Sometime around the late 2000s, probably 2007 or 2008, I was watching TV late one night, channel surfing after having smoked a bit of good weed and looking for something chill for nighttime viewing. At the time, I was a big fan of TCM (Turner Classic Movies) and was partial to exploring the classics of the golden age of Hollywood. This particular evening, I happened to land on TCM just as this odd, haunting movie was starting. Something about it immediately transfixed me and I couldn't take my eyes off its dreamy, strange interplay of light and shadows. All the way through, I kept wondering what it was I was watching, but it was only at the end ,when the title and credits played, that I found it was called Portrait of Jennie.
I immediately looked it up online and found it was available on DVD and ordered a copy. Once I got it, I watched it again (and again a while later) and just gave it another viewing last night to share it with my partner, who'd never seen it before. I still find it holds its charms quite firmly, as much as it did that first viewing.
Portrait of Jennie was released in 1948 and stars Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotton. It tells the tale of a lonely painter who meets this charming yet ghostly young girl. She seems to be from another time and another life and each time they meet, she has aged much more than the span of time which has marked the space between their meeting. Cotton's character is not sure if she's real and the whole relationship unfolds like a Twilight Zone episode. In essence, it's a love story, but it's also an allegory about life and death and eternity. Time and space twist and enfold around each other as their star-crossed paths entwine through spans of years or days, depending on your perspective.
Technically, the film is notable for some rather innovative and novel production techniques, utilizing scenes where fabric has been placed over the lens to give the image the texture of a painting canvas and mixing black & white film stock with splashes of scenes in tinted monochrome and full color. The film's cinematographer, who tragically died after the film's completion, was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award. The score of the film also uses a Theremin in the soundtrack during the segments with Jennie, to lend an air of dreamlike ambience. There are times when Jennie is shot to look like she's almost transparent, nearly fading into the background. There are also several striking exterior shots, done on location, such as those done in New York City's Central Park. among other places, which utilize natural lighting of sunrises and sunsets to magnificent and striking effect with the surrounding architecture.
The film also supplies an excellent supporting cast, most notably the legendary Ethel Barrymore as the owner of an art gallery who takes Cotton's struggling painter character under her wing to help nurture his talent. Veteran character actor, David Wayne, also turns in a lively performance as the best friend of the struggling artist.
Portrait of Jennie is a film which may be a bit old fashioned in its idealism and a bit naive in its belief in "true love", but it more than transcends these issues by its sheer commitment to its vision. It believes in itself so much, you just can't refuse its persuasions. And that's really the key theme as it shows an artist finding that the most powerful inspiration there is when creating is love.
In 1994, Future Sound of London (FSOL) released their sprawling double CD opus, Lifeforms. At the time I first heard it, I thought that I'd never heard FSOL before, however, I would later discover that they'd cracked my sphere of perception as far back as 1988 with the Stakker Humanoid single, released under the Humanoid alias.
Coming from the UK Acid House explosion of the late 1980s, Brian Dougans & Garry Cobain were on the forefront of pushing electronic music into the far reaches of deep space experimentation. Along with the likes of Autechre, they had their sights set far beyond the familiar balm of 4x4 dance grooves. With Lifeforms, FSOL cast off from those shores and set the course of their synthesizer spaceship off into the nebulous galaxies of the sweepingly ethereal.
Lifeforms took electronic music well away from the rigidity of fixed beats into something much more organic. Like the title suggests, these sonic creatures are alive and amorphous, another term they'd put to use with another alias. There's nothing static or rigid about these sounds. They all seem to grow and twist like exotic flora & fauna. Songs don't start and stop, they emerge from the jungle and then slink back into the murk after having weaved their spell. Everything from start to finish hangs together as a single, expansive landscape, populated by any number of strange beasts. It's an album that fully exploits the capacity of the medium of the day, the CD. I know the vinyl purists out there may scoff at this, but this really is an album properly enjoyed on compact disc, mostly because you don't want to have to keep getting up every 20 minutes to flip sides. You want to sink into this environment and soak in it, undisturbed.
Though it wasn't always explicitly apparent, there was always a connection between the UK Acid House movement and the preceding experimental, "Industrial" scene. The fact that Psychic TV were one of the premier early adopters of the Acid House genre should be enough of a clue, but FSOL sort of took the flow of influence back to complete the circle with this album, pulling in Industrial's more dark ambient aspects and often directly sampling sources such as Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey. This album is a vital link in that chain.
