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singlesablog · 24 days

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The Imperial Phase

“Left to My Own Devices” (1988) Pet Shop Boys Parlophone / EMI Records (Written by Tennant / Lowe) Highest U.S. Billboard Chart Position – No. 84

I was faced with a choice at a difficult age Would I write a book? Or should I take to the stage? But in the back of my head I heard distant feet Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat

- from “Left to My Own Devices”

“We had been so disciplined at making four-minute pop singles, with the exception of "It's a Sin", which is five minutes. The idea was to have an album where every track was a single

- Pet Shop Boys on the idea behind Introspective

I used to joke with a friend that the two albums in Pet Shop Boys catalog that sat next to one another could have swapped their titles: Introspective (1988) could have been titled Behaviour (1990), and vice versa. Introspection is from the Latin (“to look within”), and I guess this kind of works; an album titled Self Referential would not be nearly as catchy, if more accurate. Oddly, I always thought of introspection as being related to looking backwards, like nostalgia; in the case of the Pet Shop Boys it is perhaps just a case of inverse-ness (gay people were once called inverts), or even a thoughtful kind of literal thinking. But who knows, they could have just pulled the title out of a bag. The duo was never averse to fashion.

The album (if you are unware) consists of six extended tracks, and unlike the quote above, only 4 of them were released as singles, “Domino Dancing”, “Devices”, “Always on My Mind” (which preceded the record and was presented in a much different version), and “It’s Alright”. “It’s Alright” and “Always on My Mind” are covers, “I Want a Dog” and “I’m Not Scared” are recycled cuts, so the album only contained two original songs, “Domino Dancing” (a huge hit all over the world) and “Devices” (an even bigger hit in the UK, but not in the US). Like the EP Disco, an earlier collection of 6 extended cuts, it treated the form with respect, but also expanded the idea of what a proper album could be. To my mind it is easily one of their very best, most original, and certainly most popular (internationally it is their best seller ever). I love every track (with a small mark off for ��It’s Alright”, which does grow a little tedious), but none as much as “Left to My Own Devices”, which is formally audacious and endlessly, thrillingly queer from a gay male perspective.

I was faced with a choice at a difficult age Would I write a book? Or should I take to the stage?

Back to the idea of introspection, most young gay men have an intense inner life, and we of a certain generation (coming of age in the 1970s and 1980s) were forced to find our culture on our own. “Left to My Own Devices” is a catalogue of the thoughts and ideas that might roam around in a bachelor’s world. One of the slyer things about the song is that most of it is spoken word. Here we find Neil rapping (again!) but instead of trying to create the beat the effect is more like reportage than singing. The lyrics, as usual, are a collage of ideas carefully cut and pasted to create an atmosphere of bourgeois dandyism (“I phone up a friend who’s a party animal”, “we’ll do some shopping”)—I mean, there is a lot of tea drinking in these lyrics, and I can never be sure that this is either very gay, very British, or both. I think the Pet Shop Boys, song to song, are generally more in search of a tone where content is concerned, and I also think that tone is always meant to elude you a bit. As long as you are dancing I don’t think they care what you think, and one sure thing about Introspective is that this certainly is a dance record, and not well understood as one of the most purchased and successful House records ever made, and if you are ever in any doubt of that, please focus on the opening of “Left to My Own Devices”, where they employed an actual opera singer (Sally Bradshaw) to sing the word “house” over and over again as if it were an aria.

All of this can be seen as sardonic (their infamous “irony”) but I always prefer to think of it as sophistication; at the very least, Pet Shop Boys take their ideas and music seriously. If you read my blog post on Chic’s “Good Times” you can easily understand the courage of performing this style of music in earnest in a world of the backlash that “Disco Sucks” created, which effectively took the bubbles out the late 70s, forced an entire world of music underground, and ironically exploded the genre into many different forms, some of which this record preserves. There is a level of irony abounding in “Left to My Own Devices”; aside from the gay thing, perhaps that subversiveness is built into the genre of disco music itself. The track did not really chart in the US outside of the clubs, but that hardly mattered: one could really enjoy Introspective as a gestalt, one long thought, or even one long track. Whenever I find that I have an itch to listen to the album it is inevitably for the opening of “Devices”, where amidst a full symphony Neil opens with “I get out of bed at half past ten” and then proceeds to take you on a long ride describing a mundane day conducted by the best producers and mixers in the world. It is the transformation of the mundane into the extraordinary, and also the testament of an inner life revealed. In contrast to the general success of the album, perhaps “Left to My Own Devices” is the real innovation of the 6 tracks; it may not be the most American, or the most well-known, but being an invert myself, I must say: I rather like it that way. Is it an irony that a disco record can make one feel seen? Maybe not. To some of us, hiding in plain sight just comes naturally.

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Behaviour (1990).

Tennant later regretted the release of Introspective so soon after the previous album, Actually, feeling that it pigeon-holed them as a dance act. The melancholy follow-up, Behaviour, generally considered to be their finest achievement, was a relative failure.

I was surprised to learn that “The imperial phase” was actually put into the vernacular by Neil Tennant. The imperial phase is the period in which a musical artist is regarded to be at their commercial and creative peak simultaneously, and was coined to describe the group's feelings on their career circa "Domino Dancing" (1988). Critic Tom Ewing described three criteria for defining an artist's imperial phase as "command, permission, and self-definition".

It was genius producer Trevor Horn who came up with the line “Debussy to a disco beat” tossing it off while laying down a track. Tennant, ever the historian, collaged it into the song, and gave Horn a writing credit on the b-side “The Sound of the Atom Splitting” as compensation.

Apparently, Neil Tennant’s mother was upset at hearing him sing “I was a lonely boy, no strength, no joy, in a world of my own” but it seems that this is just a character he was play acting: he apparently had a happy childhood.

"In a secret life I was a Roundhead general" – [In British history] the "Roundheads" were the pro-Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War of the mid-1600s. The name "Roundheads" came from the fact that they generally wore their hair trimmed short, unlike their opponents, the long-haired "Cavaliers" who supported King Charles I. (And in case you're not up on your British history, Charles I was ultimately defeated, deposed, and beheaded.) Again, Neil has pointed out that, as a child, he himself would actually have been far more sympathetic to the Cavaliers (in contrast to his more anti-royalist sympathies as an adult).

- (Directly quoted from geowayne.com)

Pet Shop Boys are still recording. Nonetheless, the Boys 15th studio album, was released April 26th, 2024 to near universal praise.

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This post was written using analog techniques to collate facts. After deciding on a topic, one Wikipedia entry will naturally suggest another, and then I let those concepts create an environment of creative association rather than mere fact finding. I do cross reference sources to find what is most interesting. While some small details may be disputable, none is used for any other reason than to open up the idea at hand, and to support the belief that most pop songs are indeed works of art, with the great ones renewing themselves endlessly.

#pet shop boys #dance music #electronic music #pop #1980s

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beatledumpster · 10 months

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Blur interview - 'Nothingness Generation' (1991) translated from French.

Or: how Damon is full of seemingly contradictory theories that sound very interesting but also mostly unintelligible to me for lack of context.

Thanks to the Damon Albarn Unofficial Archive (x)

Nothingness generation

Everything is there in the name, Blur, meaning: hazy, confused. Hazy like this music that feeds on itself, kaleidoscopic view of a thirty-year-old disco. Confused like this talk, chattier when it comes to selling oneself to an English press that is hungry for cardboard sensationalism. Hazy and confused like this lost generation, shouting as loud as it can its total lack of message and beliefs, disoriented and yet rotten with certainties. The children of disorder.

I don’t know anyone in the world who has never dreamed of becoming a pop star. There’s nothing more outrageous in the world than a pop star. I for one would keep changing heroes, one day I wanted to be Albert Camus, Arthur Lee the next... We wanted to look like them. Graham, our guitar player, collects heroes. He’s fascinated by those sixties blokes that went mad, Syd Barrett or Arthur Lee… Bowie too, he was the 1970s champion, but today he’s completely unnecessary. Pop culture is, more than ever, an intrinsic element of our generation. We grew up imitating it whereas back in the day, the people and the culture would grow together. We came when everything was over already. All our ideas, we stole from videos, records, photos from pop culture. We have no other reference point that precedes it, this culture encompasses us totally. In the sixties, people could refer to events that predated pop culture. Well, we have nothing but this crazy religion. We are only nourished by pop culture but at least, we have understood it. This is what makes us more necessary than any other band. We can see this result inside us, therefore we can celebrate our own futility… Every band feeds on this tureen of spiralling debris anyway.

Why, under these conditions, are you still fascinated by pop stars?

My definition of a pop star is very different from what others may mean. I like their childishness, their futility. I find it extremely difficult to explain why I do certain things rather than others, I’m incapable of justifying myself, of making a case. I can’t even claim that I’ve wanted to be a pop star from childhood, because actually, I didn’t want to become anything (silence)… Everything happened without me knowing. I’ve been carried along, as everyone has in my generation.

Still, I have rarely seen a young band as professional and organized as you. You don’t seem like you were carried along, on the contrary you look like you’ve been working hard.

We have the advantage of being more intelligent than the other bands. But we hadn’t planned anything, I’m simply incapable of it. I just waited… At school, the future didn’t look particularly bright. It was the early 1980s, the CND was telling us that we were in mortal danger. Many people have forgotten this, but the CND was a huge influence on a whole generation of teenagers. We all thought that the planet’s days were numbered, that we were going to get blown up any day now. We never thought about our future because we were sure we wouldn’t have one. Twenty years from now, once our generation rules the world, the difference will be enormous. We are very nihilistic, empty-headed… We have no ambition, no motivation. At a time where we should have been terribly excited about life, we were frightened by this ominous cloud hanging over our heads. It was even worse than the last world war because then, at least, people were united by patriotism, you had to stick together, they were dreaming of a better world that was yet to be built. We were born in this better world only to be told that it was going to disappear very fast… So no-one cared about their neighbour or their future. Nothing really interested us, we didn’t see anything clearly or articulately. We merely floated, vaguely moving forward. We are, on a global scale, the vague generation.

Did life in a small provincial town heighten this feeling of oppression and powerlessness?

I never felt trapped in Colchester, because I knew I was going to leave one day. It was just terribly frustrating, London was on our minds, we had to go there to do something. We didn’t know what it would be, but we had to do it together. We made a deal with Graham: the first one that would manage to get in the music business would have to find ways to involve the other. And in the end, we did everything together: forming the band, getting signed, going away… There, I felt totally isolated. But it was more or less by choice. I’d walk down the street and feel like I was playing in a movie… My life has always been very cinematic, another result of pop culture. The boundary between reality and imagination was getting increasingly blurred, and everything got mixed up. Unlike Graham, I’ve always been a loudmouth, and had a lot of self-confidence. I couldn’t stand the apathy of everyone in our town, but I could clearly notice it in myself. But I allowed myself to express the reasons behind it, to explain why we are in this state, hoping that (silence)… This generation passively accepts having to go to the office every morning, whereas our elders were quite happy to go. There was a spirituality in their lives that completely vanished. To them, work was an honourable activity, there was no need for all those accesories that keep us going. However, before I got to this point, I’ve tried plenty of terrible jobs, but I just can’t think with numbers, I’m totally dyslexic. That closed the doors to 99% of jobs on earth for me.

This generation seems much more open to the rest of the world than the previous ones: young people travel a lot more, they realize that there’s more than just England. It shows everywhere: clothes, behaviour, even the way they drive…

(Laughs)... People are finally starting to understand that you can’t shut yourself off from the rest of the world any longer. England has lost its spirit, its identity, which is a good thing in itself. The English have too many hang-ups and taboos. They’ve been told that they’re a great nation too much. We think we are living off the inheritance of colonialism and there’s nothing left in the coffers… But don’t expect me to insult my country. The time has come for my compatriots to care a bit more about Europe. Because next year, we won’t have a choice… Do you know where this English fear of Europe comes from? People think they’ll have to learn foreign languages.

Your generation is also the first one to have not received any influence from punk.

At the time this was going on, I was more interested in dolls or Action Joe than in the Sex Pistols. The only possible influence is through bands: we are influenced by bands influenced by punk. But all this punk ‘fuck off’ attitude, this complete rejection, I find old-fashioned, very passé. Bands nowadays are much more scandalous than they were. We are more outrageous than all the bands of 1977, more dangerous and subversive. Because with us, nothing is on display. To me, punks are as ridiculous today as hippies were to them.

EMPTY WORDS FOR EMPTY PEOPLE

I feel responsible for the first time in my life. I have to be careful about every move I make, every word I say, because some people are listening… I’ve always considered Top of The Pops to be something very important. You have dozens of millions of people watching you, and if you’re clever, you can have a lot of fun with it, go right to the edge of censorship. I definitely don’t want to be The Cure or The Smiths, it’s too easy to tell the teens what they’re expecting from you. I don’t want to limit myself like them and become all pompous and preachy. I shit on preachers and piety.

Most of your contemporaries – Ride, Charlatans, Happy Mondays – seem unable to articulate any political opinion, as if society was totally foreign to you.

Wait… The Happy Mondays don’t have anything to do with our generation. They’re at least ten years older than us and that’s a huge gap. Ride is probably the only band whose attitude is similar to ours. Although they are much more romantic than us. I also feel close to World Of Twist. I’ve never spoken to them, but I feel like we have things in common, even though I find them too mannered (silence)… I don’t think bands are allowed to be interested in politics. All that we can offer is empty words for empty people in an empty world. If you're concerned with politics, it's bound to be to the detriment of other topics. I prefer to look at other issues, like my ties to the cosmos. It's much more interesting than right and left. I don't want to talk about the poll-tax, I prefer to be a non-person on that kind of subject. I pay my taxes because they are necessary. Whether the government is Conservative or Labour will make absolutely no difference to my day-to-day life. All the infrastructure will remain the same, so I don't want to be interested in changes that wouldn't affect me in the slightest. I'm not interested in the outside.

No-one, especially a band in your position, can live in total isolation like this.

We do. We live in a cuckoo’s nest, very far away. And it’s not even the drugs that get us there. Our world is coherent, but apart. I know that deep down, I have a talent for public speaking. But I don’t want to use it for politics, I don’t want to mix with society. I refuse to lecture those who are listening to us, no one is asking politicians who their favourite bands are.

A few months ago, you posed shirtless for Melody Maker. How much of that was narcissism, and how much of it was a joke?

It was just to tease the girls, both sexual and ironic. Only Alex, the bass player, was a flirt at school. As for me, being manly was never a major preoccupation. I've always felt equivocal, somewhere in between... None of us are macho.

Yet your posters have often pitted you against feminists.

Graham has always wanted to sleep with feminists, he loves being dominated. We are horrible perverts. As for narcissism, I can’t deny it. Our job is the best job for narcissists.

ALL GOOD-LOOKING

Ever since ‘There's no other way’ became a hit, not a day has gone by without us giving an interview or doing a photo shoot. Thirty days of non-stop interrogation... Everything sped up for us, but for months, I really felt that it was taking forever.

Even ten years ago, this rise you found so slow would have seemed very short. Bands had to wait for years to reach this stage.

It all comes from record companies. They’ve changed, they know how to manufacture hits, they learnt the rules of the game. What they want is quick money, push a band to the top, get as much as they can from it and then murder it when it’s not profitable any more. They have this power over life and death. So you have to be very careful not to let yourself be smothered, to keep enough space to grow. Because it’s so great to be so famous after only two singles, you can be tempted to play the game and close your eyes. But we care too much about our music to let it slip away, we want to stay here for a few more years.

Your music has evolved very rapidly within a year. What caused this accelerated maturation?

The sound became more sophisticated, because I didn’t want to be trapped by any particular style. I didn’t want Blur to be just another noisy band. Everything comes from the way we record: in the studio, we give a lot of importance to details that disappear as soon as we get on stage. Live, all that's left is a bass, drums and guitars... You don't have to worry about embellishments or space. On the record, it's necessary to be more complicated, otherwise our songs would sound hollow. On stage, we don't need to fill the space, the energy makes up for it.

Your reputation comes mainly from this energy. Aren't you afraid of becoming trapped by it, of being nothing more than stage actors?

Fortunately, we are still capable of playing bad concerts. I could never fake the energy… But I do feel completely trapped by what people are starting to expect from us. This energy has become our brand image, it’s alarming.

Aren’t you afraid that show business is going to suck you in and devour you?

For this album, we had to play along with show-business and accept all the offers. But for the next album, we're going to take a step back. It's become necessary for us to go back to our music, to recharge our batteries... The problem with this business is that it ends up ruining my health. I'm constantly drained, I can't sleep and my throat hurts terribly. But we were lucky enough to get drugs and alcohol out of our system before we became successful. We could be high all the time, it would be so easy. Everything's free, everything's at our fingertips, but I'm not interested in that any more. Drugs are already out of fashion, it's no longer cool to get high.

Do you fear a backlash from the press?

It will be inevitable, but I can’t worry about that, I know it won’t depend on us. All we can do is make a good second album. But I know that won't be enough.

Were you prepared for such success?

We hadn't planned for everything. Certain aspects of my life weren't ready. I didn't expect to have to work so hard. It's difficult: we want to stand firm on our positions, but meanwhile we have to devote a lot of time to the people that revolve around us. It's become an art in itself, you have to juggle and modulate all the time. And we never rehearsed for this role, we had to improvise. But the success itself, I was waiting for it, I was sure it would come one day. If you're convinced you're good, if you're sure that you're right, you don't doubt yourself.

