of records that had come in that week, often digging crazily through a whole barrel full of lps, before they even made it out onto the rough table that they would be 'displayed' on.
Many a wonder flowed into that big old barnlike building, and for a mere twenty-five cents each, the records were often in remarkably good condition after their journey through the barrel and worse. Today's goodie is one of the more powerful DJ tools in my kit back in those protean radio DJing days, and must have messed with many episodes and sets over the years, later to be sampled and cut up even more. It struck me the other day while transferring it that the lead male child actor's voice reminded me of TV's Charlie Brown, who was actually voiced by several boys over the years, it turned out I was wrong, but it made for a fun search speculation. The kids are obviously pros (it was made in LA, where there's plenty of voice talent), as the dialogue is not the easiest to comfortably act by kids. Many of us collectors over the years have sought the elusive third volume of this set of sex-ed records: Sex for Adults. I've never seen it. Who has it? Did it ever even come out, I wonder? Many times lps are announced on the back covers of small label records that don't necessarily get released in the form in which they're shown. The second volume, Sex for Teens, I did get, I believe also from the Bargain Barn, and it has appeared here on WFMU alreadyhere, courtesy of Otis Fodder. Since there was a good response to that post I've meant for a long time to transfer this baby in it's entirety so that the two known volumes can hang together here in a nice warm place. But it's not a record that one plays a whole lot, and I've certainly slowed down on using it as a DJ anymore. So it took a while to finally play through the whole sexy thing. Tangentally, I like how the authors (Nathan Leichman, PhD, and Stanley Z. Daniels, MD) created a publishing entity (Magic Medicine) for the A.S.C.A.P. rights to the dialogue on the record, so if you wanna do a cover of it, be sure and asign the rights properly! Fun how even a spoken word educational project can be buried deep in the A.S.C.A.P. files.
Sex Explained for Children is a very well produced product, however, and deserves some better modern exposure (why? I dunno, I guess...because I'm a nut for albums, mainly). The first side is a bit dry, going over the basic mechanics of reproduction, but on side two things get fun, as the little boy and the two little girls get down to the making sweet love aspect of it all.
As a side note, some wag who owned the disc previously had added a very clever piece of dialogue to the mouth of the little boy on the cover, written in pencil, which I later inked in for more clarity, as it fits the expression of the boy in the picture SO well. So buckle up your training pants, pour a libation, set up the romantic mood lighting and enjoy some fine sex ed smoothness.
Check it, my Q & A with Timothy Wyllie, ex Process Church art director, general cosmic fellow, writer of new age books about communicating with dolphins and angels. I was going to run this interview on my Temple of Pei blog but thought better of it: WFMU's Beware the Blog gets around 5000 times the traffic, and this is a voice which much be heard. This is a guy that really lives to the beat of his own drummer. Hope you dig, and remember: As it is, so be it.
During the Process salon at the Anthology Film Archives right around when Love Sex Fear Death came out you mentioned that cults could be a good thing, that there were many benefits to you spending time in one. Could you describe examples of what a good cult experience would be?
The biggest benefit is that one gets to experience a kind of life that isn't available under normal circumstances. This especially applies to reincarnates, who require an accelerated learning curve. Most western societies these days are both risk and pain averse. Cults allow those who need to go through their own pain and anger to do it in a safe situation. Cults can become a microcosm of society, so people in cults can experience a far wider array of possibilities like service, obedience, leadership, as well as what it's like to live without personal possessions, money, and personal freedom. Celibacy for a period is also a necessary psychic/emotional antidote in an over-sexed society. Possibly the greatest gift a cult bestows is when one leaves it. One emerges back into life with the opportunity to follow one's own drummer--free of parental etc influences, and understanding the dire consequences of ever giving away one's power again.
If you were involved in the start of a new cult now in 2011 what would change compared to the Process? What would you focus on?
I wouldn't. I feel cults have had their day. At this point in time and in a spiritual sense, it's every person for themselves. Cults in the sixties and seventies were a kind of clean-up contingency. The were so many reincarnates who needed to work on themselves (and be worked on). The kids these days are different--they don't really need cults the way we did.
Over the years you probably have met hundreds of people influenced by The Process. Any surprises there, was there any indication that you were part of something so huge at the time?