Lifeforms also makes the psychedelic facets of the electronic music of the day most fully realized, doing more than paying lip service to the experience by virtue of the graphics and design aesthetics. This really is music for serious tripping, well off the grid of the dance floor. Dougans' & Cobain's commitment to this culture would become much more explicit in later years as they dove headlong into full on psychedelic "acid-rock", sometimes to the dismay of fans more committed to electronic music.
In the long run, Lifeforms still stands up to serious listening to this day, sounding just as alive and organic as it did the day it was released.
On the 40th anniversary of the death of Ian Curtis (May 18/1980), it seems fitting to share some thoughts on what is, perhaps, Joy Division's most iconic album, Unknown Pleasures. Not that there's a lot of records to pick from, given the short lifespan of the band, but even from the perspective of the cover graphics, when you think of this man and the band he fronted, this is likely the first image that comes to mind.
I discovered Joy Division in the latter half of1980, by which time Ian's "deed" was done and the band had already become something of a myth in the alternative music press. I just recall hearing about this band that was so dark and depressing, their singer had topped himself, so there was this morbid curiosity shrouding the band. If I remember correctly, I ended up getting this in the little import bin at the Thunder Bay, ON, Records on Wheels outlet. At the time, I was in full fledged PiL mania and was still playing Second Edition at least once or twice a day, but I was also on the lookout for something that could compete with the brutal hardness of what was coming from that camp. "Post Punk", as a genre, was still fleshing itself out, but Joy Division soon established itself as the next front line.
When I got the album, obviously the first thing that struck me was the packaging. Not just the starkness of the cover graphics, but the texture of the sleeve as well. I'd never seen a cover like that before. Just holding the album was a tactile experience. The overall aura of it all seemed so very dark. This is a few years before Spinal Tap, but even with the white squiggly lines breaking up the darkness, this seemed like there were "none more black".
Putting on the album, the next thing that strikes is the weird production, especially Stephen Morris' drums and the way they were recorded. I didn't quite comprehend it at the time, but this was all down to the genius of producer Martin Hannett. He's somehow managed to take the thrash of this pseudo-punk band and turn it inside-out on itself. Everything sounded like it was in the wrong place, but in exactly the right way. Peter Hook's bass was played up high, most of the time, with the kick being used to hold down the subs. Bernard Sumner's guitars seemed to be off in the distance, jangling and grinding away in a corner. And the whole thing was wrapped around with this foggy ambience of strange electronic ghosts.
In front of it all was Ian's voice. I have to say it was a bit jarring at first. It wasn't like any "rock" vocalist I'd ever heard before. Maybe, in a pinch, there was a bit of Bowie about it, but only vaguely. Honestly, there's more Bing Crosby about it than Bowie. For the most part, it was its own thing and took a bit of getting used to. There was no escaping the knowledge of his fate either. Listening to the words, you couldn't help but look for clues, reasons why he'd decided to end it all. It was a somber listening experience, not really something you'd put on and party with, but it was completely engrossing. It sounded like an entire universe into itself and each player was a million miles away from the others, but it all came together into this expansive whole.
It's a record which has taken on incredible proportions over the years. It still sounds futuristic and beyond the times. It's ageless and timeless. I can only speculate on what might have happened to it if it hadn't been framed by such personal tragedy.
As a child, some of the more captivating series of programs I was exposed to were the shows created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Beginning with their “Supermarionation” spectacles like Thunderbirds, Stingray, Joe 90 and Captain Scarlet, my affection for their work would reach its zenith with their mid 1970s science fiction classic, Space 1999. However, it would not be until later in my adulthood that I would really appreciate who these people were and that they were responsible for all of these shows.
The appeal of the marionette shows, for me, was primarily down to all the models and vehicles they used and their mid-century modern sense of futurism. A lot of that came from Sylvia’s sense of fashion and design, something else I’d learn to appreciate later in life. As a little kid, it was the appeal of the spaceships and ultra-modern cars that drove me to covet those old diecast Corgi Toys. Once I got older, however, I started to appreciate the more adult and sophisticated stories of their most acclaimed series, Space 1999. However, what I’d missed out on, in this equation, was the live action series which preceded Space 1999, the single season, 1970/71 series, UFO. Because it never aired in any of the local markets I lived in during its initial run nor in subsequent syndication, it’s only very recently that I became aware of it, who produced it and how it set the stage for Space 1999. I recently had the opportunity to watch the entire series on YouTube, at long last, and found it more than a little fascinating to compare and contrast UFO to the series which would follow it.