How could you have such confidence in your music?

It's to the point, it's full of very simple references... What's more, we're all good-looking, full of energy, we've got good taste... We're everything a band should be. We're very fond of Blur and we've put a lot of ourselves into the band over the last two years. I wanted this band but... One thing you need to know about us is that we don't have a clear idea of what we're about, I can't tell you why I wanted this band so badly. The generation before us had very clear ideas, those people had ideas, they had ambition... And then, one day, all their ideas were tried, all the roads were built. Eventually, after climbing, they ended up stuck at the top. And we are their children.

Success usually comes with pressure. Has it brought you together, do you feel more united, or defensive?

You have to defend yourself every day. Otherwise, all our lives would be splashed across the press and certain aspects of mine would not be very glorious, printed in a newspaper. There are limits to this giving of yourself, people offer themselves all over the place, they end up as caricatures of themselves. We've always tended to withdraw into ourselves, we've always been a gang. A gang that decided one day to make music. When faced with difficult situations, we form a unit and become a hideous monster that devours our opponents.

Are you a gang with a lot of enemies?

A lot of people are jealous of us, we attract that kind of feeling. They think we're too perfect: we play music that's both loud and melodic, we write good songs, we're consistent, we're good-looking and we're successful... In England, people don't like that. Here, we don't like people who get their way. I can't stand that mentality, people are much less jealous on the continent. And yet, I wouldn't want to be anything other than English.

Can the enemy sometimes be within the group?

(Laughs)... We yell at each other a lot, but tensions mostly arise when there are people around us, when our girlfriends are with us. But otherwise, when it's just the four of us, the group is really stable and united. We talk to each other a lot, we can make things right when one of us is causing problems... "OK, now shut the fuck up, asshole" (smiles)... And then, we have a drummer, he absorbs all the tension, he's the one who takes all the blows. One of us has to pay the bill.

After just two singles, you find yourselves on the cover of every British magazine, acclaimed and adored. Don't you feel you've been overrated?

(Laughs)... We've been ridiculously overrated. Anyway, I'd rather be overestimated than underestimated. It's not a problem, we know how to be honest with ourselves. We know what our role on earth is. In fifteen years’ time, people will remember us as a whole. To them, Blur will represent the nineties.

#damon albarn #blur #what does he mean...

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boredout305 · 3 years

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Kid Congo Powers Interview

Kid Congo Powers was a founding member of the Gun Club. He also played with The Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Powers currently fronts Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds and recently completed a memoir, Some New Kind of Kick.

The following interview focuses on Some New Kind of Kick. In the book Powers recounts growing up in La Puente—a working-class, largely Latino city in Los Angeles County—in the 1960s, as well as his familial, professional and personal relationships. He describes the LA glam-rock scene (Powers was a frequenter of Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco), the interim period between glam and punk embodied by the Capitol Records swap meet, as well as LA’s first-wave, late-1970s punk scene.

Well written, edited and awash with amazing photos, Some New Kind of Kick will appeal to fans of underground music as well as those interested in 1960-1980s Los Angeles (think Claude Bessy and Mike Davis). The book will be available from In the Red Records, their first venture into book publishing, soon.

Interview by Ryan Leach

Kid Congo with the Pink Monkey Birds.

Ryan: Some New Kind of Kick reminded me of the New York Night Train oral histories you had compiled about 15 years ago. Was that the genesis of your book?

Kid: That was the genesis. You pinpointed it. Those pieces were done with Jonathan Toubin. It was a very early podcast. Jonathan wanted to do an audio version of my story for his website, New York Night Train. We did that back in the early 2000s. After we had completed those I left New York and moved to Washington D.C. I thought, “I have the outline for a book here.” Jonathan had created a discography and a timeline. I figured, “It’ll be great and really easy. We’ll just fill in some of the blanks and it’ll be done.” Here we are 15 years later.

Ryan: It was well worth it. It reads well. And I love the photographs. The photo of you as a kid with Frankenstein is amazing.

Kid: I’m glad you liked it. You’re the first person not involved in it that I’ve spoken with.

Ryan: As someone from Los Angeles I enjoyed reading about your father’s life and work as a union welder in the 1960s. My grandfather was a union truck driver and my father is a cabinetmaker. My dad’s cousins worked at the General Motors Van Nuys Assembly plant. In a way you captured an old industrial blue-collar working class that’s nowhere near as robust as it once was in Los Angeles. It reminded of Mike Davis’ writings on the subject.

Kid: I haven’t lived in LA for so long that I didn’t realize it doesn’t exist anymore. I felt the times. It was a reflection on my experiences and my family’s experiences. It was very working class. My dad was proud to be a union member. It served him very well. He and my mother were set up for the rest of their lives. I grew up with a sense that he earned an honest living. My parents always told me not to be embarrassed by what you did for work. People would ask me, “What’s your book about? What’s the thrust of it?” As I was writing it, I was like, “I don’t know. I’ll find out when it’s done.” What you mentioned was an aspect of that.

When I started the book and all throughout the writing I had gone to different writers’ workshops. We’d review each other’s work. It was a bunch of people who didn’t know me, didn’t know about music—at least the music I make. I just wanted to see if there was a story there. People were relating to what I was writing, which gave me the confidence to keep going.

Ryan: Some New Kind of Kick is different from Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s autobiography, Go Tell the Mountain. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but think of Pierce’s work as I read yours. Was Go Tell the Mountain on your mind as you were writing?

Kid: When I was writing about Jeffrey—it was my version of the story. It was about my relationship with him. I wasn’t thinking about his autobiography much at all. His autobiography is very different than mine. Nevertheless, there are some similarities. But his book flew off into flights of prose and fantasy. I tried to stay away from the stories that were already out there. The thing that’s interesting about Jeffrey is that everyone has a completely different story to tell about him. Everyone’s relationship with him was different.

Ryan: It’s a spectrum that’s completely filled in.

Kid: Exactly. One of the most significant relationships I’ve had in my life was with Jeffrey. Meeting him changed my life. It was an enduring relationship. It was important for me to tell my story of Jeffrey.

Ryan: The early part of your book covers growing up in La Puente and having older sisters who caught the El Monte Legion Stadium scene—groups like Thee Midniters. You told me years ago that you and Jeffrey were thinking about those days during the writing and recording of Mother Juno (1987).

Kid: That’s definitely true. Growing up in that area is another thing Jeffrey and I bonded over. We were music hounds at a young age. We talked a lot about La Puente, El Monte and San Gabriel Valley’s culture. We were able to pinpoint sounds we heard growing up there—music playing out of cars and oldies mixed in with Jimi Hendrix and Santana. That was the sound of San Gabriel Valley. It wasn’t all lowrider music. We were drawn to that mix of things. I remember “Yellow Eyes” off Mother Juno was our tribute to the San Gabriel Valley sound.

Ryan: You describe the Capitol Records Swap Meet in Some New Kind of Kick. In the pre-punk/Back Door Man days that was an important meet-up spot whose significance remains underappreciated.

Kid: The Capitol Records Swap Meet was a once-a-month event and hangout. It was a congregation of record collectors and music fans. You’d see the same people there over and over again. It was a community. Somehow everyone who was a diehard music fan knew about it. You could find bootlegs there. It went from glam to more of a Back Door Man-influenced vibe which was the harder-edged Detroit stuff—The Stooges and the MC5. You went there looking for oddities and rare records. I was barely a record collector back then. It’s where I discovered a lot of music. You had to be a pretty dedicated music fan to get up at 6 AM to go there, especially if you were a teenager.

Ryan: I enjoyed reading about your experiences as a young gay man in the 1970s. You’d frequent Rodney’s English Disco; I didn’t know you were so close to The Screamers. While not downplaying the prejudices gay men faced in the 1970s, it seemed fortuitous that these places and people existed for you in that post-Stonewall period.

Kid: Yeah. I was obviously drawn to The Screamers for a variety of reasons. It was a funny time. People didn’t really discuss being gay. People knew we were gay. I knew you were gay; you knew I was gay. But the fact that we never openly discussed it was very strange. Part of that was protection. It also had to do with the punk ethos of labels being taboo. I don’t think that The Screamers were very politicized back then and neither was I. We were just going wild. I was super young and still discovering things. I had that glam-rock door to go through. It was much more of a fantasy world than anything based in reality. But it allowed queerness. It struck a chord with me and it was a tribe. However, I did discover later on that glam rock was more of a pose than a sexual revolution.

With some people in the punk scene like The Screamers and Gorilla Rose—they came from a background in drag and cabaret. I didn’t even know that when I met them. I found it out later on. They were already very experienced. They had an amazing camp aesthetic. I learned a lot about films and music through them. They were so advanced. It was all very serendipitous. I think my whole life has been serendipitous, floating from one thing to another.

Ryan: You were in West Berlin when the Berlin Wall was breached in November 1989. “Here’s another historical event. I’m sure Kid Congo is on the scene.”

Kid: I know! The FBI must have a dossier on me. I was in New York on 9/11 too.

Ryan: A person who appears frequently in your book is your cousin Theresa who was tragically murdered. I take it her death remains a cold case.

Kid: Cold case. Her death changed my entire life. It was all very innocent before she died. That stopped everything. It was a real source of trauma. All progress up until that point went on hold until I got jolted out of it. I eventually decided to experience everything I could because life is short. That trauma fueled a lot of bad things, a lot of self-destructive impulses. It was my main demon that chased me throughout my early adult life. It was good to write about it. It’s still there and that’s probably because her murder remains unsolved. I have no resolution with it. I was hoping the book would give me some closure. We’ll see if it does.

Ryan: Theresa was an important person in your life that you wanted people to know about. You champion her.

Kid: I wanted to pay tribute to her. She changed my life. I had her confidence. I was at a crossroads at that point in my life, dealing with my sexuality. I wanted people to know about Theresa beyond my family. My editor Chris Campion really pulled that one out of me. It was a story that I told, but he said, “There’s so much more to this.” I replied, “No! Don’t make me do it.” I had a lot of stories, but it was great having Chris there to pull them together to create one big story. My original concept for the book was a coming-of-age story. Although it still is, I was originally going to stop before I even joined the Gun Club (in 1979). It was probably because I didn’t want to look at some of the things that happened afterwards. It was very good for my music. Every time I got uncomfortable, I’d go, “Oh, I’ve got to make a record and go on tour for a year and not think about this.” A lot of it was too scary to even think about. But the more I did it, the less scary it became and the more a story emerged. I had a very different book in mind than the one I completed. I’m glad I was pushed in that direction and that I was willing to be pushed. I wanted to tell these stories, but it was difficult.

Ryan: Of course, there are lighter parts in your book. There are wonderful, infamous characters like Bradly Field who make appearances.

Kid: Bradly Field was also a queer punker. He was the partner of Kristian Hoffman of The Mumps. I met Kristian in Los Angeles. We all knew Lance Loud of The Mumps because he had starred in An American Life (1973) which was the first reality TV show. It aired on PBS. I was a fan of The Mumps. Bradly came out to LA with Kristian for an elongated stay during a Mumps recording session. Of course, Bradly and I hit it off when we met. Bradly was a drummer—he played a single drum and a cracked symbol—in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Bradly was a real character. He was kind of a Peter Lorre, misanthropic miscreant. Bradly was charming while abrasively horrible at the same time. We were friends and I always remained on Bradly’s good side so there was never a problem.

Bradly had invited me and some punkers to New York. He said that if we ever made it out there that we could stay with him. He probably had no idea we’d show up a month later. Bradly Field was an important person for me to know—an unashamedly gay, crazy person. He was a madman. I had very little interest in living a typical life. That includes a typical gay life. Bradly was just a great gay artist I met in New York when I was super young. He was also the tour manager of The Cramps at one point. You can imagine what that was like. Out of Lux and Ivy’s perverse nature they unleashed him on people.

Ryan: He was the right guy to have in your corner if the club didn’t pay you.

Kid: Exactly. Who was going to say “no” to Bradly?

Ryan: You mention an early Gun Club track called “Body and Soul” that I’m unfamiliar with. I know you have a rehearsal tape of the original Creeping Ritual/Gun Club lineup (Kid Congo Powers, Don Snowden, Brad Dunning and Jeffrey Lee Pierce). Are any of these unreleased tracks on that tape?

Kid: No. Although I do have tapes, there’s no Creeping Ritual material on them. I spoke with Brad (Dunning) and he has tapes too. We both agreed that they’re unlistenable. They’re so terrible. Nevertheless, I’m going to have them digitized and I’ll take another listen to them. “Body and Soul” is an early Creeping Ritual song. At the time we thought, “Oh, this sounds like a Mink DeVille song.” At least in our minds it did. To the best of my ability I did record an approximation of “Body and Soul” on the Congo Norvell record Abnormals Anonymous (1997). I sort of reimagined it. That song was the beginning of things for me with Jeffrey. It wasn’t a clear path when we started The Gun Club. We didn’t say, “Oh, we’re going to be a blues-mixed-with-punk band.” It was a lot of toying around. It had to do with finding a style. Jeffrey had a lot of ideas. We also had musical limitations to consider. We were trying to turn it into something cohesive. There was a lot of reggae influence at the beginning. Jeffrey was a visionary who wanted to make the Gun Club work. Of course, to us he was a really advanced musician. We thought (bassist) Don Snowden was the greatest too. What’s funny is that I saw Don in Valencia, Spain, where he lives now. He came to one of our (Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds) shows a few years ago. He said, “Oh, I didn’t know how to play!”

Ryan: “I knew scales.”

Kid: Exactly. It was all perception. But we were ambitious and tenacious. We were certain we could make something really good out of what we had. That was it. We knew we had good taste in music. That was enough for us to continue on.

Ryan: I knew about The Cramps’ struggles with IRS Records and Miles Copeland. However, it took on a new meaning reading your book. Joining The Cramps started with a real high for you, recording Psychedelic Jungle (1981), and then stagnation occurred due to contractual conflicts.

Kid: There was excitement, success and activity for about a year or two. And then absolutely nothing. As I discuss in my book—and you can ask anyone who was in The Cramps—communication was not a big priority for Lux and Ivy. I was left to my own devices for a while. We were building, building, building and then it stopped. I wasn’t privy to what was going on. I knew they were depressed about it. The mood shifted. It was great recording Psychedelic Jungle and touring the world. The crowds were great everywhere we went. It was at that point that I started getting heavy into drugs. The time off left me with a lot of time to get into trouble. It was my first taste of any kind of success or notoriety. I’m not embarrassed to say that I fell into that trip: “Oh, you know who I am and I have all these musician friends now.” It was the gilded ‘80s. Things were quite decadent then. There was a lot of hard drug use. It wasn’t highly frowned upon to abuse those types of drugs in our circle. What was the reputation of The Gun Club? The drunkest, drug-addled band around. So there was a lot of support to go in that direction. Who knew it was going to go so downhill? We weren’t paying attention to consequences. Consequences be damned. So the drugs sapped a lot of energy out of it too.

I recorded the one studio album (Psychedelic Jungle) with The Cramps and a live album (Smell of Female). The live record was good and fun, but it was a means to an end. It was recorded to get out of a contract. The Cramps were always going to do it their way. Lux and Ivy weren’t going to follow anyone’s rules. I don’t know why people expected them to. To this day, I wonder why people want more. I mean, they gave you everything. People ask me, “When is Ivy going to play again?” I tell them, “She’s done enough. She paid her dues. The music was great.”

Ryan: I think after 30-something years of touring, she’s earned her union card.

Kid: Exactly. She’s done her union work.

Ryan: In your book you discuss West Berlin in the late 1980s. That was a strange period of extreme highs and lows. During that time you were playing with the Bad Seeds, working with people like Wim Wenders (in Wings of Desire) and witnessed the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the GDR. Nevertheless, it was a very dark period marred by substance abuse. Luckily, you came out of it unscathed. As you recount, some people didn’t.

Kid: It was a period of extremes. In my mind, for years, I rewrote that scene. I would say, “Berlin was great”—and it was, that part was true—and then I’d read interviews with Nick Cave and Mick Harvey and they’d say, “Oh, the Tender Prey (1988) period was just the worst. It’s hard to even talk about it.” And I was like, “It was great! What are you talking about?” Then when I started writing about it, I was like, “Oh, fuck! It really wasn’t the best time.” I had been so focused on the good things and not the bad things. Prior to writing my book, I really hadn’t thought about how incredibly dark it was. That was a good thing for me to work out. Some very bad things happened to people around me. But while that was happening, it was a real peak for me as a musician. Some of the greatest work I was involved with was being done then. And yet I still chose to self-destruct. It was a case of right place, right time. But it was not necessarily what I thought it was.

Ryan: Digressing back a bit, when we would chat years back I would ask you where you were at with this project. You seemed to be warming up to it as time went on. And I finally found a copy of the group’s album in Sydney, Australia, a year ago. I’m talking about Fur Bible (1985).

Kid: Oh, you got it?

Ryan: I did.

Kid: In Australia?

Ryan: Yes. It was part of my carry-on luggage.

Kid: I’m sure I can pinpoint the person who sold it to you.

Ryan: Are you coming around to that material now? I like the record.

