WFMU's Beware of the Blog

The Heretic Children Of The God Emperor of Dune Messiah

A strange coincidence when you are writing about someone, up against a deadline, and they die. No time to go back and make it a memorial, no point in going forward with what would now be an obsolete piece. A stranger coincidence in that the now never-completed post was to be about a never-completed project of Jean "Moebius" Giraud, the legendarily failed film collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky: Dune.
What follows is a free-imagining of a re-imaginging of the negated future of that impossible past:

Poetry Out Loud, Couples Rock, Policeband And America's Never Ending Font Of Unrecognized Genius

Clint of De Stijl Records hipped me to Poetry Out Loud, a series of LPs made by two American couples in the 1960-70s documenting their group experiments in "taking poetry off the page." -- and I can see why -- the recordings, wilth all manner of voices male and female, chanting, wailing, moaning, soaked and fried in tape delay with tranced-out percussion uncannily recall my own recordings with another double couple band. Lest you think De Stijl, digitally rereleasing all ten of the Poetry Out Loud albums, could have had a financial motive in contacting me, ask yourself what financial motive could one really have in putting out poetry records in this or any age?

Oscar Hangover And The Great Whatsit

Perhaps the only remarkable thing about the 2012 Oscars™ telecast was that it featured no 'Illuminati' symbolism whatsover. Not that it didn't have a chance. With this year's passing of Elizabeth Taylor, we could have had Cirque de Soleil perform a tribute to the spectacular entrance of the screen goddess in Cleopatra, but instead they opted for pushups in front of the crop dust scene from North By Northwest. And when the annual death montage rolled by, Taylor was put on the same level as some guy from marketing.  

The Only Way You Can Get Relief Is To Get A Shot Of Diddley

Apropos of nothing but to get the police off the streets by nine o'clock, here's sixty-six minutes of The Originator, Bo Diddley, seen here with friends Jerome Green, The Duchess, Chuck Berry and himself, Bo Diddley:

 

A Joy Division in Nazi Disneyland

Last week the web was wriggling with outrage over The Disney Store Corporation offering for sale a Mickey Mouse™ T-shirt in the graphic style of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures albumcover -- not that the iconic white-on-black waveform image (plucked from the Cambidge Encyclopedia of Astronomy by drummer Stephen Morris) was any stranger to absurd marketing schemes.

 

The Curse of Brando Island

The ghastly Spectres which were doomed at last
To tell as true a tale of dangers past, 
As ever the dark annals of the deep
Disclosed for man to dread or woman weep. 

-- The Island, Lord Byron

In 1960, while on a scouting journey for locations for Mutiny On The Bounty, Marlon Brando visits the atoll Tetiaroa and falls in love with the former home of Tahitian royalty. Two years later, Brando marries his second Mutiny co-star, Tarita Teriipia, who played his Polynesian wife in the film and purchases Tetiaroa for $200,000 with the intention of making it his home. Little did Brando know what his island paradise would bring he and his visitors, for in acting, one not only brings himself to a role, but the role can transform the actor's real personality, permenantly -- a most dangerous game for friends and family of the 'Godfather' and 'Colonel Kurtz'.

Elvis To KLF: The Train I Ride Is Sixteen Coaches Long

Life with a three-year-old can find you focusing on on forms and representations of transportation you wouldn't otherwise. Trains, for example, hold a particular resonance with the developing mind that challenge their relative rarity compared to cars and airplanes. We've found ourselves meeting constant demands for all things trains by discovering the online world of obsessive documentarians of all things locomotive. Watching this narration-and-music-free modern footage of old-fashioned steam engines has caused us to consider the sensual impact the advent of train travel would have on the rural blues men who would incorporate the sound of trains into their music and use the eeire whistle of the coming train as a metaphor for all great changes in life, love and death.

A Germs Whisky Christmas: Cruising For Oki-Dogs

December 23, 1979, Germs play the Masque Christmas Ball at Whisky-Au-Go-Go, performing what would be dubbed on-stage "art" by singer Darby Crash, self-proclaimed "Manimal" and possessor of "television and supervision," who read "every Bible story," and was educated in mind-control by public school Scientologists, an A+ hustler whose world-famous catchphrase was "buy me a beer" and whose demands for "beer and damage" do not go unheeded this night. Watch as Darby, spolight directly in his eyes, eats a lit book of matches, transforms into a panther, demands each audience member "hit the person next to you," sets fire to his (A+) lyrics (balls-on-fire-great teenage Blake) all before guitarist Pat Smear kicks a bouncer in the head (several times+) for crossing number one invisible line in rock n roll: the artists own the stage.

To The Song To The Siren

Caught this Tim Buckley performance from the non-stop-excellent media feed of master drummer Hamish Robert Kilgour, whose brother once asked the immortal question, "Is it wrong or is right to be a beatnik?" Pulled from the final episode of The Monkees, in which the Pre Fab Four tussle with a sentient potted plant from outer space, Buckley's immaculate "Song To The Siren" is as out of place as can be. Out of place even further in its inclusion on Buckley's farthest-out studio album Starsailor, where it lies hidden behind a wall of free jazz shreik and moan, the free-floating 12-string strum, like lapping waves in the sunset, further rippled out in electric reverb. 

The Ecstasy Of Break-Up Psychosis: Possession (1981)

We are all the same, but in different words,
In different bodies, and different versions.

