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.

ROXY MUSIC - FOR YOUR PLEASURE @ 50

 

Marking its golden jubilee today is the sophomore LP from glam-rock pioneers, Roxy Music, with For Your Pleasure being released on March 23, 1973. Being their last record with synth maestro Brian Eno, it marked the end of their more eccentric musical excursions while also upping their production values.

After the success of their debut, for their second outing, Roxy Music were afforded the luxury of far more studio time with which to try out new ideas and experiment. This freedom, combined with Bryan Ferry being in top form in terms of songwriting, made it possible to deliver an album of exceptional innovation and quality. When it came to studio production techniques, the song "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" (Ferry's sinister ode to a blow-up doll) fades out in its closing section, only to fade in again with all the instruments subjected to a pronounced phasing treatment. The title track fades out in an elaborate blend of tape loop effects. Brian Eno remarked that the eerie "The Bogus Man", with lyrics about a sexual stalker, displayed similarities with contemporary material by the krautrock group Can. As for songwriting prowess, "Do the Strand" has been called the archetypal Roxy Music anthem, whilst "Editions of You" was notable for a series of ear-catching solos by Andy Mackay (saxophone), Eno (VCS3), and Phil Manzanera (guitar). Eno is very present in the final song from the album "For Your Pleasure", making it unlike any other song on the album. The song ends with the voice of Judi Dench saying "You don't ask. You don't ask why" amid tapes of the opening vocals ('Well, how are you?') from "Chance Meeting" from the first Roxy Music album.

For the album’s cover art, the front photo, taken by Karl Stoecker, featured Bryan Ferry's girlfriend at the time, singer and model Amanda Lear, who was also the confidante, protégée and closest friend of the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. Lear was depicted posing in a skintight leather dress leading a black panther on a leash. The image has been described as being "as famous as the album itself". One could hardly imagine a more iconic image to accompany such an iconic album.

Upon its release, the album went to #4 on the UK charts, but oddly, received mixed reviews in some publications. In 1973, Paul Gambaccini of Rolling Stone wrote that "the bulk of For Your Pleasure is either above us, beneath us, or on another plane altogether." I suspect such critics were simply beneath the material and frankly missed the point. Retrospective criticisms over the past five decades have consistently placed it in the higher ranks of “best of” lists for the era, with many citing it as a definitive example of British pop music of the times. The combination of lyrical deviance and adventurous musicianship make it a truly outstanding artifact that has transcended the bounds of the era in which it was created.

APHEX TWIN - 26 MIXES FOR CASH @ 20

 

Celebrating it’s 20th anniversary today is Aphex Twin’s 26 Mixes for Cash, which was released on March 24th, 2003. As well as collecting all the key remix jobs Richard D. James had done since 1990, it showcased both his respect or disdain for the artists he remixed, depending on what he delivered as a finished product.

James was notorious for delivering remixes which did not actually incorporate any elements from the original recordings he was handed to work with. This was particularly the case when it came to artists he was not especially fond of, like Nine Inch Nails. In such cases, what they got back as a “remix” was, in fact, an entirely original work from James. On a few odd occasions, what was delivered wasn’t even anything by James, but rather work produced by his flatmate, Global Goon, who was also signed to Rephlex Records. With that as the case, what you end up with on the compilation is frequently pure Aphex Twin and generally very good Aphex Twin at that. The album features 22 remixes and 4 original, previously unreleased tracks, including a remix of the Windowlicker single title track.

The title for the collection was suggested by the late Warp Records co-founder Rob Mitchell. It is a reference to the fact that James insisted on a cash payment from the record label when he delivered the DAT master because he did not want them to have any of his bank details nor know his address. The album was only ever released on CD with only a Japanese 12” vinyl issued containing two of the unreleased original tracks.

LED ZEPPELIN - HOUSES OF THE HOLY @ 50

 

Marking its 50th anniversary today is Led Zeppelin’s fifth studio LP, Houses of the Holy, which was released on March 28th, 1973. It marked a distinct evolution in the groups songwriting prowess and was the first LP from the band not to be given an eponymous title.

Prior to recording this album, both Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones had built recording studios in their homes. This allowed them to develop ideas well in advance of the album’s recording schedule and take their time to explore more complex arrangements and compositional techniques. With these resources at hand, they were able to come to the table with songs that were far more fleshed out and developed than on previous albums. This also had the effect of expanding the group’s range of musical styles as they began branching out into reggae and funk influenced rhythms.

When it came time to begin formal production on the album, the group booked The Rolling Stones mobile recording facility and set up camp at Mick Jagger’s StarGroves manor house at East Woodhay in the English county of Hampshire. The bulk of the album was recorded there, where the group took the songs that had been started at Page & Jones’ studios and added to them by jamming out additional compositions in the studio. They then moved to Olympic Studios in London for additional work and, finally, finished off recording in NYC at Electric Lady Studios. While in NYC, the group also recorded a series of classic rock ’n’ roll covers which remain unreleased.

In terms of its place in the group’s canon of recordings, Houses of the Holy, veered away from the dark, heavy blues of the first two albums and went for a much cleaner, expansive rock sound, which is particularly evident in Jimmy Page’s guitar tone throughout. The variety of musical styles was also key to the album’s eclectic sound. Though it lacked a standout classic like Stairway to Heaven from the previous album, it does contain pieces which became concert staples in tours following its release, like The Song Remains the Same and No Quarter. Not all of the material recorded during the sessions made the album, including the title track, which ended up being released on Physical Graffiti. Walker’s Walk eventually found its home on the posthumous Coda LP, released after the band’s demise following the death of John Bonham.

For the cover graphics, legendary ‘70s design house, Hipgnosis were hired to do the job. This was the first cover they’d do for the band, but they would end up designing all the future covers for them going forward. Aubrey Powell was the lead photographer and designer for this project. Initially, they had considered shooting in Peru, but ended up going to Giant’s Causeway in North Ireland where a series of photos were shot in order to create a collage for the front image. Two children, Stefan and Samantha Gates, were hired and sessions took place at dawn and dusk over the course of several days in an attempt to get the right lighting. The photo sessions turned out to be something of a frustrating affair as it rained constantly throughout the shoot, thwarting attempts to get the desired results. Images were shot in black & white and then combined to create the impression of many children climbing on the rocks. The results were deemed unsatisfying until a tinting accident inadvertently produced an effect which brought the whole thing together. Whatever the struggles to get a finished work, it ultimately ended up winning a Grammy award for packaging. Powell’s work was actually the second concept submitted for the album with Hipgnosis partner, Storm Thorgerson. initially submitting an image featuring an electric green tennis court with a tennis racket on it. Furious that Thorgerson was implying, by means of a visual pun, that their music sounded like a "racket", the band fired him and hired Powell in his place.

At the time of its release, it was met with mixed critical responses, though it still became a commercial success. Critics were not impressed with the eclectic mix of styles on the album and found it unfocused and derivative. Gordon Fletcher from Rolling Stone called the album "one of the dullest and most confusing albums I've heard this year", believing the band had digressed from "the epitome of everything good about rock" to a watered down heavy metal act. Such critiques didn’t hurt sales, however, as the album topped the UK charts and spent 39 weeks on Billboard's US top 200 albums chart including two weeks at number one (their longest stint since Led Zeppelin III). The album was number four on Billboard magazine's top albums of 1973 year-end chart. Personally, It’s certainly not my favorite album from the band. I tend to agree that the forays into lighter musical styles are not particularly convincing. I prefer my Zeppelin either hot and heavy or folksy and mellow. ’50s rock, funk and reggae felt strained in their hands, at least to my ears.