THE BIRDS, THE BEES & THE MONKEES @ 55

This month marks the 55th anniversary of the release of The Monkees fifth studio album, The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, which was issued in April of 1968. While it was home to two of the last hit singles to come from the group during its heyday, it was also the first major indicator that the band’s fortunes were about to take a nosedive.

After the production coup of early 1967, which saw the group wrestle control of their music away from the dictatorial hands of Don Kirshner, the honeymoon phase that graced their third album, Headquarters, would be short lived. The camaraderie that guided the production of Headquarters, driving the group to handle all the playing themselves in order to prove their merits as a band, began to crumble once they started work on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

The reality was that they were four disparate individuals with completely different musical priorities and sensibilities. Reverting to their previous production approach, the group began to rely on session musicians again while they also separated into discrete production teams. By the time they started production on The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, the segregation between the members was essentially complete. Each had their own team of musicians and techs, often working in different studios in the LA area. Whereas the previous two records had the benefit of Chip Douglas’ production to tie things together, he was dismissed for this album and had no hand in its creation. There was still an agreement that all work created under these conditions would be credited as “produced by The Monkees”, but the concept of them being a band was now in name only.

This situation resulted in a collection of songs for the album which was wildly divergent and eclectic in style. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but does make it difficult to give a singular LP product a sense of cohesion, though it was not significantly different than what The Beatles were going through while producing their “White” album. Davy pursued his show tunes style, Mike indulged in country rock and bizarre psychedelic experiments and Micky explored his soul and baroque pop leanings. Sadly Peter Tork’s work remained mysteriously consigned to the outtakes bin as none of his songs were selected for the final track listing. In fact, Peter only played piano on Daydream Believer, so he was effectively absent from the album save for his picture on the cover. One has to wonder how much this played into his decision to be the first to quit the band, but it should be noted that he contributed two songs on the HEAD soundtrack, their next album before his departure.

In addition to the songs created for the album, a couple of tracks left over from the sessions for the previous LP managed to find their way into this collection. These included the hit singles, Valleri and Daydream Believer, both of which hit #1, though the latter would be the last such success for the band. The album also features some particularly innovative elements, especially with the songs from Mike and Micky. Micky’s P.O. Box 9847 & Zor and Zam showed off his ability to deftly slip social commentary into bubblegum pop while Mike’s Writing Wrongs featured an extended, tripped-out arrangement that took the listener through a series of shifting dreamy soundscapes. And Magnolia Simms emulated the squeaky sound of a scratchy, skipping vintage phonograph, much to the confusion of some listeners, necessitating a warning on the LP’s back cover that the “skipping” was intentional and not the result of faulty stereo equipment or a damaged record.

Upon release, the album managed to climb to #3 on the US charts, which wasn’t terrible, but was shy of the #1 slot their first four albums had easily secured. In the UK, the album didn’t chart at all, though the two singles did well. It was clear that the tide was beginning to turn on their popularity, however. The last episode of their TV series aired barely a month before the LP’s release and news of the show’s cancellation soon followed.

With the end of the series, producer Bob Rafelson was ready to bury the project in order to pursue a feature film career and saw the band’s feature film project as the perfect opportunity to desecrate their “manufactured image” while simultaneously making a social commentary on commercialism and consumer culture. Not that The Monkees were victims in this. They were completely complicit in this process and were looking to break out of their "pre-fab four" kiddie band box, a metaphor seen repeatedly throughout the movie. They were desperate to be seen as a legitimate creative force, but the backlash of popular opinion ultimately overwhelmed the group. With the commercial disaster of both the movie and a poorly conceived subsequent TV special, the group soldiered on through a few more albums, shedding members like so many falling leaves, before the whole thing collapsed in 1970.

Fortunately, history has has seen fit to rehabilitate the band’s image and allow them a remarkable renaissance in the 21st century. Their legacy of classic, timeless and innovative pop music has survived the reactionary and unfair misjudgements of the past. Now, we can appreciate all the marvels that lurk in the grooves of these records. Like most of their catalogue, Rhino Handmade have issued a deluxe expanded edition of the album featuring both stereo and mono mixes and a plethora of alternate mixes and outtakes. The sheer volume of the bonus material included in these reissues begs the question of how they managed to be so stunningly productive within such a relatively short period of time. It was really only a handful of years where they were initially active, yet they left behind an incredible catalogue, a treasure trove that would take any musicologist a lifetime to fully comprehend.

BOARDS OF CANADA - MUSIC HAS THE RIGHT TO CHILDREN @ 25

It was 25 years ago today when Boards of Canada released their debut full length album, Music Has the Right To Children, on April 20th, 1998. Blending muted downtempo hip-hop grooves with blurry ambient textures, the album created a whole new genre of chill-out music, evoking faded recollections of childhood nostalgia while simultaneously projecting itself into the future.

BoC began with brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin experimenting on modified tape recorders and synths as early as 1981. Becoming involved with the Hexagon Sun artistic collective in Pentland Hills, Scotland, they began releasing limited cassette collections of recordings, which were self-distributed among friends and relatives. Eventually, the Scottish brothers came up with the the name "Boards of Canada" as a reference to time spent in Canada as children, an experience which left an indelible imprint on the duo. After releasing a trio of EPs between 1995 & 1996, which contained numerous early versions of tracks destined for their major label debut, they signed a deal with Warp Records to release their first proper album. Of their origins, Marcus Eoin has commented:

“We'd been recording in various forms of the band as teens through much of the '80s, and already had a big collection of our own old crappy recordings that we were really fond of. Then, around 1987 or 1988, we were beginning to experiment with collage tapes of demos we'd deliberately destroyed, to give the impression of chewed up library tapes that had been found in a field somewhere. That was the seed for the whole project. In those days, everyone used to have drawers full of unique cassettes with old snippets from radio and TV, it's kind of a lost thing now, sadly. To me, it's fascinating and precious to find some lost recordings in a cupboard, so part of it was an idea to create new music that really felt like an old familiar thing”