At the beginning, for at least the first five years, we all felt we were onto something big and important. I doubt if any of us could have anticipated its importance as it has been emerging recently.
What teachings of The Process have you retained?
Although TP probably took the concept of personal responsibility too far--it's your responsibility if you are under the wheel of an airplane if it falls off; everything you do, or is done to you is your responsibility--I find it's a very useful POV since it returns the power to you. Blaming an outside force essentially renders one powerless to change it. One can of course always change one's response to it and in that way one regains one's personal power.
The concept that the Universe is responsive to individuals. And that reality is mutable in ways yet to be understood. And that the intuition is a far more trustworthy way of approaching the ineffable, than that of seeking hard evidence.
...seems a bit obvious to title this thing, but hey, I'm not really sweating it. Apologize, but under the gun. I had this huge plan to post my Best of Brooklyn Botanicas list, but well, had cold feet and thought I would sit on it for another week.There is this part where I explain that I was conceived in a rainforest notorious for UFO activity and I am on the fence on if I want to share that with WFMU blog readers or not.
So yeah, I'll tell the story in the afternoon in the comments, but this thing is beautiful. Giant statue of the Stella Maris in Windsor, Ohio.
20+ some years ago I was always going and hanging around the Old Erie Street Bookstore, one of those shops that miscreants go to and sit at the feet of a older guru type and he tells them stories, cool stories about eating acid and sneaking in to the first Bowie concert in the U.S. at the old Agora, stories about being teenagers skinny dipping in the then mayor of my hometown's backyard pond, that sort of thing, and well, more PG ones about selling books to Ravi Shankar. But yeah, he had all these fuck yeah books for sale, the Anarchist Cookbook, all the Re/Search titles, and a shitload of Loompanics.
Meanwhile, across a few states my friend Ed (name changed to protect the innocently guilty) was reading wacky books too, in particular Ivan Stang's High Weirdness By Mail. One of the things in the book was if you sent a postage paid envelope to a guy in California he would send you a stack of bible tracts. Ed made a cross out of foam core and this beauty was born.
Well, Ed is older now, in some ways has mellowed with age and has donated this cross to me. I took it home on the subway the other day and people were freaking out. An atheist got in my face about it and a fundamentalist too. I got invited to a breakfast at a local church and had a long conversation with a guy always hanging on my block. I was pretty happy for that one, his name was Wolfgang and he reminds me of Ozzy Osborne's mini-me.
So yeah, are you ready for my top 13 tracts on Ed's foam core cross? What Shape Is Your God is my favorite, which one is yours?
Today's post is of an album I picked up recently in a Salvation Army Thrift Store. The album contains the 19 minute soundtrack for a sex education filmstrip produced by Concordia. Each side has the same presentation, one with audible "beeps" one with inaudible tones, with the individual sides geared towards the use of two different filmstrip machines. This is the inaudible tone side. Let's all learn together.
Ahhh, I liked him best as a villain.
Even though he later changed his position on the West Memphis Three's guilt, it was his terrific maniacal rants as the (most dynamic) 'star' of Paradise Lost and Revelations that I used to DJ and sample lots many years ago. This unedited chunk (2:12) of prime Byers is a delicious piece of dialogue, and if it whets your appetite, and you haven't yet seen the documentary it's stolen from then this is your prompt to pick it up and give it a look (and its sequel). "To me, this place as I stand, is like Hell on Earth."
If there is anything that I am very sympathetic to, it would be space
mysticism. In elementary school I would devour any book I came across
dealing with the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster,
ancient aliens, Atlantis, etc. In the fourth grade my best friend
Per-Johan and I vowed to spend our 30s in Tibet searching for the Yeti,
convinced they were part of a tribe that would have access to the
mothership. (We lost touch at some point but every day I wake up
expecting him to knock on my door ready to go. Per Johan, if you read
this - only two years left!) In my teens I discovered the music of
Hawkwind and Coil, and have been on a steady diet of cosmic sound ever
since.