Kid: Oh, yeah. I hated it for so long. People would say to me, “Oh, the Fur Bible record is great.” I’d respond, “No. It can’t possibly be great. I’m not going to listen to it again, so don’t even try me.” Eventually, I did listen to it and I thought, “Oh, this is pretty good.” I came around to it. I like it.

Ryan: You’ve made the transition!

Kid: I feel warmly about it. I like all of the people involved with it. That was kind of a bad time too. It was that post-Gun Club period. I felt like I had tried something unsuccessful with Fur Bible. I had a little bit of shame about that. Everything else I had been involved with had been successful, in my eyes. People liked everything else and people didn’t really like Fur Bible. It was a sleeper.

Ryan: It is.

Kid: There’s nothing wrong with it. It was the first time I had put my voice on a record and it just irritated the hell out of me. It was a first step for me.

Ryan: You close your book with a heartfelt tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. You wonder how your life would’ve turned out had you not met Jeffrey outside of that Pere Ubu show in 1979. Excluding family, I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who’s had that sort of impact on my life.

Kid: As I was getting near the end of the book I was trying to figure out what it was about. A lot of it was about Jeffrey. Everything that moved me into becoming a musician and the life I lived after that was because of him. It was all because he said, “Here’s a guitar. You’re going to learn how to play it.” He had that confidence that I could do it. It was a mentorship. He would say, “You’re going to do this and you’re going to be great at it.” I was like, “Okay.” Jeffrey was the closest thing I had to a brother. We could have our arguments and disagreements, but in the end it didn’t matter. What mattered was our bond. Writing it down made it all clearer to me. His death sent me into a tailspin. I was entering the unknown. Jeffrey was like a cord that I had been hanging onto for so long and it was gone. I was more interested in writing about my relationship with him than about the music of the Gun Club. A lot of people loved Jeffrey. But there were others who said they loved him with disclaimers. I wanted to write something about Jeffrey without the disclaimers. That seemed like an important task—to honor him in a truthful manner.

Ryan: I’m glad that you did that. Jeffrey has his detractors, but they all seem to say something along the lines of “the guy still had the most indefatigable spirit and drive of any person I’ve ever known.”

Kid: That’s what drove everyone crazy!

Ryan: This book took you 15 years to finish. Completing it has to feel cathartic.

Kid: I don’t know. Maybe it will when I see the printed book. When I was living in New York there was no time for reflection. I started it after I left New York, but it was at such a slow pace. It was done piecemeal. I wanted to give up at times. I had a lot of self-doubt. And like I said, I’d just go on tour for a year and take a long break. The pandemic made me finally put it to bed. I couldn’t jump up and go away on tour anymore. It feels great to have it done. When I read it through after the final edit I was actually shocked. I was moved by it. It was a feeling of accomplishment. It’s a different feeling than what you get with music. Looking at it as one story has been an eye-opener for me. I thought to myself, “How did I do all of that?”

I see the book as the story of a music fan. I think most musicians start out as fans. Why would you do it otherwise? I never stopped being a fan. All of the opportunities that came my way were because I was a fan.

#kidcongopowers #interviews #gunclub #jeffreyleepierce #cramps #Badseeds

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berlysbandcamp · 3 years

Audio

This compilation of songs is not meant as a historic reflection of popular music of the “Arab world.” It is a very personal selection of songs we grew to like at Habibi Funk. It is music that historically never existed as a unified musical genre. We think it’s important to make this distinction and to have the listener understand that the majority of the music on this compilation does not come from the highly famous names of the musical spectrum of North Africa and the Middle East. Instead, the final body compiled for this record consists of some – at least for us – nichey pearls and often overlooked artists; resulting in a diverse range of styles from Egyptian organ funk, disco sounds from Morocco, an example of the lively reggae scene of Libya, political songs from Lebanon, soundtrack music from Alge- ria, a musical union between Kenya and Oman, and much more. The photo we chose for this cover somehow could be seen as an allegory of the sounds we feature on the label. It depicts Algerian composer Ahmed Malek at an ice cream bar dur- ing his stay in Japan for the World Expo in Osaka, 1970. He later said that his visit to Japan and especially the manga culture left a distinctive mark on the way he created his own compositions. With this in mind, it feels as a suiting visual representation for the mu- sic on this compilation. Accordingly, the compilation you are holding in your hands offers a much wider range of music than just funk influenced sounds. Sure, it brings back Fadoul, who we have already dedicated a full length album to. He was the mystical Moroccan singer who - influenced by the sounds of James Brown- created his own musical vision full of energy but also still very intimate. Another artist we have featured before is Ahmed Malek, the grand Algerian soundtrack composer, whose music is largely connected by a distinct feeling of melancholic beauty or Hamid Al Shaeri, the Egyptian hit producer whose track “Ayonha” was probably the most widely appre-ciated track off our first compilation. But we have also learned that this format of a compilation can serve as a medium to introduce artists to our audience, who we are planning to dedicate full length releases to in the near future, such as Ibrahim Hesnawi. Hesnawi is the father of reggae music in Libya - a genre still widely popular in Libya - and whose presence in the country is commonly connected to the rhyth- mic similarities of reggae with some form of Libyan folkloric music. Nahib Alhoush is another Libyan artist, whose musical output we will spotlight in the near future. In the 1970s, he was the co-founder of Free Music, one of the first Libyan bands introducing western influences into their music. After the band stopped performing together he started an at least equally successful solo career under his own name. When I got into Arabic music around five or six years ago, I knew pretty much nothing about it. Realistically, I still know very, very little about it and I’m by no means an expert. I just had the opportunity to visit the region frequently, trying to learn about music I might like. Most of the bands, I happen to enjoy, were fairly obscure and therefore a lot of the music on this compilation seems to be largely forgotten. After sharing many of the old records and tapes online through mixes, I have realized that there is a huge disparity be- tween the interest in the music on the one hand and its availability on the other. All tracks on this compilation are fully licensed, most directly from the artist or in the case of artists, who are deceased licensed from the artist’s family. There are two exceptions: Hamid Al Shaeri’s track was licensed from SLAM! as the label is still active under the name Sonar. Zohra’s “Badala Zamana” from the great Belgian label MTMU, who has reissued this track under license from the producer on 7” format before. As a European label dealing with non- western artists we try to be aware of the responsibilities that derive within the making, regarded from a post-colonial point of view by demanding on ourselves not to reproduce exploitative economic patterns. We split all of the profits from our releases equally with the artists without deducting any costs that are not directly related to the release (e.g. we pay for our research to find an artist as well as all travel costs from our share of the profit). Our agreements are licensed deals with limited terms after which the rights fall back to the artist or the artist’s family. The master rights stay with the artists, we just license them. We do not include publishing rights in our deals. We think it is important in today's reissue market, where too many shady business transactions happen, to be transparent about our licensing policies. We are always available for any questions, requests as well as more detailed information.

#Arabic #habibi funk

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thecoleopterawithana · 4 years

Quote

The next night Elliot [Mintz] took us out with a friend of his, Sal Mineo, and we all went to a gay cabaret/discotheque. John was oblivious to the gay ambience. He was curious about everyone's sexuality and liked to gossip about who was sleeping with whom, whether they were gay or straight. John made no judgements about homosexuality but was really curious about who was and who wasn't gay. He knew that his appearance at a gay club might start rumors about his own sexuality, and it made him laugh. He told me that there had been rumors about him and his first manager, Brian Epstein, and that he usually didn't deny them. He liked the fact that people could be titillated by having suspicions about his masculinity. Then I was the one who was laughing. "How could anyone believe a man who likes women as much as you do is gay?" I told him. After the show we went back to Mineo's apartment. I was thirsty, and Mineo told me to look in the refrigerator. There was nothing in it but one big bottle of amyl nitrite. Mineo told John that he knew Ava Gardner. "I'm a real fan of hers. I love Ava," John replied excitedly. Mineo went to the phone, called London, woke Gardner up, and told her that John wanted to speak to her. John took the phone. "Ava, is that you? Ava, I think you're beautiful. I've seen all your movies. Christ, is it really you?" They spoke for five minutes, then a thrilled John handed the phone back to Mineo.

In May Pang’s Loving John (1983).

[Once again, a million thanks to @eppysboys for sending over passages of interest.]

Elliot Mintz (born February 16, 1945) is an American consultant. In the 1960s and early 1970s Mintz was an underground radio DJ and host. In the 1970s he became a spokesperson for John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and took on other musicians and actors as clients as a publicist, including Bob Dylan. [...]

Though not in a professional capacity, since the death of Lennon, Mintz has acted as a spokesperson for the Lennon estate. In addition, while sifting through Lennon's belongings, he discovered hundreds of unreleased tape recordings including half-finished new songs, early versions of famous hits, and idle thoughts. Beginning in 1988, he hosted a weekly syndicated radio series based upon these recordings called The Lost Lennon Tapes, which was broadcast for about four years. After the show came to an end, Mintz began hosting the spinoff radio program The Beatle Years. Mintz has appeared in feature documentaries about Lennon and Yoko Ono, including The U.S. vs. John Lennon, Imagine: John Lennon and The Real Yoko Ono. In 1985 he was a technical advisor on the television film John and Yoko: A Love Story. He also authored an essay about his relationship with them published in 2005 in a book entitled Memories of John Lennon. [Source]

Salvatore Mineo Jr. (January 10, 1939 – February 12, 1976) was an American actor, singer and director. Mineo is best known for his Academy Award-nominated performance as John "Plato" Crawford opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Mineo also received a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for his supporting role in Exodus (1960). A 1950s teen idol, Mineo's acting career declined in his adult years. He was murdered in 1976. [...]

By the early 1960s, Mineo was becoming too old to play the type of role that had made him famous, and his rumoured homosexuality led to his being considered inappropriate for leading roles. [...] In 1969, Mineo returned to the stage to direct a Los Angeles production of the LGBT-themed play Fortune and Men's Eyes (1967), featuring then-unknown Don Johnson as Smitty and himself as Rocky. The production received positive reviews, although its expanded prison rape scene was criticized as excessive and gratuitous. [...] By 1976, Mineo's career had begun to turn around. While playing the role of a bisexual burglar in a series of stage performances of the comedy P.S. Your Cat Is Dead in San Francisco, Mineo received substantial publicity from many positive reviews; he moved to Los Angeles along with the play.

Mineo met English-born actress Jill Haworth on the set of the film Exodus in 1960, in which they portrayed young lovers. Mineo and Haworth were together on-and-off for many years. They were engaged to be married at one point. According to Mineo biographer Michael Gregg Michaud, Haworth cancelled the engagement after she caught Mineo engaging in sexual relations with another man. The two did remain very close friends until Mineo's death. [...] While some have described Haworth as being nothing but a close friend and a "beard" to Mineo to conceal his same-sex partners, Michaud casts doubt upon this claim; he asserts that Mineo and Haworth's relationship was genuine, that Mineo fell in love with Haworth, and that Mineo regarded her as one of the important people in his life. [Source]

“Portrait of a Marriage really disturbed [John]. The book was an account of the fifty-year marriage of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson, both of whom were bisexual and continually unfaithful to each other, yet were able to evolve a relationship of great depth and longevity despite the incompleteness of their marriage. John was very distressed by the theme of sexual incompatibility in the midst of great emotional attraction and the fact that no matter how hard one tries, a marriage may always remain incomplete.”

In a 1972 interview with Boze Hadleigh, Mineo discussed his bisexuality. At the time of his death, he was in a six-year relationship with male actor Courtney Burr III. [Source]

BH: Who are those two girls you mentioned, for a double date?

SM: (Laughs.) Are you kidding? I got a girl in every port- and a couple of guys in every port, too.

BH: Do you think rumors about being bi have hurt you in your career?

SM: Maybe. . . Nah, I doubt it. Everyone's got those rumors following him around, whether it's true or not. Everyone's supposed to be bi, starting way back with Gary Cooper and on through Brando and Clift and Dean and Newman and . . . you want me to stop?

BH: Did you resent the rumors?

SM: Well, no. Because what's wrong with being bi? Maybe most people are, deep down.

BH: Shirley MacLaine has publicly said that.

SM: I think she's right- got a good noodle, Shirl does. But anyhow, the rumor about me, from what I hear, was usually that I'm gay. Where, like, with Monty Clift or Brando, the rumor was that they're bi. [Brando later publicly admitted to bisexuality.]

— Boze Hadleigh’s interview with Sal Mineo (1972).

“John and I had a big talk about it, saying, basically, all of us must be bisexual. And we were sort of in a situation of thinking that we’re not [bisexual] because of society. So we are hiding the other side of ourselves, which is less acceptable. But I don’t have a strong sexual desire towards another woman.”

Have you ever? “Not really, not sexually.”

One online satire imagined an affair between Ono and Hillary Clinton.

“It’s great,” Ono laughs. “I mean, both John and I thought it was good that people think we were bisexual, or homosexual.” She laughs again.

What about that old rumor that Lennon had sex with Beatles manager Brian Epstein (which was also the subject of the 1991 film, The Hours and The Times)?

Lennon himself said: “Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But it was a pretty intense relationship.” Later, Lennon’s friend Pete Shotton said Lennon had told him that he had allowed Epstein to “toss [wank] him off.”

“Uh, well, the story I was told was a very explicit story, and from that I think they didn’t have it [sex],” Ono tells me.

— in Yoko Ono: I Still Fear John’s Killer by Tim Teeman for the Daily Beast (13 October 2015).

Q. Have you ever fucked a guy?

A. Not yet, I thought I’d save it til I was 40, life begins at 40 you know, tho I never noticed it.

Q. It is trendy to be bisexual and you’re usually ‘keeping up with the Jones’, haven’t you ever… there was talk about you and PAUL…

A. Oh, I thought it was about me and Brian Epstein… anyway, I’m saving all the juice for my own version of THE REAL FAB FOUR BEATLES STORY etc.. etc..

Q. It seems like you’re saving quite a lot for when you’re 40…

A. Yes, there might be nothing better to do, tho I don’t believe it.

— John Lennon, interview conducted by/on John Lennon, and/or Dr Winston O’boogie, for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine (November 1974).

John: [...] I was trying to put it 'round that I was gay, you know– I thought that would throw them off… dancing at all the gay clubs in Los Angeles, flirting with the boys… but it never got off the ground.

Q: I think I’ve only heard that lately about Paul.

John: Oh, I’ve had him, he’s no good. [Laughter]

— John Lennon, interviewed by Lisa Robinson for Hit Parader: A conversation with John Lennon (December 1975).

Like other alkyl nitrites, amyl nitrite is bioactive in mammals, being a vasodilator, which is the basis of its use as a prescription medicine. As an inhalant, it also has a psychoactive effect, which has led to its recreational use with its smell being described as that of old socks or dirty feet. It is also referred to as banapple gas. [Source]

Popper is a slang term given broadly to drugs of the chemical class called alkyl nitrites that are inhaled. [...] Popper use has a relaxation effect on involuntary smooth muscles, such as those in the throat and anus. It is used for practical purposes to facilitate anal sex by increasing blood flow and relaxing sphincter muscles, initially within the gay community.

"If you trace the bottle of amyl (a type of alkyl nitrite) through late 20th century history, you trace the legacies of gay culture on popular culture in the 20th century”

The drug is also used or for recreational drug purposes, typically for the "high" or "rush" that the drug can create.

Poppers were part of club culture from the mid-1970s disco scene and returned to popularity in the 1980s and 1990s rave scene. [Source]

“A cable had arrived for him that very morning stating the obvious: ‘Come too quickly. Stop. Try again. Stop. Am waiting in Paris. Stop me if you’ve heard it. Stop. Stuff yourself with artichokes and live. Stop. Don’t stop. Stop.’ He knew it was from Amie L'Nitrate.”

— in John Lennon’s unfinished story about a sudden rendezvous in Paris. Published in “Skywriting By Word Of Mouth”.

Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress and singer. [...] Gardner appeared in several high-profile films from the 1940s to 1970s [...] She is listed 25th among the American Film Institute's 25 Greatest Female Stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

Answered asks about:

John’s sexuality

Yoko and his sister Julia’s public statements about John’s sexuality

John "trying to put it ‘round that” he was gay

The Bob Wooler Episode

The Tony Manero Story

[Disclaimer: The answer to these asks represent my personal opinion at the time, which is liable to have evolved since then.]

#John Lennon #May Pang #Elliot Mintz #Sal Mineo #Brian Epstein #Ava Gardner #i'm not a homosexual or we could have had a homosexual relationship #it's only love and that is all #He could be a real soft sweetie #the lost weekend #johnny #1974 #quote #compilation #my stuff #(I added the links to other asks about his sexuality because it apparently is a topic of great interest)#(As exemplified by the number of asks I received about it)#(Ft. notions about sexuality being tied to masculinity and May not considering the option of bisexuality)#(And an emphasis put on John's curiosity about who was and wasn't gay)

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aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

Why The Bee Gees Were More Than Saturday Night Fever

https://ift.tt/3441PUp

Generations of music fans know the Bee Gees — British-born, Australia-based brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb — as the musical act that created the songs for Saturday Night Fever, the 1978 movie that made John Travolta a star and catapulted what was known at the time as “disco” music to the forefront of pop culture.