The album was recorded at their home studio in Pentland Hills, a facility which was described as a “bunker”, a characterization which the band claim was inaccurately exaggerated for publicity. Their recording facility included samplers, de-tuned synths, drum machines and a variety of analogue reel to reel and cassette tape recorders. Samples which were included in the album include bits of Sesame Street songs, CBC Canadian cultural promos and chance natural sounds like on Rue the Whirl, where the studio's window was left open and the sound of birds was accidentally recorded into the track. The results of their efforts were a mix of short transitional pieces and longer rhythmic meditations. The often muffled, degraded sound employed throughout the album contributed to the sense of experiencing faded memories, calling up recollections of youthful encounters and half remembered dreams. The titles for the songs and the albums were kept obtuse, offering as much murk as the sound of the music. The band have commented:

“Our titles are always cryptic references which the listener might understand or might not. Some of them are personal, so the listener is unlikely to know what it refers to. Music Has the Right to Children is a statement of our intention to affect the audience using sound. The Color of the Fire was a reference to a friend's psychedelic experience. Kaini Industries is a company that was set up in Canada (by coincidence in the month Mike was born), to create employment for a settlement of Cree Indians (sic). Olson is the surname of a family we know, and Smokes Quantity is the nickname of a friend of ours."

The cover image for the album is a family photo taken at Banff Springs in Alberta, Canada. The photo has been processed to reflect the same blurred, indistinct quality as the music, again bringing to mind the imperfections of memory and the sense of melancholy. There’s a kind of sadness that lurks throughout the album on every level, as a recognition of the impermanence of existence. All the cues that trigger recollection also remind the listener that these moments are gone and on their way to being lost forever.

The album won near universal critical praise upon its release and set about defining a new sub-genre of electronica. The mixture of funky rhythms undercut by textured softness and ambience surrounding them stood out as stylistically distinct in the realms of both downtempo and ambient music. It bridged the two spheres while also creating a new aesthetic which celebrated the glorious decay and imperfection of analogue recording. Dropout, hiss, warble and other artifacts of the medium of tape became functional elements of style. Brian Eno identified the phenomenon perfectly in his famous quote:

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
 

DAVID BOWIE - ALADDIN SANE @ 50

 

Celebrating its golden jubilee with half a century on the shelves, it’s David Bowie’s sixth studio album and second during his initial commercial breakthrough as "Ziggy Stardust", Aladdin Sane. After taking the charts by storm with his previous record, it would exceed that success, commercially, though perhaps not quite artistically.

Aladdin Sane was written and recorded during breaks between grueling touring schedules as Bowie and RCA sought to maximize his exposure following the success of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Aladdin Sane, the title being a play on the phrase “a lad insane”, continued the narrative of the previous record, introducing the titular character as a means to explore the personality fragmentation symbolized by the lightning bolt across Bowie’s face. Thematically, the record deals with a lot of the ups and downs of life on the road, fame and how those dichotomies can split a personality. This was the first album Bowie wrote from a position of stardom, so the view from the mount of fame plays a significant role in the concepts explored.

Because production for the LP was squeezed into snatched free time between touring legs, this didn’t leave Bowie a lot of time to develop ideas or stockpile songs from which to cherry pick later. This meant that, overall, the quality of the material on the album maybe wasn’t quite as consistent as the previous few records, though there are clearly essential songs which managed to find a home in its grooves. The title track and Jean Genie are the obvious standouts. Musically, being on the road and performing live put an emphasis on a harder rock sound, though a bit of British music hall camp can also be found lurking about the edges. The Rolling Stones were a significant influence at this period as is evidenced by Bowie's cover of Let’s Spend the Night Together.

Recording for the album took place mainly between December 1972 and January 1973, and was split between Trident Studios in London and RCA’s NYC facility. The Spiders From Mars band, comprising Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey, contributed heavily to the album’s creation, though after a run of three albums with Bowie, this would be the last to feature this lineup. Though the album focuses on a heavier rock sound, it also starts to bring in some more experimental leanings, and many consider this the beginning of that trajectory, a disposition which would lead him into stranger and darker realms throughout the remainder of the decade until his crowing achievement in that vein with Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980.

For the cover of the LP, Bowie is seen in what has become his most iconic form, in fully Ziggy glory, lightning flash blazing across his face. It is perhaps the most recognizable image of Bowie ever created. It was shot in January 1973 by Brian Duffy in his north London studio. Duffy would later photograph the sleeves for Lodger (1979) and Scary Monsters. In an effort to ensure RCA promoted the album extensively, Bowie’s manager was determined to make the cover as costly as possible. He insisted on an unprecedented seven-color system, rather than the usual four. The resulting image was the most expensive cover art ever made at the time. The make-up designer for the shoot was Pierre Laroche, who remained Bowie's make-up artist for the remainder of the 1973 tour and the Pin Ups cover shoot. Laroche copied the lightning bolt from a National Panasonic rice-cooker that happened to be in the studio. The make-up was completed with a "deathly purple wash", which together with Bowie's closed eyes, evoke a "death mask".

After its release, it quickly became Bowie’s biggest selling record to date, but critics picked up on the uneven songwriting in comparison to the previous records, though they still praised it overall. It certainly deserves its legacy as being considered an essential entry in Bowie’s catalogue, capturing the artist at a peak in his creative and performing abilities. In some regards, perhaps it’s Bowie merely riding the wave of his success for a time, but history has clearly shown that he was just taking a bit of a breather before his next artistic ascent.

DAVID BOWIE - LET’S DANCE @ 40

Released forty years ago today, on April 14th, 1983, is David Bowie’s 15th studio album, Let’s Dance. While it set the commercial high water mark of his career, becoming his all time best selling album, it also painted him into a creative corner, boxing him into a commercial sound which drove down the quality of his output throughout the remainder of the decade.

