BLOOD FOR DRACULA | ANDY WARHOL'S DRACULA @ 50

Released on March 1st, 1974, Blood for Dracula (aka Andy Warhol's Dracula) is commemorating its golden jubilee today at an astoundingly undead 50 years old. Though the connection to Warhol is little more than a loose association thanks to Factory regulars, director Paul Morrissey, and star, Joe Dellasandro, the outrageously funny and grotesque adaptation of the Gothic icon followed hot on the heels of the 3D Flesh For Frankenstein feature released the year before. In fact, production of both films was done consecutively, with filming for Dracula commencing within a day of completing shooting for the Frankenstein film. Both were shot on location in Italy, utilizing many of the same cast, including Udo Keir in the leads as both Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein.

The plot of the film follows a desperate and anemic Count Dracula as he relocates from his native Transylvania to Italy, in search of the virgin blood he is so desperate to find in order to maintain his vigour. With Italy being predominantly Catholic, his theory is that this must be the best place to find virgins for his prey. Little does he realize what sluts those Catholic girls really are, and the results of his dining become nothing less than literally stomach turning! It's all played for high camp value, landing well in line with the eras other classic midnight movie treats like Pink Flamingos.

In 1973, Paul Morrissey and Joe Dallesandro came to Italy to shoot a film for producers Andrew Braunsberg and Carlo Ponti. The original idea came from director Roman Polanski who had met Morrissey when promoting his film, "What?", with Morrissey stating that Polanski felt he would be "a natural person to make a 3-D film about Frankenstein. I thought it was the most absurd option I could imagine." Morrissey convinced Ponti to not just make one film during this period, but two, which led to the production of both Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula. One day after the principal shooting for Frankenstein was completed, Morrissey had Udo Kier, Dallesandro and Arno Juerging get shorter hair cuts, as filming for Blood for Dracula began immediately.

Initial release of the film was under the title of "Andy Warhol's Dracula" though Warhol had zero actual involvement with the production, beyond maybe offering a suggestion or two during post production. The name association was strictly for promotional purposes. The film opened to mixed reviews, though the production design received numerous compliments. It didn't do too well at the box office either, but it has become a cult favourite over the years. I first came across it in the mid 1980s during the heyday of video rentals and immediately fell in love with it. I'd already seen a theatrical revival of Flesh for Frankenstein a few years earlier, presented in all its glorious 3D grandeur. I must say that, at the time, it was the best looking 3D movie I'd ever seen, with the visual effect coming across as crisp and clear, where other films I'd seen had annoying double-vision artifacts. The print I saw used a polarizing technique, rather than the red/blue colour separation that was more common at the time. In both cases, I was fully entertained by both movies, immediately falling in love with Udo Kier, an appreciation that has sustained itself for decades, whenever I've had the pleasure of seeing him on the screen. I consider both of these films as essential viewing when it comes to cult movies, right up there with any of the works of John Waters.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - WHITE LIGHT / WHITE HEAT @ 55

 

Marking its 55th anniversary today is the sophomore album from the Velvet Underground, White Light / White Heat, which was released on January 30th, 1968. It was the Velvet’s most aggressive outing and, while perhaps pushing their production limits beyond their capacity, it still became a critical influence on the worlds of extreme music making for decades to come.

After the disappointing sales for their debut album the year before, the relationship between the band and producer Andy Warhol began to deteriorate. Not that Andy actually did much of anything in the studio to influence the band’s sound, but the decision to dismiss Andy would impact them more in terms of name recognition as they couldn’t leverage Andy’s fame anymore. The band also decided to part ways with Nico, a move which she interpreted as being “fired” as well. For the second album, the group brought Tom Wilson back to produce and set about assembling material largely inspired by the harsh noise jams they’d been exploring during their live performances over the previous year. These excursions would form the conceptual backbone for the new album. The group had also worked out an endorsement deal with VOX, who provided a slew of brand new guitars, amps and, most notably, distortion pedals, for them to exploit.

The feel of the album was designed from the get-go to be opposed to the “summer of love” vibes of the West Coast hippy scene. It was a deliberate bracing against that tide and the group, especially Lou Reed, wanted to push the tone of the record into the realms of excessive volume and distortion. The problem with this disposition was that the group didn’t quite understand how to achieve this effect without compromising the production quality of the album. As a result, when it was eventually mastered, additional compression resulted in an over saturated sound which brought in additional, unplanned levels of distortion. Where the debut album had a balance between their more aggressive nature and softer moments with songs like Sunday Morning, what ended up on WL/WH was pretty consistently harsh and volatile with little relief from the assault.

The album kicks off with the title track, with lyrics referencing the effects of intravenous injection of amphetamines - a speed rush. But the title also references Reed’s interest in certain esoteric teachings which involved healing through the use of a kind of “white light” inspired by Alice Bailey and her occult book, A Treatise On White Magic. It’s a pulsing fusion of doo-wop and proto-heavy-metal. This is followed by The Gift, the first VU track to feature John Cale on vocals. It’s an oddly mixed extended dirge which features the band improvising away on one side of the stereo field while Cale recites a story about a lover who’s surprise for his girlfriend goes terribly wrong. After a few more shorter songs like Here She Comes Now, the album wraps up with a 17 minute jam about a drag queen orgy that goes off the rails. A rather progressive theme when you consider how far ahead of the curve Reed was with the whole trans culture.