But not only did the Bee Gees create indelible dance staples like “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” and “More Than a Woman,” but they had an entire career before Saturday Night Fever, one which was launched in the 1960s and yielded pop classics like “How Do You Mend a Broken Heart,” “To Love Somebody,” “Massachusetts,” “I Started a Joke,” and more, before their gradual turn toward R&B and dance with hits such as “Jive Talkin’” and “Nights on Broadway.”

Along the way, the Bee Gees broke up, battled each other and various addictions, went through dizzying career ups and downs, wrote hits for other artists and succumbed to tragedy, with Robin, Maurice, and younger brother Andy (who started as a solo act before joining his siblings in the Bee Gees) passing away in 2012, 2003 and 1988 respectively.

They also experienced one of the most vicious backlashes in pop history as the tide turned against disco by the end of the 1970s — a backlash that may have been fueled by racism and homophobia as well as the oversaturation of the market.

Now the entire story of the Bee Gees has been chronicled in an excellent new documentary, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, which premieres this weekend on HBO in the US and Sky Documentaries in the UK. The film is directed by Frank Marshall, the legendary producer whose own track record with Amblin and his own Kennedy/Marshall Company includes films such as the Indiana Jones series, the Back to the Future trilogy, Poltergeist, the Jurassic Park/World saga, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Arachnophobia (which he also directed), The Sixth Sense and many more.

Den of Geek had the privilege of speaking with Marshall about his own view of the Bee Gees, working with Barry Gibb and the families of the other brothers, their place in pop culture and more.

Den of Geek: I went into this film not being a particularly huge Bee Gees fan, but certainly knowing who they are and knowing certain parts of the legacy like Saturday Night Fever. I came out of it wanting to get all those early albums and just fascinated by their whole story.

Frank Marshall: Well, thanks. It was an extraordinary journey. That’s what I love about documentaries, you don’t know where you’re going, unlike my day job where I know everything I’m doing that day. This was such a great journey of discovery and so I’m glad you enjoyed it.

I read that your father was a musician and you play guitar yourself, so music has always been an important part of your life.

Yeah. That was the connection here, that I grew up in a musical family. My dad was a guitar player and conductor and composer. He was actually under contract at Capitol Records. So there was a lot of connective tissue that went into this. So it kind of made sense to me. It was kind of natural.

What was your first exposure to the Bee Gees and what was it about them that struck a chord for you, so to speak?

When I thought back I knew their early songs because I grew up obviously in the ’60s, ’70s, but they really didn’t have an impact for me until Saturday Night Fever. I was shooting The Warriors, which was also at Paramount, and so it was a big deal to have this movie soundtrack suddenly become such a giant success. That was my first realization that they were pop superstars. The music from the movie was incredible. The songs were all different and really fit to the movie. Then to find out later, when I’m doing this doc, that none of it was planned, that’s incredible.

I love that portion of the documentary where it comes out that some of the execs at Paramount at the time were looking down at the “little disco movie” and had no idea what it was going to become.

Certainly, at that moment I happened to be at Paramount when that was going on. We were doing The Warriors, and I remember hearing about a little disco movie. John Travolta was a TV star. Nobody saw this coming.

What inspired you to do a film about the Bee Gees? You worked with Martin Scorsese on The Last Waltz, which is a very different film, but in terms of how to make a great music documentary was that an inspiration?

Well, Marty’s kind of an inspiration for whatever you want to do. But I’ve always loved documentaries. I’ve never really had the opportunity to do them just because they take so long and they’re so involved, and I’ve had my day job. But we started dabbling. I directed my first short doc about 10 years ago and I really loved it, but it was only 50 minutes and it was a very specific subject. We’ve kind of been dabbling in them and then Kennedy/Marshall, about five, six years ago, started really making them.

I was over at Capitol Records meeting with the head, a fellow named Steve Barnett, who had just remodeled and refurbished Capitol Records. I was marveling at how fabulous it was and it reminded me of my early days with my dad and being there and everything. So we started talking about documentaries or stories that might be told at Capitol.

He said, “Well, I just acquired the Bee Gees catalog. We want to try some to do some things to reintroduce and reinvigorate the catalog, and we think a documentary would be great.” I said, “Hey, I’m in. I’ve always thought there were an amazing group and I’d love to get into how that all came about.” So it was being in the right place at the right time for me, and that was four years ago.

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What would you say is the secret to a good documentary?

I think you have to dive deep. I think it can’t be superficial and you can’t tell a story that people know. I think you really have to dig deep into the characters to find that. You start with a general arc and for me it was the family and this gift of creativity that they had. But where did it come from?

The reason I went and got Nigel Sinclair to produce this was I looked at the fabulous doc that he did with Ron Howard on the Beatles and I said, “If they can find footage that had never been seen before of the Beatles then he can help me find footage for this.” It has to be one of those things that had never been seen before.

It needs to have some weight to it. As they say, it needs to be authentic, it needs to be real. You can’t pull wool over people’s eyes. They know if it’s a puff piece. This one, it has its ups and downs. It’s got its joyous moments but there’s also some tragedy. It’s happy and sad. So I think that it really makes for the right story and it’s right for a documentary.

Were Barry Gibbs and the families of the other brothers up for it from the start, or did it take some convincing?

Well, it started with Barry. I met Barry when he came out here for the Grammy tribute and we kind of hit it off, I think, because I’m the oldest in my family, I have younger brothers, and we both grew up in a musical family. So we shared a lot of commonality. You have to get to know each other. I traveled down to Miami several times where we’d just talked. We didn’t shoot, we didn’t do any interviews. Then he introduced me to the rest of the family. Obviously, he was blessing the project and he just felt it was just the right time.

Was one of your goals to show people that the Bee Gees were more than Saturday Night Fever? There may be generations who don’t even know that they sang “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” or “Massachusetts” or any of those other songs.

Yeah, I think it was really to reintroduce them to fans, but also introduce the younger generations of music buffs and music fans to who they really are. We’re really celebrating their legacy and what incredible songwriters they were.

They were this group that everybody knew, but I have two 20-year-old daughters and when I started putting on songs like “Islands in the Stream” and “Guilty,” they go, “Oh yeah, Barbra Streisand wrote that,” or “That’s Dolly Parton.” I said, “No, it isn’t. This is the Bee Gees.” They go, “What?” So, you’re right. There are all these songs that people know, but they don’t realize the songwriting gifts that the Bee Gees had as well.

One of the most shocking moments in the film was the Disco Demolition Night and the analysis of it by Vince Lawrence, who was a security guard at Comiskey Park for that event. When he started talking about pulling the Isaac Hayes and Al Green records out of the bonfire, that just blew me away. And the backlash against the Bee Gees was unbelievably intense.

When you delve into what was that about, I remember it but you don’t understand the impact society was having on music in those days and on the career of these guys. They were on the front wave of global superstardom. It wasn’t just local superstardom. They didn’t understand what was happening. They were just caught up in the changes and trends happening in society and the music was reflecting that. It’s the same kind of backlash that’s happening today about what you believe in.

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First of all, they weren’t disco artists. They got labeled that. But, as you know, they were R&B, they were rock, they were so many other things, but they got labeled as this and then they got blamed for it. It wasn’t their fault. It was really unfair. It was that thing that we talk about in the movie that so often happens to superstars. Now, we understand it but back then they didn’t. So we went to explore why and that’s when we found Vince and we found Nicky Siano to really set and authenticate what was going on.

Nicky (a resident DJ at Studio 54 during the disco era) mentions in the doc how disco became such a success that the music industry basically oversaturated the market with it, which I think is also something you see in the film business. A superhero movie becomes big, so let’s shove 10 more superhero movies out there as soon as possible.

I think Nicky says it, it’s about greed. They lose sight of why it’s successful and then oversaturate and then people get angry and there’s a backlash. The Bee Gees were writing other songs as well, but it was that huge reaction to Saturday Night Fever that wasn’t their fault, but they got blamed for it.

When you meet a Barry Gibb, or work with Steven Spielberg or even Orson Welles, as you did early in your career, is there something different about their personalities, the way they look at the world that ties them together as these creative visionaries?

Well, yes, I guess. They’re all perfectionists. They don’t let it go until it’s out the door and they’re made to let go. That’s the commonality. What’s amazing to me, particularly in the case of the Bee Gees, was that Barry was a collaborator. He took this input from everybody around him and that’s what created the musicality that came into their songs. It wasn’t just one thing.

He took ideas from here and from there and said, “Give us a riff over there or play that thing that you played last night.” He remembers it and that was all the creative process for him and he was natural. I think that’s what I see with Steven and certainly with Orson and with Barry is that it came naturally. It’s not work. They’re just naturally creative and that’s really the gift.

What would you like people to take away from seeing this, either brand new fans or older fans?

Well, I think it’s about the longevity and the fact that they were loving brothers. It was complicated, families are complicated, but their incredible musical gift and the impact that they’ve had on the pop music culture should not be underestimated. I think that’s what I want to do, is celebrate their legacy and hopefully people will rediscover them and discover them anew.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart premieres this Saturday (December 12) on HBO in the US and on Sunday (December 13) via Sky Documentaries in the UK.

The post Why The Bee Gees Were More Than Saturday Night Fever appeared first on Den of Geek.

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isolationstreet · 4 years

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Just going to go on a super long ramble about why I'm excited about my 70s au really and why it's set in the 70s era hollywood really is because it's an absolutely fascinating time period for both musical theatre performers trying to work in the film industry and also just the queer community in general was in a very unique position in the 70s

The musical as film went from being one of the most popular forms of entertainment with the performers being big stars to being largely ignored to actively disliked in such a short time frame having officially died with hello dolly's massive floppage in 1966

The one single exception to all musical movies around this time completly failing to capture audiences was cabert 1972 which no doubt grew a good chunk of its popularity from just how disillusioned and tired America was of the Vietnam war at that point and it's interesting how it took the record for most academy awards that didnt include best picture

But even going into Fosse's films there were no new performers who were famous for being in musical films the closest probably being liza minnelli but even she never came close to becoming synonymous with musical movies like her parents vincent minnelli and Judy Garland.

Part of there being no stars made also goes into the Fossee's quote on how to make it in choreography from way back in the day of if you choreograph one or two people people will notice and comment on the performers but if you choreograph an ensemble the audience has no choice to see the greater choreography

Going back a couple of years to sweet charity 1969 that bommed at the box office there are pleantly of big name musical theatre performers in it but you never in a million years would know them for their musical film work like no one says oh yeah I love chita rivera and bebe neuwirth for being big spender girls. That's the thing Broadway has never died the way musical films have. Broadway loved and embraced them as stars film didnt.

Bob fosse and tim scott, who I love with my whole ass heart, both were absolutely both were so in love with the idea of the hollywood movie musical and they both specifficly cited wanting to be the next fred astaite as their biggest dream that they both never gave up on. But due to the way society changed I truly believe it was an impossible dream at the time no matter how good at dancing they were.

The other thing I think about why the 70s is an interesting setting is because the 60s sexual revolution came and went the stonewall riots happend in 1969 and the first pride parade was in 1970. More and more gay clubs were popping up around the country disco became huge and la, nyc, and San Francisco were all well known for having large lgbt populations. Gay culture was truly beginning to thrive in a way that it never had before. Until everything fell apart in the 80s due to the aids epidemic.

I also think if you take these two big things of the death of the hollywood movie musical and thriving gay culture it would just make a perfect companion au to meddalarkskin and viciousscarf's 1950s hollywood lavender scare/mccarthyism coricoffelees au fic which is honestly one of my absolute favourite fics

And I think once I finally finish writing my 1970s AU its going to be kind of interesting to compare just how massive of an impact a 20 year gap in histoic human AU can have on can have on the circumstances of these characters and how things turn out for thier relationships

#long post #i swear this rant is nealy as long as how much of the fic i actually have finished at this point #but i very much plan on finishing it #im almost done with chapter the meet cute chapter #but also my ensemble cast is fairly different from the 50s au #like mac griddlebone and munk arent going to be in my fic at all #and mistoffelees is going to be in a relationship with tugger in additon to cori #and also tantomile and victoria are going to be in my fic bc it bugged me to no end that they weren't in the 50s au at all #like it blows my mind that someone would write about cori and misto and just not include tanto tugger and tori #this is probably incoherent #i just woke up from a nap

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letticetweedie · 4 years

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For my Final Major Project, my chosen subject area is dance, specifically its relationship to the individual and how we use it to communicate. Because I want to explore the very anthropological side of dance, my starting research area was the way in which it’s technically explained, such as Keith Rose’s Crib Dance diagrams and the textbooks which depict the individual steps to the Waltz. This contrast between the more monotonous and organised side of dance compared to the more philosophical areas I know I want to investigate, will help me identify what it is I’m trying to pin down. Having done this, I have also done a lot of contrasting research on catharsis, and what it is to feel catharsis in everyday life. While often used in literature, a sense of catharsis is something I personally feel when I dance, and having spoken to a number of people, they agreed that they felt a feeling of “release” when they too were dancing.

It’s this research into the idea of psychological release and emotional freedom that led to looking at freedom as a whole, and how far we can ever truly be free. One fact I remember being told is that every person in the UK will see on average 5,000 advertisements. This bombardment of consumerism and marketing suggests that we are in fact never free, consistently influenced by what we’re told to want and arguably losing any sense of independence or free will. In one article written by J. Krishnamurti, he stated that “freedom implies being completely alone…You are never alone because you are full of all the memories, all the conditioning, all the mutterings of yesterday”. While this is a more conceptual way of putting it, Krishnamurti backs up this point of never being free, as we’re constantly weighed down by our own personal experience and emotion. However, if dance is considered to bring about such a sense of release and catharsis, is that why it’s so often resorted to in times of intense emotional strain? The intuitive and natural motion of moving to a rhythm or beat could arguably be the closest thing we can ever get to being completely free. Is dance used merely as a distraction from the problems we face in reality, or is it legitimately a means for exercising a sense of psychological wellbeing? This is a key point I want to explore within this project.

Another area I want to explore is that when we do dance, how far is our movement a completely natural response, independent of external influence. The history of dance suggests that trends and styles are common in society and that more often than not, we naturally imitate those around us. However, while eras of disco, street dance and raves show this trait, what I’m interested in is the nuances that separate us, the ways not only our individual experience and emotion dictate the way we move, but how our subconscious state also influences this. Furthermore, I also want to research into the aesthetics of dance – the motifs, colour and imagery we associate with dancing and how individual experience means these will never be exactly the same for any two people. For me, I associate positive memories of dancing with large rooms of people, of which at least 90% of the people immediately next to me are close friends and with a sense of glamour and fun. However, how far does this individual experience translate onto a subjective viewer? My personal relationship to dance, and how elated it makes me feel is a major factor that influenced the decision to study dance for this project. Additionally, I know that many others are familiar with this relationship to dance, therefore this project will hopefully be something that can be largely accessible and relatable. As the cathartic nature of dancing is something I relate to really strongly, when I’ve fully explored the area, and successfully pinned down what exactly it is that makes dancing so important to us as a species, I’ll know.

The cultural context of dance is something that I want to explore thoroughly – dance itself is such a social act, it’s impossible to ignore the cultural impact its had. As noted by Marusa Pusnik in their article on the “Cultural Practice” of dance, “dance occupies an important place in the social structure of all human cultures throughout history. Dance is most commonly defined as a way of human expression through movement”. The natural affiliation to dance as a means of communication has resulted in dance being the base of a multitude of cultures. For example, originating in Bharata Natyam, India around 400 years ago, Japan’s Kabuki dance is still practiced in homes today. While research and videos are hard to find, the dance still forms a significant part of the life of those who follow it. This is just one example of the hundreds, if not thousands of different forms and styles of dance that are used around the world. Consequently it’s clear that not only is dance a matter of an individuals response to music, but a group affiliation to a shared culture or origin, something that possible aids any feeling of displacement or isolation.

Additionally, the history of dance shows a close relationship between culture and society, how groups have used dance as a way of either rebelling or affiliating themselves with the ever-changing circumstances around them. As written in an article by the BBC, (‘6 ways disco changed the world’), The 1970s craze of disco for example was in response to Nazi regulations, limiting live music and allowing only records to be played. Following on from this, disco became a massive influence on later dance trends, as it was the first time someone could join the dance floor as an individual (prior to this you’d often need someone of the opposite sex to dance with). For the first time, individuals could be part of a larger crowd, a singular mentality of just wanting a good time. This also brought about the ability for something as simple as two men being able to dance together, as this was illegal until 1971, disco therefore acting as a form of social liberation.