Throughout the latter half of the 1970s, Bowie had been pursuing a distinctly avant-garde tinged approach to pop music, exploring darker themes and sonic experimentation with sales taking a backseat to artistic expression. After the success of his Ziggy Stardust period, veering into these more obscure directions sometimes meant sacrificing commercial appeal. However, his last album on this trajectory, 1980’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) found him coming to a near perfect balance between experimentation and commercial viability.

Following the completion of Scary Monsters, Bowie spent some time pursuing acting on both stage and screen, performing in The Elephant Man and Christian F., respectively. The assassination of John Lennon in December of 1980, however, put Bowie into shock and he cancelled an upcoming tour to support Scary Monsters, retreating to Switzerland where he became something of a recluse. Musically, he was not so productive, but still worked with Giorgio Moroder for the Cat People soundtrack and collaborated with Queen for the single, Under Pressure. He also appeared in the films, The Hunger and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, both released in 1983.

Scary Monsters also marked the end of his relationship with RCA records, whom he felt had failed to fully support his recent work, instead exploiting only his back catalogue. This took him to EMI records and, looking to have a fresh start while yet again reinvent himself, he set up shop in NYC and chose Chic main-man, Nile Rogers, as producer for his next album. This was a decision which would lead to a sever rift between Bowie and producer Tony Visconti, who had worked on Bowie's previous four albums. Bowie neglected to inform Visconti of the producer change and Tony ended up finding out second hand, to which he took deep offense. While the two would ultimately end up working together again, it would not be until 20 years later for 2002’s Heathen. Bowie’s intent was to go in a completely new direction with an entirely different collection of musicians and focus on the commercial viability of the album. All the regulars from the previous albums were set aside and a fresh group of players were brought in. For this album, Bowie also refrained from contributing as a musician himself, instead opting to focus solely on being a vocalist.

Nile Rogers had made a major name for himself with Chic and by producing a string of dance classics for the likes of Diana Ross & Sister Sledge. This prowess with a groove meant that he was uniquely qualified to put Bowie’s music onto the dance floor and the title track for the album became proof of that skill. The song, Let’s Dance, was released as a single and immediately swept the club scene. I personally recall it being in constant rotation in every type of setting, from mainstream clubs to the most underground warehouse after-hours industrial-goth freak scene. It joined a host of club hits which were rehabilitating the dance floors of the day after the backlash of the “death to disco” movement, which capped off the previous decade. Songs like Let’s Dance, Blue Monday by New Order & Perfect by The The became clarion calls to loose booties on both sides of the Atlantic, announcing that it was okay to cut a rug again.

Recording of the album was done at the Power Station in NYC, over three weeks in December of 1982. Since recording Scary Monsters, Bowie had become obsessed with R&B music from the ‘50s & ’60s and artists like James Brown, Buddy Guy and Albert King. Nile used that interest as a guide to the stylistic structure of Let’s Dance. When Bowie initially played him an acoustic version of the title song, he knew it wasn’t a dance song, but he was able to adapt the arrangement with elements of ‘50s & ’60s music to mutate it into something with a groove.

The idea to recruit Stevie Ray Vaughn came from Bowie after spotting him at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Rogers was initially ambivalent about Vaughn, classifying him as too blues-centric for the funkier R&B sound he was crafting, but Bowie was insistent that he had “something”. Vaughn was unknown and hadn’t released his first album yet, but Bowie won out in the end and Stevie contributed guitar solo parts on eight of the album’s cuts. While the album blushed against some of the “new wave” influences of Bowie's so-called “Berlin era”, the mainstream soul & R&B influences brought it far more in line with the feel of Young Americans, which was also heavily influenced by black American music.

At the time of its release, it became an instant smash, topping album charts in numerous countries around the globe. All four of the album’s singles were also significant hits, with music videos for Let’s Dance and China Girl (a cover of an Iggy Pop song from the Bowie produced album, The Idiot) getting heavy rotation on the still fledgling MTV music channel. The massive Serious Moonlight Tour, which launched to promote the album, managed to secure Bowie’s position as one of the biggest pop stars of the day, a triumphant career pinnacle after a decade of weaving in and out of public favor. As previously stated, that commercial success became a double edged sword as its rewards came at the cost of creative freedom, with Bowie feeling obligated to maintain that stature while his artistic integrity suffered with each successive release during the ‘80s.

Despite the album's major commercial success, it received mixed reviews from music critics, with opinions varying on the artistic content. In Musician magazine, David Fricke called it "Bowie at his best". In a piece on Bowie for Time in July 1983, Jay Cocks described the album as "unabashedly commercial, melodically alliterative and lyrically smart at the same time". Robert Christgau felt that it had a "perfunctory professional surface", and that other than the "interesting" Modern Love, Let's Dance was "pleasantly pointless". Steve Bush of Smash Hits found it overall dull and Debra Rae Cohen of The New York Times deemed it Bowie's "most artless" record yet, but one whose familiar dance music is "almost timeless in its appeal".

Yet in terms of its legacy, it stands as the crescendo of one of the most astounding creative runs any artist has ever achieved. With 14 years of artistic genius backing it up, it should more properly be seen as a much deserved victory lap. But it did essentially bookend Bowie’s career relevance as the last significant release of his career, at least until his re-emergence from semi-retirement in 2013 with The Next Day, his penultimate album before his death in 2016. The years between Let’s Dance and The Next Day, while not entirely bereft of notable product, were still lacking in both the sense of Bowie being an artistic visionary working the cutting edge of the culture or a commercial force to be reckoned with.
 