Recording of the album was done quite quickly over the course of a couple of weeks and the band didn’t have a lot of songs to work with at the time, thus the minimal track listing. Producer Tom Wilson never worked with the band again after struggling to accommodate their insistence on pushing the volume and distortion throughout the sessions. Reed purposefully wanted to go "as high and as hard as we could" and, though there were brewing conflicts with Cale, which would ultimately result in his leaving the band after this album, during the recording sessions, the band were essentially all pulling in the same direction, though that may have resulted in them going over a cliff, but at least they went as a unit.

The cover for the LP was based on an idea which originated with Warhol, but he was not credited for it. It shows a barely visible tattoo of a skull. The tattoo was that of Joe Spencer, who played the lead role in Warhol's 1967 film Bike Boy. Spencer starred as a hustler in a motorcycle gang and is seen taking a shower in the movie. Reed selected the image from negatives of the film, and it was enlarged and distorted by Billy Name, one of the members of the Factory. Sterling Morrison, however, states that the cover was picked by him.

At the time of its release, it was a commercial failure, selling even less than the group’s debut. References to drugs and sex resulted in numerous stations banning the record and its single from airplay, which didn’t help generate interest. MGM didn’t promote the album much either, which disappointed the band, who came off the session feeling confident in what they’d done. They wanted a record that rejected the “flower power” of the day, but that also meant turning off those record buyers, leaving only a small cult to appreciate its edginess. Rolling Stone refused to even review it and Melody Maker, on the other hand, wrote off the album as "utterly pretentious, unbelievably monotonous”. Not all critics were so negative and dismissive, but those voices were sparse and had no impact on record buyers.

Yet its legacy would eventually make it an inspiration for punk, No Wave and noise music in decades to come. Its brutal aggression, searing distortion and blistering raw energy would inspire future generations, who saw the bankruptcy of the hippy culture and its failure to engender any real change, to use it as a clarion call to arms for a disaffected generation of rejects and rebels. There are few examples in popular music of a band pushing itself into such a starkly confrontational stance and it stands as a rare breed of outsider art.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO @ 55

 

Celebrating its 55th anniversary today is the debut album by The Velvet Underground and Nico, which was released on March 12th, 1967. It was an album that had limited sales when it first left the gate, but as Brian Eno famously remarked, pretty much every person who bought it in those early days went out and started a band themselves, with often revolutionary results. After over five decades in the world, it is surely one of the most profoundly influential records ever produced within the realm of rock and popular music.

It’s an album that came about at a time when youth culture was intoxicated by the psychedelic swirl of groups like The Beatles and albums like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The summer of love was about to happen and flower power and hippy utopianism were all the rage. As such, even though the Velvets were honing their craft as part of Andy Warhol’s LSD freakout Exploding Plastic Inevitable “happenings”, the essence of their music was on another level entirely. Rather than singing songs about peace and love and togetherness, they were exploring drug addiction, sexual perversion, sadomasochism, prostitution and a generally darker, New York style street hustler vibe that was on a completely different wavelength than the hippies. They dressed in black and seemed like a bunch of dour, unsettling people. Musically, their sound was harder and sharper and had a strangeness to it that felt off center and, at times, distinctly dissonant. They were, quite literally, ahead of their time.

The kind of attitude that the VU fostered wouldn’t become in vogue until a decade later, when punk, new wave, post-punk and industrial music sprang up in the late 1970s. By that time, the VU’s first album, along with the the ones that followed it, had become musical touchstones for that next generation. The naiveté of the hippies had long since lost its sheen. The reality of the crumbling cities and the failure of the “love” revolution to influence any real change had fostered a deep sense of disillusionment and that zeitgeist became the perfect ground for the VU legend to take root and grow.

The album was recorded during the latter part of 1966 with Andy Warhol listed as the “producer”, though he actually had no direct hand in its sound. Rather, Warhol was the band’s facilitator. The credibility his name offered allowed the group to do basically whatever they wanted with the recordings. That “hands off” approach, however, is still considered by the band to have been a valid production technique as it allowed them to realize their music the way they wanted. However, Warhol did contribute the distinctive album art for the record, featuring the infamous “peel and see” banana, which resulted in some exorbitantly expensive and complex manufacturing in order to realize. It was hoped that Warhol’s name would help to bolster sales of the record, but even with his branding firmly affixed to the project, the sales didn’t materialize.

But it’s not always about the numbers in the bank accounts and The Velvet Underground and Nico proved that sometimes art requires a long game in order to realize its potential. One has to wonder if this kind of influence is still possible in today’s modern music industry. Is it possible for a group of outsiders like this to set anything in motion that can flow into so many sub-genres throughout the decades. How many touch points are there in contemporary music that can trace their roots back to this album? Are there any contemporary artists around today that have the potential to plant that kind of seed for the future?