For me, the subject of dance is interesting because of the impact it has on our mental state, rather than its literal use in art as a medium. In terms of artistic references and contexts, the artists I’ve been researching are less to do with the act of dancing itself, but more the themes they investigate and how they relate to my own practice. For example, Cildo Meireles and Andy Warhol are two artists I’ve looked at as part of my research into consumerist art. The way both these artists responded to the increase in consumerist culture and advertising reminds me of the way in which dance is used in rebellion or affiliation to the same things. Using motifs such as Coca-Cola bottles and technology (more specifically in his piece ‘Babel’), Meireles emphasises the theme of excess in the material world, the ways in which we’re constantly subject to and influenced by what’s being forced into our consciousness. Similarly, Warhol explores this excess in the form of colour, again looking at the ways the artificial world around us is almost inescapable. It’s these themes that I want to explore in relation to dance, how we use it to escape the very things these two artists are highlighting in their work and how I can reference this in my own work. Furthermore, both these artists strongly use motifs as a method of inspiring such themes, something I want to include within this project. Artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz does this in his work ‘An Autumn Lexicon’. Using items such as disco balls, coloured lighting and text, he creates an environment that is immediately reminiscent of a nightclub or party, and in turn, dancing. In relation to this, I want to further explore dance in its modern social and cultural context - how now, coloured light immediately carries undertones of some kind of party or performance. More specific references as well, such as bathrooms covered in crazy graffiti, weirdly lit corridors, glitter and neon are all motifs that I want to explore in relation to their social connotations. Again, similar to Warhol and Meireles, these things all inspire a theme of excess, something that dance seems to naturally attribute itself to. Dance has become a means for not only emotional release and excess, but also a medium in which we associate being our most self, allowing personal style to manifest itself, in turn leading the modern club-scene to be associated with excess of all kinds (for example glitter and neon). Ultimately, that is what I want my project to become. I want it to manifest itself as one large, crazy, fun collection of work – something that in itself is reminiscent of the overflow of emotion we have when we dance.

The continued exploration of the theme of experience is definitely something that is still present in this project, however the one difference in this work from what I’ve done before is that I want to explore how personal experience and intuition influences the way we move and the reasons for this movement. Rather than looking at the emotional response to the world around us, I’m more interested in the ways we translate this conscious experience and emotion into natural and intuitive movement, usually as a way for us to make sense of the mess that’s in our heads. In terms of the mediums and techniques I’ll be using, I hope to still be able to work very materially, only this time using materials that more directly relate to the subject area itself. The abundance of imagery and motifs, such as the disco ball, gives a lot of opportunity to work sculpturally, something that’s become really integral in my practice so far. Print on the other hand, while another method I’ve become increasingly confident in, is a medium I want to approach differently - dance is such a time-based, physical form, I’ll have to think about how I translate this onto the printed page.

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vapormaison · 5 years

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Best of 2019 Future Funk Release 1/4: Toyama’s Love Island by Skule Toyama

A common argument I get into on audiophile and vinyl forums — that by virtue of interest and venue tend to skew boomer (who isn’t on discord now? Answer: Your grandpa.) — often revolves around the raison d’être of pressing future funk. In an earlier piece, I gave my opinion on the subject — but I didn’t really evidence the critique by many opposing audiophiles. As far as they’re concerned, I might as well be collecting Funko Pops — that is to say that these presses aren’t worthy of serious hi-fi consideration and are merely collector’s items. To their credit, when posting about my experiences with the genre, most of these aged audiophiles scratch their head not at the anime art on the box nor at the picture disks (usually reviled by the old-heads)— but at the oft-digital source itself. These guys are the ostensibly cool uncles with the dope music collection, after all.

While they often are a wealth of information on the analog format, and voracious consumers of early City Pop — a genre beloved by audiophiles, — forums like this tend to create feedback loops of retrograde understanding. Their enjoyment of all things analog turns them into intense luddites, often to the point where I question why they are interfacing with a computer in the first place, that dreaded source for the perceived decline of their hi-fi culture.

I’ve more or less given up on the prospect of turning them around on the subject of future funk. However, this summer, on a thread where we review recent vinyl purchases and upload lossless rips, I made a rather pedestrian post about how much I enjoyed Skule Toyama’s latest release — Toyama’s Love Island. And to my complete and utter surprise, my vinyl-to-digital rip of “Sunset Hasn’t Come Yet” brought all the boys to the yard. While I got my usual peanut gallery of “lol future funk, lol vaporwave, buy jazz” posts, its turns out more than a few Joe Boomers with vintage, $10k-valued Sansui stereo sets could vibe with this too. You know, the purely purists of the pure.

This caused me to consider for a time precisely why Toyama Love Island whispered to these boomers I share a particular corner of internet space with. What about it warmed the heart of these old men so cold to cold media? It obviously had to be something more than the mastering or the press itself. Most of these guys had been engaged in serious listening to absolute titans in their craft for forty plus years now. Many had studio experience themselves. Even now, I don’t have a really good answer. The best one I can supply is this: the warmth that emanates from Toyama Love Island can melt even the iciest heart. Cliche? No doubt. Apropos? Of course.

PART 1: THE MUSIC

Intro warms us up with a minute-long evergreen bit. By whom and what from— I genuinely don’t know (perhaps that’s the appeal for me personally, the mystery but also the universality)— but the punch line certainly feels nostalgic, and the horns do too.

Have a Good Time fronts the funk after a minute-long intro track. It’s an absolutely fantastic true open because of its principal horn loop that absolutely claws into your cerebral cortex and takes root there. Between listens, I found myself humming it while brewing a pot of coffee. While it’s not my favorite of the tracks on the album, its pure energy and catchiness is a master class on how future funk albums should inject you with an uncut hit of unapologetic brass funk within the first couple minutes.

Electricity takes the initial energy of Have a Good Time and subtly ratchets up the vibe with clever layering and a sweet progression. While my initial take on my first listen was that the bass was too muted (a slight boost from the hi-fi set of your choice can obviously erase that distinction quickly!) — I warmed to the mix after hearing how well it meshed with the following track.

Love Island serves as a sort of kinetic climax to the first quarter of the album and a great midpoint for the A-side, but the treble feels just slightly compressed and off-balance on the wax here. After fiddling with EQ and my pre-amp settings on the second listen, the track came through vastly better. My suggestion is to subtract here and there if you have a Japanese-built set that tends to run bright. After doing so on the 2nd listen, Love Island began to shine — and the distorted loops that seemed discordant on my initial listen were brought back into a more complimentary role with the rest of the piece.

Midnight Mall is my absolute favorite of the album because it just unabashedly brings the boogie with a pure, slap-worthy bass, crisp midrange from the intermittent horn flares, and absolutely atmospheric vocal compliments. Although Love Island is a strong title track, so to speak — I really do think Midnight Mall is the true baby-maker banger of 2019. For peak enjoyment, boost the bass a little on your stereo, add mood lighting and engage in the wholesome romantic activity (impassioned stares, hand-holding) of your choice.

Sunset Hasn’t Come Yet is the boomer whisperer. My guess regarding what makes this track appeal so authentically to the boomer crowd is the strength of its arrangement. You get a comfy arrangement throughout, a bass twang that sounds like its straight outta Miami Vice coupled with very moody Japanese vocals. For a future funk record, this feels like the track most in sync with its roots, creating a very authentic, fun sound.

Marsala’s effortless sonic transition from Sunset Hasn’t Come Yet’s stage is definitely a highlight of this album’s pretty flawless composition and arrangement. It feels very much like a palette cleanser for the album’s first half, and is perfect for an LP format — as you feel this transition writ large by the very nature of the format. The blaring synths feel like they would meld into place effortlessly with a Michael Mann-directed denouement to a period action-psych drama.

Flying Star is a soft reset to the album from a vibe standpoint, and is competent at what it does in the overall scope of the album. My only significant criticism of Skule Toyama’s output — which is somewhat present here — is that they don’t really let the vocals carry enough water. While exquisitely layered in relation to the rest of the piece, I want to hear the vocals take up a sort of primary mantle in the soundstage in a track like this. We get it in Flying Star’s middle third, but it does feel like a sort of pointless delay in gratification. A track like this has a chance to capture the listener and bring them into the sonic space. It comes just short of doing that.

Sailor Moon Rock manages to decimate that previous criticism by running at me and grabbing the tempo by the collar with an absolutely fire set of loops and immediately accelerate. I love it for that, and is definitely the B-side’s strongest composition. We get some no-doubt nasty guitar riffs and some iconic SFX that really bring this track together and make a B-side banger exemplar, reason enough to flip the wax.

Keep On Going brings us closest to a synth-wave composition that we get in the entire album on the track’s first third, but finds its funk at the ideal moment. It definitely succeeds in fleshing out of the B-side, and creates its niche on the project subtly but at the same time, at the risk of seeming hyperbolic — brilliantly.

Do Me definitely feels the most “Nu-Disco” of both the side and the overall album. It’s definitely one of those tracks that you can both happily wait for in the queue and then just revel in — knowing that while the record nears its conclusion, you get a track that just would not at all be out of place in a Shibuya nightclub circa 1979 or weave its way into a Haruki Murakami novel.

Outro is a perfect closing for the album, but I question the utility of making it the penultimate track instead with the inclusion of the bonus track. That said, it’s impossible not to vibe with the arrangement and layering of this piece. My hope is that when I die and arrive at the pearly gates (admission pending), St. Peter (recently taking up a hobby in DJing to pass eternity) will have a special edition pressing of that will have this as the final track on the wax.

Live Now! is definitely the track I feel coolest about. A good piece on the whole, just feels a bit out of step with the rest of the project. But I’m never going to look the gift horse in the mouth when it comes to the prospect of additional music, so a welcome addition nonetheless.

PART 2: VINYL EXPERIENCE

I really like the Toyama Love Island purple wax. This seemingly benign statement is no doubt going to incur a chorus of audiophiles in that forum criticizing me for this. Vinyl is not designed — as much as some will tell you, to be a perfectly neutral hi-res medium. There is natural warmth, scratchiness, minor distortion — et cetera. It also features natural imperfections that develop over time — like any piece of physical media. What’s more, some perceived hiccups on the overall master might actually be caused by a slight offset or error in the press, a common and natural occurrence when dealing with physical media like this. That’s why graphic equalizers were so prominent in vinyl hi-fi set in its late 1970s/early 1980s heyday. This is just an aspect of the vinyl experience.

Toyama’s Love Island features, in my view, a few of these imperfections. But these imperfections are nothing major — a quick re-equalization (oxymoronic, but I’m sure you know what I’m getting at here) a little fiddling around with the pre-amp here and there — these are natural to any experience and remind me why I became fascinated with the hobby in the first place — to maximize an audio experience. If every indie press gave that to me out of the box, well, what’s the point of the system that I own? It exists to provide a platform for a rich, diverse, and vibrant sonic experience. But the platter is just decorative without real warmth coming from the music, and Toyama’s Love Island brings that in droves.

My Pet Flamingo has a long (in vaporwave measurements, obviously) history of putting out quality physicals. Toyama’s Love Island builds upon this with a big’ol brick and a heaping slab of mortar. I’m also a big fan of MFP’s visuals. I’m not sure who they use to make the sleeves, but I think they’re generally constructed well, and the cover images that grace them never feel compressed or feature much in the way of artifacts. When you become deeply intimate with a vinyl sleeve, you start to notice these things — and I’ve never had this inkling when fingering a Flamingo release, so kudos to the label’s curation.

The mix feels exceptionally bright on my current system, and that has been a consistent point of curiosity with My Pet Flamingo releases. My guess is whatever they test their masters on is engineered by a British/American company not named “KEF” — think Cambridge, Wharfedale, McIntosh, etc — or a damper sounding Japanese unit like Technics or Yamaha. Again — I don’t see this as a problem, just a note to those running more traditional Japanese (80s Harman, Sansui, TEAC) or Nordic systems (B&O, Blaupunkt) that tend towards that end of the spectrum.

With obvious digital and analog appeal, Toyama’s Love Island is the closest thing to a “holistic” future funk release that I can think of — which makes me wonder why Skule Toyama’s hasn’t blown up yet. Only a matter of time, I’d guess — especially after earning a nod from this little outfit, I’d hope.

#future funk #bestof2019

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willlemdafoe · 5 years

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21 things about me and 21 tagged

Thanks to @hepburnandhepburn for tagging me ✨

Nickname/s: V

Zodiac sign: Sagittarius

Height: 5ft

Hogwarts house: Slytherin (I think)

Last thing I googled: If my local Sephora had the new Game of Thrones eyeshadow palette in stock.

Fave music: I like a lot of 90s stuff, like Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, Green Day, Nsync, 90s pop, Tracy Chapman. I also love 70s disco.

Song stuck in my head: Knowing Me, Knowing You by ABBA

What I follow: A little of everything, art, pop culture, GoT, movies, old hollywood, fashion, architecture, cats

Followers: 2071

Do I get asks: rarely

Amount of sleep: 6-7 hours

Lucky numbers: I don’t have one

What I’m wearing: jeans and a tshirt

Dream job: I wanted to be a baseball GM

Dream trip: Sweden

Favorite food: Mexican and Italian

Instruments: I used to play the Violin, Piano, and a few percussion instruments.

Languages: English, French, Spanish, very little German.

Favorite songs: Making Love Out of Nothing at All by Air Supply, One of Us by ABBA and more but I can’t remember

Random fact: The baseball player that has the most stolen bases also holds the record for most caught.

Aesthetic: I really like Jane Fonda’s 1960s and 1970s aesthetic.

#about me

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oswhys · 5 years

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Dumb AC concept ideas

So this is basically a info dump of ideas for potential AC games and concepts that its been playing with in my head, it's mostly me nerding out about junk (look if I can info dump about Teotihuacan I’ll do it.) like it's ideas that I think would be cool and what id want to see in future installments, even if they aren't likely to happen. It's also written super casually cause I started making this in a burst of inspiration at like 2 am and yet still got distracted from it cause I started going on tangents. So it's a bit of a mess. I’m totally down for bouncing ideas around if anyone has their own concepts.

1920’s jazz age assassin from the beginning of unity and the abstergo employee handbook. "The lives and failures of the most degenerate Americans to ever grace the world's stage - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Stein." please tell me how this doesn't sound cool as shit? Okokokokokokok SO… CARS. like this dude would have a car (and of course the player can earn different cars and looks for their car and junk, including a yellow Duesenberg… like come on if he knew Fitzgerald they gotta let this dude drive Gatsby's car.) I think there can be an argument about him having a rope launcher attachment buuut maybe not??? I mean a car and a rope launcher would be dope as hell. The dude probably bounced between Paris and New York if he's a genuine jazz age junkie like how abstergo describes him and his writer pals. Also it would be cool to meet Picasso… also his base of operations should be a fucking speakeasy, like duh, like where else would a 1920’s assassin camp out? I don’t really have any plot ideas but the concept of a jazz age assassin is cool enough for me to want it this badly.

1970’s-1980’s William Miles in a corporate espionage type game, like i know he had Desmond in 1987 but he was an active filed assassin in 1977 when he was in Moscow so clearly he could've been doing other junk around then. It doesn't have to be him, i just want a 70’d-80’s assassin trying to fuck with abstergo and trying to steal animus research or something. Like Alieen Bock died in 81 and that was at the height of animus research before abstergo started really investing in it cause of Vidic. Like the surrogate initiative and the animus project are… basically the same thing really. Like knowing that Altair and Ezio were not actually related until their bloodlines crossed with Desmond. So with the memory keys being cited as an integral part of the animus project they obviously had a role to play in the surrogate project. Besides the newer games are pretty loosey-goosey with how the DNA and animus junk works now, with the spear having DNA traces or whatever and its corrupted enough that we could… choose things?? (don't ask questions just have fun i guess.) ok i’m over thinking this stuff… but come on… disco!!!!! Please please please have a disco assassination. Like… the idea of an assassin taking out a target at the disco is cool enough for me to want it. ALSO!!! If it goes into the 80’s then please for the love of god a Thriller inspired outfit would be to die for. Like i know getting the exact look would be a trademark nightmare but an inspired look may be able to get away with it. I just want some real corporate espionage type missions while dressed in some brightly colored dorky(cool as shit) 70’s/80’s fashion.

So like… ANYTHING from ancient Andean culture. So The Chimú or the Moche… that would be cool, but I'd settle for Wari and Tiwanaku. I just kinda want to see Chan Chan recreated. And Moche art was so fucking good like… idk man they're making video games that are mostly of ancient cultures now so the possibility of them making something in a more modern setting is slim to none. Like come on they're gonna want to make like idk maybe one more really ancient cultural game so they can still reuse assets again before making a whole new saga. That's just their track record. The problem with doing an ancient andean cultural video game is that there isn't a lot to work with other then our knowledge of the architecture and artistry of the ancient peoples. We have art documentary significant events but there isn't really any historical recordings so there's no significant figures to meet or events to take part in that we know of right now. BUT that also means that hey if Ubisoft wants us to have freedom of choice within the narrative this would be a great opportunity.