JAPAN - ADOLESCENT SEX @ 45

 

Released this day, on April 8th, 1978, the debut LP from UK band Japan, Adolescent Sex, is celebrating 45 years on the shelves. At the time of its release, the band were still miles away from where they’d end up, creating a document of awkwardly fused glam and punk rock struggling to find an identity.

Founded in 1974 by brothers David & Steven Batt (later sir names changed to Sylvian & Jansen, respectively), along with schoolmates, Mick Karn, Richard Barbieri and Rob Dean, the band began from scratch by teaching themselves how to play their instruments. The name, Japan, was initially intended only as a temporary moniker, but it ended up being permanent when nothing better came along that suited their tastes. By 1976, they’d developed enough as musicians to catch the attention of Simon Napier-Bell, who signed a management deal with them. SNB also managed bands such as The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan's T-Rex, London and Wham! After winning a label-sponsored talent contest, the band signed a recording contract with the German disco label Hansa-Ariola in 1977, becoming an alternative glam rock outfit in the mold of Lou Reed, David Bowie, T.Rex, Roxy Music, and the New York Dolls although their initial material was principally guitar-based funk.

When you put it all together: the frizzled hair, gobs of makeup, snotty sneering and gritty punk-funk grooves - it didn’t make a lot of sense and the few press comments they got at their debut were generally dismissive and disparaging. Trouser Press wrote that the album "introduces Japan in all its guitar-rock misery, playing such Bowie-influenced tripe as 'Wish You Were Black' with less style than a sense of urgency". They were promising musicians, but the whole look and sound seemed like it was out of place in every sense compared to what else was going on in the industry. There was little indication that they’d be capable of morphing into the harbingers of “New Romantic” sophistication which would become their final form only a bit more than a year later with their third LP, Quiet Life. When the debut album was released internationally, many countries put it out with an eponymous title, taking offense to the sexual suggestiveness of the original. In the UK, the sales for their debut were pretty dismal, yet thanks to their name, they quickly developed a devoted and significant following in the country from which they'd borrowed their name, the land of the rising sun, Japan. The debut album was followed by a UK tour supporting Blue Öyster Cult. Intended to promote the album Japan faced more negative criticism and hostile audiences. In August 1978 their second single "The Unconventional" failed to chart. In November, the band also made a short US tour, but although they were better accepted by American audiences it proved to be their last and only foray into US soil.

Retrospectively, the band has little love for their debut. David Sylvian later commented that they were far too young and naive to be making an album at that point in their career and he was surprised they were encouraged and supported in pursing such a misguided product. Still, fans of their later work, myself included, found themselves backtracking into these early albums and, while both amused and bemused by the difference to the band we later came to adore, still consider these works as charming in their innocence and determination. And there’s even the odd song or two that still merits a listen again. AllMusic retrospectively gave the album a 4.5 out of 5 grade, writing: "A more exciting album than just about anything else they'd ever record, Japan were young, hungry, and more than a little rough around the edges." I don’t agree with that assessment of their later work by any means, but it’s still nice that their debut has garnered some respect after all these years.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY - SEASONS RANKED

 

Now that I’ve finished binge watching all 11 seasons currently available of American Horror Story, I thought it would be amusing to do a little analysis and ranking of them to get a sense of what I liked or didn’t within each season and the series as a whole. So before I break things down by season, I’d like to touch on a few points that apply throughout the series.

To be clear, I didn’t HATE any of it, but some things did resonate with me more than others. Ryan Murphy’s explorations of classic horror tropes within each iteration of his anthology series offer up some illuminating new perspectives on the horror genre in general, elevating it to a more sophisticated social commentary. Each season takes a look at the genre from a different angle, usually weaving a distinct vein of black humor & camp throughout, in varying degrees, as the themes touch on topical issues like racism, misogyny and physical & psychological abuse. Sometimes these worked, while sometimes they felt a touch exploitative and hit maybe a little too close to home.

A fairly consistent pattern which runs through the series is that each season tends to start off with a relatively coherent, focused concept, but the last third of the season often starts to fray and unravel into more convoluted trajectories until it loses some of the momentum which propelled the story early on. Sometimes it’s like they finished the main story too early and end up resorting to filler tactics to wrap up the season. We often end up with narrative devices like time jumps and epilogues designed to resolve plot holes, but which frequently highlight them instead. It’s an approach that can become counterproductive to the principal story's thrust when you’re suddenly feeling like the writers are scrambling to fill episodes and tie up loose ends.

On the other hand, there’s still a lot to love about the series, central of which is the rotating and repeating cast of actors who are challenged to reinvent themselves from season to season. Top of the heap on that front are mainstays, Sarah Paulson & Evan Peters, who both have an amazing talent when it comes to transforming themselves, sometimes to the point of being unrecognizable. I would also add Denis O’Hare as another adept changeling, who has had some equally mind-blowing morphs from role to role. Of course the mainstays of the series are the matriarchal divas, especially founding monarch, Jessica Lange, who was the centerpiece of the first four seasons of the series. Along with her, add in Frances Conroy, Cathy Bates and Angela Bassett. On the younger end of the female cast you have the likes of Lily Rabe, Leslie Grossman, and semi regulars like Gabourey Sidibe, Jamie Brewer, Lady Gaga & Chloë Sevigny. One thing that’s clear from that role call is that this series values its female cast and has given them a lot of amazing material to work with. Not that the show doesn’t rely on some key males. Aside from the aforementioned O’Hare & Peters, you have the likes of Zachary Quinto, John Carroll Lynch, Finn Wittrock & Cody Fern to round out some of the more notable recurring male cast. Whatever the configuration of cast & characters, it’s always fun waiting to spot those favorites in whatever role they’ve been given for each iteration.

So let’s get into the specifics of the seasons and see where I stacked them up. You might be surprised by some of my favorites, but it’s not an easy task to rank them all.