DAVID BOWIE - HUNKY DORY @ 50

December 17th marks the 50th anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s fourth studio album, Hunky Dory, which was issued this day in 1971. While his previous album had not quite “Sold the World”, this would be where he’d put together the core of his “Spiders from Mars” and set the stage for the music revolution he’d lead with its follow-up.

After the somewhat lackluster reception of The Man Who Sold the World, upon returning from a US tour to promote that album, Bowie sequestered himself in his home, eschewing touring and studio time for the moment, and planted himself at his piano in order to start composing songs for his next album. Shifting his writing process off the guitar sent him veering away from the more hard-rock styling of his last album and into a more “pop”, melodic sound. When it came time to start assembling his band for the new album, he managed to bring back guitarist Mick Ronson and drummer Mick Woodmansey, despite some creative fallout after the previous album, but bassist Tony Visconti was replaced by Trevor Bolder to create the core ensemble which would become known as The Spiders from Mars.

Inspired by his trip the the US, Bowie came up with a number of songs that paid tribute to some of the personalities he’d become enamored with over there. These included Andy Warhol, Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, all of whom found themselves immortalize in song on the new album. Moreover, Bowie’s agenda for this album was freed from the influence of the demands of record companies and their executives insisting he pursue some vision of success which was outside his own agenda. For this album, he only sought to satisfy himself and it’s one of the main reasons it is looked back upon as a turning point in his career and the moment when he fully began to cut his own path through the popular music landscape. While most artists of the time were looking to revisit the past after the wild experimentation of the late ‘60s, Bowie was keen to discover new musical lands to inhabit.

While it met with immediate critical praise upon its release, commercially, it stalled and failed to chart prior to the release of the Ziggy Stardust album in 1972. Part of the problem when it came to sales for Hunky Dory was down to Bowie's new label, RCA Records, pulling back on promoting it when they got wind that he was about to change his image AGAIN for the Ziggy album, which was already being recorded. It gave them cold feet and caused them to pull their support for Hunky Dory until they saw where he was going. However, once Ziggy took off, the backlash of success ended up sweeping Hunky Dory off the scrap heap and pushed it up the charts as well where it eventually peaked at #3 in the UK.

For many Bowie aficionados, Hunky Dory is the turning point in Bowie’s career where his artistic vision and abilities finally came into complete focus at their full potential. It’s the album which put all the pieces in place to set the stage for his success on his next album. While on it’s own, it wasn’t the spark that lit the fire, it provided the additional fuel to help reinforce his trajectory once that flame was ignited. The album is loaded with songs that have become classics in Bowie’s canon of essential works. Changes, Oh! You Pretty Things, Life On Mars, Andy Warhol & Queen Bitch all attest to his ability to craft solid, inventive pop music that has stood the test of time for half a century.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO

It was sometime in 1984 when The Velvet Underground first made a notable impression upon me. I had probably heard the odd song here and there before, but was mostly familiar with Lou Reed as a solo artist for his song, Walk On the Wild Side, which had featured in the "punk" movie soundtrack of the film, Times Square (1980). Other than that, I didn't know a hell of a lot about the group. I just recall one summer Sunday morning, after a long night of warehouse partying when the last dregs of us were lounging around the space that the song, Sunday Morning, came on and it was such a perfect expression of the moment that it burned the groups essence into my mind and I started to look more closely at them and what they had achieved.

I didn't actually get a copy of The Velvet Underground and Nico album (on CD) until sometime in the early 1990s, but I would become very familiar with it from copies owned by various friends and acquaintances. I'd also become well aware of the scene around the group at the time of its creation; the Factory crowd, Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia live extravaganzas and the auteur of the scene, Andy Warhol. It was all a big influence on us in the mid 1980s as we were looking to create our own little version of it in Vancouver, occupying disused warehouse spaces and filling them with mind altered denizens of the night, dancing to strange electronic sounds amid whatever setting we could manage to concoct with no money and scraps of whatever.

It was another case where I understood that the revolution in music and art we were seeing in our times was inspired and influenced by something from the past and that it wasn't all happening in a vacuum. The sounds the VU managed to create became massively influential to the most extreme examples of new music we were seeing from our generation. When you understood the connections and heard the linkages, you could appreciate the continuity of culture being expressed through the decades that separated these artists.

Learning about the VU also put their era in a completely new light. Having lived through it, albeit as a child who was only impressed upon by virtue of the media of the day, namely the TV, my biggest sense of culture for the late 1960s was often the caricature of hippies which had managed to permeate the popular shows of the day. Even at that, the hippies were much more subversive in their core, and I'm talking about the Merry Prankster branch here, than what was seen on the small screen. But there was another, much darker tangent to those years which remained hidden and obscured until you took the time to brush away the detritus of popular representations and explore below the surface.

In this regard, The Velvet Underground represented the ultimate "hard core" of the most significant artistic influence to emerge from the decade. While groups like The Beatles would have admittedly massive influence on popular culture in the decades to follow, The Velvets would prove to be far more insidious, perverse and persistent in terms of providing a foothold for subversive evolution within the arts. Personally, I continue to consider them "ground zero" for the most original and alienating strands of artistic expression within the realm of experimental and alternative music.