Speaking of ancient culturesssss ancient Mexican cultures would be REALLY cool too. Like obviously Mayans culture is the first to come to mind but AC already kinda explored the Mayans so idk maybe a more underrated ancient culture deserves the spotlight. The Zapotec and other civilizations in the Oaxaca. Like this would be really cool since we actually see a rise in raiding and conquest warfare, like theres these bas-relief stone carvings called Las Danzantes which are actually depictions of sacrificial victims, most likely foreign captives. The architecture is also to die for like i’m a sucker for talud-tablero style stuff popping up in ancient Latin america. Also do i gotta say it? BALL COURTS!!! A recreation of the ancient ball game in a video game would be cool as shit my dudes like… please i want this so bad. Like how origins depicted mummification with respect I’d love to see the same kind of loving dedication to the funerary practices of the ancient peoples. (off topic completely but some latin american civilizations had their own forms of mummification) like i wanna see the abandonment of Monte Alban and the later use of it by the Mixtecs. But the most important thing about the celebration of the ancient Zapotec would be the ability to celebrate the modern Zapotec culture, that would just be cool. Ok I’ll finish up this train of ideas with the one i really really really want to see recreated, the original Teotihuacan, before the Aztecs found it. With the pyramids being painted and covered in beautiful carvings and, of course, talud-tablero style architecture. It's basically the biggest ancient city in mesoamerica with hidden cave systems that we are still finding today and so much of the ancient city was built over because it might've been covered up or eroded to the point where no one knew it was there, or because there wasn't really anyone who cared enough to uh, not build on top of historical sites. Modern mexico city is built all around and on top of it (apparently you can see Walmart from the top of the temple of the sun…) so its a huge ancient city that was really colorful and really populated with crazy ancient tunnels underneath the pyramids that we’ve only discovered recently so how fucking cool are those possibilities? Like i just can't get over the idea of some assassin-esque person climbing up red pyramids and sitting next to statues and carvings of Queztalcoatl painted in a turquoise. Ancient farms and city life thriving. From what we know about it, like many other ancient latin american cities it was abandoned at some point, exactly why is unclear though (probably a mix of things cause there wasn't any kings really but more like… neighborhood councils (that's the best guess rn)). It was an actual city though, most archaeologists compare it to modern cities due to its city planning and its huge population. What was left behind was so spectacular that when the Aztecs found it they legit thought it was the city of the gods. This was a real fucking city and I’m crazy about it man i want it in a fucking video game my dudes.

COWBOYS PLEASE. Like i know rdr2 came out so they probably wont do it (for a while at least) and they already have the gold rush assassin so they've dabbled with cowboy stuff but… cowboys… like theres nothing else to say really… Cowboys. Also like i know how AC is pretty much ass melee combat and cowboys means guns and lots of guns and bows and probably rope darts. But… folding swords. That my shitty solution to have melee combat, like syndicate had melee and some gun stuff cause duh, but it was mostly melee. Like you can make the game centered around stealth so a lot more sneaking then combat, kinda like in unity. I have a few ideas for this one but most of them play into my own personal cowboy wish fulfillment fantasy of owning a farm with snakes for the production of venoms and other toxins. It's hard to explain but i kinda really want to see someone with a snake/spider enclosure where they produce venoms for the protag to use. The specific time period i have in mind is like 1870-1888 but it could defo go later. It's just that was peak for a lot of famous gunslingers and robberies. And Mesa Verde was basically rediscovered in the late 1880’s (its kinda weird like it was “officially” discovered in 88 but others saw it before that soooo. Also Montezuma Castle would be cool to visit in game as well. I dont have have a lot of knowledge about mesa verde or Montezuma but i know they're cool af.) the wild west is just ripe with possibility so i have some hope they’ll do one in the future but i don't see it happening anytime within the next couple of years.

Please for the love of god give me a AC3/unity dual sequel. Set in 1798 Egypt before during and maybe a little after the french invasion of Egypt. There would be a ton to work around and justify to get that to happen in universe buuuuut… i want it so badly. I have a shit ton of ideas but im saving all of that for a rainy day.

I wouldn't mind if they actually did stuff with WWI, mostly cause i really like that one WWI assassin from project legacy and Lydia's whole thing was really cool.

Ok I’m kinda on burn out after all that cause I just… its 4 AM and i’m supposed to be writing a paper but I made this big fucking oops.

#Assassin's Creed #assassins creed #assassin’s creed #this is dumb sorry i just... gotta express this shit #my stuff

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shadoesainte · 5 years

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When Top 40 Radio Was Boss In L.A.

Welcome world! My name is Randolph Antony Pulido. As you know, this is my first blog of any kind. My blog will be based on my research that I have done in college. The colleges I attended were Cypress College, Cerritos College, and California State University, Long Beach. The research topics I have researched on had to do with research on the Protest Music of the 1960's in the Folk Song Genre, Disco Music's Return to Retro-"Spect", and the topic I researched on in Communication Studies dealing with the Theory of Self-Disclosure Within Relationship Development Leading Towards Relational Satisfaction. These three topics I have researched on went into developing articles for magazines where all my works have been sent to several magazine companies over the course of two years.

The article based on the "Protest Music of the 1960's" deals with the controversies surrounding the mixed interpretations and misunderstandings of lyrical content in musical messages striving for acceptance in society. These protest folk songs expressed messages that were either listened to, mocked at, or even misunderstood in reference to its music styles in communicating issues towards the mainstream music listening audience. As a musical researcher and former disc jockey, I propose to further elaborating on this topic in future blog postings in an effort to see the public coming to an understanding and belief what the messages entails and what the social and political struggle stood for.

The second article is a retrospect on the Disco music phenomenon of the 1970's. There were changes that was brought on that affected and influenced the music audience, the television and movie industry, the FM radio airwaves, roller disco and areas of this genre from the underground counter-culture into the popular mainstream. In regards to this musical phenomenon, the time has been 40 years since the disco music phenomenon became part of the mainstream culture. This musical genre gained acceptance by the pop music audiences while creating it into a multi-billion dollar industry and influencing a generation of popular music audiences worldwide.

The third article deals with the theory based on my research article "Self-Disclosure Within Relationship Development Leading Towards Relational Satisfaction". This was the topic that was researched on at California State University, Long Beach in the Communication Studies department.

As a researcher on the topic of "self-disclosure", developing relationships becomes the norm when it comes to couples striving towards relational security and success. The length and longevity of relationships is revealed during initial disclosure exploring dimensions of disclosure adequacy and reciprocity in interpersonal relationships. Appropriateness in initial self disclosure is determined in first impressions towards relational trust in developing relationships towards success.

As you can now see, the first four paragraphs of my new blog is a sneak peak of my credentials and past accomplishments in the three articles that I typed and sent to various magazine companies across the country. This particular blog will now deal with a change in niche and topic that I have grown accustomed to having many conversations about over the years with many people who grew up with Los Angeles Radio back in the 1960's and 1970's. This Blog shall be entitled "WHEN TOP-40 RADIO WAS BOSS in LA". This shall cover the various covering the radio stations, disc jockeys, and the television dance shows we all grew up with back in the day. The "BOSS"days of radio probably had to go back as far as 1958 or probably earlier when a radio station called KFWB called itself "Color Radio", and was arguably the first Top-40 radio station to have a strong format playing the latest hits and upcoming new songs of the day. KFWB was the first # 1 Top-40 Station in Los Angeles and pretty much had the whole city to itself as far as listenership was concerned. As the years matured, so did the number of upcoming and competing AM Top-40 Stations that would compete with KFWB and eventually give KFWB a run for the money. The next great radio station to give KFWB some competition and eventually overtake them as the LA ratings champions is Radio 1110 KRLA. This process of KRLA eventually overtaking KFWB in the ratings took a long six years and a lot of tough competition between the two Top-40 heavyweights. As this blog progresses, I shall mention the disc jockeys who worked at the various competing Los Angeles radio stations that entertained radio audiences all over Southern California. There were more radio stations that I shall mention as the years progress chronologically throughout the 1960's and 1970's.

As we fast forward into 1964, the Beatles just made their initial appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, the musical British Invasion just literally invaded America by storm, and the Mod look was the trend that everything had to look British. That was the year ratings champion KFWB started to show its age by slowly decreased listenership in its audience as the audience slowly moved over to KRLA in order to get the latest information on the Beatles, because KRLA was where it was at for the Southern California Beatle connection. Because of this trendsetting transaction that took place at Radio 1110 KRLA, there was a new champion in LA radio as far as the ratings go. KFWB later joined on the Beatle bandwagon. but it was too late for them to make up any deficit they had in the ratings as KRLA climbed its way into Number 1. 1964 was the year of the post Kennedy assasination, and America mourned a tragic loss of its President and political leader. America wanted to become happy again. Across the Atlantic over in Liverpool, England, there were four young lads who called themselves the Beatles. Beatlemania was the trend started by the Beatles all over America and worldwide abroad. Beatlemania was the magic touch that catapulted KRLA into first over KFWB. On KRLA, they played all Beatle singles, album cuts, even their foreign recordings of their songs. It was a Beatle bonanza on KRLA, along with the Top-40 hits and hit previews of songs that had promise for the times. Just as KRLA was soaking in Beatlemania and its Number 1 ratings, another development was around the corner across town. By 1965, KRLA was still the ratings champion, but a new Top-40 station debuted as 93/KHJ. KHJ was originally established in 1922, and had various programming. Before early 1965, it was a MOR formatted station. The Drake-Chenault Company came in and decided along with RKO to turn 93/KHJ into a hit music station to compete with KRLA, and to hopefully beat KRLA in the ratings. 1965 was the year to be Beatle Radio versus Boss Radio. To Be Continued.....

In 1965, KRLA was basking in their Number 1 ratings while KHJ was the new kid on the block about to make some noise at 930 on the AM dial. KRLA disc jockeys Rebel Foster and Bob Eubanks were responsible for bringing the Beatles to Los Angeles, first to the Hollywood Bowl, then to Dodger Stadium. There would be countless contests on KRLA in order to win Beatle concert tickets. The most famous contest was called Beatleball, where three Beatle songs would be played in fragments and the listener would come up with the correct title of these songs. If the contestant identified these songs, they won tickets to the upcoming Beatle concert. While all this Hullabaloo and Beatlemania was going on at KRLA, the other side of town showed KHJ tooting its horn in trying to earn bragging rights for the first time on who was "boss" in Los Angeles radio.KHJ was the newest kid on the block trying to make some noise on the KRLA Beatlemania party, while KFWB was slowly dying in the ratings that later in the decade, they had to switch to an all-news format from their original Top-40 format. KHJ countered KRLA with non-stop contest offering more money than other stations could afford, cut the commercials to the minimum required to be played every hour, cut some of the disc jockey chatter, and present more non-stop music played each hour. Between the years 1965 thru 1967 waged the war between KRLA'S "Beatle Radio" versus KHJ's "Boss Radio".

These two stations would go toe to toe in their battle for radio supremacy in all of Los Angeles and Southern California. KHJ had their connections with the Beatles also, as they played all the Beatle singles and their "Boss Hit-Bound" Goldens. While over at KRLA, you had the Beatle connections with the latest fads, trends and news from KRLA disc jockeys Dave Hull and Bob Eubanks. KRLA not only played Beatle singles, but all cuts from all their albums up to date.

Meanwhile, there was another radio station brewing across town in Burbank as the "little station that could" on 1500 on the AM dial. KBLA was the station that never became a ratings champion because of its weak signal and could not be heard in parts of the Southland; however, the station does deserve a special mention here because their station had first rate air personalities who would work for other LA radio stations throughout the years to come. KBLA came into existence around 1964 when KRLA, KHJ, AND KFWB were going for supremacy. KBLA was the station that did things different with their Top-40 format that the other competing stations did not do before them. It was 1966 when KBLA first experimented with long play album cuts played for an AM radio audience, that was otherwise heard on the FM band. It was former "KHJ Boss Jock Dave Diamond" who started expirmented with playing these long album cuts for the AM audience otherwise unheard of on AM radio Yes, KBLA dared to be different as the little frog in the big pond of Southern California Radio. Because of their weak signal and not being able to be heard in parts of the Southland, KBLA finally signed off in June, 1967. The last disc jockey to be heard on KBLA was none other than than Dave Diamond, who adopted the name of his show "The Diamond Mine" on KBLA. He would carry the "Diamond Mine" handle to the other stations he would later work for in the years to come.

By June, 1967, KBLA had just signed off, the Monterey International Pop Festival took place as like the Woodstock of the Westcoast, and KRLA and KHJ continued the battle for radio supremacy. It was a year away before KFWB would leave the Top-40 ranks in LA radio and become an all-news station. 1967 became the year that KHJ took over sole possession of first place in the ratings. It was Boss Radio that finally showed who was "BOSS" in Los Angeles Radio. With their non-stop contests, concert ticket giveaways, more money and music, it was no wonder KHJ was beating KRLA at its own game. KRLA had sunk into a semi-automated radio station where a live disc jockeys worked part of the schedule and the remaining time was taped broadcasts of the disc jockeys show. The difference was that KHJ had live disc jockeys 24/7 while KRLA divided half disc jockeys and the other half to automation. There is nothing like the spontaneity of live radio that was happening over at KHJ. This is one bloggers opinion. .

When KHJ became a hit music station in 1965, the fast-paced format had an accelerated feel than previous top 40 radio stations across the country, with their less talk and short playlist. the station sounded like it was playing hit after hit continuously. The programming at KHJ in the sixties had the most impact than any other station in America at that time. KHJ showed who was "BOSS" by maintaining strong ratings versus its other competitors in Los Angeles radio. Strong ratings at KHJ was consistant until the late 1970's when music fans began to migrate to the FM band where the improved technology and the sound quality of stereo was superior to that of the mono sound heard on AM radio. By 1980, in spite of their highest rating in years, KHJ regretably switched to a Country format, since that was the musical genre for the times. Another format change came to KHJ when they went back to their Top-40 format combined with traffic reports meshed into their broadcasts with their format called " Car Radio". By February, 1986, the 930 AM call letters of KHJ became KRTH, using the same call letters as the sister station at 101.1 M. 930 AM KRTH became "Smokin' Oldies."

By 1978, John Sebastian, a former KHJ disc jockey, became the program director. It was the time when Sebastian took on the monumental challenge of programming an aging Top-40 AM station despite the fact that the FM band was sweeping the nation and in Los Angeles. The vast percentage of the listening audience was already on the FM dial simply because the sound quality was better in stereo as in contrast to AM which the sound was in mono. During John Sebastian's tenure at KHJ, he was proud to have scrapped up the last great ratings as a Top-40 station in the waning days in KHJ history. KHJ in 1978 was able to beat a laundry list of such heavyweight stations like KTNQ (Ten Q), KFI, KIIS-FM, KIQQ, and even tying the hottest AOR stations in the country, KLOS and KMET. Quite an accomplishment in the last few years as a station that was once a proud Top-40 powerhouse in the country. The last Program Director of KHJ as a Top-40 station was Chuck Martin from 1979-1980. Martin was responsible for bringing in Rick Dees from KHJ's sister station in Memphis, WHBQ. Rick Dees and his Cast of Idiots were known for the parody disco hit "Disco Duck". KHJ went to the Country format ny November, 1980 despite high ratings in their last Top-40 format ratings book.

There were the radio personalities and disc jockeys who shaped 93/KHJ throughout its Top-40 heyday from 1965-1980 that needs to be mentioned. Ones that became famous via radio, television and other facets of media. Those who grew up with the popular television dance shows of the 60's were the DJ's that were from KHJ, KRLA, KFWB, and some from even KBLA. Many grew up on POP Dance Party, Hollywood a-GO-GO, 9th Street West, Boss City, The Lloyd Thaxton Show, Groovy, The Real Don Steele Show just to name a few. I could have sworn there was a dance show hosted by Wink Martindale called POP Dance Party, and there was Shebang hosted by Casey Kasem. A number of the so-called "BOSS JOCKS" had distinguished television careers from Sam Riddle to the Real Don Steele. Even Robert W. M organ had TV exposure hosting Groovy on KHJ-TV Channel 9. Remember back in 1965 when Sam Riddle hosted 9th Street West then later Boss City? These were the local dance shows shown in "BOSS ANGELES" back in the day.

Nationally on network television, KRLA alum Jimmy O'Neill hosted the television musical dance show SHINDIG on ABC-TV. Jimmy O'Neill was the first disc jockey to open up the mic at 1110 KRLA. Shindig was a musical dance party that described the typical 60's dance show accompanied with musical artists and celebrities and a whole lot of dancing. Radio DJ's hosting their own local TV dance show enhanced the popularity of the radio personalities, especially when it came to not only spinning the Top-40 hits of the day, but in interviewing musical artists and entertainment celebrities in the world of folm, radio, and television. Another KRLA alum Bob Eubanks used radio as a springboard to parlay his career into television as the host of the long running game show "The Newlywed Game" along with dozens of other game shows he would host throughout his illustrious television career. Some of us may remember that radio in Los Angeles also provided Bob Eubanks the medium to promote and bring the Beatles to the Southland for their concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and Dodger Stadium. Bob Eubanks was "THE MAN" who brought the Beatles to Los Angeles. All LA Beatlemaniacs can be grateful and owe a debt of gratitude to Bob Eubanks.

Los Angeles radio provided local Angelenos and national audiences with voiceovers that were heard over the years through radio and television commercials, movies and radio and TV station ID's. The most recognizable voice of note has to be another KRLA alum, and that is Casey Kasem. From counting down the nation's musical Top-40 to announcing commercials, Casey Kasem had to be arguably the hardest working radio pitchman in the business. His American Top-40 Radio Shows can be rebroadcasted throughout the country on many radio stations that carry his former syndicatedradio show. Early in his career, Casey Kasem had television exposure hosting the TV dance show SHEBANG on KTLA-TV Channel 5. That show marked the early television exposure that introduced Casey Kasem to Los Angeles audiences.

The Golden Age of Radio in Los Angeles back in the 60's showed the medium for radio personalities as a springboard toward potential television exposure resulting from increased popularity within each radio personality. The popularity of TV dance shows were in abundance back in the day in contrast to today which is pretty much extinct in LA, i hate to say. The local TV dance shows springing from radio shows are no longer the norm in society today unfortunately. That goes for just about most major cities across the country. Hopefully, a few cities may tape a few local TV dance shows spawning from radio stations from that respective city depending on the local television station. It seemed TV dance shows were the ones to watch in the afternoon or weekends when all the teenagers were all watching their favorite radio personalities on television doing their thing hosting the show while being part of the young audience.