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01 NYC (season 11)

I’ve already written in-depth about this season, so I’ll keep it short here. Suffice to say that I was not expecting, after 10 seasons, for this most recent incarnation to top my list, but I can’t place it anywhere else, simply because nothing else has hit me so personally and deeply in terms of emotional impact. It’s a story I wasn’t expecting and which blasted away all my expectations about what this series was capable of achieving.

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02 FREAK SHOW (season 4)

Freak Show was my #1 favorite season all along until S11:NYC came along, but it’s gonna stay tight at #2. The reason for that is entirely down to the incredible characters who were brought to life, and the respect for the culture to which this season is a love letter and tribute. The world of human oddities was a misunderstood and demonized society for a long time. The long banned feature film, Freaks (1932), forms the conceptual foundation for this season and virtually everything that happens in it is an homage to that film. The casting of this season is simply remarkable as they managed to incorporate numerous real life “oddities” and they all deliver outstanding performances in their roles. Where they were created from scratch for the screen, like Naomi Grossman as Pepper, the transformation was astoundingly perfect and uncannily realistic. The work they did for Sarah Paulson’s twin roles as the conjoined Bette & Dot is nothing less than miraculous. The characters all ring true to life and they create a palpable sense of community and family bond between them and that’s what sells the whole story to me. The sense of outsiders being misunderstood is something that also hit home for me and helped me connect with the story and the struggle to be accepted.

This season was the best for Jessica Lange as Elsa Mars, the duplicitous diva in charge of the show. Her musical numbers, always covering David Bowie songs, were stunning, in particular her rendition of “Heroes”, which is staged near identically to the promotional video Bowie created for the single. I’ve never smiled so broadly with glee than when that song came on and I understood how it connected with everything that was going on in this story. Glorious.

The other element that makes Freak Show a favorite is the sense of tragedy and loss that comes about with certain characters and their fates. Ma Petite, in particular, was a particularly devastating character, especially since they teased it in a way where you initially thought that it would be a fake-out, but then it ended up a reality, and a heartbreaking one beyond compare. There were so many levels to that tragedy that it all worked in concert to leave the viewer utterly bereft by the end of it all.

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03 HOTEL (season 5)

For me, the biggest selling point of Hotel is the art direction. The Art Deco decor of the Cortez is a major character for this story, which loosely lifts from Stephen King’s The Shining, though setting the series in an urban environment, rather than rural. The sheer grandeur and mystery in the walls of this hotel is astounding and the entire season is dripping with visual decadence and glamour. It’s simply stunningly beautiful to look at throughout, even when it’s bloody and ravaged.

While it was the first season to be missing lead diva, Jessica Lange, the casting director smartly substituted in Lady Gaga for one of her first acting roles and she does a fine job of bringing vampiric menace to the party. But the real standout, cast wise, would have to be Denis O’Hare, who gender-bends his way into his most memorable performance since True Blood’s Russell Edgington told prime-time TV viewers he was going to eat their babies. But whereas Russell was a maniacal villain, Liz Taylor is an incredibly sympathetic transgender tragedy who beguiles and enchants throughout the entire season. Then there’s Sarah Paulson’s nearly unrecognizable transition into junkie-whore Sally, who cops a bit of Blade Runner “Pris” edginess to her look. You’ve also got first class turns from Kathy Bates and Chloë Sevigny, while Evan Peters delivers his most nefarious provocateur, James Patrick March, who eerily reminds me of an old Kids in the Hall character, Bruno Puntz Jones, but I’m sure that’s just coincidence.

The season is also notable for introducing vampires into the AHS canon, who commingle with the hotel’s ghosts, of the type well established in the premier season’s “Murder House”. The Cortez seems to be similarly vexed by the same unholy curse as Murder House, obeying the same basic “physics”. But the vampire trope implementation here is distinctly unhindered by traditional limitations & prohibitions and the results are exceptionally entertaining, especially when an outbreak of vampirism sweeps a gaggle of grade school children. The season also has a lot of fun with famous serial killers popping in for cameo appearances, while furthering the Halloween lore also established in Murder House.

Overall, it’s a sexy, seductive entry in the franchise and exceptionally lovely to look at.

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04 COVEN (season 3)

Coven scores points from me for being the season of “girl power”. This was the season where the focus was clearly on the women of AHS and they all shone with exceptional brightness in their witchy wickedness. This season brings in the mythology of magic and let’s the ladies have a ball with it. Everyone’s got their own special powers and the variety of forces at the fingertips of these females is most formidable! The performances on display here are consistently top notch, as evidenced by the stack of Emmy nominations that were given to Lange, Paulson, Bassett, Conroy, and Bates, with Lange & Bates winning their categories.

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05 ASYLUM (season 2)

The general ambiance of Asylum was so oppressive that it was sometimes hard to take, but it ultimately had an incredible amount of story to tell. Maybe too much as we get alien abductions, serial killers, demonic possession and Nazi war criminals all vying for attention, and that’s not to mention the merely insane, who were more often than not, simply misunderstood. Still, when you’ve got James Cromwell as a guest star, you’re in for something special.

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06 APOCALYPSE (season

It’s the mother of all crossover seasons! All of the seasons of AHS have plot threads that interconnect them in some manor or other, but they’ve generally been subtle and relatively minor. That all changed with Apocalypse as we bring Murder House, Coven and Hotel together into a braided tapestry of interwoven story arcs and character relationships. For my money, the standout performance comes from Frances Conroy as Myrtle Snow, who was a minor character from Coven, but who gets a much more significant presence here. She’s a standout even if only for that stunning hairdo! Billy Porter also makes a grand impression as the story offers up a delicious battle of the sexes were witches and warlocks go toe to toe in their struggle for supremacy. Revisiting Murder House is a lot of fun and touching base with the Cortez family ties up some loose ends, but the season, overall, wreaks havoc on the continuity of the franchise as a whole, with everything that’s come before this season thrown into question. We really don’t know what’s still standing after all this and I don’t think we ever will.