There’s a lot of very striking evolution that goes on between the two, but you have to back up a bit to the “puppet” shows to understand how a lot of these dynamics played out. Watching these shows in close succession, you can see how lessons and techniques from the past had to be modified for the present or redeveloped entirely. Things that worked in the small scale world of marionettes for a children’s show didn’t necessarily translate to the full scale landscape of flesh and blood people with an adult audience. The same things applied to scripts and characterizations and all these learning curves played out in UFO. There was also a cultural breach as the producers attempted to adapt their work from “kid” focused to something engaging for adults. In this regard, there was a certain overstepping that occurred, particularly in terms of gender relationships and sexuality, but I’ll save that for a bit as it deserves some special attention.
Space 1999 Medical Eagle
UFO Interceptor
Let’s start with the overall look and feel of the UFO series. As mentioned, there were issues in coming to grips with the scale and proportion of things. Models and set pieces which were perfectly acceptable for a puppet show just didn’t carry enough weight, literally, for interacting with humans. One of the most egregious examples of this is the actual UFO spacecraft in the series. The scale of them looks completely off, like they’re no bigger than a tin cup. The rapid spinning action of the model also undermines its appearance and contributes to a sense that they lacked substantiality. That horrible, high pitched screeching sound they make doesn’t help things either. The same thing applies to models like the SHADO moon base and Skydiver submarine. Then there’s the absurd design of the Interceptors, with their ill-proportioned nose missile. It’s still aiming towards a child’s toy rather than a serious looking fighter spacecraft.
Space 1999 Moonbase Alpha
UFO SHADO Moonbase
Contrast this with the model work done on Space 1999. In the context of the times, the improvement is vast and impressive. The ships are a much better, more mature design with the Eagles looking and feeling like they’ve actually got some mass to them. Exterior shots of them landing on planet surfaces or on the pad at Alpha are done with a much better sense of scale and substance, using high speed frame rates to create a feeling of mass. When it comes to the look of Alpha, the exterior is crafted to give a look of something large and sprawling rather than the little golf ball pods of UFO. The interiors are another massive leap forward as well. Compare the somewhat clunky, cobbled together look of UFO’s SHADO underground HQ or the moon base interiors with the interior of Space 1999’s Main Mission in Moonbase Alpha. There are a few nice design elements for the UFO sets, but the scale and scope and the coherence of design for the Alpha interiors, at least in the first season, are astonishingly well rendered. Everything looks like it’s all part of a singularity of fully integrated aesthetics. The curves, the colors (or lack thereof), were much more updated and appropriate for the mid-70s times. UFO was released in 1970, but a lot of its look seemed dated by then, belonging more to mid 1960s mod fashions, something that worked great with the puppet shows, but seemed a bit out of touch by the end of that decade.
UFO Moonbase interior
Space 1999 Alpha Main Mission
The fashions underwent a similar evolution from the wacky one piece jump suits to the more streamlined, efficient look of the Alpha uniforms. There’s some notable changes in terms of how men and women dress between these shows. In UFO, the dress for the female cast is uniformly skewed towards overtly sexualized fashions, with tight fitting catsuits, belted and form fitting and made to enhance the figure. For the first season of Space 1999, the uniforms were essentially identical between the men and the women. The women, overall, were given far more equal footing to the men in Space 1999 than in UFO. Lord knows what they were thinking with those ridiculous purple wigs for the moon base female uniforms on UFO. Why they had to wear them was never explained, even though they showed the crew not wearing them on Earth. It may have made for a fab & kinky look, but it made taking the actors seriously an impossible task. I should note, however, that Space 1999 took a bit of a step backwards in its second season, introducing some differential elements between the male and female attire and also some scenes, like the recreation area, where bikinis could be flaunted for a bit of a flesh parade.
Beyond the wardrobe, there’s a huge disparity between the two shows in terms of how the female characters are treated on UFO vs Space 1999. As I mentioned earlier, it seemed like an assumption was made that, for UFO, in order to make the show more appealing to adults, the producers decided to insinuate all sorts of sexual innuendo into the interactions between the men and women. It was fairly common to have men leering at and engaging in vaguely inappropriate touching and suggestive remarks with the women. This is the kind of stuff that gets you sent to HR these days, but it was par for the course at SHADO HQ in UFO. On Moonbase Alpha, however, these kinds of shenanigans were nowhere to be found. Women were treated as professionals and professionally. Side glances at passing booty were not to be found!