As a young child, yours truly, fantasized and pretended to host a mock dance show during parties in the backyard of our home. I would literally style my hair like the dance show host of the day, be it either a Sam Riddle,or Dick Clark. I would take a tablespoon and pretended it was a microphone. I would comb my hair every ten minutes using my father's Brylcream. They once said a "little dab will do you", to me as a kid, it was a "Big Glop". I guess it was my dream as a kid to be the next Lloyd Thaxton, Don Cornelius, or even Dick Clark.

Maybe that is why, yours truly, studied, and majored in Communication Studies. The intent was to get into radio Broadcasting, which I accomplished at the community college level at both Cypress and Cerritos College respectively. Today, I'm a writer of the articles I've mentioned earlier in this blog and the continuing saga of "When Top-40 Radio Was Boss in LA". The decades of the 1960's and 1970's featured the competitive era in the wars between the Top-40 radio station giants. There were dozens of stations to choose from in the Los Angeles market alone. For any aspiring radio broadcaster, most gained their experience by announcing in the smaller markets across the country. Many would strive for the goal to make it to the "Big Time", that is LA radio. The majority of aspiring disc jockeys across the country wanted to make it to BOSS RADIO- 93/KHJ, the top radio station in the country. KHJ was the ultimate radio goal for any disc jockey to have on his or her resume. It was those distinct KHJ microphones that made every disc jockey sound powerful and unique on the air, giving that "Boss Jock" sound.

My personal favorite "Boss Jock" type sounding voice has to be Charlie Van Dyke, since his voice is heard all over the country in various TV and radio station ID's and is one of the premier voiceovers with his deep and resonate voice. That is the voice I aspire to have, although mine can come close. Charlie Van Dyke was a former 93/KHJ disc jockey and station program director who guided the station to its highest ratings in the history of KHJ during the 1975-76 years. Those kind of ratings were the ones that made KHJ the Top-40 powerhouse across the country which seemed to be an unbeatable combination at the time. That was the time when KHJ had its final number one ratings book in 1976 with a jock lineup that included Charlie Van Dyke, Mark Elliot, Bobby Ocean, Machine Gun Kelly, Dave Sebastian Williams, Dr. John Leader and Beau Weaver (Weekends). Afterwards, the PD chair over at KHJ seemed to have broken continuity after the Charlie Van Dyke PD regime. After 1976, every year, KHJ had a new program director until 1980 under KHJ's Top-40 format. Besides the change in format to Country, KHJ's audience migrated to the FM band where the physical sound of music was better in FM stereo.

It should be noted that Chuck Martin, the last PD of Top-40 KHJ opened up a new format at the new K-WEST 106 (KWST), in 1981, which sounded like a continuation of KHJ in FM stereo. Complete with late 70's sounding KHJ type jingles and the "Boss Jock" announcing approach, it was no wonder that K-WEST 106 literally brought KHJ from the dead for a brief year and a half. Ratings wise, K-WEST 106 could not muster enough ratings to overtake other competing stations in LA. In spite of Chuck Martin's brave attempt at raising KHJ "from the dead" sort of speak, K-WEST 106 lasted until the summer of 1982. Simply put, Rick Dees over at KIIS-FM was running away with the Top-40 competition during the 1981-82 season. By that time, K-WEST PD Chuck Martin was no longer able to land Rick Dees like he did during the KHJ days. Many say that the power of a disc jockey's popularity plays a big role in a station's top rating. It may have been a posability that Rick Dees would have made a difference in K-WEST's fortunes, but unfortunately that was not the case.

There were other competing AM Top-40 stations that competed strongly against the competition, being KHJ and KRLA. One station that deserves a special mention is KTNQ (The New Ten-Q) at 1020 on the AM dial. During the late 70's, KTNQ became a legendary Top-40 station because of the top air talent that worked during the era when most listeners migrated to the FM band for better sound quality. In 1977, KTNQ made movie history when it was the featured radio station in the Ron Howard film Grand Theft Auto. During the era of the New Ten-Q, the station not only played the current hits, but were not afraid to mix it up with up-and-coming artists that KHJ and KRLA simply avoided playing. The musical playlist included some punk rock and emerging radio talent, along with radio veteran The Real Don Steele, which made the station memorable. Their contests of money giveaways and fast paced jingles made the station addicting for the first time listener of the station. Unfortunately, by July 31, 1979, KTNQ was purchased by Julio, Elias and Liberman and switched the format to Spanish. The call letters would remain the same through decades of ownership changes.

Another AM Top-40 station that emerged south of the border from Tijuana, Mexico was XETRA, better known as the " Mighty 690". The station was very powerful that it could be heard across Western America way past 50,000 watts. The "Mighty 690" was another KHJ offspring, since it included KHJ's similar radio jingles, only identifying the station as "The Mighty 690". The station was sure reminiscent of 93/KHJ, since their jingles were similar and their "Boss Jock" sound had the same quality the way the announcing was approached on AM radio. Like many competitors of Top-40 radio, "The Mighty 690" had a short life span of its own for over four years. By 1984, The Mighty 690 became "69 XTRA GOLD". Their format focused on oldies from the 60's and 70's.

Top-40 radio not only came out of the Los Angeles area, but as we look to Orange County, radio flourished in 1190 AM KEZY in Anaheim, California. KEZY was known as "The Mighty 1190," making its on-air launch on May 18, 1959. KEZY was one of the choices of AM Top-40 stations to choose from during the radio wars of the 60's and 70's. During the late 60's, the station played a mix of pop and middle of the road music, then shifted the format to Top-40 to take on the LA radio giants. KEZY was run under program director Arnie McClatchey from 1967 until 1974 when the Top-40 format continued under the new PD Mark Denis in 1975. By 1979, there was a change in format to Heavy Metal to probably compete with the FM album rock stations playing their dose of heavy metal at that time. That lasted until 1982 when KEZY switched format again, this time to a pop/oldies format. Obviously music audiences shifted to the FM band for better sound quality and AM radio became a staple for talk radio. In March, 1983, KEZY switched to an all-news station and became KNWZ. Due to the station's low ratings with their all-news format, by February, 1984 switched back to the KEZY call letters with a Top-40 music format. That lasted until April 2, 1985 when KEZY became KPZE (K-Praise) playing religious music. By February, 1989, the call letters became KORG, better known as K-0range, which broadcasted a different variety of formats over the years. Today, the 1190 frequency airs a Korean gospel format under the KGBN call letters.

Another AM radio station that competed well with other Top-40 stations in LA came out of the 1580 dial. That station is KDAY, Santa Monica. 1580 KDAY had a long history of delivering Top-40 pop hits and R&B Soul Music as well. The station started in 1968 as a Soul?R&B station as a competitor to another soul station, AM 1230 KGFJ. KDAY briefly took a shot at the Top-40 format for a few years to compete with the LA Top-40 heavyweights. When KDAY shifted its format to AOR (album oriented rock) their biggest asset was bringing in Wolfman Jack to American radio airwaves from the border radio he was broadcasting in Mexico. The KDAY gig for Wolfman Jack led to a bigger and brighter future for this trendsetter once known as Bob Smith. His KDAY on-air live radio show 6 nights a week led to his hosting the Midnight Special on NBC and being casted in the movie American Graffiti. By 1974, KDAY returned back to its original Soul/R&B roots while continuing its brave competitive battle with the other top LA stations. By the 1980's, KDAY shifted its format to Urban Contemporary, emphasizing its airplay to early rap and hip-hop artists. The KDAY call letters disappeared by the 1990's when the 1580 frequency became KBLA and shifted to business talk radio. By September, 2004, the KDAY call letters resurfaced at 93.5 FM, licensed to Redondo Beach, California.

Beginning in 1936, one of the oldest stations in Los Angeles is the first radio station to broadcast a 24-hour schedule on a regular basis. By 1954, KGFJ was that station to bill itself as "the original 24-hour station." At 1230 on the AM dial, KGFJ played a mix of news and orchestral music in the daytime, and R&B music at night. The mid-1960's was when KGFJ adopted their trademark Soul/R&B format full time around the clock under the ownership of East West Broadcasting Inc. As an adolescent listening to Soul/R&B music on KGFJ, I remember how KGFJ would come in clear during the daytime hours. The nighttime hours were a different story as far as listenership goes. In parts of the Southland at night, KGFJ was hard to get that clear signal due to television interference in the airwaves. As always, their anagram stood for "Keeping Good Folks Joyful." That is exactly what KGFJ did throughout the decades. One of the more memorable personalities at KGFJ was Hunter Hancock, where listeners loved to go "Hunting with Hunter." Hunter Hancock was one of the first white disc jockeys to broadcast rhythm and blues music to black and white audiences in America. KGFJ always had a history of intergrating its radio station, especially in the wake of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. Always a positive in living up to its moniker of "Keeping Good Folks Joyful," KGFJ has lived up to that tradition in broadcasting and appealing to audiences of all races. Whether the disc jockeys were black or white, all of them were knowlegable about the Soul/Rhythm&Blues music and its artists played on KGFJ.

Radio was made famous south of the border beyond Southern California across all of Western America from Rosarito, Baja California. XPRS was the station that was made famous by the legendary Wolfman Jack. XEPRS, the official call leters to the station, originally began as XERB in the late 1930's. By 1965, Robert Smith aka Wolfman Jack started recording his own shows and selling commercial time on XERB while running the station from his home in Minneapolis. XERB was earning most of its income from their money machine, Wolfman Jack, who profited the station by selling 15-30 programming blocks of commercial airtime on the station to many religious organizations. By the early 70's, the laws caught up with XERB and were passed in Mexico preventing religious groups from purchasing radio air time. As the situation came to a brew, the revenue and profits finally dried up and the Mexican owners eventually took ownership of the station changing the call letters to XEPRS in 1971. It was by that time the station billed itself as "The Soul Express." Wolfman Jack would remain with "1090 Soul Express" until 1972. Ironically after Wolfman left XEPRS, Mexico would reverse its laws banning religious entities from radio broadcasting and selling blocks of commercial airtime. Wolfman Jack would be on his way to American radio airwaves and his fortunes would take a big turnaround in years to come.

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Ethel Gabriel, a Rare Woman in the Record World, Dies at 99 Ethel Gabriel, who in more than 40 years at RCA Victor is thought to have produced thousands of records, many at a time when almost no women were doing that work at major labels, died on March 23 in Rochester, N.Y. She was 99. Her nephew, Ed Mauro, her closest living relative, confirmed her death. Ms. Gabriel began working at RCA’s plant in Camden, N.J., in 1940 while a student at Temple University in Philadelphia. One of her early jobs was as a record tester — she would pull one in every 500 records and listen to it for manufacturing imperfections. “If it was a hit,” she told The Pocono Record of Pennsylvania in 2007, “I got to know every note because I had to play it over and over and over.” She also had a music background — she played trombone and had her own dance band in the 1930s and early ’40s — and her skill set earned her more and more responsibility, as well as the occasional role in shaping music history. She said she was on hand at the 1955 meeting in which the RCA executive Stephen Sholes signed Elvis Presley, who had been with Sun Records. She had a hand in “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” the 1955 instrumental hit by Pérez Prado that helped ignite a mambo craze in the United States. She may have produced or co-produced the album that contained that tune, but April Tucker, lead researcher on a documentary being made about Ms. Gabriel, said details on the early part of her career were hazy. Ms. Gabriel often said that she had produced some 2,500 records. Ms. Tucker said officials at Sony, which now holds RCA’s archives, had told her that the number may actually be higher, since contributions were not always credited. In any case, by the late 1950s Ms. Gabriel was in charge of RCA Camden Records, the company’s budget line, and was earning producer credits, something she continued to do into the 1980s. In 1959 she began the “Living Strings” series of easy-listening albums, consisting of orchestral renditions of popular and classical tunes (“Living Strings Play Music of the Sea,” “Living Strings Play Music for Romance” and many more), most of which were released on Camden. The line soon branched out into “Living Voices,” “Living Guitars” and other subsets and became a big profit-generator for RCA — which was not, Ms. Gabriel said, what the boss expected when he put her in charge of Camden, a struggling label at the time. “I’m sure he thought it was a way to get rid of me,” she told The Express-Times of Easton, Pa., in 1992 (too diplomatic to name the boss). “Well, I made a multimillion-dollar line out of it, conceived, programmed and produced the entire thing.” There were other profitable series as well. Ms. Gabriel was particularly good at repackaging material from the RCA archives into albums that sold anew, as she did in the “Pure Gold” series. In 1983 she shared a Grammy Award for best historical album for “The Tommy Dorsey-Frank Sinatra Sessions” By the time she left RCA in 1984, she was a vice president. Yet, unlike the top male record executives of the era, she rarely made headlines. Ms. Tucker, an audio engineer, said she had never heard of Ms. Gabriel until one day she went searching to see if she could find out who the first female audio engineer was. She brought Ms. Gabriel to the attention of Sound Girls, an organization that promotes women in the audio field, and soon Caroline Losneck and Christoph Gelfand, documentary filmmakers, were at work on “Living Sound,” a film about her. Ms. Losneck, in a phone interview, said they had been hoping to complete the documentary by Ms. Gabriel’s 100th birthday this November. Ms. Losneck said Ms. Gabriel had survived in a tough business through productivity and competence. “She knew who to call when she needed an organist,” she said. “She knew how to manage the budget. All that gave her a measure of control.” Many of the records Ms. Gabriel made fit into a category often marginalized as elevator music. “It’s easy to look back on that music now and say it was kind of cheesy,” Ms. Losneck said, “but back then it was part of the cultural landscape.” Toward the end of her career, as more women began entering the field, Ms. Gabriel was both an example and a mentor. Nancy Jeffries, who went to work in RCA’s artists-and-repertoire department in 1974 and had earlier sung with the band the Insect Trust, was one of those who learned from her. “Being a woman and having ambition at a record company in those days was something that just didn’t compute with most of the male executive staff, but I was fortunate enough to land in the A&R department at RCA Records, where Ethel was established as a force to be reckoned with,” Ms. Jeffries, who went on to executive positions at RCA, Elektra and other record companies, said by email. “She had developed a couple of deals that, while they weren’t particularly ‘hip,’ generated a lot of income and financed some of the more speculative workings of the department. Lesson one: Make money for the company and they will leave you be.” Mr. Mauro summarized his aunt’s career simply: “She was successful early on when the playing field wasn’t level.” Ms. Gabriel, interviewed by The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1983, had a succinct explanation of her ability to thrive in a man’s world. “I didn’t know I was somewhere I shouldn’t be,” she said. Ethel Nagy was born on Nov. 16, 1921, in Milmont Park, Pa., near Philadelphia. Her father, Charles, who died when she was a teenager, was a machinist, and her mother, Margaret (Horvath) Nagy, took up ceramic sculpture later in life. Ms. Gabriel studied trombone in her youth and formed a band, En (her initials) and Her Royal Men, that played in the Philadelphia area. While at Temple she began working at RCA in nearby Camden putting labels on records and packed them before advancing to record tester. After graduating in 1943, Ms. Gabriel continued her studies at Columbia University and worked at RCA’s offices in New York, including as secretary to Herman Diaz Jr., who led RCA’s Latin division. She spent a lot of time listening in on studio sessions, and by the mid-1950s trade publications were referring to her as an “RCA Victor executive.” In 1958 she married Gus Gabriel, who was in music publishing. The couple counted Frank Sinatra as a friend. In a 2011 interview with The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, she said that in 1973, when her husband was dying in a hospital, she walked into his room one day and found his nurses in a tizzy. “I asked, ‘What’s wrong?’” she recalled. “They said, ‘Oh, everybody got autographed pictures from Sinatra!’” Ms. Jeffries said that Ms. Gabriel had always mentored the women at the company no matter where they were on the corporate ladder. But her helping hand was extended to men, too, as the producer Warren Schatz found out when he joined RCA in the mid-1970s, as the disco wave was building. He had an idea for an album that might catch that wave, he said, and she came up with $6,000 to get it made. It was by the Brothers and included a song, “Are You Ready for This,” that became a dance-floor staple. “So Ethel basically started my life off at RCA,” Mr. Schatz said in a phone interview. Soon he was vice president of A&R, and she was reporting to him. “Whatever she wanted to do, I would just say yes to,” he said. “She was so calm, and so knowledgeable, and so self-sufficient.” Ms. Gabriel left RCA in 1984, in part, she said, at the urging of Robert B. Anderson, a former U.S. treasury secretary, who persuaded her to turn over to him her retirement package — more than $250,000 — so that he could invest it in the hope that the proceeds would finance future music ventures. The money disappeared, and Mr. Anderson, who died in 1989, was later convicted of tax evasion. Ms. Gabriel lived in the Poconos for a number of years before moving to a care center in Rochester to be near Mr. Mauro and his family. As she died at a hospital there, Mr. Mauro said, the staff had Sinatra songs playing in her room. Source link Orbem News #Dies #Ethel #Gabriel #rare #record #Woman #World

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onestowatch · 3 years

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The Elevator Encounter That Sparked a New Music Genre

A painting is a collaboration of three things: the canvas, the creators, and the acrylics. If the music industry is a painting, then Black musicians are all three. In honor of Black History Month, we are exploring the legacy of black ingenuity through the decades, highlighting four music pioneers: Mahalia Jackson, The Funk Brothers, Gamble and Huff, and Frankie Knuckles.