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07 MURDER HOUSE (season 1)

It’s the season that started it all and it does have a lot going for it, but it merely ends up lower on this list simply because the series has had so much room to stretch out since this comparatively modest haunted house yarn hit the screen. Again, Frances Conroy stands out as Moira and Jessica Lange makes her mark on the franchise in short order, setting the bar high for performances.

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08 CULT (season 7)

I think this season would have had more impact if I’d seen it at the time it originally aired, when the wound of MAGA was fresher and the theme of the season was more closely tied to current events. It’s still a lot of fun, but I’m not quite convinced the producers quite captured the essence of what makes a cult tick and why people get drawn into these social constructs. I did enjoy some of the casting choices as Sonny & Cher offspring, Chaz Bono, got a great recurring role and Evan Peters working his way through all the most notorious cult leaders throughout the series was impressive. The connection to Warhol and his assailant Valerie Solanas was amusing and Peters also made a pretty good Warhol.

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09 DOUBLE FEATURE: RED TIDE (season 10.1), DEATH VALLEY (season 10.2)

After the disappointment in terms of casting for 1984 (see below), which lacked numerous long time regulars, they were all back in the fold for the Red Tide portion of season 10. Sarah Paulson, who really pushed the limits for a truly unrecognizable role, Even Peters and the delicious Francis Conroy were all on hand for another take on the vampire trope, this time with the benefits of science behind the lore. This story felt a bit like a stab at the divide between the liberal elite and the ignorant masses as the “enhancement” drug separated the “brains” from the “brutes”.

The second half of the season did something entirely new by forgoing the fate of so many seasons, which often present a set of frayed epilogues to the main story, weakening the finale. This time, they simply told an entirely different tale, one of alien invasions, alternating between 1950s sci-fi camp and modern X-Files type conspiracies. I was expecting this to finally revisit the aliens from the Asylum season, but there was no apparent connection between them. Still a lot of tentacle twisting fun.

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11 ROANOKE (season 6)

The gimmick of parodying “reality reenactment” TV was fun to start with, but to drag it out over the course of an entire season became a bit exhausting after a while. Coupled with the brutality of cannibalism and so much grotesque gore, what with the disemboweling and all, it was just a bit much for me at times. Poor Leslie Jordan (RIP)! Even Sarah Paulson admitted in an interview after finishing work on the season that she wished she'd been able to give it a miss.

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11 1984 (season 9)

This homage to ‘80s horror was very cute and well done, at least to start, but the biggest weakness for me was the absence of big hitter cast regulars like Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters. There were certainly great performances from the folks who did participate, but it didn’t have the gravitas of a real big name to hold the center of the story. There was no Kathy Bates or Frances Conroy or Angela Bassett or anyone of that caliber to ground it all. The Richard Ramirez character also came under fire from families of his victims for glamorizing the serial killer as well.
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So that's a somewhat concise rundown of the series as it stands now. I'm wondering what we'll get with the next installment as the series has apparently been renewed up to season 13, if Murphy and crew wish to keep going. After NYC, it's anyone's guess what could possibly be next. Personally, I'd love to see a sci-fi season in space!

DAVID BOWIE - BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE @ 30

Turning 30 years old today is David Bowie’s 18th studio album, Black Tie White Noise, which was released on April 5th, 1993. After a six year gap since his last solo album, Bowie was back working with Let’s Dance collaborator, Nile Rogers, though their pairing this time around may have been more forced and less creatively satisfying for both artists.

After the career topping success of the Let’s Dance album in 1983, Bowie’s output seemed to be trending in the wrong direction, creatively, for the remainder of that decade. Tonight (1984) only had moments as a decent enough follow-up and 1987’s Never Let Me Down slipped even further, struggling to live up to its title. Bowie then moved on to forming Tin Machine with Robert Fripp and producing two albums which were met with mixed responses from fans and critics alike. When it came time to set that band aside and return to solo work, it would seem that there was some pressure to reconnect with Nile and see if they could recapture some of the magic that gave their previous work so much success. Though the reports at the time of production indicated a collaboration that was mutually satisfying, subsequent comments from both artists painted a different picture. Rogers dismissed the album as a lost opportunity, with him wanting to continue on a path contiguous with the Let’s Dance sound and feel, while Bowie was wanting to experiment and explore more avant-garde edges. Ultimately, it seems the two were working at cross purposes and the results may have suffered somewhat from that lack of cohesion.

Thematically, Bowie was heavily influenced by his recent marriage to supermodel, Iman, and by the LA riots they witnessed first hand while they were in the city for their honeymoon. Bowie commented that the entire experience felt like a prison riot, where so many innocent prisoners were demanding fair treatment by a city which had turned into a virtual prison. This set his mind into concepts of racial relations and trying to bridge cultural and social gaps between people. His marriage set an example of what was possible when people could love freely and without the learned biases of racial disparagement. The title Bowie described thusly:

“White noise itself is something that I first encountered on the synthesizer many years ago. There's black noise and white noise. I thought that much of what is said and done by the whites is white noise. 'Black ties' is because, for me, musically, the one thing that really turned me on to wanting to be a musician, wanting to write, was black music, American black music. I found it all very exciting – the feeling of aggression that came through the arrangements.”

With its UK release, despite the creative conflicts which may have been at odds behind the scenes, it still managed to hit the number one spot on the charts, but it would be the last Bowie LP to do so until the release of The Next Day in 2013. In the US, it managed to climb up to #39, but its promotion was hobbled by the US label, Savage Records, filing for bankruptcy soon after it was released. Bowie had a three album deal with the label, but they ended up suing him, claiming financial losses on their investment in BTWN. However, their case was dismissed and the label was dissolved, leaving the album in a kind of limbo in the US with few available copies until it was reissued later in the decade. Critically, many felt that it was a worthy successor to and continuation of what Bowie had achieved with Scary Monsters. In light of the disappointment registered with his work prior to this, it certainly felt like a revival of Bowie’s status. Still, retrospectively, some consider the album to have been overpraised at the time and that it didn’t hold up well in ensuing years.