These words above (especially the dub-science word, version and the ultimate word, words) called out to me from the media feed of fellow sub sub Jason D. Bigelow, subtitling what seemed to be a still from one of the only 70s/80s Occult Horror Films Starring Moon Eyed Brunette I hadn't seen yet. The web search for the phrase brought only one return, an ancient message board movie-quote stump game for which this phrase proved successful in obscuring its source, the Andrzej Zulawski film, Possession 1981.

The Year Of The Diamond Dog

Last week's post on satanic animation found the specter of David Bowie waiting in the wings, The Thin White Duke serving as model for the rock star villan of Rock & Rule; and as a commentor noted, a sample of Beelzebub from The Devil & Daniel Mouse turns up on the b-side to the Bauhaus "Ziggy Stardust" EP.

As quoth the poet, "Ziggy really sang" so to the horse's mouth we go.

Looking for footage of the Future Legend, stumbled on an entire Youtube channel solely devoted to David Bowie's "Year of The Diamond Dog" -- 1974. The anonymous user had gone to great lengths to digitally rectify and stitch together silent home-movie footage with best-available source audio. A labor of love in ultimate fandom. The June-July Diamond Dogs Tour, stretched through Canada, The Midwest and The South before hot settlements in Philadelphia (band-contentious David Live recording) and NYC (MSG) hauling to every stop three trucks full of stage props. 

The Faustian Contracts Of Cartoon Bands

A bit of quicksilver dislodged by last week's run-through with the Panavision camera reminded me to finally get down and find the title of The-Weird-Cartoon-Special-Seen-Once-In-Early-Childhood, which a simple search for keywords “Faustian, Animated” would have produced fairly instantly, had only the hazy memory of a jazz singer signing her name in blood flickered more frequently. The flick in question, The Devil & Daniel Mouse, a 1978 television special made by Nelvana, the same animation studio that produced that other piece of the media memory puzzle, The-Weird-Cartoon-Movie-Taped-Off-Cable-And-Watched-Over-Again-Over-Again, in this case the 1983 sci-fi furry musical Rock and Rule. Rewrites of each other, both feature shapeshifting monster dandies in the mold of Rocky Horror / Phantom Of The Paradise, tempting and attempting to control the talents of “sexy” humanoid rodents who triumph in the end through vocal harmony, all written in the language of decadent post-Ziggy David Bowie dystopia (Year Of The Diamond Dog, 1974).

California Wander Report: Mercury Blues and The Great God Pan

Rainy Sunday in Hollywood. Dropping the family off to seek enlightenment in the hills of Echo Park, took the hour off to cash in pop-in-law birthday scrip at local Rockaway Records, an old school music collectibles mart where two-weeks-previous I'd seen the complete collection of Yellow Submarine figures with the PID sync of “Two Pauls" (all of which vanished from the walls by the time I returned.)

Mystified to fathom the $1.1K Rolling Stones box set and $750 Madonna 12” available, I settled on a dented copy of the Monterey International Pop Festival cd box set, (1992) mainly for it's odd yellow fabric cover, bereft of any information front or back save for a red print of The Great God Pan and the dates involved:

June 16 • 17 • 18 • 1967

Jammed the whole set after sunset, but not before catching a full rainbow stretching from the dark cloud above Paramount Pictures all the way to Belmont High School. (Side Note: research into the “Arrow of Evolution” mural at Belmont High led to further initiatory mysteries revealed in the murals at a different Belmont High on the opposite coast.) Either way, once home, opening the yellow box let forth a four hour flow of what the late, great John Fahey would demi-reverently refer to as enthusiasm.

The Resting Places Of My Heroes: Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon

Witchbeam tipped me to this typically idiosyncratic yet excellent 1991 BBC Arena profile of that grand sorcerer of cinema, underground or otherwise, Kenneth Anger. Balefully glaring from window of a chauffeured hearse as it tours the stations of the cross of Hollywood Babylon, Anger raps nostalgic on the scandals of the Golden Age of the Silver Screen, his own films, and life in Hollywood as “the chronicler of their foibles, follies and excesses.” 

Time Travelers Don't Wear Pants: Peter Fonda's Idaho Transfer

A snake crawling through the desert is caught by a longhaired hippie with a radio. A young woman in yellow pants walks through Craters of the Moon, Idaho, descending into a vented metal chamber buried in the rock. Inside, she removes her boots and yellow pants and places them along with a clipboard into a metal box beneath a machine with glowing colored buttons, teleporting herself into a large, clinical room where she puts her yellow pants back on, throws her boots in the corner and exits to have a muted water-cooler conversation about the poor quality of chocolate milk with Keith Carradine.

We'll All Be Magick Supermen: The “Paul is Dead” Videos of Iamaphoney

The “Paul is Dead” hoax/conspiracy/legend/myth/mystery, certainly one one of the stranger tales in the annals of rock 'n' roll, only gets weirder as time goes by. Rumors that Beatle Paul McCartney died in 1966 in a car crash and replaced by a lookalike “William Campbell” began circulating amongst heads in the UK and US throughout the late sixties, culminating in October 1969 broadcasts from Detroit's WKNR and NYC's WABC detailing not only the myth but also the “clues” left in Beatles album art, lyrics and proto-heavy-metal “backmasking.” There's the famous “I buried Paul” lyric from “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the “funeral march” depicted on the cover of Abbey Road, “Revolution #9” played backwards repeating “Wake me up dead man,” not to mention basic confusion over who and what “The Walrus” represents.