I came across theebradmiller.blogspot.com
a couple of weeks ago, specifically to the page dedicated to Psychic TV
Live at Fondation Raelienne, making me wonder what was up with those wacky Raelians , haven't really thought about them since they said they were
cloning people a few years ago. Bouncing around Google I discovered that
within a week they would be celebrating their New Year in Strawberry
Fields, Central Park, so I reached out to some friends and made plans to
meet there. If you need some background on the Raelians you can find it
here, this post is going to go on a bit too long already....
It was a beautiful, warm, sunny Friday afternoon. I rolled into Strawberry
Fields to find Greg and Alexandra waiting for me on the grass a short
distance from the where the Raelians were having their celebration. Greg
said that I had just missed a ritual using tuning forks and it looked
pretty wild. They were now meditating with a gatekeeper standing guard.
Anytime anyone would come up to ask a question he would politely shoo
them away. Curiosity got the better of me so I approached him and asked
him what was going on. He whispered that I should come back in a few
minutes and I would know when. Eventually everyone stirred and I
thought, ok, this is the time.
I approached the crowd while there was a rite going on that seemed
like a baptism. A Raelian named Kelvin came up to me and we chatted a
bit, he explained that it was the "Transmission of the Cellular Plan,"
essentially the baptism into the Raelian faith where my DNA would be
sucked into the priestess, processed in her internal computer and
transmitted to an alien satellite. VALIS? I have no idea what came over
me but I had to do this. I had to take part in the Raelians most sacred
ceremony. Eventually it was my turn. I stood before a priestess named
Sylvie, she was from Montreal. Her assistant was next to her holding a
bowl of water. Sylvie made me agree to some specifics, as in that I
came there on my own free will, there is no "God", and their main cult
leader Claude Vorilhon was the last prophet. Ok, well, yeah, I came
there on my own, God to me is indescribable and every religion thinks
their main guy is the last one, it would be kind of weird if they didn't say that so I'm cool with
that, so yeah. Sure.
She dipped her hands in the water and placed them on my forehead and
neck. A feeling of calm came over my body, a warm wave of everything
being right in the world. It felt amazing to be alive, in the a field in
Central Park, having my DNA sent to outer space...
Scientists and Experts have been doing some serious thinking at the Large Hadron Collider (aka That Thing That's Going to Create the Black Hole into Which We Will All be Sucked). First they thought about the Higgs bosun particle (aka the "God Particle," and that's what the physicists themselves call it, I am not making that up). Higgs bosun is a theoretical sub-atomic particle that physicists think may be the one thing that gives all other particles their mass. After they thought up Higgs bosun, the Scientists and Experts brought in Dr. Lily Asquith, who is a particle physicist specializing in sonification, the conversion of scientific data into sound. Dr. Asquith thought about what kinds of energy might be emitted if a Higgs bosun particle (which might exist!) were to be created during collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (and if creating it did not cause the Earth to be sucked into itself), and then she made the so-far-theoretical data into sounds: The Music of the Spheres!
What does the God Particle sound like? You can listen to it here, in an article from BBC News, but mostly it sounds like the parts of Fabio's shows where I walk away and do something else for a while. Yet many ancient religions incorporate specific holy sounds and tones, and one of the software engineers who is working with Dr. Asquith says that the Scientists and Experts who have listened to the song of the Higgs bosun have had "something akin to a religious experience." Indeed, whenever I think of what they're doing at the Large Hadron Collider, I say a little prayer.
I interviewed the vocalist from Swedish black metal band WATAIN a couple of weeks ago in anticipation of their new release, "Lawless Darkness". I have found Watain intriguing, as they seem more genuine in their belief in what is behind black metal (that force or being many refer to as satan), and have seen them live a couple of times. The second time I saw them, the stench was so bad I had to listen from the other side of a wall- not the way I prefer to listen to a show if you know anything about me, but I was not willing to let the smell of death stay on my clothes for the 2-plus hour drive home. The foul odor was part of their presentation, I was curious about that and some of the other aspects of the band.
The interview was done early in the morning (for me- E was in Sweden), and the audio on our connection was not great. I felt only a small part of it that I aired (archive here) would be understandable or clear enough for radio, so below is the interview transcribed. Here is a track from the new record, "Lawless Darkness", this is entitled "Four Thrones" (mp3).