Bowie did not tour to support the album, instead producing a film to accompany it.

 

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: NYC - The Most Horrifying Season Ever

 

I’ve recently started working on a little overview & ranking piece on American Horror Story as I’ve been finishing up the most recent season, but once I started putting my thoughts down on AHS:NYC, I soon realized that this season demands that I capture them in a separate thread. It’s simply too big and impactful for me to lump in with the rest of the series and, honestly, it’s so different from what came before, both in tone and the nature of the content, that it simply has to be given its own stage. After 10 seasons of a series which was always predicated on a sly sense of black-as-pitch humor and often camp extravagance , NYC hit me in a way I simply wasn’t prepared for. I had expected, from the series posters, that it was going to be something sexy and sleek, but it turned out to be an entirely different animal. Sexual yes, but so dark, brooding, gritty and, above all, completely devoid of anything which veered into the usual sense of perverse “fun” which was at the core of so much of what came before.

NYC is, by far, the most intimately impactful & grounded of any of the stories which have been told in this anthology series to date. There’s barely a whiff of anything “supernatural” in it. The few fantastical elements occur in allegorical dream sequences while its horrors are distinctly tangible and real. For this installment, Ryan Murphy and crew have tackled a controversial story which is determined to push boundaries and tolerances. They’ve taken on the genesis of the AIDS epidemic within the hardcore gay subculture of New York City in 1981, and in doing so, they’ve set the scene for the most serious and unsettling social exploration they’ve ever attempted. There’s simply nothing to smirk at as we deal with the hatred of the gay community and the indifference to its suffering from the outside world, while simultaneously exposing the culpability of the people within it as they often inadvertently set themselves up to become victims. There’s an overwhelming sadness and loneliness to it all, but that’s not the core emotion which drives this story.

There’s a LOT of anger brewing inside this tale of a sub-culture being stalked and terrorized by multiple adversaries while the world outside ignores their plight. From psychopaths to phantasms to infections, everyone is a potential target and no one is safe. Obviously, this is all an exploration of the devastation unleashed by the AIDS epidemic, which first found its home in the gay ghettos of NYC at the beginning of the 1980s, though I’m sure there’s also a bit of a nod to the current COVID pandemic. Sometimes its symbolic and allegorical, sometimes it is painfully literal. The anger being unleashed is, first and foremost, directed at the world in general, who considered the gay community deviant, disposable and subhuman, and who were ready to allow the pain, suffering and death to go on, unchecked. That disgust and dismissal cost an incalculable number of lives. In effect, it was a silent holocaust, an implicit & passive genocide. The world saw the suffering and, for the most part, were ready to say “good riddance”.

Yet there’s also a healthy dose of anger set aside for the people within that community. In terms of genre styling, there’s a major nod to the film, Cruising (1980), though the failure of that story, being that it was told by a straight male outsider delving into a scene he didn’t understand, is corrected by keeping all the characters native and insiders who know the score. This keeps the internal critiques founded in experience and first hand knowledge. The scene in NYC at the time was one of the greatest pinnacles of debauched hedonistic decadence to ever manifest on the face of this planet. On the one hand, it was a level of sexual freedom few could ever have imagined, a kind of “Shangri-La”. It was a magical era of discovering a new level of openness and liberation, but the other edge of that sword was a neglect of individual responsibility and interpersonal respect. The still frequently secretive, nameless and often faceless nature of the sexual encounters could be dehumanizing in the extreme and didn’t help engender empathy when people were devalued and seen as “rough trade” commodities to be indulged in one moment and discarded the next.

Bigotry, of course, forms the core of the social issue being dealt with, but again, it’s not just external sources that get condemned here. It’s not merely the hatred and indifference of the “straight world” we have to contend with and the show’s creators do not shy away from the prejudice that lurks within the community itself. There’s a particularly telling moment when Zachary Quinto’s character is boasting about his famous orgy parties and casually delivers the selling point, “no fats, no fems”. It’s a line that stabs like a knife in the back for so many in the community who have been ostracized by those characteristics for their entire lives. It’s not bad enough to have to cope with being outside societal sexual norms, but to be rejected by your own so-called “community” is doubly heartbreaking. And then there’s the alienation of the lesbian contingent, represented here by Sandra Bernhard’s trio of feminist activists, demanding a voice within a community who dismisses the female perspective as completely as cis straight males do. It’s an ugly mirror to have to look into, but kudos to AHS for being bold enough to demand we answer for some of our own sins.

Everything about this season is, in fact, quite bold and brave as far as creating TV aimed at a mainstream audience. Gay content like this is virtually unheard of as it lands well outside the sanitized, “family friendly” variety normally permitted on the small screen. Only Angels In American, as a high profile HBO series, came close to getting this down and dirty. It’s no “Will & Grace” or “Modern Family”, that’s for sure. This is the kind of gay culture that sends the heteronormative folk fleeing in panic, especially the straight male audience so prized by network ratings watchdogs. This is New York at the peak of its decadence. It’s bathhouses, glory holes, cruising parks, BDSM, anonymous encounters and rampant drug use. And this is currently streaming on Disney+! It kinda knocks my socks off that any right-wing pearl-clutching zealot can stumble on this and be left aghast in horror at the so-called “moral perversion” on display. I’d be surprised if there haven’t been protests from conservative watchdog groups about it.