This leads me to the general area of character development, which was virtually nonexistent on UFO. It was as if they forgot that they weren’t working with puppets anymore and just assumed human actors would just be as stiff and lifeless. The only character who ever managed to get some sort of a backstory was commander Ed Straker, played with appropriate gravitas by Ed Bishop. Initially, Straker comes off as cold, detached and efficacious, but there are a number of episodes which delve into his failed marriage and the tragic fate of his son which manage to show how tormented he really was and how torn he was between his personal life and responsibilities with SHADO. Keeping the planet safe from alien invaders is a pretty big burden for anyone, even more so when you command a secret organization and can’t be honest with the people closest to you in your personal life. Other than that, however, the rest of the cast are no more than mannequins doing things for some reason or other that you just don’t care much about. And the antagonists of the show are never developed beyond being mere bogeymen who fling their tin cup UFOs at Earth each episode mostly to be blasted out of the sky, unceremoniously, and without ever delving into their motivation, nature and objectives beyond the occasional glancing blow. The only exception to that is one episode which strikingly mirrors the plot of the film, Enemy Mine, as it attempts to give some sense of “humanity” to the aliens, though this is never pursued again in any other episode.
SHADO commander Ed Straker
Despite all that, UFO is still a fun show to watch if for no other reason than for the kitsch and camp of it all. It’s got some wonderful silliness to sink your teeth into if you’re interested in retro science fiction cults. Space 1999, however, manages to craft a much more thoughtful series with characters that have actual personalities and behave with real emotions. It’s not light years ahead of UFO, by any means. It’s still a bit stiff and heavy handed at times, but it manages to be a show that can, occasionally, be taken seriously with its attempts to examine human nature and the meaning of life. Either way, they’re both shows that are worth watching, not just for historical significance, but because they can be damn entertaining. And I’d be happy to drive Straker’s car any day.
diecast model of official SHADO car driven by Commander Ed Straker
May 16th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of DEVO's third and most successful LP, Freedom of Choice, released this day in 1980.
For me, this album represents DEVO achieving the perfection of their final form. Everything they'd been building towards and carefully crafting came into exact alignment on this album, from the song writing to the balance of instrumentation between guitars and synths to the image to the politics. In a way, it's almost too perfect because I never found any subsequent album as compelling. It's those first three albums which encompass the totality of the DEVO journey for me and, after this, it was pretty much just "more of the same".
Prior to this album, DEVO were a curiosity for most people, oddballs on the fringe in funny suits doing wacky robot moves. They'd been around for a good many years before this, forging their vision in underground clubs and managing to gain some attention with their first two albums within the burgeoning "New Wave" scene. I was an early adopter of the DEVO vision as soon as I saw them on SNL that first time performing Satisfaction and Jock Homo in 1978. The future was clear and it was obvious we were all slipping backwards down the evolutionary slope. As anyone can see by the current state of our planet, DEVO were more than musicians or artists, they were profits.
Freedom of Choice, in its very title, lays out the conundrum of human civilization as we struggle with the our sense of self and the desire to give up responsibility. "Freedom from choice is what you want" and all you have to do is look around to see humanity abdicating its responsibilities as the absolute worst of us flood into that vacuum of power and assume control over a system they never build and have no idea how to operate. The US is currently in the hands of a president who is the quintessential manifestation of the theory of "De-evolution". Booji Boy is all grown up and he's got his finger on the button. No one could more perfectly represent the corruption of our civilization and no one more precisely predicted this than Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale.
Freedom of Choice managed to take DEVO out of the shadows of obscurity and thrust them into the mainstream zeitgeist, particularly with the iconic single, Whip It. The song and its refrain to "whip it good" have become permanently ingrained in the collective consciousness of western pop culture. The domed red plastic hats have equally become fixtures when it comes to identifying the band. If you're looking for the pure stuff, there's no other record that's more DEVO than this.
I can't quite pinpoint when this music came into my life, but it must have been sometime in 1985 when I first became aware of Cocteau Twins, most likely their third full LP, Treasure (1984). For several years in the mid 1980s, Cocteau Twins were THEE go-to band for all your "come-down" needs. After a long night of freakin' & tweakin' on your favorite party favor, when your senses were getting fragile and you needed something soft and dreamy to drift back down to earth, there was really only one choice for that descent back into reality.