DK: Joining me is E from the band Watain, thanks for talking to us here at WFMU! You have a new record out called Lawless Darkness released by Season of Mist. Can you discuss the title and the main subjects in the record?
E: The main subject of Lawless Darkness is the breaking of patterns and the breaking of laws that chain the heart to the true self. It is about true liberation in that sense. And Lawless Darkness is about the liberation of the inner self that is, the flame of the devil, the one who opposes order of things-the one that is the liberator of the self. Lawless Darkness is what the liberated soul
experiences- it is the result- the achievement of the breaking of said laws.
DK: Would you say it’s a goal, or an end point, something to get to?
E: Yeah, it is a type of salvation, so to speak - to use a more familiar term. Lawless Darkness is in a sense - liberation meaning the breaking of laws - achieving liberation by breaking laws. And by Lawless Darkness I mean on both a spiritual and physical level. There are laws within yourself, unconscious, subconsciously, and there are laws externally in the world. Lawless Darkness is about breaking and going beyond those.
DK: In light of you saying that, do you find that certain audiences who may be more restricted where they live, may be more open to your music?
E: It might be so, at least, they are more open to the message of our music- I think they can perhaps relate to that message and what we're trying to convey, but then again, I don’t imagine that the majority of our listeners actually attempt to understand what it is we mean. I don’t think we have a larger fanbase in countries that are rougher, so to say, but I think they might be more dedicated or into what we have to say.
Ken Russell is being honored with a Lifetime
Achievement Award this year by Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival,
July 8-28.This article is the
first part of a monthly series dedicated to exploring his work, partially in light of
that distinction.
Ken
Russell’s cinematic universe is a historian’s worst nightmare.The English filmmaker has played fast
and loose with the lives of everyone from Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Liszt
to Gaudier, Mary Shelley and Rudolph Valentino while making big-time film kitsch
like Tommy (1974) and Crimes of Passion (1984) inbetween.Critical reception of his work has all too often been clouded by the director’s colorful personality and the scandals
surrounding his sensationalized subject matter.Stylistically he is about as subtle as a bugle call at three
in the morning, and when given a large enough budget his baroque fantasies are
allowed free reign in the form of drunkenly hypnotic camerawork, decadent stage
design, wild overacting and hallucinatory dream sequences that combine
the best elements of fashion photography, Artaudian cruelty and American vaudeville into an
extraordinary Gesamtkunstwerk of the
senses.
While many
despised Russell’s treatment of Tchaikovsky in The Music Lovers (1971), his follow-up later that year with The Devils would offend both critics and
censors alike.The film, based on
the trial of Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) for sorcery in
seventeenth-century France’s provincial town of Loudun, depicts religious
exorcism as a brutal spectacle wherein throngs of unclothed nuns writhe
agonizingly onscreen for 111 minutes.(As Ebert opined in his zero-star review, it is “all the
more horrendous because, as Russell fearlessly reveals, all the nuns, without
exception were young and stacked”—bold words for a man who helmed various Russ Meyer
scripts throughout the seventies!)The church
prioress who claims to be possessed by Grandier’s demons, Sister Jeanne of the
Angels (Vanessa Redgrave), has recurrent erotic fantasies about the priest
which involve him appearing in the likeness of Jesus whilst walking on water,
being crucified, and having Jeanne assume the role of Mary by drying his feet
with her golden locks before sucking the wounds of his stigmata.A delirious score by avant-composer
Peter Maxwell Davies, as well as lavish sets by filmmaker Derek Jarman, help
envelop the actors in a nightmare world of filth and putrescence, the ground
littered with the bodies of plague victims and the sky a black void.
Big news today, as Hank Williams was awarded the Pullitzer Prize! In 2010! Like, 57 years after he died! It is kind of inexplicable, except that the award comes from the same organization that gives prizes to that Big Gray Pack o' Lies, the New York Times, on a semi-regular basis. Anyway, congratulations to one of WFMU's favorite dead singer-songwriters!