In terms of the cast, it’s a little thin when it comes to series regulars like Evan Peters or Sarah Paulson, though it is great to see Zachary Quinto back in the fold after an extended absence, and Denis O’Hare turns in another stellar performance. Sandra Bernhard makes her second AHS appearance and Leslie Grossman & Billie Lourd round out the regulars. The rest of the cast are first-timers to the franchise and there are certainly standouts. Joe Mantello is a quintessential New Yorker, impassioned, outraged and perfect as the gruff head writer for a gay newspaper, while Russel Tovey is ideal as his closeted & conflicted cop lover. The great Patti LuPone is onboard to provide that matriarchal diva presence that lurks in all the best installments of this series, but this season is, by far, the most male-centric cast & story that’s ever been assembled by AHS, which is another of the reasons it feels so different from what’s come before.

Without getting into spoilers, I can simply say that what is presented here is not a “feel good” uplifting or congratulatory look at the AIDS crisis. It is a lament, a mournful cry of outrage and a plea for empathy. It is also a demand to take responsibility for one’s own actions and recognize the fundamental humanity which was destroyed by this tragedy. It is exceptionally difficult for me to imagine regular fans of the show embracing this story, but maybe I’ll be surprised. More likely, I expect a backlash against it, and likely from both “hetero” and “homo” audiences, though for different reasons. There’s a lot of uncomfortable truths being told here, so I expect some may challenge the voracity of certain aspects. It’s dangerous territory to suggest origins of a pandemic, especially when they imply conspiracies. We’ve all become hypersensitive to such implications in recent years and have far too much experience with the unhinged lunacy of most of those who espouse them. I don’t think they push that agenda too for, however, and overall, I think the reflection being cast back at the audience is honest and well intentioned in its aim to get us to recognized our reality and the tragedy of our losses.

If you’re looking for any kind of hopeful message in this, I’d suggest looking to the fact that we survived. More than that, as a community, we became immeasurably stronger. The steel in the core of this story is the indomitable spirit of the people at its center and how they never give up and keep fighting, even as the odds seem insurmountable. It's the reason the tragedy hits so hard and brings up so much emotion. The gay community DID survive this nightmare of terror and isolation and we became both stronger and wiser for the struggle. This is why we are a threat to the ignorant. That’s an important thing to remember when you consider the way that the forces of darkness in our world are currently marshaling their armies against us. So many efforts are being set in motion to deny our rights and freedoms and chase us back underground and “into the closet” again, or worse, eliminate us completely. But we’ve already looked the Devil in the eye and we’re not going to stand by and let those forces stop us. We have more strength and determination than they can conceive of and we’re not the cowards who run from liberation and freedom and progress. Always remember how powerful we really are and, if you forget that, watch this again and remind yourself what it was like to pass through Hell and that we’ll do it again if we need to.

GOD BLESS TINY TIM @ 55

 

Marking its 55th anniversary this month is the debut LP from American songbook walking encyclopedia, Tiny Tim, with God Bless Tiny Tim being released in April of 1968. Along with the single, Tiptoe Through the Tulips, and a few critical TV appearances on Laugh In and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, it would help propel this eccentric outsider artist to novelty act national stardom.

Herbert Butros Khaury was a native New Yorker born to a Jewish mother and Catholic father. Coming from a deeply religious background, he would carry his theological interests throughout his life, but it was music which was his ultimate passion, an obsession which started as a child after his father bought him a phonograph player and 78-RPM record of "Beautiful Ohio" by Henry Burr, which he played for hours on end. This kicked off his collecting of recordings and photographs of sheet music found in libraries, a hobby he continued throughout his life. His interest was predominantly early 20th century popular music, particularly from the period from 1900 to the 1930s. As he delved into this treasure-trove of Americana song craft, he became something of an expert musicologist, despite having dropped out of high school after failing several attempts to graduate his sophomore year.

His passion for music soon lead him to pick up playing violin at the age of 11 and then guitar, mandolin and, what would become his signature instrument, the ukulele, performing for his parents amusement. Once he was old enough, he began to develop a stage act, performing often for free in the East Village of NYC. Throughout his early career, he’d cycle through a variety of pseudonyms, refining his eccentric style and presence, growing out his hair and adopting a pale white clown-like makeup. His mother was initially rather concerned about these changes and tried to get him to see a therapist, but his father dissuaded her against pursuing such concerns. Eventually, while working with a novelty act featuring little people, his manager ironically suggested calling the 6’1” performer “Tiny Tim” and that particular name ended up sticking. In the early 1960s, he began to develop a following for his unique performances and eventually caught the attention of scouts for Reprise Records, who signed him to a record deal.

God Bless Tiny Tim focuses its songs primarily on the obscure early 20th century popular music Tim had become so knowledgeable about, though a version of the contemporary Sony & Cher hit, I Got You Babe, was included to showcase both is baritone and falsetto vocal ranges within the same song, with Tim playing both the male and female roles. Thanks to his recurring and baffling appearances on the hip sketch comedy series, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In, Tim developed a cult following within the hippie & youth audience, appealing to the psychedelic era’s sense of the surreal and absurd-ism. With the success of the single for Tiptoe Through The Tulips, Tiny Tim became a household name, with the peak of his fame being when he had his marriage performed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, a spectacle which generated phenomenal ratings.

Tim released two more LPs on Reprise before his contract was dropped and he went on to form his own label, but after his peak in the 1960s, his popularity waned significantly. He managed to resurface here and there throughout the ‘70s & ‘80s, most notably with a performance of Rod Stewart’s Do You Think I’m Sexy, which he brought to The Tonight Show and other programs of the day. In the later years of his life, he became something of a cult figure within the Neo-Folk set as artists like David Tibet championed his vast knowledge of vintage songs from the early eras of popular music. They even helped produce records for him and had them released on labels usually reserved for strange avant-garde acts. Tim died in 1996, leaving a legacy as one of America’s most inimitable performers, taking with him a knowledge of early popular music which is incalculable in its significance and overwhelming in its loss.