Cocteau Twins quickly became the flagship band for the 4AD label and helped to establish its aesthetic of luscious production values and elegant packaging. What the trio of Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie & Simon Raymonde brought together was the opposite of a "power trio". Softness and sweeping beauty were their hallmarks and no other band made me appreciate the potential of a good, spacey reverb like these folks.
Musically, backed by only restrained drum machine, Robin & Simon spun a web of shimmering guitars and soothing bass, a tapestry which seemed to fade off into infinity, gliding and glittering like angel wings. This aesthetic became hugely influential for me and many others as we all pounced on the wave of new digital reverb units which began flooding the music production gear market at the time. BIG echo and endless reverberation were a MUST for the burgeoning "dream pop" aficionados. But as vast and ethereal as this music was, there was a presence floating and flying atop it all which took something wonderful and alchemically transmuted it in to spun gold, the voice of Elizabeth Fraser.
Nothing was a better balm for a sensitive brain during a drug induced dawn than the voice of miss Fraser. Most of the time you didn't know what the fuck she was singing. It often just sounded like gibberish, but what magnificently beautiful gibberish it was! I didn't know at the time, but she, as it turned out, suffers from a great deal of social anxiety and this shyness became a key ingredient in creating her style on record. It was all turned inward, afraid to enunciate the words clearly. Instead, they became a phonetic code language, a symbolism of emotional triggers where the words faded from relevance and it was only the sound of that gorgeous, fragile voice leading you into that inner space of self reflection. It was a friendly, guiding hand as you came to terms with the world resolving back into itself while your head started to clear (and probably ache a bit).
Listening to this music, for me, brings back so many memories of facing a sunrise after a long strange trip and feeling like it's all going to be okay.
Early in 1983, I was living in a house in Vancouver, sharing the main floor with some band mates. The property was managed by this odd older fellow who lived in another house a couple of doors down. All three houses in this row were owned by the same person and managed by this dude, who happened to be an avid record collector. He had a little garage in the back of our house which was stuffed from top to bottom with records. There were shelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling with all these LP's neatly stored inside. We got friendly enough with the guy that he eventually gave us the green light to have a dig and borrow any records we wanted to check out. This is where I first discovered Lou Reed's most iconoclastic release of his career, Metal Machine Music.
Released on the heels of one of Reed's most commercially successful periods in the early 1970s, 1975's double LP monolith of noise came screaming out of the gate to the immediate confusion of fans and critics. Assumed to be no more than a contractually obligated prank on his record label, whom Reed was about to terminate relations, few suspected Reed's earnestness in delivering this slab of apparent antisocial discord.
At the time of its release, the idea of "noise" music was virtually anathema within the commercial record buying markets. There may have been some obscure fine arts conceptual dalliances throughout the 20th century, but it was strictly academic stuff for students and art snobs. It was never dropped headlong into the midst of a mainstream record buying public.
Prior to unearthing the record in that garage, I'd only come across a few references to it in the music press and most of it was either dismissive with the occasional glancing comment indicating some form of reverence. I recall one review by Lester Bangs of another LP where he referenced MMM as a form of antidote for the horrible album he'd just reviewed. Given that, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I dove into it. It didn't take long to discover the reality of the impenetrable wall of noise I would encounter.
I can't say I "enjoyed" listening to this album, but across those 4 sides of brain cell shattering treble piercing frequencies, something got lodged in my consciousness. Without any chemical augmentation, my brain chemistry changed. At the time, I couldn't put it into words or describe what process had occurred and I still don't really know how to give it a proper description, but I do know that the idea of "noise" and the concept of using it creatively was firmly lodged into my consciousness by this record. It also impressed a sense of personal determinism upon me in the manner in which Reed had put this product out there in accordance with nothing more than his own desires and with no concern for the judgements or reactions of anyone else.
It wasn't until years later that I finally got a CD copy of it and I don't listen to it often, but I do find it necessary to listen to at least once a year. The day Lou Reed died, it was the first recording of him that I had to listen to and I played it from start to finish. I don't find it a chore to listen to either. I find it is, as Bangs noted, a cleansing experience. It's like sandblasting all the gunk off your brain. It's a way to give your mind a bit of a reset. Reed's motives for creating the album have, since its release, become more understood as a tool for meditation rather than as a "fuck you" to any record label. It is, perhaps, the most fundamentally useful record he ever created in terms of practical application.