Whether you arrive by sheer chance or focused premeditation, one moment can change your life forever. This was the case for Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff.

It was 1962 in Philadelphia, in an elevator in the Schubert Theatre that Gamble and Huff met for the very first time. Little did they know that this chance encounter would form the basis for one of the most dominant pop and soul producing duos of the early 70s, pave the way for disco, and even shape the early sound of Michael Jackson.

Kenny Gamble was born in Philadelphia where he grew up surrounded by music, recording his first songs at arcade recording booths, delivering coffees for DJs, and even running his own record store before becoming the lead singer of Kenny Gamble and the Romeos. Meanwhile, Leon Huff was born in Camden, New Jersey where he was introduced to the piano by his mother, who played in church. He was in multiple “doo-wop” groups before landing the opportunity to work as a session pianist in New York for top writers and producers.

Upon creating together for the first time, Huff told Music Radar, "The chemistry was spontaneous and magical. Five, six songs came to us in no time at all. We didn’t have to think about what we were doing, we just did it…we each knew how to complement the other guy. I played piano and had a good sense of music. Gamble played basic guitar, but he had a terrific way with words and themes.”

After discovering they “formed a great team” and shared an identical dream, the two linked up to created a production company, which was set up it in the same building they met. They wrote songs about love, heartbreak, social conscience and family survival. Their first song to hit the top five was The Soul Survivors’ biggest hit, “Expressway To Your Heart,” effectively putting them on the expressway to becoming one of the most popular songwriter-producers of the late 1960s.

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With Jerry Ross, they co-wrote Dee Dee Warwick’s, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” which was covered by both The Supremes and Temptations. With Jerry Butler, they created “Only The Strong Survive,” which was covered by Elvis Presley. As Huff describes it, “That was a big plus for us…Because as a writer, especially a black writer, when a guy like Elvis Presley records one of your songs, that's got to bring you up a little bit.”

In 1971, Gamble and Huff formed Philadelphia International Records, with artists like The O'Jays, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, Billy Paul, Teddy Pendergrass, and The Three Degrees. The duo had over 45 top 10 hits and over 40 #1s, like the O’Jays “Love Train” and “Backstabbers,” and Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs. Jones.” They released on average 13 albums a year. PIR became the second largest black owned label behind Motown and ultimately gained more dominance in the 1970s.

In 1974, the label’s house band, MFBS (“Mother Father Brother Sister”) hit #1 with the song “T.S.O.P" (The Sound of Philadelphia), which was later used as the theme song for Soul Train. The song’s title refers to Gamble and Huff’s work, which was identified as “Philly Soul,” a genre marked by the intersection of soul serenades, pop melodies, and a rhythm section grounded in funk. James Brown’s trombonist, put it best in describing the sound as "putting the bow tie on funk.” Along with Bunny Sigler, Gamble and Huff are credited for not only creating Philly Soul, but also for setting the stage for disco.

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Their legacy didn’t stop there. Gamble and Huff continued their work, producing The Jacksons’ first two albums and writing for Aretha Franklin. In 1979, Gamble and Dyana Williams established June as Black Music Month to “promote and protect black music,” as Gamble told WBLS Radio in 2014. It not only aligns with Juneteenth but was also a reminder that “when you start to think about the music, you think about our culture.”

#gamble and huff #black history month #soul #funk #disco #the jacksons

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back-and-totheleft · 3 years

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Stone, cold sober

Re-telling the story of September 11 with a measured hand and lightness of touch hithertoo unhinted at, director Oliver Stone proves a more serious thinker than his paranoia-soaked canon would suggest. Here, he explains how his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam framed his outlook on life and art.

The introductory handshake comes with an additional squeeze of the wrist and a roguish smile.

“You’re Irish. I can tell.”

No. Your correspondent hasn’t been transported back to a disco in the 1970s. Instead, she’s in New York’s Regency Hotel meeting Oliver Stone. That twinkling opening gambit has brought about a Proustian rush of wayward tabloid headlines. I remember that idiotic book on the making of Natural Born Killers, with its scurrilous tales of loose ladies, psilocybin mushrooms and cocaine abuse. I recall that story about the director commandeering the Warners corporate jet to do peyote in the Mexican desert while making The Doors. I remember too how the set of Alexander reputedly became an extravagant saturnalia. Sure enough, I can effortlessly picture this man partying down with Colin Farrell, a duel study in swaggering Dionysian charm.

Though Stone insists his appetite for debauchery has been greatly exaggerated, he’s always owned up to unruly habits. Yes, he does have a fondness for marijuana dating back to time spent on the frontline in Vietnam. He has also ‘expanded his consciousness’ with the occasional psychedelic. But driving offences from last year and 1999 have, he claims, more to do with pre-diabetic medication unwisely knocked back with alcohol than exotic marching powders.

Still, it’s an impressively scandalous record for a man of his years. Stone is 60 now, though you’d say he were a decade younger if you suddenly spied him on the street. In person he’s imperturbably casual, far more relaxed than the ‘madman’ headlines might lead one to suppose. His glowing tan is offset by a bright yellow polo shirt and he sits way, way back in his chair holding your gaze all the while.

Accommodating and easy in his manner, you’d be hard-pressed to identify this individual as Oliver Stone – Controversial Filmmaker. That is, nevertheless, to whom we speak. Stone boasts a fearsomely uncompromising reputation as a screenwriter and director. Throughout the ‘80s when the post-classical frisson of counter-cultural Hollywood had fizzled and poachers died off or turned gamekeeper, only Stone kept the faith, authoring politically conscious cinema at a time when the Academy was honouring Driving Miss Daisy.

His screenplay for rapper’s favourite Scarface set the frenzied pace and ultra-violent tone that would later characterise his visual style. But Stone was too engaged with the world to become the new Brian De Palma. Salvador, his first major film as director, probed the gulf between the ideals of American foreign policy and realpolitik. Platoon, Wall Street, JFK and Nixon would further confirm his interest in micro and macro conspiracies and establish him as an outlaw auteur.

Though he’s now rueful about being stereotyped or “pinned like a butterfly”, he was a good sport about it, appearing as a conspiracy nut in Dave and Wild Palms.

“You know, I’ve never really regarded myself as a political filmmaker”, he tells me. “I consider myself a dramatist. I always get involved with people more than the politics. With the movie JFK, for example, the book by Jim Garrison had a lot of theory. I was more interested in making him part of that story. And Oswald fascinated me. If you watch that film it is really a trail of people played by great actors. Nixon, despite the whiff of conspiracy, is truly a psychological portrait of a man. Many people in the right wing thought it would be a hatchet job but I really made him apathetic. I refuse to be pigeon holed. I am not a political guy. I don’t go to rallies. I am not an activist. I don’t have the time because I’m busy being a writer.”

He may deny the role of agitator, but his opinions, both off and onscreen suggest otherwise. His most recent work in the documentary sector includes Persona Non Grata, an examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and two features about Cuban president Fidel Castro, Comandante and Looking for Fidel. (Stone has described himself as a friend and an admirer.)

He has, before now, referred to the events of September 11th as a ‘revolt’ and expressed an interest in the work of Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism advisor whose book Against All Enemies accuses the Bush administration of ignoring the al-Qaeda threat, then linking the group to Iraq, contrary to all evidence.

“We Vietnam vets, in particular, found it very difficult”, says Stone. “We had the backing of the world in Afghanistan. We were rounding up the main suspects. Then we go into Iraq with no support. Militarily, it was stupid. It was overreaching. And any American who travels can tell you how the rest of the world is resentful. What the hell are we doing in Iraq when the enemy was 4000 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan?”

When it was announced last summer that Stone would direct World Trade Centre, a film focusing on ‘first response’ police officers trapped by the Twin Towers collapse, many eyebrows were raised. “To allow this poisoned and deranged mind… (to recreate 9/11) in the likeness of his vile fantasies is beyond obscene,” raged one conservative commentator. But World Trade Center, it transpires, is Stone’s least obvious work even by his own consistently innovative standards. The towers do not fall back and to the left. There is no grand plot or secret ruling elite. “This is not a political film in any sense”, insists Stone. “It harks back to Platoon in that respect. In Vietnam, we didn’t sit around talking about LBJ. And the truth is, I don’t think we can say for sure what happened during 9/11. We spent more investigating Bill Clinton’s blowjobs than the destruction of the World Trade Centre. Whatever was going on in the background, if you look at the forest through the trees, it seems to me that what has happened since is far worse than what happened that day. So the politics and conspiracies behind that day, whatever they may be, are not as relevant as where we are now.” Completely eschewing polemic, the movie instead offers a heartfelt portrait of ordinary fellows on the front line. Stone’s traditional constituency are, needless to say, horrified, and assorted doublespeak statements have been issued attacking World Trade Center as “non-conspiratorial lies.”

John Conner, a leading voice in the Christian branch of the 9/11 Truth Movement, went so far as to ask the following– “Was Stone used by the Illuminati as an unknowing pawn to whitewash the 9/11 conspiracy theories to the masses? Was he approached with the project and coerced into a commitment to occupy his time in attempts to thwart any other 9/11 angle from being used? Is Stone a pawn in the game? Perhaps Stone didn’t know at the time, and found out too late.”

Oddly, however, like Paul Greengrass’ United 93, Stone’s film has found champions from either end of America’s bipolar political spectrum, often the same folks who had previously dismissed him as a pinko malcontent. L. Brent Bozell III, the president of the conservative Media Research Center and founder of the Parents Television Council — a latter day Mary Whitehouse in trousers — called it “a masterpiece” and sent an e-mail message to 400,000 people saying, “Go see this film.” Cal Thomas, the right-wing syndicated columnist and contributor to The Last Word, wrote that it was “one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see.”

“I just felt this was a great story dying to be told,” explains Stone. “It may not be like anything I have done before, but Heaven And Earth wasn’t like anything I had done before. Nor was U Turn or Natural Born Killers. I do jump around and each film is a different style. This isn’t like United 93 which was a brilliant piece of vérité. This is more like a classic John Ford, William Wyler or even Frank Capra film. Against tremendous odds this rescue takes place. This has the traditional Hollywood tropes of emotional connection to four main characters from the working class.

"I would love to bring Hollywood back to that, making films where people actually work for a living, not sit around making things happen with a remote control like that Adam Sandler film. Born On The Fourth Of July was blue-collar. So was Any Given Sunday. Although it’s about elite athletes, it was about work. They had to punish their bodies for their lifestyle.”

A marriage of disaster movie and combat zone drama, World Trade Centre follows Port Authority officers Sergeant John Mc Loughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) on a doomed rescue mission into the Twin Towers. On September 12th, they were among the last survivors to be pulled from the rubble. Though the original script by newcomer Andrea Berloff read like a relocation of Beckett’s Endgame, Stone has widened the remit to include the rescuers and the anxious wives at home. As a director noted for working within a decidedly masculine milieu, was it a challenge to represent domesticity, I wonder.

“Oh yes,” he admits. “That was a big challenge. On the surface this is a very simple story of catastrophe and rescue and heroism. But if you go beyond the cliché it is very fresh. Everything the rescuers did was dangerous. We assume rescues just happen, but it is hard work. These men really crawled into places where they thought they would die. It took hours to get them out. I tried to show some of that digging. But an even bigger cliché in these circumstances is the waiting housewife. Actually, it goes further than that. Each of these women died that day. They sit there as the hours pass and the only news is no survivors. You knew no one would come out of there. The buildings were so pancaked. So it was like death for them. I wanted to portray that. I wanted them smelling the sheets from the previous night where they had slept. Again it’s a cliché but the idea was to take the cliché and make it fresh.”

Another subplot concentrates on Staff Sergeant Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon) a Christian marine in Wilton, Connecticut, who watches events on TV and tells his colleagues that America is now at war. Once he decides that God wants him to go to New York he heads to Ground Zero with a flashlight and eventually hears the two cops in the debris. A postscript before the final credits informs us that Kearns has since served two tours of duty in Iraq.

“It’s a remarkable and weird story,” Stone admits. “But that’s how it happened. I also think Kearns represents a significant sector of the American population when he says, ‘We’re going to need some good men to avenge this’. For many people, revenge was their first thought.”

And there you have it. For all the pigeonholing as a conspiracy theorist, facts are of paramount importance to Stone. He spent two-and-a-half years researching JFK. He spent three years immersed in Persian history for the much-maligned Alexander. It was a labour of love and the ill-tempered critical reception seems to have cut to the quick.

“I’m a historical dramatist,” he explains. “I wasn’t a Kennedy assassination junkie at the time, nor was I a 9/11 junkie. But I love the past. It hurts when I read someone claiming that I’ve fabricated something. But then you make a film like Alexander and scholars say you have it right, but critics say it’s all wrong.”

Similarly, while Stone has been at pains to represent those involved in the World Trade Centre disaster as faithfully as possible, he has not been able to quell dissent completely. The widow of Dominick Pezzulo – a cop portrayed in the film - has accused Jimeno and McLoughlin of cashing in on the tragedy by selling their story to Paramount. There have also been mutterings about the film being too soon.

“I know,” nods Stone. “But I honestly think it is the right time. The Killing Fields was made five years after those events in Cambodia. During World War II, Hollywood made propaganda films. Casablanca, made in 1941, takes a very anti Nazi position even before we declared war. The Vietnam movies took longer to make, but life goes faster now. I would say to you the consequences of 9/11 are so bad that we better look back now and understand what happened on that day. When you leave it too long, events become mythologized. Watching Pearl Harbor, you’d think we won that battle. This is the epicentre of 9/11, but there are many stories that still need to be told.”

Though personal and more modest in scope than the $63 million budget might suggest, the director does hope that his intense focus on McLoughlin and Jimeno has a wider relevance.

“They did not have a clue as to what was happening,” he says. “They knew it was a terrorist attack but there was no discussion of politics. They’re cops. They are far more likely to talk about pop culture, whether it is Starsky And Hutch or GI Jane. It wasn’t Bergman down in that hole.

So I am not claiming this movie will answer all the questions. But let’s say you go to a psychiatrist and all your life you have been repressed because you were raped when you where 14. Perhaps the psychiatrist says, ‘Let’s go back to that day’. They make you remember that day and it changes all the defences you had built up. So perhaps by undoing the screw, the secret at the beginning, you can take some of the armour off.”

The events of 9/11 may be difficult to disentangle, but no more so than the filmmaker himself. Born in New York City to a Jewish father and Catholic mother, William Oliver Stone was raised Episcopalian by way of compromise. His parents divorced after his father, a conservative Republican, conducted various extra-marital affairs with family friends. Young Oliver spent much of his subsequent childhood in splendid isolation between private schools and five star hotels - ‘a cartoonish Little Lord Fauntleroy’ by his own account.

Still, Stone needs neither bullfighting nor marlin fishing to confirm his Hemingwayesque credentials as an artist. He attended Yale and dropped out twice before enlisting to fight as an Infantryman in Vietnam. Mixing with the lower orders and smoking pot soon transformed the spoiled youngster into a military hero. He was wounded twice in action and received the Bronze Star with ”V” device signifying valor for “extraordinary acts of courage under fire,” and the Purple Heart with one Oak Leaf Cluster.

Soon after the war, he was arrested at the US-Mexico border for possession of marijuana. His father bailed him out but the experience served to radicalise him. Later, meeting understandably embittered veterans such as Ron Kovic pushed Stone further to the left.

He has, however, wooed Hollywood despite the often overtly political nature of his films. He won his first Academy Award as the screenwriter of Midnight Express and has been further honoured for directing Platoon and Born On The Fourth Of July.

Now, after World Trade Centre, has attention and lavish praise from the likes of Bill O’Reilly turned his head? Not bloody likely.

“People are people,” he tells me. “I think people have to take care of themselves and their families first. But there are bigger questions now. The ecological movement want us to clean up, but how can that work when there is always the issue of jobs? It’s a very selfish world and avarice triumphs over the green imperative. After Katrina, there was a tremendous outpouring of help. That was also true when the tsunami hit Indonesia. People are very generous in America and there are some very fine Americans. Unfortunately, a lot of them don’t have passports. Most of them don’t know where Iraq is. And a lot think al Qaeda and Iraq are the same thing. There’s a problem with the education levels. American television keeps people trapped. The news is very superficial and mostly filled with advertisements and rapes and murders. If you travel in the country and you stay in the smaller places you find very limited resources. If America spent the same amount of money as we spend on embassies and CIA stations around the world on our major cities with the goal of helping bring those cities to a way of life that was democratic and economically viable, we would have a tremendous success in this country. Instead, we have an international presence and I don’t know if it is worth it. All we are doing is promoting a system which is now suspect all over the world. We have broken our constitution repeatedly since 2001.”

He smiles cynically.

“I don’t think pictures of soldiers pointing their naked dicks in Abu Ghraib has helped us at a local level either.”

He’s still got it.

-Tara Brady, “Stone cold sober,” HotPress, Sept 19 2006 [x]

#oliver stone #World Trade Center #hotpress #dui #arrests #iraq #Iraq War

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