I was recently watching King Vidor's classic 1929 film, Hallelujah!. I had only seen a short clip of it in an introductory film class as a college freshman, but the power of that one scene stayed with me for almost five years; I have no idea why I didn't rent it sooner. It's one of the two predominantly black cast films released that year (the other being Paul Sloan's Hearts in Dixie) and a first for mainstream cinema. Yes, this is a problematic film, some would say a racist film (of the best intentions), but like I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (LeRoy, 1932) it remains one of the most striking visual documents of the pre-code era. The Hollywood style was less regimented then, and as much as I admire the films of the later '30s and '40s, the early talkies have a kind of raw poesy absent from the polished work which would succeed them.
For example, take the scene when the preacher Zeke (Daniel L. Haynes) abandons his congregation out of sheer lust for Nina Mae McKenny's character, a light-skinned woman named Chick. The whole church is alive with the cries and lamentations of Zeke's constituency, every member seemingly electrified by the spirit of god; their larger-than-life shadows are thrown against the wall of the chapel by extremely dramatic frontal lighting; one female parishioner is drenched with a bucket of water when her religious flailing proves a little too fervid. As Zeke follows Chick through the throng of ecstatic worshippers, their movement is interrupted by close-ups notable for their awkwardness and violence. Suddenly, in the harsh clarity of the big screen, Zeke's leering face or Chick's come-hither gestures are shown without regard for any of the character's previous spatial orientation, as if they've been inserted from a completely different world than the one we've been viewing. That sort of cutting would never fly in the smooth, functional, self-effacing style that would come into vogue less than a decade hence. Yet the aesthetic jolts one sees in Hallelujah! are also what lend it such a visceral, mysterious hold on the spectator.
One of the things that makes Hallelujah! so watchable today is the acting, particularly that of Nina Mae McKenny--though Haynes' is nothing to scoff at, with several unforgettable musical numbers bolstered by a voice as rich and strong as Paul Robeson's. I've chosen a clip today from the first part of the film, when the sharecropper Zeke blows his entire family's wad of dough ($100 earned for an entire season's share of cotton) in a pathetic attempt to impress the materialistic Chick. This is a fragment of her initial seduction, as she dances to hot jazz played by Curtis Mosby's Blue Blowers. I'll proceed to list 5 reasons why this scene is worthy of your time today.
1.) Okay, for starters, just look at that guy drumming. Nobody does this kind of shit anymore. That fellow is juggling his own drumsticks while never missing a beat and he's happy as a lark. A trick like that is up there with Slim Gaillard's playing the piano with the backs of his hands.
2.) Nina Mae McKenny's dress. It's kind of hilarious that Vidor felt the need to foreshadow the fact that Chick fleeces Zeke for all he's worth in a loaded craps game... by having the costume designer sew two dice images onto one of her breasts. The modern viewer never really knows just when this film intends to be funny. Be that as it may, I can imagine this dress being a popular thrift store item today. Or perhaps as part of Urban Outfitter's next line, the Prohibition Chic catalogue.
3.) The largish man with oversize shoes (probably a reference to his vaudeville background) doing a clumsy and good-natured turn to Irving Berlin's "Swanee Shuffle".
4.) McKenny's incredible eyes and smile. They're so artificial and exaggerated, like a doll's features. I'm not sure why she was billed as the "Black Garbo" in Europe. There's nothing masklike, stern or impassive about the woman--as Barthes would say, her face is an event. Can you believe she was only 16 when she made Hallelujah? Yowza. Unfortunately, despite signing a five-year contract with MGM, no one knew what to star her in; McKenny's American career amounted to precious little.
5.) Her dancing. As Donald Bogle notes, this is some of the most original dancing seen on American screens at the tail end of the '20s. She combines classic flapper moves with what look like variations on modern breaks. That stuff she does with her legs when the waiters surround her is just superb. And she executes it all with a boldness and grace truly amazing for a first-time film performer.
From a devout Episcopalian to Samuel Boutwell: You're too young, sport. There are words you are too young to say and understand, strings of inspirational pabulum you are too young to belt out extemporaneously, obvious signs of coaching you are too young to discern, ulterior motives in which your daddy is engaged of which you are too young to be aware and deeper meanings behind the messages to which you are too young (and naive) to relate. But you're still very entertaining.
Samuel Boutwell: the next Marjoe. Okay, I'm getting off my soapbox now. Amen.
20+ some years ago I was always going and hanging around the 
